THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 43 
brute weighed only a little over eighteen pounds. It was a male, 
and spare in flesh. The body was of a tawny grey color, with very 
faint shadows of stripes on the sides, and small leopard-like specks 
of black on a tawny ground on the inside of the legs. ‘The tail ap- 
peared to be four or five inches only in length, and near the tip there 
fwas a black ring of about an inch wide, and at the extreme end a 
tuft of white hairs. The teeth seemed as large as those of an ordi- 
nary bull-dog, and the animal had gnawed in two, near the roots, 
the stems of one or two poplar trees as thick as a man’s wrist, which 
grew near the trap. The feline was held for eight or ten hours before 
its life was ended by a bullet. Tracks of wild-cats have been noticed 
in the snow in the same swamp occasionally of late years, but no 
similar capture has been made during the last twenty years. The 
animal will be stuffed and mounted. 
The drumming of the Ruffled Grouse has been frequent about 
here, and the notes of the Chewink became noticeable about the 
same date, the 6th April. Several Golden-winged Wood-peckers were 
seen during Easter Week. A friend reports that he has frequently 
met with these birds in the bush this year since the 17th of March. 
On Monday I saw several groups of Grackles enjoying them- 
selves near the small pools of water in the fields. They come to 
such spots to capture Caddis worms and other aquatic larve. So 
soon as the party have fished a puddle out, they ascend to the 
branches of the nearest tree and have a chorus of song, at the con- 
clusion cf which they fly to a fresh puddle, and repeat the programme. 
When the flock numbers forty or fifty the musical effect is har- 
- monious and pleasing, but when there happen to be ten or a dozen 
only in the party, the discord of individual notes mars the harmony. 
These Grackle serenades discontinue when the birds pair and com- 
mence nest building, which generally takes place about the 1st of May. 
On Monday, the 17th, between 11 and 12 a. m., I heard the 
whiffle-waffling sounds made in the air by the Snipes. At this time 
of the spring it is a peculiar, soft, genial sound, and is mostly heard 
near the margin of bogs about the hour of gloaming, and onward to 
midnight in the warm, calm evenings of the last of April. Occasion- 
ally, however, the music is given forth at mid-day, especially if the 
weather be calm and cloudy, as on Monday last. I cannot do bet- 
ter than quote from Mr. Bolles’ book, ‘‘ A Stroller in New England,” 
concerning this phenomenon : 
