THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 49 
small shallow bottle. Whether this noise is vocal or mechanical in 
character, the bird controls it, and stops tt without stopping tts flight. 
This evening the birds, as a rule, seemed satisfied with twenty-five 
or thirty successive notes in a series, about once a minute.” 
Fringilla Tristes (the Yellow Hemp Bird) put in an appearance 
on the rst inst., and I saw the Carex Plantaginea in blossom to-day. 
May 2nd, 1893. 
VIII. 
The spring season seems to have earnestly set in at last after 
many relapses. A New England author, whose treatise I have lately 
been reading, (‘‘The Stroller in New England” by Frank Bolles) 
describes the spring season’s movements as “ Crab-like,” yet with 
many charms, and terms that season of the year ‘The Maidenhood 
of Nature.” 
The bush flowers are ten days to two weeks late this year. I 
saw the first “Adder Tongues” (Zrythronium Americanum) in full 
blossom last Thursday. There was a handsome patch of unusually 
large ones growing on rich ground among raspberry bushes, which 
had given them shelter and protection. These flowers, if well cared 
for, seem capable of much enlargement and improvement. 
The Marsh Marigolds began to open yesterday, and will soon 
be at the height of their beauty and vigor. This year they are about 
co-temporaneous with the Trilliums which began to expand on 
Saturday and on Sunday (6th and 7th.) 
A large number of the summer birds are now here. The Cat 
Bird, Thrush, and the Hermit Thrush can be heard every day, in 
full song, and many of the small warblers, notably the pretty Red Start 
Flycatcher and others. The Tyrant Flycatchers and the Chimney 
Swallows have also been noticed for some days, and the serenades 
of the Whip-Poor-Wills, we hear in a piece of not far-distant woods 
almost every night. When three or four of these strange birds hold 
a sort of a seance in the loneliest part of the forest, on bright moon- 
light nights, the drama is a most fantastic extravaganza. They 
frequently take up triangular positions, or perhaps roughly, quad- 
rangular. Number one will give his quaint call eighty or ninety 
times in quick succession ; on his ceasing number two begins his 
recitative of about the same number of syllables ; next number three 
‘“takes up the wondrous tale,” and so on about, with brief intervals 
of moth-catching, till break of day. Sometimes if number one 
