30 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



barrens adapted themselves to their haunts after these had been 

 swept by wood -fires. In fact I saw more kinds of birds and 

 greater numbers of them on the barrens Tobyhanna-way on 

 August 5th and August 6th than I had seen earlier in August 

 on unburned East Mountain, where I came on only Field Spar- 

 rows and Chewinks, and more than I had seen on the neighbor- 

 ing Wismer Mountain on July 8, when in a long stay on its top 

 there came about me only Barn Swallows, whose homes were, 

 at nearest, about the barns four hundred feet below and over a 

 mile away, and the Chewinks and Maryland Yellow-throats of 

 the scrub woods about me. It was hardly late enough, when I 

 saw all these birds on the burnt barrens, for them to have gath- 

 ered there after breeding in the creek valleys below, and, more- 

 over, some of them were accompanied by young. That I saw 

 more, of course, was partly because, with so many leaves burnt 

 off the brush, I had a much better view of my surroundings than 

 on the huckleberried East Mountain and the thicketed Wismer. 



It was on the third day of the woods-fires on Big Spring 

 Mountain and Turkey Knob, three miles to the westward of 

 Buckhill Falls, that I went up to see the burnt-over district. 

 All day long on August 4 the fine ash of burnt leaves fell on us 

 at Buck Hill, the wind driving the fires nearer and nearer and 

 bringing out the fire-fighters to prevent the threatening of the 

 community. The fires had been started, presumably by berry 

 pickers, on Pleasant Ridge and had burned their way north- 

 ward across Turkey Knob to Big Spring, on whose northern 

 slope they were arrested, in some places by the fire-fighters, but 

 in more by masses of rock too bare to support any vegetation. 

 In one place the fires had burned all the way to the Buck Hill 

 stream, the very base of Wild Cat Hollow, a distance of four 

 miles, perhaps, from their place of origin. At its widest the 

 main fire was some two miles broad, unless you counted the 

 places where changing winds had driven it in narrow belts a half 

 mile further toward Buck Hill, its nearest approach to which was 

 the Bockmeyer farm, some two miles distant. 



It was about a half mile north of this, on the berry-road up 

 Big Spring, that I came into the burnt-over barrens. Here, 

 where trees twenty to thirty feet high lifted themselves at irreg- 



