6 PROCEEDINGS MANCHESTER INSTITUTE 



hearing or sight. Thus we have repeatedly tallied the respective 

 numbers of each species along such roads and obtained the facts 

 of their comparative abundance or scarcity. One such road, 

 a State road, opened up through the forest in 1902, leads 

 directly from the foot of Jefferson Highland, following much of 

 the way the South Branch of Israel's River, ascends to a pass 

 between Mt. Jefferson and Mt. Dartmouth, 3000 feet elevation, 

 known as Jefferson Notch, and continuing down on the southerly 

 side passes through Bretton Woods to the Crawford House ; or 

 by taking the old toll road, now also a State road, one reaches 

 the base of Mt. Washington and, passing out thence, the grounds 

 of the Mt. Washington Hotel, from which the return is made 

 over the Cherry Mountain road to Jefferson Meadows. Several 

 cross-country drives have also regularly been taken, including 

 Lancaster by various routes, which lying through open country 

 have furnished a quite full knowledge of its bird life. On some 

 of these all-day excursions seventy-five species of summer resi- 

 dent birds have come under observation, and once the number 

 has risen to eighty species. The variety and extent of the 

 summer bird-life of the region have thus been determined. 



In that portion of the broad Jefferson Valley which lies to 

 the westward of Israel's River and between it and Cherry Pond 

 is a swampy section which a few years ago was grown to 

 spruce and tamarack. But the extensive fires of June, 1903, 

 swept through this swamp and destroyed it almost completely 

 as a breeding place. Here I had found in the years preceding 

 the forest fires the Black-poll Warbler as a common summer 

 resident and the Hudsonian Chickadee as a breeding bird. 

 This swamp is known as the Davis Swamp. It is bordered 

 on one side by the turnipke road to Lancaster, this road fol- 

 lowing the general course of the river and passing through the 

 recently fire-devastated country which is now beginning to be 

 opened up for farms. Along this turnpike, for a short extent 

 of the way, the Wilson's Warbler now regularly breeds, while not 

 far away in the Meadows portion of the valley there has 

 come to be in recent years a small representation of the Yellow 



