202 ORNITHOLOGY. [CiiAP. XXXV. 



on some large boulders, of a former period, in the ancient gravel 

 below the shelly loam of Natchez. 



At Mount Vernon we landed, and I collected there many fossil 

 shells, of fresh-water and land species, from a terrace of yellow 

 loam, elevated many yards above high- water mark, on the Ohio. 

 Returning from my excursion, I fell in with a naturalist of the 

 place, armed with a rifle, and carrying some wild birds which he 

 had shot. He was a shoemaker by trade, and had a collection 

 of more than 150 well-stuffed birds from the neighborhood. He 

 told me that the notes I heard here in the woods were chiefly 

 those of the red-bird, but that some of the most musical were the 

 song of a brown thrush, called, in Indiana, the mocking bird, but 

 differing from the real musician of that name, which, though 

 abounding at New Madrid, does not range so far north as the 

 Ohio. Conversing with him, I learnt that the loud tapping of 

 the large red-headed woodpecker, so common a sound in the 

 American forests, is not produced, as I had imagined, by the 

 action of the beak perforating the bark or wood, but is merely a 

 succession of sharp blows on the trunk of the tree, after which 

 the bird is seen to listen attentively, to know if there are any 

 insects within. Should they stir in their alarm, and betray the 

 fact of their being &quot;at home,&quot; the woodpecker begins immediately 

 to excavate a hole in the rotten timber. 



I had promised to pay a visit to Dr. David Dale Owen, the 

 state geologist of Indiana, and hired a carriage which conveyed 

 us to New Harmony, situated on the Wabash River sixty miles 

 above its junction with the Ohio. On our way across the coun 

 try, we went through a continuous forest, consisting chiefly of 

 oak, beech, and poplar, without any undergrowth, and in this 

 respect differing remarkably from the wooded valleys and hills of 

 the Alleghanies, and the region eastward of those mountains, as 

 well as all parts of New England. Here there were no kalmias 

 or azaleas, or sweet fern, or candleberry, or other evergreens. 

 The green carpet beneath the trees was made up largely of 

 mosses, and among them was that beautiful European species 

 of feather-moss, Hypnum prolifcrum, in great plenty. The 

 trunks of many trees were spotted by a jet-black fungus resem- 



