6928 Birds. 



of considerable extent, and to the birds which frequent it, I would devote 

 the present letter. The plants which sparsely occupy such a soil must 

 often * spring to perish there,' but at the best they must be able to get 

 a firm hold of the loose shingle, to bear submersion beneath the turbid 

 and rapid waters for some time, and then half-buried in loose stones 

 and loaded with drift, and still able to recover themselves. One of 

 the most abundant of these is Cleome heptaphylla, whose irregular 

 white flowers seem always in bloom. Little tufts of the common 

 Mimosa pudica and yEschynomene americana, both in differing degrees 

 sensitive, are numerous. Amaranthus viridis, common everywhere, here 

 holds its ground in green patches, without beauty of any sort; but the 

 Amaranths have a gay representative in a species whose bright purple 

 calyces and bracts collect into a spike — brilliant bits of colour against 

 the cold gray of the stones amid which they grow. The horses' hoofs, 

 in crossing little clumps of herbage, produce a rattle singularly 

 metallic, considering its source — the dry seeds of various species of 

 Crotalaria loose within the dried and inflated pods. C. retusa is a 

 common weed, though its spikes of large yellow papilionaceous 

 flowers make it very ornamental. With C. verrucosa, here equally 

 common, the flowers, scarcely less, are a purplish blue. C. striata 

 rises to a bush three or four feet in height, but the flowers are in- 

 significant; and this list might be extended with many others. As 

 seems very commonly the case with plants in barren, exposed situa- 

 tions, though sometimes stunted in growth, the seed is produced with 

 unusual profuseness ; hence, at this season, the shingle is frequented 

 by numerous flocks of Spermophila olivacea and bicolor. I may 

 remark that if these little birds ever really cease building nests and 

 rearing young at all it is during the first two months of the year. The 

 flocks at this time are more numerous, and numbers of the adult 

 males, with distinguishing orange or black, appear among them; 

 but the autumnal flocks do not seem to exceed five or six, and then, 

 as I have often noticed, there is no adult male with ihem, which would 

 look as if they were broods of young. They certainly breed, however, 

 as late as the end of October and beginning of November. In quest 

 of the same abundantly-supplied food are numbers of your Coturniculus 

 tixicrus, a very universally distributed little bird, as the last. I found 

 it abundantly in the pastures round Freeman's Hall, than which a 

 locality more diverse from this can scarcely be. This pretty sparrow 

 rises, takes a short flight, and drops suddenly a few yards off, or will 

 sit watching on a low twig without any fear. 



" At this season, in numbers not much less, is the pretty Sylvicola, 



