4 WOOD THRUSH. 
ears cel ores = * 
ground beneath the trees is covered with a soft green carpet. Here grow whole patches 
of club-moss!, there masses of aromatic wintergreen*, beautiful, deliciously scented 
trailing arbutus* and creeping checkerberry*, to say nothing of the many different 
delicate ferns. Everywhere gurgle the springs and prattle the brooks of the forest. 
Now we tread on damper swampy soil thickly covered with many kinds of dense 
shrubbery, trees and ferns, and with pretty. evergreen heathworts, especially with 
andromeda®, blueberry, and luxuriant huckleberry bushes. The small ponds and lakes, 
which are met with here and there, heighten the charms of the landscape. This is an 
idyllic poetical world, rarely disturbed by a discordant sound. Everywhere reigns the 
most delightful variety and still the most perfect harmony. From early morning till 
late in the evening these woodlands echo with the songs of numerous birds. We hear 
the mournful and in these surroundings indescribably melodious song of the Rose- 
breasted Grosbeak, the echoing notes of the highly pleasing Towhee Bunting, or Chewink, 
and from the lofty foliage the lays of the different Vireos and Wood Warblers. The 
Robin, too, our beautiful familiar Bluebird, several Woodpeckers, the Wood Pewee and 
Scarlet Tanager may be heard.—In the swampy thickets resounds the incomparable 
song of the Hermit, and the Veery, or Wilson’s Thrush, sends its voice from the dis- 
tance. These two Thrushes may be justly called the “prima donnas” of our northern 
woods, true queens of song. They belong to the best of singing birds in general, though 
they are excelled in some respect by the Woop TurusuH, the most frequent denizen of 
these regions. This bird is also known in different parts of our country as the Wood 
Robin, Wood Nightingale and Song Thrush. 
When of late years, impelled by longing, I wandered southward, hoping to find. 
lovelier landscapes, more beautiful woods, more interesting plants, a more tropical bird- 
life, I was completely disappointed, and the farther to the south I sojourned, the more 
did this disappointment grow upon me. In Texas, the State I had so often longed to 
behold, I saw nowhere what I had expected to see:—a semi-tropical flora and avifauna. 
True, all this is different in southern Louisiana, and in Florida really tropical land- 
scapes burst on one’s astonished gaze. The woods of Texas and many other parts of 
the South cannot be compared with their counterparts in the North and East. The 
charm and irresistible attraction of the latter is almost wanting, though the floral 
world does possess interest in some places. I found and admired the beautiful Magnolia 
grandiflora, the spanish moss, dangling at length from the boughs of the trees, the odd 
forms of the yucca and numerous cacti, and many a strange bird did I find, among 
others that queen of songsters, the Mockingbird—but all this possesses but little 
attraction for the northener, who has grown up in romantic surroundings. The truly 
poetical, the truly idyllic is to be found only in the woods of the North and East and 
in the mountain ranges of the Alleghanies, where our Wood Thrush has chosen its 
home, where it builds its nest and sings its wonderful song. 
Nowhere rare and nowhere particularly common, the Wood Thrush occurs regu- 
larly from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi, and from the northern States to 
Arkansas and the mountain ranges of North and South Carolina. It is a bird of the 
1 Lycopodium dendroideum. 2 Gaultheria procumbens. 3 Epigea repens, ' Chiogenes hispidula, 6° Andromeda 
polifolia and A. calyculata, 
