lO MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



Region contain only one natural pond of any size, viz., Sherman's, Hardy's or 

 Mead's Pond, as it is variously called, situated in the northern part of Wal- 

 tham. On the extreme western border of this town there is, however, a large 

 artificial reservoir which the City of Cambridge made a few years ago by dam- 

 ming Hobbs Brook. 



Although most of Cambridge is now thickly covered with houses, it pos- 

 sesses many more trees than it did forty or fifty years ago when the districts 

 lying to the west and north of Harvard Square, in the direction of Mount 

 Auburn, Fresh Pond, and ArUngton, were largely occupied by grassy fields and 

 pastures or by vacant lots awaiting sale for building purposes. As this open 

 land was cut up into streets and house lots, trees and shrubbery were planted in 

 somewhat unwise profusion, with the result that this portion of the city has 

 come to be buried in foliage in summer. A corresponding change is taking place 

 in Watertown where, however, there is, at present, more open ground than 

 formerly, for the planted shade trees have not as yet made good the loss of 

 woods and orchards that have been cut away. The western portions of Arling- 

 ton and Belmont, the northern part of Waltham and nearly the whole of Lexing- 

 ton, exclusive of its town center and that of East Lexington, have changed but 

 little in my time. The land here is still very generally in the hands of the 

 farmers, and the landscape, although devoid of striking or unusual features, is 

 very pleasing by reason of its simple, rural beauty. On every hand untrimmed 

 woods and thickets, neglected pastures sprinkled with cedars and barberry 

 bushes, and natural grassy meadows traversed by brooks of undefiled water, 

 border close on the cultivated fields and orchards. Many of the houses, as well 

 as barns and other farm buildings, are of ancient and picturesque styles of 

 architecture, the walls and fences are gray with age or with lichens, and the 

 sides of the lanes, — with those of some of the less frequented public roads, — 

 having been left largely to Nature's wise ordering, are fringed with a profusion 

 of luxuriant native trees and shrubs of various kinds or buried deep in graceful 

 ferns. In short, most of the changes which man has wrought in the original 

 character and contour of the country have been long since either obliterated or 

 rendered positively pleasing by the softening and refining effects of time, while 

 — largely through the same beneficent influences — the artificial objects in the 

 landscape, with comparatively few exceptions, have become almost perfectly 

 harmonized with their natural surroundings. But even this remote comer of 

 the Cambridge Region is not likely to remain unspoiled for many years longer. 

 Lines of trolley cars have already penetrated it from two directions, land spec- 

 ulators are regarding it with hungry eyes, and the day cannot be far distant 

 when it must share the fate that has already befallen so much of the once 

 equally attractive country to the eastward. 



