II 
IN THE HEMLOCKS 
Mo people receive with incredulity a state- 
ment of the number of birds that annually 
visit our climate. Very few even are aware of half 
the number that spend the summer in their own 
immediate vicinity. We little suspect, when we 
walk in the woods, whose privacy we are intruding 
upon, — what rare and elegant visitants from Mex- 
ico, from Central and South America, and from the 
islands of the sea, are holding their reunions in the 
branches over our heads, or pursuing their pleasure 
on the ground before us. 
I recall the altogether admirable and shining 
family which Thoreau dreamed he saw in the upper 
chambers of Spaulding’s woods, which Spaulding 
did not know lived there, and which were not put 
out when Spaulding, whistling, drove his team 
through their lower halls. They did not go into 
society in the village; they were quite well; they 
had sons and daughters; they neither wove nor 
spun; there was a sound as of suppressed hilarity. 
I take it for granted that the forester was only 
saying a pretty thing of the birds, though I have 
observed that it does sometimes annoy them when 
