IN THE HEMLOCKS 49 
one. Here a partridge has set its foot; there, a 
woodcock ; here, a squirrel or mink; there, a skunk; 
there, a fox. What a clear, nervous track reynard 
makes! how easy to distinguish it from that of a 
little dog, —it is so sharply cut and defined! A 
dog’s track is coarse and clumsy beside it. There 
is as much wildness in the track of an animal as in 
its voice. Is a deer’s track like a sheep’s or a 
goat’s? What winged-footed fleetness and agility 
may be inferred from the sharp, braided track of 
the gray squirrel upon the new snow! Ah! in 
nature is the best discipline. How wood-life sharp- 
ens, the senses, giving a new power to the eye, the 
ear, the nose! And are not the rarest and most 
exquisite songsters wood-birds ? 
Everywhere in these solitudes I am greeted with 
the pensive, almost pathetic note of the wood 
pewee. The pewees are the true flycatchers, and 
are easily identified. They are very characteristic 
birds, have strong family traits and pugnacious dis- 
positions. They are the least attractive or elegant 
birds of our fields or forest. Sharp-shouldered, 
big-headed, short-legged, of no particular color, of 
little elegance in flight or movement, with a dis- 
agreeable flirt of the tail, always quarreling with 
their neighbors and with one another, no birds are 
so little calculated to excite pleasurable emotions in 
the beholder, or to become objects of human inter- 
est and affection. The kingbird is the best dressed 
member of the family, but he is a braggart; and, 
though always snubbing his neighbors, is an arrant 
