162 THROUGH GLADE AND MEAD. 
breasted grosbeak. At first I thought it was a chewink, 
as it sat sideways to me, but then it turned its breast 
full toward me, and I saw the large triangular, blood- 
red spot occupying the greater part of it... . Itisa 
memorable event to meet with so rare a bird. Birds 
answer to flowers, both in their abundance and their 
rareness. The meeting with a rare and beautiful bird 
like this is like meeting with some rare and beautiful 
flower, which you may never find again perchance, like 
the great purple-fringed orchis, at least. How much it 
enhances the wildness and the richness of the forest!” 
I was sitting, on just such a day, on a hillside covered 
with a young growth of rock chestnut-oak and poplar 
and striped maple and birch and the various denizens 
of our New England woodland. A little below me was 
a great boulder whose top and exposed side were gay 
with numerous, crowded stems of the pale corydalis 
(Corydalis glauca, Pursh). Since then, under the in- 
fluence of summer droughts and autumn rains, the thin 
soil which had been protected by the thick leaves of 
chestnut and maple, has disappeared, and with it the 
corydalis. Near by, further down the slope, used to 
stand a cluster of dark hemlocks; in the shade of which 
I found my first colony of the small yellow lady’s slip- 
per. Miles away to the south and to the east the spires 
of village churches stood out against the faint, warm 
sky. A low hum falling on the ear told of the railway 
