WINTER SKETCHES. I 89 



In my walk I have suddenly come upon a tab- 

 let, on which is a record in hieroglyphics of two 

 important events in the history of a pair of 

 winged creatures that fluttered about these woods 

 last season. The characters are indeed interest- 

 ing to translate. 



There in a young sapling is a vireo's nest, 

 stuffed and padded with the softest, whitest lin- 

 ing, which the mother builder and young, now 

 flown with the Summer, would have thought the 

 coldest comfort. How many hopes and fears for 

 this nest, how much love, were once centered on 

 this cheerless mass of iibrous roots and grasses ! 

 Now the builder is far away, searching, perchance, 

 among the leaves of the palmetto and orange 

 trees of tropical or subtropical regions ; yet some- 

 thing whispers to her in that distant land, to come 

 again to this identical wood ! She simply waits 

 in her Winter retreat for the sun to bring forth 

 the foliage and proper food, when on those mar- 

 velous wings she will speed her way along the 

 invisible path to her real home, for it is only here, 

 in the coolest region of her migration, that her 

 maternal heart beats for the love of nestlings. 



Above the anaglyph of this pretty chronicler is 

 chiseled, as' it were, in bas-relief, another record. 

 A gay female butterfly, as she wavered by in her 

 crooked way, on liveried velvet wings, stopped 

 here to immortalize her name. On a slender twig 



