MAY. 115 



rock, and, with a lithe switch, I at last made one desperate 

 effort to brush the skink into the lake, but succeeded 

 only in sending it into a deep crevice. It was now a 

 prisoner, but quite inaccessible to its jailer, and I tried 

 many ways to dislodge it. Finally a cold douche was 

 employed, which forced the plucky animal to make a leap 

 for life. It made it, and landed in the lake. Here its 

 activity was inconsiderable, and I readily caught it with 

 my hand. How savagely it bit ! It forced its little teeth 

 quite through my skin, and, while thus expending its 

 strength, my companion made of a handkerchief a safe 

 cage, and then I landed with the feelings of a triumphant 

 warrior. Vixen, as I called my prisoner, has something 

 of a history, to be related in part hereafter. Suffice it now 

 to say that while I remained at the lake, and for weeks 

 after returning home, the creature was ill-natured and 

 intractable beyond description. Of course, in the mount- 

 ains the bite of the skink is held to be poisonous. Every 

 native to whom I showed it claimed that I had made a 

 very narrow escape, and urged the destruction of the ani- 

 mal. I could as easily have annihilated one or two of the 

 mountaineers. 



What birds were seen to-day, other than warblers, did 

 not appear to be migrating, and it would not be surpris- 

 ing if in this region there will yet be found single pairs 

 or even small colonies of species now believed not to breed 

 south of New England or even Canada. There is little 

 need to discuss the question ; the finding of the nests can 

 alone decide it ; but I am very positive upon one point, 

 that New Jersey, and even the central portion of the State, 

 has never been credited by ornithologists with its full 

 complement of breeding birds. 



On the mountains' sides, at least where they slope to 

 the lake, a species* of ant of moderate size, black and 



