species. All are exquisite and worthy of special culture in the garden, and all are difficult 

 to transplant. The leaves of the sumach and the Virginia creeper, the latter covering 

 thickets and creeping high up on the trunks of trees, are glowing in the brightest red 

 and purple tints imaginable. In fact, the Indian summer to a great extent rewards 

 for the absence of a fine and congenial spring time, and often continues into December, 

 till a sudden winter storm puts a hasty end to all this autumnal glory. 



This season is peculiarly attractive to the lover of plant and bird life. Though 

 our country is famous for the fading tints of its autumn foliage, the rich yellow flowers 

 of the golden-rod mixing with the falling leaves, do much towards the reputation for 

 unsurpassed beauty which American scenery enjoys. There are almost fifty different 

 species of golden-rods, most of them yellow, but they vary much in "habit and in 

 arrangement of flowers, so that though the golden-rods are everywhere in our fields 

 and forests, there seems to be an unending variation in the effect they produce, and 

 the impression to the novice in their study is that there are even a greater number of 

 species among them than is actually the case." Although exceedingly common evej-y- 

 where, they are among the most distinguished of our wild flowers. Everybody who 

 knows anything of our wild scenery knows the golden-rod, and no picture or description 

 of an American autumn landscape is complete, unless the golden-rod forms an essential 

 part thereof. The autumn sneezewort or "Indian snuff"" {Heleniam autumnale) which 

 usually grows near the water, is also a common plant of the season, as are the numer- 

 ous asters which, mixed with the golden-rods, form a conspicuous part of the autumn 

 landscape. Though many of the shrabs and trees begin to shed their leaves, yet there is 

 cheery life in all the thickets, woodlands, fields, gardens, fence corners, and hedge-rows. 

 Thousands of Wrens, Thrashers, Palm and Myrtle Warblers, Juncos, Towhees, White- 

 throated and Fox-colored Sparrows, and many other species, having arrived from the 

 North silently and unperceived, rest here for a while, enlivening by their presence the 

 enchantingly beautiful days of the Indian summer, and adding in a high degree to its 

 charms. As soon as the days get cold and damp, the birds wend their way southward. 



One of the most striking and attractive of these migrants during the salubrious 

 days of the Indian summer is the White-crowned Sparrow, a bird of very prominent 

 and elegant appearance, and easily distinguished by its white crown which is separated 

 by two black stripes on either side, rather narrower than itself. The black line behind 

 the eye is continued anterior to it into the black at the base of the bill. 



The White-crowned Sparrows appear in central Wisconsin and in western Massa- 

 chusetts from the first to the fifteenth of October from the North. The first flocks 

 reach south-western Missouri by the middle of the month and south-eastern Texas by 

 the first of November. They are usually in company with Juncos and White-throated 

 Sparrows, but rarely more than a dozen are found together in one locality. Each one 

 goes its own way without caring much for the rest. The White-throats are much more 

 gregarious than the present species. It is a peculiar fact that the birds are not observed 

 each year in equal numbers ; they may be exceedingly common in spring, while only a 

 few are seen in fall and vice versa. 



During the fall these birds frequent brier patches, thickets in fields, bushy borders 

 of the woods, fence comers where bushes, golden-rods, and asters grow luxuriantly, 



