SCARLET TANAGER 327 



White Mountains, likewise, were smooth molehills to 

 my expectation. We condescend to climb the crags of 

 earth. It is our weary legs alone that praise them. That 

 forest on whose skirts the red-bird flits is not of earth. 

 I expected a fauna more infinite and various, birds of 

 more dazzling colors and more celestial song. 



May 28, 1855. I see a tanager, the most brilliant 

 and tropical-looking bird we have, bright- scarlet with 

 black wings, the scarlet appearing on the rump again 

 between wing-tips. He brings heat, or heat him. A re- 

 markable contrast with the green pines. At this dis- 

 tance he has the aspect and manners of a parrot, with 

 a fullness about the head and throat and beak, indo- 

 lently inspecting the limbs and twigs — leaning over to 

 it — and sitting still a long time. The female, too, is a 

 nea.t and handsome bird, with the same indolent ways, 

 but very differently colored from the male ; all yellow 

 below with merely dusky wings, and a sort of clay(?)- 

 color on back. 



June 24, 1857. Looked over Farmer's eggs and list 

 of names. He has several which I have not. Is not his 

 " chicklisee," after all, the Maryland yellow-throat ? 

 The eggs were numbered with a pen, — 1, 2, 3, etc., — 

 and corresponding numbers written against the names 

 on the cover of the pasteboard box in which were the 

 eggs. Among the rest I read, '■'•Fire never redder" 

 That must be the tanager. He laughed and said that 

 this was the way he came to call it by that name : Many 

 years ago, one election-day, when he and other boys, or 

 young men, were out gunning to see how many birds 

 they could kill, Jonathan Hildreth, who lived near by, 



