550 NATURAL HISTORY MISCELLANY. 
marvellous, that, at the very least, I cannot forbear giving you a bit of 
“gossip” about them. As I have before stated, we live in the coun- 
ito and are therefore supposed, by the pitying denizens of brick and 
tone, to be rather destitute of resources, and having no immediate 
neighbors, to be very dull and lonely, — but such is not possible where 
so many birds, insects, and creeping things abound, that the very air 
seems instinct with life and motion. 
Sitting upon the piazza at this moment, I am not without compan- 
ions, for the Mud-wasps are building upon the window ledges, the 
little brown Wren is in the box beneath the eaves (having first ejected 
the Blue-bird and its eggs), and the Carpenter-bee has accumulated 
h 
quite a heap of a from the railing, which is bored in more 
pen than one by her long s gallerie es and passages. I can also see 
n the gravelled a the ridges thrown up by the Mole, of which 
wot common and star-nosed a have been captured here, and 
can detect in the grass the perforations of ana animal of the rat or 
mouse kind, a sight of which has thus fer n denied us, as our old 
dog seems to think them too appetiz ng exhibit before they are 
devoured. We only know they are romi ul, and their depredations 
annoying. The dogs were less particular with a muskrat which came 
to an untimely end through their means last season; when also a 
plump young woodchuck, captured by the mowers, and which they 
were ANE to place in confinement, fell a prey to their murder- 
ous propensities. 
What ein can be devoid of excitement where turtles are discov- 
ered feasting in the strawberry bed, and where, in the sleeve of a cast- 
off garment hanging in the bathing-house, we once found the nest of 
a field-mouse, and with breathless delight watched the frightened 
mother, with her large deer-like eyes and graceful motions, as she 
crept timidly to the spot, and one by one removed her young toa 
What revery can be lonely which is liable to be broken off by the 
plaintive cry of the fish-hawks, wheeling and circling about their see 
which is reared upon the summit of a blasted pine, not eee rod 
from the house, and who may be descried passing overhead a eu 
: a, the day, with some inmate of the deep depending from saute 
t s? 
We are also visited by another huge bird, a pair of which sit mo- 
a through the summer afternoons, upon the edge of the salt- 
: - and are known among the country people by the ad 
tite of — ‘The only ornithological description at all a eing 
wik the Qua-bi ight-heron; and yet we gertstoly 
n the same vicinity 
