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in the end of May ; but, eleven degrees farther to the north, that event is deferred 

 till the 11th of June. The snow even then partially covers the ground ; but there 

 are, in those high latitudes, abundance of the berries of the Vaccinium idiginosum, 

 and Vitis idcea, Arbutus alpina, Empetrum nigrum, and of some other plants, which, 

 after having been frozen up all the winter, are exposed, on the first melting 

 of the snow, full of juice and in high flavour. Shortly afterwards, when the callow 

 young require food, the parents obtain abundance of grubs. 



The Red-breasted Thrush builds its nest on the branch of a spruce-fir-tree, 

 generally about five or six feet from the ground, taking no particular pains to 

 conceal it, and frequently selecting a tree in the immediate vicinity of a house. 

 Its nest is formed like that of the European Thrush, of grass and moss, neatly 

 interwoven and lined with a compact coating of dung and clay. The male and 

 female labour in concert in constructing it; and when the young are hatched, they 

 jointly undertake the task of feeding them. The eggs, five in number, are about 

 fourteen lines long, and have a bluish-green colour, like those of the common 

 Thrush. The male is one of the loudest and most assiduous of the songsters that 

 frequent the fur countries, beginning his chaunt immediately on his arrival. His 

 notes resemble those of the common Thrush, but are not so loud. Within the 

 arctic circle the woods are silent in the bright light of noon-day, but towards mid- 

 night, when the sun travels near the horizon, and the shades of the forest are 

 lengthened, the concert commences, and continues till six or seven in the morn- 

 ing. Even in these remote regions the mistake of those naturalists who have 

 asserted that the feathered tribes of America are void of harmony might be fully 

 disproved. Indeed, the transition is so sudden from the perfect repose, the death- 

 like silence of an arctic winter, to the animated bustle of summer ; the trees 

 spread their foliage with such magical rapidity, and every succeeding morning 

 opens with such agreeable accessions of feathered songsters to swell the chorus — 

 their plumage as gay and unimpaired as when they enlivened the deep-green 

 forests of tropical climes, that the return of a northern spring excites in the 

 mind a deep feeling of the beauties of the season, a sense of the bounty and 

 providence of the Supreme Being, which is cheaply purchased by the tedium of 

 nine months of winter. The most verdant lawns and cultivated glades of Europe, 

 the most beautiful productions of art, fail in producing that exhilaration and 

 joyous buoyancy of mind which we have experienced in treading the wilds of 

 Arctic America, when their snowy covering has been just replaced by an infant 

 but vigorous vegetation. It is impossible for the traveller to refrain, at such 



2 A 



