214 
THE WILSON BULLETIN— December, 1922 
importance which preserves for the future, as for today, the most 
beautiful of the natural resources of the state. 
Practically all of the small state of Massachusetts, like the 
rest of southern New England, is Transition country. Of par- 
ticular interest in this region is the relatively cool, northern area 
in which Petersham lies, from the fact that it exhibits a rather 
notable mingling of “northern” and “southern” trees. Thus, in 
the woods of Petersham grow important trees of the North, more 
or less typical of the Canadian faunal area, like the red pine, 
canoe and yellow birches, sugar maple, beech, basswood and a 
little red and black spruce. On the same ground grow also such 
rather characteristic trees of the central hardwoods region to the 
south (more typical, therefore, of southern Connecticut and the 
Middle States) as the hickory, tupelo, sassafras, pitch pine and 
various species of oaks, chief of which is, of course, the white oak 
oftentimes so splendidly developed in Massachustts east of the 
Connecticut river. Rut the trees which dominate chiefly in the 
woods in this section are those which attain or at least approx- 
imate their highest development in central New England — as 
the white pine, red oak, chestnut (before the blight), white ash 
and hemlock. 
There is not enough of Canadian zonal plant-life in Peters- 
ham for the town to be considered in any sense within the Canad- 
ian faunal zone. It lies only on its very “ragged edge”, so to 
speak. Nor are the Canadian faunal birds that summer here 
many. They are few, both as to numbers and species. Never- 
theless, such an extensively wooded area as Petersham, much of 
it of sizable timber, must in the very nature of the case always 
show interesting things in the bird-line. A case in point is the 
Pileated Woodpecker, resident here as one would naturally ex- 
pect this typical woods-bird to be. As one would naturally 
expect, also, where there is so much white pine, that white pine 
bird par excellence, (he Blue-headed Yireo, is not only common 
but relatively abundant. Most plentiful always where white 
pines are most plentiful — the more white pines, the more Blue- 
headed Yireos, states the case in a nutshell — the song and the 
delightful minor notes of the Blue-headed Yireo are ever in the 
ear in the pines of the Harvard Forest tracts and in other “stands” 
in town. 1 have nowhere else in Massachusetts found the species 
so plentiful except in that other white pine country, southeast- 
ern Massachusetts, including southern Plymouth Co., but not 
Cape Cod, where it is also a common woodland bird. 
