296 
LETT EES FEOM ALABAMA. 
driven by tlie inclemency of early winter to our 
milder skies^ that we seem repeopled. Many of 
these^ however, are only transient sojourners ; they 
pass through our district on their way still farther 
south, spreading themselves^ indeed, as they go^ 
and continually dropping stationary colonies, until 
the most adventurous reach the sunny isles of the 
West Indies, and the ever verdant forests of 
Mexico, and Central America. 
The youths here sometimes take a number of 
the smaller birds by a process similar to that which 
in some parts of England is called bat-fowling, I 
was present a few nights ago at the operation, 
which seemed to me a poor cowardly mode of 
destroying inoffensive and feeble creatures, with 
neither sport nor profit to recommend it. A 
naturalist might indeed obtain a few specimens by 
this means, in a better condition than such as are 
shot, inasmuch as they are generally killed without 
laceration. 
Three or four lads proceeded to some thickets 
soon after night had set in ; one of them carrying a 
lighted pine-knot, another a stout staff, and the 
rest slender branches of the trees, stripped of their 
leaves. The torch being elevated at some little 
distance from a thick bush, the lad with the staff 
began to thresh the bush, while the others stationed 
themselves so as to intercept, and whip down with 
their twigs the frightened birds, that, awakened 
from their roost, scudded out towards the light. A 
good many were struck down dead, mostly of one 
species, the Towhe Bunting [Frmgilla erytliroph- 
thcdma). It is a prettily marked little bird, which 
I have not seen in the north, though sufficiently 
abundant here; its plumage is black above, with 
