30 
THE NATURALISTS’ JOURNAL. 
a prodigious size, and near the summit of one 1 noticed what 
appeared to be an unfinished nest of a hawk or crow. 
A little further on I came to a small sluggish stream flowing 
through a swampy hollow. The water was of the colour of brandy 
from the amount of decaying leaves in its bed, while it was 
fringed upon either side with curiously contorted swamp bushes. 
Here and there a fallen trunk bridged the stream, but I had learnt 
by experience not to trust these seeming bridges, for although 
looking sound enough to the eye, they are usually mere shells 
from which the heart has long sinc^ rotted away. I noticed, as 
an odd circumstance, that for some distance this little stream 
formed an abrupt boundary between two totally different descrip¬ 
tions of woodland, for while upon one side the woods consisted 
of (at this season) bare and leafless birch and similar trees, on 
the other side of the stream rose dense and funeral-looking spruce- 
woods, certainly the thickest and most gloomy woods I came 
across in this neighbourhood. I heard a woodpecker tapping 
here and followed it a short distance but could not get a view of 
it; I also noticed a pair of brown creepers (C. familiaris ameri- 
canus) a bird which is almost identical with the European tree- 
creeper and possesses precisely the same habits. 
Proceeding along this stream, I noticed a white-breasted nut¬ 
hatch (Sit la carolinensis ) in a fir-wood, and also several chicka¬ 
dees ( Parus atricapillus) a species which seems to me to be inter¬ 
mediate between the coal and marsh titmice of England. The 
trailing arbutus, the exquisite little mayflower—emblem of Acadia 
—abounds in these woods as soon as the snow has fairly melted. 
Leaving the stream I then struck through the forest until I 
came upon a long ravine, in the dense woods, with sloping sides 
and an almost level bottom, which was spaiingly timbered and 
with a sluggish stream winding along it, and on which the snow 
still lay thickly as it also did in many spots in the surrounding 
woods. I saw here a large nest of the American crow (C. Ameri- 
canus.) It was placed fully sixty feet up in the fork of a large and 
almost limbless maple, and I did not attempt to ascend as I had 
no climbing irons with me. I shot a male junco, or black snow¬ 
bird ( Junco hycmalis ) here and noticed one or two of the common 
red squirrels which are particularly abundant in this spot; there 
was also a little bird singing in the top of a small fir but I could 
not obtain a view of it. Crossing the ravine I pushed on again 
through very thick woods, varied occasionally bv higher and more 
open rocky ground covered mostly with scrubby brushwood, but 
saw nothing more and so retraced my steps and struck a track 
leading back to the Bedford Basin. Just here the trees were 
chiefly hemlocks, and veritable giants of the forest they were, 
many of them being fully four feet in diameter near the ground 
and towering to an immense height. 
While passing down this track the snow commenced to fall 
