= 
FAUNA OF LAKE SHORE. 193 
These squalls always precede the autumnal frosts. Our gardeners feel no apprehension 
for their tender vegetables till these premonitions have appeared. 
‘*Common observations, as well as the more sure test, the rain-gauge, show that 
larger amounts of vapor from the lake are carried south, condensed in the form of rain 
or snow, than fall in this vicinity. 
‘‘During winter comparatively little snow falls, and still less accumulates here, 
though it may be abundant on the higher grounds in the interior. 
‘This region is also not so frequently favored with showers in summer as the central 
portion of the State. Long and severe droughts often prevail, but they are in part coun- 
teracted by moisture in the atmosphere. This quality sustains vegetation, and also im- 
parts a blandness and freshness to the atmosphere during the hottest days of summer, 
very observable on approaching the lake from the interior. During that season it is 
peculiarly pleasant and invigorating to invalids, and equally harrassing ue them during 
the spring season. 
‘‘ The indigenous vegetation of this vicinity is of rather a southern type—shown by 
the absence, in a great measure, of evergreens, and the occurrence of more southern 
genera, as the Cercis, Ilex, Aisculus, Nelumbium, Gleditschia, Magnolia, ete. Elliott’s 
Botany of South Carolina and Georgia has been found to be a convenient hand-book for 
investigating our flora. On the other hand strange hyperborean plants are frequently 
found, which have been washed down from the far northwest, through the chain of 
great iakes. 
‘‘Many of our birds are species whose most northern ranges of migration have been 
assigned many degrees south of this by ornithologists. The hooded, Kentucky, yellow- 
throated-wood, ccerulean, and prairie warblers annually rear their young in this vicinity. 
Trail’s fly-catcher and the piping-plover have been repeatedly seen here, and the purple 
ibis is an occasional visitor. The list might be greatly extended. 
‘‘Great numbers of the Sylvicolide annually congregate here during their migrations, 
and seem to make it a resting place, both before and after passing the lake. More 
northern species occasionally resort here during winter, for the purpose of obtaining 
food, or are driven here by storms, such are the pine grosbeak and the white owl. The 
Bohemian wax-wing visits us almost every winter, and sometimes in large flocks. The 
pine finch is described by some ornithologists as resorting to the United States only at 
leng intervals, and during winter. It visits our gardens and grounds 1n numerous flocks, 
every season, early in July, and remains here till the ensuing-spring. The young, at 
their first appearance, still retain much down about their plumage, and can not have 
been long absent from their nests. The food of these birds is Aphides during summer, 
and at other times small seeds of grapes and other vegetables. 
‘The insect tribes show still more strikingly southern affinities. The Papilie Cres- 
phontes, figured and described by Boisduval and LeConte, as the Papilio Thoas,, has been 
repeatedly taken here, though it has been considered as exclusively southern in its re- 
sorts. In the south, the larva feeds on the orange and lemon ; here, Major LeConte in- 
forms me, it lives on the Hercules-club. 
“‘The Papilio Ajax and P. Marcellus have also been described as southern insects; 
and the late Mr. Doubleday located the former exclusively in Florida, and fixed the 
most northern limit of the latter in Virginia, Still they are common at this point, and 
subsist in the lurva state on the pawpaw. An undescribed species of Libythea has been 
taken in northern Ohio; it has been found, also, in South Carolina, and is without doubt 
legitimately a southern species, 
13 
