careful not to reveal himself in the mean time; yet there is a
conscious air about the strain that impresses me with the idea that my
presence is understood and my attention courted. A tone of pride and
glee, and, occasionally, of bantering jocoseness, is discernible. I
believe it is only rarely, and when he is sure of his audience, that
he displays his parts in this manner. You are to look for him, not in
tall trees or deep forests, but in low, dense shrubbery about wet
places, where there are plenty of gnats and mosquitoes.

The winter wren is another marvelous songster, in speaking of whom it
is difficult to avoid superlatives. He is not so conscious of is
powers and so ambitious of effect as the white-eyed flycatcher, yet
you will not be less astonished and delighted on hearing him. He
possesses the fluency and copiousness for which the wrens are noted,
and besides these qualities, and what is rarely found conjoined with
them, a wild, sweet, rhythmical cadence that holds you entranced. I
shall not soon forget that perfect June day, when, loitering in a low,
ancient hemlock wood, in whose cathedral aisles the coolness and
freshness seems perennial, the silence was suddenly broken by a strain
so rapid and gushing, and touched with such a wild, sylvan
plaintiveness, that I listened in amazement. And so shy and coy was
the little minstrel, that I came twice to the woods before I was sure
to whom I was listening. In summer he is one of those birds of the
deep northern forests, that, like the speckled Canada warbler and the
hermit thrush, only the privileged ones hear.

The distribution of plants in a given locality is not more marked and
defined than that of the birds. Show a botanist a landscape, and he
will tell you where to look for the lady's-slipper, the columbine, or
the harebell. On the same principles the ornithologist will direct you