where to look for the greenlets, the wood sparrow, or the chewink. In
adjoining counties, in the same latitude, and equally inland, but
possessing a different geological formation and different
forest-timber, you will observe quite a different class of birds. In a
land of the beech and sugar maple I do not find the same songsters
that I know where thrive the oak, chestnut, and laurel. In going from
a district of the Old Red Sandstone to where I walk upon the old
Plutonic Rock, not fifty miles distant, I miss in the woods, the
veery, the hermit thrush, the chestnut-sided warbler, the blue-backed
warbler, the green-backed warbler, the black and yellow warbler, and
many others, and find in their stead the wood thrush, the chewink, the
redstart, the yellow-throat, the yellow-breasted flycatcher, the
white-eyed flycatcher, the quail, and the turtle dove.

In my neighborhood here in the Highlands the distribution is very
marked. South of the village I invariably find one species of birds,
north of it another. In only one locality, full of azalea and
swamp-huckleberry, I am always sure of finding the hooded warbler. In
a dense undergrowth of spice-bush, witch-hazel, and alder, I meet the
worm-eating warbler. In a remote clearing, covered with heath and
fern, with here and there a chestnut and an oak, I go to hear in July
the wood sparrow, and returning by a stumpy, shallow pond, I am sure
to find the water-thrush.

Only one locality within my range seems to possess attractions for all
comers. Here one may study almost the entire ornithology of the State.
It is a rocky piece of ground, long ago cleared, but now fast
relapsing into the wildness and freedom of nature, and marked by those
half-cultivated, half-wild features which birds and boys love. It is
bounded on two sides by the village and highway, crossed at various