have explained
before this that the Philadelphia vireo is in coloration an exact copy
of the warbling vireo. There is a slight difference in size between the
two, but the most practiced eye could not be depended upon to tell them
apart in a tree. _Vireo philadelphicus_ is in a peculiar case: it looks
like one common bird, and sings like another. It might have been
invented on purpose to circumvent collectors, as the Almighty has been
supposed by some to have created fossils on purpose to deceive ungodly
geologists. It is not surprising, therefore, that the bird escaped the
notice of the older ornithologists. In fact, it was first
described,--by Mr. Cassin,--in 1851, from a specimen taken, nine years
before, near Philadelphia; and its nest remained unknown for more than
thirty years longer, the first one having been discovered, apparently in
Canada, in 1884.[3]

[3] E. E. T. Seton, in _The Auk_, vol. ii. p. 305.

Day after day, the bare, sharp crest of Mount Lafayette silently invited
my feet. Then came a bright, favorable morning, and I set out. I would
go alone on this my first pilgrimage to the noble peak, at which, always
from too far off, I had gazed longingly for ten summers. It is not
inconsistent with a proper regard for one's fellows, I trust, to enjoy
now and then being without their society. It _is_ good, sometimes, for a
man to be alone,--especially on a mountain-top, and more especially at a
first visit. The trip to the summit was some seven or eight miles in
length, and an almost continual ascent, without a dull step in the whole
distance. The Tennessee warbler was singing; but perhaps the pleasantest
incident of the walk to the Profile House--in front of which the
mountain footpath is taken--was a Blackburnian warbler perched, as
usual, at the very top of a tall spruce, his orange throat flashing fire
as he faced the sun, and his song, as my notebook expresses it, "sliding
up to high _Z_ at the end" in his quaintest and most characteristic
fashion. I spent nearly three hours in climbing the mountain path, and
during all that time saw and heard only twelve kinds of birds:
redstarts, Canada warblers (near the base), black-throated blues,
black-throated greens, Nashvilles, black-polls, red-eyed vireos,
snowbirds (no white-throated sparrows!), winter wrens, Swainson and
gray-cheeked thrushes, and yellow-bellied flycatchers. Black-poll and
Nashville warblers were especially numerous, as they are also upon Mou