ring beauty.
Like most others, it grows in streaks. A few paces from where your
attention is monopolized by violets or arbutus, it is arrested by the
claytonia, growing in such profusion that it is impossible to set the
foot down without crushing the flowers. Only the forenoon walker sees
them in all their beauty, as later in the day their eyes are closed,
and their pretty heads drooped in slumber. In only one locality do I
find the lady's-slipper,--a yellow variety. The flowers that overleap
all bounds in this section are the houstonias. By the 1st of April
they are very noticeable in warm, damp places along the borders of the
woods and in half-cleared fields, but by May these localities are
clouded with them. They become visible from the highway across wide
fields, and look like little puffs of smoke clinging close to the
ground.

On the 1st of May I go to the Rock Creek or Piny Branch region to hear
the wood thrush. I always find him by this date leisurely chanting his
lofty strain; other thrushes are seen now also, or even earlier, as
Wilson's, the olive-backed, the hermit,--the two latter silent, but
the former musical.

Occasionally in the earlier part of May I find the woods literally
swarming with warblers, exploring every branch and leaf, from the
tallest tulip to the lowest spice-bush, so urgent is the demand for
food during their long northern journeys. At night they are up and
away. Some varieties, as the blue yellow-back, the chestnut-sided, and
the Blackburnian, during their brief stay, sing nearly as freely as in
their breeding-haunts. For two or three years I have chanced to meet
little companies of the bay-breasted warbler, searching for food in an
oak wood on an elevated piece of ground. They kept well up among the
branches, were rather slow in their movements, and evidently disposed
to tarry but a short time.

The summer residents here, belonging to this class of birds, are few.
I have observed the black and white creeping warbler, the Kentucky
warbler, the worm-eating warbler, the redstart, and the gnat-catcher,
breeding near Rock Creek.

Of these the Kentucky warbler is by far the most interesting, though
quite rare. I meet with him in low, damp places in the woods, usually
on the steep sides of some little run. I hear at intervals a clear,
strong, bell-like whistle or warble, and presently catch a glimpse of
the bird as he jumps up from the ground to take an insect or worm from
the under side