e, and that the veery's resembles that of the wood
thrush! The hermit thrush may be easily identified by his color; his
back being a clear olive-brown becoming rufous on his rum and tail. A
quill from his wing placed beside one from his tail on a dark ground
presents quite a marked contrast.

I walk along the old road, and note the tracks in the thin layer of
mud. When do these creatures travel here? I have never yet chanced to
meet one. Here a partridge has set its foot; there, a woodcock; here,
a squirrel or mink; thee, a skunk; there, a fox. What a clear, nervous
track reynard makes! how easy to distinguish it from that of a little
dog,--it is so sharply cut and defined! A dog's track is coarse and
clumsy beside it. There is as much wildness in the track of an animal
as in its voice. Is a deer's track like a sheep's or a goat's? What
winged-footed fleetness and agility may be inferred from the sharp,
braided track of the gray squirrel upon the new snow! Ah! in nature is
the best discipline. How wood-life sharpens the senses, giving a new
power to the eye, the ear, the nose! And are not the rarest and most
exquisite songsters wood-birds?

Everywhere in these solitudes I am greeted with the pensive, almost
pathetic not of the wood pewee. The pewees are the true flycatchers,
and are easily identified. They are very characteristic birds, have
strong family traits and pugnacious dispositions. They are the least
attractive or elegant birds of our fields or forests.
Sharp-shouldered, big-headed, short-legged, of no particular color, of
little elegance in flight or movement, with a disagreeable flirt of
the tail, always quarreling with their neighbors and with one another,
no birds are so little calculated to excite pleasurable emotions in
the beholder, or to become objects of human interest and affection.
The kingbird is the best dressed member of the family, but he is a
braggart; and, though always snubbing his neighbors, is an arrant
coward, and shows the white feather at the slightest display of pluck
in his antagonist. I have seen him turn tail to a swallow, and have
known the little pewee in question to whip him beautifully. From the
great-crested to the little green flycatcher, their ways and general
habits are the same. Slow in flying from point to point, they yet have
a wonderful quickness, and snap up the fleetest insects with little
apparent effort. There is a constant play of quick, nervous movements
underneath