groves year after year, who build their nests and remain all Summer, are practically unknown to the great majority of our people. If shown them as stuffed specimens perhaps nineteen out of twenty could easily be made to believe that they came from Japan or Central Africa. For the most part they do not arrive until there is sufficient foliage to conceal them; their voices are weak and their colors are quiet, and they glide through the thick branches unseen except by the acute vision of the practiced ornithologist. Even the most competent observer must study long and patiently before he can speak with much confidence concerning their habits. What a contrast between the shy and retiring Sylvicolide and the red-headed woodpeckers! The most unobservant person in the country knows the latter bird (Melanerpes erythrocephalus), his snowy white and shiny black and bright crimson plumage clearly define him against any background, and the ear is compelled to bear constant witness to his presence. He seldom lights in the midst of thick foliage; the bald trunks of blasted trees and the dead branches of living ones are his favorite perches. Though called one of the woodpeckers and really closely allied to them by his structure, the only wood he ever pecks is in the excavation of a hole for a nest, resembling in this respect the high hole or golden-winged woodpecker; but he has a peculiarity unique among his race, that of catching insects in the air. For this purpose he takes his stand upon the dead limb of a lofty tree high above the general level of the surrounding tree-tops, whence he launches into the air in pursuit; flying with an easy sweep until close upon his prey, when a sudden spring upward, sideways, downward or forward, as the case may be, secures it, and he turns back to his perch to await another. This artistic period of elegant leisure is possible only while the eggs are being incubated or after the young have left the nest; while he has a family on his hands he has no time for fly fishing. Both parents must then exert themselves to the utmost to provide sufficient food, which consists of cut worms and other caterpillars, beetles and the like gathered from the ground, with cher ries or other fruits in their season. They invariably light first on a tall stump or the stake of a fence to look for insects on the ground; when they see one they swoop down and secure it and are off to the nest, often crossing wide fields for the sake of perching on a fence along which they will beat the ground all day, making a journey every few minutes. The red-headed woodpecker is essentially a bird of the primeval wilderness; civilization confers no benefits on him. On the contrary it plants cherry trees which often lure him to his fate,many people being too apt to pull the trigger first and reflect (if at all) afterward. In the older parts of the country he has nearly disappeared. Minot states that he is "hardly to be ranked a bird of Massachusetts " at present (Land and Game Birds of New England; page 315), and it is my impression that their numbers are decreasing in this section. In the midst of the mild Winters of '77 and 79 they were to be seen here occasionally, but these were doubtless migrants from the far North. They do not generally appear in Spring until settled warm weather, and depart on the first tide of Autumn, though migrants from the North are seen later. A country road which accompanies a stream through all its windings-how much more pleasant and picturesque than one which crosses the ranges at right angles! What indeed can be more exasperating than to climb a mile or two up the side of a great hill, and having at last gained the summit to find that an equal descent must now be made, and that another huge range lies across our way? We see the road climbing its steep slope and disappearing over its distant summit with a feeling akin to despair. On the other hand every one likes a creek road. We are led on from point to point crossing the valley from side to side, every turn and winding opening fresh views on either hand, each landscape enlivened by the presence and motion of the stream; now passing under great trees festooned with wild grape and bittersweet vines, now ascending for a little, anon descending again. We are hardly conscious of the steady increase in altitude until at length the creek dwindles and disappears, and we find ourselves on the divide with all the world beneath, where the sky widens out supported in the far distance by blue ranges of hills. Thence the road winds down into another valley, accompanied by the gathering waters of another stream. That is a fortunate country in some respects whose hills are so high and broken that it is supposed to be impossible to carry roads over them. Otherwise the pioneer road makers, as far at least as I have observed, were so enamored of straight lines and square corners, and so possessed by the idea that the road should take equally from the lots on either hand, that they were not likely to turn aside for anything short of a vertical precipice. Their alignments are being corrected in later years and settled more in accordance with the fitness of things, but this process of adjustment is often impossible for topographical and other (chiefly other) reasons. The average Yankee likes to have the highway pass between his house and barn; then whether his duties engage him at one place or another he has opportunity to greet his acquaintances both equine and human-to learn where they are going and the object of the journey. So, having a sense of companionship in the traveling public, he clings to the highway; and the possibility of "getting out" through a private lane, crossing a field or two, has not yet been demonstrated. surface waters diminish, the living springs come more prominently into view and we feel a more grateful appreciation of their cool waters. As you watch the steady current flowing forth, apparently unchecked by the droughts which make such short work of the surface waters, the old popular notion that a living spring has a cosmical origin and exists independently of such accidents as the annual rain-fall does not seem so very unreasonable. The springs of the upper hills, as far as I have observed, though numerous are mostly small; the subsoil is too compact and the storm waters are too apt to find their way to the creeks on the surface to give the best results in the way of springs. They seem to be diminishing in volume in later years; the clearing of the forest has perhaps some effect on them, but in my opinion they can stand the removal of the forest growth better than the destruction of the "cradle knolls" (perhaps "cradle holes" is more correct), which are mounds and corresponding depressions caused by the uprooting of forest trees by the wind. The soil attached to the roots falls down in a heap as these decay, and the height of the mound is increased on one side of the hole left by their removal. Very few trees in the unbroken forest are torn up in this way; the most of them break a few feet from the ground, and as the "craThis disposition, so different from the dle knolls" occupy the entire surface and habits of our English cousins celebrated by are superimposed on each other in some inMr. John Burroughs in a recent number of stances, you gain some idea of the vast interthis magazine, dates no doubt from pioneer val of years elapsed since the forest began times, when the sense of isolation in the great to grow, as you contemplate their numberunpeopled spaces of the wilderness was so less multitudes. As long as the ground is strong that any chance traveler was held a unplowed it is covered with basins of all friend and brother, when a strolling peddler shapes and sizes, clustering on the slopes was a welcome guest and the advent of a like the eight thousand lakes enumerated traveling preacher was an event to date from by Mr John Muir on the flanks of the Sierra for the next six months. Perhaps as the Nevada. These miniature lakelets are filled country gets older we too shall find it possi- to overflowing many times a year, and opble to live at a little distance from the high- portunity is thus given for the water to perway; at present those who chance to dwell colate the subsoil and the springs at the on cross roads or where for any reason there bottom of the slope are well supplied. But is not much travel are commiserated by all when the plow and drag appear on the scene their acquaintances, it being invariably as- things are greatly altered. A year or two sumed that they must suffer greatly from of cultivation reduces the surface to a uniloneliness. form slope, the "dead furrows" afford a As the summer solstice draws near and the ready escape for the storm water, and by the time the rain is fairly over the most of the water has already been delivered at the lower side of the field and has gone on its way down the creek. It is little to be wondered at that such springs should be suspected of yielding less water now than formerly. But if you wish to see fine springs you must look for them on the lower benches along the stream, where the local glaciers and the sweeping floods which marked the close of the glacial era have combined to pile vast deposits of rounded bowlders, gravel and sand, all easily penetrated by water and resting on impervious rock. Given a square mile of such soil, so perfectly drained that bowl-shaped depressions twenty or thirty feet deep and receiving the drainage of an acre or two never contain any wa ter, and twenty or more inches of annual rain-fall, and all the elements are present for the formation of large springs. And here near the creek we find them; bursting forth full born brooks, making their presence sensible to the ear as well as to the eye; rushing along, their perennial waters forming a swamp wherever the ground is level, filled with all manner of rank aquatic vegetation, the splendid meadow lily (Lilium canadensis) great clumps of the tropical looking hellebore (Veratrum album), snakehead (Chelone), purple avens and many others. A full description of all the vegetable, insect and aquatic life to be met with in these spring runs would require a volume. One noticeable peculiarity of these runs is the dark color of the bottom. On this account the foam of the run looks whiter than any other foam; the snow-white pebbles of milky quartz seem fairly luminous. All over the region included between Lake Ontario and the border of Pennsylvania the strata are horizontal or nearly so, the hills and valleys being caused altogether by erosion. There is consequently a great lack of what is technically considered fine scenery, the view from any high point consisting merely of an endless succession of smooth, rounded hill ranges, cultivated or forest-covered; the uniformity of their height and the unbroken level of the far horizon hinting of the horizontal stratification of the rocks which com pose them. Though the general landscape may thus be rather monotonous, many charming nooks and picturesque "bits " are included within "the circle of the hills." Among the more striking of these minor features are the deep chasms or glens which the creeks have cut out of the underlying rock, leaving perpendicular cliffs on each side, and a series of cascades and rapids. Most of the readers of Good Company have seen or heard of the Watkins Glen and the cañon of the Genesee river at Portage; but the essential features of these famous localities are reproduced along some part of the course of every creek in the region to a degree greater or less. Sometimes there is room for a road through the defile; others are impassable on foot unless stairs and foot-bridges are first constructed. Nothing proves and illustrates the rapid growth of sympathy with and appreciation of Nature among our people, more than the estimation in which these retreats are held at present compared with a period fifteen or twenty years ago. Then if any person knew of their existence he kept his knowledge to himself. Now most people have been to see them, those who have not are intending to go, and those who have been once are intending to go again and again. Every photographer in the vicinity has executed a series of stereoscopic views, each the best, no other series being of any account. The stream above the glen is commonplace enough, the fields slope down to the water's edge, low bridges cross it at intervals; there are banks of washed gravel and drifts of flood-wood. As you follow its current you will see places where a solid floor of rock forms the bed of the stream, and a low outcrop of the same in the banks just above the water. As you go down the stream the hills on either side approach each other, the slopes are steeper and the exposures of rock in the bed of the creek more frequent and of greater extent. Finally the rock walls are continuous on both sides and grow higher rapidly as the stream descends, and the hills close in until sheer precipices hundreds of feet high inclose the stream, which is now broken at short intervals by picturesque cascades, formed wherever a layer of hard flagstone is superimposed on beds of soft, earthy shale. Some of these flagstones when seasoned will turn the edge of a cold chisel. Much of the shale is soft enough to be eaten when fresh if one likes it, making a soft pasty mud in the mouth with only a suspicion of grittiness. Exposed to the atmosphere it soon disintegrates and falls to powder; saturated with water it seems to resist the action of the stream better than the hard flagstone. It would naturally be supposed from the hardness of the flags and the softness of the shale that the latter would soon be worn away from beneath, leaving the hard layer projecting like a shelf. But the contrary is the case; the shale projects more and more as the bottom of the fall is reached, forming a slope of from 20° to 40° made up of hundreds of minute steps, down which the water rushes in a thin sheet looking like a curtain of the richest lace. The sound of these waterfalls is very different from that caused by the sheer plunge of a cataract into a deep pool; instead of the hoarse heavy roar of the latter, you hear the united whispers of a thousand tiny voices as the water splashes from step to step and slides away at the bottom over another hard floor, which will form the brink of another cascade a little further down. The gravel and flood-wood are left behind as soon as the stream is inclosed between continuous walls, and there are few fragments of rock in the bed of the stream; the creek in time of flood easily sweeps away all such, and nothing is left within reach of the water but the smooth, clean, living rock. There is an infinite variety in the details of the various cascades, rapids and still reaches; here a deep crevice extending diagonally up stream sucks all the water into it, whence it is projected with great force down a gently inclined plane, a dark current swift as an arrow and marbled with foam; here at the foot of this cascade, the rotary motion of a portion of the stream has bored a circular shaft through a hard layer a foot or more in thickness, penetrating the soft shale underneath; here several hard strata are superimposed on each other without any softer material between, and over their jagged edges the water rushes in a continuous rapid, whirling and boiling, white with foam. In the open country above you would not care to drink the tepid water of the creek as it expands in lazy pools under a hot sun, but here in the glen it is quite the proper thing to do. As its clear, transparent current slides into the shadow of the rocks or is beaten into a mass of snow-white foam over the cascades, and fills little rock-hewn basins with its trickling threads, you would never suspect from its appearance that it was the same water you refused to drink a mile above. It is aerated and cooled as it churns over the cascades, then too its cool subterranean currents have come forth from beneath the gravel. There are few extended views in these gorges; the windings of the stream cut off the view a little distance above and below, and as you sit here and look about you for all that appears you might be the only human being in the country. The foot path has faded on these solid rocks, and no marks of human labor are visible. Though the height of the walls in places renders them somewhat impressive, at least to eyes unaccustomed to mountain scenery, there is no element of savage grandeur and gloom. The prevailing effect is sweet, simple picturesqueness and beauty, the elements of which are the rich masses of vegetation, the rhythmic pulses and soothing sound of the waters, the play of color and the sparkle of the sunlight. Up in the upper world a breeze is blowing, the trees ranged along the brink are bending before it, and now a cool breath draws through the glen, swaying the pendent sprays of hemlock and dwarf yew, and causing the leaves of the mountain maple bush (Acer spicatum) to show their white linings. The problems that vex humanity are never considered here; instead of these a broad gleam of sunlight striking the water aslant is reflected upward against the dark wall, where it dances up and down, timing its movements with the swing of the ripples; the white clouds come into view over one wall and go out of sight behind the other; a pair of sparrows squabble and chirp in the thicket near by; the phebe bird, who finds secure building spots in the crannies of the cliff, flits past; a hawk is poising away yonder in the sky. The little drifts of powdered shale caught on the shelf-like projections of the harder strata form a soil in which many plants flourish. The wild columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) grows everywhere, here within reach of your hand, there a hundred feet above your head. That delicious afternoon in May when their scarlet and yellow bells are hanging from every ledge and swinging in the sweet western breeze, while the voices of the waters, unshrunken by the summer solstice, fill the fresh solitude with their varied music, is an occasion which no lover of Nature should miss. The golden senecio (S. aureus) and the grass of Parnassus (Parnassia caroliniana) leave their ordinary habitat in the swamps to grow and bloom on these perpendicular cliffs, attracted by the oozing moisture of living springs; likewise the meadow rue (Thalictrum) and many others. It may be considered whimsical, but the entire absence of fossils in these beds gives rise to a feeling of loneliness, at least to me. As one follows the stream in its descent into lower and still lower strata, and notes the exposure of the multitudinous layers, it seems as though some evidence of life would eventually show itself, but this practically never happens; only the tracing of the idle ripples and various nondescript mud markings furrow the surface of these mighty slabs, each ripple mark having been molded and preserved with as much care as would have been bestowed on the most splendid fossil. Near the summit of the series in this region are beds crowded with shells and crinoids, and we know that the ocean that deposited the Portage shale swarmed with life; but this knowledge does not dispel the feeling caused by its absence through all these heights and depths. The rocks seem to speak of a time when only blind inorganic forces operated, when Nature elaborated each lamina of the prodigious pile with dumb, hopeless patience; of an infinite succession of slow years with only a series of barren mud stones as the result. But as you pass along downward you suddenly catch a glimpse of a distant landscape of wooded hills and a far horizon through the trees; another turn and you have reached the end, the main valley opens before you, and roads, farms and villages are in sight. You have come back to the work-a-day world; the stream foams down its last descent, and issuing forth from the glen loses itself amid clumps of willow and subsides once more into the commonplace. E. S. Gilbert. AN UPPER-SHELF BOOK.* EARS ago a delightful boy signified his rapidly grown confidence in his parents' guest of a day, by taking her up into his own room and displaying his treasures. Chief among these was his book-case. On its upper shelf were a few straggling, ill-matched and well-worn volumes, above which was written in the little fellow's own biggest and blackest script, "BEST!" Just below, a fuller shelf was similarly inscribed, "NEXT BEST!" While the two remaining shelves though packed closely with books were ominously unlabeled. This spectacle of ruthless criticism *Ekkehard, by Joseph Victor Sheffel, 2 vols. Leipsic; Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1872. was appalling, however much one might admire its frank loyalty and whisper to one's self that a few years would be sure to uplift some volume even from the undistinguished crowd below, to the still diminished "Best.” Perhaps none of us would willingly display our own secret library-labeling even to our most sympathetic friends, but I am not ashamed to proclaim that on my "BEST" shelf are a larger proportion of German novels than the catering of our publishers indicates as the popular demand. It would seem that something more than our greater familiarity with the one language over the other were needed to account for the rapidity with which every word of the French press |