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Most people receive with incredulity a statement of the number of birds that annually visit ourclimate. Very few even are aware of half the number that spend the summer in their own immediatevicinity. We little suspect, when we walk in the woods, whose privacy we are intruding upon, -whatrare and elegant visitants from Mexico, from central and South America, and from the islands of thesea, are holding their reunions in the branches over our heads, or pursuing their pleasure on theground before us.I recall the altogether admirable and shining family which Thoreau dreamed he saw in the upperchambers of Spaulding's woods, which Spaulding did not know lived there, and which were not putout when Spaulding, whistling, drove his team through their lower halls. They did not go into societyin the village; they were quite well; they had sons and daughters; they neither wove nor spun; therewas a sound as of suppressed hilarity.I take it for granted that the forester was only saying a pretty thing of the birds, though I haveobserved that it does sometimes annoy them when Spaulding's cart rumbles through their house.Generally, however, they are as unconscious of Spaulding as Spaulding is of them.Walking the other day in an old hemlock wood, I counted over forty varieties of these summervisitants, many of the common to other woods in the vicinity, but quite a number peculiar to theseancient solitudes, and not a few that are rare in any locality. It is quite unusual to find so large anumber abiding in one forest, -and that not a large one, -most of them nesting and spending thesummer there. Many of those I observed commonly pass this season much farther north. But thegeographical distribution of birds is rather a climatical one. The same temperature, though underdifferent parallels, usually attracts the same birds; difference in altitude being equivalent to thedifference in latitude. A given height above sea-level under the parallel of thirty degrees may havethe same climate as places under that of thirty-five degrees, and similar flora and fauna. At the headwaters of the Delaware, where I write, the latitude is that of Boston, but the region has a muchgreater elevation, and hence a climate that compares better with the northern part of the State and ofNew England. Half a day's drive to the southeast brings me down into quite a different temperature, with an older geological formation, different forest timber, and different birds, -even with differentmammals. Neither the little gray rabbit nor the little gray fox is found in my locality, but the greatnorthern hare and the red fox are. In the last century, a colony of beavers dwelt here, though theoldest inhabitant cannot now point to even the traditional site of their dams. The ancient hemlocks, whither I propose to take the reader, are rich in many things besides birds. Indeed, their wealth inthis respect is owing mainly, no doubt, to their rank vegetable growth, their fruitful swamps, andtheir dark, sheltered ret

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