rotten stump, about five feet from the ground; the aperture, one and a quarter inches in diameter, was as round as if made by a small Woodpecker, or a Flying-squirrel. The hole inside was four by six inches; at the bottom a bed of chips was found, but the nest itself resembled a purse formed of the most beautiful and softest hair imaginable,—of Sables, Ermines, Martens, Hares, etc.; a warmer and snugger apartment no bird could desire, even in this cold country. On leaving the wood we shot a Spruce Partridge leading her young. On seeing us she ruffled her feathers like a barnyard hen, and rounded within a few feet of us to defend her brood; her very looks claimed our forbearance and clemency, but the enthusiastic desire to study nature prompted me to destroy her, and she was shot, and her brood secured in a few moments; the young very pretty and able to fly. This bird was so very gray that she might almost have been pronounced a different species from those at Dennysville, Me., last autumn; but this difference is occasioned by its being born so much farther north; the difference is no greater than in Tetrao umbellus[1] in Maine, and the same bird in western Pennsylvania. We crossed a savannah of many miles in extent; in many places the soil appeared to wave under us, and we expected at each step to go through the superficial moss carpet up to our middles in the mire; so wet and so spongy was it that I think I never labored harder in a walk of the same extent. In travelling through this quagmire we met with a small grove of good-sized, fine white-birch trees, and a few pines full forty feet high, quite a novelty to us at this juncture. On returning to our boats the trudging through the great bog was so fatiguing that we frequently lay down to rest; our sinews became cramped, and for my part, more than once I thought I should give up from weariness. One man killed a Falco columbarius, in the finest plumage I have ever seen. I
- ↑ The Ruffed Grouse, Bonasa umbellus.—E. C.
