a was at its
prettiest, and the flowering dogwood, also, true queen of the woods in
Florida as in Massachusetts. The fringe-bush, likewise, stood here and
there in solitary state, and thorn-bushes flourished in bewildering
variety.

Nearer the track were the omnipresent blackberry vines, some patches of
which are especially remembered for their bright rosy flowers.

Out of the dense vegetation of a swamp came the cries of Florida
gallinules, and then, of a sudden, I caught, or seemed to catch, the
sweet _kurwee_ whistle of a Carolina rail. Instinctively I turned my ear
for its repetition, and by so doing admitted to myself that I was not
certain of what I had heard, although the sora's call is familiar, and
the bird was reasonably near. I had been taken unawares, and every
ornithologist knows how hard it is to be sure of one's self in such a
case. He knows, too, how uncertain he feels of any brother observer who
in a similar case seems troubled by no distrust of his own senses. The
whistle, whatever it had been, was not repeated, and I lost my only
opportunity of adding the sora's name to my Florida catalogue--a loss,
fortunately, of no consequence to any but myself, since the bird is well
known as a winter visitor to the State.

Further along, a great blue heron was stalking about the edge of a
marshy pool, and further still, in a woody swamp, stood three little
blue herons, one of them in white plumage. In the drier and more open
parts of the way cardinals, mocking-birds, and thrashers were singing,
ground doves were cooing, quails were prophesying, and loggerhead
shrikes sat, trim and silent, on the telegraph wire. In the pine lands
were plenty of brown-headed nuthatches, full, as always, of friendly
gossip; two red-shouldered hawks, for whom life seemed to wear a more
serious aspect; three Maryland yellow throats; a pair of bluebirds, rare
enough now to be twice welcome; a black-and-white creeper, and a yellow
redpoll warbler. In the same pine woods, too, there was much good music:
house wrens, Carolina wrens, red-eyed and white-eyed vireos, pine
warblers, yellow-throated warblers, blue yellowbacks, red-eyed chewinks,
and, twice welcome, like the bluebirds, a Carolina chickadee.

A little beyond this point, in a cut through a low sand bank, I found
two pairs of rough-winged swallows, and stopped for some time to stare
at them, being myself, meanwhile, a gazing-stock for two or three
negroes lounging about the do