in the middle of the road. She ran along the horse-track for perhaps
a rod, and then disappeared among the palmetto leaves.

Meanwhile, two or three days before, while returning from St. Mark's,
whither I had gone for a day on the river, I had noticed from the car
window a swamp, or baygall, which looked so promising that I went the
very next morning to see what it would yield. I had taken it for a
cypress swamp, but it proved to be composed mainly of oaks; very tall
but rather slender trees, heavily draped with hanging moss and standing
in black water. Among them were the swollen stumps, three or four feet
high, of larger trees which had been felled. I pushed in through the
surrounding shrubbery and bay-trees, and waited for some time, leaning
against one of the larger trunks and listening to the noises, of which
the air of the swamp was full. Great-crested flycatchers, two Acadian
flycatchers, a multitude of blue yellow-backed warblers, and what I
supposed to be some loud-voiced frogs were especially conspicuous in the
concert; but a Carolina wren, a cardinal, a red-eyed vireo, and a
blue-gray gnatcatcher, the last with the merest thread of a voice,
contributed their share to the medley, and once a chickadee struck up
his sweet and gentle strain in the very depths of the swamp--like an
angel singing in hell.

My walk on the railway, that wonderful St. Mark's branch (I could never
have imagined the possibility of running trains over so crazy a track),
took me through the choicest of bird country. The bushes were alive, and
the air rang with music. In the midst of the chorus I suddenly caught
somewhere before me what I had no doubt was the song of a purple finch,
a bird that I had not yet seen in Florida. I quickened my steps, and to
my delight the singer proved to be a blue grosbeak. I had caught a
glimpse of one two days before, as I have described in another chapter,
but with no opportunity for a final identification. Here, as it soon
turned out, there were at least four birds, all males, and all singing;
chasing each other about after the most persistent fashion, in a piece
of close shrubbery with tall trees interspersed, and acting--the four
of them--just as two birds are often seen to do when contending for the
possession of a building site. At a first hearing the song seems not so
long sustained as the purple finch's commonly is, but exceedingly like
it in voice and manner, though not equal to it, I should be in