g before he gets
away. They never move very far southward, but watch the cantonments of
Frost, ready to advance the moment his outposts are drawn in and signs
appear of evacuation. Their climate, indeed, is determined in winter
rather by altitude than by latitude. The low swamps and pineries that
skirt tide-water in the Middle States furnish them a retreat. Thence
they scatter themselves over the tertiary plain as it widens southward
beneath the granite bench that divides all the great rivers south of the
Hudson into an upper and a lower reach. Detachments of them extend their
tour to the Gulf. Readers of "A Subaltern on the Campaign of New Orleans
in 1814-15" will recall his mention of the assemblage of robins hopping
over the Chalmette sward that were the first living inhabitants to
welcome the weary invaders on emerging from the palmetto marshes. They
can hardly be said to reach the particular region of which we propose to
speak, both species, the bluebird especially, being almost strangers to
it.

Other species, the cardinal grosbeak among them, may be said to stop,
as it were, just out of hearing, the echo of their song slumbering in
the thin, keen air, ready to swell again into unmistakable reality.
Between these stubborn fugitives and those who follow the butterflies to
the tropics there is a wide variety in the extent of travel in which our
winged compatriots indulge.

Quadrupeds, whose movements are less speedy and more limited, have to
adapt themselves to the Northern winter as best they may. Hard and long
training has made them less the creatures of climate than their
feathered associates, who might themselves in many cases have learned
perforce to stay where they were reared but for possessing the light and
agile wings which woo them to wander. We may fancy Bruin, with his
passion for sweet mast and luscious fruits, eying with envy the martin
and the wild fowl as they sweep over his head to the teeming Southland,
and wondering, as he huddles shivering into his snowy lair, why Nature
should be so partial in her gifts. The call of the trumpeting swan, the
bugler crane, and the Canada goose falls idly upon his ear. To their
breezy challenge, "A new home,--who'll follow?" he cannot respond.

Let us join this tide of travel and move sunward with some of those who
take through-tickets. We can easily keep up with them now. Steam is not
slower than wings,--often faster. Sitting at ease, yet moved by iron
muscles,