e number of
birds that annually visit our climate. Very few even are aware of half
the number that spend the summer in their own immediate vicinity. We
little suspect, when we walk in the woods, whose privacy we are
intruding upon,--what rare and elegant visitants from Mexico, from
central and South America, and from the islands of the sea, are
holding their reunions in the branches over our heads, or pursuing
their pleasure on the ground before us.

I recall the altogether admirable and shining family which Thoreau
dreamed he saw in the upper chambers of Spaulding's woods, which
Spaulding did not know lived there, and which were not put out when
Spaulding, whistling, drove his team through their lower halls. They
did not go into society in the village; they were quite well; they had
sons and daughters; they neither wove nor spun; there was 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 have observed 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 summer visitants, many of the common to other woods
in the vicinity, but quite a number peculiar to these ancient
solitudes, and not a few that are rare in any locality. It is quite
unusual to find so large a number abiding in one forest,--and that not
a large one,--most of them nesting and spending the summer there. Many
of those I observed commonly pass this season much farther north. But
the geographical distribution of birds is rather a climatical one. The
same temperature, though under different parallels, usually attracts
the same birds; difference in altitude being equivalent to the
difference in latitude. A given height above sea-level under the
parallel of thirty degrees may have the same climate as places under
that of thirty-five degrees, and similar flora and fauna. At the
head-waters of the Delaware, where I write, the latitude is that of
Boston, but the region has a much greater elevation, and hence a climate
that compares better with the northern part of the State and of New
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 different mamma