it was worth something barely to see and hear them.  Henceforth Dryobates borealis is a bird, and not merely a name.  This, as I have said, was among the pines, before reaching the swamp.  In the swamp itself, there suddenly appeared from somewhere, as if by magic (a dramatic entrance is not without its value, even out-of-doors), a less novel but far more impressive figure, a pileated woodpecker; a truly splendid fellow, with the scarlet cheek-patches.  When I caught sight of him, he stood on one of the upper branches of a tall pine, looking wonderfully alert and wide-awake; now stretching out his scrawny neck, and now drawing it in again, his long crest all the while erect and flaming.  After a little he dropped into the underbrush, out of which came at intervals a succession of raps.  I would have given something to have had him under my glass just then, for I had long felt curious to see him in the act of chiseling out those big, oblong, clean-cut, sharp-angled “peck-holes” which, close to the base of the tree, make so common and notable a feature of Vermont and New Hampshire forests; but, though I did my best, I could not find him, till all at once he came up again and took to a tall pine,—­the tallest in the wood,—­where he pranced about for a while, striking sundry picturesque but seemingly aimless attitudes, and then made off for good.  All in all, he was a wild-looking bird, if ever I saw one.

I was no sooner in St. Augustine, of course, than my eyes were open for wild flowers.  Perhaps I felt a little disappointed.  Certainly the land was not ablaze with color.  In the grass about the old fort fhere was plenty of the yellow oxalis and the creeping white houstonia; and from a crevice in the wall, out of reach, leaned a stalk of goldenrod in full bloom.  The reader may smile, if he will, but this last flower was a surprise and a stumbling-block.  A vernal goldenrod!  Dr. Chapman’s Flora made no mention of such an anomaly.  Sow thistles, too, looked strangely anachronistic.  I had never thought of them as harbingers of springtime.  The truth did not break upon me till a week or so afterward.  Then, on the way to the beach at Daytona, where the pleasant peninsula road traverses a thick forest of short-leaved pines, every tree of which leans heavily inland at the same angle ("the leaning pines of Daytona,” I always said to myself, as I passed), I came upon some white beggar’s-ticks,—­like daisies; and as I stopped to see what they were, I noticed the presence of ripe seeds.  The plant had been in flower a long time.  And then I laughed at my own dullness.  It fairly deserved a medal.  As if, even in Massachusetts, autumnal flowers—­the groundsel, at least—­did not sometimes persist in blossoming far into the winter!  A day or two after this, I saw a mullein stalk still presenting arms, as it were (the mullein, always looks the soldier to me), with one bright flower.  If I had found that in St. Augustine, I flatter myself I should have been less easily fooled.