Slide Mountain enjoys a distinction which no other mountain in the State, so far as is known, does,—­it has a thrush peculiar to itself.  This thrush was discovered and described by Eugene P. Bicknell, of New York, in 1880, and has been named Bicknell’s thrush.  A better name would have been Slide Mountain thrush, as the bird so far has been found only on this mountain.[1] I did not see or hear it upon the Wittenberg, which is only a few miles distant, and only two hundred feet lower.  In its appearance to the eye among the trees, one would not distinguish it from the gray-cheeked thrush of Baird, or the olive-backed thrush, but its song is totally different.  The moment I heard it I said, “There is a new bird, a new thrush,” for the quality of all thrush songs is the same.  A moment more, and I knew it was Bicknell’s thrush.  The song is in a minor key, finer, more attenuated, and more under the breath than that of any other thrush.  It seemed as if the bird was blowing in a delicate, slender, golden tube, so fine and yet so flute-like and resonant the song appeared.  At times it was like a musical whisper of great sweetness and power.  The birds were numerous about the summit, but we saw them nowhere else.  No other thrush was seen, though a few times during our stay I caught a mere echo of the hermit’s song far down the mountain-side.  A bird I was not prepared to see or to hear was the black-poll warbler, a bird usually found much farther north, but here it was, amid the balsam firs, uttering its simple, lisping song.

     [Footnote 1:  Bicknell’s thrush turns out to be the more
     southern form of the gray-cheeked thrush, and is found on the
     higher mountains of New York and New England.]

The rocks on the tops of these mountains are quite sure to attract one’s attention, even if he have no eye for such things.  They are masses of light reddish conglomerate, composed of round wave-worn quartz pebbles.  Every pebble has been shaped and polished upon some ancient seacoast, probably the Devonian.  The rock disintegrates where it is most exposed to the weather, and forms a loose sandy and pebbly soil.  These rocks form the floor of the coal formation, but in the Catskill region only the floor remains; the superstructure has never existed, or has been swept away; hence one would look for a coal mine here over his head in the air, rather than under his feet.

This rock did not have to climb up here as we did; the mountain stooped and took it upon its back in the bottom of the old seas, and then got lifted up again.  This happened so long ago that the memory of the oldest inhabitants of these parts yields no clew to the time.