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 mammals.  Neither the little gray rabbit nor the little gray fox is found in my locality, but the great northern hare and the red fox are.  In the last century, a colony of beavers dwelt here, though the oldest inhabitant cannot now point to even the traditional site of their dams.  The ancient hemlocks, whither I propose to take the reader, are rich in many things besides birds.  Indeed, their wealth in this respect is owing mainly, no doubt, to their rank vegetable growth, their fruitful swamps, and their dark, sheltered retreats.

Their history is of an heroic cast.  Ravished and torn by the tanner in his thirst for bark, preyed upon by the lumberman, assaulted and beaten back by the settler, still their spirit has never been broken, their energies never paralyzed.  Not many years ago a public highway passed through them, but it was at no time a tolerable road; trees fell across it, mud and limbs choked it up, till finally travelers took the hint and went around; and now, walking along its deserted course, I see only the footprints of coons, foxes, and squirrels.

Nature loves such woods, and places her own seal upon them.  Here she show me what can be done with ferns and mosses and lichens.  The soil is marrowy and full of innumerable forests.  Standing in these fragrant aisles, I feel the strength of the vegetable kingdom, and am awed by the deep and inscrutable processes of life going on so silently about me.

No hostile forms with axe or spud now visit these solitudes.  The cows have half-hidden ways through them, and know where the best browsing is to be had.  In spring, the farmer repairs to their bordering of maples to make sugar; in July and August women and boys from all the country about penetrate the old Barkpeelings for raspberries and blackberries; and I know a youth who wonderingly follows their languid stream casting for trout.

In like spirit, alert and buoyant, on this bright June morning go I also to reap my harvest,—­pursuing a sweet more delectable than sugar, fruit more savory than berries, and game for another palate than that tickled by trout.

June, of all the months, the student of ornithology can least afford to lose.  Most birds are nesting then, and in full song and plumage.  And what is a bird without its song?  Do we not wait for the stranger to speak?  It seems to me that I do not know a bird till I have heard its voice; then I come nearer it at once, and it possesses a human interest to me.  I have met the gray-cheeked thrush in the woods, and held him in my hand; still I do not know him.  The silence of the cedar-bird throws a mystery about him which neither his good looks nor his petty larcenies in cheery time can dispel.  A bird’s song contains a clew to its life, and establishes a sympathy, an understanding, between itself and the listener.