The Holly is found on Long Island, and on the island of Manhattan, and a little farther south it is very common. It grows from ten to forty feet in height, and very much resembles that of Europe, though not precisely similar.

The Yew is only seen here as a low trailing shrub, from four to six feet high. It is found in the Highlands, and is not uncommon northward.

The Juniper, or Red Cedar, is common enough in many parts of the country. Besides this variety, which is a tree, there is another, a low shrub, trailing on the ground, found along the great lakes and among our northern hills, and this more closely resembles the European Juniper, whose berries are used in gin.

Among the trees of note in this part of the country are also several whose northern limits scarcely extend beyond this State, and which are rare with us, while we are familiar with their names through our friends farther south. The Liquid Amber, or Sweet-Gum, is rare in this State, though very common in New Jersey; and on the coast it even reaches Portsmouth, in New Hampshire.

The Persimmon grows on the Hudson as far as the Highlands, and in the extreme southern counties. It is rather a handsome tree, its leaves are large and glossy, and its fruit, as most of us are aware, is very good indeed, and figures often in fairy tales as the medlar.

The Magnolias of several kinds are occasionally met with. The small Laurel Magnolia, or Sweet Bay, is found as far north as New York, in swampy grounds. The Cucumber Magnolia grows in rich woods in the western part of our State; and there is one in this village, a good-sized tree, perhaps thirty feet high; it is doing very well here. This tree, in favorable spots, attains a height of ninety feet. The Umbrella Magnolia, a small tree, with large white flowers, seven or eight inches broad, and rose-colored fruit, is said also to be found in our western counties.

The Papaw, belonging to the tropical Custard-apple family, grows in rich soil, upon the banks of the western waters of New York, which is its extreme northern limit.

The Kentucky Coffee-tree, with its peculiar blunt branches, is also found in rich woods, on the banks of the rivers of our western counties. It is a rough, rude-looking tree, with rugged bark, and entirely without the lesser spray one usually finds on trees. We have one in the village, and it has attained to a good size.

Monday, 5th.–Fine day. Saw a Woodpecker in the village; one of the arctic woodpeckers, which pass the winter here. They are not common in our neighborhood.

Tuesday, 6th.–Rabbits brought to the house for sale. They are quite numerous still about our hills; and although they are chiefly nocturnal animals, yet one occasionally crosses our path in the woods by day. At this season, our rabbits are gray, whence the name zoölogists have given them, the American gray rabbit; but in summer they are yellowish, varied with brown. They differ in their habits from those of Europe, never burrowing in the earth, so that a rabbit warren could scarcely exist in this country, with the native species, at least. Our rabbit would probably not be content to be confined to a sort of garden in this way. Like the Hare, it makes a form for its nest, that is to say, a slight depression in the ground, beneath some bush, or wall, or heap of stones. It is found from New Hampshire to Florida.

The Northern Hare, the variety found here, is much larger than the rabbit. It measures from twenty to twenty-five inches in length; the Gray Rabbit measures only fifteen or eighteen inches. The last weighs three or four pounds; the first six pounds and a half. In winter our hare is white, with touches of fawn-color; in summer, reddish brown; but they differ so much in shading that two individuals are never found exactly alike. The flesh is thought inferior to that of the gray rabbit. The hare lives exclusively in high forests of pine and fir; it is common here, and is said to extend from Hudson's Bay to Pennsylvania. There are a number of other hares in different parts of the Union, but this is the only one known in our own State. It is said to make quite a fierce resistance when seized, unlike the timid hare of Europe, although that animal is now thought to be rather less cowardly than its common reputation.

Wednesday, 7th.–Was there ever a region more deplorably afflicted with ill-judged names, than these United States? From the title of the Continent to that of the merest hamlet, we are unfortunate in this respect; our mistakes began with Amerigo Vespucci, and have continued to increase ever since. The Republic itself is the Great Unnamed; the States of which it is composed, counties, cities, boroughs, rivers, lakes, mountains, all partake in some degree of this novel form of evil. The passing traveller admires some cheerful American village, and inquires what he shall call so pretty a spot; an inhabitant of the place tells him, with a flush of mortification, that he is approaching Nebuchadnezzarville, or South-West-Cato, or Hottentopolis, or some other monstrously absurd combination of syllables and ideas. Strangely enough, this subject of names is one upon which very worthy people seem to have lost all ideas of fitness and propriety; you shall find that tender, doting parents, living in some Horridville or other, will deliberately, and without a shadow of compunction, devote their helpless offspring to lasting ridicule, by condemning the innocent child to carry through the world some pompous, heroic appellation, often misspelt and mispronounced to boot; thus rendering him for life a sort of peripatetic caricature, an ambulatory laughing-stock, rather than call him Peter or John, as becomes an honest man.

It is true we are not entirely without good names; but a dozen which are thoroughly ridiculous would be thought too many in most countries, and unfortunately, with us such may be counted by the hundred. By a stroke of good luck, the States are, with some exceptions, well named. Of the original thirteen, two only bore Indian names: Massachusetts and Connecticut; six, as we all remember, were taken from royal personages: Virginia, from Queen Bess; Maryland, from Henrietta Maria, the French wife of Charles I.; New York, from the duchy of James II.; Georgia, called by General Oglethorpe after George II., and the two Carolinas, which, although the refuge of many Huguenot families, so strangely recall the cruel Charles IX. and the wicked butchery of St. Bartholomew's. Of the remaining three, two were named after private individuals–New Jersey, from the birth-place of its proprietor, Sir George Carteret, and Pennsylvania, from the celebrated Quaker, while New Hampshire recalled an English county; Maine, the former satellite of Massachusetts, was named by the French colonists after the fertile province on the banks of the Loire, and Vermont, which stood in the same relation to New York, received its French title from the fancy of Young, one of the earliest of our American poets, who wrote "The Conquest of Quebec," and who was also one of the fathers of the State he named. Louisiana, called after the great Louis, and Florida, of Spanish origin, are both good in their way. Happily, the remaining names are all Indian words, admirably suited to the purpose; for what can be better than Alabama, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee?

New York, at present the most populous State in the republic, is in this respect the most afflicted part of the country. The name of the State itself is unfortunate in its association with the feeble James, while the combination of the adjective New with the brief old Saxon word York, seems particularly ill-judged. To make the matter worse, the fault is repeated in the title of the largest town of the Union, both State and city bearing the same name, which is always a great mistake, for it obliges people, in writing and speaking, to specific which of the two they mean, when either is mentioned. In fact, it destroys just half the advantage of a distinctive name. The Dutch were wiser: they called the town New Amsterdam, and the province New Netherlands. In old times, when the capital town ruled a whole dependent country, it was natural that the last should be known by the name of the first; Rome and Carthage, Tyre and Athens, could each say, "L'état, c'est moi!" and more recently, Venice, Genoa, Florence, Bern, and Geneva, might have made the same boast; but we Yankees have different notions on this point: cockneys and countrymen, we all have the same rights, and the good city of New York has never yet claimed to eclipse the whole State. The counties of New York are not quite so badly served: many of them do very well; but a very large number of the towns and villages are miserably off in this respect, and as for the townships into which the counties are divided, an outrageously absurd jumble of words has been fastened upon too many of them. It ought to be a crime little short of high treason, to give such names to habitable places; we have Ovids and Milos, Spartas and Hectors, mixed up with Smithvilles, and Stokesvilles, New Palmyras, New Herculaneums, Romes, and Carthages, and all these by the dozen; for not content with fixing an absurd name upon one spot, it is most carefully repeated in twenty more, with the aggravating addition of all the points of the compass tacked to it.

We cannot wonder that such gratuitous good-nature in providing a subject of merriment to the Old World should not have been thrown away. The laugh was early raised at our expense. As long ago as 1825, some lines in heroic verse, as a model for the imitation of our native poets, appeared in one of the English Reviews:–

"Ye plains where sweet Big-Muddy rolls along,
And Teapot, one day to be found in song,
Where Swans on Biscuit, and on Grindstone glide,
And willows wave upon Good-Woman's side!"
. . . . . . . . . .
"Blest bards who in your amorous verses call
On murmuring Pork, and gentle Cannon-Ball,
Split-Rock, and Stick-Lodge, and Two-Thousand-Mile,
White-Lime, and Cupboard, and Bad-Humored Isle."
. . . . . . . . . .
"Isis with Rum and Onion must not vie,
Cam shall resign the palm to Blowing-Fly,
And Thames and Tagus yield to Great-Big-Little-Dry!"

Retaliation is but an indifferent defence, and is seldom needed, except in a bad cause. A very good reply, however, appeared in an American Review, and it is amusing, as it proves that we came very honestly by this odd fancy for ridiculous names, having inherited the taste from John Bull himself, the following being a sample of those he has bestowed upon his discoveries about the world:

"Oh, could I seize the lyre of Walter Scott,
Then might I sing the terrors of Black Pot,
     Black River, Black Tail,
     Long Nose, Never Fail,
     Black Water, Black Bay,
     Black Point, Popinjay,
     Points Sally and Meggy,
     Two-Headed and Foggy,
While merrily, merrily bounded Cook's bark,
By Kidnapper's Cape, and old Noah's Ark,
Round Hog Island, Hog's-Heads, and Hog-Eyes,
Hog-Bay and Hog John, Hog's Tails, and Hog-sties."
. . . . . . . . . . . .

Perhaps this taste is one of the peculiarities of the Anglo-Saxon race, about which it is the fashion to talk so much just now. The discoverers from other nations do not seem to have laid themselves open to the same reproach. The Portuguese names for the Cape of Good Hope, Labrador, Buenos Ayres, etc., are very good; both themselves and the Spaniards gave many religious names, but the navigators of these nations also left many Indian words, wherever they passed. M. Von Humboldt observes that Mantanzas, massacre, and Vittoria, victory, are frequently scattered over the Spanish colonies. The Italians have made little impression in the way of names, though they have supplied noted chiefs to many a fleet of discovery; probably, however, many words of theirs would have been preserved on the hemisphere bearing an Italian name, if the language had been spoken in any part of the continent, by a colony of their own. As a people, they have produced great leaders, but no colonists. The French have generally given respectable names, either repetitions of personal titles, or of local names, or else descriptive words: la Louisiane, les Carolines, le Maine, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; for, as we have already observed, leaving a good Indian name is equal to giving one of our own. It may also be doubted if the French have placed one really ridiculous word on the map. The Dutch are never pompous or pretending. They are usually simple, homely, and hearty: the Schuylkill, or Hiding-Creek; Reedy Island; Boompties-Hoeck, Tree-Point; Barnegat, the Breaker-Gut; Great and Little Egg Harbors; Still-water; Midwout, or Midwood; Flachtebos, or Flatbush; Greenebos, Greenbush; Hellegat; Verdreitige Hoeck, Tedious Point; Havestroo, or Oat Straw; Yonker's Kill, the Young-Lord's-Creek; Bloemen'd Dal, Bloomingdale; are instances. Among the most peculiar of their names are Spyt-den-duyvel Kill, a little stream, well known to those who live on the Island of Manhattan, and Pollepel Island, a familiar object to all who go up and down the Hudson; In-spite-of-the-devil-creek is a translation of the name of the stream; formerly there was a ford there, and the spot was called Fonteyn, Springs. Pollepel means a ladle, more especially the ladle with which waffles were made. So says Judge Benson.

Happily for the world, other nations have shown more taste and sense in giving names than the English or the Yankees. It is remarkable that both the mother country and her daughter should be wanting in what would seem at first a necessary item in national existence, a distinctive name. The citizens of the United States are compelled to appropriate the title of the continent, and call themselves Americans, while the subjects of the British Empire spread the name of England over all their possessions; their sovereign is known as Queen of England, in spite of her heralds; their armies are the armies of England, their fleets are English fleets, and the people are considered as Englishmen, by their neighbors, whether born in the Hebrides, or at Calcutta, at Tipperary, or the Cape of Good Hope.

Fortunately for us, the important natural features of this country are known by fine Indian words, uniting both sound and meaning. As the larger streams of this country are among the finest waters on the earth, it is indeed a happy circumstance that they should be worthily named; no words can be better for the purpose than those of Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Alabama, Altamaha, Monongahela, Susquehannah, Potomac. The lakes, almost without an exception, are well named, from the broad inland seas of Huron, Michigan, Erie, Ontario, to the lesser sheets of water which abound in the northern latitudes of the Union; it is only when they dwindle into the mere pond of a neighborhood, and the Indian word has been forgotten, that they are made over to the tender mercies of Yankee nomenclature, and show us how fortunate it is that we escaped the honor of naming Niagara and Ontario.

There are many reasons for preserving every Indian name which can be accurately placed; generally, they are recommended by their beauty; but even when harsh in sound, they have still a claim to be kept up on account of their historical interest, and their connection with the dialects of the different tribes. A name is all we leave them, let us at least preserve that monument to their memory; as we travel through the country, and pass river after river, lake after lake, we may thus learn how many were the tribes who have melted away before us, whose very existence would have been utterly forgotten but for the word which recalls the name they once bore. And possibly, when we note how many have been swept from the earth by the vices borrowed from civilized man, we may become more earnest, more zealous, in the endeavor to aid those who yet linger among us, in reaping the better fruits of Christian civilization.

It is the waters particularly which preserve the recollection of the red man. The Five Nations are each commemorated by the principal lakes and the most important stream of the country they once inhabited. Lakes Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, and Seneca, each recall a great tribe, as well as the river Mohawk, farther eastward. There is a sound which, under many combinations, seems to have been very frequently repeated by the Iroquois–it is the syllable Ca. This is found in Canada; it is preserved in two branches of the Mohawk, the East and the West Canada, Lake Canaderagua, to the south of the same stream; Canandaigua, and Canadaseago, and Canajoharie, names of Indian towns; Cayuga, Candaia, Cayuta, Cayudutta, Canadawa, Cassadaga, Cassassenny, Cashaguash, Canasawacta, Cashong, Cattotong, Cattaraugus, Cashagua, Caughnawaga, and Canariaugo are either names still found in the Iroquois country, or which formerly existed there. This syllable Ca, and that of Ot and Os, were as common at the commencement of a name as agua, aga, agua, were at the conclusion.

The Indian names for the mountains have only reached us in a general way, such as the Alleghany, or Endless-chain, the Kittatinny, etc.

Our own success in naming the hills has been indifferent; the principal chains, the Blue, the Green, the White Mountains, the Catsbergs, the Highlands, do well enough in the mass, but as regards the individual hills we are apt to fail sadly. A large number of them bear the patronymic of conspicuous political men, Presidents, Governors, etc. That the names of men honorably distinguished should occasionally be given to towns and counties, or to any mark drawn by the hand of society upon the face of a county, would seem only right and proper; but except in extraordinary cases growing out of some peculiar connection, another class of words appears much better fitted to the natural features of the land, its rivers, lakes, and hills. There is a grandeur, a sublimity, about a mountain especially, which should ensure it, if possible, a poetical, or at least an imaginative name. Consider a mountain peak, stern and savage, veiled in mist and cloud, swept by the storm and the torrent, half-clad in the wild verdure of the evergreen forest, and say if it be not a miserable dearth of words and ideas to call that grand pile by the name borne by some honorable gentleman just turning the corner, in "honest broadcloth, close buttoned to the chin." Generally it must be admitted that this connection between a mountain and a man reminds one rather unpleasantly of that between the mountain and the mouse.

After the Revolution came the direful invasion of the ghosts of old Greeks and Romans, headed by the Yankee schoolmaster, with an Abridgment of Ancient History in his pocket. It was then your Troys and Uticas, your Tullys and Scipios, your Romes and Palmyras, your Homers and Virgils, were dropped about the country in scores. As a proof that the earlier names were far better than most of those given to-day, we add a few taken from the older counties of this State: Coldspring, the Stepping-Stones, White Stone, Riverhead, West-Farms, Grassy Point, White Plains, Canoeplace, Oakhill, Wading River, Old Man's, Fireplace, Stony-Brook, Fonda's Bush.

Long Island shows an odd medley of names; it is in itself a sort of historical epitome of our career in this way; some Dutch names, some Indian, others English, others Yankee, with a sprinkling of Hebrew and Assyrian. Long Island was the common Dutch name. The counties of Kings, Queens, and Suffolk came, of course, from England, after the conquest of the colony under Charles II.; then we have Setauket, and Patchogue, Peconic, Montauk, and Ronkonkoma, which are Indian, with many more like them; Flushing, Flatbush, Gowanus, Breuckelen or Brooklyn, and Wallabout, are Dutch; Hempstead, Oyster Bay, Near Rockaway, Shelter Island, Far Rockaway, Gravesend, Bay Side, Middle Village, and Mount Misery, are colonial; Centreville, East New York, Mechanicsville, Hicksville, with others to match, are clearly Yankee; Jerusalem, we have always believed to be Jewish; Jericho, is Canaanitish, and Babylon, we understand to be Assyrian.

There is less excuse for the pompous folly committed by giving absurd names, when we remember that we are in fact no more wanting in good leading ideas for such purposes, than other people. After the first duty of preserving as many Indian words as possible, and after allowing a portion of the counties and towns for monuments to distinguished men, either as local benefactors or deserving well of the country generally, there would no doubt still remain a large number of sites to be named.

But we need not set off on a wild good chase in quest of these. Combinations from different natural objects have been hitherto very little used in this country, and yet they are always very pleasing when applied with fitness, and form a class almost inexhaustible from their capability of variation. Broadmeadows, Brookfield, Rivermead, Oldoaks, Nutwoods, Highborough, Hillhamlet, Shallowford, Brookdale, Clearwater, Newbridge, are instances of the class of names alluded to, and it would be easy to coin hundreds like them, always bearing in mind their fitness to the natural or artificial features of the spot; springs, woods, heights, dales, rocks, pastures, orchards, forges, furnaces, factories, are all well adapted to many different combinations in this way.

Friday, 9th.–The papers this evening give an instance of a man recently killed by panthers near Umbagog Lake, a large sheet of water on the borders of New Hampshire. A hunter left home one morning to look after his traps, as usual; at night he did not return, and the next day his friends went out to look after him, when his body was found in the woods, mangled and torn, with the tracks of two panthers about the spot. So far as the marks in the snow could tell the sad history, it was believed that the hunter had come suddenly on these wild creatures; that he was afraid to fire, lest he should exasperate one animal by killing the other, and had thought it wiser to retrace his steps, walking backward, as was shown by his foot-prints; the panthers had followed as he retreated with his face toward them, but there were no signs of a struggle for some distance. He had, indeed, returned half a mile from the point where he met the animals, when he had apparently taken a misstep, and fallen backward over a dead tree; at this moment, the wild beasts would seem to have sprung upon him. And what a fearful death the poor hunter must have died! Panthers, it is said, would be very likely to have taken advantage of such an accident, when they might not have attacked the man had he continued to face them without in his turn attacking them. The body, when found, was torn and mangled; the hunter's gun, loaded and cocked, lay where it had fallen; but the creatures had left the spot when the friends of the poor man came up. They were followed some distance by their tracks, and their cries were distinctly heard in a thicket; but it seems the animals were not attacked. Perhaps the men who followed them were not armed. What a moment it must have been, when, alone in the forest, the poor hunter fell, and those fierce beasts of prey both leaped upon him!

Saturday, 10th.–Pleasant day, though coldish. We have had no very severe days, and no deep snow, since the first week in January. The season is considered a decidedly cold one; but it has been comparatively much more severe in other parts of the country than in our own neighborhood. Our deepest snow has been eighteen inches.

Monday, 12th.–It is snowing this morning. Brook Trout brought to the house. They are found in many of our smaller streams. We received a very fine mess not long since; the two largest weighed very nearly a pound; there are but few of that size now left in our waters. It would seem that our Brook Trout is entirely a northern fish. Dr. De Kay observes that he has never heard of its being found north of the forty-seventh or south of the fortieth parallel of latitude. In Ohio, it is only known in two small streams. There is another variety, the Red-bellied Trout, found in our northern mountain streams, a large and beautiful fish, of a dark olive-green color, spotted with a salmon color and crimson. The flesh when cooked is also of a bright red, approaching carmine.

Tuesday, 13th.–Fine day. The good people are beginning to use the lake for sleighs: it is now crossed by several roads, running in different directions. In passing along this afternoon, and looking at the foot-prints of horses, oxen, and dogs, on the snow-covered ice, we were reminded what different tracks were seen here only seventy years since. Moose, stags, deer, wolves must have all passed over the lake every winter. To this day, the ice on the northern waters of our State is said to be strewed with carcasses of deer, which have been killed by the wolves. In former times, when the snow lay on these hills which we now call our own, the Indians by the lake shore must have often watched the wild creatures, not only moving over the ice, but along the hill-sides also, for at this season one can see far into the distant hanging woods, and a living animal of any size moving over the white ground, would be plainly observed. To-day the forests are quite deserted in winter, except where the wood-cutters are at work, or a few rabbits and squirrels are gliding over the snow.

It would seem that although the wild animals found in these regions by the Dutch, on their arrival, have been generally driven out of the southern and eastern counties, all the different species may yet be found within the limits of the present State. Their numbers have been very much reduced, but they have not as yet been entirely exterminated. The only exceptions are the Bison, which is credibly supposed to have existed here several centuries since, and perhaps the Reindeer.

Bears were once very numerous in this part of the country, but they are now confined to the wilder districts. Occasionally, one will wander into the cultivated neighborhoods.

The American Wolf measures four or five feet in length, and is rather more robust than that of Europe. Formerly it was believed to be smaller. We have two varieties in New York, the black and the gray, the first being the most rare. Some years after this little village was founded, the howl of the wolf, pursuing the deer on the ice, was a common sound of a winter's night, but it is now many years since one has been heard of in this neighborhood.

Foxes are still to be found within the county. Two kinds belong to our quadrupeds: the Red and the Gray. The red is the largest, about three or four feet in length; there are two varieties of this fox which are less common, and highly valued for their furs. One is the Cross Fox, bearing the mark of a dark cross on its back: this sells for twelve dollars, while the common fox sells for two dollars. It is found throughout the State. The Black Fox, again, is extremely rare; it is almost entirely black, and only seen in the northern counties; the fur is considered six times more valuable than that of any other animal in America.

Beavers have become extremely rare in New York. They no longer build dams, but are found only in families in the northern counties. Three hundred beaver skins were taken in 1815 by the St. Regis Indians, in St. Lawrence County; since then the animals have become very rare. They were formerly very common here, as in most parts of the State; there was a dam at the outlet of our lake, and another upon a little stream about a mile and a half from the village, at a spot still bearing the name of Beaver Meadows. These animals are two or three feet long, of a bay or brown color. They are nocturnal in their habits, and move on land in successive leaps of ten or twelve feet. They are said to eat fish as well as aquatic plants and the bark of trees. Old Vanderdonck declares that 80,000 beavers were killed annually in this part of the continent during his residence here, but this seems quite incredible. Dr. De Kay has found, in a letter of the Dutch West India Company, the records of the export of 14,891 skins in the year 1635. In ten years, the amount they exported was 80,103, the same number which the old chronicler declares were killed in one year. The flesh was considered the greatest of dainties by the Indians, the tail especially; and in this opinion others agreed with them, for it is said that whenever a beaver, by rare good luck, was caught in Germany, the tail was always reserved for the table of the Emperor.

Wednesday, 14th.–Cold day. Quite a rosy flush on the lake, or rather on the ice and snow which cover it; there are at times singular effects of light and shade upon the lake at this season, when passing clouds throw a shadow upon it, and give to the broad white field very much the look of gray water.

It is St. Valentine's day, and valentines by the thousand are passing through the post-offices all over the country. Within the last few years, the number of these letters is said to have become really astonishing; we heard that 20,000 passed through the New York post-office last year, but one cannot vouch for the precise number. They are going out of favor now, however, having been much abused of late years.

The old Dutch colonists had a singular way of keeping this holiday; Judge Benson gives an account of it. It was called Vrouwen-Dagh, or woman's day. "Every mother's daughter," says the Judge, "was furnished with a piece of cord, the size neither too large nor too small; the twist neither too hard nor too loose; a turn round the hand, and then a due length left to serve as a lash." On the morning of this Vrouwen-Dagh, the little girls–and some large ones, too, probably, for the fun of the thing–sallied out, armed with just such a cord, and every luckless wight of a lad that was met received three or four strokes from this feminine lash. It was not "considered fair to have a knot, but fair to practice a few days to acquire the sleight." The boys, of course, passed the day in a state of more anxiety than they now do under the auspices of St. Valentine; "never venturing to turn a corner without first listening whether no warblers were behind it." One can imagine that there must have been some fun on the occasion, to the lookers-on especially; but a strange custom it was. We have never heard of anything like it elsewhere. The boys insisted that the next day should be theirs, and be called Mannen-Dagh, man's day, "but my masters were told the law would thereby defeat its own purpose, which was, that they should, at an age, and in a way most likely never to forget it, receive the lesson of Manliness, never to strike." As the lesson has been well learnt by the stronger sex in this part of the world, it is quite as well, perhaps, that the custom should drop, and Vrouwen-Dagh be forgotten. But after this, who shall say that our Dutch ancestors were not a chivalrous race?

Thursday, 22d.–Quite mild again. Cloudy. Soft, bluish haze on the hills.

Walked about the village this afternoon, looking at last summer's birds' nests. Many are still left in the trees, and just now they are capped with snow. Some birds are much more careful architects than others. The robins generally build firmly, and their nests often remain through the winter. The red-eyed vireo, or greenlet, or fly-catcher, as you please, is one of our most skillful builders; his nest is pendulous, and generally placed in a small tree–a dog-wood, when he can find one: he uses some odd materials: withered leaves, bits of hornets' nests, flax, scraps of paper, and fibres of grape-vine bark; he lines it with caterpillars' webs, hair, fine grasses, and fibres of bark. These nests are so durable, that a yellow-bird has been known to place her own over an old one of a previous year, made by this bird; and field-mice, probably the jumping-mice, are said frequently to take possession of them after the vireo and its brood are gone. But the red-eyed greenlet is rather a wood-bird, and we must not look for his nest in the village. His brother, the white-eyed greenlet, frequently builds in towns, even in the ornamental trees of our largest cities, in the fine sycamores of the older streets of Philadelphia, for instance.

The nests about our village door-yards and streets are chiefly those of the robin, goldfinch, yellow-bird, song-sparrow, chipping-bird, oriole, blue-bird, wren, Phoebe-bird, and cat-bird, with now and then a few greenlets; probably some snow-birds also, about the garden hedges or fences. This last summer it looked very much as though we had also purple-finches in the village; no nest was found, but the birds were repeatedly seen on the garden fences, near the same spot, at a time when they must have had young. Humming-birds doubtless build in the village, but their nests are rarely discovered; and they are always so small, and such cunning imitations of tufts of lichens and mosses, that they are unobserved. As for the numerous swallow tribe, their nests are never found nowadays in trees.

Of all these regular summer visitors, Robin builds the largest and most conspicuous nest; he will often pick up long strings, and strips of cloth or paper, which he interweaves with twigs and grass, leaving the ends hanging out carelessly; I have seen half a dozen paper cuttings, eighteen inches long, drooping like streamers in this way, from a robin's nest. The pensile nest of the oriole is more striking and peculiar, as well as much more neat than any other. Specimens of all the various kinds built in trees are now plainly seen in the branches; many have no doubt fallen, but a good number have kept their place until to-day, through all the winter storms. We amused ourselves this afternoon with looking after these nests in the trees as we passed along the different streets of the village.

All these village visitors seem a very sociable race: they generally collect in little neighborhoods, half a dozen families in adjoining trees, leaving others for some distance about them untenanted. It is pleasant, also, to notice how frequently they build near houses, about the very doors and windows, as though out of friendliness to man, while other trees, quite as good as those chosen, are standing vacant a little farther off. In several instances this afternoon, we saw two, three, and even four nests in one tree, shading the windows of a house; in very many cases, the three or four trees before a house were all tenanted; we observed a cottage with three little maples recently planted in the door-yard, and so much trimmed that they could scarcely boast a dozen branches between them, yet each had its large robin's nest. The birds seem to like to return to the same trees; some of the older elms and maples are regularly occupied every summer as a matter of course.

There is another fact which strikes one in looking at these nests about the village: the birds of different feathers show a very marked preference for building in maples. It is true these trees are more numerous than others about our streets, but there are also elms, locusts, and sumachs mingled with them, enough, at least, to decide the question very clearly. This afternoon we counted the nests in the different trees as we passed them, with a view to this particular point, and the result was as follows: the first we came to were in a clump of young trees of various kinds, and here we found nine nests, one in a locust, the other eight in maples. Then following the street with trees irregularly planted on either side, a few here, a few there, we counted forty-nine nests, all of which were in maples, although several elms and locusts were mingled with these; frequently there were several nests in the same maple. Next we found one in an elm; then fourteen more in maples, and successively as follows; one in a yellow willow; eleven in maples; six in a row of old elms regularly inhabited every season, and as usual, an oriole nest among these; one in a lilac-bush; one in a mountain-ash; eleven in maples; one in an elm; one in a locust; six in maples; one in a balm of Gilead; two in lilac-bushes; two in elms, one of them an oriole nest; and ten in maples. Such was the state of things in the principal streets through which we passed, making in all one hundred and twenty-seven nests, and of these, eighteen were in various kinds of trees; the remaining one hundred and nine were in maples.

One can easily understand why the orioles should often choose the drooping spray of the elm for their pendulous nests–though they build in maples and locusts also–but it is not easy to see why so many different tribes should all show such a very decided preference for the maples. It cannot be from these trees coming into leaf earlier than others, since the willows, and poplars, and lilacs are shaded before them.

Perhaps it may be the luxuriant foliage of the maple, which throws a thick canopy over its limbs. Or it may be the upward inclination of the branches, and the numerous forks in the young twigs. Whether the wood birds show the same preference, one cannot say. But along the roads, and near farm-houses, one observes the same decided partiality for these trees; the other day we observed a maple not far from a farm-house, with five nests in it, and a whole orchard close at hand, untenanted. The sumachs, on the contrary, are not in favor; one seldom sees a nest in their stag-horn branches. Neither the growth of their limbs, nor that of their foliage, seems to suit the birds.

Saturday, 24th.–Very mild and pleasant. The chicadees are hopping about among the branches, pretty, cheerful, fearless little creatures; I stood almost within reach of a couple of them, as they were gliding about the lower limbs of a sugar-maple, but they did not mind me in the least. They are regular tree birds, one rarely seems them on the ground. The snow-birds, on the contrary, are half the time running about on the earth.

The arctic or Lapland snow-bird is not unfrequent in this State as a winter visitor.

The white snow-bird is a pretty little creature, with much white in its plumage. They are not rare in winter, in parts of this State. These birds live much on the ground, and build their nests there, and for a very good reason, since in their proper native country, in arctic regions, trees are neither very common nor very tall. One of the northwestern travellers, Captain Lyon, once found a nest of this bird in a singular position; his party came accidentally upon several Indian graves: "Near the large grave was a third pile of stones, covering the body of a child, which was coiled up in the same manner. A snow-bunting had found its way through the loose stones which composed this little tomb, and its now forsaken, neatly-built nest, was found placed on the neck of the child."

Monday, 26th.–Pleasant day. Long drive of six miles on the lake. The snow is all but gone on shore, though it still lies on the ice to the depth of several inches; it accumulates there more than upon the land, seldom thawing much, except in rainy weather. Two very large cracks cross the lake at present, about five miles from the village; the ice is upheaved at those points, forming a decided ridge, perhaps two feet in height; it will doubtless first give way in that direction. The broad, level field of white looks beautiful just now, when the country about is dull and tarnished, only partially covered with the dregs of the winter snow. We met a number of sleighs, for the roads are in a bad condition from the thaw; indeed, wagons are out in the village. During the last week in February, and in March, the lake is generally more used for sleighing than at any other period; we have seen heavily-loaded sleds, carrying stone and iron, passing over it at such times. The stage-sleighs, with four horses and eight or ten passengers, occasionally go and come over the ice at this season.

Thursday, 27th.–Lovely day. Out on the ice again. Drove under Darkwood Hill; the evergreens looked sombre, indeed, all but black. On most of the other hills, one could see the ground distinctly, with fallen timber lying like giant jackstraws scattered about. But the growth of evergreens on Darkwood Hill is so dense, that they completely screen the earth. Went on shore for a short distance near the Cliffs. It is pleasant driving through the woods, even in winter; once within their bounds, we feel the charm of the forest again. Though dark and sombre in the background, yet close at hand, the old pines and hemlocks are green as ever, with lights and shadows playing about them, which in the distance become imperceptible. The trunks and limbs of the leafless trees, also, never fail to be a source of much interest. The pure wintry air is still touched with the fragrance of bark and evergreens, and the woods have a winter-light of their own, filled with pale gray shadows falling on the snow. The stillness of the forest is more striking and impressive at this season than at any other; one may glide along for miles over some quiet wood-road, without seeing or hearing a living thing, not even a bird, or a chipmuck. The passing of the sleigh seems almost an intrusion on the haunts of silence.

Dead and shrivelled leaves are still hanging on some trees, here and there; not all the storms of winter have been able to loosen their hold on the lower limbs of the beeches; they cling, also, at this late day to some oaks, and hickories, and maples. The wych-hazels are oddly garnished, bearing, many of them, their old leaves, the open husks of last year's nuts, and the shrivelled yellow flowers of autumn. Within these lies the young fruit, which has made but little progress during the last three months.

Wednesday, 28th.–Delightful day. Pleasant drive on the lake. Went on shore at the Cliffs for eggs; the poultry-yard had quite a cheery, spring look.

Our winters are undoubtedly cold enough, but the weather is far from being always severe. We have many moderate days, and others, even in the heart of winter, which are soft and balmy, a warm wind blowing in your face from the south until you wonder how it could have found its way over the snow without being chilled. People always exclaim that such days are quite extraordinary, but in truth, there never passes a year without much weather that is unseasonably pleasant., if we would but remember it. And if we take the year throughout, this sort of weather, in all its varieties, will probably be found more favorably divided for us than we fancy. It is true there are frosty nights in May, sometimes in June, which are mischievous to the crops and gardens. But then it frequently happens, also, that we have charming days when we have no right whatever to expect them; delightful Novembers, soft, mild weeks in December, pleasant breaks in January and February, with early springs, when the labors of the husbandman commence much sooner than usual. We have seen the fields in this valley ploughed in February; and the cattle grazing until late in December. Every year we have some of these pleasant moments, one season more, another less; but we soon forget them. The frosts and chilly days are remembered much longer, which does not seem quite right.

It is an additional charm of these clear, mild days in winter, that they often bring very beautiful sunsets. Not those gorgeous piles of clouds which are seen, perhaps, as frequently after the summer showers, as at any other period; but the sort of sunset one would not look for in winter–some of the softest and sweetest skies of the year. This evening the heavens were very beautiful, as we drove homeward over the ice; and the same effect may frequently be seen in December, January, or February. One of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever beheld occurred here several years since, toward the last of February. At such times, a warmer sun than usual draws from the yielding snow a mild mist, which softens the dark hills, and rising to the sky, lies there in long, light, cloudy folds. The choicest tints of the heavens are seen at such moments; tender shades of rose, lilac and pale gold, opening to show beyond a sky filled with delicate green light.

These calm sunsets are much less fleeting than others; from the moment when the clouds flush into color at the approach of the sun, one may watch them, perhaps, for more than an hour, growing brighter and warmer, as he passes slowly on his way through their midst; still varying in ever-changing beauty, while he sinks slowly to rest; and at last, long after he has dropped beyond the farther hills, fading sweetly and imperceptibly, as the shadows of night gather upon the snow.