The wood was delightful, also, after my two months in eastern
Florida, for lying on a slope, and for having an undergrowth of loose
shrubbery instead of a jungle of scrub oak and saw palmetto. Blue jays
and crested flycatchers were doing their best to outscream one
another,--with the odds in favor of the flycatchers,--and a few smaller
birds were singing, especially two or three summer tanagers, as many
yellow-throated warblers, and a ruby-crowned kinglet. In one part of the
wood, near what I took to be an old city reservoir, I came upon a single
white-throated sparrow and a humming-bird,--the latter a strangely
uncommon sight in Tallahassee, where, of all the places I have ever
seen, it ought to find itself in clover. Here, too, were a pair of
Carolina wrens, just now in search of a building-site, and conducting
themselves exactly in the manner of bluebirds intent on such business;
peeping into every hole that offered itself, and then, after the
briefest interchange of opinion,--unfavorable on the female's part, if
we may guess,--concluding to look a little farther.
As I struck the road again, a man came along on horseback, and we fell
into conversation about the country. "A lovely country," he called it,
and I agreed with him. He inquired where I was from, and I mentioned
that I had lately been in southern Florida, and found this region a
strong contrast. "Yes," he returned; and, pointing to the grass, he
remarked upon the richness of the soil.
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