[1] Just how far the cause of science was advanced by all this activity I am not prepared to say. The first ornithologist of the party published some time ago (in The Auk, vol. v. p. 151) a list of our Franconia birds, and the results of the botanists' researches among the willows have appeared, in part at least, in different numbers of the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club. As for the lepidopterist, I have an indistinct recollection that she once wrote to me of having made some highly interesting discoveries among her Franconia collections,—several undescribed species, as well as I can now remember; but she added that it would be useless to go into particulars with a correspondent entomologically so ignorant.
[2] Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, vol. v. p. 3.
[3] E. E. T. Seton, in The Auk, vol. ii. p. 305.
DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.
"December's as pleasant as May."
Old Hymn.
For a month so almost universally spoken against, [November] commonly brings more than its full proportion of fair days; and last year (1888) this proportion was, I think, even greater than usual. On the 1st and 5th I heard the peeping of [hylas]; Sunday, the 4th, was enlivened by a farewell visitation of bluebirds; during the first week, at least four sorts of [butterflies]—Disippus, Philodice, Antiopa, and Comma—were on the wing, and a single Philodice (our common yellow butterfly) was flying as late as the 16th. Wild flowers of many kinds—not less than a hundred, certainly—were in bloom; among them the exquisite little pimpernel, or poor man's weather-glass. My daily notes are full of complimentary allusions to the weather. Once in a while it rained, and under date of the 6th I find this record,—"Everybody complaining of the heat;" but as terrestrial matters go, the month was remarkably propitious up to the 25th. Then, all without warning,—unless possibly from the pimpernel, which nobody heeded,—a violent snow-storm descended upon us. Railway travel and telegraphic communication were seriously interrupted, while from up and down the coast came stories of shipwreck and loss of life. Winter was here in earnest; for the next three months good walking days would be few.
December opened with a mild gray morning. The snow had already disappeared, leaving only the remains of a drift here and there in the lee of a stone-wall; the ground was saturated with water; every meadow was like a lake; and but for the greenness of the fields in a few favored spots, the season might have been late March instead of early December. Of course such hours were never meant to be wasted within doors. So I started out, singing as I went,—