ornithologist, who finds an ineffaceable distinction in the fact that
the tail-ring of the one is sometimes, and that of the other never,
white!) lower down.

We mind us of an ancient town in the Valley of Virginia, settled
nearly a century and a half ago by riflemen, sheltered by them through
a stormy infancy, and still steeped in the traditions of the implement
in question. Spitted by the railway, the hub of many turnpikes, and
surrounded by a thickly-peopled country, it is yet near enough to the
mountains to receive from them each winter quite a delegation of their
inhabitants. Last year wild-turkeys were shot within the corporate
limits, a deer was chased within half a mile of them, and a fine
specimen of _Felis Canadensis_ was killed in an orchard still nearer.

Four miles west of the town the fertile limestone _carse_ swells into
the shady hills, clad largely with pine, that form the long glacis of
the Alleghanies. These hills are peopled principally by a hardy race
not unlike the German woodsmen, whose blood, indeed, a great many of
them share, as their surnames, though sadly thinned down into English
spelling and pronunciation, denote. They inherit, likewise, their
fancy for the rifle. Allied with the axe, which, like Talleyrand's
supposititious frontiersman, they have not forgotten, it supplies them
materially with sport and subsistence. Their land, where arable
at all, being unproductive as a rule, wood-chopping is their most
profitable branch of farming. A score or two of them drive into town
daily, each with his four-, three- or two-horse cargo of wood. The
pile is frequently topped off with a brace or two of ruffed grouse,
there called pheasant, or a wild-turkey, less often a deer, and
more often hares; which last multiply along the narrow intervales in
extraordinary numbers. We have seen three sledge-loads of hares--say