the common lot of their race. They are now the patriarchs of the
departed year, and may preach mortality to the present generation of
flowers and weeds.

Among the delights of spring, how is it possible to forget the
birds? Even the crows were welcome as the sable harbingers of a
brighter and livelier race. They visited us before the snow was
off, but seem mostly to have betaken themselves to remote depths of
the woods, which they haunt all summer long. Many a time shall I
disturb them there, and feel as if I had intruded among a company of
silent worshippers, as they sit in Sabbath stillness among the tree-
tops. Their voices, when they speak, are in admirable accordance
with the tranquil solitude of a summer afternoon; and resounding so
far above the head, their loud clamor increases the religious quiet
of the scene instead of breaking it. A crow, however, has no real
pretensions to religion, in spite of his gravity of mien and black
attire; he is certainly a thief, and probably an infidel. The gulls
are far more respectable, in a moral point of view. These denizens
of seabeaten rocks and haunters of the lonely beach come up our
inland river at this season, and soar high overhead, flapping their
broad wings in the upper sunshine. They are among the most
picturesque of birds, because they so float and rest upon the air as
to become almost stationary parts of the landscape. The imagination
has time to grow acquainted with them; they have not flitted away in
a moment. You go up among the clouds and greet these lofty-flighted
gulls, and repose confidently with them upon the sustaining
atmosphere. Duck's have their haunts along the solitary places of
the river, and alight in flocks upon the broad bosom of the
overflowed meadows. Their flight is too rapid and determined for
the eye to catch enjoyment from it, although it never fails to stir