hanging in a conspicuous place on the wall, as if it were an heirloom to be proud of, I felt no stirring of sectional animosity, thorough-bred Massachusetts Yankee and old-fashioned abolitionist as I am.  A brave people can hardly be expected or desired to forget its history, especially when that history has to do with sacrifices and heroic deeds.  But these things, taken together, did no doubt prepare me to look upon it as a happy coincidence when, one morning, I heard the familiar cry of the red-headed woodpecker, for the first time in Florida, and looked up to see him flying the national colors from the ridgepole of the State House.  I did not break out with “Three cheers for the red, white, and blue!” I am naturally undemonstrative; but I said to myself that Melanerpes erythrocephalus was a very handsome bird.

ORNITHOLOGY ON A COTTON PLANTATION.

On one of my first jaunts into the suburbs of Tallahassee I noticed not far from the road a bit of swamp,—­shallow pools with muddy borders and flats.  It was a likely spot for “waders,” and would be worth a visit.  To reach it, indeed, I must cross a planted field surrounded by a lofty barbed-wire fence and placarded against trespassers; but there was no one in sight, or no one who looked at all like a land-owner; and, besides, it could hardly be accounted a trespass—­defined by Blackstone as an “unwarranted entry on another’s soil”—­to step carefully over the cotton rows on so legitimate an errand.  Ordinarily I call myself a simple bird-gazer, an amateur, a field naturalist, if you will; but on occasions like the present I assume—­with myself, that is—­all the rights and titles of an ornithologist proper, a man of science strictly so called.  In the interest of science, then, I climbed the fence and picked my way across the field.  True enough, about the edges of the water were two or three solitary sandpipers, and at least half a dozen of the smaller yellowlegs,—­two additions to my Florida list,—­not to speak of a little blue heron and a green heron, the latter in most uncommonly green plumage.  It was well I had interpreted the placard a little generously.  “The letter killeth” is a pretty good text in emergencies of this kind.  So I said to myself.  The herons, meanwhile, had taken French leave, but the smaller birds were less suspicious; I watched them at my leisure, and left them still feeding.

Two days later I was there again, but it must be acknowledged that this time I tarried in the road till a man on horseback had disappeared round the next turn.  It would have been manlier, without doubt, to pay no attention to him; but something told me that he was the cotton-planter himself, and, for better or worse, prudence carried the day with me.  Finding nothing new, though the sandpipers and yellowlegs were still present, with a very handsome little blue heron and plenty of blackbirds, I took the road again and went