Perhaps snow and snow-birds is too short a list of attractions for a winter-day outing. It is not for me; but I have never found it an all-inclusive list. There was never a snow yet, since the days of palæolithic man at least, that covered the tree-tops, and here the— “_Chic-chicadee dee!_ saucy note Out of sound heart and merry throat” is very sure to be heard, even with the mercury below zero. It accords well with the rippling twitter of the snow-birds, and completes the day’s attraction, or should do so. How tiresome our northern summers would be without a bit of winter, now and then, wherewith to contrast them. It is strange, but true, that when the occasional rambler takes an outing he must have a whole menagerie at his elbow or votes the woods in winter a dismal solitude. It is seldom that our snow-birds have only the titmouse for company. Given a blackberry thicket, and the white-throated sparrows will be there and how gloriously they whistle! Overstaying cat-birds, here in New Jersey, will be a surprise, and their midsummer drawling will sound strangely coming over snow-banks; but of late it is a feature of a winter walk. Winter, in fact, is overfull of sights and sounds. October to March. For five months we have had snow-birds, and none the less a feature when the asters empurpled the hillsides than later when the fields were snow-bound. What of them, too, as summer comes on apace? Even above the wreckage of a wild winter, snow-birds can be cheerful. Never so tattered and torn the rank growths of the dead year but the snow-birds have reason to rejoice. If not at the present outlook, then they take a peep into futurity and sing of what will be. Probably our world looks its dreariest in March, as the darkest hour of night is just before the dawn, but happily the gloom does not weigh upon snow-birds, and to know how cheerfully they can sing one must hear them then. Their whole souls are in their utterances, and when a hundred or more ring out their gladness, March sunshine grows the brighter, the winds are tempered, and many a yellow leaf becomes a golden blossom. Blue Jays. “What is the most characteristic feature of November?” asked a shivering friend from town, as we stood with our backs to the rain-laden winds. “Birds and blossoms,” I replied. Of course he thought me trifling with him, and I asked if he expected me to say “rheumatism.”