[Transcriber's Note: Author's irregular hyphenation has been kept. ]

[Illustration: Front cover]

[Illustration: Author]

Books by Mr. Torrey. 

BIRDS IN THE BUSH. 16mo, $1. 25. 

A RAMBLER'S LEASE. 16mo, $1. 25. 

 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. BOSTON AND NEW YORK. 

[Illustration: Title page]

THE FOOT-PATH WAY

BY

BRADFORD TORREY

 Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way, And merrily hent the stile-a: A merry heart goes all the day, Your sad tires in a mile-a. 

 THE WINTER'S TALE

 BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1893

 Copyright, 1892, BY BRADFORD TORREY. 

_All rights reserved. _

SECOND EDITION. 

 _The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass. , U. S. A. _ Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 

CONTENTS. PAGE

JUNE IN FRANCONIA. 1

DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 36

DYER'S HOLLOW. 67

FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD. 90

A WIDOW AND TWINS. 111

THE MALE RUBY-THROAT. 135

ROBIN ROOSTS. 153

THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS. 176

A GREAT BLUE HERON. 197

FLOWERS AND FOLKS. 205

IN PRAISE OF THE WEYMOUTH PINE. 232

THE FOOT-PATH WAY. 

JUNE IN FRANCONIA. 

 "Herbs, fruits, and flowers, Walks, and the melody of birds. " MILTON. 

There were six of us, and we had the entire hotel, I may almost say theentire valley, to ourselves. If the verdict of the villagers could havebeen taken, we should, perhaps, have been voted a queer set, familiar asdwellers in Franconia are with the sight of idle tourists, --

 "Rapid and gay, as if the earth were air, And they were butterflies to wheel about Long as the summer lasted. "

We were neither "rapid" nor "gay, " and it was still only the first weekof June; if we were summer boarders, therefore, we must be of someunusual early-blooming variety. 

First came a lady, in excellent repute among the savants of Europe andAmerica as an entomologist, but better known to the general public as awriter of stories. With her, as companion and assistant, was a doctor oflaws, who is also a newspaper proprietor, a voluminous author, an artconnoisseur, and many things beside. They had turned their backs thusunseasonably upon the metropolis, and in this pleasant out-of-the-waycorner were devoting themselves to one absorbing pursuit, --the pursuitof moths. On their daily drives, two or three insect nets dangledconspicuously from the carriage, --the footman, thrifty soul, was neverbackward to take a hand, --and evening after evening the hotel piazza wasilluminated till midnight with lamps and lanterns, while theseenthusiasts waved the same white nets about, gathering in geometries, noctuids, sphinges, and Heaven knows what else, all of them to perishpainlessly in numerous "cyanide bottles, " which bestrewed the piazza bynight, and (happy thought!) the closed piano by day. In this nobleoccupation I sometimes played at helping; but with only meagre success, my most brilliant catch being nothing more important than a "beautifulIo. " The kind-hearted lepidopterist lingered with gracious emphasis uponthe adjective, and assured me that the specimen would be all the morevaluable because of a finger-mark which my awkwardness had left upon oneof its wings. So--to the credit of human nature be it spoken--so doesamiability sometimes get the better of the feminine scientific spirit. To the credit of human nature, I say; for, though her practice of theromancer's art may doubtless have given to this good lady some peculiarflexibility of mind, some special, individual facility in subordinatinga lower truth to a higher, it surely may be affirmed, also, of humanityin general, that few things become it better than its inconsistencies. 

Of the four remaining members of the company, two were botanists, andtwo--for the time--ornithologists. But the botanists were lovers ofbirds, also, and went nowhere without opera-glasses; while theornithologists, in turn, did not hold themselves above some elementaryknowledge of plants, and amused themselves with now and then pointingout some rarity--sedges and willows were the special desiderata--whichthe professional collectors seemed in danger of passing without notice. All in all, we _were_ a queer set. How the Latin and Greek polysyllablesflew about the dining-room, as we recounted our forenoon's orafternoon's discoveries! Somebody remarked once that the waiters' headsappeared to be more or less in danger; but if the waiters trembled atall, it was probably not for their own heads, but for ours. [1]

[1] Just how far the cause of science was advanced by all this activityI am not prepared to say. The first ornithologist of the party publishedsome time ago (in _The Auk_, vol. V. P. 151) a list of our Franconiabirds, and the results of the botanists' researches among the willowshave appeared, in part at least, in different numbers of the _Bulletinof the Torrey Botanical Club_. As for the lepidopterist, I have anindistinct recollection that she once wrote to me of having made somehighly interesting discoveries among her Franconia collections, --severalundescribed species, as well as I can now remember; but she added thatit would be useless to go into particulars with a correspondententomologically so ignorant. 

Our first excursion--I speak of the four who traveled on foot--was tothe Franconia Notch. It could not well have been otherwise; at allevents, there was one of the four whose feet would not willingly havecarried him in any other direction. The mountains drew us, and there wasno thought of resisting their attraction. 

Love and curiosity are different, if not incompatible, sentiments; andthe birds that are dearest to the man are, for that very reason, notmost interesting to the ornithologist. When on a journey, I am almostwithout eyes or ears for bluebirds and robins, song sparrows andchickadees. Now is my opportunity for extending my acquaintance, andsuch every-day favorites must get along for the time as best they canwithout my attention. So it was here in Franconia. The vesper sparrow, the veery, and a host of other friends were singing about the hotel andalong the roadside, but we heeded them not. Our case was like the boy'swho declined gingerbread, when on a visit: he had plenty of that athome. 

When we were nearly at the edge of the mountain woods, however, we heardacross the field a few notes that brought all four of us to an instantstandstill. What warbler could that be? Nobody could tell. In fact, nobody could guess. But, before the youngest of us could surmount thewall, the singer took wing, flew over our heads far into the woods, andall was silent. It was too bad; but there would be another dayto-morrow. Meantime, we kept on up the hill, and soon were in the oldforest, listening to bay-breasted warblers, Blackburnians, black-polls, and so on, while the noise of the mountain brook on our right, a bettersinger than any of them, was never out of our ears. "You are going up, "it said. "I wish you joy. But you see how it is; you will soon have tocome down again. "

I took leave of my companions at Profile Lake, they having planned anall-day excursion beyond, and started homeward by myself. Slowly, andwith many stops, I sauntered down the long hill, through the forest (thestops, I need not say, are commonly the major part of a naturalist'sramble, --the golden beads, as it were, the walk itself being only thestring), till I reached the spot where we had been serenaded in themorning by our mysterious stranger. Yes, he was again singing, this timenot far from the road, in a moderately thick growth of small trees, under which the ground was carpeted with club-mosses, dog-toothviolets, clintonia, linnæa, and similar plants. He continued to sing, and I continued to edge my way nearer and nearer, till finally I wasnear enough, and went down on my knees. Then I saw him, facing me, showing white under parts. A Tennessee warbler! Here was good luckindeed. I ogled him for a long time ("Shoot it, " says Mr. Burroughs, authoritatively, "not ogle it with a glass;" but a man must follow hisown method), impatient to see his back, and especially the top of hishead. What a precious frenzy we fall into at such moments! My knees werefairly upon nettles. He flew, and I followed. Once more he was under theglass, but still facing me. How like a vireo he looked! For one instantI thought, Can it be the Philadelphia vireo? But, though I had neverseen that bird, I knew its song to be as different as possible from thenotes to which I was listening. After a long time the fellow turned tofeeding, and now I obtained a look at his upper parts, --the back olive, the head ashy, like the Nashville warbler. That was enough. It wasindeed the Tennessee (_Helminthophila peregrina_), a bird for which Ihad been ten years on the watch. 

The song, which has not often been described, is more suggestive of theNashville's than of any other, but so decidedly different as never for amoment to be confounded with it. "When you hear it, " a friend had saidto me several years before, "you will know it for something new. " It islong (I speak comparatively, of course), very sprightly, and peculiarlystaccato, and is made up of two parts, the second quicker in movementand higher in pitch than the first. I speak of it as in two parts, though when my companions came to hear it, as they did the next day, they reported it as in three. We visited the place together afterwards, and the discrepancy was readily explained. As to pitch, the song _is_ inthree parts, but as to rhythm and character, it is in two; the firsthalf being composed of double notes, the second of single notes. Theresemblance to the Nashville's song lies entirely in the first part; thenotes of the concluding portion are not run together or jumbled, afterthe Nashville's manner, but are quite as distinct as those of theopening measure. 

As there were at least two pairs of the birds, and they wereunmistakably at home, we naturally had hope of finding one of the nests. We made several random attempts, and one day I devoted an hour or moreto a really methodical search; but the wily singer gave me not theslightest clue, behaving as if there were no such thing as a bird's nestwithin a thousand miles, and all my endeavors went for nothing. 

As might have been foreseen, Franconia proved to be an excellent placein which to study the difficult family of flycatchers. All our commoneastern Massachusetts species were present, --the kingbird, the phoebe, the wood pewee, and the least flycatcher, --and with them the crestedflycatcher (not common), the olive-sided, the traill, and theyellow-bellied. The phoebe-like cry of the traill was to be heardconstantly from the hotel piazza. The yellow-bellied seemed to beconfined to deep and rather swampy woods in the valley, and to themountain-side forests; being most numerous on Mount Lafayette, where itran well up toward the limit of trees. In his notes, the yellow-bellymay be said to take after both the least flycatcher and the wood pewee. His _killic_ (so written in the books, and I do not know how to improveupon it) resembles the _chebec_ of the least flycatcher, though muchless emphatic, as well as much less frequently uttered, while his_twee_, or _tuwee_, is quite in the voice and manner of the wood pewee'sclear, plaintive whistle; usually a monosyllable, but at other timesalmost or quite dissyllabic. The olive-sided, on the other hand, imitates nobody; or, if he does, it must be some bird with which I haveyet to make acquaintance. _Que-qúe-o_ he vociferates, with a strongemphasis and drawl upon the middle syllable. This is his song, or whatanswers to a song, but I have seen him when he would do nothing butrepeat incessantly a quick trisyllabic call, _whit, whit, whit_;corresponding, I suppose, to the well-known _whit_ with which thephoebe sometimes busies himself in a similar manner. 

Of more interest than any flycatcher--of more interest even than theTennessee warbler--was a bird found by the roadside in the village, after we had been for several days in the place. Three of us werewalking together, talking by the way, when all at once we halted, as bya common impulse, at the sound of a vireo song; a red-eye's song, as itseemed, with the faintest touch of something unfamiliar about it. Thesinger was in a small butternut-tree close upon the sidewalk, and atonce afforded us perfectly satisfactory observations, perching on a lowlimb within fifteen feet of our eyes, and singing again and again, whilewe scrutinized every feather through our glasses. As one of mycompanions said, it was like having the bird in your hand. There was noroom for a question as to its identity. At last we had before us therare and long-desired Philadelphia greenlet. As its song is littleknown, I here transcribe my notes about it, made at two different times, between which there appears to have been some discussion among us as tojust how it should be characterized:--

"The song is very pretty, and is curiously compounded of the red-eye'sand the solitary's, both as to phrase and quality. The measures are allbrief; with fewer syllables, that is to say, than the red-eye commonlyuses. Some of them are exactly like the red-eye's, while others havethe peculiar sweet upward inflection of the solitary's. To hear some ofthe measures, you would pass the bird for a red-eye; to hear others ofthem, you might pass him for a solitary. At the same time, he has notthe most highly characteristic of the solitary's phrases. His voice isless sharp and his accent less emphatic than the red-eye's, and, so faras we heard, he observes decidedly longer rests between the measures. "

This is under date of June 16th. On the following day I made anotherentry:--

"The song is, I think, less varied than either the solitary's or thered-eye's, but it grows more distinct from both as it is longer heard. Acquaintance will probably make it as characteristic and unmistakable asany of our four other vireo songs. But I do not withdraw what I saidyesterday about its resemblance to the red-eye's and the solitary's. Thebird seems quite fearless, and keeps much of the time in the lowerbranches. In this latter respect his habit is in contrast with that ofthe warbling vireo. "

On the whole, then, the song of the Philadelphia vireo comes nearest tothe red-eye's, differing from it mainly in tone and inflection ratherthan in form. In these two respects it suggests the solitary vireo, though it never reproduces the indescribably sweet cadence, the real"dying fall, " of that most delightful songster. At the risk of a seemingcontradiction, however, I must mention one curious circumstance. Ongoing again to Franconia, a year afterwards, and, naturally, keeping myears open for _Vireo philadelphicus_, I discovered that I was never fora moment in doubt when I heard a red-eye; but once, on listening to adistant solitary, --catching only part of the strain, --I was for a littlequite uncertain whether he might not be the bird for which I waslooking. How this fact is to be explained I am unable to say; it will beleast surprising to those who know most of such matters, and at allevents I think it worth recording as affording a possible clue to somefuture observer. The experience, inconsistent as the assertion maysound, does not in the least alter my opinion that the Philadelphia'ssong is practically certain to be confused with the red-eye's ratherthan with the solitary's. Upon that point my companions and I wereperfectly agreed while we had the bird before us, and Mr. Brewster'stestimony is abundantly conclusive to the same effect. He was in theUmbagog forests on a special hunt for Philadelphia vireos (he hadcollected specimens there on two previous occasions), and after somedays of fruitless search discovered, almost by accident, that the birdshad all the while been singing close about him, but in every instancehad passed for "nothing but red-eyes. "[2]

[2] _Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club_, vol. V. P. 3. 

For the benefit of the lay reader, I ought, perhaps, to have explainedbefore this that the Philadelphia vireo is in coloration an exact copyof the warbling vireo. There is a slight difference in size between thetwo, but the most practiced eye could not be depended upon to tell themapart in a tree. _Vireo philadelphicus_ is in a peculiar case: it lookslike one common bird, and sings like another. It might have beeninvented on purpose to circumvent collectors, as the Almighty has beensupposed by some to have created fossils on purpose to deceive ungodlygeologists. It is not surprising, therefore, that the bird escaped thenotice of the older ornithologists. In fact, it was firstdescribed, --by Mr. Cassin, --in 1851, from a specimen taken, nine yearsbefore, near Philadelphia; and its nest remained unknown for more thanthirty years longer, the first one having been discovered, apparently inCanada, in 1884. [3]

[3] E. E. T. Seton, in _The Auk_, vol. Ii. P. 305. 

Day after day, the bare, sharp crest of Mount Lafayette silently invitedmy feet. Then came a bright, favorable morning, and I set out. I wouldgo alone on this my first pilgrimage to the noble peak, at which, alwaysfrom too far off, I had gazed longingly for ten summers. It is notinconsistent with a proper regard for one's fellows, I trust, to enjoynow and then being without their society. It _is_ good, sometimes, for aman to be alone, --especially on a mountain-top, and more especially at afirst visit. The trip to the summit was some seven or eight miles inlength, and an almost continual ascent, without a dull step in the wholedistance. The Tennessee warbler was singing; but perhaps the pleasantestincident of the walk to the Profile House--in front of which themountain footpath is taken--was a Blackburnian warbler perched, asusual, at the very top of a tall spruce, his orange throat flashing fireas he faced the sun, and his song, as my notebook expresses it, "slidingup to high _Z_ at the end" in his quaintest and most characteristicfashion. I spent nearly three hours in climbing the mountain path, andduring all that time saw and heard only twelve kinds of birds:redstarts, Canada warblers (near the base), black-throated blues, black-throated greens, Nashvilles, black-polls, red-eyed vireos, snowbirds (no white-throated sparrows!), winter wrens, Swainson andgray-cheeked thrushes, and yellow-bellied flycatchers. Black-poll andNashville warblers were especially numerous, as they are also upon MountWashington, and, as far as I have seen, upon the White Mountainsgenerally. The feeble, sharp song of the black-poll is a singularaffair; short and slight as it is, it embraces a perfect crescendo and aperfect decrescendo. Without question I passed plenty of white-throatedsparrows, but by some coincidence not one of them announced himself. Thegray-cheeked thrushes, which sang freely, were not heard till I wasperhaps halfway between the Eagle Cliff Notch and the Eagle Lakes. Thisspecies, so recently added to our summer fauna, proves to be notuncommon in the mountainous parts of New England, though apparentlyconfined to the spruce forests at or near the summits. I found itabundant on Mount Mansfield, Vermont, in 1885, and in the summer of 1888Mr. Walter Faxon surprised us all by shooting a specimen on MountGraylock, Massachusetts. Doubtless the bird has been singing itsperfectly distinctive song in the White Mountain woods ever since thewhite man first visited them. During the vernal migration, indeed, Ihave more than once heard it sing in eastern Massachusetts. My latestdelightful experience of this kind was on the 29th of May last (1889), while I was hastening to a railway train within the limits of Boston. Preoccupied as I was, and faintly as the notes came to me, I recognizedthem instantly; for while the gray-cheek's song bears an evidentresemblance to the veery's (which I had heard within five minutes), thetwo are so unlike in pitch and rhythm that no reasonably nice ear oughtever to confound them. The bird was just over the high, close, inhospitable fence, on the top of which I rested my chin and watched andlistened. He sat with his back toward me, in full view, on a level withmy eye, and sang and sang and sang, in a most deliciously soft, far-awayvoice, keeping his wings all the while a little raised and quivering, asin a kind of musical ecstasy. It does seem a thing to be regretted--yes, a thing to be ashamed of--that a bird so beautiful, so musical, soromantic in its choice of a dwelling-place, and withal so characteristicof New England should be known, at a liberal estimate, to not more thanone or two hundred New Englanders! But if a bird wishes generalrecognition, he should do as the robin does, and the bluebird, and theoriole, --dress like none of his neighbors, and show himself freely inthe vicinity of men's houses. How can one expect to be famous unless hetakes a little pains to keep himself before the public?

From the time I left my hotel until I was fairly above the dwarf sprucesbelow the summit of Lafayette, I was never for many minutes together outof the hearing of thrush music. Four of our five summer representativesof the genus _Turdus_ took turns, as it were, in the serenade. Theveeries--Wilson's thrushes--greeted me before I stepped off the piazza. As I neared the Profile House farm, the hermits were in tune on eitherhand. The moment the road entered the ancient forest, the olive-backsbegan to make themselves heard, and halfway up the mountain path thegray-cheeks took up the strain and carried it on to its heavenlyconclusion. A noble processional! Even a lame man might have climbed tosuch music. If the wood thrush had been here, the chorus would have beencomplete, --a chorus not to be excelled, according to my untraveledbelief, in any quarter of the world. 

To-day, however, my first thoughts were not of birds, but of themountain. The weather was all that could be asked, --the temperatureperfect, and the atmosphere so transparent as to be of itself a kind oflens; so that in the evening, when I rejoined my companions at thehotel, I found to my astonishment that I had been plainly visible whileat the summit, the beholders having no other help than an opera-glass!It was almost past belief. I had felt some dilation of soul, it wastrue, but had been quite unconscious of any corresponding physicaltransformation. What would our aboriginal forerunners have said couldthey have stood in the valley and seen a human form moving from point topoint along yonder sharp, serrated ridge? I should certainly have passedfor a god! Let us be thankful that all such superstitious fancies havehad their day. The Indian, poor child of nature, "A pagan suckled in a creed outworn, "

stood afar off and worshiped toward these holy hills; but the white manclambers gayly up their sides, guide-book in hand, and leaves hissardine box and eggshells--and likely enough his business card--at thetop. Let us be thankful, I repeat, for the light vouchsafed to us; oursis a goodly heritage; but there are moods--such creatures of hereditaryinfluence are we--wherein I would gladly exchange both the guide-bookand the sardine box for a vision, never so indistinct and transient, ofKitche Manitoo. Alas! what a long time it is since any of us have beenable to see the invisible. "In the mountains, " says Wordsworth, "did hefeel his faith. " But the poet was speaking then of a very old-fashionedyoung fellow, who, even when he grew up, made nothing but a peddler. Hadhe lived in our day, he would have felt not his faith, but his ownimportance; especially if he had put himself out of breath, as mostlikely he would have done, in accomplishing in an hour and forty minuteswhat, according to the guide-book, should have taken a full hour andthree quarters. The modern excursionist (how Wordsworth would have lovedthat word!) has learned wisdom of a certain wise fowl who once taughtSt. Peter a lesson, and who never finds himself in a high place withoutan impulse to flap his wings and crow. 

For my own part, though I spent nearly three hours on the less than fourmiles of mountain path, as I have already acknowledged, I wasnevertheless somewhat short-winded at the end. So long as I was in thewoods, it was easy enough to loiter; but no sooner did I leave the lastlow spruces behind me than I was seized with an importunate desire tostand upon the peak, so near at hand just above me. I hope my readersare none of them too old to sympathize with the boyish feeling. At allevents, I quickened my pace. The distance could not be more than half amile, I thought. But it was wonderful how that perverse trail among theboulders did unwind itself, as if it never would come to an end; and Iwas not surprised, on consulting a guide-book afterwards, to find thatmy half mile had really been a mile and a half. One's sensations in sucha case I have sometimes compared with those of an essay-writer when heis getting near the end of his task. He dallied with it in thebeginning, and was half ready to throw it up in the middle; but now thefever is on him, and he cannot drive the pen fast enough. Two days agohe doubted whether or not to burn the thing; now it is certain to be hismasterpiece, and he must sit up till morning, if need be, to finish it. What would life be worth without its occasional enthusiasm, laughable inthe retrospect, perhaps, but in itself pleasurable almost to the pointof painfulness?

It was a glorious day. I enjoyed the climb, the lessening forest, thealpine plants (the diapensia was in full flower, with its upright snowygoblets, while the geum and the Greenland sandwort were just beginningto blossom), the magnificent prospect, the stimulating air, and, most ofall, the mountain itself. I sympathized then, as I have often done atother times, with a remark once made to me by a Vermont farmer's wife. Ihad sought a night's lodging at her house, and during the evening wefell into conversation about Mount Mansfield, from the top of which Ihad just come, and directly at the base of which the farmhouse stood. When she went up "the mounting, " she said, she liked to look off, ofcourse; but somehow what she cared most about was "the mounting itself. "

The woman had probably never read a line of Wordsworth, unless possibly, "We are Seven" was in the old school reader; but I am sure the poetwould have liked this saying, especially as coming from such a source. _I_ liked it, at any rate, and am seldom on a mountain-top withoutrecalling it. Her lot had been narrow and prosaic, --bitterly so, thevisitor was likely to think; she was little used to expressing herself, and no doubt would have wondered what Mr. Pater could mean by his talkabout natural objects as possessing "more or less of a moral orspiritual life, " as "capable of a companionship with man, full ofexpression, of inexplicable affinities and delicacies of intercourse. "From such refinements and subtleties her mind would have taken refuge inthoughts of her baking and ironing. But she enjoyed the mountain; Ithink she had some feeling for it, as for a friend; and who knows butshe, too, was one of "the poets that are sown by Nature"?

I spent two happy hours and a half at the summit of Lafayette. Theancient peak must have had many a worthier guest, but it could neverhave entertained one more hospitably. With what softly temperate breezesdid it fan me! I wish I were there now! But kind as was its welcome, itdid not urge me to remain. The word of the brook came true again, --asNature's words always do, if we hear them aright. Having gone as high asmy feet could carry me, there was nothing left but to go down again. "Which things, " as Paul said to the Galatians, "are an allegory. "

I was not asked to stay, but I was invited to come again; and the nextseason, also in June, I twice accepted the invitation. On the first ofthese occasions, although I was eight days later than I had been theyear before (June 19th instead of June 11th), the diapensia was justcoming into somewhat free bloom, while the sandwort showed only here andthere a stray flower, and the geum was only in bud. The dwarf paperbirch (trees of no one knows what age, matting the ground) was inblossom, with large, handsome catkins, while Cutler's willow was alreadyin fruit, and the crowberry likewise. The willow, like the birch, haslearned that the only way to live in such a place is to lie flat uponthe ground and let the wind blow over you. The other flowers noted atthe summit were one of the blueberries (_Vaccinium uliginosum_), Bigelow's sedge, and the fragrant alpine holy-grass (_Hierochloaalpina_). Why should this sacred grass, which Christians sprinkle infront of their church doors on feast-days, be scattered thus upon ourhigher mountain-tops, unless these places are indeed, as the Indian andthe ancient Hebrew believed, the special abode of the Great Spirit?

But the principal interest of this my second ascent of Mount Lafayettewas to be not botanical, but ornithological. We had seen nothingnoteworthy on the way up (I was not alone this time, though I have sofar been rude enough to ignore my companion); but while at the EagleLakes, on our return, we had an experience that threw me into a ninedays' fever. The other man--one of the botanists of last year'screw--was engaged in collecting viburnum specimens, when all at once Icaught sight of something red in a dead spruce on the mountain-side justacross the tiny lake. I leveled my glass, and saw with perfectdistinctness, as I thought, two pine grosbeaks in bright malecostume, --birds I had never seen before except in winter. Presently athird one, in dull plumage, came into view, having been hidden till nowbehind the bole. The trio remained in sight for some time, and thendropped into the living spruces underneath, and disappeared. I lingeredabout, while my companion and the black flies were busy, and was on thepoint of turning away for good, when up flew two red birds and alightedin a tree close by the one out of which the grosbeaks had dropped. Buta single glance showed that they were not grosbeaks, but white-wingedcrossbills! And soon they, too, were joined by a third bird, in femalegarb. Here was a pretty piece of confusion! I was delighted to see thecrossbills, having never before had the first glimpse of them, summer orwinter; but what was I to think about the grosbeaks? "Your determinationis worthless, " said my scientific friend, consolingly; and there was nogainsaying his verdict. Yet by what possibility could I have been sodeceived? The birds, though none too near, had given me an excellentobservation, and as long as they were in sight I had felt no uncertaintywhatever as to their identity. The bill alone, of which I had takenparticular note, ought in all reason to be held conclusive. So much forone side of the case. On the other hand, however, the second trio wereunmistakably crossbills. (They had been joined on the wing by severalothers, as I ought to have mentioned, and with their characteristicchattering cry had swept out of sight up the mountain). It was certainlya curious coincidence: three grosbeaks--two males and a female--haddropped out of a tree into the undergrowth; and then, five minuteslater, three crossbills--two males and a female--had risen out of thesame undergrowth, and taken almost the very perch which the others hadquitted! Had this strange thing happened? Or had my eyes deceived me?This was my dilemma, on the sharp horns of which I tried alternately forthe next eight days to make myself comfortable. 

During all that time, the weather rendered mountain climbingimpracticable. But the morning of the 28th was clear and cold, and I setout forthwith for the Eagle Lakes. If the grosbeaks were there, I meantto see them, though I should have to spend all day in the attempt. Mybotanist had returned home, leaving me quite alone at the hotel; but, asgood fortune would have it, before I reached the Profile House, I wasovertaken unexpectedly by a young ornithological friend, who needed nourging to try the Lafayette path. We were creeping laboriously up thelong, steep shoulder beyond the Eagle Cliff gorge, and drawing near thelakes, when all at once a peculiarly sweet, flowing warble fell uponour ears. "A pine grosbeak!" said I, in a tone of full assurance, although this was my first hearing of the song. The younger man plungedinto the forest, in the direction of the voice, while I, knowing prettywell how the land lay, hastened on toward the lakes, in hopes to findthe singer visible from that point. Just as I ran down the littleincline into the open, a bird flew past me across the water, andalighted in a dead spruce (it might have been the very tree of nine daysbefore), where it sat in full sight, and at once broke into song, --"likethe purple finch's, " says my notebook; "less fluent, but, as it seemedto me, sweeter and more expressive. I think it was not louder. " Beforemany minutes, my comrade came running down the path in high glee, calling, "Pine grosbeaks!" He had got directly under a tree in which twoof them were sitting. So the momentous question was settled, and Icommenced feeling once more a degree of confidence in my own eyesight. The loss of such confidence is a serious discomfort; but, strange as itmay seem to people in general, I suspect that few field ornithologists, except beginners, ever succeed in retaining it undisturbed for any longtime together. As a class, they have learned to take the familiar maxim, "Seeing is believing, " with several grains of allowance. With most ofthem, it would be nearer the mark to say, Shooting is believing. 

My special errand at the lakes being thus quickly disposed of, there wasno reason why I should not accompany my friend to the summit. Lafayettegave us a cold reception. We might have addressed him as Daniel Webster, according to the time-worn story, once addressed Mount Washington; butneither of us felt oratorically inclined. In truth, after the outrageousheats of the past few days, it seemed good to be thrashing our arms andcrouching behind a boulder, while we devoured our luncheon, and betweentimes studied the landscape. For my own part, I experienced a feeling ofsomething like wicked satisfaction; as if I had been wronged, and all atonce had found a way of balancing the score. The diapensia was alreadyquite out of bloom, although only nine days before we had thought ithardly at its best. It is one of the prettiest and most striking of ourstrictly alpine plants, but is seldom seen by the ordinary summertourist, as it finishes its course long before he arrives. The same maybe said of the splendid Lapland azalea, which I do not remember to havefound on Mount Lafayette, it is true, but which is to be seen in all itsglory upon the Mount Washington range, in middle or late June; so earlythat one may have to travel over snow-banks to reach it. The two flowersoftenest noticed by the chance comer to these parts are the Greenlandsandwort (the "mountain daisy"!) and the pretty geum, with its handsomecrinkled leaves and its bright yellow blossoms, like buttercups. 

My sketch will hardly fulfill the promise of its title; for our June inFranconia included a thousand things of which I have left myself no roomto speak: strolls in the Landaff Valley and to Sugar Hill; a walk toMount Agassiz; numerous visits--by the way, and in uncertain weather--toBald Mountain; several jaunts to Lonesome Lake; and wanderings here andthere in the pathless valley woods. We were none of us of that unhappyclass who cannot enjoy doing the same thing twice. 

I wished, also, to say something of sundry minor enjoyments: of thecinnamon roses, for example, with the fragrance of which we werecontinually greeted, and which have left such a sweetness in the memorythat I would have called this essay "June in the Valley of CinnamonRoses, " had I not despaired of holding myself up to so poetic a title. And with the roses the wild strawberries present themselves. Roses andstrawberries! It is the very poetry of science that these should beclassified together. The berries, like the flowers, are of a generousturn (it is a family trait, I think), loving no place better than theroadside, as if they would fain be of refreshment to beings less happythan themselves, who cannot be still and blossom and bear fruit, but aredriven by the Fates to go trudging up and down in dusty highways. Formyself, if I were a dweller in this vale, I am sure my finger-tips wouldnever be of their natural color so long as the season of strawberrieslasted. On one of my solitary rambles I found a retired sunny field, full of them. To judge from appearances, not a soul had been near it. But I noticed that, while the almost ripe fruit was abundant, there wasscarce any that had taken on the final tinge and flavor. Then I began tobe aware of faint, sibilant noises about me, and, glancing up, I sawthat the ground was already "preëmpted" by a company of cedar-birds, who, naturally enough, were not a little indignant at my poaching thuson their preserves. They showed so much concern (and had gathered theripest of the berries so thoroughly) that I actually came away thesooner on their account. I began to feel ashamed of myself, and for oncein my life was literally hissed off the stage. 

Even on my last page I must be permitted a word in praise of MountCannon, of which I made three ascents. It has nothing like the celebrityof Mount Willard, with which, from its position, it is natural tocompare it; but to my thinking it is little, if at all, less worthy. Itsoutlook upon Mount Lafayette is certainly grander than anything MountWillard can offer, while the prospect of the Pemigewasset Valley, fadingaway to the horizon, if less striking than that of the White MountainNotch, has some elements of beauty which must of necessity be lackingin any more narrowly circumscribed scene, no matter how romantic. 

In venturing upon a comparison of this kind, however, one is boundalways to allow for differences of mood. When I am in tune for suchthings, I can be happier on an ordinary Massachusetts hilltop than atanother time I should be on any New Hampshire mountain, though it wereMoosilauke itself. And, truly, Fortune did smile upon our first visit toMount Cannon. Weather conditions, outward and inward, were right. We hadcome mainly to look at Lafayette from this point of vantage; but, whilewe suffered no disappointment in that direction, we found ourselvesstill more taken with the valley prospect. We lay upon the rocks by thehour, gazing at it. Scattered clouds dappled the whole vast landscapewith shadows; the river, winding down the middle of the scene, drew thewhole into harmony, as it were, making it in some nobly literal sensepicturesque; while the distance was of such an exquisite blue as I thinkI never saw before. 

How good life is at its best! And in such

 "charmëd days, When the genius of God doth flow, "

what care we for science or the objects of science, --for grosbeak orcrossbill (may the birds forgive me!), or the latest novelty in willows?I am often where fine music is played, and never without beinginterested; as men say, I am pleased. But at the twentieth time, it maybe, something touches my ears, and I hear the music within the music;and, for the hour, I am at heaven's gate. So it is with our appreciationof natural beauty. We are always in its presence, but only on rareoccasions are our eyes anointed to see it. Such ecstasies, it seems, arenot for every day. Sometimes I fear they grow less frequent as we growolder. 

We will hope for better things; but, should the gloomy prognosticationfall true, we will but betake ourselves the more assiduously to lesserpleasures, --to warblers and willows, roses and strawberries. Sciencewill never fail us. If worse comes to worst, we will not despise themoths. 

DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 

 "December's as pleasant as May. " _Old Hymn. _

For a month so almost universally spoken against, November commonlybrings more than its full proportion of fair days; and last year (1888)this proportion was, I think, even greater than usual. On the 1st and5th I heard the peeping of hylas; Sunday, the 4th, was enlivened by afarewell visitation of bluebirds; during the first week, at least foursorts of butterflies--Disippus, Philodice, Antiopa, and Comma--were onthe wing, and a single Philodice (our common yellow butterfly) wasflying as late as the 16th. Wild flowers of many kinds--not less than ahundred, certainly--were in bloom; among them the exquisite littlepimpernel, or poor man's weather-glass. My daily notes are full ofcomplimentary allusions to the weather. Once in a while it rained, andunder date of the 6th I find this record, --"Everybody complaining ofthe heat;" but as terrestrial matters go, the month was remarkablypropitious up to the 25th. Then, all without warning, --unless possiblyfrom the pimpernel, which nobody heeded, --a violent snow-storm descendedupon us. Railway travel and telegraphic communication were seriouslyinterrupted, while from up and down the coast came stories of shipwreckand loss of life. Winter was here in earnest; for the next three monthsgood walking days would be few. 

December opened with a mild gray morning. The snow had alreadydisappeared, leaving only the remains of a drift here and there in thelee of a stone-wall; the ground was saturated with water; every meadowwas like a lake; and but for the greenness of the fields in a fewfavored spots, the season might have been late March instead of earlyDecember. Of course such hours were never meant to be wasted withindoors. So I started out, singing as I went, --

 "While God invites, how blest the day!"

But the next morning was pleasant likewise; and the next; and still thenext; and so the story went on, till in the end, omitting five days ofgreater or less inclemency, I had spent nearly the entire month in theopen air. I could hardly have done better had I been in Florida. 

All my neighbors pronounced this state of things highly exceptional;many were sure they had never known the like. At the time I fully agreedwith them. Now, however, looking back over my previous year's notes, Icome upon such entries as these: "December 3d. The day has been warm. Found chickweed and knawel in bloom, and an old garden was full offresh-looking pansies. " "4th. A calm, warm morning. " "5th. Warm andrainy. " "6th. Mild and bright. " "7th. A most beautiful winter day, mildand calm. " "8th. Even milder and more beautiful than yesterday. " "11th. Weather very mild since last entry. Pickering hylas peeping to-day. ""12th. Still very warm; hylas peeping in several places. " "13th. Warmand bright. " "14th. If possible, a more beautiful day than yesterday. "

So much for December, 1887. Its unexpected good behavior would seem tohave made a profound impression upon me; no doubt I promised never toforget it; yet twelve months later traditionary notions had resumedtheir customary sway, and every pleasant morning took me by surprise. 

The winter of 1888-89 will long be famous in the ornithological annalsof New England as the winter of killdeer plovers. I have mentioned thegreat storm of November 25th-27th. On the first pleasant morningafterwards--on the 28th, that is--my out-of-door comrade and I made anexcursion to Nahant. The land-breeze had already beaten down the surf, and the turmoil of the waters was in great part stilled; but the beachwas strewn with sea-weeds and eel-grass, and withal presented quite aholiday appearance. From one motive and another, a considerableproportion of the inhabitants of the city had turned out. The principalattraction, as far as we could perceive, was a certain big clam, ofwhich great numbers had been cast up by the tide. Baskets and wagonswere being filled; some of the men carried off shells and all, whileothers, with a celerity which must have been the result of muchpractice, were cutting out the plump dark bodies, leaving the shells inheaps upon the sand. The collectors of these molluscan dainties knewthem as quahaugs, and esteemed them accordingly; but my companion, aconnoisseur in such matters, pronounced them not the true quahaug(_Venus mercenaria_, --what a profanely ill-sorted name, even for abivalve!) but the larger and coarser _Cyprina islandica_. The man towhom we imparted this precious bit of esoteric lore received it like agentleman, if I cannot add like a scholar. "We _call_ them quahaugs, " heanswered, with an accent of polite deprecation, as if it were not in theleast to be wondered at that he should be found in the wrong. It wasevident, at the same time, that the question of a name did not strikehim as of any vital consequence. _Venus mercenaria_ or _Cyprinaislandica_, the savoriness of the chowder was not likely to be seriouslyaffected. 

It was good, I thought, to see so many people out-of-doors. Most of themhad employment in the shops, probably, and on grounds of simple economy, so called, would have been wiser to have stuck to their lasts. But man, after all that civilization has done for him (and against him), remainsat heart a child of nature. His ancestors may have been shoemakers forfifty generations, but none the less he feels an impulse now and then toquit his bench and go hunting, though it be only for a mess of clams. 

Leaving the crowd, we kept on our way across the beach to Little Nahant, the cliffs of which offer an excellent position from which to sweep thebay in search of loons, old-squaws, and other sea-fowl. Here wepresently met two gunners. They had been more successful than most ofthe sportsmen that one falls in with on such trips; between them theyhad a guillemot, two horned larks, and a brace of large plovers, of somespecies unknown to us, but noticeable for their bright cinnamon-coloredrumps. "Why couldn't _we_ have found those plovers, instead of thatfellow?" said my companion, as we crossed the second beach. I fear hewas envious at the prosperity of the wicked. But it was only a passingcloud; for on reaching the main peninsula we were speedily arrested byloud cries from a piece of marsh, and after considerable wading and aclamber over a detestable barbed-wire fence, such as no rambler everencountered without at least a temptation to profanity, we caught sightof a flock of about a dozen of the same unknown plovers. This was goodfortune indeed. We had no firearms, nor even a pinch of salt, and comingshortly to a ditch, too wide for leaping and too deep for cold-weatherfording, we were obliged to content ourselves with opera-glassinspection. Six of the birds were grouped in a little plot of grass, standing motionless, like so many robins. Their novelty and theirstriking appearance, with two conspicuous black bands across the breast, their loud cries, and their curious movements and attitudes were enoughto drive a pair of enthusiasts half crazy. We looked and looked, andthen reluctantly turned away. On getting home we had no difficulty indetermining their identity, and each at once sent off to the other thesame verdict, --"killdeer plover. "

This, as I say, was on the 28th of November. On the 3d of December wewere again at Nahant, eating our luncheon upon the veranda of some richman's deserted cottage, and at the same time enjoying the sunshine andthe beautiful scene. 

It was a summery spot; moths were flitting about us, and twograsshoppers leaped out of our way as we crossed the lawn. They showedsomething less than summer liveliness, it is true; it was onlyafterwards, and by way of contrast, that I recalled Leigh Hunt's

 "Green little vaulter in the sunny grass, Catching his heart up at the feel of June. "

But they had done well, surely, to weather the recent snow-storm and thelow temperature; for the mercury had been down to 10° within afortnight, and a large snow-bank was still in sight against the wall. Suddenly a close flock of eight or ten birds flew past us anddisappeared behind the hill. "Pigeons?" said my companion. I thoughtnot; they were sea-birds of some kind. Soon we heard killdeer cries fromthe beach, and, looking up, saw the birds, three of them, alighting onthe sand. We started down the hill in haste, but just at that moment anold woman, a miserable gatherer of drift rubbish, walked directly uponthem, and they made off. Then we saw that our "pigeons, " or "sea-birds, "had been nothing but killdeer plovers, which, like other long-wingedbirds, look much larger in the air than when at rest. Returning towardsLynn, later in the afternoon, we came upon the same three birds again;this time feeding among the boulders at the end of the beach. Weremarked once more their curious, silly-looking custom of standingstock-still with heads indrawn. But our own attitudes, as we also stoodstock-still with glasses raised, may have looked, in their eyes, evenmore singular and meaningless. As we turned away--after flushing themtwo or three times to get a view of their pretty cinnamonrump-feathers--a sportsman came up, and proved to be the very man onwhose belt we had seen our first killdeers, a week before. We left himdoing his best to bag these three also. He will never read what I write, and I need not scruple to confess that, seeing his approach, wepurposely startled the birds as badly as possible, hoping to see themmake off over the hill, out of harm's way. But the foolish creaturescould not take the hint, and alighted again within a few rods, at thesame time calling loudly enough to attract the attention of the gunner, who up to this moment had not been aware of their presence. He firedtwice before we got out of sight, but, to judge from his motions, without success. A man's happiness is perhaps of more value than aplover's, though I do not see how we are to prove it; but my sympathies, then as always, were with the birds. 

Within a week or so I received a letter from Mrs. Celia Thaxter, together with a wing, a foot, and one cinnamon feather. "By this wingwhich I send you, " she began, "can you tell me the name of the bird thatowned it?" Then after some description of the plumage, she continued:"In the late tremendous tempest myriads of these birds settled on theIsles of Shoals, filling the air with a harsh, shrill, incessant cry, and not to be driven away by guns or any of man's inhospitabletreatment. Their number was so great as to be amazing, and they hadnever been seen before by any of the present inhabitants of the Shoals. They are plovers of some kind, I should judge, but I do not know. " Onthe 16th she wrote again: "All sorts of strange things were cast up bythe storm, and the plovers were busy devouring everything they couldfind; always running, chasing each other, very quarrelsome, fightingall the time. They were in poor condition, so lean that the men did notshoot them after the first day, a fact which gives your correspondentgreat satisfaction. They are still there! My brother came from theShoals yesterday, and says that the place is alive with them, all theseven islands. "

Similar facts were reported--as I began in one way and another tolearn--from different points along the coast; especially from CapeElizabeth, Maine, where hundreds of the birds were seen on the 28th and29th of November. The reporter of this item[4] pertinently adds: "Such aflight of killdeer in Maine--where the bird is well known to berare--has probably not occurred before within the memory of livingsportsmen. " Here, as at the Isles of Shoals, the visitors were at firsteasily shot (they are not counted among game birds where they are known, on account of their habitual leanness, I suppose); but they had landedupon inhospitable shores, and were not long in becoming aware of theirmisfortune. In the middle of December one of our Cambridgeornithologists went to Cape Cod on purpose to find them. He saw aboutsixty birds, but by this time they were so wild that he succeeded ingetting only a single specimen. "Poor fellows!" he wrote me; "theylooked unhappy enough, that cold Friday, with the mercury at 12° andeverything frozen stiff. Most of them were on hillsides and in thehollows of pastures; a few were in the salt marshes, and one or two onthe beach. " Nobody expected them to remain hereabouts, as they normallywinter in the West Indies and in Central and South America;[5] but everylittle while Mrs. Thaxter wrote, "The killdeers are still here!" and onthe 21st of December, as I approached Marblehead Neck, I saw a birdskimming over the ice that covered the small pond back of the beach. Iput up my glass and said to myself, "A killdeer plover!" There proved tobe two birds. They would not suffer me within gunshot, --though I carriedno gun, --but flew off into some ploughed ground, with their usual loudvociferations. (The killdeer is aptly named _Ægialitis vocifera_. )

[4] Mr. N. C. Brown, in _The Auk_, January, 1889, page 69. 

[5] It seems probable that the birds started from some point in theSouthern States for a long southward flight, or perhaps for the WestIndies, on the evening of November 24th, and on getting out to sea werecaught by the great gale, which whirled them northward over theAtlantic, landing them--such of them, that is, as were not drowned onthe way--upon the coast of New England. The grounds for such an opinionare set forth by Dr. Arthur P. Chadbourne in _The Auk_ for July, 1889, page 255. 

During the month with the history of which we are now especiallyconcerned, I saw nothing more of them; but by way of completing thestory I may add that on the 28th of January, in the same spot, I found aflock of seven, and there they remained. I visited them four times inFebruary and once in March, and found them invariably in the same place. Evidently they had no idea of making another attempt to reach the WestIndies for _this_ season; and if they were to remain in our latitude, they could hardly have selected a more desirable location. The marsh, ormeadow, was sheltered and sunny, while the best protected corner was atthe same time one of those peculiarly springy spots in which the grasskeeps green the winter through. Here, then, these seven wayfarersstayed week after week. Whenever I stole up cautiously and peeped overthe bank into their verdant hiding-place, I was sure to hear thefamiliar cry; and directly one bird, and then another, and another, would start up before me, disclosing the characteristic brown feathersof the lower back. They commonly assembled in the middle of the marshupon the snow or ice, where they stood for a little, bobbing their headsin mutual conference, and then flew off over the house and over theorchard, calling as they flew. 

Throughout December, and indeed throughout the winter, brown creepersand red-bellied nuthatches were surprisingly abundant. Every pine woodseemed to have its colony of them. Whether the extraordinary mildness ofthe season had anything to do with this I cannot say; but their presencewas welcome, whatever the reason for it. Like the chickadee, with whomthey have the good taste to be fond of associating, they are always busyand cheerful, appearing not to mind either snow-storm or lowtemperature. No reasonable observer would ever tax them with effeminacy, though the creeper, it must be owned, cannot speak without lisping. 

Following my usual practice, I began a catalogue of the month's birds, and at the end of a fortnight discovered, to my astonishment, that thename of the downy woodpecker was missing. He had been common duringNovember, and is well known as one of our familiar winter residents. Ibegan forthwith to keep a sharp lookout for him, particularly whenever Iwent near any apple orchard. A little later, I actually commenced makingexcursions on purpose to find him. But the fates were against me, and gowhere I would, he was not there. At last I gave him up. Then, on the27th, as I sat at my desk, a chickadee chirped outside. Of course Ilooked out to see him; and there, exploring the branches of an oldapple-tree, directly under my window, was the black-and-white woodpeckerfor whom I had been searching in vain through five or six townships. Thesaucy fellow! He rapped smartly three or four times; then hestraightened himself back, as woodpeckers do, and said: "Good-morning, sir! Where have you been so long? If you wish to see _me_, you hadbetter stay at home. " He might have spoken a little less pertly; forafter all, if a man would know what is going on, whether in summer orwinter, he must not keep too much in his own door-yard. Of the thirtybirds in my December list, I should have seen perhaps ten if I had satall the time at my window, and possibly twice that number had I confinedmy walks within the limits of my own town. 

While the migration is going on, to be sure, one may find birds in themost unexpected places. Last May I glanced up from my book and espied anolive-backed thrush in the back yard, foraging among the currant-bushes. Raising a window quietly, I whistled something like an imitation of hisinimitable song; and the little traveler--always an easy dupe--prickedup his ears, and presently responded with a strain which carried mestraight into the depths of a White Mountain forest. But in December, with some exceptions, of course, birds must be sought after rather thanwaited for. The 15th, for example, was a most uncomfortable day, --souncomfortable that I stayed indoors, --the mercury only two or threedegrees above zero, and a strong wind blowing. Such weather would drivethe birds under shelter. The next forenoon, therefore, I betook myselfto a hill covered thickly with pines and cedars. Here I soon ran uponseveral robins, feeding upon the savin berries, and in a moment more wassurprised by a _tseep_ so loud and emphatic that I thought at once of afox sparrow. Then I looked for a song sparrow, --badly startled, perhaps, --but found to my delight a white-throat. He was on the ground, but at my approach flew into a cedar. Here he drew in his head and satperfectly still, the picture of discouragement. I could not blame him, but was glad, an hour later, to find him again on the ground, picking uphis dinner. I leveled my glass at him and whistled his Peabody song (thesimplest of all bird songs to imitate), but he moved not a feather. Apparently he had never heard it before! He was still there in theafternoon, and I had hopes of his remaining through the winter; but Inever could find him afterwards. Ten days prior to this I had gone toLongwood on a special hunt for this same sparrow, remembering a certainpeculiarly cozy hollow where, six or eight years before, a littlecompany of song sparrows and white-throats had passed a rather severewinter. The song sparrows were there again, as I had expected, but nowhite-throats. The song sparrows, by the way, treated me shabbily thisseason. A year ago several of them took up their quarters in a roadsidegarden patch, where I could look in upon them almost daily. This yearthere were none to be discovered anywhere in this neighborhood. Theyfigure in my December list on four days only, and were found in fourdifferent towns, --Brookline (Longwood), Marblehead, Nahant, andCohasset. Like some others of our land birds (notably the golden-wingedwoodpecker and the meadow lark), they seem to have learned that winterloses a little of its rigor along the sea-board. 

Three kinds of land birds were met with at Nahant Beach, and nowhereelse: the Ipswich sparrow, --on the 3d and 26th, --the snow bunting, andthe horned lark. Of the last two species, both of them rather common inNovember, I saw but one individual each. They were feeding side byside, and, after a short separation, --under the fright into which mysudden appearance put them, --one called to the other, and they flew offin company towards Lynn. It was a pleasing display of sociability, butnothing new; for in winter, as every observer knows, birds not of afeather flock together. The Ipswich sparrow, a very retiring but notpeculiarly timid creature, I have now seen at Nahant in every one of ourseven colder months, --from October to April, --though it isunquestionably rare upon the Massachusetts coast between the fall andspring migrations. Besides the species already named, my monthly listincluded the following: herring gull, great black-backed gull, ruffedgrouse, hairy woodpecker, flicker, goldfinch, tree sparrow, snowbird, blue jay, crow, shrike, white-bellied nuthatch (only two or threebirds), golden-crowned kinglet, and one small hawk. [6]

[6] To this list my ornithological comrade before mentioned added sevenspecies, namely: white-winged scoter, barred owl, cowbird, purple finch, white-winged crossbill, fox sparrow, and winter wren. Between us, as faras land birds went, we did pretty well. 

The only birds that sang during the month--unless we include thered-bellied nuthatches, whose frequent quaint twitterings should, perhaps, come under this head--were the chickadees and a single robin. The former I have down as uttering their sweet phoebe whistle--which Itake to be certainly their song, as distinguished from all theirmultifarious calls--on seven of the thirty-one days. They were moretuneful in January, and still more so in February; so that the titmouse, as becomes a creature so full of good humor and high spirits, may fairlybe said to sing all winter long. The robin's music was a pleasure quiteunexpected. I was out on Sunday, the 30th, for a few minutes' strollbefore breakfast, when the obliging stranger (I had not seen a robin fora fortnight, and did not see another for nearly two months) broke intosong from a hill-top covered with pitch-pines. He was in excellentvoice, and sang again and again. The morning invited music, --warm andcloudless, like an unusually fine morning in early April. 

For an entire week, indeed, the weather had seemed to be trying to outdoitself. I remember in particular the day before Christmas. I rose longbefore daylight, crossed the Mystic River marshes as the dawn wasbeginning to break, and shortly after sunrise was on my way down theSouth Shore. Leaving the cars at Cohasset, I sauntered over theJerusalem Road to Nantasket, spent a little while on the beach, andbrought up at North Cohasset, where I was attracted by alonesome-looking road running into the woods all by itself, with aguide-board marked "Turkey Hill. " Why not accept the pleasinginvitation, which seemed meant on purpose for just such an idlepedestrian as myself? As for Turkey Hill, I had never heard of it, andpresumed it to be some uninteresting outlying hamlet. My concern, as asaunterer's ought always to be, was with the road itself, not with whatmight lie at the end of it. I did not discover my mistake till I hadgone half a mile, more or less, when the road all at once turned sharplyto the right and commenced ascending. Then it dawned upon me that TurkeyHill must be no other than the long, gradual, grassy slope at which Ihad already been looking from the railway station. The prospect of seaand land was beautiful; all the more so, perhaps, because of a thickautumnal haze. It might be called excellent Christmas weather, I said tomyself, when a naturally prudent man, no longer young, could sit perchedupon a fence rail at the top of a hill, drinking in the beauties of thelandscape. 

At the station, after my descent, I met a young man of the neighborhood. "Do you know why they call that Turkey Hill?" said I. "No, sir, Idon't, " he answered. I suggested that probably somebody had killed awild turkey up there at some time or other. He looked politelyincredulous. "I don't _think_ there are any wild turkeys up there, " saidhe; "_I_ never saw any. " He was not more than twenty-five years old, andthe last Massachusetts turkey was killed on Mount Tom in 1847, so that Ihad no doubt he spoke the truth. Probably he took me for a simple-mindedfellow, while I thought nothing worse of him than that he was one ofthose people, so numerous and at the same time so much to be pitied, whohave never studied ornithology. 

The 25th was warmer even than the 24th; and it, likewise, I spent uponthe South Shore, though at a point somewhat farther inland, and in atown where I was not likely to lose myself, least of all in anyout-of-the-way woodland road. In short, I spent Christmas on my nativeheath, --a not inappropriate word, by the bye, for a region so largelygrown up to huckleberry bushes. "Holbrook's meadows, " and "Nortonpasture!"--the names are not to be found on any map, and will convey nomeaning to my readers; but in my ears they awaken memories of many andmany a sunny hour. On this holiday I revisited them both. Warm as itwas, boys and girls were skating on the meadows (in spite of their name, these have been nothing but a pond for as long as I can remember), and Istood awhile by the old Ross cellar, watching their evolutions. Howbright and cheery it was in the little sheltered clearing, with nothingin sight but the leafless woods and the ice-covered pond! "Shan't I takeyour coat?" the sun seemed to be asking. At my elbow stood a bunch oflilac bushes ("laylocks" they were probably called by the man who setthem out[7]) that had blossomed freely in the summer. The house hasbeen gone for these thirty years or more (alas! my sun must be rapidlydeclining when memory casts so long a shadow), but the bushes seemlikely to hold their own for at least a century. They might haveprompted a wise man to some wise reflections; but for myself, it must beacknowledged, I fell instead to thinking how many half days I hadfished--and caught nothing, or next to nothing--along this samepleasant, willow-bordered shore. 

[7] So they were called, too, by that lover of flowers, Walter SavageLandor, who, as his biographer says, followed a pronunciation"traditional in many old English families. "

In Norton pasture, an hour or two later, I made myself young again byputting a few checkerberries into my mouth; and in a small new clearingjust over the brook ("Dyer's Run, " this used to be called, but I fearthe name is falling into forgetfulness) I stumbled upon a patch of somehandsome evergreen shrub, which I saw at once to be a novelty. I took itfor a member of the heath family, but it proved to belong with thehollies, --_Ilex glabra_, or ink-berry, a plant not to be found in thecounty where it is my present lot to botanize. So, even on my nativeheath, I had discovered something new. 

The flora of a Massachusetts December is of necessity limited. Even inthe month under review, singularly favorable as it was, I found butsixteen sorts of wild blossoms; a small number, surely, though perhapslarger by sixteen than the average reader would have guessed. The namesof these hardy adventurers must by no means go unrecorded: shepherd'spurse, wild pepper-grass, pansy, common chickweed (_Stellaria media_), mouse-ear chickweed (_Cerastium viscosum_), knawel, common mallow, witch-hazel, cinque-foil (_Potentilla Norvegica_, --not _argentea_, as Ishould certainly have expected), many-flowered aster, cone-flower, yarrow, two kinds of groundsel, fall dandelion, and jointweed. Six ofthese--mallow, cinque-foil, aster, cone-flower, fall dandelion, andjointweed--were noticed only at Nahant; and it is further to be saidthat the jointweed was found by a friend, not by myself, while thecone-flower was not in strictness a blossom; that is to say, its rayswere well opened, making what in common parlance is called a flower, butthe true florets were not yet perfected. Such witch-hazel blossoms ascan be gathered in December are of course nothing but belated specimens. I remarked a few on the 2d, and again on the 10th; and on the afternoonof Christmas, happening to look into a hamamelis-tree, I saw what lookedlike a flower near the top. The tree was too small for climbing andalmost too large for bending, but I managed to get it down; and sureenough, the bit of yellow was indeed a perfectly fresh blossom. How didit know I was to pass that way on Christmas afternoon, and by what sortof freemasonry did it attract my attention? I loved it and left it onthe stalk, in the true Emersonian spirit, and here I do my little bestto embalm its memory. 

One of the groundsels (_Senecio viscosus_) is a recent immigrant fromEurope, but has been thoroughly established in the Back Bay lands ofBoston--where I now found it, in perfect condition, December 4th--for atleast half a dozen years. In Gray's "Flora of North America" it is saidto grow there and in the vicinity of Providence; but since that accountwas written it has made its appearance in Lowell, and probably in otherplaces. It is a coarse-looking little plant, delighting to grow in puregravel; but its blossoms are pretty, and now, with not another flower ofany sort near it, it looked, as the homely phrase is, "as handsome as apicture. " Its more generally distributed congener, _Seneciovulgaris_, --also a foreigner--is, next to the common chickweed, I shouldsay, our very hardiest bloomer. At the beginning of the month it was inflower in an old garden in Melrose; and at Marblehead Neck aconsiderable patch of it was fairly yellow with blossoms all throughDecember and January, and I know not how much longer. I saw noshepherd's purse after December 27th, but knawel was in flower as lateas January 18th. The golden-rods, it will be observed, are absentaltogether from my list; and the same would have been true of theasters, but for a single plant. This, curiously enough, still bore fiveheads of tolerably fresh blossoms, after all its numberless companions, growing upon the same hillside, had succumbed to the frost. 

Of my sixteen plants, exactly one half are species that have beenintroduced from Europe; six are members of the composite family; and ifwe omit the cone-flower, all but three of the entire number are simplewhites and yellows. Two red flowers, the clover and the pimpernel, disappointed my search; but the blue hepatica would almost certainlyhave been found, had it come in my way to look for it. 

Prettier even than the flowers, however, was the December greenness, especially of the humbler sorts: St. John's-wort, five-finger, thecreeping blackberries, --whose modest winter loveliness was never halfappreciated, --herb-robert, corydalis, partridge-berry, checkerberry, wintergreen, rattlesnake-plantain, veronica, and linnæa, to say nothingof the ferns and mosses. Most refreshing of all, perhaps, was anoccasional patch of bright green grass, like the one already spoken of, at Marblehead, or like one even brighter and prettier, which I visitedmore than once in Swampscott. 

As I review what I have written, I am tempted to exclaim withTennyson:--

 "And was the day of my delight As pure and perfect as I say?"

But I answer, in all good conscience, yes. The motto with which I beganstates the truth somewhat strongly, perhaps (it must be remembered whereI got it), but aside from that one bit of harmless borrowed hyperbole, Ihave delivered a plain, unvarnished tale. For all that, however, I donot expect my industrious fellow-citizens to fall in at once with myopinion that winter is a pleasant season at the seashore (it would betoo bad they should, as far as my own enjoyment is concerned), andDecember a month propitious for leisurely all-day rambles. How foreignsuch notions are to people in general I have lately had several forciblereminders. On one of my jaunts from Marblehead to Swampscott, forexample, I had finally taken to the railway, and was in the narrow, tortuous cut through the ledges, when, looking back, I saw a younggentleman coming along after me. He was in full skating rig, fur cap andall, with a green bag in one hand and a big hockey stick in the other. Istopped every few minutes to listen for any bird that might chance to bein the woods on either hand, and he could not well avoid overtaking me, though he seemed little desirous of doing so. The spot was lonesome, and as he went by, and until he was some rods in advance, he kept hishead partly turned. There was no mistaking the significance of thatfurtive, sidelong glance; he had read the newspapers, and didn't intendto be attacked from behind unawares! If he should ever cast his eye overthese pages (and whatever he may have thought of my appearance, I ambound to say of him that he looked like a man who might appreciate goodliterature), he will doubtless remember the incident, especially if Imention the field-glass which I carried slung over one shoulder. Evidently the world sees no reason why a man with anything better to doshould be wandering aimlessly about the country in midwinter. Nor do Iquarrel with the world's opinion. The majority is wiser than theminority, of course; otherwise, what becomes of its divine andinalienable right to lay down the law? The truth with me was that I_had_ nothing better to do. I confess it without shame. Surely there isno lack of shoemakers. Why, then, should not here and there a man takeup the business of walking, of wearing out shoes? Everything is relatedto everything else, and the self-same power that brought the killdeersto Marblehead sent me there to see them and do them honor. Should itplease the gods to order it so, I shall gladly be kept running on sucherrands for a score or two of winters. 

DYER'S HOLLOW. 

 "Quiet hours Pass'd among these heaths of ours By the grey Atlantic sea. " MATTHEW ARNOLD. 

I lived for three weeks at the "Castle, " though, unhappily, I did notbecome aware of my romantic good fortune till near the close of my stay. There was no trace of battlement or turret, nothing in the leastsuggestive of Warwick or Windsor, or of Sir Walter Scott. In fact, theCastle was not a building of any kind, but a hamlet; a small collectionof houses--a somewhat scattered collection, it must be owned, --such as, on the bleaker and sandier parts of Cape Cod, is distinguished by thename of village. On one side flowed the river, doubling its coursethrough green meadows with almost imperceptible motion. As I watched thetide come in, I found myself saying, --

 "Here twice a day the Pamet fills, The salt sea-water passes by. "

But the rising flood could make no "silence in the hills;" for thePamet, as I saw it, is far too sedate a stream ever to be caught"babbling. " It has only some three miles to run, and seems to knowperfectly well that it need not run fast. 

My room would have made an ideal study for a lazy man, I thought, thetwo windows facing straight into a sand-bank, above which rose a steephill, or perhaps I should rather say the steep wall of a plateau, onwhose treeless top, all by themselves, or with only a graveyard forcompany, stood the Town Hall and the two village churches. Perched thusupon the roof of the Cape, as it were, and surmounted by cupola andbelfry, the hall and the "orthodox" church made invaluable beacons, visible from far and near in every direction. For three weeks I steeredmy hungry course by them twice a day, having all the while a pleasingconsciousness that, however I might skip the Sunday sermon, I was by nomeans neglecting my religious privileges. The second and smallermeeting-house belonged to a Methodist society. On its front were thescars of several small holes which had been stopped and covered withtin. A resident of the Castle assured me that the mischief had been doneby pigeon woodpeckers, --flickers, --a statement at which I inwardlyrejoiced. Long ago I had announced my belief that these enthusiasticshouters must be of the Wesleyan persuasion, and here was the proof!Otherwise, why had they never sought admission to the more imposing and, as I take it, more fashionable orthodox sanctuary? Yes, the case wasclear. I could understand now how Darwin and men like him must have feltwhen some great hypothesis of theirs received sudden confirmation froman unexpected quarter. At the same time I was pained to see that theflickers' attempts at church-going had met with such indifferentencouragement. Probably the minister and the class leaders would havejustified their exclusiveness by an appeal to that saying about thosewho enter "not by the door into the sheepfold;" while the woodpeckers, on their part, might have retorted that just when they had most need togo in the door was shut. 

One of my favorite jaunts was to climb this hill, or plateau, the "Hillof Storms" (I am still ignorant whether the storms in question werepolitical, ecclesiastical, or atmospheric, but I approve the name), andgo down on the other side into a narrow valley whose meanderings led meto the ocean beach. This valley, or, to speak in the local dialect, thishollow, like the parallel one in which I lived, --the valley of thePamet, --runs quite across the Cape, from ocean to bay, a distance of twomiles and a half, more or less. 

At my very first sight of Dyer's Hollow I fell in love with it, and nowthat I have left it behind me, perhaps forever, I foresee that mymemories of it are likely to be even fairer and brighter than was theplace itself. I call it Dyer's Hollow upon the authority of the townhistorian, who told me, if I understood him correctly, that this was itsname among sailors, to whom it is a landmark. By the residents of thetown I commonly heard it spoken of as Longnook or Pike's Hollow, but forreasons of my own I choose to remember it by its nautical designation, though myself as far as possible from being a nautical man. 

To see Dyer's Hollow at its best, the visitor should enter it at thewestern end, and follow its windings till he stands upon the blufflooking out upon the Atlantic. If his sensations at all resemble mine, he will feel, long before the last curve is rounded, as if he wereascending a mountain; and an odd feeling it is, the road being level, orsubstantially so, for the whole distance. At the outset he is in agreen, well-watered valley on the banks of what was formerly LittleHarbor. The building of the railway embankment has shut out the tide, and what used to be an arm of the bay is now a body of fresh water. Luxuriant cat-tail flags fringe its banks, and cattle are feeding nearby. Up from the reeds a bittern will now and then start. I should liketo be here once in May, to hear the blows of his stake-driver's malletechoing and reëchoing among the close hills. At that season, too, allthe uplands would be green. So we were told, at any rate, though thepleasing story was almost impossible of belief. In August, as soon as weleft the immediate vicinity of Little Harbor, the very bottom of thevalley itself was parched and brown; and the look of barrenness anddrought increased as we advanced, till toward the end, as the lasthouses were passed, the total appearance of things became subalpine:stunted, weather-beaten trees, and broad patches of bearberry showing ata little distance like beds of mountain cranberry. 

All in all, Dyer's Hollow did not impress me as a promising farmingcountry. Acres and acres of horseweed, pinweed, stone clover, povertygrass, [8] reindeer moss, mouse-ear everlasting, and bearberry! No wondersuch fields do not pay for fencing-stuff. No wonder, either, that thedwellers here should be mariculturalists rather than agriculturalists. And still, although their best garden is the bay, they have theirgardens on land also, --the bottoms of the deepest hollows being selectedfor the purpose, --and by hook or by crook manage to coax a kind ofreturn out of the poverty-stricken soil. Even on Cape Cod there must besome potatoes to go with the fish. Vegetables raised under suchdifficulties are naturally sweet to the taste, and I was not so muchsurprised, therefore, on a certain state occasion at the Castle, to seea mighty dish of string beans ladled into soup-plates and exalted to thedignity of a separate course. Here, too, --but this was in Dyer'sHollow, --I found in successful operation one of the latest, and, if Imay venture an unprofessional opinion, one of the most valuable, improvements in the art of husbandry. An old man, an ancient mariner, nodoubt, was seated on a camp-stool and plying a hoe among his cabbages. He was bent nearly double with age ("triple" is the word in my notebook, but that may have been an exaggeration), and had learned wisdom withyears. I regretted afterward that I had not got over the fence andaccosted him. I could hardly have missed hearing something rememberable. Yet I may have done wisely to keep the road. Industry like his oughtnever to be intruded upon lightly. Some, I dare say, would have calledthe sight pathetic. To me it was rather inspiring. Only a day or twobefore, in another part of the township, I had seen a man sitting in achair among his bean-poles picking beans. Those heavy, sandy roads andsteep hills must be hard upon the legs, and probably the dwellersthereabout (unlike the Lombardy poplars, which there, as elsewhere, weredecaying at the top) begin to die at the lower extremities. It was notmany miles from Dyer's Hollow that Thoreau fell in with the old wrecker, "a regular Cape Cod man, " of whom he says that "he looked as if hesometimes saw a doughnut, but never descended to comfort. " Quiteotherwise was it with my wise-hearted agricultural economists; and quiteotherwise shall it be with me, also, who mean to profit by theirexample. If I am compelled to dig when I get old (to beg may I ever beashamed!), I am determined not to forget the camp-stool. The Cape Codmotto shall be mine, --He that hoeth cabbages, let him do it withassiduity. 

[8] In looking over the town history, I was pleased to come upon a notein defense of this lowly plant, on the score not only of its beauty, butof its usefulness in holding the sand in place; but, alas, "all men havenot faith, " and where the historian wrote _Hudsonia tomentosa_ theantipathetic compositor set up _Hudsonia tormentosa_. That compositorwas a Cape Cod man, --I would wager a dinner upon it. "Thus the whirligigof time brings in his revenges, " I hear him mutter, as he slips thesuperfluous consonant into its place. 

This aged cultivator, not so much "on his last legs" as beyond them, wasevidently a native of the soil, but several of the few houses standingalong the valley road were occupied by Western Islanders. I was crossinga field belonging to one of them when the owner greeted me; a milkman, as it turned out, proud of his cows and of his boy, his only child. "Howold do you think he is?" he asked, pointing to the young fellow. Itwould have been inexcusable to disappoint his fatherly expectations, andI guessed accordingly: "Seventeen or eighteen. " "Sixteen, " herejoined, --"sixteen!" and his face shone till I wished I had set thefigure a little higher. The additional years would have cost me nothing, and there is no telling how much happiness they might have conferred. "Who lives there?" I inquired, turning to a large and well-kept house inthe direction of the bay. "My nephew. " "Did he come over when you did?""No, I sent for him. " He himself left the Azores as a cabin boy, landedhere on Cape Cod, and settled down. Since then he had been toCalifornia, where he worked in the mines. "Ah! that was where you gotrich, was it?" said I. "Rich!"--this in a tone of sarcasm. But he added, "Well, I made something. " His praise of his nearest neighbor--whosename proclaimed his Cape Cod nativity--made me think well not only ofhis neighbor, but of him. There were forty-two Portuguese families inTruro, he said. "There are more than that in Provincetown?" I suggested. He shrugged his shoulders. "Yes, about half the people. " And pretty goodpeople they are, if such as I saw were fair representatives. One boy offourteen (unlike the milkman's heir, he was very small for his years, ashe told me with engaging simplicity) walked by my side for a mile ortwo, and quite won my heart. A true Nathanael he seemed, in whom was noguile. He should never go to sea, he said; nor was he ever going to getmarried so long as his father lived. He loved his father so much, and hewas the only boy, and his father couldn't spare him. "But didn't yourfather go to sea?" "Oh, yes; both my fathers went to sea. " That was apuzzle; but presently it came out that his two fathers were his fatherand his grandfather. He looked troubled for a moment when I inquired thewhereabouts of the poorhouse, in the direction of which we happened tobe going. He entertained a very decided opinion that he shouldn't liketo live there; a wholesome aversion, I am bound to maintain, dear UncleVenner to the contrary notwithstanding. 

A stranger was not an every-day sight in Dyer's Hollow, I imagine, andas I went up and down the road a good many times in the course of myvisit, I came to be pretty well known. So it happened that a WesternIslands woman came to her front door once, broom in hand and thesweetest of smiles on her face, and said, "Thank you for that five centsyou gave my little boy the other day. " "Put that in your pocket, " I hadsaid, and the obedient little man did as he was bidden, without so muchas a side glance at the denomination of the coin. But he forgot onething, and when his mother asked him, as of course she did, for mothersare all alike, "Did you thank the gentleman?" he could do nothing buthang his head. Hence the woman's smile and "thank you, " which made me soashamed of the paltriness of the gift (Thackeray never saw a boy withoutwanting to give him a _sovereign_!) that my mention of the matter here, so far from indicating an ostentatious spirit, ought rather to be takenas a mark of humility. 

All things considered, I should hardly choose to settle for life inDyer's Hollow; but with every recollection of the place I somehow feelas if its score or two of inhabitants were favored above other men. Whyis it that people living thus by themselves, and known thus transientlyand from the outside as it were, always seem in memory like dwellers insome land of romance? I cannot tell, but so it is; and whoever has sucha picture on the wall of his mind will do well, perhaps, never to putthe original beside it. Yet I do not mean to speak quite thus of Dyer'sHollow. Once more, at least, I hope to walk the length of thatstraggling road. As I think of it now, I behold again those beds ofshining bearberry ("resplendent" would be none too fine a word; there isno plant for which the sunlight does more), loaded with a wealth ofhandsome red fruit. The beach-plum crop was a failure; plum wine, of thegoodness of which I heard enthusiastic reports, would be scarce; but oneneeded only to look at the bearberry patches to perceive that Cape Codsand was not wanting in fertility after a manner of its own. If itsenergies in the present instance happened to be devoted to ornamentrather than utility, it was not for an untaxed and disinterestedoutsider to make complaint; least of all a man who was never awine-bibber, and who believes, or thinks he believes, in "art for art'ssake. " Within the woods the ground was carpeted with trailing arbutusand a profusion of checkerberry vines, the latter yielding a few fatberries, almost or quite a year old, but still sound and spicy, stilltasting "like tooth-powder, " as the benighted city boy expressed it. Itwas an especial pleasure to eat them here in Dyer's Hollow, I had somany times done the same in another place, on the banks of Dyer's Run. Lady's-slippers likewise (nothing but leaves) looked homelike andfriendly, and the wild lily of the valley, too, and the pipsissewa. Across the road from the old house nearest the ocean stood a still moreancient-seeming barn, long disused, to all appearance, but with oldmaid's pinks, catnip, and tall, stout pokeberry weeds yet flourishingbeside it. Old maid's pinks and catnip! Could that combination have beenfortuitous?

No botanist, nor even a semi-scientific lover of growing things, likemyself, can ever walk in new fields without an eye for new plants. Whilecoming down the Cape in the train I had seen, at short intervals, clusters of some strange flower, --like yellow asters, I thought. Atevery station I jumped off the car and looked hurriedly for specimens, till, after three or four attempts, I found what I was seeking, --thegolden aster, _Chrysopsis falcata_. Here in Truro it was growingeverywhere, and of course in Dyer's Hollow. Another novelty was the palegreenbrier, _Smilax glauca_, which I saw first on the hill atProvincetown, and afterward discovered in Longnook. It was not abundantin either place, and in my eyes had less of beauty than its familiarrelatives, the common greenbrier (cat-brier, horse-brier, Indian-brier)of my boyhood, and the carrion flower. This glaucous smilax was one ofthe plants that attracted Thoreau's attention, if I remember right, though I cannot now put my finger upon his reference to it. Equally newto me, and much more beautiful, as well as more characteristic of theplace, were the broom-crowberry and the greener kind of poverty grass(_Hudsonia ericoides_), inviting pillows or cushions of which, lookingvery much alike at a little distance, were scattered freely over thegrayish hills. These huddling, low-lying plants were among the thingswhich bestowed upon Longnook its pleasing and remarkable mountain-topaspect. The rest of the vegetation was more or less familiar, I believe:the obtuse-leaved milkweed, of which I had never seen so much before;three sorts of goldenrod, including abundance of the fragrant _odora_;two kinds of yellow gerardia, and, in the lower lands at the western endof the valley, the dainty rose gerardia, just now coming into bloom; thepretty _Polygala polygama_, --pretty, but not in the same class with therose gerardia; ladies' tresses; bayberry; sweet fern; crisp-leavedtansy; beach grass; huckleberry bushes, for whose liberality I hadfrequent occasion to be thankful; bear oak; chinquapin; chokeberry; asingle vine of the Virginia creeper; wild carrot; wild cherry; thecommon brake, --these and doubtless many more were there, for I made noattempt at a full catalogue. There must have been wild roses along theroadside and on the edge of the thickets, I should think, yet I cannotrecollect them, nor does the name appear in my penciled memoranda. Hadthe month been June instead of August, notebook and memory would recorda very different story, I can hardly doubt; but out of flower is out ofmind. 

In the course of my many visits to Dyer's Hollow I saw thirty-threekinds of birds, of the eighty-four species in my full Truro list. Thenumber of individuals was small, however, and, except at its lower end, the valley was, or appeared to be, nearly destitute of feathered life. Afew song sparrows, a cat-bird or two, a chewink or two, a field sparrow, and perhaps a Maryland yellow-throat might be seen above the lasthouses, but as a general thing the bushes and trees were deserted. Walking here, I could for the time almost forget that I had ever owned ahobby-horse. But farther down the hollow there was one really "birdy"spot, to borrow a word--useful enough to claim lexicographicalstanding--from one of my companions: a tiny grove of stunted oaks, bythe roadside, just at the point where I naturally struck the valleywhen I approached it by way of the Hill of Storms. Here I happened uponmy only Cape Cod cowbird, a full-grown youngster, who was beingministered unto in the most devoted manner by a red-eyed vireo, --such asight as always fills me with mingled amusement, astonishment, admiration, and disgust. That any bird should be so befooled and imposedupon! Here, too, I saw at different times an adult male blueyellow-backed warbler, and a bird of the same species in immatureplumage. It seemed highly probable, to say the least, that the youngfellow had been reared not far off, the more so as the neighboringWellfleet woods were spectral with hanging lichens, of the sort whichthis exquisite especially affects. At first I wondered why thisparticular little grove, by no means peculiarly inviting in appearance, should be the favorite resort of so many birds, --robins, orioles, woodpewees, kingbirds, chippers, golden warblers, black-and-white creepers, prairie warblers, red-eyed vireos, and blue yellow-backs; but Ipresently concluded that a fine spring of water just across the roadmust be the attraction. Near the spring was a vegetable garden, andhere, on the 22d of August, I suddenly espied a water thrush teeteringupon the tip of a bean-pole, his rich olive-brown back glistening in thesunlight. He soon dropped to the ground among the vines, and before longwalked out into sight. His action when he saw me was amusing. Instead ofdarting back, as a sparrow, for instance, would have done, he flew up tothe nearest perch; that is, to the top of the nearest bean-pole, whichhappened to be a lath. Wood is one of the precious metals on Cape Cod, and if oars are used for fence-rails, and fish-nets for hen-coops, whynot laths for bean-poles? The perch was narrow, but wide enough for thebird's small feet. Four times he came up in this way to look about him, and every time alighted thus on the top of a pole. At the same momentthree prairie warblers were chasing each other about the garden, nowclinging to the side of the poles, now alighting on their tips. It was astrange spot for prairie warblers, as it seemed to me, though theylooked still more out of place a minute later, when they left thebean-patch and sat upon a rail fence in an open grassy field. Cape Codbirds, like Cape Cod men, know how to shift their course with the wind. Where else would one be likely to see prairie warblers, black-throatedgreens, and black-and-white creepers scrambling in company over the redshingles of a house-roof, and song sparrows singing day after day from achimney-top?

In all my wanderings in Dyer's Hollow, only once did I see anything ofthat pest of the seashore, the sportsman; then, in the distance, twoyoung fellows, with a highly satisfactory want of success, as well as Icould make out, were trying to take the life of a meadow lark. No doubtthey found existence a dull affair, and felt the need of something toenliven it. A noble creature is man, --"a little lower than the angels!"Two years in succession I have been at the seashore during the autumnalmigration of sandpipers and plovers. Two years in succession have I seenmen, old and young, murdering sandpipers and plovers at wholesale forthe mere fun of doing it. Had they been "pot hunters, " seeking to earnbread by shooting for the market, I should have pitied them, perhaps, --certainly I should have regretted their work; but I shouldhave thought no ill of them. Their vocation would have been ashonorable, for aught I know, as that of any other butcher. But a man oftwenty, a man of seventy, shooting sanderlings, ring plovers, goldenplovers, and whatever else comes in his way, not for money, norprimarily for food, but because he enjoys the work! "A little lower thanthe angels!" What numbers of innocent and beautiful creatures have Iseen limping painfully along the beach, after the gunners had finishedtheir day's amusement! Even now I think with pity of one particularturnstone. Some being made "a little lower than the angels" had fired athim and carried away one of his legs. I watched him for an hour. Much ofthe time he stood motionless. Then he hobbled from one patch ofeel-grass to another, in search of something to eat. My heart ached forhim, and it burns now to think that good men find it a pastime to breakbirds' legs and wings and leave them to perish. I have seen an old man, almost ready for the grave, who could amuse his last days in this wayfor weeks together. An exhilarating and edifying spectacle itwas, --this venerable worthy sitting behind his bunch of wooden decoys, awounded tern fluttering in agony at his feet. Withal, be it said, he wasa man of gentlemanly bearing, courteous, and a Christian. He did notshoot on Sunday, --not he. Such sport is to me despicable. Yet it isaffirmed by those who ought to know--by those, that is, who engage init--that it tends to promote a spirit of manliness. 

But thoughts of this kind belong not in Dyer's Hollow. Rather let meremember only its stillness and tranquillity, its innocent inhabitants, its gray hills, its sandy road, and the ocean at the end of the way. Even at the western extremity, near the railway and the busy harbor, thevalley was the very abode of quietness. Here, on one of my earlierexcursions, I came unexpectedly to a bridge, and on the farther side ofthe bridge to a tidy house and garden; and in the garden were severalpear-trees, with fruit on them! Still more to my surprise, here was alittle shop. The keeper of it had also the agency of some insurancecompany, --so a signboard informed the passer-by. As for his stock intrade, --sole leather, dry goods, etc. , --that spoke for itself. I steppedinside the door, but he was occupied with an account book, and when atlast he looked up there was no speculation in his eyes. Possibly he hadsold something the day before, and knew that no second customer could beexpected so soon. We exchanged the time of day, --not a very valuablecommodity hereabout, --and I asked him a question or two touching thehollow, and especially "the village, " of which I had heard a rumor thatit lay somewhere in this neighborhood. He looked bewildered at theword, --he hardly knew what I could mean, he said; but with a littleprompting he recollected that a few houses between this point and NorthTruro (there used to be more houses than now, but they had been removedto other towns, --some of them to Boston!) were formerly called "thevillage. " I left him to his ledger, and on passing his house I saw thathe was a dealer in grain as well as in sole leather and calico, and hadtelephonic communication with somebody; an enterprising merchant, afterall, up with the times, in spite of appearances. 

The shop was like the valley, a careless tourist might have said, --asleepy shop in Sleepy Hollow. To me it seemed not so. Peaceful, remote, sequestered, --these and all similar epithets suited well with Longnook;but for myself, in all my loitering there I was never otherwise thanwide awake. The close-lying, barren, mountainous-looking hills did notoppress the mind, but rather lifted and dilated it, and although I couldnot hear the surf, I felt all the while the neighborhood of the sea; notthe harbor, but the ocean, with nothing between me and Spain except thatstretch of water. Blessed forever be Dyer's Hollow, I say, and blessedbe its inhabitants! Whether Western Islanders or "regular Cape Cod men, "may they live and die in peace. 

FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD. 

 "Lead him through the lovely mountain-paths, And talk to him of things at hand and common. " MATTHEW ARNOLD. 

I went up the mountain from the village of Stowe in very ignoblefashion, --in a wagon, --and was three hours on the passage. One of the"hands" at the Summit House occupied the front seat with the driver, andwe were hardly out of the village before a seasonable toothache put himin mind of his pipe. Would smoking be offensive to me? he inquired. Whatcould I say, having had an aching tooth before now myself? It was apleasure almost beyond the luxury of breathing mountain air to see themisery of a fellow-mortal so quickly assuaged. The driver, a sturdyyoung Vermonter, was a man of different spirit. He had never usedtobacco nor drunk a glass of "liquor, " I heard him saying. Somebody hadonce offered him fifty cents to smoke a cigar. 

"Why didn't you take it?" asked his companion in a tone of wonder. 

"Well, I'm not that kind of a fellow, to be bought for fifty cents. "

As we approached the base of the mountain, a white-throated sparrow waspiping by the roadside. 

"I love to hear that bird sing, " said the driver. 

It was now my turn to be surprised. Our man of principle was also a manof sentiment. 

"What do you call him?" I inquired, as soon as I could recover myself. 

"Whistling Jack, " he answered; a new name to me, and a good one; itwould take a nicer ear than mine to discriminate with certainty betweena white-throat's voice and a school-boy's whistle. 

The morning had promised well, but before we emerged from the forest aswe neared the summit we drove into a cloud, and, shortly afterward, intoa pouring rain. In the office of the hotel I found a company of eightpersons, four men and four women, drying themselves about the stove. They had left a village twenty miles away at two o'clock that morningin an open wagon for an excursion to the summit. Like myself, they haddriven into a cloud, and up to this time had seen nothing more distantthan the stable just across the road, within a stone's toss of thewindow, and even that only by glimpses. One of the party was a doctor, who must be at home that night. Hour after hour they watched the clouds, or rather the rain (we were so beclouded that the clouds could not beseen), and debated the situation. Finally, at three o'clock, they gotinto their open wagon, the rain pelting them fiercely, and started forthe base. Doubtless they soon descended into clear weather, but not tillthey were well drenched. Verily the clouds are no respecters of persons. It is nothing to them how far you have come, nor how worthy your errand. So I reflected, having nothing better to do, when my wagonful ofpilgrims had dropped out of sight in the fog--as a pebble drops into thelake--leaving me with the house to myself; and presently, as I sat atthe window, I heard a white-throated sparrow singing outside. Here wasone, at least, whom the rain could not discourage. A wild and yet asweet and home-felt strain is this of "Whistling Jack, "--a mountainbird, well used to mountain weather, and just now too happy to foregohis music, no matter how the storm might rage. I myself had been in acloud often enough to feel no great degree of discomfort or lowness ofspirits. I had not decided to spend the precious hours of a briefvacation upon a mountain-top without taking into account the additionalrisk of unfavorable weather in such a place. Let the clouds do theirworst; I could be patient and wait for the sun. But this whistlingphilosopher outside spoke of something better than patience, and Ithanked him for the timely word. 

Toward noon of the next day the rain ceased, the cloud vanished, and Imade haste to clamber up the rocky peak--the Nose, so called--at thebase of which the hotel is situated. Yes, there stretched LakeChamplain, visible for almost its entire length, and beyond it loomedthe Adirondacks. I was glad I had come. _I_ could sing now. It does aman good to look afar off. 

Even before the fog lifted I had discovered, to my no smallgratification, that the evergreens immediately about the house werefull of gray-cheeked thrushes, a close colony, strictly confined to thelow trees at the top of the mountain. They were calling at all hours, _yeep, yeep_, somewhat in the manner of young chickens; and aftersupper, as it grew dark, I stood on the piazza while they sang in fullchorus. At least six of them were in tune at once. _Wee-o, wee-o, tit-tiwee-o_, something like this the music ran, with many variations; a mostethereal sound, at the very top of the scale, but faint and sweet; quitein tune also with my mood, for I had just come in from gazing long atthe sunset, with Lake Champlain like a sea of gold for perhaps a hundredmiles, and a stretch of the St. Lawrence showing far away in the north. During the afternoon, too, I had been over the long crest of themountain to the northern peak, the highest point, belittled in localphraseology as the Chin; a delightful jaunt of two miles, withmagnificent prospects all the way. It was like walking on the ridge-poleof Vermont, a truly exhilarating experience. 

All in all, though the forenoon had been so rainy, I had lived a longday, and now, if ever, could appreciate the singing of thischaracteristic northern songster, himself such a lover of mountains asnever to be heard, here in New England, at least, and in summer-time, except amid the dwindling spruce forests of the upper slopes. I havenever before seen him so familiar. On the Mount Washington range and onMount Lafayette it is easy enough to hear his music, but one rarely getsmore than a flying glimpse of the bird. Here, as I say, he was never outof hearing, and seldom long out of sight, even from the door-step. Theyoung were already leaving the nest, and undoubtedly the birds haddisposed themselves for the season before the unpainted, inoffensive-looking little hotel showed any signs of occupancy. The verynext year a friend of mine visited the place and could discover no traceof them. They had found their human neighbors a vexation, perhaps, andon returning from their winter's sojourn in Costa Rica, or where not, had sought summer quarters on some less trodden peak. 

Not so was it with the myrtle warblers, I venture to assert, though onthis point I have never taken my friend's testimony. Perfectly at homeas they are in the wildest and most desolate places, they manifest aparticular fondness for the immediate vicinity of houses, delightingespecially to fly about the gutters of the roof and against the windowpanes. Here, at the Summit House, they were constantly to be seenhawking back and forth against the side of the building, as barnswallows are given to doing in the streets of cities. The rude structurewas doubly serviceable, --to me a shelter, and to the birds a fly-trap. Ihave never observed any other warbler thus making free with humanhabitations. 

This yellow-rump, or myrtle bird, is one of the thrifty members of hisgreat family, and next to the black-poll is the most numerousrepresentative of his tribe in Massachusetts during the spring and fallmigrations; a beautiful little creature, with a characteristic flightand call, and for a song a pretty trill suggestive of the snow-bird's. Within two or three years he has been added to the summer fauna ofMassachusetts, and as a son of the Bay State I rejoice in his presenceand heartily bid him welcome. We shall never have too many of suchcitizens. I esteem him, also, as the only one of his delicate, insectivorous race who has the hardihood to spend the winter--sparingly, but with something like regularity--within the limits of New England. Hehas a genius for adapting himself to circumstances; picking up his dailyfood in the depths of a mountain forest or off the panes of adwelling-house, and wintering, as may suit his fancy or convenience, inthe West Indies or along the sea-coast of Massachusetts. 

One advantage of a sojourn at the summit of any of our wooded NewEngland mountains is the easy access thus afforded to the upper forest. While I was here upon Mount Mansfield I spent some happy hours almostevery day in sauntering down the road for a mile or two, looking andlistening. Just after leaving the house it was possible to hear threekinds of thrushes singing at once, --gray-cheeks, olive-backs, andhermits. Of the three the hermit is beyond comparison the finest singer, both as to voice and tune. His song, given always in three detachedmeasures, each higher than the one before it, is distinguished by anexquisite liquidity, the presence of _d_ and _l_, I should say, ascontrasted with the inferior _t_ sound of the gray-cheek. If it hasless variety, and perhaps less rapture, than the song of thewood-thrush, it is marked by greater simplicity and ease; and if it doesnot breathe the ineffable tranquillity of the veery's strain, it comesto my ear, at least, with a still nobler message. The hermit's note isaspiration rather than repose. "Peace, peace!" says the veery, but thehermit's word is, "Higher, higher!" "Spiritual songs, " I call them both, with no thought of profaning the apostolic phrase. 

I had been listening to thrush music (I think I could listen to itforever), and at a bend of the road had turned to admire the wooded sideof the mountain, just here spread out before me, miles and miles ofmagnificent hanging forest, when I was attracted by a noise as ofsomething gnawing--a borer under the bark of a fallen spruce lying at myfeet. Such an industrious and contented sound! No doubt the grub wouldhave said, "Yes, I could do _this_ forever. " What knew he of thebeauties of the picture at which I was gazing? The very light with whichto see it would have been a torture to him. Heaven itself was under theclose bark of that decaying log. So peradventure, may we ourselves beliving in darkness without knowing it, while spiritual intelligenceslook on with wondering pity to see us so in love with our prison-house. Well, yonder panorama was beautiful to _me_, at all events, however itmight look to more exalted beings, and, like my brother under thespruce-tree bark, I would make the best of life as I found it. 

This way my thoughts were running when all at once two birds dashed byme--a black-poll warbler in hot pursuit of an olive-backed thrush. Thethrush alighted in a tree and commenced singing, and the warbler sat byand waited, following the universal rule that a larger bird is never tobe attacked except when on the wing. The thrush repeated his strain onceor twice, and then flew to another tree, the little fellow after himwith all speed. Again the olive-back perched and sang, and again theblack-poll waited. Three times these manoeuvres were repeated, beforethe birds passed out of my range. Some wrong-doing, real or fancied, onthe part of the larger bird, had excited the ire of the warbler. Whyshould he be imposed upon, simply because he was small? The thrush, meantime, disdaining to defend himself, would only stop now and then tosing, as if to show to the world (every creature is the centre of aworld) that such an insect persecution could never ruffle his spirit. Birds are to be commiserated, perhaps, on having such an excess of whatwe call human nature; but the misfortune certainly renders them the moreinteresting to us, who see our more amiable weaknesses so oftenreflected in their behavior. 

For the sympathetic observer every kind of bird has its own temperament. On one of my jaunts down this Mount Mansfield road I happened to espy aCanada jay in a thick spruce. He was on one of the lower branches, butpretty soon began mounting the tree, keeping near the bole and going uplimb by limb in absolute silence, exactly in the manner of our commonblue jay. I was glad to see him, but more desirous to hear his voice, the loud, harsh scream with which the books credit him, and which, _apriori_, I should have little hesitation in ascribing to any member ofhis tribe. I waited till I grew impatient. Then I started hastilytoward him, making as much commotion as possible in pushing through theundergrowth. It was a clever scheme, but the bird was not to besurprised into uttering so much as an exclamation. He dropped out of histree, flew a little distance to a lower and less conspicuous perch, andthere I finally left him. Once before, on Mount Clinton, I had seen him, and had been treated with the same studied silence. And later, I fell inwith a little family party on the side of Mount Washington, and they, too, refused me so much as a note. Probably I was too near the birds inevery case, though in the third instance there was no attempt atskulking, nor any symptom of nervousness. I have often been impressedand amused by the blue jay's habit in this respect. No bird could wellbe noisier than he when the noisy mood takes him; but come upon himsuddenly at close quarters, and he will be as still as the grave itself. He has a double gift, of eloquence and silence, --silver and gold--and nodoubt his Canadian cousin is equally well endowed. 

The reader may complain, perhaps, that I speak only of trifles. Why goto a mountain-top to look at warblers and thrushes? I am not careful tojustify myself. I love a mountain-top, and go there because I love to bethere. It is good, I think, to be lifted above the every-day level, andto enjoy the society--and the absence of society--which the heightsafford. Looking over my notes of this excursion, I come upon thefollowing sentence: "To sit on a stone beside a mountain road, witholive-backed thrushes piping on every side, the ear catching now andthen the distant tinkle of a winter wren's tune, or the nearer _zee, zee, zee_ of black-poll warblers, while white-throated sparrows callcheerily out of the spruce forest--this is to be in another world. "

This sense of distance and strangeness is not to be obtained, in my caseat all events, by a few hours' stay in such a spot. I must pitch my tentthere, for at least a night or two. I cannot even see the prospect atfirst, much less feel the spirit of the place. There must be time forthe old life to drop off, as it were, while eye and ear grow wonted tonovel sights and sounds. Doubtless I did take note of trivialthings, --the call of a bird and the fragrance of a flower. It was apleasing relief after living so long with men whose minds were all thetime full of those serious and absorbing questions, "What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?"

I remember with special pleasure a profusion of white orchids(_Habenaria dilatata_) which bordered the roadside not far from the top, their spikes of waxy snow-white flowers giving out a rich, spicy odorhardly to be distinguished from the scent of carnation pinks. Iremember, too, how the whole summit, from the Nose to the Chin, wassprinkled with the modest and beautiful Greenland sandwort, springing upin every little patch of thin soil, where nothing else would flourish, and blossoming even under the door-step of the hotel. Unpretending as itis, this little alpine adventurer makes the most of its beauty. Theblossoms are not crowded into close heads, so as to lose theirindividual attractiveness, like the florets of the golden-rod, forexample; nor are they set in a stiff spike, after the manner of theorchid just now mentioned. At the same time the plant does not trust tothe single flower to bring it into notice. It grows in a pretty tuft, and throws out its blossoms in a graceful, loose cluster. The eye iscaught by the cluster, and yet each flower shows by itself, and its ownproper loveliness is in no way sacrificed to the general effect. Howwise, too, is the sandwort in its choice of a dwelling-place! In thevalley it would be lost amid the crowd. On the bare, brown mountain-topits scattered tufts of green and white appeal to all comers. 

To what extent, if at all, the sandwort depends upon the service ofinsects for its fertilization, I do not know, but it certainly has noscarcity of such visitors. "Bees will soar for bloom high as the highestpeak of Mansfield;" so runs an entry in my notebook, with a pardonableadaptation of Wordsworth's line; and I was glad to notice that even thesplendid black-and-yellow butterfly (_Turnus_), which was often to beseen sucking honey from the fragrant orchids, did not disdain to sipalso from the sandwort's cup. This large and elegant butterfly--ourlargest--is thoroughly at home on our New England mountains, sailingover the very loftiest peaks, and making its way through the forestswith a strong and steady flight. Many a time have I taken a second lookat one, as it has threaded the treetops over my head, thinking to see abird. Besides the _Turnus_, I noted here the nettle tortoise-shellbutterfly (_Vanessa Milberti_--a showy insect, and the more attractiveto me as being comparatively a stranger); the common cabbage butterfly;the yellow _Philodice_; the copper; and, much more abundant than any ofthese, a large orange-red fritillary (_Aphrodite_, I suppose), gorgeously bedecked with spots of silver on the under surface of thewings. All these evidently knew that plenty of flowers were to be foundalong this seemingly barren, rocky crest. Whether they have any lesssensuous motive for loving to wander over such heights, who will presumeto determine? It may very well be that their almost etherealstructure--such spread of wing with such lightness of body--is only theoutward sign of gracious thoughts and feelings, of a sensitiveness tobeauty far surpassing anything of which we ourselves are capable. What acontrast between them and the grub gnawing ceaselessly under thespruce-tree bark! Can the highest angel be as far above the lowest man?And yet (how mysteriously suggestive would the fact be, if only it werenew to us!) this same light-winged Aphrodite, flitting from blossom toblossom in the mountain breeze, was but a few days ago an ugly, crawlingthing, close cousin to the borer. Since then it has fallen asleep andbeen changed, --a parable, past all doubt, though as yet we lack eyes toread it. 

I have spoken hitherto as if I were the only sojourner at the summit, but there was another man, though I seldom saw him; a kind of hermit, living in a little shanty under the lee of the Nose. Almost as a matterof course he was reputed to be of good family and to read Greek, and thefact that he now and then received a bank draft evidently gave him arespectable standing in the eye of the hotel clerk. Something--somethingof a very romantic nature, we may be sure--had driven him away from thecompanionship of his fellows, but he still found it convenient to bewithin reach of human society. Like all such solitaries, he had somehalf-insane notions. He could not sleep indoors, not for a night; itwould ruin his health, if I understood him correctly; and because ofwild animals--bears and what not--he made his bed on the roof of hishermitage. I had often dreamed of the enjoyment of a life in the woodsall by one's self, but such a mode of existence did not gain inattractiveness as I saw it here in the concrete example. On the whole Iwas well satisfied to sleep in the hotel and eat at the hotel table. Liberty is good, but I thought it might be undesirable to be a slave tomy own freedom. 

Two or three times a wagon-load of tourists appeared at the hotel. Theystrolled about the summit, admired the prospect, picked a bunch ofsandwort, perhaps, but especially they went to see the snow. They hadbeen at much trouble to stand upon the highest land in Vermont, and nowthat they were here, they wished to do or see something unique, something that should mark the day as eventful. So they were piloted toa cave midway between the Nose and the Chin, into which the sun neverpeeped, and wherein a snow-bank still lingered. The mountain was grand, the landscape was magnificent, but to eat a handful of snow and throw asnow-ball in the middle of July--this was almost like being at the NorthPole; it would be something to talk about after getting home. 

One visitor I rejoiced to see, though a stranger. I was on the Nose inthe afternoon, enjoying once more the view of Lake Champlain and theAdirondacks, when I descried two men far off toward the Chin. They hadcome up the mountain, not by the carriage road, but by a trail on theopposite side, and plainly were in no haste, though the afternoon waswearing away. As I watched their movements, a mile or two in thedistance, I said to myself, "Good! they are botanists. " So it proved; orrather one of them was a botanist, --a college professor on a pedestriancollecting-excursion. We compared notes after supper and walked togetherthe next morning, enjoying that peculiar good fellowship which nothingbut a kindred interest and an unexpected meeting in a lonesome place canmake possible. Then he started down the carriage road with the design ofexploring Smugglers' Notch, and I have never seen or heard from himsince. I hope he is still botanizing on the shores of time, and findingmany a precious rarity; and should he ever read this reference tohimself, may it be with a feeling as kindly as that with which the linesare written. 

That afternoon I followed him, somewhat unexpectedly. I went down, as Ihad come up, on wheels; but I will not say in ignoble fashion, for thedriver--the hotel proprietor himself--was in haste, the carriage had nobrake, and the speed with which we rattled down the steep pitches andround the sharp curves, with the certainty that if anything shouldbreak, the horse would run and our days would be ended, --these things, and especially the latter consideration, of which I thought and theother man spoke, made the descent one of pleasurable excitement. Wereached the base in safety and I was left at the nearest farmhouse, where by dint of some persuasion the housewife was induced to give me alodging for the night, so that on the morrow I might make a long day inSmugglers' Notch, a famous botanical resort between Mount Mansfield andMount Sterling, which I had for years been desirous of visiting. 

I would gladly have stayed longer on the heights, but it was pleasantalso to be once more in the lowlands; to walk out after supper and lookup instead of down, while the chimney swifts darted hither and thitherwith their merry, breathless cacklings. How welcome, too, were thehearty music of the robin and the carol of the grass finch! After all, Ithought, home is in the valley; but the whistle of the white-throatreminded me that I was not yet back in Massachusetts. 

A WIDOW AND TWINS. 

 "The fatherless and the widow . .. Shall eat and be satisfied. "--DEUTERONOMY xiv. 29. 

On the 1st of June, 1890, I formally broke away from ornithologicalpursuits. For two months, more or less, --till the autumnal migrationshould set in, --I was determined to have my thoughts upon other matters. There is no more desirable plaything than an outdoor hobby, but a manought not to be forever in the saddle. Such, at all events, had alwaysbeen my opinion, so that I long ago promised myself never to become, what some of my acquaintances, perhaps with too much reason, were nowbeginning to consider me, a naturalist, and nothing else. That would beletting the hobby-horse run away with its owner. For the time being, then, birds should pass unnoticed, or be looked at only when they camein my way. A sensible resolve. But the maker of it was neither Mede norPersian, as the reader, if he have patience enough, may presentlydiscover for himself. 

As I sat upon the piazza, in the heat of the day, busy or half busy witha book, a sound of humming-bird's wings now and then fell on my ear, and, as I looked toward the honeysuckle vine, I began after a while toremark that the visitor was invariably a female. I watched her probe thescarlet tubes and dart away, and then returned to my page. She mighthave a nest somewhere near; but if she had there was small likelihood ofmy finding it, and, besides, I was just now not concerned with suchtrifles. On the 24th of June, however, a passing neighbor dropped intothe yard. Was I interested in humming-birds? he inquired. If so, hecould show me a nest. I put down my book, and went with him at once. 

The beautiful structure, a model of artistic workmanship, was near theend of one of the lower branches of an apple-tree, eight or ten feetfrom the ground, saddled upon the drooping limb at a point where twooffshoots made a good holding-place, while an upright twig spread overit a leafy canopy against rain and sun. Had the builders sought myadvice as to a location, I could hardly have suggested one better suitedto my own convenience. The tree was within a stone's toss of my window, and, better still, the nest was overlooked to excellent advantage froman old bank wall which divided my premises from those of my next-doorneighbor. How could I doubt that Providence itself had set me a summerlesson?

At our first visit the discoverer of the nest--from that moment anornithologist--brought out a step-ladder, and we looked in upon the twotiny white eggs, considerately improving a temporary absence of theowner for that purpose. It was a picture to please not only the eye, butthe imagination; and before I could withdraw my gaze the mother bird wasback again, whisking about my head so fearlessly that for a moment Istood still, half expecting her to drop into the nest within reach of myhand. 

This, as I have said, was on the 24th of June. Six days later, on theafternoon of the 30th, the eggs were found to be hatched, and twolifeless-looking things lay in the bottom of the nest, their headstucked out of sight, and their bodies almost or quite naked, except fora line of grayish down along the middle of the back. 

Meanwhile, I had been returning with interest the visits of the bird toour honeysuckle, and by this time had fairly worn a path to a certainpoint in the wall, where, comfortably seated in the shade of thehummer's own tree, and armed with opera-glass and notebook, I spent somehours daily in playing the spy upon her motherly doings. 

For a widow with a house and family upon her hands, she took lifeeasily; at frequent intervals she absented herself altogether, and evenwhen at home she spent no small share of the time in flitting aboutamong the branches of the tree. On such occasions, I often saw her hoveragainst the bole or a patch of leaves, or before a piece of caterpillaror spider web, making quick thrusts with her bill, evidently after bitsof something to eat. On quitting the nest, she commonly perched upon oneor another of a certain set of dead twigs in different parts of thetree, and at once shook out her feathers and spread her tail, displayingits handsome white markings, indicative of her sex. This was thebeginning of a leisurely toilet operation, in the course of which shescratched herself with her feet and dressed her feathers with her bill, all the while darting out her long tongue with lightning-like rapidity, as if to moisten her beak, which at other times she cleansed by rubbingit down with her claws or by wiping it upon a twig. In general she paidlittle attention to me, though she sometimes hovered directly in frontof my face, as if trying to stare me out of countenance. One of the mostpleasing features of the show was her method of flying into the nest. She approached it, without exception, from the same quarter, and, afteran almost imperceptible hovering motion, shut her wings and dropped uponthe eggs. 

When the young were hatched I redoubled my attentions. Now I should seeher feed them. On the first afternoon I waited a long time for thispurpose, the mother conducting herself in her customary manner: nowhere, now there, preening her plumage, driving away a meddlesomesparrow, probing the florets of a convenient clover-head (an unusualresource, I think), or snatching a morsel from some leaf or twig. Suddenly she flew at me, and held herself at a distance of perhaps fourfeet from my nose. Then she wheeled, and, as I thought, darted out ofthe orchard. In a few seconds I turned my head, and there she sat in thenest! I owned myself beaten. While I had been gazing toward the meadow, she had probably done exactly what I had wasted the better part of theafternoon in attempting to see. 

Twenty-four hours later I was more successful, though the same ruse wasagain tried upon me. The mother left the nest at my approach, but inthree minutes (by the watch) flew in again. She brooded for nineminutes. Then, quite of her own motion, she disappeared for six minutes. On her return she spent four minutes in dressing her feathers, afterwhich she alighted on the edge of the nest, fed the little ones, andtook her place upon them. This time she brooded for ten minutes. Thenshe was away for six minutes, dallied about the tree for two minuteslonger, and again flew into the nest. While sitting, she pecked severaltimes in quick succession at a twig within reach, and I could plainlysee her mandibles in motion, as if she were swallowing. She brooded forthirteen minutes, absented herself for three minutes, and spent sixminutes in her usual cautionary manoeuvres before resuming her seat. For the long interval of twenty-two minutes she sat still. Then shevanished for four minutes, and on her return gave the young anotherluncheon, after a fast of one hour and six minutes. 

The feeding process, which I had been so desirous to see, was of a sortto make the spectator shiver. The mother, standing on the edge of thenest, with her tail braced against its side, like a woodpecker or acreeper, took a rigidly erect position, and craned her neck until herbill was in a perpendicular line above the short, wide-open, upraisedbeak of the little one, who, it must be remembered, was at this timehardly bigger than a humble-bee. Then she thrust her bill for its fulllength down into his throat, a frightful-looking act, followed by aseries of murderous gesticulations, which fairly made one observer'sblood run cold. 

On the day after this (on the 2d of July, that is to say) I climbed intothe tree, in the old bird's absence, and stationed myself where my eyeswere perhaps fifteen feet from the nest, and a foot or two above itslevel. At the end of about twenty minutes, the mother, who meantime hadmade two visits to the tree, flew into place, and brooded for seventeenminutes. Then she disappeared again, and on her return, after numberlesspretty feints and sidelong approaches, alighted on the wall of the nest, and fed both little ones. The operation, though still sufficientlyreckless, looked less like infanticide than before, --a fact due, as Isuppose, to my more elevated position, from which the nestlings' throatswere better seen. After this she brooded for another seventeen minutes. On the present occasion, as well as on many others, it was noticeablethat, while sitting upon the young, she kept up an almost incessantmotion, as if seeking to warm them, or perhaps to develop their musclesby a kind of massage treatment. A measure of such hitchings andfidgetings might have meant nothing more than an attempt to secure forherself a comfortable seat; but when they were persisted in for fifteenminutes together, it was difficult not to believe that she had somedifferent end in view. Possibly, as human infants get exercise bydandling on the mother's knee, the baby humming-bird gets his by thisparental kneading process. Whether brooding or feeding, it must be saidthat the hummer treated her tiny charges with no particular carefulness, so far as an outsider could judge. 

The next day I climbed again into the tree. The mother bird made off atonce, and did not resume her seat for almost an hour, though she wouldundoubtedly have done so earlier but for my presence. Again and againshe perched near me, her bill leveled straight at my face. Finally shealighted on the nest, and, after considerable further delay, as if toassure herself that everything was quite safe, fed the two chicks fromher throat, as before. "She thrust her bill into their mouths so far" (Iquote my notes) "that the tips of their short little beaks were upagainst the root of her mandibles!"

Only once more, on the 4th of July, I ventured into the apple-tree. Formore than an hour and a half I waited. Times without number the mothercame buzzing into the tree, made the circuit of her favorite perches, dressed her plumage, darted away again, and again returned, till I wasalmost driven to get down, for her relief. At last she fed thenestlings, who by this time must have been all but starved, as indeedthey seemed to be. "The tips of their bills _do_ come clean up to thebase of the mother's mandibles. " So I wrote in my journal; for it is thefirst duty of a naturalist to verify his own observations. 

On the 10th we again brought out the ladder. Though at least eleven daysold, the tiny birds--the "widow's mites, " as my facetious neighborcalled them--were still far from filling the cup. While I stood over it, one of them uttered some pathetic little cries that really went to myheart. His bill, perceptibly longer than on the 5th, was sticking justabove the border of the nest. I touched it at the tip, but he did notstir. Craning my neck, I could see his open eye. Poor, helpless things!Yet within three months they would be flying to Central America, or somemore distant clime. How little they knew what was before them! As littleas I know what is before me. 

The violence of the feeding act was now at its height, I think, but itwould be impossible to do justice to it by any description. My neighbor, who one day stood beside me looking on, was moved to loud laughter. Whenthe two beaks were tightly joined, and while the old bird's was beinggradually withdrawn, they were shaken convulsively, --by the mother'sattempts to disgorge, and perhaps by the young fellow's efforts tohasten the operation. It was plain that he let go with reluctance, as aboy sucks the very tip of the spoon to get the last drop of jam; but, aswill be mentioned in the course of the narrative, his behavior improvedgreatly in this respect as he grew older. 

On the 12th, just after the little ones had been fed, one of them gothis wings for the first time above the wall of the nest, and flutteredthem with much spirit. He had spent almost a fortnight in the cradle, and was beginning to think he had been a baby long enough. 

From the first I had kept in mind the question whether the feeding ofthe young by regurgitation, as described briefly by Audubon, and more indetail by Mr. William Brewster, [9] would be continued after thenestlings were fully grown. On the 14th I wrote in my journal: "Themethod of feeding remains unchanged, and, as it seems, is likely toremain so to the end. It must save the mother much labor in going andcoming, and perhaps renders the coöperation of the male parentunnecessary. " This prediction was fulfilled, but with a qualification tobe hereafter specified. 

[9] _The Auk_, vol. Vii. P. 206. 

Every morning, now, I went to the apple-tree uncertain whether the nestwould not be found empty. According to Audubon, Nuttall, Mr. Burroughs, and Mrs. Treat, young humming-birds stay in the nest only seven days. Mr. Brewster, in his notes already cited, says that the birds on whichhis observations were made--in the garden of Mr. E. S. Hoar, inConcord--were hatched on the 4th of July, [10] and forsook the nest onthe 18th. My birds were already fifteen days old, at least, and, unlessthey were to prove uncommonly backward specimens, ought to be on thewing forthwith. Nevertheless they were in no haste. Day after daypassed. The youngsters looked more and more like old birds, and themother grew constantly more and more nervous. 

[10] But Mr. Hoar, from whom Mr. Brewster had his dates, informs me thatthe time of hatching was not certainly known; and from Mr. Brewster'sstatement about the size of the nestlings, I cannot doubt that they hadbeen out of the shell some days longer than Mr. Hoar then supposed. 

On the 18th I found her in a state of unprecedented excitement, squeaking almost incessantly. At first I attributed this to concern atmy presence, but after a while it transpired that a young oriole--ablundering, tailless fellow--was the cause of the disturbance. By someaccident he had dropped into the leafy treetop, as guiltless of any evildesign as one of her own nestlings. How she did buzz about him! In andout among the branches she went, now on this side of him, now on that, and now just over his back; all the time squeaking fiercely, andcarrying her tail spread to its utmost. The scene lasted for someminutes. Through it all the two young birds kept perfectly quiet, neveronce putting up their heads, even when the mother, buzzing and calling, zigzagged directly about the nest. I had seen many birds in the tree, first and last, but none that created anything like such a stir. Themother was literally in a frenzy. She went the round of her perches, butcould stay nowhere. Once she dashed out of the tree for an instant, anddrove a sparrow away from the tomato patch. Ordinarily his presencethere would not have annoyed her in the least, but in her present stateof mind she was ready to pounce upon anybody. All of which shows oncemore how "human-like" birds are. The bewilderment of the oriole wascomical. "What on earth can this crazy thing be shooting about my earsin this style for?" I imagined him saying to himself. In fact, as heglanced my way, now and then, with his innocent baby face, I couldalmost believe that he was appealing to me with some such inquiry. 

The next morning ("at 7. 32, " as my diary is careful to note) one of thetwins took his flight. I was standing on the wall, with my glass leveledupon the nest, when I saw him exercising his wings. The action waslittle more pronounced than had been noticed at intervals during thelast three or four days, except that he was more decidedly on his feet. Suddenly, without making use of the rim of the nest, as I should haveexpected him to do, he was in the air, hovering in the prettiestfashion, and in a moment more had alighted on a leafless twig slightlyabove the level of the nest, and perhaps a yard from it. Within a minutethe mother appeared, buzzing and calling, with answering calls from theyouthful adventurer. At once--after a hasty reconnaissance of the man onthe wall--she perched beside him, and plunged her bill into his throat. Then she went to the nest, served the other one in the same way, andmade off. She had no time to waste at this juncture of affairs. 

When she had gone, I stepped up to the trunk of the tree to watch thelittle fellow more closely. He held his perch, and occupied himself withdressing his plumage, though, as the breeze freshened, he was compelledonce in a while to keep his wings in motion to prevent the wind fromcarrying him away. When the old bird returned, --in just half anhour, --she resented my intrusion (what an oppressor of the widow and thefatherless she must by this time have thought me!) in the mostunmistakable manner, coming more than once quite within reach. However, she soon gave over these attempts at intimidation, perched beside thepercher, and again put something into his maw. This time she did notfeed the nestling. As she took her departure, she told thecome-outer--or so I fancied--that there was a man under the tree, apestilent fellow, and it would be well to get a little out of his reach. At all events, she had scarcely disappeared before the youngster wasagain on the wing. It was wonderful how much at home heseemed, --poising, backing, soaring, and alighting with all the ease andgrace of an old hand. One only piece of awkwardness I saw him commit: hedropped upon a branch much too large for his tiny feet, and wasmanifestly uncomfortable. But he did not stay long, and at his nextalighting was well up in the tree, where it was noticeable that heremained ever after. 

With so much going on outside, it was hard to remain indoors, andfinally I took a chair to the orchard, and gave myself up to watchingthe drama. The feeding process, though still always by regurgitation, was by this time somewhat different from what it had been when thebills of the young were less fully developed. In my notes of this date Ifind the following description of it: "Number Two is still in the nest, but uneasy. At 10. 25 the mother appeared and fed him. [11] Her beak wasthrust into his mouth at right angles, --the change being necessitated, probably, by the greater length of his bill, --and he seemed to bejerking strenuously at it. Then he opened his beak and remainedmotionless, while the black mandibles of the mother could be seenrunning down out of sight into his throat. "

[11] For convenience, I use the masculine pronoun in speaking of boththe young birds; but I knew nothing as to the sex of either of them, though I came finally to believe that one was a male and the other afemale. 

The other youngster, Number One, as I now called him, stayed in thetree, or at most ventured only into the next one, and was fed at varyingintervals, --as often, apparently, as the busy mother could find anythingto give him. Would he go back to his cradle for the night? It seemed notimprobable, notwithstanding he had shown no sign of such an intention solong as daylight lasted. At 3. 50 the next morning, therefore, I stoleout to see. No: Number Two was there alone. 

At seven o'clock, when I made my second visit, the mother was in themidst of another day's hard work. Twice within five minutes she broughtfood to the nestling. Once the little fellow--not so very littlenow--happened to be facing east, while the old bird alighted, as she hadinvariably done, on the western side. The youngster, instead of facingabout, threw back his head and opened his beak. "Look out, there!"exclaimed my fellow-observer; "you'll break his neck if you feed him inthat way. " But she did not mind. Young birds' necks are not so easilybroken. Within ten minutes of this time she fed Number One, giving himthree doses. They were probably small, however (and small wonder), forhe begged hard for more, opening his bill with an appealing air. Theaction in this case was particularly well seen, and the vehementjerking, while the beaks were glued together, seemed almost enough topull the young fellow's head off. Within another ten minutes the motherwas again ministering to Number Two! Poor little widow! Between herincessant labors of this kind and her overwhelming anxiety whenever anystrange bird came near, I began to be seriously alarmed for her. As amember of a strictly American family, she was in a fair way, I thought, to be overtaken by the "most American of diseases, "--nervousprostration. It tired me to watch her. 

With us, and perhaps with her likewise, it was a question whether NumberTwo would remain in the nest for the day. He grew more and morerestless; as my companion--a learned man--expressed it, he began to"ramp round. " Once he actually mounted the rim of the nest, a thingwhich his more precocious brother had never been seen to do, andstretched forward to pick at a neighboring stem. Late that afternoon themother fed him five times within an hour, instead of once an hour, orthereabouts, as had been her habit three weeks before. She meant to havehim in good condition for the coming event; and he, on his part, wasactive to the same end, --standing upon the wall of the nest again andagain, and exercising his wings till they made a cloud about him. Adread of launching away still kept him back, however, and shortly afterseven o'clock I found him comfortably disposed for the night. "He is nowon his twenty-first day (at least) in the nest. To-morrow will see himgo. " So end my day's notes. 

At 5. 45 the next morning he was still there. At 6. 20 I absented myselffor a few minutes, and on returning was hailed by my neighbor with thenews that the nest was empty. Number Two had flown between 6. 25 and6. 30, but, unhappily, neither of us was at hand to give him a cheer. Itrust that he and his mother were not hurt in their feelings by theoversight. The whole family (minus the father) was still in theapple-tree; the mother full, and more than full, of business, feedingone youngster after the other, as they sat here and there in the upperbranches. 

Twenty-four hours later, as I stood in the orchard, I heard a hum ofwings, and found the mother over my head. Presently she flew into thetop of the tree, and the next instant was sitting beside one of theyoung ones. His hungry mouth was already wide open, but before feedinghim she started up from the twig, and circled about him so closely asalmost or quite to touch him with her wings. On completing the circleshe dropped upon the perch at his side, but immediately rose again, andagain flew round him. It was a beautiful act, --beautiful beyond thepower of any words of mine to set forth; an expression of maternalecstasy, I could not doubt, answering to the rapturous caresses andendearments in which mothers of human infants are so frequently seenindulging. Three days afterward, to my delight, I saw it repeated inevery particular, as if to confirm my opinion of its significance. Thesight repaid all my watchings thrice over, and even now I feel my heartgrowing warm at the recollection of it. Strange thoughtlessness, is itnot, which allows mothers capable of such passionate devotion, tiny, defenseless things, to be slaughtered by the million for the enhancementof woman's charms!

At this point we suddenly became aware that for at least a day or twothe old bird had probably been feeding her offspring in twoways, --sometimes by regurgitation, and sometimes by a simple transferfrom beak to beak. The manner of our discovery was somewhat laughable. The mother perched beside one of the young birds, put her bill into his, and then apparently fell off the limb head first. We thought she had notfinished, and looked to see her return; but she flew away, and after awhile the truth dawned upon us. Thereafter, unless our observation wasat fault, she used whichever method happened to suit her convenience. Ifshe found a choice collection of spiders, [12] for instance, she broughtthem in her throat (as cedar-birds carry cherries), to save trips; ifshe had only one or two, she retained them between her mandibles. Itwill be understood, I suppose, that we did not see the food in itspassage from one bird to the other, --human eyesight would hardly beequal to work of such nicety; but the two bills were put together sofrequently and in so pronounced a manner as to leave us in no practicaluncertainty about what was going on. Neither had I any doubt that thechange was connected in some way with the increasing age of thefledgelings; yet it is to be said that the two methods continued to beused interchangeably to the end, and on the 28th, when Number Two hadbeen out of the nest for seven days, the mother thrust her bill down histhroat, and repeated the operation, just as she had done three weeksbefore. 

[12] Mr. E. H. Eames reports (in _The Auk_, vol. Vii. P. 287) that, ondissecting a humming-bird, about two days old, he found sixteen youngspiders in its throat, and a pultaceous mass of the same in its stomach. 

For at least two days longer, as I believe, the faithful creaturecontinued her loving ministrations, although I failed to detect her inthe act. Then, on the 1st of August, as I sat on the piazza, I saw herfor the last time. The honeysuckle vine had served her well, and stillbore half a dozen scattered blossoms, as if for her especial benefit. She hovered before them, one by one, and in another instant was gone. May the Fates be kind to her, and to her children after her, to thelatest generation! Our intercourse had lasted for eight weeks, --wantingone day, --and it was fitting that it should end where it had begun, atthe sign of the honeysuckle. 

The absence of the father bird for all this time, though I havementioned it but casually, was of course a subject of continual remark. How was it to be explained? My own opinion is, reluctant as I have beento reach it, that such absence or desertion--by whatever name it may becalled--is the general habit of the male ruby-throat. Upon this point Ishall have some things to say in a subsequent paper. 

THE MALE RUBY-THROAT. 

 "Your fathers, where are they?"--ZECHARIAH i. 5. 

While keeping daily watch upon a nest of our common humming-bird, in thesummer of 1890, I was struck with the persistent absence of the head ofthe family. As week after week elapsed, this feature of the case excitedmore and more remark, and I turned to my out-of-door journal for suchmeagre notes as it contained of a similar nest found five years before. From these it appeared that at that time, also, the father bird wasmissing. Could such truancy be habitual with the male ruby-throat? I hadnever supposed that any of our land birds were given to behaving in thisill-mannered, unnatural way, and the matter seemed to call forinvestigation. 

My first resort was, of course, to books. The language of Wilson andAudubon is somewhat ambiguous, but may fairly be taken as implying themale bird's presence throughout the period of nidification. Nuttallspeaks explicitly to the same effect, though with no specification ofthe grounds on which his statement is based. The later systematicbiographers--Brewer, Samuels, Minot, and the authors of New England BirdLife--are silent in respect to the point. Mr. Burroughs, in Wake-Robin, mentions having found two nests, and gives us to understand that he sawonly the female birds. Mrs. Treat, on the other hand, makes the father aconspicuous figure about the single nest concerning which she reports. Mr. James Russell Lowell, too, speaks of watching both parents as theyfed the young ones: "The mother always alighted, while the father asuniformly remained upon the wing. "

So far, then, the evidence was decidedly, not to say decisively, in themasculine ruby-throat's favor. But while I had no desire to make out acase against him, and in fact was beginning to feel half ashamed of myuncomplimentary surmises, I was still greatly impressed with what my owneyes had seen, or rather had not seen, and thought it worth while topush the inquiry a little further. 

I wrote first to Mr. E. S. Hoar, in whose garden Mr. Brewster had madethe observations cited in my previous article. He replied with greatkindness, and upon the point in question said: "I watched the nest twoor three times a day, from a time before the young were hatched tillthey departed; and _now you mention it_, it occurs to me that I neverdid see the male, but only the white-breasted female. "

Next I sought the testimony of professional ornithologists; and here myworst suspicions seemed in a fair way to be confirmed, although thegreater number of my correspondents were unhappily compelled to plead awant of knowledge. Dr. A. K. Fisher had found, as he believed, not lessthan twenty-five nests, and to the best of his recollection had neverseen a male bird near one of them after it was completed. He had watchedthe female feeding her young, and, when the nests contained eggs, hadwaited for hours on purpose to secure the male, but always withoutresult. 

Mr. William Brewster wrote: "I have found, or seen _in situ_, twelvehummers' nests, all in Massachusetts. Of these I took nine, afterwatching each a short time, probably not more than an hour or two in anycase. Of the remaining three, I visited one three or four times atvarious hours of the day, another only twice, the third but once. Two ofthe three contained young when found. The third was supposed to haveyoung, also, but could not be examined without danger to its contents. Ihave never seen a male hummer anywhere near a nest, either before orafter the eggs were laid, but, as you will gather from the above briefdata, my experience has not been extensive; and in the old days, whenmost of my nests were found, the methods of close watching now in voguewere unthought of. In the light of the testimony to which you refer, Ishould conclude, with you, that the male hummer must occasionally assistin the care of the young, but I am very sure that this is not usually, if indeed often, the case. "

Mr. H. W. Henshaw reported a similar experience. He had found four nestsof the ruby-throat, but had seen no male about any of them afternidification was begun. "I confess, " he says, "that I had never thoughtof his absence as being other than accidental, and hence have never madeany observations directly upon the point; so that my testimony is ofcomparatively little value. In at least one instance, when the femalewas building her nest, I remember to have seen the male fly with her andperch near by, while she was shaping the nest, and then fly off with herafter more material. I don't like to believe that the little villainleaves the entire task of nidification to his better half (we may wellcall her better, if he does); but my memory is a blank so far astestimony affirmative of his devotion is concerned. " Mr. Henshaw recallsan experience with a nest of the Rivoli humming-bird (_Eugenesfulgens_), in Arizona, --a nest which he spent two hours in getting. "Iwas particularly anxious to secure the male, but did not obtain aglimpse of him, and I remember thinking that it was very strange. " Headds that Mr. C. W. Richmond has told him of finding a nest and takingthe eggs without seeing the father bird, and sums up his own view of thematter thus:--

"Had any one asked me offhand, 'Does the male hummer help the femalefeed the young?' I am quite sure I should have answered, 'Of course hedoes. ' As the case now stands, however, I am inclined to believe him adepraved wretch. "

Up to this point the testimony of my correspondents had been unanimous, but the unanimity was broken by Dr. C. Hart Merriam, who remembers thaton one occasion his attention was called to a nest (it proved to containa set of fresh eggs) by the flying of both its owners about his head;and by Mr. W. A. Jeffries, who in one case saw the father bird in thevicinity of a nest occupied by young ones, although he did not see himfeed or visit them. This nest, Mr. Jeffries says, was one of five whichhe has found. In the four other instances no male birds were observed, notwithstanding three of the nests were taken, --a tragedy which might beexpected to bring the father of the family upon the scene, if he wereanywhere within call. 

In view of the foregoing evidence, it appears to me reasonably certainthat the male ruby-throat, as a rule, takes no considerable part in thecare of eggs and young. The testimony covers not less than fifty nests. Some of them were watched assiduously, nearly all were examined, and thegreater part were actually taken; yet of the fifty or more maleproprietors, only two were seen; and concerning these exceptions, it isto be noticed that in one case the eggs were just laid, and in theother, while the hungry nestlings must have kept the mother birdextremely busy, her mate was not observed to do anything in the way oflightening her labors. 

As against this preponderance of negative testimony, and incorroboration of Mr. Lowell's and Mrs. Treat's circumstantialnarratives, there remain to be mentioned the fact communicated to me byMr. Hoar, that a townsman of his had at different times had two hummers'nests in his grounds, the male owners of which were constant in theirattentions, and the following very interesting and surprising storyreceived from Mr. C. C. Darwin, of Washington, through the kindness ofMr. Henshaw. Some years ago, as it appears, a pair of ruby-throats builta nest within a few feet of Mr. Darwin's window and a little below it, so that they could be watched without fear of disturbing them. Heremembers perfectly that the male fed the female during the entireperiod of incubation, "pumping the food down her throat. " All this time, so far as could be discovered, the mother did not once leave the nest(in wonderful contrast with my bird of a year ago), and of course thefather was never seen to take her place. Mr. Darwin cannot say that themale ever fed the young ones, but is positive that he was frequentlyabout the nest after they were hatched. While they were still too youngto fly, a gardener, in pruning the tree, sawed off the limb on which thenest was built. Mr. Darwin's mother rescued the little ones and fed themwith sweetened water, and on her son's return at night the branch wasfixed in place again, as best it could be, by means of wires. Meanwhilethe old birds had disappeared, having given up their children for lost;and it was not until the third day that they came back, --by chance, perhaps, or out of affection for the spot. At once they resumed the careof their offspring, who by this time, it is safe to say, had become moreor less surfeited with sugar and water, and gladly returned to a dietof spiders and other such spicy and hearty comestibles. 

Mr. Henshaw, with an evident satisfaction which does him honor, remarksupon the foregoing story as proving that, whatever may be true of malehummers in general, there are at least some faithful Benedicts amongthem. For myself, indeed, as I have already said, I hold no briefagainst the ruby-throat, and, notwithstanding the seemingly unfavorableresult of my investigation into his habits as a husband and father, itis by no means clear to me that we must call him hard names. Beforedoing that, we ought to know not only that he stays away from his wifeand children, but _why_ he stays away; whether he is really a shirk, orabsents himself unselfishly and for their better protection, at the riskof being misunderstood and traduced. My object in this paper is to raisethat question about him, rather than to blacken his character; in aword, to call attention to him, not as a reprobate, but as a mystery. Tothat end I return to the story of my own observations. 

In last month's article[13] I set forth somewhat in detail (if theadverb seem inappropriate, as I fear it will, I can only commend it tothe reader's mercy) the closeness of our watch upon the nest theredescribed. For more than a month it was under the eye of one or other oftwo men almost from morning till night. We did not once detect thepresence of the father, and yet I shall never feel absolutely sure thathe did not one day pay us a visit. I mention the circumstance for whatit may be worth, and because, whatever its import, it was at least alively spectacle. It occurred upon this wise: On the 19th of July, theday when the first of the young birds bade good-by to its cradle, I hadgone into the house, leaving my fellow-observer in the orchard, with acharge to call me if anything noteworthy should happen. I was hardlyseated before he whistled loudly, and I hastened out again. Anotherhummer had been there, he said, and the mother had been chasing him (orher) about in a frantic manner; and even while we were talking, thescene was reënacted. The stranger had returned, and the two birds wereshooting hither and thither through the trees, the widow squeaking andspreading her tail at a prodigious rate. The new-comer did not alight(it couldn't), and there was no determining its sex. It may have beenthe recreant husband and father, unable longer to deny himself a look athis bairns, --who knows? Or it may have been some bachelor or widower whohad come a-wooing. One thing is certain, --husband, lover, or inquisitivestranger, he had no encouragement to come again. 

[13] These two humming-bird papers were printed in consecutive numbersof _The Atlantic Monthly_, June and July, 1891. 

As if to heighten the dramatic interest of our studies (I come now tothe promised mystery), we had already had the singular good fortune tofind a male humming-bird who seemed to be stationed permanently in atall ash-tree, standing by itself in a recent clearing, at a distance ofa mile or more from our widow's orchard. Day after day, for at least afortnight (from the 2d to the 15th of July), he remained there. One orboth of us went almost daily to call upon him, and, as far as we couldmake out, he seldom absented himself from his post for five minutestogether! What was he doing? At first, in spite of his sex, it was hardnot to believe that his nest was in the tree; and to satisfy himself, mycompanion "shinned" it, schoolboy fashion, --a frightful piece of work, which put me out of breath even to look at it, --while I surveyed thebranches from all sides through an opera-glass. All was without avail. Nothing was to be seen, and it was as good as certain, the branchesbeing well separated, and easily overlooked, that there was nothingthere. 

Four days later I set out alone, to try my luck with the riddle. As Ientered the clearing, the hummer was seen at his post, and my suspicionsfastened upon a small wild apple-tree, perhaps twenty rods distant. Iwent to examine it, and presently the bird followed me. He perched inits top, but seemed not to be jealous of my proximity, and soon returnedto his customary position; but when I came back to the apple-tree, aftera visit to a clump of oaks at the top of the hill, he again came over. Icould find no sign of a nest, however, nor did the female show herself, as she pretty confidently might have been expected to do had her nestbeen near by. After this I went to the edge of the wood, where I couldkeep an eye upon both trees without being myself conspicuous. Thesentinel spent most of his time in the ash, visiting the apple-tree butonce, and then for a few minutes only. I stayed an hour and a half, andcame away no wiser than before. The nest, if nest there was, must beelsewhere, I believed. But where? And what was the object of the male'swatch?

My curiosity was fully roused. I had never seen or heard of such conducton the part of any bird, and the next forenoon I spent another hour anda half in the clearing. The hummer was at his post, as he always was. Wehad never to wait for him. Soon after my arrival he flew to theapple-tree, the action seeming to have no connection with my presence. Presently he went back to the ash, and drove out of it two intrudingbirds. A moment later two humming-birds were there, and in anothermoment they flew away in a direction opposite to the apple-tree. Here, then, was a real clue. The birds were probably our sentinel and hismate. I made after them with all speed, pausing under such scatteredtrees as had been left standing in that quarter. Nothing was to befound, and on my return there sat the male, provokingly, at the top ofthe apple-tree, whence he soon returned to the ash. A warbler enteredthe tree, and after a while ventured upon the branch where the hummerwas sitting. Instead of driving her away he took wing himself, and paidanother visit to the apple-tree, --a visit of perhaps five minutes, --atthe end of which he went back to the ash. Then two kingbirds happened toalight in the apple-tree. At once the hummer came dashing over andordered them off, and in his excitement dropped for a moment into theleafy top of a birch sapling, --a most unnatural proceeding, --after whichhe resumed his station in the ash. What could I make of all this?Apparently he claimed the ownership of both trees, and yet his nest wasin neither! He sat motionless for five minutes at a time upon certaindead twigs of the ash, precisely as our female was accustomed to sit inher apple-tree. For at least seven days he had been thus occupied. Wherewas his mate? On the edge of the wood, perhaps. But, if so, why did Ihear nothing from her, as I passed up and down? Again my hour and a halfhad been spent to no purpose. 

Not yet discouraged, I returned the next morning. For the three quartersof an hour that I remained, the hummer was not once out of the ash-treefor five minutes. I am not sure that he left it for five minutesaltogether. As usual, he perched almost without exception on one orother of two dead limbs, while a similar branch, on the opposite side ofthe trunk, he was never seen to touch. A Maryland yellow-throat alightedon one of his two branches and began to sing, but had repeated hisstrain only three or four times before the hummer, who had been absentfor the moment, darted upon him and put him to flight. A littleafterward, a red-eyed vireo alighted on his other favorite perch, and heshowed no resentment. The day before, a warbler had sat on the samebranch which the yellow-throat now invaded, and the hummer not only didnot offer to molest him, but flew away himself. These inconsistenciesmade it hard to draw any inference from his behavior. During my wholestay he did not once go to the apple-tree, although, for want ofanything better to do, I again scrutinized its branches. This time I_was_ discouraged, and gave over the search. His secret, whatever itmight be, was "too dear for my possessing. " But my fellow-observer keptup his visits, as I have said, and the hummer remained faithful to histask as late as July 15th, at least. 

Some readers may be prompted to ask, as one of my correspondents askedat the time, whether the mysterious sentry may not have been the mate ofour home bird. I see no ground for such a suspicion. The two places wereat least a mile apart, as I have already mentioned, and woods and hills, to say nothing of the village, lay between. If he was our bird's mate, his choice of a picket station was indeed an enigma. He might almost aswell have been on Mount Washington. Nor can I believe that he had anyconnection with a nest found two months afterward in a pitch-pine grovewithin a quarter of a mile, more or less, of his clearing. It wasundoubtedly a nest of that season, and might have been his for aught Iknow, so far as the mere fact of distance was concerned; but here againan intervening wood must have cut off all visual communication. If hismate and nest were not within view from his ash-tree perch, what couldbe the meaning of his conduct? Without some specific constrainingmotive, no bird in his normal condition was likely to stay in one treehour after hour, day after day, and week after week, so that one couldnever come in sight of it without seeing him. But even if his nest wasin the immediate neighborhood, the closeness and persistency of hislookout are still, to my mind, an absolute mystery. Our female bird, whether she had eggs or offspring, made nothing of absenting herself bythe half hour; but this male hardly gave himself time to eat hisnecessary food; indeed, I often wondered how he kept himself alive. Issuch a course of action habitual with male hummers? If so, had ourseemingly widowed or deserted mother a husband, who somewhere, unseen byus, was standing sentry after the same heroic, self-denying fashion?These and all similar questions I must leave to more fortunateobservers, or postpone to a future summer. Meantime, my judgment as tothe male ruby-throat's character remains in suspense. It is not plain tome whether we are to call him the worst or the best of husbands. 

ROBIN ROOSTS. 

 "From every side they hurried in, Rubbing their sleepy eyes. " KEATS. 

Of all the nearly eight hundred species of North American birds, therobin is without question the one most generally known. Its greatcommonness and wide distribution have something to do with this fact, but can hardly be said to account for it altogether. The red-eyed vireohas almost as extensive a range, and at least in New England is possiblymore numerous; but except among ornithologists it remains a stranger, even to country-bred people. The robin owes its universal recognitionpartly to its size and perfectly distinctive dress, partly to its earlyarrival in the spring, but especially to the nature of its nesting andfeeding habits, which bring it constantly under every one's eye. 

It would seem impossible, at this late day, to say anything new aboutso familiar a bird; but the robin has one interesting and remarkablehabit, to which there is no allusion in any of our systematicornithological treatises, so far as I am aware, although many individualobservers must have taken notice of it. I mean the habit of roosting atnight in large flocks, while still on its breeding grounds, and longbefore the close of the breeding season. [14]

[14] Mr. William Brewster has been aware of this habit for twenty-fiveyears, but, like myself, has never seen it mentioned in print. Hedevotes to it a paper in _The Auk_ for October, 1890, to which I amhappy to refer readers who may wish a more thorough discussion of thematter than I have been able to give. My own paper was printed at thesame time, in _The Atlantic Monthly_, and had been accepted by theeditor before I knew of Mr. Brewster's intention to write. References toa roost in Belmont, Mass. , discovered by Mr. Brewster six years before, are frequent in the following pages. 

Toward the end of summer, two years ago, I saw what looked like a dailypassage back and forth of small companies of robins. A friend, living inanother town, had noticed similar occurrences, and more than once wediscussed the subject; agreeing that such movements were probably notconnected in any way with the grand southward migration, which, so faras we could judge, had not yet commenced, but that the birds must beflying to and from some nightly resort. The flocks were small, however, and neither of us suspected the full significance of what we had seen. 

On the 19th of July, 1889, the same friend informed me that one of ourCambridge ornithologists had found a robin roost in that city, --a woodin which great numbers of birds congregated every night. This led me tokeep a sharper eye upon my own robins, whom I had already noticedrepeating their previous year's manoeuvres. Every evening, shortlybefore and after sunset, they were to be seen flying, now singly, now bytwos and threes, or even by the half dozen, evidently on their way tosome rendezvous. I was suspicious of a rather distant hill-top coveredwith pine-trees; but before I could make it convenient to visit theplace at the proper hour, I discovered, quite unexpectedly, that theroost was close by the very road up and down which I had been walking;an isolated piece of swampy wood, a few acres in extent, mostly a densegrowth of gray birches and swamp white oaks, but with a sprinkling ofmaples and other deciduous trees. It is bounded on the further side by awet meadow, and at the eastern end by a little ice-pond, with adwelling-house and other buildings beside it, all within a stone's throwof the wood. 

This discovery was made on the evening of July 25th, and I at oncecrossed a narrow field between the wood and the highway, and pushed inafter the birds. It was too dark for me to see what was going on, but asI brushed against the close branches the robins set up a livelycackling, and presently commenced flying from tree to tree before me asI advanced, though plainly with no intention of deserting theirquarters. The place was full of them, but I could form no estimate oftheir number. 

On the following evening I took my stand upon a little knoll commandingthe western end of the wood. According to my notes, the birds began toarrive about sunset, --but this was pretty certainly an error, --andthough I did not undertake an exact count until the flight was mainlyover, it seemed likely that at least three hundred passed in at thatpoint. This would have made the total number twelve hundred, orthereabout, on the assumption that my outlook had covered a quarter ofthe circuit. After the flight ceased I went into the wood, and from thecommotion overhead it was impossible not to believe that such acalculation must be well within the truth. 

The next day was rainy, but on the evening of the 28th I stood by theshore of the pond, on the eastern side of the wood, and made as accuratea count as possible of the arrivals at that point. Unfortunately I wastoo late; the robins were already coming. But in fifty minutes, between6. 40 and 7. 30, I counted 1072 birds. They appeared singly and in smallflocks, and it was out of the question for me to make sure of them all;while I was busy with a flock on the right, there was no telling howmany might be passing in on the left. If my observations comprehended aquarter of the circle, and if the influx was equally great on the othersides (an assumption afterward disproved), then it was safe to set thewhole number of birds at five thousand or more. Of the 1072 actuallyseen, 797 came before the sunset gun was fired, --a proportion somewhatlarger than it would have been had the sky been clear. 

On the afternoon of the 29th I again counted the arrivals at the easternend; but though I set out, as I thought, in good season, I found myselfonce more behind time. At 6. 30 robins were already dropping in, notwithstanding the sky was cloudless. In the first five minuteseighteen birds appeared; at sunset 818 had been counted; and at 7. 30, when I came away, the figures stood at 1267. "The robins came morerapidly than last night, " I wrote in my notebook, "and for much of thetime I could keep watch of the southeastern corner only. My vision thencovered much less than a quarter of the circuit; so that if the birdscame as freely from other directions, at least five thousand must haveentered the wood between 6. 30 and 7. 30. As long as it was light theyavoided passing directly by me, going generally to the left, andslipping into the roost behind some low outlying trees; though, fortunately, in doing this they were compelled to cross a narrow patchof the illuminated western sky. I suspect that the number increases fromnight to night. Between 6. 40 and 7. 30, 1235 birds came, as comparedwith 1072 last evening. "

Two days afterward (July 31st) I went to the western end of the wood, and found the influx there much smaller than on the opposite side; but Iarrived late, and made a partial count only. After sunset 186 birds wereseen, whereas there had been 455 entries at the eastern end, two nightsbefore, during the same time. 

Thus far I had always been too late to witness the beginning of theflight. On the evening of August 1st I resolved to be in season. Ireached the border of the pond at 5. 15, and at that very moment a singlerobin flew into the wood. No others were seen for eighteen minutes, whenthree arrived together. From this time stragglers continued to appear, and at 6. 30 I had counted 176. In the next ten minutes 180 arrived; inthe next five minutes, 138. Between 6. 45 and 7, I counted 549; then, insix minutes, 217 appeared. At 7. 25, when I concluded, the figures stoodat 1533 birds. For about twenty minutes, as will be noticed, thearrivals were at the rate of thirty-six a minute. Throughout thethickest of the flight I could keep a lookout upon only one side of me, and, moreover, the gathering darkness was by that time making it moreand more difficult to see any birds except such as passed above the darktree line; and from what went on just about me, it was evident that thenumber of arrivals was increasing rather than diminishing as my countfell off. There seemed to be no good reason for doubting that at leasttwo thousand robins entered the wood at the eastern end. 

Two nights later I stationed myself in the meadow southwest of theroost. Here I counted but 935 entries. The movement appeared to be fullyas steady as on the opposite side, but as darkness came on I foundmyself at a great disadvantage; a hill occupied the background, givingme no illuminated sky to bring the birds into relief, so that I couldsee only such as passed close at hand. Of the 935 birds, 761 came beforeseven o'clock, but it was reasonably certain that the flight afterwardwas nearly or quite as great, only that I wanted light wherewith to seeit. 

On the evening of August 4th I went back to the eastern end, and as thesky was perfectly clear I hoped to make a gain upon all my previousfigures. But the fair weather was perhaps a hindrance rather than ahelp; for the robins came later than before, and more in a body, andcontinued to arrive long after it was impossible to see them. I counted1480, --53 less than on the 1st. 

I attempted no further enumeration until the 18th. Then, in an hour andten minutes, 1203 birds were seen to enter the roost at the eastern end. But they arrived more than ever in flocks, and so late that for much ofthe time I missed all except the comparatively small number that passedin my immediate vicinity. Many were flying at a great height, --havingcome from a long distance, as I inferred, --and sometimes I knew nothingof their approach till they dropped out of the sky directly over thewood. On this occasion, as well as on many others, --but chiefly duringthe latter part of the season, --it was noticeable that some of therobins appeared to be ignorant of the precise whereabouts of the roost;they flew past it at first, and then, after more or less circling about, with loud cackling, dived hurriedly into the wood. I took special noteof one fellow, who came from the south at a great altitude, and wentdirectly over the wood. When he was well past it he suddenly pulledhimself up, as if fancying he had caught a signal. After a moment ofhesitation he proceeded on his northerly course, but had not gone farbefore he met half a dozen birds flying south. Perhaps he asked them theway. At all events, he wheeled about and joined them, and in half aminute was safe in port. He had heard of the roost, apparently (how andwhere?), but had not before visited it. 

This count of August 18th was the last for nearly a month, but I find aminute of August 27th stating that, while walking along the highway onthe westerly side of the roost, --the side that had always been the leastpopulous, --I saw within less than two minutes (as I calculated the time)more than eighty robins flying toward the wood. Up to this date, then, there could not have been any considerable falling off in the size ofthe gathering. Indeed, from my friend's observations upon the Belmontroost, to be mentioned later, it seems well-nigh certain that it wasstill upon the increase. 

Toward the close of August I became interested in the late singing ofseveral whippoorwills, and so was taken away from the robins' haunt atthe hour of sunset. Then, from the 5th to the 13th of September, I wasabsent from home. On the night of my return I went to the shore of thepond, where, on the 1st of August, I had counted 1533 entries. Theweather was favorable, and I arrived in good season and remained tillthe stars came out, but I counted only 137 robins! It was plain that thegreat majority of the congregation had departed. 

As I have said, there was little to be learned by going into the woodafter the robins were assembled. Nevertheless I used frequently tointrude upon them, especially as friends or neighbors, who had heard ofmy "discovery, " were desirous to see the show. The prodigious cacklingand rustling overhead seemed to make a deep impression upon all suchvisitors, while, for myself, I should have had no difficulty increditing the statement had I been told that _ten thousand_ robins werein the treetops. One night I took two friends to the place after it wasreally dark. All was silent as we felt our way among the trees, till, suddenly, one of the trio struck a match and kindled a blaze of drytwigs. The smoke and flame speedily waked the sleepers; but even thenthey manifested no disposition to be driven out. 

For curiosity's sake, I paid one early morning visit to the roost, onthe 30th of July. It would be worth while, I thought, to see how muchmusic so large a chorus would make, as well as to note the manner of itsdispersion. To tell the truth, I hoped for something spectacular, --agrand burst of melody, and then a pouring forth of a dense, uncountablearmy of robins. I arrived about 3. 40 (it was still hardly light enoughto show the face of the watch), and found everything quiet. Pretty soonthe robins commenced cackling. At 3. 45 a song sparrow sang, and at thesame moment I saw a robin fly out of the wood. Five minutes later arobin sang; at 3. 55 another one flew past me; at four o'clock a few ofthe birds were in song, but the effect was not in any waypeculiar, --very much as if two or three had been singing in the ordinarymanner. They dispersed precisely as I had seen them gather: now asingle bird, now two or three, now six, or even ten. A casual passeralong the road would have remarked nothing out of the common course. They flew low, --not as if they were starting upon any prolongedflight, --and a goodly number alighted for a little in the field where Iwas standing. Shortly before sunrise I went into the wood and found itdeserted. The robin is one of our noisiest birds. Who would havebelieved that an assembly of thousands could break up so quietly? Theirbehavior in this regard may possibly have been influenced by prudentialconsiderations. I have said that many of them seemingly took pains toapproach the roost indirectly and under cover. On the westerly side, forexample, they almost invariably followed a line of bushes and treeswhich runs toward the roost along the edge of the meadow, even thoughthey were obliged sharply to alter their course in so doing. 

All this time I had been in correspondence with my friend beforereferred to, who was studying a similar roost, [15]--in Belmont, --whichproved to be more populous than mine, as was to be expected, perhaps, the surrounding country being less generally wooded. It was a mile ormore from his house, which was so situated that he could sit upon hispiazza in the evening and watch the birds streaming past. On the 11th ofAugust he counted here 556 robins, of which 336 passed within fiveminutes. On the 28th he counted 1180, of which 456 passed within fiveminutes, --ninety-one a minute! On the 2d of September, from a knollnearer the roost, he counted 1883 entries. 

[15] This roost was discovered by Mr. William Brewster, in August, 1884, as already mentioned. 

This gathering, like the one in Melrose, was greatly depleted by themiddle of September. "Only 109 robins flew over the place to-night, " mycorrespondent wrote on the 25th, "against 538 September 4th, 838 August30th, and 1180 August 28th. " Two evenings later (September 27th) he wentto the neighborhood of the roost, and counted 251 birds, --instead of1883 on the 2d. Even so late as October 9th, however, the wood was notentirely deserted. During the last month or so of its occupancy, thenumber of the birds was apparently subject to sudden and widefluctuations, and it seemed not unlikely that travelers from the northwere making a temporary use of the well-known resort. It would not besurprising if the same were found to be true in the spring. In April, 1890, I saw some things which pointed, as I thought, in this direction, but I was then too closely occupied to follow the matter. 

How early in the season does this nightly flocking begin? This questionoften presented itself. It was only the middle of July when theCambridge roost was found in full operation, though at that time manyrobins must still have had family duties, and some were probablybuilding new nests. Next summer, we said, we would try to mark thebeginnings of the congregation. 

My own plans to this end came near being thwarted. In December I wasdismayed to see the owner of the wood cutting it down. Happily some kindpower stayed his hand when not more than a third of the mischief wasdone, and on the 29th of June, 1890, while strolling homeward along thehighway, listening to the distant song of a veery, I noticed within fiveor ten minutes seventeen robins making toward the old rendezvous. Onthe following evening I stood beside the ice-pond and saw one hundredand ninety-two robins enter the wood. The flight had begun before myarrival, and was not entirely over when I came away. Evidently severalhundreds of the birds were already passing their nights in company. Inmy ignorance, I was surprised at the early date; but when I communicatedmy discovery to the Belmont observer, he replied at once that he hadnoticed a movement of the same kind on the 11th of June. The birds, about a dozen, were seen passing his house. 

Thinking over the matter, I began to ask myself--though I hesitate aboutmaking such a confession--whether it might not be the adult males whothus unseasonably went off to bed in a crowd, leaving their mates tocare for eggs and little ones. At this very moment, as it happened, Iwas watching with lively sympathy the incessant activities of a femalehumming-bird, who appeared to be bringing up a family (two very hungrynestlings), with no husband to lift a finger for her assistance; and thesight, as I fear, put me into a cynical mood. Male robins were probablylike males in general, --lovers of clubs and shirkers of home duties. Indeed, a friend who went into the roost with me, one evening, remarkedupon the continual cackling in the treetops as "a very social sound;"and upon my saying something about a sewing circle, he answered, quiteseriously, "No, it is rather like a gentleman's club. " But it would havebeen unscientific, as well as unchristian, to entertain an hypothesislike this without putting its soundness to some kind of test. I adoptedthe only plan that occurred to me, --short of rising at half past twoo'clock in the morning to see the birds disperse. I entered the woodjust before the assemblage was due (this was on the 9th of July), andtook a sheltered position on the eastern edge, where, as the robins flewby me, or alighted temporarily in the trees just across the brook, theywould have the sunlight upon their breasts. Here, as often as one camesufficiently near and in a sufficiently favorable light, I noted whetherit was an adult, or a streaked, spotted bird of the present season. As amatter of course, the number concerning which this point could bepositively determined under such conditions was very small, --onlyfifty-seven altogether. Of these, forty-nine were surely birds of thepresent summer, and only eight unmistakable adult males. If any adultfemales came in, they passed among the unidentified and uncounted. [16] Iwas glad I had made the test. As a kind-hearted cynic (I confess tobeing nothing worse than this), I was relieved to find my misanthropic, or, to speak more exactly, my misornithic, notions ill founded. As forthe sprinkling of adult males, they may have been, as a "friend andfellow woodlander" suggests, birds which, for one reason or another, hadtaken up with the detestable opinion that "marriage is a failure. "

[16] A week later, my correspondent reported a similar state of thingsat the Belmont roost. "A very large proportion of the birds arespotted-breasted young of the year, but occasionally I have detected anadult male. " He examined the birds at near range, and at rest, afterthey had come into the roost in the earlier part of the evening. 

During the month of July, 1890, I made frequent counts of the entries atthe eastern end of the roost, thinking thus to ascertain in a generalway the rate at which its population increased. On the whole, the growthproved to be fairly steady, in spite of some mysterious fluctuations, aswill be seen by the following table:--

 July 3 247 " 5 383 " 6 356 " 10 765 " 12 970 " 14 1120 " 16 1064 " 17 1333 " 19 1584 " 22 1520 " 23 1453 " 27 2314

After July 6th all the enumerations were made with the help of anotherman, though we stood side by side, and covered no more ground than I hadhitherto attempted to compass alone. The figures of the 27th were far inexcess of any obtained in 1889, and for a day I was disposed to takeseriously the suggestion of a friend that some other roost must havebeen broken up and its members turned into the Melrose gathering. But onthe evening of the 28th I tried a count by myself, and made only 1517birds! The conditions were favorable, and the robins came, as they hadcome the night before, in flocks, almost in continuous streams. Thefigures had fallen off, not because there were fewer birds, but becauseI was unable to count them. They were literally too many for me. Thedifficulties of the work, it should be explained, are greatly enhancedby the fact that at the very corner where the influx is largest none ofthe low-flying birds can be seen except for a second or two, as theydart across a bit of sky between the roost and an outlying wood. Tosecure anything like a complete census, this point must be watchedcontinuously; and meantime birds are streaming in at the other cornerand shooting over the distracted enumerator's head, and perhaps droppingout of the sky. I conclude, therefore, not that the roost had increasedin population, but that my last year's reckoning was even moreinadequate than I then supposed. Even with two pairs of eyes, it isinevitable that multitudes of birds should pass in unnoticed, especiallyduring the latter half of the flight. I have never had an assistant or alooker-on to whom this was not perfectly apparent. 

As I stood night after night watching the robins stream into this littlewood, --no better, surely, than many they had passed on their way, --Iasked myself again and again what could be the motive that drew themtogether. The flocking of birds for a long journey, or in the winterseason, is less mysterious. In times of danger and distress there is nodoubt a feeling of safety in a crowd. But robins cannot be afraid of thedark. Why, then, should not each sleep upon its own feeding grounds, alone, or with a few neighbors for company, instead of flying two orthree miles, more or less, twice a day, simply for the sake of passingthe night in a general roost?

Such questions we must perhaps be content to ask without expecting ananswer. By nature the robin is strongly gregarious, and though hispresent mode of existence does not permit him to live during the summerin close communities, --as marsh wrens do, for example, and some of ourswallows, --his ancestral passion for society still asserts itself atnightfall. Ten or twelve years ago, when I was bird-gazing in Boston, there were sometimes a hundred robins at once about the Common andGarden, in the time of the vernal migration. By day they were scatteredover the lawns; but at sunset they gathered habitually in two or threecontiguous trees, not far from the Frog Pond and the Beacon Street Mall(I wonder whether the same trees are still in use for the same purpose), where, after much noise and some singing, they retired to rest, --ifgoing to sleep in a leafless treetop can be called retiring. 

Whatever the origin and reason of this roosting habit, I have no doubtthat it is universal. Middlesex County birds cannot be in any respectpeculiar. Whoever will keep a close eye upon the robins in hisneighborhood, in July and August, will find them at sunset flocking tosome general sleeping-place. 

It would be interesting to know how far they travel at such times. Thefact that so many hundreds were to be seen at a point more than a mileaway from the Belmont roost is significant; but I am not aware that anyone has yet made a study of this part of the subject. My own birdsseemed to come, as a rule, by easy stages. In the long narrow valleyeast of the roost, where I oftenest watched their approach, theyfollowed habitually--not invariably--a zigzag route, crossing the meadowdiagonally, and for the most part alighting for a little upon a certainwooded hill, whence they took a final flight to their nightly haven, perhaps a quarter of a mile beyond. Farther down the valley, a mile ormore from the roost, birds were to be seen flying toward it, but I foundno place at which a general movement could be observed and large numberscounted. 

As to the size of these nightly gatherings, it seems wisest not toguess; though, treating the subject in this narrative manner, I have notscrupled to mention, simply as a part of the story, some of my temporarysurmises. What I am told of the Belmont wood is true also of the one inMelrose: its shape and situation are such as to make an accurate censusimpossible, no matter how many "enumerators" might be employed. It couldbe surrounded easily enough, but it would be out of the question todivide the space among the different men so that no two of them shouldcount the same birds. At present it can only be said that the robins arenumbered by thousands; in some cases, perhaps, by tens of thousands. 

THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS. 

 "The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing. " OMAR KHAYYÁM. 

By the first of August the bird-lover's year is already on the wane. Inthe chestnut grove, where a month ago the wood thrush, the rose-breastedgrosbeak, and the scarlet tanager were singing, the loiterer now hearsnothing but the wood pewee's pensive whistle and the sharp monotony ofthe red-eyed vireo. The thrasher is silent in the berry pasture, and thebobolink in the meadow. The season of jollity is over. Orioles, to besure, after a month of silence, again have fits of merry fifing. Thefield sparrow and the song sparrow are still in tune, and the meadowlark whistles, though rarely. Catbirds still practice their feebleimprovisations and mimicries in the thickets along the brooksides asevening comes on, and of the multitudes of robins a few are certain tobe heard warbling before the day is over. Goldfinches have grownsuddenly numerous, or so it seems, and not infrequently one of thembreaks out in musical canary-like twitterings. On moonlight evenings thetremulous, haunting cry of the screech-owl comes to your ears, alwaysfrom far away, and if you walk through the chestnut grove aforesaid inthe daytime you may chance to catch his faint, vibratory, tree-frogwhistle. For myself, I never enter the grove without glancing into thedry top of a certain tall tree, to see whether the little rascal issitting in his open door. More than half the time he is there, andalways with his eye on me. What an air he has!--like a judge on thebench! If I were half as wise as he looks, these essays of mine wouldnever more be dull. For his and all other late summer music let us bethankful; but it is true, nevertheless, that the year is waning. Howshort it has been! Only the other day the concert opened, and alreadythe performers are uneasy to be gone. They have crowded so much into sobrief a space! The passion of a life-time into the quarter of a year!They are impatient to be gone, I say; but who knows how many of themare gone already? Where are the blue golden-winged warblers that sangdaily on the edge of the wood opposite my windows, so that I listened tothem at my work? I have heard nothing of their rough _dsee, dsee_ sincethe 21st of June, and in all that time have seen them but once--a singlebird, a youngling of the present year, stumbled upon by accident whilepushing my way through a troublesome thicket on the first day of August. Who knows, I say, how many such summer friends have already left us? Anodd coincidence, however, warns me at this very moment that too much isnot to be made of merely negative experiences; for even while I waspenciling the foregoing sentence about the blue golden-wing there camethrough the open window the hoarse upward-sliding chant of his closeneighbor, the prairie warbler. I have not heard that sound before sincethe 6th of July, and it is now the 22d of August. The singers had notgone, I knew; I saw several of them (and beautiful creatures they are!)a few days ago among the pitch pines; but why did that fellow, afterbeing dumb for six or seven weeks, pipe up at that precise moment, asif to punctuate my ruminations with an interrogation point? Does he likethis dog-day morning, with its alternate shower and sunshine, and itsconstant stickiness and heat? In any case I was glad to hear him, thoughI cannot in the spirit of veracity call him a good singer. Whist! Theregoes an oriole, a gorgeous creature, flashing from one elm to another, and piping in his happiest manner as he flies. It might be the middle ofMay, to judge from his behavior. _He_ likes dog-day weather, there canbe no question of that, however the rest of the world may grumble. 

This is a time when one sees many birds, but few species. Bluebirds areseveral times as abundant as in June. The air is sweet with their callsat this moment, and once in a while some father of the flock lets hishappiness run over in song. One cannot go far now without finding theroad full of chipping sparrows, springing up in their pretty, characteristic way, and letting the breeze catch them. The fences andwayside apple-trees are lively with kingbirds and phoebes. I amalready watching the former with a kind of mournful interest. In tendays, or some such matter, we shall have seen the last of their saucyantics. Gay tyrants! They are among the first birds of whom I canconfidently say, "They are gone;" and they seem as wide-awake when theygo as when they come. Being a man, I regret their departure; but if Iwere a crow, I think I should be for observing the 31st of August as aday of annual jubilee. 

A few years ago, in September, I saw the white-breasted swallowscongregated in the Ipswich dunes, --a sight never to be forgotten. On themorning of the 9th, the fourth day of our visit, a considerableflock--but no more, perhaps, than we had been seeing daily--cameskimming over the marshes and settled upon a sand-bar in the river, darkening it in patches. At eight o'clock, when we took the stragglingroad out of the hills, a good many--there might be a thousand, Iguessed--sat, upon the fence wires, as if resting. We walked inland, andon our return, at noon, found, as my notes of the day express it, "aninnumerable host, thousands upon thousands, " about the landward side ofthe dunes. Fences and haycocks were covered. Multitudes were on theground, --in the bed of the road, about the bare spots in the marsh, andon the gray faces of the hills. Other multitudes were in the bushes andlow trees, literally loading them. Every few minutes a detachment wouldrise into the air like a cloud, and anon settle down again. As we stoodgazing at the spectacle, my companion began chirping at a youngster whosat near him on a post, as one might chirp to a caged canary. The effectwas magical. The bird at once started toward him, others followed, andin a few seconds hundreds were flying about our heads. Round and roundthey went, almost within reach, like a cloud of gnats. "Stop! stop!"cried my companion; "I am getting dizzy. " We stopped our squeakings, andthe cloud lifted; but I can see it yet. Day after day the greatconcourse remained about the hills, till on the 13th we came away andleft them. The old lighthouse keeper told me that this was their annualrendezvous. He once saw them circle for a long time above the dunes, forseveral hours, if I remember right, till, as it seemed, all stragglershad been called in from the beach, the marsh, and the outlying grassyhills. Then they mounted into the sky in a great spiral till theypassed out of sight; and for that year there were no more swallows. This, he insisted, took place in the afternoon, "from three to fouro'clock. " He was unquestionably telling a straightforward story of whathe himself had seen, but his memory may have been at fault; for I findit to be the settled opinion of those who ought to know, that swallowsmigrate by day and not by night, while the setting out of a great flocklate in the afternoon at such a height would seem to indicate anocturnal journey. Morning or evening, I would give something to witnessso imposing a start. 

The recollection of this seaside gathering raises anew in my mind thequestion why, if swallows and swifts migrate exclusively in the daytime, we so rarely see anything of them on the passage. Our Ipswich birds wereall tree swallows, --white-breasted martins, --and might fairly besupposed to have come together from a comparatively limited extent ofcountry. But beside tree swallows there are purple martins, barnswallows, sand martins, cliff swallows, and chimney swifts, all of whichbreed to the northward of us in incalculable numbers. All of them gosouth between the middle of July and the first of October. But who inNew England has ever seen any grand army of them actually on the wing?Do they straggle along so loosely as to escape particular notice? If so, what mean congregations like that in the Ipswich dunes? Or are theirgrand concerted flights taken at such an altitude as to be invisible?

On several afternoons of last September, this time in an inland country, I observed what might fairly be called a steady stream of tree swallowsflying south. Twice, while gazing up at the loose procession, I suddenlybecame aware of a close bunch of birds at a prodigious height, barelyvisible, circling about in a way to put a count out of the question, butevidently some hundreds in number. On both occasions the flock vanishedalmost immediately, and, as I believed, by soaring out of sight. Thesecond time I meant to assure myself upon this point, but my attentionwas distracted by the sudden appearance of several large hawks withinthe field of my glass, and when I looked again for the swallows theywere nowhere to be seen. Were the stragglers which I had for some timebeen watching, flying high, but well within easy ken, and these dense, hardly discernible clusters--hirundine nebulæ, as it were--were allthese but parts of one innumerable host, the main body of which waspassing far above me altogether unseen? The conjecture was one togratify the imagination. It pleased me even to think that it _might_ betrue. But it was only a conjecture, and meantime another questionpresented itself. 

When this daily procession had been noticed for two or three afternoons, it came to me as something remarkable that I saw it always in the sameplace, or rather on the same north and south line, while no matter whereelse I walked, east or west, not a swallow was visible. Had I stumbledupon a regular route of swallow migration? It looked so, surely; but Imade little account of the matter till a month afterward, when, inexactly the same place, I observed robins and bluebirds following thesame course. The robins were seen October 26th, in four flocks, succeeding each other at intervals of a few minutes, and numbering inall about 130 birds. They flew directly south, at a moderate height, and were almost certainly detachments of one body. The bluebird movementwas two days later, at about the same hour, the morning being cold, witha little snow falling. This time, too, as it happened, the flock was infour detachments. Three of these were too compact to be counted as theypassed; the fourth and largest one was in looser order and contained alittle more than a hundred individuals. In all, as well as I couldguess, there might have been about three hundred birds. They kept astraight course southward, flying high, and with the usual calls, which, in autumn at least, always have to my ears a sound of farewell. Was it amere coincidence that these swallows, bluebirds, and robins were allcrossing the valley just at this point?

This question, too, I count it safer to ask than to answer, but allobservers, I am sure, must have remarked so much as this, --that birds, even on their migrations, are subject to strong local preferences. Anornithologist of the highest repute assures me that his own experiencehas convinced him so strongly of this fact that if he shoots a raremigrant in a certain spot he makes it a rule to visit the place again ayear afterward on the same day, and, if possible, at the same hour ofthe day. Another friend sends me a very pretty story bearing upon thesame point. The bird of which he speaks, Wilson's black-cap warbler, isone of the less common of our regular Massachusetts migrants. I countmyself fortunate if I see two or three specimens during its spring orautumn passage. My correspondent shall tell the story for himself. 

"While I was making the drawings for the 'Silva, ' at the old Dwighthouse, I was in the habit of taking a turn every pleasant day in thegardens after my scanty lunch. On the 18th of May, 1887, in my dailyround I saw a Wilson's black-cap for the first time in my life. He wasin a bush of _Spiræa media_, which grew in the midst of the rockery, andallowed me to examine him at near range with no appearance of fear. Naturally I made a note of the occurrence in my diary, and talked aboutit with my family when I got home. The seeing of a new bird always makesa red-letter day. 

"The next spring, as I was looking over my notebook of the previousyear, I came upon my entry of May 18th, and thought I would be on thelookout for a black-cap on that date. Several times during the morning Ithought of the matter, and after my lunch I sauntered into the rockeryjust as I had done the year before. Imagine my start when there, in thevery same bush, was the black-cap peering at me; and I found on lookingat my watch that it was precisely the same hour, --half past one! Irubbed my eyes and pinched myself to make sure it was not a dream. No, it was all real. Of course, I thought the coincidence very singular, andtalked about it, not only with my family, but also with other people. You must remember that I had never seen the bird elsewhere. 

"Well, another spring came round. The 18th of May was fixed in my mind, and I thought many times of my black-cap (I called it _my_ black-capnow), and wondered if it would keep tryst again. On the morning of the18th, the first thing I thought of when I awoke was my black-cap. Thatforenoon I actually felt nervous as the time approached, for I felt asort of certainty (you smile) that I should see my bird again. My lunchwas hastier than usual, and I was about to sally forth when it flashedacross me--'Suppose the bird should be there again, who would believe mystory? Hold! I will have a witness. ' I called to Mr. J----, who was atwork upstairs, and after explaining what I wanted, invited him toaccompany me. We cautiously entered the rockery, and within a fewminutes there flitted from a neighboring thicket into that very Spiræabush my black-cap! I took out my watch. It was just half past one!"

My own experiences in this kind have been much less striking anddramatic than the foregoing, but I may add that a few years ago Iwitnessed the vernal migration in a new piece of country--ten miles orso from my old field--and found myself at a very considerabledisadvantage. I had never realized till then how much accustomed I hadgrown to look for particular birds in particular places, and not inother places of a quite similar character. 

I speak of witnessing a migration; but what we see for the most part(ducks and geese being excepted) is not the actual movement northwardor southward. We see the stragglers, more or less numerous, that happento have dropped out of the procession in our immediate neighborhood, --aflock of sandpipers about the edge of the pond, some sparrows by theroadside, a bevy of warblers in the wood, --and from these signs we inferthe passing of the host. 

Unlike swallows, robins, bluebirds, blackbirds, and perhaps most of thesparrows, our smaller wood birds, the warblers and vireos especially, appear to move as a general thing in mixed flocks. Whenever the woodsare full of them, as is the case now and then every spring and fall, oneof the most striking features of the show is the number of speciesrepresented. For the benefit of readers who may never have observed sucha "bird wave, " or "rush, " let me sketch hastily one which occurred a fewyears ago, on the 22d of September. As I started out at six o'clock inthe morning, in a cool northwest wind, birds were passing overhead in analmost continuous stream, following a westerly course. They were chieflywarblers, but I noted one fairly large flock of purple finches. All wereat a good height, and the whole movement had the air of a diurnalmigration. I could only conjecture that it was the end of the nocturnalflight, so far, at least, as the warblers were concerned; in otherwords, that the birds, on this particular occasion, did not finish theirnightly journey till a little after sunrise. But if many were stillflying, many others had already halted; for presently I came to a pieceof thin, stunted wood by the roadside, and found in it a highlyinteresting company. Almost the first specimen I saw was a Connecticutwarbler perched in full view and exposing himself perfectly. Red-belliednuthatches were calling, and warblers uncounted were flitting about inthe trees and underbrush. A hurried search showed black-polls, black-throated greens, blue yellow-backs, one redstart, oneblack-and-white creeper, one Blackburnian, one black-and-yellow, oneCanadian flycatcher (singing lustily), one yellow redpoll, and oneclearly-marked bay-breast. The first yellow-bellied woodpecker of theseason was hammering in a tree over my head, and not far away was thefirst flock of white-throated sparrows. After breakfast I passed theplace again, and the only bird to be found was one phoebe! Withinhalf a mile of the spot, however, I came upon at least three goodlythrongs, including scarlet tanagers (all in yellow and black), black-throated blue warblers, pine warblers, olive-backed andgray-cheeked thrushes, a flock of chewinks (made up exclusively of adultmales, so far as I could discover), red-eyed vireos, one solitary vireo, brown thrashers, with more redstarts, a second Blackburnian, and asecond black-and-yellow. Every company had its complement of chickadees. Of the morning's forty species, thirteen were warblers; and of thesethirteen, four were represented by one specimen each. For curiosity'ssake I may add that a much longer walk that afternoon, through the sameand other woods, was utterly barren. Except for two or three flocks ofwhite-throated sparrows; there was no sign whatever that the nightbefore had brought us a "flight. "

Autumnal ornithology may almost be called a science by itself. Not onlyare birds harder to find (being silent) and harder to recognize inautumn than in spring, but their movements are in themselves moredifficult of observation. A few years of note-taking will put one inpossession of the approximate dates of arrival of all our common vernalmigrants. Every local observer will tell you when to look for each ofthe familiar birds of his neighborhood; but he will not be half so readywith information as to the time of the same birds' departure. Ask himabout a few of the commonest, --the least flycatcher and the oven-bird, or the golden warbler and the Maryland yellow-throat. He will answer, perhaps, that he has seen Maryland yellow-throats in early October, andgolden warblers in early September; but he will very likely add thatthese were probably voyagers from the North, and that he has never madeout just when his own summer birds take their leave. 

After the work of nidification is over, birds as a rule wander more orless from their breeding haunts; and even if they do not wander they arelikely to become silent. If we miss them, therefore, we are not toconclude as a matter of course that they have gone south. Last year, during the early part of the season, cuckoos were unusually plentiful, as it seemed to me. Then I discovered all at once that there were noneto be found. After the first of July I neither saw nor heard a cuckoo ofeither species! Had they moved away? I do not know; but the case may betaken as an extreme illustration of the uncertainty attaching to thelate-summer doings of birds in general. Every student must have hadexperiences of a sort to make him slow to dogmatize when such points arein question. Throughout May and June, for example, he has heard and seenwood thrushes in a certain grove. After that, for a whole month, hehears and sees nothing, though he is frequently there. The thrushes havegone? So it would seem. But then, suddenly, they are singing again inthe very same trees, and he is forced to conclude that they have notbeen away, but during their period of midsummer silence have eluded hisnotice. On the whole, therefore, after making allowance for particularcases in which we may have more precise information, it would be hard, Ithink, to say just when our nocturnal travelers set out on their longjourney. As the poet prayed Life to do, --

 They steal away, give little warning, Choose their own time; Say not good-night, --but in May's brighter clime Bid us good-morning. 

Their departure bereaves us, but, all in all, it must be accounted ablessing. Like the falling of the leaves, it touches the heart with apleasing sadness, --a sadness more delicious, if one is born to enjoy it, than all the merry-making of springtime. And even for the mostunsentimental of naturalists the autumnal season has many a delightfulhour. The year is almost done; but for the moment the whole featheredworld is in motion, and the shortest walk may show him the choicest ofrarities. Thanks to the passing of the birds, his local studies are anendless pursuit. "It is now more than forty years that I have paid someattention to the ornithology of this district, without being able toexhaust the subject, " says Gilbert White; "new occurrences still ariseas long as any inquiries are kept alive. " A happy man is the bird-lover;always another species to look for, another mystery to solve. Hisexpectations may never be realized; but no matter; it is the hope, notits fulfillment, that makes life worth having. How can any NewEnglander imagine that he has exhausted the possibilities of existenceso long as he has never seen the Lincoln finch and the Cape May warbler?

But "I speak as a fool. " Our happiness, if we are bird-lovers indeed, waits not upon novelties and rarities. All such exceptional bits ofprivate good fortune let the Fates send or withhold as they will. Thegrand spectacle itself will not fail us. Even now, through all thenorthern country, the procession is getting under way. For the nextthree months it will be passing, --millions upon millions: warblers, sparrows, thrushes, vireos, blackbirds, flycatchers, wrens, kinglets, woodpeckers, swallows, humming-birds, hawks; with sandpipers, plovers, ducks and geese, gulls, and who knows how many more? Night and day, weekdays and Sundays, they will be flying: now singly or in little groups, and flitting from one wood or pasture to another; now in greatcompanies, and with protracted all-day or all-night flights. Who couldask a better stimulus for his imagination than the annual southing ofthis mighty host? Each member of it knows his own time and his owncourse. On such a day the snipe will be in such a meadow, and the goldenplover in such a field. Some, no doubt, will lose their way. Numbersuncounted will perish by storm and flood; numbers more, alas, by humanagency. As I write, with the sad note of a bluebird in my ear, I can seethe sea-beaches and the marshes lined with guns. But the army will pushon; they will come to their desired haven; for there is a spirit inbirds, also, "and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth themunderstanding. "

A GREAT BLUE HERON. 

 "Why appear you with this ridiculous boldness?" SHAKESPEARE. 

The watcher of birds in the bush soon discovers that they haveindividual as well as race characteristics. They are not things, butpersons, --beings with intellect, affections, and will, --and a strongspecific resemblance is found to be consistent with no small measure ofpersonal variation. All robins, we say, look and act alike. But so doall Yankees; yet it is part of every Yankee's birthright to be differentfrom every other Yankee. Nature abhors a copy, it would seem, almost asbadly as she abhors a vacuum. Perhaps, if the truth were known, a copy_is_ a vacuum. 

I walked down the bay shore of Cape Cod one summer morning, and at acertain point climbed the steep cliff to the railway track, meaning tolook into a large cranberry meadow where, on previous visits, I hadfound a few sandpipers and plovers. Near one end of the perfectly level, sand-covered meadow was a little pool, and my first glance in thatdirection showed me a great blue heron wading about its edge. With asmuch quietness as possible I stole out of sight, and then hastened upthe railway through a cut, till I had the sun at my back and a hillbetween me and the bird. Then I began a stealthy approach, keepingbehind one object after another, and finally going down flat upon theground (to roll in the soil is an excellent method of cleansing one'sgarments on Cape Cod) and crawling up to a patch of bayberry bushes, thelast practicable cover. 

Here let me say that the great blue heron is, as its name implies, a bigbird, standing almost as high as an ordinary man, and spreading itswings for nearly or quite six feet. Its character for suspiciousness maybe gathered from what different writers have said about it. "He is mostjealously vigilant and watchful of man, " says Wilson, "so that those whowish to succeed in shooting the heron must approach him entirely unseen, and by stratagem. " "Extremely suspicious and shy, " says Audubon. "Unless under very favorable circumstances, it is almost hopeless toattempt to approach it. To walk up towards one would be a fruitlessadventure. " Dr. Brewer's language is to the same effect, --"At all timesvery vigilant and difficult of approach. "

This, then, was the bird which I now had under my field-glass, as I layat full length behind the friendly bayberry bushes. Up to this point, for aught that appeared, he was quite unaware of my espionage. Like allthe members of his family that I have ever seen, he possessed so muchpatience that it required much patience to watch him. For minutestogether he stood perfectly still, and his movements, as a rule, wereeither so slow as to be all but imperceptible, or so rapid as almost toelude the eye. Boys who have killed frogs--which was pretty certainly myheron's present employment--will need no explanation of his behavior. They know very well that, if the fatal club is to do its work, theslowest kind of preliminary motion must be followed by something like aflash of lightning. 

I watched the bird for perhaps half an hour, admiring his handsome bluewings as now and then he spread them, his dainty manner of lifting hislong legs, and the occasional flashing stroke of his beak. My range wasshort (for a field-glass, I mean), and, all in all, I voted it "a fineshow. "

When I wearied of my position I rose and advanced upon the heron in fullsight, expecting every moment to see him fly. To my astonishment he heldhis ground. Down the hillside I went, nearer and nearer, till I came toa barbed-wire fence, which bounded the cranberry field close by theheron's pool. As I worried my way through this abominable obstruction, he stepped into a narrow, shallow ditch and started slowly away. I maderapidly after him, whereupon he got out of the ditch and strode on aheadof me. By this time I was probably within twenty yards of him, so nearthat, as he twisted his long neck every now and then, and looked at methrough his big yellow eyes, I began to wonder whether he might not takeit into his head to turn the tables upon me. A stab in the face withthat ugly sharp beak would have been no laughing matter; but I did notbelieve myself in any danger, and quickened my steps, being now highlycurious to see how near the fellow I could get. At this he broke into akind of dog-trot, very comical to witness, and, if I had not previouslyseen him fly a few yards, I should have supposed him disabled in thewing. Dr. Brewer, by the way, says that this bird is "never known torun, or even to walk briskly;" but such negative assertions are alwaysat the maker's risk. 

He picked up his legs at last, for I pressed him closer and closer, tillthere could not have been more than forty or fifty feet between us; buteven then he settled down again beside another pool, only a few rodsfurther on in the same meadow, and there I left him to pursue hisfrog-hunt unmolested. The ludicrousness of the whole affair was enhancedby the fact, already mentioned, that the ground was perfectly flat, andabsolutely without vegetation, except for the long rows of newly plantedcranberry vines. As to what could have influenced the bird to treat methus strangely, I have no means of guessing. As we say of each other'sfreaks and oddities, it was _his way_, I suppose. He might have behavedotherwise, of course, had I been armed; but of that I felt by no meanscertain at the time, and my doubts were strengthened by an occurrencewhich happened a month or so afterward. 

I was crossing the beach at Nahant with a friend when we stole upon apair of golden plovers, birds that both of us were very happy to see. The splendid old-gold spotting of their backs was plain enough; butimmature black-bellied plovers are adorned in a similar manner, and itwas necessary for us to see the rumps of our birds before we could besure of their identity. So, after we had scrutinized them as long as wewished, I asked my companion to put them up while I should keep my glassupon their backs and make certain of the color of their rumps as theyopened their wings. We were already within a very few paces of them, butthey ran before him as he advanced, and in the end he had almost totread on them. 

The golden plover is not so unapproachable as the great blue heron, Isuppose, but from what sportsmen tell me about him I am confident thathe cannot be in the habit of allowing men to chase him along the beachat a distance of five or six yards. And it is to be added that, in thepresent instance, my companion had a gun in his hand. 

Possibly all these birds would have behaved differently another day, even in what to us might have seemed exactly the same circumstances. Undoubtedly, too, it is easier, as an almost universal rule, to approachone or two birds than a considerable flock. In the larger body there arealmost certain to be a few timorous souls, --a few wider-awake and betterinstructed souls, let us rather say, --who by their outcries and hastyflight will awaken all the others to a sense of possible danger. But itis none the less true, as I said to begin with, that individual birdshave individual ways. And my great blue heron, I am persuaded, was a"character. " It would be worth something to know what was passing behindthose big yellow eyes as he twisted his neck to look once more at thecurious fellow--curious in two senses--who was keeping after him soclosely. Was the heron curious, as well as his pursuer? Or was he only alittle set in his own way; a little resentful of being imposed upon; alittle inclined to withstand the "tyrant of his fields, " just forprinciple's sake, as patriots ought to do? Or was he a young fellow, inwhom heredity had mysteriously omitted to load the bump of caution, andupon whom experience had not yet enforced the lesson that if a creatureis taller and stronger than you are, it is prudent to assume that hewill most likely think it a pleasant bit of sport to kill you? It isnothing to the credit of humankind that the sight of an unsuspiciousbird in a marsh or on the beach should have become a subject forwonder. 

FLOWERS AND FOLKS. 

 "To know one element, explore another, And in the second reappears the first. " EMERSON. 

Every order of intelligent beings naturally separates the world into twoclasses, --itself and the remainder. Birds, for instance, have no doubt afeeling, more or less clearly defined, which, if it were translated intohuman speech, might read, "Birds and nature. " We, in our turn, say, "Manand nature. " But such distinctions, useful as they are, and thereforeadmissible, are none the less arbitrary and liable to mislead. Birds andmen are alike parts of nature, having many things in common not onlywith each other, but with every form of animate existence. The world isnot a patchwork, though never so cunningly put together, but a garmentwoven throughout. 

The importance of this truth, its far-reaching and many-sidedsignificance, is even yet only beginning to be understood; but itsbearing upon the study of what we call natural history would seem to beevident. My own experience as a dabbler in botany and ornithology hasconvinced me that the pursuit of such researches is not at all out ofthe spirit of the familiar line, --

 "The proper study of mankind is man, "--

whatever the author of the line may have himself intended by hisapothegm. To become acquainted with the peculiarities of plants or birdsis to increase one's knowledge of beings of his own sort. 

There is room, I think, for a treatise on analogical botany, --a study ofthe human nature of plants. Thoroughly and sympathetically done, thework would be both surprising and edifying. It would give us a betteropinion of plants, and possibly a poorer opinion of ourselves. Somewholesome first lessons of this kind we have all taken, as a matter ofcourse. "We all do fade as a leaf. " "All flesh is grass, and all thegoodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. " There are nohousehold words more familiar than such texts. But the work of which Iam thinking will deal not so much with our likeness to tree and herb aswith the likeness of tree and herb to us; and furthermore, it will gointo the whole subject, systematically and at length. Meanwhile, it isopen even to an amateur to offer something, in a general and discursiveway, upon so inviting a theme, and especially to call attention to itsscope and variety. 

As I sit at my desk, the thistles are in their glory, and in a vase atmy elbow stands a single head of the tall swamp variety, along with ahandful of fringed gentians. Forgetting what it is, one cannot helppronouncing the thistle beautiful, --a close bunch of minute rose-purpleflowers. But who could ever feel toward it as toward the gentian? Beautyis a thing not merely of form and color, but of memory and association. The thistle is an ugly customer. In a single respect it lays itself outto be agreeable; but even its beauty is too much like that of somevenomous reptile. Yet it has its friends, or, at all events, its patrons(if you wish to catch butterflies, go to the thistle pasture), and nodoubt could give forty eloquent and logical excuses for its offensivetraits. Probably it felicitates itself upon its shrewdness, and pitiesthe poor estate of its defenseless neighbors. How they must envy itshappier fortune! It sees them browsed upon by the cattle, and can hardlybe blamed if it chuckles a little to itself as the greedy creatures passit by untouched. School-girls and botanists break down the golden-rodsand asters, and pull up the gerardias and ladies'-tresses; but neitherschool-girl nor collector often troubles the thistle. It opens itsgorgeous blossoms and ripens its feathery fruit unmolested. Truly it isa great thing to wear an armor of prickles!

"The human nature of plants, "--have I any reader so innocent as not tofeel at this moment the appropriateness of the phrase? Can there be oneso favored as not to have some unmistakable thistles among his Christiantownsmen and acquaintance? Nay, we all know them. They are the moreeasily discovered for standing always a little by themselves. Theyescape many slight inconveniences under which more amiable peoplesuffer. Whoever finds himself in a hard place goes not to them forassistance. They are recognized afar as persons to be let alone. Yetthey, too, like their floral representatives, have a good side. If theydo not give help, they seldom ask it. Once a year they may actually "doa handsome thing, " as the common expression is; but they cannot put offtheir own nature; their very generosity pricks the hand that receivesit, and when old Time cuts them down with his scythe (what should we dowithout this famous husbandman, unkindly as we talk of him?) there willbe no great mourning. 

Is it then an unpardonable misdemeanor for a plant to defend itselfagainst attack and extermination? Has the duty of non-resistance noexceptions nor abatements in the vegetable kingdom? That would be indeeda hard saying; for what would become of our universal favorite, therose? On this point there may be room for a diversity of opinion; butfor one, I cannot wish the wild rose disarmed, lest, through therecklessness of its admirers, what is now one of the commonest of ourwayside ornaments should grow to be a rarity. I esteem the rose apatrician, and fairly entitled to patrician manners. As every one sees, people in high station, especially if they chance to possess attractivesocial qualities, are of necessity compelled to discountenanceeverything like careless familiarity, even from those with whom they mayformerly have been most intimate. They must always stand more or lessupon ceremony, and never be handled without gloves. So it is with thequeen of flowers. Its thorns not only serve it as a protection, but arefor its admirers an excellent discipline in forbearance. They make iteasier for us, as Emerson says, to "love the wood rose and leave it onthe stalk. " In addition to which I am moved to say that the rose, likethe holly, illustrates a truth too seldom insisted upon; namely, thatpeople are more justly condemned for the absence of all good qualitiesthan for the presence of one or two bad ones. 

Some such plea as this, though with a smaller measure of assurance, Ishould make in behalf of plants like the barberry and the bramble. Thelatter, in truth, sometimes acts as if it were not so much fighting usoff as drawing us on. Leaning far forward and stretching forth its arms, it buttonholes the wayfarer, so to speak, and with generous countryinsistence forces upon him the delicious clusters which he, in hispreoccupation, seemed in danger of passing untasted. I think I know thehuman counterparts of both barberry and bramble, --excellent people intheir place, though not to be chosen for bosom friends without a carefulweighing of consequences. Judging them not by their manners, but bytheir fruits, we must set them on the right hand. It would go hard withsome of the most pious of my neighbors, I imagine, if the presence of afew thorns and prickles were reckoned inconsistent with a moderatelygood character. 

As for reprobates like the so-called "poison ivy" and "poison dogwood, "they have perhaps borrowed a familiar human maxim, --"All is fair inwar. " In any case, they are no worse than savage heathen, who kill theirenemies with poisoned arrows, or than civilized Christians, who stab thereputation of their friends with poisoned words. Their marked comelinessof habit may be taken as a point in their favor; or, on the contrary, itmay be held to make their case only so much the blacker, by laying themliable to the additional charge of hypocrisy. The question is a niceone, and I gladly leave it for subtler casuists than I to settle. 

How refreshing to turn from all these, from the thistle and the bramble, yea, even from the rose itself, to gentle spirits like the violet andanemone, the arbutus and hepatica! These wage no war. They are of theoriginal Society of Friends. Who will may spoil them without hurt. Theirdefense is with their Maker. I wonder whether anybody ever thinks ofsuch flowers as representative of any order of grown people, or whetherto everybody else they are forever children, as I find, on thinking ofit, they have always been to me. Lowly and trustful, sweet and frail, "of such is the kingdom of heaven. " They pass away without losing theirinnocence. Ere the first heats of summer they are gone. 

Yet the autumn, too, has its delicate blooms, though they areovershadowed and, as it were, put out of countenance by the coarsergrowths which must be said to characterize the harvest season. Nothingthat May puts into her lap is more exquisite than are the purplegerardias with which August and September embroider the pasture and thewoodland road. They have not the sweet breath of the arbutus, nor eventhe faint elusive odor of the violet, but for daintiness of form, perfection of color, and gracefulness of habit it would be impossible topraise them too highly. Of our three species, my own favorite is the oneof the narrow leaves (_Gerardia tenuifolia_), its longer and slighterflower-stems giving it an airiness and grace peculiarly its own. A ladyto whom I had brought a handful the other day expressed it well when shesaid, "They look like fairy flowers. " They are of my mind in this: theylove a dry, sunny opening in the woods, or a grassy field on the edge ofwoods, especially if there be a seldom-used path running through it. Iknow not with what human beings to compare them. Perhaps their antitypesof our own kind are yet to be evolved. But I have before now seen awoman who might worthily be set in their company, --a person whose sweetand wise actions were so gracefully carried and so easily let fall as tosuggest an order and quality of goodness quite out of relation to commonflesh and blood. 

What a contrast between such lowly-minded, unobtrusive beauties andegotists like our multitudinous asters and golden-rods! These, betweenthem, almost take possession of the world for the two or three months oftheir reign. They are handsome, and they know it. What is beauty for, ifnot to be admired? They mass their tiny blossoms first into solid heads, then into panicles and racemes, and have no idea of hiding theirconstellated brightness under a bushel. "Let your light shine!" is theword they go on. How eagerly they crowd along the roadside, till thecasual passer-by can see scarce anything else! If he does not see_them_, it is not their fault. 

For myself, I am far from wishing them at all less numerous, or a jotless forward in displaying their charms. Let there be variety, I say. Because I speak well of the violet for its humility, I see no reason whyI should quarrel with the aster for loving to make a show. Herein, too, plants are like men. An indisposition toward publicity is amiable inthose to whom it is natural; but I am not clear that bashfulness is theonly commendable quality. Let plants and men alike carry themselvesaccording to their birthright. Providence has not ordained a diversityof gifts for nothing, and it is only a narrow philosophy that takesoffense at seeming contrarieties. The truer method, and the happier aswell, is to like each according to its kind: to love that which isamiable, to admire that which is admirable, and to study that which iscurious. 

A few weeks ago, for example, I walked again up the mountain road thatclimbs out of the Franconia Valley into the Franconia Notch. I had lefthome twenty-four hours before, fresh from working upon the asters andgolden-rods (trying to straighten out my local catalogue in accordancewith Dr. Gray's more recent classification of these large and difficultgenera), and naturally enough had asters and golden-rods still in myeye. The first mile or two afforded nothing of particular note, but byand by I came to a cluster of the sturdy and peculiar _Solidagosquarrosa_, and was taking an admiring account of its appearance andmanner of growth, when I caught sight of some lower blue flowerunderneath, which on a second glance proved to be the closed gentian. This grew in hiding, as one might say, in the shadow of its taller andshowier neighbors. Not far off, but a little more within the wood, werepatches of the linnæa, which had been at its prettiest in June, but evennow, in late September, was still putting forth scattered blossoms. Whatshould a man do? Discard the golden-rod for the gentian, and in turnforsake the gentian for the twin-flower? Nay, a child might do that, butnot a man; for the three were all beautiful and all interesting, andeach the more beautiful and interesting for its unlikeness to theothers. If one wishes a stiff lesson in classification, there are fewharder genera (among flowering plants) than _Solidago_; if he wouldinvestigate the timely and taking question of the dependence of plantsupon insects, this humble "proterandrous" gentian (which to human visionseems closed, but which the humble-bee knows well how to enter) offershim a favorable subject; while if he has an eye for beauty, a nose fordelicate fragrance, and a soul for poetry, the linnæa will never ceaseto be one of his prime favorites. So I say again, let us have variety. It would be a stupid town all whose inhabitants should be of identicaltastes and habits, though these were of the very best; and it would be atiresome country that brought forth only a single kind of plants. 

The flower of Linnæus is a flower by itself, as here and there appears aman who seems, as we say, _sui generis_. This familiar phrase, by thebye, is literally applicable to _Linnæa borealis_, a plant that spreadsover a large part of the northern hemisphere, but everywhere preservesits own specific character; so that, whether it be found in Greenland orin Maryland, on the Alaskan Islands or in Utah, in Siberia or on themountains of Scotland, it is always and everywhere the same, --a genus ofone species. Diversities of soil and climate make no impression upon itsoriginality. If it live at all, it must live according to its own plan. 

The aster, on the contrary, has a special talent for variation. Likesome individuals of another sort, it is born to adapt itself tocircumstances. Dr. Gray enumerates no less than one hundred andninety-six North American species and varieties, many of which shadeinto each other with such endless and well-nigh insensible gradationsthat even our great special student of the _Compositæ_ pronounces theaccurate and final classification of this particular genus a laborbeyond his powers. What shall we say of this habit of variability? Is ita mark of strength or of weakness? Which is nobler, --to be true to one'sideal in spite of circumstances, or to conquer circumstances by suitingone's self to them? Who shall decide? Enough that the twin-flower andthe star-flower each obeys its own law, and in so doing contributes eachits own part toward making this world the place of diversified beautywhich it was foreordained to be. 

I spoke of the linnæa's autumnal blossoms, though its normal floweringtime is in June. Even this steady-going, unimpressible citizen of theworld, it appears, has its one bit of freakishness. In these bright, summery September days, when the trees put on their glory, this lowliestmember of the honeysuckle family feels a stirring within to make itselfbeautiful; and being an evergreen (instead of a summer-green), andtherefore incapable of bedecking itself after the maple's manner, itsends up a few flower-stems, each with its couple of swinging, fragrantbells. So it bids the world good-by till the long winter once more comesand goes. 

The same engaging habit is noticeable in the case of some of our verycommonest plants. After the golden-rods and asters have had their day, late in October or well into November, when witch-hazel, yarrow, andclover are almost the only blossoms left us, you will stumble here andthere upon a solitary dandelion reflecting the sun, or a violet givingback the color of the sky. And even so, you may find, once in a while, an old man in whom imaginative impulses have sprung up anew, now thatall the prosaic activities of middle life are over. It is almost as ifhe were born again. The song of the April robin, the blossoming of theapple-tree, the splendors of sunset and sunrise, --these and things likethem touch him to pleasure, as he now remembers they used to do yearsand years ago. What means this strange revival of youth in age? Is it areminiscence merely, a final flickering of the candle, or is it rather aprophecy of life yet to come? Well, with the dandelion and the violet weknow with reasonable certainty how the matter stands. The autumnalblooms are not belated, but precocious; they belong not to the seasonpast, but to the season coming. Who shall forbid us to hope that what istrue of the violet will prove true also of the man?

It speaks well for human nature that in the long run the lowliestflowers are not only the best loved, but the oftenest spoken of. Menplay the cynic: modest merit goes to the wall, they say; whoever wouldsucceed, let him put on a brazen face and sharpen his elbows. But thosewho talk in this strain deceive neither themselves nor those who listento them. They are commonly such as have themselves tried the trumpet andelbow method, and have discovered that, whatever may be true oftransient notoriety, neither public fame nor private regard is to be wonby such means. We do not retract what we have said in praise ofdiversity, and about the right of each to live according to its ownnature, but we gladly perceive that in the case of the flowers also itis the meek that inherit the earth. 

Our appreciation of our fellow-men depends in part upon the amount, butstill more upon the quality, of the service they render us. We couldget along without poets more comfortably than without cobblers, for thelower use is often first, in order both of time and of necessity; but weare never in doubt as to their relative place in our esteem. One servesthe body, the other the soul; and we reward the one with money, theother with affection and reverence. And our estimation of plants isaccording to the same rule. Such of them as nourish the body aregood, --good even to the point of being indispensable; but as we make adifference between the barnyard fowl and the nightingale, and betweenthe common run of humanity and a Beethoven or a Milton, so maize andpotatoes are never put into the same category with lilies and violets. It must be so, because man is more than an animal, and "the life is morethan meat. "

Again we say, let each fulfill its own function. One is made forutility, another for beauty. For plants, too, are specialists. They knowas well as men how to make the most of inherited capacities andaptitudes, achieving distinction at last by the simple process ofsticking to one thing, whether that be the production of buds, blossoms, berries, leaves, bark, timber, or what not; and our judgmentof them must be correspondingly varied. The vine bears blossoms, but isto be rated not by them, but by the grapes that come after them; and therose-tree bears hips, but takes its rank not from them, but from theflowers that went to the making of them. "Nothing but leaves" is averdict unfavorable or otherwise according to its application. Thetea-shrub would hold up its head to hear it. 

One of the most interesting and suggestive points of difference amongplants is that which relates to the matter of self-reliance. Some aremade to stand alone, others to twine, and others to creep. If it wereallowable to attribute human feelings to them, we should perhaps be safein assuming that the upright look down upon the climbers, and theclimbers in turn upon the creepers; for who of us does not felicitatehimself upon his independence, such as it is, or such as he imagines itto be? But if independence is indeed a boon, --and I, for one, am toothoroughbred a New Englander ever to doubt it, --it is not the only good, nor even the highest. The nettle, standing straight and prim, asking nofavors of anybody, may rail at the grape-vine, which must lay hold ofsomething, small matter what, by which to steady itself; but the nettlemight well be willing to forego somewhat of its self-sufficiency, if byso doing it could bring forth grapes. The smilax, also, with its thorns, its pugnacious habit, and its stony, juiceless berries, a sort ofhandsome vixen among vines, --the smilax, which can climb though itcannot stand erect, has little occasion to lord it over the strawberry. If one has done nothing, or worse than nothing, it is hardly worth whileto boast of the original fashion in which he has gone about it. Moreover, the very plants of which we are speaking bear witness to thefact that it is possible to accept help, and still retain to the fullone's own individuality. The strawberry is no more a plagiarist than thesmilax, nor the grape than the nettle. If the vine clings to the cedar, the connection is but mechanical. Its spirit and life are as independentof the savin as of the planet Jupiter. Even the dodder, which not onlytwines about other weeds, but actually sucks its life from them, doesnot thereby lose an iota of its native character. If a man is onlyoriginal to begin with, --so the parable seems to run, --he is under akind of necessity to remain so (as Shakespeare did), no matter how muchhelp he may draw from alien sources. 

This truth of the vegetable world is the more noteworthy, because, alongwith it there goes a very strong and persistent habit of individualvariation. The plant is faithful to the spirit of its inherited law, butis not in bondage to the letter. Our "high-bush blackberries, " to take afamiliar illustration, are all of one species, but it does not followthat they are all exactly alike. So far from it, I knew in my time--andthe school-boys of the present day are not less accurately informed, wemay presume--where to find berries of all shapes, sizes, and flavors. Some were sour, and some were bitter, and some (I can taste them yet)were finger-shaped and sweet. And what is true of _Rubus villosus_ isprobably true of all plants, though in varying degrees. I do not recalla single article of our annual wild crop--blueberries, huckleberries, blackberries, cherries, grapes, pig-nuts (a bad name for a good thing), shagbarks, acorns, and so forth--in which there was not this constantinequality among plants of the same species, perfectly well defined, andnever lost sight of by us juvenile connoisseurs. If we failed to findthe same true of other vines and bushes, which for our purposes boreblossoms only, the explanation is not far to seek. Our perceptions, æsthetic and gastronomic, were unequally developed. We were in the caseof the man to whom a poet is a poet, though he knows very well thatthere are cooks and cooks. 

It is this slight but everywhere present admixture of the personalquality--call it individuality, or what you will--that saves the world, animal and vegetable alike, from stagnation. Every bush, every bird, every man, together with its unmistakable and ineradicable likeness tothe parent stock, has received also a something, be it more or less, that distinguishes it from all its fellows. Let our observation bedelicate enough, and we shall perceive that there are no duplicates ofany kind, the world over. It is part of the very unity of the world, this universally diffused diversity. 

It does a sympathetic observer good to see how humanly plants differ intheir likes and dislikes. One is catholic: as common people say, it isnot particular; it can live and thrive almost anywhere. Another musthave precisely such and such conditions, and is to be found, therefore, only in very restricted localities. The _Dionæa_, or Venus's fly-trap, is a famous example of this fastidiousness, growing in a small districtof North Carolina, and, as far as appears, nowhere else, --a highlyspecialized plant, with no generic relative. Another instance isfurnished by a water lily (_Nymphæa elegans_), the rediscovery of whichis chronicled in a late issue of one of our botanical journals. [17]"This lily was originally found in 1849, and has never been seen since, holding its place in botanical literature for these almost forty yearson the strength of a single collection at a single vaguely describedstation on the broad prairies of southwestern Texas;" now, after allthis time, it turns up again in another quarter of the same State. Andevery student could report cases of a similar character, though lessstriking than these, of course, within the limits of his own localresearches. If you ask me where I find dandelions, I answer, anywhere;but if you wish me to show you the sweet colt's-foot (_Nardosmiapalmata_), you must go with me to one particular spot. Any of myneighbors will tell you where the pink moccasin flower grows; but if itis the yellow one you are in search of, I shall swear you to secrecybefore conducting you to its swampy hiding-place. Some plants, like somepeople (but the plants, be it noted, are mostly weeds), seem to flourishbest away from home; others die under the most careful transplanting. Some are lovers of the open, and cannot be too much in the sun; otherslurk in deep woods, under the triple shadow of tree and bush and fern. Some take to sandy hill-tops; others must stand knee-deep in water. Oneinsists upon the richest of meadow loam; another is content with theface of a rock. We may say of them as truly as of ourselves, _Degustibus non est disputandum_. Otherwise, how would the earth ever beclothed with verdure?

[17] The _Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club_ for January, 1888, page13. 

But plants are subject to other whims not less pronounced than thesewhich have to do with the choice of a dwelling-place. We may call it thegeneral rule that leaves come before flowers; but how many of our treesand shrubs reverse this order! The singular habit of the witch-hazel, whose blossoms open as the leaves fall, may be presumed to be familiarto all readers; and hardly less curious is the freak of the chestnut, which, almost if not quite alone among our amentaceous trees, does notput on its splendid coronation robes till late in June, and isfrequently at the height of its magnificence in mid-July. What a prettypiece of variety have we, again, in the diurnal and the nocturnalbloomers! For my own part, being a watcher of birds, and thereforealmost of necessity an early stirrer abroad, I profess a special regardfor such plants as save their beauty for night-time and cloudy weather. The evening primrose is no favorite with most people, I take it, but Iseldom fail to pick a blossom or two with the dew on them. Those to whomI carry them usually exclaim as over some wonderful exotic, though theprimrose is an inveterate haunter of the roadside. Yet its blossomshave only to be looked at and smelled of to make their way, homely as isthe stalk that produces them. They love darkness rather than light, butit certainly is not "because their deeds are evil. " One might as wellcast the opprobrious text in the face of the moon and stars. Now andthen some enterprising journalist, for want of better employment, investigates anew the habits of literary workers; and it invariablytranspires that some can do their best only by daylight, while the mindsof others seem to be good for nothing till the sun goes down; and thewise reader, who reads not so much to gain information as to see whetherthe writer tells the truth, shakes his head, and says, "Oh, it is all inuse. " Of course it is all in use, just as it is with whippoorwills andthe morning-glory. 

The mention of the evening primrose calls for the further remark thatplants, not less than ourselves, have a trick of combining oppositequalities, --a coarse-grained and scraggy habit, for instance, withblossoms of exquisite fragrance and beauty. The most gorgeous flowerssometimes exhale an abominable odor, and it is not unheard of thatinconspicuous or even downright homely sorts should be accountedprecious for their sweetness; while, as everybody knows, few members ofour native flora are more graceful in appearance than the very two whosesimple touch is poison. Could anything be more characteristic of humannature than just such inconsistencies? Suavity and trickery, harshnessand integrity, a fiery temper and a gentle heart, --how often do we seethe good and the bad dwelling together! We would have ordered thingsdifferently, I dare say, had they been left to us, --the good should havebeen all good, and the bad all bad; and yet, if it be a grief to feelthat the holiest men have their failings, it ought perhaps to be aconsolation, rather than an additional sorrow, to perceive that the mostvicious are not without their virtues. Beyond which, shall we presume tosuggest that as poisons have their use, so moral evil, give it timeenough, may turn out to be not altogether a curse?

I have treated my subject too fancifully, I fear. Indeed, there comesover me at this moment a sudden suspicion that my subject itself isnothing but a fancy, or, worse yet, a profanation. If the flowers couldtalk, who knows how earnestly they might deprecate all such misguidedattempts at doing them honor, --as if it were anything but a slander, this imputation to them of the foibles, or even the self-styled goodqualities, of our poor humanity! What an egoist is man! I seem to hearthem saying; look where he will, at the world or at its Creator, he seesnothing but the reflection of his own image. 

IN PRAISE OF THE WEYMOUTH PINE. 

 "I seek in the motion of the forest, in the sound of the pines, some accents of the eternal language. " SENANCOUR. 

I could never think it surprising that the ancients worshiped trees;that groves were believed to be the dwelling places of the gods; thatXerxes delighted in the great plane-tree of Lydia; that he decked itwith golden ornaments and appointed for it a sentry, one of "theimmortal ten thousand. " Feelings of this kind are natural; among naturalmen they seem to have been well-nigh universal. The wonder is that anyshould be without them. For myself, I cannot recollect the day when Idid not regard the Weymouth pine (the white pine I was taught to callit, but now, for reasons of my own, I prefer the English name) withsomething like reverence. Especially was this true of one, --a tree ofstupendous girth and height, under which I played, and up which Iclimbed till my cap seemed almost to rub against the sky. That pineought to be standing yet; I would go far to lie in its shadow. But alas!no village Xerxes concerned himself for its safety, and long, long agoit was brought to earth, it and all its fair lesser companions. There isno wisdom in the grave, and it is nothing to them now that I rememberthem so kindly. Some of them went to the making of boxes, I suppose, some to the kindling of kitchen fires. In like noble spirit did theillustrious Bobo, for the love of roast pig, burn down his father'shouse. 

No such pines are to be seen now. I have said it for these twenty years, and mean no offense, surely, to the one under which, in thankful mood, Ihappen at this moment to be reclining. Yet a murmur runs through itsbranches as I pencil the words. Perhaps it is saying to itself thatgiants are, and always have been, things of the past, --things gazed atover the beholder's shoulder and through the mists of years; and thatthis venerable monarch of my boyhood, this relic of times remote, hasprobably grown faster since it was cut down than ever it did whilestanding. I care not to argue the point. Rather, let me be glad that atree is a tree, whether large or small. What a wonder of wonders itwould seem to unaccustomed eyes! As some lover of imaginative delightswished that he could forget Shakespeare and read him new, so I wouldcheerfully lose all memory of my king of Weymouth pines, if by thatmeans I might for once look upon a tree as upon something I had neverseen or dreamed of. 

For that purpose, were it given me to choose, I would have one that hadgrown by itself; full of branches on all sides, but with no suggestionof primness; in short, a perfect tree, a miracle hardly to be found inany forest, since the forest would be no better than a park if theseparate members of it were allowed room to develop each after its ownlaw. Nature is too cunning an artist to spoil the total effect of herpicture by too fond a regard for the beauty of particular details. 

I once passed a lazy, dreamy afternoon in a small clearing on a Canadianmountain-side, where the lumbermen had left standing a few scatteredbutternuts. I can see them now, --misshapen giants, patriarchalmonstrosities, their huge trunks leaning awkwardly this way and that, and each bearing at the top a ludicrously small, one-sided bunch ofleafy boughs. All about me was the ancient wood. For a week I had beenwandering through it with delight. Such beeches and maples, birches andbutternuts! I had not thought of any imperfection. I had been insympathy with the artist, and had enjoyed his work in the same spirit inwhich it had been wrought. Now, however, with these unhappy butternutsin my eye, I began to look, not at the forest, but at the trees, and Ifound that the spared butternuts were in no sense exceptional. _All_ thetrees were deformed. They had grown as they could, not as their innateproclivities would have led them. A tree is no better than a man; itcannot be itself if it stands too much in a crowd. 

I set it down, unwillingly, to the discredit of the Weymouth pine, --asymptom of some ancestral taint, perhaps, --that it suffers less thanmost trees from being thus encroached upon. Yet it does not entirelyescape. True, it leans neither to left nor right, its trunk is seldomcontorted; if it grow at all it must grow straight toward the zenith;but it is sadly maimed, nevertheless, --hardly more than a tall stickwith a broom at the top. If you would see a typical white pine you mustgo elsewhere to look for it. I remember one such, standing by itself ina broad Concord River meadow; not remarkable for its size, but of asymmetry and beauty that make the traveler turn again and again, till heis a mile away, to gaze upon it. No pine-tree ever grew like that in awood. 

I go sometimes through a certain hamlet, which has sprung suddenly intobeing on a hill-top where formerly stood a pine grove. The builders ofthe houses have preserved (doubtless they use that word) a goodly numberof the trees. But though I have been wont to esteem the poorest tree asbetter than none, I am almost ready to forswear my opinion at sight ofthese slender trunks, so ungainly and unsupported. The first breeze, onewould say, must bring them down upon the roofs they were never meant toshade. Poor naked things! I fancy they look abashed at being draggedthus unexpectedly and inappropriately into broad daylight. If I were tosee the householder lifting his axe against one of them I think I shouldnot say, "Woodman, spare _that_ tree!" Let it go to the fire, the soonerthe better, and be out of its misery. 

Not that I blame the tree, or the power that made it what it is. Theforest, like every other community, prospers--we may rather sayexists--at the expense of individual perfection. But the expense is trueeconomy, for, however it may be in ethics, in æsthetics the endjustifies the means. The solitary pine, unhindered, symmetrical, greento its lowermost twig, as it rises out of the meadow or stands a-tiptoeon the rocky ledge, is a thing of beauty, a pleasure to every eye. Apity and a shame that it should not be more common! But the pine_forest_, dark, spacious, slumberous, musical! Here is something betterthan beauty, dearer than pleasure. When we enter this cathedral, unlesswe enter it unworthily, we speak not of such things. Every tree may beimperfect, with half its branches dead for want of room or want of sun, but until the devotee turns critic--an easy step, alas, forhalf-hearted worshipers--we are conscious of no lack. Magnificence cando without prettiness, and a touch of solemnity is better than anyamusement. 

Where shall we hear better preaching, more searching comment upon lifeand death, than in this same cathedral? Verily, the pine is a priest ofthe true religion. It speaks never of itself, never its own words. Silent it stands till the Spirit breathes upon it. Then all itsinnumerable leaves awake and speak as they are moved. Then "he that hathears to hear, let him hear. " Wonderful is human speech, --the work ofgenerations upon generations, each striving to express itself, itsfeelings, its thoughts, its needs, its sufferings, its joys, itsinexpressible desires. Wonderful is human speech, for its complexity, its delicacy, its power. But the pine-tree, under the visitations of theheavenly influence, utters things incommunicable; it whispers to us ofthings we have never said and never can say, --things that lie deeperthan words, deeper than thought. Blessed are our ears if we hear, forthe message is not to be understood by every comer, nor, indeed, byany, except at happy moments. In this temple all hearing is given byinspiration, for which reason the pine-tree's language is inarticulate, as Jesus spake in parables. 

The pine wood loves a clean floor, and is intolerant of undergrowth. Grasses and sedges, with all bushes, it frowns upon, as a modelhousekeeper frowns upon dirt. A plain brown carpet suits it best, with amodest figure of green--preferably of evergreen--woven into it; atracery of partridge-berry vine, or, it may be, of club moss, with hereand there a tuft of pipsissewa and pyrola. Its mood is sombre, its tastesevere. Yet I please myself with noticing that the pine wood, like therest of us, is not without its freak, its amiable inconsistency, its one"tender spot, " as we say of each other. It makes a pet of one of ouroddest, brightest, and showiest flowers, the pink lady's-slipper, and bysome means or other has enticed it away from the peat bog, where itsurely should be growing, along with the calopogon, the pogonia, and thearethusa, and here it is, like some rare exotic, thriving in a bed ofsand and on a mat of brown needles. Who will undertake to explain theoccult "elective affinity" by which this rosy orchid is made so much athome under the heavy shadow of the Weymouth pine?

According to the common saying, there is no accounting for tastes. If bythis is meant simply that _we_ cannot account for them, the statement istrue enough. But if we are to speak exactly, there are no likes nordislikes except for cause. Every freak of taste, like every vagary ofopinion, has its origin and history, and, with sufficient knowledge onour part, could be explained and justified. The pine-tree and the orchidare not friends by accident, however the case may look to us who cannotsee behind the present nor beneath the surface. There are no mysteries_per se_, but only to the ignorant. Yet ignorance itself, disparaginglyas we talk of it, has its favorable side, --as it is pleasant sometimesto withdraw from the sun and wander for a season in the half-light ofthe forest. Perhaps we need be in no haste to reach a world where thereis never any darkness. In some moods, at least, I go with thepartridge-berry vine and the lady's-slipper. It is good, I think, tolive awhile longer in the shadow; to see as through a glass darkly; andto hear overhead, not plain words, but inarticulate murmurs. 

I am not to be understood as praising the pine at the expense of othertrees. All things considered, no evergreen can be equal to asummer-green, on which we see the leaves budding, unfolding, ripening, and falling, --a "worlde whiche neweth everie daie. " What would winter beworth without the naked branches of maples and elms, beeches and oaks?We speak of them sadly:

 "Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. "

But the sadness is of a pleasing sort, that could ill be spared by anywho know the pleasures of sentiment and sober reflection. But though onetree differeth from another tree in glory, we may surely rejoice in themall. One ministers to our mood to-day, another to-morrow. 

 "I hate those trees that never lose their foliage; They seem to have no sympathy with Nature; Winter and summer are alike to them. "

So says Ternissa, in Landor's dialogue. I know what she means. But I donot "hate" an impassive, unchangeable temper, whether in a tree or in aman. I have so little of such a spirit myself that I am glad to seesome tokens of it--not too frequent, indeed, nor too self-assertive--inthe world about me. And so I say, let me never be, for any long timetogether, where there are no Weymouth pines at which I may gaze fromafar, or under which I may lie and listen. They boast not (rarestoics!), but they set us a brave example. No "blasts that blow thepoplar white" can cause the pine-tree to blanch. No frost has power tostrip it of a single leaf. Its wood is soft, but how dauntless itsspirit!--a truly encouraging paradox, lending itself, at our privateneed, to endless consolatory moralizings. The great majority of mybrothers must be comforted, I think, by any fresh reminder that thebattle is not to the strong. 

For myself, then, like the lowly partridge-berry vine, I would be alwaysthe pine-tree's neighbor. Who knows but by lifelong fellowship with it Imay absorb something of its virtue? Summer and winter, its fragrantbreath rises to heaven; and of it we may say, with more truth thanLandor said of the over-sweet fragrance of the linden, "Happy the manwhose aspirations are pure enough to mingle with it!"

 INDEX. 

 Asters, 62, 214, 217. 

 Autumnal flowers, 212. 

 Autumnal ornithology, 191. 

 Bearberry, 72, 78. 

 Bittern, 71. 

 Blackberry, 63, 210, 224. 

 Bluebird, 179, 184, 185. 

 Butterflies:-- in November, 36. On Mt. Mansfield, 104. 

 Catbird, 176. 

 Cedar-bird, 33. 

 Chestnut-tree, 228. 

 Chewink, 191. 

 Chickadee, 49, 55. 

 Cowbird, 83. 

 Creeper:-- black-and-white, 85. Brown, 49. 

 Crossbill, white-winged, 27. 

 Cuckoo, 192. 

 Dandelion, 219. 

 December birds, 54. 

 December flowers, 60. 

 Diapensia, 23, 25, 30. 

 Dodder, 223. 

 Evening primrose, 228. 

 Flicker, 53, 69. 

 Flowers:-- in November, 36. In December, 60. On Cape Cod, 80. On Mt. Lafayette, 22, 25. On Mt. Mansfield, 103. 

 Flycatcher:-- great-crested, 9. Least, 9. Olive-sided, 9, 10. Phoebe, 9, 10, 179. Traill's, 9. Yellow-bellied, 9. 

 Golden Aster, 80. 

 Golden-rods, 81, 214, 215. 

 Goldfinch, 177. 

 Grass Finch (Vesper Sparrow), 5, 110. 

 Greenland Sandwort, 23, 25, 31, 103. 

 Groundsel, 61. 

 Habenaria dilatata, 103. 

 Heron, great blue, 197. 

 Holy-Grass, 25. 

 Humming-bird:-- Rivoli, 139. Ruby-throated, 111, 135. 

 Hyla Pickeringii, 36, 38. 

 Jay:-- Canada, 100. Blue, 100. 

 Kingbird, 9, 148, 179. 

 Lady's-slipper, 79, 227, 239. 

 Lapland Azalea, 31. 

 Lark:-- meadow, 53, 176. Shore (or horned), 53. 

 Linnæa, 216-218. 

 Maryland Yellow-throat, 149, 192. 

 Mount Cannon, 33. 

 Mount Lafayette, 15, 24. 

 Mount Mansfield, 90. 

 November in Eastern Massachusetts, 36. 

 Nuthatch, Red-bellied, 49, 55, 190. 

 Oriole, Baltimore, 123, 176, 179. 

 Peck's Geum, 23, 25, 31. 

 Phoebe, 9, 10, 179. 

 Pine Grosbeak, 26. 

 Pine, white, 232. 

 Plover:-- golden, 202. Killdeer, 39, 41. 

 Poverty-Grass, 72, 81. 

 Purple Gerardia, 81, 213. 

 Redstart, 16, 190, 191. 

 Robin, 55, 153, 184. 

 Roses, 32, 81, 209. 

 Scarlet Tanager, 176, 191. 

 Screech Owl, 177. 

 Smilax:-- glauca, 80. Rotundifolia, 80, 223. 

 Snow Bunting, 53. 

 Sparrow:-- chipping, 179. Field, 176. Ipswich, 53, 54. Song, 53, 85, 176. Vesper, 5, 110. White-throated, 16, 52, 91, 92, 102, 110, 190. 

 Strawberry, 32, 223. 

 Swallow, white-breasted, (Tree Swallow), 180, 183. 

 Swift, Chimney, 110, 182. 

 Thistles, 207. 

 Thrush:-- gray-cheeked, 16, 19, 94, 95, 97, 191. Hermit, 19, 97. Olive-backed, (or Swainson's), 19, 51, 97, 99, 191. Water, 84. Wilson's (or veery), 17, 19, 98. Wood, 98. 

 Turnstone, 86. 

 Veery (Wilson's Thrush), 17, 19, 98. 

 Violets, 212, 219, 221. 

 Vireo:-- Philadelphia, 11. Red-eyed, 11, 83, 153, 191. Solitary (or blue-headed), 11, 13, 191. Warbling, 14. 

 Warbler:-- bay-breasted, 6, 190. Blackburnian, 6, 16, 190, 191. Black-and-yellow, (magnolia), 190. Black-poll, 6, 16, 96, 99, 102, 190. Black-throated blue, 16, 191. Black-throated green, 16, 85, 190. Blue golden-winged, 178. Blue yellow-backed, 83, 190. Canadian flycatcher, 16, 190. Connecticut, 190. Golden (summer yellow-bird), 192. Nashville, 8, 16. Pine, 191. Prairie, 84, 178. Tennessee, 5, 6. Wilson's black-cap, 186. Yellow-rumped (myrtle), 95. 

 White-winged Crossbill, 27. 

 Winter Wren, 102. 

 Witch-Hazel, 61, 228. 

 Woodpecker:-- downy, 50. Golden-winged (flicker), 53, 69. Yellow-bellied, 190. 

 Wood Pewee, 9, 176. 

OUT-DOOR BOOKS

 Selected from the Publications of Houghton, Mifflin and Company, _4 Park St. , Boston; 11 East 17th St. , New York. _

Adirondack Stories. By P. DEMING. 18mo, 75 cents. 

A-Hunting of the Deer; How I Killed a Bear; Lost in the Woods; CampingOut; A Wilderness Romance; What Some People call Pleasure. By CHARLESDUDLEY WARNER. 16mo, paper covers, 15 cents, _net_. 

The American Horsewoman. By ELIZABETH KARR. Illustrated. New Edition. 16mo, $1. 25. 

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. By HENRY D. THOREAU. 12mo, gilt top, $1. 50. 

Birds and Bees. By JOHN BURROUGHS. With an Introduction by MARY E. BURT, of Chicago. 16mo, paper covers, 15 cents, _net_. 

Birds and Poets, with Other Papers. By JOHN BURROUGHS. 16mo, gilt top, $1. 25. 

Birds in the Bush. By BRADFORD TORREY. 16mo, $1. 25. 

Birds through an Opera-Glass. By FLORENCE A. MERRIAM. In RiversideLibrary for Young People. 16mo, 75 cents. 

Bird-Ways. By OLIVE THORNE MILLER. 16mo, $1. 25. 

Cape Cod. By HENRY D. THOREAU. 12mo, gilt top, $1. 50. 

Country By-Ways. By SARAH ORNE JEWETT. 18mo, gilt top, $1. 25. 

Drift-Weed. Poems. By CELIA THAXTER. 18mo, full gilt, $1. 50. 

Early Spring in Massachusetts. Selections from the Journals of HENRY D. THOREAU. 12mo, gilt top, $1. 50. 

Excursions in Field and Forest. By HENRY D. THOREAU. 12mo, gilt top, $1. 50. CONTENTS: Biographical Sketch, by R. W. Emerson; Natural Historyof Massachusetts; A Walk to Wachusett; The Landlord; A Winter Walk; TheSuccession of Forest Trees; Walking; Autumnal Tints; Wild Apples; Nightand Moonlight. 

Favorite Flies. By MARY ORVIS MARBURY. With colored plates. Square 8vo. (_In Press_). 

Fishing with the Fly. A volume of original Essays on Angling. By Loversof the Art. Edited by CHARLES F. ORVIS and A. NELSON CHENEY. Withcolored Plates of 149 standard varieties of Flies. With Map and Index. Crown 8vo, $2. 50. 

Fresh Fields. English Sketches. By JOHN BURROUGHS. 16mo, gilt top, $1. 25. 

The Gypsies. By CHARLES G. LELAND. With Sketches of the English, Welsh, Russian, and Austrian Romany; and papers on the Gypsy Language. Crown8vo, $2. 00. 

Homestead Highways. By H. M. SYLVESTER. 12mo, gilt top, $1. 50. 

In Nesting Time. By OLIVE THORNE MILLER. 16mo, $1. 25. 

In the Wilderness. Adirondack Essays. By CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. NewEdition, enlarged. 18mo $1. 00. 

Land of the Lingering Snow. Chronicles of a Stroller in New England fromJanuary to June. By FRANK BOLLES. 16mo, $1. 25. 

Little Brothers of the Air. By OLIVE THORNE MILLER. 16mo, $1. 25. 

Locusts and Wild Honey. By JOHN BURROUGHS. 16mo, gilt top, $1. 25. 

The Maine Woods. By HENRY D. THOREAU. 12mo, gilt top, $1. 50. 

My Garden Acquaintance and a Moosehead Journal. By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Illustrated. 32mo, 75 cents. _School Edition_, 40 cents, _net_. 

My Summer in a Garden. By CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 16mo, $1. 00. 

Nantucket Scraps. Being the Experiences of an Off-Islander, in Seasonand out of Season. By JANE G. AUSTIN. 16mo, $1. 50. 

Nature. "Little Classics, " Vol. XVI. 18mo, $1. 00. 

Nature, together with Love, Friendship, Domestic Life, Success, Greatness, and Immortality. By R. W. EMERSON. 32mo, 75 cents; _SchoolEdition_, 40 cents, _net_. 

On Horseback. A Tour in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. WithNotes on Travel in Mexico and California. By CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 16mo, $1. 25. 

Pepacton. By JOHN BURROUGHS. 16mo, gilt top, $1. 25. 

Poems. By CELIA THAXTER. 18mo, full gilt, $1. 50. 

Poetic Interpretation of Nature. By Principal J. C. SHAIRP. 16mo, gilttop, $1. 25. 

Prose Pastorals. By HERBERT M. SYLVESTER. 12mo, gilt top, $1. 50. 

A Rambler's Lease. By BRADFORD TORREY. 16mo, $1. 25. 

The Rescue of an Old Place. By MARY CAROLINE ROBBINS. 16mo, $1. 25. 

The Round Year. By EDITH M. THOMAS. Prose Papers. 16mo, gilt top, $1. 25. 

Rural Hours. By SUSAN FENIMORE COOPER. New Edition, abridged. 16mo, $1. 25. 

The Saunterer. By CHARLES G. WHITING. Essays on Nature. 16mo, $1. 25. 

Seaside Studies in Natural History. By ALEXANDER AGASSIZ and ELIZABETHC. AGASSIZ. Illustrated. 8vo, $3. 00. 

Sharp Eyes, A Taste of Maine Birch, The Apple, and other Essays. By JOHNBURROUGHS. 16mo, paper covers, 15 cents, _net_. 

The Shaybacks in Camp. Ten Summers under Canvas. By SAMUEL J. And ISABELC. BARROWS. With Map of Lake Memphremagog. 16mo, $1. 00. 

The Succession of Forest Trees, etc. By H. D. THOREAU. With BiographicalSketch by R. W. EMERSON. 16mo, paper covers, 15 cents, _net_. 

Summer. Selections from the Journals of H. D. THOREAU. With Map ofConcord. 12mo, gilt top, $1. 50. 

Tenting at Stony Beach. By MARIA LOUISE POOL. 16mo, $1. 00. 

Up and Down the Brooks. By MARY E. BAMFORD. In Riverside Library forYoung People. 16mo, 75 cents. 

Wake-Robin. By JOHN BURROUGHS. Revised and enlarged edition. Illustrated. 16mo, gilt top, $1. 25. 

Walden; or, Life in the Woods. By HENRY D. THOREAU. 12mo, gilt top, $1. 50. _Riverside Aldine Edition. _ 2 vols. 16mo, $2. 00. 

Winter. From the Journal of Thoreau. Edited by H. G. O. BLAKE. 12mo, gilt top, $1. 50. 

Winter Sunshine. By JOHN BURROUGHS. New edition, revised and enlarged. With Frontispiece. 16mo, $1. 25. 

Woods and Lakes of Maine. A Trip from Moosehead Lake to New Brunswick ina Birch-Bark Canoe. By LUCIUS L. HUBBARD. With Indian Place-Names andtheir Meanings, Illustrations, and large Map. 8vo, $3. 00. 

_For sale by all Booksellers. Sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt ofprice by the Publishers, _

 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 4 PARK ST. , BOSTON; 11 EAST 17TH ST. , NEW YORK.