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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Foot-path Way, by Bradford Torrey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Foot-path Way
+
+Author: Bradford Torrey
+
+Release Date: November 17, 2008 [EBook #27285]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOOT-PATH WAY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robin Monks, Carolyn Bottomley, Joseph Cooper
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[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 the
+entire valley, to ourselves. If the verdict of the villagers could have
+been taken, we should, perhaps, have been voted a queer set, familiar as
+dwellers 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 week
+of June; if we were summer boarders, therefore, we must be of some
+unusual early-blooming variety.
+
+First came a lady, in excellent repute among the savants of Europe and
+America as an entomologist, but better known to the general public as a
+writer of stories. With her, as companion and assistant, was a doctor of
+laws, who is also a newspaper proprietor, a voluminous author, an art
+connoisseur, and many things beside. They had turned their backs thus
+unseasonably upon the metropolis, and in this pleasant out-of-the-way
+corner were devoting themselves to one absorbing pursuit,--the pursuit
+of moths. On their daily drives, two or three insect nets dangled
+conspicuously from the carriage,--the footman, thrifty soul, was never
+backward to take a hand,--and evening after evening the hotel piazza was
+illuminated till midnight with lamps and lanterns, while these
+enthusiasts waved the same white nets about, gathering in geometries,
+noctuids, sphinges, and Heaven knows what else, all of them to perish
+painlessly in numerous "cyanide bottles," which bestrewed the piazza by
+night, and (happy thought!) the closed piano by day. In this noble
+occupation I sometimes played at helping; but with only meagre success,
+my most brilliant catch being nothing more important than a "beautiful
+Io." The kind-hearted lepidopterist lingered with gracious emphasis upon
+the adjective, and assured me that the specimen would be all the more
+valuable because of a finger-mark which my awkwardness had left upon one
+of its wings. So--to the credit of human nature be it spoken--so does
+amiability sometimes get the better of the feminine scientific spirit.
+To the credit of human nature, I say; for, though her practice of the
+romancer's art may doubtless have given to this good lady some peculiar
+flexibility of mind, some special, individual facility in subordinating
+a lower truth to a higher, it surely may be affirmed, also, of humanity
+in general, that few things become it better than its inconsistencies.
+
+Of the four remaining members of the company, two were botanists, and
+two--for the time--ornithologists. But the botanists were lovers of
+birds, also, and went nowhere without opera-glasses; while the
+ornithologists, in turn, did not hold themselves above some elementary
+knowledge of plants, and amused themselves with now and then pointing
+out some rarity--sedges and willows were the special desiderata--which
+the professional collectors seemed in danger of passing without notice.
+All in all, we _were_ a queer set. How the Latin and Greek polysyllables
+flew about the dining-room, as we recounted our forenoon's or
+afternoon's discoveries! Somebody remarked once that the waiters' heads
+appeared to be more or less in danger; but if the waiters trembled at
+all, 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 activity
+I am not prepared to say. The first ornithologist of the party published
+some time ago (in _The Auk_, vol. v. p. 151) a list of our Franconia
+birds, and the results of the botanists' researches among the willows
+have appeared, in part at least, in different numbers of the _Bulletin
+of the Torrey Botanical Club_. As for the lepidopterist, I have an
+indistinct recollection that she once wrote to me of having made some
+highly interesting discoveries among her Franconia collections,--several
+undescribed species, as well as I can now remember; but she added that
+it would be useless to go into particulars with a correspondent
+entomologically so ignorant.
+
+Our first excursion--I speak of the four who traveled on foot--was to
+the Franconia Notch. It could not well have been otherwise; at all
+events, there was one of the four whose feet would not willingly have
+carried him in any other direction. The mountains drew us, and there was
+no thought of resisting their attraction.
+
+Love and curiosity are different, if not incompatible, sentiments; and
+the birds that are dearest to the man are, for that very reason, not
+most interesting to the ornithologist. When on a journey, I am almost
+without eyes or ears for bluebirds and robins, song sparrows and
+chickadees. Now is my opportunity for extending my acquaintance, and
+such every-day favorites must get along for the time as best they can
+without my attention. So it was here in Franconia. The vesper sparrow,
+the veery, and a host of other friends were singing about the hotel and
+along the roadside, but we heeded them not. Our case was like the boy's
+who declined gingerbread, when on a visit: he had plenty of that at
+home.
+
+When we were nearly at the edge of the mountain woods, however, we heard
+across the field a few notes that brought all four of us to an instant
+standstill. What warbler could that be? Nobody could tell. In fact,
+nobody could guess. But, before the youngest of us could surmount the
+wall, the singer took wing, flew over our heads far into the woods, and
+all was silent. It was too bad; but there would be another day
+to-morrow. Meantime, we kept on up the hill, and soon were in the old
+forest, listening to bay-breasted warblers, Blackburnians, black-polls,
+and so on, while the noise of the mountain brook on our right, a better
+singer 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 to
+come down again."
+
+I took leave of my companions at Profile Lake, they having planned an
+all-day excursion beyond, and started homeward by myself. Slowly, and
+with many stops, I sauntered down the long hill, through the forest (the
+stops, I need not say, are commonly the major part of a naturalist's
+ramble,--the golden beads, as it were, the walk itself being only the
+string), till I reached the spot where we had been serenaded in the
+morning by our mysterious stranger. Yes, he was again singing, this time
+not far from the road, in a moderately thick growth of small trees,
+under which the ground was carpeted with club-mosses, dog-tooth
+violets, clintonia, linnæa, and similar plants. He continued to sing,
+and I continued to edge my way nearer and nearer, till finally I was
+near enough, and went down on my knees. Then I saw him, facing me,
+showing white under parts. A Tennessee warbler! Here was good luck
+indeed. I ogled him for a long time ("Shoot it," says Mr. Burroughs,
+authoritatively, "not ogle it with a glass;" but a man must follow his
+own method), impatient to see his back, and especially the top of his
+head. What a precious frenzy we fall into at such moments! My knees were
+fairly upon nettles. He flew, and I followed. Once more he was under the
+glass, but still facing me. How like a vireo he looked! For one instant
+I thought, Can it be the Philadelphia vireo? But, though I had never
+seen that bird, I knew its song to be as different as possible from the
+notes to which I was listening. After a long time the fellow turned to
+feeding, and now I obtained a look at his upper parts,--the back olive,
+the head ashy, like the Nashville warbler. That was enough. It was
+indeed the Tennessee (_Helminthophila peregrina_), a bird for which I
+had been ten years on the watch.
+
+The song, which has not often been described, is more suggestive of the
+Nashville's than of any other, but so decidedly different as never for a
+moment to be confounded with it. "When you hear it," a friend had said
+to me several years before, "you will know it for something new." It is
+long (I speak comparatively, of course), very sprightly, and peculiarly
+staccato, and is made up of two parts, the second quicker in movement
+and 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_ in
+three parts, but as to rhythm and character, it is in two; the first
+half being composed of double notes, the second of single notes. The
+resemblance to the Nashville's song lies entirely in the first part; the
+notes of the concluding portion are not run together or jumbled, after
+the Nashville's manner, but are quite as distinct as those of the
+opening measure.
+
+As there were at least two pairs of the birds, and they were
+unmistakably 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 more
+to a really methodical search; but the wily singer gave me not the
+slightest clue, behaving as if there were no such thing as a bird's nest
+within a thousand miles, and all my endeavors went for nothing.
+
+As might have been foreseen, Franconia proved to be an excellent place
+in which to study the difficult family of flycatchers. All our common
+eastern Massachusetts species were present,--the kingbird, the phoebe,
+the wood pewee, and the least flycatcher,--and with them the crested
+flycatcher (not common), the olive-sided, the traill, and the
+yellow-bellied. The phoebe-like cry of the traill was to be heard
+constantly from the hotel piazza. The yellow-bellied seemed to be
+confined to deep and rather swampy woods in the valley, and to the
+mountain-side forests; being most numerous on Mount Lafayette, where it
+ran well up toward the limit of trees. In his notes, the yellow-belly
+may 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 improve
+upon it) resembles the _chebec_ of the least flycatcher, though much
+less emphatic, as well as much less frequently uttered, while his
+_twee_, or _tuwee_, is quite in the voice and manner of the wood pewee's
+clear, plaintive whistle; usually a monosyllable, but at other times
+almost or quite dissyllabic. The olive-sided, on the other hand,
+imitates nobody; or, if he does, it must be some bird with which I have
+yet to make acquaintance. _Que-qúe-o_ he vociferates, with a strong
+emphasis and drawl upon the middle syllable. This is his song, or what
+answers to a song, but I have seen him when he would do nothing but
+repeat incessantly a quick trisyllabic call, _whit, whit, whit_;
+corresponding, I suppose, to the well-known _whit_ with which the
+phoebe sometimes busies himself in a similar manner.
+
+Of more interest than any flycatcher--of more interest even than the
+Tennessee warbler--was a bird found by the roadside in the village,
+after we had been for several days in the place. Three of us were
+walking together, talking by the way, when all at once we halted, as by
+a common impulse, at the sound of a vireo song; a red-eye's song, as it
+seemed, with the faintest touch of something unfamiliar about it. The
+singer was in a small butternut-tree close upon the sidewalk, and at
+once afforded us perfectly satisfactory observations, perching on a low
+limb within fifteen feet of our eyes, and singing again and again, while
+we scrutinized every feather through our glasses. As one of my
+companions said, it was like having the bird in your hand. There was no
+room for a question as to its identity. At last we had before us the
+rare and long-desired Philadelphia greenlet. As its song is little
+known, I here transcribe my notes about it, made at two different times,
+between which there appears to have been some discussion among us as to
+just how it should be characterized:--
+
+"The song is very pretty, and is curiously compounded of the red-eye's
+and the solitary's, both as to phrase and quality. The measures are all
+brief; with fewer syllables, that is to say, than the red-eye commonly
+uses. Some of them are exactly like the red-eye's, while others have
+the peculiar sweet upward inflection of the solitary's. To hear some of
+the measures, you would pass the bird for a red-eye; to hear others of
+them, you might pass him for a solitary. At the same time, he has not
+the most highly characteristic of the solitary's phrases. His voice is
+less sharp and his accent less emphatic than the red-eye's, and, so far
+as we heard, he observes decidedly longer rests between the measures."
+
+This is under date of June 16th. On the following day I made another
+entry:--
+
+"The song is, I think, less varied than either the solitary's or the
+red-eye's, but it grows more distinct from both as it is longer heard.
+Acquaintance will probably make it as characteristic and unmistakable as
+any of our four other vireo songs. But I do not withdraw what I said
+yesterday about its resemblance to the red-eye's and the solitary's. The
+bird seems quite fearless, and keeps much of the time in the lower
+branches. In this latter respect his habit is in contrast with that of
+the warbling vireo."
+
+On the whole, then, the song of the Philadelphia vireo comes nearest to
+the red-eye's, differing from it mainly in tone and inflection rather
+than 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 seeming
+contradiction, however, I must mention one curious circumstance. On
+going again to Franconia, a year afterwards, and, naturally, keeping my
+ears open for _Vireo philadelphicus_, I discovered that I was never for
+a moment in doubt when I heard a red-eye; but once, on listening to a
+distant solitary,--catching only part of the strain,--I was for a little
+quite uncertain whether he might not be the bird for which I was
+looking. How this fact is to be explained I am unable to say; it will be
+least surprising to those who know most of such matters, and at all
+events I think it worth recording as affording a possible clue to some
+future observer. The experience, inconsistent as the assertion may
+sound, does not in the least alter my opinion that the Philadelphia's
+song is practically certain to be confused with the red-eye's rather
+than with the solitary's. Upon that point my companions and I were
+perfectly agreed while we had the bird before us, and Mr. Brewster's
+testimony is abundantly conclusive to the same effect. He was in the
+Umbagog forests on a special hunt for Philadelphia vireos (he had
+collected specimens there on two previous occasions), and after some
+days of fruitless search discovered, almost by accident, that the birds
+had all the while been singing close about him, but in every instance
+had 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 explained
+before this that the Philadelphia vireo is in coloration an exact copy
+of the warbling vireo. There is a slight difference in size between the
+two, but the most practiced eye could not be depended upon to tell them
+apart in a tree. _Vireo philadelphicus_ is in a peculiar case: it looks
+like one common bird, and sings like another. It might have been
+invented on purpose to circumvent collectors, as the Almighty has been
+supposed by some to have created fossils on purpose to deceive ungodly
+geologists. It is not surprising, therefore, that the bird escaped the
+notice of the older ornithologists. In fact, it was first
+described,--by Mr. Cassin,--in 1851, from a specimen taken, nine years
+before, near Philadelphia; and its nest remained unknown for more than
+thirty years longer, the first one having been discovered, apparently in
+Canada, 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 invited
+my feet. Then came a bright, favorable morning, and I set out. I would
+go alone on this my first pilgrimage to the noble peak, at which, always
+from too far off, I had gazed longingly for ten summers. It is not
+inconsistent with a proper regard for one's fellows, I trust, to enjoy
+now and then being without their society. It _is_ good, sometimes, for a
+man to be alone,--especially on a mountain-top, and more especially at a
+first visit. The trip to the summit was some seven or eight miles in
+length, and an almost continual ascent, without a dull step in the whole
+distance. The Tennessee warbler was singing; but perhaps the pleasantest
+incident of the walk to the Profile House--in front of which the
+mountain footpath is taken--was a Blackburnian warbler perched, as
+usual, at the very top of a tall spruce, his orange throat flashing fire
+as he faced the sun, and his song, as my notebook expresses it, "sliding
+up to high _Z_ at the end" in his quaintest and most characteristic
+fashion. I spent nearly three hours in climbing the mountain path, and
+during 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 and
+gray-cheeked thrushes, and yellow-bellied flycatchers. Black-poll and
+Nashville warblers were especially numerous, as they are also upon Mount
+Washington, and, as far as I have seen, upon the White Mountains
+generally. The feeble, sharp song of the black-poll is a singular
+affair; short and slight as it is, it embraces a perfect crescendo and a
+perfect decrescendo. Without question I passed plenty of white-throated
+sparrows, but by some coincidence not one of them announced himself. The
+gray-cheeked thrushes, which sang freely, were not heard till I was
+perhaps halfway between the Eagle Cliff Notch and the Eagle Lakes. This
+species, so recently added to our summer fauna, proves to be not
+uncommon in the mountainous parts of New England, though apparently
+confined to the spruce forests at or near the summits. I found it
+abundant on Mount Mansfield, Vermont, in 1885, and in the summer of 1888
+Mr. Walter Faxon surprised us all by shooting a specimen on Mount
+Graylock, Massachusetts. Doubtless the bird has been singing its
+perfectly distinctive song in the White Mountain woods ever since the
+white man first visited them. During the vernal migration, indeed, I
+have more than once heard it sing in eastern Massachusetts. My latest
+delightful 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 recognized
+them instantly; for while the gray-cheek's song bears an evident
+resemblance to the veery's (which I had heard within five minutes), the
+two are so unlike in pitch and rhythm that no reasonably nice ear ought
+ever to confound them. The bird was just over the high, close,
+inhospitable fence, on the top of which I rested my chin and watched and
+listened. He sat with his back toward me, in full view, on a level with
+my eye, and sang and sang and sang, in a most deliciously soft, far-away
+voice, keeping his wings all the while a little raised and quivering, as
+in 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, so
+romantic in its choice of a dwelling-place, and withal so characteristic
+of New England should be known, at a liberal estimate, to not more than
+one or two hundred New Englanders! But if a bird wishes general
+recognition, he should do as the robin does, and the bluebird, and the
+oriole,--dress like none of his neighbors, and show himself freely in
+the vicinity of men's houses. How can one expect to be famous unless he
+takes a little pains to keep himself before the public?
+
+From the time I left my hotel until I was fairly above the dwarf spruces
+below the summit of Lafayette, I was never for many minutes together out
+of the hearing of thrush music. Four of our five summer representatives
+of the genus _Turdus_ took turns, as it were, in the serenade. The
+veeries--Wilson's thrushes--greeted me before I stepped off the piazza.
+As I neared the Profile House farm, the hermits were in tune on either
+hand. The moment the road entered the ancient forest, the olive-backs
+began to make themselves heard, and halfway up the mountain path the
+gray-cheeks took up the strain and carried it on to its heavenly
+conclusion. A noble processional! Even a lame man might have climbed to
+such music. If the wood thrush had been here, the chorus would have been
+complete,--a chorus not to be excelled, according to my untraveled
+belief, in any quarter of the world.
+
+To-day, however, my first thoughts were not of birds, but of the
+mountain. The weather was all that could be asked,--the temperature
+perfect, and the atmosphere so transparent as to be of itself a kind of
+lens; so that in the evening, when I rejoined my companions at the
+hotel, I found to my astonishment that I had been plainly visible while
+at 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 was
+true, but had been quite unconscious of any corresponding physical
+transformation. What would our aboriginal forerunners have said could
+they have stood in the valley and seen a human form moving from point to
+point along yonder sharp, serrated ridge? I should certainly have passed
+for a god! Let us be thankful that all such superstitious fancies have
+had 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 man
+clambers gayly up their sides, guide-book in hand, and leaves his
+sardine box and eggshells--and likely enough his business card--at the
+top. Let us be thankful, I repeat, for the light vouchsafed to us; ours
+is a goodly heritage; but there are moods--such creatures of hereditary
+influence are we--wherein I would gladly exchange both the guide-book
+and the sardine box for a vision, never so indistinct and transient, of
+Kitche Manitoo. Alas! what a long time it is since any of us have been
+able to see the invisible. "In the mountains," says Wordsworth, "did he
+feel his faith." But the poet was speaking then of a very old-fashioned
+young fellow, who, even when he grew up, made nothing but a peddler. Had
+he lived in our day, he would have felt not his faith, but his own
+importance; especially if he had put himself out of breath, as most
+likely he would have done, in accomplishing in an hour and forty minutes
+what, according to the guide-book, should have taken a full hour and
+three quarters. The modern excursionist (how Wordsworth would have loved
+that word!) has learned wisdom of a certain wise fowl who once taught
+St. Peter a lesson, and who never finds himself in a high place without
+an impulse to flap his wings and crow.
+
+For my own part, though I spent nearly three hours on the less than four
+miles of mountain path, as I have already acknowledged, I was
+nevertheless somewhat short-winded at the end. So long as I was in the
+woods, it was easy enough to loiter; but no sooner did I leave the last
+low spruces behind me than I was seized with an importunate desire to
+stand upon the peak, so near at hand just above me. I hope my readers
+are none of them too old to sympathize with the boyish feeling. At all
+events, I quickened my pace. The distance could not be more than half a
+mile, I thought. But it was wonderful how that perverse trail among the
+boulders did unwind itself, as if it never would come to an end; and I
+was not surprised, on consulting a guide-book afterwards, to find that
+my half mile had really been a mile and a half. One's sensations in such
+a case I have sometimes compared with those of an essay-writer when he
+is getting near the end of his task. He dallied with it in the
+beginning, and was half ready to throw it up in the middle; but now the
+fever is on him, and he cannot drive the pen fast enough. Two days ago
+he doubted whether or not to burn the thing; now it is certain to be his
+masterpiece, and he must sit up till morning, if need be, to finish it.
+What would life be worth without its occasional enthusiasm, laughable in
+the retrospect, perhaps, but in itself pleasurable almost to the point
+of painfulness?
+
+It was a glorious day. I enjoyed the climb, the lessening forest, the
+alpine plants (the diapensia was in full flower, with its upright snowy
+goblets, while the geum and the Greenland sandwort were just beginning
+to blossom), the magnificent prospect, the stimulating air, and, most of
+all, the mountain itself. I sympathized then, as I have often done at
+other times, with a remark once made to me by a Vermont farmer's wife. I
+had sought a night's lodging at her house, and during the evening we
+fell into conversation about Mount Mansfield, from the top of which I
+had 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, of
+course; 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 poet
+would have liked this saying, especially as coming from such a source.
+_I_ liked it, at any rate, and am seldom on a mountain-top without
+recalling it. Her lot had been narrow and prosaic,--bitterly so, the
+visitor was likely to think; she was little used to expressing herself,
+and no doubt would have wondered what Mr. Pater could mean by his talk
+about natural objects as possessing "more or less of a moral or
+spiritual life," as "capable of a companionship with man, full of
+expression, of inexplicable affinities and delicacies of intercourse."
+From such refinements and subtleties her mind would have taken refuge in
+thoughts of her baking and ironing. But she enjoyed the mountain; I
+think she had some feeling for it, as for a friend; and who knows but
+she, too, was one of "the poets that are sown by Nature"?
+
+I spent two happy hours and a half at the summit of Lafayette. The
+ancient peak must have had many a worthier guest, but it could never
+have entertained one more hospitably. With what softly temperate breezes
+did it fan me! I wish I were there now! But kind as was its welcome, it
+did not urge me to remain. The word of the brook came true again,--as
+Nature's words always do, if we hear them aright. Having gone as high as
+my 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 next
+season, also in June, I twice accepted the invitation. On the first of
+these occasions, although I was eight days later than I had been the
+year before (June 19th instead of June 11th), the diapensia was just
+coming into somewhat free bloom, while the sandwort showed only here and
+there a stray flower, and the geum was only in bud. The dwarf paper
+birch (trees of no one knows what age, matting the ground) was in
+blossom, with large, handsome catkins, while Cutler's willow was already
+in fruit, and the crowberry likewise. The willow, like the birch, has
+learned that the only way to live in such a place is to lie flat upon
+the ground and let the wind blow over you. The other flowers noted at
+the summit were one of the blueberries (_Vaccinium uliginosum_),
+Bigelow's sedge, and the fragrant alpine holy-grass (_Hierochloa
+alpina_). Why should this sacred grass, which Christians sprinkle in
+front of their church doors on feast-days, be scattered thus upon our
+higher mountain-tops, unless these places are indeed, as the Indian and
+the ancient Hebrew believed, the special abode of the Great Spirit?
+
+But the principal interest of this my second ascent of Mount Lafayette
+was to be not botanical, but ornithological. We had seen nothing
+noteworthy on the way up (I was not alone this time, though I have so
+far been rude enough to ignore my companion); but while at the Eagle
+Lakes, on our return, we had an experience that threw me into a nine
+days' fever. The other man--one of the botanists of last year's
+crew--was engaged in collecting viburnum specimens, when all at once I
+caught sight of something red in a dead spruce on the mountain-side just
+across the tiny lake. I leveled my glass, and saw with perfect
+distinctness, as I thought, two pine grosbeaks in bright male
+costume,--birds I had never seen before except in winter. Presently a
+third one, in dull plumage, came into view, having been hidden till now
+behind the bole. The trio remained in sight for some time, and then
+dropped into the living spruces underneath, and disappeared. I lingered
+about, while my companion and the black flies were busy, and was on the
+point of turning away for good, when up flew two red birds and alighted
+in a tree close by the one out of which the grosbeaks had dropped. But
+a single glance showed that they were not grosbeaks, but white-winged
+crossbills! And soon they, too, were joined by a third bird, in female
+garb. Here was a pretty piece of confusion! I was delighted to see the
+crossbills, having never before had the first glimpse of them, summer or
+winter; but what was I to think about the grosbeaks? "Your determination
+is worthless," said my scientific friend, consolingly; and there was no
+gainsaying his verdict. Yet by what possibility could I have been so
+deceived? The birds, though none too near, had given me an excellent
+observation, and as long as they were in sight I had felt no uncertainty
+whatever as to their identity. The bill alone, of which I had taken
+particular note, ought in all reason to be held conclusive. So much for
+one side of the case. On the other hand, however, the second trio were
+unmistakably crossbills. (They had been joined on the wing by several
+others, as I ought to have mentioned, and with their characteristic
+chattering cry had swept out of sight up the mountain). It was certainly
+a curious coincidence: three grosbeaks--two males and a female--had
+dropped out of a tree into the undergrowth; and then, five minutes
+later, three crossbills--two males and a female--had risen out of the
+same undergrowth, and taken almost the very perch which the others had
+quitted! Had this strange thing happened? Or had my eyes deceived me?
+This was my dilemma, on the sharp horns of which I tried alternately for
+the next eight days to make myself comfortable.
+
+During all that time, the weather rendered mountain climbing
+impracticable. But the morning of the 28th was clear and cold, and I set
+out forthwith for the Eagle Lakes. If the grosbeaks were there, I meant
+to see them, though I should have to spend all day in the attempt. My
+botanist had returned home, leaving me quite alone at the hotel; but, as
+good fortune would have it, before I reached the Profile House, I was
+overtaken unexpectedly by a young ornithological friend, who needed no
+urging to try the Lafayette path. We were creeping laboriously up the
+long, steep shoulder beyond the Eagle Cliff gorge, and drawing near the
+lakes, when all at once a peculiarly sweet, flowing warble fell upon
+our ears. "A pine grosbeak!" said I, in a tone of full assurance,
+although this was my first hearing of the song. The younger man plunged
+into the forest, in the direction of the voice, while I, knowing pretty
+well how the land lay, hastened on toward the lakes, in hopes to find
+the singer visible from that point. Just as I ran down the little
+incline into the open, a bird flew past me across the water, and
+alighted in a dead spruce (it might have been the very tree of nine days
+before), where it sat in full sight, and at once broke into song,--"like
+the purple finch's," says my notebook; "less fluent, but, as it seemed
+to me, sweeter and more expressive. I think it was not louder." Before
+many minutes, my comrade came running down the path in high glee,
+calling, "Pine grosbeaks!" He had got directly under a tree in which two
+of them were sitting. So the momentous question was settled, and I
+commenced feeling once more a degree of confidence in my own eyesight.
+The loss of such confidence is a serious discomfort; but, strange as it
+may seem to people in general, I suspect that few field ornithologists,
+except beginners, ever succeed in retaining it undisturbed for any long
+time together. As a class, they have learned to take the familiar maxim,
+"Seeing is believing," with several grains of allowance. With most of
+them, it would be nearer the mark to say, Shooting is believing.
+
+My special errand at the lakes being thus quickly disposed of, there was
+no reason why I should not accompany my friend to the summit. Lafayette
+gave us a cold reception. We might have addressed him as Daniel Webster,
+according to the time-worn story, once addressed Mount Washington; but
+neither of us felt oratorically inclined. In truth, after the outrageous
+heats of the past few days, it seemed good to be thrashing our arms and
+crouching behind a boulder, while we devoured our luncheon, and between
+times studied the landscape. For my own part, I experienced a feeling of
+something like wicked satisfaction; as if I had been wronged, and all at
+once had found a way of balancing the score. The diapensia was already
+quite out of bloom, although only nine days before we had thought it
+hardly at its best. It is one of the prettiest and most striking of our
+strictly alpine plants, but is seldom seen by the ordinary summer
+tourist, as it finishes its course long before he arrives. The same may
+be said of the splendid Lapland azalea, which I do not remember to have
+found on Mount Lafayette, it is true, but which is to be seen in all its
+glory upon the Mount Washington range, in middle or late June; so early
+that one may have to travel over snow-banks to reach it. The two flowers
+oftenest noticed by the chance comer to these parts are the Greenland
+sandwort (the "mountain daisy"!) and the pretty geum, with its handsome
+crinkled leaves and its bright yellow blossoms, like buttercups.
+
+My sketch will hardly fulfill the promise of its title; for our June in
+Franconia included a thousand things of which I have left myself no room
+to speak: strolls in the Landaff Valley and to Sugar Hill; a walk to
+Mount Agassiz; numerous visits--by the way, and in uncertain weather--to
+Bald Mountain; several jaunts to Lonesome Lake; and wanderings here and
+there in the pathless valley woods. We were none of us of that unhappy
+class who cannot enjoy doing the same thing twice.
+
+I wished, also, to say something of sundry minor enjoyments: of the
+cinnamon roses, for example, with the fragrance of which we were
+continually greeted, and which have left such a sweetness in the memory
+that I would have called this essay "June in the Valley of Cinnamon
+Roses," had I not despaired of holding myself up to so poetic a title.
+And with the roses the wild strawberries present themselves. Roses and
+strawberries! It is the very poetry of science that these should be
+classified together. The berries, like the flowers, are of a generous
+turn (it is a family trait, I think), loving no place better than the
+roadside, as if they would fain be of refreshment to beings less happy
+than themselves, who cannot be still and blossom and bear fruit, but are
+driven by the Fates to go trudging up and down in dusty highways. For
+myself, if I were a dweller in this vale, I am sure my finger-tips would
+never be of their natural color so long as the season of strawberries
+lasted. 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 was
+scarce any that had taken on the final tinge and flavor. Then I began to
+be aware of faint, sibilant noises about me, and, glancing up, I saw
+that the ground was already "preëmpted" by a company of cedar-birds,
+who, naturally enough, were not a little indignant at my poaching thus
+on their preserves. They showed so much concern (and had gathered the
+ripest of the berries so thoroughly) that I actually came away the
+sooner on their account. I began to feel ashamed of myself, and for once
+in my life was literally hissed off the stage.
+
+Even on my last page I must be permitted a word in praise of Mount
+Cannon, of which I made three ascents. It has nothing like the celebrity
+of Mount Willard, with which, from its position, it is natural to
+compare it; but to my thinking it is little, if at all, less worthy. Its
+outlook upon Mount Lafayette is certainly grander than anything Mount
+Willard can offer, while the prospect of the Pemigewasset Valley, fading
+away to the horizon, if less striking than that of the White Mountain
+Notch, has some elements of beauty which must of necessity be lacking
+in any more narrowly circumscribed scene, no matter how romantic.
+
+In venturing upon a comparison of this kind, however, one is bound
+always to allow for differences of mood. When I am in tune for such
+things, I can be happier on an ordinary Massachusetts hilltop than at
+another time I should be on any New Hampshire mountain, though it were
+Moosilauke itself. And, truly, Fortune did smile upon our first visit to
+Mount Cannon. Weather conditions, outward and inward, were right. We had
+come mainly to look at Lafayette from this point of vantage; but, while
+we suffered no disappointment in that direction, we found ourselves
+still more taken with the valley prospect. We lay upon the rocks by the
+hour, gazing at it. Scattered clouds dappled the whole vast landscape
+with shadows; the river, winding down the middle of the scene, drew the
+whole into harmony, as it were, making it in some nobly literal sense
+picturesque; while the distance was of such an exquisite blue as I think
+I 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 or
+crossbill (may the birds forgive me!), or the latest novelty in willows?
+I am often where fine music is played, and never without being
+interested; as men say, I am pleased. But at the twentieth time, it may
+be, 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 appreciation
+of natural beauty. We are always in its presence, but only on rare
+occasions are our eyes anointed to see it. Such ecstasies, it seems, are
+not for every day. Sometimes I fear they grow less frequent as we grow
+older.
+
+We will hope for better things; but, should the gloomy prognostication
+fall true, we will but betake ourselves the more assiduously to lesser
+pleasures,--to warblers and willows, roses and strawberries. Science
+will never fail us. If worse comes to worst, we will not despise the
+moths.
+
+
+
+
+DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.
+
+    "December's as pleasant as May."
+                            _Old Hymn._
+
+
+For a month so almost universally spoken against, November commonly
+brings more than its full proportion of fair days; and last year (1888)
+this proportion was, I think, even greater than usual. On the 1st and
+5th I heard the peeping of hylas; Sunday, the 4th, was enlivened by a
+farewell visitation of bluebirds; during the first week, at least four
+sorts of butterflies--Disippus, Philodice, Antiopa, and Comma--were on
+the wing, and a single Philodice (our common yellow butterfly) was
+flying as late as the 16th. Wild flowers of many kinds--not less than a
+hundred, certainly--were in bloom; among them the exquisite little
+pimpernel, or poor man's weather-glass. My daily notes are full of
+complimentary allusions to the weather. Once in a while it rained, and
+under date of the 6th I find this record,--"Everybody complaining of
+the heat;" but as terrestrial matters go, the month was remarkably
+propitious up to the 25th. Then, all without warning,--unless possibly
+from the pimpernel, which nobody heeded,--a violent snow-storm descended
+upon us. Railway travel and telegraphic communication were seriously
+interrupted, while from up and down the coast came stories of shipwreck
+and loss of life. Winter was here in earnest; for the next three months
+good walking days would be few.
+
+December opened with a mild gray morning. The snow had already
+disappeared, leaving only the remains of a drift here and there in the
+lee of a stone-wall; the ground was saturated with water; every meadow
+was like a lake; and but for the greenness of the fields in a few
+favored spots, the season might have been late March instead of early
+December. Of course such hours were never meant to be wasted within
+doors. 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 the
+next; and so the story went on, till in the end, omitting five days of
+greater or less inclemency, I had spent nearly the entire month in the
+open 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 agreed
+with them. Now, however, looking back over my previous year's notes, I
+come upon such entries as these: "December 3d. The day has been warm.
+Found chickweed and knawel in bloom, and an old garden was full of
+fresh-looking pansies." "4th. A calm, warm morning." "5th. Warm and
+rainy." "6th. Mild and bright." "7th. A most beautiful winter day, mild
+and 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. Warm
+and bright." "14th. If possible, a more beautiful day than yesterday."
+
+So much for December, 1887. Its unexpected good behavior would seem to
+have made a profound impression upon me; no doubt I promised never to
+forget it; yet twelve months later traditionary notions had resumed
+their customary sway, and every pleasant morning took me by surprise.
+
+The winter of 1888-89 will long be famous in the ornithological annals
+of New England as the winter of killdeer plovers. I have mentioned the
+great storm of November 25th-27th. On the first pleasant morning
+afterwards--on the 28th, that is--my out-of-door comrade and I made an
+excursion to Nahant. The land-breeze had already beaten down the surf,
+and the turmoil of the waters was in great part stilled; but the beach
+was strewn with sea-weeds and eel-grass, and withal presented quite a
+holiday appearance. From one motive and another, a considerable
+proportion of the inhabitants of the city had turned out. The principal
+attraction, as far as we could perceive, was a certain big clam, of
+which great numbers had been cast up by the tide. Baskets and wagons
+were being filled; some of the men carried off shells and all, while
+others, with a celerity which must have been the result of much
+practice, were cutting out the plump dark bodies, leaving the shells in
+heaps upon the sand. The collectors of these molluscan dainties knew
+them as quahaugs, and esteemed them accordingly; but my companion, a
+connoisseur in such matters, pronounced them not the true quahaug
+(_Venus mercenaria_,--what a profanely ill-sorted name, even for a
+bivalve!) but the larger and coarser _Cyprina islandica_. The man to
+whom we imparted this precious bit of esoteric lore received it like a
+gentleman, if I cannot add like a scholar. "We _call_ them quahaugs," he
+answered, with an accent of polite deprecation, as if it were not in the
+least to be wondered at that he should be found in the wrong. It was
+evident, at the same time, that the question of a name did not strike
+him as of any vital consequence. _Venus mercenaria_ or _Cyprina
+islandica_, the savoriness of the chowder was not likely to be seriously
+affected.
+
+It was good, I thought, to see so many people out-of-doors. Most of them
+had 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), remains
+at heart a child of nature. His ancestors may have been shoemakers for
+fifty generations, but none the less he feels an impulse now and then to
+quit 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 the
+bay in search of loons, old-squaws, and other sea-fowl. Here we
+presently met two gunners. They had been more successful than most of
+the sportsmen that one falls in with on such trips; between them they
+had a guillemot, two horned larks, and a brace of large plovers, of some
+species unknown to us, but noticeable for their bright cinnamon-colored
+rumps. "Why couldn't _we_ have found those plovers, instead of that
+fellow?" said my companion, as we crossed the second beach. I fear he
+was envious at the prosperity of the wicked. But it was only a passing
+cloud; for on reaching the main peninsula we were speedily arrested by
+loud cries from a piece of marsh, and after considerable wading and a
+clamber over a detestable barbed-wire fence, such as no rambler ever
+encountered without at least a temptation to profanity, we caught sight
+of a flock of about a dozen of the same unknown plovers. This was good
+fortune indeed. We had no firearms, nor even a pinch of salt, and coming
+shortly to a ditch, too wide for leaping and too deep for cold-weather
+fording, we were obliged to content ourselves with opera-glass
+inspection. Six of the birds were grouped in a little plot of grass,
+standing motionless, like so many robins. Their novelty and their
+striking appearance, with two conspicuous black bands across the breast,
+their loud cries, and their curious movements and attitudes were enough
+to drive a pair of enthusiasts half crazy. We looked and looked, and
+then reluctantly turned away. On getting home we had no difficulty in
+determining their identity, and each at once sent off to the other the
+same verdict,--"killdeer plover."
+
+This, as I say, was on the 28th of November. On the 3d of December we
+were again at Nahant, eating our luncheon upon the veranda of some rich
+man's deserted cottage, and at the same time enjoying the sunshine and
+the beautiful scene.
+
+It was a summery spot; moths were flitting about us, and two
+grasshoppers leaped out of our way as we crossed the lawn. They showed
+something less than summer liveliness, it is true; it was only
+afterwards, 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 the
+low temperature; for the mercury had been down to 10° within a
+fortnight, and a large snow-bank was still in sight against the wall.
+Suddenly a close flock of eight or ten birds flew past us and
+disappeared behind the hill. "Pigeons?" said my companion. I thought
+not; they were sea-birds of some kind. Soon we heard killdeer cries from
+the beach, and, looking up, saw the birds, three of them, alighting on
+the sand. We started down the hill in haste, but just at that moment an
+old woman, a miserable gatherer of drift rubbish, walked directly upon
+them, and they made off. Then we saw that our "pigeons," or "sea-birds,"
+had been nothing but killdeer plovers, which, like other long-winged
+birds, look much larger in the air than when at rest. Returning towards
+Lynn, later in the afternoon, we came upon the same three birds again;
+this time feeding among the boulders at the end of the beach. We
+remarked once more their curious, silly-looking custom of standing
+stock-still with heads indrawn. But our own attitudes, as we also stood
+stock-still with glasses raised, may have looked, in their eyes, even
+more singular and meaningless. As we turned away--after flushing them
+two or three times to get a view of their pretty cinnamon
+rump-feathers--a sportsman came up, and proved to be the very man on
+whose belt we had seen our first killdeers, a week before. We left him
+doing 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, we
+purposely startled the birds as badly as possible, hoping to see them
+make off over the hill, out of harm's way. But the foolish creatures
+could not take the hint, and alighted again within a few rods, at the
+same time calling loudly enough to attract the attention of the gunner,
+who up to this moment had not been aware of their presence. He fired
+twice before we got out of sight, but, to judge from his motions,
+without success. A man's happiness is perhaps of more value than a
+plover'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 wing
+which I send you," she began, "can you tell me the name of the bird that
+owned it?" Then after some description of the plumage, she continued:
+"In the late tremendous tempest myriads of these birds settled on the
+Isles of Shoals, filling the air with a harsh, shrill, incessant cry,
+and not to be driven away by guns or any of man's inhospitable
+treatment. Their number was so great as to be amazing, and they had
+never 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." On
+the 16th she wrote again: "All sorts of strange things were cast up by
+the storm, and the plovers were busy devouring everything they could
+find; always running, chasing each other, very quarrelsome, fighting
+all the time. They were in poor condition, so lean that the men did not
+shoot them after the first day, a fact which gives your correspondent
+great satisfaction. They are still there! My brother came from the
+Shoals yesterday, and says that the place is alive with them, all the
+seven islands."
+
+Similar facts were reported--as I began in one way and another to
+learn--from different points along the coast; especially from Cape
+Elizabeth, Maine, where hundreds of the birds were seen on the 28th and
+29th of November. The reporter of this item[4] pertinently adds: "Such a
+flight of killdeer in Maine--where the bird is well known to be
+rare--has probably not occurred before within the memory of living
+sportsmen." Here, as at the Isles of Shoals, the visitors were at first
+easily shot (they are not counted among game birds where they are known,
+on account of their habitual leanness, I suppose); but they had landed
+upon inhospitable shores, and were not long in becoming aware of their
+misfortune. In the middle of December one of our Cambridge
+ornithologists went to Cape Cod on purpose to find them. He saw about
+sixty birds, but by this time they were so wild that he succeeded in
+getting only a single specimen. "Poor fellows!" he wrote me; "they
+looked unhappy enough, that cold Friday, with the mercury at 12° and
+everything frozen stiff. Most of them were on hillsides and in the
+hollows of pastures; a few were in the salt marshes, and one or two on
+the beach." Nobody expected them to remain hereabouts, as they normally
+winter in the West Indies and in Central and South America;[5] but every
+little while Mrs. Thaxter wrote, "The killdeers are still here!" and on
+the 21st of December, as I approached Marblehead Neck, I saw a bird
+skimming over the ice that covered the small pond back of the beach. I
+put up my glass and said to myself, "A killdeer plover!" There proved to
+be two birds. They would not suffer me within gunshot,--though I carried
+no gun,--but flew off into some ploughed ground, with their usual loud
+vociferations. (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 the
+Southern States for a long southward flight, or perhaps for the West
+Indies, on the evening of November 24th, and on getting out to sea were
+caught by the great gale, which whirled them northward over the
+Atlantic, landing them--such of them, that is, as were not drowned on
+the way--upon the coast of New England. The grounds for such an opinion
+are 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 especially
+concerned, I saw nothing more of them; but by way of completing the
+story I may add that on the 28th of January, in the same spot, I found a
+flock of seven, and there they remained. I visited them four times in
+February and once in March, and found them invariably in the same place.
+Evidently they had no idea of making another attempt to reach the West
+Indies for _this_ season; and if they were to remain in our latitude,
+they could hardly have selected a more desirable location. The marsh, or
+meadow, was sheltered and sunny, while the best protected corner was at
+the same time one of those peculiarly springy spots in which the grass
+keeps green the winter through. Here, then, these seven wayfarers
+stayed week after week. Whenever I stole up cautiously and peeped over
+the bank into their verdant hiding-place, I was sure to hear the
+familiar cry; and directly one bird, and then another, and another,
+would start up before me, disclosing the characteristic brown feathers
+of the lower back. They commonly assembled in the middle of the marsh
+upon the snow or ice, where they stood for a little, bobbing their heads
+in mutual conference, and then flew off over the house and over the
+orchard, calling as they flew.
+
+Throughout December, and indeed throughout the winter, brown creepers
+and red-bellied nuthatches were surprisingly abundant. Every pine wood
+seemed to have its colony of them. Whether the extraordinary mildness of
+the season had anything to do with this I cannot say; but their presence
+was welcome, whatever the reason for it. Like the chickadee, with whom
+they have the good taste to be fond of associating, they are always busy
+and cheerful, appearing not to mind either snow-storm or low
+temperature. 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 the
+name of the downy woodpecker was missing. He had been common during
+November, and is well known as one of our familiar winter residents. I
+began forthwith to keep a sharp lookout for him, particularly whenever I
+went near any apple orchard. A little later, I actually commenced making
+excursions on purpose to find him. But the fates were against me, and go
+where I would, he was not there. At last I gave him up. Then, on the
+27th, as I sat at my desk, a chickadee chirped outside. Of course I
+looked out to see him; and there, exploring the branches of an old
+apple-tree, directly under my window, was the black-and-white woodpecker
+for whom I had been searching in vain through five or six townships. The
+saucy fellow! He rapped smartly three or four times; then he
+straightened himself back, as woodpeckers do, and said: "Good-morning,
+sir! Where have you been so long? If you wish to see _me_, you had
+better stay at home." He might have spoken a little less pertly; for
+after all, if a man would know what is going on, whether in summer or
+winter, he must not keep too much in his own door-yard. Of the thirty
+birds in my December list, I should have seen perhaps ten if I had sat
+all the time at my window, and possibly twice that number had I confined
+my walks within the limits of my own town.
+
+While the migration is going on, to be sure, one may find birds in the
+most unexpected places. Last May I glanced up from my book and espied an
+olive-backed thrush in the back yard, foraging among the currant-bushes.
+Raising a window quietly, I whistled something like an imitation of his
+inimitable song; and the little traveler--always an easy dupe--pricked
+up his ears, and presently responded with a strain which carried me
+straight into the depths of a White Mountain forest. But in December,
+with some exceptions, of course, birds must be sought after rather than
+waited for. The 15th, for example, was a most uncomfortable day,--so
+uncomfortable that I stayed indoors,--the mercury only two or three
+degrees above zero, and a strong wind blowing. Such weather would drive
+the birds under shelter. The next forenoon, therefore, I betook myself
+to a hill covered thickly with pines and cedars. Here I soon ran upon
+several robins, feeding upon the savin berries, and in a moment more was
+surprised by a _tseep_ so loud and emphatic that I thought at once of a
+fox 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 sat
+perfectly still, the picture of discouragement. I could not blame him,
+but was glad, an hour later, to find him again on the ground, picking up
+his dinner. I leveled my glass at him and whistled his Peabody song (the
+simplest of all bird songs to imitate), but he moved not a feather.
+Apparently he had never heard it before! He was still there in the
+afternoon, and I had hopes of his remaining through the winter; but I
+never could find him afterwards. Ten days prior to this I had gone to
+Longwood on a special hunt for this same sparrow, remembering a certain
+peculiarly cozy hollow where, six or eight years before, a little
+company of song sparrows and white-throats had passed a rather severe
+winter. The song sparrows were there again, as I had expected, but no
+white-throats. The song sparrows, by the way, treated me shabbily this
+season. A year ago several of them took up their quarters in a roadside
+garden patch, where I could look in upon them almost daily. This year
+there were none to be discovered anywhere in this neighborhood. They
+figure in my December list on four days only, and were found in four
+different towns,--Brookline (Longwood), Marblehead, Nahant, and
+Cohasset. Like some others of our land birds (notably the golden-winged
+woodpecker and the meadow lark), they seem to have learned that winter
+loses a little of its rigor along the sea-board.
+
+Three kinds of land birds were met with at Nahant Beach, and nowhere
+else: the Ipswich sparrow,--on the 3d and 26th,--the snow bunting, and
+the horned lark. Of the last two species, both of them rather common in
+November, I saw but one individual each. They were feeding side by
+side, and, after a short separation,--under the fright into which my
+sudden appearance put them,--one called to the other, and they flew off
+in company towards Lynn. It was a pleasing display of sociability, but
+nothing new; for in winter, as every observer knows, birds not of a
+feather flock together. The Ipswich sparrow, a very retiring but not
+peculiarly timid creature, I have now seen at Nahant in every one of our
+seven colder months,--from October to April,--though it is
+unquestionably rare upon the Massachusetts coast between the fall and
+spring migrations. Besides the species already named, my monthly list
+included the following: herring gull, great black-backed gull, ruffed
+grouse, hairy woodpecker, flicker, goldfinch, tree sparrow, snowbird,
+blue jay, crow, shrike, white-bellied nuthatch (only two or three
+birds), golden-crowned kinglet, and one small hawk.[6]
+
+[6] To this list my ornithological comrade before mentioned added seven
+species, namely: white-winged scoter, barred owl, cowbird, purple finch,
+white-winged crossbill, fox sparrow, and winter wren. Between us, as far
+as land birds went, we did pretty well.
+
+The only birds that sang during the month--unless we include the
+red-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 I
+take to be certainly their song, as distinguished from all their
+multifarious calls--on seven of the thirty-one days. They were more
+tuneful 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 fairly
+be said to sing all winter long. The robin's music was a pleasure quite
+unexpected. I was out on Sunday, the 30th, for a few minutes' stroll
+before breakfast, when the obliging stranger (I had not seen a robin for
+a fortnight, and did not see another for nearly two months) broke into
+song from a hill-top covered with pitch-pines. He was in excellent
+voice, and sang again and again. The morning invited music,--warm and
+cloudless, like an unusually fine morning in early April.
+
+For an entire week, indeed, the weather had seemed to be trying to outdo
+itself. I remember in particular the day before Christmas. I rose long
+before daylight, crossed the Mystic River marshes as the dawn was
+beginning to break, and shortly after sunrise was on my way down the
+South Shore. Leaving the cars at Cohasset, I sauntered over the
+Jerusalem Road to Nantasket, spent a little while on the beach, and
+brought up at North Cohasset, where I was attracted by a
+lonesome-looking road running into the woods all by itself, with a
+guide-board marked "Turkey Hill." Why not accept the pleasing
+invitation, which seemed meant on purpose for just such an idle
+pedestrian as myself? As for Turkey Hill, I had never heard of it, and
+presumed it to be some uninteresting outlying hamlet. My concern, as a
+saunterer's ought always to be, was with the road itself, not with what
+might lie at the end of it. I did not discover my mistake till I had
+gone half a mile, more or less, when the road all at once turned sharply
+to the right and commenced ascending. Then it dawned upon me that Turkey
+Hill must be no other than the long, gradual, grassy slope at which I
+had already been looking from the railway station. The prospect of sea
+and land was beautiful; all the more so, perhaps, because of a thick
+autumnal haze. It might be called excellent Christmas weather, I said to
+myself, when a naturally prudent man, no longer young, could sit perched
+upon a fence rail at the top of a hill, drinking in the beauties of the
+landscape.
+
+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, I
+don't," he answered. I suggested that probably somebody had killed a
+wild turkey up there at some time or other. He looked politely
+incredulous. "I don't _think_ there are any wild turkeys up there," said
+he; "_I_ never saw any." He was not more than twenty-five years old, and
+the last Massachusetts turkey was killed on Mount Tom in 1847, so that I
+had no doubt he spoke the truth. Probably he took me for a simple-minded
+fellow, while I thought nothing worse of him than that he was one of
+those people, so numerous and at the same time so much to be pitied, who
+have never studied ornithology.
+
+The 25th was warmer even than the 24th; and it, likewise, I spent upon
+the South Shore, though at a point somewhat farther inland, and in a
+town where I was not likely to lose myself, least of all in any
+out-of-the-way woodland road. In short, I spent Christmas on my native
+heath,--a not inappropriate word, by the bye, for a region so largely
+grown up to huckleberry bushes. "Holbrook's meadows," and "Norton
+pasture!"--the names are not to be found on any map, and will convey no
+meaning to my readers; but in my ears they awaken memories of many and
+many a sunny hour. On this holiday I revisited them both. Warm as it
+was, 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 I
+stood awhile by the old Ross cellar, watching their evolutions. How
+bright and cheery it was in the little sheltered clearing, with nothing
+in sight but the leafless woods and the ice-covered pond! "Shan't I take
+your coat?" the sun seemed to be asking. At my elbow stood a bunch of
+lilac bushes ("laylocks" they were probably called by the man who set
+them out[7]) that had blossomed freely in the summer. The house has
+been gone for these thirty years or more (alas! my sun must be rapidly
+declining when memory casts so long a shadow), but the bushes seem
+likely to hold their own for at least a century. They might have
+prompted a wise man to some wise reflections; but for myself, it must be
+acknowledged, I fell instead to thinking how many half days I had
+fished--and caught nothing, or next to nothing--along this same
+pleasant, willow-bordered shore.
+
+[7] So they were called, too, by that lover of flowers, Walter Savage
+Landor, 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 by
+putting a few checkerberries into my mouth; and in a small new clearing
+just over the brook ("Dyer's Run," this used to be called, but I fear
+the name is falling into forgetfulness) I stumbled upon a patch of some
+handsome evergreen shrub, which I saw at once to be a novelty. I took it
+for a member of the heath family, but it proved to belong with the
+hollies,--_Ilex glabra_, or ink-berry, a plant not to be found in the
+county where it is my present lot to botanize. So, even on my native
+heath, I had discovered something new.
+
+The flora of a Massachusetts December is of necessity limited. Even in
+the month under review, singularly favorable as it was, I found but
+sixteen sorts of wild blossoms; a small number, surely, though perhaps
+larger by sixteen than the average reader would have guessed. The names
+of these hardy adventurers must by no means go unrecorded: shepherd's
+purse, 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 I
+should certainly have expected), many-flowered aster, cone-flower,
+yarrow, two kinds of groundsel, fall dandelion, and jointweed. Six of
+these--mallow, cinque-foil, aster, cone-flower, fall dandelion, and
+jointweed--were noticed only at Nahant; and it is further to be said
+that the jointweed was found by a friend, not by myself, while the
+cone-flower was not in strictness a blossom; that is to say, its rays
+were well opened, making what in common parlance is called a flower, but
+the true florets were not yet perfected. Such witch-hazel blossoms as
+can 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 afternoon
+of Christmas, happening to look into a hamamelis-tree, I saw what looked
+like a flower near the top. The tree was too small for climbing and
+almost too large for bending, but I managed to get it down; and sure
+enough, the bit of yellow was indeed a perfectly fresh blossom. How did
+it know I was to pass that way on Christmas afternoon, and by what sort
+of freemasonry did it attract my attention? I loved it and left it on
+the stalk, in the true Emersonian spirit, and here I do my little best
+to embalm its memory.
+
+One of the groundsels (_Senecio viscosus_) is a recent immigrant from
+Europe, but has been thoroughly established in the Back Bay lands of
+Boston--where I now found it, in perfect condition, December 4th--for at
+least half a dozen years. In Gray's "Flora of North America" it is said
+to grow there and in the vicinity of Providence; but since that account
+was written it has made its appearance in Lowell, and probably in other
+places. It is a coarse-looking little plant, delighting to grow in pure
+gravel; but its blossoms are pretty, and now, with not another flower of
+any sort near it, it looked, as the homely phrase is, "as handsome as a
+picture." Its more generally distributed congener, _Senecio
+vulgaris_,--also a foreigner--is, next to the common chickweed, I should
+say, our very hardiest bloomer. At the beginning of the month it was in
+flower in an old garden in Melrose; and at Marblehead Neck a
+considerable patch of it was fairly yellow with blossoms all through
+December and January, and I know not how much longer. I saw no
+shepherd's purse after December 27th, but knawel was in flower as late
+as January 18th. The golden-rods, it will be observed, are absent
+altogether from my list; and the same would have been true of the
+asters, but for a single plant. This, curiously enough, still bore five
+heads 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 been
+introduced from Europe; six are members of the composite family; and if
+we omit the cone-flower, all but three of the entire number are simple
+whites and yellows. Two red flowers, the clover and the pimpernel,
+disappointed my search; but the blue hepatica would almost certainly
+have 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, the
+creeping blackberries,--whose modest winter loveliness was never half
+appreciated,--herb-robert, corydalis, partridge-berry, checkerberry,
+wintergreen, rattlesnake-plantain, veronica, and linnæa, to say nothing
+of the ferns and mosses. Most refreshing of all, perhaps, was an
+occasional patch of bright green grass, like the one already spoken of,
+at Marblehead, or like one even brighter and prettier, which I visited
+more than once in Swampscott.
+
+As I review what I have written, I am tempted to exclaim with
+Tennyson:--
+
+    "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 began
+states the truth somewhat strongly, perhaps (it must be remembered where
+I got it), but aside from that one bit of harmless borrowed hyperbole, I
+have delivered a plain, unvarnished tale. For all that, however, I do
+not expect my industrious fellow-citizens to fall in at once with my
+opinion that winter is a pleasant season at the seashore (it would be
+too bad they should, as far as my own enjoyment is concerned), and
+December a month propitious for leisurely all-day rambles. How foreign
+such notions are to people in general I have lately had several forcible
+reminders. On one of my jaunts from Marblehead to Swampscott, for
+example, I had finally taken to the railway, and was in the narrow,
+tortuous cut through the ledges, when, looking back, I saw a young
+gentleman coming along after me. He was in full skating rig, fur cap and
+all, with a green bag in one hand and a big hockey stick in the other. I
+stopped every few minutes to listen for any bird that might chance to be
+in 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 his
+head partly turned. There was no mistaking the significance of that
+furtive, sidelong glance; he had read the newspapers, and didn't intend
+to be attacked from behind unawares! If he should ever cast his eye over
+these pages (and whatever he may have thought of my appearance, I am
+bound to say of him that he looked like a man who might appreciate good
+literature), he will doubtless remember the incident, especially if I
+mention the field-glass which I carried slung over one shoulder.
+Evidently the world sees no reason why a man with anything better to do
+should be wandering aimlessly about the country in midwinter. Nor do I
+quarrel with the world's opinion. The majority is wiser than the
+minority, of course; otherwise, what becomes of its divine and
+inalienable 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 is
+no lack of shoemakers. Why, then, should not here and there a man take
+up the business of walking, of wearing out shoes? Everything is related
+to everything else, and the self-same power that brought the killdeers
+to Marblehead sent me there to see them and do them honor. Should it
+please the gods to order it so, I shall gladly be kept running on such
+errands 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 not
+become aware of my romantic good fortune till near the close of my stay.
+There was no trace of battlement or turret, nothing in the least
+suggestive of Warwick or Windsor, or of Sir Walter Scott. In fact, the
+Castle was not a building of any kind, but a hamlet; a small collection
+of houses--a somewhat scattered collection, it must be owned,--such as,
+on the bleaker and sandier parts of Cape Cod, is distinguished by the
+name of village. On one side flowed the river, doubling its course
+through green meadows with almost imperceptible motion. As I watched the
+tide 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 the
+Pamet, 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 know
+perfectly well that it need not run fast.
+
+My room would have made an ideal study for a lazy man, I thought, the
+two windows facing straight into a sand-bank, above which rose a steep
+hill, or perhaps I should rather say the steep wall of a plateau, on
+whose treeless top, all by themselves, or with only a graveyard for
+company, stood the Town Hall and the two village churches. Perched thus
+upon the roof of the Cape, as it were, and surmounted by cupola and
+belfry, the hall and the "orthodox" church made invaluable beacons,
+visible from far and near in every direction. For three weeks I steered
+my hungry course by them twice a day, having all the while a pleasing
+consciousness that, however I might skip the Sunday sermon, I was by no
+means neglecting my religious privileges. The second and smaller
+meeting-house belonged to a Methodist society. On its front were the
+scars of several small holes which had been stopped and covered with
+tin. A resident of the Castle assured me that the mischief had been done
+by pigeon woodpeckers,--flickers,--a statement at which I inwardly
+rejoiced. Long ago I had announced my belief that these enthusiastic
+shouters 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 was
+clear. I could understand now how Darwin and men like him must have felt
+when some great hypothesis of theirs received sudden confirmation from
+an unexpected quarter. At the same time I was pained to see that the
+flickers' attempts at church-going had met with such indifferent
+encouragement. Probably the minister and the class leaders would have
+justified their exclusiveness by an appeal to that saying about those
+who enter "not by the door into the sheepfold;" while the woodpeckers,
+on their part, might have retorted that just when they had most need to
+go in the door was shut.
+
+One of my favorite jaunts was to climb this hill, or plateau, the "Hill
+of Storms" (I am still ignorant whether the storms in question were
+political, ecclesiastical, or atmospheric, but I approve the name), and
+go down on the other side into a narrow valley whose meanderings led me
+to the ocean beach. This valley, or, to speak in the local dialect, this
+hollow, like the parallel one in which I lived,--the valley of the
+Pamet,--runs quite across the Cape, from ocean to bay, a distance of two
+miles and a half, more or less.
+
+At my very first sight of Dyer's Hollow I fell in love with it, and now
+that I have left it behind me, perhaps forever, I foresee that my
+memories of it are likely to be even fairer and brighter than was the
+place itself. I call it Dyer's Hollow upon the authority of the town
+historian, who told me, if I understood him correctly, that this was its
+name among sailors, to whom it is a landmark. By the residents of the
+town I commonly heard it spoken of as Longnook or Pike's Hollow, but for
+reasons 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 the
+western end, and follow its windings till he stands upon the bluff
+looking out upon the Atlantic. If his sensations at all resemble mine,
+he will feel, long before the last curve is rounded, as if he were
+ascending a mountain; and an odd feeling it is, the road being level, or
+substantially so, for the whole distance. At the outset he is in a
+green, well-watered valley on the banks of what was formerly Little
+Harbor. 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 near
+by. Up from the reeds a bittern will now and then start. I should like
+to be here once in May, to hear the blows of his stake-driver's mallet
+echoing and reëchoing among the close hills. At that season, too, all
+the uplands would be green. So we were told, at any rate, though the
+pleasing story was almost impossible of belief. In August, as soon as we
+left the immediate vicinity of Little Harbor, the very bottom of the
+valley itself was parched and brown; and the look of barrenness and
+drought increased as we advanced, till toward the end, as the last
+houses were passed, the total appearance of things became subalpine:
+stunted, weather-beaten trees, and broad patches of bearberry showing at
+a little distance like beds of mountain cranberry.
+
+All in all, Dyer's Hollow did not impress me as a promising farming
+country. Acres and acres of horseweed, pinweed, stone clover, poverty
+grass,[8] reindeer moss, mouse-ear everlasting, and bearberry! No wonder
+such fields do not pay for fencing-stuff. No wonder, either, that the
+dwellers here should be mariculturalists rather than agriculturalists.
+And still, although their best garden is the bay, they have their
+gardens on land also,--the bottoms of the deepest hollows being selected
+for the purpose,--and by hook or by crook manage to coax a kind of
+return out of the poverty-stricken soil. Even on Cape Cod there must be
+some potatoes to go with the fish. Vegetables raised under such
+difficulties are naturally sweet to the taste, and I was not so much
+surprised, therefore, on a certain state occasion at the Castle, to see
+a mighty dish of string beans ladled into soup-plates and exalted to the
+dignity of a separate course. Here, too,--but this was in Dyer's
+Hollow,--I found in successful operation one of the latest, and, if I
+may venture an unprofessional opinion, one of the most valuable,
+improvements in the art of husbandry. An old man, an ancient mariner, no
+doubt, 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 with
+years. I regretted afterward that I had not got over the fence and
+accosted him. I could hardly have missed hearing something rememberable.
+Yet I may have done wisely to keep the road. Industry like his ought
+never to be intruded upon lightly. Some, I dare say, would have called
+the sight pathetic. To me it was rather inspiring. Only a day or two
+before, in another part of the township, I had seen a man sitting in a
+chair among his bean-poles picking beans. Those heavy, sandy roads and
+steep hills must be hard upon the legs, and probably the dwellers
+thereabout (unlike the Lombardy poplars, which there, as elsewhere, were
+decaying at the top) begin to die at the lower extremities. It was not
+many 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 he
+sometimes saw a doughnut, but never descended to comfort." Quite
+otherwise was it with my wise-hearted agricultural economists; and quite
+otherwise shall it be with me, also, who mean to profit by their
+example. If I am compelled to dig when I get old (to beg may I ever be
+ashamed!), I am determined not to forget the camp-stool. The Cape Cod
+motto shall be mine,--He that hoeth cabbages, let him do it with
+assiduity.
+
+[8] In looking over the town history, I was pleased to come upon a note
+in defense of this lowly plant, on the score not only of its beauty, but
+of its usefulness in holding the sand in place; but, alas, "all men have
+not faith," and where the historian wrote _Hudsonia tomentosa_ the
+antipathetic compositor set up _Hudsonia tormentosa_. That compositor
+was a Cape Cod man,--I would wager a dinner upon it. "Thus the whirligig
+of time brings in his revenges," I hear him mutter, as he slips the
+superfluous consonant into its place.
+
+This aged cultivator, not so much "on his last legs" as beyond them, was
+evidently a native of the soil, but several of the few houses standing
+along the valley road were occupied by Western Islanders. I was crossing
+a 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. "How
+old do you think he is?" he asked, pointing to the young fellow. It
+would have been inexcusable to disappoint his fatherly expectations, and
+I guessed accordingly: "Seventeen or eighteen." "Sixteen," he
+rejoined,--"sixteen!" and his face shone till I wished I had set the
+figure 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 in
+the 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, landed
+here on Cape Cod, and settled down. Since then he had been to
+California, where he worked in the mines. "Ah! that was where you got
+rich, was it?" said I. "Rich!"--this in a tone of sarcasm. But he added,
+"Well, I made something." His praise of his nearest neighbor--whose
+name proclaimed his Cape Cod nativity--made me think well not only of
+his neighbor, but of him. There were forty-two Portuguese families in
+Truro, he said. "There are more than that in Provincetown?" I suggested.
+He shrugged his shoulders. "Yes, about half the people." And pretty good
+people they are, if such as I saw were fair representatives. One boy of
+fourteen (unlike the milkman's heir, he was very small for his years, as
+he told me with engaging simplicity) walked by my side for a mile or
+two, and quite won my heart. A true Nathanael he seemed, in whom was no
+guile. He should never go to sea, he said; nor was he ever going to get
+married so long as his father lived. He loved his father so much, and he
+was the only boy, and his father couldn't spare him. "But didn't your
+father go to sea?" "Oh, yes; both my fathers went to sea." That was a
+puzzle; but presently it came out that his two fathers were his father
+and his grandfather. He looked troubled for a moment when I inquired the
+whereabouts of the poorhouse, in the direction of which we happened to
+be going. He entertained a very decided opinion that he shouldn't like
+to live there; a wholesome aversion, I am bound to maintain, dear Uncle
+Venner to the contrary notwithstanding.
+
+A stranger was not an every-day sight in Dyer's Hollow, I imagine, and
+as I went up and down the road a good many times in the course of my
+visit, I came to be pretty well known. So it happened that a Western
+Islands woman came to her front door once, broom in hand and the
+sweetest of smiles on her face, and said, "Thank you for that five cents
+you gave my little boy the other day." "Put that in your pocket," I had
+said, and the obedient little man did as he was bidden, without so much
+as a side glance at the denomination of the coin. But he forgot one
+thing, and when his mother asked him, as of course she did, for mothers
+are all alike, "Did you thank the gentleman?" he could do nothing but
+hang his head. Hence the woman's smile and "thank you," which made me so
+ashamed of the paltriness of the gift (Thackeray never saw a boy without
+wanting to give him a _sovereign_!) that my mention of the matter here,
+so far from indicating an ostentatious spirit, ought rather to be taken
+as a mark of humility.
+
+All things considered, I should hardly choose to settle for life in
+Dyer's Hollow; but with every recollection of the place I somehow feel
+as if its score or two of inhabitants were favored above other men. Why
+is it that people living thus by themselves, and known thus transiently
+and from the outside as it were, always seem in memory like dwellers in
+some land of romance? I cannot tell, but so it is; and whoever has such
+a picture on the wall of his mind will do well, perhaps, never to put
+the original beside it. Yet I do not mean to speak quite thus of Dyer's
+Hollow. Once more, at least, I hope to walk the length of that
+straggling road. As I think of it now, I behold again those beds of
+shining bearberry ("resplendent" would be none too fine a word; there is
+no plant for which the sunlight does more), loaded with a wealth of
+handsome red fruit. The beach-plum crop was a failure; plum wine, of the
+goodness of which I heard enthusiastic reports, would be scarce; but one
+needed only to look at the bearberry patches to perceive that Cape Cod
+sand was not wanting in fertility after a manner of its own. If its
+energies in the present instance happened to be devoted to ornament
+rather than utility, it was not for an untaxed and disinterested
+outsider to make complaint; least of all a man who was never a
+wine-bibber, and who believes, or thinks he believes, in "art for art's
+sake." Within the woods the ground was carpeted with trailing arbutus
+and a profusion of checkerberry vines, the latter yielding a few fat
+berries, almost or quite a year old, but still sound and spicy, still
+tasting "like tooth-powder," as the benighted city boy expressed it. It
+was an especial pleasure to eat them here in Dyer's Hollow, I had so
+many times done the same in another place, on the banks of Dyer's Run.
+Lady's-slippers likewise (nothing but leaves) looked homelike and
+friendly, and the wild lily of the valley, too, and the pipsissewa.
+Across the road from the old house nearest the ocean stood a still more
+ancient-seeming barn, long disused, to all appearance, but with old
+maid's pinks, catnip, and tall, stout pokeberry weeds yet flourishing
+beside it. Old maid's pinks and catnip! Could that combination have been
+fortuitous?
+
+No botanist, nor even a semi-scientific lover of growing things, like
+myself, can ever walk in new fields without an eye for new plants. While
+coming down the Cape in the train I had seen, at short intervals,
+clusters of some strange flower,--like yellow asters, I thought. At
+every station I jumped off the car and looked hurriedly for specimens,
+till, after three or four attempts, I found what I was seeking,--the
+golden aster, _Chrysopsis falcata_. Here in Truro it was growing
+everywhere, and of course in Dyer's Hollow. Another novelty was the pale
+greenbrier, _Smilax glauca_, which I saw first on the hill at
+Provincetown, and afterward discovered in Longnook. It was not abundant
+in either place, and in my eyes had less of beauty than its familiar
+relatives, the common greenbrier (cat-brier, horse-brier, Indian-brier)
+of my boyhood, and the carrion flower. This glaucous smilax was one of
+the plants that attracted Thoreau's attention, if I remember right,
+though I cannot now put my finger upon his reference to it. Equally new
+to me, and much more beautiful, as well as more characteristic of the
+place, were the broom-crowberry and the greener kind of poverty grass
+(_Hudsonia ericoides_), inviting pillows or cushions of which, looking
+very much alike at a little distance, were scattered freely over the
+grayish hills. These huddling, low-lying plants were among the things
+which bestowed upon Longnook its pleasing and remarkable mountain-top
+aspect. 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 end
+of the valley, the dainty rose gerardia, just now coming into bloom; the
+pretty _Polygala polygama_,--pretty, but not in the same class with the
+rose gerardia; ladies' tresses; bayberry; sweet fern; crisp-leaved
+tansy; beach grass; huckleberry bushes, for whose liberality I had
+frequent occasion to be thankful; bear oak; chinquapin; chokeberry; a
+single vine of the Virginia creeper; wild carrot; wild cherry; the
+common brake,--these and doubtless many more were there, for I made no
+attempt at a full catalogue. There must have been wild roses along the
+roadside and on the edge of the thickets, I should think, yet I cannot
+recollect them, nor does the name appear in my penciled memoranda. Had
+the month been June instead of August, notebook and memory would record
+a very different story, I can hardly doubt; but out of flower is out of
+mind.
+
+In the course of my many visits to Dyer's Hollow I saw thirty-three
+kinds of birds, of the eighty-four species in my full Truro list. The
+number of individuals was small, however, and, except at its lower end,
+the valley was, or appeared to be, nearly destitute of feathered life. A
+few 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 last
+houses, 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 a
+hobby-horse. But farther down the hollow there was one really "birdy"
+spot, to borrow a word--useful enough to claim lexicographical
+standing--from one of my companions: a tiny grove of stunted oaks, by
+the roadside, just at the point where I naturally struck the valley
+when I approached it by way of the Hill of Storms. Here I happened upon
+my only Cape Cod cowbird, a full-grown youngster, who was being
+ministered unto in the most devoted manner by a red-eyed vireo,--such a
+sight as always fills me with mingled amusement, astonishment,
+admiration, and disgust. That any bird should be so befooled and imposed
+upon! Here, too, I saw at different times an adult male blue
+yellow-backed warbler, and a bird of the same species in immature
+plumage. It seemed highly probable, to say the least, that the young
+fellow had been reared not far off, the more so as the neighboring
+Wellfleet woods were spectral with hanging lichens, of the sort which
+this exquisite especially affects. At first I wondered why this
+particular little grove, by no means peculiarly inviting in appearance,
+should be the favorite resort of so many birds,--robins, orioles, wood
+pewees, kingbirds, chippers, golden warblers, black-and-white creepers,
+prairie warblers, red-eyed vireos, and blue yellow-backs; but I
+presently concluded that a fine spring of water just across the road
+must be the attraction. Near the spring was a vegetable garden, and
+here, on the 22d of August, I suddenly espied a water thrush teetering
+upon the tip of a bean-pole, his rich olive-brown back glistening in the
+sunlight. He soon dropped to the ground among the vines, and before long
+walked out into sight. His action when he saw me was amusing. Instead of
+darting back, as a sparrow, for instance, would have done, he flew up to
+the nearest perch; that is, to the top of the nearest bean-pole, which
+happened 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, why
+not laths for bean-poles? The perch was narrow, but wide enough for the
+bird'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 moment
+three prairie warblers were chasing each other about the garden, now
+clinging to the side of the poles, now alighting on their tips. It was a
+strange spot for prairie warblers, as it seemed to me, though they
+looked still more out of place a minute later, when they left the
+bean-patch and sat upon a rail fence in an open grassy field. Cape Cod
+birds, like Cape Cod men, know how to shift their course with the wind.
+Where else would one be likely to see prairie warblers, black-throated
+greens, and black-and-white creepers scrambling in company over the red
+shingles of a house-roof, and song sparrows singing day after day from a
+chimney-top?
+
+In all my wanderings in Dyer's Hollow, only once did I see anything of
+that pest of the seashore, the sportsman; then, in the distance, two
+young fellows, with a highly satisfactory want of success, as well as I
+could make out, were trying to take the life of a meadow lark. No doubt
+they found existence a dull affair, and felt the need of something to
+enliven it. A noble creature is man,--"a little lower than the angels!"
+Two years in succession I have been at the seashore during the autumnal
+migration of sandpipers and plovers. Two years in succession have I seen
+men, old and young, murdering sandpipers and plovers at wholesale for
+the mere fun of doing it. Had they been "pot hunters," seeking to earn
+bread by shooting for the market, I should have pitied them,
+perhaps,--certainly I should have regretted their work; but I should
+have thought no ill of them. Their vocation would have been as
+honorable, for aught I know, as that of any other butcher. But a man of
+twenty, a man of seventy, shooting sanderlings, ring plovers, golden
+plovers, and whatever else comes in his way, not for money, nor
+primarily for food, but because he enjoys the work! "A little lower than
+the angels!" What numbers of innocent and beautiful creatures have I
+seen limping painfully along the beach, after the gunners had finished
+their day's amusement! Even now I think with pity of one particular
+turnstone. Some being made "a little lower than the angels" had fired at
+him and carried away one of his legs. I watched him for an hour. Much of
+the time he stood motionless. Then he hobbled from one patch of
+eel-grass to another, in search of something to eat. My heart ached for
+him, and it burns now to think that good men find it a pastime to break
+birds' 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 way
+for weeks together. An exhilarating and edifying spectacle it
+was,--this venerable worthy sitting behind his bunch of wooden decoys, a
+wounded tern fluttering in agony at his feet. Withal, be it said, he was
+a man of gentlemanly bearing, courteous, and a Christian. He did not
+shoot on Sunday,--not he. Such sport is to me despicable. Yet it is
+affirmed by those who ought to know--by those, that is, who engage in
+it--that it tends to promote a spirit of manliness.
+
+But thoughts of this kind belong not in Dyer's Hollow. Rather let me
+remember 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, the
+valley was the very abode of quietness. Here, on one of my earlier
+excursions, I came unexpectedly to a bridge, and on the farther side of
+the bridge to a tidy house and garden; and in the garden were several
+pear-trees, with fruit on them! Still more to my surprise, here was a
+little shop. The keeper of it had also the agency of some insurance
+company,--so a signboard informed the passer-by. As for his stock in
+trade,--sole leather, dry goods, etc.,--that spoke for itself. I stepped
+inside the door, but he was occupied with an account book, and when at
+last he looked up there was no speculation in his eyes. Possibly he had
+sold something the day before, and knew that no second customer could be
+expected so soon. We exchanged the time of day,--not a very valuable
+commodity hereabout,--and I asked him a question or two touching the
+hollow, and especially "the village," of which I had heard a rumor that
+it lay somewhere in this neighborhood. He looked bewildered at the
+word,--he hardly knew what I could mean, he said; but with a little
+prompting he recollected that a few houses between this point and North
+Truro (there used to be more houses than now, but they had been removed
+to other towns,--some of them to Boston!) were formerly called "the
+village." I left him to his ledger, and on passing his house I saw that
+he was a dealer in grain as well as in sole leather and calico, and had
+telephonic communication with somebody; an enterprising merchant, after
+all, up with the times, in spite of appearances.
+
+The shop was like the valley, a careless tourist might have said,--a
+sleepy 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 than
+wide awake. The close-lying, barren, mountainous-looking hills did not
+oppress the mind, but rather lifted and dilated it, and although I could
+not hear the surf, I felt all the while the neighborhood of the sea; not
+the harbor, but the ocean, with nothing between me and Spain except that
+stretch of water. Blessed forever be Dyer's Hollow, I say, and blessed
+be 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 ignoble
+fashion,--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, and
+we were hardly out of the village before a seasonable toothache put him
+in mind of his pipe. Would smoking be offensive to me? he inquired. What
+could I say, having had an aching tooth before now myself? It was a
+pleasure almost beyond the luxury of breathing mountain air to see the
+misery of a fellow-mortal so quickly assuaged. The driver, a sturdy
+young Vermonter, was a man of different spirit. He had never used
+tobacco nor drunk a glass of "liquor," I heard him saying. Somebody had
+once 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 was
+piping 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 man
+of 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; it
+would take a nicer ear than mine to discriminate with certainty between
+a white-throat's voice and a school-boy's whistle.
+
+The morning had promised well, but before we emerged from the forest as
+we neared the summit we drove into a cloud, and, shortly afterward, into
+a pouring rain. In the office of the hotel I found a company of eight
+persons, four men and four women, drying themselves about the stove.
+They had left a village twenty miles away at two o'clock that morning
+in an open wagon for an excursion to the summit. Like myself, they had
+driven into a cloud, and up to this time had seen nothing more distant
+than the stable just across the road, within a stone's toss of the
+window, 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 be
+seen), and debated the situation. Finally, at three o'clock, they got
+into their open wagon, the rain pelting them fiercely, and started for
+the base. Doubtless they soon descended into clear weather, but not till
+they 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 of
+pilgrims had dropped out of sight in the fog--as a pebble drops into the
+lake--leaving me with the house to myself; and presently, as I sat at
+the window, I heard a white-throated sparrow singing outside. Here was
+one, at least, whom the rain could not discourage. A wild and yet a
+sweet and home-felt strain is this of "Whistling Jack,"--a mountain
+bird, well used to mountain weather, and just now too happy to forego
+his music, no matter how the storm might rage. I myself had been in a
+cloud often enough to feel no great degree of discomfort or lowness of
+spirits. I had not decided to spend the precious hours of a brief
+vacation upon a mountain-top without taking into account the additional
+risk of unfavorable weather in such a place. Let the clouds do their
+worst; I could be patient and wait for the sun. But this whistling
+philosopher outside spoke of something better than patience, and I
+thanked him for the timely word.
+
+Toward noon of the next day the rain ceased, the cloud vanished, and I
+made haste to clamber up the rocky peak--the Nose, so called--at the
+base of which the hotel is situated. Yes, there stretched Lake
+Champlain, visible for almost its entire length, and beyond it loomed
+the Adirondacks. I was glad I had come. _I_ could sing now. It does a
+man good to look afar off.
+
+Even before the fog lifted I had discovered, to my no small
+gratification, that the evergreens immediately about the house were
+full of gray-cheeked thrushes, a close colony, strictly confined to the
+low trees at the top of the mountain. They were calling at all hours,
+_yeep, yeep_, somewhat in the manner of young chickens; and after
+supper, as it grew dark, I stood on the piazza while they sang in full
+chorus. At least six of them were in tune at once. _Wee-o, wee-o, tit-ti
+wee-o_, something like this the music ran, with many variations; a most
+ethereal sound, at the very top of the scale, but faint and sweet; quite
+in tune also with my mood, for I had just come in from gazing long at
+the sunset, with Lake Champlain like a sea of gold for perhaps a hundred
+miles, 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 the
+mountain to the northern peak, the highest point, belittled in local
+phraseology as the Chin; a delightful jaunt of two miles, with
+magnificent prospects all the way. It was like walking on the ridge-pole
+of Vermont, a truly exhilarating experience.
+
+All in all, though the forenoon had been so rainy, I had lived a long
+day, and now, if ever, could appreciate the singing of this
+characteristic northern songster, himself such a lover of mountains as
+never to be heard, here in New England, at least, and in summer-time,
+except amid the dwindling spruce forests of the upper slopes. I have
+never before seen him so familiar. On the Mount Washington range and on
+Mount Lafayette it is easy enough to hear his music, but one rarely gets
+more than a flying glimpse of the bird. Here, as I say, he was never out
+of hearing, and seldom long out of sight, even from the door-step. The
+young were already leaving the nest, and undoubtedly the birds had
+disposed themselves for the season before the unpainted,
+inoffensive-looking little hotel showed any signs of occupancy. The very
+next year a friend of mine visited the place and could discover no trace
+of them. They had found their human neighbors a vexation, perhaps, and
+on 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 on
+this point I have never taken my friend's testimony. Perfectly at home
+as they are in the wildest and most desolate places, they manifest a
+particular fondness for the immediate vicinity of houses, delighting
+especially to fly about the gutters of the roof and against the window
+panes. Here, at the Summit House, they were constantly to be seen
+hawking back and forth against the side of the building, as barn
+swallows are given to doing in the streets of cities. The rude structure
+was doubly serviceable,--to me a shelter, and to the birds a fly-trap. I
+have never observed any other warbler thus making free with human
+habitations.
+
+This yellow-rump, or myrtle bird, is one of the thrifty members of his
+great family, and next to the black-poll is the most numerous
+representative of his tribe in Massachusetts during the spring and fall
+migrations; a beautiful little creature, with a characteristic flight
+and 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 of
+Massachusetts, and as a son of the Bay State I rejoice in his presence
+and heartily bid him welcome. We shall never have too many of such
+citizens. 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. He
+has a genius for adapting himself to circumstances; picking up his daily
+food in the depths of a mountain forest or off the panes of a
+dwelling-house, and wintering, as may suit his fancy or convenience, in
+the West Indies or along the sea-coast of Massachusetts.
+
+One advantage of a sojourn at the summit of any of our wooded New
+England mountains is the easy access thus afforded to the upper forest.
+While I was here upon Mount Mansfield I spent some happy hours almost
+every day in sauntering down the road for a mile or two, looking and
+listening. Just after leaving the house it was possible to hear three
+kinds of thrushes singing at once,--gray-cheeks, olive-backs, and
+hermits. Of the three the hermit is beyond comparison the finest singer,
+both as to voice and tune. His song, given always in three detached
+measures, each higher than the one before it, is distinguished by an
+exquisite liquidity, the presence of _d_ and _l_, I should say, as
+contrasted with the inferior _t_ sound of the gray-cheek. If it has
+less variety, and perhaps less rapture, than the song of the
+wood-thrush, it is marked by greater simplicity and ease; and if it does
+not breathe the ineffable tranquillity of the veery's strain, it comes
+to my ear, at least, with a still nobler message. The hermit's note is
+aspiration rather than repose. "Peace, peace!" says the veery, but the
+hermit'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 it
+forever), and at a bend of the road had turned to admire the wooded side
+of the mountain, just here spread out before me, miles and miles of
+magnificent hanging forest, when I was attracted by a noise as of
+something gnawing--a borer under the bark of a fallen spruce lying at my
+feet. Such an industrious and contented sound! No doubt the grub would
+have said, "Yes, I could do _this_ forever." What knew he of the
+beauties of the picture at which I was gazing? The very light with which
+to see it would have been a torture to him. Heaven itself was under the
+close bark of that decaying log. So peradventure, may we ourselves be
+living in darkness without knowing it, while spiritual intelligences
+look 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 it
+might look to more exalted beings, and, like my brother under the
+spruce-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 by
+me--a black-poll warbler in hot pursuit of an olive-backed thrush. The
+thrush alighted in a tree and commenced singing, and the warbler sat by
+and waited, following the universal rule that a larger bird is never to
+be attacked except when on the wing. The thrush repeated his strain once
+or twice, and then flew to another tree, the little fellow after him
+with all speed. Again the olive-back perched and sang, and again the
+black-poll waited. Three times these manoeuvres were repeated, before
+the birds passed out of my range. Some wrong-doing, real or fancied, on
+the part of the larger bird, had excited the ire of the warbler. Why
+should he be imposed upon, simply because he was small? The thrush,
+meantime, disdaining to defend himself, would only stop now and then to
+sing, as if to show to the world (every creature is the centre of a
+world) that such an insect persecution could never ruffle his spirit.
+Birds are to be commiserated, perhaps, on having such an excess of what
+we call human nature; but the misfortune certainly renders them the more
+interesting to us, who see our more amiable weaknesses so often
+reflected 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 a
+Canada jay in a thick spruce. He was on one of the lower branches, but
+pretty soon began mounting the tree, keeping near the bole and going up
+limb by limb in absolute silence, exactly in the manner of our common
+blue 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, _a
+priori_, I should have little hesitation in ascribing to any member of
+his tribe. I waited till I grew impatient. Then I started hastily
+toward him, making as much commotion as possible in pushing through the
+undergrowth. It was a clever scheme, but the bird was not to be
+surprised into uttering so much as an exclamation. He dropped out of his
+tree, flew a little distance to a lower and less conspicuous perch, and
+there 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 in
+with 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 in
+every case, though in the third instance there was no attempt at
+skulking, nor any symptom of nervousness. I have often been impressed
+and amused by the blue jay's habit in this respect. No bird could well
+be noisier than he when the noisy mood takes him; but come upon him
+suddenly 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 no
+doubt his Canadian cousin is equally well endowed.
+
+The reader may complain, perhaps, that I speak only of trifles. Why go
+to a mountain-top to look at warblers and thrushes? I am not careful to
+justify myself. I love a mountain-top, and go there because I love to be
+there. It is good, I think, to be lifted above the every-day level, and
+to enjoy the society--and the absence of society--which the heights
+afford. Looking over my notes of this excursion, I come upon the
+following sentence: "To sit on a stone beside a mountain road, with
+olive-backed thrushes piping on every side, the ear catching now and
+then the distant tinkle of a winter wren's tune, or the nearer _zee,
+zee, zee_ of black-poll warblers, while white-throated sparrows call
+cheerily 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 case
+at all events, by a few hours' stay in such a spot. I must pitch my tent
+there, for at least a night or two. I cannot even see the prospect at
+first, much less feel the spirit of the place. There must be time for
+the old life to drop off, as it were, while eye and ear grow wonted to
+novel sights and sounds. Doubtless I did take note of trivial
+things,--the call of a bird and the fragrance of a flower. It was a
+pleasing relief after living so long with men whose minds were all the
+time 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 odor
+hardly to be distinguished from the scent of carnation pinks. I
+remember, too, how the whole summit, from the Nose to the Chin, was
+sprinkled with the modest and beautiful Greenland sandwort, springing up
+in every little patch of thin soil, where nothing else would flourish,
+and blossoming even under the door-step of the hotel. Unpretending as it
+is, this little alpine adventurer makes the most of its beauty. The
+blossoms are not crowded into close heads, so as to lose their
+individual attractiveness, like the florets of the golden-rod, for
+example; nor are they set in a stiff spike, after the manner of the
+orchid just now mentioned. At the same time the plant does not trust to
+the 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 is
+caught by the cluster, and yet each flower shows by itself, and its own
+proper loveliness is in no way sacrificed to the general effect. How
+wise, too, is the sandwort in its choice of a dwelling-place! In the
+valley it would be lost amid the crowd. On the bare, brown mountain-top
+its scattered tufts of green and white appeal to all comers.
+
+To what extent, if at all, the sandwort depends upon the service of
+insects for its fertilization, I do not know, but it certainly has no
+scarcity of such visitors. "Bees will soar for bloom high as the highest
+peak of Mansfield;" so runs an entry in my notebook, with a pardonable
+adaptation of Wordsworth's line; and I was glad to notice that even the
+splendid black-and-yellow butterfly (_Turnus_), which was often to be
+seen sucking honey from the fragrant orchids, did not disdain to sip
+also from the sandwort's cup. This large and elegant butterfly--our
+largest--is thoroughly at home on our New England mountains, sailing
+over the very loftiest peaks, and making its way through the forests
+with a strong and steady flight. Many a time have I taken a second look
+at one, as it has threaded the treetops over my head, thinking to see a
+bird. Besides the _Turnus_, I noted here the nettle tortoise-shell
+butterfly (_Vanessa Milberti_--a showy insect, and the more attractive
+to me as being comparatively a stranger); the common cabbage butterfly;
+the yellow _Philodice_; the copper; and, much more abundant than any of
+these, a large orange-red fritillary (_Aphrodite_, I suppose),
+gorgeously bedecked with spots of silver on the under surface of the
+wings. All these evidently knew that plenty of flowers were to be found
+along this seemingly barren, rocky crest. Whether they have any less
+sensuous motive for loving to wander over such heights, who will presume
+to determine? It may very well be that their almost ethereal
+structure--such spread of wing with such lightness of body--is only the
+outward sign of gracious thoughts and feelings, of a sensitiveness to
+beauty far surpassing anything of which we ourselves are capable. What a
+contrast between them and the grub gnawing ceaselessly under the
+spruce-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 were
+new to us!) this same light-winged Aphrodite, flitting from blossom to
+blossom in the mountain breeze, was but a few days ago an ugly, crawling
+thing, close cousin to the borer. Since then it has fallen asleep and
+been changed,--a parable, past all doubt, though as yet we lack eyes to
+read 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 matter
+of course he was reputed to be of good family and to read Greek, and the
+fact that he now and then received a bank draft evidently gave him a
+respectable standing in the eye of the hotel clerk. Something--something
+of a very romantic nature, we may be sure--had driven him away from the
+companionship of his fellows, but he still found it convenient to be
+within reach of human society. Like all such solitaries, he had some
+half-insane notions. He could not sleep indoors, not for a night; it
+would ruin his health, if I understood him correctly; and because of
+wild animals--bears and what not--he made his bed on the roof of his
+hermitage. I had often dreamed of the enjoyment of a life in the woods
+all by one's self, but such a mode of existence did not gain in
+attractiveness as I saw it here in the concrete example. On the whole I
+was 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 to
+my own freedom.
+
+Two or three times a wagon-load of tourists appeared at the hotel. They
+strolled about the summit, admired the prospect, picked a bunch of
+sandwort, perhaps, but especially they went to see the snow. They had
+been at much trouble to stand upon the highest land in Vermont, and now
+that they were here, they wished to do or see something unique,
+something that should mark the day as eventful. So they were piloted to
+a cave midway between the Nose and the Chin, into which the sun never
+peeped, and wherein a snow-bank still lingered. The mountain was grand,
+the landscape was magnificent, but to eat a handful of snow and throw a
+snow-ball in the middle of July--this was almost like being at the North
+Pole; it would be something to talk about after getting home.
+
+One visitor I rejoiced to see, though a stranger. I was on the Nose in
+the afternoon, enjoying once more the view of Lake Champlain and the
+Adirondacks, when I descried two men far off toward the Chin. They had
+come up the mountain, not by the carriage road, but by a trail on the
+opposite side, and plainly were in no haste, though the afternoon was
+wearing away. As I watched their movements, a mile or two in the
+distance, I said to myself, "Good! they are botanists." So it proved; or
+rather one of them was a botanist,--a college professor on a pedestrian
+collecting-excursion. We compared notes after supper and walked together
+the next morning, enjoying that peculiar good fellowship which nothing
+but a kindred interest and an unexpected meeting in a lonesome place can
+make possible. Then he started down the carriage road with the design of
+exploring Smugglers' Notch, and I have never seen or heard from him
+since. I hope he is still botanizing on the shores of time, and finding
+many a precious rarity; and should he ever read this reference to
+himself, may it be with a feeling as kindly as that with which the lines
+are written.
+
+That afternoon I followed him, somewhat unexpectedly. I went down, as I
+had come up, on wheels; but I will not say in ignoble fashion, for the
+driver--the hotel proprietor himself--was in haste, the carriage had no
+brake, and the speed with which we rattled down the steep pitches and
+round the sharp curves, with the certainty that if anything should
+break, the horse would run and our days would be ended,--these things,
+and especially the latter consideration, of which I thought and the
+other man spoke, made the descent one of pleasurable excitement. We
+reached 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 a
+lodging for the night, so that on the morrow I might make a long day in
+Smugglers' Notch, a famous botanical resort between Mount Mansfield and
+Mount Sterling, which I had for years been desirous of visiting.
+
+I would gladly have stayed longer on the heights, but it was pleasant
+also to be once more in the lowlands; to walk out after supper and look
+up instead of down, while the chimney swifts darted hither and thither
+with their merry, breathless cacklings. How welcome, too, were the
+hearty music of the robin and the carol of the grass finch! After all, I
+thought, home is in the valley; but the whistle of the white-throat
+reminded 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 ornithological
+pursuits. For two months, more or less,--till the autumnal migration
+should set in,--I was determined to have my thoughts upon other matters.
+There is no more desirable plaything than an outdoor hobby, but a man
+ought not to be forever in the saddle. Such, at all events, had always
+been my opinion, so that I long ago promised myself never to become,
+what some of my acquaintances, perhaps with too much reason, were now
+beginning to consider me, a naturalist, and nothing else. That would be
+letting the hobby-horse run away with its owner. For the time being,
+then, birds should pass unnoticed, or be looked at only when they came
+in my way. A sensible resolve. But the maker of it was neither Mede nor
+Persian, as the reader, if he have patience enough, may presently
+discover for himself.
+
+As I sat upon the piazza, in the heat of the day, busy or half busy with
+a 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 to
+remark that the visitor was invariably a female. I watched her probe the
+scarlet tubes and dart away, and then returned to my page. She might
+have a nest somewhere near; but if she had there was small likelihood of
+my finding it, and, besides, I was just now not concerned with such
+trifles. On the 24th of June, however, a passing neighbor dropped into
+the yard. Was I interested in humming-birds? he inquired. If so, he
+could 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 the
+end of one of the lower branches of an apple-tree, eight or ten feet
+from the ground, saddled upon the drooping limb at a point where two
+offshoots made a good holding-place, while an upright twig spread over
+it a leafy canopy against rain and sun. Had the builders sought my
+advice as to a location, I could hardly have suggested one better suited
+to my own convenience. The tree was within a stone's toss of my window,
+and, better still, the nest was overlooked to excellent advantage from
+an old bank wall which divided my premises from those of my next-door
+neighbor. How could I doubt that Providence itself had set me a summer
+lesson?
+
+At our first visit the discoverer of the nest--from that moment an
+ornithologist--brought out a step-ladder, and we looked in upon the two
+tiny white eggs, considerately improving a temporary absence of the
+owner for that purpose. It was a picture to please not only the eye, but
+the imagination; and before I could withdraw my gaze the mother bird was
+back again, whisking about my head so fearlessly that for a moment I
+stood still, half expecting her to drop into the nest within reach of my
+hand.
+
+This, as I have said, was on the 24th of June. Six days later, on the
+afternoon of the 30th, the eggs were found to be hatched, and two
+lifeless-looking things lay in the bottom of the nest, their heads
+tucked out of sight, and their bodies almost or quite naked, except for
+a line of grayish down along the middle of the back.
+
+Meanwhile, I had been returning with interest the visits of the bird to
+our honeysuckle, and by this time had fairly worn a path to a certain
+point in the wall, where, comfortably seated in the shade of the
+hummer's own tree, and armed with opera-glass and notebook, I spent some
+hours daily in playing the spy upon her motherly doings.
+
+For a widow with a house and family upon her hands, she took life
+easily; at frequent intervals she absented herself altogether, and even
+when at home she spent no small share of the time in flitting about
+among the branches of the tree. On such occasions, I often saw her hover
+against the bole or a patch of leaves, or before a piece of caterpillar
+or spider web, making quick thrusts with her bill, evidently after bits
+of something to eat. On quitting the nest, she commonly perched upon one
+or another of a certain set of dead twigs in different parts of the
+tree, and at once shook out her feathers and spread her tail, displaying
+its handsome white markings, indicative of her sex. This was the
+beginning of a leisurely toilet operation, in the course of which she
+scratched 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 rubbing
+it down with her claws or by wiping it upon a twig. In general she paid
+little attention to me, though she sometimes hovered directly in front
+of my face, as if trying to stare me out of countenance. One of the most
+pleasing features of the show was her method of flying into the nest.
+She approached it, without exception, from the same quarter, and, after
+an almost imperceptible hovering motion, shut her wings and dropped upon
+the eggs.
+
+When the young were hatched I redoubled my attentions. Now I should see
+her feed them. On the first afternoon I waited a long time for this
+purpose, the mother conducting herself in her customary manner: now
+here, now there, preening her plumage, driving away a meddlesome
+sparrow, probing the florets of a convenient clover-head (an unusual
+resource, I think), or snatching a morsel from some leaf or twig.
+Suddenly she flew at me, and held herself at a distance of perhaps four
+feet from my nose. Then she wheeled, and, as I thought, darted out of
+the orchard. In a few seconds I turned my head, and there she sat in the
+nest! 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 the
+afternoon in attempting to see.
+
+Twenty-four hours later I was more successful, though the same ruse was
+again tried upon me. The mother left the nest at my approach, but in
+three minutes (by the watch) flew in again. She brooded for nine
+minutes. Then, quite of her own motion, she disappeared for six minutes.
+On her return she spent four minutes in dressing her feathers, after
+which she alighted on the edge of the nest, fed the little ones, and
+took her place upon them. This time she brooded for ten minutes. Then
+she was away for six minutes, dallied about the tree for two minutes
+longer, and again flew into the nest. While sitting, she pecked several
+times in quick succession at a twig within reach, and I could plainly
+see her mandibles in motion, as if she were swallowing. She brooded for
+thirteen minutes, absented herself for three minutes, and spent six
+minutes in her usual cautionary manoeuvres before resuming her seat.
+For the long interval of twenty-two minutes she sat still. Then she
+vanished for four minutes, and on her return gave the young another
+luncheon, after a fast of one hour and six minutes.
+
+The feeding process, which I had been so desirous to see, was of a sort
+to make the spectator shiver. The mother, standing on the edge of the
+nest, with her tail braced against its side, like a woodpecker or a
+creeper, took a rigidly erect position, and craned her neck until her
+bill was in a perpendicular line above the short, wide-open, upraised
+beak of the little one, who, it must be remembered, was at this time
+hardly bigger than a humble-bee. Then she thrust her bill for its full
+length down into his throat, a frightful-looking act, followed by a
+series of murderous gesticulations, which fairly made one observer's
+blood run cold.
+
+On the day after this (on the 2d of July, that is to say) I climbed into
+the tree, in the old bird's absence, and stationed myself where my eyes
+were perhaps fifteen feet from the nest, and a foot or two above its
+level. At the end of about twenty minutes, the mother, who meantime had
+made two visits to the tree, flew into place, and brooded for seventeen
+minutes. Then she disappeared again, and on her return, after numberless
+pretty feints and sidelong approaches, alighted on the wall of the nest,
+and fed both little ones. The operation, though still sufficiently
+reckless, looked less like infanticide than before,--a fact due, as I
+suppose, to my more elevated position, from which the nestlings' throats
+were better seen. After this she brooded for another seventeen minutes.
+On the present occasion, as well as on many others, it was noticeable
+that, while sitting upon the young, she kept up an almost incessant
+motion, as if seeking to warm them, or perhaps to develop their muscles
+by a kind of massage treatment. A measure of such hitchings and
+fidgetings might have meant nothing more than an attempt to secure for
+herself a comfortable seat; but when they were persisted in for fifteen
+minutes together, it was difficult not to believe that she had some
+different end in view. Possibly, as human infants get exercise by
+dandling on the mother's knee, the baby humming-bird gets his by this
+parental kneading process. Whether brooding or feeding, it must be said
+that 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 at
+once, and did not resume her seat for almost an hour, though she would
+undoubtedly have done so earlier but for my presence. Again and again
+she perched near me, her bill leveled straight at my face. Finally she
+alighted on the nest, and, after considerable further delay, as if to
+assure herself that everything was quite safe, fed the two chicks from
+her throat, as before. "She thrust her bill into their mouths so far" (I
+quote my notes) "that the tips of their short little beaks were up
+against the root of her mandibles!"
+
+Only once more, on the 4th of July, I ventured into the apple-tree. For
+more than an hour and a half I waited. Times without number the mother
+came buzzing into the tree, made the circuit of her favorite perches,
+dressed her plumage, darted away again, and again returned, till I was
+almost driven to get down, for her relief. At last she fed the
+nestlings, who by this time must have been all but starved, as indeed
+they seemed to be. "The tips of their bills _do_ come clean up to the
+base of the mother's mandibles." So I wrote in my journal; for it is the
+first duty of a naturalist to verify his own observations.
+
+On the 10th we again brought out the ladder. Though at least eleven days
+old, the tiny birds--the "widow's mites," as my facetious neighbor
+called 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 my
+heart. His bill, perceptibly longer than on the 5th, was sticking just
+above the border of the nest. I touched it at the tip, but he did not
+stir. Craning my neck, I could see his open eye. Poor, helpless things!
+Yet within three months they would be flying to Central America, or some
+more distant clime. How little they knew what was before them! As little
+as I know what is before me.
+
+The violence of the feeding act was now at its height, I think, but it
+would 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. When
+the two beaks were tightly joined, and while the old bird's was being
+gradually withdrawn, they were shaken convulsively,--by the mother's
+attempts to disgorge, and perhaps by the young fellow's efforts to
+hasten the operation. It was plain that he let go with reluctance, as a
+boy sucks the very tip of the spoon to get the last drop of jam; but, as
+will be mentioned in the course of the narrative, his behavior improved
+greatly in this respect as he grew older.
+
+On the 12th, just after the little ones had been fed, one of them got
+his wings for the first time above the wall of the nest, and fluttered
+them 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 of
+the young by regurgitation, as described briefly by Audubon, and more in
+detail by Mr. William Brewster,[9] would be continued after the
+nestlings were fully grown. On the 14th I wrote in my journal: "The
+method of feeding remains unchanged, and, as it seems, is likely to
+remain so to the end. It must save the mother much labor in going and
+coming, and perhaps renders the coöperation of the male parent
+unnecessary." This prediction was fulfilled, but with a qualification to
+be hereafter specified.
+
+[9] _The Auk_, vol. vii. p. 206.
+
+Every morning, now, I went to the apple-tree uncertain whether the nest
+would 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 which
+his observations were made--in the garden of Mr. E. S. Hoar, in
+Concord--were hatched on the 4th of July,[10] and forsook the nest on
+the 18th. My birds were already fifteen days old, at least, and, unless
+they were to prove uncommonly backward specimens, ought to be on the
+wing forthwith. Nevertheless they were in no haste. Day after day
+passed. The youngsters looked more and more like old birds, and the
+mother grew constantly more and more nervous.
+
+[10] But Mr. Hoar, from whom Mr. Brewster had his dates, informs me that
+the time of hatching was not certainly known; and from Mr. Brewster's
+statement about the size of the nestlings, I cannot doubt that they had
+been 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 at
+my presence, but after a while it transpired that a young oriole--a
+blundering, tailless fellow--was the cause of the disturbance. By some
+accident he had dropped into the leafy treetop, as guiltless of any evil
+design as one of her own nestlings. How she did buzz about him! In and
+out 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, and
+carrying her tail spread to its utmost. The scene lasted for some
+minutes. Through it all the two young birds kept perfectly quiet, never
+once 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. The
+mother was literally in a frenzy. She went the round of her perches, but
+could stay nowhere. Once she dashed out of the tree for an instant, and
+drove a sparrow away from the tomato patch. Ordinarily his presence
+there would not have annoyed her in the least, but in her present state
+of mind she was ready to pounce upon anybody. All of which shows once
+more how "human-like" birds are. The bewilderment of the oriole was
+comical. "What on earth can this crazy thing be shooting about my ears
+in this style for?" I imagined him saying to himself. In fact, as he
+glanced my way, now and then, with his innocent baby face, I could
+almost 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 the
+twins took his flight. I was standing on the wall, with my glass leveled
+upon the nest, when I saw him exercising his wings. The action was
+little more pronounced than had been noticed at intervals during the
+last 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 have
+expected him to do, he was in the air, hovering in the prettiest
+fashion, and in a moment more had alighted on a leafless twig slightly
+above the level of the nest, and perhaps a yard from it. Within a minute
+the mother appeared, buzzing and calling, with answering calls from the
+youthful adventurer. At once--after a hasty reconnaissance of the man on
+the 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, and
+made 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 the
+little fellow more closely. He held his perch, and occupied himself with
+dressing his plumage, though, as the breeze freshened, he was compelled
+once in a while to keep his wings in motion to prevent the wind from
+carrying him away. When the old bird returned,--in just half an
+hour,--she resented my intrusion (what an oppressor of the widow and the
+fatherless she must by this time have thought me!) in the most
+unmistakable manner, coming more than once quite within reach. However,
+she soon gave over these attempts at intimidation, perched beside the
+percher, and again put something into his maw. This time she did not
+feed the nestling. As she took her departure, she told the
+come-outer--or so I fancied--that there was a man under the tree, a
+pestilent fellow, and it would be well to get a little out of his reach.
+At all events, she had scarcely disappeared before the youngster was
+again on the wing. It was wonderful how much at home he
+seemed,--poising, backing, soaring, and alighting with all the ease and
+grace of an old hand. One only piece of awkwardness I saw him commit: he
+dropped upon a branch much too large for his tiny feet, and was
+manifestly uncomfortable. But he did not stay long, and at his next
+alighting was well up in the tree, where it was noticeable that he
+remained ever after.
+
+With so much going on outside, it was hard to remain indoors, and
+finally I took a chair to the orchard, and gave myself up to watching
+the drama. The feeding process, though still always by regurgitation,
+was by this time somewhat different from what it had been when the
+bills of the young were less fully developed. In my notes of this date I
+find 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 was
+thrust into his mouth at right angles,--the change being necessitated,
+probably, by the greater length of his bill,--and he seemed to be
+jerking strenuously at it. Then he opened his beak and remained
+motionless, while the black mandibles of the mother could be seen
+running down out of sight into his throat."
+
+[11] For convenience, I use the masculine pronoun in speaking of both
+the 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 a
+female.
+
+The other youngster, Number One, as I now called him, stayed in the
+tree, or at most ventured only into the next one, and was fed at varying
+intervals,--as often, apparently, as the busy mother could find anything
+to give him. Would he go back to his cradle for the night? It seemed not
+improbable, notwithstanding he had shown no sign of such an intention so
+long as daylight lasted. At 3.50 the next morning, therefore, I stole
+out to see. No: Number Two was there alone.
+
+At seven o'clock, when I made my second visit, the mother was in the
+midst of another day's hard work. Twice within five minutes she brought
+food to the nestling. Once the little fellow--not so very little
+now--happened to be facing east, while the old bird alighted, as she had
+invariably done, on the western side. The youngster, instead of facing
+about, threw back his head and opened his beak. "Look out, there!"
+exclaimed my fellow-observer; "you'll break his neck if you feed him in
+that way." But she did not mind. Young birds' necks are not so easily
+broken. Within ten minutes of this time she fed Number One, giving him
+three doses. They were probably small, however (and small wonder), for
+he begged hard for more, opening his bill with an appealing air. The
+action in this case was particularly well seen, and the vehement
+jerking, while the beaks were glued together, seemed almost enough to
+pull the young fellow's head off. Within another ten minutes the mother
+was again ministering to Number Two! Poor little widow! Between her
+incessant labors of this kind and her overwhelming anxiety whenever any
+strange bird came near, I began to be seriously alarmed for her. As a
+member of a strictly American family, she was in a fair way, I thought,
+to be overtaken by the "most American of diseases,"--nervous
+prostration. It tired me to watch her.
+
+With us, and perhaps with her likewise, it was a question whether Number
+Two would remain in the nest for the day. He grew more and more
+restless; as my companion--a learned man--expressed it, he began to
+"ramp round." Once he actually mounted the rim of the nest, a thing
+which his more precocious brother had never been seen to do, and
+stretched forward to pick at a neighboring stem. Late that afternoon the
+mother fed him five times within an hour, instead of once an hour, or
+thereabouts, as had been her habit three weeks before. She meant to have
+him in good condition for the coming event; and he, on his part, was
+active to the same end,--standing upon the wall of the nest again and
+again, and exercising his wings till they made a cloud about him. A
+dread of launching away still kept him back, however, and shortly after
+seven o'clock I found him comfortably disposed for the night. "He is now
+on his twenty-first day (at least) in the nest. To-morrow will see him
+go." So end my day's notes.
+
+At 5.45 the next morning he was still there. At 6.20 I absented myself
+for a few minutes, and on returning was hailed by my neighbor with the
+news that the nest was empty. Number Two had flown between 6.25 and
+6.30, but, unhappily, neither of us was at hand to give him a cheer. I
+trust that he and his mother were not hurt in their feelings by the
+oversight. The whole family (minus the father) was still in the
+apple-tree; the mother full, and more than full, of business, feeding
+one youngster after the other, as they sat here and there in the upper
+branches.
+
+Twenty-four hours later, as I stood in the orchard, I heard a hum of
+wings, and found the mother over my head. Presently she flew into the
+top of the tree, and the next instant was sitting beside one of the
+young ones. His hungry mouth was already wide open, but before feeding
+him she started up from the twig, and circled about him so closely as
+almost or quite to touch him with her wings. On completing the circle
+she dropped upon the perch at his side, but immediately rose again, and
+again flew round him. It was a beautiful act,--beautiful beyond the
+power of any words of mine to set forth; an expression of maternal
+ecstasy, I could not doubt, answering to the rapturous caresses and
+endearments in which mothers of human infants are so frequently seen
+indulging. Three days afterward, to my delight, I saw it repeated in
+every particular, as if to confirm my opinion of its significance. The
+sight repaid all my watchings thrice over, and even now I feel my heart
+growing warm at the recollection of it. Strange thoughtlessness, is it
+not, which allows mothers capable of such passionate devotion, tiny,
+defenseless things, to be slaughtered by the million for the enhancement
+of woman's charms!
+
+At this point we suddenly became aware that for at least a day or two
+the old bird had probably been feeding her offspring in two
+ways,--sometimes by regurgitation, and sometimes by a simple transfer
+from 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 not
+finished, and looked to see her return; but she flew away, and after a
+while the truth dawned upon us. Thereafter, unless our observation was
+at fault, she used whichever method happened to suit her convenience. If
+she found a choice collection of spiders,[12] for instance, she brought
+them in her throat (as cedar-birds carry cherries), to save trips; if
+she had only one or two, she retained them between her mandibles. It
+will be understood, I suppose, that we did not see the food in its
+passage from one bird to the other,--human eyesight would hardly be
+equal to work of such nicety; but the two bills were put together so
+frequently and in so pronounced a manner as to leave us in no practical
+uncertainty about what was going on. Neither had I any doubt that the
+change was connected in some way with the increasing age of the
+fledgelings; yet it is to be said that the two methods continued to be
+used interchangeably to the end, and on the 28th, when Number Two had
+been out of the nest for seven days, the mother thrust her bill down his
+throat, and repeated the operation, just as she had done three weeks
+before.
+
+[12] Mr. E. H. Eames reports (in _The Auk_, vol. vii. p. 287) that, on
+dissecting a humming-bird, about two days old, he found sixteen young
+spiders in its throat, and a pultaceous mass of the same in its stomach.
+
+For at least two days longer, as I believe, the faithful creature
+continued her loving ministrations, although I failed to detect her in
+the act. Then, on the 1st of August, as I sat on the piazza, I saw her
+for the last time. The honeysuckle vine had served her well, and still
+bore 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 the
+latest generation! Our intercourse had lasted for eight weeks,--wanting
+one day,--and it was fitting that it should end where it had begun, at
+the sign of the honeysuckle.
+
+The absence of the father bird for all this time, though I have
+mentioned 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 been
+to reach it, that such absence or desertion--by whatever name it may be
+called--is the general habit of the male ruby-throat. Upon this point I
+shall 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 the
+summer of 1890, I was struck with the persistent absence of the head of
+the family. As week after week elapsed, this feature of the case excited
+more and more remark, and I turned to my out-of-door journal for such
+meagre notes as it contained of a similar nest found five years before.
+From these it appeared that at that time, also, the father bird was
+missing. Could such truancy be habitual with the male ruby-throat? I had
+never supposed that any of our land birds were given to behaving in this
+ill-mannered, unnatural way, and the matter seemed to call for
+investigation.
+
+My first resort was, of course, to books. The language of Wilson and
+Audubon is somewhat ambiguous, but may fairly be taken as implying the
+male bird's presence throughout the period of nidification. Nuttall
+speaks explicitly to the same effect, though with no specification of
+the grounds on which his statement is based. The later systematic
+biographers--Brewer, Samuels, Minot, and the authors of New England Bird
+Life--are silent in respect to the point. Mr. Burroughs, in Wake-Robin,
+mentions having found two nests, and gives us to understand that he saw
+only the female birds. Mrs. Treat, on the other hand, makes the father a
+conspicuous figure about the single nest concerning which she reports.
+Mr. James Russell Lowell, too, speaks of watching both parents as they
+fed the young ones: "The mother always alighted, while the father as
+uniformly remained upon the wing."
+
+So far, then, the evidence was decidedly, not to say decisively, in the
+masculine ruby-throat's favor. But while I had no desire to make out a
+case against him, and in fact was beginning to feel half ashamed of my
+uncomplimentary surmises, I was still greatly impressed with what my own
+eyes had seen, or rather had not seen, and thought it worth while to
+push the inquiry a little further.
+
+I wrote first to Mr. E. S. Hoar, in whose garden Mr. Brewster had made
+the observations cited in my previous article. He replied with great
+kindness, and upon the point in question said: "I watched the nest two
+or three times a day, from a time before the young were hatched till
+they departed; and _now you mention it_, it occurs to me that I never
+did see the male, but only the white-breasted female."
+
+Next I sought the testimony of professional ornithologists; and here my
+worst suspicions seemed in a fair way to be confirmed, although the
+greater number of my correspondents were unhappily compelled to plead a
+want of knowledge. Dr. A. K. Fisher had found, as he believed, not less
+than twenty-five nests, and to the best of his recollection had never
+seen a male bird near one of them after it was completed. He had watched
+the female feeding her young, and, when the nests contained eggs, had
+waited for hours on purpose to secure the male, but always without
+result.
+
+Mr. William Brewster wrote: "I have found, or seen _in situ_, twelve
+hummers' nests, all in Massachusetts. Of these I took nine, after
+watching each a short time, probably not more than an hour or two in any
+case. Of the remaining three, I visited one three or four times at
+various hours of the day, another only twice, the third but once. Two of
+the three contained young when found. The third was supposed to have
+young, also, but could not be examined without danger to its contents. I
+have never seen a male hummer anywhere near a nest, either before or
+after the eggs were laid, but, as you will gather from the above brief
+data, my experience has not been extensive; and in the old days, when
+most of my nests were found, the methods of close watching now in vogue
+were unthought of. In the light of the testimony to which you refer, I
+should conclude, with you, that the male hummer must occasionally assist
+in 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 nests
+of the ruby-throat, but had seen no male about any of them after
+nidification was begun. "I confess," he says, "that I had never thought
+of his absence as being other than accidental, and hence have never made
+any observations directly upon the point; so that my testimony is of
+comparatively little value. In at least one instance, when the female
+was building her nest, I remember to have seen the male fly with her and
+perch near by, while she was shaping the nest, and then fly off with her
+after more material. I don't like to believe that the little villain
+leaves the entire task of nidification to his better half (we may well
+call her better, if he does); but my memory is a blank so far as
+testimony affirmative of his devotion is concerned." Mr. Henshaw recalls
+an experience with a nest of the Rivoli humming-bird (_Eugenes
+fulgens_), in Arizona,--a nest which he spent two hours in getting. "I
+was particularly anxious to secure the male, but did not obtain a
+glimpse of him, and I remember thinking that it was very strange." He
+adds that Mr. C. W. Richmond has told him of finding a nest and taking
+the eggs without seeing the father bird, and sums up his own view of the
+matter thus:--
+
+"Had any one asked me offhand, 'Does the male hummer help the female
+feed the young?' I am quite sure I should have answered, 'Of course he
+does.' As the case now stands, however, I am inclined to believe him a
+depraved 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 that
+on one occasion his attention was called to a nest (it proved to contain
+a 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 the
+vicinity of a nest occupied by young ones, although he did not see him
+feed or visit them. This nest, Mr. Jeffries says, was one of five which
+he has found. In the four other instances no male birds were observed,
+notwithstanding three of the nests were taken,--a tragedy which might be
+expected to bring the father of the family upon the scene, if he were
+anywhere within call.
+
+In view of the foregoing evidence, it appears to me reasonably certain
+that the male ruby-throat, as a rule, takes no considerable part in the
+care of eggs and young. The testimony covers not less than fifty nests.
+Some of them were watched assiduously, nearly all were examined, and the
+greater part were actually taken; yet of the fifty or more male
+proprietors, only two were seen; and concerning these exceptions, it is
+to be noticed that in one case the eggs were just laid, and in the
+other, while the hungry nestlings must have kept the mother bird
+extremely busy, her mate was not observed to do anything in the way of
+lightening her labors.
+
+As against this preponderance of negative testimony, and in
+corroboration of Mr. Lowell's and Mrs. Treat's circumstantial
+narratives, there remain to be mentioned the fact communicated to me by
+Mr. 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 their
+attentions, and the following very interesting and surprising story
+received from Mr. C. C. Darwin, of Washington, through the kindness of
+Mr. Henshaw. Some years ago, as it appears, a pair of ruby-throats built
+a 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. He
+remembers perfectly that the male fed the female during the entire
+period 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 the
+father was never seen to take her place. Mr. Darwin cannot say that the
+male ever fed the young ones, but is positive that he was frequently
+about the nest after they were hatched. While they were still too young
+to fly, a gardener, in pruning the tree, sawed off the limb on which the
+nest was built. Mr. Darwin's mother rescued the little ones and fed them
+with sweetened water, and on her son's return at night the branch was
+fixed in place again, as best it could be, by means of wires. Meanwhile
+the 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 care
+of their offspring, who by this time, it is safe to say, had become more
+or less surfeited with sugar and water, and gladly returned to a diet
+of spiders and other such spicy and hearty comestibles.
+
+Mr. Henshaw, with an evident satisfaction which does him honor, remarks
+upon the foregoing story as proving that, whatever may be true of male
+hummers in general, there are at least some faithful Benedicts among
+them. For myself, indeed, as I have already said, I hold no brief
+against the ruby-throat, and, notwithstanding the seemingly unfavorable
+result of my investigation into his habits as a husband and father, it
+is by no means clear to me that we must call him hard names. Before
+doing that, we ought to know not only that he stays away from his wife
+and children, but _why_ he stays away; whether he is really a shirk, or
+absents himself unselfishly and for their better protection, at the risk
+of being misunderstood and traduced. My object in this paper is to raise
+that question about him, rather than to blacken his character; in a
+word, to call attention to him, not as a reprobate, but as a mystery. To
+that end I return to the story of my own observations.
+
+In last month's article[13] I set forth somewhat in detail (if the
+adverb seem inappropriate, as I fear it will, I can only commend it to
+the reader's mercy) the closeness of our watch upon the nest there
+described. For more than a month it was under the eye of one or other of
+two men almost from morning till night. We did not once detect the
+presence of the father, and yet I shall never feel absolutely sure that
+he did not one day pay us a visit. I mention the circumstance for what
+it may be worth, and because, whatever its import, it was at least a
+lively spectacle. It occurred upon this wise: On the 19th of July, the
+day when the first of the young birds bade good-by to its cradle, I had
+gone into the house, leaving my fellow-observer in the orchard, with a
+charge to call me if anything noteworthy should happen. I was hardly
+seated before he whistled loudly, and I hastened out again. Another
+hummer had been there, he said, and the mother had been chasing him (or
+her) about in a frantic manner; and even while we were talking, the
+scene was reënacted. The stranger had returned, and the two birds were
+shooting hither and thither through the trees, the widow squeaking and
+spreading 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 been
+the recreant husband and father, unable longer to deny himself a look at
+his bairns,--who knows? Or it may have been some bachelor or widower who
+had come a-wooing. One thing is certain,--husband, lover, or inquisitive
+stranger, he had no encouragement to come again.
+
+[13] These two humming-bird papers were printed in consecutive numbers
+of _The Atlantic Monthly_, June and July, 1891.
+
+As if to heighten the dramatic interest of our studies (I come now to
+the promised mystery), we had already had the singular good fortune to
+find a male humming-bird who seemed to be stationed permanently in a
+tall ash-tree, standing by itself in a recent clearing, at a distance of
+a mile or more from our widow's orchard. Day after day, for at least a
+fortnight (from the 2d to the 15th of July), he remained there. One or
+both of us went almost daily to call upon him, and, as far as we could
+make out, he seldom absented himself from his post for five minutes
+together! What was he doing? At first, in spite of his sex, it was hard
+not to believe that his nest was in the tree; and to satisfy himself, my
+companion "shinned" it, schoolboy fashion,--a frightful piece of work,
+which put me out of breath even to look at it,--while I surveyed the
+branches from all sides through an opera-glass. All was without avail.
+Nothing was to be seen, and it was as good as certain, the branches
+being well separated, and easily overlooked, that there was nothing
+there.
+
+Four days later I set out alone, to try my luck with the riddle. As I
+entered the clearing, the hummer was seen at his post, and my suspicions
+fastened upon a small wild apple-tree, perhaps twenty rods distant. I
+went to examine it, and presently the bird followed me. He perched in
+its top, but seemed not to be jealous of my proximity, and soon returned
+to his customary position; but when I came back to the apple-tree, after
+a visit to a clump of oaks at the top of the hill, he again came over. I
+could 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 nest
+been near by. After this I went to the edge of the wood, where I could
+keep an eye upon both trees without being myself conspicuous. The
+sentinel spent most of his time in the ash, visiting the apple-tree but
+once, and then for a few minutes only. I stayed an hour and a half, and
+came away no wiser than before. The nest, if nest there was, must be
+elsewhere, I believed. But where? And what was the object of the male's
+watch?
+
+My curiosity was fully roused. I had never seen or heard of such conduct
+on the part of any bird, and the next forenoon I spent another hour and
+a half in the clearing. The hummer was at his post, as he always was. We
+had never to wait for him. Soon after my arrival he flew to the
+apple-tree, the action seeming to have no connection with my presence.
+Presently he went back to the ash, and drove out of it two intruding
+birds. A moment later two humming-birds were there, and in another
+moment they flew away in a direction opposite to the apple-tree. Here,
+then, was a real clue. The birds were probably our sentinel and his
+mate. I made after them with all speed, pausing under such scattered
+trees as had been left standing in that quarter. Nothing was to be
+found, and on my return there sat the male, provokingly, at the top of
+the apple-tree, whence he soon returned to the ash. A warbler entered
+the tree, and after a while ventured upon the branch where the hummer
+was sitting. Instead of driving her away he took wing himself, and paid
+another visit to the apple-tree,--a visit of perhaps five minutes,--at
+the end of which he went back to the ash. Then two kingbirds happened to
+alight in the apple-tree. At once the hummer came dashing over and
+ordered them off, and in his excitement dropped for a moment into the
+leafy top of a birch sapling,--a most unnatural proceeding,--after which
+he 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 was
+in neither! He sat motionless for five minutes at a time upon certain
+dead twigs of the ash, precisely as our female was accustomed to sit in
+her apple-tree. For at least seven days he had been thus occupied. Where
+was his mate? On the edge of the wood, perhaps. But, if so, why did I
+hear nothing from her, as I passed up and down? Again my hour and a half
+had been spent to no purpose.
+
+Not yet discouraged, I returned the next morning. For the three quarters
+of an hour that I remained, the hummer was not once out of the ash-tree
+for five minutes. I am not sure that he left it for five minutes
+altogether. As usual, he perched almost without exception on one or
+other of two dead limbs, while a similar branch, on the opposite side of
+the trunk, he was never seen to touch. A Maryland yellow-throat alighted
+on one of his two branches and began to sing, but had repeated his
+strain only three or four times before the hummer, who had been absent
+for the moment, darted upon him and put him to flight. A little
+afterward, a red-eyed vireo alighted on his other favorite perch, and he
+showed no resentment. The day before, a warbler had sat on the same
+branch which the yellow-throat now invaded, and the hummer not only did
+not offer to molest him, but flew away himself. These inconsistencies
+made it hard to draw any inference from his behavior. During my whole
+stay he did not once go to the apple-tree, although, for want of
+anything better to do, I again scrutinized its branches. This time I
+_was_ discouraged, and gave over the search. His secret, whatever it
+might be, was "too dear for my possessing." But my fellow-observer kept
+up his visits, as I have said, and the hummer remained faithful to his
+task as late as July 15th, at least.
+
+Some readers may be prompted to ask, as one of my correspondents asked
+at the time, whether the mysterious sentry may not have been the mate of
+our home bird. I see no ground for such a suspicion. The two places were
+at 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 as
+well have been on Mount Washington. Nor can I believe that he had any
+connection with a nest found two months afterward in a pitch-pine grove
+within a quarter of a mile, more or less, of his clearing. It was
+undoubtedly a nest of that season, and might have been his for aught I
+know, so far as the mere fact of distance was concerned; but here again
+an intervening wood must have cut off all visual communication. If his
+mate and nest were not within view from his ash-tree perch, what could
+be the meaning of his conduct? Without some specific constraining
+motive, no bird in his normal condition was likely to stay in one tree
+hour after hour, day after day, and week after week, so that one could
+never come in sight of it without seeing him. But even if his nest was
+in the immediate neighborhood, the closeness and persistency of his
+lookout are still, to my mind, an absolute mystery. Our female bird,
+whether she had eggs or offspring, made nothing of absenting herself by
+the half hour; but this male hardly gave himself time to eat his
+necessary food; indeed, I often wondered how he kept himself alive. Is
+such a course of action habitual with male hummers? If so, had our
+seemingly widowed or deserted mother a husband, who somewhere, unseen by
+us, was standing sentry after the same heroic, self-denying fashion?
+These and all similar questions I must leave to more fortunate
+observers, or postpone to a future summer. Meantime, my judgment as to
+the male ruby-throat's character remains in suspense. It is not plain to
+me 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, the
+robin is without question the one most generally known. Its great
+commonness and wide distribution have something to do with this fact,
+but can hardly be said to account for it altogether. The red-eyed vireo
+has almost as extensive a range, and at least in New England is possibly
+more numerous; but except among ornithologists it remains a stranger,
+even to country-bred people. The robin owes its universal recognition
+partly to its size and perfectly distinctive dress, partly to its early
+arrival in the spring, but especially to the nature of its nesting and
+feeding habits, which bring it constantly under every one's eye.
+
+It would seem impossible, at this late day, to say anything new about
+so familiar a bird; but the robin has one interesting and remarkable
+habit, to which there is no allusion in any of our systematic
+ornithological treatises, so far as I am aware, although many individual
+observers must have taken notice of it. I mean the habit of roosting at
+night in large flocks, while still on its breeding grounds, and long
+before the close of the breeding season.[14]
+
+[14] Mr. William Brewster has been aware of this habit for twenty-five
+years, but, like myself, has never seen it mentioned in print. He
+devotes to it a paper in _The Auk_ for October, 1890, to which I am
+happy to refer readers who may wish a more thorough discussion of the
+matter than I have been able to give. My own paper was printed at the
+same time, in _The Atlantic Monthly_, and had been accepted by the
+editor before I knew of Mr. Brewster's intention to write. References to
+a 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 daily
+passage back and forth of small companies of robins. A friend, living in
+another town, had noticed similar occurrences, and more than once we
+discussed the subject; agreeing that such movements were probably not
+connected in any way with the grand southward migration, which, so far
+as we could judge, had not yet commenced, but that the birds must be
+flying 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 our
+Cambridge ornithologists had found a robin roost in that city,--a wood
+in which great numbers of birds congregated every night. This led me to
+keep a sharper eye upon my own robins, whom I had already noticed
+repeating their previous year's manoeuvres. Every evening, shortly
+before and after sunset, they were to be seen flying, now singly, now by
+twos and threes, or even by the half dozen, evidently on their way to
+some rendezvous. I was suspicious of a rather distant hill-top covered
+with pine-trees; but before I could make it convenient to visit the
+place at the proper hour, I discovered, quite unexpectedly, that the
+roost 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 dense
+growth of gray birches and swamp white oaks, but with a sprinkling of
+maples and other deciduous trees. It is bounded on the further side by a
+wet meadow, and at the eastern end by a little ice-pond, with a
+dwelling-house and other buildings beside it, all within a stone's throw
+of the wood.
+
+This discovery was made on the evening of July 25th, and I at once
+crossed a narrow field between the wood and the highway, and pushed in
+after the birds. It was too dark for me to see what was going on, but as
+I brushed against the close branches the robins set up a lively
+cackling, and presently commenced flying from tree to tree before me as
+I advanced, though plainly with no intention of deserting their
+quarters. The place was full of them, but I could form no estimate of
+their number.
+
+On the following evening I took my stand upon a little knoll commanding
+the western end of the wood. According to my notes, the birds began to
+arrive about sunset,--but this was pretty certainly an error,--and
+though I did not undertake an exact count until the flight was mainly
+over, it seemed likely that at least three hundred passed in at that
+point. This would have made the total number twelve hundred, or
+thereabout, on the assumption that my outlook had covered a quarter of
+the circuit. After the flight ceased I went into the wood, and from the
+commotion overhead it was impossible not to believe that such a
+calculation must be well within the truth.
+
+The next day was rainy, but on the evening of the 28th I stood by the
+shore of the pond, on the eastern side of the wood, and made as accurate
+a count as possible of the arrivals at that point. Unfortunately I was
+too late; the robins were already coming. But in fifty minutes, between
+6.40 and 7.30, I counted 1072 birds. They appeared singly and in small
+flocks, 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 how
+many might be passing in on the left. If my observations comprehended a
+quarter of the circle, and if the influx was equally great on the other
+sides (an assumption afterward disproved), then it was safe to set the
+whole number of birds at five thousand or more. Of the 1072 actually
+seen, 797 came before the sunset gun was fired,--a proportion somewhat
+larger than it would have been had the sky been clear.
+
+On the afternoon of the 29th I again counted the arrivals at the eastern
+end; but though I set out, as I thought, in good season, I found myself
+once more behind time. At 6.30 robins were already dropping in,
+notwithstanding the sky was cloudless. In the first five minutes
+eighteen birds appeared; at sunset 818 had been counted; and at 7.30,
+when I came away, the figures stood at 1267. "The robins came more
+rapidly than last night," I wrote in my notebook, "and for much of the
+time I could keep watch of the southeastern corner only. My vision then
+covered much less than a quarter of the circuit; so that if the birds
+came as freely from other directions, at least five thousand must have
+entered the wood between 6.30 and 7.30. As long as it was light they
+avoided passing directly by me, going generally to the left, and
+slipping into the roost behind some low outlying trees; though,
+fortunately, in doing this they were compelled to cross a narrow patch
+of the illuminated western sky. I suspect that the number increases from
+night to night. Between 6.40 and 7.30, 1235 birds came, as compared
+with 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 I
+arrived late, and made a partial count only. After sunset 186 birds were
+seen, whereas there had been 455 entries at the eastern end, two nights
+before, during the same time.
+
+Thus far I had always been too late to witness the beginning of the
+flight. On the evening of August 1st I resolved to be in season. I
+reached the border of the pond at 5.15, and at that very moment a single
+robin flew into the wood. No others were seen for eighteen minutes, when
+three arrived together. From this time stragglers continued to appear,
+and at 6.30 I had counted 176. In the next ten minutes 180 arrived; in
+the next five minutes, 138. Between 6.45 and 7, I counted 549; then, in
+six minutes, 217 appeared. At 7.25, when I concluded, the figures stood
+at 1533 birds. For about twenty minutes, as will be noticed, the
+arrivals were at the rate of thirty-six a minute. Throughout the
+thickest 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 more
+and more difficult to see any birds except such as passed above the dark
+tree line; and from what went on just about me, it was evident that the
+number of arrivals was increasing rather than diminishing as my count
+fell off. There seemed to be no good reason for doubting that at least
+two thousand robins entered the wood at the eastern end.
+
+Two nights later I stationed myself in the meadow southwest of the
+roost. Here I counted but 935 entries. The movement appeared to be fully
+as steady as on the opposite side, but as darkness came on I found
+myself at a great disadvantage; a hill occupied the background, giving
+me no illuminated sky to bring the birds into relief, so that I could
+see only such as passed close at hand. Of the 935 birds, 761 came before
+seven o'clock, but it was reasonably certain that the flight afterward
+was nearly or quite as great, only that I wanted light wherewith to see
+it.
+
+On the evening of August 4th I went back to the eastern end, and as the
+sky was perfectly clear I hoped to make a gain upon all my previous
+figures. But the fair weather was perhaps a hindrance rather than a
+help; for the robins came later than before, and more in a body, and
+continued to arrive long after it was impossible to see them. I counted
+1480,--53 less than on the 1st.
+
+I attempted no further enumeration until the 18th. Then, in an hour and
+ten 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 of
+the time I missed all except the comparatively small number that passed
+in my immediate vicinity. Many were flying at a great height,--having
+come from a long distance, as I inferred,--and sometimes I knew nothing
+of their approach till they dropped out of the sky directly over the
+wood. On this occasion, as well as on many others,--but chiefly during
+the latter part of the season,--it was noticeable that some of the
+robins 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 note
+of one fellow, who came from the south at a great altitude, and went
+directly over the wood. When he was well past it he suddenly pulled
+himself up, as if fancying he had caught a signal. After a moment of
+hesitation he proceeded on his northerly course, but had not gone far
+before he met half a dozen birds flying south. Perhaps he asked them the
+way. At all events, he wheeled about and joined them, and in half a
+minute was safe in port. He had heard of the roost, apparently (how and
+where?), but had not before visited it.
+
+This count of August 18th was the last for nearly a month, but I find a
+minute of August 27th stating that, while walking along the highway on
+the westerly side of the roost,--the side that had always been the least
+populous,--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 of
+the gathering. Indeed, from my friend's observations upon the Belmont
+roost, to be mentioned later, it seems well-nigh certain that it was
+still upon the increase.
+
+Toward the close of August I became interested in the late singing of
+several whippoorwills, and so was taken away from the robins' haunt at
+the hour of sunset. Then, from the 5th to the 13th of September, I was
+absent from home. On the night of my return I went to the shore of the
+pond, where, on the 1st of August, I had counted 1533 entries. The
+weather was favorable, and I arrived in good season and remained till
+the stars came out, but I counted only 137 robins! It was plain that the
+great majority of the congregation had departed.
+
+As I have said, there was little to be learned by going into the wood
+after the robins were assembled. Nevertheless I used frequently to
+intrude upon them, especially as friends or neighbors, who had heard of
+my "discovery," were desirous to see the show. The prodigious cackling
+and rustling overhead seemed to make a deep impression upon all such
+visitors, while, for myself, I should have had no difficulty in
+crediting the statement had I been told that _ten thousand_ robins were
+in the treetops. One night I took two friends to the place after it was
+really 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 dry
+twigs. The smoke and flame speedily waked the sleepers; but even then
+they manifested no disposition to be driven out.
+
+For curiosity's sake, I paid one early morning visit to the roost, on
+the 30th of July. It would be worth while, I thought, to see how much
+music so large a chorus would make, as well as to note the manner of its
+dispersion. To tell the truth, I hoped for something spectacular,--a
+grand burst of melody, and then a pouring forth of a dense, uncountable
+army of robins. I arrived about 3.40 (it was still hardly light enough
+to show the face of the watch), and found everything quiet. Pretty soon
+the robins commenced cackling. At 3.45 a song sparrow sang, and at the
+same moment I saw a robin fly out of the wood. Five minutes later a
+robin sang; at 3.55 another one flew past me; at four o'clock a few of
+the birds were in song, but the effect was not in any way
+peculiar,--very much as if two or three had been singing in the ordinary
+manner. They dispersed precisely as I had seen them gather: now a
+single bird, now two or three, now six, or even ten. A casual passer
+along the road would have remarked nothing out of the common course.
+They flew low,--not as if they were starting upon any prolonged
+flight,--and a goodly number alighted for a little in the field where I
+was standing. Shortly before sunrise I went into the wood and found it
+deserted. The robin is one of our noisiest birds. Who would have
+believed that an assembly of thousands could break up so quietly? Their
+behavior in this regard may possibly have been influenced by prudential
+considerations. I have said that many of them seemingly took pains to
+approach the roost indirectly and under cover. On the westerly side, for
+example, they almost invariably followed a line of bushes and trees
+which runs toward the roost along the edge of the meadow, even though
+they were obliged sharply to alter their course in so doing.
+
+All this time I had been in correspondence with my friend before
+referred to, who was studying a similar roost,[15]--in Belmont,--which
+proved to be more populous than mine, as was to be expected, perhaps,
+the surrounding country being less generally wooded. It was a mile or
+more from his house, which was so situated that he could sit upon his
+piazza in the evening and watch the birds streaming past. On the 11th of
+August he counted here 556 robins, of which 336 passed within five
+minutes. On the 28th he counted 1180, of which 456 passed within five
+minutes,--ninety-one a minute! On the 2d of September, from a knoll
+nearer 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 the
+middle of September. "Only 109 robins flew over the place to-night," my
+correspondent wrote on the 25th, "against 538 September 4th, 838 August
+30th, and 1180 August 28th." Two evenings later (September 27th) he went
+to the neighborhood of the roost, and counted 251 birds,--instead of
+1883 on the 2d. Even so late as October 9th, however, the wood was not
+entirely deserted. During the last month or so of its occupancy, the
+number of the birds was apparently subject to sudden and wide
+fluctuations, and it seemed not unlikely that travelers from the north
+were making a temporary use of the well-known resort. It would not be
+surprising 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 question
+often presented itself. It was only the middle of July when the
+Cambridge roost was found in full operation, though at that time many
+robins must still have had family duties, and some were probably
+building new nests. Next summer, we said, we would try to mark the
+beginnings of the congregation.
+
+My own plans to this end came near being thwarted. In December I was
+dismayed to see the owner of the wood cutting it down. Happily some kind
+power stayed his hand when not more than a third of the mischief was
+done, and on the 29th of June, 1890, while strolling homeward along the
+highway, listening to the distant song of a veery, I noticed within five
+or ten minutes seventeen robins making toward the old rendezvous. On
+the following evening I stood beside the ice-pond and saw one hundred
+and ninety-two robins enter the wood. The flight had begun before my
+arrival, and was not entirely over when I came away. Evidently several
+hundreds of the birds were already passing their nights in company. In
+my ignorance, I was surprised at the early date; but when I communicated
+my discovery to the Belmont observer, he replied at once that he had
+noticed 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 about
+making such a confession--whether it might not be the adult males who
+thus unseasonably went off to bed in a crowd, leaving their mates to
+care for eggs and little ones. At this very moment, as it happened, I
+was watching with lively sympathy the incessant activities of a female
+humming-bird, who appeared to be bringing up a family (two very hungry
+nestlings), with no husband to lift a finger for her assistance; and the
+sight, as I fear, put me into a cynical mood. Male robins were probably
+like males in general,--lovers of clubs and shirkers of home duties.
+Indeed, a friend who went into the roost with me, one evening, remarked
+upon the continual cackling in the treetops as "a very social sound;"
+and upon my saying something about a sewing circle, he answered, quite
+seriously, "No, it is rather like a gentleman's club." But it would have
+been unscientific, as well as unchristian, to entertain an hypothesis
+like this without putting its soundness to some kind of test. I adopted
+the only plan that occurred to me,--short of rising at half past two
+o'clock in the morning to see the birds disperse. I entered the wood
+just before the assemblage was due (this was on the 9th of July), and
+took a sheltered position on the eastern edge, where, as the robins flew
+by me, or alighted temporarily in the trees just across the brook, they
+would have the sunlight upon their breasts. Here, as often as one came
+sufficiently near and in a sufficiently favorable light, I noted whether
+it was an adult, or a streaked, spotted bird of the present season. As a
+matter of course, the number concerning which this point could be
+positively determined under such conditions was very small,--only
+fifty-seven altogether. Of these, forty-nine were surely birds of the
+present summer, and only eight unmistakable adult males. If any adult
+females came in, they passed among the unidentified and uncounted.[16] I
+was glad I had made the test. As a kind-hearted cynic (I confess to
+being nothing worse than this), I was relieved to find my misanthropic,
+or, to speak more exactly, my misornithic, notions ill founded. As for
+the sprinkling of adult males, they may have been, as a "friend and
+fellow woodlander" suggests, birds which, for one reason or another, had
+taken up with the detestable opinion that "marriage is a failure."
+
+[16] A week later, my correspondent reported a similar state of things
+at the Belmont roost. "A very large proportion of the birds are
+spotted-breasted young of the year, but occasionally I have detected an
+adult male." He examined the birds at near range, and at rest, after
+they 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 at
+the eastern end of the roost, thinking thus to ascertain in a general
+way the rate at which its population increased. On the whole, the growth
+proved to be fairly steady, in spite of some mysterious fluctuations, as
+will 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 another
+man, though we stood side by side, and covered no more ground than I had
+hitherto attempted to compass alone. The figures of the 27th were far in
+excess of any obtained in 1889, and for a day I was disposed to take
+seriously the suggestion of a friend that some other roost must have
+been broken up and its members turned into the Melrose gathering. But on
+the evening of the 28th I tried a count by myself, and made only 1517
+birds! The conditions were favorable, and the robins came, as they had
+come the night before, in flocks, almost in continuous streams. The
+figures had fallen off, not because there were fewer birds, but because
+I was unable to count them. They were literally too many for me. The
+difficulties of the work, it should be explained, are greatly enhanced
+by the fact that at the very corner where the influx is largest none of
+the low-flying birds can be seen except for a second or two, as they
+dart across a bit of sky between the roost and an outlying wood. To
+secure anything like a complete census, this point must be watched
+continuously; and meantime birds are streaming in at the other corner
+and shooting over the distracted enumerator's head, and perhaps dropping
+out of the sky. I conclude, therefore, not that the roost had increased
+in population, but that my last year's reckoning was even more
+inadequate than I then supposed. Even with two pairs of eyes, it is
+inevitable that multitudes of birds should pass in unnoticed, especially
+during the latter half of the flight. I have never had an assistant or a
+looker-on to whom this was not perfectly apparent.
+
+As I stood night after night watching the robins stream into this little
+wood,--no better, surely, than many they had passed on their way,--I
+asked myself again and again what could be the motive that drew them
+together. The flocking of birds for a long journey, or in the winter
+season, is less mysterious. In times of danger and distress there is no
+doubt a feeling of safety in a crowd. But robins cannot be afraid of the
+dark. Why, then, should not each sleep upon its own feeding grounds,
+alone, or with a few neighbors for company, instead of flying two or
+three miles, more or less, twice a day, simply for the sake of passing
+the night in a general roost?
+
+Such questions we must perhaps be content to ask without expecting an
+answer. By nature the robin is strongly gregarious, and though his
+present mode of existence does not permit him to live during the summer
+in close communities,--as marsh wrens do, for example, and some of our
+swallows,--his ancestral passion for society still asserts itself at
+nightfall. Ten or twelve years ago, when I was bird-gazing in Boston,
+there were sometimes a hundred robins at once about the Common and
+Garden, in the time of the vernal migration. By day they were scattered
+over the lawns; but at sunset they gathered habitually in two or three
+contiguous 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,--if
+going to sleep in a leafless treetop can be called retiring.
+
+Whatever the origin and reason of this roosting habit, I have no doubt
+that it is universal. Middlesex County birds cannot be in any respect
+peculiar. Whoever will keep a close eye upon the robins in his
+neighborhood, in July and August, will find them at sunset flocking to
+some general sleeping-place.
+
+It would be interesting to know how far they travel at such times. The
+fact that so many hundreds were to be seen at a point more than a mile
+away from the Belmont roost is significant; but I am not aware that any
+one has yet made a study of this part of the subject. My own birds
+seemed to come, as a rule, by easy stages. In the long narrow valley
+east of the roost, where I oftenest watched their approach, they
+followed habitually--not invariably--a zigzag route, crossing the meadow
+diagonally, and for the most part alighting for a little upon a certain
+wooded hill, whence they took a final flight to their nightly haven,
+perhaps a quarter of a mile beyond. Farther down the valley, a mile or
+more from the roost, birds were to be seen flying toward it, but I found
+no place at which a general movement could be observed and large numbers
+counted.
+
+As to the size of these nightly gatherings, it seems wisest not to
+guess; though, treating the subject in this narrative manner, I have not
+scrupled to mention, simply as a part of the story, some of my temporary
+surmises. What I am told of the Belmont wood is true also of the one in
+Melrose: its shape and situation are such as to make an accurate census
+impossible, no matter how many "enumerators" might be employed. It could
+be surrounded easily enough, but it would be out of the question to
+divide the space among the different men so that no two of them should
+count the same birds. At present it can only be said that the robins are
+numbered 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. In
+the chestnut grove, where a month ago the wood thrush, the rose-breasted
+grosbeak, and the scarlet tanager were singing, the loiterer now hears
+nothing but the wood pewee's pensive whistle and the sharp monotony of
+the red-eyed vireo. The thrasher is silent in the berry pasture, and the
+bobolink in the meadow. The season of jollity is over. Orioles, to be
+sure, after a month of silence, again have fits of merry fifing. The
+field sparrow and the song sparrow are still in tune, and the meadow
+lark whistles, though rarely. Catbirds still practice their feeble
+improvisations and mimicries in the thickets along the brooksides as
+evening comes on, and of the multitudes of robins a few are certain to
+be heard warbling before the day is over. Goldfinches have grown
+suddenly numerous, or so it seems, and not infrequently one of them
+breaks out in musical canary-like twitterings. On moonlight evenings the
+tremulous, haunting cry of the screech-owl comes to your ears, always
+from far away, and if you walk through the chestnut grove aforesaid in
+the daytime you may chance to catch his faint, vibratory, tree-frog
+whistle. For myself, I never enter the grove without glancing into the
+dry top of a certain tall tree, to see whether the little rascal is
+sitting in his open door. More than half the time he is there, and
+always with his eye on me. What an air he has!--like a judge on the
+bench! If I were half as wise as he looks, these essays of mine would
+never more be dull. For his and all other late summer music let us be
+thankful; but it is true, nevertheless, that the year is waning. How
+short it has been! Only the other day the concert opened, and already
+the performers are uneasy to be gone. They have crowded so much into so
+brief 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 them
+are gone already? Where are the blue golden-winged warblers that sang
+daily on the edge of the wood opposite my windows, so that I listened to
+them at my work? I have heard nothing of their rough _dsee, dsee_ since
+the 21st of June, and in all that time have seen them but once--a single
+bird, a youngling of the present year, stumbled upon by accident while
+pushing 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? An
+odd coincidence, however, warns me at this very moment that too much is
+not to be made of merely negative experiences; for even while I was
+penciling the foregoing sentence about the blue golden-wing there came
+through the open window the hoarse upward-sliding chant of his close
+neighbor, the prairie warbler. I have not heard that sound before since
+the 6th of July, and it is now the 22d of August. The singers had not
+gone, 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, after
+being dumb for six or seven weeks, pipe up at that precise moment, as
+if to punctuate my ruminations with an interrogation point? Does he like
+this dog-day morning, with its alternate shower and sunshine, and its
+constant stickiness and heat? In any case I was glad to hear him, though
+I cannot in the spirit of veracity call him a good singer. Whist! There
+goes 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 of
+May, to judge from his behavior. _He_ likes dog-day weather, there can
+be 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 are
+several times as abundant as in June. The air is sweet with their calls
+at this moment, and once in a while some father of the flock lets his
+happiness run over in song. One cannot go far now without finding the
+road full of chipping sparrows, springing up in their pretty,
+characteristic way, and letting the breeze catch them. The fences and
+wayside apple-trees are lively with kingbirds and phoebes. I am
+already watching the former with a kind of mournful interest. In ten
+days, or some such matter, we shall have seen the last of their saucy
+antics. Gay tyrants! They are among the first birds of whom I can
+confidently say, "They are gone;" and they seem as wide-awake when they
+go as when they come. Being a man, I regret their departure; but if I
+were a crow, I think I should be for observing the 31st of August as a
+day of annual jubilee.
+
+A few years ago, in September, I saw the white-breasted swallows
+congregated in the Ipswich dunes,--a sight never to be forgotten. On the
+morning of the 9th, the fourth day of our visit, a considerable
+flock--but no more, perhaps, than we had been seeing daily--came
+skimming over the marshes and settled upon a sand-bar in the river,
+darkening it in patches. At eight o'clock, when we took the straggling
+road out of the hills, a good many--there might be a thousand, I
+guessed--sat, upon the fence wires, as if resting. We walked inland, and
+on our return, at noon, found, as my notes of the day express it, "an
+innumerable host, thousands upon thousands," about the landward side of
+the dunes. Fences and haycocks were covered. Multitudes were on the
+ground,--in the bed of the road, about the bare spots in the marsh, and
+on the gray faces of the hills. Other multitudes were in the bushes and
+low trees, literally loading them. Every few minutes a detachment would
+rise into the air like a cloud, and anon settle down again. As we stood
+gazing at the spectacle, my companion began chirping at a youngster who
+sat near him on a post, as one might chirp to a caged canary. The effect
+was magical. The bird at once started toward him, others followed, and
+in a few seconds hundreds were flying about our heads. Round and round
+they went, almost within reach, like a cloud of gnats. "Stop! stop!"
+cried my companion; "I am getting dizzy." We stopped our squeakings, and
+the cloud lifted; but I can see it yet. Day after day the great
+concourse remained about the hills, till on the 13th we came away and
+left them. The old lighthouse keeper told me that this was their annual
+rendezvous. He once saw them circle for a long time above the dunes, for
+several hours, if I remember right, till, as it seemed, all stragglers
+had been called in from the beach, the marsh, and the outlying grassy
+hills. Then they mounted into the sky in a great spiral till they
+passed out of sight; and for that year there were no more swallows.
+This, he insisted, took place in the afternoon, "from three to four
+o'clock." He was unquestionably telling a straightforward story of what
+he himself had seen, but his memory may have been at fault; for I find
+it to be the settled opinion of those who ought to know, that swallows
+migrate by day and not by night, while the setting out of a great flock
+late in the afternoon at such a height would seem to indicate a
+nocturnal journey. Morning or evening, I would give something to witness
+so imposing a start.
+
+The recollection of this seaside gathering raises anew in my mind the
+question why, if swallows and swifts migrate exclusively in the daytime,
+we so rarely see anything of them on the passage. Our Ipswich birds were
+all tree swallows,--white-breasted martins,--and might fairly be
+supposed to have come together from a comparatively limited extent of
+country. But beside tree swallows there are purple martins, barn
+swallows, sand martins, cliff swallows, and chimney swifts, all of which
+breed to the northward of us in incalculable numbers. All of them go
+south between the middle of July and the first of October. But who in
+New 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 their
+grand 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 swallows
+flying south. Twice, while gazing up at the loose procession, I suddenly
+became aware of a close bunch of birds at a prodigious height, barely
+visible, circling about in a way to put a count out of the question, but
+evidently some hundreds in number. On both occasions the flock vanished
+almost immediately, and, as I believed, by soaring out of sight. The
+second time I meant to assure myself upon this point, but my attention
+was distracted by the sudden appearance of several large hawks within
+the field of my glass, and when I looked again for the swallows they
+were nowhere to be seen. Were the stragglers which I had for some time
+been watching, flying high, but well within easy ken, and these dense,
+hardly discernible clusters--hirundine nebulæ, as it were--were all
+these but parts of one innumerable host, the main body of which was
+passing far above me altogether unseen? The conjecture was one to
+gratify the imagination. It pleased me even to think that it _might_ be
+true. But it was only a conjecture, and meantime another question
+presented 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 same
+place, or rather on the same north and south line, while no matter where
+else I walked, east or west, not a swallow was visible. Had I stumbled
+upon a regular route of swallow migration? It looked so, surely; but I
+made little account of the matter till a month afterward, when, in
+exactly the same place, I observed robins and bluebirds following the
+same course. The robins were seen October 26th, in four flocks,
+succeeding each other at intervals of a few minutes, and numbering in
+all about 130 birds. They flew directly south, at a moderate height,
+and were almost certainly detachments of one body. The bluebird movement
+was two days later, at about the same hour, the morning being cold, with
+a little snow falling. This time, too, as it happened, the flock was in
+four detachments. Three of these were too compact to be counted as they
+passed; the fourth and largest one was in looser order and contained a
+little more than a hundred individuals. In all, as well as I could
+guess, there might have been about three hundred birds. They kept a
+straight 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 a
+mere coincidence that these swallows, bluebirds, and robins were all
+crossing the valley just at this point?
+
+This question, too, I count it safer to ask than to answer, but all
+observers, I am sure, must have remarked so much as this,--that birds,
+even on their migrations, are subject to strong local preferences. An
+ornithologist of the highest repute assures me that his own experience
+has convinced him so strongly of this fact that if he shoots a rare
+migrant in a certain spot he makes it a rule to visit the place again a
+year afterward on the same day, and, if possible, at the same hour of
+the day. Another friend sends me a very pretty story bearing upon the
+same point. The bird of which he speaks, Wilson's black-cap warbler, is
+one of the less common of our regular Massachusetts migrants. I count
+myself fortunate if I see two or three specimens during its spring or
+autumn passage. My correspondent shall tell the story for himself.
+
+"While I was making the drawings for the 'Silva,' at the old Dwight
+house, I was in the habit of taking a turn every pleasant day in the
+gardens after my scanty lunch. On the 18th of May, 1887, in my daily
+round I saw a Wilson's black-cap for the first time in my life. He was
+in a bush of _Spiræa media_, which grew in the midst of the rockery, and
+allowed 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 about
+it with my family when I got home. The seeing of a new bird always makes
+a red-letter day.
+
+"The next spring, as I was looking over my notebook of the previous
+year, I came upon my entry of May 18th, and thought I would be on the
+lookout for a black-cap on that date. Several times during the morning I
+thought of the matter, and after my lunch I sauntered into the rockery
+just as I had done the year before. Imagine my start when there, in the
+very same bush, was the black-cap peering at me; and I found on looking
+at my watch that it was precisely the same hour,--half past one! I
+rubbed 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, and
+talked 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-cap
+now), and wondered if it would keep tryst again. On the morning of the
+18th, the first thing I thought of when I awoke was my black-cap. That
+forenoon I actually felt nervous as the time approached, for I felt a
+sort of certainty (you smile) that I should see my bird again. My lunch
+was hastier than usual, and I was about to sally forth when it flashed
+across me--'Suppose the bird should be there again, who would believe my
+story? Hold! I will have a witness.' I called to Mr. J----, who was at
+work upstairs, and after explaining what I wanted, invited him to
+accompany me. We cautiously entered the rockery, and within a few
+minutes there flitted from a neighboring thicket into that very Spiræa
+bush 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 and
+dramatic than the foregoing, but I may add that a few years ago I
+witnessed the vernal migration in a new piece of country--ten miles or
+so from my old field--and found myself at a very considerable
+disadvantage. I had never realized till then how much accustomed I had
+grown to look for particular birds in particular places, and not in
+other 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 northward
+or southward. We see the stragglers, more or less numerous, that happen
+to have dropped out of the procession in our immediate neighborhood,--a
+flock of sandpipers about the edge of the pond, some sparrows by the
+roadside, a bevy of warblers in the wood,--and from these signs we infer
+the passing of the host.
+
+Unlike swallows, robins, bluebirds, blackbirds, and perhaps most of the
+sparrows, our smaller wood birds, the warblers and vireos especially,
+appear to move as a general thing in mixed flocks. Whenever the woods
+are full of them, as is the case now and then every spring and fall, one
+of the most striking features of the show is the number of species
+represented. For the benefit of readers who may never have observed such
+a "bird wave," or "rush," let me sketch hastily one which occurred a few
+years ago, on the 22d of September. As I started out at six o'clock in
+the morning, in a cool northwest wind, birds were passing overhead in an
+almost continuous stream, following a westerly course. They were chiefly
+warblers, but I noted one fairly large flock of purple finches. All were
+at a good height, and the whole movement had the air of a diurnal
+migration. I could only conjecture that it was the end of the nocturnal
+flight, so far, at least, as the warblers were concerned; in other
+words, that the birds, on this particular occasion, did not finish their
+nightly journey till a little after sunrise. But if many were still
+flying, many others had already halted; for presently I came to a piece
+of thin, stunted wood by the roadside, and found in it a highly
+interesting company. Almost the first specimen I saw was a Connecticut
+warbler perched in full view and exposing himself perfectly. Red-bellied
+nuthatches were calling, and warblers uncounted were flitting about in
+the trees and underbrush. A hurried search showed black-polls,
+black-throated greens, blue yellow-backs, one redstart, one
+black-and-white creeper, one Blackburnian, one black-and-yellow, one
+Canadian flycatcher (singing lustily), one yellow redpoll, and one
+clearly-marked bay-breast. The first yellow-bellied woodpecker of the
+season was hammering in a tree over my head, and not far away was the
+first flock of white-throated sparrows. After breakfast I passed the
+place again, and the only bird to be found was one phoebe! Within
+half a mile of the spot, however, I came upon at least three goodly
+throngs, including scarlet tanagers (all in yellow and black),
+black-throated blue warblers, pine warblers, olive-backed and
+gray-cheeked thrushes, a flock of chewinks (made up exclusively of adult
+males, so far as I could discover), red-eyed vireos, one solitary vireo,
+brown thrashers, with more redstarts, a second Blackburnian, and a
+second black-and-yellow. Every company had its complement of chickadees.
+Of the morning's forty species, thirteen were warblers; and of these
+thirteen, four were represented by one specimen each. For curiosity's
+sake I may add that a much longer walk that afternoon, through the same
+and other woods, was utterly barren. Except for two or three flocks of
+white-throated sparrows; there was no sign whatever that the night
+before had brought us a "flight."
+
+Autumnal ornithology may almost be called a science by itself. Not only
+are birds harder to find (being silent) and harder to recognize in
+autumn than in spring, but their movements are in themselves more
+difficult of observation. A few years of note-taking will put one in
+possession of the approximate dates of arrival of all our common vernal
+migrants. Every local observer will tell you when to look for each of
+the familiar birds of his neighborhood; but he will not be half so ready
+with information as to the time of the same birds' departure. Ask him
+about 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, and
+golden warblers in early September; but he will very likely add that
+these were probably voyagers from the North, and that he has never made
+out just when his own summer birds take their leave.
+
+After the work of nidification is over, birds as a rule wander more or
+less from their breeding haunts; and even if they do not wander they are
+likely to become silent. If we miss them, therefore, we are not to
+conclude 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 none
+to be found. After the first of July I neither saw nor heard a cuckoo of
+either species! Had they moved away? I do not know; but the case may be
+taken as an extreme illustration of the uncertainty attaching to the
+late-summer doings of birds in general. Every student must have had
+experiences of a sort to make him slow to dogmatize when such points are
+in question. Throughout May and June, for example, he has heard and seen
+wood thrushes in a certain grove. After that, for a whole month, he
+hears and sees nothing, though he is frequently there. The thrushes have
+gone? So it would seem. But then, suddenly, they are singing again in
+the very same trees, and he is forced to conclude that they have not
+been away, but during their period of midsummer silence have eluded his
+notice. On the whole, therefore, after making allowance for particular
+cases in which we may have more precise information, it would be hard, I
+think, to say just when our nocturnal travelers set out on their long
+journey. 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 a
+blessing. Like the falling of the leaves, it touches the heart with a
+pleasing sadness,--a sadness more delicious, if one is born to enjoy it,
+than all the merry-making of springtime. And even for the most
+unsentimental of naturalists the autumnal season has many a delightful
+hour. The year is almost done; but for the moment the whole feathered
+world is in motion, and the shortest walk may show him the choicest of
+rarities. Thanks to the passing of the birds, his local studies are an
+endless pursuit. "It is now more than forty years that I have paid some
+attention to the ornithology of this district, without being able to
+exhaust the subject," says Gilbert White; "new occurrences still arise
+as long as any inquiries are kept alive." A happy man is the bird-lover;
+always another species to look for, another mystery to solve. His
+expectations may never be realized; but no matter; it is the hope, not
+its fulfillment, that makes life worth having. How can any New
+Englander imagine that he has exhausted the possibilities of existence
+so 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 of
+private good fortune let the Fates send or withhold as they will. The
+grand spectacle itself will not fail us. Even now, through all the
+northern country, the procession is getting under way. For the next
+three 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, week
+days and Sundays, they will be flying: now singly or in little groups,
+and flitting from one wood or pasture to another; now in great
+companies, and with protracted all-day or all-night flights. Who could
+ask a better stimulus for his imagination than the annual southing of
+this mighty host? Each member of it knows his own time and his own
+course. On such a day the snipe will be in such a meadow, and the golden
+plover in such a field. Some, no doubt, will lose their way. Numbers
+uncounted will perish by storm and flood; numbers more, alas, by human
+agency. As I write, with the sad note of a bluebird in my ear, I can see
+the sea-beaches and the marshes lined with guns. But the army will push
+on; they will come to their desired haven; for there is a spirit in
+birds, also, "and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them
+understanding."
+
+
+
+
+A GREAT BLUE HERON.
+
+    "Why appear you with this ridiculous boldness?"
+                                           SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+The watcher of birds in the bush soon discovers that they have
+individual as well as race characteristics. They are not things, but
+persons,--beings with intellect, affections, and will,--and a strong
+specific resemblance is found to be consistent with no small measure of
+personal variation. All robins, we say, look and act alike. But so do
+all Yankees; yet it is part of every Yankee's birthright to be different
+from every other Yankee. Nature abhors a copy, it would seem, almost as
+badly 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 a
+certain point climbed the steep cliff to the railway track, meaning to
+look into a large cranberry meadow where, on previous visits, I had
+found a few sandpipers and plovers. Near one end of the perfectly level,
+sand-covered meadow was a little pool, and my first glance in that
+direction showed me a great blue heron wading about its edge. With as
+much quietness as possible I stole out of sight, and then hastened up
+the railway through a cut, till I had the sun at my back and a hill
+between me and the bird. Then I began a stealthy approach, keeping
+behind one object after another, and finally going down flat upon the
+ground (to roll in the soil is an excellent method of cleansing one's
+garments on Cape Cod) and crawling up to a patch of bayberry bushes, the
+last practicable cover.
+
+Here let me say that the great blue heron is, as its name implies, a big
+bird, standing almost as high as an ordinary man, and spreading its
+wings for nearly or quite six feet. Its character for suspiciousness may
+be gathered from what different writers have said about it. "He is most
+jealously vigilant and watchful of man," says Wilson, "so that those who
+wish 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 to
+attempt to approach it. To walk up towards one would be a fruitless
+adventure." Dr. Brewer's language is to the same effect,--"At all times
+very vigilant and difficult of approach."
+
+This, then, was the bird which I now had under my field-glass, as I lay
+at full length behind the friendly bayberry bushes. Up to this point,
+for aught that appeared, he was quite unaware of my espionage. Like all
+the members of his family that I have ever seen, he possessed so much
+patience that it required much patience to watch him. For minutes
+together he stood perfectly still, and his movements, as a rule, were
+either so slow as to be all but imperceptible, or so rapid as almost to
+elude the eye. Boys who have killed frogs--which was pretty certainly my
+heron's present employment--will need no explanation of his behavior.
+They know very well that, if the fatal club is to do its work, the
+slowest kind of preliminary motion must be followed by something like a
+flash of lightning.
+
+I watched the bird for perhaps half an hour, admiring his handsome blue
+wings as now and then he spread them, his dainty manner of lifting his
+long legs, and the occasional flashing stroke of his beak. My range was
+short (for a field-glass, I mean), and, all in all, I voted it "a fine
+show."
+
+When I wearied of my position I rose and advanced upon the heron in full
+sight, expecting every moment to see him fly. To my astonishment he held
+his ground. Down the hillside I went, nearer and nearer, till I came to
+a barbed-wire fence, which bounded the cranberry field close by the
+heron's pool. As I worried my way through this abominable obstruction,
+he stepped into a narrow, shallow ditch and started slowly away. I made
+rapidly after him, whereupon he got out of the ditch and strode on ahead
+of me. By this time I was probably within twenty yards of him, so near
+that, as he twisted his long neck every now and then, and looked at me
+through his big yellow eyes, I began to wonder whether he might not take
+it into his head to turn the tables upon me. A stab in the face with
+that ugly sharp beak would have been no laughing matter; but I did not
+believe myself in any danger, and quickened my steps, being now highly
+curious to see how near the fellow I could get. At this he broke into a
+kind of dog-trot, very comical to witness, and, if I had not previously
+seen him fly a few yards, I should have supposed him disabled in the
+wing. Dr. Brewer, by the way, says that this bird is "never known to
+run, or even to walk briskly;" but such negative assertions are always
+at the maker's risk.
+
+He picked up his legs at last, for I pressed him closer and closer, till
+there could not have been more than forty or fifty feet between us; but
+even then he settled down again beside another pool, only a few rods
+further on in the same meadow, and there I left him to pursue his
+frog-hunt unmolested. The ludicrousness of the whole affair was enhanced
+by the fact, already mentioned, that the ground was perfectly flat, and
+absolutely without vegetation, except for the long rows of newly planted
+cranberry vines. As to what could have influenced the bird to treat me
+thus strangely, I have no means of guessing. As we say of each other's
+freaks and oddities, it was _his way_, I suppose. He might have behaved
+otherwise, of course, had I been armed; but of that I felt by no means
+certain at the time, and my doubts were strengthened by an occurrence
+which happened a month or so afterward.
+
+I was crossing the beach at Nahant with a friend when we stole upon a
+pair of golden plovers, birds that both of us were very happy to see.
+The splendid old-gold spotting of their backs was plain enough; but
+immature black-bellied plovers are adorned in a similar manner, and it
+was necessary for us to see the rumps of our birds before we could be
+sure of their identity. So, after we had scrutinized them as long as we
+wished, I asked my companion to put them up while I should keep my glass
+upon their backs and make certain of the color of their rumps as they
+opened their wings. We were already within a very few paces of them, but
+they ran before him as he advanced, and in the end he had almost to
+tread on them.
+
+The golden plover is not so unapproachable as the great blue heron, I
+suppose, but from what sportsmen tell me about him I am confident that
+he cannot be in the habit of allowing men to chase him along the beach
+at a distance of five or six yards. And it is to be added that, in the
+present 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 approach
+one or two birds than a considerable flock. In the larger body there are
+almost certain to be a few timorous souls,--a few wider-awake and better
+instructed souls, let us rather say,--who by their outcries and hasty
+flight will awaken all the others to a sense of possible danger. But it
+is none the less true, as I said to begin with, that individual birds
+have individual ways. And my great blue heron, I am persuaded, was a
+"character." It would be worth something to know what was passing behind
+those big yellow eyes as he twisted his neck to look once more at the
+curious fellow--curious in two senses--who was keeping after him so
+closely. Was the heron curious, as well as his pursuer? Or was he only a
+little set in his own way; a little resentful of being imposed upon; a
+little inclined to withstand the "tyrant of his fields," just for
+principle's sake, as patriots ought to do? Or was he a young fellow, in
+whom heredity had mysteriously omitted to load the bump of caution, and
+upon whom experience had not yet enforced the lesson that if a creature
+is taller and stronger than you are, it is prudent to assume that he
+will most likely think it a pleasant bit of sport to kill you? It is
+nothing to the credit of humankind that the sight of an unsuspicious
+bird in a marsh or on the beach should have become a subject for
+wonder.
+
+
+
+
+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 two
+classes,--itself and the remainder. Birds, for instance, have no doubt a
+feeling, more or less clearly defined, which, if it were translated into
+human speech, might read, "Birds and nature." We, in our turn, say, "Man
+and nature." But such distinctions, useful as they are, and therefore
+admissible, are none the less arbitrary and liable to mislead. Birds and
+men are alike parts of nature, having many things in common not only
+with each other, but with every form of animate existence. The world is
+not a patchwork, though never so cunningly put together, but a garment
+woven throughout.
+
+The importance of this truth, its far-reaching and many-sided
+significance, is even yet only beginning to be understood; but its
+bearing upon the study of what we call natural history would seem to be
+evident. My own experience as a dabbler in botany and ornithology has
+convinced me that the pursuit of such researches is not at all out of
+the spirit of the familiar line,--
+
+    "The proper study of mankind is man,"--
+
+whatever the author of the line may have himself intended by his
+apothegm. To become acquainted with the peculiarities of plants or birds
+is to increase one's knowledge of beings of his own sort.
+
+There is room, I think, for a treatise on analogical botany,--a study of
+the human nature of plants. Thoroughly and sympathetically done, the
+work would be both surprising and edifying. It would give us a better
+opinion of plants, and possibly a poorer opinion of ourselves. Some
+wholesome first lessons of this kind we have all taken, as a matter of
+course. "We all do fade as a leaf." "All flesh is grass, and all the
+goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field." There are no
+household words more familiar than such texts. But the work of which I
+am thinking will deal not so much with our likeness to tree and herb as
+with the likeness of tree and herb to us; and furthermore, it will go
+into the whole subject, systematically and at length. Meanwhile, it is
+open even to an amateur to offer something, in a general and discursive
+way, upon so inviting a theme, and especially to call attention to its
+scope and variety.
+
+As I sit at my desk, the thistles are in their glory, and in a vase at
+my elbow stands a single head of the tall swamp variety, along with a
+handful of fringed gentians. Forgetting what it is, one cannot help
+pronouncing the thistle beautiful,--a close bunch of minute rose-purple
+flowers. But who could ever feel toward it as toward the gentian? Beauty
+is 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 out
+to be agreeable; but even its beauty is too much like that of some
+venomous reptile. Yet it has its friends, or, at all events, its patrons
+(if you wish to catch butterflies, go to the thistle pasture), and no
+doubt could give forty eloquent and logical excuses for its offensive
+traits. Probably it felicitates itself upon its shrewdness, and pities
+the poor estate of its defenseless neighbors. How they must envy its
+happier fortune! It sees them browsed upon by the cattle, and can hardly
+be blamed if it chuckles a little to itself as the greedy creatures pass
+it by untouched. School-girls and botanists break down the golden-rods
+and asters, and pull up the gerardias and ladies'-tresses; but neither
+school-girl nor collector often troubles the thistle. It opens its
+gorgeous blossoms and ripens its feathery fruit unmolested. Truly it is
+a great thing to wear an armor of prickles!
+
+"The human nature of plants,"--have I any reader so innocent as not to
+feel at this moment the appropriateness of the phrase? Can there be one
+so favored as not to have some unmistakable thistles among his Christian
+townsmen and acquaintance? Nay, we all know them. They are the more
+easily discovered for standing always a little by themselves. They
+escape many slight inconveniences under which more amiable people
+suffer. Whoever finds himself in a hard place goes not to them for
+assistance. They are recognized afar as persons to be let alone. Yet
+they, too, like their floral representatives, have a good side. If they
+do not give help, they seldom ask it. Once a year they may actually "do
+a handsome thing," as the common expression is; but they cannot put off
+their own nature; their very generosity pricks the hand that receives
+it, and when old Time cuts them down with his scythe (what should we do
+without this famous husbandman, unkindly as we talk of him?) there will
+be no great mourning.
+
+Is it then an unpardonable misdemeanor for a plant to defend itself
+against attack and extermination? Has the duty of non-resistance no
+exceptions nor abatements in the vegetable kingdom? That would be indeed
+a hard saying; for what would become of our universal favorite, the
+rose? On this point there may be room for a diversity of opinion; but
+for one, I cannot wish the wild rose disarmed, lest, through the
+recklessness of its admirers, what is now one of the commonest of our
+wayside ornaments should grow to be a rarity. I esteem the rose a
+patrician, and fairly entitled to patrician manners. As every one sees,
+people in high station, especially if they chance to possess attractive
+social qualities, are of necessity compelled to discountenance
+everything like careless familiarity, even from those with whom they may
+formerly have been most intimate. They must always stand more or less
+upon ceremony, and never be handled without gloves. So it is with the
+queen of flowers. Its thorns not only serve it as a protection, but are
+for its admirers an excellent discipline in forbearance. They make it
+easier for us, as Emerson says, to "love the wood rose and leave it on
+the stalk." In addition to which I am moved to say that the rose, like
+the holly, illustrates a truth too seldom insisted upon; namely, that
+people are more justly condemned for the absence of all good qualities
+than for the presence of one or two bad ones.
+
+Some such plea as this, though with a smaller measure of assurance, I
+should make in behalf of plants like the barberry and the bramble. The
+latter, in truth, sometimes acts as if it were not so much fighting us
+off as drawing us on. Leaning far forward and stretching forth its arms,
+it buttonholes the wayfarer, so to speak, and with generous country
+insistence forces upon him the delicious clusters which he, in his
+preoccupation, seemed in danger of passing untasted. I think I know the
+human counterparts of both barberry and bramble,--excellent people in
+their place, though not to be chosen for bosom friends without a careful
+weighing of consequences. Judging them not by their manners, but by
+their fruits, we must set them on the right hand. It would go hard with
+some of the most pious of my neighbors, I imagine, if the presence of a
+few thorns and prickles were reckoned inconsistent with a moderately
+good character.
+
+As for reprobates like the so-called "poison ivy" and "poison dogwood,"
+they have perhaps borrowed a familiar human maxim,--"All is fair in
+war." In any case, they are no worse than savage heathen, who kill their
+enemies with poisoned arrows, or than civilized Christians, who stab the
+reputation of their friends with poisoned words. Their marked comeliness
+of habit may be taken as a point in their favor; or, on the contrary, it
+may be held to make their case only so much the blacker, by laying them
+liable to the additional charge of hypocrisy. The question is a nice
+one, 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 and
+anemone, the arbutus and hepatica! These wage no war. They are of the
+original Society of Friends. Who will may spoil them without hurt. Their
+defense is with their Maker. I wonder whether anybody ever thinks of
+such flowers as representative of any order of grown people, or whether
+to everybody else they are forever children, as I find, on thinking of
+it, they have always been to me. Lowly and trustful, sweet and frail,
+"of such is the kingdom of heaven." They pass away without losing their
+innocence. Ere the first heats of summer they are gone.
+
+Yet the autumn, too, has its delicate blooms, though they are
+overshadowed and, as it were, put out of countenance by the coarser
+growths which must be said to characterize the harvest season. Nothing
+that May puts into her lap is more exquisite than are the purple
+gerardias with which August and September embroider the pasture and the
+woodland road. They have not the sweet breath of the arbutus, nor even
+the faint elusive odor of the violet, but for daintiness of form,
+perfection of color, and gracefulness of habit it would be impossible to
+praise them too highly. Of our three species, my own favorite is the one
+of the narrow leaves (_Gerardia tenuifolia_), its longer and slighter
+flower-stems giving it an airiness and grace peculiarly its own. A lady
+to whom I had brought a handful the other day expressed it well when she
+said, "They look like fairy flowers." They are of my mind in this: they
+love a dry, sunny opening in the woods, or a grassy field on the edge of
+woods, especially if there be a seldom-used path running through it. I
+know not with what human beings to compare them. Perhaps their antitypes
+of our own kind are yet to be evolved. But I have before now seen a
+woman who might worthily be set in their company,--a person whose sweet
+and wise actions were so gracefully carried and so easily let fall as to
+suggest an order and quality of goodness quite out of relation to common
+flesh and blood.
+
+What a contrast between such lowly-minded, unobtrusive beauties and
+egotists like our multitudinous asters and golden-rods! These, between
+them, almost take possession of the world for the two or three months of
+their reign. They are handsome, and they know it. What is beauty for, if
+not to be admired? They mass their tiny blossoms first into solid heads,
+then into panicles and racemes, and have no idea of hiding their
+constellated brightness under a bushel. "Let your light shine!" is the
+word they go on. How eagerly they crowd along the roadside, till the
+casual 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 jot
+less 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 why
+I should quarrel with the aster for loving to make a show. Herein, too,
+plants are like men. An indisposition toward publicity is amiable in
+those to whom it is natural; but I am not clear that bashfulness is the
+only commendable quality. Let plants and men alike carry themselves
+according to their birthright. Providence has not ordained a diversity
+of gifts for nothing, and it is only a narrow philosophy that takes
+offense at seeming contrarieties. The truer method, and the happier as
+well, is to like each according to its kind: to love that which is
+amiable, to admire that which is admirable, and to study that which is
+curious.
+
+A few weeks ago, for example, I walked again up the mountain road that
+climbs out of the Franconia Valley into the Franconia Notch. I had left
+home twenty-four hours before, fresh from working upon the asters and
+golden-rods (trying to straighten out my local catalogue in accordance
+with Dr. Gray's more recent classification of these large and difficult
+genera), and naturally enough had asters and golden-rods still in my
+eye. The first mile or two afforded nothing of particular note, but by
+and by I came to a cluster of the sturdy and peculiar _Solidago
+squarrosa_, and was taking an admiring account of its appearance and
+manner of growth, when I caught sight of some lower blue flower
+underneath, 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 and
+showier neighbors. Not far off, but a little more within the wood, were
+patches of the linnæa, which had been at its prettiest in June, but even
+now, in late September, was still putting forth scattered blossoms. What
+should a man do? Discard the golden-rod for the gentian, and in turn
+forsake the gentian for the twin-flower? Nay, a child might do that, but
+not a man; for the three were all beautiful and all interesting, and
+each the more beautiful and interesting for its unlikeness to the
+others. If one wishes a stiff lesson in classification, there are few
+harder genera (among flowering plants) than _Solidago_; if he would
+investigate the timely and taking question of the dependence of plants
+upon insects, this humble "proterandrous" gentian (which to human vision
+seems closed, but which the humble-bee knows well how to enter) offers
+him a favorable subject; while if he has an eye for beauty, a nose for
+delicate fragrance, and a soul for poetry, the linnæa will never cease
+to 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 identical
+tastes and habits, though these were of the very best; and it would be a
+tiresome country that brought forth only a single kind of plants.
+
+The flower of Linnæus is a flower by itself, as here and there appears a
+man who seems, as we say, _sui generis_. This familiar phrase, by the
+bye, is literally applicable to _Linnæa borealis_, a plant that spreads
+over a large part of the northern hemisphere, but everywhere preserves
+its own specific character; so that, whether it be found in Greenland or
+in Maryland, on the Alaskan Islands or in Utah, in Siberia or on the
+mountains of Scotland, it is always and everywhere the same,--a genus of
+one species. Diversities of soil and climate make no impression upon its
+originality. If it live at all, it must live according to its own plan.
+
+The aster, on the contrary, has a special talent for variation. Like
+some individuals of another sort, it is born to adapt itself to
+circumstances. Dr. Gray enumerates no less than one hundred and
+ninety-six North American species and varieties, many of which shade
+into each other with such endless and well-nigh insensible gradations
+that even our great special student of the _Compositæ_ pronounces the
+accurate and final classification of this particular genus a labor
+beyond his powers. What shall we say of this habit of variability? Is it
+a mark of strength or of weakness? Which is nobler,--to be true to one's
+ideal in spite of circumstances, or to conquer circumstances by suiting
+one's self to them? Who shall decide? Enough that the twin-flower and
+the star-flower each obeys its own law, and in so doing contributes each
+its own part toward making this world the place of diversified beauty
+which it was foreordained to be.
+
+I spoke of the linnæa's autumnal blossoms, though its normal flowering
+time is in June. Even this steady-going, unimpressible citizen of the
+world, it appears, has its one bit of freakishness. In these bright,
+summery September days, when the trees put on their glory, this lowliest
+member of the honeysuckle family feels a stirring within to make itself
+beautiful; and being an evergreen (instead of a summer-green), and
+therefore incapable of bedecking itself after the maple's manner, it
+sends up a few flower-stems, each with its couple of swinging, fragrant
+bells. So it bids the world good-by till the long winter once more comes
+and goes.
+
+The same engaging habit is noticeable in the case of some of our very
+commonest plants. After the golden-rods and asters have had their day,
+late in October or well into November, when witch-hazel, yarrow, and
+clover are almost the only blossoms left us, you will stumble here and
+there upon a solitary dandelion reflecting the sun, or a violet giving
+back 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 that
+all the prosaic activities of middle life are over. It is almost as if
+he were born again. The song of the April robin, the blossoming of the
+apple-tree, the splendors of sunset and sunrise,--these and things like
+them touch him to pleasure, as he now remembers they used to do years
+and years ago. What means this strange revival of youth in age? Is it a
+reminiscence merely, a final flickering of the candle, or is it rather a
+prophecy of life yet to come? Well, with the dandelion and the violet we
+know with reasonable certainty how the matter stands. The autumnal
+blooms are not belated, but precocious; they belong not to the season
+past, but to the season coming. Who shall forbid us to hope that what is
+true of the violet will prove true also of the man?
+
+It speaks well for human nature that in the long run the lowliest
+flowers are not only the best loved, but the oftenest spoken of. Men
+play the cynic: modest merit goes to the wall, they say; whoever would
+succeed, let him put on a brazen face and sharpen his elbows. But those
+who talk in this strain deceive neither themselves nor those who listen
+to them. They are commonly such as have themselves tried the trumpet and
+elbow method, and have discovered that, whatever may be true of
+transient notoriety, neither public fame nor private regard is to be won
+by such means. We do not retract what we have said in praise of
+diversity, and about the right of each to live according to its own
+nature, but we gladly perceive that in the case of the flowers also it
+is the meek that inherit the earth.
+
+Our appreciation of our fellow-men depends in part upon the amount, but
+still more upon the quality, of the service they render us. We could
+get along without poets more comfortably than without cobblers, for the
+lower use is often first, in order both of time and of necessity; but we
+are never in doubt as to their relative place in our esteem. One serves
+the body, the other the soul; and we reward the one with money, the
+other with affection and reverence. And our estimation of plants is
+according to the same rule. Such of them as nourish the body are
+good,--good even to the point of being indispensable; but as we make a
+difference between the barnyard fowl and the nightingale, and between
+the common run of humanity and a Beethoven or a Milton, so maize and
+potatoes 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 more
+than meat."
+
+Again we say, let each fulfill its own function. One is made for
+utility, another for beauty. For plants, too, are specialists. They know
+as well as men how to make the most of inherited capacities and
+aptitudes, achieving distinction at last by the simple process of
+sticking to one thing, whether that be the production of buds,
+blossoms, berries, leaves, bark, timber, or what not; and our judgment
+of them must be correspondingly varied. The vine bears blossoms, but is
+to be rated not by them, but by the grapes that come after them; and the
+rose-tree bears hips, but takes its rank not from them, but from the
+flowers that went to the making of them. "Nothing but leaves" is a
+verdict unfavorable or otherwise according to its application. The
+tea-shrub would hold up its head to hear it.
+
+One of the most interesting and suggestive points of difference among
+plants is that which relates to the matter of self-reliance. Some are
+made to stand alone, others to twine, and others to creep. If it were
+allowable to attribute human feelings to them, we should perhaps be safe
+in assuming that the upright look down upon the climbers, and the
+climbers in turn upon the creepers; for who of us does not felicitate
+himself upon his independence, such as it is, or such as he imagines it
+to be? But if independence is indeed a boon,--and I, for one, am too
+thoroughbred a New Englander ever to doubt it,--it is not the only good,
+nor even the highest. The nettle, standing straight and prim, asking no
+favors of anybody, may rail at the grape-vine, which must lay hold of
+something, small matter what, by which to steady itself; but the nettle
+might well be willing to forego somewhat of its self-sufficiency, if by
+so doing it could bring forth grapes. The smilax, also, with its thorns,
+its pugnacious habit, and its stony, juiceless berries, a sort of
+handsome vixen among vines,--the smilax, which can climb though it
+cannot stand erect, has little occasion to lord it over the strawberry.
+If one has done nothing, or worse than nothing, it is hardly worth while
+to boast of the original fashion in which he has gone about it.
+Moreover, the very plants of which we are speaking bear witness to the
+fact that it is possible to accept help, and still retain to the full
+one's own individuality. The strawberry is no more a plagiarist than the
+smilax, nor the grape than the nettle. If the vine clings to the cedar,
+the connection is but mechanical. Its spirit and life are as independent
+of the savin as of the planet Jupiter. Even the dodder, which not only
+twines about other weeds, but actually sucks its life from them, does
+not thereby lose an iota of its native character. If a man is only
+original to begin with,--so the parable seems to run,--he is under a
+kind of necessity to remain so (as Shakespeare did), no matter how much
+help he may draw from alien sources.
+
+This truth of the vegetable world is the more noteworthy, because, along
+with it there goes a very strong and persistent habit of individual
+variation. The plant is faithful to the spirit of its inherited law, but
+is not in bondage to the letter. Our "high-bush blackberries," to take a
+familiar illustration, are all of one species, but it does not follow
+that they are all exactly alike. So far from it, I knew in my time--and
+the school-boys of the present day are not less accurately informed, we
+may 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_ is
+probably true of all plants, though in varying degrees. I do not recall
+a 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 constant
+inequality among plants of the same species, perfectly well defined, and
+never lost sight of by us juvenile connoisseurs. If we failed to find
+the same true of other vines and bushes, which for our purposes bore
+blossoms only, the explanation is not far to seek. Our perceptions,
+æsthetic and gastronomic, were unequally developed. We were in the case
+of the man to whom a poet is a poet, though he knows very well that
+there are cooks and cooks.
+
+It is this slight but everywhere present admixture of the personal
+quality--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 to
+the parent stock, has received also a something, be it more or less,
+that distinguishes it from all its fellows. Let our observation be
+delicate enough, and we shall perceive that there are no duplicates of
+any 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 in
+their likes and dislikes. One is catholic: as common people say, it is
+not particular; it can live and thrive almost anywhere. Another must
+have 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 district
+of North Carolina, and, as far as appears, nowhere else,--a highly
+specialized plant, with no generic relative. Another instance is
+furnished by a water lily (_Nymphæa elegans_), the rediscovery of which
+is 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 years
+on the strength of a single collection at a single vaguely described
+station on the broad prairies of southwestern Texas;" now, after all
+this time, it turns up again in another quarter of the same State. And
+every student could report cases of a similar character, though less
+striking than these, of course, within the limits of his own local
+researches. If you ask me where I find dandelions, I answer, anywhere;
+but if you wish me to show you the sweet colt's-foot (_Nardosmia
+palmata_), you must go with me to one particular spot. Any of my
+neighbors will tell you where the pink moccasin flower grows; but if it
+is the yellow one you are in search of, I shall swear you to secrecy
+before conducting you to its swampy hiding-place. Some plants, like some
+people (but the plants, be it noted, are mostly weeds), seem to flourish
+best away from home; others die under the most careful transplanting.
+Some are lovers of the open, and cannot be too much in the sun; others
+lurk 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. One
+insists upon the richest of meadow loam; another is content with the
+face of a rock. We may say of them as truly as of ourselves, _De
+gustibus non est disputandum_. Otherwise, how would the earth ever be
+clothed with verdure?
+
+[17] The _Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club_ for January, 1888, page
+13.
+
+But plants are subject to other whims not less pronounced than these
+which have to do with the choice of a dwelling-place. We may call it the
+general rule that leaves come before flowers; but how many of our trees
+and shrubs reverse this order! The singular habit of the witch-hazel,
+whose blossoms open as the leaves fall, may be presumed to be familiar
+to all readers; and hardly less curious is the freak of the chestnut,
+which, almost if not quite alone among our amentaceous trees, does not
+put on its splendid coronation robes till late in June, and is
+frequently at the height of its magnificence in mid-July. What a pretty
+piece of variety have we, again, in the diurnal and the nocturnal
+bloomers! For my own part, being a watcher of birds, and therefore
+almost of necessity an early stirrer abroad, I profess a special regard
+for 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 I
+seldom fail to pick a blossom or two with the dew on them. Those to whom
+I carry them usually exclaim as over some wonderful exotic, though the
+primrose is an inveterate haunter of the roadside. Yet its blossoms
+have only to be looked at and smelled of to make their way, homely as is
+the stalk that produces them. They love darkness rather than light, but
+it certainly is not "because their deeds are evil." One might as well
+cast the opprobrious text in the face of the moon and stars. Now and
+then some enterprising journalist, for want of better employment,
+investigates anew the habits of literary workers; and it invariably
+transpires that some can do their best only by daylight, while the minds
+of others seem to be good for nothing till the sun goes down; and the
+wise reader, who reads not so much to gain information as to see whether
+the writer tells the truth, shakes his head, and says, "Oh, it is all in
+use." Of course it is all in use, just as it is with whippoorwills and
+the morning-glory.
+
+The mention of the evening primrose calls for the further remark that
+plants, not less than ourselves, have a trick of combining opposite
+qualities,--a coarse-grained and scraggy habit, for instance, with
+blossoms of exquisite fragrance and beauty. The most gorgeous flowers
+sometimes exhale an abominable odor, and it is not unheard of that
+inconspicuous or even downright homely sorts should be accounted
+precious for their sweetness; while, as everybody knows, few members of
+our native flora are more graceful in appearance than the very two whose
+simple touch is poison. Could anything be more characteristic of human
+nature than just such inconsistencies? Suavity and trickery, harshness
+and integrity, a fiery temper and a gentle heart,--how often do we see
+the good and the bad dwelling together! We would have ordered things
+differently, I dare say, had they been left to us,--the good should have
+been all good, and the bad all bad; and yet, if it be a grief to feel
+that the holiest men have their failings, it ought perhaps to be a
+consolation, rather than an additional sorrow, to perceive that the most
+vicious are not without their virtues. Beyond which, shall we presume to
+suggest that as poisons have their use, so moral evil, give it time
+enough, may turn out to be not altogether a curse?
+
+I have treated my subject too fancifully, I fear. Indeed, there comes
+over me at this moment a sudden suspicion that my subject itself is
+nothing but a fancy, or, worse yet, a profanation. If the flowers could
+talk, who knows how earnestly they might deprecate all such misguided
+attempts at doing them honor,--as if it were anything but a slander,
+this imputation to them of the foibles, or even the self-styled good
+qualities, of our poor humanity! What an egoist is man! I seem to hear
+them saying; look where he will, at the world or at its Creator, he sees
+nothing 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; that
+Xerxes delighted in the great plane-tree of Lydia; that he decked it
+with golden ornaments and appointed for it a sentry, one of "the
+immortal ten thousand." Feelings of this kind are natural; among natural
+men they seem to have been well-nigh universal. The wonder is that any
+should be without them. For myself, I cannot recollect the day when I
+did not regard the Weymouth pine (the white pine I was taught to call
+it, but now, for reasons of my own, I prefer the English name) with
+something like reverence. Especially was this true of one,--a tree of
+stupendous girth and height, under which I played, and up which I
+climbed till my cap seemed almost to rub against the sky. That pine
+ought 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 ago
+it was brought to earth, it and all its fair lesser companions. There is
+no wisdom in the grave, and it is nothing to them now that I remember
+them 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 the
+illustrious Bobo, for the love of roast pig, burn down his father's
+house.
+
+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, I
+happen at this moment to be reclining. Yet a murmur runs through its
+branches as I pencil the words. Perhaps it is saying to itself that
+giants are, and always have been, things of the past,--things gazed at
+over the beholder's shoulder and through the mists of years; and that
+this venerable monarch of my boyhood, this relic of times remote, has
+probably grown faster since it was cut down than ever it did while
+standing. I care not to argue the point. Rather, let me be glad that a
+tree is a tree, whether large or small. What a wonder of wonders it
+would seem to unaccustomed eyes! As some lover of imaginative delights
+wished that he could forget Shakespeare and read him new, so I would
+cheerfully lose all memory of my king of Weymouth pines, if by that
+means I might for once look upon a tree as upon something I had never
+seen or dreamed of.
+
+For that purpose, were it given me to choose, I would have one that had
+grown by itself; full of branches on all sides, but with no suggestion
+of primness; in short, a perfect tree, a miracle hardly to be found in
+any forest, since the forest would be no better than a park if the
+separate members of it were allowed room to develop each after its own
+law. Nature is too cunning an artist to spoil the total effect of her
+picture by too fond a regard for the beauty of particular details.
+
+I once passed a lazy, dreamy afternoon in a small clearing on a Canadian
+mountain-side, where the lumbermen had left standing a few scattered
+butternuts. I can see them now,--misshapen giants, patriarchal
+monstrosities, their huge trunks leaning awkwardly this way and that,
+and each bearing at the top a ludicrously small, one-sided bunch of
+leafy boughs. All about me was the ancient wood. For a week I had been
+wandering through it with delight. Such beeches and maples, birches and
+butternuts! I had not thought of any imperfection. I had been in
+sympathy with the artist, and had enjoyed his work in the same spirit in
+which it had been wrought. Now, however, with these unhappy butternuts
+in my eye, I began to look, not at the forest, but at the trees, and I
+found that the spared butternuts were in no sense exceptional. _All_ the
+trees were deformed. They had grown as they could, not as their innate
+proclivities would have led them. A tree is no better than a man; it
+cannot be itself if it stands too much in a crowd.
+
+I set it down, unwillingly, to the discredit of the Weymouth pine,--a
+symptom of some ancestral taint, perhaps,--that it suffers less than
+most trees from being thus encroached upon. Yet it does not entirely
+escape. True, it leans neither to left nor right, its trunk is seldom
+contorted; if it grow at all it must grow straight toward the zenith;
+but it is sadly maimed, nevertheless,--hardly more than a tall stick
+with a broom at the top. If you would see a typical white pine you must
+go elsewhere to look for it. I remember one such, standing by itself in
+a broad Concord River meadow; not remarkable for its size, but of a
+symmetry and beauty that make the traveler turn again and again, till he
+is a mile away, to gaze upon it. No pine-tree ever grew like that in a
+wood.
+
+I go sometimes through a certain hamlet, which has sprung suddenly into
+being on a hill-top where formerly stood a pine grove. The builders of
+the houses have preserved (doubtless they use that word) a goodly number
+of the trees. But though I have been wont to esteem the poorest tree as
+better than none, I am almost ready to forswear my opinion at sight of
+these slender trunks, so ungainly and unsupported. The first breeze, one
+would say, must bring them down upon the roofs they were never meant to
+shade. Poor naked things! I fancy they look abashed at being dragged
+thus unexpectedly and inappropriately into broad daylight. If I were to
+see the householder lifting his axe against one of them I think I should
+not say, "Woodman, spare _that_ tree!" Let it go to the fire, the sooner
+the better, and be out of its misery.
+
+Not that I blame the tree, or the power that made it what it is. The
+forest, like every other community, prospers--we may rather say
+exists--at the expense of individual perfection. But the expense is true
+economy, for, however it may be in ethics, in æsthetics the end
+justifies the means. The solitary pine, unhindered, symmetrical, green
+to its lowermost twig, as it rises out of the meadow or stands a-tiptoe
+on the rocky ledge, is a thing of beauty, a pleasure to every eye. A
+pity and a shame that it should not be more common! But the pine
+_forest_, dark, spacious, slumberous, musical! Here is something better
+than beauty, dearer than pleasure. When we enter this cathedral, unless
+we enter it unworthily, we speak not of such things. Every tree may be
+imperfect, with half its branches dead for want of room or want of sun,
+but until the devotee turns critic--an easy step, alas, for
+half-hearted worshipers--we are conscious of no lack. Magnificence can
+do without prettiness, and a touch of solemnity is better than any
+amusement.
+
+Where shall we hear better preaching, more searching comment upon life
+and death, than in this same cathedral? Verily, the pine is a priest of
+the true religion. It speaks never of itself, never its own words.
+Silent it stands till the Spirit breathes upon it. Then all its
+innumerable leaves awake and speak as they are moved. Then "he that hath
+ears to hear, let him hear." Wonderful is human speech,--the work of
+generations upon generations, each striving to express itself, its
+feelings, its thoughts, its needs, its sufferings, its joys, its
+inexpressible desires. Wonderful is human speech, for its complexity,
+its delicacy, its power. But the pine-tree, under the visitations of the
+heavenly influence, utters things incommunicable; it whispers to us of
+things we have never said and never can say,--things that lie deeper
+than words, deeper than thought. Blessed are our ears if we hear, for
+the message is not to be understood by every comer, nor, indeed, by
+any, except at happy moments. In this temple all hearing is given by
+inspiration, 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 model
+housekeeper frowns upon dirt. A plain brown carpet suits it best, with a
+modest figure of green--preferably of evergreen--woven into it; a
+tracery of partridge-berry vine, or, it may be, of club moss, with here
+and there a tuft of pipsissewa and pyrola. Its mood is sombre, its taste
+severe. Yet I please myself with noticing that the pine wood, like the
+rest 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 our
+oddest, brightest, and showiest flowers, the pink lady's-slipper, and by
+some means or other has enticed it away from the peat bog, where it
+surely should be growing, along with the calopogon, the pogonia, and the
+arethusa, and here it is, like some rare exotic, thriving in a bed of
+sand and on a mat of brown needles. Who will undertake to explain the
+occult "elective affinity" by which this rosy orchid is made so much at
+home under the heavy shadow of the Weymouth pine?
+
+According to the common saying, there is no accounting for tastes. If by
+this is meant simply that _we_ cannot account for them, the statement is
+true enough. But if we are to speak exactly, there are no likes nor
+dislikes except for cause. Every freak of taste, like every vagary of
+opinion, has its origin and history, and, with sufficient knowledge on
+our part, could be explained and justified. The pine-tree and the orchid
+are not friends by accident, however the case may look to us who cannot
+see behind the present nor beneath the surface. There are no mysteries
+_per se_, but only to the ignorant. Yet ignorance itself, disparagingly
+as we talk of it, has its favorable side,--as it is pleasant sometimes
+to withdraw from the sun and wander for a season in the half-light of
+the forest. Perhaps we need be in no haste to reach a world where there
+is never any darkness. In some moods, at least, I go with the
+partridge-berry vine and the lady's-slipper. It is good, I think, to
+live awhile longer in the shadow; to see as through a glass darkly; and
+to hear overhead, not plain words, but inarticulate murmurs.
+
+I am not to be understood as praising the pine at the expense of other
+trees. All things considered, no evergreen can be equal to a
+summer-green, on which we see the leaves budding, unfolding, ripening,
+and falling,--a "worlde whiche neweth everie daie." What would winter be
+worth 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 any
+who know the pleasures of sentiment and sober reflection. But though one
+tree differeth from another tree in glory, we may surely rejoice in them
+all. 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 do
+not "hate" an impassive, unchangeable temper, whether in a tree or in a
+man. I have so little of such a spirit myself that I am glad to see
+some tokens of it--not too frequent, indeed, nor too self-assertive--in
+the world about me. And so I say, let me never be, for any long time
+together, where there are no Weymouth pines at which I may gaze from
+afar, or under which I may lie and listen. They boast not (rare
+stoics!), but they set us a brave example. No "blasts that blow the
+poplar white" can cause the pine-tree to blanch. No frost has power to
+strip it of a single leaf. Its wood is soft, but how dauntless its
+spirit!--a truly encouraging paradox, lending itself, at our private
+need, to endless consolatory moralizings. The great majority of my
+brothers must be comforted, I think, by any fresh reminder that the
+battle is not to the strong.
+
+For myself, then, like the lowly partridge-berry vine, I would be always
+the pine-tree's neighbor. Who knows but by lifelong fellowship with it I
+may absorb something of its virtue? Summer and winter, its fragrant
+breath rises to heaven; and of it we may say, with more truth than
+Landor said of the over-sweet fragrance of the linden, "Happy the man
+whose 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.
+
+
+
+
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Foot-path Way, by Bradford Torrey
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+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Foot-path Way, by Bradford Torrey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Foot-path Way
+
+Author: Bradford Torrey
+
+Release Date: November 17, 2008 [EBook #27285]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOOT-PATH WAY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robin Monks, Carolyn Bottomley, Joseph Cooper
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="box">
+<p class="center" style="font-weight: bold;">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<p class="noin" style="text-align: left;">
+Author's irregular hyphenation has been kept.<br>
+For a complete list of corrections made, please see the <a href="#TN">end of this document</a>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/frontcover.jpg" width="400" height="600" alt="Front Cover.">
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/author.jpg" width="400" height="560" alt="Author, Bradford Torrey.">
+</div>
+<br>
+<h1>THE FOOT-PATH WAY</h1>
+
+<h5>BY</h5>
+
+<h3>BRADFORD TORREY</h3>
+<h2>&nbsp;</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><p class="center">
+<span class="i1">Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way,</span>
+<span class="i2">And merrily hent the stile-a:</span>
+<span class="i0">A merry heart goes all the day,</span>
+<span class="i2">Your sad tires in a mile-a.</span>
+<span class="i16"><span class="smcap">The Winter's Tale</span></span></p>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/riverpress.jpg" width="300" height="380" alt="River Press icon.">
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">
+BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br>
+HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY<br>
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge<br>
+1893</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">
+Copyright, 1892,<br>
+<span class="smcap">By</span> BRADFORD TORREY.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>All rights reserved.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">SECOND EDITION.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A.</i><br>
+Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton &amp; Co.
+</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<a name="toc" id="toc"></a><h3>CONTENTS.</h3>
+
+<table summary="Contents" width="55%" cellpadding="1">
+  <tr>
+    <td class="text">&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="pg"><small>PAGE</small></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="text"><a href="#JUNE_IN_FRANCONIA">
+        <span class="smcap">June in Franconia.</span></a></td>
+    <td class="pg"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="text"><a href="#DECEMBER_OUT-OF-DOORS">
+        <span class="smcap">December Out-of-Doors.</span></a></td>
+    <td class="pg"><a href="#Page_36">36</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="text"><a href="#DYERS_HOLLOW">
+        <span class="smcap">Dyer's Hollow.</span></a></td>
+    <td class="pg"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="text"><a href="#FIVE_DAYS_ON_MOUNT_MANSFIELD">
+        <span class="smcap">Five Days on Mount Mansfield.</span></a></td>
+    <td class="pg"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="text"><a href="#A_WIDOW_AND_TWINS">
+        <span class="smcap">A Widow and Twins.</span></a></td>
+    <td class="pg"><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="text"><a href="#THE_MALE_RUBY-THROAT">
+        <span class="smcap">The Male Ruby-Throat.</span></a></td>
+    <td class="pg"><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="text"><a href="#ROBIN_ROOSTS">
+        <span class="smcap">Robin Roosts.</span></a></td>
+    <td class="pg"><a href="#Page_153">153</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="text"><a href="#THE_PASSING_OF_THE_BIRDS">
+        <span class="smcap">The Passing of the Birds.</span></a></td>
+    <td class="pg"><a href="#Page_176">176</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="text"><a href="#A_GREAT_BLUE_HERON">
+        <span class="smcap">A Great Blue Heron.</span></a></td>
+    <td class="pg"><a href="#Page_197">197</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="text"><a href="#FLOWERS_AND_FOLKS">
+        <span class="smcap">Flowers and Folks.</span></a></td>
+    <td class="pg"><a href="#Page_205">205</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="text"><a href="#IN_PRAISE_OF_THE_WEYMOUTH_PINE">
+        <span class="smcap">In Praise of the Weymouth Pine.</span></a></td>
+    <td class="pg"><a href="#Page_232">232</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="text"><a href="#INDEX">
+        <span class="smcap">Index.</span></a></td>
+    <td class="pg"><a href="#Page_243">243</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="pg">
+
+<h2>THE FOOT-PATH WAY.</h2>
+
+<hr>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span>
+<h3><a name="JUNE_IN_FRANCONIA" id="JUNE_IN_FRANCONIA"></a>JUNE IN FRANCONIA.</h3>
+<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<center><small><span class="i0">  "Herbs, fruits, and flowers,</span>
+<span class="i0">Walks, and the melody of birds."</span>
+<span class="i16"><span class="smcap">Milton.</span></span></small></center>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">There</span> were six of us, and we had the
+entire hotel, I may almost say the entire valley, to ourselves. If
+the verdict of the villagers could have been taken, we should,
+perhaps, have been voted a queer set, familiar as dwellers in
+Franconia are with the sight of idle tourists,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><center><small>
+<span class="i0">"Rapid and gay, as if the earth were air,</span>
+<span class="i1">And they were butterflies to wheel about</span>
+<span class="i-4">Long as the summer lasted."</span></small></center>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We were neither "rapid" nor "gay," and it was still only the first week
+of June; if we were summer boarders, therefore, we must be of some
+unusual early-blooming variety.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
+<p>First came a lady, in excellent repute among the savants of
+Europe and America as an entomologist, but better known to the
+general public as a writer of stories. With her, as companion
+and assistant, was a doctor of laws, who is also a newspaper
+proprietor, a voluminous author, an art connoisseur, and many
+things beside. They had turned their backs thus unseasonably upon
+the metropolis, and in this pleasant out-of-the-way corner were
+devoting themselves to one absorbing pursuit,&mdash;the pursuit
+of moths. On their daily drives, two or three insect nets dangled
+conspicuously from the carriage,&mdash;the footman, thrifty soul,
+was never backward to take a hand,&mdash;and evening after evening
+the hotel piazza was illuminated till midnight with lamps and
+lanterns, while these enthusiasts waved the same white nets about,
+gathering in geometries, noctuids, sphinges, and Heaven knows
+what else, all of them to perish painlessly in numerous "cyanide
+bottles," which bestrewed the piazza by night, and (happy
+thought!) the closed piano by day. In this noble occupation I
+sometimes played at helping; but with only meagre success, my most
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>
+brilliant catch being nothing more important than a "beautiful Io." The
+kind-hearted lepidopterist lingered with gracious emphasis upon the
+adjective, and assured me that the specimen would be all the more
+valuable because of a finger-mark which my awkwardness had left upon one
+of its wings. So&mdash;to the credit of human nature be it
+spoken&mdash;so does amiability sometimes get the better of the feminine
+scientific spirit. To the credit of human nature, I say; for, though her
+practice of the romancer's art may doubtless have given to this good
+lady some peculiar flexibility of mind, some special, individual
+facility in subordinating a lower truth to a higher, it surely may be
+affirmed, also, of humanity in general, that few things become it better
+than its inconsistencies.</p>
+
+<p>Of the four remaining members of the company, two were botanists, and
+two&mdash;for the time&mdash;ornithologists. But the botanists were
+lovers of birds, also, and went nowhere without opera-glasses; while the
+ornithologists, in turn, did not hold themselves above some elementary
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+knowledge of plants, and amused themselves with now and then pointing out
+some rarity&mdash;sedges and willows were the special desiderata&mdash;which
+the professional collectors seemed in danger of passing without notice.
+All in all, we <i>were</i> a queer set. How the Latin and Greek
+polysyllables flew about the dining-room, as we recounted our forenoon's
+or afternoon's discoveries! Somebody remarked once that the waiters'
+heads appeared to be more or less in danger; but if the waiters
+trembled at all, it was probably not for their own heads, but for ours.
+<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
+
+<p>Our first excursion&mdash;I speak of the four who traveled
+on foot&mdash;was to the Franconia Notch. It could not well
+have been otherwise; at all events, there was one of the four
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+whose feet would not willingly have carried him in any other direction.
+The mountains drew us, and there was no thought of resisting their
+attraction.</p>
+
+<p>Love and curiosity are different, if not incompatible, sentiments;
+and the birds that are dearest to the man are, for that very
+reason, not most interesting to the ornithologist. When on a
+journey, I am almost without eyes or ears for bluebirds and
+robins, song sparrows and chickadees. Now is my opportunity
+for extending my acquaintance, and such every-day favorites
+must get along for the time as best they can without my attention.
+So it was here in Franconia. The <a name="vesper5" id="vesper5">vesper
+sparrow</a>, the veery, and a host of other friends were singing
+about the hotel and along the roadside, but we heeded them not.
+Our case was like the boy's who declined gingerbread, when on a visit:
+he had plenty of that at home.</p>
+
+<p>When we were nearly at the edge of the mountain woods, however, we
+heard across the field a few notes that brought all four of us to an
+instant standstill. What <a name="tennessee5" id="tennessee5">warbler</a>
+could that be? Nobody could tell. In fact, nobody could guess. But, before
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+the youngest of us could surmount the wall, the singer took wing,
+flew over our heads far into the woods, and all was silent. It was
+too bad; but there would be another day to-morrow. Meantime, we kept
+on up the hill, and soon were in the old forest, listening to
+<a name="baybreast6" id="baybreast6">bay-breasted warblers</a>,
+<a name="blackburn6" id="blackburn6">Blackburnians</a>,
+<a name="blackpoll6" id="blackpoll6">black-polls</a>, and so on,
+while the noise of the mountain brook on our right, a better singer
+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 to come down again."</p>
+
+<p>I took leave of my companions at Profile Lake, they having planned an
+all-day excursion beyond, and started homeward by myself. Slowly, and
+with many stops, I sauntered down the long hill, through the forest (the
+stops, I need not say, are commonly the major part of a naturalist's
+ramble,&mdash;the golden beads, as it were, the walk itself being only
+the string), till I reached the spot where we had been serenaded in the
+morning by our <a name="tennessee6" id="tennessee6">mysterious stranger</a>.
+Yes, he was again singing, this time not far from the road, in a
+moderately thick growth of small trees, under which the ground was
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+carpeted with club-mosses, dog-tooth violets, clintonia, linn&aelig;a, and
+similar plants. He continued to sing, and I continued to edge my way nearer
+and nearer, till finally I was near enough, and went down on my knees.
+Then I saw him, facing me, showing white under parts. A Tennessee warbler!
+Here was good luck indeed. I ogled him for a long time ("Shoot it," says
+Mr. Burroughs, authoritatively, "not ogle it with a glass;" but a man must
+follow his own method), impatient to see his back, and especially the top
+of his head. What a precious frenzy we fall into at such moments! My
+knees were fairly upon nettles. He flew, and I followed. Once more
+he was under the glass, but still facing me. How like a vireo he looked!
+For one instant I thought, Can it be the Philadelphia vireo? But, though
+I had never seen that bird, I knew its song to be as different as possible
+from the notes to which I was listening. After a long time the fellow
+turned to feeding, and now I obtained a look at his upper parts,&mdash;the
+back olive, the head ashy, like the Nashville warbler. That was enough.
+It was indeed the Tennessee (<i>Helminthophila peregrina</i>),
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+a bird for which I had been ten years on the watch.</p>
+
+<p>The song, which has not often been described, is more suggestive
+of the <a name="nashville8" id="nashville8">Nashville's</a> than
+of any other, but so decidedly different as never for a moment
+to be confounded with it. "When you hear it," a friend had said
+to me several years before, "you will know it for something new." It is
+long (I speak comparatively, of course), very sprightly, and peculiarly
+staccato, and is made up of two parts, the second quicker in movement
+and 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 <i>is</i> in
+three parts, but as to rhythm and character, it is in two; the first
+half being composed of double notes, the second of single notes. The
+resemblance to the Nashville's song lies entirely in the first part; the
+notes of the concluding portion are not run together or jumbled, after
+the Nashville's manner, but are quite as distinct as those of the
+opening measure.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+<p>As there were at least two pairs of the birds, and they were
+unmistakably 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 more
+to a really methodical search; but the wily singer gave me not the
+slightest clue, behaving as if there were no such thing as a bird's nest
+within a thousand miles, and all my endeavors went for nothing.</p>
+
+<p>As might have been foreseen, Franconia proved to be an
+excellent place in which to study the difficult family of
+flycatchers. All our common eastern Massachusetts species were
+present,&mdash;the <a name="kingbird9" id="kingbird9">kingbird</a>,
+the <a name="phoebe9" id="phoebe9">ph&oelig;be</a>, the
+<a name="pewee9" id="pewee9">wood pewee</a>, and the <a
+name="flyleast" id="flyleast">least flycatcher</a>,&mdash;and
+with them the <a name="flygreat" id="flygreat">crested flycatcher</a>
+(not common), the <a name="flyolive9" id="flyolive9">olive-sided</a>,
+the <a name="traill" id="traill">traill</a>, and the <a
+name="flyyellow" id="flyyellow">yellow-bellied</a>. The ph&oelig;be-like
+cry of the traill was to be heard constantly from the hotel piazza.
+The yellow-bellied seemed to be confined to deep and rather swampy
+woods in the valley, and to the mountain-side forests; being
+most numerous on Mount Lafayette, where it ran well up toward
+the limit of trees. In his notes, the yellow-belly may be said to take
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+after both the least flycatcher and the wood pewee. His <i>killic</i>
+(so written in the books, and I do not know how to improve upon
+it) resembles the <i>chebec</i> of the least flycatcher, though
+much less emphatic, as well as much less frequently uttered,
+while his <i>twee</i>, or <i>tuwee</i>, is quite in the voice and
+manner of the wood pewee's clear, plaintive whistle; usually a
+monosyllable, but at other times almost or quite dissyllabic. The
+<a name="flyolive10" id="flyolive10">olive-sided</a>, on the other hand,
+imitates nobody; or, if he does, it must be some bird with which I have
+yet to make acquaintance. <i>Que-q&uacute;e-o</i> he vociferates, with a
+strong emphasis and drawl upon the middle syllable. This is his song, or
+what answers to a song, but I have seen him when he would do nothing but
+repeat incessantly a quick trisyllabic call, <i>whit, whit, whit</i>;
+corresponding, I suppose, to the well-known <i>whit</i> with which the
+<a name="phoebe10" id="phoebe10">ph&oelig;be</a> sometimes busies himself in a
+similar manner.</p>
+
+<p>Of more interest than any flycatcher&mdash;of more interest even than
+the Tennessee warbler&mdash;was a bird found by the roadside in the
+village, after we had been for several days in the place. Three of us were
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+walking together, talking by the way, when all at once we
+halted, as by a common impulse, at the sound of a vireo song; a
+<a name="redeye11" id="redeye11">red-eye's</a> song, as it seemed, with
+the faintest touch of something unfamiliar about it. The singer was in a
+small butternut-tree close upon the sidewalk, and at once afforded us
+perfectly satisfactory observations, perching on a low limb within
+fifteen feet of our eyes, and singing again and again, while we
+scrutinized every feather through our glasses. As one of my companions
+said, it was like having the bird in your hand. There was no room for a
+question as to its identity. At last we had before us the rare and
+long-desired <a name="phila" id="phila">Philadelphia greenlet</a>. As its song is little known, I here
+transcribe my notes about it, made at two different times, between which
+there appears to have been some discussion among us as to just how it
+should be characterized:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The song is very pretty, and is curiously compounded of the red-eye's
+and the <a name="solitary11" id="solitary11">solitary's</a>, both as to
+phrase and quality. The measures are all brief; with fewer syllables, that
+is to say, than the red-eye commonly uses. Some of them are exactly like
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+red-eye's, while others have the peculiar sweet upward inflection of the
+solitary's. To hear some of the measures, you would pass the bird for a
+red-eye; to hear others of them, you might pass him for a solitary. At
+the same time, he has not the most highly characteristic of the
+solitary's phrases. His voice is less sharp and his accent less emphatic
+than the red-eye's, and, so far as we heard, he observes decidedly
+longer rests between the measures."</p>
+
+<p>This is under date of June 16th. On the following day I made another
+entry:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The song is, I think, less varied than either the solitary's or the
+red-eye's, but it grows more distinct from both as it is longer heard.
+Acquaintance will probably make it as characteristic and unmistakable as
+any of our four other vireo songs. But I do not withdraw what I said
+yesterday about its resemblance to the red-eye's and the solitary's. The
+bird seems quite fearless, and keeps much of the time in the lower
+branches. In this latter respect his habit is in contrast with that of
+the warbling vireo."</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, then, the song of the Philadelphia vireo
+comes nearest to the red-eye's,<span class='pagenum'>
+<a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> differing from it mainly
+in tone and inflection rather than in form. In these two respects it
+suggests the <a name="solitary13" id="solitary13">solitary vireo</a>,
+though it never reproduces the indescribably sweet cadence, the real
+"dying fall," of that most delightful songster. At the risk of a seeming
+contradiction, however, I must mention one curious circumstance. On going
+again to Franconia, a year afterwards, and, naturally, keeping my ears
+open for <i>Vireo philadelphicus</i>, I discovered that I was never for a
+moment in doubt when I heard a red-eye; but once, on listening to a
+distant solitary,&mdash;catching only part of the strain,&mdash;I was for
+a little quite uncertain whether he might not be the bird for which I was
+looking. How this fact is to be explained I am unable to say; it will be
+least surprising to those who know most of such matters, and at all
+events I think it worth recording as affording a possible clue to some
+future observer. The experience, inconsistent as the assertion may
+sound, does not in the least alter my opinion that the Philadelphia's
+song is practically certain to be confused with the red-eye's
+rather than with the solitary's. Upon that point my companions
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+and I were perfectly agreed while we had the bird before us, and Mr.
+Brewster's testimony is abundantly conclusive to the same effect. He was
+in the Umbagog forests on a special hunt for Philadelphia vireos (he had
+collected specimens there on two previous occasions), and after some
+days of fruitless search discovered, almost by accident, that the birds
+had all the while been singing close about him, but in every instance
+had passed for "nothing but red-eyes."<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2">
+</a> <a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p>
+
+<p>For the benefit of the lay reader, I ought, perhaps, to have
+explained before this that the Philadelphia vireo is in coloration
+an exact copy of the <a name="warbling" id="warbling">warbling vireo</a>.
+There is a slight difference in size between the two, but the
+most practiced eye could not be depended upon to tell them
+apart in a tree. <i>Vireo philadelphicus</i> is in a peculiar
+case: it looks like one common bird, and sings like another.
+It might have been invented on purpose to circumvent collectors,
+as the Almighty has been supposed by some to have created
+fossils on purpose to deceive ungodly geologists. It is not
+surprising, therefore, that the bird escaped the notice
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+of the older ornithologists. In fact, it was first described,&mdash;by
+Mr. Cassin,&mdash;in 1851, from a specimen taken, nine years before,
+near Philadelphia; and its nest remained unknown for more than thirty
+years longer, the first one having been discovered, apparently
+in Canada, in 1884.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3">
+</a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>Day after day, the bare, sharp crest of <a name="lafayette15" id="lafayette15">
+Mount Lafayette</a> silently invited my feet. Then came a
+bright, favorable morning, and I set out. I would go alone on this
+my first pilgrimage to the noble peak, at which, always from too
+far off, I had gazed longingly for ten summers. It is not inconsistent
+with a proper regard for one's fellows, I trust, to enjoy now and
+then being without their society. It <i>is</i> good, sometimes,
+for a man to be alone,&mdash;especially on a mountain-top, and more
+especially at a first visit. The trip to the summit was some seven or
+eight miles in length, and an almost continual ascent, without a dull
+step in the whole distance. The Tennessee warbler was singing; but
+perhaps the pleasantest incident of the walk to the Profile
+House&mdash;in front of which the mountain footpath is taken&mdash;was
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+
+a <a name="blackburn16" id="blackburn16">Blackburnian warbler</a>
+perched, as usual, at the very top of a tall spruce, his
+orange throat flashing fire as he faced the sun, and his
+song, as my notebook expresses it, "sliding up to high <i>Z</i>
+at the end" in his quaintest and most characteristic fashion.
+I spent nearly three hours in climbing the mountain path,
+and during all that time saw and heard only twelve kinds
+of birds: <a name="redstart16" id="redstart16">redstarts</a>,
+<a name="canadian16" id="canadian16"> Canada warblers</a> (near the base),
+<a name="blk_throat_bl16" id="blk_throat_bl16"> black-throated blues</a>,
+<a name="blk_throat_gr16" id="blk_throat_gr16"> black-throated greens</a>,
+<a name="nashville16" id="nashville16">Nashvilles</a>, <a
+name="blackpoll16" id="blackpoll16">black-polls</a>, red-eyed vireos,
+snowbirds (no <a name="whitethroat16" id="whitethroat16">white-throated
+sparrows</a>!), winter wrens, Swainson and <a name="graythrush16"
+id="graythrush16">gray-cheeked thrushes</a>, and yellow-bellied
+flycatchers. Black-poll and Nashville warblers were especially
+numerous, as they are also upon Mount Washington, and, as
+far as I have seen, upon the White Mountains generally. The
+feeble, sharp song of the black-poll is a singular affair;
+short and slight as it is, it embraces a perfect crescendo and a
+perfect decrescendo. Without question I passed plenty of white-throated
+sparrows, but by some coincidence not one of them announced himself. The
+gray-cheeked thrushes, which sang freely, were not heard till I was
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+perhaps halfway between the Eagle Cliff Notch and the Eagle Lakes. This
+species, so recently added to our summer fauna, proves to be not
+uncommon in the mountainous parts of New England, though apparently
+confined to the spruce forests at or near the summits. I found it
+abundant on Mount Mansfield, Vermont, in 1885, and in the summer of 1888
+Mr. Walter Faxon surprised us all by shooting a specimen on Mount
+Graylock, Massachusetts. Doubtless the bird has been singing its
+perfectly distinctive song in the White Mountain woods ever since the
+white man first visited them. During the vernal migration, indeed, I
+have more than once heard it sing in eastern Massachusetts. My latest
+delightful 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
+recognized them instantly; for while the gray-cheek's song bears
+an evident resemblance to the <a name="veery17" id="veery17">veery's</a>
+(which I had heard within five minutes), the two are so unlike in
+pitch and rhythm that no reasonably nice ear ought ever to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+confound them. The bird was just over the high, close, inhospitable
+fence, on the top of which I rested my chin and watched and listened. He
+sat with his back toward me, in full view, on a level with my eye, and
+sang and sang and sang, in a most deliciously soft, far-away voice,
+keeping his wings all the while a little raised and quivering, as in a
+kind of musical ecstasy. It does seem a thing to be regretted&mdash;yes,
+a thing to be ashamed of&mdash;that a bird so beautiful, so musical, so
+romantic in its choice of a dwelling-place, and withal so characteristic
+of New England should be known, at a liberal estimate, to not more than
+one or two hundred New Englanders! But if a bird wishes general
+recognition, he should do as the robin does, and the bluebird, and the
+oriole,&mdash;dress like none of his neighbors, and show himself freely
+in the vicinity of men's houses. How can one expect to be famous unless
+he takes a little pains to keep himself before the public?</p>
+
+<p>From the time I left my hotel until I was fairly above
+the dwarf spruces below the summit of Lafayette, I was never
+for many minutes together out of the hearing of thrush
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+music. Four of our five summer representatives of the genus <i>Turdus</i>
+took turns, as it were, in the serenade. The <a name="veery19"
+id="veery19">veeries&mdash;Wilson's thrushes</a>&mdash;greeted
+me before I stepped off the piazza. As I neared the Profile House
+farm, the <a name="hermit19" id="hermit19">hermits</a> were in tune
+on either hand. The moment the road entered the ancient forest, the
+<a name="swainson19" id="swainson19">olive-backs</a> began to make
+themselves heard, and halfway up the mountain path the <a
+name="graythrush19" id="graythrush19">gray-cheeks</a> took up the
+strain and carried it on to its heavenly conclusion. A noble
+processional! Even a lame man might have climbed to such music. If the
+wood thrush had been here, the chorus would have been complete,&mdash;a
+chorus not to be excelled, according to my untraveled belief, in any
+quarter of the world.</p>
+
+<p>To-day, however, my first thoughts were not of birds, but
+of the mountain. The weather was all that could be asked,&mdash;the
+temperature perfect, and the atmosphere so transparent as to
+be of itself a kind of lens; so that in the evening, when I
+rejoined my companions at the hotel, I found to my astonishment that
+I had been plainly visible while at the summit, the beholders having
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+no other help than an opera-glass! It was almost past belief. I had felt
+some dilation of soul, it was true, but had been quite unconscious of
+any corresponding physical transformation. What would our aboriginal
+forerunners have said could they have stood in the valley and seen a
+human form moving from point to point along yonder sharp, serrated
+ridge? I should certainly have passed for a god! Let us be thankful that
+all such superstitious fancies have had their day. The Indian, poor
+child of nature,</p>
+
+<p class="center"><small>"A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,"</small></p>
+
+<p>stood afar off and worshiped toward these holy hills; but
+the white man clambers gayly up their sides, guide-book in hand,
+and leaves his sardine box and eggshells&mdash;and likely enough
+his business card&mdash;at the top. Let us be thankful, I repeat,
+for the light vouchsafed to us; ours is a goodly heritage; but
+there are moods&mdash;such creatures of hereditary influence are
+we&mdash;wherein I would gladly exchange both the guide-book and the
+sardine box for a vision, never so indistinct and transient, of
+Kitche Manitoo. Alas! what a long time it is since any of us
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+have been able to see the invisible. "In the mountains," says
+Wordsworth, "did he feel his faith." But the poet was speaking then of a
+very old-fashioned young fellow, who, even when he grew up, made nothing
+but a peddler. Had he lived in our day, he would have felt not his
+faith, but his own importance; especially if he had put himself out of
+breath, as most likely he would have done, in accomplishing in an hour
+and forty minutes what, according to the guide-book, should have taken a
+full hour and three quarters. The modern excursionist (how Wordsworth
+would have loved that word!) has learned wisdom of a certain wise fowl
+who once taught St. Peter a lesson, and who never finds himself in a
+high place without an impulse to flap his wings and crow.</p>
+
+<p>For my own part, though I spent nearly three hours on the
+less than four miles of mountain path, as I have already acknowledged,
+I was nevertheless somewhat short-winded at the end. So long as
+I was in the woods, it was easy enough to loiter; but no sooner
+did I leave the last low spruces behind me than I was seized
+with an importunate desire to stand upon the peak, so near
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"> [Pg 22]</a></span>
+at hand just above me. I hope my readers are none of them too old to
+sympathize with the boyish feeling. At all events, I quickened my pace.
+The distance could not be more than half a mile, I thought. But it was
+wonderful how that perverse trail among the boulders did unwind itself,
+as if it never would come to an end; and I was not surprised, on
+consulting a guide-book afterwards, to find that my half mile had really
+been a mile and a half. One's sensations in such a case I have sometimes
+compared with those of an essay-writer when he is getting near the end
+of his task. He dallied with it in the beginning, and was half ready to
+throw it up in the middle; but now the fever is on him, and he cannot
+drive the pen fast enough. Two days ago he doubted whether or not to
+burn the thing; now it is certain to be his masterpiece, and he must sit
+up till morning, if need be, to finish it. What would life be worth
+without its occasional enthusiasm, laughable in the retrospect, perhaps,
+but in itself pleasurable almost to the point of painfulness?</p>
+
+<p>It was a glorious day. I enjoyed the climb, the lessening
+forest, the <a name="lafayette22" id="lafayette22">alpine</a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+plants (the <a name="diapensia23" id="diapensia23">diapensia</a>
+was in full flower, with its upright snowy goblets, while the
+<a name="geum23" id="geum23">geum</a> and the <a name="sandwort23"
+id="sandwort23"> Greenland sandwort</a> were just beginning to blossom),
+the magnificent prospect, the stimulating air, and, most of all, the
+mountain itself. I sympathized then, as I have often done at other
+times, with a remark once made to me by a Vermont farmer's wife. I had
+sought a night's lodging at her house, and during the evening we fell
+into conversation about Mount Mansfield, from the top of which I had
+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, of course;
+but somehow what she cared most about was "the mounting itself."</p>
+
+<p>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 poet would have liked this saying, especially
+as coming from such a source. <i>I</i> liked it, at any rate,
+and am seldom on a mountain-top without recalling it. Her lot
+had been narrow and prosaic,&mdash;bitterly so, the visitor was
+likely to think; she was little used to expressing herself, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+no doubt would have wondered what Mr. Pater could mean by his talk about
+natural objects as possessing "more or less of a moral or spiritual
+life," as "capable of a companionship with man, full of expression, of
+inexplicable affinities and delicacies of intercourse." From such
+refinements and subtleties her mind would have taken refuge in thoughts
+of her baking and ironing. But she enjoyed the mountain; I think she had
+some feeling for it, as for a friend; and who knows but she, too, was
+one of "the poets that are sown by Nature"?</p>
+
+<p>I spent two happy hours and a half at the summit of <a
+name="lafayette24" id="lafayette24">Lafayette</a>. The ancient peak must
+have had many a worthier guest, but it could never have entertained one
+more hospitably. With what softly temperate breezes did it fan me! I
+wish I were there now! But kind as was its welcome, it did not urge me
+to remain. The word of the brook came true again,&mdash;as Nature's
+words always do, if we hear them aright. Having gone as high as my feet
+could carry me, there was nothing left but to go down again. "Which
+things," as Paul said to the Galatians, "are an allegory."</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+<p>I was not asked to stay, but I was invited to come again; and
+the next season, also in June, I twice accepted the invitation.
+On the first of these occasions, although I was eight days
+later than I had been the year before (June 19th instead of
+June 11th), the <a name="diapensia25" id="diapensia25">diapensia</a>
+was just coming into somewhat free bloom, while the <a name="sandwort25"
+id="sandwort25">sandwort</a> showed only here and there a
+stray flower, and the <a name="geum25" id="geum25">geum</a>
+was only in bud. The dwarf paper birch (trees of no one knows
+what age, matting the ground) was in blossom, with large,
+handsome catkins, while Cutler's willow was already in fruit, and
+the crowberry likewise. The willow, like the birch, has learned that the
+only way to live in such a place is to lie flat upon the ground and let
+the wind blow over you. The other flowers noted at the summit were one
+of the blueberries (<i>Vaccinium uliginosum</i>), Bigelow's sedge,
+and the fragrant alpine <a name="holy" id="holy">holy-grass
+(<i>Hierochloa alpina</i>)</a>. Why should this sacred grass,
+which Christians sprinkle in front of their church doors on
+feast-days, be scattered thus upon our higher mountain-tops, unless
+these places are indeed, as the Indian and the ancient Hebrew
+believed, the special abode of the Great Spirit?</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+<p>But the principal interest of this my second ascent of Mount
+Lafayette was to be not botanical, but ornithological. We had seen
+nothing noteworthy on the way up (I was not alone this time, though I
+have so far been rude enough to ignore my companion); but while at the
+Eagle Lakes, on our return, we had an experience that threw me into a
+nine days' fever. The other man&mdash;one of the botanists of last
+year's crew&mdash;was engaged in collecting viburnum specimens, when all
+at once I caught sight of something red in a dead spruce on the
+mountain-side just across the tiny lake. I leveled my glass, and saw
+with perfect distinctness, as I thought, two <a name="grosbeak"
+id="grosbeak">pine grosbeaks</a> in bright male costume,&mdash;birds
+I had never seen before except in winter. Presently a third one,
+in dull plumage, came into view, having been hidden till now
+behind the bole. The trio remained in sight for some time,
+and then dropped into the living spruces underneath, and
+disappeared. I lingered about, while my companion and the black
+flies were busy, and was on the point of turning away for good,
+when up flew two red birds and alighted in a tree close by the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+one out of which the grosbeaks had dropped. But a single glance
+showed that they were not grosbeaks, but <a name="crossbill"
+id="crossbill">white-winged crossbills</a>! And soon they, too, were
+joined by a third bird, in female garb. Here was a pretty piece of
+confusion! I was delighted to see the crossbills, having never before
+had the first glimpse of them, summer or winter; but what was I to
+think about the grosbeaks? "Your determination is worthless," said my
+scientific friend, consolingly; and there was no gainsaying his verdict.
+Yet by what possibility could I have been so deceived? The birds, though
+none too near, had given me an excellent observation, and as long as
+they were in sight I had felt no uncertainty whatever as to their
+identity. The bill alone, of which I had taken particular note, ought in
+all reason to be held conclusive. So much for one side of the case. On
+the other hand, however, the second trio were unmistakably crossbills.
+(They had been joined on the wing by several others, as I ought to have
+mentioned, and with their characteristic chattering cry had swept out of
+sight up the mountain). It was certainly a curious coincidence: three
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+grosbeaks&mdash;two males and a female&mdash;had dropped out of
+a tree into the undergrowth; and then, five minutes later, three
+crossbills&mdash;two males and a female&mdash;had risen out of the same
+undergrowth, and taken almost the very perch which the others had
+quitted! Had this strange thing happened? Or had my eyes deceived me?
+This was my dilemma, on the sharp horns of which I tried alternately for
+the next eight days to make myself comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>During all that time, the weather rendered mountain climbing
+impracticable. But the morning of the 28th was clear and cold, and I set
+out forthwith for the Eagle Lakes. If the grosbeaks were there, I meant
+to see them, though I should have to spend all day in the attempt. My
+botanist had returned home, leaving me quite alone at the hotel; but, as
+good fortune would have it, before I reached the Profile House, I was
+overtaken unexpectedly by a young ornithological friend, who needed
+no urging to try the Lafayette path. We were creeping laboriously
+up the long, steep shoulder beyond the Eagle Cliff gorge, and
+drawing near the lakes, when all at once a peculiarly sweet, flowing
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+warble fell upon our ears. "A pine grosbeak!" said I, in a tone of full
+assurance, although this was my first hearing of the song. The younger man
+plunged into the forest, in the direction of the voice, while I, knowing
+pretty well how the land lay, hastened on toward the lakes, in hopes to
+find the singer visible from that point. Just as I ran down the little
+incline into the open, a bird flew past me across the water, and alighted
+in a dead spruce (it might have been the very tree of nine days before),
+where it sat in full sight, and at once broke into song,&mdash;"like the
+purple finch's," says my notebook; "less fluent, but, as it seemed to me,
+sweeter and more expressive. I think it was not louder." Before many
+minutes, my comrade came running down the path in high glee, calling,
+"Pine grosbeaks!" He had got directly under a tree in which two of them
+were sitting. So the momentous question was settled, and I commenced
+feeling once more a degree of confidence in my own eyesight. The loss of
+such confidence is a serious discomfort; but strange as it may seem to
+people in general, I suspect that few field ornithologists, except
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+beginners, ever succeed in retaining it undisturbed for any long time
+together. As a class, they have learned to take the familiar maxim,
+"Seeing is believing," with several grains of allowance. With most of
+them, it would be nearer the mark to say, Shooting is believing.</p>
+
+<p>My special errand at the lakes being thus quickly disposed of,
+there was no reason why I should not accompany my friend to the
+summit. Lafayette gave us a cold reception. We might have addressed
+him as Daniel Webster, according to the time-worn story, once addressed
+Mount Washington; but neither of us felt oratorically inclined. In truth,
+after the outrageous heats of the past few days, it seemed good to be
+thrashing our arms and crouching behind a boulder, while we devoured our
+luncheon, and between times studied the landscape. For my own part, I
+experienced a feeling of something like wicked satisfaction; as if I had
+been wronged, and all at once had found a way of balancing the score.
+The <a name="diapensia30" id="diapensia30">diapensia</a> was
+already quite out of bloom, although only nine days before we had
+thought it hardly at its best. It is one of the prettiest and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+most striking of our strictly alpine plants, but is seldom
+seen by the ordinary summer tourist, as it finishes its course
+long before he arrives. The same may be said of the splendid
+<a name="azalea" id="azalea">Lapland azalea</a>, which I do
+not remember to have found on Mount Lafayette, it is true,
+but which is to be seen in all its glory upon the Mount
+Washington range, in middle or late June; so early that one
+may have to travel over snow-banks to reach it. The two flowers
+oftenest noticed by the chance comer to these parts are the
+<a name="sandwort31" id="sandwort31">Greenland sandwort</a> (the
+"mountain daisy"!) and the pretty <a name="geum31" id="geum31">geum</a>,
+with its handsome crinkled leaves and its bright yellow blossoms,
+like buttercups.</p>
+
+<p>My sketch will hardly fulfill the promise of its title; for our June in
+Franconia included a thousand things of which I have left myself no room
+to speak: strolls in the Landaff Valley and to Sugar Hill; a walk to
+Mount Agassiz; numerous visits&mdash;by the way, and in uncertain
+weather&mdash;to Bald Mountain; several jaunts to Lonesome Lake; and
+wanderings here and there in the pathless valley woods. We were none of
+us of that unhappy class who cannot enjoy doing the same thing twice.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+<p>I wished, also, to say something of sundry minor enjoyments:
+of the cinnamon roses, for example, with the fragrance of
+which we were continually greeted, and which have left such
+a sweetness in the memory that I would have called this essay
+"June in the Valley of Cinnamon Roses," had I not despaired of
+holding myself up to so poetic a title. And with the roses the
+<a name="strawberry32" id="strawberry32">wild strawberries</a> present
+themselves. <a name="rose32" id="rose32">Roses</a> and strawberries! It is
+the very poetry of science that these should be classified together. The
+berries, like the flowers, are of a generous turn (it is a family trait,
+I think), loving no place better than the roadside, as if they would fain
+be of refreshment to beings less happy than themselves, who cannot be
+still and blossom and bear fruit, but are driven by the Fates to go
+trudging up and down in dusty highways. For myself, if I were a dweller
+in this vale, I am sure my finger-tips would never be of their natural
+color so long as the season of strawberries lasted. 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
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+almost ripe fruit was abundant, there was scarce any that
+had taken on the final tinge and flavor. Then I began to be
+aware of faint, sibilant noises about me, and, glancing up, I
+saw that the ground was already "pre&euml;mpted" by a company of
+<a name="cedar" id="cedar">cedar-birds</a>, who, naturally enough,
+were not a little indignant at my poaching thus on their preserves. They
+showed so much concern (and had gathered the ripest of the berries so
+thoroughly) that I actually came away the sooner on their account. I
+began to feel ashamed of myself, and for once in my life was literally
+hissed off the stage.</p>
+
+<p>Even on my last page I must be permitted a word in praise of
+<a name="cannon" id="cannon">Mount Cannon</a>, of which I made
+three ascents. It has nothing like the celebrity of Mount Willard,
+with which, from its position, it is natural to compare it; but
+to my thinking it is little, if at all, less worthy. Its outlook
+upon Mount Lafayette is certainly grander than anything Mount Willard
+can offer, while the prospect of the Pemigewasset Valley, fading
+away to the horizon, if less striking than that of the White Mountain
+Notch, has some elements of beauty which must of necessity be lacking
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+in any more narrowly circumscribed scene, no matter how romantic.</p>
+
+<p>In venturing upon a comparison of this kind, however, one is bound
+always to allow for differences of mood. When I am in tune for such
+things, I can be happier on an ordinary Massachusetts hilltop than at
+another time I should be on any New Hampshire mountain, though it were
+Moosilauke itself. And, truly, Fortune did smile upon our first visit to
+Mount Cannon. Weather conditions, outward and inward, were right. We had
+come mainly to look at Lafayette from this point of vantage; but, while
+we suffered no disappointment in that direction, we found ourselves
+still more taken with the valley prospect. We lay upon the rocks by the
+hour, gazing at it. Scattered clouds dappled the whole vast landscape
+with shadows; the river, winding down the middle of the scene, drew the
+whole into harmony, as it were, making it in some nobly literal sense
+picturesque; while the distance was of such an exquisite blue as I think
+I never saw before.</p>
+
+<p>How good life is at its best! And in such</p>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><center><small>
+<span class="i4">"charm&euml;d days,</span>
+<span class="i0">When the genius of God doth flow,"</span>
+</small></center></div></div>
+
+<p>what care we for science or the objects of science,&mdash;for grosbeak
+or crossbill (may the birds forgive me!), or the latest novelty in
+willows? I am often where fine music is played, and never without being
+interested; as men say, I am pleased. But at the twentieth time, it may
+be, 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 appreciation
+of natural beauty. We are always in its presence, but only on rare
+occasions are our eyes anointed to see it. Such ecstasies, it seems, are
+not for every day. Sometimes I fear they grow less frequent as we grow
+older.</p>
+
+<p>We will hope for better things; but, should the gloomy prognostication
+fall true, we will but betake ourselves the more assiduously to lesser
+pleasures,&mdash;to warblers and willows, roses and strawberries.
+Science will never fail us. If worse comes to worst, we will not despise
+the moths.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h6>FOOTNOTES:</h6>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>
+Just how far the cause of science was advanced by all this activity
+I am not prepared to say. The first ornithologist of the party published
+some time ago (in <i>The Auk</i>, vol. v. p. 151) a list of our Franconia
+birds, and the results of the botanists' researches among the willows
+have appeared, in part at least, in different numbers of the <i>Bulletin
+of the Torrey Botanical Club</i>. As for the lepidopterist, I have an
+indistinct recollection that she once wrote to me of having
+made some highly interesting discoveries among her Franconia
+collections,&mdash;several undescribed species, as well as I can now
+remember; but she added that it would be useless to go into particulars
+with a correspondent entomologically so ignorant.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>
+<i>Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club</i>, vol. v. p. 3.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a>
+E. E. T. Seton, in <i>The Auk</i>, vol. ii. p. 305.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+<h3><a name="DECEMBER_OUT-OF-DOORS" id="DECEMBER_OUT-OF-DOORS"></a>
+DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.</h3>
+<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span>
+
+<p class="center"><small>"December's as pleasant as May."<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;"><i>Old Hymn.</i></span></small>
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">For</span> a month so almost universally spoken
+against, <a name="nov_flowers" id="nov_flowers">November</a> commonly
+brings more than its full proportion of fair days; and last year (1888)
+this proportion was, I think, even greater than usual. On the 1st
+and 5th I heard the peeping of <a name="hyla36" id="hyla36">hylas</a>;
+Sunday, the 4th, was enlivened by a farewell visitation
+of bluebirds; during the first week, at least four sorts of
+<a name="butterfly36" id="butterfly36">butterflies</a>&mdash;Disippus,
+Philodice, Antiopa, and Comma&mdash;were on the wing, and
+a single Philodice (our common yellow butterfly) was flying
+as late as the 16th. Wild flowers of many kinds&mdash;not
+less than a hundred, certainly&mdash;were in bloom; among them
+the exquisite little pimpernel, or poor man's weather-glass.
+My daily notes are full of complimentary allusions to the weather.
+Once in a while it rained, and under date of the 6th I find this
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+record,&mdash;"Everybody complaining of the heat;" but as terrestrial
+matters go, the month was remarkably propitious up to the 25th. Then,
+all without warning,&mdash;unless possibly from the pimpernel, which
+nobody heeded,&mdash;a violent snow-storm descended upon us. Railway
+travel and telegraphic communication were seriously interrupted, while
+from up and down the coast came stories of shipwreck and loss of life.
+Winter was here in earnest; for the next three months good walking days
+would be few.</p>
+
+<p>December opened with a mild gray morning. The snow had already
+disappeared, leaving only the remains of a drift here and there in the
+lee of a stone-wall; the ground was saturated with water; every meadow
+was like a lake; and but for the greenness of the fields in a few
+favored spots, the season might have been late March instead of early
+December. Of course such hours were never meant to be wasted within
+doors. So I started out, singing as I went,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><small>"While God invites, how blest the day!"</small></p>
+
+<p>But the next morning was pleasant likewise; and the next; and still
+the next; and so the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">
+[Pg 38]</a></span> story went on, till in the end, omitting five days
+of greater or less inclemency, I had spent nearly the entire month in
+the open air. I could hardly have done better had I been in Florida.</p>
+
+<p>All my neighbors pronounced this state of things highly exceptional;
+many were sure they had never known the like. At the time I fully agreed
+with them. Now, however, looking back over my previous year's notes, I
+come upon such entries as these: "December 3d. The day has been warm.
+Found chickweed and knawel in bloom, and an old garden was full of
+fresh-looking pansies." "4th. A calm, warm morning." "5th. Warm and
+rainy." "6th. Mild and bright." "7th. A most beautiful winter day, mild
+and 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; <a name="hyla38" id="hyla38">hylas</a> peeping
+in several places." "13th. Warm and bright." "14th. If possible, a
+more beautiful day than yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>So much for December, 1887. Its unexpected good behavior would seem to
+have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+made a profound impression upon me; no doubt I promised never to
+forget it; yet twelve months later traditionary notions had resumed
+their customary sway, and every pleasant morning took me by surprise.</p>
+
+<p>The winter of 1888-89 will long be famous in the ornithological
+annals of New England as the winter of <a name="killdeer39"
+id="killdeer39">killdeer plovers</a>. I have mentioned the
+great storm of November 25th-27th. On the first pleasant morning
+afterwards&mdash;on the 28th, that is&mdash;my out-of-door comrade
+and I made an excursion to Nahant. The land-breeze had already
+beaten down the surf, and the turmoil of the waters was in
+great part stilled; but the beach was strewn with sea-weeds
+and eel-grass, and withal presented quite a holiday appearance.
+From one motive and another, a considerable proportion of
+the inhabitants of the city had turned out. The principal
+attraction, as far as we could perceive, was a certain big
+clam, of which great numbers had been cast up by the tide.
+Baskets and wagons were being filled; some of the men carried
+off shells and all, while others, with a celerity which must
+have been the result of much practice, were cutting out
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+the plump dark bodies, leaving the shells in heaps upon the sand. The
+collectors of these molluscan dainties knew them as quahaugs, and
+esteemed them accordingly; but my companion, a connoisseur in such
+matters, pronounced them not the true quahaug (<i>Venus
+mercenaria</i>,&mdash;what a profanely ill-sorted name, even for a
+bivalve!) but the larger and coarser <i>Cyprina islandica</i>. The man to
+whom we imparted this precious bit of esoteric lore received it like a
+gentleman, if I cannot add like a scholar. "We <i>call</i> them quahaugs,"
+he answered, with an accent of polite deprecation, as if it were not
+in the least to be wondered at that he should be found in the wrong.
+It was evident, at the same time, that the question of a name did not
+strike him as of any vital consequence. <i>Venus mercenaria</i> or
+<i>Cyprina islandica</i>, the savoriness of the chowder was not likely
+to be seriously affected.</p>
+
+<p>It was good, I thought, to see so many people out-of-doors.
+Most of them had 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
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+for him (and against him), remains at heart a child of nature. His
+ancestors may have been shoemakers for fifty generations, but none the
+less he feels an impulse now and then to quit his bench and go hunting,
+though it be only for a mess of clams.</p>
+
+<p>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 the bay in search of loons, old-squaws, and other
+sea-fowl. Here we presently met two gunners. They had been more
+successful than most of the sportsmen that one falls in with on such
+trips; between them they had a guillemot, two horned larks, and a brace
+of <a name="killdeer41" id="killdeer41">large plovers</a>, of some
+species unknown to us, but noticeable for their bright cinnamon-colored
+rumps. "Why couldn't <i>we</i> have found those plovers, instead
+of that fellow?" said my companion, as we crossed the second beach.
+I fear he was envious at the prosperity of the wicked. But it was
+only a passing cloud; for on reaching the main peninsula we were
+speedily arrested by loud cries from a piece of marsh, and after
+considerable wading and a clamber over a detestable barbed-wire
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+fence, such as no rambler ever encountered without at least a temptation
+to profanity, we caught sight of a flock of about a dozen of the same
+unknown plovers. This was good fortune indeed. We had no firearms, nor
+even a pinch of salt, and coming shortly to a ditch, too wide for
+leaping and too deep for cold-weather fording, we were obliged to
+content ourselves with opera-glass inspection. Six of the birds were
+grouped in a little plot of grass, standing motionless, like so many
+robins. Their novelty and their striking appearance, with two
+conspicuous black bands across the breast, their loud cries, and their
+curious movements and attitudes were enough to drive a pair of
+enthusiasts half crazy. We looked and looked, and then reluctantly
+turned away. On getting home we had no difficulty in determining their
+identity, and each at once sent off to the other the same
+verdict,&mdash;"killdeer plover."</p>
+
+<p>This, as I say, was on the 28th of November. On the 3d of December we
+were again at Nahant, eating our luncheon upon the veranda of some rich
+man's deserted cottage, and at the same time enjoying the sunshine and
+the beautiful scene.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+<p>It was a summery spot; moths were flitting about us, and two
+grasshoppers leaped out of our way as we crossed the lawn. They showed
+something less than summer liveliness, it is true; it was only
+afterwards, and by way of contrast, that I recalled Leigh Hunt's</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><center><small>
+<span class="i0">"Green little vaulter in the sunny grass,</span>
+<span class="i1-5">Catching his heart up at the feel of June."</span></small></center>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But they had done well, surely, to weather the recent snow-storm and
+the low temperature; for the mercury had been down to 10&deg; within
+a fortnight, and a large snow-bank was still in sight against the
+wall. Suddenly a close flock of eight or ten birds flew past us and
+disappeared behind the hill. "Pigeons?" said my companion. I thought
+not; they were sea-birds of some kind. Soon we heard killdeer cries from
+the beach, and, looking up, saw the birds, three of them, alighting on
+the sand. We started down the hill in haste, but just at that moment an
+old woman, a miserable gatherer of drift rubbish, walked directly upon
+them, and they made off. Then we saw that our "pigeons," or "sea-birds,"
+had been nothing but killdeer plovers, which, like other long-winged
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+birds, look much larger in the air than when at rest. Returning
+towards Lynn, later in the afternoon, we came upon the same three birds
+again; this time feeding among the boulders at the end of the beach. We
+remarked once more their curious, silly-looking custom of standing
+stock-still with heads indrawn. But our own attitudes, as we also stood
+stock-still with glasses raised, may have looked, in their eyes, even
+more singular and meaningless. As we turned away&mdash;after flushing
+them two or three times to get a view of their pretty cinnamon
+rump-feathers&mdash;a sportsman came up, and proved to be the very man
+on whose belt we had seen our first killdeers, a week before. We left
+him doing 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, we
+purposely startled the birds as badly as possible, hoping to see them
+make off over the hill, out of harm's way. But the foolish creatures
+could not take the hint, and alighted again within a few rods, at
+the same time calling loudly enough to attract the attention of
+the gunner, who up to this moment had not been aware of their
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+presence. He fired twice before we got out of sight, but, to judge from
+his motions, without success. A man's happiness is perhaps of more value
+than a plover's, though I do not see how we are to prove it; but my
+sympathies, then as always, were with the birds.</p>
+
+<p>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 wing
+which I send you," she began, "can you tell me the name of the bird that
+owned it?" Then after some description of the plumage, she continued:
+"In the late tremendous tempest myriads of these birds settled on the
+Isles of Shoals, filling the air with a harsh, shrill, incessant cry,
+and not to be driven away by guns or any of man's inhospitable
+treatment. Their number was so great as to be amazing, and they had
+never 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." On
+the 16th she wrote again: "All sorts of strange things were cast up by
+the storm, and the plovers were busy devouring everything they could find;
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+always running, chasing each other, very quarrelsome, fighting all the
+time. They were in poor condition, so lean that the men did not shoot
+them after the first day, a fact which gives your correspondent great
+satisfaction. They are still there! My brother came from the Shoals
+yesterday, and says that the place is alive with them, all the seven
+islands."</p>
+
+<p>Similar facts were reported&mdash;as I began in one way
+and another to learn&mdash;from different points along the
+coast; especially from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, where hundreds
+of the birds were seen on the 28th and 29th of November.
+The reporter of this item <a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> pertinently adds: "Such
+a flight of killdeer in Maine&mdash;where the bird is well known
+to be rare&mdash;has probably not occurred before within the memory
+of living sportsmen." Here, as at the Isles of Shoals, the visitors
+were at first easily shot (they are not counted among game birds
+where they are known, on account of their habitual leanness, I suppose);
+but they had landed upon inhospitable shores, and were not long in
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+becoming aware of their misfortune. In the middle of December one
+of our Cambridge ornithologists went to Cape Cod on purpose to find
+them. He saw about sixty birds, but by this time they were so wild
+that he succeeded in getting only a single specimen. "Poor fellows!"
+he wrote me; "they looked unhappy enough, that cold Friday, with the
+mercury at 12&deg; and everything frozen stiff. Most of them were on
+hillsides and in the hollows of pastures; a few were in the salt marshes,
+and one or two on the beach." Nobody expected them to remain hereabouts,
+as they normally winter in the West Indies and in Central and
+South America; <a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> but every little
+while Mrs. Thaxter wrote, "The killdeers are still here!" and on the
+21st of December, as I approached Marblehead Neck, I saw a bird skimming
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+over the ice that covered the small pond back of the beach. I put up my
+glass and said to myself, "A killdeer plover!" There proved to be two
+birds. They would not suffer me within gunshot,&mdash;though I carried
+no gun,&mdash;but flew off into some ploughed ground, with their usual
+loud vociferations. (The killdeer is aptly named <i>&AElig;gialitis
+vocifera</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>During the month with the history of which we are now especially
+concerned, I saw nothing more of them; but by way of completing the
+story I may add that on the 28th of January, in the same spot, I found a
+flock of seven, and there they remained. I visited them four times in
+February and once in March, and found them invariably in the same place.
+Evidently they had no idea of making another attempt to reach the West
+Indies for <i>this</i> season; and if they were to remain in our
+latitude, they could hardly have selected a more desirable location.
+The marsh, or meadow, was sheltered and sunny, while the best protected
+corner was at the same time one of those peculiarly springy spots in
+which the grass keeps green the winter through. Here, then, these seven
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+wayfarers stayed week after week. Whenever I stole up cautiously and
+peeped over the bank into their verdant hiding-place, I was sure to hear
+the familiar cry; and directly one bird, and then another, and another,
+would start up before me, disclosing the characteristic brown feathers
+of the lower back. They commonly assembled in the middle of the marsh
+upon the snow or ice, where they stood for a little, bobbing their heads
+in mutual conference, and then flew off over the house and over the
+orchard, calling as they flew.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout December, and indeed throughout the winter,
+<a name="creeper49" id="creeper49">brown creepers</a> and
+<a name="nuthatch49" id="nuthatch49">red-bellied nuthatches</a>
+were surprisingly abundant. Every pine wood seemed to have
+its colony of them. Whether the extraordinary mildness of
+the season had anything to do with this I cannot say; but
+their presence was welcome, whatever the reason for it. Like the
+<a name="chickadee49" id="chickadee49">chickadee</a>, with whom they
+have the good taste to be fond of associating, they are always busy
+and cheerful, appearing not to mind either snow-storm or low temperature.
+No reasonable observer would ever tax them with effeminacy, though
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+the creeper, it must be owned, cannot speak without lisping.</p>
+
+<p>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 the
+name of the <a name="downy" id="downy">downy woodpecker</a> was missing.
+He had been common during November, and is well known as one of our
+familiar winter residents. I began forthwith to keep a sharp lookout for
+him, particularly whenever I went near any apple orchard. A little
+later, I actually commenced making excursions on purpose to find him.
+But the fates were against me, and go where I would, he was not there.
+At last I gave him up. Then, on the 27th, as I sat at my desk, a
+chickadee chirped outside. Of course I looked out to see him; and there,
+exploring the branches of an old apple-tree, directly under my window,
+was the black-and-white woodpecker for whom I had been searching in vain
+through five or six townships. The saucy fellow! He rapped smartly three
+or four times; then he straightened himself back, as woodpeckers do, and
+said: "Good-morning, sir! Where have you been so long? If you wish to see
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+<i>me</i>, you had better stay at home." He might have spoken a little
+less pertly; for after all, if a man would know what is going on, whether
+in summer or winter, he must not keep too much in his own door-yard. Of
+the thirty birds in my December list, I should have seen perhaps ten if
+I had sat all the time at my window, and possibly twice that number had
+I confined my walks within the limits of my own town.</p>
+
+<p>While the migration is going on, to be sure, one may find birds in the
+most unexpected places. Last May I glanced up from my book and espied an
+<a name="swainson51" id="swainson51">olive-backed thrush</a> in the back
+yard, foraging among the currant-bushes. Raising a window quietly, I
+whistled something like an imitation of his inimitable song; and the
+little traveler&mdash;always an easy dupe&mdash;pricked up his ears,
+and presently responded with a strain which carried me straight into the
+depths of a White Mountain forest. But in December, with some exceptions,
+of course, birds must be sought after rather than waited for. The 15th,
+for example, was a most uncomfortable day,&mdash;so uncomfortable
+that I stayed indoors,&mdash;the mercury only two or three
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+degrees above zero, and a strong wind blowing. Such weather
+would drive the birds under shelter. The next forenoon, therefore,
+I betook myself to a hill covered thickly with pines and cedars. Here
+I soon ran upon several robins, feeding upon the savin berries, and in
+a moment more was surprised by a <i>tseep</i> so loud and emphatic
+that I thought at once of a fox sparrow. Then I looked for a song
+sparrow,&mdash;badly startled, perhaps,&mdash;but found to my delight a
+<a name="whitethroat52" id="whitethroat52">white-throat</a>. He was on the
+ground, but at my approach flew into a cedar. Here he drew in his head and
+sat perfectly still, the picture of discouragement. I could not blame him,
+but was glad, an hour later, to find him again on the ground, picking up
+his dinner. I leveled my glass at him and whistled his Peabody song (the
+simplest of all bird songs to imitate), but he moved not a feather.
+Apparently he had never heard it before! He was still there in the
+afternoon, and I had hopes of his remaining through the winter; but I
+never could find him afterwards. Ten days prior to this I had gone to
+Longwood on a special hunt for this same sparrow, remembering a certain
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+peculiarly cozy hollow where, six or eight years before, a little company
+of <a name="songspar53" id="songspar53">song sparrows</a> and
+white-throats had passed a rather severe winter. The song sparrows were
+there again, as I had expected, but no white-throats. The song sparrows,
+by the way, treated me shabbily this season. A year ago several of them
+took up their quarters in a roadside garden patch, where I could look in
+upon them almost daily. This year there were none to be discovered
+anywhere in this neighborhood. They figure in my December list on four
+days only, and were found in four different towns,&mdash;Brookline
+(Longwood), Marblehead, Nahant, and Cohasset. Like some others of our land
+birds (notably the <a name="flicker53" id="flicker53">golden-winged
+woodpecker</a> and the <a name="meadow53" id="meadow53">meadow lark</a>),
+they seem to have learned that winter loses a little of its rigor along
+the sea-board.</p>
+
+<p>Three kinds of land birds were met with at Nahant Beach, and nowhere
+else: the <a name="ipswich53" id="ipswich53">Ipswich sparrow</a>,&mdash;on
+the 3d and 26th,&mdash;the <a name="snowbunting" id="snowbunting">snow
+bunting</a>, and the <a name="horned" id="horned">horned lark</a>.
+Of the last two species, both of them rather common in November,
+I saw but one individual each. They were feeding side by
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+side, and, after a short separation,&mdash;under the fright into which my
+sudden appearance put them,&mdash;one called to the other, and they flew
+off in company towards Lynn. It was a pleasing display of sociability, but
+nothing new; for in <a name="dec_birds" id="dec_birds">winter</a>, as
+every observer knows, birds not of a feather flock together. The
+<a name="ipswich54" id="ipswich54">Ipswich sparrow</a>, a very retiring
+but not peculiarly timid creature, I have now seen at Nahant in every one
+of our seven colder months,&mdash;from October to April,&mdash;though it
+is unquestionably rare upon the Massachusetts coast between the fall and
+spring migrations. Besides the species already named, my monthly list
+included the following: herring gull, great black-backed gull, ruffed
+grouse, hairy woodpecker, flicker, goldfinch, tree sparrow, snowbird,
+blue jay, crow, shrike, white-bellied nuthatch (only two or three birds),
+golden-crowned kinglet, and one small hawk.<a name="FNanchor_6_6"
+id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>The only birds that sang during the month&mdash;unless
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+we include the <a name="nuthatch55" id="nuthatch55">red-bellied
+nuthatches</a>, whose frequent quaint twitterings should, perhaps,
+come under this head&mdash;were the <a name="chickadee55"
+id="chickadee55">chickadees</a> and a single <a name="robin55"
+id="robin55">robin</a>. The former I have down as uttering
+their sweet ph&oelig;be whistle&mdash;which I take to be certainly their
+song, as distinguished from all their multifarious calls&mdash;on seven
+of the thirty-one days. They were more tuneful 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 fairly be said to sing all winter
+long. The robin's music was a pleasure quite unexpected. I was out on
+Sunday, the 30th, for a few minutes' stroll before breakfast, when the
+obliging stranger (I had not seen a robin for a fortnight, and did not
+see another for nearly two months) broke into song from a hill-top
+covered with pitch-pines. He was in excellent voice, and sang again and
+again. The morning invited music,&mdash;warm and cloudless, like an
+unusually fine morning in early April.</p>
+
+<p>For an entire week, indeed, the weather had seemed to be
+trying to outdo itself. I remember in particular the day before
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+Christmas. I rose long before daylight, crossed the Mystic River marshes
+as the dawn was beginning to break, and shortly after sunrise was on my
+way down the South Shore. Leaving the cars at Cohasset, I sauntered
+over the Jerusalem Road to Nantasket, spent a little while on the
+beach, and brought up at North Cohasset, where I was attracted by a
+lonesome-looking road running into the woods all by itself, with a
+guide-board marked "Turkey Hill." Why not accept the pleasing
+invitation, which seemed meant on purpose for just such an idle
+pedestrian as myself? As for Turkey Hill, I had never heard of
+it, and presumed it to be some uninteresting outlying hamlet.
+My concern, as a saunterer's ought always to be, was with
+the road itself, not with what might lie at the end of it.
+I did not discover my mistake till I had gone half a mile,
+more or less, when the road all at once turned sharply to
+the right and commenced ascending. Then it dawned upon me
+that Turkey Hill must be no other than the long, gradual,
+grassy slope at which I had already been looking from the
+railway station. The prospect of sea and land was beautiful; all
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+the more so, perhaps, because of a thick autumnal haze. It might be
+called excellent Christmas weather, I said to myself, when a naturally
+prudent man, no longer young, could sit perched upon a fence rail at the
+top of a hill, drinking in the beauties of the landscape.</p>
+
+<p>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, I don't," he answered. I suggested that probably somebody
+had killed a wild turkey up there at some time or other. He looked
+politely incredulous. "I don't <i>think</i> there are any wild
+turkeys up there," said he; "<i>I</i> never saw any." He was not
+more than twenty-five years old, and the last Massachusetts turkey
+was killed on Mount Tom in 1847, so that I had no doubt he spoke the
+truth. Probably he took me for a simple-minded fellow, while I thought
+nothing worse of him than that he was one of those people, so numerous
+and at the same time so much to be pitied, who have never studied
+ornithology.</p>
+
+<p>The 25th was warmer even than the 24th; and it, likewise, I spent upon
+the South <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a>
+</span>Shore, though at a point somewhat farther inland, and
+in a town where I was not likely to lose myself, least of all in any
+out-of-the-way woodland road. In short, I spent Christmas on my native
+heath,&mdash;a not inappropriate word, by the bye, for a region so
+largely grown up to huckleberry bushes. "Holbrook's meadows," and
+"Norton pasture!"&mdash;the names are not to be found on any map, and
+will convey no meaning to my readers; but in my ears they awaken
+memories of many and many a sunny hour. On this holiday I revisited them
+both. Warm as it was, 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 I stood awhile by the old Ross cellar, watching their
+evolutions. How bright and cheery it was in the little sheltered
+clearing, with nothing in sight but the leafless woods and the
+ice-covered pond! "Shan't I take your coat?" the sun seemed to be
+asking. At my elbow stood a bunch of lilac bushes ("laylocks" they were
+probably called by the man who set them out <a name="FNanchor_7_7"
+id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>)
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+that had blossomed freely in the summer. The house has been gone for
+these thirty years or more (alas! my sun must be rapidly declining when
+memory casts so long a shadow), but the bushes seem likely to hold their
+own for at least a century. They might have prompted a wise man to some
+wise reflections; but for myself, it must be acknowledged, I fell
+instead to thinking how many half days I had fished&mdash;and caught
+nothing, or next to nothing&mdash;along this same pleasant,
+willow-bordered shore.</p>
+
+<p>In Norton pasture, an hour or two later, I made myself young again by
+putting a few checkerberries into my mouth; and in a small new clearing
+just over the brook ("Dyer's Run," this used to be called, but I fear
+the name is falling into forgetfulness) I stumbled upon a patch of some
+handsome evergreen shrub, which I saw at once to be a novelty. I took it
+for a member of the heath family, but it proved to belong with the
+hollies,&mdash;<i>Ilex glabra</i>, or ink-berry, a plant not to be found
+in the county where it is my present lot to botanize. So, even on
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a>
+</span>my native heath, I had discovered something new.</p>
+
+<p>The <a name="dec_flowers" id="dec_flowers">flora</a> of a
+Massachusetts December is of necessity limited. Even in the month
+under review, singularly favorable as it was, I found but sixteen
+sorts of wild blossoms; a small number, surely, though perhaps larger
+by sixteen than the average reader would have guessed. The names of
+these hardy adventurers must by no means go unrecorded: shepherd's purse,
+wild pepper-grass, pansy, common chickweed (<i>Stellaria media</i>),
+mouse-ear chickweed (<i>Cerastium viscosum</i>), knawel, common mallow,
+witch-hazel, cinque-foil (<i>Potentilla Norvegica</i>,&mdash;not
+<i>argentea</i>, as I should certainly have expected), many-flowered
+aster, cone-flower, yarrow, two kinds of groundsel, fall dandelion,
+and jointweed. Six of these&mdash;mallow, cinque-foil, aster,
+cone-flower, fall dandelion, and jointweed&mdash;were noticed
+only at Nahant; and it is further to be said that the jointweed
+was found by a friend, not by myself, while the cone-flower was not
+in strictness a blossom; that is to say, its rays were well opened,
+making what in common parlance is called a flower, but the true
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a>
+</span>florets were not yet perfected. Such <a name="witch61"
+id="witch61">witch-hazel</a> blossoms as can 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 afternoon of Christmas, happening to
+look into a hamamelis-tree, I saw what looked like a flower near the
+top. The tree was too small for climbing and almost too large for
+bending, but I managed to get it down; and sure enough, the bit of
+yellow was indeed a perfectly fresh blossom. How did it know I was to
+pass that way on Christmas afternoon, and by what sort of freemasonry
+did it attract my attention? I loved it and left it on the stalk, in the
+true Emersonian spirit, and here I do my little best to embalm its
+memory.</p>
+
+<p>One of the <a name="groundsel" id="groundsel">groundsels</a>
+(<i>Senecio viscosus</i>) is a recent immigrant from Europe,
+but has been thoroughly established in the Back Bay lands of
+Boston&mdash;where I now found it, in perfect condition, December
+4th&mdash;for at least half a dozen years. In Gray's "Flora
+of North America" it is said to grow there and in the vicinity
+of Providence; but since that account was written it has made its
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+appearance in Lowell, and probably in other places. It is a
+coarse-looking little plant, delighting to grow in pure gravel; but its
+blossoms are pretty, and now, with not another flower of any sort near
+it, it looked, as the homely phrase is, "as handsome as a picture." Its
+more generally distributed congener, <i>Senecio vulgaris</i>,&mdash;also a
+foreigner&mdash;is, next to the common chickweed, I should say, our very
+hardiest bloomer. At the beginning of the month it was in flower in an
+old garden in Melrose; and at Marblehead Neck a considerable patch of it
+was fairly yellow with blossoms all through December and January, and I
+know not how much longer. I saw no shepherd's purse after December 27th,
+but knawel was in flower as late as January 18th. The golden-rods, it
+will be observed, are absent altogether from my list; and the same would
+have been true of the <a name="aster62" id="aster62">asters</a>, but for
+a single plant. This, curiously enough, still bore five heads of
+tolerably fresh blossoms, after all its numberless companions, growing
+upon the same hillside, had succumbed to the frost.</p>
+
+<p>Of my sixteen plants, exactly one half are <span class='pagenum'>
+<a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> species that have
+been introduced from Europe; six are members of the composite family;
+and if we omit the cone-flower, all but three of the entire number are
+simple whites and yellows. Two red flowers, the clover and the
+pimpernel, disappointed my search; but the blue hepatica would almost
+certainly have been found, had it come in my way to look for it.</p>
+
+<p>Prettier even than the flowers, however, was the December greenness,
+especially of the humbler sorts: St. John's-wort, five-finger, the
+creeping <a name="blackberry63" id="blackberry63">blackberries</a>,&mdash;whose
+modest winter loveliness was never half appreciated,&mdash;herb-robert,
+corydalis, partridge-berry, checkerberry, wintergreen,
+rattlesnake-plantain, veronica, and linn&aelig;a, to say nothing of the
+ferns and mosses. Most refreshing of all, perhaps, was an occasional
+patch of bright green grass, like the one already spoken of, at
+Marblehead, or like one even brighter and prettier, which I visited more
+than once in Swampscott.</p>
+
+<p>As I review what I have written, I am tempted to exclaim with
+Tennyson:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><center><small>
+<span class="i0">"And was the day of my delight</span>
+<span class="i0">As pure and perfect as I say?"</span></small></center>
+</div></div>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+<p>But I answer, in all good conscience, yes. The motto with which I began
+states the truth somewhat strongly, perhaps (it must be remembered where
+I got it), but aside from that one bit of harmless borrowed hyperbole, I
+have delivered a plain, unvarnished tale. For all that, however, I do
+not expect my industrious fellow-citizens to fall in at once with my
+opinion that winter is a pleasant season at the seashore (it would be
+too bad they should, as far as my own enjoyment is concerned), and
+December a month propitious for leisurely all-day rambles. How foreign
+such notions are to people in general I have lately had several forcible
+reminders. On one of my jaunts from Marblehead to Swampscott, for example,
+I had finally taken to the railway, and was in the narrow, tortuous cut
+through the ledges, when, looking back, I saw a young gentleman coming
+along after me. He was in full skating rig, fur cap and all, with a
+green bag in one hand and a big hockey stick in the other. I stopped
+every few minutes to listen for any bird that might chance to be in the
+woods on either hand, and he could not well avoid overtaking me, though he
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+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 his head partly
+turned. There was no mistaking the significance of that furtive,
+sidelong glance; he had read the newspapers, and didn't intend to be
+attacked from behind unawares! If he should ever cast his eye over these
+pages (and whatever he may have thought of my appearance, I am bound to
+say of him that he looked like a man who might appreciate good
+literature), he will doubtless remember the incident, especially if I
+mention the field-glass which I carried slung over one shoulder.
+Evidently the world sees no reason why a man with anything better to do
+should be wandering aimlessly about the country in midwinter. Nor do I
+quarrel with the world's opinion. The majority is wiser than the
+minority, of course; otherwise, what becomes of its divine and
+inalienable right to lay down the law? The truth with me was
+that I <i>had</i> nothing better to do. I confess it without
+shame. Surely there is no lack of shoemakers. Why, then, should
+not here and there a man take up the business of walking, of wearing
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+out shoes? Everything is related to everything else, and the self-same
+power that brought the killdeers to Marblehead sent me there to see them
+and do them honor. Should it please the gods to order it so, I shall
+gladly be kept running on such errands for a score or two of winters.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h6>FOOTNOTES:</h6>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a>
+Mr. N. C. Brown, in <i>The Auk</i>, January, 1889, page 69.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a>
+It seems probable that the birds started from some point in the
+Southern States for a long southward flight, or perhaps for the West
+Indies, on the evening of November 24th, and on getting out to sea were
+caught by the great gale, which whirled them northward over the
+Atlantic, landing them&mdash;such of them, that is, as were not drowned
+on the way&mdash;upon the coast of New England. The grounds for such an
+opinion are set forth by Dr. Arthur P. Chadbourne in <i>The Auk</i> for
+July, 1889, page 255.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a>
+To this list my ornithological comrade before mentioned added seven
+species, namely: white-winged scoter, barred owl, cowbird, purple finch,
+white-winged crossbill, fox sparrow, and winter wren. Between us, as far
+as land birds went, we did pretty well.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a>
+So they were called, too, by that lover of flowers, Walter Savage
+Landor, who, as his biographer says, followed a pronunciation
+"traditional in many old English families."</p></div></div>
+
+<hr>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+<h3><a name="DYERS_HOLLOW" id="DYERS_HOLLOW"></a>DYER'S HOLLOW.</h3>
+<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><center><small>
+<span class="i8">"Quiet hours</span>
+<span class="i1-5">Pass'd among these heaths of ours</span>
+<span class="i-2">By the grey Atlantic sea."</span>
+<span class="i16"><span class="smcap">Matthew Arnold.</span></span>
+</small></center></div></div>
+
+<p>I <span class="smcap">lived</span> for three weeks at the "Castle,"
+though, unhappily, I did not become aware of my romantic good fortune till
+near the close of my stay. There was no trace of battlement or turret,
+nothing in the least suggestive of Warwick or Windsor, or of Sir Walter
+Scott. In fact, the Castle was not a building of any kind, but a hamlet; a
+small collection of houses&mdash;a somewhat scattered collection, it must
+be owned,&mdash;such as, on the bleaker and sandier parts of Cape Cod, is
+distinguished by the name of village. On one side flowed the river,
+doubling its course through green meadows with almost imperceptible
+motion. As I watched the tide come in, I found myself saying,&mdash;</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><center><small>
+<span class="i0">"Here twice a day the Pamet fills,</span>
+<span class="i3">The salt sea-water passes by."</span></small></center>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But the rising flood could make no "silence in the hills;" for the
+Pamet, 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 know
+perfectly well that it need not run fast.</p>
+
+<p>My room would have made an ideal study for a lazy man, I
+thought, the two windows facing straight into a sand-bank, above
+which rose a steep hill, or perhaps I should rather say the steep
+wall of a plateau, on whose treeless top, all by themselves, or
+with only a graveyard for company, stood the Town Hall and the
+two village churches. Perched thus upon the roof of the Cape,
+as it were, and surmounted by cupola and belfry, the hall and
+the "orthodox" church made invaluable beacons, visible from
+far and near in every direction. For three weeks I steered
+my hungry course by them twice a day, having all the while
+a pleasing consciousness that, however I might skip the
+Sunday sermon, I was by no means neglecting my religious
+privileges. The second and smaller meeting-house belonged to a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+Methodist society. On its front were the scars of several small holes
+which had been stopped and covered with tin. A resident of the Castle
+assured me that the mischief had been done by pigeon
+woodpeckers,&mdash;<a name="flicker69" id="flicker69">flickers</a>,&mdash;a
+statement at which I inwardly rejoiced. Long ago I had announced my
+belief that these enthusiastic shouters 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 was clear. I could understand now how
+Darwin and men like him must have felt when some great hypothesis of
+theirs received sudden confirmation from an unexpected quarter. At the
+same time I was pained to see that the flickers' attempts at
+church-going had met with such indifferent encouragement. Probably the
+minister and the class leaders would have justified their exclusiveness
+by an appeal to that saying about those who enter "not by the door into
+the sheepfold;" while the woodpeckers, on their part, might have
+retorted that just when they had most need to go in the door was shut.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+<p>One of my favorite jaunts was to climb this hill, or plateau,
+the "Hill of Storms" (I am still ignorant whether the storms in question
+were political, ecclesiastical, or atmospheric, but I approve the name),
+and go down on the other side into a narrow valley whose meanderings led
+me to the ocean beach. This valley, or, to speak in the local dialect,
+this hollow, like the parallel one in which I lived,&mdash;the valley of
+the Pamet,&mdash;runs quite across the Cape, from ocean to bay, a
+distance of two miles and a half, more or less.</p>
+
+<p>At my very first sight of Dyer's Hollow I fell in love with it, and
+now that I have left it behind me, perhaps forever, I foresee that my
+memories of it are likely to be even fairer and brighter than was the
+place itself. I call it Dyer's Hollow upon the authority of the town
+historian, who told me, if I understood him correctly, that this was its
+name among sailors, to whom it is a landmark. By the residents of the
+town I commonly heard it spoken of as Longnook or Pike's Hollow, but for
+reasons of my own I choose to remember it by its nautical designation,
+though myself as far as possible from being a nautical man.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+<p>To see Dyer's Hollow at its best, the visitor should enter it at
+the western end, and follow its windings till he stands upon the bluff
+looking out upon the Atlantic. If his sensations at all resemble mine,
+he will feel, long before the last curve is rounded, as if he were
+ascending a mountain; and an odd feeling it is, the road being level, or
+substantially so, for the whole distance. At the outset he is in a green,
+well-watered valley on the banks of what was formerly Little Harbor. 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 near by. Up from the
+reeds a <a name="bittern" id="bittern">bittern</a> will now and then
+start. I should like to be here once in May, to hear the blows of his
+stake-driver's mallet echoing and re&euml;choing among the close hills.
+At that season, too, all the uplands would be green. So we were told, at
+any rate, though the pleasing story was almost impossible of belief. In
+August, as soon as we left the immediate vicinity of Little Harbor, the
+very bottom of the valley itself was parched and brown; and the look
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+of barrenness and drought increased as we advanced, till toward
+the end, as the last houses were passed, the total appearance of
+things became subalpine: stunted, weather-beaten trees, and broad
+patches of <a name="bearberry72" id="bearberry72">bearberry</a>
+showing at a little distance like beds of mountain cranberry.</p>
+
+<p>All in all, Dyer's Hollow did not impress me as a promising
+farming country. Acres and acres of horseweed, pinweed, stone
+clover, <a name="poverty72" id="poverty72">poverty grass,</a>
+<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8"
+class="fnanchor">[8]</a> reindeer moss, mouse-ear everlasting, and
+bearberry! No wonder such fields do not pay for fencing-stuff. No
+wonder, either, that the dwellers here should be mariculturalists
+rather than agriculturalists. And still, although their best garden is
+the bay, they have their gardens on land also,&mdash;the bottoms of
+the deepest hollows being selected for the purpose,&mdash;and by
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+hook or by crook manage to coax a kind of return out of the
+poverty-stricken soil. Even on Cape Cod there must be some
+potatoes to go with the fish. Vegetables raised under such
+difficulties are naturally sweet to the taste, and I was not so much
+surprised, therefore, on a certain state occasion at the Castle, to
+see a mighty dish of string beans ladled into soup-plates and exalted
+to the dignity of a separate course. Here, too,&mdash;but this was in
+Dyer's Hollow,&mdash;I found in successful operation one of the latest,
+and, if I may venture an unprofessional opinion, one of the most
+valuable, improvements in the art of husbandry. An old man, an ancient
+mariner, no doubt, 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 with years. I regretted afterward that I had not got over the
+fence and accosted him. I could hardly have missed hearing something
+rememberable. Yet I may have done wisely to keep the road. Industry
+like his ought never to be intruded upon lightly. Some, I dare say,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+would have called the sight pathetic. To me it was rather inspiring.
+Only a day or two before, in another part of the township, I had seen a
+man sitting in a chair among his bean-poles picking beans. Those heavy,
+sandy roads and steep hills must be hard upon the legs, and probably the
+dwellers thereabout (unlike the Lombardy poplars, which there, as
+elsewhere, were decaying at the top) begin to die at the lower
+extremities. It was not many 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 he sometimes saw a doughnut, but never descended to
+comfort." Quite otherwise was it with my wise-hearted agricultural
+economists; and quite otherwise shall it be with me, also, who mean to
+profit by their example. If I am compelled to dig when I get old (to beg
+may I ever be ashamed!), I am determined not to forget the camp-stool.
+The Cape Cod motto shall be mine,&mdash;He that hoeth cabbages, let him
+do it with assiduity.</p>
+
+<p>This aged cultivator, not so much "on his last legs" as beyond
+them, was evidently a native of the soil, but several of the few
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+houses standing along the valley road were occupied by Western
+Islanders. I was crossing a 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. "How old do you think he is?"
+he asked, pointing to the young fellow. It would have been
+inexcusable to disappoint his fatherly expectations, and I
+guessed accordingly: "Seventeen or eighteen." "Sixteen," he
+rejoined,&mdash;"sixteen!" and his face shone till I wished I had
+set the figure 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 in the 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, landed
+here on Cape Cod, and settled down. Since then he had been
+to California, where he worked in the mines. "Ah! that was where
+you got rich, was it?" said I. "Rich!"&mdash;this in a tone of
+sarcasm. But he added, "Well, I made something." His praise of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+his nearest neighbor&mdash;whose name proclaimed his Cape Cod
+nativity&mdash;made me think well not only of his neighbor, but of him.
+There were forty-two Portuguese families in Truro, he said. "There are
+more than that in Provincetown?" I suggested. He shrugged his shoulders.
+"Yes, about half the people." And pretty good people they are, if such
+as I saw were fair representatives. One boy of fourteen (unlike the
+milkman's heir, he was very small for his years, as he told me with
+engaging simplicity) walked by my side for a mile or two, and quite won
+my heart. A true Nathanael he seemed, in whom was no guile. He should
+never go to sea, he said; nor was he ever going to get married so long
+as his father lived. He loved his father so much, and he was the only
+boy, and his father couldn't spare him. "But didn't your father go to
+sea?" "Oh, yes; both my fathers went to sea." That was a puzzle; but
+presently it came out that his two fathers were his father and his
+grandfather. He looked troubled for a moment when I inquired the
+whereabouts of the poorhouse, in the direction of which we happened to be
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+going. He entertained a very decided opinion that he shouldn't like to
+live there; a wholesome aversion, I am bound to maintain, dear Uncle
+Venner to the contrary notwithstanding.</p>
+
+<p>A stranger was not an every-day sight in Dyer's Hollow, I imagine, and
+as I went up and down the road a good many times in the course of my visit,
+I came to be pretty well known. So it happened that a Western Islands
+woman came to her front door once, broom in hand and the sweetest of
+smiles on her face, and said, "Thank you for that five cents you gave my
+little boy the other day." "Put that in your pocket," I had said, and the
+obedient little man did as he was bidden, without so much as a side glance
+at the denomination of the coin. But he forgot one thing, and when his
+mother asked him, as of course she did, for mothers are all alike, "Did
+you thank the gentleman?" he could do nothing but hang his head. Hence
+the woman's smile and "thank you," which made me so ashamed of the
+paltriness of the gift (Thackeray never saw a boy without wanting to give
+him a <i>sovereign</i>!) that my mention of the matter here, so far from
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+indicating an ostentatious spirit, ought rather to be taken as a mark
+of humility.</p>
+
+<p>All things considered, I should hardly choose to settle for life in
+Dyer's Hollow; but with every recollection of the place I somehow feel
+as if its score or two of inhabitants were favored above other men. Why
+is it that people living thus by themselves, and known thus transiently
+and from the outside as it were, always seem in memory like dwellers in
+some land of romance? I cannot tell, but so it is; and whoever has such
+a picture on the wall of his mind will do well, perhaps, never to put
+the original beside it. Yet I do not mean to speak quite thus of Dyer's
+Hollow. Once more, at least, I hope to walk the length of that
+straggling road. As I think of it now, I behold again those beds of
+shining <a name="bearberry78" id="bearberry78">bearberry</a>
+("resplendent" would be none too fine a word; there is no plant for
+which the sunlight does more), loaded with a wealth of handsome red
+fruit. The beach-plum crop was a failure; plum wine, of the goodness
+of which I heard enthusiastic reports, would be scarce; but one needed
+only to look at the bearberry patches to perceive that Cape Cod sand was
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+not wanting in fertility after a manner of its own. If its
+energies in the present instance happened to be devoted to ornament
+rather than utility, it was not for an untaxed and disinterested
+outsider to make complaint; least of all a man who was never a
+wine-bibber, and who believes, or thinks he believes, in "art for art's
+sake." Within the woods the ground was carpeted with trailing arbutus
+and a profusion of checkerberry vines, the latter yielding a few fat
+berries, almost or quite a year old, but still sound and spicy, still
+tasting "like tooth-powder," as the benighted city boy expressed it. It
+was an especial pleasure to eat them here in Dyer's Hollow, I had so
+many times done the same in another place, on the banks of Dyer's Run.
+<a name="slipper79" id="slipper79">Lady's-slippers</a> likewise
+(nothing but leaves) looked homelike and friendly, and the wild lily of
+the valley, too, and the pipsissewa. Across the road from the old house
+nearest the ocean stood a still more ancient-seeming barn, long disused,
+to all appearance, but with old maid's pinks, catnip, and tall, stout
+pokeberry weeds yet flourishing beside it. Old maid's pinks and catnip!
+Could that combination have been fortuitous?</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+<p>No botanist, nor even a semi-scientific lover of growing things,
+like myself, can ever walk in new fields without an eye for new
+plants. While coming down the <a name="cape_cod" id="cape_cod">Cape</a>
+in the train I had seen, at short intervals, clusters of some strange
+flower,&mdash;like yellow asters, I thought. At every station I
+jumped off the car and looked hurriedly for specimens, till, after
+three or four attempts, I found what I was seeking,&mdash;the
+<a name="gold_aster" id="gold_aster">golden aster</a>, <i>Chrysopsis
+falcata</i>. Here in Truro it was growing everywhere, and
+of course in Dyer's Hollow. Another novelty was the <a name="glauca"
+id="glauca">pale greenbrier, <i>Smilax glauca</i></a>, which
+I saw first on the hill at Provincetown, and afterward discovered
+in Longnook. It was not abundant in either place, and in
+my eyes had less of beauty than its familiar relatives,
+the common greenbrier (cat-brier, horse-brier, Indian-brier)
+of my boyhood, and the carrion flower. This glaucous smilax
+was one of the plants that attracted Thoreau's attention, if I
+remember right, though I cannot now put my finger upon his reference
+to it. Equally new to me, and much more beautiful, as well as more
+characteristic of the place, were the broom-crowberry and the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+greener kind of <a name="poverty81" id="poverty81">poverty grass
+(<i>Hudsonia ericoides</i>)</a>, inviting pillows or cushions
+of which, looking very much alike at a little distance, were
+scattered freely over the grayish hills. These huddling, low-lying
+plants were among the things which bestowed upon Longnook its
+pleasing and remarkable mountain-top aspect. 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
+<a name="goldrod81" id="goldrod81">goldenrod</a>, including abundance
+of the fragrant <i>odora</i>; two kinds of yellow gerardia, and,
+in the lower lands at the western end of the valley, the dainty
+<a name="gerardia81" id="gerardia81">rose gerardia</a>, just now
+coming into bloom; the pretty <i>Polygala polygama</i>,&mdash;pretty,
+but not in the same class with the rose gerardia; ladies'
+tresses; bayberry; sweet fern; crisp-leaved tansy; beach
+grass; huckleberry bushes, for whose liberality I had frequent
+occasion to be thankful; bear oak; chinquapin; chokeberry; a
+single vine of the Virginia creeper; wild carrot; wild cherry;
+the common brake,&mdash;these and doubtless many more were
+there, for I made no attempt at a full catalogue. There
+must have been wild <a name="rose81" id="rose81">roses</a>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+along the roadside and on the edge of the thickets, I should think, yet
+I cannot recollect them, nor does the name appear in my penciled
+memoranda. Had the month been June instead of August, notebook and
+memory would record a very different story, I can hardly doubt; but out
+of flower is out of mind.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of my many visits to Dyer's Hollow I saw thirty-three
+kinds of birds, of the eighty-four species in my full Truro list. The
+number of individuals was small, however, and, except at its lower end,
+the valley was, or appeared to be, nearly destitute of feathered life. A
+few 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 last
+houses, 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 a
+hobby-horse. But farther down the hollow there was one really "birdy"
+spot, to borrow a word&mdash;useful enough to claim lexicographical
+standing&mdash;from one of my companions: a tiny grove of stunted
+oaks, by the roadside, just at the point where I naturally
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+struck the valley when I approached it by way of the Hill of Storms. Here
+I happened upon my only Cape Cod <a name="cowbird"id="cowbird">cowbird</a>,
+a full-grown youngster, who was being ministered unto in the most
+devoted manner by a <a name="redeye83" id="redeye83">red-eyed
+vireo</a>,&mdash;such a sight as always fills me with mingled amusement,
+astonishment, admiration, and disgust. That any bird should be so
+befooled and imposed upon! Here, too, I saw at different times an adult
+male blue yellow-backed warbler, and a bird of the same species in
+immature plumage. It seemed highly probable, to say the least, that the
+young fellow had been reared not far off, the more so as the neighboring
+Wellfleet woods were spectral with hanging lichens, of the sort which
+this exquisite especially affects. At first I wondered why this particular
+little grove, by no means peculiarly inviting in appearance, should be the
+favorite resort of so many birds,&mdash;robins, orioles, wood pewees,
+kingbirds, chippers, golden warblers, black-and-white creepers,
+prairie warblers, red-eyed vireos, and <a name="blueyellow83"
+id="blueyellow83">blue yellow-backs</a>; but I presently concluded that a
+fine spring of water just across the road must be the attraction.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>
+Near the spring was a vegetable garden, and here, on the 22d of August,
+I suddenly espied a <a name="waterthrush" id="waterthrush">water
+thrush</a> teetering upon the tip of a bean-pole, his rich olive-brown
+back glistening in the sunlight. He soon dropped to the ground
+among the vines, and before long walked out into sight. His
+action when he saw me was amusing. Instead of darting back,
+as a sparrow, for instance, would have done, he flew up to
+the nearest perch; that is, to the top of the nearest bean-pole,
+which happened 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, why not laths for bean-poles? The perch was narrow,
+but wide enough for the bird'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 moment three <a name="prairie84"
+id="prairie84">prairie warblers</a> were chasing each other about the
+garden, now clinging to the side of the poles, now alighting on their
+tips. It was a strange spot for prairie warblers, as it seemed to me,
+though they looked still more out of place a minute later, when they
+left the bean-patch and sat upon a rail fence in an open grassy field.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+Cape Cod birds, like Cape Cod men, know how to shift their course
+with the wind. Where else would one be likely to see prairie warblers,
+<a name="blk_throat_gr85" id="blk_throat_gr85">black-throated greens</a>,
+and <a name="creeper85" id="creeper85">black-and-white creepers</a>
+scrambling in company over the red shingles of a house-roof, and
+<a name="songspar85" id="songspar85">song sparrows</a> singing day
+after day from a chimney-top?</p>
+
+<p>In all my wanderings in Dyer's Hollow, only once did I see
+anything of that pest of the seashore, the sportsman; then, in
+the distance, two young fellows, with a highly satisfactory want of
+success, as well as I could make out, were trying to take the life of a
+meadow lark. No doubt they found existence a dull affair, and felt the
+need of something to enliven it. A noble creature is man,&mdash;"a
+little lower than the angels!" Two years in succession I have been at
+the seashore during the autumnal migration of sandpipers and plovers.
+Two years in succession have I seen men, old and young, murdering
+sandpipers and plovers at wholesale for the mere fun of doing it. Had
+they been "pot hunters," seeking to earn bread by shooting for the
+market, I should have pitied them, perhaps,&mdash;certainly I should
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+have regretted their work; but I should have thought no ill of them. Their
+vocation would have been as honorable, for aught I know, as that of any
+other butcher. But a man of twenty, a man of seventy, shooting sanderlings,
+ring plovers, golden plovers, and whatever else comes in his way, not for
+money, nor primarily for food, but because he enjoys the work! "A little
+lower than the angels!" What numbers of innocent and beautiful creatures
+have I seen limping painfully along the beach, after the gunners had
+finished their day's amusement! Even now I think with pity of one particular
+<a name="turnstone" id="turnstone">turnstone</a>. Some being made "a
+little lower than the angels" had fired at him and carried away one of
+his legs. I watched him for an hour. Much of the time he stood motionless.
+Then he hobbled from one patch of eel-grass to another, in search of
+something to eat. My heart ached for him, and it burns now to think that
+good men find it a pastime to break birds' 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 way for weeks together. An exhilarating and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+edifying spectacle it was,&mdash;this venerable worthy sitting behind
+his bunch of wooden decoys, a wounded tern fluttering in agony at his
+feet. Withal, be it said, he was a man of gentlemanly bearing,
+courteous, and a Christian. He did not shoot on Sunday,&mdash;not he.
+Such sport is to me despicable. Yet it is affirmed by those who ought to
+know&mdash;by those, that is, who engage in it&mdash;that it tends to
+promote a spirit of manliness.</p>
+
+<p>But thoughts of this kind belong not in Dyer's Hollow. Rather let me
+remember 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, the
+valley was the very abode of quietness. Here, on one of my earlier
+excursions, I came unexpectedly to a bridge, and on the farther side of
+the bridge to a tidy house and garden; and in the garden were several
+pear-trees, with fruit on them! Still more to my surprise, here
+was a little shop. The keeper of it had also the agency of some
+insurance company,&mdash;so a signboard informed the passer-by.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+As for his stock in trade,&mdash;sole leather, dry goods,
+etc.,&mdash;that spoke for itself. I stepped inside the door, but he was
+occupied with an account book, and when at last he looked up there was
+no speculation in his eyes. Possibly he had sold something the day
+before, and knew that no second customer could be expected so soon. We
+exchanged the time of day,&mdash;not a very valuable commodity
+hereabout,&mdash;and I asked him a question or two touching the hollow,
+and especially "the village," of which I had heard a rumor that it lay
+somewhere in this neighborhood. He looked bewildered at the
+word,&mdash;he hardly knew what I could mean, he said; but with a little
+prompting he recollected that a few houses between this point and North
+Truro (there used to be more houses than now, but they had been removed
+to other towns,&mdash;some of them to Boston!) were formerly called "the
+village." I left him to his ledger, and on passing his house I saw that
+he was a dealer in grain as well as in sole leather and calico, and had
+telephonic communication with somebody; an enterprising merchant, after
+all, up with the times, in spite of appearances.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+<p>The shop was like the valley, a careless tourist might have
+said,&mdash;a sleepy shop in Sleepy Hollow. To me it seemed not so.
+Peaceful, remote, sequestered,&mdash;these and all similar epithets
+suited well with Longnook; but for myself, in all my loitering there I
+was never otherwise than wide awake. The close-lying, barren,
+mountainous-looking hills did not oppress the mind, but rather lifted
+and dilated it, and although I could not hear the surf, I felt all the
+while the neighborhood of the sea; not the harbor, but the ocean, with
+nothing between me and Spain except that stretch of water. Blessed
+forever be Dyer's Hollow, I say, and blessed be its inhabitants! Whether
+Western Islanders or "regular Cape Cod men," may they live and die in
+peace.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h6>FOOTNOTES:</h6>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a>
+In looking over the town history, I was pleased to come upon a note
+in defense of this lowly plant, on the score not only of its beauty, but
+of its usefulness in holding the sand in place; but, alas, "all men have
+not faith," and where the historian wrote <i>Hudsonia tomentosa</i> the
+antipathetic compositor set up <i>Hudsonia tormentosa</i>. That compositor
+was a Cape Cod man,&mdash;I would wager a dinner upon it. "Thus the
+whirligig of time brings in his revenges," I hear him mutter, as he
+slips the superfluous consonant into its place.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+<h3><a name="FIVE_DAYS_ON_MOUNT_MANSFIELD" id="FIVE_DAYS_ON_MOUNT_MANSFIELD"></a>
+FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD.</h3>
+<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><center><small>
+<span class="i0">"Lead him through the lovely mountain-paths,</span>
+<span class="i1">And talk to him of things at hand and common."</span>
+<span class="i16"><span class="smcap">Matthew Arnold.</span></span>
+</small></center></div></div>
+
+<p>I <span class="smcap">went</span> up the mountain from the village
+of Stowe in very ignoble fashion,&mdash;in a wagon,&mdash;and was three
+hours on the passage. One of the "hands" at the Summit House occupied
+the front seat with the driver, and we were hardly out of the village
+before a seasonable toothache put him in mind of his pipe. Would smoking
+be offensive to me? he inquired. What could I say, having had an aching
+tooth before now myself? It was a pleasure almost beyond the luxury of
+breathing mountain air to see the misery of a fellow-mortal so quickly
+assuaged. The driver, a sturdy young Vermonter, was a man of different
+spirit. He had never used tobacco nor drunk a glass of "liquor," I heard
+him saying. Somebody had once offered him fifty cents to smoke a cigar.
+</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+<p>"Why didn't you take it?" asked his companion in a tone of wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm not that kind of a fellow, to be bought for fifty cents."
+</p>
+
+<p>As we approached the base of the mountain, a <a name="whitethroat91"
+id="whitethroat91">white-throated sparrow</a> was piping by the roadside.
+</p>
+
+<p>"I love to hear that bird sing," said the driver.</p>
+
+<p>It was now my turn to be surprised. Our man of principle was also
+a man of sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you call him?" I inquired, as soon as I could recover myself.
+</p>
+
+<p>"Whistling Jack," he answered; a new name to me, and a good one; it
+would take a nicer ear than mine to discriminate with certainty between
+a white-throat's voice and a school-boy's whistle.</p>
+
+<p>The morning had promised well, but before we emerged from the
+forest as we neared the summit we drove into a cloud, and, shortly
+afterward, into a pouring rain. In the office of the hotel I found a
+company of eight persons, four men and four women, drying themselves
+about the stove. They had left a village twenty miles away at two
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+o'clock that morning in an open wagon for an excursion to the
+summit. Like myself, they had driven into a cloud, and up to this
+time had seen nothing more distant than the stable just across the
+road, within a stone's toss of the window, 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 be
+seen), and debated the situation. Finally, at three o'clock,
+they got into their open wagon, the rain pelting them fiercely,
+and started for the base. Doubtless they soon descended into clear
+weather, but not till they 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 of pilgrims had dropped
+out of sight in the fog&mdash;as a pebble drops into the
+lake&mdash;leaving me with the house to myself; and presently,
+as I sat at the window, I heard a <a name="whitethroat92"
+id="whitethroat92">white-throated sparrow</a> singing outside. Here was
+one, at least, whom the rain could not discourage. A wild and yet a sweet and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+home-felt strain is this of "Whistling Jack,"&mdash;a mountain bird,
+well used to mountain weather, and just now too happy to forego his
+music, no matter how the storm might rage. I myself had been in a cloud
+often enough to feel no great degree of discomfort or lowness of
+spirits. I had not decided to spend the precious hours of a brief
+vacation upon a mountain-top without taking into account the additional
+risk of unfavorable weather in such a place. Let the clouds do their
+worst; I could be patient and wait for the sun. But this whistling
+philosopher outside spoke of something better than patience, and I
+thanked him for the timely word.</p>
+
+<p>Toward noon of the next day the rain ceased, the cloud vanished,
+and I made haste to clamber up the rocky peak&mdash;the Nose, so
+called&mdash;at the base of which the hotel is situated. Yes, there
+stretched Lake Champlain, visible for almost its entire length, and
+beyond it loomed the Adirondacks. I was glad I had come. <i>I</i>
+could sing now. It does a man good to look afar off.</p>
+
+<p>Even before the fog lifted I had discovered, to my no small
+gratification, that the evergreens immediately about the house were
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
+full of <a name="graythrush94" id="graythrush94">gray-cheeked
+thrushes</a>, a close colony, strictly confined to the low trees
+at the top of the mountain. They were calling at all hours,
+<i>yeep, yeep</i>, somewhat in the manner of young chickens;
+and after supper, as it grew dark, I stood on the piazza while
+they sang in full chorus. At least six of them were in tune at
+once. <i>Wee-o, wee-o, tit-ti wee-o</i>, something like this
+the music ran, with many variations; a most ethereal sound, at the very
+top of the scale, but faint and sweet; quite in tune also with my mood,
+for I had just come in from gazing long at the sunset, with Lake
+Champlain like a sea of gold for perhaps a hundred miles, 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 the mountain to the northern
+peak, the highest point, belittled in local phraseology as the Chin; a
+delightful jaunt of two miles, with magnificent prospects all the way.
+It was like walking on the ridge-pole of Vermont, a truly exhilarating
+experience.</p>
+
+<p>All in all, though the forenoon had been so rainy, I had lived
+a long day, and now, if ever, could appreciate the singing of this
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+<a name="graythrush95" id="graythrush95">characteristic northern
+songster</a>, himself such a lover of mountains as never to be heard, here
+in New England, at least, and in summer-time, except amid the dwindling
+spruce forests of the upper slopes. I have never before seen him so
+familiar. On the Mount Washington range and on Mount Lafayette it is
+easy enough to hear his music, but one rarely gets more than a flying
+glimpse of the bird. Here, as I say, he was never out of hearing, and
+seldom long out of sight, even from the door-step. The young were
+already leaving the nest, and undoubtedly the birds had disposed
+themselves for the season before the unpainted, inoffensive-looking
+little hotel showed any signs of occupancy. The very next year a friend
+of mine visited the place and could discover no trace of them. They had
+found their human neighbors a vexation, perhaps, and on returning from
+their winter's sojourn in Costa Rica, or where not, had sought summer
+quarters on some less trodden peak.</p>
+
+<p>Not so was it with the <a name="myrtle" id="myrtle">myrtle
+warblers</a>, I venture to assert, though on this point I have never
+taken my friend's testimony. Perfectly at home as they are in the wildest
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+and most desolate places, they manifest a particular fondness for the
+immediate vicinity of houses, delighting especially to fly about the
+gutters of the roof and against the window panes. Here, at the Summit
+House, they were constantly to be seen hawking back and forth against
+the side of the building, as barn swallows are given to doing in the
+streets of cities. The rude structure was doubly serviceable,&mdash;to
+me a shelter, and to the birds a fly-trap. I have never observed any
+other warbler thus making free with human habitations.</p>
+
+<p>This yellow-rump, or myrtle bird, is one of the thrifty
+members of his great family, and next to the <a name="blackpoll96"
+id="blackpoll96">black-poll</a> is the most numerous representative
+of his tribe in Massachusetts during the spring and fall migrations;
+a beautiful little creature, with a characteristic flight and
+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 of
+Massachusetts, and as a son of the Bay State I rejoice in his presence
+and heartily bid him welcome. We shall never have too many of such
+citizens. I esteem him, also, as the only one of his delicate,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+insectivorous race who has the hardihood to spend the
+winter&mdash;sparingly, but with something like regularity&mdash;within
+the limits of New England. He has a genius for adapting himself to
+circumstances; picking up his daily food in the depths of a mountain
+forest or off the panes of a dwelling-house, and wintering, as may suit
+his fancy or convenience, in the West Indies or along the sea-coast of
+Massachusetts.</p>
+
+<p>One advantage of a sojourn at the summit of any of our wooded New
+England mountains is the easy access thus afforded to the upper forest.
+While I was here upon Mount Mansfield I spent some happy hours almost
+every day in sauntering down the road for a mile or two, looking and
+listening. Just after leaving the house it was possible to hear three
+kinds of thrushes singing at once,&mdash;<a name="graythrush97"
+id="graythrush97">gray-cheeks</a>, <a name="swainson97"
+id="swainson97">olive-backs</a>, and <a name="hermit97"
+id="hermit97">hermits</a>. Of the three the hermit is beyond comparison
+the finest singer, both as to voice and tune. His song, given always in
+three detached measures, each higher than the one before it, is
+distinguished by an exquisite liquidity, the presence of <i>d</i>
+and <i>l</i>, I should say, as contrasted with the inferior <i>t</i> sound
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+of the gray-cheek. If it has less variety, and perhaps less rapture, than
+the song of the <a name="woodthrush" id="woodthrush">wood-thrush</a>, it
+is marked by greater simplicity and ease; and if it does not breathe the
+ineffable tranquillity of the <a name="veery98" id="veery98">veery's</a>
+strain, it comes to my ear, at least, with a still nobler message. The
+hermit's note is aspiration rather than repose. "Peace, peace!" says the
+veery, but the hermit's word is, "Higher, higher!" "Spiritual songs," I
+call them both, with no thought of profaning the apostolic phrase.</p>
+
+<p>I had been listening to thrush music (I think I could listen to it
+forever), and at a bend of the road had turned to admire the wooded side
+of the mountain, just here spread out before me, miles and miles of
+magnificent hanging forest, when I was attracted by a noise as of
+something gnawing&mdash;a borer under the bark of a fallen spruce lying at
+my feet. Such an industrious and contented sound! No doubt the grub would
+have said, "Yes, I could do <i>this</i> forever." What knew he of the
+beauties of the picture at which I was gazing? The very light with which to
+see it would have been a torture to him. Heaven itself was under the close
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
+bark of that decaying log. So peradventure, may we ourselves be living
+in darkness without knowing it, while spiritual intelligences look on
+with wondering pity to see us so in love with our prison-house. Well,
+yonder panorama was beautiful to <i>me</i>, at all events, however
+it might look to more exalted beings, and, like my brother under the
+spruce-tree bark, I would make the best of life as I found it.</p>
+
+<p>This way my thoughts were running when all at once two birds dashed by
+me&mdash;a <a name="blackpoll99" id="blackpoll99">black-poll warbler</a>
+in hot pursuit of an <a name="swainson99" id="swainson99">olive-backed
+thrush</a>. The thrush alighted in a tree and commenced singing,
+and the warbler sat by and waited, following the universal rule
+that a larger bird is never to be attacked except when on the
+wing. The thrush repeated his strain once or twice, and then
+flew to another tree, the little fellow after him with all speed.
+Again the olive-back perched and sang, and again the black-poll waited.
+Three times these man&oelig;uvres were repeated, before the birds
+passed out of my range. Some wrong-doing, real or fancied, on the part
+of the larger bird, had excited the ire of the warbler. Why should he be
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+imposed upon, simply because he was small? The thrush, meantime,
+disdaining to defend himself, would only stop now and then to sing, as
+if to show to the world (every creature is the centre of a world) that
+such an insect persecution could never ruffle his spirit. Birds are to
+be commiserated, perhaps, on having such an excess of what we call human
+nature; but the misfortune certainly renders them the more interesting
+to us, who see our more amiable weaknesses so often reflected in their
+behavior.</p>
+
+<p>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 a
+<a name="canadajay" id="canadajay">Canada jay</a> in a thick spruce. He
+was on one of the lower branches, but pretty soon began mounting the tree,
+keeping near the bole and going up limb by limb in absolute silence, exactly
+in the manner of our common <a name="bluejay" id="bluejay">blue jay</a>.
+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, <i>a priori</i>,
+I should have little hesitation in ascribing to any member of his
+tribe. I waited till I grew impatient. Then I started hastily
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+toward him, making as much commotion as possible in pushing through the
+undergrowth. It was a clever scheme, but the bird was not to be
+surprised into uttering so much as an exclamation. He dropped out of his
+tree, flew a little distance to a lower and less conspicuous perch, and
+there 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 in
+with 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 in
+every case, though in the third instance there was no attempt at
+skulking, nor any symptom of nervousness. I have often been impressed
+and amused by the blue jay's habit in this respect. No bird could well
+be noisier than he when the noisy mood takes him; but come upon him
+suddenly at close quarters, and he will be as still as the grave itself.
+He has a double gift, of eloquence and silence,&mdash;silver and
+gold&mdash;and no doubt his Canadian cousin is equally well endowed.</p>
+
+<p>The reader may complain, perhaps, that I speak only of trifles. Why go
+to a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a>
+</span>mountain-top to look at warblers and thrushes? I am not careful to
+justify myself. I love a mountain-top, and go there because I love to be
+there. It is good, I think, to be lifted above the every-day level, and to
+enjoy the society&mdash;and the absence of society&mdash;which the heights
+afford. Looking over my notes of this excursion, I come upon the following
+sentence: "To sit on a stone beside a mountain road, with olive-backed
+thrushes piping on every side, the ear catching now and then the distant
+tinkle of a <a name="winterwren" id="winterwren">winter wren's</a> tune,
+or the nearer <i>zee, zee, zee</i> of <a name="blackpoll102"
+id="blackpoll102">black-poll warblers</a>, while <a name="whitethroat102"
+id="whitethroat102">white-throated sparrows</a> call cheerily out of the
+spruce forest&mdash;this is to be in another world."</p>
+
+<p>This sense of distance and strangeness is not to be obtained, in my
+case at all events, by a few hours' stay in such a spot. I must pitch
+my tent there, for at least a night or two. I cannot even see the
+prospect at first, much less feel the spirit of the place. There must be
+time for the old life to drop off, as it were, while eye and ear grow
+wonted to novel sights and sounds. Doubtless I did take note of trivial
+things,&mdash;the call of a bird and the fragrance of a flower. It was
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+a pleasing relief after living so long with men whose minds were all the
+time full of those serious and absorbing questions, "What shall we eat,
+and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?"</p>
+
+<p>I remember with special pleasure a profusion of <a name="habenaria"
+id="habenaria">white orchids (<i>Habenaria dilatata</i>)</a> which
+bordered the roadside not far from the top, their spikes of waxy
+snow-white flowers giving out a rich, spicy odor hardly to be
+distinguished from the scent of carnation pinks. I remember, too,
+how the whole summit, from the Nose to the Chin, was sprinkled with the
+modest and beautiful <a name="sandwort103" id="sandwort103">Greenland
+sandwort</a>, springing up in every little patch of thin soil,
+where nothing else would flourish, and blossoming even under
+the door-step of the hotel. Unpretending as it is, this little
+alpine adventurer makes the most of its beauty. The blossoms
+are not crowded into close heads, so as to lose their individual
+attractiveness, like the florets of the golden-rod, for example;
+nor are they set in a stiff spike, after the manner of the
+orchid just now mentioned. At the same time the plant does
+not trust to the single flower to bring it into notice. It
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+grows in a pretty tuft, and throws out its blossoms in a graceful, loose
+cluster. The eye is caught by the cluster, and yet each flower shows by
+itself, and its own proper loveliness is in no way sacrificed to the
+general effect. How wise, too, is the sandwort in its choice of a
+dwelling-place! In the valley it would be lost amid the crowd. On the
+bare, brown mountain-top its scattered tufts of green and white appeal
+to all comers.</p>
+
+<p>To what extent, if at all, the sandwort depends upon the service of
+insects for its fertilization, I do not know, but it certainly has no
+scarcity of such visitors. "Bees will soar for bloom high as the highest
+peak of Mansfield;" so runs an entry in my notebook, with a pardonable
+adaptation of Wordsworth's line; and I was glad to notice that even the
+splendid black-and-yellow <a name="butterfly104" id="butterfly104">butterfly</a>
+(<i>Turnus</i>), which was often to be seen sucking honey
+from the fragrant orchids, did not disdain to sip also from
+the sandwort's cup. This large and elegant butterfly&mdash;our
+largest&mdash;is thoroughly at home on our New England mountains,
+sailing over the very loftiest peaks, and making its way
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+through the forests with a strong and steady flight. Many a time have I
+taken a second look at one, as it has threaded the treetops over my
+head, thinking to see a bird. Besides the <i>Turnus</i>, I noted here the
+nettle tortoise-shell butterfly (<i>Vanessa Milberti</i>&mdash;a showy
+insect, and the more attractive to me as being comparatively a
+stranger); the common cabbage butterfly; the yellow <i>Philodice</i>; the
+copper; and, much more abundant than any of these, a large orange-red
+fritillary (<i>Aphrodite</i>, I suppose), gorgeously bedecked with
+spots of silver on the under surface of the wings. All these evidently
+knew that plenty of flowers were to be found along this seemingly barren,
+rocky crest. Whether they have any less sensuous motive for loving to
+wander over such heights, who will presume to determine? It may very
+well be that their almost ethereal structure&mdash;such spread of wing
+with such lightness of body&mdash;is only the outward sign of gracious
+thoughts and feelings, of a sensitiveness to beauty far surpassing
+anything of which we ourselves are capable. What a contrast between
+them and the grub gnawing ceaselessly under the spruce-tree bark! Can
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+the highest angel be as far above the lowest man? And yet (how
+mysteriously suggestive would the fact be, if only it were new to us!)
+this same light-winged Aphrodite, flitting from blossom to blossom in
+the mountain breeze, was but a few days ago an ugly, crawling thing,
+close cousin to the borer. Since then it has fallen asleep and been
+changed,&mdash;a parable, past all doubt, though as yet we lack eyes to
+read it.</p>
+
+<p>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 matter of
+course he was reputed to be of good family and to read Greek, and the fact
+that he now and then received a bank draft evidently gave him a respectable
+standing in the eye of the hotel clerk. Something&mdash;something of a
+very romantic nature, we may be sure&mdash;had driven him away from the
+companionship of his fellows, but he still found it convenient to be
+within reach of human society. Like all such solitaries, he had some
+half-insane notions. He could not sleep indoors, not for a night; it would
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+ruin his health, if I understood him correctly; and because of wild
+animals&mdash;bears and what not&mdash;he made his bed on the roof of
+his hermitage. I had often dreamed of the enjoyment of a life in the
+woods all by one's self, but such a mode of existence did not gain in
+attractiveness as I saw it here in the concrete example. On the whole I
+was 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 to
+my own freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Two or three times a wagon-load of tourists appeared at the hotel.
+They strolled about the summit, admired the prospect, picked a bunch of
+sandwort, perhaps, but especially they went to see the snow. They had
+been at much trouble to stand upon the highest land in Vermont, and now
+that they were here, they wished to do or see something unique,
+something that should mark the day as eventful. So they were piloted to
+a cave midway between the Nose and the Chin, into which the sun never
+peeped, and wherein a snow-bank still lingered. The mountain was grand,
+the landscape was magnificent, but to eat a handful of snow and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+throw a snow-ball in the middle of July&mdash;this was almost like being
+at the North Pole; it would be something to talk about after getting
+home.</p>
+
+<p>One visitor I rejoiced to see, though a stranger. I was on the Nose in
+the afternoon, enjoying once more the view of Lake Champlain and the
+Adirondacks, when I descried two men far off toward the Chin. They had
+come up the mountain, not by the carriage road, but by a trail on the
+opposite side, and plainly were in no haste, though the afternoon was
+wearing away. As I watched their movements, a mile or two in the
+distance, I said to myself, "Good! they are botanists." So it proved; or
+rather one of them was a botanist,&mdash;a college professor on a
+pedestrian collecting-excursion. We compared notes after supper and
+walked together the next morning, enjoying that peculiar good fellowship
+which nothing but a kindred interest and an unexpected meeting in a
+lonesome place can make possible. Then he started down the carriage road
+with the design of exploring Smugglers' Notch, and I have never seen
+or heard from him since. I hope he is still botanizing on the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+shores of time, and finding many a precious rarity; and should he ever
+read this reference to himself, may it be with a feeling as kindly as
+that with which the lines are written.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon I followed him, somewhat unexpectedly. I went down, as
+I had come up, on wheels; but I will not say in ignoble fashion, for
+the driver&mdash;the hotel proprietor himself&mdash;was in haste, the
+carriage had no brake, and the speed with which we rattled down the
+steep pitches and round the sharp curves, with the certainty that if
+anything should break, the horse would run and our days would be
+ended,&mdash;these things, and especially the latter consideration, of
+which I thought and the other man spoke, made the descent one of
+pleasurable excitement. We reached 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 a lodging for the night, so that on the morrow I
+might make a long day in Smugglers' Notch, a famous botanical resort
+between Mount Mansfield and Mount Sterling, which I had for years been
+desirous of visiting.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+<p>I would gladly have stayed longer on the heights, but it was pleasant
+also to be once more in the lowlands; to walk out after supper and look up
+instead of down, while the <a name="swift110" id="swift110">chimney
+swifts</a> darted hither and thither with their merry, breathless
+cacklings. How welcome, too, were the hearty music of the robin and the
+carol of the <a name="vesper110" id="vesper110">grass finch</a>! After
+all, I thought, home is in the valley; but the whistle of the <a
+name="whitethroat110" id="whitethroat110">white-throat</a> reminded me
+that I was not yet back in Massachusetts.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+<h3><a name="A_WIDOW_AND_TWINS" id="A_WIDOW_AND_TWINS"></a>A WIDOW AND TWINS.</h3>
+<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span>
+
+<p class="center">
+<small>"The fatherless and the widow ... shall eat and be
+satisfied."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Deuteronomy</span> xiv. 29.</small>
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">On</span> the 1st of June, 1890, I formally
+broke away from ornithological pursuits. For two months, more or
+less,&mdash;till the autumnal migration should set in,&mdash;I was
+determined to have my thoughts upon other matters. There is no more
+desirable plaything than an outdoor hobby, but a man ought not to be
+forever in the saddle. Such, at all events, had always been my opinion,
+so that I long ago promised myself never to become, what some of my
+acquaintances, perhaps with too much reason, were now beginning to
+consider me, a naturalist, and nothing else. That would be letting the
+hobby-horse run away with its owner. For the time being, then, birds
+should pass unnoticed, or be looked at only when they came in my way.
+A sensible resolve. But the maker of it was neither Mede nor Persian,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+as the reader, if he have patience enough, may presently discover for
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>As I sat upon the piazza, in the heat of the day, busy or half busy
+with a 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 to
+remark that the visitor was invariably a female. I watched her probe the
+scarlet tubes and dart away, and then returned to my page. She might
+have a nest somewhere near; but if she had there was small likelihood of
+my finding it, and, besides, I was just now not concerned with such
+trifles. On the 24th of June, however, a passing neighbor dropped into
+the yard. Was I interested in humming-birds? he inquired. If so, he
+could show me a nest. I put down my book, and went with him at once.</p>
+
+<p>The beautiful structure, a model of artistic workmanship, was near the
+end of one of the lower branches of an apple-tree, eight or ten feet
+from the ground, saddled upon the drooping limb at a point where two
+offshoots made a good holding-place, while an upright twig spread over
+it a leafy canopy against rain and sun. Had the builders sought my
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+advice as to a location, I could hardly have suggested one better suited
+to my own convenience. The tree was within a stone's toss of my window,
+and, better still, the nest was overlooked to excellent advantage from
+an old bank wall which divided my premises from those of my next-door
+neighbor. How could I doubt that Providence itself had set me a summer
+lesson?</p>
+
+<p>At our first visit the discoverer of the nest&mdash;from that moment an
+ornithologist&mdash;brought out a step-ladder, and we looked in upon the
+two tiny white eggs, considerately improving a temporary absence of the
+owner for that purpose. It was a picture to please not only the eye, but
+the imagination; and before I could withdraw my gaze the mother bird was
+back again, whisking about my head so fearlessly that for a moment I
+stood still, half expecting her to drop into the nest within reach of my
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>This, as I have said, was on the 24th of June. Six days later,
+on the afternoon of the 30th, the eggs were found to be hatched,
+and two lifeless-looking things lay in the bottom of the nest,
+their heads tucked out of sight, and their bodies almost or quite
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+naked, except for a line of grayish down along the middle of the back.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, I had been returning with interest the visits of the bird
+to our honeysuckle, and by this time had fairly worn a path to a certain
+point in the wall, where, comfortably seated in the shade of the
+hummer's own tree, and armed with opera-glass and notebook, I spent some
+hours daily in playing the spy upon her motherly doings.</p>
+
+<p>For a widow with a house and family upon her hands, she took life
+easily; at frequent intervals she absented herself altogether, and even
+when at home she spent no small share of the time in flitting about
+among the branches of the tree. On such occasions, I often saw her hover
+against the bole or a patch of leaves, or before a piece of caterpillar
+or spider web, making quick thrusts with her bill, evidently after
+bits of something to eat. On quitting the nest, she commonly
+perched upon one or another of a certain set of dead twigs in
+different parts of the tree, and at once shook out her feathers
+and spread her tail, displaying its handsome white markings,
+indicative of her sex. This was the beginning of a leisurely toilet
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+operation, in the course of which she scratched 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 rubbing it down with her claws or
+by wiping it upon a twig. In general she paid little attention to me,
+though she sometimes hovered directly in front of my face, as if trying
+to stare me out of countenance. One of the most pleasing features of the
+show was her method of flying into the nest. She approached it, without
+exception, from the same quarter, and, after an almost imperceptible
+hovering motion, shut her wings and dropped upon the eggs.</p>
+
+<p>When the young were hatched I redoubled my attentions. Now I should
+see her feed them. On the first afternoon I waited a long time for this
+purpose, the mother conducting herself in her customary manner: now
+here, now there, preening her plumage, driving away a meddlesome
+sparrow, probing the florets of a convenient clover-head (an unusual
+resource, I think), or snatching a morsel from some leaf or twig.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+Suddenly she flew at me, and held herself at a distance of perhaps four
+feet from my nose. Then she wheeled, and, as I thought, darted out of
+the orchard. In a few seconds I turned my head, and there she sat in the
+nest! 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 the
+afternoon in attempting to see.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty-four hours later I was more successful, though
+the same ruse was again tried upon me. The mother left the
+nest at my approach, but in three minutes (by the watch)
+flew in again. She brooded for nine minutes. Then, quite of
+her own motion, she disappeared for six minutes. On her
+return she spent four minutes in dressing her feathers, after
+which she alighted on the edge of the nest, fed the little
+ones, and took her place upon them. This time she brooded
+for ten minutes. Then she was away for six minutes, dallied
+about the tree for two minutes longer, and again flew into the
+nest. While sitting, she pecked several times in quick succession
+at a twig within reach, and I could plainly see her mandibles
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
+in motion, as if she were swallowing. She brooded for thirteen minutes,
+absented herself for three minutes, and spent six minutes in her usual
+cautionary man&oelig;uvres before resuming her seat. For the long
+interval of twenty-two minutes she sat still. Then she vanished for four
+minutes, and on her return gave the young another luncheon, after a fast
+of one hour and six minutes.</p>
+
+<p>The feeding process, which I had been so desirous to see, was of a
+sort to make the spectator shiver. The mother, standing on the edge
+of the nest, with her tail braced against its side, like a woodpecker
+or a creeper, took a rigidly erect position, and craned her neck until
+her bill was in a perpendicular line above the short, wide-open, upraised
+beak of the little one, who, it must be remembered, was at this time
+hardly bigger than a humble-bee. Then she thrust her bill for its full
+length down into his throat, a frightful-looking act, followed by a
+series of murderous gesticulations, which fairly made one observer's
+blood run cold.</p>
+
+<p>On the day after this (on the 2d of July, that is to say) I
+climbed into the tree, in the old bird's absence, and stationed myself
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a>
+</span>where my eyes were perhaps fifteen feet from the
+nest, and a foot or two above its level. At the end of about
+twenty minutes, the mother, who meantime had made two visits
+to the tree, flew into place, and brooded for seventeen
+minutes. Then she disappeared again, and on her return,
+after numberless pretty feints and sidelong approaches,
+alighted on the wall of the nest, and fed both little ones.
+The operation, though still sufficiently reckless, looked
+less like infanticide than before,&mdash;a fact due, as
+I suppose, to my more elevated position, from which the
+nestlings' throats were better seen. After this she brooded
+for another seventeen minutes. On the present occasion,
+as well as on many others, it was noticeable that, while
+sitting upon the young, she kept up an almost incessant
+motion, as if seeking to warm them, or perhaps to develop
+their muscles by a kind of massage treatment. A measure of
+such hitchings and fidgetings might have meant nothing more
+than an attempt to secure for herself a comfortable seat;
+but when they were persisted in for fifteen minutes together,
+it was difficult not to believe that she had some different end in
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+view. Possibly, as human infants get exercise by dandling on the
+mother's knee, the baby humming-bird gets his by this parental kneading
+process. Whether brooding or feeding, it must be said that the hummer
+treated her tiny charges with no particular carefulness, so far as an
+outsider could judge.</p>
+
+<p>The next day I climbed again into the tree. The mother bird made off at
+once, and did not resume her seat for almost an hour, though she would
+undoubtedly have done so earlier but for my presence. Again and again
+she perched near me, her bill leveled straight at my face. Finally she
+alighted on the nest, and, after considerable further delay, as if to
+assure herself that everything was quite safe, fed the two chicks from
+her throat, as before. "She thrust her bill into their mouths so far" (I
+quote my notes) "that the tips of their short little beaks were up
+against the root of her mandibles!"</p>
+
+<p>Only once more, on the 4th of July, I ventured into the apple-tree.
+For more than an hour and a half I waited. Times without
+number the mother came buzzing into the <span class='pagenum'>
+<a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>tree, made the
+circuit of her favorite perches, dressed her plumage, darted away again,
+and again returned, till I was almost driven to get down, for her
+relief. At last she fed the nestlings, who by this time must have been
+all but starved, as indeed they seemed to be. "The tips of their bills
+<i>do</i> come clean up to the base of the mother's mandibles." So I
+wrote in my journal; for it is the first duty of a naturalist to verify
+his own observations.</p>
+
+<p>On the 10th we again brought out the ladder. Though at least eleven
+days old, the tiny birds&mdash;the "widow's mites," as my facetious
+neighbor called them&mdash;were still far from filling the cup. While
+I stood over it, one of them uttered some pathetic little cries that
+really went to my heart. His bill, perceptibly longer than on the 5th,
+was sticking just above the border of the nest. I touched it at the tip,
+but he did not stir. Craning my neck, I could see his open eye. Poor,
+helpless things! Yet within three months they would be flying to Central
+America, or some more distant clime. How little they knew what was
+before them! As little as I know what is before me.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
+<p>The violence of the feeding act was now at its height, I think, but
+it would 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. When the two beaks were tightly joined, and while the old bird's
+was being gradually withdrawn, they were shaken convulsively,&mdash;by
+the mother's attempts to disgorge, and perhaps by the young fellow's
+efforts to hasten the operation. It was plain that he let go with
+reluctance, as a boy sucks the very tip of the spoon to get the last
+drop of jam; but, as will be mentioned in the course of the narrative,
+his behavior improved greatly in this respect as he grew older.</p>
+
+<p>On the 12th, just after the little ones had been fed, one of them got
+his wings for the first time above the wall of the nest, and fluttered
+them with much spirit. He had spent almost a fortnight in the cradle,
+and was beginning to think he had been a baby long enough.</p>
+
+<p>From the first I had kept in mind the question whether
+the feeding of the young by regurgitation, as described
+briefly by Audubon, and more in detail by Mr. <span class='pagenum'>
+<a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>William Brewster,<a
+name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9"
+class="fnanchor">[9]</a> would be continued after the nestlings
+were fully grown. On the 14th I wrote in my journal: "The method of
+feeding remains unchanged, and, as it seems, is likely to remain so to
+the end. It must save the mother much labor in going and coming, and
+perhaps renders the co&ouml;peration of the male parent unnecessary."
+This prediction was fulfilled, but with a qualification to be hereafter
+specified.</p>
+
+<p>Every morning, now, I went to the apple-tree uncertain whether
+the nest would 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 which his observations were made&mdash;in
+the garden of Mr. E. S. Hoar, in Concord&mdash;were hatched on the
+4th of July, <a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> and forsook
+the nest on the 18th. My birds were already <span class='pagenum'>
+<a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>fifteen days
+old, at least, and, unless they were to prove uncommonly backward
+specimens, ought to be on the wing forthwith. Nevertheless they were in
+no haste. Day after day passed. The youngsters looked more and more like
+old birds, and the mother grew constantly more and more nervous.</p>
+
+<p>On the 18th I found her in a state of unprecedented excitement,
+squeaking almost incessantly. At first I attributed this to
+concern at my presence, but after a while it transpired that a
+young <a name="baltimore123" id="baltimore123">oriole</a>&mdash;a
+blundering, tailless fellow&mdash;was the cause of the disturbance.
+By some accident he had dropped into the leafy treetop, as
+guiltless of any evil design as one of her own nestlings.
+How she did buzz about him! In and out 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, and
+carrying her tail spread to its utmost. The scene lasted for
+some minutes. Through it all the two young birds kept perfectly
+quiet, never once putting up their heads, even when the mother,
+buzzing and calling, zigzagged directly about the nest.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+I had seen many birds in the tree, first and last, but none that created
+anything like such a stir. The mother was literally in a frenzy. She
+went the round of her perches, but could stay nowhere. Once she dashed
+out of the tree for an instant, and drove a sparrow away from the tomato
+patch. Ordinarily his presence there would not have annoyed her in the
+least, but in her present state of mind she was ready to pounce upon
+anybody. All of which shows once more how "human-like" birds are. The
+bewilderment of the oriole was comical. "What on earth can this crazy
+thing be shooting about my ears in this style for?" I imagined him
+saying to himself. In fact, as he glanced my way, now and then, with his
+innocent baby face, I could almost believe that he was appealing to me
+with some such inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning ("at 7.32," as my diary is careful to note) one of the
+twins took his flight. I was standing on the wall, with my glass leveled
+upon the nest, when I saw him exercising his wings. The action was
+little more pronounced than had been noticed at intervals during the
+last three or four days, except that he was more decidedly on his
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+feet. Suddenly, without making use of the rim of the nest, as I should
+have expected him to do, he was in the air, hovering in the prettiest
+fashion, and in a moment more had alighted on a leafless twig slightly
+above the level of the nest, and perhaps a yard from it. Within a minute
+the mother appeared, buzzing and calling, with answering calls from the
+youthful adventurer. At once&mdash;after a hasty reconnaissance of the
+man on the wall&mdash;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, and made off. She had no time to waste at this juncture of affairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>When she had gone, I stepped up to the trunk of the tree
+to watch the little fellow more closely. He held his perch,
+and occupied himself with dressing his plumage, though,
+as the breeze freshened, he was compelled once in a while
+to keep his wings in motion to prevent the wind from carrying
+him away. When the old bird returned,&mdash;in just half
+an hour,&mdash;she resented my intrusion (what an oppressor
+of the widow and the fatherless she must by this time have
+thought me!) in the most unmistakable <span class='pagenum'>
+<a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>manner,
+coming more than once quite within reach. However, she soon gave over
+these attempts at intimidation, perched beside the percher, and again
+put something into his maw. This time she did not feed the nestling. As
+she took her departure, she told the come-outer&mdash;or so I
+fancied&mdash;that there was a man under the tree, a pestilent fellow,
+and it would be well to get a little out of his reach. At all events,
+she had scarcely disappeared before the youngster was again on the wing.
+It was wonderful how much at home he seemed,&mdash;poising, backing,
+soaring, and alighting with all the ease and grace of an old hand. One
+only piece of awkwardness I saw him commit: he dropped upon a branch
+much too large for his tiny feet, and was manifestly uncomfortable. But
+he did not stay long, and at his next alighting was well up in the tree,
+where it was noticeable that he remained ever after.</p>
+
+<p>With so much going on outside, it was hard to remain indoors,
+and finally I took a chair to the orchard, and gave myself up to
+watching the drama. The feeding process, though still always by
+regurgitation, was by this time somewhat different from what it
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+had been when the bills of the young were less fully developed. In
+my notes of this date I find the following description of it:
+"Number Two is still in the nest, but uneasy. At 10.25 the mother
+appeared and fed him. <a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>Her beak was
+thrust into his mouth at right angles,&mdash;the change being
+necessitated, probably, by the greater length of his bill,&mdash;and he
+seemed to be jerking strenuously at it. Then he opened his beak and
+remained motionless, while the black mandibles of the mother could be
+seen running down out of sight into his throat."</p>
+
+<p>The other youngster, Number One, as I now called him, stayed in the
+tree, or at most ventured only into the next one, and was fed at varying
+intervals,&mdash;as often, apparently, as the busy mother could find
+anything to give him. Would he go back to his cradle for the night? It
+seemed not improbable, notwithstanding he had shown no sign of such an
+intention so long as daylight lasted. At 3.50 the next morning,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+therefore, I stole out to see. No: Number Two was there alone.</p>
+
+<p>At seven o'clock, when I made my second visit, the mother was in the
+midst of another day's hard work. Twice within five minutes she brought
+food to the nestling. Once the little fellow&mdash;not so very little
+now&mdash;happened to be facing east, while the old bird alighted, as
+she had invariably done, on the western side. The youngster, instead of
+facing about, threw back his head and opened his beak. "Look out,
+there!" exclaimed my fellow-observer; "you'll break his neck if you feed
+him in that way." But she did not mind. Young birds' necks are not so
+easily broken. Within ten minutes of this time she fed Number One,
+giving him three doses. They were probably small, however (and small
+wonder), for he begged hard for more, opening his bill with an appealing
+air. The action in this case was particularly well seen, and the
+vehement jerking, while the beaks were glued together, seemed almost
+enough to pull the young fellow's head off. Within another ten minutes the
+mother was again ministering to Number Two! Poor little widow! Between her
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+incessant labors of this kind and her overwhelming anxiety whenever any
+strange bird came near, I began to be seriously alarmed for her. As a
+member of a strictly American family, she was in a fair way, I thought,
+to be overtaken by the "most American of diseases,"&mdash;nervous
+prostration. It tired me to watch her.</p>
+
+<p>With us, and perhaps with her likewise, it was a question
+whether Number Two would remain in the nest for the day. He grew
+more and more restless; as my companion&mdash;a learned
+man&mdash;expressed it, he began to "ramp round." Once he
+actually mounted the rim of the nest, a thing which his more
+precocious brother had never been seen to do, and stretched
+forward to pick at a neighboring stem. Late that afternoon
+the mother fed him five times within an hour, instead of once
+an hour, or thereabouts, as had been her habit three weeks
+before. She meant to have him in good condition for the coming event;
+and he, on his part, was active to the same end,&mdash;standing
+upon the wall of the nest again and again, and exercising his wings
+till they made a cloud about him. A dread of launching away still kept
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+him back, however, and shortly after seven o'clock I found him
+comfortably disposed for the night. "He is now on his twenty-first day
+(at least) in the nest. To-morrow will see him go." So end my day's
+notes.</p>
+
+<p>At 5.45 the next morning he was still there. At 6.20 I absented myself
+for a few minutes, and on returning was hailed by my neighbor with the
+news that the nest was empty. Number Two had flown between 6.25 and
+6.30, but, unhappily, neither of us was at hand to give him a cheer. I
+trust that he and his mother were not hurt in their feelings by the
+oversight. The whole family (minus the father) was still in the
+apple-tree; the mother full, and more than full, of business, feeding
+one youngster after the other, as they sat here and there in the upper
+branches.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty-four hours later, as I stood in the orchard, I heard a hum
+of wings, and found the mother over my head. Presently she flew into
+the top of the tree, and the next instant was sitting beside one of
+the young ones. His hungry mouth was already wide open, but before
+feeding him she started up from the twig, and circled about him so
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+closely as almost or quite to touch him with her wings. On completing
+the circle she dropped upon the perch at his side, but immediately rose
+again, and again flew round him. It was a beautiful act,&mdash;beautiful
+beyond the power of any words of mine to set forth; an expression of
+maternal ecstasy, I could not doubt, answering to the rapturous caresses
+and endearments in which mothers of human infants are so frequently seen
+indulging. Three days afterward, to my delight, I saw it repeated in
+every particular, as if to confirm my opinion of its significance. The
+sight repaid all my watchings thrice over, and even now I feel my heart
+growing warm at the recollection of it. Strange thoughtlessness, is it
+not, which allows mothers capable of such passionate devotion, tiny,
+defenseless things, to be slaughtered by the million for the enhancement
+of woman's charms!</p>
+
+<p>At this point we suddenly became aware that for at least a day
+or two the old bird had probably been feeding her offspring in
+two ways,&mdash;sometimes by regurgitation, and sometimes by a
+simple transfer from beak to beak. The manner of our discovery
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+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 not finished,
+and looked to see her return; but she flew away, and after
+a while the truth dawned upon us. Thereafter, unless our
+observation was at fault, she used whichever method happened
+to suit her convenience. If she found a choice collection of
+spiders, <a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> for instance,
+she brought them in her throat (as cedar-birds carry cherries),to save
+trips; if she had only one or two, she retained them between her
+mandibles. It will be understood, I suppose, that we did not see the
+food in its passage from one bird to the other,&mdash;human
+eyesight would hardly be equal to work of such nicety; but the two
+bills were put together so frequently and in so pronounced a manner
+as to leave us in no practical uncertainty about what was going
+on. Neither had I any doubt that the change was connected in some way
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+with the increasing age of the fledgelings; yet it is to be said that
+the two methods continued to be used interchangeably to the end, and on
+the 28th, when Number Two had been out of the nest for seven days, the
+mother thrust her bill down his throat, and repeated the operation, just
+as she had done three weeks before.</p>
+
+<p>For at least two days longer, as I believe, the faithful creature
+continued her loving ministrations, although I failed to detect her in
+the act. Then, on the 1st of August, as I sat on the piazza, I saw her
+for the last time. The honeysuckle vine had served her well, and still
+bore 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
+the latest generation! Our intercourse had lasted for eight
+weeks,&mdash;wanting one day,&mdash;and it was fitting that it should
+end where it had begun, at the sign of the honeysuckle.</p>
+
+<p>The absence of the father bird for all this time, though I have
+mentioned it but casually, was of course a subject of continual
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
+remark. How was it to be explained? My own opinion is, reluctant as I
+have been to reach it, that such absence or desertion&mdash;by whatever
+name it may be called&mdash;is the general habit of the male
+ruby-throat. Upon this point I shall have some things to say in a
+subsequent paper.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h6>FOOTNOTES:</h6>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a>
+<i>The Auk</i>, vol. vii. p. 206.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10">
+</a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a>
+But Mr. Hoar, from whom Mr. Brewster had his dates, informs me
+that the time of hatching was not certainly known; and from Mr.
+Brewster's statement about the size of the nestlings, I cannot doubt
+that they had been out of the shell some days longer than Mr. Hoar then
+supposed.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a>
+For convenience, I use the masculine pronoun in speaking of both the
+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 a female.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12">
+</a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a>
+Mr. E. H. Eames reports (in <i>The Auk</i>, vol. vii. p. 287) that, on
+dissecting a humming-bird, about two days old, he found sixteen young
+spiders in its throat, and a pultaceous mass of the same in its stomach.</p>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+<h3><a name="THE_MALE_RUBY-THROAT" id="THE_MALE_RUBY-THROAT"></a>THE MALE RUBY-THROAT.</h3>
+<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span>
+
+<p class="center"><small>
+"Your fathers, where are they?"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Zechariah</span> i. 5.</small>
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">While</span> keeping daily watch upon a
+nest of our common humming-bird, in the summer of 1890, I was struck
+with the persistent absence of the head of the family. As week after
+week elapsed, this feature of the case excited more and more remark, and
+I turned to my out-of-door journal for such meagre notes as it contained
+of a similar nest found five years before. From these it appeared that
+at that time, also, the father bird was missing. Could such truancy be
+habitual with the male ruby-throat? I had never supposed that any of our
+land birds were given to behaving in this ill-mannered, unnatural way,
+and the matter seemed to call for investigation.</p>
+
+<p>My first resort was, of course, to books. The language
+of Wilson and Audubon is somewhat ambiguous, but may fairly
+be taken as implying the male bird's presence <span class='pagenum'>
+<a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>throughout
+the period of nidification. Nuttall speaks explicitly to the same
+effect, though with no specification of the grounds on which his
+statement is based. The later systematic biographers&mdash;Brewer,
+Samuels, Minot, and the authors of New England Bird Life&mdash;are
+silent in respect to the point. Mr. Burroughs, in Wake-Robin, mentions
+having found two nests, and gives us to understand that he saw only the
+female birds. Mrs. Treat, on the other hand, makes the father a
+conspicuous figure about the single nest concerning which she reports.
+Mr. James Russell Lowell, too, speaks of watching both parents as they
+fed the young ones: "The mother always alighted, while the father as
+uniformly remained upon the wing."</p>
+
+<p>So far, then, the evidence was decidedly, not to say decisively,
+in the masculine ruby-throat's favor. But while I had no desire
+to make out a case against him, and in fact was beginning to feel
+half ashamed of my uncomplimentary surmises, I was still greatly
+impressed with what my own eyes had seen, or rather had not seen,
+and thought it worth while to push the inquiry a little further.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+<p>I wrote first to Mr. E. S. Hoar, in whose garden Mr. Brewster
+had made the observations cited in my previous article. He replied with
+great kindness, and upon the point in question said: "I watched the nest
+two or three times a day, from a time before the young were hatched till
+they departed; and <i>now you mention it</i>, it occurs to me that I
+never did see the male, but only the white-breasted female."</p>
+
+<p>Next I sought the testimony of professional ornithologists; and here
+my worst suspicions seemed in a fair way to be confirmed, although the
+greater number of my correspondents were unhappily compelled to plead a
+want of knowledge. Dr. A. K. Fisher had found, as he believed, not less
+than twenty-five nests, and to the best of his recollection had never
+seen a male bird near one of them after it was completed. He had watched
+the female feeding her young, and, when the nests contained eggs, had
+waited for hours on purpose to secure the male, but always without
+result.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. William Brewster wrote: "I have found, or seen <i>in situ</i>,
+twelve hummers' nests, all in Massachusetts. Of these I took
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+nine, after watching each a short time, probably not more than an hour
+or two in any case. Of the remaining three, I visited one three or four
+times at various hours of the day, another only twice, the third but
+once. Two of the three contained young when found. The third was
+supposed to have young, also, but could not be examined without danger
+to its contents. I have never seen a male hummer anywhere near a nest,
+either before or after the eggs were laid, but, as you will gather from
+the above brief data, my experience has not been extensive; and in the
+old days, when most of my nests were found, the methods of close
+watching now in vogue were unthought of. In the light of the testimony
+to which you refer, I should conclude, with you, that the male hummer
+must occasionally assist in the care of the young, but I am very sure
+that this is not usually, if indeed often, the case."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. H. W. Henshaw reported a similar experience. He had found four
+nests of the ruby-throat, but had seen no male about any of them after
+nidification was begun. "I confess," he says, "that I had never thought
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+of his absence as being other than accidental, and hence have
+never made any observations directly upon the point; so that
+my testimony is of comparatively little value. In at least one
+instance, when the female was building her nest, I remember to have
+seen the male fly with her and perch near by, while she was
+shaping the nest, and then fly off with her after more material.
+I don't like to believe that the little villain leaves the entire
+task of nidification to his better half (we may well call her better,
+if he does); but my memory is a blank so far as testimony affirmative
+of his devotion is concerned." Mr. Henshaw recalls an experience with
+a nest of the <a name="rivoli" id="rivoli">Rivoli humming-bird (<i>Eugenes
+fulgens</i>)</a>, in Arizona,&mdash;a nest which he spent two hours in
+getting. "I was particularly anxious to secure the male, but did not
+obtain a glimpse of him, and I remember thinking that it was very
+strange." He adds that Mr. C. W. Richmond has told him of finding a nest
+and taking the eggs without seeing the father bird, and sums up his own
+view of the matter thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Had any one asked me offhand, 'Does <span class='pagenum'>
+<a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> the male hummer help
+the female feed the young?' I am quite sure I should have answered, 'Of
+course he does.' As the case now stands, however, I am inclined to
+believe him a depraved wretch."</p>
+
+<p>Up to this point the testimony of my correspondents had been unanimous,
+but the unanimity was broken by Dr. C. Hart Merriam, who remembers that
+on one occasion his attention was called to a nest (it proved to contain
+a 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 the
+vicinity of a nest occupied by young ones, although he did not see him
+feed or visit them. This nest, Mr. Jeffries says, was one of five which
+he has found. In the four other instances no male birds were observed,
+notwithstanding three of the nests were taken,&mdash;a tragedy which
+might be expected to bring the father of the family upon the scene, if
+he were anywhere within call.</p>
+
+<p>In view of the foregoing evidence, it appears to me reasonably
+certain that the male ruby-throat, as a rule, takes no considerable
+part in the care of eggs and young. The <span class='pagenum'>
+<a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>testimony covers
+not less than fifty nests. Some of them were watched assiduously, nearly
+all were examined, and the greater part were actually taken; yet of the
+fifty or more male proprietors, only two were seen; and concerning these
+exceptions, it is to be noticed that in one case the eggs were just
+laid, and in the other, while the hungry nestlings must have kept the
+mother bird extremely busy, her mate was not observed to do anything in
+the way of lightening her labors.</p>
+
+<p>As against this preponderance of negative testimony, and in
+corroboration of Mr. Lowell's and Mrs. Treat's circumstantial
+narratives, there remain to be mentioned the fact communicated to me by
+Mr. 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 their
+attentions, and the following very interesting and surprising story
+received from Mr. C. C. Darwin, of Washington, through the kindness of
+Mr. Henshaw. Some years ago, as it appears, a pair of ruby-throats built
+a nest within a few feet of Mr. Darwin's window and a little below it, so
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+that they could be watched without fear of disturbing them. He remembers
+perfectly that the male fed the female during the entire period 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 the father was never
+seen to take her place. Mr. Darwin cannot say that the male ever fed the
+young ones, but is positive that he was frequently about the nest after
+they were hatched. While they were still too young to fly, a gardener, in
+pruning the tree, sawed off the limb on which the nest was built. Mr.
+Darwin's mother rescued the little ones and fed them with sweetened water,
+and on her son's return at night the branch was fixed in place again, as
+best it could be, by means of wires. Meanwhile the old birds had
+disappeared, having given up their children for lost; and it was not until
+the third day that they came back,&mdash;by chance, perhaps, or out of
+affection for the spot. At once they resumed the care of their offspring,
+who by this time, it is safe to say, had become more or less surfeited
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
+with sugar and water, and gladly returned to a diet of spiders and
+other such spicy and hearty comestibles.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Henshaw, with an evident satisfaction which does him honor, remarks
+upon the foregoing story as proving that, whatever may be true of male
+hummers in general, there are at least some faithful Benedicts among
+them. For myself, indeed, as I have already said, I hold no brief
+against the ruby-throat, and, notwithstanding the seemingly unfavorable
+result of my investigation into his habits as a husband and father, it
+is by no means clear to me that we must call him hard names. Before
+doing that, we ought to know not only that he stays away from his wife
+and children, but <i>why</i> he stays away; whether he is really a shirk,
+or absents himself unselfishly and for their better protection, at the
+risk of being misunderstood and traduced. My object in this paper is to
+raise that question about him, rather than to blacken his character; in a
+word, to call attention to him, not as a reprobate, but as a mystery. To
+that end I return to the story of my own observations.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+<p>In last month's article<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> I set forth somewhat
+in detail (if the adverb seem inappropriate, as I fear it will, I can only
+commend it to the reader's mercy) the closeness of our watch upon the nest
+there described. For more than a month it was under the eye of one or
+other of two men almost from morning till night. We did not once detect
+the presence of the father, and yet I shall never feel absolutely sure
+that he did not one day pay us a visit. I mention the circumstance for
+what it may be worth, and because, whatever its import, it was at least a
+lively spectacle. It occurred upon this wise: On the 19th of July, the
+day when the first of the young birds bade good-by to its cradle, I had
+gone into the house, leaving my fellow-observer in the orchard, with a
+charge to call me if anything noteworthy should happen. I was hardly
+seated before he whistled loudly, and I hastened out again. Another
+hummer had been there, he said, and the mother had been chasing him
+(or her) about in a frantic manner; and even while we were
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+talking, the scene was re&euml;nacted. The stranger had returned, and
+the two birds were shooting hither and thither through the trees, the
+widow squeaking and spreading 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 been the recreant husband and father, unable longer to
+deny himself a look at his bairns,&mdash;who knows? Or it may have been
+some bachelor or widower who had come a-wooing. One thing is
+certain,&mdash;husband, lover, or inquisitive stranger, he had no
+encouragement to come again.</p>
+
+<p>As if to heighten the dramatic interest of our studies (I come now to
+the promised mystery), we had already had the singular good fortune to
+find a male humming-bird who seemed to be stationed permanently in a
+tall ash-tree, standing by itself in a recent clearing, at a distance of
+a mile or more from our widow's orchard. Day after day, for at least a
+fortnight (from the 2d to the 15th of July), he remained there. One or
+both of us went almost daily to call upon him, and, as far as we
+could make out, he seldom absented himself from his post for
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>
+five minutes together! What was he doing? At first, in spite of his sex,
+it was hard not to believe that his nest was in the tree; and to satisfy
+himself, my companion "shinned" it, schoolboy fashion,&mdash;a frightful
+piece of work, which put me out of breath even to look at
+it,&mdash;while I surveyed the branches from all sides through an
+opera-glass. All was without avail. Nothing was to be seen, and it was
+as good as certain, the branches being well separated, and easily
+overlooked, that there was nothing there.</p>
+
+<p>Four days later I set out alone, to try my luck with the riddle. As I
+entered the clearing, the hummer was seen at his post, and my suspicions
+fastened upon a small wild apple-tree, perhaps twenty rods distant. I
+went to examine it, and presently the bird followed me. He perched in
+its top, but seemed not to be jealous of my proximity, and soon returned
+to his customary position; but when I came back to the apple-tree, after
+a visit to a clump of oaks at the top of the hill, he again came over. I
+could 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 nest
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+been near by. After this I went to the edge of the wood, where
+I could keep an eye upon both trees without being myself conspicuous.
+The sentinel spent most of his time in the ash, visiting the apple-tree
+but once, and then for a few minutes only. I stayed an hour and a half,
+and came away no wiser than before. The nest, if nest there was, must be
+elsewhere, I believed. But where? And what was the object of the male's
+watch?</p>
+
+<p>My curiosity was fully roused. I had never seen or heard
+of such conduct on the part of any bird, and the next forenoon
+I spent another hour and a half in the clearing. The hummer
+was at his post, as he always was. We had never to wait
+for him. Soon after my arrival he flew to the apple-tree,
+the action seeming to have no connection with my presence.
+Presently he went back to the ash, and drove out of it two
+intruding birds. A moment later two humming-birds were there,
+and in another moment they flew away in a direction opposite
+to the apple-tree. Here, then, was a real clue. The birds
+were probably our sentinel and his mate. I made after them
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+with all speed, pausing under such scattered trees as had been
+left standing in that quarter. Nothing was to be found, and on
+my return there sat the male, provokingly, at the top of the
+apple-tree, whence he soon returned to the ash. A warbler entered
+the tree, and after a while ventured upon the branch where the
+hummer was sitting. Instead of driving her away he took wing
+himself, and paid another visit to the apple-tree,&mdash;a visit
+of perhaps five minutes,&mdash;at the end of which he went back to
+the ash. Then two <a name="kingbird148" id="kingbird148">kingbirds</a>
+happened to alight in the apple-tree. At once the hummer came
+dashing over and ordered them off, and in his excitement dropped
+for a moment into the leafy top of a birch sapling,&mdash;a most
+unnatural proceeding,&mdash;after which he 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 was
+in neither! He sat motionless for five minutes at a time upon
+certain dead twigs of the ash, precisely as our female was
+accustomed to sit in her apple-tree. For at least seven days
+he had been thus occupied. Where was his mate? On the edge of the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+wood, perhaps. But, if so, why did I hear nothing from her, as I passed
+up and down? Again my hour and a half had been spent to no purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Not yet discouraged, I returned the next morning. For the three
+quarters of an hour that I remained, the hummer was not once out
+of the ash-tree for five minutes. I am not sure that he left it for
+five minutes altogether. As usual, he perched almost without exception
+on one or other of two dead limbs, while a similar branch, on the
+opposite side of the trunk, he was never seen to touch. A
+<a name="maryland149" id="maryland149">Maryland yellow-throat</a>
+alighted on one of his two branches and began to sing, but had repeated
+his strain only three or four times before the hummer, who had been
+absent for the moment, darted upon him and put him to flight. A little
+afterward, a red-eyed vireo alighted on his other favorite perch, and he
+showed no resentment. The day before, a warbler had sat on the same
+branch which the yellow-throat now invaded, and the hummer not only did
+not offer to molest him, but flew away himself. These inconsistencies
+made it hard to draw any inference from his behavior. During
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+my whole stay he did not once go to the apple-tree, although, for want
+of anything better to do, I again scrutinized its branches. This time I
+<i>was</i> discouraged, and gave over the search. His secret, whatever it
+might be, was "too dear for my possessing." But my fellow-observer kept
+up his visits, as I have said, and the hummer remained faithful to his
+task as late as July 15th, at least.</p>
+
+<p>Some readers may be prompted to ask, as one of my correspondents asked
+at the time, whether the mysterious sentry may not have been the mate of
+our home bird. I see no ground for such a suspicion. The two places were
+at 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 as
+well have been on Mount Washington. Nor can I believe that he had any
+connection with a nest found two months afterward in a pitch-pine grove
+within a quarter of a mile, more or less, of his clearing. It was
+undoubtedly a nest of that season, and might have been his for aught I
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+know, so far as the mere fact of distance was concerned; but
+here again an intervening wood must have cut off all visual
+communication. If his mate and nest were not within view from his
+ash-tree perch, what could be the meaning of his conduct? Without some
+specific constraining motive, no bird in his normal condition was likely
+to stay in one tree hour after hour, day after day, and week after week,
+so that one could never come in sight of it without seeing him. But even
+if his nest was in the immediate neighborhood, the closeness and
+persistency of his lookout are still, to my mind, an absolute mystery.
+Our female bird, whether she had eggs or offspring, made nothing of
+absenting herself by the half hour; but this male hardly gave himself
+time to eat his necessary food; indeed, I often wondered how he kept
+himself alive. Is such a course of action habitual with male hummers? If
+so, had our seemingly widowed or deserted mother a husband, who
+somewhere, unseen by us, was standing sentry after the same heroic,
+self-denying fashion? These and all similar questions I must
+leave to more fortunate observers, or postpone to a future
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+summer. Meantime, my judgment as to the male ruby-throat's character
+remains in suspense. It is not plain to me whether we are to call him
+the worst or the best of husbands.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h6>FOOTNOTES:</h6>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a>
+These two humming-bird papers were printed in consecutive numbers
+of <i>The Atlantic Monthly</i>, June and July, 1891.</p></div></div>
+
+<hr>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+<h3><a name="ROBIN_ROOSTS" id="ROBIN_ROOSTS"></a>ROBIN ROOSTS.</h3>
+<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><center><small>
+<span class="i1-5">"From every side they hurried in,</span>
+<span class="i0">Rubbing their sleepy eyes."</span>
+<span class="i16"><span class="smcap">Keats.</span></span>
+</small></center></div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Of</span> all the nearly eight hundred species of
+North American birds, the robin is without question the one most generally
+known. Its great commonness and wide distribution have something to do
+with this fact, but can hardly be said to account for it altogether. The
+<a name="redeye153" id="redeye153">red-eyed vireo</a> has almost as
+extensive a range, and at least in New England is possibly more
+numerous; but except among ornithologists it remains a stranger, even to
+country-bred people. The robin owes its universal recognition partly to
+its size and perfectly distinctive dress, partly to its early arrival in
+the spring, but especially to the nature of its nesting and feeding
+habits, which bring it constantly under every one's eye.</p>
+
+<p>It would seem impossible, at this late day, <span class='pagenum'>
+<a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> to say anything
+new about so familiar a bird; but the robin has one interesting and
+remarkable habit, to which there is no allusion in any of our
+systematic ornithological treatises, so far as I am aware, although
+many individual observers must have taken notice of it. I mean the
+habit of roosting at night in large flocks, while still on its
+breeding grounds, and long before the close of the breeding
+season.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p>
+
+<p>Toward the end of summer, two years ago, I saw what looked like
+a daily passage back and forth of small companies of robins. A friend,
+living in another town, had noticed similar occurrences, and more than
+once we discussed the subject; agreeing that such movements were
+probably not connected in any way with the grand southward migration,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+which, so far as we could judge, had not yet commenced, but that the
+birds must be flying to and from some nightly resort. The flocks were
+small, however, and neither of us suspected the full significance of
+what we had seen.</p>
+
+<p>On the 19th of July, 1889, the same friend informed me that one of our
+Cambridge ornithologists had found a robin roost in that city,&mdash;a
+wood in which great numbers of birds congregated every night. This led
+me to keep a sharper eye upon my own robins, whom I had already noticed
+repeating their previous year's man&oelig;uvres. Every evening, shortly
+before and after sunset, they were to be seen flying, now singly, now by
+twos and threes, or even by the half dozen, evidently on their way to
+some rendezvous. I was suspicious of a rather distant hill-top covered
+with pine-trees; but before I could make it convenient to visit
+the place at the proper hour, I discovered, quite unexpectedly,
+that the roost 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 dense growth of gray birches and swamp white oaks, but
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+with a sprinkling of maples and other deciduous trees. It is bounded on
+the further side by a wet meadow, and at the eastern end by a little
+ice-pond, with a dwelling-house and other buildings beside it, all
+within a stone's throw of the wood.</p>
+
+<p>This discovery was made on the evening of July 25th, and I at once
+crossed a narrow field between the wood and the highway, and pushed in
+after the birds. It was too dark for me to see what was going on, but as
+I brushed against the close branches the robins set up a lively
+cackling, and presently commenced flying from tree to tree before me as
+I advanced, though plainly with no intention of deserting their
+quarters. The place was full of them, but I could form no estimate of
+their number.</p>
+
+<p>On the following evening I took my stand upon a little knoll
+commanding the western end of the wood. According to my notes, the
+birds began to arrive about sunset,&mdash;but this was pretty
+certainly an error,&mdash;and though I did not undertake an exact
+count until the flight was mainly over, it seemed likely that at
+least three hundred passed in at that point. This would have made the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+total number twelve hundred, or thereabout, on the assumption that my
+outlook had covered a quarter of the circuit. After the flight ceased I
+went into the wood, and from the commotion overhead it was impossible
+not to believe that such a calculation must be well within the truth.</p>
+
+<p>The next day was rainy, but on the evening of the 28th I stood by the
+shore of the pond, on the eastern side of the wood, and made as accurate
+a count as possible of the arrivals at that point. Unfortunately I was
+too late; the robins were already coming. But in fifty minutes, between
+6.40 and 7.30, I counted 1072 birds. They appeared singly and in small
+flocks, 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 how
+many might be passing in on the left. If my observations comprehended a
+quarter of the circle, and if the influx was equally great on the other
+sides (an assumption afterward disproved), then it was safe to set the
+whole number of birds at five thousand or more. Of the 1072 actually seen,
+797 came before the sunset gun was fired,&mdash;a proportion somewhat
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
+larger than it would have been had the sky been clear.</p>
+
+<p>On the afternoon of the 29th I again counted the arrivals at
+the eastern end; but though I set out, as I thought, in good
+season, I found myself once more behind time. At 6.30 robins
+were already dropping in, notwithstanding the sky was cloudless.
+In the first five minutes eighteen birds appeared; at sunset 818
+had been counted; and at 7.30, when I came away, the figures
+stood at 1267. "The robins came more rapidly than last night,"
+I wrote in my notebook, "and for much of the time I could keep
+watch of the southeastern corner only. My vision then covered much
+less than a quarter of the circuit; so that if the birds came as freely
+from other directions, at least five thousand must have entered the wood
+between 6.30 and 7.30. As long as it was light they avoided passing
+directly by me, going generally to the left, and slipping into the
+roost behind some low outlying trees; though, fortunately, in doing
+this they were compelled to cross a narrow patch of the illuminated
+western sky. I suspect that the number increases from night to night.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+Between 6.40 and 7.30, 1235 birds came, as compared with 1072 last
+evening."</p>
+
+<p>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 I
+arrived late, and made a partial count only. After sunset 186 birds were
+seen, whereas there had been 455 entries at the eastern end, two nights
+before, during the same time.</p>
+
+<p>Thus far I had always been too late to witness the beginning of the
+flight. On the evening of August 1st I resolved to be in season. I
+reached the border of the pond at 5.15, and at that very moment a single
+robin flew into the wood. No others were seen for eighteen minutes, when
+three arrived together. From this time stragglers continued to appear,
+and at 6.30 I had counted 176. In the next ten minutes 180 arrived; in
+the next five minutes, 138. Between 6.45 and 7, I counted 549; then, in
+six minutes, 217 appeared. At 7.25, when I concluded, the figures stood
+at 1533 birds. For about twenty minutes, as will be noticed, the arrivals
+were at the rate of thirty-six a minute. Throughout the thickest of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
+the flight I could keep a lookout upon only one side of me, and,
+moreover, the gathering darkness was by that time making it more and
+more difficult to see any birds except such as passed above the dark
+tree line; and from what went on just about me, it was evident that the
+number of arrivals was increasing rather than diminishing as my count
+fell off. There seemed to be no good reason for doubting that at least
+two thousand robins entered the wood at the eastern end.</p>
+
+<p>Two nights later I stationed myself in the meadow southwest of the
+roost. Here I counted but 935 entries. The movement appeared to be fully
+as steady as on the opposite side, but as darkness came on I found
+myself at a great disadvantage; a hill occupied the background, giving
+me no illuminated sky to bring the birds into relief, so that I could
+see only such as passed close at hand. Of the 935 birds, 761 came before
+seven o'clock, but it was reasonably certain that the flight afterward
+was nearly or quite as great, only that I wanted light wherewith to see
+it.</p>
+
+<p>On the evening of August 4th I went back to the eastern end,
+and as the sky was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161"
+id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>perfectly clear I hoped to make
+a gain upon all my previous figures. But the fair weather was perhaps a
+hindrance rather than a help; for the robins came later than before, and
+more in a body, and continued to arrive long after it was impossible to
+see them. I counted 1480,&mdash;53 less than on the 1st.</p>
+
+<p>I attempted no further enumeration until the 18th. Then,
+in an hour and ten 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 of the time I missed all
+except the comparatively small number that passed in my immediate
+vicinity. Many were flying at a great height,&mdash;having come
+from a long distance, as I inferred,&mdash;and sometimes I knew
+nothing of their approach till they dropped out of the sky
+directly over the wood. On this occasion, as well as on many
+others,&mdash;but chiefly during the latter part of the
+season,&mdash;it was noticeable that some of the robins 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 note
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+of one fellow, who came from the south at a great altitude, and went
+directly over the wood. When he was well past it he suddenly pulled
+himself up, as if fancying he had caught a signal. After a moment of
+hesitation he proceeded on his northerly course, but had not gone far
+before he met half a dozen birds flying south. Perhaps he asked them the
+way. At all events, he wheeled about and joined them, and in half a
+minute was safe in port. He had heard of the roost, apparently (how and
+where?), but had not before visited it.</p>
+
+<p>This count of August 18th was the last for nearly a month, but I find
+a minute of August 27th stating that, while walking along the highway
+on the westerly side of the roost,&mdash;the side that had always been
+the least populous,&mdash;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 of the gathering. Indeed, from my friend's observations
+upon the Belmont roost, to be mentioned later, it seems well-nigh
+certain that it was still upon the increase.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+<p>Toward the close of August I became interested in the late singing
+of several whippoorwills, and so was taken away from the robins'
+haunt at the hour of sunset. Then, from the 5th to the 13th of
+September, I was absent from home. On the night of my return I went to
+the shore of the pond, where, on the 1st of August, I had counted 1533
+entries. The weather was favorable, and I arrived in good season and
+remained till the stars came out, but I counted only 137 robins! It was
+plain that the great majority of the congregation had departed.</p>
+
+<p>As I have said, there was little to be learned by going into the wood
+after the robins were assembled. Nevertheless I used frequently to
+intrude upon them, especially as friends or neighbors, who had heard of
+my "discovery," were desirous to see the show. The prodigious cackling
+and rustling overhead seemed to make a deep impression upon all such
+visitors, while, for myself, I should have had no difficulty in
+crediting the statement had I been told that <i>ten thousand</i>
+robins were in the treetops. One night I took two friends
+to the place after it was really dark. All was silent as we felt
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+our way among the trees, till, suddenly, one of the trio struck a match
+and kindled a blaze of dry twigs. The smoke and flame speedily waked the
+sleepers; but even then they manifested no disposition to be driven out.
+</p>
+
+<p>For curiosity's sake, I paid one early morning visit to the
+roost, on the 30th of July. It would be worth while, I thought, to
+see how much music so large a chorus would make, as well as to note
+the manner of its dispersion. To tell the truth, I hoped for something
+spectacular,&mdash;a grand burst of melody, and then a pouring forth
+of a dense, uncountable army of robins. I arrived about 3.40 (it was
+still hardly light enough to show the face of the watch), and found
+everything quiet. Pretty soon the robins commenced cackling. At 3.45
+a song sparrow sang, and at the same moment I saw a robin fly out of
+the wood. Five minutes later a robin sang; at 3.55 another one flew
+past me; at four o'clock a few of the birds were in song, but the
+effect was not in any way peculiar,&mdash;very much as if two or three
+had been singing in the ordinary manner. They dispersed precisely as
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+I had seen them gather: now a single bird, now two or three, now six, or
+even ten. A casual passer along the road would have remarked nothing out
+of the common course. They flew low,&mdash;not as if they were starting
+upon any prolonged flight,&mdash;and a goodly number alighted for a
+little in the field where I was standing. Shortly before sunrise I went
+into the wood and found it deserted. The robin is one of our noisiest
+birds. Who would have believed that an assembly of thousands could break
+up so quietly? Their behavior in this regard may possibly have been
+influenced by prudential considerations. I have said that many of them
+seemingly took pains to approach the roost indirectly and under cover.
+On the westerly side, for example, they almost invariably followed a
+line of bushes and trees which runs toward the roost along the edge of
+the meadow, even though they were obliged sharply to alter their course
+in so doing.</p>
+
+<p>All this time I had been in correspondence with my friend before
+referred to, who was studying a similar roost,<a name="FNanchor_15_15"
+id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a>
+&mdash;in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a>
+</span>Belmont,&mdash;which proved to be more populous than mine,
+as was to be expected, perhaps, the surrounding country being less
+generally wooded. It was a mile or more from his house, which was so
+situated that he could sit upon his piazza in the evening and watch the
+birds streaming past. On the 11th of August he counted here 556 robins,
+of which 336 passed within five minutes. On the 28th he counted 1180, of
+which 456 passed within five minutes,&mdash;ninety-one a minute! On the
+2d of September, from a knoll nearer the roost, he counted 1883 entries.</p>
+
+<p>This gathering, like the one in Melrose, was greatly
+depleted by the middle of September. "Only 109 robins flew
+over the place to-night," my correspondent wrote on the
+25th, "against 538 September 4th, 838 August 30th, and 1180
+August 28th." Two evenings later (September 27th) he went to
+the neighborhood of the roost, and counted 251 birds,&mdash;instead
+of 1883 on the 2d. Even so late as October 9th, however,
+the wood was not entirely deserted. During the last month
+or so of its occupancy, the number of the birds was apparently
+subject to sudden and wide fluctuations, and it seemed
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+not unlikely that travelers from the north were making a temporary use
+of the well-known resort. It would not be surprising 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.</p>
+
+<p>How early in the season does this nightly flocking begin? This
+question often presented itself. It was only the middle of July when the
+Cambridge roost was found in full operation, though at that time many
+robins must still have had family duties, and some were probably
+building new nests. Next summer, we said, we would try to mark the
+beginnings of the congregation.</p>
+
+<p>My own plans to this end came near being thwarted. In December I was
+dismayed to see the owner of the wood cutting it down. Happily some kind
+power stayed his hand when not more than a third of the mischief was
+done, and on the 29th of June, 1890, while strolling homeward along the
+highway, listening to the distant song of a veery, I noticed within five
+or ten minutes seventeen robins making toward the old rendezvous.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+On the following evening I stood beside the ice-pond and saw one hundred
+and ninety-two robins enter the wood. The flight had begun before my
+arrival, and was not entirely over when I came away. Evidently several
+hundreds of the birds were already passing their nights in company. In
+my ignorance, I was surprised at the early date; but when I communicated
+my discovery to the Belmont observer, he replied at once that he had
+noticed a movement of the same kind on the 11th of June. The birds,
+about a dozen, were seen passing his house.</p>
+
+<p>Thinking over the matter, I began to ask myself&mdash;though I hesitate
+about making such a confession&mdash;whether it might not be the adult
+males who thus unseasonably went off to bed in a crowd, leaving their
+mates to care for eggs and little ones. At this very moment, as it
+happened, I was watching with lively sympathy the incessant activities
+of a female humming-bird, who appeared to be bringing up a family (two
+very hungry nestlings), with no husband to lift a finger for her
+assistance; and the sight, as I fear, put me into a cynical mood.
+Male robins were probably like males in general,&mdash;lovers
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
+of clubs and shirkers of home duties. Indeed, a friend who went
+into the roost with me, one evening, remarked upon the continual
+cackling in the treetops as "a very social sound;" and upon my
+saying something about a sewing circle, he answered, quite
+seriously, "No, it is rather like a gentleman's club." But
+it would have been unscientific, as well as unchristian,
+to entertain an hypothesis like this without putting its
+soundness to some kind of test. I adopted the only plan that
+occurred to me,&mdash;short of rising at half past two o'clock
+in the morning to see the birds disperse. I entered the wood
+just before the assemblage was due (this was on the 9th of
+July), and took a sheltered position on the eastern edge,
+where, as the robins flew by me, or alighted temporarily in
+the trees just across the brook, they would have the sunlight
+upon their breasts. Here, as often as one came sufficiently near
+and in a sufficiently favorable light, I noted whether it was
+an adult, or a streaked, spotted bird of the present season.
+As a matter of course, the number concerning which this point
+could be positively determined under such conditions was very
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+small,&mdash;only fifty-seven altogether. Of these, forty-nine were
+surely birds of the present summer, and only eight unmistakable adult
+males. If any adult females came in, they passed among the unidentified
+and uncounted. <a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a>
+<a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> I was glad I had made the
+test. As a kind-hearted cynic (I confess to being nothing worse than
+this), I was relieved to find my misanthropic, or, to speak more
+exactly, my misornithic, notions ill founded. As for the sprinkling of
+adult males, they may have been, as a "friend and fellow woodlander"
+suggests, birds which, for one reason or another, had taken up with the
+detestable opinion that "marriage is a failure."</p>
+
+<p>During the month of July, 1890, I made frequent counts of the entries
+at the eastern end of the roost, thinking thus to ascertain in a general
+way the rate at which its population increased. On the whole, the growth
+proved to be fairly steady, in spite of some mysterious fluctuations, as
+will be seen by the following table:&mdash;</p>
+<table summary="Dates" width="50%" cellpadding="1" border="0">
+  <tr>
+    <td class="list">July &nbsp;&nbsp;3</td>
+    <td class="list">247</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="list">July &nbsp;16</td>
+    <td class="list">1064</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="list">&nbsp;"&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;5</td>
+    <td class="list">383</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="list">&nbsp;&nbsp; " &nbsp;&nbsp; 17</td>
+    <td class="list">1333</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="list">&nbsp;"&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;6</td>
+    <td class="list">356</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="list">&nbsp;&nbsp; " &nbsp;&nbsp; 19</td>
+    <td class="list">1584</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="list">&nbsp;&nbsp; " &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;10</td>
+    <td class="list"> 765</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="list">&nbsp;&nbsp; " &nbsp;&nbsp; 22</td>
+    <td class="list">1520</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="list">&nbsp;&nbsp; " &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;12</td>
+    <td class="list"> 970</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="list">&nbsp;&nbsp; " &nbsp;&nbsp; 23</td>
+    <td class="list">1453</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="list">&nbsp;&nbsp; " &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;14</td>
+    <td class="list"> 1120</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</td>
+    <td class="list">&nbsp;&nbsp; " &nbsp;&nbsp; 27</td>
+    <td class="list">2314</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>After July 6th all the enumerations were made with the help of another
+man, though we stood side by side, and covered no more ground than I had
+hitherto attempted to compass alone. The figures of the 27th were far in
+excess of any obtained in 1889, and for a day I was disposed to take
+seriously the suggestion of a friend that some other roost must have
+been broken up and its members turned into the Melrose gathering. But
+on the evening of the 28th I tried a count by myself, and made only
+1517 birds! The conditions were favorable, and the robins came, as
+they had come the night before, in flocks, almost in continuous
+streams. The figures had fallen off, not because there were fewer
+birds, but because I was unable to count them. They were literally
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+too many for me. The difficulties of the work, it should be explained,
+are greatly enhanced by the fact that at the very corner where the
+influx is largest none of the low-flying birds can be seen except for a
+second or two, as they dart across a bit of sky between the roost and an
+outlying wood. To secure anything like a complete census, this point
+must be watched continuously; and meantime birds are streaming in at the
+other corner and shooting over the distracted enumerator's head, and
+perhaps dropping out of the sky. I conclude, therefore, not that the
+roost had increased in population, but that my last year's reckoning was
+even more inadequate than I then supposed. Even with two pairs of eyes,
+it is inevitable that multitudes of birds should pass in unnoticed,
+especially during the latter half of the flight. I have never had an
+assistant or a looker-on to whom this was not perfectly apparent.</p>
+
+<p>As I stood night after night watching the robins stream
+into this little wood,&mdash;no better, surely, than many
+they had passed on their way,&mdash;I asked myself again
+and again what could be the motive that drew them <span class='pagenum'>
+<a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>together.
+The flocking of birds for a long journey, or in the winter season, is
+less mysterious. In times of danger and distress there is no doubt a
+feeling of safety in a crowd. But robins cannot be afraid of the dark.
+Why, then, should not each sleep upon its own feeding grounds, alone, or
+with a few neighbors for company, instead of flying two or three miles,
+more or less, twice a day, simply for the sake of passing the night in a
+general roost?</p>
+
+<p>Such questions we must perhaps be content to ask without expecting an
+answer. By nature the robin is strongly gregarious, and though his
+present mode of existence does not permit him to live during the summer
+in close communities,&mdash;as marsh wrens do, for example, and some of
+our swallows,&mdash;his ancestral passion for society still asserts
+itself at nightfall. Ten or twelve years ago, when I was bird-gazing
+in Boston, there were sometimes a hundred robins at once about
+the Common and Garden, in the time of the vernal migration. By
+day they were scattered over the lawns; but at sunset they gathered
+habitually in two or three contiguous trees, not far from the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+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,&mdash;if going to sleep in a leafless
+treetop can be called retiring.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever the origin and reason of this roosting habit, I have no
+doubt that it is universal. Middlesex County birds cannot be in any
+respect peculiar. Whoever will keep a close eye upon the robins in his
+neighborhood, in July and August, will find them at sunset flocking to
+some general sleeping-place.</p>
+
+<p>It would be interesting to know how far they travel at such times. The
+fact that so many hundreds were to be seen at a point more than a mile
+away from the Belmont roost is significant; but I am not aware that any
+one has yet made a study of this part of the subject. My own birds
+seemed to come, as a rule, by easy stages. In the long narrow valley east
+of the roost, where I oftenest watched their approach, they followed
+habitually&mdash;not invariably&mdash;a zigzag route, crossing the meadow
+diagonally, and for the most part alighting for a little upon a certain
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+wooded hill, whence they took a final flight to their nightly haven,
+perhaps a quarter of a mile beyond. Farther down the valley, a mile or
+more from the roost, birds were to be seen flying toward it, but I found
+no place at which a general movement could be observed and large numbers
+counted.</p>
+
+<p>As to the size of these nightly gatherings, it seems wisest not to
+guess; though, treating the subject in this narrative manner, I have not
+scrupled to mention, simply as a part of the story, some of my temporary
+surmises. What I am told of the Belmont wood is true also of the one in
+Melrose: its shape and situation are such as to make an accurate census
+impossible, no matter how many "enumerators" might be employed. It could
+be surrounded easily enough, but it would be out of the question to
+divide the space among the different men so that no two of them should
+count the same birds. At present it can only be said that the robins are
+numbered by thousands; in some cases, perhaps, by tens of thousands.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h6>FOOTNOTES:</h6>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a>
+Mr. William Brewster has been aware of this habit for twenty-five
+years, but, like myself, has never seen it mentioned in print. He
+devotes to it a paper in <i>The Auk</i> for October, 1890, to which I am
+happy to refer readers who may wish a more thorough discussion of the
+matter than I have been able to give. My own paper was printed at the
+same time, in <i>The Atlantic Monthly</i>, and had been accepted by the
+editor before I knew of Mr. Brewster's intention to write. References to
+a roost in Belmont, Mass., discovered by Mr. Brewster six years before,
+are frequent in the following pages.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a>
+This roost was discovered by Mr. William Brewster, in August, 1884,
+as already mentioned.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a>
+<a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a>
+A week later, my correspondent reported a similar state of things
+at the Belmont roost. "A very large proportion of the birds are
+spotted-breasted young of the year, but occasionally I have detected an
+adult male." He examined the birds at near range, and at rest, after
+they had come into the roost in the earlier part of the evening.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+<h3><a name="THE_PASSING_OF_THE_BIRDS" id="THE_PASSING_OF_THE_BIRDS"></a>
+THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS.</h3>
+<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><center><small>
+<span class="i0">"The Bird of Time has but a little way</span>
+<span class="i2">To flutter&mdash;and the Bird is on the Wing."</span>
+<span class="i16"><span class="smcap">Omar Khayy&aacute;m.</span></span>
+</small></center></div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">By</span> the first of August the bird-lover's
+year is already on the wane. In the chestnut grove, where a
+month ago the wood thrush, the rose-breasted grosbeak, and the
+<a name="tanager176" id="tanager176">scarlet tanager</a> were
+singing, the loiterer now hears nothing but the <a name="pewee176"
+id="pewee176">wood pewee's</a> pensive whistle and the sharp monotony
+of the red-eyed vireo. The thrasher is silent in the berry pasture,
+and the bobolink in the meadow. The season of jollity is over.
+<a name="baltimore176" id="baltimore176">Orioles</a>, to be sure,
+after a month of silence, again have fits of merry fifing. The
+<a name="field" id="field">field sparrow</a> and the <a
+name="songspar176" id="songspar176">song sparrow</a> are still in tune,
+and the <a name="meadow176" id="meadow176">meadow lark</a> whistles,
+though rarely. <a name="catbird" id="catbird">Catbirds</a> still practice
+their feeble improvisations and mimicries in the thickets along the
+brooksides as evening comes on, and of the multitudes of robins a few are
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+certain to be heard warbling before the day is over. <a name="goldfinch"
+id="goldfinch">Goldfinches</a> have grown suddenly numerous, or so it
+seems, and not infrequently one of them breaks out in musical canary-like
+twitterings. On moonlight evenings the tremulous, haunting cry of the
+<a name="screech" id="screech">screech-owl</a> comes to your ears, always
+from far away, and if you walk through the chestnut grove aforesaid in the
+daytime you may chance to catch his faint, vibratory, tree-frog whistle.
+For myself, I never enter the grove without glancing into the dry top of
+a certain tall tree, to see whether the little rascal is sitting in his
+open door. More than half the time he is there, and always with his eye
+on me. What an air he has!&mdash;like a judge on the bench! If I were
+half as wise as he looks, these essays of mine would never more be dull.
+For his and all other late summer music let us be thankful; but it is
+true, nevertheless, that the year is waning. How short it has been! Only
+the other day the concert opened, and already the performers are uneasy
+to be gone. They have crowded so much into so brief a space! The passion
+of a life-time into the quarter of a year! They are impatient to be gone,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+I say; but who knows how many of them are gone already? Where are the
+<a name="bluegold" id="bluegold">blue golden-winged warblers</a> that sang
+daily on the edge of the wood opposite my windows, so that I listened to
+them at my work? I have heard nothing of their rough <i>dsee, dsee</i> since
+the 21st of June, and in all that time have seen them but once&mdash;a
+single bird, a youngling of the present year, stumbled upon by accident
+while pushing 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? An odd coincidence, however, warns me at this very moment that too
+much is not to be made of merely negative experiences; for even while I
+was penciling the foregoing sentence about the blue golden-wing there came
+through the open window the hoarse upward-sliding chant of his close
+neighbor, the <a name="prairie178" id="prairie178">prairie warbler</a>. I
+have not heard that sound before since the 6th of July, and it is now the
+22d of August. The singers had not gone, 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, after being dumb for six or seven weeks, pipe
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+up at that precise moment, as if to punctuate my ruminations with an
+interrogation point? Does he like this dog-day morning, with its
+alternate shower and sunshine, and its constant stickiness and heat?
+In any case I was glad to hear him, though I cannot in the spirit
+of veracity call him a good singer. Whist! There goes an
+<a name="baltimore179" id="baltimore179">oriole</a>, a gorgeous
+creature, flashing from one elm to another, and piping in his happiest
+manner as he flies. It might be the middle of May, to judge from his
+behavior. <i>He</i> likes dog-day weather, there can be no question of that,
+however the rest of the world may grumble.</p>
+
+<p>This is a time when one sees many birds, but few species.
+<a name="bluebird179" id="bluebird179">Bluebirds</a> are several times as
+abundant as in June. The air is sweet with their calls at this moment,
+and once in a while some father of the flock lets his happiness run over
+in song. One cannot go far now without finding the road full of
+<a name="chipping" id="chipping">chipping sparrows</a>, springing
+up in their pretty, characteristic way, and letting the breeze
+catch them. The fences and wayside apple-trees are lively with
+<a name="kingbird179" id="kingbird179">kingbirds</a> and
+<a name="phoebe179" id="phoebe179">ph&oelig;bes</a>. I am already
+watching the former with a kind of mournful interest. In ten days, or
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+some such matter, we shall have seen the last of their saucy antics. Gay
+tyrants! They are among the first birds of whom I can confidently say,
+"They are gone;" and they seem as wide-awake when they go as when they
+come. Being a man, I regret their departure; but if I were a crow, I
+think I should be for observing the 31st of August as a day of annual
+jubilee.</p>
+
+<p>A few years ago, in September, I saw the <a name="swallow180"
+id="swallow180">white-breasted swallows</a> congregated in the Ipswich
+dunes,&mdash;a sight never to be forgotten. On the morning of the 9th,
+the fourth day of our visit, a considerable flock&mdash;but no more,
+perhaps, than we had been seeing daily&mdash;came skimming over the
+marshes and settled upon a sand-bar in the river, darkening it in
+patches. At eight o'clock, when we took the straggling road out of the
+hills, a good many&mdash;there might be a thousand, I guessed&mdash;sat,
+upon the fence wires, as if resting. We walked inland, and on our
+return, at noon, found, as my notes of the day express it, "an
+innumerable host, thousands upon thousands," about the landward side of
+the dunes. Fences and haycocks were covered. Multitudes were on
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+the ground,&mdash;in the bed of the road, about the bare
+spots in the marsh, and on the gray faces of the hills. Other
+multitudes were in the bushes and low trees, literally loading them.
+Every few minutes a detachment would rise into the air like a cloud,
+and anon settle down again. As we stood gazing at the spectacle, my
+companion began chirping at a youngster who sat near him on a post, as
+one might chirp to a caged canary. The effect was magical. The bird at
+once started toward him, others followed, and in a few seconds hundreds
+were flying about our heads. Round and round they went, almost within
+reach, like a cloud of gnats. "Stop! stop!" cried my companion; "I am
+getting dizzy." We stopped our squeakings, and the cloud lifted; but I
+can see it yet. Day after day the great concourse remained about the
+hills, till on the 13th we came away and left them. The old lighthouse
+keeper told me that this was their annual rendezvous. He once saw them
+circle for a long time above the dunes, for several hours, if I
+remember right, till, as it seemed, all stragglers had been called
+in from the beach, the marsh, and the outlying grassy hills. Then
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+they mounted into the sky in a great spiral till they passed out of
+sight; and for that year there were no more swallows. This, he insisted,
+took place in the afternoon, "from three to four o'clock." He was
+unquestionably telling a straightforward story of what he himself had
+seen, but his memory may have been at fault; for I find it to be the
+settled opinion of those who ought to know, that swallows migrate by day
+and not by night, while the setting out of a great flock late in the
+afternoon at such a height would seem to indicate a nocturnal journey.
+Morning or evening, I would give something to witness so imposing a
+start.</p>
+
+<p>The recollection of this seaside gathering raises anew in my mind the
+question why, if swallows and swifts migrate exclusively in the daytime,
+we so rarely see anything of them on the passage. Our Ipswich birds were
+all tree swallows,&mdash;white-breasted martins,&mdash;and might fairly
+be supposed to have come together from a comparatively limited extent
+of country. But beside tree swallows there are purple martins, barn
+swallows, sand martins, cliff swallows, and <a name="swift182"
+id="swift182">chimney swifts</a>, all of which breed to the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+northward of us in incalculable numbers. All of them go south between
+the middle of July and the first of October. But who in New 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 their grand
+concerted flights taken at such an altitude as to be invisible?</p>
+
+<p>On several afternoons of last September, this time in an inland
+country, I observed what might fairly be called a steady stream of
+<a name="swallow183" id="swallow183">tree swallows</a> flying south.
+Twice, while gazing up at the loose procession, I suddenly became aware
+of a close bunch of birds at a prodigious height, barely visible, circling
+about in a way to put a count out of the question, but evidently some
+hundreds in number. On both occasions the flock vanished almost
+immediately, and, as I believed, by soaring out of sight. The second
+time I meant to assure myself upon this point, but my attention was
+distracted by the sudden appearance of several large hawks within the
+field of my glass, and when I looked again for the swallows they were
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+nowhere to be seen. Were the stragglers which I had for some time been
+watching, flying high, but well within easy ken, and these dense, hardly
+discernible clusters&mdash;hirundine nebul&aelig;, as it were&mdash;were
+all these but parts of one innumerable host, the main body of which was
+passing far above me altogether unseen? The conjecture was one to
+gratify the imagination. It pleased me even to think that it <i>might</i> be
+true. But it was only a conjecture, and meantime another question
+presented itself.</p>
+
+<p>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 same place, or rather on the same north and south line, while
+no matter where else I walked, east or west, not a swallow was visible.
+Had I stumbled upon a regular route of swallow migration? It
+looked so, surely; but I made little account of the matter till
+a month afterward, when, in exactly the same place, I observed
+<a name="robin184" id="robin184">robins</a> and <a name="bluebird184"
+id="bluebird184">bluebirds</a> following the same course. The robins
+were seen October 26th, in four flocks, succeeding each other
+at intervals of a few minutes, and numbering in all about 130
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+birds. They flew directly south, at a moderate height, and were
+almost certainly detachments of one body. The <a name="bluebird185"
+id="bluebird185">bluebird</a> movement was two days later, at
+about the same hour, the morning being cold, with a little snow falling.
+This time, too, as it happened, the flock was in four detachments. Three
+of these were too compact to be counted as they passed; the fourth and
+largest one was in looser order and contained a little more than a
+hundred individuals. In all, as well as I could guess, there might have
+been about three hundred birds. They kept a straight 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 a mere coincidence that
+these swallows, bluebirds, and robins were all crossing the valley just
+at this point?</p>
+
+<p>This question, too, I count it safer to ask than to answer, but all
+observers, I am sure, must have remarked so much as this,&mdash;that birds,
+even on their migrations, are subject to strong local preferences. An
+ornithologist of the highest repute assures me that his own experience
+has convinced him so strongly of this fact that if he shoots a rare
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+migrant in a certain spot he makes it a rule to visit the place again a
+year afterward on the same day, and, if possible, at the same hour of
+the day. Another friend sends me a very pretty story bearing upon the
+same point. The bird of which he speaks, Wilson's black-cap warbler, is
+one of the less common of our regular Massachusetts migrants. I count
+myself fortunate if I see two or three specimens during its spring or
+autumn passage. My correspondent shall tell the story for himself.</p>
+
+<p>"While I was making the drawings for the 'Silva,' at the old Dwight
+house, I was in the habit of taking a turn every pleasant day in the
+gardens after my scanty lunch. On the 18th of May, 1887, in my daily
+round I saw a <a name="wilsons" id="wilsons">Wilson's black-cap</a>
+for the first time in my life. He was in a bush of <i>Spir&aelig;a
+media</i>, which grew in the midst of the rockery, and allowed 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 about it with my family
+when I got home. The seeing of a new bird always makes a red-letter day.
+</p>
+
+<p>"The next spring, as I was looking over <span class='pagenum'>
+<a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>my notebook of the
+previous year, I came upon my entry of May 18th, and thought I would be
+on the lookout for a black-cap on that date. Several times during the
+morning I thought of the matter, and after my lunch I sauntered into the
+rockery just as I had done the year before. Imagine my start when there,
+in the very same bush, was the black-cap peering at me; and I found on
+looking at my watch that it was precisely the same hour,&mdash;half past
+one! I rubbed 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, and talked about it, not only with my family, but also with
+other people. You must remember that I had never seen the bird
+elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>my</i> black-cap now), and wondered if it would keep tryst
+again. On the morning of the 18th, the first thing I thought of
+when I awoke was my black-cap. That forenoon I actually felt
+nervous as the time approached, for I felt a sort of certainty (you
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+smile) that I should see my bird again. My lunch was hastier than usual,
+and I was about to sally forth when it flashed across me&mdash;'Suppose
+the bird should be there again, who would believe my story? Hold! I will
+have a witness.' I called to Mr. J&mdash;&mdash;, who was at work
+upstairs, and after explaining what I wanted, invited him to accompany
+me. We cautiously entered the rockery, and within a few minutes there
+flitted from a neighboring thicket into that very Spir&aelig;a bush my
+black-cap! I took out my watch. It was just half past one!"</p>
+
+<p>My own experiences in this kind have been much less striking and
+dramatic than the foregoing, but I may add that a few years ago I
+witnessed the vernal migration in a new piece of country&mdash;ten miles
+or so from my old field&mdash;and found myself at a very considerable
+disadvantage. I had never realized till then how much accustomed I had
+grown to look for particular birds in particular places, and not in
+other places of a quite similar character.</p>
+
+<p>I speak of witnessing a migration; but what we see for the most
+part (ducks and geese being excepted) is not the actual movement
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+northward or southward. We see the stragglers, more or less numerous,
+that happen to have dropped out of the procession in our immediate
+neighborhood,&mdash;a flock of sandpipers about the edge of the pond,
+some sparrows by the roadside, a bevy of warblers in the wood,&mdash;and
+from these signs we infer the passing of the host.</p>
+
+<p>Unlike swallows, robins, bluebirds, blackbirds, and perhaps most
+of the sparrows, our smaller wood birds, the warblers and vireos
+especially, appear to move as a general thing in mixed flocks.
+Whenever the woods are full of them, as is the case now and then
+every spring and fall, one of the most striking features of the
+show is the number of species represented. For the benefit of
+readers who may never have observed such a "bird wave," or "rush,"
+let me sketch hastily one which occurred a few years ago, on the 22d
+of September. As I started out at six o'clock in the morning, in a
+cool northwest wind, birds were passing overhead in an almost continuous
+stream, following a westerly course. They were chiefly warblers, but I
+noted one fairly large flock of purple finches. All were at a good height,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
+and the whole movement had the air of a diurnal migration. I could only
+conjecture that it was the end of the nocturnal flight, so far, at least,
+as the warblers were concerned; in other words, that the birds, on this
+particular occasion, did not finish their nightly journey till a little
+after sunrise. But if many were still flying, many others had already
+halted; for presently I came to a piece of thin, stunted wood by the
+roadside, and found in it a highly interesting company. Almost the first
+specimen I saw was a <a name="connecticut" id="connecticut">Connecticut
+warbler</a> perched in full view and exposing himself perfectly.
+<a name="nuthatch190" id="nuthatch190">Red-bellied nuthatches</a> were
+calling, and warblers uncounted were flitting about in the trees and
+underbrush. A hurried search showed <a name="blackpoll190"
+id="blackpoll190">black-polls</a>, <a name="blk_throat_gr190"
+id="blk_throat_gr190">black-throated greens</a>, <a name="blueyellow190"
+id="blueyellow190">blue yellow-backs</a>, one <a name="redstart190"
+id="redstart190">redstart</a>, one black-and-white creeper, one
+<a name="blackburn190" id="blackburn190">Blackburnian</a>, one
+<a name="magnolia" id="magnolia">black-and-yellow</a>, one
+<a name="canadian190" id="canadian190">Canadian flycatcher</a>
+(singing lustily), one yellow redpoll, and one clearly-marked
+<a name="baybreast190" id="baybreast190">bay-breast</a>. The first
+<a name="yellowbelly" id="yellowbelly">yellow-bellied woodpecker</a> of
+the season was hammering in a tree over my head, and not far away was the
+first flock of <a name="whitethroat190" id="whitethroat190">white-throated
+sparrows</a>. After breakfast I passed the place <span class='pagenum'>
+<a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>again,
+and the only bird to be found was one ph&oelig;be! Within
+half a mile of the spot, however, I came upon at least three
+goodly throngs, including <a name="tanager191" id="tanager191">scarlet
+tanagers</a> (all in yellow and black), <a name="blk_throat_bl191"
+id="blk_throat_bl191">black-throated blue warblers</a>,
+<a name="pinewarbler" id="pinewarbler">pine warblers</a>,
+<a name="swainson191" id="swainson191">olive-backed</a> and
+<a name="graythrush191" id="graythrush191">gray-cheeked
+thrushes</a>, a flock of <a name="chewink" id="chewink">chewinks</a>
+(made up exclusively of adult males, so far as I could discover),
+<a name="redeye191" id="redeye191">red-eyed vireos</a>, one
+<a name="solitary191" id="solitary191">solitary vireo</a>, brown
+thrashers, with more <a name="redstart191" id="redstart191">redstarts</a>,
+a second <a name="blackburn191" id="blackburn191">Blackburnian</a>,
+and a second black-and-yellow. Every company had its complement of
+chickadees. Of the morning's forty species, thirteen were warblers; and
+of these thirteen, four were represented by one specimen each. For
+curiosity's sake I may add that a much longer walk that afternoon,
+through the same and other woods, was utterly barren. Except for two or
+three flocks of white-throated sparrows; there was no sign whatever that
+the night before had brought us a "flight."</p>
+
+<p><a name="ornithol" id="ornithol">Autumnal ornithology</a>
+may almost be called a science by itself. Not only are birds
+harder to find (being silent) and harder to recognize in autumn
+than in spring, but their movements are in themselves more difficult
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+of observation. A few years of note-taking will put one in possession of
+the approximate dates of arrival of all our common vernal migrants. Every
+local observer will tell you when to look for each of the familiar birds
+of his neighborhood; but he will not be half so ready with information
+as to the time of the same birds' departure. Ask him about a few of
+the commonest,&mdash;the least flycatcher and the oven-bird, or the
+<a name="summeryellow" id="summeryellow">golden warbler</a> and the
+<a name="maryland192" id="maryland192">Maryland yellow-throat</a>. He
+will answer, perhaps, that he has seen Maryland yellow-throats in early
+October, and golden warblers in early September; but he will very likely
+add that these were probably voyagers from the North, and that he has
+never made out just when his own summer birds take their leave.</p>
+
+<p>After the work of nidification is over, birds as a rule wander more
+or less from their breeding haunts; and even if they do not wander
+they are likely to become silent. If we miss them, therefore, we are
+not to conclude as a matter of course that they have gone south.
+Last year, during the early part of the season, <a name="cuckoo"
+id="cuckoo">cuckoos</a> were unusually plentiful, as it seemed to me. Then I
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+discovered all at once that there were none to be found. After the first
+of July I neither saw nor heard a cuckoo of either species! Had they
+moved away? I do not know; but the case may be taken as an extreme
+illustration of the uncertainty attaching to the late-summer doings of
+birds in general. Every student must have had experiences of a sort to
+make him slow to dogmatize when such points are in question. Throughout
+May and June, for example, he has heard and seen wood thrushes in a
+certain grove. After that, for a whole month, he hears and sees nothing,
+though he is frequently there. The thrushes have gone? So it would seem.
+But then, suddenly, they are singing again in the very same trees, and
+he is forced to conclude that they have not been away, but during their
+period of midsummer silence have eluded his notice. On the whole,
+therefore, after making allowance for particular cases in which we may
+have more precise information, it would be hard, I think, to say just
+when our nocturnal travelers set out on their long journey. As the poet
+prayed Life to do,&mdash;</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><center><small>
+<span class="i0">They steal away, give little warning,</span>
+<span class="i-5">Choose their own time;</span>
+<span class="i0">Say not good-night,&mdash;but in May's brighter clime</span>
+<span class="i-6">Bid us good-morning.</span></small></center>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Their departure bereaves us, but, all in all, it must be accounted a
+blessing. Like the falling of the leaves, it touches the heart with a
+pleasing sadness,&mdash;a sadness more delicious, if one is born to
+enjoy it, than all the merry-making of springtime. And even for the most
+unsentimental of naturalists the autumnal season has many a delightful
+hour. The year is almost done; but for the moment the whole feathered
+world is in motion, and the shortest walk may show him the choicest of
+rarities. Thanks to the passing of the birds, his local studies are an
+endless pursuit. "It is now more than forty years that I have paid some
+attention to the ornithology of this district, without being able to
+exhaust the subject," says Gilbert White; "new occurrences still arise
+as long as any inquiries are kept alive." A happy man is the bird-lover;
+always another species to look for, another mystery to solve. His
+expectations may never be realized; but no matter; it is the hope, not
+its fulfillment,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+that makes life worth having. How can any New
+Englander imagine that he has exhausted the possibilities of existence
+so long as he has never seen the Lincoln finch and the Cape May warbler?</p>
+
+<p>But "I speak as a fool." Our happiness, if we are bird-lovers indeed,
+waits not upon novelties and rarities. All such exceptional bits of
+private good fortune let the Fates send or withhold as they will. The
+grand spectacle itself will not fail us. Even now, through all the
+northern country, the procession is getting under way. For the next
+three months it will be passing,&mdash;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, week
+days and Sundays, they will be flying: now singly or in little groups,
+and flitting from one wood or pasture to another; now in great
+companies, and with protracted all-day or all-night flights. Who could
+ask a better stimulus for his imagination than the annual southing of
+this mighty host? Each member of it
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+knows his own time and his
+own course. On such a day the snipe will be in such a meadow, and the
+golden plover in such a field. Some, no doubt, will lose their way.
+Numbers uncounted will perish by storm and flood; numbers more, alas, by
+human agency. As I write, with the sad note of a bluebird in my ear, I
+can see the sea-beaches and the marshes lined with guns. But the army
+will push on; they will come to their desired haven; for there is a
+spirit in birds, also, "and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them
+understanding."</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+<h3><a name="A_GREAT_BLUE_HERON" id="A_GREAT_BLUE_HERON"></a>A GREAT BLUE HERON.</h3>
+<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span>
+
+<p class="center"><small>"Why appear you with this ridiculous boldness?"<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 15em;"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare.</span></span></small>
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> watcher of birds in the bush soon discovers that they have
+individual as well as race characteristics. They are not things, but
+persons,&mdash;beings with intellect, affections, and will,&mdash;and a
+strong specific resemblance is found to be consistent with no small
+measure of personal variation. All robins, we say, look and act alike.
+But so do all Yankees; yet it is part of every Yankee's birthright to be
+different from every other Yankee. Nature abhors a copy, it would seem,
+almost as badly as she abhors a vacuum. Perhaps, if the truth were
+known, a copy <i>is</i> a vacuum.</p>
+
+<p>I walked down the bay shore of Cape Cod one summer morning, and at a
+certain point climbed the steep cliff to the railway track, meaning to
+look into a large cranberry meadow where, on previous visits, I had
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+found a few sandpipers and plovers. Near one end of the
+perfectly level, sand-covered meadow was a little pool, and my first
+glance in that direction showed me a great blue heron wading about its
+edge. With as much quietness as possible I stole out of sight, and then
+hastened up the railway through a cut, till I had the sun at my back and
+a hill between me and the bird. Then I began a stealthy approach,
+keeping behind one object after another, and finally going down flat
+upon the ground (to roll in the soil is an excellent method of cleansing
+one's garments on Cape Cod) and crawling up to a patch of bayberry
+bushes, the last practicable cover.</p>
+
+<p>Here let me say that the great blue heron is, as its name implies, a big
+bird, standing almost as high as an ordinary man, and spreading its
+wings for nearly or quite six feet. Its character for suspiciousness may
+be gathered from what different writers have said about it. "He is most
+jealously vigilant and watchful of man," says Wilson, "so that those who
+wish to succeed in shooting the heron must approach him entirely unseen,
+and by stratagem." "Extremely
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+suspicious and shy," says
+Audubon. "Unless under very favorable circumstances, it is almost
+hopeless to attempt to approach it. To walk up towards one would be a
+fruitless adventure." Dr. Brewer's language is to the same
+effect,&mdash;"At all times very vigilant and difficult of approach."</p>
+
+<p>This, then, was the bird which I now had under my field-glass, as I lay
+at full length behind the friendly bayberry bushes. Up to this point,
+for aught that appeared, he was quite unaware of my espionage. Like all
+the members of his family that I have ever seen, he possessed so much
+patience that it required much patience to watch him. For minutes
+together he stood perfectly still, and his movements, as a rule, were
+either so slow as to be all but imperceptible, or so rapid as almost to
+elude the eye. Boys who have killed frogs&mdash;which was pretty
+certainly my heron's present employment&mdash;will need no explanation
+of his behavior. They know very well that, if the fatal club is to do
+its work, the slowest kind of preliminary motion must be followed by
+something like a flash of lightning.</p>
+
+<p>I watched the bird for perhaps half an
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
+hour, admiring his
+handsome blue wings as now and then he spread them, his dainty manner of
+lifting his long legs, and the occasional flashing stroke of his beak.
+My range was short (for a field-glass, I mean), and, all in all, I voted
+it "a fine show."</p>
+
+<p>When I wearied of my position I rose and advanced upon the heron in full
+sight, expecting every moment to see him fly. To my astonishment he held
+his ground. Down the hillside I went, nearer and nearer, till I came to
+a barbed-wire fence, which bounded the cranberry field close by the
+heron's pool. As I worried my way through this abominable obstruction,
+he stepped into a narrow, shallow ditch and started slowly away. I made
+rapidly after him, whereupon he got out of the ditch and strode on ahead
+of me. By this time I was probably within twenty yards of him, so near
+that, as he twisted his long neck every now and then, and looked at me
+through his big yellow eyes, I began to wonder whether he might not take
+it into his head to turn the tables upon me. A stab in the face with
+that ugly sharp beak would have been no laughing matter; but I did not
+believe myself in any danger, and quickened
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
+my steps, being
+now highly curious to see how near the fellow I could get. At this he
+broke into a kind of dog-trot, very comical to witness, and, if I had
+not previously seen him fly a few yards, I should have supposed him
+disabled in the wing. Dr. Brewer, by the way, says that this bird is
+"never known to run, or even to walk briskly;" but such negative
+assertions are always at the maker's risk.</p>
+
+<p>He picked up his legs at last, for I pressed him closer and closer, till
+there could not have been more than forty or fifty feet between us; but
+even then he settled down again beside another pool, only a few rods
+further on in the same meadow, and there I left him to pursue his
+frog-hunt unmolested. The ludicrousness of the whole affair was enhanced
+by the fact, already mentioned, that the ground was perfectly flat, and
+absolutely without vegetation, except for the long rows of newly planted
+cranberry vines. As to what could have influenced the bird to treat me
+thus strangely, I have no means of guessing. As we say of each other's
+freaks and oddities, it was <i>his way</i>, I suppose. He might have behaved
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
+otherwise, of course, had I been armed; but of that I felt by
+no means certain at the time, and my doubts were strengthened by an
+occurrence which happened a month or so afterward.</p>
+
+<p>I was crossing the beach at Nahant with a friend when we stole upon a
+pair of <a name="plover" id="plover">golden plovers</a>, birds that both of us were very happy to see.
+The splendid old-gold spotting of their backs was plain enough; but
+immature black-bellied plovers are adorned in a similar manner, and it
+was necessary for us to see the rumps of our birds before we could be
+sure of their identity. So, after we had scrutinized them as long as we
+wished, I asked my companion to put them up while I should keep my glass
+upon their backs and make certain of the color of their rumps as they
+opened their wings. We were already within a very few paces of them, but
+they ran before him as he advanced, and in the end he had almost to
+tread on them.</p>
+
+<p>The golden plover is not so unapproachable as the great blue heron, I
+suppose, but from what sportsmen tell me about him I am confident that
+he cannot be in the habit of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+allowing men to chase him along
+the beach at a distance of five or six yards. And it is to be added
+that, in the present instance, my companion had a gun in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>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 approach
+one or two birds than a considerable flock. In the larger body there are
+almost certain to be a few timorous souls,&mdash;a few wider-awake and
+better instructed souls, let us rather say,&mdash;who by their outcries
+and hasty flight will awaken all the others to a sense of possible
+danger. But it is none the less true, as I said to begin with, that
+individual birds have individual ways. And my great blue heron, I am
+persuaded, was a "character." It would be worth something to know what
+was passing behind those big yellow eyes as he twisted his neck to look
+once more at the curious fellow&mdash;curious in two senses&mdash;who
+was keeping after him so closely. Was the heron curious, as well as his
+pursuer? Or was he only a little set in his own way; a little resentful
+of being imposed
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+upon; a little inclined to withstand the
+"tyrant of his fields," just for principle's sake, as patriots ought to
+do? Or was he a young fellow, in whom heredity had mysteriously omitted
+to load the bump of caution, and upon whom experience had not yet
+enforced the lesson that if a creature is taller and stronger than you
+are, it is prudent to assume that he will most likely think it a
+pleasant bit of sport to kill you? It is nothing to the credit of
+humankind that the sight of an unsuspicious bird in a marsh or on the
+beach should have become a subject for wonder.</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+<h3><a name="FLOWERS_AND_FOLKS" id="FLOWERS_AND_FOLKS"></a>FLOWERS AND FOLKS.</h3>
+<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><center><small>
+<span class="i0">"To know one element, explore another,</span>
+<span class="i0">And in the second reappears the first."</span>
+<span class="i16"><span class="smcap">Emerson.</span></span></small></center>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Every</span> order of intelligent beings naturally separates the world into two
+classes,&mdash;itself and the remainder. Birds, for instance, have no
+doubt a feeling, more or less clearly defined, which, if it were
+translated into human speech, might read, "Birds and nature." We, in our
+turn, say, "Man and nature." But such distinctions, useful as they are,
+and therefore admissible, are none the less arbitrary and liable to
+mislead. Birds and men are alike parts of nature, having many things in
+common not only with each other, but with every form of animate
+existence. The world is not a patchwork, though never so cunningly put
+together, but a garment woven throughout.</p>
+
+<p>The importance of this truth, its far-reaching and many-sided
+significance, is even yet
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+only beginning to be understood; but
+its bearing upon the study of what we call natural history would seem to
+be evident. My own experience as a dabbler in botany and ornithology has
+convinced me that the pursuit of such researches is not at all out of
+the spirit of the familiar line,&mdash;</p>
+
+<center><small>"The proper study of mankind is man,"&mdash;</small></center>
+
+<p>whatever the author of the line may have himself intended by his
+apothegm. To become acquainted with the peculiarities of plants or birds
+is to increase one's knowledge of beings of his own sort.</p>
+
+<p>There is room, I think, for a treatise on analogical botany,&mdash;a
+study of the human nature of plants. Thoroughly and sympathetically
+done, the work would be both surprising and edifying. It would give us a
+better opinion of plants, and possibly a poorer opinion of ourselves.
+Some wholesome first lessons of this kind we have all taken, as a matter
+of course. "We all do fade as a leaf." "All flesh is grass, and all the
+goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field." There are no
+household words more familiar than such texts. But the work of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
+which I am thinking will deal not
+so much with our likeness to tree and herb as with the likeness of tree
+and herb to us; and furthermore, it will go into the whole subject,
+systematically and at length. Meanwhile, it is open even to an amateur
+to offer something, in a general and discursive way, upon so inviting a
+theme, and especially to call attention to its scope and variety.</p>
+
+<p>As I sit at my desk, the <a name="thistle" id="thistle">thistles</a> are in their glory, and in a vase at
+my elbow stands a single head of the tall swamp variety, along with a
+handful of fringed gentians. Forgetting what it is, one cannot help
+pronouncing the thistle beautiful,&mdash;a close bunch of minute
+rose-purple flowers. But who could ever feel toward it as toward the
+gentian? Beauty is 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 out to be agreeable; but even its beauty is too much like
+that of some venomous reptile. Yet it has its friends, or, at all
+events, its patrons (if you wish to catch butterflies, go to the thistle
+pasture), and no doubt could give forty eloquent and logical excuses for
+its
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+offensive traits. Probably it felicitates itself upon its
+shrewdness, and pities the poor estate of its defenseless neighbors. How
+they must envy its happier fortune! It sees them browsed upon by the
+cattle, and can hardly be blamed if it chuckles a little to itself as
+the greedy creatures pass it by untouched. School-girls and botanists
+break down the golden-rods and asters, and pull up the gerardias and
+ladies'-tresses; but neither school-girl nor collector often troubles
+the thistle. It opens its gorgeous blossoms and ripens its feathery
+fruit unmolested. Truly it is a great thing to wear an armor of
+prickles!</p>
+
+<p>"The human nature of plants,"&mdash;have I any reader so innocent as not
+to feel at this moment the appropriateness of the phrase? Can there be
+one so favored as not to have some unmistakable thistles among his
+Christian townsmen and acquaintance? Nay, we all know them. They are the
+more easily discovered for standing always a little by themselves. They
+escape many slight inconveniences under which more amiable people
+suffer. Whoever finds himself in a hard place goes not to them for
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>
+assistance. They are recognized afar as persons to be let
+alone. Yet they, too, like their floral representatives, have a good
+side. If they do not give help, they seldom ask it. Once a year they may
+actually "do a handsome thing," as the common expression is; but they
+cannot put off their own nature; their very generosity pricks the hand
+that receives it, and when old Time cuts them down with his scythe (what
+should we do without this famous husbandman, unkindly as we talk of
+him?) there will be no great mourning.</p>
+
+<p>Is it then an unpardonable misdemeanor for a plant to defend itself
+against attack and extermination? Has the duty of non-resistance no
+exceptions nor abatements in the vegetable kingdom? That would be indeed
+a hard saying; for what would become of our universal favorite, the <a
+name="rose209" id="rose209">rose</a>? On this point there may be room for a
+diversity of opinion; but for one, I cannot wish the wild rose disarmed,
+lest, through the recklessness of its admirers, what is now one of the
+commonest of our wayside ornaments should grow to be a rarity. I esteem
+the rose a patrician, and fairly entitled to patrician
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+manners. As every one sees,
+people in high station, especially if they chance to possess attractive
+social qualities, are of necessity compelled to discountenance
+everything like careless familiarity, even from those with whom they may
+formerly have been most intimate. They must always stand more or less
+upon ceremony, and never be handled without gloves. So it is with the
+queen of flowers. Its thorns not only serve it as a protection, but are
+for its admirers an excellent discipline in forbearance. They make it
+easier for us, as Emerson says, to "love the wood rose and leave it on
+the stalk." In addition to which I am moved to say that the rose, like
+the holly, illustrates a truth too seldom insisted upon; namely, that
+people are more justly condemned for the absence of all good qualities
+than for the presence of one or two bad ones.</p>
+
+<p>Some such plea as this, though with a smaller measure of assurance, I
+should make in behalf of plants like the barberry and the <a
+name="blackberry210" id="blackberry210">bramble</a>. The latter, in truth,
+sometimes acts as if it were not so much fighting us off as drawing us
+on. Leaning far forward and stretching forth its arms, it
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
+buttonholes the wayfarer, so to
+speak, and with generous country insistence forces upon him the
+delicious clusters which he, in his preoccupation, seemed in danger of
+passing untasted. I think I know the human counterparts of both barberry
+and bramble,&mdash;excellent people in their place, though not to be
+chosen for bosom friends without a careful weighing of consequences.
+Judging them not by their manners, but by their fruits, we must set them
+on the right hand. It would go hard with some of the most pious of my
+neighbors, I imagine, if the presence of a few thorns and prickles were
+reckoned inconsistent with a moderately good character.</p>
+
+<p>As for reprobates like the so-called "poison ivy" and "poison dogwood,"
+they have perhaps borrowed a familiar human maxim,&mdash;"All is fair in
+war." In any case, they are no worse than savage heathen, who kill their
+enemies with poisoned arrows, or than civilized Christians, who stab the
+reputation of their friends with poisoned words. Their marked comeliness
+of habit may be taken as a point in their favor; or, on the contrary, it
+may be held to make their case only so
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+much the blacker, by
+laying them liable to the additional charge of hypocrisy. The question
+is a nice one, and I gladly leave it for subtler casuists than I to
+settle.</p>
+
+<p>How refreshing to turn from all these, from the thistle and the bramble,
+yea, even from the rose itself, to gentle spirits like the <a
+name="violet212" id="violet212">violet</a> and anemone, the arbutus and
+hepatica! These wage no war. They are of the original Society of
+Friends. Who will may spoil them without hurt. Their defense is with
+their Maker. I wonder whether anybody ever thinks of such flowers as
+representative of any order of grown people, or whether to everybody
+else they are forever children, as I find, on thinking of it, they have
+always been to me. Lowly and trustful, sweet and frail, "of such is the
+kingdom of heaven." They pass away without losing their innocence. Ere
+the first heats of summer they are gone.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the <a name="autumn_flower" id="autumn_flower">autumn</a>, too, has its delicate blooms, though they are
+overshadowed and, as it were, put out of countenance by the coarser
+growths which must be said to characterize the harvest season. Nothing
+that May puts into her lap is more exquisite than
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+are the <a name="gerardia213" id="gerardia213">purple gerardias</a> with which August
+and September embroider the pasture and the woodland road. They have not
+the sweet breath of the arbutus, nor even the faint elusive odor of the
+violet, but for daintiness of form, perfection of color, and
+gracefulness of habit it would be impossible to praise them too highly.
+Of our three species, my own favorite is the one of the narrow leaves
+(<i>Gerardia tenuifolia</i>), its longer and slighter flower-stems giving it
+an airiness and grace peculiarly its own. A lady to whom I had brought a
+handful the other day expressed it well when she said, "They look like
+fairy flowers." They are of my mind in this: they love a dry, sunny
+opening in the woods, or a grassy field on the edge of woods, especially
+if there be a seldom-used path running through it. I know not with what
+human beings to compare them. Perhaps their antitypes of our own kind
+are yet to be evolved. But I have before now seen a woman who might
+worthily be set in their company,&mdash;a person whose sweet and wise
+actions were so gracefully carried and so easily let fall as to suggest
+an order and quality of goodness quite out of relation to common flesh
+and blood.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+<p>What a contrast between such lowly-minded, unobtrusive beauties
+and egotists like our multitudinous <a name="aster214" id="aster214">asters</a> and <a name="goldrod214" id="goldrod214">golden-rods</a>! These,
+between them, almost take possession of the world for the two or three
+months of their reign. They are handsome, and they know it. What is
+beauty for, if not to be admired? They mass their tiny blossoms first
+into solid heads, then into panicles and racemes, and have no idea of
+hiding their constellated brightness under a bushel. "Let your light
+shine!" is the word they go on. How eagerly they crowd along the
+roadside, till the casual passer-by can see scarce anything else! If he
+does not see <i>them</i>, it is not their fault.</p>
+
+<p>For myself, I am far from wishing them at all less numerous, or a jot
+less 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 why
+I should quarrel with the aster for loving to make a show. Herein, too,
+plants are like men. An indisposition toward publicity is amiable in
+those to whom it is natural; but I am not clear that bashfulness is the
+only commendable quality. Let plants
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
+and men alike carry
+themselves according to their birthright. Providence has not ordained a
+diversity of gifts for nothing, and it is only a narrow philosophy that
+takes offense at seeming contrarieties. The truer method, and the
+happier as well, is to like each according to its kind: to love that
+which is amiable, to admire that which is admirable, and to study that
+which is curious.</p>
+
+<p>A few weeks ago, for example, I walked again up the mountain road that
+climbs out of the Franconia Valley into the Franconia Notch. I had left
+home twenty-four hours before, fresh from working upon the asters and <a
+name="goldrod215" id="goldrod215">golden-rods</a> (trying to straighten out
+my local catalogue in accordance with Dr. Gray's more recent
+classification of these large and difficult genera), and naturally
+enough had asters and golden-rods still in my eye. The first mile or two
+afforded nothing of particular note, but by and by I came to a cluster
+of the sturdy and peculiar <i>Solidago squarrosa</i>, and was taking an
+admiring account of its appearance and manner of growth, when I caught
+sight of some lower blue flower underneath, which on a second glance
+proved to be the closed gentian. This grew
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+in hiding, as one
+might say, in the shadow of its taller and showier neighbors. Not far
+off, but a little more within the wood, were patches of the <a
+name="linnaea" id="linnaea">linn&aelig;a</a>, which had been at its
+prettiest in June, but even now, in late September, was still putting
+forth scattered blossoms. What should a man do? Discard the golden-rod
+for the gentian, and in turn forsake the gentian for the twin-flower?
+Nay, a child might do that, but not a man; for the three were all
+beautiful and all interesting, and each the more beautiful and
+interesting for its unlikeness to the others. If one wishes a stiff
+lesson in classification, there are few harder genera (among flowering
+plants) than <i>Solidago</i>; if he would investigate the timely and taking
+question of the dependence of plants upon insects, this humble
+"proterandrous" gentian (which to human vision seems closed, but which
+the humble-bee knows well how to enter) offers him a favorable subject;
+while if he has an eye for beauty, a nose for delicate fragrance, and a
+soul for poetry, the linn&aelig;a will never cease to be one of his
+prime favorites. So I say again, let us have variety. It would be a
+stupid town all whose inhabitants should
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+be of identical
+tastes and habits, though these were of the very best; and it would be a
+tiresome country that brought forth only a single kind of plants.</p>
+
+<p>The flower of Linn&aelig;us is a flower by itself, as here and there
+appears a man who seems, as we say, <i>sui generis</i>. This familiar phrase,
+by the bye, is literally applicable to <i>Linn&aelig;a borealis</i>, a plant
+that spreads over a large part of the northern hemisphere, but
+everywhere preserves its own specific character; so that, whether it be
+found in Greenland or in Maryland, on the Alaskan Islands or in Utah, in
+Siberia or on the mountains of Scotland, it is always and everywhere the
+same,&mdash;a genus of one species. Diversities of soil and climate make
+no impression upon its originality. If it live at all, it must live
+according to its own plan.</p>
+
+<p>The <a name="aster217" id="aster217">aster</a>, on the contrary, has a special talent for variation. Like
+some individuals of another sort, it is born to adapt itself to
+circumstances. Dr. Gray enumerates no less than one hundred and
+ninety-six North American species and varieties, many of which shade
+into each other with such
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+endless and well-nigh insensible
+gradations that even our great special student of the <i>Composit&aelig;</i>
+pronounces the accurate and final classification of this particular
+genus a labor beyond his powers. What shall we say of this habit of
+variability? Is it a mark of strength or of weakness? Which is
+nobler,&mdash;to be true to one's ideal in spite of circumstances, or to
+conquer circumstances by suiting one's self to them? Who shall decide?
+Enough that the twin-flower and the star-flower each obeys its own law,
+and in so doing contributes each its own part toward making this world
+the place of diversified beauty which it was foreordained to be.</p>
+
+<p>I spoke of the linn&aelig;a's autumnal blossoms, though its normal
+flowering time is in June. Even this steady-going, unimpressible citizen
+of the world, it appears, has its one bit of freakishness. In these
+bright, summery September days, when the trees put on their glory, this
+lowliest member of the honeysuckle family feels a stirring within to
+make itself beautiful; and being an evergreen (instead of a
+summer-green), and therefore incapable of bedecking itself after the
+maple's manner, it sends up a few flower-stems,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+each with its
+couple of swinging, fragrant bells. So it bids the world good-by till
+the long winter once more comes and goes.</p>
+
+<p>The same engaging habit is noticeable in the case of some of our very
+commonest plants. After the golden-rods and asters have had their day,
+late in October or well into November, when witch-hazel, yarrow, and
+clover are almost the only blossoms left us, you will stumble here and
+there upon a solitary <a name="dandelion" id="dandelion">dandelion</a> reflecting the sun, or a <a
+name="violet219" id="violet219">violet</a> giving back 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 that all the prosaic
+activities of middle life are over. It is almost as if he were born
+again. The song of the April robin, the blossoming of the apple-tree,
+the splendors of sunset and sunrise,&mdash;these and things like them
+touch him to pleasure, as he now remembers they used to do years and
+years ago. What means this strange revival of youth in age? Is it a
+reminiscence merely, a final flickering of the candle, or is it rather a
+prophecy of life yet to come? Well, with the dandelion and the violet we
+know with reasonable certainty
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
+how the matter stands. The
+autumnal blooms are not belated, but precocious; they belong not to the
+season past, but to the season coming. Who shall forbid us to hope that
+what is true of the violet will prove true also of the man?</p>
+
+<p>It speaks well for human nature that in the long run the lowliest
+flowers are not only the best loved, but the oftenest spoken of. Men
+play the cynic: modest merit goes to the wall, they say; whoever would
+succeed, let him put on a brazen face and sharpen his elbows. But those
+who talk in this strain deceive neither themselves nor those who listen
+to them. They are commonly such as have themselves tried the trumpet and
+elbow method, and have discovered that, whatever may be true of
+transient notoriety, neither public fame nor private regard is to be won
+by such means. We do not retract what we have said in praise of
+diversity, and about the right of each to live according to its own
+nature, but we gladly perceive that in the case of the flowers also it
+is the meek that inherit the earth.</p>
+
+<p>Our appreciation of our fellow-men depends in part upon the amount, but
+still more
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+upon the quality, of the service they render us. We
+could get along without poets more comfortably than without cobblers,
+for the lower use is often first, in order both of time and of
+necessity; but we are never in doubt as to their relative place in our
+esteem. One serves the body, the other the soul; and we reward the one
+with money, the other with affection and reverence. And our estimation
+of plants is according to the same rule. Such of them as nourish the
+body are good,&mdash;good even to the point of being indispensable; but
+as we make a difference between the barnyard fowl and the nightingale,
+and between the common run of humanity and a Beethoven or a Milton, so
+maize and potatoes are never put into the same category with lilies and
+<a name="violet221" id="violet221">violets</a>. It must be so, because man is more than an animal, and "the
+life is more than meat."</p>
+
+<p>Again we say, let each fulfill its own function. One is made for
+utility, another for beauty. For plants, too, are specialists. They know
+as well as men how to make the most of inherited capacities and
+aptitudes, achieving distinction at last by the simple process of
+sticking to one thing, whether
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+that be the production of buds,
+blossoms, berries, leaves, bark, timber, or what not; and our judgment
+of them must be correspondingly varied. The vine bears blossoms, but is
+to be rated not by them, but by the grapes that come after them; and the
+rose-tree bears hips, but takes its rank not from them, but from the
+flowers that went to the making of them. "Nothing but leaves" is a
+verdict unfavorable or otherwise according to its application. The
+tea-shrub would hold up its head to hear it.</p>
+
+<p>One of the most interesting and suggestive points of difference among
+plants is that which relates to the matter of self-reliance. Some are
+made to stand alone, others to twine, and others to creep. If it were
+allowable to attribute human feelings to them, we should perhaps be safe
+in assuming that the upright look down upon the climbers, and the
+climbers in turn upon the creepers; for who of us does not felicitate
+himself upon his independence, such as it is, or such as he imagines it
+to be? But if independence is indeed a boon,&mdash;and I, for one, am
+too thoroughbred a New Englander ever to doubt it,&mdash;it is not the
+only good, nor
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+even the highest. The nettle, standing straight
+and prim, asking no favors of anybody, may rail at the grape-vine, which
+must lay hold of something, small matter what, by which to steady
+itself; but the nettle might well be willing to forego somewhat of its
+self-sufficiency, if by so doing it could bring forth grapes. The <a
+name="smilax223" id="smilax223">smilax</a>, also, with its thorns, its
+pugnacious habit, and its stony, juiceless berries, a sort of handsome
+vixen among vines,&mdash;the smilax, which can climb though it cannot
+stand erect, has little occasion to lord it over the <a
+name="strawberry223" id="strawberry223">strawberry</a>. If one has done
+nothing, or worse than nothing, it is hardly worth while to boast of the
+original fashion in which he has gone about it. Moreover, the very
+plants of which we are speaking bear witness to the fact that it is
+possible to accept help, and still retain to the full one's own
+individuality. The strawberry is no more a plagiarist than the smilax,
+nor the grape than the nettle. If the vine clings to the cedar, the
+connection is but mechanical. Its spirit and life are as independent of
+the savin as of the planet Jupiter. Even the <a name="dodder" id="dodder">dodder</a>, which not only
+twines about other weeds, but actually sucks its
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>
+life from
+them, does not thereby lose an iota of its native character. If a man is
+only original to begin with,&mdash;so the parable seems to run,&mdash;he
+is under a kind of necessity to remain so (as Shakespeare did), no
+matter how much help he may draw from alien sources.</p>
+
+<p>This truth of the vegetable world is the more noteworthy, because, along
+with it there goes a very strong and persistent habit of individual
+variation. The plant is faithful to the spirit of its inherited law, but
+is not in bondage to the letter. Our "high-bush <a name="blackberry224" id="blackberry224">blackberries</a>," to take a
+familiar illustration, are all of one species, but it does not follow
+that they are all exactly alike. So far from it, I knew in my
+time&mdash;and the school-boys of the present day are not less
+accurately informed, we may presume&mdash;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 <i>Rubus villosus</i> is probably true of all plants, though in
+varying degrees. I do not recall a single article of our annual wild
+crop&mdash;blueberries, huckleberries, blackberries,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+cherries,
+grapes, pig-nuts (a bad name for a good thing), shagbarks, acorns, and
+so forth&mdash;in which there was not this constant inequality among
+plants of the same species, perfectly well defined, and never lost sight
+of by us juvenile connoisseurs. If we failed to find the same true of
+other vines and bushes, which for our purposes bore blossoms only, the
+explanation is not far to seek. Our perceptions, &aelig;sthetic and
+gastronomic, were unequally developed. We were in the case of the man to
+whom a poet is a poet, though he knows very well that there are cooks
+and cooks.</p>
+
+<p>It is this slight but everywhere present admixture of the personal
+quality&mdash;call it individuality, or what you will&mdash;that saves
+the world, animal and vegetable alike, from stagnation. Every bush,
+every bird, every man, together with its unmistakable and ineradicable
+likeness to the parent stock, has received also a something, be it more
+or less, that distinguishes it from all its fellows. Let our observation
+be delicate enough, and we shall perceive that there are no duplicates
+of any kind, the world over. It is part of the very unity of the world,
+this universally diffused diversity.</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+<p>It does a sympathetic observer good to see how humanly plants
+differ in their likes and dislikes. One is catholic: as common people
+say, it is not particular; it can live and thrive almost anywhere.
+Another must have precisely such and such conditions, and is to be
+found, therefore, only in very restricted localities. The
+<i>Dion&aelig;a</i>, or Venus's fly-trap, is a famous example of this
+fastidiousness, growing in a small district of North Carolina, and, as
+far as appears, nowhere else,&mdash;a highly specialized plant, with no
+generic relative. Another instance is furnished by a water lily
+(<i>Nymph&aelig;a elegans</i>), the rediscovery of which is chronicled in a
+late issue of one of our botanical journals. <a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a> <a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> "This lily was
+originally found in 1849, and has never been seen since, holding its
+place in botanical literature for these almost forty years on the
+strength of a single collection at a single vaguely described station on
+the broad prairies of southwestern Texas;" now, after all this time, it
+turns up again in another quarter of the same State. And every student
+could report cases of a similar character,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+though less
+striking than these, of course, within the limits of his own local
+researches. If you ask me where I find dandelions, I answer, anywhere;
+but if you wish me to show you the sweet colt's-foot (<i>Nardosmia
+palmata</i>), you must go with me to one particular spot. Any of my
+neighbors will tell you where the <a name="slipper227" id="slipper227">pink moccasin flower</a> grows; but if it
+is the yellow one you are in search of, I shall swear you to secrecy
+before conducting you to its swampy hiding-place. Some plants, like some
+people (but the plants, be it noted, are mostly weeds), seem to flourish
+best away from home; others die under the most careful transplanting.
+Some are lovers of the open, and cannot be too much in the sun; others
+lurk 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. One
+insists upon the richest of meadow loam; another is content with the
+face of a rock. We may say of them as truly as of ourselves, <i>De
+gustibus non est disputandum</i>. Otherwise, how would the earth ever be
+clothed with verdure?</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+<p>But plants are subject to other whims not less pronounced than
+these which have to do with the choice of a dwelling-place. We may call
+it the general rule that leaves come before flowers; but how many of our
+trees and shrubs reverse this order! The singular habit of the <a
+name="witch228" id="witch228">witch-hazel</a>, whose blossoms open as the
+leaves fall, may be presumed to be familiar to all readers; and hardly
+less curious is the freak of the <a name="chestnut" id="chestnut">chestnut</a>, which, almost if not quite
+alone among our amentaceous trees, does not put on its splendid
+coronation robes till late in June, and is frequently at the height of
+its magnificence in mid-July. What a pretty piece of variety have we,
+again, in the diurnal and the nocturnal bloomers! For my own part, being
+a watcher of birds, and therefore almost of necessity an early stirrer
+abroad, I profess a special regard for such plants as save their beauty
+for night-time and cloudy weather. The <a name="primrose" id="primrose">evening primrose</a> is no favorite
+with most people, I take it, but I seldom fail to pick a blossom or two
+with the dew on them. Those to whom I carry them usually exclaim as over
+some wonderful exotic, though the primrose is an inveterate haunter
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>
+of the roadside. Yet its blossoms have only to be looked at and
+smelled of to make their way, homely as is the stalk that produces them.
+They love darkness rather than light, but it certainly is not "because
+their deeds are evil." One might as well cast the opprobrious text in
+the face of the moon and stars. Now and then some enterprising
+journalist, for want of better employment, investigates anew the habits
+of literary workers; and it invariably transpires that some can do their
+best only by daylight, while the minds of others seem to be good for
+nothing till the sun goes down; and the wise reader, who reads not so
+much to gain information as to see whether the writer tells the truth,
+shakes his head, and says, "Oh, it is all in use." Of course it is all
+in use, just as it is with whippoorwills and the morning-glory.</p>
+
+<p>The mention of the evening primrose calls for the further remark that
+plants, not less than ourselves, have a trick of combining opposite
+qualities,&mdash;a coarse-grained and scraggy habit, for instance, with
+blossoms of exquisite fragrance and beauty. The most gorgeous flowers
+sometimes exhale an
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
+abominable odor, and it is not unheard of
+that inconspicuous or even downright homely sorts should be accounted
+precious for their sweetness; while, as everybody knows, few members of
+our native flora are more graceful in appearance than the very two whose
+simple touch is poison. Could anything be more characteristic of human
+nature than just such inconsistencies? Suavity and trickery, harshness
+and integrity, a fiery temper and a gentle heart,&mdash;how often do we
+see the good and the bad dwelling together! We would have ordered things
+differently, I dare say, had they been left to us,&mdash;the good should
+have been all good, and the bad all bad; and yet, if it be a grief to
+feel that the holiest men have their failings, it ought perhaps to be a
+consolation, rather than an additional sorrow, to perceive that the most
+vicious are not without their virtues. Beyond which, shall we presume to
+suggest that as poisons have their use, so moral evil, give it time
+enough, may turn out to be not altogether a curse?</p>
+
+<p>I have treated my subject too fancifully, I fear. Indeed, there comes
+over me at this moment a sudden suspicion that my subject
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
+itself is nothing but a fancy,
+or, worse yet, a profanation. If the flowers could talk, who knows how
+earnestly they might deprecate all such misguided attempts at doing them
+honor,&mdash;as if it were anything but a slander, this imputation to
+them of the foibles, or even the self-styled good qualities, of our poor
+humanity! What an egoist is man! I seem to hear them saying; look where
+he will, at the world or at its Creator, he sees nothing but the
+reflection of his own image.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h6>FOOTNOTES:</h6>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a> <a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a>
+The <i>Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club</i> for January, 1888,
+page 13.</p></div> </div>
+
+<hr>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+<h3><a name="IN_PRAISE_OF_THE_WEYMOUTH_PINE" id="IN_PRAISE_OF_THE_WEYMOUTH_PINE">
+</a>IN PRAISE OF THE WEYMOUTH PINE.</h3>
+<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span>
+
+<p class="center"><small>"I seek in the motion of the forest, in the sound of
+the pines, some accents of the eternal language."
+<span style="margin-left: 25em;"><span class="smcap">S&eacute;nancour.</span></span>
+</small>
+</p>
+
+<p>I <span class="smcap">could</span> never think it surprising that the ancients worshiped trees;
+that groves were believed to be the dwelling places of the gods; that
+Xerxes delighted in the great plane-tree of Lydia; that he decked it
+with golden ornaments and appointed for it a sentry, one of "the
+immortal ten thousand." Feelings of this kind are natural; among natural
+men they seem to have been well-nigh universal. The wonder is that any
+should be without them. For myself, I cannot recollect the day when I
+did not regard the Weymouth pine (the white pine I was taught to call
+it, but now, for reasons of my own, I prefer the English name) with
+something like reverence. Especially was this true of one,&mdash;a tree
+of stupendous girth and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+height, under which I played, and up
+which I climbed till my cap seemed almost to rub against the sky. That
+pine ought 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
+ago it was brought to earth, it and all its fair lesser companions.
+There is no wisdom in the grave, and it is nothing to them now that I
+remember them 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
+the illustrious Bobo, for the love of roast pig, burn down his father's
+house.</p>
+
+<p>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, I
+happen at this moment to be reclining. Yet a murmur runs through its
+branches as I pencil the words. Perhaps it is saying to itself that
+giants are, and always have been, things of the past,&mdash;things gazed
+at over the beholder's shoulder and through the mists of years; and that
+this venerable monarch of my boyhood, this relic of times remote, has
+probably grown
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+faster since it was cut down than ever it did
+while standing. I care not to argue the point. Rather, let me be glad
+that a tree is a tree, whether large or small. What a wonder of wonders
+it would seem to unaccustomed eyes! As some lover of imaginative
+delights wished that he could forget Shakespeare and read him new, so I
+would cheerfully lose all memory of my king of Weymouth pines, if by
+that means I might for once look upon a tree as upon something I had
+never seen or dreamed of.</p>
+
+<p>For that purpose, were it given me to choose, I would have one that had
+grown by itself; full of branches on all sides, but with no suggestion
+of primness; in short, a perfect tree, a miracle hardly to be found in
+any forest, since the forest would be no better than a park if the
+separate members of it were allowed room to develop each after its own
+law. Nature is too cunning an artist to spoil the total effect of her
+picture by too fond a regard for the beauty of particular details.</p>
+
+<p>I once passed a lazy, dreamy afternoon in a small clearing on a Canadian
+mountain-side, where the lumbermen had left standing
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+a few
+scattered butternuts. I can see them now,&mdash;misshapen giants,
+patriarchal monstrosities, their huge trunks leaning awkwardly this way
+and that, and each bearing at the top a ludicrously small, one-sided
+bunch of leafy boughs. All about me was the ancient wood. For a week I
+had been wandering through it with delight. Such beeches and maples,
+birches and butternuts! I had not thought of any imperfection. I had
+been in sympathy with the artist, and had enjoyed his work in the same
+spirit in which it had been wrought. Now, however, with these unhappy
+butternuts in my eye, I began to look, not at the forest, but at the
+trees, and I found that the spared butternuts were in no sense
+exceptional. <i>All</i> the trees were deformed. They had grown as they
+could, not as their innate proclivities would have led them. A tree is
+no better than a man; it cannot be itself if it stands too much in a
+crowd.</p>
+
+<p>I set it down, unwillingly, to the discredit of the Weymouth
+pine,&mdash;a symptom of some ancestral taint, perhaps,&mdash;that it
+suffers less than most trees from being thus encroached upon. Yet it
+does not entirely
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
+escape. True, it leans neither to left nor
+right, its trunk is seldom contorted; if it grow at all it must grow
+straight toward the zenith; but it is sadly maimed,
+nevertheless,&mdash;hardly more than a tall stick with a broom at the
+top. If you would see a typical white pine you must go elsewhere to look
+for it. I remember one such, standing by itself in a broad Concord River
+meadow; not remarkable for its size, but of a symmetry and beauty that
+make the traveler turn again and again, till he is a mile away, to gaze
+upon it. No pine-tree ever grew like that in a wood.</p>
+
+<p>I go sometimes through a certain hamlet, which has sprung suddenly into
+being on a hill-top where formerly stood a pine grove. The builders of
+the houses have preserved (doubtless they use that word) a goodly number
+of the trees. But though I have been wont to esteem the poorest tree as
+better than none, I am almost ready to forswear my opinion at sight of
+these slender trunks, so ungainly and unsupported. The first breeze, one
+would say, must bring them down upon the roofs they were never meant to
+shade. Poor naked things! I fancy they
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+look abashed at being dragged thus unexpectedly and inappropriately into
+broad daylight. If I were to see the householder lifting his axe against
+one of them I think I should not say, "Woodman, spare <i>that</i> tree!" Let
+it go to the fire, the sooner the better, and be out of its misery.</p>
+
+<p>Not that I blame the tree, or the power that made it what it is. The
+forest, like every other community, prospers&mdash;we may rather say
+exists&mdash;at the expense of individual perfection. But the expense is
+true economy, for, however it may be in ethics, in &aelig;sthetics the
+end justifies the means. The solitary pine, unhindered, symmetrical,
+green to its lowermost twig, as it rises out of the meadow or stands
+a-tiptoe on the rocky ledge, is a thing of beauty, a pleasure to every
+eye. A pity and a shame that it should not be more common! But the pine
+<i>forest</i>, dark, spacious, slumberous, musical! Here is something better
+than beauty, dearer than pleasure. When we enter this cathedral, unless
+we enter it unworthily, we speak not of such things. Every tree may be
+imperfect, with half its branches dead for want of room or want of sun,
+but until the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+devotee turns critic&mdash;an easy step, alas, for half-hearted
+worshipers&mdash;we are conscious of no lack. Magnificence can do
+without prettiness, and a touch of solemnity is better than any
+amusement.</p>
+
+<p>Where shall we hear better preaching, more searching comment upon life
+and death, than in this same cathedral? Verily, the pine is a priest of
+the true religion. It speaks never of itself, never its own words.
+Silent it stands till the Spirit breathes upon it. Then all its
+innumerable leaves awake and speak as they are moved. Then "he that hath
+ears to hear, let him hear." Wonderful is human speech,&mdash;the work
+of generations upon generations, each striving to express itself, its
+feelings, its thoughts, its needs, its sufferings, its joys, its
+inexpressible desires. Wonderful is human speech, for its complexity,
+its delicacy, its power. But the pine-tree, under the visitations of the
+heavenly influence, utters things incommunicable; it whispers to us of
+things we have never said and never can say,&mdash;things that lie
+deeper than words, deeper than thought. Blessed are our ears if we hear,
+for the message is not to be understood by
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>
+every comer, nor, indeed, by any, except at happy moments. In this
+temple all hearing is given by inspiration, for which reason the
+pine-tree's language is inarticulate, as Jesus spake in parables.</p>
+
+<p>The pine wood loves a clean floor, and is intolerant of undergrowth.
+Grasses and sedges, with all bushes, it frowns upon, as a model
+housekeeper frowns upon dirt. A plain brown carpet suits it best, with a
+modest figure of green&mdash;preferably of evergreen&mdash;woven into
+it; a tracery of partridge-berry vine, or, it may be, of club moss, with
+here and there a tuft of pipsissewa and pyrola. Its mood is sombre, its
+taste severe. Yet I please myself with noticing that the pine wood, like
+the rest 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 our
+oddest, brightest, and showiest flowers, the <a name="slipper239" id="slipper239">pink lady's-slipper</a>, and by
+some means or other has enticed it away from the peat bog, where it
+surely should be growing, along with the calopogon, the pogonia, and the
+arethusa, and here it is, like some rare exotic, thriving in a bed of
+sand and on a mat of brown needles. Who
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+will undertake to explain the occult "elective affinity" by which this
+rosy orchid is made so much at home under the heavy shadow of the
+Weymouth pine?</p>
+
+<p>According to the common saying, there is no accounting for tastes. If by
+this is meant simply that <i>we</i> cannot account for them, the statement is
+true enough. But if we are to speak exactly, there are no likes nor
+dislikes except for cause. Every freak of taste, like every vagary of
+opinion, has its origin and history, and, with sufficient knowledge on
+our part, could be explained and justified. The pine-tree and the orchid
+are not friends by accident, however the case may look to us who cannot
+see behind the present nor beneath the surface. There are no mysteries
+<i>per se</i>, but only to the ignorant. Yet ignorance itself, disparagingly
+as we talk of it, has its favorable side,&mdash;as it is pleasant
+sometimes to withdraw from the sun and wander for a season in the
+half-light of the forest. Perhaps we need be in no haste to reach a
+world where there is never any darkness. In some moods, at least, I go
+with the partridge-berry vine and the lady's-slipper. It is good, I
+think, to live awhile longer in the shadow; to see as through a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+glass darkly; and to hear overhead, not plain words, but inarticulate
+murmurs.</p>
+
+<p>I am not to be understood as praising the pine at the expense of other
+trees. All things considered, no evergreen can be equal to a
+summer-green, on which we see the leaves budding, unfolding, ripening,
+and falling,&mdash;a "worlde whiche neweth everie daie." What would
+winter be worth without the naked branches of maples and elms, beeches
+and oaks? We speak of them sadly:</p>
+
+<p class="center"><small>"Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang."</small>
+</p>
+
+<p>But the sadness is of a pleasing sort, that could ill be spared by any
+who know the pleasures of sentiment and sober reflection. But though one
+tree differeth from another tree in glory, we may surely rejoice in them
+all. One ministers to our mood to-day, another to-morrow.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"><center><small>
+<span class="i2">"I hate those trees that never lose their foliage;</span>
+<span class="i1-5">They seem to have no sympathy with Nature;</span>
+<span class="i-1">Winter and summer are alike to them."</span></small></center>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>So says Ternissa, in Landor's dialogue. I know what she means. But I do
+not "hate" an impassive, unchangeable temper, whether in a tree or in a
+man. I have so little of such a spirit myself that I am glad to see
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+some tokens of it&mdash;not too frequent, indeed, nor too
+self-assertive&mdash;in the world about me. And so I say, let me never
+be, for any long time together, where there are no Weymouth pines at
+which I may gaze from afar, or under which I may lie and listen. They
+boast not (rare stoics!), but they set us a brave example. No "blasts
+that blow the poplar white" can cause the pine-tree to blanch. No frost
+has power to strip it of a single leaf. Its wood is soft, but how
+dauntless its spirit!&mdash;a truly encouraging paradox, lending itself,
+at our private need, to endless consolatory moralizings. The great
+majority of my brothers must be comforted, I think, by any fresh
+reminder that the battle is not to the strong.</p>
+
+<p>For myself, then, like the lowly partridge-berry vine, I would be always
+the pine-tree's neighbor. Who knows but by lifelong fellowship with it I
+may absorb something of its virtue? Summer and winter, its fragrant
+breath rises to heaven; and of it we may say, with more truth than
+Landor said of the over-sweet fragrance of the linden, "Happy the man
+whose aspirations are pure enough to mingle with it!"</p>
+
+<hr class="pg">
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
+<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a><b>INDEX.</b></h2>
+<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span>
+
+<p>
+Asters, <a href="#aster62">62</a>,
+  <a href="#aster214">214</a>,
+  <a href="#aster217">217</a>.<br>
+Autumnal flowers, <a href="#autumn_flower">212</a>.<br>
+Autumnal ornithology, <a href="#ornithol">191</a>.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Bearberry,
+  <a href="#bearberry72">72</a>,
+  <a href="#bearberry78">78</a>.<br>
+Bittern, <a href="#bittern">71</a>.<br>
+Blackberry, <a href="#blackberry63">63</a>,
+  <a href="#blackberry210">210</a>,
+  <a href="#blackberry224">224</a>.<br>
+Bluebird, <a href="#bluebird179">179</a>,
+  <a href="#bluebird184">184</a>,
+  <a href="#bluebird185">185</a>.<br>
+
+Butterflies:&mdash;<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in November, <a href="#butterfly36">36</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on Mt. Mansfield, <a href="#butterfly104">104</a>.</span><br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Catbird, <a href="#catbird">176</a>.<br>
+Cedar-bird, <a href="#cedar">33</a>.<br>
+Chestnut-tree, <a href="#chestnut">228</a>.<br>
+Chewink, <a href="#chewink">191</a>.<br>
+Chickadee, <a href="#chickadee49">49</a>,
+  <a href="#chickadee55">55</a>.<br>
+Cowbird, <a href="#cowbird">83</a>.<br>
+Creeper:&mdash;<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">black-and-white, <a href="#creeper85">85</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">brown, <a href="#creeper49">49</a>.</span><br>
+Crossbill, white-winged, <a href="#crossbill">27</a>.<br>
+Cuckoo, <a href="#cuckoo">192</a>.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Dandelion, <a href="#dandelion">219</a>.<br>
+December birds, <a href="#dec_birds">54</a>.<br>
+December flowers, <a href="#dec_flowers">60</a>.<br>
+Diapensia, <a href="#diapensia23">23</a>,
+  <a href="#diapensia25">25</a>,
+  <a href="#diapensia30">30</a>.<br>
+Dodder, <a href="#dodder">223</a>.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Evening primrose, <a href="#primrose">228</a>.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Flicker, <a href="#flicker53">53</a>,
+  <a href="#flicker69">69</a>.<br>
+Flowers:&mdash;<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in November, <a href="#nov_flowers">36</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in December, <a href="#dec_flowers">60</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on Cape Cod, <a href="#cape_cod">80</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on Mt. Lafayette, <a href="#lafayette22">22</a>,
+  <a href="#Page_25">25</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on Mt. Mansfield, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</span><br>
+Flycatcher:&mdash;<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">great-crested, <a href="#flygreat">9</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">least, <a href="#flyleast">9</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">olive-sided, <a href="#flyolive9">9</a>,
+  <a href="#flyolive10">10</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ph&oelig;be, <a href="#phoebe9">9</a>,
+  <a href="#phoebe10">10</a>,
+  <a href="#phoebe179">179</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Traill's, <a href="#traill">9</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">yellow-bellied, <a href="#flyyellow">9</a>.</span><br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Golden Aster, <a href="#gold_aster">80</a>.<br>
+Golden-rods, <a href="#goldrod81">81</a>,
+  <a href="#goldrod214">214</a>,
+  <a href="#goldrod215">215</a>.<br>
+Goldfinch, <a href="#goldfinch">177</a>.<br>
+Grass Finch (Vesper Sparrow), <a href="#vesper5">5</a>,
+  <a href="#vesper110">110</a>.<br>
+Greenland Sandwort, <a href="#sandwort23">23</a>,
+  <a href="#sandwort25">25</a>,
+  <a href="#sandwort31">31</a>,
+  <a href="#sandwort103">103</a>.<br>
+Groundsel, <a href="#groundsel">61</a>.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Habenaria dilatata, <a href="#habenaria">103</a>.<br>
+Heron, great blue, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>.<br>
+Holy-Grass, <a href="#holy">25</a>.<br>
+Humming-bird:&mdash;<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rivoli, <a href="#rivoli">139</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ruby-throated, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>,
+  <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</span><br>
+Hyla Pickeringii, <a href="#hyla36">36</a>,
+  <a href="#hyla38">38</a>.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Jay:&mdash;<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Canada, <a href="#canadajay">100</a>.</span><br>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">blue, <a href="#bluejay">100</a>.</span><br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Kingbird, <a href="#kingbird9">9</a>,
+  <a href="#kingbird148">148</a>,
+  <a href="#kingbird179">179</a>.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Lady's-slipper,
+  <a href="#slipper79">79</a>,
+  <a href="#slipper227">227</a>,
+  <a href="#slipper239">239</a>.<br>
+Lapland Azalea, <a href="#azalea">31</a>.<br>
+Lark:&mdash;<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">meadow,
+  <a href="#meadow53">53</a>,
+  <a href="#meadow176">176</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">shore (or horned), <a href="#horned">53</a>.</span><br>
+Linn&aelig;a, <a href="#linnaea">216-218</a>.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Maryland Yellow-throat,
+  <a href="#maryland149">149</a>,
+  <a href="#maryland192">192</a>.<br>
+Mount Cannon, <a href="#cannon">33</a>.<br>
+Mount Lafayette,
+  <a href="#lafayette15">15</a>,
+  <a href="#lafayette24">24</a>.<br>
+Mount Mansfield, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+November in Eastern Massachusetts, <a href="#nov_flowers">36</a>.<br>
+Nuthatch, Red-bellied,
+  <a href="#nuthatch49">49</a>,
+  <a href="#nuthatch55">55</a>,
+  <a href="#nuthatch190">190</a>.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oriole, Baltimore,
+  <a href="#baltimore123">123</a>,
+  <a href="#baltimore176">176</a>,
+  <a href="#baltimore179">179</a>.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Peck's Geum,
+  <a href="#geum23">23</a>,
+  <a href="#geum25">25</a>,
+  <a href="#geum31">31</a>.<br>
+Ph&oelig;be, <a href="#phoebe9">9</a>,
+  <a href="#phoebe10">10</a>,
+  <a href="#phoebe179">179</a>.<br>
+Pine Grosbeak, <a href="#grosbeak">26</a>.<br>
+Pine, white, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.<br>
+Plover:&mdash;<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">golden, <a href="#plover">202</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">killdeer,
+  <a href="#killdeer39">39</a>,
+  <a href="#killdeer41">41</a>.</span><br>
+Poverty-Grass,
+  <a href="#poverty72">72</a>,
+  <a href="#poverty81">81</a>.<br>
+Purple Gerardia,
+  <a href="#gerardia81">81</a>,
+  <a href="#gerardia213">213</a>.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Redstart,
+  <a href="#redstart16">16</a>,
+  <a href="#redstart190">190</a>,
+  <a href="#redstart191">191</a>.<br>
+Robin,
+  <a href="#robin55">55</a>,
+  <a href="#Page_153">153</a>,
+  <a href="#robin184">184</a>.<br>
+Roses,
+  <a href="#rose32">32</a>,
+  <a href="#rose81">81</a>,
+  <a href="#rose209">209</a>.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Scarlet Tanager,
+  <a href="#tanager176">176</a>,
+  <a href="#tanager191">191</a>.<br>
+Screech Owl, <a href="#screech">177</a>.<br>
+Smilax:&mdash;<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">glauca, <a href="#glauca">80</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">rotundifolia,
+  <a href="#Page_80">80</a>,
+  <a href="#smilax223">223</a>.</span><br>
+Snow Bunting, <a href="#snowbunting">53</a>.<br>
+Sparrow:&mdash;<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">chipping, <a href="#chipping">179</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">field, <a href="#field">176</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ipswich,
+  <a href="#ipswich53">53</a>,
+  <a href="#ipswich54">54</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">song,
+  <a href="#songspar53">53</a>,
+  <a href="#songspar85">85</a>,
+  <a href="#songspar176">176</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">vesper, <a href="#vesper5">5</a>,
+  <a href="#vesper110">110</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">white-throated,
+  <a href="#whitethroat16">16</a>,
+  <a href="#whitethroat52">52</a>,
+  <a href="#whitethroat91">91</a>,
+  <a href="#whitethroat92">92</a>,
+  <a href="#whitethroat102">102</a>,
+  <a href="#whitethroat110">110</a>,
+  <a href="#whitethroat190">190</a>.</span><br>
+Strawberry,
+  <a href="#strawberry32">32</a>,
+  <a href="#strawberry223">223</a>.<br>
+Swallow, white-breasted, (Tree Swallow),
+  <a href="#swallow180">180</a>,
+  <a href="#swallow183">183</a>.<br>
+Swift, Chimney,
+  <a href="#swift110">110</a>,
+  <a href="#swift182">182</a>.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thistles, <a href="#thistle">207</a>.<br>
+Thrush:&mdash;<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">gray-cheeked, <a href="#graythrush16">16</a>,
+  <a href="#graythrush19">19</a>,
+  <a href="#graythrush94">94</a>,
+  <a href="#graythrush95">95</a>,
+  <a href="#graythrush97">97</a>,
+  <a href="#graythrush191">191</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">hermit, <a href="#hermit19">19</a>,
+  <a href="#hermit97">97</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">olive-backed, (or Swainson's),
+  <a href="#swainson19">19</a>,
+  <a href="#swainson51">51</a>,
+  <a href="#swainson97">97</a>,
+  <a href="#swainson99">99</a>,
+  <a href="#swainson191">191</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">water, <a href="#waterthrush">84</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wilson's (or veery),
+  <a href="#veery17">17</a>,
+  <a href="#veery19">19</a>,
+  <a href="#veery98">98</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">wood, <a href="#woodthrush">98</a>.</span><br>
+Turnstone, <a href="#turnstone">86</a>.<br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Veery (Wilson's Thrush), <a href="#veery17">17</a>,
+  <a href="#veery19">19</a>,
+  <a href="#veery98">98</a>.<br>
+Violets, <a href="#violet212">212</a>,
+  <a href="#violet219">219</a>,
+  <a href="#violet221">221</a>.<br>
+Vireo:&mdash;<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Philadelphia, <a href="#phila">11</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">red-eyed,
+  <a href="#redeye11">11</a>,
+  <a href="#redeye83">83</a>,
+  <a href="#redeye153">153</a>,
+  <a href="#redeye191">191</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">solitary (or blue-headed),
+  <a href="#solitary11">11</a>,
+  <a href="#solitary13">13</a>,
+  <a href="#solitary191">191</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">warbling, <a href="#warbling">14</a>.</span><br>
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Warbler:&mdash;<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">bay-breasted, <a href="#baybreast6">6</a>,
+  <a href="#baybreast190">190</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Blackburnian,
+  <a href="#blackburn6">6</a>,
+  <a href="#blackburn16">16</a>,
+  <a href="#blackburn190">190</a>,
+  <a href="#blackburn191">191</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">black-and-yellow, (magnolia),
+  <a href="#magnolia">190</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">black-poll, <a href="#blackpoll6">6</a>,
+  <a href="#blackpoll16">16</a>,
+  <a href="#blackpoll96">96</a>,
+  <a href="#blackpoll99">99</a>,
+  <a href="#blackpoll102">102</a>,
+  <a href="#blackpoll190">190</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">black-throated blue,
+  <a href="#blk_throat_bl16">16</a>,
+  <a href="#blk_throat_bl191">191</a>.</span><br>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">black-throated green,
+  <a href="#blk_throat_gr16">16</a>,
+  <a href="#blk_throat_gr85">85</a>,
+  <a href="#blk_throat_gr190">190</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">blue golden-winged,
+  <a href="#bluegold">178</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">blue yellow-backed, <a href="#blueyellow83">83</a>,
+  <a href="#blueyellow190">190</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Canadian flycatcher, <a href="#canadian16">16</a>,
+  <a href="#canadian190">190</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Connecticut, <a href="#connecticut">190</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">golden (summer yellow-bird), <a href="#summeryellow">192</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nashville, <a href="#nashville8">8</a>,
+  <a href="#nashville16">16</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">pine, <a href="#pinewarbler">191</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">prairie, <a href="#prairie84">84</a>,
+  <a href="#prairie178">178</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tennessee, <a href="#tennessee5">5</a>,
+  <a href="#tennessee6">6</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wilson's black-cap, <a href="#wilsons">186</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">yellow-rumped (myrtle), <a href="#myrtle">95</a>.</span><br>
+White-winged Crossbill, <a href="#crossbill">27</a>.<br>
+Winter Wren, <a href="#winterwren">102</a>.<br>
+Witch-Hazel, <a href="#witch61">61</a>,
+  <a href="#witch228">228</a>.<br>
+Woodpecker:&mdash;<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">downy, <a href="#downy">50</a>.</span><br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">golden-winged (flicker),
+  <a href="#flicker53">53</a>,
+  <a href="#flicker69">69</a>.<br>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">yellow-bellied, <a href="#yellowbelly">190</a>.</span><br>
+Wood Pewee, <a href="#pewee9">9</a>, <a href="#pewee176">176</a>.</span><br>
+</p>
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+
+<div class="box">
+<h3>Books by Mr. Torrey.</h3>
+<hr style="width: 50%;">
+<p class="center">
+BIRDS IN THE BUSH. 16mo, $1.25.<br>
+A RAMBLER'S LEASE. 16mo, $1.25.</p>
+
+<h4>HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN &amp; CO.</h4>
+<h5>BOSTON AND NEW YORK.</h5>
+</div>
+
+<h2>OUT-DOOR BOOKS</h2>
+
+<p class="center">Selected from the Publications of</p>
+
+<h3>Houghton, Mifflin and Company,</h3>
+
+<p class="center"><i>4 Park St., Boston; 11 East 17th St., New York.</i>
+</p>
+<hr style="width: 10%;">
+<div class="blockquot"><p><b>Adirondack Stories.</b> By <span class="smcap">P. Deming</span>. 18mo, 75 cents.</p>
+
+<p><b>A-Hunting of the Deer; How I Killed a Bear</b>; Lost in the Woods;
+Camping Out; A Wilderness Romance; What Some People call Pleasure.
+By <span class="smcap">Charles Dudley Warner</span>. 16mo, paper covers, 15 cents, <i>net</i>.</p>
+
+<p><b>The American Horsewoman.</b> By <span class="smcap">Elizabeth Karr</span>. Illustrated. New
+Edition. 16mo, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p><b>A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.</b> By <span class="smcap">Henry D. Thoreau</span>.
+12mo, gilt top, $1.50.</p>
+
+<p><b>Birds and Bees.</b> By <span class="smcap">John Burroughs</span>. With an Introduction by <span class="smcap">Mary E.
+Burt</span>, of Chicago. 16mo, paper covers, 15 cents, <i>net</i>.</p>
+
+<p><b>Birds and Poets, with Other Papers.</b> By <span class="smcap">John Burroughs</span>. 16mo, gilt
+top, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p><b>Birds in the Bush.</b> By <span class="smcap">Bradford Torrey</span>. 16mo, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p><b>Birds through an Opera-Glass.</b> By <span class="smcap">Florence A. Merriam</span>. In Riverside
+Library for Young People. 16mo, 75 cents.</p>
+
+<p><b>Bird-Ways.</b> By <span class="smcap">Olive Thorne Miller</span>. 16mo, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p><b>Cape Cod.</b> By <span class="smcap">Henry D. Thoreau</span>. 12mo, gilt top, $1.50.</p>
+
+<p><b>Country By-Ways.</b> By <span class="smcap">Sarah Orne Jewett</span>. 18mo, gilt top, $1.25.
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><b>Drift-Weed.</b> Poems. By <span class="smcap">Celia Thaxter</span>. 18mo, full gilt, $1.50.</p>
+
+<p><b>Early Spring in Massachusetts.</b> Selections from the Journals of
+<span class="smcap">Henry D. Thoreau</span>. 12mo, gilt top, $1.50.</p>
+
+<p><b>Excursions in Field and Forest.</b> By <span class="smcap">Henry D. Thoreau</span>. 12mo, gilt
+top, $1.50.<br>
+<span class="smcap">Contents</span>: Biographical Sketch, by R. W. Emerson; Natural History of
+Massachusetts; A Walk to Wachusett; The Landlord; A Winter Walk;
+The Succession of Forest Trees; Walking; Autumnal Tints; Wild
+Apples; Night and Moonlight.</p>
+
+<p><b>Favorite Flies.</b> By <span class="smcap">Mary Orvis Marbury</span>. With colored plates. Square
+8vo. (<i>In Press</i>).</p>
+
+<p><b>Fishing with the Fly.</b> A volume of original Essays on Angling. By
+Lovers of the Art. Edited by <span class="smcap">Charles F. Orvis</span> and <span class="smcap">A. Nelson Cheney</span>.
+With colored Plates of 149 standard varieties of Flies. With Map
+and Index. Crown 8vo, $2.50.</p>
+
+<p><b>Fresh Fields.</b> English Sketches. By <span class="smcap">John Burroughs</span>. 16mo, gilt top,
+$1.25.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Gypsies.</b> By <span class="smcap">Charles G. Leland</span>. With Sketches of the English,
+Welsh, Russian, and Austrian Romany; and papers on the Gypsy
+Language. Crown 8vo, $2.00.</p>
+
+<p><b>Homestead Highways.</b> By <span class="smcap">H. M. Sylvester</span>. 12mo, gilt top, $1.50.</p>
+
+<p><b>In Nesting Time.</b> By <span class="smcap">Olive Thorne Miller</span>. 16mo, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p><b>In the Wilderness.</b> Adirondack Essays. By <span class="smcap">Charles Dudley Warner</span>. New
+Edition, enlarged. 18mo $1.00.</p>
+
+<p><b>Land of the Lingering Snow.</b> Chronicles of a Stroller in New England
+from January to June. By <span class="smcap">Frank Bolles</span>. 16mo, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p><b>Little Brothers of the Air.</b> By <span class="smcap">Olive Thorne Miller</span>. 16mo, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p><b>Locusts and Wild Honey.</b> By <span class="smcap">John Burroughs</span>. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25.
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><b>The Maine Woods.</b> By <span class="smcap">Henry D. Thoreau</span>. 12mo, gilt top, $1.50.</p>
+
+<p><b>My Garden Acquaintance and a Moosehead Journal.</b> By <span class="smcap">James Russell
+Lowell</span>. Illustrated. 32mo, 75 cents. <i>School Edition</i>, 40 cents,
+<i>net</i>.</p>
+
+<p><b>My Summer in a Garden.</b> By <span class="smcap">Charles Dudley Warner</span>. 16mo, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p><b>Nantucket Scraps.</b> Being the Experiences of an Off-Islander, in
+Season and out of Season. By <span class="smcap">Jane G. Austin</span>. 16mo, $1.50.</p>
+
+<p><b>Nature.</b> "Little Classics," Vol. XVI. 18mo, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p><b>Nature, together with Love, Friendship, Domestic Life, Success,
+Greatness, and Immortality.</b> By <span class="smcap">R. W. Emerson</span>. 32mo, 75 cents;
+<i>School Edition</i>, 40 cents, <i>net</i>.</p>
+
+<p><b>On Horseback.</b> A Tour in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
+With Notes on Travel in Mexico and California. By <span class="smcap">Charles Dudley
+Warner</span>. 16mo, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p><b>Pepacton.</b> By <span class="smcap">John Burroughs</span>. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p><b>Poems.</b> By <span class="smcap">Celia Thaxter</span>. 18mo, full gilt, $1.50.</p>
+
+<p><b>Poetic Interpretation of Nature.</b> By Principal <span class="smcap">J. C. Shairp</span>. 16mo,
+gilt top, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p><b>Prose Pastorals.</b> By <span class="smcap">Herbert M. Sylvester</span>. 12mo, gilt top, $1.50.</p>
+
+<p><b>A Rambler's Lease.</b> By <span class="smcap">Bradford Torrey</span>. 16mo, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Rescue of an Old Place.</b> By <span class="smcap">Mary Caroline Robbins</span>. 16mo, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Round Year.</b> By <span class="smcap">Edith M. Thomas</span>. Prose Papers. 16mo, gilt top,
+$1.25.</p>
+
+<p><b>Rural Hours.</b> By <span class="smcap">Susan Fenimore Cooper</span>. New Edition, abridged. 16mo,
+$1.25.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Saunterer.</b> By <span class="smcap">Charles G. Whiting</span>. Essays on Nature. 16mo,
+$1.25.
+
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><b>Seaside Studies in Natural History.</b> By <span class="smcap">Alexander Agassiz</span> and
+<span class="smcap">Elizabeth C. Agassiz</span>. Illustrated. 8vo, $3.00.</p>
+
+<p><b>Sharp Eyes, A Taste of Maine Birch, The Apple, and other Essays.</b> By
+<span class="smcap">John Burroughs</span>. 16mo, paper covers, 15 cents, <i>net</i>.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Shaybacks in Camp.</b> Ten Summers under Canvas. By <span class="smcap">Samuel J.</span> and
+<span class="smcap">Isabel C. Barrows</span>. With Map of Lake Memphremagog. 16mo, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Succession of Forest Trees, etc.</b> By <span class="smcap">H. D. Thoreau</span>. With
+Biographical Sketch by <span class="smcap">R. W. Emerson</span>. 16mo, paper covers, 15 cents,
+<i>net</i>.</p>
+
+<p><b>Summer.</b> Selections from the Journals of <span class="smcap">H. D. Thoreau</span>. With Map of
+Concord. 12mo, gilt top, $1.50.</p>
+
+<p><b>Tenting at Stony Beach.</b> By <span class="smcap">Maria Louise Pool</span>. 16mo, $1.00.</p>
+
+<p><b>Up and Down the Brooks.</b> By <span class="smcap">Mary E. Bamford</span>. In Riverside Library
+for Young People. 16mo, 75 cents.</p>
+
+<p><b>Wake-Robin.</b> By <span class="smcap">John Burroughs</span>. Revised and enlarged edition.
+Illustrated. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p><b>Walden; or, Life in the Woods.</b> By <span class="smcap">Henry D. Thoreau</span>. 12mo, gilt top,
+$1.50. <i>Riverside Aldine Edition</i>. 2 vols. 16mo, $2.00.</p>
+
+<p><b>Winter.</b> From the Journal of Thoreau. Edited by <span class="smcap">H. G. O. Blake</span>.
+12mo, gilt top, $1.50.</p>
+
+<p><b>Winter Sunshine.</b> By <span class="smcap">John Burroughs</span>. New edition, revised and
+enlarged. With Frontispiece. 16mo, $1.25.</p>
+
+<p><b>Woods and Lakes of Maine.</b> A Trip from Moosehead Lake to New
+Brunswick in a Birch-Bark Canoe. By <span class="smcap">Lucius L. Hubbard</span>. With Indian
+Place-Names and their Meanings, Illustrations, and large Map. 8vo,
+$3.00.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;'>
+
+<p><sup>*</sup><sub>*</sub><sup>*</sup><i>For sale by all Booksellers. Sent by mail, post-paid,
+on receipt of price by the Publishers,</i></p>
+
+<p class="center">HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN &amp; CO.<br>
+
+<span class="smcap">4 Park St., Boston; 11 East 17th St., New York.</span>
+</p></div>
+
+
+<div class="box">
+<p class="center" style="font-weight: bold;"><a name="TN" id="TN"></a>Pagination errors corrected in Index:
+</p>
+<p class="noin" style="text-align: left;">
+Catbird, 167 <b>to</b> Catbird, 176<br>
+Lark, meadow, 167 <b>to</b> Lark, meadow, 176<br>
+Mount Lafayette, 25 <b>to</b> Mount Lafayette, 24<br>
+Oriole, Baltimore, 167 <b>to</b> Oriole, Baltimore, 176<br>
+Scarlet Tanager, 167 <b>to</b> Scarlet Tanager, 176<br>
+Sparrow, field, 167 <b>to</b> Sparrow, field, 176<br>
+Sparrow, song, 167 <b>to</b> Sparrow, song, 176<br>
+Wood Pewee, 167 <b>to</b> Wood Pewee, 176</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Foot-path Way, by Bradford Torrey
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Foot-path Way
+
+Author: Bradford Torrey
+
+Release Date: November 17, 2008 [EBook #27285]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOOT-PATH WAY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robin Monks, Carolyn Bottomley, Joseph Cooper
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[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 the
+entire valley, to ourselves. If the verdict of the villagers could have
+been taken, we should, perhaps, have been voted a queer set, familiar as
+dwellers 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 week
+of June; if we were summer boarders, therefore, we must be of some
+unusual early-blooming variety.
+
+First came a lady, in excellent repute among the savants of Europe and
+America as an entomologist, but better known to the general public as a
+writer of stories. With her, as companion and assistant, was a doctor of
+laws, who is also a newspaper proprietor, a voluminous author, an art
+connoisseur, and many things beside. They had turned their backs thus
+unseasonably upon the metropolis, and in this pleasant out-of-the-way
+corner were devoting themselves to one absorbing pursuit,--the pursuit
+of moths. On their daily drives, two or three insect nets dangled
+conspicuously from the carriage,--the footman, thrifty soul, was never
+backward to take a hand,--and evening after evening the hotel piazza was
+illuminated till midnight with lamps and lanterns, while these
+enthusiasts waved the same white nets about, gathering in geometries,
+noctuids, sphinges, and Heaven knows what else, all of them to perish
+painlessly in numerous "cyanide bottles," which bestrewed the piazza by
+night, and (happy thought!) the closed piano by day. In this noble
+occupation I sometimes played at helping; but with only meagre success,
+my most brilliant catch being nothing more important than a "beautiful
+Io." The kind-hearted lepidopterist lingered with gracious emphasis upon
+the adjective, and assured me that the specimen would be all the more
+valuable because of a finger-mark which my awkwardness had left upon one
+of its wings. So--to the credit of human nature be it spoken--so does
+amiability sometimes get the better of the feminine scientific spirit.
+To the credit of human nature, I say; for, though her practice of the
+romancer's art may doubtless have given to this good lady some peculiar
+flexibility of mind, some special, individual facility in subordinating
+a lower truth to a higher, it surely may be affirmed, also, of humanity
+in general, that few things become it better than its inconsistencies.
+
+Of the four remaining members of the company, two were botanists, and
+two--for the time--ornithologists. But the botanists were lovers of
+birds, also, and went nowhere without opera-glasses; while the
+ornithologists, in turn, did not hold themselves above some elementary
+knowledge of plants, and amused themselves with now and then pointing
+out some rarity--sedges and willows were the special desiderata--which
+the professional collectors seemed in danger of passing without notice.
+All in all, we _were_ a queer set. How the Latin and Greek polysyllables
+flew about the dining-room, as we recounted our forenoon's or
+afternoon's discoveries! Somebody remarked once that the waiters' heads
+appeared to be more or less in danger; but if the waiters trembled at
+all, 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 activity
+I am not prepared to say. The first ornithologist of the party published
+some time ago (in _The Auk_, vol. v. p. 151) a list of our Franconia
+birds, and the results of the botanists' researches among the willows
+have appeared, in part at least, in different numbers of the _Bulletin
+of the Torrey Botanical Club_. As for the lepidopterist, I have an
+indistinct recollection that she once wrote to me of having made some
+highly interesting discoveries among her Franconia collections,--several
+undescribed species, as well as I can now remember; but she added that
+it would be useless to go into particulars with a correspondent
+entomologically so ignorant.
+
+Our first excursion--I speak of the four who traveled on foot--was to
+the Franconia Notch. It could not well have been otherwise; at all
+events, there was one of the four whose feet would not willingly have
+carried him in any other direction. The mountains drew us, and there was
+no thought of resisting their attraction.
+
+Love and curiosity are different, if not incompatible, sentiments; and
+the birds that are dearest to the man are, for that very reason, not
+most interesting to the ornithologist. When on a journey, I am almost
+without eyes or ears for bluebirds and robins, song sparrows and
+chickadees. Now is my opportunity for extending my acquaintance, and
+such every-day favorites must get along for the time as best they can
+without my attention. So it was here in Franconia. The vesper sparrow,
+the veery, and a host of other friends were singing about the hotel and
+along the roadside, but we heeded them not. Our case was like the boy's
+who declined gingerbread, when on a visit: he had plenty of that at
+home.
+
+When we were nearly at the edge of the mountain woods, however, we heard
+across the field a few notes that brought all four of us to an instant
+standstill. What warbler could that be? Nobody could tell. In fact,
+nobody could guess. But, before the youngest of us could surmount the
+wall, the singer took wing, flew over our heads far into the woods, and
+all was silent. It was too bad; but there would be another day
+to-morrow. Meantime, we kept on up the hill, and soon were in the old
+forest, listening to bay-breasted warblers, Blackburnians, black-polls,
+and so on, while the noise of the mountain brook on our right, a better
+singer 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 to
+come down again."
+
+I took leave of my companions at Profile Lake, they having planned an
+all-day excursion beyond, and started homeward by myself. Slowly, and
+with many stops, I sauntered down the long hill, through the forest (the
+stops, I need not say, are commonly the major part of a naturalist's
+ramble,--the golden beads, as it were, the walk itself being only the
+string), till I reached the spot where we had been serenaded in the
+morning by our mysterious stranger. Yes, he was again singing, this time
+not far from the road, in a moderately thick growth of small trees,
+under which the ground was carpeted with club-mosses, dog-tooth
+violets, clintonia, linnaea, and similar plants. He continued to sing,
+and I continued to edge my way nearer and nearer, till finally I was
+near enough, and went down on my knees. Then I saw him, facing me,
+showing white under parts. A Tennessee warbler! Here was good luck
+indeed. I ogled him for a long time ("Shoot it," says Mr. Burroughs,
+authoritatively, "not ogle it with a glass;" but a man must follow his
+own method), impatient to see his back, and especially the top of his
+head. What a precious frenzy we fall into at such moments! My knees were
+fairly upon nettles. He flew, and I followed. Once more he was under the
+glass, but still facing me. How like a vireo he looked! For one instant
+I thought, Can it be the Philadelphia vireo? But, though I had never
+seen that bird, I knew its song to be as different as possible from the
+notes to which I was listening. After a long time the fellow turned to
+feeding, and now I obtained a look at his upper parts,--the back olive,
+the head ashy, like the Nashville warbler. That was enough. It was
+indeed the Tennessee (_Helminthophila peregrina_), a bird for which I
+had been ten years on the watch.
+
+The song, which has not often been described, is more suggestive of the
+Nashville's than of any other, but so decidedly different as never for a
+moment to be confounded with it. "When you hear it," a friend had said
+to me several years before, "you will know it for something new." It is
+long (I speak comparatively, of course), very sprightly, and peculiarly
+staccato, and is made up of two parts, the second quicker in movement
+and 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_ in
+three parts, but as to rhythm and character, it is in two; the first
+half being composed of double notes, the second of single notes. The
+resemblance to the Nashville's song lies entirely in the first part; the
+notes of the concluding portion are not run together or jumbled, after
+the Nashville's manner, but are quite as distinct as those of the
+opening measure.
+
+As there were at least two pairs of the birds, and they were
+unmistakably 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 more
+to a really methodical search; but the wily singer gave me not the
+slightest clue, behaving as if there were no such thing as a bird's nest
+within a thousand miles, and all my endeavors went for nothing.
+
+As might have been foreseen, Franconia proved to be an excellent place
+in which to study the difficult family of flycatchers. All our common
+eastern Massachusetts species were present,--the kingbird, the phoebe,
+the wood pewee, and the least flycatcher,--and with them the crested
+flycatcher (not common), the olive-sided, the traill, and the
+yellow-bellied. The phoebe-like cry of the traill was to be heard
+constantly from the hotel piazza. The yellow-bellied seemed to be
+confined to deep and rather swampy woods in the valley, and to the
+mountain-side forests; being most numerous on Mount Lafayette, where it
+ran well up toward the limit of trees. In his notes, the yellow-belly
+may 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 improve
+upon it) resembles the _chebec_ of the least flycatcher, though much
+less emphatic, as well as much less frequently uttered, while his
+_twee_, or _tuwee_, is quite in the voice and manner of the wood pewee's
+clear, plaintive whistle; usually a monosyllable, but at other times
+almost or quite dissyllabic. The olive-sided, on the other hand,
+imitates nobody; or, if he does, it must be some bird with which I have
+yet to make acquaintance. _Que-que-o_ he vociferates, with a strong
+emphasis and drawl upon the middle syllable. This is his song, or what
+answers to a song, but I have seen him when he would do nothing but
+repeat incessantly a quick trisyllabic call, _whit, whit, whit_;
+corresponding, I suppose, to the well-known _whit_ with which the
+phoebe sometimes busies himself in a similar manner.
+
+Of more interest than any flycatcher--of more interest even than the
+Tennessee warbler--was a bird found by the roadside in the village,
+after we had been for several days in the place. Three of us were
+walking together, talking by the way, when all at once we halted, as by
+a common impulse, at the sound of a vireo song; a red-eye's song, as it
+seemed, with the faintest touch of something unfamiliar about it. The
+singer was in a small butternut-tree close upon the sidewalk, and at
+once afforded us perfectly satisfactory observations, perching on a low
+limb within fifteen feet of our eyes, and singing again and again, while
+we scrutinized every feather through our glasses. As one of my
+companions said, it was like having the bird in your hand. There was no
+room for a question as to its identity. At last we had before us the
+rare and long-desired Philadelphia greenlet. As its song is little
+known, I here transcribe my notes about it, made at two different times,
+between which there appears to have been some discussion among us as to
+just how it should be characterized:--
+
+"The song is very pretty, and is curiously compounded of the red-eye's
+and the solitary's, both as to phrase and quality. The measures are all
+brief; with fewer syllables, that is to say, than the red-eye commonly
+uses. Some of them are exactly like the red-eye's, while others have
+the peculiar sweet upward inflection of the solitary's. To hear some of
+the measures, you would pass the bird for a red-eye; to hear others of
+them, you might pass him for a solitary. At the same time, he has not
+the most highly characteristic of the solitary's phrases. His voice is
+less sharp and his accent less emphatic than the red-eye's, and, so far
+as we heard, he observes decidedly longer rests between the measures."
+
+This is under date of June 16th. On the following day I made another
+entry:--
+
+"The song is, I think, less varied than either the solitary's or the
+red-eye's, but it grows more distinct from both as it is longer heard.
+Acquaintance will probably make it as characteristic and unmistakable as
+any of our four other vireo songs. But I do not withdraw what I said
+yesterday about its resemblance to the red-eye's and the solitary's. The
+bird seems quite fearless, and keeps much of the time in the lower
+branches. In this latter respect his habit is in contrast with that of
+the warbling vireo."
+
+On the whole, then, the song of the Philadelphia vireo comes nearest to
+the red-eye's, differing from it mainly in tone and inflection rather
+than 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 seeming
+contradiction, however, I must mention one curious circumstance. On
+going again to Franconia, a year afterwards, and, naturally, keeping my
+ears open for _Vireo philadelphicus_, I discovered that I was never for
+a moment in doubt when I heard a red-eye; but once, on listening to a
+distant solitary,--catching only part of the strain,--I was for a little
+quite uncertain whether he might not be the bird for which I was
+looking. How this fact is to be explained I am unable to say; it will be
+least surprising to those who know most of such matters, and at all
+events I think it worth recording as affording a possible clue to some
+future observer. The experience, inconsistent as the assertion may
+sound, does not in the least alter my opinion that the Philadelphia's
+song is practically certain to be confused with the red-eye's rather
+than with the solitary's. Upon that point my companions and I were
+perfectly agreed while we had the bird before us, and Mr. Brewster's
+testimony is abundantly conclusive to the same effect. He was in the
+Umbagog forests on a special hunt for Philadelphia vireos (he had
+collected specimens there on two previous occasions), and after some
+days of fruitless search discovered, almost by accident, that the birds
+had all the while been singing close about him, but in every instance
+had 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 explained
+before this that the Philadelphia vireo is in coloration an exact copy
+of the warbling vireo. There is a slight difference in size between the
+two, but the most practiced eye could not be depended upon to tell them
+apart in a tree. _Vireo philadelphicus_ is in a peculiar case: it looks
+like one common bird, and sings like another. It might have been
+invented on purpose to circumvent collectors, as the Almighty has been
+supposed by some to have created fossils on purpose to deceive ungodly
+geologists. It is not surprising, therefore, that the bird escaped the
+notice of the older ornithologists. In fact, it was first
+described,--by Mr. Cassin,--in 1851, from a specimen taken, nine years
+before, near Philadelphia; and its nest remained unknown for more than
+thirty years longer, the first one having been discovered, apparently in
+Canada, 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 invited
+my feet. Then came a bright, favorable morning, and I set out. I would
+go alone on this my first pilgrimage to the noble peak, at which, always
+from too far off, I had gazed longingly for ten summers. It is not
+inconsistent with a proper regard for one's fellows, I trust, to enjoy
+now and then being without their society. It _is_ good, sometimes, for a
+man to be alone,--especially on a mountain-top, and more especially at a
+first visit. The trip to the summit was some seven or eight miles in
+length, and an almost continual ascent, without a dull step in the whole
+distance. The Tennessee warbler was singing; but perhaps the pleasantest
+incident of the walk to the Profile House--in front of which the
+mountain footpath is taken--was a Blackburnian warbler perched, as
+usual, at the very top of a tall spruce, his orange throat flashing fire
+as he faced the sun, and his song, as my notebook expresses it, "sliding
+up to high _Z_ at the end" in his quaintest and most characteristic
+fashion. I spent nearly three hours in climbing the mountain path, and
+during 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 and
+gray-cheeked thrushes, and yellow-bellied flycatchers. Black-poll and
+Nashville warblers were especially numerous, as they are also upon Mount
+Washington, and, as far as I have seen, upon the White Mountains
+generally. The feeble, sharp song of the black-poll is a singular
+affair; short and slight as it is, it embraces a perfect crescendo and a
+perfect decrescendo. Without question I passed plenty of white-throated
+sparrows, but by some coincidence not one of them announced himself. The
+gray-cheeked thrushes, which sang freely, were not heard till I was
+perhaps halfway between the Eagle Cliff Notch and the Eagle Lakes. This
+species, so recently added to our summer fauna, proves to be not
+uncommon in the mountainous parts of New England, though apparently
+confined to the spruce forests at or near the summits. I found it
+abundant on Mount Mansfield, Vermont, in 1885, and in the summer of 1888
+Mr. Walter Faxon surprised us all by shooting a specimen on Mount
+Graylock, Massachusetts. Doubtless the bird has been singing its
+perfectly distinctive song in the White Mountain woods ever since the
+white man first visited them. During the vernal migration, indeed, I
+have more than once heard it sing in eastern Massachusetts. My latest
+delightful 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 recognized
+them instantly; for while the gray-cheek's song bears an evident
+resemblance to the veery's (which I had heard within five minutes), the
+two are so unlike in pitch and rhythm that no reasonably nice ear ought
+ever to confound them. The bird was just over the high, close,
+inhospitable fence, on the top of which I rested my chin and watched and
+listened. He sat with his back toward me, in full view, on a level with
+my eye, and sang and sang and sang, in a most deliciously soft, far-away
+voice, keeping his wings all the while a little raised and quivering, as
+in 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, so
+romantic in its choice of a dwelling-place, and withal so characteristic
+of New England should be known, at a liberal estimate, to not more than
+one or two hundred New Englanders! But if a bird wishes general
+recognition, he should do as the robin does, and the bluebird, and the
+oriole,--dress like none of his neighbors, and show himself freely in
+the vicinity of men's houses. How can one expect to be famous unless he
+takes a little pains to keep himself before the public?
+
+From the time I left my hotel until I was fairly above the dwarf spruces
+below the summit of Lafayette, I was never for many minutes together out
+of the hearing of thrush music. Four of our five summer representatives
+of the genus _Turdus_ took turns, as it were, in the serenade. The
+veeries--Wilson's thrushes--greeted me before I stepped off the piazza.
+As I neared the Profile House farm, the hermits were in tune on either
+hand. The moment the road entered the ancient forest, the olive-backs
+began to make themselves heard, and halfway up the mountain path the
+gray-cheeks took up the strain and carried it on to its heavenly
+conclusion. A noble processional! Even a lame man might have climbed to
+such music. If the wood thrush had been here, the chorus would have been
+complete,--a chorus not to be excelled, according to my untraveled
+belief, in any quarter of the world.
+
+To-day, however, my first thoughts were not of birds, but of the
+mountain. The weather was all that could be asked,--the temperature
+perfect, and the atmosphere so transparent as to be of itself a kind of
+lens; so that in the evening, when I rejoined my companions at the
+hotel, I found to my astonishment that I had been plainly visible while
+at 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 was
+true, but had been quite unconscious of any corresponding physical
+transformation. What would our aboriginal forerunners have said could
+they have stood in the valley and seen a human form moving from point to
+point along yonder sharp, serrated ridge? I should certainly have passed
+for a god! Let us be thankful that all such superstitious fancies have
+had 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 man
+clambers gayly up their sides, guide-book in hand, and leaves his
+sardine box and eggshells--and likely enough his business card--at the
+top. Let us be thankful, I repeat, for the light vouchsafed to us; ours
+is a goodly heritage; but there are moods--such creatures of hereditary
+influence are we--wherein I would gladly exchange both the guide-book
+and the sardine box for a vision, never so indistinct and transient, of
+Kitche Manitoo. Alas! what a long time it is since any of us have been
+able to see the invisible. "In the mountains," says Wordsworth, "did he
+feel his faith." But the poet was speaking then of a very old-fashioned
+young fellow, who, even when he grew up, made nothing but a peddler. Had
+he lived in our day, he would have felt not his faith, but his own
+importance; especially if he had put himself out of breath, as most
+likely he would have done, in accomplishing in an hour and forty minutes
+what, according to the guide-book, should have taken a full hour and
+three quarters. The modern excursionist (how Wordsworth would have loved
+that word!) has learned wisdom of a certain wise fowl who once taught
+St. Peter a lesson, and who never finds himself in a high place without
+an impulse to flap his wings and crow.
+
+For my own part, though I spent nearly three hours on the less than four
+miles of mountain path, as I have already acknowledged, I was
+nevertheless somewhat short-winded at the end. So long as I was in the
+woods, it was easy enough to loiter; but no sooner did I leave the last
+low spruces behind me than I was seized with an importunate desire to
+stand upon the peak, so near at hand just above me. I hope my readers
+are none of them too old to sympathize with the boyish feeling. At all
+events, I quickened my pace. The distance could not be more than half a
+mile, I thought. But it was wonderful how that perverse trail among the
+boulders did unwind itself, as if it never would come to an end; and I
+was not surprised, on consulting a guide-book afterwards, to find that
+my half mile had really been a mile and a half. One's sensations in such
+a case I have sometimes compared with those of an essay-writer when he
+is getting near the end of his task. He dallied with it in the
+beginning, and was half ready to throw it up in the middle; but now the
+fever is on him, and he cannot drive the pen fast enough. Two days ago
+he doubted whether or not to burn the thing; now it is certain to be his
+masterpiece, and he must sit up till morning, if need be, to finish it.
+What would life be worth without its occasional enthusiasm, laughable in
+the retrospect, perhaps, but in itself pleasurable almost to the point
+of painfulness?
+
+It was a glorious day. I enjoyed the climb, the lessening forest, the
+alpine plants (the diapensia was in full flower, with its upright snowy
+goblets, while the geum and the Greenland sandwort were just beginning
+to blossom), the magnificent prospect, the stimulating air, and, most of
+all, the mountain itself. I sympathized then, as I have often done at
+other times, with a remark once made to me by a Vermont farmer's wife. I
+had sought a night's lodging at her house, and during the evening we
+fell into conversation about Mount Mansfield, from the top of which I
+had 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, of
+course; 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 poet
+would have liked this saying, especially as coming from such a source.
+_I_ liked it, at any rate, and am seldom on a mountain-top without
+recalling it. Her lot had been narrow and prosaic,--bitterly so, the
+visitor was likely to think; she was little used to expressing herself,
+and no doubt would have wondered what Mr. Pater could mean by his talk
+about natural objects as possessing "more or less of a moral or
+spiritual life," as "capable of a companionship with man, full of
+expression, of inexplicable affinities and delicacies of intercourse."
+From such refinements and subtleties her mind would have taken refuge in
+thoughts of her baking and ironing. But she enjoyed the mountain; I
+think she had some feeling for it, as for a friend; and who knows but
+she, too, was one of "the poets that are sown by Nature"?
+
+I spent two happy hours and a half at the summit of Lafayette. The
+ancient peak must have had many a worthier guest, but it could never
+have entertained one more hospitably. With what softly temperate breezes
+did it fan me! I wish I were there now! But kind as was its welcome, it
+did not urge me to remain. The word of the brook came true again,--as
+Nature's words always do, if we hear them aright. Having gone as high as
+my 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 next
+season, also in June, I twice accepted the invitation. On the first of
+these occasions, although I was eight days later than I had been the
+year before (June 19th instead of June 11th), the diapensia was just
+coming into somewhat free bloom, while the sandwort showed only here and
+there a stray flower, and the geum was only in bud. The dwarf paper
+birch (trees of no one knows what age, matting the ground) was in
+blossom, with large, handsome catkins, while Cutler's willow was already
+in fruit, and the crowberry likewise. The willow, like the birch, has
+learned that the only way to live in such a place is to lie flat upon
+the ground and let the wind blow over you. The other flowers noted at
+the summit were one of the blueberries (_Vaccinium uliginosum_),
+Bigelow's sedge, and the fragrant alpine holy-grass (_Hierochloa
+alpina_). Why should this sacred grass, which Christians sprinkle in
+front of their church doors on feast-days, be scattered thus upon our
+higher mountain-tops, unless these places are indeed, as the Indian and
+the ancient Hebrew believed, the special abode of the Great Spirit?
+
+But the principal interest of this my second ascent of Mount Lafayette
+was to be not botanical, but ornithological. We had seen nothing
+noteworthy on the way up (I was not alone this time, though I have so
+far been rude enough to ignore my companion); but while at the Eagle
+Lakes, on our return, we had an experience that threw me into a nine
+days' fever. The other man--one of the botanists of last year's
+crew--was engaged in collecting viburnum specimens, when all at once I
+caught sight of something red in a dead spruce on the mountain-side just
+across the tiny lake. I leveled my glass, and saw with perfect
+distinctness, as I thought, two pine grosbeaks in bright male
+costume,--birds I had never seen before except in winter. Presently a
+third one, in dull plumage, came into view, having been hidden till now
+behind the bole. The trio remained in sight for some time, and then
+dropped into the living spruces underneath, and disappeared. I lingered
+about, while my companion and the black flies were busy, and was on the
+point of turning away for good, when up flew two red birds and alighted
+in a tree close by the one out of which the grosbeaks had dropped. But
+a single glance showed that they were not grosbeaks, but white-winged
+crossbills! And soon they, too, were joined by a third bird, in female
+garb. Here was a pretty piece of confusion! I was delighted to see the
+crossbills, having never before had the first glimpse of them, summer or
+winter; but what was I to think about the grosbeaks? "Your determination
+is worthless," said my scientific friend, consolingly; and there was no
+gainsaying his verdict. Yet by what possibility could I have been so
+deceived? The birds, though none too near, had given me an excellent
+observation, and as long as they were in sight I had felt no uncertainty
+whatever as to their identity. The bill alone, of which I had taken
+particular note, ought in all reason to be held conclusive. So much for
+one side of the case. On the other hand, however, the second trio were
+unmistakably crossbills. (They had been joined on the wing by several
+others, as I ought to have mentioned, and with their characteristic
+chattering cry had swept out of sight up the mountain). It was certainly
+a curious coincidence: three grosbeaks--two males and a female--had
+dropped out of a tree into the undergrowth; and then, five minutes
+later, three crossbills--two males and a female--had risen out of the
+same undergrowth, and taken almost the very perch which the others had
+quitted! Had this strange thing happened? Or had my eyes deceived me?
+This was my dilemma, on the sharp horns of which I tried alternately for
+the next eight days to make myself comfortable.
+
+During all that time, the weather rendered mountain climbing
+impracticable. But the morning of the 28th was clear and cold, and I set
+out forthwith for the Eagle Lakes. If the grosbeaks were there, I meant
+to see them, though I should have to spend all day in the attempt. My
+botanist had returned home, leaving me quite alone at the hotel; but, as
+good fortune would have it, before I reached the Profile House, I was
+overtaken unexpectedly by a young ornithological friend, who needed no
+urging to try the Lafayette path. We were creeping laboriously up the
+long, steep shoulder beyond the Eagle Cliff gorge, and drawing near the
+lakes, when all at once a peculiarly sweet, flowing warble fell upon
+our ears. "A pine grosbeak!" said I, in a tone of full assurance,
+although this was my first hearing of the song. The younger man plunged
+into the forest, in the direction of the voice, while I, knowing pretty
+well how the land lay, hastened on toward the lakes, in hopes to find
+the singer visible from that point. Just as I ran down the little
+incline into the open, a bird flew past me across the water, and
+alighted in a dead spruce (it might have been the very tree of nine days
+before), where it sat in full sight, and at once broke into song,--"like
+the purple finch's," says my notebook; "less fluent, but, as it seemed
+to me, sweeter and more expressive. I think it was not louder." Before
+many minutes, my comrade came running down the path in high glee,
+calling, "Pine grosbeaks!" He had got directly under a tree in which two
+of them were sitting. So the momentous question was settled, and I
+commenced feeling once more a degree of confidence in my own eyesight.
+The loss of such confidence is a serious discomfort; but, strange as it
+may seem to people in general, I suspect that few field ornithologists,
+except beginners, ever succeed in retaining it undisturbed for any long
+time together. As a class, they have learned to take the familiar maxim,
+"Seeing is believing," with several grains of allowance. With most of
+them, it would be nearer the mark to say, Shooting is believing.
+
+My special errand at the lakes being thus quickly disposed of, there was
+no reason why I should not accompany my friend to the summit. Lafayette
+gave us a cold reception. We might have addressed him as Daniel Webster,
+according to the time-worn story, once addressed Mount Washington; but
+neither of us felt oratorically inclined. In truth, after the outrageous
+heats of the past few days, it seemed good to be thrashing our arms and
+crouching behind a boulder, while we devoured our luncheon, and between
+times studied the landscape. For my own part, I experienced a feeling of
+something like wicked satisfaction; as if I had been wronged, and all at
+once had found a way of balancing the score. The diapensia was already
+quite out of bloom, although only nine days before we had thought it
+hardly at its best. It is one of the prettiest and most striking of our
+strictly alpine plants, but is seldom seen by the ordinary summer
+tourist, as it finishes its course long before he arrives. The same may
+be said of the splendid Lapland azalea, which I do not remember to have
+found on Mount Lafayette, it is true, but which is to be seen in all its
+glory upon the Mount Washington range, in middle or late June; so early
+that one may have to travel over snow-banks to reach it. The two flowers
+oftenest noticed by the chance comer to these parts are the Greenland
+sandwort (the "mountain daisy"!) and the pretty geum, with its handsome
+crinkled leaves and its bright yellow blossoms, like buttercups.
+
+My sketch will hardly fulfill the promise of its title; for our June in
+Franconia included a thousand things of which I have left myself no room
+to speak: strolls in the Landaff Valley and to Sugar Hill; a walk to
+Mount Agassiz; numerous visits--by the way, and in uncertain weather--to
+Bald Mountain; several jaunts to Lonesome Lake; and wanderings here and
+there in the pathless valley woods. We were none of us of that unhappy
+class who cannot enjoy doing the same thing twice.
+
+I wished, also, to say something of sundry minor enjoyments: of the
+cinnamon roses, for example, with the fragrance of which we were
+continually greeted, and which have left such a sweetness in the memory
+that I would have called this essay "June in the Valley of Cinnamon
+Roses," had I not despaired of holding myself up to so poetic a title.
+And with the roses the wild strawberries present themselves. Roses and
+strawberries! It is the very poetry of science that these should be
+classified together. The berries, like the flowers, are of a generous
+turn (it is a family trait, I think), loving no place better than the
+roadside, as if they would fain be of refreshment to beings less happy
+than themselves, who cannot be still and blossom and bear fruit, but are
+driven by the Fates to go trudging up and down in dusty highways. For
+myself, if I were a dweller in this vale, I am sure my finger-tips would
+never be of their natural color so long as the season of strawberries
+lasted. 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 was
+scarce any that had taken on the final tinge and flavor. Then I began to
+be aware of faint, sibilant noises about me, and, glancing up, I saw
+that the ground was already "pre-empted" by a company of cedar-birds,
+who, naturally enough, were not a little indignant at my poaching thus
+on their preserves. They showed so much concern (and had gathered the
+ripest of the berries so thoroughly) that I actually came away the
+sooner on their account. I began to feel ashamed of myself, and for once
+in my life was literally hissed off the stage.
+
+Even on my last page I must be permitted a word in praise of Mount
+Cannon, of which I made three ascents. It has nothing like the celebrity
+of Mount Willard, with which, from its position, it is natural to
+compare it; but to my thinking it is little, if at all, less worthy. Its
+outlook upon Mount Lafayette is certainly grander than anything Mount
+Willard can offer, while the prospect of the Pemigewasset Valley, fading
+away to the horizon, if less striking than that of the White Mountain
+Notch, has some elements of beauty which must of necessity be lacking
+in any more narrowly circumscribed scene, no matter how romantic.
+
+In venturing upon a comparison of this kind, however, one is bound
+always to allow for differences of mood. When I am in tune for such
+things, I can be happier on an ordinary Massachusetts hilltop than at
+another time I should be on any New Hampshire mountain, though it were
+Moosilauke itself. And, truly, Fortune did smile upon our first visit to
+Mount Cannon. Weather conditions, outward and inward, were right. We had
+come mainly to look at Lafayette from this point of vantage; but, while
+we suffered no disappointment in that direction, we found ourselves
+still more taken with the valley prospect. We lay upon the rocks by the
+hour, gazing at it. Scattered clouds dappled the whole vast landscape
+with shadows; the river, winding down the middle of the scene, drew the
+whole into harmony, as it were, making it in some nobly literal sense
+picturesque; while the distance was of such an exquisite blue as I think
+I never saw before.
+
+How good life is at its best! And in such
+
+                "charmed days,
+    When the genius of God doth flow,"
+
+what care we for science or the objects of science,--for grosbeak or
+crossbill (may the birds forgive me!), or the latest novelty in willows?
+I am often where fine music is played, and never without being
+interested; as men say, I am pleased. But at the twentieth time, it may
+be, 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 appreciation
+of natural beauty. We are always in its presence, but only on rare
+occasions are our eyes anointed to see it. Such ecstasies, it seems, are
+not for every day. Sometimes I fear they grow less frequent as we grow
+older.
+
+We will hope for better things; but, should the gloomy prognostication
+fall true, we will but betake ourselves the more assiduously to lesser
+pleasures,--to warblers and willows, roses and strawberries. Science
+will never fail us. If worse comes to worst, we will not despise the
+moths.
+
+
+
+
+DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.
+
+    "December's as pleasant as May."
+                            _Old Hymn._
+
+
+For a month so almost universally spoken against, November commonly
+brings more than its full proportion of fair days; and last year (1888)
+this proportion was, I think, even greater than usual. On the 1st and
+5th I heard the peeping of hylas; Sunday, the 4th, was enlivened by a
+farewell visitation of bluebirds; during the first week, at least four
+sorts of butterflies--Disippus, Philodice, Antiopa, and Comma--were on
+the wing, and a single Philodice (our common yellow butterfly) was
+flying as late as the 16th. Wild flowers of many kinds--not less than a
+hundred, certainly--were in bloom; among them the exquisite little
+pimpernel, or poor man's weather-glass. My daily notes are full of
+complimentary allusions to the weather. Once in a while it rained, and
+under date of the 6th I find this record,--"Everybody complaining of
+the heat;" but as terrestrial matters go, the month was remarkably
+propitious up to the 25th. Then, all without warning,--unless possibly
+from the pimpernel, which nobody heeded,--a violent snow-storm descended
+upon us. Railway travel and telegraphic communication were seriously
+interrupted, while from up and down the coast came stories of shipwreck
+and loss of life. Winter was here in earnest; for the next three months
+good walking days would be few.
+
+December opened with a mild gray morning. The snow had already
+disappeared, leaving only the remains of a drift here and there in the
+lee of a stone-wall; the ground was saturated with water; every meadow
+was like a lake; and but for the greenness of the fields in a few
+favored spots, the season might have been late March instead of early
+December. Of course such hours were never meant to be wasted within
+doors. 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 the
+next; and so the story went on, till in the end, omitting five days of
+greater or less inclemency, I had spent nearly the entire month in the
+open 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 agreed
+with them. Now, however, looking back over my previous year's notes, I
+come upon such entries as these: "December 3d. The day has been warm.
+Found chickweed and knawel in bloom, and an old garden was full of
+fresh-looking pansies." "4th. A calm, warm morning." "5th. Warm and
+rainy." "6th. Mild and bright." "7th. A most beautiful winter day, mild
+and 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. Warm
+and bright." "14th. If possible, a more beautiful day than yesterday."
+
+So much for December, 1887. Its unexpected good behavior would seem to
+have made a profound impression upon me; no doubt I promised never to
+forget it; yet twelve months later traditionary notions had resumed
+their customary sway, and every pleasant morning took me by surprise.
+
+The winter of 1888-89 will long be famous in the ornithological annals
+of New England as the winter of killdeer plovers. I have mentioned the
+great storm of November 25th-27th. On the first pleasant morning
+afterwards--on the 28th, that is--my out-of-door comrade and I made an
+excursion to Nahant. The land-breeze had already beaten down the surf,
+and the turmoil of the waters was in great part stilled; but the beach
+was strewn with sea-weeds and eel-grass, and withal presented quite a
+holiday appearance. From one motive and another, a considerable
+proportion of the inhabitants of the city had turned out. The principal
+attraction, as far as we could perceive, was a certain big clam, of
+which great numbers had been cast up by the tide. Baskets and wagons
+were being filled; some of the men carried off shells and all, while
+others, with a celerity which must have been the result of much
+practice, were cutting out the plump dark bodies, leaving the shells in
+heaps upon the sand. The collectors of these molluscan dainties knew
+them as quahaugs, and esteemed them accordingly; but my companion, a
+connoisseur in such matters, pronounced them not the true quahaug
+(_Venus mercenaria_,--what a profanely ill-sorted name, even for a
+bivalve!) but the larger and coarser _Cyprina islandica_. The man to
+whom we imparted this precious bit of esoteric lore received it like a
+gentleman, if I cannot add like a scholar. "We _call_ them quahaugs," he
+answered, with an accent of polite deprecation, as if it were not in the
+least to be wondered at that he should be found in the wrong. It was
+evident, at the same time, that the question of a name did not strike
+him as of any vital consequence. _Venus mercenaria_ or _Cyprina
+islandica_, the savoriness of the chowder was not likely to be seriously
+affected.
+
+It was good, I thought, to see so many people out-of-doors. Most of them
+had 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), remains
+at heart a child of nature. His ancestors may have been shoemakers for
+fifty generations, but none the less he feels an impulse now and then to
+quit 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 the
+bay in search of loons, old-squaws, and other sea-fowl. Here we
+presently met two gunners. They had been more successful than most of
+the sportsmen that one falls in with on such trips; between them they
+had a guillemot, two horned larks, and a brace of large plovers, of some
+species unknown to us, but noticeable for their bright cinnamon-colored
+rumps. "Why couldn't _we_ have found those plovers, instead of that
+fellow?" said my companion, as we crossed the second beach. I fear he
+was envious at the prosperity of the wicked. But it was only a passing
+cloud; for on reaching the main peninsula we were speedily arrested by
+loud cries from a piece of marsh, and after considerable wading and a
+clamber over a detestable barbed-wire fence, such as no rambler ever
+encountered without at least a temptation to profanity, we caught sight
+of a flock of about a dozen of the same unknown plovers. This was good
+fortune indeed. We had no firearms, nor even a pinch of salt, and coming
+shortly to a ditch, too wide for leaping and too deep for cold-weather
+fording, we were obliged to content ourselves with opera-glass
+inspection. Six of the birds were grouped in a little plot of grass,
+standing motionless, like so many robins. Their novelty and their
+striking appearance, with two conspicuous black bands across the breast,
+their loud cries, and their curious movements and attitudes were enough
+to drive a pair of enthusiasts half crazy. We looked and looked, and
+then reluctantly turned away. On getting home we had no difficulty in
+determining their identity, and each at once sent off to the other the
+same verdict,--"killdeer plover."
+
+This, as I say, was on the 28th of November. On the 3d of December we
+were again at Nahant, eating our luncheon upon the veranda of some rich
+man's deserted cottage, and at the same time enjoying the sunshine and
+the beautiful scene.
+
+It was a summery spot; moths were flitting about us, and two
+grasshoppers leaped out of our way as we crossed the lawn. They showed
+something less than summer liveliness, it is true; it was only
+afterwards, 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 the
+low temperature; for the mercury had been down to 10 deg. within a
+fortnight, and a large snow-bank was still in sight against the wall.
+Suddenly a close flock of eight or ten birds flew past us and
+disappeared behind the hill. "Pigeons?" said my companion. I thought
+not; they were sea-birds of some kind. Soon we heard killdeer cries from
+the beach, and, looking up, saw the birds, three of them, alighting on
+the sand. We started down the hill in haste, but just at that moment an
+old woman, a miserable gatherer of drift rubbish, walked directly upon
+them, and they made off. Then we saw that our "pigeons," or "sea-birds,"
+had been nothing but killdeer plovers, which, like other long-winged
+birds, look much larger in the air than when at rest. Returning towards
+Lynn, later in the afternoon, we came upon the same three birds again;
+this time feeding among the boulders at the end of the beach. We
+remarked once more their curious, silly-looking custom of standing
+stock-still with heads indrawn. But our own attitudes, as we also stood
+stock-still with glasses raised, may have looked, in their eyes, even
+more singular and meaningless. As we turned away--after flushing them
+two or three times to get a view of their pretty cinnamon
+rump-feathers--a sportsman came up, and proved to be the very man on
+whose belt we had seen our first killdeers, a week before. We left him
+doing 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, we
+purposely startled the birds as badly as possible, hoping to see them
+make off over the hill, out of harm's way. But the foolish creatures
+could not take the hint, and alighted again within a few rods, at the
+same time calling loudly enough to attract the attention of the gunner,
+who up to this moment had not been aware of their presence. He fired
+twice before we got out of sight, but, to judge from his motions,
+without success. A man's happiness is perhaps of more value than a
+plover'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 wing
+which I send you," she began, "can you tell me the name of the bird that
+owned it?" Then after some description of the plumage, she continued:
+"In the late tremendous tempest myriads of these birds settled on the
+Isles of Shoals, filling the air with a harsh, shrill, incessant cry,
+and not to be driven away by guns or any of man's inhospitable
+treatment. Their number was so great as to be amazing, and they had
+never 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." On
+the 16th she wrote again: "All sorts of strange things were cast up by
+the storm, and the plovers were busy devouring everything they could
+find; always running, chasing each other, very quarrelsome, fighting
+all the time. They were in poor condition, so lean that the men did not
+shoot them after the first day, a fact which gives your correspondent
+great satisfaction. They are still there! My brother came from the
+Shoals yesterday, and says that the place is alive with them, all the
+seven islands."
+
+Similar facts were reported--as I began in one way and another to
+learn--from different points along the coast; especially from Cape
+Elizabeth, Maine, where hundreds of the birds were seen on the 28th and
+29th of November. The reporter of this item[4] pertinently adds: "Such a
+flight of killdeer in Maine--where the bird is well known to be
+rare--has probably not occurred before within the memory of living
+sportsmen." Here, as at the Isles of Shoals, the visitors were at first
+easily shot (they are not counted among game birds where they are known,
+on account of their habitual leanness, I suppose); but they had landed
+upon inhospitable shores, and were not long in becoming aware of their
+misfortune. In the middle of December one of our Cambridge
+ornithologists went to Cape Cod on purpose to find them. He saw about
+sixty birds, but by this time they were so wild that he succeeded in
+getting only a single specimen. "Poor fellows!" he wrote me; "they
+looked unhappy enough, that cold Friday, with the mercury at 12 deg. and
+everything frozen stiff. Most of them were on hillsides and in the
+hollows of pastures; a few were in the salt marshes, and one or two on
+the beach." Nobody expected them to remain hereabouts, as they normally
+winter in the West Indies and in Central and South America;[5] but every
+little while Mrs. Thaxter wrote, "The killdeers are still here!" and on
+the 21st of December, as I approached Marblehead Neck, I saw a bird
+skimming over the ice that covered the small pond back of the beach. I
+put up my glass and said to myself, "A killdeer plover!" There proved to
+be two birds. They would not suffer me within gunshot,--though I carried
+no gun,--but flew off into some ploughed ground, with their usual loud
+vociferations. (The killdeer is aptly named _Aegialitis 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 the
+Southern States for a long southward flight, or perhaps for the West
+Indies, on the evening of November 24th, and on getting out to sea were
+caught by the great gale, which whirled them northward over the
+Atlantic, landing them--such of them, that is, as were not drowned on
+the way--upon the coast of New England. The grounds for such an opinion
+are 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 especially
+concerned, I saw nothing more of them; but by way of completing the
+story I may add that on the 28th of January, in the same spot, I found a
+flock of seven, and there they remained. I visited them four times in
+February and once in March, and found them invariably in the same place.
+Evidently they had no idea of making another attempt to reach the West
+Indies for _this_ season; and if they were to remain in our latitude,
+they could hardly have selected a more desirable location. The marsh, or
+meadow, was sheltered and sunny, while the best protected corner was at
+the same time one of those peculiarly springy spots in which the grass
+keeps green the winter through. Here, then, these seven wayfarers
+stayed week after week. Whenever I stole up cautiously and peeped over
+the bank into their verdant hiding-place, I was sure to hear the
+familiar cry; and directly one bird, and then another, and another,
+would start up before me, disclosing the characteristic brown feathers
+of the lower back. They commonly assembled in the middle of the marsh
+upon the snow or ice, where they stood for a little, bobbing their heads
+in mutual conference, and then flew off over the house and over the
+orchard, calling as they flew.
+
+Throughout December, and indeed throughout the winter, brown creepers
+and red-bellied nuthatches were surprisingly abundant. Every pine wood
+seemed to have its colony of them. Whether the extraordinary mildness of
+the season had anything to do with this I cannot say; but their presence
+was welcome, whatever the reason for it. Like the chickadee, with whom
+they have the good taste to be fond of associating, they are always busy
+and cheerful, appearing not to mind either snow-storm or low
+temperature. 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 the
+name of the downy woodpecker was missing. He had been common during
+November, and is well known as one of our familiar winter residents. I
+began forthwith to keep a sharp lookout for him, particularly whenever I
+went near any apple orchard. A little later, I actually commenced making
+excursions on purpose to find him. But the fates were against me, and go
+where I would, he was not there. At last I gave him up. Then, on the
+27th, as I sat at my desk, a chickadee chirped outside. Of course I
+looked out to see him; and there, exploring the branches of an old
+apple-tree, directly under my window, was the black-and-white woodpecker
+for whom I had been searching in vain through five or six townships. The
+saucy fellow! He rapped smartly three or four times; then he
+straightened himself back, as woodpeckers do, and said: "Good-morning,
+sir! Where have you been so long? If you wish to see _me_, you had
+better stay at home." He might have spoken a little less pertly; for
+after all, if a man would know what is going on, whether in summer or
+winter, he must not keep too much in his own door-yard. Of the thirty
+birds in my December list, I should have seen perhaps ten if I had sat
+all the time at my window, and possibly twice that number had I confined
+my walks within the limits of my own town.
+
+While the migration is going on, to be sure, one may find birds in the
+most unexpected places. Last May I glanced up from my book and espied an
+olive-backed thrush in the back yard, foraging among the currant-bushes.
+Raising a window quietly, I whistled something like an imitation of his
+inimitable song; and the little traveler--always an easy dupe--pricked
+up his ears, and presently responded with a strain which carried me
+straight into the depths of a White Mountain forest. But in December,
+with some exceptions, of course, birds must be sought after rather than
+waited for. The 15th, for example, was a most uncomfortable day,--so
+uncomfortable that I stayed indoors,--the mercury only two or three
+degrees above zero, and a strong wind blowing. Such weather would drive
+the birds under shelter. The next forenoon, therefore, I betook myself
+to a hill covered thickly with pines and cedars. Here I soon ran upon
+several robins, feeding upon the savin berries, and in a moment more was
+surprised by a _tseep_ so loud and emphatic that I thought at once of a
+fox 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 sat
+perfectly still, the picture of discouragement. I could not blame him,
+but was glad, an hour later, to find him again on the ground, picking up
+his dinner. I leveled my glass at him and whistled his Peabody song (the
+simplest of all bird songs to imitate), but he moved not a feather.
+Apparently he had never heard it before! He was still there in the
+afternoon, and I had hopes of his remaining through the winter; but I
+never could find him afterwards. Ten days prior to this I had gone to
+Longwood on a special hunt for this same sparrow, remembering a certain
+peculiarly cozy hollow where, six or eight years before, a little
+company of song sparrows and white-throats had passed a rather severe
+winter. The song sparrows were there again, as I had expected, but no
+white-throats. The song sparrows, by the way, treated me shabbily this
+season. A year ago several of them took up their quarters in a roadside
+garden patch, where I could look in upon them almost daily. This year
+there were none to be discovered anywhere in this neighborhood. They
+figure in my December list on four days only, and were found in four
+different towns,--Brookline (Longwood), Marblehead, Nahant, and
+Cohasset. Like some others of our land birds (notably the golden-winged
+woodpecker and the meadow lark), they seem to have learned that winter
+loses a little of its rigor along the sea-board.
+
+Three kinds of land birds were met with at Nahant Beach, and nowhere
+else: the Ipswich sparrow,--on the 3d and 26th,--the snow bunting, and
+the horned lark. Of the last two species, both of them rather common in
+November, I saw but one individual each. They were feeding side by
+side, and, after a short separation,--under the fright into which my
+sudden appearance put them,--one called to the other, and they flew off
+in company towards Lynn. It was a pleasing display of sociability, but
+nothing new; for in winter, as every observer knows, birds not of a
+feather flock together. The Ipswich sparrow, a very retiring but not
+peculiarly timid creature, I have now seen at Nahant in every one of our
+seven colder months,--from October to April,--though it is
+unquestionably rare upon the Massachusetts coast between the fall and
+spring migrations. Besides the species already named, my monthly list
+included the following: herring gull, great black-backed gull, ruffed
+grouse, hairy woodpecker, flicker, goldfinch, tree sparrow, snowbird,
+blue jay, crow, shrike, white-bellied nuthatch (only two or three
+birds), golden-crowned kinglet, and one small hawk.[6]
+
+[6] To this list my ornithological comrade before mentioned added seven
+species, namely: white-winged scoter, barred owl, cowbird, purple finch,
+white-winged crossbill, fox sparrow, and winter wren. Between us, as far
+as land birds went, we did pretty well.
+
+The only birds that sang during the month--unless we include the
+red-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 I
+take to be certainly their song, as distinguished from all their
+multifarious calls--on seven of the thirty-one days. They were more
+tuneful 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 fairly
+be said to sing all winter long. The robin's music was a pleasure quite
+unexpected. I was out on Sunday, the 30th, for a few minutes' stroll
+before breakfast, when the obliging stranger (I had not seen a robin for
+a fortnight, and did not see another for nearly two months) broke into
+song from a hill-top covered with pitch-pines. He was in excellent
+voice, and sang again and again. The morning invited music,--warm and
+cloudless, like an unusually fine morning in early April.
+
+For an entire week, indeed, the weather had seemed to be trying to outdo
+itself. I remember in particular the day before Christmas. I rose long
+before daylight, crossed the Mystic River marshes as the dawn was
+beginning to break, and shortly after sunrise was on my way down the
+South Shore. Leaving the cars at Cohasset, I sauntered over the
+Jerusalem Road to Nantasket, spent a little while on the beach, and
+brought up at North Cohasset, where I was attracted by a
+lonesome-looking road running into the woods all by itself, with a
+guide-board marked "Turkey Hill." Why not accept the pleasing
+invitation, which seemed meant on purpose for just such an idle
+pedestrian as myself? As for Turkey Hill, I had never heard of it, and
+presumed it to be some uninteresting outlying hamlet. My concern, as a
+saunterer's ought always to be, was with the road itself, not with what
+might lie at the end of it. I did not discover my mistake till I had
+gone half a mile, more or less, when the road all at once turned sharply
+to the right and commenced ascending. Then it dawned upon me that Turkey
+Hill must be no other than the long, gradual, grassy slope at which I
+had already been looking from the railway station. The prospect of sea
+and land was beautiful; all the more so, perhaps, because of a thick
+autumnal haze. It might be called excellent Christmas weather, I said to
+myself, when a naturally prudent man, no longer young, could sit perched
+upon a fence rail at the top of a hill, drinking in the beauties of the
+landscape.
+
+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, I
+don't," he answered. I suggested that probably somebody had killed a
+wild turkey up there at some time or other. He looked politely
+incredulous. "I don't _think_ there are any wild turkeys up there," said
+he; "_I_ never saw any." He was not more than twenty-five years old, and
+the last Massachusetts turkey was killed on Mount Tom in 1847, so that I
+had no doubt he spoke the truth. Probably he took me for a simple-minded
+fellow, while I thought nothing worse of him than that he was one of
+those people, so numerous and at the same time so much to be pitied, who
+have never studied ornithology.
+
+The 25th was warmer even than the 24th; and it, likewise, I spent upon
+the South Shore, though at a point somewhat farther inland, and in a
+town where I was not likely to lose myself, least of all in any
+out-of-the-way woodland road. In short, I spent Christmas on my native
+heath,--a not inappropriate word, by the bye, for a region so largely
+grown up to huckleberry bushes. "Holbrook's meadows," and "Norton
+pasture!"--the names are not to be found on any map, and will convey no
+meaning to my readers; but in my ears they awaken memories of many and
+many a sunny hour. On this holiday I revisited them both. Warm as it
+was, 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 I
+stood awhile by the old Ross cellar, watching their evolutions. How
+bright and cheery it was in the little sheltered clearing, with nothing
+in sight but the leafless woods and the ice-covered pond! "Shan't I take
+your coat?" the sun seemed to be asking. At my elbow stood a bunch of
+lilac bushes ("laylocks" they were probably called by the man who set
+them out[7]) that had blossomed freely in the summer. The house has
+been gone for these thirty years or more (alas! my sun must be rapidly
+declining when memory casts so long a shadow), but the bushes seem
+likely to hold their own for at least a century. They might have
+prompted a wise man to some wise reflections; but for myself, it must be
+acknowledged, I fell instead to thinking how many half days I had
+fished--and caught nothing, or next to nothing--along this same
+pleasant, willow-bordered shore.
+
+[7] So they were called, too, by that lover of flowers, Walter Savage
+Landor, 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 by
+putting a few checkerberries into my mouth; and in a small new clearing
+just over the brook ("Dyer's Run," this used to be called, but I fear
+the name is falling into forgetfulness) I stumbled upon a patch of some
+handsome evergreen shrub, which I saw at once to be a novelty. I took it
+for a member of the heath family, but it proved to belong with the
+hollies,--_Ilex glabra_, or ink-berry, a plant not to be found in the
+county where it is my present lot to botanize. So, even on my native
+heath, I had discovered something new.
+
+The flora of a Massachusetts December is of necessity limited. Even in
+the month under review, singularly favorable as it was, I found but
+sixteen sorts of wild blossoms; a small number, surely, though perhaps
+larger by sixteen than the average reader would have guessed. The names
+of these hardy adventurers must by no means go unrecorded: shepherd's
+purse, 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 I
+should certainly have expected), many-flowered aster, cone-flower,
+yarrow, two kinds of groundsel, fall dandelion, and jointweed. Six of
+these--mallow, cinque-foil, aster, cone-flower, fall dandelion, and
+jointweed--were noticed only at Nahant; and it is further to be said
+that the jointweed was found by a friend, not by myself, while the
+cone-flower was not in strictness a blossom; that is to say, its rays
+were well opened, making what in common parlance is called a flower, but
+the true florets were not yet perfected. Such witch-hazel blossoms as
+can 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 afternoon
+of Christmas, happening to look into a hamamelis-tree, I saw what looked
+like a flower near the top. The tree was too small for climbing and
+almost too large for bending, but I managed to get it down; and sure
+enough, the bit of yellow was indeed a perfectly fresh blossom. How did
+it know I was to pass that way on Christmas afternoon, and by what sort
+of freemasonry did it attract my attention? I loved it and left it on
+the stalk, in the true Emersonian spirit, and here I do my little best
+to embalm its memory.
+
+One of the groundsels (_Senecio viscosus_) is a recent immigrant from
+Europe, but has been thoroughly established in the Back Bay lands of
+Boston--where I now found it, in perfect condition, December 4th--for at
+least half a dozen years. In Gray's "Flora of North America" it is said
+to grow there and in the vicinity of Providence; but since that account
+was written it has made its appearance in Lowell, and probably in other
+places. It is a coarse-looking little plant, delighting to grow in pure
+gravel; but its blossoms are pretty, and now, with not another flower of
+any sort near it, it looked, as the homely phrase is, "as handsome as a
+picture." Its more generally distributed congener, _Senecio
+vulgaris_,--also a foreigner--is, next to the common chickweed, I should
+say, our very hardiest bloomer. At the beginning of the month it was in
+flower in an old garden in Melrose; and at Marblehead Neck a
+considerable patch of it was fairly yellow with blossoms all through
+December and January, and I know not how much longer. I saw no
+shepherd's purse after December 27th, but knawel was in flower as late
+as January 18th. The golden-rods, it will be observed, are absent
+altogether from my list; and the same would have been true of the
+asters, but for a single plant. This, curiously enough, still bore five
+heads 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 been
+introduced from Europe; six are members of the composite family; and if
+we omit the cone-flower, all but three of the entire number are simple
+whites and yellows. Two red flowers, the clover and the pimpernel,
+disappointed my search; but the blue hepatica would almost certainly
+have 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, the
+creeping blackberries,--whose modest winter loveliness was never half
+appreciated,--herb-robert, corydalis, partridge-berry, checkerberry,
+wintergreen, rattlesnake-plantain, veronica, and linnaea, to say nothing
+of the ferns and mosses. Most refreshing of all, perhaps, was an
+occasional patch of bright green grass, like the one already spoken of,
+at Marblehead, or like one even brighter and prettier, which I visited
+more than once in Swampscott.
+
+As I review what I have written, I am tempted to exclaim with
+Tennyson:--
+
+    "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 began
+states the truth somewhat strongly, perhaps (it must be remembered where
+I got it), but aside from that one bit of harmless borrowed hyperbole, I
+have delivered a plain, unvarnished tale. For all that, however, I do
+not expect my industrious fellow-citizens to fall in at once with my
+opinion that winter is a pleasant season at the seashore (it would be
+too bad they should, as far as my own enjoyment is concerned), and
+December a month propitious for leisurely all-day rambles. How foreign
+such notions are to people in general I have lately had several forcible
+reminders. On one of my jaunts from Marblehead to Swampscott, for
+example, I had finally taken to the railway, and was in the narrow,
+tortuous cut through the ledges, when, looking back, I saw a young
+gentleman coming along after me. He was in full skating rig, fur cap and
+all, with a green bag in one hand and a big hockey stick in the other. I
+stopped every few minutes to listen for any bird that might chance to be
+in 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 his
+head partly turned. There was no mistaking the significance of that
+furtive, sidelong glance; he had read the newspapers, and didn't intend
+to be attacked from behind unawares! If he should ever cast his eye over
+these pages (and whatever he may have thought of my appearance, I am
+bound to say of him that he looked like a man who might appreciate good
+literature), he will doubtless remember the incident, especially if I
+mention the field-glass which I carried slung over one shoulder.
+Evidently the world sees no reason why a man with anything better to do
+should be wandering aimlessly about the country in midwinter. Nor do I
+quarrel with the world's opinion. The majority is wiser than the
+minority, of course; otherwise, what becomes of its divine and
+inalienable 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 is
+no lack of shoemakers. Why, then, should not here and there a man take
+up the business of walking, of wearing out shoes? Everything is related
+to everything else, and the self-same power that brought the killdeers
+to Marblehead sent me there to see them and do them honor. Should it
+please the gods to order it so, I shall gladly be kept running on such
+errands 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 not
+become aware of my romantic good fortune till near the close of my stay.
+There was no trace of battlement or turret, nothing in the least
+suggestive of Warwick or Windsor, or of Sir Walter Scott. In fact, the
+Castle was not a building of any kind, but a hamlet; a small collection
+of houses--a somewhat scattered collection, it must be owned,--such as,
+on the bleaker and sandier parts of Cape Cod, is distinguished by the
+name of village. On one side flowed the river, doubling its course
+through green meadows with almost imperceptible motion. As I watched the
+tide 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 the
+Pamet, 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 know
+perfectly well that it need not run fast.
+
+My room would have made an ideal study for a lazy man, I thought, the
+two windows facing straight into a sand-bank, above which rose a steep
+hill, or perhaps I should rather say the steep wall of a plateau, on
+whose treeless top, all by themselves, or with only a graveyard for
+company, stood the Town Hall and the two village churches. Perched thus
+upon the roof of the Cape, as it were, and surmounted by cupola and
+belfry, the hall and the "orthodox" church made invaluable beacons,
+visible from far and near in every direction. For three weeks I steered
+my hungry course by them twice a day, having all the while a pleasing
+consciousness that, however I might skip the Sunday sermon, I was by no
+means neglecting my religious privileges. The second and smaller
+meeting-house belonged to a Methodist society. On its front were the
+scars of several small holes which had been stopped and covered with
+tin. A resident of the Castle assured me that the mischief had been done
+by pigeon woodpeckers,--flickers,--a statement at which I inwardly
+rejoiced. Long ago I had announced my belief that these enthusiastic
+shouters 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 was
+clear. I could understand now how Darwin and men like him must have felt
+when some great hypothesis of theirs received sudden confirmation from
+an unexpected quarter. At the same time I was pained to see that the
+flickers' attempts at church-going had met with such indifferent
+encouragement. Probably the minister and the class leaders would have
+justified their exclusiveness by an appeal to that saying about those
+who enter "not by the door into the sheepfold;" while the woodpeckers,
+on their part, might have retorted that just when they had most need to
+go in the door was shut.
+
+One of my favorite jaunts was to climb this hill, or plateau, the "Hill
+of Storms" (I am still ignorant whether the storms in question were
+political, ecclesiastical, or atmospheric, but I approve the name), and
+go down on the other side into a narrow valley whose meanderings led me
+to the ocean beach. This valley, or, to speak in the local dialect, this
+hollow, like the parallel one in which I lived,--the valley of the
+Pamet,--runs quite across the Cape, from ocean to bay, a distance of two
+miles and a half, more or less.
+
+At my very first sight of Dyer's Hollow I fell in love with it, and now
+that I have left it behind me, perhaps forever, I foresee that my
+memories of it are likely to be even fairer and brighter than was the
+place itself. I call it Dyer's Hollow upon the authority of the town
+historian, who told me, if I understood him correctly, that this was its
+name among sailors, to whom it is a landmark. By the residents of the
+town I commonly heard it spoken of as Longnook or Pike's Hollow, but for
+reasons 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 the
+western end, and follow its windings till he stands upon the bluff
+looking out upon the Atlantic. If his sensations at all resemble mine,
+he will feel, long before the last curve is rounded, as if he were
+ascending a mountain; and an odd feeling it is, the road being level, or
+substantially so, for the whole distance. At the outset he is in a
+green, well-watered valley on the banks of what was formerly Little
+Harbor. 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 near
+by. Up from the reeds a bittern will now and then start. I should like
+to be here once in May, to hear the blows of his stake-driver's mallet
+echoing and re-echoing among the close hills. At that season, too, all
+the uplands would be green. So we were told, at any rate, though the
+pleasing story was almost impossible of belief. In August, as soon as we
+left the immediate vicinity of Little Harbor, the very bottom of the
+valley itself was parched and brown; and the look of barrenness and
+drought increased as we advanced, till toward the end, as the last
+houses were passed, the total appearance of things became subalpine:
+stunted, weather-beaten trees, and broad patches of bearberry showing at
+a little distance like beds of mountain cranberry.
+
+All in all, Dyer's Hollow did not impress me as a promising farming
+country. Acres and acres of horseweed, pinweed, stone clover, poverty
+grass,[8] reindeer moss, mouse-ear everlasting, and bearberry! No wonder
+such fields do not pay for fencing-stuff. No wonder, either, that the
+dwellers here should be mariculturalists rather than agriculturalists.
+And still, although their best garden is the bay, they have their
+gardens on land also,--the bottoms of the deepest hollows being selected
+for the purpose,--and by hook or by crook manage to coax a kind of
+return out of the poverty-stricken soil. Even on Cape Cod there must be
+some potatoes to go with the fish. Vegetables raised under such
+difficulties are naturally sweet to the taste, and I was not so much
+surprised, therefore, on a certain state occasion at the Castle, to see
+a mighty dish of string beans ladled into soup-plates and exalted to the
+dignity of a separate course. Here, too,--but this was in Dyer's
+Hollow,--I found in successful operation one of the latest, and, if I
+may venture an unprofessional opinion, one of the most valuable,
+improvements in the art of husbandry. An old man, an ancient mariner, no
+doubt, 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 with
+years. I regretted afterward that I had not got over the fence and
+accosted him. I could hardly have missed hearing something rememberable.
+Yet I may have done wisely to keep the road. Industry like his ought
+never to be intruded upon lightly. Some, I dare say, would have called
+the sight pathetic. To me it was rather inspiring. Only a day or two
+before, in another part of the township, I had seen a man sitting in a
+chair among his bean-poles picking beans. Those heavy, sandy roads and
+steep hills must be hard upon the legs, and probably the dwellers
+thereabout (unlike the Lombardy poplars, which there, as elsewhere, were
+decaying at the top) begin to die at the lower extremities. It was not
+many 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 he
+sometimes saw a doughnut, but never descended to comfort." Quite
+otherwise was it with my wise-hearted agricultural economists; and quite
+otherwise shall it be with me, also, who mean to profit by their
+example. If I am compelled to dig when I get old (to beg may I ever be
+ashamed!), I am determined not to forget the camp-stool. The Cape Cod
+motto shall be mine,--He that hoeth cabbages, let him do it with
+assiduity.
+
+[8] In looking over the town history, I was pleased to come upon a note
+in defense of this lowly plant, on the score not only of its beauty, but
+of its usefulness in holding the sand in place; but, alas, "all men have
+not faith," and where the historian wrote _Hudsonia tomentosa_ the
+antipathetic compositor set up _Hudsonia tormentosa_. That compositor
+was a Cape Cod man,--I would wager a dinner upon it. "Thus the whirligig
+of time brings in his revenges," I hear him mutter, as he slips the
+superfluous consonant into its place.
+
+This aged cultivator, not so much "on his last legs" as beyond them, was
+evidently a native of the soil, but several of the few houses standing
+along the valley road were occupied by Western Islanders. I was crossing
+a 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. "How
+old do you think he is?" he asked, pointing to the young fellow. It
+would have been inexcusable to disappoint his fatherly expectations, and
+I guessed accordingly: "Seventeen or eighteen." "Sixteen," he
+rejoined,--"sixteen!" and his face shone till I wished I had set the
+figure 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 in
+the 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, landed
+here on Cape Cod, and settled down. Since then he had been to
+California, where he worked in the mines. "Ah! that was where you got
+rich, was it?" said I. "Rich!"--this in a tone of sarcasm. But he added,
+"Well, I made something." His praise of his nearest neighbor--whose
+name proclaimed his Cape Cod nativity--made me think well not only of
+his neighbor, but of him. There were forty-two Portuguese families in
+Truro, he said. "There are more than that in Provincetown?" I suggested.
+He shrugged his shoulders. "Yes, about half the people." And pretty good
+people they are, if such as I saw were fair representatives. One boy of
+fourteen (unlike the milkman's heir, he was very small for his years, as
+he told me with engaging simplicity) walked by my side for a mile or
+two, and quite won my heart. A true Nathanael he seemed, in whom was no
+guile. He should never go to sea, he said; nor was he ever going to get
+married so long as his father lived. He loved his father so much, and he
+was the only boy, and his father couldn't spare him. "But didn't your
+father go to sea?" "Oh, yes; both my fathers went to sea." That was a
+puzzle; but presently it came out that his two fathers were his father
+and his grandfather. He looked troubled for a moment when I inquired the
+whereabouts of the poorhouse, in the direction of which we happened to
+be going. He entertained a very decided opinion that he shouldn't like
+to live there; a wholesome aversion, I am bound to maintain, dear Uncle
+Venner to the contrary notwithstanding.
+
+A stranger was not an every-day sight in Dyer's Hollow, I imagine, and
+as I went up and down the road a good many times in the course of my
+visit, I came to be pretty well known. So it happened that a Western
+Islands woman came to her front door once, broom in hand and the
+sweetest of smiles on her face, and said, "Thank you for that five cents
+you gave my little boy the other day." "Put that in your pocket," I had
+said, and the obedient little man did as he was bidden, without so much
+as a side glance at the denomination of the coin. But he forgot one
+thing, and when his mother asked him, as of course she did, for mothers
+are all alike, "Did you thank the gentleman?" he could do nothing but
+hang his head. Hence the woman's smile and "thank you," which made me so
+ashamed of the paltriness of the gift (Thackeray never saw a boy without
+wanting to give him a _sovereign_!) that my mention of the matter here,
+so far from indicating an ostentatious spirit, ought rather to be taken
+as a mark of humility.
+
+All things considered, I should hardly choose to settle for life in
+Dyer's Hollow; but with every recollection of the place I somehow feel
+as if its score or two of inhabitants were favored above other men. Why
+is it that people living thus by themselves, and known thus transiently
+and from the outside as it were, always seem in memory like dwellers in
+some land of romance? I cannot tell, but so it is; and whoever has such
+a picture on the wall of his mind will do well, perhaps, never to put
+the original beside it. Yet I do not mean to speak quite thus of Dyer's
+Hollow. Once more, at least, I hope to walk the length of that
+straggling road. As I think of it now, I behold again those beds of
+shining bearberry ("resplendent" would be none too fine a word; there is
+no plant for which the sunlight does more), loaded with a wealth of
+handsome red fruit. The beach-plum crop was a failure; plum wine, of the
+goodness of which I heard enthusiastic reports, would be scarce; but one
+needed only to look at the bearberry patches to perceive that Cape Cod
+sand was not wanting in fertility after a manner of its own. If its
+energies in the present instance happened to be devoted to ornament
+rather than utility, it was not for an untaxed and disinterested
+outsider to make complaint; least of all a man who was never a
+wine-bibber, and who believes, or thinks he believes, in "art for art's
+sake." Within the woods the ground was carpeted with trailing arbutus
+and a profusion of checkerberry vines, the latter yielding a few fat
+berries, almost or quite a year old, but still sound and spicy, still
+tasting "like tooth-powder," as the benighted city boy expressed it. It
+was an especial pleasure to eat them here in Dyer's Hollow, I had so
+many times done the same in another place, on the banks of Dyer's Run.
+Lady's-slippers likewise (nothing but leaves) looked homelike and
+friendly, and the wild lily of the valley, too, and the pipsissewa.
+Across the road from the old house nearest the ocean stood a still more
+ancient-seeming barn, long disused, to all appearance, but with old
+maid's pinks, catnip, and tall, stout pokeberry weeds yet flourishing
+beside it. Old maid's pinks and catnip! Could that combination have been
+fortuitous?
+
+No botanist, nor even a semi-scientific lover of growing things, like
+myself, can ever walk in new fields without an eye for new plants. While
+coming down the Cape in the train I had seen, at short intervals,
+clusters of some strange flower,--like yellow asters, I thought. At
+every station I jumped off the car and looked hurriedly for specimens,
+till, after three or four attempts, I found what I was seeking,--the
+golden aster, _Chrysopsis falcata_. Here in Truro it was growing
+everywhere, and of course in Dyer's Hollow. Another novelty was the pale
+greenbrier, _Smilax glauca_, which I saw first on the hill at
+Provincetown, and afterward discovered in Longnook. It was not abundant
+in either place, and in my eyes had less of beauty than its familiar
+relatives, the common greenbrier (cat-brier, horse-brier, Indian-brier)
+of my boyhood, and the carrion flower. This glaucous smilax was one of
+the plants that attracted Thoreau's attention, if I remember right,
+though I cannot now put my finger upon his reference to it. Equally new
+to me, and much more beautiful, as well as more characteristic of the
+place, were the broom-crowberry and the greener kind of poverty grass
+(_Hudsonia ericoides_), inviting pillows or cushions of which, looking
+very much alike at a little distance, were scattered freely over the
+grayish hills. These huddling, low-lying plants were among the things
+which bestowed upon Longnook its pleasing and remarkable mountain-top
+aspect. 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 end
+of the valley, the dainty rose gerardia, just now coming into bloom; the
+pretty _Polygala polygama_,--pretty, but not in the same class with the
+rose gerardia; ladies' tresses; bayberry; sweet fern; crisp-leaved
+tansy; beach grass; huckleberry bushes, for whose liberality I had
+frequent occasion to be thankful; bear oak; chinquapin; chokeberry; a
+single vine of the Virginia creeper; wild carrot; wild cherry; the
+common brake,--these and doubtless many more were there, for I made no
+attempt at a full catalogue. There must have been wild roses along the
+roadside and on the edge of the thickets, I should think, yet I cannot
+recollect them, nor does the name appear in my penciled memoranda. Had
+the month been June instead of August, notebook and memory would record
+a very different story, I can hardly doubt; but out of flower is out of
+mind.
+
+In the course of my many visits to Dyer's Hollow I saw thirty-three
+kinds of birds, of the eighty-four species in my full Truro list. The
+number of individuals was small, however, and, except at its lower end,
+the valley was, or appeared to be, nearly destitute of feathered life. A
+few 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 last
+houses, 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 a
+hobby-horse. But farther down the hollow there was one really "birdy"
+spot, to borrow a word--useful enough to claim lexicographical
+standing--from one of my companions: a tiny grove of stunted oaks, by
+the roadside, just at the point where I naturally struck the valley
+when I approached it by way of the Hill of Storms. Here I happened upon
+my only Cape Cod cowbird, a full-grown youngster, who was being
+ministered unto in the most devoted manner by a red-eyed vireo,--such a
+sight as always fills me with mingled amusement, astonishment,
+admiration, and disgust. That any bird should be so befooled and imposed
+upon! Here, too, I saw at different times an adult male blue
+yellow-backed warbler, and a bird of the same species in immature
+plumage. It seemed highly probable, to say the least, that the young
+fellow had been reared not far off, the more so as the neighboring
+Wellfleet woods were spectral with hanging lichens, of the sort which
+this exquisite especially affects. At first I wondered why this
+particular little grove, by no means peculiarly inviting in appearance,
+should be the favorite resort of so many birds,--robins, orioles, wood
+pewees, kingbirds, chippers, golden warblers, black-and-white creepers,
+prairie warblers, red-eyed vireos, and blue yellow-backs; but I
+presently concluded that a fine spring of water just across the road
+must be the attraction. Near the spring was a vegetable garden, and
+here, on the 22d of August, I suddenly espied a water thrush teetering
+upon the tip of a bean-pole, his rich olive-brown back glistening in the
+sunlight. He soon dropped to the ground among the vines, and before long
+walked out into sight. His action when he saw me was amusing. Instead of
+darting back, as a sparrow, for instance, would have done, he flew up to
+the nearest perch; that is, to the top of the nearest bean-pole, which
+happened 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, why
+not laths for bean-poles? The perch was narrow, but wide enough for the
+bird'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 moment
+three prairie warblers were chasing each other about the garden, now
+clinging to the side of the poles, now alighting on their tips. It was a
+strange spot for prairie warblers, as it seemed to me, though they
+looked still more out of place a minute later, when they left the
+bean-patch and sat upon a rail fence in an open grassy field. Cape Cod
+birds, like Cape Cod men, know how to shift their course with the wind.
+Where else would one be likely to see prairie warblers, black-throated
+greens, and black-and-white creepers scrambling in company over the red
+shingles of a house-roof, and song sparrows singing day after day from a
+chimney-top?
+
+In all my wanderings in Dyer's Hollow, only once did I see anything of
+that pest of the seashore, the sportsman; then, in the distance, two
+young fellows, with a highly satisfactory want of success, as well as I
+could make out, were trying to take the life of a meadow lark. No doubt
+they found existence a dull affair, and felt the need of something to
+enliven it. A noble creature is man,--"a little lower than the angels!"
+Two years in succession I have been at the seashore during the autumnal
+migration of sandpipers and plovers. Two years in succession have I seen
+men, old and young, murdering sandpipers and plovers at wholesale for
+the mere fun of doing it. Had they been "pot hunters," seeking to earn
+bread by shooting for the market, I should have pitied them,
+perhaps,--certainly I should have regretted their work; but I should
+have thought no ill of them. Their vocation would have been as
+honorable, for aught I know, as that of any other butcher. But a man of
+twenty, a man of seventy, shooting sanderlings, ring plovers, golden
+plovers, and whatever else comes in his way, not for money, nor
+primarily for food, but because he enjoys the work! "A little lower than
+the angels!" What numbers of innocent and beautiful creatures have I
+seen limping painfully along the beach, after the gunners had finished
+their day's amusement! Even now I think with pity of one particular
+turnstone. Some being made "a little lower than the angels" had fired at
+him and carried away one of his legs. I watched him for an hour. Much of
+the time he stood motionless. Then he hobbled from one patch of
+eel-grass to another, in search of something to eat. My heart ached for
+him, and it burns now to think that good men find it a pastime to break
+birds' 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 way
+for weeks together. An exhilarating and edifying spectacle it
+was,--this venerable worthy sitting behind his bunch of wooden decoys, a
+wounded tern fluttering in agony at his feet. Withal, be it said, he was
+a man of gentlemanly bearing, courteous, and a Christian. He did not
+shoot on Sunday,--not he. Such sport is to me despicable. Yet it is
+affirmed by those who ought to know--by those, that is, who engage in
+it--that it tends to promote a spirit of manliness.
+
+But thoughts of this kind belong not in Dyer's Hollow. Rather let me
+remember 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, the
+valley was the very abode of quietness. Here, on one of my earlier
+excursions, I came unexpectedly to a bridge, and on the farther side of
+the bridge to a tidy house and garden; and in the garden were several
+pear-trees, with fruit on them! Still more to my surprise, here was a
+little shop. The keeper of it had also the agency of some insurance
+company,--so a signboard informed the passer-by. As for his stock in
+trade,--sole leather, dry goods, etc.,--that spoke for itself. I stepped
+inside the door, but he was occupied with an account book, and when at
+last he looked up there was no speculation in his eyes. Possibly he had
+sold something the day before, and knew that no second customer could be
+expected so soon. We exchanged the time of day,--not a very valuable
+commodity hereabout,--and I asked him a question or two touching the
+hollow, and especially "the village," of which I had heard a rumor that
+it lay somewhere in this neighborhood. He looked bewildered at the
+word,--he hardly knew what I could mean, he said; but with a little
+prompting he recollected that a few houses between this point and North
+Truro (there used to be more houses than now, but they had been removed
+to other towns,--some of them to Boston!) were formerly called "the
+village." I left him to his ledger, and on passing his house I saw that
+he was a dealer in grain as well as in sole leather and calico, and had
+telephonic communication with somebody; an enterprising merchant, after
+all, up with the times, in spite of appearances.
+
+The shop was like the valley, a careless tourist might have said,--a
+sleepy 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 than
+wide awake. The close-lying, barren, mountainous-looking hills did not
+oppress the mind, but rather lifted and dilated it, and although I could
+not hear the surf, I felt all the while the neighborhood of the sea; not
+the harbor, but the ocean, with nothing between me and Spain except that
+stretch of water. Blessed forever be Dyer's Hollow, I say, and blessed
+be 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 ignoble
+fashion,--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, and
+we were hardly out of the village before a seasonable toothache put him
+in mind of his pipe. Would smoking be offensive to me? he inquired. What
+could I say, having had an aching tooth before now myself? It was a
+pleasure almost beyond the luxury of breathing mountain air to see the
+misery of a fellow-mortal so quickly assuaged. The driver, a sturdy
+young Vermonter, was a man of different spirit. He had never used
+tobacco nor drunk a glass of "liquor," I heard him saying. Somebody had
+once 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 was
+piping 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 man
+of 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; it
+would take a nicer ear than mine to discriminate with certainty between
+a white-throat's voice and a school-boy's whistle.
+
+The morning had promised well, but before we emerged from the forest as
+we neared the summit we drove into a cloud, and, shortly afterward, into
+a pouring rain. In the office of the hotel I found a company of eight
+persons, four men and four women, drying themselves about the stove.
+They had left a village twenty miles away at two o'clock that morning
+in an open wagon for an excursion to the summit. Like myself, they had
+driven into a cloud, and up to this time had seen nothing more distant
+than the stable just across the road, within a stone's toss of the
+window, 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 be
+seen), and debated the situation. Finally, at three o'clock, they got
+into their open wagon, the rain pelting them fiercely, and started for
+the base. Doubtless they soon descended into clear weather, but not till
+they 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 of
+pilgrims had dropped out of sight in the fog--as a pebble drops into the
+lake--leaving me with the house to myself; and presently, as I sat at
+the window, I heard a white-throated sparrow singing outside. Here was
+one, at least, whom the rain could not discourage. A wild and yet a
+sweet and home-felt strain is this of "Whistling Jack,"--a mountain
+bird, well used to mountain weather, and just now too happy to forego
+his music, no matter how the storm might rage. I myself had been in a
+cloud often enough to feel no great degree of discomfort or lowness of
+spirits. I had not decided to spend the precious hours of a brief
+vacation upon a mountain-top without taking into account the additional
+risk of unfavorable weather in such a place. Let the clouds do their
+worst; I could be patient and wait for the sun. But this whistling
+philosopher outside spoke of something better than patience, and I
+thanked him for the timely word.
+
+Toward noon of the next day the rain ceased, the cloud vanished, and I
+made haste to clamber up the rocky peak--the Nose, so called--at the
+base of which the hotel is situated. Yes, there stretched Lake
+Champlain, visible for almost its entire length, and beyond it loomed
+the Adirondacks. I was glad I had come. _I_ could sing now. It does a
+man good to look afar off.
+
+Even before the fog lifted I had discovered, to my no small
+gratification, that the evergreens immediately about the house were
+full of gray-cheeked thrushes, a close colony, strictly confined to the
+low trees at the top of the mountain. They were calling at all hours,
+_yeep, yeep_, somewhat in the manner of young chickens; and after
+supper, as it grew dark, I stood on the piazza while they sang in full
+chorus. At least six of them were in tune at once. _Wee-o, wee-o, tit-ti
+wee-o_, something like this the music ran, with many variations; a most
+ethereal sound, at the very top of the scale, but faint and sweet; quite
+in tune also with my mood, for I had just come in from gazing long at
+the sunset, with Lake Champlain like a sea of gold for perhaps a hundred
+miles, 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 the
+mountain to the northern peak, the highest point, belittled in local
+phraseology as the Chin; a delightful jaunt of two miles, with
+magnificent prospects all the way. It was like walking on the ridge-pole
+of Vermont, a truly exhilarating experience.
+
+All in all, though the forenoon had been so rainy, I had lived a long
+day, and now, if ever, could appreciate the singing of this
+characteristic northern songster, himself such a lover of mountains as
+never to be heard, here in New England, at least, and in summer-time,
+except amid the dwindling spruce forests of the upper slopes. I have
+never before seen him so familiar. On the Mount Washington range and on
+Mount Lafayette it is easy enough to hear his music, but one rarely gets
+more than a flying glimpse of the bird. Here, as I say, he was never out
+of hearing, and seldom long out of sight, even from the door-step. The
+young were already leaving the nest, and undoubtedly the birds had
+disposed themselves for the season before the unpainted,
+inoffensive-looking little hotel showed any signs of occupancy. The very
+next year a friend of mine visited the place and could discover no trace
+of them. They had found their human neighbors a vexation, perhaps, and
+on 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 on
+this point I have never taken my friend's testimony. Perfectly at home
+as they are in the wildest and most desolate places, they manifest a
+particular fondness for the immediate vicinity of houses, delighting
+especially to fly about the gutters of the roof and against the window
+panes. Here, at the Summit House, they were constantly to be seen
+hawking back and forth against the side of the building, as barn
+swallows are given to doing in the streets of cities. The rude structure
+was doubly serviceable,--to me a shelter, and to the birds a fly-trap. I
+have never observed any other warbler thus making free with human
+habitations.
+
+This yellow-rump, or myrtle bird, is one of the thrifty members of his
+great family, and next to the black-poll is the most numerous
+representative of his tribe in Massachusetts during the spring and fall
+migrations; a beautiful little creature, with a characteristic flight
+and 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 of
+Massachusetts, and as a son of the Bay State I rejoice in his presence
+and heartily bid him welcome. We shall never have too many of such
+citizens. 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. He
+has a genius for adapting himself to circumstances; picking up his daily
+food in the depths of a mountain forest or off the panes of a
+dwelling-house, and wintering, as may suit his fancy or convenience, in
+the West Indies or along the sea-coast of Massachusetts.
+
+One advantage of a sojourn at the summit of any of our wooded New
+England mountains is the easy access thus afforded to the upper forest.
+While I was here upon Mount Mansfield I spent some happy hours almost
+every day in sauntering down the road for a mile or two, looking and
+listening. Just after leaving the house it was possible to hear three
+kinds of thrushes singing at once,--gray-cheeks, olive-backs, and
+hermits. Of the three the hermit is beyond comparison the finest singer,
+both as to voice and tune. His song, given always in three detached
+measures, each higher than the one before it, is distinguished by an
+exquisite liquidity, the presence of _d_ and _l_, I should say, as
+contrasted with the inferior _t_ sound of the gray-cheek. If it has
+less variety, and perhaps less rapture, than the song of the
+wood-thrush, it is marked by greater simplicity and ease; and if it does
+not breathe the ineffable tranquillity of the veery's strain, it comes
+to my ear, at least, with a still nobler message. The hermit's note is
+aspiration rather than repose. "Peace, peace!" says the veery, but the
+hermit'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 it
+forever), and at a bend of the road had turned to admire the wooded side
+of the mountain, just here spread out before me, miles and miles of
+magnificent hanging forest, when I was attracted by a noise as of
+something gnawing--a borer under the bark of a fallen spruce lying at my
+feet. Such an industrious and contented sound! No doubt the grub would
+have said, "Yes, I could do _this_ forever." What knew he of the
+beauties of the picture at which I was gazing? The very light with which
+to see it would have been a torture to him. Heaven itself was under the
+close bark of that decaying log. So peradventure, may we ourselves be
+living in darkness without knowing it, while spiritual intelligences
+look 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 it
+might look to more exalted beings, and, like my brother under the
+spruce-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 by
+me--a black-poll warbler in hot pursuit of an olive-backed thrush. The
+thrush alighted in a tree and commenced singing, and the warbler sat by
+and waited, following the universal rule that a larger bird is never to
+be attacked except when on the wing. The thrush repeated his strain once
+or twice, and then flew to another tree, the little fellow after him
+with all speed. Again the olive-back perched and sang, and again the
+black-poll waited. Three times these manoeuvres were repeated, before
+the birds passed out of my range. Some wrong-doing, real or fancied, on
+the part of the larger bird, had excited the ire of the warbler. Why
+should he be imposed upon, simply because he was small? The thrush,
+meantime, disdaining to defend himself, would only stop now and then to
+sing, as if to show to the world (every creature is the centre of a
+world) that such an insect persecution could never ruffle his spirit.
+Birds are to be commiserated, perhaps, on having such an excess of what
+we call human nature; but the misfortune certainly renders them the more
+interesting to us, who see our more amiable weaknesses so often
+reflected 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 a
+Canada jay in a thick spruce. He was on one of the lower branches, but
+pretty soon began mounting the tree, keeping near the bole and going up
+limb by limb in absolute silence, exactly in the manner of our common
+blue 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, _a
+priori_, I should have little hesitation in ascribing to any member of
+his tribe. I waited till I grew impatient. Then I started hastily
+toward him, making as much commotion as possible in pushing through the
+undergrowth. It was a clever scheme, but the bird was not to be
+surprised into uttering so much as an exclamation. He dropped out of his
+tree, flew a little distance to a lower and less conspicuous perch, and
+there 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 in
+with 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 in
+every case, though in the third instance there was no attempt at
+skulking, nor any symptom of nervousness. I have often been impressed
+and amused by the blue jay's habit in this respect. No bird could well
+be noisier than he when the noisy mood takes him; but come upon him
+suddenly 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 no
+doubt his Canadian cousin is equally well endowed.
+
+The reader may complain, perhaps, that I speak only of trifles. Why go
+to a mountain-top to look at warblers and thrushes? I am not careful to
+justify myself. I love a mountain-top, and go there because I love to be
+there. It is good, I think, to be lifted above the every-day level, and
+to enjoy the society--and the absence of society--which the heights
+afford. Looking over my notes of this excursion, I come upon the
+following sentence: "To sit on a stone beside a mountain road, with
+olive-backed thrushes piping on every side, the ear catching now and
+then the distant tinkle of a winter wren's tune, or the nearer _zee,
+zee, zee_ of black-poll warblers, while white-throated sparrows call
+cheerily 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 case
+at all events, by a few hours' stay in such a spot. I must pitch my tent
+there, for at least a night or two. I cannot even see the prospect at
+first, much less feel the spirit of the place. There must be time for
+the old life to drop off, as it were, while eye and ear grow wonted to
+novel sights and sounds. Doubtless I did take note of trivial
+things,--the call of a bird and the fragrance of a flower. It was a
+pleasing relief after living so long with men whose minds were all the
+time 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 odor
+hardly to be distinguished from the scent of carnation pinks. I
+remember, too, how the whole summit, from the Nose to the Chin, was
+sprinkled with the modest and beautiful Greenland sandwort, springing up
+in every little patch of thin soil, where nothing else would flourish,
+and blossoming even under the door-step of the hotel. Unpretending as it
+is, this little alpine adventurer makes the most of its beauty. The
+blossoms are not crowded into close heads, so as to lose their
+individual attractiveness, like the florets of the golden-rod, for
+example; nor are they set in a stiff spike, after the manner of the
+orchid just now mentioned. At the same time the plant does not trust to
+the 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 is
+caught by the cluster, and yet each flower shows by itself, and its own
+proper loveliness is in no way sacrificed to the general effect. How
+wise, too, is the sandwort in its choice of a dwelling-place! In the
+valley it would be lost amid the crowd. On the bare, brown mountain-top
+its scattered tufts of green and white appeal to all comers.
+
+To what extent, if at all, the sandwort depends upon the service of
+insects for its fertilization, I do not know, but it certainly has no
+scarcity of such visitors. "Bees will soar for bloom high as the highest
+peak of Mansfield;" so runs an entry in my notebook, with a pardonable
+adaptation of Wordsworth's line; and I was glad to notice that even the
+splendid black-and-yellow butterfly (_Turnus_), which was often to be
+seen sucking honey from the fragrant orchids, did not disdain to sip
+also from the sandwort's cup. This large and elegant butterfly--our
+largest--is thoroughly at home on our New England mountains, sailing
+over the very loftiest peaks, and making its way through the forests
+with a strong and steady flight. Many a time have I taken a second look
+at one, as it has threaded the treetops over my head, thinking to see a
+bird. Besides the _Turnus_, I noted here the nettle tortoise-shell
+butterfly (_Vanessa Milberti_--a showy insect, and the more attractive
+to me as being comparatively a stranger); the common cabbage butterfly;
+the yellow _Philodice_; the copper; and, much more abundant than any of
+these, a large orange-red fritillary (_Aphrodite_, I suppose),
+gorgeously bedecked with spots of silver on the under surface of the
+wings. All these evidently knew that plenty of flowers were to be found
+along this seemingly barren, rocky crest. Whether they have any less
+sensuous motive for loving to wander over such heights, who will presume
+to determine? It may very well be that their almost ethereal
+structure--such spread of wing with such lightness of body--is only the
+outward sign of gracious thoughts and feelings, of a sensitiveness to
+beauty far surpassing anything of which we ourselves are capable. What a
+contrast between them and the grub gnawing ceaselessly under the
+spruce-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 were
+new to us!) this same light-winged Aphrodite, flitting from blossom to
+blossom in the mountain breeze, was but a few days ago an ugly, crawling
+thing, close cousin to the borer. Since then it has fallen asleep and
+been changed,--a parable, past all doubt, though as yet we lack eyes to
+read 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 matter
+of course he was reputed to be of good family and to read Greek, and the
+fact that he now and then received a bank draft evidently gave him a
+respectable standing in the eye of the hotel clerk. Something--something
+of a very romantic nature, we may be sure--had driven him away from the
+companionship of his fellows, but he still found it convenient to be
+within reach of human society. Like all such solitaries, he had some
+half-insane notions. He could not sleep indoors, not for a night; it
+would ruin his health, if I understood him correctly; and because of
+wild animals--bears and what not--he made his bed on the roof of his
+hermitage. I had often dreamed of the enjoyment of a life in the woods
+all by one's self, but such a mode of existence did not gain in
+attractiveness as I saw it here in the concrete example. On the whole I
+was 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 to
+my own freedom.
+
+Two or three times a wagon-load of tourists appeared at the hotel. They
+strolled about the summit, admired the prospect, picked a bunch of
+sandwort, perhaps, but especially they went to see the snow. They had
+been at much trouble to stand upon the highest land in Vermont, and now
+that they were here, they wished to do or see something unique,
+something that should mark the day as eventful. So they were piloted to
+a cave midway between the Nose and the Chin, into which the sun never
+peeped, and wherein a snow-bank still lingered. The mountain was grand,
+the landscape was magnificent, but to eat a handful of snow and throw a
+snow-ball in the middle of July--this was almost like being at the North
+Pole; it would be something to talk about after getting home.
+
+One visitor I rejoiced to see, though a stranger. I was on the Nose in
+the afternoon, enjoying once more the view of Lake Champlain and the
+Adirondacks, when I descried two men far off toward the Chin. They had
+come up the mountain, not by the carriage road, but by a trail on the
+opposite side, and plainly were in no haste, though the afternoon was
+wearing away. As I watched their movements, a mile or two in the
+distance, I said to myself, "Good! they are botanists." So it proved; or
+rather one of them was a botanist,--a college professor on a pedestrian
+collecting-excursion. We compared notes after supper and walked together
+the next morning, enjoying that peculiar good fellowship which nothing
+but a kindred interest and an unexpected meeting in a lonesome place can
+make possible. Then he started down the carriage road with the design of
+exploring Smugglers' Notch, and I have never seen or heard from him
+since. I hope he is still botanizing on the shores of time, and finding
+many a precious rarity; and should he ever read this reference to
+himself, may it be with a feeling as kindly as that with which the lines
+are written.
+
+That afternoon I followed him, somewhat unexpectedly. I went down, as I
+had come up, on wheels; but I will not say in ignoble fashion, for the
+driver--the hotel proprietor himself--was in haste, the carriage had no
+brake, and the speed with which we rattled down the steep pitches and
+round the sharp curves, with the certainty that if anything should
+break, the horse would run and our days would be ended,--these things,
+and especially the latter consideration, of which I thought and the
+other man spoke, made the descent one of pleasurable excitement. We
+reached 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 a
+lodging for the night, so that on the morrow I might make a long day in
+Smugglers' Notch, a famous botanical resort between Mount Mansfield and
+Mount Sterling, which I had for years been desirous of visiting.
+
+I would gladly have stayed longer on the heights, but it was pleasant
+also to be once more in the lowlands; to walk out after supper and look
+up instead of down, while the chimney swifts darted hither and thither
+with their merry, breathless cacklings. How welcome, too, were the
+hearty music of the robin and the carol of the grass finch! After all, I
+thought, home is in the valley; but the whistle of the white-throat
+reminded 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 ornithological
+pursuits. For two months, more or less,--till the autumnal migration
+should set in,--I was determined to have my thoughts upon other matters.
+There is no more desirable plaything than an outdoor hobby, but a man
+ought not to be forever in the saddle. Such, at all events, had always
+been my opinion, so that I long ago promised myself never to become,
+what some of my acquaintances, perhaps with too much reason, were now
+beginning to consider me, a naturalist, and nothing else. That would be
+letting the hobby-horse run away with its owner. For the time being,
+then, birds should pass unnoticed, or be looked at only when they came
+in my way. A sensible resolve. But the maker of it was neither Mede nor
+Persian, as the reader, if he have patience enough, may presently
+discover for himself.
+
+As I sat upon the piazza, in the heat of the day, busy or half busy with
+a 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 to
+remark that the visitor was invariably a female. I watched her probe the
+scarlet tubes and dart away, and then returned to my page. She might
+have a nest somewhere near; but if she had there was small likelihood of
+my finding it, and, besides, I was just now not concerned with such
+trifles. On the 24th of June, however, a passing neighbor dropped into
+the yard. Was I interested in humming-birds? he inquired. If so, he
+could 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 the
+end of one of the lower branches of an apple-tree, eight or ten feet
+from the ground, saddled upon the drooping limb at a point where two
+offshoots made a good holding-place, while an upright twig spread over
+it a leafy canopy against rain and sun. Had the builders sought my
+advice as to a location, I could hardly have suggested one better suited
+to my own convenience. The tree was within a stone's toss of my window,
+and, better still, the nest was overlooked to excellent advantage from
+an old bank wall which divided my premises from those of my next-door
+neighbor. How could I doubt that Providence itself had set me a summer
+lesson?
+
+At our first visit the discoverer of the nest--from that moment an
+ornithologist--brought out a step-ladder, and we looked in upon the two
+tiny white eggs, considerately improving a temporary absence of the
+owner for that purpose. It was a picture to please not only the eye, but
+the imagination; and before I could withdraw my gaze the mother bird was
+back again, whisking about my head so fearlessly that for a moment I
+stood still, half expecting her to drop into the nest within reach of my
+hand.
+
+This, as I have said, was on the 24th of June. Six days later, on the
+afternoon of the 30th, the eggs were found to be hatched, and two
+lifeless-looking things lay in the bottom of the nest, their heads
+tucked out of sight, and their bodies almost or quite naked, except for
+a line of grayish down along the middle of the back.
+
+Meanwhile, I had been returning with interest the visits of the bird to
+our honeysuckle, and by this time had fairly worn a path to a certain
+point in the wall, where, comfortably seated in the shade of the
+hummer's own tree, and armed with opera-glass and notebook, I spent some
+hours daily in playing the spy upon her motherly doings.
+
+For a widow with a house and family upon her hands, she took life
+easily; at frequent intervals she absented herself altogether, and even
+when at home she spent no small share of the time in flitting about
+among the branches of the tree. On such occasions, I often saw her hover
+against the bole or a patch of leaves, or before a piece of caterpillar
+or spider web, making quick thrusts with her bill, evidently after bits
+of something to eat. On quitting the nest, she commonly perched upon one
+or another of a certain set of dead twigs in different parts of the
+tree, and at once shook out her feathers and spread her tail, displaying
+its handsome white markings, indicative of her sex. This was the
+beginning of a leisurely toilet operation, in the course of which she
+scratched 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 rubbing
+it down with her claws or by wiping it upon a twig. In general she paid
+little attention to me, though she sometimes hovered directly in front
+of my face, as if trying to stare me out of countenance. One of the most
+pleasing features of the show was her method of flying into the nest.
+She approached it, without exception, from the same quarter, and, after
+an almost imperceptible hovering motion, shut her wings and dropped upon
+the eggs.
+
+When the young were hatched I redoubled my attentions. Now I should see
+her feed them. On the first afternoon I waited a long time for this
+purpose, the mother conducting herself in her customary manner: now
+here, now there, preening her plumage, driving away a meddlesome
+sparrow, probing the florets of a convenient clover-head (an unusual
+resource, I think), or snatching a morsel from some leaf or twig.
+Suddenly she flew at me, and held herself at a distance of perhaps four
+feet from my nose. Then she wheeled, and, as I thought, darted out of
+the orchard. In a few seconds I turned my head, and there she sat in the
+nest! 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 the
+afternoon in attempting to see.
+
+Twenty-four hours later I was more successful, though the same ruse was
+again tried upon me. The mother left the nest at my approach, but in
+three minutes (by the watch) flew in again. She brooded for nine
+minutes. Then, quite of her own motion, she disappeared for six minutes.
+On her return she spent four minutes in dressing her feathers, after
+which she alighted on the edge of the nest, fed the little ones, and
+took her place upon them. This time she brooded for ten minutes. Then
+she was away for six minutes, dallied about the tree for two minutes
+longer, and again flew into the nest. While sitting, she pecked several
+times in quick succession at a twig within reach, and I could plainly
+see her mandibles in motion, as if she were swallowing. She brooded for
+thirteen minutes, absented herself for three minutes, and spent six
+minutes in her usual cautionary manoeuvres before resuming her seat.
+For the long interval of twenty-two minutes she sat still. Then she
+vanished for four minutes, and on her return gave the young another
+luncheon, after a fast of one hour and six minutes.
+
+The feeding process, which I had been so desirous to see, was of a sort
+to make the spectator shiver. The mother, standing on the edge of the
+nest, with her tail braced against its side, like a woodpecker or a
+creeper, took a rigidly erect position, and craned her neck until her
+bill was in a perpendicular line above the short, wide-open, upraised
+beak of the little one, who, it must be remembered, was at this time
+hardly bigger than a humble-bee. Then she thrust her bill for its full
+length down into his throat, a frightful-looking act, followed by a
+series of murderous gesticulations, which fairly made one observer's
+blood run cold.
+
+On the day after this (on the 2d of July, that is to say) I climbed into
+the tree, in the old bird's absence, and stationed myself where my eyes
+were perhaps fifteen feet from the nest, and a foot or two above its
+level. At the end of about twenty minutes, the mother, who meantime had
+made two visits to the tree, flew into place, and brooded for seventeen
+minutes. Then she disappeared again, and on her return, after numberless
+pretty feints and sidelong approaches, alighted on the wall of the nest,
+and fed both little ones. The operation, though still sufficiently
+reckless, looked less like infanticide than before,--a fact due, as I
+suppose, to my more elevated position, from which the nestlings' throats
+were better seen. After this she brooded for another seventeen minutes.
+On the present occasion, as well as on many others, it was noticeable
+that, while sitting upon the young, she kept up an almost incessant
+motion, as if seeking to warm them, or perhaps to develop their muscles
+by a kind of massage treatment. A measure of such hitchings and
+fidgetings might have meant nothing more than an attempt to secure for
+herself a comfortable seat; but when they were persisted in for fifteen
+minutes together, it was difficult not to believe that she had some
+different end in view. Possibly, as human infants get exercise by
+dandling on the mother's knee, the baby humming-bird gets his by this
+parental kneading process. Whether brooding or feeding, it must be said
+that 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 at
+once, and did not resume her seat for almost an hour, though she would
+undoubtedly have done so earlier but for my presence. Again and again
+she perched near me, her bill leveled straight at my face. Finally she
+alighted on the nest, and, after considerable further delay, as if to
+assure herself that everything was quite safe, fed the two chicks from
+her throat, as before. "She thrust her bill into their mouths so far" (I
+quote my notes) "that the tips of their short little beaks were up
+against the root of her mandibles!"
+
+Only once more, on the 4th of July, I ventured into the apple-tree. For
+more than an hour and a half I waited. Times without number the mother
+came buzzing into the tree, made the circuit of her favorite perches,
+dressed her plumage, darted away again, and again returned, till I was
+almost driven to get down, for her relief. At last she fed the
+nestlings, who by this time must have been all but starved, as indeed
+they seemed to be. "The tips of their bills _do_ come clean up to the
+base of the mother's mandibles." So I wrote in my journal; for it is the
+first duty of a naturalist to verify his own observations.
+
+On the 10th we again brought out the ladder. Though at least eleven days
+old, the tiny birds--the "widow's mites," as my facetious neighbor
+called 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 my
+heart. His bill, perceptibly longer than on the 5th, was sticking just
+above the border of the nest. I touched it at the tip, but he did not
+stir. Craning my neck, I could see his open eye. Poor, helpless things!
+Yet within three months they would be flying to Central America, or some
+more distant clime. How little they knew what was before them! As little
+as I know what is before me.
+
+The violence of the feeding act was now at its height, I think, but it
+would 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. When
+the two beaks were tightly joined, and while the old bird's was being
+gradually withdrawn, they were shaken convulsively,--by the mother's
+attempts to disgorge, and perhaps by the young fellow's efforts to
+hasten the operation. It was plain that he let go with reluctance, as a
+boy sucks the very tip of the spoon to get the last drop of jam; but, as
+will be mentioned in the course of the narrative, his behavior improved
+greatly in this respect as he grew older.
+
+On the 12th, just after the little ones had been fed, one of them got
+his wings for the first time above the wall of the nest, and fluttered
+them 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 of
+the young by regurgitation, as described briefly by Audubon, and more in
+detail by Mr. William Brewster,[9] would be continued after the
+nestlings were fully grown. On the 14th I wrote in my journal: "The
+method of feeding remains unchanged, and, as it seems, is likely to
+remain so to the end. It must save the mother much labor in going and
+coming, and perhaps renders the cooperation of the male parent
+unnecessary." This prediction was fulfilled, but with a qualification to
+be hereafter specified.
+
+[9] _The Auk_, vol. vii. p. 206.
+
+Every morning, now, I went to the apple-tree uncertain whether the nest
+would 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 which
+his observations were made--in the garden of Mr. E. S. Hoar, in
+Concord--were hatched on the 4th of July,[10] and forsook the nest on
+the 18th. My birds were already fifteen days old, at least, and, unless
+they were to prove uncommonly backward specimens, ought to be on the
+wing forthwith. Nevertheless they were in no haste. Day after day
+passed. The youngsters looked more and more like old birds, and the
+mother grew constantly more and more nervous.
+
+[10] But Mr. Hoar, from whom Mr. Brewster had his dates, informs me that
+the time of hatching was not certainly known; and from Mr. Brewster's
+statement about the size of the nestlings, I cannot doubt that they had
+been 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 at
+my presence, but after a while it transpired that a young oriole--a
+blundering, tailless fellow--was the cause of the disturbance. By some
+accident he had dropped into the leafy treetop, as guiltless of any evil
+design as one of her own nestlings. How she did buzz about him! In and
+out 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, and
+carrying her tail spread to its utmost. The scene lasted for some
+minutes. Through it all the two young birds kept perfectly quiet, never
+once 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. The
+mother was literally in a frenzy. She went the round of her perches, but
+could stay nowhere. Once she dashed out of the tree for an instant, and
+drove a sparrow away from the tomato patch. Ordinarily his presence
+there would not have annoyed her in the least, but in her present state
+of mind she was ready to pounce upon anybody. All of which shows once
+more how "human-like" birds are. The bewilderment of the oriole was
+comical. "What on earth can this crazy thing be shooting about my ears
+in this style for?" I imagined him saying to himself. In fact, as he
+glanced my way, now and then, with his innocent baby face, I could
+almost 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 the
+twins took his flight. I was standing on the wall, with my glass leveled
+upon the nest, when I saw him exercising his wings. The action was
+little more pronounced than had been noticed at intervals during the
+last 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 have
+expected him to do, he was in the air, hovering in the prettiest
+fashion, and in a moment more had alighted on a leafless twig slightly
+above the level of the nest, and perhaps a yard from it. Within a minute
+the mother appeared, buzzing and calling, with answering calls from the
+youthful adventurer. At once--after a hasty reconnaissance of the man on
+the 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, and
+made 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 the
+little fellow more closely. He held his perch, and occupied himself with
+dressing his plumage, though, as the breeze freshened, he was compelled
+once in a while to keep his wings in motion to prevent the wind from
+carrying him away. When the old bird returned,--in just half an
+hour,--she resented my intrusion (what an oppressor of the widow and the
+fatherless she must by this time have thought me!) in the most
+unmistakable manner, coming more than once quite within reach. However,
+she soon gave over these attempts at intimidation, perched beside the
+percher, and again put something into his maw. This time she did not
+feed the nestling. As she took her departure, she told the
+come-outer--or so I fancied--that there was a man under the tree, a
+pestilent fellow, and it would be well to get a little out of his reach.
+At all events, she had scarcely disappeared before the youngster was
+again on the wing. It was wonderful how much at home he
+seemed,--poising, backing, soaring, and alighting with all the ease and
+grace of an old hand. One only piece of awkwardness I saw him commit: he
+dropped upon a branch much too large for his tiny feet, and was
+manifestly uncomfortable. But he did not stay long, and at his next
+alighting was well up in the tree, where it was noticeable that he
+remained ever after.
+
+With so much going on outside, it was hard to remain indoors, and
+finally I took a chair to the orchard, and gave myself up to watching
+the drama. The feeding process, though still always by regurgitation,
+was by this time somewhat different from what it had been when the
+bills of the young were less fully developed. In my notes of this date I
+find 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 was
+thrust into his mouth at right angles,--the change being necessitated,
+probably, by the greater length of his bill,--and he seemed to be
+jerking strenuously at it. Then he opened his beak and remained
+motionless, while the black mandibles of the mother could be seen
+running down out of sight into his throat."
+
+[11] For convenience, I use the masculine pronoun in speaking of both
+the 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 a
+female.
+
+The other youngster, Number One, as I now called him, stayed in the
+tree, or at most ventured only into the next one, and was fed at varying
+intervals,--as often, apparently, as the busy mother could find anything
+to give him. Would he go back to his cradle for the night? It seemed not
+improbable, notwithstanding he had shown no sign of such an intention so
+long as daylight lasted. At 3.50 the next morning, therefore, I stole
+out to see. No: Number Two was there alone.
+
+At seven o'clock, when I made my second visit, the mother was in the
+midst of another day's hard work. Twice within five minutes she brought
+food to the nestling. Once the little fellow--not so very little
+now--happened to be facing east, while the old bird alighted, as she had
+invariably done, on the western side. The youngster, instead of facing
+about, threw back his head and opened his beak. "Look out, there!"
+exclaimed my fellow-observer; "you'll break his neck if you feed him in
+that way." But she did not mind. Young birds' necks are not so easily
+broken. Within ten minutes of this time she fed Number One, giving him
+three doses. They were probably small, however (and small wonder), for
+he begged hard for more, opening his bill with an appealing air. The
+action in this case was particularly well seen, and the vehement
+jerking, while the beaks were glued together, seemed almost enough to
+pull the young fellow's head off. Within another ten minutes the mother
+was again ministering to Number Two! Poor little widow! Between her
+incessant labors of this kind and her overwhelming anxiety whenever any
+strange bird came near, I began to be seriously alarmed for her. As a
+member of a strictly American family, she was in a fair way, I thought,
+to be overtaken by the "most American of diseases,"--nervous
+prostration. It tired me to watch her.
+
+With us, and perhaps with her likewise, it was a question whether Number
+Two would remain in the nest for the day. He grew more and more
+restless; as my companion--a learned man--expressed it, he began to
+"ramp round." Once he actually mounted the rim of the nest, a thing
+which his more precocious brother had never been seen to do, and
+stretched forward to pick at a neighboring stem. Late that afternoon the
+mother fed him five times within an hour, instead of once an hour, or
+thereabouts, as had been her habit three weeks before. She meant to have
+him in good condition for the coming event; and he, on his part, was
+active to the same end,--standing upon the wall of the nest again and
+again, and exercising his wings till they made a cloud about him. A
+dread of launching away still kept him back, however, and shortly after
+seven o'clock I found him comfortably disposed for the night. "He is now
+on his twenty-first day (at least) in the nest. To-morrow will see him
+go." So end my day's notes.
+
+At 5.45 the next morning he was still there. At 6.20 I absented myself
+for a few minutes, and on returning was hailed by my neighbor with the
+news that the nest was empty. Number Two had flown between 6.25 and
+6.30, but, unhappily, neither of us was at hand to give him a cheer. I
+trust that he and his mother were not hurt in their feelings by the
+oversight. The whole family (minus the father) was still in the
+apple-tree; the mother full, and more than full, of business, feeding
+one youngster after the other, as they sat here and there in the upper
+branches.
+
+Twenty-four hours later, as I stood in the orchard, I heard a hum of
+wings, and found the mother over my head. Presently she flew into the
+top of the tree, and the next instant was sitting beside one of the
+young ones. His hungry mouth was already wide open, but before feeding
+him she started up from the twig, and circled about him so closely as
+almost or quite to touch him with her wings. On completing the circle
+she dropped upon the perch at his side, but immediately rose again, and
+again flew round him. It was a beautiful act,--beautiful beyond the
+power of any words of mine to set forth; an expression of maternal
+ecstasy, I could not doubt, answering to the rapturous caresses and
+endearments in which mothers of human infants are so frequently seen
+indulging. Three days afterward, to my delight, I saw it repeated in
+every particular, as if to confirm my opinion of its significance. The
+sight repaid all my watchings thrice over, and even now I feel my heart
+growing warm at the recollection of it. Strange thoughtlessness, is it
+not, which allows mothers capable of such passionate devotion, tiny,
+defenseless things, to be slaughtered by the million for the enhancement
+of woman's charms!
+
+At this point we suddenly became aware that for at least a day or two
+the old bird had probably been feeding her offspring in two
+ways,--sometimes by regurgitation, and sometimes by a simple transfer
+from 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 not
+finished, and looked to see her return; but she flew away, and after a
+while the truth dawned upon us. Thereafter, unless our observation was
+at fault, she used whichever method happened to suit her convenience. If
+she found a choice collection of spiders,[12] for instance, she brought
+them in her throat (as cedar-birds carry cherries), to save trips; if
+she had only one or two, she retained them between her mandibles. It
+will be understood, I suppose, that we did not see the food in its
+passage from one bird to the other,--human eyesight would hardly be
+equal to work of such nicety; but the two bills were put together so
+frequently and in so pronounced a manner as to leave us in no practical
+uncertainty about what was going on. Neither had I any doubt that the
+change was connected in some way with the increasing age of the
+fledgelings; yet it is to be said that the two methods continued to be
+used interchangeably to the end, and on the 28th, when Number Two had
+been out of the nest for seven days, the mother thrust her bill down his
+throat, and repeated the operation, just as she had done three weeks
+before.
+
+[12] Mr. E. H. Eames reports (in _The Auk_, vol. vii. p. 287) that, on
+dissecting a humming-bird, about two days old, he found sixteen young
+spiders in its throat, and a pultaceous mass of the same in its stomach.
+
+For at least two days longer, as I believe, the faithful creature
+continued her loving ministrations, although I failed to detect her in
+the act. Then, on the 1st of August, as I sat on the piazza, I saw her
+for the last time. The honeysuckle vine had served her well, and still
+bore 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 the
+latest generation! Our intercourse had lasted for eight weeks,--wanting
+one day,--and it was fitting that it should end where it had begun, at
+the sign of the honeysuckle.
+
+The absence of the father bird for all this time, though I have
+mentioned 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 been
+to reach it, that such absence or desertion--by whatever name it may be
+called--is the general habit of the male ruby-throat. Upon this point I
+shall 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 the
+summer of 1890, I was struck with the persistent absence of the head of
+the family. As week after week elapsed, this feature of the case excited
+more and more remark, and I turned to my out-of-door journal for such
+meagre notes as it contained of a similar nest found five years before.
+From these it appeared that at that time, also, the father bird was
+missing. Could such truancy be habitual with the male ruby-throat? I had
+never supposed that any of our land birds were given to behaving in this
+ill-mannered, unnatural way, and the matter seemed to call for
+investigation.
+
+My first resort was, of course, to books. The language of Wilson and
+Audubon is somewhat ambiguous, but may fairly be taken as implying the
+male bird's presence throughout the period of nidification. Nuttall
+speaks explicitly to the same effect, though with no specification of
+the grounds on which his statement is based. The later systematic
+biographers--Brewer, Samuels, Minot, and the authors of New England Bird
+Life--are silent in respect to the point. Mr. Burroughs, in Wake-Robin,
+mentions having found two nests, and gives us to understand that he saw
+only the female birds. Mrs. Treat, on the other hand, makes the father a
+conspicuous figure about the single nest concerning which she reports.
+Mr. James Russell Lowell, too, speaks of watching both parents as they
+fed the young ones: "The mother always alighted, while the father as
+uniformly remained upon the wing."
+
+So far, then, the evidence was decidedly, not to say decisively, in the
+masculine ruby-throat's favor. But while I had no desire to make out a
+case against him, and in fact was beginning to feel half ashamed of my
+uncomplimentary surmises, I was still greatly impressed with what my own
+eyes had seen, or rather had not seen, and thought it worth while to
+push the inquiry a little further.
+
+I wrote first to Mr. E. S. Hoar, in whose garden Mr. Brewster had made
+the observations cited in my previous article. He replied with great
+kindness, and upon the point in question said: "I watched the nest two
+or three times a day, from a time before the young were hatched till
+they departed; and _now you mention it_, it occurs to me that I never
+did see the male, but only the white-breasted female."
+
+Next I sought the testimony of professional ornithologists; and here my
+worst suspicions seemed in a fair way to be confirmed, although the
+greater number of my correspondents were unhappily compelled to plead a
+want of knowledge. Dr. A. K. Fisher had found, as he believed, not less
+than twenty-five nests, and to the best of his recollection had never
+seen a male bird near one of them after it was completed. He had watched
+the female feeding her young, and, when the nests contained eggs, had
+waited for hours on purpose to secure the male, but always without
+result.
+
+Mr. William Brewster wrote: "I have found, or seen _in situ_, twelve
+hummers' nests, all in Massachusetts. Of these I took nine, after
+watching each a short time, probably not more than an hour or two in any
+case. Of the remaining three, I visited one three or four times at
+various hours of the day, another only twice, the third but once. Two of
+the three contained young when found. The third was supposed to have
+young, also, but could not be examined without danger to its contents. I
+have never seen a male hummer anywhere near a nest, either before or
+after the eggs were laid, but, as you will gather from the above brief
+data, my experience has not been extensive; and in the old days, when
+most of my nests were found, the methods of close watching now in vogue
+were unthought of. In the light of the testimony to which you refer, I
+should conclude, with you, that the male hummer must occasionally assist
+in 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 nests
+of the ruby-throat, but had seen no male about any of them after
+nidification was begun. "I confess," he says, "that I had never thought
+of his absence as being other than accidental, and hence have never made
+any observations directly upon the point; so that my testimony is of
+comparatively little value. In at least one instance, when the female
+was building her nest, I remember to have seen the male fly with her and
+perch near by, while she was shaping the nest, and then fly off with her
+after more material. I don't like to believe that the little villain
+leaves the entire task of nidification to his better half (we may well
+call her better, if he does); but my memory is a blank so far as
+testimony affirmative of his devotion is concerned." Mr. Henshaw recalls
+an experience with a nest of the Rivoli humming-bird (_Eugenes
+fulgens_), in Arizona,--a nest which he spent two hours in getting. "I
+was particularly anxious to secure the male, but did not obtain a
+glimpse of him, and I remember thinking that it was very strange." He
+adds that Mr. C. W. Richmond has told him of finding a nest and taking
+the eggs without seeing the father bird, and sums up his own view of the
+matter thus:--
+
+"Had any one asked me offhand, 'Does the male hummer help the female
+feed the young?' I am quite sure I should have answered, 'Of course he
+does.' As the case now stands, however, I am inclined to believe him a
+depraved 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 that
+on one occasion his attention was called to a nest (it proved to contain
+a 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 the
+vicinity of a nest occupied by young ones, although he did not see him
+feed or visit them. This nest, Mr. Jeffries says, was one of five which
+he has found. In the four other instances no male birds were observed,
+notwithstanding three of the nests were taken,--a tragedy which might be
+expected to bring the father of the family upon the scene, if he were
+anywhere within call.
+
+In view of the foregoing evidence, it appears to me reasonably certain
+that the male ruby-throat, as a rule, takes no considerable part in the
+care of eggs and young. The testimony covers not less than fifty nests.
+Some of them were watched assiduously, nearly all were examined, and the
+greater part were actually taken; yet of the fifty or more male
+proprietors, only two were seen; and concerning these exceptions, it is
+to be noticed that in one case the eggs were just laid, and in the
+other, while the hungry nestlings must have kept the mother bird
+extremely busy, her mate was not observed to do anything in the way of
+lightening her labors.
+
+As against this preponderance of negative testimony, and in
+corroboration of Mr. Lowell's and Mrs. Treat's circumstantial
+narratives, there remain to be mentioned the fact communicated to me by
+Mr. 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 their
+attentions, and the following very interesting and surprising story
+received from Mr. C. C. Darwin, of Washington, through the kindness of
+Mr. Henshaw. Some years ago, as it appears, a pair of ruby-throats built
+a 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. He
+remembers perfectly that the male fed the female during the entire
+period 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 the
+father was never seen to take her place. Mr. Darwin cannot say that the
+male ever fed the young ones, but is positive that he was frequently
+about the nest after they were hatched. While they were still too young
+to fly, a gardener, in pruning the tree, sawed off the limb on which the
+nest was built. Mr. Darwin's mother rescued the little ones and fed them
+with sweetened water, and on her son's return at night the branch was
+fixed in place again, as best it could be, by means of wires. Meanwhile
+the 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 care
+of their offspring, who by this time, it is safe to say, had become more
+or less surfeited with sugar and water, and gladly returned to a diet
+of spiders and other such spicy and hearty comestibles.
+
+Mr. Henshaw, with an evident satisfaction which does him honor, remarks
+upon the foregoing story as proving that, whatever may be true of male
+hummers in general, there are at least some faithful Benedicts among
+them. For myself, indeed, as I have already said, I hold no brief
+against the ruby-throat, and, notwithstanding the seemingly unfavorable
+result of my investigation into his habits as a husband and father, it
+is by no means clear to me that we must call him hard names. Before
+doing that, we ought to know not only that he stays away from his wife
+and children, but _why_ he stays away; whether he is really a shirk, or
+absents himself unselfishly and for their better protection, at the risk
+of being misunderstood and traduced. My object in this paper is to raise
+that question about him, rather than to blacken his character; in a
+word, to call attention to him, not as a reprobate, but as a mystery. To
+that end I return to the story of my own observations.
+
+In last month's article[13] I set forth somewhat in detail (if the
+adverb seem inappropriate, as I fear it will, I can only commend it to
+the reader's mercy) the closeness of our watch upon the nest there
+described. For more than a month it was under the eye of one or other of
+two men almost from morning till night. We did not once detect the
+presence of the father, and yet I shall never feel absolutely sure that
+he did not one day pay us a visit. I mention the circumstance for what
+it may be worth, and because, whatever its import, it was at least a
+lively spectacle. It occurred upon this wise: On the 19th of July, the
+day when the first of the young birds bade good-by to its cradle, I had
+gone into the house, leaving my fellow-observer in the orchard, with a
+charge to call me if anything noteworthy should happen. I was hardly
+seated before he whistled loudly, and I hastened out again. Another
+hummer had been there, he said, and the mother had been chasing him (or
+her) about in a frantic manner; and even while we were talking, the
+scene was re-enacted. The stranger had returned, and the two birds were
+shooting hither and thither through the trees, the widow squeaking and
+spreading 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 been
+the recreant husband and father, unable longer to deny himself a look at
+his bairns,--who knows? Or it may have been some bachelor or widower who
+had come a-wooing. One thing is certain,--husband, lover, or inquisitive
+stranger, he had no encouragement to come again.
+
+[13] These two humming-bird papers were printed in consecutive numbers
+of _The Atlantic Monthly_, June and July, 1891.
+
+As if to heighten the dramatic interest of our studies (I come now to
+the promised mystery), we had already had the singular good fortune to
+find a male humming-bird who seemed to be stationed permanently in a
+tall ash-tree, standing by itself in a recent clearing, at a distance of
+a mile or more from our widow's orchard. Day after day, for at least a
+fortnight (from the 2d to the 15th of July), he remained there. One or
+both of us went almost daily to call upon him, and, as far as we could
+make out, he seldom absented himself from his post for five minutes
+together! What was he doing? At first, in spite of his sex, it was hard
+not to believe that his nest was in the tree; and to satisfy himself, my
+companion "shinned" it, schoolboy fashion,--a frightful piece of work,
+which put me out of breath even to look at it,--while I surveyed the
+branches from all sides through an opera-glass. All was without avail.
+Nothing was to be seen, and it was as good as certain, the branches
+being well separated, and easily overlooked, that there was nothing
+there.
+
+Four days later I set out alone, to try my luck with the riddle. As I
+entered the clearing, the hummer was seen at his post, and my suspicions
+fastened upon a small wild apple-tree, perhaps twenty rods distant. I
+went to examine it, and presently the bird followed me. He perched in
+its top, but seemed not to be jealous of my proximity, and soon returned
+to his customary position; but when I came back to the apple-tree, after
+a visit to a clump of oaks at the top of the hill, he again came over. I
+could 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 nest
+been near by. After this I went to the edge of the wood, where I could
+keep an eye upon both trees without being myself conspicuous. The
+sentinel spent most of his time in the ash, visiting the apple-tree but
+once, and then for a few minutes only. I stayed an hour and a half, and
+came away no wiser than before. The nest, if nest there was, must be
+elsewhere, I believed. But where? And what was the object of the male's
+watch?
+
+My curiosity was fully roused. I had never seen or heard of such conduct
+on the part of any bird, and the next forenoon I spent another hour and
+a half in the clearing. The hummer was at his post, as he always was. We
+had never to wait for him. Soon after my arrival he flew to the
+apple-tree, the action seeming to have no connection with my presence.
+Presently he went back to the ash, and drove out of it two intruding
+birds. A moment later two humming-birds were there, and in another
+moment they flew away in a direction opposite to the apple-tree. Here,
+then, was a real clue. The birds were probably our sentinel and his
+mate. I made after them with all speed, pausing under such scattered
+trees as had been left standing in that quarter. Nothing was to be
+found, and on my return there sat the male, provokingly, at the top of
+the apple-tree, whence he soon returned to the ash. A warbler entered
+the tree, and after a while ventured upon the branch where the hummer
+was sitting. Instead of driving her away he took wing himself, and paid
+another visit to the apple-tree,--a visit of perhaps five minutes,--at
+the end of which he went back to the ash. Then two kingbirds happened to
+alight in the apple-tree. At once the hummer came dashing over and
+ordered them off, and in his excitement dropped for a moment into the
+leafy top of a birch sapling,--a most unnatural proceeding,--after which
+he 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 was
+in neither! He sat motionless for five minutes at a time upon certain
+dead twigs of the ash, precisely as our female was accustomed to sit in
+her apple-tree. For at least seven days he had been thus occupied. Where
+was his mate? On the edge of the wood, perhaps. But, if so, why did I
+hear nothing from her, as I passed up and down? Again my hour and a half
+had been spent to no purpose.
+
+Not yet discouraged, I returned the next morning. For the three quarters
+of an hour that I remained, the hummer was not once out of the ash-tree
+for five minutes. I am not sure that he left it for five minutes
+altogether. As usual, he perched almost without exception on one or
+other of two dead limbs, while a similar branch, on the opposite side of
+the trunk, he was never seen to touch. A Maryland yellow-throat alighted
+on one of his two branches and began to sing, but had repeated his
+strain only three or four times before the hummer, who had been absent
+for the moment, darted upon him and put him to flight. A little
+afterward, a red-eyed vireo alighted on his other favorite perch, and he
+showed no resentment. The day before, a warbler had sat on the same
+branch which the yellow-throat now invaded, and the hummer not only did
+not offer to molest him, but flew away himself. These inconsistencies
+made it hard to draw any inference from his behavior. During my whole
+stay he did not once go to the apple-tree, although, for want of
+anything better to do, I again scrutinized its branches. This time I
+_was_ discouraged, and gave over the search. His secret, whatever it
+might be, was "too dear for my possessing." But my fellow-observer kept
+up his visits, as I have said, and the hummer remained faithful to his
+task as late as July 15th, at least.
+
+Some readers may be prompted to ask, as one of my correspondents asked
+at the time, whether the mysterious sentry may not have been the mate of
+our home bird. I see no ground for such a suspicion. The two places were
+at 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 as
+well have been on Mount Washington. Nor can I believe that he had any
+connection with a nest found two months afterward in a pitch-pine grove
+within a quarter of a mile, more or less, of his clearing. It was
+undoubtedly a nest of that season, and might have been his for aught I
+know, so far as the mere fact of distance was concerned; but here again
+an intervening wood must have cut off all visual communication. If his
+mate and nest were not within view from his ash-tree perch, what could
+be the meaning of his conduct? Without some specific constraining
+motive, no bird in his normal condition was likely to stay in one tree
+hour after hour, day after day, and week after week, so that one could
+never come in sight of it without seeing him. But even if his nest was
+in the immediate neighborhood, the closeness and persistency of his
+lookout are still, to my mind, an absolute mystery. Our female bird,
+whether she had eggs or offspring, made nothing of absenting herself by
+the half hour; but this male hardly gave himself time to eat his
+necessary food; indeed, I often wondered how he kept himself alive. Is
+such a course of action habitual with male hummers? If so, had our
+seemingly widowed or deserted mother a husband, who somewhere, unseen by
+us, was standing sentry after the same heroic, self-denying fashion?
+These and all similar questions I must leave to more fortunate
+observers, or postpone to a future summer. Meantime, my judgment as to
+the male ruby-throat's character remains in suspense. It is not plain to
+me 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, the
+robin is without question the one most generally known. Its great
+commonness and wide distribution have something to do with this fact,
+but can hardly be said to account for it altogether. The red-eyed vireo
+has almost as extensive a range, and at least in New England is possibly
+more numerous; but except among ornithologists it remains a stranger,
+even to country-bred people. The robin owes its universal recognition
+partly to its size and perfectly distinctive dress, partly to its early
+arrival in the spring, but especially to the nature of its nesting and
+feeding habits, which bring it constantly under every one's eye.
+
+It would seem impossible, at this late day, to say anything new about
+so familiar a bird; but the robin has one interesting and remarkable
+habit, to which there is no allusion in any of our systematic
+ornithological treatises, so far as I am aware, although many individual
+observers must have taken notice of it. I mean the habit of roosting at
+night in large flocks, while still on its breeding grounds, and long
+before the close of the breeding season.[14]
+
+[14] Mr. William Brewster has been aware of this habit for twenty-five
+years, but, like myself, has never seen it mentioned in print. He
+devotes to it a paper in _The Auk_ for October, 1890, to which I am
+happy to refer readers who may wish a more thorough discussion of the
+matter than I have been able to give. My own paper was printed at the
+same time, in _The Atlantic Monthly_, and had been accepted by the
+editor before I knew of Mr. Brewster's intention to write. References to
+a 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 daily
+passage back and forth of small companies of robins. A friend, living in
+another town, had noticed similar occurrences, and more than once we
+discussed the subject; agreeing that such movements were probably not
+connected in any way with the grand southward migration, which, so far
+as we could judge, had not yet commenced, but that the birds must be
+flying 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 our
+Cambridge ornithologists had found a robin roost in that city,--a wood
+in which great numbers of birds congregated every night. This led me to
+keep a sharper eye upon my own robins, whom I had already noticed
+repeating their previous year's manoeuvres. Every evening, shortly
+before and after sunset, they were to be seen flying, now singly, now by
+twos and threes, or even by the half dozen, evidently on their way to
+some rendezvous. I was suspicious of a rather distant hill-top covered
+with pine-trees; but before I could make it convenient to visit the
+place at the proper hour, I discovered, quite unexpectedly, that the
+roost 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 dense
+growth of gray birches and swamp white oaks, but with a sprinkling of
+maples and other deciduous trees. It is bounded on the further side by a
+wet meadow, and at the eastern end by a little ice-pond, with a
+dwelling-house and other buildings beside it, all within a stone's throw
+of the wood.
+
+This discovery was made on the evening of July 25th, and I at once
+crossed a narrow field between the wood and the highway, and pushed in
+after the birds. It was too dark for me to see what was going on, but as
+I brushed against the close branches the robins set up a lively
+cackling, and presently commenced flying from tree to tree before me as
+I advanced, though plainly with no intention of deserting their
+quarters. The place was full of them, but I could form no estimate of
+their number.
+
+On the following evening I took my stand upon a little knoll commanding
+the western end of the wood. According to my notes, the birds began to
+arrive about sunset,--but this was pretty certainly an error,--and
+though I did not undertake an exact count until the flight was mainly
+over, it seemed likely that at least three hundred passed in at that
+point. This would have made the total number twelve hundred, or
+thereabout, on the assumption that my outlook had covered a quarter of
+the circuit. After the flight ceased I went into the wood, and from the
+commotion overhead it was impossible not to believe that such a
+calculation must be well within the truth.
+
+The next day was rainy, but on the evening of the 28th I stood by the
+shore of the pond, on the eastern side of the wood, and made as accurate
+a count as possible of the arrivals at that point. Unfortunately I was
+too late; the robins were already coming. But in fifty minutes, between
+6.40 and 7.30, I counted 1072 birds. They appeared singly and in small
+flocks, 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 how
+many might be passing in on the left. If my observations comprehended a
+quarter of the circle, and if the influx was equally great on the other
+sides (an assumption afterward disproved), then it was safe to set the
+whole number of birds at five thousand or more. Of the 1072 actually
+seen, 797 came before the sunset gun was fired,--a proportion somewhat
+larger than it would have been had the sky been clear.
+
+On the afternoon of the 29th I again counted the arrivals at the eastern
+end; but though I set out, as I thought, in good season, I found myself
+once more behind time. At 6.30 robins were already dropping in,
+notwithstanding the sky was cloudless. In the first five minutes
+eighteen birds appeared; at sunset 818 had been counted; and at 7.30,
+when I came away, the figures stood at 1267. "The robins came more
+rapidly than last night," I wrote in my notebook, "and for much of the
+time I could keep watch of the southeastern corner only. My vision then
+covered much less than a quarter of the circuit; so that if the birds
+came as freely from other directions, at least five thousand must have
+entered the wood between 6.30 and 7.30. As long as it was light they
+avoided passing directly by me, going generally to the left, and
+slipping into the roost behind some low outlying trees; though,
+fortunately, in doing this they were compelled to cross a narrow patch
+of the illuminated western sky. I suspect that the number increases from
+night to night. Between 6.40 and 7.30, 1235 birds came, as compared
+with 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 I
+arrived late, and made a partial count only. After sunset 186 birds were
+seen, whereas there had been 455 entries at the eastern end, two nights
+before, during the same time.
+
+Thus far I had always been too late to witness the beginning of the
+flight. On the evening of August 1st I resolved to be in season. I
+reached the border of the pond at 5.15, and at that very moment a single
+robin flew into the wood. No others were seen for eighteen minutes, when
+three arrived together. From this time stragglers continued to appear,
+and at 6.30 I had counted 176. In the next ten minutes 180 arrived; in
+the next five minutes, 138. Between 6.45 and 7, I counted 549; then, in
+six minutes, 217 appeared. At 7.25, when I concluded, the figures stood
+at 1533 birds. For about twenty minutes, as will be noticed, the
+arrivals were at the rate of thirty-six a minute. Throughout the
+thickest 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 more
+and more difficult to see any birds except such as passed above the dark
+tree line; and from what went on just about me, it was evident that the
+number of arrivals was increasing rather than diminishing as my count
+fell off. There seemed to be no good reason for doubting that at least
+two thousand robins entered the wood at the eastern end.
+
+Two nights later I stationed myself in the meadow southwest of the
+roost. Here I counted but 935 entries. The movement appeared to be fully
+as steady as on the opposite side, but as darkness came on I found
+myself at a great disadvantage; a hill occupied the background, giving
+me no illuminated sky to bring the birds into relief, so that I could
+see only such as passed close at hand. Of the 935 birds, 761 came before
+seven o'clock, but it was reasonably certain that the flight afterward
+was nearly or quite as great, only that I wanted light wherewith to see
+it.
+
+On the evening of August 4th I went back to the eastern end, and as the
+sky was perfectly clear I hoped to make a gain upon all my previous
+figures. But the fair weather was perhaps a hindrance rather than a
+help; for the robins came later than before, and more in a body, and
+continued to arrive long after it was impossible to see them. I counted
+1480,--53 less than on the 1st.
+
+I attempted no further enumeration until the 18th. Then, in an hour and
+ten 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 of
+the time I missed all except the comparatively small number that passed
+in my immediate vicinity. Many were flying at a great height,--having
+come from a long distance, as I inferred,--and sometimes I knew nothing
+of their approach till they dropped out of the sky directly over the
+wood. On this occasion, as well as on many others,--but chiefly during
+the latter part of the season,--it was noticeable that some of the
+robins 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 note
+of one fellow, who came from the south at a great altitude, and went
+directly over the wood. When he was well past it he suddenly pulled
+himself up, as if fancying he had caught a signal. After a moment of
+hesitation he proceeded on his northerly course, but had not gone far
+before he met half a dozen birds flying south. Perhaps he asked them the
+way. At all events, he wheeled about and joined them, and in half a
+minute was safe in port. He had heard of the roost, apparently (how and
+where?), but had not before visited it.
+
+This count of August 18th was the last for nearly a month, but I find a
+minute of August 27th stating that, while walking along the highway on
+the westerly side of the roost,--the side that had always been the least
+populous,--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 of
+the gathering. Indeed, from my friend's observations upon the Belmont
+roost, to be mentioned later, it seems well-nigh certain that it was
+still upon the increase.
+
+Toward the close of August I became interested in the late singing of
+several whippoorwills, and so was taken away from the robins' haunt at
+the hour of sunset. Then, from the 5th to the 13th of September, I was
+absent from home. On the night of my return I went to the shore of the
+pond, where, on the 1st of August, I had counted 1533 entries. The
+weather was favorable, and I arrived in good season and remained till
+the stars came out, but I counted only 137 robins! It was plain that the
+great majority of the congregation had departed.
+
+As I have said, there was little to be learned by going into the wood
+after the robins were assembled. Nevertheless I used frequently to
+intrude upon them, especially as friends or neighbors, who had heard of
+my "discovery," were desirous to see the show. The prodigious cackling
+and rustling overhead seemed to make a deep impression upon all such
+visitors, while, for myself, I should have had no difficulty in
+crediting the statement had I been told that _ten thousand_ robins were
+in the treetops. One night I took two friends to the place after it was
+really 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 dry
+twigs. The smoke and flame speedily waked the sleepers; but even then
+they manifested no disposition to be driven out.
+
+For curiosity's sake, I paid one early morning visit to the roost, on
+the 30th of July. It would be worth while, I thought, to see how much
+music so large a chorus would make, as well as to note the manner of its
+dispersion. To tell the truth, I hoped for something spectacular,--a
+grand burst of melody, and then a pouring forth of a dense, uncountable
+army of robins. I arrived about 3.40 (it was still hardly light enough
+to show the face of the watch), and found everything quiet. Pretty soon
+the robins commenced cackling. At 3.45 a song sparrow sang, and at the
+same moment I saw a robin fly out of the wood. Five minutes later a
+robin sang; at 3.55 another one flew past me; at four o'clock a few of
+the birds were in song, but the effect was not in any way
+peculiar,--very much as if two or three had been singing in the ordinary
+manner. They dispersed precisely as I had seen them gather: now a
+single bird, now two or three, now six, or even ten. A casual passer
+along the road would have remarked nothing out of the common course.
+They flew low,--not as if they were starting upon any prolonged
+flight,--and a goodly number alighted for a little in the field where I
+was standing. Shortly before sunrise I went into the wood and found it
+deserted. The robin is one of our noisiest birds. Who would have
+believed that an assembly of thousands could break up so quietly? Their
+behavior in this regard may possibly have been influenced by prudential
+considerations. I have said that many of them seemingly took pains to
+approach the roost indirectly and under cover. On the westerly side, for
+example, they almost invariably followed a line of bushes and trees
+which runs toward the roost along the edge of the meadow, even though
+they were obliged sharply to alter their course in so doing.
+
+All this time I had been in correspondence with my friend before
+referred to, who was studying a similar roost,[15]--in Belmont,--which
+proved to be more populous than mine, as was to be expected, perhaps,
+the surrounding country being less generally wooded. It was a mile or
+more from his house, which was so situated that he could sit upon his
+piazza in the evening and watch the birds streaming past. On the 11th of
+August he counted here 556 robins, of which 336 passed within five
+minutes. On the 28th he counted 1180, of which 456 passed within five
+minutes,--ninety-one a minute! On the 2d of September, from a knoll
+nearer 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 the
+middle of September. "Only 109 robins flew over the place to-night," my
+correspondent wrote on the 25th, "against 538 September 4th, 838 August
+30th, and 1180 August 28th." Two evenings later (September 27th) he went
+to the neighborhood of the roost, and counted 251 birds,--instead of
+1883 on the 2d. Even so late as October 9th, however, the wood was not
+entirely deserted. During the last month or so of its occupancy, the
+number of the birds was apparently subject to sudden and wide
+fluctuations, and it seemed not unlikely that travelers from the north
+were making a temporary use of the well-known resort. It would not be
+surprising 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 question
+often presented itself. It was only the middle of July when the
+Cambridge roost was found in full operation, though at that time many
+robins must still have had family duties, and some were probably
+building new nests. Next summer, we said, we would try to mark the
+beginnings of the congregation.
+
+My own plans to this end came near being thwarted. In December I was
+dismayed to see the owner of the wood cutting it down. Happily some kind
+power stayed his hand when not more than a third of the mischief was
+done, and on the 29th of June, 1890, while strolling homeward along the
+highway, listening to the distant song of a veery, I noticed within five
+or ten minutes seventeen robins making toward the old rendezvous. On
+the following evening I stood beside the ice-pond and saw one hundred
+and ninety-two robins enter the wood. The flight had begun before my
+arrival, and was not entirely over when I came away. Evidently several
+hundreds of the birds were already passing their nights in company. In
+my ignorance, I was surprised at the early date; but when I communicated
+my discovery to the Belmont observer, he replied at once that he had
+noticed 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 about
+making such a confession--whether it might not be the adult males who
+thus unseasonably went off to bed in a crowd, leaving their mates to
+care for eggs and little ones. At this very moment, as it happened, I
+was watching with lively sympathy the incessant activities of a female
+humming-bird, who appeared to be bringing up a family (two very hungry
+nestlings), with no husband to lift a finger for her assistance; and the
+sight, as I fear, put me into a cynical mood. Male robins were probably
+like males in general,--lovers of clubs and shirkers of home duties.
+Indeed, a friend who went into the roost with me, one evening, remarked
+upon the continual cackling in the treetops as "a very social sound;"
+and upon my saying something about a sewing circle, he answered, quite
+seriously, "No, it is rather like a gentleman's club." But it would have
+been unscientific, as well as unchristian, to entertain an hypothesis
+like this without putting its soundness to some kind of test. I adopted
+the only plan that occurred to me,--short of rising at half past two
+o'clock in the morning to see the birds disperse. I entered the wood
+just before the assemblage was due (this was on the 9th of July), and
+took a sheltered position on the eastern edge, where, as the robins flew
+by me, or alighted temporarily in the trees just across the brook, they
+would have the sunlight upon their breasts. Here, as often as one came
+sufficiently near and in a sufficiently favorable light, I noted whether
+it was an adult, or a streaked, spotted bird of the present season. As a
+matter of course, the number concerning which this point could be
+positively determined under such conditions was very small,--only
+fifty-seven altogether. Of these, forty-nine were surely birds of the
+present summer, and only eight unmistakable adult males. If any adult
+females came in, they passed among the unidentified and uncounted.[16] I
+was glad I had made the test. As a kind-hearted cynic (I confess to
+being nothing worse than this), I was relieved to find my misanthropic,
+or, to speak more exactly, my misornithic, notions ill founded. As for
+the sprinkling of adult males, they may have been, as a "friend and
+fellow woodlander" suggests, birds which, for one reason or another, had
+taken up with the detestable opinion that "marriage is a failure."
+
+[16] A week later, my correspondent reported a similar state of things
+at the Belmont roost. "A very large proportion of the birds are
+spotted-breasted young of the year, but occasionally I have detected an
+adult male." He examined the birds at near range, and at rest, after
+they 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 at
+the eastern end of the roost, thinking thus to ascertain in a general
+way the rate at which its population increased. On the whole, the growth
+proved to be fairly steady, in spite of some mysterious fluctuations, as
+will 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 another
+man, though we stood side by side, and covered no more ground than I had
+hitherto attempted to compass alone. The figures of the 27th were far in
+excess of any obtained in 1889, and for a day I was disposed to take
+seriously the suggestion of a friend that some other roost must have
+been broken up and its members turned into the Melrose gathering. But on
+the evening of the 28th I tried a count by myself, and made only 1517
+birds! The conditions were favorable, and the robins came, as they had
+come the night before, in flocks, almost in continuous streams. The
+figures had fallen off, not because there were fewer birds, but because
+I was unable to count them. They were literally too many for me. The
+difficulties of the work, it should be explained, are greatly enhanced
+by the fact that at the very corner where the influx is largest none of
+the low-flying birds can be seen except for a second or two, as they
+dart across a bit of sky between the roost and an outlying wood. To
+secure anything like a complete census, this point must be watched
+continuously; and meantime birds are streaming in at the other corner
+and shooting over the distracted enumerator's head, and perhaps dropping
+out of the sky. I conclude, therefore, not that the roost had increased
+in population, but that my last year's reckoning was even more
+inadequate than I then supposed. Even with two pairs of eyes, it is
+inevitable that multitudes of birds should pass in unnoticed, especially
+during the latter half of the flight. I have never had an assistant or a
+looker-on to whom this was not perfectly apparent.
+
+As I stood night after night watching the robins stream into this little
+wood,--no better, surely, than many they had passed on their way,--I
+asked myself again and again what could be the motive that drew them
+together. The flocking of birds for a long journey, or in the winter
+season, is less mysterious. In times of danger and distress there is no
+doubt a feeling of safety in a crowd. But robins cannot be afraid of the
+dark. Why, then, should not each sleep upon its own feeding grounds,
+alone, or with a few neighbors for company, instead of flying two or
+three miles, more or less, twice a day, simply for the sake of passing
+the night in a general roost?
+
+Such questions we must perhaps be content to ask without expecting an
+answer. By nature the robin is strongly gregarious, and though his
+present mode of existence does not permit him to live during the summer
+in close communities,--as marsh wrens do, for example, and some of our
+swallows,--his ancestral passion for society still asserts itself at
+nightfall. Ten or twelve years ago, when I was bird-gazing in Boston,
+there were sometimes a hundred robins at once about the Common and
+Garden, in the time of the vernal migration. By day they were scattered
+over the lawns; but at sunset they gathered habitually in two or three
+contiguous 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,--if
+going to sleep in a leafless treetop can be called retiring.
+
+Whatever the origin and reason of this roosting habit, I have no doubt
+that it is universal. Middlesex County birds cannot be in any respect
+peculiar. Whoever will keep a close eye upon the robins in his
+neighborhood, in July and August, will find them at sunset flocking to
+some general sleeping-place.
+
+It would be interesting to know how far they travel at such times. The
+fact that so many hundreds were to be seen at a point more than a mile
+away from the Belmont roost is significant; but I am not aware that any
+one has yet made a study of this part of the subject. My own birds
+seemed to come, as a rule, by easy stages. In the long narrow valley
+east of the roost, where I oftenest watched their approach, they
+followed habitually--not invariably--a zigzag route, crossing the meadow
+diagonally, and for the most part alighting for a little upon a certain
+wooded hill, whence they took a final flight to their nightly haven,
+perhaps a quarter of a mile beyond. Farther down the valley, a mile or
+more from the roost, birds were to be seen flying toward it, but I found
+no place at which a general movement could be observed and large numbers
+counted.
+
+As to the size of these nightly gatherings, it seems wisest not to
+guess; though, treating the subject in this narrative manner, I have not
+scrupled to mention, simply as a part of the story, some of my temporary
+surmises. What I am told of the Belmont wood is true also of the one in
+Melrose: its shape and situation are such as to make an accurate census
+impossible, no matter how many "enumerators" might be employed. It could
+be surrounded easily enough, but it would be out of the question to
+divide the space among the different men so that no two of them should
+count the same birds. At present it can only be said that the robins are
+numbered 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 KHAYYAM.
+
+
+By the first of August the bird-lover's year is already on the wane. In
+the chestnut grove, where a month ago the wood thrush, the rose-breasted
+grosbeak, and the scarlet tanager were singing, the loiterer now hears
+nothing but the wood pewee's pensive whistle and the sharp monotony of
+the red-eyed vireo. The thrasher is silent in the berry pasture, and the
+bobolink in the meadow. The season of jollity is over. Orioles, to be
+sure, after a month of silence, again have fits of merry fifing. The
+field sparrow and the song sparrow are still in tune, and the meadow
+lark whistles, though rarely. Catbirds still practice their feeble
+improvisations and mimicries in the thickets along the brooksides as
+evening comes on, and of the multitudes of robins a few are certain to
+be heard warbling before the day is over. Goldfinches have grown
+suddenly numerous, or so it seems, and not infrequently one of them
+breaks out in musical canary-like twitterings. On moonlight evenings the
+tremulous, haunting cry of the screech-owl comes to your ears, always
+from far away, and if you walk through the chestnut grove aforesaid in
+the daytime you may chance to catch his faint, vibratory, tree-frog
+whistle. For myself, I never enter the grove without glancing into the
+dry top of a certain tall tree, to see whether the little rascal is
+sitting in his open door. More than half the time he is there, and
+always with his eye on me. What an air he has!--like a judge on the
+bench! If I were half as wise as he looks, these essays of mine would
+never more be dull. For his and all other late summer music let us be
+thankful; but it is true, nevertheless, that the year is waning. How
+short it has been! Only the other day the concert opened, and already
+the performers are uneasy to be gone. They have crowded so much into so
+brief 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 them
+are gone already? Where are the blue golden-winged warblers that sang
+daily on the edge of the wood opposite my windows, so that I listened to
+them at my work? I have heard nothing of their rough _dsee, dsee_ since
+the 21st of June, and in all that time have seen them but once--a single
+bird, a youngling of the present year, stumbled upon by accident while
+pushing 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? An
+odd coincidence, however, warns me at this very moment that too much is
+not to be made of merely negative experiences; for even while I was
+penciling the foregoing sentence about the blue golden-wing there came
+through the open window the hoarse upward-sliding chant of his close
+neighbor, the prairie warbler. I have not heard that sound before since
+the 6th of July, and it is now the 22d of August. The singers had not
+gone, 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, after
+being dumb for six or seven weeks, pipe up at that precise moment, as
+if to punctuate my ruminations with an interrogation point? Does he like
+this dog-day morning, with its alternate shower and sunshine, and its
+constant stickiness and heat? In any case I was glad to hear him, though
+I cannot in the spirit of veracity call him a good singer. Whist! There
+goes 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 of
+May, to judge from his behavior. _He_ likes dog-day weather, there can
+be 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 are
+several times as abundant as in June. The air is sweet with their calls
+at this moment, and once in a while some father of the flock lets his
+happiness run over in song. One cannot go far now without finding the
+road full of chipping sparrows, springing up in their pretty,
+characteristic way, and letting the breeze catch them. The fences and
+wayside apple-trees are lively with kingbirds and phoebes. I am
+already watching the former with a kind of mournful interest. In ten
+days, or some such matter, we shall have seen the last of their saucy
+antics. Gay tyrants! They are among the first birds of whom I can
+confidently say, "They are gone;" and they seem as wide-awake when they
+go as when they come. Being a man, I regret their departure; but if I
+were a crow, I think I should be for observing the 31st of August as a
+day of annual jubilee.
+
+A few years ago, in September, I saw the white-breasted swallows
+congregated in the Ipswich dunes,--a sight never to be forgotten. On the
+morning of the 9th, the fourth day of our visit, a considerable
+flock--but no more, perhaps, than we had been seeing daily--came
+skimming over the marshes and settled upon a sand-bar in the river,
+darkening it in patches. At eight o'clock, when we took the straggling
+road out of the hills, a good many--there might be a thousand, I
+guessed--sat, upon the fence wires, as if resting. We walked inland, and
+on our return, at noon, found, as my notes of the day express it, "an
+innumerable host, thousands upon thousands," about the landward side of
+the dunes. Fences and haycocks were covered. Multitudes were on the
+ground,--in the bed of the road, about the bare spots in the marsh, and
+on the gray faces of the hills. Other multitudes were in the bushes and
+low trees, literally loading them. Every few minutes a detachment would
+rise into the air like a cloud, and anon settle down again. As we stood
+gazing at the spectacle, my companion began chirping at a youngster who
+sat near him on a post, as one might chirp to a caged canary. The effect
+was magical. The bird at once started toward him, others followed, and
+in a few seconds hundreds were flying about our heads. Round and round
+they went, almost within reach, like a cloud of gnats. "Stop! stop!"
+cried my companion; "I am getting dizzy." We stopped our squeakings, and
+the cloud lifted; but I can see it yet. Day after day the great
+concourse remained about the hills, till on the 13th we came away and
+left them. The old lighthouse keeper told me that this was their annual
+rendezvous. He once saw them circle for a long time above the dunes, for
+several hours, if I remember right, till, as it seemed, all stragglers
+had been called in from the beach, the marsh, and the outlying grassy
+hills. Then they mounted into the sky in a great spiral till they
+passed out of sight; and for that year there were no more swallows.
+This, he insisted, took place in the afternoon, "from three to four
+o'clock." He was unquestionably telling a straightforward story of what
+he himself had seen, but his memory may have been at fault; for I find
+it to be the settled opinion of those who ought to know, that swallows
+migrate by day and not by night, while the setting out of a great flock
+late in the afternoon at such a height would seem to indicate a
+nocturnal journey. Morning or evening, I would give something to witness
+so imposing a start.
+
+The recollection of this seaside gathering raises anew in my mind the
+question why, if swallows and swifts migrate exclusively in the daytime,
+we so rarely see anything of them on the passage. Our Ipswich birds were
+all tree swallows,--white-breasted martins,--and might fairly be
+supposed to have come together from a comparatively limited extent of
+country. But beside tree swallows there are purple martins, barn
+swallows, sand martins, cliff swallows, and chimney swifts, all of which
+breed to the northward of us in incalculable numbers. All of them go
+south between the middle of July and the first of October. But who in
+New 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 their
+grand 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 swallows
+flying south. Twice, while gazing up at the loose procession, I suddenly
+became aware of a close bunch of birds at a prodigious height, barely
+visible, circling about in a way to put a count out of the question, but
+evidently some hundreds in number. On both occasions the flock vanished
+almost immediately, and, as I believed, by soaring out of sight. The
+second time I meant to assure myself upon this point, but my attention
+was distracted by the sudden appearance of several large hawks within
+the field of my glass, and when I looked again for the swallows they
+were nowhere to be seen. Were the stragglers which I had for some time
+been watching, flying high, but well within easy ken, and these dense,
+hardly discernible clusters--hirundine nebulae, as it were--were all
+these but parts of one innumerable host, the main body of which was
+passing far above me altogether unseen? The conjecture was one to
+gratify the imagination. It pleased me even to think that it _might_ be
+true. But it was only a conjecture, and meantime another question
+presented 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 same
+place, or rather on the same north and south line, while no matter where
+else I walked, east or west, not a swallow was visible. Had I stumbled
+upon a regular route of swallow migration? It looked so, surely; but I
+made little account of the matter till a month afterward, when, in
+exactly the same place, I observed robins and bluebirds following the
+same course. The robins were seen October 26th, in four flocks,
+succeeding each other at intervals of a few minutes, and numbering in
+all about 130 birds. They flew directly south, at a moderate height,
+and were almost certainly detachments of one body. The bluebird movement
+was two days later, at about the same hour, the morning being cold, with
+a little snow falling. This time, too, as it happened, the flock was in
+four detachments. Three of these were too compact to be counted as they
+passed; the fourth and largest one was in looser order and contained a
+little more than a hundred individuals. In all, as well as I could
+guess, there might have been about three hundred birds. They kept a
+straight 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 a
+mere coincidence that these swallows, bluebirds, and robins were all
+crossing the valley just at this point?
+
+This question, too, I count it safer to ask than to answer, but all
+observers, I am sure, must have remarked so much as this,--that birds,
+even on their migrations, are subject to strong local preferences. An
+ornithologist of the highest repute assures me that his own experience
+has convinced him so strongly of this fact that if he shoots a rare
+migrant in a certain spot he makes it a rule to visit the place again a
+year afterward on the same day, and, if possible, at the same hour of
+the day. Another friend sends me a very pretty story bearing upon the
+same point. The bird of which he speaks, Wilson's black-cap warbler, is
+one of the less common of our regular Massachusetts migrants. I count
+myself fortunate if I see two or three specimens during its spring or
+autumn passage. My correspondent shall tell the story for himself.
+
+"While I was making the drawings for the 'Silva,' at the old Dwight
+house, I was in the habit of taking a turn every pleasant day in the
+gardens after my scanty lunch. On the 18th of May, 1887, in my daily
+round I saw a Wilson's black-cap for the first time in my life. He was
+in a bush of _Spiraea media_, which grew in the midst of the rockery, and
+allowed 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 about
+it with my family when I got home. The seeing of a new bird always makes
+a red-letter day.
+
+"The next spring, as I was looking over my notebook of the previous
+year, I came upon my entry of May 18th, and thought I would be on the
+lookout for a black-cap on that date. Several times during the morning I
+thought of the matter, and after my lunch I sauntered into the rockery
+just as I had done the year before. Imagine my start when there, in the
+very same bush, was the black-cap peering at me; and I found on looking
+at my watch that it was precisely the same hour,--half past one! I
+rubbed 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, and
+talked 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-cap
+now), and wondered if it would keep tryst again. On the morning of the
+18th, the first thing I thought of when I awoke was my black-cap. That
+forenoon I actually felt nervous as the time approached, for I felt a
+sort of certainty (you smile) that I should see my bird again. My lunch
+was hastier than usual, and I was about to sally forth when it flashed
+across me--'Suppose the bird should be there again, who would believe my
+story? Hold! I will have a witness.' I called to Mr. J----, who was at
+work upstairs, and after explaining what I wanted, invited him to
+accompany me. We cautiously entered the rockery, and within a few
+minutes there flitted from a neighboring thicket into that very Spiraea
+bush 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 and
+dramatic than the foregoing, but I may add that a few years ago I
+witnessed the vernal migration in a new piece of country--ten miles or
+so from my old field--and found myself at a very considerable
+disadvantage. I had never realized till then how much accustomed I had
+grown to look for particular birds in particular places, and not in
+other 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 northward
+or southward. We see the stragglers, more or less numerous, that happen
+to have dropped out of the procession in our immediate neighborhood,--a
+flock of sandpipers about the edge of the pond, some sparrows by the
+roadside, a bevy of warblers in the wood,--and from these signs we infer
+the passing of the host.
+
+Unlike swallows, robins, bluebirds, blackbirds, and perhaps most of the
+sparrows, our smaller wood birds, the warblers and vireos especially,
+appear to move as a general thing in mixed flocks. Whenever the woods
+are full of them, as is the case now and then every spring and fall, one
+of the most striking features of the show is the number of species
+represented. For the benefit of readers who may never have observed such
+a "bird wave," or "rush," let me sketch hastily one which occurred a few
+years ago, on the 22d of September. As I started out at six o'clock in
+the morning, in a cool northwest wind, birds were passing overhead in an
+almost continuous stream, following a westerly course. They were chiefly
+warblers, but I noted one fairly large flock of purple finches. All were
+at a good height, and the whole movement had the air of a diurnal
+migration. I could only conjecture that it was the end of the nocturnal
+flight, so far, at least, as the warblers were concerned; in other
+words, that the birds, on this particular occasion, did not finish their
+nightly journey till a little after sunrise. But if many were still
+flying, many others had already halted; for presently I came to a piece
+of thin, stunted wood by the roadside, and found in it a highly
+interesting company. Almost the first specimen I saw was a Connecticut
+warbler perched in full view and exposing himself perfectly. Red-bellied
+nuthatches were calling, and warblers uncounted were flitting about in
+the trees and underbrush. A hurried search showed black-polls,
+black-throated greens, blue yellow-backs, one redstart, one
+black-and-white creeper, one Blackburnian, one black-and-yellow, one
+Canadian flycatcher (singing lustily), one yellow redpoll, and one
+clearly-marked bay-breast. The first yellow-bellied woodpecker of the
+season was hammering in a tree over my head, and not far away was the
+first flock of white-throated sparrows. After breakfast I passed the
+place again, and the only bird to be found was one phoebe! Within
+half a mile of the spot, however, I came upon at least three goodly
+throngs, including scarlet tanagers (all in yellow and black),
+black-throated blue warblers, pine warblers, olive-backed and
+gray-cheeked thrushes, a flock of chewinks (made up exclusively of adult
+males, so far as I could discover), red-eyed vireos, one solitary vireo,
+brown thrashers, with more redstarts, a second Blackburnian, and a
+second black-and-yellow. Every company had its complement of chickadees.
+Of the morning's forty species, thirteen were warblers; and of these
+thirteen, four were represented by one specimen each. For curiosity's
+sake I may add that a much longer walk that afternoon, through the same
+and other woods, was utterly barren. Except for two or three flocks of
+white-throated sparrows; there was no sign whatever that the night
+before had brought us a "flight."
+
+Autumnal ornithology may almost be called a science by itself. Not only
+are birds harder to find (being silent) and harder to recognize in
+autumn than in spring, but their movements are in themselves more
+difficult of observation. A few years of note-taking will put one in
+possession of the approximate dates of arrival of all our common vernal
+migrants. Every local observer will tell you when to look for each of
+the familiar birds of his neighborhood; but he will not be half so ready
+with information as to the time of the same birds' departure. Ask him
+about 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, and
+golden warblers in early September; but he will very likely add that
+these were probably voyagers from the North, and that he has never made
+out just when his own summer birds take their leave.
+
+After the work of nidification is over, birds as a rule wander more or
+less from their breeding haunts; and even if they do not wander they are
+likely to become silent. If we miss them, therefore, we are not to
+conclude 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 none
+to be found. After the first of July I neither saw nor heard a cuckoo of
+either species! Had they moved away? I do not know; but the case may be
+taken as an extreme illustration of the uncertainty attaching to the
+late-summer doings of birds in general. Every student must have had
+experiences of a sort to make him slow to dogmatize when such points are
+in question. Throughout May and June, for example, he has heard and seen
+wood thrushes in a certain grove. After that, for a whole month, he
+hears and sees nothing, though he is frequently there. The thrushes have
+gone? So it would seem. But then, suddenly, they are singing again in
+the very same trees, and he is forced to conclude that they have not
+been away, but during their period of midsummer silence have eluded his
+notice. On the whole, therefore, after making allowance for particular
+cases in which we may have more precise information, it would be hard, I
+think, to say just when our nocturnal travelers set out on their long
+journey. 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 a
+blessing. Like the falling of the leaves, it touches the heart with a
+pleasing sadness,--a sadness more delicious, if one is born to enjoy it,
+than all the merry-making of springtime. And even for the most
+unsentimental of naturalists the autumnal season has many a delightful
+hour. The year is almost done; but for the moment the whole feathered
+world is in motion, and the shortest walk may show him the choicest of
+rarities. Thanks to the passing of the birds, his local studies are an
+endless pursuit. "It is now more than forty years that I have paid some
+attention to the ornithology of this district, without being able to
+exhaust the subject," says Gilbert White; "new occurrences still arise
+as long as any inquiries are kept alive." A happy man is the bird-lover;
+always another species to look for, another mystery to solve. His
+expectations may never be realized; but no matter; it is the hope, not
+its fulfillment, that makes life worth having. How can any New
+Englander imagine that he has exhausted the possibilities of existence
+so 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 of
+private good fortune let the Fates send or withhold as they will. The
+grand spectacle itself will not fail us. Even now, through all the
+northern country, the procession is getting under way. For the next
+three 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, week
+days and Sundays, they will be flying: now singly or in little groups,
+and flitting from one wood or pasture to another; now in great
+companies, and with protracted all-day or all-night flights. Who could
+ask a better stimulus for his imagination than the annual southing of
+this mighty host? Each member of it knows his own time and his own
+course. On such a day the snipe will be in such a meadow, and the golden
+plover in such a field. Some, no doubt, will lose their way. Numbers
+uncounted will perish by storm and flood; numbers more, alas, by human
+agency. As I write, with the sad note of a bluebird in my ear, I can see
+the sea-beaches and the marshes lined with guns. But the army will push
+on; they will come to their desired haven; for there is a spirit in
+birds, also, "and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them
+understanding."
+
+
+
+
+A GREAT BLUE HERON.
+
+    "Why appear you with this ridiculous boldness?"
+                                           SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+The watcher of birds in the bush soon discovers that they have
+individual as well as race characteristics. They are not things, but
+persons,--beings with intellect, affections, and will,--and a strong
+specific resemblance is found to be consistent with no small measure of
+personal variation. All robins, we say, look and act alike. But so do
+all Yankees; yet it is part of every Yankee's birthright to be different
+from every other Yankee. Nature abhors a copy, it would seem, almost as
+badly 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 a
+certain point climbed the steep cliff to the railway track, meaning to
+look into a large cranberry meadow where, on previous visits, I had
+found a few sandpipers and plovers. Near one end of the perfectly level,
+sand-covered meadow was a little pool, and my first glance in that
+direction showed me a great blue heron wading about its edge. With as
+much quietness as possible I stole out of sight, and then hastened up
+the railway through a cut, till I had the sun at my back and a hill
+between me and the bird. Then I began a stealthy approach, keeping
+behind one object after another, and finally going down flat upon the
+ground (to roll in the soil is an excellent method of cleansing one's
+garments on Cape Cod) and crawling up to a patch of bayberry bushes, the
+last practicable cover.
+
+Here let me say that the great blue heron is, as its name implies, a big
+bird, standing almost as high as an ordinary man, and spreading its
+wings for nearly or quite six feet. Its character for suspiciousness may
+be gathered from what different writers have said about it. "He is most
+jealously vigilant and watchful of man," says Wilson, "so that those who
+wish 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 to
+attempt to approach it. To walk up towards one would be a fruitless
+adventure." Dr. Brewer's language is to the same effect,--"At all times
+very vigilant and difficult of approach."
+
+This, then, was the bird which I now had under my field-glass, as I lay
+at full length behind the friendly bayberry bushes. Up to this point,
+for aught that appeared, he was quite unaware of my espionage. Like all
+the members of his family that I have ever seen, he possessed so much
+patience that it required much patience to watch him. For minutes
+together he stood perfectly still, and his movements, as a rule, were
+either so slow as to be all but imperceptible, or so rapid as almost to
+elude the eye. Boys who have killed frogs--which was pretty certainly my
+heron's present employment--will need no explanation of his behavior.
+They know very well that, if the fatal club is to do its work, the
+slowest kind of preliminary motion must be followed by something like a
+flash of lightning.
+
+I watched the bird for perhaps half an hour, admiring his handsome blue
+wings as now and then he spread them, his dainty manner of lifting his
+long legs, and the occasional flashing stroke of his beak. My range was
+short (for a field-glass, I mean), and, all in all, I voted it "a fine
+show."
+
+When I wearied of my position I rose and advanced upon the heron in full
+sight, expecting every moment to see him fly. To my astonishment he held
+his ground. Down the hillside I went, nearer and nearer, till I came to
+a barbed-wire fence, which bounded the cranberry field close by the
+heron's pool. As I worried my way through this abominable obstruction,
+he stepped into a narrow, shallow ditch and started slowly away. I made
+rapidly after him, whereupon he got out of the ditch and strode on ahead
+of me. By this time I was probably within twenty yards of him, so near
+that, as he twisted his long neck every now and then, and looked at me
+through his big yellow eyes, I began to wonder whether he might not take
+it into his head to turn the tables upon me. A stab in the face with
+that ugly sharp beak would have been no laughing matter; but I did not
+believe myself in any danger, and quickened my steps, being now highly
+curious to see how near the fellow I could get. At this he broke into a
+kind of dog-trot, very comical to witness, and, if I had not previously
+seen him fly a few yards, I should have supposed him disabled in the
+wing. Dr. Brewer, by the way, says that this bird is "never known to
+run, or even to walk briskly;" but such negative assertions are always
+at the maker's risk.
+
+He picked up his legs at last, for I pressed him closer and closer, till
+there could not have been more than forty or fifty feet between us; but
+even then he settled down again beside another pool, only a few rods
+further on in the same meadow, and there I left him to pursue his
+frog-hunt unmolested. The ludicrousness of the whole affair was enhanced
+by the fact, already mentioned, that the ground was perfectly flat, and
+absolutely without vegetation, except for the long rows of newly planted
+cranberry vines. As to what could have influenced the bird to treat me
+thus strangely, I have no means of guessing. As we say of each other's
+freaks and oddities, it was _his way_, I suppose. He might have behaved
+otherwise, of course, had I been armed; but of that I felt by no means
+certain at the time, and my doubts were strengthened by an occurrence
+which happened a month or so afterward.
+
+I was crossing the beach at Nahant with a friend when we stole upon a
+pair of golden plovers, birds that both of us were very happy to see.
+The splendid old-gold spotting of their backs was plain enough; but
+immature black-bellied plovers are adorned in a similar manner, and it
+was necessary for us to see the rumps of our birds before we could be
+sure of their identity. So, after we had scrutinized them as long as we
+wished, I asked my companion to put them up while I should keep my glass
+upon their backs and make certain of the color of their rumps as they
+opened their wings. We were already within a very few paces of them, but
+they ran before him as he advanced, and in the end he had almost to
+tread on them.
+
+The golden plover is not so unapproachable as the great blue heron, I
+suppose, but from what sportsmen tell me about him I am confident that
+he cannot be in the habit of allowing men to chase him along the beach
+at a distance of five or six yards. And it is to be added that, in the
+present 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 approach
+one or two birds than a considerable flock. In the larger body there are
+almost certain to be a few timorous souls,--a few wider-awake and better
+instructed souls, let us rather say,--who by their outcries and hasty
+flight will awaken all the others to a sense of possible danger. But it
+is none the less true, as I said to begin with, that individual birds
+have individual ways. And my great blue heron, I am persuaded, was a
+"character." It would be worth something to know what was passing behind
+those big yellow eyes as he twisted his neck to look once more at the
+curious fellow--curious in two senses--who was keeping after him so
+closely. Was the heron curious, as well as his pursuer? Or was he only a
+little set in his own way; a little resentful of being imposed upon; a
+little inclined to withstand the "tyrant of his fields," just for
+principle's sake, as patriots ought to do? Or was he a young fellow, in
+whom heredity had mysteriously omitted to load the bump of caution, and
+upon whom experience had not yet enforced the lesson that if a creature
+is taller and stronger than you are, it is prudent to assume that he
+will most likely think it a pleasant bit of sport to kill you? It is
+nothing to the credit of humankind that the sight of an unsuspicious
+bird in a marsh or on the beach should have become a subject for
+wonder.
+
+
+
+
+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 two
+classes,--itself and the remainder. Birds, for instance, have no doubt a
+feeling, more or less clearly defined, which, if it were translated into
+human speech, might read, "Birds and nature." We, in our turn, say, "Man
+and nature." But such distinctions, useful as they are, and therefore
+admissible, are none the less arbitrary and liable to mislead. Birds and
+men are alike parts of nature, having many things in common not only
+with each other, but with every form of animate existence. The world is
+not a patchwork, though never so cunningly put together, but a garment
+woven throughout.
+
+The importance of this truth, its far-reaching and many-sided
+significance, is even yet only beginning to be understood; but its
+bearing upon the study of what we call natural history would seem to be
+evident. My own experience as a dabbler in botany and ornithology has
+convinced me that the pursuit of such researches is not at all out of
+the spirit of the familiar line,--
+
+    "The proper study of mankind is man,"--
+
+whatever the author of the line may have himself intended by his
+apothegm. To become acquainted with the peculiarities of plants or birds
+is to increase one's knowledge of beings of his own sort.
+
+There is room, I think, for a treatise on analogical botany,--a study of
+the human nature of plants. Thoroughly and sympathetically done, the
+work would be both surprising and edifying. It would give us a better
+opinion of plants, and possibly a poorer opinion of ourselves. Some
+wholesome first lessons of this kind we have all taken, as a matter of
+course. "We all do fade as a leaf." "All flesh is grass, and all the
+goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field." There are no
+household words more familiar than such texts. But the work of which I
+am thinking will deal not so much with our likeness to tree and herb as
+with the likeness of tree and herb to us; and furthermore, it will go
+into the whole subject, systematically and at length. Meanwhile, it is
+open even to an amateur to offer something, in a general and discursive
+way, upon so inviting a theme, and especially to call attention to its
+scope and variety.
+
+As I sit at my desk, the thistles are in their glory, and in a vase at
+my elbow stands a single head of the tall swamp variety, along with a
+handful of fringed gentians. Forgetting what it is, one cannot help
+pronouncing the thistle beautiful,--a close bunch of minute rose-purple
+flowers. But who could ever feel toward it as toward the gentian? Beauty
+is 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 out
+to be agreeable; but even its beauty is too much like that of some
+venomous reptile. Yet it has its friends, or, at all events, its patrons
+(if you wish to catch butterflies, go to the thistle pasture), and no
+doubt could give forty eloquent and logical excuses for its offensive
+traits. Probably it felicitates itself upon its shrewdness, and pities
+the poor estate of its defenseless neighbors. How they must envy its
+happier fortune! It sees them browsed upon by the cattle, and can hardly
+be blamed if it chuckles a little to itself as the greedy creatures pass
+it by untouched. School-girls and botanists break down the golden-rods
+and asters, and pull up the gerardias and ladies'-tresses; but neither
+school-girl nor collector often troubles the thistle. It opens its
+gorgeous blossoms and ripens its feathery fruit unmolested. Truly it is
+a great thing to wear an armor of prickles!
+
+"The human nature of plants,"--have I any reader so innocent as not to
+feel at this moment the appropriateness of the phrase? Can there be one
+so favored as not to have some unmistakable thistles among his Christian
+townsmen and acquaintance? Nay, we all know them. They are the more
+easily discovered for standing always a little by themselves. They
+escape many slight inconveniences under which more amiable people
+suffer. Whoever finds himself in a hard place goes not to them for
+assistance. They are recognized afar as persons to be let alone. Yet
+they, too, like their floral representatives, have a good side. If they
+do not give help, they seldom ask it. Once a year they may actually "do
+a handsome thing," as the common expression is; but they cannot put off
+their own nature; their very generosity pricks the hand that receives
+it, and when old Time cuts them down with his scythe (what should we do
+without this famous husbandman, unkindly as we talk of him?) there will
+be no great mourning.
+
+Is it then an unpardonable misdemeanor for a plant to defend itself
+against attack and extermination? Has the duty of non-resistance no
+exceptions nor abatements in the vegetable kingdom? That would be indeed
+a hard saying; for what would become of our universal favorite, the
+rose? On this point there may be room for a diversity of opinion; but
+for one, I cannot wish the wild rose disarmed, lest, through the
+recklessness of its admirers, what is now one of the commonest of our
+wayside ornaments should grow to be a rarity. I esteem the rose a
+patrician, and fairly entitled to patrician manners. As every one sees,
+people in high station, especially if they chance to possess attractive
+social qualities, are of necessity compelled to discountenance
+everything like careless familiarity, even from those with whom they may
+formerly have been most intimate. They must always stand more or less
+upon ceremony, and never be handled without gloves. So it is with the
+queen of flowers. Its thorns not only serve it as a protection, but are
+for its admirers an excellent discipline in forbearance. They make it
+easier for us, as Emerson says, to "love the wood rose and leave it on
+the stalk." In addition to which I am moved to say that the rose, like
+the holly, illustrates a truth too seldom insisted upon; namely, that
+people are more justly condemned for the absence of all good qualities
+than for the presence of one or two bad ones.
+
+Some such plea as this, though with a smaller measure of assurance, I
+should make in behalf of plants like the barberry and the bramble. The
+latter, in truth, sometimes acts as if it were not so much fighting us
+off as drawing us on. Leaning far forward and stretching forth its arms,
+it buttonholes the wayfarer, so to speak, and with generous country
+insistence forces upon him the delicious clusters which he, in his
+preoccupation, seemed in danger of passing untasted. I think I know the
+human counterparts of both barberry and bramble,--excellent people in
+their place, though not to be chosen for bosom friends without a careful
+weighing of consequences. Judging them not by their manners, but by
+their fruits, we must set them on the right hand. It would go hard with
+some of the most pious of my neighbors, I imagine, if the presence of a
+few thorns and prickles were reckoned inconsistent with a moderately
+good character.
+
+As for reprobates like the so-called "poison ivy" and "poison dogwood,"
+they have perhaps borrowed a familiar human maxim,--"All is fair in
+war." In any case, they are no worse than savage heathen, who kill their
+enemies with poisoned arrows, or than civilized Christians, who stab the
+reputation of their friends with poisoned words. Their marked comeliness
+of habit may be taken as a point in their favor; or, on the contrary, it
+may be held to make their case only so much the blacker, by laying them
+liable to the additional charge of hypocrisy. The question is a nice
+one, 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 and
+anemone, the arbutus and hepatica! These wage no war. They are of the
+original Society of Friends. Who will may spoil them without hurt. Their
+defense is with their Maker. I wonder whether anybody ever thinks of
+such flowers as representative of any order of grown people, or whether
+to everybody else they are forever children, as I find, on thinking of
+it, they have always been to me. Lowly and trustful, sweet and frail,
+"of such is the kingdom of heaven." They pass away without losing their
+innocence. Ere the first heats of summer they are gone.
+
+Yet the autumn, too, has its delicate blooms, though they are
+overshadowed and, as it were, put out of countenance by the coarser
+growths which must be said to characterize the harvest season. Nothing
+that May puts into her lap is more exquisite than are the purple
+gerardias with which August and September embroider the pasture and the
+woodland road. They have not the sweet breath of the arbutus, nor even
+the faint elusive odor of the violet, but for daintiness of form,
+perfection of color, and gracefulness of habit it would be impossible to
+praise them too highly. Of our three species, my own favorite is the one
+of the narrow leaves (_Gerardia tenuifolia_), its longer and slighter
+flower-stems giving it an airiness and grace peculiarly its own. A lady
+to whom I had brought a handful the other day expressed it well when she
+said, "They look like fairy flowers." They are of my mind in this: they
+love a dry, sunny opening in the woods, or a grassy field on the edge of
+woods, especially if there be a seldom-used path running through it. I
+know not with what human beings to compare them. Perhaps their antitypes
+of our own kind are yet to be evolved. But I have before now seen a
+woman who might worthily be set in their company,--a person whose sweet
+and wise actions were so gracefully carried and so easily let fall as to
+suggest an order and quality of goodness quite out of relation to common
+flesh and blood.
+
+What a contrast between such lowly-minded, unobtrusive beauties and
+egotists like our multitudinous asters and golden-rods! These, between
+them, almost take possession of the world for the two or three months of
+their reign. They are handsome, and they know it. What is beauty for, if
+not to be admired? They mass their tiny blossoms first into solid heads,
+then into panicles and racemes, and have no idea of hiding their
+constellated brightness under a bushel. "Let your light shine!" is the
+word they go on. How eagerly they crowd along the roadside, till the
+casual 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 jot
+less 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 why
+I should quarrel with the aster for loving to make a show. Herein, too,
+plants are like men. An indisposition toward publicity is amiable in
+those to whom it is natural; but I am not clear that bashfulness is the
+only commendable quality. Let plants and men alike carry themselves
+according to their birthright. Providence has not ordained a diversity
+of gifts for nothing, and it is only a narrow philosophy that takes
+offense at seeming contrarieties. The truer method, and the happier as
+well, is to like each according to its kind: to love that which is
+amiable, to admire that which is admirable, and to study that which is
+curious.
+
+A few weeks ago, for example, I walked again up the mountain road that
+climbs out of the Franconia Valley into the Franconia Notch. I had left
+home twenty-four hours before, fresh from working upon the asters and
+golden-rods (trying to straighten out my local catalogue in accordance
+with Dr. Gray's more recent classification of these large and difficult
+genera), and naturally enough had asters and golden-rods still in my
+eye. The first mile or two afforded nothing of particular note, but by
+and by I came to a cluster of the sturdy and peculiar _Solidago
+squarrosa_, and was taking an admiring account of its appearance and
+manner of growth, when I caught sight of some lower blue flower
+underneath, 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 and
+showier neighbors. Not far off, but a little more within the wood, were
+patches of the linnaea, which had been at its prettiest in June, but even
+now, in late September, was still putting forth scattered blossoms. What
+should a man do? Discard the golden-rod for the gentian, and in turn
+forsake the gentian for the twin-flower? Nay, a child might do that, but
+not a man; for the three were all beautiful and all interesting, and
+each the more beautiful and interesting for its unlikeness to the
+others. If one wishes a stiff lesson in classification, there are few
+harder genera (among flowering plants) than _Solidago_; if he would
+investigate the timely and taking question of the dependence of plants
+upon insects, this humble "proterandrous" gentian (which to human vision
+seems closed, but which the humble-bee knows well how to enter) offers
+him a favorable subject; while if he has an eye for beauty, a nose for
+delicate fragrance, and a soul for poetry, the linnaea will never cease
+to 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 identical
+tastes and habits, though these were of the very best; and it would be a
+tiresome country that brought forth only a single kind of plants.
+
+The flower of Linnaeus is a flower by itself, as here and there appears a
+man who seems, as we say, _sui generis_. This familiar phrase, by the
+bye, is literally applicable to _Linnaea borealis_, a plant that spreads
+over a large part of the northern hemisphere, but everywhere preserves
+its own specific character; so that, whether it be found in Greenland or
+in Maryland, on the Alaskan Islands or in Utah, in Siberia or on the
+mountains of Scotland, it is always and everywhere the same,--a genus of
+one species. Diversities of soil and climate make no impression upon its
+originality. If it live at all, it must live according to its own plan.
+
+The aster, on the contrary, has a special talent for variation. Like
+some individuals of another sort, it is born to adapt itself to
+circumstances. Dr. Gray enumerates no less than one hundred and
+ninety-six North American species and varieties, many of which shade
+into each other with such endless and well-nigh insensible gradations
+that even our great special student of the _Compositae_ pronounces the
+accurate and final classification of this particular genus a labor
+beyond his powers. What shall we say of this habit of variability? Is it
+a mark of strength or of weakness? Which is nobler,--to be true to one's
+ideal in spite of circumstances, or to conquer circumstances by suiting
+one's self to them? Who shall decide? Enough that the twin-flower and
+the star-flower each obeys its own law, and in so doing contributes each
+its own part toward making this world the place of diversified beauty
+which it was foreordained to be.
+
+I spoke of the linnaea's autumnal blossoms, though its normal flowering
+time is in June. Even this steady-going, unimpressible citizen of the
+world, it appears, has its one bit of freakishness. In these bright,
+summery September days, when the trees put on their glory, this lowliest
+member of the honeysuckle family feels a stirring within to make itself
+beautiful; and being an evergreen (instead of a summer-green), and
+therefore incapable of bedecking itself after the maple's manner, it
+sends up a few flower-stems, each with its couple of swinging, fragrant
+bells. So it bids the world good-by till the long winter once more comes
+and goes.
+
+The same engaging habit is noticeable in the case of some of our very
+commonest plants. After the golden-rods and asters have had their day,
+late in October or well into November, when witch-hazel, yarrow, and
+clover are almost the only blossoms left us, you will stumble here and
+there upon a solitary dandelion reflecting the sun, or a violet giving
+back 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 that
+all the prosaic activities of middle life are over. It is almost as if
+he were born again. The song of the April robin, the blossoming of the
+apple-tree, the splendors of sunset and sunrise,--these and things like
+them touch him to pleasure, as he now remembers they used to do years
+and years ago. What means this strange revival of youth in age? Is it a
+reminiscence merely, a final flickering of the candle, or is it rather a
+prophecy of life yet to come? Well, with the dandelion and the violet we
+know with reasonable certainty how the matter stands. The autumnal
+blooms are not belated, but precocious; they belong not to the season
+past, but to the season coming. Who shall forbid us to hope that what is
+true of the violet will prove true also of the man?
+
+It speaks well for human nature that in the long run the lowliest
+flowers are not only the best loved, but the oftenest spoken of. Men
+play the cynic: modest merit goes to the wall, they say; whoever would
+succeed, let him put on a brazen face and sharpen his elbows. But those
+who talk in this strain deceive neither themselves nor those who listen
+to them. They are commonly such as have themselves tried the trumpet and
+elbow method, and have discovered that, whatever may be true of
+transient notoriety, neither public fame nor private regard is to be won
+by such means. We do not retract what we have said in praise of
+diversity, and about the right of each to live according to its own
+nature, but we gladly perceive that in the case of the flowers also it
+is the meek that inherit the earth.
+
+Our appreciation of our fellow-men depends in part upon the amount, but
+still more upon the quality, of the service they render us. We could
+get along without poets more comfortably than without cobblers, for the
+lower use is often first, in order both of time and of necessity; but we
+are never in doubt as to their relative place in our esteem. One serves
+the body, the other the soul; and we reward the one with money, the
+other with affection and reverence. And our estimation of plants is
+according to the same rule. Such of them as nourish the body are
+good,--good even to the point of being indispensable; but as we make a
+difference between the barnyard fowl and the nightingale, and between
+the common run of humanity and a Beethoven or a Milton, so maize and
+potatoes 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 more
+than meat."
+
+Again we say, let each fulfill its own function. One is made for
+utility, another for beauty. For plants, too, are specialists. They know
+as well as men how to make the most of inherited capacities and
+aptitudes, achieving distinction at last by the simple process of
+sticking to one thing, whether that be the production of buds,
+blossoms, berries, leaves, bark, timber, or what not; and our judgment
+of them must be correspondingly varied. The vine bears blossoms, but is
+to be rated not by them, but by the grapes that come after them; and the
+rose-tree bears hips, but takes its rank not from them, but from the
+flowers that went to the making of them. "Nothing but leaves" is a
+verdict unfavorable or otherwise according to its application. The
+tea-shrub would hold up its head to hear it.
+
+One of the most interesting and suggestive points of difference among
+plants is that which relates to the matter of self-reliance. Some are
+made to stand alone, others to twine, and others to creep. If it were
+allowable to attribute human feelings to them, we should perhaps be safe
+in assuming that the upright look down upon the climbers, and the
+climbers in turn upon the creepers; for who of us does not felicitate
+himself upon his independence, such as it is, or such as he imagines it
+to be? But if independence is indeed a boon,--and I, for one, am too
+thoroughbred a New Englander ever to doubt it,--it is not the only good,
+nor even the highest. The nettle, standing straight and prim, asking no
+favors of anybody, may rail at the grape-vine, which must lay hold of
+something, small matter what, by which to steady itself; but the nettle
+might well be willing to forego somewhat of its self-sufficiency, if by
+so doing it could bring forth grapes. The smilax, also, with its thorns,
+its pugnacious habit, and its stony, juiceless berries, a sort of
+handsome vixen among vines,--the smilax, which can climb though it
+cannot stand erect, has little occasion to lord it over the strawberry.
+If one has done nothing, or worse than nothing, it is hardly worth while
+to boast of the original fashion in which he has gone about it.
+Moreover, the very plants of which we are speaking bear witness to the
+fact that it is possible to accept help, and still retain to the full
+one's own individuality. The strawberry is no more a plagiarist than the
+smilax, nor the grape than the nettle. If the vine clings to the cedar,
+the connection is but mechanical. Its spirit and life are as independent
+of the savin as of the planet Jupiter. Even the dodder, which not only
+twines about other weeds, but actually sucks its life from them, does
+not thereby lose an iota of its native character. If a man is only
+original to begin with,--so the parable seems to run,--he is under a
+kind of necessity to remain so (as Shakespeare did), no matter how much
+help he may draw from alien sources.
+
+This truth of the vegetable world is the more noteworthy, because, along
+with it there goes a very strong and persistent habit of individual
+variation. The plant is faithful to the spirit of its inherited law, but
+is not in bondage to the letter. Our "high-bush blackberries," to take a
+familiar illustration, are all of one species, but it does not follow
+that they are all exactly alike. So far from it, I knew in my time--and
+the school-boys of the present day are not less accurately informed, we
+may 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_ is
+probably true of all plants, though in varying degrees. I do not recall
+a 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 constant
+inequality among plants of the same species, perfectly well defined, and
+never lost sight of by us juvenile connoisseurs. If we failed to find
+the same true of other vines and bushes, which for our purposes bore
+blossoms only, the explanation is not far to seek. Our perceptions,
+aesthetic and gastronomic, were unequally developed. We were in the case
+of the man to whom a poet is a poet, though he knows very well that
+there are cooks and cooks.
+
+It is this slight but everywhere present admixture of the personal
+quality--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 to
+the parent stock, has received also a something, be it more or less,
+that distinguishes it from all its fellows. Let our observation be
+delicate enough, and we shall perceive that there are no duplicates of
+any 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 in
+their likes and dislikes. One is catholic: as common people say, it is
+not particular; it can live and thrive almost anywhere. Another must
+have precisely such and such conditions, and is to be found, therefore,
+only in very restricted localities. The _Dionaea_, or Venus's fly-trap,
+is a famous example of this fastidiousness, growing in a small district
+of North Carolina, and, as far as appears, nowhere else,--a highly
+specialized plant, with no generic relative. Another instance is
+furnished by a water lily (_Nymphaea elegans_), the rediscovery of which
+is 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 years
+on the strength of a single collection at a single vaguely described
+station on the broad prairies of southwestern Texas;" now, after all
+this time, it turns up again in another quarter of the same State. And
+every student could report cases of a similar character, though less
+striking than these, of course, within the limits of his own local
+researches. If you ask me where I find dandelions, I answer, anywhere;
+but if you wish me to show you the sweet colt's-foot (_Nardosmia
+palmata_), you must go with me to one particular spot. Any of my
+neighbors will tell you where the pink moccasin flower grows; but if it
+is the yellow one you are in search of, I shall swear you to secrecy
+before conducting you to its swampy hiding-place. Some plants, like some
+people (but the plants, be it noted, are mostly weeds), seem to flourish
+best away from home; others die under the most careful transplanting.
+Some are lovers of the open, and cannot be too much in the sun; others
+lurk 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. One
+insists upon the richest of meadow loam; another is content with the
+face of a rock. We may say of them as truly as of ourselves, _De
+gustibus non est disputandum_. Otherwise, how would the earth ever be
+clothed with verdure?
+
+[17] The _Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club_ for January, 1888, page
+13.
+
+But plants are subject to other whims not less pronounced than these
+which have to do with the choice of a dwelling-place. We may call it the
+general rule that leaves come before flowers; but how many of our trees
+and shrubs reverse this order! The singular habit of the witch-hazel,
+whose blossoms open as the leaves fall, may be presumed to be familiar
+to all readers; and hardly less curious is the freak of the chestnut,
+which, almost if not quite alone among our amentaceous trees, does not
+put on its splendid coronation robes till late in June, and is
+frequently at the height of its magnificence in mid-July. What a pretty
+piece of variety have we, again, in the diurnal and the nocturnal
+bloomers! For my own part, being a watcher of birds, and therefore
+almost of necessity an early stirrer abroad, I profess a special regard
+for 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 I
+seldom fail to pick a blossom or two with the dew on them. Those to whom
+I carry them usually exclaim as over some wonderful exotic, though the
+primrose is an inveterate haunter of the roadside. Yet its blossoms
+have only to be looked at and smelled of to make their way, homely as is
+the stalk that produces them. They love darkness rather than light, but
+it certainly is not "because their deeds are evil." One might as well
+cast the opprobrious text in the face of the moon and stars. Now and
+then some enterprising journalist, for want of better employment,
+investigates anew the habits of literary workers; and it invariably
+transpires that some can do their best only by daylight, while the minds
+of others seem to be good for nothing till the sun goes down; and the
+wise reader, who reads not so much to gain information as to see whether
+the writer tells the truth, shakes his head, and says, "Oh, it is all in
+use." Of course it is all in use, just as it is with whippoorwills and
+the morning-glory.
+
+The mention of the evening primrose calls for the further remark that
+plants, not less than ourselves, have a trick of combining opposite
+qualities,--a coarse-grained and scraggy habit, for instance, with
+blossoms of exquisite fragrance and beauty. The most gorgeous flowers
+sometimes exhale an abominable odor, and it is not unheard of that
+inconspicuous or even downright homely sorts should be accounted
+precious for their sweetness; while, as everybody knows, few members of
+our native flora are more graceful in appearance than the very two whose
+simple touch is poison. Could anything be more characteristic of human
+nature than just such inconsistencies? Suavity and trickery, harshness
+and integrity, a fiery temper and a gentle heart,--how often do we see
+the good and the bad dwelling together! We would have ordered things
+differently, I dare say, had they been left to us,--the good should have
+been all good, and the bad all bad; and yet, if it be a grief to feel
+that the holiest men have their failings, it ought perhaps to be a
+consolation, rather than an additional sorrow, to perceive that the most
+vicious are not without their virtues. Beyond which, shall we presume to
+suggest that as poisons have their use, so moral evil, give it time
+enough, may turn out to be not altogether a curse?
+
+I have treated my subject too fancifully, I fear. Indeed, there comes
+over me at this moment a sudden suspicion that my subject itself is
+nothing but a fancy, or, worse yet, a profanation. If the flowers could
+talk, who knows how earnestly they might deprecate all such misguided
+attempts at doing them honor,--as if it were anything but a slander,
+this imputation to them of the foibles, or even the self-styled good
+qualities, of our poor humanity! What an egoist is man! I seem to hear
+them saying; look where he will, at the world or at its Creator, he sees
+nothing 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; that
+Xerxes delighted in the great plane-tree of Lydia; that he decked it
+with golden ornaments and appointed for it a sentry, one of "the
+immortal ten thousand." Feelings of this kind are natural; among natural
+men they seem to have been well-nigh universal. The wonder is that any
+should be without them. For myself, I cannot recollect the day when I
+did not regard the Weymouth pine (the white pine I was taught to call
+it, but now, for reasons of my own, I prefer the English name) with
+something like reverence. Especially was this true of one,--a tree of
+stupendous girth and height, under which I played, and up which I
+climbed till my cap seemed almost to rub against the sky. That pine
+ought 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 ago
+it was brought to earth, it and all its fair lesser companions. There is
+no wisdom in the grave, and it is nothing to them now that I remember
+them 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 the
+illustrious Bobo, for the love of roast pig, burn down his father's
+house.
+
+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, I
+happen at this moment to be reclining. Yet a murmur runs through its
+branches as I pencil the words. Perhaps it is saying to itself that
+giants are, and always have been, things of the past,--things gazed at
+over the beholder's shoulder and through the mists of years; and that
+this venerable monarch of my boyhood, this relic of times remote, has
+probably grown faster since it was cut down than ever it did while
+standing. I care not to argue the point. Rather, let me be glad that a
+tree is a tree, whether large or small. What a wonder of wonders it
+would seem to unaccustomed eyes! As some lover of imaginative delights
+wished that he could forget Shakespeare and read him new, so I would
+cheerfully lose all memory of my king of Weymouth pines, if by that
+means I might for once look upon a tree as upon something I had never
+seen or dreamed of.
+
+For that purpose, were it given me to choose, I would have one that had
+grown by itself; full of branches on all sides, but with no suggestion
+of primness; in short, a perfect tree, a miracle hardly to be found in
+any forest, since the forest would be no better than a park if the
+separate members of it were allowed room to develop each after its own
+law. Nature is too cunning an artist to spoil the total effect of her
+picture by too fond a regard for the beauty of particular details.
+
+I once passed a lazy, dreamy afternoon in a small clearing on a Canadian
+mountain-side, where the lumbermen had left standing a few scattered
+butternuts. I can see them now,--misshapen giants, patriarchal
+monstrosities, their huge trunks leaning awkwardly this way and that,
+and each bearing at the top a ludicrously small, one-sided bunch of
+leafy boughs. All about me was the ancient wood. For a week I had been
+wandering through it with delight. Such beeches and maples, birches and
+butternuts! I had not thought of any imperfection. I had been in
+sympathy with the artist, and had enjoyed his work in the same spirit in
+which it had been wrought. Now, however, with these unhappy butternuts
+in my eye, I began to look, not at the forest, but at the trees, and I
+found that the spared butternuts were in no sense exceptional. _All_ the
+trees were deformed. They had grown as they could, not as their innate
+proclivities would have led them. A tree is no better than a man; it
+cannot be itself if it stands too much in a crowd.
+
+I set it down, unwillingly, to the discredit of the Weymouth pine,--a
+symptom of some ancestral taint, perhaps,--that it suffers less than
+most trees from being thus encroached upon. Yet it does not entirely
+escape. True, it leans neither to left nor right, its trunk is seldom
+contorted; if it grow at all it must grow straight toward the zenith;
+but it is sadly maimed, nevertheless,--hardly more than a tall stick
+with a broom at the top. If you would see a typical white pine you must
+go elsewhere to look for it. I remember one such, standing by itself in
+a broad Concord River meadow; not remarkable for its size, but of a
+symmetry and beauty that make the traveler turn again and again, till he
+is a mile away, to gaze upon it. No pine-tree ever grew like that in a
+wood.
+
+I go sometimes through a certain hamlet, which has sprung suddenly into
+being on a hill-top where formerly stood a pine grove. The builders of
+the houses have preserved (doubtless they use that word) a goodly number
+of the trees. But though I have been wont to esteem the poorest tree as
+better than none, I am almost ready to forswear my opinion at sight of
+these slender trunks, so ungainly and unsupported. The first breeze, one
+would say, must bring them down upon the roofs they were never meant to
+shade. Poor naked things! I fancy they look abashed at being dragged
+thus unexpectedly and inappropriately into broad daylight. If I were to
+see the householder lifting his axe against one of them I think I should
+not say, "Woodman, spare _that_ tree!" Let it go to the fire, the sooner
+the better, and be out of its misery.
+
+Not that I blame the tree, or the power that made it what it is. The
+forest, like every other community, prospers--we may rather say
+exists--at the expense of individual perfection. But the expense is true
+economy, for, however it may be in ethics, in aesthetics the end
+justifies the means. The solitary pine, unhindered, symmetrical, green
+to its lowermost twig, as it rises out of the meadow or stands a-tiptoe
+on the rocky ledge, is a thing of beauty, a pleasure to every eye. A
+pity and a shame that it should not be more common! But the pine
+_forest_, dark, spacious, slumberous, musical! Here is something better
+than beauty, dearer than pleasure. When we enter this cathedral, unless
+we enter it unworthily, we speak not of such things. Every tree may be
+imperfect, with half its branches dead for want of room or want of sun,
+but until the devotee turns critic--an easy step, alas, for
+half-hearted worshipers--we are conscious of no lack. Magnificence can
+do without prettiness, and a touch of solemnity is better than any
+amusement.
+
+Where shall we hear better preaching, more searching comment upon life
+and death, than in this same cathedral? Verily, the pine is a priest of
+the true religion. It speaks never of itself, never its own words.
+Silent it stands till the Spirit breathes upon it. Then all its
+innumerable leaves awake and speak as they are moved. Then "he that hath
+ears to hear, let him hear." Wonderful is human speech,--the work of
+generations upon generations, each striving to express itself, its
+feelings, its thoughts, its needs, its sufferings, its joys, its
+inexpressible desires. Wonderful is human speech, for its complexity,
+its delicacy, its power. But the pine-tree, under the visitations of the
+heavenly influence, utters things incommunicable; it whispers to us of
+things we have never said and never can say,--things that lie deeper
+than words, deeper than thought. Blessed are our ears if we hear, for
+the message is not to be understood by every comer, nor, indeed, by
+any, except at happy moments. In this temple all hearing is given by
+inspiration, 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 model
+housekeeper frowns upon dirt. A plain brown carpet suits it best, with a
+modest figure of green--preferably of evergreen--woven into it; a
+tracery of partridge-berry vine, or, it may be, of club moss, with here
+and there a tuft of pipsissewa and pyrola. Its mood is sombre, its taste
+severe. Yet I please myself with noticing that the pine wood, like the
+rest 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 our
+oddest, brightest, and showiest flowers, the pink lady's-slipper, and by
+some means or other has enticed it away from the peat bog, where it
+surely should be growing, along with the calopogon, the pogonia, and the
+arethusa, and here it is, like some rare exotic, thriving in a bed of
+sand and on a mat of brown needles. Who will undertake to explain the
+occult "elective affinity" by which this rosy orchid is made so much at
+home under the heavy shadow of the Weymouth pine?
+
+According to the common saying, there is no accounting for tastes. If by
+this is meant simply that _we_ cannot account for them, the statement is
+true enough. But if we are to speak exactly, there are no likes nor
+dislikes except for cause. Every freak of taste, like every vagary of
+opinion, has its origin and history, and, with sufficient knowledge on
+our part, could be explained and justified. The pine-tree and the orchid
+are not friends by accident, however the case may look to us who cannot
+see behind the present nor beneath the surface. There are no mysteries
+_per se_, but only to the ignorant. Yet ignorance itself, disparagingly
+as we talk of it, has its favorable side,--as it is pleasant sometimes
+to withdraw from the sun and wander for a season in the half-light of
+the forest. Perhaps we need be in no haste to reach a world where there
+is never any darkness. In some moods, at least, I go with the
+partridge-berry vine and the lady's-slipper. It is good, I think, to
+live awhile longer in the shadow; to see as through a glass darkly; and
+to hear overhead, not plain words, but inarticulate murmurs.
+
+I am not to be understood as praising the pine at the expense of other
+trees. All things considered, no evergreen can be equal to a
+summer-green, on which we see the leaves budding, unfolding, ripening,
+and falling,--a "worlde whiche neweth everie daie." What would winter be
+worth 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 any
+who know the pleasures of sentiment and sober reflection. But though one
+tree differeth from another tree in glory, we may surely rejoice in them
+all. 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 do
+not "hate" an impassive, unchangeable temper, whether in a tree or in a
+man. I have so little of such a spirit myself that I am glad to see
+some tokens of it--not too frequent, indeed, nor too self-assertive--in
+the world about me. And so I say, let me never be, for any long time
+together, where there are no Weymouth pines at which I may gaze from
+afar, or under which I may lie and listen. They boast not (rare
+stoics!), but they set us a brave example. No "blasts that blow the
+poplar white" can cause the pine-tree to blanch. No frost has power to
+strip it of a single leaf. Its wood is soft, but how dauntless its
+spirit!--a truly encouraging paradox, lending itself, at our private
+need, to endless consolatory moralizings. The great majority of my
+brothers must be comforted, I think, by any fresh reminder that the
+battle is not to the strong.
+
+For myself, then, like the lowly partridge-berry vine, I would be always
+the pine-tree's neighbor. Who knows but by lifelong fellowship with it I
+may absorb something of its virtue? Summer and winter, its fragrant
+breath rises to heaven; and of it we may say, with more truth than
+Landor said of the over-sweet fragrance of the linden, "Happy the man
+whose 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.
+
+  Linnaea, 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.
+
+
+
+
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