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AT THE STUDY ECOTl

SDfjc ftttoersise Literature Series

BIRDS AND BEES
SHARP EYES

AND OTHER PAPERS

BY

JOHN BURROUGHS
WITH AN INTRODUCTION

BY

MARY E. BURT
AND A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

^eRfrergiacgregg

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
CI)e Ktocrmfce l^xtm Camfrutfg;e

COPYRIGHT, lS75, 1879, iSSl, 1S86, 1903, 1907, I909, I9I4, I917, AND I92I

BY JOHN BURROUGHS

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

' *** ®*ate College

2Ctje Ktoerstfee Literature £>m'e0
BIRDS AND BEES

BY

JOHN BURROUGHS
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MARY E. BUR1

CONTENTS

PAGE

Biographical Sketch ..•••••• ™

Introduction by Mary E. Burt •••••• 3

: JBlRDS.

Bird Enemies .•••*.»«.•• •?

The Tragedies of the Neste -> s , .,..21

Bees.
\/ An Idyl of the Honey-Bee «••••• «45
The Pastoral Beea « * «, k; • » r 66

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

Nature chose the spring of the year for the time of
John Burroughs's birth. A little before the day when the
wake-robin shows itself, that the observer might be on hand
for the sight, he was born in Roxbury, Delaware County,
New York, on the western borders of the Catskill Moun-
tains; the precise date was April 3, 1837. Until 1863 he
remained in the country about his native place, working
on his father's farm, getting his schooling in the district
school and neighboring academies, and taking his turn also
as teacher. As he himself has hinted, the originality,
freshness, and wholesomeness of his writings are probably
due in great measure to the unliterary surroundings of
his early life, which allowed his mind to form itself on
unconventional lines, and to the later companionships with
unlettered men, which kept him in touch with the sturdy
simplicities of life.

From the very beginnings of his taste for literature, the
essay was his favorite form. Dr. Johnson was the prophet
of his youth, but he soon transferred his allegiance to Emer-
son, who for many years remained his " master enchanter."
To cure himself of too close an imitation of the Concord
seer, which showed itself in his first magazine article, Ua>
pression, he took to writing his sketches of nature, and
about this time he fell in with the writings of Thoreau,
which doubtless confirmed and encouraged him in this
direction. But of all authors and of all men, Walt Whit
man, in his personality and as a literary force, seems tfl
have made the prof oundest impression upon Mr. Burroughs,
though doubtless Emerson had a greater influence on his
Style of writing.

12693

iv BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

Expression appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in I860*
£,nd most of his contributions to literature have been in the
form of papers first published in the magazines, and after-
wards collected into books. He more than once paid
tribute to his teachers in literature. His first book, now
out of print, was Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and
Person, published in 1867 ; and Whitman : A Study,
which appeared in 1896, is a more extended treatment of
the man and his poetry and philosophy. Birds and Poets,
too, contains a paper on Whitman, entitled The Flight of
the Eagle, besides an essay on Emerson, whom he also
treated incidentally in his paper, Matthew Arnold on
Emerson and Carlyle, in Indoor. Studies ; and the latter
volume contains his essay on Tiioreau.

In the autumn of 1863 he went to "Washington, and IE
the following January entered the Treasury Department
He was for some years an assistant in the office of the
Comptroller of the Currency, and later chief of the organi-
sation division of that Bureau. For some time he was
keeper of one of the vaults, and for a great part of the day
his only duty was to be at his desk. In these leisure hours
his mind traveled off into the country, where his previous
life had been spent, and with the help of his pen, always a
faithful friend and magician, he lived over again those
happy days, now happier still with the glamour of all past
pleasures. In this way he wrote Wake-Robin and a part
of Winter Sunshine. It must not be supposed, however,
that he was deprived of outdoor pleasures while at Wash-
ington. On the contrary, he enjoyed many walks in the
suburbs of the capital, and in those days the real country
came up to the very edges of the city. His Spring at the
Capital, Winter Sunshine, A March Chronicle, and other
papers bear the fruit of his life on the Potomac. He went
to England in 1871 on business for the Treasury Depart
ment, and again on his own account a dozen years later.
The record of the two visits is to be found mainly in his
chapters on An October Abroad, contained in the volume

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. v

Winter Sunshine, and in the papers gathered into the
volume Fresh Fields.

He resigned his place in the Treasury in 1873, and was
appointed receiver of a broken national bank. Later, unti1
1885, his business occupation was that of a National Bank
Examiner. An article contributed by him to The Century
Magazine for March, 1881, on Broken Banks and Lax
Director's, is perhaps the only literary outcome of this occu-
pation, but the keen powers of observation, trained in the
Held of nature, could not fail to disclose themselves in
analyzing columns of figures. After leaving Washington
Mr. Burroughs bought a fruit farm at West Park, near
Esopus, on the Hudson, and there building his house from
the stones found in his fields, has given himself the best-
conditions for that humanizing of nature which constitutes
the charm of his books. He was married in 1857 to a lady
living in the New York village where he was at the time
teaching. He keeps his country home the year round, only
occasionally visiting New York. The cultivation of grapes
absorbs the greater part of his time ; but he has by no means
given over letters. His work, which has long found ready
acceptance both at home and abroad, is now passing into that
security of fame which comes from its entrance into the
school-life of American children.

Besides his outdoor sketches and the other papers already
mentioned, Mr. Burroughs has written a number of critical
essays on life and literature, published in Indoor Studies,
and other volumes. He has also taken his readers into his
confidence in An Egotistical Chapter, the final one of his
Indoor Studies ; and in the Introduction to the Riverside
Edition of his writings he has given us further glimpses of
his private intellectual life.

Probably no other American writer has a greater sym-
pathy with, and a keener enjoyment of, country life in all
its phases — farming, camping, fishing, walking — than has
John Burroughs. His books are redolent of the soil, and
have such "freshness and primal sweetness," that we need

vi BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

not be told that the pleasure he gets from his walks and
excursions is by no means over when he steps inside his
doors again. As he tells us on more than one occasion, he
finds he can get much more out of his outdoor experiences
by thinking them over, and writing them out afterwards.

Numbers 28, 36, and 92 of the Riverside Literature Se-
ries consist of selections from Mr. Burroughs's books. No.
28, which is entitled Birds and Bees, is made up of Bird
Enemies and The Tragedies of the Nests from the volume
Signs and Seasons, An Idyl of the Honey-Bee from Pe-
pacton, and The Pastoral Bees from Locusts and Wild
Honey. The Introduction, by Miss Mary E. Burt, gives
an account of the use of Mr. Burroughs's writings in
Chicago schools.

In No. 36, Sharp Eyes^ and Other Papers, the initial
paper, Sharp Eyes, is drawn from Locusts and Wild
Honey, The Apple comes from Winter Sunshine, A Taste
f Maine Birch and Winter Neighbors from Signs and
Seasons, and Notes by the Way (on muskrats, squirrels,
foxes, and woodchucks) from Pepacton.

The collection called A Bunch of Herbs, and Other
Papers, forming No. 92 of the Series, was designed with
special reference to what the author has to say of trees and
flowers, and contains A Bunch of Herbs from Pepacton,
Strawberries from Locusts and Wild Honey, A March
Chronicle and Autumn Tides from Winter Sunshine, A
Spray of Pine and A Spring Relish from Signs and
Seasons, and English Woods: A Contrast from Fresh
Fields*

INTKODUCTION.

It is seldom that I find a book so far above chil-
ilren that I cannot share its best thought with them.
So when I first took up one of John Burroughs's es-
says, I at once foresaw many a ramble with my pupils
through the enchanted country that is found within
its breezy pages. To read John Burroughs is to live
in the woods and fields, and to associate intimately
with all their little timid inhabitants ; to learn that — ■

" God made all the creatures and gave them our love and our fear,
To give sign, we and they are his children, one family here."

When I came to use Pepacton in my class of the
sixth grade, I soon found, not only that the children
read better but that they came rapidly to a better ap-
preciation of the finer bits of literature in their reg-
ular readers, while their interest in their new author
grew quickly to an enthusiasm. Never was a little
brother or sister more real to them than was " Peggy
Mel" as she rushed into the hive laden with stolen
honey, while her neighbors gossiped about it, or the
stately elm that played sly tricks, or the log which
proved to be a good bedfellow because it did not grum-
ble. Burroughs's way of investing beasts, birds, in-
sects, and inanimate things with human motives is
very pleasing to children. They like to trace analo-
gies between the human and the irrational, to think

4 INTRODUCTION.

of a weed as a tramp stealing rides, of Nature as a
tell-tale when taken by surprise.

The quiet enthusiasm of John Burroughs's essays is
much healthier than the over-wrought dramatic action
which sets all the nerves a-quiver, — nerves already
stimulated to excess by the comedies and tragedies
forced upon the daily lives of children. It is espe-
cially true of children living in crowded cities, shut
away from the woods and hills, constant witnesses of
the effects of human passion, that they need the tonic
of a quiet literature rather than the stimulant of a
stormy or dramatic one, — a literature which develops
gentle feelings, deep thought, and a relish for what is
homely and homespun, rather than a literature wlrch
calls forth excited feelings.

The essays in this volume are those in which my
pupils have expressed an enthusiastic interest, or
which, after careful reading, I have selected for future
use. I have found in them lew pages so hard as to
require over much study, or a too frequent use of the
dictionary. John Burroughs, more than almost any
other writer of the time, has a prevailing taste for sim-
ple words and simple constructions. " He that runs
may read " him. I have found many children under
eleven years of age who could read a whole page with-
out hesitating. If I discover some words which I fore-
see will cause difficulty, I place such on the black-
board and rapidly pronounce and explain them before
the reading. Generally, however, I find the text the
best interpreter of its words. What follows explains
what goes before, if the child is led to read on to the
end of the sentence. It is a mistake to allow children
to be frightened away from choice reading by an occa-
sional hard word. There is no better time than hid

INTRODUCTION. 5

reading lesson in which to teach a child that the hard
things of life are to be grappled with and overcome.
A mistake also, I think, is that toilsome process of
explanation which I sometimes find teachers following,
under the impression that it will be " parrot work "
(as the stock phrase of the "institutes" has it) for
the pupils to read anything which they do not clearly
and fully comprehend. Teachers' definitions, in such
cases, I have often noticed, are no better than dic-
tionary definitions, and surely everybody knows that
few more fruitless things than dictionary definitions
are ever crammed into the memory of a child. Bet'
ter far give free play to the native intelligence of the
child, and trust it to apprehend, though it may not yet
comprehend nor be able to express its apprehension
in definition. On this subject I am glad to quote so
high an authority as Sir Walter Scott : " Indeed I
rather suspect that children derive impulses of a pow-
erful and important kind from reading things which
they do not comprehend, and therefore that to write
down to children's understanding is a mistake. Set
them on the scent and let them puzzle it out."

From time to time I have allowed my pupils to give
me written reports from memory of these essays, and
have often found these little compositions sparkling
with pleasing information, or full of that childlike fun
which is characteristic of the author. I have marked
the errors in these exercises, and have given them
back to the children to rewrite. Sometimes the sec-
ond papers show careful correction — and sometimes
the mistakes are partially neglected. Very often the
child wishes to improve on the first composition, and
so adds new blunders as well as creates new interest.

There is a law of self-preservation in Nature, which

6 INTRODUCTION.

takes care of mistakes. Every human soul reaches
toward the light in the most direct path open to it,
and will correct its own errors as soon as it is devel-
oped far enough. There is no use in trying to force
maturity ; teachers who trouble children beyond all
reason, and worry over their mistakes, are fumbling
at the roots of young plants that will grow if they are
let alone long enough.

The average mechanical work (spelling, construc-
tion of sentences, writing, etc) is better under this
method than when more time is devoted to the me-
chanics and less to the thought of composition. I
have seen many reports of Burroughs's essays from
the pens of children more pleasing and reliable than
the essays of some professional re viewers ; in these
papers I often find the children adding little sugges-
tions of their own ; as, " Do birds dream ? " One of
the girls says her bird " jumps in its sleep." A little
ten year old writes, " Weeds are unuseful flowers,"
and, " I like this book because there are real things
in it." Another thinks she "will look more care-
fully ' if she ever gets out into the country again.
For the development of close observation and good
Feeling toward the common things of life, I know of
Ho writings better than those of John Burroughs.

MAEY E. BURT.

Jones School, Chicago. Sept. 1, 1887.

BIRDS.

BIRD ENEMIES.

How surely the birds know their enemies ! Se€
ihow the wrens and robins and bluebirds pursue and
scold the cat, while they take little or no notice of the
dog ! Even the swallow will fight the cat, and, re-
lying too confidently upon its powers of flight, some-
times swoops down so near to its enemy that it is
caught by a sudden stroke of the cat's paw. The
only case I know of in which our small birds fail to
recognize their enemy is furnished by the shrike ; ap-
parently the little birds do not know that this modest-
colored bird is an assassin. At least, I have never
seen them scold or molest him, or utter any outcries
at his presence, as they usually do at birds of prey.
Probably it is because the shrike is a rare visitant,
and is not found in this part of the country during
the nesting season of our songsters.

But the birds have nearly all found out the trick
of the jay, and when he comes sneaking through the
trees in May and June in quest of eggs, he is quickly
exposed and roundly abused. It is amusing to see
the robins hustle him out of the tree which holds their
nest. They cry " Thief, thief ! " to the top of their
voices as they charge upon him, and the jay retorts in
a voice scarcely less complimentary as he makes off.

g BIRDS.

The jays have their enemies also, and need to keep
an eye on their own eggs. It would be interesting to
know if jays ever rob jays, or crows plunder crows;
or is there honor among thieves even in the feathered
tribes ? I suspect the jay is often punished by birds
which are otherwise innocent of nest-robbing. One
season I found a jay's nest in a small cedar on the
side of a wooded ridge. It held five eggs, every one
of which had been punctured. Apparently some bird
had driven its sharp beak through their shells, with
the sole intention of destroying them, for no part of
the contents of the eggs had been removed. It looked
like a case of revenge ; as if some thrush or warbler,
whose nest had suffered at the hands of the jays, had
watched its opportunity, and had in this way retail
ated upon its enemies. An egg for an egg. The jays
were lingering near, very demure and silent, and pro-
bably ready to join a crusade against nest-robbers.

The great bugaboo of the birds is the owl. The
owl snatches them from off their roosts at night, and
gobbles up their eggs and young in their nests. He
is a veritable ogre to them, and his presence fills them
with consternation and alarm.

One season, to protect my early cherries, I placed
a large stuffed owl amid the branches of the tree.
Such a racket as there instantly began about my
grounds is not pleasant to think upon ! The orioles
and robins fairly " shrieked out their affright." T'hG
news instantly spread in every direction, and appar-
ently every bird in town came to see that owl in the
cherry-tree, and every bird took a cherry, so that I
lost more fruit than if I had left the owl in-doors.
With craning necks and horrified looks the birds
alighted upon the branches, and between their screams

BIRD ENEMIES. 9

would snatch off a cherry, as if the act was some re-
lief to their outraged feelings.

The chirp and chatter of the young of birds which
build in concealed or inclosed places, like the wood-
peckers, the house wren, the high-hole, the oriole, is
in marked contrast to the silence of the fledgelings of
most birds that build open and exposed nests. The
young of the sparrows, — unless the social sparrow be
an exception, — warblers, fly-catchers, thrushes, never
allow a sound to escape them ; and on the alarm note
of their parents being heard, sit especially close and
motionless, while the young of chimney swallows, wood-
peckers, and orioles are very noisy. The latter, in its
deep pouch, is quite safe from birds of prey, except
perhaps the owl. The owl, I suspect, thrusts its leg
into the cavities of woodpeckers and into the pocket-
like nest of the oriole, and clutches and brings forth
the birds in its talons. In one case which x neard of,
a screech-owl had thrust its claw into a cavity in a
tree, and grasped the head of a red-headed wood-
pecker; being apparently unable to draw its prey forth,
it had thrust its own round head into the hole, and in
some way became fixed there, and had thus died with
the woodpecker in its talons.

The life of birds is beset with dangers and mishap'
of which we know little. One day, in my walk, 1
came upon a goldfinch with the tip of one wing se
curely fastened to the feathers of its rump, by what
appeared to be the silk of some caterpillar. The
bird, though uninjured, was completely crippled, anJ
could not fly a stroke. Its little body was hot and
panting in my hands, as I carefully broke the fetter.
Then it darted swiftly away with a happy cry. A
record of all the accidents and tragedies oi bird life

10 BIRDS.

for a single season would show many curious incidents
A friend of mine opened his box-stove one fall to kin-
dle a fire in it, when he beheld in the black interior
the desiccated forms of two bluebirds. The birds had
probably taken refuge in the chimney during souk
cold spring storm, and had come down the pipe to the
stove, from whence they were unable to ascend. A
peculiarly touching little incident of bird life occurred
to a caged female canary. Though unmated, it laid
some eggs, and the happy bird was so carried away
by her feelings that she would offer food to the eggs,
and chatter and twitter, trying, as it seemed, to en-
courage them to eat ! The incident is hardly tragic,
neither is it comic.

Certain birds nest in the vicinity of our houses and
outbuildings, or even in and upon them, for protec-
tion from their enemies, but they often thus expose
themselves to a plague of the most deadly character.

I refer to the vermin with which their nests often
swarm, and which kill the young before they are
fledged. In a state of nature this probably never
happens; at least I have never seen or heard of it
happening to nests placed in trees or under rocks. It
is the curse of civilization falling upon the birds which
come too near man. The vermin, or the germ of the
vermin, is probably conveyed to the nest in hen's
feathers, or in straws and hairs picked up about the
barn or hen-house. A robin's nest upon your porci
or in your summer-house will occasionally become an
intolerable nuisance from the swarms upon swarms of
minute vermin with which it is filled. The parent
birds stem the tide as long as they can, but are often
compelled to leave the young to their terrible fate.

One season a phcebe-bird built on a projecting stone

BIRD ENEMIES. U

ander the eaves of the house, and all appeared to go
well till the young were nearly fledged, when the nest
suddenly became a bit of purgatory. The birds kept
their places in their burning bed till they could hold
)ut no longer, when they leaped forth and fell dead
-Upon the ground.

After a delay of a week or more, during which 1
Imagine the parent birds purified themselves by every
means known to them, the couple built another nest a
few yards from the first, and proceeded to rear a sec-
ond brood ; but the new nest developed into the same
bed of torment that the first did, and the three young
birds, nearly ready to fly, perished as they sat within
it. The parent birds then left the place as if it had
been accursed.

I imagine the smaller birds have an enemy in our
Dative white-footed mouse, though I have not proof
enough to convict him. But one season the nest of a
chickadee which I was observing was broken up in a
position where nothing but a mouse could have reached
it. The bird had chosen a cavity in the limb of an ap-
ple-tree which stood but a few yards from the house.
The cavity was deep, and the entrance to it, which was
ten feet from the ground, was small. Barely light
enough was admitted, when the sun was in the most
favorable position, to enable one to make out the num-
r/er of eggs, which was six, at the bottom of the dim
Interior. While one was peering in and trying to get
nis head out of his own light, the bird would startle
him by a queer kind of puffing sound. She would
Dot leave her nest like most birds, but really tried to
blow, or scare, the intruder away ; and after repeated
experiments I could hardly refrain from jerking my
Head back when that little explosion of sound came ud

12 BIRDS.

from the dark interior. One night, when incubation
was about half finished, the nest was harried. A
slight trace of hair or fur at the entrance led me to
infer that some small animal was the robber. A
weasel might have done it, as they sometimes climb
«rees, but I doubt if either a squirrel or a rat could
have passed the entrance.

Probably few persons have ever suspected the cat°
bird of being an egg-sucker ; I do not know that she
has ever been accused of such a thing, but there is
something uncanny and disagreeable about her, which
I at once understood, when I one day caught her in
the very act of going through a nest of eggs.

A pair of the least fly-catchers, the bird which say*
chebec, chcbec, and is a small edition of the pewee,
one season built their nest where I had them for many
hours each day under my observation. The nest was
a very snug and compact structure placed in the forks
of a small maple about twelve feet from the ground,
The season before, a red squirrel had harried the nest
of a wood-thrush in this same tree, and I was aj)pre-
hensive that he would serve the fly-catcbers the sam3
trick; so, as I sat with my book in a summer-hous^
near by, I kept my loaded gun within easy read-.
One egg was laid, and the next morning, as I made
my daily inspection of the nest, only a fragment of
its empty shell was to be found. This I removed,
meu tally imprecating the rogue of a red squirrel.
The birds were much disturbed by the event, but did
not desert the nest, as I had feared they would, but
after much inspection of it and many consultations
together, concluded, it seems, to try again. Two
more eggs were laid, when one day I heard the bird*
Utter a sharp cry, and on looking up 1 saw a cat-bir*7

BIRD ENEMIES. 13

perched upon the riin of the nest, hastily devouring
the eggs. I soon regretted my precipitation in kill'
ing her, because such interference is generally unwise.
It turned out that she had a nest of her own with five
eggs, in a spruce-tree near my window.

Then this pair of little fly-catchers did what I had
never seen birds do before ; they pulled the nest to
pieces and rebuilt it in a peach-tree not many rodi>
away, where a brood was successfully reared. The
nest was here exposed to the direct rays of the noon-
day sun, and to shield her young when the heat was
greatest, the mother-bird would stand above them
with wings slightly spread, as other birds have beei*
:«iown to do under like circumstances.

To what extent the cat-bird is a nest-robber I have
ao evidence, but that feline mew of hers, and that
flirting, flexible tail, suggest something not entirely
bird-like.

Probably the darkest tragedy of the nest is enacted
when a snake plunders it. All birds and animals, so
far as I have observed, behave in a peculiar manner
toward a snake. They seem to feel something of the
same loathing toward it that the human species expe*
riences. The bark of a dog when he encounters a
snake is different from that which he gives out on
any other occasion ; it is a mingled note of alarm,
inquiry, and disgust.

One day a tragedy was enacted a few yards fron?
where I was sitting with a book ; two song-sparrowfe
were trying to defend their nest against a black
snake. The curious, interrogating note of a chicken
who had suddenly come upon the scene in his walk-
first caused me to look up from my reading. There
were the sparrows, with wings raised in a way pecu*

14 BIRDS.

liarly expressive of horror and dismay, rushing about
a low clump of grass and bushes. Then, looking more
closely, I saw the glistening form of the black snake,
and the quick movement of his head as he tried to
seize the birds. The sparrows darted about and
through the grass and weeds, trying to beat the
snake off. Their tails and wings were spread, and,
panting with the heat and the desperate struggle, they
presented a most singular spectacle. They uttered no
cry, not a sound escaped them ; they were plainly
speechless with horror and dismay. Not once did
they drop their wings, and the peculiar expression
of those uplifted palms, as it were, I shall never
forget. It occurred to me that perhaps here was a
case of attempted bird-charming on the part of the
snake, so I looked on from behind the fence. The
birds charged the snake and harassed him from every
side, but were evidently under no spell save that of
courage in defending their nest. Every moment or
two I could see the head and neck of the serpent
make a sweep at the birds, when the one struck at
would fall back, and the other would renew the as-
sault from the rear. There appeared to be little dan-
ger that the snake could strike and hold one of the
birds, though I trembled for them, they were so bold
*nd approached so near to the snake's head. Time
and again he sprang at them, but without success.
How the poor things panted, and held up their wings
appealingly ! Then the snake glided off to the near
fence, barely escaping the stone which I hurled at
him. I found the nest rifled and deranged ; whether
it had contained eggs or young I know not. The
male sparrow had cheered me many a day with his
3ong, and I blamed myself for not having rushed at

BIRD ENEMIES. 15

once to the rescue, when the arch enemy was upon
him. There is probably little truth in the popular
notion that snakes charm birds. The black snake if
the most subtle, alert, and devilish of our snakes, and
I have never seen him have any but young, helpless
foirds in his mouth.

We have one parasitical bird, the cow-bird, so-called
because it walks about amid the grazing cattle and
seizes the insects which their heavy tread sets going,
which is an enemy of most of the smaller birds. It
drops its egg in the nest of the song-sparrow, the
social sparrow, the snow-bird, the vireos, and the
wood -warblers, and as a rule it is the only egg in
the nest that issues successfully. Either the eggs o£
the rightful owner of the nest are not hatched, or else
the young are overridden and overreached by the
parasite and perish prematurely.

Among the worst enemies of our birds are the so-
called " collectors," men who plunder nests and mur-
der their owners in the name of science. Not the
genuine ornithologist, for no one is more careful of
squandering bird life than he ; but the sham ornithol-
ogist, the man whose vanity or affectation happens to
take an ornithological turn. He is seized with an
itching for a collection of eggs and birds because it
happens to be the fashion, or because it gives him the
air of a man of science. But in the majority of cases
the motive is a mercenary one ; the collector expects
to sell these spoils of the groves and orchards. Hob
bing nests and killing birds becomes a business with
him. He goes about it systematically, and becomes
an expert in circumventing and slaying our songsters.
Every town of any considerable size is infested with
one or more of these bird highwaymen, and every

16 BIRDS.

nest in the country round about that the wretches caa
lay hands on is harried. Their professional term for
a nest of eggs is u a clutch," a word that well ex-
presses the work of their grasping, murderous fingers.
They clutch and destroy in the germ the life and
music of the woodlands. Certain of our natural
history journals are mainly organs of communication
between these human weasels. They record their
exploits at nest-robbing and bird-slaying in their col-
umns. One collector tells with gusto how he " worked
his way ': through an orchard, ransacking every tree,
and leaving, as he believed, not one nest behind him.
He had better not be caught working his way through
my orchard. Another gloats over the number of
Connecticut warblers — a rare bird — he killed in
one season in Massachusetts. Another tells how a
mocking-bird appeared in southern New England and
was hunted down by himself and friend, its eggs
'' clutched," and the bird killed. Who knows how
«nuch the bird lovers of New England lost by that
foul deed ? The progeny of the birds would probably
have returned to Connecticut to breed, and their
progeny, or a part of them, the same, till in time the
famous songster would have become a regular visitant
to New England. In the same journal still another
collector describes minutely how he outwitted three
humming-birds and captured their nests and eggs,—
a clutch he was very proud of. A Massachusetts bird
harrier boasts of his clutch of the eggs of that dainty
little warbler, the blue yellow-back. One season
he took two sets, the next five sets, the next four sets,
besides some single eggs, and the next season four sets,
and says he might have found more had he had more
time. One season he took, in about twenty days, three

BIRD ENEMIES. 17

aets from one tree. I have heard of a collector who
boasted of having taken one hundred sets of the eggs
of the marsh wren in a single day ; of another, who
took, in the same time, thirty nests of the yellow-
breasted chat ; and of still another, who claimed to
have taken one thousand sets of e^s of different birds
in one season. A large business has grown up under
the influence of this collecting craze. One dealer
in eggs has those of over five hundred species. He
says that his business in 1883 was twice that of
1882 ; in 1884 it was twice that of 1883, and so on.
Collectors vie with each other in the extent and
variety of their cabinets. They not only obtain eggs
in sets, but aim to have a number of sets of the same
bird, so as to show all possible variations. I hear of
a private collection that contains twelve sets of king-
birds' eggs, eight sets of house-wrens' eggs, four sets
of mocking-birds' eggs, etc. ; sets of eggs taken in lovr
trees, high trees, medium trees ; spotted sets, dark sets,
plain sets, and light sets of the same species of bird.
Many collections are made on this latter plan.
-" Thus are our birds hunted and cut off, and all in
the name of science ; as if science had not long ago
finished with these birds. She has weighed and mea-
sured, and dissected, and described them, and their
nests, and eggs, and placed them in her cabinet ; and
the interest of science and of humanity now demands
that this wholesale nest-robbing cease. These inci-
dents I have given above, it is true, are but drops in
the bucket, but the bucket would be more than full if
we could get all the facts. Where one man publishes
his notes, hundreds, perhaps thousands, say nothing,
but go as silently about their nest-robbing as weasels.
It is true that the student of ornithology often feeis

18 BIRDS.

compelled to take bird-life. It is not an easy matter
to "name all the birds without a gun," though aa
opera-glass will often render identification entirely
certain, and leave the songster unharmed ; but onoe
having mastered the birds, the true ornithologist leaves
his gun at home. This view of the case may not be
agreeable to that desiccated mortal called the " closet
naturalist," but for my own part the closet naturalist
is a person with whom I have very little sympathy.
He is about the most wearisome and profitless creature
in existence. With his piles of skins, his cases of
eggs, his laborious feather-splitting, and his outlandish
nomenclature, he is not only the enemy of the birds
but the enemy of all those who would know them
rightly.

Not the collectors alone are to blame for the dimin-
ishing numbers of our wild birds, but a large share
of the responsibility rests upon quite a different class
of persons, namely, the milliners. False taste in
dress is as destructive to our feathered friends as are
false aims in science. It is said that the traffic in
the skins of our brighter plumaged birds, arising
from their use by the milliners, reaches to hundreds
of thousands annually. I am told of one middleman
who collected from the shooters in one district, in four
months, seventy thousand skins. It is a barbarous
taste that craves this kind of ornamentation. Think
of a woman or girl of real refinement appearing upon
the street with her head gear adorned with the scalps
of our songsters !

>/ It is probably true that the number of our birds
destroyed by man is but a small percentage of the
number cut off by their natural enemies ; but it is to
be remembered that those he destroys are in addition

BIRD ENEMIES. 19

to those thus cut off, and that it is this extra or ar-
tificial destruction that disturbs the balance of nature.
The operation of natural causes keeps the birds in
check, but the greed of the collectors and milliners
tends to their extinction.

I can pardon a man who wishes to make a collec-
tion of eggs and birds for his own private use, if he
will content himself with one or two specimens of a
kind, though he will find any collection much less
satisfactory and less valuable than he imagines, but
the professional nest-robber and skin collector should
be put down, either by legislation or with dogs and
shot-guns.

I have remarked above thai there is probably very
little truth in the popular notion that snakes can
"charm " birds. But two of my correspondents have
each furnished me with an incident from his own ex-
perience, which seems to confirm the popular belief.
One of them writes from Georgia as follows : —

"Some twenty-eight years ago I was in Calaveras
County, California, engaged in cutting lumber. One
day in coming out of the camp or cabin, my attention
was attracted to the curious action of a quail in the
air, which, instead of flying low and straight ahead as
usual, was some fifty feet high, flying in a circle, and
uttering cries of distress. I watched the bird and
saw it gradually descend, and following with my eye
in a line from the bird to the ground saw a large
snake with head erect and some ten or twelve inches
above the ground, and mouth wide open, and as far
as I could see, gazing intently on the quail (I was
about thirty feet from the snake). The quail gradu-
ally descended, its circles growing smaller and smaller
and all the time uttering cries of distress, until its feet

20 BIRDS.

were within two or three inches of the mouth of the
snake ; when I threw a stone, and though not hitting
the snake, yet struck the ground so near as to frighten
him, and he gradually started off. The quail, how-
ever, fell to the ground, apparently lifeless. I went
forward and picked it up and found it was thoroughly
overcome with fright, its little heart beating as if it .>
would burst through the skin. After holding it in»
my hand a few moments it flew away. I then tried
to find the snake, but could not. I am unable to say
whether the snake was venomous or belonged to the
constricting family, like the black snake. I can well
recollect it was large and moved off rather slow. As
I had never seen anything of the kind before, it made
a great impression on my mind, and after the lapse
of so long a time, the incident appears as vivid to
me as though it had occurred yesterday."

It is not probable that the snake had its mouth
open ; its darting tongue may have given that impres-
sion.

The other incident comes to me from Vermont.
" While returning from church in 1876," says the
writer, " as I was crossing a bridge ... I noticed a
striped snake in the act of charming a song-sparrow.
They were both upon the sand beneath the bridge.
The snake kept his head swaying slowly from side to
side, and darted his tongue out continually. The
bird, not over a foot away, was facing the snake, horv
ping from one foot to the other, and uttering a dis-
satisfied little chirp. I watched them till the snake
seized the bird, having gradually drawn nearer. As
he seized it, I leaped over the side of the bridge;
the snake glided away and I took up the bird, which
he had dropped. It was too frightened to try to fly.

THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS. 21

and 1 carried it nearly a mile before it flew from my
open hand."

If these observers are quite sure of what they saw„
fchen undoubtedly snakes have the power to draw
birds within their grasp. I remember that my mother
once told me that while gathering wild strawberries
she had on one occasion come upon a bird fluttering
about the head of a snake as if held there by a spell.
On her appearance, the snake lowered its head and
made off, and the panting bird flew away. A neigh-
bor of mine killed a black suake which had swallowed
a full-grown red squirrel, probably captured by the
same power of fascination.

THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS.

The life of the birds, especially of our migratory
song-birds, is a series of adventures and of hair-breadth
escapes by flood and field. Very few of them prob-
ably die a natural death, or even live out half their
appointed days. The home instinct is strong in birds
as it is in most creatures ; and I am convinced that
every spring a large number of those which have sur-
vived the Southern campaign return to their old
haunts to breed. A Connecticut farmer took me out
under his porch, one April day, and showed me a
phoebe bird's nest six stories high. The same bird
had no doubt returned year after year ; and as there
was room for only one nest upon her favorite shelf,
she had each season reared a new superstructure upon
the old as a foundation. I have heard of a white
robin — an albino — that nested several years in sue*

22 BIRDS.

cession in the suburbs of a Maryland city. A sparrow
with a very marked peculiarity of song I have heard
several seasons in my own locality. But the birds
do not all live to return to their old haunts : the bobo-
links and starlings run a gauntlet of fire from the
Hudson to the Savannah, and the robins and meadow-
larks and other song-birds are shot by boys and pot-
hunters in great numbers, — to say nothing of their
danger from hawks and owls. But of those that do
return, what perils beset their nests, even in the most
favored localities ! The cabins of the early settler?,
when the country was swarming with hostile Indians,
were not surrounded by such dangers. The tender
households of the birds are not only exposed to hos*
tile Indians in the shape of cats and collectors, but to
numerous murderous and bloodthirsty animals, against
whom they have no defense but concealment. They
lead the darkest kind of pioneer life, even in our gar*
dens and orchards, and under the walls of our houses.
Not a day or a night passes, from the time the eggs
are laid till the young are flown, when the chances are
not greatly in favor of the nest being rifled and its
contents devoured, — by owls, skunks, minks, and
coons at night, and by crows, jays, squirrels, weasels,
snakes, and rats during the day. Infancy, we say> is
hedged about by many perils ; but the infancy of birds
is cradled and pillowed in peril. An old Michigan
settler told me that the first six children that were born
to him died ; malaria and teething invariably carried
them off when they had reached a certain age ; but
other children were born, the country improved, and
by and by the babies weathered the critical period,
and the next six lived and grew up. The birds, too,
would no doubt persevere six times and twice six times.

THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS. 23

if the season were long enough, and finally rear their
family, but the waning summer cuts them short, and
but few species have the heart and strength to make
even the third trial, n^

/* The first nest-builders in spring, like the first settlers
near hostile tribes, suffer the most casualties. A la/ge
proportion of the nests of April and May are de*
stroyed ; their enemies have been many months without
eggs, and their appetites are keen for them. It is a
time, too, when other food is scarce, and the crows
and squirrels are hard put. But the second nests of
June, and still more the nests of July and August,
are seldom molested. It is rarely that the nest of
the goldfinch or the cedar-bird is harried.

My neighborhood on the Hudson is perhaps excep-
tionally unfavorable as a breeding haunt for birds,
owing to the abundance of fish-crows and of red squir-
rels ; and the season of which this chapter is mainly
a chronicle, the season of 1881, seems to have been
a black-letter one even for this place, for at least nine
nests out of every ten that I observed during that
spring and summer failed of their proper issue. From
the first nest I noted, which was that of a bluebird,
• — built (very imprudently I thought at the time) in
a squirrel-hole in a decayed apple-tree, about the last
of April, and which came to naught, even the moiher-
bird, I suspect, perishing by a violent death, — to
;he iast, which was that of a snow-bird, observed ifl
August, among the Catskills, deftly concealed in a
mossy bank by the side of a road that skirted a wood,
where the tall thimble blackberries grew in abundance,
and from which the last young one was taken, when H
was about half grown, by some nocturnal walker or
daylight prowler, some untoward fate seemed hovering

24 BIRDS.

about them. It was a season of calamities, of violent
deaths, of pillage and massacre, among our feathered
neighbors. For the first time I noticed that the
orioles were not safe in their strong, pendent nests
Three broods were started in the apple-trees, only a
few yards from the house, where, for previous seasons,
the birds had nested without molestation ; but this
time the young were all destroyed when about half
grown. Their chirping and chattering, which was so
noticeable one day, suddenly ceased the next. The
nests were probably plundered at night, and doubtless
by the little red screech-owl, which I know is a denizen
of these old orchards, living in the deeper cavities of
the trees. The owl could alight on the top of the nest,
and easily thrust his murderous claw down into
its long pocket and seize the young and draw them
forth. The tragedy of one of the nests was heightened,
or at least made more palpable, by one of the half-
fledged birds, either in its attempt to escape or while
in the clutches of the enemy, being caught and entan-
gled in one of the horse-hairs by which the nest wras
stayed and held to the limb above. There it hung
bruised and dead, gibbeted to its own cradle. This
nest was the theatre of another little tragedy later in
the season. Some time in August a bluebird, indulging
its propensity to peep and pry into holes and crevices9
alighted upon it and probably inspected the interior;
but by some unlucky move it got its wings entangled
in this same fatal horse-hair. Its efforts to free itself
appeared only to result in its being more securely and
hopelessly bound ; and there it perished ; and there its
form, dried and embalmed by the summer heats, was
yet hanging in September, the outspread wings and
plumage showing nearly as bright as in life.

THE TRAGEDIES OE THE NESTS. 25

A correspondent writes me that one of his orioles
got entangled in a cord while building her nest, and
that though by the aid of a ladder he reached and
liberated her, she died soon afterward. He also
found a "chippie" (called also "hair bird") sus-
pended from a branch by a horse-hair, beneath &
partly-constructed nest. I heard of a cedar-bird)
caught and destroyed in the same way, and of two
young bluebirds, around whose legs a horse-hair had
become so tightly wound that the legs withered up
and dropped off. The birds became fledged, and
finally left the nest with the others. Such tragedies
are probably quite common.

Before the advent of civilization in this country, the
oriole probably built a much deeper nest than it usu-
ally does at present. When now it builds in remote
trees and along the borders of the woods, its nest, 1
have noticed, is long and gourd-shaped ; but in or-
chards and near dwellings it is only a deep cup or
pouch. It shortens it up in proportion as the danger
lessens. Probably a succession of disastrous years,
like the one under review, would cause it to lengthen
it again beyond the reach of owl's talons or jay-bird's
beak.

The first song-sparrow's nest I observed in the
spring of 1881 was in the field under a fragment of &
board, the board being raised from the ground a
couple of inches by two poles. It had its full com-
plement of eggs, and probably sent forth a brood of
young birds, though as to this I cannot speak posi-
tively, as I neglected to observe it further. It was
well sheltered and concealed, and was not easily come
at by any of its natural enemies, save snakes and
weasels. But concealment often avails little. In

26 BIRDS.

May, a song-sparrow, that had evidently met with
disaster earlier in the season, built its nest in a thick
mass of woodbine against the side of my house, about
fifteen feet from the ground. Perhaps it took the
hint from its cousin, the English sparrow. The nest
was admirably placed, protected from the storms by
the overhanging eaves and from all eyes by the thick
screen of leaves. Only by patiently watching the.
suspicious bird, as she lingered near with food in her
beak, ^id I discover its whereabouts. That brood is
safe, 1 thought, beyond doubt. But it was not ; the
nest was pillaged one night, either by an owl, or else
by a rat that had climbed into the vine, seeking an
entrance to the house. The mother-bird, after reflect-
ing upon her ill-luck about a week, seemed to resolve
to try a different system of tactics and to throw all
appearances of concealment aside. She built a nest
a few yards from the house beside the drive, upon a
smooth piece of greensward. There was not a weed
or a shrub or anything whatever to conceal it or mark
its site. The structure was completed and incubation
had begun before I discovered what was going on.
"Well, well," I said, looking down upon the bird
almost at my feet, " this is going to the other extreme
indeed ; now, the cats will have you," The desper-
ate little bird sat there day after day, looking like a
brown leaf pressed down in the short green grass.
As the weather grew hot, her position became very
trying. It was no longer a question of keeping the
eggs warm, but of keeping them from roasting. The
sun had no mercy on her, and she fairly panted in the
middle of the day. In such an emergency the male
robin has been known to perch above the sitting
female and shade her with his outstretched wings,

THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS. 27

But in this case there was no perch for the male bird,
bad he been disposed to make a sunshade of himself.
I thought to lend a hand in this direction myself,
and so stuck a leafy twig beside the nest. This was
probably an unwise interference ; it guided disaster
to the spot ; the nest was broken up, and the mother-
bird was probably caught, as I never saw her after-
ward.

For several previous summers a pair of kingbirds
fiad reared, unmolested, a brood of young in an ap-
ple-tree, only a few yards from the house ; but dur-
ing this season disaster overtook them also. The
nest was completed, the eggs laid, and incubation had
just begun, when, one morning about sunrise, I heard
loud cries of distress and alarm proceed from the old
apple-tree. Looking out of the window I saw a crowt
which I knew to be a fish-crow, perched upon the
edge of the nest, hastily bolting the eggs. The parent
birds, usually so ready for the attack, seemed over-
come with grief and alarm. They fluttered about in
the most helpless and bewildered manner, and it was
not till the robber fled on my approach that they
recovered themselves and charged upon him. The
crow scurried away with upturned, threatening head,
the furious kingbirds fairly upon his back. The pair-
lingered around their desecrated nest for several days,
almost silent, and saddened by their loss, and then
disappeared. They probably made another trial else-
where.

: The fish-crow only fishes when it has destroyed
all the eggs and young birds it can find. It is the
most despicable thief and robber among our feathered
creatures. From May to August it is gorged with the
fledgelings of the nest. It is fortunate that its range

BIRDS.

is so limited. In size it is smaller than the common
crow, and is a much less noble and dignified bird
Its caw is weak and feminine — a sort of split and
abortive caw, that stamps it the sneak-thief it is.
This crow is common farther south, but is not found
in this State, so far as I have observed, except in the
valley of the Hudson.

One season a pair of them built a nest in a Norway
spruce that stood amid a dense growth of other or*
namental trees near a large unoccupied house. The}'
aat down amid plenty. The wolf established himself
in the fold. The many birds — robins, thrushes,
finches, vireos, pewees — that seek the vicinity of
dwellings (especially of these large country residences
with their many trees and park-like grounds), for the
greater safety of their eggs and young, were the easy
and convenient victims of these robbers. They plun-
dered right and left, and were not disturbed till their
young were nearly fledged, when some boys, who
had long before marked them as their prize, rifled
the nest.

The song-birds nearly all build low ; their cradle
is not upon the tree- top. It is only birds of prey
that fear danger from below more than from above,
and that seek the higher branches for their nests. A
line five feet from the ground would run above more
than half- the nests, and one ten feet would bound
more than three fourths of them. It is only the
oriole and the wood pewee that, as a rule, go higher
than this. The crows and jays and other enemies of
the birds have learned to explore this belt pretty
thoroughly. But the leaves and the protective color-
ing of most nests baffle them as effectually, no doubt;
as they do the professional oologist. The nest of the

THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS. 29

red-eyed vireo is one of the most artfully placed in
the wood. It is just beyond the point where the eye
naturally pauses in its search ; namely, on the extreme
end of the lowest branch of the tree, usually four or
*ive feet from the ground. One looks up and down
and through the tree, — shoots his eye-beams into it
as he might discharge his gun at some game hidden
there, but the drooping tip of that low horizontal
branch — who would think of pointing his piece just
there? If a crow or other marauder were to alight
upon the branch or upon those above -it, the nest
would be screened from him by the lar^e leaf that
usually forms a canopy immediately above it. The
nest-hunter, standing at the foot of the tree and look-
ing straight before him, might discover it easily, were
it not for its soft, neutral gray tint which blends so
thoroughly with the trunks and branches of trees.
Indeed, I think there is no nest in the woods — no
arboreal nest — so well concealed. The last one I
saw was pendent from the end of a low branch of a
maple, that nearly grazed the clapboards of an un-
used hay-barn in a remote backwoods clearing. I
peeped through a crack and saw the old birds feed
the nearty fledged young within a few inches of my
face. And yet the cow-bird finds this nest and drops
her parasitical egg in it. Her tactics in this as in
other cases are probably to watch the movements of
the parent bird. She may often be seen searching
anxiously through the trees or bushes for a suitable
nest, yet she may still oftener be seen perched upon
some good point of observation watching the birds as
they come and go about her. There is no doubt that,
in many cases, the cow-bird makes room for her own
illegitimate egg in the nest by removing one of the

30 BIRDS.

bird's own, When the cow-bird finds two or more
£ggs in a nest in which she wishes to deposit her own,
she will remove one of them. I found a sparrow's
nest with two sparrow's eggs and one cow-bird's egg^
and another egg lying a foot or so below it on the
ground. I replaced the ejected egg, and the next day
found it again removed, and another cow-bird's egg
in its place ; I put it back the second time, when it
was again ejected, or destroyed, for I failed to find
it anywhere. Very alert and sensitive birds like the
warblers often bury the strange egg beneath a second
nest built on top of the old. A lady, living in the
suburbs of an eastern city, one morning heard cries
of distress from a pair of house-wrens that had a nest
in a honeysuckle on her front porch. On looking out
of the window, she beheld this little comedy — com=
edy from her point of view, but no doubt grim-tragedy
from the point of view of the wrens ; a cow-bird with
a wren's egg in its beak running rapidly along the
walk, with the outraged wrens forming a procession
behind it, screaming, scolding, and gesticulating as
only these voluble little birds can. The cow-bird
had probably been surprised in the act of violating
the nest, and the wrens were giving her a piece of
tbeir minds.

Every cow-bird is reared at the expense of two or
more song-birds. For every one of these dusky little
pedestrians there amid the grazing cattle there are
two or more sparrows, or vireos, or warblers, the less
It is a big price to pay — two larks for a bunting —
two sovereigns for a shilling ; but Nature does not
hesitate occasionally to contradict herself in just this
way. The young of the cow-bird is disproportion-
ately large and aggressive, one might say hoggish.

THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS. 31

When disturbed it will clasp the nest and scream, and
snap its beak threateningly. One hatched out in a
song-sparrow's nest which was under my observation,
and would soon have overridden and overborne the
young sparrow, which came out of the shelJ a fev7
hours later, had I not interfered from time to time
and lent the young sparrow a helping hand. Every
day I would visit the nest and take the sparrow out
from under the pot-bellied interloper and place it on
top, so that presently it was able to hold its own
against its enemy. Both birds became fledged and
left the nest about the same time. Whether the race
was an even one after that, I know not.

I noted but two warblers' neste during that season,
one of the black-throated blue-back and one of the
redstart, — the latter built in an apple-tree but a few
yards from a little rustic summer-house where I idle
away many summer days. The lively little birds,
darting and flashing about, attracted my attention for
a week before I discovered their nest. They prob-
ably built it by working early in the morning, be-
fore I appeared upon the scene, as I never saw them
with material in their beaks. Guessing from their
movements that the nest was in a large maple that
stood near by, I climbed the tree and explored it
thoroughly, looking especially in the forks of the
branches, as the authorities say these birds build in a
fork. But no nest could I find. Indeed, how can
one by searching find a bird's nest ? I overshot the
mark ; the nest was much nearer me, almost under
my very nose, and I discovered it, not by searching,
but by a casual glance of the eye, while thinking of
other matters. The bird was just settling upon it as
I looked up from my book and caught her in the act>

82 BIRDS.

The nest was built near the end of a long, knotty,
horizontal branch of an apple-tree, but effectually hid*
den by the grouping of the leaves ; it had three eggs>
one of which proved to be barren. The two young
birds grew apace, and were out of the nest early in
the second week ; but something caught one of them
the first night. The other probably grew to maturity,
as it disappeared from the vicinity with its parents
after some days.

The blue-back's nest was scarcely a foot from the
ground, in a little bush situated in a low, dense wood
of hemlock and beech and maple, amid the Catskills,
— a deep, massive, elaborate structure, in which the
sitting bird sank till her beak and tail alone were vis-
ible above the brim. It was a misty, chilly day when
I chanced to find the nest, and the mother-bird knew
instinctively that it was not prudent to leave her four
half incubated eggs uncovered and exposed for a mo-
ment. When I sat down near the nest she grew very
uneasy, and after trying in vain to decoy me away by
suddenly dropping from the branches and dragging
herself over the ground as if mortally wounded, sho
approached and timidly and half doubtingly covered
her eggs within two yards of where I sat. I disturbed
her several times to note her ways. There came to
be something almost appealing in her looks and man-
ner, and she would keep her place on her precious
eggs till my outstretched hand was within a few feet
of her. Finally, I covered the cavity of the nest with
a dry leaf. This she did not remove with her beak,
but thrust her head deftlv beneath it and shook it off
upon the ground. Many of her sympathizing neigh-
bors, attracted by her alarm note, came and had a
peep at the intruder and then flew away, but the male

THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS. 33

bird did not appear upon the scene. The final his-
tory of this nest I am unable to give, as I did not
again visit it till late in the season, when, of course, it
was empty.

Years pass without my finding a brown-thrasher's
nest ; it is not a nest you are likely to stumble upon
in your walk ; it is hidden as a miser hides his gold
and watched as jealously. The male pours out his
rich and triumphant song from the tallest tree he
can find, and fairly challenges you to come and look
for his treasures in his vicinity. But you will not find
them if you go. The nest is somewhere on the outer
circle of his song; bs is never so imprudent as to
take up his stand very near it. The artists who draw
those cosy little pictures of a brooding mother-bird
with the male perched but a yard away in full song,
do not copy from nature. The thrasher's nest I found
was thirty or forty rods from the point where the
male was wont to indulge in his brilliant recitative.
It was in an open field under a low ground-juniper.
My dog disturbed the sitting bird as I was passing
near. The nest could be seen only by lifting up and
parting away the branches. All the arts of conceal-
ment had been carefully studied. It was the last
place you would think of looking, and, if you did look,
nothing was visible but the dense green circle of tho
low-spreading juniper. When you approached, the
bird would keep her place till you had begun to stir
the branches, when she would start out, and, just
skimming the ground, make a bright brown line to
the near fence and bushes. I confidently expected
that this nest would escape molestation, but it did not.
Its discovery by myself and dog probably opened tho
door for ill luck, as one day, not long afterward, when

34 BIRDS.

I peeped in upon it, it was empty. The proud song
of the male had ceased from his accustomed tree, and
the pair were seen no more in that vicinity.

The phcebe-bird is a wise architect, and perhaps
enjoys as great an immunity from danger, both in
its person and its nest, as any other bird. Its mod-
est, ashen-gray suit is the color of the rocks where it
builds, and the moss of which it makes such free use
gives to its nest the look of a natural growth or ao»
cretion. But when it comes into the barn or under
the shed to build, as it so frequently does, the moss is
rather out of place. Doubtless in time the bird will
take the hint, and when she builds in such places will
leave the moss out. I noted but two nests, the sum-
mer I am speaking of : one, in a barn, failed of issue,
on account of the rats, I suspect, though the little
owl may have been the depredator ; the other, in the
woods, sent forth three young. This latter nest was
most charmingly and ingeniously placed. I discov-
ered it while in quest of pond-lilies, in a long, deep,
level stretch of water in the woods. A large tree had
blown over at the edge of the water, and its dense mass
of up-turned roots, with the black, peaty soil filling
the interstices, was like the fragment of a wall several
feet high, rising from the edge of the languid current.
In a niche in this earthy wall, and visible and acces-
sible only from the water, a phcebe had built her nest
and reared her brood. I paddled my boat up and
came alongside prepared to take the family aboard.
The young, nearly ready to fly, were quite undisturbed
by my presence, having probably been assured that no
danger need be apprehended from that side. It was
not a likely place for minks, or they would not have
been so secure.

THE TRAGEDIES OF TUB NESTS. 35

1 noted but one nest of the wood pewee, and that,
too, like so many other nests, failed of issue. It was
saddled upon a small dry limb of a plane-tree that
^tood by the roadside, about forty feet from the ground.
tCvery day for nearly a week, as I passed by I saw the
sitting bird upon the nest. Then one morning she
was not in her place, and on examination the nest
proved to be empty — robbed, I had no doubt, by the
red squirrels, as they were very abundant in its vicin-
ity, and appeared to make a clean sweep of every nest.
The wood pewee builds an exquisite nest, shaped and
finished as if cast in a mould. It is modeled without
and within with equal neatness and art, like the nest
of the humming-bird and the little gray gnat-catcher.
The material is much more refractory than that used
by either of these birds, being, in the present case,
dry, fine cedar twigs ; but these were bound into a
shape as rounded and compact as could be moulded
out of the most plastic material. Indeed, the nest of
this bird looks precisely like a large, lichen-covered,
cup-shaped excrescence of the limb upon which it is
placed. And the bird, while bitting, seems entirely at
her ease. Most birds seem to make very hard work
of incubation. It is a kind of martyrdom which ap-
pears to tax all their powers of endurance. They
have such a fixed, rigid, predetermined look, pressed
down into the nest and as motionless as if made of
cast-iron. But the wood pewee is an exception. She
is largely visible above the rim of the nest. Her atti-
tude is easy and graceful ; she moves her head this
way and that, and seems to take note of whatever goes
on about her ; and if her neighbor were to drop in for
a little social chat, she could doubtless do her part.
In fact, she makes light and easy work of what, to

36 BIRDS-

most other birds, is such a serious and engrossing
matter. If it does not look like play with her, it at
least looks like leisure and quiet contemplation.

There is no nest-builder that suffers more from
crows and squirrels and other enemies than the wood-
thrush. It builds as openly and unsuspiciously as if
it thought the whole world as honest as itself. Its
favorite place is the fork of a sapling, eight or ten feet
from the ground, where it falls an easy prey to every
nest-robbe^ that comes prowling through the woods
and groves. It is not a bird that skulks and hides,
like the cat-bird, the brown-thrasher, the chat, or the
cheewink, and its nest is not concealed with the same
art as theirs. Our thrushes are all frank, open-man-
nered birds ; but the veery and the hermit build upon
the ground, where they at least escape the crows, owls,
and jays, and stand a better chance to be overlooked
by the red squirrel and weasel also ; while the robin
seeks the protection of dwellings and out-buildings.
For years I have not known the nest of a wood-thrush
to succeed. During the season referred to I observed
but two, both apparently a second attempt, as the
season was well advanced, and both failures. In one
ease, the nest was placed in a branch that an apple-
tree, standing near a dwelling, held out over the high-
way. The structure was barely ten feet above the mid-
dle of the road, and would just escape a passing load
of hay. It was made conspicuous by the use of a
large fragment of newspaper in its foundation — an
unsafe material to build upon in most cases. What*
ever else the press may guard, this particular news-
paper did not guard this nest from harm. It saw the
egg and probably the chick, but not the fledgeling. A
murderous deed was committed above the public high-

THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS. 37

way, but whether in the open day or under cover of
darkness I have no means of knowing. The frisky red
squirrel was doubtless the culprit. The other nest
was in a maple sapling, within a few yards of the
little rustic summer-house already referred to. The
first attempt of the season, I suspect, had failed in
a more secluded place under the hill ; so the pair had
come up nearer the house for protection. The male
sang in the trees near by for several days before I
chanced to see the nest. The very morning, I think,
it was finished, I saw a red squirrel exploring a tree
but a few yards away ; he probably knew what the
singing meant as well as I did. I did not see the in-
side of the nest, for it was almost instantly deserted,
the female having probably laid a single egg, which
the squirrel had devoured.

If I were a bird, in building my nest I should fol-
low the example of the bobolink, placing it in the
midst of a broad meadow, where there was no spear of
grass, or flower* or growth unlike another to mark its
site. I judge that the bobolink escapes the dangers to
which I have adverted as few or no other birds do.
Unless the mowers come along at an earlier date than
she has anticipated, that is, before July 1st, or a skunk
goes nosing through the grass, which is unusual, she is
as safe as bird well can be in the great open of nature.
She selects the most monotonous and uniform place
she can find amid the daisies or the timothy and clover,
and places her simple structure upon the ground in
the midst of it. There is no concealment, except as
the great conceals the little, as the desert conceals the
pebble, as the myriad conceals the unit. You may
find the nest once, if your course chances to lead
you across it and your eye is quick enough to note

38 BIRDS.

the silent brown bird as she darts quickly away;
but step three paces in the wrong direction, and
<7our search will probably be fruitless. My friend and
1 found a nest by accident one day, and then lost it
again one minute afterward. I moved away a few
yards to be sure of the mother-bird, charging my
friend not to stir from his tracks. When I returned,
he had moved two paces, he said (he had really moved
four), and we spent a half hour stooping over the
daisies and the buttercups, looking for the lost clew.
We grew desperate, and fairly felt the ground all over
with our hands, but without avail. I marked the
spot with a bush, and came the next day, and with
the bush as a centre, moved about it in slowly
increasing circles, covering, I thought, nearly every
inch of ground with my feet, and laying hold of it with
all the visual power that I could command, till my
patience was exhausted, and I gave up, baffled. I be-
gan to doubt the ability of the parent birds themselves
to find it, and so secreted myself and watched. After
much delay, the male bird appeared with food in his
beak, and satisfying himself that the coast was clear,
dropped into the grass which I had trodden down in
my search. Fastening my eye upon a particular mea-
dGW-lily, I walked straight to the spot, bent down, and
gazed long and intently into the grass. Finally my
eye separated the nest and its young from its sur-
roundings. My foot had barely missed them in my
search, but by how much they had escaped my eye 1
could not tell. Probably not by distance at all, but
simply by unrecognition. They were virtually in-
visible. The dark gray and yellowish brown dry
grass and stubble of the meadow-bottom were exactly
copied in the color of the half-fledged young. More

THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS. 39

than that, they hugged the nest so closely and formed
such a compact mass, that though there were five of
them, they preserved the unit of expression, — no
single head or form was defined ; they were one, and
that one was without shape or color, and not separa-
ble, except by closest scrutiny, from the one of the
meadow-bottom. That nest prospered, as bobolinks'
nests doubtless generally do ; for, notwithstanding
the enormous slaughter of the birds during their fall
migrations by Southern sportsmen, the bobolink ap-
pears to hold its own, and its music does not dimin-
ish in our Northern meadows.

Birds with whom the struggle for life is the sharpest
seem to be more prolific than those whose nest and
young are exposed to fewer dangers. The robin, the
sparrow, the pewee, etc., will rear, or make the at-
tempt to rear, two and sometimes three broods in a
season ; but the bobolink, the oriole, the kingbird, the
goldfinch, the cedar-bird, the birds of prey, and the
woodpeckers, that build in safe retreats, in the trunks
of trees, have usually but a single brood. If the bob-
olink reared two broods, our meadows would swarm
with them.

I noted three nests of the cedar-bird in August in
a single orchard, all productive, but all with one or
more unfruitful eggs in them. The cedar-bird is the
most silent of our birds, having but a single fine note,
so far as I have observed, but its manners are very
expressive at times. No bird known to me is ca-
pable of expressing so much silent alarm while on
the nest as this bird. As you ascend the tree and
draw near it, it depresses its plumage and crest,
stretches up its neck, and becomes the very picture
of fear. Other birds, under like circumstances, hardly

40 BIRDS.

change their expression at all till they launch into the
air, when by their voice they express anger rather
than alarm.

I have referred to the red squirrel as a destroyer
of the eggs and young of birds. I think the mischief
it does in this respect can hardly be overestimatedo
Nearly all birds look upon it as their enemy, and at
tack and annoy it when it appears near their breed-
ing haunts. Thus, I have seen the pewee, the cuckoo,
the robin, and the wood-thrush pursuing it with angry
voice and gestures. A friend of mine saw a pair of
robins attack one in the top of a tall tree so vigor^
ously that they caused it to lose its hold, when it fell
to the ground, and was so stunned by the blow as to
allow him to pick it up. If you wish the birds to
breed and thrive in your orchard and groves, kill
every red squirrel that infests the place ; kill every
weasel also. The weasel is a subtle and arch enemy
of the birds. It climbs trees and explores them with
great ease and nimbleness. I have seen it do so on
several occasions. One day my attention was ar-
rested by the angry notes of a pair of brown-thrash-
ers that were flitting from bush to bush along an old
stone row in a remote field. Presently I saw what it
was that excited them — three large red weasels, or
ermines coming along the stone wall, and leisurely anq
half playfully exploring every tree that stood near it.
They had probably robbed the thrashers. They would
go up the trees with great ease, and glide serpent-like
out upon the main branches. When they descended
the tree they were unable to come straight down, like
a squirrel, but went around it spirally. How boldly
they thrust their heads out of the wall, and eyed me
and sniffed me, as I drew near, — their round, thin

THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS. 41

ears, their prominent, glistening, bead-like eyes, and
the curving, snake-like motions of the head and neck
being very noticeable. They looked like blood-suck erf
and egg-suckers. They suggested something extremely
remorseless and cruel. One could understand the
alarm of the rats when they discover one of these
fearless, subtle, and circumventing creatures thread-
ing their holes. To flee must be like trying to escape
death itself. I was one day standing in the woods
upon a flat stone, in what at certain seasons was the
bed of a stream, when one of these weasels came un-
dulating along and ran under the stone upon which I
was standing. As I remained motionless, he thrust
out his wedge-shaped head, and turned it back above
the stone as if half in mind to seize my foot ; then he
drew back, and presently went his way. These wea-
sels often hunt in packs like the British stoat. When
I was a boy, my father one day armed me with an old
musket and sent me to shoot chipmunks around the
corn. While watching the squirrels, a troop of wea-
sels tried to cross a bar-way where I sat, and were so
bent on doing it that I fired at them, boy-like, simply
to thwart their purpose. One of the weasels was dis-
abled by my shot, but the troop was not discouraged,
and, after making several feints to cross, one of them
seized the wounded one and bore it over, and the
pack disappeared in the wall on the other side.

Let me conclude this chapter with two or three
more notes about this alert enemy of the birds and
the lesser animals, the weasel.

A farmer one day heard a queer growling sound in
the grass ; on approaching the spot he saw two weasels
contending over a mouse ; each had hold of the mouse
pulling in opposite directions, and were so absorbed in

42 BIRDS.

the struggle that the farmer cautiously put his hands
down and grabbed them both by the back of the neck
He put them in a cage, and offered them bread and
.other food. This they refused to eat, but in a few
days one of them had eaten the other up, picking his
ilxmes clean and leaving nothing but the skeleton.

The same farmer was one day in his cellar when
(two rats came out of a hole near him in great haste,
and ran up the cellar wall and along its top till they
came to a floor timber that stopped their progress,
when they turned at bay, and looked excitedly back
along the course they had come. In a moment a wea-
sel, evidently in hot pursuit of them, came out of the
hole, and seeing the farmer, checked his course and
darted back. The rats had doubtlees turned to give
him fight, and would probably have been a match for
him.

The weasel seems to track its game by scent. A
hunter of my acquaintance was one day sitting in the
woods, when he saw a red squirrel run with great
speed up a tree near him, and out upon a long branch,
from which he leaped to some rocks, and disappeared
beneath them. In a moment a weasel came in full
course upon his trail, ran up the tree, then out along
the branch, from the end of which he leaped to the
2ocks as the squirrel did, and plunged beneath them.

Doubtless the squirrel fell a prey to him. The
•squirrel's best game would have been to have kept to
the higher tree-tops, where he could easily have dis-
tanced the weasel. But beneath the rocks he stood a
very poor chance. I have often wondered what keeps
such an animal as the weasel in check, for weasels are
quite rare. They never need go hungry, for rats and
squirrels and mice and birds are everywhere. They

THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS. 43

probably do not fall a prey to any other animal, and
very rarely to man. But the circumstances or agen-
eies that check the increase of any species of animaJ
or bird are, as Darwin says, very obscure and but
little known.

BEES.

AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE.

There is no creature with which man has sui-
rounded himself that seems so much like a product of
civilization, so much like the result of development
on special lines and in special fields, as the honey-bee.
Indeed, a colony of bees, with their neatness and love
of order, their division of labor, their public spirited*
ness, their thrift, their complex economies and their
inordinate love of gain, seems as far removed from a
condition of rude nature as does a walled city or a
cathedral town. Our native bee, on the other hand,
" the burly, dozing humble-bee," affects one more like
the rude, untutored savage. He has learned nothing
from experience. He lives from hand to mouth. He
luxuriates in time of plenty, and he starves in times
of scarcity. He lives in a rude nest or in a hole in
the ground, and in small communities ; he builds a
few deep cells or sacks in which he stores a little honey
and bee-bread for his young, but as a worker in wax
jhe is of the most primitive and awkward. The In-
dian regarded the honey-bee as an ill-omen. She was
the white man's fly. In fact she was the epitome of
the white man himself. She has the white mans
craftiness, his industry, his architectural skill, his
neatness and love of system, his foresight ; and above

&6 BEES.

all his eager, miserly habits. The honey-bee's great
ambition is to be rich, to lay up great stores, to
possess the sweet of every flower that blooms. She is
more than provident. Enough will not satisfy her.
she must have all she can get by hook or by crook.
She comes from the oldest country, Asia, and thrives
best in the most fertile and long-settled lands.

Yet the fact remains that the honey-bee is essen-
tially a wild creature, and never has been and can-
not be thoroughly domesticated. Its proper home is
the woods, and thither every new swarm counts on
going ; and thither many do go in spite of the care
and watchfulness of the bee-keeper. If the woods
in any given locality are deficient in trees with suit-
able cavities, the bees resort to all sorts of make-
shifts ; they go into chimneys, into barns and out-
houses, under stones, into rocks, and so forth. Sev-
eral chimneys in my locality with disused flues are
taken possession of by colonies of bees nearly every
season. One day, while bee-hunting, I developed a
line that wrent toward a farm-house where I had rea-
son to believe no bees were kept. I followed it up
and questioned the farmer about his bees. He said
he kept no bees, but that a swarm had taken pos-
session of his chimney, and another had gone under
the clapboards in the gable end of his house. He
fiad taken a large lot of honey out of both places
the year before. Another farmer told me that one
day his family had seen a number of bees examining
a knot-hole in the side of his house ; the next day as
they were sitting down to dinner their attention was
attracted by a loud humming noise, when they dis-
covered a swarm of bees settling upon the side of the
house and pouring into the knot-hole. In subsequent
years other swarms came to the same place.

AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. 47

Apparently, every swarm of bees before it leaves
the parent hive sends out exploring parties to look-
up the future home. The woods and groves are
searched through and through, and no doubt the pri-
vacy of many a squirrel and many a wood mouse ia
intruded upon. What cozy nooks and retreats they
do spy out, so much more attractive than the painted
hive in the garden, so much cooler in summer and
so much warmer in winter !

The bee is in the main an honest citizen ; she pre-
fers legitimate to illegitimate business ; she is never
an outlaw until her proper sources of supply fail ;
she will not touch honey as long as honey-yielding
flowers can be found ; she always prefers to go to
the fountain-head, and dislikes to take her sweets at
second hand. But in the fall, after the flowers have
failed, she can be tempted. The bee-hunter takes
advantage of this fact; he betrays her with a little
honey. He wants to steal her stores, and he first
encourages her to steal his, then follows the thief homo
with her booty. This is the whole trick of the bee-
hunter. The bees never suspect his game, else by tak-
ing a circuitous route they could easily baffle him.
But the honey-bee has absolutely no wit or cunning out-
side of her special gifts as a gatherer and storer o$
honey. She is a simple-minded creature, and can be
imposed upon by any novice. Yet it is not every nov«
ice that can find a bee-tree. The sportsman may track
his game to its retreat by the aid of his dog, but in
hunting the honey-bee one must be his own dog, and
track his game through an element m which it leaves
no trail. It is a task for a sharp, quick eye, and may
test the resources of the best wood-craft. One autumn
when I devoted much time to this pursuit, as the best

48 BEES.

means of getting at nature and the open-air exhilara>
tion, my eye became so trained that bees were nearly
as easy to it as birds. I saw and heard bees wherever
I v/ent. One day, standing on a street corner in a
oreat city, I saw above the trucks and the traffic a line
of bees carrying off sweets from some grocery or com
jlectionery shop.

One looks upon the woods with a new interest wheB
lie suspects they hold a colony of bees. What a
pleasing secret it is ; a tree with a heart of comb-
honey, a decayed oak or maple with a bit of Sicily or
Mount Hymettus stowed away in its trunk or branches ;
secret chambers where lies hidden the wealth of ten
thousand little freebooters, great nuggets and wedges
of precious ore gathered with risk and labor from
. every field and wood about.

But if you would know the delights of bee-hunt-
ing, and how many sweets such a trip yields beside*
honey, come with me some bright, warm, late Sep~
tember or early October day. It is the golden season
of the year, and any errand or pursuit that takes us
abroad upon the hills or by the painted woods and
along the amber colored streams at such a time is
enough. So, with haversacks filled with grapes and
peaches and apples and a bottle of milk, — for we
shall not be home to dinner, — and armed with a
compass, a hatchet, a pail, and a box with a piece of
comb-honey neatly fitted into it — any box the size of
your hand with a lid will do nearly as well as the elab-
orate and ingenious contrivance of the regular bee-
hunter — we sally forth. Our course at first lies along
the highway, under great chestnut-trees whose nuts
are just dropping, then through an orchard and
across a little creek, thence gently rising through a

AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. 49

long series of cultivated fields toward some high,
uplying land, behind which rises a rugged woo. |
ridge or mountain, the most sightly point in all this
tion. Behind this ridge for several miles the country
is wild, wooded, and rocky, and is no doubt the
home of many wild swarms of bees. What a -lee-
ful uproar the robins, cedar-birds, high-holes, and cow
black-birds make amid the black cherry-trees as we
pass along. The raccoons, too, have been here after
black cherries, and we see their marks at various
points. Several crows are walking about a newly
sowed wheat field we pass through, and we pause to
note their graceful movements and glossy coats. I
have seen no bird walk the ground with just the
same air the crow does. It is not exactly pride ;
there is no strut or swagger in it, though perhaps
just a little condescension ; it is the contented, com-
plaisant, and self-possessed gait of a lord over his
domains. All these acres are mine, he says, aud all
these crops ; men plow and sow for me, and I stay
here or go there, and find life sweet and good
wherever I am. The hawk looks awkward and out
of place on the ground ; the game birds hurry and
skulk, but the crow is at home and treads the
earth as if there were none to molest or make him
afraid.

The crows we have always with us, but it is not
every day or every season that one sees an eagle.
Hence I must preserve the memory of one I saw
the last day I went bee-hunting. As I was laboring
up the side of a mountain at the head of a valley,
the noble bird sprang from the top of a dry tree
above me and came sailing directly over my head. I
saw him bend his eye down upon me, and I could

50 BEES.

hear the low hum of his plumage, as if the web of
every quill in his great wings vibrated in his strong,
level flight. I watched him as long as my eye
could hold him. When he was fairly clear of the
mountain he began that sweeping spiral movement ir
which he climbs the sky. Up and up he went with*
out once breaking his majestic poise till he appeared)
to sight some far-off alien geography, when he
bent his course thitherward and gradually vanished
in the blue depths. The eagle is a bird of large
ideas, he embraces long distances ; the continent is
his home. I never look upon one without emotion;
I follow him with my eye as long as I can. I
think of Canada, of the Great Lakes, of the Rocky
Mountains, of the wild and sounding sea-coast.
The waters are his, and the woods and the inacces-
sible cliffs. He pierces behind the veil of the storm,
and his joy is height and depth and vast spaces.

We go out of our way to touch at a spring run in
the edge of the woods, and are lucky to find a single
scarlet lobelia lingering there. It seems almost to
light up the gloom with its intense bit of color. Be-
side a ditch in a field beyond we find the great blue
lobelia {Lobelia syphilitica), and near it amid the
weeds and wild grasses and purple asters the most
beautiful of our fall flowers, the ^ringed gentian,.
What a rare and delicate, almost aristocratic look the
gentian has amid its coarse, unkempt surroundingse
It does not lure the bee, but it lures and holds every
passing human eye. If we strike through the corner
of yonder woods, where the ground is moistened by
hidden springs and where there is a little opening
amid the trees, we shall find the closed gentian, a
rare flower in this locality. I had walked this way

AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. 51

many times before I chanced upon its retreat ; and
then I was following a line of bees. I lost the bees
but I got the gentians. How curiously this flower
looks, with its deep blue petals folded together so
tightly — a bud and yet a blossom. It is the nun
among our wild flowers, a form closely veiled and
cloaked. The buccaneer bumble-bee sometimes tries
to rifle it of its sweets. I have seen the blossom witb
the bee entombed in it. He had forced his way into
ihe virgin corolla as if determined to know its secret,
but he had never returned with the knowledge he had
gained.

After a refreshing walk of a couple of miles we
reach a point where we will make our first trial — a
high stone wall that runs parallel with the wooded
ridge referred to, and separated from it by a broad
field. There are bees at work there on that golden-
rod, and it requires but little manoeuvring to sweep
one into our box. Almost any other creature rudely
and suddenly arrested in its career and clapped into
a cage in this way would show great confusion and
alarm. The bee is alarmed for a moment, but the bee
has a passion stronger than its love of life or fear of
death, namely, desire for honey, not simply to eat,
but to carry home as booty. " Such rage of honey in.
their bosom beats," says Virgil. It is quick to catch
the scent of honey in the box, and as quick to fall
to filling itself. We now set the box down upon the
wall and gently remove the cover. The bee is head
and shoulders in one of the half-filled cells, and is
oblivious to everything else about it. Come rack,
come ruin, it will die at work. We step back a few-
paces, and sit down upon the ground so as to bring
the box against the blue sky as a background. In

52 BEES.

two or three minutes the bee is seen rising slowly
and heavily from the box. It seems loath to leave so
much honey behind and it mark« the place well. It
mounts aloft in a rapidly increasing spiral, surveying
ihe near and minute objects first, then the larger anal
flnore distant, till having circled about the spot five
or six times and taken all its bearings it darts away
for home. It is a good eye that holds fast to the bee
till it is fairly off. Sometimes one's head will swim
following it, and often one's eyes are put out by the
sun. This bee gradually drifts down the hill, then
strikes away toward a farm-house half a mile away,
where I know bees are kept. Then we try another
and another, and the third bee, much to our satisfac-
tion, goes straight toward the woods. We could see
the brown speck against the darker background for
many yards. The regular bee-hunter professes to be
able to tell a wild bee from a tame one by the color,
the former, he says, being lighter. But there is no
difference ; they are both alike in color and in man-
ner, ^oung bees are lighter than old, and that is all
there is of it. If a bee lived many years in the
woods it would doubtless come to have some distin-
guishing marks, but the life of a bee is only a few
months at .the farthest, and no change is wrought in
tthis brief time.

Our bees are all soon back, and more with them,
for we have touched the box here and there with the
3ork of a bottle of anise oil, and this fragrant and
pungent oil will attract bees half a mile or more.
When no flowers can be found, this is the quickest
8?ay to obtain a bee.

It is a singular fact that when the bee first finds
the hunter's box its first feeling is one of anger ; it

AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE, 53

is as mad as a hornet ; its tone changes, it sounds its
shrill war trumpet and darts to and fro, and rivef
vent to its rage and indignation in no uncertain man
ner. It seems to scent foul play at once. It saws,
"Here is robbery; here is the spoil of some hive,
may be my own," and its blood is up. But its ruling
passion soon comes to the surface, its avarice gets
the better of its indignation, and it seems to say,
" Well, I had better take possession of this and carry
it home." So after many feints and approaches and
dartings off with a loud angry hum as if it would
none of it, the bee settles down and fills itself.

It does not entirely cool off and get soberly to
work till it has made two or three trips home with
its booty. When other bees come, even if all from
the same swarm, they quarrel and dispute over the
box, and clip and dart at each other like bantam
cocks. Apparently the ill feeling which the sight of
the honey awakens is not one of jealousy or rivalry,
but wrath.

A bee will usually make three *>r four trips from
the hunter's box before it brings back a companion.
I suspect the bee does not tell its fellows what it has
found, but that they smell out the secret ; it doubt-
less bears some evidence with it upon its feet or pro*
boscis that it has been upon honey-comb and net upon
flowers, and its companions take the hint and follow,
arriving always many seconds behind. Then the
quantity and quality of the booty woidd also betraj
it. No doubt, also, there are plenty of gossips about
a hive that note and tell everything. " Oh, did you
see that ? Peggy Mel came in a few moments ago
m great haste, and one of the up-stairs packers says
she was loaded till she groaned with apple- blossom

54 BEES.

honey which she deposited, and then rushed off again
like mad. Apple-blossom honey in October ! Fee,
fi, fo, fum ! I smell something ! Let 's after."

In about half an hour we have three well-defined
,'ines of bees established — two to farm-houses and
one to the woods, and our box is being rapidly de=
pleted of its honey. About every fourth bee goes to
the woods, and now that they have learned the way
thoroughly they do not make the long preliminary
whirl above the box, but start directly from it. The
woods are rough and dense and the hill steep, and we
do not like to follow the line of bees until we have
tried at least to settle the problem as to the distance
they go into the woods — whether the tree is on this
side of the ridge or in the depth of the forest on
the other side. So we shut up the box when it is
full of bees and carry it about three hundred yard?
along the wall from which we are operating. When
liberated, the bees, as they always will in such cases,
go off in the same directions they have been going;
they do not seem to know that they have been moved.
But other bees have followed our scent, and it is not
many minutes before a second line to the woods is
established. This is called cross-lining the bees. The
new line makes a sharp angle with the other line*
and we know at once that the tree is only a few
rods into the woods. The two lines we have estab-
jlished form two sides of a triangle of which the wall
Is the base ; at the apex of the triangle, or where the
two lines meet in the woods, we are sure to find the
tree. We quickly follow up these lines, and where
they cross each other on the side of the hill we scan
©very tree closely. I pause at the foot of an oak
and examine a hole near the root ; now the bees are

AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. 55

m this tree and their entrance is on the upper side
near the ground, not two feet from the hole I peer
into, and yet so quiet and secret is their going and
coming that I fail to discover them and pass on up
the hill. Failing in this direction, I return to the
oak again, and then perceive the bees going out in a
small crack in the tree. The bees do not know they
are found out and that the game is in our hands, and
are as oblivious of our presence as if we were ants
or crickets. The indications are that the swarm is a
small one, and the store of honey trifling. In " tak-
ing up " a bee-tree it is usual first to kill or stupefy
the bees with the fumes of burning sulphur or with
tobacco smoke. But this course is impracticable on
the present occasion, so we boldly and ruthlessly as-
sault the tree with an ax we have procured. At the
first blow the bees set up a loud buzzing, but we
have no mercy, and the side of the cavity is soon cut
away and the interior with its white-yellow mass of
comb-honey is exposed, and not a bee strikes a blow
in defense of its all. This may seem singular, but
it has nearly always been my experience. When a
swarm of bees are thus rudely assaulted with an ax,
they evidently think the end of the world has come,
and, like true misers as they are, each one seizes as
much of the treasure as it can hold ; in other words,'
they all fall to and gorge themselves with honey, and
calmly await the issue. When in this condition they
make no defense and will not sting unless taken hold
of. In fact they are as harmless as flies. Bees are
always to be managed with boldness and deeision.
Any half-way measures, any timid poking about, any
feeble attempts to reach their honey, are sure to be
quickly resented. The popular notion that bees have

56 BEES.

a special antipathy toward certain persons and a lik«
ing for certain others has only this fact at the bottom
of it ; they will sting a person who is afraid of them
and goes skulking and dodging about, and they will
not sting a person who faces them boldly and has nc
dread of them. They are like dogs. The way tc
disarm a vicious dog is to show him you do not fear
him ; it is his turn to be afraid then. I never had
any dread of bees and am seldom stung by them. I
have climbed up into a large chestnut that contained
a swarm in one of its cavities and chopped them out
with an ax, being obliged at times to pause and brush
uhe bewildered bees from my hands and face, and not
been stung once. I have chopped a swarm out of
an apple-tree in June and taken out the cards of
honey and arranged them in a hive, and then dipped
out the bees with a dipper, and taken the whole
home with me in pretty good condition, with scarcely
any opposition on the part of the bees. In reach-
ing your hand into the cavitv to detach and remove
the comb you are pretty sure to get stung, for when
you touch the " business end " of a bee, it will sting
even though its head be off. But the bee carries the
antidote to its own poison. The best remedy for bee
sting is honey, and when your hands are besmeared
with honey, as they are sure to be on such occasions,
the wound is scarcely more painful than the prick of!
a pin. Assault your bee-tree, then, boldly with your
ax, and you will find that when the honey is exposed
every bee has surrendered and the whole swarm is
cowering in helpless bewilderment and terror. Our
tree yields only a few pounds of honey, not enough
to have lasted the swarm till January, but no matter?
we have the less burden to carry.

AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. 57

In the afternoon we go nearly half a mile farther
along the ridge to a corn-field that lies immediately
in front of the highest point of the mountain. The
view is superb ; the ripe autumn landscape rolls away
to the east, cut through by the great placid river ; in
the extreme north the wall of the Catskills stands out
clear and strong, while in the south the mountains
of the Highlands bound the view. The day is warn
and the bees are very busy there in that neglected
corner of the field, rich in asters, flea-bane, ant",
golden-rod. The corn has been cut, and upon a stout,
but a few rods from the woods, which here drop
quickly down from the precipitous heights, we set up
our bee-box, touched again with the pungent oil. In
a few moments a bee has found it ; she comes up to
leeward, following the scent. On leaving the box she
goes straight toward the woods. More bees quickly
come, and it is not long before the line is well estab-
lished. Now we have recourse to the same tactics
we employed before, and move along the ridge to
another field to get our cross line. But the bees still
go in almost the same direction they did from the
corn stout. The tree is then either on the top of the
mountain, or on the other or west side of it. AA e
hesitate to make the plunge into the woods and seek
to scale those precipices, for the eye can plainly see
what is before us. As the afternoon sun gets lower,
the bees are seen with wonderful distinctness. Thcj
fly toward and under the sun and are in a strong
light, while the near woods which form the back-
ground are in deep shadow. They look like lai
luminous motes. Their swiftly vibrating, transpaivi t
wings surround their bodies with a shining minima
that makes them visible for a long distance. They

58 BEES.

seem magnified many times. We see them bridge
the little gulf between us and the woods, then rise
up over the tree-tops with their burdens, swerving
neither to the right hand nor to the left. It is al-
most pathetic to see them labor so, climbing the
mountain and unwittingly guiding us to their treas-
ures. When the sun gets down so that his direction
corresponds exactly with the course of the bees, we
make the plunge. It proves even harder climbing
than we had anticipated; the mountain is faced by
a broken and irregular wall of rock, up which we pull'
ourselves slowly and cautiously by main strength.
In half an hour, the perspiration streaming from
every pore, we reach the summit. The trees here
are all small, a second growth, and we are soon con-
vinced the bees are not here. Then down we go on
the other side, clambering down the rocky stair-ways
till we reach quite a broad plateau that forms some-
thing- like the shoulder of the mountain. On the
brink of this there are many large hemlocks, and we
scan them closely and rap upon them with our ax.
But not a bee is seen or heard ; we do not seem as
near the tree as we were in the fields below ; yet if
some divinity would only whisper the fact to us we
are within a few rods of the coveted prize, which is
not in one of the large hemlocks or oaks that absorb
our attention, but in an old stub or stump not six feet
high, and which we have seen and passed several
times without giving it a thought. We go farther
down the mountain and beat about to the right and
left and get entangled in brush and arrested by pre-
cipices, and finally as the day is nearly spent, give
up the search and leave the woods quite baffled, but
resolved to return on the morrow. The next day we

AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE, >J

come back and commence operations in an openin"
in the woods well down on the side of the mountain,
where we gave up the search. Our box is soon
swarming with the eager bees, and they go back to-
ward the summit we have passed. We follow ba
and establish a new line where the ground will pel
mit ; then another and still another, and yet the rids
die is not solved. One time we are south of them,,
then north, then the bees get up through the trees
and we cannot tell where they go. But after much
searching, and after the mystery seems rather to
deepen than to clear up, we chance to pause beside
the old stump. A bee comes out of a small open-
ing, like that made by ants in decayed wood, rubs its
eyes and examines its antennae, as bees always do
before leaving their hive, then takes flight. At the
same instant several bees come by us loaded with our
honey and settle home with that peculiar low com*'
placent buzz of the well-filled insect. Here then is
our idyl, our bit of Virgil and Theocritus, in a de-
cayed stump of a hemlock tree. We could tear it
open with our hands, and a bear would find it an easy
prize, and a rich one too, for we take from it fifty
pounds of excellent honey. The bees have been
here many years, and have of course sent out swarm
after swarm into the wilds. They have protectee
themselves against the weather and strengthened
their shaky habitation by a copious use of wax.

When a bee-tree is thus " taken up " in the middle
of the day, of course a good many bees are away from
home and have not heard the news. When they re-
turn and find the ground flowing with honey, and
piles of bleeding combs lying about, they apparently
do not recognize the place, and their first instinct is

60 BEES.

to fall to and fill themselves; this done, their next
thought is to carry it home, so they rise up slowly
through the branches of the trees till they have at-
tained an altitude that enables them to survey the
scene, when they seem to say, " Why, this is home,"
and down they come again ; beholding the wreck and
ruins once more they still think there is some mis-
take, and get up a second or a third time and then
drop back pitifully as before. It is the most pathetic
sight of all, the surviving and bewildered bees strug-
gling to save a few drops of their wasted treasures.

Presently, if there is another swarm in the woods,
robber-bees appear. You may know them by their
saucy, chiding, devil-may-care hum. It is an ill wind
that blows nobody good, and they make the most of
the misfortune of their neighbors ; and thereby pave
the way for their own ruin. The hunter marks their
course and the next day looks them up. On this oc-
casion the day was hot and the honey very fragrant,
and a line of bees was soon established S. S. W.
Though there was much refuse honey in the old stub,
and though little golden rills trickled down the hill
from it, and the near branches and saplings were be-
smeared with it where we wiped our murderous hands,
yet not a drop was wasted. It was a feast to which
'not only honey-bees came, but bumble-bees, wasps,
'yhornets, flies, ants. The bumble-bees, which at this
season are hungry vagrants with no fixed place of
abode, would gorge themselves, then creep beneath
the bits of empty comb or fragments of bark and
pass the night, and renew the feast next day. The
ibumble-bee is an insect of which the bee-hunter sees
much. There are all sorts and sizes of them. They
are dull and clumsy compared with the honey-bee^

AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. 61

Attracted in the fields by the bee hunter's box, they
will come up the wind on the scent and blunder into
it in the most stupid, lubberly fashion.

The honey-bee that licked up our leavings on tin
old stub belonged to a swarm, as it proved, about half
a mile farther down the ridge, and a few days after-
ward fate overtook them, and their stores in turn be
came the prey of another swarm in the vicinity, whici:
also tempted Providence and were overwhelmed. The
lirst mentioned swarm I had lined from several points,
and was following up the clew over rocks and through
gulleys, when I came to where a large hemlock had
been felled a few years before and a swarm taken
from a cavity near the top of it ; fragments of the old
comb were yet to be seen. A few yards away stood
another short, squatty hemlock, and I said my bees
ought to be there. As I paused near it I noticed
where the tree had been wounded with an ax a couple
of feet from the ground many years before. The
wound had partially grown over, but there was an
opening there that I did not see at the first glance. I
was about to pass on when a bee passed me making
that peculiar shrill, discordant hum that a bee makes
when besmeared with honey. I saw it alight in the
partially closed wound and crawl home ; then came
others and others, little bands and squads of them
heavily freighted with honey from the box. The tree
was about twenty inches through and hollow at tin.
butt, or from the ax mark down. This space t lie-
bees had completely filled with honey. With an ax
we cut away the outer ring of live wood and exposed
ihe treasure. Despite the utmost care, we wounded
the comb so that little rills of the golden liquid issued
from the root of the tree and trickled down the bill

S2 BEES,

The other bee-tree in the vicinity, to which I have
referred, we found one warm November day in less
than half an hour after entering the woods. It also
was a hemlock, that stood in a niche in a wall of
hoary, moss-covered rocks thirty feet high. The tree
.hardly reached to the top of the precipice. The bees
entered a small hole at the root, which was seven o£
eight feet from the ground. The position was a strik-
ing one, Never did apiary have a finer outlook or
Euore rugged surroundings. A black, wood-embraced
lake lay at our feet ; the long panorama of the Cats*
kills filled the far distance, and the more broken out-
lines of the Shawangunk range filled the rear. On
every hand were precipices and a wild confusion of
rocks and trees.

The cavity occupied by the bees was about tln-ed
feet and a half lon^ and ei^ht or ten inches in diam-
eter. With an ax we cut away one side of the Uee
and laid bare its curiously wrought heart of honey. It
was a most pleasing sight. What winding and devi-
ous ways the bees had through their palace ! What
preat masses and blocks of snow-white comb there
were ! Where it was sealed up, presenting that
( slightly dented, uneven surface, it looked like some
precious ore. When we carried a large pail full of ii
lout of the woods, it seemed still more like ore.

Your native bee-hunter predicates the distance of
the tree by the time the bee occupies in making its
first trip. But this is no certain guide. You are
always safe in calculating that the tree is inside of a
mile, and you need not as a rule look for your bee's
return under ten minutes. One day I picked up a
bee in an opening in the woods and gave it honey,
and it made three trips to my box with an interval

AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. (53

of about twelve minutes between tLem ; it returned
alone each time ; the tree, which I afterward found,
was about half a mile distant.

In lining bees through the woods, the tactics of fche
hunter are to pause every twenty or thirty rods, lop
away the branches or cut down the trees, and set the
bees to work again. If they still go forward, he goes
forward also and repeats his observations till the
tree is found or till the bees turn and come back
upon the trail. Then he knows he has passed the
tree, and he retraces his steps to a convenient dis-
tance and tries again, and thus quickly reduces the
space to be looked over till the swarm is traced
home. On one occasion, in a wild rocky wood, where
the surface alternated between deep gulfs and chasms*
filled with thick, heavy growths of timber and sharp,
precipitous, rocky ridges like a tempest tossed sea, I
carried my bees directly under their tree, and set
them to work from a high, exposed ledge of rocks not
thirty feet distant. One would have expected them
under such circumstances to have gone straight home,
as there were but few branches intervening, but they
did not ; they labored up through the trees and at-
tained an altitude above the woods as if they had
miles to travel, and thus baffled me for hours. Bee^
Iwill always do this. They are acquainted with the
woods only from the top side, and from the air above »
they recognize home only by land-marks here, and ir
every instance they rise aloft to take their bearii
Think how familiar to them the topography of the
yorest summits must be — an umbrageous sea oi
plain where every mark and point is known.

Another curious fact is that generally you will get
track of a bee-tree sooner when you are half a mile

64 * BEES

from it than when you are only a few yards. Bees,
like us human insects, have little faith in the near at
hand ; tkey expect to make their fortune in a distant
field, they are lured by the remote and the difficult,
and hence overlook the flower and the sweet at their
very door. On several occasions I have unwittingly-
set my box within a few paces of a bee-tree and
waited long for bees without getting them, when, ou
fferaoving to a distant field or opening in the woods
I have got a clew at once.

1 have a theory that when bees leave the hive,
Unless there is some special attraction in some other
direction, they generally go against the wind. They
would thus have the wind with them when they
returned home heavily l?den, and with these little
navigators the difference is an important one. With
a full cargo, a stiff head-wind is a great hindrance,
but fresh and empty-handed they can face it with
more ease. Virgil says bees bear gravel stones a&
ballast, but their only ballast is their honey bag.
Hence, when I go bee-hunting, I prefer to get to
windward of the woods in which the swarm is sup-
posed to have taken refuge.

Bees, like the milkman, like to be near a springo
They do water their honey, especially in a dry time.
The liquid is then of course thicker and sweeter, and
will bear diluting. Hence, old bee-hunters look for
bee trees along creeks and near spring runs in the
woods, I once found a tree a long distance from
any water, and the honey had a peculiar bitter flavor
imparted to it, I was convinced, by rain water sucked
from the decayed and spongy hemlock tree, in which
the swarm was found. In cutting into the tree, the
north side of it was found to be saturated with wate"

AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. 65

like a spring, which ran out in big drops, and had a
bitter flavor. The bees had thus found a spring or
a cistern in their own house.

Bees are exposed to many hardships and many
dangers. Winds and storms prove as disastrous to
them as to other navigators. Black spiders lie in
wait for them as do brigands for travelers. One day
as I was looking for a bee amid some golden-rod, I
spied one partly concealed under a leaf. Its baskets
were full of pollen, and it did not move. On lifting
up the leaf I discovered that a hairy spider was am-
bushed there and had the bee by the throat. The
vampire was evidently afraid of the bee's sting, and
was holding it by the throat till quite sure of its death,
Virgil speaks of the painted lizard, perhaps a species
of salamander, as an enemy of the honey-bee. We
have no lizard that destroys the bee ; but our tree- toad,
ambushed among the apple and cherry blossoms,
snaps them up wholesale. Quick as lightning that
subtle but clammy tongue darts forth, and the unsus-
pecting bee is gone. Yirgil also accuses the titmouse
and the woodpecker of preying upon the bees, and
our kingbird has been charged with the like crime,
but the latter devours only the drones. The workers
are either too small and quick for it, or else it dreads
their sting.

Virgil, by the way, had little more than a child's
knowledge of the honey-bee. There is little fact
and much fable in his fourth Georgic. If he had
ever kept bees himself, or even visited an apiary, it ia
hard to see how he could have believed that the bee
in its flight abroad carried a gravel stone for ballast:

a

And as when empty barks on billosvs float,
With sandy ballast sailors trim the boat ;

66 BEES.

So bees bear gravel stones, -whose poising- weight
Steers through the whistling winds their steady flight; "

or that when two colonies made war upon each other
they issued forth from their hives led by their kings
and fought in the air, strewing the ground with the
dead and dying : —

" Hard hailstones lie not thicker on the plain,
Nor shaken oaks such show'rs of acorns rain."

It is quite certain he had never been bee-hunting.
If he had, we should have had a fifth Georgic. Yet
he seems to have known that bees sometimes escaped
to the woods : —

" Nor bees are lodged in hives alone, but found
In chambers of their own beneath the ground :
Their vaulted roofs are hung in pumices,
And in the rotten trunks of hollow trees."

Wild honey is as near like tame as wild bees are
like their brothers in the hive. The only difference is
that wild honey is flavored with your adventure, which
makes it a little more delectable than the domestic
article.

THE PASTORAL BEES.

The honey-bee goes forth from the hive in spring
like the dove from Noah's ark, and it is not till aftel
many days that she brings back the olive leaf, which
in this case is a pellet of golden pollen upon each hip,
usually obtained from the alder or the swamp willow.
In a country where maple sugar is made, the bees get
their first taste of sweet from the sap as it flows from
the spiles, or as it dries and is condensed upon the

THE PASTORAL BEES. G7

sides of the buckets. They will sometimes, in fcheii
eagerness, come about the boiling place and be o\
whelmed by the steam and the smoke. But fo
appear to be more eager for bread in the spring i
for honey ; their supply of this article, perhaps, docs
not keep as well as their stores of the latter ; hence
fresh bread, in the shape of new pollen, is diligently
sought for. My bees get their first supplies from the
catkins of the willows. How quickly they find them
out. If but one catkin opens anywhere within ran .
s bee is on hand that very hour to rifle it, and it is a
most pleasing experience to stand near the hive some
mild April day and see them come pouring in with
their little baskets packed with this first fruitage of
the spring. They will have new bread now ; they
have been to mill in good earnest ; see their dusty
coats, and the golden grist they bring home with
them.

When a bee brings pollen into the hive, he ad-
vances to the cell in which it is to be deposited and
kicks it off as one might his overalls or rubber boots,
making one foot help the other ; then he walks off
without ever looking behind him ; another bee, one
of the indoor hands, comes along and rams it down
•with his head and packs it into the cell as the dairy-
maid packs butter into a firkin.

' The first spring wild-flowers, whose shy faces among
the dry leaves and rocks are so welcome, yield no
honey. The anemone, the hepatica, the bloodroot,
the arbutus, the numerous violets, the spring beauty,
the corydalis, etc., woo all lovers of nature, hut do
not woo the honey-loving bee. It requires more sun
and warmth to develop the saccharine element, and
the beauty of these pale striplings of the woods and

08 BEES.

groves is their sole and sufficient excuse for being
The arbutus, lying low and keeping green all winter,
attains to perfume, but not to honey.

The first honey is perhaps obtained from the flow-
ers of the red maple and the golden willow. The
latter sends forth a wild, delicious perfume. The
sugar maple blooms a little later, and from its silked
tassels a rich nectar is gathered. My bees will not
label these different varieties for me as I really wish
they would. Honey from the maple, a tree so clean
and wholesome, and full of such virtues every way,
would be something to put one's tongue to. Or that
from the blossoms of the apple, the peach, the cherry,
the quince, the currant, — one would like a card of
each of these varieties to note their peculiar qualities.
The apple-blossom is very important to the bees. A
single swarm has been known to gain twenty pounds
in weight during its continuance. Bees love the
ripened fruit, too, and in August and September will
suck themselves tipsy upon varieties such as the sops-
of-wine.

The interval between the blooming of the fruit-trees
and that of the clover and the raspberry is bridged
over in many localities by the honey locust, What
»a delightful summer murmur these trees send forth
at this season. I know nothing about the quality
of the honey, but it ought to keep well. But when
the red raspberry blooms, the fountains of plenty
are unsealed indeed ; what a commotion about the
hives then, especially in localities where it is ex-
tensively cultivated, as in places along the Hudson.
The delicate white clover, which begins to bloom
about the same time, is neglected ; even honey it-
self is passed by for this modest, colorless, all but

THE PASTORAL BEES. 69

odorless flower. A field of these berries in June
sends forth a continuous murmur like that of an
enormous hive. The honey is not so white as that
obtained from clover, but it is easier gathered ; it i'
in shallow cups while that of the clover is in deeL
tubes. The bees are up and at it before sunrise,
and it takes a brisk shower to drive them in. But
fche clover blooms later and blooms everywhere, and
is the staple source of supply of the finest quality of
honey. The red clover yields up its stores only to
the longer proboscis of the bumble-bee, else the bee
pasturage of our agricultural districts would be un-
equaled. I do not know from what the famous honev
of Chamouni in the Alps is made, but it can hardly
surpass our best products. The snow-white honey
of Anatolia in Asiatic Turkey, which is regularly
sent to Constantinople for the use of the grand seig-
nior and the ladies of his seraglio, is obtained from
the cotton plant, which makes me think that the
white clover does not flourish there. The white clover
is indigenous with us ; its seeds seem latent in the
ground, and the application of certain stimulants to
the soil, such as wood ashes, causes them to germinate
and spring up.

The rose, with all its beauty and perfume, yield.1-
no honey to the bee, unless the wild species be sough.
by the bumble-bee.

Among the humbler plants, let me not forget th»
dandelion that so early dots the sunny slopes, ana
sipon which the bee languidly grazes, wallowing to
his knees in the golden but not over-succulent pas-
turage. From the blooming rye and wheat the bee
gathers pollen, also from the obscure blossoms of
Indian corn. Among weeds, catnip is the great favor-

fO BEES.

ite. It lasts nearly the whole season and yields
richly. It could no doubt be profitably cultivated
in some localities, and catnip honey would be a
novelty in the market. It would probably partake
of the aromatic properties of the plant from which it
was derived.

Among your stores of honey gathered before mid-
summer, you may chance upon a card, or mayhap
only a square inch or two of comb, in which the liquid
is as transparent as water, of a delicious quality, with
a slight flavor of mint. This is the product of the
linden or basswood, of all the trees in our forest the
one most beloved by the bees. Melissa, the goddess
of honey, has placed her seal upon this tree. The
wild swarms in the woods frequently reap a choice
harvest from it. I have seen a mountain side thickly
studded with it, its straight, tall, smooth, light-gray
shaft carrying its deep-green crown far aloft, like the
tulip-tree or the maple.

In some of the Northwestern States there are large
forests of it, and the amount of honey reported stored
by strong swarms in this section during the time the
tree is in bloom is quite incredible. As a shade and
ornamental tree the linden is fully equal to the maple,
and if it were as extensively planted and cared for, our
supplies of virgin honey would be greatly increased.
The famous honey of Lithuania in Russia is the pro-
duct of the linden.

It is a homely old stanza current among bee folk
that —

" A swarm of bees in May
Is worth a load of hay :
A swarm of bees in June
Is worth a silver spoon ;
But a swarm in July
Is not worth a fly."

THE PASTORAL LEES. 71

A- swarm in May is indeed a treasure ; it is, like an
April baby, sure to thrive, and will very likely itself
send out a swarm a month or two later ; but a swarm
in July is not to be despised ; it will store no clover
or linden honey for the "grand seignior and the ladies
of his seraglio," but plenty of the rank and wholesome
poor man's nectar, the sun-tanned product of the |
beian buckwheat. Buckwheat honey is the black
sheep in this white flock, but there is spirit and
character in it. It lays hold of the taste in no
equivocal manner, especially when at a winter break-
fast it meets its fellow, the russet buckwheat cake.
Bread with honey to cover it from the same stalk
is double good fortune. It is not black, either, but
nut-brown, and belongs to the same class of goods
as Herrick's

"Nut-brown mirth and russet wit."

How the bees love it, and they bring the delicious
odor of the blooming plant to the hive with them,
so that in the moist warm twilight the apiary is
redolent with the perfume of buckwheat.

Yet evidently it is not the perfume of any flower
that attracts the bees ; they pay no attention to the
sweet-scented lilac, or to heliotrope, but work upon
sumach, silkweed, and the hateful snapdragon. Iut
September they are hard pressed, and do well if they
pick up enough sweet to pay the running expen
of their establishment. The purple asters and th'
golden-rod are about all that remain to them.

Bees will go three or four miles in quest of honey,
but it is a great advantage to move the hive n< v
the good pasturage, as has been the custom from the
earliest times in the Old World. Some enterprising
person, taking a hint perhaps from the ancient Egyp-

72 BEES.

tians, who had floating apiaries on the Nile, has tried
the experiment of floating several hundred colonies
north on the Mississippi, starting from New Orleans
and following the opening season up, thus realizing
a sort of perpetual May or June, the chief attraction
being the blossoms of the river willow, which yield
lioney of rare excellence. Some of the bees were
no doubt left behind, but the amount of virgin
honey secured must have been very great. In Sep-
tember they should have begun the return trip9
following the retreating summer South. '

It is the making of the wax that costs with the
bee. As with the poet, the form, the receptacle,
gives him more trouble than the sweet that fills it,
though, to be sure, there is always more or less
empty comb in both cases. The honey he can have
for the gathering, but the wax he must make him-
self — must evolve from his own inner consciousness.
When wax is to be made the wax-makers fill them-
selves with honey and retire into their chamber for
private meditation ; it is like some solemn religious
rite ; they take hold of hands, or hook themselves
together in long lines that hang in festoons from
the top of the hive, and wait for the miracle to
transpire. After about twenty-four hours their
patience is rewarded, the honey is turned into wax,
minute scales of which are secreted from between
the rings of the abdomen of each bee ; this is taken
off and from it the comb is built up. It is cal-
culated that about twenty-five pounds of honey are
used in elaborating one pound of comb, to say noth-
ing of the time that is lost. Hence the importance.
in an economical point of view, of a recent device
which the honey is extracted and the comb re

THE PASTORAL BEES. 73

turned intact to the bees. But honey without tli
comb is the perfume without the rose, — it is Bwect
merely, and soon degenerates into candy. Half the
delectabieness is in breaking down these frail and
exquisite walls yourself, and tasting the nectar before
it has lost its freshness by the contact with the
3Ur. Then the comb is a sort of shield or foil
that prevents the tongue from being overwhelmed
by the shock of the sweet.

The drones have the least enviable time of it.
Their foothold in the hive is very precarious. They
look like the giants, the lords of the swarm, but
they are really the tools. Their loud, threatening
hum has no sting to back it up, and their size and
noise make them only the more conspicuous marks
for the birds.

Toward the close of the season, say in July or
August^ the flat goes forth that the drones must die ;
there is no further use for them. Then the poor
creatures, how they are huddled and hustled about,
trying to hide in corners and by-ways. There is no
loud, defiant humming now, but abject fear seizes
them. They cower like hunted criminals. I have
seen a dozen or more of them wedge themselves into
a small space between the glass and the comb, wh<
the bees could not get hold of them, or where they
seemed to be overlooked in the general slaughter.
They will also crawl outside and hide under the ed
of the hive. But sooner or later they are all killed
or kicked out. The drone makes no resistance, ex-
cept to pull back and try to get away; but (putting
yourself in his place) with one bee a-h<>l<l of your col-
lar or the hair of your head, and another a-liold of each
arm or leg, and still another feeling for your waist-
bands with his sting, the odds are greatly against you.

74 BEES.

It is a singular fact, also, that the queen is made,
not born. If the entire population of Spain or Great
Britain were the offspring of one mother, it might be
found necessary to hit upon some device by which a
royal baby could be manufactured out of an ordinary
one, or else give up the fashion of royalty. All the
bees in the hive have a common parentage, and the
queen and the worker are the same in the egg and in
the chick ; the patent of royalty is in the cell and in
the food ; the cell being much larger, and the food a,
peculiar stimulating kind of jelly. In certain contin-
gencies, such as the loss of the queen with no eggs
in the royal cells, the workers take the larva of an
ordinary bee, enlarge the cell by taking in the two
adjoining ones, and nurse it and stuff it and coddle it,
till at the end of sixteen days it comes out a queen.
But ordinarily, in the natural course of events, the
young queen is kept a prisoner in her cell till the
old queen has left with the swarm. Later on, the un-
matched queen is guarded against the reigning queen,
who only wants an opportunity to murder every royal
scion in the hive. At this time both the queens, the
one a prisoner and the other at large, pipe defiance
at each other, a shrill, fine, trumpet-like note that any
ear will at once recognize. This challenge, not being
allowed to be accepted by either party, is followed, in a
day or two, by the abdication of the reigning queen ; she
leads out the swarm, and her successor is liberated by
her keepers, who, in her time, abdicates in favor of the
next younger. When the bees have decided that no
more swarms can issue, the reigning queen is allowed
to use her stiletto upon her unhatched sisters. Cases
have been known where two queens issued at the
same time, when a mortal combat ensued, encouraged

THE PASTORAL BEES. ?0

by the workers, who formed a ring about them, but
showed no preference, and recognized the victor as
the lawful sovereign. For these and many other curi-
ous facts we are indebted to the blind liuber.

It is worthy of note that the position of the queen
cells is always vertical, while that of the drones and
workers is horizontal; majesty stands on its head,
which fact may be a part of the secret.

The notion has always very generally prevailed
that the queen of the bees is an absolute ruler, and
issues her royal orders to willing subjects. Hence
Napoleon the First sprinkled the symbolic bees over
the imperial mantle that bore the arms of his dynasty ;
and in the country of the Pharaohs the bee was used
as the emblem of a people sweetly submissive to the
orders of its king. But the fact is, a swarm of bees
is an absolute democracy, and kings and despots can
find no warrant in their example. The power and
authority are entirely vested in the great mass, the
workers. They furnish all the brains and foresight of
the colony, and administer its affairs. Their word
is law, and both king and queen must obey. They
regulate the swarming, and give the signal for the
swarm to issue from the hive ; they select and make
ready the tree in the woods and conduct the queen
to it.

The peculiar office and sacredness of the queen
consists in the fact that she is the mother of the
swarm, and the bees love and cherish her as a mother
and not as a sovereign. She is the sole female bee
IE the hive, and the swarm clings to her because she
is their life. Deprived of their queen, and of all
brood from which to rear one, the swarm loses all
heart and soon dies, though there be an abundance
rd honey in the hive.

76 bEES.

The common bees will never use their sting upon
the queen ; if she is to be disposed of they starve her
to death ; and the queen herself will sting nothing but
royalty — nothing but a rival queen.

The queen, I say, is the mother bee ; it is undoubt-
edly complimenting her to call her a queen and in-
fest her with regal authority, yet she is a superb
sreature, and looks every inch a queen. It is an
event to distinguish her amid the mass of bees when
the swarm alights ; it awakens a thrill. Before you
have seen a queen you wonder if this or that bee,
which seems a little larger than its fellows, is not she,
but when you once really set eyes upon her you do
not doubt for a moment. You know that is the queen
That long, elegant, shining, feminine-looking creature
«an be none less than royalty. How beautifully her
body tapers, how distinguished she looks, how delib-
erate her movements ! The bees do not fall down be-
fore her, but caress her and touch her person. The
drones or males, are large bees too, but coarse, bluntv
broad-shouldered, masculine-looking. There is but
one fact or incident in the life of the queen that looks
imperial and authoritative : Huber relates that when
the old queen is restrained in her movements by the
workers, and prevented from destroying the young
queens in their cells, she assumes a peculiar attitude
and utters a note that strikes every bee motionless,
and makes every head bow ; while this sound lasts
not a bee stirs, but all look abashed and humbled, yet
whether the emotion is one of fear, or reverence, or
of sympathy with the distress of the queen mother,
is hard to determine. The moment it ceases and she
advances again toward the royal cells, the bees bite
and pull and insult her as before,

THE PASTORAL BEES. 77

I always feel that I have missed some good fortune
if I am away from home when my bees swarm.
What a delightful summer sound it is ; how they come
pouring out of the hive, twenty or thirty thousand
bees each striving to get out first ; it is as when the
•lam gives way and lets the waters loose ; it is a fl<
i bees which breaks upward into the air, and becomes
a maze of whirling black lines to the eye and a soft
chorus of myriad musical sounds to the ear. This
way and that way they drift, now contracting,, now
expanding, rising, sinking, growing thick about some
branch or bush, then dispersing and massing at some
other point, till finally they begin to alight in earnest,
when in a few moments the whole swarm is collected
upon the branch, forming a bunch perhaps as large
as a two-gallon measure. Here they will hang from
one to three or four hours, or until a suitable tree
in the woods is looked up, when, if they have not
been offered a hive in the mean time, they are up
and off. In hiving them, if any accident happens
to the queen the enterprise miscarries at once. One
day I shook a swarm from a small pear-tree into a
tin pan, set the pan down on a shawl spread beneath
the tree, and put the hive over it. The bees presently
all crawled up into it, and all seemed to go well for
ten or fifteen minutes, when I observed that some*
thing was wrong ; the bees began to buzz excitei
and to rush about in a bewildered manner, then they
took to the wing and all returned to the parent stock.
Dn lifting up the pan, I found beneath it the queen
with three or four other bees. She had been one of
the first to fall, had missed the pan in her descent, and
I had set it upon her. I conveyed her tenderly back
to the hive, but either the accident terminated fatally

78 BEES.

with her or eke the young queen had been liberated
in the interim, and one of them had fallen in combat,
for it was ten days before the swarm issued a second
time.

No one, to my knowledge, has ever seen the beet,
house-hunting in the woods. Yet there can be nc
doubt that they look up new quarters either before
or on the day the swarm issues. For all bees ar@
wild bees and incapable of domestication ; that is, the
kistinct to go back to nature and take up again their
wild abodes in the trees is never eradicated. Years
upon years of life in the apiary seems to have n<*
appreciable effect towards their final, permanent do-
mestication. That every new swarm contemplates
migrating to the woods, seems confirmed by the fact
that they wTill only come out when the weather is
favorable to such an enterprise, and that a passing
cloud, or a sudden wind, after the bees are in the air,
will usually drive them back into the parent hive.
Or an attack upon them with sand or gravel, or loose
earth or water, will quickly cause them to change
their plans. I would not even say but that, when the
bees are going off, the apparently absurd practice,
now entirely discredited by regular bee-keepers but
still resorted to by unscientific folk, of beating upon
tin pans, blowing horns, and creating an uproar gen-
erally, might not be without good results* Certainly
not by drowning the " orders " of the queen, but by
impressing the bees as with some unusual commotion
in nature. Bees are easily alarmed and disconcerted,
and I have knowTi runaway swrarms to be brought
down by a farmer ploughing in the field who show-
ered them with handfuls of loose soil.

J love to see a swarm go off — if it is not mine,

THE PASTORAL BEES. 79

and if mine must go I want to be on hand to see the
fun. It is a return to first principles again by a very
direct route The past season I witnessed two such
escapes. One swarm had come out the day before.
aads without alighting, had returned to the parent
hive — some hitch in the plan, perhaps, or may be
the queen had found her wings too weak'. The next
day they came out again, and were hived. But
something offended them, or else the tree in the
woods — perhaps some royal old maple or birch,
holding its head high above all others, with snug,
spacious, irregular chambers and galleries — had too
many attractions ; for they were presently discovered
filling the air over the garden, and whirling excitedly
around. Gradually they began to drift over the
street ; a moment more, and they had become sepa-
rated from the other bees, and, drawing together in a
more compact mass or cloud, away they went, a hum-
ming, flying vortex of bees, the queen in the centre,
and the swarm revolving around her as a pivot, —
over meadows, across creeks and swamps, straight
for the heart of the mountain, about a mile distant,
■ — slow at first, so that the youth who gave chase
kept up with them, but increasing their speed tiD
only a fox hound could have kept them in sight. I
saw their pursuer laboring up the side of the moun-
tain ; saw his white shirt-sleeves gleam as he enterec
the woods; but he returned a few hours afterward
without any clew as to the particular tree in which
they had taken refuge out of the ten thousand that
covered the side of the mountain.

The other swarm came out about one o'clock of a
hot July day, and at once showed symptom- that
alarmed the keeper, who, however, threw neither

80 BEES.

dirt nor water. The house was situated on a steep
side-hill. Behind it the ground rose, for a hundred
rods or so, at an angle of nearly forty-five degrees,
and the prospect of having to chase them up this hill,
if chase them we should, promised a good trial o{
wind at least ; for it soon became evident that theii
3ourse lay in this direction. Determined to have a
hand, or rather a foot, in the chase, I threw off my
coat and hurried on, before the swarm was yet fairly
organized and under way. The route soon led ma
into a field of standing rye, every spear of which
held its head above my own. Plunging recklessly
forward, my course marked to those watching from
below by the agitated and wriggling grain, I emerged
from the miniature forest just in time to see the run
aways disappearing over the top of the hill, some
fifty rods in advance of me. Lining them as well as
I could, I soon reached the hill-top, my breath ut-
terly gone and the perspiration streaming from every
pore of my skin. On the other side the country
opened deep and wide. A large valle}^ swept around
to the north, heavily wooded at its head and on its
sides. It became evident at once that the bees had
made good their escape, and that whether they had
stopped on one side of the valley or the other, or
had indeed cleared the opposite mountain and gone
into some unknown forest beyond, was entirely protM
lematical. I turned back, therefore, thinking of the
honey-laden tree that some of these forests would
hold before the falling of the leaf.

I heard of a youth in the neighborhood, more
lucky than myself on a like occasion. It seems that
he had got well in advance of the swarm, whose
route lay over a hill, as in my case, and as he neared

THE PASTORAL BEES. 81

the summit, hat in hand, the bees had just oomo up
and were all about him. Presently he noticed th
hovering about his straw hat, and alighting on his
arm ; and in almost as brief a time as it takes to re.
late it, the whole swarm had followed the queen into
his hat. Being near a stone wall, he coolly deposited
his prize upon it, quickly disengaged himself from
the accommodating bees, and returned for a hive.
The explanation of this singular circumstance nc
doubt is, that the queen, unused to such long and
heavy flights, was obliged to alight from very ex-
haustion. It is not very unusual for swarms to be
thus found in remote fields, collected upon a bush or
branch of a tree.

When a swarm migrates to the woods in this man-
ner, the individual bees, as I have intimated, do not
move in right lines or straight forward, like a flock
of birds, but round and round, like chaff in a whirl-
wind. Unitedly they form a humming, revolving,
nebulous mass, ten or fifteen feet across, which keeps
just high enough to clear all obstacles, except in
crossing deep valleys, when, of course, it may be
Very high. The swarm seems to be guided by a line
<o£ couriers, which may be seen (at least at the out-
set) constantly going and coming. As they take a
direct course, there is always some chance of follow-
ing them to the tree, unless they go a long distance.;
and some obstruction, like a wood, or a swamp, or a
high hill, intervenes — enough chance, at any rate,
to stimulate the lookers-on to give vigorous chase
as Ions: as their wind holds out. If the bees are
successfully followed to their retreat, two plans are
feasible: either to fell the tree at once, and - k to
hive them, perhaps bring them home in the section of

82 BEES.

the tree that contains the cavity ; or to leave the tree
till fall, then invite your neighbors, and go and cut
it, and see the ground flow with honey. The former
course is more business-like ; but the latter is the
one usually recommended by one's friends and neigh-
bors.

Perhaps nearly one third of all the runaway swarms
Heave when no one is about, and hence are unseen and
raiheard, save, perchance, by some distant laborers in
the field, or by some youth ploughing on the side of
the mountain, who hears an unusual humming noise,
and sees the swarm dimly whirling by overhead, and,
>aiay be, gives chase ; or he may simply catch the
sound, when he pauses, looks quickly around, but sees
nothing. When he comes in at night he tells how
he heard or saw a swarm of bees go over ; and, per-
haps from beneath one of the hives in the garden a
black mass of bees has disappeared during the day.

They are not partial as to the kind of tree, — pine,
hemlock, elm, birch, maple, hickory, — any tree with
a good cavity high up or low down. A swarm of
mine ran away from the new patent hive I gave them,
and took up their quarters in the hollow trunk of an
old apple-tree across an adjoining field. The entrance
was a mouse-hole near the ground.

Another swarm in the neighborhood deserted their
keeper and went into the cornice of an out-house that
stood amid evergreens in the rear of a large mansion.
But there is no accounting for the taste of bees, as
Samson found when he discovered the swarm in the
carcass, or more probably the skeleton, of the lion he
had slain.

In any given locality, especially in the more wooded
and mountainous districts, the number of swarms that

THE PASTORAL DEES. 83

thus assert their independence forms quite a large
per cent. In the Northern States these swarms very
often perish before spring ; but in such a country as
Florida they seem to multiply, till bee-trees are vert
common. In the West, also, wild honey is <>:
gathered in large quantities. I noticed not long
since, that some wood - choppers on the west Blope
of the Coast Range felled a tree that had several pail-
fuls in it.

One night on the Potomac a party of us unwit-
tingly made our camp near the foot of a bee-tree,
which next day the winds of heaven blew down, for
our special delectation, at least so we read the sign.
Another time while sitting by a waterfall in the leaf.
less April woods I discovered a swarm in the top of
a large hickory. I had the season before remarked
the tree as a likely place for bees, but the screen of
leaves concealed them from me. This time my former
presentiment occurred to me, and, looking sharply,
sure enough there were the bees, going out and in a
large, irregular opening. In June a violent tempest
of wind and rain demolished the tree, and the honey
was all lost in the creek into which it fell. I hap-
pened along that way two or three days after the
tornado, when I saw a remnant of the swarm, those,
doubtless, that escaped the flood and those that were
away when the disaster came, hanging in a small
black mass to a branch high up near where th ir
home used to be. They looked forlorn enough. If
the queen was saved the remnant probably sought
another tree ; otherwise the bees have soon died.

I have seen bees desert their hive in the Bpring
when it was infested with worms, or when the honey
was exhausted ; at such times the swarm seems to

84 BEES.

wander aimlessly, alighting here and there, and per-
haps in the end uniting with some other colony. In
case of such union, it would be curious to know x
negotiations were first opened between the parties, and
if the houseless bees are admitted at once to all the
rio-hts and franchises of their benefactors. It would
be very like the bees to have some preliminary plac
and understanding about the matter on both sides.

Bees will accommodate themselves to almost any
quarters, yet no hive seems to please them so well
as a section of a hollow tree — 4* gurus ,: as they
are called in the South and West where the sweet
gum grows. In some European countries the hive
is always made from the trunk of a tree, a suitable
cavity being formed by boring. The old-fashioned
straw hive is picturesque, and a great favorite with
the bees also.

The life of a swarm of bees is like an active and
hazardous campaign of an army ; the ranks are be-
ing continually depleted, and continually recruited.
What adventures they have by flood and field, and
what hair-breadth escapes ! A strong swarm during
the honey season loses, on an average, about four
or five thousand per month, or one hundred and
fifty per day. They are overwhelmed by wind and
rain, caught by spiders, benumbed by cold, crushe(
by cattle, drowned in rivers and ponds, and yl
many nameless ways cut off or disabled. In the
spring the principal mortality is from the cold. As
the sun declines they get chilled before they can
reach home. Many fall down outside the hive,
unable to get in with their burden. One may see
them come utterly spent and drop hopelessly into
the grass in front of their very doors. Before they

THE PASTORAL BEES. 86

can rest the cold has stiffened them. I go out in
April and May and pick them up by the handfuls,
their baskets loaded with pollen, and warm them in
the sun or in the house, or by the simple warmth
of my hand, until they can crawl into the hi
Heat is their life, and an apparently lifel bee
may be revived by warming him. I have also
picked them up while rowing on the river and
seen them safely to shore. It is amusing to see
them come huriying home when there is a thunder-
storm approaching. They come piling in till the
rain is upon them. Those that are overtaken by
the storm doubtless weather it as best they can in
the sheltering trees or grass. It is not probable
that a bee ever gets lost by wandering into strange
and unknown parts. With their myriad eyes they
see everything; and then, their sense of locality is
very acute, is, indeed, one of their ruling traits.
When a bee marks the place of his hive, or of a
bit of good pasturage in the fields or swamps, or of
the bee-hunter's box of honey on the hills or in the
woods, he returns to it as unerringly as fata

Honey was a much more important article of
food with the ancients than it is with us. As they
ippear to. have been unacquainted with sugar, honey,
no doubt, stood them instead. It is too rank and
pungent for the modern taste; it soon cloys upon
the palate. It demands the appetite of youth, and
the strong, robust digestion of people who live
much in the open air. It is a more wholesome
food than sugar, and modern confectionery is poison
beside it. Beside grape sugar, honey contains manna,
mucilage, pollen, acid, and other vegetable odorifer-
ous substances and juices. It is a sugar with a kind

86 BEES.

of wild natural bread added. The manna of itself is
both food and medicine, and the pungent vegetable
extracts have rare virtues. Honey promotes the ex-
cretions and dissolves the glutinous and starchy im-
pedimenta of the system.

Hence it is not without reason that with the ancients
a land flowing with milk and honey should mean &
land abounding in all good things ; and the queen
in the nursery rhyme, who lingered in the kitchen to
eat " bread and honey ' while the " king was in the
parlor counting out his money," was doing a very sen-
sible thing. Epaminondas is said to have rarely eaten
anything but bread and honey. The Emperor Augus-
tus one day inquired of a centenarian how he had kept
his vigor of mind and body so long ; to which the
veteran replied that it was by " oil without and honey
within." ' Cicero, in his " Old Age," classes honey
with meat and milk and cheese as among the staple
articles with which a well-kept farm-house will be
supplied.

Italy and Greece, in fact all the Mediterranean
countries, appear to have been famous lands for honey.
Mount Hymettus, Mount Hybla, and Mount Ida pro-
duced what may be called the classic honey of an«=
tiquity, an article doubtless in nowise superior to ou£
best products. Leigh Hunt's " Jar of Honey " is
mainly distilled from Sicilian history and literature,
Theocritus furnishing the best yield. Sicily has al-
ways been rich in bees. Swinburne (the traveler of a
hundred years ago) says the woods on this island
abounded in wild honey, and that the people also had
many hives near their houses. The idyls of Theoc-
ritus are native to the island in this respect, and
abound in bees — » " flat-nosed bees " as he calls them

THE PASTORAL BEES. «Y

in the Seventh Idyl — and comparisons in which
comb-honey is the standard of the most delectabh
this world's goods. His goatherds can think of no
greater bliss than that the mouth be filled with honey-
combs, or to be inclosed in a chest like Daphnis and
fed on the combs of bees ; and among the delectablea
with which Arsinoe cherishes Adonis are " honey*'
cakes," and other tid-bits made of "sweet honey." In
the country of Theocritus this custom is said still to
prevail: when a couple are married the attendants
place honey in their mouths, by which they would sym-
bolize the hope that their love may be as sweet to
their souls as honey to the palate.

It was fabled that Homer was suckled by a priestess
whose breasts distilled honey; and that once when
Pindar lay asleep the bees dropped honey upon his lips.
In the Old Testament the food of the promised Im-
manuel was to be butter and honey (there is much
doubt about the butter in the original), that he might
know good from evil ; and Jonathan's eyes were en-
lightened, by partaking of some wood or wild honey ;
" See, I pray you, how mine eyes have been enlight-
ened, because I tasted a little of this honey." So far
as this part of his diet was concerned, therefore, John
the Baptist, during his sojourn in the wilderness, his
divinity school-days in the mountains and plains of
Judea, fared extremely well. About the other part,
the locusts, or, not to put too fine a point on it, the
grasshoppers, as much cannot be said, though they
were among the creeping and leaping tilings the chil
dren of Israel were permitted to eat. They were prob-
ably not eaten raw, but roasted in that most primitive
of ovens, a hole in the ground made hot by building
a fire in it. The locusts and honey may have been

88 BEES.

served together, as the Bed as of Ceylon are said to
season their meat with honey. At any rate, as the lo-
cust is often a great plague in Palestine, the prophet in
eating them found his account in the general weal, anc
in the profit of the pastoral bees ; the fewer locusts,
the more flowers. Owing to its numerous wild-flowers
and flowering shrubs, Palestine has always been a fa-
mous country for bees. They deposit their honey in
hollow trees as our bees do when they escape from the
hive, and in holes in the rocks as ours do not. In a
tropical or semi-tropical climate bees are quite apt
to take refuge in the rocks, but where, ice and snow
prevail, as with us, they are much safer high up in the
trunk of a forest tree.

The best honey is the product of the milder parts of
the temperate zone. There are too many rank and
poisonous plants in the tropics. Honey from certain
districts of Turkey produces headache and vomiting,
and that from Brazil is used chiefly as medicine. The
honey of Mount Hymettus owes its fine quality to wild
thyme. The best honey in Persia and in Florida is
collected from the orange blossom. The celebrated
honey of Narbonne in the south of France is obtained
from a species of rosemary. In Scotland good honey
is made from the blossoming heather.

California honey is white and delicate and highly
perfumed, and now takes the lead in the market.
But honey is honey the world over ; and the bee is
the bee still. " Men may degenerate," sa}rs an old
traveler, " may forget the arts by which they acquired
renown ; manufactories may fail, and commodities be
debased, but the sweets of the wild-flowers of the
wilderness, the industry and natural mechanics of
the bee, will continue without change or derogation.'1

II

SHAKP EYES

AND OTHER PAPERS

CONTENTS

PAGE

i3harp Eyes 3

The Apple .......... 25

A Taste of Maine Birch . • .... 41

Winter Neighbors 65

Notes by the Way

I. The Weather-wise Muskrat • . • . . .84
II. Cheating the Squirrels .88

III. Fox and Hound 89

IV. The Woodchuck , , 0 . • o o . 92

SHARP EYES AND OTHER PAPERS.

SHARP EYES.

• Noting how one eye seconds and reinforces the
other, I have often amused myself by wondering what
the effect would be if one could go on opening eye
after eye to the number say of a dozen or more.
What would he see? Perhaps not the invisible —
not the odors of flowers nor the fever germs in the air
— not the infinitely small of the microscope nor tho
infinitely distant of the telescope. This would require,
not more eyes so much as an eye constructed with
more and different lenses ; but would he not see with
augmented power within the natural limits of vision ?
At any rate some persons seem to have opened more
eyes than others, they see with such force and distinct-
ness ; their vision penetrates the tangle ancLobscuriry
where that of others fails like a spent or impotent
bullet. How many eyes did Gilbert White open? how
many did Henry Thoreau? how many did Audubon 'i
how many does the hunter, matching his sight against
the keen and alert sense of a deer or a moo.se, or a fol
or a wolf? Not outward eyes, but inward. We opel
another eye whenever we see beyond the first genera!
features or outlines of things — whenever we grasp
special details and characteristic markings that this
mask covers. Science confers new powers of vision.

4 SHARP EYES.

Whenever you have learned to discriminate the birds,
or the plants, or the geological features of a country,
it is as if new and keener eyes were added.

Of course one mast not only see sharply, but read
aright what he sees. The facts in the life of Nature
that are transpiring about us are like written words,
that the observer is to arrange into sentences. Or
the writing is in cipher and he must furnish the key,/
A female oriole was one day observed very much pre*
oecuoied under a shed where the refuse from the horse
stable was thrown. She hopped about among the barn,
fowls, scolding them sharply when they came too neap
her. The stable, dark and cavernous, was just be-
yond. The bird, not finding what she wanted outside,
boldly ventured into the stable, and was presently cap*
cured by the farmer. What did she want? was the
query. What, but a horsehair for her nest which was
in an apple-tree near by ; and she was so bent on hav-
ing one that I have no doubt she would have tweaked
one out of the horse's tail had he been in the stable.
Later in the season I examined her nest and found it
sewed through arid through with several long horse-
hairs, so that the bird persisted in her search till the
hair was found.

Little dramas and tragedies and comedies, littla
characteristic scenes, are always being enacted in the
iives of the birds, if our e}^es are sharp enough to see
them. Some clever observer saw this little comedy
played among some English sparrows and wrote an
account of it in his newspaper ; it is too good not to
be true : A male bird brought to his box a large, fine
goose feather, which is a great find for a sparrow and
much coveted. After he had deposited his prize and
Shattered his gratuiations over it he went away in

SHARP BYES. f

quest of his mate. His next-door neighbors female

bird, seeing her chance, quickly slipped in and
the feather, — and here the wit of the bird came out,
for instead of carrying it into her own box she flew \\ ith
It to a near tree and hid it in a fork of the branches,
then went home, and when her neighbor returned witl
his mate was innocently employed about her own af
lairs. The proud male, finding his feather -one, came
out of his box in a high state of excitement, and, with
wrath in his manner and accusation on his tongue,
rushed into the cot of the female. Not finding his
goods and chattels there as he had expected, lie
stormed around a while, abusing everybody in gen
and his neighbor in particular, and then went, away as
if to repair the loss. As soon as he was out of sierht
the shrewd thief went and brought the feather home
and lined her own domicile with it.

I was much amused one summer day in seeing :*
bluebird feeding her young one in the shaded street of
a large town. She had captured a cicada or harvest-
fly, and after bruising it a while on the ground flew
with it to a tree and placed it in the beak of the young
bird. It was a large morsel, and the mother seemed
to have doubts of her chick's ability to dispose of it,
for she stood near and watched its efforts with gn
solicitude. The young bird struggled valiantly with
the cicada, but made no headway in swallowing it,
when the mother took it from him and flew to the
sidewalk, and proceeded to break and bruise it more
thoroughly. Then she again placed it in his beak, and
seemed to say, "There, try it now," and sympathized
so thoroughly with his efforts that she repeated many
of his motions and contortions. But the great fly wad
unyielding, and, indeed, seemed ridiculously dispropo*

6 SHARP EYES.

fcioiied to the beak that held it. The young bird flut»
tered and fluttered and screamed, " I 'm stuck, I 'm
stuck," till the anxious parent again seized the morsel
and carried it to an iron railing, where she came down
apon it for the space of a minute with all the force
and momentum her beak could command. Then she
offered it to her young a third time, but with the
Same result as before, except that this time the bird
dropped it ; but she was at the ground as soon as the
cicada was, and taking it in her beak flew some dis-
tance to a Irish board fence where she sat motionless
for some moments. While pondering the problem
hew that fly should be broken, the male bluebird ap-
proached her, and said very plainly, and I thought
rather curtly, " Give me that bug," but she quickly
resetted his interference and flew farther away, where
she sat apparently quite discouraged when I last saw
her.

The bluebird is a home bird, and I am never tired
of recurring to him. His coming or reappearance in
the spring marks a new chapter in the progress of the
season ; things are never quite the same after one has
heard that note. The past spring the males came
about a week in advance of the females. A fine male
lingered about my grounds and orchard all the time,
apparently waiting the arrival of his mate. He called
and warbled every day, as if he felt sure she was
within ear-shot, and could be hurried up. Now lie
warbled half-angrily or upbraidingly, then coaxingly,
then cheerily and confidently, the next moment in a
plaintive, far-away manner. He would half open his
ivings, and twinkle them caressingly, as if beckoning
his mate to his heart. One morning she had come,
but was shy and reserved. The fond male flew to a

SHARP EYES. 7

knot-hole in an old apple-tree, and coaxed her to hia
side. I heard a fine confidential warble, — the old,

old story. But the female flew to a near tree, and
uttered her plaintive, homesick note The male went
and got some dry grass or bark in his beak, and flew
again to the hole in the old tree, and promised unre-
mitting devotion, but the other said " nay.'* and fl
away in the distance. When he saw her going, or
rather heard her distant note, he dropped his stuff,
and cried out in a tone that said plainly enough,
(i Wait a minute. One word, please," and rlew swiftly
in pursuit. He won her before long, however, and
early in April the pair were established in one of the
four or five boxes I had put up for them, but not
until they had changed their minds several times. As
soon as the first brood had flown, and while they were
yet under their parents' care, they began another nest
in one of the other boxes, the female, as usual, doing
all the work, and the male all the complimenting.

A source of occasional great distress to the mother-
bird was a white cat that sometimes followed me
about. The cat had never been known to catch a
bird, but she had a way of watching them that was
very embarrassing to the bird. Whenever she ap-
peared, the mother bluebird would set up that pitiful
melodious plaint. One morning the cat was standing
by me, when the bird came with her beak loaded with
building material, and alighted above me to sun
the place before going into the box. When she saw
the cat, she was greatly disturbed, and in her agitation
could not keep her hold upon all her material. Straw
after straw came eddying down, till not half her origi-
nal burden remained. After the cat had gone away,
the bird's alarm subsided, till, presently seeing the

b SHARP EYES.

eoast clear, she flew quickly to the box and pitched in
her remaining straws with the greatest precipitation,
and, without going in to arrange them, as was her
Wont, flew away in evident relief.

In the cavity of ?n apple-tree but a few yards off*
find much nearer the house than they usually build,
a pair of high-holes, or golden-shafted woodpeckers,
took uj) their abode. A knot-hole which led to the
decayed interior was enlarged, the live wood being cut
away as clean as a squirrel would have done it. The
inside preparations I could not witness, but day after
day, as I passed near, I heard the bird hammering
away, evidently beating down obstructions and shap-
ing and enlarging the cavity. The chips were not
brought out, but were used rather to floor the interior.
The woodpeckers are not nest-builders, but rather
nest-carvers.

The time seemed very short before the voices of the
young were heard in the heart of the old tree, — at
first feebly, but waxing stronger day by day until
they could be heard many rods distant. When I put
my hand upon the trunk of the tree, they would set
up an eager, expectant chattering ; but if I climbed
up it toward the opening, they soon detected the un-
usual sound and would hush quickly, only now and
then uttering a warning note. Long before they were
fully fledged they clambered up to the orifice to re-
ceive their food. As but one could stand in the open-
ing at a time, there was a good deal of elbowing and
struggling for this position. T± was a very desirable
one aside from the advantages it had when food was
served ; it looked out upon the great shining world,
into which the young birds seemed never tired of gaz.
ing. The fresh air must have been a consideration

SHARP EYES. 9

also, for the interior or a high-hole's dwelling fa not
sweet. When the parent birds came with food the
young one in the opening did not get it all, but tor
he had received a portion, either on his own motion I
on a hint from the old one, he would give place to the
one behind him. Still, one bird evidently outstripped
his fellows, and in the race of life was two or three
days in advance of them. His voice was loudest ;uid
his head oftenest at the window. But I noticed that
when he had kept the position too long, the oth<
evidently made it uncomfortable in his rear, and, after
" fidgeting " about a while, he would be compelled to
"back down." But retaliation was then easy, and I
fear his mates spent few easy moments at that look-
out. They would close their eyes and slide back into
the cavity as if the world had suddenty lost all its
charms for them.

This bird was, of course, the first to leave the nrst
For two days before that event he kept his position in
the opening most of the time and sent forth his str
voice incessantly. The old ones abstained from feed-
ing him almost entirely, no doubt to encourage his
exit. As I stood looking at him one afternoon and
noting his progress, he suddenly reached a resolution,
— seconded, I have no doubt, from the rear, - - and
launched forth upon his untried wings. They served
him well and carried him about fifty yards up-hill the
first heat. The second day after, the next in size and
spirit left in the same manner; then another, till
only one remained. The parent birds ceased their
visits to him, and for one day he called and called till
our ears were tired of the sound. His was the faint-
est heart of all. Then he had none to encourage hin3
from behind. He left the nest and clung to the outer

10 SHAUP EYES.

bowl of the tree, and yelped and piped for an hour
longer ; then he committed himself to his wings and
•vent his way like the rest.

A young farmer in the western part of New York,
who has a sharp, discriminating eye, sends me some
interesting notes about a tame high-hole he once had

"Did you ever notice," says he, "that the high*
hole never eats anything that he cannot pick up with
his tongue ? At least this was the case with a young
one I took from the nest and tamed. He could thrust
out his tongue two or three inches, and it was amusing
to see his efforts to eat currants from the hand. He
would run out his tongue and try to stick it to the
currant; failing in that, he would bend his tongue
around it like a hook and try to raise it by a sudden
jerk. But he never succeeded, the round fruit w »uld
roll and slip away every time. He never seemed to
think of taking it in his beak. His tongue w; s in
constant use to find out the nature of everythirg he
saw ; a nail-hole in a board or any similar hole was
carefully explored. If he was held near the face he
would soon be attracted by the eye and thrust his
tongue into it. In this way he gained the respect of
a number of half-grown cats that were around the
house. I wished to make them familiar to each other,
80 there would be less danger of their killiug him. So
I would take them both on my knee, when the bird
would soon notice the kitten's eyes, and leveling his
bill as carefully as a marksman levels his rifle, he
would remain so a minute when he would dart his
tongue into the cat's eye. This was held by the cats
to be very mysterious : being struck in the eye by
something invisible to them. They soon acquired
such a terror of him that they would avoid him and

SHARP EYES. 11

run away whenever they saw his bill turned in their
direction. He never would swallow a grasshopper
even when it was placed in his throat; he would shake
himself until he had thrown it out of his mouth.
4 best hold ' was ants. He never was surprised at any
thing, and never was afraid of anything. II.- would
drive the turkey gobbler and the rooster. He would
advance upon them holding one wing up as high as
possible, as if to strike with it, and shuffle along the
ground toward them, scolding all the while in a harsh
voice. I feared at first that they might kill him, but
I soon found that he was able to take care of himself
I would turn over stones and dig into ant-hills fo*
him, and he would lick up the ants so fast that a
stream of them seemed going into his mouth unceas.
ingly. I kept him till late in the fall, when he disap-
peared, probably going south, and I never saw him
again."

My correspondent also sends me some interesting
observations about the cuckoo. He says a large g< >< >se>
berry bush standing in the border of an old hedge-
row, in the midst of open fields, and not far from his
house, was occupied by a pair of cuckoos for two sea-
sons in succession, and, after an interval of a year, for
two seasons more. This gave him a good chance to
observe them. He says the mother-bird lays a single
egg, and sits upon it a number of days before Living
fche second, so that he has seen one young bird nearly
grown, a second just hatched, and a whole egg all in
the nest at once. " So far as I have seen, this is the
settled practice, — the young leaving the nest one at
a time to the number of six or eight. The you
have quite the look of the young of the dove in manj
respects. When nearly grown they are covered with

12 SHARP EYES.

long blue pin-feathers as long as darning-needles,
without a bit of plumage on them. They part on the
back and hang down on each side by their own weight
With its curious feathers and misshapen body the
young bird is anything but handsome. They never
open their mouths when approached, as many young
birds do, but sit perfectly still, hardly moving whea
touched." He also notes the unnatural indifference
of the mother-bird when her nest and young are ap-
proached. She makes no sound, but sits quietly on a
near branch in apparent perfect unconcern.

These observations, together with the fact that the
egg of the cuckoo is occasionally found in the nests of
other birds, raise the inquiry whether our bird is
slowly relapsing into the habit of the European spe-
cies, which always foists its egg upon other birds ; or
whether, on the other hand, it is not mending its
manners in this respect. It has but little to unlearn
or to forget in the one case, but great progress to make
in the other. How far is its rudimentary nest — a
mere platform of coarse twigs and dry stalks of weeds
— from the deep, compact, finely woven and finely
modeled nest of the goldfinch or king-bird, and what
a gulf between its indifference toward its young and
their solicitude ! Its irregular manner of laying also
seems better suited to a parasite like our cow-bird, or
the European cuckoo, than to a regular nest-builder.

This observer, like most sharp-eyed persons, sees
plenty of interesting things as he goes about his work.
He one day saw a white swallow, which is of rare
occurrence. He saw a bird, a sparrow he thinks, fly
against the side of a horse and fill his beak with hair
from the loosened coat of the animal. He saw a
shrike pursue a chickadee, when the latter escaped by

SHARP EYES. 13

taking- refuge in a small hole in a tree. One day In
early spring he saw two hen-hawks that were circling
and screaming high in air, approach each other, ex-
tend a claw, and, clasping them together, fall toward
the earth flapping and struggling as if they were tied
together ; on nearing the ground they separated and
goared aloft again. He supposed that it was not a
passage of war but of love, and that the hawks were
toying fondly with each other.

He further relates a curious circumstance of finding
a humming-bird in the upper part of a barn with its
bill stuck fast in a crack of one of the large timbers,
dead, of course, with wings extended, and as dry as a
chip. The bird seems to have died as it had lived, on
the wing, and its last act was indeed a ghastly parody
of its living career. Fancy this nimble, flashing sprite^,
whose life was passed probing the honeyed depths of
flowers, at last thrusting its bill into a crack in a dry
timber in a hay-loft, and, with spread wings, ending
its existence.

When the air is damp and heavy, swallows fre-
quently hawk for insects about cattle and moving
herds in the field. My farmer describes how they
attended him one foggy day, as he was mowing in the
meadow with a mowing-machine. It had been fci_
for two days, and the swallows were very hungry,
and the insects stupid and inert. When the sound of
his machine was heard, the swallows appeared am
attended him like a brood of hungry chickens. lie
says there was a continued rush of purple win
over the "cut-bar," and just where it was causing the
grass to tremble and fall. Without his assistance the
swallows would doubtless have gone hungry yet an-
other day*

14 SHARP EYES.

Of the hen-hawk, he has observed that both male
and female take part in incubation. "I was rather
surprised," he says, " on one occasion, to see how
quickly they change places on the nest. The nest was
in a tall beech, and the leaves were not yet fully out.
I could see the head and neck of the hawk over the
edge of the nest, when I saw the other hawk coming
clown through the air at full speed. I expected he
would alight near by, but instead of that he struck
directly upon the nest, his mate getting out of the
way barely in time to avoid being hit ; it seemed al-
most as if he had knocked her off the nest. I hardly
see how they can make such a rush on the nest with-
out danger to the eggs."

The king-bird will worry the hawk as a whiffet dog
will worry a bear. It is by his persistence and au-
dacity, not by any injury he is capable of dealing his
great antagonist. The king-bird seldom more than
dogs the hawk, keeping above and between his wings,
and making a great ado ; but my correspondent says
he once " saw a king-bird riding on a hawk's back.
The hawk flew as fast as possible, and the king-
bird sat upon his shoulders in triumph until they
bad passed out of sight," — tweaking his feathers, no
doubt, and threatening to scalp him the next moment*

That near relative of the king-bird, the great
crested fly-catcher, has one well known peculiarity ;
he appears never to consider his nest finished until it
contains a cast-off snake-skin. My alert correspon-
dent one day saw him eagerly catch up an onion skin
and make off with it, either deceived by it or else
thinking it a good substitute for the coveted material

One day in May, walking in the woods, I came
upon the nest of a whippoorwill, or rather its eggs.

SHARP EYES. 15

Tor it builds no nest, — two elliptical whitish spotted
dggs lying upon the dry leaves. My foot was within
a yard of the mother-bird before she flew. 1 won-
dered what a sharp eye would detect curious 01 ch
acteristic in the ways of the bird, so 1 came to the
place many times and had a look. It was a] ways a
task to separate the bird from her surroundii
though I stood within a few feet of her, and knew
exactly where to look. One had to hear on with
eye,, as it were, and refuse to be baffled. The sticks
and leaves, and bits of black or dark-brown bark, were
all exactly copied in the bird's plumage. And then
she did sit so close, and simulate so well a shape] I
decaying piece of wood or bark! Twice I brought
a companion* and guiding his eye to the spot, nottd
how difficult it was for him to make out there, in full
view upon the dry leaves, any semblance to a bird.
AY hen the bird returned after being disturbed, she
would alight within a few inches of her eggs, a
then, after a moment's pause, hobble awkwardly upon
them.

After the young had appeared, all the wit of the
bird came into play. I was on hand the next day,
I think. The mother-bird sprang up when I was
within a pace of her, and in doing so fanned the
leaves with her wings till they sprang up too; aa
the leaves started the young started, and, being oi
the same color, to tell which was the leaf and which
the bird was a trying task to any eye. I came the
next day, when the same tactics were repeated. Once
a leaf fell upon one of the young birds and nearly
hid it. The young are covered with a reddish down.
like a young partridge, and soon follow then mother
about. When disturbed, they gave but one leap,

16 SHARP EYES.

then settled down, perfectly motionless and stupid*
with eyes closed. The parent bird, on these occasions,
made frantic efforts to decoy me away from her
young. She would fly a few paces and fall upon hei
breast, and a spasm, like that of death, would run
through her tremulous outstretched wings and pros-
trate body. She kept a sharp eye out the meanwhile
to see if the ruse took, and if it did not, she was
quickly cured, and moving about to some other point,
tried to draw my attention as before. When followed
she always alighted upon the ground, dropping down
in a sudden peculiar way. The second or third day
both old and young had disappeared.

The whippoorwill walks as awkwardly as a swal-
low, which is as awkward as a man in a bag, and yet
she manages to lead her young about the woods. The
latter, I think, move by leaps and sudden spurts, their
protective coloring shielding them most effectively,
Wilson once came upon the mother-bird and her
brood in the woods, and, though they were at his very
feet, was so baffled by the concealment of the young
that he was about to give up the search, much disap-
pointed, when he perceived something " like a slight
moldiness among the withered leaves, and, on stoop-
ing down, discovered it to be a young whippoorwill^
seemingly asleep." Wilson's description of the young
is very accurate, as its downy covering does look pre-
cisely like a " slight moldiness." Returning a few
moments afterwrard to the spot to get a pencil he had
forgotten, he could find neither old nor young.

It takes an eye to see a partridge in the woods
motionless upon the leaves ; this sense needs to b(
as sharp as that of smell in hounds and pointers ; and
yet I know an unkempt youth that seldom fails tc

SHARP EYES. 17

see the bird and shoot it before it takes wing. I
think he sees it as soon as it sees him, and before
it suspects itself seen. What a training to the eye
is hunting! To pick out the game from its surround-
ings, the grouse from the leaves, the gray squirrel from
the mossy oak limb it hugs so closely, the red fox
from the ruddy or brown or gray field, the rabbit from
fche stubble, or the white hare from the snow, requires
the best powers of this sense. A woodchu.-k, motion-
less in the fields or upon a rock, looks very much like
a large stone or bowlder, yet a keen eye knows the
difference at a glance, a quarter of a mile away.

A man has a sharper eye than a dog, or a fox, or
than any of the wild creatures, but not so sharp an ear
or nose. But in the birds he finds his match. 1 low-
quickly the old turkey discovers the hawk, a mere
speck against the sky, and how quickly the hawk dis-
covers you if you happen to be secreted in the bushes,
or behind the fence near which he alights! One ad-
vantage the bird surely has, and that is, owing to the
form, structure, and position of the eye, it has a much
larger field of vision — indeed, can probably see in
nearly every direction at the same instant, behind as
well as before. Man's field of vision embraces less
than half a circle horizontal^, and still less vertically :
Ms brow and brain prevent him from seeing wi I
many degrees of the zenith without a movement of tin
head; the bird, on the other hand, takes in nearly thi
whole sphere at a glance.

I find I see, almost without effort, nearly every bird
within sight in the field or wood I pass through (a llit
of the wing, a flirt of the tail are enough, though the
flickering leaves do all conspire to hide them ), and
tihat with like ease the birds see me, though, un-

18 SHARP EYES.

questionably, the chances are immensely in their favor.
The eye sees what it has the means of seeing, truly.
You must have the bird in your heart before you can
find it in the bush. The eye must have purpose and
aim. No one ever yet found the walking fern who
did not have the walking fern in his mind. A per-
son whose eye is full of Indian relics picks them up in
every field he walks through.

One season I was interested in the tree-frogs ; espe-
cially the tiny piper that one nears about the woods
and brushy fields — the hyla of the swamps become
a denizen of the trees ; I had never seen him in this
new role. But this season, having hylas in mind, or
rather being ripe for them, I several times came across
them. One Sunday, walking amid some bushes, I cap-
tured two. They leaped before me as doubtless they
had done many times before ; but though I was not
looking for or thinking of them, yet they were quickly
recognized, because the eye had been commissioned to
find them. On another occasion, not long afterward,
I was hurriedly loading my gun in the October woods
in hopes of overtaking a gray squirrel that was
fast escaping through the tree-tops, when one of these
lilliput frogs, the color of the fast-yellowing leaves,
leaped near me. I saw him only out of the corner of
my eye and yet bagged him, because I had already
made him my own.

Nevertheless, the habit of observation is the habit
of clear and decisive gazing. Not by a first casual
glance, but by a steady deliberate aim of the eye are
the rare and characteristic things discovered. You
must look intently and hold your eye firmly to the
spot, to see more than do the rank and file of man-
kind. The sharp-shooter picks out his man and knows

SHARP EVES ].,

him with fatal certainty from a stump, or a rock, or a

cap on a pole. The phrenologists do well to locate, Dot
only form, color, and weight, in the region of the eye,
but also a faculty which they call individuality — that
which separates, discriminates, and sees in every object
its essential character. This is just as necessary to
the naturalist as to the artist or the poet. The sharp
eye notes specific points and differences, — it seizes
upon and preserves the individuality of the thing.

Persons frequently describe to me some bird they
have seen or heard and ask me to name it, but in most
cases the bird might be any one of a dozen, or else
it is totally unlike any bird found in this continent.
They have either seen falsely or else vaguely. Not
so the farm youth who wrote me one winter day that
he had seen a single pair of strange birds, which lie
describes as follows: "They were about the size of
the 'chippie,' the tops of their heads were red, and
the breast of the male was of the same color, while
that of the female was much lighter; their rumps
were also faintly tinged with red. If I have described
them so that you would know them, please write me
their names." There can be little doubt but the
young observer had seen a pair of red-polls, — a bird
related to the goldfinch, and that occasionally comes
down to us in the winter from the far north. Another
time, the same youth wrote that he had seen a strange
bird, the color of a sparrow, that alighted on fen
and buildings as well as upon the ground, and that
walked. This last fact shoved the youth's discrimi-
nating eye and settled the case. I knew it to be a
species of the lark, and from the size, color, Beason,
etc., the tit-lark. But how many persons would have
observed that the bird walked instead of hopped ?

20 SHARP EYES.

Some friends of mine who lived in the country tried
to describe to me a bird that built a nest in a tree
within a few feet of the house. As it was a brown
bird, I should have taken it for a wood-thrush, had
not the nest been described as so thin and loose that
from beneath the eggs could be distinctly seen. The
most pronounced feature in the description was the
barred appearance of the under side of the bird's taiL
I was quite at sea, until one day, when we were driv-
ing out, a cuckoo flew across the road in front of us„
when my friends exclaimed, " There is our bird ! " I
had never known a cuckoo to build near a house, and
I had never noted the appearance the tail presents
when viewed from beneath ; but if the bird had been
described in its most obvious features, as slender, with
a long tail, cinnamon brown above and white beneath,
with a curved bill, any one who knew the bird would
have recognized the portrait.

We think we have looked at a thing sharply until
we are asked for its specific features. 1 thought 1
knew exactly the form of the leaf of the tulip-tree,
until one day a lady asked me to draw the outline of
one. A good observer is quick to take a hint and to
follow it up. Most of the facts of nature, especially
in the life of the birds and animals, are well screened.
We do not see the play because we do not look in-
iently enough. The other day I was sitting with a
friend upon a high rock in the woods, near a small
stream, when we saw a water-snake swimming across
a pool toward the opposite bank. Any eye would
have noted it, perhaps nothing more. A little closer
and sharper gaze revealed the fact that the snake bore
something in its mouth, which, as we went down to
investigate, proved to be a small cat-fish, three o*

SHARP EYES. 21

tour inches long. The snake had captured it in the
pool, and, like any other fisherman, wanted to get its
prey to dry land, although itself lived mostly in the
water. Here, we said, is being enacted a little tragedy,
that would have escaped any but sharp eyes. The
snake, which was itself small, had the fish by the
throat, the hold of vantage among all creatures, and
jclung to it with great tenacity. The snake knew that
its best tactics was to get upon dry land as soon as
possible. It could not swallow its victim alive, and it
could not strangle it in the water. For a while it
tried to kill its game by holding it up out of the
water, but the fish grew heavy, and every few mo-
ments its struggles brought down the snake's head.
This would not do. Compressing the fish's throat
would not shut off its breath under such circum-
stances, so the wily serpent tried to get ashore with it,
and after several attempts succeeded in effecting a
landing on a flat rock. But the fish died hard. Cat-
fish do not give up the ghost in a hurry. Its throat
was becoming congested, but the snake's distended
jaws must have ached. It was like a petrified gape.
Then the spectators became very curious and close in
their scrutiny, and the snake determined to withdraw
from the public gaze and finish the business in hand
to its own notions. But, when gently but firmly n-
monstrated with by my friend with his walking-stick,
it dropped the fish and retreated in high dudgeon be-
neath a stone in the bed of the creek. The fish, witl
a swollen and angry throat, went its way also.

Birds, I say, have wonderfully keen eyes. Throw
a fresh bone or a piece of meat upon the snow in
winter, and see how soon the crows will discover it
and be on hand. If it be near the house or barn, the

22 SHARP EYES.

crow that first discovers it will alight near it, to make
sure he is not deceived ; then be will go away, and
soon return with a companion. The two alight a few
yards from the bone, and after some delay, during
;vhich the vicinity is sharply scrutinized, one of the
srows advances boldly to within a few feet of the
coveted prize. Here he pauses, and if no trick is dis-
covered, and the meat be indeed meat, he seizes it and
makes off.

One midwinter I cleared away the snow under an
apple-tree near the house and scattered some corn
there. I had not seen a blue-jay for weeks, yet that
very day oue found my corn, and after that several
came daily and partook of it, holding the kernels
under their feet upon the limbs of the trees and peck-
ing them vigorously.

Of course the woodpecker and his kind have sharp
eyes ; still I was surprised to see how quickly Downy
found out some bones that were placed in a convenient
place under the shed to be pounded up for the hens.
In going out to the barn I often disturbed him making
a meal off the bite of meat that still adhered to them.

" Look intently enough at anything," said a poet to
me one day, " and yoTi will see something that would
otherwise escape you." I thought of the remark as I
sat on a stump in an opening of the woods one spring
day. I saw a small hawk approaching ; he flew to a
tall tulip-tree and alighted on a large limb near the
top. He eyed me and I eyed him. Then the bird
disclosed a traii that was new to me : he hopped along
the limb to a. small cavity near the trunk, when he
thrust in his head and pulled out some small object
and fell to eating it. After he had partaken of it for
some minutes he put the remainder back in his larder

SHARP EYES. 2.fi

and flew away. I had seen something like feathers
eddying slowly down as the hawk ate, and on ap-
proaching the spot found the feathers of a sparrow
here and there clinging to the bushes beneath tin-
tree. The hawk then — commonly called the chicki n
hawk — is as provident as a mouse or a squirrel, and
lays by a store against a time of need, but I should
not have discovered the fact had I not held my eye
on him.

An observer of the birds is attracted by any unusual
sound or commotion among them. In May or June,
when other birds are most vocal, the jay is a silent
bird; he goes sneaking about the orchards and the
groves as silent as a pickpocket ; he is robbing bird's-
nests and he is very anxious that nothing should be
said about it ; but in the fall none so quick and loud to
cry " Thief, thief ! " as he. One December morning a
troop of jays discovered a little screech-owl secreted
in the hollow trunk of an old apple-tree near my
house. How they found the owl out is a mystery, since
it never ventures forth in the light of day; but they
did, and proclaimed the fact with great emphasis. I
suspect the bluebirds first told them, for these birds are
constantly peeping into holes and crannies, both spring
and fall. Some unsuspecting bird had probably en-
tered the cavity prospecting for a place for next year's
nest, or else looking out a likely place to pass a
cold night, and then had rushed out with important
news. A boy who should unwittingly venture into a
bear's den when Bruin was at home could not be more
astonished and alarmed than a bluebird would be on
finding itself in the cavity of a decayed tree with an
owl. At any rate the bluebirds joined the jays in
calling the attention of all whom it might concern to

24 SHARP EYES.

the fact that a culprit of some sort was hiding from
the light of day in the old apple-tree. I heard the
notes of warning and alarm and approached to within
eye-shot. The bluebirds were cautious and hovered
about uttering their peculiar twittering calls ; but the
jays were bolder and took turns looking in at the
cavity, and deriding the poor, shrinking owl. A jay
would alight in the entrance of the hole and flirt
and peer and attitudinize, and then fly away crying
^ Thief, thief, thief ! " at the top of his voice.

I climbed up and peered into the opening, and
could just descry the owl clinging to the inside of the
tree. I reached in and took him out, giving little
heed to the threatening snapping of his beak. He
was as red as a fox and as yellow-eyed as a cat. He
made no effort to escape, but planted his claws in my
forefinger and clung there with a grip that soon grew
uncomfortable. I placed him in the loft of an out-
house in hopes of getting better acquainted with him.
By day he was a very willing prisoner, scarcely mov-
ing at all, even when approached and touched with
the hand, but looking out upon the world with half-
closed, sleepy eyes. But at night what a change ; how
alert, how wild, how active! He was like another
bird ; he darted about with wide, fearful eyes, and re-
garded me like a cornered cat. I opened the window,
and swiftly, but as silent as a shadow, he glided out
into the congenial darkness, and perhaps, ere this, has
revenged himself upon the sleeping jay or bluebird
febat first betrayed his hiding-place.

THE APPLE.

Ijo! sweetened with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing o\er-inellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night. — Tennyson.

'Not a little of the sunshine of our northern win*
ters is surely wrapped up in the apple. How could
we winter over without it ! How is life sweetened by
its mild acids! A cellar well filled with apples is
more valuable than a chamber filled with flax and
wool. So much sound ruddy life to draw upon, to
strike one's roots down into, as it were.

Especially to those whose soil of life is inclined to
be a little clayey and heavy, is the apple a winter
necessity. It is the natural antidote of most of the
ills the flesh is heir to. Full of vegetable acids and
aromatics, qualities which act as refrigerants and an-
tiseptics, what an enemy it is to jaundice, indigestion
torpidity of liver, etc. It is a gentle spur and tonic
to the whole biliary system. Then I have read that
it has been found by analysis to contain more ph<w
phorus than any other vegetable. This makes it the
proper food of the scholar and the sedentary man ; it
feeds his brain and it stimulates his liver. Nor is
this all. Besides its hygienic properties, the apple
is fall of susrar and mucilage, which make it highh
nutritious. It is said, "The operators of Cornwall,
England, consider ripe apples nearly as nourishing as
bread, and far more so than potatoes. In the year
1801 — which was a year of much scarcity — apples,

26 THE APPLE.

instead of being converted into cider, were sold to the
poor, and the laborers asserted that they could ' stand
their work ' on baked apples without meat ; whereas
a potato diet required either meat or some other sub-
stantial nutriment. The French and Germans use
apples extensively, so do the inhabitants of all Euro-
pean nations. The laborers depend upon them as an
article of food, and frequently make a dinner of sliced
apples and bread. "

Yet the English apple is a tame and insipid affair,
compared with the intense, sun-colored and sun-
steeped fruit our orchards yield. The English have
no sweet apple, I am told, the saccharine element
apparently being less abundant in vegetable nature
in that sour and chilly climate than in our own. It is
well known that the European maple yields no sugar,
while both our birch and hickory have sweet in their
veins. Perhaps this fact accounts for our excessive
love of sweets, which may be said to be a national
trait.

The Russian apple has a lovely complexion, smooth
and transparent, but the Cossack is not yet all elimi*
nated from it. The only one I have seen — the
Duchess of Oldenburg — is as beautiful as a Tartar
princess, with a distracting odor, but it is the least
bit puckery to the taste.

The best thing I know about Chili is not its guano
'beds, but this fact which I learn from Darwin's " \ oy
age," namely, that the apple thrives well there. Dar-
win saw a town there so completely buried in a wood
of apple-trees, that its streets were merely paths in an
orchard. The tree indeed thrives so well, that large
branches cut off in the spring and planted two oi
three feet deep in the ground send out roots and

THE APPLE. 27

develop into fine full-bearing trees by the third year.
The people know the value of the apple too. They
make cider and wine of it and then from the refuse a
white and finely flavored spirit; then by another |
cess a sweet treacle is obtained called honey. The
children and the pigs eat little or no other food. He
does not add that the people are healthy and temper-
ate, but I have no doubt they are. We knew tin-
apple had many virtues, but these Chilians have really
opened a deep beneath a deep. We had found out
the cider and the spirits, but who guessed the wine
and the honey, unless it were the bees ? There is a
variety in our orchards called the winesap, a doubly
liquid name that suggests what might be done with
this fruit.

The apple is the commonest and yet the most varied
and beautiful of fruits. A dish of them is as becom-
ing to the centre-table in winter as was the vase of
flowers in the summer, — a bouquet of spitzenber^s
and greenings and northern spies. A rose when it
blooms, the apple is a rose when it ripens. It pleases
every sense to which it can be addressed, the touch,
the smell, the sight, the taste ; and when it falls in the
still October days it pleases the ear. It is a call to a
banquet, it is a signal that the feast is ready. The
bough would fain hold it, but it can now assert its in-
dependence ; it can now live a life of its own.

Daily the stem relaxes its hold, till finally it lets go
completely, and down comes the painted sphere with a
mellow thump to the earth, towards which it has been
nodding so long. It bounds away to seek its lied, to
hide under a leaf, or in a tuft of grass. It will now
take time to meditate and ripen! What delicious
thoughts it has there nestled with its fellows under

28 THE APPLE.

the fence, turning acid into sugar, and sugar into
wine !

How pleasing to the touch ! I love to stroke its
polished rondure with my hand, to carry it in my
pocket on my tramp over the winter hills, or through
the early spring woods. You are company, you red-
eheeked spitz, or you salmon-fleshed greening ! I toy
with you ; press your face to mine, toss you in the airs
roll you on the ground, see you shine out where you
lie amid the moss and dry leaves and sticks. You are
so alive! You glow like a ruddy flower. You look
so animated I almost expect to see you move. I
postpone the eating of you, you are so beautiful!
How compact ; how exquisitely tinted ! Stained by
the sun and varnished against the rains. An inde-
pendent vegetable existence, alive and vascular as my
own flesh ; capable of being wounded, bleeding, wast-
ing away, and almost of repairing damages!

How it resists the cold ! holding out almost as long
as the red cheeks of the boys do. A frost that de-
stroys the potatoes and other roots only makes the
apple more crisp and vigorous ; it peeps out from
the chance November snows unscathed. When 1 see
the fruit-vender on the street corner stamping his feet
and beating his hands to keep them warm, and his
naked apples lying exposed to the blasts, I wouder if
they do not ache too to clap their hands and enliven
their circulation. But they can stand it nearly as long
as the vender can.

Noble common fruit, best friend of man and most
loved by him, following him like his dog or his cow,
wherever he goes. His homestead is not planted till
you are planted, your roots intertwine with his ; thriv-
ing best where he thrives best, loving the limestone

THE APPLE. 29

and the frost, the plow and the priming-knife, you

are indeed suggestive of hardy, cheerful industry, and
a healthy life in the open air. Temperate, chaste
fruit! you mean neither luxury nor sloth, neither
satiety nor indolence, neither enervating- heats noi the
Frigid Zones. Uncloying fruit, fruit whose hest sauce
is the open air, whose finest flavors only he whose
taste is sharpened by brisk work or walking knows :
winter fruit, when the fire of life burns brightest;
fruit always a little hyperborean, leaning towards the
cold ; bracing, sub-acid, active fruit. I think you
must come from the north, you are so frank and hon-
est, so sturdy and appetizing. You are stocky and
homely like the northern races. Your quality is
Saxon. Surely the fiery and impetuous south is not
akin to you. Not spices or olives or the sumptuous
liquid fruits, but the grass, the snow, the grains, the
coolness is akin to you. I think if I could subsist on
you or the like of you, I should never have an intem-
perate or ignoble thought, never be feverish or de-
spondent. So far as I could absorb or transmute
your quality I should be cheerful, continent, equitable,
sweet-blooded, long-lived, and should shed warmth
and contentment around.

Is there any other fruit that has so much facial ex-
pression as the apple? What boy does not more than
half believe they can see with that single eye of
theirs ? Do they not look and nod to him from tlu
bough? The swaar has one look, the ram bo another,
the spy another. The youth recognizes the seek-no*
further buried beneath a dozen other varieties, the
moment he catches a glance of its eye, or the bonny-
cheeked Newtown pippin, or the gentle but sharp-no
gilliflower. He goes to the great bin in the cellar

30 THE APPLE.

and sinks his shafts here and there in the garnered
wealth of the orchards, mining for his favorites, some*
times coming plump upon them, sometimes catching a
glimpse of them to the right or left, or uncovering
them as keystones in an arch made up of many varie-

'des.

In the dark he can usually tell them by the sense
of touch. There is not only the size and shape, but
there is the texture and polish. Some apples are coarse-
grained and some are fine ; some are thin-skinned and
some are thick. One variety is quick and vigorous
beneath the touch ; another gentle and yielding. The
pinnock has a thick skin with a spongy lining, a bruise
in it becomes like a piece of cork. The tallow apple
has an unctuous feel, as its name suggests. It sheds
water like a duck. What apple is that with a fat
curved stem that blends so prettily with its own flesh.
— the wine - apple ? Some varieties impress me as
masculine, — weather-stained, freckled, lasting and
rugged ; others are indeed lady apples, fair, delicate,
shining, mild-flavored, white-meated, like the egg-drop
and the lady-finger. The practiced hand knows each
kind by the touch.

Do you remember the apple hole in the garden or
back of the house, Ben Bolt ? In the fall after the
bins in the cellar had been well stocked, we excavated
a circular pit in the warm, mellow earth, and covering
the bottom with clean rye straw, emptied in basketful

ifter basketful of hardy choice varieties, till there was
a tent -shaped mound several feet high of shining

/ar legated fruit. Then wrapping it about with a thick
layer of long rye straw, and tucking it up snug and
warm, the mound was covered with a thin coating o|
earth, a flat stone on the top holding down the straw

THE APPLE. 3l

As winter set in, another coating of earth was pot
upon it, with perhaps an overcoat of course dry Btable
manure, and the precious pile was left in silence and
darkness till spring. No marmot hibernating undei

ground in his nest of leaves and dry grass, more cosy
and warm. No frost, no wet, but fragrant privacy
and quiet. Then how the earth tempera and flavors
the apples ! It draws out all the acrid unripe quali-
ties, and infuses into them a subtle refreshing taste
of the soil. Some varieties perish; but the ranker,
hardier kinds, like the northern spy, the greening, or
the black apple, or the russet, or the pinnock, how
they ripen and grow in grace, how the green becomes
gold, and the bitter becomes sweet !

As the supply in the bins and barrels gets low and
spring approaches, the buried treasures in the garden
are remembered. With spade and axe we go out and
penetrate through the snow and frozen earth till the
inner dressing of straw is laid bare. It is not quite
as clear and bright as when we placed it there last
fall, but the fruit beneath, which the hand soon ex-
poses, is just as bright and far more luscious. Then,
as day after day you resort to the hole, and, removing
the straw and earth from the opening, thrust your
arm into the fragrant pit, you have a better chance
than ever before to become acquainted witli your
favorites by the sense of touch. ITow you fed for
them, reaching to the right and left! Now you have
got a Tolman sweet; you imagine you can feel that
single meridian line that divides it into two hemi-
spheres. Now a greening fills your hand, you feel its
fine quality beneath its rough coat. Now you have
hooked a swaar, you recognize its full faee : now a
Vandevere or a King rolls down from the apex above,

82 THE APPLE.

and you bag it at once. When you were a school
boy you stowed these away in your pockets and ate
them along the road and at recess, and again at noon-
time ; and they, in a measure, corrected the effects
of the cake and pie with which your indulgent mother
filled your lunch-basket.

The boy is indeed the true apple-eater, and is no'
to be questioned how he came by the fruit with which
his pockets are filled. It belongs to him . . • His
own juicy flesh craves the juicy flesh of the apple
Sap draws sap. His fruit-eating has little reference
to the state of his appetite. Whether he be full of
meat or empty of meat he wants the apple just the
same. Before meal or after meal it never comes
amiss. The farm-boy munches apples all day longc
He has nests of them in the ha}' - mow, mellowing,
to which he makes frequent visits. Sometimes old
Brindle, having access through the open door, smells
them out and makes short work of them.

In some countries the custom remains of placing a
rosy apple in the hand of the dead that they may find
it when they enter paradise. In northern mythology
the giants eat apples to keep off old age.

The apple is indeed the fruit of youth. As we
grow old we crave apples less. It is an ominous sign<
When you are ashamed to be seen eating them on the
street ; when you can carry them in your pocket and
your hand not constantly find its way to them ; when
your neighbor has apples and you have none, and yots
make no nocturnal visits to his orchard ; when youi
lunch-basket is without them, and you can pass a
winter's night by the fireside with no thought of the
fruit at your elbow, then be assured you are no longei
a boy, either in heart or year*.

THE APPLE.

The genuine apple-eater comforts himself with an
apple in their season as others with a pipe or cm
When he has nothing else to do, or is bored, he eats
an apple. While he is waiting for the train he i
an apple, sometimes several of them. When he tab
% walk he arms himself with apples, His traveling
bag is full of apples. He offers an apple to his com-
panion, and takes one himself. They are his chief
solace when on the road. He sows their seed all alon^
the route. He tosses the core from the car-window
and from the top of the stage-coach. He would, in
time, make the land one vast orchard. He dispenses
with a knife. He prefers that his teeth shall have the
first taste. Then he knows the best flavor is imme-
diately beneath the skin, and that in a pared apple
this is lost. If you will stew the apple, he says, in-
stead of baking it, by all means leave the skin on. It
improves the color and vastly heightens the flavor of
the dish.

The apple is a masculine fruit ; hence women are
poor apple-eaters. It belongs to the open air, and
requires an open-air taste and relish.

I instantly sympathized with that clergyman I read
of, who on pulling out his pocket-handkerchief in the
midst of his discourse, pulled out two bouncing apples
with it that went rolling across the pulpit floor anc!
down the pulpit stairs. These apples were, no doubt,
to be eaten after the sermon on his way home, or to
his next appointment. They would take the tasfc
it out of his mouth. Then, would a minister be apt
to grow tiresome with two big apples in his coat-tail
pockets? Would he not naturally hasten along to
44 lastly," and the big apples ? If they were tin- dom-
inie apples, and it was April or May, he certainly
would.

34 THE APPLE.

How the early settlers prized the apple! When
their trees broke down or were split asunder by the
storms, the neighbors turned out, the divided tree was
put together again and fastened with iron bolts. In
some of the oldest orchards one may still occasionally
see a large dilapidated tree with the rusty iron bolt
yet visible. Poor, sour fruit, too, but sw^et in those
early pioneer days. My grandfather, who was one of
these heroes of the stump, used every fall to make a
journey of forty miles for a few apples, which he
brought home in a bag on horseback. He frequently
started from home by two or three o'clock in tho
morning, and at one time both he and his horse were
much frightened by the screaming of panthers in a
narrow pass in the mountains through which the road
led.

Emerson, I believe, has spoken of the apple as the
social fruit of New England. Indeed, what a pro-
moter or abettor of social intercourse anions' our rural
population the apple has been, the company growing
more merry and unrestrained as soon as the basket cf
apples was passed round ! When the cider followed,
the introduction and good understanding were com-
plete. Then those rural gatherings that enlivenec1
the autumn in the country, known as "apple cuts,'
now, alas ! nearly obsolete, where so many things were
cut and dried besides apples ! The larger and more
loaded the orchard, the more frequently the invite
tions went round and the higher the social and col
vivial spirit ran. Ours is eminently a country of the
orchard. Horace Greeley said he had seen no land in
which the orchard formed such a prominent feature
in the rural and agricultural districts. Nearly every
farmhouse in the Eastern and Northern States has its

THE APPLE. 35

setting or its background of apple-trees, which gener-
ally date back to the first settlement of the farm.
Indeed, the orchard, more than almost any other
thing, tends to soften and humanize the country, and
to give the place of which it is an adjunct, a settled,
domestic look. The apple-tree takes the rawness and
wildness off any scene. On the top of a mountain, or
in remote pastures, it sheds the sentiment of home.
It never loses its domestic air, or lapses into a wild
state. And in planting a homestead, or in choosing
a building site for the new house, what a help it is to
have a few old, maternal apple-trees near by ; regular
°0d grandmothers, who have seen trouble, who have
been sad and glad through so many winters and sum-
mers, who have blossomed till the air about them is
sweeter than elsewhere, and borne fruit till the srrass
beneath them has become thick and soft from human
contact, and who have nourished robins and finches in
their branches till they have a tender, brooding look.
The ground, the turf, the atmosphere of an old
orchard, seem several stages nearer to man than that
of the adjoining field, as if the trees had given bark
to the soil more than they had taken from it ; as if
they had tempered the elements and attracted all the
genial and beneficent influences in the landscape
around.

An apple orchard is sure to bear you several crop
beside the apple. There is the crop of sweet and ten
der reminiscences dating from childhood and spanning
the seasons from May to October, and making the
orchard a sort of outlying part of the household. ^ <>i
have played there as a child, mused there as a youth
or lover, strolled there as a thoughtful, sad-eyed man.
Your father, perhaps, planted the trees, or reared them

36 THE APPLE.

from the seed, and you yourself have pruned and
grafted them, and worked among them, till every
separate tree has a peculiar history and meaning in
your mind. Then there is the never-failing crop of
birds — robins, goldfinches, king-birds, cedar-birds,
bair-birds, orioles, starlings — all nesting and breed-
ing in its branches, and fitly described by Wilson
Flagg as "Birds of the Garden and Orchard."
Whether the pippin and svveetbough bear or not, the
" punctual birds " can always be depended on. In-
deed, there are few better places to study ornithology
than in the orchard. Besides its regular occupants,
many of the birds of the deeper forest find occasion to
visit it during the season. The cuckoo comes for the
tent-caterpillar, the jay for frozen apples, the ruffed
grouse for buds, the crow foraging for birds' eggs, the
woodpecker and chickadees for their food, and the
high-hole for ants. The red-bird comes too, it only
to see what a friendly covert its branches form ; and
the wood-thrush now and then comes out of the grove
near by, and nests alongside of its cousin, the robin.
The smaller hawks know that this is a most likely
spot for their prey; and in spring the shy northern
warblers may be studied as they pause to feed on the
fine insects amid its branches. The mice love to
dwell here also, and hither comes from the near woods
the squirrel and the rabbit. The latter will put his
head through the boy's slipper-noose any time for a
taste of the sweet apple, and the red squirrel and chip-
munk esteem its seeds a great rarity.

All the domestic animals love the apple, but none
so much so as the cow. The taste of it wakes her up
as few other things do, and bars and fences must be
well looked after. No need to assort them or pick

THE APPLE. 37

out the ripe ones for her. An apple is an apple, and
there is no best about it. I heard of a quick-witted
old cow that learned to shake them down from the
tree. While rubbing herself she had observed that
an apple sometimes fell. This stimulated her to rub
a little harder, when more apples fell. She then I
the hint and rubbed her shoulder with sueh vigor that
the farmer had to check her and keep an eye on hei
to save his fruit.

But the cow is the friend of the apple. How many
trees she has planted about the farm, in the edge of
the woods, and in remote fields and pastures. The
wild apples, celebrated by Thoreau, are mostly of her
planting. She browses them down to be sure, but they
are hers, and why should she not ?

What an individuality the apple-tree has, each va-
riety being nearly as marked by its form as by its
fruit. What a vigorous grower, for instance, is the
Ribston pippin, an English apple. Wide branching
like the oak, and its large ridgy fruit, in late fall or
early winter, is one of my favorites. Or the thick and
more pendent top of the belleflower, with its equally
rich, sprightly uncloying fruit.

Sweet apples are perhaps the most nutritious, and
when baked are a feast in themselves. With a tn 8
of the Jersey sweet or of Tolman's sweeting in bear-
ins:, no man's table need be devoid of luxuries and
one of the most wholesome of all deserts. Or the
red astrachan, an August apple, what a gap may be
filled in the culinary department of a household at
this season, by a single tree of this fruit! And what
a feast is its shining crimson coat to the eye befon its
snow-white flesh has reached the tongue. But the
apple of apples for the household is the spitzenberg.

88 THE APPLE.

in this casket Pomona has put her highest flavors. It
Ban stand the ordeal of cooking and still remain a
spitz. I recently saw a barrel of these apples from
the orchard of a fruit-grower in the northern part of
lNew York, who has devoted especial attention to this
variety. They were perfect gems. Not large, that
.liad not been the aim, but small, fair, uniform, and
ted to the core. How intense, how spicy and aromatic !

But all the excellences of the apple are not con-
fined to the cultivated fruit. Occasionally a seedling
springs up about the farm that produces fruit of rare
beauty and worth. In sections peculiarly adapted tc
the apple, like a certain belt along the Hudson River,
I have noticed that most of the wild unbidden trees
bear good, edible fruit. In cold and ungenial districts,
the seedlings are mostly sour and crabbed, but in
more favorable soils they are oftener mild and sweet.
I know wild apples that ripen in August, and that do
not need, if it could be had, Thoreau's sauce of sharp
November air to be eaten with. At the foot of a hill
near me and striking its roots deep in the shale, is a
giant specimen of native tree that bears an apple that
has about the clearest, waxiest, most transparent com-
plexion I ever saw. It is good size, and the color of
a tea-rose. Its quality is best appreciated in the
kitchen. 1 know another seedling of excellent quality;
Mid so remarkable for its firmness and density, that,
it is known on the farm where it grows as the "heavy4,
apple."

I have alluded to Thoreau, to whom all lovers of
the apple and its tree are under obligation. His
chapter on Wild Apples is a most delicious piece of
writing. It has a " tang and smack " like the fruit it
celebrates, and is dashed and streaked with color in

THE APPLE. 39

the same manner. It has the hue and perfume of the
crab, and the richness and raciness of the pippin, i
Thoreau loved other apples than the wild Borta and

was obliged to confess that his favorites could not be
eaten in-doors. Late in November he found a l>iue-
pearmain tree growing within the edge of a sua;
almost as good as wild. "You would not suppose,1*
he says, " that there was any fruit left there on the
iirst survey, but you must look according to Bystem,
Those which lie exposed are quite brown and rotten
now, or perchance a few still show one blooming cheek
here and there amid the wet leaves. NevertheL
with experienced eyes I explore amid the bare alders,
and the huckleberry bushes, and the withered Bed
and in the crevices of the rocks, which are full of
leaves, and pry under the fallen and decayed ferns
which, with apple and alder leaves, thickly strew the
ground. For I know that they lie concealed, fallen
into hollows long since, and covered up by the leaves
of the tree itself — a proper kind of packing. From
these lurking places, everywhere within the circum-
ference of the tree, I draw forth the fruit all wet and
glossy, maybe nibbled by rabbits and hollowed out
by crickets, and perhaps a leaf or two cemented t<> it
(as Curzon an old manuscript from a monastery's
mouldy cellar), but still with a rich bloom on it, and
at least as ripe and wrell kept, if no better than those
in barrels, more crisp and lively than they. If these
resources fail to yield anything, I have learned to look
between the leaves of the suckers which spring thickly
from some horizontal limb, for now and then one
lodges there, or in the very midst of an alder-clump,
where they are covered by leaves, safe from cows which
day have smelled them out. If I am sharp-set, for I

40 THE APPLE.

do not refuse the blue-pearinain, I fill my pockets on
each side ; and as I retrace my steps, in the frosty eve,
beino- perhaps four or five miles from home, I eat one
first from this side, and then from that, to keep my

:•»

A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH.

The traveler and camper-out in Maine, unless li€
penetrates its more northern portions, has less reason
to remember it as a pine-tree State than a birch-tree
State. The white-pine forests have melted away like
snow in the spring and gone down stream, leaving
only patches here and there in the more remote and
inaccessible parts. The portion of the State I saw —
the valley of the Kennebec and the woods about
Moxie Lake — had been shorn of its pine timber more
than forty years before, and is now covered with a
thick growth of spruce and cedar and various decid-
uous trees. But the birch abounds. Indeed, when
the pine goes out the birch comes in; the race of men
succeeds the race of giants. This tree has great stay-
at-home virtues. Let the sombre, aspiring, mysterious
pine go ; the birch has humble every-day uses. In
Maine, the paper or canoe birch is turned to more
account than any other tree. I read in Gibbon that
the natives of ancient Assyria used to celebrate in
verse or prose the three hundred and sixty ns<>s to
which the various parts and products of the palm-1
were applied. The Maine bireh is turned to so many
accounts that it may well be called the palm of this
region. Uncle Nathan, our guide, said it was m
especially for the camper-out ; yes, and for the wood-
man and frontiersman generally. It is a magazine, a
furnishing store set up in the wilderness, who ids

Jt^J *i X ^ J. *- J J. JLJ KSJ. J.TJ. X± I J. i J-J LJL it V/ii«

are free to every coiner. The whole equipment of the
camp lies folded in it, and comes forth at the beck of
the woodman's axe ; tent, waterproof roof, boat, camp
atensils, buckets, cups, plates, spoons, napkins, table-
cloths, paper for letters or your journal, torches, can
dies, kindling-wood, and fuel. The canoe-birch yields
you its vestments with the utmost liberality. Ask for
ats coat, and it gives you its waistcoat also. Its bark
seems wrapped about it layer upon layer, and comes
off with great ease. We saw many rude structures
and cabins shingled and sided with it, and haystacks
capped with it. Near a maple-sugar camp there was
a large pile of birch-bark sap-buckets, — each oucket
made of a piece Of bark about a yard square, folded
up as the tinman folds up a sheet of tin to make a
square vessel, the corners bent around against the
sides and held by a wooden pin. When, one day. we
were overtaken by a shower in traveling through the
woods, our guide quickly stripped large sheets of the
oark from a near tree, and we had each a perfect
umbrella as by magic. When the rain was over, and
we moved on, I wrapped mine about me like a large
leather apron, and it shielded my clothes from the wet
bushes. When we came to a spring, Uncle Nathan
would have a birch-bark cup ready before any of us
could get a tin one out of his knapsack, and I think
water never tasted so sweet as from one of these bark
cups. It is exactly the thing. It just fits the mouth,
and it seems to give new virtues to the water. It
makes me thirsty now when I think of it. In oul
camp at Moxie we made a large birch-bark box t<»
keep the butter in ; and the butter in this box, covered
with some leafy boughs, I think improved in flavoi
day by day. Maine butter needs something to mollifj

A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 43

and sweeten it a little, and I think birch bark will do
it. In camp Uncle Nathan often drank his tea and
coffee from a bark cup ; the china closet in the bil
tree was always handy, and our vulgar tin ware wa
erally a good deal mixed, and the kitchen-maid not at
all particular about dish-washing. We all tried the
Oatmeal with the maple syrup in one of these dishes,
and the stewed mountain cranberries, using a birch
bark spoon, and never found service better. Uncle
Nathan declared he could boil potatoes in a bark kefc
tie, and I did not doubt him. Instead of sending our
soiled napkins and table-spreads to the wash, we rolled
them up into candles and torches, and drew daily upon
our stores in the forest for new ones.

But the great triumph of the birch is of course the
bark canoe. When Uncle Nathan took us out under
his little wood-shed, and showed us, or rather modestly
permitted us to see, his nearly finished canoe, it was
like a first glimpse of some new and unknown genius
of the woods or streams. It sat there on the chips
and shavings and fragments of bark like some shy,
delicate creature just emerged from its hiding-place,
or like some wild flower just opened. It was the first
ifooat of the kind I had ever seen, and it filled mv eve
completely. "What woodcraft it indicated, and what
a wild free life, sylvan life, it promised! It had such
a fresh, aboriginal look as I had never before seen in
any kind of handiwork. Its clear yellow-red color
would have become the cheek of an Indian maiden.
Then its supple curves and swells, its sinewy stays
and thwarts, its bow-like contour, its tomahawk stem
and stern rising quickly and sharply from its frame,
were all vividly suggestive of the race from which it
Oame. An old Indian had taught Uncle Nathan thf

44 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH.

art, and the soul of the ideal red man looked out of
the boat before us. Uncle Nathan had spent two
days ranging the mountains looking for a suitable
tree, and had worked nearly a week on the craft. It
was twelve feet long, and would seat and carry five
men nicely. Three trees contribute to the making of
a canoe besides the birch, namely, the white cedar for
ribs and lining, the spruce for roots and fibres to sew
its joints and bind its frame, and the pine for pitch
or rosin to stop its seams and cracks. It is hand-made
and home-made, or rather wood-made, in a sense that
no other craft is, except a dug-out, and it suggests a
taste and a refinement that few products of civilization
realize. The design of a savage, it yet looks like the
thought of a poet, and its grace and fitness haunt the
imagination. I suppose its production was the inev-
itable result of the Indian's wants and surround in «'s,
but that does not detract from its beauty. It is, in-
deed, one of the fairest flowers the thorny plant of
necessity ever bore. Our canoe, as I have intimated,
was not yet finished when we first saw it, nor yet
when we took it up, with its architect, upon our met-
aphorical backs and bore it to the woods0 It lacked
part of its cedar lining and the rosin upon its joints,
and these were added after we reached our destination.
Though we were not indebted to the birch-tree for
our guide, Uncle Nathan, as he was known in all the
country, yet he matched well these woodsy products
and conveniences. The birch-tree had given him a
large part of his tuition, and kneeling in his canoe
and making it shoot noiselessly over the water with
that subtle yet indescribably expressive and athletic
play of the muscles of the back and shoulders, the
boat and the man seemed born of the same spirit.

A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. \o

He had been a hunter and trapper foi < vet forty
years; he had grown gray in the woods, had ripened

and matured there, and everything about hi if

the spirit of the woods had had the ordering of it ; his
/whole make-up was in a minor and subdued key, like
"the moss and the lichens, or like the protective color-
ing of the game, — everything but his quick sense
Wd penetrative glance. He was as gentle and modest
as a girl; his sensibilities were like plants that grow
in . the shade. The woods and the solitudes had
touched him with their own softening and refining
influence; had indeed shed upon his soil of Life a
rich deep leaf mould that was delightful, and that
nursed, half concealed, the tenderest and wildest
growths. There was grit enough back of and beneath
it all, but he presented none of the rough and repel
ling traits of character of the conventional backwoods-
man. In the spring he was a driver of logs on the
Kennebec, usually having charge of a large gang of
men ; in the winter he was a solitary trapper and
hunter in the forests.

Our first glimpse of Maine waters was Pleasant
Pond, which we found by following a white, rapid,
musical stream from the Kennebec three miles back
into the mountains. Maine waters are for the most
part dark-complexioned, Indian-colored stream-, but
Pleasant Pond is a pale-face among them both ir
name and nature. It is the only strictly silver Ink- 1
ever saw. Its waters seem almost artificially white
and brilliant, though of remarkable transparency. I
think I detected minute shining motes held in suspen-
sion in it. As for the trout they are veritable ban
of silver until you have cut their flesh, when they are
$he reddest of gold. They have no crimson or othel

46 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH.

spots, and the straight lateral line is but a faint pencil
mark. They appeared to be a species of lake trout
peculiar to these waters, uniformly from ten to twelve
inches in length. And these beautiful fish, at the time
y£ our visit (last of August) at least, were to be
feken only in deep water upon a hook baited with salt
pork, And then you needed a letter of introduction
feo them. They were not to be tempted or cajoled by
strangers. We did not succeed in raising a fish, al*
though instructed how it was to be done, until one of
the natives, a young and obliging farmer living hard
by, came and lent his countenance to the enterprise.
I sat in one end of the boat and he in the other ; my
pork was the same as his, and I manoeuvred it as
directed, and yet those fish knew his hook from mine
in sixty feet of water, and preferred it four times in
five. Evidently they did not bite because they were
hungry, but solely for old acquaintance' sake.

Pleasant Pond is an irregular sheet of water, two
miles or more in its greatest diameter, with high, rug-
ged mountains rising up from its western shore, and
low rolling hills sweeping back from its eastern and
northern, covered by a few sterile farms. I was never
tired, when the wind was still, of floating along its
margin and gazing down into its marvelously trans*
lucent depths. The bowlders and fragments of roekf
were seen, at a depth of twenty-five or thirty feet?
strewing its floor, and apparently as free from any
covering of sediment as when they were dropped thetf
by the old glaciers aeons ago. Our camp was amid u.
dense grove of second growth of white pine on the
eastern shore, where, for one, I found a most admk
rable cradle in a little depression, outside of the tent*
carpeted with pine needles, in which to pass the night,

A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 47

The camper-out is always in luck if he can find, sh i-
tered by the trees, a soft hole in the ground, even i
he has a stone for a pillow. The earth must open itfl
arms a little for us even in life, if we are to b1
well upon its bosom. I have often heard mi grand
father, who was a soldier of the Revolution, tell witl
great gusto how he once bivouacked in a little In. How
Hiade by the overturning of a tree, and slept
soundly that he did not wake up till his cradle was
half full of water from a passing shower.

What bird or other creature might represent the
divinity of Pleasant Pond I do not know, but its
demon, as of most northern inland waters, is fche loon
and a very good demon he is too, suggesting some-
thing not so much malevolent, as arch, sardonic, ubi-
quitous, circumventing, with just a tinge of something
inhuman and uncanny. His fiery red eyes gleaming
forth from that jet-black head are full of meani
Then his strange horse laughter by day and his weird,
doleful cry at night, like that of a lost and wandering
spirit, recall no other bird or beast. He Bug
something almost supernatural in his alertness and
amazing quickness, cheating the shot and the bullet of
the sportsman out of their aim. I know of but one
other bird so quick, and that is the humming-bird,
which I have, never been able to kill with a gun. The
loon laughs the shot-gun to scorn, and the ob
young farmer above referred to told me he had shot
at them hundreds of times with his rifle, without
effect, — they always dodged his bullet. We had in
our party a breach-loading rifle, which weapon is p
haps an appreciable moment of time quicker than the
ordinary muzzle loader, and this the poor loon could
Dot or did not dodge. He had not timed himself te

48 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH.

that species of fire-arm, and when, with his fellow, he
swam about within rifle range of our camp, letting off
volleys of his wild ironical ha-ha, he little suspected
ihe dangerous gun that was matched against him.
As the rifle cracked both loons made the gesture of.
diving, but only one of them disappeared beneath the
»water ; and when he came to the surface in a few
foments, a hundred or more yards away, and saw hk
companion did not follow, but was floating on the
water where he had last seen him, he took the alarm,
and sped away in the distance. The bird I had killed
was a magnificent specimen, and I looked him ovej
with great interest. His glossy checkered coat, his
banded neck, his snow-white breast, his powerful lance-
shaped beak, his red eyes, his black, thin, slender,
marvelously delicate feet and legs, issuing from his
muscular thighs, and looking as if they had never
touched the ground, his strong wings well forwardr
while his legs were quite at the apex, and the neat,
elegant model of the entire bird, speed and quickness
and strength stamped upon every feature, — all de-
lighted and lingered in the eye. The loon appears
like anything but a silly bird, unless you see him in
some collection, or in the shop of the taxidermist
where he usually looks very tame and goose-like*
Nature never meant the loon to stand up, or to use
his feet and legs for other purposes than swimming
Indeed, he cannot stand except upon his tail in a per-
pendicular attitude, but in the collections he is poised
upon his feet like a barn-yard fowl, all the wildness,
and grace and alertness goes out of him. My speci-
men sits upon a table as upon the surface of the
water, his feet trailing behind him, his body low and
trim, his head elevated and slightly turned as if in the

A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH.

act of bringing that fiery eye to bear upon you, and
vigilance and power stamped upon every lineament

The loon is to the fishes what the hawk is to the
birds; he swoops down to unknown depths upon
vthem, and not even the wary trout can elude him
Uncle Nathan said he had seen the loon disap
and in a moment come up with a large trout, win
lie would cut in two with his strong heak, and BwaJ
low piecemeal. Neither the loon nor the otter can
bolt a fish under the water; he must come to the snr-
face to dispose of it. (I once saw a man eat a cal
under water in London.) Our guide told me he had
seen the parent loon swimming with a single young
one upon its back. When closely pressed it dove, or
44 div * as he would have it, and left the young bii
sitting upon the water. Then it too disappeared, and
when the old one returned and called, it came out from
the shore. On the wing overhead, the loon looks not
unlike a very large duck, but when it alights it
ploughs into the water like a bombshell. It probably
cannot take flight from the land, as the one Gilbert
White saw and describes in his letters was picked up
in a field, unable to launch itself into the air.

From Pleasant Pond we went seven miles through
the woods to Moxie Lake, following an overgrown
lumberman's "tote" road, our canoe and Buppli .
etc., hauled on a sled by the young fanner with hi:
three-year-old steers. I doubt if birch-bark ever made
a rougher voyage than that. As I watched it abovi
the bushes, the sled and the luggage being hidden, it
appeared as if tossed in the wildest and most tempest-
uous sea. When the bushes closed above it I fell
if ic had gone down, or been broken into a hundred
pieces. Billows of rocks and logs, and chasms of

50 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH.

creeks and spring runs, kept it rearing and pitching
in the most frightful manner. The steers went at a
spanking pace ; indeed, it was a regular bovine gale ;
but their driver clung to their side amid the brush
and bowlders with desperate tenacity, and seemed to
manage them by signs and nudges, for he hardly u&
tered his orders aloud. But we got through without
any serious mishap, passing Mosquito Creek and Mos-
quito Pond, and flanking Mosquito Mountain, but see-
ing no mosquitoes, and brought up at dusk at a lum-
berman's old hay-barn, standing in the midst of a
lonely clearing on the shores of Moxie Lake.

Here we passed the night, and were lucky in hav-
ing a good roof over our heads, for it rained heavily.
After we were rolled in our blankets and variously
disposed upon the haymow, Uncle Nathan lulled us to
sleep by a long and characteristic yarn.

I had asked him, half jocosely, if he believed in
" spooks " ; but he took my question seriously, and
without answering it directly, proceeded to tell us
what he himself had known and witnessed. It was,
by the way, extremely difficult either to surprise or to
steal upon any of Uncle Nathan's private opinions
and beliefs about matters and things. He was as shy
of all debatable subjects as a fox is of a trap. He
usually talked in a circle, just as he hunted moose and
caribou, so as not to approach his point too rudely
and suddenly. He would keep on the lee side of his
interlocutor in spite of all one could do. He was
thoroughly good and reliable, but the wild creature"
of the woods, in pursuit of which he had spent so
much of his life, had taught him a curious gentleness
and indirection, and to keep himself in the back*
.ground ; he was careful that you should not scent his

A TASTE OF MAIXE BIRCH.

opinions upon any subject at all polemic, but 1 .,■ . mid
tell you what he had seen and known. What he had

seen and known about spooks was briefly this : In

company with a neighbor he was passing the ni
with an old recluse who lived somewhere in il.
woods. Their host was au Englishman, who had the
reputation of having murdered his wife some
fore in another part of the country, and, deserted by
his grown-up children, was eking out his daya in p
erty amid these solitudes. The three men were bleep*
ing upon the floor, with Uncle Nathan next to a rude
partition that cdvided the cabin into two room.. Ar,
his head there was a door that opened into this other
apartment. Late at night, Uncle Nathan said, he
awoke and turned over, and his mind was occupied
with various things, when he heard somebody behind
the partition. He reached over and felt that both of
his companions were in their places beside him. and
he was somewhat surprised. The person, or whatever
it was, in the other room moved about heavily, and
pulled the table from its place beside the wall to the
middle of the floor. " I was not dreaming:," said
Uncle Nathan ; " J felt of my eyes twice to make
sure, and they were wide open." Presently the dooi
opened; he was sensible of the draught upon his head
and a woman's form stepped heavily past him :
felt the "swirl" of her skirts as she went by. Tin
there was a loud noise in the room as if some on.- had
fallen their whole length upon the floor. k* It jarred
the house," said he, " and woke everybody up. I a 4.

old Mr. if he heard that noise. • Ye id be,

'it was thunder.' But it was not thunder, I kis
that;" and then added, "I was no more afraid than i
am this minute. I never was the least mite afraid

52 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH.

in my life. And my eyes were wide open," he re*
peated ; " I felt of them twice ; but whether that was
the speret of that man's murdered wife or not I can-
not tell. They said she was an uncommon heavy
woman." Uncle Nathan was a man of unusually
quick aud acute senses, and he did not doubt their
evidence on this occasion any more than he did when
they prompted him to level his rifle at a bear or a
moose.

i Moxie Lake lies much lower than Pleasant Pond^
and its waters compared with those of the latter are
as copper compared with silver. It is very irregular
in shape ; now narrowing to the dimensions of a slow
moving grassy creek, then expanding into a broad
deep basin with rocky shores, and commanding the
noblest mountain scenery. It is rarely that the pond-
lily and the speckled trout are found together, — the
fish the soul of the purest spring water, the flower the
transfigured spirit of the dark mud and slime of slug-
gish summer streams and ponds ; yet in Moxie they
were both found in perfection. Our camp was amid
the birches, poplars, and white cedars near the head of
the lake, where the best fishing at this season was to

1 be had, Moxie has a small oval head, rather shallow5
but bumpy with rocks ; a long, deep neck, full of
springs, where the trout lie ; and a very broad chest,
with two islands tufted with pine-trees for breasts*
We swam in the head, we fished in the neck, or in t
small section of it, a space about the size of the
Adam's apple, and we paddled across and around the
broad expanse below. Our birch bark was not fin-
ished and christened till we reached Moxie. The ce-
dar lining was completed at Pleasant Pond, where we
had the use of a bateau, but the rosin was not applied

A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 69

to the seams till we reached this lake. When 1 knelt
down in it for the first time and put its slender ma-
ple paddle into the water, it sprang away with Buch

quickness and speed that it disturbed me in m\
I had spurred a more restive and spirited Bteed than I
was used to. In fact, I had never been in a craft that
sustained so close a relation to my will, and was so
responsive to my slightest wish. When 1 caught i
first large trout from it, it sympathized a little t<>>.
closely, and my enthusiasm started a leak, which, how*
ever, with a live coal and a piece of rosin, was quickly
mended. You cannot perform much of a war-dance
in a birch-bark canoe: better wait till you get <;n dry
land. Yet as a boat it is not so shy and k* ticklish''
as I had imagined. One needs to be on the alert, as
becomes a sportsman and an angler, and in his deal-
ings with it must charge himself with three things, —
precision, moderation, and circumspection.

Trout weighing four and five pounds have been
taken at Moxie, but none of that size came to our hand.
I realized the fondest hopes I had dared to indulge in
when I hooked the first two-pounder of my life, and
my extreme solicitude lest he get away 1 trust was par-
donable. My friend, in relating the episode in cam]).
said I implored him to row me down in the middle of
the lake that T might have room to manoeuvre my fish
But the slander has barely a grain of truth in it. The
water near us showed several old stakes broken «>it
just below the surface, and my fish was determined to
wrap my leader about one of these stakes ; it was only
for the clear space a few yards farther out that I
prayed. It was not long after that my friend found
himself in an anxious frame of mind. He hooked a
iarge trout, which came home on him so suddenly that

64 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH.

he had not time to reel up his line, and in his extrem«
ity he stretched his tall form into the air and lifted
up his pole to an incredible neight. He checked the
trout before it got under the boat, but dared not come
down an inch, and then began his amusing further
elongation in reaching for his reel with one hand,
while he carried it ten feet into the air with the other*
A step-ladder would perhaps have been more welcome
to him just then than at any other moment during his
life. But the trout was saved, though my friend's but*
tons and suspenders suffered.

We learned a new trick in fly-fishing here, worth
disclosing. It was not one day in four that the trout
would take the fly on the surface. When the south
wind wras blowing and the clouds threatened rain, they
would at times, notably about three o'clock, rise hand-
somely. But on all other occasions it was rarely that
we could entice them up through the twelve or fifteen
feet of water. Earlier in the season they are not so
lazy and indifferent, but the August languor and
drowsiness were now upon them. So we learned by
a lucky accident to fish deep for them, even weighting
our leaders with a shot, and allowing the flies to sink
nearly to the bottom. After a moment's pause we
would draw them slowly up, and when half or two
thirds of the way to the top the trout would strikef
when the sport became lively enough. Most of our
fish were taken in this way. There is nothing like
the flash and the strike at the surface, and perhaps
only the need of food will ever tempt the genuine
angler into any more prosaic style of fishing ; but if
you must go below the surface, a shotted leader is the
best thing to use.

Our camp-fire at night served more purposes than

A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH.

one, from its embers and flickering Bhadows, Uncle
Nathan read us many a tale of his life in the vrooda
They were the same old hunter's stories, except that
they evidently had the merit of being strictly i;
and hence were not very thrilling or marvelous. Qni
Nathan's tendency was rather to tone down and be
little his experiences than to exaggerate them. If he
ever bragged at all (and I suspeet he did just a little
when telling us how he outshot one of the fam«
riflemen of the American team, whom he was sruidinc
through these woods), he did it in such a sly, round-
about way that it was hard to catch him at it. His
passage with the rifleman referred to shows the dif-
ference between the practical off-hand skill of the
hunter in the woods and the science of the long-range
target hitter. Mr. Bull's Eye had heard that his guide
was a capital shot and had seen some proof of it, and
hence could not rest till he had had a trial of skill w ith
him. Uncle Nathan, being the challenged party, had
the right to name the distance and the conditions.
A piece of white paper the size of a silver dollar was
put upon a tree twelve rods off, the contestants to fire
three shots each off-hand. Uncle Nathan's first bullet
barely missed the mark, but the other two were plan:
well into it. Then the great rifleman took his turn, and
EJiissed every time.

"By hemp!" said Uncle Nathan, " I was Borrj I

shot so well, Mr. took it so to heart ; and I had

used his own rifle, too. He did not get over it for a
week."

But far more ignominious was the failure oi Mr.
Bull's Eye when he saw his first bear. They w<
paddling slowly and silently down Dead River, when
fche guide heard a slight noise in the bushes just be*

56 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH.

hind a little bend. He whispered to the rifleman, who
sat kneeling in the bow of the boat, to take his rifle.
Bat instead of doing so he picked up his two-barreled
shot-gun. As they turned the point, there stood a
bear not twenty yards away, drinking from the stream.
Cncle Nathan held the canoe, while the man who bad
eome so far in quest of this ver}r game was trying to
Bay lown his shot-gun and pick up his rifle. "His
hand moved like the hand of a clock,'' said Uncle
Nathan, u and I could hardly keep my seat. I knew
the bear would see us in a moment more, and run."
Instead of laying his gun by his side, where it be-
longed, he reached it across in front of him and laid
it upon his rifle, and in trying to get the latter from
under it a noise was made ; the bear heard it and
raised his head. Still there was time, for as the bear
sprang into the woods he stopped and looked back, —
" as I knew he would," said the guide ; yet the marks-
man was not ready. " By hemp ! I could have shot
three bears," exclaimed Uncle Nathan, " while he was
getting that rifle to his face ! '

Poor Mr. Bull's Eye was deeply humiliated. " Just
the chance 1 had been looking for," he said, "and my
wits suddenly left me."

As a hunter Uncle Nathan always took the game
on its own terms, that of still-hunting. He even shot
foxes in this way, going into the fields in the fall just
at break of day, and watching for them about their
mousing haunts. One morning, by these tactics, he
shot a black fox ; a fine specimen, he said, and a wild
one, for he stopped and looked and listened every few
yards.

He had killed over two hundred moose, a large
nuicber of them at night on the lakes. His method

A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. "»7

was to go out in his canoe and conceal himself l»y
some point or island, and wait till he heard the game.
In the fall the moose comes into the water to eat the

large fibrous roots of the poml-lili. He Bpla&fa
along till he finds a suitable spot, when he begins feed-
ing, sometimes thrusting his head and neck Beveral
feet under water. The hunter listens, and when the
imoose lifts his head and the rills of water run from
it, and he hears him " swash " the lily roots about to
get off the mud, it is his time to start. Silently a
shadow he creeps up on the moose, who by the way,
it seems, never expects the approach of danger from
the water side. If the hunter accidentally make
noise the moose looks toward the shore for it. Th
is always a slight gleam on the water, Uncle Nathan
says, even in the darkest night, and the dusky form
of the moose can be distinctly seen upon it. When
the hunter sees this darker shadow he lifts his <rnn to
the sky and gets the range of its barrels, then lowers
it till it covers the mark, and fires.

The largest moose Uncle Nathan ever killed is
mounted in the State House at Augusta. lie shot
him while hunting in winter on snow -shot- The
moose was reposing upon the ground, with his h
stretched out in front of him, as one may some*!
see a cow resting. The position was such that
a quartering shot through the animal's hip could reach
its heart. Studying the problem carefully, and taki
his own time, the hunter fired. The moose Bprang
into the air, turned, and came with tremendous Btri<
straight toward him. "I knew he had not seen <»r
scented me," said Uncle Nathan, "but, by hemp, I
wished myself somewhere else just then; for I \
lying right down in his path." But the noble a.m.

58 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH.

stopped a few yards short, and fell dead with a bullet«
bole through his heart.

When the moose yard in the winter, that is, restrict
their wanderings to a well-defined section of the forest
or mountain, trampling down the snow and beating
paths in all directions, they browse off only the most
dainty morsels first ; when they go over the ground s-
'second time they crop a little cleaner ; the third time
they sort still closer, till by and by nothing is left*
Spruce, hemlock, poplar, the barks of various ^rres,
everything within reach, is cropped close. When the
hunter comes upon one of these yards the problem for
him to settle is, Where are the moose ? for it is abso-
lutely necessary that he keep on the lee side of them.
So he considers the lay of the land, the direction of
the wind, the time of day, the depth of the snow, ex-
amines the spoor, the cropped twigs, and studies every
hint and clew like a detective. Uncle Nathan said he
could not explain to another how lie did it, but he
could usually tell in a few minutes in what direction
to look for the game. His experience had ripened
into a kind of intuition or winged reasoning that was
above rules.

He said that most large game, deer, caribou, moosef
bear, when started by the hunter and not mucfo
scared, were sure to stop and look back before disap*
pearing from sight : he usually waited for this last
and best chance to fire. He told us of a huge bear
he had seen one morning while still-hunting foxes in
the fields ; the bear saw him, and got into the woods
before he could-get a good shot. In her course some
distance up the mountain was a bald, open spot, and
he felt sure when she crossed this spot she would
pause and look behind her ; and sure enough, like

A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH,

Lot's wife, her curiosity got the better of hei j
stopped to have a final look, and her travek em
there and then.

Uncle Nathan had trapped and shot a gr< at main
bears, and some of his experiences revealed an un
usual degree of sagacity in this animal. One April
when the weather began to get warm and thaw., an
old bear left her den in the rocks and built a lai
warm nest of grass, leaves, and the bark of the white
cedar, under a tall balsam fir that stood in a low,
sunny, open place amid the mountains. Hither
conducted her two cubs, and the family began life in
what might be called their spring residence. The
tree above them was for shelter, and for refuge
the cubs in case danger approached, as it soon did in
the form of Uncle Nathan. He happened that way
soon after the bear had moved. Seeing her track in
the snow, lie concluded to follow it. When the bear
had passed, the snow had been soft and sposhy, and
she had u slumped," he said, several inches. It was
now hard and slippery. As he neared the tree
track turned and doubled, and tacked this way and
that, and led through the worst brush and brambl
tr» be found. This was a shrewd thought of the old
bear; she could thus hear her enemy coming a long
time before he drew very near. When Uncle Nathan
finally reached the nest, he found it empty, but still
'warm. Then he began to circle about and look fol
the bear's footprints or nail-prints upon the frozen
snow. Not finding them the first time, he took B
larger circle, then a still larger; finally he mad. a
long detour, and spent nearly an hour searching lot
some clew to the direction the bear had taken, but all
to no purpose. Then he returned to the tree and

60 A TASTE OF MAINE BiRCll.

scrutinized it. The foliage was very dense, but pres*
ently lie made out one of the cubs near the top, stand*
ing up amid the branches, and peering down at him.
This he killed. Further search only revealed a mast
of foliage apparently more dense than usual, but a
bullet sent into it was followed by loud whimpering
and crying, and the other baby bear came tumbling
down. In leaving the place, greatly puzzled as to
what had become of the mother bear, Uncle Nathan
followed another of her frozen tracks, and after about
a quarter of a mile saw beside it, upon the snow, the
fresh trail he had been in search of. In making her
escape the bear had stepped exactly in her old tracks
that were hard and icy, and had thus left no mark tilj
she took to the snow again.

During his trapping expeditions into the woods in
midwinter, I was curious to know how Uncle Nathan
passed the nights, as we were twice pinched with the
cold at that season in our tent and blankets. It was
no trouble to keep warm, he said, in the coldest
weather. As night approached, he would select a
place for his camp on the side of a hill. With one of
his snow-shoes he would shovel out the snow till the
ground was reached, carrying the snow out in front,
as we scrape the earth out of the side of a hill to level
up a place for the house and yard. On this level
place, which, however, was made to incline slightly
toward the hill, his bed of boughs was made. On the
ground he had uncovered he built his fire. His bed
was thus on a level with the fire, and the heat could
not thaw the snow under him and let him down, or
the beaming logs roll upon him. With a steep ascent
behind it the fire burned better, and the wind was not
ho ai>t to drive the smoke and blaze in upon him.

A TASTE OF MAIM: BIRCB. «1

Then, with the long, curving branches of the spruce

stuck thickly around three sides of thb bed, and curv-
ing over and uniting their tops above it, a shelter \
formed that would keep out the cold and th<
and that would catch and retain the warmth of the tin-
Rolled in his blanket in such a nest, Uncle Nathan
aad passed hundreds of the most frigid winter Bights

One day we made an excursion of three miles
through the woods to Bald Mountain, following a dim
trail. We saw, as we filed silently along, plenty of
signs of caribou, deer, and bear, but were not bless
with a sio-ht of either of the animals themselv<
noticed that Uncle Nathan, in looking through the
woods, did not hold his head as we did, but thrust it
slightly forward, and peered under the branches like
a deer or other wild creature.

The summit of Bald Mountain was the most im-
pressive mountain-top I had ever seen, mainly, ] i r-
naps, because it was one enormous crown of nearly
naked granite. The rock had that gray, elemental,
eternal look which granite alone has. One seemed i
be face to face with the gods of the fore-world. Like
an atom, like a breath of to-day, we were suddenly
confronted by abysmal geologic time, — the eternil
past and the eternities to come. The enormous cleav-
age of the rocks, the appalling cracks and fissun s, the
rent bowlders, the smitten granite floors, gave one c
new sense of the power of heat and frost. En one
place we noticed several deep parallel grooves, made
by the old glaciers. In the depressions on the sum-
mit there was a hard, black, peaty-like soil that loo.
indescribably ancient and unfamiliar. Out of I
mould, that might have come from the moon or the
interplanetary spaces, were growing mountain craft-

62 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH.

berries and blueberries or huckleberries. We were
soon so absorbed in gathering the latter that we were
quite oblivious of the grandeurs about us. It is these
blueberries that attract the bears. In eating them,
Uncle Nathan said, they take the bushes in their
mouths, and by an upward movement strip them clean
of both leaves and berries. We were constantly on
the lookout for the bears, but failed to see any. Yei
a few days afterward, when two of our party returned
here and encamped upon the mountain, they saw five
during their stay, but failed to get a good shot. The
rifle was in the wrong place each time. The man
with the shot-gun saw an old bear and two cubs lift
themselves from behind a rock and twist their noses
around for his scent, and then shrink away. They
were too far off for his buckshot. I must not forget
the superb view that lay before us, a wilderness of
woods and waters stretching away to the horizon on
every hand. Nearly a dozen lakes and ponds could
be seen, and in a clearer atmosphere the foot of Moose-
head Lake would have been visible. The highest and
most striking mountain to be seen was Mount Bige-
low, rising dbove Dead River, far to the west, and its
two sharp peaks notching the horizon like enormous
saw-teeth. We walked around and viewed curiously
a huge bowlder on the top of the mountain that had
1 been split in two vertically, and one of the halves
moved a few feet out of its bed. It looked recent
and familiar, but suggested gods instead of men. The
force that moved the rock had plainly come from the
north. I thought of a similar bowlder I had seen not
long before on the highest point of the Shawangunk
Mountains, in New York, one side of which is propped
up with a large stone, as wall-builders prop up a rock

A TASTE OF MAINE BlkCH. 68

to wrap a chain around it. The rock Beemfl poised
lightly, and has but a few points of bearin In this
instance, too, the power had come from the north.

The prettiest botanical specimen my trip yielded
was a little plant that bears the ugly name of horn
bladderwort (Utricular la cornuta), and which 1
found growing in marshy places along the shores of
Moxie Lake. It has a slender, naked stem nearly a

■

foot high, crowned by two or more large deep yellt
flowers, — flowers the shape of little bonnets or hood .
One almost expected to see tiny faces looking out of
them. This illusion is heightened by the horn or Bpur
of the flower, which projects from the hood like a long
tapering chin, — some masker's device. Then the
cape behind, — what a smart upward curve it 1
as if spurned by the fairy shoulders it was meant to
cover ! But perhaps the most notable thing about the
flower was its fragrance, — the richest and str<
perfume I have ever found in a wild flower. This
our botanist, Gray, does not mention, as if one should
describe the lark and forget its song. 1 he fragrance
suggested that 'of white clover, but was more raid; and
spicy.

The woods about Moxie Lake were literally ear
ed with Linncea. I had never seen it in such profu-
sion. In early summer, the period of its bloom.
a charming spectacle the mossy floors of these n m
woods must present! The flowers are purple
color, nodding and fragrant. Another very abundant
plant in these woods was the Clintonia borea
Uncle Nathan said it was called " bear's com." though
he did not know why. The only noticeable flower by
the Maine roadsides at this season that is nol ooran
in other parts of the country is the harebell. Us

64 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH.

brigLt blue, bell-shaped corolla shone out from amid
the dry grass and weeds all along the route. It was
one of the most delicate roadside flowers I had ever
seen.

The only new bird I saw in Maine was the pileated
woodpecker, or black " log cock, '; called by Uncle
Nathan " wood cock." 1 had never before seen or
heard this bird, and its loud cackle in the woods about
Moxie was a new sound to me. It is the wildest and
largest of our northern woodpeckers, and the rarest.,
Its voice and the sound of its hammer are heard only
in the depths of the northern woods. It is about as
large as a crow, and nearly as black.

We stayed a week at Moxie, or until we became
surfeited with its trout, and had killed the last Mer-
ganser duck that lingered about our end of the lake.
The trout that had accumulated on our hands we had
kept alive in a large champagne basket submerged in
the lake, and the morning we broke camp the basket
was towed to the shore and opened ; and after we had
feasted our eyes upon the superb spectacle, every
&rout, twelve or fifteen in number, some of them two*
pounders, was allowed to swim back into the lake0
They went leisurely, in couples and in trios, and were
soon kicking up their heels in their old haunts. I ex-
pect that the divinity who presides over Moxie will
see to it that every one of those trout, doubled SID
weight, comes to our basket in the future.

WINTER NEIGHBORS.

country is more of a wilderness, more of a
wild solitude, in the winter than in the Bummer. l
wild comes out. The urban, the cultivated, is hidden
or negatived. You shall hardly know a good field
from a poor, a meadow from a pasture, a park from a
forest. Lines and boundaries are disregarded ; eral
and, bar-ways are unclosed ; man lets go his hold upon
the earth ; title-deeds are deep buried beneath the
snow; the best-kept grounds relapse to a state of
nature; under the pressure of the cold all the wild
creatures become outlaws, and roam abroad beyond
their usual haunts. The partridge comes to the or
chard for buds; the rabbit comes to the garden and
lawn; the crows and jays come to the ash-heap and
corn-crib, the snow-buntings to the stack and to the
barn-yard; tne sparrows pilfer from the domestic
fowJs; the pine grosbeak conies down from the north
and shears your maples of their buds ; the fox prowla
about your premises at night, and the fed squirrels
find your grain in the barn or steal the butternut
from your attic. In fact, winter, like some great 08
lami.ty, changes the status of most creatures and Bets
them adrift. Winter, like poverty, makes us ac-
quainted with strange bed fed lows.

For my part, my nearest approach to a Btrange bed
fellow is the little gray rabbit that has taken up bei
abede und-, my study floor. As she spends tk

66 WINTER NEIGHBORS.

here and is out larking at night, she is not much of a
bedfellow after all. It is probable that I disturb her
slumbers more than she does mine. I think she is
some support to me under there — a silent wild-eyed
witness and backer ; a type of the gentle and harm*
less in savage nature. She has no sagacity to give me
or- lend me, but that soft, nimble foot of hers, anc|
that touch as of cotton wherever she goes, are worthy
of emulation. I think I can feel her good-will through
the floor, and I hope she can mine. When I have 3
happy thought I imagine her ears twitch, especially
when I think of the sweet apple I will place by hei
doorway at night. I wonder if that fox chanced
to catch a glimpse of her the other night when he
stealthily leaped over the fence near by and walked
along between the study and the house? How clearly
one could read that it was not a little dog that had
passed there. There was something furtive in the
track ; it shied off away from the house and around it,
as if eying it suspiciously ; and then it had the caution
and deliberation of the fox — bold, bold, but not too
bold ; wariness was in every footprint. If it had been
a little dog that had chanced to wander that way,
when he crossed my path lie would have followed it
up to the barn and have gone smelling around fop
a bone ; but this sharp, cautious track held straight
across all others, keeping five or six rods from the
house, up the hill, across the highway towards a
neighboring farmstead, with its nose in the air and it?
eye and ear alert, so to speak.

A winter neighbor of mine in whom 1 am inter-
ested, and who perhaps lends me his support after his
kind, is a little red owl, whose retreat is in the heart
\o£ an old apple-tree just over the fence. Where he

WINTER NEIGHBORS 67

keeps himself in spring and summei T do not fa ow,

but late every fall, aiul at intervals all winter, his
hiding-place is discovered by the jays and Qut-hatch
and proclaimed from the tree-tops for the B] of

half an hour or so, with all the powers of voir,
can command. Four times during one wintei they
called me out to behold this little ogre feigning Bleep
in Ms den, sometimes in one apple-tree, sometim >,a in
another, j Whenever I heard their cries, I knew my
neighbor was being berated. The birds would take
turns at looking in upon him and uttering their alarm*
notes. Every jay within hearing would coin.- to the
spot and at once approach the hole in the trunk 01
limb, and with a kind of breathless eagerness and
citement take a peep at the owl, and then join the
outcry. When I approached they would hastily take
a final look and then withdraw and regard mv m<
merits intently. After accustoming my eye to the
faint light of the cavity for a few moments, I could
usually make out the owl at the bottom feigning Bleep.
Feigning, I say, because this is what he really did, as
I first discovered one day when I cut into his retreat
with the axe. The loud blows and the falling chips
did not disturb him at all. When I reached in
stick and pulled him over on his side, leaving one of
his wings spread out, he made no attempt to re
himself, but lay among the chips and fragments oi
decayed wood, like a part of themselvi [ndeed, it
took a sharp eye to distinguish him. Nor till J :
pulled him forth by one wing, rather rudelj
abandon his trick of simulated sleep or death. Then
like a detected pickpocket, he was suddenly
formed into another creature. His eyes flew wi
apen, his talons clutched my finger, hi ears were de-

68 WINTER NEIGHBORS.

pressed, and every motion and look said, '" Hands off,
at your peril." Finding this game did not work, he
soon began to " play 'possum " again. I put a cover
over my study wood-box and kept him captive for a
week. Look in upon him any time, night or day, and
lie was apparently wrapped in the profoundest slum-
ber ; but the live mice which I put into his box from
time to time found his sleep was easily broken ; there
would be a sudden rustle in the box, a faint squeak,
and then silence. After a week of captivity I gave
him his freedom in the full sunshine : no trouble iot
him to see which way and where to go.

Just at dusk in the winter nights, I often hear hid
soft bur-r-r-r, very pleasing and bell-like. What a
furtive, woody sound it is in the winter stillness, so
Unlike the harsh scream of the hawk. But all the
ways of the owl are ways of softness and duskiness.
His wings are shod with silence, his plumage is edged

vwith down.

J\ Another owl neighbor of mine, with whom I pass
the time of day more frequently than with the last,
lives farther away. I pass his castle every night on
my way to the post-office, and in winter, if the hour
is late enough, am pretty sure to see him standing in
his doorway, surveying the passers-by and the land-
scape through narrow slits in his eyes. For four suc-
cessive winters now have I observed him. As the
twilight begins to deepen he rises out of his cavity
in the apple-tree, scarcely faster than the moon rises
from behind the hill, and sits in the opening, com-
pletely framed by its outlines of gray bark and dead
vood, and by his protective coloring virtually invisible
to every eye that does not know he is there. Prob'
ably my own is the only eye that has ever penetrated

WINTER NEIGHBORS.

his secret, and mine never would have done; bo had I
not chanced on one occasion to Bee him leave hia re-
treat and make a raid upon a shrike that was impal-
ing a shrew-mouse upon a thorn in a neighboring ti
and which J was watching. Failing to get the moo
the owl returned swiftly to his cavity, and ever Bince,
while going that way, I have been on the lookout for
b.im. Dozens of teams and foot-passengers pass him
late in the day, but he regards them not, nor they
him. When I come alone and pause to salute him,
he opens his eyes a little wider, and, appearing to
recognize me, quickly shrinks and fades into the back-
ground of his door in a very weird and curious
manner. When he is not at his outlook, or when ho
is, it requires the best powers of the eye to decide the
point, as the empty cavity itself is almost an exact
image of him. If the whole thing had been carefully
studied it could not have answered its purpose better.
The owl stands quite perpendicular, presenting a front
of light mottled gray; the eyes are closed to a mere
slit, the ear-feathers depressed, the beak buried in the
plumage, and the whole attitude is one of silent,
motionless waiting and observation. If a 11101:
should be seen crossing the highway, or scudding over
any exposed part of the snowy surface in the twilig
the owl would doubtless r:\voop down upon it. 1
think the owl has learned to distinguish me from tin
rest of the passers-by; at least, when I stop before
him, and he sees himself observed, he backs down into
his den, as I have said, in a very amusing manner.
Whether bluebirds, nut-hatches, and chickadees —
birds that pass the night in cavities of trees — ever
run into the clutches of: the dozing owl, I should bo
glad to know. My impression is, however, that they

70 WINTER NEIGHBORS.

seek out smaller cavities. An old willow by the roact
side blew down one summer, and a decayed branch
broke open, revealing a brood of half-fledged owls,
and many feathers and quills of bluebirds, orioles, and
other songsters, showing plainly enough why all birds
lear and berate the owl.

The English house sparrows, that are so rapidlj
Increasing among us, and that must add greatly to the
food supply of the owls and other birds of prey, seek
to baffle their enemies by roosting in the densest ever-
greens they can find, in the arbor- vitae, and in hem-
lock hedges. Soft-winged as the owl is, he cannot
steal in upon such a retreat without giving them
warning.

These sparrows are becoming about the most no-
ticeable of my winter neighbors, and a troop of them
every morning watch me put out the hens' feed, and
soon claim their share. I rather encouraged them in
their neighborliness, till one day I discovered the snow
under a favorite plum-tree where they most frequently
perched covered with the scales of the fruit-buds. On
investigating I found that the tree had been nearly
stripped of its buds — a very unneighborly act on the
part of the sparrows, considering, too, all the cracked
corn I had scattered for them. So I at once served
notice on them that our good understanding was at
an end. And a hint is as good as a kick with this
brid. The stone I hurled among them, and the one
with which I followed them up, may have been taken
as a kick ; but they were only a hint of the shot-gun
that stood ready in the corner. The sparrowrs left in
high dudgeon, and were not back again in some days,
and were then very shy. No doubt the time is near
at iaand when we shall have to wage serious war upoa

WINTER NEIGHBORS. 71

these sparrows, as they long have had to do on I
continent of Europe. And yet it will be hard to K
the little wretches, the only Old World bird we ha
When I take down my gun to shoot them I shall prob-
ably remember that the Psalmist said, k* 1 watch, ai
am as a sparrow alone upon the house-top," and mai
be the recollection will cause me to stay my Iran..
The sparrows have the Old World hardiness and pr<
lificness; they are wise and tenacious of life, and
shall find it by and by no small matter to keep them
in check. Our native birds are much different, !
prolific, less shrewd, less aggressive and persistent,
less quick-witted and able to read the note of danger
or hostility, — in short, less sophisticated. Most of
our birds are yet essentially wild, that is, little chang
by civilization. In winter, especially, they sweep by
me and around me in flocks, — the Canada Bparrow,
the snow-bunting, the shore-laik, the pine grosbeak.
the red-poll, the cedar-bird, — feeding upon fros
apples in the orchard, upon cedar-berries, npon ma-
ple-buds, and the berries of the mountain ash, and
the celtis, and upon the seeds of the weeds thai l
above the snow in the field, or upon the ha\ »
dropped where the cattle have been foddered in the
barn-yard or about the distant stack; but yet tak.
no heed cf man, in no way changing their habit-
as to take advantage of his presence in nature The
pine grosbeak will come in numbers upon your porch
to get the black drupes of the honeysuckle or I
woodbine, or within reach of your windows the

berries of the mountain-ash, but they know you D
they look at you as innocently and unconcernedly
at a bear or moose in their native north, and ^>ur
house is no more to them than a ledge of rocks.

72 WINTER NEIGHBORS.

The only ones of my winter neighbors that actually
rap at my door are the nut-hatches and woodpeckers,
and these do not know that it is my door. My retreat
is covered with the bark of young chestnut-trees, and
the birds, I suspect, mistake it for a huge stump that
ought to hold fat grubs (there is not even a book-
worm inside of it), and their loud rapping ofter.
makes me think I have a caller indeed. I place frag-
ments of hickory-nuts in the interstices of the bark,
and thus attract the nut-hatches ; a bone upon my
window-sill attracts both nut-hatches and the downy
woodpecker. They peep in curiously through the
window upon me, pecking away at my bone, too often
a very poor one. A bone nailed to a tree a few feet
in front of the window attracts crows as well as lesser
birds. Even the slate-colored snow-bird, a seed-eater,
comes and nibbles it occasionally.

The bird that seems to consider he has the best
right to the bone both upon the tree and upon the sill
is the downy woodpecker, my favorite neighbor among
the winter birds, to whom I will mainly devote the
remainder of this chapter. His retreat is but a few
paces from my own, in the decayed limb of an apple-
tree which he excavated several autumns ago. I say
" he ':* because the red plume on the top of his head
proclaims the sex. It seems not to be generally known
to our writers upon ornithology that certain of out
woodpeckers — probably all the winter residents —
each fall excavate a limb or the trunk of a tree in which
to pass the winter, and that the cavity is abandoned
in the spring, probably for a new one in which nidifi-
cation takes place. So far as I have observed, these
cavities are drilled out only by the males. Where the
females take up their quarters I am not so well ii>

WINTER NEIGHBORS. 73

formed, though I suspect that they use the abandoned
holes of the males of the previous year.

The particular woodpecker to which I refer drilled
his first hole in my apple-tree one fall four or live
years ago. This he occupied till the folio win- 9] mig,
when he abandoued it. The next fall he began a b
in an adjoining limb, later than before, and when it
was about half completed a female took possession of
his old quarters. I am sorry to say that this seen
to enrage the male very much, and he persecuted the
poor bird whenever she appeared upon the scene, i Ie
would fly at her spitefully and drive her off. One
chilly November morning, as I passed under the tree,
I heard the hammer of the little architect in his cav-
ity, and at the same time saw the persecuted female
sitting at the entrance of the other hole as if she would
fain come out. She was actually shivering, probably
from both fear and cold. I understood the situation
at a glance; the bird was afraid to come forth and
brave the anger of the male. Not till I had rapped
smartly upon the limb with my stick did she wine
out and attempt to escape; but she had not gone too
feet from the tree before the male was in hot pur-
suit, and in a few moments had driven her back to
the same tree, where she tried to avoid him among
the branches. A few days after, he rid himself of
his unwelcome neighbor in the following ingenious
manner : he fairly scuttled the other cavity ; he drilled
a hole into the bottom of it that let in the light and
the cold, and I saw the female there no more. I did
not see him in the act of rendering this tenement
uninhabitable; but one morning, behold it was punc-
tured at the bottom, and the circumstances all seemed
to point to him as the author of it. There is probably

74 WINTER NEIGHBORS.

no gallantry among the birds except at the mating
season. I have frequently seen the male woodpecker
drive the female away from the bone upon the tree.
When she hopped around to the other end and timidly
, oibbled it, he would presently dart spitefully at her.
She would then take up her position in his rear and
wait till he had finished hii meal. The position of
the female amoDg the birds is very much the same as
that of woman among savage tribes. Most of the
drudgery of life falls upon her, and the leavings of
ihe males are often her lot.

My bird is a genuine little savage, doubtless, but I
value him as a neighbor. It is a satisfaction during
ihe cold or stormy winter nights to know he is warm
and cosy there in his retreat. AVhen the day is bad
and unfit to be abroad in, he is there too. When I
wish to know if he is at home, I go and rap upon his
tree, and, if he is not too lazy or indifferent, after
some delay he shows his head in his round doorway
about ten feet above, and looks down inquiringly upon
me — sometimes latterly I think half resentfully, as
much as to say, u I would thank you not to disturb me
so often." After sundown, he will not put his head
out any more when I call, but as I step away I can
get a glimpse of him inside looking cold and reserved;
He is a late riser, especially if it is a cold or disagree-
able morning, in this respect being like the barn fowls ;
it is sometimes near nine o'clock before I sec him
leave his tree. On the other hand, he comes home
early, being in if the day is unpleasant hy four p. m.
He lives all alone ; in this respect I do not commend
his example. Where his mate is I should like to
know.

I have discovered several other woodpeckers in aA

WINTER NEIGHBORS. ft

joining orchards, each of which has a like home and
leads a like solitary life. One of them has excavat I
a dry limb within easy reach of my hand, doing the
work also in September. But the choice of tree
not a good one ; the limb was too much de
one workman had made the cavity too large; :. chip
had come out, making a hole in the outer wall.
he went a few inches down the limb and began again*
and excavated a large, commodious chamber, but had
again come too near the surface : scarcely more than
the bark protected him in one place, and the limb \
very much weakened. Then he made another attempt
still farther down the limb, and drilled in an inch
or two, but seemed, to change his mind; the work
stopped, and I concluded the bird had wisely aban-
doned the tree. Passing there one cold, rainy Novem-
ber day, I thrust in my two fingers and was surprised
to feel something soft and warm : as I drew away my
hand the bird came out, apparently no more surprised
than I was. It had decided, then, to make its home
in the old limb; a decision it had occasion to regret,
for not long after, on a stormy night, the branch gave
way and fell to the ground.

" When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
And down will conie baby, cradle and all."

Such a cavity makes a snug, warm home, and H hen

the entrance is on the under side of the limb, a&
usual, the wind and snow cannot reach the occupant
Late in December, while crossing a high, wood
nountain, lured by the music of fox-hounds. 1 «
covered fresh yellow chips strewing the new-fallen
snow, and at once though1-, of my woodpeckers. 1 »:i
booking around I saw where one had been ai work
excavating a lodge in a small yellow birch. Die ori

76 WINTER NEIGHBORS.

fice was about fifteen feet from the ground, and ap.
peared as round as if struck with a compass. It was
on the east side of the tree, so as to avoid the prevail-
ing west and northwest winds. As it was nearly two
inches in diameter, it could not have been the work of
the downy, but must have been that of the hairy, or
else the yellow-bellied woodpecker. His home had
(probably been wrecked by some violent wind, and he
was thus providing himself another. In digging out
these retreats the woodpeckers prefer a dry, brittle
trunk, not too soft. They go in horizontally to the
centre and then turn downward, enlarging the tunnel
as they go, till when finished it is the shape of a long,
deep pear.

Another trait our woodpeckers have that endears
them to me, and that has never been pointedly noticed
by our ornithologists, is their habit of drumming in
the spring. They are songless birds, and yet all are
musicians ; they make the dry limbs eloquent of the
coming change. Did you think that loud, sonorous
hammering which proceeded from the orchard or from
the near woods on that still March or April morning
was only some bird getting its breakfast ? It is downy,
but he is not rapping at the door of a grub ; he is rap.
ping at the door of spring, and the dry limb thrills
beneath the ardor of his blows. Or, later in the sea=
son, in the dense forest or by some remote mountain
lake, does that measured rhythmic beat that breaks
upon the silence, first three strokes following each
other rapidly, succeeded by two louder ones with longer
intervals between them, and that has an effect upon
the alert ear as if the solitude itself had at last found a
voice — does that suggest anything less than a delib-
erate musical performance ? In fact, our woodpecker

WINTER NEIGHBORS. 77

are just as characteristically drummers as is the ruffed
grouse, and they have their particular limbs and st
to which they resort for that purpose. Their need
axpression is apparently just as great as that 6f
song-birds, and it is not surprising that tins should
taave found out that there is music in a dry, reasoned
^imb which can be evoked beneath their beaks.

A few seasons ago a downy woodpecker, probably
the individual one who is now my winter neighbor
oegan to drum early in March in a partly decayed
apple-tree that stands in the edge of a narrow strip of
woodland near me. When the morning was still and
mild I would often hear him through my window be-
fore I was up, or by half-past six o'clock, and he
would keep it up pretty briskly till nine or ten o'clock,
in this respect resembling the grouse, which do most
of their drumming in the forenoon. His drum was
the stub of a dry limb about the size of one's wrist.
The heart was decayed and gone, but the outer shell
was hard and resonant. The bird would keep his po-
sition there for an hour at a time. Between his drum-
mings he would preen his plumage and listen as if for
fche response of the female, or for the drum of some
rival. How swift his head would go when he was
delivering his blows upon the limb! His beak wore
the surface perceptibly. When he wished to chang
the key, which was quite often, he would shift his
position an inch or two to a knot which gave out a
higher, shriller note. When I climbed up to examine
his drum he was much disturbed. I did not know ho
was in the vicinity, but it seems he saw me from a
near tree, and came in haste to the neighboring
branches, and with spread plumage and a sharp note
demanded plainly enough what my business was w ith

Tb WINTER NEIGHBORS.

his drum. I was invading his privacy, desecrating
his shrine, and the bird was much put out. After
some weeks the female appeared ; he had literally
drummed up a mate ; his urgent and oft-repeated ad-
vertisement was answered. Still the drumming die)
not cease, but was quite as fervent as before. If a
mate could be won by drumming she could be kept
and entertained by more drumming ; courtship should
not end with marriage. If the bird felt musical be
fore, of course he felt much more so now. Besides
that, the gentle deities needed propitiating in behalf
of the nest and young as well as in behalf of the mate.
After a time a second female came, when there was
war between the two. I did not see them come to
blows, but I saw one female pursuing the other about
the place, and giving her no rest for several days.
She was evidently trying to run her out of the neigh-
borhood. Now and then she, too, would drum briefly,
as if sending a triumphant message to her mate.

The woodpeckers do not each have a particular dry
limb to which they resort at all times to drum, like
the one I have described. The woods are full of
suitable branches, and thev drum more or less here
and there as they are in quest of food ; yet I am con-
vinced each one has its favorite spot, like the grouse,
to which it resorts, especially in the morning. The
sugar-maker in the maple-woods may notice that this
sound proceeds from the same tree or trees about his
camp with great regularity. A woodpecker in my vi-
cinity has drummed for two seasons on a telegraph-
pole, and he makes the wires and glass insulators ring
Another drums on a thin board on the end of a long
grape-arbor, and on still mornings can be heard o
long distance.

WINTER NEIGHBORS. 79

A friend of mine in a Southern city tells me «•. :
yed-headed woodpecker that drums upon a lightnii
rod on his neighbor's house. Nearly every cleai
morning at certain seasons, he says, this musical r
ping may be heard. " He alternates his tapping
his stridulous call, and the effect on a cool, aul
like morning is very pleasing."

The high-hole appears to drum more promiscuously
than does the downy. He utters his long, loud Bpri
call, which — which — which — which, and then '"•
gins to rap with his beak upon his perch before the
\ast note has reached your ear. I have Been him
drum sitting upon the ridge of the barn. The Log
cock, or pileated woodpecker, the largest and wildest
of our Northern species, I have never heard drum.
His blows should wake the echoes.

When the woodpecker is searching for food, or lay-
ing siege to some hidden grub, the sound of his ham-
mer is dead or muffled, and is heard but a few yards.
It is only upon dry, seasoned timber, freed of its hark,
that he beats his reveille to spring and wooes his
mate.

Wilson was evidently familiar with this vernal
drumming of the woodpeckers, but quite misinterpi
it. Speaking of the red-bellied species, he says: ■
rattles like the rest of the tribe on the dead lin.
and with such violence as to be heard in still weal
more than half a mile off; and listens t«. hear ih<
sect it has alarmed." He listens rather to hear the
drum of his rival or the brief and coy response of the
female; for there are no insects in these dry limbs.

On one occasion I saw downy at his drum when a
female flew quickly through the tree and alighted a
tew yards beyond him. He paused instantly, and

30 WINTER NEIGHBORS.

kept hia place, apparently without moving a muscle.
The female, I took it, had answered his advertisement.
She flitted about from limb to limb (the female may
be known by the absence of the crimson spot on the
back of the head), apparently full of business of her
own, and now and then wrould drum in a shy, tenta-
tive manner. The male watched her a few mo-
ments, and, conTinced perhaps that she meant busi=
ness, struck up his liveliest tune, then listened for her
response. As it came back timidly but promptly, he
left his perch and sought a nearer acquaintance with
the prudent female. Whether or not a match grew
out of this little flirtation I cannot sav.

Our smaller woodpeckers are sometimes accused of
injuring the apple and other fruit trees, but the depre-
dator is probably the larger and rarer yellow-bellied
species. One autumn I caught one of these fellows in
the act of sinking long rows of his little wells in the
limb of an apple-tree. There were series of rings of
them, one above another, quite around the stem, some
of them the third of an inch across. They are evi-
dently made to get at the tender, juicy bark, or cam-
bium layer, next to the hard wood of the tree. The
health and vitality of the branch are so seriously im-
paired by them that it often dies.

In the following winter the same bird (probably}
tapped a maple-tree in front of my window in fifty-sis.
places ; and when the day was sunny, and the sap
oozed out, he spent most of his time there. He knew
the good sap-days, and was on hand promptly for his
tipple ; cold and cloudy days he did not appear. He
knew which side of the tree to tap, too, and avoided
the sunless northern exposure. When one series of
well-holes failed to supply him, he would sink anotner,

WINTER NEIGHBORS. 81

drilling through the bark with great ease and quick
ness. Then, when the day was warm, and the Bap ran
freely, he would have a regular sugar-maple debauch,
sitting there by his wells hour after hour, and as fast
as they became filled sipping out the sap. This he
did in a gentle, caressing manner that was v» t\ e
gestive. He made a row of wells near the foot of the
tree, and other rows higher up, and he would hoi
up and down the trunk as these became filled. He
would hop down the tree backward with the utmost
ease, throwing his tail outward and his head inward at
each hop. When the wells would freeze or his thirst
become slaked, he would ruffle his feathers, draw him-
self together, and sit and doze in the sun on the side.-
of the tree. He passed the night in a hole in an
apple-tree not far off. He was evidently a young bird,
not yet having the plumage of the mature male or fe-
male, and yet he knew which tree to tap and where to
tap it. I saw where he had bored several maples in
the vicinity, but no oaks or chestnuts. I nailed op a
fat bone near his sap-works: the downy woodpecker
came there several times a day to dine; the nut-hated
came, and even the snow-bird took a taste occasion-
ally ; but this sap-sucker never touched it; the sweet
of the tree sufficed for him. This woodpecker does
not breed or abound in my vicinity; only stray speci*
mens are now and then to be met with in the c
months. As spring approached, the one I refer tc
took his departure.

I must bring my account of my neighbor in the tree
down to the latest date ; so after the lapse of a year I
add the following notes. The last day of February
was bright and springlike. I heard the first sparrow

82 WINTER NEIGHBORS.

sing that morning and the first screaming of the eii>
cling hawks, and about seven o'clock the first drui'
ming of my little friend. His first notes were uncer-
tain and at long intervals, but by and by he warmed
up and beat a lively tattoo. As the season advanced
foe ceased to lodge in his old quarters. I would rap
and find nobody at home. Was he out on a lark9 1
said, the spring fever working in his blood ? After a
time his drumming grew less frequent, and finally, in
the middle of April, ceased entirely. Had some acci-
dent befallen him, or had he wandered away to fresh
fields, following some siren of his species ? Probably
the latter. Another bird that I had under observa-
tion also left his winter-quarters in the spring. This,
then, appears to be the usual custom. The wrens and
the nut-hatches and chickadees succeed to these abaL.
doned cavities, and often have amusing disputes over
them. The nut-hatches frequently pass the night in
them, and the wrens and chickadees nest in them. I
have further observed that in excavating a cavity for
a nest the downy woodpecker makes the entrance
smaller than when he is excavating his winter-quar-
ters. This is doubtless for the greater safety of the
young birds.

The next fall, the downy excavated another limb in
the old apple-tree, but had not got his retreat quite
finished, when the large hairy woodpecker appeared
upon the scene. I heard his loud dick, click, early
one frosty November morning. There was something
impatient and angry in the tone that arrested my at-
tention. I saw the bird fly to the tree where downy
had been at work, and fall with great violence upon
the entrance to his cavity. The bark and the chips
flew beneath his vigorous blows, and before I fairly

»

WINTER NEIGHBORS. S3

woke up to what lie was doing, he had completelj de-
molished the neat, round doorway of downy. He 1
made a large ragged opening large enough for himself
to enter. I drove him away and my favorite came
back, but only to survey the ruins of his castle for a
moment and then go away. He lingered about for a
day or two and then disappeared. The big haiiy
usurper passed a night in the cavity, but on being hus-
tled out of it the next night by me, he also left, but
not till he had demolished the entrance to a cavity in
a neighboring tree where downy and his mate had
reared their brood that summer, and where I had
Sloped the female would pass the winter.

NOTES BY THE WAY.

I. THE WEATHER-WISE MUSKRAT.

I AM more than half persuaded that the muskrat
is a wise little animal, and that on the subject of the
weather, especially, he possesses some secret that 1
should be glad to know. In the fall of 1878 I noticed
that he built unusually high and massive nests. I
noticed them in several different localities. In a shal-
low, sluggish pond by the roadside, which I used to
pass daily in my walk, two nests were in process of
construction throughout the month of November. The
builders worked only at night, and I could see each
day that the work had visibly advanced. When there
was a slight skim of ice over the pond, this was broken
up about the nests, with trails through it in different
directions where the material had been brought. The
houses were placed a little to one side of the main
channel, and were constructed entirely of a species of
coarse wild grass that grew all about. So far as I
could see, from first to last they were solid masses
of grass, as if the interior cavity or nest was to be
excavated afterward, as doubtless it was. As they
emerged from the pond they gradually assumed the
shape of a miniature mountain, very bold and steep
on the south side, and running down a long gentle
grade to the surface of the water on the north. One
could see that the little architect hauled all his ma-
terial up this easy slope, and thrust it out boldly

THE WEATHER-WISE MUSKRAT.

ground the other side. Every mouthful was distinctly
defined. After they were two feet or more above tin-
water, I expected each day to see that the finishing
stroke had been given and the work brought to a
close. But higher yet, said the builder. December
drew near, the cold became threatening, and I was
apprehensive that win^r would suddenly shut down
lapon those unfinished nests. But the wise rats knew
better than I did ; they had received private advices
from headquarters that I knew not of. Finally, about
the 6th of December, the nests assumed completion;
the northern incline was absorbed or carried up, and
each structure became a strong massive cone, three or
four feet high, the largest nest of the kind I had evei
seen. Does it mean a severe winter ? I inquired, An
old farmer said it meant "high water," and he was
right once, at least, for in a few days afterward we
had the heaviest rainfall known in this section for
half a century. The creeks rose to an almost unprece-
dented height. The sluggish pond became a seething,
turbulent watercourse ; gradually the angry element
crept up the sides of these lake dwellings, till, when
the rain ceased, about four o'clock they showed above
the flood no larger than a man's hat. During the
night the channel shifted till the main current swept
over them, and next day not a vestige of the nests wac
to be seen; they had gone down-stream, as had many
other dwellings of a less temporary character. The
rats had built wisely, and would have been perfectly
secure against any ordinary high water, but who can
foresee a flood? The oldest traditions of their race
did not run back to the time of such a visitation.

Nearly a week afterward another dwelling f
begun, well away from the treacherous channel, but

86 NOTES BY THE WAY.

the architects did not work at it with much heart;
the material was very scarce, the ice hindered, and be-
fore the basement-story was fairly finished, winter had
the pond under his lock and key.

In other localities I noticed that where the nests
were placed on the banks of streams, they were made
secure against the floods by feeing built amid a small
©lump of bushes. When the fall of 1879 came, the
inuskrats were very tardy about beginning their house,
la}ring the corner-stone — or the corner-sod — about
December 1st, and continuing the work slowly and
indifferently. On the 15th of the month the nest was
not yet finished. This, I said, indicates a mild winter;
and, sure enough, the season was one of the mildest
known for many years. The rats had little use for
their house.

Again, in the fall of 1880, while the weather-wise
were wagging their heads, some forecasting a mild,
some a severe winter, I watched with interest for a
sign from my muskrats. About November 1st, a month
earlier than the previous year, they began their nest,
and worked at it with a will. They appeared to have
just got tidings of what was coming. If I had taken
the hint so palpably given, my celery would not have
been frozen in the ground, and my apples caught
in unprotected places. When the cold wave struck
us, about November 20th, my four-legged " I-told-you-
so's" had nearly completed their dwelling ; it lacked
only the ridge-board, so to speak ; it needed a little
"topping out," to give it a finished look. But this
it never got. The winter had come to stay, and il
waxed more and more severe, till the unprecedented
cold of the last days of December must have aston«
Sshed even the wise muskrats in their snug retreat

THE WEATHER-WISE MUSKRAT. 87

I approached their nest at this time, a white mound
upon the white, deeply frozen surface of the pond, and
wondered if there was any life in that apparent
ulchre. I thrust my walking- - stick sharply into it,
when there was a rustle and a splash into the wa
as the occupant made his escape. What a damp ba
tenent that house has, I thought, and what a pity tc
ijrout a peaceful neighbor out of his bed in this weather,
and into such a state of things as this ! But water docs
not wet the muskrat ; his fur is charmed, am1 not a
drop penetrates it. Where the ground is favoral
the muskrats do not build these mound-like nests, but
burrow into the hank a long distance, and establish
their winter-quarters there.

Shall we not say, then, in view of the above facts,
that this little creature is weather-wise ? The hitting
of the mark twice might be mere good luck ; but three
bull's-eyes in succession is not a mere coincidence ; it
is a proof of skill. The muskrat is not found in the
Old World, which is a little singular, as other rats so
abound there, and as those slow-going English streams
especially, with their grassy banks, are so well suited
to him. The water-rat of Europe is smaller, but <>f
similar nature and habits. The muskrat does c I
hibernate like some rodents, but is pretty active all
winter. In December I noticed in my walk where
they had made excursions of a few yards to an orchard
for frozen apples. One day, along a little stream, I
saw a mink track amid those of the muskrat ; follow-
ing it up, I presently came to blood and other marks
of strife upon the snow beside a stone wall. L« |

in between the stones, I found the carcass of the luck.
less rat, with its head and neck eaten away. The
mink had made a meal of him.

88 NOTES BY THE WAY

n. CHEATING THE SQUIRRELS.

For the largest and finest chestnuts I had last fall
I was indebted to the gray squirrels. Walking through
the early October woods one clay, I came upon a place
where the ground was thickly strewn with very large
ainopened chestnut burs. On examination I found
that every bur had been cut square off with about an
inch of the stem adhering, and not one had been left
on the tree. It was not accident, then, but design.
Whose design? The squirrels'. The fruit was the
finest I had ever seen in the woods, and some wise
squirrel had marked it for his own. The burs were
ripe, and had just begun to divide, not " threefold,"
but fourfold, " to show the fruit within." The squir-
rel that had taken all this pains had evidently rea-
soned with himself thus : " Now, these are extremely
fine chestnuts, and I want them ; if I wait till the
burs open on the tree the crows and jays will be sure
to carry off a great many of the nuts before they fall ;
then, after the wind has rattled out what remain,
there are the mice, the chipmunks, the red squirrels,
the raccoons, the grouse, to say nothing of the boys
and the pigs, to come in for their share ; so I will
forestall events a little ; I will cut off the burs when
they have matured, and a few days of this dry Octo*
ber weather will cause every one of them to open on
the ground ; I shall be on hand in the nick of time to
gather up my nuts." The squirrel, of course, had to
take the chances of a prowler like myself coming
along, but he had fairly stolen a march on his neigh-
bors. As I proceeded to collect and open the burs, 1
Was half prepared to hear an audible protest from the

FOX AND HOUND. 89

trees about, for I constantly fancied myself watched
by shy but jealous eyes. It is an interesting inquiry
how the squirrel knew the burs would open if lef(
lie on the ground a few days. Perhaps he did not
know, but thought the experiment worth trying.

The gray squirrel is peculiarly an American prod
uct, and might serve very well as a national emblem
The Old World can beat us on rats and mice, but we
are far ahead on squirrels, having five or six species
to Europe's one.

III. FOX AND HOUND.

I STOOD on a high hill or ridge one autumn day
and saw a hound run a fox through the fields far be-
neath me. AVhat odors that fox must have shaken
out of himself, I thought, to be traced thus easily, and
how great their specific gravity not to have been
blown away like smoke by the breeze ! The fox ran
a long distance down the hill, keeping within a few-
feet of a stone wall ; then turned a right angle and
led off for the mountain, across a plowed field and a
succession of pasture lands. In about fifteen minutes
the hound came in full blast with her nose in the air,
and never once did she put it to the ground while in
my sight. When she came to the stone wall she took
the other side from that taken by the fox, idd kept
about the same distance from it, being thus separated
several yards from his track, with, the fence bet wren
her and it. At the point where the fox turned
sharply to the left, the hound overshot a few yards,
then wheeled, and feeling the air a moment with her
nose, took up the scent again and was off on his trail

90 NOTES BY THE WAY.

as unerringly as fate. It seemed as if the fox must
have sowed himself broadcast as he went along, and
that his scent was so rank and heavy that it settled
in the hollows and clung tenaciously to the bushes
and crevices in the fence. I thought I ought to have
caught a remnant of it as I passed that way some
minutes later, but I did not. But I suppose it was
rsot that the light-footed fox so impressed himself
upon the ground he ran over, but that the sense of
the hound was so keen. To her sensitive nose these
tracks steamed like hot cakes, and they would not
have cooled off so as to be undistinguishable for sev-
eral hours. For the time being she had but one
sense : her whole soul was concentrated in her nose.

It is amusing when the hunter starts out of a win-
ter morning to see his hound probe the old tracks to
determiue how recent they are. He sinks his nose
down deep in the snow so as to exclude the air from
above, then draws a long full breath, giving some-
times an audible snort. If there remains the least
effluvium of the fox the hound will detect it. If it be
very slight it only sets his tail wagging ; if it be
strong it unloosens his tongue.

Such things remind one of the waste, the friction
that is going on all about us, even when the wheels of
life run the most smoothly. A fox cannot trip along
the top of a stone wall so lightly but that he will leave
enough of himself to betray his course to the hound
for hours afterward. When the boys play " hare and
hounds " the hare scatters bits of paper to give a clew
to the pursuers, but he scatters himself much more
freely if only our sight and scent were sharp enough
to detect the fragments. Even the fish leave a traii
in the water, and it is said the otter will pursue them

FOX AND HOUND. "1

by it. The birds make a track in the air, only theil
enemies hunt by sight rather than by scent. The
baffles the hound most upon a hard crust of frozen
snow; the scent will not hold to the smooth, bead-like
granules.

Judged by the eye alone, the fox is the lightest and
most buoyant creature that runs. His Boft wrappi
of fur conceals the muscular play and effort that ifl so
obvious in the hound that pursues him, and he comes
bounding along precisely as if blown by a gentle wind.
His massive tail is carried as if it floated upon the air
by its own lightness.

The hound is not remarkable for his fleetness. but
how he will hang ! — often running late into the night
and sometimes till morning, from ridge to ridge, from
peak to peak ; now on the mountain, now crossing the
valley, now playing about a large slope of nplying
pasture fields. At times the fox has a pretty well-
defined orbit, and the hunter knows where to intercept
him. Again he leads off like a comet, quite beyond
the system of hills and ridges upon which he v
started, and his return is entirely a matter of conjec-
ture; but if the day be not more than half spent, the
chances are that the fox will be back before night*

■

though the sportsman's patience seldom holds out that

The hound is a most interesting dog. How \\i>

and long-visaged he is — how peaceful and well-dis-
posed! He is the Quaker among dogs. All the \i
ciousness and currishness seem to have been weeded
out of him ; he seldom quarrels, or lights, or pla
like other dogs. Two strange hounds, meeting
the first time, behave as civilly toward each other as
two men. I know a hound that has au ancient, wriifc

92 NOTES BY THE WAY.

kled, human, far-away look that reminds one of the
bust of Homer among the Elgin marbles. He looks
like the mountains toward which his heart yearns so
much.

The hound is a great puzzle to the farm dog ; the
latter, attracted by his baying, comes barking and
snarling up through the fields bent on picking a quar=
rel; he intercepts the hound, snubs and insults and
annoys him in every way possible, but the hound
heeds him not ; if the dog attacks him he gets away
as best he can, and goes on with the trail ; the cur
bristles and barks, and struts about for a while, then
goes back to the house, evidently thinking the hound
a lunatic which he is for the time being — a mono-
maniac, the slave and victim of one idea. I saw the
master of a hound one day arrest him in full course,
to give one of the hunters time to get to a certain
runaway ; the dog cried and struggled to free himself
and would listen neither to threats nor caresses.
Knowing he must be hungry, I offered him my lunch,
but he would not touch it. I put it in his mouth, but
he threw it contemptuously from him. We coaxed
and petted and reassured him, but he was under a
spell ; he was bereft of all thought or desire but the
one passion to pursue that trail.

IV. THEWOODCHUCK

Writers upon rural England and her familiar
natural history make no mention of the marmot or
woodchuck. In Europe this animal seems to ba con-
fined to the high mountainous districts, as on out

THE WOODCIIUCK.

Pacific slope, burrowing near the snow line. It is
more social or gregarious than the American
living in large families like our prairie-do In the
Middle and Eastern States our woodchuck takes the
place, in some respects, of the English rabbit, burrow-
ing in every hillside and under every stone wall and
jutting ledge and large bowlder, from winner it mat
raids upon the grass and clover and smin times upon
the garden vegetables. It is quite solitary in fa
habits, seldom more than one inhabiting the Bame den,
unless it be a mother and her young. It is not now
so much a wood chuck as afield chuck. Occasionally,
however, one seems to prefer the woods, and is not
seduced by the sunny slopes and the succulent grass,
but feeds, as did his fathers before him, upon roots
and twigs, the bark of young trees, and upon various
wood plants.

One summer day, as I was swimming across ^
broad, deep pool in the creek in a secluded place in
the woods, I saw one of these sylvan chucks amid the
rocks but a few feet from the edge of the water where
I proposed to touch. He saw ray approach, but doubt-
less took me for some water-fowl, or for some cousin
of his of the rauskrat tribe ; for he went on with hi-
feeding, and regarded me not till I paused within ten
feet of him and lifted myself up. Then he did not
know me, having, perhaps, never seen Adam in hif
simplicity, but he twisted his nose around to eat el 1 my
scent ; and the moment he had done so he sprang like
a jumping-jack and rushed into his den with the ut-
most precipitation.

The woodchuek is the true serf among our animals ;
he belongs to the soil, and savors of it. He is of the
earth, earthy. There is generally a decided odor about

94 NOTES BY THE WAY.

his dens and lurking-places, but it is not at all di&
agreeable in the clover-scented air, and bis shrill
whistle, as he takes to his hole or defies the farm do<*
from the interior of the stone wall, is a pleasant sum*
mer sound. In form and movement the woodchuck
is not captivating. His body is heavy and flabby*
Indeed, such a flaccid, fluid, pouchy carcass, I havfc
aever before seen. It has absolutely no muscular ten*
!§ion or rigidity, but is as baggy and shaky as a skin
filled with water. Let the rifleman shoot one while
it lies basking on a sidelong rock, and its body slumps
off, and rolls and spills down the hill, as if it were a
mass of bowels only. The legs of the woodchuck are
short and stout, and made for digging rather than
running. The latter operation he performs by short
leaps, his belly scarcely clearing the ground. For a
short distance he can make very good time, but he
seldom trusts himself far from his hole, and when
surprised in that predicament, makes little effort to
escape, but, grating his teeth, looks the danger squarely
in the face.

I knew a farmer in New York who had a very
large bob-tailed churn-dog by the name of Cuff. The
farmer kept a large dairy and made a great deal of
'butter, and it was the business of Cuff to spend nearly
the half of each summer day treading the endless
! round of the churning-machine. During the remainder
of the day he had plenty of time to sleep, and rest.,
and sit on his hips and survey the landscape. One
day, sitting thus, he discovered a woodchuck about
forty rods from the house, on a steep side-hill, feeding
about near his hole, which was beneath a large rock.
The old dog, forgetting his stiffness, and remembering
the fun he had had with woodchucks in his earlier

THE WOODCUUCK.

days, started off at his highest speed, vainly hoping to
catch this one before he could get to his hole. But
the woodchuck, seeing the dog come laboring up 1
hill, sprang to the mouth of his den, and, when his
pursuer was only a few rods off, whistled tauntin
and went in. This occurred several times, the i
dog marching up the hill, and then marchii
again, having had his labor for his pains. I bus]
that he revolved the subject in his mind while he
volved the great wheel of the churning-maehine, and
that some turn or other brought him a happy thought,
for next time he showed himself a strategist. Instead
of giving chase to the woodchuck when first dis-
covered, he crouched down to the ground, and, resting
his head on his paws, watched him. The woodchuck
kept working away from the hole, lured by the tendei
clover, but, not unmindful of his safety, lifted hi in-
self up on his haunches every few moments and sur-
veyed the approaches. Presently, after the woodchuck
had let himself down from one of these attitudes of
observation, and resumed his feeding, Cuff star
swiftly but stealthily up the hill, precisely in the at-
titude of a cat when she is stalking a bird. When
the woodchuck rose up again, Cuff was perfectly mo-
tionless and half hid by the grass. When he I
resumed his clover, Cuff sped up the hill as before,
this time crossing a fence, but in a low place, and
nimbly that he was not discovered. Again the wo
chuck was on the outlook, again Cuff was motionless
and hugging the ground. As the dog nears his vie
he is partially hidden by a swell in the earth, but stiil
the woodchuck from his outlook reports " all right,"
when Cuff, having not twice as far to run as the
'chuck, throws all stealthiness aside ami rushes di-

#6 NOTES BY THE WAY.

cectly for tlie hole. At that moment the woodcnuck
discovers his danger, and, seeing that it is a race for
life, leaps as I never saw marmot leap before. But
he is two seconds too late, his retreat is cut off, and
£he powerful jaws of the old dog close upon him.

The next season Cuff tried the same tactics again
with like success ; but when the third woodchuck had
taken up his abode at the fatal hole, the old churner's
wits and strength had begun to fail him, and he was
baffled in each attempt to capture the animal.

The woodchuck always burrows on a side-hill. This
enables him to guard against being drowned out, by
making the termination of the hole higher than the
entrance. He digs in slantingly for about two or three
£eet, then makes a sharp upward turn and keeps nearly
parallel with the surface of the ground for a distance
of eight or ten feet farther, according to the grade.
Here he makes his nest and passes the winter, holing
up in October or November and coming out agam in
April. This is a long sleep, and is rendered possible
only by the amount of fat with which the system has
become stored during the summer. The fire of life
still burns, but very faintly and slowly, as with the
draughts all closed and the ashes heaped up. Res«
piration is continued, but at longer intervals, and all
the vital processes are nearly at a standstill. Dig one
out during hibernation (Audubon did so), and you
find it a mere inanimate ball, that suffers itself to be
moved and rolled about without showing signs of
awakening. But bring it in by the fire, and it pres.
ently unrolls and opens its eyes, and crawls feebly
about, and if left to itself will seek some dark hole or
corner, roll itself up again, and resume its former con*
ditioD.

•