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BURR0UGH5S

5harp Eyes and
Other Papers

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SHARP EYES

AND OTHER PAPERS

BT

JOHN BURROUGHS

^^mrt^^g

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

Boston : 4 Park Street ; New York : 86 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 378-388 Wabash Avenue

CONTENTS.

PAGS

Sharp Eves 3

The Apple .25

A Taste of Maine Birch 41

Winter Neighbors , . . 05

Notes by the Wat

I. The Weather-wise Miiskrat ...... 84

II. Cheating the Squirrels .«.,,. 88

III. Fox and Hounfl ........ 89

IV. The Woodchuck 02

CopjTight, 1875, 1879, 1^81, and 1886,
Br JOHN BURROUGHS.

AU rights reserved.

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 the
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 ?
^.t 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 and obscurity
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?
how many does the hunter, matching his sight against .
the keen and alert sense of a deer or a moose, or a fox
or a wolf ? Not outward eyes, but inward. We open
another eye whenever we see beyond the first general
features or outlines of things — whenever we grasp the
special details and characteristic markings that this
mask covers. Science confers new powei^^f^iW^^

D. H. HILL LIBRARY
North Carolina State College

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 must 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 pra
occupied 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 near
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-
tured 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 and 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, little
characteristic scenes, are always being enacted in the
lives of the birds, if our eyes 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
chattered his gratuiations over it he went away ifi

SHARP EYES. 5

quest of his mate. His next-door neighbor, a female
bird, seeing her chance, quickly slipped in and seized
the feather, — and here the wit of the bird came out,
for instead of carrying it into her own box she flew with
it to a near tree and hid it in a fork of the branches,
then went home, and when her neighbor returned with
his mate was innocently employed about her own af-j
fairs. The proud male, finding his feather gone, came
out of his box in a high state of excitement, and, with
vvrath 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, he
stormed around a while, abusing everybody in general
and his neighbor in particular, and then went away as
if to repair the loss. As soon as he was out of sight,
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 great
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 was
onyielding, and, indeed, seemed ridiculously dispropor-

6 SHARP EYES.

tioned 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
upon 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
:icada was, and taking it in her beak flew some dis«
iance to a high 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
resented his interference and flew farther away, where
she sat apparently quite discouraged when I last sa\v
her.

The bluebird is a home bird, and I am never tired
of recurring to him. Hi^ 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 he
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
wings, 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 3

SHARP EYES. 7

knot-hole in an old apple-tree, and coaxed her to his
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 flew
away in the distance. When he saw her going, oi
rather heard her distant note, he dropped his stuff,
and cried out in a tone that said plainly enough,
" Wait a minute. One word, please," and flew 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 survey
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

8 SHARP EYES.

coast 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 an apple-tree but a few yards offj
and much nearer the house than they usually build,
a pair of high-holes, or golden-shafted woodpeckers,
took up 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. It 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. Tlie fresh air must have been a consideration

SHARP EYES. 9

also, for the interior of a high-hole's dwelling is not
sweet. When the parent birds came with food the
young one in the opening did not get it all, but after
he had received a portion, either on his own motion or
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 v/as two or three
days in advance of them. His voice was loudest and
his head oftenest at the window. But I noticed that
when he had kept the position too long, the others
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. suddenlj^ lost all its
charms for them.

This bird was, of course, the first to leave the nest.
For two days before that event he kept his position in
the opening most of the time and sent forth his strong
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 him
from behind. He left the nest and clung to the outer

10 SHARP EYES.

bowl of the tree, and yelped and piped for an hour
longer ; then he committed himself to his wings and
went 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-
liole 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 woidd bend his tongue
around it like a hook and try to raise it by a sudden
jerk. But he never succeeded, the round fruit would
roll and slip away every time. He never seemed to
think of taking it in his beak. His tongue wrs in
constant use to find out the nature of everythirg he
saw ; a nail-hole in a board or any similar holti 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,
so there would be less danger of their killing 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. U

run away v/henever 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. His
' best hold ' was ants. He never was surprised at any°
thing, and never was afraid of anything. He would
jdrive 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 for
him, and he would lick up the ants so fast that a
stream of them seemed going into his mouth unceas*
ingiy. 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 goose-
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 laying
the 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 young
have quite the look of the young of the dove in many
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 when
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
Bgg 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
ehrike 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
soared 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 foggy
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 and
attended him like a brood of hungry chickens. He
says there was a continued rush of purple wings
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 nesv. 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
down 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 fiew as fast as possible, and the king-
bird sat upon his shoulders in triumph until they
had 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 :
lie 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
uj^on the nest of a whippoorwill, or rather its eggs*

SHARP EYES. 15

for it builds no nest, — two elliptical whitish spotted
eggs lying upon the dry leaves. My foot was within
a yard of the mother-bird before she flew. I won-
dered what a sharp eye would detect curious or char-
acteristic in the ways of the bird, so I came to the
place many times and had a look. It was always a
task to separate the bird from her surroundings,
though I stood within a few; feet of her, and knew
exactly where to look. One had to bear on with his
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 shapeless
decaying piece of wood or bark! Twice I brought
a companion^ and guiding his eye to the spot, noted
how difficult it was for him to make out there, in full
view upon the dry leaves, any semblance to a bird.
When the bird returned after being disturbed, she
would alight within a few inches of her eggs, and
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; as
the leaves started the young started, and, being of
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 their 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 her
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 afterward 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 be
as sharp as that of smell in hounds and pointers ; and
yet I know an unkempt youth that seldom fails to

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
the stubble, or the white hare from the snow, requires
the best powers of this sense. A woodchuck, 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. How
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 horizontally, and still less vertically ;
his brow and brain prevent him from seeing within
many degrees of the zenith without a movement of the
head ; the bird, on the other hand, takes in nearly the
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 flit
of the wing, a flirt of the tail are enough, though the
flickering leaves do all conspire to hide them), and
that 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 wiiose 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 hears 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 EYES 19

him with fatal certainty from a stump, or a rock, or a
cap on a pole. The phrenologists do well to locate, not
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 on 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 he
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 nmch 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 fences
and buildings as well as upon the ground, and that
walked. This last fact showed 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, season,
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. I thought I
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-
tently 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 he a small cat-fish, three oit

SHARP EYES. 21

four 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
clung 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 re-
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, with
a swollen and angry throat, went its way also.

Birds, 1 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 tliat first discovers it will alight near it, to make
sure he is not deceived ; then he will go away, and
soon return with a companion. The two alight a few
yards from the bone, and after some delay, during
which the vicinity is sharply scrutinized, one of the
crows 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 one 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 you 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 trait that was new to me : he hopped along
the limb to a small cavitv 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. 23

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 the
tree. The hawk then — - commonly called the chicken
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
that first betrayed his hiding-place.

THE APPLE.

Lol sweetened with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a sUent autunm 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 phos-
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 sugar and mucilage, which make it highly
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,

D. H. HILL LIBRARY

North Caraiina .^tpifo rnlUn*^

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 " V 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 pro-
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 the
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 spitzenbergs
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
bouo:h 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 thumo to the earth, towards which it has been
nodding so long. It bounds away to seek its bed, 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 tlie 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-
cheeked spitz, or you salmon-fleshed greening ! I toy
with you ; press your face to mine, toss you in the air,
roll you on the ground, see you shine out where you
lie amid the moss and dry leaves and sticks. You are
so alive I 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 I 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 wonder 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 pruning-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 nor the
Frigid Zones. Uncloying fruit, fruit whose best 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 the
bough ? The swaar has one look, the rambo 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-nosed
gilliflower. He goes to the great bin in the cellar

liO 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-
ties.

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 jjiece 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 stra^

THE APPLE. 31

As winter set in, another coating of earth was put
upon it, with perhaps an overcoat of coarse dry stable
manure, and the precious pile was left in silence and
darkness till spring. No marmot hibernating under
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 tempers 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 with your
favorites by the sense of touch. How you feel fop
them, reaching to the i-ight 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 face ; now a
V'andevere or a King rolls down from the apex above,

32 THE APPLE.

and you bag it at once. When you were a school-
boy you stowec *-.hes8 away in your pockets and ate
them along the i lad and at recess, and again at noon-
time ; and they, i.i 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 not
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 long.
He has nests of them in the hay - 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 you
make no nocturnal visits to his orchard; when your
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 longer
a boy, either in heart or years.

THE APPLE. 33

The genuine apple-eater comforts himself with an
apple in their season as others with a pipe or cigar.
When he has nothing else to do, or is bored, he eats
an apple. While he is waiting for the train he eats
an apple, sometimes several of them. When he takes
a 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 along
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 and
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 taste of
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
" lastly," and the big apples ? If they were the 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 sweet 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 the
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 among our rural
population the apple has been, the company growing
more merry and unrestrained as soon as the basket cf
apples was passed round I When the cider followed,
the introduction and good understanding were com-
plete. Then those rural gatherings that enlivened
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 invita-
tions went round and the higher the social and con-
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 a2:ricultural districts. Nearly every
farmhouse in the Eastern and Northern States has its

THE APPLE. 85

^Kitting 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
old 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 grass
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 back
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 crops
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. You
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,
hair-birds, orioles, starlings — all nesting and breed-
ing in its branches, and fitly described by Wilson
Flao-cr as "Birds of the Garden and Orchard."
Whether the pippin and sweetbough 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
hiirh-hole for ants. The red-bird comes too, if 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 took
the hint and rubbed her shoulder with such vigor that
the farmer had to check her and keep an eye on her
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 ya^
riety being nearly as marked by its form as by its
fruit. What a vigorous grower, for instance, is the
Kibston 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 tree
of the Jersey sweet or of Tolman's sweeting in bear-
ing, 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 before 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 lias put her highest flavors. It
can 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
New York, who has devoted especial attention to this
variety. They were perfect gems. Not large, that
had not been the aim, but small, fair, uniform, and
j red 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 to
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 liili
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. I know another seedling of excellent quality
and so remarkable for its firmness and density, that
it is known on the farm where it grows as the " heavy
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 " tanj^ and smack " like the fruit it
celebrates, and is dashed and streaked with color va

THE APPLE. 89

the same manner. It has the hue and perfume of the
crab, and the richness and raciness of the pippin. But
Thoreau loved other apples than the wild sorts and
was obliged to confess that his favorites could not be
eaten in-doors. Late in November he found a blue-
pearmain tree growing within the edge of a swamp^
almost as good as wild. " You would not suppose,"
he says, " that there was any fruit left there on the
first survey, but you must look according to system.
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. Nevertheless,
with experienced eyes I explore amid the bare alders,
and the huckleberry bushes, and the withered sedge,
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, T draw forth the fruit all wet and
glossy, maybe nibbled by rabbits and hollowed out
by crickets, and perhaps a leaf or two cemented to 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 well 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
may have smelled them out. If I am sharp-set, for I

40 THE APPLE.

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

A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH.

The traveler and camper-out in Maine, unless he
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 uses to
which the various parts and products of the palm-tree
were applied. The Maine birch is turned to so many
accounts that it may well be called the palm of this
region. Uncle Nathan, our guide, said it was made
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, whose goods

42 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH.

are free to every comer. 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
utensils, buckets, cups, plates, spoons, napkins, table-
cloths, paper for letters or your journal, torches, can-
• dles, kindliug-wood, and fuel. The canoe-birch yields
■ you its vestments with the utmost liberality. Ask for
its 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 Ducket
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
bark 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 barl?
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 our
camp at Moxie we made a large birch-bark box to
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 mollify

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 liis tea and
coffee from a bark cup ; the china closet in the birch-
tree was always handy, and our vulgar tin ware was gen-
erally a good deal mixed, and the kitchen-maid not at

jail 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 ket-
tle, 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
boat of the kind I had ever seen, and it filled my eye

(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 maideno
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
came. An old Indian had taught Uncle Nathan tha

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 surroundings,
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 woods. 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 o£ the same spirit.

A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 45

He had been a hunter and trapper for over forty
years ; he had grown gray in the woods, had ripened
and matured there, and everything about him was as 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
and 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 streams, but
Pleasant Pond is a pale-face among them both in
name and nature. It is the only strictly silver lake I
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 bars
of silver until you have cut their flesh, when they are
the reddest of gold. They have no crimson or other

46 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH.

spots, and tlie 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
of our visit (last of August) at least, were to be
taken only in deep water upon a hook baited with salt
pork. And then you needed a letter of introduction
to 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 rocks
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 there
by the old glaciers seons ago. Our camp was amid a
dense grove of second growth of white pine on the
eastern shore, where, for one, I found a most admi.
fable 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 lie can find, she!*
tered by the trees, a soft hole in the ground, even if
he has a stone for a pillow. The earth must open its
arms a little for us even in life, if we are to sleep
well upon its bosom. I have often heard my grand-
father, who was a soldier of the Revolution, tell with
great guato how he once bivouacked in a little hollow
made by the overturning of a tree, and slept so'
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 the 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 fi<3ry red eyes gleaming
forth from that jet-black head are full of meaning.
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 suggests
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 obliging
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 per-
haps an appreciable moment of time quicker than the
ordinary muzzle loader, and this the poor loon could
^ot or did not dodge. He had not timed himself to

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
the 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
moments, a hundred or more yards away, and saw his
'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 over
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 forward,
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 vshop 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. 49

act o£ 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
them, and not even the wary trout can elude him.
Uncle Nathan said he had seen the loon disappear,
and in a moment come up with a large trout, which
he would cut in two with his strong beak, and swal-
low piecemeal. Neither the loon nor the otter can
bolt a fish under the water ; he must come to the sur-
face to dispose of it. (I once saw a man eat a cake
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
" div " as he would have it, and left the young bird
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 supplies,
etc., hauled on a sled by the young farmer with his
three-year-old steers. I doubt if birch-bark ever made
a rougher voyage than that. As I watched it above
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 felt as
if it 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 pitcking
m 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 ut-
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 jSivn.

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 creatures
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 MAINE BIRCH. 51

opinions upon any subject at all polemic, but he would
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 nio-ht
with an old recluse who lived somewhere in these
woods. Their host was an Englishman, who had the
reputation of having murdered his wife some years be-
fore in another part of the country, and, deserted by
his grown-up children, was eking out his days in pov-
erty amid these solitudes. The three men were sleep-
ing upon the floor, with Uncle Nathan next to a rude
partition that divided the cabin into two rooms. At
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 ; " I felt of my eyes twice to make
sure, and they were wide open." Presently the door
opened ; he was sensible of the draught upon his head,
and a woman's form stepped heavily past him ; he
felt the " swirl " of her skirts as she went by. Then
there was a loud noise in the foom as if some one had
fallen their whole length upon the floor. " It jarred
the house," said he, " and woke everybody up. I asked

old Mr. if he heard that noise. * Yes,' said he,

' it was thunder.* But it w^as not thunder, I know
that ; " and then added, " I was no more afraid than I
am this minute. I never was the least mite afraid

62 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 and 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.

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 slov/
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
be had. Moxie has a small oval head, rather shallow,
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 breastSo
We swam in the head, we fished in the neck, or in a
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. 53

to the seams till we reached this lake. When I knelt
down in it for the first time and put its slender ma-
ple paddle into the water, it sprang away with such
quickness and speed that it disturbed me in my seat.
I had spurred a more restive and spirited steed 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 I caught my
first large trout from it, it sympathized a little too
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 on dry
land. Yet as a boat it is not so shy and " 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 I trust was par-
donable. My friend, in relating the episode in camp,
said I implored him to row me down in the middle of
the lake that I 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 oif
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
large 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 height. 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 hands
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 was 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 strike,
i 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 tlan

A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 55

one ; from its embers and flickering shadows, Uncle
Nathan read us many a tale of his life in the woods.
They were the same old hunter's stories, except that
they evidently had the merit of being strictly true,
and hence were not very thrilling or marvelous. Uncle
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 suspect he did just a little,,
when telling us how he outshot one of the famous
riflemen of the American team, whom he was guiding
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 with
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 planted
well into it. Then the great rifleman took his turn, and
missed every time.

I " By hemp ! " said Uncle Nathan, " I was sorry 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 of Mr.
Bull's Eye when he saw his first bear. They were
paddling slowly and silently down Dead River, when
the 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.
But 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.
[Jncle Nathan held the canoe, while the man who had
come so far in quest of this ver}'^ game was trying to
lay down his shot-gun and pick up his rifle. '' His
hand moved like the hand of a clock," said Uncle
Nathan, '' 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 I 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
number of them at night on the lakes. His method

A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 57

was to go out in his canoe and conceal himself by
some point or island, and wait till he heard the game.
In the fail the moose comes into the water to eat the
large fibrous roots of the pond - lilies. He splashes
along till he finds a suitable spot, when he begins feed*
mg, sometimes thrusting his head and neck several
feet under water. The hunter listens, and when the
moose 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 as 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 makes {^
noise the moose looks toward the shore for it. Ther'*
is always a slight gleam on the water. Uncle Natha:i
says, even in the darkest night, and the dusky forpi
of the moose can be distinctly seen upon it. When
the hunter sees this darker shadow he lifts his gun 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. He shot
him while hunting in winter on snow-shoes. The
moose was reposing upon the ground, with his head
stretched out in front of him, as one may sometimes
see a cow resting. The position was such that only
a quartering shot through the animal's hip could reach
its heart. Studying the problem carefully, and taking
his own time, the hunter fired. The moose sprang
into the air, turned, and came with tremendous strides
straight toward him. " I knew he had not seen or
scented me," said Uncle Nathan, " but, by hemp, I
wished myself somewhere else just then ; for I was
lying right down in his path." But the noble animal

68 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH.

stopped a few yards short, and fell dead' with a bullet*
hole 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 a
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 trees,
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 he 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, moose,
bear, when started by the hunter and not much
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 iiito 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. 59

Lot's wife, her curiosity got the better of her; she
stopped to have a final look, and her travels ended
there and then.

Uncle Nathan had trapped and shot a great many
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 thawy, an
old bear left her den in the rocks and built a large,
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 she
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 for
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, he concluded to follow it. When the bear
had passed, the snow had been soft and sposhy, and
she had " slumped," he said, several inches. It was
now hard and slippery. As he neared the tree the
track turned and doubled, and tacked this way and
that, and led through the worst brush and brambles
to 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 for
the bear's footprints or nail-prints upon the frozen
snow. Not finding them the first time, he took a
larger circle, then a still larger; finally he made a
long detour^ and spent nearly an hour searching for
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 BIRCH.

scrutinized it. The foliage was very dense, but pres»
eiitly he 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 mass
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 till
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 bdrning logs roll upon him. AVith a steep ascent
behind it the fire burned better, and the wind was not
80 apt to drive the smoke and blaze in upon him.

A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. 61

Then, with the long, curving branches of the spruce
stuck thickly around three sides of the bed, and curv<=
ing over and uniting their tops above it, a shelter was
formed that would keep out the cold and the snow,
and that would catch and retain the warmth of the fire.
Rolled in his blanket in such a nest. Uncle Nathan
had passed hundreds of the most frigid winter nights, i

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 blessed
with a siofht of either of the animals themselves. I
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, per-
haps, because it was one enormous crown of nearly
naked granite. The rock had that gray, elemental,
eternal look which granite alone has. One seemed to
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 eternities
past and the eternities to come. The enormous cleav-
age of the rocks, the appalling cracks and fissures, the
rent bowlders, the smitten granite floors, gave one a
new sense of the power of heat and frost. In 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 looked
indescribably ancient and unfamiliar. Out of this
mould, that might have come from the moon or the
interplanetary spaces, were growing mountain cran-

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. Yet
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 above 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
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 BIRCH. 63

to wrap a chain around it. The rock seems poised
lightly, and has but a few points of bearing. 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 horned
bladderwort ( Utricular la cornuta), and which I
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 yellow
flowers, — flowers the shape of little bonnets or hoods.
One almost expected to see tiny faces looking out of
them. This illusion is heightened by the horn or spur
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 has,
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 strongest
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. The fragrance
suggested that of white clover, but was more rank and
spicy.

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

64 A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH.

bright 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." I 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
trout, twelve or fifteen in number, some of them two-
pounders, was allowed to swim back into the lake.
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 in
weisrht, comes to our basket in the future.

WINTER NEIGHBORS.

. The country is more of a wilderness, more of a
wild solitude, in the winter than in the summer. The
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 ; gates
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
fowls ; the pine grosbeak comes down from the north
and shears your maples of their buds ; the fox prowls
about your premises at night, and the red squirrels
find your grain in the barn or steal the butternuts
from ycur attic. In fact, winter, like some great ca»
lamity, changes the status of most creatures and sets
them adrift. Winter, like poverty, makes us ac-
quainted with strange bedfellows.

For my part, my nearest approach to a strange bed-
fellow is the little gray rabbit that has taken up her
abode under my study floor. As she spends the day

eQ 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 ma
or lend me, but that soft, nimble foot of hers, and
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 a
happy thought I imagine her ears twitch, especially
when I think of the sweet apple I will place by her
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 he would have followed it
up to the barn and have gone smelling around for
a bone ; but this sharp, cautious track held straight
a,cross all others, keeping five or six rods from the
house, up the hill, across the highway towards a
neiffhborinsT farmstead, with its nose in the air and its
eye and ear alert, so to speak.

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

WINTER NEIGHBORS. 67

keeps himself in spring and summer I do not know,
but late every fall, and at intervals all winter, his
hiding-place is discovered by the jays and nut-hatches,
and proclaimed from the tree-tops for the space of
half an hour or so, with all the powers of voice they
can command. Four times during one winter they
called me out to behold this little ogre feigning sleep
in his den, sometimes in one apple-tree, sometimes in
another. 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 come to the
spot and at once approach the hole in the trunk or
limb, and with a kind of breathless eagerness and ex-
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 my move-
ments 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 sleep.
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 a
stick and pulled him over on his side, leaving one of
his wings spread out, he made no attempt to recover
himself, but lay among the chips and fragments of
decayed wood, like a part of themselves. Indeed, it
took a sharp eye to distinguish him. Nor till I had
pulled him forth by one wing, rather rudely, did he
abandon his trick of simulated sleep or death. Then,
like a detected pickpocket, he was suddenly trans-
formed into another creature. His eyes flew wide
open, his talons clutched my finger, his 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
he was apparently wraj^ped 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 for
him to see which way and where to go.

Just at dusk in the winter nights, I often hear his
soft hur-r-r-r^ very pleasing and bell-like. W^hat 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
with down.

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
wood, 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. 69

hiss secret, and mine never would have done so had 1
not chanced on one occasion to see him leave his re«
treat and make a raid upon a shrike that was impal-
ing a shrew-mouse upon a thorn in a neighboring tree,
and which I was watching. Failing to get the mouse,
the owl returned swiftly to his cavity, and ever since,
while going that way, I have been on the lookout for
him. 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 b;ick^
ground of his door in a very weird and curious
manner. When he is not at his outlook, or when he
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 mouse
should be seen crossing the highway, or scudding over
any exposed part of the snowy surface in the twilight,
the owl would doubtless swoop down upon it. I
think the owl has learned to distinguish me from the
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 be
glad to know. My impression is, however, that they

70 WINTER NEIGHBORS.

seek out smaller cavities. An old willow by the road-
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
fear and berate the owl.

The English house sparrows, that are so rapidly
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
Botice on them that our good understanding was at
an end. And a hint is as good as a kick with this
bird. 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 sparrows left in
high dudgeon, and were not back again in some days,
and were then very shy. No doubt the time is near
a^. hand when we shall have to wage serious war- upon

WINTER NEIGHBORS. 71

these sparrows, as they long have had to do on the
continent of Europe. And yet it will be hard to kill
the little wretches, the only Old World bird we have.
When I take down my gun to shoot them I shall prob-
ably remember that the Psalmist said, " I watch, and
am as a sparrow alone upon the house-top," and may-
be the recollection will cause me to stay my hando
The sparrows have the Old World hardiness and pro-
lificness ; they are wise and tenacious of life, and we
shall find it by and by no small matter to keep them
in check. Our native birds are much different, less
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 changed
b}^ civilization. In winter, especially, they sweep by
me and around me in flocks, — the Canada sparrow,
the snow-bunting, the shore-lark, the pine grosbeak,
the red-poll, the cedar-bird, — feeding upon frozen
apples in the orchard, upon cedar-berries, upon ma-
ple-buds, and the berries of the mountain ash, and
the celtis, and upon the seeds of the weeds that rise
above the snow in the field, or upon the hay-seed
dropped where the cattle have been foddered in the
barn-yard or about the distant stack ; but 'j2t taking
no heed of man, in no way changing their habits so
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 the
woodbine, or within reach of your windows to get the
berries of the mountain-ash, but they know you not ;
they look at you as innocently and unconcernedly as
at a bear or moose in their native north, and jout
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 often
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 treie 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 ?n apple-
tree which he excavated several autumns ago. I say
"he" be« ause 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 our
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 in-

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 five
years ago. This he occupied till the following spring,
when he abandoned it. The next fall he began a hole
in an adjoining limb, later than before, and when it
was about half comjDleted a female took possession of
his old quarters. I am sorry to say that this seemed
to enrage the male very much, and he persecuted the
poor bird whenever she appeared upon the scene. He
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 come
out and attempt to escape ; but she had not gone ten
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 neig-hbor in the followins: ins^enious
manner : he fairly scuttled the other cavity ; he drilled
a hole into the bottom of it that let in the liffht 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 probabl;y

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.
AYhen she hopped around to the other end and timidly
nibbled it, he would presently dart spitefully at her.
She would then take up her position in his rear and
wait till he had finished hi; meal. The position of
the female among 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
the 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
the cold or stormy winter nights to know he is warm
and cosy there in his retreat. When 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
nie — sometimes latterly I think half resentfully, as
much as to say, " 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 see him
leave his tree. On the other hand, he comes home
early, being in if the day is unpleasant by 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 ad

WINTER NEIGHBORS. 75

Kif

joining orchards, each of which has a like home and
leads a like solitary life. One of them has excavated
a dry limb within easy reach of my hand, doing the
work also in September. But the choice of tree was
not a good one ; the limb was too much decayed, and
the workman had made the cavity too large ; a chip
had come out, making a hole in the outer wall. Then
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 was
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 hough hreaks the cradle will fall,
And down will come baby, cradle and all."

Such a cavity makes a snug, warm home, and whel*
:the entrance is on the under side of the limb, as is
usual, the wind and snow cannot reach the occupant.
Late in December, while crossing a high, wooded
mountain, lured by the music of fox-hounds, I dis-
covered fresh yellow chips strewing the new-fallen
snow, and at once thought of my woodpeckers. On
looking around I saw where one had been at work
excavating a lodge in a small yellow birch. The ori-

Y6 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 tndears
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 woodpecki rs

WINTER NEIGHBORS. 11

are just as characteristically drummers as is the ruffed
grouse, and they have their particular limbs and stubs
to which they resort for that purpose. Their need of
expression is apparently just as great as that of the
song-birds, and it is not surprising that they should
have found out that there is music in a dry, seasoned
limb which can be evoked beneath their beaks. i

A few seasons ago a downy woodpecker, probably
the individual one who is now my winter neighbor,
began 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 b}^ 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
the 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 change
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 he
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 with

78 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 did
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 they 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 a
long distance.

WINTER NEIGHBORS, . 79

A friend of mine in a Southern city tells me of a
red-headed woodpecker that drums upon a lightning-
rod on his neighbor's house. Nearly every clear, still
morning at certain seasons, he says, this musical rap-
ping may be heard. " He alternates his tapping with
iiis stridulous call, and the effect on a cool, autumn-
like morning is very pleasing."

The high-hole appears to drum more promiscuously
than does the downy. He utters his long, loud spring
call, which — whick — whick — whick, and then be-
gins to rap with his beak upon his perch before the
last note has reached your ear. I have seen 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 drunie
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 vards.
It is only upon dry, seasoned timber, freed of its bark,
that he beats his reveille to spring and wooes his
mate.

Wilson was evidently familiar with this vernal
drumming of the woodpeckers, but quite misinterprets
it. Speaking of the red-bellied species, he says : " It
rattles like the rest of the tribe on the dead limbs,
and with such violence as to be heard in still weather
more than half a. mile off ; and listens to hear the in-
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
few yards beyond him. He paused instantly, and

80 WINTER NEIGHBORIS.

kept hi^ 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 would drum in a shy, tenta-
tive manner. The male watched her a few mo-
ments, and, convinced 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
hijuring 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)
fcapped a maple-tree in front of my window in fifty-six
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
v/ell-holes failed to supply him, he would sink another,

\

WINTER NEIGHBORS. 81

drilling through the bark with great ease and quick*
ness. Then, when the day was warm, and the sap ran
freely, he would have a regular sugar-maple debaucli,
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 very sug«
gestive. He made a row of wells near the foot of the
tree, and other rows higher up, and he would hop
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 up a
fat bone near his sap-works : the downy woodpecker
came there several times a day to dine ; the nut-hatch
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 colder
months. As spring approached, the one I refer to
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 tlie first screaming of the ciiv
cling hawks, and about seven o'clock the first drum-
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
he ceased to lodge in his old quarters. I would rap
and find nobody at home. Was he out on a lark, I
said, the spring fever working in his blood ? After a
"ime his drumming grew less frequent, and finally, in
i;he middle of April, ceased entirely. Had some acci-
lent befallen him, or had he wandered away to fresh
i&elds, 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 aban-
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 cliche clicks 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 w^here 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, 83

woke up to what he was doing, he had completely de-
molished the neat, round doorway of downy. He had
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 hairy
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
hoped 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 I
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 85

«

around the otlier side. Every mouthful was distinctly
defined. After they were two feet or more above the
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 winter would suddenly shut down
upon 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 comjjletion ;
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 ever
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 was
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 was
begun, well away from the treacherous channel, but

86 NOTES BY THE WAV.

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 being built amid a small
clump of bushes. When the fall of 1879 came, the
muskrats were very tardy about beginning their house,
laying 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 it
waxed more and more severe, till the unprecedented
cold of the last days of December must have aston.
ished 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, deepl}^ frozen surface of the pond, and
wondered if there was any life in that apparent sep-
ulchre. I thrust my walking-stick sharply into it,
when there was a rustle and a splash into the water,
as the occupant made his escape. What a dsrap base-
ment that house has, I thought, and what a pity to
rout a peaceful neighbor out of his bed in this weather,
and into such a state of things as this ! But water does
not wet the muskrat ; his fur is charmed, and not a
drop penetrates it. Where the ground is favorable,
the muskrats do not build these mound-like nests, but
burrow into the bank 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 of
similar nature and habits. The muskrat does not
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, 1
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. Looking
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.

II. 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 day, I came upon a place
where the ground was thickly strewn with very large
unopened 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, I
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 left to
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 emblemo
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.

«TOOD on a high hill or ridge one autumn day
and ^^Ni s- hound run a fox through the fields far be-
neatli me. What odors that fox must have shaken
out o£ Mmself , I thought, to be traced thus easily, and
hoY/ 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, and kept
aboiit the same distance from it, being thus separated
several yards from his track, with the fence between
Iier and it. At the point where the fox turned
sliarply to the left, the hound overshot a few yards,
tnen 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 WAV.

as unerringly as fate. It seemed as if tlie 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
not 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
determine 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 aU 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 trail
in the water, and it is said the otter will pursue them

FOX AND HOUND. 91

by it. The birds make a track in the air, only their
enemies hunt by sight rather than by scent. The fox
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 soft wrapping
of fur conceals the muscular play and effort that is 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 uplying
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 was
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
long.

The hound is a most interesting dog. How solemn
and long-visaged he is — how peaceful and well-dis-
posed ! He is the Quaker among dogs. All the vi-
ciousness and currishness seem to have been weeded
out of him ; he seldom quarrels, or fights, or plays,
like other dogs. Two strange hounds, meeting for
the first time, behave as civilly toward each other as
two men. I know a hound that has an ancient, wrin-

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 barkfe 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. THE WOODCHUCK

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

THE WOODCHUCK. 93

Pacific slope, burrowing near the snow line. It is
more social or gregarious than the American species,
living in large families like our prairie-dog. 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 whence it makes
raids upon the grass and clover and sometimes upon
the garden vegetables. It is quite solitary in its
habits, seldom more than one inhabiting the same den,
unless it be a mother and her young. It is not now
so much a wood chuck as a field 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 a
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 my approach, but doubt-
less took me for some water-fowl, or for some cousin
of his of the muskrat tribe ; for he went on with his
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 his
simplicity, but he twisted his nose around to catch 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 woodchuck 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 dis*
agreeable in the clover-scented air, and his shrill
whistle, as he takes to his hole or defies the farm dog
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 have
never before seen. It has absolutely no muscular ten-^
sion 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 ha
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 WOODCHUCK. 95

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 the
hill, sprang to the mouth of his den, and, when his
pursuer was only a few rods oft*, whistled tauntingly
and went in. This occurred several times, the old
dog marching up the hill, and then marching down
again, having had his labor for his pains. I suspect
that he revolved the subject in his mind while he re-
volved the great wheel of the churning-machine, 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 tender
clover, but, not unmindful of his safety, lifted him-
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, Cuft started
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 again
resumed his clover. Cuff sped up the hill as before,
this time crossing a fence, but in a low place, and so
nimbly that he was not discovered. Again the wood-
chuck was on the outlook, again Cuff was motionless
and hugging the ground. As the dog nears his victim
he is partially hidden by a swell in the earth, but still
the woodchuck from his outlook reports " all right,"
when Cuff, having not twice as far to run as the
'chuck, throws all stealthiness aside and rushes di-

96 ■ NOTES BY THE WAY.

rectly for the hole. At that moment the woodchuck
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
the 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
feet, 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 gi-ade.
Here he makes his nest and passes the winter, holing
up in October or November and coming out again 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-
dition.

D. H. HILL LIBRARY
North Carolina State College

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