THE FOOT-PATH WAY

BRADFORD TORREY

on PIP ©F

state of George •u. Bloc
Class of 1892

BIOLOGY

LIBRARY

BIRDS IN THE BUSH. i6mo, $1.25.
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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK.

THE FOOT-PATH WAY

BY

BRADFORD TORREY

Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way,

And merrily hent the stile-a :
A merry heart goes all the day,

Your sad tires in a mile-a.

THE WINTER'S TALE

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
(Cfce fttoergiDe &tt$&
1892

BIOLOGY
LIBRARY

Copyright, 1892,
BY BRADFORD TORREY.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghtou & Co.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

JUNE IN FRANCONIA 1

DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS 36

DYER'S HOLLOW 67

FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD . . . 90

A WIDOW AND TWINS Ill

THE MALE RUBY-THROAT 135

ROBIN ROOSTS 153

THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS .... 176

A GREAT BLUE HERON 197

FLOWERS AND FOLKS 205

IN PRAISE OF THE WEYMOUTH PINE . 232

o

THE FOOT-PATH WAY.

JUNE IN FRANCONIA.

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

MILTON.

THERE were six of us, and we had the
entire hotel, I may almost say the entire
valley, to ourselves. If the verdict of the
villagers could have been taken, we should,
perhaps, have been voted a queer set, fami-
liar as dwellers in Franconia are with the
sight of idle tourists, —

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

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

FRANC ON I A.

First came a lady, in excellent repute
among the savants of Europe and America
as an entomologist, but better known to the
general public as a writer of stories. With
her, as companion and assistant, was a doc-
tor of laws, who is also a newspaper propri-
etor, a voluminous author, an art connois-
seur, and many things beside. They had
turned their backs thus unseasonably upon
the metropolis, and in this pleasant out-
of-the-way corner were devoting themselves
to one absorbing pursuit, — the pursuit of
moths. On their daily drives, two or three
insect nets dangled conspicuously from the
carriage, — the footman, thrifty soul, was
•never backward to take a hand, — and
evening after evening the hotel piazza was
illuminated till midnight with lamps and
lanterns, while these enthusiasts waved the
same white nets about, gathering in geome-
trids, noctuids, sphinges, and Heaven knows
what else, all of them to perish painlessly
in numerous "cyanide bottles," which be-
strewed the piazza by night, and (happy
thought ! ) the closed piano by day. In this
noble occupation I sometimes played at help-
ing ; but with only meagre success, my most

JUNE IN FRANC ON I A. 3

brilliant catch being nothing more impor-
tant than a "beautiful lo." The kind-
hearted lepidopterist lingered with gracious
emphasis upon the adjective, and assured me
that the specimen would be all the more val-
uable because of a finger-mark which my
awkwardness had left upon one of its wings.
So — to the credit of human nature be it
spoken — so does amiability sometimes get
the better of the feminine scientific spirit.
To the credit of human nature, I say; for,
though her practice of the romancer's art
may doubtless have given to this good lady
some peculiar flexibility of mind, some spe-
cial, individual facility in subordinating a
lower truth to a higher, it surely may be
affirmed, also, of humanity in general, that
few things become it better than its incon-
sistencies.

Of the four remaining members of the
company, two were botanists, and two — for
the time — ornithologists. But the botanists
were lovers of birds, also, and went nowhere
without opera-glasses; while the ornitholo-
gists, in turn, did not hold themselves above
some elementary knowledge of plants, and
amused themselves with now and then point-

4 JUNE IN FRANC ON I A.

ing out some rarity — sedges and willows
were the special desiderata — which the pro-
fessional collectors seemed in danger of pass-
ing without notice. All in all, we were a
queer set. How the Latin and Greek poly-
syllables flew about the dining-room, as we
recounted our forenoon's or afternoon's dis-
coveries ! Somebody remarked once that the
waiters' heads appeared to be more or less
in danger; but if the waiters trembled at
all, it was probably not for their own heads,
but for ours.1

Our first excursion — I speak of the four
who traveled on foot — was to the Franconia
Notch. It could not well have been other-
wise ; at all events, there was one of the four

1 Just how far the cause of science was advanced by
all this activity I am not prepared to say. The first orni-
thologist of the party published some time ago (in The
Auk, vol. v. p. 151) a list of our Franconia birds, and the
results of the botanists' researches among the willows
have appeared, in part at least, in different numbers of
the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club. As for the
lepidopterist, I have an indistinct recollection that she
once wrote to me of having made some highly interest-
ing discoveries among her Franconia collections, — sev-
eral undescribed species, as well as I can now remember ;
but she added that it would be useless to go into particu-
lars with a correspondent entomologically so ignorant.

JUNE IN FRAN CON I A. 5

whose feet would not willingly have carried
him in any other direction. The mountains
drew us, and there was no thought of resist-
ing their attraction.

Love and curiosity are different, if not
incompatible, sentiments ; and the birds that
are dearest to the man are, for that very
reason, not most interesting to the ornithol-
ogist. When on a journey, I am almost
without eyes or ears for bluebirds and rob-
ins, song sparrows and chickadees. Now is
my opportunity for extending my acquain-
tance, and such every-day favorites must get
along for the time as best they can without
my attention. So it was here in Franconia.
The vesper sparrow, the veery, and a host
of other friends were singing about the hotel
and along the roadside, but we heeded them
not. Our case was like the boy's who de-
clined gingerbread, when on a visit : he had
plenty of that at home.

When we were nearly at the edge of the
mountain woods, however, we heard across
the field a few notes that brought all four
of us to an instant standstill. What war-
bler could that be? Nobody could tell. In
fact, nobody could guess. But, before the

6 JUNE IN FRANCONIA.

youngest of us could surmount the wall, the
singer took wing, flew over our heads far
into the woods, and all was silent. It was
too bad ; but there would be another day to-
morrow. Meantime, we kept on up the hill,
and soon were in the old forest, listening
to bay - breasted warblers, Blackburnians,
black-polls, and so on, while the noise of the
mountain brook on our right, a better singer
than any of them, was never out of our
ears. "You are going up," it said. "I
wish you joy. But you see how it is ; you
will soon have to come down again."

I took leave of my companions at Profile
Lake, they having planned an all-day excur-
sion beyond, and started homeward by my-
self. Slowly, and with many stops, I saun-
tered down the long hill, through the forest
(the stops, I need not say, are commonly the
major part of a naturalist's ramble, — the
golden beads, as it were, the walk itself be-
ing only the string), till I reached the spot
where we had been serenaded in the morn-
ing by our mysterious stranger. Yes, he
was again singing, this time not far from
the road, in a moderately thick growth of
small trees, under which the ground was

JUNE IN FRAN CON I A. 7

carpeted with club-mosses, dog-tooth violets,
clintonia, linnsea, and similar plants. He
continued to sing, and I continued to edge
my way nearer and nearer, till finally I was
near enough, and went down on my knees.
Then I saw him, facing me, showing white
under parts. A Tennessee warbler ! Here
was good luck indeed. I ogled him for a
long time ("Shoot it," says Mr. Burroughs,
authoritatively, "not ogle it with a glass;"
but a man must follow his own method), im-
patient to see his back, and especially the
top of his head. What a precious frenzy we
fall into at such moments ! My knees were
fairly upon nettles. He flew, and I fol-
lowed. Once more he was under the glass,
but still facing me. How like a vireo he
looked ! For one instant I thought, Can it
be the Philadelphia vireo? But, though I
had never seen that bird, I knew its song to
be as different as possible from the notes to
which I was listening. After a long time
the fellow turned to feeding, and now I ob-
tained a look at his upper parts, — the back
olive, the head ashy, like the Nashville
warbler. That was enough. It was indeed
the Tennessee (Helminthophila peregrina),

8 JUNE IN FRANCONIA.

a bird for which I had been ten years on the
watch.

The song, which has not often been de-
scribed, is more suggestive of the Nashville's
than of any other, but so decidedly different
as never for a moment to be confounded with
it. "When you hear it," a friend had said
to me several years before, "you will know
it for something new." It is long (I speak
comparatively, of course), very sprightly,
and peculiarly staccato, and is made up of
two parts, the second quicker in movement
and higher in pitch than the first. I speak
of it as in two parts, though when my com-
panions came to hear it, as they did the next
day, they reported it as in three. We vis-
ited the place together afterwards, and the
discrepancy was readily explained. As to
pitch, the song is in three parts, but as to
rhythm and character, it is in two ; the first
half being composed of double notes, the
second of single notes. The resemblance to
the Nashville's song lies entirely in the first
part ; the notes of the concluding portion are
not run together or jumbled, after the Nash-
ville's manner, but are quite as distinct as
those of the opening measure.

JUNE IN FRANCONIA. 9

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

As might have been foreseen, Franconia
proved to be an excellent place in which
to study the difficult family of flycatchers.
All our common eastern Massachusetts
species were present, — the kingbird, the
phoebe, the wood pewee, and the least fly-
catcher, — and with them the crested fly-
catcher (not common), the olive-sided, the
traill, and the yellow-bellied. The phoebe-
like cry of the traill was to be heard con-
stantly from the hotel piazza. The yellow-
bellied seemed to be confined to deep and
rather swampy woods in the valley, and to
the mountain-side forests; being most nu-
merous on Mount Lafayette, where it ran
well up toward the limit of trees. In his
notes, the yellow-belly may be said to take

10 JUNE IN FRANCONIA.

after both the least flycatcher and the wood
pewee. His killic (so written in the books,
and I do not know how to improve upon it)
resembles the chebec of the least flycatcher,
though much less emphatic, as well as much
less frequently uttered, while his twee, or
tuwee, is quite in the voice and manner of
the wood pewee 's clear, plaintive whistle;
usually a monosyllable, but at other times
almost or quite dissyllabic. The olive-sided,
on the other hand, imitates nobody; or, if
he does, it must be some bird with which I
have yet to make acquaintance. Que-que-o
he vociferates, with a strong emphasis and
drawl upon the middle syllable. This is his
song, or what answers to a song, but I have
seen him when he would do nothing but re-
peat incessantly a quick trisyllabic call,
whit, whit, whit ; corresponding, I suppose,
to the well-known whit with which the phoebe
sometimes busies himself in a similar man-
ner.

Of more interest than any flycatcher —
of more interest even than the Tennessee
warbler — was a bird found by the roadside
in the village, after we had been for several
days in the place. Three of us were walk-

JUNE IN FRANC ON I A. 11

ing together, talking by the way, when all
at once we halted, as by a common impulse,
at the sound of a vireo song; a red-eye's
song, as it seemed, with the faintest touch of
something unfamiliar about it. The singer
was in a small butternut-tree close upon the
sidewalk, and at once afforded us perfectly
satisfactory observations, perching on a low
limb within fifteen feet of our eyes, and
singing again and again, while we scruti-
nized every feather through our glasses. As
one of my companions said, it was like hav-
ing the bird in your hand. There was no
room for a question as to its identity. At
last we had before us the rare and long-
desired Philadelphia greenlet. As its song
is little known, I here transcribe my notes
about it, made at two different times, be-
tween which there appears to have been some
discussion among us as to just how it should
be characterized : —

" The song is very pretty, and is curiously
compounded of the red-eye's and the soli-
tai^r's, both as to phrase and quality. The
measures are all brief; with fewer syllables,
that is to say, than the red-eye commonly
uses. Some of them are exactly like the

12 JUNE IN FRAN CON I A.

red-eye's, while others have the peculiar
sweet upward inflection of the solitary's.
To hear some of the measures, you would
pass the bird for a red-eye; to hear others
of them, you might pass him for a solitary.
At the same time, he has not the most highly
characteristic of the solitary's phrases. His
voice is less sharp and his accent less em-
phatic than the red-eye's, and, so far as we
heard, he observes decidedly longer rests
between the measures."

This is under date of June IGth. On the
following day I made another entry : —

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

On the whole, then, the song of the Phil-
adelphia vireo comes nearest to the red-eye's,

JUNE IN FRANCONIA. 13

differing from it mainly in tone and inflec-
tion rather than in form. In these two re-
spects it suggests the solitary vireo, though
it never reproduces the indescribably sweet
cadence, the real "dying fall," of that most
delightful songster. At the risk of a seem-
ing contradiction, however, I must mention
one curious circumstance. On going again
to Francoiiia, a year afterwards, and, nat-
urally, keeping my ears open for Vireo pJdl-
addpliicuS) I discovered that I was never
for a moment in doubt when I heard a red-
eye ; but once, on listening to a distant soli-
tary, — catching only part of the strain, —
I was for a little quite uncertain whether he
might not be the bird for which I was look-
ing. How this fact is to be explained I am
unable to say ; it will be least surprising to
those who know most of such matters, and
at all events I think it worth recording as
affording a possible clue to some future ob-
server. The experience, inconsistent as the
assertion may sound, does not in the least
alter my opinion that the Philadelphia's
song is practically certain to be confused
with the red-eye's rather than with the soli-
tary's. Upon that point my companions

14 JUNE IN FRAN CON I A.

and I were perfectly agreed while we had
the bird before us, and Mr. Brewster's tes-
timony is abundantly conclusive to the same
effect. He was in the Umbagog forests on
a special hunt for Philadelphia vireos (he
had collected specimens there on two previ-
ous occasions), and after some days of fruit-
less search discovered, almost by accident,
that the birds had all the while been singing
close about him, but in every instance had
passed for "nothing but red-eyes."1

For the benefit of the lay reader, I ought,
perhaps, to have explained before this that
the Philadelphia vireo is in coloration an ex-
act copy of the warbling vireo. There is a
slight difference in size between the two,
but the most practiced eye could not be de-
pended upon to tell them apart in a tree.
Vireo philadelphicus is in a peculiar case :
it looks like one common bird, and sings
like another. It might have been invented
on purpose to circumvent collectors, as the
Almighty has been supposed by some to
have created fossils on purpose to deceive
ungodly geologists. It is not surprising,
therefore, that the bird escaped the notice

1 Bulletin oftheNuttall Ornithological Club, vol. v. p. 3.

JUNE IN FRANCONIA. 15

of the older ornithologists. In fact, it was
first described, — by Mr. Cassin, — in 1851,
from a specimen taken, nine years before,
near Philadelphia; and its nest remained
unknown for more than thirty years longer,
the first one having been discovered, appar-
ently in Canada, in 1884.1

Day after day, the bare, sharp crest of
Mount Lafayette silently invited my feet.
Then came a bright, favorable morning, and
I set out. I would go alone on this my first
pilgrimage to the noble peak, at which, al-
ways from too far off, I had gazed longingly
for ten summers. It is not inconsistent
with a proper regard for one's fellows, I
trust, to enjoy now and then being without
their society. It is good, sometimes, for a
man to be alone, — especially on a mountain-
top, and more especially at a first visit. The
trip to the summit was some seven or eight
miles in length, and an almost continual as-
cent, without a dull step in the whole dis-
tance. The Tennessee warbler was sing-
ing; but perhaps the pleasantest incident of
the walk to the Profile House — in front of
which the mountain footpath is taken — was
1 E. E. T. Seton, in The Auk, vol. ii. p. 305.

16 JUNE IN FRANC ON I A.

a Blackburnian warbler perched, as usual,
at the very top of a tall spruce, his orange
throat flashing fire as he faced the sun,
and his song, as my notebook expresses it,
"sliding up to high Z at the end" in his
quaintest and most characteristic fashion. I
spent nearly three hours in climbing the
mountain path, and during all that time saw
and heard only twelve kinds of birds : red-
starts, Canada warblers (near the base),
black-throated blues, black-throated greens,
Nashvilles, black -polls, red -eyed vireos,
snowbirds (no white -throated sparrows!),
winter wrens, Swainson and gray-cheeked
thrushes, and yellow - bellied flycatchers.
Black -poll and Nashville warblers were es-
pecially numerous, as they are also upon
Mount Washington, and, as far as I have
seen, upon the White Mountains generally.
The feeble, sharp song of the black-poll is a
singular affair; short and slight as it is, it
embraces a perfect crescendo and a perfect
decrescendo. Without question I passed
plenty of white -throated sparrows, but by
some coincidence not one of them announced
himself. The gray-cheeked thrushes, which
sang freely, were not heard till I was per-

JUNE IN FRANCONIA. 17

haps halfway between the Eagle Cliff Notch
and the Eagle Lakes. This species, so re-
cently added to our summer fauna, proves
to be not uncommon in the mountainous
parts of New England, though apparently
confined to the spruce forests at or near the
summits. I found it abundant on Mount
Mansfield, Vermont, in 1885, and in the
summer of 1888 Mr. Walter Faxon sur-
prised us all by shooting a specimen on
Mount Gray lock, Massachusetts. Doubt-
less the bird has been singing its perfectly
distinctive song in the White Mountain
woods ever since the white man first visited
them. During the vernal migration, indeed,
I have more than once heard it sing in east-
ern Massachusetts. My latest delightful
experience of this kind was on the 29th of
May last (1889), while I was hastening to a
railway train within the limits of Boston.
Preoccupied as I was, and faintly as the
notes came to me, I recognized them in-
stantly; for while the gray -cheek's song
bears an evident resemblance to the veery's
(which I had heard within five minutes), the
two are so unlike in pitch and rhythm that
no reasonably nice ear ought ever to con-

18 JUNE IN FRAN CON I A.

found them. The bird was just over the
high, close, inhospitable fence, on the top
of which I rested my chin and watched and
listened. He sat with his back toward me,
in full view, on a level with my eye, and
sang and sang and sang, in a most deli-
ciously soft, far-away voice, keeping his
wings all the while a little raised and quiv-
ering, as in a kind of musical ecstasy. It
does seem a thing to be regretted — yes, a
thing to be ashamed of — that a bird so beau-
tiful, so musical, so romantic in its choice
of a dwelling-place, and withal so charac-
teristic of New England should be known,
at a liberal estimate, to not more than one
or two hundred New Englanders! But if
a bird wishes general recognition, he should
do as the robin does, and the bluebird, and
the oriole, — dress like none of his neigh-
bors, and show himself freely in the vicinity
of men's houses. How can one expect to be
famous unless he takes a little pains to keep
himself before the public?

From the time I left my hotel until I was
fairly above the dwarf spruces below the
summit of Lafayette, I was never for many
minutes together out of the hearing of thrush

JUNE IN FRAN CON I A. 19

music. Four of our five summer represent-
atives of the genus Turdus took turns, as
it were, in the serenade. The veeries —
Wilson's thrushes — greeted me before I
stepped off the piazza. As I neared the
Profile House farm, the hermits were in tune
on either hand. The moment the road en-
tered the ancient forest, the olive - backs
began to make themselves heard, and half-
way up the mountain path the gray-cheeks
took up the strain and carried it on to its
heavenly conclusion. A noble processional!
Even a lame man might have climbed to
such music. If the wood thrush had been
here, the chorus would have been complete,
— a chorus not to be excelled, according
to my untraveled belief, in any quarter of
the world.

To-day, however, my first thoughts were
not of birds, but of the mountain. The
weather was all that could be asked, — the
temperature perfect, and the atmosphere so
transparent as to be of itself a kind of lens ;
so that in the evening, when I rejoined my
companions at the hotel, I found to my as-
tonishment that I had been plainly visible
while at the summit, the beholders having

20 JUNE IN FRANC ON I A.

no other help than an opera-glass ! It was
almost past belief. I had felt some dilation
of soul, it was true, but had been quite
unconscious of any corresponding physical
transformation. What would our aboriginal
forerunners have said could they have stood
in the valley and seen a human form moving
from point to point along yonder sharp,
serrated ridge? I should certainly have
passed for a god ! Let us be thankful that
all such superstitious fancies have had their
day. The Indian, poor child of nature,

" A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,"

stood afar off and worshiped toward these
holy hills; but the white man clambers
gayly up their sides, guide-book in hand,
and leaves his sardine box and eggshells —
and likely enough his business card — at the
top. Let us be thankful, I repeat, for the
light vouchsafed to us ; ours is a goodly her-
itage ; but there are moods — such creatures
of hereditary influence are we — wherein I
would gladly exchange both the guide-book
and the sardine box for a vision, never so
indistinct and transient, of Kitche Manitoo.
Alas ! what a long time it is since any of us

JUNE IN FRANCONIA. 21

have been able to see the invisible. "In
the mountains," says Wordsworth, "did he
feel his faith." But the poet was speaking
then of a very old-fashioned young fellow,
who, even when he grew up, made nothing
but a peddler. Had he lived in our day,
he would have felt not his faith, but his own
importance; especially if he had put him-
self out of breath, as most likely he would
have done, in accomplishing in an hour and
forty minutes what, according to the guide-
book, should have taken a full hour and
three quarters. The modern excursionist
(how Wordsworth would have loved that
word !) has learned wisdom of a certain wise
fowl who once taught St. Peter a lesson, and
who never finds himself in a high place with-
out an impulse to flap his wings and crow.

For my own part, though I spent nearly
three hours on the less than four miles of
mountain path, as I have already acknow-
ledged, I was nevertheless somewhat short-
winded at the end. So long as I was in the
woods, it was easy enough to loiter ; but no
sooner did I leave the last low spruces be-
hind me than I was seized with an importu-
nate desire to stand upon the peak, so near

22 JUNE IN FRAN CON I A.

at hand just above me. I hope my readers
are none of them too old to sympathize with
the boyish feeling. At all events, I quick-
ened my pace. The distance could not be
more than half a mile, I thought. But it
was wonderful how that perverse trail among
the boulders did unwind itself, as if it never
would come to an end; and I was not sur-
prised, on consulting a guide-book after-
wards, to find that my half mile had really
been a mile and a half. One's sensations in
such a case I have sometimes compared
with those of an essay -writer when he is get-
ting near the end of his task. He dallied
with it in the beginning, and was half ready
to throw it up in the middle ; but now the
fever is on him, and he cannot drive the pen
fast enough. Two days ago he doubted
whether or not to burn the thing; now it is
certain to be his masterpiece, and he must
sit up till morning, if need be, to finish
it. What would life be worth without
its occasional enthusiasm, laughable in the
retrospect, perhaps, but in itself pleasurable
almost to the point of painf ulness ?

It was a glorious day. I enjoyed the
climb, the lessening forest, the alpine plants

JUNE IN FRANC ON I A. 23

(the diapensia was in full flower, with its
upright snowy goblets, while the geum and
the Greenland sandwort were just beginning
to blossom), the magnificent prospect, the
stimulating air, and, most of all, the moun-
tain itself. I sympathized then, as I have
often done at other times, with a remark
once made to me by a Vermont farmer's
wife. I had sought a night's lodging at her
house, and during the evening we fell into
conversation about Mount Mansfield, from
the top of which I had just come, and di-
rectly at the base of which the farmhouse
stood. When she went up "the mounting,"
she said, she liked to look off, of course ; but
somehow what she cared most about was
"the mounting itself."

The woman had probably never read a
line of Wordsworth, unless, possibly, "We
are Seven" was in the old school reader;
but I am sure the poet would have liked this
saying, especially as coming from such a
source. / liked it, at any rate, and am
seldom on a mountain-top without recalling
it. Her lot had been narrow and prosaic,
— bitterly so, the visitor was likely to think ;
she was little used to expressing herself, and

24 JUNE IN FRAN CON I A.

no doubt would have wondered what Mr.
Pater could mean by his talk about natural
objects as possessing "more or less of a
moral or spiritual life," as "capable of a
companionship with man, full of expression,
of inexplicable affinities and delicacies of
intercourse." From such refinements and
subtleties her mind would have taken refuge
in thoughts of her baking and ironing. But
she enjoyed the mountain; I think she had
some feeling for it, as for a friend ; and who
knows but she, too, was one of "the poets
that are sown by Nature "?

I spent two happy hours and a half at the
summit of Lafayette. The ancient peak
must have had many a worthier guest, but it
could never have entertained one more hos-
pitably. With what softly temperate breezes
did it fan me ! I wish I were there now !
But kind as was its welcome, it did not urge
me to remain. The word of the brook came
true again, — as Nature's words always do,
if we hear them aright. Having gone as
high as my feet could carry me, there was
nothing left but to go down again. " Which
things," as Paul said to the Galatians, "are
an allegory."

JUNE IN FRAN CON I A. 25

I was not asked to stay, but I was invited
to come again; and the next season, also in
June, I twice accepted the invitation. On
the first of these occasions, although I was
eight days later than I had been the year
before (June 19th instead of June llth), the
diapensia was just coming into somewhat
free bloom, while the sandwort showed only
here and there a stray flower, and the geum
was only in bud. The dwarf paper birch
(trees of no one knows what age, matting
the ground) was in blossom, with large,
handsome catkins, while Cutler's willow
was already in fruit, and the crowberry
likewise. The willow, like the birch, has
learned that the only way to live in such a
place is to lie flat upon the ground and let
the wind blow over you. The other flowers
noted at the summit were one of the blue-
berries ( Vaccinium, uliginosum), Bigelow's
sedge, and the fragrant alpine holy-grass
(Hierochloa alpind). Why should this sa-
cred grass, which Christians sprinkle in
front of their church doors on feast-days, be
scattered thus upon our higher mountain-
tops, unless these places are indeed, as the
Indian and the ancient Hebrew believed,
the special abode of the Great Spirit?

26 JUNE IN FRAN CON I A.

But the principal interest of this my sec-
ond ascent of Mount Lafayette was to be
not botanical, but ornithological. We had
seen nothing noteworthy on the way up (I
was not alone this time, though I have so
far been rude enough to ignore my compan-
ion); but while at the Eagle Lakes, on our
return, we had an experience that threw me
into a nine days' fever. The other man —
one of the botanists of last year's crew —
was engaged in collecting viburnum speci-
mens, when all at once I caught sight of
something red in a dead spruce on the moun-
tain-side just across the tiny lake. I leveled
my glass, and saw with perfect distinctness,
as I thought, two pine grosbeaks in bright
male costume, — birds I had never seen be-
fore except in winter. Presently a third
one, in dull plumage, came into view, hav-
ing been hidden till now' behind the bole.
The trio remained in sight for some time,
and then dropped into the living spruces
underneath, and disappeared. I lingered
about, while my companion and the black
flies were busy, and was on the point of
turning away for good, when up flew two
red birds and alighted in a tree close by the

JUNE IN FRANCONIA. 27

one out of which the grosbeaks had dropped.
But a single glance showed that they were
not grosbeaks, but white-winged crossbills !
And soon they, too, were joined by a third
bird, in female garb. Here was a pretty
piece of confusion! I was delighted to see
the crossbills, having never before had the
first glimpse of them, summer or winter;
but what was I to think about the gros-
beaks? "Your determination is worthless,"
said my scientific friend, consolingly; and
there was no gainsaying his verdict. Yet
by what possibility could I have been so de-
ceived? The birds, though none too near,
had given me an excellent observation, and
as long as they were in sight I had felt no
uncertainty whatever as to their identity.
The bill alone, of which I had taken partic-
ular note, ought in all reason to be held
conclusive. So much for one side of the
case. On the other hand, however, the
second trio were unmistakably crossbills.
(They had been joined on the wing by sev-
eral others, as I ought to have mentioned,
and with their characteristic chattering cry
had swept out of sight up the mountain).
It was certainly a curious coincidence : three

28 JUNE IN FRANC ONI A.

grosbeaks — two males and a female — had
dropped out of a tree into the undergrowth ;
and then, five minutes later, three crossbills
— two males and a female — had risen out
of the same undergrowth, and taken almost
the very perch which the others had quitted !
Had this strange thing happened? Or had
my eyes deceived me? This was my dilem-
ma, on the sharp horns of which 1 tried al-
ternately for the next eight days to make
myself comfortable.

During all that time, the weather rendered
mountain climbing impracticable. But the
morning of the 28th was clear and cold, and
I set out forthwith for the Eagle Lakes. If
the grosbeaks were there, I meant to see
them, though I should have to spend all day
in the attempt. My botanist had returned
home, leaving me quite alone at the hotel;
but, as good fortune would have it, before
I reached the Profile House, I was over-
taken unexpectedly by a young ornithological
friend, who needed no urging to try the La-
fayette path. We were creeping laboriously
up the long, steep shoulder beyond the Ea-
gle Cliff gorge, and drawing near the lakes,
when all at once a peculiarly sweet, flowing

JUNE IN FRAN CON I A. 29

warble fell upon our ears. UA pine gros-
beak ! " said I, in a tone of full assurance,
although this was my first hearing of the
song. The younger man plunged into the
forest, in the direction of the voice, while I,
knowing pretty well how the land lay, has-
tened on toward the lakes, in hopes to find
the singer visible from that point. Just as
I ran down the little incline into the open,
a bird flew past me across the water, and
alighted in a dead spruce (it might have
been the very tree of nine days before),
where it sat in full sight, and at once broke
into song, — "like the purple finch's," says
my notebook; "less fluent, but, as it seemed
to me, sweeter and more expressive. I think
it was not louder." Before many minutes,
my comrade came running down the path in
high glee, calling, "Pine grosbeaks!" He
had got directly under a tree in which two
of them were sitting. So the momentous
question was settled, and I commenced feel-
ing once more a degree of confidence in my
own eyesight. The loss of such confidence
is a serious discomfort; but, strange as it
may seem to people in general, I suspect
that few field ornithologists, except begin-

30 JUNE IN FRAN CON I A.

ners, ever succeed in retaining it undis-
turbed for any long time together. As a
class, they have learned to take the familiar
maxim, "Seeing is believing," with several
grains of allowance. With most of them,
it would be nearer the mark to say, Shoot-
ing is believing.

My special errand at the lakes being thus
quickly disposed of, there was no reason why
I should not accompany my friend to the
summit. Lafayette gave us a cold reception.
We might have addressed him as Daniel
Webster, according to the time-worn story,
once addressed Mount Washington; but
neither of us felt oratorically inclined. In
truth, after the outrageous heats of the past
few days, it seemed good to be thrashing our
arms and crouching behind a boulder, while
we devoured our luncheon, and between
times studied the landscape. For my own
part, I experienced a feeling of something
like wicked satisfaction; as if I had been
wronged, and all at once had found a way
of balancing the score. The diapensia was
already quite out of bloom, although only
nine days before we had thought it hardly
at its best. It is one of the prettiest and

JUNE IN FRANCONIA. 31

most striking of our strictly alpine plants,
but is seldom seen by the ordinary summer
tourist, as it finishes its course long before
he arrives. The same may be said of the
splendid Lapland azalea, which I do not
remember to have found on Mount Lafay-
ette, it is true, but which is to be seen in
all its glory upon the Mount Washington
range, in middle or late June ; so early that
one may have to travel over snow-banks to
reach it. The two flowers oftenest noticed
by the chance comer to these parts are
the Greenland sand wort (the "mountain
daisy " !) and the pretty geum, with its hand-
some crinkled leaves and its bright yellow
blossoms, like buttercups.

My sketch will hardly fulfill the promise
of its title; for our June in Franconia in-
cluded a thousand things of which I have
left myself no room to speak : strolls in the
Landaff Valley and to Sugar Hill ; a walk
to Mount Agassiz ; numerous visits — by the
way, and in uncertain weather — to Bald
Mountain ; several jaunts to Lonesome Lake ;
and wanderings here and there in the path-
less valley woods. We were none of us of
that unhappy class who cannot enjoy doing
the same thing twice.

32 JUNE IN FRANCONIA.

I wished, also, to say something of sun-
dry minor enjoyments: of the cinnamon
roses, for example, with the fragrance of
which we were continually greeted, and which
have left such a sweetness in the memory
that I would have called this essay "June
in the Valley of Cinnamon Roses," had I
not despaired of holding myself up to so
poetic a title. And with the roses the wild
strawberries present themselves. Roses and
strawberries ! It is the very poetry of sci-
ence that these should be classified together.
The berries, like the flowers, are of a gener-
ous turn (it is a family trait, I think), lov-
ing no place better than the roadside, as if
they would fain be of refreshment to beings
less happy than themselves, who cannot be
still and blossom and bear fruit, but are
driven by the Fates to go trudging up and
down in dusty highways. For myself, if I
were a dweller in this vale, I am sure my
finger-tips would never be of their natural
color so long as the season of strawberries
lasted. On one of my solitary rambles I
found a retired sunny field, full of them.
To judge from appearances, not a soul had
been near it. But I noticed that, while the

JUNE IN FRANC ON I A. 33

almost ripe fruit was abundant, there was
scarce any that had taken on the final tinge
and flavor. Then I began to be aware of
faint, sibilant noises about me, and, glan-
cing up, I saw that the ground was already
"preempted" by a company of cedar-birds,
who, naturally enough, were not a little in-
dignant at my poaching thus on their pre-
serves. They showed so much concern (and
had gathered the ripest of the berries so
thoroughly) that I actually came away the
sooner on their account. I began to feel
ashamed of myself, and for once in my life
was literally hissed off the stage.

Even on my last page I must be permitted
a word in praise of Mount Cannon, of which
I made three ascents. It has nothing like
the celebrity of Mount Willard, with which,
from its position, it is natural to compare it ;
but to my thinking it is little, if at all, less
worthy. Its outlook upon Mount Lafayette
is certainly grander than anything Mount
Willard can offer, while the prospect of the
Pemigewasset Valley, fading away to the
horizon, if less striking than that of the
White Mountain Notch, has some elements
of beauty which must of necessity be lacking

34 JUNE IN FRANC ON I A.

in any more narrowly circumscribed scene,
no matter how romantic.

In venturing upon a comparison of this
kind, however, one is bound always to allow
for differences of mood. When I am in
tune for such things, I can be happier on an
ordinary Massachusetts hilltop than at an-
other time I should be on any New Hamp-
shire mountain, though it were Moosilauke
itself. And, truly, Fortune did smile upon
our first visit to Mount Cannon. Weather
conditions, outward and inward, were right.
We had come mainly to look at Lafayette
from this point of vantage; but, while we
suffered no disappointment in that direc-
tion, we found ourselves still more taken
with the valley prospect. We lay upon the
rocks by the hour, gazing at it. Scattered
clouds dappled the whole vast landscape with
shadows ; the river, winding down the mid-
dle of the scene, drew the whole into har-
mony, as it were, making it in some nobly
literal sense picturesque ; while the distance
was of such an exquisite blue as I think I
never saw before.

How good life is at its best ! And in
such

JUNE IN FRANC ON I A. 35

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

what care we for science or the objects of
science, — for grosbeak or crossbill (may the
birds forgive me !), or the latest novelty in
willows? I am often where fine music is
played, and never without being interested;
as men say, I am pleased. But at the twen-
tieth time, it may be, something touches my
ears, and I hear the music within the music ;
and, for the hour, I am at heaven's gate.
So it is with our appreciation of natural
beauty. We are always in its presence, but
only on rare occasions are our eyes anointed
to see it. Such ecstasies, it seems, are not
for every day. Sometimes I fear they grow
less frequent as we grow older.

We will hope for better things; but,
should the gloomy prognostication fall true,
we will but betake ourselves the more assid-
uously to lesser pleasures, — to warblers and
willows, roses and strawberries. Science
will never fail us. If worse comes to worst,
we will not despise the moths.

DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.

" December 's as pleasant as May."

Old Hymn.

FOR a month so almost universally spoken
against, November commonly brings more
than its full proportion of fair days; and
last year (1888) this proportion was, I think,
even greater than usual. On the 1st and
5th I heard the peeping of hylas ; Sunday,
the 4th, was enlivened by a farewell visita-
tion of bluebirds ; during the first week, at
least four sorts of butterflies — Disippus,
Philodice, Antiopa, and Comma — were on
the wing, and a single Philodice (our com-
mon yellow butterfly) was flying as late as
the 16th. Wild flowers of many kinds —
not less than a hundred, certainly — were
in bloom; among them the exquisite little
pimpernel, or poor man's weather - glass.
My daily notes are full of complimentary
allusions to the weather. Once in a while it
rained, and under date of the 6th I find this

DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 37

record, — "Everybody complaining of the
heat; "but as terrestrial matters go, the
month was remarkably propitious up to the
25th. Then, all without warning, — unless
possibly from the pimpernel, which nobody
heeded, — a violent snow-storm descended
upon us. Kailway travel and telegraphic
communication were seriously interrupted,
while from up and down the coast came
stories of shipwreck and loss of life. Win-
ter was here in earnest ; for the next three
months good walking days would be few.

December opened with a mild gray morn-
ing. The snow had already disappeared,
leaving only the remains of a drift here and
there in the lee of a stone-wall ; the ground
was saturated with water; every meadow
was like a lake ; and but for the greenness
of the fields in a few favored spots, the sea-
son might have been late March instead of
early December. Of course such hours
were never meant to be wasted within doors.
So I started out, singing as I went, —

" While God invites, how blest the day ! "

But the next morning was pleasant likewise ;
and the next ; and still the next ; and so the

38 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.

story went on, till in the end, omitting five
days of greater or less inclemency, I had
spent nearly the entire month in the open
air. I could hardly have done better had I
been in Florida.

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

So much for December, 1887. Its unex-
pected good behavior would seem to have

DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 39

made a profound impression upon me; no
doubt I promised never to forget it; yet
twelve months later traditionary notions had
resumed their customary sway, and every
pleasant morning took me by surprise.

The winter of 1888-89 will long be fa-
mous in the ornithological annals of New
England as the winter of killdeer plovers.
1 have mentioned the great storm of Novem-
ber 25th-27th. On the first pleasant morn-
ing afterwards — on the 28th, that is — my
out-of-door comrade and I made an excur-
sion to Nahant. The land-breeze had al-
ready beaten down the surf, and the turmoil
of the waters was in great part stilled ; but
the beach was strewn with sea-weeds and
eel-grass, and withal presented quite a holi-
day appearance. From one motive and an-
other, a considerable proportion of the in-
habitants of the city had turned out. The
principal attraction, as far as we could per-
ceive, was a certain big clam, of which great
numbers had been cast tip by the tide. Bas-
kets and wagons were being filled ; some of
the men carried off shells and all, while oth-
ers, with a celerity which must have been
the result of much practice, were cutting out

40 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.

the plump dark bodies, leaving the shells
in heaps upon the sand. The collectors of
these molluscan dainties knew them as qua-
haugs, and esteemed them accordingly ; but
my companion, a connoisseur in such mat-
ters, pronounced them not the true quahaug
( Venus mercenaries, — what a profanely ill-
sorted name, even for a bivalve!) but the
larger and coarser Cyprina islandica. The
man to whom we imparted this precious bit
of esoteric lore received it like a gentleman,
if I cannot add like a scholar. "We call
them quahaugs," he answered, with an ac-
cent of polite deprecation, as if it were not
in the least to be wondered at that he should
be found in the wrong. It was evident, at
the same time, that the question of a name
did not strike him as of any vital conse-
quence. Venus mercenaries or Cyprina
islandica, the savor iness of the chowder was
not likely to be seriously affected.

It was good, I thought, to see so many
people out - of - doors. Most of them had
employment in the shops, probably, and on
grounds of simple economy, so called, would
have been wiser to have stuck to their lasts.
But man, after all that civilization has done

DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 41

for him (and against him), remains at heart
a child of nature. His ancestors may have
been shoemakers for fifty generations, but
none the less he feels an impulse now and
then to quit his bench and go hunting,
though it be only for a mess of clams.

Leaving the crowd, we kept on our way
across the beach to Little Nahant, the cliffs
of which offer an excellent position from
which to sweep the bay in search of loons,
old-squaws, and other sea-fowl. Here we
presently met two gunners. They had been
more successful than most of the sportsmen
that one falls in with on such trips ; between
them they had a guillemot, two horned larks,
and a brace of large plovers, of some species
unknown to us, but noticeable for their
bright cinnamon -colored rumps. "Why
couldn't we have found those plovers, in-
stead of that fellow? " said my companion,
as we crossed the second beach. I fear he
was envious at the prosperity of the wicked.
But it was only a passing cloud; for on
reaching the main peninsula we were
speedily arrested by loud cries from a piece
of marsh, and after considerable wading and
a clamber over a detestable barbed-wire

42 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS,

fence, such as no rambler ever encountered
without at least a temptation to profanity,
we caught sight of a flock of about a dozen
of the same unknown plovers. This was
good fortune indeed. We had no firearms,
nor even a pinch of salt, and coining shortly
to a ditch, too wide for leaping and too deep
for cold-weather fording, we were obliged
to content ourselves with opera-glass inspec-
tion. Six of the birds were grouped in a
little plot of grass, standing motionless, like
so many robins. Their novelty and their
striking appearance, with two conspicuous
black bands across the breast, their loud
cries, and their curious movements and at-
titudes were enough to drive a pair of en-
thusiasts half crazy. We looked and looked,
and then reluctantly turned away. On get-
ting home we had no difficulty in determin-
ing their identity, and each at once sent off
to the other the same verdict, — "killdeer
plover."

This, as I say, was on the 28th of Novem-
ber. On the 3d of December we were again
at Nahant, eating our luncheon upon the
veranda of some rich man's deserted cottage,

O ™

and at the same time enjoying the sunshine
and the beautiful scene.

DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 43

It was a summery spot ; moths were flit-
ting about us, and two grasshoppers leaped
out of our way as we crossed the lawn. They
showed something less than summer liveli-
ness, it is true ; it was only afterwards, and
by way of contrast, that I recalled Leigh
Hunt's

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

But they had done well, surely, to weather
the recent snow-storm and the low tempera-
ture ; for the mercury had been down to 10°
within a fortnight, and a large snow-bank
was still in sight against the wall. Sud-
denly a close flock of eight or ten birds flew
past us and disappeared behind the hill.
"Pigeons?" said my companion. I thought
not ; they were sea-birds of some kind. Soon
we heard killdeer cries from the beach, and,
looking up, saw the birds, three of them,
alighting on the sand. We started down
the hill in haste, but just at that moment an
old woman, a miserable gatherer of drift
rubbish, walked directly upon them, and
they made off. Then we saw that our
"pigeons," or "sea-birds," had been nothing
but killdeer plovers, which, like other long-

44 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.

winged birds, look much larger in the air
than when at rest. Returning towards Lynn,
later in the afternoon, we came upon the
same three birds again; this time feeding
among the boulders at the end of the beach.
We remarked once more their curious, silly-
looking custom of standing stock-still with
heads indrawn. But our own attitudes, as
we also stood stock-still with glasses raised,
may have looked, in their eyes, even more
singular and meaningless. As we turned
away — after flushing them two or three
times to get a view of their pretty cinnamon
rump-feathers — a sportsman came up, and
proved to be the very man on whose belt we
had seen our first killdeers, a week before.
We left him doing his best to bag these
three also. He will never read what I write,
and I need not scruple to confess that, see-
ing his approach, we purposely startled the
birds as badly as possible, hoping to see them
make off over the hill, out of harm's way.
But the foolish creatures could not take the
hint, and alighted again within a few rods,
at the same time calling loudly enough to
attract the attention of the gunner, who up
to this moment had not been aware of their

DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 45

presence. He fired twice before we got out
of sight, but, to judge from his motions,
without success. A man's happiness is per-
haps of more value than a plover's, though
I do not see how we are to prove it ; but my
sympathies, then as always, were with the
birds.

Within a week or so I received a letter
from Mrs. Celia Thaxter, together with a
wing, a foot, and one cinnamon feather.
"By this wing which I send you," she be-
gan, "can you tell me the name of the bird
that owned it?" Then after some descrip-
tion of the plumage, she continued: "In the
late tremendous tempest myriads of these
birds settled on the Isles of Shoals, filling
the air with a harsh, shrill, incessant cry,
and not to be driven away by guns or any
of man's inhospitable treatment. Their
number was so great as to be amazing, and
they had never been seen before by any of
the present inhabitants of the Shoals. They
are plovers of some kind, I should judge,
but I do not know." On the 16th she wrote
again: "All sorts of strange things were
cast up by the storm, and the plovers were
busy devouring everything they could find;

46 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.

always running, chasing each other, very
quarrelsome, lighting all the time. They
were in poor condition, so lean that the men
did not shoot them after the first day, a fact
which gives your correspondent great satis-
faction. They are still there ! My brother
came from the Shoals yesterday, and says
that the place is alive with them, all the
seven islands."

Similar facts were reported — as I began
in one way and another to learn — from
different points along the coast; especially
from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, where hun-
dreds of the birds were seen on the 28th and
29th of November. The reporter of this
item1 pertinently adds: "Such a flight of
killdeer in Maine — where the bird is well
known to be rare — has probably not oc-
curred before within the memory of living
sportsmen." Here, as at the Isles of Shoals,
the visitors were at first easily shot (they are
not counted among game birds where they
are known, on account of their habitual lean-
ness, I suppose); but they had landed upon
inhospitable shores, and were not long in

1 Mr. N. C. Brown, in The Auk, January, 1889,
page 69.

DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 47

becoming aware of their misfortune. In
the middle of December one of our Cam-
bridge ornithologists went to Cape Cod on
purpose to find them. He saw about sixty
birds, but by this time they were so wild
that he succeeded in getting only a single
specimen. "Poor fellows! " he wrote me;
"they looked unhappy enough, that cold
Friday, with the mercury at 12° and every-
thing frozen stiff. "Most of them were on
hillsides and in the hollows of pastures; a
few were in the salt marshes, and one or two
on the beach." Nobody expected them to
remain hereabouts, as they normally winter
in the West Indies and in Central and South
America;1 but every little while Mrs. Thax-
ter wrote, "The killdeers are still here!"
and on the 21st of December, as I approached
Marblehead Neck, I saw a bird skimming

1 It seems probable that the birds started from some
point in the Southern States for a long southward flight,
or perhaps for the West Indies, on the evening of Novem-
ber 24th, and on getting out to sea were caught by the
great gale, which whirled them northward over the At-
lantic, landing them — such of them, that is, as were
not drowned on the way — upon the coast of New Eng-
land. The grounds for such an opinion are set forth by
Dr. Arthur P. Chadbourne in The Auk for July, 1889,
page 255.

48 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.

over the ice that covered the small pond
back of the beach. I put up my glass and
said to myself, "A killdeer plover !" There
proved to be two birds. They would not
suffer me within gunshot, — though I car-
ried no gun, — but flew off into some
ploughed ground, with their usual loud vo-
ciferations. (The killdeer is aptly named
^Egialitis vocifera.^

During the month with the history of
which we are now especially concerned, I
saw nothing more of them ; but by way of
completing the story I may add that on the
28th of January, in the same spot, I found
a flock of seven, and there they remained.
I visited them four times in February and
once in March, and found them invariably in
the same place. Evidently they had no idea
of making another attempt to reach the
West Indies for this season; and if they
were to remain in our latitude, they could
hardly have selected a more desirable loca-
tion. The marsh, or meadow, was sheltered
and sunny, while the best protected corner
was at the same time one of those peculiarly
springy spots in which the grass keeps green
the winter through. Here, then, these seven

DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 49

wayfarers stayed week after week. When-
ever I stole up cautiously and peeped over
the bank into their verdant hiding-place, I
was sure to hear the familiar cry; and di-
rectly one bird, and then another, and an-
other, would start up before me, disclosing
the characteristic brown feathers of the
lower back. They commonly assembled in
the middle of the marsh upon the snow or
ice, where they stood for a little, bobbing
their heads in mutual conference, and then
flew off over the house and over the orchard,
calling as they flew.

Throughout December, and indeed
throughout the winter, brown creepers and
red - bellied nuthatches were surprisingly
abundant. Every pine wood seemed to have
its colony of them. Whether the extraordi-
nary mildness of the season had anything to
do with this I cannot say ; but their pres-
ence was welcome, whatever the reason for
it. Like the chickadee, with whom they
have the good taste to be fond of associat-
ing, they are always busy and cheerful, ap-
pearing not to mind either snow-storm or
low temperature. No reasonable observer
would ever tax them with effeminacy, though

50 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.

the creeper, it must be owned, cannot speak
without lisping.

Following my usual practice, I began a
catalogue of the month's birds, and at the
end of a fortnight discovered, to my aston-
ishment, that the name of the downy wood-
pecker was missing. He had been common
during November, and is well known as one
of our familiar winter residents. I began
forthwith to keep a sharp lookout for him,
particularly whenever I went near any apple
orchard. A little later, I actually com-
menced making excursions on purpose to
find him. But the fates were against me,
and go where I would, he was not there.
At last I gave him up. Then, on the 27th,
as I sat at my desk, a chickadee chirped
outside. Of course I looked out to see him ;
and there, exploring the branches of an old
apple-tree, directly under my window, was
the black-and-white woodpecker for whom
I had been searching in vain through five
or six townships. The saucy fellow! He
rapped smartly three or four times ; then he
straightened himself back, as woodpeckers
do, and said: "Good-morning, sir! Where
have you been so long ? If you wish to see

DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 51

me, you had better stay at home." He might
have spoken a little less pertly; for after
all, if a man would know what is going on,
whether in summer or winter, he must not
keep too much in his own door-yard. Of
the thirty birds in my December list, I
should have seen perhaps ten if I had sat all
the time at my window, and possibly twice
that number had I confined my walks within
the limits of my own town.

While the migration is going on, to be
sure, one may find birds in the most unex-
pected places. Last May I glanced up from
my book and espied an olive-backed thrush
in the back yard, foraging among the cur-
rant-bushes. Raising a window quietly, I
whistled something like an imitation of his
inimitable song; and the little traveler —
always an easy dupe — pricked up his ears,
and presently responded with a strain which
carried me straight into the depths of a
White Mountain forest. But in December,
with some exceptions, of course, birds must
be sought after rather than waited for. The
15th, for example, was a most uncomforta-
ble day, — so uncomfortable that I stayed
indoors,0 — the mercury only two or three

52 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.

degrees above zero, and a strong wind blow-
ing. Such weather would drive the birds
under shelter. The next forenoon, there-
fore, I betook myself to a hill covered thickly
with pines and cedars. Here I soon ran
upon several robins, feeding upon the savin
berries, and in a moment more was surprised
by a tseep so loud and emphatic that I thought
at once of a fox sparrow. Then I looked
for a song sparrow, — badly startled, per-
haps, — but found to my delight a white-
throat. He was on the ground, but at my
approach flew into a cedar. Here he drew
in his head and sat perfectly still, the pic-
ture of discouragement. I could not blame
him, but was glad, an hour later, to find
him again on the ground, picking up his
dinner. I leveled my glass at him and
whistled his Peabody song (the simplest of
all bird songs to imitate), but he moved not
a feather. Apparently he had never heard
it before ! He was still there in the after-
noon, and I had hopes of his remaining
through the winter ; but I never could find
him afterwards. Ten days prior to this I
had gone to Longwood on a special hunt for
this same sparrow, remembering a certain

DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 53

peculiarly cozy hollow where, six or eight
years before, a little company of song spar-
rows and white-throats had passed a rather
severe winter. The song sparrows were
there again, as I had expected, but no white-
throats. The song sparrows, by the way,
treated me shabbily this season. A year
ago several of them took up their quarters
in a roadside garden patch, where I could
look in upon them almost daily. This year
there were none to be discovered anywhere
in this neighborhood. They figure in my
December list on four days only, and were
found in four different towns, — Brookline
(Longwood), Marblehead, Nahant, and Co-
hasset. Like some others of our land birds
(notably the golden-winged woodpecker and
the meadow lark), they seem to have learned
that winter loses a little of its rigor along
the sea-board.

Three kinds of land birds were met with
at Nahant Beach, and nowhere else: the
Ipswich sparrow, — on the 3d and 26th, —
the snow bunting, and the horned lark. Of
the last two species, both of them rather
common in November, I saw but one in-
dividual each. They were feeding side by

54 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.

side, and, after a short separation, — under
the fright into which my sudden appearance
put them, — one called to the other, and they
flew off in company towards Lynn. It was
a pleasing display of sociability, but no-
thing new; for in winter, as every observer
knows, birds not of a feather flock together.
The Ipswich sparrow, a very retiring but
not peculiarly timid creature, I have now
seen at Nahant in every one of our seven
colder months, — from October to April, —
though it is unquestionably rare upon the
Massachusetts coast between the fall and
spring migrations. Besides the species al-
ready named, my monthly list included the
following : herring gull, great black-backed
gull, ruffed grouse, hairy woodpecker, flick-
er, goldfinch, tree sparrow, snowbird, blue
jay, crow, shrike, white - bellied nuthatch
(only two or three birds), golden - crowned
kinglet, and one small hawk.1

The only birds that sang during the month

1 To this list my ornithological comrade before men-
tioned added seven species, namely : white-winged scoter,
barred owl, cowbird, purple finch, white-winged cross-
bill, fox sparrow, and winter wren. Between us, as far
as land birds went, we did pretty well.

DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 55

— unless we include the red -bellied nut-
hatches, whose frequent quaint twitterings
should, perhaps, come under this head —
were the chickadees and a single robin. The
former 1 have down as uttering their sweet
phoebe whistle — which I take to be cer-
tainly their song, as distinguished from all
their multifarious calls — on seven of the
thirty-one days. They were more tuneful
in January, and still more so in February;
so that the titmouse, as becomes a creature
so full of good humqr and high spirits, may
fairly be said to sing all winter long. The
robin's music was a pleasure quite unex-
pected. I was out on Sunday, the 30th, for
a few minutes' stroll before breakfast, when
the obliging stranger (I had not seen a robin
for a fortnight, and did not see another for
nearly two months) broke into song from a
hill-top covered with pitch-pines. He was
in excellent voice, and sang again and
again. The morning invited music, —
warm and cloudless, like an unusually fine
morning in early April.

For an entire week, indeed, the weather
had seemed to be trying to outdo itself. I
remember in particular the day before

56 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.

Christmas. I rose long before daylight,
crossed the Mystic River marshes as the
dawn was beginning to break, and shortly
after sunrise was on my way down the South
Shore. Leaving the cars at Cohasset, I
sauntered over the Jerusalem Road to Nan-
tasket, spent a little while on the beach,
and brought up at North Cohasset, where I
was attracted by a lonesome-looking road
running into the woods all by itself, with a
guide-board marked "Turkey Hill." Why
not accept the pleasing invitation, which
seemed meant on purpose for just such an
idle pedestrian as myself? As for Turkey
Hill, I had never heard of it, and presumed
it to be some uninteresting outlying hamlet.
My concern, as a saunter er's ought always
to be, was with the road itself, not with
what might lie at the end of it. I did not
discover my mistake till I had gone half a
mile, more or less, when the road all at once
turned sharply to the right and commenced
ascending. Then it dawned upon me that
Turkey Hill must be no other than the long,
gradual, grassy slope at which I had already
been looking from the railway station. The
prospect of sea and land was beautiful; all

DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 57

the more so, perhaps, because of a thick
autumnal haze. It might be called excellent
Christmas weather, I said to myself, when
a naturally prudent man, no longer young,
could sit perched upon a fence rail at the
top of a hill, drinking in the beauties of the
landscape.

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

The 25th was warmer even than the 24th ;
and it, likewise, I spent upon the South

58 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.

Shore, though at a point somewhat farther
inland, and in a town where I was not likely
to lose myself, least of all in any out-of-
the-way woodland road. In short, I spent
Christmas on my native heath, — a not in-
appropriate word, by the bye, for a region
so largely grown up to huckleberry bushes.
"Holbrook's meadows," and "Norton pas-
ture! " — the names are not to be found on
any map, and will convey no meaning to my
readers ; but in my ears they awaken mem-
ories of many and many a sunny hour. On
this holiday I revisited them both. Warm
as it was, boys and girls were skating on the
meadows (in spite of their name, these have
been nothing but a pond for as long as I
can remember), and I stood awhile by the
old Ross cellar, watching their evolutions.
How bright and cheery it was in the little
sheltered clearing, with nothing in sight but
the leafless woods and the ice-covered pond !
"Shan't I take your coat? " the sun seemed
to be asking. At my elbow stood a bunch
of lilac bushes ("laylocks " they were prob-
ably called by the man who set them out J)

1 So they were called, too, by that lover of flowers,
Walter Savage Landor, who, as his biographer says, fol-

DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 59

that had blossomed freely in the summer.
The house has been gone for these thirty
years or more (alas! my sun must be rap-
idly declining when memory casts so long
a shadow), but the bushes seem likely to
hold their own for at least a century. They
might have prompted a wise man to some
wise reflections ; but for myself, it must be
acknowledged, I fell instead to thinking how
many half days I had fished — and caught
nothing, or next to nothing — along this
same pleasant, willow-bordered shore.

In Norton pasture, an hour or two later,
I made myself young again by putting a few
checkerberries into my mouth; and in a
small new clearing just over the brook
("Dyer's Run," this used to be called, but
I fear the name is falling into forgetfulness)
I stumbled upon a patch of some handsome
evergreen shrub, which I saw at once to be
a novelty. I took it for a member of the
heath family, but it proved to belong with
the hollies, — Ilex glabra, or ink-berry, a
plant not to be found in the county where it
is my present lot to botanize. So, even on

lowed a pronunciation " traditional in many old English
families."

60 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.

my native heath, I had discovered some-
thing new.

The flora of a Massachusetts December is
of necessity limited. Even in the month
under review, singularly favorable as it was,
I found but sixteen sorts of wild blossoms ;
a small number, surely, though perhaps
larger by sixteen than the average reader
would have guessed. The names of these
hardy adventurers must by no means go un-
recorded: shepherd's purse, wild pepper-
grass, pansy, common chickweed (Stellaria
media), mouse-ear chickweed (Cerastium
viscosurri), knawel, common mallow, witch-
hazel, cinque-foil (Potentilla Norvegica, —
not argentea, as I should certainly have ex-
pected), many-flowered aster, cone -flower,
yarrow, two kinds of groundsel, fall dande-
lion, and join tweed. Six of these — mallow,
cinque-foil, aster, cone-flower, fall dande-
lion, and jointweed — were noticed only at
Nahant ; and it is further to be said that the
jointweed was found by a friend, not by
myself, while the cone -flower was not in
strictness a blossom ; that is to say, its rays
were well opened, making what in common
parlance is called a flower, but the true

DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 61

florets were not yet perfected. Such witch-
hazel blossoms as can be gathered in Decem-
ber are of course nothing but belated speci-
mens. I remarked a few on the 2d, and
again on the 10th; and on the afternoon of
Christmas, happening to look into a hama-
melis-tree, I saw what looked like a flower
near the top. The tree was too small for
climbing and almost too large for bending,
but I managed to get it down; and sure
enough, the bit of yellow was indeed a per-
fectly fresh blossom. How did it know I
was to pass that way on Christmas afternoon,
and by what sort of freemasonry did it at-
tract my attention? I loved it and left it
on the stalk, in the true Emersonian spirit,
and here I do my little best to embalm its
memory.

One of the groundsels (Senecio viscosus)
is a recent immigrant from Europe, but has
been thoroughly established in the Back
Bay lands of Boston — where I now found it,
in perfect condition, December 4th — for at
least half a dozen years. In Gray's "Flora
of North America" it is said to grow there
and in the vicinity of Providence ; but since
that account was written it has made its ap-

62 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.

pearance in Lowell, and probably in other
places. It is a coarse -looking little plant,
delighting to grow in pure gravel; but its
blossoms are pretty, and now, with not
another flower of any sort near it, it looked,
as the homely phrase is, "as handsome as
a picture." Its more generally distributed
congener, Senecio vulgaris, — also a for-
eigner — is, next to the common chickweed,
I should say, our very hardiest bloomer.
At the beginning of the month it was in
flower in an old garden in Melrose ; and at
Marblehead Neck a considerable patch of it
was fairly yellow with blossoms all through
December and January, and I know not
how much longer. I saw no shepherd's
purse after December 27th, but knawel was
in flower as late as January 18th. The
golden-rods, it will be observed, are absent
altogether from my list ; and the same would
have been true of the asters, but for a single
plant. This, curiously enough, still bore
five heads of tolerably fresh blossoms, after
all its numberless companions, growing upon
the same hillside, had succumbed to the
frost.

Of my sixteen plants, exactly one half are

DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 63

species that have been introduced from Eu-
rope ; six are members of the composite fam-
ily ; and if we omit the cone -flower, all but
three of the entire number are simple whites
and yellows. Two red flowers, the clover
and the pimpernel, disappointed my search ;
but the blue hepatica would almost certainly
have been found, had it come in my way to
look for it.

Prettier even than the flowers, however,
was the December greenness, especially of
the humbler sorts: St. John's -wort, five-
finger, the creeping blackberries, — whose
modest winter loveliness was never half
appreciated, — herb-robert, corydalis, par-
tridge - berry, checkerberry, wintergreen,
rattlesnake-plantain, veronica, and linnsea,
to say nothing of the ferns and mosses.
Most refreshing of all, perhaps, was an oc-
casional patch of bright green grass, like the
one already spoken of, at Marblehead, or
like one even brighter and prettier, which I
visited more than once in Swampscott.

As I review what I have written, I am
tempted to exclaim with Tennyson : —

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

64 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.

But I answer, in all good conscience, yes.
The motto with which I began states the
truth somewhat strongly, perhaps (it must
be remembered where I got it), but aside
from that one bit of harmless borrowed hy-
perbole, I have delivered a plain, unvar-
nished tale. For all that, however, I do
not expect my industrious fellow-citizens to
fall in at once with my opinion that winter
is a pleasant season at the seashore (it
would be too bad they should, as far as my
own enjoyment is concerned), and December
a month propitious for leisurely all-day ram-
bles. How foreign such notions are to peo-
ple in general I have lately had several for-
cible reminders. On one of my jaunts from
Marblehead to Swampscott, for example, I
had finally taken to the railway, and was in
the narrow, tortuous cut through the ledges,
when, looking back, I saw a young gentle-
man coming along after me. He was in full
skating rig, fur cap and all, with a green
bag in one hand and a big hockey stick in
the other. I stopped every few minutes to
listen for any bird that might chance to be
in the woods on either hand, and he could
not well avoid overtaking me, though he

DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS. 65

seemed little desirous of doing so. The spot
was lonesome, and as he went by, and until
he was some rods in advance, he kept his
head partly turned. There was no mistak-
ing the significance of that furtive, sidelong
glance; he had read the newspapers, and
didn't intend to be attacked from behind
unawares ! If he should ever cast his eye
over these pages (and whatever he may have
thought of my appearance, I am bound to
say of him that he looked like a man who
might appreciate good literature), he will
doubtless remember the incident, especially
if I mention the field-glass which I carried
slung over one shoulder. Evidently the
world sees no reason why a man with any-
thing better to do should be wandering aim-
lessly about the country in midwinter. Nor
do I quarrel with the world's opinion. The
majority is wiser than the minority, of
course ; otherwise, what becomes of its divine
and inalienable right to lay down the law ?
The truth with me was that I had nothing
better to do. I confess it without shame.
Surely there is no lack of shoemakers.
Why, then, should not here and there a man
take up the business of walking, of wearing

66 DECEMBER OUT-OF-DOORS.

out shoes? Everything is related to every-
thing else, and the self - same power that
brought the killdeers to Marblehead sent me
there to see them and do them honor.
Should it please the gods to order it so, I
shall gladly be kept running on such errands
for a score or two of winters.

DYEK'S HOLLOW.

" Quiet hours

Pass'd among these heaths of ours
By the grey Atlantic sea."

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

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

68 DYERS HOLLOW.

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

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

My room would have made an ideal study
for a lazy man, I thought, the two windows
facing straight into a sand-bank, above
which rose a steep hill, or perhaps I should
rather say the steep wall of a plateau, on
whose treeless top, all by themselves, or
with only a graveyard for company, stood
the Town Hall and the two village churches.
Perched thus upon the roof of the Cape, as
it were, and surmounted by cupola and bel-
fry, the hall and the "orthodox" church
made invaluable beacons, visible from far
and near in every direction. For three
weeks I steered my hungry course by them
twice a day, having all the while a pleasing
consciousness that, however I might skip the
Sunday sermon, I was by no means neglect-
ing my religious privileges. The second
and smaller meeting-house belonged to a

DYER'S HOLLOW. 69

Methodist society. On its front were the
scars of several small holes which had been
stopped and covered with tin. A resident
of the Castle assured me that the mischief
had been done by pigeon woodpeckers, —
flickers, — a statement at which I inwardly
rejoiced. Long ago I had announced my be-
lief that these enthusiastic shouters must be
of the Wesleyan persuasion, and here was
the proof ! Otherwise, why had they never
sought admission to the more imposing and,
as I take it, more fashionable orthodox sanc-
tuary? Yes, the case was clear. I could
understand now how Darwin and men like
him must have felt when some great hypoth-
esis of theirs received sudden confirmation
from an unexpected quarter. At the same
time I was pained to see that the flickers'
attempts at church-going had met with such
indifferent encouragement. Probably the
minister and the class leaders would have
justified their exclusivehess by an appeal to
that saying about those who enter "not by
the door into the sheepfold ; " while the wood-
peckers, on their part, might have retorted
that just when they had most need to go in
the door was shut.

70 DYERS HOLLOW.

One of my favorite jaunts was to climb
this hill, or plateau, the "Hill of Storms"
(I am still ignorant whether the storms in
question were political, ecclesiastical, or at-
mospheric, but I approve the name), and
go down on the other side into a narrow
valley whose meanderings led me to the
ocean beach. This valley, or, to speak in
the local dialect, this hollow, like the paral-
lel one in which I lived, — the valley of the
Pamet, — runs quite across the Cape, from
ocean to bay, a distance of two miles and a
half, more or less.

At my very first sight of Dyer's Hollow
I fell in love with it, and now that I have
left it behind me, perhaps forever, I foresee
that my memories of it are likely to be even
fairer and brighter than was the place itself.
I call it Dyer's Hollow upon the authority
of the town historian, who told me, if I un-
derstood him correctly, that this was its
name among sailors, to whom it is a land-
mark. By the residents of the town I com-
monly heard it spoken of as Longnook or
Pike's Hollow, but for reasons of my own I
choose to remember it by its nautical desig-
nation, though myself as far as possible from
being a nautical man.

DYER'S HOLLOW. 71

To see Dyer's Hollow at its best, the visi-
tor should enter it at the western end, and
follow its windings till he stands upon the
bluff looking out upon the Atlantic. If his
sensations at all resemble mine, he will feel,
long before the last curve is rounded, as if
he were ascending a mountain ; and an odd
feeling it is, the road being level, or sub-
stantially so, for the whole distance. At
the outset he is in a green, well-watered val-
ley on the banks of what was formerly Little
Harbor. The building of the railway em-
bankment has shut out the tide, and what
used to be an arm of the bay is now a body
of fresh water. Luxuriant cat-tail flags
fringe its banks, and cattle are feeding near
by. Up from the reeds a bittern will now
and then start. I should like to be here
once in May, to hear the blows of his stake-
driver's mallet echoing and reechoing among
the close hills. At that season, too, all the
uplands would be green. So we were told,
at any rate, though the pleasing story was
almost impossible of belief. In August, as
soon as we left the immediate vicinity of
Little Harbor, the very bottom of the valley
itself was parched and brown; and the look

72 DYER'S HOLLOW.

of barrenness and drought increased as we
advanced, till toward the end, as the last
houses were passed, the total appearance of
things became subalpine : stunted, weather-
beaten trees, and broad patches of bearberry
showing at a little distance like beds of
mountain cranberry.

All in all, Dyer's Hollow did not impress
me as a promising farming country. Acres
and acres of horseweed, pinweed, stone
clover, poverty grass,1 reindeer moss, mouse-
ear everlasting, and bearberry ! No wonder
such fields do not pay for fencing-stuff. ^ No
wonder, either, that the dwellers here should
be mariculturalists rather than agricultural-
ists. And still, although their best garden
is the bay, they have their gardens on land
also, — the bottoms of the deepest hollows
being selected for the purpose, — and by

1 In looking over the town history, I was pleased to
come upon a note in defense of this lowly plant, on the
score not only of its beauty, but of its usefulness in hold-
ing the sand in place ; but, alas, " all men have not
faith," and where the historian wrote Hudsonia tomen-
tosa the antipathetic compositor set up Hudsonia tor-
mentosa. That compositor was a Cape Cod man, — I
would wager a dinner upon it. "Thus the whirligig of
time brings in his revenges," I hear him mutter, as he
slips the superfluous consonant into its place.

JDYER'S HOLLOW. 73

hook or by crook manage to coax a kind
of return out of the poverty-stricken soil.
Even on Cape Cod there must be some pota-
toes to go with the fish. Vegetables raised
under such difficulties are naturally sweet to
the taste, and I was not so much surprised,
therefore, on a certain state occasion at the
Castle, to see a mighty dish of string beans
ladled into soup-plates and exalted to the
dignity of a separate course. Here, too, —
but this was in Dyer's Hollow, — I found
in successful operation one of the latest, and,
if I may venture an unprofessional opinion,
one of the most valuable, improvements in
the art of husbandry. An old man, an an-
cient mariner, no doubt, was seated on a
camp-stool and plying a hoe among his cab-
bages. He was bent nearly double with age
("triple" is the word in my notebook, but
that may have been an exaggeration), and
had learned wisdom with years. I regretted
afterward that I had not got over the fence
and accosted him.. I could hardly have
missed hearing something rememberable.
Yet I may have done wisely to keep the
road. Industry like his ought never to be
intruded upon lightly. Some, I dare say,

74 DYER'S HOLLOW,

would have called the sight pathetic. To
me it was rather inspiring. Only a day or
two before, in another part of the township,
I had seen a man sitting in a chair among
his bean-poles picking beans. Those heavy,
sandy roads -and steep hills must be hard
upon the legs, and probably the dwellers
thereabout (unlike the Lombardy poplars,
which there, as elsewhere, were decaying at
the top) begin to die at thev lower extremi-
ties. It was not many miles from Dyer's
Hollow that Thoreau fell in with the old
wrecker, "a regular Cape Cod man," of
whom he says that "he looked as if he some-
times saw a doughnut, but never descended
to comfort." Quite otherwise was it with
my wise-hearted agricultural economists;
and quite otherwise shall it be with me, also,
who mean to profit by their example. If I
am compelled to dig when I get old (to
beg may I ever be ashamed!), I am deter-
mined not to forget the camp-stool. The
Cape Cod motto shall be mine, — He that
hoeth cabbages, let him do it with assiduity.
This aged cultivator, not so much "on
his last legs " as beyond them, was evidently
a native of the soil, but several of the few

DYER'S HOLLOW. 75

houses standing along the valley road were
occupied by Western Islanders. I was
crossing a field belonging to one of them
when the owner greeted me; a milkman,
as it turned out, proud of his cows and of
his boy, his only child. " How old do you
think he is?" he asked, pointing to the
young fellow. It would have been inexcus-
able to disappoint his fatherly expectations,
and I guessed accordingly: "Seventeen or
eighteen." "Sixteen," he rejoined, — "six-
teen ! " and his face shone till I wished I had
set the figure a little higher. The additional
years would have cost me nothing, and there
is no telling how much happiness they might
have conferred. "Who lives there? " I in-
quired, turning to a large and well - kept
house in the direction of the bay. "My
nephew." "Did he come over when you
did ? " " No, I sent for him. " He himself
left the Azores as a cabin boy, landed here
on Cape Cod, and settled down. Since
then he had been to California, where he
worked in the mines. "Ah! that was where
you got rich, was it ? " said I. " Kich ! " —
this in a tone of sarcasm. But he added,
"Well, I made something." His praise of

76 DYER'S HOLLOW.

his nearest neighbor — whose name pro-
claimed his Cape Cod nativity — made me
think well not only of his neighbor, but of
him. There were forty -two Portuguese
families in Truro, he said. "There are
more than that in Provincetown ? " I sug-
gested. He shrugged his shoulders. "Yes,
about half the people." And pretty good
people they are, if such as I saw were fair
representatives. One boy of fourteen (un-
like the milkman's heir, he was very small
for his years, as he told me with engaging
simplicity) walked by my side for a mile or
two, and quite won my heart. A true
Nathanael he seemed, in whom was no guile.
He should never go to sea, he said ; nor was
he ever going to get married so long as his
father lived. He loved his father so much,
and he was the only boy, and his father
could n't spare him. "But didn 't your
father go to sea?" "Oh, yes; both my fa-
thers went to sea." That was a puzzle ; but
presently it came out that his two fathers
were his father and his grandfather. He
looked troubled for a moment when I in-
quired the whereabouts of the poorhouse, in
the direction of which we happened to be

DYER'S HOLLOW. 77

going. He entertained a very decided
opinion that he shouldn't like to live there;
a wholesome aversion, I am bound to main-
tain, dear Uncle Yenner to the contrary
notwithstanding.

A stranger was not an every-day sight in
Dyer's Hollow, I imagine, and as I went up
and down the road a good many times in the
course of my visit, I came to be pretty well
known. So it happened that a Western
Islands woman came to her front door once,
broom in hand and the sweetest of smiles on
her face, and said, " Thank you for that five
cents you gave my little boy the other day."
"Put that in your pocket," I had said, and
the obedient little man did as he was bid-
den, without so much as a side glance at the
denomination of the coin. But he forgot
one thing, and when his mother asked him,
as of course she did, for mothers are all
alike, "Did you thank the gentleman?" he
could do nothing but hang his head. Hence
the woman's smile and "thank you," which
made me so ashamed of the paltriness of the
gift (Thackeray never saw a boy without
wanting to give him a sovereign /) that my
mention of the matter here, so far from in-

78 DYER'S HOLLOW.

dicating an ostentatious spirit, ought rather
to be taken as a mark of humility.

All things considered, I should hardly
choose to settle for life in Dyer's Hollow;
but with every recollection of the place I
somehow feel as if its score or two of inhab-
itants were favored above other men. Why
is it that people living thus by themselves,
and known thus transiently and from the
outside as it were, always seem in memory
like dwellers in some land of romance? I
cannot tell, but so it is; and whoever has
such a picture on the wall of his mind will
do well, perhaps, never to put the original
beside it. Yet I do not mean to speak quite
thus of Dyer's Hollow. Once more, at
least, I hope to walk the length of that strag-
gling road. As I think of it now, I behold
again those beds of shining bearberry ("re-
splendent" would be none too fine a word;
there is no plant for which the sunlight does
more), loaded with a wealth of handsome red
fruit. The beach-plum crop was a failure ;
plum wine, of the goodness of which I heard
enthusiastic reports, would be scarce; but
one needed only to look at the bearberry
patches to perceive that Cape Cod sand was

DYER'S HOLLOW. 79

not wanting in fertility after a manner of its
own. If its energies in the present instance
happened to be devoted to ornament rather
than utility, it was not for an untaxed and
disinterested outsider to make complaint;
least of all a man who was never a wine-
bibber, and who believes, or thinks he be-
lieves, in "art for art's sake." Within the
woods the ground was carpeted with trailing
arbutus and a profusion of checkerberry
vines, the latter yielding a few fat berries,
almost or quite a year old, but still sound
and spicy, still tasting "like tooth-powder,"
as the benighted city boy expressed it. It
was an especial pleasure to eat them here in
Dyer's Hollow, I had so many times done
the same in another place, on the banks
of Dyer's Run. Lady's - slippers likewise
(nothing but leaves) looked homelike and
friendly, and the wild lily of the valley, too,
and the pipsissewa. Across the road from
the old house nearest the ocean stood a still
more ancient-seeming barn, long disused, to
all appearance, but with old maid's pinks,
catnip, and tall, stout pokeberry weeds yet
flourishing beside it. Old maid's pinks
and catnip ! Could that combination have
been fortuitous?

80 DYERS HOLLOW.

No botanist, nor even a semi -scientific
lover of growing tilings, like myself, can
ever walk in new fields without an eye for
new plants. While coming down the Cape
in the train I had seen, at short intervals,
clusters of some strange flower, — like yellow
asters, I thought. At every station I jumped
off the car and looked hurriedly for speci-
mens, till, after three or four attempts, I
found what I was seeking, — the golden as-
ter, CJiryso2^sisfalcata. Here in Truro it
was growing everywhere, and of course in
Dyer's Hollow. Another novelty was the
pale greenbrier, Smilax glauca, which I saw
first on the hill at Provincetown, and after-
ward discovered in Longnook. It was not
abundant in either place, and in my eyes had
less of beauty than its familiar relatives, the
common greenbrier (cat-brier, horse-brier,
Indian -brier) of my boyhood, and the car-
rion flower. This glaucous smilax was one
of the plants that attracted Thoreau's atten-
tion, if I remember right, though I cannot
now put my finger upon his reference to it.
Equally new to me, and much more beau-
tiful, as well as more characteristic of the
place, were the broom -crowberry and the

DYER'S HOLLOW. 81

greener kind of poverty grass (Hudsonia
ericoides), inviting pillows or cushions of
which, looking very much alike at a little
distance, were scattered freely over the
grayish hills. These huddling, low-lying
plants were among the things which bestowed
upon Longnook its pleasing and remarkable
mountain-top aspect. The rest of the veg-
etation was more or less familiar, I believe :
the obtuse-leaved milkweed, of which I had
never seen so much before; three sorts of
goldenrod, including abundance of the fra-
grant odor a; two kinds of yellow gerardia,
and, in the lower lands at the western end
of the valley, the dainty rose gerardia, just
now coming into bloom ; the pretty Poly gala
polygama, — pretty, but not in the same
class with the rose gerardia; ladies' tresses;
bayberry; sweet fern; crisp-leaved tansy;
beach grass ; huckleberry bushes, for whose
liberality I had frequent occasion to be
thankful; bear oak; chinquapin; choke-
berry ; a single vine of the Virginia creeper ;
wild carrot ; wild cherry ; the common brake,
— these and doubtless many more were
there, for I made no attempt at a full cata-
logue. There must have been wild roses

82 DYER'S HOLLOW.

along the roadside and on the edge of the
thickets, I should think, yet I cannot recol-
lect them, nor does the name appear in my
penciled memoranda. Had the month been
June instead of August, notebook and mem-
ory would record a very different story, I
can hardly doubt; but out of flower is out
of mind.

In the course of my many visits to Dyer's
Hollow I saw thirty-three kinds of birds, of
the eighty-four species in my full Truro list.
The number of individuals was small, how-
ever, and, except at its lower end, the val-
ley was, or appeared to be, nearly destitute
of feathered life. A few song sparrows, a
cat-bird or two, a chewink or two, a field
sparrow, and perhaps a Maryland yellow-
throat might be seen above the last houses,
but as a general thing the bushes and trees
were deserted. Walking here, I could for
the time almost forget that I had ever owned
a hobby-horse. But farther down the hollow
there was one really "birdy " spot, to bor-
row a word — useful enough to claim lexico-
graphical standing — from one of my com-
panions: a tiny grove of stunted oaks, by
the roadside, just at the point where I nat-

DYERS HOLLOW. 83

urally struck the valley when I approached
it by way of the Hill of Storms. Here I
happened upon my only Cape Cod cowbird,
a full-grown youngster, who was being min-
istered unto in the most devoted manner by
a red-eyed vireo, — such a sight as always
fills me with mingled amusement, astonish-
ment, admiration, and disgust. That any
bird should be so befooled and imposed
upon! Here, too, I saw at different times
an adult male blue yellow-backed warbler,
and a bird of the same species in immature
plumage. It seemed highly probable, to say
the least, that the young fellow had been
reared not far off, the more so as the neigh-
boring Wellfleet woods were spectral with
hanging lichens, of the sort which this ex-
quisite especially affects. At first I won-
dered why this particular little grove, by no
means peculiarly inviting in appearance,
should be the favorite resort of so many
birds, — robins, orioles, wood pewees, king-
birds, chippers, golden warblers, black-and-
white creepers, prairie warblers, red-eyed
vireos, and blue yellow-backs; but I pres-
ently concluded that a fine spring of water
just across the road must be the attraction.

84 DYERS HOLLOW.

Near the spring was a vegetable garden, and
here, on the 22d of August, I suddenly es-
pied a water thrush teetering upon the tip
of a bean-pole, his rich olive-brown back
glistening in the sunlight. He soon dropped
to the ground among the vines, and before
long walked out into sight. His action when
he saw me was amusing. Instead of darting
back, as a sparrow, for instance, would have
done, he flew up to the nearest perch; that
is, to the top of the nearest bean-pole, which
happened to be a lath. Wood is one of the
precious metals on Cape Cod, and if oars are
used for fence-rails, and fish-nets for hen-
coops, why not laths for bean-poles ? The
perch was narrow, but wide enough for the
bird's small feet. Four times he came up
in this way to look about him, and every
time alighted thus on the top of a pole. At
the same moment three prairie warblers were
chasing each other about the garden, now
clinging to the side of the poles, now alight-
ing on their tips. It was a strange spot for
prairie warblers, as it seemed to me, though
they looked still more out of place a minute
later, when they left the bean-patch and sat
upon a rail fence in an open grassy field.

DYER'S HOLLOW. 85

Cape Cod birds, like Cape Cod men, know
how to shift their course with the wind.
Where else would one be likely to see prairie
warblers, black-throated greens, and black-
and-white creepers scrambling in company
over the red shingles of a house-roof, and
song sparrows singing day after day from a
chimney -top ?

In all my wanderings in Dyer's Hollow,
only once did I see anything of that pest of
the seashore, the sportsman; then, in the
distance, two young fellows, with a highly
satisfactory want of success, as well as I
could make out, were trying to take the life
of a meadow lark. No doubt they found
existence a dull affair, and felt the need of
something to enliven it. A noble creature
is man, — "a little lower than the angels! "
Two years in succession I have been at the
seashore during the autumnal migration of
sandpipers and plovers. Two years in suc-
cession have I seen men, old and young,
murdering sandpipers and plovers at whole-
sale for the mere fun of doing it. Had they
been "pot hunters," seeking to earn bread
by shooting for the market, I should have
pitied them, perhaps, — certainly I should

86 DYER'S HOLLOW.

have regretted their work ; but I should have
thought no ill of them. Their vocation
would have been as honorable, for aught I
know, as that of any other butcher. But a
man of twenty, a man of seventy, shooting
sanderlings, ring plovers, golden plovers,
and whatever else comes in his way, not for
money, nor primarily for food, but because
he enjoys the work! "A little lower than
the angels!" What numbers of innocent
and beautiful creatures have I seen limping
painfully along the beach, after the gunners
had finished their day's amusement! Even
now I think with pity of one particular
turnstone. Some being made "a little
lower than the angels " had fired at him and
carried away one of his legs. I watched
him for an hour. Much of the time he stood
motionless. Then he hobbled from one
patch of eel-grass to another, in search of
something to eat. My heart ached for him,
and it burns now to think that good men
find it a pastime to break birds' legs and
wings and leave them to perish. I have
seen an old man, almost ready for the grave,
who could amuse his last days in this way
for weeks together. An exhilarating and

DYER'S HOLLOW. 87

edifying spectacle it was, — this venerable
worthy sitting behind his bunch of wooden
decoys, a wounded tern fluttering in agony
at his feet. Withal, be it said, he was a
man of gentlemanly bearing, courteous, and
a Christian. He did not shoot on Sunday,

— not he. Such sport is to me despicable.
Yet it is affirmed by those who ought to
know — by those, that is, who engage in it

— that it tends to promote a spirit of man-
liness.

But thoughts of this kind belong not in
Dyer's Hollow. Kather let me remember
only its stillness and tranquillity, its inno-
cent inhabitants, its gray hills, its sandy
road, and the ocean at the end of the way.
Even at the western extremity, near the rail*
way and the busy harbor, the valley was the
very abode of quietness. Here, on one of
my earlier excursions, I came unexpectedly
to a bridge, and on the farther side of the
bridge to a tidy house and garden ; and in
the garden were several pear-trees, with
fruit on them ! Still more to my surprise,
here was a little shop. The keeper of it had
also the agency of some insurance company,

— so a signboard informed the passer-by.

88 DYER'S HOLLOW.

As for his stock in trade, — sole leather,
dry goods, etc., —that spoke for itself. I
stepped inside the door, but he was occupied
with an account book, and when at last he
looked up there was no speculation in his
eyes. Possibly he had sold something the
day before, and knew that no second cus-
tomer could be expected so soon. We ex-
changed the time of day, — not a very val-
uable commodity hereabout, — and I asked
him a question or two touching the hollow,
and especially "the village," of which I had
heard a rumor that it lay somewhere in this
neighborhood. He looked bewildered at the
word, — he hardly knew what I could mean,
he said ; but with a little prompting he re-
collected that a few houses between this point
and North Truro (there used to be more
houses than now, but they had been removed
to other towns, — some of them to Boston !)
were formerly called "the village." I left
him to his ledger, and on passing his house
I saw that he was a dealer in grain as well
as in sole leather and calico, and had tele-
phonic communication with somebody; an
enterprising merchant, after all, up with the
times, in spite of appearances.

DYERS HOLLOW. 89

The shop was like the valley, a careless
tourist might have said, — a sleepy shop in
Sleepy Hollow. To me it seemed not so.
Peaceful, remote, sequestered, — these and
all similar epithets suited well with Long-
iiook; but for myself, in all my loitering
there I was never otherwise than wide awake.
The close-lying, barren, mountainous-look-
ing hills did not oppress the mind, but
rather lifted and dilated it, and although I
could not hear the surf, I felt all the while
the neighborhood of the sea; not the har-
bor, but the ocean, with nothing between
me and Spain except that stretch of water.
Blessed forever be Dyer's Hollow, I say,
and blessed be its inhabitants! Whether
Western Islanders or "regular Cape Cod
men," may they live and die in peace.

FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANS-
FIELD.

" Lead him through the lovely mountain-paths,
And talk to him of thing's at hand and common."

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

I WENT up the mountain from the village
of Stowe in very ignoble fashion, — in a
wagon, — and was three hours on the pas-
sage. One of the "hands" at the Summit
House occupied the front seat with the
driver, and we were hardly out of the village
before a seasonable toothache put him in
mind of his pipe. Would smoking be offen-
sive to me? he inquired. What could I say,
having had an aching tooth before now my-
self? It was a pleasure almost beyond the
luxury of breathing mountain air to see
the misery of a fellow-mortal so quickly as-
suaged. The driver, a sturdy young Ver-
monter, was a man of different spirit. He
had never used tobacco nor drunk a glass of
"liquor," I heard him saying. Somebody
had once offered him fifty cents to smoke a
cigar.

FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD. 91

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

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

As we approached the base of the moun-
tain, a white-throated sparrow was piping
by the roadside.

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

It was now my turn to be surprised. Our
man of principle was also a man of senti-
ment.

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

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

The morning had promised well, but be-
fore we emerged from the forest as we neared
the summit we drove into a cloud, and,
shortly afterward, into a pouring rain. In
the office of the hotel I found a company of
eight persons, four men and four women,
drying themselves about the stove. They
had left a village twenty miles away at two

92 FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD.

o'clock that morning in an open wagon for
an excursion to the summit. Like myself,
they had driven into a cloud, and up to this
time had seen nothing more distant than the
stable just across the road, within a stone's
toss of the window, and even that only by
glimpses. One of the party was* a doctor,
who must be at home that night. Hour after
hour they watched the clouds, or rather the
rain (we were so beclouded that the clouds
could not be seen), and debated the situation.
Finally, at three o'clock, they got into their
open wagon, the rain pelting them fiercely,
and started for the base. Doubtless they
soon descended into clear weather, but not
till they were well drenched. Verily the
clouds are no respecters of persons. It is
nothing to them how far you have come, nor
how worthy your errand. So I reflected,
having nothing better to do, when my wag-
onful of pilgrims had dropped out of sight
in the fog — as a pebble drops into the lake
— leaving me with the house to myself ; and
presently, as I sat at the window, I heard
a white-throated sparrow singing outside.
Here was one, at least, whom the rain could
not discourage. A wild and yet a sweet and

FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD. 93

home-felt strain is this of " Whistling Jack,"
— a mountain bird, well used to mountain
weather, and just now too happy to forego
his music, no matter how the storm might
rage. I myself had been in a cloud often
enough to feel no great degree of discomfort
or lowness of spirits. I had not decided to
spend the precious hours of a brief vacation
upon a mountain-top without taking into
account the additional risk of unfavorable
weather in such a place. Let the clouds do
their worst ; I could be patient and wait for
the sun. But this whistling philosopher out-
side spoke of something better than patience,
and I thanked him for the timely word.

Toward noon of the next day the rain
ceased, the cloud vanished, and I made haste
to clamber up the rocky peak — the Nose,
so called — at the base of which the hotel is
situated. Yes, there stretched Lake Cham-
plain, visible for almost its entire length,
and beyond it loomed the Adirondacks. I
was glad I had come. / could sing now.
It does a man good to look afar off.

Even before the fog lifted I had discov-
ered, to my no small gratification, that the
evergreens immediately about the house were

94 FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD.

full of gray-cheeked thrushes, a close col-
ony, strictly confined to the low trees at the
top of the mountain. They were calling at
all hours, yeep, yeep, somewhat in the man-
ner of young chickens ; and after supper, as
it grew dark, I stood on the piazza while
they sang in full chorus. At least six of
them were in tune at once. TFee-o, wee-o^
tit-ti wee-o, something1 like this the music
ran, with many variations; a most ethereal
sound, at the very top of the scale, but faint
and sweet ; quite in tune also with my mood,
for I had just come in from gazing long at
the sunset, with Lake Champlain like a sea
of gold for perhaps a hundred miles, and a
stretch of the St. Lawrence showing far
away in the north. During the afternoon,
too, I had been over the long crest of the
mountain to the northern peak, the highest
point, belittled in local phraseology as the
Chin; a delightful jaunt of two miles, with
magnificent prospects all the way. It was
like walking on the ridge-pole of Vermont,
a truly exhilarating experience.

All in all, though the forenoon had been
so rainy, I had lived a long day, and now,
if ever, could appreciate the singing of this

FTVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD. 95

characteristic northern songster, himself
such a lover of mountains as never to be
heard, here in New England, at least, and
in summer-time, except amid the dwindling
spruce forests of the upper slopes. I have
never before seen him so familiar. On the
Mount Washington range and on Mount
Lafayette it is easy enough to hear his
music, but one rarely gets more than a fly-
ing glimpse of the bird. Here, as I say, Ije
was never out of hearing, and seldom long
out of sight, even from the door-step. The
young were already leaving the nest, and un-
doubtedly the birds had disposed themselves
for the season before the unpainted, inoffen-
sive-looking little hotel showed any signs of
occupancy. The very next year a friend of
mine visited the place and could discover no
trace of them. They had found their human
neighbors a vexation, perhaps, and on re-
turning from their winter's sojourn in Costa
Eica, or where not, had sought summer
quarters on some less trodden peak.

Not so was it with the myrtle warblers, I
venture, to assert, though on this point I
have never taken my friend's testimony.
Perfectly at home as they are in the wildest

96 FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD.

and most desolate places, they manifest a
particular fondness for the immediate vicin-
ity of houses, delighting especially to fly
about the gutters of the roof and against the
window panes. Here, at the Summit
House, they were constantly to be seen hawk-
ing back and forth against the side of the
building, as barn swallows are given to doing
in the streets of cities. The rude structure
was doubly serviceable, — to me a shelter,
and to the birds a fly-trap. I have never ob-
served any other warbler thus making free
with human habitations.

This yellow-rump, or myrtle bird, is one
of the thrifty members of his great family,
and next to the black-poll is the most numer-
ous representative of his tribe in Massachu-
setts during the spring and fall migrations ;
a beautiful little creature, with a character-
istic flight and call, and for a song a pretty
trill suggestive of the snow-bird's. Within
two or three years he has been added to the
summer fauna of Massachusetts, and as a
son of the Bay State I rejoice in his presence
and heartily bid him welcome. We shall
never have too many of such citizens. I es-
teem him, also, as the only one of his deli-

FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD. 97

cate, insectivorous race who has the hardi-
hood to spend the winter — sparingly, but
with something like regularity — within the
limits of New England. He has a genius for
adapting himself to circumstances ; picking
up his daily food in the depths of a moun-
tain forest or off the panes of a dwelling-
house, and wintering, as may suit his fancy
or convenience, in the West Indies or along
the sea-coast of Massachusetts.

One advantage of a sojourn at the summit
of any of our wooded New England moun-
tains is the easy access thus afforded to the
upper forest. While I was hereupon Mount
Mansfield I spent some happy hours almost
every day in sauntering down the road for
a mile or two, looking and listening. Just
after leaving the house it was possible to
hear three kinds of thrushes singing at once,
— gray -cheeks, olive -backs, and hermits.
Of the three the hermit is beyond compar-
ison the finest singer, both as to voice and
tune. His song, given always in three de-
tached measures, each higher than the one
before it, is distinguished by an exquisite
liquidity, the presence of d and 7, I should
say, as contrasted with the inferior t sound

98 FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD.

of the gray-cheek. If it has less variety, and
perhaps less rapture, than the song of the
wood-thrush, it is marked by greater sim-
plicity and ease ; and if it does not breathe
the ineffable tranquillity of the veery's
strain, it comes to my ear, at least, with a
still nobler message. The hermit's note
is aspiration rather than repose. "Peace,
peace!" says the veery, but the hermit's
word is, "Higher, higher!" "Spiritual
songs," I call them both, with no thought
of profaning the apostolic phrase.

I had been listening to thrush music (I
think I could listen to it forever), and at a
bend of the road had turned to admire the
wooded side of the mountain, just here spread
out before me, miles and miles of magnifi-
cent hanging forest, when I was attracted by
a noise as of something gnawing — a borer
under the bark of a fallen spruce lying at
my feet. Such an industrious and contented
sound ! No doubt the grub would have said,
"Yes, I could dp this forever." What
knew he of the beauties of the picture at
which I was gazing? The very light with
which to see it would have been a torture
to him. Heaven itself was under the close

FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD. 99

bark of that decaying log. So, peradven-
ture, may we ourselves be living in darkness
without knowing it, while spiritual intelli-
gences look on with wondering pity to see us
so in love with our prison-house. Well,
yonder panorama was beautiful to me, at all
events, however it might look to more ex-
alted beings, and, like my brother under the
spruce-tree bark, I would make the best of
life as I found it.

This way my thoughts were running when
all at once two birds dashed by me — a
blackpoll warbler in hot pursuit of an olive -
backed thrush. The thrush alighted in a
tree and commenced singing, and the war-
bler sat by and waited, following the univer-
sal rule that a larger bird is never to be at-
tacked except when on the wing. The thrush
repeated his strain once or twice, and then
flew to another tree, the little fellow after
him with all speed. Again the olive-back
perched and sang, and again the black-poll
waited. Three times these manoauvres were
repeated, before the birds passed out of my
range. Some wrong-doing, real or fancied,
on the part of the larger bird, had excited
the ire of the warbler. Why should he be

100 FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD.

imposed upon, simply because he was small?
The thrush, meantime, disdaining to defend
himself, would only stop now and then to
sing, as if to show to the world (every crea-
ture is the centre of a world) that such an
insect persecution could never ruffle his
spirit. Birds are to be commiserated, per-
haps, on having such an excess of what we
call human nature ; but the misfortune cer-
tainly renders them the more interesting to
us, who see our more amiable weaknesses so
often reflected in their behavior.

For the sympathetic observer every kind
of bird has its own temperament. On one
of my jaunts down this Mount Mansfield
road I happened to espy a Canada jay in a
thick spruce. He was on one of the lower
branches, but pretty soon began mounting
the tree, keeping near the bole and going up
limb by limb in absolute silence, exactly in
the manner of our common blue jay. I was
glad to see him, but more desirous to hear
his voice, the loud, harsh scream with which
the books credit him, and which, a priori,
I should have little, hesitation in ascribing to
any member of his tribe. I waited till I
grew impatient. Then I started hastily to-

FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MRNSFIVLD." 101

ward him, making as much commotion as
possible in pushing through the undergrowth.
It was a clever scheme, but the bird was not
to be surprised into uttering so much as an
exclamation. He dropped out of his tree,
flew a little distance to a lower and less con-
spicuous perch, and there I finally left him.
Once before, on Mount Clinton, I had seen
him, and had been treated with the same
studied silence. And later, I fell in with
a little family party on the side of Mount
Washington, and they, too, refused me so
much as a note. Probably I was too near
the birds in every case, though in the third
instance there was no attempt at skulking,
nor any symptom of nervousness. I have
often been impressed and amused by the
blue jay's habit in this respect. No bird
could well be noisier than he when the noisy
mood takes him; but come upon him sud-
denly at close quarters, and he will be as
still as the grave itself. He has a double
gift, of eloquence and silence, — silver and
gold — and no doubt his Canadian cousin is
equally well endowed.

The reader may complain, perhaps, that
I speak only of trifles. Why go to a moun-

102 TOFS DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD.

tain-top to look at warblers and thrushes?
I am not careful to justify myself. I love a
mountain-top, and go there because I love
to be there. It is good, I think, to be lifted
above the every -day level, and to enjoy the
society — and the absence of society — which
the heights afford. Looking over my notes
of this excursion, I come upon the following
sentence : "To sit on a stone beside a moun-
tain road, with olive-backed thrushes piping
on every side, the ear catching now and then
the distant tinkle of a winter wren's tune,
or the nearer zee, zee, zee of black-poll war-
blers, while white-throated sparrows call
cheerily out of the spruce forest — this is to
be in another world."

This sense of distance and strangeness is
not to be obtained, in my case at all events,
by a few hours' stay in such a spot. I must
pitch my tent there, for at least a night or
two. I cannot even see the prospect at first,
much less feel the spirit of the place. There
must be time for the old life to drop off, as
it were, while eye and ear grow wonted to
novel sights and sounds. Doubtless I did
take note of trivial things, — the call of a
bird and the fragrance of a flower. It was

FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD. 103

a pleasing relief after living so long with
men whose minds were all the time full of
those serious and absorbing questions, " What
shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and
wherewithal shall we be clothed? "

I remember with special pleasure a profu-
sion of white orchids (Habenaria dilatata)
which bordered the roadside not far from
the top, their spikes of waxy snow-white
flowers giving out a rich, spicy odor hardly
to be distinguished from the scent of carna-
tion pinks. I remember, too, how the whole
summit, from the Nose to the Chin, was
sprinkled with the modest and beautiful
Greenland sandwort, springing up in every
little patch of thin soil, where nothing else
would flourish, and blossoming even under
the door-step of the hotel. Unpretendirig
as it is, this little alpine adventurer makes
the most of its beauty. The blossoms are
not crowded into close heads, so as to lose
their individual attractiveness, like the flor-
ets of the golden-rod, for example ; nor are
they set in a stiff spike, after the manner of
the orchid just now mentioned. At the
same time the plant does not trust to the
single flower to bring it into notice. It

104 FIVE DATS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD.

grows in a pretty tuft, and throws out its
blossoms in a graceful, loose cluster. The
eye is caught by the cluster, and yet each
flower shows by itself, and its own proper
loveliness is in no way sacrificed to the
general effect. How wise, too, is the sand-
wort in its choice of a dwelling-place ! In
the valley it would be lost amid the crowd.
On the bare, brown mountain-top its scat-
tered tufts of green and white appeal to all
comers.

To what extent, if at all, the sandwort de-
pends upon the service of insects for its fer-
tilization, I do not know, but it certainly has
no scarcity of such visitors. "Bees will
soaf for bloom high as the highest peak of
Mansfield;" so runs an entry in my note-
book, with a pardonable adaptation of
Wordsworth's line; and I was glad to no-
tice that even the splendid black-and-yellow
butterfly (Turnus), which was often to be
seen sucking honey from the fragrant or-
chids, did not disdain to sip also from the
sandwort 's cup. This large and elegant but-
terfly — our largest — is thoroughly at home
on our New England mountains, sailing over
the very loftiest peaks, and making its way

FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD. 105

through the forests with a strong and steady
flight. Many a time have I taken a second
look at one, as it has threaded the treetops
over my head, thinking to see a bird. Be-
sides the Turnus, I noted here the nettle
tortoise-shell butterfly ( Vanessa Milberti —
a showy insect, and the more attractive to
me as being comparatively a stranger); the
common cabbage butterfly ; the yellow Phil-
odice ; the copper; and, much more abun-
dant than any of these, a large orange-red
fritillary (Aphrodite, I suppose), gorgeously
bedecked with spots of silver on the under
surface of the wings. All these evidently
knew that plenty of flowers were to be found
along this seemingly barren, rocky crest.
Whether they have any less sensuous motive
for loving to wander over such heights, who
will presume to determine? It may very
well be that their almost ethereal structure
— such spread of wing with such lightness
of body — is only the outward sign of gra-
cious thoughts and feelings, of a sensitive-
ness to beauty far surpassing anything of
which we ourselves are capable. What a
contrast between them and the grub gnawing
ceaselessly under the spruce-tree bark ! Can

106 FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD.

the highest angel be as far above the lowest
man? And yet (how mysteriously sugges-
tive would the fact be, if only it were new
to us!) this same light-winged Aphrodite,
flitting from blossom to blossom in the moun-
tain breeze, was but a few days ago an ugly,
crawling thing, close cousin to the borer.
Since then it has fallen asleep and been
changed, — a parable, past all doubt, though
as yet we lack eyes to read it.

I have spoken hitherto as if I were the
only sojourner at the summit, but there was
another man, though I seldom saw him; a
kind of hermit, living in a little shanty
under the lee of the Nose. Almost as a
matter of course he was reputed to be of
good family and to read Greek, and the fact
that he now and then received a bank draft
evidently gave him a respectable standing
in the eye of the hotel clerk. Something —
something of a very romantic nature, we
may be sure — had driven him away from
the companionship of his fellows, but he
still found it convenient to be within reach
of human society. Like all such solitaries,
he had some half -insane notions. He could
not sleep indoors, not for a night; it would

FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD. 107

ruin his health, if I understood him cor-
rectly ; and because of wild animals — bears
and what not — he made his bed on the roof
of his hermitage. I had often dreamed of
the enjoyment of a life in the woods all by
one's self, but such a mode of existence did
not gain in attractiveness as I saw it here in
the concrete example. On the whole I was
well satisfied to sleep in the hotel and eat
at the hotel table. Liberty is good, but I
thought it might be undesirable to be a slave
to my own freedom.

Two or three times a wagon-load of tour-
ists appeared at the hotel. They strolled
about the summit, admired the prospect,
picked a bunch of sandwort, perhaps, but
especially they went to see the snow. They
had been at much trouble to stand upon the
highest land in Vermont, and now that they
were here, they wished to do or see some-
thing unique, something that should mark
the day as eventful. So they were piloted
to a cave midway between the Nose and the
Chin, into which the sun never peeped, and
wherein a snow-bank still lingered. The
mountain was grand, the landscape was mag-
nificent, but to eat a handful of snow and

108 FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD.

throw a snow-ball in the middle of July —
this was almost like being at the North Pole ;
it would be something to talk about after
getting home.

One visitor I rejoiced to see, though a
stranger. I was on* the Nose in the after-
noon, enjoying once more the view of Lake
Champlain and the Adirondacks, when I
descried two men far off toward the Chin.
They had come up the mountain, not by the
carriage road, but by a trail on the opposite
side, and plainly were in no haste, though
the afternoon was wearing away. As I
watched their movements, a mile or two in
the distance, I said to myself, "Good ! they
are botanists." So it proved; or rather one
of them was a botanist, — a college professor
on a pedestrian collecting-excursion. We
compared notes after supper and walked
together the next morning, enjoying that
peculiar good fellowship which nothing but
a kindred interest and au unexpected meet-
ing in a lonesome place can make possible.
Then he started down the carriage road with
the design of exploring Smugglers' Notch,
and I have never seen or heard from him
since. I hope he is still botanizing on the

FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD. 109

shores of time, and finding many a precious
rarity ; and should he ever read this refer-
ence to himself, may it be with a feeling
as kindly as that with which the lines are
written.

That afternoon I followed him, somewhat
unexpectedly. I went down, as I had come
up, on wheels; but I will not say in igno-
ble fashion, for the driver — the hotel pro-
prietor himself — was in haste, the carriage
had no brake, and the speed with which we
rattled down the steep pitches and round
the sharp curves, with the certainty that
if anything should break, the horse would
run and our days would be ended, — these
things, and especially the latter considera-
tion, of which I thought and the other man
spoke, made the descent one of pleasurable
excitement. We reached the base in safety
and I was left at the nearest farmhouse,
where by dint of some persuasion the house-
wife was induced to give me a lodging for
the night, so that on the morrow I might
make a long day in Smugglers' Notch, a
famous botanical resort between Mount
Mansfield and Mount Sterling, which I had
for years been desirous of visiting.

110 FIVE DAYS ON MOUNT MANSFIELD.

I would gladly have stayed longer on the
heights, but it was pleasant also to be once
more in the lowlands ; to walk out after sup-
per and look up instead of down, while the
chimney swifts darted hither and thither
with their merry, breathless cacklings. How
welcome, too, were the hearty music of the
robin and the carol of the grass finch ! Af-
ter all, I thought, home is in the valley ; but
the whistle of the white-throat reminded me
that I was not yet back in Massachusetts.

A WIDOW AND TWINS.

" The fatherless and the widow . . . shall eat and be
satisfied." — DEUTERONOMY xiv. 29.

ON the 1st of June, 1890, I formally
broke away from ornithological pursuits.
For two months, more or less, — till the
autumnal migration should set in, — I was
determined to have my thoughts upon other
matters. There is no more desirable play-
thing than an outdoor hobby, but a man
ought not to be forever in the saddle. Such,
at all events, had always been my opinion,
so that I long ago promised myself never to
become, what some of my acquaintances,
perhaps with too much reason, were now
beginning to consider me, a naturalist, and
nothing else. That would be letting the
hobby-horse run away with its owner. For
the time being, then, birds should pass un-
noticed, or be looked at only when they came
in my way. A sensible resolve. But the
maker of it was neither Mede nor Persian,

112 A WIDOW AND TWINS.

as the reader, if he have patience enough,
may presently discover for himself.

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

The beautiful structure, a model of artis-
tic workmanship, was near the end of one of
the lower branches of an apple-tree, eight or
ten feet from the ground, saddled upon the
drooping limb at a point where two offshoots
made a good holding-place, while an upright
twig spread over it a leafy canopy against
rain and sun. Had the builders sought my

A WIDOW AND TWINS. 113

advice as to a location, I could hardly have
suggested one better suited to my own con-
venience. The tree was within a stone's toss
of my window, and, better still, the nest was
overlooked to excellent advantage from an
old bank wall which divided my premises
from those of my next-door neighbor. How
could I doubt that Providence itself had set
me a summer lesson?

At our first visit the discoverer of the nest
— from that moment an ornithologist —
brought out a step-ladder, and we looked in
upon the two tiny white eggs, considerately
improving a temporary absence of the owner
for that purpose. It was a picture to please
not only the eye, but the imagination ; and
before I could withdraw my gaze the mother
bird was back again, whisking about my
head so fearlessly that for a moment I stood
still, half expecting her to drop into the nest
within reach of my hand.

This, as I have said, was on the 24th of
June. Six days later, on the afternoon of
the 30th, the eggs were found to be hatched,
and two lifeless-looking things lay in the
bottom of the nest, their heads tucked out
of sight, and their bodies almost or quite

114 A WIDOW AND TWINS.

naked, except for a line of grayish down
along the middle of the back.

Meanwhile, I had been returning with
interest the visits of the bird to our honey-
suckle, and by this time had fairly worn a
path to a certain point in the wall, where,
comfortably seated in the shade of the hum-
mer's own tree, and armed with opera-glass
and notebook, I spent some hours daily in
playing the spy upon her motherly doings.

For a widow with a house and family
upon her hands, she took life easily ; at fre-
quent intervals she absented herself alto-
gether, and even when at home she spent
no small share of the time in flitting about
among the branches of the tree. On such
occasions, I often saw her hover against the
bole or a patch of leaves, or before a piece
of caterpillar or spider web, making quick
thrusts with her bill, evidently after bits of
something to eat. On quitting the nest, she
commonly perched upon one or another of a
certain set of dead twigs in different parts
of the tree, and at once shook out her feath-
ers and spread her tail, displaying its hand-
some white markings, indicative of her sex.
This was the beginning of a leisurely toilet

A WIDOW AND TWINS. 115

operation, in the course of which she
scratched herself with her feet and dressed
her feathers with her bill, all the while dart-
ing out her long tongue with lightning-like
rapidity, as if to moisten her beak, which
at other times she cleansed by rubbing it
down with her claws or by wiping it upon
a twig. In general she paid little atten-
tion to me, though she sometimes hovered
directly in front of my face, as if trying to
stare me out of countenance. One of the
most pleasing features of the show was her
method of flying into the nest. She ap-
proached it, without exception, from the
same quarter, and, after an almost imper-
ceptible hovering motion, shut her wings
and dropped upon the eggs.

When the young were hatched I re-
doubled my attentions. Now I should see
her feed them. On the first afternoon I
waited a long time for this purpose, the
mother conducting herself in her customary
manner : now here, now there, preening her
plumage, driving away a meddlesome spar-
row, probing the florets of a convenient
clover-head (an unusual resource, I think),
or snatching a morsel from some leaf or twig.

11G A WIDOW AND TWINS.

Suddenly she flew at me, and held herself
at a distance of perhaps four feet from my
nose. Then she wheeled, and, as I thought,
darted out of the orchard. In a few seconds
I turned my head, and there she sat in the
nest ! I owned myself beaten. While I had
been gazing toward the meadow, she had
probably done exactly what I had wasted
the better part of the afternoon in attempt-
ing to see.

Twenty -four hours later I was more suc-
cessful, though the same ruse was again
tried upon me. The mother left the nest
at my approach, but in three minutes (by
the watch) flew in again. She brooded for
nine minutes. Then, quite of her own mo-
tion, she disappeared for six minutes. On
her return she spent four minutes in dress-
ing her feathers, after which she alighted on
the edge of the nest, fed the little ones, and
took her place upon them. This time she
brooded for ten minutes. Then she was
away for six minutes, dallied about the tree
for two minutes longer, and again flew into
the nest. While sitting, she pecked several
times in quick succession at a twig within
reach, and I could plainly see her mandibles

A WIDOW AND TWINS. 117

in motion, as if she were swallowing. She
brooded for thirteen minutes, absented her-
self for three minutes, and spent six minutes
in her usual cautionary manoeuvres before
resuming her seat. For the long interval of
twenty -two minutes she sat still. Then she
vanished for four minutes, and on her re-
turn gave the young another luncheon, after
a fast of one hour and six minutes.

The feeding process, which I had been so
desirous to see, was of a sort to make the
spectator shiver. The mother, standing on
the edge of the nest, with her tail braced
against its side, like a woodpecker or a
creeper, took a rigidly erect position, and
craned her neck until her bill was in a per-
pendicular line above the short, wide-open,
upraised beak of the little one, who, it must
be remembered, was at this time hardly big-
ger than a humble-bee. Then she thrust
her bill for its full length down into his
throat, a frightful-looking act, followed by
a series of murderous gesticulations, which
fairly made one observer's blood run cold.

On the day after this (on the 2d of July,
that is to say) I climbed into the tree, in
the old bird's absence, and stationed myself

118 A WIDOW AND TWINS.

where my eyes were perhaps fifteen feet from
the nest, and a foot or two above its level.
At the end of about twenty minutes, the
mother, who meantime had made two visits
to the tree, flew into place, and brooded for
seventeen minutes. Then she disappeared
again, and on her return, after numberless
pretty feints and sidelong approaches,
alighted on the wall of the nest, and fed
both little ones. The operation, though still
sufficiently reckless, looked less like infanti-
cide than before, — a fact due, as I suppose,
to my more elevated position, from which
the nestlings' throats were better seen.
After this she brooded for another seventeen
minutes. On the present occasion, as well
as on many others, it was noticeable that,
while sitting upon the young, she kept up
an almost incessant motion, as if seeking to
warm them, or perhaps to develop their
muscles by a kind of massage treatment.
A measure of such hitchings and fidgetings
might have meant nothing more than an
attempt to secure for herself a comfortable
seat; but when they were persisted in for
fifteen minutes together, it was difficult not
to believe that she had some different end in

A WIDOW AND TWINS. 119

view. Possibly, as human infants get ex-
ercise by dandling on the mother's knee, the
baby humming-bird gets his by this paren-
tal kneading process. Whether brooding
or feeding, it must be said that the hummer
treated her tiny charges with no particular
careftdness, so far as an outsider could
judge.

The next day I climbed again into the
tree. The mother bird made off at once,
and did not resume her seat for almost an
hour, though she would undoubtedly have
done so earlier but for my presence. Again
and again she perched near me, her bill
leveled straight at my face. Finally she
alighted on the nest, and, after considerable
further delay, as if to assure herself that
everything was quite safe, fed the two chicks
from her throat, as before. "She thrust
her bill into their mouths so far " (I quote
my notes) "that the tips of their short little
beaks were up against the root of her man-
dibles!"

Only once more, on the 4th of July, I
ventured into the apple-tree. For more than
an hour and a half I waited. Times without
number the mother came buzzing into the

120 A WIDOW AND TWINS.

tree, made the circuit of her favorite perches,
dressed her plumage, darted away again,
and again returned, till I was almost driven
to get down, for her relief. At last she fed
the nestlings, who by this time must have
been all but starved, as indeed they seemed
to be. "The tips of their bills do come
clean up to the base of the mother's mandi-
bles." So I wrote in my journal; for it is
the first duty of a naturalist to verify his
own observations.

On the 10th we again brought out the
ladder. Though at least eleven days old,
the tiny birds — the "widow's mites," as
my facetious neighbor called them — were
still far from filling the cup. While I stood
over it, one of them uttered some pathetic
little cries that really went to my heart. His
bill, perceptibly longer than on the 5th, was
sticking just above the border of the nest.
I touehed it at the tip, but he did not stir.
Craning my neck, I could see his open eye.
Poor, helpless things! Yet within three
months they would be flying to Central
America, or some more distant clime. How
little they knew what was before them ! As
little as I know what is before me.

A WIDOW AND TWINS. 121

The violence of the feeding act was now
at its height, I think, but it would be im-
possible to do justice to it by any descrip-
tion. My neighbor, who one day stood be-
side me looking on, was moved to loud laugh-
ter. When the two beaks were tightly
joined, and while the old bird's was being
gradually withdrawn, they were shaken con-
vulsively, — by the mother's attempts to dis-
gorge, and perhaps by the young fellow's
efforts to hasten the operation. It was plain
that he let go with reluctance, as a boy sucks
the very tip of the spoon to get the last drop
of jam; but, as will be mentioned in the
course of the narrative, his behavior improved
greatly in this respect as he grew older.

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

From the first I had kept in mind the
question whether the feeding of the young
by regurgitation, as described briefly by
Audubon, and more in detail by Mr. Wil-

122 A WIDOW AND TWINS.

liam Brewster,1 would be continued after
the nestlings were fully grown. On the
14th I wrote in my journal: "The method
of feeding remains unchanged, and, as it
seems, is likely to remain so to the end. It
must save the mother much labor in going
and coming, and perhaps renders the cooper-
ation of the male parent unnecessary. " This
prediction was fulfilled, but with a qualifica-
tion to be hereafter specified.

Every morning, now, I went to the apple-
tree uncertain whether the nest would not
be found empty. According to Audubon,
Nuttall, Mr. Burroughs, and Mrs. Treat,
young humming-birds stay in the nest only
seven days. Mr. Brewster, in his notes
already cited, says that the birds on which
his observations were made — in the garden
of Mr. E. S. Hoar, in Concord — were
hatched on the 4th of July,2 and forsook
the »est on the 18th. My birds were al-

1 The Auk, vol. vii. p. 206.

2 But Mr. Hoar, from whom Mr. Brewster had his
dates, informs me that the time of hatching was not
certainly known ; and from Mr. Brewster's statement
ahout the size of the nestlings, I cannot doubt that they
had been out of the shell some days longer than Mr.
Hoar then supposed.

A WIDOW AND TWINS. 123

ready fifteen days old, at least, and, unless
they were to prove uncommonly backward
specimens, ought to be on the wing forth-
with. Nevertheless they were in no haste.
Day after day passed. The youngsters
looked more and more like old birds, and
the mother grew constantly more and more
nervous.

On the 18th I found her in a state of un-
precedented excitement, squeaking almost
incessantly. At first I attributed this to
concern at my presence, but after a while it
transpired that a young oriole — a blunder-
ing, tailless fellow — was the cause of the
disturbance. By some accident he had
dropped into the leafy treetop, as guiltless of
any evil design as one of her own nestlings.
How she did buzz about him ! In and out
among the branches she went, now on this
side of him, now on that, and now just over
his back; all the time squeaking fiercely,
and carrying her tail spread to its utmost.
The scene lasted for some minutes.
Through it all the two young birds kept
perfectly quiet, never once putting up their
heads, even when the mother, buzzing and
calling, zigzagged directly about the nest.

124 A WIDOW AND TWINS.

I had seen many birds in the tree, first and
last, but none that created anything like
such a stir. The mother was literally in a
frenzy. She went the round of her perches,
but could stay nowhere. Once she dashed
out of the tree for an instant, and drove a
sparrow away from the tomato patch. Or-
dinarily his presence there would not have
annoyed her in the least, but in her present
state of mind she was ready to pounce upon
anybody. All of which shows once more how
" human -like ' ' birds are. The bewilderment
of the oriole was comical. "What on earth
can this crazy thing be shooting about my
ears in this style for? " I imagined him say-
ing to himself. In fact, as he glanced my
way, now and then, with his innocent baby
face, I could almost believe that he was ap-
pealing to me with some such inquiry.

The next morning ("at 7.32," as my diary
is careful to note) one of the twins took his
flight. I was standing on the wall, with my
glass leveled upon the nest, when I saw him
exercising his wings. The action was little
more pronounced than had been noticed at
intervals during the last three or four days,
except that he was more decidedly on his

A WIDOW AND TWINS. 125

feet. Suddenly, without making use of the
rim of the nest, as I should have expected
him to do, he was in the air, hovering in the
prettiest fashion, and in a moment more had
alighted on a leafless twig slightly above the
level of the nest, and perhaps a yard from
it. Within a minute the mother appeared,
buzzing and calling, with answering calls
from the youthful adventurer. At once —
after a hasty reconnaissance of the man on
the wall — she perched beside him, and
plunged her bill into his throat. Then she
went to the nest, served the other one in the
same way, and made off. She had no time
to waste at this juncture of affairs.

When she had gone, I stepped up to the
trunk of the tree to watch the little fellow
more closely. He held his perch, and oc-
cupied himself with dressing his plumage,
though, as the breeze freshened, he was
compelled once in a while to keep his wings
in motion to prevent the wind from carrying
him away. When the old bird returned, —
in just half an hour, — she resented my in-
trusion (what an oppressor of the widow and
the fatherless she must by this time have
thought me !) in the most unmistakable man-

126 A WIDOW AND TWINS.

ner, coming more than once quite within
reach. However, she soon gave over these
attempts at intimidation, perched beside the
percher, and again put something into his
maw. This time she did not feed the nest-
ling. As she took her departure, she told
the come-outer — or so I fancied — that there
was a man under the tree, a pestilent fellow,
and it would be well to get a little out of
his reach. At all events, she had scarcely
disappeared before the youngster was again
on the wing. It was wonderful how much
at home he seemed, — poising, backing, soar-
ing, and alighting with all the ease and
grace of an old hand. One only piece of
awkwardness I saw him commit : he dropped
upon a branch much too large for his tiny
feet, and was manifestly uncomfortable.
But he did not stay long, and at his next
alighting was well up in the tree, where it
was noticeable that he remained ever after.
With so much going on outside, it was
hard to remain indoors, and finally I took a
chair to the orchard, and gave myself up to
watching the drama. The feeding process,
though still always by regurgitation, was by
this time somewhat different from what it

A WIDOW AND TWINS. 127

had been when the bills of the young were
less fully developed. In my notes of this
date I find the following description of it :
"Number Two is still in the nest, but un-
easy. At 10.25 the mother appeared and
fed him.1 Her beak was thrust into his
mouth at right angles, — the change being
necessitated, probably, by the greater length
of his bill, — and he seemed to be jerking
strenuously at it. Then he opened his beak
and remained motionless, while the black
mandibles of the mother could be seen run-
ning down out of sight into his throat."

The other youngster, Number One, as I
now called him, stayed in the tree, or at
most ventured only into the next one, and
was fed at varying intervals, — as often,
apparently, as the busy mother could find
anything to give him. Would he go back
to his cradle for the night? It seemed not
improbable, notwithstanding he had shown
no sign of such an intention so long as day-
light lasted. At 3.50 the next morning,

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

128 A WIDOW AND TWINS.

therefore, I stole out to see. No : Number
Two was there alone.

At seven o'clock, when I made my second
visit, the mother was in the midst of another
day's hard work. Twice within five minutes
she brought food to the nestling. Once the
little fellow — not so very little now — hap-
pened to be facing east, while the old bird
alighted, as she had invariably done, on the
western side. The youngster, instead of
facing about, threw back his head and
opened his beak. "Look out, there!" ex-
claimed my fellow-observer; "you '11 break
his neck if you feed him in that way." But
she did not mind. Young birds' necks are
not so easily broken. Within ten minutes
of this time she fed Number One, giving
him three doses. They were probably small,
however (and small wonder), for he begged
hard for more, opening his bill with an ap-
pealing air. The action in this case was
particularly well seen, and the vehement
jerking, while the beaks were glued together,
seemed almost enough to pull the young fel-
low's head off. Within another ten minutes
the mother was again ministering to Number
Two ! Poor little widow ! Between her in-

A WIDOW AND TWINS. 129

cessant labors of this kind and her over-
whelming anxiety whenever any strange bird
came near, I began to be seriously alarmed
for her. As a member of a strictly Ameri-
can family, she was in a fair way, I thought,
to be overtaken by the "most American of
diseases," — nervous prostration. It tired
me to watch her.

With us, and perhaps with her likewise,
it was a question whether Number Two
would remain in the nest for the day. He
grew more and more restless ; as my com-
panion — a learned man — expressed it, he
began to "ramp round." Once he actually
mounted the rim of the nest, a thing which
his more precocious brother had never been
seen to do, and stretched forward to pick at
a neighboring stem. Late that afternoon
the mother fed him five times within an hour,
instead of once an hour, or thereabouts, as
had been her habit three weeks before. She
meant to have him in good condition for the
coming event ; and he, on his part, was ac-
tive to the same end, — standing upon the
wall of the nest again and again, and exer-
cising his wings till they made a cloud about
him. A dread of launching away still kept

130 A WIDOW AND TWINS.

him back, however, and shortly after seven
o'clock I found him comfortably disposed
for the night. "He is now on his twenty-
first day (at least) in the nest. To-morrow
will see him go." So end my day's notes.

At 5.45 the next morning he was still
there. At 6.20 I absented myself for a few
minutes, and on returning was hailed by my
neighbor with the news that the nest was
empty. Number Two had flown between
6.25 and 6.30, but, unhappily, neither of us
was at hand to give him a cheer. I trust
that he and his mother were not hurt in their
feelings by the oversight. The whole family
(minus the father) was still in the apple-
tree ; the mother full, and more than full, of
business, feeding one youngster after the
other, as they sat here and there in the up-
per branches.

Twenty-four hours later, as I stood in the
orchard, I heard a hum of wings, and found
the mother over my head. Presently she
flew into the top of the tree, and the next
instant was sitting beside one of the young
ones. His hungry mouth was already wide
open, but before feeding him she started up
from the twig, and circled about him so

A WIDOW AND TWINS. 131

closely as almost or quite to touch him with
her wings. On completing the circle she
dropped upon the perch at his side, but im-
mediately rose again, and again flew round
him. It was a beautiful act, — beautiful
beyond the power of any words of mine to
set forth ; an expression of maternal ecstasy,
I could not doubt, answering to the rap-
turous caresses and endearments in which
mothers of human infants are so frequently
seen indulging. Three days afterward, to
my delight, I saw it repeated in every par-
ticular, as if to confirm my opinion of its
significance. The sight repaid all my watch-
ings thrice over, and even now I feel my
heart growing warm at the recollection of
it. Strange thoughtlessness, is it not, which
allows mothers capable of such passionate
devotion, tiny, defenseless things, to be
slaughtered by the million for the enhance-
ment of woman's charms!

At this point we suddenly became aware
that for at least a day or two the old bird
had probably been feeding her offspring in
two ways, — sometimes by regurgitation,
and sometimes by a simple transfer from
beak to beak. The manner of our discovery

132 A WIDOW AND TWINS.

was somewhat laughable. The mother
perched beside one of the young birds, put
her bill into his, and then apparently fell
off the limb head first. We thought she
had not finished, and looked to see her re-
turn ; but she flew away, and after a while
the truth dawned upon us. Thereafter, un-
less our observation was at fault, she used
whichever method happened to suit her con-
venience. If she found a choice collection
of spiders,1 for instance, she brought them
in her throat (as cedar-birds carry cherries),
to save trips; if she had only one or two,
she retained them between her mandibles.
It will be understood, 1 suppose, that we
did not see the food in its passage from one
bird to the other, — human eyesight would
hardly be equal to work of such nicety ; but
the two bills were put together so frequently
and in so pronounced a manner as to leave
us in no practical uncertainty about what
was going on. Neither had I any doubt
that the change was connected in some way

1 Mr. E. H. Eames reports (in The Auk, vol. vii. p.
287) that, on dissecting a humming-bird, about two days
old, he found sixteen young spiders in its throat, and a
pultaceous mass of the same in its stomach.

A WIDOW AND TWINS. 133

with the increasing age of the fledgelings ;
yet it is to be said that the two methods
continued to be used interchangeably to the
end, and on the 28th, when Number Two
had been out of the nest for seven days, the
mother thrust her bill down his throat, and
repeated the operation, just as she had done
three weeks before.

For at least two days longer, as I believe,
the faithful creature continued her loving
ministrations, although I failed to detect
her in the act. Then, on the 1st of August,
as I sat on the piazza, I saw her for the
last time. The honeysuckle vine had served
her well, and still bore half a dozen scat-
tered blossoms, as if for her especial bene-
fit. She hovered before them, one by one,
and in another instant was gone. May the
Fates be kind to her, and to her children
after her, to the latest generation ! Our in-
tercourse had lasted for eight weeks, —
wanting one day, — and it was fitting that it
should end where it had begun, at the sign
of the honeysuckle.

The absence of the father bird for all this
time, though I have mentioned it but casu-
ally, was of course a subject of continual re-

134 A WIDOW AND TWINS.

mark. How was it to be explained? My
own opinion is, reluctant as I have been to
reach it, that such absence or desertion —
by whatever name it may be called — is the
general habit of the male ruby -throat. Upon
this point I shall have some things to say
in a subsequent paper.

THE MALE RUBY-THROAT.

" Your fathers, where are they ? " — ZECHABIAH i. 5.

WHILE keeping daily watch upon a nest
of our common humming-bird, in the sum-
mer of 1890, I was struck with the persis-
tent absence of the head of the family. As
week after week elapsed, this feature of the
case excited more and more remark, and I
turned to my out-of-door journal for such
meagre notes as it contained of a similar
nest found five years before. From these it
appeared that at that time, also, the father
bird was missing. Could such truancy be
habitual with the male ruby -throat? I had
never supposed that any of our land birds
were given to behaving in this ill-mannered,
unnatural way, and the matter seemed to
call for investigation.

My first resort was, of course, to books.
The language of Wilson and Audubon is
somewhat ambiguous, but may fairly be
taken as implying the male bird's presence

136 THE MALE RUBY-THROAT.

throughout the period of nidification. Nut-
tall speaks explicitly to the same effect,
though with no specification of the grounds
on which his statement is based. The later
systematic biographers — Brewer, Samuels,
Minot, and the authors of New England
Bird Life — are silent in respect to the
point. Mr. Burroughs, in Wake - Robin,
mentions having found two nests, and gives
us to understand that he saw only the fe-
male birds. Mrs. Treat, on the other hand,
makes the father a conspicuous figure about
the single nest concerning which she reports.
Mr. James Russell Lowell, too, speaks of
watching both parents as they fed the young
ones: "The mother always alighted, while
the father as uniformly remained upon the
wing."

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

THE MALE RUBY-THROAT. 137

I wrote first to Mr. E. S. Hoar, in whose
garden Mr. Brewster had made the observa-
tions cited in my previous article. He re-
plied with great kindness, and upon the point
in question said : " I watched the nest two or
three times a day, from a time before the
young were hatched till they departed ; and
now you mention it> it occurs to me that I
never did see the male, but only the white-
breasted female."

Next I sought the testimony of profes-
sional ornithologists; and here my <worst
suspicions seemed in a fair way to be con-
firmed, although the greater number of my
correspondents were unhappily compelled to
plead a want of knowledge. Dr. A. K.
Fisher had found, as he believed, not less
than twenty-five nests, and to the best of
his recollection had never seen a male bird
near one of them after it was completed.
He had watched the female feeding her
young, and, when the nests contained eggs,
had waited for hours on purpose to secure
the male, but always without result.

Mr. William Brewster wrote: "I have
found, or seen in situ, twelve hummers'
nests, all in Massachusetts. Of these I took

138 THE MALE RUBY-THROAT.

nine, after watching each a short time, prob-
ably not more than an hour or two in any
case. Of the remaining three, I visited one
three or four times at various hours of the
day, another only twice, the third but once.
Two of the three contained young when
found. The third was supposed to have
young, also, but could not be examined with-
out danger to its contents. I have never
seen a male hummer anywhere near a nest,
either before or after the eggs were laid,
but, us you will gather from the above brief
data, my experience has not been extensive ;
and in the old days, when most of my nests
were found, the methods of close watch-
ing now in vogue were unthought of. In
the light of the testimony to which you re-
fer, I should conclude, with you, that the
male hummer must occasionally assist in
the care of the young, but I am very sure
that this is not usually, if indeed often, the
case."

Mr. H. W. Henshaw reported a similar
experience. He had found four nests of the
ruby-throat, but had seen no male about any
of them after nidification was begun. "I
confess," he says, "that I had never thought

THE MALE RUBY-THROAT. 139

of his absence as being other than accidental,
and hence have never made any observations
directly upon the point; so that my testi-
mony is of comparatively little value. In
at least one instance, when the female was
building her nest, I remember to have seen
the male fly with her and perch near by,
while she was shaping the nest, and then fly
off with her after more material. I don't
like to believe that the little villain leaves
the entire task of nidification to his better
half (we may well call her better, if he does) ;
but my memory is a blank so far as testi-
mony affirmative of his devotion is con-
cerned." Mr. Henshaw recalls an experi-
ence with a nest of the Rivoli humming-
bird (Eugenes fulgens), in Arizona, — a
nest which he spent two hours in getting.
"I was particularly anxious to secure the
male, but did not obtain a glimpse of him,
and I remember thinking that it was very
strange." He adds that Mr. C. W. Rich-
mond has told him of finding a nest and tak-
ing the eggs without seeing the father bird,
and sums up his own view of the matter
thus : —

"Had any one asked me offhand, 'Does

140 THE MALE RUBY-THROAT.

the male hummer help the female feed the
young ? ' I am quite sure I should have an-
swered, 'Of course he does.' As the case
now stands, however, I am inclined to be-
lieve him a depraved wretch."

Up to this point the testimony of my cor-
respondents had been unanimous, but the
unanimity was broken by Dr. C. Hart Mer-
riam, who remembers that on one occasion
his attention was called to a nest (it proved
to contain a set of fresh eggs) by the flying
of both its owners about his head ; and by
Mr. W. A. Jeffries, who in one case saw
the father bird in the vicinity of a nest oc-
cupied by young ones, although he did not
see him feed or visit them. This nest, Mr.
Jeffries says, was one of five which he has
found. In the four other instances no male
birds were observed, notwithstanding three
of the nests were taken, — a tragedy which
might be expected to bring the father of the
family upon the scene, if he were anywhere
within call.

In view of the foregoing evidence, it ap-
pears to me reasonably certain that the male
ruby -throat, as a rule, takes no considerable
part in the care of eggs and young. The

THE MALE RUBY-THROAT. 141

testimony covers not less than fifty nests.
Some of them were watched assiduously,
nearly all were examined, and the greater
part were actually taken ; yet of the fifty or
more male proprietors, only two were seen ;
and concerning these exceptions, it is to be
noticed that in one case the eggs were just
laid, and in the other, while the hungry
nestlings must have kept the mother bird
extremely busy, her mate was not observed
to do anything in the way of lightening her
labors.

As against this preponderance of negative
testimony, and in corroboration of Mr.
Lowell's and Mrs. Treat's circumstantial
narratives, there remain to be mentioned the
fact communicated to me by Mr. Hoar, that
a townsman of his had at different times had
two hummers' nests in his grounds, the male
owners of which were constant in their at-
tentions, and the following very interesting
and surprising story received from Mr. C.
C. Darwin, of Washington, through the
kindness of Mr. Henshaw. Some years
ago, as it appears, a pair of ruby-throats
built a nest within a few feet of Mr.
Darwin's window and a little below it, so

142 THE MALE RUBY-THROAT.

that they could be watched without fear of
disturbing them. He remembers perfectly
that the male fed the female during the en-
tire period of incubation, "pumping the
food down her throat." All this time, so
far as could be discovered, the mother did
not once leave the nest (in wonderful con-
trast with my bird of a year ago), and of
course the father was never seen to take her
place. Mr. Darwin cannot say that the
male ever fed the young ones, but is positive
that he was frequently about the nest after
they were hatched. While they were still
too young to fly, a gardener, in pruning the
tree, sawed off the limb on which the nest
was built. Mr. Darwin's mother rescued
the little ones and fed them with sweetened
water, and on her son's return at night the
branch was fixed in place again, as best it
could be, by means of wires. Meanwhile
the old birds had disappeared, having given
up their children for lost; and it was not
until the third day that they came back, —
by chance, perhaps, or out of affection for
the spot. At once they resumed the care
of their offspring, who by this time, it is
safe to say, had become more or less surfeited

THE MALE RUBY-THROAT. 143

with sugar and water, and gladly returned
to a diet of spiders and other such spicy and
hearty comestibles.

Mr. Henshaw, with an evident satisfac-
tion which does him honor, remarks upon
the foregoing story as proving that, what-
ever may be true of male hummers in gen-
eral, there are at least some faithful Bene-
dicts among them. For myself, indeed, as
I have already said, I hold no brief against
the ruby-throat, and, notwithstanding the
seemingly unfavorable result of my investi-
gation into his habits as a husband and fa-
ther, it is by no means clear to me that we
must call him hard names. Before doing
that, we ought to know not only that he
stays away from his wife and children, but
why he stays away ; whether he is really a
shirk, or absents himself unselfishly and for
their better protection, at the risk of being
misunderstood and traduced. My object in
this paper is to raise that question about
him, rather than to blacken his character;
in a word, to call attention to him, not as a
reprobate, but as a mystery. To that end
I return to the story of my own observa-
tions.

144 THE MALE RUBY-THROAT.

Iii last month's article1 I set forth some-
what in detail (if the adverb seem inappro-
priate, as I fear it will, I can only commend
it to the reader's mercy) the closeness of our
watch upon the nest there described. For
more than a month it was under the eye of
one or other of two men almost from morn-
ing till night. We did not once detect the
presence of the father, and yet I shall never
feel absolutely sure that he did not one day
pay us a visit. I mention the circumstance
for what it may be worth, and because, what-
ever its import, it was at least a lively spec-
tacle. It occurred upon this wise : On the
19th of July, the day when the first of the
young birds bade good-by to its cradle, I
had gone into the house, leaving my fellow-
observer in the orchard, with a charge to
call me if anything noteworthy should hap-
pen. I was hardly seated before he whistled
loudly, and I hastened out again. Another
hummer had been there, he said, and the
mother had been chasing him (or her) about
in a frantic manner ; and even while we were

1 These two humming-bird papers were printed in
consecutive numbers of TJie Atlantic Monthly, June and
July, 1891.

THE MALE RUBY-THROAT. 145

talking, the scene was reenacted. The
stranger had returned, and the two birds
were shooting hither and thither through the
trees, the widow squeaking and spreading
her tail at a prodigious rate. The new-comer
did not alight (it could n't), and there was
no determining its sex. It may have been
the recreant husband and father, unable
longer to deny himself a look at his bairns,
— who knows? Or it may have been some
bachelor or widower who had come a-woo-
ing. One thing is certain, — husband,
lover, or inquisitive stranger, he had no
encouragement to come again.

As if to heighten the dramatic interest of
our studies (I come now to the promised
mystery), we had already had the singular
good fortune to find a male humming-bird
who seemed to be stationed permanently in
a tall ash-tree, standing by itself in a recent
clearing, at a distance of a mile or more
from our widow's orchard. Day after day,
for at least a fortnight (from the 2d to the
15th of July), he remained there. One or
both of us went almost daily to call upon
him, and, as far as we could make out, he
seldom absented himself from his post for

146 THE MALE RUBY-THROAT.

five minutes together! What was he doing?
At first, in spite of his sex, it was hard not
to believe that his nest was in the tree ; and
to satisfy himself, my companion "shinned "
it, schoolboy fashion, — a frightful piece of
work, which put me out of breath even to
look at it, — while I surveyed the branches
from all sides through an opera-glass. All
was without avail. Nothing was to be seen,
and it was as good as certain, the branches
being well separated and easily overlooked,
that there was nothing there.

Four days later I set out alone, to try
my luck with the riddle. As I entered the
clearing, the hummer was seen at his post,
and my suspicions fastened upon a small
wild apple-tree, perhaps twenty rods distant.
I went to examine it, and presently the bird
followed me. He perched in its top, but
seemed not to be jealous of my proximity,
and soon returned to his customary position ;
but when I came back to the apple-tree,
after a visit to a clump of oaks at the top
of the hill, he again came over. I could
find no sign of a nest, however, nor did the
female show herself, as she pretty confidently
might have been expected to do had her nest

THE MALE RUBY-THROAT. 147

been near by. After this I went to the edge
of the wood, where I could keep an eye
upon both trees without being myself con-
spicuous. The sentinel spent most of his
time in the ash, visiting the apple-tree but
once, and then for a few minutes only. I
stayed an hour and a half, and came away
no wiser than before. The nest, if nest
there was, must be elsewhere, I believed.
But where? And what was the object of
the male's watch?

My curiosity was fully roused. I had
never seen or heard of such conduct on the
part of any bird, and the next forenoon I
spent another hour and a half in the clear-
ing. The hummer was at his post, as he
always was. We had never to wait for him.
Soon after my arrival he flew to the apple-
tree, the action seeming to have no con-
nection with my presence. Presently he
went back to the ash, and drove out of it
two intruding birds. A moment later two
iiumming-birds were there, and in another
moment they flew away in a direction op-
posite to the apple-tree. Here, then, was
a real clue. The birds were probably our
sentinel and his mate. I made after them

148 THE MALE RUBY-THROAT.

with all speed, pausing under such scattered
trees as had been left standing in that quar-
ter. Nothing was to be found, and on my
return there sat the male, provokingly, at
the top of the apple-tree, whence he soon
returned to the ash. A warbler entered the
tree, and after a while ventured upon the
branch where the hummer was sitting. In-
stead of driving her away he took wing
himself, and paid another visit to the apple-
tree, — a visit of perhaps five minutes, — at
the end of which he went back to the ash.
Then two kingbirds happened to alight in
the apple-tree. At once the hummer came
dashing over and ordered them off, and in
his excitement dropped for a moment into
the leafy top of a birch sapling, — a most
unnatural proceeding, — after which he re-
sumed his station in the ash. What could
I make of all this? Apparently he claimed
the ownership of both trees, and yet his nest
was in neither ! He sat motionless for five
minutes at a time upon certain dead twigs
of the ash, precisely as our female was ac-
customed to sit in her apple-tree. For at
least seven days he had been thus occupied.
Where was his mate? On the edge of the

THE MALE RUBY-THROAT. 149

wood, perhaps. But, if so, why did I hear
nothing from her, as I passed up and down ?
Again my hour and a half had been spent to
no purpose.

Not yet discouraged, I returned the next
morning. For the three quarters of an hour
that I remained, the hummer was not once
out of the ash-tree for five minutes. I am
not sure that he left it for five minutes alto-
gether. As usual, he perched almost with-
out exception on one or other of two dead
limbs, while a similar branch, on the oppo-
site side of the trunk, he was never seen to
touch. A Maryland yellow-throat alighted
on one of his two branches and began to
sing, but had repeated his strain only three
or four times before the hummer, who had
been absent for the moment, darted upon
him and put him to flight. A little after-
ward, a red-eyed vireo alighted on his other
favorite perch, and he showed no resent-
ment. The day before, a warbler had sat on
the same branch which the yellow-throat now
invaded, and the hummer not only did not
offer to molest him, but flew away himself.
These inconsistencies made it hard to draw
any inference from his behavior. During

150 THE MALE RUBY-THROAT.

my whole stay he did not once go to the ap-
ple-tree, although, for want of anything bet-
ter to do, I again scrutinized its branches.
This time I was discouraged, and gave
over the search. His secret, whatever it
might be, was "too dear for my possessing."
But my fellow-observer kept up his visits,
as I have said, and the hummer remained
faithful to his task as late as July 15th,
at least.

Some readers may be prompted to ask, as
one of my correspondents asked at the time,
whether the mysterious sentry may not have
been the mate of our home bird. I see no
ground for such a suspicion. The two
places were at least a mile apart, as I have
already mentioned, and woods and hills, to
say nothing of the village, lay between. If
he was our bird's mate, his choice of a picket
station was indeed an enigma. He might
almost as well have been on Mount Wash-
ington. Nor can I believe that he had any
connection with a nest found two months
afterward in a pitch-pine grove within a
quarter of a mile, more or less, of his clear-
ing. It was undoubtedly a nest of that sea-
son, and might have been his for aught I

THE MALE RUBY-THROAT. 151

know, so far as the mere fact of distance was
concerned; but here again an intervening
wood must have cut off all visual com-
munication. If his mate and nest were
not within view from his ash - tree perch,
what could be the meaning of his conduct?
Without some specific constraining motive,
no bird in his normal condition was likely
to stay in one tree hour after hour, day after
day, and week after week, so that one could
never come in sight of it without seeing him.
But even if his nest was in the immediate
neighborhood, the closeness and persistency
of his lookout are still, to my mind, an ab-
solute mystery. Our female bird, whether
she had eggs or offspring, made nothing of
absenting herself by the half hour; but this
male hardly gave himself time to eat his
necessary food; indeed, I often wondered
how he kept himself alive. Is such a course
of action habitual with male hummers? If
so, had our seemingly widowed or deserted
mother a husband, who somewhere, unseen
by us, was standing sentry after the same
heroic, self-denying fashion ? These and all
similar questions I must leave to more for-
tunate observers, or postpone to a future

152 THE MALE RUBY-THROAT.

summer. Meantime, my judgment as to the
male ruby -throat's character remains in sus-
pense. It is not plain to me whether we
are to call him the worst or the best of hus-
bands.

EOBIN BOOSTS.

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

KEATS.

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

It would seem impossible, at this late day,

154 ROBIN ROOSTS.

to say anything new about so familiar a bird ;
but the robin has one interesting and re-
markable habit, to which there is no allusion
in any of our systematic ornithological trea-
tises, so far as I am aware, although many
individual observers must have taken notice
of it. I mean the habit of roosting at night
in large flocks, while still on its breeding
grounds, and long before the close of the
breeding season.1

Toward the end of summer, two years ago,
I saw what looked like a daily passage back
and forth of small companies of robins. A
friend, living in another town, had noticed
similar occurrences, and more than once we
discussed the subject; agreeing that such
movements were probably not connected in
any way with the grand southward migration,

1 Mr. William Brewster has been aware of this habit
for twenty-five years, but, like myself, has never seen it
mentioned in print. He devotes to it a paper in The Auk
for October, 1890, to which I am happy to refer readers
who may wish a more thorough discussion of the mat-
ter than I have been able to give. My own paper was
printed at the same time, in The Atlantic Monthly, and
had been accepted by the editor before I knew of Mr.
Brewster's intention to write. References to a roost in
Belmont, Mass., discovered by Mr. Brewster six years be-
fore, are frequent in the following pages.

ROBIN ROOSTS. 155

which, so far as we could judge, had not yet
commenced, but that the birds must be fly-
ing to and from some nightly resort. The
flocks were small, however, and neither of
us suspected the full significance of what we
had seen.

On the 19th of July, 1889, the same
friend informed me that one of our Cam-
bridge ornithologists had found a robin roost
in that city, — a wood in which great num-
bers of birds congregated every night. This
led me to keep a sharper eye upon my own
robins, whom I had already noticed repeat-
ing their previous year's manoeuvres. Every
evening, shortly before and after sunset,
they were to be seen flying, now singly, now
by twos and threes, or even by the half
dozen, evidently on their way to some ren-
dezvous. I was suspicious of a rather dis-
tant hill - top covered with pine - trees ; but
before I could make it convenient to visit the
place at the proper hour, I discovered, quite
unexpectedly, that the roost was close by the
very road up and down which I had been
walking ; an isolated piece of swampy wood,
a few acres in extent, mostly a dense growth
of gray birches and swamp white oaks, but

156 ROBIN ROOSTS.

with a sprinkling of maples and other decid-
uous trees. It is bounded on the further
side by a wet meadow, and at the eastern
end by a little ice-pond, with a dwelling-
house and other buildings beside it, all within
a stone's throw of the wood.

This discovery was made on the evening
of July 25th, and I at once crossed a narrow
field between the wood and the highway, and
pushed in after the birds. It was too dark
for me to see what was going on, but as I
brushed against the close branches the rob-
ins set up a lively cackling, and presently
commenced flying from tree to tree before
me as I advanced, though plainly with no
intention of deserting their quarters. The
place was full of them, but I could form no
estimate of their number.

On the following evening I took my stand
upon a little knoll commanding the western
end of the wood. According to my notes,
the birds began to arrive about sunset, —
but this was pretty certainly an error, — and
though I did not undertake an exact count
until the flight was mainly over, it seemed
likely that at least three hundred passed in
at that point. This would have made the

ROBIN ROOSTS. 157

total number twelve hundred, or thereabout,
on the assumption that my outlook had cov-
ered a quarter of the circuit. After the
flight ceased I went into the wood, and from
the commotion overhead it was impossible not
to believe that such a calculation must be
well within the truth.

The next day was rainy, but on the even-
ing of the 28th I stood by the shore of the
pond, on the eastern side of the wood, and
made as accurate a count as possible of the
arrivals at that point. Unfortunately I was
too late; the robins were already coming.
But in fifty minutes, between 6.40 and 7.30,
I counted 1072 birds. They appeared singly
and in small flocks, and it was out of the
question for me to make sure of them all ;
while I was busy with a flock on the right,
there was no telling how many might be
passing in on the left. If my observations
comprehended a quarter of the circle, and
if the influx was equally great on the other
sides (an assumption afterward disproved),
then it was safe to set the whole number
of birds at five thousand or more. Of the
1072 actually seen, 797 came before the sun-
set gun was fired, — a proportion somewhat

158 ROBIN ROOSTS.

larger than it would have been had the sky
been clear.

On the afternoon of the 29th I again
counted the arrivals at the eastern end; but
though I set out, as I thought, in good sea-
son, I found myself once more behind time.
At 6.30 robins were already dropping in,
notwithstanding the sky was cloudless. In
the first five minutes eighteen birds ap-
peared; at sunset 818 had been counted;
and at 7.30, when I came away, the figures
stood at 1267. "The robins came more
rapidly than last night," I wrote in my note-
book, "and for much of the time I could
keep watch of the southeastern corner only.
My vision then covered much less than a
quarter of the circuit; so that if the birds
came as freely from other directions, at least
five thousand must have entered the wood
between 6.30 and 7.30. As long as it was
light they avoided passing directly by me,
going generally to the left, and slipping into
the roost behind some low outlying trees;
though, fortunately, in doing this they were
compelled to cross a narrow patch of the
illuminated western sky. I suspect that the
number increases from night to night. Be-

ROBIN ROOSTS. 159

tween 6.40 and 7.30, 1235 birds came, as
compared with 1072 last evening. "

Two days afterward (July 31st) I went to
the western end of the wood, and found the
influx there much smaller than on the oppo-
site side; but I arrived late, and made a
partial count only. After sunset 186 birds
were seen, whereas there had been 455 en-
tries at the eastern end, two nights before,
during the same time.

Thus far I had always been too late to
witness the beginning of the flight. On the
evening of August 1st I resolved to be in
season. I reached the border of the pond
at 5.15, and at that very moment a single
robin flew into the wood. No others were
seen for eighteen minutes, when three ar-
rived together. From this time stragglers
continued to appear, and at 6.30 I had
counted 176. In the next ten minutes 180
arrived ; in the next five minutes, 138. Be-
tween 6.45 and 7, I counted 549; then, in
six minutes, 217 appeared. At 7.25, when
I concluded, the figures stood at 1533 birds.
For about twenty minutes, as will be no-
ticed, the arrivals were at the rate of thirty-
six a minute. Throughout the thickest of

160 ROBIN ROOSTS.

the flight I could keep a lookout upon only
one side of me, and, moreover, the gather-
ing darkness was by that time making it
more and more difficult to see any birds ex-
cept such as passed above the dark tree line ;
and from what went on just about me, it was
evident that the number of arrivals was in-
creasing rather than diminishing as my count
fell off. There seemed to be no good reason
for doubting that at least two thousand rob-
ins entered the wood at the eastern end.

Two nights later I stationed myself in
the meadow southwest of the roost. Here
I counted but 935 entries. The movement
appeared to be fully as steady as on the op-
posite side, but as darkness came on I found
myself at a great disadvantage ; a hill occu-
pied the background, giving me no illumi-
nated sky to bring the birds into relief, so
that I could see only such as passed close at
hand. Of the 935 birds, 761 came before
seven o'clock, but it was reasonably certain
that the flight afterward was nearly or quite
as great, only that I wanted light wherewith
to see it.

On the evening of August 4th I went back
to the eastern end, and as the sky was per-

ROBIN ROOSTS. 161

f ectly clear I hoped to make a gain upon all
my previous figures. But the fair weather
was perhaps a hindrance rather than a help ;
for the robins came later than before, and
more in a body, and continued to arrive long
after it was impossible to see them. I
counted 1480, — 53 less than on the 1st.

I attempted no further enumeration until
the 18th. Then, in an hour and ten min-
utes, 1203 birds were seen to enter the roost
at the eastern end. But they arrived more
than ever in flocks, and so late that for much
of the time I missed all except the compar-
atively small number that passed in my im-
mediate vicinity. Many were flying at a
great height, — having come from a long
distance, as I inferred, — and sometimes I
knew nothing of their approach till they
dropped out of the sky directly over the
wood. On this occasion, as well as on many
others, — but chiefly during the latter part
of the season, — it was noticeable that some
of the robins appeared to be ignorant of the
precise whereabouts of the roost; they flew
past it at first, and then, after more or less
circling about, with loud cackling, dived
hurriedly into the wood. I took special note

162 ROBIN ROOSTS.

of one fellow, who came from the south at
a great altitude, and went directly over the
wood. When he was well past it he sud-
denly pulled himself up, as if fancying he
had caught a signal. After a moment of
hesitation he proceeded on his northerly
course, but had not gone far before he met
half a dozen birds flying south. Perhaps
he asked them the way. At all events, he
wheeled about and joined them, and in half
a minute was safe in port. He had heard
of the roost, apparently (how and where ? ),
but had not before visited it.

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

ROBIN IWOSTS. 163

Toward the close of August I became in-
terested in the late singing of several whip-
poor wills, and so was taken away from the
robins' haunt at the hour of sunset. Then,
from the 5th to the 13th of September, I
was absent from home. On the night of my
return I went to the shore of the pond, where,
on the 1st of August, I had counted 1533
entries. The weather was favorable, and I
arrived in good season and remained till the
stars came out, but I counted only 137 rob-
ins! It was plain that the great majority
of the congregation had departed.

As I have said, there was little to be
learned by going into the wood after the
robins were assembled. Nevertheless I used
frequently to intrude upon them, especially
as friends or neighbors, who had heard of
my "discovery," were desirous to see the
show. The prodigious cackling and rustling
overhead seemed to make a deep impression
upon all such visitors, while, for myself,
I should have had no difficulty in credit-
ing the statement had I been told that ten
thousand robins were in the treetops. One
night I took two friends to the place after it
was really dark. All was silent as we felt

164 ROBIN ROOSTS.

our way among the trees, till, suddenly, one
of the trio struck a match and kindled a
blaze of dry twigs. The smoke and flame
speedily waked the sleepers ; but even then
they manifested no disposition to be driven
out.

For curiosity's sake, I paid one early
morning visit to the roost, on the 30th of
July. It would be worth while, I thought,
to see how much music so large a chorus
would make, as well as to note the manner
of its dispersion. To tell the truth, I hoped
for something spectacular, — a grand burst
of melody, and then a pouring forth of a
dense, uncountable army of robins. I ar-
rived about 3.40 (it was still hardly light
enough to show the face of the watch), and
found everything quiet. Pretty soon the
robins commenced cackling. At 3.45 a
song sparrow sang, and at the same moment
I saw a robin fly out of the wood. Five
minutes later a robin sang; at 3.55 another
one flew past me ; at four o'clock a few of
the birds were in song, but the effect was
not in any way peculiar, — very much as if
two or three had been singing in the ordi-
nary manner. They dispersed precisely as

ROBIN ROOSTS. 165

I had seen them gather : now a single bird,
now two or three, now six, or even ten. A
casual passer along the road would have re-
marked nothing out of the common course.
They flew low, — not as if they were starting
upon any prolonged flight, — and a goodly
number alighted for a little in the field
where I was standing. Shortly before sun-
rise I went into the wood and found it de-
serted. The robin is one of our noisiest
birds. Who would have believed that an
assembly of thousands could break up so
quietly ? Their behavior in this regard may
possibly have been influenced by prudential
considerations. I have said that many of
them seemingly took pains to approach the
roost indirectly and under cover. On the
westerly side, for example, they almost in-
variably followed a line of bushes and trees
which runs toward the roost along the edge
of the meadow, even though they were
obliged sharply to alter their course in so
doing.

All this time I had been in correspond-
ence with my friend before referred to, who
was studying a similar roost,1 — in Belmont,

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

166 ROBIN ROOSTS.

— which proved to be more populous than
mine, as was to be expected, perhaps, the
surrounding country being less generally
wooded. It was a mile or more from his
house, which was so situated that he could
sit upon his piazza in the evening and watch
the birds streaming past. On the llth of
August he counted here 556 robins, of which
336 passed within five minutes. On the
28th he counted 1180, of which 456 passed
within five minutes, — ninety-one a minute !
On the 2d of September, from a knoll
nearer the roost, he counted 1883 entries.

This gathering, like the one in Melrose,
was greatly depleted by the middle of Sep-
tember. "Only 109 robins flew over the
place to-night," my correspondent wrote on
the 25th, "against 538 September 4th, 838
August 30th, and 1180 August 28th." Two
evenings later (September 27th) he went to
the neighborhood of the roost, and counted
251 birds, —instead of 1883 on the 2d.
Even so late as October 9th, however, the
wood was not entirely deserted. During the
last month or so of its occupancy, the num-
ber of the birds was apparently subject to
sudden and wide fluctuations, and it seemed

ROBIN ROOSTS. 167

not unlikely that travelers from the north
were making a temporary use of the well-
known resort. It would not be surprising
if the same were found to be true in the
spring. In April, 1890, I saw some things
which pointed, as I thought, in this direc-
tion, but I was then too closely occupied to
follow the matter.

How early in the season does this nightly
flocking begin? This question often pre-
sented itself. It was only the middle of
July when the Cambridge roost was found
in full operation, though at that time many
robins must still have had family duties, and
some were probably building new nests.
Next summer, we said, we would try to
mark the beginnings of the congregation.

My own plans to this end came near being
thwarted. In December I was dismayed to
see the owner of the wood cutting it down.
Happily some kind power stayed his hand
when not more than a third of the mischief
was done, and on the 29th of June, 1890,
while strolling homeward along the highway,
listening to the distant song of a veery, I
noticed within five or ten minutes seventeen
robins making toward the old rendezvous.

168 ROBIN ROOSTS.

On the following evening I stood beside the
ice-pond and saw one hundred and ninety-
two robins enter the wood. The flight had
begun before my arrival, and was not en-
tirely over when I came away. Evidently
several hundreds of the birds were already
passing their nights in company. In my
ignorance, I was surprised at the early date ;
but when I communicated my discovery to
the Belmont observer, he replied at once that
he had noticed a movement of the same kind
on the llth of June. The birds, about a
dozen, were seen passing his house.

Thinking over the matter, I began to ask
myself — though I hesitate about making
such a confession — whether it might not be
the adult males who thus unseasonably went
off to bed in a crowd, leaving their mates to
care for eggs and little ones. At this very
moment, as it happened, I was watching with
lively sympathy the incessant activities of a
female humming-bird, who appeared to be
bringing up a family (two very hungry
nestlings), with no husband to lift a finger
for her assistance ; and the sight, as I fear,
put me into a cynical mood. Male robins
were probably like males in general, — lov-

ROBIN ROOSTS. 169

ers of clubs and shirkers of home duties.
Indeed, a friend who went into the roost
with me, one evening, remarked upon the
continual cackling in the treetops as "a very
social sound;" and upon my saying some-
thing about a sewing circle, he answered,
quite seriously, " No, it is rather like a gen-
tleman's club." But it would have been
unscientific, as well as unchristian, to enter-
tain an hypothesis like this without putting
its soundness to some kind of test. I
adopted the only plan that occurred to me,
— short of rising at half past two o'clock in
the morning to see the birds disperse. I
entered the wood just before the assemblage
was due (this was on the 9th of July), and
took a sheltered position on the eastern edge,
where, as the robins flew by me, or alighted
temporarily in the trees just across the brook,
they would have the sunlight upon their
breasts. Here, as often as one came suffi-
ciently near and in a sufficiently favorable
light, I noted whether it was an adult, or a
streaked, spotted bird of the present season.
As a matter of course, the number concern-
ing which this point could be positively de-
termined under such conditions was very

170 ROBIN ROOSTS.

small, — only fifty-seven altogether. Of
these, forty-nine were surely birds of the
present summer, and only eight unmistak-
able adult males. If any adult females
came in, they passed among the unidentified
and uncounted.1 I was glad I had made the
test. As a kind-hearted cynic (I confess to
being nothing worse than this), I was re-
lieved to find my misanthropic, or, to speak
more exactly, my misornithic, notions ill
founded. As for the sprinkling of adult
males, they may have been, as a "friend and
fellow woodlander" suggests, birds which,
for one reason or another, had taken up
with the detestable opinion that "marriage
is a failure."

During the month of July, 1890, I made
frequent counts of the entries at the eastern
end of the roost, thinking thus to ascertain
in a general way the rate at which its popu-
lation increased. On the whole, the growth
proved to be fairly steady, in spite of some
mysterious fluctuations, as will be seen by
the following table : —

1 A week later, my correspondent reported a similar
state of things at the Belmont roost. "A very large
proportion of the birds are spotted-breasted young of the

ROBIN ROOSTS. 171

July 3 247 July 16 1064

" 5 383 17 1333

"6 356 19 1584

" 10 765 22 1520

" 12 970 23 1453

" 14 1120 27 2314

After July 6th all the enumerations were
made with the help of another man, though
we stood side by side, and covered no more
ground than I had hitherto attempted to
compass alone. The figures of the 27th
were far in excess of any obtained in 1889,
and for a day I was disposed to take seri-
ously the suggestion of a friend that some
other roost must have been broken up and
its members turned into the Melrose gather-
ing. But on the evening of the 28th I tried
a count by myself, and made only 1517
birds ! The conditions were favorable, and
the robins came, as they had come the night
before, in flocks, almost in continuous
streams. The figures had fallen off, not be-
cause there were fewer birds, but because
I was unable to count them. They were lit-

year, but occasionally I have detected an adult male."
He examined the birds at near range, and at rest, after
they had come into the roost in the earlier part of the
evening.

172 ROBIN ROOSTS.

erally too many for me. The difficulties of
the work, it should be explained, are greatly
enhanced by the fact that at the very corner
where the influx is largest none of the low-
flying birds can be seen except for a second
or two, as they dart across a bit of sky be-
tween the roost and an outlying wood. To
secure anything like a complete census, this
point must be watched continuously; and
meantime birds are streaming in at the
other corner and shooting over the distracted
enumerator's head, and perhaps dropping
out of the sky. 1 conclude, therefore, not
that the roost had increased in population,
but that my last year's reckoning was even
more inadequate than I then supposed.
Even with two pairs of eyes, it is inevitable
that multitudes of birds should pass in un-
noticed, especially during the latter half of
the flight. I have never had an assistant or
a looker-on to whom this was not perfectly
apparent.

As I stood night after night watching the
robins stream into this little wood, — no bet-
ter, surely, than many they had passed on
their way, — I asked myself again and again
what could be the motive that drew them to-

ROBIN ROOSTS. 173

gether. The flocking of birds for a long
journey, or in the winter season, is less mys-
terious. In times of danger and distress
there is no doubt a feeling of safety in a
crowd. But robins cannot be afraid of the
dark. Why, then, should not each sleep
upon its own feeding grounds, alone, or
with a few neighbors for company, instead
of flying two or three miles, more or less,
twice a day, simply for the sake of passing
the night in a general roost?

Such questions we must perhaps be con-
tent to ask without expecting an answer.
By nature the robin is strongly gregarious,
and though his present mode of existence
does not permit him to live during ijie sum-
mer in close communities, — as marsh wrens
do, for example, and some of our swallows,
— his ancestral passion for society still
asserts itself at nightfall. Ten or twelve
years ago, when I was bird-gazing in Bos-
ton, there were sometimes a hundred robins
at once about the Common and Garden, in
the time of the vernal migration. By day
they were scattered over the lawns; but at
sunset they gathered habitually in two or
three contiguous trees, not far from the

174 ROBIN ROOSTS.

Frog Pond and the Beacon Street Mall (I
wonder whether the same trees are still in
use for the same purpose), where, after
much noise and some singing, they retired
to rest, — if going to sleep in a leafless
treetop can be called retiring.

Whatever the origin and reason of this
roosting habit, I have no doubt that it is
universal. Middlesex County birds cannot
be in any respect peculiar. Whoever will
keep a close eye upon the robins in his neigh-
borhood, in July and August, will find them
at sunset flocking to some general sleeping-
place.

It would be interesting to know how far
they travel at such times. The fact that so
many hundreds were to be seen at a point
more than a mile away from the Belmont
roost is significant ; but I am not aware that
any one has yet made a study of this part of
the subject. My own birds seemed to come,
as a rule, by easy stages. In the long nar-
row valley east of the roost, where I oftenest
watched their approach, they followed ha-
bitually — not invariably — a zigzag route,
crossing the meadow diagonally, and for the
most part alighting for a little upon a cer-

ROBIN ROOSTS. 175

tain wooded hill, whence they took a final
flight to their nightly haven, perhaps a quar-
ter of a mile beyond. Farther down the
valley, a mile or more from the roost, birds
were to be seen flying toward it, but I found
no place at which a general movement could
be observed and large numbers counted.

As to the size of these nightly gatherings,
it seems wisest not to guess; though, treat-
ing the subject in this narrative manner, I
have not scrupled to mention, simply as a
part of the story, some of my temporary sur-
mises. What I am told of the Belmont
wood is true also of the one in Melrose : its
shape and situation are such as to make an
accurate census impossible, no matter how
many "enumerators" might be employed.
It could be surrounded easily enough, but it
would be out of the question to divide the
space among the different men so that no
two of them should count the same birds.
At present it can only be said that the rob-
ins are numbered by thousands; in some
cases, perhaps, by tens of thousands.

THE PASSING OF THE BIKDS.

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

OMAR KHAYYAM.

BY the first of August the bird-lover's
year is already on the wane. In the chest-
nut grove, where a month ago the wood
thrush, the rose-breasted grosbeak, and the
scarlet tanager were singing, the loiterer now
hears nothing but the wood pewee's pensive
whistle and the sharp monotony of the red-
eyed vireo. The thrasher is silent in the
berry pasture, and the bobolink in the
meadow. The season of jollity is over.
Orioles, to be sure, after a month of silence,
again have fits of merry fifing. The field
sparrow and the song sparrow are still in
tune, and the meadow lark whistles, though
rarely. Catbirds still practice their feeble
improvisations and mimicries in the thickets
along the brooksides as evening comes on,
and of the multitudes of robins a few are

THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS. 177

certain to be heard warbling before the day
is over. Goldfinches have grown suddenly
numerous, or so it seems, and not infre-
quently one of them breaks out in musical
canary -like twitterings. On moonlight even-
ings the tremulous, haunting cry of the
screech-owl comes to your ears, always from
far away, and if you walk through the chest-
nut grove aforesaid in the daytime you may
chance to catch his faint, vibratory, tree-
frog whistle. For myself, I never enter the
grove without glancing into the dry top of a
certain tall tree, to see whether the little ras-
cal is sitting in his open door. More than
half the time he is there, and always with
his eye on me. What an air he has ! — like
a judge on the bench! If I were half as
wise as he looks, these essays of mine would
never more be dull. For his and all other
late summer music let us be thankful ; but
it is true, nevertheless, that the year is wan-
ing. How short it has been! Only the
other day the concert opened, and already
the performers are uneasy to be gone. They
have crowded so much into so brief a space !
The passion of a life-time into the quarter
of a year ! They are impatient to be gone,

178 THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS.

I say; but who knows how many of them
are gone already? Where are the blue gol-
den-winged warblers that sang daily on the
edge of the wood opposite my windows, so
that I listened to them at my work ? I have
heard nothing of their rough dsee, dsee since
the 21st of June, and in all that time have
seen them but once — a single bird, a young-
ling of the present year, stumbled upon by
accident while pushing my way through a
troublesome thicket on the first day of Au-
gust. Who knows, I say, how many such
summer friends have already left us? An
odd coincidence, however, warns me at this
very moment that too much is not to be made
of merely negative experiences; for even
while I was penciling the foregoing sentence
about the blue golden -wing there came
through the open window the hoarse upward-
sliding chant of his close neighbor, the prairie
warbler. I have not heard that sound be-
fore since the 6th of July, and it is now the
22d of August. The singers had not gone,
I knew ; I saw several of them (and beauti-
ful creatures they are !) a few days ago among
the pitch pines ; but why did that fellow, af-
ter being dumb for six or seven weeks, pipe

THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS. 179

up at that precise moment, as if to punctuate
my ruminations with an interrogation point ?
Does he like this dog-day morning, with its
alternate shower and sunshine, and its con-
stant stickiness and heat? In any case I
was glad to hear him, though I cannot in the
spirit of veracity call him a good singer.
Whist! There goes an oriole, a gorgeous
creature, flashing from one elm to another,
and piping in his happiest manner as he flies.
It might be the middle of May, to judge from
his behavior. He likes dog-day weather,
there can be no question of that, however
the rest of the world may grumble.

This is a time when one sees many birds,
but few species. Bluebirds are several times
as abundant as in June. The air is sweet
with their calls at this moment, and once in
a while some father of the flock lets his hap-
piness run over in song. One cannot go far
now without finding the road full of chip-
ping sparrows, springing up in their pretty,
characteristic way, and letting the breeze
catch them. The fences and wayside apple-
trees are lively with kingbirds and phrebes.
I am already watching the former with a
kind of mournful interest. In ten days, or

180 THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS.

some such matter, we shall have seen the
last of their saucy antics. Gay tyrants!
They are among the first birds of whom 1
can confidently say, "They are gone;" and
they seem as wide-awake when they go as
when they come. Being a man, I regret
their departure; but if I were a crow, I
think I should be for observing the 31st of
August as a day of annual jubilee.

A few years ago, in September, I saw the
white-breasted swallows congregated in the
Ipswich dunes, — a sight never to be forgot-
ten. On .the morning of the 9th, the fourth
day of our visit, a considerable flock — but
no more, perhaps, than we had been seeing
daily — came skimming over the marshes
and settled upon a sand-bar in the river,
darkening it in patches. At eight o'clock,
when we took the straggling road out of
the hills, a good many — there might be a
thousand, I guessed — sat upon the fence
wires, as if resting. We walked inland,
and on our return, at noon, found, as my
notes of the day express it, " an innumerable
host, thousands upon thousands," about the
landward side of the dunes. Fences and
haycocks were covered. Multitudes were on

THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS. 181

the ground, — in the bed of the road, about
the bare spots in the marsh, and on the gray
faces of the hills. Other multitudes were in
the bushes and low trees, literally loading
them. Every few minutes a detachment
would rise into the air like a cloud, and anon
settle down again. As we stood gazing at
the spectacle, my companion began chirping
at a youngster who sat near him on a post,
as one might chirp to a caged canary. The
effect was magical. The bird at once started
toward him, others followed, and in a few
seconds hundreds were flying about our
heads. Round and round they went, almost
within reach, like a cloud of gnats. "Stop !
stop! " cried my companion; "I am getting
dizzy." We stopped our squeakings, and
the cloud lifted ; but I can see it yet. Day
after day the great concourse remained about
the hills, till on the 13th we came away and
left them. The old lighthouse keeper told
me that this was their annual rendezvous.
He once saw them circle for a loner time

O

above the dunes, for several hours, if I re-
member right, till, as it seemed, all strag-
glers had been called in from the beach, the
marsh, and the outlying grassy hills. Then

182 THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS.

they mounted into the sky in a great spiral
till they passed out of sight; and for that
year there were no more swallows. This,
he insisted, took place in the afternoon,
"from three to four o'clock." He was un-
questionably telling a straightforward story
of what he himself had seen, but his memory
may have been at fault ; for I find it to be
the settled opinion of those who ought to
know, that swallows migrate by day and not
by night, while the setting out of a great
flock late in the afternoon at such a height
would seem to indicate a nocturnal journey.
Morning or evening, I would give something
to witness so imposing a start.

The recollection of this seaside gathering
raises anew in my mind the question why, if
swallows and swifts migrate exclusively in
the daytime, we so rarely see anything of
them on the passage. Our Ipswich birds
were all tree swallows, — white-breasted
martins, — and might fairly be supposed to
have come together from a comparatively
limited extent of country. But beside tree
swallows there are purple martins, barn
swallows, sand martins, cliff swallows, and
chimney swifts, all of which breed to the

THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS. 183

northward of us in incalculable numbers.
All of them go south between the middle of
July and the first of October. But who in
New England has ever seen any grand army
of them actually on the wing? Do they
straggle along so loosely as to escape par-
ticular notice? If so, what mean congrega-
tions like that in the Ipswich dunes? Or
are their grand concerted flights taken at
such an altitude as to be invisible?

On several afternoons of last September,
this time in an inland country, 1 observed
what might fairly be called a steady stream
of tree swallows flying south. Twice, while
gazing up at the loose procession, I suddenly
became aware of a close bunch of birds at
a prodigious height, barely visible, circling
about in a way to put a count out of the
question, but evidently some hundreds in
number. On both occasions the flock van-
ished almost immediately, and, as I be-
lieved, by soaring out of sight. The second
time I meant to assure myself upon this
point, but my attention was distracted by
the sudden appearance of several large
hawks within the field of my glass, and when
I looked again for the swallows they were

184 THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS.

nowhere to be seen. Were the stragglers
which I had for some time been watching,
flying high, but well within easy ken, and
these dense, hardly discernible clusters —
hirundine nebulae, as it were — were all
these but parts of one innumerable host, the
main body of which was passing far above
me altogether unseen? The conjecture was
one to gratify the imagination. It pleased
me even to think that it might be true.
But it was only a conjecture, and meantime
another question presented itself.

When this daily procession had been no-
ticed for two or three afternoons, it came to
me as something remarkable that I saw it
always in the same place, or rather on the
same north and south line, while no matter
where else I walked, east or west, not a
swallow was visible. Had I stumbled upon
a regular route of swallow migration? It
looked so, surely; but I made little account
of the matter till a month afterward, when,
in exactly the same place, I observed robins
and bluebirds following the same course.
The robins were seen October 26th, in four
flocks, succeeding each other at intervals of a
few minutes, and numbering in all about 130

THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS. 185

birds. They flew directly south, at a mod-
erate height, and were almost certainly de-
tachments of one body. The bluebird move-
ment was two days later, at about the same
hour, the morning being cold, with a little
snow f ailing. This time, too, as it happened,
the flock was in four detachments. Three
of these were too compact to be counted as
they passed; the fourth and largest one was
in looser order and contained a little more
than a hundred individuals. In all, as well
as I could guess, there might have been about
three hundred birds. They kept a straight
course southward, flying high, and with the
usual calls, which, in autumn at least, al-
ways have to my ears a sound of farewell.
Was it a mere coincidence that these swal-
lows, bluebirds, and robins were all crossing
the valley just at this point ?

This question, too, I count it safer to ask
than to answer, but all observers, I am sure,
must have remarked so much as this, — that
birds, even on their migrations, are subject
to strong local preferences. An ornitholo-
gist of the highest repute assures me that
his own experience has convinced him so
strongly of this fact that if he shoots a rare

186 THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS.

migrant in a certain spot he makes it a rule
to visit the place again a year afterward on
the same day, and, if possible, at the same
hour of the day. Another friend sends me
a very pretty story bearing upon the same
point. The bird of which he speaks, Wil-
son's black-cap warbler, is one of the less
common of our regular Massachusetts mi-
grants. I count myself fortunate if I see
two or three specimens during its spring or
autumn passage. My correspondent shall
tell the story for himself.

"While I was making the drawings for
the 'Silva,' at the old Dwight house, I was
in the habit of taking a turn every pleasant
day in the gardens after my scanty lunch.
On the 18th of May, 1887, in my daily
round I saw a Wilson's black-cap for the
first time in my life. He was in a bush of
Spircea media , which grew in the midst of
the rockery, and allowed me to examine him
at near range with no appearance of fear.
Naturally I made a note of the occurrence
in my diary, and talked about it with my
family when I got home. The seeing of a
new bird always makes a red-letter day.

"The next spring, as I was looking over

THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS. 187

my notebook of the previous year, I came
upon my entry of May 18th, and thought
I would be on the lookout for a black-cap
on that date. Several times during the
morning I thought of the matter, and af-
ter my lunch I sauntered into the rockery
just as I had done the year before. Imag-
ine my start when there, in the very same
bush, was the black-cap peering at me ; and
I found on looking at my watch that it was
precisely the same hour, — half past one !
I rubbed my eyes and pinched myself to
make sure it was not a dream. No, it was
all real. Of course, I thought the coinci-
dence very singular, and talked about it,
not only with my family, but also with other
people. You must remember that I had
never seen the bird elsewhere.

"Well, another spring came round. The
18th of May was fixed in my mind, and I
thought many times of my black-cap (I
called it my black-cap now), and wondered
if it would keep tryst again. On the morn-
ing of the 18th, the first thing I thought of
when I awoke was my black-cap. That fore-
noon I actually felt nervous as the time ap-
proached, for I felt a sort of certainty (you

188 THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS.

smile) that I should see my bird again. My
lunch was hastier than usual, and I was about
to sally forth when it flashed across me —
'Suppose the bird should be there again,
who would believe my story? Hold! I will

have a witness.' I called to Mr. J ,

who was at work upstairs, and after explain-
ing what I wanted, invited him to accom-
pany me. We cautiously entered the rock-
ery, and within a few minutes there flitted
from a neighboring thicket into that very
SpiraBa bush my black-cap ! I took out my
watch. It was just half past one I "

My own experiences in this kind have
been much less striking and dramatic than
the foregoing, but I may add that a few
years ago I witnessed the vernal migration
in a new piece of country — ten miles or so
from my old field — and found myself at a
very considerable disadvantage. I had never
realized till then how much accustomed I
had grown to look for particular birds in
particular places, and not in other places of
a quite similar character.

I speak of witnessing a migration; but
what we see for the most part (ducks and
geese being excepted) is not the actual move-

THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS. 189

ment northward or southward. We see the
stragglers, more or less numerous, that hap-
pen to have dropped out of the procession in
our immediate neighborhood, — a flock of
sandpipers about the edge of the pond, some
sparrows by the roadside, a bevy of war-
blers in the wood, — and from these signs
we infer the passing of the host.

Unlike swallows, robins, bluebirds, black-
birds, and perhaps most of the sparrows, our
smaller wood birds, the warblers and vireos
especially, appear to move as a general thing
in mixed flocks. Whenever the woods are
full of them, as is the case now and then
every spring and fall, one of the most strik-
ing features of the show is the number
of species represented. For the benefit of
readers who may never have observed such
a "bird wave," or "rush," let me sketch has-
tily one which occurred a few years ago, on
the 22d of September. As I started out at
six o'clock in the morning, in a cool north-
west wind, birds were passing overhead in
an almost continuous stream, following a
westerly course. They were chiefly war-
blers, but I noted one fairly large flock of
purple finches. All were at a good height,

190 THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS.

and the whole movement had the air of a
diurnal migration. I could only conjecture
that it was the end of the nocturnal flight, so
far, at least, as the warblers were concerned ;
in other words, that the birds, on this par-
ticular occasion, did not finish their nightly
journey till a little after sunrise. But if
many were still flying, many others had al-
ready halted ; for presently I came to a piece
of thin, stunted wood by the roadside, and
found in it a highly interesting company.
Almost the first specimen I saw was a Con-
necticut warbler perched in full view and ex-
posing himself perfectly. Eed-bellied nut-
hatches were calling, and warblers uncounted
were flitting about in the trees and under-
brush. A hurried search showed black-
polls, black-throated greens, blue yellow-
backs, one redstart, one black-and-white
creeper, one Blackburnian, one black-and-
yellow, one Canadian flycatcher (singing
lustily), one yellow redpoll, and one clearly-
marked bay -breast. The first yellow-bellied
woodpecker of the season was hammering
in a tree over my head, and not far away
was the first flock of white -throated spar-
rows. After breakfast I passed the place

THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS. 191

again, and the only bird to be found was
one phcebe ! Within half a mile of the spot,
however, I came upon at least three goodly
throngs, including scarlet tanagers (all in
yellow and black), black-throated blue war-
blers, pine warblers, olive-backed and gray-
cheeked thrushes, a flock of chewinks (made
up exclusively of adult males, so far as I
could discover), red-eyed vireos, one solitary
vireo, brown thrashers, with more redstarts,
a second Blackburnian, and a second black-
aiid-yellow. Every company had its com-
plement of chickadees. Of the morning's
forty species, thirteen were warblers; and
of these thirteen, four were represented by
one specimen each. For curiosity's sake I
may add that a much longer walk that after-
noon, through the same and other woods,
was utterly barren. Except for two or three
flocks of white-throated sparrows, there was
no sign whatever that the night before had
brought us a "flight."

Autumnal ornithology may almost be
called a science by itself. Not only are birds
harder to find (being silent) and harder to
recognize in autumn than in spring, but their
movements are in themselves more difficult

192 THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS.

of observation. A few years of note-taking
will put one in possession of the approx-
imate dates of arrival of all our common
vernal migrants. Every local observer will
tell you when to look for each of the famil-
iar birds of his neighborhood; but he will
not be half so ready with information as to
the time of the same birds' departure. Ask
him about a few of the commonest, — the
least flycatcher and the oven-bird, or the
golden warbler and the Maryland yellow-
throat. He will answer, perhaps, that he
has seen Maryland yellow-throats in early
October, and golden warblers in early Sep-
tember; but he will very likely add that
these were probably voyagers from the North,
and that he has never made out just when
his own summer birds take their leave.

After the work of nidification is over,
birds as a rule wander more or less from
their breeding haunts ; and even if they do
not wander they are likely to become silent.
If we miss them, therefore, we are not to
conclude as a matter of course that they
have gone south. Last year, during the
early part of the season, cuckoos were unu-
sually plentiful, as it seemed to me. Then I

THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS. 193

discovered all at once that there were none to
be found. After the first of July I neither
saw nor heard a cuckoo of either species!
Had they moved away? I do not know;
but the case may be taken as an extreme
illustration of the uncertainty attaching to
the late-summer doings of birds in general.
Every student must have had experiences
of a sort to make him slow to dogmatize
when such points are in question. Through-
out May and June, for example, he has
heard and seen wood thrushes in a certain
grove. After that, for a whole month, he
hears and sees nothing, though he is fre-
quently there. The thrushes have gone?
So it would seem. But then, suddenly,
they are singing again in the very same
trees, and he is forced to conclude that they
have not been away, but during their period
of midsummer silence have eluded his no-
tice. On the whole, therefore, after mak-
ing allowance for particular cases in which
we may have more precise information, it
would be hard, I think, to say just when
our nocturnal travelers set out on their
long journey. As the poet prayed Life to
do, —

194 THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS.

They steal away, give little warning,
Choose their own time ;

Say not good-night, — but in May's brighter clime
Bid us good-morning.

Their departure bereaves us, but, all in
all, it must be accounted a blessing. Like
the falling of the leaves, it touches the heart
with a pleasing sadness, — a sadness more
delicious, if one is born to enjoy it, than all
the merry-making of springtime. And even
for the most unsentimental of naturalists
the autumnal season has many a delightful
hour. The year is almost done ; but for the
moment the whole feathered world is in mo-
tion, and the shortest walk may show him
the choicest of rarities. Thanks to the pass-
ing of the birds, his local studies are an end-
less pursuit. "It is now more than forty
years that I have paid some attention to the
ornithology of this district, without being
able to exhaust the subject," says Gilbert
White; "new occurrences still arise as long
as any inquiries are kept alive." A happy
man is the bird-lover; always another spe-
cies to look for, another mystery to solve.
His expectations may never be realized ; but
no matter ; it is the hope, not its fulfillment,

THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS. 195

that makes life worth having. How can
any New Englander imagine that he has ex-
hausted the possibilities of existence so long
as he has never seen the Lincoln finch and
the Cape May warbler?

But "I speak as a fool." Our happiness,
if we are bird-lovers indeed, waits not upon
novelties and rarities. All such exceptional
bits of private good fortune let the Fates
send or withhold as they will. The grand
spectacle itself will not fail us. Even now,
through all the northern country, the pro-
cession is getting under way. For the next
three months it will be passing, — millions
upon millions : warblers, sparrows, thrushes,
vireos, blackbirds, flycatchers, wrens, king-
lets, woodpeckers, swallows, humming-birds,
hawks ; with sandpipers, plovers, ducks and
geese, gulls, and who knows how many more ?
Night and day, week days and Sundays,
they will be flying : now singly or in little
groups, and flitting from one wood or pas-
ture to another; now in great companies,
and with protracted all-day or all-night
flights. Who could ask a better stimulus
for his imagination than the annual southing
of this mighty host? Each member of it

196 THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS.

knows his own time and his own course.
On such a day the snipe will be in such a
meadow, and the golden plover in such a
field. Some, no doubt, will lose their way.
Numbers uncounted will perish by storm
and flood; numbers more, alas, by human
agency. As I write, with the sad note of a
bluebird in my ear, I can see the sea-beaches
and the marshes lined with guns. But the
army will push on ; they will come to their
desired haven ; for there is a spirit in birds,
also, "and the inspiration of the Almighty
giveth them understanding."

A GEEAT BLUE HERON.

" Why appear you with this ridiculous boldness ? "

SHAKESPEARE.

THE watcher of birds in the bush soon
discovers that they have individual as well
as race characteristics. They are not
things, but persons, — beings with intellect,
affections, and will, — and a strong specific
resemblance is found to be consistent with
no small measure of personal variation. All
robins, we say, look and act alike. But so
do all Yankees ; yet it is part of every Yan-
kee's birthright to be different from every
other Yankee. Nature abhors a copy, it
would seem, almost as badly as she abhors
a vacuum. Perhaps, if the truth were
known, a copy is a vacuum.

I walked down the bay shore of Cape Cod
one summer morning, and at a certain point
climbed the steep cliff to the railway track,
meaning to look into a large cranberry
meadow where, on previous visits, I had

198 A GREAT BLUE HERON.

found a few sandpipers and plovers. Near
one end of the perfectly level, saryl-covered
meadow was a little pool, and my first
glance in that direction showed me a great
blue heron wading about its edge. With
as much quietness as possible I stole out of
sight, and then hastened up the railway
through a cut, till I had the sun at my back
and a hill between me and the bird. Then
I began a stealthy approach, keeping behind
one object after another, and finally going
down flat upon the ground (to roll in the
soil is an excellent method of cleansing
one's garments on Cape Cod) and crawling
up to a patch of bayberry bushes, the last
practicable cover.

Here let me say that the great blue heron
is, as its name implies, a big bird, stand-
ing almost as high as an ordinary man, and
spreading its wings for nearly or quite six
feet. Its character for suspiciousness may
be gathered from what different writers have
said about it. "He is most jealously vigi-
lant and watchful of man," says Wilson,
" so that those who wish to succeed in shoot-
ing the heron must approach him entirely
unseen, and by stratagem." "Extremely

A GREAT BLUE HERON. 199

suspicious and shy," says Audubon. "Un-
less under very favorable circumstances, it
is almost hopeless to attempt to approach it.
To walk up towards one would be a fruitless
adventure." Dr. Brewer's language is to
the same effect, — " At all times very vigi-
lant and difficult of approach."

This, then, was the bird which I now had
under my field-glass, as I lay at full length
behind the friendly bayberry bushes. Up
to this point, for aught that appeared, he
was quite unaware of my espionage. Like
all the members of his family that I have
ever seen, he possessed so much patience that
it required much patience to watch him.
For minutes together he stood perfectly still,
and his movements, as a rule, were either so
slow as to be all but imperceptible, or so
rapid as almost to elude the eye. Boys who
have killed frogs — which was pretty cer-
tainly my heron's present employment —
will need no explanation of his behavior.
They know very well that, if the fatal club
is to do its work, the slowest kind of prelim-
inary motion must be followed by something
like a flash of lightning.

I watched the bird for perhaps half an

200 A GEE AT BLUE HERON.

hour, admiring his handsome blue wings as
now and then he spread them, his dainty
manner of lifting his long legs, and the
occasional flashing stroke of his beak. My
range was short (for a field-glass, I mean),
and, all in all, I voted it "a fine show."

When I wearied of my position I rose and
advanced upon the heron in full sight, ex-
pecting every moment to see him fly. To
my astonishment he held his ground. Down
the hillside I went, nearer and nearer, till I
came to a barbed-wire fence, which bounded
the cranberry field close by the heron's pool.
As I worried my way through this abomina-
ble obstruction, he stepped into a narrow,
shallow ditch and started slowly away. I
made rapidly after him, whereupon he got
out of the ditch and strode on ahead of me.
By this time I was probably within twenty
yards of him, so near that, as he twisted his
long neck every now and then, and looked
at me through his big yellow eyes, I began
to wonder whether he might not take it into
his head to turn the tables upon me. A stab
in the face with that ugly sharp beak would
have been no laughing matter ; but I did not
believe myself in any danger, and quickened

A GEE AT BLUE HERON. 201

my steps, being now highly curious to see
how near the fellow I could get. At this
he broke into a kind of dog-trot, very com-
ical to witness, and, if I had not previously
seen him fly a few yards, I should have
supposed him disabled in the wing. Dr.
Brewer, by the way, says that this bird is
"never known to run, or even to walk
briskly;" but such negative assertions are
always at the maker's risk.

He picked up his legs at last, for I pressed
him closer and closer, till there could not
have been more than forty or fifty feet be-
tween us; but even then he settled down
again beside another pool, only a few rods
further on in the same meadow, and there
I left him to pursue his frog-hunt unmo-
lested. The ludicrousness of the whole
affair was enhanced by the fact, already
mentioned, that the ground was perfectly
flat, and absolutely without vegetation, ex-
cept for the long rows of newly planted cran-
berry vines. As to what could have influ-
enced the bird to treat me thus strangely, I
have no means of guessing. As we say of
each other's freaks and oddities, it was his
way, I suppose. He might have behaved

202 A GREAT BLUE HERON.

otherwise, of course, had I been armed ; but
of that I felt by no means certain at the
time, and my doubts were strengthened by
an occurrence which happened a month or
so afterward.

I was crossing the beach at Nahant with
a friend when we stole upon a pair of golden
plovers, birds that both of us were very
happy to see. The splendid old-gold spot-
ting of their backs was plain enough ; but
immature black-bellied plovers are adorned
in a similar manner, and it was necessary
for us to see the rumps of our birds before
we could be sure of their identity. So,
after we had scrutinized them as long as we
wished, I asked my companion to put them
up while I should keep my glass upon their
backs and make certain of the color of their
rumps as they opened their wings. We
were already within a very few paces of
them, but they ran before him as he ad-
vanced, and in the end he had almost to
tread on them.

The golden plover is not so unapproacha-
ble as the great blue heron, I suppose, but
from what sportsmen tell me about him I am
confident that he cannot be in the habit of

A CHEAT BLUE HEROX. 203

allowing men to chase him along the beach
at a distance of five or six yards. And it
is to be added that, in the present instance,
my companion had a gun in his hand.

Possibly all these birds would have be-
haved differently another day, even in what
to us might have seemed exactly the same
circumstances. Undoubtedly, too, it is eas-
ier, as an almost universal rule, to approach
one or two birds than a considerable flock.
In the larger body there are almost certain
to be a few timorous souls, — a few wider-
awake and better instructed souls, let us
rather say, — who by their outcries and hasty
flight will awaken all the others to a sense
of possible danger. But it is none the less
true, as I said to begin with, that individual
birds have individual ways. And my great
blue heron, I am persuaded, was a "charac-
ter." It would be worth something to know
what was passing behind those big yellow
eyes as he twisted his neck to look once
more at the curious fellow — curious in two
senses — who was keeping after him so
closely. Was the heron curious, as well as
his pursuer? Or was he only a little set in
his own way; a little resentful of being im-

204 A GREAT BLUE HERON.

posed upon ; a little inclined to withstand the
"tyrant of his fields," just for principle's
sake, as patriots ought to do? Or was he a
young fellow, in whom heredity had myste-
riously omitted to load the bump of caution,
and upon whom experience had not yet en-
forced the lesson that if a creature is taller
and stronger than you are, it is prudent to
assume that he will most likely think it a
pleasant bit of sport to kill you? It is no-
thing to the credit of humankind that the
sight of an unsuspicious bird in a marsh or
on the beach should have become a subject
for wonder.

FLOWERS AND FOLKS.

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

EMEKSON.

EVEKY order of intelligent beings natu-
rally separates the world into two classes, —
itself and the remainder. Birds, for in-
stance, have no doubt a feeling, more or less
clearly defined, which, if it were translated
into human speech, might read, "Birds and
nature." We, in our turn, say, "Man and
nature." But such distinctions, useful as
they are, and therefore admissible, are none
the less arbitrary and liable to mislead.
Birds and men are alike parts of nature,
having many things in common not only
with each other, but with every form of an-
imate existence. The world is not a patch-
work, though never so cunningly put to-
gether, but a garment woven throughout.

The importance of this truth, its far-reach-
ing and many-sided significance, is even yet

206 FLO WEES AND FOLKS.

only beginning to be understood; but its
bearing upon the study of what we call nat-
ural history would seem to be evident. My
own experience as a dabbler in botany and
ornithology has convinced me that the pur-
suit of such researches is not at all out of
the spirit of the familiar line, —

" The proper study of mankind is man," —

whatever the author of the line may have
himself intended by his apothegm. To be-
come acquainted with the peculiarities of
plants or birds is to increase one's know-
ledge of beings of his own sort.

There is room, I think, for a treatise on
analogical botany, — a study of the human
nature of plants. Thoroughly and sympa-
thetically done, the work would be both
surprising and edifying. It would give us
a better opinion of plants, and possibly a
poorer opinion of ourselves. Some whole-
some first lessons of this kind we have all
taken, as a matter of course. "We all do
fade as a leaf." "All flesh is grass, and all
the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the
field." There are no household words more
familiar than such texts. But the work of

FLOWERS AND FOLKS. 207

which I am thinking will deal not so much
with our likeness to tree and herb as with
the likeness of tree and herb to us; and
furthermore, it will go into the whole sub-
ject, systematically and at length. Mean-
while, it is open even to an amateur to offer
something, in a general and discursive way,
upon so inviting a theme, and especially to
call attention to its scope and variety.

As I sit at my desk, the thistles are in
their glory, and in a vase at my elbow stands
a single head of the tall swamp variety,
along with a handful of fringed gentians.
Forgetting what it is, one cannot help pro-
nouncing the thistle beautiful, — a close
bunch of minute rose-purple flowers. But
who could ever feel toward it as toward the
gentian ? Beauty is a thing not merely of
form and color, but of memory and associ-
ation. The thistle is an ugly customer.
In a single respect it lays itself out to be
agreeable ; but even its beauty is too much
like that of some venomous reptile. Yet it
has its friends, or, at all events, its patrons
(if you wish to catch butterflies, go to the
thistle pasture), and no doubt could give
forty eloquent and logical excuses for its

208 FLOWERS AND FOLKS.

offensive traits. Probably it felicitates it-
self upon its shrewdness, and pities the poor
estate of its defenseless neighbors. How
they must envy its happier fortune ! It sees
them browsed upon by the cattle, and can
hardly be blamed if it chuckles a little to
itself as the greedy creatures pass it by un-
touched. School-girls and botanists break
down the golden-rods and asters, and pull
up the gerardias and ladies '-tresses; but
neither school-girl nor collector often trou-
bles the thistle. It opens its gorgeous
blossoms and ripens its feathery fruit unmo-
lested. Truly it is a great thing to wear an
armor of prickles !

"The human nature of plants," — have
I any reader so innocent as not to feel at
this moment the appropriateness of the
phrase? Can there be one so favored as
not to have some unmistakable thistles
among his Christian townsmen and acquain-
tance? Nay, we all know them. They are
the more easily discovered for standing al-
ways a little by themselves. They escape
many slight inconveniences under which
more amiable people suffer. Whoever finds
himself in a hard place goes not to them for

FLOWERS AND FOLKS. 209

assistance. They are recognized afar as
persons to be let alone. Yet they, too, like
their floral representatives, have a good side.
If they do not give help, they seldom ask it.
Once a year they may actually "do a hand-
some thing," as the common expression is;
but they cannot put off their own nature ;
their very generosity pricks the hand that
receives it, and when old Time cuts them
down with his scythe (what should we do
without this famous husbandman, unkindly
as we talk of him?) there will be no great
mourning.

Is it then an unpardonable misdemeanor
for a plant to defend itself against attack
and extermination? Has the duty of non-
resistance no exceptions nor abatements in
the vegetable kingdom? That would be in-
deed a hard saying ; for what would become
of our universal favorite, the rose ? On this
point there may be room for a diversity of
opinion ; but for one, I cannot wish the wild
rose disarmed, lest, through the recklessness
of its admirers, what is now one of the com-
monest of our wayside ornaments should
grow to be a rarity. I esteem the rose a
patrician, and fairly entitled to patrician

210 FLOWERS AND FOLKS.

manners. As every one sees, people in high
station, especially if they chance to possess
attractive social qualities, are of necessity
compelled to discountenance everything like
careless familiarity, even from those with
whom they may formerly have been most
intimate. They must always stand more or
less upon ceremony, and never be handled
without gloves. So it is with the queen of
flowers. Its thorns not only serve it as
a protection, but are for its admirers ' an
excellent discipline in forbearance. They
make it easier for us, as Emerson says, to
"love the wood rose and leave it on the
stalk." In addition to which I am moved
to say that the rose, like the holly, illustrates
a truth too seldom insisted upon ; namely,
that people are more justly condemned for
the absence of all good qualities than for
the presence of one or two bad ones.

Some such plea as this, though with a
smaller measure of assurance, I should make
in behalf of plants like the barberry and
the bramble. The latter, in truth, some-
times acts as if it were not so much fighting
us off as drawing us on. Leaning far for-
ward and stretching forth its arms, it but-

FLOWERS AND FOLKS. 211

tonholes the wayfarer, so to speak, and with
generous country insistence forces upon him
the delicious clusters which he, in his preoc-
cupation, seemed in danger of passing un-
tasted. I think I know the human counter-
parts of both barberry and bramble, — ex-
cellent people in their place, though not to
be chosen for bosom friends without a care-
ful weighing of consequences. Judging
them not by their manners, but by their
fruits, we must set them on the right hand.
It would go hard with some of the most
pious of my neighbors, I imagine, if the
presence of a few thorns and prickles were
reckoned inconsistent with a moderately
good character.

As for reprobates like the so-called "poi-
son ivy" and "poison dogwood," they have
perhaps borrowed a familiar human maxim,
— "All is fair in war." In any case, they
are no worse than savage heathen, who kill
their enemies with poisoned arrows, or than
civilized Christians, who stab the reputation
of their friends with poisoned words. Their
marked comeliness of habit may be taken as
a point in their favor ; or, on the contrary,
it may be held to make their case only so

212 FLOWERS AND FOLKS.

much the blacker, by laying them liable to
the additional charge of hypocrisy. The
question is a nice one, and I gladly leave it
for subtler casuists than I to settle.

How refreshing to turn from all these,
from the thistle and the bramble, yea, even
from the rose itself, to gentle spirits like the
violet and anemone, the arbutus and hepat-
ica! These wage no war. They are of the
original Society of Friends. Who will may
spoil them without hurt. Their defense is
with their Maker. I wonder whether any-
body ever thinks of such flowers as repre-
sentative of any order of grown people, or
whether to everybody else they are forever
children, as I find, on thinking of it, they
have always been to me. Lowly and trust-
ful, sweet and frail, "of such is the king-
dom of heaven." They pass away without
losing their innocence. Ere the first heats
of summer they are gone.

Yet the autumn, too, has its delicate
blooms, though they are overshadowed and,
as it were, put out of countenance by the
coarser growths which must be said to char-
acterize the harvest season. Nothing that
May puts into her lap is more exquisite than

FLOWERS AND FOLKS. 213

are the purple gerardias with which August
and September embroider the pasture and
the woodland road. They have not the
sweet breath of the arbutus, nor even the
faint elusive odor of the violet, but for dain-
tiness of form, perfection of color, and grace-
fulness of habit it would be impossible to
praise them too highly. Of our three spe-
cies, my own favorite is the one of the nar-
row leaves ( Gerardia tenuifolia), its longer
and slighter flower -stems giving it an airi-
ness and grace peculiarly its own. A lady
to whom I had brought a handful the other
day expressed it well when she said, "Ihey
look like fairy flowers." They are of my
mind in this : they love a dry, sunny open-
ing in the woods, or a grassy field on the
edge of woods, especially if there be a sel-
dom-used path running through it. I know
not with what human beings to compare them.
Perhaps their antitypes of our own kind are
yet to be evolved. But I have before now
seen a woman who might worthily be set in
their company, — a person whose sweet and
wise actions were so gracefully carried and
so easily let fall as to suggest an order
and quality of goodness quite out of rela-
tion to common flesh and blood.

214 FLOWERS AND FOLKS.

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

For myself, I am far from wishing them
at all less numerous, or a jot less forward
in displaying their charms. Let there be
variety, I say. Because I speak well of the
violet for its humility, I see no reason why
I should quarrel with the aster for loving
to make a show. Herein, too, plants are
like men. An indisposition toward pub-
licity is amiable in those to whom it is nat-
ural ; but I am not clear that bashf ulness is
the only commendable quality. Let plants

FLO WEES AND FOLKS. 215

and men alike carry themselves according to
their birthright. Providence has not or-
dained a diversity of gifts for nothing, and
it is only a narrow philosophy that takes
offense at seeming contrarieties. The truer
method, and the happier as well, is to like
each according to its kind : to love that which
is amiable, to admire that which is admir-
able, and to study that which is curious.

A few weeks ago, for example, I walked
again up the mountain road that climbs out
of the Franconia Valley into the Franconia
Notch. I had left home twenty-four hours
before, fresh from working upon the asters
and golden-rods (trying to straighten out my
local catalogue in accordance with Dr. Gray's
more recent classification of these large and
Difficult genera), and naturally enough had
asters and golden-rods still in my eye. The
first mile or two afforded nothing of particu-
lar note, but by and by I came to a cluster
of the sturdy and peculiar Solidago squar-
rosa, and was taking an admiring account
of its appearance and manner of growth,
when I caught sight of some lower blue
flower underneath, which on a second glance
proved to be the closed gentian. This grew

216 FLOWERS AND FOLKS.

in hiding, as one might say, in the shadow
of its taller and showier neighbors. Not far
off, but a little more within the wood, were
patches of the linnsea, which had been at its
prettiest in June, but even now, in late Sep-
tember, was still putting forth scattered blos-
soms. What should a man do? Discard
the golden-rod for the gentian, and in turn
forsake the gentian for the twin -flower?
Nay, a child might do that, but not a man ;
for the three were all beautiful and all in-
teresting, and each the more beautiful and
interesting for its unlikeness to the others.
If one wishes a stiff lesson in classification,
there are few harder genera (among flower-
ing plants) than Solidago ; if he would in-
vestigate the timely and taking question of
the dependence of plants upon insects, this
humble "proterandrous" gentian (which to
human vision seems closed, but which the
humble-bee knows well how to enter) offers
him a favorable subject ; while if he has an
eye for beauty, a nose for delicate fragrance,
and a soul for poetry, the linnsea will never
cease to be one of his prime favorites. So
I say again, let us have variety. It would
be a stupid town all whose inhabitants should

FLOWERS AND FOLKS. 217

be of identical tastes and habits, though
these were of the very best; and it would
be a tiresome country that brought forth only
a single kind of plants.

The flower of Linnaeus is a flower by it-
self, as here and there appears a man who
seems, as we say, sui generis. This familiar
phrase, by the bye, is literally applicable to
Linncea borealis, a plant that spreads over
a large part of the northern hemisphere,
but everywhere preserves its own specific
character; so that, whether it be found in
Greenland or in Maryland, on the Alas-
kan Islands or in Utah, in Siberia or on the
mountains of Scotland, it is always and
everywhere the same, — a genus of one
species. Diversities of soil and climate
make no impression upon its originality.
If it live at all, it must live according to
its own plan.

The aster, on the contrary, has a special
talent for variation. Like some individuals
of another sort, it is born to adapt itself
to circumstances. Dr. Gray enumerates no
less than one hundred and ninety-six North
American species and varieties, many of
which shade into each other with such end-

218 FLOWERS AND FOLKS.

less and well-nigh insensible gradations that
even our great special student of the Com-
positce pronounces the accurate and final
classification of this particular genus a labor
beyond his powers. What shall we say of
this habit of variability ? Is it a mark of
strength or of weakness? Which is nobler,
— to be true to one's ideal in spite of cir-
cumstances, or to conquer circumstances by
suiting one's self to them? Who shall de-
cide? Enough that the twin-flower and the
star-flower each obeys its own law, and in so
doing contributes each its own part toward
making this world the place of diversified
beauty which it was foreordained to be.

I spoke of the linnaea's autumnal blossoms,
though its normal flowering time is in June.
Even this steady-going, unimpressible citi-
zen of the world, it appears, has its one bit
of freakishness. In these bright, summery
September days, when the trees put on their
glory, this lowliest member of the honey-
suckle family feels a stirring within to make
itself beautiful ; and being an evergreen (in-
stead of a summer-green), and therefore in-
capable of bedecking itself after the maple's
manner, it sends up a few flower-stems,

FLO WEES AND FOLKS. 219

each with its couple of swinging, fragrant
bells. So it bids the world good-by till the
long winter once more comes and goes.

The same engaging habit is noticeable in
the case of some of our very commonest
plants. After the golden-rods and asters
have had their day, late in October or well
into November, when witch-hazel, yarrow,
and clover are almost the only blossoms left
us, you will stumble here and there upon
a solitary dandelion reflecting the sun, or
a violet giving back the color of the sky.
And even so, you may find, once in a
while, an old man in whom imaginative im-
pulses have sprung up anew, now that all
the prosaic activities of middle life are over.
It is almost as if he were born again. The
song of the April robin, the blossoming of
the apple-tree, the splendors of sunset and
sunrise, — these and things like them touch
him to pleasure, as he now remembers they
used to do years and years ago. What means
this strange revival of youth in age ? Is it a
reminiscence merely, a final flickering of the
candle, or is it rather a prophecy of life yet
to come ? Well, with the dandelion and the
violet we know with reasonable certainty

220 FLOWERS AND FOLKS.

how the matter stands. The autumnal
blooms are not belated, but precocious ; they
belong not to the season past, but to the
season coming. Who shall forbid us to
hope that what is true of the violet will
prove true also of the man?

It speaks well for human nature that in
the long run the lowliest flowers are not
only the best loved, but the oftenest spoken
of. Men play the cynic : modest merit goes
to the wall, they say; whoever would suc-
ceed, let him put on a brazen face and
sharpen his elbows. But those who talk in
this strain deceive neither themselves nor
those who listen to them. They are com-
monly such as have themselves tried the
trumpet and elbow method, and have dis-
covered that, whatever may be true of tran-
sient notoriety, neither public fame nor pri-
vate regard is to be won by such means. We
do not retract what we have said in praise of
diversity, and about the right of each to live
according to its own nature, but we gladly
perceive that in the case of the flowers also
it is the meek that inherit the earth.

Our appreciation of our fellow-men de-
pends in part upon the amount, but still more

FLOWERS AND FOLKS. 221

upon the quality, of the service they render
us. We could get along without poets more
comfortably than without cobblers, for the
lower use is often first, in order both of time
and of necessity ; but we are never in doubt
as to their relative place in our esteem. One
serves the body, the other the soul; and we
reward the one with money, the other with
affection and reverence. And our estimation
of plants is according to the same rule.
Such of them as nourish the body are good,
— good even to the point of being indispens-
able ; but as we make a difference between
the barnyard fowl and the nightingale, and
between the common run of humanity and a
Beethoven or a Milton, so maize and potatoes
are never put into the same category with
lilies and violets. It must be so, because
man is more than an animal, and "the life
is more than meat."

Again we say, let each fulfill its own
function. One is made for utility, another
for beauty. For plants, too, are specialists.
They know as well as men how to make the
most of inherited capacities and aptitudes,
achieving distinction at last by the simple
process of sticking to one thing, whether

222 FLOWERS AND FOLKS.

that be the production of buds, blossoms,
berries, leaves, bark, timber, or what not;
and our judgment of them must be corre-
spondingly varied. The vine bears blos-
soms, but is to be rated not by them, but by
the grapes that come after them; and the
rose-tree bears hips, but takes its rank not
from them, but from the flowers that went
to the making of them. "Nothing but
leaves "is a verdict unfavorable or other-
wise according to its application. The tea-
shrub would hold up its head to hear it.

One of the most interesting and sugges-
tive points of difference among plants is
that which relates to the matter of self-
reliance. Some are made to stand alone,
others to twine, and others to creep. If it
were allowable to attribute human feelings to
them, we should perhaps be safe in assuming
that the upright look down upon the climb-
ers, and the climbers in turn upon the creep-
ers; for who of us does not felicitate him-
self upon his independence, such as it is, or
such as he imagines it to be? But if inde-
pendence is indeed a boon, — and I, for one,
am too thoroughbred a New Englander ever
to doubt it, — it is not the only good, nor

FLOWERS AND FOLKS. 223

even the highest. The nettle, standing
straight and prim, asking no favors of any-
body, may rail at the grape-vine, which must
lay hold of something, small matter what,
by which to steady itself; but the nettle
might well be willing to forego somewhat of
its self-sufficiency, if by so doing it could
bring forth grapes. The smilax, also, with
its thorns, its pugnacious habit, and its
stony, juiceless berries, a sort of handsome
vixen among vines, — the smilax, which can
climb though it cannot stand erect, has little
occasion to lord it over the strawberry. If
one has done nothing, or worse than nothing,
it is hardly worth while to boast of the orig-
inal fashion in which he has gone about it.
Moreover, the very plants of which we are
speaking bear witness to the fact that it is
possible to accept help, and still retain to
the full one's own individuality. The straw-
berry is no more a plagiarist than the smilax,
nor the grape than the nettle. If the vine
clings to the cedar, the connection is but
mechanical. Its spirit and life are as inde-
pendent of the savin as of the planet Jupiter.
Even the dodder, which not only twines
about other weeds, but actually sucks its

224 FLOWERS AND FOLKS.

life from them, does not thereby lose an iota
of its native character. If a man is only
original to begin with, — so the parable
seems to run, — he is under a kind of neces-
sity to remain so (as Shakespeare did), no
matter how much help he may draw from
alien sources.

This truth of the vegetable world is the
more noteworthy, because along with it there
goes a very strong and persistent habit of
individual variation. The plant is faithful
to the spirit of its inherited law, but is not
in bondage to the letter. Our "high-bush
blackberries," to take a familiar illustration,
are all of one species, but it does not follow
that they are all exactly alike. So far from
it, I knew in my time — and the school-boys
of the present day are not less accurately
informed, we may presume — where to find
berries of all shapes, sizes, and flavors.
Some were sour, and some were bitter, and
some (I can taste them yet) were finger-
shaped and sweet. And what is true of
Rubus mllosus is probably true of all plants,
though in varying degrees. I do not re-
call a single article of our annual wild crop
• — blueberries, huckleberries, blackberries,

FLOWERS AND FOLKS. 225

cherries, grapes, pig-nuts (a bad name for
a good thing), shagbarks, acorns, and so
forth — in which there was not this constant
inequality among plants of the same species,
perfectly well defined, and never lost sight
of by us juvenile connoisseurs. If we failed
to find the same true of other vines and
bushes, which for our purposes bore blos-
soms only, the explanation is not far to seek.
Our perceptions, aesthetic and gastronomic,
were unequally developed. We were in the
case of the man to whom a poet is a poet,
though he knows very well that there are
cooks and cooks.

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

226 FLOWERS AND FOLKS.

It does a sympathetic observer good to
see how humanly plants differ in their likes
and dislikes. One is catholic : as common
people say, it is not particular; it can live
and thrive almost anywhere. Another must
have precisely such and such conditions, and
is to be found, therefore, only in very re-
stricted localities. The Dioncea, or Venus's
fly-trap, is a famous example of this fastidi-
ousness, growing in a small district of North
Carolina, and, as far as appears, nowhere
else, — a highly specialized plant, with no
generic relative. Another instance is fur-
nished by a water lily (Nymplicea elegans),
the rediscovery of which is chronicled in a
late issue of one of our botanical journals.1
"This lily was originally found in 1849, and
has never been seen since, holding its place
in botanical literature for these almost forty
years on the strength of a single collection
at a single vaguely described station on the
broad prairies of southwestern Texas ; " now,
after all this time, it turns up again in* an-
other quarter of the same State. And every
student could report cases of a similar char-

1 The Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club for Janu-
ary. 1888, page 13.

FLOWERS AND FOLKS. 227

acter, though less striking than these, of
course, within the limits of his own local
researches. If you ask me where I find
dandelions, I answer, anywhere ; but if you
wish me to show you the sweet colt's-foot
(Nardosmia palmata), you must go with
me to one particular spot. Any of my
neighbors will tell you where the pink moc-
casin flower grows; but if it is the yellow
one you are in search of, I shall swear you
to secrecy before conducting you to its
swampy hiding-place. Some plants, like
some people (but the plants, be it noted, are
mostly weeds), seem to flourish best away
from home ; others die under the most care-
ful transplanting. Some are lovers of the
open, and cannot be too much in the sun ;
others lurk in deep woods, under the triple
shadow of tree and bush and fern. Some
take to sandy hill-tops ; others must stand
knee-deep in water. One insists upon the
richest of meadow loam; another is con-
tent with the face of a rock. We may say
of them as truly as of ourselves, De gusti-
bus non est disputandum. Otherwise, how
would the earth ever be clothed with ver-
dure?

228 FLOWERS AND FOLKS.

But plants are subject to other whims not
less pronounced than these which have to do
with the choice of a dwelling-place. We
may call it the general rule that leaves come
before flowers ; but how many of our trees
and shrubs reverse this order ! The singu-
lar habit of the witch-hazel, whose blossoms
open as the leaves fall, may be presumed to
be familiar to all readers; and hardly less
curious is the freak of the chestnut, which,
almost if not quite alone among our amen-
taceous trees, does not put on its splendid
coronation robes till late in June, and is
frequently at the height of its magnificence
in mid- July. What a pretty piece of vari-
ety have we, again, in the diurnal arid the
nocturnal bloomers! For my own part,
being a watcher of birds, and therefore al-
most of necessity an early stirrer abroad, I
profess a special regard for such plants as
save their beauty for night-time and cloudy
weather. The evening primrose is no favor-
ite with most people, I take it, but I seldom
fail to pick a blossom or two with the dew
on them. Those to whom I carry them usu-
ally exclaim as over some wonderful exotic,
though the primrose is an inveterate haunter

FLOWERS AND FOLKS. 229

of the roadside. Yet its blossoms have only
to be looked at and smelled of to make their
way, homely as is the stalk that produces
them. They love darkness rather than
light, but it certainly is not "because their
deeds are evil." One might as well cast
the opprobrious text in the face of the moon
and stars. Now and then some enterprising
journalist, for want of better employment,
investigates anew the habits of literary work-
ers ; and it invariably transpires that some
can do their best only by daylight, while
the minds of others seem to be good for
nothing till the sun goes down; and the
wise reader, who reads not so much to gain
information as to see whether the writer
tells the truth, shakes his head, and says,
"Oh, it is all in use." Of course it is all
in use, just as it is with whippoorwills and
the morning-glory.

The mention of the evening primrose calls
for the further remark that plants, not less
than ourselves, have a trick of combining
opposite qualities, — a coarse-grained and
scraggy habit, for instance, with blossoms
of exquisite fragrance and beauty. The
most gorgeous flowers sometimes exhale an

230 FLOWERS AND FOLKS.

abominable odor, and it is not unheard of
that inconspicuous or even downright homely
sorts should be accounted precious for their
sweetness; while, as everybody knows, few
members of our native flora are more grace-
ful in appearance than the very two whose
simple touch is poison. Could anything be
more characteristic of human nature than
just such inconsistencies? Suavity and
trickery, harshness and integrity, a fiery
temper and a gentle heart, — how often do
we see the good and the bad dwelling to-
gether! We would have ordered things dif-
ferently, I dare say, had they been left to
us, — the good should have been all good,
and the bad all bad ; and yet, if it be a grief
to feel that the holiest men have their fail-
ings, it ought perhaps to be a consolation,
rather than an additional sorrow, to perceive
that the most vicious are not without their
virtues. Beyond which, shall we presume to
suggest that as poisons have their use, so
moral evil, give it time enough, may turn out
to be not altogether a curse ?

I have treated my subject too fancifully,
I fear. Indeed, there comes over me at this
moment a sudden suspicion that my subject

FLOWERS AND FOLKS. 231

itself is nothing but a fancy, or, worse yet,
a profanation. If the flowers could talk,
who knows how earnestly they might depre-
cate all such misguided attempts at doing
them honor, — as if it were anything but
a slander, this imputation to them of the
foibles, or even the self-styled good quali-
ties, of our poor humanity ! What an egoist
is man! I seem to hear them saying;
look where he will, at the world or at its
Creator, he sees nothing but the reflection
of his own image.

IN PEAISE OF THE WEYMOUTH
PINE.

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

SENANCOUB.

I COULD never think it surprising that the
ancients worshiped trees; that groves were
believed to be the dwelling places of the
gods; that Xerxes delighted in the great
plane-tree of Lydia; that he decked it with
golden ornaments and appointed for it a
sentry, one of "the immortal ten thousand."
Feelings of this kind are natural; among
natural men they seem to have been well-
nigh universal. The wonder is that any
should be without them. For myself, I can-
not recollect the day when I did not regard
the Weymouth pine (the white pine I was
taught to call it, but now, for reasons of my
own, I prefer the English name) with some-
thing like reverence. Especially was this
true of one, — a tree of stupendous girth and

IN PRAISE OF THE WEYMOUTH PINE. 233

height, under which I played, and up which
I climbed till my cap seemed almost to rub
against the sky. That pine ought to be
standing yet ; I would go far to lie in its
shadow. But alas ! no village Xerxes con-
cerned himself for its safety, and long, long
ago it was brought to earth, it and all its
fair lesser companions. There is no wisdom
in the grave, and it is nothing to them now
that I remember them so kindly. Some of
them went to the making of boxes, I sup-
pose, some to the kindling of kitchen fires.
In like noble spirit did the illustrious Bo-
bo, for the love of roast pig, burn down his
father's house.

No such pines are to be seen now. I have
said it for these twenty years, and mean no
offense, surely, to the one under which, in
thankful mood, I happen at this moment to
be reclining. Yet a murmur runs through
its branches as I pencil the words. Perhaps
it is saying to itself that giants are, and
always have been, things of the past, —
things gazed at over the beholder's shoulder
and through the mists of years; and that
this venerable monarch of my boyhood, this
relic of times remote, has probably grown

234 IN PRAISE OF THE WE YMO UTII PINE.

faster since it was cut down than ever it did
while standing. I care not to argue the
point. Rather, let me be glad that a tree
is a tree, whether large or small. What a
wonder of wonders it would seem to unac-
customed eyes ! As some lover of imagina-
tive delights wished that he could forget
Shakespeare and read him new, so I would
cheerfully lose all memory of my king of
Weymouth pines, if by that means I might
for once look upon a tree as upon something
I had never seen or dreamed of.

For that purpose, were it given me to
choose, I would have one that had grown
by itself ; full of branches on all sides, but
with no suggestion of primness ; in short, a
perfect tree, a miracle hardly to be found
in any forest, since the forest would be no
better than a park if the separate members
of it were allowed room to develop each af-
ter its own law. Nature is too cunning an
artist to spoil the total effect of her picture
by too fond a regard for the beauty of par-
ticular details.

I once passed a lazy, dreamy afternoon in
a small clearing on a Canadian mountain-
side, where the lumbermen had left standing

IN PRAISE OF THE WEYMOUTII PINE. 235

a few scattered butternuts. I can see them
now, — misshapen giants, patriarchal mon-
strosities, their huge trunks leaning awk-
wardly this way and that, and each bearing
at the top a ludicrously small, one-sided
bunch of leafy boughs. All about me was
the ancient wood. For a week I had been
wandering through it with delight. Such
beeches and maples, birches and butternuts !
I had not thought of any imperfection. I
had been in sympathy with the artist, and
had enjoyed his work in the same spirit in
which it had been wrought. Now, however,
with these unhappy butternuts in my eye, I
began to look, not at the forest, but at the
trees, and I found that the spared butter-
nuts were in no sense exceptional. All the
trees were deformed. They had grown as
they could, not as their innate proclivities
would have led them. A tree is no better
than a man ; it cannot be itself if it stands
too much in a crowd.

I set it down, unwillingly, to the discredit
of the Weymouth pine, — a symptom of some
ancestral taint, perhaps, — that it suffers
less than most trees from being thus en-
croached upon. Yet it does not entirely es-

236 IN PRAISE OF THE WEYMOUTH PINE.

cape. True, it leans neither to left nor
right, its trunk is seldom contorted; if it
grow at all it must grow straight toward the
zenith ; but it is sadly maimed, nevertheless,
— hardly more than a tall stick with a broom
at the top. If you would see a typical white
pine you must go elsewhere to look for it.
I remember one such, standing by itself in
a broad Concord Eiver meadow; not re-
markable for its size, but of a symmetry and
beauty that make the traveler turn again
and again, till he is a mile away, to gaze
upon it. No pine-tree ever grew like that
in a wood.

I go sometimes through a certain hamlet,
which has sprung suddenly into being on a
hill-top where formerly stood a pine grove.
The builders of the houses have preserved
(doubtless they use that word) a goodly num-
ber of the trees. But though I have been
wont to esteem the poorest tree as better
than none, I am almost ready to forswear
my opinion at sight of these slender trunks,
so ungainly and unsupported. The first
breeze, one would say, must bring them
down upon the roofs they were never meant
to shade. Poor naked things ! I fancy they

IN PRAISE OF THE WE Y MOUTH PINE. 237

look abashed at being dragged thus un-
expectedly and inappropriately into broad
daylight. If I were to see the householder
lifting his axe against one of them I think
I should not say, "Woodman, spare that
tree! " Let it go to the fire, the sooner the
better, and be out of its misery.

Not that I blame the tree, or the power
that made it what it is. The forest, like
every other community, prospers — we may
rather say exists — at the expense of indi-
vidual perfection. But the expense is true
economy, for, however it may be in ethics,
in a3sthetics the end justifies the means.
The solitary pine, unhindered, symmetrical,
green to its lowermost twig, as it rises out
of the meadow or stands a-tiptoe on the
rocky ledge, is a thing of beauty, a pleasure
to every eye. A pity and a shame that it
should not be more common ! But the pine
forest, dark, spacious, slumberous, musical!
Here is something better than beauty, dearer
than pleasure. When we enter this cathe-
dral, unless we enter it unworthily, we speak
not of such things. Every tree may be im-
perfect, with half its branches dead for want
of room or want of sun, but until the dev-

238 IN PRAISE OF THE WEYMOUTU PINE.

otee turns critic — an easy step, alas, for
half -hearted worshipers — we are conscious
of no lack. Magnificence can do without
prettiness, and a touch of solemnity is bet-
ter than any amusement.

Where shall we hear better preaching,
more searching comment upon life and death,
than in this same cathedral? Verily, the
pine is a priest of the true religion. It
speaks never of itself, never its own words.
Silent it stands till the Spirit breathes upon
it. Then all its innumerable leaves awake
and speak as they are moved. Then "he
that hath ears to hear, let him hear." Won-
derful is human speech, — the work of gen-
erations upon generations, each striving to
express itself, its feelings, its thoughts, its
needs, its sufferings, its joys, its inexpressi-
ble desires. Wonderful is human speech,
for its complexity, its delicacy, its power.
But the pine-tree, under the visitations of
the heavenly influence, utters things incom-
municable; it whispers to us of things we
have never said and never can say, — things
that lie deeper than words, deeper than
thought. Blessed are our ears if we hear,
for the message is not to be understood by

IN PRAISE OF THE WEYMOUTH PINE. 239

every comer, nor, indeed, by any, except
at happy moments. In this temple all hear-
ing is given by inspiration, for which reason
the pine-tree's language is inarticulate, as
Jesus spake in parables.

The pine wood loves a clean floor, and
is intolerant of undergrowth. Grasses and
sedges, with all bushes, it frowns upon, as a
model housekeeper frowns upon dirt. A
plain brown carpet suits it best, with a mod-
est figure of green — preferably of evergreen
— woven into it; a tracery of partridge-
berry vine, or, it may be, of club moss, with
here and there a tuft of pipsissewa and py-
rola. Its mood is sombre, its taste severe.
Yet I please myself with noticing that the
pine wood, like the rest of us, is not without
its freak, its amiable inconsistency, its one
"tender spot," as we say of each other. It
makes a pet of one of our oddest, brightest,
and showiest flowers, the pink lady's-slip-
per, and by some means or other has enticed
it away from the peat bog, where it surely
should be growing, along with the calopogon,
the pogonia, and the arethusa, and here it is,
like some rare Exotic, thriving in a bed of
sand and on a mat of brown needles. Who

240 IN PRAISE OF THE WE Y MOUTH PINE.

will undertake to explain the occult "elec-
tive affinity " by which this rosy orchid is
made so much at home under the heavy
shadow of the Weymouth pine ?

According to the common saying, there is
no accounting for tastes. If by this is meant
simply that we cannot account for them, the
statement is true enough. But if we are to
speak exactly, there are no likes nor dislikes
except for cause. Every freak of taste, like
every vagary of opinion, has its origin and
history, and, with sufficient knowledge on
our part, could be explained and justified.
The pine-tree and the orchid are not friends
by accident, however the case may look to
us who cannot see behind the present nor
beneath the surface. There are no myster-
ies per se, but only to the ignorant. Yet
ignorance itself, disparagingly as we talk of
it, has its favorable side, — as it is pleasant
sometimes to withdraw from the sun and
wander for a season in the half-light of the
forest. Perhaps we need be in no haste to
reach a world where there is never any dark-
ness. In some moods, at least, I go with
the partridge-berry vine and the lady's-slip-
per. It is good, I think, to live awhile
longer in the shadow ; to see as through a

IN PRAISE OF THE WEYMOUTII PINE. 241

glass darkly; and to hear overhead, not
plain words, but inarticulate murmurs.

I am not to be understood as praising
the pine at the expense of other trees. All
things considered, no evergreen can be equal
to a summer - green, on which we see the
leaves budding, unfolding, ripening, and
falling, — a "worlde whiche neweth everie
daie." What would winter be worth with-
out the naked branches of maples and elms,
beeches and oaks ? We speak of them sadly :

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

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

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

So says Ternissa, in Landor's dialogue. I
know what she means. But I do not "hate "
an impassive, unchangeable temper, whether
in a tree or in a man. I have so little of
such a spirit myself that I am glad to see

242 IN PRAISE OF THE WEYMOUTH PINE.

some tokens of it — not too frequent, indeed,
nor too self-assertive — in the world about
me. And so I say, let me never be, for any
long time together, where there are no Wey-
mouth pines at which I may gaze from afar,
or under which I may lie and listen. They
boast not (rare stoics!), but they set us a
brave example. No "blasts that blow the
poplar white " can cause the pine-tree to
blanch. No frost has power to strip it of a
single leaf. Its wood is soft, but how daunt-
less its spirit ! — a truly encouraging para-
dox, lending itself, at our private need, to
endless consolatory moralizings. The great
majority of my brothers must be comforted,
I think, by any fresh reminder that the bat-
tle is not to the strong.

For myself, then, like the lowly partridge-
berry vine, I would be always the pine-tree's
neighbor. Who knows but by lifelong fel-
lowship with it I may absorb something of
its virtue ? Summer and winter, its fragrant
breath rises to heaven; and of it we may
say, with more truth than Landor said of the
over-sweet fragrance of the linden, "Happy
the man whose aspirations are pure enough
to mingle with it! "

INDEX.

ASTERS, 62, 214, 217.
Autumnal flowers, 212.
Autumnal ornithology, 191.

Bearberry, 72, 78.
Bittern, 71.

Blackberry, 63, 210, 224.
Bluebird, 179, 184, 185.
Butterflies : —

in November, 36.

on Mt. Mansfield, 104.

Catbird, 167,
Cedar-bird, 33.
Chestnut-tree, 228.
Chewink, 191.
Chickadee, 49, 55.
Cowbird, 83.
Creeper : —

black-and-white, 85.

brown, 49.

Crossbill, white-winged, 27.
Cuckoo, 192.

Dandelion, 219.
December birds, 54.
December flowers, 60.
Diapensia, 23, 25, 30.
Dodder, 223.

Evening primrose, 228.

Flicker, 53, 69.
Flowers : —

iii November, 36.

Flowers : —

in December, 60.

on Cape Cod, 80.

on Mt. Lafayette, 22,
25.

on Mt. Mansfield, 103.
Flycatcher : —

great-crested, 9.

least, 9.

olive-sided, 9, 10.

phcebe, 9, 10, 179.

TraiU's, 9.

yellow-bellied, 9.

Golden Aster, 80.

Golden-rods, 81, 214, 215.

Goldfinch, 177.

Grass Finch (Vesper Spar-
row), 5, 110.

Greenland Sandwort, 23, 25,
31, 103.

Groundsel, 61.

Habenaria dilatata, 103.
Heron, great blue, 197.
Holy-Grass,25.
Humming-Bird : —

Kivoli, 139.

ruby - throated, 111.

135.
Hyla Pickeringii, 36, 38.

Jay: —

Canada, 100.
blue, 100.

244 INDEX.

Kingbird, 9, 148, 179.

Sparrow : —

vesper, 5, 110.

Lady's-slipper, 79, 227, 239.
Lapland Azalea, 31.

white - throated, 16,
52, 91, 92, 102, 110,

Lark : —

190.

meadow, 53, 167.

Strawberry, 32, 223.

shore (or horned), 53.

Swallow, white - breasted,

Linnaea, 216-218.

(Tree Swallow), 180,

183.

Maryland Yellow - throat,

Swift, Chimney, 110, 182.

149, 192.

Mount Cannon, 33.

Thistles, 207.

Mount Lafayette, 15, 25.

Thrush : —

Mount Mansfield, 90.

gray-cheeked, 16, 19,

94, 95, 97, 191.

November in Eastern Mas-

hermit, 19, 97.

sachusetts, 36.

olive - backed, (or

Nuthatch, Red -bellied, 49,

Swainson's), 19, 51,

55, 190.

97, 99, 191.

water, 84.

Oriole, Baltimore, 123, 167,

Wilson's (or veery),

179.

17, 19, 98.
wood, 98.

Peck's Geum, 23, 25, 31.

Turnstone, 86.

Phoebe, 9, 10, 179.

Pine Grosbeak, 26.

Veery (Wilson's Thrush),

Pine, white, 232.

17, 19, 98.

Plover : —

Violets, 212, 219, 221.

golden, 202.

Vireo:-

kiUdeer, 39, 41.
Poverty-Grass, 72, 81.

Philadelphia, 11.
red-eyed, 11, 83, 153,

Purple Gerardia, 81, 213.

191.

solitary (or blue-head-

Redstart, 16, 190, 191.

ed), 11, 13, 191.

Robin, 55, 153, 184.

warbling, 14.

Roses, 32, 81, 209.

Warbler: —

Scarlet Tanager, 167, 191.
Screech Owl, 177.

bay-breasted, 6, 190.
Blackburnian, 6, 16,

Smilax : —

190, 191.

glauea, 80.
• rotundifolia, 80, 223.
Snow Bunting, 53.

black - and - yellow,
(magnolia), 190.
black-poll, 6, 16, 96,

Sparrow : —
chipping, 179.
field, 167.
Ipswich, 53, 54.

99, 102, 190.
black-throated blue,
16, 191.
black-throated green,

song, 53, 85, 167.

16, 85, 190.

INDEX.

245

Warbler : —

blue golden -winged,

178.
blue yellow - backed,

83, 190.
Canadian flycatcher,

16, 190,

Connecticut, 190.
eolden (summer yel-

low-bird), 192.
Nashville, 8, 16.
pine, 191.
prairie, 84, 178.
Tennessee, 5, 6.

Warbler : —

Wilson's black - cap,

186.

yellow-rumped (myr-
tle), 95.

White-winged Crossbill, 27.
Winter Wren, 102.
Witch-Hazel, 61, 228.
Woodpecker : —
downy, 50.

golden-winged (flick-
er), 53, 69.
yellow-bellied, 190.
Wood Pewee, 9, 167.

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