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WORKS. New Riverside Edition. With several
Portraits of Burroughs, and engraved Title-pages.
Printed from entirely new plates. lo vols, izmo,
cloth, gilt top, the set, Ifis-oo, net ; uncut, paper
labels, $15.00, net; half calf, gilt top, $30-00. net.

RiVERBY.

Wake-Robin.

Winter Sunshine.

Locusts and Wild Honey.

Fresh Fields.

Indoor Studies.

Birds and Poets, with Other Papers.

Pep acton, and Other Sketches.

Signs and Seasons.

Whitman : A Study.

The Same. Each volume, i6mo, gilt top, $1.25; the
set, 10 vols., uniform, $12.50; half calf, $22.50.

WAKE-ROBIN. Riverside Aldine Series. i6mo,
$1.00.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY,
Boston and New York.

RIVERBY

BY

JOHN BURROUGHS

ptsjmmtm^^

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

1897

Copyright, 1894,
By JOHN BURROUGHS.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass. U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Ca

PEEFATORY NOTE

I HAVE often said to myself, ''Why should
not one name his books as he names his chil-
dren, arbitrarily, and let the name come to
mean much or little, as the case may be?''
In the case of the present volume — probably
my last collection of Out-of-door Papers — I
have taken this course, and have given to the
book the name of my place here on the Hud-
son, ''Eiverby," by the river, where the
sketches were written, and where for so many
years I have been an interested spectator of
the life of nature, as, with the changing sea-
sons, it has ebbed and flowed past my door.

J. B.

"^

X^'^

CONTENTS

PAOB

Among the Wild-Flowers 1

The Heart of the Southern Catskills . . 33

Birds' Eggs ^^

77

Bird Courtship

; Prairie

. 112

Notes from the Prairie 88

Eye-Beams

A Young Marsh Hawk 134

14.5
The Chipmunk ^*^

Spring Jottings ^''"

Glimpses of Wild Life 1*^2

A Life of Fear ^^^

nno

Lovers of Nature ^"'^

A Taste of Kentucky Blue-Grass . . • • 222

94.9

In Mammoth Cave ^^-^

Hasty Observation ^^^

Bird Life in an Old Apple-Tree . • .273

The Ways of Sportsmen 280

Talks with Young Observers .... 285

K^C-StoteC

RIVERBY

AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS

Nearly every season I make the acquaint-
ance of one or more new flowers. It takes
years to exhaust the botanical treasures of any
one considerable neighborhood, unless one
makes a dead set at it, like an herbalist. One
likes to have his floral acquaintances come to
him easily and naturally, like his other friends.
Some pleasant occasion should bring you to-
gether. You meet in a walk, or touch elbows
on a picnic under a tree, or get acquainted on
a fishing or camping-out expedition. What
comes to you in the way of birds or flowers
while wooing only the large spirit of open-air
nature seems like special good fortune. At
any rate, one does not want to bolt his botany,
but rather to prolong the course. One likes to
have something in reserve, something to be on
the lookout for on his walks. I have never
yet found the orchid called Calypso, a large,
variegated purple and yellow flower. Gray says,
which grows in cold, wet woods and bogs, very
beautiful, and very rare. Calypso, you know,
was the nymph who fell in love with Ulysses

2 AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS

and detained him seven years upon her island,
and died of a broken heart after he left her. 1
have a keen desire to see her in her floral guise,
reigning over some silent bog, or rising above
the moss of some dark glen in the woods, and
would gladly be the Ulysses .to be detained at
least a few hours by her.

I will describe her by the aid of Gray, so
that if any of my readers come across her they
may know what a rarity they have found. She
may be looked for in cold, mossy, boggy places
in our Northern woods. You will see a low
flower somewhat like a lady's slipper; that is,
with an inflated sac-shaped lip, the petals and
sepals much alike, rising and spreading, the
color mingled purple and yellow, the stem, or
scape, from three to five inches high, with but
©ne leaf, — that one thin and slightly heart-
shaped, with a stem which starts from a solid
bulb. That is the nymph of our boggy soli-
tudes, waiting to break her heart for any adven-
turous hero who may penetrate her domain.

Several of our harmless little wild-flowers
have been absurdly named out of the old
mythologies: thus, Indian cucumber root, one
of Thoreau's favorite flowers, is named after
the sorceress Medea, and is called "medeola,"
because it was at one time thought to possess
rare medicinal properties; and medicine and
sorcery have always been more or less con-
founded in the opinion of mankind. It is a
pretty and decorative sort of plant, with, when
perfect, two stages or platforms of leaves, one

AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS 3

above the other. You see a whorl of five or
six leaves, a foot or more from the ground,
which seems to bear a standard with another
whorl of three leaves at the top of it. The
small, colorless, recurvecj flowers shoot out
from above this top whorl. The whole expres-
sion of the plant is singularly slender and grace-
ful. Sometimes, probably the first year, it
only attains to the first circle of leaves. This
is the platform from which it will rear its
flower column the next year. Its white,
tuberous root is crisp and tender, and leaves in
the mouth distinctly the taste of cucumber.
Whether or not the Indians used it as a relish
as we do the cucumber, I do not know.

Still another pretty flower that perpetuates
the name of a Grecian nymph, a flower that was
a new find to me a few summers ago, is the Are-
thusa. Arethusa was one of the nymphs who
attended Diana, and was by that goddess turned
into a fountain, that she might escape the god
of the river Alpheus, who became desperately
in love with her on seeing her at her bath.
Our Arethusa is one of the prettiest of the
orchids, and has been pursued through many a
marsh and quaking bog by her lovers. She is
a bright pink-purple flower an inch or more
long, with the odor of sweet violets. The
sepals and petals rise up and arch over the
column, which we may call the heart of the
flower, as if shielding it. In Plymouth County,
Massachusetts, where the Arethusa seems com-
mon, I have heard it called Indian pink.

4 AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS

But I was going to recount my new finds.
One sprang up in the footsteps of that destroy-
ing angel, Dynamite. A new railroad cut
across my tramping-ground, with its hordes of
Italian laborers and its mountains of giant-
powder, etc., was enough to banish all the
gentler deities forever from the place. But it
did not. Scarcely had the earthquake passed
when, walking at the base of a rocky cliff that
had been partly blown away in the search for
stone for two huge abutments that stood near
by, I beheld the ddbris at the base of the cliflf
draped and festooned by one of our most beau-
tiful foliage plants, and one I had long been on
the lookout for, namely, the climbing fumitory.
It was growing everywhere in the greatest pro-
fusion, affording by its tenderness, delicacy,
and grace the most striking contrast to the
destruction the black giant had wrought. The
power that had smote the rock seemed to have
called it into being. Probably the seeds had
lain dormant in cracks and crevices for years,
and when the catastrophe came, and they found
themselves in new soil amid the wreck of the
old order of things, they sprang into new life,
and grew as if the world had been created anew
for them, as, in a sense, it had. Certainly,
they grew most luxuriantly, and never was the
ruin wrought by powder veiled by more deli-
cate lace-like foliage. ^ The panicles of droop-

1 Strange to say, the plant did not appear in that locality
the next season, and has never appeared since. Perhaps it
will take another dynamite earthquake to wake it up.

AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS 5

ing, pale flesh-colored flowers heightened the
efi'ect of the whole. This plant is a regular
climher; it has no extra appendages for that
purpose, and does not wind, but climbs by
means of its young leaf-stalks, which lay hold
like tiny hands or hooks. The end of every
branch is armed with a multitude of these baby
hands. The flowers are pendent and swing
like ear jewels. They are slightly heart-
shaped, and when examined closely look like
little pockets made of crumpled silk, nearly
white on the inside, or under side, and pale
purple on the side toward the light, and shirred
up at the bottom. And pockets they are in
quite a literal sense, for, though they fade,
they do not fall, but become pockets full of
seeds. The fumitory is a perpetual bloomer
from July till killed by the autumn frosts.

The closely allied species of this plant, the
dicentra (Dutchman's breeches and squirrel
corn), are much more common, and are among
our prettiest spring flowers. I have an eye out
for the white-hearts (related to the bleeding-
hearts of the gardens, and absurdly called
"Dutchman's breeches") the last week in
April. It is a rock-loving plant, and springs
up on the shelves of the ledges or in the dt^bris
at their base as if by magic. As soon as blood-
root has begun to star the Avaste, stony places,
and the first swallow has been heard in the
sky, we are on the lookout for dicentra. The
more northern species, called "squirrel corn"
from the small golden tubers at its root, ])looms

6 AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS

in May, and has the fragrance of hyacinths.
It does not affect the rocks, like all the other
flowers of this family.

My second new acquaintance the same season
was the showy lady's slipper. Most of the floral
ladies leave their slippers in swampy places in
the woods ; only the stemless one (acaule)
leaves hers on dry ground before she reaches
the swamp, commonly under evergreen trees,
where the carpet of pine needles will not hurt
her feet. But one may penetrate many wet,
mucky places in the woods before he finds the
prettiest of them all, the showy lady's slipper,
— the prettiest slipper, but the stoute<«t and
coarsest plant; the flower large and very
showy, white, tinged with purple in f ront^ : the
stem two feet high, very leafy, and coarser
than bear-weed. Report had come to me
through my botanizing neighbor, that in a
certain quaking sphagnum bog in the woods
the showy lady's slipper could be found. "The
locality proved to be the marrowy grave of an
extinct lake or black tarn. On the borders of
it the white azalea was in bloom, fast fading.
In the midst of it were spruces and black ash
and giant ferns, and low in the spongy, mossr
bottom, the pitcher plant. The lady's slipper
grew in little groups and companies all about
Never have I beheld a prettier sight, — so gay,
so festive, so holiday-looking. Were they so
many gay bonnets rising above the foliage, or
were they flocks of white doves with purple-
stained breasts just lifting up their wings . to

AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS 7

take flight, or were they little fleets of fairy
boats, with sail set, tossing on a mimic sea of
wild weedy growths ? Such images throng the
mind on recalling the scene, and only faintly
hint its beauty and animation. The long,
erect, white se23als do much to give the alert,
tossing look which the flower wears. The dim
light, too, of its secluded haunts, and its snowy
purity and freshness, contribute to the impres-
sion it makes. The purple tinge is like a stain
of wine which has slightly overflowed the brim
of the inflated lip or sac and run part way
down its snowy sides.

This lady's slipper is one of the rarest and
choicest of our wild-flowers, and its haunts and
its beauty are known only to the few. Those
who have the secret guard it closely, lest their
favorite be exterminated. A well-known bot-
anist in one of the large New England cities
told me that it was found in but one place in
that neighborhood, and that the secret, so far
as he knew, was known to but three persons,
and was carefully kept by them.

A friend of mine, an enthusiast on orchids,
came one June day a long way by rail, to see
this flower. I conducted him to the edge of the
swamp, lifted up the branches as I would a
curtain, and said, ''There they are."

"Where? " said he, peering far into the dim
recesses.

"Within six feet of you," I replied.

He narrowed his vision, and such an expres-
sion of surprise and delight as came over his

8 AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS

face ! A group of a dozen or more of the
plants, some of them twin-flowered, were there
almost within reach, the first he had ever seen,
and his appreciation of the scene, visible in
every look and gesture, was greatly satisfying.
In the fall he came and moved a few of the
plants to a tamarack swamp in his own vicinity,
where they throve and bloomed finely for a few
years, and then for some unknown reason failed.
Nearly every June, my friend still comes to
feast his eyes upon this queen of the cypripe-
diums.

While returning from my first search for the
lady's slipper, my hat fairly brushed the nest
of the red-eyed vireo, which was so cunningly
concealed, such an open secret, in the dim,
leafless underwoods, that I could but pause and
regard it. It was suspended from the end of
a small, curving sapling, was flecked here and
there by some whitish substance so as to blend
it with the gray mottled boles of the trees,
and, in the dimly lighted ground-floor of the
woods, was sure to escape any but the most
prolonged scrutiny. A couple of large leaves
formed a canopy above it. It was not so much
hidden as it was rendered invisible by texture
and position with reference to light and shade.

A few summers ago I struck a new and beau-
tiful plant, in the shape of a weed that had
only recently appeared in that part of the coun-
try. I was walking through an August meadow
when I saw, on a little knoll, a bit of most
vivid orange, verging on a crimson. I knew

AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS 9

of no flower of such a complexion frequenting
such a place as that. On investigation, it
proved to be a' stranger. It had a rough,
hairy, leafless stem about a foot high, sur-
mounted by a corymbose cluster of flowers or
flower-heads of dark vivid orange-color. The
leaves were deeply notched and toothed, very
bristly, and were pressed flat to the ground.
The whole plant was a veritable Esau for hairs,
and it seemed to lay hold upon the ground as
if it was not going to let go easily. And what
a fiery plume it had! The next day, in an-
other field a mile away, I chanced upon more
of the flowers. On making inquiry, I found
that a small patch or colony of the plants had
appeared that season, or first been noticed then,
in a meadow well known to me from boyhood.
They had been cut down with the grass in early
July, and the first week in August had shot up
and bloomed again. I found the spot aflame
with them. Their leaves covered every inch of
the surface where they stood, and not a spear
of grass grew there. They were taking slow
but complete possession; they were devouring
the meadow by inches. The plant seemed to
be a species of hieracium, or hawkweed, or some
closely allied species of the composite family,
but I could not find it mentioned in our bot-
anies.

A few days later, on the edge of an adjoin-
ing county ten miles distant, I found, probably,
its headquarters. It had appeared there a few
years before, and was thought to have escaped

10 AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS

from some farmer's door-yard. Patches of it
were appearing here and there in the fields, and
the farmers were thoroughly alive to the danger
and were fighting it like fire. Its seeds are
winged like those of the dandelion, and it sows
itself far and near. It would be a beautiful
acquisition to our midsummer fields, supplying
a tint as brilliant as that given by the scarlet
poppies to English grain-fields. But it would
be an expensive one, as it usurps the land com-
pletely. ^

Parts of New England have already a mid-
summer flower nearly as brilliant and probably
far less aggressive and noxious, in meadow
beauty, or rhexia, the sole northern genus of a
family of tropical plants. I found it very
abundant in August in the country bordering
on Buzzard's Bay. It was a new flower to me,
and I was puzzled to make it out. It seemed
like some sort of scarlet evening-primrose.
The parts were in fours, the petals slightly
heart-shaped and convoluted in the bud, the
leaves bristly, the calyx-tube prolonged, etc. ;
but the stem was square, the leaves opposite,
and the tube urn- shaped. The flowers were
an inch across, and bright purple or scarlet. It
grew in large patches in dry, sandy fields, mak-
ing the desert gay with color; and also on the
edges of marshy places. It eclipses any flower

1 This observation was made ten years ago. T have since
learned that the plant is Hieracium aurantiacum from
Europe, a kind of hawkweed. It is fast becoming a com-
mon weed in New York and New England.

AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS 11

of the open fields known to me farther inland.
When we come to improve our wild garden, as
recommended by Mr. Robinson in his book on
wild gardening, we must not forget the rhexia.

Our seacoast flowers are probably more bril-
liant in color than the same flowers in the inte-
rior. I thought the wild rose on the Massa-
chusetts coast deeper tinted and more fragrant
than those I was used to. The steeple-bush,
or hardback, had more color, as had the rose-
gerardia and several other plants.

But when vivid color is wanted, what can
surpass or equal our cardinal-flower? There h
a glow about this flower as if color emanated
from it as from a live coal. The eye is baflled
and does not seem to reach the surface of the
petal; it does not see the texture or material
part as it does in other flowers, but rests in a
steady, still radiance. It is not so much some-
thing colored as it is color itself. And then
the moist, cool, shady places it aff'ects, usually
where it has no floral rivals, and where the
large, dark shadows need just such a dab of fire.
Often, too, we see it double, its reflected image
in some dark pool heightening its effect. I
have never found it with its only rival in color,
the monarda or bee-balm, a species of mint.
Farther north, the cardinal-flower seems to fail,
and the monarda takes its place, growing in
similar localities. One may see it about a
mountain spring, or along a meadow brook, or
glowing in the shade around the head of a wild
mountain lake It stands up two feet high or

12 AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS

more, and the flowers show like a broad scarlet
cap.

The only thing I have seen in this country
that calls to mind the green grain-fields of
Britain splashed with scarlet poppies may be
witnessed in August in the marshes of the
lower Hudson, when the broad sedgy and flaggy
spaces are sprinkled with the great marsh-mal-
low. It is a most pleasing spectacle, — level
stretches of dark green flag or waving marsh-
grass kindled on every square yard by these
bright pink blossoms like great burning coals
fanned in the breeze. The mallow is not so
deeply colored as the poppy, but it is much
larger, and has the tint of youth and happiness.
It is an immigrant from Europe, but it is mak-
ing itself thoroughly at home in our great river
meadows.

The same day your eye is attracted by the
mallows: as your train skirts or cuts through
the broad marshes, it will revel with delight in
the masses of fresh bright color afforded by the
purple loosestrife, which grows in similar locali-
ties, and shows here and there like purple bon-
fires. It is a tall plant, grows in dense masses,
and affords a most striking border to the broad
spaces dotted with the mallow. It, too, came
to us from over seas, and first appeared along
the Wallkill, many years ago. It used to be
thought by the farmers in that vicinity that its
seed was first brought in wool imported to this
country from Australia, and washed in the
Wallkill at Walden, where there was a woolen

AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS 13

factory. This is not probable, as it is a Euro-
pean species, and I should sooner think it had
escaped from cultivation. If one were to act
upon the suggestions of Robinson's "Wild
Garden," already alluded to, he would gather
the seeds of these plants and sow them in the
marshes and along the sluggish inland streams,
till the banks of all our rivers were gay with
these brilliant exotics.

Among our native plants, the one that takes
broad marshes to itself and presents vast sheets
of color is the marsh milkweed, far less bril-
liant than the loosestrife or the mallow ; still a
missionary in the wilderness, lighting up many
waste places with its humbler tints of purple.

One sometimes seems to discover a familiar
wild-flower anew by coming upon it in some
peculiar and striking situation. Our columbine
is at all times and in all places one of the most
exquisitely beautiful of flowers; yet one spring
day, when I saw it growing out of a small seam
on the face of a great lichen- covered wall of
rock, where no soil or mould was visible, — a
jet of foliage and color shooting out of a black
line on the face of a perpendicular mountain
wall and rising up like a tiny fountain, its
drops turning to flame-colored jewels that hung
and danced in the air against the gray rocky
surface, — its beauty became something magical
and audacious. On little narrow shelves in the
rocky wall the corydalis was blooming, and
among the loose boulders at its base the blood-
root shone conspicuous, suggesting snow rather
than anything more sanguine.

14 AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS

Certain flowers one makes special expeditions
for every season. They are limited in their
ranges, and must generally be sought for in
particular haunts. How many excursions to
the woods does the delicious trailing arbutus
give rise to ! How can one let the spring go
by without gathering it himself when it hides
in the moss! There are arbutus days in one's
calendar, days when the trailing flower fairly
calls him to the woods. With me, they come
the latter part of April. The grass is greening
here and there on the moist slopes and by the
spring runs; the first furrow has been struck
by the farmer; the liverleaf is in the height of
its beauty, and the bright constellations of the
bloodroot shine out here and there; one has
had his first taste and his second taste of the
spring and of the woods, and his tongue is
sharpened rather than cloyed. Now he will
take the most delicious and satisfying draught
of all, the very essence and soul of the early
season, of the tender brooding days, with all
their prophecies and awakenings, in the handful
of trailing arbutus which he gathers in his
walk. At the mere thought of it, one sees the
sunlight flooding the woods, smells the warm
earthy odors which the heat liberates from be-
neath the dry leaves, hears the mellow bass of
the first bumble-bee,

" Rover of the underwoods,"

or the finer chord of the adventurous honey-
bee seeking store for his empty comb. The

AMONG THE WILD-FLOWEKS 15

arriving swallows twitter above the woods; the
first chewink rustles the dry leaves; the north-
ward bound thrushes, the hermit and the gray-
cheeked, flit here and there before you. The
robin, the sparrow, and the bluebird are building
their first nests, and the first shad are making
their way slowly up the Hudson. Indeed, the
season is fairly under way when the trailing
arbutus comes. Now look out for troops of
boys and girls going to the woods to gather it!
and let them look out that in their greed they
do not exterminate it. Within reach of our
large towns the choicer spring wild-flowers are
hunted mercilessly. Every fresh party from
town raids them as if bent upon their destruc-
tion. One day, about ten miles from one of
our Hudson River cities, there got into the
train six young women loaded down with vast
sheaves and bundles of trailing arbutus. Each
one of them had enough for forty. They had
apparently made a clean sweep of the woods.
It was a pretty sight, — the pink and white of
the girls and the pink and white of the flowers !
and the car too was suddenly filled with per-
fume, — the breathj of spring loaded the air,
but I thought it a pity to ravish the woods in
that way. The next party was probably equally
greedy, and because a handful was desirable,
thought an armful proportionately so; till, by
and by, the flower will be driven from those
woods.

Another flower that one makes special excur-
sions for is the pond lily. The pond lily is a

16 AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS

star, and easily takes the first place among
lilies; and the expeditions to her haunts, and
the gathering her where she rocks upon the
dark secluded waters of some pool or lakelet,
are the crown and summit of the floral expedi-
tions of summer. It .is the expedition about
which more things gather than almost any
other: you want your boat, you want your
lunch, you want your friend or friends with
you. You are going to put in the greater part
of the day; you are going to picnic in the
woods, and indulge in a "green thought in a
green shade." When my friend and I go for
pond lilies, we have to traverse a distance of
three miles with our boat in a wagon. The
road is what is called a "back road," and leads
through woods most of the way. Black Pond,
where the lilies grow, lies about one hundred
feet higher than the Hudson, from which it is
separated by a range of rather bold wooded
heights, one of which might well be called
Mount Hymettus, for I have found a great deal
of wild honey in the forest that covers it. The
stream which flows out of the pond takes a
northward course for two or three miles, till it
finds an opening through the rocky hills, when
it makes rapidly for the Hudson. Its career
all the way from the lake is a series of alter-
nating pools and cascades. Now a long, deep,
level stretch, where the perch and the bass and
the pickerel lurk, and where the willow-herb
and the royal osmunda fern line the shores;
then a sudden leap of eight, ten, or fifteen

AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS 17

feet down rocks to another level stretch, where
the water again loiters and suns itself; and so
on through its adventurous course till the hills
are cleared and the river is in sight. Our road
leads us along this stream, across its rude
bridges, through dark hemlock and pine woods,
under gray, rocky walls, now past a black pool,
then within sight or hearing of a foaming rapid
or fall, till we strike the outlet of the long
level that leads to the lake. In this we launch
our boat and paddle slowly upward over its
dark surface, now pushing our way through
half- submerged treetops, then ducking under
the trunk of an overturned tree which bridges
the stream and makes a convenient way for the
squirrels and wood-mice, or else forcing the
boat over it when it is sunk a few inches below
the surface. We are traversing what was once
a continuation of the lake; the forest floor is
as level as the water and but a few inches
above it, even in summer; it sweeps back a
half mile or more, densely covered with black
ash, red maple, and other deciduous trees, to
the foot of the rocky hills which shut us in.
What glimpses we get, as we steal along, into
the heart of the rank, dense, silent woods ! I
carry in my eye yet the vision I had on one
occasion, of a solitary meadow lily hanging like
a fairy bell there at the end of a chance open-
ing, where a ray of sunlight fell full upon it
and brought out its brilliant orange against the
dark green background. It appeared to be the
only bit of bright color in all the woods.

18 AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS

Then the song of a single hermit-thrush immB'
diately after did even more for the ear than the
lily did for the eye. Presently the swamp-
sparrow, one of the rarest of the sparrows, was
seen and heard; and that nest there in a small
bough a few feet over the water proves to be
hers — in appearance, a ground bird's nest in
a bough, with the same four speckled eggs.
As we come in sight of the lilies, where they
cover the water at the outlet of the lake, a
brisk gust of wind, as if it had been waiting
to surprise us, sweeps down and causes every
leaf to leap from the water and show its pink
under side. Was it a fluttering of hundreds of
wings, or the clapping of a multitude of hands'?
But there rocked the lilies with their golden
hearts open to the sun, and their tender white
petals as fresh as crystals of snow. What a
queenly flower indeed, the type of unsullied
purity and sweetness ! Its root, like a black,
corrugated, ugly reptile, clinging to the slime,
but its flower in purity and whiteness like a
star. There is something very pretty in the
closed bud making its way up through the
water to meet the sun, and there is something
touching in the flower closing itself up again
after its brief career, and slowly burying itself
beneath the dark wave. One almost fancies a
sad, regretful look in it as the stem draws it
downward to mature its seed on the sunless
bottom. The pond lily is a flower of the
morning; it closes a little after noon, but after
you have plucked it and carried it home, it still

AMONG THE WILD-FLOWEKS 19

feels the call of the morning sun, and will
open to him if you give it a good chance. Coil
their stems up in the grass on the lawn, where
the sun's rays can reach them,i, and sprinkle
them copiously. By the time you are ready
for your morning walk, there they sit upon the
moist grass, almost as charmingly as upon the
wave.

Our more choice wild-flowers, the rarer and
finer spirits among them, please us by their in-
dividual beauty and charm; others, more coarse
and common, delight us by mass and profusion;
we regard not the one, but the many, as did
Wordsworth his golden daffodils : —

" Ten thousand, saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance."

Of such is the marsh- marigold, giving a
golden lining to many a dark, marshy place in
the leafless April woods, or marking a little
watercourse through a greening meadow with a
broad line of new gold. One glances up from
his walk, and his eye falls upon something like
fixed and heaped-up sunshine there beneath the
alders, or yonder in the freshening field.

In a measure, the same is true of our wild
sunflowers, lighting up many a neglected bushy
fence corner or weedy roadside with their
bright, beaming faces. The evening primrose
is a coarse, rankly growing plant; but, in late
summer, how many an untrimmed bank is
painted over by it with the most fresh and
delicate canary yellow!

20 AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS

We have one flower which grows in vast
multitudes, yet which is exquisitely delicate
and beautiful in and of itself: I mean the
houstonia, or .bluets. In May, in certain parts
of the country, I see vast sheets of it; in old,
low meadow bottoms that have never known
the plough, it covers the ground like a dull
bluish or purplish snow which has blown
unevenly about. In the mass it is not espe-
cially pleasing; it has a faded, indefinite sort
of look. Its color is not strong and positive
enough to be effective in the mass, yet each
single flower is a gem of itself. The color of
the common violet is much more firm and pro-
nounced; and how many a grassy bank is made
gay with it in the mid-May days ! We have a
great variety of violets, and they are very
capricious as to perfume. The only species
which are uniformly fragrant are the tall
Canada violet, so common in our Northern
woods, — white, with a tinge of purple to the
under side of its petals, — and the small white
violet of the marshy places; yet one summer I
came upon a host of the spurred violet in a
sunny place in the woods which filled the air
with a delicate perfume. A handful of them
yielded a perceptible fragrance, but a single
flower none that I could detect. The Canada
violet very frequently blooms in the fall, and
is more fragrant at such times than in its earlier
blooming. I must not forget to mention that
delicate and lovely flower of May, the fringed
polygala. You gather it when you go for the

AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS 21

fragrant, showy orchis, — that is, if you are
lucky enough to find it. It is rather a shy
flower, and is not found in every woods. One
day we went up and down through the woods
looking for it, — woods of mingled oak, chest-
nut, pine, and hemlock, — and were about giv-
ing it up when suddenly we came upon a gay
company of them beside an old wood-road. It
was as if a flock of small rose- purple butterflies
had alighted there on the ground before us.
The whole plant has a singularly fresh and
tender aspect. Its foliage is of a slightly pur-
ple tinge, and of very delicate texture. Not
the least interesting feature about the plant is
the concealed fertile flower which it bears on a
subterranean shoot, keeping, as it were, one
flower for beauty and one for use.

II

In our walks we note the most showy and
beautiful flowers, but not always the most
interesting. Who, for instance, pauses to con-
sider that early species of everlasting, commonly
called mouse- ear, that grows nearly every-
where by the roadside or about poor fields?
It begins to be noticeable in May, its whitish
downy appearance, its groups of slender stalks
crowned with a corymb of paper-like buds, con-
trasting it with the fresh green of surrounding
grass or weeds. It is a member of a very large
family, the Compositse, and does not attract one

22 AMONG THE AVILD-FLOWERS

by its beauty; but it is interesting, because of
its many curious traits and habits. For in-
stance, it is dioecious, that is, the two sexes are
represented by separate plants; and what is
more curious, these plants are usually found
separated from each other in well defined
groups, like the men and women in an old-
fashioned country church, — always in groups ;
here a group of females, there a few yards
away, a group of males. The females may be
known by their more slender and graceful
appearance, and, as the season advances, by
their outstripping the males in growth. In-
deed, they become real amazons in comparison
with their brothers. The staminate or male
plants grow but a few inches high; the heads
are round, and have a more dusky or freckled
appearance than do the pistillate; and as soon
as they have shed their pollen their work is
done, they are of no further use, and by the
middle of May or before, their heads droop,
their stalks wither, and their general collapse
sets in. Then the other sex, or pistillate
plants, seem to have taken a new lease of life;
they Avax strong, they shoot up with the grow-
ing grass and keep their heads above it; they
are alert and active, they bend in the breeze;
their long, tapering flower-heads take on a tinge
of color, and life seems full of purpose and
enjoyment with them. I have discovered, too,
that they are real sun worshipers; that they
turn their faces to the east in the morning, and
follow the sun in his course across the sky til]

AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS 23

they all bend to the west at his going down.
On the other hand, their brothers have stood
stiff and stupid and unresponsive to any influ-
ence of sky and air, so far as I could see, till
they drooped and died.

Another curious thing is that the females seem
vastly more numerous. I should say almost
ten times as abundant. You have to hunt for
the males ; the others you see far off. One sea-
son I used every day to pass several groups or
circles of females in the grass by the roadside.
I noted how they grew and turned their faces
sunward. I observed how alert and vigorous
they were, and what a purplish tinge came over
their mammae-shaped flower-heads as June ap-
proached. I looked for the males ; to the east,
south, west, none could be found for hundreds of
yards. On the north, about two hundred feet
away, I found a small colony of meek and lowly
males. I wondered by what agency fertilization
would take place, by insects, or by the wind 1 I
suspected it would not take place. No insects
seemed to visit the flowers, and the wind surely
could not be relied upon to hit the mark so far
off, and from such an unlikely corner, too.
But by some means the vitalizing dust seemed
to have been conveyed. Early in June the
plants began to shed their down, or seed- bear-
ing pappus, still carrying their heads at the top
of the grass, so that the breezes could have free
access to them and sow the seeds far and wide.
As the seeds are sown broadcast by the wind,

24 AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS

I was at first puzzled to know how the two
sexes were kept separate, and always in little
communities, till I perceived what I might
have read in the botany, that the plant is
perennial and spreads by offsets and runners
like the strawberry. This would of course
keep the two kinds in groups by themselves.

Another plant which has interesting ways
and is beautiful besides is the adder' s-tongue,
or yellow erythro7iium, the earliest of the lilies,
and one of the most pleasing. The April sun-
shine is fairly reflected in its revolute flowers.
The lilies have bulbs that sit on or near the
top of the ground. The onion is a fair type of
the lily in this respect. But here is a lily with
the bulb deep in the ground. How it gets
there is well worth investigating. The botany
says the bulb is deep in the ground but ofi'ers
no explanation. Now it is only the bulbs of the
older or flowering plants that are deep in the
ground. The bulbs of the young plants are
near the top of the ground. The young plants
have but one leaf, the older or flowering ones
have two. If you happen to be in the woods
at the right time in early April you may see
these leaves compactly rolled together, piercing
the matted coating of sear leaves that covers
the ground like some sharp-pointed instrument.
They do not burst their covering or lift it up,
but pierce through it like an awl.

But how does the old bulb get so deep into
the ground ? In digging some of them up one
spring in an old meadow bottom, I had to

AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS 25

cleave the tough fihrous sod to a depth of eight
inches. The smaller ones were barely two
inches below the surface. Of course they all
started from the seed at the surface of the soil.
The young botanist, or nature lover, Avill find
here a field for original research. If, in late
May or early elune, after the leaves of the
plant have disappeared, he finds the ground
where they stood showing curious, looping,
twisting growths or roots, of a greenish white
color, let him examine them. They are as
smooth and as large as an angle- worm and very
brittle. Both ends will be found in the
ground, one attached to the old bulb, the other
boring or drilling downward and enlarged till
it suggests the new bulb. I do not know that
this mother root in all cases comes to the sur-
face. Why it should come at all is a mystery,
unless it be in some way to get more power for
the downward thrust. My own observations
upon the subject are not complete, but I think
in the foregoing I have given the clue as to
how the bulb each year sinks deeper and deeper
into the ground.

It is a pity that this graceful and abundant
flower has no good and appropriate common
name. It is the earliest of the true lilies, and
it has all the grace and charm that belong to
this order of flowers. Erythronium, its bo-
tanical name, is not good, as it is derived from
a Greek word that means red, while one species
of our flower is yellow and the other is white.
How it came to be called adder 's-tongue I do

w

26 AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS

not know; probably from the spotted charac-
ter of the leaf, which might suggest a snake,
though it in no wise resembles a snake's
tongue. A fawn is spotted, too, and "fawn-
lily " would be better than adder' s-tongue.
Still better is the name "trout-lily," which has
recently been proposed for this plant. It blooms
along the trout streams, and its leaf is as mot-
q^J tied as a trout's back. The name "dog's-
tooth" may have been suggested by the shape
and color of the bud, but how the "violet"
came to be added is a puzzle, as it has not one
feature of the violet. It is only another illus-
tration of the haphazard way in which our
wild-flowers, as well as our birds, have been
named.

In my spring rambles I have sometimes come
upon a solitary specimen of this yellow lily
growing beside a mossy stone where the sun-
shine fell full upon it, and have thought it one
of the most beautiful of our Avild-flowers. Its
two leaves stand up like a fawn's ears, and this
feature, with its re-curved petals, gives it an
alert, Avide- awake look. The white species I
have never seen. I am told they are very
abundant on the mountains in California.

Another of our common wild-flowers, wh'ch
I always look at with an interrogation point in
my mind, is the wild ginger. Why should this
plant always hide its flower? Its two fuzzy,
heart-shaped green leaves stand up very con-
spicuously amid the rocks or mossy stones, but
its one curious, brown, bell- shaped flower is

AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS 27

always hidden beneath the moss or dry leaves,
as if too modest to face the light of the open
woods. As a rule, the one thing which a plant
is anxious to show and to make much of, and
to flaunt before all the world, is its flower.
But the wild ginger reverses the rule and
blooms in secret. Instead of turning upward
toward the light and air, it turns downward
toward the darkness and the silence. It has
no corolla, but what the botanists call a lurid
or brown-purple calyx, which is conspicuous
like a corolla. Its root leaves in the mouth a
taste precisely like that of ginger.

This plant and the closed gentian are appar-
ent exceptions, in their manner of blooming, to
the general habit of the rest of our flowers.
The closed gentian does not hide its flower, but
the corolla never opens; it always remains a
closed bud. It probably never experiences the
benefits of insect visits, which Darwin showed
us were of such importance in the vegetable
world. I once plucked one of the flowers into
which a bumble-bee had forced his wav, but he
had never come out; the flower was his tomb.

There is yet another curious exception which
I will mention, namely, the witch-hazel. All
our trees and plants bloom in the spring, except
this one species; this blooms in the fall. Just
as its leaves are fading and falling, its flowers
appear, giving out an odor along the bushy
lanes and margins of the woods that is to the
nose like cool water to the hand. Why it
should bloom in the fall instead of in the

28 AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS

spring is a mystery. And it is probably be-
cause of this very curious trait that its branches
are used as divining-rods by certain credulous
persons, to point out where springs of water and
jjrecious metals are hidden.

Most young people find botany a dull study.
So it is, as taught from the text- books in the
schools ; but study it yourself in the fields and
woods, and you will find it a source of peren-
nial delight. Find your flower and then name
it by the aid of the botany. There is so much
in a name. To find out what a thing is called
is a great help. It is the beginning of know-
ledge; it is the first step. When we see a
new person who interests us, we wish to know
his or her name. A bird, a flower, a place, —
the first thing we wish to know about it is its
name. Its name helps us to classify it; it
gives us a handle to grasp it by, it sheds a ray
of light where all before was darkness. As
soon as we know the name of a thing, we seem
to have established some sort of relation with it.
The other day, while the train was delayed
by an accident, I wandered a few yards away
from it along the river margin seeking wild-
flowers. Should I find any whose name I did
not know? While thus loitering, a young
English girl also left the train and came in my
direction, plucking the flowers right and left as
she came. But they were all unknown to her;
she did 'not know the names of one of them,
and she wished to send them home to hei
father, too. With what satisfaction she heard

AMONG THE WILD-FLOWEKS 29

the names; the words seemed to be full of
meaning to her, though she had never heard
them before in her life. It was what she
wanted: it was an introduction to the flowers,
and her interest in them increased at once.

"That orange-colored flower which you just
plucked from the edge of the water, that is our
jewel-weed," I said.

"It looks like a jewel," she replied.

"You have nothing like it in England, or
did not have till lately ; but I hear it is now
appearing along certain English streams, having
been brought from this country. "

"And what is this?" she inquired, holding
up a blue flower with a very bristly leaf and

stalk.

"That is viper' s-bugloss or blucAveed, a plant
from your side of the water, one that is making
itself thoroughly at home along the Hudson
and in the valleys of some of its tributaries
among the Catskills. It is a rough, hardy
weed, but its flower, with its long, conspicuous
purple stamens and blue corolla, as you see, is

very pretty."

"Here is another emigrant from across the
Atlantic," I said, holding up a cluster of small
white flowers, each mounted upon a little
inflated brown bag or balloon, — the bladder-
campion. "It also runs riot in some of our
fields as I am sure you will not see it at home. "
She went on filling her hands with flowers, and
I gave her the names of each, — sweet clover
or melilotus, probably a native plant, vervain

30 AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS

(foreign), purple loosestrife (foreign), toad-flax
(foreign), chelone or turtle-head, a native, and
the purple mimulus or monkey- flower, also a
native. It was a likely place for the cardinal-
flower, but I could not find any. I wanted
this hearty English girl to see one of our native
wild- flowers so intense in color that it would
fairly make her eyes water to gaze upon it.

Just 4hen the whistle of the engine sum-
moned us all aboard, and in a moment we were
ofl".

When one is stranded anywhere in the
country in the season of flowers or birds, if he
feels any interest in these things he always has
something ready at hand to fall back upon.
And if he feels no interest in them he will do
well to cultivate an interest. The tedium of
an eiglity-mile drive which I lately took (in
September), cutting through parts of three
counties, was greatly relieved by noting the
various flowers by the roadside. First my
attention was attracted by wild thyme making
purple patches here and there in the meadows
and pastures. I got out of the wagon and
gathered some of it; I found honey-bees work-
ing upon it, and remembered that it was a
famous plant for honey in parts of the old
world. It had probably escaped from some
garden; I had never seen it growing wild in
this way before. Along the Schoharie Kill, I
saw acres of blue weed or viper 's-bugloss, the
hairy stems of the plants, when looked at
toward the sun, having a frosted appearance.

AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS 31

What is this tall plant by the roadside
thickly hung with pendent clusters of long pur-
plish buds or tassels? The stalk is four feet
high, the lower leaves are large and lobed, and
the whole effect of the plant is striking. The
clusters of purple pendents have a very deco-
rative effect. This is a species of nabalus, of
the great composite family, and is sometimes
called lion's-foot. The flower is cream-colored,
but quite inconspicuous. The noticeable thing
about it is the drooping or pendulous clusters
of what appear to be buds, but which are the
involucres, bundles of purple scales, like little
staves, out of which the flower emerges.

In another place I caught sight of something
intensely blue in a wet, weedy place, and on
getting some of it found it to be the closed
gentian, a flower to which I have already re-
ferred as never opening but always remaining
a bud. Four or five of these blue buds, each
like the end of your little finger and as long as
the first joint, crown the top of the stalk, set
in a rosette of green leaves. It is one of our
rarer flowers, and a very interesting one, well
worth getting out of the wagon to gather. As
I drove through a swampy part of Ulster
County, my attention was attracted by a climb-
ing plant overrunning the low bushes by the
sluggish streams, and covering them thickly
with clusters of dull white flowers. I did not
remember evej to have seen it before, and on
taking it home and examining it found it to be
climbing boneset. The flowers are so much

S2 AMONG THE WILD-FLOWERS

like those of boneset that you would suspect
their relationship at once.

Without the name any flower is still more or
less a stranger to you. The name betrays its
family, its relationship to other flowers, and
gives the mind something tangible to grasp.
It is very diflicult for persons who have had no
special training to learn the names of the flow-
ers from the botany. The botany is a sealed
book to them. The descriptions of the flowers
are in a language which they do not understand
at all. And the key is no help to them. It
is as much a puzzle as the botany itself. They
need a key to unlock the key.

One of these days some one will give us a
handbook of our wild - flowers, by the aid of
which we shall all l)e able to name those we
gather in our walks without the trouble of
analyzing them. In this book we shall have a
list of all our flowers arranged according to
color, as white flowers, blue flowers, yellow
flowers, pink flowers, etc., with place of growth
and time of blooming. Also lists or sub-lists
of fragrant flowers, climbing flowers, marsh
flowers, meadow flowers, wood flowers, etc., so
that, with flower in hand, by running over
these lists we shall be pretty sure to find its
name. Having got its name we can turn to
Gray or Wood and find a more teclinical de-
scription of it if we choose.

THE HEAET OF THE SOUTHERN
CATSKILLS

On looking at the Southern and more distant
Catskills from the Hudson River on the east,
or on looking at them from the west, from some
point of vantage in Delaware County, you see,
amid the group of mountains, one that looks
like the back and shoulders of a gigantic horse.
The horse has got his head down grazing; the
shoulders are high, and the descent from them
down his neck very steep ; if he were to lift up
his head, one sees that it would be carried far
above all other peaks, and that the noble beast
might gaze straight to his peers in the Adiron-
dacks or the Wliite Mountains. But the head
and neck never come up ; some spell or enchant-
ment keeps it down there amid the mighty
herd, and the high round shoulders and the
smooth strong back of the steed are alone visi-
ble. The peak to which I refer is Slide Moun-
tain, the highest of the Catskills by some two
hundred feet, and probably the most inaccessi-
ble; certainly the hardest to get a view of, it
is hedged about so completely by other peaks.
The greatest mountain of them all, and appar-
ently the least willing to be seen; only at a
distance of thirty or forty miles is it seen to

34 HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS

stand up above all other peaks. It takes its
name from a landslide which occurred many
years ago, down its steep northern side, or
down the neck of the grazing steed. The mane
of spruce and balsam fir was stripped away for
many hundred feet, leaving a long gray streak
visible from afar.

Slide Mountain is the centre and the chief
of the Southern Catskills. Streams flow from
its base and from the base of its subordinates
to all points of the compass: the Rondout and
the Neversink to the south; the Beaverkill to
the west; the Esopus to the north, and several
lesser streams to the east. With its summit as
the centre, a radius of ten miles would include
within the circle described but very little culti-
vated land ; only a few poor, wild farms in some
of the numerous valleys. The soil is poor, a
mixture of gravel and clay, and is subject to
slides. It lies in the valleys in ridges and
small hillocks as if dumped there from a huge
cart. The tops of the Southern Catskills are
all capped with a kind of conglomerate or
"pudden stone" — a rock of cemented quartz
pebbles which underlies the coal measures.
This rock disintegrates under the action of the
elements, and the sand and gravel which result
are carried into the valleys and make up the
most of the soil. From the Northern Catskills,
so far as I know them, this rock has been swept
clean. Low down in the valleys the old red
sandstone crops out, and as you go west into
Delaware County, in many places it alone re-

HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS 35

mains and makes up most of the soil, all the
Buperincumbent rock having been carried away.

Slide Mountain had been a summons and a
challenge to me for many years. I had fished
every stream that it nourished, and had camped
in the wilderness on all sides of it, and when-
ever I had caught a glimpse of its summit I
had promised myself to set foot there before
another season had passed. But the seasons
came and went, and my feet got no nimbler
and Slide Mountain no lower, until finally, one
July, seconded by an energetic friend, we
thought to bring Slide to terms by approaching
him through the mountains on the east. With
a farmer's son for guide we struck in by way of
Weaver Hollow, and, after a long and desper-
ate climb, contented ourselves with the Whit-
tenburg, instead of Slide. The view from the
Whittenburg is in many respects more striking,
as you are perched immediately above a broader
and more distant sweep of country, and are
only about two hundred feet lower. You are
here on the eastern brink of the Southern Cats-
kills, and the earth falls away at your feet and
curves down through an immense stretch of
forest till it joins the plain of Shokan, and
thence sweeps away to the Hudson and beyond.
Slide is southwest of you, six or seven miles
distant, but is visible only when you climb
into a treetop. I climbed and saluted him and
promised to call next time.

We passed the night on the Whittenburg,
sleeping on the moss, between two decayed

36 HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS

logs, with balsam boughs thrust into the ground
and meeting and forming a canopy over us.
In coming off the mountain in the morning we
ran upon a huge porcupine, and I learned for
the first time that the tail of a porcupine goes
with a spring like a trap. It seems to be a
set-lock, and you no sooner touch with the
weight of a hair one of the quills, than the tail
leaps up in a most surprising manner, and the
laugh is not on your side. The beast cantered
rJong the path in my front, and I threw myself
upon him, shielded by my roll of blankets.
He submitted quietly to the indignity, and lay
very still under my blankets, with his broad
tail pressed close to the ground. This I pro-
ceeded to investigate, but had not fairly made a
beginning when it went off like a trap, and my
hand and wrist were full of quills. This
caused me to let up on the creature, when it
lumbered away till it tumbled down a preci-
pice. The quills were quickly removed from
my hand, when we gave chase. When we
came up to him he had wedged himself in
between the rocks so that he presented only a
back bristling with quills, with the tail lying
in ambush below. He had chosen his position
well, and seemed to defy us. After amusing
ourselves by repeatedly springing his tail and
receiving the quills in a rotten stick, we made
a slip-noose out of a spruce root, and after
much manoeuvring got it over his head and led
him forth. In what a peevish, injured tone
the creature did complain of our unfair tactics.

HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS 37

He protested and protested, and Mdiimpered
and scolded like some infirm old man tormented
by boys. His game after we led him forth
was to keep himself as much as possible in the
shape of a ball, but with two sticks and the
cord we finally threw him over on his back and
exposed his quilless and vulnerable under side,
when he fairly surrendered and seemed to say,
"Now you may do with me as you like." His
great chisel-like teeth, which are quite as for-
midable as those of the woodchuck, he does not
appear to use at all in his defense, but relies
entirely upon his quills, and when those fail
him he is done for.

After amusing ourselves with him a while
longer, we released him and went on our way.
The trail to which we had committed ourselves
led us down into Woodland Valley, a retreat
which so took my eye by its fine trout brook,
its sujDerb mountain scenery, and its sweet
seclusion, that I marked it for my own and
promised myself a return to it at no distant
day. This promise I kept and pitched my tent
there twice during that season. Both occasions
were a sort of laying siege to Slide, but we
only skirmished with him at a distance; the
actual assault was not undertaken. But the
following year, reinforced by two other brave
climbers, we determined upon the assault, and
upon making it from this the most difiicult
side. The regular way is by Big Ingin Valley,
where the climb is comparatively easy, and
where it is often made by women. But from

38 HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS

Woodland Valley only men may essay the
ascent. Larkins is the upper inhabitant, and
from our camping-ground near his clearing we
set out early one June morning.

One would think nothing could be easier to
find than a big mountain, especially when one
is encamped upon a stream which he knows
springs out of its very loins. But for some
reason or other we had got an idea that Slide
Mountain was a very slippery customer and
must be approached cautiously. We had tried
from several points in the valley to get a view
of it, but were not quite sure we had seen its
very head. When on the Whittenburg, a
neighboring peak, the year before, I had caught
a brief glimpse of it only by climbing a dead
tree and craning up for a moment from its top-
most branch. It would seem as if the moun-
tain had taken every precaution to shut itself
off from a near view. It was a shy mountain,
and we were about to stalk it through six or
seven miles of primitive woods, and we seemed
to have some unreasonable fear that it might
elude us. We had been told of parties who
had essayed the ascent from this side, and had
returned baffled and bewildered. In a tangle
of primitive woods, the very bigness of the
mountain baffles one. It is all mountain;
whichever way you turn — and one turns some-
times in such cases before he knows it — the
foot finds a steep and rugged ascent.

The eye is of little service; one must be
sure of his bearings and push boldly on and up.

HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS 39

One is not unlike a flea upon a great shaggy
beast, looking for the animal's head, or even
like a much smaller and much less nimble crea-
ture— he may waste his time and steps, and
think he has reached the head when he is only
upon the rump. Hence I questioned our host,
who had several times made the ascent, closely.
Larkins laid his old felt hat upon the table,
and, placing one hand upon one side and the
other upon the other, said: " There Slide lies,"
between the two forks of the stream, just as
my hat lies between my two hands. David
will go with you to the forks, and then you
will push right on up." But Larkins was not
right, though he had traversed all those moun-
tains many times over. The peak we were
about to set out for did not lie between the
forks, but exactly at the head of one of them ;
the beginnings of the stream are in the very
path of the slide, as we afterward found. We
broke camp early in the morning, and with our
blankets strapped to our backs and rations in
our pockets for two days, set out along an
ancient and, in places, an obliterated bark road
that followed, and crossed, and recrossed the
stream. The morning was bright and warm,
but the wind was fitful and petulant, and I
predicted rain. What a forest solitude our
obstructed and dilapidated wood road led us
through: five miles of primitive woods before
we came to the forks, three miles before we
came to the "burnt shanty," a name merely —
no shanty there now for twenty -five years past.

40 HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS

The ravages of the bark peelers were still visi-
ble, now in a space thickly strewn with the soft
and decayed trunks of hemlock-trees, and over-
grown with wild cherry, then in huge mossy
logs scattered through the beech and maple
woods ; some of these logs were so soft and mossy
that one could sit or recline upon them as upon

a sofa.

But the prettiest thing was the stream solilo-
quizing in such musical tones there amid the
moss-covered rocks and bowlders. How clean
it looked, what purity ; civilization corrupts the
streams as it corrupts the Indian; only in such
remote woods can you now see a brook in all
its original freshness and beauty. Only the sea
and the mountain forest brook are pure; all
between is contaminated more or less by the
work of man. An ideal trout brook was this,
now hurrying, now loitering, now deepening
around a great bowlder, now gliding evenly
over a pavement of green-gray stone and peb-
bles; no sediment or stain of any kind, but
white and sparkling as snow water, and nearly
as cool. Indeed, the water of all this Catskill
region is the best in the world. For the first
few days one feels as if he could almost live on
the water alone ; he cannot drink enough of it.
In this particular it is indeed the good Bible
land, " a land of brooks of water, of fountains
and depths that spring out of valleys and
hills. "

Near the forks we caught, or thought we
caught, through an opening, a glimpse of Slide.

HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS 41

Was it Slide, was it the head, or the rump, or
the shoulder of the shaggy monster we were m
quest of ? At the forks there was a bewilder-
ing maze of underbrush and great trees, and
the way did not seem at all certain, nor was
David, who was then at the end of his reckon-
ing, able to reassure us. But in assaulting a
mountain, as in assaulting a fort, boldness is
the watchword. We pressed forward, following
a line of blazed trees for nearly a mile, then turn-
ing to the left began the ascent of the moun-
tafn. It was steep, hard climbing. We saw
numerous marks of both bears and deer; but no
birds, save at long intervals the winter wren
flitting here and there and darting under logs
and rubbish like a mouse. Occasionally its
gushing lyrical song would break the silence.
After we had climbed an hour or two, the
clouds began to gather, and presently the ram
began to come down. This was discouraging;
but we put our backs up against trees and
rocks, and waited for the shower to pass.

"They were wet with the showers of the
mountain and embraced the rocks for want of
shelter," as they did in Job's time. But the
shower was light and brief, and we were soon
under way again. Three hours from the forks
broucrht us out on the broad level back of the
mountain upon which Slide, considered as an
isolated peak, is reared. After a time we en-
tered a dense growth of spruce which covered
a slight depression in the table of the moun-
tain. The moss was deep, the ground spongy.

42 HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS

the light dim, the air hushed. The transition
from the open, leafy woods to this dim, silent,
weird grove was very marked. It was like the
passage from the street into the temple. Here
we paused awhile and ate our lunch, and
refreshed ourselves with Avater gathered from a
little well sunk in the moss.

The quiet and repose of this spruce grove
proved to be the calm that goes before the
storm. As we passed out of it we came plump
upon the almost perpendicular battlements of
Slide. The mountain rose like a huge, rock-
bound fortress from this plain-like expanse. It
was ledge upon ledge, precipice upon precipice,
up which and over which we made our way
slowly and with great labor, now pulling our-
selves up by our hands, then cautiously finding
niches for our feet and zigzagging right and left
from shelf to shelf. This northern side of the
mountain was thickly covered with moss and
lichens, like the north side of a tree. This
made it soft to the foot and broke many a slip
and fall. Everywhere a stunted growth of yel-
low birch, mountain -ash, and spruce and fir
opposed our progress. The ascent at such an
angle with a roll of blankets on your back is
not unlike climbing a tree; every limb resists
your progress and pushes you back, so that
when we at last reached the summit, after
twelve or fifteen hundred feet of this sort of
work, the fight was about all out of the best of
us. It was then nearly two o'clock, so that we
had been about seven hours in coming seven
miles.

HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS 43

Here on the top of the mountain we over-
took spring, which had been gone from the val-
ley nearly a month. Red clover was opening
in the valley below and wild strawberries just
ripening; on the summit the yellow birch was
just hanging out its catkins, and the claytonia,
or spring beauty, was in bloom. The leaf-buds
of the trees were just bursting, making a faint
mist of green, which, as the eye swept down-
ward, gradually deepened until it became a
dense, massive cloud in the valleys. At the
foot of the mountain the clintonia, or northern
careen lily, and the low shad-bush were showing
their berries, but long before the top was reached
th^y were found in bloom. I had never before
stood amid blooming claytonia, a flower of
April, and looked down upon a field that held
ripening strawberries. Every thousand feet ele-
vation seemed to make about ten days' differ-
ence in the vegetation, so that the season Avas
a month or more later on the top of the moun-
tain than at its base. A very pretty flower
which we began to meet with well up on the
mountain-side was the painted trillium, the pet-
als white, veined with pink.

The low, stunted growth of spruce and fir
which clothes the top of Slide has been cut
away over a small space on the highest point,
laying open the view on nearly all sides. Here
we sat down and enjoyed our triumph. We
saw the world as the hawk or the balloonist
sees it when he is 3,000 feet in the air. How
soft and flowing all the outlines of the hills and

44 HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS

mountains beneath us looked. The foresta
dropped down and undulated away over them,
covering them like a carpet. To the east we
looked over the near by Whittenburg range to
the Hudson and beyond; to the south Peek-o'-
Moose, with its sharp crest, and Table Moun-
tain, with its long level top, were the two con-
spicuous objects; in the west, Mt, Graham and
Double Top, about 3,800 feet each, arrested the
eye ; while in our front to the north we looked
over the top of Panther Mountain to the multi-
tudinous peaks of the Northern Catskills. All
was mountain and forest on every hand. Civ-
ilization seemed to have done little more than
to have scratched this rough, shaggy surface of
the earth here and there. In any such view,
the Avild, the aboriginal, the geographical
greatly predominate. The works of man dwin-
dle, and the original features of the huge globe
come out. Every single object or point is
dwarfed; the valley of the Hudson is only a
wrinkle in the earth's surface. You discover
with a feeling of surprise that the great thing
is the earth itself, which stretches away on
every hand so far beyond your ken.

The Arabs believe that the mountains steady
the earth and hold it together; but they had
only to get on the top of a high one to see how
insignificant they are, and how adequate the
earth looks to get along without them. To the
imaginative Oriental people mountains seemed
to mean much more than they do to us. They
were sacred; they were the abodes of theii

HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS 45

divinities. They offered their sacrifices upon
them. In the Bible mountains are used as a
symbol of that which is great and holy. Jeru-
salem is spoken of as a holy mountain. The
Syrians were beaten by the Children of Israel
because, said they, "Their gods are gods of the
hills; therefore were they stronger than we."
It was on Mount Horeb that God appeared to
Moses in the burning bush, and on Sinai that
he delivered to him the law. Josephus says
that the Hebrew shepherds never pasture their
flocks on Sinai, believing it to be the abode of
Jehovah. The solitude of mountain-tops is
peculiarly impressive, and it is certainly easier
to believe the Deity appeared in a burning
bush there than in the valley below. When
the clouds of heaven, too, come down and en-
velop the top of the mountain — how such a
circumstance must have impressed the old God-
fearing Hebrews. Moses knew ^vell how to
surround the law with the pomp and circum-
stance that would inspire the deepest awe and
reverence.

But when the clouds came down and envel-
oped us on Slide Mountain the grandeur, the
solemnity, was gone in a twinkling; the por-
tentous-looking clouds proved to be nothing
but base fog that wet us and extinguished the
world for us. How tame, and prosy, and
humdrum the scene instantly became. But
when the fog lifted, and we looked from under
it as from under a just raised lid, and the eye
plunged again like an escaped bird into those

46 HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS

vast gulfs of space that opened at our feet, the
feeling of grandeur and solemnity quickly came
back.

The first want we felt on the top of Slide,
after we had got some rest, was a want of
water. Several of us cast about, right and
left, but no sign of water was found. But
water must be had, so we all started off delib-
erately to hunt it up. We had not gone many
hundred yards before we chanced uj^on an ice-
cave beneath some rocks — vast masses of ice,
with crystal pools of water near. This was
good luck indeed, and put a new and brighter
face on the situation.

Slide Mountain enjoys a distinction which
no other mountain in the State, so far as is
known, does — it has a thrush peculiar to it-
self. This thrush was discovered and described
by Eugene Bicknell of New York, in 1880,
and has been named Bicknell' s thrush. A
better name would have been Slide Mountain
thrush, as the bird so far has only been found
on the mountain. I did not see or hear it
upon the Whittenburg, which is only a few
miles distant, and only two hundred feet lower.
In its appearance to the eye among the trees
one would not distinguish it from the gray-
cheeked thrush of Baird, or the olive-backed
thrush, but its song is totally different. The
moment I heard it I said, "There is a new
bird, a new thrush," as the quality of all
thrush songs is the same. A moment more
and I knew it was Bicknell' s thrush. The

HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS 47

song is in a minor key, finer, more attenuated,
and more under the breath than that of any-
other thrush. It seemed as if the bird was
blowing in a delicate, slender, golden tube, so
fine and yet so flute-like and resonant the song
appeared. At times it was like a musical
whisper of great sweetness and power. The
birds were numerous about the summit, but we
saw them nowhere else. No other thrush was
seen, though a few times during our stay I
eaught a mere echo of the hermit's song far
down the mountain-side. A bird I was not
prepared to see or hear was the black poll war-
bler, a bird usually found much farther north,
but here it was, amid the balsam firs, uttering
its simple, lisping song.

The rocks on the tops of these mountains are
quite sure to attract one's attention, even if he
have no eye for such things. They are masses
of light reddish conglomerate, composed of
round wave- worn quartz pebbles. Every peb-
ble had been shaped and polished upon some
ancient seacoast, probably the Devonian. The
rock disintegrates where it is most exposed to
the weather and forms a loose sandy and pebbly
soil. These rocks form the floor of the coal
formation, but in the Catskill region only the
floor remains; the superstructure has nevei
existed or has been swept away; lience om
would look for a coal mine here over his head
in the air, rather than under his feet.

This rock did not have to climb up here as
we did; the mountain stooped and took it upon

48 HEAKT OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS

its back in the bottom of the old seas, and then
got lifted up again. This happened so long
ago that the memor}^ of the oldest inhabitant of
these parts yields no clew to the time.

A pleasant task we had in reflooring and
reroofing the log hut with balsam boughs
against the night. Plenty of small balsams
grew all about, and we soon had a huge pile of
their branches in the old hut. What a trans-
formation, this fresh green carpet and our fra-
grant bed, like the deep-furred robe of some
huge animal wrought in that dingy interior!
Two or three things disturbed our sleep. A
cup of strong beef-tea taken for supper dis-
turbed mine ; then the porcupines kept up such
a grunting and chattering near our heads, just
on the other side of the logs, that sleep was
difficult. In my wakeful mood I was a good
deal annoyed by a little rabbit that kept whip-
ping in at our dilapidated door and nibbling at
our bread and hard-tack. He persisted even
after the gray of the morning appeared. Then
about four o'clock it began gently to rain. I
think I heard the first drop that fell. My
companions ^vere all in sound sleep. The rain
increased, and gradually the sleepers awoke.
It was like the tread of an advancing enemy
which every ear had been expecting. The roof
over us was of the poorest, and we had no con-
fidence in it. It was made of the thin bark of
spruce and balsam, and was full of hollows and
depressions. Presently these hollows got full
of water, when there was a simultaneous down-

HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS 49

pour of bigger and lesser rills upon the sleepers
beneath. Said sleepers, as one man, sprang
up, each taking his blanket with him; but by
the time some of the party had got themselves
stowed away under the adjacent rock, the rain
ceased. It was little more than the dissolving
of the night-cap of fog which so often hangs
about these heights. With the first appear-
ance of the dawn I had heard the new thrush
in the scattered trees near the hut — a strain
as fine as if blown upon a fairy flute, a sup-
pressed musical whisper from out the tops of
the dark spruces. Probably never did there go
up from the top of a great mountain a smaller
song to greet the day, albeit it was of the pur-
est harmony. It seemed to have in a more
marked degree the quality of interior reverbera-
tion than any other thrush song I had ever
heard. Would the altitude or the situation
account for its minor key? Loudness would
avail little in such a place. Sounds are not far
heard on a mountain-top; they are lost in the
abyss of vacant air. But amid these low,
dense, dark spruces, which make a sort of cano-
pied privacy of every square rod of ground,
what could be more in keeping than this deli-
cate musical whisper? It was but the soft
hum of the balsams, interpreted and embodied
in a bird's voice.

It was the plan of two of our companions to
go from Slide over into the head of the lion-
dout, and thence out to the railroad at the little
village of Shokan, an unknown way to them,

50 HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS

involving nearly an all-day pull the first day
through a pathless wilderness. AVe ascended
to the topmost floor of the tower, and from my
knowledge of the topography of the country I
pointed out to them their course, and where the
valley of the Eondout must lie. The vast
stretch of woods, when it came into view from
under the foot of Slide, seemed from our point
of view very uniform. It swept away to the
southeast, rising gently toward the ridge that
separates Lone Mountain from Peek o' Moose,
and iDresented a comparatively easy problem.
As a clew to the course, the line where the
dark belt or saddle-cloth of spruce, which cov-
ered the top of the ridge they were to skirt,
ended and the deciduous woods began, a sharp,
well-defined line was pointed out as the course
to be followed. It led straight to the top of
the broad level-backed ridge which connected
two higher peaks and immediately behind
which lay the headwaters of the Rondout.
Having studied the map thoroughly and pos-
sessed themselves of the points, they rolled
up their blankets about nine o'clock and were
ofi", my friend and myself purposing to spend
yet another day and night on Slide. As our
friends plunged down into that fearful abyss,
we shouted to them the old classic caution, "Be
bold, be bold, he not too bold." It required
courage to make such a leap into the unknown
as I knew those young men were making, and
it required prudence. A faint heart or a be-
wildered head, and serious consequences might

HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS 51

have resulted. The theory of a thing is so
much easier than the practice. The theory is
in the air, the practice is in the woods; the
eye, the thought, travel easily where the foot
halts and stumbles. However, our friends
made the theory and the fact coincide; they
kept the dividing line between the spruce and
the birches, and j^assed over the ridge into the
valley safely, but they were torn and bruised
and wet by the showers, and made the last few
miles of their journey on will and pluck alone,
their last pound of positive strength having
been exhausted in making the descent through
the chaos of rocks and logs into the head of the
valley. In such emergencies one overdraws
his account; he travels on the credit of the
strength he expects to gain when he gets his
dinner and some sleep. Unless one has made
such a trip himself (and I have several times
in my life) he can form but a faint idea what
it is like — what a trial it is to the body and
what a trial it is to the mind. You are ficht-
ing a battle with an enemy in ambush. How
those miles and leagues which your feet must
compass lie hidden there in that wilderness;
how they seem to multiply themselves; how
they are fortified with logs, and rocks, and
fallen trees; how they take refuge in deep gul-
lies, and skulk behind unexpected eminences!
Your body not only feels the fatigue of the
battle, your mind feels the strain of tlie under-
taking; you may miss your mark; the moun-
tains may outmanoeuvre you. All that day,

52 HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS

whenever I looked down upon that treacherous
wilderness, I thought with misgivings of those
two friends groping their way there, and would
have given something to have known how it
fared with them. Their concern was probably
less than my own, because they were more
ignorant of what was before them. Then there
was just a slight shadow of a fear in my mind
that I might have been in error about some
points of the geography I had pointed out to
them. But all was well, and the victory was
won according to the campaign which I had
planned. When we saluted our friends upon
their own doorstep a week afterward, the
wounds were raarly all healed and the rents all
mended.

When one is on a mountain-top he spends
most of the time in looking at the show he has
been at such pains to see. About every hour
we would ascend the rude lookout to take a
fresh observation. With a glass I could see
my native hills forty miles away to the north-
west. I was now upon the back of the horse,
yea, upon the highest point of his shoulders,
which had so many times attracted my atten-
tion as a boy. We could look along his bal-
sam-covered back to his rump from which the
eye glanced away down into the forests of the
Neversink, and on the other hand plump down
into the gulf where his head was grazing or
drinking. During the day there was a grand
procession, of thunder-clouds filing along over
the Northern Catskills, and letting down veils

HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS 53

of rain and enveloping them. From such an
elevation one has the same view of the clouds
that he does from the prairie or the ocean.
They do not seem to rest across and to be
upborne by the hills, but they emerge out of
the dim west, thin and vague, and grow and
stand up as they get nearer and roll by him,
on a level but invisible highway, huge chariots
of wind and storm.

In the afternoon a thick cloud threatened us,
but it proved to be the condensation of vapor
that announces a cold wave. There was soon
a marked fall in the temperature, and as night
drew near it became pretty certain that we were
going to have a cold time of it. The wind
rose, the vapor above us thickened and came
nearer, until it began to drive across the sum-
mit in slender wraiths, which curled over the
brink and shut out the view. We became very
diligent in getting in our night wood, and in
gathering more boughs to calk up the openings
in the hut. The wood we scraped together
was a sorry lot, roots and stumps and branches
of decayed spruce, such as we could collect
without an axe, and some rags and tags of birch
bark. The fire was built in one corner of the
shanty, the smoke finding easy egress through
large openings on the east side and in the roof
over it. We doubled up the bed, making it
thicker and more nest-like, and as darkness set
in stowed ourselves into it beneath our blank-
ets. The searching wind found out every crev-
ice about our heads and shoulders, and it was

54 HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS

icy cold. Yet we fell asleep, and had slept
about an hour when my companion sprang up
in an unwonted state of excitement for so
placid a man. His excitement was occasioned
by the sudden discovery that what ajDpeared to
be a bar of ice was fast taking the place of his
backbone. His teeth chattered and he was
convulsed with ague. I advised him to replen-
ish the fire, and to wrap himself in his blanket
and cut the liveliest capers he was capable of
in so circumscribed a place. This he promptly
did, and the thought of his wild and desperate
dance there in the dim light, his tall form, his
blanket flapping, his teeth chattering, the por-
cupines outside marking time with their squeals
and grunts, still provokes a smile, though it
was a serious enough matter at the time. Af-
ter a while the warmth came back to him, but
he dared not trust himself again to the boughs;
he fought the cold all night as one might fight
a besieging foe. By carefully husbanding the
fuel, the beleaguering enemy was kept at bay
till morning came, but when morning did come
even the huge root he had used as a chair was
consumed. Rolled in my blanket beneath a
foot or more of balsam boughs, I had got some
fairly good sleep, and was most of the time
oblivious to the melancholy vigil of my friend.
As we had but a few morsels of food left, and
had been on rather short rations the day before,
hunger was added to his other discomforts. At
that time a letter was on the way to him from
his wife, which contained this prophetic sen-

HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS 55

tence: "I hope thee is not suffering with cold
and hunger on some lone mountain- top."

Mr. Bicknell's thrush struck up again at the
first signs of dawn, notwithstanding the cold.
I could hear his penetrating and melodious
whisper as I lay buried beneath the boughs.
Presently I arose and invited my friend to turn
in for a brief nap, while I gathered some wood
and set the coffee brewing. With a brisk, roar-
ing fire on, I left for the spring to fetch some
water and to make my toilet. The leaves of the
mountain goldenrod, which everywhere covered
the ground in the opening, were covered with
frozen particles of vapor, and the scene, shut
in by fog, was chill and dreary enough.

We were now not long in squaring an account
with Slide, and making ready to leave. Round
pellets of snow began to fall, and we came off
the mountain on the 10th of June in a Novem-
ber storm and temperature. Our purpose was
to return by the same valley we had come. A
well-defined trail led off the summit to the
north; to this we committed ourselves. In a
few minutes we emerged at the head of the
slide that had given the mountain its name.
This was the path made by visitors to the
scene; when it ended the track of the avalanche
began, no bigger than your hand apparently
had it been at first, but it rapidly grew, until
it became several rods in width. It dropped
down from our feet straight as an arrow until
it was lost in the fog, and looked perilously
eteep. The dark forms of the spruce were

56 HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS

clinging to the edge of it as if reaching out to
their fellows to save them. We hesitated on
the brink, but finally cautiously began the
descent. The rock was quite naked and slip-
pery, and only on the margin of the slide were
there any bowlders to stay the foot or bushy
growths to aid the hand. As we paused, after
some minutes, to select our course, one of the
finest surprises of the trip awaited us: the fog
in our front was swiftly whirled up by the
breeze, like the drop-curtain at the theatre, only
much more rapidly, and in a twinkling the vast
gulf opened before us. It was so sudden as to
be almost bewildering. The world opened like
a book and there were the pictures; the spaces
were without a film, the forests and mountains
looked surprisingly near; in the heart of the
Northern Catskills a wild valley was seen
flooded with sunlight. Then the curtain ran
down again, and nothing was left but the gray
strip of rock to which we clung, plunging down
into the obscurity. Down and down we made
our way. Then the fog lifted again. It was
Jack and his bean-stalk renewed; new won-
ders, new views, awaited us every few moments,
till at last the whole valley below us stood in
the clear sunshine. We passed down a preci-
pice and there was a rill of water, the begin-
ning of the creek that wound through the val-
ley below; farther on, in a deep depression,
lay the remains of an old snow-bank ; winter
had made his last stand here, and April flowers
were springing up almost amid his very bones.

HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS 57

We did not find a palace, and a hungry giant,
and a princess, etc., at the end of our bean-
stalk, but we found a humble roof and the
hospitable heart of Mrs. Larkins, which an-
swered our purpose better. And we were in the
mood, too, to have undertaken an eating bout
with any giant Jack ever discovered.

Of all the retreats I have found amid the
Catskills, there is no other that possesses quite
so many charms for me as this valley, wherein
stands Larkins's humble dwelling; it is so
wild, so quiet, and has such superb mountain
views. In coming up the valley, you have
apparently reached the head of civilization a
mile or more lower down; here the rude little
houses end, and you turn to the left into the
woods. Presently you emerge into a clearing
again, and before you rises the rugged and
indented crest of Panther Mountain, and near
at hand, on a low plateau, rises the humble
roof of Larkins, — you get a picture of the
Panther and of the homestead at one glance.
Above the house hangs a high, bold cliff cov-
ered with forest, with a broad fringe of black-
ened and blasted treetrunks, where the cack-
ling of the great pilated woodpecker may be
heard; on the left a dense forest sweeps up to
the sharp spruce-covered cone of the Whitten-
burg, nearly four thousand feet high, while at
the head of the valley rises Slide over all.
From a meadow just back of Larkins's barn, a
view may be had of all these mountains, while
the terraced side of Cross Mountain bounds the

58 HEAET OF THE SOUTHEKN CATSKILLS

view immediately to the east. Eimning from
the top of Panther toward Slide one sees a
gigantic wall of rock, crowned with a dark line
of fir. The forest abruptly ends, and in its
stead rises the face of this colossal rocky escarp-
ment, like some barrier built by the mountain
gods. Eagles might nest here. It breaks the
monotony of the world of woods very impres-
sively.

I delight in sitting on a rock in one of these
upper fields, and seeing the sun go down be-
hind Panther. The rapid flowing brook below
me fills all the valley with a soft murmur.
There is no breeze, but the great atmospheric
tide flows slowly in toward the cooling forest;
one can see it by the motes in the air illumi-
nated by the setting sun: presently, as the air
cools a little, the tide turns and flows slowly
out. The long, winding valley up to the foot
of Slide, five miles of primitive woods, how
wild and cool it looks, its one voice the mur-
mur of the creek. On the Whittenburg the
sunshine lingers long; now it stands up like an
island in a sea of shadows, then slowly sinks
beneath the wave. The evening call of a robin
or the thrush at his vespers makes a marked
impression on the silence and the solitude.

The following day my friend and I pitched
our tent in the woods beside the stream where
I had pitched it twice before and passed several
delightful days, with trout in abundance and
wild strawberries at intervals. Mrs. Larkins's
cream-pot, butter-jar, and bread- box were within

HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS 59

easy reach. Near the camp was an unusually
large spring, of icy coldness, which served as
our refrigerator. Trout or milk immersed in
this spring in a tin pail would keep sweet
four or live days. One night some creature,
probably a lynx or a raccoon, came and lifted
the stone from the pail that held the trout and
took out a fine string of them and ate them up
on the spot, leaving only the string and one
head. In August bears come down to an
ancient and now brushy bark peeling near by
for blackberries. But the creature that most
infests these backwoods is the porcupine. He
is as stupid and indifferent as the skunk; his
broad, blunt nose points a witless head. They
are great gnawers, and will gnaw your house
down if you do not look out. Of a summer
evening they will walk coolly into your open
door if not prevented. The most annoying
animal to the camper-out in this region, and
the one he needs to be most on the lookout for,
is the cow. Backwoods cows and young cattle
seem always to be famished for salt, and they
will fairly lick the fisherman's clothes off his
back, and his tent and equipage out of exist-
ence, if you give them a chance. On one occa-
sion some wood-ranging heifers and steers that
had been hovering around our camp for some
days made a raid upon it when we were absent.
The tent was shut and everything snugged
up, but they ran their long tongues under the
tent, and, tasting something savory, hooked
out John Stuart Mill's "Essays on Keligion,"

60 HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS

which one of us had brought along thinking to
read in the woods. They mouthed the volume
around a good deal, but its logic was too tough
for them, and they contented themselves with
devouring the paper in which it was wrapped.
If the cattle had not been surprised at just that
point, it is probable the tent would have gone
down before their eager curiosity and thirst for
salt.

The raid which Larkins's dog made upon
our camp was amusing rather than annoying.
He was a very friendly and intelligent shep-
herd dog, probably a collie. Hardly had we
sat down to our first lunch in camp before he
called on us. But as he was disposed to be
too friendly, and to claim too large a share of
the lunch, we rather gave him the cold shoul-
der. He did not come again; but a few even-
ings afterward, as we sauntered over to the
house on some trifling errand, the dog suddenly
conceived a bright little project. He seemed
to say to himself, on seeing us, "There come
both of them now, just as I have been hoping
they would; now while they are away I Avill
run quickly over and know what they have got
that a dog can eat." My companion saw the
dog get up on our arrival, and go quickly in
the direction of our camp, and he said some-
thing in the cur's manner suggested to him the
object of his hurried departure. He called my
attention to the fact, and we hastened back.
On cautiously nearing camp, the dog was seen
amid the pails in the shallow water of the creek

HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS Gl

investigating them. He had uncovered the
butter, and was about to taste it, when we
shouted, and he made quick steps for home,
with a very "kill -sheep" look. When we
again met him at the house next day he could
not look us in the face, but sneaked off, utterly
crestfallen. This was a clear case of reasoning
on the part of the dog, and afterward a clear
case of a sense of guilt from wrong-doing.
The dog will probably be a man before any
other animal.

BIEDS' EGGS.

"Admtre the bird's egg and leave it in its
nest" is a wiser forbearance than "Love the
wood-rose and leave it on its stalk." We will
try to leave these eggs in the nest, and as far
as possible show the bird and the nest with them.

The first egg of spring is undoubtedly a hen's
egg. The domestic fowls, not being compelled
to shift for themselves, and having artificial
shelter, are not so mindful of the weather and
the seasons as the wild birds. But the hen of
the woods and the hen of the prairie, namely,
the ruff'ed and the pinnated grouse, do not
usually nest till the season is so far advanced
that danger from frost is past.

The first wild egg, in New York and New
England, is probably that of an owl, the great
horned owl, it is said, laying as early as
March. They probably shelter their eggs from
the frost and the snow before incubation be-
gins. The little screech-owl waits till April, and
seeks the deep snug cavity of an old tree; the
heart of a decayed apple-tree suits him well.
Begin your search by the middle of April, and
before the month is past you will find the four
white, round eggs resting upon a little dry grass
or a few dry leaves in the bottom of a long

BIRDS' EGGS 63

cavity. Owls' eggs are inclined to be spherical.
You would expect to see a big round-headed,
round-eyed creature come out of such an egg.

The passenger pigeon nests before danger
from frost is passed; but as it lays but two
eggs, probably in two successive days, the risks
from this source are not great; though occasion-
ally a heavy April snowstorm breaks them up.

Which is the earliest song-bird's egg? One
cannot be quite so certain here, as he can as to
which the first wild-flower is, for instance ; but
I would take my chances on finding that of the
phoebe-bird first, and finding it before the close
of April, unless the season is very backward.
The present season (1883), a pair built their
nest under the eaves of my house, and depos-
ited their eggs, the last days of the month.
Some English sparrows that had been hanging
around, and doubtless watching the phoebes,
threw the eggs out and took possession of the
nest. How shrewd and quick to take the hint
these little feathered John Bulls are. With a
handful of rattling pebble- stones I told this
couple very plainly that they were not welcome
visitors to my premises. They fled precipi-
tately. The next morning they appeared again,
but were much shyer. Another discharge of
pebbles, and they were off as if bound for the
protection of the British flag, and did not
return. I notice wherever I go that these birds
have got a suspicion in their heads that public
opinion has changed with regard to them, and
that they are no longer M-anted.

64 BIRDS* EGGS

The eggs of the phoebe-bird are snow white,
and when, in threading the gorge of some
mountain trout- brook, or prowling about some
high, overhanging ledge, one's eye falls upon
this mossy structure planted with such match-
less art upon a little shelf of the rocks, with
its complement of five or six pearl-like eggs, he
is ready to declare it the most pleasing nest in
all the range of our bird architecture. It was
such a happy thought for the bird to build
there, just out of the reach of all four-footed
beasts of prey, sheltered from the storms and
winds, and, by the use of moss and lichens,
blending its nest so perfectly with its surround-
ings that only the most alert eye can detect it.
An egg upon a rock, and thriving there, — the
frailest linked to the strongest, as if the geol-
ogy of the granite mountain had been bent into
the service of the bird. I doubt if crows, or
jays, or owls ever rob these nests. Phoebe has
outwitted them. They never heard of the bird
that builded its house upon a rock. " Strong
is thy dwelling-place, and thou puttest thy nest
in a rock."

The song-sparrow sometimes nests in April,
but not commonly in our latitude. Emerson
says, in "May-Day:" —

" The sparrow meek, prophetic-eyed,
Her nest beside the snow-drift weaves,
Secure the osier yet will hide
Her callow brood in mantling leaves."

But the sparrow usually prefers to wait till the
snow-drift is gone. I have never found the

birds' eggs 65

nest of one till long after the last drift had
disappeared from the fields, though a late writer
upon New England birds says the sparrow
sometimes lays in April, when snow is yet upon
the ground.

The sparrow is not a beautiful bird except in
our afifections and associations, and its eggs are
not beautiful as eggs go, — four or five little
freckled spheres, that, like the bird itself, blend
well with the ground upon which they are
placed.

The eggs of the "chippie," or social sparrow,
are probably the most beautiful of sparrow
eggs, being of a bright bluish green with a ring
of dark purple spots around the larger end.

Generally there is but little relation between
the color of the bird and the color of its egg.
For the most part the eggs of birds that occupy
open, exposed nests are of some tint that har-
monizes well with the surroundings. With the
addition of specks of various hue they are ren-
dered still less conspicuous. The eggs of the
scarlet tanager are greenish blue, with faint
brown or purplish markings. The blackbird
lays a greenish blue egg also, with various
markings. Indeed, the favorite ground tint of
the birds that build open nests is a greenish
blue; sometimes the blue predominates, some-
times the green; while the eggs of birds that
build concealed nests, or lay in dark cavities,
are generally white, as is the case with the
eggs of all our woodpeckers, for instance.
The eggs of the bluebird are bluish white.

66 birds' eggs

Among the flycatchers, the nest of the phoebe
is most concealed, at least from above, and her
eggs are white, while those of nearly all the
other species are more or less tinted and
marked. The eggs of the humming-bird are
white, but the diminutiveness of their recepta-
cle is a sufficient concealment. Another white
egg is that of the kingfisher, deposited upon
fish-bones at the end of a hole in the bank
eight or nine feet long. The bank swallow
also lays white eggs, as does the chimney swal-
low, the white-bellied swallow, and the purple
martin. The eggs of the barn swallow and
0115" swallow are more or less speckled. In
England the kingfisher (smaller and much more
brilliantly colored than ours), woodpeckers, the
bank swallow, the swift, the wry-neck (related
to the woodpecker), and the dipper, also lay
white eggs.

A marked exception to the above rule is
furnished by the eggs of the Baltimore oriole,
perhaps the most fantastically marked of all
our birds' eggs. One would hardly expect a
plainly marked egg in such a high-swung,
elaborately woven, deeply pouched, aristocratic
nest. The threads and strings and horsehairs
with which the structure is sewed and bound
and sta^^ed are copied in the curious lines and
markings of the treasures it holds. After the
oriole is through with its nest, it is sometimes
taken possession of by the house wren in which
to rear its second brood. The long, graceful
cavity, with its fine carpet of hair, is filled

birds' eggs 67

with coarse twigs, as if one were to build a log
hut in a palace, and the rusty- colored eggs of
the little busybody deposited there. The wren
would perhaps stick to its bundle of small
fagots in the box or pump tree, and rear its
second brood in the cradle of the first, were it
not that by seeking new lodgings time can be,
saved. The male bird builds and furnishes the
second nest, and the mother bird has begun to
lay in it before the first is empty.

The chatter of a second brood of nearly
fledged wrens is heard now (August 20) in an
oriole's nest suspended from the branch of an
apple-tree near where I write. Earlier in the.
season the parent birds made long and deter-
mined attempts to establish themselves in a
cavity that had been occupied by a pair of blue-
birds. The original proprietor of the place
was the downy woodpecker. He had excavated
it the autumn before and had passed the winter
there, often to my certain knowledge lying
abed till nine o'clock in the morning. In the
spring he went elsewhere, probably with a
female, to begin the season in new quarters.
The bluebirds early took possession, and in
June their first brood had flown. The wrens
had been hanging around, evidently with an
eye on the place (such little comedies may be
witnessed anywhere), and now very naturally
thought it was their turn. A day or two after
the young bluebirds had flown, I noticed some
fine, dry grass clinging to the entrance to the
cavity; a circumstance which I understood a

68 birds' eggs

few moments later, when the wren rushed by
me into the cover of a small Norway spruce,
hotly pursued by the male bluebird. It was a
brown streak and a blue streak pretty close
together. The wrens had gone to house-clean-
ing, and the bluebird had returned to find his
bed and bedding being pitched out-of-doors,
and had thereupon given the wrens to under-
stand in the most emphatic manner that he had
no intention of vacating the premises so early
in the season. Day after day, for more than
two weeks, the male bluebird had to clear his
premises of these intruders. It occupied much
of his time and not a little of mine, as I sat
with a book in a summer-house near by, laugh-
ing at his pretty fury and spiteful onset. On
two occasions the wren rushed under the chair
in which I sat, and a streak of blue lightning
almost flashed in my very face. One day, just
as T had passed the tree in which the cavity
was placed, I heard the wren scream desper-
ately; turning, I saw the little vagabond fall
into the grass with the wrathful bluebird fairly
upon him; the latter had returned just in time
to catch him, and was evidently bent on pun-
ishing him well. But in the squabble in the
grass the wren escaped and took refuge in the
friendly evergreen. The bluebird paused for a
moment with outstretched wings looking for
the fugitive, then flew away. A score of times
during the month of June did I see the wren
taxing every energy to get away from the blue-
bird. He would dart into the stone wall,

birds' eggs 69

under the floor of the summer-house, into the
weeds — anywhere to hide his diminished head.
The bhiebird with his bright coat looked like
an officer in uniform in pursuit of some wicked,
rusty little street gamin. Generally the favor-
ite house of refuge of the wrens was the little
spruce, into which their pursuer made no
attempt to follow them. The female would sit
concealed amid the branches, chattering in a
scolding, fretful way, while the male with his
eye upon his tormentor would perch on the top-
most shoot and sing. Why he sang at such
times, whether in triumph and derision, or to
keep his courage up and reassure his mate, I
could not make out. When his song was sud-
denly cut short and I glanced to see him dart
down into the spruce, my eye usually caught
a twinkle of blue wings hovering near. The
wrens finally gave up the fight, and their ene-
mies reared their second brood in peace.

That the wren should use such coarse, refrac-
tory materials, especially since it builds in holes
where twigs are so awkward to carry and ad-
just, is curious enough. All its congeners, the
marsh Avrens, the Carolina wren, the winter
wren, build of soft flexible materials. The
nest of the winter wren, and of the English
''Jenny Wren," is mainly of moss, and is a
marvel of softness and warmth.

One day a swarm of honey-bees went into
my chimney, and I mounted the stack to see
into which flue they had gone. As I craned
my neck above the sooty vent, with the bees

70 BIEDS' EGGS

humming about my ears, the first thing my eye
rested upon in the black interior was two long
white pearls upon a little shelf of .twigs, the
nest of the chimney swallow, or swift, —
honey, soot, and birds' eggs closely associated.
The bees, though in an unused flue, soon found
the gas of anthracite that hovered about the top
of the chimney too much for them, and they
left. But the swallows are not repelled by
smoke. They seem to have entirely abandoned
their former nesting-places in hollow trees and
stumps and to frequent only chimneys. A
tireless bird, never perching, all day upon' the.,
wing and probably capable of flying one thou- '
sand miles in twenty-four hours; they do not
even stop to gather materials for their nests,
but snap ofi" the small dry twigs from the tree-
tops as they fly by. Confine one of thesfe swal-
lows to a room and it will not perch, but after
flying till it becomes bewildered and exhausted^,
it clings to the side of the wall till it dies. I
once found one in my room on returning, after
several days' absence, in which life seemed
nearly extinct; its feet grasped my finger as I
removed it from the wall, but its eyes closed
and it seemed about on the point of joining its
companion which lay dead upon the floor.
Tossing it into the air, however, seemed to
awaken its wonderful powers of flight, and
away it went straight toward the clouds. On
the wing the chimney swallow looks like an
athlete stripped for the race. There is the
least appearance of quill and plumage of any of

birds' eggs 71

oar birds, and, with all its speed and marvel-
ous evolutions, the effect of its flight is stiff and
wiry. There appears to be but one joint in
the wmg, and that next the body. This pecu-
liar inflexible motion of the wings, as if they
were little sickles of sheet iron, seems to be
owing to the length and development of the
primary quills and the smallness of the secon-
dary. The wing appears to hinge only at the
wrist. The barn swallow lines its rude ma-
sonry with feathers, but the swift begins life on
bare twigs, glued together by a glue of home
manufacture as adhesive as Spaulding's.

I have wondered if Emerson referred to any
particular bird in these lines from "The Prob-
lem. "

"Know'st thou what wove yon wood-bird's nest
O^ leaves, and feathers from her breast ? "

Probably not, but simply availed himself of
the general belief that certain birds or fowls
lined their nests with their own feathers. This
is notably true of the eider duck, and in a
measure of our domestic fowls, but so far as I
know is not true of any of our small birds.
The barn swallow and house Avren feather their
nests at the expense of the hens and geese.
The winter wren picks up the feathers of the
ruffed grouse. The chickadee, Emerson's
favorite bird, uses a few feathers in its uphol-
stering, but not its own. In England, I
noticed that the little willow warbler makes a
free use of feathers from the poultry yard.
Many of our birds use hair in their nests, and

72 birds' eggs

the kingbird and cedar-bird like wool. I have
found a single feather of the bird's own in the
nest of the phoebe. Such a circumstance would
perhaps justify the poet.

About the first of June there is a nest in the
woods upon the ground with four creamy w^hite
eggs in it spotted w^ith brown or lilac, chiefly
about the larger ends, that always gives the
walker, who is so lucky as to find it, a thrill of
pleasure. It is like a ground-sparrow's nest
with a roof or canopy to it. The little brown
or olive backed bird starts away from your feet
and runs swiftly and almost silently over the
dry leaves, and then turns her speckled breast
to see if you are following. She walks very
prettily, by far the prettiest pedestrian in the
woods. But if she thinks you have discovered
her secret, she feigns lameness and disability
of both legs and wing, to decoy you into the
pursuit of her. This is the golden-crowned
thrush, or accentor, a strictly wood-bird, about
the size of a song-sparrow, with the dullest of
gold upon his crown, but the brightest of songs
in his heart. The last nest of this bird I
found was while in quest of the pink cypripe-
dium. We suddenly spied a couple of the
flowers a few steps from the path along which
we were Avalking and had stooped to admire
them, when out sprang the bird from beside
them, doubtless thinking she was the subject of
observation instead of the flowers that swung
their purple bells but a foot or two above her.
But we never should have seen her had she

birds' eggs 73

kept her place. She had found a rent in the
matted carpet of dry leaves and pine needles
that covered the ground, and into this had
insinuated her nest, the leaves and needles
forming a canopy above it, sloping to the south
and west, the source of the more frequent sum-
mer rains.

At about the same time one finds the nest
above described, if he were to explore the
woods very thoroughly, he might chance upon
two curious eggs lying upon the leaves as if
dropped there by chance. They are elliptical,
both ends of a size, about an inch and a quarter
long, of a creamy white spotted with lavender.
These are the eggs of the whippoorwill, a bird
that has absolutely no architectural instincts
or gifts. Perhaps its wide, awkward mouth and
short beak are ill-adapted to carrying nest ma-
terials. It is awkward upon the ground and
awkward upon the tree, being unable to perch
upon a limb, except lengthwise of it.

The song and game birds lay pointed eggs,
but the night birds lay round or elliptical eggs.

The egg collector sometimes stimulates a
bird to lay an unusual number of eggs. A
youth, whose truthfulness I do not doubt, told
me he once induced a highhole to lay twenty-
nine eggs, by robbing her of an egg each day.
The eggs became smaller and smaller, till the
twenty-ninth one was only the size of a chip-
pie's egg. At this point the bird gave up the
contest.

There is a last egg of summer as well as a

74 birds' eggs

first egg of spring, but one cannot name either
with much confidence. Both the robin and
the chippie sometimes rear a third brood in
August, but the birds that delay their nesting
till midsummer are the goldfinch and the cedar-
bird, the former waiting for the thistle to ripen
its seeds, and the latter probably for the appear-
ance of certain insects which it takes on the
wing. Often the cedar-bird does not build till
August, and will line its nest with wool if it
can get it, even in this sultry month. The
eggs are marked and colored, as if a white egg
were to be spotted with brown, then colored a
pale blue, then again sharply dotted or blotched
with blackish or purplish spots.

But the most common August nest with me
— early August — is that of the goldfinch, —
a deep, snug, compact nest, with no loose ends
hanging, placed in the fork of a small limb of
an apple-tree, peach-tree, or ornamental shade-
tree. The eggs are a faint bluish white.

While the female is sitting, the male feeds
her regularly. She calls to him on his ap-
proach, or when she hears his voice passing by,
in the most afi'ectionate, feminine, childlike
tones, the only case I know of where the sitting
bird makes any sound while in the act of incu-
bation. When a rival male invades the tree,
or approaches too near, the male whose nest it
holds pursues and reasons or expostulates with
him in the same bright, amicable, confiding
tones. Indeed, most birds make use of their
Bwe.eteot notes in war. The song of love is the

birds' eggs 75

song of battle too. The male yellow-birds flit
about from point to point, apparently assuring
each other of the highest sentiments of esteem
and consideration, at the same time that one
intimates to the other that he is carrying his
joke a little too far. It has the effect of saying
with mild and good-humored surprise, " Why,
my dear sir, this is my territory ; you surely do
not mean to trespass; permit me to salute you,
and to escort you over the line." Yet the
intruder does not always take the hint. Occa-
sionally the couple have a brief sparring match
in the air, and mount up and up, beak to beak,
to a considerable height, but rarely do they
actually come to blows.

- The yellow-bird becomes active and conspic-
uous after the other birds have nearly all Avith-
drawn from the stage and become silent, their
broods reared and flown. August is his month,
his festive season. It is his turn now. The
thistles are ripening their seeds, and his nest is
undisturbed by jay-bird or crow. He is the first
bird I hear in the morning, circling and swing-
ing through the air in that peculiar undulating
flight and calling out on the do^vnward curve
of each stroke, "Here we go, here we go!"
Every hour in the day he indulges in his cir-
cling, billowy flight. It is a part of his musi-
cal performance. His course at such times is
a deeply undulating line, like the long gentle
roll of the summer sea, the distance from crest
to crest or from valley to valley being probably
thirty feet; this distance is made with but one

76 birds' eggs

brief beating of the wings on the downward
curve. As he quickly opens them they give
him a strong upward impulse and he describes
the long arc with them closely folded. Thus
falling and recovering, rising and sinking like
dolphins in the sea, he courses through the
summer air. In marked contrast to this feat
is his manner of flying when he indulges in a
brief outburst of song in the air. Now he flies
level, with broad expanded wings nearly as
round and as concave as two shells, which beat
the air slowly. The song is the chief matter
now, and the wings are used only to keep him
afloat while delivering it. In the other case
the flight is the main concern, and the voice
merely punctuates it.

I know no autumn egg but a hen's egg,
though a certain old farmer tells me he finds a
quail's nest full of eggs nearly every Septem-
ber; but fall progeny of any kind has a belated
start in life, and the chances are agayist it.

BIRD COUETSHIP

There is something about the matchmaking
of birds that is not easily penetrated. The
jealousies and rivalries of the males and of the
females is easily understood — it is quite
human; but those sudden rushes of several
males, some of them already mated, after one
female, with squeals and screams and a great
clatter of wings — what does it mean 1 There
is nothing human about that, unless it be illus-
trative of a trait that has at times cropped out
in the earlier races and which is still seen
among the Esquimaux, where the male carries
off the female by force. But in these sudden
sallies among the birds the female, so far as I
have observed, is never carried off. One may
see half a dozen English sparrows engaged in
what at first glance appears to be a general
melee in the gutter or on the sidewalk, but if
you look more closely you will see a single
female in the midst of the mass, beating off the
males who, with plumage puffed out and
screaming and chattering, are all making a set
at her. She strikes right and left, and seems
to be equally displeased with them all. But
her anger may be all put on, and she may be
giving the wink all the time to her favorite.

78 BIRD COURTSHIP

The Esquimaux maiden is said by Doctor Nan-
sen to resist stoutly being carried off even by
the man she is desperately in love with.

In the latter half of April we pass through
what I call the "robin racket" — trains of
three or four birds rushing pell-mell over the
lawn and fetching up in a tree or bush, or
occasionally upon the ground, all piping and
screaming at the top of their voices, but
whether in mirth or anger it is hard to tell.
The nucleus of the train is a female. One
cannot see that the males in pursuit of her are
rivals; it seems rather as if they had united to
hustle her out of the place. But somehow the
matches are no doubt made and sealed during
these mad rushes. Maybe the female shouts
out to her suitors, "Who touches me first
wins," and away she scurries like an arrow.
The males shout out, "Agreed!" and away
they go in pursuit, each trying to outdo the
other. The game is a brief one. Before one
can get the clew to it the party has dipersed.

Earlier in the season the pretty sparring of
the males is the chief feature. You may see
two robins apparently taking a walk or a run
together over the sward or along the road; only
first one bird runs, and then the other. They
keep a few feet apart, stand very erect, and the
course of each describes the segment of an arc
about the other, thus : —

How courtly and deferential their manners

BIRD COURTSHIP 79

toward each other are ; often they pipe a shrill,
fine strain, audible only a few yards away.
Then, in a twinkling, one makes a spring and
they are beak to beak and claw to claw as they
rise up a few feet into the air. But usually
no blow is delivered; not a feather is ruffled;
each, I suppose, finds the guard of the other
perfect. Then they settle down upon the
ground again and go through with the same
running challenge as before. How their breasts
glow in the strong April sunlight; how perk
and military the bearing of each! Often they
will run about each other in this way for many
rods. After a week or so the males seem to
have fought all their duels, when the rush and
racket I have already described begins.

The bluebird wins his mate by the ardor of
his attentions and the sincerity of his compli-
ments, and by finding a house ready built
which cannot be surpassed. The male blue-
bird is usually here several days before the
female, and he sounds forth his note as loudly
and eloquently as he can till she appears. On
her appearance he flies at once to the box or
tree cavity upon which he has had his eye, and
as he looks into it calls and warbles in his most
persuasive tones. The female at such times is
always shy and backward, and the contrast in
the manners of the two birds is as striking as
the contrast in their colors. The male is bril-
liant and ardent; the female is dim and retir-
ing, not to say indifferent. She may take a
hasty peep into the hole in the box or tree and

80 BIRD COURTSHIP

then fly away, uttering a lonesome, homesick
note. Only by a wooing of many days is she
to be fully won.

The past April I was witness one Sunday
morning to the jealousies that may rage in
these little brown breasts. A pair of bluebirds
had apparently mated and decided to occupy a
woodpecker's lodge in the limb of an old apple-
tree near my study. But that morning another
male appeared on the scene and was bent on
cutting the first male out, and carrying off his
bride. I happened to be near by when the
two birds came into collision. They fell to
the grass and kept their grip upon each other
for half a minute. Then they separated and
the first up flew to the hole and called fondly
to the female. This was too much for the
other male and they clinched again and fell to
the ground as before. There they lay upon
the grass, blue and brown intermingled. But
not a feather was tweaked out or even dis-
turbed, that I could see. They simply held
each other down. Then they separated again,
and again rushed upon each other. The battle
raged for about fifteen minutes, when one of
the males, which one, of course, I could not
tell, withdrew and flew to a box under the
eaves of the study and exerted all the eloquence
he possessed to induce the female to come to
him there. How he warbled and called and
lifted his wings and flew to the entrance to the
box and called again! The female was evi-
dently strongly attracted; she would respond

BIRD COURTSHIP 81

and fly about halfway to an apple-tree and look
toward him. The other male in the mean time
did his best to persuade her to cast her lot with
him. He followed her to the tree toward his
rival, and then flew back to the nest and spread
his plumage and called and warbled, oh, so con-
fidently, so fondly, so reassuringly ! When the
female would return and peep into the hole in
the tree what fine, joyous notes he would utter;
then he would look in and twinkle his wings
and say something his rival could not hear.
This vocal and pantomimic contest went on for
a long time. The female was evidently greatly
shaken in her allegiance to the male in the old
apple-tree. In less than an hour another
female responded to the male who had sought
the eaves of the study, and flew with him to
the box. Whether this was their first meeting
or not I do not know, but it was clear enough
that the heart of the male was fixed upon the
bride of his rival. He would devote himself a
moment to the new-comer and then turn toward
the old apple-tree, and call and lift his Avings.
Then, apparently admonished by the bird near
him, would turn again to her and induce her to
look into the box and warble fondly. Then
up on a higher branch again, with his attention
directed toward his first love, between whom
and himself salutations seemed constantly pass-
ing. This little play went on for some time,
when the two females came into collision, and
fell to the ground tweaking each other spite-
fully. Then the four birds drifted away from

82 BIRD COURTSHIP

me down into the vineyard, where the males
closed with each other again and fell to the
ploughed ground and lay there a surprisingly
long time, nearly two minutes, as we calcu-
lated. Their wings were outspread, and their
forms were indistinguishable. They tugged at
each other most doggedly, one or the other
brown breast was generally turned up, partly
overlaid by a blue coat. They were deter-
mined to make a finish of it this time, but
which got the better of the fight I could not
tell. But it was the last battle; they finally
separated, neither, apparently, any the worse
for the encounter. The females fought two
more rounds, the males looking on and warbling
approvingly when they separated, and the two
pairs drifted away in different directions. The
next day they were about the box and tree
again, and seemed to have definitely settled
matters. Who won and who lost I do not
know, but two pairs of bluebirds have since
been very busy and very happy about the two
nesting places. One of the males I recognize
as a bird that appeared early in March; I rec-
ognize him from one peculiar note in the midst
of his warble, a note that suggests a whistle.

The matchmaking of the highholes, which
often comes under my observation, is in marked
contrast to that of the robins and bluebirds.
There does not appear to be any anger or any
blows. The male or two males will alight on
a limb in front of the female, and go through
with a series of bowings and scrapings that are

BIRD COURTSHIP 83

truly comical. He spreads his tail, he puffs
out his breast, he throws back his head, and
then bends his body to the right and to the
left, uttering all the while a curious musical
hiccough. The female confronts him unmoved,
but whether her attitude is critical or defensive I
cannot tell. Presently she flies away, followed
by her suitor or suitors, and the little comedy is
enacted on another stump or tree. Among all
the woodpeckers the drum plays an important
part in the matchmaking. The male takes
up his stand on a dry, resonant limb, or on the
ridgeboard of a building, and beats the loudest
call he is capable of. The downy woodpecker
usually has a particular branch to which he
resorts for advertising his matrimonial wants.
A favorite drum of the highholes about me is
a hollow wooden tube, a section of a pump
which stands as a bird box upon my summer-
house. It is a good instrument; its tone is
sharp and clear. A highhole alights upon it
and sends forth a rattle that can be heard a
long way off. Then he lifts up his head and
utters that long April call, Wick, wick, wick,
wick. Then he drums again. If the female
does not find him it is not because he does not
make noise enough. But his sounds are all
welcome to the ear. They are simple and
primitive and voice well a certain sentiment of
the April days. As I write these lines I hear
through the half-open door his call come up
from a distant field. Then I hear the steady
hammering of one that has been for three days

84 BIRD COURTSHIP

trying to penetrate the weather boarding of the
big icehouse by the river and reach the sawdust
filling for a nesting place.

Among our familiar birds the matchmaking
of none other is quite so pretty as that of the
goldfinch. The goldfinches stay with us in
lorn flocks and clad in a dull olive suit through-
out the winter. In May the males begin to
put on their bright summer plumage. This is
the result of a kind of superficial moulting.
Their feathers are not shed, but their dusky
covering or overalls are cast off. When the
process is only partly completed the bird has a
smutty, unpresentable appearance. But we
seldom see them at such times. They seem to
retire from society. When the change is com-
plete and the males have got their bright uni-
forms of yellow and black the courting begins.
All the goldfinches of a neighborhood collect
together and hold a sort of a musical festival.
To the number of many dozens they may be
seen in some large tree, all singing and calling
in the most joyous and vivacious manner.
The males sing, and the females chirp and call.
Whether there is actual competition on a trial
of musical abilities of the males before the
females or not I do not know. The best of
feeling seems to pervade the company; there is
no sign of quarreling or fighting; "all goes
merry as a marriage bell," and the matches
seem actually to be made during these musical
picnics. Before May is passed the birds are
seen in couples, and in June housekeeping

BIRD COURTSHIP 85

usually begins. This I call the ideal of love-
making among birds, and is in striking contrast
to the squabbles and jealousies of most of our
songsters.

I have known the goldfinches to keep up
this musical and lovemaking festival through
three consecutive days of a cold northeast rain-
storm. Bedraggled, but ardent and happy, the
birds were not to be dispersed by wind or
weather.

All the woodpeckers, so far as I have ob-
served, drum up their mates; the male adver-
tises his wants by hammering upon a dry,
resonant limb, when in due time the female
approaches and is duly courted and won. The
drumming of the ruffed grouse is for the same
purpose ; the female hears, concludes to take a
walk that way, approaches timidly, is seen and
admired, and the match is made. That the
male accepts the first female that ofi"ers herself
is probable. Among all the birds the choice,
the selection, seems to belong to the female.
The males court promiscuously ;' the females
choose discreetly. The grouse, unlike the
woodpecker, always carries his drum with him,
which is his own proud breast; yet, if undis-
turbed, he selects some particular log or rock in
the woods from which to sound forth his will-
ingness to wed. What determines the choice
of the female it would be hard to say. Among
song-birds it is probably the best songster, or
the one whose voice suits her taste best:
Among birds of bright plumage it is probably

86 BIRD COURTSHIP

the gayest dress; among the drummers she is
doubtless drawn by some quality of the sound.
Our ears and eyes are too coarse to note any
differences in these things, but doubtless the
birds themselves note differences.

Birds show many more human traits than do
quadrupeds. That they actually fall in love
admits of no doubt; that there is a period of
courtship, during which the male uses all the
arts he is capable of to win his mate, is equally
certain; that there are jealousies and rivalries,
and that the peace of families is often rudely
disturbed by outside males or females is a com-
mon observation. The females, when they
c6me to blows, fight much more spitefully and
recklessly than do the males. One species of
bird has been known to care for the young of
another species which had been made orphans.
The male turkey will sometimes cover the eggs
of his mate and hatch and rear the brood alone.
Altogether, birds often . present some marked
resemblances in their actions to men, when love
is the moti^'«.

Mrs. Martin, in her * * Home Life on an Os-
trich Farm," relates this curious, incident: —

"One undutiful hen — having apparently
imbibed advanced notions — absolutely refused
to sit at all, and the poor husband, determined
not to be disappointed of his little family, did
all the work himself, sitting bravely and pa-
tiently day and night, though nearly dead with
exhaustion, till the chicks were hatched out.
The next time this pair of birds had a nest the

BIRD COUETSHIP 87

cock's mind was firmly made up that he would
stand no more nonsense. He foyght the hen
■[kicked her], giving her so severe a thrashing
that she was all but killed, and this Petruchio-
like treatment had the desired effect, for the
wife never again rebelled, but sat submis-
sively. "

In the case of another pair of ostriches of
which Mrs. Martin tells, the female was acci-
dentally killed, when the male mourned her
loss for over two years and would not look at
another female. He wandered up and down,
up and down, the length of his camp, utterly
disconsolate. At last he mated again with a
most magnificent hen, who ruled him tyranni-
cally; he became the most hen-pecked, or,
rather, hen-kicked of husbands.

^

NOTES FROM THE PEAIRIE

The best lesson I have had for a long time
in the benefits of contentment and of the value
of one's own nook or corner of the world, how-
ever circumscribed it may be, as a point from
which to observe nature and life, comes to me
from a prairie correspondent, an invalid lady,
confined to her room year in and year out, and
yet who sees more and appreciates more than
many of us who have the freedom of a whole
continent. Having her permission, why should
I not share these letters with my readers, espe-
cially since there are other house-bound or bed-
bound invalids whom they may reach and who
may derive some cheer or suggestion from
them? AVords uttered in a popular magazine
like "The Century" are like the vapors that go
up from the ground and the streams: they are
sure to be carried far and wide, and to fall
again as rain or dew, and one little knows what
thirsty plant or flower they may reach and
nourish. I am thinking of another fine spirit,
couch-bound in one of the northern New Eng-
land States, who lives in a town that bears the
same name as that in which my Western cor-
respondent resides, and into whose chamber my
slight and desultory papers have also brought

NOTES FROM THE PKAIKIE 89

something of the breath of the fields and woods,
and who in return has given me many glimpses
of nature through eyes purified by suffering.

Women are about the best lovers of nature,
after all; at least of nature in her milder and
more familiar forms. The feminine character,
the feminine perceptions, intuitions, delicacy,
sympathy, quickness, etc., are more responsive
to natural forms and influences than is the mas-
culine mind.

My Western correspondent sees existence as
from an altitude, and sees where the comple-
ments and compensations come in. She lives
upon the prairie, and she says it is as the ocean
to her, upon which she is adrift, and always
expects to be, until she reaches the other shore.
Her house is the ship which she never leaves.
"What is visible from my window is the sea,
changing only from winter to summer as the
sea changes from storm to sunshine. But there
is one advantage, — messages can come to me
continually from all the wide world."

One summer she wrote she had been hoping
to be well enough to renew her acquaintance
with the birds, the flowers, the woods, but
instead was confined to her room more closely
than ever.

"It is a disappointment to me, but I decided
long ago that the wisest plan is to make the
best of things; to take what is given you, and
make the most of it. To gather up the frag-
ments that nothing may be lost, api)lies to
one's life as well as to other i/hiiigs. Though

90 NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE

I cannot walk, I can think and read and write;
probably I get my share of pleasure from
sources that well people are apt to neglect. I
have learned that the way to be happy is to
keep so busy that thoughts of self are forced
out of sight ; and to live for others, not for our-
selves.

" Sometimes, when I think over the matter,
I am half sorry for well people, because, you
see, I have so much better company than they
can have, for I have so much more time to go
all over the world and meet all the best and
wisest peojDle in it. Some of them died long
ago to the most of people, but to me they are
just as much alive as they ever were; they give
me their best and wisest thoughts without the
disagreeable accompaniments others must en-
dure. Other people use their eyes and ears
and pens for me; all I have to do is to sit still
and enjoy the results. Dear friends I have
everywhere, though I am unknown to them;
what right have I to wish for more privileges
than I have ? "

There is philosophy for you — philosophy
which looks fate out of countenance. It seems
that if we only have the fortitude to take the
ills of life cheerfully and say to fortune, "Thy
worst is good enough for me," behold the worst
is already repentant and fast changing to the
best. Love softens the heart of the inevitable.
The magic phrase which turns the evil spirits
into good angels is, "I am contented." Hap-
I)iness is always at one's elbow, it seems, in

NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE 91

one disguise or another; all one has to do is to
stop seeking it afar, or stop seeking it at all,
and say to this unwelcome attendant, " Be thou
my friend," when, lo, the mask falls, and the
angel is disclosed. Certain rare spirits in this
world have accepted poverty with such love
and pride that riches at once became contempti-
ble.

My correspondent has the gift of observation.
In renouncing self she has opened the door for
many other things to enter. In cultivating the
present moment, she cultivates the present in-
cident. The power to see things comes of
that mental attitude which is directed to the
now and the here : keen, alert perceptions,
those faculties that lead the mind and take the
incident as it flies. Most people fail to see
things because the print is too small for their
vision; they read only the large-lettered events
like the newspaper headings, and are apt to
miss a part of these, unless they see in some
way their own initials there.

The small type of the lives of bird and beast
about her is easily read by this cheerful invalid.
"To understand that the sky is everywhere
blue," says Goethe, "we need not go around
the world ; " and it would seem that this
woman has got all the good and pleasure there
is in natural history from the pets in her room,
and the birds that build before her window. I
had been for a long time trying to determine
whether or not the blue-jay hoarded up nuts
for winter use, but had not been able to settle

92 NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE

the point. I applied to her, and, sitting by
her window, she discovered that jays do indeed
hoard food in a tentative, childish kind of way,
but not with the cunning and provident fore-
sight of the squirrels and native mice. She
saw a jay fly to the ground with what proved
to be a peanut in its beak and carefully cover
it up with leaves and grass. * ' The next fall,
looking out of my own window, I saw two jays
hiding chestnuts with the same blind instinct.
They brought them from a near tree and cov-
ered them up in the grass, putting but one in
a place. Subsequently, in another locality, I
saw jays similarly employed. It appears to be
simply the crow instinct to steal, or to carry
away and hide any superfluous morsel of food."
The jays were really planting chestnuts instead
of hoarding them. There was no possibility of
such supplies being available in winter, and in
spring a young tree might spring from each
nut. This fact doubtless furnishes a key to
the problem why a forest of pine is usually
succeeded by a forest of oak. The acorns are
planted by the jays. Their instinct for hiding
things prompts them to seek the more dark and
secluded pine woods with their booty, and the
thick layer of needles furnishes an admirable
material with which to cover the nut. The
germ sprouts and remains a low slender shoot
for years, or until the pine woods are cut away,
when it rapidly becomes a tree.

My correspondent thinks the birds possess
some of the frailties of human beings; among

NOTES FKOM THE PRAIRIE 98

other things, ficklcmindedness. "I beiieve
they build nests just for the fun of it, to pass
away the time, to have something to chatter
about and dispute over." (I myself have seen
a robin play at nest building late in October,
and have seen two young bluebirds ensconce
themselves in an old thrush's nest in the fall
and appear to amuse themselves like children,
while the wind made the branch sway to and
fro.) "Now my wrens' nest is so situated
that nothing can disturb them, and where I
can see it at any time. They have often made
a nest and left it. A year ago, during the
latter part of May, they built a nest, and in a
few days they kicked everything out of the box
and did the work all over again, repeating the
operation all July, then left the country with-
out accomplishing anything further. This
season they reared one brood, built another
nest, and, I think, laid one or more eggs, idled
around a few weeks, and then went away."
(This last was probably a "cock-nest," built by
the male as a roosting place.) " I have noticed,
too, that blue-jays build their apology for
nest, and abandon it for another place in the
same tree." Her jays and wrens do not live
together on the most amiable terms. " I had
much amusement while the jay was on the
nest, watching the actions of the wrens whose
nest was under the porch close by the oak.
Perched on a limb over the jay, the male wren
sat flirting his tail and scolding, evidently say-
ing all the insulting things he could think of ;

a

94 NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE

for after enduring it for some time, the jay
would fly off its nest in a rage, and, with the
evident intention of impaling Mr. Wren with
his bill, strike down vengefully and — find his
bill fast in the bark, while his enemy was
somewhere else, squeaking - in derision. They
kept that up day after day, but the wren is too
lively to be caught by a large bird.

"I have never had the opportunity to dis-
cover whether there was any difference in the
dispositions of birds of the same species; it
would take a very close and extended observa-
tion to determine that; but I do know there is
as much difference between animals as between
human beings m that respect. Horses, cats,
dogs, squirrels, — all have their own individ-
uality. I have had five gray squirrels for
pets, and even their features were unlike.
Fred and Sally were mates, who were kept shut
up in their cages all the time. Fred was won-
derfully brave, would strut and scold until
there was something to be afraid of, then would
crouch down behind Sally and let her defend
him, the sneak! He abused her shamefully,
but she never resented it. Being the larger,
she could have whipped him and not half
tried; but she probably labored under the
impression, which is shared by some people^
that it is a wife's duty to submit to whatever
abuse the husband chooses to inflict. Their
characters reminded me so stro'ngly of some
people I have seen that I used to take Fred out
and whip him regularly, as a sort of vicarioua

NOTES FROM THE PRAIKIE 95

punishment of those who deserved it. Chip
was a gentle, pretty squirrel, fond of being
petted, spent most of her time in my pocket or
around my neck, but she died young; probably
she was too good to live.

"Dick, lazy and a glutton, also died young,
from over-eating. Chuck, the present pet, has
Satan's own temper — very ugly — but so in-
telligent that she is the plague of our lives,
though at the same time she is a constant
source of amusement. It is impossible to
remain long angry with her, however atrocious
her crimes are. AVe are obliged to let her run
loose through the house, for when shut up she
squeals and chatters and rattles her cage so we
can't endure it. From one piece of mischief
to another as fast as she can go, she requires
constant watching. She knows what is forbid-
den very well, for if I chance to look at her
after she has been up to mischief, she quickly
drops down flat, spreads her tail over her back,
looking all the time so very innocent that she
betrays herself. If I go towards her, she
springs on my back, where I cannot reach her
to whip her. She never bites me, but if others
tease her she is very vicious. When I tease
her she relieves her feelings by biting any one
else who happens to be in the room; and it is
no slight matter being bitten by a squirrel's
sharp teeth. Knowing that the other members
of the family are afraid of her, she amuses her-
self by putting nuts in their shoes, down their
necks, or in their hair, then standing guard,

96 NOTES FEOM THE PRAIRIE

SO that if they remove the nuts she flies at
them.

''Chuck will remember an injury for months,
and take revenge whenever opportunity offers.
She claims all the nuts and candy that come

into the house, searching Mr. B 's pockets

on Sundays J never on other days. I don't see
how she distinguishes, unless from the fact that
he comes home early on that day. Once when
she caught one of the girls eating some of her
nuts, she flew at her, bit her, and began carry-
ing off the nuts to hide as fast as she could.
For months afterward she would slip slyly up
and bite the girl. She particularly despises
my brother, he teases her so, and gives her no
chance to bite; so she gets even with him by
tearing up everything of his she can find, — his
books, his gloves, etc. ; and if she can get into
the closet where I keep the soiled clothing,
she will select such articles as belong to him,
and tear them up ! And she has a wonderful
memory, never forgets where she puts things;
people whom she has not seen for several years
she remembers.

" She had the misfortune to have about two
inches of her tail cut off, by being caught in the
door, which made it too short to be used for
wiping her face; it would slip out of her
hands, making her stamp her feet and chatter
her teeth with anger. By experimenting, she
found by backing up in a corner it was pre-
vented from slipping out of her reach. Have
had her five years ; wonder how long their lives

NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE 97

nsually are ? One of my neighbors got a young
squirrel, so young tliat it required milk; so
they got a small nursing-bottle for it. Until
that squirrel was over a year old, whenever he
got hungry, he would get his bottle and sit and
hold it up as if he thought that quite the
proper way for a squirrel to obtain his nourish-
ment. It was utterly comical to see him. We
have no black squirrels; a few red ones and a
great many gray ones of different kinds."

I was much interested in her pet squirrel,
and made frequent inquiries about it. A year
later she writes: "My squirrel still lives and
rules the house. She has an enemy that causes
her much trouble, — a rat that comes into the
wood- shed. I had rioticed that whenever she
went out there, she investigated the dark cor-
ners with care before she ventured to play, but
did not understand it till I chanced to be sit-
ting in the kichen door once, as she was dig-
ging up a nut she had buried. Just as she got
it up, a great rat sprung on her back; there
ensued a trial of agility and strength to see
which should have that nut. Neither seemed
to be angry, for they did not attempt to bite,
but raced around the shed, cuffing each other
at every opportunity ; sometimes one had the
nut, sometimes the other. I regret to say my
squirrel, whenever she grew tired, took a base
advantage of the rat by coming and sitting at
my feet, gnawing the nut, and plainly showing
by her motions her exultation over her foe.
Finally the rat became so exasperated that ha

98 NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE

forgot prudence and forced her to climb up on
my shoulder.

" In an extract from a London paper I see it
asserted that birds and snakes cannot taste.
As to the snakes I cannot say, but I know
birds can taste, from observing my canary when
I give him something new to eat. He will
edge up to it carefully, take a bit, back off to
meditate; then if he decides he likes it, he
walks up boldly and eats his fill. But if there
is anything disagreeable in what I offer him,
acid, for instance, there is such a fuss! He
scrapes his bill, raises and lowers the feathers
on the top of his head, giving one the impres-
sion that he is making a wry face. He cannot
be induced to touch it a second time.

"I have taught him to think I am afraid of
him, and how he tyrannizes over me, chasing
me from place to place, pecking and squeaking!
He delights in pulling out my hair. When
knitting or crocheting, he tries to prevent my
pulling the yarn by standing on it; when that
fails, he takes hold with his bill and pulls with
all his little might."

Some persons have a special gift or quality
that enables them to sustain more intimate
relations with wild creatures than others.
Women, as a rule, are ridiculously afraid of
cattle and horses turned loose in a field, but
my correspondent, when a young girl, had
many a lark with the prairie colts. " Is it not
strange," she says, "that a horse will rarely
hurt a child, or any person that is fond of

NOTES FKOM THE PRAIRIE 99

them ? To see a drove of a hundred or even a
hundred and fifty unbroken colts branded and
turned out to grow up was a common occur-
rence then [in her childhood]. I could go
among them, catch them, climb on their backs,
and they never offered to hurt me; they seemed
to consider it fun. They would come up and
touch me with their noses and prance off around
and around me; but just let a man come near
them, and they were off like the wind."

All her reminiscences of her early life in
Iowa, thirty years ago, are deeply interesting
to me. Her parents, a Boston family, moved
to that part of the State in advance of the rail-
roads, making the journey from the Mississippi
in a wagon. "My father had been fortunate
enough to find a farm with a frame house upon
it (the houses were mostly log ones) built by
an Englishman whose homesickness had driven
him back to England. It stood upon a slight
elevation in the midst of a prairie, though not
a very level one. To the east and to the west
of us, about four miles away, were the woods
along the banks of the streams. It was in the
month of June when we came, and the prairie
was tinted pink with wild roses. From early
spring till late in the fall the ground used to
be so covered with some kinds of flowers that
it had almost as decided a color as the sky
itself, and the air would be fragrant with their
perfume. First it is white with ' dog-toes '
[probably an orchid], then a cold blue from
being covered with some kind of light blue

100 NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE

flower; next come the roses; in July and
August it is pink with the ' prairie pink, '
dotted with scarlet lilies; as autumn comes on
it is vivid with orange- colored flowers. I
never knew their names; they have woody
stalks; one kind that grows about a foot high
has a feathery spray of little blossoms [golden-
rod?]. There are several kinds of tall ones;
the blossom has yellow leaves and brown vel-
vety centres [cone-flower, or rudbeckia, prob-
ably, now common in the East]. We young-
sters used to gather the gum that exuded from
the stalk. Every one was poor in those days,
and no one was ashamed of it. Plenty to eat,
such as it was. We introduced some innova-
tions in that line that shocked the people here.
We used corn meal ; they said it was only fit
for hogs. Worse than that, we ate ' greens '
— weeds, they called them. It does not seem
possible, but it is a fact, that with all those
fertile acres around them waiting for cultiva-
tion, and to be had almost for the asking, those
people (they were mainly Hoosiers) lived on
fried salt pork, swimming in fat, and hot bis-
cuit all the year round; no variety, no vegeta-
bles, no. butter saved for winter use, no milk
after cold weather began, for it was too much
trouble to milk the cows — such a shiftless set!
And the hogs they raised — you should have
seen them ! ' Prairie sharks ' and ' razor-
backs were the local names for them, and
either name fitted them ; long noses, long legs,
bodies about five inches thick, and no amount

NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE 101

of food would make them fat. They were
allowed to run wild to save the trouble of car-
ing for them, and when the pork-barrel was
empty they sliot one.

"Everybody drove oxen and used lumber-
wagons with a board across the box for a seat.
How did we ever endure it, riding over the
roadless prairies ! Then, any one who o\\ ned
a horse was considered an. aristocrat and de-
spised accordingly. One yoke of oxen that we
had were not to be sneezed at as a fast team.
They were trained to trot, and would make
good time too." [I love to hear oxen praised.
An old Michigan farmer, an early settler, told
me of a famous pair of oxen he once had; he
spoke of them with great affection. They
would draw any log he hitched them to.
When they had felt of the log and found they
had their match, he said they would nudge each
other, give their tails a kink, lift up their
heads, and say eh-h-h-h ! then something had
to come.]

"One phrase you used in your last letter —
* the start from the stump ' • — shows how local-
ity governs the illustrations we use. The start
was not from the stuinp here, quite the reverse.
Nature made the land ready for man's hand,
and there were no obstacles in the shape of
stumps and stones to overcome. Probably in
the East a pine-stump fence is not regarded as
either particularly attractive or odd; but to
me, when I first saw one in York State, it was
both. I had never even heard of the stumps

102 NOTES FKOM THE PRAIRIE

being utilized in that way. Seen for the first
time, there is something grotesque in the
appearance of those long arms forever reaching
out after something they never find, like a
petrified octopus. Those fences are an evi-
dence of Eastern thrift — making an enemy
serve as a friend. I think they would frighten
our horses and cattle, used as they are to the
almost invisible wire fence. ' Worm ' fences
were the fashion at first. But they soon
learned the necessity of economizing wood.
The people were extravagant, too, in the outlay
of power in tilling the soil, sixteen yoke of
oxen being thought absolutely necessary to run
a breaking- plough; and I have seen twenty
yoke used, requiring three men to drive and
attend the great clumsy plough. Every sum-
mer you might see them in any direction, look-
ing like ' thousand - legged worms. ' They
found out after a while that two yoke answered
quite as well. There is something very queer
about the bowlders that are supposed to have
been brought down from northern regions dur-
ing the glacial period; like Banquo's ghost,
they refuse to stay down. Other stones beside
them gradually become buried, but the bowlders
are always on top of the ground. Is there
something repellent about them, that the earth
refuses to cover them? They seem to be of no
use, for they cannot be worked as other stone;
they have to be broken open with heat in some
way, though I did see a building made of them
once. The bowlders had been broken and put

NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE 103

in big squares and little squares, oblong pieces
and triangles. The effect was curious, if not
fine.

" In those days there were such quantities of
game-birds, it was the sportsman's paradise,
and during the summer a great many gunners
from the cities came there. Prairie-chickens
without number, as great a nuisance as the
crows in the East, only we could eat them to
pay for the grain they ate; also geese, turkeys,
ducks, quail, and pigeons. Did you ever hear
the prairie-chickens during the spring? I
never felt sure spring had come to stay till, in
the early morning, there came the boom of the
chickens. Poor old hooff. It is an indescrib-
able sound, as if there were a thousand saying
the same thing and keeping perfect time. No
trouble then getting a child up early in the
morning, for it is time for hunting prairie-
chickens' nests. In the most unexpected
places in the wild grass the nests would be
found, with about sixteen eggs in them, looking
somewhat like a guinea-hen's egg. Of course
an omelet made out of them tasted ever so
much better than if made out of home-laid
eggs; now I should not like the taste so well,
probably, for there is a wild flavor to the egg,
as there is to the flesh of the bird. Many a
time I've stepped right into the nest, so well
was it hidden. After a prairie fire is a good
time to go egging, the nests being in plain
sight, and the eggs already roasted. I have
tried again and again to raise the chickens by

104 NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE

setting the eggs under the tame hens, but it
cannot be done; they seem to inherit a shyness
that makes them refuse to eat, and at the first
opportunity they slip off in the grass and are
gone. Every kind of food, even to live in-
sects, they will refuse, and will starve to death
rather than eat in captivity. There are but
few chickens here now; they have taken Hor-
ace Greeley's advice and gone West. As to
four-footed game, there were any number of
the little prairie-wolves and some big gray
ones. Could see the little wolves running
across the prairie any time a day, and at night
their continual yap^ yap was almost unendur-
able. They developed a taste for barn-yard
fowl that made it necessary for hens to roost
high. They are cowards in the daytime, but
brave enough to come close to the house at
night. If people had only had foxhounds,
they would have afforded an opportunity for
some sport. I have seen people try to run
them down on horseback, but never knew them
to succeed.

"One of my standard amusements was to go
every little while to a den the wolves had,
where the rocks cropped out of the ground, and
poke in there with a stick, to see a wolf pop
out scared almost to death. As to the big
wolves, it was dangerous sport to meddle with
them. I had an experience with them one
winter that would have begotten a desire to
keep a proper distance from them, had I not
felt it before. An intensely cold night three

NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE 105

of US were riding in an open wagon on one
Beat. The road ran for about a mile through
the woods, and as we entered it four or five
gray wolves sprang out at us ; the horse needed
no urging, you may be sure, but to me it
seemed an age before we got out into the
moonlight on the prairie; then the wolves
slunk back into the woods. Every leap they
made it seemed as if they would jump into the
wagon. I could hear them strike against the
back of it and hear their teeth click together as
they barely missed my hand where I held on to
the seat to keep from being thrown out. My
most prominent desire about that time was to
sit in the middle and let some one else have the

outside seat.

"Grandfather was very fond of trapping,
and used to catch a great many wolves for their
skins and the bounty; also minks and musk-
rats. I always had to help skin them, which
I considered dreadful, especially skinning the
muskrats; but as that was the only condition
under which I was allowed to go along, of
course I submitted, for I wouldn't miss the
excitement of seeing whether we had succeeded
in outwitting and catching the sly creatures for
any consideration. The beautiful minks, with
their slender satiny bodies, it seemed a pity to
catch them. Muskrats I had no sympathy for,
they looked so ratty, and had so unpleasant a
smell The gophers were one of the greatest
plagues the farmers had. The ground would
be dotted with their mounds, so round and

106 NOTES FROM THE PRAIKIE

regular, the black dirt pulverized so finely. I
always wondered how they could make them of
such a perfect shape, and wished I could see
way down into their houses. They have more
than one entrance to them, because I 've tried
to drown them out, and soon I would see what
I took to be my gopher, that I thought I had
covered so nicely, skipping off. They took so
much corn out of the hills after it was planted
that it was customary to mix corn soaked with
strychnine with the seed corn. Do they have
pocket gophers in the East ? [No. ] They are
the cutest little animals, with their pockets on
each side of their necks, lined with fur; when
they get them stuffed full they look as broad as
they are long, and so saucy. I have met them
and had them show fight, because I wouldn't
turn out of their path — the little impudent
things !

"One nuisance that goes along with civiliza-
tion we escaped until the railroad was built,
and that was rats. The railroads brought
other nuisances too, the weeds; they soon
crowded out the native plants. I don't want
to be understood as calling all weeds nuisances;
the beautiful flowers some of them bear save
their reputations — the dandelion, for instance ;
I approve of the dandelion, whatever others
may think. I shall never forget the first one I
found in the West; it was like meeting an old
friend. It grew alongside of an emigrant road,
about five miles from my home; here I spied
the golden treasure in the grass. Some of the

NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE 107

many ' prairie schooners ' that had passed that
way had probably dropped the one seed.
Mother dug it up and planted it in our flower-
bed, and in two years the neighborhood was
yellow with them — all from that one root.
The prairies are gone now, and the wild-
flowers, those that have not been civilized to
death like the Indians, have taken refuge in
the fence-corners."

I had asked her what she knew about cranes,
and she replied as follows : —

"During the first few years after we came

West, cranes, especially the sand-hill variety,

were very plentiful. Any day in the summer

you might see a triangle of them flying over,

with their long legs dragging behind them ; or

if you had sharp eyes, could see them stalking

along the sloughs sometimes found on the

prairie. In the books I see them described as

being brown in color. Now I should not call

them brown, for they are more of a yellow.

They are just the color of a gosling, should it

get its down somewhat soiled, and they look

much like overgrown goslings set up on stilts.

I have often found their nests, and always in

the shallow water in the slough, built out of

sticks, much as the children build cob-houses,

about a foot high, with two large flat eggs in

them. I have often tried to catch them on

their nests, so as to see how they disposed of

their long legs, but never quite succeeded.

They are very shy, and their nests are always

60 situated as to enable them to see in every

108 NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE

direction. I had a great desire to possess a pet
crane, but every attempt to raise one resulted
in failure, all on account of those same slender
legs.

"The egg I placed under a 'sitting hen'
(one was as much as a hen could conveniently
manage); it would hatch out all right, and I
had no difficulty in feeding the young crane,
for it would eat anything, and showed no shy-
ness— quite different from a young prairie-
chicken; in fact, their tameness was the cause
of their death, for, like Mary's little lamb,
they insisted on going everywhere I went.
When they followed me into the house, and
stepped upon the smooth floor, one leg would
go in one direction and the other in the oppo-
site, breaking one or both of them. They
seemed to be unable to walk upon any smooth
surface. Such ridiculous looking things they
were ! I have seen a few pure white ones, but
only on the wing. They seem more shy than
the yellow ones.

"Once I saw a curious sight; I saw seven or
eight cranes dance a cotillon, or something
very much like it. I have since read of wild
fowl performing in that way, but then I had
never heard of it. They were in a meadow
about half a mile from the house; I did not at
all understand what they were doing, and pro-
ceeded to investigate. After walking as near
as I could without frightening them,- I crept
through the tall grass until I was within a rod
of the cranes, and then lay and watched them.

NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE 1U9

It was the most comical sight to see them waltz
around, sidle up to each other and back again,
their long necks and legs making the most
clumsy motions. With a little stretch of the
imagination one might see a smirk on their
faces, and suspect them of caricaturing human
beings. There seemed to be a regular method
in their movements, for the changes were re-
peated. How long they kept it up I do not
know, for I tired of it and went back to the
house, but they had danced until the grass was
trampled down hard and smooth. I always
had a mania for trying experiments, so I coaxed
my mother to cook one the men had shot,
though I had never heard of any one's eating
crane. It was not very good, tasted somewhat
peculiar, and the thought that maybe it was
poison struck me with horror. I was badly
scared, for I reflected that I had no proof that
it was not poison, and I had been told so many
times that I was bound to come to grief, sooner
or later, from trying to find out things. "

I am always glad to have the views of a sen-
sible person, outside of the literary circles,
upon my favorite authors, especially when the
views are spontaneous. "Speaking of Tho-
reau," says my correspondent, "I am willing to
allow most that is said in his praise, but / do
not like him, all the same. Do you know I
feel that he was not altogether human. There
is something uncanny about him. I guess that
instead of having a human soul, his body M-as
inhabited by some sylvan deity that flourished

110 NOTES FROM THE PRAIRIE

in Grecian times ; he seemed out of place among
human beings."

Of Carlyle, too, she has an independent
opinion. "It is a mystery to me why men so
universally admire Carlyle; women do not, or
if there is occasionally one who does, she does
not like him. A woman's first thought about
him would be, ' I pity his wife ! ' Do you
remember what he said in answer to Mrs.
Welsh's proposal to come and live with them
and help support them? He said they could
only live pleasantly together on the condition
that she looked up to him, not he to her.
Here is what he says : ' Now, think, Liebchen,
whether your mother will consent to forget her
riches and our poverty, and uncertain, more
probably scanty, income, and consent in the
spirit of Christian meekness to make me her
guardian and director, and be a second wife to
her daughter's husband?' Now, isn't that
insufferable conceit for you? To expect that
a woman old enough to be his mother would
lay aside her self-respect and individuality to
accept him, a comparatively young and inexpe-
rienced man, as her master? The cheekiness
of it! Here you have the key-note of his
character — ' great I and little u. '

"I have tried faithfully to like him, for it
seemed as if the fault must be in me because I
did not; I have labored wearily through nearly
all his works, stumbling over his superlatives
(why, he is an adjective factory; his pages
look like the alphabet struck by a cyclone.

NOTES FROM THE PKAIlilE lH

You call it picturesqueness ; I call it grotesque-
ness). But it was of no use; it makes me
tired all over to think of it. All the time I
said to myself, 'Oh, do stop your scolding;
you are not so much better than the rest of us. '
One is willing to be led to a higher life, but
who wants to be pushed and cuffed along?
How can people place him and our own Emer-
son, the dear guide and friend of so many of
us, on the same level? It may be that the
world had need of him, just as it needs light-
ning and rain and cold and pain, but must we
like these things ? " ^

1 My correspondent was Mrs. Beardslee of Manchesteii
Iowa. She died in October, 1885.

EYE-BEAMS

I. A WEASEL AND HIS DEN

My most interesting note of the season of 1893
relates to a weasel. One day in early Novem-
ber my boy and I were sitting on a rock at the
edge of a tamarack swamp in the woods hoping
to get a glimpse of some grouse which we knew
were in the habit of feeding in the swamp.
We had not sat there very long before we
heard a slight rustling in the leaves below us
which we at once fancied was made by the
cautious tread of a grouse. (We had no gun.)
Presently through the thick brushy growth, we
caught sight of a small animal running along,
that we at first took for a red squirrel. A
moment more, and it came into full view but a
few yards from us, and we saw that it was a
weasel. A second glance showed that it car-
ried something in its mouth, which, as it drew
near, we saw was a mouse, or a mole of some
sort. The weasel ran nimbly along, now the
length of a decayed log, then over stones and
branches, pausing a moment every tliree or four
yards, and passed within twenty feet of us, and
disappeared behind some rocks on the bank at
the edge of the swamp. "He is carrying food

EYE-BEAMS 113

into his den," I said; "let us watch him."
In four or five minutes he reappeared, coming
back over the course along which he had just
passed, running over and under the same stones
and down the same decayed log, and was soon
out of sight in the swamp. We had not
moved, and evidently he had not noticed us.
After about six minutes we heard the same
rustle as at first, and in a moment saw the
weasel coming back with another mouse in his
mouth. He kept to his former route as if
chained to it, making the same pauses and
gestures, and repeating exactly his former
movements. He disappeared on our left as
before, and after a few moments' delay, re-
emerged and took his course down into the
swamp again. We waited about the same
length of time as before, when back he came
with another mouse. He evidently had a big
crop of mice down there amid the bogs and
bushes, and he was gathering his harvest in
very industriously. We became curious to see
exactly where his den was, and so walked
around where he had seemed to disappear each
time, and waited. He was as punctual as
usual, and* was back with his game exactly on
time. It happened that we had stopped within
two paces of his hole, so that, as he approached
it, he evidently discovered us. He paused,
looked steadily at us, and then without any
sign of fear entered his den. The entrance
was not under the rocks as we had expected,
but was in the bank a few feet beyond them.

114 EYE-BEAMS

We remained motionless for some time, but he
did not reappear. Our presence had made him
suspicious, and he was going to wait awhile.
Then I removed some dry leaves and exposed
his doorway, a small, round hole, hardly as
large as the chipmunk makes, going straight
down into the ground. We had a lively curi-
osity to get a peep into his larder. If he had
been carrying in mice at this rate very long his
cellars must be packed with them. With a
sharp stick I began digging into the red clayey
soil, but soon encountered so many roots from
near trees that I gave it up, deciding to return
next day with a mattock. So I repaired the
damages I had done as well as I could, replaced
the leaves, and we moved off.

The next day, which was mild and still as
usual, I came back armed, as I thought, to un-
earth the weasel and his treasures. I sat down
where we had sat the day before and awaited
developments. I was curious to know if the
weasel was still carrying in his harvest. I had
sat but a few minutes when I heard again the
rustle in the dry leaves, and saw the weasel
coming home with another mouse. I observed
him till he had made three trips; about every
six or seven minutes, I calculated, he brought in
a mouse. Then I went and stood near his
hole. This time he had a fat meadow-mouse.
He laid it down near the entrance, went in and
turned around, and reached out and drew the
mouse in after him. That store of mice I am
bound to see, I thought, and then fell to with

EYE-BEAMS 115

the heavy mattock. I followed the hole down
about two feet, when it turned to the north.
I kept the clue by thrusting into the passage
slender twigs; these it was easy to follow.
Two or three feet more and the hole branched,
one part going west, the other northeast. I
followed the west one a few feet till it
branched. Then I turned to the easterly tun-
nel, and pursued it till it branched. I fol-
lowed one of these ways till it divided. I
began to be embarrassed and hindered by the
accumulations of loose soil. Evidently' this
weasel had foreseen just such an assault upon
his castle as I was making, and had planned it
accordingly. He was not to be caught nap-
ping. I found several enlargements in the
various tunnels, breathing spaces, or spaces to
turn around in, or to meet and chat with a
companion, but nothing that looked like a ter-
minus, a permanent living-room. I tried re-
moving the soil a couple of paces away with
the mattock, but found it slow work. I was
getting warm and tired, and my task was
apparently only just begun. The farther I
dug the more numerous and intricate became
the passages. I concluded to stop, and come
again the next day, armed with a shovel in
addition to the mattock.

Accordingly, I came back on the morrow,
and fell to work vigorously. I soon had quite
a large excavation; I found the bank a laby-
rinth of passages, with here and there a large
chamber. One of the latter I struck only six

116 EYE-BEAMS

inches under the surface, by making a fresh
breach a few feet away.

While I was leaning upon my shovel-handle
and recovering my breath, I heard some light-
footed creature tripping over the leaves above
me just out of view, which I fancied might be
a squirrel. Presently I heard the bay of a
hound and the yelp of a cur, and then knew
that a rabbit had passed near me. The dogs
came hurrying after, with a great rumpus, and
then presently the hunters followed. The
dogs remained barking not many rods south of
me on the edge of the swamp, and I knew the
rabbit had run to hole. For half an hour or
more I heard the hunters at work there, dig-
ging their game out; then they came along and
discovered me at my work. (An old trapper
and woodsman and his son.) I told them what
I was in quest of. "A mountain weasel," said
the old man. "Seven or eight years ago I
used to set dead falls for rabbits just over
there, and the game was always partly eaten
up. It must have been this weasel that visited
my traps." So my game was evidently an old
resident of the place. This swamp, maybe,
had been his hunting ground for many years,
and he had added another hall to his dwelling
each year. After further digging, I struck at
least one of his banqueting halls, a cavity about
the size of one's hat, arched over by a network
of fine tree-roots. The occupant evidently
lodged, or rested here also. There was a
warm, dry nest, made of leaves and the fur of

EYE-BEAMS 117

mice and moles. I took out two or three hand-
fuls. In finding this chamber, I had followed
one of the tunnels around till it brought me
within a foot of the original entrance. A few
inches to one side of this cavity there was
what I took to be a back alley where the weasel
threw his waste; there Avere large masses of
wet, decaying fur here, and fur pellets such as
are regurgitated by hawks and owls. In the
nest there was the tail of a flying squirrel,
showing that the weasel sometimes had a flying
squirrel for supper or dinner.

I continued my digging with renewed en-
ergy ; I should yet find the grand depot where
all these passages centred; but the farther I
excavated, the more complex and bafiiing the
problem became ; the ground was honeycombed
with passages. What enemy has this weasel,
I said to myself, that he should provide so
many ways of escape, that he should have a
back door at every turn? To corner him
would be impossible ; to be lost in his fortress
were like being lost in Mammoth Cave. How
he could bewilder his pursuer by appearing
now at this door, now at that; now mocking
him from the attic, now defying him from the
cellar. So far, I had discovered but one en-
trance ; but some of the chambers were so near
the surface that it looked as if the planner had
calculated upon an emergency when he might
want to reach daylight quickly in a new place.

Finally I paused, rested upon my shovel
awhile, eased my aching back upon the ground,

118 EYE-BEAMS

and then gave it up, feeling as I never had
before the force of the old saying, that you
cannot catch a weasel asleep. I had made an
ugly hole in the hank, had handled over two or
three times a ton or more of earth, and was
apparently no nearer the weasel and his store
of mice than when I began.

Then I regretted that I had broken into his
castle at all; that I had not contented myself
with coming day after day and counting his mice
as he carried them in, and continued my obser-
vation upon him each succeeding year. Now
the rent in his fortress could not be repaired,
and he would doubtless move away, as he most
certainly did, for his doors, which I had closed
with soil, remained unopened after winter had
set in.

But little seems known about the intimate
private lives of any of our lesser wild creatures.
It was news to me that any of the weasels
lived in dens in this way, and that they stored
up provision against a day of need. This
species was probably the little ermine, eight or
nine inches long, with tail about five inches.
It was still in its summer dress of dark chest-
nut-brown above and whitish below.

It was a mystery where the creature had put
the earth which it must have removed in dig-
ging its den; not a grain was to be seen any-
where, and yet a bushel or more must have been
taken out. Externally, there was not the
slightest sign of that curious habitation there
under the ground. The entrance M^as hidden

EYE-BEAMS 119

beneath dry leaves, and was surrounded by
little passages and flourishes between the leaves
and the ground. If any of my readers find a
weasel's den, I hope they will be wiser than I
was, and observe his goings and comings with-
out disturbing his habitation.

II. KEEN PERCEPTIOXS

Success in observing nature, as in so many
other things, depends upon alertness of mind
and quickness to take a hint. One's percep-
tive faculties must be like a trap lightly and
delicately set; a touch must suffice to spring it.
But how many people have I walked with,
whose perceptions were rusty and unpracticed
— nothing less than a bear would spring their
trap. All the finer play of nature, all the
small deer they miss. The little dramas and
tragedies that are being enacted by the wild
creatures in the fields and woods are more or
less veiled and withdrawn; and the actors all
stop when a spectator appears upon the scene.
One must be able to interpret the signs, to pene-
trate the scenes, to put this and that together.

Then nature speaks a different language from
our own ; the successful observer translates this
language into human speech. He knows the
meaning of every sound, movement, gesture,
and gives the human equivalent. Careless or
hasty observers, on the other hand, make the
mistake of reading their own thoughts or men-
tal and emotional processes into nature; plans

120 EYE-BEAMS

and purposes are attributed to the wild creatures
which are quite beyond them. Some people in
town saw an English sparrow tangled up in a
horsehair, and suspended from a tree, with
other sparrows fluttering and chattering about
it They concluded at once that the sparrows
had executed one of their number, doubtless
for some crime. I have several times seen
sparrows suspended in this way about their
nesting and roosting places. Acciients happen
to birds as well as to other folks. But they
do not yet imitate us in the matter of capital
punishment.

One day I saw a little bush sparrow flutter-
ing along in the grass, disabled in some way,
and a large number of its mates flitting and
calling about it. I captured the bird, and in
doing so, its struggles in my hand broke the
bond that held it — some kind of web or silken
insect thread that tied together the quills of
one wing. When I let it fly away all its mates
followed it as if wondering at the miracle that
had been wrought. They no doubt experi-
enced some sort of emotion. Birds sympathize
with each other in their distress, and will make
common cause against an enemy. Crows will
pursue and fight a tame crow. They seem to
look upon him as an alien and an enemy. He
is never so shapely and bright and polished as
his wild brother. He is more or less demoral-
ized, and has lost caste. Probably a pack of
wolves would in the same way destroy a tame
wolf, should such an one appear in their midst

EYE-BEAMS 121

The wild creatures are human — with a dif-
ference, a wide difference. They have the
keenest powers of perception; what observers
they are! how quickly they take a hint! but
they have little or no powers of reflection.
The crows do not meet in parliaments and cau-
cuses, as has been fancied, and try offenders,
and discuss the tariff, or consider ways and
means. They are gregarious and social, and
probably in the fall have something like a reun-
ion of the tribe. At least their vast assem-
blages upon the hills at this season have a
decidedly festive appearance.

The crow has fine manners. He always has
the walk and air of a lord of the soil. One
morning I put out some fresh meat upon the
snow near my study window. Presently a
crow came and carried it off, and alighted with
it upon the ground in the vineyard. While he
was eating of it, another crow came, and,
alighting a few yards away, slowly walked up
to within a few feet of this fellow and stopped.
I expected to see a struggle over the food, as
would have been the case with domestic fowls
or animals. Nothing of the kind. The feed-
ing crow stopped eating, regarded the other for
a moment, made a gesture or two, and flew
away. Then the second crow went up to the
food, and proceeded to take his share. Pres-
ently the first crow came back, when eacli
seized a portion of the food and flew away with
it. Their mutual respect and good-will seemed
perfect. Whether it really was so in our hu-

122 EYE-BEAMS

man sense, or whether it was simply an illus-
tration of the instinct of mutual support which
seems to prevail among gregarious birds, I
know not. Birds that are solitary in their
habits, like hawks or woodpeckers, behave
quite differently toward each other in the pres-
ence of their food.

The lives of the wild creatures revolve about
two facts or emotions, appetite and fear.
Their keenness in discovering food and in dis-
covering danger are alike remarkable. But
man can nearly always outwit them, because
while his perceptions are not as sharp, his
poAver of reflection is so much greater. His
cunning carries a great deal farther. The crow
will quickly discover anything that looks like
a trap or snare set to catch him, but it takes
him a long time to see through the simplest
contrivance. As I have above stated, I some-
times place meat on the snow in front of my
study window to attract him. On one occasion,
after a couple of crows had come to expect
something there daily, I suspended a piece of
meat by a string from a branch of the tree just
over the spot where I usually placed the food.
A crow soon discovered it, and came into the
tree to see what it meant. His suspicions
were aroused. There was some design in that
suspended meat evidently. It was a trap to
catch him. He surveyed it from every near
branch. He peeked and pried, and was bent
on penetrating the mystery. He flew to the
ground, and walked about and surveyed it fronj

EYE-BEAMS 123

all sides. Then he took a long walk down alx)ut
the vineyard as if in hope of hitting upon
some clue. Then he came to the tree again,
and tried first one eye, then the other, upon
it ; then to the ground beneath ; then he went
away and came back; then his fellow came
and they both squinted and investigated and
then disappeared. Chickadees and woodpeckers
would alight upon the meat and peck it swing-
ing in the wind, but the crows Avere fearful.
Does this show reflection? Perhaps it does,
but I look upon it rather as that instinct of
fear and cunning so characteristic of the crow.
Two days passed thus: every morning the
crows came and surveyed the suspended meat
from all points in the tree, and then went
away. The third day, I placed a large bone
on the snow beneath the suspended morsel.
Presently one of the crows appeared in the
tree, and bent his eye upon the tempting bone.
"The mystery deepens," he seemed to say to
himself. But after half an hour's investiga-
tion, and after approaching several times within
a few feet of the food upon the ground, he
seemed to conclude there was no connection
between it and the piece hanging by the string.
So he finally walked up to it and fell to peck-
ing it, flipping his wings all the time, as a sign
of his watchfulness. He also turned up his
eye, momentarily, to the piece in the air above,
as if it might be some disguised sword of
Damocles, ready to fall upon him. Soon his
mate came and alighted on a low branch of the

124 EYE-BEAMS

tree. The feeding crow regarded him a mo-
ment, and then flew up to his side, as if to give
him a turn at the meat. But he refused to run
the risk. He evidently looked upon the whole
thing as a delusion and a snare, and presently
went away, and his mate followed him. Then
I placed the bone in one of the main forks of
the tree, but the crows kept at a safe distance
from it. Then I put it back to the ground,
but they grew more and more suspicious; some
evil intent in it all, they thought. Finally, a
dog carried ofi" the bone, and the crows ceased
to visit the tree.

III. A sparrow's mistake

If one has always built one's nest upon the
ground, and if one comes of a race of ground-
builders, it is a risky experiment to build in a
tree. The conditions are ' vastly different.
One of my near neighbors, a little song- spar-
row, learned this lesson the past season. She
grew ambitious; she departed from the tradi-
tions of her race, and placed her nest in a tree.
Such a pretty spot she chose, too — the pen-
dent cradle formed by the interlaced sprays of
two parallel branches of a Norway spruce.
These branches shoot out almost horizontally;
indeed, the lower ones become quite so in
spring, and the side shoots with which they are
clothed droop down, forming the slopes of min-
iature ridges; where the slopes of two branches
join, a little valley is formed which often looks

EYE-BEAMS 125

more stable than it really is. My sparrow
selected one of these little valleys about six
feet from the ground and quite near the walls
of the house. Here, she has thought, I will
build my nest, and pass the heat of June in a
miniature Norway. This tree is the fir-clad
mountain, and this little vale on its side I
select for my own. She carried up a great
quantity of coarse grass and straws for the
foundation, just as she would have done upon
the ground. On the top of this mass there
gradually came into shape the delicate structure
of her nest, compacting and refining till its
delicate carpet of hairs and threads was reached.
So sly as the little bird was about it too —
every moment on her guard lest you discover
her secret! Five eggs were laid, and incuba-
tion was far advanced, when the storms and
winds came. The cradle indeed did rock.
The boughs did not break, but they swayed
and separated as you would part your two
interlocked hands. The ground of the little
valley fairly gave way, the nest tilted over till
its contents fell into the chasm. It was like
an earthquake that destroys a hamlet.

No born tree-builder would have placed its
nest in such a situation. Birds that build at
the end of the branch, like the oriole, tie the
nest fast; others, like th3 robin, build against
the main trunk ; still others build securely in
the fork. The sparrow, in her ignorance,
rested her house upon the spray of two
branches, and when the tempest came the

126 EYE-BEAMS

branches parted company and the nest was
engulfed.

Another sparrow friend of mine met with a
curious mishap the past season. It was the
little social sparrow, or chippie. She built her
nest on the arm of a grapevine in the vineyard,
a favorite place with chippie. It had a fine
canopy of leaves, and was firmly and securely
placed. Just above it hung a bimch of young
grapes, which in the warm July days grew
very rapidly. The little bird had not foreseen
the calamity that threatened her. The grapes
grew down into her nest and completely filled
it, so that when I put my hand in, there were
the eggs sat upon by the grapes. The bird
was crowded out, and had perforce abandoned
her nest, ejected by a bunch of grapes. How
long she held her ground I do not know ; prob-
ably till the fruit began to press heavily upon
her.

IV. A POOR FOUNDATION \

It is a curious habit the wood-thrush has
of starting its nest with a fragment of news-
paper or other paper. Except in remote woods,
I think it nearly always puts a piece of paper
in the foundation of its nest. Last spring I
chanced to be sitting near a tree in which a
wood- thrush had concluded to build. She
came with a piece of paper nearly as large as
my hand, placed it upon the branch, stood
upon it a moment, and then flew down to the
ground. A little puff of wind caused the

EYE-BEAMS 127

paper to leave the branch a moment afterward.
The thrush watched it eddy slowly down to the
ground, when she seized it and carried it back.
She placed it in position as before, stood upon
it again for a moment, and then flew away.
Again the paper left the branch, and sailed
away slowly to the ground. The bird seized it
again, jerking it about rather spitefully, I
thought; she turned it around two or three
times, then labored back to the branch with it,
upon which she shifted it about as if to hit
upon some position in which it would lie more
securely. This time she sat down upon it for
a moment, and then went away, doubtless with
the thought in her head that she would bring
something to hold it down. The perverse
paper followed her in a few seconds. She
seized it again, and hustled it about more than
before. As she rose with it toward the nest,
it in some way impeded her flight, and she was
compelled to return to the ground with it.
But she kept her temper remarkably well.
She turned the paper over and took it up in
her beak several times before she was satisfied
with her hold, and then carried it back to the
branch, where, however, it would not stay. I
saw her make six trials of it when I was called
away. I think she finally abandoned the rest-
less fragment, probably a scrap that held some
" breezy " piece of writing, for later in the sea-
son I examined the nest and found no paper
in it*

128 EYE-BEAMS

V. A FRIGHTENED MINK

In walking through the woods one day in
early winter, we read upon the newly fallen
snow the record of a mink's fright the night
before. The mink had been traveling through
the woods post-haste, not along the water-
courses where one sees them by day, but over
ridges and across valleys. We followed his
track some distance to see what adventures he
had met with. We tracked him through a
bushy swamp, saw where he had left it to
explore a pile of rocks, then where he had
taken to the swamj) again, then to the more
open woods. Presently the track turned
sharply about, and doubled upon itself in long
hurried strides. What had caused the mink
to change its mind so suddenly ? We explored
a few paces ahead, and came upon a fox track.
The mink had seen the fox stalking stealthily
through the woods, and the sight had probably
brought his heart into his mouth. I think he
climbed a tree, and waited till the fox passed.
His track disappeared amid a clump of hem-
locks, and then reappeared again a little be-
yond them. It described a big loop around,
and then crossed the fox track only a few yards
from the point where its course was inter-
rupted. Then it followed a little watercourse,
went under a rude bridge in a wood-road, then
mingled with squirrel tracks in a denser part of
the thicket. If the mink met a muskrat or
a rabbit in his travels, or came upon a grouse,

EYE-BEAMS 129

or quail, or a farmer's hen-roost, he had tlie
supper he was in quest of.

VI. A LEGLESS CLIMBER

The eye always sees what it wants to see,
and the ear hears what it wants to hear. If I
am intent upon birds' nests in my walk, I find
birds' nests everywhere. Some people see
four-leaved clovers wherever they look in the
grass. A friend of mine picks up Indian relics
all about the fields; he has Indian relics in his
eye. I have seen him turn out of the path at
right angles, as a dog will when he scents some-
thing, and walk straight away several rods, and
pick up an Indian pounding-stone. He saw it
out of the corner of his eye. I find that with-
out conscious effort I see and hear birds with
like ease. Eye and ear are always on the
alert.

One day in early June I was walking with
some friends along a secluded wood-road.
Above the hum of the conversation I caught
the distressed cry of a pair of blue- jays. My
companions heard it also, but did not heed it.

But to my ear the cry was peculiar. It was
uttered in a tone of anguish and alarm. I
said, "Let us see what is the trouble with
these jays." I presently saw a nest twenty-
five or thirty feet from the ground in a small
hemlock which I at once concluded belonged
to the jays. The birds M'ere but a few yards
away hopping about amid the neighboring

130 EYE-BEAMS

branches, uttering now and then their despair-
ing note. Looking more intently at the nest,
I became aware in the dim light of the tree of
something looped about it, or else there was a
dark, very crooked limb that partly held it.
Suspecting the true nature of the case, I threw
a stone up through the branches, and then an-
other and another, when the dark loops and
folds upon one side of the nest began to disap-
pear, and the head and neck of a black snake
to slowly slide out on a horizontal branch on
the other; in a moment the snake had cleared
the nest, and stretched himself along the
branch.

Another rock-fragment jarred his perch when
he slid cautiously along toward the branch of a
large pine-tree which came out and mingled its
spray with that of the hemlock. It was soon
apparent that the snake was going to take
refuge in the pine. As he made the passage
from one tree to the other we sought to dis-
lodge him by a shower of sticks and stones, but
without success; he was soon upon a large
branch of the pine, and, stretched out on top
of the limb, thought himself quite hidden.
And so he was; but we knew his hiding-place,
and the stones and clubs we hurled soon made
him uneasy. Presently a club struck the
branch with such force that he was fairly dis-
lodged, but saved himself by quickly wrapping
his tail about the limb. In this position he
hung for some moments, but the intervening
branches shielded him pretty well from out

EYE-BEAMS 131

missiles, and he soon recovered himself and
gained a still higher branch that reached out
over the road and nearly made a bridge to the
trees on the other side.

Seeing the monster was likely to escape us,
unless we assailed him at closer quarters, I
determined to climb the tree. A smaller tree
growing near helped me up to the first branches,
where the ascent was not very difficult. I
finally reached the branch upon which the
snake was carefully poised, and began shaking
it. But he did not come down; he wrapped
his tail about it, and defied me. My own posi-
tion was precarious, and I was obliged to move
with great circumspection.

After much manoeuvring I succeeded in arm-
ing myself with a dry branch eight or ten feet
long, where I had the serpent at a disadvan-
tage. He kept his hold well. I clubbed him
about from branch to branch while my friends,
with cautions and directions^ looked on from
beneath. Neither man nor snake will indulge
in very lively antics in a treetop thirty or forty
feet from the ground. But at last I dislodged
him, and swinging and looping like a piece of
rubber hose he went to the ground, where my
friends pounced upon him savagely and quickly
made an end of him.

I worked my way carefully down the tree,
and was about to drop upon the ground from
the lower branches, when I saw another bh\ck
snake coiled up at the foot of the tree, as if
lying in wait for me. Had he started to hia

132 EYE-BEAMS

mate's rescue, and, seeing the battle over, was
he now waiting to avenge himself upon the
victor? But the odds were against him; my
friends soon had him stretched beside his com-
rade.

The first snake killed had swallowed two
young jays just beginning to feather out.

How the serpent discovered the nest would
be very interesting to know. What led him to
search in this particular tree amid all these
hundreds of trees that surrounded it? It is
probable that the snake watches like a cat, or,
having seen the parent birds about this tree,
explored it. Nests upon the ground and in
low boughs are frequently rifled by black
snakes, but I have never before known one to
climb to such a height in a forest tree.

It would also be interesting to know if the
other snake was in the secret of this nest, and
was waiting near to share in its contents. One
rarely has the patience to let these little dramas
or tragedies be played to the end; one cannot
look quietly on, and see a snake devour any-
thing. Not even when it is snake eat snake.
Only a few days later my little boy called me
to the garden to see a black snake in the act of
swallowing a garter snake. The little snake
was holding back with all his might and main,
hooking his tail about the blackberry bushes,
and pulling desperately; still his black enemy
was slowly engulfing him, and had accom-
plished about eight or ten inches of him, when
he suddenly grew alarmed at some motion of

EYE-BEAMS 133

ours, and ejected tlie little snake from him
with unexpected ease and quickness, and tried
to escape. The little snake's head was bleed-
ing, but he did not seem otherwise to have
suffered from the adventure.

Still a few days later, the man who was
mowing the lawn called to me to come and
witness a similar tragedy, but on a smaller
scale — a garter snake swallowing a little green
snake. Half the length of the green snake had
disappeared from sight, and it was quite dead.
The process had been a slow one, as the garter
snake was only two or three inches longer than
his victim. There seems to be a sort of poetic
justice in snake swallowing snake, shark eating
shark, and one can look on with more compos-
ure than when a bird or frog is the victim. It
is said that in the deep sea there is a fish that
will SAvallow another fish eight or ten times its'
own size. It seizes its victim by the tail and
slowly sucks it in, stretching and expanding
itself at the same time, and probably digesting
the big fish by inches, till after many days it
is completely engulfed. Would it be hard to
find something analogous to this in life, espe-
cially in American politics?

A YOUNG MARSH HAWK

Most country boys, I fancy, know the marsh
hawk. It is he you see flying low over the
fields, beating about bushes and marshes and
dipping over the fences, with his attention di-
rected to the ground beneath him. He is a
cat on wings. He keeps so low that the birds
and mice do not see him till he is fairly upon
them. The hen-hawk swoops down upon the
meadow-mouse from his position high in air, or
from the top of a dead tree; but the marsh-
hawk stalks him and comes suddenly upon him
from over the fence, or from behind a low bush
or tuft of grass. He is nearly as large as the
hen-hawk, but has a much longer tail. When
I was a boy I used to call him the long-tailed
hawk. The male is a bluish slate- color; the
female a reddish brown like the hen-hawk, with
a white rump.

Unlike the other hawks, they nest on the
ground in low, thick marshy places. For
several seasons a pair have nested in a bushy
marsh a few miles back of me, near the house
of a farmer friend of mine, who has a keen eye
for the wild life about him. Two years ago he
found the nest^ but when I got over to see it
the next week, it had been robbed, probably

A YOUNG MARSH HAWK 135

by some boys in the neighl)orhood. The past
season, in April or May, ]jy watching the
mother bird, he found the nest again. It was
in a marshy place, several acres in extent, in
the bottom of a valley, and thickly grown with
hardback, prickly ash, smilax, and other low
thorny bushes. My friend brought me to the
brink of a low hill, and pointed out to me in
the marsh below us, as nearly as he could, just
where the nest was located. Then we crossed
the pasture, entered upon the marsh, and made
our way cautiously toward it. The wild thorny
growths, waist high, had to be carefully dealt
with. As we neared the spot I used my eyes
the best I could, but I did not see the hawk
till she sprang into the air not ten yards away
from us. She went screaming upward, and
was soon sailing in a circle far above us.
There, on a coarse matting of twigs and weeds,
lay five snow-white eggs, a little more than
half as large as hen's eggs. My companion
said the male hawk would probably soon ap-
pear and join the female, but he did not. She
kept drifting away to the east, and was soon
gone from our sight.

We soon withdrew and secreted ourselves
behind the stone wall, in hopes of seeing the
mother hawk return. She appeared in the dis-
tance, but seemed to know she was being
watched, and kept away. About ten days later
we made another visit to the nest. An adven-
turous young Chicago lady also wanted to see
a hawk's nest, and so accompanied us. This

136 A YOUNG MARSH HAWK

time three of the eggs were hatched, and as the
mother hawk sprang up, either by accident or
intentionally, she threw two of the young hawks
some feet from the nest. She rose up and
screamed angrily. Then, turning toward us,
she came like an arrow straight at the young
lady, a bright plume in whose hat probably
drew her fire. The damsel gathered up her
skirts about her and beat a hasty retreat.
Hawks were not so pretty as she thought they
were. A large hawk launched at one's face
from high in the air is calculated to make one
a little nervous. It is such a fearful incline
down which the bird comes, and she is aiming
exactly toward your eye. When within about
thirty feet of you she turns upward with a rush-
ing sound, and mounting higher falls toward
you again. She is only firing blank cartridges,
as it were ; but it usually has the desired effect,
and beats the enemy off.

After we had inspected the young hawks, a
neighbor of my friend offered to conduct us to
a quail's nest. Anything in the shape of a
nest is always welcome, it is such a mystery,
such a centre of interest and affection, and, if
upon the ground, is usually something so
dainty and exquisite amid the natural wreckage
and confusion. A ground nest seems so ex-
posed, too, that it always gives a little thrill of
pleasurable surprise to see the group of frail
eggs resting there behind so slight a -barrier.
I will walk a long distance any day just to see
a song-sparrow's nest amid the stubble or undei

A YOUNG MARSH HAWK 137

a tuft of grass. It is a jewel in a rosette of
jewels, with a frill of weeds or turf. A quail's
nest I had never seen, and to be shown one
within the hunting-ground of this murderous
hawk would be a double pleasure. Such a
quiet, secluded, grass-grown highway as we
moved along was itself a rare treat. Seques-
tered was the word that the little valley sug-
gested, and peace the feeling the road evoked.
The farmer, whose fields lay about us, half
grown with wxeds and bushes, evidently did
not make stir or noise enough to disturb any-
thing. Beside this rustic highway, bounded
by old mossy stone walls, and within a stone's
throw of the farmer's barn, the quail had made
her nest. It was just under the edge of a pros-
trate thorn- bush.

"The nest is right there," said the farmer,
pausing within ten feet of it, and pointing to
the spot with his stick.

In a moment or two we could make out the
mottled brown plumage of the sitting bird.
Then w^e approached her cautiously till we l^ent
above her.

She never moved a feather.
Then I put my cane down in the brush be-
hind her. We wanted to see the eggs, yet did
not want rudely to disturb the sitting hen.
She would not move.

Then I put down my hand within a few
inches of her ; still she kept her place. Should
we have to lift her off bodily ?

Then the young lady put down her hand,

138 A YOUNG MARSH HAWK

probably the prettiest and the whitest hand the
quail had ever seen. At least it startled her,
and off she sprang, uncovering such a crowded
nest of eggs as I had never before beheld.
Twenty-one of them ! a ring or disk of white
like a china tea-saucer. You could not help say-
ing how pretty, how cunning, like baby hen's
eggs, as if the bird was playing at sitting as
children play at housekeeping.

If I had known how crowded her nest was,
I should not have dared disturb her, for fear
she would break some of them. But not an ess
suffered harm by her sudden flight; and no
harm came to the nest afterward. Every egg
hatched, I was told, and the little chicks,
hardly bigger than bumblebees, were led away
by the mother into the fields.

In about a week I paid another visit to the
hawk's nest. The eggs were all hatched, and
the mother bird was hovering near. I shall
never forget the curious expression of those
young hawks sitting there on the ground. The
expression was not one of youth, but of ex-
treme age. Such an ancient, infirm look as
they had — the sharp, dark, and shrunken look
about the face and eyes, and their feeble, tot-
tering motions! They sat upon their elbows
and the hind part of their bodies, and their
pale, withered legs and feet extended before
them in the most helpless fashion. Their
angular bodies were covered with a pale yel-
lowish down, like that of a chicken; their
heads had a plucked, seedy appearance; and

A YOUNG MARSH HAWK 139

their long, strong, naked wings hung down by
their sides till they touched the ground: power
and ferocity in the first rude draught, shorn of
everything but its sinister ugliness. Another
curious thing was the gradation of the young in
size ; they tapered down regularly from the first
to the fifth, as if there had been, as probably
there was, an interval of a day or two between
the hatching of each.

The two older ones showed some signs of
fear on our approach, and one of them threw
himself upon his back, and put up his impotent
legs, and glared at us with open beak. The
two smaller ones regarded us not at all.

Neither of the parent birds appeared during
our stay.

When I visited the nest again, eight or ten
days later, the birds were much grown, but of
as marked a difference in size as before, and
with the same look of extreme old a^je — old
age in men of the aquiline type, nose and chin
coming together, and eyes large and sunken.
They now glared upon us with a wild, savage
look, and opened their beaks threateningly.

The next week, when my friend visited the
nest, the larger of the hawks fought him sav-
agely. But one of the brood, probably the
last to hatch, had made but little growth. It
appeared to be on the point of starvation. The
mother hawk (for the male seemed to have dis-
appeared) had doubtless found her family too
large for her, and w'as deliberately allowing one
of the number to perish; or did the larger and

140 A YOUNG MARSH HAWK

stronger young devour all the food before the
weaker member could obtain any? Probably
this was the case.

Arthur brought the feeble nestling away, and
the same day my little boy got it and brought
it home, wrapped in a woolen rag. It was
clearly a starved bantling. It cried feebly, but
would not lift up its head.

We first poured some warm milk down its
throat, which soon revived it, so that it would
swallow small bits of flesh. In a day or two
we had it eating ravenously, and its growth be-
came noticeable. Its voice had the sharp whis-
tling character of that of its parents, and was
stilled only when the bird was asleep. We
made a pen for it, about a yard square, in one
end of the study, covering the floor with several
thicknesses of newspapers; and here, upon a
bit of brown woolen blanket for a nest, the
hawk waxed strong day by day. An uglier-
looking pet, tested by all the rules we usually
apply to such things, w^ould have been hard to
find. There he would sit upon his elbows, his
helpless feet out in front of him, his great
featherless wings touching the floor, and shrilly
cry for more food. For a time we gave him
water daily from a stylograph-pen filler, but the
water he evidently did not need or relish.
Fresh meat, and plenty of it, was his demand.
And we soon discovered that he liked game,
such as mice, squirrels, birds, much better than
butcher's meat.

Then began a lively campaign on the part of

A YOUNG MAKSII HAWK 141

my little boy against all the vermin and small
game in the neighborhood to keep the hawk
supplied. He trapped and he hunted, he en-
listed his mates in his service, he even robbed
the cats to feed the hawk. His usefulness as
a boy of all work was seriously impaired.

"Where is J ?" "Gone after a scpiirrel

for his hawk." And often the day would l^e
half gone before his hunt was successfuh The
premises were very soon cleared of mice, and
the vicinity of chipmunks and squirrels.
Farther and farther he was compelled to hunt
the surrounding farms and woods to keep up
with the demands of the hawk. By the time
the hawk was ready to fly he had consumed
twenty-one chipmunks, fourteen red squirrels,
sixteen mice, and twelve English sparrows, be-
sides a lot of butcher's meat.

His plumage very soon began to show itself,
crowding off tufts of the down. The quills on
his great wings sprouted and grew apace.

\Vhat a ragged, uncanny appearance he pre-
sented! but his look of extreme age gradually
became modified. What a lover of the sun-
light he was! We would put him out upon
the grass in the full blaze of the morning sun,
and he would spread his wings and bask in it
with the most intense enjoyment. In the nest
the young must be exposed to the full power of
the midday sun during our first heated terms in
June and July, the thermometer often going up
to 93 or 95 degrees, so that sunshine seemed to
be a need of his nature. He liked tlie rain

142 A YOUNG MARSH HAWK

equally well, and when put out in a shower
would sit down and take it as if every drop did
him good.

His legs developed nearly as slowly as his
wings. He could not stand steadily upon them
till about ten days before he was ready to fly.
The talons were limp and feeble. When we
came with food he would hobble along toward
us like the worst kind of a cripple, dropping
and moving his wings, and treading upon his
legs from the foot back to the elbow, the foot
remaining closed and useless. Like a baby
learning to stand, he made many trials before he
succeeded. He would rise up on his trembling
legs only to fall back again.

One day, in the summer-house, I saw him
for the first time stand for a moment squarely
upon his legs with the feet fully spread beneath
them. He looked about him as if the world
suddenly wore a new aspect.

His plumage now grew quite rapidly. One
red squirrel per day, chopped fine with an axe,
was his ration. He began to hold his game
with his foot while he tore it. The study was
full of his shed down. His dark brown mot-
tled plumage began to grow beautiful. The
wings drooped a little, but gradually he got con-
trol of them and held them in place.

It was now the 20th of July, and the hawk
was about five weeks old. In a day or two he
was walking or jumping about the ground. He
chose a position under the edge of a Norway
spruce, where he would sit for hours dozing, oi

A YOUNG MAK8H HAWK 143

looking out upon tlie landscape. When we
brought him game he would advance to meet us
witli wings slightly lifted, and uttering a shrill
cry. Toss him a mouse or sparrow, and he
would seize it with one foot and hop off to his
cover, where he would bend above it, spread
his plumage, look this way and that, uttering
all the time the most exultant and satisfied
chuckle.

About this time he began to practice striking
with his talons, as an Indian boy might begin
practicing with his bow and arrow. He would
strike at a dry leaf in the grass, or at a fallen
apple, or at some imaginary object. He was
learning the use of his weapons. His wings
also — he seemed to feel them sprouting from
his shoulder. He would lift them straight up
and hold them expanded, and they would seem
to quiver with excitement. Every hour in the
day he would do this. The pressure was be-
ginning to centre there. Then he would strike
playfully at a leaf or a bit of wood, and keep
his wings lifted.

The next step was to spring into the air and
beat his wings. He seemed now to be thinking
entirely of his wings. They itched to be put
to use.

A day or two later he would leap and fly
several feet. A pile of brush ten or twelve feet
below the bank was easily reached. Here he
would perch in true hawk fashion, to the be-
wilderment and scandal of all the robins and
catbirds in the vicinity. Here he would dart

144 A YOUNG MARSH HAWK

his eye in all directions, turning his head over
and glancing it up into the sky.

He was now a lovely creature, fully fledged,
and as tame as a kitten. But he was not a bit
like a kitten in one respect — he could not bear
to have you stroke or even touch his plumage.
He had a horror of your hand, as if it would
hopelessly defile him. But he would perch upon
it, and allow you to carry him about.

If a dog or cat appeared, he was ready to give
battle instantly. He rushed up to a little dog
one day, and struck him with his foot savagely.
He was afraid of strangers, and of any unusual
object.

The last week in July he began to fly quite
freely, and it was necessary to clip one of his
wings. As the clipping embraced only the ends
of his primaries, he soon overcame the diffi-
culty, and by carrying his broad, long tail more
on that side, flew with considerable ease. He
made longer and longer excursions into the sur-
rounding fields and vineyards, and did not al-
ways return. On such occasions we would go
find him and fetch him back.

Late one rainy afternoon he flew aAvay into
the vineyard, and when, an hour later, I went
after him, he could not be found, and we never
saw him again.

We hoped hunger would soon drive him
back, but we have had no clue to him from that
day to this.

THE CHIPMUNK

The first chipmunk in March is as sure a
token of the spring as the first bluebird or the
first robin; and it is quite as welcome. Some
genial influence has found him out there in his
burrow, deep under the ground, and waked him
up and enticed him forth into the light of day.
The red squirrel has been more or less active all
winter; his track has dotted the surface of every
new fallen snow throughout the season. But
the chipmunk retired from view early in De-
cember and has passed the rigorous months in
his nest, beside his hoard of nuts, some feet
underground, and hence, when he emerges in
March and is seen upon his little journeys^^along
the fences, or perched upon a log or rock near
his hole in the woods, it is another sign that
spring is at hand. His store of nuts may or
may not be all consumed; it is certain that
he is no sluggard, to sleep away these first
bright warm days.

Before the first crocus is out of the ground,
you may look for the first chipmunk. When
I hear the little downy woodpecker begin his
spring drumming, then I know the chipmunk
is due. He cannot sleep after that challenge of
the woodpecker reaches his ear.

146 THE CHIPMUNK

Apparently the first thing he does on coming
forth, as soon as he is sure of himself, is to go
courting. So far as I have observed, the love-
making of the chipmunk occurs in March. A
single female will attract all the males in the
vicinity. One early March day I was at work
for several hours near a stone fence where a
female had apparently taken up her quarters.
What a train of suitors she had that day ! how
they hurried up and down, often giving each
other a spiteful slap or bite as they passed.
The young are born in May, four or five at a
birth.

The chipmunk is quite a solitary creature; I
have never known more than one to occupy the
same den. Apparently no two can agree to live
together. AMiat a clean, pert, dapper, nervous
little fellow he is ! How fast his heart beats, as
he stands up on the wall by the roadside, and
with hands spread out upon his breast regards
you intently ! A movement of your arm, and
he darts into the wall with a saucy chip-r-r,
which has the effect of slamming the door behind
him.

On some still day in autumn, the nutty days,
the woods will often be pervaded by an under-
tone of sound, produced by their multitudinous
clucking, as they sit near their dens. It is one
of the characteristic sounds of fall.

The chipmunk has many enemies, such as
cats, weasels, black snakes, hawks, and owls.
One season one had his den in the side of the
bank near my study. As I stood regarding hia

THE CHIPxMUNK 147

goings and comings, one October morning, I
saw him, when a few yards away from his hole,
turn and retreat with all speed. As he darted
beneath the sod, a shrike swooped down and
hovered a moment on the wing just over the
hole where he had disappeared. I doubt if the
shrike could have killed him, but it certainly
gave him a good fright.

It was amusing to watch this chipmunk carry
nuts and other food into his den. He had
made a well-defined path from his door out
through the weeds and dry leaves, into the ter-
ritory where his feeding ground lay. The
path was a crooked one ; it dipped under weeds,
under some large loosely piled stones, under a
pile of chestnut posts, and then followed the
remains of an old wall. Going and coming,
his motions were like clockwork. He always
went by spurts and sudden sallies. He was
never for one moment off his guard. He
would appear at the mouth of his den, look
quickly about, take a few leaps to a tussock of
grass, pause a breath with one foot raised, slip
quickly a few yards over some dry leaves, pause
again by a stump beside a path, rush across the
path to the pile of loose stones, go under the
first and over the second, gain the pile of posts,
make his way through that, survey his course a
half moment from the other side of it, and then
dart on to some other cover, and presently be-
yond my range, where I think he gathered
acorns, as there were no other nut-bearing trees
than oaks near. In four or five minutes I

148 THE CHIPMUNK

would see him coming back, always keeping
rigidly to the course he took going out, pausing
at the same spots, darting over or under the
same objects, clearing at a bound the same pile
of leaves. There was no variation in his man-
ner of proceeding all the time I observed him.

He was alert, cautious, and exceedingly
methodical. He had found safety in a certain
course, and he did not at any time deviate a
hair's breadth from it. Something seemed to
say to him all the time, "Beware, beware!"
The nervous, impetuous ways of these creatures
are no doubt the result of the life of fear which
they lead.

My chipmunk had no companion. He lived
all by himself in true hermit fashion, as is usu-
ally the case with this squirrel. Provident
creature that he is, one would think that he
would long ago have discovered that heat, and
therefore food, is economized by two or three
nesting together.

One day in early spring a chipmunk that lived
near me met with a terrible adventure, the mem-
ory of which Avill probably be handed down
through many generations of its family. I was
sitting in the summer-house with oSTig the cat
upon my knee, when the chipmunk came out of
its den a few feet away, and ran quickly to a pile
of chestnut posts about twenty yards from where
I sat. Nig saw it and was off my lap upon
the floor in an instant. I spoke sharply to the
cat, when she sat down and folded her paws
under her, and regarded the squirrel, as I

THE CHIPMUNK 149

thought, with only a dreamy kind of interest.
I fancied she thought it a hopeless case there
amid that pile of posts. "That is not your
game, Nig," I said, "so spare yourself any
anxiety. " Just then I was called to the house,
where I was detained about five minutes. As
I returned I met Nig coming to the house with
the chipmunk in her mouth. She had the air
of one who had won a wager. She carried the
chipmunk by the tliroat, and its body hung
limp from her mouth. I quickly took the
squirrel from her and reproved her sharply. It
lay in my hand as if dead, though I saw no
marks of the cat's teeth upon it. Presently it
gasped for its breath, then again and again. I
saw that the cat had simply choked it. Quickly
the film passed off its eyes, its heart began
visibly to beat, and slowly the breathing became
regular. I carried it back and laid it down in
the door of its den. In a moment it crawled or
kicked itself in. In the afternoon I placed a
handful of corn there, to express my sympathy,
and as far as possible make amends for Nig's
cruel treatment.

Not till four or five days had passed did my
little neighbor emerge again from its den and
then only for a moment. That terrible black
monster with the large green-yellow eyes — it
might be still lurking near. How the black
monster had captured the alert and restless
squirrel so quickly, under the circumstances,
was a great mystery to me. Was not its eye
as sharp as the cat's and its movements as quick ?

150 THE CHIPMUNK

Yet cats do have the secret of catching squirrels,
and birds, and mice, but I have never yet had
the luck to see it done.

It was not very long before the chipmunk
was going to and from her den as usual, though
the dread of the black monster seemed ever
before her, and gave speed and extra alertness
to all her movements. In early summer four
young chipmunks emerged from the den, and
ran freely about. There was nothing to disturb
them, for alas, Nig herself was now dead.

One summer day I watched a cat for nearly
a half hour trying her arts upon a chipmunk
that sat upon a pile of stone. Evidently her
game was to stalk him. She had cleared half
the distance, or about twelve feet, that separated
the chipmunk from a dense Norway spruce
when I chanced to become a spectator of the
little drama. There sat the cat crouched low
on the grass, her big, yellow eyes fixed upon
the chipmunk, and there sat the chipmunk at
the mouth of his den motionless with his eye
fixed upon the cat. For a long time neither
moved. "Will the cat bind him with her
fatal spell ? " I thought. Sometimes her head
slowly lowered and her eyes seemed to dilate,
and I fancied she was about to spring. But
she did not. The distance was too great to be
successfully cleared in one bound. Then the
squirrel moved nervously, but kept his eye
upon the enemy. Then the cat evidently
grew tired and relaxed a little and looked
behind her. Then she crouched again and

THE CHIPMUNK 151

riveted her gaze upon the squirrel. But the
latter would not be hypnotized; it shifted
Its position a few times and finally rniicklv
entered its den, when the cat soon slunk
away.

In digging his hole it is evident tliat the
chipmunk carries away the loose soil. Xever a
gram of it is seen in front of his door. Those
pockets of his probably stand him in good stead
on such occasions. Only in one instance have
I seen a pile of earth before the entrance to a
chipmunk s den, and that was where the builder
had begun his house late in November and was
probably too much hurried to remove this u^dv
mark from before his door. I used to pass his
place every morning in my walk, and my eve
always fell upon that little pile of red, freshly
dug soil. A little later I used frequently to
surprise the squirrel furniching his house, carry-
mg in dry leaves of the maple and plane-tree
He would seize a large leaf and with both hands
stuff It into his cheek pockets, and then carry it
into his den. I saw him on several different
days occupied in this way. I trust he had se-
cured his winter stores, though I am a little
doubtful. He was hurriedly making himself a
new home, and the cold of December was upon us
while he was yet at work. It may be that he
had moved the stores from his old quarters
wherever they were, and again it may be that
he had been dispossessed of both his house and
provender by some other chipmunk.

When nuts or grain are not to be had, these

152 THE CHIPMUNK

thrifty little creatures will find some substitute
to help them over the winter. Two chipmunks
near my study were occupied many days in
carrying in cherry pits which they gathered
beneath a large cherry-tree that stood ten or
twelve rods away. As Nig was no longer about
to molest them, they grew very fearless, and
used to spin up and down the garden path to
and from their source of supplies in a way quite
unusual with these timid creatures. After they
had got enough cherry pits, they gathered the
seed of a sugar maple that stood near. Many
of the keys remained upon the tree after the
leaves had fallen and these the squirrels har-
vested. They would run swiftly out upon the
ends of the small branches, reach out for the
maple keys, snip off the wings and deftly slip
the nut or samara into their cheek pockets.
Day after day in late autumn I used to see
them thus occupied.

As I have said, I have no evidence that more
than one chipmunk occupy the same den. One
March morning after a light fall of snow I saw
where one had come up out of his hole, which
was in the side of our path to the vineyard, and
after a moment's survey of the surroundings
had started off on his travels. I followed the
track to see where he had gone. He had
passed through my woodpile, then under the
beehives, then around the' study and under
some spruces and along the slope to the hole of
a friend of his, about sixty yards from his own.
Apparently he had gone in here, and then his

THE CHIPMUNK 153

friend had come forth with him, for there were
two tracks leading from this doorway. I fol-
lowed them to a third humhle entrance, not far
off, wliere the tracks were so numerous that I
lost the trail. It was pleasing to see the evi-
dence of their morning sociability written there
upon the new snow.

One of the enemies of the chipmunk, as I
discovered lately, is the weasel. I was sitting
in the woods one autumn day when I heard a
small cry, and a rustling amid the branches of
a tree a few rods beyond me. Looking thither
I saAv a chipmunk fall through the air, and
catch on a limb twenty or more feet from the
ground. He appeared to have dropped from
near the top of the tree.

He secured his hold upon the small branch
that had luckily intercepted his fall, and sat
perfectly still. In a moment more I saw a
weasel — one of the smaller red varieties —
come down the trunk of the tree, and begin
exploring the branches on a level with the
chipmunk.

I saw in a moment what had happened. The
weasel had driven the squirrel from his retreat
in the rocks and stones beneath, and had pressed
him so closely that he had taken refuge in the
top of a tree. But weasels can climb trees too,
and this one had tracked the friglitened chip-
munk to the topmost branch, M'here lie had tried
to seize him. Then the squirrel liad, in liorror,
let go his hold, screamed, and fallen through
the air, till he struck the blanch as just described.

154 THE CHIPMUNK

Now his bloodthirsty enemy was looking for
him again, apparently relying entirely upon his
sense of smell to guide him to the game.

How did the weasel know the squirrel had
not fallen clear to the ground? He certainly
did know, for when he reached the same tier of
branches, he began exploring them. The chip-
munk sat transfixed with fear, frozen with ter-
ror, not twelve feet away, and yet the weasel
saw him not.

Bound and round, up and down he went on
the branches, exploring them over and over.
How he hurried, lest the trail get cold ! How
subtle and cruel and fiendish he looked ! His
snakelike movements, his tenacity, his speed!

He seemed baffled; he knew his game was
near, but he could not strike the spot. The
branch, upon the extreme end of which the
squirrel sat, ran out and up from the tree seven
or eight feet, and then, turning a sharp elbow,
swept down and out at right angles with its
first covirse.

The weasel would pause each time at this
elbow and turn back. It seemed as if he knew
that particular branch held his prey, and yet its
crookedness each time threw him out. He
would not give it up, but went over his course
again and again.

One can fancy the feelings of the chipmunk,
sitting there in plain view a few feet away,
watching its deadly enemy hunting for the clue.
How its little heart must have fairly stood still
each time the fatal branch was struck. Prob-

THE CHIPMUNK 155

ably as a last resort it would again have let go
its hold and fallen to the ground, where it
might have eluded its enemy a while longer.

In the course of five or six minutes, the
weasel gave over the search, and ran hurriedly
down the tree to the ground.

The chipmunk remained motionless for a long
time; then he stirred a little as if hope was ret
viving. Then he looked nervously about him ;
then he had recovered himself so far as to
change his position.

Presently he began to move cautiously along
the branch to the bole of the tree ; then, after
a few moments' delay, he plucked up courage
to descend to the ground, where I hope no
weasel has disturbed him since.

SPEING JOTTINGS

For ten or more years past I have been in
the habit of jotting down, among other things
in my note-book, observations upon the seasons
as they passed, — the complexion of the day,
the aspects of nature, the arrival of the birds,
the opening of the flowers, or any characteristic
feature of the passing moment or hour which
the great open-air panorama presented. Some
of these notes and observations touching the
opening and the progress of the spring season
follow herewith.

I need hardly say they are off-hand and in-
formal; what they have to recommend them to
the general reader is mainly their fidelity to
actual fact. The sun always crosses the line on
time, but the seasons which he makes are by no
means so punctual; they loiter or they hasten,
and the spring tokens are three or four weeks
earlier or later some seasons than others. The
ice often breaks up on the river early in March,
but I have crossed upon it as late as the 10th of
April. My journal presents many samples of
both early and late springs.

But before I give these extracts let me say
a word or two in favor of the habit of keeping
a journal of one's thoughts and days. To a

Sl'KINt; .JOTTINGS 1.07

countryman, especially of a meditative turn,
who likes to preserve the flavor of the passing
moment, or to a person of leisure anywhere,
who wants to make the most of life, a journal
will be found a great liel}). It is a sort of de-
posit account wherein one saves up bits and frag-
ments of his life that would otherwise be lost to
him.

What seemed so insignificant in the passing,
or as it lay in embryo in his mind, becomes a
valuable part of his experiences when it is fully
unfolded and recorded in black and white. The
process of writing develops it; the bud becomes
the leaf or flower; the one is disentangled from
the many and takes definite form and hue. I
remember that Thoreau says in a letter to a
friend after his return from a climb to the top
of Monadnock, that it is not till he gets home
that he really goes over the mountain; that is,
I suppose, sees what the climb meant to him
when he comes to write an account of it to his
friend. Every one's experience is probably
much the same; when we try to tell what we
saw and felt, even to our journals, we discover
more and deeper meanings in things than we
had suspected.

The pleasure and value of every walk or
journey we take may be doubled to us by care-
fully noting down the impressions it makes
upon us. How nuich of the flavor of IMaine
birch I should have missed had I not compelled
that vague, unconscious being within me, who
absorbs so much, and says so little, to unbosom

158 SPRING JOTTINGS

himself at the point of the pen. It was not till
after I got home that I really went to Maine,
or to the Adirondacks, or to Canada. Out of
the chaotic and nebulous impressions which
these expeditions gave me, I evolved the real
experience. There is hardly anything that
does not become much more in the telling than
in the thinking, or in the feeling.

I see the fishermen floating up and down the
river above their nets, which are suspended far
out of sight in the water beneath them. They
do not know what fish they have got, if any,
till after a Avhile they lift the nets up and ex-
amine them. In all of us there is a region of
sub-consciousness above which our ostensible
lives go forward, and in which much comes to
us or is slowly developed, of which we are quite
ignorant, until we lift up our nets and inspect
them.

Then the charm and significance of a day are
so subtle and fleeting! Before we know it, it
is gone past all recovery. I find that each
spring, that each summer, and fall, and winter
of my life has a hue and quality of its own,
given by some prevailing mood, a train of
thought, an event, an experience, — a color or
quality of which I am quite unconscious at the
time, being too near to it, and too completely
enveloped by it. But afterward, some mood or
circumstance, an odor, or fragment of a tune
brings it back as by a flash ; for one brief sec-
ond the adamantine door of the past swings
open and gives me a glimpse of my former life.

SPRING JOTTIxNGS 159

One's journal daslied oif witliout any secondary
motive may often preserve and renew the past
for him in this way.

These leaves from my own journal are not
very good samples of tliis sort of thing, but
they preserve for me the image of many a day
which memory alone could never have kept

March 3, 1879. The sun is getting strong,
but wmter still holds his own. No hint of
spring in the earth or air. No sparrow or spar-
row song yet. But on the 5th there was a hint
of spring. The day warm and the snow melt-
ing. The first bluebird note this morning.
How sweetly it dropped down from the blue
overhead !

March 10. A real spring day at last, and a
rouser! Thermometer between 50° and 60° in
the coolest spot; bees very lively about the
hive and working on the sawdust in the wood
yard; how they dig and wallow in the woody
meal, apparently squeezing it as if forcing it to
yield up something to them! Here they get
their first substitute for pollen. The sawdust
of hickory and maple is preferred. The inner
milky substance between the bark and the wood,
called the cambium layer, is probably the source
of their supplies.

In the growing tree it is in this layer or se-
cretion that the vital processes are the most
active and potent. It has been found by experi-
ment that this tender, milky substance is capable
of exerting a very great force ; a growing tree
exerts a lifting and jiushing force of more than

160 SPRING JOTTINGS

thirty pounds to the square inch, and the force
is thought to reside in the soft fragile cells that
make up the cambium layer. It is like the
strength of Samson residing in his hair. Saw
one bee enter the hive with pollen on his back,
which he must have got from some open green-
house; or had he found the skunk cabbage in
bloom ahead of me?

The bluebirds! It seemed as if they must
have been waiting somewhere close by for the
first warm day, like actors behind the scenes,
for they were here in numbers early in the
morning; they rushed upon the stage very
promptly w^hen their parts were called. No
robins yet. Sap runs, but not briskly. It is
too warm and still ; it wants a brisk day for sap,
with a certain sharpness in the air, a certain
crispness and tension.

March 12. A change to more crispness and
coolness, but a delicious spring morning. Hun-
dreds of snowbirds with a sprinkling of song
and Canada sparrows are all about the house,
chirping and lisping and chattering in a very
animated manner. The air is full of bird
voices; through this maze of fine sounds comes
the strong note and warble of the robin, and
the soft call of the bluebird. A few days ago,
not a bird, not a sound; everything rigid and
severe; then in a day the barriers of winter
give way, and spring comes like an inundation.
In a twinklmg all is changed.

Under date of February 27, 1881, I find this
note: "Warm; saw the male bluebird warbling

SPKINU JOTTINGS IGl

and calling cheerily. The male bluebird spreads
his tail as he flits about at this season, in a way
to make him look very gay and dressy. It adds
to his expression considerably, and makes him
look alert and beau-like, and every inch a male.
The grass is green under the snow and has
grown perceptibly. The warmth of the air
seems to go readily through a covering of ice
and snow. Note how quickly the ice lets go
of the door-stones, though completely covered,
when the day becomes warm."

The farmers say a deep snow draws the frost
out of the ground. It is certain that the frost
goes out when the ground is deeply covered for
some time, though it is of course the warmth
rising up from the depths of the ground that
does it. A winter of deep snows is apt to
prove fatal to the peach buds. The frost leaves
the ground, the soil often becomes so warm that
angle-worms rise to near the surface, the sap in
the trees probably stirs a little; then there
comes a cold wave, the mercury goes down to
ten or fifteen below zero, and the peach buds are
killed. It is not the cold alone that does it; it
is the warmth at one end and the extreme cold
at the other. When the snow is removed so
that the frost can get at the roots also, peach
buds will stand fourteen or fifteen degrees be-
low zero.

March 7, 1881. A perfect spring day at
last, — still, warm, and without a cloud.
Tapped two trees; the sap runs, the snow runs,
everything runs. Bluebirds the only birds yet.

162 SPRING JOTTINGS

Thermometer 42° in the shade. A perfect sap
day. A perfect sap day is a crystalline day;
the night must have a keen edge of frost, and
the day a keen edge of air and sun, with wind
north or northwest. The least film, the least
breath from the south, the least suggestion of
growth, and the day is marred as a sap day.
Maple sap is maple frost melted by the sun.
(9 p. M.) A soft, large-starred night ; the moon
in her second quarter; perfectly still and freez-
ing ; Venus throbbing low in the west. A crys-
talline night.

March 21, 1884. The top of a high barom-
etric wave, a day like a crest, lifted up, sightly,
sparkling. A cold snap without storm issuing
in this clear, dazzling, sharp, northern day.
How light, as if illuminated by more than the
sun; the sky is full of light; light seems to be
streaming up all around the horizon. The
leafless trees make no shadows; the woods are
flooded with light; everything shines; a day
large and imposing, breathing strong masculine
breaths out of the north ; a day without a speck
or film, winnowed through and through, all the
windows and doors of the sky open. Day of
crumpled rivers and lakes, of crested waves, of
bellying sails, high-domed and lustrous day.
The only typical March day of the bright heroic
sort we have yet had.

March 24, 1884. Damp, still morning,
much fog on the river. All the branches and
twigs of the trees strung with drops of water.
The grass and weeds beaded with fog drops.

SPUING JOTTINGS 1G3

Two lines of ducks go up tlie river, one a few
feet beneath the other. On second ghince tlie
under line proves to be the reflection of the
other in the still water. As the ducks cross a
large field of ice, the lower line is suddenly
blotted out, as if the birds had dived beneath
the ice. A train of cars across the river, — the
train sunk beneath a solid stratum of fog, its
plume of smoke and vapor unrolling alx)ve it
and slanting away in the distance; a liquid
morning; the turf buzzes as you walk over it.

Skunk cabbage on Saturday the 22d, proba-
bly in bloom several days. This plant always
gets ahead of me. It seems to come up like a
mushroom in a single night. Water newts just
out, and probably piping before the frogs,
though not certain about this.

March 25. One of the rare days that go be-
fore a storm; the flower of a series of days in-
creasingly fair. To-morrow, probably, the flower
falls, and days of rain and cold prepare the way
for another fair day or days. The barometer
must be high to-day ; the birds fly high. I feed
my bees on a rock and sit long and watch them
covering the combs, and rejoice in the multitu-
dinous humming. The river is a great mirror
dotted here and there by small cakes of ice.
The first sloop comes lazily up on the flood tiile,
like the first butterfly of spring; the little
steamer, our river omnibus, makes her flrst trip,
and wakes the echoes with her salutatory whis-
tle, her flags dancing in the sun.

April 1. Welcome to April, my natal

164 SPRING JOTTINGS

month; the month of the swelling buds, the
springing grass, the first nests, the first plant-
ings, the first flowers, and, last but not least,
the first shad! The door of the seasons first
stands ajar this month, and gives us a peep be-
yond. The month in which to begin the world,
in which to begin your house, in which to begin
your courtship, in which to enter upon any new
enterprise. The bees usually get their first pol-
len this month and their first honey. All hi-
bernating creatures are out before April is past.
The coon, the chipmunk, the bear, the turtles,
the frogs, the snakes, come forth beneath April
skies.

April 8. A day of great brightness and
clearness, — a crystalline April day that precedes
snow. In this sharp crisp air the flakes are
forming. As in a warm streaming south wind
one can almost smell the swelling buds, so a
wind from the opposite quarter at this season
as often suggests the crystalline snow. I go up
in the sugar bush (this was up among the Cats-
kills) and linger for an hour among the old
trees. The air is still and has the property of
being "hollow," as the farmers say; that is, it
is heavy, motionless, and transmits sounds well.
Every warble of a bluebird, or robin, or caw of
crow, or bark of dog, or bleat of sheep, or
cackle of geese, or call of boy or man, within
the landscape, comes distinctly to the ear. The
smoke from the chimney goes straight up.

I walk through the bare fields; the shore
larks run or flit before me; I hear their shuf-

SPRING JOTTINGS 165

fling, gurgling, lisping, half inarticulate song.
Only of late years have I noticed the shore larks
in this section. Now they breed and pass the
summer on these hills, and I am told that they
are gradually becoming permanent residents in
other parts of the State. They are nearly as
large as the English skylark, with conspicuous
black markings about the head and throat; shy
birds squatting in the sear grass, and probably
taken by most country people who see them to
be sparrows.

Their flight and manner in song is much like
that of the skylark. The bird mounts up and
up on ecstatic wing, till it becomes a mere speck
against the sky, where it drifts to and fro, and
utters at intervals its crude song, a mere fraction
or rudiment of the skylark's song, a few sharp,
lisping, unmelodious notes, as if the bird had a
bad cold and could only now and then make any
sound, — heard a long distance, but insignificant,
a mere germ of the true lark's song; as it were
the first rude attempt of nature in this direction.
After due trial and waiting, she develops the
lark's song itself. But if the law of evolution
applies to bird-songs as well as to other things,
the shore lark should in time become a fine
songster. I know of no bird-song that seems
so obviously struggling to free itself and reach a
fuller expression. As the bird seems more and
more inclined to abide permanently amid culti-
vated fields, and to forsake the wild and savage
north, let me hope that its song is also under-
going a favorable change.

166 SPRING JOTTINGS

How conspicuous the crows in the brown
fields, or against the lingering snowbanks, or
in the clear sky. How still the air ! One could
carry a lighted candle over the hills. The
light is very strong, and the effect of the wall
of white mountains rising up all around from
the checkered landscape, and holding up the
blue dome of the sky, is strange indeed.

April 14. A delicious day, warm as May.
This to me is the most bewitching part of
the whole year. One's relish is so keen, and
the morsels are so few, and so tender. How the
fields of winter rye stand out! They call up
visions of England. A perfect day in April far
excels a perfect day in June, because it pro-
vokes and stimulates while the latter sates and
cloys. Such days have all the peace and gen-
iality of summer without any of its satiety or
enervating heat.

April 15. Not much cloud this morning,
but much vapor in the air. A cool south wind
with streaks of a pungent vegetable odor, prob-
ably from the -willows. When I make too
dead a set at it I miss it; but Avhen I let my
nose have its own way, and take in the air
slowly, I get it, an odor as of a myriad swell-
ing buds. The long-drawn call of the high-
hole comes up from the fields, then the tender
rapid trill of the bush or russet sparrow, then
the piercing note of the meadow-lark, a flying
shaft of sound.

April 21. The enchanting days continue
without a break. One's senses are not large

SPRING JOTTINGS 167

enough to take them all in. Maple buds just
bursting, apple-trees full of infantile leaves.
How the poplars and willows stand out! A
moist, warm, brooding haze over all the earth.
All day my little rustic sparrow sings and trills
divinely. The most prominent bird music in
April is from the sparrows.

The yellow-birds (goldfinches) are just get-
ting on their yellow coats. I saw some yester-
day that had a smutty, unwashed look, because
of the new yellow shining through the old drab-
colored webs of the feathers. These birds do
not shed their feathers in the spring, as careless
observers are apt to think they do, but merely
shed the outer webs of their feathers and quills,
which peel off like a glove from the hand.

All the groves and woods lightly touched
with new foliage. Looks like May; violets
and dandelions in bloom. Sparrow's nest with
two eggs. Maples hanging out their delicate
fringe-like bloom. First swallows may be
looked for any day after April 20.

This period may be called the vernal equi-
poise, and corresponds to the October calm
called the Indian summer.

April 2, 1890. The second of the April
days, clear as a bell. The eye of the heavens
Avide open at last. A sparrow day; how they
sang! And the robins, too, before I was up in
the morning. Now and then I could hear the
rat- tat- tat of the downy at his drum. How
many times I paused at my work tc drink in the
beauty of the day.

168 SPRING JOTTINGS

How I like to walk out after supper these
days ! I stroll over the lawn and stand on the
brink of the hill. The sun is down, the robins
pipe and call, and as the dusk comes on they
indulge in that loud chiding note or scream,
whether in anger or in fun I never can tell.
Up the road in the distance the multitudinous
voice of the little peepers, — a thicket or screen
of sound. An April twilight is unlike any
other.

April 12. Lovely, bright day. We plough
the ground under the hill for the new vine-
yard. In opening the furrow for the young
vines I guide the team by walking in their
front. How I soaked up the sunshine to-day.
At night I glowed all over ; my whole being had
had an earth bath; such a feeling of freshly
ploughed land in every cell of my brain. The
furrow had struck in; the sunshine had photo-
graphed it upon my soul.

April 13. A warm, even hot April day.
The air full of haze; the sunshine golden.
In the afternoon J. and I walk out over the
country north of town. Everybody is out, all
the paths and byways are full of boys and
young fellows. We sit on a wall a long time by
a meadow and orchard, and drink in the scene.
April to perfection, such a sentiment of spring
everywhere. The sky is partly overcast, the
air moist, just enough so to bring out the odors,
— a sweet perfume of bursting growing things.
One could almost eat the turf like a horse. All
about the robins sang. In the trees the crow-

SPRING JOTTINCS 169

blackbird cackled and jingled. Athwart these
sounds came every half minute the clear, strong
note of the meadow-lark. The larks were very
numerous and were lovemaking. Then the
highhole called and the bush sparrow trilled
Arbutus days these, everybody wants to go to
the woods for arbutus; it fairly calls one. The
soil calls for the plough, too, the garden calls
tor the spade, the vineyard calls for the hoe
^rom all about the farm voices call. Come and
do this, or do that. At night how the "peep-
ers pile up the sound.

How I delight to see the plough at work such
mornings; the earth is ripe for it, fairly lusts
tor It, and the freshly turned soil looks good
enough to eat. Plucked my first bloodroot this
morning, — a full-blown flower with a young
one folded up in a leaf beneath it, only just the
bud emerging like the head of a pappoose pro-
truding from its mother's blanket, —a very
pretty sight. The bloodroot always comes up
with the leaf shielding the flower-bud, as one
shields the flame of the candle in the open air
with his hand half closed about it.

These days the song of the toad — tr-r-r-r-r-
r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r ~ is heard in the land.
At nearly all hours I hear it, and it is as wel-
come to me as the song of any bird. It is a
kind of gossamer of sound drifting in the air.
Mother toad is in the pools and puddles now
depositing that long chain or raveling of oggs,
while her dapper little mate rides u]ion Ter
back and fertilizes them as they are laid. A.s

170 SPRING JOTTINGS

I look toward the fields where the first brown
thrasher is singing, I see emerald patches of rye.
The unctuous confident strain of the bird seems
to make the fields grow greener hour by hour.

May 4. The perfection of early May
weather. How green the grass, how happy the
birds, how placid the river, how busy the bees,
how soft the air ! — that kind of weather when
there seems to be dew in the air all day, — the
day a kind of prolonged morning, — so fresh,
so wooing, so caressing! The baby leaves on
the apple-trees have doubled in size since last
night.

March 12, 1891. Had positive prccf this
morning that at least one song-sparrow has come
back to his haunts of a year ago. One year ago
to-day my attention was attracted, while walk-
ing over to the post-office, by an unfamiliar bird-
song. It caught my ear while I was a long way
off. I followed it up and found that it pro-
ceeded from a song-sparrow. Its chief feature
was one long, clear high note, very strong,
sweet, and plaintive. It sprang out of the trills
and quavers of the first part of the bird-song,
like a long arc or parabola of sound. To my
mental vision it rose far up against the blue,
and turned sharply downward again and fin-
ished in more trills and quavers. I had never
before heard anything like it. It was the usual
long, silvery note in the sparrow's song greatly
increased ; indeed, the whole breath and force of
the bird put in this note, so that you caught
little else than this silver loop of sound. The

SPRING JOTTINGS 171

bird remained in one locality — the Imshy
corner of a field — the whole season. He in-
dulged in the ordinary sparrow song also. I
had repeatedly had my eye upon him when he
changed from one to the other.

And now here lie is again, just a year after,
in the same place, singing the same remarkahle
song, capturing my ear with the same exquisite
lasso of sound. What Avould I not give to
know just where he passed the winter, and what
adventures by flood and field befell him.

(I will add that the bird continued in song
the whole season, apparently confining his wan-
derings to a few acres of ground. But the fol-
lowing spring he did not return, and I have
never heard him since, and if any of his pro-
geny inherited this peculiar song I have not
heard them.)

GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE

Any glimpse of the wild and savage in na-
ture, especially after long confinement indoors
or in town, always gives a little fillip to my
mind. Thus, when in my walk from the city
the other day I paused, after a half hour, in a
thick clump of red cedars crowning a little hill
that arose amid a marshy and bushy bit of land-
scape, and found myself in the banqueting-hall
of a hawk, something more than my natural
history tastes stirred within me.

No hawk was there then, but the marks of
his nightly presence were very obvious. The
branch of a cedar about fifteen feet from the
ground was his perch. It was worn smooth,
with a feather or two adhering to it. The
ground beneath was covered with large pellets
and wads of mouse-hair; the leaves were white
with his droppings, while the dried entrails of
his victims clung here and there to the bushes.
The bird evidently came here nightly to devour
and digest its prey. This was its den, its re-
treat; all about lay its feeding-grounds. It
revealed to me a new trait in the hawk, — its
local attachments and habits; that it, too, had

GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFK 173

a home, and did not wander alxjut like a vaga-
bond. It had its domain, which it no doubt
assiduously cultivated. Here it came to dine
and meditate, and a most attractive spot it had
chosen, a kind of pillared cave amid the cedars.
It was such a spot as the pedestrian would be
sure to direct his steps to, and, having reached
it, would be equally sure to tarry and eat his
own lunch there.

The winged creatures are probably quite as
local as the four-footed. Sitting one night on
a broad, gently rising hill, to see the darkness
close in upon the landscape, my attention was
attracted by a marsh hawk industriously work-
ing the fields about me. Time after time he
made the circuit, varying but little in his
course each time ; dropping into the grass here
and there, beating low over the bogs and bushes,
and then disappearing in the distance. This
was his domain, his preserve, and doubtless ho
had his favorite perch not far off.

All our permanent residents among the birds,
both large and small, are comparatively limited
in their ranges. The crow is nearly as local as
the woodchuck. He goes farther from home in
quest of food, but his territory is well defined,
both winter and summer. His place of roost-
ing remains the same year after year. Once,
while spending a few days at a mountain lake
nearly surrounded by deep woods, my attention
was attracted each night, just at sundown, by
an osprey that always came from the same di-
rection, dipped into the lake as he passed over

174 GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE

it for a sip of its pure water, and disappeared
in the woods beyond. The routine of his life
was probably as marked as that of any of ours.
He fished the waters of the Delaware all day,
probably never going beyond a certain limit,
and returned each night at sundown, as punc-
tual as a day-laborer, to his retreat in the for-
est. The sip of water, too, from the lake he
never failed to take.

All the facts we possess in regard to the hab-
its of the song-birds in this respect point to the
conclusion that the same individuals return to
the same localities year after year, to nest and
to rear their young. I am convinced that the
same woodpecker occupies the same cavity in a
tree winter after winter, and drums upon the
same dry limb spring after spring. I like to
think of all these creatures as capable of local
attachments, and not insensible to the senti-
ment of home.

But I set out to give some glimpses of the
wild life which one gets about the farm. Not
of a startling nature are they, certainly, but
very welcome for all that. The domestic ani-
mals require their lick of salt every week or so,
and the farmer, I think, is equally glad to get
a taste now and then of the wild life that has
so nearly disappeared from the older and more
thickly settled parts of the country.

Last winter a couple of bears, an old one and
a young one, passed through our neighborhood.
Their tracks were seen upon the snow in the
woods, and the news created great excitement

GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE 175

among the Nimrods. It was like the commo-
tion in the water along shore after a steamer
had passed. The bears were proba])ly safely
in the Catskills by the time the hunters got
dogs and guns ready and set forth. Country
people are as eager to accept any rumor of a
strange and dangerous creature in the woods as
they are to believe in a ghost story. They
want it to be true; it gives them sometliing to
think about and talk about. It is to tlieir
minds like strong drink to their palates. It
gives a new interest to the woods, as the ghost
story gives a new interest to the old house.

A few years ago the belief became current in
our neighborhood that a dangerous wild animal
lurked in the woods about, now here, now
there. It had been seen in the dusk. Some
big dogs had encountered it in the night, and
one of them was nearly killed. Then a calf
and a sheep were reported killed and partly de-
voured. Women and children became afraid to
go through the woods, and men avoided them
after sundown. One day as I passed an Irish-
man's shanty that stood in an opening in the
woods, his wife came out with a pail, and
begged leave to accompany me as far as the
spring, which lay beside the road some distance
into the woods. She was afraid to go alone for
water on account of the "wild baste." Then,
to cap the climax of wild rumors, a horse was
killed. One of my neighbors, an intelligent
man and a good observer, went up to see the
horse. He reported that a great gash had been

176 GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE

eaten in the top of the horse's neck, that its
back was bitten and scratched, and that he was
convinced it was the work of some wild animal
like a panther which had landed upon the
horse's back and fairly devoured it alive. The
horse had run up and down the field trying to
escape, and finally, in its desperation, had
plunged headlong off a high stone wall by the
barn and been killed. I was compelled to ac-
cept his story, but I pooh-poohed the conclu-
sions. It was impossible that we should have
a panther in the midst of us, or, if we had, that
it would attack and kill a horse. But how
eagerly the people believed it ! It tasted good.
It tasted good to me too, but I could not believe
it. It soon turned out that the horse was killed
by another horse, a vicious beast that had fits of
murderous hatred toward its kind. The sheep
and calf were probably not killed at all, and
the big dogs had had a fight among themselves.
So the panther legend faded out, and our woods
became as tame and humdrum as before. We
cannot get up anything exciting that will hold,
and have to make the most of such small deer
as coons, foxes, and woodchucks. Glimpses of
these and of the birds are all I have to report.

II

The day on which I have any adventure with
a wild creature, no matter how trivial, has a
little different flavor from the rest; as when,
one morning in early summer, I put my head

GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE 177

out of the back window and returned the clial-
lenge of a quail that sent fortli his clear call
from a fence-rail one hundred yards away. In-
stantly he came sailing over the field of raspber-
ries straight toward me. When about fifteen
yards away he drojDped into the cover and re-
peated his challenge. I responded, when in an
instant he was almost within reach of me. He
alighted under the window, and looked quickly
around for his rival. How his eyes shone, how
his form dilated, how dapper and polished and
brisk he looked! He turned his eye up to me
and seemed to say, "Is it you, then, who are
mocking me?" and ran quickly around the cor-
ner of the house. Here he lingered some time
amid the rosebushes, half persuaded that tlie
call, which I still repeated, came from his rival.
Ah, I thought, if with his mate and young he
M^ould only make my field his home ! The°call
of the quail is a country sound that is becoming
all too infrequent.

So fond am I of seeing Nature reassert her-
self that I even found some compensation in the
loss of my chickens that bright November niglit
when some wild creature, coon or fox, swept
two of them out of the evergreens, and tlieir
squawking as they were hurried across the lawn
called me from my bed to shout good-by after
them. It gave a new interest to the hen-roost,
this sudden incursion of wild nature. I feel
bound to caution tlie boys a])out disturbing the
wild rabbits that in summer breed in my cur-
rant-patch, and in autumn seek refuge imder

178 GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE

my study floor. The occasional glimpses I get
of them about the lawn in the dusk, their cotton
tails twinkling in the dimness, afford me a gen-
uine pleasure. I have seen the time when I
would go a good way to shoot a partridge, but
I would not have killed, if I could, the one
that started out of the vines that cover my rus-
tic porch, as I approached that side of the
house one autumn morning. How much of the
woods, and of the untamable spirit of wild
nature, she brought to my very door! It was
tonic and exhilarating to see her whirl away
toward the vineyard. I also owe a moment's
pleasure to the gray squirrel that, finding my
summer-house in the line of his travels one
summer day, ran through it and almost over my
feet as I sat idling w^ith a book.

I am sure my power of digestion was im-
proved that cold winter morning when, just as
we were sitting down to breakfast about sun-
rise, a red fox loped along in front of the win-
dow, looking neither to the right nor to the
left, and disappeared amid the currant-bushes.
What of the wild and the cunning did he not
bring ! His graceful form and motion were in
my mind's eye all day. When you have seen
a fox loping along in that way you have seen
the poetry there is in the canine tribe. It is
to the eye what a flowing measure is to the
mind, so easy, so buoyant; the furry creature
drifting along like a large red thistledown, or
like a plume borne by the wind. It is some-
thing to remember with pleasure, that a muskrat

GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE 179

Bought my door one December night when u
cold wave was swooping down upon us. A\'as
he seeking shelter, or had he lost his reckon-
ing? The dogs cornered him in the very door-
way, and set up a great hubbub. In the dark-
ness, thinking it was a cat, I put my hand
down to feel it. The creature skii)pe(l to the
other corner of the doorway, hitting my hand
with its cold, rope-like tail. Lighting a match,
I had a glimpse of him sitting up on his
haunches like a woodchuck, confronting his
enemies. I rushed in for the lantern, with the
hope of capturing him alive, but before I re-
turned the dogs, growing bold, had finished
him.

I have had but one call from a coon, that I
am aware of, and I fear we did not treat him
with due hospitality. He took up his quarters
for the day in a Norway spruce, the branches
of which nearly brushed the house. I had
noticed that the dog was very curious about
that tree all the forenoon. After dinner his
curiosity culminated in repeated loud and con-
fident barking. Then I began an investigation,
expecting to find a strange cat, or at most a red
squirrel. But a moment's scrutiny revealed
his coonship. Then how to capture him l>e-
came the problem. A long pole was procured,
and I sought to dislodge him from his hold.
The skill with which he maintained himself
amid the branches excited our admiration.
But after a time he dropped lightly to tlie
ground, not in the least disconcerted, and at

180 GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE

once on his guard against both man and beast.
The dog was a coward, and dared not face him.
When the coon's attention was diverted the
dog would rash in; then one of us would at-
tempt to seize the coon's tail, but he faced about
so quickly, his black eyes gleaming, that the
hand was timid about seizing him. But finally
in his skirmishing with the dog I caught him
by the tail, and bore him safely to an open
flour barrel, and he was our prisoner. Much
amusement my little boy and I anticipated
with him. He partook of food that same day,
and on the second day would eat the chestnuts
in our presence. Never did he show the
slightest fear of us or of anything, but he was
unwearied in his efforts to regain his freedom.
After a few days we put a strap upon his neck
and kept him tethered by a chain. But in the
night, by dint of some hocus-pocus, he got the
chain unsnapped and made off, and is now, I
trust, a patriarch of his tribe, wearing a leather
necktie.

The skunk visits every farm sooner or later.
One night I came near shaking hands with one
on my very door-stone. I thought it was the
cat, and put down my hand to stroke it, when
the creature, probably appreciating my mistake,
moved off up the bank, revealing to me the
white stripe on its body and the kind of cat I
had saluted. The skunk is not easily ruffled,
and seems to employ excellent judgment in the
use of its terrible weapon.

Several times I have had calls from wood-

GLLMrSES OF WILD LIFE 181

chucks. One looked in at tlie open door of my
study one day, and, after sniffing a while, and
not hking the smell of such clover as I was
compelled to nibble there, moved on to })etter
pastures. Another one invaded the kitclien
door while we were at dinner. The dorrs
promptly challenged him, and there was a lively
scrimmage upon the door-stone. I thought the
dogs were fighting, and ruslied to part them.
Ihe incident broke in upon the drowsy summer
noon as did the appearance of the muskrat upon
the frigid December night. The woodchuck
episode that afforded us the most amusement
occurred last summer. ^Ve were at work in a
newly-planted vineyard, when the man with
the cultivator saw, a few yards in front of him
some large gray object that at first puzzled him'
He approached it, and found it to be an old
woodchuck with a young one in its mouth,
bhe was carrying her kitten as does a cat by
the nape of the neck. Evidently she was mov-
ing her family to pastures new. As the man
was m the line of her march, she stopped and
considered what was to be done. He called to
me, and I approached slowly. As the mother
saw me closing in on her flank, she was sud-
denly seized with a panic, and, droi)ping her
young, fled precipitately for the cover of a large
pile of grape-posts some ten or twelve roils di*^-
tant. We pursued hotly, and overhauled her
as she was within one jump of the house of
refuge. Taking her by the tail, I carried her
back to her baby; but she heeded it not. It

182 GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE

was only her own bacon now that she was soli-
citous about. The young one remained where
it had been dropped, keeping up a brave, reas-
suring whistle that was in ludicrous contrast to
its exposed and helpless condition. It was the
smallest woodchuck I had ever seen, not much
larger than a large rat. Its head and shoulders
were so large in proportion to the body as to
give it a comical look. It could not walk about
yet, and had never before been above ground.
Every moment or two it would whistle cheerily,
as the old one does when safe in its den and the
farm dog is fiercely baying outside. We took
the youngster home, and my little boy was de-
lighted over the prospect of a tame woodchuck.
Not till the next day would it eat. Then, get-
ting a taste of the milk, it clutched the spoon
that held it with great eagerness, and sucked
away like a little pig. We were all immensely
diverted by it. It ate eagerly, grew rapidly,
and was soon able to run about. As the old
one had been killed, we became curious as to
the fate of the rest of her family, for no doubt
there Avere more. Had she moved them, or
had we intercepted her on her first trip ? We
knew where the old den was, but not the new.
So we would keep a lookout. Near the end of
the week, on passing by the old den, there were
three young ones creeping about a few feet from
its mouth. They were starved out, and had
come forth to see what could be found. We
captured them all, and the young family was
again united. How these poor, half-famished

GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE 183

creatures did lay hold of the spoon when they
got a taste of the milk! One could not help
laughing. Their little shinhig black paws were
so handy and so smooth ; they seemed as if in-
cased in kid gloves. They throve well upon
milk, and then upon milk and clover. l)ut
after the novelty of the thing had worn off, the
boy found he had encumbered himself with se-
rious duties in assuming the position of foster-
mother to this large family ; so he gave them all
away but one, the first one captured, which had
outstripped all the others in growth. This
soon became a very amusmg pet, but it always
protested when handled, and always objected to
confinement. I should mention that the cat had
a kitten about the age of the chuck, and as she
had more milk than the kitten could dispose of,
the chuck, when we first got him, was often
placed in the nest with the kitten, and was
regarded by the cat as tenderly as her own, and
allowed to nurse freely. Thus a friendship
sprang up between the kitten and the wood-
chuck, wdiich lasted as long as the latter lived.
They w^ould play together precisely like two
kittens: clinch and tumble about and roll upon
the grass in a very amusing way. Finally the
woodchuck took up his abode under the floor of
the kitchen, and gradually relapsed into a half-
wild state. He would permit no familiarities
from any one save the kitten, but each day they
would have a turn or two at their old games of
rough-and-tumble. The chuck was now over
half grown, and procured his own living. One

184 GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE

day the dog, ^ho had all along looked upon
him with a jealous eye, encountered him too
far from cover, and his career ended then and
there.

In July the woodchuck was forgotten in our
interest in a little gray rabbit which we found
nearly famished. It was so small that it could
sit in the hollow of one's hand. Some accident
had probably befallen its mother. The tiny
creature looked spiritless and forlorn. We had
to force the milk into its mouth. But in a day
or two it began to revive, and would lap the
milk eagerly. Soon it took to grass and clover,
and then to nibbling sweet apples and early
pears. It grew rapidly, and was one of the
softest and most harmless-looking pets I had
ever seen. For a month or more the little
rabbit was the only company I had, and it
helped to beguile the time immensely. In
coming in from the field or from my work, I
seldom failed to bring it a handful of red clover
blossoms, of which it became very fond. One
day it fell slyly to licking my hand, and I dis-
covered it wanted salt. I would then moisten
my fingers, dip them into the salt, and offer
them to the rabbit. How rapidly the delicate
little tongue would play upon them, darting out
to the right and left of the large front incisors,
the slender paws being pressed against my hand
as if to detain it ! But the rabbit proved really
untamable; its wild nature could not be over-
come. In its large box-cage or prison, where
it could see nothing but the tree above it, it

GLIMrSK.S <JF WILD LIFE 18.5

was tame, and M-oukl at times frisk playfully
about my hand and strike it gently with its fore-
feet; but the moment it was liberated in a room
or let down in the grass with a string about its
neck, all its wild nature came forth. In the
roora it would run and hide; in the oi.on it
would make desperate eflorts to escape, and leap
and bound as you drew in the string that held
it. At night, too, it never failed to try t.-.
make its escape from the cage, and finally,
when two thirds grown, succeeded, and we saw
it no more.

Ill

How completely the life of a bird revolves
about its nest, its home! In the case of the
wood-thrush, its life and joy seem to mount
higher and higher as the nest prospers. The
male becomes a fountain of melody ; his hai)in-
ness waxes day by day; he makes little trium-
phal tours about the neighborhood, and pours
out his pride and gladness in the ears of all.
How sweet, how well-bred, is his demonstra-
tion! But let any accident befall that precious
nest, and what a sudden silence falls upon him!
Last summer a pair of wood-thrushes built
their nest within a few rods of my house, and
when the enterprise was fairly launched and the
mother bird was sitting uj^on her four blue i^n^^,
the male was in the height of his song. How
he poured forth his rich melody, never in the
immediate vicinity of the nest, but alway?

f

186 GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE

within easy hearing distance ! Every morning,
as promptly as the morning came, between five
and six, he would sing for half an hour from
the top of a locust-tree that shaded my roof. I
came to expect him as much as I expected my
breakfast, and I was not disappointed till one
morning I seemed to miss something. What
was it? Oh, the thrush has not sung this
morning. Something is the matter; and recol-
lecting that yesterday I had seen a red squirrel
in the trees not far from the nest, I at once
inferred that the nest had been harried. Go-
ing to the spot, I found my fears were well
grounded; every egg was gone. The joy of
the thrush was laid low. No more songs from
the treetop, and no more songs from any point,
till nearly a week had elapsed, when I heard
him again under the hill, where the pair had
started a new nest, cautiously tuning up, and
apparently with his recent bitter experience
still weighing upon him.

After a pair of birds have been broken up
once or twice during the season, they become
almost desperate, and will make great efforts tc
outwit their enemies. The past season my at-
tention was attracted by a pair of brown thrash^
ers. They first built their nest in a pasture-
field under a low, scrubby apple-tree which the
cattle had browsed down till it spread a thick,
wide mass of thorny twigs only a few inches
above the ground. Some blackberry briers had
also grown there, so that the screen was perfect.
My dog first started the bird, as I was passing

GLIMPSES OF WILD LJFK 187

by. P»y stooping low ;iii<l peering intently, I
could make out the nest and eggs. Two 'or
three times a week, as I passed by, I would
pause to see how the nest was prosix-ring The
mother bird would keep her ]>lace, her'' yellow
eyes never blinking. One morning as I looked
into her tent I found the nest empty. Some
night-prowler, probably a skunk or fox, or
maybe a black snake or red squirrel by day
had plundered it. It would seem as if it wal
too well screened : it was in such a spot as any
depredator would be apt to explore. "Surely "
he would say, 'Hhis is a likely place for 'a
nest." The birds then moved over the hill a
hundred rods or more, mucli nearer the house,
and m some rather open bushes tried again!
But again they came to grief. Then, after
some delay, the mother bird made a l)old stroke.
She seemed to reason with herself thus: "Since
I have fared so disastrously in seeking seclusion
for my nest, I will now adopt the opposite tac-
tics, and come out fairly in tlie open. AMiat
hides me hides my enemies: let us try greater
publicity." So she came out and built' her nest
by a few small shoots that grew beside the path
tliat divides the two vineyards, and where we
passed to and fro many times daily. 1 discov-
ered her by chance early in the morning as 1
proceeded to my work. Slie started up at my
feet and llitted quickly along al)ove the
ploughed ground, almost as red as the soil. 1
admired her audacity. Surely no prowler by
night or day would suspect a nest in this open

188 GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE

and exposed place. There was no cover by
which they could approach, and no concealment
anywhere. The nest was a hasty affair, as if
the birds' patience at nest-building had been
about exhausted. Presently an egg appeared,
and then the next day another, and on the
fourth day a third. No doubt the bird would
have succeeded this time had not man inter-
fered. In cultivating the vinevards the horse
and cultivator had to pass over this very spot.
Upon this the bird had not calculated. I de-
termined to assist her. I called ray man, and
told him there was one spot in that vineyard,
no bigger than his hand, where the horse's foot
must not be allowed to fall, nor tooth of culti-
vator to touch. Then I showed him the nest,
and charged him to avoid it. Probably if I
had kept the secret to myself and let the bird
run her own risk, the nest would have escaped.
But the result was that the man, in elaborately
trying to avoid the nest, overdid the matter;
the horse plunged, and set his foot squarely
upon it. Such a little spot, the chances were
few that the horse's foot would fall exactly
there ; and yet it did, and the birds' hopes were
again dashed. The pair then disappeared from
my vicinity, and I saw them no more.

The summer just gone I passed at a farm-
house on the skirts of the Northern Catskills.
How could I help but see what no one else of
all the people about seemed to notice, — a little
bob-tailed song-sparrow building her nest in a
pile of dry brush very near the kitchen door.

GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFK l«i)

It was late in July, and slie hail ihmljtlesa
reared one brood in tlie earlier season. Her
toilet was decidedly the worse for wear. I
noted her day after day very busy about the
fence and quince bushes between the Ikjusc and
milk house with her beak full of coarse straw
and hay. To a casual observer she seemed Hit-
ting about aimlessly, carrying straws from place
to place just to amuse herself. When I came
to watch her closely to learn the place of her
nest, she seemed to suspect my intention and
made many little feints and movements calcu-
lated to put me olf the track. But I would not
be misled, and presently had her secret. The
male did not assist her at all, but sang much of
the time in an apple-tree or upon the fence, on
the other side of the house. Those artists who
paint pictures of devoted male birds singing
from the branch that holds the nest, or in its
immediate vicinity, do not give the birds credit
for all the wit they possess. They do not ad-
vertise the place where their treasures are hid
in this way. See yonder indigo-bird shaking
out its happy song from the topmost twig of the
maple or oak; its nest is many yards away in
a low bush not more than three feet from the
ground.

And so with nearly all the birds. The one
thing to which they bend all tlieir wits is the
concealment of their nests. \\'lien you come
upon the sitting bird, she will almost let you
touch her rather than to start up before you and
thus betray her secret. The bobolink begins

190 GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE

to scold and to circle about you as soon as you
enter the meadow where his nest is so well hid-
den. He does not wait to show his anxiety till
you are almost upon it. By no action of his
can you get a clue as to its exact whereabouts.

The song-sparrow nearly always builds upon
the ground, but my little neighbor of last July
laid the foundations of her domicile a foot or
more above the soil. And what a mass of
straws and twigs she did collect together!
How coarse and careless and aimless at first; a
mere lot of rubbish dropped upon the tangle of
dry limbs, but presently how it began to refine
and come into shape in the centre! till there
was the most exquisite hair-lined cup set about
by a chaos of coarse straws and branches.
What a process of evolution! The completed
nest was foreshadowed by the first stiff straw,
but how far off is yet that dainty casket with
its complement of speckled eggs ! The nest was
so placed that it had for canopy a large broad,
drooping leaf of yellow dock. This formed a
perfect shield against both sun and rain, while it
served to conceal it from any curious eyes from
above, — from the cat, for instance, prowling
along the top of the wall. Before the eggs had
hatched the docken leaf wilted and dried and
fell down upon the nest. But the mother bird
managed to insinuate herself beneath it, and
went on with her brooding all the same.

Then I arranged an artificial cover of leaves
and branches which shielded her charge till they
had flown away. A mere trifle was this little

GLIMPSES OK WILD LIFE 1<J1

bob-tailed ])ir(l with lier arts and licr secrets,
and the male with his song, and yet the pail-
gave a touch of something to those days and to
that place which I would nut willingly have
missed.

I have spoken of nature as a stage whereon
the play, more or less interrupted and indirect,
constantly goes on. One amusing actor upon
that stage one season, upon my own premises,
was a certain male bluebird. To the spectator-
it was a comedy, but to the actor himself I im-
agine it was quite serious Inisiness. The bird
and his mate had a nest in a box upon an out-
house. In this outhouse was a whidow with
one pane broken out. At almost any hour in
the day from spring to early summer, the male
bird could be seen fluttering and pecking against
this window from the outside. Did he want to
get within ? Apparently so, and yet he would
now and then pause in his demonstrations,
alight in the frame of the broken pane, look in-
tently within, and after a moment resume his
assault upon the window. The people who saw
the actions of the bird were at a loss how to
interpret them. But I could see at once what
was the matter. The bird saw its image in the
mirror of the glass (the dark interior helped the
reflection) and was making war as he su])posed
upon a rival. Only the unyielding glass kept
him from tweaking out every saucy blue feather
upon the spot! Then he would pi-ep in through
the vacant pane and try to determine where his
rival had so suddenly disappeared. How it

192 GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE

must have puzzled his little poll! And he
learned nothing from experience. Hundreds of
times did he perch in the broken pane and
sharply eye the interior. And for two months
there did not seem to be an hour when he w^as
not assaulting the window. He never lost faith
in the reality of the bird within, and he never
abated one jot his enmity toward him. If the
glass had been a rough surface he would cer-
tainly have worn his beak and claws and wings
to mere stubs. The incident shows the pug-
nacious disposition of the bluebird, and it shows
how shallow a bird's wit is when new problems
or conditions confront it. I have known a
cock-robin to assault an imaginary rival in a
garret window, in the same manner, and keep
up the warfare for weeks.

On still another occasion similar antics of a
male bluebird greatly disturbed the sleep of my
hired man in the early morning. The bird
with its mate had a nest in a box near by the
house, and after the manner of the bluebirds
was very inquisitive and saucy about windows;
one morning it chanced to discover its reflected
image in the windows of the hired man's room.
The shade, of some dark stuff, was down on
the inside, which aided in making a kind of
looking-glass of the window. Instantly the
bird began an assault upon his supposed rival
in the window, and made such a clattering that
there was no more sleep inside that room.
Morning after morning the bird kept this up
till the tired ploughman complained bitterly and

GLIMPSES OF WILD LIFE 193

declared his intention to kill the bird. In an
unlucky moment I suggested that he leave the
shade up and try the etiect. lie did so, and
his morning sleep was thenceforth undisturbed.
A Western correspondent writes me that she
once put a looking-glass down on the floor in
front of the canary bird's cage The poor ca-
nary had not had any communion with his own
kind for years. "He used often to watch the
ugly sparrows — the little plebeians — from his
aristocratic gilded palace. I opened his cage
and he walked up to the looking-glass and it
was not long before he made up his mind. He
collected dead leaves, twigs, bits of paper, and
all sorts of stray bits, and began a nest right off.
Several days after in his lonely cage he would
take bits of straw and arrange them when they
were given him.''

A LIFE OF FEAE

As I sat looking from my window the other
morning upon a red squirrel gathering hickory-
nuts from a small hickory, and storing them up
in his den in the bank, I was forcibly reminded
of the state of constant fear and apprehension
in which the wild creatures live, and I tried to
picture to myself what life would be to me, or
to any of us, hedged about by so many dangers,
real or imaginary.

The squirrel would shoot up the tree, mak-
ing only a brown streak from the bottom to the
top; would seize his nut and rush down again
in the most precipitate manner. Half way to
his den, which was not over three rods distant,
he would rush up the trunk of another tree for
a few yards to make an observation. No dan-
ger being near, he would dive into his den and
reappear again in a twinkling.

Returning for another nut, he would mount
the second tree again for another observation.
Satisfied that the coast was clear, he would spin
along the top of the ground to the tree that bore
the nuts, shoot up it as before, seize the fruit,
and then back again to his retreat.

Never did he fail during the half hour or
more that I watched him to take an observation

A Un: OF FKAK jg-

onl,i« way hoth to ,.,,,, 1 f,..„„ ,,i,„,,t ,j

snatch and run" with hi,,.. So,nothi>,..
seeme.1 to say to hi,n all tho ti,„o: "Look out"
lookout!" "Thec-iti" "Ti.,. , , 7„ ,.?. ,
owl!" "The boy with the gun'"
fini'flT "'']"''' I>'=ee,„her „u,rni„c,; the first
fine flakes of a coM, driving s„owstor„. were
ju.t begiuuing to sift down, and the s.mirrel
was eager to finish harvesting his „uts in'ti„,e.
It wa,s quite touching to see how luirried and
anxious and nervous he was. I f,.lt like Knin.T
out and lendnig a han.I. The nuts were si'iialf
poor i„g-nuts, and I thought of all the gnawin^
he won d have to do to get at the scanty mea°t
they held My little boy once took pity on"
squirre that lived in the wall near the gate and
cracked the nuts for him and put them upon a
small board shelf in the tree where he eould sit
and eat them at his ease.

Tlie red squirrel is not so provident as the
chipmunk. He lays up stores irregularlv, by
fits and starts; he never has enough put up to
carry him over the winter; hence he is more or
less active all tlie season. Long before the De-
cember snow the cliipmunk has for davs been
making hourly trips to his den with full pock-
ets of nuts or corn or buckwheat, till his bin
holds enough to carry him througli to April
He need not, an<l I believe does not, sot foot
out of doors during the whole winter. But tho
red squirrel trusts more to luck.

As alert and watchful as the red squirrel is
he is frequently caught by the cat. My Nig

196 A LIFE OF FEAR

as black as ebony, knows well the taste of his
flesh. I have known him to be caught by the
black snake and successfully swallowed. The
snake, no doubt, lay in ambush for him.

This fear, this ever present source of danger
of the wild creatures, we know little about.
Probably the only person in the civilized coun-
tries who is no better off than the animals in
this respect is the Czar of Eussia. He would
not even dare gather nuts as openly as my
squirrel. A blacker and more terrible cat than
Nig would be lying in wait for him and would
make a meal of him. The early settlers in
this country must have experienced something of
this dread of apprehension from the Indians.
Many African tribes now live in the same state
of constant fear of the slave-catchers or of other
hostile tribes. Our ancestors, back in pre-his-
toric times, or back of that in geologic times,
must have known fear as a constant feeling.
Hence the prominence of fear in infants and
children when compared with the youth or the
grown person. Babies are nearly always afraid
of strangers.

In the domestic animals also, fear is much
more active in the young than in the old.
Nearly every farm boy has seen a calf but a day
or two old, which its mother has secreted in the
woods or in a remote field, charge upon him fu-
riously with a wild bleat, when first discovered.
After this first ebullition of fear, it usually set-
tles down into the tame humdrum of its bovine
elders.

A LIFE OF FEAR 197

Eternal vigilance is the price of life with
most of the wild creatures. There is only one
among them Avhose wildness I cannot under-
stand, and that is the common water turtle.
Why is this creature so fearful ? What are its
enemies 1 I know of nothing that preys upon
it. Yet see how watchful and suspicious these
turtles are as they sun themselves upon a log or
a rock. Before you are fairly in gunshot of
them, they slide down into the water and are
gone.

The land turtle, or terrapin, on the other
hand, shows scarcely a trace of fear. He will
indeed pause in his walk when you are very
near him, but he will not retreat into his shell
till you have poked him with your foot or your
cane. He appears to have no enemies ; but the
little spotted water turtle is as shy as if he
was the delicate tidbit that every creature was
searching for. I did once find one which a fox
had dug out of the mud in winter, and carried
a few rods and dropped on the snow, as if he
had found he had no use for it.

One can understand the fearlessness of the
skunk. Nearly every creature but the farm
dog yields to him the right of way. All dread
his terrible weapon. If you meet one in your
Avalk in the twilight fields, the chances are that
you will turn out for him, not he for you. He
may even pursue you, just for the fun of seeing
you run. He comes waltzing toward you, ap-
parently in the most hilarious spirits.

The coon is probably the most courageous

198 A LIFE OF FEAR

creature among our familiar wild animals. Who
ever saw a coon show the white feather? He
will face any odds with perfect composure. I
have seen a coon upon the ground, beset by
four men and two dogs, and never for a moment
lose his presence of mind, or show a sign of
fear. The raccoon is clear grit.

The fox is a very wild and suspicious crea-
ture, but curiously enough, when you suddenly
come face to face with him, when he is held by
a trap, or driven by the hound, his expression
is not that of fear, but of shame and guilt. He
seems to diminish in size and to be over-
whelmed with humiliation. Does he know
himself to be an old thief, and is that the reason
of his embarrassment ? The fox has no enemies
but man, and when he is fairly outwitted, he
looks the shame he evidently feels.

In the heart of the rabbit fear constantly
abides. How her eyes protrude ! She can see
back and front and on all sides as well as a
bird. The fox is after her, the owls are after
her, the gunners are after her, and she has no
defense but her speed. She always keeps well
to cover. The Northern hare keeps in the
thickest brush. If the hare or rabbit crosses
a broad open exposure it does so hurriedly, like
a mouse when it crosses the road. The mouse
is in danger of being pounced upon by a hawk,
and the hare or rabbit by the snowy owl, or
else the great horned owl.

A friend of mine was following one morning
a fresh rabbit track through an open field.

A LIFE OF FEAR. 199

SuddenJy the track came to an end, as if the
creature had taken wings — as it had after an
unpleasant fashion. There, on either side of
its last foot imprint, were several parallel lines
in the snow, made by the wings of the great
owl that had swooped down and carried it off.
What a little tragedy was seen written there
upon the white, even surface of the field!

The rabbit has not much wit. I once, when
a boy, saw one that had been recently caught,
liberated in an open field in the presence of a
dog that was being held a few yards away.
But the poor thing lost all presence of mind
and was quickly caught by the clumsy dog.

A hunter once saw a hare running upon the
ice along the shore of one of the Eangely lakes.
Presently a lynx appeared in hot pursuit; as
soon as the hare found it was being pursued,
it began to circle, foolish thing. This gave the
lynx greatly the advantage, as it could follow in
a much smaller circle. Soon the hare was run
do^vn and seized.

• I saw the same experiment tried with a red
squirrel with quite opposite results. The boy
who had caught the squirrel in his wire trap
had a very bright and nimble dog about the
size of a fox, that seemed to be very sure he
could catch a red squirrel under any circum-
stances if only the trees were out of the way.
So the boy went to the middle of an open field
with his caged squirrel, the dog, who seemed to
know what was up, dancing and jumping about
him. It was in midwinter; the snow had a

200 A LIFE OF FEAR

firm crust that held boy and dog alike. The
dog was drawn back a few yards and the squir-
rel liberated. Then began one of the most ex-
citing races I have witnessed for a long time.
It was impossible for the lookers-on not to be
convulsed with laughter, though neither dog
nor squirrel seemed to regard the matter as much
of a joke. The squirrel had all his wits about
him, and kept them ready for instant use. He
did not show the slightest confusion. He was
no match for the dog in fair running, and he
discovered this fact in less than three seconds;
he must win, if at all, by strategy. Not a
straight course for the nearest tree, but a zigzag
course; yea, a double or treble zigzag course.
Every instant the dog was sure the squirrel was
his and every instant he was disappointed. It
was incredible and bewildering to him. The
squirrel dodged this way and that. The dog
looked astonished and vexed.

Then the squirrel issued from between his
hind legs and made three jumps toward the
woods before he was discovered. Our sides
ached with laughter, cruel as it may seem.

It was evident the squirrel would win. The
dog seemed to redouble his efforts. He would
overshoot the game, or shoot by it to the right
or left. The squirrel was the smaller craft and
could out-tack him easily. One more leap and
the squirrel was up a tree, and the dog was
overwhelmed with confusion and disgust.

He could not believe his senses. "Not catch
a squirrel in such a field as that? Go to, I

A LIFE OF FEAR 201

will have him yet ! '' and he bounds up the tree
as high as one's head, and then bites the bark
of it in his anger and chagrin.

The boy says his dog has never bragged since
about catching red squirrels " if only the trees
were out of reach ! "

When any of the winged creatures are en-
gaged in a life and death race in that way, or
in any other race, the tactics of the squirrel do
not work; the pursuer never overshoots nor
shoots by his mark. The flight of the two is
timed as if they were parts of one whole. A
hawk will pursue a sparrow or a robin through
a zigzag course and not lose • a stroke or half^ a
stroke of the wing by reason of any darting to
the right or left. The clew is held with fatal
precision. No matter how quickly nor how
often the sparrow or the finch changes its
course, its enemy changes, simultaneously, as if
every move was known to it from the first.

^ The same thing may be noticed among the
birds in their love chasings; the pursuer seems
to know perfectly the mind of the pursued.
This concert of action among birds is very curi-
ous. When they are in the alert a flock of
sparrows, or pigeons, or cedar-birds, or snow-
buntings, or blackbirds, will all take flight as if
there was but one bird, instead of a hundred.
The same impulse seizes every individual bird
at the same instant, as if they were sprung by
electricity.

Or when a flock of birds is in flight, it is
still one body, one will; it will rise, or circle,

202 A LIFE OF FEAR

or swoop, with a unity that is truly astonish-
ing.

A flock of snow-buntings will perform their
aerial evolutions with a precision that the best-
trained soldiery cannot equal. Have the birds
an extra sense which we have not? A brood
of young partridges in the woods will start up
like an explosion, every brown particle and frag-
ment hurled into the air at the same instant.
Without word or signal, how is it done?

LOVERS OF NATURE

We love nature with a different love at dif-
ferent periods of our lives. In youth our love
is sensuous. It is not so much a conscious love
as it is an irresistible attraction. The senses are
keen and fresh, and they crave a field for their
exercise. We delight in the color of flowers,
the perfume of meadows and orchards, the moist,
fresh smell of the woods. We eat the pungent
roots and barks, we devour the wild fruits, we
slay the small deer. Then nature also offers a
field of adventure ; it challenges and excites our
animal spirits. The woods are full of game,
the waters of fish; the river invites the oar, the
breeze, the sail, the mountain-top promises a
wide prospect. Hence the rod, the gun, the
boat, the tent, the pedestrian club. In youth
we are nearer the savage state, the primitive
condition of mankind and wild nature is our
proper home. The transient color of the young
bird points its remote ancestry, and the taste of
youth for rude nature in like manner is the sur-
vival of an earlier race instinct.

Later in life we go to nature as an escape
from the tension and turmoil of business, or for

204 LOVERS OF NATURE

rest and recreation from study, or seeking solace
from grief and disappointment, or as a refuge
from the frivolity and hypocrisies of society.
We lie under trees, we stroll through lanes, or
in meadows and pastures, or muse on the shore.
Nature " salves " our worst wounds ; she heals
and restores us.

Or we cultivate an intellectual pleasure in
nature, and follow up some branch of natural
science, as botany, or ornithology, or mineralogy.

Then there is the countryman's love of na-
ture, the pleasure in cattle, horses, bees, grow-
ing crops, manual labor, sugar- making, garden-
ing, harvesting, and the rural quietness and
repose.

Lastly we go to nature for solitude and for
communion with our own souls. Nature at-
tunes us to a higher and finer mood. This
love springs from our religious needs and in-
stincts. This was the love of Thoreau, of
Wordsworth, and has been the inspiration of
much modern poetry and art.

Dr. Johnson said he had lived in London so
long that he had ceased to note the changes of
the seasons. But Dr. Johnson was not a lover
of nature. Of that feeling for the country of
which Wordsworth's poetry, for instance, is so
full, he probably had not a vestige. Think of
Wordsworth shut up year in and year out — in
■the city! That lover of shepherds, of moun-
tains, of lonely tarns, of sounding waterfalls, —
" Who looked upon the hills with tenderness,
And made dear friendships with the streams and groves.*'

LOVERS OF NATURE 205

Dr. Johnson's delight was in men and in
verbal fisticuffs with them, but Wordsworth
seems to have loved nature more than men; at
least he was drawn most to those men who
lived closest to nature and were more a part
of her. Thus he says he loved shepherds,
"dwellers in the valleys,''

" Not verily
For their own sakes, but for the fields and hills
Where was their occupation and abode."

Your real lover of nature does not love the
merely beautiful things which he culls here and
there ; he loves the earth itself, the faces of the
hills and mountains, the rocks, the streams, the
naked trees no less than the leafy trees, — a
ploughed field no less than a green meadow.
He does not know what it is that draws him.
It is not beauty, any more than it is beauty in
his father and mother that makes him love
them. It is "something far more deeply in-
terfused, " — something native and kindred that
calls to him. In certain moods how good the
earth, the soil, seems! One wants to feel it
with his hands and smell it — almost taste it.
Indeed, I never see a horse eat soil and sods
without a feeling that I would like to taste it
too. The rind of the earth, of this "round and
delicious globe " which has hung so long upon
the great Newtonian tree, ripening in the sun,
must be sweet.

I recall an Irish girl lately come to this coun-
try, who worked for us, and who, when I dug
and brought to the kitchen the first earlv pota-

206 LOVERS OF NATURE

toes, felt them, and stroked them with her
hand, and smelled them, and was loath to lay
them down, they were so full of suggestion of
the dear land and home she had so lately left.
I suppose it was a happy surprise to her to find
that the earth had the same fresh, moist smell
here that it had in Ireland, and yielded the
same crisp tubers. The canny creature had
always worked in the fields, and the love of the
soil and of homely country things was deep in
her heart. Another emigrant from over the
seas, a laboring man, confined to the town, said
to me in his last illness, that he believed he
would get well if he could again walk in the
fields. A Frenchman who fled the city and
came to the country said, with an impressive
gesture, that he w^anted to be where he could
see the blue sky over his head.

These little incidents are but glints or faint
gleams of that love of nature to which I would
point, — an affection for the country itself, and
not a mere passing admiration for its beauties.
A great many people admire nature; they write
admiring things about her; they apostrophize
her beauties; they describe minutely pretty
scenes here and there; they climb mountains to
see the sun set, or the sun rise, or make long
journeys to find waterfalls, but nature's real
lover listens to their enthusiasm with coolness
and indiff"erence. Nature is not to be praised
or patronized. You cannot go to her and de-
scribe her; she must speak through your heart.
The woods and fields must melt into your mind,

LOVERS OF NATURE 207

dissolved by your love for them. Did they not
melt into Wordsworth's mind? They colored
all his thoughts; the solitude of those green,
rocky Westmoreland fells broods over every
page. He does not tell us how beautiful he
finds nature and how much he enjoys her, he
makes us share his enjoyment.

Eichard JefFeries was probably as genuine a
lover of nature as was Wordsworth, but he had
not the same power to make us share his enjoy-
ment. His page is sometimes wearisome from
mere description and enumeration. He is
rarely interpretative; the mood, the frame of
mind, which nature herself begets, he seldom
imparts to us. What we finally love in nature
is ourselves, some suggestion of the human
spirit, and no labored description, or careful
enumeration of details will bring us to this.

" Nor do words
Which practiced talent readily affords,
Prove that her hand has touched responsive chords."

It has been aptly said that Jefferies was a
reporter of genius but that he never (in his na-
ture books) got beyond reporting. His " Wild
Life " reads like a kind of field newspaper ; he
puts in everything, he is diligent and untiring,
but for much of it one cares very little after
he is through. For selecting and combining
the things of permanent interest so as to excite
curiosity and impart charm, he has but little
power.

The passion for nature is by no means a mere
curiosity about her, or an itching to portray

208 LOVERS OF NATURE

certain of her features; it lies deeper and is
probably a form of, or closely related to, our
religious instincts. When you go to nature,
bring us good science or else good literature,
and not a mere inventory of what you have
seen. One demonstrates, the other interprets.

Observation is selective and detective. A
real observation begets warmth and joy in the
mind. To see things in detail as they lie about
you and enumerate them is not observation;
but to see the significant things, to seize the
quick movement and gesture, to disentangle the
threads of relation, to know the nerves that
thrill from the cords that bind, or the typical
and vital from the commonplace and mechanical
— that is to be an observer. In Thoreau's
" Walden " there is observation; in the Journals
published since his death there is close and pa-
tient scrutiny, but only now and then any-
thing that we care to know. Considering that
Thoreau spent half of each day for upward of
twenty years in the open air, bent upon spying
out nature's ways and doings, it is remarkable
that he made so few real observations.

Yet how closely he looked! He even saw
that mysterious waving line which one may
sometimes note in little running brooks. "I
see stretched from side to side of this smooth
brook where it is three or four feet wide what
seems to indicate an invisible waving line, like
a cobweb against which the water is heaped up
a very little. This line is constantly swayed
to and fro, as if by the current or wind, belly-

LOVERS OF NATURE 209

ing forward here and there. I try repeatedly
to catch and break it with my hand and let the
water run free, but still to my surprise I clutch
nothing but fluid, and the imaginary line keeps
its place."

A little closer scrutiny would have shown him
that this waving water line was probably caused
in some way by the meeting of two volumes or
currents of water.

The most novel and interesting observation I
can now recall is his discovery of how the wild
apple-tree in the pastures triumphs over the
browsing cattle, namely, by hedging itself about
by a dense thorny growth, keeping the cows at
arm's length as it were, and then sending up a
central shoot beyond their reach.

One of the most acute observations Thoreau's
Journals contain is not upon nature at all, but
upon the difference between men and women
"in respect to the adornment of their heads:"
"Do you ever see an old or jammed bonnet on
the head of a woman at a public meeting ? But
look at any assembly of men with their hats
on; how large a proportion of the hats will be
old, weather-beaten, and indented ; but, I think,
so much more picturesque and interesting.
One farmer rides by my door in a hat which it
does me good to see, there is so much character
in it, so much independence, to begin with, and
then afl'ection for his old friends, etc., etc. I
should not wonder if there were lichens on it.
. . . Men wear their hats for use, women
theirs for ornament. I have seen the greatest

210 LOVERS OF NATURE

philosopher in the town with what the traders
would call a 'shocking bad hat ' on, but the
woman whose bonnet does not come up to the
mark is at best a blue- stocking."

So clever an observation upon anything in
nature as that is hard to find in the Journals.

To observe is to discriminate and take note
of all the factors.

One day while walking in my vineyard, la-
menting the damage the storm of yesterday had
wrought in it, my ear caught, amid the medley
of other sounds and songs, an unfamiliar bird-
note from the air overhead. Gradually it
dawned upon my consciousness that this was
not the call of any of our native birds, but of a
stranger. Looking steadily in the direction the
sound came, after some moments I made out
the form of a bird flying round and round in a
large circle high in air, and momentarily utter-
ing its loud sharp call. The size, the shape,
the manner, and the voice of the bird were all
strange. In a moment I knew it to be an Eng-
lish skylark, apparently adrift and undecided
which way to go. Finally it seemed to make
up its mind, and then bore away to the north.
My ear had been true to its charge^

The man who told me that some of our birds
took an earth bath, and some of them a water
bath, and a few of them took both, had looked
closer into this matter than I had. The spar-
rows usually earth their plumage, but the Eng-
lish sparrow does both. The farm boy who
told a naturalist a piece of news about the tur-

LOVERS OF NATURE 211

ties, namely, that the reason why we never see
any small turtles about the fields is because for
two or three years the young turtles bury them-
selves in the ground and keep quite hidden from
sight, had used his eyes to some purpose.
This was a real observation.

Just as a skilled physician, in diagnosing a
case, picks out the significant symptoms and
separates them from the rest, so the real ob-
server, with eye and ear, seizes what is novel
and characteristic in the scenes about him.
His attention goes through the play at the sur-
face and reaches the rarer incidents beneath or
beyond.

Richard JefFeries was not strictly an obser-
ver; he was a loving and sympathetic spectator
of the nature about him, a poet if you please,
but he tells us little that is memorable or sug-
gestive. His best books are such as the
"Gamekeeper at Home," and the "Amateur
Poacher,'' where the human element is brought
in, and the descriptions of nature are relieved
by racy bits of character drawing. By far the
best thing of all is a paper which he wrote
shortly before his death, called " My Old Vil-
lage." It is very beautiful and pathetic, and
reveals the heart and soul of the man as no-
thing else he has written does. I must permit
myself to transcribe one paragraph of it. It
shows how he, too, was under the spell of the
past, and such a recent past, too : —

"I think I have heard that the oaks are
down. They may be standing or down, it mat-

212 LOVERS OF NATURE

ters nothing to me; the leaves I last saw upon
them are gone for evermore, nor shall I ever
see them come there again, ruddy in spring.
I would not see them again, even if I could;
they could never look again, as they used to do.
There are too many memories there. The hap-
piest days become the saddest afterward; let
us never go back, lest we too die. There are
no such oaks anywhere else, none so tall and
straight, and with such massive heads, on which
the sun used to shine as if on the globe of the
earth, one side in shadow, the other in bright
light. How often I have looked at oaks since,
and yet have never been able to get the same
effect from them ! Like an old author printed
in another type, the words are the same, but
the sentiment is different. The brooks have
ceased to run. There is no music now at the
old hatch where we used to sit, in danger of
our lives, happy as kings, on ' the narrow bar
over the deep water. The barred pike that
used to come up in such numbers are no more
among the flags. The perch used to drift down
the stream and then bring up again. The sun
shone there for a very long time, and the water
rippled and sang, and it always seemed to me
that I could feel the rippling and the singing
and the sparkling back through the centuries.
The brook is dead, for where man goes, nature
ends. I dare say there is water there still, but
it is not the brook ; the brook is gone like John
Brown's soul [not our John Brown]. There
used to be clouds over the fields, white clouda

LOVERS OF NATURE 213

in blue summer skies. I have lived a good
deal on clouds; they have been meat to me
often ; they bring something to the spirit which
even the trees do not. I see clouds now some-
times when the iron gripe of hell permits for a
minute or two; they are very different clouds
and speak differently. I long for some of the
old clouds that had no memories. There were
nights in those times over those fields, not
darkness, but Night, full of glowing suns and
glowing richness of life that sprang up to meet
them. The nights are there still; they are
everyAvhere, nothing local in the night; but it
is not the Night to me seen through the win-
dow. "

In the literature of nature I know of no page
so pathetic and human.

Moralizing about nature or through nature is
tedious enough, and yet unless the piece has
some moral or emotional background it does not
touch us. In other words, to describe a thing
for the mere sake of describing it, to make a
dead set at it like a reporter, whatever may be
the case in painting, it will not do in literature.
The object must be informed with meaning, and
to do this the creative touch of the imagination
is required. Take this passage from AVhitman
on the night, and see if there is not more than
mere description there : —

" A large part of the sky seemed just laid in
great splashes of phosphorus. You could look
deeper in, farther through, than usual ; the orbs
thick as heads of wheat in a field. Not that

214 LOVERS OF NATURE

there was any special brilliancy either — no-
thing near as sharp as I have seen of keen win-
ter nights, but a curious general luminousness
throughout to sight, sense, and soul. The latter
had much to do with it. . . . l!^ow, indeed,
if never before, the heavens declared the glory
of God. It was to the full the sky of the Bible,
01 Arabia, of the prophets, and of the oldest
poems. "

Or this touch of a January night on the Del-
aware River : —

"Overhead, the splendor indescribable; yet
something haughty, almost supercilious, in the
night; never did I realize more latent senti-
ment, almost 2^(^881071, in the silent intermin-
able stars up there. One can understand on such
a night why, from the days of the Pharaohs or
Job, the dome of heaven, sprinkled with planets,
has supplied the subtlest, deepest criticism on
human pride, glory, ambition."

Matthew Arnold quotes this passage from
Obermann as showing a rare feeling for na-
ture : —

"My path lay beside the green waters of the
Thiele. Feeling inclined to muse, and finding
the night so warm that there was no hardship
in being all night out of doors, I took the road
to Saint Blaise. I descended a steep bank,
and got upon the shore of the lake where its
ripple Game up and expired. The air was
calm; every one was at rest; I remained there
for hours. Toward morning the moon shed
over the earth and waters the ineffable melan-

LOVERS OF NATURE 215

choly of her last gleams. Nature seems un-
speakably grand, when, plunged in a long rev-
erie, one hears the rippling of the waters upon
a solitary strand, in the calm of a night still
enkindled and luminous with the setting moon.
"Sensibility beyond utterance, charm and
torment of our vain years; vast consciousness
of a nature everywhere greater than we are, and
everywhere impenetrable; all-embracing pas-
sion, ripened wisdom, delicious self-abandon-
ment — everything that a mortal heart can con-
tain of life- weariness and yearning, I felt it all.
I experienced it all, in this memorable night.
I have made a grave step toward the age of de-
cline. I have swallowed up ten years of life at
once. Happy the simple whose heart is always
young ! "

The moral element is behind this also, and
is the source of its value and charm. In litera-
ture never nature for her own sake, but for the
sake of the soul which is over and above all.

II

One of the most desirable things in life is a
fresh impression of an old fact or scene. One's
love of nature may be a constant factor, yet it
is only now and then that he gets a fresh im-
pression of the charm and meaning of nature;
only now and then that the objects without and
the mood within so fit together that we have a
vivid and original sense of the beauty and sig-
nificance that surround us. How often do we

216 LOVERS OF NATURE

really see the stars'? Probably a great many
people never see them at all — that is, never
look upon them with any thrill of emotion. If
I see them a few times a year, I think myself
in luck. If I deliberately go out to see them,
I am quite sure to miss them; but occasionally,
as one glances up to them in his lonely night
walk, the mind opens, or the heaven opens —
which is it ? — and he has a momentary glimpse
of their ineffable splendor and significance.
How overwhelming, how awe-inspiring! His
thought goes like a lightning flash into that
serene abyss, and then the veil is drawn again.
One's science, one's understandmg, tells him
he is a voyager on the celestial deep, that the
earth beneath his feet is a star among stars,
that we can never be any more in the heavens
than we are now, or any more within reach of
the celestial laws and forces; but how rare the
mood in which we can realize this astounding
fact, in which we can get a fresh and vivid im-
pression of it! To have it ever present with
one in all its naked grandeur would perhaps be
more than we could bear.

The common and the familiar — how soon
they cease to impress us! The great service of
genius, speaking through art and literature, is
to pierce through our callousness and indifiference
and give us fresh impressions of things as they
really are; to present things in new combina-
tions, or from new points of view, so that they
shall surprise and delight us like a new revela.
tion. When poetry does this, or when art does

LOVERS OF NATURE 217

it, or when science does it, it recreates the
M^orld for us, and for the moment we are again
Adam in paradise.

Herein lies one compensation to the lover of
nature who is an enforced dweller in the town :
the indifference which familiarity breeds is not
his. His weekly or monthly sallies into the
country yield him a rare delight. To his fresh,
eager senses the charm of novelty is over all.
Country people look with a kind of pitying
amusement upon the delight of their newly ar-
rived city friends; but would we not, after all,
give something if we could exchange eyes with
them for a little wliile ?

We who write about nature pick out, I sus-
pect, only the rare moments when we have had
glimpses of her, and make much of them. Our
lives are dull, and our minds crusted over with
rubbish like those of other people. Then
writing about nature, as about most other sub-
jects, is an expansive process; we are under the
law of evolution; we grow the germ into the
tree; a little original observation goes a good
ways. Life is a compendium. The record in
our minds and hearts is in shorthand. When
M^e come to write it out, we are surprised at its
length and significance. What we feel in a
twinkling it takes a long time to tell to another.
When I pass along by a meadow in June,
where the bobolinks are singing and the daisies
dancing in the wind, and the scent of the clover
is in the air, and where the boys and girls are
looking for wild strawberries in the grass, I

218 LOVERS OF NATUEE

take it all in in a glance, it enters swiftly
through all my senses; but if I set about writ-
ing an account of my experience for my reader,
how long and tedious the process, how I must
beat about the bush! And then, if I would
have him see and feel it, I must avoid a point-
blank description and bring it to him, or him
to it, by a kind of indirection, so as to surprise
him and give him more than I at first seemed
to promise.

To a countryman like myself the presence of
natural objects, the open face of the country,
sheds a cheering and soothing influence at all
times; but it is only at rare intervals that he
experiences the thrill of a fresh impression. I
find that a kind of preoccupation, as the farmer
with his Avork, the angler with his rod, the
sportsman with his gun, the walker with his
friend, the lounger with his book, aff'ords con-
ditions that are not to be neglected. So much
will steal in at the corners of your eyes; the
unpremeditated glance, when the mind is passive
and receptive, often stirs the soul. Upon
whom does the brook make such an impression
as upon the angler? How he comes to know
its character! how he studies its every phase!
how he feels it through that rod and line as if
they were a part of himself! I pity the per-
son who does not get at least one or two fresh
impressions of the charm and sweetness of na-
ture in the spring. Later in the season it gets
to be more of an old story ; but in March whe-u
the season is early, and in April when, the se^

LOVERS OF NATURE 219

son is late, there occasionally come days which
awaken a new joy in the heart. Every recur-
ring spring one experiences this fresh delight.
There is nothing very tangible yet in awaken-
ing nature, but there is something in the air,
some sentiment in the sunshine and in the look
of things, a prophecy of life and renewal, that
sends a thrill through the frame. The first
sparrow's song, the first robin's call, the first
bluebird's warble, the first phoebe's note — who
can hear it without emotion? Or the first flock
of migrating geese or ducks — how much they
bring north with them ! When the red-shoul-
dered starlings begin to gurgle in the elms or
golden willows along the marshes and water-
courses, you will feel spring then; and if you
look closely upon the ground beneath them, you
will find that sturdy advanced guard of our
floral army, the skunk cabbage, thrusting his
spear-point up through the ooze, and spring
will again quicken your pulse.

One seems to get nearer to nature in the early
spring days: all screens are removed, the earth
everywhere speaks directly to you; she is not
hidden by verdure and foliage; there is a pe-
culiar delight in walking over the brown turf of
the fields that one cannot feel later on. How
welcome the smell of it, warmed by the sun;
the first breath of the reviving earth. How
welcome the full, sparkling watercourses too,
everywhere drawing the eye; by and by they
will be veiled by the verdure and shrunken by
the heat. When March is kind, for how much

220 LOVERS OF NATURE

her slightest favors count ! The other evening,
as I stood on the slope of a hill in the twilight,
I heard a whistling of approaching wings, and
presently a woodcock flying low passed near
me. I could see his form and his long curved
wings dimly against the horizon ; his whistling
slowly vanished in the gathering night, but his
passage made something stir and respond within
me. March was on the wing, she was abroad
in the soft still twilight searching out the
moist, springy places where the worms first
come to the surface and where the grass first
starts; and her course was up the valley from
the south. A day or two later I sat on a hill-
side in the woods late in the day, amid the
pines and hemlocks, and heard the soft, elusive
spring call of the little owl — a curious musical
undertone hardly separable from the silence; a
bell, muffled in feathers, tolling in the twilight
of the woods and discernible only to the most
alert ear. But it was the voice of spring, the
voice of the same impulse that sent the wood-
cock winging his way through the dusk, that
was just beginning to make the pussy willows
swell and the grass to freshen in the spring
runs.

Occasionally, of a bright, warm, still day in
March, such as we have had the present season,
the little flying spider is abroad. It is the
most delicate of all March tokens, but very
suggestive. Its long, waving threads of gossa-
mer, invisible except when the sunlight falls
upon them at a particular angle, stream out here

LOVERS OF NATURE 221

and there upon the air, a filament of life, reach-
ing and reaching as if to catch and detain the
most subtle of the skyey influences.

Nature is always new in the spring, and
lucky are we if it finds us new also.

A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-

GrRASS

How beautiful is fertility ! A landscape of
fruitful and well- cultivated fields ; an unbroken
expanse of grass; a thick, uniform growth of
grain — how each of these fills and satisfies the
eye ! And it is not because we are essentially
'jtilitarian and see the rich loaf and the fat
beef as the outcome of it all, but because we
read in it an expression of the beneficence and
good- will of the earth. We love to see harmony
between man and nature; we love peace and
not war; we love the adequate, the complete.
A perfect issue of grass or grain is a satisfaction
to look upon, because it is a success. These
things have the beauty of an end exactly ful-
filled, the beauty of perfect fitness and propor-
tion. The barren in nature is ugly and repels
us, unless it be on such a scale and convey such
a suggestion of power as to awaken the emotion
of the sublime. What can be less mviting
than a neglected and exhausted Virginia farm,
the thin red soil showing here and there
through the ragged and scanty turf? and what,
on the other hand, can please the eye of a coun-
tryman more than the unbroken verdancy and
fertility of a Kentucky blue-grass farm? I
find I am Yery apt to take a farmer's view of a

A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS 223

country. That long line of toiling and thrifty
yoemen back of me seems to have bequeathed
something to my blood that makes me respond
very quickly to a fertile and well-kept land-
scape, and that, on the other hand, makes me
equally discontented in a poor, shabby one.
All the way from Washington till I struck the
heart of Kentucky, the farmer in me was un-
happy; he saw hardly a rood of land that he
would like to call his own. But that remnant
of the wild man of tlie woods, which most of
us still carry, saw much that delighted him,
especially down the New Eiver, where the
rocks and the waters, and the steep forest- clad
mountains were as wild and as savage as any-
thing he had known in his early Darwinian
ages. But when we emerged upon the banks
of the Great Kanawha, the man of the woods
lost his interest and the man of the fields saw
little that was comforting.

When we cross the line into Kentucky, I
said, we shall see a change. But no, we did
not. The farmer still groaned in spirit; no
thrifty farms, no substantial homes, no neat
villages, no good roads anywhere, but squalor
and sterility on every hand. Nearly all the
afternoon we rode through a country like the
poorer parts of New England, unredeemed by
anything like New England thrift. It was a
country of coal, a very new country, geologi-
cally speaking, and the top-soil did not seem to
have had time to become deepened and enriched
by vegetable mould. Near sundown, as I

224 A TASTE OF KEXTUGKY BLUE-GRASS

glanced out of the window, I thought I began to
see a change. Presently I was very sure I did.
It began to appear in the more grassy character
of the woods. Then I caught sight of pecu-
liarly soft and uniform grassy patches here and
there in the open. Then in a few moments
more the train had shot us fairly into the edge
of the blue-grass region, and the farmer in me
♦ began to be on the alert. We had passed in a
twinkling from a portion of the earth's surface
which is new, which is of yesterday, to a por-
tion which is of the oldest, from the carboni-
ferous to the lower silurian. Here, upon this
lower Silurian, the earth that saw and nourished
the great monsters and dragons was growing
the delicate blue- grass. It had taken all these
millions upon millions of years to prepare the
way for this little plant to grow to perfection.
I thought I had never seen fields and low hills
look so soft in the twilight; they seemed clad
in greenish-gray fur. As we neared Mount
Sterling, how fat and smooth the land looked;
what long, even, gently flowing lines against
the fading western sky, broken here and there
by herds of slowly grazing or else reposing and
ruminating cattle! What peace and plenty it
suggested! From a land raw and crude and
bitter like unripe fruit, we had suddenly been
transported into the midst of one ripe and mel-
low with the fullness of time. It was sweet
to look upon. I was seized with a strong de-
sire to go forth and taste it by a stroll through
it in the twilight.

A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS 225

In the course of the ten days that followed,
the last ten days of May, I had an opportunity
to taste it pretty well, and my mind has had a
grassy flavor ever since. I had an opportunity
to see this restless and fitful American nature
of ours in a more equable and beneficent mood
than I had ever before seen it in ; all its savage-
ness and acridness gone, no thought now but
submission to the hand and wants of man. I
afterward saw the prairies of Illinois, and the
vast level stretches of farming country of north-
ern Ohio and Indiana, but these lands were no-
where quite so human, quite so beautiful, or
quite so productive as the blue-grass region.
One likes to see the earth's surface lifted up and
undulating a little, as if it heaved and swelled
with emotion; it suggests more life, and at the
same time that the sense of repose is greater.
There is no repose in a prairie ; it is stagnation,
it is a dead level. Those immense stretches of
flat land pain the eye, as if all life and expres-
sion had gone from the face of the earth.
There is just unevenness enough in the blue-
grass region to give mobility and variety to the
landscape. From almost any given point one
commands broad and extensive views — immense
fields of wheat or barley, or corn or hemp, or
grass or clover, or of woodland pastures.

With Professor Proctor I drove a hundred
miles or more about the country in a buggy.
First from Frankfort to Versailles, the capital of
Woodford County ; then to Lexington, where we
passed a couple of days with Major McDowell

226 A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS

at Ashland, the old Henry Clay place; then
to Georgetown in Scott County ; thence back to
Frankfort again. The following week I passed
three days on the great ctock farm of Colonel
Alexander, where I saw more and finer blooded
stock in the way of horses, cattle, and sheep
than I had ever seen before. From thence we
went south to Colonel Shelby's, where we
passed a couple of days on the extreme edge of
the blue-grass circle in Boyle County. Here
we strike the rim of sharp low hills that run
quite around this garden of the State, from the
Ohio Eiver on the west to the Ohio again on
the north and east. Kentucky is a great coun-
try for licks; there are any number of streams
and springs that bear the name of some lick.
Probably the soil of no State in the Union has
been so much licked and smacked over as that
of Kentucky. Colonel Shelby's farm is near
a stream called Knob Lick, and within a few
miles of a place called Blue Lick. I expected
to see some sort of salt spring where the buffalo
and deer used to come to lick; but instead of
that saw a raw, naked spot of earth, an acre or
two in extent, which had apparently been licked
into the shape of a clay model of some scene in
Colorado or the Eocky Mountains. There were
gullies and chasms and sharp knobs and peaks
as blue and barren as could be, and no sign of
a spring or of water visible. The buffalo had
licked the clay for the saline matter it held,
and had certainly made a deep and lasting im-
pression.

A TASTE OF KENTUCKY-BLUE GRASS 227

From Shelby City we went west sixty or
more miles, skirting the blue-grass region, to
Lebanon Junction, where I took the train for
Cave City. The blue-grass region is as large
as the State of Massachusetts, and is, on the
whole, the finest bit of the earth's surface, with
the exception of parts of England, I have yet
seen. In one way it is more pleasing than
anything one sees in England, on account of the
greater sense of freedom and roominess which it
gives one. Everything is on a large, generous
scale. The fields are not so cut up, nor the
roadways so narrow, nor the fences so prohibi-
tory. Indeed, the distinguishing feature of
this country is its breadth: one sees fields of
corn or wheat or clover of from fifty to one
hundred acres each. At Colonel Alexander's
I saw three fields of clover lying side by side
which contained three hundred acres : as the
clover was just in full bloom, the sight was a
very pleasing one. The farms are larger, rang-
ing from several hundred to several thousand
acres. The farmhouses are larger, with wide
doors, broad halls, high ceilings, ample grounds,
and hospitality to match. There is nothing
niggardly or small in the people or in their
country. One sees none of the New York or
New England primness and trimness, but the
ample, flowing Southern way of life. It is
common to see horses and cattle grazing in the
grounds immediately about the house; there is
nothing but grass, and the great forest trees,
which they cannot hurt. The farmhouses

228 A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GKASS

rarely stand near the highway, but are set after
the English fashion, from a third to half a mile
distant, amid a grove of primitive forest trees,
and flanked or backed up by the many lesser
buildings that the times of slavery made neces-
sary. Educated gentlemen farmers are proba-
bly the rule more than in the North. There
are not so many small or so many leased farms.
The proprietors are men of means, and come
the nearest to forming a landed gentry of any
class of men we have in this country. They
are not city men running a brief and rapid ca-
reer on a fancy farm, but genuine countrymen,
who love the land and mean to keep it. I re-
member with pleasure one rosy-faced young
farmer, whose place we casually invaded in
Lincoln County. He was a graduate of Har-
vard University and of the law school, but here
he was with his trousers tucked into his boot-
legs, helping to cultivate his corn, or looking
after his herds upon his broad acres. He was
nearly the ideal of a simple, hearty, educated
country farmer and gentleman.

But the feature of this part of Kentucky
which struck me the most forcibly, and which
is perhaps the most unique, are the immense
sylvan or woodland pastures. The forests are
simply vast grassy orchards of maple and oak,
or other trees, where the herds graze and repose.
They everywhere give a look to the land as of
royal parks and commons. They are as clean
as a meadow and as inviting as long, grassy
vistas and circles of cool shade can make them.

A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS 229

All the saplings and bushy imdergrowths com-
mon to forests have been removed, leaving only
the large trees scattered here and there, which
seem to protect rather than occupy the ground
Such a look of leisure, of freedom, of ampli-
tude, as these forest groves give to the land-
scape !

What vistas, "vvhat aisles, what retreats, what
depths of sunshine and shadow ! The grass is
as uniform as a carpet, and grows quite up to
the boles of the trees. One peculiarity of the
blue-grass is that it takes complete possession
of the soil; it suffers no rival; it is as uniform
as a fall of snow. Only one weed seems to
hold its own against it, and that is ironweed, a
plant like a robust purple aster five or six feet
high. This is Kentucky's one weed, so far as
I saw. It was low and inconspicuous while I
was there, but before fall it gets tall and rank,
and its masses of purple flowers make a very
striking spectacle. Through these forest glades
roam the herds of cattle or horses. I know no
prettier sight than a troop of blooded mares
with their colts slowly grazing through these
stately aisles, some of them in sunshine, and
some in shadow. In riding along the highway
there was hardly an hour when such a scene
was not in view. Very often the great farm-
house stands amid one of these open forests
and is approached by a graveled road that winds
amid the trees. At Colonel Alexander's the
cottage of his foreman, as well as many of tlie
tarm buildings and stables, stands in a grassy

230 A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS

forest, and the mares with their colts roam far
and wide. Sometimes when they were going
for water, or were being started in for the night,
they would come charging along like the wind,
and what a pleasing sight it was to see their
glossy coats glancing adown the long sun-flecked
vistas! Sometimes the more open of these
forest lands are tilled ; I saw fine crops of hemp
growing on them, and in one or two cases corn.
But where the land has never been under cul •
tivation it is remarkably smooth — one can drive
with a buggy with perfect ease and freedom
anywhere through these woods. The ground is
as smooth as if it had been rolled. In Ken-
tucky we are beyond the southern limit of the
glacial drift; there are no surface boulders and
no abrupt knolls or gravel banks. Another
feature which shows how gentle and uniform
the forces which have moulded this land have
been are the beautiful depressions which go by
the ugly name of "sink-holes." They are
broad turf-lined bowls sunk in the surface here
and there, and as smooth and symmetrical as if
they had been turned out by a lathe. Those
about the woodlands of Colonel Alexander were
from one to two hundred feet across and fifteen
or twenty feet deep. The green turf sweeps
down into them without a break, and the great
trees grow from their sides and bottoms the
same as elsewhere. They look as if they might
have been carved out by the action of whirling
water, but are probably the result of the surface
water seeking a hidden channel in the under-

A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS 231

lying rock, and thus slowly carrying away the
soil with it. They all still have underground
drainage through the bottom. By reason of
these depressions this part of the State has been
called "goose-nest land," their shape suggest-
ing the nests of immense geese. On my way
southward to the Mammoth Cave, over the
formation known as the subcarboniferous, they
formed the most noticeable feature of the land-
scape. An immense flock of geese had nested
here, so that in places the rims of their nests
touched one another. As you near the great
cave you see a mammoth depression, nothing
less than a broad, oval valley which holds entire
farms, and which has no outlet save through
the bottom. In England these depressions
would be called punch- bowls; and though they
know well in Kentucky what punch is made
of, and can furnish the main ingredient of su-
perb quality, and in quantity that would quite
fill some of these grassy basins, yet I do not
know that they apply this term to them. But
in the good old times before the war, when the
spirit of politics ran much higher than now,
these punch-bowls and the forests about them
were the frequent scenes of happy and convi-
vial gatherings. Under the great trees the
political orators held forth ; a whole ox Avould
be roasted to feed the hungry crowd, and some-
thing stronger than punch flowed freely. One
farmer showed us in our walk where Crittenden
and Breckinridge had frequently held forth, but
the grass had long been growing over the ashes
where the ox had been roasted.

232 A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS

What a land for picnics and open-air meet-
ings! The look of it suggested something
more large and leisurely than the stress and
hurry of our American life. What was there
about it that made me think of Walter Scott
and the age of romance and chivalry? and of
Eobin Hood and his adventurous band under
the greenwood tree? Probably it was those
stately, open forests, with their clear, grassy
vistas where a tournament might be held, and
those superb breeds of horses wandering through
them upon which it was so easy to fancy
knights and ladies riding. The land has not
the mellow, time-enriched look of England; it
could not have it under our harder, fiercer
climate; but it has a sense of breadth and a
roominess which one never sees in England ex-
cept in the great royal parks.

The fences are mainly posts and rails, which
fall a little short of giving the look of perma-
nence which a hedge or a wall and dike afford.

The Kentuckians have an unhandsome way
of treating their forests when they want to get
rid of them ; they girdle the trees and let them
die, instead of cutting them down at once. A
girdled tree dies hard ; the struggle is painful
to look upon; inch by inch, leaf by leaf, it
yields, and the agony is protracted nearly
through the whole season. The land looked
accursed when its noble trees were all dying
or had died, as if smitten by a plague. One
hardly expected to see grass or grain growing
upon it. The girdled trees stand for years,

A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS 233

their gaunt skeletons "blistering in the sun or
blackening in the rain. Through southern In-
diana and Illinois I noticed this same lazy,
ugly custom of getting rid of the trees.

The most noticeable want of the blue-grass
region is water. The streams bore under-
ground through the limestone rock so readily
that they rarely come to the surface. With
plenty of sparkling streams and rivers like New
England, it would indeed be a land of infinite
attractions. The most unsightly feature the
country afforded was the numerous shallow
basins, scooped out of the soil and filled with
stagnant water, where the flocks and herds
drank. These, with the girdled trees, were
about the only things the landscape presented
to which the eye did not turn with plea-
sure. Yet when one does chance upon a spring,
it is apt to be a strikingly beautiful one.
The limestone rock, draped with dark, dripping
moss, opens a cavernous mouth from which in
most instances a considerable stream flows. I
saw three or four such springs, about which one
wanted to linger long. The largest was at
Georgetown, where a stream ten or twelve feet
broad and three or four feet deep came gliding
from a cavernous cliff without a ripple. It is
situated in the very edge of the town, and could
easily be made a feature singidarly attractive.
As we approached its head, a little colored girl
rose up from its brink with a pail of water. I
asked her name. "Venus, sir; Venus." It
was the nearest I had ever come to seeing
Venus rising from the foam.

234 A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS

There are three hard things in Kentucky,
only one of which is to my taste ; namely, hard
bread, hard beds, and hard roads. The roads
are excellent, macadamized as in England, and
nearly as well kept; but that "beat-biscuit," a
sort of domestic hardtack, in the making of
which the flour or dough is beaten long and
hard with the rolling-pin, is, in my opinion, a
poor substitute for Yankee bread; and those
mercilessly hard beds — the macadamizing prin-
ciple is out of place there too. It would not
be exact to call Kentucky butter bad; but with
all their fine grass and fancy stock, they do not
succeed well in this article of domestic manu-
facture. But Kentucky whiskey is soft, se-
ductively so, and I caution all travelers to be-
ware how they suck any iced preparation of it
through a straw of a hot day ; it is not half so
innocent as it tastes.

The blue-grass region has sent out, and con-
tinues to send out, the most famous trotting
horses in the world. Within a small circle not
half a dozen miles across were produced all the
more celebrated horses of the past ten years;
but it has as yet done nothing of equal excellence
in the way of men. I could but ask myself
why this ripe and mellow geology, this stately
and bountiful landscape, these large and sub-
stantial homesteads, have not yet produced a
crop of men to match. Cold and sterile Mas-
sachusetts is far in the lead in this respect.
Granite seems a better nurse of genius than the
lime- rock. The one great man born in Ken-

A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS 235

tucky, Abraham Lincoln, was not a product of
this fertile region. Henry Clay was a Virgin-
ian. The two most eminent native blue-grass
men were John C. Breckinridge and John J.
Crittenden. It seems that it takes something
more than a fertile soil to produce great men;
a deep and rich humo.n soil is much more im-
portant. Kentucky has been too far to one
side of the main current of our national life;
she has felt the influence of New England but
very little ; neither has she been aroused by the
stir and enterprise of the great West. Her
schoolhouses are too far apart, even in this rich
section, and she values a fast trotter or racer
more than she does a line scholar.

What gives the great fertility to the blue-
grass region is the old limestone rock, laid
down in the ancient silurian seas, which comes
to the surface over all this part of the State and
makes the soil by its disintegration. The earth
surface seems once to have bulged up here like
a great bubble, and then have been planed or
ground off by the elements. This wearing
away process removed all the more recent for-
mations, the coal beds and the conglomerate or
other rocks beneath them, and left this ancient
limestone exposed. Its continued decay keeps
up the fertility of the soil. AYheat and corn
and clover are rotated for fifty years upon the
same fields without manure, and without any
falling off in their productiveness. Where the
soil is removed, the rock presents that rough,
honeycombed appearance which surfaces do that

236 A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GEASS

have been worm-eaten instead of worn. The
tooth which has gnawed, and is still gnawing
it, is the carbonic acid carried into the earth by-
rain-water. Hence, unlike the prairies of the
West, the fertility of this soil perpetually renews
itself. The blue-grass seems native to this re-
gion; any field left to itself will presently be
covered with blue-grass. It is not cut for hay,
but is for grazing alone. Fields which have
been protected during the fall yield good pas-
turage even in winter. And a Kentucky win-
ter is no light affair, the mercury often falling
fifteen or twenty degrees below zero.

I saw but one new bird in Kentucky, namely,
the lark-finch, and but one pair of those. This
is a Western bird of the sparrow kind which is
slowly making its way eastward, having been
found as far east as Long Island. I was daily
on the lookout for it, but saw none till I Avas
about leaving this part of the State. Near old
Governor Shelby's place in Boyle County, as
we were driving along the road, my eye caught
a grayish-brown bird like the skylark, but with
a much more broad and beautifully marked tail.
It suggested both a lark and a sparrow, and I
knew at once it was the lark-finch I had been
looking for. It alighted on some low object in
a ploughed field, and with a glass I had a good
view of it — a very elegant, distinguished-ap-
pearing bird for one clad in the sparrow suit, the
tail large and dark, with white markings on the
outer web of the quills. Much as I wanted to
hear his voice, he would not sing, and it was

A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS 237

not till I reached Adams County, Illinois, that
I saw another one and heard the song. Dn/ing
about the country here — which, by the way,
reminded me more of the blue-grass region than
anything I saw outside of Kentucky — with a
friend, I was again on the lookout for the new
bird, but had begun to think it was not a resi-
dent, when I espied one on the fence by the
roadside. It failed to sing, but farther on we
saw another one which alighted upon a fruit
tree near us. We paused to look and to listen,
when instantly it struck up and gave us a good
sample of its musical ability. It was both a
lark and a sparrow song; or, rather, the notes
of a sparrow uttered in the continuous and rapid
manner of the skylark — a pleasing perform-
ance, but not meriting the praise I had heard
bestowed upon it.

In Kentucky and Illinois, and probably
throughout the West and Southwest, certain
birds come to the front and are conspicuous
which we see much less of in the East. The
blue jay seems to be a garden and orchard bird, .
and to build about dwellings as familiarly as
the robin does with us. There must be dozens
of these birds in this part of the country where
there is but one in New England. And the
brown thrashers — in Illinois they were as com-
mon along the highways as song sparrows or
chippies are with us, and nearly as familiar.
So also were the turtle-doves and meadow-larks.
That the Western birds should be more tame
and familiar than the same species in the East

238 A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS

is curious enough. From the semi- domestica-
tion of so many of the English birds, when
compared with our own, we infer that the older
the country, the more the birds are changed in
this respect; yet the birds of the Mississippi
Valley are less afraid of man than those of the
valley of the Hudson or the Connecticut. Is it
because the homestead, with its trees and build-
ings, affords the birds on the great treeless prai-
ries their first and almost only covert ? Where
could the perchers perch till trees and fences
and buildings offered? For this reason they
would at once seek the vicinity of man and be-
come familiar with him.

In Kentucky the summer redbird everywhere
attracted my attention. Its song is much like
that of its relative the tanager, and its general
habits and manners are nearly the same.

The oriole is as common in Kentucky as in
New York or New England. One day we saw
one weave into her nest unusual material.
As we sat upon the lawn in front of the cot-
tage, we had noticed the bird just beginning
her structure, suspending it from a long, low
branch of the Kentucky coffee- tree that grew
but a few feet away. I suggested to my host
that if he would take some brilliant yarn and
scatter it about upon the shrubbery, the fence,
and the walks, the bird would probably avail
herself of it, and weave a novel nest. I had
heard of it being done, but had never tried it
myself. The suggestion was at once acted upon
and in a few moments a handful of zephyr yarn,

A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS 239

crimson, orange, green, yellow, and blue, was
distributed about the grounds. As we sat at
dinner a few moments later I saw the eager bird
flying up toward her nest with one of these
brilliant yarns streaming behind her. They
had caught her eye at once, and she fell to
work upon them with a will; not a bit daunted
by their brilliant color, she soon had a crim-
son spot there amid the green leaves. She af-
forded us rare amusement all the afternoon
and the next morning. How she seemed to
congratulate herself over her rare find! How
vigorously she knotted those strings to her
branch and gathered the ends in and sewed
them through and through the structure, jerk-
ing them spitefully like a housewife burdened
with many cares! How savagely she would fly
at her neighbor, an oriole that had a nest just
over the fence a few yards away, when she in-
vaded her territory! The male looked on ap-
provingly, but did not ofl'er to lend a hand.
There is something in the manner of the female
on such occasions, something so decisive and
emphatic, that one entirely approves of the
course of the male in not meddling or ofl'ering
any suggestions. It is the wife's enterprise, and
she evidently knows her own mind so well that
the husband keeps aloof, or plays the part of
an approving spectator.

The woolen yarn was ill-suited to the Ken-
tucky climate. This fact the bird seemed to
appreciate, for she used it only in the upper
part of her nest, in attaching it to the branch

240 A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GKASS

and in binding and compacting the rim, making
the sides and bottom of hemp, leaving it thin
and airy, much more so than are the same nests
with us. No other bird would, perhaps, have
used such brilliant material; their instincts of
concealment would have revolted, but the oriole
aims more to make its nest inaccessible than to
hide it. Its position and depth insure its safety.
The red-headed woodpecker was about the
only bird of this class I saw, and it was very
common. Almost any moment, in riding along,
their conspicuous white markings as they flew
from tree to tree were to be seen festooning the
woods. Yet I was told that they were far less
numerous than formerly. Governor Knott said
he believed there were ten times as many when
he was a boy as now. But what beautiful
thing is there in this world that was not ten
times more abundant when one was a boy than
he finds it on becoming a man? Youth is the
principal factor in the problem. If one could
only have the leisure, the alertness, and the
freedom from care that he had when a boy, he
Avould probably find that the world had not de-
teriorated so much as he is apt to suspect.

The field or meadow bird, everywhere heard
in Kentucky and Illinois, is the black- throated
bunting, a heavy-beaked bird the size and color
of an English sparrow, with a harsh, rasping
song, which it indulges in incessantly. Among
bird-songs it is like a rather coarse weed among
our wild-flowers.

I could not find the mocking-bird in song,

A TASTE OF KENTUCKY BLUE-GRASS 241

though it breeds in the bkie-grass counties. I
saw only two specimens of the bird in all my
wanderings. The Virginia cardinal Avas com-
mon, and in places the yellow-breasted chat was
lieard. Once I heard from across a broad field
a burst of bobolink melody from a score or more
of throats — a flock of the birds probably paus-
ing on their way north. In Chicago I was told
that the Illinois bobolink had a different song
from the New England species, but I could de-
tect no essential difference. The song of cer-
tain birds, notably that of the bobolink, seems
to vary slightly in different localities, and also
to change during a series of years. I no longer
hear the exact bobolink song which I heard in
my boyhood, in the localities where I then
heard it. Not a season passes but I hear marked
departures in the songs of our birds from what
appears to be the standard song of a given species.

IN MAMMOTH CAVE

Some idea of the impression which Mammoth
Cave makes upon the senses, irrespective even
of sight, may be had from the fact that blind
people go there to see it, and are greatly struck
with it. I was assured that this is a fact.
The blind seem as much impressed by it as
those who have their sight. When the guide
pauses at the more interesting point, or lights
the scene up with a great torch or with Bengal
lights, and points out the more striking fea-
tures, the blind exclaim, " How wonderful ! how
beautiful ! " They can feel it if they cannot
see it. They get some idea of the spacious-
ness when words are uttered. The voice goes
forth in these colossal chambers like a bird.
When no word is spoken, the silence is of a
kind never experienced on the surface of the
earth, it is so profound and abysmal. This,
and the absolute darkness, to a person with eyes
makes him feel as if he were face to face with
the primordial nothingness. The objective
universe is gone; only the subjective remains;
the sense of hearing is inverted, and reports
only the murmurs from within. The blind
miss much, but much remains to them. The
great cave is not merely a spectacle to the eye;

IN MAMMOTH CAVE 243

it is a wonder to the ear, a strangeness to the
smell and to the touch. The body feels the
presence of unusual conditions through every
pore.

For my part, my thoughts took a decidedly
sepulchral turn ; I thought of my dead and of
all the dead of the earth, and said to myself, the
darkness and the silence of their last resting-
place is like this; to this we must all come at
last. No vicissitudes of earth, no changes of
seasons, no sound of storm or thunder penetrate
here; winter and summer, day and night, peace
or war, it is all one; a world beyond the reach
of change, because beyond the reach of life.
What peace, what repose, what desolation!
The marks and relics of the Indian, which dis-
appear so quickly from the light of day above,
are here beyond the reach of natural change.
The imprint of his moccasin in the dust might
remain undisturbed for a thousand years. At
one point the guide reaches his arm beneath the
rocks that strew the floor and pulls out the
burnt ends of canes used, when probably fdled
with oil or grease, by the natives to light their
way into the cave doubtless centuries ago.

Here in the loose soil are ruts worn by cart-
wheels in 1812, when, during the war with
Great Britain, the earth was leached to make
saltpetre. The guide kicks corn-cobs out of
the dust where the oxen were fed at noon, and
they look nearly as fresh as ever they did. In
those frail corn-cobs and in those wheel tracks
as if the carts had but just gone along, one

244 IN MAMMOTH CAVE

seemed to come very near to the youth of the
century, almost to overtake it.

At a point in one of the great avenues, if you
stop and listen, you hear a slow, solemn ticking
like a great clock in a deserted hall; you hear
the slight echo as it fathoms and sets off the
silence. It is called the clock, and is caused by
a single large drop of water falling every second
into a little pool. A ghostly kind of clock
there in the darkness, that is never wound up
and that never runs down. It seemed like a
mockery where time is not, and change does not
come — the clock of the dead. This sombre
and mortuary cast of one's thoughts seems so
natural in the great cave, that I could well un-
derstand the emotions of a lady who visited the
cave with a party a few days before I was there.
She went forward very reluctantly from the
first; the silence and the darkness of the huge
mausoleum evidently impressed her imagination,
so that when she got to the spot where the guide
points out the "Giant's Coffin," a huge, fallen
rock, which, in the dim light takes exactly the
form of an enormous cofiin, her fear quite over-
came her, and she begged piteously to be taken
back. Timid, highly imaginative people, es-
pecially women, are quite sure to have a sense
of fear in this strange underground world.
The guide told me of a lady in one of the par-
ties he was conducting through, who wanted to
linger behind a little all alone ; he suffered her
to do so, but presently heard a piercing scream.
Rushing back he found her lying prone upon

IN MAMMOTH CAVE 245

the 'ground in a dead faint. She had acciden-
tally put out her lamp, and was so appalled by
the darkness that instantly closed around her
that she swooned at once.

Sometimes it seemed to me as if I was
threading the streets of some buried city of the
fore-world. With your little lantern in your
hand, you follow your guide through those end-
less and silent avenues, catching glimpses on
either hand of what appears to be some strange
antique architecture, the hoary and crumbling
walls rising high up into the darkness. Now
we turn a sharp corner, or turn down a street
which crosses our course at right angles; now
we come out into a great circle, or spacious
court, which the guide lights up with a quick-
paper torch, or a colored chemical light.
There are streets above you and streets below
you. As this was a city where day never en-
tered, no provision for light needed to be made,
and it is built one layer above another to the
number of four or five, or on the plan of an
enormous ant hill, the lowest avenues being sev-
eral hundred feet beneath the uppermost. The
main avenue leading in from the entrance is
called the Broadway, and if Broadway, jSTew
York, was arched over and reduced to utter
darkness and silence, and its roadway blocked
with mounds of earth and fragments of rock, it
would perhaps, only lack that gray, cosmic,
elemental look, to make it resemble this. A
mile or so from the entrance we pass a couple
of rude stone houses, built forty or more years

246 IN MAMMOTH CAVE

ago by some consumptives, who hoped to pro-
long their lives by a residence in this pure,
antiseptic air. Five months they lived here,
poor creatures, a half dozen of them, Avithout
ever going forth into the world of light. But
the long entombment did not arrest the disease ;
the mountain did not draw the virus out, but
seemed to draw the strength and vitality out,
so that when the victims did go forth into the
light and air, bleached as white as chalk, they
succumbed at once, and nearly all died before
they could reach the hotel, a few hundred yards
away

Probably the prettiest thing they have to
show you in Mammoth Cave is the Star Cham-
ber. This seems to have made an impression
upon Emerson when he visited the cave, for he
mentions it in one of his essays, "Illusions."
The guide takes your lantern from you and
leaves you seated upon a bench by the wayside,
in the profound cosmic darkness. He retreats
along a side alley that seems • to go down to a
lower level, and at a certain point shades his
lamp with his hat, so that the light falls upon
the ceiling over your head. You look up, and
the first thought is that there is an opening just
there that permits you to look forth upon the
midnight skies. You see the darker horizon
line where the sky ends and the mountains be-
gin. The sky is blue-black and is thickly
studded with stars, rather small stars, but appar-
ently genuine. At one point a long, luminous
streak simulates exactly the form and effect of a

IN MAMMOTH CAVE 247

comet. As you gaze, the guide slowly moves
his hat, and a black cloud gradually creeps over
the sky, and all is blackness again. Then you
hear footsteps retreating and dying away in the
distance. Presently all is still, save the ring-
ing in your own ears. Then after a few mo-
ments, during which you have sat in a silence
like that of the interstellar spaces, you hear
over your left shoulder a distant flapping of
wings, followed by the crowing of a cock.
You turn your head in that direction and be-
hold a faint daAvn breaking on the horizon. It
slowly increases till you hear footsteps approach-
ing, and your dusky companion, playing the
part of Apollo, wath lamp in hand ushers in the
light of day. It is rather theatrical, but a very
pleasant diversion nevertheless.

Another surprise was when we paused at a
certain point, and the guide asked me to shout
or call in a loud voice. I did so without any
unusual effect following. Then he spoke in a
very deep base, and instantly the rocks all
about and beneath us became like the strings of
an ^Eolian harp. They seemed transformed as
if by enchantment. Then I tried, but did not
strike the right key ; the rocks were dumb ; I
•tried again, but got no response; flat and dead
the sounds came back as if in mockery; then I
struck a deeper base, the chord was hit, and the
solid Avails seemed to become as thin and frail
as a drum head or as the frame of a violin.
They fairly seemed to dance about us, and to
recede away from us. Such wild, sweet music

248 IN MAMMOTH CAVE

I had never before heard rocks discourse. Ah,
the magic of the right key! "Why leap ye,
ye high hills ? " why, but that they had been
spoken to in the right voice ? Is not the whole
secret of life to pitch our voices in the right
key ? Eesponses come from the very rocks
when we do so. I thought of the lines of our
poet of Democracy : —

" Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or

her I shall follow,
As the water follows tlie moon, silenth^ with fluid steps,

anywhere around the globe."

Where we were standing was upon an arch
over an avenue which crossed our course be-
neath us. The reverberations on Echo River,
a point I did not reach, can hardly be more sur-
prising, though they are described as wonderful.

There are four or five levels in the cave, and
a series of avenues upon each. The lowest is
some two hundred and fifty feet below the en-
trance. Here the stream which has done all
this carving and tunneling has got to the end
of its tether. It is here on a level with Green
River in the valley below and flows directly
into it. I say the end of its tether, though if
Green River cuts its valley deeper, the stream
will of course follow suit. The bed of the
river has probably, at successive periods, been
on a level with each series of avenues of the
cave. The stream is now doubtless but a mere
fraction of its former self. Indeed, every fea-
ture of the cave attests the greater volume and
activity of the forces which carved it, in the

IN MAMMOTH CAVE 249

earlier geologic ages. The waters have worn
the rock as if it were but ice. The domes and
pits are carved and fluted in precisely the way-
dripping water flutes snow or ice. The rainfall
must have been enormous in those early days,
and it must have had a much stronger and
sharper tooth of carbonic acid gas than now.
It has carved out enormous pits with perpendi-
cular sides, two or three hundred feet deep.
Goring Dome I remember particularly. You
put your head through an irregularly shaped
window in the wall at the side of one of the
avenues, and there is this huge shaft or well,
starting from some higher level and going down
two hundred feet below you. There must have
been such wells in the old glaciers, worn by a
rill of water slowly eating its way down. It
was probably ten feet across, still moist and
dripping. The guide threw down a lighted
torch, and it fell and fell, till I had to crane
my neck far out to see it finally reach the bot-
tom. Some of these pits are simply appalling,
and where the way is narrow, have been covered
over to prevent accidents.

No part of Mammoth Cave was to me more
impressive than its entrance, probably because
here its gigantic proportions are first revealed to
you, and can be clearly seen. That strange
colossal underworld here looks out into the light
of day, and comes in contrast with familiar
scenes and objects. When you are fairly in the
cave, you cannot see it; that is, with your
above-ground eyes ; you walk along by the dim

250 IN MAMMOTH CAVE

light of your lamp as in a huge wood at night;
when the guide lights up the more interesting
portions with his torches and colored lights, the
effect is weird and spectral; it seems like a
dream; it is an unfamiliar world; you hardly
know whether this is the emotion of grandeur
which you experience, or of mere strangeness.
If you could have the light of day in there,
you would come to your senses, and could test
the reality of your impressions. At the en-
trance you have the light of day, and you look
fairly in the face of this underground monster,
yea, into his open mouth, which has a span of
fifty feet or more, and down into his contracting
throat, where a man can barely stand upright,
and where the light fades and darkness begins.
As you come down the hill through the woods
from the hotel, you see no sign of the cave till
you emerge into a small opening where the
grass grows and the sunshine falls, when you
turn slightly to the right, and there at your feet
yawns this terrible pit; and you feel indeed as
if the mountain had opened its mouth and was
lying in wait to swallow you down, as a whale
might swallow a shrimj). I never grew tired
of sitting or standing here by this entrance and
gazing into it. It had for me something of the
same fascination that the display of the huge
elemental forces of nature have, as seen in
thunder-storms, or in a roaring ocean surf.
Two phoebe-birds had their nests in little niches
of the rocks, and delicate ferns and wild-flowers
fringed the edges.

IN MAMMOTH CAVE 251

Another very interesting feature to me was
the behavior of the cool air which welled up
out of the mouth of the cave. It simulated
exactly a fountain of water. It rose up to a
certain level, or until it filled the depression
immediately about the mouth of the cave, and
then flowing over at the lowest point, ran down
the hill towards Green Kiver, along a little
watercourse, exactly as if it had been a liquid.
I amused myself by wading down into it as into
a fountain. The air above was muggy and hot,
the thermometer standing at about eighty-six
degrees, and this cooler air of the cave, which
was at a temperature of about fifty-two degrees,
was separated in the little pool or lakelet which
is formed from the hotter air above it by a per-
fectly horizontal line. As I stepped down into
it I could feel it close over my feet, then it
was at my knees, then I was immersed to my
hips, then to my waist, then I stood neck deep
in it, my body almost chilled while my face
and head were bathed by a sultry, oppressive
air. Where the two bodies of air came into
contact, a slight film of vapor was formed by
condensation ; I waded in till I could look under
this as under a ceiling. It was as level, and
as well defined as a sheet of ice on a pond.
A few moments' immersion into this aerial
fountain made one turn to the warmer air again.
At the depression in the rim of the basin one
had but to put his hand down to feel the cold
air flowing over like water. Fifty yards below,
you could still wade into it as into a creek, and

252 IN MAMMOTH CAVE

at a hundred yards it was still quickly percep-
tible, but broader and higher; it had begun to
lose some of its coldness, and to mingle with
the general air; all the plants growing on the
margin of the watercourse were in motion, as
well as the leaves on the low branches of the
trees near by. Gradually this cool current was
dissipated and lost in the warmth of the day.

HASTY OBSERVATION

When Boswell told Dr. Johnson that while
in Italy he had several times seen the experi-
ment tried of placing a scorpion within a circle
of burning coals, and that in every instance the
scorpion, after trying to break through the fiery
circle, retired to the centre and committed sui-
cide by darting its sting into its head, the doc-
tor showed the true scientific spirit by demand-
ing further proof of the fact. The mere
testimony of the eye under such circumstances
was not enough; appearances are often decep-
tive. "If the great anatomist Morgagni," said
the doctor, "after dissecting a scorpion on
which the experiment had been tried, should
certify that its sting had penetrated its head,
that would be convincing." For almost the
only time in his life, I say, the superstitious
doctor showed himself a true scientist, a man
refusing to accept the truth of appearances.

But this frame of mind was not habitual to
him, for the next moment he said that swallows
sleep all winter in the bed of a river or pond,
" conglobulated " into a ball. The scientific
spirit would have required him to insist upon
the proof of the alleged fact in this case the
same as in the other. Has any competent ob-

254 HASTY OBSERVATION

server verified this statement ? Have svrallows
been taken out of the mud, or been seen to
throw themselves into the water?

Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), in his book
on animals, says that the eel leaves the water in
the night time, and invades the fields and gar-
dens to feed upon peas and lentils. A scien-
tific man makes this statement, and probably
upon no stronger proof than that some eels
dropped by poachers in their hasty retreat, had
been found in a pea patch. If peas had been
found, and found in many cases, in the stom-
achs of eels, that Avould have been pretty con-
clusive proof that eels eat peas.

The great thing in observation is not to be
influenced by our preconceived notions, or by
what we want to be true, or by our fears, hopes,
or any personal element, and to see the thing
just as it is.

A person who believes in ghosts and apjDari-
tions cannot be depended upon to investigate
an alleged phenomenon of this sort, because he
will not press his inquiry far enough, and will
take for granted the very fact we want proof of.

The eye does not always see what is in front
of it. Indeed it might almost be said, it sees
only what is back of it, in the mind. When-
ever I have any particular subject in mind,
every walk gives me new material. If I am
thinking about tree-toads, I find tree-toads. If
I am dwelling upon birds' nests, I find plenty
of nests which otherwise I should have passed
by. If bird-songs occupy me, I am bound to,
hear some new or peculiar note.

HASTY OBSERVATION 250

Every one has observed how, after he has
made the acquaintance of a new word, that
word is perpetually turning up in his reading,
as if it had suddenly become the fashion.
When you have a thing in mind, it is not long
till you have it in hand. Torrey and Drum-
mond, the botanists, were one day walking in
the woods near West Point. "I have never
yet found so and so," said Drummond, naming
a rare kind of moss. "Find it anywhere,"
said Torrey, and stooped and picked it up at
their feet. Thoreau could pick up arrowheads
with the same ease. Many people have the
same quick eye for a four-leafed clover. I may
say of myself without vanity, that I see birds
with like ease. It is no effort, I cannot help
it. Either my eye or my ear is on duty quite
unbeknown to me. When I visit my friends,
I leave a trail of birds behind me, as old Am-
phion left a plantation of trees wherever he sat
down and played.

The scientific habit of mind leads a man to
take into account all possible sources of error
in such observations. The senses are all so
easily deceived.

People of undoubted veracity tell you of the
strange things they have known to rain down,
or of some strange bird or beast they have seen.
But if you question them closely, you are pretty
sure to find some flaw in the observation, or
some link of evidence wanting. We are so apt
to jump to conclusions; we take one or two
steps in following up the evidence, and then

256 HASTY OBSERVATION

leap to the result that seems to be indicated.
If you find a trout in the milk, you may be jus-
tified in jumping to a conclusion not flattering
to your milkman, but if you find angle-worms
in the barrel of rain-water after a shower, you
are not to conclude that therefore they rained
down, as many people think they do.

Or if after a shower in summer you find the
ground swarming with little toads, you are not
to infer that the shower brought them down.
I have frequently seen large numbers of little
toads hopping about after a shower, but only in
particular localities. Upon a small, gravelly
hill in the highway along which I was in the
habit of walking, I have seen them several sea-
sons, but in no other place upon that road.
Just why they come out on such occasions is a
question; probably to get their jackets wet.
There was a pond and marshy ground not far
oif where they doubtless hatched. Because the
frogs are heard in the marshes in spring as soon
as the ice and snow are gone, it is a popular be-
lief that they hibernate in these places. But
the two earliest frogs, I am convinced, pass the
winter in the ground in the woods, and seek
the marshes as soon as the frost and ice are
gone. I have heard the hyla pipe in a feeble
tentative manner in localities where the ground
was free from frost, while the marshes near by
were yet covered with solid ice; and in spring
I have dug out another species from beneath the
leaf mould in the woods. Both these species
are properly land-frogs, and only take to the

HASTY OBSERVATION 257

water to breed, returning again to the woods
later in the season. The same is true of the
tree-frog, which passes the winter in the ground
or in hollow trees, and takes to the marshes in
May to deposit its eggs. The common bull-
frog and the pickerel-frog doubtless pass the
winter in the bed of ponds and streams. I
think it is quite certain that hiljernating ani-
mals in the ground do not freeze, though by no
means beyond the reach of frost. The frogs,
ants, and crickets are probably protected by
some sort of acid which their bodies secrete,
though this is only a guess of my own. The
frog I dug out of the leaves one spring day,
while the ground above and below him was
frozen hard, was entirely free from frost, though
his joints were apparently very stiff. A friend
of mine in balling some trees in winter cut
through a den of field crickets; the ground was
frozen about their galleries, but the crickets
themselves, though motionless, were free from
frost. Cut the large, black tree ants out of a
pine log in winter and though apparently life-
less they are not frozen.

There is something in most of us that wel-
comes a departure from the ordinary routine of
natural causes; we like to believe that the im-
possible happens; we like to see the marvelous
and mysterious crop out of ordinary occurrences.
We like to believe, for instance, that snakes
can charm their prey ; can exert some mysteri-
ous influence over bird or beast at a distance of
many feet, which deprives it of power to escape.

258 HASTY OBSERVATION

But there is probably little truth in this popular
notion. Fear often paralyzes, and doubtless this
is the whole secret of the power of snakes and
cats to charm their prey. It is what is called a
subjective phenomenon; the victim is fascinated
or spellbound by the sudden and near appear-
ance of its enemy. A sportsman in whose
veracity I have full confidence, told me that his
pointer dog had several times worked up to a
woodcock or partridge and seized it in his
mouth. Of course the dog brought no myste-
rious power to bear upon the bird. He could
hardly have seen the bird till he came plump
upon it; he was wholly intent upon unraveling
its trail. The bird, in watching the eager mo-
tions and the gradual approach of the dog, must
have been thrown into such a state of fear or
consternation as to quite paralyze its powers,
and suffered the dog to pick it up. In the case
of snakes, they doubtless in most instances ap-
proach and seize their prey unawares. I have
seen a little snake in the woods pursue and
overtake a lizard that was trying to escape from
it. There was no attempt at charming; supe-
rior speed alone gave the victory to the snake.
I have known a red squirrel to be caught and
swallowed by a black snake, but I have no be-
lief that the squirrel was charmed; it was more
probably seized from some ambush.

One can hardly understand how a mouse can
be caught by a hawk except upon the theory
that the mouse is suddenly paralyzed by fear.
The meadow-mouse when exposed to view ia

HASTY OBSERVATION 259

very wary and quick in its movements; it is
nibbling grass in the meadow bottom, or clear-
ing its runway, or shaping its nest, when the
hawk poises on wing high in the air above it.
When the hawk discovers its victim, it descends
with extended talons to the earth and seizes it.
It does not drop like a bolt from heaven; its
descent, on the contrary, is quite deliberate,
and must be attended by a sound of rushing
wings that ought to reach the mouse's ear, if
the form escapes its eye.

There is doubtless just as much '^charming"
in this case as in any other, or when a fish-
hawk falls through the air and seizes a fish near
the surface in perfectly clear water — what hin-
ders the fish from seeing and avoiding its en-
emy ? Apparently nothing ; apparently it allows
itself to be seized. Every fisherman knows
how alert most fish are, how quickly they dis-
cover him and dart away, even when he is im-
mediately above them. All I contend for is
that the snake, the cat, the hawk, does not ex-
ert some mysterious power over its prey, but
that its prey in many cases loses its power to
escape through fear. It is said that a stuffed
snake's skin will charm a bird as well as the live
snake.

I came near reaching a hasty conclusion the
other day with regard to a chickadee's nest.
The nest is in a small cavity in the limb of a
pear-tree near my study, and the birds and I
are on very friendly terms. As the nest of
a pair of chickadees had been broken up here a

260 HASTY OBSERVATION

few seasons ago by a mouse or squirrel, I was
apprehensive lest this nest share the same fate.
Hence when, one morning, the birds were miss-
ing, and I found on inspection what appeared
to be the hair of some small animal adhering to
the edges of the hole that leads to the nest, I
concluded that the birds had been cleaned out
again. Later in the day I examined the sup-
posed hair with my pocket glass, and found it
was not hair, but some vegetable fibre. My
next conclusion was that the birds had not been
molested, but that they Avere furnishing their
apartment, and some of the material had stuck
to the door jambs. This proved to be the cor-
rect inference. The chickadee makes a little
felt-like mat or carpet with which it covers the
bottom of the nest-cavity. A day or two later,
in my vineyard near by, I found where a piece
of heavy twine that held a yoimg grapevine to a
stake had been pulled down to the ground and
picked and beaten, and parts of it reduced to
its original tow. Here, doubtless, the birds
had got some of their carpeting material.

I recently read in a work on ornithology that
the rings of small holes which we see in the
trunks and limbs of perfectly sound apple-trees
are made by woodpeckers in search of grubs and
insects. This is a hasty inference. These
holes are made by woodpeckers, but the food
they obtain at the bottom of them is not the
flesh of worm or insect, but the flesh of the
apple-tree — the soft, milky inner bark. The
same writer says these holes are not hurtful to

HASTY OBSERVATION '^61

the tree, but conducive to its health. Yet I
have seen the limbs of large apple-trees nearly
killed by being encompassed by numerous rings
of large, deep holes made by the yellow-bellied
woodpecker. This bird drills holes in the
sugar maple in the spring for the sap I have
known him to spend the greater part of a bright
March day on the sunny side of a maple, in-
dulging in a tipple of maple sap every four or
five minutes. As fast as his well holes filled
up he would sip them dry.

A lady told me that a woodpecker drilled
holes in the boards that form the eaves of her
house, for the grubs of the carpenter bumblebee.
This also seemed to me a hasty conclusion, be-
cause the woodpeckers made holes so large that
the next season the bluebirds nested there.
The woodpeckers were probably drilling for a
place to nest. A large ice-house stands on the
river bank near me, and every season the man
in charge has to shoot or drive away the high-
holes that cut numerous openings through the
outer sheathing of hemlock boards into the
spaces filled with sawdust, where they find the
digging easy and a nesting-place safe and snug

My neighbor caught a small hawk in his shad-
net, and therefore concluded the hawk ate fish.
He put him in a cage, and offered him frag-
ments of shad. The little hawk was probably
in pursuit of a bird which took refuge under
the net as it hung upon the drying-poles ; or he
may have swooped down upon the net m the
spirit of pure bluster and bravado, and thus

262 HASTY OBSERVATION

come to grief in a hurry. The fine, strong
threads of the net defied his murderous beak
and talons. He was engulfed as completely as
is a fly in a spider's web, and the more he
struggled the more hopeless his case became.
It was a pigeon-hawk, and these little maraud-
ers are very saucy.

My neighbor says that in the city of Brook-
lyn he has known kingbirds to nest in boxes
like martins and bluebirds. I question this
observation, though it may be true. The cousin
of the kingbird, the great crested flycatcher,
builds in cavities in trees, and its relative, the
phoebe-bird, nests under bridges and hay-sheds.
Hence there is this fact to start with in favor
of my neighbor's observation.

But when a lady from Pennsylvania writes
me that she has seen "swallows rolling and
dabbling in the mud in early spring, their
breasts so covered with it that it would take but
little stretch of imagination to believe they had
just emerged from the bottom of the pond be-
side which they were playing," I am more than
skeptical. The lady has not seen straight.
The swallows were not rolling in the mud;
there was probably not a sjDeck of mud upon
their plumage, but a little upon their beaks
and feet. The red of their breasts was their
own proper color. They were building their
nests, as my correspondent knew, but they did
not carefully mix and knead the mud, as she
thought they did; they had selected mortar
already of the proper sort.

HASTY OBSERVATION 263

The careful observer is not long in learning
that there is truth in the poet's remark, that
"things are not what they seem." Everywhere
on the surface of nature things seem one thing,
and mean quite another. The hasty observer
is misled by the seeming, and thus misses the
real truth. ^

The little green snake that I saw aniong the
" live-for-evers " the other day, how nearly it
escaped detection by the close resemblance of its
color to that of the plant! And when, a few
days later, I saw one carelessly disposed across
the top of the bending grass and daisies, but a
few feet from where I sat, my eye again came
near being baffled.

The little snake was probably lying in wait
for some insect. Presently it slid gently down
into the grass, moving so slowly as to escape
any but the most watchful eye. After its head
and a part of its body were upon the ground,
its tail still pointed straight up and exactly re-
sembled some fresh vegetable growth. The
safeguard of this little snake is in his protective
coloring; hence his movements are slower and
more deliberate than those of the other snakes.

This simulation is very common in nature.
Every creature has its enemy, and pretends to
be that which it is not, in order to escape de-
tection. The true frog pretends to be a piece
of bark, or a lichen upon a tree; the wood-frog
is the color of the dry leaves upon which it
hops, though when spawning in the little black
pools and tarns in spring, its color is very dark,
like the element it inhabits.

264 HASTY OBSERVATION

One day, in my walk in the woods, I dis-
turbed a whippoorwill where she sat upon her
eggs on the ground. When I returned to the
spot some hours afterward, and tried to make
out the bird upon her nest, my eye was baffled
for some moments, so successful was she in pre-
tending to be only a mottled stick or piece of
fallen bark.

Only the most practiced eye can detect the
partridge (ruffled grouse) when she sits or
stands in full view upon the ground in the
woods. How well she plays her part, rarely
moving, till she suddenly bursts up before you,
and is gone in a twinkling! How well her
young are disciplined always to take their cue
from her ! Not one will stir till she gives the
signal.

One day in my walk, as I paused on the side
of a steep hill in the edge of the woods, my
eye chanced to fall upon a partridge, sitting
upon the leaves beside a stump scarcely three
paces from me. *'Can she have a nest there? "
was my first thought. Then I remembered it
was late in the summer, and she certainly could
not be incubating. Then why is she sitting
there in that exposed manner'?

Keeping my eye upon her, I took a step for-
ward, when, quick as a flash, she sprang into
the air and went humming away. At the same
moment, all about me, almost from under my
feet, her nearly grown young sprang up and
went booming through the woods after her.
Not one of them had moved or showed fear till
their mother gave the word.

HASTY OBSERVATION 265

To observe nature and know her secrets, one
needs not only a sharp eye, but a steady and
patient eye. You must look again and again,
and not be misled by appearances. All the
misinformation about the objects and phenom-
ena of nature afloat among country people is the
result of hasty and incomplete observation.

In parts of the country where wheat is grown
there is quite a prevalent belief among the farm-
ers that if the land is poor or neglected, the
wheat will turn into chess or cheat grass.
Have they not seen it, have they not known the
wheat to disappear entirely, and the chess to be
there in its place?

But like so many strange notions that are
current in the rural districts, this notion is the
result of incomplete observation. The cheat
grass was there all the while, feebler and in-
conspicuous, but biding its time; when the
wheat failed and gave up possession of the soil
the grass sprang forward and took its place.

Nature always has a card to play in that way.
There is no miracle nor case of spontaneous
generation about the curious succession of forest
trees — oak succeeding pine, or poplar succeed-
ing birch or maple — if we could get at the facts.
Nature only lets loose germs which the winds
or the birds and animals have long since stored
there, and which have only been waiting their
opportunity to grow.

A great many people are sure there is such a
creature as a glass snake, a snake which breaks
up into pieces to escape its enemies, and then

266 HASTY OBSERVATION

when danger is past gets itself together again
and goes its way.

Not long since a man published an account in
a scientific journal of a glass snake which he
had encountered in a hay-field, and which,
when he attemjDted to break its head, had
broken itself up into five or six pieces.

He carefully examined the pieces and found
them of regular lengths of three or four inches,
and that they dovetailed together by a nice and
regular process. He left the fragments in the
grass, and when he returned from dinner they
were all gone. He therefore inferred the snake
had reconstructed itself and traveled on.

K he had waited to see this process, his ob-
servation would have been complete.

On another occasion, he cut one in two with
his scythe, when the snake again made small
change of itself. Again he went to his dinner
just at the critical time, and when he returned
the fragments of the reptile had disappeared.

This will not do. We must see the play
out, before we can report upon the last act.

There is, of course, a small basis of fact in
the superstition of the glass snake. The crea-
ture is no snake at all, but a species of limbless
lizard, quite common in the West. And it has
the curious power of voluntarily breaking itself
up into regular pieces when disturbed, but it is
only the tail which is so broken up; the body
part remains intact.

Break this up and the snake is dead. The
tail is disproportionately long, and is severed at

HASTY OBSERVATION 267

certain points, evidently to mislead its enemies.
It is the old trick of throwing a tub to a whale.
The creature sacrifices its tail to secure the
safety of its body. These fragments have no
power to unite themselves again, but a new tail
is grown in place of the part lost. When a real
observer encountered the glass or joint-snake,
these facts were settled.

The superstition of the hair- snake is founded
upon a like incomplete observation. Every-
where may be found intelligent people who will
tell you they know that a horse-hair, if put
into the spring, will turn into a snake, and that
all hair-snakes have this origin. But a hair
never turns into a snake any more than wheat
is transformed into chess. The so-called hair-
snake is a parasitical worm which lives in the
bodies of various insects, and which at maturity
takes to the water to lay its eggs.

What boy, while trout-fishing in July and
August, and using grasshoppers for bait, has not
been vexed to find the body of the insect, when
snapped at by the trout, yielding a long, white,
brittle thread, which clogged his hook, and
spoiled the attractiveness of the bait? This
thread is the hair-worm.

How the germ first gets into the body of the
grasshopper I do not know. After the creature
leaves the insect, it becomes darker in color, and
narder and firmer in texture, and more closely
resembles a large hair.

See what pains the trapper will take to outwit
the fox; see what art the angler will practice

268 HASTY OBSERVATION

to deceive the wary trout. One must pursue
the truth with the like patience and diligence.

The farmers all think, or used to think, that
the hen-hawk was their enemy, but last spring
the Agricultural Department procured three
hundred hen-hawks, and examined the craw of
each of them, and made the valuable discovery
that this hawk subsisted almost entirely upon
meadow mice, thus proving them to be one of
the farmer's best friends.

The crow, also, when our observations upon
his food habits are complete, is found to be a
friend, and not an enemy. The smaller hawks
do prey upon birds and chickens, though the
pretty little sparrow-hawk lives largely upon
insects.

Gilbert White quotes the great Linnaeus as
saying that "Hawks make a truce with other
birds as long as the cuckoo is heard.'' This is
also a superstition. Watch closely, and you
will see the small hawks in pursuit of birds at
all seasons; and when a hawk pursues a bird,
or when one bird pursues another, it has the
power to tack and turn, and to time its move-
ments to that of the bird pursued, which is
quite marvelous.

The sparrow might as well dodge its own
shadow as to dodge the sharp-shinned hawk.
It escapes, if at all, by rushing into a bush or
tree, where the movements of its enemy are im-
peded by the leaves and branches.

Speaking of hawks, reminds me that I read
the other day in one of the magazines a very

HASTY OBSERVATION 269

pretty poem, in which a hawk was represented
poised in mid-air, on motionless wing, during
♦^■he calm of a midsummer day.

Now, of a still day, this is an impossible feat
for a hawk or any other bird. The poet had not
observed quite closely enough. She had noted
(as who has not ?) the ha\vk stationary in the
air on motionless wing, but she failed to note, or
she had forgotten, that the wind was blowing.

He cannot do it on a calm day; the blowing
wind furnishes the power necessary to buoy him
up. He so adjusts his wings to the moving
currents that he hangs stationary upon them.
When the hawk hovers in the air of a still day,
he is compelled to beat his wings rapidly. He
must expend upon the air the power which, in
the former case, is expended upon him.

Thus does hasty and incomplete observation

mislead one.

One day in early April as I was riding along

the road I heard the song of the brown thrasher.

The thrasher is not due yet, I said to myself,

but there was its song, and no mistake, with

all its quibs and quirks and interludes, being

chanted from some tree -top a few yards in ad^

vance of me. Let us have a view of the bird,

I said, as I approached the tree upon which I

fancied he was perched. The song ceased and

no thrasher was visible, but there sat a robin,

which, as I paused, flew to a lower tree in a field

at some distance from the road. Then I moved

on, thinking the songster had eluded me. On

looking back I chanced to see the robin fly back

270 HASTY OBSERVATION

to the top of the tree where I had first disturbed
it, and in a moment or two more, forth came
the thrasher's song again. Then I went cau-
tiously back and caught the robin in the very
act of reproducing perfectly the song of the
brown thrasher. A bolder plagiarist I had
never seen; not only had he got the words, as
it were correctly, but he delivered them in the
same self-conscious manner. His performance
would probably have deceived the brown
thrasher himself. How did the robin come by
this song? I can suggest no other explanation
than that he must have learned it from the
brown thrasher. Probably the latter bird sang
near the nest of the robin, so that the young
heard this song and not that of their own kind.
If so it would be interesting to know if all the
young males learned the song.

Close attention is the secret of learning from
nature's book, as from every other. Most
persons only look at the pictures, but the real
student studies the text; he alone knows what
tlie pictures really mean. There is a great deal
of by- play going on in the life of nature about
us, a great deal of variation and out-cropping of
individual traits, that we entirely miss unless
we have our eyes and ears open.

It is not like the play at the theatre, where
everything is made conspicuous and aims to
catch the eye, and where the story clearly and
fully unfolds itself. On nature's stage many
dramas are being played at once, and without
any reference to the lookers-on, unless it be to

HASTY OBSERVATION 271

escape their notice. The actors rush or strut
across the stage, the curtain rises or falls, the
significant thing happens, and we heed it not
because our wits are dull or else our minds are
preoccupied. We do not pay strict attention.
Nature will not come to you; you must go to
her; that is, you must put yourself in commu-
nication with her; you must open the corre-
spondence; you must train your eye to pick out
the significant things. A quick open sense,
and a lively curiosity like that of a boy are ne-
cessary. Indeed, the sensitiveness and alertness
of youth and the care and patience of later
years are what make the successful observer.

The other morning my little boy and I set
out to find the horse who had got out of the pas-
ture and gone ofi". Had he gone up the road or
down? We did not know, but we imagined
Ave could distinguish his track going down the
road, so we began our search in that direction.
The road presently led through a piece of
woods. Suddenly my little boy stopped me.

"Papa, see that spider's web stretched across
the road; our horse has not gone this way."

My face had nearly touched the web or cable
of the little spider, which stretched completely
across the road, and which certainly would have
been swept away had the horse or any other
creature passed along there in the early morning.
The boy's eye was sharper than my own. He
had been paying stricter attention to the signs
and objects about him. We turned back and
60on found the horse in the opposite direction.

272 HASTY OBSERVATION

This same little boy, by looking closely, has
discovered that there are certain stingless wasps.
When he sees one which bears the marks he
boldly catches him in his hand. The wasp goes
through the motions of stinging so perfectly, so
works and thrusts with its flexible body, that
nearly every hand to which it is offered draws
back. The mark by which the boy is guided is
the light color of the wasp's face. Most coun-
try boys know that white-faced bumble-bees are
stingless, but I have not before known a boy
bold enough to follow the principle out and ap-
ply it to wasps as well. These white-faces are
the males, and answer to the drones in the bee
hive; though the drones have not a white face.

We cannot all find the same things in nature.
She is all things to all men. She is like the
manna that came down from heaven. "He
made manna to descend for them, in which were
all manner of tastes; and every Israelite found
in it what his palate was chiefly pleased with.
If he desired fat in it, he had it. In it the
young men tasted bread ; the old men, honey ;
and the children, oil." But all found in it
substance and strength. So with nature. In
her are "all manner of tastes," science, art,
poetry, utility, and good in all. The botanist
has one pleasure in her, the ornithologist an-
other, the explorer another, the walker and
sportsman another; what all may have is the
refreshment and the exhilaration which come
from a loving and intelligent scrutiny of her
manifold works.

BIRD LI¥E m AN OLD APPLE-
TREE

Near my study there used to stand several
old apple-trees that bore fair crops of apples,
but better crops of birds. Every year these old
trees were the scenes of bird incidents and bird
histories that were a source of much interest and
amusement.

Young trees may be the best for apples, but
old trees are sure to bear the most birds. If
they are very decrepit, and full of dead and
hollow branches, they will bear birds in winter
as well as summer. The downy woodpecker
wants no better place than the brittle, dozy
trunk of an apple-tree in which to excavate his
winter home.

My old apple-trees are all down but one, and
this one is probably an octogenarian, and I am
afraid cannot stand in another winter. Its body
is a mere shell not much over one inch thick, the
heart and main interior structure having turned
to black mould long ago.

An old tree, unlike an old person, as long as
it lives at all, always has a young streak, or
rather ring, in it. It wears a girdle of perpet-
ual youth.

My old tree has never yet failed to yield me

274 BIRD LIFE IN AN OLD APPLE-TREE

a bushel or more of gillyflowers, and it has
turned out at least a dozen broods of the great
crested flycatcher, and robins and bluebirds in
proportion. It carries up one large decayed
trunk which some one sawed off at the top be-
fore my time, and in this a downy woodpecker
is now, January 12, making a home.

Several years ago a downy woodpecker ex-
cavated a retreat in this branch, which the fol-
lowing season was appropriated by the blue-
birds, and has been occupied by them nearly
every season since.

When the bluebirds first examined the cav-
ity in the spring, I suppose they did not find
the woodpecker at home, as he is a pretty early
riser.

I happened to be passing near the tree when,
on again surveying the premises one afternoon,
they found him in.

The male bluebird was very angry, and I
suppose looked upon the innocent downy as an
intruder. He seized on him, and the two fell
to the ground, the speckled woodpecker quite
covered by the blue coat of his antagonist.
Downy screamed vigorously, and got away as
soon as he could, but not till the bluebird had
tweaked out a feather or two.

He is evidently no fighter, though one would
think that a bird that had an instrument with
which it could drill a hole into a tree could de-
fend itself against the soft- billed bluebird.

Two seasons the English sparrows ejected the
bluebirds and established themselves in it, but

BIRD LIFE IN AN OLD APPLE-TREE 275

were in turn ejected by myself, their furniture
of hens' feathers and straws pitched out, and
the bluebirds invited to return, which later in
the season they did.

The new cavity which downy is now drilling
is just above the old one and near the top of
the stub. Its wells are usually sunk to a
depth of six or eight inches, but in the present
case it cannot be sunk more than four inches
without breaking through into the old cavity.

Downy seems to have considered the situa-
tion, and is proceeding cautiously. As she
passed last night in her new quarters I am in-
clined to think it is about finished, and there
must be at least one inch of wood beneath her.
She worked vigorously the greater part of the
day, her yellow chips strewing the snow be-
neath.

I paused several times to observe her proceed-
ings.

After her chips accumulate she stops her
drilling and throws them out. This she does
with her beak, shaking them out very rapidly
with a flirt of her head.

She did not disappear from sight each time
to load her beak, but withdrew her head and
appeared to seize the fragments as if from her
feet. If she had had a companion I should
have thought he was handing them up to her
from the bottom of the cavity. Maybe she had
them piled up near the doorway.

The woodpeckers, both the hairy and the
downy, usually excavate these winter retreats

276 BIRD LIFE IN AN OLD APPLE-TREE

in the fall. They pass the nights and the
stormy days in them. So far as I have ob-
served they do not use them as nesting-places
the following season.

Last night when I rapped on the trunk of the
old apple-tree near sundown, downy put out
her head with a surprised and inquiring look,
and then withdrew it again as I passed on.

I have spoken of the broods of the great
crested flycatchers that have been reared in the
old apple-tree. This is by no means a common
bird, and as it destroys many noxious insects I
look upon it with a friendly eye, though it is
the most uncouth and unmusical of the flycatch-
ers.

Indeed, among the other birds of the garden
and orchard it seems quite like a barbarian.

It has a harsh, froglike scream, form and
manners to suit, and is clad in a suit of butter-
nut brown. It seeks a cast-ofi* snakeskin to
weave into its nest, and not finding one, will
take an onion skin, a piece of oiled paper, or
large fish scales.

It builds in a cavity in a tree, rears one
brood, and is off' early in the season. I never
see or hear it after August 1st.

A pair have built in a large, hollow limb in
my old apple-tree for many years. Whether it
is the same pair or not I do not know. Proba-
bly it is, or else some of their descendants.

I looked into the cavity one day while the
mother bird was upon the nest, but before she
had laid any eggs. A sudden explosive sound

BIRD LIFE IN AN OLD APPLE-TREE 277

came up out of the dark depths of the limb,
much like that made by an alarmed cat. It
made me jerk my head back, when out came
the bird and hurried off.

For several days I saw no more of the pair,
and feared they had deserted the spot. But
they had not; they were only more sly than
usual. I soon discovered an egg in the nest,
and then another and another.

One day, as I stood near by, a male bluebird
came along with his mate, prospecting for a spot
for a second nest. He alighted at the entrance
of this hole and peeped in.

Instantly the flycatcher was upon him. The
blue was enveloped by the butternut brown.
The two fell to the ground, where the bluebird
got away, and in a moment more came back and
looked in the hole again, as much as to say, " I
will look into that hole now at all hazards."

The barbarian made a dash for him again,
but he was now on his guard and avoided her.

Not long after, the bluebirds decided to oc-
cupy the old cavity of the downy woodpecker
from which I had earlier in the season expelled
the English sparrows. After they had estab-
lished themselves here a kind of border war
broke out between the male bluebird and the
flycatchers, and was kept up for weeks.

The bluebird is very jealous and very bold.
He will not even tolerate a house- wren in the
vicinity of his nest. Every bird that builds in
a cavity he looks upon as his natural rival and
enemy. The flycatchers did not seek any quar-

278 BIRD LIFE IN AN OLD APPLE-TREE

rel with him as long as he kept to his own
domicile, but he could not tolerate them in the
same tree.

It was a pretty sight to see this little blue-
coat charging the butternut through the trees.
The beak of the latter would click like a gun-
lock, and its harsh, savage voice was full of
anger, but the bluebird never flinched, and was
always ready to renew the fight.

The English sparrow will sometimes worst
the bluebird by getting possession of the box or
cavity ahead of him. Once inside the sparrow
can hold the fort, and the bluebird will soon
give up the siege; but in a fair field and no
favors, the native bird will quickly rout the for-
eigner.

Speaking of birds that build in cavities re-
minds me of a curious trait the high-hole has
developed in my vicinity, one which I have
never noticed or heard of elsewhere.

It drills into buildings and steeples and tele-
graph poles, and in some instances makes itself
a serious nuisance.

One season the large imitation Greek col-
umns of an unoccupied old-fashioned summer
residence near me were badly marred by them.
The bird bored into one column, and finding
the cavity — a foot or more across — not just
what it was looking for, cut into another one,
and still into another. Then he bored into the
ice-house on the premises, and in the sawdust
filling between the outer and inner sheathing
found a place to his liking.

BIRD LIFE IN AN OLD APPLE-TREE 279

One bird seemed like a monomaniac, and
drilled holes up and down and right and left as
if possessed of an evil spirit. It is quite prob-
able that if a high-hole or other woodpecker
should go crazy, it would take to just this sort
of thing, drilling into seasoned timber till it
used its strength up. The one I refer to would
cut through a dry hemlock board in a very
short time, making the slivers fly. The sound
was like that of a carpenter's hammer. It may
have been that he was an unmated bird, a bach-
elor whose suit had not prospered that season,
and who was giving vent to his outraged instincts
in drilling these mock nesting-places.

THE WAYS OF SPORTSMEN

I HAVE often had occasion to notice how
much more intelligence the bird carries in its
eye than does the animal or quadruped.

The animal will see you, too, if you are mov-
ing, but if you stand quite still even the wary
fox will pass within a few yards of you and not
know you from a stump, unless the wind brings
him your scent.

But a crow or a hawk will discern you when
you think yourself quite hidden. His eye is
as keen as the fox's sense of smell, and seems
fairly to penetrate veils and screens. Most of
the water-fowl are equally sharp-eyed.

The chief reliance of the animals for their
safety, as well as for their food, is upon the
keenness of their scent, while the fowls of the
air depend mainly upon the eye.

A hunter out in Missouri relates how closely
a deer approached him one day in the woods.
The hunter was standing on the top of a log,
about four feet from the ground, when the deer
bounded playfully into a glade in the forest, a
couple of hundred yards away. The animal
began to feed and to move slowly toward the
hunter. He was on the alert, but did not see
or scent his enemy. He never took a bite of

' THE WAYS OF SPORTSMEN 281

grass, says the sportsman, without first putting
his nose to it, and then instantly raising his
head and looking about.

In about ten minutes the deer had approached
within fifty yards of the gunner ; then the mur-
derous instinct of the latter began to assert it-
self. His gun was loaded with fine shot, but
he dared not make a move to change his shells
lest the deer see him. He had one shell loaded
with Ko. 4 shot in his pocket. Oh! if he
could only get that shell into his gun.

The unsuspecting deer kept approaching;
presently he passed behind a big tree, and his
head was for a moment hidden. The hunter
sprang to his work; he got one of the :No «
shells out of his gun and got his hand into his
pocket and a hold of the No. 4. Then the
shining eyes of the deer were in view again.
The hunter stood in this attitude five minutes
How we wish he had been compelled to stand

for five hundred !

Then another tree shut off the buck's gaze for
a moment; in went the No. 4 shell into the
barrel and the gun was closed quickly, but
there was no time to bring it to the shoulder.
The animal was now only thirty yards away.
His hair was smooth and glossy, and every
movement was full of grace and beauty. Time
after time he seemed to look straight at the
hunter, and once or twice a look of suspicion
seemed to cross his face.

The man began to realize how painful it was
to stand perfectly stil] on tlie top of a log for

282 THE WAYS OF SPORTSMEN

fifteen minutes. Every muscle ached and
seemed about to rebel against his will. If the
buck held to his course he would pass not more
than fifteen feet to one side of the gun, and the
man that held it thought he might almost blow
his heart out.

There was one more tree for him to pass
behind, when the gun could be raised. He
approached the tree, rubbed his nose against
it, and for a moment was half hidden behind it.
When his head appeared on the other side the
gun was pointed straight at his eye — and with
only No. 4 shot, which could only wound him,
but could not kill him.

The deer stops; he does not expose his body
back of the fore leg, as the hunter had wished.
The latter begins to be ashamed of himself, and
has about made up his mind to let the beautiful
creature pass unharmed, when the buck sud-
denly gets his scent, his head goes up, his nos-
trils expand, and a look of terror comes over
his face. This is too much for the good reso-
lutions of the hunter. Bang! goes the gun,
the deer leaps into the air, wheels around a
couple of times, recovers himself and is off in
a twinkling, no doubt carrying, the narrator
says, a hundred No. 4 shot in his face and
neck. The man says: "I've always regretted
shooting at him."

I should think he would. But a man in the
woods, with a gun in his hand, is no longer a
man — he is a brute. The devil is in the guu
;0 make brutes of us all.

THE WAYS OF SPORTSMEN 283

If the game on this occasion had been, say a
wild turkey or a grouse, its discriminating eye
would have figured out the hunter there on that
log very quickly.

This manly exploit of the Western hunter
reminds me of an exploit of a Brooklyn man,
who last winter killed a bull moose in Maine.
It was a more sportsmanlike proceeding, but my
sympathies were entirely with the moose. The
hero tells his story in a New York paper.
With his guides, all armed with Winchester
rifles, he penetrated far into the wilderness till
he found a moose yard. It was near the top
of a mountain.

They started one of the animals and then

took up its trail.

As soon as the moose found it was being fol-
lowed, it led right off in hopes of outwalking
its enemies. But they had snow-shoes and he
did not; they had food and he did not. On
they went, pursued and pursuers, through the
snow-clogged wilderness, day after day. The
moose led them the most difficult route he could

find. V -1^

At night the men would make camp, build a
fire, eat and smoke, and roll themselves in their
blankets and sleep. In the morning they would
soon come up to the camping place of the poor
moose, where the imprint of his great body
showed in the snow, and where he had passed
a cold, supperless night.

On the fifth day the moose began to show
sicrns of fatigue ; he rested often, he also tried

284 THE WAYS OF SPORTSMEN

to get around and behind his pursuers and let
them pass on. Think how inadequate his wit
was to cope w^ith the problem — he thought
they would pass by him if he went to one side.

On the morning of the sixth day he had
made uj) his mind to travel no farther, but to
face his enemies and have it out with them.

As he heard them approach he rose up from
his couch of snow, mane erect, his look fierce
and determined. Poor creature, he did not
know how unequal the contest was. How I
wish he could at that moment have had a Win-
chester rifle too, and had known how to use it.
There would have been fair play then.

With such weapons as God had given him
he had determined tc> meet the foe, and if they
had had only such weapons as God had given
them, he would have been safe. But they had
weapons which the devil had given them, and
their deadly bullets soon cut him down, and
now probably his noble antlers decorate the hall
of his murderer.

TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS

To teach young people or old people how to
observe nature is a good deal like trying to teach
them how to eat their dinner. The first thing
necessary in the latter case is a good appetite;
this given, the rest follows very easily. And
in observing nature, unless you have the appe-
tite, the love, the spontaneous desire, you will
get little satisfaction. It is the heart that sees
more than the mind. To love nature is the first
step in observing her. If a boy had to learn
fishing as a task, what slow progress he would
make ;, but as his heart is in it, how soon he
becomes an adept.

The eye sees quickly and easily those things
in which we are interested. A man interested
in horses sees every fine horse in the country
he passes through; the dairyman notes the cat-
tle; the bee culturist counts the skips of bees;
the sheep-grower notes the flocks, etc. Is it
any efi'ort for the ladies to note the new bon-
nets and the new cloaks upon the street? ^^ e
all see and observe easily in the line of our
business, our tasks, our desires.

If one is a lover of the birds, he sees birds
everywhere, plenty of them. I think I seldom

286 TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS

miss a bird in my walk if he is within eye or
ear shot, even though my mind be not intent
upon that subject. Walking along the road
this very day, feeling a cold, driving snow-
storm, I saw some large birds in the top of a
maple as I passed by. I do not know how I
came to see them, for I was not in an ornitho-
logical frame of mind. But I did. There
were three of them feeding upon the buds of
the maple. They were nearly as large as rob-
ins, of a dark ash color, very plump, with tails
much forked. What were they 1 My neigh-
bor did not know; had never seen such birds
before. I instantly knew them to be pine
grosbeaks from the far north. I had not seen
them before for ten years. A few days pre-
viously I had heard one call from the air as it
passed over; I recognized the note, and hence
knew that the birds were about. They come
down from the north at irregular intervals, and
are seen in flocks in various parts of the States.
They seem just as likely to come mild winters
as severe ones. Later in the day the birds
came about my study. I sat reading with my
back to the window when I was advised of their
presence by catching a glimpse of one reflected
in my eye-glasses as it flew up from the ground
to the branch of an apple-tree only a few feet
away. I only mention the circumstance to
show how quick an observer is to take the hint.
I was absorbed in my reading, but the moment
that little shadow flitted athwart that luminous
reflsction of the window in the corner of my

TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 287

glasses, something said "that was a bird." Ap-
proaching the window, I saw several of them
sitting not five feet away. I could inspect
them perfectly. They were a slate color, with
a tinge of bronze upon the head and rump. In
full plumage the old males are a dusky red.
Hence these were all either young males or fe-
males. Occasionally among these flocks an old
male may be seen. It would seem as if only a
very few of the older and wiser birds accom-
panied these younger birds in their excursions
into more southern climes.

Presently the birds left the apple-bough that
nearly brushed my window, and, with a dozen
or more of their fellows that I had not seen,
settled in a Norway spruce a few yards away,
and began to feed upon the buds. They looked
very pretty there amid the driving snow. I
was flattered that these visitants from the far
north should find entertainment on my prem-
ises. How plump, contented, and entirely at
home they looked. But they made such havoc
with the spruce buds that after a while I began
to fear a bud would not be left upon the trees ;
the spruces would be checked in their growth
the next year. So I presently went out to re-
monstrate with them and ask them to move on.
I approached them very slowly, and when be-
side the tree within a few feet of several of
them, they heeded me not. One bird kept its
position and went on snipping ofi" the buds till
I raised my hand ready to seize it, before it
moved a yard or two higher up. I think it was

288 TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS

only my white, uncovered hand that disturbed it.
Indeed,

" They were so unacquainted with man,
Their tameness was shocking to see."

The snow was covered with the yellow chaflPy
scales of the buds and still the birds sifted them
down, till I was compelled to "shoo" them
away, when they moved to a tree nearer the
house beneath which they left more yellow
chaff upon the snow.

The mind of an observer is like a gun with
a hair trigger ~ it goes at a touch, while the
minds of most persons require very vigorous
nudging. You must take the hint and take it
quickly if you would get up any profitable inti-
macy with nature. Above all, don't jump to
conclusions; look again and again; verify your
observations. Be sure the crow is pulling corn,
and not probing for grubs, before you kill him.
Be sure it is the oriole purloining your grapes,
and not the sparrows, before you declare them
your enemies. I one day saw humming-birds
apparently probing the ripe yellow cheeks of my
finest peaches, but I was not certain till I
saw a bird hovering over a particular peach, and
then mounting upon a ladder I examined it,
when sure enough, the golden cheek was full of
pin-holes. The orioles destroy many of my
earliest pears, but it required much watching to
catch them in the very act. I once saw a
phoebe-bird swoop down upon a raspberry bush
and carry a berry to a rail on a near fence, but

TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 289

I did not therefore jump to the conchision that
the phoebe was a berry-eater. What it wanted
was the worm in the berry. How do I know?
Because I saw it extract something from the
berry and liy away.

A French missionary, said to have been a
good naturalist, writing in this country in 1634,
makes this curious statement about our hum-
ming-bird: "This bird, as one might say, dies,
or, to speak more correctly, puts itself to sleep
in the month of October, living fastened to
some little branchlet of a tree by the feet, and
wakes up in the month of April when the
flowers are in abundance, and sometimes later,
and for that cause is called in the Mexican
tongue the "Revived." How could the good
missionary ever have been led to make such a
statement 1 The actual finding of the bird win-
tering in that way would have been the proof
science demands, and nothing short of that.

A boy in the interior of the State wrote to
me the other day that while in the field looking
after Indian arrow-heads he had seen a brown
and gray bird with a black mark running
through the eye, and that the bird walked in-
stead of hopped. He said it had a high, shrill
whistle and flew like a meadow-lark. This boy
is a natural observer; he noted that the bird
was a walker. Most of the birds hop or jump,
keeping both feet together. This boy heard his
bird afterward in the edge of the evening, and
"followed it quite a ways, but could not get a
glimpse of it. " He had failed to note the crest

290 TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS

on its head and the black spot on its breast, for
doubtless his strange bird was the shore-lark, a
northern bird, that comes to us in flocks in the
late fall or early winter, and in recent years has
become a permanent resident of certain parts of
New York State. I have heard it in full song
above the hills in Delaware County, after the
manner of the English skylark, but its song
was a crude, feeble, broken affair compared with
that of the skylark. These birds thrive well
in confinement. I had one seven months in a
cage while living in Washington. It was dis-
abled in the wing by a gunner, who brought it
to me. Its wound soon healed; it took food
readily; it soon became tame, and was an ob-
ject of much interest and amusement. The
cage in which I had hastily put it was formerly
a case filled with stufi'ed birds. Its front was
glass. As it was left out upon the porch over
night, a strange cat discovered the bird through
this glass, and through the glass she plunged
and captured the bird. In the morning there
was the large hole in this glass, and the pretty
lark was gone. I have always indulged a faint
hope that the glass was such a surprise to the
cat, and made such a racket about her eyes and
ears as she sprang against it, that she beat a
hasty retreat, and that the bird escaped through
the break.

II

In May two boys in town wrote to me to
explain to them the meaning of the egg-shells,

TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 291

mostly those of robins, that were to be seen
lying about on the ground here and there. 1
supposed every boy knew where most of these
egg-shells came from. As soon as the young
birds are out, the mother bird removes the frag-
ments of shells from the nest, carrying them in
her beak some distance, and dropping them here
and there. All our song-birds, so far as I
know, do this.

Sometimes, however, these shells are dropped
by blue-jays after their contents have been
swallowed. The jay will seize a robin's egg by
thrusting his beak into it, and hurry off lest he
be caught in the act by the owner. At a safe
distance he will devour the contents at his lei-
sure, and drop the shell.

The robins, however, have more than once
caught the jay in the act. He has the reputa-
tion among them of being a sneak thief. Many
and many a time during the nesting season you
may see a lot of robins mob a jay. The jay
comes slyly prowling through the trees, looking
for his favorite morsel, when he is discovered
by a vigilant robin, who instantly rushes at him
crying, "Thief! thief! " at the top of his voice.
All the robins that have nests within hearing
gather to the spot and join in the pursuit of the
jay, screaming and scolding.

The jay is hustled out of the tree in a hurry,
and goes sneaking away with the robins at his
heels. He is usually silent, like other thieves,
but sometimes the birds make it so hot for him
that he screams in anger and disgust.

292 TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS

Of the smaller birds, like the vireos and
warblers, the jay will devour the young.

My little boy one day saw a jay sitting be-
side a nest in a tree, probably that of the red-
eyed vireo, and coolly swallowing the just-
hatched young, while the parent birds were
powerless to prevent him. They flew at him
and snapped their beaks in his face, but he
heeded them not. A robin would have knocked
him off his feet at her first dive.

One is sometimes puzzled by seeing a punc-
tured egg lying upon the ground. One day I
came near stepping upon one that was lying in
the path that leads to the spring — a fresh egg
with a little hole in it carefully placed upon
the gravel. I suspected it to be the work of
the cowbird, and a few days later I had con-
vincing proof that the cowbird is up to this
sort of thing. I was sitting in my summer
house with a book, when I had a glimpse of a
bird darting quickly down from the branches of
the maple just above me toward the vineyard,
with something in its beak. Following up my
first glance with more deliberate scrutiny, I
saw a female cowbird alight upon the ground
and carefully deposit some small object there,
and then, moving a few inches away, remain
quite motionless. Without taking my eyes
from the spot, I walked straight down there.
The bird Hew away, and I found the object she
had dropped to be a little speckled bird's egg
still warm. I saw that it was the egg of the
red-eyed vireo. It was punctured with two

TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 295

holes where the bird had seized it; otherwise
it had been very carefully handled. For some
days I had been convinced that a pair of vireos
had a nest in my maple, but much scrutiny had
failed to reveal it to me.

Only a few moments before the cowbird
appeared I had seen the happy pair leave the
tree together, flying to a clump of trees lower
down the slope of the hill. The female had
evidently just deposited her egg, the cowbird
had probably been watching near by, and had
seized it the moment the nest was vacated.
Her plan was of course to deposit one of her
own in its place.

I now made a more thorough search for the
nest, and soon found it, but it was beyond my
reach on an outer branch, and whether or not
the cowbird dropped one of her own eggs in
place of the one she had removed I do not
know. Certain am I that the vireos soon
abandoned the nest, though they do not always
do this when hoodwinked in this way.

I once met a gentleman on the train who
told me about a brood of quails that had
hatched out under his observation. He was
convinced that the mother quail had broken the
shells for the young birds. He sent me one of
the shells to convince me that it had been
broken from the outside.

At first glance it did appear so. It had been
cut around near the large end, with the excep-
tion of a small space, as if by regular thrusts or
taps from a bird's beak, so that this end opened

294 TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS

like the lid of a box on a hinge, and let the im-
prisoned bird escape. What convinced the
gentleman that the force had been applied from
the outside was that the edges of the cut or
break were bent in.

If we wish rightly to interpret nature, to get
at the exact truth of her ways and doings, we
must cultivate what is called the critical habit
of mind; that is, the habit of mind that does
not rest with mere appearances. One must sift
the evidence, must cross- question the facts.
This gentleman was a lawyer, but he laid aside
the cunning of his craft in dealing with this
question of these egg-shells.

The bending in, or the indented appearance
of the edge of the shells was owing to the fact
that the thin paper-like skin that lines the in-
terior of the shell had dried and shrunken, and
had thus drawn the edges of the shell inward.
The cut was made by the beak of the young
bird, probably by turning its head from right
to left; one little point it could not reach, anfl
this formed the hinge of the lid I have spoken
of.

Is it at all probable that if the mother bird
had done this work she would have left this
hinge, and left it upon every egg, since the
hinge was of no use 1 The complete removal
of the cap would have been just as well.

Neither is it true that the parent bird shoves
its young from the nest when they are ready to
fly, unless it be in the case of doves and pi-
geons. Our small birds certainly do not do this.

TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 295

The young birds will launch out of their own
motion as soon as their wings will sustain thera,
and sometimes before.

There is usually one of the brood a little
more forward than its mates, and this one is the
first to venture forth. In the case of the blue-
bird, chickadee, highhole, nuthatch, and others,
the young are usually a day or two in leaving

the nest.

The past season I was much interested in
seeing a brood of chickadees, reared on my
premises, venture upon their first flight. Their
heads had been seen at the door of their dwell-
ing — a cavity in the limb of a pear-tree — at
intervals for two or three days.

Evidently they liked the looks of the great
outside world; and one evening, just before
sundown, one of them came forth. His first
flight was of several yards to a locust, where he
alighted upon an inner branch, and after some
chirping and calling proceeded to arrange his
plumage, and compose himself for the night.

I watched him till it Avas nearly dark. He
did not appear at all afraid there alone in the
tree, but put his head under his wing and set-
tled down for the night as if it were just what
he had always been doing. There was a heavy
shower a few hours later, but in the morning
he was there upon his perch in good spirits.

I happened to be passing in the morning
when another one came out. He hopped out
upon a limb, shook himself, and chirped and
called loudly. After some moments an idea

296 TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS

seemed to strike him. His attitude changed,
his form straightened up, and a thrill of excite-
ment seemed to run through him. I knew what
it all meant; something had whispered to the
bird, "Fly! " With a spring and a cry he was
in the air, and made good headway to a near
hemlock.

Others left in a similar manner during that
day and the next, till all were out.

Some birds seem to scatter as soon as they
are out of the nest. With others the family
keeps together the greater part of the season.
Among birds that have this trait may be named
the chickadee, the bluebird, the blue- jay, the
nuthatch, the kingbird, the phoebe-bird, and
others of the true flycatchers.

One frequently sees the young of the phcebe
sitting in a row upon a limb, while the parents
feed them in regular order. Twice I have come
upon a brood of young but fully fledged screech-
owls in a dense hemlock wood, sitting close to-
gether upon a low branch. They stood there
like a row of mummies, the yellow curtains of
their eyes drawn together to a mere crack, till
they saw themselves discovered.

Then they all changed their attitudes as if an
electric current had passed through the branch
upon which they sat. Leaning this way and
that, they stared at me like frightened cats till
the mother took flight, when the young fol-
lowed.

The family of chickadees above referred to
kept in the trees about my place for two oi

TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 297

three weeks. They hunted the same feeding-
ground over and over, and always seemed to
find an abundance. The parent liirds did the
hunting, the young did tlie calling and the eat-
ing. At any hour in the day you could find
the troop slowly making their way over some
part of their territory.

Later in the season one of the parent birds
seemed smitten with some fatal malady. If
birds have leprosy, this must have been leprosy.
The poor thing dropped down through a maple-
tree close by the house, barely able to flit a few
feet at a time. Its plumage appeared greasy
and filthy, and its strength was about gone. I
placed it in the branches of a spruce-tree, and
never saw it afterward.

Ill

A boy brought me a dead bird the other
morning which his father had picked up on the
railroad. It had probably been killed by strik-
ing the telegraph wires. As it was a bird the
like of which he had never seen before, he
wanted to know its name. It was a wee bird,
mottled gray and brown like nearly aU our
ground birds, as the sparrows, the meadow-
larks, the quail: a color that makes the bird
practically invisible to its enemies in the air
above. Unlike the common sparrows, its little
round wings were edged with yellow, with a
tinge of yellow on its shoulders; hence its
name, the yellow- winged sparrow. It has also

298 TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS

a yellowish line over the eye. It is by no
means a common bird, though there are proba-
bly few farms in the Middle and Eastern States
upon which one could not be found. It is one
of the birds to be looked for. Ordinary ob-
servers do not see it or hear it.

It is small, shy, in every way inconspicu-
ous. Its song is more like that of an insect
than that of any other of our birds. If you
hear in the fields in May and June a fine,
stridulous song like that of a big grasshopper,
it probably proceeds from this bird. Move in
the direction of it and you will see the little
brown bird flit a few yards before you. For
several mornings lately I have heard and seen
one on a dry, gravelly hillock in a field. Each
time he has been near the path where I walk.
Unless your ear is on the alert you will miss
his song. Amid the other bird songs of May
heard afield it is like a tiny, obscure plant amid
tall, rank growths. The bird affords a capital
subject for the country boy, or town boy, either,
when he goes to the country, to exercise his
powers of observation upon. If he finds this
bird he will find a good many other interesting
things. He may find the savannah sparrow
also, which closely resembles the bird he is
looking for. It is a trifle larger, has more bay
about the wings, and is more common toward
the coast. Its yellow markings are nearly the
same. There is also a variety of the yellow-
winged sparrow called Henslow's yellow-winged
sparrow, but it bears so close a resemblance to

TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 299

the first-named that it requires a professional
ornithologist to distinguish them. I confess I
have never identified it.

I never see the yellow- wing without being re-
minded of a miniature meadow-lark. Its short
tail, its round wings, its long and strong legs
and feet, its short beak, its mottled coat, the
touch of yellow, as if he had just rubbed
against a newly-opened dandelion, but in this
case on the wings instead of on the breast, the
quality of its voice, and its general shape and
habits, all suggest a tiny edition of this large
emphatic walker of our meadows.

The song of this little sparrow is like the
words "chick, chick-a-su-su," uttered with a
peculiar buzzing sound. Its nest is placed
upon the ground in the open field, with four or
five speckled eggs. The eggs are rounder and
their ground color whiter than the eggs of other
sparrows.

I do not know whether this kind walks or
hops. This would be an interesting point for
the young observer to determine. All the
other sparrows known to me are hoppers, but
from the unusually long and strong legs of this
species, its short tail and erect manner, I more
than half suspect it is a walker. If so, this
adds another meadow-lark feature.

Let the young observer follow up and iden-
tify any one bird, and he will be surprised to
find how his love and enthusiasm for birds will
kindle. He will not stop with the one bird.
Carlyle wrote in a letter to his brother, " At-

300 TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS

tempt to explain what you do know, and you
already know something more." Bring what
powers of observation you already have to bear
upon animate nature, and already your powers
are increased. You can double your capital
and more in a single season.

The first among the less common birds which
I identified when I began the study of orni-
thology was the red-eyed vireo, the little gray
t)ird with a line over its eye that moves about
with its incessant cheerful warble all day, rain
or shine, among the trees, and it so fired my
enthusiasm that before the end of the season
I had added a dozen or more (to me) new birds
to my list. After a while the eye and ear be-
come so sensitive and alert that they seem to
see and hear of themselves, and like sleepless
sentinels report to you whatever comes within
their range. Driving briskly along the road
the other day, I saw a phoebe-bird building her
nest under a cliff of rocks. I had but a glimpse,
probably two seconds, through an opening in the
trees, but it was long enough for my eye to
take in the whole situation: the gray wall of
rock, the flitting form of the bird and the half-
finished nest into which the builder settled.
Yesterday, May 7, I went out for an hour's
walk looking for birds' nests. I made a tour
of some orchards, pastures and meadows, but
found nothing, and then came home and found
a blue- jay's nest by my very door. How did I
find it? In the first place my mind was in-
tent upon nest finding: I was ripe for a bird's

TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 301

iiest. In the second place I had for some time
suspected that a pair of jays were nesting or in-
tending to nest in some of the evergreens about
my house; a pair had been quite familiar about
the premises for some weeks, and I had seen
the male feed the female, always a sure sign
that the birds are mated, and are building or
ready to build. Many birds do this. I have
even seen the crow feed its mate in April.
Just at this writing, a pair of chickadees at-
tracted my attention in a spruce-tree in front of
my window. One of them, of course the male,
is industriously feeding the other. The female
hops about, imitating the voice and manner of
a young bird, her wings quivering, her cry
plaintive, while the male is very busy collecting
some sort of fine food out of the just-bursting
buds of the tree. Every half minute or so he
approaches her and delivers his morsel into her
beak. I should know from this fact alone that
the birds have a nest near by. The truth is, it
is just on the other side of the study in a small
cavity in a limb of a pear-tree. The female is
laying her eggs, one each day probably, and the
male is making life as easy for her as possible,
by collecting all her food for her.

Hence, when as I came down the drive and
a blue- jay alighted in a maple near me, I
paused to observe him. He wiped his beak on
a limb, changed his position a couple of times,
then uttered a low mellow note. The voice as
of a young jay, tender and appealing, came out
of a Norway spruce near by. The cry was con-

302 TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS

tinned, when the bird I was watching flew in
amid the top branches, and the cry became still
more urgent and plaintive. I stepped along a
few paces and saw the birds, the female stand-
ing up in her nest and the male feeding her.
The nest was placed in a sort of basket formed
by the whorl of up- curving branches at the top
of the tree, the central shaft being gone.

It contained four eggs of a dirty brownish-
greenish color. As I was climbing up to it, a
turtle dove threw herself out of the tree and
fluttered to the ground as if mortally wounded.
My little boy was looking on, and seeing the
dove apparently so helpless and in such distress,
ran to see "what in the world ailed it." It
fluttered along before him for a few yards, and
then its mate appearing upon the scene, the two
flew away, much to the surprise of the boy.
We soon found the doves' nest, a shelf of twigs
on a branch about midway of the tree. It held
two young birds nearly fledged. How they
seemed to pant as they crouched there, a shape-
less mass of down and feathers, regarding us!
The doves had been so sly about their nesting
that I had never suspected them for a moment.
The next tree held a robin's nest, and the nest
of a purple finch is probably near by. One
usually makes a mistake in going away from
home to look for birds' nests. Search the trees
about your door.

The blue-jay is a cruel nest- robber, but this
pair had spared the doves in the same tree, and
I think they have made their peace with the

TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 303

robins, as I do not see the latter hustling them
about any more. Probably they want to stand
well with their neighbors, anc« so go away from
home to commit their robberies.

IV

If a new bird appears in my neighborhood,
my eye or ear reports it at once. One April
several of those rare thrushes, —Bicknell's or
Slide Mountain thrush — stopped for two days
in my currant-patch. How did I know? I
heard their song as I went about the place, a fine
elusive strain unlike that of any other thrush.
To locate it exactly I found very difficult.
It always seemed to be much farther off than it
actually was. There is a hush and privacy
about its song that makes it unique. _ It has
a mild, fluty quality, very sweet, but m a sub-
dued key. It is a bird of remote northern
mountain- tops, and its song seems adjusted to
the low, thick growths of such localities.

The past season a solitary Great Carolina
wren took up its abode in a bushy land near
one corner of my vineyard. It came late m the
season, near the end of August, the only one I
had ever heard north of the District of Colum-
bia. During my Washington days, many years
ago, this bird was one of the most notable song-
st'ers observed in my walks. His loud, rolling
whistle and warble, his jocund calls and saluta-
tions — how closely they were blended with all
my associations with nature on the Potomac.

304 TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS

When, therefore, one morning my ear caught
the same blithe, ringing voice on the Hudson,
be assured I was quickly on the alert. How it
brought up the past. How it reopened a chap-
ter of my life that had long been closed. It
stood out amid other bird songs and calls with
a distinctness that attracted the dullest ears.
Such a southern Virginia air as it gave to that
nook by the river's side ! .

I left my work amid the grapes and went
down to interview the bird. He peeped at me
inquisitively and suspiciously for a few mo-
ments from a little clump of weeds and bushes,
then came out in fuller view, and finally hopped
to the top of a grape-post, drooped his wings
and tail, lifted up his head, and sung and war-
bled his best. If he had known exactly what
I came for and had been intent upon doing his
best to please me, he could not have succeeded
better.

The Great Carolina wren is a performer like
the mocking-bird, and is sometimes called the
mocking wren. He sings and acts as well.
He seems bent on attracting the attention of
somebody or something. A Southern poet has
felicitously interpreted certain notes by the
words, "Sweetheart, sweetheart, sweet."

Day after day and week after week, till the
frosts of the late October came, the bird tarried
in that spot, confining his wanderings to a very
small area and calling and warbling at all hours.
From my summer-liouse I could often hear his
voice rise up from under the hill, seeming to

TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 305

fill all the space down there with sound. 'NMiat
brought this solitary bird there, so far from
the haunts of his kind, I know not. ^[aybe
he was simply spying out the land, and will
next season return with his mate. Mocking-
birds have wandered north as far as Connecticut,
and were found breeding there by a collector,
who robbed them of their eggs. The mocking
wren would be a great acquisition to our North-
ern river banks and bushy streams. It is the
largest of our Avrens, and in the volume and
variety of its notes and the length of its song
season surpasses all others.

A lover of nature never takes a walk without
perceiving something new and interesting. All
life in the winter woods or fields as revealed
upon the snow, how interesting it is. I re-
cently met a business man who regularly goes
camping to the Maine woods every winter from
the delight he has in various signs of wild life
written upon the snow. His morning paper,
he says, is the sheet of snow which he reads in
his walk. Every event is chronicled, every
new arrival registers his name, if you have eyes
to read it!

In December my little boy and I took our
skates and went a mile distant from home into
the woods to a series of long, still pools in a
wild, rocky stream for an hour's skating.
There was a light skim of snow upon the ice,
but not enough to seriously interfere with our
sport, while it was ample to reveal the course
of every wild creature that had passed the night

306 TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS

before. Here a fox had crossed, there a rabbit
or a squirrel or muskrat.

Presently we saw a different track and a
strange one. The creature that made it had
come out of a hole in the ground about a yard
from the edge of the long, narrow pool upon
which we were skating, and had gone up the
stream, leaving a track upon the snow as large
as that of an ordinary sized dog, but of an en-
tirely different character.

We had struck the track of an otter, a rare
animal in the Hudson River Valley; in fact,
rare in any part of the State. We followed it
with deep interest; it threw over the familiar
stream the air of some remote pool or current in
the depths of the Adirondacks or the Maine
woods. Every few rods the otter had appar-
ently dropped upon his belly and drawn himself
along a few feet by his fore paws, leaving a
track as if a log or bag of meal had been drawn
along there. He did this about every three
rods.

At the head of the pool where the creek was
open and the water came brawling down over
rocks and stones, the track ended on the edge
of the ice; the otter had taken to the water.
A cold bath, one would say, in mid-December,
but probably no colder to him than the air, as
his coat is perfectly water- proof.

On another pool further up the track reap-
peared and was rubbed out here and there by
the same heavy dragging in the snow, like a
chain with a long solid bar at regular distances

TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 307

ill place of links. At one point the otter had
gone ashore and scratched a little upon the
ground. He had gone from pool to pool, tak-
ing the open rapids wherever they appeared.

The otter is a large mink or weasel, three
feet or more long and very savage. It feeds
upon fish, which it seems to capture with ease.
It is said that it will track them through the
water as a hound tracks a fox on land. It will
travel a large distance under the ice, on a single
breath of air. Every now and then it will ex-
hale this air, which will form a large bubble
next the ice, where in a few moments it be-
comes purified and ready to be taken into the
creature's lungs again. If by any accident the
bubble were to be broken up and scattered,
the otter might drown before he could collect
it together again. A man who lived near the
creek said the presence of the otter accounted
for the scarcity of the fish there.

The other day one of my farmer neighbors
asked me if I had seen the new bird that was
about. This man was an old hunter, and had
a sharp eye for all kinds of game, but he had
never before seen the bird, which was nearly as
large as a robin, of a dull blue or slate color
marked with white.

Another neighbor, who was standing by, said
the bird had appeared at his house the day be-
fore. A cage with two canaries was hanging

308 TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS

against the window, when suddenly a large bird
swooped down as if to dash himself against it;
but arresting himself when near the glass, he
hovered a moment, eying the birds, and then
flew to a near tree.

The poor canaries were so frightened that
they fell from their perches and lay panting
upon the floor of their cage.

No one had ever seen the bird before; what
was it? It was the shrike, who thought he
was sure of a dinner when he saw those cana-
ries.

If you see, in late autumn or winter, a slim,
ashen-gray bird, in size a little less than the
robin, having white markings, flying heavily
from point to point, and always alighting on the
topmost branch of a tree, you may know it is
the shrike.

He is very nearly the size and color of the
mocking-bird, but with flight and manners en-
tirely difl'erent. There is some music in his
soul, though his murderous beak nearly spoils it
in giving it forth.

One winter morning, just at sunrise, as I was
walking along the streets of a city, I heard the
shrike's harsh warble. Looking about me, I
soon saw the bird perched upon the topmost
twig of a near tree, saluting the sunrise. It
was what the robin might have done, but the
strain had none of the robin's melody.

Some have compared the shrike's song to the
creaking of a rusty gate-hinge, but it is not
quite so bad as that. Still it is unmistakably

TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 309

the voice of a savage. None of the birds of
prey have musical voices.

The shrike had probably come to town to try
his luck with English sparrows. I do not know
that he caught any, but in a neighboring city I
heard of a shrike that made great havoc with
the sparrows.

VI

When nature made the flying squirrel she
seems to have whispered a hint or promise of
the same gift to the red squirrel. At least
there is a distinct suggestion of the same power
in the latter. When hard pressed the red
squirrel will trust himself to the air with the
same faith that the flying squirrel does, but, it
must be admitted, with only a fraction of the
success of the latter. He makes himself into a
rude sort of parachute, which breaks the force
of his fall very much. The other day my dog
ran one up the side of the house, through the
woodbine, upon the roof. As I opened fire
upon him with handfuls of gravel, to give him
to understand he was not welcome there, he
boldly launched out into the air and came down
upon the gravel walk, thirty feet below, with
surprising lightness and apparently without the
least shock or injury, and was oft' in an instant
beyond the reach of the dog. On another occa-
sion I saw one leap from the top of a hickory
tree and fall through the air at least forty feet
and alight without injury. During their de-
scent upon such occasions their legs are widely

310 TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS

extended, their bodies are broadened and flat-
tened, the tail stiffened and slightly curved, and
a curious tremulous motion runs through all.
It is very obvious that a deliberate attempt is
made to present the broadest surface possible to
the air, and I think a red squirrel might leap
from almost any height to the ground without
serious injury. Our flying squirrel is in no
proper sense a flyer. On the ground he is more
helpless than a chipmunk because less agile.
He can only sail or slide down a steep incline
from the top of one tree to the foot of another.
The flying squirrel is active only at night;
hence its large, soft eyes, its soft fur and its
gentle, shrinking ways. It is the gentlest and
most harmless of our rodents. A pair of them
for two or three successive years had their nest
behind the blinds of an upper Avindow of a
large, unoccu^Died country house near me. You
could stand in the room inside and observe the
happy family through the window pane against
which their nest pressed. There on the win-
dow sill lay a pile of large, shining chestnuts,
which they were evidently, holding against a
time of scarcity, as the pile did not diminish
while I observed them. The nest was com-
posed of cotton and wool which they filched
from a bed in one of the chambers, and it was
always a mystery how they got into the room
to obtain it. There seemed to be no other
avenue but the chimney flue.

There are always gradations in nature, or in
natural life; no very abrupt departures. If

TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 311

you find any marked trait or gift in a species
you will find hints and suggestions of it, or as
it Avere, preliminary studies of it, in other allied
species. I am not thinking of the law of evo-
lution which binds together the animal life of
the globe, but of a kind of overflow in nature
which carries any marked endowment or charac-
teristic of a species in lessened force or comple-
tion to other surrounding species. Or if looked
at from the other way, a progressive series, the
idea being more and more fully carried out in
each succeeding type — a kind of lateral and
secondary evolution. Thus there are progres-
sive series among our song-birds. The brown
thrasher is an advance upon the catbird and the
mocking bird is an advance upon the brown
thrasher in the same direction. Each one car-
ries the special gift of song or mimicking some
stages forward. The same among the larks,
through the titlark, shore-lark, up to the crown-
ing triumph of the skylark. The nightingale
also finishes a series Avhich starts with the
hedge warbler, and includes the robin red-
breast. Our ground- sparrow songs probably
reach their highest perfection in the song of the
fox-sparrow; our finches in that of the purple
finch, etc.

The same thing may be observed in other
fields. The idea of the flying fish, the fish that
leaves the water and takes for a moment to the
air, does not seem to have exhausted itself till
we reach the walking fisli of tropical America,
or the tree-climbing fish of India. From the

312 TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS

protective coloring of certain insects, animals,
and birds the step is not far to actual mimicry
of certain special forms and colors. The natu-
ralists find in Java a spider that exactly copies
upon a leaf the form and colors of bird drop-
pings. How many studies of honey-gathering
bees did nature make before she achieved her
masterpiece in this line in the honey-bee of our
hives? The skunk's peculiar weapon of defense
is suggested by the mink and the weasel. Is
not the beaver the head of the series of gnawers,
the loon of divers, the condor of soarers ? Al-
ways one species that goes beyond any other.
Look over a collection of African animals and
see how high shouldered they are, how many
hints or prophecies of the giraffe there are before
the giraffe is reached. After nature had made
the common turtle, of course she w^ould not
stop till she had made the box tortoise. In
him the idea is fully realized. On the body of
the porcupine the quills are detached and stuck
into the flesh of its enemy on being touched;
but nature has not stopped here. With the tail
the animal strikes its quills into its assailant.
Now if some animal could be found that actually
threw its quills, at a distance of several feet,
the idea would be still further carried out.

The rattlesnake is not the only rattler. I
have seen the black snake and the harmless lit-
tle garter snake vibrate their tails when dis-
turbed in precisely the same manner. The
black snake's tail was in contact with a dry leaf,
and it gave forth a loud humming sound which
at once put me on the alert.

TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 313

I met a little mouse in my travels the other
day that interested me. He was on his travels
also, and we met in the middle of a mountain
lake. I was casting my fly there when I saw
just sketched or etched upon the glassy surface
a delicate V-shaped figure, the point of whicli
reached about the middle of the lake, while the
two sides as they diverged faded out toward the
shore. I saw the point of this V was being
slowly pushed toward the opposite shore. I
drew near in my boat, and beheld a little mouse
swimming vigorously for the opposite shore.
His little legs appeared like swiftly revolving
wheels beneath him. As I came near he dived
under the water to escape me, but came up
again like a cork and just as quickly. It was
laughable to see him repeatedly duck beneath
the surface and pop back again in a twinkling.
He could not keep under water more than a
second or two. Presently I reached him my
oar, when he ran up it and into the palm of my
hand, where he sat for some time and arranged
his fur and warmed himself. He did not show
the slightest fear. It was probably the first
time he had ever shaken hands with a human
being. He was what we call a meadow mouse,
but he had doubtless lived all his life in the
woods and was strangely unsophisticated. How
his little round eyes did shine, and how he
sniffed me to find out if I was more dangerous
than I appeared to his sight.

After a while I put him down in the bottom
of the boat and resumed my fishing. But it

314 TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS

was not long before he became very restless
and evidently wanted to go about his business.
He would climb up to the edge of the boat and
peer down into the water. Finally he could
brook the delay no longer and plunged boldly
overboard, but he had either changed his mind
or lost his reckoning, for he started back in the
direction he had come, and the last I saw of
him he was a mere speck vanishing in the
shadows near the other shore.

Later on I saw another mouse while we were
at work in the fields that interested me also.
This one was our native white-footed mouse.
We disturbed the mother with her young in
her nest and she rushed out with her little ones
clinging to her teats. A curious spectacle she
presented as she rushed along, as if slit and
torn into rags. Her pace was so precipitate
that two of the young could not keep their
hold and were left in the weeds. We remained
quiet and presently the mother came back look-
ing for them. When she had found one she
seized it as a cat seizes her kitten and made off
with it. In a moment or two she came back
and found the other one and carried it away.
I was curious to see if the young would take
hold of her teats again as at first and be dragged
away in that manner, but they did not. It
would be interesting to know if they seize hold
of their mother by instinct when danger threat-
ens, or if they simply retain the hold which
they already have. I believe the flight of the
family always takes place in this manner, with
this species of mouse.

TALKS WITH YOUNG OHSEKVEKS 315

VII

The other day I was walking in the silent,
naked April woods when I said to myself,
"There is nothing in the woods."

I sat down upon a rock. Then I lifted up
my eyes and beheld a newly constructed crow's
nest in a hemlock tree near by. The nest was
but little above the level of the top of a ledge
of rocks only a few yards away that crowned
the rim of the valley. But it was placed be-
hind the stem of the tree from the rocks, so as
to be secure from observation on that side.
The crow evidently knew what she was about.
Presently I heard what appeared to be the voice
of a young crow in the treetops not far oft\
This I knew to be the voice of the female, and
that she was being fed by the male. She was
probably laying, or about beginning to lay, eggs
in the nest. Crows, as well as most of our
smaller birds, always go through the rehearsal
of this act of the parent feeding the young many
times while the young are yet a long way in tlie
future. The mother bird seems timid and baby-
ish, and both in voice and manner assumes the
character of a young fledgling. The male brings
the food and seems more than usually solicitous
about her welfare. Is it to conserve her
strength or to make an impression on the devel-
oping eggs 1 The same thing may be observed
among the domestic pigeons, and is always a
sign that a new brood is not far off.

When the young do come the female is usu-

316 TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS

ally more active in feeding them than the male.
Among the birds of prey, like hawks and eagles,
the female is the larger and more powerful, and
therefore better able to defend and to care for
her young. Among all animals, the affection
of the mother for her offspring seems to be
greater than that of her mate, though among
the birds the male sometimes shows a super-
abundance of paternal regard that takes in the
young of other species. Thus a correspondent
sends me this curious incident of a male blue-
bird and some young vireos. A pair of blue-
birds were rearing their second brood in a box
on the porch of my correspondent, and a pair
of vireos had a nest with young in some lilac
bushes but a few feet away. The writer had
observed the male bluebird perch in the lilacs
near the young vireos, and, he feared, with mur-
derous intent. On such occasions the mother
vireo would move among the upper branches
much agitated. If she grew demonstrative the
bluebird would drive her away. One after-
noon the observer pulled away the leaves so as
to have a full view of the vireo 's nest from the
seat where he sat not ten feet away. Presently
he saw the male bluebird come to the nest
with a worm in its beak, and, as the young vir-
eos stretched up their gaping mouths, he
dropped the worm into one of them. Then he
reached over and waited upon one of the young
birds as its own mother would have done. A
few moments after he came to his own brood,
with a worm or insect, and then the next trip

TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 317

he visited the nest of the neighbor again, greatly
to the displeasure of the vireo, who scolded him
sharply as she watched his movements from a
near branch. My correspondent says: "I
watched them for several days; sometimes the
bluebird would visit his own nest several times
before lending a hand to the vireos. Some-
times he resented the vireos' plaintive fault-find-
ing and drove them away. I never saw tlie
female bluebird near the vireos' nest."

That the male bird should be broader in his
sympathies and affections will not, to most men
at least, seem strange.

Another correspondent relates an equally cu-
rious incident about a wren and some young
robins. "One day last summer," he says,
"while watching a robin feeding her young, I
was surprised to see a wren alight on the edge
of the nest in the absence of the robin, and de-
posit a little worm in the throat of one of the
young robins. It then flew off about ten feet,
and it seemed as if it would almost burst with
excessive volubility. It then disappeared, and
the robin came and went, just as the wren re-
turned with another worm for the young robins.
This was kept up for an hour. Once they ar-
rived simultaneously, when the wren "svas ap-
parently much agitated, but waited impatiently
on its previous perch, some ten feet off, until
the robin had left, when it visited the nest as
before. I climbed the tree for a closer inspec-
tion and found only a well-regulated robin
household, but nowhere a wren's nest. After

318 TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS

coming down I walked around the tree and dis-
covered a hole, and upon looking in saw a nest
of sleeping featherless wrens. At no time
while I was in the vicinity had the wren vis-
ited these little ones."

Of all our birds, the wren seems the most
overflowing with life and activity. Probably
in this instance it had stuffed its own young to
repletion, when its own activity bubbled over
into the nest of its neighbor. It is well known
that the male wren frequently builds what are
called " cock-nests. " It is simply so full of life
and joy and of the propagating instinct, that
after the real nest is completed, and while the
eggs are being laid, it gives vent to itself in
constructing these sham, or cock-nests. I have
found the nest of the marsh-wren surrounded
by half a dozen or more of these make-believers.
The gushing ecstatic nature of the bird ex-
presses itself in this way.

I have myself known but one instance of a
bird lending a hand in feeding young not its
own. This instance is to be set down to the
credit of a female English sparrow. A little
"chippie " had on her hands the task of supply-
ing the wants of that horse-leech, young cow-
bunting. The sparrow looked on from its perch
a few yards away, and when the chippie was off
looking up food, it would now and then bring
something and place it in the beak of the clam-
orous bunting. I think the "chippie" appre-
ciated its good offices. Certainly its dusky
foster-child did. This bird, when young, seems

TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSKRVERS 319

the most greedy of all fledgelings. It cries
"More," "More," incessantly. When its
foster parent is a small bird like "chippie" or
one of the warblers, one would think it would
swallow its parent when food is brought it.
I suppose a similar spectacle is witnessed in
England when the cuckoo is brought up by a
smaller bird, as is always the case. Sings the
fool in " Lear " : —

" The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,
Tliat it had its head bit off by its young."

Last season I saw a cow-bunting fully grown
following a "chippie" sparrow about, clamoring
for food, and really looking large enough to bite
off and swallow the head of its parent, and ap-
parently hungry enough to do it. The " chip-
pie " was evidently trying to shake it ofif and
let it shift for itself, for it avoided it and flew
from point to point to escape it. Its life was
probably made wretched by the greedy monster
it had unwittingly reared.

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