X THE WHOLE 7E?IR ROUNP PflLLHS LORE SH3RP THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES iDallafi Lore WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON Illustrated. THE FACE OF THE FIELDS. THE LAY OF THE LAND. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK THE WHOLE YEAR ROUND THE MUSKRATS ARE BUILDING THE WHOLE YEAR ROUND BY DALLAS LORE SHARP WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROBERT BRUCE HORSFALL BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY £fn- llilu-rsi&c press O.mbnDgc 1915 COPYRIGHT, 1896, 1903, 1910, 1911, AND 1913, BY PERRY MASON COMPANT COPYRIGHT, 1904, 1905, AND 1906, BY THE CHAPPLB PUBLISHING COMPANY, LTD. COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS BOOK COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1905 AND 1914, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE * CO. COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN * CO. COPYRIGHT, 1908, ipll, 1912, 1914, AND 1915, BY DALLAS LORE SHARP COPYRIGHT, 1909, 1911, 1913, AND IQH, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1911 AND 1912, BY THE GOLDEN RULE COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1912 AND 1914, BY THE CENTURY COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Qti 81 INTRODUCTION THE writer of this book has four children of his own, and not so very long ago (he can re- member it) he was a child himself, and roamed the fields, as still he does, with all the child's love of freedom and joy in the companionship of wild things — wild lives, wild winds, wild places, and the wild hours along the edge of dusk and dawn. And if hei has any right to ask other children than his own to \ tramp the wild places with him through the pages of J. this book it is because he is still a child and cannot j outgrow his love of Saturdays and skates and deep [ woods and the ways of the wild folk, great and small ; - and because, again, he has tramped the wild places (for his home is in the woods) more than most of his readers, perhaps, and tramped them the seasons round — stormy nights and lazy autumn days, and summer and winter; and he has seen — only what his readers have seen, no doubt, — the ordinary things, but he has often felt, as all children do at times feel, strange deep things, things more wonderful than anybody ever saw. And yet the ordinary things, ordinary only because we have not watched them and thought about them, are really what we are going out to see; and we are going out in an ordinary way — upon our two feet, vi INTRODUCTION barefoot when we can, in rubber boots if we must; sometimes with a fish-pole, sometimes with a hoe; sometimes with a camera — but never with a gun;| y and if we see nothing more than the sky and the c earth, we shall not have had our tramp in vain — not,; '•> if the sky is full of clouds or storm or stars; and not\ if the earth is full of wideness and freshness and free- f ; dom; and not if our hearts are full of — it may be, of ^ f; those strange deep feelings that the hearts of children K / know. And so the author hopes that this book in its new * cover, with its new name (it is made of four books of | ' the seasons bound in one) will find its way into many t homes, where the four separate books went only to^ '? the schools. And if it comes to your home, he hopes \ [ that it will take you into the fields and woods and, 4') if possible, cause you to love them and all their wilding life more. • ,'' DALLAS LORE SHARP, fe* MULLEIN HILL, 1914. CONTENTS SPRING I. SPRING! SPRING! SPRING! 1 II. THE SPRING RUNNING III. AN OLD APPLE TREE . IV. A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO SEE THIS SPRING . V. IF You HAD WINGS VI. A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO Do THIS SPRING . VII. THE PALACE IN THE PIG-PEN .... VIII. Is IT A LIFE OF FEAR? IX. THE BUZZARD OF THE BEAR SWAMP . X. A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO HEAR THIS SPRING XI. TURTLE EGGS FOR AGASSIZ ... XII. AN ACCOUNT WITH NATURE 115- XIII. WOODS MEDICINE 127 SUMMER I. THE SUMMER AFIELD „ II. THE WILD ANIMALS AT PLAY III. A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO SEE THIS SUMMER IV. THE COYOTE OF PELICAN POINT .... V. FROM T WHARF TO FRANKLIN FIELD . VI. A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO. HEAR THIS SUMMER VII. THE SEA-BIRDS' HOME CONTENTS THE MOTHER MURRE MOTHER CAREY'S CHICKENS .... RIDING THE RIM ROCK A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO Do THIS SUMMER THE "CONY" K 7!V few • "* .' AUTUMN I. THE CLOCK STRIKES ONE II. ALONG THE HIGHWAY OF THE Fox III. IN THE TOADFISH'S SHOE IV. A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO SEE THIS FALL V. WHIPPED BY EAGLES VI. THANKSGIVING AT GRANDFATHER'S FARM . VII. A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO Do THIS FALL III. THE MUSKRATS ARE BUILDING 61 IX. THE NORTH WIND DOTH BLOW 67 X. AN OUTDOOR LESSON 76 XI. LEAFING XII. A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO HEAR THIS FALL ... 88 CIII. HONK, HONK, HONK! 96 WINTER 1. HUNTING THE SNOW 1 II. THE TURKEY DRIVE 15 III. WHITE-FOOT . 29 IV. A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO SEE THIS WINTER . . 39 V. CHRISTMAS IN THE WOODS CONTENTS VII. A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO Do THIS WINTER ,VIII. THE MISSING TOOTH IX. THE PECULIAR TOSSUM X. A FEBRUARY FRESHET XI. A BREACH IN THE BANK XII. A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO HEAR THIS WINTER ILLUSTRATIONS THE MUSKRATS ABE BUILDING Frontispiece SPRING PRING OF THE YEAR — SfiADBUSH Facing 1 *HYLAS PEEPING "SPRING!" 1 THE EARLIEST BLOODROOT" THE TURKEY-HEN — "HALF A MILE FROM HOME" . • CATFISH FAMILY SCREECH OWL — " OUT OVER THE MEADOW HE SAILS " . ?REE-TOAD — " COMES FORTH TO THE EDGE OF HIS HOLE" SKUNK-CABBAGE AND BUMBLEBEE 27 A SUNFISH OVER ITS NEST CRESTED FLYCATCHER WITH SNAKE-SKIN "ONE OF MY LITTLE BAND OF CROWS " YOUNG PAINTED TURTLE, FROGS' EGGS, SNAILS, AND WHIRLI- GIG BEETLES 45 ONE LIVE TOAD UNDER YOUR DOORSTEP " ICEBE AND HER YOUNG IKE AND MINNOWS . BARKING — "UPON THE BARE KNOLL NEAR THE HOUSE" PINE MARTEN AND CHIPMUNK "UPON ONE OF THESE THE BUZZARD SAT HUMPED" . YOUNG TURKEY BUZZARD . 4;> • a 70, ; 83| xu ILLUSTRATIONS BROWN THRASHER — " OUR FINEST, MOST GIFTED SONGSTER" 87 PAINTED TURTLE — "BEGAN TO BURY HERSELF". . . . 103 CHIPMUNK EATING JUNE-BUGS 117 "TWO TUMBLE-BUGS TRYING TO ROLL THEIR BALL UP HILL" 127 "THE BOX TURTLES SCUFF CARELESSLY ALONG" .... 130 SUMMER A SUMMER EVENING — BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERONS Facing 1 RED CLOVER AND BUMBLEBEE 4 RED SALAMANDER, OLD AND YOUNG 7 NEWTS HIPPOPOTAMUS — "!T WAS HIS GAME OF SOLITAIRE" . THE OTTER AND HIS SLIDE "FOLLOW MY LEADER" BUTTERFLIES AT PLAY — "WHIRLING OVER MT. HOOD'S POINTED PEAK" 16 RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD AND NEST 20 ORCHIDS 22 YOUNG COWBIRD IN VIREO'S NEST 25 COYOTE — "WHAT A SHOT!" 28 ARGIOPE, THE MEADOW SPIDER 44 CICADA — " DOG-DA YS-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z " "THE BATS FLITTING AND WAVERING ABOUT" RED-EYED VIREO — "Do YOU BELIEVE IT?" . TUFTED PUFFINS BRANDT'S CORMORANT ILLUSTRATIONS A MOTHER SPIDER WITH HER SACK OF EGGS THE FATHER STICKLEBACK ON GUARD . . . . . CALIFORNIA MURRE — "WITH THREATENING BEAK WATCHED THE TWO MEN COME ON" 75 'PETRELS — "SKIMMING THE HEAVING SEA LIKE SWALLOWS" 80 RIDING THE RIM ROCK — " NECK AND NECK WITH A BIG WHITE STEER" 97 SASSAFRAS 105 DEADLY NIGHTSHADE 106 . POISON SUMACH 107 'POISON IVY 108 VIRGINIA CREEPER 109 THE DEADLY MUSHROOMS 110 POKE BERRIES Ill THE CONY, OR PIKA 116 AUTUMN "THE WILD GEESE ARE PASSING — SOUTHWARD" . . Facing 1 " TO-DAY is THE NOON OF THE YEAR" .... Facing 4 "OVER THE HILL IN A WHIRLWIND OF DUST AND HOWLS" Facing 18 "HERE I FOUND HIM KEEPING HOUSE" .... Facing 24 A SILKY SKEIN OF COBWEB 30 ,"A WILD CREATURE THAT WON'T GET OUT OF YOUR WAY" Facing 32 iPYXIE 32 FIELD OF CORN IN THE SHOCK 33 THE WINGED, AND PLUMED, AND BALLOONED SEEDS . . 34, 35 v ILLUSTRATIONS ,"ONE OF THEM STRUCK ME A STINGING BLOW ON THE HEAD" Facing 42 'THE LANTERN FLICKERS, THE MILK FOAMS, THE STORIES FLOW" f. Facing 48 A COON 54 ^QUAILS 55 SHAGBARKS 56 HERRING GULLS OVER CITY ROOFS 57 ,AUTUMN BERRIES 58 FLOCKING SWALLOWS 66 A WHITE-FOOTED MOUSE AND ITS NEST 68 A CHIPMUNK 70 A WOODCHUCK 72 "FIVE DAYS OF LIFE AND PLENTY FOR THE BIRDS " ... 74 "BUT COME, BOYS, GET AFTER THOSE BAGS!". . . Facing 84 A LOON 89 WHEN NIGHT COMES 90 BLUE JAYS 91 A RED SQUIRREL 92 GOLDEN-CROWNED KINGLETS 93 WILD GEESE 102 NOTE The subject of the initial for chapter iv is witch-hazel ; that for chap- ter vii, the cocoons of the cecropia, the promethea, and the basket-worm ; and that for chapter vin, a sprig of alder, with the old fruit and a budded oatkin. The subjects of the other initials require no identification. ILLUSTRATIONS WINTER THE Fox SPARROWS' BATH . . . . . . . Facing SKUXK TRACKS ' CAT TRACKS TRACKS OF HARE JOINED BY DOGS "IX A BURST OF SPEED ACROSS THE OPEN FIELD" DOG TRACKS IN FOUR INCHES OF SNOW TRACKS OF THE WHITE-FOOTED MOUSE "A GRAY SQUIRREL WITH A RED SQUIRREL AT HIS HEELS" . Fox TRACKS MUSKRAT TRAIL "INTO THE AIR THEY WENT" WHITE-FOOT — "IN THE WINTER GALES" "FIVE WEE MICE" WHITE-FOOT AND THE HICKORY-NUTS A VIREO'S NEST IN WINTER " WIND-SWEEPINGS " 'POSSUM IN THE PERSIMMON TREE WEASEL — "WATCHING ME FROM BETWEEN THE STICKS" . "A CHICKADEE" "DOING THE EXCAVATING THEMSELVES" FOOD FOR THE NUTHATCHES THE MOURNING-CLOAK BUTTERFLY, AN EARLY FLITTER . A RUFFED GROUSE TRAIL "THE SNOW HAD MELTED FROM THE RIVER MEADOWS " . "CARRYING A BIG BOB-TAILED VOLE OUT OF MY 'MOWING' " "SCURRYING THROUGH THE TOPS OF SOME PITCH PINES" . 1 3 * 4 6 '•- 7 - 7 ' 9 ' 11 }( 12 14 -. 26 . 33 35 I? 38 ^ 40 ; 41 ^ 50 f>3 ^ 62 £* 69 j* 76 J xvi ILLUSTRATIONS "ALL THE AFTERNOON THE CROWS HAVE BEEN GOING OVER" '» THE DUCK-BILLED PLATYPUS, OR DUCK-BILL .... THE ECHIDNA, OR PORCUPINE ANT-EATER "STANDING BEFORE A LARGE 'POSSUM" "OUT SHE SPILLED AND NINE LITTLE 'POSSUMS WITH HER" "A GREAT BLUE HERON WOULD BEAT PONDEROUSLY ACROSS" MEADOW MOUSE — "!N A DRIFTING CATBIRD'S NEST" "A LITTLE FIGURE IN YELLOW OIL-SKINS" /"DREW A LIMP LITTLE FORM OUT OF THE WATER" . QUAIL — " ONE OF THE COVEY CALLING THE FLOCK TOGETHER" "A FLOCK OF ROBINS DASHING INTO THE CEDARS" PUSSY-WILLOWS AND WATERCRESS "THE HAZELNUT BUSHES ARE IN BLOOM" BLUEBIRD — "LIKE A BIT OF SUMMER SKY" . 93 97 on . 100 106 -> 109 . 114 121 127 131 132 133 135 SPRING SPRING OF THE YEAR- SHADBUSH (CHAPTER I) ^— ' "~~ " -> THE SPEING OF THE YEAE CHAPTER I SPUING ! SPRING I SPRING ! I" w "HO is your spring messenger ? Is it bird] or flower or beast that brings your spring' What sight or sound or smell spells^ S-P-R-I-N-G to you, in big, joyous letters ? Perhaps it is the frogs. Certainly I could not have! a real spring without the frogs. They have peepedj |" Spring ! " to me ev- jry time I have had a J spring. Perhaps it is the arbutus, or the hepatica, or the pus- sy - willow, or the bluebird, or the yel- ! jlow spice-bush, or, if /you chance to live in New England, perhaps it u jthe wood pussy that brings your spring ! Beast, bird, or flower, whatever it is, there comes a May and a messenger and — spring ! You know that! spring is here. It may snow again before night: noj matter; your messenger has brought you the news, brought you the very spring itself, and after \ ifter am - 4 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR Then, you see, my chapter in the book will become y your own. There are so many persons who do not know one/ bird from another, one tree from another, one flower , • from another; who would not know one season from/ another did they not see the spring hats in the mil- •' liner's window or feel the need of a £%* change of coat. I hope you are not 'f one of them. I hope you are' on the watch, instead, for the ,' first phoebe or the earliest < bloodroot, or are listening toft catch the shrill, brave peep- \ ing of the little tree-frogs, '« the hylas. As for me, I am on the watch ; i for the shadbush. Oh, yes, spring v 3 comes before the shadbush opens, but tf/ it is likely not to stay. The wild geese ^ trumpet spring in the gray March skies ^ j as they pass ; a February rain, after a ^v! '$ long cold season of snow, spatters your face with ;\/ spring ; the swelling buds on the maples, the fuzzy 1 kittens on the pussy-willows, the opening marsh- J- ^ '\ marigolds in the meadows, the frogs, the bluebirds & until the shadbush opens. After that, hang up your * •' SPRING! SPRING! SPRING! 5 sled and skates, put away your overcoat and mittens ; for spring is here, and the honey-bees will buzz every bright day until the October asters are in bloom. I said if you want springtime ahead of time you must have it in your heart. Of course you must. If your heart is warm and your eye is keen, you can go forth in the dead of winter and gather buds, seeds, cocoons, and living things enough to make a little spring. For the fires of summer are never wholly out. They are only banked in the winter, smoulder- ing always under the snow, and quick to brighten and burst into blaze. There comes a warm day in January, and across your thawing path crawls a woolly-bear caterpillar ; a mourning-cloak butter- fly flits through the woods, and the juncos sing. That night a howling snowstorm sweeps out of the north ; the coals are covered again. So they kindle and darken, until they leap from the ashes of winter a pure, thin blaze in the shadbush, to burn higher and hotter across the summer, to flicker and die away — a line of yellow embers — in the weird witch-hazel of the autumn. At the sign of the shadbush the doors of my springtime swing wide open. My birds are back, my turtles are out, my long sleeping woodchucks are wide awake. There is not a stretch of woodland or meadow now that shows a trace of winter. Over the pasture the bluets are beginning to drift, as if the haze on the distant hills, floating down in the night, T ' £ 6 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR had been caught in the dew-wet grass. They wash? the field to its borders in their delicate azure hue.' At the sign of the shadbush the doors of my mem- ory, too, swing wide open, and I am a boy again in- the meadows of my old home. The shadbush is in x. blossom, and the fish are running — the sturgeon" up the Delaware; the shad up Cohansey Creek ;.-*> and through the Lower Sluice, these soft, stirringv nights, the catfish are slipping. Is there any real boy now in Lupton's Meadows to watch them come ? Oh yes, doubtless ; and doubtless there ever shall But I would go down for this one night, down in May moonlight, and listen, as I used to listen years ago, for the quiet splash splash splash, as the swarm- ing catfish pass through the shallows of the main ditch, up toward the dam at the pond. At the sign of the shadbush how swiftly the tides of life begin to rise ! How mysteriously their cur- rents run ! — the fish swimming in from the sea, the birds flying up from the South, the flowers open-' ing fresh from the soil, the insects coming out from, their sleep : life moving everywhere — across the heavens, over the earth, along the deep, dim aisles of the sea! CHAPTER II THE SPRING RUNNING HIS title is Kipling's ; the observations that follow are mine; but the real spring run- ning is yours and mine and Kipling's and Mowgli the wolf-child's, whose running Kipling has told us about. Indeed, every child of the earth hasj felt it, has had the running — every living thing of the land and the sea. Everything feels it; everything is restless, every- thing is moving. The renter changes houses; the city dweller goes " down to the shore " or up to th mountains to open his summer cottage; the farmer starts to break up the land for planting; the school- children begin to squirm in their seats and long fly out of the windows ; and " Where are you goingt this summer? " is on every one's lips. They have all caught the spring running, the only infection I know that you can catch from Ap skies. The very sun has caught it, too, and is length- ening out his course, as if he hated to stop and to bed at night. And the birds, that are supposed to go to bed most promptly, they sleep, says th good old poet Chaucer, with open eye, these Apri nights, so bad is their case of spring running, — " So priketh hem Nature in hir corages." l 1 So nature pricks (stirs) them in their hearts. 8 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR Their long journey northward over sea and land has " not cured them yet of their unrest. Only one thing/ will do it (and I suppose we all should be glad), one f sovereign remedy, and that is family cares. But they are yet a long way off. Meantime watch your turkey-hen, how she saunters down the field alone, how pensive she looks, how lost for something to do and somewhere to go. She is sick with this disease of spring. Follow her, keep-( ing out of sight yourself, an dlo, — . a nest, hidden under f/L • a pile of brush in a corner of the pasture fence, half a mile from home ! The turkey-hen has wandered off half a mile to build her nest ; but many wild birds have come on their small wings all the way from the forests of the Amazon and have gone on to Hudson Bay and the Fur Countries, just to build their nests and rear! their young. A wonderful case of the spring run- v ning, you would say; and still more wonderful is thef annual journey of the golden plover from Patagonia • to Alaska and back, eight thousand miles each way. k Yet there is another case that seems to me more f mysterious, and quite as wonderful, as the sea seems more mysterious than the land. , THE SPRING RUNNING 9 It is the spring running of the fish. For when the great tidal waves of bird-life begin to roll north- ward with the sun, a corresponding movement begins among the denizens of the sea. The cold-blooded fish feel the stirring; the spring running seizes them, and in they come through the pathless wastes of the ocean, waves of them, shoals of them, — sturgeon, shad, herring, — like the waves and flocks of wild geese, warblers, and swallows overhead, — into the brackish water of the bays and rivers and on (the herring) into the fresh water of the ponds. To watch the herring come up Weymouth Back River into Herring Run here near my home, as I do every April, is to watch one of the most interesting, most mysterious movements of all nature. It was about a century ago that men of Weymouth brought! herring in barrels of water by ox-teams from Taun-i ton River and liberated them in the pond at the; head of Weymouth Back River. These fish laid their* eggs in the grassy margins of the pond that spring | and went out down the river to the sea. Later on 'the young fry, when large enough to care for them- selves, found their way down the river and out to sea j And where did they go then ? and what did they! >? Who can tell? for who can read the dark book( .of the sea? Yet this one thing we know they didJ for still they are doing it after all these hundred years, — they came back up the river, when they! were full-grown, — up the river, up the run, up intd J 10 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR the pond, to lay their eggs in the waters where they were hatched, in the waters that to them were home. Something very much like this all the other fish are doing, as are the birds also. The spell of home is over land and sea, and has been laid upon them all. The bird companies of the fall went south at the inexorable command of Hunger ; but a greater than Hunger is in command of the forces of spring. Now our vast bird army of North Amer- ica, five billion strong, is moving northward at the call of Home. And the hosts of the sea, whose shining billions we cannot number, — they, too, are coming up, some of them far up through the shal- low streams to the wood-walled ponds for a drink of the sweet waters of Home. As a boy I used to go down to the meadows at night to hear the catfish coming, as now I go down to the village by day to see the herring coming. The catfish would swim in from the Cohansey, through the sluices in the bank, then up by way of the meadow ditches to the dam over which fall the waters of Lup- ton's Pond. It was a seven- or eight-foot dam, and of course the fish could not climb it. Down under the splash- ing water they would crowd by hundreds, their moving bodies close-packed, pushing forward, all trying to break through the wooden wall that blocked their way. Slow, stupid things they looked ; but was not each big cat head pointed forward ? each slow, THE SPRING RUNNING cold brain trying to follow and keep up with each swift, warm heart ? For the homeward-bound heart knows no barrier ; it never stops for a dam. The herring, too, on their way up the run are stopped by a dam ; but the town, in granting to cer- tain men the sole rights to catch the fish, stipulated that a number of the live herring, as many as several barrels full, should be helped over the dam each spring that they might go on up to the pond to de- posit their eggs. If this were not done annually, the fish would soon cease to come, and the Weymouth herring would be no more. There was no such lift for the catfish under Lup- ton's dam. I often tossed them over into the pond, and so helped to continue the line; but perhaps there was no need, for spring after spring they returned. They were the young fish, I suppose, new each year, from parent fish that remain inside the pond the year round. I cannot say now — I never asked myself before — whether it is Mother or Father Catfish who stays with the swarm (it is literally a swarm) of kitten catfish. It may be father, as in the case of Father Stickleback and Father Toadfish, who cares for the children. If it is — I take off my hat to him. I have four of ,my own; and I think if I had eighteen or twenty more I should have both hands full. But Father Cat- fish ! Did you ever see his brood ? I should say that there might easily be five hun- 12 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR died young ones in the family, though I never have counted them. But you might. If you want to try , it, take your small scoop-net of coarse cheesecloth, \ . or mosquito-netting, and go down to the pond this « spring. Close along the margin you will see holes ( in the shallow water running up under the over- * hanging grass and roots. The holes were made prob- f">' ably by the muskrats. It is in here that the old J catfish is guarding the brood. As soon as you learn to know the holes, you can | cover the entrance with your net, and then by „<• / jumping or stamp- 1 " ing hard on the < ground above the < ^ / hole, you will drive out the old fish with a flop, the $ \ l^family following in a fine, black cloud. The old fish ^ ( j^t will swim away, then come slowly back to the scat- ^ * tered swarm, to the little black things that look like ; •' ; y small tadpoles, who soon cluster about the parent <. ? v ,5once more and wiggle away into the deep, dark / ' ?• water of the pond — the strangest family group i :r / ' /that I know in all the spring world. CHAPTER III AN OLD APPLE TREE BEYOND the meadow, perhaps half a mile from my window, stands an old apple tree, the last of an ancient line that once marked the boundary between the " upper " and the " lower" pastures. It is a bent, broken, hoary old tree, grizzled with suckers from feet to crown. No one has pruned it for half a century ; no one ever gathers its gnarly apples — no one but the cattle who love to lie in its shadow and munch its fruit. The cows know the tree. One of their winding paths runs under its low-hung branches ; and as I frequently travel the cow-paths, I also find my way thither. Yet I do not go for apples, nor just be- cause the cow-path takes me. That old apple tree is hollow, hollow all over, trunk and branches, as hol- low as a lodging-house ; and I have never known it when it was not " putting up " some wayfaring vis- itor or some permanent lodger. So I go over, when- ever 1 have a chance, to call upon my friends or pay my respects to the distinguished guests. This old tree is on the neighboring farm. It does not belong to me, and I am glad ; for if it did, then I should have to trim it, and scrape it, and plaster 14 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR ^ up its holes, and put a burlap petticoat on it, all be- i.v cause of the gruesome gypsy moths that infest my trees. Oh, yes, that would make it bear better ap- ples, but what then would become of its birds and* beasts? Everybody ought to have one apple tree that bears birds and beasts — and Baldwin apples, - too, of course, if the three sorts of fruit can be. made to grow on the same tree. But only the birds . / and beasts grow well on the untrimmed, unscraped, unplastered, unpetticoated old tree yonder between " the pastures. His heart is wide open to every small- traveler passing by. Whenever I look over toward the old tree, I think 7" of the old vine-covered, weather-beaten house in which my grandfather lived, where many a traveler put up over night — to get a plate of grand mother's buckwheat cakes, I think, and a taste of her keen wit. The old house sat in under a grove of pin oak and pine, — " Underwood " we called it, — a shel- tered, sheltering spot ; with a peddler's stall in the barn, a peddler's place at the table, a peddler's bed in the herby garret, a boundless, fathomless feather- bed, of a piece with the house and the hospitality. There were larger houses and newer, in the neigh- borhood ; but no other house in all the region, not > even the tavern, two miles farther down the pike, was half so central, or so homelike, or so full of .x sweet and juicy gossip. The old apple tree yonder between the woods and the meadow is as central, as AN OLD APPLE TREE 15 ^hospitable, and, if animals talk with one another,^ just as full of neighborhood news as was father's roof-tree. Of course you would never suspect it, passing by/; fBut then, no lover of wild things passes by — never without first stopping, and especially before an old tree all full of holes. Whenever you see a hole in tree, in a sand-bank, in a hillside, under a rail-pile' — anywhere out of doors, stop ! Stop here beside this decrepit apple tree. No, you will find no sign swinging from the front, no door- plate, no letter-box bearing the name of the family V/* residing here. The birds and beasts do not adverv-W> 1"^ tise their houses so. They would hide their houses (. > they would have you pass by; for most persons are rude in the woods and fields, breaking into the homes of the wood-folk as they never would dream of doing in the case of their human neighbors. There is no need of being rude anywhere, no),, need of being an unwelcome visitor even to the shy- est and most timid of the little people of the fields. Come over with me — they know me in the old apple tree. It is nearly sundown. The evening is near, with night at its heels, for it is an early March day. We shall not wait long. The doors will open tha we may enter — enter into a home of the fields, an a little way at least, into a life of the fields, for, as I have said, this old tree has a small dweller of some sort the year round. 16 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR On this March day we shall be admitted by my £ y owls. They take possession late in winter and oc- / cupy the tree, with some curious fellow tenants, un- [ , til early summer. I can count upon these small screech owls by February, — - the forlorn month, the seasonless, hopeless, lifeless month of the year, but for its owls, its thaws, its lengthening days, its cackling pullets, its possible bluebirds, and its being i the year's end! At least the ancients called Feb-r ruary, not December, the year's end, maintaining, \ \ with some sense, that the making of the world was f / begun in March, that is, with the spring. The owls do not, like the swallows, bring the spring, but they / nevertheless help winter with most seemly haste into f an early grave. If, as the dusk comes down, I cannot go over to ./ the tree, I will go to my window and watch. I can- not see him, the grim-beaked baron with his hooked ( talons, his ghostly wings, his night-seeing eyes, but £ I know that he has come to his window in the apple- ( tree turret yonder against the darkening sky, and \ that he watches with me. I cannot see him swoop i downward over the ditches, nor see him quarter the \ meadow, beating, dangling, dropping between the) jl flattened tussocks; nor can I hear him, as, back on the silent shadows, he slants upward again to his\ tower. Mine are human eyes, human ears. Even j the quick-eared meadow mouse did not hear until the long talons closed and it was too late. \ SCREECH OWL -"OUT OVER THE MEADOW HE SAILS r> 18 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR But there have been times when, like some belated traveler, I have been forced to cross this wild night- land of his ; and I have felt him pass — so near at times that he has stirred my hair, by the wind — dare I say ? — of his mysterious wings. At other times I have heard him. Often on the edge of night I have lis- tened to his quavering, querulous cry from the elm- tops below me by the meadow. But oftener I have watched at the casement here in my castle wall. Away yonder on the borders of night, dim and gloomy, looms his ancient keep. I wait. Soon on the ^deepened dusk spread his soft wings, out over the i meadow he sails, up over my wooded height, over my moat, to my turret tall, as silent and unseen as the soul of a shadow, except he drift across the face of the full round moon, or with his weird cry cause the dreaming quiet to stir in its sleep and moan. Now let us go over again to the old tree, this time in May. It will be curious enough, as the soft dusk comes on, to see the round face of the owl in one hole and, out of another hole in the broken limb above, the flat, weazened face of a little tree-toad. Both creatures love the dusk; both have come forth to their open doors to watch the darkening; both will make off under the cover of the night — one for mice and frogs over the meadow, the other for slugs and insects over the crooked, tangled limbs of the apple tree. It is strange enough to see them together, but it i AN OLD APPLE TREE 19 is stranger still to think of them together; for it is just such prey as this little toad that the owl has gone over the meadow to catch. Why does he not take the supper ready here on the shelf? There may be reasons that we, who do not eat tree-toad, know nothing of ; but I am inclined to believe that the owl has never seen his fellow lodger in the doorway above, though he must often have heard him trilling gently and lonesomely in the gloaming, when his skin cries for rain! Small wonder if they have never met ! for this gray, squat, disk-toed little monster in the hole, or flattened on the bark of the tree like a patch of li- chen, may well be one of the things that are hidden from even the sharp-eyed owl. It is always a source of fresh amazement, the way that this largest of the hylas, on the moss-marked rind of an old tree, can utterly blot himself out before your staring eyes. The common toads and all the frogs have enemies enough, and it would seem from the comparative scarcity of the tree-toads that they must have en- emies, too ; but I do not know who they are. This scarcity of the tree-toads is something of a puzzle, and all the more to me, that, to my certain knowl- ,edge, this toad has lived in the old Baldwin tree, now, for five years. Perhaps he has been several J toads, you say, not one; for who can tell one tree- toad from another ? Nobody ; and for that reason I made, some time ago, a simple experiment, in order 20 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR • '. to see how long a tree-toad might live, unprotected, in his own natural environment. Upon moving into this house, about nine years , ago, we found a tree-toad living in the big hickory by the porch. For the next three springs he reap- >peared, and all summer long we would find him, now on the tree, now on the porch, often on the railing / and backed tight up against a post. Was he one or ^many ? we asked. Then we marked him ; and for the ^ next four years we knew that he was himself alone. ^ How many more years he might have lived in the hickory for us all to pet, I should like to know ; but .'/ last summer, to our great sorrow, the gypsy moth 'killers, poking in the hole, hit our little friend and : left him dead. Si It was very wonderful to me, the instinct for |*home: — the love for home, I should like to call it — I that this humble little creature showed. Now, a toad /is an amphibian to the zoologist; an ugly gnome I with a jeweled eye, to the poet; but to the naturalist, ' the lover of life for its own sake, who lives next ?«door to his toad, who feeds him a fly or a fat grub f now and then, who tickles him to sleep with a rose v leaf, who waits as thirstily as the hilltop for him call the summer rain, who knows his going to 'sleep for the winter, his waking up for the spring — to such a one, I say, a tree-toad means more than the jeweled eye and the strange amphibious habits. 1 AN OLD APPLE TREE 21 This small tree-toad had a home, had it in a tree, too, — in a hickory tree, — this toad that dwelt by my house. " East, west, Hame 's best," r croaked our tree-toad in a tremulous, plaintive song that wakened memories in the vague twilight of more old, unhappy, far-off things than any other voice I ever knew. These two tree-toads could not have been induced to trade houses, the hickory for the apple, because a house to a toad means home, and a home is never in the market. There are many more houses in the land than homes. Most of us are only real-estate dealers. Many of us have never had a home ; and none of us has ever had, perhaps, more than one, or could have — that home of our childhood. This toad seemed to feel it all. Here in the hickory for four years (more nearly seven, I am sure) he lived, single and alone. He would go down to the meadow when the toads gathered there to lay their eggs; but back he would come, without mate or companion, to his tree. Stronger than love of kind, than love of mate, constant and dominant in his slow cold heart was his instinct for home. If I go down to the orchard and bring up from an apple tree some other toad to dwell in the hole of the hickory, I shall fail. He might remain for the day, but not throughout the night, for with the 22 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR •gathering twilight there steals upon him an irresist- j ible longing ; and guided by it, as bee and pigeon ' y>and dog and man are guided, he makes his sure way -^'5 back to his orchard home. Would my toad of the Baldwin tree go back be-! yond the orchard, over the road, over the wide L meadow, over to the old tree, half a mile away, if I ;v brought him from there ? We shall see. During the 1 .coming summer I shall mark him in some manner, ' . and bringing him here to the hickory, I shall then watch the old apple tree yonder to see if he re- \ / turns. It will be a hard, perilous journey. But his . -..longing will not let him rest; and, guided by his -mysterious sense of direction, — for that one place, 3 — he will arrive, I am sure, or he will die on the way. Suppose he never gets back ? Only one toad less ? A great deal more than that. There in the old Bald- win he has made his home for I don't know how long, hunting over its world of branches in the sum- mer, sleeping down in its deep holes during the winter — down under the chips and punk and cast- ings, beneath the nest of the owls, it may be ; for my toad in the hickory always buried himself so, down in the debris at the bottom of the hole, where, in a kind of cold storage, he preserved himself until thawed out by the spring. I never pass the old apple in the summer but that I stop to pay my respects to the toad ; nor in the AN OLD APPLE TREE 23 , ^winter that I do not pause and think of him fin there. He is no longer mere toad. He has passed /into the Guardian Spirit of the tree, warring in the .green leaf against worm and grub and slug, and in 'the dry leaf hiding himself, a heart of life, within f^the thin ribs, as if to save the old shell of a tree to • another summer. Often in the dusk, especially the summer dusk, I Chave gone over to sit at his feet and learn some of .the things that my school-teachers and college pro- .fessors did not teach me. ) Seating myself comfortably at the foot of the tree, wait. The toad comes forth to the edge f his hole above me, settles himself comfortably, and waits. And the esson begins. The quiet of the summer evening steals out th the wood-shadows and softly covers the fields. We 'v- >do not stir. An hour passes. j We do not stir. Not to stir f .-is the lesson — one of the primary lessons in this C course with the toad. "£"'.'" '; The dusk thickens. The grasshoppers begin to strum; the owl slips out and drifts away; a whip- poor-will drops on the bare knoll near me, clucks and shouts and shouts again, his rapid repetition a thou- ,sand times repeated by the voices that call to one L f another down the long empty aisles of the swamp ; s •' . I. 24 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR a big moth whirs about my head and is gone ; a bat flits squeaking past ; a firefly blazes, is blotted out by the darkness, blazes again, and so passes, his tiny lantern flashing into a night that seems the darker for his quick, unsteady glow. We do not stir. It is a hard lesson. By all my other teachers I had been taught every manner of stirring, and this strange exercise of being still takes me where my body is weakest, and puts me almost out of breath. What ! out of breath by keeping still ? Yes, be- cause I had been hurrying hither and thither, do- ing this and that — • doing them so fast for so many ; years that I no longer understood how to sit down > and keep still and do nothing inside of me as well as outside. Of course you know how to keep still, •/ for you are children. And so perhaps you do not need to take lessons of teacher Toad. But I do, for I am grown up, and a man, with a world of things to do, a great many of which I do not need to do at all — if only I would let the toad teach me all he knows. j So, when I am tired, I will go over to the toad. I will sit at his feet, where time is nothing, and the worry of work even less. He has all time and no; task. He sits out the hour silent, thinking — I know not what, nor need to know. So we will sit in silence, the toad and I, watching Altair burn along the shore of the horizon, and overhead Arcturus, and AN OLD APPLE TREE 25 the rival fireflies flickering through the leaves of the 1 apple tree. And as we watch, I shall have time to vlrest and to think. Perhaps I shall have a thought, a 'thought all my own, a rare thing for any one to have, and worth many an hour of waiting. CHAPTER IV A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO SEE THIS SPRING UT of the multitude of sights, which twelve I sights this spring shall I urge you to see? \ Why the twelve, of course, that I always look for most eagerly. And the first of these, I think, is the bluebird. O " Have you seen a bluebird yet ? " some friend will ask me, as March comes on. Or it will be, "I have seen my first bluebird ! "as if seeing a first blue- bird were something very wonderful and important. And so it is ; for the sight of the first March blue- bird is the last sight of winter and the first sight of spring. The brown of the fertile earth is on its breast, the blue of the summer sky is on its back, a and in its voice is the clearest, sweetest of all invi- fj tations to come out of doors. Where has he spent the winter ? Look it up. What ) has brought him back so early ? Guess at it. What does he say as he calls to you? Listen. What has John Burroughs written about him? Look it up and read. » m THINGS TO SEE THIS SPRING II 27 You must see the skunk-cabbage abloom in the swamp. You need not pick it and carry it home for the table — just see it. But be sure you see it. Get down and open the big purple-streaked spathe, as it spears the cold mud, and look at the " spadix" cov- ered with its tiny but per- fect flowers. Now wait a minute. The woods are still bare ; ice may still be found on the northern slopes, while here before you, like a wedge split- ting the fro- zen soil, like a spear cleaving through the earth from the other, the sum- mer, side of the world, is this broad blade of life letting up almost the first cluster of the new spring's flowers. Wait a moment longer and you may hear your first bumblebee, as he comes humming at the door of the cabbage for a taste of new honey and pollen. THE SPRING OF THE YEAR III Among the other early signs of spring, you should ] a flock of red-winged blackbirds ! And what } a sight they are upon a snow-covered field ! For often '{ after their return it will snow again, when the bril- < liant, shining birds in black with their red epaulets make one of the most striking sights of the season, f IV Another bird event that you should witness is the \ arrival of the migrating warblers. You will be out ' one of these early May days when there will be a J stirring of small birds in the bushes at your side, ; in the tall trees over your head — everywhere! It is « the warblers. You are in the tide of the tiny migrants I — yellow warblers, pine warblers, myrtle warblers, j black-throated green warblers — some of them on their way from South America to Labrador. You must be in the woods and see them as they come. You should see the "spice-bush" (wild allspice or fever-bush or Benjamin-bush) in bloom in the damp March woods. And, besides that, you should see with I your own eyes under some deep, dark forest trees the 0 blue hepatica and on some bushy hillside the pink arbutus. (For fear I forget to tell you in the chapter of things to do, let me now say that you should take a day this spring and go " may-flowering.") I THINGS TO SEE THIS SPRING VI 29 r .; L There are four nests that you should see this' ; spring: a hummingbird's nest, saddled upon the, f horizontal limb of some fruit or forest tree, and* '• looking more like a wart on the limb than a nest ; ' secondly, the nest, eggs rather, of a turtle buried in\ i the soft sand along the margin of a pond or out *^ j in some cultivated field; thirdly, the nest of a sun-'. •; fish (pumpkin-seed) in the shallow water close up' along the sandy shore of the pond ; and fourthly, * \ the nest of the red squirrel, made of fine stripped^ cedar bark, away up in the top of some tall pine £"•, tree ! I mean by this that there are many other in- V teresting nest-builders besides the birds. Of all the!' | difficult nests to find, the hummingbird's is the most I; difficult. When you find one, please write to me - \ about it. VII You should see a "spring peeper," the tiny Pick- ering's frog — if you can. The marsh and the mead-v ows will be vocal with them, but one of the hardest < 30 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR •••' things that you will try to do this spring will be to see the shrill little piper, as he plays his bagpipe . in the rushes at your very feet. But hunt until you do see him. It will sharpen your eyes and steady j your patience for finding other things. '. VIII You should see the sun come up on a May morn- ing. The dawn is always a wonderful sight, but % never at other times attended with quite the glory, ^ with quite the music, with quite the sweet fragrance, ,- « with quite the wonder of a morning in May. Don't*, < >fail to see it. Don't fail to rise with it. You will '; •feel as if you had wings — something better even sjA than wings. IX You should see a farmer ploughing in a large field i — the long straight furrows of brown earth; the • blackbirds following behind after worms; the rip of the ploughshare ; the roll of the soil from the smooth mould-board — the wealth of it all. For in just such fields is the wealth of the world, and the health of it, too. Don't miss the sight of the ploughing. > x , Go again to the field, three weeks later, and see it all green with sprouting corn, or oats, or one of a score of crops. Then — but in " The Fall of the "Y ^Year" I ask you to go once more and see that field THINGS TO SEE THIS SPRING 31 1 covered with shocks of ripened corn, shocks that re pitched up and down its long rows of corn-butts like a vast village of Indian tepees, each tepee full of golden corn. XI You should see, hanging from a hole in some old apple tree, a long thin snake-skin ! It is the latch- string of the great crested fly- catcher. Now why does this bird always use a snake-skin in his >nest? and why does he usually leave it hanging loose outside khe hole ? Questions, these, for )you to think about. And if you ;?will look sharp, you will see in jven the commonest things ques- tions enough to keep you think- ing as long as you live. XII You should see a dandelion. A dandelion ? Yes, a dandelion, " fringing the dusty road with harmless gold." But ;hat almost requires four eyes — two to see the dan- .delion and two more to see the gold — the two eyes in your head, and the two in your imagination. Do you really know how to see anything? Most persons ave eyes, but only a few really see. This is because .they cannot look hard and steadily at anything. Th 32 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR first great help to real seeing is to go into the woods knowing what you hope to see — seeing it in your eye, as we say, before you see it in the out-of-doors. No one would ever see a tree-toad on a mossy tree or a whip-poor-will among the fallen leaves who did not have tree-toads and whip-poor-wills in mind. Then, secondly, look at the thing hard until you see in it something peculiar, something different from any- thing like it that you ever saw before. Don't dream. in the woods; don't expect the flowers to tell you! their names or the wild things to come up and ask you to wait while they perform for you. i \ CHAPTER V IF YOU HAD WINGS IF you had wings, why of course you would wear feathers instead of clothes, and you might be a crow ! And then of course you [would steal corn, and run the risk of getting three! your big wing feathers shot away. All winter long, and occasionally during this spring, I have seen one of my little band of crows flying about with a big hole in his wing, — at least three of his large wing feathers gone, shot away probably last sum- mer, — which causes him to fly with a list or limp, Jike an automobile with a flattened tire, or a ship with a shifted ballast. Now for nearly a year that crow has been hobbling \ about on one whole and one half wing, trusting to . 34 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR luck to escape his enemies, until he can get three new feathers to take the places of those that are missing. " Well, why does n't he get them ? " you ask. If you were that crow, how would you get them ? Can a crow, by taking thought, add three new feath- ers to his wing? Certainly not. That crow must wait until wing- j feather season comes again, just as an apple tree ' must wait until apple-growing season comes to hang its boughs with luscious fruit. The crow has nothing to do with it. His wing feathers are supplied by Na- - ture once a year (after the nesting-time), and if a crow loses any of them, even if right after the new feathers had been supplied, that crow will have to wait until the season for wing feathers comes around once more — if indeed he can wait and does not fall a prey to hawk or owl or the heavy odds of winter. But Nature is not going to be hurried on that ac count, nor caused to change one jot or tittle from her wise and methodical course. The Bible says that the hairs of our heads are numbered. So are the feathers on a crow's body. Nature knows just how many there are altogether ; how many there are of each sort — primaries, secondaries, tertials, greater coverts, middle coverts, lesser coverts, and scapulars — in the wing; just how each sort is' arranged; just when each sort is to be moulted and renewed. If Master Crow does not take care of his IF YOU HAD WINGS clothes, then he will have to go without until the time fora new suit comes; for Mother Nature won patch them up as your mother patches up yours. But now this is what I want you to notice and think about : that just as an apple falls according to a great law of Nature, so a bird's feathers fall ac- cording to a law of Nature. The moon is appointed for seasons ; the sun knoweth his going down ; and so light and insignificant a thing as a bird's feather not only is appointed to grow in a certain place at a certain time, but also knoweth its falling off. Nothing could look more haphazard, certainly, than the way a hen's feathers seem to drop off at moulting time. The most forlorn, undone, abject creature about the farm is the half-moulted hen. There is one in the chicken-yard now, so nearly naked that she really is ashamed of herself, and so miserably helpless that she squats in a corner all night, unable to reach the low poles of the roost. It is a critical experience with the hen, this moulting of her feathers ; and were it not for the protection of the yard it would be a fatal experience, so easily could she be captured. Nature seems to have no hand in the business at all ; if she has, then what a mess she is making of it ! But pick up the hen, study the falling of the feathers carefully, and lo! here is law and order, every feather as important to Nature as a star, every quill as a planet, and the old white hen as mightily 36 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR T looked after by Nature as the round sphere of the universe ! Once a year, usually after the nesting-season, it seems a physical necessity for most birds to renew their plumage. We get a new suit (some of us) because our old one wears out. That is the most apparent cause for the new annual suit of the birds. Yet with them, as with some of us, the feathers go out of fashion, and then the change of feathers is a mere matter of style, it seems. For severe and methodical as Mother Nature / must be (and what mother or teacher or ruler, who v* has great things to do and a multitude of little things ; to attend to, must not be severe and methodical ? ) -,' — severe, I say, as Mother Nature must be in look- ^ing after her children's clothes, she has for all that a real motherly heart, it seems. 5? For see how she looks after their wedding gar- ments— giving to most of the birds a new suit, gay '•": and gorgeous, especially to the bridegrooms, as if ?f fine feathers did make a fine bird ! Or does she do all of this to meet the fancy of the bride, as the I scientists tell us? Whether so or not, it is a fact I that among the birds it is the bridegroom who is > adorned for his wife, and sometimes the fine feathers come by a special moult — an : extra suit for him ! Take Bobolink, for instance. He has two complete moults a year, two new suits, one of them his wedding IF YOU HAD WINGS 37 suit. Now, as I write, I hear him singing over the meadow — a jet-black, white, and cream-buff lover, most strikingly adorned. His wife, down in the grass, looks as little like him as a sparrow looks like a black- bird. But after the breeding-season he will moult again, changing color so completely that he and his wife and children will all look alike, all like spar- rows, and will even lose their names, flying south now under the name of " reedbirds." Bobolink passes the winter in Brazil ; and in the spring, just before the long northward journey be- gins, he lays aside his fall traveling clothes and puts on his gay wedding garments and starts north for his bride. But you would hardly know he was so dressed, to look at him ; for, strangely enough, he is not black and white, but still colored like a sparrow, as he was in the fall. Apparently he is. Look at him more closely, however, and you will find that the brownish-yellow color is all caused by a veil of fine fringes hanging from the edges of the feathers. The bridegroom wearing the wedding veil? Yes ! Underneath is the black and white and cream- buff suit. He starts northward ; and, by the time he reaches Massachusetts, the fringe veil is worn off and the black and white bobolink appears. Speci- mens taken after their arrival here still show traces of the brownish-yellow veil. Many birds do not have this early spring moult at all ; and with most of those that do, the great 38 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR 1 ' . wing feathers are not then renewed as are l'^ but only at the annual moult after the nesting is ^done. The great feathers of the wings are, as you know, the most important feathers a bird has; and, the shedding of them is so serious a matter that; Nature has come to make the change according to the habits and needs of the birds. With most birds the body feathers begin to go first, then the wing feathers, and last those of the tail. But the shedding of the wing feathers is a very slow and carefully regulated process. In the wild geese and other water birds the wing* ~- feathers drop out with the feathers of the body, and1] '"~ go so nearly together that the birds really cannot fly. On land you could catch the birds with your hands. But they keep near or on the water and thus ^i? escaPe> Chough times have been when it was neces- V> sary to protect them at this season by special laws ; 'A for bands of men would go into their nesting- ' marshes and kill them with clubs by hundreds ! The shedding of the feathers brings many risks ' to the birds ; but Nature leaves none of her children ? atterly helpless. The geese at this time cannot fly because their feathers are gone ; but they can swim,' and so get away from most of their natural enemies. $ On the other hand, the hawks that hunt by wing, and must have wings always in good feather, or else perish, lose their feathers so slowly that they never feel their loss. It takes a hawk nearly a year to get a complete IF YOU HAD WINGS 39 ' change of wing feathers, one or two dropping out t from each wing at a time, at long intervals apart. Then here is the gosling, that goes six weeks in w «3,down, before it gets its first feathers, which it sheds dthin a few weeks, in the fall. Whereas the young [iiail is born with quills so far grown that it is able to fly almost as soon as it is hatched. These are real mature feathers ; but the bird is young and soon outgrows these first flight feathers, so they are quickly lost and new ones come. This goes on till fall, several moults occurring the first summer to icet the increasing weight of the little quail's grow- ing body. I said that Nature was severe and methodical, and she is, where she needs to be, so severe that you ire glad, perhaps, that you are not a crow. But Na- like every wise mother, is severe only where she needs to be. A crow's wing feathers are vastly important to him. Let him then take care of them, for they are the best feathers made and are put in to stay a year. But a crow's tail feathers are not so , vastly important to him ; he could get on, if, like the rabbit in the old song, he had no tail at all. In most birds the tail is a kind of balance or steer- ang-gear, and not of equal importance with the wings. Nature, consequently, seems to have attached less importance to the feathers of the tail. They are not so firmly set, nor are they of the same quality or kind ; for, unlike the wing feathers, if a tail feather is 1 40 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR through accident, it is made good, no matter when. How do you explain that? Do you think I believe that old story of the birds roosting with their tails out, so that, because of generations of lost tails, those feathers now grow expecting to be plucked by some enemy, and therefore have only a temporary hold? The normal, natural way, of course, is to replace a lost feather with a new one as soon as possible. [But, in order to give extra strength to the wing feathers, Nature has found it necessary to check J their frequent change ; and so complete is the check that the annual moult is required to replace a single one. The Japanese have discovered the secret of this ... check, and are able by it to keep certain feathers I in the tails of their cocks growing until they reach ?; the enormous length of ten to twelve feet. My crow, it seems, lost his three feathers last sum- •X mer just after his annual moult ; the three broken "j shafts he carries still in his wing, and must continue ¥ to carry, as the stars must continue their courses, 'V\jimtil those three feathers have rounded out their / ^cycle to the annual moult. The universe of stars and '• /feathers is a universe of law, of order, and of reason. CHAPTER VI A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO DO THIS SPRING I DO not know where to begin — there are so many interesting things to do this spring ! But, while we ought to be interested in all of the out-of-doors, it is very necessary to select some one field, say, the birds or flowers, for special study.} That would help us to decide what to do this spring.. If there is still room under your window, or on the clothes-pole in your yard, or in a neighboring! tree, nail up another bird-house. (Get "Methods ofi Attracting Birds " by Gilbert H. Trafton.) If thel bird-house is on a pole or post, invert a large tin pan; over the end of the post and nail the house fasfr upon it. This will keep cats and squirrels from dis-j turbing the birds. If the bird-house is in a tree, sawv off a limb, if you can without hurting the tree, and do the same there. Cats are our birds' worst enemies^ II Cats ! Begin in your own home and neighborh a campaign against the cats, to reduce their number and to educate their owners to the need of keeping them well fed and shut up in the house from early 42 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR evening until after the early morning ; for these are the cats' natural hunting hours, when they do the greatest harm to the birds. This does not mean any cruelty to the cat — no stoning, no persecution. The cat is not at fault. It is the keepers of the cats who need to be educated. Out of every hundred nests in my neighborhood the cats of two farmhouses destroy ninety-five! The state must come to the rescue of the birds by some new rigid law reducing the number of cats. Ill Speaking of birds, let me urge you to begin your watching and study early — with the first robins and bluebirds — and to select some near-by park or wood-lot or meadow to which you can go frequently. There is a good deal in getting intimately acquainted with a locality, so that you know its trees individ- ually, its rocks, walls, fences, the very qualities of its soil. Therefore you want a small area, close at hand. Most observers make the mistake of roaming first here, then there, spending their time and observa- tion in finding their way around, instead of upon the birds to be seen. You must get used to your paths and trees before you can see the birds that flit about them. IV In this haunt that you select for your observation, you must study not only the birds but the trees, and THINGS TO DO THIS SPRING 43 '• the other forms of life, and the shape of the ground (the " lay " of the land) as well, so as to know all that you see. In a letter just received from a teacher, who is also a college graduate, occurs this strange I description : "My window faces a hill on which j straggle brown houses among the deep green of ) elms or oaks or maples, I don't know which." Per- haps the hill is far away ; but I suspect that the writer, knowing my love for the out-of-doors, wanted to give me a vivid picture, but, not knowing one tree from another, put them all in so I could make my own choice ! Learn your common trees, common flowers, com- mon bushes, common animals, along with the birds. Plant a garden, if only a pot of portulacas, and care for it, and watch it grow ! Learn to dig in the soil and to love it. It is amazing how much and how many things you can grow in a box on the window- sill, or in a corner of the dooryard. There are plants for the sun and plants for the shade, plants for the wall, plants for the very cellar of your house. Get you a bit of earth and plant it, no matter how busy are with other things this spring. VI There are four excursions that you should make this spring : one to a small pond in the woods ; one 44 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR to a deep, wild swamp; one to a wide salt marsh fresh-water meadow; and one to the seashore — to a wild rocky or sandy shore uninhabited by man. There are particular birds and animals as well as< plants and flowers that dwell only in these haunts; besides, you will get a sight of four distinct kinds of J landscape, four deep impressions of the face of^ nature that are altogether as good to have as thej sight of four flowers or birds. f Make a calendar of your spring (read " Nature's *. Diary" by Francis H. Allen) — when and where you; find your first bluebird, robin, oriole, etc. ; when and 2 where you find your first hepatica, arbutus, saxi-^ frage, etc. ; and, as the season goes on, when and \ where the doings of the various wild things take! place. VIII Boy or girl, you should go fishing — down to the pond or the river where you go to watch the birds. Suppose you do not catch any fish. That doesn't ' matter; for you have gone out to the pond with a pole in your hands (a pole is a real thing) ; you have gone with the hope, (hope is a real thing) of catch- ing fish (fish are real things); and even if you catch no fish, you will be sure, as you wait for the u THINGS TO DO THIS SPRING 45 • fish to bite, to hear a belted kingfisher, or see a painted turtle, or catch the breath of the sweet leaf-buds and clustered catkins opening around the wooded pond. It is a very good thing for the young > naturalist to learn to sit still. A fish-pole is a great j help in learning that necessary lesson. IX \ // One of the most interesting things you can do for V> special study is to collect some frogs' eggs from the \ J, pond and watch them grow g into tadpoles ;!and on into frogs. There are m glass vessels ^ aim on u IE! made particularly for such study (an ordinary glass jar will do). If you can afford a small glass aquarium, get one and with a few green water- plants put in a few minnows, a snail or two, a young turtle, water-beetles, and frogs' eggs, and watch them grow. -^r^^T- *~^££, $ 46 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR X You should get up by half past three o'clock (at 'the earliest streak of dawn) and go out into the new morning with the birds ! You will hardly recognize the world as that in which your humdrum days (there are no such days, really) are spent! All is fresh, all is new, and the bird-chorus ! " Is it possi- ble," you will exclaim, "that this can be the earth?" Early morning and toward sunset are the best times of the day for bird-study. But if there was not a bird, there would be the sunrise and the sunset — the wonder of the waking, the peace of the clos- ing, day. XI I am not going to tell you that you should make 1 i _ _ U' _ / , _i u j 1 am not going to tell you that you should make collection of beetles or butterflies (you should not \\ make a collection of birds or birds' eggs) or ofi ' pressed flowers or of minerals or of arrow-heads or \ of — anything. Because, while such a collection is of great interest and of real value in teaching you names and things, still there are better ways of study- ing living nature. For instance, I had rather have 47 THINGS TO DO THIS SPRING >you tame a hop-toad, feed him, watch him Ufter evening all summer, than make any sort o dead or dried or pressed collection of anything. Liv things are better than those things dead. Better now one live toad under your doorstep than bottle ,up in alcohol all the reptiles of your state. XII Finally you should remember that kindliness and " patience and close watching are the keys to the out- 1 of-doors ; that only sympathy and gentleness and ; quiet are welcome in the fields and woods. What, v then, ought I to say that you should do finally? $ CHAPTER VII THE PALACE IN THE PIG-PEN YOU have taken a handful of my wooded acres," says Nature to me, " and if you have not improved them, you at least have changed them greatly. But they are mine still. Be friendly now, go softly, and you shall have them all — and I shall have them all, too. We will share them together." And we do. Every part of the fourteen acres is mine, yielding some kind of food or fuel or shelter. And every foot, yes, every foot, is Nature's ; as entirely hers as when the thick primeval forest stood here. The apple trees are hers as much as mine, and she has ten different bird families that I know of, living in them this spring. A pair of crows and a pair of red-tailed hawks are nesting in the wood-lot; there are at least three families of chipmunks in as many of my stone-piles ; a fine old tree-toad sleeps on the i porch under the climbing rose; a hornet's nest hangs I in a corner of the eaves ; a small colony of swifts I thunder in the chimney ; swallows twitter in the hay- loft ; a chipmunk and a half-tame gray squirrel feed in the barn ; and — to bring an end to this bare be- ginning— under the roof of the pig-pen dwell a pair of phoebes. V THE PALACE IN THE PIG-PEN 49 To make a bird-house of a pig-pen, to divide it between the pig and the bird — this is as far as Na- [ ture can go, and this is certainly enough to redeem < the whole farm. For she has not sent an outcast OT( / a scavenger to dwell in the pen, but a bird of char-^ j acter, however much he may lack in song or color. '/ Phrebe does not make up well in a picture; neither I does he perform well as a singer; there is little to I him, in fact, but personality — personality of a kind and (may I say?) quantity, sufficient to make th pig-pen a decent and respectable neighborhood. Phosbe is altogether more than his surroundings. Every time I go to feed the pig, he lights upon a post near by and says to me, " It 's what you are ! Not what you do, but how you do it ! " — with a aunch into the air, a whirl, an unerring snap at a cabbage butterfly, and an easy drop to the post again, by way of illustration. " Not where you live, but how you live there; not the feathers you wear, but how you wear them — it is what you are that counts!" There is a difference between being a " character " fand having one. My phoabe "lives over the pig," but I cannot feel familiar with a bird of his air and carriage, who faces the world so squarely, who settles upon a stake as if he owned it, who lives a prince in my pig-pen. Look at him ! How alert, able, free ! Notice the limber drop of his tail, the ready energy it suggests. , 50 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR By that one sign you would know the bird had force. He is afraid of nothing, not even the cold; and he migrates only because he is a fly-catcher, and is thus compelled to. The earliest spring day, however, that you find the flies buzzing in the sun, look for pho3be. He is back, coming alone and long before it is safe. He was one of the first of my birds to return this spring. And it was a fearful spring, this of which I am tell- ing you. How Phoebe managed to exist those miser- able March days is a mystery. He came directly to the pen as he had come the year before, and his presence in that bleakest of Marches gave the weather its only touch of spring. The same force and promptness are manifest in the domestic affairs of the bird. One of the first to arrive this spring, he was the first to build and bring off a brood — or, perhaps, she was. And the size of the brood — of the broods, for there was a second, and a third ! Phoebe appeared without his mate, and for nearly three weeks he hunted in the vicinity of the pen, calling the day long, and, toward the end of the second week, occasionally soaring into the air, flut- tering, and pouring forth a small, ecstatic song that>, seemed fairly forced from him. These aerial bursts meant just one thing: she was coming, was coming soon! Was she coming or was he getting ready to go for her? Here he had been THE PALACE IN THE PIG-PEN 51 ill/ for nearly three weeks, his house-lot chosen, his mind at rest, his heart beating faster with every sunrise. It was as plain as day that he knew — was certain — just how and just when something lovely was going to happen. I wished I knew. I was half in love with i her myself ; and I, too, watched for her. On the evening of April 14th, he was alone as usual. The next morning a pair of phoebes flitted in and out of the windows of the pen. Here she was. Will some one tell me all about it? Had she just come f along and fallen instantly in love with him and his fine pig-pen? It is pretty evident that he nested here last year. Was she, then, his old mate? Did they keep together all through the autumn and winter? If so, then why not together all the way back from Florida to Massachusetts? Here is a pretty story. But who will tell it to me? For several days after she came, the weather con- tinued raw and wet, so that nest-building was greatly delayed. The scar of an old, last year's nest still showed on a stringer, and I wondered if they had decided on this or some other site for the new nest. They had not made up their minds, for when they -did start it was to make three beginnings in as many places. • Then I offered a suggestion. Out of a bit of stick, branching at right angles, I made a little bracket and tacked it up on one of the stringers. It ap- -0 52 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR ^•^ '' pealed to them at once, and from that moment the \ building went steadily on. Saddled upon this bracket, and well mortared to f" the stringer, the nest, when finished, was as safe ^ as a castle. And how perfect a thing it was ! Few \ '[ nests, indeed, combine the solidity, the softness, and - the exquisite inside curve of Phoebe's. In placing the bracket, I had carelessly nailed it c •' under one of the cracks in the loose board roof. The H nest was receiving its first linings when there came \ a long, hard rain that beat through the crack and y soaked the little cradle. This was serious, for a great ;•' , deal of mud had been worked into the thick founda- tion, and here, in the constant shade, the dampness <£ would be long in drying out. The builders saw the mistake, too, and with their ,% great good sense immediately began to remedy it. ; [. They built the bottom up thicker, carried the walls ^ J over on a slant that brought the outermost point \ within the line of the crack, then raised them until v| ;' the cup was as round-rimmed and hollow as the 0 mould of Mrs. Phoebe's breast could make it. The outside of the nest, its base, is broad and \ rough and shapeless enough; but nothing could be :< \ softer and lovelier than the inside, the cradle, and ',, nothing drier, for the slanting walls of the nest shed „ y, ... • as damp and cold as a newly plastered house. It felt v •\ wet to my touch. Yet I noticed that the birds were .> already brooding. Every night and often during the *j^ ,* day I would see one of them in the nest — so deep n« \ in, that only a head or a tail showed over the round / rim. '<•* ) After several days I looked to see the eggs, but JH i?';? to my surprise found the nest empty. It had been 1 . ! robbed, I thought, yet by what creature I could noK / imagine. Then down cuddled one of the birds again , fii — and I understood. Instead of wet and cold, the : J •/ nest to-day was warm to my hand, and dry almost , £;* to the bottom. It had changed color, too, all the / upper part having turned a soft silver-gray. She V" £ (I am sure it was she) had not been brooding her '; teggs at all ; she had been brooding her mother's v thought of them; and for them had been nestling",' here these days and nights, drying and warming \ f their damp cradle with the fire of her life and love. V^ §In due time the eggs came, — five of them, white, Y spotless, and shapely. While the little phoebe hen - fwas hatching them, I gave my attention further to ^ the cock. §0ur intimate friendship revealed a most pleas- : ing nature in phosbe. Perhaps such close and con- \ tinned association would show like qualities in every v /^ bird, even in the kingbird ; but I fear only a woman, J . ^ like Mrs. Olive Thome Miller, could find them in him. v. **A Not much can be said of this flycatcher family, ex ^54 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR ' ** cept that it is useful — a kind of virtue that gets its \ chief reward in heaven. I am acquainted with only of the other nine Eastern members, — crested flycatcher, kingbird, wood pewee, and chebec, — and /*. |£? each of these has some redeeming attribute besides the habit of catching flies. They are all good nest-builders, good parents, and . brave, independent birds ; but aside from phoebe and pewee — the latter in his small way the sweetest voice of the oak woods — the whole family is an odd lot, cross-grained, cross-looking, and about as musical as a family of ducks. A duck seems to know that he cannot sing. A flycatcher knows nothing of his shortcomings. He believes he can sing, and in time he will prove it. If desire and effort count for any- thing, he certainly must prove it in time. How long the family has already been training, no one knows. Everybody knows, however, the success each fly- catcher of them has thus far attained. It would make a good minstrel show, doubtless, if the family would appear together. In chorus, surely, they would r&vTj be far from a tuneful choir. Yet individually, in ^ , the wide universal chorus of the out-of-doors, how . ' much we should miss the kingbird's metallic twitter and the chebec's insistent call ! \ There was little excitement for phoebe during this period of incubation. He hunted in the neighborhood and occasionally called to his mate, contented enough but certainly sometimes appearing tired. ft 56 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR One rainy day he sat in the pig-pen window looking { out at the gray, wet world. He was humped and silent and meditative, his whole attitude speaking / the extreme length of his day, the monotony of the drip, drip, drip from the eaves, and the sitting, the ceaseless sitting, of his brooding wife. He might have hastened the time by catching a few flies for her or by taking her place on the nest ; but I never saw him do it. Things were livelier when the eggs hatched, for it required a good many flies a day to keep the five young ones growing. And how they grew! Like bread sponge in a pan, they began to rise, pushing the mother up so that she was forced to stand over them ; then pushing her out until she could cling only to the side of the nest at night; then pushing her off altogether. By this time they were hanging to the outside themselves, covering the nest from sight almost, until finally they spilled off upon their wings. Out of the nest upon the air ! Out of the pen and into a sweet, wide world of green and blue and of f golden light ! I saw one of the broods take this first flight, and it was thrilling. The nest was placed back from the window and below it, so that in leaving the nest the young would have to drop, then turn and fly up to get out. Below was the pig. As they grew, I began to fear that they might try THE PALACE IN THE PIG-PEN 57 \ their wings before this feat could be accomplished, and so fall to the pig below. But Nature, in this case, *' was careful of her pearls. Day after day they clung / /•: 'to the nest, even after they might have flown ; and \ when they did go, it was with a sure and long flight v -; that carried them out and away to the tops of the * neighboring trees. They left the nest one at a time and were met in the air by their mother, who, darting to them, calling iloudly, and, whirling about them, helped them as high and as far away as they could go. I wish the simple record of these family affairs could be closed without one tragic entry. But that can rarely be of any family. Seven days after thel first brood were awing, I found the new eggs in the|; nest. Soon after that the male bird disappeared. L The second brood had now been out a week, and in | all that time no sight or sound was had of the father. What happened? Was he killed? Caught by a cat or a hawk ? It is possible ; and this is an easy and kindly way to think of him. It is not impossible that he may have remained as leader and protector to the , first brood ; or (perish the thought !) might he havef grown weary at sight of the second lot of five| eggs, of the long days and the neglect that theyj meant for him, and out of jealousy and fickleness! wickedly deserted? I hope it was death, a stainless, even ignominious* ; death by one of my neighbor's many cats. • 58 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR 1 / Death or desertion, it involved a second tragedy. Five such young ones at this time were too many for the mother. She fought nobly ; no mother could have done more. All five were brought within a few days of flight; then, one day, I saw a little wing hanging listlessly over the side of the nest. I went closer. One had died. It had starved to death. There were none of the parasites in the nest that often kill whole broods. It was a plain case of sacrifice, — by the mother, perhaps ; by the other young, maybe — one for the other four. But she did well. Nine such young birds to her credit since April. Who shall measure her actual use to the world ? How does she compare in value with the pig? Weeks later I saw several of her brood along the meadow fence hawking for flies. They were not far from my cabbage-patch. I hope a pair of them will return to me next spring and that they will come early. Any bird that deigns to dwell under roof of mine commands my friendship. But no other bird takes Phoebe's place in my affections ; there is so much in him to like, and he speaks for so much of the friendship of nature. " Humble and inoffensive bird " he has been called by one of our leading ornithologies — because he comes to my pig-pen ! Inoffensive ! this bird with the cabbage butterfly in his beak ! The faint and damning praise ! And humble ? There is not * «' "TV K THE PALACE IN THE PIG-PEN 59 a humble feather on his body. Humble to those who see the pen and not the bird. But to me — why, the bird has made a palace of my pig-pen ! The very pig seems less a pig because of this ex- quisite association ; and the lowly work of feeding the creature has been turned for me by Phoebe into a poetic course in bird study. CHAPTER VIII IS IT A LIFE OF FEAR? THERE was a swish of wings, a flash of gray, a cry of pain ; a squawking, cowering, scat- tering flock of hens ; a weakly fluttering pul- let; and yonder, swinging upward into the sky, a marsh hawk, buoyant and gleaming silvery in the sun. Over the trees he beat, circled once, and disap- peared. The hens were still flapping for safety in a dozen directions, but the gray harrier had gone. A bolt of lightning could hardly have dropped so unan- nounced, could hardly have vanished so completely, could scarcely have killed so quickly. I ran to the pullet, but found her dead. The harrier's stroke, de- livered with fearful velocity, had laid head and neck open as with a keen knife. Yet a little slower and he would have missed, for the pullet warded off the other claw with her wing. The gripping talons slipped off the long quills, and the hawk swept on without his quarry. He dared not come back for it at my feet ; so, with a single turn above the woods he was gone. The scurrying hens stopped to look about them. • i • ii IS IT A LIFE OF FEAR? 61 There was nothing in the sky to see. They stood still and silent a moment. The rooster chucked. Then one by one they turned back into the open pasture. A huddled group under the hen-yard fence broke up and came out with the others. Death had flashed among them, but had missed them. Fear had ' come, but it had gone. Within two minutes from the fall of the stroke, every hen in the flock was in- tent at her scratching, or as intently chasing the gray grasshoppers over the pasture. Yet, as the flock scratched, the high-stepping cock would frequently cast up his eye toward the tree- tops ; would sound his alarum at the flight of a robin ; and if a crow came over, he would shout and dodge and start to run. But instantly the shadow would pass, and instantly Chanticleer — " He looketh as it were a grym leoun, And on hise toos he rometh up and doun; Thus roial as a prince is in an halle." He wasn't afraid. Cautious, alert, watchful he was, but not afraid. No shadow of dread lay dark and ominous across the sunshine of his pasture. Shadows came — like a flash ; and like a flash they vanished away. We cannot go far into the fields without sighting the hawk and the snake, whose other names are Death. In one form or another Death moves every- where, down every wood-path and pasture-lane, 62 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR , / through the black waters of the mill-pond, out under' / the open of the April sky, night and day, and every A day, the four seasons through. I have seen the still surface of a pond break sud- denly with a swirl, and flash a hundred flecks of silver into the light, as the minnows leap from the jaws of the terrible pike. Then a loud rattle, a streak of blue, a splash at the centre of the swirl, and I see the pike twisting and bending in the beak of the terrible kingfisher. The killer is killed. But at the mouth of the nest-hole in the steep sand-bank, sway- ing from a root in the edge of the turf above, hangs . the terrible black snake, the third killer ; and the belted kingfisher, dropping the pike, darts off with a startled cry. I have been afield at times when one tragedy has followed another in such rapid and continuous suc- cession as to put a whole shining, singing, blossom- ' ing springtime under a pall. Everything has seemed | to cower, skulk, and hide, to run as if pursued. There was no peace, no stirring of small life, not even in the quiet of the deep pines ; for here a hawk would be nesting, or a snake would be sleeping, or X IS IT A LIFE OF FEAR? 63 I would hear the passing of a fox, see perhaps his£ :keen, hungry face an instant as he halted, windingv- me. There is struggle, and pain, and death in the 'woods, and there is fear also, but the fear does not last long; it does not haunt and follow and terrify; it has no being, no shape, no lair. The shadow of the swiftest scudding cloud is not so fleeting as this Fear-shadow in the woods. The lowest of the animals^ 1 ^ seem capable of feeling fear; yet the very highest % of them seem incapable of dreading it. For them "-,-.. Fear is not of the imagination, but of the sight, and of the passing moment. 1 " The present only toucheth thee ! " It does more, it throngs him — our little fellow mortal of the stubble-field. Into the present is lived "^5 the whole of his life — he remembers none of it ; he anticipates none of it. And the whole of this life is action ; and the whole of this action is joy. The mo- ments of fear in an animal's life are few and vanish- ing. Action and joy are constant, the joint laws of '• all animal life, of all nature — of the shining stars that sing together, of the little mice that squeak to- J .gether, of the bitter northeast storms that roar across' the wintry fields. I have had more than one hunter grip me excitedly, •and with almost a command bid me hear the music of the baying pack. There are hollow halls in the 64 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR I swamps that lie to the east and north and west of ( / me, that catch up the cry of the foxhounds, thaty blend it, mellow it, round it, and roll it, rising and^ falling over the meadows in great globes of sound, ; as pure and sweet as the pearly notes of the veery j rolling round their silver basin in the summer dusk. : What music it is when the pack breaks into the i open on the warm trail ! A chorus then of tongues j singing the ecstasy of pursuit ! My blood leaps ; ther natural primitive wild thing of muscle and nerve andV instinct within me slips its leash, and on past with the pack I drive, the scent of the trail single and sweet in my nostrils, a very fire in my blood, motion, motion, motion in my bounding muscles, and in my( being a mighty music, spheric and immortal ! " The fair music that all creatures made To their great Lord, whose love their motions swayed . . ." But what about the fox, loping wearily on ahead ? What part has he in the chorus? No part, perhaps, unless we grimly call him its conductor. But the point is the chorus — that it never ceases, the hounds at this moment, not the fox, in the leading role. "But the chorus ceases for me," you say. "My heart is with the poor fox." So is mine, and mine isi with the dogs too. No, don't say " Poor little fox ! " For many a night I have bayed with the pack, amK ; as often — of tener, I think — I have loped and dodged and doubled with the fox, pitting limb against limb, i lung against lung, wit against wit, and always escap- r IS IT A LIFE OF FEAR? 65 , ing. More than once, in the warm moonlight, I, the j$ fox, have led them on and on, spurring their lagging j muscles with a sight of my brush, on and on, through the moonlit night, through the day, on into the moon v again, and on until — only the stir of -my own foot- steps has followed me. Then, doubling once more, creeping back a little upon my track, I have looked | at my pursuers, silent and stiff upon the trail, and, ere the echo of their cry has died away, I have .caught up the chorus and carried it single-throated; through the wheeling, singing spheres. There is more of fact than of fancy to this. That a fox ever purposely led a dog to run to death would be hard to prove ; but that the dogs run themselves to death in a single extended chase after a single fox is a common occurrence here in the woods about the farm. Occasionally the fox may be overtaken by the hounds ; seldom, however, except in the case of a very young one or of one unacquainted with the y of the land, a stranger that may have been driven into the rough country here. I have been both fox and hound ; I have run the race too often not to know that both enjoy it at times, fox as much as hound. Some weeks ago the dogs carried a young fox around and around the farm, hunting him here, there, everywhere, as if in a game of hide-and-seek. An old fox would have led the dogs on a long coursing run across the range. But the young fox, after the dogs were caught and \ 1 66 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR taken off the trail, soon sauntered up through the mowing-field behind the barn, came out upon the bare knoll near the house, and sat there in the moon- light yapping down at Rex and Dewey, the house- dogs in the two farms below. Rex is a Scotch collie, Dewey a dreadful mix of dog-dregs. He had been tail-ender in the pack for a while during the after- noon. Both dogs an- swered back at the young fox. But he could not egg them on. Rex was too fat, Dewey had had enough ; not so the youngfox. - It had been fun. He wanted more. ;> "Come on, Dewey!" he cried. " Come on, Rex, play tag again ! You 're still 'it.'" I was at work with my chickens one spring day when the fox broke from cover in the tall woods, struck the old wagon-road along the ridge, and came at a gallop down behind the hen-coops, with five hounds not a minute behind. They passed with a crash and were gone — up over the ridge and down IS IT A LIFE OF FEAR? 67 1 into the east swamp. Soon I noticed that the pack had broken, deploying in every direction, beating the ground over and over. Reynard had given them the slip — on the ridge-side, evidently, for there were no cries from below in the swamp. Leaving my work at noon, I went down to restake my cow in the meadow. I had just drawn her chain- pin when down the road through the orchard behind me came the fox, hopping high up and down, his neck stretched, his eye peeled for poultry. Spying white hen of my neighbor's, he made for her, clear to the barnyard wall. Then, hopping higher for a better view, he sighted another hen in the front yard, skipped in gayly through the fence, seized her, and loped across the road and away up the birch-grown hills beyond. The dogs had been at his very heels ten minutes before. He had fooled them. And no doubt he had done it again and again. They were even now yelp- ing at the end of the baffling trail behind the ridge. Let them yelp. It is a kind and convenient habit of dogs, this yelping, one can tell so exactly where they are. Meantime one can take a turn for one's self at the chase, get a bite of chicken, a drink of water, a wink or two of rest, and when the yelping gets warm again, one is quite ready to pick up one's heels and lead the pack another merry dance. The fox is quite a jolly fellow. This is the way the races out of doors are all run 68 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR -? • £'> / off. Now and then they may end tragically. A fox eannot reckon on the hunter with a gun. He is rac- ing against the pack of hounds. But, mortal finish or no, the spirit of the chase is neither rage nor ter- ror, but the excitement of a matched game, the' ecstasy of pursuit for the hound, the passion of es- cape for the fox, without fury or fear — except for the instant at the start and at the finish — when it is a finish. This is the spirit of the chase — of the race, more truly ; for it is always a race, where the stake is not life and death, but rather the joy of winning. The hound cares as little for his own life as for the life of the fox he is hunting. It is the race, instead, that he loves ; it is the moments of crowded, complete, su- preme existence for him — " glory " we call it when men run it off together. Death, and the fear of death, the animals can neither understand nor feel. Only enemies exist in the world out of doors, only hounds, foxes, hawks — they, and their scents, their sounds and shadows ; and not fear, but readiness only. The level of wild life, of the soul of all nature, is a great serenity. It is seldom lowered, but often raised to a higher level, intenser, faster, more exultant. The serrate pines on my horizon are not the pickets of a great pen. My fields and swamps and ponds are not one wide battle-field, as if the only work of my wild neighbors were bloody war, and the whole of their existence a reign of terror. This IS IT A LIFE OF FEAR? 69 , is a universe of law and order and marvelous bal- >. ance ; conditions these of life, of normal, peaceful, / joyous life. Life and not death is the law ; joy and f not fear is the spirit, is the frame of all that breathes, > of very matter itself. "And ever at the loom of Birth The Mighty Mother weaves and sings; She weaves — fresh robes for mangled earth; She sings — fresh hopes for desperate things." But suppose the fox were a defenseless rabbit, > what of fear and terror then ? Ask any one who has shot in the rabbity fields of ' southern New Jersey. The rabbit seldom runs in ; blind terror. He is soft-eyed, and timid, and as gentle » as a pigeon, but he is not defenseless. A nobler set t of legs was never bestowed by nature than the little cottontail's. They are as wings compared with the bent, bow legs that bear up the ordinary rabbit- hound. With winged legs, protecting color, a clear map of the country in his head, — its stumps, rail- piles, cat-brier tangles, and narrow rabbit-roads, — with all this as a handicap, Bunny may well run his usual cool and winning race. The balance is just as even, the chances quite as good, and the contest every bit as interesting to him as to Reynard. I have seen a rabbit squat close in his form and let a hound pass yelping within a few feet of him, but waiting on his toes as ready as a hair-trigger should he be discovered. N- r < ' , - 70 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR v f 'f I have seen him leap for his life as the dog sighted \ him, and, bounding like a ball across the stubble, disappear in the woods, the hound within two jumps of his flashing tail. I have waited at the end of the. wood-road for the runners to come back, down theV home-stretch, for the finish. On they go through the woods, for a quarter, or perhaps a half a mile, the baying of the hound faint and intermittent in the distance, then quite lost. No, there it is again, louder now. They have turned the course. I wait. The quiet life of the woods is undisturbed ; for the voice of the hound is only an echo, not unlike the far-off tolling of a slow-swinging bell. The leaves stir as a wood mouse scurries from his stump ; an acorn rattles down ; then in the winding wood- ; -JU^ road I hear the pit-pat, pit-pat, of soft furry feet, ) ; and there at the bend is the rabbit. He stops, rises high up on his haunches, and listens. He drops again , upon all fours, scratches himself behind the ear,cjjfc^ reaches over the cart-rut for a nip of sassafras, hops a little nearer, and throws his big ears forward in ' quick alarm, for he sees me, and, as if something had exploded under him, he kicks into the air and is off, — leaving a pretty tangle for the dog to un- ravel, later on, by this mighty jump to the side. My children and a woodchopper were witnesses re- cently of an exciting, and, for this section of Mas- \ sachusetts, a novel race, which, but for them, must . IS IT A LIFE OF FEAR? 71 1 certainly have ended fatally. The boys through the wood-lot where the man was chopping,N when down the hillside toward them rushed a littler ^ /chipmunk, his teeth a-chatter with terror ; for close behind him, with the easy, wavy motion of a shadow, glided a dark-brown ani- mal, which the man took on the instant for a mink, but which must have been a large weasel or a pine marten. When% almost at the feet of the boys, and about to be seized by the marten, the squeaking chipmunk ran up a tree. Up glided the marten, up for twenty, feet, when the chipmunk jumped. It', was a fearfully close call. The marten did not dare to jump, but turned and started down, when the man intercepted him with a stick. A round and around the tree he dodged, growling and snarling fjjf and avoid- ing the stick, not a bit abashed, ^r stubbornly holding his own, until forced to seek refuge among the branches. Meanwhile, the terrified chipmunk had recovered his nerve and sat quietly watching the sudden turn of affairs from a near-by stump. I frequently climb into the cupola of the barn 72 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR during the winter, and bring down a dazed junco j that would beat his life out up there against the / i window-panes. He will lie on his back in my open \J hand, either feigning death or really powerless with fear. His eyes will close, his whole tiny body throb convulsively with his throbbing heart. Taking him to the door, I will turn him over and give him a gentle toss. Instantly his wings flash ; they take him zigzag for a yard or two, then bear him swiftly round r the corner of the house and drop him in the midst Q of his fellows, where they are feeding upon the lawn, f He will shape himself up a little and fall to picking I with the others. From a state of collapse the laws of his being! bring the bird into normal behavior as quickly and | completely as the collapsed rubber ball is rounded " . i by the laws of its being. The memory of the fright ; seems to be an impression exactly like the dent in 4 | the rubber ball — as if it had never been. • Memories, of course, the animals surely have; but ( \ little or no power to use them. The dog will some- .' \-times seem to cherish a grudge ; so will the elephant, f. / Some one injures or wrongs him, and the huge \ , beast harbors the memory, broods it, and awaits his j opportunity for revenge. Yet the records of these f- cases usually show that the creature had been living \ iwith the object of his hatred — his keeper, perhaps j — and that the memory goes no farther back than = the present moment, than the sight of the hated one. IS IT A LIFE OF FEAR? 73 i At my railroad station I frequently see a yoke of great sleepy, bald-faced oxen, that look as much alike as two blackbirds. Their driver knows them ! apart ; but as they stand there, bound to one an- \ other by the heavy bar across their foreheads, it; would puzzle anybody else to tell Buck from Berry. 1 But not if he approach them wearing an overcoat At sight of me in an overcoat the off ox will snort and back and thrash about in terror, twisting the head of his yoke-fellow, nearly breaking his neck and trampling him miserably. But the nigh ox is used to it. He chews and blinks away placidly, keeps his feet the best he can, and does n't try to under- ,tand at all why greatcoats should so frighten his [cud-chewing brother. I will drop off my coat and go up immediately to smooth the muzzles of both oxen, now blinking sleepily while the lumber is being loaded on. Years ago, the driver told me, the off ox was badly frightened by a big woolly coat, the sight or smell of which probably suggested to the creature some natural enemy, a panther, perhaps, or a bear The memory remained, but beyond recall except i the presence of its first cause, the greatcoat. To us there are such things as terror and death but not to the lower animals except momentarily We are clutched by terror even as the junco wa clutched in my goblin hand. When the mighty fi gers open, we zigzag, dazed, from the danger ; hut . 74 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR fall to planning before the tremors of the fright have ceased. Upon the crumbled, smoking heap of San Francisco a second splendid city has arisen and shall ever rise. Terror can kill the living, but it can-f not hinder them from forgetting, or prevent them from hoping, or, for more than an instant, stop them from doing. Such is the law of life — the law ] of heaven, of my pastures, of the little junco, of my- self. Life, Law, and Matter are all of one piece. The horse in my stable, the robin, the toad, the/ beetle, the vine in my garden, the garden itself, arid I together with them all, come out of the same divine dust; we all breathe the same divine breath ; we have our beings under the same divine laws ; only they do not know that the law, the breath, and the dust are divine. If, with all that I know of fear, I can so readily forget it, and can so constantly feel , the hope and the joy of life within me, how soon for \ them, my lowly fellow mortals, must vanish all sight of fear, all memory of pain ! And how abiding with them, how compelling, the necessity to live ! And in their unquestioning obedience, what joy ! The face of the fields is as changeful as the face of a child. Every passing wind, every shifting cloud, every calling bird, every baying hound, every shape, \ shadow, fragrance, sound, and tremor, are reflected j there. But if time and experience and pain come, they ' pass utterly away ; for the face of the fields does not grow old or wise or seamed with pain. It is always the IS IT A LIFE OF FEAR? 75 1 face of a child, — asleep in winter, awake in spring and summer, — a face of life and health always, as much \ in the falling leaf as in the opening bud, as much under the covers of the snow as in the greensward | of the spring, as much in the wild, fierce joy of fox and hound as they course the turning, tangling paths of the woodlands in their fateful race as in the song of brook and bird on a joyous April morning. CHAPTER IX THE BUZZARD OF THE BEAR SWAMP NO, I do not believe that any one of you evei >, went into a swamp to find a turkey buzzard's v,. nest. Still, if you had been born on the >. edge of a great swamp, as I was, and if the great- * winged buzzards had been soaring, soaring up in 5' I your sky, as all through my boyhood they were v y; soaring up in mine, then why should you not have -r gone some time into the swamp to see where they ^ make their nests — these strange cloud-winged crea- t» tures ? \ Boys are boys, and girls are girls, the world over; 5* and I am pretty sure that little Jack Homer and ^ myself were not the only two boys in all the world ^ to do great and wonderful deeds. Any boy with a lUove for birds and a longing for the deep woods, j* living close to the edge of the Bear Swamp, would have searched out that buzzard's nest. Although I was born within the shadows of the Bear Swamp, close enough to smell the magnolias along its margin, and lived my first ten years only a little farther off, yet it was not until after twice years of absence that I stood again within sight ; ' I I THE BUZZARD OF THE BEAR SWAMP 77 of it, ready for the first time to cross its dark bor- ders and find the buzzard's nest. Now here at last I found myself, looking down over the largest, least trod, deepest-tangled swamp in southern New Jersey — wide, gloomy, silent, and to me, — for I still thought of it as I used to when a child, — to me, a mysterious realm of black streams, hollow trees, animal trails, and haunting shapes, presided over by this great bird, the turkey buzzard. For he was never mere bird to me, but some kind of spirit. He stood to me for what was far off, mys- terious, secret, and unapproachable in the deep, dark swamp ; and, in the sky, so wide were his wings, so majestic the sweep of his flight, he had always stirred me, caused me to hold my breath and wish myself to fly. No other bird did I so much miss from my New England skies when I came here to live. Only the other day, standing in the heart of Boston, I glanced up and saw, sailing at a far height against the bil- lowy clouds, an aeroplane ; and what should I think of but the flight of the vulture, so like the steady wings of the great bird seemed the steady wings of this great monoplane far off against the sky. And so you begin to understand why I had come back after so many years to the swamp, and why I wanted to see the nest of this strange bird that had been flying, flying forever in my imagination and in my sky. But my good uncle, whom I was visit- :. 78 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR •' i , ing, when I mentioned my quest, merely exclaimed,1 "What in thunderation ! " You will find a good many uncles and other folk ^ . who won't understand a good many things that you want to do. Never mind. If you want to see a buz-^ zard's nest, let all your relations exclaim while you^ go quietly off alone and see it. I wanted to find a buzzard's nest — the nest o£. the Bear Swamp buzzard ; and here at last I stood; x and yonder on the clouds, a mere mote in the dis- tance, floated the bird. It was coming toward me;" over the wide reach of the swamp. Silent, inscrutable, and alien lay the swamp, and- untouched by human hands. Over it spread a quiet and reserve as real as twilight. Like a mask it was worn, and was slipped on, I know, at my approach. I could feel the silent spirit of the place drawing back away from me. But I should have at least' a guide to lead me through the shadow land, for out! of the lower living green towered a line of limb-- less stubs, like a line of telegraph-poles, their bleached bones gleaming white, or showing dark and gaunt' against the horizon, and marking for me a path far out across the swamp. Besides, here came the buzzard; winding slowly down the clouds. Soon its spiral changed to a long pendulum-swing, till just above the skeleton trees the great bird wheeled and, brac- ing itself with its flapping wings, dropped heavily upon one of the headless tree-trunks. THE BUZZARD OF THE BEAR SWAMP 79 It had come leisurely, yet I could see that it had come with a direct- ness and purpose that was unmistak- ,ble and also meaningful. It had Discovered me in the distance, and, s while still invisible to niy eyes, fhad started down to perch (Upon that giant stub in order to watch me. It was suspicious, and had come to watch me, because somewhere beneath its jrch, I felt sure, lay a hollow the creature's den, hold- ing its two eggs or its young. / A buzzard has something like a soul. Marking the direction p*>of the stub, and its distance, I waded into the deep un- the buzzard perched against the sky for my guide, and, for my quest, the stump or hollow log that held the creature's nest. The rank ferns and y ropy vines swallowed \J me up, and shut out at &, 80 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR times even the sight of the sky and the buzzard. It was not until half an hour's struggle that, climbing a pine-crested swell in the low bottom, I sighted the [ bird again. It had not moved. I was now in the real swamp, the old uncut forest. It was a land of tree giants : huge tulip poplar and swamp white oak, so old that they had become soli- tary, their comrades having fallen one by one ; while , some of them, unable to loose their grip upon the soil, rhich had widened and tightened through centuries, were still standing, though long since dead. It was upon one of these that the buzzard sat humped. Directly in my path stood an ancient swamp white oak, the greatest tree, I think, that I have ever seen. It was not the highest, nor the largest round, per- haps, but in years and looks the greatest. Hoary, hollow, and broken-limbed, his huge bole seemed encircled with the centuries. " For it had bene an aimcieiit tree, Sacred with many a mysteree." Above him to twice his height loomed a tulip pop- liar, clean-boled for thirty feet and in the top all | green and gold with blossoms. It was a resplendent ^ thing beside the oak, yet how unmistakably the | ij gnarled old monarch wore the crown ! His girth more [ if than balanced the poplar's greater height ; and, as \ for blossoms, he had his tiny-flowered catkins; but j nature knows the beauty of strength and inward < majesty, and has pinned no boutonniere upon the oak. f \ THE BUZZARD OF THE BEAR SWAMP 81 My buzzard now was hardly more than half a mile ,•' ', , away, and plainly seen through the rifts in the lofty f I t. timbered roof above me. As I was nearing the top( / of a large fallen pine that lay in my course, I was^ startled by the burrh! burrh! burrh! of three par-' .' tridges taking wing just beyond, near the foot of / 1 the tree. Their exploding flight seemed all the more j like a real explosion when three little clouds of dust-| Asmoke rose out of the low, wet bottom of the swampp Jancl drifted up against the green. Then I saw an interesting sight. The pine, in its^- fall, had snatched with its wide-reaching, multitudi-1 nous roots at the shallow bottom and torn out a giant fistful of earth, leaving a hole about two feet deep and jmore than a dozen feet wide. The sand thus lifted Jinto the air had gradually washed down into a mound \ on each side of the butt, where it lay high and dry ) above the level of the wet swamp. This the swamp j ij birds had turned into a great dust-bath. It was in ) constant use, evidently. Not a spear of grass had sprouted in it, and all over it were pits and craters lof various sizes, showing that not only the partridges but also the quail and such small things as the iwarblers bathed here, — though I can't recall ever ^having seen a warbler bathe in the dust. A dry bath 'in the swamp was something of a luxury, evidently. I wonder if the buzzards used it? I went forward cautiously now, and expectantly, I \ for I was close enough to see the white beak and\ 82 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR I,' red wattled neck of my buzzard guide. The buzzard I saw me, too, and began to twist its head and to , twitch its wing-tips nervously. Then the long, black f wings began to open, as you would open a two-foot rule, and, with a heavy lurch that left the dead stub rocking, the bird dropped and was soon soaring high up in the blue. This was the locality of the nest; now where should I find it? Evidently I was to have no further help from the old bird. The underbrush was so thick that I could hardly see farther than my nose. A half-rotten tree-trunk lay near, the top end resting rt across the backs of several saplings that it had borne down in its fall. I crept up on this for a look around, and almost tumbled off at finding myself staring directly into the dark, cavernous hollow of an im- mense log lying on a slight rise of ground a few feet ahead of me. It was a yawning hole, which at a glance I knew belonged to the buzzard. The log, a mere shell of a mighty white oak, had been girdled and felled with an axe, by coon-hunters probably, and still lay with one side resting upon the rim of the stump. As I stood looking, something white stirred vaguely in the hole and disappeared. Leaping from my perch, I scrambled forward to> the month of the hollow log and was greeted with hisses from far back in the dark. Then came a thump-' ing of bare feet, more hisses, and a sound of snap- ping beaks. I had found my buzzard's nest ! ' i 84 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR Hardly that, either, for there was not a feather, ' r stick, or chip as evidence of a nest. The eggs had , been laid upon the sloping cavern floor, and in the / course of their incubation must have rolled clear down to the opposite end, where the opening was so narrow that the buzzard could not have brooded them until she had rolled them back. The wonder is that they had ever hatched. But they had, and what they hatched was another . wonder. Nature never intended a young buzzard for any eye but his mother's, and she hates the sight v , of him. Elsewhere I have told of a buzzard that • devoured her eggs at the approach of an enemy, so delicately balanced are her unnamable appetites and her maternal affections ! The two strange nestlings in the log must have been three weeks old, I should say, the larger weigh- ing about four pounds. They were covered, as young ) owls are, with deep snow-white down, out of which • protruded their black scaly, snaky legs. They stood braced on these long black legs, their receding heads drawn back, shoulders thrust forward, and bodies humped between the featherless wings like challenging tom-cats. In order to examine them, I crawled into the den — not a difficult act, for the opening measured four °i) feet and a half across at the mouth. The air was < : musty inside, yet surprisingly free from odor. The 2 floor was absolutely clean, but on the top and sides . ^ •-.. ............ ... THE BUZZARD OF THE BEAR SWAMP 85. ,, ' of the cavity was a thick coating of live mosquitoes, £' most of them gorged, hanging like a red-beaded • tapestry over the walls. I had taken pains that the flying buzzard should^ not see me enter, for I hoped she would descend to look after her young. But she would take no chances V ; with herself. I sat near the mouth of the hollow, J^i where I could catch the fresh breeze that pulled ; across the end, and where I had a view of a far-away / bit of sky. Suddenly, across this field of blue, there ^ \ > swept a meteor of black — the buzzard ! and evidently ; in that instant of passage, at a distance certainly of half a mile, she spied me in the log. I waited more than an hour longer, and when I ; tumbled out with a dozen kinds of cramps, the un- ; worried mother was soaring serenely far up in the ;' clear, cool sky. - CHAPTER X A CHAPTER OF THINGS TO HEAR THIS SPRING I HE frogs ! You can have no spring until you ) •-; hear the frogs. The first shrill notes, heard -v before the ice is fairly out of the marshes, -•- . will be the waking call of the hylas, the tiny tree- frogs that later on in the summer you will find in thej ' woods. Then, as the spring advances and this sil-«v j very sleigh-bell jingle tinkles faster, other voices , I will join in — the soft croak of the spotted leopard /£*> frogs, the still softer melancholy quaver of the com~l.jT -:' mon toad, and away down at the end of the scale the jS» deep, solemn bass of the great bullfrog saying, " Go C_^ 'J round ! Better go round ! " Hfe II "* You must hear, besides the first spring notes of the *C^> >j bluebird and the robin, four bird songs this spring. T«?^ " First (1) the song of the wood thrush or the hermit,/ ^ ,S thrush, whichever one lives in your neighborhood. , \ •> No words can describe the purity, the peacefulness, '; /the spiritual quality of the wood thrush's simple J{ > " Come to me." It is the voice of the ^ tender twilight, the voice of the tran- N -{ d THINGS TO HEAR THIS SPRING 87 r squil forest, speaking to you. After the thrush the brown thrasher, our finest, most gifted songster, N; : • as great a singer, I think (and I have often heard,,- } * them both), as the Southern mockingbird. Then (3) the operatic catbird. She sits lower down among the bushes than the brown thrasher, as if she knew (, that, compared with him, she must take a back seat; but for variety of notes and length of song, she has few rivals. I say she^ when really I ought to say he, for it is the males of most birds that sing, but the cat- bird seems so long and slender, so dainty and femi nine, that I think of this singer as of some exquisite operatic singer in a woman's role. Then (4) the bobolink ; for his song is just like Bryant's bubbling poem, only better ! Go to the meadows in. June an 88 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR listen as he comes lilting and singing over your head. Ill There are some birds that cannot sing: the belted kingfisher, for instance ; he can only rattle. You must hear him rattle. You can do as well yourself if you will shake a " pair of bones " or heave an anchor and let the chain run fast through the hawse-hole. You then must hear the downy woodpecker doing his rattling rat-ta-tat-tat-tat-tat (across the page and back again), as fast as rat-ta-tat can tat. How he makes the old dead limb or fence-post rattle as he drums upon it with his chisel bill. He can be heard half a mile around. Then high-hole, the flicker (or golden-winged woodpecker), you must hear him yell, Up-up-up-up-up up-np-up-up-up-up, — a ringing, rolling, rapid kind of yodel that echoes over the spring fields. IV You must hear the nighthawk and the whip-poor- iwill. Both birds are to be heard at twilight, and the whip-poor-will far into the night. At the very break of dawn is also a good time to listen to them. At dusk you will see (I have seen him from the city roofs in Boston) a bird about the size of a pigeon mounting up into the sky by short flights, crying Ipeent, until far over your head the creature will sud- denly turn and on half-closed wings dive headlong T, ^ .""-•-'•'- THINGS TO HEAR THIS SPRING 89 f .toward the earth, when, just before hitting the ground, upward he swoops, at the same instant iinaking a weird booming sound, a kind of hollow groan with his wings, as the wind rushes through their large feathers. This diver through the dim ; ocean of air is the nighthawk. Let one of the I birds dive close to your head on a lonely dusky road, and your hair will try to jump out from under jour hat. The whip-poor-will's cry you all know. When you, . hear one this spring, go out into the twilight and watch for him. See him spring into the air, like a strange shadow, for flies ; count his to hip-poor-wills (he may call it more than a hundred times in as many seconds !). But hear a circle of the birds, if possible, . "calling through the darkness of a wood all around you ! V There is one strange bird song that is half song and half dance that perhaps most of you may never be able , to hear and see ; but as it is worth going miles to hear, -and nights of watching to witness, I am going to set, /it here as one of your outdoor tasks or feats: you! hiust hear the mating song of the woodcock. I have \ described the song and the dance in "Roof and,' /Meadow," in the chapter called " One Flew East! ;and One Flew West." Mr. Bradford Torrey has an! account of it in his "Clerk of the Woods," in the \ i chapter named "Woodcock Vespers." To hear the-: \ 90 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR song is a rare experience for the habitual watcher in the woods, but one that you might have the first April evening that you are abroad. Go down to your nearest meadow — a meadow near a swampy piece of woods is best — and here, along the bank of the meadow stream, wait in the chilly twilight for the speank, speank, or the peent, peent, from the grass — the signal that the song is about to begin. VI One of the dreadful — positively dreadful — sounds of the late spring that I hear day in and day out is the gobbling, strangling, ghastly cries of young crows feeding. You will surely think some- thing is being murdered. The crying of a hungry baby is musical in comparison. But it is a good sound to hear, for it reminds one of the babes in the woods — that a new generation of birds is being brought through from babyhood to gladden the world. It is a tender sound ! The year is still young. VII You should hear the hum of the honey-bees on a fresh May day in an apple tree that is just coming into perfect bloom. The enchanting loveliness of the pink and white world of blossoms is enough to make one forget to listen to the hum-hum-hum- THINGS TO HEAR THIS SPRING 91 humming-ing-ing-ing-ing of the excited bees. But hear their myriad wings, fanning the perfume into the air and filling the sunshine with the music of work. The whir, the hum of labor — of a busy fac-, tory, of a great steamship dock — is always music to those who know the blessedness of work ; but it takes that knowledge, and a good deal of imagination besides, to hear the music in it. Not so with the bees. The season, the day, the colors, and perfumes — they are the song ; the wings are only the million-stringed aeolian upon which the song is played. VIII You should hear the grass grow. What ! I re- peat, you should hear the grass grow. I have a friend, a sound and sensible man, but a lover of the out-of- doors, who says he can hear it grow. But perhaps it is the soft stir of the working earthworms that he hears. Try it. Go out alone one of these April nights ; select a green pasture with a slope to the south, at least a mile from any house, or railroad ; lay your ear flat upon the grass, listen without a move for ten minutes. You hear something — or do you feel it ? Is it the reaching up of the grass ? is it the stir of the earthworms? is it the pulse of the throb- bing universe? or is it your own throbbing pulse? It is all of these, I think ; call it the heart of the grass beating in every tiny living blade, if you wish to. You should listen to hear the grass grow. ML 92 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR IX The fires have gone out on the open hearth. , Listen early in the morning and toward evening for < f» the rumbling, the small, muffled thunder, of the < '> chimney swallows, as they come down from the open J ^ v/skyon their wonderful wings. Don't be frightened. ' P, It is n't Santa Glaus this time of year ; nor is it the | >' / Old Nick ! The smothered thunder is caused by the fe • rapid beating of the swallows' wings on the air in | the narrow chimney-flue, as the birds settle down\ ; from the top of the chimney and hover over their «<') • nests. Stick your head into the fireplace and look \ 5 up ! Don't smoke the precious lodgers out, no matter ( :, how much racket they make. * Hurry out while the last drops of your first May I thunder-shower are still falling and listen to the f / robins singing from the tops of the trees. Their v^ 1 liquid songs are as fresh as the shower, as if the rain- \ $ ; drops in falling were running down from the trees ' 1 )^>in song — as indeed they are in the overflowing ,: j» trout-brook. Go out and listen, and write a better j • poem than this one that I wrote the other afternoon « !-when listening to the birds in our first spring \ 1 )v shower : — The warm rain drops aslant the sun / And in the rain the robins sing; Across the creek in twos and troops, The hawking swifts and swallows wing. 1 5> I THINGS TO HEAR THIS SPRING The air is sweet with apple bloom, And sweet the laid dust down the lane, The meadow's marge of calamus, And aweet the robins in the rain. O greening time of bloom and song! O fragrant days of tender pain! The wet, the warm, the sweet young days With robins singing in the rain. 93 • .. • CHAPTER XI TURTLE EGGS FOR AGASSIZ I TOOK down, recently, from the shelves of a great public library, the four volumes of Ag- assiz's " Contributions to the Natural History of the United States." I doubt if anybody but the charwoman, with her duster, had touched those vol- umes for twenty-five years. They are a monumental wwork, the fruit of vast and heroic labors, with colored .plates on stone, showing the turtles of the United States, and their life-history. The work was published J more than half a century ago, but it looked old 7 beyond its years — massive, heavy, weathered, as if >dug from the rocks; and I soon turned with a sigh .(from *ne weary learning of its plates and diagrams * to look at the preface. I Then, reading down through the catalogue of "human names and of thanks for help received, I 1 came to a sentence beginning: — ^ " In New England I have myself collected largely ; pbut I have also received valuable contributions from . *the late Rev. Zadoc Thompson of Burlington; . . . ^ rom Mr. D. Henry Thoreau of Concord ; . . . and > from Mr. J. W. P. Jenksof Middleboro'." And then iit hastens on with the thanks in order to get to the TURTLE EGGS FOR AGASSIZ 95 ^turtles, as if turtles were the one and only thing ,real importance in all the world. Turtles are important — interesting ; so is the late^ ^ Rev. Zadoc Thompson of Burlington. Indeed any* /reverend gentleman who would catch turtles for Agassiz must have been interesting. If Agassiz had « only put a chapter into his turtle book about him! and as for the Mr. Jenks of Middleboro' (at the end of the quotation) I know that he was interesting; for years later, he was an old college professor of mine. He told me some of the particulars of his turtle contri- utions, particulars which Agassiz should have found place for in his big book. The preface says merely that this gentleman sent turtles to Cambridge by the. thousands — brief and scanty recognition. For that is not the only thing this gentleman did. On one occasion he sent, not turtles, but turtle eggs to Cam- bridge — brought them, I should say ; and all there to show for it, so far as I could discover, is a all drawing of a bit of one of the eggs ! Of course, Agassiz wanted to make that drawing, and had to have & fresh turtle egg to draw it from. He had to have it, and he got it. A great man, when he wants a certain turtle egg, at a certain time, al- ways gets it, for he gets some one else to get it for him. I am glad he got it. But what makes me sad and impatient is that he did not think it worth while to tell us about the getting of it. It would seem, naturally, that there could be noth 96 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR ing unusual or interesting about the getting of tur- ( '/ tie eggs when you want them. Nothing at all, if you / s should chance to want the eggs as you chance to y \ find them. So with anything else. But if you want , turtle eggs when you want them, and are bound to have them, then you must — get Mr. Jenks, or some- i body else to get them for you. Agassiz wanted those turtle eggs when he wanted them — not a minute over three hours from the min- f ute they were laid. Yet even that does not seem ex- acting, hardly more difficult than the getting of hens' jj eggs only three hours old. Just so, provided the pro- i fessor could have had his private turtle-coop in Harvard College Yard ; and provided he could have made his turtles lay. But turtles will not respond, like hens, to meat-scraps and the warm mash. The ! professor's problem was not to get from a mud | turtle's nest in the back yard to his work-table in ; the laboratory; but to get from the laboratory in , Cambridge to some pond when the turtles were lay- ing, and back to the laboratory within the limited •time. And this might have called for nice and dis- criminating work — as it did. Agassiz had been engaged for a long time upon his " Contributions." He had brought the great work /nearly to a finish. It was, indeed, finished but for one small yet very important bit of observation: he ?had carried the turtle egg through every stage of jits development with the single exception of one — TURTLE EGGS FOR AGASSIZ 97 the very earliest. That beginning stage had brought the " Contributions" to a halt. To get eggs that were jfresh enough to show the incubation at this period had been impossible. There were several ways that Agassiz might have proceeded : he might have got a leave of absence for the spring term, taken his laboratory to some pond inhabited by turtles, and there camped until should catch the reptile digging out her nest. «But there were difficulties in all of that — as those who are college professors and naturalists know. As this was quite out of the question, he did the easiest thing — asked Mr. Jenks of Middleboro to •get him the eggs. Mr. Jenks got them. Agassiz knew ill about his getting of them ; and I say the strange id irritating thing is, that Agassiz did not think it worth while to tell us about it, at least in the preface to his monumental work. It was many years later that Mr. Jenks, then a gray-haired college professor, told me how he got those eggs to Agassiz. " I was principal of an academy, during my younger fears," he began, " and was busy one day with my Masses, when a large man suddenly filled the door- ly of the room, smiled to the four corners of the >m, and called out with a big, quick voice that he was Professor Agassiz. " Of course he was. I knew it, even before he had had time to shout it to me across the room. 98 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR "Would I get him some turtle eggs? he called. Yes, I would. And would I get them to Cambridge within three hours from the time they were laid? Yes, I would. And I did. And it was worth the doing. But I did it only once. " When I promised Agassiz those eggs, I knew where I was going to get them. I had got turtle eggs there before — at a particular patch of sandy shore along a pond, a few miles distant from the acad- emy. " Three hours was the limit. From the railroad station to Boston was thirty-five miles ; from the pond to the station was perhaps three or four miles; from Boston to Cambridge we called about three miles. Forty miles in round numbers ! We figured it all out before he returned, and got the trip down to two hours, — record time : — driving from the pond to the station ; from the station by express train to Boston ; from Boston by cab to Cambridge. This left an easy hour for accidents and delays. " Cab and car and carriage we reckoned into our time-table ; but what we did n't figure on was the turtle." And he paused abruptly. " Young man," he went on, his shaggy brows and spectacles hardly hiding the twinkle in the eyes that were bent severely upon me, "young man, when you go after turtle eggs, take into account the < turtle. No! No! that's bad advice. Youth never reckons on the turtle — and youth seldom ought to. 1 TURTLE EGGS FOR AGASSIZ 99 Only old age does that ; and old age would never have got those turtle eggs to Agassiz. "It was in the early spring that Agassiz came to the academy, long before there was any likelihood of the turtles' laying. But I was eager for the quest, and so fearful of failure that I started out to watch at the pond, fully two weeks ahead of the time that the turtles might be expected to lay. I remember the date clearly: it was May 14th. "A little before dawn — along near three o'clock — I would drive over to the pond, hitch my horse near by, settle myself quietly among some thick cedars close to the sandy shore, and there I would wait, my kettle of sand ready, my eye covering the whole sleeping pond. Here among the cedars I would eat my breakfast, and then get back in good season to open the academy for the morning session. " And so the watch began. "I soon came to know individually the dozen or more turtles that kept to my side of the pond. Shortly after the cold mist would lift and melt away, they would stick up their heads through the quiet water; and as the sun slanted down over the ragged rim of tree-tops, the slow things would float into the warm lighted spots, or crawl out and doze comfort- ably on the hummocks and snags. " What fragrant mornings those were ! How fresh and new and unbreathed ! The pond odors, the woods odors, the odors of the ploughed fields — of ilOO THE SPRING OF THE YEAR water-lily, and wild grape, and the dew-laid soil ! I can taste them yet, and hear them yet — the still, large sounds of the waking day — the pickerel break- ing the quiet with his swirl; the kingfisher drop- ping anchor ; the stir of feet and wings among the trees. And then the thought of the great book be- ing held up for me ! Those were rare mornings! " But there began to be a good many of them, for he turtles showed no desire to lay. They sprawled in the sun, and never one came out upon the sand 1 as if she intended to help on the great professor's Vbook. The story of her eggs was of small concern ',,to her; her contribution to the Natural History of •> the United States could wait. f" And it did wait. I began my watch on the 14th of May ; June 1st found me still among the cedars, * still waiting, as I had waited every morning, Sun- •f days and rainy days alike. June 1st was a perfect morning, but every turtle slid out upon her log, as if egg-laying might be a matter strictly of next year. | '? " I began to grow uneasy, — not impatient yet, «°for a naturalist learns his lesson of patience early, ** and for all his years ; but I began to fear lest, by some subtile sense, my presence might somehow be ^ known to the creatures; that they might have gone to some other place to lay, while I was away at the schoolroom. " I watched on to the end of the first week, on to the end of the second week in June, seeing the mists TURTLE EGGS FOR AGASSIZ 101 e f rise and vanish every morning, and along with them . vanish, more and more, the poetry of my early morn- / ing vigil. Poetry and rheumatism cannot long dwell f together in the same clump of cedars, and I had > begun to feel the rheumatism. A month of morning mists wrapping me around had at last soaked through I to my bones. But Agassiz was waiting, and the a world was waiting, for those turtle eggs; and I • would wait. It was all I could do, for there is no use bringing a china nest-egg to a turtle; she is not ? open to any such delicate suggestion. " Then came a mid-June Sunday morning, with :' dawn breaking a little after three : a warm, wide- ; awake dawn, with the level mist lifted from the level » surface of the pond a full hour higher than I had ', seen it any morning before. " This was the day. I knew it. I have heard per- i sons say that they can hear the grass grow ; that j they know by some extra sense when danger is nigh. '( For a month I had been watching, had been brood- / ing over this pond, and now I knew. I felt a stirring •J of the pulse of things that the cold-hearted turtles * could no more escape than could the clods and I. -' " Leaving my horse unhitched, as if he, too, un- j derstood, I slipped eagerly into my covert for a look 5 at the pond. As I did so, a large pickerel ploughed 1 a furrow out through the spatter-docks, and in his \ wake rose the head of a large painted turtle. Swing- ing slowly round, the creature headed straight for ' 102 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR > the shore, and, without a pause, scrambled out on» the sand. " She was nothing unusual for a turtle, but her manner was unusual and the gait at which she, moved; for there was method in it and fixed pur- pose. On she came, shuffling over the sand toward the higher open fields, with a hurried, determined, see-saw that was taking her somewhere in particular, and that was bound to get her there on time. " I held my breath. Had she been a dinosaurian "'; making Mesozoic footprints, I could not have been more fearful. For footprints in the Mesozoic mud, or in the sands of time, were as nothing to me when compared with fresh turtle eggs in the sands of this pond. "But over the strip of sand, without a stop, she paddled, and up a narrow cow-path into the high grass along a fence. Then up the narrow cow-path, on all fours, just like another turtle, I paddled, and into the high wet grass along the fence. " I kept well within sound of her, for she moved ; \ recklessly, leaving a wide trail of flattened grass be- ] / hind. I wanted to stand up, — and I don't believe ' I could have turned her back with a rail, — but I' was afraid if she saw me that she might return in- . definitely to the pond ; so on I went, flat to the ground, squeezing through the lower rails of the fence, as if the field beyond were a melon-patch. It was nothing of the kind, only a wild, uncomfortable "TAIL FIRST, BEGAN TO BURY HERSELF" ..- 104 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR pasture, full of dewberry vines, and very discourag- ing. They were excessively wet vines and briery. I pulled my coat-sleeves as far over my fists as I could get them, and with the tin pail of sand swinging from between my teeth to avoid noise, I stumped fiercely, but silently, on after the turtle. " She was laying her course, I thought, straight down the length of this dreadful pasture, when, not far from the fence, she suddenly hove to, warped herself short about, and came back, barely clearing me. I warped about, too, and in her wake bore down across the corner of the pasture, across the powdery public road, and on to a fence along a field of young corn. " I was somewhat wet by this time, but not so wet as I had been before wallowing through the deep, dry dust of the road. Hurrying up behind a large tree by the fence, I peered down the corn-rows and saw the turtle stop, and begin to paw about in j the loose, soft soil. She was going to lay ! " I held on to the tree and watched, as she tried 4 this place, and that place, and the other place. But the place, evidently, was hard to find. What \ could a female turtle do with a whole field of possi- ;'ble nests to choose from ? Then at last she found it, and, whirling about, she backed quickly at it and, tail first, began to bury herself before my staring eyes. " Those were not the supreme moments of my life; TURTLE EGGS FOR AGASSIZ 105 \ ; perhaps those moments came later that day ; but those certainly were among the slowest, most dreadfully imixed of moments that I ever experienced. They were hours long. There she was, her shell just show- ing, like some old hulk in the sand alongshore. And how long would she stay there ? and how should I know if she had laid an egg? " I could still wait. And so I waited, when, over ..the freshly awakened fields, floated four mellow] ; strokes from the distant town clock. " Four o'clock ! Why there was no train until! seven ! No train for three hours ! The eggs would t spoil ! Then with a rush it came over me that thisj was Sunday morning, and there was no regular seven| o'clock train, — none till after nine. " I think I should have fainted had not the turtle' just then begun crawling off. I was weak and dizzy ;j but there, there in the sand, were the eggs! and Agassiz ! and the great book! Why, I cleared the fence — and the forty miles that lay between mej and Cambridge — at a single jump ! He should have '•them, trains or no. Those eggs should go to Aj 'siz by seven o'clock, if I had to gallop every mil< of the way. Forty miles ! Any horse could cover it in three hours, if he had to ; and, upsetting th< 'astonished turtle, I scooped out her long white eg£ " On a bed of sand in the bottom of the pail laid them, with what care my trembling fingers lowed; filled in between them with more sand; j \ 106 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR with layer after layer to the rim ; and covering all smoothly with more sand, I ran back for my horse. " That horse knew, as well as I, that the turtles had laid, and that he was to get those eggs to Agas- siz. He turned out of that field into the road on two wheels, a thing he had not done for twenty years, doubling me up before the dashboard, the pail of eggs miraculously lodged between my knees. " I let him out. If only he could keep this pace all the way to Cambridge ! — or even halfway there, I would have time to finish the trip on foot. I shouted him on, holding to the dasher with one hand, holding the pail of eggs with the other, not daring to get off my knees, though the bang on them, as we pounded down the wood-road, was terrific. But nothing must happen to the eggs ; they must not be jarred, or even turned over in the sand before they came to Agassiz. " In order to get out on the pike it was necessary to drive back away from Boston toward the town. We had nearly covered the distance, and were round- ing a turn from the woods into the open fields, when, ahead of me, at the station it seemed, I heard the quick, sharp whistle of a locomotive. "What did it mean? Then followed the puff, puff, puff, of a starting train. But what train? ^ Which way going? And jumping to my feet for a longer view, I pulled into a side road that paralleled the track, and headed hard for the station. TURTLE EGGS FOR AGASSIZ 107 " We reeled along. The station was still out of sight, but from behind the bushes that shut it from view, rose the smoke of a moving engine. It was perhaps a mile away, but we were approaching, head ton, and, topping a little hill, I swept down upon a freight train, the black smoke pouring from the stack, as the mighty creature pulled itself together for its swift run down the rails. " My horse was on the gallop, following the track, and going straight toward the coming train. The sight of it almost maddened me — the bare thought of it, on the road to Boston ! On I went; on it came, a half — a quarter of a mile between us, when suddenly my road shot out along an unfenced field with only a level stretch of sod between me and the engine. " With a pull that lifted the horse from his feet, I swung him into the field and sent him straight as an arrow for the track. That train should carry me and my eggs to Boston ! " The engineer pulled the whistle. He saw me stand up in the rig, saw my hat blow off, saw me wave my arms, saw the tin pail swing in my teeth, and he jerked out a succession of sharp Halts ! But 'it was he who should halt, not I ; and on we went, the horse with a flounder landing the carriage on 'top of the track. " The train was already grinding to a stop ; but before it was near a standstill, I had backed off the 108 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR track, jumped out, and, running down the rails with the astonished engineers gaping at me, had swung aboard the cab. " They offered no resistance ; they had n't had time. Nor did they have the disposition, for I looked^ strange, not to say dangerous. Hatless, dew-soaked, smeared with yellow mud, and holding, as if it were a baby or a bomb, a little tin pail of sand ! " ' Crazy,' the fireman muttered, looking to the i engineer for his cue. " I had been crazy, perhaps, but I was not crazy now. " ( Throw her wide open,' I commanded. ' Wide open ! These are fresh turtle eggs for Professor Agassiz of Cambridge. He must have them before breakfast.' "Then they knew I was crazy, and, evidently thinking it best to humor me, threw the throttle wide open, and away we went. " I kissed my hand to the horse, grazing uncon- cernedly in the open field, and gave a smile to my fy crew. That was all I could give them, and hold my- £ self and the eggs together. But the smile was enough. And they smiled through their smut at me, though one of them held fast to his shovel, while the other kept his hand upon a big ugly wrench. Neither of them spoke to me, but above the roar of the sway- ing engine I caught enough of their broken talk to understand that they were driving under a full head '' TURTLE EGGS FOR AGASSIZ 109 of steam, with the intention of handing me over to the Boston police, as perhaps the safest way of disposing of me. " I was only afraid that they would try it at the next station. But that station whizzed past without a bit of slack, and the next, and the next ; when it came over me that this was the through freight, which should have passed in the night, and was making up lost time. " Only the fear of the shovel and the wrench kept me from shaking hands with both men at this dis- covery. But I beamed at them ; and they at me. I was enjoying it. The unwonted jar beneath my feet was wrinkling my diaphragm with spasms of delight. And the fireman beamed at the engineer, with a look that said, ' See the lunatic grin ; he likes it ! ' " He. did like it. How the iron wheels sang to me as they took the rails ! How the rushing wind in my ears sang to me ! From my stand on the fireman's side of the cab I could catch a glimpse of the track just ahead of the engine, where the ties seemed to leap into the throat of the mile-devouring monster. The joy of it ! of seeing space swallowed by the mile ! " I shifted the eggs from hand to hand and thought of my horse, of Agassiz, of the great book, of my great luck, — luck, — luck, — until the multitudi- nous tongues of the thundering train were all chim- ing Muck! luck! luck!' They knew! they under- 110 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR ^ stood! This beast of fire and tireless wheels wast 2^doing its best to get the eggs to Agassiz ! t " We swung out past the Blue Hills, and yonder ; flashed the morning sun from the towering dome of the State House. I might have leaped from the cab and run the rest of the way on foot, had I not ^ caught the eye of the engineer watching me nar- ^ rowly. I was not in Boston yet, nor in Cambridge ]> x either. I was an escaped lunatic, who had held up a ^ ^ train, and forced it to carry me from Middleboro to Boston. " Perhaps I had overdone the lunacy business. Suppose these two men should take it into their ...'heads to turn me over to the police, whether "I * would or no ? I could never explain the case in time ; to get the eggs to Agassiz. I looked at my watch. m1Lere were still a few minutes left in which I might explain to these men, who, all at once, had become my captors. But how explain? Nothing could avail against my actions, my appearance, and my little pail of sand. "I had not thought of my appearance before. Here I was, face and clothes caked with yellow mud, my hair wild and matted, my hat gone, and in my full- grown hands a tiny tin pail of sand, as if I had been digging all night with a tiny tin shovel on the shore ! And thus to appear in the decent streets of Boston of a Sunday morning ! ; " I began to feel like a lunatic. The situation TURTLE EGGS FOR AGASSIZ 111 ywas serious, or might be, and rather desperately^ /" Jfunny at its best. I must in some way have shown X^ my new fears, for both men watched me more sharply. " Suddenly, as we were nearing the outer f reight- , ard, the train slowed down and came to a stop. I S was ready to jump, but still I had no chance. They 7 had nothing to do, apparently, but to guard me. I \ ^-(looked at my watch again. What time we had made! It was only six o'clock, — a whole hour left in which to get to Cambridge! "But I didn't like this delay. Five minutes — in — went by. Gentlemen,' I began, but was cut short by an , express train coining past. We were moving again, / ^on — into a siding — on to the main track — on with »Ja bump and a crash and a succession of crashes, running the length of the train — on, on at a turtle's >pace, but on, — when the fireman, quickly jumping for the bell-rope, left the way to the step free, and — " I never touched the step, but landed in the soft sand at the side of the track, and made a line for 'the freight-yard fence. "There was no hue or cry. I glanced over my •shoulder to see if they were after me. Evidently their hands were full, or they did n't know I had gone. " But I had gone ; and was ready to drop over the high board-fence, when it occurred to me that I might drop into a policeman's arms. Hanging my A* 112 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR pail in a splint on top of a post, I peered cautiously over — a very wise thing to do before you jump a high board-fence. There, crossing the open square toward the station, was a big, burly fellow with a club — looking for me ! " I flattened for a moment, when some one in the freight-yard yelled at me. I preferred the policeman, and, grabbing my pail, I slid softly over to the street. The policeman moved on past the corner of the sta-,, tion out of sight. The square was free, and yonder I stood a cab. " Time was flying now. Here was the last lap. The cabman saw me coming, and squared away. I / waved a dollar-bill at him, but he only stared the/ more. A dollar can cover a good deal, but I was tooj much for one dollar. I pulled out another, thrust''' them both at him, and dodged into the cab, calling, , * Cambridge ! ' " He would have taken me straight to the police- 5 station, had I not said, ' Harvard College. Professor r Agassiz's house ! I've got eggs for Agassiz,' push- c, ing another dollar up at him through the hole. " It was nearly half past six. " ' Let him go ! ' I ordered. ' Here 's another dol- lar if you make Agassiz's house in twenty minutes.1 Let him out ; never mind the police! ' " He evidently knew the police, or there were .' none around at that time on a Sunday morning. We went down the sleeping streets, as I had gone down the , TURTLE EGGS FOR AGASSIZ 113 wood-roads from the pond two hours before, but ;h the rattle aud crash now of a fire brigade. "hirling a corner into Cambridge Street, we took the bridge at a gallop, the driver shouting out some- thing in Hibernian to a pair of waving arms and a belt and brass buttons. " Across the bridge with a rattle and jolt that put the eggs in jeopardy, and on over the cobble-stones, we went. Half standing, to lessen the jar, I held the >ail in one hand and held myself in the other, not 'daring to let go even to look at my watch. " But I was afraid to look at the watch. I was afraid to see how near to seven o'clock it might be. ^The sweat was dropping down my nose, so close was running to the limit of my time. " Suddenly there was a lurch, and I dived forward, £.. ramming my head into the front of the cab, coming up with a rebound that landed me across the small I of my back on the seat, and sent half of my pail of | eggs helter-skelter over the floor. " We had stopped. Here was Agassiz's house ; \j md without taking time to pick up the eggs that \\ I fere scattered, I jumped out with my pail and[ mnded at the door. " No one was astir in the house. But I would stir rnie one. And I did. Right in the midst of thej racket the door opened. It was the maid. " ' Agassiz,' I gasped, ( I want Professor Agassiz, j I quick ! ' And I pushed by her into the hall. 114 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR "'Go 'way, sir. I'll call the police. Professor Agassiz is in bed. Go 'way, sir ! ' " ' Call him — Agassiz — instantly, or I '11 call him myself.' "But I did n't ; for just then a door overhead was flung open, a great white-robed figure appeared on the dim landing above, and a quick loud voice called excitedly, — "'Let him in ! Let him in. I know him. He has my turtle eggs ! ' " And the apparition, slipperless, and clad in any- thing but an academic gown, came sailing down the stairs. "The maid fled. The great man, his arms ex- tended, laid hold of me with both hands, and drag- ging me and my precious pail into his study, with a swift, clean stroke laid open one of the eggs, as the watch in my trembling hands ticked its way to seven — as if nothing unusual were happening to the his- tory of the world." CHAPTER XII AN ACCOUNT WITH NATURE THERE were chipmunks everywhere. The stone walls squeaked with them. At every turn, from early spring to early autumn, a chip- munk was scurrying away from me. Chipmunks were common. They did no particular harm, no par- ticular good ; they did nothing in particular, being only chipmunks and common, or so I thought, until one morning (it was June-bug time) when I stopped and watched a chipmunk that sat atop the stone wall down in the orchard. He was eating, and the shells of his meal lay in a little pile upon the big flat stone which served as his table. They were acorn-shells, I thought; yet June seemed rather late in the season for acorns, and, looking closer, I discovered that the pile was entirely composed of June-bug shells — wings and hollow bodies of the pestiferous beetles ! Well, well! I had never seen this before, never even heard of it. Chipmunk, a useful member of society! actually eating bugs in this bug-ridden world of mine! This was interesting and important. Why, I had really never known Chipmunk, after all ! So I had n't. He had always been too common. 116 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR Flying squirrels were more worth while, because there were none on the farm. Now, however, I deter- mined to cultivate the acquaintance of Chipmunk, for there might he other discoveries awaiting me. And there were. A narrow strip of grass separated the orchard and my garden-patch. It was on my way to the garden /that I most often stopped to watch this chipmunk, \or rather the pair of them, in the orchard wall. June y advanced, the beetles disappeared, and the two chip- j munks in the wall were now seven, the young ones almost as large as their parents, and both young and / old on the best of terms with me. For the first time in four years there were pros- f pects of good strawberries. Most of my small patch was given over to a new variety, one that I had ^originated; and I was waiting with an eagerness | which was almost anxiety for the earliest berries. / I had put a little stick beside each of the three * big berries that were reddening first (though I could $ have walked from the house blindfolded and picked 'Uhem). I might have had the biggest of the three on 'I June 7th, but for the sake of the flavor I thought j it best to wait another day. On the 8th I went ;£down to get it. The big berry was gone, and so was > one of the others, while only half of the third was ;* left on the vine ! Gardening has its disappointments, its seasons of , despair — and wrath, too. Had a toad showed him- - -, •/ - ? ...,..-- - ; \ • v .- - • - 118 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR self at that moment, he might have fared badly, foi\ more than likely, I thought, it was he who had stolen my berries. On the garden wall sat a friendly chip- munk eying me sympathetically. A few days later several fine berries were ripe, and\^ L I was again on my way to the garden when I passed ^ the chipmunks in the orchard. A shining red spot among the vine-covered stones of their wall brought ^'. . me to a stop. For an instant I thought that it was my *~ \ rose-breasted grosbeak, and that I was about to get a •*: } clew to its nest. Then up to the slab where he ate the V; June-bugs scrambled the chipmunk, and the rose-red! \ . spot on the breast of the supposed grosbeak dissolved' ; into a big scarlet-red strawberry. And by its long >• wedge shape I knew it was one of my new variety, (ft) I hurried across to the patch and found every l-j^ berry gone, while a line of bloody fragments led me J J* back to the orchard wall, where a half-dozen fresh calyx crowns completed my second discovery. No, it did not complete it. It took a little watch- ing to find out that the whole family — all seven ! — were after those berries. They were picking them half ripe, even, and actually storing them away, can- ning them, down in the cavernous depths of the stone-pile ! Alarmed? Yes, and I was wrathful, too. The taste for strawberries is innate, original; vou can't be human without it. But joy in chipmunks is a culti- ,vated liking. What chance in such a circumstance AN ACCOUNT WITH NATURE 119 f • '.has the nature-lover with the human man? What^ 'shadow of doubt as to his choice between the chip-v^ \J* v* ; muuks and the strawberries? ^ *r ^ I had no gun and no time to go over to my neigh- < |bor's to borrow his. So I stationed myself near by ^with a fistful of stones, and waited for the thieves ^ to show themselves. I came so near to hitting one of (them with a stone that the sweat started all over me. ^ After that there was no danger. I had lost my nerve. <• \. The little scamps knew that war had been declared, \ and they hid and dodged and sighted me so far off ' Miat even with a gun I should have been all summer * 'killing the seven of them. Meantime, a good rain and the warm June days' f \. were turning the berries red by the quart. They had *Jmore than caught up to the chipmunks. I dropped my stones and picked. The chipmunks picked, too; so did the toads and the robins. Everybody picked. ^It was free for all. We picked them and ate them, ~ jammed them, and canned them. I almost carried .some over to my neighbor, but took peas instead. v'J)-' The strawberry season closed on the Fourth of * July ; and our taste was not dimmed, nor our natural love for strawberries abated; but all four of the small boys had hives from over-indulgence, so boun tifully did Nature provide, so many did the seven chipmunks leave us ! Peace between me and the chipmunks had been signed before the strawberry season closed, and th r r \- /-.- '. t . : 120 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR pact still holds. Other things have occurred since to threaten it, however. Among1 them, an article in a I recent number of an out-of-door magazine, of wide ,> circulation. Herein the chipmunk family was most ; roundly rated, in fact condemned to annihilation be- [ cause of its wicked taste for birds' eggs and for the young birds. Numerous photographs accompanied the article, showing the red squirrel with eggs in his mouth, but no such proof (even the red squirrel photographs, I strongly believe, were done from a L; stuffed squirrel) of Chipmunk's guilt, though he was • h counted equally bad and, doubtless, will suffer with 1 Chickaree at the hands of those who have taken the ;fej article seriously. I believe that would be a great mistake. Indeed, I I believe the article a deliberate falsehood, concocted •j in order to sell the made-up photographs. Chipmunk i is not an egg-sucker, else I should have found it out. But of course that does not mean that no one else I has found it out. It does mean, however, that if w Chipmunk robs at all he does it so seldom as to call '^for no alarm or retribution. There is scarcely a day in the nesting-season when / f I fail to see half a dozen chipmunks about the walls, 'I yet I have never noticed one even suspiciously near J a bird's nest. In an apple tree, scarcely six jump? 1 from the home of the family in the orchard wall, a- I brood of tree swallows came to wing this spring ; • while robins, chippies, and red-eyed vireos — not to AN ACCOUNT WITH NATURE 121 mention a cowbird, which I wish they had devoured — have also hatched and flown away from nests that these squirrels might easily have rifled. It is not often that one comes upon even the red squirrel in the very act of robbing a nest. But the< black snake, the glittering fiend! and the dear house cats ! If I run across a dozen black snakes in the early summer, it is safe to say that six of them are discovered to me by the cries of the birds that; :they are robbing. So is it with the cats. No creature larger than a June-bug, however, is often distressed1' by a chipmunk. In a recent letter to me Mr. B roughs says : — " No, I never knew the chipmunk to suck or de- " stroy eggs of any kind, and I have never heard of any well-authenticated instance of his doing so.= The red squirrel is the sinner in this respect, and probably the gray squirrel also." It will be difficult to find a true bill against him. Were the evidence all in, I believe that instead of a culprit we should find Chipmunk a useful citizen. Does not that pile of June-bug bodies on the flat stone leave me still in debt to him? He may erij\" occasionally, and may, on occasion, make a nuisance; of himself — but so do my four small boys, blessf them ! And, well, — who does n't? When a family* of chipmunks, which you have fed all summer on the veranda, take up their winter quarters inside the closed cabin, and chew up your quilts, hammocks,- \ 122 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR table-cloths, and whatever else there is of chewable properties, then they are anathema. The havoc certain chipmunks in the mountains once made among our possessions was dreadful. But instead of exterminating them root and branch, a big box was prepared the next summer and lined with tin, in which the linen was successfully wintered. But how real was the loss, after all? Here was a rough log cabin on the side of Thorn Mountain. What sort of table-cloth ought to be found in such a cabin, if not one that has been artistically chewed ;by chipmunks? Is it for fine linen that we take to the woods in summer? The chipmunks are well worth a table-cloth now and then — well worth, be- sides these, all the strawberries and all the oats they can steal from my small patch. Only it is n't stealing. Since I ceased throwing stones and began to watch the chipmunks carefully, I do not find that their manner is in the least the man- ner of thieves. They do not act as if they were taking what they have no right to. For who has told Chip- munk to earn his oats in the sweat of his brow ? No one. Instead, he seems to understand that he is one of the innumerable factors ordained to make me sweat — a good and wholesome experience for me so long as I get the necessary oats. And I get them, in spite of the chipmunks, though I don't like to guess at the quantity of oats they have carried off — anywhere, I should say, from a peck to a Mil AN ACCOUNT WITH NATURE 123 bushel, which they have stored as they tried to store the berries, somewhere in the big recesses of the stone wall. All this, however, is beside the point. It is n't a 'case of oats and berries against June-bugs. You don't haggle with Nature after that fashion. The farm is not a market-place where you get exactly what you pay for. You must spend on the farm all you have of time and strength and brains ; but you must not expect in return merely your money's worth. Infinitely more than that, and oftentimes less. Farm- ing is like virtue, — its own reward. It pays the man ' who loves it, no matter how short the crop of oats and corn. So it is with Chipmunk. Perhaps his books don't balance — a few June-bugs short on the credit side. What then? It is n't mere bugs and berries, as I have just suggested, but stone-piles. What is the difference in value to me between a stone-pile with a chipmunk in it and one without. Just the difference, relatively speaking, between the house with my four boys in it, and the house without. Chipmunk, with his sleek, round form, his rich color and his stripes, is the daintiest, most beautiful , of all our squirrels. He is one of the friendliest of my tenants, too, friendlier even than the friendliest of my birds — Chickadee. The two are very much alike in spirit; but however tame and confiding Chickadee may become, he is still a bird and belongs to a different 124 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR and, despite his wings, lower order of beings. ChickO adee is often curious about me ; he can be coaxed to - eat from my hand. Chipmunk is m ore than curious ;J he is interested ; and it is not crumbs that he wantsn but friendship. He can be coaxed to eat from my lij sleep in my pocket, and even come to be stroked. I have sometimes seen Chickadee in winter when he seemed to come to me out of very need for living companionship. But in the flood-tide of summer life? Chipmunk will watch me from his stone-pile and me along with every show of friendship. The family in the orchard wall have grown very* familiar. They flatter me. One or another of them, . sitting upon the high flat slab, sees me coming. He sits on the very edge of the crack, to be truthful;'.- and if I take a single step aside toward him, he flips, * and all there is left of him is a little angry squeak; from the depths of the stones. If, however, I pass Jj properly along, do not stop or make any sudden mo- tion, he sees me past, then usually follows me, espe- cially if I get well off and pause. During a shower one day I halted under a large , hickory just beyond his den. He came running after me, so interested that he forgot to look to his foot-- ing, and just opposite me slipped and bumped his< nose hard against a stone — so hard that he sat up o- immediately and vigorously rubbed it. Another time •' he followed me across to the garden and on until he £ came to the barbed-wire fence along the meadow. V 125, AN ACCOUNT WITH NATURE / - Here he climbed a post and continued after me by way! w ., of the middle strand of the wire, wriggling, twisting,^ even grabbing the barbs, in his efforts to maintain^ his balance. He got midway between the posts, when <'\ the sagging strand tripped him and he fell with a; splash into a shallow pool below. No, he did not'v drown, but his curiosity did get a ducking. Did the family in the orchard wall stay together '; as a family for the first summer? I should like toc'v/ know. As late as August they all seemed to be