John Burroughs........................................................................................................................................1

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH...................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................................3

BIRDS. .....................................................................................................................................................4

BIRD ENEMIES. .....................................................................................................................................4

THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS....................................................................................................10

BEES. .....................................................................................................................................................17

AN IDYL OF THE HONEYBEE.......................................................................................................17

THE PASTORAL BEES.......................................................................................................................25

II. SHARP EYES AND OTHER PAPERS...........................................................................................33

SHARP EYES. .......................................................................................................................................33

THE APPLE..........................................................................................................................................41

A TASTE OF MAINE BIRCH. .............................................................................................................46

WINTER NEIGHBORS........................................................................................................................55

NOTES BY THE WAY. ........................................................................................................................61

I. THE WEATHERWISE MUSKRAT...............................................................................................61

II. CHEATING THE SQUIRRELS. ......................................................................................................63

III. FOX AND HOUND........................................................................................................................63

IV. THE WOODCHUCK......................................................................................................................64

Nature chose the spring of the year for the time of John Burroughs's birth. A little before the day when the

wakerobin shows itself, that the observer might be on hand for the sight, he was born in Roxbury, Delaware

County, New York, on the western borders of the Catskill Mountains; the precise date was April 3, 1837.

Until 1863 he remained in the country about his native place, working on his father's farm, getting his

schooling in the district school and neighboring academies, and taking his turn also as teacher. As he himself

has hinted, the originality, freshness, and wholesomeness of his writings are probably due in great measure to

the unliterary surroundings of his early life, which allowed his mind to form itself on unconventional lines,

and to the later companionships with unlettered men, which kept him in touch with the sturdy simplicities of

>From the very beginnings of his taste for literature, the essay was his favorite form. Dr. Johnson was the

prophet of his youth, but he soon transferred his allegiance to Emerson, who for many years remained his

"master enchanter." To cure himself of too close an imitation of the Concord seer, which showed itself in his

first magazine article, Expression, he took to writing his sketches of nature, and about this time he fell in with

the writings of Thoreau, which doubtless confirmed and encouraged him in this direction. But of all authors

and of all men, Walt Whitman, in his personality and as a literary force, seems to have made the profoundest

impression upon Mr. Burroughs, though doubtless Emerson had a greater influence on his style of writing.

Expression appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in 1860, and most of his contributions to literature have been in

the form of papers first published in the magazines, and afterwards collected into books. He more than once

paid tribute to his teachers in literature. His first book, now out of print, was Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet

and Person, published in 1867; and Whitman: A Study, which appeared in 1896, is a more extended treatment

of the man and his poetry and philosophy. Birds and Poets, too, contains a paper on Whitman, entitled The

Flight of the Eagle, besides an essay on Emerson, whom he also treated incidentally in his paper, Matthew

Arnold on Emerson and Carlyle, in Indoor Studies; and the latter volume contains his essay on Thoreau.

In the autumn of 1863 he went to Washington, and in the following January entered the Treasury Department.

He was for some years an assistant in the office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and later chief of the

organization division of that Bureau. For some time he was keeper of one of the vaults, and for a great part of

the day his only duty was to be at his desk. In these leisure hours his mind traveled off into the country,

where his previous life had been spent, and with the help of his pen, always a faithful friend and magician, he

lived over again those happy days, now happier still with the glamour of all past pleasures. In this way he

wrote WakeRobin and a part of Winter Sunshine. It must not be supposed, however, that he was deprived of

outdoor pleasures while at Washington. On the contrary, he enjoyed many walks in the suburbs of the capital,

and in those days the real country came up to the very edges of the city. His Spring at the Capital, Winter

Sunshine, A March Chronicle, and other papers bear the fruit of his life on the Potomac. He went to England

in 1871 on business for the Treasury Department, and again on his own account a dozen years later. The

record of the two visits is to be found mainly in his chapters on An October Abroad, contained in the volume

He resigned his place in the Treasury in 1873, and was appointed receiver of a broken national bank. Later,

until 1885, his business occupation was that of a National Bank Examiner. An article contributed by him to

The Century Magazine for March, 1881, on Broken Banks and Lax Directors, is perhaps the only literary

outcome of this occupation, but the keen powers of observation, trained in the field of nature, could not fail to

disclose themselves in analyzing columns of figures. After leaving Washington Mr. Burroughs bought a fruit

farm at West Park, near Esopus, on the Hudson, and there building his house from the stones found in his

fields, has given himself the best conditions for that humanizing of nature which constitutes the charm of his

books. He was married in 1857 to a lady living in the New York village where he was at the time teaching.

He keeps his country home the year round, only occasionally visiting New York. The cultivation of grapes

absorbs the greater part of his time; but he has by no means given over letters. His work, which has long

found ready acceptance both at home and abroad, is now passing into that security of fame which comes from

Besides his outdoor sketches and the other papers already mentioned, Mr. Burroughs has written a number of

critical essays on life and literature, published in Indoor Studies, and other volumes. He has a1so taken his

readers into his confidence in An Egotistical Chapter, the final one of his Indoor Studies; and in the

Introduction to the Riverside Edition of his writings he has given us further glimpses of his private

Probably no other American writer has a greater sympathy with, and a keener enjoyment of, country life in all

its phasesfarming, camping, fishing, walkingthan has John Burroughs. His books are redolent of the

soil, and have such "freshness and primal sweetness," that we need not be told that the pleasure he gets from

his walks and excursions is by no means over when he steps inside his doors again. As he tells us on more

than one occasion, he finds he can get much more out of his outdoor experiences by thinking them over, and

Numbers 28, 36, and 92 of the Riverside Literature Series consist of selections from Mr. Burroughs's books.

No. 28, which is entitled Birds and Bees, is made up of Bird Enemies and The Tragedies of the Nests from

the volume Signs and Seasons, An Idyl of the HoneyBee from Pepacton, and The Pastoral Bees from

Locusts and Wild Honey. The Introduction, by Miss Mary E. Burt, gives an account of the use of Mr.

In No. 36, Sharp Eyes, and Other Papers, the initial paper, Sharp Eyes, is drawn from Locusts and Wild

Honey, The Apple comes from Winter Sunshine, A Taste of Maine Birch and Winter Neighbors from Signs

and Seasons, and Notes by the Way (on muskrats, squirrels, foxes, and woodchucks) from Pepacton.

The collection called A Bunch of Herbs, and Other Papers, forming No. 92 of the Series, was designed with

special reference to what the author has to say of trees and flowers, and contains A Bunch of Herbs from

Pepacton, Strawberries from Locusts and Wild Honey, A March Chronicle and Autumn Tides from Winter

Sunshine, A Spray of Pine and A Spring Relish from Signs and Seasons, and English Woods: A Contrast

It is seldom that I find a book so far above children that I cannot share its best thought with them. So when I

first took up one of John Burroughs's essays, I at once foresaw many a ramble with my pupils through the

enchanted country that is found within its breezy pages. To read John Burroughs is to live in the woods and

fields, and to associate intimately with all their little timid inhabitants; to learn that

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

When I came to use Pepacton in my class of the sixth grade, I soon found, not only that the children read

better but that they came rapidly to a better appreciation of the finer bits of literature in their regular readers,

while their interest in their new author grew quickly to an enthusiasm. Never was a little brother or sister

more real to them than was "Peggy Mel" as she rushed into the hive laden with stolen honey, while her

neighbors gossiped about it, or the stately elm that played sly tricks, or the log which proved to be a good

bedfellow because it did not grumble. Burroughs's way of investing beasts, birds, insects, and inanimate

things with human motives is very pleasing to children. They like to trace analogies between the human and

the irrational, to think of a weed as a tramp stealing rides, of Nature as a telltale when taken by surprise.

The quiet enthusiasm of John Burroughs's essays is much healthier than the overwrought dramatic action

which sets all the nerves aquiver, nerves already stimulated to excess by the comedies and tragedies

forced upon the daily lives of children. It is especially true of children living in crowded cities, shut away

from the woods and hills, constant witnesses of the effects of human passion, that they need the tonic of a

quiet literature rather than the stimulant of a stormy or dramatic one,a literature which develops gentle

feelings, deep thought, and a relish for what is homely and homespun, rather than a literature which calls

The essays in this volume are those in which my pupils have expressed an enthusiastic interest, or which,

after careful reading, I have selected for future use. I have found in them few pages so hard as to require over

much study, or a too frequent use of the dictionary. John Burroughs, more than almost any other writer of the

time, has a prevailing taste for simple words and simple constructions. "He that runs may read" him. I have

found many children under eleven years of age who could read a whole page without hesitating. If I discover

some words which I foresee will cause difficulty, I place such on the blackboard and rapidly pronounce and

explain them before the reading. Generally, however, I find the text the best interpreter of its words. What

follows explains what goes before, if the child is led to read on to the end of the sentence. It is a mistake to

allow children to be frightened away from choice reading by an occasional hard word. There is no better time

than his reading lesson in which to teach a child that the hard things of life are to be grappled with and

overcome. A mistake also, I think, is that toilsome process of explanation which I sometimes find teachers

following, under the impression that it will be "parrot work" (as the stock phrase of the "institutes" has it) for

the pupils to read anything which they do not clearly and fully comprehend. Teachers' definitions, in such

cases, I have often noticed, are no better than dictionary definitions, and surely everybody knows that few

more fruitless things than dictionary definitions are ever crammed into the memory of a child. Better far give

free play to the native intelligence of the child, and trust it to apprehend, though it may not yet comprehend

nor be able to express its apprehension in definition. On this subject I am glad to quote so high an authority as

Sir Walter Scott: "Indeed I rather suspect that children derive impulses of a powerful and important kind from

reading things which they do not comprehend, and therefore that to write down to children's understanding is

>From time to time I have allowed my pupils to give me written reports from memory of these essays, and

have often found these little compositions sparkling with pleasing information, or full of that childlike fun

which is characteristic of the author. I have marked the errors in these exercises, and have given them back to

the children to rewrite. Sometimes the second papers show careful correctionand sometimes the mistakes

are partially neglected. Very often the child wishes to improve on the first composition, and so adds new

There is a law of selfpreservation in Nature, which takes care of mistakes. Every human soul reaches toward

the light in the most direct path open to it, and will correct its own errors as soon as it is developed far

enough. There is no use in trying to force maturity; teachers who trouble children beyond all reason, and

worry over their mistakes, are fumbling at the roots of young plants that will grow if they are let alone long

The average mechanical work (spelling, construction of sentences, writing, etc.) is better under this method

than when more time is devoted to the mechanics and less to the thought of composition. I have seen many

reports of Burroughs's essays from the pens of children more pleasing and reliable than the essays of some

professional reviewers; in these papers I often find the children adding little suggestions of their own; as, "Do

birds dream?" One of the girls says her bird "jumps in its sleep." A little ten year old writes, "Weeds are

unuseful flowers," and, "I like this book because there are real things in it." Another thinks she "will look

more carefully " if she ever gets out into the country again. For the development of close observation and

good feeling toward the common things of life, I know of no writings better than those of John Burroughs.

How surely the birds know their enemies! See how the wrens and robins and bluebirds pursue and scold the

cat, while they take little or no notice of the dog! Even the swallow will fight the cat, and, relying too

confidently upon its powers of flight, sometimes swoops down so near to its enemy that it is caught by a

sudden stroke of the cat's paw. The only case I know of in which our small birds fail to recognize their enemy

is furnished by the shrike; apparently the little birds do not know that this modestcolored bird is an assassin.

At least, I have never seen them scold or molest him, or utter any outcries at his presence, as they usually do

at birds of prey. Probably it is because the shrike is a rare visitant, and is not found in this part of the country

But the birds have nearly all found out the trick the jay, and when he comes sneaking through the trees in

May and June in quest of eggs, he is quickly exposed and roundly abused. It is amusing to see the robins

hustle him out of the tree which holds their nest. They cry "Thief, thief!" to the top of their voices as they

charge upon him, and the jay retorts in a voice scarcely less complimentary as he makes off.

The jays have their enemies also, and need to keep an eye on their own eggs. It would be interesting to know

if jays ever rob jays, or crows plunder crows; or is there honor among thieves even in the feathered tribes? I

suspect the jay is often punished by birds which are otherwise innocent of nestrobbing. One season I found

a jay's nest in a small cedar on the side of a wooded ridge. It held five eggs, every one of which had been

punctured. Apparently some bird had driven its sharp beak through their shells, with the sole intention of

destroying them, for no part of the contents of the eggs had been removed. It looked like a case of revenge; as

if some thrush or warbler, whose nest had suffered at the hands of the jays, had watched its opportunity, and

had in this way retaliated upon its enemies. An egg for an egg. The jays were lingering near, very demure and

The great bugaboo of the birds is the owl. The owl snatches them from off their roosts at night, and gobbles

up the1r eggs and young in their nests. He is a veritable ogre to them, and his presence fills them with

One season, to protect my early cherries I placed a large stuffed owl amid the branches of the tree. Such a

racket as there instantly began about my grounds is not pleasant to think upon! The orioles and robins fairly

"shrieked out their affright." The news instantly spread in every direction, and apparently every bird in town

came to see that owl in the cherrytree, and every bird took a cherry, so that I lost more fruit than if I had left

the owl indoors. With craning necks and horrified looks the birds alighted upon the branches, and between

their screams would snatch off a cherry, as if the act was some relief to their outraged feelings.

The chirp and chatter of the young of birds which build in concealed or inclosed places, like the

woodpeckers, the house wren, the highhole, the oriole, is in marked contrast to the silence of the fledglings

of most birds that build open and exposed nests. The young of the sparrows,unless the social sparrow be an

exception,warblers, flycatchers, thrushes, never allow a sound to escape them; and on the alarm note of

their parents being heard, sit especially close and motionless, while the young of chimney swallows,

woodpeckers, and orioles are very noisy. The latter, in its deep pouch, is quite safe from birds of prey, except

perhaps the owl. The owl, I suspect, thrusts its leg into the cavities of woodpeckers and into the pocketlike

nest of the oriole, and clutches and brings forth the birds in its talons. In one case which I heard of, a

screechowl had thrust its claw into a cavity in a tree, and grasped the head of a redheaded woodpecker;

being apparently unable to draw its prey forth, it had thrust its own round head into the hole, and in some way

The life of birds is beset with dangers and mishaps of which we know little. One day, in my walk, I came

upon a goldfinch with the tip of one wing securely fastened to the feathers of its rump, by what appeared to

be the silk of some caterpillar. The bird, though uninjured, was completely crippled, and could not fly a

stroke. Its little body was hot and panting in my hands, as I carefully broke the fetter. Then it darted swiftly

away with a happy cry. A record of all the accidents and tragedies of bird life for a single season would show

many curious incidents. A friend of mine opened his boxstove one fall to kindle a fire in it, when he beheld

in the black interior the desiccated forms of two bluebirds. The birds had probably taken refuge in the

chimney during some cold spring storm, and had come down the pipe to the stove, from whence they were

unable to ascend. A peculiarly touching little incident of bird life occurred to a caged female canary. Though

unmated, it laid some eggs, and the happy bird was so carried away by her feelings that she would offer food

to the eggs, and chatter and twitter, trying, as it seemed, to encourage them to eat! The incident is hardly

Certain birds nest in the vicinity of our houses and outbuildings, or even in and upon them, for protection

from their enemies, but they often thus expose themselves to a plague of the most deadly character.

I refer to the vermin with which their nests often swarm, and which kill the young before they are fledged. In

a state of nature this probably never happens; at least I have never seen or heard of it happening to nests

placed in trees or under rocks. It is the curse of civilization falling upon the birds which come too near man.

The vermin, or the germ of the vermin, is probably conveyed to the nest in hen's feathers, or in straws and

hairs picked up about the barn or henhouse. A robin's nest upon your porch or in your summerhouse will

occasionally become an intolerable nuisance from the swarms upon swarms of minute vermin with which it is

filled. The parent birds stem the tide as long as they can, but are often compelled to leave the young to their

One season a phoebebird built on a projecting stone under the eaves of the house, and all appeared to go

well till the young were nearly fledged, when the nest suddenly became a bit of purgatory. The birds kept

their places in their burning bed till they could hold no longer, when they leaped forth and fell dead upon the

After a delay of a week or more, during which I imagine the parent birds purified themselves by every means

known to them, the couple built another nest a few yards from the first, and proceeded to rear a second brood;

but the new nest developed into the same bed of torment that the first did, and the three young birds, nearly

ready to fly, perished as they sat within it. The parent birds then left the place as if it had been accursed.

I imagine the smaller birds have an enemy in our native whitefooted mouse, though I have not proof enough

to convict him. But one season the nest of a chickadee which I was observing was broken up in a position

where nothing but a mouse could have reached it. The bird had chosen a cavity in the limb of an appletree

which stood but a few yards from the house. The cavity was deep, and the entrance to it, which was ten feet

from the ground, was small. Barely light enough was admitted, when the sun was in the most favorable

position, to enable one to make out the number of eggs, which was six, at the bottom of the dim interior.

While one was peering in and trying to get his head out of his own light, the bird would startle him by a queer

kind of puffing sound. She would not leave her nest like most birds, but really tried to blow or scare the

intruder away; and after repeated experiments I could hardly refrain from jerking my head back when that

little explosion of sound came up from the dark interior. One night, when incubation was about half finished,

the nest was harried. A slight trace of hair or fur at the entrance led me to infer that some small animal was

the robber. A weasel might have done it, as they sometimes climb trees, but I doubt if either a squirrel or a rat

Probably few persons have ever suspected the catbird of being an eggsucker; I do not know that she has

ever been accused of such a thing, but there is something uncanny and disagreeable about her, which I at once

understood, when I one day caught her in the very act of going through a nest of eggs.

A pair of the least flycatchers, the bird which says chebec, chebec, and is a small edition of the pewee, one

season built their nest where I had them for many hours each day under my observation. The nest was a very

snug and compact structure placed in the forks of a small maple about twelve feet from the ground. The

season before, a red squirrel had harried the nest of a woodthrush in this same tree, and I was apprehensive

that he would serve the flycatchers the same trick; so, as I sat with my book in a summerhouse near by, I

kept my loaded gun within easy reach. One egg was laid, and the next morning, as I made my daily

inspection of the nest, only a fragment of its empty shell was to be found. This I removed, mentally

imprecating the rogue of a red squirrel. The birds were much disturbed by the event, but did not desert the

nest, as I had feared they would, but after much inspection of it and many consultations together, concluded,

it seems, to try again. Two more eggs were laid, when one day I heard the birds utter a sharp cry, and on

looking up I saw a catbird perched upon the rim of the nest, hastily devouring the eggs. I soon regretted my

precipitation in killing her, because such interference is generally unwise. It turned out that she had a nest of

Then this pair of little flycatchers did what I had never seen birds do before; they pulled the nest to pieces

and rebuilt it in a peachtree not many rods away, where a brood was successfully reared. The nest was here

exposed to the direct rays of the noonday sun, and to shield her young when the heat was greatest, the

motherbird would stand above them with wings slightly spread, as other birds have been know to do under

To what extent the catbird is a nestrobber I have no evidence, but that feline mew of hers, and that flirting,

Probably the darkest tragedy of the nest is enacted when a snake plunders it. All birds and animals, so far I

have observed, behave in a peculiar manner toward a snake. They seem to feel something of the loathing

toward it that the human species experiences. The bark of a dog when he encounters a snake is different from

that which he gives out on any other occasion; it is a mingled note of alarm, inquiry, and disgust.

One day a tragedy was enacted a few yards from where I was sitting with a book; two songsparrows trying

to defend their nest against a black snake. The curious, interrogating note of a chicken who had suddenly

come upon the scene in his walk caused me to look up from my reading. There were the sparrows, with wings

raised in a way peculiarly expressive of horror and dismay, rushing about a low clump of grass and bushes.

Then, looking more closely, I saw the glistening form of the black snake and the quick movement of his head

as he tried to seize the birds. The sparrows darted about and through the grass and weeds, trying to beat the

snake off. Their tails and wings were spread, and, panting with the heat and the desperate struggle, they

presented a most singular spectacle. They uttered no cry, not a sound escaped them; they were plainly

speechless with horror and dismay. Not once did they drop their wings, and the peculiar expression of those

uplifted palms, as it were, I shall never forget. It occurred to me that perhaps here was a case of attempted

birdcharming on the part of the snake, so I looked on from behind the fence. The birds charged the snake

and harassed him from every side, but were evidently under no spell save that of courage in defending their

nest. Every moment or two I could see the head and neck of the serpent make a sweep at the birds, when the

one struck at would fall back, and the other would renew the assault from the rear. There appeared to be little

danger that the snake could strike and hold one of the birds, though I rembled for them, they were so bold and

approached so near to the snake's head. Time and again he sprang at them, but without success. How the poor

things panted, and held up their wings appealingly! Then the snake glided off to the near fence, barely

escaping the stone which I hurled at him. I found the nest rifled and deranged; whether it had contained eggs

or young I know not. The male sparrow had cheered me many a day with his song, and I blamed myself for

not having rushed at once to the rescue, when the arch enemy was upon him. There is probably little truth in

the popular notion that snakes charm birds. The black snake is the most subtle, alert, and devilish of our

snakes, and I have never seen him have any but young, helpless birds in his mouth.

We have one parasitical bird, the cowbird, socalled because it walks about amid the grazing cattle and

seizes the insects which their heavy tread sets going, which is an enemy of most of the smaller birds. It drops

its egg in the nest of the songsparrow, the social sparrow, the snowbird, the vireos, and the

woodwarblers, and as a rule it is the only egg in the nest that issues successfully. Either the eggs of the

rightful owner of the nest are not hatched, or else the young are overridden and overreached by the parasite

Among the worst enemies of our birds are the socalled "collectors," men who plunder nests and murder

their owners in the name of science. Not the genuine ornithologist, for no one is more careful of squandering

bird life than he; but the sham ornithologist, the man whose vanity or affectation happens to take an

ornithological turn. He is seized with an itching for a collection of eggs and birds because it happens to be the

fashion, or because it gives him the air of a man of science. But in the majority of cases the motive is a

mercenary one; the collector expects to sell these spoils of the groves and orchards. Robbing the nests and

killing birds becomes a business with him. He goes about it systematically, and becomes expert in

circumventing and slaying our songsters. Every town of any considerable size is infested with one or more of

these bird highwaymen, and every nest in the country round about that the wretches can lay hands on is

harried. Their professional term for a nest of eggs is "a clutch," a word that well expresses the work of their

grasping, murderous fingers. They clutch and destroy in the germ the life and music of the woodlands.

Certain of our natural history journals are mainly organs of communication between these human weasels.

They record their exploits at nestrobbing and birdslaying in their columns. One collector tells with gusto

how he "worked his way" through an orchard, ransacking every tree, and leaving, as he believed, not one nest

behind him. He had better not be caught working his way through my orchard. Another gloats over the

number of Connecticut warblersa rare birdhe killed in one season in Massachusetts. Another tells how a

mockingbird appeared in southern New England and was hunted down by himself and friend, its eggs

"clutched," and the bird killed. Who knows how much the bird lovers of New England lost by that foul deed?

The progeny of the birds would probably have returned to Connecticut to breed, and their progeny, or a part

of them, the same, till in time the famous songster would have become a regular visitant to New England. In

the same journal still another collector describes minutely how he outwitted three humming birds and

captured their nests and eggs,a clutch he was very proud of. A Massachusetts bird harrier boasts of his

clutch of the egg's of that dainty little warbler, the blue yellowback. One season he took two sets, the next

five sets, the next four sets, besides some single eggs, and the next season four sets, and says he might have

found more had he had more time. One season he took, in about twenty days, three from one tree. I have

heard of a collector who boasted of having taken one hundred sets of the eggs of the marsh wren, in a single

day; of another, who took in the same time, thirty nests of the yellowbreasted chat; and of still another, who

claimed to have taken one thousand sets of eggs of different birds in one season. A large business has grown

up under the influence of this collecting craze. One dealer in eggs has those of over five hundred species. He

says that his business in 1883 was twice that of 1882; in 1884 it was twice that of 1883, and so on. Collectors

vie with each other in the extent and variety of their cabinets. They not only obtain eggs in sets, but aim to

have a number of sets of the same bird so as to show all possible variations. I hear of a private collection that

contains twelve sets of kingbirds' eggs, eight sets of housewrens' eggs, four sets mockingbirds' eggs, etc.;

sets of eggs taken in low trees, high trees, medium trees; spotted sets, dark sets, plain sets, and light sets of

Thus are our birds hunted and cut off and all in the name of science; as if science had not long ago finished

with these birds. She has weighed and measured, and dissected, and described them, and their nests, and eggs,

and placed them in her cabinet; and the interest of science and of humanity now demands that this wholesale

nestrobbing cease. These incidents I have given above, it is true, are but drops in the bucket, but the bucket

would be more than full if we could get all the facts. Where one man publishes his notes, hundreds, perhaps

It is true that the student of ornithology often feels compelled to take birdlife. It is not an easy matter to

"name all the birds without a gun," though an operaglass will often render identification entirely certain, and

leave the songster unharmed; but once having mastered the birds, the true ornithologist leaves his gun at

home. This view of the case may not be agreeable to that desiccated mortal called the "closet naturalist," but

for my own part the closet naturalist is a person with whom I have very little sympathy. He is about the most

wearisome and profitless creature in existence. With his piles of skins, his cases of eggs, his laborious

feathersplitting, and his outlandish nomenclature, he is not only the enemy of the birds but the enemy of all

Not the collectors alone are to blame for the diminishing numbers of our wild birds, but a large share of the

responsibility rests upon quite a different class of persons, namely, the milliners. False taste in dress is as

destructive to our feathered friends as are false aims in science. It is said that the traffic in the skins of our

brighter plumaged birds, arising from their use by the milliners, reaches to hundreds of thousands annually. I

am told of one middleman who collected from the shooters in one district, in four months, seventy thousand

skins. It is a barbarous taste that craves this kind of ornamentation. Think of a woman or girl of real

refinement appearing upon the street with her head gear adorned with the scalps of our songsters!

It is probably true that the number of our birds destroyed by man is but a small percentage of the number cut

off by their natural enemies; but it is to be remembered that those he destroys are in addition to those thus cut

off, and that it is this extra or artificial destruction that disturbs the balance of nature. The operation of natural

causes keeps the birds in check, but the greed of the collectors and milliners tends to their extinction.

I can pardon a man who wishes to make a collection of eggs and birds for his own private use, if he will

content himself with one or two specimens of a kind, though he will find any collection much less

satisfactory and less valuable than he imagines, but the professional nestrobber and skin collector should be

I have remarked above that there is probably very little truth in the popular notion that snakes can "charm"

birds. But two of my correspondents have each furnished me with an incident from his own experience,

which seems to confirm the popular belief. One of them writes from Georgia as follows:

"Some twentyeight years ago I was in Calaveras County, California, engaged in cutting lumber. One day in

coming out of the camp or cabin, my attention was attracted to the curious action of a quail in the air, which,

instead of flying low and straight ahead as usual, was some fifty feet high, flying in a circle, and uttering cries

of distress. I watched the bird and saw it gradually descend, and following with my eye in a line from the bird

to the ground saw a large snake with head erect and some ten or twelve inches above the ground, and mouth

wide open, and as far as I could see, gazing intently on the quail (I was about thirty feet from the snake). The

quail gradually descended, its circles growing smaller and smaller and all the time uttering cries of distress,

until its feet were within two or three inches of the mouth of the snake; when I threw a stone, and though not

hitting the snake, yet struck the ground so near as to frighten him, and he gradually started off. The quail,

however, fell to the ground, apparently lifeless. I went forward and picked it up and found it was thoroughly

overcome with fright, its little heart beating as if it would burst through the skin. After holding it in my hand

a few moments it flew away. I then tried to find the snake, but could not. I am unable to say whether the

snake was venomous or belonged to the constricting family, like the black snake. I can well recollect it was

large and moved off rather slow. As I had never seen anything of the kind before, it made a great impression

on my mind, and after the lapse of so long a time, the incident appears as vivid to me as though it had

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

The other incident comes to me from Vermont. "While returning from church in 1876," says the writer, "as I

was crossing a bridge... I noticed a striped snake in the act of charming a songsparrow. They were both

upon the sand beneath the bridge. The snake kept his head swaying slowly from side to side, and darted his

tongue out continually. The bird, not over a foot away, was facing the snake, hopping from one foot to the

other, and uttering a dissatisfied little chirp. I watched them till the snake seized the bird, having gradually

drawn nearer. As he seized it, I leaped over the side of the bridge; the snake glided away and I took up the

bird, which he had dropped. It was too frightened to try to fly and I carried it nearly a mile before it flew from

If these observers are quite sure of what they saw, then undoubtedly snakes have the power to draw birds

within their grasp. I remember that my mother told me that while gathering wild strawberries she had on one

occasion come upon a bird fluttering about the head of a snake as if held there by a spell. On her appearance,

the snake lowered its head and made off, and the panting bird flew away. A neighbor of mine killed a black

snake which had swallowed a fullgrown red squirrel, probably captured by the same power of fascination.

The life of the birds, especially of our migratory songbirds, is a series of adventures and of hairbreadth

escapes by flood and field. Very few of them probably die a natural death, or even live out half their

appointed days. The home instinct is strong in birds as it is in most creatures; and I am convinced that every

spring a large number of those which have survived the Southern campaign return to their old haunts to

breed. A Connecticut farmer took me out under his porch, one April day, and showed me a phoebe bird's nest

six stories high. The same bird had no doubt returned year after year; and as there was room for only one nest

upon her favorite shelf, she had each season reared a new superstructure upon the old as a foundation. I have

heard of a white robinan albinothat nested several years in succession in the suburbs of a Maryland city.

A sparrow with a very marked peculiarity of song I have heard several seasons in my own locality. But the

birds do not all live to return to their old haunts: the bobolinks and starlings run a gauntlet of fire from the

Hudson to the Savannah, and the robins and meadowlarks and other songbirds are shot by boys and

pothunters in great numbers,to say nothing of their danger from hawks and owls. But of those that do

return, what perils beset their nests, even in the most favored localities! The cabins of the early settlers, when

the country was swarming with hostile Indians, were not surrounded by such dangers. The tender households

of the birds are not only exposed to hostile Indians in the shape of cats and collectors, but to numerous

murderous and bloodthirsty animals, against whom they have no defense but concealment. They lead the

darkest kind of pioneer life, even in our gardens and orchards, and under the walls of our houses. Not a day or

a night passes, from the time the eggs are laid till the young are flown, when the chances are not greatly in

favor of the nest being rifled and its contents devoured,by owls, skunks, minks, and coons at night, and by

crows, jays, squirrels, weasels, snakes, and rats during the day. Infancy, we say, is hedged about by many

perils; but the infancy of birds is cradled and pillowed in peril. An old Michigan settler told me that the first

six children that were born to him died; malaria and teething invariably carried them off when they had

reached a certain age; but other children were born, the country improved, and by and by the babies

weathered the critical period and the next six lived and grew up. The birds, too, would no doubt persevere six

times and twice six times, if the season were long enough, and finally rear their family, but the waning

summer cuts them short, and but a few species have the heart and strength to make even the third trial.

The first nestbuilders in spring, like the first settlers near hostile tribes, suffer the most casualties. A large

portion of the nests of April and May are destroyed; their enemies have been many months without eggs and

their appetites are keen for them. It is a time, too, when other food is scarce, and the crows and squirrels are

hard put. But the second nests of June, and still more the nests of July and August, are seldom molested. It is

My neighborhood on the Hudson is perhaps exceptionally unfavorable as a breeding haunt for birds, owing to

the abundance of fishcrows and of red squirrels; and the season of which this chapter is mainly a chronicle,

the season of 1881, seems to have been a blackletter one even for this place, for at least nine nests out of

every ten that I observed during that spring and summer failed of their proper issue. >From the first nest I

noted, which was that of a bluebird,built (very imprudently I thought at the time) in a squirrelhole in a

decayed appletree, about the last of April, and which came to naught, even the motherbird, I suspect,

perishing by a violent death,to the last, which was that of a snowbird, observed in August, among the

Catskills, deftly concealed in a mossy bank by the side of a road that skirted a wood, where the tall thimble

blackberries grew in abundance, from which the last young one was taken, when it was about half grown, by

some nocturnal walker or daylight prowler, some untoward fate seemed hovering about them. It was a season

of calamities, of violent deaths, of pillage and massacre, among our feathered neighbors. For the first time I

noticed that the orioles were not safe in their strong, pendent nests. Three broods were started in the

appletrees, only a few yards from the house, where, for previous seasons, the birds had nested without

molestation; but this time the young were all destroyed when about half grown. Their chirping and chattering,

which was so noticeable one day, suddenly ceased the next. The nests were probably plundered at night, and

doubtless by the little red screechowl, which I know is a denizen of these old orchards, living in the deeper

cavities of the trees. The owl could alight on the top of the nest, and easily thrust his murderous claw down

into its long pocket and seize the young and draw them forth. The tragedy of one of the nests was heightened,

or at least made more palpable, by one of the halffledged birds, either in its attempt to escape or while in the

clutches of the enemy, being caught and entangled in one of the horsehairs by which the nest was stayed and

held to the limb above. There it hung bruised and dead, gibbeted to its own cradle. This nest was the theatre

of another little tragedy later in the season. Some time in August a bluebird, indulging its propensity to peep

and pry into holes and crevices, alighted upon it and probably inspected the interior; but by some unlucky

move it got its wings entangled in this same fatal horsehair. Its efforts to free itself appeared only to result in

its being more securely and hopelessly bound; and there it perished; and there its form, dried and embalmed

by the summer heats, was yet hanging in September, the outspread wings and plumage showing nearly as

A correspondent writes me that one of his orioles got entangled in a cord while building her nest, and that

though by the aid of a ladder he reached and liberated her, she died soon afterward. He also found a "chippie"

(called also "hair bird") suspended from a branch by a horsehair, beneath a partly constructed nest. I heard

of a cedarbird caught and destroyed in the same way, and of two young bluebirds, around whose legs a

horsehair had become so tightly wound that the legs withered up and dropped off. The birds became

fledged, and left the nest with the others. Such tragedies are probably quite common.

Before the advent of civilization in this country, the oriole probably built a much deeper nest than it usually

does at present. When now it builds in remote trees and along the borders of the woods, its nest, I have

noticed, is long and gourdshaped; but in orchards and near dwellings it is only a deep cup or pouch. It

shortens it up in proportion as the danger lessens. Probably a succession of disastrous years, like the one

under review, would cause it to lengthen it again beyond the reach of owl's talons or jaybird's beak.

The first songsparrow's nest I observed in the spring of 1881 was in the field under a fragment of a board,

the board being raised from the ground a couple of inches by two poles. It had its full complement of eggs,

and probably sent forth a brood of young birds, though as to this I cannot speak positively, as I neglected to

observe it further. It was well sheltered and concealed, and was not easily come at by any of its natural

enemies, save snakes and weasels. But concealment often avails little. In May, a songsparrow, that had

evidently met with disaster earlier in the season, built its nest in a thick mass of woodbine against the side of

my house, about fifteen feet from the ground. Perhaps it took the hint from its cousin, the English sparrow.

The nest was admirably placed, protected from the storms by the overhanging eaves and from all eyes by the

thick screen of leaves. Only by patiently watching the suspicious bird, as she lingered near with food in her

beak, did I discover its whereabouts. That brood is safe, I thought, beyond doubt. But it was not; the nest was

pillaged one night, either by an owl, or else by a rat that had climbed into the vine, seeking an entrance to the

house. The motherbird, after reflecting upon her illluck about a week, seemed to resolve to try a different

system of tactics and to throw all appearances of concealment aside. She built a nest few yards from the

house beside the drive, upon a smooth piece of greensward. There was not a weed or a shrub or anything

whatever to conceal it or mark its site. The structure was completed and incubation had begun before I

discovered what was going on. "Well, well," I said, looking down upon the bird almost at my feet, "this is

going to the other extreme indeed; now, the cats will have you." The desperate little bird sat there day after

day, looking like a brown leaf pressed down in the short green grass. As the weather grew hot, her position

became very trying. It was no longer a question of keeping the eggs warm, but of keeping them from

roasting. The sun had no mercy on her, and she fairly panted in the middle of the day. In such an emergency

the male robin has been known to perch above the sitting female and shade her with his outstretched wings.

But in this case there was no perch for the male bird, had he been disposed to make a sunshade of himself. I

thought to lend a hand in this direction myself, and so stuck a leafy twig beside the nest. This was probably

an unwise interference; it guided disaster to the spot; the nest was broken up, and the motherbird was

For several previous summers a pair of kingbirds had reared, unmolested, a brood of young in an appletree,

only a few yards from the house; but during this season disaster overtook them also. The nest was completed,

the eggs laid, and incubation had begun, when, one morning about sunrise, I heard cries of distress and alarm

proceed from the old appletree. Looking out of the window I saw a crow, which I knew to be a fishcrow,

perched upon the edge of the nest, hastily bolting the eggs. The parent birds, usually so ready for the attack,

seemed overcome with grief and alarm. They fluttered about in the most helpless and bewildered manner,

and it was not till the robber fled on my approach that they recovered themselves and charged upon him. The

crow scurried away with upturned, threatening head, the furious kingbirds fairly upon his back. The pair

lingered around their desecrated nest for several days, almost silent, and saddened by their loss, and then

The fishcrow only fishes when it has destroyed all the eggs and young birds it can find. It is the most

despicable thief and robber among our feathered creatures. From May to August, it is gorged with the

fledglings of the nest. It is fortunate that its range is so limited. In size it is smaller than the common crow,

and is a much less noble and dignified bird. Its caw is weak and femininea sort of split and abortive caw,

that stamps it the sneakthief it is. This crow is common farther south, but is not found in this State, so far as

One season a pair of them built a nest in a Norway Spruce that stood amid a dense growth of other

ornamental trees near a large unoccupied house. They sat down amid plenty. The wolf established himself in

the fold. The many birdsrobins, thrushes, finches, vireos, pewees that seek the vicinity of dwellings

(especially of these large country residences with their many trees and parklike grounds), for the greater

safety of their eggs and young, were the easy and convenient victims of these robbers. They plundered right

and left, and were not disturbed till their young were nearly fledged, when some boys, who had long before

The songbirds nearly all build low; their cradle is not upon the treetop. It is only birds of prey that fear

danger from below more than from above, and that seek the higher branches for their nests. A line five feet

from the ground would run above more than half the nests, and one ten feet would bound more than three

fourths of them. It is only the oriole and the wood pewee that, as a rule, go higher than this. The crows and

jays and other enemies of the birds have learned to explore this belt pretty thoroughly. But the leaves and the

protective coloring of most nests baffle them as effectually, no doubt as they do the professional o�logist. The

nest of the redeyed vireo is one of the most artfully placed in the wood. It is just beyond the point where the

eye naturally pauses in its search; namely, on the extreme end of the lowest branch of the tree, usually four or

five feet from the ground. One looks up and down through the tree,shoots his eyebeams into it as he

might discharge his gun at some game hidden there, but the drooping tip of that low horizontal branchwho

would think of pointing his piece just there? If a crow or other marauder were to alight upon the branch or

upon those above it, the nest would be screened from him by the large leaf that usually forms a canopy

immediately above it. The nesthunter standing at the foot of the tree and looking straight before him, might

discover it easily, were it not for its soft, neutral gray tint which blends so thoroughly with the trunks and

branches of trees. Indeed, I think there is no nest in the woodsno arboreal nestso well concealed. The

last one I saw was a pendent from the end of a low branch of a maple, that nearly grazed the clapboards of an

unused haybarn in a remote backwoods clearing. I peeped through a crack and saw the old birds feed the

nearly fledged young within a few inches of my face. And yet the cowbird finds this nest and drops her

parasitical egg in it. Her tactics in this as in other cases are probably to watch the movements of the parent

bird. She may often be seen searching anxiously through the trees or bushes for a suitable nest, yet she may

still oftener be seen perched upon some good point of observation watching the birds as they come and go

about her. There is no doubt that, in many cases, the cowbird makes room for her own illegitimate egg in

the nest by removing one of the bird's own. When the cowbird finds two or more eggs in a nest in which she

wishes to deposit her own, she will remove one of them. I found a sparrow's nest with two sparrow's eggs and

one cowbird's egg, another egg lying a foot or so below it on the ground. I replaced the ejected egg, and the

next day found it again removed, and another cowbird's egg in its place; I put it back the second time, when

it was again ejected, or destroyed, for I failed to find it anywhere. Very alert and sensitive birds like the

warblers often bury the strange egg beneath a second nest built on top of the old. A lady, living in the suburbs

of an eastern city, one morning heard cries of distress from a pair of housewrens that had a nest in a

honeysuckle on her front porch. On looking out of the window, she beheld this little comedycomedy from

her point of view, but no doubt grimtragedy from the point of view of the wrens; a cowbird with a wren's

egg in its beak running rapidly along the walk with the outraged wrens forming a procession behind it,

screaming, scolding, and gesticulating as only these voluble little birds can. The cowbird had probably been

surprised in the act of violating the nest, and the wrens were giving her a piece of theirs minds.

Every cowbird is reared at the expense of two or more songbirds. For every one of these dusky little

pedestrians there amid the grazing cattle there are two more sparrows, or vireos, or warblers, the less. It is a

big price to paytwo larks for a buntingtwo sovereigns for a shilling; but Nature does not hesitate

occasionally to contradict herself in just this way. The young of the cowbird is disproportionately large and

aggressive, one might say hoggish. When disturbed it will clasp the nest and scream, and snap its beak

threateningly. One hatched out in a songsparrow's nest which was under my observation, and would soon

have overridden and overborne the young sparrow, which came out of the shell a few hours later, had I not

interfered from time to time and lent the young sparrow a helping hand. Every day I would visit the nest and

take the sparrow out from under the potbellied interloper and place it on top so that presently it was able to

hold its own against its enemy. Both birds became fledged and left the nest about the same time. Whether the

I noted but two warblers' nests during that season, one of the blackthroated blueback and one of the

redstart,the latter built in an appletree but a few yards from a little rustic summerhouse where I idle

away many summer days. The lively little birds, darting and flashing about, attracted my attention for a week

before I discovered their nest. They probably built it by working early in the morning, before I appeared upon

the scene, as I never saw them with material in their beaks. Guessing from their movements that the nest was

in a large maple that stood near by, I climbed the tree and explored it thoroughly, looking especially in the

forks of the branches, as the authorities say these birds build in a fork. But no nest could I find. Indeed, how

can one by searching find a bird's nest? I overshot the mark; the nest was much nearer me, almost under my

very nose, and I discovered it, not by searching but by a casual glance of the eye, while thinking of other

matters. The bird was just settling upon it as I looked up from my book and caught her in the act. The nest

was built near the end of a long, knotty, horizontal branch of an appletree, but effectually hidden by the

grouping of the leaves; it had three eggs, one of which proved to be barren. The two young birds grew apace,

and were out of the nest early in the second week; but something caught one of them the first night. The other

probably grew to maturity, as it disappeared from the vicinity with its parents after some days.

The blueback's nest was scarcely a foot from the ground, in a little bush situated in a low, dense wood of

hemlock and beech and maple, amid the Catskills,a deep, massive, elaborate structure, in which the sitting

bird sank till her beak and tail alone were visible above the brim. It was a misty, chilly day when I chanced to

find the nest, and the motherbird knew instinctively that it was not prudent to leave her four half incubated

eggs uncovered and exposed for a moment. When I sat down near the nest she grew very uneasy, and after

trying in vain to decoy me away by suddenly dropping from the branches and dragging herself over the

ground as if mortally wounded, she approached and timidly and half doubtingly covered her eggs within two

yards of where I sat. I disturbed her several times to note her ways. There came to be something almost

appealing in her looks and manner, and she would keep her place on her precious eggs till my outstretched

hand was within a few feet of her. Finally, I covered the cavity of the nest with a dry leaf. This she did not

remove with her beak, but thrust her head deftly beneath it and shook it off upon the ground. Many of her

sympathizing neighbors, attracted by her alarm note, came and had a peep at the intruder and then flew away,

but the male bird did not appear upon the scene. The final history of this nest I am unable to give, as I did not

Years pass without my finding a brownthrasher's nest; it is not a nest you are likely to stumble upon in your

walk; it is hidden as a miser hides his gold, and watched as jealously. The male pours out his rich and

triumphant song from the tallest tree he can find, and fairly challenges you to come and look for his treasures

in his vicinity. But you will not find them if you go. The nest is somewhere on the outer circle of his song; he

is never so imprudent as to take up his stand very near it. The artists who draw those cosy little pictures of a

brooding motherbird with the male perched but a yard away in full song, do not copy from nature. The

thrasher's nest I found thirty or forty rods from the point where the male was wont to indulge in his brilliant

recitative. It was in an open field under a low groundjuniper. My dog disturbed the sitting bird as I was

passing near. The nest could be seen only by lifting up and parting away the branches. All the arts of

concealment had been carefully studied. It was the last place you would think of looking, and, if you did look,

nothing was visible but the dense green circle of the lowspreading juniper. When you approached, the bird

would keep her place till you had begun to stir the branches, when she would start out, and, just skimming the

ground, make a bright brown line to the near fence and bushes. I confidently expected that this nest would

escape molestation, but it did not. Its discovery by myself and dog probably opened the door for ill luck, as

one day, not long afterward, when I peeped in upon it, it was empty. The proud song of the male had ceased

The phoebebird is a wise architect, and perhaps enjoys as great an immunity from danger, both in its person

and its nest, as any other bird. Its modest, ashengray suit is the color of the rocks where it builds, and the

moss of which it makes such free use gives to its nest the look of a natural growth or accretion. But when it

comes into the barn or under the shed to build, as it so frequently does, the moss is rather out of place.

Doubtless in time the bird will take the hint, and when she builds in such places will leave the moss out. I

noted but two nests, the summer I am speaking of: one, in a barn, failed of issue, on account of the rats, I

suspect, though the little owl may have been the depredator; the other, in the woods, sent forth three young.

This latter nest was most charmingly and ingeniously placed. I discovered it while in quest of pondlilies, in

a long, deep level stretch of water in the woods. A large tree had blown over at the edge of the water, and its

dense mass of upturned roots, with the black, peaty soil filling the interstices, was like the fragment of a

wall several feet high, rising from the edge of the languid current. In a niche in this earthy wall, and visible

and accessible only from the water, a phoebe had built her nest, and reared her brood. I paddled my boat up

and came alongside prepared to take the family aboard. The young, nearly ready to fly, were quite

undisturbed by my presence, having probably been assured that no danger need be apprehended from that

side. It was not a likely place for minks, or they would not have been so secure.

I noted but one nest of the wood pewee, and that, too, like so many other nests, failed of issue. It was saddled

upon a small dry limb of a planetree that stood by the roadside, about forty feet from the ground. Every day

for nearly a week, as I passed by I saw the sitting bird upon the nest. Then one morning she was not in her

place, and on examination the nest proved to be emptyrobbed, I had no doubt, by the red squirrels, as they

were very abundant in its vicinity, and appeared to make a clean sweep of every nest. The wood pewee builds

an exquisite nest, shaped and finished as if cast in a mould. It is modeled without and within with equal

neatness and art, like the nest of the hummingbird and the little gray gnatcatcher. The material is much

more refractory than that used by either of these birds, being, in the present case, dry, fine cedar twigs; but

these were bound into a shape as rounded and compact as could be moulded out of the most plastic material.

Indeed, the nest of this bird looks precisely like a large, lichencovered, cupshaped excrescence of the limb

upon which it is placed. And the bird, while sitting, seems entirely at ease. Most birds seem to make very

hard work of incubation. It is a kind of martyrdom which appears to tax all their powers of endurance. They

have such a fixed, rigid, predetermined look, pressed down into the nest and as motionless as if made of

castiron. But the wood pewee is an exception. She is largely visible above the rim of the nest. Her attitude is

easy and graceful; she moves her head this way and that, and seems to take note of whatever goes on about

her; and if her neighbor were to drop in for a little social chat, she could doubtless do her part. In fact, she

makes light and easy work of what, to most other birds, is such a serious and engrossing matter. If it does not

look like play with her, it at least looks like leisure and quiet contemplation.

There is no nestbuilder that suffers more from crows and squirrels and other enemies than the woodthrush.

It builds as openly and unsuspiciously as if it thought the whole world as honest as itself. Its favorite place is

the fork of a sapling, eight or ten feet from the ground, where it falls an easy prey to every nestrobber that

comes prowling through the woods and groves. It is not a bird that skulks and hides, like the catbird, the

brownthrasher, the chat, or the cheewink, and its nest is not concealed with the same art as theirs. Our

thrushes are all frank, openmannered birds; but the veery and the hermit build upon the ground, where they

at least escape the crows, owls, and jays, and stand a better chance to be overlooked, by the red squirrel and

weasel also; while the robin seeks the protection of dwellings and outbuildings. For years I have not known

the nest of a woodthrush to succeed. During the season referred to I observed but two, both apparently a

second attempt, as the season was well advanced, and both failures. In one case, the nest was placed in a

branch that an apple tree, standing near a dwelling, held out over the highway. The structure was barely ten

feet above the middle of the road, and would just escape a passing load of hay. It was made conspicuous by

the use of a large fragment of newspaper in its foundationan unsafe material to build upon in most cases.

Whatever else the press may guard, this particular newspaper did not guard this nest from harm. It saw the

egg and probably the chick, but not the fledgeling. A murderous deed was committed above the public

highway, but whether in the open day or under cover of darkness I have no means of knowing. The frisky red

squirrel was doubtless the culprit. The other nest was in a maple sapling, within a few yards of the little rustic

summerhouse already referred to. The first attempt of the season, I suspect, had failed in a more secluded

place under the hill; so the pair had come up nearer the house for protection. The male sang in the trees near

by for several days before I chanced to see the nest. The very morning, I think, it was finished, I saw a red

squirrel exploring a tree but a few yards away; he probably knew what the singing meant as well as I did. I

did not see the inside of the nest, for it was almost instantly deserted, the female having probably laid a single

If I were a bird, in building my nest I should follow the example of the bobolink, placing it in the midst of a

broad meadow, where there was no spear of grass, or flower or growth unlike another to mark its site. I judge

that the bobolink escapes the dangers to which I have adverted as few or no other birds do. Unless the

mowers come along at an earlier date than she has anticipated, that is, before July lst, or a skunk goes nosing

through the grass, which is unusual, she is as safe as bird well can be in the great open of nature. She selects

the most monotonous and uniform place she can find amid the daisies or the timothy and clover, and places

her simple structure upon the ground in the midst of it. There is no concealment, except as the great conceals

the little, as the desert conceals the pebble, as the myriad conceals the unit. You may find the nest once, if

your course chances to lead you across it and your eye is quick enough to note the silent brown bird as she

darts quickly away; but step three paces in the wrong direction, and your search will probably be fruitless.

My friend and I found a nest by accident one day, and then lost it again one minute afterward. I moved away

a few yards to be sure of the motherbird, charging my friend not to stir from his tracks. When I returned, he

had moved two paces, he said (he had really moved four), and we spent a half hour stooping over the daisies

and the buttercups, looking for the lost clew. We grew desperate, and fairly felt the ground all over with our

hands, but without avail. I marked the spot with a bush, and came the next day, and with the bush as a centre,

moved about it in slowly increasing circles, covering, I thought, nearly every inch of ground with my feet,

and laying hold of it with all the visual power that I could command, till my patience was exhausted, and I

gave up, baffled. I began to doubt the ability of the parent birds themselves to find it, and so secreted myself

and watched. After much delay, the male bird appeared with food in his beak, and satisfying himself that the

coast was clear, dropped into the grass which I had trodden down in my search. Fastening my eye upon a

particular meadowlily, I walked straight to the spot, bent down, and gazed long and intently into the grass.

Finally my eye separated the nest and its young from its surroundings. My foot had barely missed them in my

search, but by how much they had escaped my eye I could not tell. Probably not by distance at all, but simply

by unrecognition. They were virtually invisible. The dark gray and yellowish brown dry grass and stubble of

the meadowbottom were exactly copied in the color of the halffledged young. More than that, they hugged

the nest so closely and formed such a compact mass, that though there were five of them, they preserved the

unit of expression,no single head or form was defined; they were one, and that one was without shape or

color, and not separable, except by closest scrutiny, from the one of the meadowbottom. That nest

prospered, as bobolinks' nests doubtless generally do; for, notwithstanding the enormous slaughter of the

birds during their fall migrations by Southern sportsmen, the bobolink appears to hold its own, and its music

Birds with whom the struggle for life is the sharpest seem to be more prolific than those whose nest and

young are exposed to fewer dangers. The robin, the sparrow, the pewee, etc., will rear, or make the attempt to

rear, two and sometimes three broods in a season; but the bobolink, the oriole, the kingbird, the goldfinch, the

cedarbird, the birds of prey, and the woodpeckers, that build in safe retreats, in the trunks of trees, have

usually but a single brood. If the boblink reared two broods, our meadows would swarm with them.

I noted three nests of the cedarbird in August in a single orchard, all productive, but all with one or more

unfruitful eggs in them. The cedarbird is the most silent of our birds having but a single fine note, so far as I

have observed, but its manners are very expressive at times. No bird known to me is capable of expressing so

much silent alarm while on the nest as this bird. As you ascend the tree and draw near it, it depresses its

plumage and crest, stretches up its neck, and becomes the very picture of fear. Other birds, under like

circumstances, hardly change their expression at all till they launch into the air, when by their voice they

I have referred to the red squirrel as a destroyer of the eggs and young of birds. I think the mischief it does in

this respect can hardly be over estimated. Nearly all birds look upon it as their enemy, and attack and annoy it

when it appears near their breeding haunts. Thus, I have seen the pewee, the cuckoo, the robin, and the

woodthrush pursuing it with angry voice and gestures. A friend of mine saw a pair of robins attack one in

the top of a tall tree so vigorously that they caused it to lose its hold, when it fell to the ground, and was so

stunned by the blow as to allow him to pick it up. If you wish the birds to breed and thrive in your orchard

and groves, kill every red squirrel that infests the place; kill every weasel also. The weasel is a subtle and

arch enemy of the birds. It climbs trees and explores them with great ease and nimbleness. I have seen it do

so on several occasions. One day my attention was arrested by the angry notes of a pair of brownthrashers

that were flitting from bush to bush along an old stone row in a remote field. Presently I saw what it was that

excited themthree large red weasels, or ermines coming along the stone wall, and leisurely and half

playfully exploring every tree that stood near it. They had probably robbed the thrashers. They would go up

the trees with great ease, and glide serpentlike out upon the main branches. When they descended the tree

they were unable to come straight down, like a squirrel, but went around it spirally. How boldly they thrust

their heads out of the wall, and eyed me and sniffed me, as I drew near,their round, thin ears, their

prominent, glistening, beadlike eyes, and the curving, snakelike motions of the head and neck being very

noticeable. They looked like bloodsuckers and eggsuckers. They suggested something extremely

remorseless and cruel. One could understand the alarm of the rats when they discover one of these fearless,

subtle, and circumventing creatures threading their holes. To flee must be like trying to escape death itself. I

was one day standing in the woods upon a flat stone, in what at certain seasons was the bed of a stream, when

one of these weasels came undulating along and ran under the stone upon which I was standing. As I

remained motionless, he thrust his wedgeshaped head, and turned it back above the stone as if half in mind

to seize my foot; then he drew back, and presently went his way. These weasels often hunt in packs like the

British stoat. When I was a boy, my father one day armed me with an old musket and sent me to shoot

chipmunks around the corn. While watching the squirrels, a troop of weasels tried to cross a barway where I

sat, and were so bent on doing it that I fired at them, boylike, simply to thwart their purpose. One of the

weasels was disabled by my shot, but the troop was not discouraged, and, after making several feints to cross,

one of them seized the wounded one and bore it over, and the pack disappeared in the wall on the other side.

Let me conclude this chapter with two or three notes about this alert enemy of the birds and the lesser

A farmer one day heard a queer growling sound in the grass; on approaching the spot he saw two weasels

contending over a mouse; each had hold of the mouse pulling in opposite directions, and were so absorbed in

the struggle that the farmer cautiously put his hands down and grabbed them both by the back of the neck. He

put them in a cage, and offered them bread and other food. This they refused to eat, but in a few days one of

them had eaten the other up, picking his bones clean and leaving nothing but the skeleton.

The same farmer was one day in his cellar when two rats came out of a hole near him in great haste, and ran

up the cellar wall and along its top till they came to a floor timber that stopped their progress, when they

turned at bay, and looked excitedly back along the course they had come. In a moment a weasel, evidently in

hot pursuit of them, came out of the hole, and seeing the farmer, checked his course and darted back. The rats

had doubtless turned to give him fight, and would probably have been a match for him.

The weasel seems to track its game by scent. A hunter of my acquaintance was one day sitting in the woods,

when he saw a red squirrel run with great speed up a tree near him, and out upon a long branch, from which

he leaped to some rocks, and disappeared beneath them. In a moment a weasel came in fu1l course upon his

trail, ran up the tree, then out along the branch, from the end of which he leaped to the rocks as the squirrel

Doubtless the squirrel fell a prey to him. The squirrel's best game would have been to have kept to the higher

treetops, where he could easily have distanced the weasel. But beneath the rocks he stood a very poor

chance. I have often wondered what keeps such an animal as the weasel in check, for weasels are quite rare.

They never need go hungry, for rats and squirrels and mice and birds are everywhere. They probably do not

fall a prey to any other animal, and very rarely to man. But the circumstances or agencies that check the

increase of any species of animal are, as Darwin says, very obscure and but little known.

There is no creature with which man has surrounded himself that seems so much like a product of

civilization, so much like the result of development on special lines and in special fields, as the honeybee.

Indeed, a colony of bees, with their neatness and love of order, their division of labor, their public

spiritedness, their thrift, their complex economies and their inordinate love of gain, seems as far removed

from a condition of rude nature as does a walled city or a cathedral town. Our native bee, on the other hand,

"the burly, dozing humblebee," affects one more like the rude, untutored savage. He has learned nothing

from experience. He lives from hand to mouth. He luxuriates in time of plenty, and he starves in times of

scarcity. He lives in a rude nest or in a hole in the ground, and in small communities; he builds a few deep

cells or sacks in which he stores a little honey and beebread for his young, but as a worker in wax he is of

the most primitive and awkward. The Indian regarded the honeybee as an illomen. She was the white

man's fly. In fact she was the epitome of the white man himself. She has the white man's craftiness, his

industry, his architectural skill, his neatness and love of system, his foresight; and above all his eager, miserly

habits. The honeybee's great ambition is to be rich, to lay up great stores, to possess the sweet of every flower

that blooms. She is more than provident. Enough will not satisfy her, she must have all she can get by hook or

by crook. She comes from the oldest country, Asia, and thrives best in the most fertile and longsettled lands.

Yet the fact remains that the honeybee is essentially a wild creature, and never has been and cannot be

thoroughly domesticated. Its proper home is the woods, and thither every new swarm counts on going; and

thither many do go in spite of the care and watchfulness of the beekeeper. If the woods in any given locality

are deficient in trees with suitable cavities, the bees resort to all sorts of makeshifts; they go into chimneys,

into barns and outhouses, under stones, into rocks, and so forth. Several chimneys in my locality with disused

flues are taken possession of by colonies of bees nearly every season. One day, while beehunting, I

developed a line that went toward a farmhouse where I had reason to believe no bees were kept. I followed

it up and questioned the farmer about his bees. He said he kept no bees, but that a swarm had taken

possession of his chimney, and another had gone under the clapboards in the gable end of his house. He had

taken a large lot of honey out of both places the year before. Another farmer told me that one day his family

had seen a number of bees examining a knothole in the side of his house; the next day as they were sitting

down to dinner their attention was attracted by a loud humming noise, when they discovered a swarm of bees

settling upon the side of the house and pouring into the knothole. In subsequent years other swarms came to

Apparently, every swarm of bees before it leaves the parent hive sends out exploring parties to look up the

future home. The woods and groves are searched through and through, and no doubt the privacy of many a

squirrel and many a wood mouse is intruded upon. What cozy nooks and retreats they do spy out, so much

more attractive than the painted hive in the garden, so much cooler in summer and so much warmer in winter!

The bee is in the main an honest citizen; she prefers legitimate to illegitimate business; she is never an outlaw

until her proper sources of supply fail; she will not touch honey as long as honeyyielding flowers can be

found; she always prefers to go to the fountainhead, and dislikes to take her sweets at second hand. But in

the fall, after the flowers have failed, she can be tempted. The beehunter takes advantage of this fact; he

betrays her with a little honey. He wants to steal her stores, and he first encourages her to steal his, then

follows the thief home with her booty. This is the whole trick of the beehunter. The bees never suspect his

game, else by taking a circuitous route they could easily baffle him. But the honeybee has absolutely no wit

or cunning outside of her special gifts as a gatherer and storer of honey. She is a simpleminded creature, and

can be imposed upon by any novice. Yet it is not every novice that can find a beetree. The sportsman may

track his game to its retreat by the aid of his dog, but in hunting the honeybee one must be his own dog, and

track his game through an element in which it leaves no trail. It is a task for a sharp, quick eye, and may test

the resources of the best woodcraft. One autumn when I devoted much time to this pursuit, as the best

means of getting at nature and the openair exhilaration, my eye became so trained that bees were nearly as

easy to it as birds. I saw and heard bees wherever I went. One day, standing on a street corner in a great city, I

saw above the trucks and the traffic a line of bees carrying off sweets from some grocery or confectionery

One looks upon the woods with a new interest when he suspects they hold a colony of bees. What a pleasing

secret it is; a tree with a heart of combhoney, a decayed oak or maple with a bit of Sicily or Mount

Hymettus stowed away in its trunk or branches; secret chambers where lies hidden the wealth of ten thousand

little freebooters, great nuggets and wedges of precious ore gathered with risk and labor from every field and

But if you would know the delights of beehunting, and how many sweets such a trip yields beside honey,

come with me some bright, warm, late September or early October day. It is the golden season of the year,

and any errand or pursuit that takes us abroad upon the hills or by the painted woods and along the amber

colored streams at such a time is enough. So, with haversacks filled with grapes and peaches and apples and a

bottle of milk,for we shall not be home to dinner,and armed with a compass, a hatchet, a pail, and a box

with a piece of combhoney neatly fitted into itany box the size of your hand with a lid will do nearly as

well as the elaborate and ingenious contrivance of the regular beehunterwe sally forth. Our course at first

lies along the highway, under great chestnuttrees whose nuts are just dropping, then through an orchard and

across a little creek, thence gently rising through a long series of cultivated fields toward some high, uplying

land, behind which rises a rugged wooded ridge or mountain, the most sightly point in all this section. Behind

this ridge for several miles the country is wild, wooded, and rocky, and is no doubt the home of many wild

swarms of bees. What a gleeful uproar the robins, cedarbirds, highholes, and cow blackbirds make amid

the black cherrytrees as we pass along. The raccoons, too, have been here after black cherries, and we see

their marks at various points. Several crows are walking about a newly sowed wheat field we pass through,

and we pause to note their graceful movements and glossy coats. I have seen no bird walk the ground with

just the same air the crow does. It is not exactly pride; there is no strut or swagger in it, though perhaps just a

little condescension; it is the contented, complaisant, and selfpossessed gait of a lord over his domains. All

these acres are mine, he says, and all these crops; men plow and sow for me, and I stay here or go there, and

find life sweet and good wherever I am. The hawk looks awkward and out of place on the ground; the game

birds hurry and skulk, but the crow is at home and treads the earth as if there were none to molest him or

The crows we have always with us, but it is not every day or every season that one sees an eagle. Hence I

must preserve the memory of one I saw the last day I went beehunting. As I was laboring up the side of a

mountain at the head of a valley, the noble bird sprang from the top of a dry tree above me and came sailing

directly over my head. I saw him bend his eye down upon me, and I could hear the low hum of his plumage,

as if the web off every quill in his great wings vibrated in his strong, level flight. I watched him as long as my

eye could hold him. When he was fairly clear of the mountain he began that sweeping spiral movement in

which he climbs the sky. Up and up he went without once breaking his majestic poise till be appeared to sight

some faroff alien geography, when he bent his course thitherward and gradually vanished in the blue depths.

The eagle is a bird of large ideas, he embraces long distances; the continent is his home. I never look upon

one without emotion; I follow him with my eye as long as I can. I think of Canada, of the Great Lakes, of the

Rocky Mountains, of the wild and sounding seacoast. The waters are his, and the woods and the

inaccessible cliffs. He pierces behind the veil of the storm, and his joy is height and depth and vast spaces.

We go out of our way to touch at a spring run in the edge of the woods, and are lucky to find a single scarlet

lobelia lingering there. It seems almost to light up the gloom with its intense bit of color. Beside a ditch in a

field beyond we find the great blue lobelia (Lobelia syphilitica), and near it amid the weeds and wild grasses

and purple asters the most beautiful of our fall flowers, the fringed gentian. What a rare and delicate, almost

aristocratic look the gentian has amid its coarse, unkempt surroundings. It does not lure the bee, but it lures

and holds every passing human eye. If we strike through the corner of yonder woods, where the ground is

moistened by hidden springs and where there is a little opening amid the trees, we shall find the closed

gentian, a rare flower in this locality. I had walked this way many times before I chanced upon its retreat; and

then I was following a line of bees. I lost the bees but I got the gentians. How curiously this flower looks,

with its deep blue petals folded together so tightlya bud and yet a blossom. It is the nun among our wild

flowers, a form closely veiled and cloaked. The buccaneer bumblebee sometimes tries to rifle it of its

sweets. I have seen the blossom with the bee entombed in it. He had forced his way into the virgin corolla as

if determined to know its secret, but he had never returned with the knowledge he had gained.

After a refreshing walk of a couple of miles we reach a point where we will make our first triala high stone

wall that runs parallel with the wooded ridge referred to, and separated from it by a broad field. There are

bees at work there on that goldenrod, and it requires but little maneuvering to sweep one into our box. Almost

any other creature rudely and suddenly arrested in its career and clapped into a cage in this way would show

great confusion and alarm. The bee is alarmed for a moment, but the bee has a passion stronger than its love

of life or fear of death, namely, desire for honey, not simply to eat, but to carry home as booty. "Such rage of

honey in their bosom beats," says Virgil. It is quick to catch the scent of honey in the box, and as quick to fall

to filling itself. We now set the box down upon the wall and gently remove the cover. The bee is head and

shoulders in one of the halffilled cells, and is oblivious to everything else about it. Come rack, come ruin, it

will die at work. We step back a few paces, and sit down upon the ground so as to bring the box against the

blue sky as a background. In two or three minutes the bee is seen rising slowly and heavily from the box. It

seems loath to leave so much honey behind and it marks the place well. It mounts aloft in a rapidly increasing

spiral, surveying the near and minute objects first, then the larger and more distant, till having circled about

the spot five or six times and taken all its bearings it darts away for home. It is a good eye that holds fast to

the bee till it is fairly off. Sometimes one's head will swim following it, and often one's eyes are put out by

the sun. This bee gradually drifts down the hill, then strikes away toward a farmhouse half a mile away,

where I know bees are kept. Then we try another and another, and the third bee, much to our satisfaction,

goes straight toward the woods. We could see the brown speck against the darker background for many yards.

The regular beehunter professes to be able to tell a wild bee from a tame one by the color, the former, he

says, being lighter. But there is no difference; they are both alike in color and in manner. Young bees are

lighter than old, and that is all there is of it. If a bee lived many years in the woods it would doubtless come to

have some distinguishing marks, but the life of a bee is only a few months at the farthest, and no change is

Our bees are all soon back, and more with them, for we have touched the box here and there with the cork of

a bottle of anise oil, and this fragrant and pungent oil will attract bees half a mile or more. When no flowers

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

a hornet; its tone changes, it sounds its shrill war trumpet and darts to and fro, and gives vent to its rage and

indignation in no uncertain manner. It seems to scent foul play at once. It says, "Here is robbery; here is the

spoil of some hive, may be my own," and its blood is up. But its ruling passion soon comes to the surface, its

avarice gets the better of its indignation, and it seems to say, "Well, I had better take possession of this and

carry it home." So after many feints and approaches and dartings off with a loud angry hum as if it would

It does not entirely cool off and get soberly to work till it has made two or three trips home with its booty.

When other bees come, even if all from the same swarm, they quarrel and dispute over the box, and clip and

dart at each other like bantam cocks. Apparently the ill feeling which the sight of the honey awakens is not

A bee will usually make three or four trips from the hunter's box before it brings back a companion. I suspect

the bee does not tell its fellows what it has found, but that they smell out the secret; it doubtless bears some

evidence with it upon its feet or proboscis that it has been upon honeycomb and not upon flowers, and its

companions take the hint and follow, arriving always many seconds behind. Then the quantity and quality of

the booty would also betray it. No doubt, also, there are plenty of gossips about a hive that note and tell

everything. "Oh, did you see that? Peggy Mel came in a few moments ago in great haste, and one of the

upstairs packers says she was loaded till she groaned with appleblossom honey which she deposited, and

then rushed off again like mad. Appleblossom honey in October! Fee, fi, fo, fum! I smell something! Let's

In about half an hour we have three welldefined lines of bees established two to farmhouses and one to

the woods, and our box is being rapidly depleted of its honey. About every fourth bee goes to the woods, and

now that they have learned the way thoroughly they do not make the long preliminary whirl above the box,

but start directly from it. The woods are rough and dense and the hill steep, and we do not like to follow the

line of bees until we have tried at least to settle the problem as to the distance they go into the

woodswhether the tree is on this side of the ridge or in the depth of the forest on the other side. So we shut

up the box when it is full of bees and carry it about three hundred yards along the wall from which we are

operating. When liberated, the bees, as they always will in such cases, go off in the same directions they have

been going; they do not seem to know that they have been moved. But other bees have followed our scent,

and it is not many minutes before a second line to the woods is established. This is called crosslining the

bees. The new line makes a sharp angle with the other line, and we know at once that the tree is only a few

rods into the woods. The two lines we have established form two sides of a triangle of which the wall is the

base; at the apex of the triangle, or where the two lines meet in the woods, we are sure to find the tree. We

quickly follow up these lines, and where they cross each other on the side of the hill we scan every tree

closely. I pause at the foot of an oak and examine a hole near the root; now the bees are in this tree and their

entrance is on the upper side near the ground, not two feet from the hole I peer into, and yet so quiet and

secret is their going and coming that I fail to discover them and pass on up the hill. Failing in this direction, I

return to the oak again, and then perceive the bees going out in a small crack in the tree. The bees do not

know they are found out and that the game is in our hands, and are as oblivious of our presence as if we were

ants or crickets. The indications are that the swarm is a small one, and the store of honey trifling. In "taking

up" a beetree it is usual first to kill or stupefy the bees with the fumes of burning sulfur or with tobacco

smoke. But this course is impracticable on the present occasion, so we boldly and ruthlessly assault the tree

with an ax we have procured. At the first blow the bees set up a loud buzzing, but we have no mercy, and the

side of the cavity is soon cut away and the interior with its whiteyellow mass of combhoney is exposed,

and not a bee strikes a blow in defense of its all. This may seem singular, but it has nearly always been my

experience. When a swarm of bees are thus rudely assaulted with an ax, they evidently think the end of the

world has come, and, like true misers as they are, each one seizes as much of the treasure as it can hold; in

other words they all fall to and gorge themselves with honey, and calmly await the issue. When in this

condition they make no defense and will not sting unless taken hold of. In fact they are as harmless as flies.

Any halfway measures, any timid poking about, any feeble attempts to reach their honey, are sure to be

quickly resented. The popular notion that bees have a special antipathy toward certain persons and a liking

for certain others has only this fact at the bottom of it; they will sting a person who is afraid of them and goes

skulking and dodging about, and they will not sting a person who faces them boldly and has no dread of

them. They are like dogs. The way to disarm a vicious dog is to show him you do not fear him; it is his turn

to be afraid then. I never had any dread of bees and am seldom stung by them. I have climbed up into a large

chestnut that contained a swarm in one of its cavities and chopped them out with an ax, being obliged at

times to pause and brush the bewildered bees from my hands and face, and not been stung once. I have

chopped a swarm out of an appletree in June and taken out the cards of honey and arranged them in a hive,

and then dipped out the bees with a dipper, and taken the whole home with me in pretty good condition, with

scarcely any opposition on the part of the bees. In reaching your hand into the cavity to detach and remove

the comb you are pretty sure to get stung, for when you touch the "business end" of a bee, it will sting even

though its head be off. But the bee carries the antidote to its own poison. The best remedy for bee sting is

honey, and when your hands are besmeared with honey, as they are sure to be on such occasions, the wound

is scarcely more painful than the prick of a pin. Assault your beetree, then, boldly with your ax, and you will

find that when the honey is exposed every bee has surrendered and the whole swarm is cowering in helpless

bewilderment and terror. Our tree yields only a few pounds of honey, not enough to have lasted the swarm till

In the afternoon we go nearly half a mile farther along the ridge to a cornfield that lies immediately in front of

the highest point of the mountain. The view is superb; the ripe autumn landscape rolls away to the east, cut

through by the great placid river; in the extreme north the wall of the Catskills stands out clear and strong,

while in the south the mountains of the Highlands bound the view. The day is warm and the bees are very

busy there in that neglected corner of the field, rich in asters, fleabane, and goldenrod. The corn has been

cut, and upon a stout, but a few rods from the woods, which here drop quickly down from the precipitous

heights, we set up our beebox, touched again with the pungent oil. In a few moments a bee has found it; she

comes up to leeward, following the scent. On leaving the box she goes straight toward the woods. More bees

quickly come, and it is not long before the line is well established. Now we have recourse to the same tactics

we employed before, and move along the ridge to another field to get our cross line. But the bees still go in

almost the same direction they did from the corn stout. The tree is then either on the top of the mountain or

on the other or west side of it. We hesitate to make the plunge into the woods and seek to scale those

precipices, for the eye can plainly see what is before us. As the afternoon sun gets lower the bees are seen

with wonderful distinctness. They fly toward and under the sun and are in a strong light, while the near

woods which form the background are in deep shadow. They look like large luminous motes. Their swiftly

vibrating, transparent wings surround their bodies with a shining nimbus that makes them visible for a long

distance. They seem magnified many times. We see them bridge the little gulf between us and the woods,

then rise up over the treetops with their burdens, swerving neither to the right hand nor to the left. It is

almost pathetic to see them labor so, climbing the mountain and unwittingly guiding us to their treasures.

When the sun gets down so that his direction corresponds exactly with the course of the bees, we make the

plunge. It proves even harder climbing than we had anticipated; the mountain is faced by a broken and

irregular wall of rock, up which we pull ourselves slowly and cautiously by main strength. In half an hour,

the perspiration streaming from every pore, we reach the summit. The trees here are all small, a second

growth, and we are soon convinced the bees are not here. Then down we go on the other side, clambering

down the rocky stairways till we reach quite a broad plateau that forms something like the shoulder of the

mountain. On the brink of this there are many large hemlocks, and we scan them closely and rap upon them

with our ax. But not a bee is seen or heard; we do not seem as near the tree as we were in the fields below; yet

if some divinity would only whisper the fact to us we are within a few rods of the coveted prize, which is not

in one of the large hemlocks or oaks that absorb our attention, but in an old stub or stump not six feet high,

and which we have seen and passed several times without giving it a thought. We go farther down the

mountain and beat about to the right and left and get entangled in brush and arrested by precipices, and

finally as the day is nearly spent, give up the search and leave the woods quite baffled, but resolved to return

on the morrow. The next day we come back and commence operations in an opening in the woods well down

on the side of the mountain, where we gave up the search. Our box is soon swarming with the eager bees, and

they go back toward the summit we have passed. We follow back and establish a new line where the ground

will permit; then another and another, and yet the riddle is not solved. One time we are south of them, then

north, then the bees get up through the trees and we cannot tell where they go. But after much searching, and

after the mystery seems rather to deepen than to clear up, we chance to pause beside the old stump. A bee

comes out of a small opening, like that made by ants in decayed wood, rubs its eyes and examines its

antennae as bees always do before leaving their hive, then takes flight. At the same instant several bees come

by us loaded with our honey and settle home with that peculiar low complacent buzz of the wellfilled insect.

Here then is our idyl, our bit of Virgil and Theocritus, in a decayed stump of a hemlock tree. We could tear it

open with our hands, and a bear would find it an easy prize, and a rich one too, for we take from it fifty

pounds of excellent honey. The bees have been here many years, and have of course sent out swarm after

swarm into the wilds. They have protected themselves against the weather and strengthened their shaky

When a beetree is thus "taken up" in the middle of the day, of course a good many bees are away from home

and have not heard the news. When they return and find the ground flowing with honey, and piles of bleeding

combs lying about, they apparently do not recognize the place, and their first instinct is to fall to and fill

themselves; this done, their next thought is to carry it home, so they rise up slowly through the branches of

the trees till they have attained an altitude that enables them to survey the scene, when they seem to say,

"Why, this is home," and down they come again; beholding the wreck and ruins once more they still think

there is some mistake, and get up a second or a third time and then drop back pitifully as before. It is the most

pathetic sight of all, the surviving and bewildered bees struggling to save a few drops of their wasted

Presently, if there is another swarm in the woods, robberbees appear. You may know them by their saucy,

chiding, devilmaycare hum. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, and they make the most of the

misfortune of their neighbors; and thereby pave the way for their own ruin. The hunter marks their course and

the next day looks them up. On this occasion the day was hot and the honey very fragrant, and a line of bees

was soon established S. S. W. Though there was much refuse honey in the old stub, and though little golden

rills trickled down the hill from it, and the near branches and saplings were besmeared with it where we

wiped our murderous hands, yet not a drop was wasted. It was a feast to which not only honeybees came,

but bumblebees, wasps, hornets, flies, ants. The bumblebees, which at this season are hungry vagrants with

no fixed place of abode, would gorge themselves, then creep beneath the bits of empty comb or fragments of

bark and pass the night, and renew the feast next day. The bumblebee is an insect of which the beehunter

sees much. There are all sorts and sizes of them. They are dull and clumsy compared with the honeybee.

Attracted in the fields by the beehunter's box, they will come up the wind on the scent and blunder into it in

The honeybee that licked up our leavings on the old stub belonged to a swarm, as it proved, about half a

mile farther down the ridge, and a few days afterward fate overtook them, and their stores in turn became the

prey of another swarm in the vicinity, which also tempted Providence and were overwhelmed. The first

mentioned swarm I had lined from several points, and was following up the clew over rocks and through

gulleys, when I came to where a large hemlock had been felled a few years before and a swarm taken from a

cavity near the top of it; fragments of the old comb were yet to be seen. A few yards away stood another

short, squatty hemlock, and I said my bees ought to be there. As I paused near it I noticed where the tree had

been wounded with an ax a couple of feet from the ground many years before. The wound had partially

grown over, but there was an opening there that I did not see at the first glance. I was about to pass on when a

bee passed me making that peculiar shrill, discordant hum that a bee makes when besmeared with honey. I

saw it alight in the partially closed wound and crawl home; then came others and others, little bands and

squads of them heavily freighted with honey from the box. The tree was about twenty inches through and

hollow at the butt, or from the ax mark down. This space the bees had completely filled with honey. With an

ax we cut away the outer ring of live wood and exposed the treasure. Despite the utmost care, we wounded

the comb so that little rills of the golden liquid issued from the root of the tree and trickled down the hill.

The other beetree in the vicinity, to which I have referred, we found one warm November day in less than

half an hour after entering the woods. It also was a hemlock, that stood in a niche in a wall of hoary,

mosscovered rocks thirty feet high. The tree hardly reached to the top of the precipice. The bees entered a

small hole at the root, which was seven or eight feet from the ground. The position was a striking one. Never

did apiary have a finer outlook or more rugged surroundings. A black, woodembraced lake lay at our feet;

the long panorama of the Catskills filled the far distance, and the more broken outlines of the Shawangunk

range filled the rear. On every hand were precipices and a wild confusion of rocks and trees.

The cavity occupied by the bees was about three feet and a half long and eight or ten inches in diameter. With

an ax we cut away one side of the tree and laid bare its curiously wrought heart of honey. It was a most

pleasing sight. What winding and devious ways the bees had through their palace! What great masses and

blocks of snowwhite comb there were! Where it was sealed up, presenting that slightly dented, uneven

surface, it looked like some precious ore. When we carried a large pail full of it out of the woods, it seemed

Your native beehunter predicates the distance of the tree by the time the bee occupies in making its first trip.

But this is no certain guide. You are always safe in calculating that the tree is inside of a mile, and you need

not as a rule look for your bee's return under ten minutes. One day I picked up a bee in an opening in the

woods and gave it honey, and it made three trips to my box with an interval of about twelve minutes between

them; it returned alone each time; the tree, which I afterward found, was about half a mile distant.

In lining bees through the woods, the tactics of the hunter are to pause every twenty or thirty rods, lop away

the branches or cut down the trees, and set the bees to work again. If they still go forward, he goes forward

also and repeats his observations till the tree is found or till the bees turn and come back upon the trail. Then

he knows be has passed the tree, and he retraces his steps to a convenient distance and tries again, and thus

quickly reduces the space to be looked over till the swarm is traced home. On one occasion, in a wild rocky

wood, where the surface alternated between deep gulfs and chasms filled with thick, heavy growths of timber

and sharp, precipitous, rocky ridges like a tempest tossed sea, I carried my bees directly under their tree, and

set them to work from a high, exposed ledge of rocks not thirty feet distant. One would have expected them

under such circumstances to have gone straight home, as there were but few branches intervening, but they

did not; they labored up through the trees and attained an altitude above the woods as if they had miles to

travel, and thus baffled me for hours. Bees will always do this. They are acquainted with the woods only from

the top side, and from the air above they recognize home only by landmarks here, and in every instance they

rise aloft to take their bearings. Think how familiar to them the topography of the forest summits must bean

Another curious fact is that generally you will get track of a beetree sooner when you are half a mile from it

than when you are only a few yards. Bees, like us human insects, have little faith in the near at hand; they

expect to make their fortune in a distant field, they are lured by the remote and the difficult, and hence

overlook the flower and the sweet at their very door. On several occasions I have unwittingly set my box

within a few paces of a beetree and waited long for bees without getting them, when, on removing to a

I have a theory that when bees leave the hive, unless there is some special attraction in some other direction,

they generally go against the wind. They would thus have the wind with them when they returned home

heavily laden, and with these little navigators the difference is an important one. With a full cargo, a stiff

headwind is a great hindrance, but fresh and emptyhanded they can face it with more ease. Virgil says bees

bear gravel stones as ballast, but their only ballast is their honey bag. Hence, when I go beehunting, I prefer

to get to windward of the woods in which the swarm is supposed to have taken refuge.

Bees, like the milkman, like to be near a spring. They do water their honey, especially in a dry time. The

liquid is then of course thicker and sweeter, and will bear diluting. Hence, old beehunters look for beetrees

along creeks and near spring runs in the woods. I once found a tree a long distance from any water, and the

honey had a peculiar bitter flavor imparted to it, I was convinced, by rainwater sucked from the decayed and

spongy hemlock tree, in which the swarm was found. In cutting into the tree, the north side of it was found to

be saturated with water like a spring, which ran out in big drops, and had a bitter flavor. The bees had thus

Bees are exposed to many hardships and many dangers. Winds and storms prove as disastrous to them as to

other navigators. Black spiders lie in wait for them as do brigands for travelers. One day as I was looking for

a bee amid some goldenrod, I spied one partly concealed under a leaf. Its baskets were full of pollen, and it

did not move. On lifting up the leaf I discovered that a hairy spider was ambushed there and had the bee by

the throat. The vampire was evidently afraid of the bee's sting, and was holding it by the throat till quite sure

of its death. Virgil speaks of the painted lizard, perhaps a species of salamander, as an enemy of the

honeybee. We have no lizard that destroys the bee; but our treetoad, ambushed among the apple and cherry

blossoms, snaps them up wholesale. Quick as lightning that subtle but clammy tongue darts forth, and the

unsuspecting bee is gone. Virgil also accuses the titmouse and the woodpecker of preying upon the bees, and

our kingbird has been charged with the like crime, but the latter devours only the drones. The workers are

Virgil, by the way, had little more than a child's knowledge of the honeybee. There is little fact and much

fable in his fourth Georgic. If he had ever kept bees himself, or even visited an apiary, it is hard to see how he

could have believed that the bee in its flight abroad carried a gravel stone for ballast:

"And as when empty barks on billows float, With Sandy ballast sailors trim the boat; So bees bear gravel

stones, whose poising weight Steers through the whistling winds their steady flight;"

or that when two colonies made war upon each other they issued forth from their hives led by their kings and

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

It is quite certain he had never been beehunting. If he had, we should have had a fifth Georgic. Yet he seems

"Nor bees are lodged in hives alone, but found In chambers of their own beneath the ground: Their vaulted

Wild honey is as near like tame as wild bees are like their brothers in hive. The only difference is that wild

honey is flavored with your adventure, which makes it a little more delectable than the domestic article.

The honeybee goes forth from the hive in spring like the dove from Noah's ark, and it is not till after many

days that she brings back the olive leaf, which in this case is a pellet of golden pollen upon each hip, usually

obtained from the alder or the swamp willow. In a country where maple sugar is made, the bees get their first

taste of sweet from the sap as it flows from the spiles, or as it dries and is condensed upon the sides of the

buckets. They will sometimes, in their eagerness, come about the boiling place and be overwhelmed by the

steam and the smoke. But bees appear to be more eager for bread in the spring than for honey; their supply of

this article, perhaps, does not keep as well as their stores of the latter, hence fresh bread, in the shape of new

pollen, is diligently sought for. My bees get their first supplies from the catkins of the willows. How quickly

they find them out. If but one catkin opens anywhere within range, a bee is on hand that very hour to rifle it,

and it is a most pleasing experience to stand near the hive some mild April day and see them come pouring in

with their little baskets packed with this first fruitage of the spring. They will have new bread now; they have

been to mill in good earnest; see their dusty coats, and the golden grist they bring home with them.

When a bee brings pollen into the hive, he advances to the cell in which it is to be deposited and kicks it off

as one might his overalls or rubber boots, making one foot help the other; then he walks off without ever

looking behind him; another bee, one of the indoor hands, comes along and rams it down with his head and

The first spring wildflowers, whose shy faces among the dry leaves and rocks are so welcome, yield no

honey. The anemone, the hepatica, the bloodroot, the arbutus, the numerous violets, the spring beauty, the

corydalis, etc., woo lovers of nature, but do not woo the honeyloving bee. It requires more sun and warmth

to develop the saccharine element, and the beauty of these pale striplings of the woods and groves is their

sole and sufficient excuse for being. The arbutus, lying low and keeping green all winter, attains to perfume,

The first honey is perhaps obtained from the flowers of the red maple and the golden willow. The latter sends

forth a wild, delicious perfume. The sugar maple blooms a little later, and from its silken tassels a rich nectar

is gathered. My bees will not label these different varieties for me as I really wish they would. Honey from

the maples, a tree so clean and wholesome, and full of such virtues every way, would be something to put

one's tongue to. Or that from the blossoms of the apple, the peach, the cherry, the quince, the currant, one

would like a card of each of these varieties to note their peculiar qualities. The appleblossom is very

important to the bees. A single swarm has been known to gain twenty pounds in weight during its

continuance. Bees love the ripened fruit, too, and in August and September will suck themselves tipsy upon

The interval between the blooming of the fruittrees and that of the clover and the raspberry is bridged over

in many localities by the honey locust. What a delightful summer murmur these trees send forth at this

season. I know nothing about the quality of the honey, but it ought to keep well. But when the red raspberry

blooms, the fountains of plenty are unsealed indeed; what a commotion about the hives then, especially in

localities where it is extensively cultivated, as in places along the Hudson. The delicate white clover, which

begins to bloom about the same time, is neglected; even honey itself is passed by for this modest colorless, all

but odorless flower. A field of these berries in June sends forth a continuous murmur like that of an enormous

hive. The honey is not so white as that obtained from clover but it is easier gathered; it is in shallow cups

while that of the clover is in deep tubes. The bees are up and at it before sunrise, and it takes a brisk shower

to drive them in. But the clover blooms later and blooms everywhere, and is the staple source of supply of the

finest quality of honey. The red clover yields up its stores only to the longer proboscis of the bumblebee,

else the bee pasturage of our agricultural districts would be unequaled. I do not know from what the famous

honey of Chamouni in the Alps is made, but it can hardly surpass our best products. The snowwhite honey

of Anatolia in Asiatic Turkey, which is regularly sent to Constantinople for the use of the grand seignior and

the ladies of his seraglio, is obtained from the cotton plant, which makes me think that the white clover does

not flourish these. The white clover is indigenous with us; its seeds seem latent in the ground, and the

application of certain stimulants to the soil, such as wood ashes, causes them to germinate and spring up.

The rose, with all its beauty and perfume, yields no honey to the bee, unless the wild species be sought by the

Among the humbler plants, let me not forget the dandelion that so early dots the sunny slopes, and upon

which the bee languidly grazes, wallowing to his knees in the golden but not oversucculent pasturage.

>From the blooming rye and wheat the bee gathers pollen, also from the obscure blossoms of Indian corn.

Among weeds, catnip is the great favorite. It lasts nearly the whole season and yields richly. It could no doubt

be profitably cultivated in some localities, and catnip honey would be a novelty in the market. It would

probably partake of the aromatic properties of the plant from which it was derived.

Among your stores of honey gathered before midsummer, you may chance upon a card, or mayhap only a

square inch or two of comb, in which the liquid is as transparent as water, of a delicious quality, with a slight

flavor of mint. This is the product of the linden or basswood, of all the trees in our forest the one most

beloved by the bees. Melissa, the goddess of honey, has placed her seal upon this tree. The wild swarms in

the woods frequently reap a choice harvest from it. I have seen a mountain side thickly studded with it, its

straight, tall, smooth, lightgray shaft carrying its deepgreen crown far aloft, like the tuliptree or the

In some of the Northwestern States there are large forests of it, and the amount of honey reported stored by

strong swarms in this section during the time the tree is in bloom is quite incredible. As a shade and

ornamental tree the linden is fully equal to the maple, and if it were as extensively planted and cared for, our

supplies of virgin honey would be greatly increased. The famous honey of Lithuania in Russia is the product

"A swarm of bees in May Is worth a load of hay; A swarm of bees in June Is worth a silver spoon; But a

A swarm in May is indeed a treasure; it is, like an April baby, sure to thrive, and will very likely itself send

out a swarm a month or two later; but a swarm in July is not to be despised; it will store no clover or linden

honey for the "grand seignior and the ladies of his seraglio," but plenty of the rank and wholesome poor

man's nectar, the suntanned product of the plebeian buckwheat. Buckwheat honey is the black sheep in this

white flock, but there is spirit and character in it. It lays hold of the taste in no equivocal manner, especially

when at a winter breakfast it meets its fellow, the russet buckwheat cake. Bread with honey to cover it from

the same stalk is double good fortune. It is not black, either, but nutbrown, and belongs to the same class of

How the bees love it, and they bring the delicious odor of the blooming plant to the hive with them, so that in

Yet evidently it is not the perfume of any flower that attracts the bees; they pay no attention to the

sweetscented lilac, or to heliotrope, but work upon sumach, silkweed, and the hateful snapdragon. In

September they are hard pressed, and do well if they pick up enough sweet to pay the running expenses of

their establishment. The purple asters and the goldenrod are about all that remain to them.

Bees will go three or four miles in quest of honey, but it is a great advantage to move the hive near the good

pasturage, as has been the custom from the earliest times in the 0ld World. Some enterprising person, taking a

hint perhaps from the ancient Egyptians, who had floating apiaries on the Nile, has tried the experiment of

floating several hundred colonies north on the Mississippi, starting from New Orleans and following the

opening season up, thus realizing a sort of perpetual May or June, the chief attraction being the blossoms of

the river willow, which yield honey of rare excellence. Some of the bees were no doubt left behind, but the

amount of virgin honey secured must have been very great. In September they should have begun the return

It is the making of the wax that costs with the bee. As with the poet, the form, the receptacle, gives him more

trouble than the sweet that fills it, though, to be sure, there is always more or less empty comb in both cases.

The honey he can have for the gathering, but the wax he must make himselfmust evolve from his own

inner consciousness. When wax is to be made the waxmakers fill themselves with honey and retire into their

chamber for private meditation; it is like some solemn religious rite; they take hold of hands, or hook

themselves together in long lines that hang in festoons from the top of the hive, and wait for the miracle to

transpire. After about twentyfour hours their patience is rewarded, the honey is turned into wax, minute

scales of which are secreted from between the rings of the abdomen of each bee; this is taken off and from it

the comb is built up. It is calculated that about twentyfive pounds of honey are used in elaborating one

pound of comb, to say nothing of the time that is lost. Hence the importance in an economical point of view,

of a recent device by which the honey is extracted and the comb returned intact to the bees. But honey

without the comb is the perfume without the rose,it is sweet merely, and soon degenerates into candy. Half

the delectableness is in breaking down these frail and exquisite walls yourself, and tasting the nectar before it

has lost its freshness by the contact with the air. Then the comb is a sort of shield or foil that prevents the

The drones have the least enviable time of it. Their foothold in the hive is very precarious. They look like the

giants, the lords of the swarm, but they are really the tools. Their loud, threatening hum has no sting to back it

up, and their size and noise make them only the more conspicuous marks for the birds.

Toward the close of the season, say in July or August, the fiat goes forth that the drones must die; there is no

further use for them. Then the poor creatures, how they are huddled and hustled about, trying to hide in

corners and byways. There is no loud, defiant humming now, but abject fear seizes them. They cower like

hunted criminals. I have seen a dozen or more of them wedge themselves into a small space between the glass

and the comb, where the bees could not get hold of them or where they seemed to be overlooked in the

general slaughter. They will also crawl outside and hide under the edges of the hive. But sooner or later they

are all killed or kicked out. The drone makes no resistance, except to pull back and try to get away; but

(putting yourself in his place) with one bee ahold of your collar or the hair of your head, and another ahold

of each arm or leg, and still another feeling for your waistbands with his sting, the odds are greatly against

It is a singular fact, also, that the queen is made, not born. If the entire population of Spain or Great Britain

were the offspring of one mother, it might be found necessary to hit upon some device by which a royal baby

could be manufactured out of an ordinary one, or else give up the fashion of royalty. All the bees in the hive

have a common parentage, and the queen and the worker are the same in the egg and in the chick; the patent

of royalty is in the cell and in the food; the cell being much larger, and the food a peculiar stimulating kind of

jelly. In certain contingencies, such as the loss of the queen with no eggs in the royal cells, the workers take

the larva of an ordinary bee, enlarge the cell by taking in the two adjoining ones, and nurse it and stuff it and

coddle it, till at the end of sixteen days it comes out a queen. But ordinarily, in the natural course of events,

the young queen is kept a prisoner in her cell till the old queen has left with the swarm. Later on, the

unhatched queen is guarded against the reigning queen, who only wants an opportunity to murder every royal

scion in the hive. At this time both the queens, the one a prisoner and the other at large, pipe defiance at each

other, a shrill, fine, trumpetlike note that any ear will at once recognize. This challenge, not being allowed

to be accepted by either party, is followed, in a day or two by the abdication of the reigning queen; she leads

out the swarm, and her successor is liberated by her keepers, who, in her time, abdicates in favor of the next

younger. When the bees have decided that no more swarms can issue, the reigning queen is allowed to use

her stiletto upon her unhatched sisters. Cases have been known where two queens issued at the same time,

when a mortal combat ensued, encouraged by the workers, who formed a ring about them, but showed no

preference, and recognized the victor as the lawful sovereign. For these and many other curious facts we are

It is worthy of note that the position of the queen cells is always vertical, while that of the drones and workers

is horizontal; majesty stands on its head, which fact may be a part of the secret.

The notion has always very generally prevailed that the queen of the bees is an absolute ruler, and issues her

royal orders to willing subjects. Hence Napoleon the First sprinkled the symbolic bees over the imperial

mantle that bore the arms of his dynasty; and in the country of the Pharaohs the bee was used as the emblem

of a people sweetly submissive to the orders of its king. But the fact is, a swarm of bees is an absolute

democracy, and kings and despots can find no warrant in their example. The power and authority are entirely

vested in the great mass, the workers. They furnish all the brains and foresight of the colony, and administer

its affairs. Their word is law, and both king and queen must obey. They regulate the swarming, and give the

signal for the swarm to issue from the hive; they select and make ready the tree in the woods and conduct the

The peculiar office and sacredness of the queen consists in the fact that she is the mother of the swarm, and

the bees love and cherish her as a mother and not as a sovereign. She is the sole female bee in the hive, and

the swarm clings to her because she is their life. Deprived of their queen, and of all brood from which to rear

one, the swarm loses all heart and soon dies, though there be an abundance of honey in the hive.

The common bees will never use their sting upon the queen; if she is to be disposed of they starve her to

death; and the queen herself will sting nothing but royaltynothing but a rival queen.

The queen, I say, is the mother bee; it is undoubtedly complimenting her to call her a queen and invest her

with regal authority, yet she is a superb creature, and looks every inch a queen. It is an event to distinguish

her amid the mass of bees when the swarm alights; it awakens a thrill. Before you have seen a queen you

wonder if this or that bee, which seems a little larger than its fellows, is not she, but when you once really set

eyes upon her you do not doubt for a moment. You know that is the queen. That long, elegant, shining,

femininelooking creature can be none less than royalty. How beautifully her body tapers, how distinguished

she looks, how deliberate her movements! The bees do not fall down before her, but caress her and touch her

person. The drones or males, are large bees too, but coarse, blunt, broadshouldered, masculinelooking.

There is but one fact or incident in the life of the queen that looks imperial and authoritative: Huber relates

that when the old queen is restrained in her movements by the workers, and prevented from destroying the

young queens in their cells, she assumes a peculiar attitude and utters a note that strikes every bee motionless,

and makes every head bow; while this sound lasts not a bee stirs, but all look abashed and humbled, yet

whether the emotion is one of fear, or reverence, or of sympathy with the distress of the queen mother, is hard

to determine. The moment it ceases and she advances again toward the royal cells, the bees bite and pull and

I always feel that I have missed some good fortune if I am away from home when my bees swarm. What a

delightful summer sound it is; how they come pouring out of the hive, twenty or thirty thousand bees each

striving to get out first; it is as when the dam gives way and lets the waters loose; it is a flood of bees which

breaks upward into the air, and becomes a maze of whirling black lines to the eye and a soft chorus of myriad

musical sounds to the ear. This way and that way they drift, now contracting, now expanding, rising, sinking,

growing thick about some branch or bush, then dispersing and massing at some other point, till finally they

begin to alight in earnest, when in a few moments the whole swarm is collected upon the branch, forming a

bunch perhaps as large as a twogallon measure. Here they will hang from one to three or four hours, or until

a suitable tree in the woods is looked up, when, if they have not been offered a hive in the mean time, they

are up and off. In hiving them, if any accident happens to the queen the enterprise miscarries at once. One day

I shook a swarm from a small peartree into a tin pan, set the pan down on a shawl spread beneath the tree,

and put the hive over it. The bees presently all crawled up into it, and all seemed to go well for ten or fifteen

minutes, when I observed that something was wrong; the bees began to buzz excitedly and to rush about in a

bewildered manner, then they took to the wing and all returned to the parent stock. On lifting up the pan, I

found beneath it the queen with three or four other bees. She had been one of the first to fall, had missed the

pan in her descent, and I had set it upon her. I conveyed her tenderly back to the hive, but either the accident

terminated fatally with her or else the young queen had been liberated in the interim, and one of them had

No one, to my knowledge, has ever seen the bees househunting in the woods. Yet there can be no doubt that

they look up new quarters either before or on the day the swarm issues. For all bees are wild bees and

incapable of domestication; that is, the instinct to go back to nature and take up again their wild abodes in the

trees is never eradicated. Years upon years of life in the apiary seems to have no appreciable effect towards

their final, permanent domestication. That every new swarm contemplates migrating to the woods, seems

confirmed by the fact that they will only come out when the weather is favorable to such an enterprise, and

that a passing cloud or a sudden wind, after the bees are in the air, will usually drive them back into the

parent hive. Or an attack upon them with sand or gravel, or loose earth or water, will quickly cause them to

change their plans. I would not even say but that, when the bees are going off, the apparently absurd practice,

now entirely discredited by regular beekeepers but still resorted to by unscientific folk, of beating upon tin

pans, blowing horns, and creating an uproar generally, might not be without good results. Certainly not by

drowning the "orders" of the queen, but by impressing the bees as with some unusual commotion in nature.

Bees are easily alarmed and disconcerted, and I have known runaway swarms to be brought down by a farmer

I love to see a swarm go offif it is not mine, and if mine must go I want to be on hand to see the fun. It is a

return to first principles again by a very direct route. The past season I witnessed two such escapes. One

swarm had come out the day before, and, without alighting, had returned to the parent hivesome hitch in

the plan, perhaps, or may be the queen had found her wings too weak. The next day they came out again, and

were hived. But something offended them, or else the tree in the woodsperhaps some royal old maple or

birch holding its head high above all others, with snug, spacious, irregular chambers and gallerieshad too

many attractions; for they were presently discovered filling the air over the garden, and whirling excitedly

around. Gradually they began to drift over the street; a moment more, and they had become separated from

the other bees, and, drawing together in a more compact mass or cloud, away they went, a humming, flying

vortex of bees, the queen in the centre, and the swarm revolving around her as a pivot,over meadows,

across creeks and swamps, straight for the heart of the mountain, about a mile distant, slow at first, so that

the youth who gave chase kept up with them, but increasing their speed till only a fox hound could have kept

them in sight. I saw their pursuer laboring up the side of the mountain; saw his white shirtsleeves gleam as

he entered the woods; but he returned a few hours afterward without any clew as to the particular tree in

which they had taken refuge out of the ten thousand that covered the side of the mountain.

The other swarm came out about one o'clock of a hot July day, and at once showed symptoms that alarmed

the keeper, who, however, threw neither dirt nor water. The house was situated on a steep sidehill. Behind it

the ground rose, for a hundred rods or so, at an angle of nearly fortyfive degrees, and the prospect of having

to chase them up this hill, if chase them we should, promised a good trial of wind at least; for it soon became

evident that their course lay in this direction. Determined to have a hand, or rather a foot, in the chase, I threw

off my coat and hurried on, before the swarm was yet fairly organized and under way. The route soon led me

into a field of standing rye, every spear of which held its head above my own. Plunging recklessly forward,

my course marked to those watching from below by the agitated and wriggling grain, I emerged from the

miniature forest just in time to see the runaways disappearing over the top of the hill, some fifty rods in

advance of me. Lining them as well as I could, I soon reached the hilltop, my breath utterly gone and the

perspiration streaming from every pore of my skin. On the other side the country opened deep and wide. A

large valley swept around to the north, heavily wooded at its head and on its sides. It became evident at once

that the bees had made good their escape, and that whether they had stopped on one side of the valley or the

other, or had indeed cleared the opposite mountain and gone into some unknown forest beyond, was entirely

problematical. I turned back, therefore, thinking of the honeyladen tree that some of these forests would

I heard of a youth in the neighborhood, more lucky than myself on a like occasion. It seems that he had got

well in advance of the swarm, whose route lay over a hill, as in my case, and as he neared the summit, hat in

hand, the bees had just come up and were all about him. Presently he noticed them hovering about his straw

hat, and alighting on his arm; and in almost as brief a time as it takes to relate it, the whole swarm had

followed the queen into his hat. Being near a stone wall, he coolly deposited his prize upon it, quickly

disengaged himself from the accommodating bees, and returned for a hive. The explanation of this singular

circumstance no doubt is, that the queen, unused to such long and heavy flights, was obliged to alight from

very exhaustion. It is not very unusual for swarms to be thus found in remote fields, collected upon a bush or

When a swarm migrates to the woods in this manner, the individual bees, as I have intimated, do not move in

right lines or straight forward, like a flock of birds, but round and round, like chaff in a whirlwind. Unitedly

they form a humming, revolving, nebulous mass, ten or fifteen feet across, which keeps just high enough to

clear all obstacles, except in crossing deep valleys, when, of course, it may be very high. The swarm seems to

be guided by a line of couriers, which may be seen (at least at the outset) constantly going and coming. As

they take a direct course, there is always some chance of following them to the tree, unless they go a long

distance, and some obstruction, like a wood, or a swamp, or a high hill, intervenesenough chance, at any

rate, to stimulate the lookerson to give vigorous chase as long as their wind holds out. If the bees are

successfully followed to their retreat, two plans are feasible: either to fell the tree at once, and seek to hive

them, perhaps bring them home in the section of the tree that contains the cavity; or to leave the tree till fall,

then invite your neighbors, and go and cut it, and see the ground flow with honey. The former course is more

businesslike; but the latter is the one usually recommended by one's friends and neighbors.

Perhaps nearly one third of all the runaway swarms leave when no one is about, and hence are unseen and

unheard, save, perchance, by some distant laborers in the field, or by some youth ploughing on the side of the

mountain, who hears an unusual humming noise, and sees the swarm dimly whirling by overhead, and, may

be, gives chase; or he may simply catch the sound, when he pauses, looks quickly around, but sees nothing.

When he comes in at night he tells how he heard or saw a swarm of bees go over; and, perhaps from beneath

one of the hives in the garden a black mass of bees has disappeared during the day.

They are not partial as to the kind of tree,pine, hemlock, elm, birch, maple, hickory,any tree with a good

cavity high up or low down. A swarm of mine ran away from the new patent hive I gave them, and took up

their quarters in the hollow trunk of an old appletree across an adjoining field. The entrance was a

Another swarm in the neighborhood deserted their keeper and went into the cornice of an outhouse that

stood amid evergreens in the rear of a large mansion. But there is no accounting for the taste of bees, as

Samson found when he discovered the swarm in the carcass, or more probably the skeleton, of the lion he had

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

thus assert their independence forms quite a large per cent. In the Northern States these swarms very often

perish before spring; but in such a country as Florida they seem to multiply, till beetrees are very common.

In the West, also, wild honey is often gathered in large quantities. I noticed not long since, that some

woodchoppers on the west slope of the Coast Range felled a tree that had several pailfuls in it.

One night on the Potomac a party of us unwittingly made our camp near the foot of a beetree, which next

day the winds of heaven blew down, for our special delectation, at least so we read the sign. Another time

while sitting by a waterfall in the leafless April woods I discovered a swarm in the top of a large hickory. I

had the season before remarked the tree as a likely place for bees, but the screen of leaves concealed them

from me. This time my former presentiment occurred to me, and, looking sharply, sure enough there were the

bees, going out and in a large, irregular opening. In June a violent tempest of wind and rain demolished the

tree, and the honey was all lost in the creek into which it fell. I happened along that way two or three days

after the tornado, when I saw a remnant of the swarm, those, doubtless, that escaped the flood and those that

were away when the disaster came, hanging in a small black mass to a branch high up near where their home

used to be. They looked forlorn enough. If the queen was saved the remnant probably sought another tree;

I have seen bees desert their hive in the spring when it was infested with worms, or when the honey was

exhausted; at such times the swarm seems to wander aimlessly, alighting here and there, and perhaps in the

end uniting with some other colony. In case of such union, it would be curious to know if negotiations were

first opened between the parties, and if the houseless bees are admitted at once to all the rights and franchises

of their benefactors. It would be very like the bees to have some preliminary plan and understanding about

Bees will accommodate themselves to almost any quarters, yet no hive seems to please them so well as a

section of a hollow tree"gums" as they are called in the South and West where the sweet gum grows. In

some European countries the hive is always made from the trunk of a tree, a suitable cavity being formed by

boring. The oldfashioned straw hive is picturesque, and a great favorite with the bees also.

The life of a swarm of bees is like an active and hazardous campaign of an army; the ranks are being

continually depleted, and continually recruited. What adventures they have by flood and field, and what

hairbreadth escapes! A strong swarm during the honey season loses, on an average, about four or five

thousand per month, or one hundred and fifty per day. They are overwhelmed by wind and rain, caught by

spiders, benumbed by cold, crushed by cattle, drowned in rivers and ponds, and in many nameless ways cut

off or disabled. In the spring the principal mortality is from the cold. As the sun declines they get chilled

before they can reach home. Many fall down outside the hive, unable to get in with their burden. One may see

them come utterly spent and drop hopelessly into the grass in front of their very doors. Before they can rest

the cold has stiffened them. I go out in April and May and pick them up by the handfuls, their baskets loaded

with pollen, and warm them in the sun or in the house, or by the simple warmth of my hand, until they can

crawl into the hive. Heat is their life, and an apparently lifeless bee may be revived by warming him. I have

also picked them up while rowing on the river and seen them safely to shore. It is amusing to see them come

hurrying home when there is a thunderstorm approaching. They come piling in till the rain is upon them.

Those that are overtaken by the storm doubtless weather it as best they can in the sheltering trees or grass. It

is not probable that a bee ever gets lost by wandering into strange and unknown parts. With their myriad eyes

they see everything; and then, their sense of locality is very acute, is, indeed, one of their ruling traits. When a

bee marks the place of his hive, or of a bit of good pasturage in the fields or swamps, or of the beehunter's

box of honey on the hills or in the woods, he returns to it as unerringly as fate.

Honey was a much more important article of food with the ancients than it is with us. As they appear to have

been unacquainted with sugar, honey, no doubt, stood them instead. It is too rank and pungent for the modern

taste; it soon cloys upon the palate. It demands the appetite of youth, and the strong, robust digestion of

people who live much in the open air. It is a more wholesome food than sugar, and modern confectionery is

poison beside it. Beside grape sugar, honey contains manna, mucilage, pollen, acid, and other vegetable

odoriferous substances and juices. It is a sugar with a kind of wild natural bread added. The manna of itself is

both food and medicine, and the pungent vegetable extracts have rare virtues. Honey promotes the excretions

Hence it is not without reason that with the ancients a land flowing with milk and honey should mean a land

abounding in all good things; and the queen in the nursery rhyme, who lingered in the kitchen to eat "bread

and honey" while the "king was in the parlor counting out his money," was doing a very sensible thing.

Epaminondas is said to have rarely eaten anything but bread and honey. The Emperor Augustus one day

inquired of a centenarian how he had kept his vigor of mind and body so long; to which the veteran replied

that it was by "oil without and honey within." Cicero, in his "Old Age," classes honey with meat and milk and

cheese as among the staple articles with which a wellkept farmhouse will be supplied.

Italy and Greece, in fact all the Mediterranean countries, appear to have been famous lands for honey. Mount

Hymettus, Mount Hybla, and Mount Ida produced what may be called the classic honey of antiquity, an

article doubtless in nowise superior to our best products. Leigh Hunt's "Jar of Honey" is mainly distilled from

Sicilian history and literature, Theocritus furnishing the best yield. Sicily has always been rich in bees.

Swinburne (the traveler of a hundred years ago) says the woods on this island abounded in wild honey, and

that the people also had many hives near their houses. The idyls of Theocritus are native to the island in this

respect, and abound in bees "Flatnosed bees" as he calls them in the Seventh Idyland comparisons in

which combhoney is the standard of the most delectable of this world's goods. His goatherds can think of no

greater bliss than that the mouth be filled with honeycombs, or to be inclosed in a chest like Daphnis and

fed on the combs of bees; and among the delectables with which Arsinoe cherishes Adonis are

"honeycakes," and other tidbits made of "sweet honey." In the country of Theocritus this custom is said

still to prevail: when a couple are married the attendants place honey in their mouths, by which they would

symbolize the hope that their love may be as sweet to their souls as honey to the palate.

It was fabled that Homer was suckled by a priestess whose breasts distilled honey; and that once when Pindar

lay asleep the bees dropped honey upon his lips. In the Old Testament the food of the promised Immanuel

was to be butter and honey (there is much doubt about the butter in the original), that he might know good

from evil; and Jonathan's eyes were enlightened, by partaking of some wood or wild honey: "See, I pray you,

how mine eyes have been enlightened, because I tasted a little of this honey." So far as this part of his diet

was concerned, therefore, John the Baptist, during his sojourn in the wilderness, his divinity schooldays in

the mountains and plains of Judea, fared extremely well. About the other part, the locusts, or, not to put too

fine a point on it, the grasshoppers, as much cannot be said, though they were among the creeping and

leaping things the children of Israel were permitted to eat. They were probably not eaten raw, but roasted in

that most primitive of ovens, a hole in the ground made hot by building a fire in it. The locusts and honey

may have been served together, as the Bedas of Ceylon are said to season their meat with honey. At any rate,

as the locust is often a great plague in Palestine, the prophet in eating them found his account in the general

weal, and in the profit of the pastoral bees; the fewer locusts, the more flowers. Owing to its numerous

wildflowers and flowering shrubs, Palestine has always been a famous country for bees. They deposit their

honey in hollow trees as our bees do when they escape from the hive, and in holes in the rocks as ours do not.

In a tropical or semitropical climate bees are quite apt to take refuge in the rocks, but where ice and snow

The best honey is the product of the milder parts of the temperate zone. There are too many rank and

poisonous plants in the tropics. Honey from certain districts of Turkey produces headache and vomiting, and

that from Brazil is used chiefly as medicine. The honey of Mount Hymettus owes its fine quality to wild

thyme. The best honey in Persia and in Florida is collected from the orange blossom. The celebrated honey of

Narbonne in the south of France is obtained from a species of rosemary. In Scotland good honey is made

California honey is white and delicate and highly perfumed, and now takes the lead in the market. But honey

is honey the world over; and the bee is the bee still. "Men may degenerate," says an old traveler, "may forget

the arts by which they acquired renown; manufactories may fail, and commodities be debased, but the sweets

of the wildflowers of the wilderness, the industry and natural mechanics of the bee, will continue without

Noting how one eye seconds and reinforces the other, I have often amused myself by wondering what the

effect would be if one could go on opening eye after eye to the number say of a dozen or more. What would

he see? Perhaps not the invisiblenot the odors of flowers nor the fever germs in the airnot the infinitely

small of the microscope nor the infinitely distant of the telescope. This would require, not more eyes so much

as an eye constructed with more and different lenses; but would he not see with augmented power within the

natural limits of vision? At any rate some persons seem to have opened more eyes than others, they see with

such force and distinctness; their vision penetrates the tangle and obscurity where that of others fails like a

spent or impotent bullet. How many eyes did Gilbert White open? how many did Henry Thoreau? how many

did Audubon? how many does the hunter, matching his sight against the keen and alert sense of a deer or a

moose, or a fox or a wolf? Not outward eyes, but inward. We open another eye whenever we see beyond the

first general features or outlines of thingswhenever we grasp the special details and characteristic markings

Whenever you have learned to discriminate the birds, or the plants, or the geological features of a country, it

Of course one must not only see sharply, but read aright what he sees. The facts in the life of Nature that are

transpiring about us are like written words that the observer is to arrange into sentences. Or the writing is in

cipher and he must furnish the key. A female oriole was one day observed very much preoccupied under a

shed where the refuse from the horse stable was thrown. She hopped about among the barn fowls, scolding

them sharply when they came too near her. The stable, dark and cavernous, was just beyond. The bird, not

finding what she wanted outside, boldly ventured into the stable, and was presently captured by the farmer.

What did she want? was the query. What, but a horsehair for her nest which was in an appletree near by;

and she was so bent on having one that I have no doubt she would have tweaked one out of the horse's tail

had he been in the stable. Later in the season I examined her nest and found it sewed through and through

with several long horse hairs, so that the bird persisted in her search till the hair was found.

Little dramas and tragedies and comedies, little characteristic scenes, are always being enacted in the lives of

the birds, if our eyes are sharp enough to see them. Some clever observer saw this little comedy played

among some English sparrows and wrote an account of it in his newspaper; it is too good not to be true: A

male bird brought to his box a large, fine goose feather, which is a great find for a sparrow and much coveted.

After he had deposited his prize and chattered his gratulations over it he went away in quest of his mate. His

nextdoor neighbor, a female bird, seeing her chance, quickly slipped in and seized the feather,and here

the wit of the bird came out, for instead of carrying it into her own box she flew with it to a near tree and hid

it in a fork of the branches, then went home, and when her neighbor returned with his mate was innocently

employed about her own affairs. The proud male, finding his feather gone, came out of his box in a high state

of excitement, and, with wrath in his manner and accusation on his tongue, rushed into the cot of the female.

Not finding his goods and chattels there as he had expected, he stormed around a while, abusing everybody in

general and his neighbor in particular, and then went away as if to repair the loss. As soon as he was out of

sight, the shrewd thief went and brought the feather home and lined her own domicile with it.

I was much amused one summer day in seeing a bluebird feeding her young one in the shaded street of a

large town. She had captured a cicada or harvestfly, and after bruising it a while on the ground flew with it

to a tree and placed it in the beak of the young bird. It was a large morsel, and the mother seemed to have

doubts of her chick's ability to dispose of it, for she stood near and watched its efforts with great solicitude.

The young bird struggled valiantly with the cicada, but made no head way in swallowing it, when the mother

took it from him and flew to the sidewalk, and proceeded to break and bruise it more thoroughly. Then she

again placed it in his beak, and seemed to say, "There, try it now," and sympathized so thoroughly with his

efforts that she repeated many of his motions and contortions. But the great fly was unyielding, and, indeed,

seemed ridiculously disproportioned to the beak that held it. The young bird fluttered and fluttered and

screamed, "I'm stuck, I'm stuck," till the anxious parent again seized the morsel and carried it to an iron

railing, where she came down upon it for the space of a minute with all the force and momentum her beak

could command. Then she offered it to her young a third time, but with the same result as before, except that

this time the bird dropped it; but she was at the ground as soon as the cicada was, and taking it in her beak

flew some distance to a high board fence where she sat motionless for some moments. While pondering the

problem how that fly should be broken, the male bluebird approached her, and said very plainly, and I

thought rather curtly, "Give me that bug," but she quickly resented his interference and flew farther away,

The bluebird is a home bird, and I am never tired of recurring to him. His coming or reappearance in the

spring marks a new chapter in the progress of the season; things are never quite the same after one has heard

that note. The past spring the males came about a week in advance of the females. A fine male lingered about

my grounds and orchard all the time, apparently waiting the arrival of his mate. He called and warbled every

day, as if he felt sure she was within earshot, and could be hurried up. Now he warbled halfangrily or

upbraidingly, then coaxingly, then cheerily and confidently, the next moment in a plaintive, faraway

manner. He would half open his wings, and twinkle them caressingly, as if beckoning his mate to his heart.

One morning she had come, but was shy and reserved. The fond male flew to a knothole in an old

appletree, and coaxed her to his side. I heard a fine confidential warble, the old, old story. But the female

flew to a near tree, and uttered her plaintive, homesick note. The male went and got some dry grass or bark in

his beak, and flew again to the hole in the old tree, and promised unremitting devotion, but the other said

"nay," and flew away in the distance. When he saw her going, or rather heard her distant note, he dropped his

stuff, and cried out in a tone that said plainly enough, "Wait a minute. One word, please," and flew swiftly in

pursuit. He won her before long, however, and early in April the pair were established in one of the four or

five boxes I had put up for them, but not until they had changed their minds several times. As soon as the first

brood had flown, and while they were yet under their parents' care, they began another nest in one of the

other boxes, the female, as usual, doing all the work, and the male all the complimenting.

A source of occasional great distress to the motherbird was a white cat that sometimes followed me about.

The cat had never been known to catch a bird, but she had a way of watching them that was very

embarrassing to the bird. Whenever she appeared, the mother bluebird would set up that pitiful melodious

plaint. One morning the cat was standing by me, when the bird came with her beak loaded with building

material, and alighted above me to survey the place before going into the box. When she saw the cat, she was

greatly disturbed, and in her agitation could not keep her hold upon all her material. Straw after straw came

eddying down, till not half her original burden remained. After the cat had gone away, the bird's alarm

subsided, till, presently seeing the coast clear, she flew quickly to the box and pitched in her remaining straws

with the greatest precipitation, and, without going in to arrange them, as was her wont, flew away in evident

In the cavity of an appletree but a few yards off, and much nearer the house than they usually build, a pair of

highholes, or goldenshafted woodpeckers, took up their abode. A knothole which led to the decayed

interior was enlarged, the live wood being cut away as clean as a squirrel would have done it. The inside

preparations I could not witness, but day after day, as I passed near, I heard the bird hammering away,

evidently beating down obstructions and shaping and enlarging the cavity. The chips were not brought out,

but were used rather to floor the interior. The woodpeckers are not nestbuilders, but rather nestcarvers.

The time seemed very short before the voices of the young were heard in the heart of the old tree,at first

feebly, but waxing stronger day by day until they could be heard many rods distant. When I put my hand

upon the trunk of the tree, they would set up an eager, expectant chattering; but if I climbed up it toward the

opening, they soon detected the unusual sound and would hush quickly, only now and then uttering a warning

note. Long before they were fully fledged they clambered up to the orifice to receive their food. As but one

could stand in the opening at a time, there was a good deal of elbowing and struggling for this position. It was

a very desirable one aside from the advantages it had when food was served; it looked out upon the great

shining world, into which the young birds seemed never tired of gazing. The fresh air must have been a

consideration also, for the interior of a highhole's dwelling is not sweet. When the parent birds came with

food the young one in the opening did not get it all, but after he had received a portion, either on his own

motion or on a hint from the old one, he would give place to the one behind him. Still, one bird evidently

outstripped his fellows, and in the race of life, was two or three days in advance of them. His voice was

loudest and his head oftenest at the window. But I noticed that when he had kept the position too long, the

others evidently made it uncomfortable in his rear, and, after "fidgeting" about a while, he would be

compelled to "back down." But retaliation was then easy, and I fear his mates spent few easy moments at that

lookout. They would close their eyes and slide back into the cavity as if the world had suddenly lost all its

This bird was, of course, the first to leave the nest. For two days before that event he kept his position in the

opening most of the time and sent forth his strong voice incessantly. The old ones abstained from feeding him

almost entirely, no doubt to encourage his exit. As I stood looking at him one afternoon and noting his

progress, he suddenly reached a resolution,seconded, I have no doubt, from the rear,and launched forth

upon his untried wings. They served him well and carried him about fifty yards uphill the first heat. The

second day after, the next in size and spirit left in the same manner; then another, till only one remained. The

parent birds ceased their visits to him, and for one day he called and called till our ears were tired of the

sound. His was the faintest heart of all. Then he had none to encourage him from behind. He left the nest and

clung to the outer bowl of the tree, and yelped and piped for an hour longer; then he committed himself to his

A young farmer in the western part of New York, who has a sharp, discriminating eye, sends me some

"Did you ever notice," says he, "that the highhole never eats anything that he cannot pick up with his

tongue? At least this was the case with a young one I took from the nest and tamed. He could thrust out his

tongue two or three inches, and it was amusing to see his efforts to eat currants from the hand. He would run

out his tongue and try to stick it to the currant; failing in that, he would bend his tongue around it like a hook

and try to raise it by a sudden jerk. But he never succeeded, the round fruit would roll and slip away every

time. He never seemed to think of taking it in his beak. His tongue was in constant use to find out the nature

of everything he saw; a nailhole in a board or any similar hole was carefully explored. If he was held near

the face he would soon be attracted by the eye and thrust his tongue into it. In this way he gained the respect

of a number of halfgrown cats that were around the house. I wished to make them familiar to each other, so

there would be less danger of their killing him. So I would take them both on my knee, when the bird would

soon notice the kitten's eyes, and leveling his bill as carefully as a marksman levels his rifle, he would remain

so a minute when he would dart his tongue into the cat's eye. This was held by the cats to be very mysterious:

being struck in the eye by something invisible to them. They soon acquired such a terror of him that they

would avoid him and run away whenever they saw his bill turned in their direction. He never would swallow

a grasshopper even when it was placed in his throat; he would shake himself until he had thrown it out of his

mouth. His 'best hold' was ants. He never was surprised at anything, and never was afraid of anything. He

would drive the turkey gobbler and the rooster. He would advance upon them holding one wing up as high as

possible, as if to strike with it, and shuffle along the ground toward them, scolding all the while in a harsh

voice. I feared at first that they might kill him, but I soon found that he was able to take care of himself. I

would turn over stones and dig into anthills for him, and he would lick up the ants so fast that a stream of

them seemed going into his mouth unceasingly. I kept him till late in the fall, when he disappeared, probably

My correspondent also sends me some interesting observations about the cuckoo. He says a large gooseberry

bush standing in the border of an old hedgerow, in the midst of open fields, and not far from his house, was

occupied by a pair of cuckoos for two seasons in succession, and, after an interval of a year, for two seasons

more. This gave him a good chance to observe them. He says the motherbird lays a single egg, and sits upon

it a number of days before laying the second, so that he has seen one young bird nearly grown, a second just

hatched, and a whole egg all in the nest at once. "So far as I have seen, this is the settled practice,the young

leaving the nest one at a time to the number of six or eight. The young have quite the look of the young of the

dove in many respects. When nearly grown they are covered with long blue pinfeathers as long as

darningneedles, without a bit of plumage on them. They part on the back and hang down on each side by

their own weight. With its curious feathers and misshapen body the young bird is anything but handsome.

They never open their mouths when approached, as many young birds do, but sit perfectly still, hardly

moving when touched." He also notes the unnatural indifference of the motherbird when her nest and young

are approached. She makes no sound, but sits quietly on a near branch in apparent perfect unconcern.

These observations, together with the fact that the egg of the cuckoo is occasionally found in the nests of

other birds, raise the inquiry whether our bird is slowly relapsing into the habit of the European species,

which always foists its egg upon other birds; or whether, on the other hand, it is not mending its manners in

this respect. It has but little to unlearn or to forget in the one case, but great progress to make in the other.

How far is its rudimentary nesta mere platform of coarse twigs and dry stalks of weedsfrom the deep,

compact, finely woven and finely modeled nest of the goldfinch or kingbird, and what a gulf between its

indifference toward its young and their solicitude! Its irregular manner of laying also seems better suited to a

parasite like our cowbird, or the European cuckoo, than to a regular nestbuilder.

This observer, like most sharpeyed persons, sees plenty of interesting things as he goes about his work. He

one day saw a white swallow, which is of rare occurrence. He saw a bird, a sparrow he thinks, fly against the

side of a horse and fill his beak with hair from the loosened coat of the animal. He saw a shrike pursue a

chickadee, when the latter escaped by taking refuge in a small hole in a tree. One day in early spring he saw

two henhawks that were circling and screaming high in air, approach each other, extend a claw, and,

clasping them together, fall toward the earth flapping and struggling as if they were tied together; on nearing

the ground they separated and soared aloft again. He supposed that it was not a passage of war but of love,

He further relates a curious circumstance of finding a hummingbird in the upper part of a barn with its bill

stuck fast in a crack of one of the large timbers, dead, of course, with wings extended, and as dry as a chip.

The bird seems to have died as it had lived, on the wing, and its last act was indeed a ghastly parody of its

living career. Fancy this nimble, flashing sprite, whose life was passed probing the honeyed depths of

flowers, at last thrusting its bill into a crack in a dry timber in a hayloft, and, with spread wings, ending its

When the air is damp and heavy, swallows frequently hawk for insects about cattle and moving herds in the

field. My farmer describes how they attended him one foggy day, as he was mowing in the meadow with a

mowingmachine. It had been foggy for two days, and the swallows were very hungry, and the insects stupid

and inert. When the sound of his machine was heard, the swallows appeared and attended him like a brood of

hungry chickens. He says there was a continued rush of purple wings over the "cutbar," and just where it

was causing the grass to tremble and fall. Without his assistance the swallows would doubtless have gone

Of the henhawk, he has observed that both male and female take part in incubation. "I was rather surprised,"

he says, "on one occasion, to see how quickly they change places on the nest. The nest was in a tall beech,

and the leaves were not yet fully out. I could see the head and neck of the hawk over the edge of the nest,

when I saw the other hawk coming down through the air at full speed. I expected he would alight near by, but

instead of that he struck directly upon the nest, his mate getting out of the way barely in time to avoid being

hit; it seemed almost as if he had knocked her off the nest. I hardly see how they can make such a rush on the

The kingbird will worry the hawk as a whiffet dog will worry a bear. It is by his persistence and audacity,

not by any injury he is capable of dealing his great antagonist. The kingbird seldom more than dogs the

hawk, keeping above and between his wings, and making a great ado; but my correspondent says he once

"saw a kingbird riding on a hawk's back. The hawk flew as fast as possible, and the kingbird sat upon his

shoulders in triumph until they had passed out of sight,"tweaking his feathers, no doubt, and threatening to

That near relative of the kingbird, the great crested flycatcher, has one well known peculiarity: he appears

never to consider his nest finished until it contains a castoff snakeskin. My alert correspondent one day

saw him eagerly catch up an onion skin and make off with it, either deceived by it or else thinking it a good

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

builds no nest,two elliptical whitish spotted eggs lying upon the dry leaves. My foot was within a yard of

the motherbird before she flew. I wondered what a sharp eye would detect curious or characteristic in the

ways of the bird, so I came to the place many times and had a look. It was always a task to separate the bird

from her surroundings though I stood within a few feet of her, and knew exactly where to look. One had to

bear on with his eye, as it were, and refuse to be baffled. The sticks and leaves, and bits of black or

darkbrown bark, were all exactly copied in the bird's plumage. And then she did sit so close, and simulate so

well a shapeless decaying piece of wood or bark! Twice I brought a companion, and guiding his eye to the

spot, noted how difficult it was for him to make out there, in full view upon the dry leaves, any semblance to

a bird. When the bird returned after being disturbed, she would alight within a few inches of her eggs, and

After the young had appeared, all the wit of the bird came into play. I was on hand the next day, I think. The

motherbird sprang up when I was within a pace of her, and in doing so fanned the leaves with her wings till

they sprang up too; as the leaves started the young started, and, being of the same color, to tell which was the

leaf and which the bird was a trying task to any eye. I came the next day, when the same tactics were

repeated. Once a leaf fell upon one of the young birds and nearly hid it. The young are covered with a reddish

down like a young partridge, and soon follow their mother about. When disturbed, they gave but one leap,

then settled down, perfectly motionless and stupid, with eyes closed. The parent bird, on these occasions

made frantic efforts to decoy me away from her young. She would fly a few paces and fall upon her breast,

and a spasm, like that of death, would run through her tremulous outstretched wings and prostrate body. She

kept a sharp eye out the meanwhile to see if the ruse took, and if it did not, she was quickly cured, and

moving about to some other point tried to draw my attention as before. When followed she always alighted

upon the ground, dropping down in a sudden peculiar way. The second or third day both old and young had

The whippoorwill walks as awkwardly as a swallow, which is as awkward as a man in a bag, and yet she

manages to lead her young about the woods. The latter, I think, move by leaps and sudden spurts, their

protective coloring shielding them most effectively. Wilson once came upon the motherbird and her brood

in the woods, and, though they were at his very feet, was so baffled by the concealment of the young that he

was about to give up the search, much disappointed, when he perceived something "like a slight moldiness

among the withered leaves, and, on stooping down, discovered it to be a young whippoorwill seemingly

asleep." Wilson's description of the young is very accurate, as its downy covering does look precisely like a

"slight moldiness." Returning a few moments afterward to the spot to get a pencil he had forgotten, he could

It takes an eye to see a partridge in the woods motionless upon the leaves; this sense needs to be as sharp as

that of smell in hounds and pointers; and yet I know an unkempt youth that seldom fails to see the bird and

shoot it before it takes wing. I think he sees it as soon as it sees him and before it suspects itself seen. What a

training to the eye is hunting! To pick out the game from its surroundings, the grouse from the leaves, the

gray squirrel from the mossy oak limb it hugs so closely, the red fox from the ruddy or brown or gray field,

the rabbit from the stubble, or the white hare from the snow requires the best powers of this sense. A

woodchuck, motionless in the fields or upon a rock, looks very much like a large stone or bowlder, yet a keen

A man has a sharper eye than a dog, or a fox, or than any of the wild creatures, but not so sharp an ear or

nose. But in the birds he finds his match. How quickly the old turkey discovers the hawk, a mere speck

against the sky, and how quickly the hawk discovers you if you happen to be secreted in the bushes or behind

the fence near which he alights! One advantage the bird surely has, and that is, owing to the form, structure,

and position of the eye, it has a much larger field of visionindeed, can probably see in nearly every

direction at the same instant, behind as well as before. Man's field of vision embraces less than half a circle

horizontally, and still less vertically; his brow and brain prevent him from seeing within many degrees of the

zenith without a movement of the head; the bird on the other hand, takes in nearly the whole sphere at a

I find I see almost without effort nearly every bird within sight in the field or wood I pass through (a flit of

the wing, a flirt of the tail are enough, though the flickering leaves do all conspire to hide them), and that with

like ease the birds see me, though, unquestionably, the chances are immensely in their favor. The eye sees

what it has the means of seeing, truly. You must have the bird in your heart before you can find it in the bush.

The eye must have purpose and aim. No one ever yet found the walking fern who did not have the walking

fern in his mind. A person whose eye is full of Indian relics picks them up in every field he walks through.

One season I was interested in the treefrogs; especially the tiny piper that one hears about the woods and

brushy fieldsthe hyla of the swamps become a denizen of the trees; I had never seen him in this new role.

But this season, having hylas in mind, or rather being ripe for them, I several times came across them. One

Sunday, walking amid some bushes, I captured two. They leaped before me as doubtless they had done many

times before; but though I was not looking for or thinking of them, yet they were quickly recognized, because

the eye had been commissioned to find them. On another occasion, not long afterward, I was hurriedly

loading my gun in the October woods in hopes of overtaking a gray squirrel that was fast escaping through

the treetops, when one of these lilliput frogs, the color of the fastyellowing leaves, leaped near me. I saw

him only out of the corner of my eye and yet bagged him, because I had already made him my own.

Nevertheless, the habit of observation is the habit of clear and decisive gazing. Not by a first casual glance,

but by a steady deliberate aim of the eye are the rare and characteristic things discovered. You must look

intently and hold your eye firmly to the spot, to see more than do the rank and file of mankind. The

sharpshooter picks out his man and knows him with fatal certainty from a stump, or a rock, or a cap on a

pole. The phrenologists do well to locate, not only form, color, and weight, in the region of the eye, but also a

faculty which they call individualitythat which separates, discriminates, and sees in every object its

essential character. This is just as necessary to the naturalist as to the artist or the poet. The sharp eye notes

specific points and differences,it seizes upon and preserves the individuality of the thing. Persons

frequently describe to me some bird they have seen or heard and ask me to name it, but in most cases the bird

might be any one of a dozen, or else it is totally unlike any bird found in this continent. They have either seen

falsely or else vaguely. Not so the farm youth who wrote me one winter day that he had seen a single pair of

strange birds, which he describes as follows: "They were about the size of the 'chippie,' the tops of their heads

were red, and the breast of the male was of the same color, while that of the female was much lighter; their

rumps were also faintly tinged with red. If I have described them so that you would know them, please write

me their names." There can be little doubt but the young observer had seen a pair of redpolls,a bird

related to the goldfinch, and that occasionally comes down to us in the winter from the far north. Another

time, the same youth wrote that he had seen a strange bird, the color of a sparrow, that alighted on fences and

buildings as well as upon the ground, and that walked. This last fact shoved the youth's discriminating eye

and settled the case. I knew it to be a species of the lark, and from the size, color, season, etc., the titlark.

But how many persons would have observed that the bird walked instead of hopped?

Some friends of mine who lived in the country tried to describe to me a bird that built a nest in a tree within a

few feet of the house. As it was a brown bird, I should have taken it for a woodthrush, had not the nest been

described as so thin and loose that from beneath the eggs could be distinctly seen. The most pronounced

feature in the description was the barred appearance of the under side of the bird's tail. I was quite at sea, until

one day, when we were driving out, a cuckoo flew across the road in front of us, when my friends exclaimed,

"There is our bird!" I had never known a cuckoo to build near a house, and I had never noted the appearance

the tail presents when viewed from beneath; but if the bird had been described in its most obvious features, as

slender, with a long tail, cinnamon brown above and white beneath, with a curved bill, anyone who knew the

We think we have looked at a thing sharply until we are asked for its specific features. I thought I knew

exactly the form of the leaf of the tuliptree, until one day a lady asked me to draw the outline of one. A good

observer is quick to take a hint and to follow it up. Most of the facts of nature, especially in the life of the

birds and animals, are well screened. We do not see the play because we do not look intently enough. The

other day I was sitting with a friend upon a high rock in the woods, near a small stream, when we saw a

watersnake swimming across a pool toward the opposite bank. Any eye would have noted it, perhaps

nothing more. A little closer and sharper gaze revealed the fact that the snake bore something in its mouth,

which, as we went down to investigate, proved to be a small catfish, three or four inches long. The snake

had captured it in the pool, and, like any other fisherman, wanted to get its prey to dry land, although itself

lived mostly in the water. Here, we said, is being enacted a little tragedy, that would have escaped any but

sharp eyes. The snake, which was itself small, had the fish by the throat, the hold of vantage among all

creatures, and clung to it with great tenacity. The snake knew that its best tactics was to get upon dry land as

soon as possible. It could not swallow its victim alive, and it could not strangle it in the water. For a while it

tried to kill its game by holding it up out of the water, but the fish grew heavy, and every few moments its

struggles brought down the snake's head. This would not do. Compressing the fish's throat would not shut off

its breath under such circumstances, so the wily serpent tried to get ashore with it, and after several attempts

succeeded in effecting a landing on a flat rock. But the fish died hard. Catfish do not give up the ghost in a

hurry. Its throat was becoming congested, but the snake's distended jaws must have ached. It was like a

petrified gape. Then the spectators became very curious and close in their scrutiny, and the snake determined

to withdraw from the public gaze and finish the business in hand to its own notions. But, when gently but

firmly remonstrated with by my friend with his walkingstick, it dropped the fish and retreated in high

dudgeon beneath a stone in the bed of the creek. The fish, with a swollen and angry throat, went its way also.

Birds, I say, have wonderfully keen eyes. Throw a fresh bone or a piece of meat upon the snow in winter, and

see how soon the crows will discover it and be on hand. If it be near the house or barn, the crow that first

discovers it will alight near it, to make sure he is not deceived; then he will go away, and soon return with a

companion. The two alight a few yards from the bone, and after some delay, during which the vicinity is

sharply scrutinized, one of the crows advances boldly to within a few feet of the coveted prize. Here he

pauses, and if no trick is discovered, and the meat be indeed meat, he seizes it and makes off.

One midwinter I cleared away the snow under an appletree near the house and scattered some corn there. I

had not seen a bluejay for weeks, yet that very day one found my corn, and after that several came daily and

partook of it, holding the kernels under their feet upon the limbs of the trees and pecking them vigorously.

Of course the woodpecker and his kind have sharp eyes; still I was surprised to see how quickly Downy

found out some bones that were placed in a convenient place under the shed to be pounded up for the hens. In

going out to the barn I often disturbed him making a meal off the bite of meat that still adhered to them.

"Look intently enough at anything," said a poet to me one day, "and you will see something that would

otherwise escape you." I thought of the remark as I sat on a stump in an opening of the woods one spring day.

I saw a small hawk approaching; he flew to a tall tuliptree and alighted on a large limb near the top. He eyed

me and I eyed him. Then the bird disclosed a trait that was new to me: he hopped along the limb to a small

cavity near the trunk, when he thrust in his head and pulled out some small object and fell to eating it. After

he had partaken of it for some minutes he put the remainder back in his larder and flew away. I had seen

something like feathers eddying slowly down as the hawk ate, and on approaching the spot found the feathers

of a sparrow here and there clinging to the bushes beneath the tree. The hawk thencommonly called the

chicken hawkis as provident as a mouse or a squirrel, and lays by a store against a time of need, but I

An observer of the birds is attracted by any unusual sound or commotion among them. In May or June, when

other birds are most vocal, the jay is a silent bird; he goes sneaking about the orchards and the groves as

silent as a pickpocket; he is robbing bird'snests and he is very anxious that nothing should be said about it;

but in the fall none so quick and loud to cry "Thief, thief!" as he. One December morning a troop of jays

discovered a little screechowl secreted in the hollow trunk of an old appletree near my house. How they

found the owl out is a mystery, since it never ventures forth in the light of day; but they did, and proclaimed

the fact with great emphasis. I suspect the bluebirds first told them, for these birds are constantly peeping into

holes and crannies, both spring and fall. Some unsuspecting bird had probably entered the cavity prospecting

for a place for next year's nest, or else looking out a likely place to pass a cold night, and then had rushed out

with important news. A boy who should unwittingly venture into a bear's den when Bruin was at home could

not be more astonished and alarmed than a bluebird would be on finding itself in the cavity of a decayed tree

with an owl. At any rate the bluebirds joined the jays in calling the attention of all whom it might concern to

the fact that a culprit of some sort was hiding from the light of day in the old appletree. I heard the notes of

warning and alarm and approached to within eyeshot. The bluebirds were cautious and hovered about

uttering their peculiar twittering calls; but the jays were bolder and took turns looking in at the cavity, and

deriding the poor shrinking owl. A jay would alight in the entrance of the hole and flirt and peer and

attitudinize, and then flyaway crying "Thief, thief, thief!" at the top of his voice.

I climbed up and peered into the opening, and could just descry the owl clinging to the inside of the tree. I

reached in and took him out, giving little heed to the threatening snapping of his beak. He was as red as a fox

and as yelloweyed as a cat. He made no effort to escape, but planted his claws in my forefinger and clung

there with a grip that soon grew uncomfortable. I placed him in the loft of an outhouse in hopes of getting

better acquainted with him. By day he was a very willing prisoner, scarcely moving at all, even when

approached and touched with the hand, but looking out upon the world with halfclosed, sleepy eyes. But at

night what a change; how alert, how wild, how active! He was like another bird; he darted about with wide,

fearful eyes, and regarded me like a cornered cat. I opened the window, and swiftly, but as silent as a shadow,

he glided out into the congenial darkness, and perhaps, ere this, has revenged himself upon the sleeping jay or

Not a little of the sunshine of our northern winters is surely wrapped up in the apple. How could we winter

over without it! How is life sweetened by its mild acids! A cellar well filled with apples is more valuable than

a chamber filled with flax and wool. So much sound ruddy life to draw upon, to strike one's roots down into,

Especially to those whose soil of life is inclined to be a little clayey and heavy, is the apple a winter necessity.

It is the natural antidote of most of the ills the flesh is heir to. Full of vegetable acids and aromatics, qualities

which act as refrigerants and antiseptics, what an enemy it is to jaundice, indigestion, torpidity of liver, etc. It

is a gentle spur and tonic to the whole biliary system. Then I have read that it has been found by analysis to

contain more phosphorus than any other vegetable. This makes it the proper food of the scholar and the

sedentary man; it feeds his brain and it stimulates his liver. Nor is this all. Besides its hygienic properties, the

apple is full of sugar and mucilage, which make it highly nutritious. It is said, "The operators of Cornwall,

England, consider ripe apples nearly as nourishing as bread, and far more so than potatoes. In the year

1801which was a year of much scarcityapples, instead of being converted into cider, were sold to the

poor, and the laborers asserted that they could 'stand their work' on baked apples without meat; whereas a

potato diet required either meat or some other substantial nutriment. The French and Germans use apples

extensively, so do the inhabitants of all European nations. The laborers depend upon them as an article of

Yet the English apple is a tame and insipid affair compared with the intense, suncolored and sunsteeped

fruit our orchards yield. The English have no sweet apple, I am told, the saccharine element apparently being

less abundant in vegetable nature in that sour and chilly climate than in our own. It is well known that the

European maple yields no sugar, while both our birch and hickory have sweet in their veins. Perhaps this fact

accounts for our excessive love of sweets, which may be said to be a national trait.

The Russian apple has a lovely complexion, smooth and transparent, but the Cossack is not yet all eliminated

from it. The only one I have seenthe Duchess of Oldenburgis as beautiful as a Tartar princess, with a

The best thing I know about Chili is not its guano beds, but this fact which I learn from Darwin's "Voyage,"

namely, that the apple thrives well there. Darwin saw a town there so completely buried in a wood of

appletrees, that its streets were merely paths in an orchard. The tree indeed thrives so well, that large

branches cut off in the spring and planted two or three feet deep in the ground send out roots and develop into

fine fullbearing trees by the third year. The people know the value of the apple too. They make cider and

wine of it and then from the refuse a white and finely flavored spirit; then by another process a sweet treacle

is obtained called honey. The children and the pigs eat little or no other food. He does not add that the people

are healthy and temperate, but I have no doubt they are. We knew the apple had many virtues, but these

Chilians have really opened a deep beneath a deep. We had found out the cider and the spirits, but who

guessed the wine and the honey, unless it were the bees? There is a variety in our orchards called the

The apple is the commonest and yet the most varied and beautiful of fruits. A dish of them is as becoming to

the centretable in winter as was the vase of flowers in the summer,a bouquet of spitzenbergs and

greenings and northern spies. A rose when it blooms, the apple is a rose when it ripens. It pleases every sense

to which it can be addressed, the touch, the smell, the sight, the taste; and when it falls in the still October

days it pleases the ear. It is a call to a banquet, it is a signal that the feast is ready. The bough would fain hold

Daily the stem relaxes its hold, till finally it lets go completely, and down comes the painted sphere with a

mellow thump to the earth, towards which it has been nodding so long. It bounds away to seek its bed, to hide

under a leaf, or in a tuft of grass. It will now take time to meditate and ripen! What delicious thoughts it has

there nestled with its fellows under the fence, turning acid into sugar, and sugar into wine!

How pleasing to the touch! I love to stroke its polished rondure with my hand, to carry it in my pocket on my

tramp over the winter hills, or through the early spring woods. You are company, you redcheeked spitz, or

you salmonfleshed greening! I toy with you; press your face to mine, toss you in the air, roll you on the

ground, see you shine out where you lie amid the moss and dry leaves and sticks. You are so alive! You glow

like a ruddy flower. You look so animated I almost expect to see you move. I postpone the eating of you, you

are so beautiful! How compact; how exquisitely tinted! Stained by the sun and varnished against the rains. An

independent vegetable existence, alive and vascular as my own flesh; capable of being wounded, bleeding,

How it resists the cold! holding out almost as long as the red cheeks of the boys do. A frost that destroys the

potatoes and other roots only makes the apple more crisp and vigorous; it peeps out from the chance

November snows unscathed. When I see the fruitvender on the street corner stamping his feet and beating

his hands to keep them warm, and his naked apples lying exposed to the blasts, I wonder if they do not ache

too to clap their hands and enliven their circulation. But they can stand it nearly as long as the vender can.

Noble common fruit, best friend of man and most loved by him, following him like his dog or his cow,

wherever he goes. His homestead is not planted till you are planted, your roots intertwine with his; thriving

best where he thrives best, loving the limestone and the frost, the plow and the pruningknife, you are indeed

suggestive of hardy, cheerful industry, and a healthy life in the open air. Temperate, chaste fruit! you mean

neither luxury nor sloth, neither satiety nor indolence, neither enervating heats nor the Frigid Zones.

Uncloying fruit, fruit whose best sauce is the open air, whose finest flavors only he whose taste is sharpened

by brisk work or walking knows; winter fruit, when the fire of life burns brightest; fruit always a little

hyperborean, leaning towards the cold; bracing, subacid, active fruit. I think you must come from the north,

you are so frank and honest, so sturdy and appetizing. You are stocky and homely like the northern races.

Your quality is Saxon. Surely the fiery and impetuous south is not akin to you. Not spices or olives or the

sumptuous liquid fruits, but the grass, the snow, the grains, the coolness is akin to you. I think if I could

subsist on you or the like of you, I should never have an intemperate or ignoble thought, never be feverish or

despondent. So far as I could absorb or transmute your quality I should be cheerful, continent, equitable,

Is there any other fruit that has so much facial expression as the apple? What boy does not more than half

believe they can see with that single eye of theirs? Do they not look and nod to him from the bough? The

swaar has one look, the rambo another, the spy another. The youth recognizes the seeknofurther buried

beneath a dozen other varieties, the moment he catches a glance of its eye, or the bonnycheeked Newtown

pippin, or the gentle but sharpnosed gilliflower. He goes to the great bin in the cellar and sinks his shafts

here and there in the garnered wealth of the orchards, mining for his favorites, sometimes coming plump

upon them, sometimes catching a glimpse of them to the right or left, or uncovering them as keystones in an

arch made up of many varieties. In the dark he can usually tell them by the sense of touch. There is not only

the size and shape, but there is the texture and polish. Some apples are coarse grained and some are fine;

some are thinskinned and some are thick. One variety is quick and vigorous beneath the touch; another

gentle and yielding. The pinnock has a thick skin with a spongy lining, a bruise in it becomes like a piece of

cork. The tallow apple has an unctuous feel, as its name suggests. It sheds water like a duck. What apple is

that with a fat curved stem that blends so prettily with its own flesh,the wineapple? Some varieties

impress me as masculine,weatherstained, freckled, lasting and rugged; others are indeed lady apples, fair,

delicate, shining, mildflavored, whitemeated, like the eggdrop and the ladyfinger. The practiced hand

knows each kind by the touch. Do you remember the apple hole in the garden or back of the house, Ben Bolt?

In the fall after the bins in the cellar had been well stocked, we excavated a circular pit in the warm, mellow

earth, and covering the bottom with clean rye straw, emptied in basketful after basketful of hardy choice

varieties, till there was a tentshaped mound several feet high of shining variegated fruit. Then wrapping it

about with a thick layer of long rye straw, and tucking it up snug and warm, the mound was covered, with a

thin coating of earth, a flat stone on the top holding down the straw. As winter set in, another coating of earth

was put upon it, with perhaps an overcoat of coarse dry stable manure, and the precious pile was left in

silence and darkness till spring. No marmot hibernating underground in his nest of leaves and dry grass,

more cosy and warm. No frost, no wet, but fragrant privacy and quiet. Then how the earth tempers and

flavors the apples! It draws out all the acrid unripe qualities, and infuses into them a subtle refreshing taste of

the soil. Some varieties perish; but the ranker, hardier kinds, like the northern spy, the greening, or the black

apple, or the russet, or the pinnock, how they ripen and grow in grace, how the green becomes gold, and the

As the supply in the bins and barrels gets low and spring approaches, the buried treasures in the garden are

remembered. With spade and axe we go out and penetrate through the snow and frozen earth till the inner

dressing of straw is laid bare. It is not quite as clear and bright as when we placed it there last fall, but the

fruit beneath, which the hand soon exposes, is just as bright and far more luscious. Then, as day after day you

resort to the hole, and, removing the straw and earth from the opening, thrust your arm into the fragrant pit,

you have a better chance than ever before to become acquainted with your favorites by the sense of touch.

How you feel for them, reaching to the right and left! Now you have got a Tolman sweet; you imagine you

can feel that single meridian line that divides it into two hemispheres. Now a greening fills your hand, you

feel its fine quality beneath its rough coat. Now you have hooked a swaar, you recognize its full face; now a

Vandevere or a King rolls down from the apex above, and you bag it at once. When you were a schoolboy

you stowed these away in your pockets and ate them along the road and at recess, and again at noon time; and

they, in a measure, corrected the effects of the cake and pie with which your indulgent mother filled your

The boy is indeed the true appleeater, and is not to be questioned how he came by the fruit with which his

pockets are filled. It belongs to him. . .His own juicy flesh craves the juicy flesh of the apple. Sap draws sap.

His fruiteating has little reference to the state of his appetite. Whether he be full of meat or empty of meat

he wants the apple just the same. Before meal or after meal it never comes amiss. The farmboy munches

apples all day long. He has nests of them in the haymow, mellowing, to which he makes frequent visits.

Sometimes old Brindle, having access through the open door, smells them out and makes short work of them.

In some countries the custom remains of placing a rosy apple in the hand of the dead that they may find it

when they enter paradise. In northern mythology the giants eat apples to keep off old age.

The apple is indeed the fruit of youth. As we grow old we crave apples less. It is an ominous sign. When you

are ashamed to be seen eating them on the street; when you can carry them in your pocket and your hand not

constantly find its way to them; when your neighbor has apples and you have none, and you make no

nocturnal visits to his orchard; when your lunchbasket is without them, and you can pass a winter's night by

the fireside with no thought of the fruit at your elbow, then be assured you are no longer a boy, either in heart

The genuine appleeater comforts himself with an apple in their season as others with a pipe or cigar. When

he has nothing else to do, or is bored, he eats an apple. While he is waiting for the train he eats an apple,

sometimes several of them. When he takes a walk, he arms himself with apples. His traveling bag is full of

apples. He offers an apple to his companion, and takes one himself. They are his chief solace when on the

road. He sows their seed all along the route. He tosses the core from the carwindow and from the top of the

stagecoach. He would, in time, make the land one vast orchard. He dispenses with a knife. He prefers that

his teeth shall have the first taste. Then he knows the best flavor is immediately beneath the skin, and that in a

pared apple this is lost. If you will stew the apple, he says, instead of baking it, by all means leave the skin

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

I instantly sympathized with that clergyman I read of, who on pulling out his pockethandkerchief in the

midst of his discourse, pulled out two bouncing apples with it that went rolling across the pulpit floor and

down the pulpit stairs. These apples were, no doubt, to be eaten after the sermon on his way home, or to his

next appointment. They would take the taste of it out of his mouth. Then, would a minister be apt to grow

tiresome with two big apples in his coattail pockets? Would he not naturally hasten along to "lastly," and the

big apples? If they were the dominie apples, and it was April or May, he certainly

How the early settlers prized the apple! When their trees broke down or were split asunder by the storms, the

neighbors turned out, the divided tree was put together again and fastened with iron bolts. In some of the

oldest orchards one may still occasionally see a large dilapidated tree with the rusty iron bolt yet visible.

Poor, sour fruit, too, but sweet in those early pioneer days. My grandfather, who was one of these heroes of

the stump, used every fall to make a journey of forty miles for a few apples, which he brought home in a bag

on horseback. He frequently started from home by two or three o'clock in the morning, and at one time both

he and his horse were much frightened by the screaming of panthers in a narrow pass in the mountains

Emerson, I believe, has spoken of the apple as the social fruit of New England. Indeed, what a promoter or

abettor of social intercourse among our rural population the apple has been, the company growing more

merry and unrestrained as soon as the basket of apples was passed round! When the cider followed, the

introduction and good understanding were complete. Then those rural gatherings that enlivened the autumn in

the country, known as " apple cuts," now, alas! nearly obsolete, where so many things were cut and dried

besides apples! The larger and more loaded the orchard, the more frequently the invitations went round and

the higher the social and convivial spirit ran. Ours is eminently a country of the orchard. Horace Greeley said

he had seen no land in which the orchard formed such a prominent feature in the rural and agricultural

districts. Nearly every farmhouse in the Eastern and Northern States has its setting or its background of

appletrees, which generally date back to the first settlement of the farm. Indeed, the orchard, more than

almost any other thing, tends to soften and humanize the country, and to give the place of which it is an

adjunct, a settled, domestic look. The appletree takes the rawness and wildness off any scene. On the top of

a mountain, or in remote pastures, it sheds the sentiment of home. It never loses its domestic air, or lapses

into a wild state. And in planting a homestead, or in choosing a building site for the new house, what a help it

is to have a few old, maternal appletrees near by; regular old grandmothers, who have seen trouble, who

have been sad and glad through so many winters and summers, who have blossomed till the air about them is

sweeter than elsewhere, and borne fruit till the grass beneath them has become thick and soft from human

contact, and who have nourished robins and finches in their branches till they have a tender, brooding look.

The ground, the turf, the atmosphere of an old orchard, seem several stages nearer to man than that of the

adjoining field, as if the trees had given back to the soil more than they had taken from it; as if they had

tempered the elements and attracted all the genial and beneficent influences in the landscape around.

An apple orchard is sure to bear you several crops beside the apple. There is the crop of sweet and tender

reminiscences dating from childhood and spanning the seasons from May to October, and making the orchard

a sort of outlying part of the household. You have played there as a child, mused there as a youth or lover,

strolled there as a thoughtful, sadeyed man. Your father, perhaps, planted the trees, or reared them from the

seed, and you yourself have pruned and grafted them, and worked among them, till every separate tree has a

peculiar history and meaning in your mind. Then there is the neverfailing crop of birdsrobins,

goldfinches, kingbirds, cedarbirds, hairbirds, orioles, starlingsall nesting and breeding in its branches,

and fitly described by Wilson Flagg as "Birds of the Garden and Orchard." Whether the pippin and

sweetbough bear or not, the "punctual birds" can always be depended on. Indeed, there are few better places

to study ornithology than in the orchard. Besides its regular occupants, many of the birds of the deeper forest

find occasion to visit it during the season. The cuckoo comes for the tentcaterpillar, the jay for frozen

apples, the ruffed grouse for buds, the crow foraging for birds' eggs, the woodpecker and chickadees for their

food, and the highhole for ants. The redbird comes too, if only to see what a friendly covert its branches

form; and the woodthrush now and then comes out of the grove near by, and nests alongside of its cousin,

the robin. The smaller hawks know that this is a most likely spot for their prey; and in spring the shy northern

warblers may be studied as they pause to feed on the fine insects amid its branches. The mice love to dwell

here also, and hither comes from the near woods the squirrel and the rabbit. The latter will put his head

through the boy's slippernoose any time for taste of the sweet apple, and the red squirrel and chipmunk

All the domestic animals love the apple, but none so much so as the cow. The taste of it wakes her up as few

other things do, and bars and fences must be well looked after. No need to assort them or pick out the ripe

ones for her. An apple is an apple, and there is no best about it. I heard of a quickwitted old cow that learned

to shake them down from the tree. While rubbing herself she had observed that an apple sometimes fell. This

stimulated her to rub a little harder, when more apples fell. She then took the hint and rubbed her shoulder

with such vigor that the farmer had to check her and keep an eye on her to save his fruit.

But the cow is the friend of the apple. How many trees she has planted about the farm, in the edge of the

woods, and in remote fields and pastures. The wild apples, celebrated by Thoreau, are mostly of her planting.

What an individuality the appletree has, each variety being nearly as marked by its form as by its fruit. What

a vigorous grower, for instance, is the Ribston pippin, an English apple. Wide branching like the oak, and its

large ridgy fruit, in late fall or early winter, is one of my favorites. Or the thick and more pendent top of the

Sweet apples are perhaps the most nutritious, and when baked are a feast in themselves. With a tree of the

Jersey sweet or of Tolman's sweeting in bearing, no man's table need be devoid of luxuries and one of the

most wholesome of all deserts. Or the red astrachan, an August apple, what a gap may be filled in the

culinary department of a household at this season, by a single tree of this fruit! And what a feast is its shining

crimson coat to the eye before its snowwhite flesh has reached the tongue. But the apple of apples for the

household is the spitzenberg. In this casket Pomona has put her highest flavors. It can stand the ordeal of

cooking and still remain a spitz. I recently saw a barrel of these apples from the orchard of a fruitgrower in

the northern part of New York, who has devoted special attention to this variety. They were perfect gems.

Not large, that had not been the aim, but small, fair, uniform, and red to the core. How intense, how spicy and

But all the excellences of the apple are not confined to the cultivated fruit. Occasionally a seedling springs up

about the farm that produces fruit of rare beauty and worth. In sections peculiarly adapted to the apple, like a

certain belt along the Hudson River, I have noticed that most of the wild unbidden trees bear good, edible

fruit. In cold and ungenial districts, the seedlings are mostly sour and crabbed, but in more favorable soils

they are oftener mild and sweet. I know wild apples that ripen in August, and that do not need, if it could be

had, Thoreau's sauce of sharp November air to be eaten with. At the foot of a hill near me and striking its

roots deep in the shale, is a giant specimen of native tree that bears an apple that has about the clearest,

waxiest, most transparent complexion I ever saw. It is good size, and the color of a tearose. Its quality is

best appreciated in the kitchen. I know another seedling of excellent quality and so remarkable for its

firmness and density, that it is known on the farm where it grows as the "heavy apple."

I have alluded to Thoreau, to whom all lovers of the apple and its tree are under obligation. His chapter on

Wild Apples is a most delicious piece of writing. It has a "tang and smack " like the fruit it celebrates, and is

dashed and streaked with color in the same manner. It has the hue and perfume of the crab, and the richness

and raciness of the pippin. But Thoreau loved other apples than the wild sorts and was obliged to confess that

his favorites could not be eaten indoors. Late in November he found a bluepearmain tree growing within

the edge of a swamp, almost as good as wild. "You would not suppose," he says, "that there was any fruit left

there on the first survey, but you must look according to system. Those which lie exposed are quite brown

and rotten now, or perchance a few still show one blooming cheek here and there amid the wet leaves.

Nevertheless, with experienced eyes I explore amid the bare alders, and the huckleberry bushes, and the

withered sedge, and in the crevices of the rocks, which are full of leaves, and pry under the fallen and

decayed ferns which, with apple and alder leaves, thickly strew the ground. For I know that they lie

concealed, fallen into hollows long since, and covered up by the leaves of the tree itselfa proper kind of

packing. From these lurking places, everywhere within the circumference of the tree, I draw forth the fruit all

wet and glossy, maybe nibbled by rabbits and hollowed out by crickets, and perhaps a leaf or two cemented

to it (as Curzon an old manuscript from a monastery's mouldy cellar), but still with a rich bloom on it, and at

least as ripe and well kept, if no better than those in barrels, more crisp and lively than they. If these resources

fail to yield anything, I have learned to look between the leaves of the suckers which spring thickly from

some horizontal limb, for now and then one lodges there, or in the very midst of an alderclump, where they

are covered by leaves, safe from cows which may have smelled them out. If I am sharpset, for I do not

refuse the bluepearmain, I fill my pockets on each side; and as I retrace my steps, in the frosty eve being

perhaps four or five miles from home, I eat one first from this side, and then from that, to keep my balance."

The traveler and camperout in Maine, unless he penetrates its more northern portions, has less reason to

remember it as a pinetree State than a birchtree State. The whitepine forests have melted away like snow

in the spring and gone down stream, leaving only patches here and there in the more remote and inaccessible

parts. The portion of the State I sawthe valley of the Kennebec and the woods about Moxie Lake had

been shorn of its pine timber more than forty years before, and is now covered with a thick growth of spruce

and cedar and various deciduous trees. But the birch abounds. Indeed, when the pine goes out the birch comes

in; the race of men succeeds the race of giants. This tree has great stayathome virtues. Let the sombre,

aspiring, mysterious pine go; the birch has humble everyday uses. In Maine, the paper or canoe birch is

turned to more account than any other tree. I read in Gibbon that the natives of ancient Assyria used to

celebrate in verse or prose the three hundred and sixty uses to which the various parts and products of the

palmtree were applied. The Maine birch is turned to so many accounts that it may well be called the palm of

this region. Uncle Nathan, our guide, said it was made especially for the camperout; yes, and for the

woodman and frontiersman generally. It is a magazine, a furnishing store set up in the wilderness, whose

goods are free to every comer. The whole equipment of the camp lies folded in it, and comes forth at the beck

of the woodman's axe; tent, waterproof roof, boat, camp utensils, buckets, cups, plates, spoons, napkins, table

cloths, paper for letters or your journal, torches, candles, kindlingwood, and fuel. The canoebirch yields

you its vestments with the utmost liberality. Ask for its coat, and it gives you its waistcoat also. Its bark

seems wrapped about it layer upon layer, and comes off with great ease. We saw many rude structures and

cabins shingled and sided with it, and haystacks capped with it. Near a maplesugar camp there was a large

pile of birchbark sapbuckets,each bucket made of a piece of bark about a yard square, folded up as the

tinman folds up a sheet of tin to make a square vessel, the corners bent around against the sides and held by a

wooden pin. When, one day, we were overtaken by a shower in traveling through the woods, our guide

quickly stripped large sheets of the bark from a near tree, and we had each a perfect umbrella as by magic.

When the rain was over, and we moved on, I wrapped mine about me like a large leather apron, and it

shielded my clothes from the wet bushes. When we came to a spring, Uncle Nathan would have a birchbark

cup ready before any of us could get a tin one out of his knapsack, and I think water never tasted so sweet as

from one of these bark cups. It is exactly the thing. It just fits the mouth and it seems to give new virtues to

the water. It makes me thirsty now when I think of it. In our camp at Moxie we made a large birchbark box

to keep the butter in; and the butter in this box, covered with some leafy boughs, I think improved in flavor

day by day. Maine butter needs something to mollify and sweeten it a little, and I think birch bark will do it.

In camp Uncle Nathan often drank his tea and coffee from a bark cup; the china closet in the birchtree was

always handy, and our vulgar tin ware was generally a good deal mixed, and the kitchenmaid not at all

particular about dishwashing. We all tried the oatmeal with the maple syrup in one of these dishes, and the

stewed mountain cranberries, using a birchbark spoon, and never found service better. Uncle Nathan

declared he could boil potatoes in a bark kettle, and I did not doubt him. Instead of sending our soiled napkins

and tablespreads to the wash, we rolled them up into candles and torches, and drew daily upon our stores in

But the great triumph of the birch is of course the bark canoe. When Uncle Nathan took us out under his little

woodshed, and showed us, or rather modestly permitted us to see, his nearly finished canoe, it was like a

first glimpse of some new and unknown genius of the woods or streams. It sat there on the chips and shavings

and fragments of bark like some shy delicate creature just emerged from its hidingplace, or like some wild

flower just opened. It was the first boat of the kind I had ever seen, and it filled my eye completely. What

woodcraft it indicated, and what a, wild free life, sylvan life, it promised! It had such a fresh, aboriginal look

as I had never before seen in any kind of handiwork. Its clear yellowred color would have become the cheek

of an Indian maiden. Then its supple curves and swells, its sinewy stays and thwarts, its bowlike contour, its

tomahawk stem and stern rising quickly and sharply from its frame, were all vividly suggestive of the race

from which it came. An old Indian had taught Uncle Nathan the art, and the soul of the ideal red man looked

out of the boat before us. Uncle Nathan had spent two days ranging the mountains looking for a suitable tree,

and had worked nearly a week on the craft. It was twelve feet long, and would seat and carry five men nicely.

Three trees contribute to the making of a canoe besides the birch, namely, the white cedar for ribs and lining,

the spruce for roots and fibres to sew its joints and bind its frame, and the pine for pitch or rosin to stop its

seams and cracks. It is handmade and homemade, or rather woodmade, in a sense that no other craft is,

except a dugout, and it suggests a taste and a refinement that few products of civilization realize. The design

of a savage, it yet looks like the thought of a poet, and its grace and fitness haunt the imagination. I suppose

its production was the inevitable result of the Indian's wants and surroundings, but that does not detract from

its beauty. It is, indeed, one of the fairest flowers the thorny plant of necessity ever bore. Our canoe, as I have

intimated, was not yet finished when we first saw it, nor yet when we took it up, with its architect, upon our

metaphorical backs and bore it to the woods. It lacked part of its cedar lining and the rosin upon its joints, and

Though we were not indebted to the birchtree for our guide, Uncle Nathan, as he was known in all the

country, yet he matched well these woodsy products and conveniences. The birchtree had given him a large

part of his tuition, and kneeling in his canoe and making it shoot noiselessly over the water with that subtle

yet indescribably expressive and athletic play of the muscles of the back and shoulders, the boat and the man

seemed born of the same spirit. He had been a hunter and trapper for over forty years; he had grown gray in

the woods, had ripened and matured there, and everything about him was as if the spirit of the woods had had

the ordering of it; his whole makeup was in a minor and subdued key, like the moss and the lichens, or like

the protective coloring of the game,everything but his quick sense and penetrative glance. He was as gentle

and modest as a girl; his sensibilities were like plants that grow in the shade. The woods and the solitudes had

touched him with their own softening and refining influence; had indeed shed upon his soil of life a rich deep

leaf mould that was delightful, and that nursed, half concealed, the tenderest and wildest growths. There was

grit enough back of and beneath it all, but he presented none of the rough and repelling traits of character of

the conventional backwoodsman. In the spring he was a driver of logs on the Kennebec, usually having

charge of a large gang of men; in the winter he was a solitary trapper and hunter in the forests.

Our first glimpse of Maine waters was Pleasant Pond, which we found by following a white, rapid, musical

stream from the Kennebec three miles back into the mountains. Maine waters are for the most part

darkcomplexioned, Indiancolored streams, but Pleasant Pond is a paleface among them both in name and

nature. It is the only strictly silver lake I ever saw. Its waters seem almost artificially white and brilliant,

though of remarkable transparency. I think I detected minute shining motes held in suspension in it. As for

the trout they are veritable bars of silver until you have cut their flesh, when they are the reddest of gold.

They have no crimson or other spots, and the straight lateral line is but a faint pencil mark. They appeared to

be a species of lake trout peculiar to these waters, uniformly from ten to twelve inches in length. And these

beautiful fish, at the time of our visit (last of August) at least, were to be taken only in deep water upon a

hook baited with salt pork. And then you needed a letter of introduction to them. They were not to be tempted

or cajoled by strangers. We did not succeed in raising a fish, although instructed how it was to be done, until

one of the natives, a young and obliging farmer living hard by, came and lent his countenance to the

enterprise. I sat in one end of the boat and he in the other; my pork was the same as his, and I maneuvered it

as directed, and yet those fish knew his hook from mine in sixty feet of water, and preferred it four times in

five. Evidently they did not bite because they were hungry, but solely for old acquaintance' sake.

Pleasant Pond is an irregular sheet of water, two miles or more in its greatest diameter, with high, rugged

mountains rising up from its western shore, and low rolling hills sweeping back from its eastern and northern,

covered by a few sterile farms. I was never tired, when the wind was still, of floating along its margin and

gazing down into its marvelously translucent depths. The boulders and fragments of rocks were seen, at a

depth of twentyfive or thirty feet, strewing its floor, and apparently as free from any covering of sediment as

when they were dropped there by the old glaciers aeons ago. Our camp was amid a dense grove of second

growth of white pine on the eastern shore, where, for one, I found a most admirable cradle in a little

depression, outside of the tent, carpeted with pine needles, in which to pass the night. The camperout is

always in luck if he can find, sheltered by the trees, a soft hole in the ground, even if he has a stone for a

pillow. The earth must open its arms a little for us even in life, if we are to sleep well upon its bosom. I have

often heard my grandfather, who was a soldier of the Revolution, tell with great gusto how he once

bivouacked in a little hollow made by the overturning of a tree, and slept so soundly that he did not wake up

What bird or other creature might represent the divinity of Pleasant Pond I do not know, but its demon, as of

most northern inland waters, is the loon, and a very good demon he is too, suggesting something not so much

malevolent, as arch, sardonic, ubiquitous, circumventing, with just a tinge of something inhuman and

uncanny. His fiery red eyes gleaming forth from that jetblack head are full of meaning. Then his strange

horse laughter by day and his weird, doleful cry at night, like that of a lost and wandering spirit, recall no

other bird or beast. He suggests something almost supernatural in his alertness and amazing quickness,

cheating the shot and the bullet of the sportsman out of their aim. I know of but one other bird so quick, and

that is the hummingbird, which I have never been able to kill with a gun. The loon laughs the shotgun to

scorn, and the obliging young farmer above referred to told me he had shot at them hundreds of times with

his rifle, without effect,they always dodged his bullet. We had in our party a breachloading rifle, which

weapon is perhaps an appreciable moment of time quicker than the ordinary muzzleloader, and this the poor

loon could not or did not dodge. He had not timed himself to that species of firearm, and when, with his

fellow, he swam about within rifle range of our camp, letting off volleys of his wild ironical haha, he little

suspected the dangerous gun that was matched against him. As the rifle cracked both loons made the gesture

of diving, but only one of them disappeared beneath the water; and when he came to the surface in a few

moments, a hundred or more yards away, and saw his companion did not follow, but was floating on the

water where he had last seen him, he took the alarm and sped away in the distance. The bird I had killed was

a magnificent specimen, and I looked him over with great interest. His glossy checkered coat, his banded

neck, his snowwhite breast, his powerful lance shaped beak, his red eyes, his black, thin, slender,

marvelously delicate feet and legs, issuing from his muscular thighs, and looking as if they had never touched

the ground, his strong wings well forward while his legs were quite at the apex, and the neat, elegant model

of the entire bird, speed and quickness and strength stamped upon every feature,all delighted and lingered

in the eye. The loon appears like anything but a silly bird, unless you see him in some collection, or in the

shop of the taxidermist, where he usually looks very tame and gooselike. Nature never meant the loon to

stand up, or to use his feet and legs for other purposes than swimming. Indeed, he cannot stand except upon

his tail in a perpendicular attitude, but in the collections he is poised upon his feet like a barnyard fowl, all

the wildness and grace and alertness goes out of him. My specimen sits upon a table as upon the surface of

the water, his feet trailing behind him, his body low and trim, his head elevated and slightly turned as if in the

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

The loon is to the fishes what the hawk is to the birds; he swoops down to unknown depths upon them, and

not even the wary trout can elude him. Uncle Nathan said he had seen the loon disappear and in a moment

come up with a large trout, which he would cut in two with his strong beak, and swallow piecemeal. Neither

the loon nor the otter can bolt a fish under the water; he must come to the surface to dispose of it. (I once saw

a man eat a cake under water in London.) Our guide told me he had seen the parent loon swimming with a

single young one upon its back. When closely pressed it dove, or "div" as he would have it, and left the

young bird sitting upon the water. Then it too disappeared, and when the old one returned and called, it came

out from the shore. On the wing overhead, the loon looks not unlike a very large duck, but when it alights it

ploughs into the water like a bombshell. It probably cannot take flight from the land, as the one Gilbert White

saw and describes in his letters was picked up in a field, unable to launch itself into the air.

>From Pleasant Pond we went seven miles through the woods to Moxie Lake, following an overgrown

lumberman's "tote" road, our canoe and supplies, etc., hauled on a sled by the young farmer with his

threeyearold steers. I doubt if birchbark ever made rougher voyage than that. As I watched it above the

bushes, the sled and the luggage being hidden, it appeared as if tossed in the wildest and most tempestuous

sea. When the bushes closed above it I felt as if it had gone down, or been broken into a hundred pieces.

Billows of rocks and logs, and chasms of creeks and spring runs, kept it rearing and pitching in the most

frightful manner. The steers went at a spanking pace; indeed, it was a regular bovine gale; but their driver

clung to their side amid the brush and boulders with desperate tenacity, and seemed to manage them by signs

and nudges, for he hardly uttered his orders aloud. But we got through without any serious mishap, passing

Mosquito Creek and Mosquito Pond, and flanking Mosquito Mountain, but seeing no mosquitoes, and

brought up at dusk at a lumberman's old haybarn, standing in the midst of a lonely clearing on the shores of

Here we passed the night, and were lucky in having a good roof over our heads, for it rained heavily. After

we were rolled in our blankets and variously disposed upon the haymow, Uncle Nathan lulled us to sleep by a

I had asked him, half jocosely, if he believed in "spooks"; but he took my question seriously, and without

answering it directly, proceeded to tell us what he himself had known and witnessed. It was, by the way,

extremely difficult either to surprise or to steal upon any of Uncle Nathan's private opinions and beliefs about

matters and things. He was as shy of all debatable subjects as a fox is of a trap. He usually talked in a circle,

just as he hunted moose and caribou, so as not to approach his point too rudely and suddenly. He would keep

on the lee side of his interlocutor in spite of all one could do. He was thoroughly good and reliable, but the

wild creatures of the woods, in pursuit of which he had spent so much of his life, had taught him a curious

gentleness and indirection, and to keep himself in the background; he was careful that you should not scent

his opinions upon any subject at all polemic, but he would tell you what he had seen and known. What he had

seen and known about spooks was briefly this:In company with a neighbor he was passing the night with

an old recluse who lived somewhere in these woods. Their host was an Englishman, who had the reputation

of having murdered his wife some years before in another part of the country, and, deserted by his grownup

children, was eking out his days in poverty amid these solitudes. The three men were sleeping upon the floor,

with Uncle Nathan next to a rude partition that divided the cabin into two rooms. At his head there was a door

that opened into this other apartment. Late at night, Uncle Nathan said, he awoke and turned over, and his

mind was occupied with various things, when he heard somebody behind the partition. He reached over and

felt that both of his companions were in their places beside him, and he was somewhat surprised. The person,

or whatever it was, in the other room moved about heavily, and pulled the table from its place beside the wall

to the middle of the floor. "I was not dreaming," said Uncle Nathan;" I felt of my eyes twice to make sure,

and they were wide open." Presently the door opened; he was sensible of the draught upon his head, and a

woman's form stepped heavily past him; he felt the "swirl" of her skirts as she went by. Then there was a loud

noise in the room as if some one had fallen their whole length upon the floor. "It jarred the house," said he,

"and woke everybody up. I asked old Mr. if he heard that noise. 'Yes,' said he, 'it was thunder.' But it

was not thunder, I know that;" and then added, "I was no more afraid than I am this minute. I never was the

least mite afraid in my life. And my eyes were wide open," he repeated; "I felt of them twice; but whether

that was the speret of that man's murdered wife or not I cannot tell. They said she was an uncommon heavy

woman." Uncle Nathan was a man of unusually quick and acute senses, and he did not doubt their evidence

on this occasion any more than he did when they prompted him to level his rifle at a bear or a moose.

Moxie Lake lies much lower than Pleasant Pond, and its waters compared with those of the latter are as

copper compared with silver. It is very irregular in shape; now narrowing to the dimensions of a slow moving

grassy creek, then expanding into a broad deep basin with rocky shores, and commanding the noblest

mountain scenery. It is rarely that the pondlily and the speckled trout are found together,the fish the soul

of the purest spring water, the flower the transfigured spirit of the dark mud and slime of sluggish summer

streams and ponds; yet in Moxie they were both found in perfection. Our camp was amid the birches, poplars,

and white cedars near the head of the lake, where the best fishing at this season was to be had. Moxie has a

small oval head, rather shallow, but bumpy with rocks; a long, deep neck, full of springs, where the trout lie;

and a very broad chest, with two islands tufted with pinetrees for breasts. We swam in the head, we fished

in the neck, or in a small section of it, a space about the size of the Adam's apple, and we paddled across and

around the broad expanse below. Our birch bark was not finished and christened till we reached Moxie. The

cedar lining was completed at Pleasant Pond, where we had the use of a bateau, but the rosin was not applied

to the seams till we reached this lake. When I knelt down in it for the first time and put its slender maple

paddle into the water, it sprang away with such quickness and speed that it disturbed me in my seat. I had

spurred a more restive and spirited steed than I was used to. In fact, I had never been in a craft that sustained

so close a relation to my will, and was so responsive to my slightest wish. When I caught my first large trout

from it, it sympathized a little too closely, and my enthusiasm started a leak, which, however, with a live coal

and a piece of rosin, was quickly ended. You cannot perform much of a wardance in a birchbark canoe:

better wait till you get on dry land. Yet as a boat it is not so shy and "ticklish" as I had imagined. One needs

to be on the alert, as becomes a sportsman and an angler, and in his dealings with it must charge himself with

Trout weighing four and five pounds have been taken at Moxie, but none of that size came to our hand. I

realized the fondest hopes I had dared to indulge in when I hooked the first twopounder of my life, and my

extreme solicitude lest he get away I trust was pardonable. My friend, in relating the episode in camp, said I

implored him to row me down in the middle of the lake that I might have room to man�uver my fish. But the

slander has barely a grain of truth in it. The water near us showed several old stakes broken off just below the

surface, and my fish was determined to wrap my leader about one of these stakes; it was only for the clear

space a few yards farther out that I prayed. It was not long after that my friend found himself in an anxious

frame of mind. He hooked a large trout, which came home on him so suddenly that he had not time to reel up

his line, and in his extremity he stretched his tall form into the air and lifted up his pole to an incredible

height. He checked the trout before it got under the boat, but dared not come down an inch, and then began

his amusing further elongation in reaching for his reel with one hand while he carried it ten feet into the air

with the other. A stepladder would perhaps have been more welcome to him just then than at any other

moment during his life. But the trout was saved, though my friend's buttons and suspenders suffered.

We learned a new trick in flyfishing here, worth disclosing. It was not one day in four that the trout would

take the fly on the surface. When the south wind was blowing and the clouds threatened rain, they would at

times, notably about three o'clock, rise handsomely. But on all other occasions it was rarely that we could

entice them up through the twelve or fifteen feet of water. Earlier in the season they are not so lazy and

indifferent, but the August languor and drowsiness were now upon them. So we learned by a lucky accident

to fish deep for them, even weighting our leaders with a shot, and allowing the flies to sink nearly to the

bottom. After a moment's pause we would draw them slowly up, and when half or two thirds of the way to

the top the trout would strike, when the sport became lively enough. Most of our fish were taken in this way.

There is nothing like the flash and the strike at the surface, and perhaps only the need of food will ever tempt

the genuine angler into any more prosaic style of fishing; but if you must go below the surface, a shotted

Our campfire at night served more purposes than one; from its embers and flickering shadows, Uncle

Nathan read us many a tale of his life in the woods. They were the same old hunter's stories, except that they

evidently had the merit of being strictly true, and hence were not very thrilling or marvelous. Uncle Nathan's

tendency was rather to tone down and belittle his experiences than to exaggerate them. If he ever bragged at

all (and I suspect he did just a little, when telling us how he outshot one of the famous riflemen of the

American team, whom he was guiding through these woods), he did it in such a sly, roundabout way that it

was hard to catch him at it. His passage with the rifleman referred to shows the difference between the

practical offhand skill of the hunter in the woods and the science of the longrange target hitter. Mr. Bull's

Eye had heard that his guide was a capital shot and had seen some proof of it, and hence could not rest till he

had had a trial of skill with him. Uncle Nathan, being the challenged party, had the right to name the distance

and the conditions. A piece of white paper the size of a silver dollar was put upon a tree twelve rods off, the

contestants to fire three shots each offhand. Uncle Nathan's first bullet barely missed the mark, but the other

two were planted well into it. Then the great rifleman took his turn, and missed every time.

"By hemp!" said Uncle Nathan," I was sorry I shot so well, Mr. took it so to heart; and I had used his

But far more ignominious was the failure of Mr. Bull's Eye when he saw his first bear. They were paddling

slowly and silently down Dead River, when the guide heard a slight noise in the bushes just behind a little

bend. He whispered to the rifleman, who sat kneeling in the bow of the boat, to take his rifle. But instead of

doing so he picked up his twobarreled shotgun. As they turned the point, there stood a bear not twenty

yards away, drinking from the stream. Uncle Nathan held the canoe, while the man who had come so far in

quest of this very game was trying to lay down his shotgun and pick up his rifle. "His hand moved like the

hand of a clock," said Uncle Nathan, "and I could hardly keep my seat. I knew the bear would see us in a

moment more, and run. Instead of laying his gun by his side, where it belonged, he reached it across in front

of him and laid it upon his rifle, and in trying to get the latter from under it a noise was made; the bear heard

it and raised his head. Still there was time, for as the bear sprang into the woods he stopped and looked

back,"as I knew he would," said the guide; yet the marksman was not ready. "By hemp! I could have shot

three bears," exclaimed Uncle Nathan, "while he was getting that rifle to his face!"

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

As a hunter Uncle Nathan always took the game on its own terms, that of stillhunting. He even shot foxes in

this way, going into the fields in the fall just at break of day, and watching for them about their mousing

haunts. One morning, by these tactics, he shot a black fox; a fine specimen, he said, and a wild one, for he

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

out in his canoe and conceal himself by some point or island, and wait till he heard the game. In the fall the

moose comes into the water to eat the large fibrous roots of the pondlilies. He splashes along till he finds a

suitable spot, when he begins feeding, sometimes thrusting his bead and neck several feet under water. The

hunter listens, and when the moose lifts his head and the rills of water run from it, and he hears him "swash"

the lily roots about to get off the mud, it is his time to start. Silently as a shadow he creeps up on the moose,

who by the way, it seems, never expects the approach of danger from the water side. If the hunter

accidentally makes a noise the moose looks toward the shore for it. There is always a slight gleam on the

water, Uncle Nathan says, even in the darkest night, and the dusky form of the moose can be distinctly seen

upon it. When the hunter sees this darker shadow he lifts his gun to the sky and gets the range of its barrels,

The largest moose Uncle Nathan ever killed is mounted in the State House at Augusta. He shot him while

hunting in winter on snowshoes. The moose was reposing upon the ground, with his head stretched out in

front of him, as one may sometimes see a cow resting. The position was such that only a quartering shot

through the animal's hip could reach its heart. Studying the problem carefully, and taking his own time, the

hunter fired. The moose sprang into the air, turned, and came with tremendous strides straight toward him. "I

knew he had not seen or scented me," said Uncle Nathan, "but, by hemp, I wished myself somewhere else

just then; for I was lying right down in his path." But the noble animal stopped, a few yards short, and fell

When the moose yard in the winter, that is, restrict their wanderings to a welldefined section of the forest or

mountain, trampling down the snow and beating paths in all directions, they browse off only the most dainty

morsels first; when they go over the ground a second time they crop a little cleaner; the third time they sort

still closer, till by and by nothing is left. Spruce, hemlock, poplar, the barks of various trees, everything

within reach, is cropped close. When the hunter comes upon one of these yards the problem for him to settle

is, Where are the moose? for it is absolutely necessary that he keep on the lee side of them. So he considers

the lay of the land, the direction of the wind, the time of day, the depth of the snow, examines the spoor, the

cropped twigs, and studies every hint and clew like a detective. Uncle Nathan said he could not explain to

another how he did it, but he could usually tell in a few minutes in what direction to look for the game. His

experience had ripened into a kind of intuition or winged reasoning that was above rules.

He said that most large game, deer, caribou, moose, bear, when started by the hunter and not much scared,

were sure to stop and look back before disappearing from sight: he usually waited for this last and best

chance to fire. He told us of a huge bear he had seen one morning while stillhunting foxes in the fields; the

bear saw him, and got into the woods before he could get a good shot. In her course some distance up the

mountain was a bald, open spot, and he felt sure when she crossed this spot she would pause and look behind

her; and sure enough, like Lot's wife, her curiosity got the better of her; she stopped to have a final look, and

Uncle Nathan had trapped and shot a great many bears, and some of his experiences revealed an unusual

degree of sagacity in this animal. One April, when the weather began to get warm and thawy, an old bear left

her den in the rocks and built a large, warm nest of grass, leaves, and the bark of the white cedar, under a tall

balsam fir that stood in a low, sunny, open place amid the mountains. Hither she conducted her two cubs, and

the family began life in what might be called their spring residence. The tree above them was for shelter, and

for refuge for the cubs in case danger approached, as it soon did in the form of Uncle Nathan. He happened

that way soon after the bear had moved. Seeing her track in the snow, he concluded to follow it. When the

bear had passed, the snow had been soft and sposhy, and she had "slumped," he said, several inches. It was

now hard and slippery. As he neared the tree the track turned and doubled, and tacked this way and that, and

led through the worst brush and brambles to be found. This was a shrewd thought of the old bear; she could

thus hear her enemy coming a long time before he drew very near. When Uncle Nathan finally reached the

nest, he found it empty, but still warm. Then he began to circle about and look for the bear's footprints or

nailprints upon the frozen snow. Not finding them the first time, he took a larger circle, then a still larger;

finally he made a long detour, and spent nearly an hour searching for some clew to the direction the bear had

taken, but all to no purpose. Then he returned to the tree and scrutinized it. The foliage was very dense, but

presently he made out one of the cubs near the top, standing up amid the branches, and peering down at him.

This he killed. Further search only revealed a mass of foliage apparently more dense than usual, but a bullet

sent into it was followed by loud whimpering and crying, and the other baby bear came tumbling down. In

leaving the place, greatly puzzled as to what had become of the mother bear, Uncle Nathan followed another

of her frozen tracks, and after about a quarter of a mile saw beside it, upon the snow, the fresh trail he had

been in search of. In making her escape the bear had stepped exactly in her old tracks that were hard and icy,

During his trapping expeditions into the woods in midwinter, I was curious to know how Uncle Nathan

passed the nights, as we were twice pinched with the cold at that season in our tent and blankets. It was no

trouble to keep warm, he said, in the coldest weather. As night approached, he would select a place for his

camp on the side of a hill. With one of his snowshoes he would shovel out the snow till the ground was

reached, carrying the snow out in front, as we scrape the earth out of the side of a hill to level up a place for

the house and yard. On this level place, which, however, was made to incline slightly toward the hill, his bed

of boughs was made. On the ground he had uncovered he built his fire. His bed was thus on a level with the

fire, and the heat could not thaw the snow under him and let him down, or the burning logs roll upon him.

With a steep ascent behind it the fire burned better, and the wind was not so apt to drive the smoke and blaze

in upon him. Then, with the long, curving branches of the spruce stuck thickly around three sides of the bed,

and curving over and uniting their tops above it, a shelter was formed that would keep out the cold and the

snow, and that would catch and retain the warmth of the fire. Rolled in his blanket in such a nest, Uncle

One day we made an excursion of three miles through the woods to Bald Mountain, following a dim trail. We

saw, as we filed silently along, plenty of signs of caribou, deer, and bear, but were not blessed with a sight of

either of the animals themselves. I noticed that Uncle Nathan, in looking through the woods, did not hold his

head as we did, but thrust it slightly forward, and peered under the branches like a deer or other wild creature.

The summit of Bald Mountain was the most impressive mountaintop I had ever seen, mainly, perhaps,

because it was one enormous crown of nearly naked granite. The rock had that gray, elemental, eternal look

which granite alone has. One seemed to be face to face with the gods of the foreworld. Like an atom, like a

breath of today, we were suddenly confronted by abysmal geologic time,the eternities past and the

eternities to come. The enormous cleavage of the rocks, the appalling cracks and fissures, the rent boulders,

the smitten granite floors, gave one a new sense of the power of heat and frost. In one place we noticed

several deep parallel grooves, made by the old glaciers. In the depressions on the summit there was a hard,

black, peatylike soil that looked indescribably ancient and unfamiliar. Out of this mould, that might have

come from the moon or the interplanetary spaces, were growing mountain cranberries and blueberries or

huckleberries. We were soon so absorbed in gathering the latter that we were quite oblivious of the grandeurs

about us. It is these blueberries that attract the bears. In eating them, Uncle Nathan said, they take the bushes

in their mouths, and by an upward movement strip them clean of both leaves and berries. We were constantly

on the lookout for the bears, but failed to see any. Yet a few days afterward, when two of our party returned

here and encamped upon the mountain, they saw five during their stay, but failed to get a good shot. The rifle

was in the wrong place each time. The man with the shotgun saw an old bear and two cubs lift themselves

from behind a rock and twist their noses around for his scent, and then shrink away. They were too far off for

his buckshot. I must not forget the superb view that lay before us, a wilderness of woods and waters

stretching away to the horizon on every band. Nearly a dozen lakes and ponds could be seen, and in a clearer

atmosphere the foot of Moosehead Lake would have been visible. The highest and most striking mountain to

be seen was Mount Bigelow, rising above Dead River, far to the west, and its two sharp peaks notching the

horizon like enormous sawteeth. We walked around and viewed curiously a huge boulder on the top of the

mountain that had been split in two vertically, and one of the halves moved a few feet out of its bed. It looked

recent and familiar, but suggested gods instead of men. The force that moved the rock had plainly come from

the north. I thought of a similar boulder I had seen not long before on the highest point of the Shawangunk

Mountains in New York, one side of which is propped up with a large stone, as wallbuilders prop up a rock

to wrap a chain around it. The rock seems poised lightly, and has but a few points of bearing. In this instance,

The prettiest botanical specimen my trip yielded was a little plant that bears the ugly name of horned

bladderwort (Utricularia cornuta), and which I found growing in marshy places along the shores of Moxie

Lake. It has a slender, naked stem nearly a foot high, crowned by two or more large deep yellow

flowers,flowers the shape of little bonnets or hoods. One almost expected to see tiny faces looking out of

them. This illusion is heightened by the horn or spur of the flower, which projects from the hood like a long

tapering chin,some masker's device. Then the cape behind,what a smart upward curve it has, as if

spurned by the fairy shoulders it was meant to cover! But perhaps the most notable thing about the flower

was its fragrance,the richest and strongest perfume I have ever found in a wild flower. This our botanist,

Gray, does not mention; as if one should describe the lark and forget its song. The fragrance suggested that of

The woods about Moxie Lake were literally carpeted with Linn�a. I had never seen it in such profusion. In

early summer, the period of its bloom, what a charming spectacle the mossy floors of these remote woods

must present! The flowers are purple rosecolor, nodding and fragrant. Another very abundant plant in these

woods was the Clintonia borealis. Uncle Nathan said it was called "bear's corn," though he did not know why.

The only noticeable flower by the Maine roadsides at this season that is not common in other parts of the

country is the harebell. Its bright blue, bellshaped corolla shone out from amid the dry grass and weeds all

along the route. It was one of the most delicate roadside flowers I had ever seen.

The only new bird I saw in Maine was the pileated woodpecker, or black "log cock," called by Uncle Nathan

"wood cock." I had never before seen or heard this bird, and its loud cackle in the woods about Moxie was a

new sound to me. It is the wildest and largest of our northern woodpeckers, and the rarest. Its voice and the

sound of its hammer are heard only in the depths of the northern woods. It is about as large as a crow, and

We stayed a week at Moxie, or until we became surfeited with its trout, and had killed the last Merganser

duck that lingered about our end of the lake. The trout that had accumulated on our hands we had kept alive

in a large champagne basket submerged in the lake, and the morning we broke camp the basket was towed to

the shore and opened; and after we had feasted our eyes upon the superb spectacle, every trout, twelve or

fifteen in number, some of them twopounders, was allowed to swim back into the lake. They went leisurely,

in couples and in trios, and were soon kicking up their heels in their old haunts. I expect that the divinity who

presides over Moxie will see to it that every one of those trout, doubled in weight, comes to our basket in the

The country is more of a wilderness, more of a wild solitude, in the winter than in the summer. The wild

comes out. The urban, the cultivated, is hidden or negatived. You shall hardly know a good field from a poor,

a meadow from a pasture, a park from a forest. Lines and boundaries are disregarded; gates and barways are

unclosed; man lets go his hold upon the earth; titledeeds are deep buried beneath the snow; the bestkept

grounds relapse to a state of nature; under the pressure of the cold all the wild creatures become outlaws, and

roam abroad beyond their usual haunts. The partridge comes to the orchard for buds; the rabbit comes to the

garden and lawn; the crows and jays come to the ashheap and corncrib, the snowbuntings to the stack and

to the barnyard; the sparrows pilfer from the domestic fowls; the pine grosbeak comes down from the north

and shears your maples of their buds; the fox prowls about your premises at night, and the red squirrels find

your grain in the barn or steal the butternuts from your attic. In fact, winter, 1ike some great calamity,

changes the status of most creatures and sets them adrift. Winter, like poverty, makes us acquainted with

For my part, my nearest approach to a strange bedfellow is the little gray rabbit that has taken up her abode

under my study floor. As she spends the day here and is out larking at night, she is not much of a bedfellow

after all. It is probable that I disturb her slumbers more than she does mine. I think she is some support to me

under therea silent wildeyed witness and backer; a type of the gentle and harmless in savage nature. She

has no sagacity to give me or lend me, but that soft, nimble foot of hers, and that touch as of cotton wherever

she goes, are worthy of emulation. I think I can feel her goodwill through the floor, and I hope she can

mine. When I have a happy thought I imagine her ears twitch, especially when I think of the sweet apple I

will place by her doorway at night. I wonder if that fox chanced to catch a glimpse of her the other night

when he stealthily leaped over the fence near by and walked along between the study and the house? How

clearly one could read that it was not a little dog that had passed there. There was something furtive in the

track; it shied off away from the house and around it, as if eying it suspiciously; and then it had the caution

and deliberation of the fox bold, bold, but not too bold; wariness was in every footprint. If it had been a

little dog that had chanced to wander that way, when he crossed my path he would have followed it up to the

barn and have gone smelling around for a bone; but this sharp, cautious track held straight across all others,

keeping five or six rods from the house, up the hill, across the highway towards a neighboring farmstead,

A winter neighbor of mine in whom I am interested, and who perhaps lends me his support after his kind, is a

little red owl, whose retreat is in the heart of an old appletree just over the fence. Where he keeps himself in

spring and summer I do not know, but late every fall, and at intervals all winter, his hidingplace is

discovered by the jays and nuthatches, and proclaimed from the treetops for the space of half an hour or

so, with all the powers of voice they can command. Four times during one winter they called me out to

behold this little ogre feigning sleep in his den, sometimes in one appletree, sometimes in another.

Whenever I heard their cries, I knew my neighbor was being berated. The birds would take turns at looking in

upon him and uttering their alarmnotes. Every jay within hearing would come to the spot and at once

approach the hole in the trunk or limb, and with a kind of breathless eagerness and excitement take a peep at

the owl, and then join the outcry. When I approached they would hastily take a final look and then withdraw

and regard my movements intently. After accustoming my eye to the faint light of the cavity for a few

moments, I could usually make out the owl at the bottom feigning sleep. Feigning, I say, because this is what

he really did, as I first discovered one day when I cut into his retreat with the axe. The loud blows and the

falling chips did not disturb him at all. When I reached in a stick and pulled him over on his side, leaving one

of his wings spread out, he made no attempt to recover himself, but lay among the chips and fragments of

decayed wood, like a part of themselves. Indeed, it took a sharp eye to distinguish him. Nor till I had pulled

him forth by one wing, rather rudely, did he abandon his trick of simulated sleep or death. Then, like a

detected pickpocket, he was suddenly transformed into another creature. His eyes flew wide open, his talons

clutched my finger, his ears were depressed, and every motion and look said, "Hands off, at your peril."

Finding this game did not work, he soon began to "play 'possum " again. I put a cover over my study

woodbox and kept him captive for a week. Look in upon him any time, night or day, and he was apparently

wrapped in the profoundest slumber; but the live mice which I put into his box from time to time found his

sleep was easily broken; there would be a sudden rustle in the box, a faint squeak, and then silence. After a

week of captivity I gave him his freedom in the full sunshine: no trouble for him to see which way and where

Just at dusk in the winter nights, I often hear his soft burrrr, very pleasing and belllike. What a furtive,

woody sound it is in the winter stillness, so unlike the harsh scream of the hawk. But all the ways of the owl

are ways of softness and duskiness. His wings are shod with silence, his plumage is edged with down.

Another owl neighbor of mine, with whom I pass the time of day more frequently than with the last, lives

farther away. I pass his castle every night on my way to the postoffice, and in winter, if the hour is late

enough, am pretty sure to see him standing in his doorway, surveying the passersby and the landscape

through narrow slits in his eyes. For four successive winters now have I observed him. As the twilight begins

to deepen he rises out of his cavity in the appletree, scarcely faster than the moon rises from behind the hill,

and sits in the opening, completely framed by its outlines of gray bark and dead wood, and by his protective

coloring virtually invisible to every eye that does not know he is there. Probably my own is the only eye that

has ever penetrated his secret, and mine never would have done so had I not chanced on one occasion to see

him leave his retreat and make a raid upon a shrike that was impaling a shrewmouse upon a thorn in a

neighboring tree and which I was watching. Failing to get the mouse, the owl returned swiftly to his cavity,

and ever since, while going that way, I have been on the lookout for him. Dozens of teams and

footpassengers pass him late in the day, but he regards them not, nor they him. When I come alone and

pause to salute him, he opens his eyes a little wider, and, appearing to recognize me, quickly shrinks and

fades into the background of his door in a very weird and curious manner. When he is not at his outlook, or

when he is, it requires the best powers of the eye to decide the point, as the empty cavity itself is almost an

exact image of him. If the whole thing had been carefully studied it could not have answered its purpose

better. The owl stands quite perpendicular, presenting a front of light mottled gray; the eyes are closed to a

mere slit, the earfeathers depressed, the beak buried in the plumage, and the whole attitude is one of silent,

motionless waiting and observation. If a mouse should be seen crossing the highway, or scudding over any

exposed part of the snowy surface in the twilight, the owl would doubtless swoop down upon it. I think the

owl has learned to distinguish me from the rest of the passersby; at least, when I stop before him, and he

sees himself observed, he backs down into his den, as I have said, in a very amusing manner. Whether

bluebirds, nuthatches, and chickadees birds that pass the night in cavities of treesever run into the

clutches of the dozing owl, I should be glad to know. My impression is, however, that they seek out smaller

cavities. An old willow by the roadside blew down one summer, and a decayed branch broke open, revealing

a brood of halffledged owls, and many feathers and quills of bluebirds, orioles, and other songsters, showing

The English house sparrows, that are so rapidly increasing among us, and that must add greatly to the food

supply of the owls and other birds of prey, seek to baffle their enemies by roosting in the densest evergreens

they can find, in the arborvit�, and in hemlock hedges. Softwinged as the owl is, he cannot steal in upon

These sparrows are becoming about the most noticeable of my winter neighbors, and a troop of them every

morning watch me put out the hens' feed, and soon claim their share. I rather encouraged them in their

neighborliness, till one day I discovered the snow under a favorite plumtree where they most frequently

perched covered with the scales of the fruitbuds. On investigating I found that the tree had been nearly

stripped of its budsa very unneighborly act on the part of the sparrows, considering, too, all the cracked

corn I had scattered for them. So I at once served notice on them that our good understanding was at an end.

And a hint is as good as a kick with this bird. The stone I hurled among them, and the one with which I

followed them up, may have been taken as a kick; but they were only a hint of the shotgun that stood ready

in the corner. The sparrows left in high dungeon, and were not back again in some days, and were then very

shy. No doubt the time is near at hand when we shall have to wage serious war upon these sparrows, as they

long have had to do on the continent of Europe. And yet it will be hard to kill the little wretches, the only Old

World bird we have. When I take down my gun to shoot them I shall probably remember that the Psalmist

said, "I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the housetop," and maybe the recollection will cause me to

stay my hand. The sparrows have the Old World hardiness and prolificness; they are wise and tenacious of

life, and we shall find it by and by no small matter to keep them in check. Our native birds are much

different, less prolific, less shrewd, less aggressive and persistent, less quickwitted and able to read the note

of danger or hostilityin short, less sophisticated. Most of our birds are yet essentially wild, that is, little

changed by civilization. In winter, especially, they sweep by me and around me in flocks,the Canada

sparrow, the snowbunting, the shorelark, the pine grosbeak, the redpoll, the cedarbird,feeding upon

frozen apples in the orchard, upon cedarberries, upon maplebuds, and the berries of the mountain ash, and

the celtis, and upon the seeds of the weeds that rise above the snow in the field, or upon the hayseed

dropped where the cattle have been foddered in the barnyard or about the distant stack; but yet taking no

heed of man, in no way changing their habits so as to take advantage of his presence in nature. The pine

grosbeak will come in numbers upon your porch, to get the black drupes of the honeysuckle or the woodbine,

or within reach of your windows to get the berries of the mountainash, but they know you not; they look at

you as innocently and unconcernedly as at a bear or moose in their native north, and your house is no more to

The only ones of my winter neighbors that actua1ly rap at my door are the nuthatches and woodpeckers, and

these do not know that it is my door. My retreat is covered with the bark of young chestnuttrees, and the

birds, I suspect, mistake it for a huge stump that ought to hold fat grubs (there is not even a bookworm inside

of it), and their loud rapping often makes me think I have a caller indeed. I place fragments of hickorynuts

in the interstices of the bark, and thus attract the nuthatches; a bone upon my windowsill attracts both

nuthatches and the downy woodpecker. They peep in curiously through the window upon me, pecking away

at my bone, too often a very poor one. A bone nailed to a tree a few feet in front of the window attracts crows

as well as lesser birds. Even the slatecolored snowbird, a seedeater, comes and nibbles it occasionally.

The bird that seems to consider he has the best right to the bone both upon the tree and upon the sill is the

downy woodpecker, my favorite neighbor among the winter birds, to whom I will mainly devote the

remainder of this chapter. His retreat is but a few paces from my own, in the decayed limb of an appletree

which he excavated several autumns ago. I say "he" because the red plume on the top of his head proclaims

the sex. It seems not to be generally known to our writers upon ornithology that certain of our

woodpeckersprobably all the winter residentseach fall excavate a limb or the trunk of a tree in which to

pass the winter, and that the cavity is abandoned in the spring, probably for a new one in which nidification

takes place. So far as I have observed, these cavities are drilled out only by the males. Where the females take

up their quarters I am not so well informed, though I suspect that they use the abandoned holes of the males

The particular woodpecker to which I refer drilled his first hole in my appletree one fall four or five years

ago. This he occupied till the following spring when he abandoned it. The next fall he began a hole in an

adjoining limb, later than before, and when it was about half completed a female took possession of his old

quarters. I am sorry to say that this seemed to enrage the male, very much, and he persecuted the poor bird

whenever she appeared upon the scene. He would fly at her spitefully and drive her off. One chilly November

morning, as I passed under the tree, I heard the hammer of the little architect in his cavity, and at the same

time saw the persecuted female sitting at the entrance of the other hole as if she would fain come out. She

was actually shivering, probably from both fear and cold. I understood the situation at a glance; the bird was

afraid to come forth and brave the anger of the male. Not till I had rapped smartly upon the limb with my

stick did she come out and attempt to escape; but she had not gone ten feet from the tree before the male was

in hot pursuit, and in a few moments had driven her back to the same tree, where she tried to avoid him

among the branches. A few days after, he rid himself of his unwelcome neighbor in the following ingenious

manner: he fairly scuttled the other cavity; he drilled a hole into the bottom of it that let in the light and the

cold, and I saw the female there no more. I did not see him in the act of rendering this tenement

uninhabitable; but one morning, behold it was punctured at the bottom, and the circumstances all seemed to

point to him as the author of it. There is probably no gallantry among the birds except at the mating season. I

have frequently seen the male woodpecker drive the female away from the bone upon the tree. When she

hopped around to the other end and timidly nibbled it, he would presently dart spitefully at her. She would

then take up her position in his rear and wait till he had finished his meal. The position of the female among

the birds is very much the same as that of woman among savage tribes. Most of the drudgery of life falls

My bird is a genuine little savage, doubtless, but I value him as a neighbor. It is a satisfaction during the cold

or stormy winter nights to know he is warm and cosy there in his retreat. When the day is bad and unfit to be

abroad in; he is there too. When I wish to know if he is at home, I go and rap upon his tree, and, if he is not

too lazy or indifferent, after some delay he shows his head in his round doorway about ten feet above, and

looks down inquiringly upon mesometimes latterly I think half resentfully, as much as to say, "I would

thank you not to disturb me so often." After sundown, he will not put his head out any more when I call, but

as I step away I can get a glimpse of him inside looking cold and reserved. He is a late riser, especially if it is

a cold or disagreeable morning, in this respect being like the fowls; it is sometimes near nine o'clock before I

see him leave his tree. On the other hand, he comes home early, being in if the day is unpleasant by four P.

M. He lives all alone; in this respect I do not commend his example. Where his mate is I should like to know.

I have discovered several other woodpeckers in adjoining orchards, each of which has a like home and leads a

like solitary life. One of them has excavated a dry limb within easy reach of my hand, doing the work also in

September. But the choice of tree was not a good one; the limb was too much decayed, and the workman had

made the cavity too large; a chip had come out, making a hole in the outer wall. Then he went a few inches

down the limb and began again, and excavated a large, commodious chamber, but had again come too near

the surface; scarcely more than the bark protected him in one place, and the limb was very much weakened.

Then he made another attempt still farther down the limb, and drilled in an inch or two, but seemed to change

his mind; the work stopped, and I concluded the bird had wisely abandoned the tree. Passing there one cold,

rainy November day, I thrust in my two fingers and was surprised to feel something soft and warm: as I drew

away my hand the bird came out, apparently no more surprised than I was. It had decided, then, to make its

home in the old limb; a decision it had occasion to regret, for not long after, on a stormy night, the branch

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

Such a cavity makes a snug, warm home, and when the entrance is on the under side if the limb, as is usual,

the wind and snow cannot reach the occupant. Late in December, while crossing a high, wooded mountain,

lured by the music of foxhounds, I discovered fresh yellow chips strewing the newfallen snow, and at once

thought of my woodpeckers. On looking around I saw where one had been at work excavating a lodge in a

small yellow birch. The orifice was about fifteen feet from the ground, and appeared as round as if struck

with a compass. It was on the east side of the tree, so as to avoid the prevailing west and northeast winds. As

it was nearly two inches in diameter, it could not have been the work of the downy, but must have been that

of the hairy, or else the yellowbellied woodpecker. His home had probably been wrecked by some violent

wind, and he was thus providing himself another. In digging out these retreats the woodpeckers prefer a dry,

brittle, trunk, not too soft. They go in horizontally to the centre and then turn downward, enlarging the tunnel

Another trait our woodpeckers have that endears them to me, and that has never been pointedly noticed by

our ornithologists, is their habit of drumming in the spring. They are songless birds, and yet all are musicians;

they make the dry limbs eloquent of the coming change. Did you think that loud, sonorous hammering which

proceeded from the orchard or from the near woods on that still March or April morning was only some bird

getting its breakfast? It is downy, but he is not rapping at the door of a grub; he is rapping at the door of

spring, and the dry limb thrills beneath the ardor of his blows. Or, later in the season, in the dense forest or by

some remote mountain lake, does that measured rhythmic beat that breaks upon the silence, first three strokes

following each other rapidly, succeeded by two louder ones with longer intervals between them, and that has

an effect upon the alert ear as if the solitude itself had at last found a voicedoes that suggest anything less

than a deliberate musical performance? In fact, our woodpeckers are just as characteristically drummers as is

the ruffed grouse, and they have their particular limbs and stubs to which they resort for that purpose. Their

need of expression is apparently just as great as that of the songbirds, and it is not surprising that they

should have found out that there is music in a dry, seasoned limb which can be evoked beneath their beaks.

A few seasons ago a downy woodpecker, probably the individual one who is now my winter neighbor, began

to drum early in March in a partly decayed appletree that stands in the edge of a narrow strip of woodland

near me. When the morning was still and mild I would often hear him through my window before I was up,

or by halfpast six o'clock, and he would keep it up pretty briskly till nine or ten o'clock, in this respect

resembling the grouse, which do most of their drumming in the forenoon. His drum was the stub of a dry

limb about the size of one's wrist. The heart was decayed and gone, but the outer shell was hard and resonant.

The bird would keep his position there for an hour at a time. Between his drummings he would preen his

plumage and listen as if for the response of the female, or for the drum of some rival. How swift his head

would go when he was delivering his blows upon the limb! His beak wore the surface perceptibly. When he

wished to change the key, which was quite often, he would shift his position an inch or two to a knot which

gave out a higher, shriller note. When I climbed up to examine his drum he was much disturbed. I did not

know he was in the vicinity, but it seems he saw me from a near tree, and came in haste to the neighboring

branches, and with spread plumage and a sharp note demanded plainly enough what my business was with

his drum. I was invading his privacy, desecrating his shrine, and the bird was much put out. After some

weeks the female appeared; he had literally drummed up a mate; his urgent and oftrepeated advertisement

was answered. Still the drumming did not cease, but was quite as fervent as before. If a mate could be won by

drumming she could be kept and entertained by more drumming; courtship should not end with marriage. If

the bird felt musical before, of course he felt much more so now. Besides that, the gentle deities needed

propitiating in behalf of the nest and young as well as in behalf of the mate. After a time a second female

came, when there was war between the two. I did not see them come to blows, but I saw one female pursuing

the other about the place, and giving her no rest for several days. She was evidently trying to run her out of

the neighborhood. Now and then she, too, would drum briefly as if sending a triumphant message to her

The woodpeckers do not each have a particular dry limb to which they resort at all times to drum, like the one

I have described. The woods are full of suitable branches, and they drum more or less here and there as they

are in quest of food; yet I am convinced each one has its favorite spot, like the grouse, to which it resorts,

especially in the morning. The sugarmaker in the maplewoods may notice that their sound proceeds from

the same tree or trees about his camp with great regularity. A woodpecker in my vicinity has drummed for

two seasons on a telegraph pole, and he makes the wires and glass insulators ring. Another drums on a thin

board on the end of a long grapearbor, and on still mornings can be heard a long distance.

A friend of mine in a Southern city tells me of a redheaded woodpecker that drums upon a lightningrod on

his neighbor's house. Nearly every clear, still morning at certain seasons, he says, this musical rapping may

be heard. "He alternates his tapping with his stridulous call, and the effect on a cool, autumnlike morning is

The highhole appears to drum more promiscuously than does the downy. He utters his long, loud spring

call, whickwhickwhickwhick, and then begins to rap with his beak upon his perch before the last

note has reached your ear. I have seen him drum sitting upon the ridge of the barn. The log cock, or pileated

woodpecker, the largest and wildest of our Northern species, I have never heard drum. His blows should

When the woodpecker is searching for food, or laying siege to some hidden grub, the sound of his hammer is

dead or muffled, and is heard but a few yards. It is only upon dry, seasoned timber, freed of its bark, that he

Wilson was evidently familiar with this vernal drumming of the woodpeckers, but quite misinterprets it.

Speaking of the redbellied species, he says: "It rattles like the rest of the tribe on the dead limbs, and with

such violence as to be heard in still weather more than half a mile off; and listens to hear the insect it has

alarmed." He listens rather to hear the drum of his rival or the brief and coy response of the female; for there

On one occasion I saw downy at his drum when a female flew quickly through the tree and alighted a few

yards beyond him. He paused instantly, and kept his place, apparently without moving a muscle. The female,

I took it, had answered his advertisement. She flitted about from limb to limb (the female may be known by

the absence of the crimson spot on the back of the head), apparently full of business of her own, and now and

then would drum in a shy, tentative manner. The male watched her a few moments and, convinced perhaps

that she meant business, struck up his liveliest tune, then listened for her response. As it came back timidly

but promptly, he left his perch and sought a nearer acquaintance with the prudent female. Whether or not a

Our smaller woodpeckers are sometimes accused of injuring the apple and other fruit trees, but the depredator

is probably the larger and rarer yellowbellied species. One autumn I caught one of these fellows in the act of

sinking long rows of his little wells in the limb of an appletree. There were series of rings of them, one

above another, quite around the stem, some of them the third of an inch across. They are evidently made to

get at the tender, juicy bark, or cambium layer, next to the hard wood of the tree. The health and vitality of

In the following winter the same bird (probably) tapped a mapletree in front of my window in fiftysix

places; and when the day was sunny, and the sap oozed out, he spent most of his time there. He knew the

good sapdays, and was on hand promptly for his tipple; cold and cloudy days he did not appear. He knew

which side of the tree to tap, too, and avoided the sunless northern exposure. When one series of wellholes

failed to supply him, he would sink another, drilling through the bark with great ease and quickness. Then,

when the day was warm, and the sap ran freely, he would have a regular sugarmaple debauch, sitting there

by his wells hour after hour, and as fast as they became filled sipping out the sap. This he did in a gentle,

caressing manner that was very suggestive. He made a row of wells near the foot of the tree, and other rows

higher up, and he would hop up and down the trunk as these became filled. He would hop down the tree

backward with the utmost ease, throwing his tail outward and his head inward at each hop. When the wells

would freeze or his thirst become slaked, he would ruffle his feathers, draw himself together, and sit and doze

in the sun on the side of the tree. He passed the night in a hole in an appletree not far off. He was evidently a

young bird not yet having the plumage of the mature male or female, and yet he knew which tree to tap and

where to tap it. I saw where he had bored several maples in the vicinity, but no oaks or chestnuts. I nailed up

a fat bone near his sapworks: the downy woodpecker came there several times a day to dine; the nuthatch

came, and even the snowbird took a taste occasionally; but this sapsucker never touched it; the sweet of

the tree sufficed for him. This woodpecker does not breed or abound in my vicinity; only stray specimens are

now and then to be met with in the colder months. As spring approached, the one I refer to took his departure.

I must bring my account of my neighbor in the tree down to the latest date; so after the lapse of a year I add

the following notes. The last day of February was bright and springlike. I heard the first sparrow sing that

morning and the first screaming of the circling hawks, and about seven o'clock the first drumming of my little

friend. His first notes were uncertain and at long intervals, but by and by he warmed up and beat a lively

tattoo. As the season advanced he ceased to lodge in his old quarters. I would rap and find nobody at home.

Was he out on a lark, I said, the spring fever working in his blood? After a time his drumming grew less

frequent, and finally, in the middle of April, ceased entirely. Had some accident befallen him, or had he

wandered away to fresh fields, following some siren of his species? Probably the latter. Another bird that I

had under observation also left his winterquarters in the spring. This, then, appears to be the usual custom.

The wrens and the nuthatches and chickadees succeed to these abandoned cavities, and often have amusing

disputes over them. The nuthatches frequently pass the night in them, and the wrens and chickadees nest in

them. I have further observed that in excavating a cavity for a nest the downy woodpecker makes the entrance

smaller than when he is excavating his winterquarters. This is doubtless for the greater safety of the young

The next fall, the downy excavated another limb in the old appletree, but had not got his retreat quite

finished, when the large hairy woodpecker appeared upon the scene. I heard his loud click, click, early one

frosty November morning. There was something impatient and angry in the tone that arrested my attention. I

saw the bird fly to the tree where downy had been at work, and fall with great violence upon the entrance to

his cavity. The bark and the chips flew beneath his vigorous blows, and before I fairly woke up to what he

was doing, he had completely demolished the neat, round doorway of downy. He had made a large ragged

opening large enough for himself to enter. I drove him away and my favorite came back, but only to survey

the ruins of his castle for a moment and then go away. He lingered about for a day or two and then

disappeared. The big hairy usurper passed a night in the cavity, but on being hustled out of it the next night

by me, he also left, but not till he had demolished the entrance to a cavity in a neighboring tree where downy

and his mate had reared their brood that summer, and where I had hoped the female would pass the winter.

I am more than half persuaded that the muskrat is a wise little animal, and that on the subject of the weather,

especially, he possesses some secret that I should be glad to know. In the fall of 1878 I noticed that he built

unusually high and massive nests. I noticed them in several different localities. In a shallow, sluggish pond by

the roadside, which I used to pass daily in my walk, two nests were in process of construction throughout the

month of November. The builders worked only at night, and I could see each day that the work had visibly

advanced. When there was a slight skim of ice over the pond, this was broken up about the nests, with trails

through it in different directions where the material had been brought. The houses were placed a little to one

side of the main channel, and were constructed entirely of a species of coarse wild grass that grew all about.

So far as I could see, from first to last they were solid masses of grass, as if the interior cavity or nest was to

be excavated afterward, as doubtless it was. As they emerged from the pond they gradually assumed the

shape of a miniature mountain, very bold and steep on the south side, and running down a long gentle grade

to the surface of the water on the north. One could see that the little architect hauled all his material up this

easy slope, and thrust it out boldly around the other side. Every mouthful was distinctly defined. After they

were two feet or more above the water, I expected each day to see that the finishing stroke had been given

and the work brought to a close. But higher yet, said the builder. December drew near, the cold became

threatening, and I was apprehensive that winter would suddenly shut down upon those unfinished nests. But

the wise rats knew better than I did; they had received private advices from headquarters that I knew not of.

Finally. about the 6th of December, the nests assumed completion; the northern incline was absorbed or

carried up, and each structure became a strong massive cone, three or four feet high, the largest nest of the

kind I had ever seen. Does it mean a severe winter? I inquired. An old farmer said it meant "high water," and

he was right once, at least, for in a few days afterward we had the heaviest rainfall known in this section for

half a century. The creeks rose to an almost unprecedented height. The sluggish pond became a seething,

turbulent watercourse; gradually the angry element crept up the sides of these lake dwellings, till, when the

rain ceased, about four o'clock they showed above the flood no larger than a man's hat. During the night the

channel shifted till the main current swept over them, and next day not a vestige of the nests was to be seen;

they had gone downstream, as had many other dwellings of a less temporary character. The rats had built

wisely, and would have been perfectly secure against any ordinary high water, but who can foresee a flood?

The oldest traditions of their race did not run back to the time of such a visitation.

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

architects did not work at it with much heart; the material was very scarce, the ice hindered, and before the

In other localities I noticed that where the nests were placed on the banks of streams, they were made secure

against the floods by being built amid a small clump of bushes. When the fall of 1879 came, the muskrats

were very tardy about beginning their house, laying the cornerstoneor the cornersodabout December

1st, and continuing the work slowly and indifferently. On the 15th of the month the nest was not yet finished.

This, I said, indicates a mild winter; and, sure enough, the season was one of the mildest known for many

Again, in the fall of 1880, while the weatherwise were wagging their heads, some forecasting a mild, some a

severe winter, I watched with interest for a sign from my muskrats. About November 1st, a month earlier than

the previous year, they began their nest, and worked at it with a will. They appeared to have just got tidings

of what was coming. If I had taken the hint so palpably given, my celery would not have been frozen in the

ground, and my apples caught in unprotected places. When the cold wave struck us, about November 20th,

my fourlegged "Itoldyouso's" had nearly completed their dwelling; it lacked only the ridgeboard, so to

speak; it needed a little "topping out," to give it a finished look. But this it never got. The winter had come to

stay, and it waxed more and more severe, till the unprecedented cold of the last days of December must have

astonished even the wise muskrats in their snug retreat. I approached their nest at this time, a white mound

upon the white, deeply frozen surface of the pond, and wondered if there was any life in that apparent

sepulchre. I thrust my walkingstick sharply into it, when there was a rustle and a splash into the water, as

the occupant made his escape. What a damp basement that house has, I thought, and what a pity to rout out a

peaceful neighbor out of his bed in this weather and into such a state of things as this! But water does not wet

the muskrat; his fur is charmed, and not a drop penetrates it. Where the ground is favorable, the muskrats do

not build these moundlike nests, but burrow into the bank a long distance, and establish their

Shall we not say, then, in view of the above facts, that this little creature is weatherwise? The hitting of the

mark twice might be mere good luck; but three bull'seyes in succession is not a mere coincidence; it is a

proof of skill. The muskrat is not found in the Old World, which is a little singular, as other rats so abound

there, and as those slowgoing English streams especially, with their grassy banks, are so well suited to him.

The waterrat of Europe is smaller, but of similar nature and habits. The muskrat does not hibernate like

some rodents, but is pretty active all winter. In December I noticed in my walk where they had made

excursions of a few yards to an orchard for frozen apples. One day, along a little stream, I saw a mink track

amid those of the muskrat; following it up, I presently came to blood and other marks of strife upon the snow

beside a stone wall. Looking in between the stones, I found the carcass of the luckless rat, with its head and

FOR the largest and finest chestnuts I had last fall I was indebted to the gray squirrels. Wa1king through the

early October woods one day, I came upon a place where the ground was thickly strewn with very large

unopened chestnut burs. On examination I found that every bur had been cut square off with about an inch of

the stem adhering, and not one had been left on the tree. It was not accident, then, but design. Whose design?

The squirrels'. The fruit was the finest I had ever seen in the woods, and some wise squirrel had marked it for

his own. The burs were ripe, and had just begun to divide, not "threefold," but fourfold, "to show the fruit

within." The squirrel that had taken all this pains had evidently reasoned with himself thus: "Now , these are

extremely fine chestnuts, and I want them; if I wait till the burs open on the tree the crows and jays will be

sure to carry off a great many of the nuts before they fall; then, after the wind has rattled out what remain,

there are the mice, the chipmunks, the red squirrels, the raccoons, the grouse, to say nothing of the boys and

the pigs, to come in for their share; so I will forestall events a little; I will cut off the burs when they have

matured, and a few days of this dry October weather will cause everyone of them to open on the ground; I

shall be on hand in the nick of time to gather up my nuts." The squirrel, of course, had to take the chances of

a prowler like myself coming along, but he had fairly stolen a march on his neighbors. As I proceeded to

collect and open the burs, I was half prepared to hear an audible protest from the trees about, for I constantly

fancied myself watched by shy but jealous eyes. It is an interesting inquiry how the squirrel knew the burs

The gray squirrel is peculiarly an American product, and might serve very well as a national emblem. The

Old World can beat us on rats and mice, but we are far ahead on squirrels, having five or six species to

I STOOD on a high hill or ridge one autumn day and saw a hound run a fox through the fields far beneath

me. What odors that fox must have shaken out of himself, I thought, to be traced thus easily, and how great

their specific gravity not to have been blown away like smoke by the breeze! The fox ran a long distance

down the hill, keeping within a few feet of a stone wall; then turned a right angle and led off for the

mountain, across a plowed field and a succession of pasture lands. In about fifteen minutes the hound came in

full blast with her nose in the air, and never once did she put it to the ground while in my sight. When she

came to the stone wall she took the other side from that taken by the fox, and kept about the same distance

from it, being thus separated several yards from his track, with the fence between her and it. At the point

where the fox turned sharply to the left, the hound overshot a few yards, then wheeled, and feeling the air a

moment with her nose, took up the scent again and was off on his trail as unerringly as fate. It seemed as if

the fox must have sowed himself broadcast as he went along, and that his scent was so rank and heavy that it

settled in the hollows and clung tenaciously to the bushes and crevices in the fence. I thought I ought to have

caught a remnant of it as I passed that way some minutes later, but I did not. But I suppose it was not that the

lightfooted fox so impressed himself upon the ground he ran over, but that the sense of the hound was so

keen. To her sensitive nose these tracks steamed like hot cakes, and they would not have cooled off so as to

be undistinguishable for several hours. For the time being she had but one sense: her whole soul was

It is amusing when the hunter starts out of a winter morning to see his hound probe the old tracks to

determine how recent they are. He sinks his nose down deep in the snow so as to exclude the air from above,

then draws a long full breath, giving sometimes an audible snort. If there remains the least effluvium of the

fox the hound will detect it. If it be very slight it only sets his tail wagging; if it be strong it unloosens his

Such things remind one of the waste, the friction that is going on all about us, even when the wheels of life

run the most smoothly. A fox cannot trip along the top of a stone wall so lightly but that he will leave enough

of himself to betray his course to the hound for hours afterward. When the boys play "hare and hounds" the

hare scatters bits of paper to give a clew to the pursuers, but he scatters himself much more freely if only our

sight and scent were sharp enough to detect the fragments. Even the fish leave a trail in the water, and it is

said the otter will pursue them by it. The birds make a track in the air, only their enemies hunt by sight rather

than by scent. The fox baffles the hound most upon a hard crust of frozen snow; the scent will not hold to the

Judged by the eye alone, the fox is the lightest and most buoyant creature that runs. His soft wrapping of fur

conceals the muscular play and effort that is so obvious in the hound that pursues him, and he comes

bounding along precisely as if blown by a gentle wind. His massive tail is carried as if it floated upon the air

The hound is not remarkable for his fleetness, but how he will hang! often running late into the night and

sometimes till morning, from ridge to ridge, from peak to peak; now on the mountain, now crossing the

valley, now playing about a large slope of uplying pasture fields. At times the fox has a pretty welldefined

orbit, and the hunter knows where to intercept him. Again he leads off like a comet, quite beyond the system

of hills and ridges upon which he was started, and his return is entirely a matter of conjecture; but if the day

be not more than half spent, the chances are that the fox will be back before night, though the sportsman's

The hound is a most interesting dog. How solemn and longvisaged he ishow peaceful and welldisposed!

He is the Quaker among dogs. All the viciousness and currishness seem to have been weeded out of him; he

seldom quarrels, or fights, or plays, like other dogs. Two strange hounds, meeting for the first time, behave as

civilly toward each other as if two men. I know a hound that has an ancient, wrinkled, human, faraway look

that reminds one of the bust of Homer among the Elgin marbles. He looks like the mountains toward which

The hound is a great puzzle to the farm dog; the latter, attracted by his baying, comes barking and snarling up

through the fields bent on picking a quarrel; he intercepts the hound, snubs and insults and annoys him in

every way possible, but the hound heeds him not; if the dog attacks him he gets away as best he can, and goes

on with the trail; the cur bristles and barks and struts about for a while, then goes back to the house, evidently

thinking the hound a lunatic, which he is for the time beinga monomaniac, the slave and victim of one

idea. I saw the master of a hound one day arrest him in full course to give one of the hunters time to get to a

certain runaway; the dog cried and struggled to free himself and would listen neither to threats nor caresses.

Knowing he must be hungry, I offered him my lunch, but he would not touch it. I put it in his mouth, but he

threw it contemptuously from him. We coaxed and petted and reassured him, but he was under a spell; he was

Writers upon rural England and her familiar natural history make no mention of the marmot or woodchuck.

In Europe this animal seems to be confined to high mountainous districts, as on our Pacific slope, burrowing

near the snow line. It is more social or gregarious than the American species, living in large families like our

prairiedog. In the Middle and Eastern States our woodchuck takes the place, in some respects, of the English

rabbit, burrowing in every hillside and under every stone wall and jutting ledge and large bowlder, from

whence it makes raids upon the grass and clover and sometimes upon the garden vegetables. It is quite

solitary in its habits, seldom more than one inhabiting the same den, unless it be a mother and her young. It is

not now so much a wood chuck as a field chuck. Occasionally, however, one seems to prefer the woods, and

is not seduced by the sunny slopes and the succulent grass, but feeds, as did his fathers before him, upon roots

One summer day, as I was swimming across a broad, deep pool in the creek in a secluded place in the woods,

I saw one of these sylvan chucks amid the rocks but a few feet from the edge of the water where I proposed to

touch. He saw my approach, but doubtless took me for some waterfowl, or for some cousin of his of the

muskrat tribe; for he went on with his feeding, and regarded me not till I paused within ten feet of him and

lifted myself up. Then he did not know me; having, perhaps, never seen Adam in his simplicity, but he

twisted his nose around to catch my scent; and the moment he had done so he sprang like a jumpingjack and

The woodchuck is the true serf among our animals; he belongs to the soil, and savors of it. He is of the earth,

earthy. There is generally a decided odor about his dens and lurkingplaces, but it is not at all disagreeable in

the cloverscented air, and his shrill whistle, as he takes to his hole or defies the farm dog from the interior of

the stone wall, is a pleasant summer sound. In form and movement the woodchuck is not captivating. His

body is heavy and flabby. Indeed, such a flaccid, fluid, pouchy carcass, I have never before seen. It has

absolutely no muscular tension or rigidity, but is as baggy and shaky as a skin filled with water. Let the

rifleman shoot one while it lies basking on a sidelong rock, and its body slumps off, and rolls and spills down

the hill, as if it were a mass of bowels only. The legs of the woodchuck are short and stout, and made for

digging rather than running. The latter operation he performs by short leaps, his belly scarcely clearing the

ground. For a short distance he can make very good time, but he seldom trusts himself far from his hole, and

when surprised in that predicament, makes little effort to escape, but, grating his teeth, looks the danger

I knew a farmer in New York who had a very large bobtailed churndog by the name of Cuff. The farmer

kept a large dairy and made a great deal of butter, and it was the business of Cuff to spend nearly the half of

each summer day treading the endless round of the churningmachine. During the remainder of the day he

had plenty of time to sleep, and rest, and sit on his hips and survey the landscape. One day, sitting thus, he

discovered a woodchuck about forty rods from the house, on a steep sidehill, feeding about near his hole,

which was beneath a large rock. The old dog, forgetting his stiffness, and remembering the fun he had had

with woodchucks in his earlier days, started off at his highest speed, vainly hoping to catch this one before he

could get to his hole. But the woodchuck, seeing the dog come laboring up the hill, sprang to the mouth of his

den, and, when his pursuer was only a few rods off, whistled tauntingly and went in. This occurred several

times, the old dog marching up the hill, and then marching down again, having had his labor for his pains. I

suspect that he revolved the subject in his mind while he revolved the great wheel of the churningmachine,

and that some turn or other brought him a happy thought, for next time he showed himself a strategist.

Instead of giving chase to the woodchuck when first discovered, he crouched down to the ground, and,

resting his head on his paws, watched him. The woodchuck kept working away from the hole, lured by the

tender clover, but, not unmindful of his safety, lifted himself up on his haunches every few moments and

surveyed the approaches. Presently, after the woodchuck had let himself down from one of these attitudes of

observation, and resumed his feeding, Cuff started swiftly but stealthily up the hill, precisely in the attitude of

a cat when she is stalking a bird. When the woodchuck rose up again, Cuff was perfectly motionless and half

hid by the grass. When he again resumed his clover, Cuff sped up the hill as before, this time crossing a

fence, but in a low place, and so nimbly that he was not discovered. Again the wood chuck was on the

outlook, again Cuff was motionless and hugging the ground. As the dog nears his victim he is partially

hidden by a swell in the earth, but still the woodchuck from his outlook reports "all right," when Cuff, having

not twice as far to run as the 'chuck, throws all stealthiness aside and rushes directly for the hole. At that

moment the woodchuck discovers his danger, and, seeing that it is a race for life, leaps as I never saw marmot

leap before. But he is two seconds too late, his retreat is cut off, and the powerful jaws of the old dog close

The next season Cuff tried the same tactics again with like success; but when the third woodchuck had taken

up his abode at the fatal hole, the old churner's wits and strength had begun to fail him, and he was baffled in

The woodchuck always burrows on a sidehill. This enables him to guard against being drowned out, by

making the termination of the hole higher than the entrance. He digs in slantingly for about two or three feet,

then makes a sharp upward turn and keeps nearly parallel with the surface of the ground for a distance of

eight or ten feet farther, according to the grade. Here he makes his nest and passes the winter, holing up in

October or November and coming out again in April. This is a long sleep, and is rendered possible only by

the amount of fat with which the system has become stored during the summer. The fire of life still burns, but

very faintly and slowly, as with the draughts all closed and the ashes heaped up. Respiration is continued, but

at longer intervals, and all the vital processes are nearly at a standstill. Dig one out during hibernation

(Audubon did so), and you find it a mere inanimate ball, that suffers itself to be moved and rolled about

without showing signs of awakening. But bring it in by the fire, and it presently unrolls and opens its eyes,

and crawls feebly about, and if left to itself will seek some dark hole or corner, roll itself up again, and