In New England Fields And Woods - free ebook by Rowland Evans Robinson

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In New England Fields And Woods

Rowland Evans Robinson

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In New England Fields and Woods

In New England Fields and Woods

By Rowland E. Robinson Boston and New York Houghton, Mifflin and Company The Riverside Press, Cambridge Copyright, 1896, By ROWLAND E. ROBINSON. All rights reserved. TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED The weather and the changes of the seasons are such common and convenient topics that one need not apologize for talking about them, though he says nothing new. Still less need one make an apology if he becomes garrulous in relation to scenes which are now hidden fro

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I

I

THE NAMELESS SEASON In the March page of our almanac, opposite the 20th of the month we find the bold assertion, "Now spring begins;" but in the northern part of New England, for which this almanac was especially compiled, the weather does not bear out the statement. The snow may be gone from the fields except in grimy drifts, in hollows and along fences and woodsides; but there is scarcely a sign of spring in the nakedness of pasture, meadow, and ploughed land, now more dreary in the dun desola

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II

II

MARCH DAYS Back and forth across the land, in swift and sudden alternation, the March winds toss days of bitter cold and days of genial warmth, now out of the eternal winter of the north, now from the endless summer of the tropics. Repeated thawing and freezing has given the snow a coarse grain. It is like a mass of fine hailstones and with no hint of the soft and feathery flakes that wavered down like white blossoms shed from the unseen bloom of some far-off upper world and that silently transf

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III

III

THE HOME FIRESIDE Weeks ago the camp-fire shed its last glow in the deserted camp, its last thin thread of smoke was spun out and vanished in the silent air, and black brands and gray ashes were covered in the even whiteness of the snow. The unscared fox prowls above them in curious exploration of the desolate shanty, where wood-mice are domiciled and to whose sunny side the partridge comes to bask; the woodpecker taps unbidden to enter or departs from the always open door; and under the stars t

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IV

IV

THE CROW The robin's impatient yelp not yet attuned to happy song, the song sparrow's trill, the bluebird's serene melody, do not herald the coming of spring, but attend its vanguard. These blithe musicians accompany the soft air that bares the fields, empurples the buds, and fans the bloom of the first squirrelcups and sets the hyla's shrill chime a-ringing. Preceding these, while the fields are yet an unbroken whiteness and the coping of the drifts maintain the fantastic grace of their storm-b

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V

V

THE MINK This little fur-bearer, whose color has been painted darker than it is, singularly making his name proverbial for blackness, is an old acquaintance of the angler and the sportsman, but not so familiar to them and the country boy as it was twoscore years ago. It was a woeful day for the tribe of the mink when it became the fashion for other folk to wear his coat, which he could only doff with the subtler garment of life. Throughout the term of his exaltation to the favor of fashion, he w

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VI

VI

APRIL DAYS At last there is full and complete assurance of spring, in spite of the baldness of the woods, the barrenness of the fields, bleak with sodden furrows of last year's ploughing, or pallidly tawny with bleached grass, and untidy with the jetsam of winter storms and the wide strewn litter of farms in months of foddering and wood-hauling. There is full assurance of spring in such incongruities as a phœbe a-perch on a brown mullein stalk in the midst of grimy snow banks, and therefrom swoo

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VII

VII

THE WOODCHUCK Chancing to pass a besmirched April snowbank on the border of a hollow, you see it marked with the footprints of an old acquaintance of whom for months you have not seen even so much as this. It is not that he made an autumnal pilgrimage, slowly following the swift birds and the retreating sun, that you had no knowledge of him, but because of his home-keeping, closer than a hermit's seclusion. These few cautious steps, venturing but half way from his door to the tawny naked grass t

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VIII

VIII

THE CHIPMUNK As the woodchuck sleeps away the bitterness of cold, so in his narrower chamber sleeps the chipmunk. Happy little hermit, lover of the sun, mate of the song sparrow and the butterflies, what a goodly and hopeful token of the earth's renewed life is he, verifying the promises of his own chalices, the squirrelcups, set in the warmest corners of the woodside, with libations of dew and shower drops, of the bluebird's carol, the sparrow's song of spring. Now he comes forth from his long

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IX

IX

SPRING SHOOTING The Ram makes way for the Bull; March goes out and April comes in with sunshine and showers, smiles and tears. The sportsman has his gun in hand again with deadly purpose, as the angler his rod and tackle with another intention than mere overhauling and putting to rights. The smiles of April are for them. The geese come wedging their way northward; the ducks awaken the silent marshes with the whistle of their pinions; the snipe come in pairs and wisps to the thawing bogs—all on t

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X

X

THE GARTER-SNAKE When the returned crows have become such familiar objects in the forlorn unclad landscape of early spring that they have worn out their first welcome, and the earliest songbirds have come to stay in spite of inhospitable weather that seems for days to set the calendar back a month, the woods invite you more than the fields. There nature is least under man's restraint and gives the first signs of her reawakening. In windless nooks the sun shines warmest between the meshes of the

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XI

XI

THE TOAD During our summer acquaintance with her, when we see her oftenest, a valued inhabitant of our garden and a welcome twilight visitor at our threshold, we associate silence with the toad, almost as intimately as with the proverbially silent clam. In the drouthy or too moist summer days and evenings, she never awakens our hopes or fears with shrill prophecies of rain as does her nimbler and more aspiring cousin, the tree-toad. A rustle of the cucumber leaves that embower her cool retreat,

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XII

XII

We listen to the cuckoo's monotonous flute among the white drifts of orchard bloom and the incessant murmur of bees, the oriole's half plaintive carol as of departed joys in the elms, and the jubilant song of the bobolink in the meadows, where he is not an outlaw but a welcome guest, mingling his glad notes with the merry voices of flower-gathering children, as by and by he will with the ringing cadence of the scythe and the vibrant chirr of the mower. Down by the flooded marshes the scarlet of

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XIII

XIII

THE BOBOLINK The woods have changed from the purple of swelling buds to the tender grayish green of opening leaves, and the sward is green again with new grass, when this pied troubadour, more faithful to the calendar than leaf or flower, comes back from his southern home to New England meadows to charm others than his dusky ladylove with his merry song. He seldom disappoints us by more than a day in the date of his arrival, and never fails to receive a kindly welcome, though the fickle weather

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XIV

XIV

THE GOLDEN-WINGED WOODPECKER The migrant woodpecker whose cheery cackle assures us of the certainty of spring is rich in names that well befit him. If you take to high-sounding titles for your humble friends, you will accept Colaptes auratus , as he flies above you, borrowing more gold of the sunbeams that shine through his yellow pinions, or will be content to call him simply golden-winged. When he flashes his wings in straight-away flight before you, or sounds his sharp, single note of alarm,

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XV

XV

JUNE DAYS June brings skies of purest blue, flecked with drifts of silver, fields and woods in the flush of fresh verdure, with the streams winding among them in crystal loops that invite the angler with promise of more than fish, something that tackle cannot lure nor creel hold. The air is full of the perfume of locust and grape bloom, the spicy odor of pine and fir, and of pleasant voices—the subdued murmur of the brook's changing babble, the hum of bees, the stir of the breeze, the songs of b

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XVI

XVI

THE BULLFROG The flooded expanse of the marshes has shrunken perceptibly along its shoreward boundaries, leaving a mat of dead weeds, bits of driftwood, and a water-worn selvage of bare earth to mark its widest limits. The green tips of the rushes are thrust above the amber shallows, whereon flotillas of water-shield lie anchored in the sun, while steel-blue devil's-needles sew the warm air with intangible threads of zigzag flight. The meshed shadows of the water-maples are full of the reflectio

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XVII

XVII

THE ANGLER I Angling is set down by the master of the craft, whom all revere but none now follow, as the Contemplative Man's Recreation; but is the angler, while angling, a contemplative man? That beloved and worthy brother whose worm-baited hook dangles in quiet waters, placid as his mind—till some wayfaring perch, or bream, or bullhead shall by chance come upon it, he, meanwhile, with rod set in the bank, taking his ease upon the fresh June sward, not touching his tackle nor regarding it but w

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XVIII

XVIII

FARMERS AND FIELD SPORTS "Happy the man whose only care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air On his own ground." Happier still is such a one who has a love for the rod and gun, and with them finds now and then a day's freedom from all cares by the side of the stream that borders his own acres and in the woods that crest his knolls or shade his swamp. As a rule none of our people take so few days of recreation as the farmer. Excepting Sundays, two or three days at the cou

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XIX

XIX

TO A TRESPASS SIGN Scene, A Wood. An old man with a fishing-rod speaks :— What strange object is this which I behold, incongruous in its staring whiteness of fresh paint and black lettering, its straightness of lines and abrupt irregularity amid the soft tints and graceful curves of this sylvan scene? As I live, a trespass sign! Thou inanimate yet most impertinent thing, dumb yet commanding me with most imperative words to depart hence, how dost thou dare forbid my entrance upon what has so long

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XX

XX

A GENTLE SPORTSMAN All the skill of woodcraft that goes to the making of the successful hunter with the gun, must be possessed by him who hunts his game with the camera. His must be the stealthy, panther-like tread that breaks no twig nor rustles the fallen leaves. His the eye that reads at a glance the signs that to the ordinary sight are a blank or at most are an untranslatable enigma. His a patience that counts time as nothing when measured with the object sought. When by the use and practice

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XXI

XXI

JULY DAYS The woods are dense with full-grown leafage. Of all the trees, only the basswood has delayed its blossoming, to crown the height of summer and fill the sun-steeped air with a perfume that calls all the wild bees from hollow tree and scant woodside gleaning to a wealth of honey gathering, and all the hive-dwellers from their board-built homes to a finer and sweeter pillage than is offered by the odorous white sea of buckwheat. Half the flowers of wood and fields are out of bloom. Herdsg

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XXII

XXII

CAMPING OUT "Camping out" is becoming merely a name for moving out of one's permanent habitation and dwelling for a few weeks in a well-built lodge, smaller than one's home, but as comfortable and almost as convenient; with tables, chairs and crockery, carpets and curtains, beds with sheets and blankets on real bedsteads, a stove and its full outfit of cooking utensils, wherefrom meals are served in the regular ways of civilization. Living in nearly the same fashion of his ordinary life, except

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XXIII

XXIII

THE CAMP-FIRE If "the open fire furnishes the room," the camp-fire does more for the camp. It is its life—a life that throbs out in every flare and flicker to enliven the surroundings, whether they be the trees of the forest, the expanse of prairie, shadowed only by clouds and night, or the barren stretch of sandy shore. Out of the encompassing gloom of all these, the camp-fire materializes figures as real to the eye as flesh and blood. It peoples the verge of darkness with grotesque forms, that

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XXIV

XXIV

A RAINY DAY IN CAMP The plans of the camper, like those of other men, "gang aft agley." The morrow, which he proposed to devote to some long-desired hunting or fishing trip, is no more apt to dawn propitiously on him than on the husbandman, the mariner, or any other mortal who looks to the weather for special favor. On the contrary, instead of the glowing horizon and the glory of the sunburst that should usher in the morning, the slow dawn is quite apt to have the unwelcome accompaniment of rain

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XXV

XXV

AUGUST DAYS With such unmistakable signs made manifest to the eye and ear the summer signals its fullness and decline, that one awakening now from a sleep that fell upon him months ago might be assured of the season with the first touch of awakening. To the first aroused sense comes the long-drawn cry of the locust fading into silence with the dry, husky clap of his wings; the changed voice of the song birds, no more caroling the jocund tunes of mating and nesting time, but plaintive with the sa

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XXVI

XXVI

All this while our trolling gear was in tow: the boy's a "phantom minnow" bristling with barbs, a veritable porcupine fish; mine a fluted spoon. The larger fish seemed attracted by the better imitation, or perhaps age and experience had given them discernment to shun the other more glaring sham, and the best of them went to the boy's score; but the unwise majority of smaller fish were evidently anxious to secure souvenir spoons of Little Otter, and in consequence of that desire I was "high hook"

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XXVII

XXVII

THE SUMMER CAMP-FIRE A thin column of smoke seen rising lazily among the leafy trees and fading to a wavering film in the warm morning air or the hotter breath of noon, a flickering blaze kindling in the sultry dusk on some quiet shore, mark the place of the summer camp-fire. It is not, like the great hospitable flare and glowing coals of the autumn and winter camp-fires, the centre to which all are drawn, about which the life of the camp gathers, where joke and repartee flash to and fro as natu

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XXVIII

XXVIII

THE RACCOON Summer is past its height. The songless bobolink has forsaken the shorn meadow. Grain fields, save the battalioned maize, have fallen from gracefulness and beauty of bending heads and ripple of mimic waves to bristling acres of stubble. From the thriftless borders of ripening weeds busy flocks of yellowbirds in faded plumage scatter in sudden flight at one's approach like upblown flurries of dun leaves. Goldenrod gilds the fence-corners, asters shine in the dewy borders of the woods,

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XXIX

XXIX

THE RELUCTANT CAMP-FIRE The depressing opposite of the fire that is the warm heart of the camp is the pile of green or rain-soaked fuel that in spite of all coaxing and nursing refuses to yield a cheerful flame. Shavings from the resin-embalmed heart of a dead pine and scrolls of birch bark fail to enkindle it to more than flicker and smoke, while the wet and hungry campers brood forlornly over the cheerless centre of their temporary home, with watery eyes and souls growing sick of camp life. Ni

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XXX

XXX

SEPTEMBER DAYS September days have the warmth of summer in their briefer hours, but in their lengthening evenings a prophetic breath of autumn. The cricket chirps in the noontide, making the most of what remains of his brief life; the bumblebee is busy among the clover blossoms of the aftermath; and their shrill cry and dreamy hum hold the outdoor world above the voices of the song birds, now silent or departed. What a little while ago they were our familiars, noted all about us in their accusto

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XXXI

XXXI

A PLEA FOR THE UNPROTECTED Why kill, for the mere sake of killing or the exhibition of one's skill, any wild thing that when alive harms no one and when killed is of no worth? The more happy wild life there is in the world, the pleasanter it is for all of us. When one is duck-shooting on inland waters, sitting alert in the bow of the skiff with his gun ready for the expected gaudy wood duck, or plump mallard, or loud quacking dusky duck, or swift-winged teal, to rise with a splashing flutter out

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XXXII

XXXII

THE SKUNK Always and everywhere in evil repute and bad odor, hunted, trapped, and killed, a pest and a fur-bearer, it is a wonder that the skunk is not exterminated, and that he is not even uncommon. With an eye to the main chance, the fur-trapper spares him when fur is not prime, but when the letter "R" has become well established in the months the cruel trap gapes for him at his outgoing and incoming, at the door of every discovered burrow, while all the year round the farmer, sportsman, and p

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XXXIII

XXXIII

A CAMP-FIRE RUN WILD Some wooden tent-pins inclosing a few square yards of ground half covered with a bed of evergreen twigs, matted but still fresh and odorous, a litter of paper and powder-smirched rags, empty cans and boxes, a few sticks of fire wood, a blackened, primitive wooden crane, with its half-charred supporting crotches, and a smouldering heap of ashes and dying brands, mark the place of a camp recently deserted. Coming upon it by chance, one could not help a feeling of loneliness, s

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XXXIV

XXXIV

THE DEAD CAMP-FIRE A heap of ashes, a few half-burned brands, a blackened pair of crotched sticks that mark the place of the once glowing heart of the camp, furnish food for the imagination to feed upon or give the memory an elusive taste of departed pleasures. If you were one of those who saw its living flame and felt its warmth, the pleasant hours passed here come back with that touch of sadness which accompanies the memory of all departed pleasures and yet makes it not unwelcome. What was unp

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XXXV

XXXV

OCTOBER DAYS Fields as green as when the summer birds caroled above them, woods more gorgeous with innumerable hues and tints of ripening leaves than a blooming parterre, are spread beneath the azure sky, whose deepest color is reflected with intenser blue in lake and stream. In them against this color are set the scarlet and gold of every tree upon their brinks, the painted hills, the clear-cut mountain peaks, all downward pointing to the depths of this nether sky. Overhead, thistledown and the

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XXXVI

XXXVI

A COMMON EXPERIENCE The keenest of the sportsman's disappointments is not a blank day, nor a series of misses, unaccountable or too well accountable to a blundering hand or unsteady nerves, nor adverse weather, nor gun or tackle broken in the midst of sport, nor perversity of dogs, nor uncongeniality of comradeship, nor yet even the sudden cold or the spell of rheumatism that prevents his taking the field on the allotted morning. All these may be but for a day. To-morrow may bring game again to

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XXXVII

XXXVII

THE RED SQUIRREL A hawk, flashing the old gold of his pinions in the face of the sun, flings down a shrill, husky cry of intense scorn; a jay scolds like a shrew; from his safe isolation in the midwater, a loon taunts you and the awakening winds with his wild laughter; there is a jeer in the chuckling diminuendo of the woodchuck's whistle, a taunt in the fox's gasping bark as he scurries unseen behind the veil of night; and a scoff on hunters and hounds and cornfield owners is flung out through

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XXXVIII

XXXVIII

THE RUFFED GROUSE The woods in the older parts of our country possess scarcely a trait of the primeval forest. The oldest trees have a comparatively youthful appearance, and are pygmies in girth beside the decaying stumps of their giant ancestors. They are not so shagged with moss nor so scaled with lichens. The forest floor has lost its ancient carpet of ankle-deep moss and the intricate maze of fallen trees in every stage of decay, and looks clean-swept and bare. The tangle of undergrowth is g

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XXXIX

XXXIX

The gray-bearded man who comes along the old wood road wonders at the little change so many years have made in the scene of the grand achievements of his youth, and in his mind he runs over the long calendar to assure himself that so many autumns have glowed and faded since that happy day. How can he have grown old, his ear dull to the voices of the woods, his sight dim with the slowly but surely falling veil of coming blindness, so that even now the road winds into a misty haze just before him,

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XL

XL

NOVEMBER DAYS In a midsummer sleep one dreams of winter, its cold, its silence and desolation all surrounding him; then awakes, glad to find himself in the reality of the light and warmth of summer. Were we dreaming yesterday of woods more gorgeous in their leafage than a flower garden in the flush of profusest bloom, so bright with innumerable tints that autumnal blossoms paled beside them as stars at sunrise? Were we dreaming of air soft as in springtime, of the gentle babble of brooks, the ca

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XLI

XLI

THE MUSKRAT A little turning of nature from her own courses banishes the beaver from his primal haunts, but his less renowned and lesser cousin, the muskrat, philosophically accommodates himself to the changed conditions of their common foster mother and still clings fondly to her altered breast. The ancient forests may be swept away and their successors disappear, till there is scarcely left him a watersoaked log to use as an intermediate port in his coastwise voyages; continual shadow may give

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XLII

XLII

NOVEMBER VOICES With flowers and leaves, the bird songs have faded out, and the hum and chirp of insect life, the low and bleat of herds and flocks afield, and the busy sounds of husbandry have grown infrequent. There are lapses of such silence that the ear aches for some audible signal of life; and then to appease it there comes with the rising breeze the solemn murmur of the pines like the song of the sea on distant shores, the sibilant whisper of the dead herbage, the clatter of dry pods, and

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XLIII

XLIII

THANKSGIVING Doubtless many a sportsman has bethought him that his Thanksgiving turkey will have a finer flavor if the feast is prefaced by a few hours in the woods, with dog and gun. Meaner fare than this day of bounty furnishes forth is made delicious by such an appetizer, and the Thanksgiving feast will be none the worse for it. What can be sweeter than the wholesome fragrance of the fallen leaves? What more invigorating than the breath of the two seasons that we catch: here in the northward

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XLIV

XLIV

DECEMBER DAYS Fewer and more chill have become the hours of sunlight, and longer stretch the noontide shadows of the desolate trees athwart the tawny fields and the dead leaves that mat the floor of the woods. The brook braids its shrunken strands of brown water with a hushed murmur over a bed of sodden leaves between borders of spiny ice crystals, or in the pools swirl in slow circles the imprisoned fleets of bubbles beneath a steadfast roof of glass. Dark and sullen the river sulks its cheerle

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XLV

XLV

WINTER VOICES Out of her sleep nature yet gives forth voices betokening that life abides beneath the semblance of death, that her warm heart still beats under the white shroud that infolds her rigid breast. A smothered tinkle as of muffled bells comes up from the streams through their double roofing of snow and ice, and the frozen pulse of the trees complains of its thralldom with a resonant twang as of a strained cord snapped asunder. Beneath their frozen plains, the lakes bewail their imprison

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XLVI

XLVI

THE VARYING HARE It is wonderful that with such a host of enemies to maintain himself against, the varying hare may still be counted as one of our familiar acquaintances. Except in the depths of the great wildernesses, he has no longer to fear the wolf, the wolverine, the panther, and the lesser felidæ , but where the younger woodlands have become his congenial home, they are also the home of a multitude of relentless enemies. The hawk, whose keen eyes pierce the leafy roof of the woods, wheels

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XLVII

XLVII

THE WINTER CAMP-FIRE The chief requisite of a winter camp-fire is volume. The feeble flame and meagre bed of embers that are a hot discomfort to the summer camper, while he hovers over coffee-pot and frying-pan, would be no more than the glow of a candle toward tempering this nipping air. This fire must be no dainty nibbler of chips and twigs that a boy's hatchet may furnish, but a roaring devourer of logs, for whose carving the axe must be long and stoutly wielded—a very glutton of solid fuel,

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XLVIII

XLVIII

JANUARY DAYS In these midwinter days, how muffled is the earth in its immaculate raiment, so disguised in whiteness that familiar places are strange, rough hollows smoothed to mere undulations, deceitful to the eye and feet, and level fields so piled with heaps and ridges that their owners scarcely recognize them. The hovel is as regally roofed as the palace, the rudest fence is a hedge of pearl, finer than a wall of marble, and the meanest wayside weed is a white flower of fairyland. The woods,

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XLIX

XLIX

A NEW ENGLAND WOODPILE When the charitable mantle of the snow has covered the ugliness of the earth, as one looks towards the woodlands he may see a distant dark speck emerge from the blue shadow of the woods and crawl slowly houseward. If born to the customs of this wintry land, he may guess at once what it is; if not, speculation, after a little, gives way to certainty, when the indistinct atom grows into a team of quick-stepping horses or deliberate oxen hauling a sled-load of wood to the far

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L

L

A CENTURY OF EXTERMINATION It seems quite probable that this nineteenth century may be unpleasantly memorable in centuries to come as that in which many species of animate and inanimate nature became extinct. It has witnessed the extinction of the great auk, so utterly swept off the face of the earth that the skin, or even the egg of one, is a small fortune to the possessor. Reduced from the hundreds of thousands of twenty-five years ago to the few hundred of to-day, it needs but a few years to

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LI

LI

Winged ticks kill the grouse, but the owl endures their companionship with sedate serenity and thrives with a swarm of the parasites in the covert of his feathers. The skunk has always been killed on sight as a pest that the world would be the sweeter for being rid of. In later years the warfare against him has received an impetus from the value of his fur, but though this has gone on relentlessly for many years, his tribe still live to load the air with a fragrance that incites the ambitious tr

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LII

LII

THE WEASEL A chain that is blown away by the wind and melted by the sun, links with pairs of parallel dots the gaps of farm fences, and winds through and along walls and zigzag lines of rails, is likely to be the most visible sign that you will find in winter of one bold and persistent little hunter's presence. Still less likely are you to be aware of it in summer or fall, even by such traces of his passage, for he is in league with nature to keep his secrets. When every foot of his outdoor wand

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LIII

LIII

FEBRUARY DAYS In the blur of storm or under clear skies, the span of daylight stretches farther from the fading dusk of dawn to the thickening dusk of evening. Now in the silent downfall of snow, now in the drift and whirl of flakes driven from the sky and tossed from the earth by the shrieking wind, the day's passage is unmarked by shadows. It is but a long twilight, coming upon the world out of one misty gloom, and going from it into another. Now the stars fade and vanish in the yellow morning

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LIV

LIV

THE FOX Among the few survivals of the old untamed world there are left us two that retain all the raciness of their ancestral wildness. Their wits have been sharpened by the attrition of civilization, but it has not smoothed their characteristics down to the level of the commonplace, nor contaminated them with acquired vices as it has their ancient contemporary, the Indian. But they are held in widely different esteem, for while the partridge is in a manner encouraged in continuance, the fox is

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LV

LV

AN ICE-STORM Of all the vagaries of winter weather, one of the rarest is the ice-storm; rain falling with a wind and from a quarter that should bring snow, and freezing as it falls, not penetrating the snow but coating it with a shining armor, sheathing every branch and twig in crystal and fringing eaves with icicles of most fantastic shapes. On ice-clad roofs and fields and crackling trees the rain still beats with a leaden clatter, unlike any other sound of rain; unlike the rebounding pelting

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LVI

LVI

SPARE THE TREES All the protection that the law can give will not prevent the game naturally belonging to a wooded country from leaving it when it is deforested, nor keep fish in waters that have shrunk to a quarter of their ordinary volume before midsummer. The streams of such a country will thus shrink when the mountains, where the snows lie latest and the feeding springs are, and the swamps, which dole out their slow but steady tribute, are bereft of shade. The thin soil of a rocky hill, when

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LVII

LVII

THE CHICKADEE The way to the woods is blurred with a mist of driven snow that veils the portal of the forest with its upblown curtain, and blots out all paths, and gives to the familiar landmarks a ghostly unreality. The quietude of the woods is disturbed by turbulent voices, the angry roar and shriek of the wind, the groaning and clashing of writhing, tormented trees. Over all, the sunned but unwarmed sky bends its blue arch, as cold as the snowy fields and woods beneath it. In such wild weathe

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