As I have said, there was little to be learned by going into the wood after the robins were assembled. Nevertheless I used frequently to intrude upon them, especially as friends or neighbors, who had heard of my "discovery," were desirous to see the show. The prodigious cackling and rustling overhead seemed to make a deep impression upon all such visitors, while, for myself, I should have had no difficulty in crediting the statement had I been told that ten thousand robins were in the treetops. One night I took two friends to the place after it was really dark. All was silent as we felt our way among the trees, till, suddenly, one of the trio struck a match and kindled a blaze of dry twigs. The smoke and flame speedily waked the sleepers; but even then they manifested no disposition to be driven out.

For curiosity's sake, I paid one early morning visit to the roost, on the 30th of July. It would be worth while, I thought, to see how much music so large a chorus would make, as well as to note the manner of its dispersion. To tell the truth, I hoped for something spectacular,—a grand burst of melody, and then a pouring forth of a dense, uncountable army of robins. I arrived about 3.40 (it was still hardly light enough to show the face of the watch), and found everything quiet. Pretty soon the robins commenced cackling. At 3.45 a song sparrow sang, and at the same moment I saw a robin fly out of the wood. Five minutes later a robin sang; at 3.55 another one flew past me; at four o'clock a few of the birds were in song, but the effect was not in any way peculiar,—very much as if two or three had been singing in the ordinary manner. They dispersed precisely as I had seen them gather: now a single bird, now two or three, now six, or even ten. A casual passer along the road would have remarked nothing out of the common course. They flew low,—not as if they were starting upon any prolonged flight,—and a goodly number alighted for a little in the field where I was standing. Shortly before sunrise I went into the wood and found it deserted. The robin is one of our noisiest birds. Who would have believed that an assembly of thousands could break up so quietly? Their behavior in this regard may possibly have been influenced by prudential considerations. I have said that many of them seemingly took pains to approach the roost indirectly and under cover. On the westerly side, for example, they almost invariably followed a line of bushes and trees which runs toward the roost along the edge of the meadow, even though they were obliged sharply to alter their course in so doing.

All this time I had been in correspondence with my friend before referred to, who was studying a similar roost,[15]—in Belmont,—which proved to be more populous than mine, as was to be expected, perhaps, the surrounding country being less generally wooded. It was a mile or more from his house, which was so situated that he could sit upon his piazza in the evening and watch the birds streaming past. On the 11th of August he counted here 556 robins, of which 336 passed within five minutes. On the 28th he counted 1180, of which 456 passed within five minutes,—ninety-one a minute! On the 2d of September, from a knoll nearer the roost, he counted 1883 entries.

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

This gathering, like the one in Melrose, was greatly depleted by the middle of September. "Only 109 robins flew over the place to-night," my correspondent wrote on the 25th, "against 538 September 4th, 838 August 30th, and 1180 August 28th." Two evenings later (September 27th) he went to the neighborhood of the roost, and counted 251 birds,—instead of 1883 on the 2d. Even so late as October 9th, however, the wood was not entirely deserted. During the last month or so of its occupancy, the number of the birds was apparently subject to sudden and wide fluctuations, and it seemed not unlikely that travelers from the north were making a temporary use of the well-known resort. It would not be surprising if the same were found to be true in the spring. In April, 1890, I saw some things which pointed, as I thought, in this direction, but I was then too closely occupied to follow the matter.

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

My own plans to this end came near being thwarted. In December I was dismayed to see the owner of the wood cutting it down. Happily some kind power stayed his hand when not more than a third of the mischief was done, and on the 29th of June, 1890, while strolling homeward along the highway, listening to the distant song of a veery, I noticed within five or ten minutes seventeen robins making toward the old rendezvous. On the following evening I stood beside the ice-pond and saw one hundred and ninety-two robins enter the wood. The flight had begun before my arrival, and was not entirely over when I came away. Evidently several hundreds of the birds were already passing their nights in company. In my ignorance, I was surprised at the early date; but when I communicated my discovery to the Belmont observer, he replied at once that he had noticed a movement of the same kind on the 11th of June. The birds, about a dozen, were seen passing his house.

Thinking over the matter, I began to ask myself—though I hesitate about making such a confession—whether it might not be the adult males who thus unseasonably went off to bed in a crowd, leaving their mates to care for eggs and little ones. At this very moment, as it happened, I was watching with lively sympathy the incessant activities of a female humming-bird, who appeared to be bringing up a family (two very hungry nestlings), with no husband to lift a finger for her assistance; and the sight, as I fear, put me into a cynical mood. Male robins were probably like males in general,—lovers of clubs and shirkers of home duties. Indeed, a friend who went into the roost with me, one evening, remarked upon the continual cackling in the treetops as "a very social sound;" and upon my saying something about a sewing circle, he answered, quite seriously, "No, it is rather like a gentleman's club." But it would have been unscientific, as well as unchristian, to entertain an hypothesis like this without putting its soundness to some kind of test. I adopted the only plan that occurred to me,—short of rising at half past two o'clock in the morning to see the birds disperse. I entered the wood just before the assemblage was due (this was on the 9th of July), and took a sheltered position on the eastern edge, where, as the robins flew by me, or alighted temporarily in the trees just across the brook, they would have the sunlight upon their breasts. Here, as often as one came sufficiently near and in a sufficiently favorable light, I noted whether it was an adult, or a streaked, spotted bird of the present season. As a matter of course, the number concerning which this point could be positively determined under such conditions was very small,—only fifty-seven altogether. Of these, forty-nine were surely birds of the present summer, and only eight unmistakable adult males. If any adult females came in, they passed among the unidentified and uncounted.[16] I was glad I had made the test. As a kind-hearted cynic (I confess to being nothing worse than this), I was relieved to find my misanthropic, or, to speak more exactly, my misornithic, notions ill founded. As for the sprinkling of adult males, they may have been, as a "friend and fellow woodlander" suggests, birds which, for one reason or another, had taken up with the detestable opinion that "marriage is a failure."

[16] A week later, my correspondent reported a similar state of things at the Belmont roost. "A very large proportion of the birds are spotted-breasted young of the year, but occasionally I have detected an adult male." He examined the birds at near range, and at rest, after they had come into the roost in the earlier part of the evening.

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

July 3 247 " 5 383 " 6 356 " 10 765 " 12 970 " 14 1120 " 16 1064 " 17 1333 " 19 1584 " 22 1520 " 23 1453 " 27 2314

After July 6th all the enumerations were made with the help of another man, though we stood side by side, and covered no more ground than I had hitherto attempted to compass alone. The figures of the 27th were far in excess of any obtained in 1889, and for a day I was disposed to take seriously the suggestion of a friend that some other roost must have been broken up and its members turned into the Melrose gathering. But on the evening of the 28th I tried a count by myself, and made only 1517 birds! The conditions were favorable, and the robins came, as they had come the night before, in flocks, almost in continuous streams. The figures had fallen off, not because there were fewer birds, but because I was unable to count them. They were literally too many for me. The difficulties of the work, it should be explained, are greatly enhanced by the fact that at the very corner where the influx is largest none of the low-flying birds can be seen except for a second or two, as they dart across a bit of sky between the roost and an outlying wood. To secure anything like a complete census, this point must be watched continuously; and meantime birds are streaming in at the other corner and shooting over the distracted enumerator's head, and perhaps dropping out of the sky. I conclude, therefore, not that the roost had increased in population, but that my last year's reckoning was even more inadequate than I then supposed. Even with two pairs of eyes, it is inevitable that multitudes of birds should pass in unnoticed, especially during the latter half of the flight. I have never had an assistant or a looker-on to whom this was not perfectly apparent.

As I stood night after night watching the robins stream into this little wood,—no better, surely, than many they had passed on their way,—I asked myself again and again what could be the motive that drew them together. The flocking of birds for a long journey, or in the winter season, is less mysterious. In times of danger and distress there is no doubt a feeling of safety in a crowd. But robins cannot be afraid of the dark. Why, then, should not each sleep upon its own feeding grounds, alone, or with a few neighbors for company, instead of flying two or three miles, more or less, twice a day, simply for the sake of passing the night in a general roost?

Such questions we must perhaps be content to ask without expecting an answer. By nature the robin is strongly gregarious, and though his present mode of existence does not permit him to live during the summer in close communities,—as marsh wrens do, for example, and some of our swallows,—his ancestral passion for society still asserts itself at nightfall. Ten or twelve years ago, when I was bird-gazing in Boston, there were sometimes a hundred robins at once about the Common and Garden, in the time of the vernal migration. By day they were scattered over the lawns; but at sunset they gathered habitually in two or three contiguous trees, not far from the Frog Pond and the Beacon Street Mall (I wonder whether the same trees are still in use for the same purpose), where, after much noise and some singing, they retired to rest,—if going to sleep in a leafless treetop can be called retiring.

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

It would be interesting to know how far they travel at such times. The fact that so many hundreds were to be seen at a point more than a mile away from the Belmont roost is significant; but I am not aware that any one has yet made a study of this part of the subject. My own birds seemed to come, as a rule, by easy stages. In the long narrow valley east of the roost, where I oftenest watched their approach, they followed habitually—not invariably—a zigzag route, crossing the meadow diagonally, and for the most part alighting for a little upon a certain wooded hill, whence they took a final flight to their nightly haven, perhaps a quarter of a mile beyond. Farther down the valley, a mile or more from the roost, birds were to be seen flying toward it, but I found no place at which a general movement could be observed and large numbers counted.

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



THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS.

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

By the first of August the bird-lover's year is already on the wane. In the chestnut grove, where a month ago the wood thrush, the rose-breasted grosbeak, and the scarlet tanager were singing, the loiterer now hears nothing but the wood pewee's pensive whistle and the sharp monotony of the red-eyed vireo. The thrasher is silent in the berry pasture, and the bobolink in the meadow. The season of jollity is over. Orioles, to be sure, after a month of silence, again have fits of merry fifing. The field sparrow and the song sparrow are still in tune, and the meadow lark whistles, though rarely. Catbirds still practice their feeble improvisations and mimicries in the thickets along the brooksides as evening comes on, and of the multitudes of robins a few are certain to be heard warbling before the day is over. Goldfinches have grown suddenly numerous, or so it seems, and not infrequently one of them breaks out in musical canary-like twitterings. On moonlight evenings the tremulous, haunting cry of the screech-owl comes to your ears, always from far away, and if you walk through the chestnut grove aforesaid in the daytime you may chance to catch his faint, vibratory, tree-frog whistle. For myself, I never enter the grove without glancing into the dry top of a certain tall tree, to see whether the little rascal is sitting in his open door. More than half the time he is there, and always with his eye on me. What an air he has!—like a judge on the bench! If I were half as wise as he looks, these essays of mine would never more be dull. For his and all other late summer music let us be thankful; but it is true, nevertheless, that the year is waning. How short it has been! Only the other day the concert opened, and already the performers are uneasy to be gone. They have crowded so much into so brief a space! The passion of a life-time into the quarter of a year! They are impatient to be gone, I say; but who knows how many of them are gone already? Where are the blue golden-winged warblers that sang daily on the edge of the wood opposite my windows, so that I listened to them at my work? I have heard nothing of their rough dsee, dsee since the 21st of June, and in all that time have seen them but once—a single bird, a youngling of the present year, stumbled upon by accident while pushing my way through a troublesome thicket on the first day of August. Who knows, I say, how many such summer friends have already left us? An odd coincidence, however, warns me at this very moment that too much is not to be made of merely negative experiences; for even while I was penciling the foregoing sentence about the blue golden-wing there came through the open window the hoarse upward-sliding chant of his close neighbor, the prairie warbler. I have not heard that sound before since the 6th of July, and it is now the 22d of August. The singers had not gone, I knew; I saw several of them (and beautiful creatures they are!) a few days ago among the pitch pines; but why did that fellow, after being dumb for six or seven weeks, pipe up at that precise moment, as if to punctuate my ruminations with an interrogation point? Does he like this dog-day morning, with its alternate shower and sunshine, and its constant stickiness and heat? In any case I was glad to hear him, though I cannot in the spirit of veracity call him a good singer. Whist! There goes an oriole, a gorgeous creature, flashing from one elm to another, and piping in his happiest manner as he flies. It might be the middle of May, to judge from his behavior. He likes dog-day weather, there can be no question of that, however the rest of the world may grumble.

This is a time when one sees many birds, but few species. Bluebirds are several times as abundant as in June. The air is sweet with their calls at this moment, and once in a while some father of the flock lets his happiness run over in song. One cannot go far now without finding the road full of chipping sparrows, springing up in their pretty, characteristic way, and letting the breeze catch them. The fences and wayside apple-trees are lively with kingbirds and phoebes. I am already watching the former with a kind of mournful interest. In ten days, or some such matter, we shall have seen the last of their saucy antics. Gay tyrants! They are among the first birds of whom I can confidently say, "They are gone;" and they seem as wide-awake when they go as when they come. Being a man, I regret their departure; but if I were a crow, I think I should be for observing the 31st of August as a day of annual jubilee.

A few years ago, in September, I saw the white-breasted swallows congregated in the Ipswich dunes,—a sight never to be forgotten. On the morning of the 9th, the fourth day of our visit, a considerable flock—but no more, perhaps, than we had been seeing daily—came skimming over the marshes and settled upon a sand-bar in the river, darkening it in patches. At eight o'clock, when we took the straggling road out of the hills, a good many—there might be a thousand, I guessed—sat, upon the fence wires, as if resting. We walked inland, and on our return, at noon, found, as my notes of the day express it, "an innumerable host, thousands upon thousands," about the landward side of the dunes. Fences and haycocks were covered. Multitudes were on the ground,—in the bed of the road, about the bare spots in the marsh, and on the gray faces of the hills. Other multitudes were in the bushes and low trees, literally loading them. Every few minutes a detachment would rise into the air like a cloud, and anon settle down again. As we stood gazing at the spectacle, my companion began chirping at a youngster who sat near him on a post, as one might chirp to a caged canary. The effect was magical. The bird at once started toward him, others followed, and in a few seconds hundreds were flying about our heads. Round and round they went, almost within reach, like a cloud of gnats. "Stop! stop!" cried my companion; "I am getting dizzy." We stopped our squeakings, and the cloud lifted; but I can see it yet. Day after day the great concourse remained about the hills, till on the 13th we came away and left them. The old lighthouse keeper told me that this was their annual rendezvous. He once saw them circle for a long time above the dunes, for several hours, if I remember right, till, as it seemed, all stragglers had been called in from the beach, the marsh, and the outlying grassy hills. Then they mounted into the sky in a great spiral till they passed out of sight; and for that year there were no more swallows. This, he insisted, took place in the afternoon, "from three to four o'clock." He was unquestionably telling a straightforward story of what he himself had seen, but his memory may have been at fault; for I find it to be the settled opinion of those who ought to know, that swallows migrate by day and not by night, while the setting out of a great flock late in the afternoon at such a height would seem to indicate a nocturnal journey. Morning or evening, I would give something to witness so imposing a start.

The recollection of this seaside gathering raises anew in my mind the question why, if swallows and swifts migrate exclusively in the daytime, we so rarely see anything of them on the passage. Our Ipswich birds were all tree swallows,—white-breasted martins,—and might fairly be supposed to have come together from a comparatively limited extent of country. But beside tree swallows there are purple martins, barn swallows, sand martins, cliff swallows, and chimney swifts, all of which breed to the northward of us in incalculable numbers. All of them go south between the middle of July and the first of October. But who in New England has ever seen any grand army of them actually on the wing? Do they straggle along so loosely as to escape particular notice? If so, what mean congregations like that in the Ipswich dunes? Or are their grand concerted flights taken at such an altitude as to be invisible?

On several afternoons of last September, this time in an inland country, I observed what might fairly be called a steady stream of tree swallows flying south. Twice, while gazing up at the loose procession, I suddenly became aware of a close bunch of birds at a prodigious height, barely visible, circling about in a way to put a count out of the question, but evidently some hundreds in number. On both occasions the flock vanished almost immediately, and, as I believed, by soaring out of sight. The second time I meant to assure myself upon this point, but my attention was distracted by the sudden appearance of several large hawks within the field of my glass, and when I looked again for the swallows they were nowhere to be seen. Were the stragglers which I had for some time been watching, flying high, but well within easy ken, and these dense, hardly discernible clusters—hirundine nebulae, as it were—were all these but parts of one innumerable host, the main body of which was passing far above me altogether unseen? The conjecture was one to gratify the imagination. It pleased me even to think that it might be true. But it was only a conjecture, and meantime another question presented itself.

When this daily procession had been noticed for two or three afternoons, it came to me as something remarkable that I saw it always in the same place, or rather on the same north and south line, while no matter where else I walked, east or west, not a swallow was visible. Had I stumbled upon a regular route of swallow migration? It looked so, surely; but I made little account of the matter till a month afterward, when, in exactly the same place, I observed robins and bluebirds following the same course. The robins were seen October 26th, in four flocks, succeeding each other at intervals of a few minutes, and numbering in all about 130 birds. They flew directly south, at a moderate height, and were almost certainly detachments of one body. The bluebird movement was two days later, at about the same hour, the morning being cold, with a little snow falling. This time, too, as it happened, the flock was in four detachments. Three of these were too compact to be counted as they passed; the fourth and largest one was in looser order and contained a little more than a hundred individuals. In all, as well as I could guess, there might have been about three hundred birds. They kept a straight course southward, flying high, and with the usual calls, which, in autumn at least, always have to my ears a sound of farewell. Was it a mere coincidence that these swallows, bluebirds, and robins were all crossing the valley just at this point?

This question, too, I count it safer to ask than to answer, but all observers, I am sure, must have remarked so much as this,—that birds, even on their migrations, are subject to strong local preferences. An ornithologist of the highest repute assures me that his own experience has convinced him so strongly of this fact that if he shoots a rare migrant in a certain spot he makes it a rule to visit the place again a year afterward on the same day, and, if possible, at the same hour of the day. Another friend sends me a very pretty story bearing upon the same point. The bird of which he speaks, Wilson's black-cap warbler, is one of the less common of our regular Massachusetts migrants. I count myself fortunate if I see two or three specimens during its spring or autumn passage. My correspondent shall tell the story for himself.

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

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

"Well, another spring came round. The 18th of May was fixed in my mind, and I thought many times of my black-cap (I called it my black-cap now), and wondered if it would keep tryst again. On the morning of the 18th, the first thing I thought of when I awoke was my black-cap. That forenoon I actually felt nervous as the time approached, for I felt a sort of certainty (you smile) that I should see my bird again. My lunch was hastier than usual, and I was about to sally forth when it flashed across me—'Suppose the bird should be there again, who would believe my story? Hold! I will have a witness.' I called to Mr. J——, who was at work upstairs, and after explaining what I wanted, invited him to accompany me. We cautiously entered the rockery, and within a few minutes there flitted from a neighboring thicket into that very Spiraea bush my black-cap! I took out my watch. It was just half past one!"

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

I speak of witnessing a migration; but what we see for the most part (ducks and geese being excepted) is not the actual movement northward or southward. We see the stragglers, more or less numerous, that happen to have dropped out of the procession in our immediate neighborhood,—a flock of sandpipers about the edge of the pond, some sparrows by the roadside, a bevy of warblers in the wood,—and from these signs we infer the passing of the host.

Unlike swallows, robins, bluebirds, blackbirds, and perhaps most of the sparrows, our smaller wood birds, the warblers and vireos especially, appear to move as a general thing in mixed flocks. Whenever the woods are full of them, as is the case now and then every spring and fall, one of the most striking features of the show is the number of species represented. For the benefit of readers who may never have observed such a "bird wave," or "rush," let me sketch hastily one which occurred a few years ago, on the 22d of September. As I started out at six o'clock in the morning, in a cool northwest wind, birds were passing overhead in an almost continuous stream, following a westerly course. They were chiefly warblers, but I noted one fairly large flock of purple finches. All were at a good height, and the whole movement had the air of a diurnal migration. I could only conjecture that it was the end of the nocturnal flight, so far, at least, as the warblers were concerned; in other words, that the birds, on this particular occasion, did not finish their nightly journey till a little after sunrise. But if many were still flying, many others had already halted; for presently I came to a piece of thin, stunted wood by the roadside, and found in it a highly interesting company. Almost the first specimen I saw was a Connecticut warbler perched in full view and exposing himself perfectly. Red-bellied nuthatches were calling, and warblers uncounted were flitting about in the trees and underbrush. A hurried search showed black-polls, black-throated greens, blue yellow-backs, one redstart, one black-and-white creeper, one Blackburnian, one black-and-yellow, one Canadian flycatcher (singing lustily), one yellow redpoll, and one clearly-marked bay-breast. The first yellow-bellied woodpecker of the season was hammering in a tree over my head, and not far away was the first flock of white-throated sparrows. After breakfast I passed the place again, and the only bird to be found was one phoebe! Within half a mile of the spot, however, I came upon at least three goodly throngs, including scarlet tanagers (all in yellow and black), black-throated blue warblers, pine warblers, olive-backed and gray-cheeked thrushes, a flock of chewinks (made up exclusively of adult males, so far as I could discover), red-eyed vireos, one solitary vireo, brown thrashers, with more redstarts, a second Blackburnian, and a second black-and-yellow. Every company had its complement of chickadees. Of the morning's forty species, thirteen were warblers; and of these thirteen, four were represented by one specimen each. For curiosity's sake I may add that a much longer walk that afternoon, through the same and other woods, was utterly barren. Except for two or three flocks of white-throated sparrows; there was no sign whatever that the night before had brought us a "flight."

Autumnal ornithology may almost be called a science by itself. Not only are birds harder to find (being silent) and harder to recognize in autumn than in spring, but their movements are in themselves more difficult of observation. A few years of note-taking will put one in possession of the approximate dates of arrival of all our common vernal migrants. Every local observer will tell you when to look for each of the familiar birds of his neighborhood; but he will not be half so ready with information as to the time of the same birds' departure. Ask him about a few of the commonest,—the least flycatcher and the oven-bird, or the golden warbler and the Maryland yellow-throat. He will answer, perhaps, that he has seen Maryland yellow-throats in early October, and golden warblers in early September; but he will very likely add that these were probably voyagers from the North, and that he has never made out just when his own summer birds take their leave.

After the work of nidification is over, birds as a rule wander more or less from their breeding haunts; and even if they do not wander they are likely to become silent. If we miss them, therefore, we are not to conclude as a matter of course that they have gone south. Last year, during the early part of the season, cuckoos were unusually plentiful, as it seemed to me. Then I discovered all at once that there were none to be found. After the first of July I neither saw nor heard a cuckoo of either species! Had they moved away? I do not know; but the case may be taken as an extreme illustration of the uncertainty attaching to the late-summer doings of birds in general. Every student must have had experiences of a sort to make him slow to dogmatize when such points are in question. Throughout May and June, for example, he has heard and seen wood thrushes in a certain grove. After that, for a whole month, he hears and sees nothing, though he is frequently there. The thrushes have gone? So it would seem. But then, suddenly, they are singing again in the very same trees, and he is forced to conclude that they have not been away, but during their period of midsummer silence have eluded his notice. On the whole, therefore, after making allowance for particular cases in which we may have more precise information, it would be hard, I think, to say just when our nocturnal travelers set out on their long journey. As the poet prayed Life to do,—

They steal away, give little warning, Choose their own time; Say not good-night,—but in May's brighter clime Bid us good-morning.

Their departure bereaves us, but, all in all, it must be accounted a blessing. Like the falling of the leaves, it touches the heart with a pleasing sadness,—a sadness more delicious, if one is born to enjoy it, than all the merry-making of springtime. And even for the most unsentimental of naturalists the autumnal season has many a delightful hour. The year is almost done; but for the moment the whole feathered world is in motion, and the shortest walk may show him the choicest of rarities. Thanks to the passing of the birds, his local studies are an endless pursuit. "It is now more than forty years that I have paid some attention to the ornithology of this district, without being able to exhaust the subject," says Gilbert White; "new occurrences still arise as long as any inquiries are kept alive." A happy man is the bird-lover; always another species to look for, another mystery to solve. His expectations may never be realized; but no matter; it is the hope, not its fulfillment, that makes life worth having. How can any New Englander imagine that he has exhausted the possibilities of existence so long as he has never seen the Lincoln finch and the Cape May warbler?

But "I speak as a fool." Our happiness, if we are bird-lovers indeed, waits not upon novelties and rarities. All such exceptional bits of private good fortune let the Fates send or withhold as they will. The grand spectacle itself will not fail us. Even now, through all the northern country, the procession is getting under way. For the next three months it will be passing,—millions upon millions: warblers, sparrows, thrushes, vireos, blackbirds, flycatchers, wrens, kinglets, woodpeckers, swallows, humming-birds, hawks; with sandpipers, plovers, ducks and geese, gulls, and who knows how many more? Night and day, week days and Sundays, they will be flying: now singly or in little groups, and flitting from one wood or pasture to another; now in great companies, and with protracted all-day or all-night flights. Who could ask a better stimulus for his imagination than the annual southing of this mighty host? Each member of it knows his own time and his own course. On such a day the snipe will be in such a meadow, and the golden plover in such a field. Some, no doubt, will lose their way. Numbers uncounted will perish by storm and flood; numbers more, alas, by human agency. As I write, with the sad note of a bluebird in my ear, I can see the sea-beaches and the marshes lined with guns. But the army will push on; they will come to their desired haven; for there is a spirit in birds, also, "and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding."



A GREAT BLUE HERON.

"Why appear you with this ridiculous boldness?" SHAKESPEARE.

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

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

Here let me say that the great blue heron is, as its name implies, a big bird, standing almost as high as an ordinary man, and spreading its wings for nearly or quite six feet. Its character for suspiciousness may be gathered from what different writers have said about it. "He is most jealously vigilant and watchful of man," says Wilson, "so that those who wish to succeed in shooting the heron must approach him entirely unseen, and by stratagem." "Extremely suspicious and shy," says Audubon. "Unless under very favorable circumstances, it is almost hopeless to attempt to approach it. To walk up towards one would be a fruitless adventure." Dr. Brewer's language is to the same effect,—"At all times very vigilant and difficult of approach."

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

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

When I wearied of my position I rose and advanced upon the heron in full sight, expecting every moment to see him fly. To my astonishment he held his ground. Down the hillside I went, nearer and nearer, till I came to a barbed-wire fence, which bounded the cranberry field close by the heron's pool. As I worried my way through this abominable obstruction, he stepped into a narrow, shallow ditch and started slowly away. I made rapidly after him, whereupon he got out of the ditch and strode on ahead of me. By this time I was probably within twenty yards of him, so near that, as he twisted his long neck every now and then, and looked at me through his big yellow eyes, I began to wonder whether he might not take it into his head to turn the tables upon me. A stab in the face with that ugly sharp beak would have been no laughing matter; but I did not believe myself in any danger, and quickened my steps, being now highly curious to see how near the fellow I could get. At this he broke into a kind of dog-trot, very comical to witness, and, if I had not previously seen him fly a few yards, I should have supposed him disabled in the wing. Dr. Brewer, by the way, says that this bird is "never known to run, or even to walk briskly;" but such negative assertions are always at the maker's risk.

He picked up his legs at last, for I pressed him closer and closer, till there could not have been more than forty or fifty feet between us; but even then he settled down again beside another pool, only a few rods further on in the same meadow, and there I left him to pursue his frog-hunt unmolested. The ludicrousness of the whole affair was enhanced by the fact, already mentioned, that the ground was perfectly flat, and absolutely without vegetation, except for the long rows of newly planted cranberry vines. As to what could have influenced the bird to treat me thus strangely, I have no means of guessing. As we say of each other's freaks and oddities, it was his way, I suppose. He might have behaved otherwise, of course, had I been armed; but of that I felt by no means certain at the time, and my doubts were strengthened by an occurrence which happened a month or so afterward.

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

The golden plover is not so unapproachable as the great blue heron, I suppose, but from what sportsmen tell me about him I am confident that he cannot be in the habit of allowing men to chase him along the beach at a distance of five or six yards. And it is to be added that, in the present instance, my companion had a gun in his hand.

Possibly all these birds would have behaved differently another day, even in what to us might have seemed exactly the same circumstances. Undoubtedly, too, it is easier, as an almost universal rule, to approach one or two birds than a considerable flock. In the larger body there are almost certain to be a few timorous souls,—a few wider-awake and better instructed souls, let us rather say,—who by their outcries and hasty flight will awaken all the others to a sense of possible danger. But it is none the less true, as I said to begin with, that individual birds have individual ways. And my great blue heron, I am persuaded, was a "character." It would be worth something to know what was passing behind those big yellow eyes as he twisted his neck to look once more at the curious fellow—curious in two senses—who was keeping after him so closely. Was the heron curious, as well as his pursuer? Or was he only a little set in his own way; a little resentful of being imposed upon; a little inclined to withstand the "tyrant of his fields," just for principle's sake, as patriots ought to do? Or was he a young fellow, in whom heredity had mysteriously omitted to load the bump of caution, and upon whom experience had not yet enforced the lesson that if a creature is taller and stronger than you are, it is prudent to assume that he will most likely think it a pleasant bit of sport to kill you? It is nothing to the credit of humankind that the sight of an unsuspicious bird in a marsh or on the beach should have become a subject for wonder.



FLOWERS AND FOLKS.

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

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

The importance of this truth, its far-reaching and many-sided significance, is even yet only beginning to be understood; but its bearing upon the study of what we call natural history would seem to be evident. My own experience as a dabbler in botany and ornithology has convinced me that the pursuit of such researches is not at all out of the spirit of the familiar line,—

"The proper study of mankind is man,"—

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

There is room, I think, for a treatise on analogical botany,—a study of the human nature of plants. Thoroughly and sympathetically done, the work would be both surprising and edifying. It would give us a better opinion of plants, and possibly a poorer opinion of ourselves. Some wholesome first lessons of this kind we have all taken, as a matter of course. "We all do fade as a leaf." "All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field." There are no household words more familiar than such texts. But the work of which I am thinking will deal not so much with our likeness to tree and herb as with the likeness of tree and herb to us; and furthermore, it will go into the whole subject, systematically and at length. Meanwhile, it is open even to an amateur to offer something, in a general and discursive way, upon so inviting a theme, and especially to call attention to its scope and variety.

As I sit at my desk, the thistles are in their glory, and in a vase at my elbow stands a single head of the tall swamp variety, along with a handful of fringed gentians. Forgetting what it is, one cannot help pronouncing the thistle beautiful,—a close bunch of minute rose-purple flowers. But who could ever feel toward it as toward the gentian? Beauty is a thing not merely of form and color, but of memory and association. The thistle is an ugly customer. In a single respect it lays itself out to be agreeable; but even its beauty is too much like that of some venomous reptile. Yet it has its friends, or, at all events, its patrons (if you wish to catch butterflies, go to the thistle pasture), and no doubt could give forty eloquent and logical excuses for its offensive traits. Probably it felicitates itself upon its shrewdness, and pities the poor estate of its defenseless neighbors. How they must envy its happier fortune! It sees them browsed upon by the cattle, and can hardly be blamed if it chuckles a little to itself as the greedy creatures pass it by untouched. School-girls and botanists break down the golden-rods and asters, and pull up the gerardias and ladies'-tresses; but neither school-girl nor collector often troubles the thistle. It opens its gorgeous blossoms and ripens its feathery fruit unmolested. Truly it is a great thing to wear an armor of prickles!

"The human nature of plants,"—have I any reader so innocent as not to feel at this moment the appropriateness of the phrase? Can there be one so favored as not to have some unmistakable thistles among his Christian townsmen and acquaintance? Nay, we all know them. They are the more easily discovered for standing always a little by themselves. They escape many slight inconveniences under which more amiable people suffer. Whoever finds himself in a hard place goes not to them for assistance. They are recognized afar as persons to be let alone. Yet they, too, like their floral representatives, have a good side. If they do not give help, they seldom ask it. Once a year they may actually "do a handsome thing," as the common expression is; but they cannot put off their own nature; their very generosity pricks the hand that receives it, and when old Time cuts them down with his scythe (what should we do without this famous husbandman, unkindly as we talk of him?) there will be no great mourning.

Is it then an unpardonable misdemeanor for a plant to defend itself against attack and extermination? Has the duty of non-resistance no exceptions nor abatements in the vegetable kingdom? That would be indeed a hard saying; for what would become of our universal favorite, the rose? On this point there may be room for a diversity of opinion; but for one, I cannot wish the wild rose disarmed, lest, through the recklessness of its admirers, what is now one of the commonest of our wayside ornaments should grow to be a rarity. I esteem the rose a patrician, and fairly entitled to patrician manners. As every one sees, people in high station, especially if they chance to possess attractive social qualities, are of necessity compelled to discountenance everything like careless familiarity, even from those with whom they may formerly have been most intimate. They must always stand more or less upon ceremony, and never be handled without gloves. So it is with the queen of flowers. Its thorns not only serve it as a protection, but are for its admirers an excellent discipline in forbearance. They make it easier for us, as Emerson says, to "love the wood rose and leave it on the stalk." In addition to which I am moved to say that the rose, like the holly, illustrates a truth too seldom insisted upon; namely, that people are more justly condemned for the absence of all good qualities than for the presence of one or two bad ones.

Some such plea as this, though with a smaller measure of assurance, I should make in behalf of plants like the barberry and the bramble. The latter, in truth, sometimes acts as if it were not so much fighting us off as drawing us on. Leaning far forward and stretching forth its arms, it buttonholes the wayfarer, so to speak, and with generous country insistence forces upon him the delicious clusters which he, in his preoccupation, seemed in danger of passing untasted. I think I know the human counterparts of both barberry and bramble,—excellent people in their place, though not to be chosen for bosom friends without a careful weighing of consequences. Judging them not by their manners, but by their fruits, we must set them on the right hand. It would go hard with some of the most pious of my neighbors, I imagine, if the presence of a few thorns and prickles were reckoned inconsistent with a moderately good character.

As for reprobates like the so-called "poison ivy" and "poison dogwood," they have perhaps borrowed a familiar human maxim,—"All is fair in war." In any case, they are no worse than savage heathen, who kill their enemies with poisoned arrows, or than civilized Christians, who stab the reputation of their friends with poisoned words. Their marked comeliness of habit may be taken as a point in their favor; or, on the contrary, it may be held to make their case only so much the blacker, by laying them liable to the additional charge of hypocrisy. The question is a nice one, and I gladly leave it for subtler casuists than I to settle.

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

Yet the autumn, too, has its delicate blooms, though they are overshadowed and, as it were, put out of countenance by the coarser growths which must be said to characterize the harvest season. Nothing that May puts into her lap is more exquisite than are the purple gerardias with which August and September embroider the pasture and the woodland road. They have not the sweet breath of the arbutus, nor even the faint elusive odor of the violet, but for daintiness of form, perfection of color, and gracefulness of habit it would be impossible to praise them too highly. Of our three species, my own favorite is the one of the narrow leaves (Gerardia tenuifolia), its longer and slighter flower-stems giving it an airiness and grace peculiarly its own. A lady to whom I had brought a handful the other day expressed it well when she said, "They look like fairy flowers." They are of my mind in this: they love a dry, sunny opening in the woods, or a grassy field on the edge of woods, especially if there be a seldom-used path running through it. I know not with what human beings to compare them. Perhaps their antitypes of our own kind are yet to be evolved. But I have before now seen a woman who might worthily be set in their company,—a person whose sweet and wise actions were so gracefully carried and so easily let fall as to suggest an order and quality of goodness quite out of relation to common flesh and blood.

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

For myself, I am far from wishing them at all less numerous, or a jot less forward in displaying their charms. Let there be variety, I say. Because I speak well of the violet for its humility, I see no reason why I should quarrel with the aster for loving to make a show. Herein, too, plants are like men. An indisposition toward publicity is amiable in those to whom it is natural; but I am not clear that bashfulness is the only commendable quality. Let plants and men alike carry themselves according to their birthright. Providence has not ordained a diversity of gifts for nothing, and it is only a narrow philosophy that takes offense at seeming contrarieties. The truer method, and the happier as well, is to like each according to its kind: to love that which is amiable, to admire that which is admirable, and to study that which is curious.

A few weeks ago, for example, I walked again up the mountain road that climbs out of the Franconia Valley into the Franconia Notch. I had left home twenty-four hours before, fresh from working upon the asters and golden-rods (trying to straighten out my local catalogue in accordance with Dr. Gray's more recent classification of these large and difficult genera), and naturally enough had asters and golden-rods still in my eye. The first mile or two afforded nothing of particular note, but by and by I came to a cluster of the sturdy and peculiar Solidago squarrosa, and was taking an admiring account of its appearance and manner of growth, when I caught sight of some lower blue flower underneath, which on a second glance proved to be the closed gentian. This grew in hiding, as one might say, in the shadow of its taller and showier neighbors. Not far off, but a little more within the wood, were patches of the linnaea, which had been at its prettiest in June, but even now, in late September, was still putting forth scattered blossoms. What should a man do? Discard the golden-rod for the gentian, and in turn forsake the gentian for the twin-flower? Nay, a child might do that, but not a man; for the three were all beautiful and all interesting, and each the more beautiful and interesting for its unlikeness to the others. If one wishes a stiff lesson in classification, there are few harder genera (among flowering plants) than Solidago; if he would investigate the timely and taking question of the dependence of plants upon insects, this humble "proterandrous" gentian (which to human vision seems closed, but which the humble-bee knows well how to enter) offers him a favorable subject; while if he has an eye for beauty, a nose for delicate fragrance, and a soul for poetry, the linnaea will never cease to be one of his prime favorites. So I say again, let us have variety. It would be a stupid town all whose inhabitants should be of identical tastes and habits, though these were of the very best; and it would be a tiresome country that brought forth only a single kind of plants.

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

The aster, on the contrary, has a special talent for variation. Like some individuals of another sort, it is born to adapt itself to circumstances. Dr. Gray enumerates no less than one hundred and ninety-six North American species and varieties, many of which shade into each other with such endless and well-nigh insensible gradations that even our great special student of the Compositae pronounces the accurate and final classification of this particular genus a labor beyond his powers. What shall we say of this habit of variability? Is it a mark of strength or of weakness? Which is nobler,—to be true to one's ideal in spite of circumstances, or to conquer circumstances by suiting one's self to them? Who shall decide? Enough that the twin-flower and the star-flower each obeys its own law, and in so doing contributes each its own part toward making this world the place of diversified beauty which it was foreordained to be.

I spoke of the linnaea's autumnal blossoms, though its normal flowering time is in June. Even this steady-going, unimpressible citizen of the world, it appears, has its one bit of freakishness. In these bright, summery September days, when the trees put on their glory, this lowliest member of the honeysuckle family feels a stirring within to make itself beautiful; and being an evergreen (instead of a summer-green), and therefore incapable of bedecking itself after the maple's manner, it sends up a few flower-stems, each with its couple of swinging, fragrant bells. So it bids the world good-by till the long winter once more comes and goes.

The same engaging habit is noticeable in the case of some of our very commonest plants. After the golden-rods and asters have had their day, late in October or well into November, when witch-hazel, yarrow, and clover are almost the only blossoms left us, you will stumble here and there upon a solitary dandelion reflecting the sun, or a violet giving back the color of the sky. And even so, you may find, once in a while, an old man in whom imaginative impulses have sprung up anew, now that all the prosaic activities of middle life are over. It is almost as if he were born again. The song of the April robin, the blossoming of the apple-tree, the splendors of sunset and sunrise,—these and things like them touch him to pleasure, as he now remembers they used to do years and years ago. What means this strange revival of youth in age? Is it a reminiscence merely, a final flickering of the candle, or is it rather a prophecy of life yet to come? Well, with the dandelion and the violet we know with reasonable certainty how the matter stands. The autumnal blooms are not belated, but precocious; they belong not to the season past, but to the season coming. Who shall forbid us to hope that what is true of the violet will prove true also of the man?

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

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

Again we say, let each fulfill its own function. One is made for utility, another for beauty. For plants, too, are specialists. They know as well as men how to make the most of inherited capacities and aptitudes, achieving distinction at last by the simple process of sticking to one thing, whether that be the production of buds, blossoms, berries, leaves, bark, timber, or what not; and our judgment of them must be correspondingly varied. The vine bears blossoms, but is to be rated not by them, but by the grapes that come after them; and the rose-tree bears hips, but takes its rank not from them, but from the flowers that went to the making of them. "Nothing but leaves" is a verdict unfavorable or otherwise according to its application. The tea-shrub would hold up its head to hear it.

One of the most interesting and suggestive points of difference among plants is that which relates to the matter of self-reliance. Some are made to stand alone, others to twine, and others to creep. If it were allowable to attribute human feelings to them, we should perhaps be safe in assuming that the upright look down upon the climbers, and the climbers in turn upon the creepers; for who of us does not felicitate himself upon his independence, such as it is, or such as he imagines it to be? But if independence is indeed a boon,—and I, for one, am too thoroughbred a New Englander ever to doubt it,—it is not the only good, nor even the highest. The nettle, standing straight and prim, asking no favors of anybody, may rail at the grape-vine, which must lay hold of something, small matter what, by which to steady itself; but the nettle might well be willing to forego somewhat of its self-sufficiency, if by so doing it could bring forth grapes. The smilax, also, with its thorns, its pugnacious habit, and its stony, juiceless berries, a sort of handsome vixen among vines,—the smilax, which can climb though it cannot stand erect, has little occasion to lord it over the strawberry. If one has done nothing, or worse than nothing, it is hardly worth while to boast of the original fashion in which he has gone about it. Moreover, the very plants of which we are speaking bear witness to the fact that it is possible to accept help, and still retain to the full one's own individuality. The strawberry is no more a plagiarist than the smilax, nor the grape than the nettle. If the vine clings to the cedar, the connection is but mechanical. Its spirit and life are as independent of the savin as of the planet Jupiter. Even the dodder, which not only twines about other weeds, but actually sucks its life from them, does not thereby lose an iota of its native character. If a man is only original to begin with,—so the parable seems to run,—he is under a kind of necessity to remain so (as Shakespeare did), no matter how much help he may draw from alien sources.

This truth of the vegetable world is the more noteworthy, because, along with it there goes a very strong and persistent habit of individual variation. The plant is faithful to the spirit of its inherited law, but is not in bondage to the letter. Our "high-bush blackberries," to take a familiar illustration, are all of one species, but it does not follow that they are all exactly alike. So far from it, I knew in my time—and the school-boys of the present day are not less accurately informed, we may presume—where to find berries of all shapes, sizes, and flavors. Some were sour, and some were bitter, and some (I can taste them yet) were finger-shaped and sweet. And what is true of Rubus villosus is probably true of all plants, though in varying degrees. I do not recall a single article of our annual wild crop—blueberries, huckleberries, blackberries, cherries, grapes, pig-nuts (a bad name for a good thing), shagbarks, acorns, and so forth—in which there was not this constant inequality among plants of the same species, perfectly well defined, and never lost sight of by us juvenile connoisseurs. If we failed to find the same true of other vines and bushes, which for our purposes bore blossoms only, the explanation is not far to seek. Our perceptions, aesthetic and gastronomic, were unequally developed. We were in the case of the man to whom a poet is a poet, though he knows very well that there are cooks and cooks.

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

It does a sympathetic observer good to see how humanly plants differ in their likes and dislikes. One is catholic: as common people say, it is not particular; it can live and thrive almost anywhere. Another must have precisely such and such conditions, and is to be found, therefore, only in very restricted localities. The Dionaea, or Venus's fly-trap, is a famous example of this fastidiousness, growing in a small district of North Carolina, and, as far as appears, nowhere else,—a highly specialized plant, with no generic relative. Another instance is furnished by a water lily (Nymphaea elegans), the rediscovery of which is chronicled in a late issue of one of our botanical journals.[17] "This lily was originally found in 1849, and has never been seen since, holding its place in botanical literature for these almost forty years on the strength of a single collection at a single vaguely described station on the broad prairies of southwestern Texas;" now, after all this time, it turns up again in another quarter of the same State. And every student could report cases of a similar character, though less striking than these, of course, within the limits of his own local researches. If you ask me where I find dandelions, I answer, anywhere; but if you wish me to show you the sweet colt's-foot (Nardosmia palmata), you must go with me to one particular spot. Any of my neighbors will tell you where the pink moccasin flower grows; but if it is the yellow one you are in search of, I shall swear you to secrecy before conducting you to its swampy hiding-place. Some plants, like some people (but the plants, be it noted, are mostly weeds), seem to flourish best away from home; others die under the most careful transplanting. Some are lovers of the open, and cannot be too much in the sun; others lurk in deep woods, under the triple shadow of tree and bush and fern. Some take to sandy hill-tops; others must stand knee-deep in water. One insists upon the richest of meadow loam; another is content with the face of a rock. We may say of them as truly as of ourselves, De gustibus non est disputandum. Otherwise, how would the earth ever be clothed with verdure?

[17] The Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club for January, 1888, page 13.

But plants are subject to other whims not less pronounced than these which have to do with the choice of a dwelling-place. We may call it the general rule that leaves come before flowers; but how many of our trees and shrubs reverse this order! The singular habit of the witch-hazel, whose blossoms open as the leaves fall, may be presumed to be familiar to all readers; and hardly less curious is the freak of the chestnut, which, almost if not quite alone among our amentaceous trees, does not put on its splendid coronation robes till late in June, and is frequently at the height of its magnificence in mid-July. What a pretty piece of variety have we, again, in the diurnal and the nocturnal bloomers! For my own part, being a watcher of birds, and therefore almost of necessity an early stirrer abroad, I profess a special regard for such plants as save their beauty for night-time and cloudy weather. The evening primrose is no favorite with most people, I take it, but I seldom fail to pick a blossom or two with the dew on them. Those to whom I carry them usually exclaim as over some wonderful exotic, though the primrose is an inveterate haunter of the roadside. Yet its blossoms have only to be looked at and smelled of to make their way, homely as is the stalk that produces them. They love darkness rather than light, but it certainly is not "because their deeds are evil." One might as well cast the opprobrious text in the face of the moon and stars. Now and then some enterprising journalist, for want of better employment, investigates anew the habits of literary workers; and it invariably transpires that some can do their best only by daylight, while the minds of others seem to be good for nothing till the sun goes down; and the wise reader, who reads not so much to gain information as to see whether the writer tells the truth, shakes his head, and says, "Oh, it is all in use." Of course it is all in use, just as it is with whippoorwills and the morning-glory.

The mention of the evening primrose calls for the further remark that plants, not less than ourselves, have a trick of combining opposite qualities,—a coarse-grained and scraggy habit, for instance, with blossoms of exquisite fragrance and beauty. The most gorgeous flowers sometimes exhale an abominable odor, and it is not unheard of that inconspicuous or even downright homely sorts should be accounted precious for their sweetness; while, as everybody knows, few members of our native flora are more graceful in appearance than the very two whose simple touch is poison. Could anything be more characteristic of human nature than just such inconsistencies? Suavity and trickery, harshness and integrity, a fiery temper and a gentle heart,—how often do we see the good and the bad dwelling together! We would have ordered things differently, I dare say, had they been left to us,—the good should have been all good, and the bad all bad; and yet, if it be a grief to feel that the holiest men have their failings, it ought perhaps to be a consolation, rather than an additional sorrow, to perceive that the most vicious are not without their virtues. Beyond which, shall we presume to suggest that as poisons have their use, so moral evil, give it time enough, may turn out to be not altogether a curse?

I have treated my subject too fancifully, I fear. Indeed, there comes over me at this moment a sudden suspicion that my subject itself is nothing but a fancy, or, worse yet, a profanation. If the flowers could talk, who knows how earnestly they might deprecate all such misguided attempts at doing them honor,—as if it were anything but a slander, this imputation to them of the foibles, or even the self-styled good qualities, of our poor humanity! What an egoist is man! I seem to hear them saying; look where he will, at the world or at its Creator, he sees nothing but the reflection of his own image.



IN PRAISE OF THE WEYMOUTH PINE.

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

I could never think it surprising that the ancients worshiped trees; that groves were believed to be the dwelling places of the gods; that Xerxes delighted in the great plane-tree of Lydia; that he decked it with golden ornaments and appointed for it a sentry, one of "the immortal ten thousand." Feelings of this kind are natural; among natural men they seem to have been well-nigh universal. The wonder is that any should be without them. For myself, I cannot recollect the day when I did not regard the Weymouth pine (the white pine I was taught to call it, but now, for reasons of my own, I prefer the English name) with something like reverence. Especially was this true of one,—a tree of stupendous girth and height, under which I played, and up which I climbed till my cap seemed almost to rub against the sky. That pine ought to be standing yet; I would go far to lie in its shadow. But alas! no village Xerxes concerned himself for its safety, and long, long ago it was brought to earth, it and all its fair lesser companions. There is no wisdom in the grave, and it is nothing to them now that I remember them so kindly. Some of them went to the making of boxes, I suppose, some to the kindling of kitchen fires. In like noble spirit did the illustrious Bobo, for the love of roast pig, burn down his father's house.

No such pines are to be seen now. I have said it for these twenty years, and mean no offense, surely, to the one under which, in thankful mood, I happen at this moment to be reclining. Yet a murmur runs through its branches as I pencil the words. Perhaps it is saying to itself that giants are, and always have been, things of the past,—things gazed at over the beholder's shoulder and through the mists of years; and that this venerable monarch of my boyhood, this relic of times remote, has probably grown faster since it was cut down than ever it did while standing. I care not to argue the point. Rather, let me be glad that a tree is a tree, whether large or small. What a wonder of wonders it would seem to unaccustomed eyes! As some lover of imaginative delights wished that he could forget Shakespeare and read him new, so I would cheerfully lose all memory of my king of Weymouth pines, if by that means I might for once look upon a tree as upon something I had never seen or dreamed of.

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

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

I set it down, unwillingly, to the discredit of the Weymouth pine,—a symptom of some ancestral taint, perhaps,—that it suffers less than most trees from being thus encroached upon. Yet it does not entirely escape. True, it leans neither to left nor right, its trunk is seldom contorted; if it grow at all it must grow straight toward the zenith; but it is sadly maimed, nevertheless,—hardly more than a tall stick with a broom at the top. If you would see a typical white pine you must go elsewhere to look for it. I remember one such, standing by itself in a broad Concord River meadow; not remarkable for its size, but of a symmetry and beauty that make the traveler turn again and again, till he is a mile away, to gaze upon it. No pine-tree ever grew like that in a wood.

I go sometimes through a certain hamlet, which has sprung suddenly into being on a hill-top where formerly stood a pine grove. The builders of the houses have preserved (doubtless they use that word) a goodly number of the trees. But though I have been wont to esteem the poorest tree as better than none, I am almost ready to forswear my opinion at sight of these slender trunks, so ungainly and unsupported. The first breeze, one would say, must bring them down upon the roofs they were never meant to shade. Poor naked things! I fancy they look abashed at being dragged thus unexpectedly and inappropriately into broad daylight. If I were to see the householder lifting his axe against one of them I think I should not say, "Woodman, spare that tree!" Let it go to the fire, the sooner the better, and be out of its misery.

Not that I blame the tree, or the power that made it what it is. The forest, like every other community, prospers—we may rather say exists—at the expense of individual perfection. But the expense is true economy, for, however it may be in ethics, in aesthetics the end justifies the means. The solitary pine, unhindered, symmetrical, green to its lowermost twig, as it rises out of the meadow or stands a-tiptoe on the rocky ledge, is a thing of beauty, a pleasure to every eye. A pity and a shame that it should not be more common! But the pine forest, dark, spacious, slumberous, musical! Here is something better than beauty, dearer than pleasure. When we enter this cathedral, unless we enter it unworthily, we speak not of such things. Every tree may be imperfect, with half its branches dead for want of room or want of sun, but until the devotee turns critic—an easy step, alas, for half-hearted worshipers—we are conscious of no lack. Magnificence can do without prettiness, and a touch of solemnity is better than any amusement.

Where shall we hear better preaching, more searching comment upon life and death, than in this same cathedral? Verily, the pine is a priest of the true religion. It speaks never of itself, never its own words. Silent it stands till the Spirit breathes upon it. Then all its innumerable leaves awake and speak as they are moved. Then "he that hath ears to hear, let him hear." Wonderful is human speech,—the work of generations upon generations, each striving to express itself, its feelings, its thoughts, its needs, its sufferings, its joys, its inexpressible desires. Wonderful is human speech, for its complexity, its delicacy, its power. But the pine-tree, under the visitations of the heavenly influence, utters things incommunicable; it whispers to us of things we have never said and never can say,—things that lie deeper than words, deeper than thought. Blessed are our ears if we hear, for the message is not to be understood by every comer, nor, indeed, by any, except at happy moments. In this temple all hearing is given by inspiration, for which reason the pine-tree's language is inarticulate, as Jesus spake in parables.

The pine wood loves a clean floor, and is intolerant of undergrowth. Grasses and sedges, with all bushes, it frowns upon, as a model housekeeper frowns upon dirt. A plain brown carpet suits it best, with a modest figure of green—preferably of evergreen—woven into it; a tracery of partridge-berry vine, or, it may be, of club moss, with here and there a tuft of pipsissewa and pyrola. Its mood is sombre, its taste severe. Yet I please myself with noticing that the pine wood, like the rest of us, is not without its freak, its amiable inconsistency, its one "tender spot," as we say of each other. It makes a pet of one of our oddest, brightest, and showiest flowers, the pink lady's-slipper, and by some means or other has enticed it away from the peat bog, where it surely should be growing, along with the calopogon, the pogonia, and the arethusa, and here it is, like some rare exotic, thriving in a bed of sand and on a mat of brown needles. Who will undertake to explain the occult "elective affinity" by which this rosy orchid is made so much at home under the heavy shadow of the Weymouth pine?

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