46 WAKE-ROBIN 



locality, and experience a like difficulty in getting 

 a good view of the author of it. It is quite a 

 noticeable strain, sharp and sibilant, and sounds 

 well amid the old trees. In the upland woods of 

 beech and maple it is a more familiar sound than 

 in these solitudes. On taking the bird in hand, 

 one cannot help exclaiming, "How beautiful!" So 

 tiny and elegant, the smallest of the warblers; a 

 delicate blue back, with a slight bronze-colored tri- 

 angular spot between the shoulders ; upper mandible 

 black; lower mandible yellow as gold; throat yel- 

 low, becoming a dark bronze on the breast. Blue 

 yellow-back he is called, though the yellow is much 

 nearer a bronze. He is remarkably delicate and 

 beautiful, — the handsomest as he is the smallest 

 of the warblers known to me. It is never with- 

 out surprise that I find amid these rugged, savage 

 aspects of nature creatures so fairy and delicate. 

 But such is the law. Go to the sea or climb the 

 mountain, and with the ruggedest and the savagest 

 you will find likewise the fairest and the most deli- 

 cate. The greatness and the minuteness of nature 

 pass all understanding. 



Ever since I entered the woods, even while lis- 

 tening to the lesser songsters, or contemplating the 

 silent forms about me, a strain has reached my ears 

 from out the depths of the forest that to me is the 

 finest sound in nature, — the song of the hermit 

 thrush. I often hear him thus a long way ofi", 

 sometimes over a quarter of a mile away, when 

 only the. stronger and more perfect parts <d his 



