THE PASSING OF THE BIRDS. 195 
that makes life worth having. How can 
any New Englander imagine that he has ex- 
hausted 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 pro- 
cession is getting under way. For the next 
three months it will be passing, — millions 
upon millions: warblers, sparrows, thrushes, 
vireos, blackbirds, flycatchers, wrens, king- 
lets, 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 pas- 
ture 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 
