BIRDS IN THE GREENWOODS 255 



pleasing of things is to see them shoot through the 

 yet thin veil of green, give a flying peck at one, and 

 become immediately enveloped in a little yellow 

 cloud of the pollen. It looks, indeed, as if the bird 

 had shaken it from its own feathers, for its intimate 

 actions are too quick and small to be followed, and 

 the pollen is all around it. But as the eye marks 

 the tiny explosion with delight, reason, quickly 

 following, as delightedly tells you the why of it, 

 and a plucked catkin illustrates. 



This is all in the early fresh morning, when the 

 earth is like a dew-bath and all the influences so 

 lovely that one wonders how sin and sorrow can 

 have entered into such a world. It seems as though 

 nature must be at her fairest for so fairy a thing to 

 be done. I, at least, have not seen it take place 

 later, and I cannot help hoping that no one else 

 will. 



But why do the little birds explode their catkins? 

 Do their sharp eyes, each time, see an insect upon 

 them, or do they really enjoy the thing for its own 

 sake ? I can see no reason why this latter should 

 not be the case, or, even if it is not so to any great 

 degree now, why it should not come to be so in time. 

 It must be exciting, surely, this sudden little puff of 

 yellow pollen-smoke, and then there is the fairy-like 

 beauty of it. There was much laughter, naturally, 

 when Darwin propounded the theory that birds 

 could admire, and when he instanced the bower- 

 birds, and, particularly, one that makes itself an 

 attractive little flower-garden, removing the blossoms 

 as soon as they fade, and replacing them with fresh 

 ones, it was held that such cases as these were decisive 



