96 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
wild bird, suffering from any fatal ailment 
other than wounds. When their food is 
plentiful all kinds of wild things thrive. Of 
course, when unusually hard winters come, 
and food cannot be found, the non-migratory 
birds and animals suffer, often to death, from 
hunger and cold. But this is accident rather 
than anything else. Take a healthy child into 
the woods, and see how naturally and surely it 
will fall to nibbling at the buds, and bark, and 
roots of things. There seems to be an innate 
hunger for this sort of food, lying dormant in 
every human being until called into activity by 
some association, accident, or exigency. 
Now, I am not going into the dear old 
theory of the botanical doctors touching na- 
ture’s remedies for man’s ailments. I am not 
a physician, and I favor no special school of 
medicine. But I do maintain that itis good 
for man+and woman, too—to nibble and 
browse. Go bite the bud of the spice-wood, 
or the bark of the sassafras, and tell me 
whether you feel a new element slip into your 
nature. No sooner do you taste for the first 
time this wild, racy flavor, than you recognize 
its perfect adaptation to a need of your life. 
Nor is this need a mere physical one. Some- 
how the fragrance and flavor that satisfy it 
reach the thought-generating part of one, and 
tinge one’s imagination and fancy with new 
colors. 
I remember, with a steady delight, some days 
spent with the ginseng-diggers of North Car- 
olina. It was there that I first tasted this 
celebrated American root, and discovered a lik- 
ing for its charming, aromatic bitter-sweetness. 
No wonder the Chinese prized it above gold! 
