202 



Bird-Land Echoes. 



felt that I was saj'ing good-by forever to a valued 

 friend. 



A day on Duck Island, — a September day when 

 there is the suggestiveness of decay over all the up- 

 lands ; almost a funereal outlook ; for the summer, 

 though not dead, is slowly dying. However, there 

 is, as yet, but little evidence of this on the island 

 shores. The tides have kept the herbage green, and 



there is no lack of glitter along 



the little ridges 



Sanderling. 



where the currents have heaped the sand into curi- 

 ously curved lines. The scattered relics of the last 

 great freshet — branches of old trees torn from the 

 mountain-side — still hold their places, and about 

 each is a little pool that steadily grows less with 

 the ebbing and is refilled again by the returning 

 tide before it has wasted quite away. Here, when 

 the island is abandoned by all after the fishermen 

 have dried their nets for the season, I am wont to 



