oe 
At the Water’s Edge 
enjoyment from species of birds which they 
have never seen, and are never likely to see. 
But, for my own part, it gives me no small satis- 
faction to recall, as distinctly as I may, the ap- 
pearance and habits of the many varieties that 
lie quite beyond my own narrow field of obser- 
vation ; to imagine, for instance, the beautiful 
ivory gull, living among the icebergs of the arc- 
tic zone, and, as it sails aloft, flooding its 
snowy form in the same purple and rosy beams 
of morning light that gleam in brilliant cold- 
ness on the pinnacles of ice; one of the rare 
ornaments of vitality that hover in that vast 
and frozen silence ; and, again, to think of that 
magnificent specimen of quite another sort, far 
in the sunny south, the great white heron, trop- 
ical and pensive. ‘There is pleasure, too, as 
well as aggravation, in the thought of numer- 
ous species nearer home, which I have seldom 
or never seen, nesting and singing their lives 
away, year after year, in their favorite habitats 
which I have not yet visited, but whom it is one 
of my long ambitions one day to bring within 
the circle of intimate acquaintance. A shadowy 
sort of pleasure, some prosy or cynical person 
may say. Well, it is at least positive, although 
so unsubstantial ; and I submit that it is some- 
161 
