Song Birds and Water Fowl 
to the day’s blank page. But the end was not 
yet. Sauntering along, I asked the first person 
I met how far it was to the station, thinking it 
might be a five minutes’ walk. My lower jaw 
dropped in amazement when he replied, ‘‘ Four 
miles !’’—with fifty-one minutes to do it in, 
after a hard day’s tramp, and by an unfamiliar 
and circuitous route. He unconsciously rubbed 
in the agony by adding that, if I had come ten 
minutes sooner, I might have ridden all the way. 
It was the last train; I felt as if I were escaping 
from a plague-stricken district, and, by an im- 
promptu system of rapid transit, I reached the 
station, with two minutes to spare. This was in 
the town of Islip, of which I had only a glimpse, 
but it sufficed to take away much of the bad 
taste of the day. With the verdure of an Eng- 
lish landscape, dotted with comfortable colonial 
houses, this town is the type of many along the 
South Shore. But with all my zeal for water 
fowl, I doubt whether a whole flock of little 
white herons would tempt me to repeat my ex- 
perience at Chautauqua Landing. 
es 
Do butterflies ever migrate? If they do, 
there was certainly a ‘‘ wave’’ of them at Cape 
188 
