Song Birds and Water Fowl 
draw. But not less pleasing to an eager 
naturalist are many other lurking signs, out of 
the broad highway of the year’s advance, 
which are worthy of brief mention. 
It is often in February when, in panoply of 
ice and storm, the climax of winter’s reign 
seems to come, and his domination is ap- 
parently most absolute. Yet at this very in- 
stant of imagined supremacy, his power is 
already on the wane. By the middle of this 
short but rigorous month, spring sends her fleet- 
winged messenger before her face, and the 
year’s dark age is coming to an end. In an 
unwonted way the sunlight now begins to make 
itself conspicuous, both by such a peculiar, 
general effulgence of the atmosphere as was not 
observable before, and by the fact that when 
one walks abroad he finds the sun is tumbling 
into his eyes in a most peculiar fashion, now 
pouring his beams directly over the eye-lid’s 
edge, in a blinding way, and again lurking 
roguishly around the corner of the eye, as if 
the rays of light were bent on playing hide- 
and-seek among the lashes. It is true that 
spring and winter meet in open battle only on 
the field of March. But even some weeks be- 
fore, in this peculiar play of sunlight, one can 
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