168 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 



sound his silver horn ; the red squirrel will cackle from 

 his safe retreat above you, and the little chickadee lisp 

 his good-morning, and while you watch and listen, half 

 dreaming and half thinking, broad day-Hght and the 

 duties of another day will be upon you. As the season 

 advances and the snow disappears, the animals that 

 have hibernated again show themselves, and others 

 return to their old haunts in the woods. The large 

 hen-hawks come back to nest in the elms, and every 

 day they ma^^ be seen in their aerial flight circling 

 above the trees ; nothing can be more graceful than the 

 Alight of the larger hawks. How one envies them 

 their leisurely journey in the upper air ! and, when the 

 noisier crows come in numbers to assail them, wdth 

 what indifference is the attack received ; if the assault 

 is continued till it becomes annoying, the hawk poises 

 his pinions, and mounts upward, beyond the equipoise 

 of the clumsier and more groveling birds. 



You meet the timid httle rabbit at every turn, and 

 after a while it ceases to appear startled at your 

 approach. The squirrels are chatty and noisy, appar- 

 ently delighted with the presence of man. The bird 

 that pleases you most and startles you oftenest as it 

 goes whirring through the woods is the partridge. You 

 may find the hen nesting in some open place soon after 

 the snow is off the ground, wdiile the male bird will 

 reassure her by his martial drumming from some moss- 

 covered log in an adjoining thicket. It would indeed 

 be a lonely woods in which there were no squirrels or 

 partridges. Would to heaven that laws could be so 



