NATURE'S CRAFTSMEN 



will call him, if you please, Mr, Four. He is well worth 

 your knowing, especially if you are caring much for 

 bees. Down through the grove and across the brook 

 we go to the fallow fields that lie between this wooded 

 hill and the far southward wanderings of the stream 

 along yon knobby glen. 



Earlier in the season we might have sung literally 

 with lovers of the old Scotch psalter — 



" In pastures green He leadeth me, 

 The quiet waters by." 



But not to-day! Here are, indeed, the quiet waters, 

 but not the pastures green, for, in truth, they are 

 yellow. It is a somewhat uncommon scene. This year 

 the vast, untilled estate of "Devon Hills" around us 

 has not known the sweep and burr-r-r of the horse- 

 mower, and wild flowers and meadow-larks, spiders 

 and grasshoppers have had unmolested sway. Thus it 

 comes that a broad expanse of yellow golden-rod lies 

 all around us, lightened up with clumps of the pale-blue 

 and white aster ^ and the blooms of boneset/ wherein 

 living things may range and hunt and nest after their 

 own wild will and wont. 



"This ought to be a fine field for our collecting," 

 quoth Mr. Four. 



Collecting wild bees? Surely that were a sport easily 

 ended. A short horse is soon curried, saith the proverb; 

 and I have never seen more than five species of wild 

 bees around here. 



Mr. Four smiled. He was well inclined to credit me 

 with some knowledge of living creatures, but that trace 



^ Aster puniceus and A. ericoides. 

 ^ Ewpatorium perfoliatum. 

 144 



