WILD LIFE OF ORCHARD AND FIELD 



grasses and weeds have made good headway, and 

 the fruit - trees, the maples, the witch - hazel, and 

 other adventurous trees and shrubs are in full leaf- 

 age by the middle of the month, so that the road- 

 sides and gardens and orchards seem finished. 

 The woods, however, are still scantily apparelled, 

 and, seen at a distance, have a gray, rusty as- 

 pect that tells what a multitude of naked twigs 

 still remain. 



The lengthening and more and more sunny 

 days remedy this rapidly, and an exuberance of 

 verdure soon clothes the earth, yet the realiza- 

 tion that "summer is a-comin' in'' is always 

 sudden. We are never quite prepared for long- 

 anticipated events when at last they arrive. After 

 a long southerly rain, ushered in b}^ a thunder- 

 storm and wearing itself out in drizzle and mist 

 and gloom, we awake one morning to find the 

 sun glorious again, the air washed almost to the 

 clarity of a vacuum, and a delicious breeze flowing 

 out of the west. Loudly to our ears, then, comes 

 the roar of the little cataract half a mile awaj^, 

 swollen to a torrent that overflows the rocks with 

 nut-brown water — not roiled, but stained by cedar 

 and hemloclv roots — and we think of out - door 

 photography and of fishing. 



159 



