An August Reverie. 215 



life-power of which man has no trace and can 

 never realize. If so, we can look upon them as we 

 do wind-tossed thistle-down, but can go no further. 

 I doubt this. There is closer kinship than the 

 world allows. 



I clipped the following from a recent newspaper 

 because of its suggestiveness : 



" A number of ornithologists, possessed of the 

 zeal that marks the faithful devotee of science, 

 have climbed Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty by 

 night and nestled in the hand of the goddess in 

 order to make a study of the habits of migratory 

 birds at this season of the year. It was a curious 

 vantage-ground of study, and has yielded some 

 curious results. Thus, it is stated by one of the 

 observers that birds from Canada and Labrador, 

 travelling by the sea-coast, seem to have learned 

 the peril of collision with the statue, as year by 

 year the number of the killed from this cause grows 

 less. Another most interesting fact reported by 

 another gentleman of the party was the evidence 

 of a system of signals in flocks of birds. Each 

 of the different flocks seemed to have a veteran 

 leader, who gave a shrill call when passing strange 



