An August Reverie. 211 



the moment a cuckoo makes the same disovery. 

 The bird is afraid some of them may escape, and 

 such frantic slaughtering cannot be described. It 

 equals the killing of small fry when the blue-fish 

 attack them. The cuckoo to-day solved no prob- 

 lem. It was studiously bird-like and reserved, 

 chattered but for a moment and passed by, making 

 no more impression than the acquaintances one 

 meets on the street. Not so the next comer, a 

 black-and-white tree-creeping warbler, a bird so 

 small that it mighj: nest by your front porch and 

 you never know it. The little fellow knew nothing 

 of August lassitude, but rattled loose bark and 

 darted over an enormous area of arboreal territory. 

 It is but a rough calculation, to be sure, but not far 

 from a correct measurement, I take it. I counted 

 twenty-seven main branches, each of which, as 

 travelled by the bird, is twenty feet long, a stretch 

 of five hundred and forty feet ; then came one 

 hundred branches of the second size with about 

 ten feet of running room upon them, and, finally, 

 fully fifteen hundred twigs, some five feet in length. 

 This gives us a run-way over which the bird 

 travelled of nine thousand and forty feet. Guess- 



