Th'oiigh a Forest 139 



also more pain — and with them both are more 

 enduring. Where little is given, little is required. 

 But the deer are in this wiser than we. 



The whippoorwill regales us every evening with 

 his call, always cheerful because of its vigor. The 

 nesting habits of this bird are peculiar. I do not 

 know whether the female changes her nest before 

 the young are hatched — probably she does, as her 

 large mouth is adequate to picking up and carrying 

 off her eggs, but after the hatching she has a new 

 nest for every day, at least if disturbed, though she 

 does not carry her young very far — a few rods 

 usually. She places them under a sheltering shrub, 

 on the bare ground, and when once they are found 

 it is not difficult to find them again. They grow 

 very rapidly, and are gray-colored, like a piece of 

 bark or a last year's leaf, and show no signs of life 

 when picked up and handled. 



An orphan wood-duck offered himself for adop- 

 tion to one of our hens which had chicks about his 

 size. She looked at him askance at first, but he 

 got under her wings, and soon won her maternal 

 regard. He could not run as fast as the chicks, 

 and the hen would wait for him and go after him. 

 He would make little excursions on the water, and 

 bade fair to become one of our favorite pets, but 

 he disappeared as mysteriously as he came. The 

 probability is that his mother brought him to the 

 lake in the vicinity of the hen-coop, where he went 



