LOVERS OF NATURE 219 



them! When the red-shouldered starlings begin to 

 gurgle in the elms or golden willows along the 

 marshes and watercourses, you will feel spring then ; 

 and if you look closely upon the ground beneath 

 them, you will find that sturdy advanced guard of 

 our floral army, the skunk cabbage, thrusting his 

 spear-point up through the ooze, and spring will 

 again quicken your pulse. 



One seems to get nearer to nature in the early 

 spring days: all screens are removed, the earth 

 everywhere speaks directly to you ; she is not hidden 

 by verdure and foliage; there is a peculiar delight 

 in walking over the brown turf of the fields that one 

 cannot feel later on. How welcome the smell of it, 

 warmed by the sun; the first breath of the reviving 

 earth. How welcome the full, sparkling water- 

 courses, too, everywhere drawing the eye ; by and by 

 they will be veiled by the verdure and shrunken by 

 the heat. When March is kind, for how much her 

 slightest favors count! The other evening, as I 

 stood on the slope of a hill in the twilight, I heard 

 a whistling of approaching wings, and presently a 

 woodcock flying low passed near me. I could see 

 his form and his long curved wings dimly against the 

 horizon ; his whistling slowly vanished in the gather- 

 ing night, but his passage made something stir and 

 respond within me. March was on the wing, she 

 was abroad in the soft still twilight searching out 

 the moist, springy places where the worms first come 

 to the surface and where the grass first starts; and 

 her course was up the valley from the south. A 



