8 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR 



Their long journey northward over sea and land has 

 not cured them yet of their unrest. Only one thing 

 will do it (and I suppose we all should be glad), one 

 sovereign remedy, and that is family cares. But 

 they are yet a long way off. 



Meantime watch your turkey-hen, how she saunters 

 down the field alone, how pensive she looks, how 

 lost for something to do and somewhere to go. She 

 is sick with this disease of spring. Follow her, keep- 

 ing out of sight 

 yourself, an dlo, 

 a nest, hidden 

 under 



a pile of brush in a corner of the pasture fence, half 

 a mile from home ! 



The turkey-hen has wandered off half a mile to 

 build her nest ; but many wild birds have come on 

 their small wings all the way from the forests of the 

 Amazon and have gone on to Hudson Bay and the 

 Fur Countries, just to build their nests and rear 

 their young. A wonderful case of the spring run- 

 ning, you would say ; and still more wonderful is the 

 annual journey of the golden plover from Patagonia 

 to Alaska and back, eight thousand miles each way. 

 Yet there is another case that seems to me more 

 mysterious, and quite as wonderful, as the sea seems 

 more mysterious than the land. 



