THE WATER-OUZEL 295 



throat. But instead of sitting confidingly as my 

 other visitors had done, he rushed off at once, 

 nearly tumbling heels over head into the lake in 

 his suspicious confusion, and with loud screams 

 roused the neighborhood. 



Love for song-birds, with their sweet human 

 voices, appears to be more common and unfailing 

 than love for flowers. Every one loves flowers to 

 some extent, at least in life's fresh morning, at 

 tracted by them as instinctively as humming-birds 

 and bees. Even the young Digger Indians have 

 sufficient love for the brightest of those found 

 growing on the mountains to gather them and braid 

 them as decorations for the hair. And I was glad 

 to discover, through the few Indians that could be 

 induced to talk on the subject, that they have 

 names for the wild rose and the lily, and other con 

 spicuous flowers, whether available as food or oth 

 erwise. Most men, however, whether savage or 

 civilized, become apathetic toward all plants that 

 have no other apparent use than the use of beauty. 

 But fortunately one's first instinctive love of song 

 birds is never wholly obliterated, no matter what the 

 influences upon our lives may be. I have often been 

 delighted to see a pure, spiritual glow come into 

 the countenances of hard business-men and old 

 miners, when a song-bird chanced to alight near 

 them. Nevertheless, the little mouthful of meat 

 that swells out the breasts of some song-birds is too 

 often the cause of their death. Larks and robins 

 in particular are brought to market in hundreds. 

 But fortunately the Ouzel has no enemy so eager to 

 eat his little body as to follow him into the moun- 



