A WOODLAND INTIMATE. 23 



scious, it is to be feared, of our admiring 

 comments upon her ingenuity and courage. 

 Seeing her thus devoted to her charge, I 

 wondered anew whether she could be so in- 

 nocent as not to know that one of the eggs 

 on which she brooded with such assiduity 

 was not her own, but had been foisted upon 

 her by a faithless cow-bird. To me, I must 

 confess, it is inexplicable that any bird 

 should be either so unobservant as not to 

 recognize a foreign egg at sight, or so easy- 

 tempered as not to insist on straightway 

 being rid of it ; though this is no more in- 

 scrutable, it may be, than for another bird 

 persistently, and as it were on principle, to 

 cast her own offspring upon the protection 

 of strangers ; while this, in turn, is not more 

 mysterious than ten thousand every-day oc- 

 currences all about us. After all, it is a 

 wise man that knows what to wonder at ; 

 while the wiser he grows the stronger is 

 likely to become his conviction that, little 

 as may be known, nothing is absolutely 

 unknowable ; that in the world, as in its 

 Author, there is probably " no darkness at 

 all," save as daylight is dark to owls and 

 bats. I did not see the oven-bird's eggs at 



