GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS 407 



have now turned into Conant's woods. The oven-bird 

 helps fill some pauses. . . . Here comes a small bird 

 with a ricochet flight and a faint twittering note like a 

 messenger from Elysium. 



Nov. 9, 1851. Now the leaves are gone the birds' 

 nests are revealed, the brood being fledged and flown. 

 There is a perfect adaptation in the material used in 

 constructing a nest. There is one which I took from a 

 maple on the causeway at Hubbard's Bridge. It is fas- 

 tened to the twigs by white woolen strings (out of a 

 shawl?), which it has picked up in the road, though it 

 is more than half a mile from a house ; and the sharp 

 eyes of the bird have discovered plenty of horsehairs 

 out of the tail or mane, with which to give it form by 

 their spring ; with fine meadow hay for body, and the 

 reddish woolly material which invests the ferns in the 

 spring (apparently) for lining. 



March 10, 1852. I was reminded, this morning be- 

 fore I rose, of those undescribed ambrosial mornings 

 of summer which I can remember, when a thousand 

 birds were heard gently twittering and ushering in the 

 light, like the argument to a new canto of an epic and 

 heroic poem. The serenity, the infinite promise, of such 

 a morning ! The song or twitter of birds drips from the 

 leaves like dew. Then there was something divine and 

 immortal in our life. When I have waked up on my 

 couch in the woods and seen the day dawning, and 

 heard the twittering of the birds. 



April 2, 1852. 6 A. M. — The sun is up. The water 

 on the meadows is perfectly smooth and placid, reflect- 

 ing; the hills and clouds and trees. The air is full of 



