40 WAKE-KOBIN 



had. In spring the farmer repairs to their border- 

 ing of maples to make sugar; in July and August 

 women and boys from all the country about pene- 

 trate the old Barkpeelings for raspberries and black- 

 berries; and I know a youth who wonderingly 

 follows their languid stream casting for trout. 



In like spirit, alert and buoyant, on this bright 

 June morning go I also to reap my harvest, pur- 

 suing a sweet more delectable than sugar, fruit more 

 savory than berries, and game for another palate 

 than that tickled by trout. 



June, of all the months, the student of ornithol- 

 ogy can least afford to lose. Most birds are nesting 

 then, and in full song and plumage. And what is 

 a bird without its song ? Do we not wait for the 

 stranger to speak? It seems to me that I do not 

 know a bird till I have heard its voice; then I 

 come nearer it at once, and it possesses a human 

 interest to me. I have met the gray-cheeked thrush 

 in the woods, and held him in my hand; still I do 

 not know him. The silence of the cedar-bird throws 

 a mystery about him which neither his good looks 

 nor his petty larcenies in cherry time can dispel. 

 A bird's song contains a clew to its life, and estab- 

 lishes a sympathy, an understanding, between itself 

 and the listener. 



I descend a steep hill, and approach the hemlocks 

 through a large sugar-bush. When .twenty rods 

 distant, I hear all along the line of the forest 

 the incessant warble of the red-eyed vireo, cheerful 

 and happy as the merry whistle of a schoolboy. 



