IN FIELD AND WOOD 



While I was watching the squirrel and the wood- 

 pecker, I discovered a crow's nest with nearly grown 

 young. The parent crow came low over the fence 

 into the grove, and flew to a branch of an oak, and 

 alighted only ten or twelve feet from the ground. 

 Then it flew to a higher branch in another tree, and 

 then to the top of a group of spruces, where I saw 

 one of the young crows rise and take the food. How 

 cautious and artful the whole proceeding was ! 



One of our latest nature writers pretends to see 

 what the crow brings her young at such times. Had 

 I had the most powerful opera-glasses on this occa- 

 sion, I could not have told the nature of the morsel 

 she brought in her beak. The thing is done very 

 quickly and deftly, and is not meant for the eye of 

 any onlooker there may chance to be about. 



Thus all the little ways and doings of the birds 

 interest me. They are curiously human, while yet 

 they afford glimpses into a new and strange world. 

 We look on; we are interested; we understand; we 

 sympathize; we may lend a hand; we share much in 

 common; one nature mothers us all; our lives run 

 parallel in many respects; similar problems, similar 

 needs, similar fatalities, similar tribulations, come 

 home to us all; and yet we are separated by a gulf, 

 the gulf that lies between conscious, reasoning soul 

 and unconscious, unreasoning instinct. But I must 

 not plunge into the gulf, nor seek to clear it here. 



91 



