120 SUMMER 



ready for storing in their barns beneath the rocks; 

 but this would not last long. It was already early 

 August and what haying they had to do must be 

 done quickly or winter would catch them hungry. 



They cut the grass that grows in the vicinity of 

 the slide, and cock it until it is cured, then they carry 

 it all below against the coming of the cold; and 

 naturalists who have observed them describe with 

 what hurry and excitement the colony falls to taking 

 in the hay when bad weather threatens to spoil it. 



Hardy little farmers ! Bold small folk ! Why climb 

 for a home with your tiny, bare-soled feet above the 

 aerie of the eagle and the cave of the soaring con- 

 dor of the Sierras? Why not descend to the warm 

 valleys, where winter, indeed, comes, but cannot lin- 

 ger? or farther down where the grass is always 

 green, with never a need to cut and cure a winter's 

 hay? 



I do not know why nor why upon the tossing 

 waves the little petrel makes her bed ; nor why, be- 

 neath the waves, "down to the dark, to the utter 

 dark" on 



" The great gray level plains of ooze," 



the "blind white sea-snakes" make their home; 

 nor why at the north, in the fearful, far-off, frozen 

 north, the little lemmings dwell; nor why, nor why. 

 But as I sat there above the clouds, listening to the 

 plaintive, trembling whistle of the little cony, and 



