COWS AND THEIR FEATHERED NAMESAKES 



CHAPTER XIV 



The Cow-Bird: Molothrus Ater 



IN THE PASTURES 



The sky was cloudless and the air was still. The dust lay 

 thick on the country road. There were so many cicadas reveling 

 in the drowsy heat and so many thirsty tree-toads calling for rain 

 that it was as if one cicada and one tree -toad traveled with you, 

 singing all the way. \To the north lay fields of velvet-green 

 where young clover quickly sprang to cover the brown stems of 

 the lately-mown crop ; dull tan where the timothy that now packed 

 swelling barns had grown; gold stubble thickly dotted with the 

 sheaves of garnered wheat ; waving blue-green seas of unripened 

 oats and the jade-colored blades of growing corn.) 



Above the shorn fields the Larks flung down an interrogatory, 

 "Spring o' the year?" as if they feared to state for fact a matter 

 which might be open to question. For the season had been pe- 

 culiar. Winter had lingered late. Then the spring rains set in, 

 cold and prolonged so that the leaves had been unusually slow in 



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