TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS 305 



fill all the space down there with sound. 'NMiat 

 brought this solitary bird there, so far from 

 the haunts of his kind, I know not. ^[aybe 

 he was simply spying out the land, and will 

 next season return with his mate. Mocking- 

 birds have wandered north as far as Connecticut, 

 and were found breeding there by a collector, 

 who robbed them of their eggs. The mocking 

 wren would be a great acquisition to our North- 

 ern river banks and bushy streams. It is the 

 largest of our Avrens, and in the volume and 

 variety of its notes and the length of its song 

 season surpasses all others. 



A lover of nature never takes a walk without 

 perceiving something new and interesting. All 

 life in the winter woods or fields as revealed 

 upon the snow, how interesting it is. I re- 

 cently met a business man who regularly goes 

 camping to the Maine woods every winter from 

 the delight he has in various signs of wild life 

 written upon the snow. His morning paper, 

 he says, is the sheet of snow which he reads in 

 his walk. Every event is chronicled, every 

 new arrival registers his name, if you have eyes 

 to read it! 



In December my little boy and I took our 

 skates and went a mile distant from home into 

 the woods to a series of long, still pools in a 

 wild, rocky stream for an hour's skating. 

 There was a light skim of snow upon the ice, 

 but not enough to seriously interfere with our 

 sport, while it was ample to reveal the course 

 of every wild creature that had passed the night 



