36 AUTUMN NOTES IN IOWA 



in the Jasper County woods these days. It is the 

 season, also, when one may walk or wheel along- 

 country roads to some remembered patch of hazel 

 shrubbery, and till one's pocket ^vith the brown 

 nuts — having modest hope that some few may 

 prove edible. Mrs. Farnham writes of the "cory- 

 lus ' ' unfolding its young leaves, and describes the 

 hazel copses at some length, as making ^^one of 

 the most picturesque features of our landscape." 

 A few days ago, in hazel brush along a hilly, little- 

 traveled road, a half mile or so from any house, 

 we found an unexpected reminder of summer — a 

 somewhat frayed dickcissel nest, with one blue 

 egg still intact though ancient. Someway this 

 solitary abandoned egg produced on imagination 

 a deeper sense of the wastefulness of nature than 

 the thousands of battered osage oranges, the in- 

 numerable plums and grapes and nuts that no man 

 or beast would ever enjoy, and that no kindly soil 

 would ever nourish to growth. 



Charles City to MarshaUtoivn, September 9, 1906. 

 In the park square at Charles City this morning, 

 the waddling grackles were silently feeding on the 

 ground and a red-eyed vireo sang in subdued 

 strains from the trees. Along the river banks the 

 heads of western ironweed, lifted on tall stems, 

 flourished in quite conspicuous mass, and a monk- 

 ev-flower almost within the water added a bit of 



