NOVEMBER 155 



active — the bird-grasshopper in strong fhght, 

 crickets singing in the grass, ''their cheerful sum- 

 mer cry, ' ' as White of Selborne calls it ; a swarm 

 of mosquitoes, and a small orange butterfly on a 

 golden dandelion blossom. Nearly every day for 

 a week the cardinal has sung, often in strains al- 

 most as free and varied as in spring. A Carolina 

 wren, a really trim, dainty bird, was feeding on the 

 trunk of a small tree, not four yards from the 

 club-house window, Thanksgiving afternoon, and 

 we heard wild geese passing over soon after our 

 Thanksgiving dinner. 



A correspondent at Grinnell writes that ''our 

 neighborhood has been enlivened since the day be- 

 fore Thanksgiving by the presence of a pair of 

 long-eared owls, roosting usually in the big, crook- 

 ed box-elder west of Mr. Erskine's house. Are 

 they rare here?'^ "Whether rare or not for others, 

 for you and me such little novelties of observa- 

 tion cheer the passing days, and enrich the mem- 

 ory for 5^ears to come. How applicable to the 

 whole field of nature for many of us, is the spirit 

 of White's sincere, simple statement: "It is now 

 more than forty years that I have paid some atten- 

 tion to the ornithology of this district, without be- 

 ing able to exhaust the subject: new occurrences 

 still arise as long as any inquiries are kept 

 alive." ^^ 



31 Natural History of Selborne, Letter XLIX. 



