ALONG THE HILLSBOROUGH. 7 
dence of having seen me first. Long legs, 
long wings, a long bill — and long sight and 
long patience: such is the tall bird’s dowry. 
Good and useful qualities, all of them. 
Long may they avail to put off the day of 
their owner’s extermination. 
The major is scarcely a bird of which you 
can make a pet in your mind, as you may 
of the chickadee, for instance, or the blue- 
bird, or the hermit thrush. He does not 
lend himself naturally to such imaginary en- 
dearments. But it is pleasant to have him 
on one’s daily beat. I should count it one 
compensation for having to live in Florida 
instead of in Massachusetts (but I might 
require a good many others) that I should 
see him a hundred times as often. In walk- 
ing down the river road I seldom saw less 
than half a dozen; not together (the major, 
like fishermen in general, is of an unsocial 
turn), but here one and there one,—on a 
sand-bar far out in the river, or in some 
shallow bay, or on the submerged edge of 
an oyster-flat. Wherever he was, he always 
looked as if he might be going to do some- 
thing presently; even now, perhaps, the 
matter was on his mind; but at this mo- 
