The Birds’ Calendar 
favorites? With the current of life ever full and 
steady in its flow, all of the exhilaration of 
spring, its exultation and enthusiasm, would 
disappear, for spring itself would cease to be, 
As Shakespeare puts it— 
‘* How many things by season season’d are 
To their right praise and true perfection !” 
In his periodical regret at losing his wood. 
land friends, the ornithologist or botanist is 
forgetting that if they did not go away they 
could not come again. Nature’s plans are 
formed, not for the best effect of a single year, 
but for the greatest aggregate of effect for all 
time. Even music itself is permeated through 
and through with discord ; not because of itself 
it can ever please, but for its power in contrast 
to enhance the concord. Discord is as hateful 
to the ear as darkness to the eye, but they are 
the necessary foils of harmony and light, as 
winter is of spring. 
We shall have to be very differently con- 
stituted before we shall be satisfied to live 
under the constant blaze of the poet’s ‘‘ high, 
eternal noon.’’ Nor yet—not to be too par- 
ticular—do I think that any one is quite will- 
ing to go to that equally monotonous place 
72 
