DRAGON'S BLOOD 235 



our trip. Through the windows of the gun-room I 

 could see their learned backs as they bent over their 

 compilations. Suddenly the eerie little wail of a 

 screech owl floated up from the river-bank. Curiously 

 enough, it came from the very tree behind which 

 I was crouching. Instantly I saw three backs 

 straighten and three heads peer excitedly out into 

 the darkness. When I at last strolled in half an hour 

 later, they told me excitedly that they had scored the 

 first screech owl ever heard in that particular part of 

 Canada. I never told them. It is not safe to trifle 

 with the feelings of a scientific ornithologist. Un- 

 doubtedly my reticence in regard to that particular 

 bird-song is all that has saved me from occupying a 

 lonely grave in upper Canada. 



Sweetest of all the singers, the thrush-folk — what 

 shall I say of them? of the veery, with its magic 

 notes; of the hermit thrush whose song opens the 

 portals of another world; of the dear wood thrush 

 who sings at our door. While these three voices are 

 left in the world, there are recurrent joys that noth- 

 ing can take from us. 



It was the veery song that I learned first. More 

 years ago than I like to remember, I walked at sun- 

 rise by a thicket, listening to bird-songs and wonder- 

 ing whether there was any way by which I might 

 come to learn the names of the singers. One song 

 rippled out of that thicket that thrilled me with its 

 strange unearthly harp-chords. "Ta-wheela, ta- 

 wheela, ta-wheela," it ran weirdly down the scale, 



