114 WHERE ROLLS THE OREGON 



nest done, the season's clutch of eggs laid, and 

 incubation started, to see it all destroyed, and in 

 less than a week to have built again and to have 

 summoned the secret forces of life with new eggs 

 for the new nests ! 



Can a man be born when he is old ? No, be- 

 cause there is not a need for such rebirth. But if 

 there were need, if that were the only way of pre- 

 serving the race, the thing would be done. 



The autumn winds strip my trees of their with- 

 ered leaves, and the buds swell and leaf out again 

 in the spring. That is the natural cycle. There is 

 nothing mysterious about that. The caterpillars 

 stripped them of their green leaves in July. The 

 naked things shrank and shuddered in the burn- 

 ing heat, the sap standing still in their veins. 

 Then, instantly laying hold with their manifold 

 fingers on the subtile threads of life, they wove 

 and fashioned and put on a new mantle, a mira- 

 cle, that the span of the summer might be crossed, 

 and the seed carried over for another spring. 



It was so with the grebes. It is so with all life 

 — each living thing a multitude, each individual 

 its whole race latent — potent if need be. 



A bare handful of the former myriads of the 



