THE SAND-HILL CRANE. Ml 



knowledge of men and his ways. A man with a team ploughing, 

 troubles them not. A slow-moving double wagon is but little 

 noticed. A man with a gun is a walking terror, recognised across 

 the township. 



The writer once was driving in a double team with a driver 

 and two sportsmen, when three cranes were seen on a hillside nearly 

 ahead. Our course was changed so as to pass along the foot of the 

 hill and a gunshot away, and the horses continued their walk while 

 the sportsmen sat with their guns in their hands but their faces 

 turned toward the horses. In this way we drove until opposite the 

 birds, when they attempted to rise, but necessarily, in rising, had 

 to face down hill, as they could not rise and surmount the hill 

 together. Each marksman selected his bird, and we thus secured 

 all three, although one fell a mile away. 



This bird migrates late in the autumn, seeking the Floridas, the 

 gentler prairies of Texas, and the Gulf of Mexico, and reappears in 

 the latitude of the Great Lakes in May. They are scattered over 

 the whole continent of North America and are found as abundant 

 on the Pacific coast as on the prairies of Illinois. They migrate in 

 large flocks and fly in irregular lines, often so far aloft that they 

 seem like tiny drifts of smoke which the eye can barely see. Some- 

 times a snow-white crane is seen among them, and hasty writers 

 have assumed this to be a bird grown white with age, while, in fact, 

 it is one of another species. 



One other habit of the bird deserves record. 



If, on a still October day, in city or on prairie land, you hear 

 that gurgling cry, so faint that though at first you pause, yet you will 

 say to yourself " that is only sweet memory," and walk on. It may 

 be you will catch it again. Stop short, and look the sky all over. 

 Far up against the blue welkin, so high that you just can see it, you 

 will find a moving circle, no larger to you than your lady's finger- 

 ring. You cannot count the number of feathered jewels in that 

 ring, there may be fifty or more, but you can see it sway, and move, 

 and slowly float along, dropping as it floats, that grueling cry that 

 will fall from Heaven right into your heart, telling you that the 

 cranes are moving south, and that, idling on their way, they have 

 paused to call to you and make you look Heavenward. 



