MARCH 



17 



A day or two later I sat on a hillside in the 

 woods late in the day amid the pines and hemlocks, 

 and heard the soft, elusive spring call of the little 

 owl a curious musical undertone hardly separa- 

 ble from the silence ; a bell, muffled in feathers, toll- 

 ing in the twilight of the woods and discernible only 

 to the most alert ear. But it was the voice of spring, 

 the voice of the same impulse that sent the wood- 

 cock winging his way through the dusk, that was 

 just beginning to make the pussy-willows swell and 

 the grass to freshen in the spring runs. 



BURROUGHS: Riverby. 



18 



I hear the song sparrow practicing his first mat- 

 ins for the year. No wonder his song has been 

 compared to the tinkling of bells ! A more vibrat- 

 ing, resonant quality there is not in the whole 

 choir of native-bird voices. His ditty consists of 

 three short introductory notes (embodying the 

 theme or motive, perhaps) ; these three notes trans- 

 lating themselves, to my ear, in the syllables 

 " sweet, sweet, sweet," with a drawing in of the 

 breath each time, followed by a bewildering suc- 

 cession of delicious tintinnabulations. 



EDITH M. THOMAS: The Round Year. 



