UNDER THE MAPLES 



lateral white quills in the tail, its kinship to the 

 grass finch or vesper sparrow. The slate-color 

 soon obliterates most of these signs, but the white 

 quills remain. It has departed from the nesting- 

 habits of its forbears. The vesper sparrow nests 

 upon the ground in the open fields, but the junco 

 chooses a mossy bank or tussock by the roadside, 

 or in the woods, and constructs a very artistic 

 nest of dry grass and hair which is so well hidden 

 that the passer-by seldom detects it. 



Another small word I read about certain of the 

 rocks in my native Catskills, a laminated, blue- 

 gray sandstone, that when you have split them 

 open with steel wedges and a big hammer, or blown 

 them up with dynamite, instead of the gray fresh 

 surface of the rock greeting you, it is often a surface 

 of red mud, as if the surface had been enameled 

 or electrotyped with mud. It appears to date from 

 the first muddy day of creation. I have such 

 a one for my doorstone at Woodchuck Lodge. It 

 is amusing to see the sweepers and scrubbers of 

 doorstones fall upon it with soap and hot water, 

 and utterly fail to make any impression upon it. 

 Nowhere else have I seen rocks casehardened with 

 primal mud. The fresh-water origin of the Cat- 

 skill rocks no doubt in some way accounts for it. 



VII 



WE are all interested students of the weather, but 

 20 



