SPRING IN WESTERN OREGON. 



THE BOOMING OF THE SOOTY GROUSE. 



SPRING in western Oregon is perhaps as welcome and as 

 beautiful as spring in any part of the country ; for if it does 

 not follow a cold and snowy winter, it brings sunshine after 

 a season of cloud and constant rain. What a joy it is to see 

 Mount Hood blinking in the steam drawn up by the warm 

 sun from the water-soaked ground, while a Western meadow- 

 lark on a fence, with the sunshine in his beautiful breast, 

 sings us into summer ! Mount Hood and the Western meadow- 

 larks always seem to belong together as two of the surpassing 

 creations of the Lord. As the mountains of the East are less 

 grand than these snow-capped monarchs of the Coast Range, 

 so the Eastern meadow-lark, with his sweet, melancholy te-lee- 

 e-ri-6, is no way to be compared with this glorious songster of 

 the West, who is thrush and skylark and nightingale in one. 

 If he is not our best singer, and on that point there has 

 been some discussion, he at least comes upon the stage 

 when his presence is most effective ; ." For, lo, the winter is 

 past, the rain is over and gone ; the flowers appear on the 

 earth ; the time of the singing birds is come." 



Late March and early April in western Oregon are a time 

 of gladness to the woods wanderer. The mud is drying 

 enough to render roads and woods passable, and the birds and 

 blossoms are making everything gay. From the brilliant 

 yellow skunk-cabbage, that looks like a calla-lily, and the 

 golden clumps of the Mahonia, or "Oregon grape," to the 



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