QO AV WINTER. 



Philadelphia, having, after leaving their roosting 

 grounds, lost their reckoning in a dense fog. He 

 tells us how the masses obeyed a few leaders, 

 and how methodically they all departed, led by 

 their appointed scouts. It was an incident that 

 thrilled him more than all else that he had wit- 

 nessed ; and none knew our birds in their homes 

 better than he. 



The bewildered crows this morning recalled 

 this story, for the poor birds were in a hopeless 

 plight. Perhaps their leaders were at logger- 

 heads, or, being none, it was a case of each for 

 himself and ill-luck catch the hindmost. Be this 

 as it may, their party-cries filled the misty air and 

 relieved me of all feeling of loneliness. From 

 the open meadows I ventured into a gloomy 

 wood, leaving the crows to solve their own prob- 

 lems. Here the fog proved an enormous lens, 

 and, at the same time obscuring the tops of even 

 dwarfed undergrowth, made them appear as 

 trees, and the taller grasses that had withstood 

 the winter were as shrubbery. It was this most 

 strange effect that made my old playground as a 

 land unknown But as the wild cries of the trou- 

 bled crows grew faint, the sense of loneliness, 

 against which one naturally rebels, assumed mas- 

 tery, and I longed for at least sunlight, that the 

 familiar trees might be stripped of their masks. 

 One's own thoughts should be acceptable com- 



