IN THE CATSKILLS 



and inscrutable processes of life going on so silently 

 about me. 



No hostile forms with axe or spud now visit these 

 solitudes. The cows have half -hidden ways through 

 them, and know where the best browsing is to be 

 had. In spring, the farmer repairs to their border- 

 ing of maples to make sugar; in July and August, 

 women and boys from all the country about pen- 

 etrate the old Barkpeelings for raspberries and 

 blackberries ; and I know a youth who wonderingly 

 follows their languid stream casting for trout. 



In like spirit, alert and buoyant, on this bright 

 June morning go I also to reap my harvest, pur- 

 suing a sweet more delectable than sugar, fruit 

 more savory than berries, and game for another 

 palate than that tickled by trout. 



June, of all the months, the student of ornitho- 

 logy can least afford to lose. Most birds are nesting 

 then, and in full song and plumage. And what is 

 a bird without its song? Do we not wait for the 

 stranger to speak? It seems to me that I do not 

 know a bird till I have heard its voice ; then I 

 come nearer it at once, and it possesses a human 

 interest to me. I have met the gray-cheeked thrush 

 in the woods, and held him in my hand; still I do 

 not know him. The silence of the cedar-bird throws 

 a mystery about him which neither his good looks 

 nor his petty larcenies in cherry time can dispel. 

 A bird's song contains a clew to its life, and estab- 



