IN THE HEMLOCKS 



mandible black ; lower mandible yellow as gold ; 

 throat yellow, becoming a dark bronze on the 

 breast. Blue yellow-back he is called, though the 

 yellow is much nearer a bronze. He is remarkably 

 delicate and beautiful, the handsomest as he is 

 the smallest of the warblers known to me. It is 

 never without surprise that I find amid these rug- 

 ged, savage aspects of nature creatures so fairy and 

 delicate. But such is the law. Go to the sea or 

 climb the mountain, and with the ruggedest and the 

 savagest you will find likewise the fairest and the 

 most delicate. The greatness and the minuteness 

 of nature pass all understanding. 



Ever since I entered the woods, even while lis- 

 tening to the lesser songsters, or contemplating the 

 silent forms about me, a strain has reached my ears 

 from out the depths of the forest that to me is the 

 finest sound in nature, the song of the hermit 

 thrush. I often hear him thus a long way off, 

 sometimes over a quarter of a mile away, when 

 only the stronger and more perfect parts of his 

 music reach me; and through the general chorus 

 of wrens and warblers I detect this sound rising 

 pure and serene, as if a spirit from some remote 

 height were slowly chanting a divine accompani- 

 ment. This song appeals to the sentiment of the 

 beautiful in me, and suggests a serene religious 

 beatitude as no other sound in nature does. It is 

 perhaps more of an evening than a morning hymn, 

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