156 IN BIRD LAND. 



clambered far up their steep sides. Perhaps the 

 mountain-climber would think them tame. It made 

 my head swim that evening to see a towhee bunting 

 dart from a copse near by and hurl himself with reck- 

 less abandon down the declivity, as if there were not 

 the slightest danger of breaking his neck or dashing 

 himself to pieces. He stopped just in time to 

 plunge into another thicket for which he had taken 

 aim. 



As the sun sank, I seated myself on the grass far 

 up the steep, and looked down on the beautiful 

 valley below me. There was the broad Ohio, wend- 

 ing its way between the sentinel hills, the green 

 clover fields and meadows smiUng good-night to the 

 sinking sun, and the brown ploughed fields with their 

 green corn-rows. A wood-thrush mounted to a dead 

 twig at the very top of a tall oak some distance 

 below me, and poured forth his sad vesper hymn, 

 so bewitchingly sweet and far-away ; the while Ken- 

 tucky warblers and cardinal grossbeaks piped their 

 lullabies or madrigals, as they chose, from the dark- 

 ling woods; and, altogether, it was a never-to-be- 

 forgotten evening. 



An early morning hour found me climbing the ac- 

 clivity and mounting to the top of the hill. In a 

 clover-field the gossamer Tse-e-e of the grasshopper 

 sparrow, a birdlet among birds, pierced my ear. 

 Presently a pair of these sparrows were seen on the 

 fence-stakes, and, yes, one of them had a worm in 

 its bill, indicating that there were little ones in the 

 neighborhood. If I could find a grasshopper spar- 



