96 EVERYDAY BIRDS 



he reaches the furthermost coast of Labrador or 

 the banks of the Saskatchewan. The prospectus 

 of which I spoke, and of which every reader 

 ought to have a copy, tells, in a general way, 

 whither each company is bound, but the members 

 of the same company often scatter themselves 

 over several degrees of latitude. 



Some of the companies move compactly, and 

 are only two or three days, more or less, in pass- 

 ing a given point. You must be in the woods, 

 for example, on the 12th or 13th of May, or you 

 will miss them altogether. Others straggle along 

 for a whole month. You begin to think, perhaps, 

 that they mean to stay with you all summer, but 

 some morning you wake up to the fact that the 

 last one has gone. 



It is curious how few people see this army of 

 travelers. They pass by thousands and hundreds 

 of thousands. More than a hundred different 

 companies go through every town in Massa- 

 chusetts between March 1 and June 1. They 

 dress gayly — not a few of them seem to have 

 borrowed Joseph's coat — and are full of music, 

 yet somehow their advent excites little remark. 

 Perhaps it is because, for the most part, they flit 

 from bush to bush and from tree to tree, here 

 one and there one. If some year they should 

 form in line, and move in close order along the 



