Water Fowl 



effusive tone and temperament, upon its sombre 

 shores. The everlasting hills may be symboli- 

 cal of limitless duration; but the ceaseless, 

 eager throbbing of the sea's immeasurable ex- 

 panse is certainly Nature's grandest emblem of 

 eternal life. Water, salt or fresh, is a strangely 

 vital substance, half articulate, ever strug- 

 gling blindly upward into life and melody, a 

 corporeal sister of the evanescent wind. There 

 is no passion to be found in Nature like that of 

 the angry sea. The very essence of music's 

 undertones is in the fluid thunder of the ocean's 

 breakers, and in the roar of the majestic water- 

 fall ; while the cascade and the brook beguile 

 the ear with their delicious melting chaos of 

 unrhythmic and uncadenced tumblings ; ut- 

 terly devoid, it is true, of the technical quali- 

 ties of melody, yet the very incarnation of its 

 spirit. 



Ornithology that drives one to the woods, 

 the fields, the shore — anywhere but to the 

 stuffed collection — is open sesam6 to unlock 

 the door to many kindred forms of pleasure 

 and inquiry. Any ornithologist is very nar- 

 row-minded, who, in all his wanderings, finds 

 only birds. Around them, as a nucleus, will 

 crystallize a thousand objects of interest, for 



59 



