At the Water's Edge 



enjoyment from species of birds which they 

 have never seen, and are never likely to see. 

 But, for my own part, it gives me no small satis- 

 faction to recall, as distinctly as I may, the ap- 

 pearance and habits of the many varieties that 

 lie quite beyond my own narrow field of obser- 

 vation ; to imagine, for instance, the beautiful 

 ivory gull, living among the icebergs of the arc- 

 tic zone, and, as it sails aloft, flooding its 

 snowy form in the same purple and rosy beams 

 of morning light that gleam in brilliant cold- 

 ness on the pinnacles of ice ; one of the rare 

 ornaments of vitality that hover in that vast 

 and frozen silence ; and, again, to think of that 

 magnificent specimen of quite another sort, far 

 in the sunny south, the great white heron, trop- 

 ical and pensive. There is pleasure, too, as 

 well as aggravation, in the thought of numer- 

 ous species nearer home, which I have seldom 

 or never seen, nesting and singing their lives 

 away, year after year, in their favorite habitats 

 which I have not yet visited, but whom it is one 

 of my long ambitions one day to bring within 

 the circle of intimate acquaintance. A shadowy 

 sort of pleasure, some prosy or cynical person 

 may say. Well, it is at least positive, although 

 so unsubstantial ; and I submit that it is some- 

 i6i 



