64 THE MOUNTAINS 



to be in "Drew Forest." There, in that 

 veritable bird-refuge, were swifts by the 

 hundred. At times, on the early edge of 

 a fair summer night, when the wood 

 thrushes were fluting their antiphonal 

 vespers, the sky above the campus trees 

 was thronged with these amazing birds, 

 in their prodigious aerial performance — 

 now gliding, with wings crescent-curved; 

 now moving in daring slants, at constantly 

 changing angles; now describing long- 

 sweeping and up-rising curves; now com- 

 bining, perhaps a score together, in an 

 intricate pattern of criss-cross weaving; 

 and now dashing at one another, and miss- 

 ing collision and general smash-up by no 

 visible margin whatever. 



Disposition 



Birds have a group disposition just as 

 surely as men have a group temperament. 

 There is as much temperamental differ- 

 ence between a bobolink and a bronzed 



