40 WAKE-ROBIN 
had. In spring the farmer repairs to their border- 
ing of maples to make sugar; in July and August 
women and boys from all the country about pene- 
trate the old Barkpeelings for raspberries and black- 
berries; and I know a youth who wonderingly 
follows their languid stream casting for trout. 
In like spirit, alert and buoyant, on this bright 
June morning go I also to reap my harvest, — pur- 
suing a sweet more delectable than sugar, fruit more 
savory than berries, and game for another palate 
than that tickled by trout. 
June, of all the months, the student of ornithol- 
ogy can least afford to lose. Most birds are nesting 
then, and in full song and plumage. And what is 
a bird without its song? Do we not wait for the 
stranger to speak? It seems to me that I do not 
know a bird till I have heard its voice; then I 
come nearer it at once, and it possesses a human 
interest to me. I have met the gray-cheeked thrush 
in the woods, and held him in my hand; still I do 
not knowhim. The silence of the cedar-bird throws 
a mystery about him which neither his good looks 
nor his petty larcenies in cherry time can dispel. 
A bird’s song contains a clew to its life, and estab- 
lishes a sympathy, an understanding, between itself 
and the listener. 
I descend a steep hill, and approach the hemlocks 
through a large sugar-bush. When twenty rods 
distant, I hear all along the line of the forest 
the incessant warble of the red-eyed vireo, cheerful 
and happy as the merry whistle of a schoolboy. 
