46 WAKE-—ROBIN 
locality, and experience a like difficulty in getting 
a good view of the author of it. It is quite a 
noticeable strain, sharp and sibilant, and sounds 
well amid the old trees. In the upland woods of 
beech and maple it is a more familiar sound than 
in these solitudes. On taking the bird in hand, 
one cannot help exclaiming, ‘‘ How beautiful!” So 
tiny and elegant, the smallest of the warblers; a 
delicate blue back, with a slight bronze-colored tri- 
angular spot between the shoulders; upper mandible 
black; lower mandible yellow as gold; throat yel- 
low, becoming a dark bronze on the breast. Blue 
yellow-back he is called, though the yellow is much 
nearer a bronze. He is remarkably delicate and 
beautiful, —the handsomest as he is the smallest 
of the warblers known to me. It is never with- 
out surprise that I find amid these rugged, savage 
aspects of nature creatures so fairy and delicate. 
But such is the law. Go to the sea or climb the 
mountain, and with the ruggedest and the savagest 
you will find likewise the fairest and the most deli- 
cate. The greatness and the minuteness of nature 
pass all understanding. 
Ever since I entered the woods, even while lis- 
tening to the lesser songsters, or contemplating the 
silent forms about me, a strain has reached my ears 
from out the depths of the forest that to me is the 
finest sound in nature, —the song of the hermit 
thrush. I often hear him thus a long way off, 
sometimes over a, quarter of a mile away, when 
only the stronger and more perfect parts of his 
