54 WAKE-ROBIN 
males chasing each other with fearful speed through 
the forest. 
Turning to the left from the old road, I wander 
over soft logs and gray yielding débris, across the 
little trout brook, until I emerge in the overgrown 
Barkpeeling, — pausing now and then on the way 
to admire a small, solitary white flower which rises 
above the moss, with radical, heart-shaped leaves, 
and a blossom precisely like the liverwort except 
in color, but which is not put down in my botany, 
—or to observe the ferns, of which I count six 
varieties, some gigantic ones nearly shoulder-high. 
At the foot of a rough, scraggy yellow birch, on a 
bank of club-moss, so richly inlaid with partridge- 
berry and curious shining leaves— with here and 
there in the bordering a spire of the false winter- 
green strung with faint pink flowers and exhaling 
the breath of a May orchard—that it looks too 
costly a couch for such an idler, I recline to note 
what transpires. The sun is just past the meridian, 
' and the afternoon chorus is not yet in full tune. 
Most birds sing with the greatest spirit and vivacity 
in the forenoon, though there are occasional bursts 
later in the day in which nearly all voices join; 
while it is not till the twilight that the full power 
and solemnity of the thrush’s hymn is felt. 
My attention is soon arrested by a pair of hum- 
mingbirds, the ruby-throated, disporting themselves 
in a low bush a few yards from me. The female 
takes shelter amid the branches, and squeaks exult- 
ingly as the male, circling above, dives down as if 
