48 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
Passing through a beechwood, we heard a sharp 
call, and saw a black-and-white bird back down a 
tree. This cautious procedure stamped him as the 
downy woodpecker. Of all the tree-climbers only the 
woodpeckers back down. 
Strangely enough, a short distance farther on we 
heard another cry like that of the downy wood- 
pecker, only harsher and wilder, and caught a glimpse 
of the hairy woodpecker, the big brother of the 
downy, a rarer, larger bird of the deep woods. That 
ended our bird list — a paltry seven when we should 
have had a score. 
We passed the swamp meadow close to the road, 
where the blue, blind gentian grows not twenty-five 
yards from the unseeing eyes of the travelers, who 
pass there every October day and never suspect what 
a miracle of color lies hidden in the tangle of marsh- 
grass beside their path. The Botanist with many 
misgivings had shown me the secret. For three years 
we had tramped together before he held me to be 
worthy to share it. 
Farther on we crossed a plateau where a series of 
stumps showed where a grove of chestnut trees had 
grown in the days before the Blight. Suddenly 
from under our very feet dashed a brown rabbit, 
his white powder-puff gleaming at every jump. 
The lithe, lean, springing body seemed the very em- 
bodiment of speed. There are few animals that can 
pass a rabbit in a hundred yards, even our cotton- 
tail, the slowest of his family. He is, however, only 
a sprinter. In a long-distance event the fox, the dog, 
