DRAGON’S BLOOD 235 
our trip. Through the windows of the gun-room I 
could see their learned backs as they bent over their 
compilations. Suddenly the eerie little wail of a 
screech owl floated up from the river-bank. Curiously 
enough, it came from the very tree behind which 
I was crouching. Instantly I saw three backs 
straighten and three heads peer excitedly out into 
the darkness. When [ at last strolled in half an hour 
later, they told me excitedly that they had scored the 
first screech owl ever heard in that particular part of 
Canada. I never told them. It is not safe to trifle 
with the feelings of a scientific ornithologist. Un- 
doubtedly my reticence in regard to that particular 
bird-song is all that has saved me from occupying a 
lonely grave in upper Canada. 
Sweetest of all the singers, the thrush-folk — what 
shall I say of them? of the veery, with its magic 
notes; of the hermit thrush whose song opens the 
portals of another world; of the dear wood thrush 
who sings at our door. While these three voices are 
left in the world, there are recurrent joys that noth- 
ing can take from us. 
It was the veery song that I learned first. More 
years ago than I like to remember, I walked at sun- 
rise by a thicket, listening to bird-songs and wonder- 
ing whether there was any way by which I might 
come to learn the names of the singers. One song 
rippled out of that thicket that thrilled me with its 
strange unearthly harp-chords. ‘“‘Ta-wheela, ta- 
wheela, ta-wheela,” it ran weirdly down the scale, 
