48 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



and another and another. Sometimes there were 

 only a few birds at a time, sometimes as many as 

 a hundred, flying seldom more than three or four 

 abreast, their line streaming out raggedly. That 

 first northward-flying courier had done his errand 

 with marvelous rapidity! The birds kept coming 

 for half an hour, I should say. They flew for the 

 most part in silence, only the leaders cawing, as if 

 they were crying, "This way! This way!" But a 

 far-off noise of the gathering to the south began to 

 come faintly to my ear, as it was augmented by new 

 throats, birds doubtless arriving from the south as 

 well as the north. Unfortunately, this gathering was 

 well up on the precipitous mountain-side at least 

 two miles away from me, and between lay a tract 

 of forest which had been lumbered some ten years 

 before, and even my curiosity to learn the cause of 

 this mobilization could not induce me to attempt the 

 passage. Any one who has wrestled with old lum- 

 ber slash on a mountain-side will understand. 



But such mobilizations have frequently been in- 

 vestigated. Usually they prove to be for the attack- 

 on some enemy, Thoreau speaks of the crows 

 "bursting up above the woods where they were 

 perching, like the black fragments of a powder-mill 

 just exploded." When they are gathered for war 

 purposes their cries will lead you to the spot where 

 they are fighting, and these same bursts of black 

 fragments among the trees, usually following an 

 especial uproar of cawing, will direct you to the 

 center of the battle. Walter King Stone, the illus- 

 trator of this book, and Charles Livingston Bull 

 have told me of a mobilization they once witnessed, 



