96 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. 



wild bird, suffering from any fatal ailment 

 other than wounds. When their food is 

 plentiful all kinds of wild things thrive. Of 

 course, when unusually hard winters come, 

 and food cannot be found, the non-migratory 

 birds and animals suffer, often to death, from 

 hunger and cold. But this is accident rather 

 than anything else. Take a healthy child into 

 the woods, and see how naturally and surely it 

 will fall to nibbling at the buds, and bark, and 

 roots of things. There seems to be an innate 

 hunger for this sort of food, lying dormant in 

 every human being until called into activity by 

 some association, accident, or exigency. 



Now, I am not going into the dear old 

 theory of the botanical doctors touching na- 

 ture's remedies for man's ailments. I am not 

 a physician, and I favor no special school of 

 medicine. But I do maintain that it is good 

 for man — and woman, too — to nibble and 

 browse. Go bite the bud of the spice-wood, 

 or the bark of the sassafras, and tell me 

 whether you feel a new element slip into your 

 nature. No sooner do you taste for the first 

 time this wild, racy flavor, than you recognize 

 its perfect adaptation to a need of your life. 

 Nor is this need a mere physical one. Some- 

 how the fragrance and flavor that satisfy it 

 reach the thought-generating part of one, and 

 tinge one's imagination and fancy with new 

 colors. 



I remember, with a steady delight, some days 

 spent with the ginseng-diggers of North Car- 

 olina. It was there that I first tasted this 

 celebrated American root, and discovered a lik- 

 ing for its charming, aromatic bitter-sweetness. 

 No wonder the Chinese prized it above gold 1 



