OLD FRIENDS IN NEW PLACES 
other vacant form — the perfection of art without 
any art. When the rabbit builds her nest and has 
her young she does not seek out a dense cover, but 
comes right out into the clear open spaces where you 
would never think of looking. She excavates a little 
cradle in the ground, gathers some dry grass, weaves 
a little blanket of dry grass and fur from her own 
body, just large enough to cover it, and her secret 
is well kept — most hidden when hidden the least. 
Quail and grouse know something of the same art, 
and never make their nests in a thick tangle. I 
have seen a quail’s nest with twenty eggs in it on 
the edge of a public highway. The brooding bird 
allowed me almost to touch her with my hand be- 
fore she flew away. 
If every bushy and weedy spring run in Georgia 
embracing not more than an acre or two of ground 
has two dozen sparrows, to say nothing of a pair or 
two of cardinals, Carolina wrens, and mockingbirds, 
one can get some idea of what a vast number of birds 
such a large State — over three hundred miles long 
and two hundred miles wide — holds. With two 
pairs of birds to the acre, a fair estimate, it would 
count up to over seventy millions. The farm of 
about one hundred and thirty acres upon which I 
passed February and March probably held several 
dozen sparrows and as many juncoes, a score or two 
blue jays, and two or three dozen meadowlarks, a 
pair each of cardinals, Carolina wrens, and brown 
103 
