BIRDS AND BRIGHT LEAVES 73 



An interesting thing to me has been the tardy 

 brightening of individual maple trees. It is one 

 more manifestation, I assume, of Nature's gift 

 of versatility, her faculty of variation, to which, 

 all but universal as it is, scientific men attribute 

 so much potency in the evolving of so-called spe- 

 cies. What I notice just now is that, as some 

 bushes and trees mature their fruit later than 

 others of the same kind, living apparently under 

 the same conditions, so some maple trees are a 

 week or two behiud their immediate neighbors in 

 ripening their foliage. I have passed within a 

 day or two both sugar maples and red maples 

 that were just donning their gay robes. Well 

 done, I am moved to say, as my eye lights on 

 them. They and the poplars, together with cer- 

 tain extensive maple groves on the higher levels, 

 still keep the world arrayed in a really barbaric 

 splendor. Two weeks ago I should have prophe- 

 sied that before this time the landscape would be 

 stripped for winter ; and so it would have been, 

 perhaps, if a cold storm had supervened instead 

 of this period of summery brightness and calm. 

 Great is weather. There is nothing like it. It 

 makes a man — and a tree, too, for aught I know 

 — glad to be alive. 



That it makes the birds happy is beyond dis- 

 pute. You can see it with half an eye. Many of 



