WAYS OF NATURE 
in the top of a tall yellow birch near the spring that 
supplies my cabin with water. A bold climber 
“shinned” up the fifty or sixty feet of rough tree- 
trunk and looked in upon the eleven eggs. They 
were beyond the reach of his arm, in a well-like 
cavity over three feet deep. How would the mother 
duck get her young up out of that well and down 
to the ground? We watched, hoping to see her in 
the act. But we did not. She may have done it at 
night or very early in the morning. All we know is 
that when Amasa one morning passed that way, 
there sat eleven little tufts of black and yellow down 
in the spring, with the mother duck near by. It was 
a pretty sight. The feat of getting down from the 
tree-top cradle had been safely effected, probably by 
the young clambering up on the inside walls of the 
cavity and then tumbling out into the air and com- 
ing down gently like huge snowflakes. They are 
mostly down, and why should they not fall with- 
out any danger to life or limb? The notion that 
the mother duck takes the young one by one in her 
beak and carries them to the creek is doubtless erro- 
neous. Mr. William Brewster once saw the golden- 
eye, whose habits of nesting are like those of the 
wood duck, get its young from the nest to the water 
in this manner: The mother bird alighted in the 
water under the nest, looked all around to see that 
the coast was clear, and then gave a peculiar call. 
Instantly the young shot out of the cavity that held 
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