FIELD-DAYS IN CALIFORNIA 



top of a tall Massachusetts pine, "Trees, trees, 

 murmuring trees." 



You can even remember the very clump of 

 evergreens, in what is now part of the Arnold 

 Arboretum, under which you first heard it, not 

 knowing, nor being able to discover, who its 

 author was. A brook trickled along the foot of 

 the hill, and there you stayed evening after even- 

 ing to listen to the sweet song of the veery. You 

 recall, too, your satisfaction, a few years after- 

 ward, in printing in a good place your version of 

 the warbler's tune, a version which you were 

 young enough, and simple enough, to hope might 

 be kept in remembrance. 



Well, that was long ago, and whether any one 

 else remembers it or not, it pleases you now to 

 say it over to yourself, as you seem once more 

 to hear the bird saying it, "Trees, trees, murmur- 

 ing trees." Yes, yes, there is much good litera- 

 ture in the Check- List. For the right reader, and 

 at the right time, its briefest prose may turn to 

 poetry. 



And now did you ever hear of Piddletown, 

 Dorsetshire, England ? Ten to one you never did. 

 Yet here in the Check-List you may learn that, 

 surprising as it sounds, it holds a small but not 

 unimportant place in the annals of American or- 

 nithology. Our North American bittern, one of 

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