OUR FOREST CHORISTERS. 185 



twigs, I did not dream how near akin we were. Or when 

 a humming-bird, a winged drop of gorgeous sheen and 

 gloss, a living gem, poising on his wings, thrust his dark, 

 slender, honey-seeking bill into the white blossoms of a 

 little bush beside my window, I should have thought it no 

 such bad thing to be a bird, even if one next became a 

 bat, like the colony in our eaves, that dart and drop and 

 skim and skurry, all the length of moonless nights, in such 

 ecstasies of dusky joy." Was this weird creature, the bat, 

 in very truth a bird, in some far primeval time ? and does 

 he fancy, in unquiet dreams at nightfall, that he is one 

 still ? I wonder whether he can enjoy the winged brother- 

 hood into which he has thrust himself — victim, perhaps, of 

 some rash quadruped-ambition — an Icarus doomed for ever 

 not to fall. 



4. I think that, if required, on pain of death, to name 

 instantly the most perfect thing in the universe, I should 

 risk my fate on a bird's egg. There is, first, its exquisite 

 fragility of material, strong only by the mathematical pre- 

 cision of that form so daintily molded. There is its abso- 

 lute purity from external stain, since that thin barrier 

 remains impassable until the whole is in ruins — a purity 

 recognized in the household proverb of "An ajriple, an egg, 

 and a nut." 



5. Then, its range of tints, so varied, so subdued, and 

 so beautiful, whether of pure white, like the martin's, or 

 pure green, like the robin's, or dotted and mottled into 

 the loveliest of browns, like the red thrush's, or aqua ma- 

 rine, with stains of moss-agate, like the chipping sparrow's, 

 or blotched with long, weird ink-marks on a pale ground, 

 like the oriole's, as if it bore inscribed some magic clew to 

 the bird's darting flight and pensile nest. Above all, the 

 associations and predictions of this little wonder, that one 

 may bear home between his fingers all that winged splen- 

 dor, all that celestial melody, coiled in mystery within 



