228 NATURE AND WOODCRAFT. 



head has patches of scarlet, white, and black, 

 each well defined and setting off the other. 

 The breast and back are of varying tints of 

 warm russet-brown, the feathers of the wings 

 picked out with white. His tail is alternately 

 elevated and depressed as he changes his posi- 

 tion, and the glowing patches of golden yellow 

 on his wings are well brought out as he flits 

 from spray to spray. Thus do the Linnet and 

 Goldfinch go through the winter, together 

 ranging the fields and feeding upon the seeds 

 which they can pick up. Spring comes, and 

 they separate, the one keeping to the woods, 

 the other flying off to nest on the moorlands 

 among the golden floods of glowing gorse. 



The naked trees stand like ghosts against 

 a cold grey sky ; those pines seem hoary with 

 their white weight of snow; the woods are 

 painful in their very stillness, and the still- 

 ness is made more intense by the crackling- 

 sound of the snow as it is shivered from above 

 by a courageous Squirrel that has ventured 

 out to have a look at Nature in her wintry 

 garb. Her pulse seems frozen, and outside 

 all is cold, silent, and cheerless. Over the 

 brown and bare woodlands, over the frozen 



