NATURE'S REALM. 43 
nailed to the side of the aforesaid neighbor's 
henhouse, and my opportunity for a further in- 
sight into the breeding habits of that particular 
pair of harriers was forever blasted. 
- Seasons have come and gone since I left my 
boyhood home and entered into the strife in a 
great city, but the vision of my country life has 
been to me a delightful remembrance, ready at 
all times to respond to the beckon of memory’s 
finger and sweeten my daily toil, and with a 
hope to renew some of the subtle influence of 
the surroundings of my early life, I left my of- 
fice one day last spring to revisit the old farm. 
As I alighted at the little country depot and 
started on my six-mile tramp my spirits grew 
buoyant, the fresh morning air and light sun 
drew melodies of praise trom countless song- 
sters, and I pictured in anticipation the old 
homestead as of yore, but alas! when I drew 
near I regretted that I had parted with my 
birthright. A stranger courteously bade me 
welcome, but my stay was short. The place 
seemed deserted. The boxes along the eaves 
of the crib were torn down, the flicker holes in 
the gables of the barn were covered by clap- 
boards and paint, and the huge chimney was 
replaced by a modern ih see ” one. He was 
considered a ‘‘ progressive” farmer, yet I do 
not think the flash of the bluebird’s wing at his 
corn crib, the twitter of the swallow in his 
barn, or the sociable swift in his chimney, 
would have retarded his progress. His mow- 
ing machine in the field was the juggernaut 
under which the bobolink and meadow lark 
were sacrificed, and I thought how, in the by- 
gone days, the little patches of grass left stand- 
ing by the sturdy, kind-hearted mower, be- 
tokened the unmolested homes of those ground 
breeders. 
The delightful old orchard, with its. trees: 
abounding in hollow limbs, yet fruitful as the 
new, was now no more, and where once stood 
the sturdy ‘ pearmain,” with that hollow in 
the centre of the trunk, from which I had taken 
one winter four screech owls, was now a sickly 
sapling of doubtful vitality but of grcat repute 
in the catalogue of its mercantile seller. The 
-lofty trees, once the homes of my Auzeos. in the 
“‘forty-acre” lot, were lying in the fornmm o 
boards and shingles at the sawmill hard by, 
and the brook which had its origin under their 
shadow, and had supplied our pasture with a 
never-failing stream, was now but a dry path, 
a trail of what had gone before, and as I turned 
away I wondered if aught remained as before, 
and as if in answer an ebon wing brushed 
through the stately elms and a crow, with a 
couple of king birds in full pursuit, flew toward 
the swamp with an egg impaled on his beak, 
and I even exulted that at least this crafty bird 
could hold his own in the struggle for existence 
against the other biped, genus homo. 
