616 
THE OUTLOOK 
attractive; and the other birds that we 
heard sing, th< ugh they played their part 
in the generai chorus, were performers 
of no especial note, like our tree creepers, 
pine warblers, and chipping sparrows. 
The great spring chorus had already 
begun to subside, but the woods and 
fields were still vocal with beautiful bird 
music, the country was very lovely, the 
inn as comfortable as possible, and the 
bath and supper very enjoyable after our 
tramp; and altogether I passed no 
pleasanter twenty-four hours during my 
entire European trip. 
Ten days later, at Sagamore Hill, I 
was among my own birds, and was much 
interested as I listened to and looked at 
them in remembering the notes and actions 
of the birds I had seen in England. On 
the evening of the first day I sat in my 
rocking-chair on the broad veranda, 
looking across the Sound towards the 
glory of the sunset. The thickly grassed 
hillside sloped down in front of me to a 
belt of forest from which rose the golden, 
leisurely chiming of the wood thrushes, 
chanting their vespers ; through the still 
air came the warble of vireo and tanager ; 
and after nightfall we heard the flight 
song of an oven bird from the same belt 
of timber. Overhead an oriole sang in 
the weeping elm, now and then breaking 
his song to scold like an overgrown wren. 
Song sparrows and cat birds sang in the 
shrubbery; one robin had built its nest 
over the front, and one over the back 
door, and there was a chippy's nest in 
the wistaria vine by the porch. During 
the next twenty-four hours I saw and 
heard, either right around the house or 
while walking down to bathe, through the 
woods, the following forty-two birds : 
Little Green Heron, Quail, Red 'bailed 
Hawk, Yellow Billed Cuckoo, Kingfisher, 
Flicker, Hummingbird, Swift, Meadow 
Lark, Red Winged Blackbird, Sharp 
'bailed Finch, Song Sparrow, Chipping 
Sparrow, Bush Sparrow, Purple Finch, 
Baltimore Oriole, Cowbunting, Robin, 
Wood Thrush, Thrasher, Cat Bird, Scarlet 
Tanager, Red Eyed Vireo, Yellow War¬ 
bler. Black-Throated Green Warbler, King 
Bird, Wood Peewee, Crow, Blue Jay, 
Cedar Bird. Maryland Yellow Throat, 
Chickadee, Black and White Creeper, 
Barn Swallow, White Breasted Swallow, 
Oven Bird, Thistlefinch, Vesperfinch, 
Indigo Bunting, Towhee, Grasshopper 
Sparrow, and Screech Owl. 
The birds were still in full song, for on 
Long Island there is little abatement in 
the chorus until about the second week 
of July, when the blossoming of the chest¬ 
nut trees patches the woodland with 
frothy greenish yellow. 
I sent the companion of my PInglish 
walk John Burroughs’s “ Birds and Poets.” 
John Burroughs’s life-work is beginning to 
have its full effect in many different lines. 
When he first wrote there were few men 
of letters in our country who knew nature 
at first hand. Now there are many who 
delight in our' birds, who know their 
songs, who keenly love all that belongs to 
out-of-doors life. For instance, Madison 
Cawein and Ernest McGaffy have for a 
number of years written of our woods 
and fields, of the birds and the flowers, as 
only those can write who join to love of 
nature the gift of observation and the 
gift of description. Mr. Cawein is a 
Kentuckian ; and another Kentuckian, 
Miss Julia Stockton Dinsmore, in the lit¬ 
tle volume of poems which she has just 
published includes many which describe 
with beauty and charm the sights and 
sounds so*dear to all of us who know 
American country life. Miss Dinsmore 
knows Kentucky, and the Gulf Coast 
of Louisiana, and the great plains of 
North Dakota; and she knows also, 
the regions that lie outside of what 
can be seen with material vision. For 
years in our family we have had some of 
her poems in the scrap-book cut from 
newspapers when we knew nothing about 
her except the initials signed to the verses. 
Only one who sees with the eyes of the 
spirit as well as the eyes of the body could 
have written the “ Threnody,” curiously 
attractive in its simplicity and pathos, with 
which the little book opens. It contains 
many poems that make a similar appeal. 
The writer knows bluebird and robin, red- 
bird and field lark and whippoorwill, 
just as she knows Southern rivers and 
Western plains; she knows rushing 
winds and running waters and the sights 
and sounds of lonely places ; and. more¬ 
over. she knows, and almost tells, those 
hidden things of the heart which never 
find complete utterance. 
