BIRDS 
21 
how curious and suggestive! We go out 
in the morning, and no Thrush or Vireo 
is to be heard; we go out again, and every 
tree and grove is musical; yet again, and 
all is silent. Who saw them come? who 
saw them depart? This pert little Winter- 
Wren, for instance, darting in and out 
the fence, diving under the rubbish here 
and coming up yards away,—how does 
he manage with those little circular wings 
to compass degrees and zones, and arrive 
always in the nick of time? Last August 
I saw him in the remotest wilds of the 
Adirondack, impatient and inquisitive as 
usual; a few weeks later, on the Potomac, 
1 was greeted by the same hardy little 
busybody. Does he travel by easy stages 
from bush to bush and from wood to 
wood? or has that compact little body 
force and courage to brave the night and 
the upper air, and so achieve leagues at 
one pull? And yonder Bluebird, with 
the hue of the Bermuda sky upon his 
back, as Thoreau would say, and the flush 
of its dawn upon his breast,—did he 
come down out of heaven on that bright 
March morning when he told us so softly 
