community like ours It only marks the time 
to take off the storm porch and to rake the 
leaves from the bulb bed, and then life goes 
on much us before. I found It difficult, how. 
ever, to keep to any definite direction; the 
sound of red-winged blackbirds In a field to 
the right no sooner tempted me off in that 
direction than I was lured back by a pair 
of bluebirds to the left. The bluebirds were 
looking over the trees In an apple orchard. 
The female flew from one tree to the next, 
the inale, like a blue-coated Gareth, warbling, 
“Lead and I follow," and falling into the 
very ecstacy of song, if his mate peered for 
a moment into a hollow limb. This particu¬ 
lar female seemed not yet in earnest; she 
apparently looked into the knot holes, 
not with any Idea of taking immediate pos¬ 
session, but from force of habit, as women, 
walking in a city street, gaze with heads 
averted from their escorts, at hats and 
gowns which they have no intention of pur¬ 
chasing. 
The blue of the sky was everywhere, 
reflected from the full streams. The. 
little brooks, like the birds, could not 
contain themselves, and spread over the 
adjoining slopes so that on every hill¬ 
side the color of the sky was caught 
In a thousand patches of deep blue. Even 
the muddy road was streaked with pur¬ 
ple. As I stood near the tower on Arling¬ 
ton Heights, the sun was caught by a misty 
cloud, and the shadows on all the dis¬ 
tant ranges deepened to pale violet; but 
as the sun drew to the edges of the cloud 
the violet faded gradually to a pale grey, 
In the pastures the brushwood on all the 
grey birches had reddened with new life; 
even the alder thickets seemed to shine 
‘with a brighter silver, set off here and 
there by the yellowish twigs of a willow. 
In Bedford everyone was enjoying the 
sunshine. Invalids and old people, cats 
and dogs, sat and dozed on the doorstep. 
The door of the barber shop was open, so 
that the man in the chair, if he liked not 
the barber’s gossip, could listen to the 
bluebirds in the old elms along the pleas¬ 
ant village street. I stepped into a gro¬ 
cery and was met there too by a promise 
of summer; the packages of spring seeds 
were arranged in the middle of the room, 
and offered a brilliant display of all the 
gay flowers and luscious fruits which 
might for a judicious purchaser prove 
the fulfilment of this morning's promise. 
As the car entered Bedford we had 
passed over the Shawsheen, and here 
to my delight I heard the "gossip of 
swallows” and saw their sharp cut 
wings high over the blue water. Swallows 
that dare the winds of a New England 
March are probably not so rare in the 
- broad valleys of the Concord and its trib¬ 
utaries as in the narrower basins of the 
Charles and the Mystic. They were a 
welcome sight, for to me a single swal¬ 
low marks, not summer perhaps, but still 
the second step of spring, the season 
when insect life begins. I found my first 
Phoebe, too, In Bedford; calling from an 
old farmstead, and finding an abundance 
of phcebe food about the stone-walled 
cow yard, into which the sun was pour¬ 
ing. I asked the farmer when his phcebe 
j had returned, but he confessed that he 
had no acquaintance with such a bird. 
He had seen a "squad of blackbirds” that 
j morning, but he had only lately moved 
in from Arlington, and had not had time 
to get acquainted with an old settler like 
the phcebe. To judge by the elms before 
the house, the farm must date from the 
18th century, and the pheobe, if he had 
had any pride of birth, must have cared 
little whether the farmer knew him or 
not. His ancestor had no doubt been 
calling on the morning when the seven¬ 
ty-seven Bedford men mustered under 
the village oak to start for the Concord 
fight. 
Even the conductor on the car that car¬ 
ried me on to Billerica felt the softening 
influence of the day. “It makes a man 
feel like new,” he said. He too had his 
eye out for wild life, and had seen a wood¬ 
chuck come out of his burrow that morn¬ 
ing. Who would not have been coaxed out 
of his burrow by such a morning? The 
wind was constantly brushing over the long 
grass and white-pine needles so that the 
sunlight brought out their gloss like the 
glint on a woman’s hair. 
As I passed one orchard after another, 
I saw many people looking upward into 
the branches of the trees; but they were 
not fellow ornithologists. The brown-tall 
moth has become a scourge through all this 
region, and extension shears seemed to be 
i in the hands of every other ifruit grower. In 
one orchard a woman in a man’s straw hat 
was directing her husband's attention to 
the nests above. How is it that a creature 
ordinarily so particular about appearances 
as a woman can ever voluntarily put on a 
man’s straw hat? 
From Billerica I walked to Burlington, 
adding cowblrds and red-poll linnets, and 
a noble pair of red-Shouldered hawks to 
the morning’s list. Two loads of fragrant 
hay passed me on the road, and as the 
wind blew wisps from the sides of the 
load I stooped to see of what constituents 
the hay was composed. It was unusually 
good hay, chiefly white-top, with a little 
i herd’s grass, and some sweet vernal grass, 
the latter, of course, long past its flowering. 
I noted also a frond or two of sensitive 
fern, and a bit of vine from a running 
blackberry, a stalk of dock and one of 
sorrel. It was pleasant thus to botanize 
in March among the plants of midsummer. 
I doubt not that a skilled collector could 
have told to a fortnight just when the 
i hay was cut, and just the sort of land 
where It grew, as Layard restored the 
palace of Sennacherib from the fragments 
of alabaster slabs, or an economic entomol¬ 
ogist at Washington by studying the bits of 
legs and shells in a bird’s stomach can 
make out for you the menu of his last 
meal. 
A little farther on an apple tree beside 
the road attracted my attention. It had 
been cut open about four feet from the 
ground; the hole was two feet long and a 
hand's breadth wide. A glance into the hol¬ 
low explained the purpose of the cut. The 
hollow was lined from top to bottom with 
the base of a layer of honey comb. It had 
been a bee tree, in which a swarm of wild 
bees had stored the fragrant nectar from 
the clover fields and raspberry patches of 
Billerica. Either some passer-by had noticed 
