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BY THE WAYSIDE 
43 
K M I I 
Winter Excursions. 
Few people know how many interest¬ 
ing things there are to be seen upon a 
winter walk. The walk is taken simply 
for the walk, ‘‘a constitutional.” To be 
sure, it is a' great deal just to exercise 
our lungs in the fresh air, to fill the blood 
again with good oxygen, and to get our¬ 
selves out of ourselves for a time, know¬ 
ing that it economizes time in the end. 
But we get most benefit from a walk that 
is taken for pleasure and not as a task 
imposed upon our physical nature. 
There is so much to see when the year 
is at full tide in spring that even the 
most unsympathetic soul with the dull¬ 
est senses can hardly fail to get closer to 
nature then. But winter, we are told, 
is lifeless, devoid of interest to the nature 
lover, who must now turn to books to 
read instead what others have seen and 
felt. But Burroughs sees much in the 
winter aspect, and so may we. The re¬ 
gion must indeed be barren that does 
not yield something worth finding. Let 
me tell you how much we found, my art¬ 
ist friend and I, one beautiful day in late 
November in a flat countrv—I had al- 
* 
most said uninteresting country—just 
outside a big town, along the course of 
a muddy stream. 
First there were the birds; the day 
was made for them, still, clear, and mild. 
We had but an hour and were looking 
for other things and so we did not catch 
them all. But we got the downy and 
the.hairy woodpeckers, the junco, the 
black-capped chickadee, the. crow and 
the blue jay, besides a sparrow which 
would not sit still long enough to be iden¬ 
tified with certainty, and a hawk too far 
away even for our glasses to make out 
clearly. Not so bad a list, after all. 
Then, along the creek banks, there were 
seeds we wanted, ash and box elder, to 
keep for some experiments in tree plant¬ 
ing; and some weed seeds to illustrate 
nature lessons, the beggers’ ticks, senna 
and cockles. There was a big patch of 
knotweed, to whose brown and withered 
stems the parasitic dodder clung, and 
someone would be found who did not 
know this robber plant and must be in¬ 
formed. So it was added to the growing 
collection. The water certainly looked 
muddy and uninteresting, but it might 
be supporting life, so I filled a bottle 
with dead leaves and mud from the bot¬ 
tom. On my return, the microscope re¬ 
vealed a good number of minute forms 
of life. 
When we were not looking up for birds 
or down at our feet for seeds, we searched 
the thickets at the level of our eyes, for 
this is the best time of the year to go 
“cocooning.” The maples were preyed 
upon this year by the white-marked 
tussock moth; the cocoons were numer¬ 
ous, hairy cases attached to twigs and 
leaves, with the conspicuous cluster of 
eggs on the outside in a glistening frothy 
mass. And at last, as we turned home¬ 
ward, there in the hedge-row was the 
prize we were searching for, a cecropia 
cocoon, which almost escaped our eyes. 
But, alas, the beautiful creature who 
spun it had not escaped the eyes of a 
chalice fly; the silken case was pierced 
with tiny holes where its parasitic young 
had escaped, and when cut open the 
cocoon covered only the dry skin of the 
caterpillar. The poor larva had perished 
after spinning its case, unable to begin 
its winter metamorphosis. But we took 
the cocoon anvwav, for even this might 
“point a moral or adorn a tale.” Lastly, 
we picked a deserted robin’s nest for the 
Continued on page 48. 
