PEACH TREES IN BLOOM 5 
the faint star Fomalhaut is seen in the Southern 
sky below Scorpio, also unknown in the Northern 
heavens, while that rare sight, the great cone of the 
zodiacal light, is sometimes to be seen just after the 
sun has set. 
And the night here has its well-remembered sounds, 
the gentle breeze lightly sighing through the pines, 
the gust of wind striking the trees into deeper music, 
the trill of a bird, the muffled call of an owl, and in 
summer the insistent call of the whip-poor-will and 
the orchestral boom of a thousand insect performers. 
Besides these, there is one sound that never fails 
summer or winter. At stated intervals the cocks wake 
up and crow. They divide the night into watches of 
about three hours. You hear one clear call, a voice 
responds, then here and there and everywhere, like 
watchmen exchanging the signal, the cry goes forth; 
you hear the circle widening from that first challenge 
to distant margins where the voices are faint almost 
as memories — you imagine them circling on and on 
orver the earth, and then all is still for another three 
hours. At the last crowing of the cocks, as though 
the sun were answering to their call, a gentle radi- 
ance flows up into the dome of the sky and 
" tenderly the haughty day 
Fills his blue urn with fire." 
