16 TA Es AU De ONG Bi aera 
the heels of this the cat-tails crowded, reaching out for the territory 
grown too shallow for the pioneer plant society; and landward still 
farther came the broad sedgeland, and beyond the fen-meadow, some- 
day to be prairie, rolled to the borders of the woodland. Here was 
life and movement and a long, grim struggle to exist. Forever the 
front line advanced lakeward and the storm-winds beat it back, but 
year by year it was still accomplishing the work begun when the very 
uplands marked the margins of the original glacial lake. 
But almost more intriguing than this, we discovered how inter- 
woven with this plant world was the life of the birds. Choosing by 
preference and long habit the particular plant-zone most suited to their 
nesting needs, we found each bird almost unerringly in the same place 
season after season. Quite as surely as the majority of truly aquatic 
species preferred the cat-tails, others were equally fond of neighboring 
associations. 
Moving landward beyond the tall cat-tail and wild-rice society, one 
broke suddenly into the open sedgeland, and the change in life was 
quite as abrupt as the change in vegetation. True, a few Redwings 
and Wrens filtered in, but it was characterized by one bird whose ex- 
clusive domain it was—the Swamp Sparrow. We found its nest, cley- 
erly concealed at the roots of a spreading clump of Carex atop a “bog,” 
well above the shallow water that remained in this area till late summer. 
At length as the wooded islands neared, the ground became merely 
moist, and we found ourselves entering a broad meadow of blue-joint 
grass; and here again we found a new world into which the etheral 
trill of the Swamp Sparrow scarcely penetrated. 
The meadow was smooth and green and easy to walk in. Here 
and there red osiers or glaucous willows broke its level monotone, sug- 
gesting possible nesting places of stray Redwings or Dickcissels or, 
in late summer, Goldfinches. Where the sweet flag crowded along 
the half-choked brook, Short-billed Marsh Wrens reiterated their rasp- 
ing trills in chorus; and ever and anon the curt, clock-like “‘zit-er-reet!”’ 
of the Henslow’s Sparrow melted into the low hum of the meadow’s 
symphony. But the grassland expressed itself best through the boister- 
ous Bobolinks who spattered its every inch with the clear, jangling 
tunes so unlike anything else in the marsh. Tirelessly on fluttering 
wings, they climbed the cloudless blue, circling and weaving, crystalliz- 
ing the air into melody. 
Sometimes on hot, bright, still afternoons when the Marsh Hawk 
wheels high in the sky, it is pleasant to drowse in the woodland border 
and study the green blaze of the marsh, seeking to fathom all the 
secrets it yet guards. There is life, death, joy, sadness in the eternal 
ebb and flow of things. What drama goes on now behind that green 
wall of verdure? 
Symbol of the wilderness that was! Some people in one careless 
glance can know a marsh—a wasteland of mosquitoes and treacherous 
“sink-holes” and fever—and never thereafter regard it with a ray of 
real interest. Yet it filled its quiet place in the scheme of things— 
spongelike, absorbing and filtering the flood waters down through the 
