Wait yet a little longer, and you shall see those mists gather themselves into white towers, and stand like fortresses along the promontories, massy and motionless, only piled with every instant higher and higher into the sky, and casting longer shadows athwart the rocks; and out of the pale blue of the horizon you will see forming and advancing a troop of narrow, dark, pointed vapors, which will cover the sky, inch by inch, with their gray network, and take the light off the landscape with an eclipse which will stop the singing of the birds and the motion of the leaves together; and then you will see horizontal bars of black shadow forming under them, and lurid wreaths create themselves, you know not how, along the shoulders of the hills; you never see them form, but when you look back to a place which was clear an instant ago, there is a cloud on it, hanging by the precipices, as a hawk pauses over his prey. And then you will see the sudden rush of the awakened wind, and you will see those watch-towers of vapor swept away from their foundations, and waving curtains of opaque rain let down to the valleys, swinging from the burdened clouds in black, bending fringes, or pacing in pale columns along the lake level, grazing its surface into foam as they go. And then, as the sun sinks, you shall see the storm drift for an instant from off the hills, leaving their broad sides smoking, and loaded yet with snow-white, torn, steam-like rags of capricious vapor, now gone, now gathered again; while the smouldering sun, seeming not far away, but burning like a red-hot ball beside you, and as if you could reach it, plunges through the rushing wind and rolling cloud with headlong fall, as if it meant to rise no more, dyeing all the air about it with blood. And then you shall hear the fainting tempest die in the hollow of the night, and you shall see a green halo kindling on the summit of the eastern hills, brighter brighter yet, till the large white circle of the slow moon is lifted up among the barred clouds, step by step, line by line; star after star she quenches with her kindling light, setting in their stead an army of pale, penetrable, fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give light upon the earth, which move together, hand in hand, company by company, troop by troop, so measured in their

unity of motion, that the whole heaven seems to roll with them, and the earth to reel under them. And then wait yet for one hour, until the east again becomes purple, and the heaving mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea, are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning; watch the white glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the mountains, like mighty serpents with scales of fire; watch the columnar peaks of solitary snow, kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, each in itself a new morning; their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter than the lightning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, like altar smoke, up to heaven; the roselight of their silent domes flushing that heaven about them and above them, piercing with purer light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on every wreath as it passes by, until the whole heaven one scarlet canopy is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing, vault beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of angels; and then, when you can look no more for gladness, and when you are bowed down with fear and love for the Maker and Doer of this, tell me who hast best delivered His message unto men!

THE YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT1

JOHN BURROUGHS

I SELDOM go the Rock Creek route without being amused and sometimes annoyed by the yellow-breasted chat. This bird has something of the manners and build of the cat-bird, yet he is truly an original. The cat-bird is mild and feminine compared with this rollicking polyglot. His voice is very loud and strong and quite uncanny. No sooner have you penetrated his retreat, which is usually a thick undergrowth in low, wet localities, near the woods or in the old fields, than he begins his serenade, which for the variety, grotesqueness, and uncouthness of the notes, is not unlike a country skimmerton. If one

1 From "Spring at the Capital" in Wake Robin. Houghton, Mifflin and Company.

passes directly along, the bird may scarcely break the silence. But pause a while, or loiter quietly about, and your presence stimulates him to do his best. He peeps quizzically at you from beneath the branches, and gives a sharp feline mew. In a moment more he says very distinctly, who, who. Then in rapid succession follow notes the most discordant that ever broke the sylvan silence. Now he barks like a puppy, then quacks like a duck, then rattles like a kingfisher, then squalls like a fox, then caws like a crow, then mews like a cat. Now he calls as if to be heard a long way off, then changes his key, as if addressing his spectator. Though very shy, and carefully keeping himself screened when you show any disposition to get a better view, he will presently, if you remain quiet, ascend a twig, or hop out on a branch in plain sight, lop his tail, droop his wings, cock his head, and become very melodramatic. In less than half a minute, he darts into the bushes again, and again tunes up, no Frenchman rolling his r's so fluently: C-r-r-r-r-r,-whrr, that's it, chee, quack, cluck,-yit-yit-yit, now hit it,—tr-r-r, — when, caw, caw, cut, cut, who, who, mew, mew,

tea-boy,

and so on till you are tired of listening. Observing one very closely one day, I discovered that he was limited to six notes or changes, which he went through in regular order, scarcely varying a note in a dozen repetitions.

ODORS OF VEGETATION 1

WILSON FLAGG

THE characteristic odors of the seasons come chiefly from flowers in the spring and early summer, from herbs and foliage in the later summer, and from the ripened harvest and withered leaves in autumn. Winter is without odors, except those of the forest and seaside. The first aroma that pervades the atmosphere in spring is that of willows and poplars, which are very distinct; the former resembling that of lilacs, the latter more

1 From Halcyon Days. Estes and Lauriat.

balsamic, and proceeding no less from the glutinous buds than from the flowers. Nature never seems so capricious as when she distributes her odors among the different species of vegetation. Why should the flowers of the elm and the maple be scentless, differing in this respect so notably from other spring flowers? Fragrance is denied them, perhaps as a superfluity, because they bloom and fade before the insect tribes are abroad.

We are all familiar with the scent of flowering orchard trees. It is the incense that May diffuses over the landscape just before her departure. The blossom of linden trees succeeds, and brings along with it a universal hum of insects, that seem intoxicated with its sweets. From this bloom the bee gathers the choicest honey. If the linden tree had no other extraordinary merit, I should preserve it for its unrivalled sweetness. Its fragrant emanations are scattered abroad so widely that not an insect loses a message from its proffered feast of nectar; and the hum of the innumerable hosts of different species attracts our attention as one of the picturesque phenomena of the season.

The true seasonal fragrance of summer is that of new-mown hay, for the air is filled with it during all the time of hay-making. This is indeed the "balm of a thousand flowers"; for though a greater part of the aroma comes from the leaves of clover and different kinds of grasses, the whole is the grateful result of many species with their flowers, when cut down by the scythe. Almost any combination of healthful herbs, when spread out to the sun and wind, after being mowed, will produce an aroma like that of new-mown hay. If you mix with these any considerable quantity of those noxious or innutritious herbs which are not acceptable to cattle, there comes from the mixture a rank herbaceous smell that indicates their presence. Nature is always true to the instincts of her creatures, and sets up no false allurements to tempt them to that which is unhealthful.

To the scent of new-mown hay succeeds that of the grain harvest, the odor of ripened vegetation. We now mark the difference between the savor of herbs when they are cut down in blossom and after they have ripened their seeds. The odors of summer are more spicy or aromatic, and have more of an

intoxicating quality, than those of the harvest. Nature has denied fragrance to the autumnal flowers, except a few that resemble the flowers of spring; such is the graceful neottia, breathing the odor of hyacinths, which is so obscure that it would be overlooked by the insects, if they were not guided by its perfume. Autumn indeed seems niggardly of her gifts to the honey-sipping insects, for the flowers of this season are as destitute of sweetness as of fragrance. The charms of autumn are chiefly for the eye, of tinted woods and gorgeous flowers, that attract us more by their glowing profusion than by any particular beauty as individual objects.

THE SOUND OF SUMMER1

RICHARD JEFFERIES

BESIDES the singing and calling, there is a peculiar sound which is only heard in summer. Waiting quietly to discover what birds are about, I become aware of a sound in the very air. It is not the midsummer hum which will soon be heard over the heated hay in the valley and over the cooler hills alike. It is not enough to be called a hum, and does but just tremble at the extreme edge of hearing. If the branches wave and rustle, they overbear it; the buzz of a passing bee is so much louder, it overcomes all of it that is in the whole field. I cannot define it except by calling the hours of winter to mind - they are silent; you hear a branch crack or creak as it rubs another in the wood, you hear the hoar frost crunch on the grass beneath your feet, but the air is without sound in itself. The sound of summer is everywhere in the passing breeze, in the hedge, in the broadbranching trees, in the grass as it swings; all the myriad particles that together make the summer are in motion. The sap moves in the trees, the pollen is pushed out from grass and flower, and yet again these acres and acres of leaves and square miles of grass blades for they would cover acres and square miles

1 From "The Pageant of Summer" in The Life of the Fields.