JBRARY tfySRSITY Of IAN DiEQO F AX LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW CHRONICLES OF A STROLLER IN XEW ENGLAND FROM JANUARY TO JUNE BY FRANK BOLLES BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIX AND COMPANY (Ebe Eitoersibc ^3rcj5s, CambriDfle 1892 Copyr-ght, 1891, By frank BOLLES. All rights reserved. The Hiverside Press, Cnmbrida/^, Mrrss., U. S. A- Electiotyped and Friuted by H. O. Uoughtou & Co. CONTENTS. Paqb Footprints in the Snow 1 Nature in Armor 6 A Tempest 12 The Sea in a Snowstorm 18 Two Views through Winter Sunshine ... 25 Waverley Oaks and Bussey Hemlocks ... 31 The First Bluebirds 38 The Minute-Man in a Snowdrift .... 44 The Cobung of the Birds . . . . . .51 The Equinoctial on the Dunes .... 59 The Renaissance 73 The Vesper Song of the Woodcock ... 78 A Trip to Highland Light 83 The Current of Musketaquid 98 A Bit of Color 110 The Conquest of Pegan Hill 115 Wood Ducks and Bloodroot 122 A Voyage to Heard's Island 130 A Forest Anthem 149 The Bittern's Love Song 159 Warbler Sunday 1G5 Rock Meadow at Night 176 The Secrets of the Meadow 181 Wachusett 190 In the Wren Orchard 198 Chocorua 208 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW. Sunday, the eleventh day of the new year, was what most people would call a good day to stay in the house. The face of New England winter was set. No smiling sky relieved its grimness, no soft breeze promised a season of relenting. The notes of the college bell were muffled and the great quadrangle was deep with snow, as I left Old Cambridge behind me and sought the hills of Arlington three miles or more to the north. Slowly climbing the heights, after my car ride, I looked back at the world I had left. The sky was a mass of dull gray clouds, with a copper-colored spot where the sun was hiding. Boston and Cambridge lay under a pall of smoke and dun-colored vapor. The broken ridges from Belmont to the Middle- sex Fells were buried deep in snow, the soft whiteness of whicli was interrupted by patches of dark pines, dotted with stiff cedars, or shaded 2 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. by the delicate etching of birches and elms. The air was in that condition which favors the carriage of distant sonnds. I heard the rumble of trains on the Fitchburg, Massachusetts Cen- tral and Albany railways on the one hand and of those on the Northern roads on the other. Now and then the tooting whistle of a train sounded like the hooting of a mammoth owl. Entering the woods, I found written upon the snow the records of those who had travelled there before me. A boy with his sled had been across to a pond in the hollow. A dog had fol- lowed him, running first to one side, then to the other. Further on I struck another track. The prints were smaller than the dog's, round, and in a single line, spaced quite evenly, like tiiose of a fox. Somebody's cat had been hunting on her own account. In an open space, bunches of goldenrod and asters had been pulled to pieces, and all around their stalks the footprints of small birds, perhaps goldfinches or redpolls, were thick. Not far away the snow on an open hillside was pencilled by the rising stems of barberry bushes. From the pine woods to these bushes numerous tiny paths led. The most dainty feet had printed their story there. The journeys seemed to have been made in dark- ness, for the paths made queer curves, loops, false starts into the open pasture and quick re- FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW. 3 turns to the woods. The barberry bushes had been found, however, and were thoroughly en- snared in the tracks. The mice which formed them had made holes in the snow near the stems of the bushes, and these holes led through long tunnels down to the ground and possibly into it. Among the pitch pines, old orchards, and chest- nut trees squirrel tracks were countless. Most of them were those of the red squirrel, but in deeper woods I found, records of gray squirrels as wall. Along frozen brooks, where alders, willows, privet, and rosebushes were thick, the small brown rabbits had been feeding and pay- ins; moonlio-ht visits to each other. In an or- chard I found a place where a crow had alighted and marched about with long strides. Most in- terestinof of all were the hurried tracks of a flock of birds which had been feeding on bar- berries, juniper and privet berries. They had been disturbed by a dog and had skurried through the thicket, their sharp toes printing innumerable " crow's feet " in the snow. What were they ? I pushed on to see, and soon started a flock of fifteen quail from a dark grove of pines. Later I found one cuddled up in a hol- low in the snow under a juniper, eating the ber- ries over her head. I nearly stepped upon the bush before she flew. Descending into a ravine filled with ruddy 4 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. willows, privet, and rose bushes gay with their red hips, I heard a note which made me halt and listen. Yes, a robin. The sides of the ravine were clothed with savins, the ridges were crowned by tall pines. Rose hips and sumac seeds, barberries, privet and juniper berries furnished food, and the sun is always warm — when it shines. A soft rain began to fall, and it loosed the tongues of the birds. Chickadees called from tree to hedge. Golden-crested king- lets lisped to each other in the cedars. A dozen crows circled over the high pines, cawing discon- tentedly, and the robin's note sounded from three or four quarters at once. I gained the top of the ridge and looked Across a pasture. In a branchinff oak were several birds. As I drew near, others flew in from neighboring savins and bunches of barberry bushes. They were robins. In all, thirty-six flew into the oak and then went off in a noisy flock as I reached the tree. Their plumage was much lighter than in summer. The rain fell faster and I left the pasture, homeward bound. The last I saw of the pasture hillside it was sprinkled with robins running back and forth on the snow, picking up privet berries. They were as jolly as in cherry time. "While recrossing pasture and field, swamp and thicket, I noticed countless black specks upon the snow. They moved. They were FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW. 5 alive. Wherever a footprint, a sharp edge of drift, or a stone wall broke the monotony of the snow surface, these black specks accumulated, and heaped themselves against the barrier. For miles every inch of snow had from one to a dozen of these sj)ecks upon it. What were they? Snowfleas or spring-tails (^achoi^eutes nivi- cola'), one of the mysteries of winter, one of the extravagances of animal life. Fortunately they prefer the cold face of the snow to a life of para- sitic persecution. As I caught a homeward-bound electric car, I looked back at the rido;es of Arlinofton with gratitude and admiration. They made a land- scape of ermine, a soft blending of light and dark. Tho falling rain, snowbound farms, savin- dotted hillsides, bluish belts of woodland, deli- cate tracery of elm branches ; all mingled to form a background for reverie, a gentle good-by to a day of rest. NATURE IN ARMOR. Nature does not always drop her cloak of ermine when she buckles on her armor. She often covers her soft snow garments with icy mail and meets the dawn with every hillside a shield and every branch of oak a sword. She was thus girded and armed on Sunday, January 18, 1891, as I sought the Arlington hills at the hour when the air of Suffolk and Middlesex was throbbing with the music of church bells. A gentle east wind — for even Massachusetts east winds can be gentle when they try — carried in slanting lines against the hills and trees a steady fall of cold rain. It had been falling so for over twelve hours, till level snow, fences, walls, weeds by the wayside, shrubs, orchards, elms in the meadows, savins on the hillsides, and belts of woods on the ridge-crests were all sheathed in clear ice, which measured, on an average, a quarter of an inch in thickness. As I mounted through the open fields toward the heights, I wondered what the birds were do- ing in the cold rain, witli every twig ice-coated, and every berry shut u}> in thick crystal. Where NATURE IN ARMOR. 7 were the crows, the chickadees, and above all, the adventurous robins ? " Here I am," a robin seemed to say from the roadside, and at the same instant I saw a bird fly from a dense tangle of briers, bushes, cedars and tall maples, to the highest branch of a tree, shake himself thor- oughly, and then give the familiar robin signal of alarm and inquiry. He was answered by a sec- ond bird, and presently three of them flew over my head and down the hill towards a grove of pines. I had a clear view of them through my opera-glass. A few steps further on I came to a white birch- tree, bent by the ice till its head rested in a snowbank on the opposite side of the road from its but. It formed an ice-screen thirty feet long and nine feet high, directly across the road. The tree measured nearly three feet in circum- ference at its base. Near by a grove of white birches had become a shapeless tangle of ice-wires and cables. The eye could not separate any one tree from the mass, and the tops of all were rest- ing upon the snow. The road w^as lined with bleached asters and goldenrod. Not only were their stems ice-lning, but their pale, flower-like involucres were embedded in nodding: balls of ice, half an inch in diameter. So delicate w'ere these mock flowers and so erect and perfect their form within the crystal, that it seemed certain 8 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. they must have been first embraced by a freez- ing mist as gentle and caressing as a ray of sun- shine. The same ice-kiss had rested upon the bunches of red barberries, the dark berries of the privet, and the sticky, red, cone-shaped masses of the sumac fruit. Even the dead, rus- set leaves hanging from the oaks had a sheet of ice clinging to them which, Avhen slipped off, showed their form and veinings. Entering the pine woods where I had previ- ously seen quail, I found the trees in trouble. The great pines were loaded down with ice, and many a branch had broken and fallen under its weight. The surface of the snow was strewn with twigs and branches of every size. A strange roar of falling ice and twigs filled the woods, now and then emphasized by the crash of some greater fall. I found the tracks of one quail and of a rabbit, made doubtless Saturday evening while the snow was still soft ; but other- wise the face of the snow told no tales. It w^as smooth and shining, as though no dainty feet of mice and squirrels had ever pressed upon it. There were squirrels at work, however. Under one pitch-pine I found a pint of cone chips freshly strewn. Half a mile distant I surprised a red squirrel busy in an old chestnut-tree which had succumbed to its awful burden of ice and fallen manoled in the snow. He fled fi'om me NATURE IN ARMOR. 9 and bounded up tlie trunk of an oak, but he reckoned without the ice, and when part way up lost his grip and fell back upon the crust below, a very much mortified squirrel. In dense growths of pitch-pines and savins I came across six flocks of chickadees, in all per- haps twenty of the merry little birds. They seemed to keep dry, and by working on the under and westerly sides of the branches found food not covered by ice. In one of the flocks were two little brown creepers who were unable to make spirals or zigzags round the tree-trunks, as is their frequent practice, but who seemed happy in hitching straight up the trunks of the pines and the oaks. The chickadees, creepers and crows, as well as the robins, were very talk- ative. The only other bird seen was a small hawk, which sailed silently over the snow in a secluded pasture. About two o'clock I gained the crest of a high ridge from which I could see many miles of snow-covered country. The sky was a cold gray- ish white ; the pines and cedars looked almost black. Against the sky the ice-covered, leafless trees were a darker gray than the clouds, but against the evergreens or in masses by them- selves they were ashes-of-roses color and wonder- fully soft in tone. Looking across a sloping pasture at a swamp filled with elms and willows, 10 LAND OF THE Ll.XGERlNG SNOW. they seemed to be a mass of dark stems with their tops shrouded in ])ale smoke through which the faintest possible fire-glow permeated. I suppose the color came from the reddish bai-k of the twigs. Just then the sun found a rift in the rushing clouds, and for a single minute poured his glory upon the crystal world below. Every tint changed. Every atom of ice re- sponded, flashing to the touch of light, but the east wind hurried forward fresh mists from the ocean and the sunlight vanished. Below me hundreds of small trees trailed their tops upon the snow. It seemed as though some muezzin of the ice-world had called them to their prayers. Farther away were acres of scattered pitch-pines, every bunch of whose needles was a drooping pompon of heavy ice. As I looked at them through the thickly falling sleet they seemed to march in ranks across the fields of snow, their heads bent from the wintry storm, despair in their attitude. " The retreat from Moscow," I said, and hoped that the day of judgment against the weak among the trees w^ould not be followed by a night of tempestuous wrath against the whole ice-bound forest. The wind, gentle as it seemed, was too strong for some trees. Once I heard a report like a canndn, and turned to see an old willow forty feet high plunge into the snow. At another NATURE IN ARMOR. 11 time a long bi^anch of an elm at which I was looking slowly bent lower and lower, and then broke midway witli a crack and swung toward the ground. I raised a prostrate cedar bush, whose height was about seven feet, and found that its load of ice seemed to weigh thirty pounds. If this were so, what must the burden of the great trees have been ? Tons, perhaps. Yet the oaks did not seem to bend an inch. Their stiff heads wei'e raised straight toward the sky, and their immovable arms bristled with icicles. About an hour before sunset I pointed my course downward, sighting for the tower of Me- morial Hall rising black against the distant sky. Much ice had fallen from the trees since the forenoon, and there was a ceaseless roar of fall- ing fragments as I passed through the strips of woodland. The temperature had risen enough to loosen the ice armor, and everything from asters to elm-tops was casting it off. A TEMPEST. On the afternoon of Satnrclaj'', January 24, while roamino^ over the hills between Arling'ton and Medford, I made up my mind not to spend the next day in the woods. Nature seemed to have become prosaic, almost dull, I saw one crow, — no other tenant of the woods. The snow had been washed away and the ice which re- mained was stained. The air was heavy with the breath of long-forgotten cabbage-leaves. Farmers were at work in their plowed lands, stirring up other odors equally obnoxious. Even the fields were unpleasant to walk over on ac- count of their alternate patches of ice and pasty mud. But Sunday morning before sunrise the wind shifted to the northeast and changed a drizzling rain into a furious snowstorm, and by noon, when I reached the first hill -top above Arlington, the storm was at its height. The air was in a fury. Laden with great masses of flakes it bore them in horizontal lines over fields and pastures, hurling them against every obsta- cle, and whitening even the window panes of houses facing eastward. The blast was as unin- A TEMPEST. 13 termittent in its pi'essure as natural forces can be ; yet it seemed to excite vibration and rhythm in all it touched. The tops of the pines fell and rose, the branches moved forward and back, the roar of the wind pulsated and the soft surface of the snow was not even, but broken into tiny waves. In the pine woods the wind was less violent, but the passing snow seemed like vibrat- ing white lines rather than flakes. As I stood in the pines and looked northeast, every tree was black against a distance of on-coming white rage. As I looked southwest every tree was white, finely outlined in black, against a i-etreat- ing mass of colorless motion. If I looked south- east the trees were black and white, and if north- west they were white and black, and whichever way I looked the air was surging on, laden with the bewildered and bewildering snow. Pushing on I entered a deep and rocky gorge. Possibly Vei'estchagin's brush could indicate the absolute whiteness overlaid upon the less abso- lute white of that mysteriously beautiful spot. Certainly nothing else could. Every rock, bush, trunk, limb, branchlnt, twig and leaf-bud was covered with the clinging snow. Beyond was an oak wood. The inelastic ice of last Sunday failed to bend these stubborn trees, but the wet, sticky snow had overcome thom. Dozens of slender young oaks, thirty feet in height, were bent to 14 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. the ground. This gave a hint of what the con- dition of the pitch-pines and cedars woukl be, in spots sheltered from the wind, and I hurried on to see tliem. The walking was heav}-. Early in the afternoon, when the storm abated, just nine inches of snow had fallen on a level. Pass- ing through the woods, where I had seen quail two weeks ago, but where now no sign of them was to be found, I came out into the old pasture, thickly overgrown with savin, pitch-pine and barberries. Here and there something which resembled a tree remained, but the greater part of the growth had been suppressed. There were rounded masses which looked like sheep in the snow, and there were arched stems from which depended balls and branches of snow resembling boxing-gloves, cauliflowers, toy rabbits and lambs and other unpoetical objects. In most cases the top of the pine or savin could not be distin- guished from its base. At the foot of the hill was a cedar swamp. Entering, I could readily imagine myself in the Luray Caverns. A floor of pure white sup- ported an endless series of white columns, beyond which were botryoidal masses of white rising to a roof of white. Mingled with the more regular forms were snarls and tangles of snow serpents, and shafts and pinnacles as varied in form as the stalagmites of the limestone caves. Later I was A TEMPEST. 15 in one of these enchanting places when the sun came out and the zenith was left free from clouds. The effects were so beautiful and striking that, although words give but a hint of them, they are ineffaceable in memory. Through the swamp runs a small stream. As the day was compara- tively warm no ice encumbered the clear water. At one point it spread out over a broad bed of mud, from which rose a thick growth of grass, watercress and ranunculus. All three plants were vivid green and offered a strange contrast to the arabesque of snow which framed the brook. Wild as was the storm and stimulating as were its direct buffeting and indirect effect of form and color, the day was as remarkable on another account as it was for the tempest. I saw eighty-five birds, representing nine species. Several times I heard crows, flying through the driving snow, calling to each other in its con- fusion. In the pines at the summit of the first high hill were two little brown creepers flying from trunk to trunk and exploring busily the bark on the sheltered side of the trees. When they left a tree the storm whirled them away like dry leaves, but they promptly headed toward the wind and sped back under the lee of some sheltering tree to its but, the point where their explorations always begin. They kept track 16 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. of each other by frequent attenuated squeaks. Chickadees were eveiyvvhere, and very noisy. They worked quite as much on snow-covered twigs as on the sheltered side of branches. In the cedar swamp they popped in and out of snow caverns among the branches, often tipping over great piles of snow and dodging them with a jolly " chick-a-dee-dee-dee." In this swamp a single tree-sparrow appeared among the branches of a big cedar and looked with evident amaze- ment upon my snow-covered form. Here, too, I saw and heard the first robins of the day %ing and signalling among the tops of some of the larger cedars, and near by in a bunch of pines, just above the swamp, three golden-crested king- lets made merry in the sunlight which succeeded the storm. A solitary goldfinch undulated over me in an open pasture, singing the first note or two of his summer song, and a nuthatch passed close by me on my homeward walk. But the great display of birds came in the middle of the afternoon, at the time that the clouds were breaking and the wind was working out of the east. I was crossing a high sloping- pasture with a cedar swamp at its base and a fringe of large cedars round its edge, when, strik- ing a patch of concealed ice, my feet flew from under me, and I found myself on my back in the snow. Looking into the sky, I saw a flock A TEMPEST. 17 of at least twenty robins flying overhead. They came from the swamp and stopped in the fringe of cedars to frolic and feed. Suddenly a flock of smaller birds joined them, and by the aid of my glass I discovered that they were cedar-birds. For twenty minutes or more this company of fully fifty birds romped in the savin tops, as they do in cherry-trees in summer, the screams of the robins being incessant. Many of the robins came near enough for me to scrutinize their plumage closely. I saw none but male birds among them. The two flocks vanished as suddenly as they came, and I could find no trace of either, although I searched and waited for them more than an hour. These birds were seen on precisely the same spot as the large flock of robins observed January 11. Although I did not leave the woods and pas- tures until sunset with its exquisite tints had come, I saw no footprints of any kind in the snow. I wished that I could linger until even- ing and follow the soft tread of rabbits and mice, the moon meanwhile pouring her light into tlie enchantment of those groves of snow- encumbered trees. THE SEA IN A SNOWSTORM. February came in under the guise of May. The sky of Sunday, the first, was wonderfully blue ; its air mild, often more than mild ; its clouds were like the pictures in my old physical geography. I could almost see the mystic words cirrus, cumulus, stratus, written in the heavens. Tempted by the mock spring I extended my walk beyond its usual limits, infringed on Lex- ington, and from the heights of Waverley sur- veyed miles of glistening hillsides to the north and west, and crowded cities to the south and east. Every hollow was a pool, and every gla- cial furrow in the hills a brook. The cabbages were reasserting their rights to the farmlands and the air appurtenant thereto. The birds revelled in the warm sunshine, fly- ing for the love of flying, and calling loudly to each other for the sake of calling. The crows spoke loudest and the chickadees most often. On a sunny bank a large flock of goldfinches were feeding among the weeds and grasses. I counted fifty of them, and sevei^al flew away before the census was finished. They were singing enough THE SEA IN A SNOWSTORM. 19 of their sweet song to suggest the summer. Once during the day I heard the " phoebe note " of the chickadee, and twice I had the satisfaction of hearing crows " gobble." They do not often make this sound. It suggests somewhat the gobbling of a turkey-cock. So warm, thawing, and genial was this day that one had to be pes- simistic to realize that it was only a mocking grin on the mask of winter and not a smile on the lips of spring. But Sunday, February 8, showed winter in his true colors again. The day was, as regards snow-laden trees and drifted roads, a duplicate of the last Sunday in January. Instead of en- joying the snow pictures in the woods and pas- tures of Arlington, I traversed Crab Alley, Bread and Milk Streets, and that meandering marvel of old Boston, Battery march Street, and gained the harbor front at Rowe's Wharf. Some of these snow-covered haunts of trade were as free from footprints as the savin swamps of Arlington. In Crab Alley I came to tracks in the snow which made me wonder whether some of the quail from the Parker House toast had not escaped alive. Dainty little steps crossed and recrossed the narrow lane, and formed a dense network of converging paths at the back door of a small chop-house. As I approached, two tame doves flew noisily 20 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. from beliind the barrel which graced the door- step, and several English sparrows swung from a telej^hone wire overhead. I looked up into the iron caps of the electric light lamps to see whether the spai-rows had built in them. They had. In Boston and sev- eral adjoining cities the major part of these iron witch-caps contain sparrows' nests. Even the lamps which ai-e suspended over the streets and drawn in daily by the linemen are not dis- dained by the birds. From the deck of the Janus-natured ferry- boat, which was pausing for the time between trips to the Revere Beach cars, I looked out upon a chilly sky and sea. The waters were restless, the wind fierce and cold, the snow- flakes stinging. At anchor lay a large steamer, black and thin. The odd gearing at her stern showed that she was an ocean cable . steamer. Beyond her was a four-masted schooner. I wondered what her sailors called her fourth mast. Suddenly my wandering eyes were fixed in astonishment upon a jaunty form floating on the water within less than fifty feet of the ferry- boat. It had emerged from the cold and tossing waters with a bounce, shaken itself, and begun a bobbing career in the daylight and snow- flakes. Pop ! Down went its head, up v/ent its tail and feet and it was gone again. During THE SEA IN A SNOWSTORM. 21 fifteen minutes it bobbed up six times in the same spot, staying afloat each time from fifteen to thirty seconds, and below about two minutes. It was black above, snowy white below, and formed in the likeness of a duck. It was a whistler, a duck common in the harbor and along our coast in winter. While diving, it was probably breakfasting upon small shell-fish found on the bottom. On the way across to East Boston I saw seven or eight more whistlers and over fifty herring-gulls, many of them in the dark plum- age peculiar to the immature birds. Twenty minutes later I stood on the narrow strip of sand left between the poplar walk in front of the Point of Pines Hotel and the angry ocean. The wind was northeast, and blowing a gale. The tide had turned half an hour before, but it was still unusually high. Behind me the Sau- gus marshes were wholly submerged. A few haystacks alone broke the monotony of gray water, foam and scudding snow. To the north ought to have been seen distant Lynn, but the eye was met only by stinging snowflakes and cold wind. My train, before it had gone an eighth of a mile, had been swallowed up in steam and hurrying masses of snow. Where was Na- hant ? There was not a trace of it. The hun- gry waves broke ten ranks deep upon the flat 22 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. sands across which they roared ; but beyond them was no land, — only the fury of gray and white hanging above a hissing, greenish gray and white below. The sand was brown, not a warm brown, but a cold, shining, grayish brown with no kindness in it. There was nothing in the whole world which my eye could reach to suggest warmth or happi- ness. True, there were the empty buildings with padlocked doors among the snow-covered trees, but they were more desolate and soul-chill- ing than anything in nature. I walked among them until wearied by the mockery of their signs and broken paraphernalia. Hideous ki- osks, whose blue and yellow paint was partly covered by the white pity of the storm, told in glaring letters of " Ice Water," " Red Hot Pop Corn," " Sunshades and Fans," and " Clam Chowder." The wind shrieked through their cracks and pelted wot snow against their win- dows. In the amphitheatre where spectacular plays are given on summer evenings the tide dabbled with the rusty wheels of a sheet-iron car marked " Apache." Beyond it, canvas mountains and caiions were swaying and creak- ing in the storm, their ragged edges humming in the wind. A sign offered " Seats for 50 cents, children 25." The seats were softly cushioned by six inches of snow, but the idle THE SEA IN A SNOWSTORM. 23 summer crowd had been blown away by tlie winter's breath. Only a flock of a dozen crows lent life to the arena. A train emerged from the storm. I could see its dark outlines ; its torn column of steam ; the swift motion of its many wheels, — then it was gone, engulfed in the dizzy vibration of the snow, its voice unheard amid the greater voices of the sky and sea. The tide was going down as I started towards home on the hard shining sand of Crescent Beach. I think at least two hundred herring-gulls passed by me, flying slowly against the gale and keeping over the water, but parallel to the beach and about a hundred yards from it. They were silent. Their strong wings beat against the storm. Now and then one plunged into the foam of a breaking wave, or glided for a second along the trough of the sea. They did not seem like true birds, beings of the same race as humming- birds, sweet -voiced thrushes, or keen-witted chickadees. They were rather creations of the salt waves and ocean tempests ; cold-blooded, scaly things, incapable of those loves and fears, songs and quaint nesting ways of the birds of field and forest. Near Oak Island a flock of four snow buntings, which had been feeding among the bunches of seaweed, rose at my ap- proach and flew toward and past me up the 24 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. beach. They are among the most beautiful of our winter visitors, their white and brown plum- age being a sight always welcome to the eyes of those who love the birds. At intervals flocks of English sparrows rose from the seaweed and shunned me. There seems to be no form of vegetable food-supply upon which our native birds dejiend, that this ravenous, non-migratory pest does not devour. From Point of Pines to Crescent Beach sta- tion the thunder of the breakers and the rush of the wind and snow were ceaseless. The storm hurried me along in its strong embrace and drove its chill through me. The tide had left the marshes, and the snow had claimed them. As the waves retreated from the beach the snow stuck to the gleaming pebbles, the snaky bits of keljD and the purple shells. Where two hours before, at high tide, the waves had dashed foam fifty feet into the air, now the breakwaters and the heaps of shingle and seaweed were covered with white from the drippings of the great roof of sky. The whistlers were still in the harbor at three o'clock, but most of the gulls had gone. Snow clung to decks, masts, yards, furled sails and rigging. It whitened the water-front of the city, purified the docks, and made even Crab Alley seem picturesque as I ploughed through it homeward bound. TWO VIEWS THROUGH WINTER SUN- SHINE. Saturday and Sunday, the middle days of February, were filled to the brim with spar- kling winter sunshine. The heavens were swept clean of clouds by a rush of cold dry air from the birthplace of the Great Glacier. The ground was like granite, and was well covered with the snow that crunches under foot like pul- verized quartz. I spent Saturday afternoon on the highest part of the Belmont-Arlington ridge, and the world, seen from those wind-swept heights, seemed made of cleaner, brighter stuff than when touched on the flats below. There are clear days in summer, but they are not so abso- lutely clear as the clearest days in winter. I never saw a more perfectly transparent air than that which raced across New England on that Saturday. The vision was not checked by dis- tance or by vapor ; only by the curve of Mother Earth's cheek. Looking eastward from the heights, the eye passed over the Fell country of Medford and 26 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. Stoneliam and the marshes of the Saugus to the irregular line of Massachusetts Bay. Long Beach, running out from Lynn to Nahant, was dazzlingiy white against the pure blue of the sea. Little Nahant, Egg Kock, Nahant and WiuthroiJ Head, all snow-covered, stood out in bold relief against the even-tinted water. Between them several schooners appeared now and then work- ing up the coast, the sunlight striking full against their sails. High intervening land cut oft" a view of the wooded and rocky Beverly shore ; but the Danvers Asylum could be plainly seen, like a great feudal castle, crowning one of the hiohest rido'es. Southward a nest of cities rested on the fork of the Charles and the Mystic. The chilled breath of half a million people hung over them and their crowded homes, but it did not obscure the picture of the harbor with its forts, islands, and moving sails, nor the more distant pano- rama of the Neponset Valley and Hull, Hing- ham, and the Scituate shore. This view of Boston and its densely populated neighbors has a strange fascination about it. There is little beauty in its blending of roofs, chimneys, tele- graph poles, church spires, flashing window- panes and bits of white steam or darker smoke, yet in spite of its distance and silence it has the mystery of life about it. From a mountain-top TWO VIEWS THROUGH WINTER SUNSHINE. 27 the eye may roam over granite peaks, serried ranks of spruce forest, undulating groves of pines and birches, green intervales and snug farmhouses, finding in them a restful charm, a song of sweet New England calm. In this mass of distant houses, factories, grain ele- vators, stores, wharves, churches, marked here and there by historic outlines like Bunker Hill Monument, the golden dome of the State House, Memorial Hall and Mount Auburn Tower, there is something which stirs and stim- ulates rather than soothes, something which re- calls the toil, sorrow, self-sacrifice and eternal restlessness of society, and the ever-present duty of the individual toward it. The mountain view lulls one's conscience ; the sight of this nest of cities arouses it to action. Westward the view from the heights was monotonous. Low ridges succeeded each other for many miles, holding in their hollows towns, snow-covered farming lands, broken bits of oak or pine forest, and patches of ice on pond or meandering river. But northward the eye found much to rest upon. Along the limits of Middle- sex could be seen the valley of the Merrimac. Then came the border towns of New Hampshire, and beyond them the peaks and rounded sum- mits which are the pride of Jaffrey, Dublin. Peterborough, Temple, and Lyudeborough. 28 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. From Wachusett on the left to the Uncanoo- nucs on the rioht the horizon was roiiohenecl by the mountains of the Monadnock group, snow-crusted and flashing in the sunshine. They recalled boyhood days and adventures. A race from a bull on Monadnock, a moonlight climb on Lyndeborough, a thunder-storm on Pinnacle, a July picnic on Joe English hill. On the way home I saw a flock of about twenty cedar-birds in the same pasture where I saw them on January 25. They were cold and listless, allowing me to approach them closely enough to see the scarlet wax on their wing- feathers. Two of them were eating barberries which they picked one by one while clinging head-downwards on the bending stems. The robins, I learned from a fellow-observer, had been seen not only that day, but every day for a month, on their favorite feeding-ground. The flock varies in size, he said, from twenty to fifty. As I hurried along over the snow^ in a very windy field a mouse scampered away from one bunch of grasses to another and plunged into his hole. His doorway was well protected by a large bunch of dried grass. Sunday I took an early train for Readville, crossed the pretty triple-arch bridge over the Neponset, and climbed to the snowy crest of Blue Hill. Although the hill is nearlv three TWO VIEWS THROUGH WINTER SUNSHINE. 29 hundred feet higher than Arlington Heights, its view seemed to me less attractive. It is three miles farther from the cities ; fifteen miles farther from the New Hampshire line, and in the centre of a country less picturesque in formation than that of the Middlesex Fells. Moreover, a northwest wind, which is the one most likely to accompany clear winter weather, carries the smoke of Boston in such a direction as to injure the Blue Hill view, while it im- proves that from Arlington. As I looked down ujjon the Neponset meadows, Poukapog Pond and Great Pond, I saw moving black specks which reminded me of the amusing little snow-fleas. They were skaters, enjoying the ideal weather for their graceful exercise. Passing Governor's Island and heading for Broad Sound was a four- masted schooner under full sail. Not a bird was to be seen on the hill. The top is covered with scrub-oak, which is replaced on the slopes by small nut-trees, oak saplings, a few pines, birches and maples. There seemed to be no food for any kind of winter bird. In the estates below, near the triple-arch bridge, I saw crows, chickadees, two tree - sparrows and a downy woodpecker. As I came back to and through the city by an afternoon train I wondered which was less 30 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. wholesome for the eye of man, the clingy monotony of dirty white houses which one used to see in suburban streets, or the nause- ating combinations of yellows, greens, cheap reds and discouraged blues which are now the fashion. WAVERLEY OAKS AND BUSSEY HEM- LOCKS. A FEW rods beyond the railway station in Waverley the tracks of the Fitchburg and Mas- sachusetts Central roads cross a meadow through which Beaver Brook flows on its way to the Charles. In this meadow the towns of Belmont, Watertown and Waltham find a common cor- ner, and here stand the Waverley oaks. Some of these ancient trees grow on the level land through which the brook has cut its channel, but most of them rise from the narrow glacial ridges which project into or border the meadow. There are few places near Boston which welcome spring earlier than this moist and sunny corner. Here early spring birds are found, and many of the choicest flowers flourish. Saturday, Febru- ary 21, was a misty, moisty day with gray skies, wet snow and rain-laden air. Beaver Brook meadow was as wet as a meadow can be without changing its name, and the brook itself was more than knee-deep. The meadow, that afternoon, yielded to me the first flower of spring. It is true I had seen 32 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. a golden crocus bud before leaving the city, but it was under the shelter of a well-warmed, south- facing house, and had been covered with a straw blanket all winter. This flower of the swamp had taken care of itself on the edge of a cold spring filled with bright green watercress. It had no warm wall to shelter it, no blanket save the black mud. It was as large as a tulip, and its spots and stripes of purple and greenish yellow made it quite conspicuous in its meadow bed. Pulling open the fleshy lips of its highly scented spathe, its yellow pollen was scattered in all directions. The name of this odoriferous flower of early spring is symplocarpus foetidus. Passing through the ancient oaks I heard birds singing in a stubble field beyond. The oaks are the finest trees I have ever seen outside of the primeval forests of the North. One of them — not the largest or oldest — measured twenty feet around its trunk at a height of three feet from the turf. There are in all nearly thirty of these magnificent trees, whose age, if John Evelyn is a good authority for the age of oaks, is prob- ably to be reckoned by centuries. The glacial kame from which these trees spring, old as it is, bears on its face the record of change and of the woes of nature ; but the oaks, having out- lived generations of other trees, seem like moun- tain-crests, stable and enduring. The birds in WAVEBLEY OAKS AND BUSSEY HEMLOCKS. 33 the stubble field proved to be tree-sparrows. Tliey were feeding on the seeds of weeds found on patches of moist earth left bare by the wast- ing snow. Each bii'd was saying something in a joyous recitative which he maintained continu- ously, regardless of the rippling mirth of his companions. I crept close to them and watched them through the embrasures of an old stone wall. Their chestnut caps, white wing-bars and long slender tails make them easy birds to re- cognize. As I rose they flew, nearly thirty strong, and vanished in the mist. Recrossing Beaver Brook I kept along the Belmont ridge for a mile or more, seeing crows, chickadees, a flock of six cedar-birds, a brown creeper, several kinglets and two grouse, seven species all told. As sunset drew near the mist became denser. The few springtails which I saw along the stone walls seemed sluggish. While watching them I noticed a tunnel under the snow, made, I sup- pose, by a field mouse (^arvicola2)ennsylvamcus)^ and running from the wall to a pile of brush in the pasture. It twisted and wound in and out in stranoe fio-iires. Here and there its maker seemed to have poked his head through the snow to get his bearings. From the length of these tunnels I inferred that their little engineer works either very fast or very long in making 84 LAND OF TEE LINGERING SNOW. them. The snow fell Friday, the tunnels were made before Saturday afternoon, yet one of them was fully three hundred feet long. At the sunset hour a strange glow permeated the mist, but it soon vanished. I left the hills and crossed the Belmont meadows. The twi- light was weird. The mud of the Concord turn- pike seemed unnaturally yellow ; the pollard willows assumed horrid shapes ; head-lights on distant engines made menacing gleams on the wet rails ; the great excavations in clay beds near the brickyards were filled with black shad- ows from which rose vapors ; brooks once clear, now polluted by slaughter-houses, gave out foul clouds of mist, and as electric lamps along the road suddenly grew into glowing yellow balls in the fog, they showed, rising above them, cruci- fixes of this nineteenth century on which are stretched the electric wires whose messages of good or evil keep the nerves of society forever uneasy. Sunday was a cheerful contrast to Saturday night. With a young friend who was heart-full of love for birds, flowers, the quiet of the woods and the music of the brooks, I tramped from Bussey Woods westward through the quiet lanes, snow-covered pastures and secluded swamps which fill the sparsely settled region in this cor- ner of Brookline and West Roxbury. It is a WAVERLEY OAKS AND BUSSEY HEMLOCKS. 35 charming bit of country crowded with hills, deep valleys, groves of many kinds of trees, roaring brooks, fern-hung ledges of pudding-stone, and sunny orchards. Birds were numerous. We began with a golden-winged woodpecker in the great trees of the Arboretum ; then a robin ap- peared and snapped his tail at us from the top of an elm. The voice of a blue jay came from the evergreens, and chickadees were everywhere. From the first bare hill we gained a broad view of Boston, the harbor and the country from Blue Hill to Arlington Heights. A fresh west wind and a bright blue sky made everything seem full of readiness for spring and a new period of blossoming growth. Passing Allandale Spring and gaining a ridge beyond, we heard the mew- ing of a large hawk, and presently saw a pair of fine red-shoiddered hawks quartering over a meadow, probably in search of mice. They rose and perched for a moment in the top of a tall dead tree. In Walnut Hills Cemetery we found quail tracks under barberry bushes, and pres- ently flushed a bird. We also saw a kinglet in the swamp. Red squirrels, mice, rabbits, and another quadruped evidently very abundant in the region, had made multitudes of tracks in the soft wet snow. Just what this other quadruped was I cannot surely say, but if it was what I sus- pect it to have been, I should prefer not to travel 36 LAXD OF THE LINGERING SNOW. much by night in its company. A chipmunk, finding the mouth of his hole free fi-om snow, had come out from it into the driveway and made a few scampering circles where the snow was shallowest. As we neared the edge of Newton, we saw a downy woodpecker with his red cap on. In the swamp beyond were grouse tracks, and foot- prints of a man and dog. Both the latter had been running, and I fancied the dog had started a rabbit which the man had hurried to head off at a point where a wood-road rounded the corner of the hill. Soon after crossing the Newton line we turned toward the southeast and walked rapidly back to the top of Bellevue Hill. Wa- chusett and Monadnock greeted us from the far horizon, and a marvelous blending of bay, city, park, suburban settlement, and untouched na- ture surrounded us on every side. Fortunate Boston, to be girdled by such diversified and picturesque country ! The view from this hill is readily gained by walking from Highland Sta- tion, and it seemed to me more charming than that from Blue Hill. The last pleasure of the day was in exploring the hemlock woods at the Arnold Arboretum. Thanks to an arrangement with Harvard Uni- versity, the people of Boston have the use of this beautiful estate for all time. While its WAVERLEY OAKS AND BUSSEY HEMLOCKS. 37 systematic collections are as yet young and in- comjjlete, its natural beauties are many. Just north of Bussey Street an abrupt rocky hill, crowned with tall and singularly straight hem- looks, rises above the surrounding fields and roll- ing pastures. From its deeply shaded top look- ing down its precipitous ledges upon the roaring waters of the Bussey brook, I seemed to feel my- self removed from the neiohborhood of a ffreat city to one of those wild White Mountain ravines where trout are hidden in the torrents, where the harsh scream of the pileated woodpecker breaks the silence of the forest, and where the hoof-print of the deer is of tener found than the footstep of a man. THE FIRST BLUEBIRDS. Some of the wildest, rougliest, and most heav- ily timbered country within sight of Boston lies in the western end of Winchester and along the northern edge of Arlington. I reached it on the afternoon of the last day of winter, by walk- ing along the western shore of Mystic Pond until near the Winchester line, then bearing to the left until I gained the high wooded ledges which command Winchester village from the west. It was a blustering day : the air was filled alter- nately with golden sunlight and flurries of large snowflakes. Dry snow covered the ground. Along the stone walls it had drifted heavily, reaching in many places a depth of two feet. Walking in the ploughed fields was uncertain, the furrows being filled with snow and the ridges blown free from it. The brooks were noisy, but their music was muffled by decks of thin ice which partially covered them. Great white air- bubbles rolled along under these ice decks. Here and there watercress, buttercup leaves and long blades of grass could be seen pressed upward against the transparent ice by the pulsat- THE FIRST BLUEBIRDS. 39 ing current. In one pool in the pine woods the floor of the little basin was studded with scarlet partridge berries, surrounded by their rich green leaves. The view from the crest of the ledges was well worth a harder climb. Mystic Pond is beautiful in itself, but it is made more so by the Fell coun- try, rugged and snow-laden, rising above it. AVinchester, with its many-colored cottages sprinkled over the snow, made a pleasing pic- tui-e. Beyond pond, village, and the Fells, loomed the distant heights upon which the Dan- vers Asylum showed its gloomy walls. The snow flurries which blurred the distance made the nest of cities along the Charles softer and more picturesque than usual. The ledges are well wooded. Pitch-pines, cedars and a sprin- kling of hardwood cover them. Among these trees were crows, a small hawk, a blue jay, two kinglets, two little brown creepers, and neaidy a dozen chickadees. The creepers and two of the chickadees were working together. Both pairs of birds signalled each other constantly. If a creeper flew it told its mate, who soon followed, usually flying to the same tree. The chickadees sometimes went to the same tree also, and seemed to be always within forty or fifty feet of the creepers. From this hill, which used to be called Mt. 40 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. Pisgali, I made a bee line for Turkey or One Pine Hill, in Arlington. Much of the interme- diate region is filled with white pines. In one gi'ove of many hundred large pines, the effects of the dark green roof, pure white floor and straight brown columns forming radiating vistas were impressive, none the less so from the silence and the cold. From a brier thicket on the edge of this wood a grouse flew noisily. Near Turkey Hill was an odd meeting of paths in the snow. A horse and sled, a man, a large dog, two quail, a rabbit, and a mouse had all left their prints on a square rod of snow. It was the last calendar day of winter. The sun was going down in wrath. The wind blew across the top of One Pine Hill impatiently. One Pine, with its sixty stubs of dead and broken branches, trembled, and told by its fee- bleness of the approaching day when One Pine Hill, successor of Three Pine Hill, shall become No Pine Hill. March came in at midnight smiling. The big yellow moon looked down upon the soft snow wdiich had fallen since sunset, wrapping the earth in ermine. I chose Lincoln for my objective point, and reached it by rail early in the fore- noon. The air was keen, very keen, the sky faintly blue through thin clouds, the sun only a yellow spot in the south. Leaving the railway THE FIRST BLUEBIRDS. 41 I wound my way back towards Stony Brook, passing through groves of small oaks, meadows full of treacherous pools covered with brittle ice, belts of whispering white-pines, apple orchards and wood-roads leading up hill and down, end- ins: nowhere. Four miles of this wanderino- brought me to Kendal Green station in Weston, with a record of twenty crows, eighteen chicka- dees, sixteen tree-sparrows and three blue jays. Every farmhouse seemed to have its two or three large elms, and its one, two or three noisy chickadees. No English sparrows were to be seen. The sleighing throughout the region appeared to be good and the snow in the fields was more than six inches deep on a level. The aspect of the country was much more wintry than it was nearer the coast, yet Lincoln is only thirteen miles northwest of the State House. For two weeks past the pussy willows had been increasing in size and beauty. Some of them had now reached their most attractive state, for when they begin to push out their yellow stamens they lose much of their peculiar charm. Near Kendal Green I found a noble family of these little Quakers. They were large, and closely set on their stems. Within a foot of the tip of one wand were thirty pussies, each measuring from a half to three quarters of an inch in length. Lincoln, judging by the tracks 42 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. in the snow, is well stocked with rabbits, field mice and skunks. It showed me the first fox track I have seen in Massachusetts this winter. A fox's track resembles closely that of the dog, but it has some marked distinctions. The fox often clips the snow with his toes, thus jarolong- ing his footprint slightly ; he also has a longer stride than a dog of the same size, and sets his feet more nearly in a single line. The footprints of the skunk are grouped in fours, and the four prints in each group are very nearly in line ; the first and third being a little to one side, and the second and fourth to the other side, of an imagi- nary middle line. Just above Kendal Green station the railway builders have taken a large bite out of a gravelly hillside. The bitten spot faces southeast and is as warm a nook on a windy winter An,y as could well be found. It is stocked with dried weed stalks, sumacs with their prince's feather-like spikes, and red cedars covered with fruit. As I rounded the corner of the bitten bank, Spring herself stepped out to meet me, for twelve blue- birds rose in a flock and flew into the cedars and apple-trees which surmounted the cutting. It was 1.30 P. M., and as every cloud had vanished from the sky the sunlight brought out the color- ing of these beautiful birds with marvelous in- tensity. It is hard to say which is loveliest, the THE FIRST BLUEBIRDS. 43 cerulean flash from their backs, or the chestnut warmth of their round breasts. I watched and listened to these birds for more than an hour. They were joyously happy. They flew, they basked in the sunlight, they went to the orchard and peered into a hole in an apple limb in which many a bluebird has probably been hatched ; they hovered all over the cedars, eating their bluish, aromatic fruit ; they perched on the ice at the brink of Stony Brook and drank from the rushing water ; they pecked at the sumac spikes, they sipped melting snow on the slate roof of the freight house ; they swung on the tele- graph wires, and they filled the air with their sweet, simple notes. The station - master said some of them had been seen the Wednesday pre- vious. At last I left them unwillingly, and walked down the track which follows Stony Brook towards Waltham. In the swift current between the ice which projected far out from each shore a muskrat was swimming down stream ; twice he dived and twice he surged along with the cold flood before I passed him. THE MINUTE-MAN IN A SNOWDRIFT. It is not often that snow-slioes are useful in this part of Massachusetts, but as about sixteen inches of a recent fall remained on the hills when I took my walk on Saturday, March 7, I found snow-shoes not only useful but neces- sary for cross-country travel. My shoes were made by a neat-fingered farmer in the White Mountains, and are more durable than many of the fancy shoes for sale among athletic goods. A fish-shaped frame of ash with two cross braces is filled with a coarse mesh of rawhide. The foot is secured to this light framework by a leather toe-cap from which straps extend across the top of the instep and around the ankle. The heel is free to rise and fall in walking, while the heel of the snow-shoe is loaded to make it trail upon the snow, thus keeping the toe up and away from snags. I spent most of Saturday afternoon on the crest of a high hill not far from the Belmont mineral spring. The air was warm and clear, the sunlight intensely bright, and the sky won- derfully blue. Birds were few and far between. THE MINUTE-MAN IN A SNOWDRIFT. 45 and it is possible that many individuals here in the winter have decamped already. Two crows, two chickadees, two brown creepers, six rob- ins, four quail, constituted my list for the day. The robins passed overhead about three o'clock, flying iiigh, fast, and due north. They may not have stopped short of the New Hampshire hills, for which tliey seemed to be aiming. The quail were feeding on barberries, and judging by their tracks there seemed to have been eight or ten of them at work. A quail's footprint looks like the barb and part of the shaft of an arrow pointing in the direction from which the bird has come. When they hurry, their tracks are run together, forming a continuous line of per- petuated panic. The quail were quite noisy on Saturday, making a harsh call unlike their " bob, bob-white." During the coming week or fort- night the number of kinds of birds near Boston is likely to increase. I have long been hoping to see crossbills, redpoll linnets, siskins, red bellied nuthatches and others of the winter birds, but this is an off year for them. Now I am looking for redwing blackbirds, purple grackles and rusty grackles, song sparrows, swamp sparrows, fox sparrows, purple finches, pewees and other early migrants. About sunset on Saturday I was in a grove of venerable red cedars. The lower half of the 46 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. trees was in shadow, the upper half in sun- light. Below, all seemed cold and dreary : the unbroken snow, the rough trunks of the trees, their sombre foliage. Above, all seemed warm and cheerful : the bright blue sky, the passing bits of white cloud, the upper branches of the cedars glowing with golden olive-green. I sought an open ledge where I could see from Blue Hill to Monadnock, and watched the sun sink into a bed of clouds. The after effects of color were pronounced. Overhead the sky was cobalt ; low in the east it was pale Prussian blue ; in the north it was deep orange, and in the west silvery, with a few dark ragged clouds shredded over it. After sunset and just before darkness comes, colors, irrespective of the out- lines of the objects to which they belong, stand out more forcibly than at any other time. This was noticeable Saturday evening. The red of a distant steeple was aggressive ; so was the yellow of some tufts of dead grass waving in the wind, and so was the russet of the dried leaves on a grove of oaks or beeches two miles distant. The sky at that hour was a matchless back- ground for the copper-colored stems of the willow trees, the bewildering network of descend- ing lines in an elm's branches and twigs ; and the distant rows of maples marching along an opposing hilltop with the orange light of the THE MINUTE-MAN IN A SNOWDRIFT. 47 northern sky burning through them. Mist effects, and glimpses of distances through driv- ing snowflakes are fascinating, because they leave much to the imagination. Views of clear sunset skies, radiant with color, ranks of leafless trees showing black against the snow, peaks of snow growing bluer as night draws on — these also are fascinating, because the eye seems to gain the truth about whatever it rests upon. Everything is clean-cut, sharply out- lined against sky or snow, sincere, real, satis- fying. Sunday, the 8th, was as warm and still a day as the month of March is capable of pro- ducing. From early morning until late in the afternoon there was not breeze enough to rustle a leaf, much less to cool cheek and eye smarting under the direct and reflected rays of the sun. I took an early train to Bedford and began my walk there, not because of the charms of Bed- ford, but because the train went no further. Bedford is a pleasant, old-fashioned village, in the midst of a comparatively flat country. Walking through the village I noticed its high- shouldered and many windowed meeting-house, its haughty elms, and its air of ancient respecta- bility. Five miles away, said a weather-worn guide board, is Concord town ; so I turned west- ward, feeling sure that early spring birds must 48 LAND OF THE LINGERING SNOW. haunt the home of Thoreau. Just outside of Bedford streets I sat down on a stone wall to bask in the warm sunshine. The mercur}^ stood at 68° in the shade, yet a snow-drift close by was four and a half feet in depth. The bell of the old meeting-house was tolling, and distance made its voice sweet. It sometimes seems as though church bells attract the birds. In the perfect stillness of the air I could hear many bird notes. A yellowhammer was calling per- sistently from a distant maple; a bluebird sang in the nearest orchard, and six noisy crows were flying to and fro in a j^loughed field examining spots of earth left bare by the receding snow. Presently a flock of three blue jays entered the orchard and seemed to find satisfactory food in the apples left on the ground last autumn. Between Bedford and Concord I saw eleven more blue jays, a dozen more crows, thirteen chickadees, five tree-sparrows and the tracks of a flock of ten quail. There were also many crow tracks in the snow. They are larger than those of qiiail and the print of the long hind toe is very marked. The feature of the day was the repeated occurrence of blue jays. The birds w^ere noisy and restless, and most of them were moving northward. The country through which I passed was level and uninter- esting. Little timber was in sight, and most of THE MINUTE-MAN IN A SNOWDRIFT. 49 the farms had an air of bein