The silvered flats gleam frostily below;
Suddenly drops the gull, and breaks the glassy tide.”
Of course even the casual observer has often been aware of the fact that
“the robin is plastering his house hard by;” and many of us may have
looked upon a winter scene like the following, but I am sure we never
thought of painting it in just such tropical colors,—
“The river was numb, and could not speak,
For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun;
A single crow on the tree-top bleak
From his shining feathers shed off the cold sun.”
Hosea Biglow seems to think he knows where to find
“Some blooms thet make the season suit the mind,
An’ seem to match the doubting bluebird’s notes,”
liverworts and bloodroots being among those talismanic plants. There is
a world of serenity in the following metrical etching, which makes one
almost long to die and be forever at rest:—
“Happy their end
Who vanish down life’s evening stream
Placid as swans that drift in dream
Round the next river-bend.”
Our poet had the charming habit of making some characteristic bird-way
do deft metaphorical duty in his verse, like the skilful weaver who runs
a line of exquisite tint through his weft. Here is an instance, found in
the poem called “Threnodia,”—
“I loved to see the infant soul
· · · · · · ·
Peep timidly from out its nest,
His lips, the while,
Fluttering with half-fledged words,
Or hushing to a smile
That more than words expressed,
When his glad mother on him stole
And snatched him to her breast!
O, thoughts were brooding in those eyes,
That would have soared like strong-winged birds
Far, far into the skies,
Gladding the earth with song
And gushing harmonies.”
Here is another fine simile,—
“As if a lark should suddenly drop dead
While the blue air yet trembled with its song,
So snapped at once that music’s golden thread.”
In the following stanzas on “The Falcon”—used as a metaphor for
Truth—there is a captivating multiplicity of figures,—
“I know a falcon swift and peerless
As e’er was cradled in the pine;
No bird had ever eye so fearless,
Or wing so strong as this of mine.
“The winds not better love to pilot
A cloud with molten gold o’errun,
Than him, a little burning islet,
A star above the coming sun.
“For with a lark’s heart he doth tower,
By a glorious upward instinct drawn;
No bee nestles deeper in the flower
Than he in the bursting rose of dawn.”
It almost throws one into “a midsummer night’s dream” to read this
picturesque line,—
“The clouds like swans drift down the streaming atmosphere.”
That must have been an expressive face indeed whose features were
“As full of motion as a nest
That palpitates with unfledged birds,”
albeit one may be permitted to hope, without irreverence, that it made a
more attractive picture than did the callow youngsters gaping and
wabbling in their nursery. But here is a delineation of bird life so
graphically and richly colored that one longs for the brush of the
artist to transfer it to canvas. Listen! listen! There is an exhilarant
in the atmosphere.
“The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o’errun
With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,—
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?”
The last two lines, by the way, are in perfect keeping with Mr. Lowell’s
generous instincts, which were always on the side of the lowly and
unappreciated. Seductive as the figure is, there seems to be something
slightly forced in the poet’s conceit that the thrushes sing because
they have been “pierced through with June’s delicious sting,” unless it
might be justified on the principle that pain and trial often enhance
moral values.
There is a beautiful stanza in the poem, “On Planting a Tree at
Inverara,”—
“Hither the busy birds shall flutter,
With the light timber for their nests,
And, pausing from their labor, utter
The morning sunshine in their breasts.”
With all his poet’s soul Lowell loved the serene, as when he
congratulates himself on having left the grating noise and stifling
smoke of London, and found in some sequestered haunt
“Air and quiet too;
Air filtered through the beech and oak;
Quiet by nothing harsher broke
Than wood-dove’s meditative coo.”
The word “meditative” is extremely felicitous, but no more so than the
hop-skip-and-spring of the following lines from a Commencement dinner
poem:—
“I’ve a notion, I think, of a good dinner speech,
Tripping light as a sandpiper over the beach,
Swerving this way and that, as the wave of the moment
Washes out its slight trace with a dash of whim’s foam on’t,
And leaving on memory’s rim just a sense
Something graceful had gone by, a live present tense;
Not poetry,—no, not quite that, but as good,
A kind of winged prose that could fly if it would.”
Like all discriminating lovers of “Nature’s blithe commoners,” Lowell
had his favorites, whose praises he frequently rung with a sincerity
that cannot be doubted for a moment. He was especially partial to the
bobolink. He must have often peeped into the
“Tussocks that house blithe Bob o’ Lincoln,”
or his Muse would not have been so adept and faithful in her hymning
descriptions. We will lend a listening ear while she sings her chansons
on the virtues of the bird our poet loved so truly. First, I will call
attention to the following portraiture of that cavalier of the meadow,
the male bobolink, at the season when there are bantlings in the
grass-domed nest which demand his paternal care, as well as that of his
faithful spouse,—
“Meanwhile that devil-may-care, the bobolink,
Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops
Just ere he sweeps o’er rapture’s tremulous brink,
And ’twixt the windrows most demurely drops,
A decorous bird of business, who provides
For his brown mate and fledgelings six besides,
And looks from right to left, a farmer ’mid his crops.”
One can almost see the poet leaning against the rail fence of the clover
field, with pencil in hand, drawing the portrait of the bird which is
posing unconsciously before him, so true is his delineation of bobolink
life. But to find Lowell at his best you must read his description of
Robert o’ Lincoln at _his_ best. Hark!—
“A week ago the sparrow was divine;
The bluebird, shifting his light load of song
From post to post along the cheerless fence,
Was as a rhymer ere the poet come;
But now, oh, rapture! sunshine winged and voiced,
Pipe blown through by the warm, wild breath of the West,
Shepherding his soft droves of fleecy cloud,
Gladness of woods, skies, waters, all in one,
The bobolink has come, and, like the soul
Of the sweet season, vocal in a bird,
Gurgles in ecstasy we know not what,
Save _June! Dear June! Now God be praised for June._”
The only fault to be found with this exquisite tribute is that it is
rather too much involved to glide melodiously from the lips, or be quite
clear to the mind until after a second or third reading. Not so
picturesque, but more simple and musical, is this bit,—
“From blossom-clouded orchards, far away
The bobolink tinkled.”
The provincial tongue of Hosea Biglow presents us with the following
rare bit of portraiture, which has all the strength and freshness of a
painting from Nature:—
“June’s bridesman, poet o’ the year,
Gladness on wings, the bobolink is here;
Half-hid in tip-top apple-bloom he sings,
Or climbs against the breeze with quiverin’ wings,
Or, givin’ way to’t in mock despair,
Runs down, a brook o’ laughter, thro’ the air,”—
a rhythmical tribute that is both an honor to the poet and a compliment
to the bobolink.
The Baltimore oriole also claims Mr. Lowell’s admiration. There is one
descriptive passage relative to this bird that, in my opinion, goes
ahead of even the famous bobolink eulogy just quoted:
“Hush! ’Tis he!
My oriole, my glance of summer fire,
Is come at last, and, ever on the watch,
Twitches the pack-thread I had lightly wound
About the bough to help his housekeeping,—
Twitches and scouts by turns, blessing his luck,
Yet fearing me who laid it in his way,
Nor, more than wiser we in our affairs,
Divines the providence that hides and helps.
_Heave, ho! Heave, ho!_ he whistles as the twine
Slackens its hold; _once more, now!_ and a flash
Lightens across the sunlight to the elm
Where his mate dangles at her cup of felt
Nor all his booty is the thread; he trails
My loosened thought with it along the air,
And I must follow, would I ever find
The inward rhyme to all this wealth of life.”
The last sentence is a deft turn at weaving, oriole-like, a thread of
moral reflection into a fine piece of description. Even in his later
years Lowell could not throw off the spell that this summer flake of
gold had thrown over him; for in his volume called “Heartsease and Rue”
he has inserted a little poem entitled “The Nest” that for rhythmical
flow and beauty has not been excelled by any of his earlier productions.
He first describes the nest in May as follows:—
“Then from the honeysuckle gray
The oriole with experienced quest
Twitches the fibrous bark away,
The cordage of his hammock nest,
Cheering his labor with a note
Rich as the orange of his throat.
“High o’er the loud and dusty road
The soft gray cup in safety swings,
To brim ere August with its load
Of downy breasts and throbbing wings,
O’er which the friendly elm-tree heaves
An emerald roof with sculptured leaves.
· · · · · · ·
Thy duty, wingëd flame of Spring,
Is but to love and fly and sing.”
Then he chants a pathetic “palinode,” as he calls it, in December, when
“... homeless winds complain along
The columned choir once thrilled with song.
“And thou, dear nest, whence joy and praise
The thankful oriole used to pour,
Swing’st empty while the north winds chase
Their snowy swarms from Labrador.
But, loyal to the happy past,
I love thee still for what thou wast.”
Besides the bobolink and the oriole, the blackbird is often made to do
charming duty in Lowell’s verse. Every student of the birds has often
seen the picture described by the line,—
“Alders the creaking red-wings sink on;”
or heard
“... the blackbirds clatt’rin’ in tall trees
An’ settlin’ things in windy Congresses,—
Queer politicians, though, for I’ll be skinned
Ef all on ’em don’t head against the wind.”
A number of quotations in which the robin figures conspicuously have
already been given. One more occurs to me,—that in which Hosea Biglow
exclaims,—
“Thet’s robin-redbreast’s almanick; he knows
That arter this ther’ ’s only blossom-snows;
So, choosin’ out a handy crotch an’ spouse,
He goes to plast’rin’ his adobë house.”
But hold! here is still another:—
“The Maple puts her corals on in May,
While loitering frosts about the lowlands cling,
To be in tune with what the robins sing,
Plastering new log-huts ’mid her branches gray.”
It can scarcely be hoped to make this anthology from Lowell exhaustive,
for almost every time I turn the leaves of his poetical works I stumble
upon some reference to the birds before unnoted; but this article would
be incomplete should one of his choicest bits of metrical description,
which must bring both anthology and book to a close, be omitted. It is
found in the poem entitled “The Nightingale in the Study,” the whole of
which must be read to catch the drift of its moral teaching. The poet
doubtless attributes more magnanimity to the cat-bird than that carolist
is entitled to,—but no matter; the Muses cannot be over-precise. Here is
a charmer:—
“‘Come forth!’ my cat-bird calls to me,
‘And hear me sing a cavatina
That, in this old familiar tree,
Shall hang a garden of Alcina.
· · · · · · ·
“‘Or, if to me you will not hark,
By Beaver Brook a thrush is ringing
Till all the alder-coverts dark
Seem sunshine-dappled with his singing.
“‘Come out beneath the unmastered sky,
With its emancipating spaces,
And learn to sing as well as I,
Without premeditated graces.
· · · · · · ·
“‘Come out! with me the oriole cries,
Escape the demon that pursues you!
And hark! the cuckoo weatherwise,
Still hiding, farther onward wooes you.’”
But this time, for a wonder, the poet declines the invitation to go out
of doors, because, as he says, “a bird is singing in my brain;” and yet
he does so with evident regret, for he exclaims, in response to the
cat-bird’s plea,—
“‘Alas, dear friend, that, all my days,
Has poured from that syringa thicket
The quaintly discontinuous lays
To which I hold a season ticket,—
“‘A season ticket cheaply bought
With a dessert of pilfered berries,
And who so oft my love has caught
With morn and evening voluntaries,
“‘Deem me not faithless, if all day
Among my dusty books I linger,
No pipe, like thee, for June to play
With fancy-led, half-conscious finger.
“‘A bird is singing in my brain,
And bubbling o’er with mingled fancies,
Gay, tragic, rapt, right heart of Spain
Fed with the sap of old romances;’”
and so for once the poet of the birds cannot be lured from his study,
where he has been caught in the weft of old Moorish and Castilian
legends, and he concludes his apology with the only slighting allusion
in all his verses, so far as I have discovered, to his beloved winged
minstrels:—
“‘Bird of to-day, thy songs are stale
To his, my singer of all weathers,
My Calderon, my nightingale,
My Arab soul in Spanish feathers.
“‘Ah, friend, these singers dead so long,
And still, God knows, in purgatory,
Give its best sweetness to all song,
To Nature’s self her better glory.’”
Thus the Lowell anthology has swollen to a veritable anthem, and gives
to this modest volume a peroration that it can never hope to deserve.
APPENDIX.
MY BIRD LIST.
The following is an alphabetical list of the birds which I have seen in
my neighborhood, Springfield, Clark County, Ohio. It is given for the
convenience of bird students, who are always interested in the _locale_
of the feathered tribe. The small figure (1) indicates residents all the
year round; (2), summer residents; (3), winter residents; (4), migrants.
Bittern, American.²
Blackbird, red-winged.²
Bluebird.² (occasionally winter resident).
Bobolink.²
Bob-white.¹
Bunting, black-throated;
Dickcissel.²
Butcher-bird.⁴
Buzzard, turkey.²
Cat-bird.²
Cedar-bird.⁴
Chat, yellow-breasted.²
Chickadee, black-capped.¹
Cow-bird.²
Creeper, brown.³
Crow.¹
Cuckoo, black-billed.²
yellow-billed.²
Dickcissel.²
Dove, turtle or mourning.¹
Duck, wood.²
Finch, purple.⁴
Flicker.¹
Flycatcher, Acadian.⁴
crested.²
least.⁴
Traill’s.⁴
yellow-bellied.⁴
Gnatcatcher, blue-gray.⁴
Goldfinch, American.¹
Grass-finch.²
Grossbeak, cardinal.¹
rose-breasted.⁴
Grouse, ruffed.¹
Hawk, red-shouldered.³
sharp-shinned.³
sparrow.¹
Heron, great blue.²
green.²
Humming-bird, ruby-throated.²
Indigo-bird.²
Jay, blue.²
Junco; snowbird.³
Killdeer.²
Kingbird.²
Kingfisher, belted.²
Kinglet, golden-crowned.³
ruby-crowned.⁴
Lark, horned or shore.³
meadow.²
Martin, purple.²
Night-hawk.²
Nuthatch, white-breasted.¹
red-breasted.⁴
Oriole, Baltimore.²
orchard.²
Oven bird.²
Owl, screech.¹
Pewee, wood.²
Phœbe; house pewee.²
Pipit, American.³
Redstart.⁴
Robin.² (sometimes in winter).
Sandpiper, spotted.²
Sapsucker, yellow-bellied.⁴
Shrike, loggerhead.⁴
Sparrow, chipping.²
English.¹
field.²
fox.⁴
grasshopper.²
lark.⁴
Savanna.⁴
song.¹
swamp.⁴
tree.³
white-crowned.⁴
white-throated.⁴
Swallow, bank.²
barn.²
cliff or cave.
white-bellied or tree.²
Swift, chimney.²
Tanager, scarlet.²
Titmouse, tufted.¹
Thrasher, brown.²
Thrush, hermit.⁴
Wilson’s or veery.⁴
wood.²
Towhee; chewink.²
Vireo, blue-headed.⁴
red-eyed.²
warbling.²
white-eyed.⁴
yellow-throated.⁴
Warbler, bay-breasted.⁴
black and white.⁴
Blackburnian.⁴
black-poll.⁴
black-throated blue.⁴
black-throated green.⁴
blue-winged.⁴
Canadian.⁴
cerulean.⁴
chestnut-sided.⁴
Connecticut.⁴
golden-winged.⁴
hooded.⁴
Kirtland’s.⁴
magnolia.⁴
Maryland yellow-throat.²
mourning.⁴
myrtle.⁴
Nashville.⁴
palm or red-poll.⁴
Tennessee.⁴
Wilson’s; green black-capped.⁴
worm-eating.⁴
yellow or summer.²
Water-thrush.⁴
Louisiana.⁴
Whippoorwill.²
Woodpecker, downy.¹
golden-winged; flicker.¹
hairy.¹
red-bellied; zebra-bird.³
red-headed.²
yellow-bellied.⁴
Wren, Bewick’s.²
Carolina.¹
house.²
short-billed marsh.⁴
winter.⁴
FOOTNOTES.
[1]Some months after the foregoing had appeared in the columns of a
popular journal I had occasion to modify one assertion. For many
years I had been studying the creeper, and had never seen him
descend a tree or bough head-first until one autumn day while
loitering in the woods. A creeper was hitching up the stem of a
sapling in his characteristic manner; as I drew near, he seemed to
catch a glimpse of a tidbit in his rear, near the sapling’s root. In
his extreme haste to secure it before I drove him away, he wheeled
around, scuttled down over the bark head-foremost a distance of
perhaps two feet, picked up his morsel, and then dashed out of
sight, as if ashamed of his breach of creeper etiquette, probably to
eat humble pie at his leisure. That was in the autumn of 1892. Since
then no creeper, to my knowledge, has been guilty of a similar
offence against the _convenances_.
[2]Long after this statement had appeared in print, Mr. Bradford Torrey
described, in the “Atlantic Monthly,” a similar performance which he
witnessed in Florida; and, rather oddly, myrtle warblers were also
the actors in this instance.
[3]Mr. Eldridge E. Fish, to whom reference has already been made, after
reading this article, which first appeared in a weekly paper,
suggested in a letter that the little warbler could not well remove
the intruded egg without breaking it, which would spoil her nest
altogether. Hence she simply adds another story to her dwelling.
This is doubtless the true explanation.
[4]This is, after all, no exception, for I have since found a number of
turtle-doves’ nests on the ground.
[5]The reader will see, from the facts given in the remainder of the
chapter, that I reckoned without my host in supposing that
woodpeckers usually sleep in cavities of trees. That they sometimes
select such places for roosts cannot be doubted; but that such is
always or even generally their habit the experiments described
farther on conclusively disprove. It is only fair to say that the
rest of the chapter was added long after the foregoing had been
written, and proves how unsafe it is for the naturalist to make
generalizations.
[6]Since this was written, I have found several more nests, and have
even watched the skilful architects at their house-building.
[7]This series of papers, as well as some others in this volume, was
written at the suggestion of Mr. Amos R. Wells, of “The Golden
Rule,” Boston, and was first published in that journal.
[8]This episode is referred to in the chapter on “Nest-Hunting.”
[9]This article, under the title of “Lowell and the Birds” was first
published in the “New England Magazine,” for November, 1891, shortly
after the poet’s death. Copyright credit is here given to the
publisher of that magazine.
[10]The one noted in the chapter on “The Wood-Pewee.” As the poem on
this bird is quoted in that article, it has been purposely omitted
from this collection of passages.
INDEX.
A
Accentor, 199.
Addison, quoted, 168.
Allen, J. A., quoted, 79-80.
B
Bird baths, 15, 38, 39, 51, 205.
Bird colonies, 42-44.
Bird migration, 64, 76-86.
Bird plumage, 87-91.
Bird roosts, 116-126.
Bird sadness, 207, 208.
Bird song, my creed regarding, 13, 14.
Birds of Paradise, 167.
Blackbirds, 180, 249, 258.
crow, 29, 34, 35, 63.
red-winged, 29, 65, 120, 125.
yellow-headed, 235.
Bluebirds, 28, 88, 165, 190, 209, 249, 250.
Bobolink, 200, 247, 255, 256.
Bolles, Frank, 29.
Brewster, William, 84-86.
Browning, Robert, quoted, 150.
Browning, Mrs. E. B., quoted, 169.
Bryant, W. C., quoted, 81.
Bunting, black-throated, 112.
cow, 96, 97, 125, 178, 180, 199.
towhee, 66, 89, 93, 113, 156, 163, 200.
Burns, Robert, quoted, 207.
Burroughs, John, 29, 165, 211.
C
Cat-bird, 24-26, 82, 125, 143, 259-261.
Chapman, Frank M., 80.
Chat, yellow-breasted, 102, 154, 193-4.
Chewink, 62.
Chickadee, 42, 44, 217, 250.
Coleridge, quoted, 208.
Collectors, 214.
Creeper, brown, 15, 17-20, 44, 203, 219.
Cross-bill, 209.
Crow, 154, 251.
Cuckoo, yellow-billed, 174, 187.
D
Dove, turtle, 13, 63, 120, 172, 173.
E
Emerson, 42, 52, 244.
quoted, 10, 11, 49, 141, 158, 225.
F
Falcon, 252.
Finch, cut-throat, 206.
purple, 72.
Fish, Eldridge E., 94, 97, 209.
Flicker, yellow-hammer, 57, 124, 162, 205.
Flycatcher, Traill’s, 85.
G
Gibson, W. H., quoted, 92.
Gnat-catcher, blue-gray, 144-146, 195.
Goldfinch, 74, 104-109, 113, 187, 232, 235.
Grackle, purple (_see_ Crow blackbird), 35.
Grass-finch, 68, 88, 112, 118.
Grossbeak, Brazilian, 232.
cardinal, 46, 62, 90, 113, 156, 232.
evening, 71.
rose-breasted, 64, 73.
Grouse, ruffed, 166.
H
Hawk, hen, 250.
sparrow, 210.
Heron, great blue, 237.
green, 155, 181-183.
Howells, W. D., quoted, 11.
Hummers, 165.
I
Indigo-bird, 87, 102, 153, 235.
J
Jay, blue, 28, 196, 210, 234.
Juncos (_see_ Snow-birds), 51, 53-56, 82, 118, 219, 229.
K
Killdeer, 28, 65, 99, 183.
King-bird; bee-martin, 197.
Kingfisher, Australian, 234.
belted, 184.
Kinglets, 42, 166.
golden-crowned, 36, 44, 81, 204, 209.
ruby-crowned, 91, 204.
L
Langille, J. H., quoted, 166.
Lanier, Sidney, quoted, 14-15, 133.
Larcom, Lucy, quoted, 68.
Lark, 247, 252, 253.
meadow, 65, 84, 112, 118, 125, 173.
Longfellow, quoted, 164.
Lowell, 40, 45.
quoted, 113, 128-9, 130, 131, 175, 198, 222, 243-261.
M
Martin, house or purple, 241.
Mexican stars, 166.
Milton, quoted, 200.
Montreal, 226.
Mount Royal, Canada, 227-231.
N
Nests, 20, 92-109, 169-185.
Night-hawk, 135-140.
Nonpareil, 212, 232.
Nuthatch, white-breasted, 15, 29, 31, 35, 42, 45, 47, 212.
O
Oriole, Baltimore, 64, 99, 113, 249, 257, 260.
orchard, 153, 180.
Oven-bird, 142.
Owls, 121, 238.
P
Parrots, 236.
Pelicans, 237.
Pewee, wood, 114, 115, 127-134, 190, 196, 220, 244.
Pheasant, silver, 234.
Phœbe, 69, 126, 189, 220, 250.
R
Redstart, 74, 91, 230.
Robin, 27, 65, 73, 112, 120, 200, 211, 233, 246, 249, 250, 251, 259.
S
Sandpiper, 254.
Sangster, Margaret E., quoted, 93.
Shakespeare, quoted, 212.
Snow-bird (_see_ Junco), 49, 51, 250.
Sparrow, bush, 12, 68, 88, 99, 102-104, 105, 106, 109, 112, 120.
chipping, 69, 88, 210.
English, 239.
fox, 67.
grasshopper, 156.
lark, 112, 118.
song, 13, 15, 46, 56, 58, 60-62, 63, 65, 66, 114, 119, 153, 164,
229.
swamp, 222.
tree, 15, 49-51, 53, 55, 56, 59-60, 116.
white-crowned, 90.
white-throated, 120, 224, 233, 237.
Starling, English, 232.
Swallow, bank, 98.
Swan, 251, 253.
T
Tanager, scarlet, 65, 89, 213.
Thrasher, brown, 14, 64, 81, 82, 94, 120, 121, 143, 148-151, 190, 202,
206.
Titmouse, black-capped, 15, 31, 32, 64, 113, 180.
crested, 20, 32, 35, 45.
Thrush, Wilson’s, 227, 228.
wood, 95, 122, 156, 159, 170-172, 179, 190, 206, 259.
Torrey, Bradford, 39, 134, 149, 223.
V
Vireo, blue-headed, 71-72.
red-eyed, 72, 85, 177, 230.
warbling, 99, 152, 196.
W
Wallace, A. R., quoted, 167.
Warblers, 38, 82, 85, 86, 90, 217.
bay-breasted, 74.
Blackburnian, 220.
black-throated blue, 220.
black-throated green, 220, 221, 230.
blue-winged, 70.
cerulean, 114, 220.
chestnut-sided, 114, 220, 230.
creeping, 220, 229.
hooded, 83, 146-148, 199.
Kentucky, 156.
Maryland yellow-throat, 85, 91, 113, 153.
mourning, 83.
myrtle, 38, 39, 220.
parula, 220.
summer, 96-98.
worm-eating, 144.
Water-thrush, Louisiana, 158.
Waxbills, 231.
Weaver-birds, 236.
Whippoorwill, 135, 149.
Wood-dove, 254.
Woodpeckers, 17, 42, 124, 248.
downy, 15, 46, 163.
hairy, 32, 46.
red-bellied; zebra-bird, 21.
red-headed, 32, 36-38, 89, 123, 125, 142, 186, 197, 199, 202.
yellow-bellied; sap-sucker, 29, 30.
Wren, Bewick’s, 39, 64, 69, 143.
Carolina, 41, 113, 157.
Z
Zoölogical Garden, a visit to, 231-239.
LAUREL-CROWNED LETTERS.
Best Letters of Lord Chesterfield. With an Introduction by Edward Gilpin
Johnson.
Best Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. With an Introduction by
Octave Thanet.
Best Letters of Horace Walpole. With an Introduction by Anna B. McMahan.
Best Letters of Madame de Sévigné. With an Introduction by Edward
Playfair Anderson.
Best Letters of Charles Lamb. With an Introduction by Edward Gilpin
Johnson.