xpressibly wild, beautiful look. She keeps
her place till I am within two paces of her, when she flutters away as
at first. In the brief interval the remaining egg has hatched, and the
two little nestling lift their heads without being jostled or
overreached by any strange bedfellow. A week afterward and they were
flown away,--so brief is the infancy of birds. And the wonder is that
they escape, even for this short time, the skunks and minks and
muskrats that abound here, and that have a decided partiality for such
tidbits.

I pass on through the old Barkpeeling, now threading an obscure
cow-path or an overgrown wood-road; now clambering over soft and
decayed logs, or forcing my way through a network of briers and
hazels; now entering a perfect bower of wild cherry, beech, and soft
maple; now emerging into a grassy lane, golden with buttercups or
white with daisies, or wading waist-deep in the red raspberry-bushes.

Whir! whir! whir! and a brood of half-grown partridges start up like
an explosion, a few paces from me, and, scattering, disappear in the
bushes on all sides. Let me sit down here behind the screen of ferns
and briers, and hear this wild hen of the woods call together her
brood. At what an early age the partridge flies! Nature seems to
concentrate her energies on the wing, making the safety of a bird a
point to be looked after first; and while the body is covered with
down, and no signs of feathers are visible, the wing-quills sprout and
unfold, and in an incredibly short time the young make fair headway in
flying.

The same rapid development of wing may be observed in chickens and
turkeys, but not in water-fowls, nor in birds that are safely housed
in the nest till full-fledged. The other day, by a brook, I came
suddenly upon a young sandpiper, a most beautiful creature, enveloped
in a soft gray down, swift and nimble and apparently a week or two
old, but with no signs of plumage either of body or wing. And it
needed none, for it escaped me by taking to the water as readily as if
it had flown with wings.

Hark! there arises over there in the brush a soft persuasive cooing,
a sound so subtle and wild and unobtrusive that it requires the most
alert and watchful ear to hear it. How gentle and solicitous and full
of yearning love! It is the voice of the mother hen. Presently a faint
timid "Yeap!" which almost eludes the ear, is heard in various
direction,--the young responding. As no danger seems near, the