chimney-swift, perhaps,
included) may smile at my simplicity, but I was surprised to find this
"animated torrid zone," this "insect lover of the sun," in such a
Greenland climate. Did he not know that his own poet had, described him
as "hot midsummer's petted crone"? But possibly he was equally surprised
at my appearance. He might even have taken his turn at quoting
Emerson:--

"Pants up hither the spruce clerk
From South Cove and City Wharf"?[13]

Of the two, he was unquestionably the more at home, for he was living
where in forty-eight hours I should have found my death. So much is
_Bombus_ better than a man.

In a little pool of water, which seemed to be nothing but a transient
puddle caused by the melting snow, was a tiny fish. I asked him by what
miracle he got there, but he could give no explanation. He, too, might
well enough have joined the noble company of Emersonians:--

"I never thought to ask, I never knew;
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self-same Power that brought me here brought you."

Almost at the very top of Mount Clinton I was saluted by the familiar
ditty of the Nashville warbler. I could hardly believe my ears; but
there was no mistake, for the bird soon appeared in plain sight. Had it
been one of the hardier-seeming species, the yellow-rumped for example,
I should not have thought it very strange; but this dainty
_Helminthophaga_, so common in the vicinity of Boston, did appear to be
out of his latitude, summering here on Alpine heights. With a good pair
of wings, and the whole continent to choose from, he surely might have
found some more congenial spot than this in which to bring up his little
family. I took his presence to be only an individual freak, but a
subsequent visitor, who made the ascent from the Glen, reported the same
species on that side also, and at about the same height.

These signs of life on bleak mountain ridges are highly interesting and
suggestive. The fish, the humblebees, the birds, and a mouse which
scampered away to its hole amid the rocks,--all these might have found
better living elsewhere. But Nature will have her world full. Stunted
life is better than none, she thinks. So she plants her forests of
spruces, and keeps them growing, where, with all their efforts, they
cannot get above the height of a man's knee. There is no beauty about
them, no grace. They sacrifice symmetry and everything else for the sake
of bare existence, remin