le of their
wings as they rise. Spring and fall the "black ducks" still come to
find the brackish waters which they like, and to fill their crops with
the seeds of the eel-grass and the mixed food of the flats. In the
late twilight you may sometimes catch sight of a flock speeding in,
silent and swift, over the Mill-dam, or hear their sonorous quacking
from their feeding-ground.

At least, these things were,--and not long since,--though I cannot
answer for a year or two back. The birds long retain the tradition of
the old places, and strive to keep their hold upon them; but we are
building them out year by year. The memory is still fresh of flocks of
teal by the "Green Stores" on the Neck; but the teal and the "Stores"
are gone, and perhaps the last black duck has quacked on the river,
and the last whistler taken his final flight. Some of us, who are not
yet old men, have killed "brown-backs" and "yellow-legs" on the
marshes that lie along to the west and south of the city, now cut up
by the railroads; and you may yet see from the cars an occasional
long-booted individual, whose hopes still live on the tales of the
past, stalking through the sedge with "superfluous gun," or patiently
watching his troop of one-legged wooden decoys.

The sea keeps its own climate, and keeps its highways open, after all
on the land is shut up by frost. The sea-birds, accordingly, seem to
lead an existence more independent of latitude and of seasons. In
midwinter, when the seashore watering-places are forsaken by men, you
may find Nahant or Nantasket Beach more thronged with bipeds of this
sort than by the featherless kind in summer. The Long Beach of Nahant
at that season is lined sometimes by an almost continuous flock of
sea-ducks, and a constant passing and repassing are kept up between
Lynn Bay and the surf outside.

Early of a winter's morning at Nantasket I once saw a flock of geese,
many hundreds in number, coming in from the Bay to cross the land in
their line of migration. They advanced with a vast, irregular front
extending far along the horizon, their multitudinous _honking_
softened into music by the distance. As they neared the beach the
clamor increased and the line broke up in apparent confusion, circling
round and round for some minutes in what seemed aimless
uncertainty. Gradually the cloud of birds resolved itself into a
number of open triangles, each of which with its deeper-voiced leader
took its way inland; as if t