trembling. So perfect is this instinct, that once,
when I had laid them on the leaves again, and one accidentally fell on
its side, it was found with the rest in exactly the same position ten
minutes afterward. They are not callow like the young of most birds, but
more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. The
remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes
is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They
suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by
experience. Such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval
with the sky it reflects. The woods do not yield another such gem. The
traveler does not often look into such a limpid well. The ignorant or
reckless sportsman often shoots the parent at such a time, and leaves
these innocents to fall a prey to some prowling beast or bird, or
gradually mingle with the decaying leaves which they so much resemble.
It is said that when hatched by a hen they will directly disperse on
some alarm, and are so lost, for they never hear the mother's call which
gathers them again. These were my hens and chickens.

It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free though secret in
the woods, and still sustain themselves in the neighborhood of towns,
suspected by hunters only. How retired the otter manages to live there!
He grows to be four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps without
any human being getting a glimpse of him. I formerly saw the raccoon in
the woods behind where my house is built, and probably still heard their
whinnering at night. Commonly I rested an hour or two in the shade at
noon, after planting, and ate my lunch, and read a little by a spring
which was the source of a swamp and of a brook, oozing from under
Brister's Hill, half a mile from my field. The approach to this was
through a succession of descending grassy hollows, full of young pitch
pines, into a larger wood about the swamp. There, in a very secluded and
shaded spot, under a spreading white pine, there was yet a clean firm
sward to sit on. I had dug out the spring and made a well of clear gray
water, where I could dip up a pailful without roiling it, and thither I
went for this purpose almost every day in midsummer, when the pond was
warmest. Thither, too, the woodcock led her brood, to probe the mud for
worms, flying but a foot above them down the bank, while they ran in a
troop beneath; but at last, spying me, s