and he is forced to conclude that they have not
been away, but during their period of midsummer silence have eluded his
notice. On the whole, therefore, after making allowance for particular
cases in which we may have more precise information, it would be hard, I
think, to say just when our nocturnal travelers set out on their long
journey. As the poet prayed Life to do,--

They steal away, give little warning,
Choose their own time;
Say not good-night,--but in May's brighter clime
Bid us good-morning.

Their departure bereaves us, but, all in all, it must be accounted a
blessing. Like the falling of the leaves, it touches the heart with a
pleasing sadness,--a sadness more delicious, if one is born to enjoy it,
than all the merry-making of springtime. And even for the most
unsentimental of naturalists the autumnal season has many a delightful
hour. The year is almost done; but for the moment the whole feathered
world is in motion, and the shortest walk may show him the choicest of
rarities. Thanks to the passing of the birds, his local studies are an
endless pursuit. "It is now more than forty years that I have paid some
attention to the ornithology of this district, without being able to
exhaust the subject," says Gilbert White; "new occurrences still arise
as long as any inquiries are kept alive." A happy man is the bird-lover;
always another species to look for, another mystery to solve. His
expectations may never be realized; but no matter; it is the hope, not
its fulfillment, that makes life worth having. How can any New
Englander imagine that he has exhausted the possibilities of existence
so long as he has never seen the Lincoln finch and the Cape May warbler?

But "I speak as a fool." Our happiness, if we are bird-lovers indeed,
waits not upon novelties and rarities. All such exceptional bits of
private good fortune let the Fates send or withhold as they will. The
grand spectacle itself will not fail us. Even now, through all the
northern country, the procession is getting under way. For the next
three months it will be passing,--millions upon millions: warblers,
sparrows, thrushes, vireos, blackbirds, flycatchers, wrens, kinglets,
woodpeckers, swallows, humming-birds, hawks; with sandpipers, plovers,
ducks and geese, gulls, and who knows how many more? Night and day, week
days and Sundays, they will be flying: now singly or in little groups,
and flitting from one wood or pasture