d the mother
bird upon the nest. As I draw near she seems to sit closer, her eyes
growing large with an inexpressibly 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 nestlings lift their heads without being jostled or overreached
by any strange bedfellow. A week afterward and they are 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 old cow-path or
an overgrown wood-road; now clambering over soft and decayed logs, or
forcing my way through a network of briers and hazel; now entering a
perfect bower of wild-cherry, beech, and soft-maple; now emerging into a
little 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 this screen of ferns and
briers, and hear this wild-hen of the woods call together her brood.
Have you observed at what an early age the Partridge flies? Nature seems
to concentrate her energies on the wing, making the safety of the 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 subtile 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