ipe; and that nest of his, that was so warm and cosy
beneath the snowbank in the meadow-bottom, is sodden or afloat. But
meadow-mice are not afraid of water. On various occasions I have seen
them swimming about the spring pools like muskrats, and, when alarmed,
diving beneath the water. Add the golden willows to the full streams,
with the red-shouldered starlings perched amid their branches, sending
forth their strong, liquid, gurgling notes, and the picture is
complete. The willow branches appear to have taken on a deeper yellow
in spring; perhaps it is the effect of the stronger sunshine, perhaps
it is the effect of the swift, vital water laving their roots. The
epaulettes of the starlings, too, are brighter than when they left us
in the fall, and they appear to get brighter daily until the nesting
begins. The males arrive many days before the females, and, perched
along the marshes and watercourses, send forth their liquid, musical
notes, passing the call from one to the other, as if to guide and
hurry their mates forward.

[Illustration: A WOODLAND BROOK]

The noise of a brook, you may observe, is by no means in proportion to
its volume. The full March streams make far less noise relatively to
their size than the shallower streams of summer, because the rocks and
pebbles that cause the sound in summer are deeply buried beneath the
current. "Still waters run deep" is not so true as "deep waters run
still." I rode for half a day along the upper Delaware, and my
thoughts almost unconsciously faced toward the full, clear river. Both
the Delaware and the Susquehanna have a starved, impoverished look in
summer,--unsightly stretches of naked drift and bare, bleaching rocks.
But behold them in March, after the frost has turned over to them the
moisture it has held back and stored up as the primitive forests used
to hold the summer rains. Then they have an easy, ample, triumphant
look, that is a feast to the eye. A plump, well-fed stream is as
satisfying to behold as a well-fed animal or a thrifty tree. One
source of charm in the English landscape is the full, placid stream
the season through; no desiccated watercourses will you see there, nor
any feeble, decrepit brooks, hardly able to get over the ground.

This condition of our streams and rivers in spring is evidently but a
faint reminiscence of their condition during what we may call the
geological springtime, the March or April of the earth's history,
when the an