d
the wasteful destruction of our forests.

[Sidenote: _A CATBIRD BLUEBERRYING._]

In this corner, one morning, I saw a catbird gathering blueberries for
dinner. She came down on a fence post as light as a feather, looked
over to where I sat motionless under my tree, hesitated, flirted her
tail expressively as who should say, "Can I trust her?" then glanced
down to the berry-loaded bushes on the ground, and turned again her soft
dark eyes on me. I hardly breathed, and she flew lightly to the first
wire of the fence, paused, then to the second, still keeping an eye my
way. At that point she bent an earnest gaze on the blueberry patch,
turning this way and that, and I believe selecting the very berry she
desired; for she suddenly dropped like a shot, seized the berry, and was
back on the post, as if the ground were hot. There she rested long
enough for me to see what she held in her beak, and then disappeared in
the silent way she had come. In a moment she returned; for it was not
for herself she was berrying, but for some speckled-breasted beauty
shyly hiding in the alder thicket below.

As the babies' month drew near its close, and August stood threateningly
on the threshold, sometimes I heard young folk at their lessons. Most
charming was a scion of the chewink family learning to ring his silver
bell. I could not see him,--he was hidden behind the leafy screen across
the river; but happily sounds are not so easily concealed as sights, and
the little performance explained itself as clearly as if I had had the
added testimony of my eyes (though I longed to see it, too). The
instructor was a superior singer, such as I have heard but few times,
and the song at its best is one of our most choice, consisting of two
short notes followed by a tremolo perhaps an octave higher, in a loud
clear ring like a silver-toned bell.

"Was never voice of ours could say
Our inmost in the sweetest way
Like yonder voice."

For several minutes this rich and inspiring song rang out from the
bushes, to my great delight, when suddenly it ceased, and a weak voice
piped up. It was neither so loud nor so clear; the introductory notes
were given with uncertainty and hesitation, and the tremolo was a slow
and very poor imitation. Still, it was plain that the towhee baby was
practicing for his entrance into the ranks of our most bewitching
singers. The next day, a chewink, I think the same whose music and whose
teaching I had admired, hon