ng discovery. In
one of the temporary pauses in our wild career, I was startled by the
flight of a bird from the ground very near us, and, searching about, I
soon found a veery's nest with one egg. It was daintily placed in a
clump of brakes or big ferns, resting on a fallen stick, over and around
which the brakes had grown.

The bird was not so pleased with my discovery as I was. She perched on a
tree over our heads, and uttered the mournful veery cry; and though I
did not so much as lay a finger on that nest, I believe she deserted it
at that moment, for several days afterward it was found exactly as on
that day, with its one egg cold and abandoned.

If I had not, through two summers' close study, made myself very
familiar with the various calls and cries of the veery, I think I should
be driven wild by them; for no bird that I know can impart such distance
to his notes, and few can get around so silently and unobserved as he. A
great charm in his song is that it rarely bursts upon your notice; it
appears to steal into your consciousness, and in a moment the air seems
full of his breezy, woodsy music, his "quivering, silvery song," as
Cheney calls it.

Not long were we allowed to meditate upon the charms of the veery, for
again the luring song began, the other side of the belt of woods, and
off we started anew. This time we secured the bird, or his name, which
was all we desired. The sweet beguiler turned out to be the warbler
mentioned above, the black-throated green, but with a more than usually
exquisite arrangement of his notes. Indeed, my friend, who was what I
call warbler-mad,--a state of infatuation I have with care and
difficulty guarded myself against,--heard in the woods of the
neighborhood, during that summer's visit, no less than four different
songs from the same species of warbler.

[Sidenote: _THE LAST TRAMP._]

While slowly and weariedly dragging myself back to where our patient
horse stood waiting, I fell into meditation on this way of making the
study of nature hard work instead of rest and refreshment, and the
comparative merits of chasing up one's birds and waiting for them to
come about one. Without doubt the choice of method is due largely to
temperament, but I think it will be found that most of our nature-seers
have followed the latter course.

* * * * *

June was now drawing to an end, and the day of my friend's departure had
nearly arrived. One more tr