The literary naturalist does not take liberties with facts; facts are the flora upon which he lives.  The more and the fresher the facts the better.  I can do nothing without them, but I must give them my own flavor.  I must impart to them a quality which heightens and intensifies them.

To interpret Nature is not to improve upon her:  it is to draw her out; it is to have an emotional intercourse with her, absorb her, and reproduce her tinged with the colors of the spirit.

If I name every bird I see in my walk, describe its color and ways, etc., give a lot of facts or details about the bird, it is doubtful if my reader is interested.  But if I relate the bird in some way to human life, to my own life,—­show what it is to me and what it is in the landscape and the season,—­then do I give my reader a live bird and not a labeled specimen.

   J. B.
   1895.

WAKE-ROBIN

I

THE RETURN OF THE BIRDS

Spring in our northern climate may fairly be said to extend from the middle of March to the middle of June.  At least, the vernal tide continues to rise until the latter date, and it is not till after the summer solstice that the shoots and twigs begin to harden and turn to wood, or the grass to lose any of its freshness and succulency.

It is this period that marks the return of the birds,—­one or two of the more hardy or half-domesticated species, like the song sparrow and the bluebird, usually arriving in March, while the rarer and more brilliant wood-birds bring up the procession in June.  But each stage of the advancing season gives prominence to the certain species, as to certain flowers.  The dandelion tells me when to look for the swallow, the dogtooth violet when to expect the wood-thrush, and when I have found the wake-robin in bloom I know the season is fairly inaugurated.  With me this flower is associated, not merely with the awakening of Robin, for he has been awake for some weeks, but with the universal awakening and rehabilitation of nature.

Yet the coming and going of the birds is more or less a mystery and a surprise.  We go out in the morning, and no thrush or vireo is to be heard; we go out again, and every tree and grove is musical; yet again, and all is silent.  Who saw them come?  Who saw them depart?

This pert little winter wren, for instance, darting in and out the fence, diving under the rubbish here and coming up yards away,—­how does he manage with those little circular wings to compass degrees and zones, and arrive always in the nick of time?  Last August I saw him in the remotest wilds of the Adirondacks, impatient and inquisitive as usual; a few weeks later, on the Potomac, I was greeted by the same hardy little busybody.  Does he travel by easy stages from bush to bush and from wood to wood? or has that compact little body force and courage to brave the night and the upper air, and so achieve leagues at one pull?