Everyday Adventures

ve discovered the Elixir of Youth-but never indoors. The prescription is a simple one. Mix a hobby with plenty of sky-air, shake well, and take twice a week. I know a rai

of dying. Anyway, he would not have time until he has found the ram's-head and the cr

in collecting butterflies, beetles, wasps, and similar bric-a-brac. As for those four abandoned o?logists who have hunted with me for years, they will be young at a hundred. They rank high in the

ds, and tanned skins. Nor am I much of a hunter. When it comes to slaughtering defenseless animals with high-powered guns, I prefer a position in an abattoir. One can kill more animals in a day, and with less exertion. Yet my

ver, a maxim of Thoreau which I furbish up for just such occasions. "A man sits as many risks as he runs," wrote that wanderer in the woods. Accordingly the next morning found me t

can continent. Ploughing through slush, the black rhododendron stems twisted around us like wet rubber, and the hollow green leaves funneled ice-water down our backs and into our ears. Breaking through the last of the thickets, we at length reached a little brook which ran along th

rge sticks. The fresh broken ends and the droppings on the cliff-side showed that it was a recent one. There were no signs of either of the birds. We solemnly removed our coats and sweaters and prepared for the worst. To me the cliff looked much li

this opportunity to tell me that the rare Allegheny cave-rat was found on this cliff, and nearly fell off his perch trying to point out to me a crevice where he had once seen the mass of sticks, stones, leaves, feathers, and bones with which these ver

d the precipice, managed to wriggle up in some miraculous way without slipping off. From the top of the tongue he clambered up to the niche where the nest was, call

counseled the Collector from a

and-hold on the slippery rock. After getting my breath, I managed to wriggle up through the crevice and lay safe on the top of the tongue. The niche above was not large enough for us both, so the Collector came down while I took his place. I was lashed by a freezing rain, my numb hands were cut and bleeding, and there were ten weary miles still ahead. Yet that mom

were probably those of a skunk. Inside, it had a little damp green moss; while the rim was made of green birch twigs bruised and hackled by the beaks of the builders. On this day, March 9, 1918, there were no eggs, although in a previous year the Collector had found two as early as February 25, when the cliffs were covered with snow; and on March 5, of another year he collected a full set of five fresh eggs, which I afterwards examined in his col

ix feet backwards to the shelf from which we started. As I looked down the cliff-side I decided to remain with the ravens. It was not until the Collector promised most solemnly to catch me, that I at last let

ector; "it's one of the

topped to rest at the foot, and I was just telling him that the Cornishmen hate the raven because to their ears he always cries "Corpse, corpse!" when suddenly the bird itself came back again. It flew across the valley and alighted on a t

s and a soar, and its long tail resembling that of a

rst raven while wandering through the mountains in the spring of 1909, and how he trailed and hunted and watched until, in 1910, he found the first nest. Since then he had found twelve. His system was a simple one. Selecting from a gazetteer a list of mountain villages with wild names, such as Bea

ago, when he suddenly became conscious that he was being followed by something or somebody. At a point where the trail doubled on itself, he ran back swiftly and silently, just in time to see a bay-lynx

o Mrs. McMahon's immaculate kitchen and were treated by the old couple like a pair of long-lost sons. In less than two minutes our waterlogged shoes were off, our wet coats and sogged sweaters spread out to dry, and we sat huddled over a glowing stove while Mrs. McMahon fried fish, made griddle-cakes, and brewed hot tea simultaneously and wi

flying over the valley, with its curious tossing, mounting flight, like a bunch of thistle-down. It differs from the more common horned, or shore, lark by havi

its head thought at first that it was a turkey buzzard, which southern bird, curiously enough, finds its way through the valleys up into these northern mountains. In fact, the Collector once found a buzzard's nest just across a ravine from the nest of a raven. Beyond the camp, on the other side of a rushing to

cent wild turkey hanging dead in a little apple tree; it had come to a miserable end by catching the toes of one foot in between two twigs in such a way that it could not release itself. The bright red color of its legs distinguished it from a tame turkey. The Collector co

f broad fields, swift streams, and leafless trees, flanked by dark belts of pines and hemlocks. Beyond the hills was raven-land, lonely, wind-swept, full of lavender an

arters of a century later, the wailing howl of a wolf-pack sounded outside his cabin, although wolves had been gone from the Valley for f

SHALL NEITHER LACK

Quiggle, who killed a maned panther one winter night, under the light of a wind-swept moon, with his famous gun, Black Sam. Over on Panther's Run not ten mil

e caw of a crow, a snatch of song-sparrow melody, the chirp of a robin, the fluted alto

's Gap, where local tradition hath it that the poet wooed, not unsuccessfully, a mountain girl, and wrote "The Raven" in her cabin. On the way to the Gap we heard and saw nineteen different kinds of birds, including siskin,

he ground, on a shelf protected by a protruding ledge, some ten feet down from the top of the cliffs. Rigging a rope to a tree, I managed to swarm up and look at last on the eggs of a Northern raven. They were three in number, a full clutch. The number ranges from three to five, very rarely six,

d near, giving only the hoarse "Crrruck." They have also a soft love-note, which cannot be heard fifty yards away and sounds something like the syllables "Ga-gl-gl-gli." As they soared near us, their plumage shone like black glass, and we could see the long tapered feathers of the neck swell whenever either of them croaked. They had a peculiar trick of gliding side by side and suddenly touching wings, overlapping each other for an

oss the forests and the ranges of hills, to where the ploughed fields began. Perhaps that poet whose heart-strings were a lute had looked f