In New England Fields and Woods

h winds toss days of bitter cold and days of genial warmth, now out of th

of the soft and feathery flakes that wavered down like white blossoms shed from the unseen bloom of some far-off upper

nto this later coarseness come of its base earthly association, with a grinding slump, as in l

of these returning exiles, not enemies now, but friendly messengers, bringing tidings of spring. You do not begrudge them the meagre feasts they find, the frozen apple still hanging, brown and

tionless, with the palpitating shadows of the crows plunging into them on this side, then, lost for an instant in the blue obscurity, then, emerging on that side with the same untiring beat of shado

fore it has time to leach, and in a little while gives you a surface most delightful to walk upon, and shortens distances to half what they were. It has lost its first pure whiteness wherewith n

t to them till you are offered a few yards of turf, laid bare by winds and sun, and then you realize that nothing is quite so good as the old stand-by, a naked ground, and crave more of it, even as this is, and hunger for it with its later garnishing of

l orchestra, and the jays are clamoring their ordinary familiar cries with occasional notes that you do not often hear. One of these is a soft, rapidly uttered cluck, the bird all the time dancing with his body, but not wit

of his preserves, but you are not likely to get more than a g

sible saw, but you are likelier to see him and mistake him for a

shreds of tree-moss and lichen, with heaps of cone scales,-the squirrel's kitchen middens,-the sign of a partridge's nightly roosting, similar

and leaves and red berries of wintergreen, as fresh as when the first snow covered them, a rusty trail of mayflowe

you can the odors of the pine and the hemlocks or the sweet fragrance of the boiling sap, coming from the sugar-maker's camp with a pungent mixture of wood-smoke. You are also made aware that the skunk has been abroad, that reynard is somewhere to windward, and by an undescribed, gene

melted snow, which bring the mirrored sky and its fleecy flocks of clouds, with treetops turned topsy-turvy, down into the bounds of fields. The broo

p of water where the muskrat may see the sun and the stars again. You hear the trump

olet banks, tempt forth the bees, but they find no flowers yet, not even a squirrelcup or willow catk

of the bluebird; the song sparrow trills his cheery melody; the first robin is announced