The Spring of the Year

and mine and Kipling's and Mowgli the wolf-child's, whose running Kipling has told us about. Indeed,

shore" or up to the mountains to open his summer cottage; the farmer starts to break up the land for planting; the schoolchildren

oo, and is lengthening out his course, as if he hated to stop and go to bed at night. And the birds, that are supposed to go to bed m

m Nature in hi

icks (stirs) the

r unrest. Only one thing will do it (and I suppose we all should be glad), on

mething to do and somewhere to go. She is sick with this disease of spring. Follow her, keeping out of sight

he Fur Countries, just to build their nests and rear their young. A wonderful case of the spring running, you would say; and still more wonderful is the annual journey of the golden plover from

The cold-blooded fish feel the stirring; the spring running seizes them, and in they come through the pathless wastes of the ocean, waves of them, shoals of them,-sturgeon, shad, he

ut a century ago that men of Weymouth brought herring in barrels of water by ox-teams from Taunton River and liberated them in the pond at the head of Weymouth Back River. These fish laid their eggs

w they did, for still they are doing it after all these hundred years,-they came back up the river, when they were full-grown,-up th

e inexorable command of Hunger; but a greater than Hunger is in command of the forces of spring. Now our vast bird army of North America, five billion strong, is moving northward at the call of Home. And

llage by day to see the herring coming. The catfish would swim in from the Cohansey, through the sluices

-packed, pushing forward, all trying to break through the wooden wall that blocked their way. Slow, stupid things they looked; but was not each big cat head pointe

pulated that a number of the live herring, as many as several barrels full, should be helped over the dam each spring that they might go on up

helped to continue the line; but perhaps there was no need, for spring after spring they returned. They

atfish. It may be father, as in the case of Father Stickleback and Father Toadfish, who cares for the children. If it is-I take off my hat to him.

ur small scoop-net of coarse cheesecloth, or mosquito-netting, and go down to the pond this spring. Close along the margin you will see holes in the shallow w

ish with a flop, the family following in a fine, black cloud. The old fish will swim away, then come slowly back to the scattered swarm, to the little black things that look lik