We who write about nature pick out, I suspect, only the rare moments when we have had glimpses of her, and make much of them. Our lives are dull, and our minds crusted over with rubbish like those of other people. Then writing about nature, as about most other subjects, is an expansive process; we are under the law of evolution; we grow the germ into the tree; a little original observation goes a good way. Life is a compendium. The record in our minds and hearts is in shorthand. When we come to write it out, we are surprised at its length and significance. What we feel in a twinkling it takes a long time to tell to another. When I pass along by a meadow in June, where the bobolinks are singing and the daisies dancing in the wind, and the scent of the clover is in the air, and where the boys and girls are looking for wild strawberries in the grass, I take it all in in a glance, it enters swiftly through all my senses; but if I set about writing an account of my experience for my reader, how long and tedious the process, how I must beat about the bush! And then, if I would have him see and feel it, I must avoid a point-blank description and bring it to him, or him to it, by a kind of indirection, so as to surprise him and give him more than I at first seemed to promise. To a countryman like myself the presence of natural objects, the open face of the country, sheds a cheering and soothing influence at all times; but it is only at rare intervals that he experiences the thrill of a fresh impression. I find that a kind of preoccupation, as the farmer with his work, the angler with his rod, the sportsman with his gun, the walker with his friend, the lounger with his book, affords conditions that are not to be neglected. So much will steal in at the corners of your eyes; the unpremeditated glance, when the mind is passive and receptive, often stirs the soul. Upon whom does the brook make such an impression as upon the angler? How he comes to know its character! how he studies its every phase! how he feels it through that rod and line as if they were a part of himself! I pity the person who does not get at least one or two fresh impressions of the charm and sweetness of nature in the spring. Later in the season it gets to be more of an old story; but in March, when the season is early, and in April, when the season is late, there occasionally come days which awaken a new joy in the heart. Every recurring spring one experiences this fresh delight. There is nothing very tangible yet in awakening nature, but there is something in the air, some sentiment in the sunshine and in the look of things, a prophecy of life and renewal, that sends a thrill through the frame. The first sparrow's song, the first robin's call, the first bluebird's warble, the first phœbe's note—who can hear it without emotion? Or the first flock of migrating geese or ducks—how much they bring north with them! When the