“But why so much excitement over a family of woodpeckers?” some reader may be asking. Rarity, my friend; rarity and brilliant feathers. So far as appears from the latest catalogue of Massachusetts birds, this Newton nest is one of a very small number ever found in the State, and the very first one ever recorded from the eastern half of it.[2] Put that fact with the further one that the birds are among the showiest in North America, real marvels of beauty,--splendid colors, splendidly laid on,--and it is plain to see why a city full of nature lovers should have welcomed this pair with open arms and watched over their welfare as one watches over the most honored of guests. For my part, I should not think it inappropriate if the mayor were to order the firing of a salute and the ringing of bells on the happy morning when the young birds take wing. Tons of gunpowder have been burnt, before now, with less reason. LATE SUMMER NOTES On this bright morning I am passing fields and kitchen gardens that I have not seen since a month ago. Then the fields were newly mown stubble-fields, such as all men who knew anything of the luxury of a bare-footed boyhood must have in vivid remembrance. (How gingerly, with what a sudden slackening of the pace, we walked over them, if circumstances made such a venture necessary,--in pursuit of a lost ball, or on our way to the swimming-hole,--setting the foot down softly and stepping high! I can see the action at this minute, as plainly as I see yonder fence-post.) Now the first thing that strikes the eye is the lively green of the aftermath. It looks as soft as a velvet carpet. I remember what I used to hear in haying time, that cattle like the second crop best. I should think they would. Grass is man’s patient friend. Directly or indirectly, we may say, he subsists upon it. Nay, the Scripture itself declares as much, in one of its most familiar texts. It is good to see it so quick to recover from the cruel work of the scythe, so responsive to the midsummer rains, its color so deep, its leaves so full of sap. It is this spirit of hopefulness, this patience under injury, that makes shaven lawns possible. As to the beauty of grass, no man appreciates it, I suppose, unless he has lived where grass does not grow. “When I go back to New England,” said an exile in Florida, “I will ask for no garden. Let me have grass about the house, and I can do without roses.” The century ends with an apple year; and every tree is in the fashion. The old, the decrepit, the solitary, not one of them all but got the word in season; as there is no woman in Christendom but learns somehow, before it is too late, whether sleeves are to be worn loose or tight. Along the roadside, in the swamp, in the orchard, everywhere the story is the same. Apple trees are all freemasons. This hollow shell of a trunk, with one last battered limb keeping it alive, received its cue with the rest.