What then? I could scarcely strain the magnolia’s breath from the mingling odors if it were here, for the common air I breathe is the breath of blossoming clover, wild grape, elder, blackberry, rose, and azalea. I must almost smell them by _families_. For here are six wild roses perfuming my air, five viburnums, six dogwoods (these last quite lacking in perfume, be it said), and wild blackberries that I have never dared to number. Who wants to number them? to spend his June with a “plant analysis,” dissecting and keeping tally? It is enough now to be alive and out of doors among the flowers. Nor is it all of June to find thirty-six species of birds nesting within a radius of five hundred and fifty-five and one half feet from your _front_ door. I do not cite these figures in order to startle, but to suggest, if I might, the joyous medley of life in June, its variety and abundance. You may not be able to name all the warblers; you have never yet made out which is which among the dogwoods and viburnums; the dogwood flowers are all four-pointed stars, while the viburnums are all five-pointed. But what of it,—four or five, dogwood or viburnum! Here they are, banked in soft, snowy fragrance along the margin of the pond. A tiny nest swings from a fork among them, a tiny bird with a white ring around her eye broods and watches you drift past. You have a fish-pole, and all about you and within you is the June. [Illustration] X A Broken Feather ONE of the pair of crows that nest in my woodlot has been flying over all winter long with a gap in his right wing. Three at least of the large wing feathers are missing, and the result is a perceptible limp. The bird moves through the air with the list of a boat that has shifted or lost its ballast. Were he set upon in the air by a hawk, as might happen if he were smaller, the race would be short. He is plainly disabled by the loss of these three feathers, and has been for months. Just how and when the loss occurred I don’t know. It is likely, however, that the feathers were shot away in June,—in corn-stealing time. Now for nearly a year he has been hobbling about on one whole and one half wing, trusting to luck to escape his enemies, until he can get three new feathers to take the places of these that are missing.