You are atop of your stump, when over the ridge you hear a slow, quiet rustle in the dead leaves--a skunk; then a slow, _loud_ rustle--a turtle; then a _quick_, loud--_one-two-three_--rustle--a chewink; then a tiny, rapid rustle--a mouse; then a long, rasping rustle--a snake; then a measured, galloping rustle--a squirrel; then a light-heavy, hop-thump rustle--a rabbit; then--and not once have you seen the rustlers in the leaves beyond the ridge; and not once have you stirred from your stump. Perhaps this understanding of the leaf-sounds might be called “interpretation”; but before you can interpret them, you must hear them; and no dozing, dreaming, fuddling sitter upon a stump has ears to hear. As you sit there, you notice a blue jay perched silent and unafraid directly over you--not an ordinary, common way for a blue jay to act. “Why?” you ask. Why, a nest, of course, somewhere near! Or, suddenly round and round the trunk of a large oak tree whirls a hummingbird. “Queer,” you say. Then up she goes--and throwing your eye ahead of her through the tree-tops you chance to intercept her bee-line flight--a hint! She is probably gathering lichens for a nest which she is building somewhere near, in the direction of her flight. A whirl! a flash!--as quick as light! You have a wonderful story! Now do not get the impression that all one needs to do in order to become acquainted with the life of the woods is to sit on a stump a long time, say nothing, and listen hard. All that is necessary--rather, the ability to do it is necessary; but in the woods or out it is also necessary to exercise common sense. Guess, for instance, when guessing is all that you can do. You will learn more, however, and learn it faster, generally, by following it up, than by sitting on a stump and guessing about it. At twilight, in the late spring and early summer, we frequently hear a gentle, tremulous call from the woods or from below in the orchard. “What is it?” I had been asked a hundred times, and as many times had guessed that it might be the hen partridge clucking to her brood; or else I had replied that it made me think of the mate-call of a coon, or that I half inclined to believe it the cry of the woodchucks, or that possibly it might be made by the owls. In fact, I didn’t know the peculiar call, and year after year I kept guessing at it. We were seated one evening on the porch listening to the whip-poor-wills, when some one said, “There’s your woodchuck singing again.” Sure enough, there sounded the tremulous woodchuck-partridge-owl-coon cry. I slipped down through the birches determined at last to know that cry and stop guessing about it, if I had to follow it all night.