W. Hamilton Gibson

“ SILENTLY, like thoughts that come and go, the snow-flakes fall, each one a gem. The whitened air conceals all earthly trace, and leaves to memory the space to fill. I look upon a blank, whereon my fancy paints, as could no hand of mine, the pictures and the poems of a boyhood life; and even as the undertone of a painting, be it warm or cool, shall modify or change the color laid upon it, so this cold and frosty background through the window transfigures all my thoughts, and forms them into winter memories legion like the snow. ”

“ When the sad autumn days are upon us, when the dying leaves with ominous flush yield up their hold on life, and are borne to earth on wailing winds, and all nature seems filled with mocking phantoms of the summer’s life and loveliness; when we listen for the robin’s song and hear it not, or the thrush’s bell-like trill, and listen in vain; when we look into the southern sky and see the winged flocks departing behind the faded hills—it is at such a time, while the very air seems weighed with melancholy, that the snow-birds come with their welcome, twittering voices. ”

“ We know that this orchid is but the half of itself, as it were; that its color, its form, however eccentric and incomprehensible, its twisted inverted position on its individual stalk-like ovary, its slender nectary, its carefully concealed pollen—all are anticipations of an insect complement, a long-tongued night-moth perhaps, with whose life its own is mysteriously linked through the sweet bond of perfume and nectar, and in the sole hope of posterity. ”

“ We all know the nasturtium, but have we thought to ask it why these petals have such a deep crimson or orange colored spot, and why each one is so beautifully fringed at the edge of its stalk?
These are but a dozen of the millions of similar challenges, riddles, puzzles, which the commonest flowers of field and garden present to us; and yet we claim to "know" our nasturtium, our pink, our monk's-hood larkspur, our daisy, and violet!
No; we must be more than "botanists" before we can hope to understand the flowers, with their endless, infinite variety of form, color, and fragrance. ”

“ Around its borders a thicket of black alder grows, its close-clinging scarlet berries, half hid in summer by the overhanging foliage, now seen in all their brilliancy and profusion, the brightest touches of color in nature’s winter landscape.
Soon we are walking over the soft and silent carpet in the pine grove’s sombre shelter, stopping for one brief moment to listen to the sighing wind overhead, and to inhale one long and lasting whiff of the delicious invigorating aroma of the trees.
Once more out in the open, our attention is arrested by a little stain of blood upon the snow. ”

“ And who shall say that our pretty fay is a myth, or her magic wand a wild creation of the fancy? May we not see the wonder-workings of that potent wand on every hand, even though our fairy has eluded us while she cast the spell? There are a host of these wee fairies continually flitting about among the trees plotting all sorts of mischief and leaving an astonishing witness of their visitation in their trail as they pass from leaf to leaf or twig to twig. ”

“ When we consider the life of the cow-bird, how suggestive is this spectacle which we may see every year in September in the chuckling flocks massing for their migration, occasionally fairly blackening the trees as with a mildew, each one the visible witness of a double or quadruple cold-blooded murder, each the grim substitute for a whole annihilated singing family of song-sparrow, warbler, or thrush! ”

“ Five hundred feet below us, winding in and out, now beneath leafy tangles, now under quaint little bridges, and again reposing placidly in broad mill-ponds, the happy Shepaug lends to a lovely valley its usefulness and beauty. Turning in another direction, we pass the Snuggery ball-ground, animated with the shouts of victory; and descending into a vale of almost primeval wildness, we continue our way up the ascent of “Artist’s Hill,” from whose summit on every side, as far as the eye can reach, the landscape softens into the hazy horizon. ”

“ Our first capture of the fairy insect is always a memorable feat, with its lingering, odorous reminders, [123] which not even soap and hot water will entirely obliterate from our finger-tips. But why should we have caught her? What an opportunity we threw away in her capture! Why not, rather, have followed the gauzy sprite, and learned something of her ways, something of the mission she is performing as she flits from leaf to leaf? For this is no idle flight of the lace-wing fly as we see her in the summer meadow. ”

“ And in fulfilment of the cycle, February sees the swelling buds of willow, with their restless pussies eager for the spring, half creeping from their winter cells.
The October day is a dream, bright and beautiful as the rainbow, and as brief and fugitive. The same clouds and the same sun may be with us on the morrow, but the rainbow will have gone. There is a destroyer that goes abroad by night; he fastens upon every leaf, and freezes out its last drop of life, and leaves it on the parent stem, pale, withered, and dying. ”

“ Yes, manners, unquestionably—"bad manners," it would almost seem, in some instances, as, for example, in this andromeda blossom-bell, which, in its perfume and its nectar, deliberately invites the tiny Andrena bee, only to deluge its little, black, hairy face with a smothering shower of dusty pollen. A remarkable style of etiquette, surely, that is, from our human standpoint. But in the realm of Flora the standards of decorum, so far as greeting is concerned, are not governed by artificial whim. There is no "smart set" to dictate and set the fashion for others less smart to follow. ”

“ Even now, along the lichen-dappled wall upon the summit, I see the lingering strip of snow, gritty and speckled, and at its very edge, hiding beneath the covering leaves, those modest little faces looking out at me—faces which seemed to blush a deeper pink at their rude discovery. No other flower can breathe the perfume of the arbutus, that earthy, spicy fragrance, which seems as though distilled from the very leaf-mould at its roots. Often on this sunny slope, so sheltered by dense pines and hemlocks, have these charming clusters, pink and white, burst into bloom beneath the snow in March ”

“ UNDER the popular name of "locust," our cicada, or harvest-fly, has long enjoyed the reputation as our chief insect musician, vying with the katydid in the volume of its song. We all know its long, whizzing crescendo in the sultry summer days. But let us call things by their right names. This buzzing musician is not a locust; it is a cicada. The true locust is what we ordinarily call a grasshopper, that "high-elbowed grig" of the meadows, so generous with his "molasses," and with such a vigorous kick. ”

“ The bushes are now bare of fruit, but ruddy with their autumn blushes, tingeing the surface of the knoll with a delicate coral pink. This thicket extends far down upon the slope, even encroaching upon the wheel-ruts of the lane, and across again, until cut short by an ancient tumbling line of lichen-covered stones, a landmark which has long since yielded up its claim as a barrier of protection to the old orchard it encloses, now only a moss-grown pile, with every chink and crevice a nestling-place of some searching tendril, fern, or clambering vine. ”

“ What is the method of our spider? Ages before the advent of the human engineer he followed the same tactics which we now see him performing in every meadow, or even at our window-sill, or on the bouquet upon our table, linking flower with flower, window-sill with garden fence, bush with bush, tree with tree, with his glistening suspension-bridge spanning the stream, river, and meadow. ”

“ Although loving the cold, and choosing the winter season to be with us, the snow-birds cannot hold their own against the little hardy chickadee. Indeed, I sometimes think that this little frost-proof puff is happier and more sprightly in proportion as the cold increases, and that even the sight of a frozen thermometer would be, perhaps, an especial inspiration for his song. Not so the little snow-birds. When those raw and bitter winds sweep like a blight over the face of nature, their little song is frozen, and their familiar forms are seen no more. ”

“ These are the supreme moments of the spring, consecrated to the loves of bird and blossom. Every little winged form that scarcely bends the twig has its all-consuming passion, and every tree its wedding of the flower. Out in the orchard the apple-trees are laden in veritable domes of pink-white bloom, as if by the rare spectacle of a rosy fall of snow, and from among the dewy petals the army of bees give forth their low, continuous drone—that sympathetic chord in the universal harmony of spring. ”

“ We find a dazzling contrast; for in the sombre shadows of the pine-forest one readily forgets the month, or even the season. Here we approach a rippling trout-stream, and as we stop to rest upon its tottering bridge we look across a long brook meadow, where the asters screen the ground in mid-air in a purple sea—one of the rarest spectacles of autumn. But in this swamp lot there are presented a continual series of just such rich displays from spring-time till the winter. ”

“ Reaching the summit of this incline, we find ourselves on a hill-top wide and far-reaching, on right and left losing itself in wooded wold, while in front the level road diminishes to a point, surmounted by blue hills in the distance. Two miles on a pastoral hill-top, where golden-rod and tall spiræas cluster along the lichen-covered walls, where orange-lilies gleam among the alders, with now and then a blazing group of butterfly-plant or a dusty clump of milk-weed. The air is laden with the nut-like odor of the everlasting flowers all around us. ”