File:Birds and nature (1907) (14750153472).jpg

Identifier: birdsnature51907chic (find matches)
Title: Birds and nature
Year: 1900 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Birds Natural history
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : A.W. Mumford, Publisher
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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g what damage theyhave sustained, for, of course, in spiteof the care of shipping, they are notas perfect as before they were caught,and there is a great deal of delicatework on them before they are readyfor exhibition or sale. Mounted, a drawer full of butter-flies is more beautiful than a collectionof precious gems, for, although manyof our native butterflies are exceed-ingly beautiful, they are not to becompared with the average of thosefrom India, China, and South America.In these dead, heavy black alternateswith brilliant crimson, yellow, andgold, livid greens and blues, and deep,rich garnet and purple, sometimes inbroad bands and blotches of glowingcolor, and in others in wonderfullydelicate and intricate traceries andpatterns. The texture of the wings isalso infinitely more beautiful than any-thing we have here, some of themhaving a heavy rich gloss that exceedsthat on the finest fabric that humanskill can produce, while others havethe deep changing lustre of gems orliquids. 24
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THE WHIPPOORWILL WHAT farm boy has not heard thisbirdless voice echoing from theghostly shades of the thicketclose at hand, or scarcely audi-able in the distance? Perhaps you haveheard it as you have passed betweenthe wood and the hill over there, com-ing clear from the wood but re-echoingfrom the hill only the shrill last sylla-ble. Farther away on the distant hill-top you may have taken this last sylla-ble for the piping of the salamander.The whippoorwill song belongs withthe early May moonlit balmy nights, be-fore the blossoms have lost their best per-fume and before farm work ^as becomea mere drudgery. It vividly recalls the merry Maybasket-ing frolics,, apparently so necessary toexistence on the farm; the fresh green,fields and woodland blossoms; the plant-ing season with all its hidden promises.There is, in the warble of the bluebird,glad promise of returning spring; andin the animated whistle of the phoebereiteration of the earlier promise; butthe whippoorwill tells of that del

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