When I was building, one of these had its
nest underneath the house, and before I
had laid the second floor, and swept out
the shavings, would come out regularly
at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at
my feet. It probably had never seen a
man before; and it soon became quite
familiar, and would run over my shoes
and up my clothes. It could readily
ascend the sides of the room by short 10
impulses, like a squirrel, which it re-
sembled in its motions. At length, as I
leaned with my elbow on the bench one
day, it ran up my clothes, and along my
sleeve, and round and round the paper 15
which held my dinner, while I kept the
latter close, and dodged and played at bo-
peep with it; and when at last Í held still
a piece of cheese between my thumb and
finger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in my 20
hand, and afterward cleaned its face and
paws, like a fly, and walked away.

A phoebe soon built in my shed, and a robin for protection in a pine which grew against the house. In June the partridge 25 (Tetrao umbellus), which is so shy a bird, led her brood past my windows, from the woods in the rear to the front of my house, clucking and calling to them like a hen, and in all her behavior proving her- 30 self the hen of the woods. The young suddenly disperse on your approach, at a signal from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them away, and they so exactly resemble the dried leaves and 35 twigs that many a traveler has placed his foot in the midst of a brood, and heard the whir of the old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls and mewing, or seen her trail her wings to attract his attention, 40 without suspecting their neighborhood. The parent will sometimes roll and spin round before you in such a dishabille, that you cannot, for a few moments, detect what kind of creature it is. The 45 young squat still and flat, often running their heads under a leaf, and mind only their mother's directions given from a distance, nor will your approach make them run again and betray themselves. You may even tread on them, or have your eyes on them for a minute, without discovering them. I have held them in my open hand at such a time, and still their only care, obedient to their mother 55 and their instinct, was to squat there without fear or trembling. So perfect is this instinct, that once, when I had laid ther

50

on the leaves again, and one accidentally fell on its side, it was found with the rest in exactly the same position ten minutes afterward. They are not callow like the 5 young of most birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. The remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects. The woods do not yield another such a gem. The traveler does not often look into such a limpid well. The ignorant or reckless sportsman often shoots the parent at such a time, and leaves these innocents to fall a prey to some prowling beast or bird, or gradually mingle with the decaying leaves which they so much resemble. It is said that when hatched by a hen they will directly disperse on some alarm, and so are lost, for they never hear the mother's call which gathers them again. These were my hens and chickens.

It is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free though secret in the woods, and still sustain themselves in the neighborhood of towns, suspected by hunters only. How retired the otter manages to live here! He grows to be four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps without any human being getting a glimpse of him. I formerly saw the raccoon in the woods behind where my house is built, and probably still heard their whinnering at night. Commonly I rested an hour or two in the shade at noon, after planting, and ate my lunch, and read a little by a spring which was the source of a swamp and of a brook, oozing from under Brister's Hill, half a mile from my field. The approach to this was through a succession of descending grassy hollows, full of young pitch-pines, into a larger wood about the swamp. There, in a very secluded and shaded spot, under a spreading white-pine, there was yet a clean firm sward to sit on. I had dug out the spring and made a well of clear gray water, where I could dip up a pailful without roiling it, and thither I went for this purpose almost every day in midsummer, when the pond was warmest. Thither too the wood-cock led her brood, to probe the mud for worms, flying but a foot above them down the

bank, while they ran in a troop beneath;
but at last, spying me, she would leave her
young and circle round and round me,
nearer and nearer till within four or five
feet, pretending broken wings and legs,
to attract my attention, and get off her
young, who would already have taken up
their march, with faint wiry peep, single
file through the swamp, as she directed.
Or I heard the peep of the young when I
could not see the parent bird. There too
the turtle-doves sat over the spring, or
fluttered from bough to bough of the soft
white-pines over my head; or the red
squirrel, coursing down the nearest bough, 15
was particularly familiar and inquisitive.
You only need sit still long enough in some
attractive spot in the woods that all its
inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you
by turns.

the board; while the stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, as 1 saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of several of his members. 5 They fought with more pertinacity than bull-dogs. Neither manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident that their battle-cry was Conquer or die. In the meanwhile there came along a single 10 red ant on the hill-side of this valley, evidently full of excitement, who either had despatched his foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle; probably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs; whose mother had charged him to return with his shield or upon it. Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He saw 20 this unequal combat from afar,- for the blacks were nearly twice the size of the red, he drew near with rapid pace till he stood on his guard within half an inch of the combatants; then, watching his opportunity, he sprang upon the black warrior, and commenced his operations near the root of his right foreleg, leaving the foe to select among his own members; and so there were three united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been invented which put all other locks and cements to shame. I should not have wondered by this time to find that they had their respective musical bands stationed on some eminent chip, and playing their national airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think of it, the less the difference. And certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers and for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight! Two killed on the patriots' side, and Luther Blanchard wounded! Why here every ant was a Buttrick,-' Fire! for God's sake fire!'- and thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was not one hireling there. I have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the results of this battle will be as important and memorable to those

I was witness to events of a less peaceful character. One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an 25 inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised 30 to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one 35 black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my woodyard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only battle-field which I 40 have ever witnessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every side they were en- 45 gaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast locked in each other's embraces, in a little sunny valley 50 amid the chips, now at noon-day prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to his adversary's front, and through all the tumblings on 55 that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the root, having already caused the other to go by

whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker Hill at least.

small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus, in which the small ones, being victorious, are said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of their giant 5 enemies a prey to the birds. This event happened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden.' The battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five

I took up the chip on which the three I have particularly described were struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the near fore-leg of his enemy, 10 years before the passage of Webster's

having severed his remaining feeler, his
own breast was all torn away, exposing
what vitals he had there to the jaws of
the black warrior, whose breastplate was
apparently too thick for him to pierce; 15
and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's
eyes shone with ferocity such as war only
could excite. They struggled half an
hour longer under the tumbler, and when
I looked again the black soldier had sev- 20
ered the heads of his foes from their
bodies, and the still living heads were
hanging on either side of him like ghastly
trophies at his saddlebow, still appar-
ently as firmly fastened as ever, and he 25
was endeavoring with feeble struggles, be-
ing without feelers and with only the rem-
nant of a leg, and I know not how many
other wounds, to divest himself of them;
which at length, after half an hour more, 30
he accomplished. I raised the glass, and
he went off over the window-sill in that
crippled state. Whether he finally sur-
vived that combat, and spent the re-
mainder of his days in some Hotel des 35
Invalides, I do not know; but I thought
that his industry would not be worth much
thereafter. I never learned which party
was victorious, nor the cause of the war;
but I felt for the rest of that day as if I 40
had my feelings excited and harrowed by
witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and
carnage, of a human battle before my door.

Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles
of ants have long been celebrated, and the 45
date of them recorded, though they say
that Huber is the only modern author who
appears to have witnessed them. Æneas
Sylvius,' say they, after giving a very
circumstantial account of one contested 50
with great obstinacy by a great and small
species on the trunk of a pear tree,' adds
that "This action was fought in the pon-
tificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the
presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an emi- 55
nent lawyer, who related the whole history
of the battle with the greatest fidelity.'
A similar engagement between great and

Fugitive-Slave Bill.

Many a village Bose, fit only to course a mud-turtle in a victualling cellar, sported his heavy quarters in the woods, without the knowledge of his master, and ineffectually smelled at old fox burrows and woodchucks' holes; led perchance by some slight cur which nimbly threaded the wood, and might still inspire a natural terror in its denizens; now far behind his guide, barking like a canine bull toward some small squirrel which had treed itself for scrutiny, then, cantering off, bending the bushes with his weight, imagining that he is on the track of some stray member of the jerbilla family. Once I was surprised to see a cat walking along the stony shore of the pond, for they rarely wander so far from home. The surprise was mutual. Nevertheless the most domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there than the regular inhabitants. Once, when berrying, I met with a cat with young kittens in the woods, quite wild, and they all, like their mother, had their backs up and were fiercely spitting at me. A few years before I lived in the woods there was what was called a 'winged cat' in one of the farm-houses in Lincoln nearest the pond, Mr. Gilian Baker's. When I called to see her in June, 1842, she was gone a-hunting in the woods, as was her wont (I am not sure whether it was a male or female, and so use the more common pronoun), but her mistress told me that she came into the neighborhood a little more than a year before, in April, and was finally taken into their house, that she was of a dark brownish-gray color, with a white spot on her throat, and white feet, and had a large bushy tail like a fox; that in the winter the fur grew thick and flatted out along her sides, forming strips. ten or twelve inches long by two and a half wide, and under her chin like a muff,

the upper side loose, the under matted like
felt, and in the spring these appendages
dropped off. They gave me a pair of her
wings,' which I keep still. There is no
appearance of a membrane about them.
Some thought it was part flying-squirrel
or some other wild animal, which is not
impossible, for, according to naturalists,
prolific hybrids have been produced by the
union of the marten and domestic cat. 10
This would have been the right kind of
cat for me to keep, if I had kept any; for
why should not a poet's cat be winged as
well as his horse?

15

In the fall the loon (Colymbus glacialis) came, as usual, to molt and bathe in the pond, making the woods ring with his wild laughter before I had risen. At rumor of his arrival all the Mill-dam sportsmen are on the alert, in gigs and on foot, two by 20 two and three by three, with patent rifles and conical balls and spy-glasses. They come rustling through the woods like autumn leaves, at least ten men to one loon. Some station themselves on this 25 side of the pond, some on that, for the poor bird cannot be omnipresent; if he dive here he must come up there. But now the kind October wind rises, rustling the leaves and rippling the surface of the 30 water, so that no loon can be heard or seen, though his foes sweep the pond with spy-glasses, and make the woods resound with their discharges. The waves generously rise and dash angrily, taking sides 35 with all waterfowl, and our sportsmen must beat a retreat to town and shop and unfinished jobs. But they were too often successful. When I went to get a pail of water early in the morning I frequently 40 saw this stately bird sailing out of my cove within a few rods. If I endeavored to overtake him in a boat, in order to see how he would manoeuver, he would dive and be completely lost, so that I did not 45 discover him again, sometimes, till the latter part of the day. But I was more than a match for him on the surface. He commonly went off in a rain.

dived, but when he came up I was nearer than before. He dived again, but I miscalculated the direction he would take, and we were fifty rods apart when he came 5 to the surface this time, for I had helped to widen the interval; and again he laughed loud and long, and with more reason than before. He manoeuvered so cunningly that I could not get within half a dozen rods of him. Each time, when he came to the surface, turning his head this way and that, he coolly surveyed the water and the land, and apparently chose his course so that he might come up where there was the widest expanse of water and at the greatest distance from the boat. It was surprising how quickly he made up his mind and put his resolve into execution. He led me at once to the widest part of the pond, and could not be driven from it. While he was thinking one thing in his brain, I was endeavoring to divine his thought in mine. It was a pretty game, played on the smooth surface of the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly your adversary's checker disappears beneath the board, and the problem is to place yours nearest to where his will appear again. Sometimes he would come up unexpectedly on the opposite side of me, having apparently passed directly under the boat. So long-winded was he and sc unweariable, that when he had swum farthest he would immediately plunge again, nevertheless; and then no wit could divine where in the deep pond, beneath the smooth surface, he might be speeding his way like a fish, for he had time and ability to visit the bottom of the pond in its deepest part. It is said that loons have been caught in the New York lakes eighty feet beneath the surface, with hooks set for trout, though Walden is deeper than that. How surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly visitor from another sphere speeding his way amid their schools! Yet he appeared to know his course as surely underwater as on the surface, and swam much faster there. Once or twice I saw a ripple where he approached the surface, just put his head out to reconnoiter, and instantly dived again. I found that it was as well for me to rest on my oars and wait his reappearing as to endeavor to calculate where he would rise; for again and again, when I was straining my eyes over the surface one way, I would suddenly be startled by

As I was paddling along the north shore 50 one very calm October afternoon, for such days especially they settle on to the lakes, like the milkweed down, having looked in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly one, sailing out from the shore 5 toward the middle a few rods in front of me, set up his wild laugh and betrayed himself. I pursued with a paddle and he

-

the middle of Waldon I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.

CONCLUSION

To the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change of air and scenery. Thank 10 Heaven, here is not all the world. The buck-eye does not grow in New England, and the mocking-bird is rarely heard here. The wild-goose is more of a cosmopolite than we; he breaks his fast in Canada, takes a luncheon in the Ohio, and plumes himself for the night in a southern bayou. Even the bison, to some extent, keeps pace with the seasons, cropping the pastures of the Colorado only till a greener and sweeter grass awaits him by the Yellowstone. Yet we think that if rail-fences are pulled down, and stone-walls piled up on our farms, bounds are henceforth set to our lives and our fates decided. If you are chosen town-clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer: but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless. The universe is wider than our views of it.

his unearthly laugh behind me. But why,
after displaying so much cunning, did he
invariably betray himself the moment he
came up by that loud laugh? Did not his
white breast enough betray him? He was 5
indeed a silly loon, I thought. I could
commonly hear the plash of the water
when he came up, and so also detected
him. But after an hour he seemed as
fresh as ever, dived as willingly and swam
yet farther than at first. It was surpris-
ing to see how serenely he sailed off with
unruffled breast when he came to the sur-
face, doing all the work with his webbed
feet beneath. His usual note was this 15
demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that
of a water-fowl; but occasionally, when he
had balked me most successfully and come
up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn
unearthly howl, probably more like that 20
of a wolf than any bird; as when a beast
puts his muzzle to the ground and deliber-
ately howls. This was his looning,-per-
haps the wildest sound that is ever heard
here, making the woods ring far and wide. 25
I concluded that he laughed in derision of
my efforts, confident of his own resources.
Though the sky was by this time overcast,
the pond was so smooth that I could see
where he broke the surface when I did 30
not hear him. His white breast, the still-
ness of the air, and the smoothness of the
water were all against him. At length,
having come up fifty rods off, he uttered
one of those prolonged howls, as if call- 35
ing on the god of loons to aid him, and
immediately there came a wind from the
east and rippled the surface, and filled
the whole air with misty rain, and I was
impressed as if it were the prayer of the
loon answered, and his god was angry
with me; and so I left him disappearing
far away on the tumultuous surface.

For hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold 45 the middle of the pond, far from the sportsmen; tricks which they will have less need to practise in Louisiana bayous. When compelled to rise they would sometimes circle round and round and over the 50 pond at a considerable height, from which they could easily see to other ponds and the river, like black motes in the sky; and, when I thought they had gone off thither long since, they would settle down by a slanting flight of a quarter of a mile on to a distant part which was left free; but what beside safety they got by sailing in

55

Yet we should oftener look over the tafferel of our craft, like curious passengers, and not make the voyage like stupid sailors picking oakum. The other side of the globe is but the home of our correspondent. Our voyaging is only greatcircle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. One hastens to Southern Africa to chase the giraffe; but surely that is not the game he would be after. How long, pray, would a man hunt giraffes if he could? Snipes and woodcocks also may afford rare sport; but I trust it would be nobler game to shoot one's self.

'Direct your eye right inward, and you'll
find

A thousand regions in your mind
Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be
Expert in home-cosmography.'

What does Africa - what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find?