Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/320

306 night warbler the white-eyed vireo? not yet here.

April 8, 1854 At Nut Meadow Brook, saw or rather heard, a musk-rat plunge into the brook before me, and saw him endeavoring in vain to bury himself in the sandy bottom, looking like an amphibious animal. I stooped and taking him by the tail, which projected, tossed him ashore. He did n6t lose the points of the compass, but turned directly to the brook again, though it was toward me, and plunging in buried himself in the mud, and that was the last I saw of him. Saw a large bird sail along over the edge of Wheeler's cranberry meadow just below Fair Haven, which I at first thought a gull. But with my glass I found it appeared like a hawk and had a perfectly white head and tail, and broad black or blackish wings. It sailed and circled along over the low cliff and the crows dived at it in the field of my glass.I saw it well both above and beneath as it turned, and then it passed off to hover over the cliffs at a greater height. It was undoubtedly a white-headed eagle, though to the eye it was but a large hawk.

I find that I can criticise my composition best when I stand at a little distance from it, when I do not see it, for instance. I make a little chapter of contents which enables me to recall