Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/287

Rh With them, I am pretty sure, came a goodly detachment of myrtle warblers (yellow-rumps), though the advance guards of that host (two birds were all that fell under my eye) were seen on the 18th of April. The great host is still to come; for the myrtles are a host,—a multitude that no man can number. As I listen to their soft, dreamy trill on these fair spring mornings, when the tall valley willows are all in their earliest green,—a sight worth living for,—I seem sometimes to be for the moment on the heights of the White Mountains. Well I remember how much I enjoyed their quiet breath of song on the snowy upper slopes of Mt. Moosilauke in May a year ago. For the myrtle, notwithstanding his name, is a great lover of knee-high spruces.

He is a lovely bird, wherever he lives, and it is good to see him flourish, though by so doing he forfeits the peculiar charm of novelty. Everything considered, I am bound to say, that is not so regrettable a loss. If he were as scarce as some of his relatives, every collector's hand would be against him. Czars and rare birds must pay the price.