Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/32

14 ond empty canoe with its nose against the bank.

This was on a Saturday. Saturday afternoon and Sunday are busy people's days in the woods. For their sakes I am always glad to meet them there—bird students, flower pickers, or simple strollers; yet I have learned to look upon those times as my poorest, and to choose others so far as I can. One does not enjoy nature to great advantage at a picnic. There are woods and swamps of which on all ordinary occasions I almost feel myself the owner, but of which on Saturday and Sunday I have scarcely so much as a rambler's lease. This I have learned, however,—and I pass the secret on,—that the Sunday picnic does not usually begin till after nine o'clock in the forenoon.

When bird study becomes more general than it is now, as it ought to do, the community will perhaps find means—or, to speak more correctly, will use means, since there is no need of finding them—to restrain the present enormous overproduction of English sparrows, and so to give cer-