Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

On the other hand, the strongest trait of the wood-bred crow is his distrust of man. Instinct, if it works in the crow tribe, should certainly have implanted this distrust in the youthful heads of Box and Cox, but they showed nothing of the sort. And there you have the crow puzzle all over again, for the crow, wild or tame, is a puzzle. Half a hundred of them the other day were congregated about a wood road through the pines, yelling themselves hoarse in the wildest of excitement.

So interested were they that they took no notice of me when I approached, thinking that they had a hawk or owl at bay there and were harrying him. So I walked down the wood road right in amongst them. But there was neither hawk nor owl nor anything else there to account for their excitement. They tore about this empty space, cawing, fluttering, standing erect, alert, and quivering on a limb and gazing wildly at what seemed to be to them very real and very terrible. But it was nothing to me; I could not find so much as a chipmunk stirring there. After a little they chased this terrible nothing on down the road and then across lots into another part of the wood, leaving me gaping and in doubt whether they were just playing a game among themselves, all making believe they saw a monster where there was none, or whether they really could see some woodland bogle that was invisible to my dull eyes and were following him on his way.

Box and Cox may have been among them, and for all I know may later have told the crowd what a queer creature man is when you come to know him as foster-fathered crows have to.

INDEX

A

Acorns, 98, 99, 100

Admiral, red, 5

Alder, 177, 182

---- red-berried, 195

Angleworms, 160

Anosia plexippus, 117

Antiopa vanessa, 116

Apple blossoms, 119, 198

---- tree, 27, 135, 205

---- wild, 156

Arbor vitæ, 39

Aroostook war, 24

Ash tree, 96, 133

Aster, 114

Azalia, 166

B

Barberry, 184, 185

Bat, 76, 79, 82

Bayberry, 111

Bee, 10

Beech, 29

Birch, 29, 34, 35, 74, 75, 83, 92, 93, 126, 127, 133, 143, 165

---- C. T. U., 92, 94

Bittern, 60

Blackberry, 16

Blackbird, red-winged, 119, 178, 180, 182, 201

Blueberry, swamp, 164

Bluebird, 113, 212

Blue Hills, 110

Buck, 38

Buckthorn, 195

Butterfly, 5, 114, 117

---- admiral, red, 5

---- Anosia plexippus, 117

---- Antiopa vanessa, 116

---- Hunters’, 115

---- monarch, 114, 116, 117

---- painted lady, 5, 115

---- Pyrameis, 117

---- Pyrameis atalanta, 5

---- Pyrameis cardui, 5, 116

---- sulphur, 114