Chariton courier. (Keytesville, Chariton County, Mo.) 1878-current, 1879-08-09

of love had just begun with him. His
song is marked by strength and anima-
ton, with slight plaintive tinge. A
friend tells me of one he used to hear
during the long summer days whose
song was peculiar, and sounded very
much like the words: " Three cheers
Three cheers! Good to eat! Good to
eat!"
Not less noticeable, and more plain
tive and sweet, is the chant of the little
bush or wood sparrow, the country
cousin of the trim little social sparrow,
less neatly dressed and combed than the
latter bird, but a nightingale beside it
in musical ability. 1t is one of the ear
liest songsters in spring, and one of the
latest in summer. With me 1t has but
few rivals in April, and it has none in
August. Its song is simple, child-like
strain, sweet and tender dirge. On
hearing it, the image it calls to mind is
that of the wavelets of a pool from a
fallen stone reversed, or running from
the circumference to the center. 1t has
circular eliminating character. 1t
begins slow, but high, and after few
notes runs rapidly to point.
Another midsummer songster is the
scarlet tanager, who, also, one may
hear in some localities in the high noon
of the dreamy August days. He likes
woods and mountain sides, and his song
may be heard a long distance.
The only fresh nests to be found after
midsummer are those of the cedar-bird
and gold-fnch, two winter birds that
delay their building till the height of
the season, in order to obtain certain
kinds of food for their young, the gold
finch relying mainly upon the seeds of
the thistle, and the cedar bird upon in
sects and berries. A late English writer
says the birds In that country do not
alight upon the thistle, but pluck its
down as they sweep by on the wing.
Our gold finch alights directly upon the
top of the prickly sheath that contains
the down and seeds, and tears it open
at leisure. So far as have observed,
no other bird feeds upon these seeds.
About this time the telegraph wires
a'ong the country roads are strung with
swallows, barn swallows and cliff swal-
lows, old and young, resting themselves,
and apparently chatting together about
the southern Journey they are so soon
to undertake. They have abandoned
their nests, and seem to have grown
sociable, and disposed to take life easy
for brief season, at least. In August
they are off.
The swift, or chimney swallow, never
perches like his congeners, not even
when gathering the dry twigs for his
nest; these he snips off the tops of dead
trees while on the wing; those little
black, wiry feet have never touched the
ground nor limb of tree.
The shy and enticiDg wood-f flowers are
gone; Flora no longer holds her court
in the sylvan aisles; go ye to the ponds
and to the languid water-courses and
behold the queen herself, the white
water-lily. 1t has taken all the power
and all the chemistry of the July
sun to evoke such beauty and purity
and fragrance from those black, Shiny
depths. There is something Egyptian
about this shower-something that sug-
gests Cleopatra and that wondrous East.
Its white sculpturesqueful beauty alone
would remind of Greece; but there is
the blackness, the Africa out of which
it springs, the richness of Niles floods,
and its basking, languid habits. 1t is not
a bit Saxon; it is Southern and Eastern.
The pure, cold-spring water of our
mountain lakes is uncongenial to it; but
dark, warm miasmatic waters suit it
best; at least it is the deep, dark, Shiny
silt and mud that are found in such
waters that it delights in. English trav-
elers have charged that American flow
ers are scentless; let them try this
water-lily, and then put their noses in
their own odorless synaphH1 alba.
There, by the haunts of the water-lily,
is the scarlet lobelia, another midsum-
mer flower, showing like a red-plumed
knight on the shore. The closed gen.
tian and fringed gentian come later,
and reward the walker in late August
and early September. The golden rod.
too-not ''forgotten by the bee," as one
of our poets sings, for the honey-bee
works upon one species at least-and
the blue and purple asters.
Indeed, the late summer has charms
of its own; and the spirit is less restless
and inquisitive than in the earlier sea.
son. 1t is time for hammoeks and for
lounging upon the dry sward under
trees, or drifting idly in your boat upon
the river. The great hawks sail round
and round, the birds gather in social
iocks, and there is no fret or hurry in
Nature. Christian Union.