5. Oats harvest arrives, and the fields are waving with yellow grain. Now
be wary, O kind-hearted cradler, and tread not into those pure white eggs
ready to burst with life! Soon there is a peeping sound heard, and lo! a
proud mother walketh magnificently in the midst of her children,
scratching and picking, and teaching them how to swallow. Happy she, if
she may be permitted to bring them up to maturity, and uncompelled to
renew her joys in another nest.

6. The assiduities of a mother have a beauty and a sacredness about them
that command respect and reverence in all animal nature, human or
inhuman--what a lie does that word carry--except, perhaps, in monsters,
insects, and fish. I never yet heard of the parental tenderness of a
trout, eating up his little baby, nor of the filial gratitude of a spider,
nipping the life out of his gray-headed father, and usurping his web.

7. But if you would see the purest, the sincerest, the most affecting
piety of a parent's love, startle a young family of quails, and watch the
conduct of the mother. She will not leave you. No, not she. But she will
fall at your feet, uttering a noise which none but a distressed mother can
make, and she will run, and flutter, and seem to try to be caught, and
cheat your outstretched hand, and affect to be wing-broken and wounded,
and yet have just strength to tumble along, until she has drawn you,
fatigued, a safe distance from her threatened children and the young hopes
of her heart; and then will she mount, whirring with glad strength, and
away through the maze of trees you have not seen before, like a close-shot
bullet, fly to her skulking infants,

8. Listen now. Do you hear those three half-plaintive notes, quickly and
clearly poured out? She is calling the boys and girls together. She sings
not now "Bob White!" nor "Ah! Bob White!" That is her husband's love call,