serenade, singing now in a sweet, dreamy way, sounding just like a
ripple of moonlit water looks. This love-song of the goldfinch is the
climax of the summer's bird-song. If there were none other, the summer
would be worth while.

Dreamily sitting on a bare twig, the wood pewee is content. She has
raised her family, they are now able to get their own food. Though she
is worn and wasted since the spring, and may easily be told from her
husband, because he is handsome and well-groomed, yet is she content
to sit and wait for the food to come her way. Now she circles from her
perch and returns. Watching her catch an insect on the way, I hear the
sharp snap of her bill, as if two pebbles had been smartly struck
together.

* * * * *

Fanning the air with gauzy wings, the honey bee comes for a feast on
the flowers of the figwort. Visiting every open blossom, he loads up
with the honey and departs in a line for his hive. Bye-and-bye a
humble-bee wanders along, quickly finding that another has drained the
blossoms of their sweets. He passes on undismayed; there are more
flowers. Over by the wire fence the tick-trefoil, desmodium, is in its
glory. Its lower petal stands out like a doorstep, and on it the
humble-bee alights. Two little yellow spots, bordered with deep red,
show him where lies the nectar. Here he thrusts his head, forcing open
the wing petals from the standard. Instantly the keel snaps down as if
a steel spring had been released. The bee is dusted with pollen, which
he carries with him to fertilize another flower. How did the flower
learn to fashion that mechanism, to construct those highly colored
nectar-guides? How many centuries of accumulated intelligence or