with a compass, a hatchet, a pail, and a box with a piece of comb-honey
neatly fitted into it--any box the size of your hand with a lid will do
nearly as well as the elaborate and ingenious contrivance of the
regular bee-hunter--we sally forth. Our course at first lies along the
highway, under great chestnut-trees whose nuts are just dropping, then
through an orchard and across a little creek, thence gently rising
through a long series of cultivated fields toward some high, uplying
land, behind which rises a rugged wooded ridge or mountain, the most
sightly point in all this section. Behind this ridge for several miles
the country is wild, wooded, and rocky, and is no doubt the home of
many wild swarms of bees. What a gleeful uproar the robins,
cedar-birds, high-holes, and cow black-birds make amid the black
cherry-trees as we pass along. The raccoons, too, have been here after
black cherries, and we see their marks at various points. Several
crows are walking about a newly sowed wheat field we pass through,
and we pause to note their graceful movements and glossy coats. I have
seen no bird walk the ground with just the same air the crow does.
It is not exactly pride; there is no strut or swagger in it, though
perhaps just a little condescension; it is the contented, complaisant,
and self-possessed gait of a lord over his domains. All these acres
are mine, he says, and all these crops; men plow and sow for me, and I
stay here or go there, and find life sweet and good wherever I am.
The hawk looks awkward and out of place on the ground; the game birds
hurry and skulk, but the crow is at home and treads the earth as if
there were none to molest him or make him afraid.

The crows we have always with us, but it is not every day or every
season that one sees an eagle. Hence I must preserve the memory of one
I saw the last day I went bee-hunting. As I was laboring up the side
of a mountain at the head of a valley, the noble bird sprang from the