somewhat like a hay-hook. I suspect it will be found there is really some advantage in large birds of passage flying in the wedge form and cleaving their way through the air,—that they really do overcome its resistance best in this way, and perchance the direction and strength of the wind determine the comparative length of the two sides. The great gulls fly generally up and down the river valley, cutting off the bends of the river, and so do these geese. They fly sympathizing with the river, a stream in the air, soon lost in the distant sky. If you scan the horizon at this season you are very likely to detect a flock of dark ducks moving with rapid wing athwart the sky, or see the undulating line of migrating geese.
Ball's Hill, with its withered oak leaves and its pines, looks very fair to-day, a mile and a half off across the water, through a very thin varnish or haze. It reminds me of the isle which was called up from the bottom of the sea and given to Apollo. How charming the contrast of land and water, especially where there is a temporary island in the flood with its new and tender shores of waving outline, so withdrawn, yet habitable; above all, if it rises into a hill high above the water, so contrasting with it the more, and, if that hill is wooded, suggesting wildness. Our vernal lakes have a beauty
