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[Illustration]




                                OUTINGS
                              AT ODD TIMES

                                   BY

                        CHARLES C. ABBOTT, M. D.

              AUTHOR OF A NATURALIST’S RAMBLES ABOUT HOME,
                        DAYS OUT OF DOORS, ETC.

                             [Illustration]

                                NEW YORK
                        D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
                                  1890




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                            COPYRIGHT, 1890,
                      BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.




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                               PREFATORY.

                                -------




                      Nature, and Books about it.


Often, during a long and dusty walk in midsummer, I have chanced
suddenly upon a wayside spring, and stooping drank directly from the
bosom of Mother Earth. Filled with the pleasant recollections of such
moments, how tame is all other tipple, even though the crystal is a
marvel of art, with “beady bubbles winking at the brim”!

So, too, I find it with matters of graver import. I would that no one
should aid me in gathering my stores, but with my own hands I would
delve at the fountain-head. The spirit of such an aim is a spur to
youth, but becomes a source of amusement rather than a more serious
matter in our maturer years. I am more than willing now to take nature
at second hand. But is this safe? How far can we trust another’s eyes,
ears, and sense of touch and smell? There are critics scattered as
thickly as motes in a sunbeam, veritable know-alls, who shriek “Beware!”
when nature is reported; but, for all this, outdoor books are very
tempting to a host of people, and in the long run educate rather than
misinform. That ever two naturalists should wholly agree, after careful
study of an animal, is not probable. There will be the same differences
as exist between two translations of the same book. What a crow, a
mouse, or a gorgeous cluster of blooming lotus is to me, these will
never be to another; but, because of this, do not persist that your
neighbor is blind, deaf, or stupid. I recently had a horse ask me to let
down the bars; to another it would have been merely the meaningless fact
that the horse neighed.

Having an outdoor book in hand, when and how should it be read? It is no
doubt very tempting to think of a shady nook, or babbling brook, or
both, in connection with the latest outdoor volume. Possibly, as you
start out for a quiet day, you string together a bit of rhyme concerning
the book, as Leigh Hunt did and others have done since. It is a common
practice to carry a book into the fields, but not a logical one. How can
a book, even one of outdoor topics, compete with Nature? Certainly if
Nature is to the reader but a convenient room, a lighter and more airy
one than any at home, does it not signify a serious lack in the mind of
that person? From a notice of a recent publication I clip the following:
“A capital book to slip into one’s pocket when taking an outing.” If,
because of its size, it could be readily slipped into one’s pocket, then
it was a capital way of getting rid of it. What sort of an outing can
one have who reads all the while? Is not the cloud-flecked sky something
more than a ceiling, the surrounding hills more than mere walls, the
grass and flowers more than carpet? There is one pleasure even greater
than that of reading, and that is being out of doors. To read at such a
time seems to imply one of two things: either that the reader knows
Nature thoroughly, or is indifferent to such knowledge. The former
phenomenon the world has never seen; the latter, to speak mildly,
deserves our pity. To escape ridicule, which is something, to insure
happiness, which is more, to avoid great dangers, which is of even
greater importance, one must know something of Nature. In one sense she
is our persistent foe. She mantles with inviting cover of rank grass her
treacherous quicksands; she paints in tempting colors her most poisonous
fruits; she spreads unheralded the insidious miasma from the meadow and
the swamp; but neither the quicksand, the unwholesome fruit, nor noxious
vapors is an unmixed evil. Let us take them as they are, see them as
parts and parcels of a complete whole, and each hour of every outing is
an unclouded joy. Nature never excuses our ignorance.

Whatever one’s position in life, does a knowledge of Nature prove
unneeded? Should we not know that potatoes grow beneath the sod, as well
as apples grow upon trees? Gather a crowd at random on the streets, or
corner a half-dozen at some social gathering, and how many can tell you
the life-history of a mushroom or a truffle? “Do potatoes grow upon
bushes?” was asked not long since. This was positively painful, but
worse things have happened. A young lady, from a city renowned for its
schools, startled her country cousins by asking, while toying with an
ear of corn, “Which end, when you plant, do you put in the ground, the
blunt or the pointed one?” If botany is impracticable in the curriculum
of the public schools, ought not, at least, the natural history of our
common articles of food to be taught? Can not such ignorance as this
implied be banished from the land?

But I have wandered; let us come back to books. If books, even those
descriptive of nature, are out of place in the woods, meadows, or by the
brook-side, when should they be read? Clearly, when the scenes they
treat of are not accessible. Why should we be entertained with a
description of a bird or flower, when they are both before us? It seems
incredible that any one should be better pleased with another’s
impressions, however cunningly told, than with those of his own senses.
It is a strange mental condition that can delight in the story of a
bird, and yet have no desire to see the creature; to be a witness to all
the marvelous cunning that this bird exhibits. Few are those among us
whose outings cover a lifetime; and when the happy days of freedom come
to us, let books be kept behind, and with untrammeled eyes and ears let
us drink in the knowledge that comes to us at no other time. Summer is
all too short a season for other occupation than enthusiastic
sight-seeing and sound-hearing.

Long before autumn most of us must be back to the busy town. Business
demands our work-day hours; and now, during the leisure of long winter
evenings, with what delight one may recall vacation-days, reading
outdoor books! The library now becomes the mountain, lake, or river.
With Thoreau, Burroughs, or Jeffries at hand, one can hear the summer
birds in the shrill whistle of the wind, and the babbling of summer
brooks in the rattle of icy rain.

For permission to reprint, in this collected form, the brief essays here
brought together, the author is indebted to Messrs. Harper & Bros., D.
Appleton & Co., the editors of the Christian Union, Christian at Work,
and of Garden and Forest, of New York; and to the editor of the
American, of Philadelphia Pa.

                                                C. C. A.

               TRENTON, NEW JERSEY, _September 1, 1890_.




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                               CONTENTS.


                          _PART I.—IN WINTER._
                                                   PAGE
                 A WINTER SUNRISE                     1
                 MIDWINTER MINSTRELSY                 8
                 A COLD WAVE                         14
                 THE WOODS IN WINTER                 22
                 OLD ALMANACS                        29
                 A QUAKER CHRISTMAS                  41
                 A NEW PLACE TO LOAF                 46
                 ROUND ABOUT A SPRING IN WINTER      51
                 A BAY-SIDE OUTING                   60
                 FREE FOR THE DAY                    66
                 AN OPEN WINTER                      82
                 A FOGGY MORNING                     89
                 THE OLD FARM’S WOOD-PILE            96

                         _PART II.—IN SPRING._

                 THE APRIL MOON                     105
                 CONCERNING SMALL OWLS              111
                 A HIDDEN HIGHWAY                   117
                 WEATHERCOCKS                       127
                 APPLE-BLOSSOMS                     133
                 THE BUILDING OF THE NEST           139
                 A MEADOW MUD-HOLE                  147
                 AN OPEN WELL                       164

                         _PART III.—IN SUMMER._

                 A NOISOME WEED                     171
                 A WAYSIDE BROOK                    178
                 WAYSIDE TREES                      183
                 SKELETON-LIFTING                   186
                 WHY I PREFER A COUNTRY LIFE        190
                 A MIDSUMMER OUTING                 197
                 A WORD ABOUT KNOWLEDGE             203
                 THE NIGHT-SIDE OF NATURE           207
                 THE HERBS OF THE FIELD             215

                         _PART IV.—IN AUTUMN._

                 A LAKE-SIDE OUTING                 221
                 DEW AND FROST                      227
                 A HERMIT FOR THE DAY               232
                 SNOW-BIRDS                         243
                 BLUE JAYS                          249
                 THE GROWTH OF TREES                257
                 FOSSIL MAN IN THE DELAWARE VALLEY  260

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                                PART I.

                               IN WINTER.

                                -------




                           A Winter Sunrise.


The waning moon was scarcely visible in the western sky and not a star
shone overhead, when I ventured out of doors, at the call of the
gathering crows. These noisy scavengers of the river’s shore had
evidently slept with one eye open, and at the first faint glimmering of
the dawn signaled, in no uncertain tones, the coming day. Across the
brown meadows floated their clamorous cries and roused me when my own
slumber was most profound; but I responded promptly, willing at least,
if not wildly anxious, to witness a winter sunrise.

I have said the meadows were brown; such was their color when I saw them
last; but now, every wrinkled blade of last year’s grass was daintily
feathered with pearly frost. A line, too, of steel-gray crystals topped
every rail of the old worm fence, and capped the outreaching branches of
the scattered trees. The glint of splintered glass filled the landscape.

Knowing the view would there be least obstructed, I walked leisurely to
a high knoll in the lower meadows, leaving a curiously dark streak
behind me where I brushed away the frost as I passed. Not a bird greeted
me. The sparrows and chickadees of yesterday were still asleep. The
crackling of brittle twigs beneath my feet was the only sound I heard,
save, of course, the blended voices of the distant crows. The
brightening of the eastern sky proceeded slowly. Cloud above cloud
threatened to shut out the light until the day had well advanced; while
from the river rose a filmy bank of smoke-like fog that settled in huge
masses over the intervening marshes. But still the crows were clamorous,
and I had been told that their songs at sunrise augured a fair day; so,
’twixt hope and fear, I reached the high knoll in my neighbor’s meadow.
It was at the nick of time. Without a heralding ray in the whole
horizon, a flood of rosy light leaped through a rift in the clouds and
every cold gray crystal of the frost glowed with ruddy warmth. Then
deafening loud was the din of the foraging crows, as though they exulted
at the fullfillment of their prediction; and from that moment on, the
day was beautiful.

And if crows could be so enthusiastic over a bright winter day, why not
other birds? What of that host of arctic finches that tarry with us
until spring? I listened in vain for the foxie sparrow’s warble, the
call of the Peabody bird, and whistling of the purple finch. These were
all here yesterday and making merry; now every one was mute. The
ceaseless cawing of the c