[Illustration: A HAWK IN SIGHT]

A Year in the Fields

SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF JOHN BURROUGHS: WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY CLIFTON JOHNSON

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The Riverside Press, Cambridge

Copyright, 1875, 1877, 1879, 1881, 1886, 1894, and 1895, BY JOHN BURROUGHS.

Copyright, 1896 and 1901, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

_All rights reserved_

NOTE

Taking advantage of the opportunity afforded by the necessity for again reprinting _A Year in the Fields_, the publishers have added to the volume a biographical sketch of Mr. Burroughs and a number of new illustrations.

BOSTON, _September_, 1901.

CONTENTS

PAGE JOHN BURROUGHS: A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH vii I. A SNOW-STORM 1 II. WINTER NEIGHBORS 13 III. A SPRING RELISH 41 IV. APRIL 67 V. BIRCH BROWSINGS 85 VI. A BUNCH OF HERBS. FRAGRANT WILD FLOWERS 125 WEEDS 135 VII. AUTUMN TIDES 159 VIII. A SHARP LOOKOUT 179

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE A HAWK IN SIGHT _Frontispiece_ RIVERBY, MR. BURROUGHS'S HOME ON THE HUDSON viii "SLABSIDES" x TRACKS IN THE SNOW 2 THE STUDY 8 OUT FOR A WALK 14 THE OLD APPLE-TREE 18 WINTER AT RIVERBY ON THE HUDSON 26 WOOD FOR THE STUDY FIRE 38 AN EVENING IN SPRING 42 AT THE STUDY DOOR 50 A WOODLAND BROOK 62 AN APRIL DAY 70 THE HOME OF A SPIDER 86 A BIRD SONG 98 IN THE WOODS 122 PICKING WILD FLOWERS 134 A FLOWER IN A WOODLAND ROADWAY 146 A STALWART WEED 156 AMONG THE ROCKS 160 ON THE EDGE OF A CATSKILL "SUGAR BUSH" 166 A CATSKILL ROADWAY 182 BEECHNUTS 194 (Mr. Burroughs's Boyhood Home seen in the distance.) BY THE STUDY FIRE 206

Table of contents (by pages)

• 1: A Year in the Fields by John Burroughs
• 2: There were nine children in the Burroughs family
• 3: And it aroused in Burroughs a strong desire to enlist
• 4: Describing a snow storm in his time
• 5: Pipe the flakes a lively dance
• 6: And it seems indeed like cotton or wool
• 7: The earth is built upon crystals
• 8: Makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows
• 9: Every jay within hearing would come to the spot
• 10: The owl returned swiftly to his cavity
• 11: And thus attract the nuthatches
• 12: He would presently dart spitefully at her
• 13: Or else the yellow bellied woodpecker
• 14: In this respect resembling the grouse
• 15: When the woodpecker is searching for food
• 16: The nuthatches frequently pass the night in them
• 17: I am on the lookout for watercresses
• 18: Another punctual bird is the yellow redpoll warbler
• 19: Nor the anemone bloom ordinarily till that date
• 20: There are individual hepaticas
• 21: These membranous wrappings curl back
• 22: Undulating watercourses with a peculiar satisfaction
• 23: Perched along the marshes and watercourses
• 24: Its very snows are fertilizing
• 25: No matter what the almanac may say
• 26: The chewink and the brown thrasher
• 27: Randolph pronounced it a flycatcher
• 28: This bird is not properly a lark
• 29: Hemlock formerly enticed the lumberman and tanner
• 30: The Neversink lays open the region to the south
• 31: Every mountain has its steepest point
• 32: I first began to notice the wood thrush
• 33: But that the hermit thrush and the veery
• 34: They browsed on the low limbs and bushes
• 35: And loading heavily and firing at intervals
• 36: But I found only more alder swamp
• 37: Its appearance promised more trout than I found
• 38: Water thrush called also the New York water thrush
• 39: A fair string of trout for breakfast was my reward
• 40: Instantly plunged over the brink of the mountain
• 41: Fragrant pond lily with his own odorless Nymphaea alba
• 42: Calopogon Calopogon pulchellus
• 43: Like the English fragrant orchis
• 44: How fastidious and exclusive is the cypripedium
• 45: The seed lies dormant under the sward
• 46: Sandy margins and islands of the Esopus
• 47: Succory is one of Virgil's weeds also
• 48: Our fleabane is a troublesome weed at times
• 49: It is not a troublesome weed in cultivated crops
• 50: Purslane commonly called pusley
• 51: Illustration A STALWART WEED Most weeds have their uses
• 52: How suggestive this thistle down
• 53: And of the ripening of all forest fruits
• 54: In how many respects fall imitates or parodies the spring
• 55: Till the gossamer thread you fling
• 56: The red maple is the early astrachan
• 57: Near where the chipmunk has his den
• 58: It runs up or stays up and spawns in November
• 59: He has sowed himself broadcast upon it
• 60: It was the most portentous storm breeding sun I ever beheld
• 61: The diathesis is all important
• 62: The fittest with reference to position
• 63: There sat a frog the wood frog
• 64: Nature fills her baskets by the same sleight of hand
• 65: Says of the wasp that it carries spiders to its nest
• 66: And why should not the grasshopper
• 67: Some hepaticas are sweet scented and some are not
• 68: It is first cousin to the trilliums
• 69: Agassiz traces the glaciers like a rastreador
• 70: And ligature usage have been retained