“Nature marches in procession, in sections, like the corps of an army. All have done much for me, and still do. But for the last two days it has been the great wild bee, the humble-bee, or “bumble,” as the children call him. As I walk, or hobble*, from the farm-house down to the creek, I traverse the before-mention’d lane, fenced by old rails, with many splits, splinters, breaks, holes, &c, the choice habitat of those crooning, hairy insects. Up and down and by and between these rails, they swarm and dart and fly in countless myriads. As I wend slowly along, I am often accompanied with a moving cloud of them. They play a leading part in my morning, midday or sunset rambles, and often dominate the landscape in a way I never before thought of—fill the long lane, not by scores or hundreds only, but by thousands. Large and vivacious and swift, with wonderful momentum and a loud swelling perpetual hum, varied now and then by something almost like a shriek, they dart to and fro, in rapid flashes, chasing each other, and (little things as they are,) conveying to me a new and pronounc’d sense of strength, beauty, vitality and movement. Are they in their mating season? or what is the meaning of this plenitude, swiftness, eagerness, display? As I walk’d, I thought I was follow’d by a particular swarm, but upon observation I saw that it was a rapid succession of changing swarms, one after another.” ~ Walt Whitman, Specimen Days. More Whitman in these e-leaves.
*After a paralytic stroke in 1873.
Whitman also notes the sounds of the grasshoppers, cicadas, katydids, and crickets. It was, after all, a world without the chemical warfare of herbicides/insecticides/fungicides, a world without hydrocarbon-based industrial farming. Insect life was unimaginably rich in comparison to the deserts we’ve made since.
People were proving their modern mettle, though: the last mass Passenger Pigeon hunts were in the 1870s and 1880s. The last great Bison slaughters were in the early 1870s.
***
In just the last couple days in the Republican assault on America:
EPA panel of industry shills advocating for more air pollution.
The nominee to head the Department of Interior works for poisoners.
White House foxes in charge of ethical chickens.
Garbage President of the white nationalists mocks asylum-seekers.
The unending lies of Donald Trump.
(Vicious and moronic son Don Don seems to have been unaware that Pulitzer Prizes have been granted to fiction for a century now.)
Backyard and Beyond 
Well said
On Sun, Mar 31, 2019 at 8:01 AM Backyard and Beyond wrote:
> mthew posted: “”Nature marches in procession, in sections, like the corps > of an army. All have done much for me, and still do. But for the last two > days it has been the great wild bee, the humble-bee, or “bumble,” as the > children call him. As I walk, or hobble*, from th” >