This is like one of those Red-skin stories where the noble savages carry off a girl and the honest backwoodsman with his incomparable knowledge follows the track and reads the signs of her fate in a footprint here, a broken twig there, a trinket dropped by the way.

But once upon a time, bitterns nested in every pothole marsh and every streamside cattail patch from British Columbia to Newfoundland and from Florida to California.

Mr. Clinton's candidates, a veritable who's who of New York Democrats, include Carol Bellamy, the former City Council president; Sandra Feldman, head of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City, and Representative Gary L. Ackerman of Queens.

basis, oasis, thesis, stasis