i6 



HARDWICKKS SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



interest of little birds, may I add the word meat to 

 berries? For some years, in cold weather, I have 

 been in the habit of feeding little birds, and, in 

 addition to their breakfast of bread and corn, I give 

 them, as a standing dish a joint or two of beef, which 

 I hang in a tree well out of the way of cats. The 

 first supply of several pounds which I hung up at the 

 beginning of December, is now quite exhausted, 

 nothing being left but the bone. New Zealand 

 mutton is not dear at 7.\d. a pound, but meat as much 

 to the taste of my feathered guests may be had at 

 half that price. I fear birds have more enemies than 

 friends, but if only one friend in each parish would 

 feed them in this way a great number would be saved 

 from starvation in severe weather," 



Often in other days I have sat looking over the 

 restless waves of the sea surrounding Lundy, when 

 the birds had come in and the great gulls and Solan 

 geese were darting like rays of light over the water 

 below me, or soaring far above my head, and though 

 the musicaLnotes of the Crediton and Exeter lanes did 

 not fall in such rich variety on my ear, I watched 

 with keen interest the huge birds intent on their 

 business, untiring in their activity, and investing the 

 landscape and the sea-scape, which might otherwise 

 have been common-place enough, with a charm pecu- 

 liarly its own. Few birds are more majestic than the 

 Solan goose, which, in rapidly decreasing numbers, 

 breeds on Lundy — the lowest latitude, report says, 

 where it ijiakes its nest ; as it sails along over the 

 deep green waters, in the bright sunshine, it conveys 

 a sense of tremendous power, of lordly contempt for 

 space and time that makes feeble mortals envy it. 

 Half-an-hour and those powerful pinions would 

 traverse the distance from Lundy to Barnstaple, an 

 hour or a little more and its vast strength would bear 

 it to Cardiff or St. David's Cathedral : it is its own 

 express train, and, calm or windy, dark or clear, its 

 rapidity of flight and indifference to distance never 

 desert it. 



Only think of the keenness of observation and 

 acute intelligence of birds : watch them eating 

 crumbs scattered for them outside a window, and 

 then admit how frolicsome are their gambols, how 

 much character their conduct discloses. Fruit in 

 Chili and other parts of South America is reported to 

 have been in 1887, left entirely untouched by birds, 

 while the sheep and cattle which were imprudent 

 enough to feast upon it, paid with their lives for their 

 temerity. These facts rest upon the high authority of 

 the "Pacific Archives of Medicine and Surgery," 

 and prove that the unfailing instinct of birds with 

 respect to the wliolesomeness of fruit is, as Michelet 

 remarks, in his great work on birds, frequently an 

 excellent guide for human beings. It is possible, 

 though far from proved, that the peculiarities in the 

 fruit of different years may have something to do with 

 the outbreak and varying mortality of cholera 

 epidemics. 



We hardly understand, many of us, how supremely 

 happy and busy birds are. No human community is 

 more actively engaged ; no man or woman goes to work 

 with such merry voice and unaffected delight. It is 

 a sad thought that birds of prey, in the no doubt wise 

 economy of nature, destroy enormous numbers of 

 little songsters every year. It has been computed 

 that 20,000 sparrow-hawks live in the United 

 Kingdom ; if they, on the average, consume two 

 little birds a day apiece, not fewer than 14,000,000 

 are thus destroyed every year. That we cannot help, 

 but we can prevent the wanton and objectless 

 destruction of these little messengers of good and 

 peace. No fashion more hideous, more savouring of 

 savage instincts and barbarous tastes can be conceived 

 than adorning the hat, and fastening up the dress 

 with dead birds. Ostrich plumes are undoubtedly 

 most beautiful, and as they are now produced solely 

 for purposes of dress on the great ostrich farms of the 

 Cape, their use may pass without question, but to pin 

 on a goldfinch, a yellow-hammer, a robin — though 

 this atrocity I have never seen — a chaffinch, or a 

 green linnet, is enough to make us wonder if we are 

 more enlightened and refined than some Indian Brave 

 decorating his neck with a string of the formidable 

 claws of the grizzly bear. The great feature of bird- 

 life is its constant movement. Watch a bird hopping 

 across the lawn, mark its bright eye, observe its 

 graceful actions and jDerfect symmetry of form, and 

 then, when you have shot it and put a stop for ever 

 to the quick beatings of its happy little heart, go up 

 and look at the limp, tiny form lying still and bleeding 

 on the ground : The contrast is too painful to dwell 

 upon. It is more startling, because human life is 

 confessedly so full of sorrow, than seeing some 

 superbly proportioned and active man in the midst of 

 his labours, and soon after standing by his bedside 

 and gazing on the cold rigid face of death : all the 

 hopes and fears of life over : that marvellous mechan- 

 ism, the most perfect and complicated structure in the 

 world, out of gear, and the spirit that gave beauty 

 and interest to that glorious form and active mind 

 gone on its last long journey we know not where. 

 But the human being hopes that for him there remains 

 a hereafter, a country where, though work will never 

 cease, it will be less exhausting and worrying than 

 here : a land where there will be rest ; where, in short, 

 the weary struggler will find that peace which the 

 storm-tost soul of Dante sought in vain on earth. 

 The little bird may have no such future. His brief 

 existence perhaps ends here, and when his bright eye 

 dims and his warm heart becomes cold and still, his 

 enjoyment may be for ever over. Destroyed for the 

 good of man, killed to supply necessary food, less 

 objection may be made, but slaughtered to bedeck 

 the bonnets and hats of people who make themselves 

 hideous in consequence, who jjerchance have never 

 seen the bird at home in his early summer happiness, 

 who pay little heed to his fascinating ways, and care 



