THE YOUTH OF BIRDS. 171 



first dawnings of our memories, if we are country-bred, is connected with 

 this subject. What boy can remember anything much earlier in his asso- 

 ciations of ideas, than the delight with which he pounced upon some luck- 

 less Hedge-Sparrow's nest, or saw for the first time a Swallow bringing 

 mud under the veranda. But these memories are connected with strings 

 of eggs and pretty nests, and fall far short in interest of the hatching of 

 the eggs, and experience soon teaches the veriest urchin that when he sees 

 the eggs look glossy, there is no more "blowing" for him, for they are 

 '^set-hard," and . very few ever think of taking a nest with young ones, 

 unless it be to rear up, which is usually done by placing them, nest and 

 all, in a small cage at the spot where they were hatched, and the old 

 birds come and feed them. 



So impressed was I, in ray young tender-hearted days, with the cruelty 

 of taking young biids, that I remember crying as if my heart would break, 

 when I saw a village boy commit the unworthy act, and witnessed the 

 agony of the poor little parents. It was a Greenfinch's nest, and the young 

 were taken for mere wantonness, and soon perished miserably, after they 

 had served for the sport of an hour. If birds are a nuisance, and must 

 be destroyed, let it be done at once, but let us not torture them unne- 

 cessarily by wounding them in the tenderest point, in which, for the time 

 at least, it is evident their sensibilities are equal to our own! 



Now, in the human subject, youth and maturity differ so little that they 

 would not be thought for a moment to belong to distinct races of beings, 

 though of the same genus, but this is by no means the case with birds, 

 and it needs but a single illustration to shew this. — Look at the young of 

 the Redbreast, and tell me if an uninitiated person, who had never seen 

 one before, would identify it with the parent bird. Just the case with 

 the Cuckoo; would any one take him to be the offspring of the well-known 

 harbinger of spring? — assuredly they would not; and if this holds good, 

 as it does with many of our land- birds, how much more with those whose 

 home is on the waters; here even a good ornithologist may fail, unless he 

 has personal experience in the matter; in fact, until a bird is several months 

 old, unless in the case of our summer visitants, he can hardly be said to 

 bear anything like a close resemblance to his parents. There is certainly 

 this analogy between birds and human creatures, that both in youth more 

 resemble the mother. Thus Pheasants, Grouse, Ducks of various kinds, 

 and many other water-fowl, and numerous other species, take a nice ob- 

 server to distinguish the young cock birds for a long time after they fly, 

 and we know very well that were it not for the turned-up hat amongst 

 young children, we should be puzzled to find out the boys sometimes. 

 Amongst the water-fowl indeed, until the plumage appears, they are abso- 

 lutely undistinguishable. Between land and water-birds there is this great 



