204 TIIK FEVniKUED TRIIiES. 



by the schoolboys in Yorkshire. I have fi'0(iuoutly soon them in tlic twigs of a thick 



tiiorn hedge, under banks, in haystacks, in ivy bushes, in old clumps, in the loopholes ot 



buildings, and, in one instance, in an old bonnet placed among some peas to frighten away 



ihe blackcaps." 



To llie (leatli of the smaller songsters, during severe winters, Towper patheticallj^ 



alludes : — 



■' lIo^v find the iiiynads, tluit in summer cheer 

 The hills and valleys ^vith their ceaseless songs. 

 Due sustenance, — or where subsist they now ? 

 Earth yields them uovight ; the imprisun'd worm is sale 

 Beneath the frozen clod ; all seeds of herbs 

 1 Lie eover'd close ; and berry-bearing thorns 



That feed the thrush (whatever some suppose), 



Afford the smaller minstrels no suppl}-. 



The long protracted rigour of the year 



Thins all their nvimerous flocks. In chinks and holes 



Ten thousand seek an unmolested end. 



As instinct prompts ; self-buried cro they die." 



^fr. Allan Cunningham, when writing to a friend, says : — " I liave once or twice in 

 my life had an opportunity of answering that touching inquiry of Ibirns, — 



' 'Ilk happing bird, wee, hapless thing. 

 That in the merry months o' spring 

 Delighted me to hear thee sing, 



"What comes o' thee ? 

 AVhare wilt thou cower thy chitt'ring wing 



An' close thy c'c ?' 



One cold December night, with snow in the air, when I was some ten years old or so, I 

 was groping for sparrows under the eaves in the thatcli, whore you know they make 

 holes like tliose bored by swallows in the river banks. In one of these holes I got a 

 handful of something soft ; it felt feathery and warm, and a smothered chirp told mo it 

 was living. I brought it, wondering, to my father's house, and took a look at it in the 

 light. The ball consisted of four living wrens rolled together, the heads under their 

 wings, and their feet pulled in, so that nothing was visible outside save a coating of 

 mottled feathers. This I took to be their mode of keeping themselves warm during the 

 cold of winter. If you ask if I am sure my memory serves me rightly, I answer yes ; 

 for havhig allowed one of the wrens to escape, it flew directly to where my father was 

 reading at a candle, and I had the misery of receiving at his hands one of tlioso 

 whip]iings which a boy is not likely soon to forget. 



" SVhen eighteen years old, or thereabouts, I met with something of the same kind; 

 there was a difference, indeed, in the birds, for on this occasion they were magpies — not 

 birds of song, but of noise. I went out with my brother, now in the navy, one tine 

 moonlight winter night, to shoot wood-pigeons in a neighbouring plantation. Tiio 

 wind was high, and we expected to find them in a sheltered place, wlicre the soil \ias 

 deep, and the spruce firs had grown high. As I went cowering along, looking through 

 the brandies between me and the moon, I saw, what seemed as large as a well-iill(>d 

 knapsack, fixed on the top of a long, slender ash-tree, which had struggled up in spite of 

 the firs, which you know grow very rapidly. I pointed it out to my l)n>llier, and seizing 

 the shaft of the tree, shook it violently, when if one magpie fell to tlie ground, tlure 

 were not less than twenty dropt in a lump at my feet. Away tliey Hew screaming in all 

 directions. One only remained on the spot wdiich they occupied on the tree, and 1 shot 

 it, and .90 settled what kind of birds had been huddled together tn avoid the idld. I 

 looked at them before I shoolc them down for a minute's space or more, and could sec 

 neither heads nor feet ; it seemed a bundle of old clouts or featiiers." 



