January 



disturbs their equanimity and drives them to 

 shelter fully as much as intense cold. With no 

 other occupation than their precarious purvey- 

 ance, and amid the most cheerless surround- 

 ings, if they were obliged to think all winter, 

 it would indeed be a most tedious and disheart- 

 ening experience for them. Probably no mere 

 animal has any of a human being's sense of the 

 lapse of time, for which they cannot be too 

 profoundly grateful. 



One of the daintiest species to be found in 

 the woods at this season, a spark of vital warmth 

 in the surrounding cold, is the golden-crowned 

 kinglet, also called golden-crowned wren, or 

 '' gold-crest." This little creature is less than 

 five inches long (a bird's length being meas- 

 ured from the tip of the bill to the end of the 

 tail), and its head is beautifully marked with 

 two black stripes enclosing a yellow stripe 

 which in the mature male has a scarlet centre. 

 The rest of the body is in the main greenish 

 olive above, and an impure white beneath. It 

 is impossible to get a good view of all these 

 points at once, as he is in almost perpetual 

 motion, nimbly hopping from spot to spot in 

 the bushes and trees, and fluttering his wings. 

 His food at this season is chiefly the larvse of 



25 



