September 



their young are produced, and the fate of the 

 species pecuHarly hangs in the balance. But 

 by a glorious contradiction, while most timid 

 and seclusive during the nesting period, this is 

 also the time when threatened danger to their 

 young will make them most fearless. With a 

 bravery that is pathetic, they will endeavor to 

 protect the birdlings, often utterly forgetful of 

 their own safety in anxiety for their more help- 

 less offspring. How resolutely the female 

 sticks to the nest during incubation, showing 

 her intense alarm only in the wild glance of the 

 eye and a paralyzed motionlessness. Prob- 

 ably, at such times death itself would not be 

 more painful than the living terror they often 

 experience. There would be something ex- 

 tremely comical in the puny rage sometimes 

 manifested by the tiny creatures toward their 

 giant foes, did not the impulse prompting it 

 command our noblest admiration. 



In musical phrase, the period from January to 

 July is a crescendo — that from July to January, 

 a decrescendo. In many ways the record of 

 the last six months is the same as that of the 

 first six, read backward ; the second half of the 

 year saying of the first half, " It must increase, 

 I must decrease." Nature shows a grand cli- 



259 



