1903 How the Animals Die 7 



to all who were athirst, and would come swiftly to drink. 

 Seeing me, they would draw back among the ferns to watch 

 and listen ; but the little rivulet tinkled away unchanged, 

 and they always came back at last, taking me shyly for their 

 friend because I sat beside their spring. 



One day when I came a little wood-warbler was sitting 

 on a frond of evergreen that hung over the spring as if to 

 protect it. For several days I had noticed him there, rest- 

 ing or flitting silently about the underbrush. He rarely 

 drank, but seemed to be there, as I was, just because he 

 loved the place. He was old and alone ; the dark feathers 

 of his head were streaked with grey, and his feet showed the 

 wrinkled scales that age always brings to the birds. As if 

 he had learned the gentleness of age, he seemed to have no 

 fear, barely moving aside as I approached, and at times 

 coming close beside me as I looked into his spring. To-day 

 he was quieter than usual : when I stretched out my hand 

 to take him he made no resistance, but settled down quietly 

 on my finger and closed his eyes. For a half-hour or more 

 he sat there contentedly, blinking sleepily now and then, 

 and opening his eyes wide when I brought him a drop of 

 water on the tip of my finger. As twilight came on, and all 

 the voices of the wood were hushed, I put him back on the 

 evergreen frond, where he nodded off to sleep before I went 

 away. 



Next morning he was closer to the friendly spring, on a 

 lower branch of the big evergreen. Again he nestled down 

 in my hand and drank gratefully the drop from my finger- 

 tip. At twilight I found him hanging head down from a 

 spruce-root, his feet clinched in a hold that would never 

 loosen, his bill just touching the life-giving water. He had 

 fallen asleep there, in peace, by the spring that he had 

 known and loved all his life, and whose waters welled up 

 to his lips and held his image in their heart to the last 

 moment. 



How do the animals die ? — quietly, peacefully, nine-tenths 

 of them, as the eagle died in his own free element, and the 

 little wood-warbler by the spring he loved. For these two 

 are but types of the death that goes on in the woods con- 

 tinually. The only exception is in this : that they were 



