30 PROCEEDINGS OP THE 



himself, his personality, has never been done justice. It is 

 true that for the convenience of our own mind we have raised 

 him to a co-partnership with the industrious bee in the sym- 

 bolic representation of a straight line. But with the farmer we 

 have also written him as a destroyer of crops. We think of him 

 as a rogue, a loud-mouthed roister, the personification of craft, 

 of arrogance toward man and beast. 



And yet in my own memory arises a very different vision. 

 It is a snow storm on the Delaware meadows. All is white, 

 and save for the wind, silent. A powdery snow sifts monoto- 

 nously down from a gray, cloudy sky. Now caught up by a cold 

 wind it is hurled into my face Avith a blinding force, before 

 which I bend my head and close my eyes. Again with a sud- 

 den change of wind the air is cleared partially before me and I 

 see the vague outlines of distant trees and even the dark lines of 

 the river beyond. 



Suddenly, and with no more noise than the flakes themselves, 

 a thousand spectre-like objects rise from the snowy ground 

 before me. There is no outburst of indignation. They take 

 wing wearily, as if in a stupor. They rise hesitatingly and 

 struggle piteously against the wind. Some turn and are borne 

 before it; others flutter vainly, waver and are swept backward 

 by an irresistable force — thrown as it were into the drift beyond. 



Crows? The shadows of Crows, rather! The spirit, the arro- 

 gance, is gone. Poor, starved, benumbed creatures. No wonder 

 they do not resent my intrusion. Nature has taught them to 

 endure suffering. 



This, then, is the other side of Crow-life. Bufi'eted by winds, 

 at the mercy of snow and starvation and man, thus hordes of 

 them perish each winter. 



But contrary to what their presence in winter might indicate, 

 crows are partially migratory. The thousands that gather along 

 the Delaware river each j'ear doubtless come, in a large part, 

 from the north. For winter quarters, they seek the low-lying 

 river-valleys, where the snow melts quicklj' and where the tides 

 offer at least a scanty supply of food. There are many such 

 areas drained by the rivers which empty into the Delaware and 

 Chesapeake Bays, and here, in the east at least, is the centre of 

 the winter Crow population. 



