SHARP EYES. 18 
taking refuge in a small hole in a tree. One day in 
early spring he saw two hen-hawks that were circling 
and screaming high in air, approach each other, ex- 
tend a claw, and, clasping them together, fall toward 
the earth flapping and struggling as if they were tied 
together ; on nearing the ground they separated and 
soared aloft again. He supposed that it was not a 
passage of war but of love, and that the hawks were 
toying fondly with each other. 
He further relates a curious circumstance of finding 
a humming-bird in the upper part of a barn with its 
bill stuck fast in a crack of one of the large timbers, 
dead, of course, with wings extended, and as dry as a 
chip. The bird seems to have died as it had lived, on 
the wing, and its last act was indeed a ghastly parody 
of its living career. Fancy this nimble, flashing sprite, 
whose life was passed probing the honeyed depths of 
flowers, at la&t thrusting its bill into a crack in a dry 
timber in a hay-loft, and, with spread wings, ending 
its existence. 
When the air is damp and heavy, swallows fre- 
quently hawk for insects about cattle and moving 
herds in the field. My farmer describes how they 
attended him one foggy day, as he was mowing in the 
meadow with a mowing-machine. It had been fogg 
for two days, and the swallows were very hungry, 
and the insects stupid and inert. When the sound of 
his machine was heard, the swallows appeared and 
attended him like a brood of hungry chickens. He 
says there was a continued rush of purple wings 
over the “cut-bar,” and just where it was causing the 
grass to tremble and fall. Without his assistance the 
swallows would doubtless have gone hungry yet ane 
other day. 
