A Few Feathered Fiends. 211 



hawk can move without detection, and its telltale 

 shadow not only gives us timely warning, but also 

 many a timid mouse and merry sparrow. As a mat- 

 ter of fact, too, hawks are really much more abun- 

 dant at this season, and probably this is equally true 

 of owls. 



Hawks are cowards ; they are crafty ; with all 

 their beauty and skilful flight and aerial evolutions, 

 they never risk themselves ; they do not prey on 

 creatures that can resist them. In these respects 

 they bear a strong resemblance to common types of 

 humanity ; their meanness is a well-focussed photo- 

 graph of people to be met with everywhere. Did 

 hawks merely kill that they themselves might live, 

 we could be more tolerant ; but with what fiendish 

 pleasure will they dash through a flock of sparrows, 

 perhaps maiming one and putting all in abject terror ! 

 Is there not everything that is despicable in the shrill 

 scream of a hawk after it has caused the poor spar- 

 rows to dash like frightened sheep along the weedy 

 way, or when, coming suddenly upon the tuneful 

 white-throats, as they mourn amidst the ruins of a 

 dead summer, it disturbs their meditations ? 



It is as easy to catalogue their sins as to pick out 

 the flaws in your neighbors, but in either case it is 

 an absurd exhibition of self-righteousness to do so. 

 Hawks eat the pretty warblers, and these warblers 

 eat insects far more beautiful than themselves, and 

 these, again, or some of them, prey on still smaller 

 ones. It is but a long chain of destruction, and 

 man need not set himself up as one whit better than 



