Song Birds and Water Fowl 
maturity, one writer citing the case of a lichen, 
in every way favorably situated for growth, 
which, after forty-five years, had some of its 
organs still undeveloped; and there is good 
reason to believe that the longest lived species 
maintain their vitality many hundreds and even 
thousands of years, attaining an age that exceeds 
that of the very oldest trees—the cedars of Leb- 
anon and the sequoias of California. Surely 
there is sublime simplicity in the thought of 
this unquenchable and lonely spark of life sur- 
viving, undisturbed by all vicissitudes, upon 
some bleak and barren mountain-top, from a 
period that antedates the Ceesars. 
& 
Besides the conventional early birds of the 
new year—the song-sparrow, bluebird, red- 
winged blackbird, phoebe, robin, grackle— 
which have come to remain with us all sum- 
mer, this blustering month is enlivened by 
the first of the so-called migrants—birds of 
passage — which make a brief stop, and then 
speed away to their more northern homes. Our 
earliest migrant, that comes as a sort of silver lin- 
ing to the clouds of March, is the beautiful fox- 
sparrow, the handsomest and most gifted of his 
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