PHASES OF BIRD LIFE. 209 
Thomson declares that even the merry linnets “lit 
on the dead tree, a dull, despondent flock.” 
It would be difficult to arrange a “table of mor- 
tality’ for the birds. However, as they know noth- 
ing about life insurance, there is no call for such a 
compilation ; but even if the statistician could state 
the number of deaths, there is no arithmetic that 
could compute the heartaches and heartbreaks expe- 
rienced by “our. little brothers: of ‘the* air.’” “In 
the midst of life we are in death,” might well be put 
into the litany of the birds. If they had _ burial- 
grounds, there would be plenty of employment for 
the sexton and some grave “ Olid Mortality.” 
The elements themselves sometimes play sad havoc 
with the birds. Mr. Eldridge E. Fish, of Buffalo, 
N. Y., tells of an October storm in which many 
golden-crowned kinglets were dashed to the ground, 
while others flew against windows of houses in which 
lights were left burning. ‘The storm was so severe 
that the little voyagers, travelling southward by night, 
were compelled to alight, and thus many of them 
were destroyed. The same writer speaks of a cold 
tain which froze as it fell, coating everything with 
ice, and thus cutting off the birds’ supply of food, so 
that many bluebirds perished. To my certain know- 
ledge, robins, which breed very early in the spring, 
sometimes are frozen to death while hugging their 
nests, when a cold wave swoops from the north. 
The same calamity sometimes overtakes the cross- 
bill during the winter in the forests of Canada. 
Apparently even Nature herself is not always a tender 
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