Prof. Duns on Influence of Recent Storm on Bird Life. 71 



birds visible were chiefly sparrows and blackbirds. In the 

 early period of the storm there were many redwings to be 

 seen in the Back Walk — say a flock of about sixty or 

 seventy. I watched them for about a week or ten days, and 

 noticed that they got gradually weaker and fewer. Boys had 

 little difficulty in catching them with the aid of their caps. 

 They seemed too weak to get away, and I have no doubt 

 every one of them perished. Strange, I have seen only one 

 fieldfare this winter, and it seemed always to keep about 

 fifty yards away from the redwings. The paucity of the 

 feathered tribe about us is now marked." 



Wigtoicnshire. — The Kev. George Wilson, writing on the 22d 

 of January 1879, says : " I have heard of a few small birds 

 being seen dead below hedges, and one man reports he had 

 seen a good many dead blackbirds." On the 18th of February 

 Mr Wilson informed me that the mortality had been much 

 greater than he was aware of previously. Many linnets, green 

 and grey, had been found dead. The gulls at Luce Bay had 

 suffered much in consequence of the freezing of the shore 

 between tide marks, and, as he believes, because the surface- 

 swimming fishes had gone out of the reach of the gulls 

 because of the intense cold. Gulls alighted and fed along 

 with the barn-door fowls. 



These notes supply a good deal of material for speculative 

 questions of great interest. For example, the common im- 

 pression indicated in the lines — 



* ' Sae lang as it snaws 

 The birds will hae haws," 



not only shows that there is some ground for the belief that 

 the supply of food for birds generally answers to their 

 necessities, but it raises a question which lies further out of 

 view. May there not be purpose when the provision is not 

 equal to the wants ? Then there is a deeper question still, 

 which would lead us to expect the existence of an analogy 

 between such seasons of wide-spread havoc among groups of 

 animals, say birds, and periods of great mortality among men. 

 Both questions seem to me susceptible of a thoroughly 

 satisfactory discussion from the point of view of creative 



