94 THE RING OF NATURE 



Italy testify their faith. ' When the priest intoned 

 the Gloria,' says Baron von Berlepsch, the great 

 Austrian bird champion, who writes of these sad 

 doings, ' the congregation let loose the small birds 

 they had brought with them, in the brilliantly 

 lighted church, as a mark of the general feeling 

 of joy at the blissful Resurrection. The wretched 

 little winged creatures, dazzled by the light, flew 

 at the candles, only to be burned and scorched and 

 to perish in agony.' 



Surely it is enough for our little friends to brave 

 the perils of contrary winds and freezing blizzards, 

 bewildering fogs and the allurements of light- 

 houses, the attack of hawks and crows and the 

 infirmities of weakness and cramp that must 

 often spoil their marvellous flight, without adding 

 the deliberate hatred of man. 



To mark the reluctance of a whitethroat to cross 

 as much as half a field in one flight, to pick up the 

 body of some small unfortunate and examine the 

 shortness and feebleness of its wing, is to be 

 astonished at the power which sends them across 

 a whole continent in order to ' be in England now 

 that April 's there.' It is distinctly one of the 

 miracles of the year to find the pipit keeping 

 punctual tryst with the ash twig that knew it last 

 year, the two of them having been sundered by 

 thousands of miles and innumerable life-and-death 

 adventures. 



There is no need for the catching and marking 

 of birds to see whether it is indeed the same swallow 



