42 Redr7tff 



They were always hungry, and though they 

 ate enormously, they one and all grew thinner 

 and thinner. The mother was the last to be 

 affected. But when it came, it came as hard 

 on her — a ravenous hunger, a feverish head- 

 ache, and a wasting weakness. She never 

 knew the cause. She could not know that the 

 dust of the much-used dust-bath, that her true 

 instinct taught her to mistrust at first, and now 

 again to shun, was sown with parasitic worms, 

 and that all of the family were infested. 



No natural impulse is without a purpose. 

 The mother-bird's knowledge of healing was 

 only to follow natural impulse. The eager, 

 feverish craving for something, she knew not 

 what, led her to eat, or try, everything that 

 looked eatable and to seek the coolest woods. 

 And there she found a deadly sumach laden 

 with its poison fruit. A month ago she would 

 have passed it by, but now she tried the un 

 attractive berries. The acrid burning juic6 

 seemed to itnswer some strange demand of her 

 body ; she ate and ate, and all her family 

 joined in the strange feast of physic. No hu- 

 man doctor could have hit it better ; it proved 

 a biting, drastic purge, the dreadful secret foe 

 was downed, the danger passed. But not for 

 all — Nature, the old nurse, had come too late 



