176 SPRING ACTIVITY 



little green tufts were toiling, like living and rational 

 creatures, at strife which should produce the finest 

 shoot and the fairest blossom. Then the whisking 

 wings and the trilling throats are apparently enough 

 in themselves to put the air into a state of commo- 

 tion. And they are all in the act of beautifying na- 

 ture too : some are plucking the dry grass, so that 

 the fields may appear green ; others are gathering 

 up the withered sticks ; others again, the lost feathers 

 and hairs ; and others still are pulling the lichens 

 from the bark of the trees. The merles and the 

 mavises are running under the hedges, and the ever- 

 greens in the shrubbery, and capturing the snails in 

 their winter habitations, before they have had time 

 to prepare those hordes which would be the pest of 

 the gardeners for the whole season. Other birds 

 are inspecting the buds in the orchard ; and picking 

 off every one which contains a caterpillar or a nest 

 of eggs, that would pour forth their destructive 

 horde and render the whole tree lifeless. Yonder 

 again are the rooks, clearing the meadow of the 

 young cockchafers which the heat has brought 

 nearer to the surface ; and which, if they were to 

 remain there, would soon begin to. eat the roots of 

 the grass to such an extent that the turf would peel 

 off as easily as the withered tunic of an onion ; and 

 the labour of one hundred years (for some meadows 

 take that length of time before they reach perfec- 

 tion) would be ruined in one season. Man could not 

 do that which the rook does ; because the rook goes 

 instinctively to the places where the grubs are, just 

 as the lightning goes instinctively to the elevated 

 point of a metal rod ; whereas man would have to 

 learn where to find and how to catch them, and the 

 lesson, simple as the matter appears, and is in the 

 case of the rook, would be no easy one. Some of 

 them come from a distance too ; for there are the 

 white sea-gulls, with their long bent wings and their 

 wailing screams, busy in the same field with the 



