92 PEPACTON 



themselves, the horny growth "pips" the shell. 

 Their efforts then continue till their prison walls 

 are completely sundered and the bird is free. This 

 process is rendered the more easy by the fact that 

 toward the last the shell becomes very rotten; the 

 acids that are generated by the growing chick eat it 

 and make it brittle, so that one can hardly touch 

 a fully incubated bird's egg without breaking it. 

 To help the young bird forth would insure its 

 speedy death. It is not true, either, that the par- 

 ent shoves its young from the nest when they are 

 fully fledged, except possibly in the case of some 

 of the swallows and of the eagle. The young of 

 all our more common birds leave the nest of their 

 own motion, stimulated probably by the calls of the 

 parents, and in some cases by the withholding of 

 food for a longer period than usual. 



As an instance where Bryant warps the facts to 

 suit his purpose, take his poems" of the " Yellow 

 Violet '^ and "The Fringed Gentian." Of this last 

 flower he says : — 



" Thou -waitest late and com'st alone, 

 When woods are bare and birds are flown, 

 And frosts and shortening days portend 

 The aged year is near his end." 



The fringed gentian belongs to September, and, 

 when the severer frosts keep away, it runs over 

 into October. But it does not come alone and the 

 woods are not bare. The closed gentian comes at the 

 same time, and the blue and purple asters are in all 

 their glory. Goldenrod, turtle-head, and other fall 



