SHARP EYES. 13 



taking- refuge in a small hole in a tree. One day in 

 early spring he saw two hen-hawks that were circling 

 and screaming high in air, approach each other, ex- 

 tend a claw, and, clasping them together, fall toward 

 the earth flapping and struggling as if they were tied 

 together ; on nearing the ground they separated and 

 soared aloft again. He supposed that it was not a 

 passage of war but of love, and that the hawks were 

 toying fondly with each other. 



He further relates a curious circumstance of finding 

 a humming-bird in the upper part of a barn with its 

 bill stuck fast in a crack of one of the large timbers, 

 dead, of course, with wings extended, and as dry as a 

 chip. The bird seems to have died as it had lived, on 

 the wing, and its last act was indeed a ghastly parody 

 of its living career. Fancy this nimble, flashing sprite, 

 whose life was passed probing the honeyed depths of 

 flowers, at last thrusting its bill into a crack in a dry 

 timber in a hay-loft, and, with spread wings, ending 

 its existence. 



When the air is damp and heavy, swallows fre- 

 quently hawk for insects about cattle and moving 

 herds in the field. My farmer describes how they 

 attended him one foggy day, as he was mowing in the 

 meadow with a mowing-machine. It had been foggy 

 for two days, and the swallows were very hungry, 

 and the insects stupid and inert. When the sound of 

 his machine was heard, the swallows appeared and 

 attended him like a brood of hungry chickens. He 

 says there was a continued rush of purple wings 

 over the " cut-bar," and just where it was causing the 

 grass to tremble and fall. Without his assistance the 

 swallows would doubtless have gone hungry yet an* 

 other day. 



