176 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



are better meteorologists than men," says Lowell, " and I have 

 little doubt that in immediate weather-wisdom they have the 

 advantage of our sophisticated senses, though I suspect a sailor 

 or a shepherd would be their match." And then he goes on 

 to instance thriftlessness on the part of American birds : " I 

 have noted but two days' difference in the coming of the song- 

 sparrow between a very early and a very backward spring. 

 This very year I saw the linnets at work thatching just before 

 a snowstorm which covered the ground several inches deep for 

 a couple of days. They struck work and left us for a while, 

 no doubt in search of food. Birds frequently perish from 

 sudden changes in our whimsical spring weather, of which 

 they had no forboding. More than thirty years ago a cherry- 

 tree, then in full bloom, near my window, was covered with 

 humming-birds benumbed by a fall of mingled rain and snow 

 which probably killed many of them. It should seem that 

 their coming was dated by the height of the sun, which betrays 

 them into unthrifty matrimony."* Probably it is owing to our 

 more genial climate that such mischances are rare amongst Eng- 

 lish birds. Just as Thoreau said, that if he fell into a trance in 

 the midst of his beloved woodlands, he thought he could tell 

 by the plants in flower around him what time of the year it was 

 within two days when he awoke, an English ornithologist would 

 be at no loss to decide without a calendar on the day and 

 month during early spring, if he might only note the arrival of 

 our immigrants. 



In the case of our larger birds, the enthusiastic collector will 

 have to resort, it seems likely, in a very few years, to the 

 dealers. Extermination is rapidly overtaking many of them. The 

 last kite seen in Lincolnshire was shot about 1860. We have 

 only witnessed their magnificent hoverings and great stretch of 

 wing in South Wales. Ravens are banished to the higher 

 mountains like, Helvellyn, and to the most inaccessible sea 



* See My Study Windows : Essays by Lowell, p. 5. London, 1871. 



