SE CRE Tl VENESS. 1 3 



What becomes of pins, we should like t<> know, 

 And the birds that die, where do they go? 



What becomes of old birds ? Do they perish in the 

 attempt to cross the sea in their biennial migrations, 

 or are they eaten, devoured utterly by beasts of prey or 

 insects ? Why is it that hunters so rarely come across 

 the remnants of a murdered bird? the ravages of hawks 

 and owls do not account for the tenth part of the mor- 

 tality implied by the difference between the possible and 

 actual yearly increase of creatures that rear from five 

 to ten young ones every spring. And what about the 

 larger habitants of the wilderness, the countless Polish 

 wolves, Georgia raccoons, and Texas squirrels, that do 

 not fall by the hand of man and have few other enemies? 

 Are they eaten by ants? The woods would be covered 

 with skeletons. No ; I believe that animals die in the 

 best hiding-places they can find, and in a region of 

 tangle-woods and craggy cliffs that would mean a good 

 deal. Some of the bones we find in the Jurassic lime- 

 stone caves are perhaps the remnants of animals whose 

 secretiveness in articulo mortis was rewarded by an un- 

 disturbed repose of fifteen or twenty thousand years. 

 Raccoons, like bears and other plantigrades, are subject 

 to a kind of mange, and one of my acquaintances in 

 Columbus, Georgia, tried to cure his pet coon with a 

 dose of nux vomica. The remedy promised success 

 if life itself is a disease : the little plantigrade stretched 



