ANNUAL DESTRUCTION OF BIRD LIFE 29 



and beasts ; millions more would perish of hunger 

 and cold ; millions of migrants would fall by the way, 

 some in the sea and some on land; those that re- 

 turned from distant regions would be but a remnant, 

 and the residents that survived through the winter, 

 these, too, would be nothing but a remnant. It is 

 not only that this inconceivable amount of bird life 

 must be destroyed each year, but we cannot suppose 

 that death is not a painful process. In a vast majo- 

 rity of cases, whether the bird slowly perishes of 

 hunger and weakness, or is pursued and captured by 

 birds and beasts of prey, or is driven by cold adverse 

 winds and storms into the waves, the pain, the agony 

 must be great. The least painful death is undoubtedly 

 that of the bird that, weakened by want of susten- 

 ance, dies by night of cold in severe weather. It is 

 indeed most like the death of the nestling, but a 

 few hours out of the shell, which has been thrown 

 out of the nest, and which soon grows cold, and 

 dozes its feeble, unconscious life away. 



We may say, then, that of all the thousand forms 

 of death which Nature has invented to keep her too 

 rapidly multiplying creatures within bounds, that 

 which is brought about by the singular instinct of the 

 young cuckoo in the nest is the most merciful or 

 the least painful. 



I am not sure that I said all this, or marshalled 

 fact and argument in the precise order in which 

 they are here set down. I fancy not, as it seems 

 more than could well have been spoken while we 



