28 WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 



numbers are destroyed that the family would be in danger 

 of rapid extermination, but that the fecundity of the survi- 

 vors nearly keeps pace with the many fatalities to Avhich 

 they are liable. 



These birds are distributed over an immense northern ter- 

 ritory, and though they are, everywhere in the more shel- 

 tered regions, found to exhibit the propensity to collect in 

 numbers greater or smaller during the extreme cold weather 

 in low spots where they will have some shelter from the acci- 

 dental peculiarities of the locality, yet nowhere else except 

 upon just these wide plains are they to be found in such as- 

 tonishing congregations as we have here described. The 

 universal habit of all this family of Gallinacise is rather to 

 run and roost in little squads or flocks. Whence this differ- 

 ence in the habits of the same bird. Who knows ? Ah, 

 whence the difference ? This is the question ! 



Now your metaphysical philosophers are as thick as black- 

 birds in cherry-time among us and quite as fussy. Every 

 village pot-house has a genius in ragged breeches and with a 

 long score of "chalks" against him, who will prove to you 

 that Christianity is a delusion, and the doctrine of immor- 

 tality all nonsense, by such imposing logic as that "you can 

 neither see a soul, hear a soul, taste a soul, smell a soul, 

 nor " an astounding climax which we would think of doubt- 

 ing to be true in his case " feel a soul !" But, let them 

 alone. It is all right. This is an age of progression and 

 discovery. 



"How many a vulgar Oato has compelled 

 His energies, no longer tameless then, 

 To mould a pin or fabricate a nail! 



How many a Newton, to whose passive ken," &c. 



Let them alone, we say. There is no telling what these 

 "vulgar" Catos and Kewtons may not accomplish. The 

 chronicles of olden times are filled with wondrous tales, 

 showing how they, once in awhile, shake off the crust, and 



