152 THE HUMAN SIDE OF BIRDS 



dred midnight raids upon the nests of crows and 

 other birds, alone suffered the death penalty. 



Many other instances of feathered judgment and 

 execution could easily be cited. The more we study 

 the world of non-human nature, the more we see 

 how arrogant it is for man to suppose for an in- 

 stant that he is the sole possessor of moral and 

 spiritual perception. Birds have no written laws 

 and no money-paid lawyers and judges. If man is 

 to understand their courts of justice, their moral 

 and spiritual codes, their unwritten family laws — 

 he must study them from the equator to the polar 

 circle ; from the tops of the Andes, amid unscalable 

 crags and cliffs, to the distant islands of the sea, 

 and reed-covered banks of tropical streams. .Wher- 

 ever the air has a feathered inhabitant, wherever 

 eyrie-like orchids grow, which are fertilised by iri- 

 descent, fairy-like humming-birds, wherever the 

 northern white birds congregate along the willow- 

 grown bottoms of the Yukon, or mass themselves 

 in coveys like a circle of white snow-flakes, to hide 

 from their arctic enemies — there is a perfection of 

 law and justice unknown to man. 



