ioo ANNALS OF BIRD LIFE. 



birth, and life, and death. For it is no more 

 rational to conclude that Earth is the centre and 

 sole supporter of Life, than it is to presume that 

 that Life which animates even the tiniest atom of 

 organic matter is not as immortal and eternal as 

 the grand and infinite Universe of which it forms 

 so insignificant a part. 



Night is favourable to such thoughts as these 

 the darkness and the stillness bring man closer 

 to the vast unseen and inconceivable Power which 

 behind this mighty Universe controls its working 

 and shapes its destiny. A little Sedge Bird, in the 

 spinney yonder by the stream, wakes the stillness 

 of this beautiful night ; it warbles a moment or 

 two, then all is silent once more. Now what is 

 the history of that feathered mite ? Its song 

 awakes a train of thought that leads us back into 

 the misty past back to the beginning of its 

 existence as a bird back to earlier ancestors still 

 back to the glorious dawn of Life upon this fair 

 world of ours. Think of this Sedge Bird's long, 

 eventful history as our planet has gone cycling on 

 through the vast uncounted ages which bring this 

 little Warbler from those dark, mysterious times 

 down to to-night. What is this power of pro- 

 gressive development which seems ever to tend 

 from a lower to a higher stage of existence which 

 man in his wisdom has termed Evolution ? Who 

 the designer, and What the potent force which 

 controls this beautiful process ? Hark ! there is 

 our Sedge Bird warbling again in the spinney 

 he is one fraction of a group which comprises the 



