1 64 ANNALS OF BIRD LIFE. 



ing to destroy them ; the insects dance about in 

 the sunshine, or flit to and fro in the dusk of 

 evening, heedless of the feeding Swallows, Goat- 

 suckers, and bats ; the lambs skip about on the 

 hillsides and the leverets in the corn, having no 

 fear or dread of the Eagle's fatal stoop ; the tiny 

 fishes in the stream swim to and fro in their glad- 

 ness, and even jump out of the water in exuberance 

 of spirit, all unconscious of the voracious pike, 

 the otter, or the Kingfisher, which may be about 

 to devour them. To infer that Nature is fraught 

 with misery and unhappiness because the funda- 

 mental condition of its existence is one of battle 

 and murder, is a very wrong assumption, and one 

 which the observation of wild life in its natural 

 haunts will quickly dispel. The mortality among 

 organic life is enormous millions of creatures are 

 born that do not survive their infancy ; millions 

 more perish in yet earlier stages of existence. 



Among birds, for instance, which have the 

 power of increasing rapidly, of the young, hatched 

 one season, but a very trifling percentage survive 

 until the next. The vegetable kingdom is under 

 the influence of the same great law in many 

 cases not one seedling in ten millions surviving 

 in the struggle for existence. This noble oak 

 tree before us, for a thousand years or more has 

 regularly produced crop after crop of acorns, yet 

 only one sapling yonder in the hedge survives ! 

 Even with animals that multiply exceedingly 

 slow, such as the elephant for example, a very 



