PHILLIDA AND CORIDON. 



THE happiness of birds, heretofore taken for 

 granted, and long ago put to service in a prov- 

 erb, is in these last days made a matter of 

 doubt. It transpires that they are engaged 

 without respite in a struggle for existence, a 

 struggle so fierce that at least two of them per- 

 ish every year for one that survives. 1 How, 

 then, can they be otherwise than miserable ? 



There is no denying the struggle, of course ; 

 nor need we question some real effect produced 

 ~by it upon the cheerfulness of the participants. 

 The more rationalistic of the smaller species, 

 we may be sure, find it hard to reconcile the 

 existence of hawks and owls with the doctrine 

 of an all- wise Providence ; while even the most 

 simple-minded of them can scarcely fail to real- 

 ize that a world in which one is liable any day 

 to be pursued by a boy with a shot-gun is not 

 in any strict sense paradisiacal. 



And yet, who knows the heart of a bird? A 



1 Wallace, Natural Selection, p. 30. 



