BIRDS' NESTS. 197 



would double itself every year ; and if this were 

 the case, they would soon become so abundant 

 as to have to fight for places to build their 

 nests. But they do not seem to increase at 

 all. There appears to be just the same number 

 of thrushes and blackbirds, of sparrows and 

 chaffinches, that there was last year. What 

 becomes of them? If they went away to 

 foreign lands, we should hear of their appear- 

 ance there. But other lands are stocked just 

 as well as ours. We hear sometimes of a new 

 kind of bird being found in a certain place, it 

 is true ; but that is usually a bird of passage, 

 about whose ways we know very little. We 

 can only account for the fact by referring all 

 to the Providence of God, who, by various ways 

 known only to himself, so directs the increase 

 of animals, that they shall neither become so 

 numerous as to interfere with each other, nor 

 so scarce as to allow the earth to be overrun 

 with weeds, the seeds of which are consumed 

 by them as food, nor be stripped of its produce 



