Notes on the Mild Winter and the Birds.



205



But who is to place limits to mind ? If a bird has mental

faculties at all, it has mind. Its senses are far more highly developed

than man’s : its sensations probably equal in proportion to its place

in Creation. Man is unquestionably lord of creation, the whole

of the rest of Creation mysteriously linked with him, and the

little bird brother one of the most marvellous and beautiful of

all created beings. As to the senses of a bird, what human being

ever possessed the eye-sight of the Hawk or Eagle, or even of

other smaller birds ? Or their sense of hearing ? Their power to

detect wholesome food at a glance, or the presence of a human

hand that has been about their nest ? Their extraordinary sensi¬

tiveness of touch ? And as to memory, does not the swallow find

its way from distant lands, year after year, back to the old haunts

it loves ? The pet bird pines and refuses food if deprived of its loved

owner, and remembers him, or her, again after a long lapse of time,

even years. What is this but memory ? Who then shall say that

in the miserable prison it is doomed to at the dealers, it does not

remember happier days and pine for lost liberty ? I do not hesitate

to affirm that I am certain it does, and that in that little breast

there are longings and regrets of which we grosser mortals reck

little or nothing. I conceive it to be no more than our bounden

duty if we cause a bird to be deprived of freedom, to see that it shall

find in man not an enemy but a friend and protector.



NOTES ON THE MILD WINTER

AND THE BIRDS.


By P. F. M. Galloway.


The persistent mild Southerly and S. Westerly winds which

have been going on ever since the early part of November (with the

exception of about ten days of dry cold weather with the wind

Easterly, which occurred about the latter end of last month) has

brought on the growth of vegetation at a tremendous pace. We are

practically five weeks in advance.


In the woods there are green carpets of bluebells quite five

inches high, the foxgloves have grown six inches in length, ferns in

places have not died down, some have remained green all the winter.



