SHALL WE PAY OUR DEBT? 375 



Domestic hen three days before she died of old age, when nineteen 



years old 



birds for taking your cherries and strawberries 

 will be so reduced as to be negligible. 



A recently published estimate of the average life- 

 time of birds allots to a wren three years, a thrush 

 ten, a robin twelve, a lark thirteen, a blackbird 

 twelve, a goldfinch fifteen, a canary fifteen, a 

 pigeon twenty, a crane twenty-four, a sparrow 

 hawk forty, a crow fifty, a heron fifty-nine. This 

 gives to the birds in which we are most interested 

 a very short span of life. It is in our power to 

 make this life longer and safer for those of our birds, 

 upon which we are most dependent, those to which 



