Song Birds and Water Fowl 



maturity, one writer citing the case of a lichen, 

 in every way favorably situated for growth,, 

 which, after forty-five years, had some of its 

 organs still undeveloped ; and there is good 

 reason to believe that the longest lived species 

 maintain their vitality many hundreds and even 

 thousands of years, attaining an age that exceeds 

 that of the very oldest trees — the cedars of Leb- 

 anon and the sequoias of California. Surely 

 there is sublime simplicity in the thought of 

 this unquenchable and lonely spark of life sur- 

 viving, undisturbed by all vicissitudes, upon 

 some bleak and barren mountain-top, from a 

 period that antedates the Caesars. 



Besides the conventional early birds of the 

 new year — the song-sparrow, bluebird, red- 

 winged blackbird, phoebe, robin, grackle — > 

 which have come to remain with us all sum- 

 mer, this blustering month is enlivened by 

 the first of the so-called migrants — ^birds of 

 passage — which make a brief stop, and then 

 speed away to their more northern homes. Our 

 earliest migrant, that comes as a sort of silver lin- 

 ing to the clouds of March, is the beautiful fox- 

 sparrow, the handsomest and most gifted of his 

 264 ^ 



