Intimations. 41 



the centuries : these gains and losses of a half- 

 score of millenniums ? Man mightier, wiser, hap- 

 pier, it may be ; and yet the March winds stir the 

 lingering trace of savagery in us all, and we are, 

 for the moment, wild as the flashing waves that 

 hurry by. What a change ! Now but a single 

 seal ; but time was when not only seals, but the 

 walrus, roamed the ancient river, and the masto- 

 don and reindeer, moose and musk-ox, lingered 

 upon its shores. 



The effect of sudden changes of the weather 

 upon animal life is one of the few subjects that 

 have not been written to death, possibly because 

 they have not been closely studied ; and to add to 

 the difficulty, these changes are often quite as sud- 

 den and short-lived as the conditions that produced 

 them. It would certainly seem so in the case of 

 migratory birds, and more prominently so in that 

 of occasional visitors. No one, I venture to assert, 

 has been so fortunate as to see a snow-bunting, 

 the northern white snow-finch, during the past 

 winter; yet a whole host of them suddenly 

 appeared at the close of the storm, and disap- 

 peared quite as quickly as they came. Not once 



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