WILD-BIRDS. 41 



of cold almost unparalleled in its intensity was ushered in on the 

 western sea-board of Scotland in February of the year of grace 1870. 



And how fares it with our feathered favourites, the wild birds, 

 in these hard times ? Fertile as they are in resources, and inde- 

 fatigable in providing for the wants of the passing hour, all their 

 little shifts must frequently prove inadequate to the supply of their 

 daily wants in such trying times as these. St. Valentine's day has 

 come and gone, but neither in copse, nor hedgerow, nor ivy-mantled 

 wall, find we as yet any traces of nidification, nor has the love- 

 prompted warble, in past years so loud and incessant at this season, 

 been yet heard around us. The robin only cheeps ; the sparrow 

 simply chirps ; the linnet merely twitters ; and even the " gay 

 chafBnch " can only give us a disconsolate " fink, fink," in place of 

 his well-known glad burst of choicest and cheeriest song. The 

 mellow chaunt of the merle and song-thrush delights not yet the 

 ear from copse or brake at early morn or evening-tide. The 

 intense and piercing cold, which, on the wings of the northern 

 blast, sweeps over the land as we write, and as it moans, and sighs, 

 and wildly shrieks by starts in its progress over the deep, causes 

 the lone sea-bird to utter its eeriest and wildest cry, has succeeded 

 in freezing, not only the rivulet and the pool, but has actually 

 bound up the voice of gladness and every source of joyful utter- 

 ance in all our feathered friends as well. But " nil despe^-andum," 

 better times are coming. Fields will yet be green, trees will yet 

 be leafy, rivers unboimd from icy fetters will yet dance merrily in 

 the sun, and laugh with aU their ripples, as they hasten seawards ; 

 and then " again shall flowers appear on the earth ; the time of the 

 singing of birds shall have come, and the voice of the turtle be 

 heard in our land." 



Are glanders incurable? is a very ugly, but doubtless a very 

 important question, which is being at present keenly discussed in 

 the columns of several metropolitan journals. By glanders is 



