98 
BIRDS IN A VILLAGE. 
quently very hardy ; and in some cases the rivers 
and streams they frequent are exceedingly poor in 
fish. Some of them are very beautiful, and they 
vary in size from birds no larger than a sparrow to 
others as large as a pigeon. 
Anglers might raise the cry that they require all 
the finny inhabitants of our waters for their own 
sport. It is scarcely necessary to go as deeply into 
the subject as mathematical-minded Mudie did to 
show that Nature's lavishness in the production of 
life would make such a contention unreasonable. 
He demonstrated that if all the fishes hatched were 
to live their full term, in twenty-four years their 
productive power would convert into fish (two 
hundred to the solid foot) as much matter as there 
is contained in the whole solar system — sun, 
planets, and satellites ! An " abundantly startling " 
result, as he says ; but it should be observed that 
many of the minor planets, discovered since his 
time, are not included in the calculation, while the 
comets were left out altogether. This was just as 
well, perhaps, since, according to current theories 
on celestial subjects, it would take half a million, 
or some such very large number, of cubic miles of 
the exceedingly tenuous stuff composing a comet 
to furnish solid matter sufficient to represent even 
a single decent-sized grayling. To be well within 
the mark, ninety-nine out of every hundred fishes 
