218 
BIBBS IN A VILLAGE. 
were to take him up and drop him from your hand, 
he would fall to the ground like a stone or a lump 
of clay — so easy and swift is the passage from 
life to death in wild nature ! But he was never 
miserable. 
Those of my readers who have seen much of 
animals in a state of nature, will agree that death 
from decay, or old age, is very rare among them. In 
that state the fullest vigour, with brightness of all 
the faculties, is so important that probably in 
ninety-nine cases in a hundred any falling off in 
strength, or decay of any sense, results in some 
fatal accident. Death by misadventure, as we call 
it, is Nature's ordinance, the end designed for a 
very large majority of her children. Nevertheless, 
animals do sometimes live on without accident to 
the very end of their term, to fade peacefully away 
at the last. I have myself witnessed such cases in 
mammals and birds ; and one such case, which pro- 
foundly impressed me, and is vividly remembered, 
I will describe. One morning in the late summer, 
while walking in the fields at my home in South 
America, I noticed a few purple martins, large, 
beautiful swallows common in that region, engaged, 
at a considerable height, in the aerial exercises in 
which they pass so much of their time each day. 
By-and-by one of the birds separated itself from 
the others, and, circling slowly downward, finally 
