28 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIRDS. 
numbers are destroyed that the family would be in danger 
of rapid extermination, but that the fecundity of the survi- 
vors nearly keeps pace with the many fatalities to which 
they are liable. 
These birds are distributed over an immense northern ter- 
ritory, and though they are, everywhere in the more shel- 
tered regions, found to exhibit the propensity to collect in 
numbers greater or smaller during the extreme cold weather 
in low spots where they will have some shelter from the acci- 
dental peculiarities of the locality, yet nowhere else except 
upon just these wide plains are they to be found in such as- 
tonishing congregations as we have here described. The 
universal habit of all this family of Gallinacias is rather to 
run and roost in little squads or flocks. Whence this differ- 
ence in the habits of the same bird. Who knows ? Ah, 
whence the difference ? This is the question ! 
Now your metaphysical philosophers are as thick as black- 
birds in cherry-time among us — and quite as fussy. Every 
village pot-house has a genius in ragged breeches and with a 
long score of "chalks" against him, who will prove to you 
that Christianity is a delusion, and the doctrine of immor- 
tality all nonsense, by such imposing logic as that "you can 
neither see a soul, hear a soul, taste a soul, smell a soul, 
nor — " an astounding climax which we would think of doubt- 
ing to be true in his case — " feel a soul !" But, let them 
alone. It is all right. This is an age of progression and 
discovery. 
"How many a vulgar Cato has compelled 
His energies, no longer tameless then, 
To mould a pin or fabricate a nail ! 
How many a Newton, to whose passive ken," &c. 
Let them alone, we say. There is no telling what these 
"vulgar" Catos and Newtons may not accomplish. The 
chronicles of olden times are filled with wondrous tales, 
showing how they, once in awhile, shake off the crust, and 
