THE NATURALIST AND COLLECTOR 
7 
A Hard Year on Birds. 
P EOPLE who live on the city pave¬ 
ments do not know the pathetic 
loss which the New England and 
Middle States — and probably 
the Western States — are just now suf¬ 
fering- from the absent notes of the 
early spring- birds. When that Feb- 
ruarv cold wave went South and sent 
the thermometer in Georg-ia to 10 de¬ 
grees below freezing, the lowest record 
for cold that State has any account of 
—the birds, Southern and Northern, 
were found dead in the various door 
yards and fields in g-reat numbers. One 
gentleman from Georgia informed us 
that he discovered a great many dead 
mocking birds near his house, and also 
many dead orioles. The loss of the 
Florida orange orchards, with the 
oranges ready for the market, though 
it amounts to many millions of dollars, 
can sometime be repaired. But the 
loss of the birds will be felt through 
the whole Northern country, and is 
one which it will take many years 
perhaps to make good. 
Up the Hudson the bluebird’s note is 
in many places silent, or infrequent; 
and the song sparrow and the phoebe. 
so far as we have noticed, are in many 
places, and in more than one county, 
rarely to be heard—so that March and 
April saw the orchard and field and 
door yard voiceless to an unwontoned 
degree. 
Just as we felt assured of this unusual 
fact a gentleman of Springfield, Mass., 
who is himself a well known writer 
on the phases of nature, informs us 
that he has missed the bluebirds and 
many other feathered early comers 
of that neighborhood. Now, it is well 
known that the Conneticut River 
Valley is a favorite haunt of all our 
common birds, and around Springfield 
not less than from twelve to twenty 
species of birds that are far Northern 
or Southern can sometimes be found. 
To suffer from a depopulation of 
feathered tribes is not only serious and 
sad, but it is very uncommon indeed. 
What may happen when the May con¬ 
tingent is looked for, which includes 
the swallows, orioles, humming birds, 
the various warblers, and many others, 
it is too early, as we write, to deter¬ 
mine. Let us hope that the tragedy 
of Killing worth, which gave Long¬ 
fellow the theme of one of his most 
touching and beautiful poems, may 
not be further repeated. But there is 
some reason to fear it may be, as these 
migrants are birds of very tender 
habits. If the bobolink, with his 
• breezy fountain of song, should also be 
missed, the clover-fields and meadows 
of June will suffer from the dumb 
transformation. 
—Frank Leslie’s Weekly. 
Flammarian, the ingenious French 
astronomer, has been photographing 
the celestial pole! The position of this 
is constantly varying on account of the 
precession of the equinoxes and other 
movements of the earth, but with a 
stationary telescope its place at any 
particular time may be accurately de¬ 
termined from the circular lines drawn 
on a photog-raphic plate by the circum¬ 
polar stars. On a photograph taken 
last September with an exposure of 250 
minutes, the arcs of the paths of the 
stars have a length of 60.5 degrees, and 
the different paths closely join to give 
a series of broken circles around a cen¬ 
ter which represents the point toward 
which the earth’s axis is pointed. 
Experiments by M. Auguste Strind¬ 
berg are said to indicate that sulphur,in¬ 
stead of being an elementary substance, 
is really a fossil resin or bitumen, and 
a compound of carbon, oxygen and 
hydrogen. 
