558 
BIURDA OF 
HITE of Selborne was, on the 
whole, tolerably content to 
plunge his swallows, or a good propor- 
tion of them, into the mud and deposit 
them for the winter at the bottom of 
a pond. Professionally conservative, as 
a fine old Church-of-England clergy- 
man, though constitutionally sceptical, as 
became one of the earliest of really ob- 
servant naturalists, he was loath to break 
flatly with the consensus of contempo- 
rary opinion, rustic and philosophic, and 
found a modus vivendi in the theory 
that a great many, perhaps a majority, 
of the swifts and barn-swallows did go 
to Africa. He had seen them organ- 
izing their emigration-parties and hold- 
ing noisy debate over the best time to 
start and the best route to take. The 
sea-part of the travel was of trifling 
length, and baiting-places were plenty in 
France, Spain, and Italy. Sometimes, 
such was their power of wing, they 
were known to take the outside route 
and strike boldly across the Bay of 
Biscay, for they had alighted on vessels. 
Probably the worthy old man was re- 
luctant to wrench from the rural mind 
a harmless remnant of superstition,—if 
superstition it might be called, in view 
of the fact that sundry saurians and 
chelonians, held by classifiers to be 
superior in rank to birds, do hibernate 
under water, and that, more marvellous 
than all, the quarrymen of his day, like 
those of ours, insisted that living frogs 
occasionally sprang from under their 
chisel, leaving an unchallengeable im- 
press in the immemorial rock. It must 
indeed have been up-hill work to extin- 
guish the old belief in the minds of men 
who had seen the water-ouzel pattering 
in perfect ease and comfort along the 
floor of the pellucid pool, and who had 
heard from their fisher friends from the 
north coast of the gannets that were 
drawn up in the herring-nets. 
Most of us, even color’ chi sanno, 
like to retain a spice of mystery in our 
d 
) 
BIRDS OF A TEXAN WINTER. 
‘[Dec. 
A TEXAN WINTER. 
mental food. It may constitute no part 
of the nutriment, and may often be 
deleterious, but it meets a want, some- 
how or other, and wants, however un- 
definable, must be recognized. It isa 
spur that titillates the absorbent sur- 
faces and helps to keep them in action. 
It is a craving that the race is never 
going to outlive, and that will afford oc- 
cupation and subsistence to a consider- 
able class of its most intelligent and re- 
spectable members until the year one 
million, as it has done since the year 
one. The great mass of us like to see 
the absolute reign of reason tempered 
by the incomprehensible, and are ever 
ready to lend a kindly ear to men and 
things that humor that liking. 
Where do all the birds, myriads in 
number and scores in species, go when 
they leave the North in the winter? 
A small minority lags, not superfluous, 
for we are delighted to have them, but 
in a subdued, pinched, and hand-to-mouth 
mode of existence in marked contrast to 
their summer life and perceptibly mar- 
ring the pleasure of their society. They 
flock around our homes and assume a 
mendicant air that is a little depressing. 
Unlike the featherless tramps, they pay 
very well for their dole; but we should 
prefer them, as we do our other friends, 
to be independent, and that although 
we know they are but winter friends 
and will coolly turn their backs upon us 
as soon as the weather permits. The 
spryest and least dependent of them all, 
the snow-bird, who sports perpetual full 
dress, jerks at us his expressive tail and 
is off at the first thaw, black coat, 
white vest, and all. No tropics or sub- 
tropics for him. He can stand our 
climate and our company with a certain 
condescending tolerance so long as we 
keep the temperature not too much 
above zero, but grows contemptuous 
when Fahrenheit grows effeminate and 
forty. Nothing for it then but to cool 
off his thin and unprotected legs and 
