was found, by its ring, in Malta. In 1833 a Polish gentleman put an iron collar round a stork with the inscription, "This stork comes from Poland," and set it at liberty. In 1834 the same bird returned to the same spot to the same person with a collar of gold and the inscription, "India sends back the stork to the Poles with gifts." Before such incidents how can we talk of laws of nature? Yet so true it is, "Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed time, and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of the Lord." How marvellous are those migrations! They know. Behold the birds! They know; unerring instinct points the way for them. See that mighty flock on its way through the sky; no regiment ever marched with more order. See how they part company as they arrive at the well-known fields and woods. They know. Go to the birds! Has man no instincts, or, if he has, are they only the instincts of an animal and a creature? How suggestive are the wings of birds! Suggestive of what? Is there nothing within thee which invites to flight? Hast thou no heaven, no blue lift or country beyond the blue? Hast thou no home? Hast thou not a fatherland? has not from childhood to age rejoiced to see the bird

"Whom man loves best—

The pious bird with a scarlet breast,
Our little English robin?

The bird that comes about our doors
When autumn winds are sobbing-
The Peter of Norway boors,

Their Thomas in Finland,
And Russia far inland;

The bird who by some name or other
All men who know do call a brother."

Of whom the same poet, Wordsworth, says

"He needs not fear the season's rage,
For the whole house is Robin's cage."

Who

The love of these pleasant little creatures is very simple and natural, and our affection to them has the advantage over many of our other affections that it does not need to be stirred up with a golden spoon. What is that within thee which brings a tear to thine eye while the lark poised on the wing shakes down its notes from the upper air?

"That happy, happy liver,

With a song as strong as a mountain river,
Pouring out thanks to the Almighty Giver."

What makes the shout of the cuckoo so mystical through the depths of the wood, from the far-off hill? I think it is something from afar echoing that cry, saying "Come home! Come home! Come home!" I think it is something within thee, saying, "I will arise and go to my Father." Very suggestive is a bird on the wing. Through birds we get to love all creatures; they are so

pensive, so confident. Often seems it to me providence, cheerfu.ness, and purpose all gleam out to me as I see the dear flash of a bird's wing. Go to the birds. Whither do they go in the winter? How safely they sleep so long, and each little head buried beneath its wing, or, as we have seen, they travel far away; some presentiment, even when all things are bright and fair, bids them to begin their journey and way. Exquisite sensibility, almighty law, and then the winter rest. Almighty intelligence, let me adore thee; "for who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this." Let us think of God; what He does with the birds in winter. I often think God buries the birds. They do not meet us in our walk; they do not lie dead beneath our feet. God cares for them. Where do they die, and where do they fall in the winter? "Ye are of more value than the birds." "Be of good cheer." Go to the birds and learn faith in Almighty protection; think what the sparrow finds-a place, a rest for herself; there she lays her young. Oh, I hope there is something within which urges me along through my blindness to His blessedness. "Oh," you say, "what shall I do in old age? what shall I do in winter? what shall I do in the grave?" Ye are of more value than many sparrows, and the sparrows find a home; not one is forgotten before God; He who watches them in their flight and in their place of repose will watch thee, will wake for thee. I have heard one tell how a thousand miles out of sea, amidst the rushing tempest, and the wind, and lightning flash, the good ship went down with all its costly freight of life; but as one or two formed a raft, or manned the longboat, amidst the storm he looked up and saw the stormy petrel touching the billows, and then flashing back into the light of the sky, and said he, " He who has created that bird, and brought it so far from land, and fitted it for the tempest and storm, and to outride it all, must know those who are below, and must know me." He is infinite, and if the sea is in the hollow of His hand they are in the hollow of His hand, and I am in the hollow of His hand! Did you ever hear them sing in the night? Sweet in the fern or in the forest, the bird that sings darkling or in the morning. Very sweet are the devotions of the birds. Dost thou realise in God's house that great intelligence beneath His wing? "Even Thine altars, O Lord of Hosts, my King and my God." Ye are of more value than they, my pretty, bright wing friends. Bright-wing for you, for me.

Yes, birds are mysteries, as I said. Their deaths-who buries the birds? We seldom see them lying dead in our wood-walks ; and to what an age some of them survive! The poet Bryant, walking in the forest, and meditating on the perpetuity of nature in the life of old oaks, says :

"The century-living crow

Whose birth was in their tops grew old, and died
Amidst their branches."

The passionate nightingale indeed, like a child of genius, dies young, and will only live for sixteen years; but the linnet will live forty, our imitative parrot sixty. It is said a falcon will live two hundred, and swans two hundred and ninety years. When I was a child I sat one summer evening in my little bed-room attic beneath the shade of an old elder-tree, and I saw in an old book, and put in my memory two verses I have never seen since. I should like to know whose they are. I suppose the production of some unknown one, for really no one besides myself would find much poetical merit in them; but they have often been a comfort and strength to me in life :

"Yon raven once an acorn took

From Romney's tallest, stoutest tree;

He hid it by a limpid brook,

And lived another oak to see.

Thus Melancholy buries Hope,
But Providence keeps still alive,

And bids us with afflictions cope,
And all anxieties survive."

So cheerfulness is taught by the black-winged raven, or crow, and yet this is the bird to which the old proverb attributes the incessant cry, "cras cras," to-morrow, to-morrow. Welsh tradition indeed assigns to the owl the honour, according to Mr. Borrow, of being the oldest creature in the world. And a pretty tradition which he recites in his "Wild Wales" shows how the eagle, desirous of finding the oldest inhabitant, went from creature to creature until at last the most ancient was found to be the owl; but this I fancy is only a fancy.

In the sweet season of spring, when nature invites us to her concerts in the woods, the notes of birds richly harmonise with the glory and gaiety of universal nature; and the song in the deep covert of the wood, or up high in the heavens, is finely in unison with nature's wide and amply flowing tapestry of green and gold. There is a wonderful exhilaration in the song of a bird. If it is true, as one proverb says, "Every bird is known by his feathers," so also is that other, "Every bird is known by its note." But we need not think only of the rich music of the nightingale, or even the melody of the woodlark, or the soft note of the linnet, innumerable birds have delightful notes. Association lends a charm to notes which could scarcely be considered musical. The Lapland mocking bird, or "hundered tuner," and our cuckoo, that "blithe new comer," which we remember to have heard shouting through a long spring day in the green alcoves of Fontainebleau, no science of music could ever make them melodious, but how charming they are.

Dear old Isaac Walton, his soul filled with the music of the nightingale, says in one of his most melodious and best-known passages, "He that at midnight, when the labourers sleep securely, should hear, as I have heard, the clear air, the sweet descant, the rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above the earth and say, 'Lord, what music hast Thou provided for Thy saints in heaven, when Thou affordest bad men such music upon the earth." But a man must have his soul very much in harmony with this life of joy in order that he may enjoy it;. and who has not known seasons when the rapid trill of birds in the woodland, the grove, or the cage, have only been an insupportable and wearying succession of noises? The soul of the listener distuned the sounds, and made them all "like sweet bells jangled." So says the wise man in a well-known proverb, "As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to a heavy heart." The sweet music distracts the listener, he exclaims, like "Bianca among the Nightingales,"

"I marvel how the birds can sing."

and

It is a strange thing that few people seem to know how to deal with sorrow; with the best intentions they very often rather add to it than diminish it, sometimes by endless talk, in which nothing is said, sometimes by selecting the very topics for consolation only in such a manner as to add to the acuteness of the grief. They do. worse than leave the sufferer alone; they take away the benedictions of silence; they rob of the garment in cold weather; they add the sharp to the sharp, the sour to the sour. Very few are they who are "brothers born for adversity." Sympathy is a rare gift, and where it is felt most it expresses itself with fewest words. It has nothing to say, but it makes itself felt, and so far it is a consolation. It is to be hoped that there are very few who, in the presence of suffering, are merely unfeeling. It is only that there is no adequacy, no depth of feeling. The poor sufferer sits mute and spell-bound in heaviness and despair of heart, and one comes in and says, "I'll play to you, I'll sing to you." And there are songs and chords which can find their way to the innermost mourning chambers and most secret sorrows of the soul. There are tones and strains which are exactly those it would soothe a heavy heart to hear, but then they need to be selected with wonderful care and wisdom. Soothing sorrow is as delicate an affair as surgery, and needs as delicate and adroit a touch as the operation for some dangerous disease, or the dressing of some most painful wound. And when some one who has never known a grief comes and with careless tongue recites some worldly gossip, or sings some recent opera strain, the poor victim feels a millionfold more sad, must almost scream as if some rugged Indian, rather than skilful surgeon,

were tearing open the wounds afresh. This is the " vinegar upon nitre," the "singing of songs to a heavy heart." Very few have ever passed through a great grief without experiencing the painful absence of sympathy in nature-a fine day, the rich luminousness of natural scenery, the calm, graceful, beautiful indifference of all natural objects. How can the sun shine so when I am so desolate ? Rivers-how can they sing so when my heart is breaking? Nature never puts on mourning weeds on account of personal griefs. She seems to have some great heart-breaking cause of her own sometimes, but her sympathy is never extorted for individual sufferers. She goes on just in her usual way, and it is very merciful and very great that she does so ; but it is none the less true that her gladness in seasons of isolation and bereavement adds a sombreness to the spirit, and seems to give so much of brightness as to enable us to look down into a vault and read a loved name on the plate upon a coffin lid. In such seasons she seems to bring vinegar to the soul's nitre, and to sing songs to a heavy heart. The song of birds, however, have that rich commendation, they are unbought lyrics. A proverb says, "Little birds that can sing and won't must be made to sing." But little need is there of such a proverb. Birds in the woods sing blithely enough; sometimes in the cage indeed they pine away. But even there the blackbird outside the cottage in the large wicker prison, or even the linnet or canary behind their glittering wires in the drawing-room, pour out torrents of what sometimes sound like heart-broken and heart-breaking airs. They have neither sentimental joys nor sentimental griefs; their little throats are the vehicles of reality. Their songs are not mock sentiment. While we pave and lay out with porcelain from Sèvres our beautiful sentimental Calvaries and Golgothas, and do all our Church wailing even after the most approved scientific method, the gushing flow of birds' voices rebukes our vanity and our falsehood.

Of all vagrants in nature there are few, I suppose, which wander so wide and far as birds, beautiful, aerial vagabonds; but they have their centre of radiation and their law of flight; the gyre eagle, sweeping over the lofty Alpine cliff, and the lark, with speckled breast, singing up high in the blue lift, know their homes and return to them. It is an edifying thing to see rook after rook returning, and sometimes a whole regiment flying back to the "rooky wood." There are vagrants, says the wise man, not so wise as birds. "As a bird that wandereth from her nest so is a man that wandereth from his place." The proverb only needs to be announced for the force, the common-sense like force of it to be seen and felt. It is indeed an image easily apprehended. Wonderful is the instinct which prompts many kinds of birds to select the place of their nest; wonderful creatures, searching out artificial