ripture texts on their side. Indeed, if birds
were only acute theologians, they would unquestionably proceed to turn
these texts (since they find it so easy to obey them) into the basis of
a "system of truth." Other parts of the Bible must be _interpreted_, to
be sure (so the theory would run); but _these_ statements mean just what
they say, and whoever meddles with them is carnally minded and a
rationalist.

Somebody will object, perhaps, that, with our talk about a "perpetual
picnic," we are making a bird's life one cloudless holiday;
contradicting what we have before admitted about a struggle for
existence, and leaving out of sight altogether the seasons of scarcity,
the storms, and the biting cold. But we intend no such foolish
recantation. These hardships are real enough, and serious enough. What
we maintain is that evils of this kind are not necessarily inconsistent
with enjoyment, and may even give to life an additional zest. It is a
matter of every-day observation that the people who have nothing to do
except to "live well" (as the common sarcasm has it) are not always the
most cheerful; while there are certain diseases, like pessimism and the
gout, which seem appointed to wait on luxury and idleness,--as though
nature were determined to have the scales kept somewhat even. And surely
this divine law of compensation has not left the innocent birds
unprovided for,--the innocent birds of whom it was said, "Your heavenly
Father feedeth them." How must the devoted pair exult, when, in spite
of owls and hawks, squirrels and weasels, small boys and full-grown
oologists, they have finally reared a brood of offspring! The long
uncertainty and the thousand perils only intensify the joy. In truth, so
far as this world is concerned, the highest bliss is never to be had
without antecedent sorrow; and even of heaven itself we may not scruple
to say that, if there are painters there, they probably feel obliged to
put some shadows into their pictures.

But of course (and this is what we have been coming to through this long
introduction),--of course our friends of the air are happiest in the
season of mating; happiest, and therefore most attractive to us who find
our pleasure in studying them. In spring, of all times of the year, it
seems a pity that everybody should not turn ornithologist. For "all
mankind love a lover;" and the world, in consequence, has given itself
up to novel-reading, not knowing, unfortunately, how much