er-birds as enliveners of the
landscape. Any circumstance connected with scenery, that exercises our
feelings of benevolence, adds to the picturesque charms of a prospect;
and no man can see a little bird, or any other animal, at this time,
without feeling a lively interest in its welfare. The sight of a flock
of Snow-Buntings descending, like a shower of meteors, upon a field
of grass, and eagerly devouring the seeds contained in its drooping
pannicles that extend above the snow-drifts,--of a company of Crows
rejoicing with noisy sociability over some newly-discovered feast in the
pine-wood,--of the party-colored Woodpeckers winding round the trees
and hammering upon their trunks,--all these, and many other sights
and sounds, are associated with our ideas of the happiness of these
creatures; and while our benevolent feelings are thus agreeably
exercised, the objects that cause our emotions add a positive charm to
the dreary aspects of winter. These reflections have always led me to
regard the birds and other interesting animals as having a value to
mankind not to be estimated in dollars and cents, and which is entirely
independent of any services they may render to the farmer or the
orchardist by preventing the over-multiplication of noxious insects.

The greater number of small birds that remain in northern latitudes
during winter, except the Woodpeckers and their congeners, are such as
subsist chiefly upon seeds. Those insectivorous species that gather
their food chiefly from the ground are under a particular necessity of
migrating. Hence the common Robin, living entirely on insects and a
little fruit, that serves him rather as a dessert than as substantial
fare, a bird that never feeds upon grain or seeds of any kind, but
devours the insects that are found upon the surface of the soil, cannot
subsist in our latitude, except in open winters. During such favorable
seasons, the Robins are able to collect vast quantities of dormant
insects from the open ground. These birds always endeavor to keep on the
outside of extensive snows; and if in any year, very early in November,
a large quantity of snow should fall in the latitude of New Jersey and
Pennsylvania, while north of it the ground remained uncovered, the
Robins would be retarded in their journey and tarry with us in unusual
numbers. A great many of them must perish of hunger, or be reduced to
the necessity of feeding on the berries of the Viburnum and Juniper,
shou