'

to be its terrors; of those influences, alike subtle and deleterious, which prompted the fervent and pathetic expostulation of St. Paul.* But it will tear away the veil of ignorance and brace the nerves of carelessness; and, in placing us face to face with very formidable facts, will stir toward amendment all hearts not yet altogether hardened into moral and social indifferentism.

It will of course be understood that the step which is immediately contemplated in these remarks is one attended with the smallest possible expense. It is to found (if the distinction may be permitted) an association, but not a society. It is to enter into a bond of honor, under which the bondsmen would have no public action whatever in common. They would subscribe an engagement having no legal force; and no inoral sanction, no Erinnues, to enforce it, except the action of the private conscience in the internal forum. For the engagement is to give away a proportion of the annual receipt which the individual himself will fix, will alter if he pleases, and which, altered or unaltered, he will not be called to promulgate. If it is said he does not know exactly what his income is, let him allow a margin; and let him, if he think proper, rule everything in his own favor by taking it at what he knows to be its minimum. If it be asked, may he credit himself with his poor's rate which is compulsory, or with a contribution to a statue of a pub lic benefactor which relieves no human want or misery, again it is in his own power, like the estate of Ananias and Sapphira. He will, however, not fail to remember that his obligation is only to give not less than the proportion he has fixed. It does not restrain him from giving more. It is to be hoped that, with practice, his ideas will alter and improve. The burden will be lost in the privilege. He will learn as to giving that, like mercy, It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. Nay, that done in a certain manner, it is † Acts v. 4.

* 1 Tim. vi. 9-11.
Merchant of Venice, iv. 1.

even a surer and a larger blessing to the first than to the second. Now it may be requisite to specify some of the incidental advantages which are to be expected from this peculiar method, not of giving (for all our choice of modes and forms of giving would remain just as free as before), but of conditioning our gifts. I will name one or two. First, it will place us in honest co operation with those from whom we differ. This is a distinct good; for it will tend to soften any asperities which difference engenders. Secondly, for that portion of the community who find economies either necessary or congenial, a certain dignity will be conferred upon these economies, and they will be redeemed from the sense of meanness, if they are made in order to render possible the fattening of a dedicated fund. And, thirdly, in many cases of begging letters and the like, who is there that has not felt it painful to have his own pecuniary interest pitted against even a questionable applicant? under the plan now in our contemplation, the applicant goes against the fund, not against our personal means of indulgence and enjoyment: so that we can afford to treat him dispassionately, and reject him, if need be, with a quiet conscience, as it makes us none the richer.

But,

I have not thus taken upon me the office of tendering a recommendation to my fellow-members of the community, bearing upon the order of actual life, without ascertaining in more than one quarter from whence influence may flow that there is a desire to see tried some experiment of the kind, and even to give it energetic support. The work of correspondence necessary to organize the plan, and set it going, would be altogether beyond my power to undertake. At the same time, I am ready to be the careful recipient of any assents to the general conception, which there may be a disposition to tender; and (without any other pledge) I should hold myself bound to make such endeavors toward a practical beginning as would at least prevent good intentions thus conveyed from falling to the ground. -Nineteenth Century.

As soon as spring comes back to the temperate zone, myriads and myriads of birds which are scattered over the warmer regions of the South come together in numberless bands, and, full of vigor and joy, hasten northward to rear their off spring. Each of our hedges, each grove, each ocean cliff, and each of the lakes and ponds with which Northern America, Northern Europe, and Northern Asia are dotted tell us at that time of the year the tale of what mutual aid means for the birds; what force, energy, and protection it confers to every living being, however feeble and defenceless it otherwise might be. Take, for instance, one of the numberless lakes of the Russian and Siberian steppes. Its shores are peopled with myriads of aquatic birds, belonging to at least a score of different species, all living in perfect peace-all protecting one another.

For several hundred yards from the shore the air is filled with gulls and terns, as with snow flakes on a winter day. Thousands of plovers and sand-coursers run over the beach, searching their food, whistling, and simply enjoying life. Further on, on almost each wave, a duck is rocking, while higher up you notice the flocks of the Casarki ducks. Exuberant life swarms everywhere.*

And here are the robbers-the strongest, the cunningest ones, those "ideally organized for robbery." And you hear their hungry, angry, dismal cries as for hours in succession they watch the opportunity of snatching from this mass of living beings one single unprotected individBut as soon as they approach, their

ual.

* Syevertsoff's Periodical Phenomena, p. 251.

presence is signalled by dozens of voluntary sentries, and hundreds of gulls and terns set to chase the robber. Maddened by hunger, the robber soon abandons his usual precautions: he suddenly dashes into the living mass; but, attacked from all sides, he again is compelled to retreat. From sheer despair he falls upon the wild ducks; but the intelligent, social birds rapidly gather in a flock and fly away if the robber is an erne; they plunge into the lake if it is a falcon; or they raise a cloud of water-dust and bewilder the assailant if it is a kite.* And while life continues to swarm on the lake, the robber flies away with cries of anger, and looks out for carrion, or for a young bird or a field-mouse not yet used to obey in time the warnings of its comrades. In the face of an exuberant life, the ideally armed robber must be satisfied with the off-fall of that life.

Further north, in the Arctic archipelagoes,

and see all the ledges, all the cliffs and coryou may sail along the coast for many miles ners of the mountain-sides, up to a height of from two to five hundred feet, literally cov ered with sea-birds, whose white breasts show against the dark rocks as if the rocks were closely sprinkled with chalk specks. The air, near and far, is, so to say, full with fowls.t Each of such "bird-mountains'' is a living illustration of mutual aid, as well as of the infinite variety of characters, individua!

Seyfferlitz, quoted by Brehm, iv. 760.

The Arctic Voyages of A. E. Nordenskjöld, London, 1879, p. 135. See also the powerful description of the St. Kilda Islands by Mr. Dixon (quoted by Seebohm), and nearly all books of Arctic travel.

and specific, resulting from social life. The oyster-catcher is renowned for its readiness to attack the birds of prey. The barge is known for its watchfulness, and it easily becomes the leader of more placid birds. The turnstone, when surrounded by comrades belonging to more energetic species, is a rather timorous bird; but it undertakes keeping watch for the security of the commonwealth when surrounded by smaller birds. Here you have the dominative swans; there, the extremely sociable kittiwake gulls, among whom quarrels are rare and short; the prepossessing polar guillemots, which continually caress each other; the egoist she-goose, who has repudiated the orphans of a killed comrade; and, by her side, another female who adopts anyone's orphans, and now paddles surrounded by fifty or sixty youngsters, whom she conducts and cares for as if they all were her own breed. Side by side with the penguins, which steal one another's eggs, you have the dotterels, whose family relations are so "charming and touching that even passionate hunters recoil from shooting a female surrounded by her young ones; or the eider-ducks, among which (like the velvet-ducks, or the coroyas of the Savannahs) several females hatch together in the same nest; or the lums, which sit in turn upon a common covey. Nature is variety itself, offering all possible varieties of characters, from the basest to the highest and that is why she cannot be depicted by any sweeping assertion. Still less can she be judged from the moralist's point of view, because the views of the moralist are themselves a result-most unconscious of the observation of Nature. Coming together at nesting time is so common with most birds that more examples are scarcely needed. Our trees are crowned with groups of crows' nests; our hedges are full of nests of smaller birds our farmhouses give shelter to colonies of swallows our old towers are the refuge of hundreds of nocturnal birds; and pages might be filled with the most charming descriptions of the peace and harmony which prevail in almost all these nesting associations. As to the protection derived by the weakest birds from their unions, it is evident. That excellent observer, Dr. Conës, saw, for instance, the little cliffswallows nesting in the immediate neighborhood of the prairie falcon (Falco polyargus). The falcon had its nest on the

s;

top of one of the minarets of clay which are so common in the cañons of Colorado, while a colony of swallows nested just beneath. The little peaceful birds had no fear of their rapacious neighbor; they even did not let it approach to their colony. They immediately. surrounded it and chased it, so that it had to make off at once. *

In

Life in societies does not cease when the nesting period is over; it begins then in a new form. The young broods gather in societies of youngsters, generally including several species. Social life is practiced at that time chiefly for its own sake-partly for security, and chiefly for the pleasures derived from it. So we see in our forests the societies formed by the young nuthatchers (Sitta cæsia), together with titmouses, chaffinches, wrens, treecreepers, or some wood-peckers.† Spain the swallow is met with in company with kestrels, fly-catchers, and even pigeons. In the Far West the young horned larks live in large societies, together with another lark (Sprague's), the sky-lark, the Savannah sparrow, and several species of buntings and longspurs. In fact, it would be much easier to describe the species which live isolated than to simply name those species which join the autumnal societies of young birds-not for hunting or nesting purposes, but simply to enjoy life in society and to spend their time in plays and sports, after having given a few hours every day to find their daily food.

And, finally, we have that immense display of mutual aid among birds-their migrations-which I dare not even enter upon in a review article. Sufficient to say that birds which have lived for months in small bands scattered over a wide territory gather in thousands; they come together at a given place, for several days in succession, before they start, and they evidently discuss the particulars of the journey. Some species will indulge every afternoon in flights preparatory to the long passage. All wait for their tardy congeners, and finally they start in a certain well-chosen di

*Elliot Conës, in Bulletin U. S. Geol. Survey of Territories, iv. No. 7, pp. 556, 579, etc. + Brehm Father, quoted by A. Brehm, iv. 34 89. See also White's Natural History of Selborne, Letter XI.

Dr.Couës' Birds of Dakota and Montana. in Bulletin U. S. Survey of Territories, iv. No. 7.

rection-a fruit of accumulated collective experience the strongest flying at the head of the band, and relieving one another in that difficult task. They cross the seas in large bands consisting of both big and small birds, and when they return next spring they repair to the same spot, and, in most cases, each of them takes possession of the very same nest which it had built or repaired the previous year.*

Going now over to mammals, the first thing which strikes us is the overwhelming numerical predominance of social species over those few carnivores which do not associate. The plateaus, the Alpine tracts, and the steppes of the Old and New World are stocked with herds of deer, antelopes, gazelles, fallow deer, buffaloes, wild goats and sheep, all of which are sociable animals. When the Europeans came to settle in America, they found it so densely peopled with buffaloes, that pioneers had to stop their advance when a colunin of migrating buffaloes came to cross the route they followed; the march past of the dense column lasting sometimes for two and three days. And when the Russians took possession of Siberia they found it so densely peopled with deer, antelopes, squirrels, and other sociable animals, that the very conquest of Siberia was nothing but a hunting expedition which lasted for two hundred years. Not long ago the small streams of Northern America and Northern Siberia were peopled with colonies of beavers, and up to the seventeenth century like colonies swarmed in Northern Russia. The flat lands of the four great continents are still covered with countless colonies of mice, ground squirrels, marmots, and other rodents.

In the lower latitudes of Asia and Africa the forests are still the abode of numerous families of elephants, rhinoceroses, and numberless societies of monkeys. In the far north the reindeer aggregate in numberless herds; while still further north we

*It has often been intimated that larger birds may occasionally transport some of the smaller birds when they cross together the Mediterranean, but the fact still remains doubtful. On the other side. it is certain that some smaller birds join the bigger ones for migration. The fact has been noticed several times and it was recently confirmed by

L. Buxbaum at Raunheim. He saw several

parties of cranes which had larks flying in the

midst and on both sides of their migratory columns.- Der zoologische Garten, 1886, p. 133.

find the herds of the musk-oxen and numberless bands of polar foxes. The coasts. of the ocean are enlivened by flocks of seals and morses; its waters, by shoals of sociable cetaceans; and even in the depths of the great plateau of Central Asia we find herds of wild horses, wild donkeys, wild camels, and wild sheep. All these mammals live in societies and nations sometimes numbering hundreds of thousands of individuals, although now, after three centuries of gunpowder civilization, we find but the débris of the immense aggregations of old. How trifling, in comparison with them, are the numbers of the carnivores! And how false, therefore, is the view of those who speak of the animal world as if nothing were to be seen in it but lions and hyenas plunging their bleeding teeth into the flesh of their victims! One might as well imagine that the whole of human life is nothing but a succession of Tel-el-Kebir and Geok-tepé massacres.

Association and mutual aid are the rule with mammals. We find social habits even among the carnivores, and we can only name the cat tribe (lions, tigers, leopards, etc.) as a division the members of which decidedly prefer isolation to society, and are but seldom met with even in small groups. The two tribes of the civets (Viverrida) and the weasels (Mustelida) might also be characterized by their isolated life, but it is a fact that during the last century the common weasel was more sociable than it is now; it was seen then in larger groups in Scotland and in the Unterwalden canton of Switzerland. As to the great tribe of the dogs, it is eminently sociable, and association for hunting purposes may be considered as characteristic of its numerous species. It is well known, in fact, that wolves gather in packs for hunting, and Tschudi left an excellent description of how they draw up in a halfcircle, surround a cow which is grazing on a mountain slope, and then, suddenly appearing with a loud barking, make it roll in the abyss. During severe winters their packs grow so numerous as to become a danger for human settlements, as was the case in France some five-and forty years ago.

In the Russian steppes they never attack the horses otherwise than in packs ; and yet they have to sustain bitter fights, during which the horses (according to

Tschudi, Thierleben der Alpenwelt, p. 404.