or cold, dry or moist, and the musquash is scarce likely to be wiser.
I have noted but two days' difference in the coming of the song-
sparrow between a very early and a very backward spring. This
very year I saw the linnets at work thatching, just before a snow-
storm which covered the ground several inches deep for a number
of days. They struck work and left us for a while, no doubt in
search of food. Birds frequently perish from sudden changes in our
whimsical spring weather of which they had no foreboding. More
than thirty years ago, a cherry-tree, then in full bloom, near my
window, was covered with humming-birds benumbed by a fall of
mingled rain and snow, which probably killed many of them. It
should seem that their coming was dated by the height of the sun,
which betrays them into unthrifty matrimony;

"So priketh hem Nature in hir corages;"(1)

but their going is another matter. The chimney swallows leave us
early, for example, apparently so soon as their latest fledglings are
firm enough of wing to attempt the long rowing-match that is
before them. On the other hand the wild-geese probably do not
leave the North till they are frozen out, for I have heard their bugles
sounding southward so late as the middle of December. What may
be called local migrations are doubtless dictated by the chances of
food. I have once been visited by large flights of cross-bills; and
whenever the snow lies long and deep on the ground, a flock of
cedar-birds comes in mid-winter to eat the berries on my
hawthorns. I have never been quite able to fathom the local, or
rather geographical partialities of birds. never before this summer
(1870) have the king-birds, handsomest of flycatchers, built in my
orchard; though I always know where to find them within half a