It Stuns Him, And If He
Recovers From That His Beak Is Usually Broken So That He Must Starve.
Happily Such Accidents Are Rare.
The great rapidity of a bird's heart
beating so fast seems to render it peculiarly susceptible to death from
shock.
Great fright will sometimes kill a bird, as for instance, when
they have wandered inside a room, and been thoughtlessly held in some
one's hand. Without visible injury, the heart, after beating excessively
violently, almost as rapidly slows, the nictitating membrane is drawn
over the eyes, the head falls to one side, and the bird becomes lifeless
from nervous exhaustion. The beautiful swallows, be tender to them, for
they symbol all that is best in nature and all that is best in our
hearts.
BUCKHURST PARK.
An old beech tree had been broken off about five feet from the ground,
and becoming hollow within, was filled with the decay of its own
substance. In this wood-sorrel had taken root, and flower and leaf
covered the space within, white flower and green leaf flourishing on old
age. The wood-sorrel leaf, the triune leaf, is perhaps more lovely even
than the flower, like a more delicately shaped clover of a tenderer
green, and it lasts far on into the autumn. When the violet leaves are no
more looked for, when the cowslips have gone, and the bluebells have left
nothing behind them but their nodding seed-cases, still the wood-sorrel
leaf stays on the mound, in shape and colour the same, and as pleasantly
acid to the taste now under the ripening nuts as in May.
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