"The robin came back with a worm."
Much tenderness is shown by grown-up birds to helpless orphans in need of their aid. A redbreast was mentioned lately in Science Gossip as doing a deed of kindness towards a young starling one bitterly cold morning. The starling had left the nest, and was sitting frightened and shivering in a cellar, whither it had crept, too weak and hungry to fly. In vain kindly human hands offered it bread; it refused all food, till a little hungry robin came down on his daily visit to the house and spied the baby-bird, sitting on one leg, calling his absent mother. Off he went, and soon came darting back with a worm, which was gratefully accepted. When the beggar-bird had been fed, both flew away. Seagulls have been seen assisting a wounded comrade over the wave, and a crane, seeing one of its fellows shot, placed itself under the sufferer in such a way as to prevent his falling to the ground; then, weighted as he was, he bore him away beyond gun-shot.
In sickness, too, not only monkeys, dogs, cats, and the higher animals, but the lowest also, as well as birds, show good feeling. On a salt lake in Utah lived an old and completely blind pelican, which was very fat, 'and must,' says Darwin, 'have been well fed for a long while by his companions.' Crows feed their blind friends, and so do rats, and a case is on record of a barn-door cock who did the same thing. These and similar facts, which could be multiplied by thousands, prove how beautiful a spirit is that which our great Creator breathed into even the humblest of His creatures, and how worthy, for His sake, they are of our reverence and regard.
Edith Carrington.
IN THE SNOW.
"They stumbled along, supporting the stranger as best they could."