And how fares it with our feathered favourites, the wild birds, in these hard times? Fertile as they are in resources, and indefatigable in providing for the wants of the passing hour, all their little shifts must frequently prove inadequate to the supply of their daily wants in such trying times as these. St. Valentine's day has come and gone, but neither in copse, nor hedgerow, nor ivy-mantled wall, find we as yet any traces of nidification, nor has the love-prompted warble, in past years so loud and incessant at this season, been yet heard around us. The robin only cheeps; the sparrow simply chirps; the linnet merely twitters; and even the "gay chaffinch" can only give us a disconsolate "fink, fink," in place of his well-known glad burst of choicest and cheeriest song. The mellow chaunt of the merle and song-thrush delights not yet the ear from copse or brake at early morn or evening-tide. The intense and piercing cold, which, on the wings of the northern blast, sweeps over the land as we write, and as it moans, and sighs, and wildly shrieks by starts in its progress over the deep, causes the lone sea-bird to utter its eeriest and wildest cry, has succeeded in freezing, not only the rivulet and the pool, but has actually bound up the voice of gladness and every source of joyful utterance in all our feathered friends as well. But "nil desperandum," better times are coming. Fields will yet be green, trees will yet be leafy, rivers unbound from icy fetters will yet dance merrily in the sun, and laugh with all their ripples, as they hasten seawards; and then "again shall flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds shall have come, and the voice of the turtle be heard in our land."