The king-rail is a noble bird, and a few haunt the marshes all summer long, nesting where the tall grass is too rank and tangled even to tempt a restless cow. Perhaps they have in mind the danger of meddlesome mankind, and dwell in such spots accordingly. Taking the whole range of bird life into consideration, it certainly would appear that birds give a good deal of attention to such matters. And, before leaving the subject, I will add that, to be intelligible in discussing birds’ ways, one must assume that they have minds akin to ours; and this leads to the suspicion on the part of some, and conviction in my own case, that the birds’ mind and that of man are too closely akin to warrant much distinction. Birds, then, as usual, trooped to the fore as I rambled down the river. I saw nothing else, yet not a bird was in view. The old histories came to mind, and closed my eyes to other than an inner vision. “Greate stores of swannes, geese, and ducks, and huge cranes, both blue and white.” Is it not exasperating to think of the change wrought in two centuries? A mile-wide river, and banks of old-time wildness still remaining, yet not a feather rests upon the one or shadow of a walking bird falls upon the other. Far and near, up and down, and high overhead I scan the country for a glimpse of some one bird, but in vain. The crows nowadays have the river to themselves, and none of these were about to-day. The day has been a marked one for its emptiness. Tracing the river’s shore for miles ought to yield rich results, but here, at my journey’s end, I am empty-handed. What little I have seen has but soured my temper. It is most unwise to be ever mourning over the unrecoverable past, but how can one avoid it? Such a walk, productive of nothing worth recording, may not, I hope, be in vain. It at least provokes me to say, Can not wild life, or what little remains of it, be effectually protected? Can not swans, geese, and ducks be induced to return? They can never prove an obstruction to navigation, so why should legislation on this point be, as at present, a mere farce? The day will never come, perhaps, when people who prefer a living to a dead bird will be acknowledged as having a claim to the wild life that would appear to be no man’s peculiar property. By an overwhelming majority, mankind hold, if a creature is good to eat, it must be killed. But the insignificant minority still feel they have a claim. I would walk twenty miles to see a wild swan on the Delaware; my neighbor would walk forty if sure of shooting it.