Small birds of half a dozen kinds were also there, and one tinkle-tinkled his spring song quite merrily in spite of the cold that kept the others silent and made me blue.

One day I spied a big queen bumble-bee on the ground, looking extremely conspicuous in its black and chestnut coat on the fresh green sward; and thinking it numbed by the cold I picked it up.

It moved its legs feebly, but alas! its enemy had found and struck it down, and with its hard, sharp little beak had drilled a hole in one of the upper plates of its abdomen, and from that small opening had cunningly extracted all the meat.

Though still alive it was empty as a blown eggshell.

Poor queen and mother, you survived the winter in vain, and went abroad in vain in the bitter weather in quest of bread to nourish your few first-born--the grubs that would help you by and by; now there will be no bread for them, and for you no populous city in the flowery earth and a great crowd of children to rise up each day, when days are long, to call you blessed! And he who did this thing, the unspeakable oxeye with his black and yellow breast--"catanic black and amber"-- even while I made my lamentation was tinkling his merry song overhead in the windy elms.
The birds that lived on the huge cathedral itself had the greatest attraction for me; and here the daws, if not the most numerous, were the most noticeable, as they ever are on account of their conspicuousness in their black plumage, their loquacity and everlasting restlessness.