The sea keeps its own climate, and keeps its highways open, after all on the land is shut up by frost.  The sea-birds, accordingly, seem to lead an existence more independent of latitude and of seasons.  In midwinter, when the seashore watering-places are forsaken by men, you may find Nahant or Nantasket Beach more thronged with bipeds of this sort than by the featherless kind in summer.  The Long Beach of Nahant at that season is lined sometimes by an almost continuous flock of sea-ducks, and a constant passing and repassing are kept up between Lynn Bay and the surf outside.

Early of a winter’s morning at Nantasket I once saw a flock of geese, many hundreds in number, coming in from the Bay to cross the land in their line of migration.  They advanced with a vast, irregular front extending far along the horizon, their multitudinous honking softened into music by the distance.  As they neared the beach the clamor increased and the line broke up in apparent confusion, circling round and round for some minutes in what seemed aimless uncertainty.  Gradually the cloud of birds resolved itself into a number of open triangles, each of which with its deeper-voiced leader took its way inland; as if they trusted to their general sense of direction while flying over the water, but on coming to encounter the dangers of the land, preferred to delegate the responsibility.  This done, all is left to the leader; if he is shot, it is said the whole flock seem bewildered, and often alight without regard to place or to their safety.  The selection of the leader must therefore be a matter of deliberation with them; and this, no doubt, was going on in the flock I saw at Nantasket during their pause at the edge of the beach.  The leader is probably always an old bird.  I have noticed sometimes that his honking is more steady and in a deeper tone, and that it is answered in a higher key along the line.

THE INDIAN REVOLT.

For the first time in the history of the English dominion in India, its power has been shaken from within its own possessions, and by its own subjects.  Whatever attacks have been made upon it heretofore have been from without, and its career of conquest has been the result to which they have led.  But now no external enemy threatens it, and the English in India have found themselves suddenly and unexpectedly engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with a portion of their subjects, not so much for dominion as for life.  There had been signs and warnings, indeed, of the coming storm; but the feeling of security in possession and the confidence of moral strength were so strong, that the signs had been neglected and the warnings disregarded.