One of my guests was a robin of exceptionally small size with a withered leg. This bird was first brought to me one evening by some of the children, who had caught it in the schoolroom, and thought I would be able to do something for it. A more pitiable object could not be imagined; it was nothing but a little feathered skeleton; the "comfortable little red waistcoat with legs to it" was now a sharp keel, but behind the bone one could feel the little muscular heart working away violently. One leg was crushed above the knee and was now dead and dried, the closed claws hardened into a ball. I assured them that nothing could be done to save it, that the most merciful thing we could do would be to let it fly away into the bushes, where it would quickly fall asleep and die without pain in the intense cold. I opened my hand and it darted away into the black bitter night, but great was my surprise next morning, when looking at the company gathered at the window, to find the wasted little cripple among them, eagerly picking up crumbs! I was foolishly pleased to see it there; nevertheless it was a pity that it had survived the night and in the end lived through the frost, seeing that a hopelessly injured and maimed bird is, like the caged bird, incapable of its proper life, and to any one who can feel for a bird is better dead.
The second day of the frost made a wonderful difference in the appearance of the birds out in the fields, especially the starlings. These had now lost all energy and were seen everywhere moving languidly about over the pale frosty turf in a hopeless search for a soft place, while others were found gathered at some spot sheltered by a stone hedge from the bitter north-east wind, standing crowded together in listless attitudes, with drooping wings. By degrees the fieldfares and redwings disappeared. The song-thrushes which, next to the starlings, were the most numerous, appeared to fare better than the other soft-billed species, owing to the abundance of snails in the stone hedges. It was a mystery to me how with nothing but those poor beaks they were able to get them out. Snails were exceedingly plentiful in the crevices between the stones, many of them easily got at, but so tightly were they glued and frozen to the stone that I could not pull them off with my fingers. They were like limpets on a rock, yet it was plain to see that the thrushes did get a good many out and so saved themselves from starvation. Their anvils were everywhere near the walls, each with its litter of broken shells about it. The hibernating snails were not only found in the stone hedges; they were also extraordinarily abundant among the sandhills or towans at Lelant and Phillack on the coast near St. Ives. They were hidden in the sand at the roots of the coarse marram grass growing on the hills. Here the thrushes had less difficulty in getting them out, and every stone lying in the sand was made use of. It amused me to find that the favourite anvil at one spot was a soda-water bottle which had been stuck deep in the soft sand, leaving the round end about two inches above the ground. Its form and the faint bluish tinge in the clear thick glass gave it the exact appearance of a round lump of ice, but the thrushes had discovered that it was not ice but something as hard as stone, and being immovable, better suited to their purpose than the pebbles and small fragments of stone lying about on the sand. All round the useful bottle the ground was thickly strewn with many-coloured broken snail-shells.
