How astonishing is the instinct which induces these little creatures to emigrate to other countries, when the season approaches in which the food they require is no longer to be found in the land where they have built their nests, and reared their young, and sung their sweetest songs! How amazing the skill with which they pursue their distant journies to precisely those countries which are the best furnished with means for their support! Equally wonderful is their return, at stated periods, to the shores they have quitted. Well may we exclaim, with the delightful naturalist of Selborne,

"Whence your return by such nice instinct led,
When spring, soft season, lifts her bloomy head?
Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride—
The God of nature is your secret guide."

We cannot willingly close this little sketch without quoting the appropriate and elegantly written observations of a naturalist of the present day. "Birds, generally speaking, appear to belong more to the air than to the earth: they constitute moving republics, which traverse the atmosphere at stated periods in large bodies. These bodies perform their aërial evolutions like an army, crowd into close column, form into triangle, extend in line of battle, or disperse in

light squadrons. The bird knows, by an admirable instinct, the winds and weather which are favourable to his voyage. He can long foresee the approaches of frost, or the return of spring. He needs no compass to direct his cours through the empire of the cloud, the thunder, and the tempest; and, while man and beast are creeping on the earth, he breathes the pure air of heaven, and soars upward nearer to the spring of day. He arrives at the term of his voyage, and touches the hospitable land of his destination. He finds there a subsistence prepared by the hand of Providence, and a safe asylum in the grove, the forest, or the mountain, where he revisits the habitation he had tenanted before, the scene of his former delights, the cradle of his infancy. The stork resumes his ancient tower, the nightingale the solitary thicket, the swallow his old window, and the redbreast the mossy trunk of the same oak in which he formerly nestled.”*

In conclusion, we must beg to appropriate to our use another interesting passage from the same writer, on the touching exhibitions of parental tenderness displayed by the feathered race, in the patient hatching of their eggs, and the

*See Griffith's Cuvier.

care and defence of their young ones, as long as they require their attention. "The mother, seated the livelong day upon her eggs, forgets all the necessities of nature. Her natural character undergoes a complete change, and flinging off the timidity which usually characterises her, she braves every danger, and dares the most unequal conflicts for the safety of her young. Some birds never quit their nests without plucking feathers from their own breasts to cover their eggs; others cover them with dry leaves; and among some species, the male hatches in his turn, or brings food to the female. So much tenderness and trouble, lavished without compensation; such a sublime and generous self-devotion in the most urgent dangers, proves that this natural and amiable sentiment is not the result of any mechanical connexion of ideas and sensations, but of a law altogether divine. The swallow, precipitating itself into an edifice in flames to rescue its young; the hen, which hesitates not to brave death in defence of her chickens; the timid lark, presenting herself to the fowler, to divert him from her nest; in fine, all these touching evidences of affection for the helpless, in animals so light and volatile, clearly indicate the sacred impulse communicated to all that breathe, by the Mighty Being who

has willed the perpetuity and support of every species. Here, indeed, we recognise the workmanship of the Divinity, in all its admirable wisdom and surpassing benevolence. The finger of God is here!"

[Much of the information contained in this little book, is drawn either from the entertaining volumes of Bewick, or from the more scientific pages of "The Animal Kingdom of Cuvier, with additional Descriptions and Original Matter, by Ed. Griffith, F. L. S. and others."]

11

CHAPTER I.

NATURALISTS have arranged birds under six orders. In each of these orders there are again sub-divisions; but, as we do not pretend to enter into the minutiae of ornithology, we shall only notice the six grand divisions, as forming the broad outlines of the science. They are as follow:

First Order.Accipitres, or birds of prey.

Second do. www. Passeres, including most of our birds of song, and many others.

Third do. Scansores, or Climbers.

Are known by their bent beak and crooked talons; very powerful arms, by means of which they pursue other birds, and even weak quadrupeds and reptiles. They are among the birds, what the carnivora are among quadrupeds. They form two families, the Diurnal and Nocturnal.-Cuvier.