What is this Mighty Breath, ye sages say,

That, in a powerful language, felt, not heard,

Instructs the fowls of heaven; and thro' their breast
These arts of love diffuses? What but God!
Inspiring God! who, boundless Spirit all,
And unremitting Energy, pervades,
Adjusts, sustains, and agitates the whole.
He ceaseless works alone; and yet alone
Seems not to work; with such perfection framed
Is this complex stupendous scheme of things!
But, tho' concealed to every purer eye

Th' informing Author in his works appears:
Chief, lovely Spring, in thee, and thy soft scenes,
The smiling God is seen; while water, earth,
And air, attest his bounty: which exalts
The brute creation to this finer thought,
And annual melts their undesigning hearts
Profusely thus in tenderness and joy1.

Birds may certainly be ranked among the most beautiful creatures in the world. The structure and conformation of their bodies, even of their minutest parts, is so regular and perfect, as to exhibit the most convincing proofs of the wisdom and providence of God. The mechanism that produces the various motions of the winged tribe is wonderful. The anatomical descriptions contained in the treatises on ornithology, or the natural history of birds, are extremely curious and interesting. But, not to enter into a detail that would be too extensive for the limits of this paper, I shall be content, on this head, to quote the observation of M. Vicq d'Azyr, an ingenious French naturalist: It is particularly worthy of observation, that in comparing the muscles and bones of birds with those of the human specles, the analogies are found to be much greater, and more striking, than could have been expected, considering the little resemblance there is between the external forms of these two classes. This evinces the beautiful uniformity that reigns in the great Spring, line 846, &c.

1

scheme of nature, and that in orders of being so different. It is also a remarkable proof of final causes, when we consider that the diversities of this otherwise uniform plan, are exactly suited to the nature, structure, and motions, which characterize each class1.'

The bodies of birds are formed, in every part, with such skill and harmony, as to be perfectly conformable to their manner of living, and to their respective necessities. The stork and heron, which are obliged to seek their food chiefly in the marshes, have long bills, and also very long legs, that they may run into the water without wetting their bodies, and yet reach their prey at a distance. The bills of woodcocks, snipes, and other birds, which hunt for worms in moorish grounds, and which (as Mr. Willoughby observes) live also on the fat unctuous humours they suck out of the earth, are likewise very long; as are also the bills of curlews, and other sea-fowl, that hunt for their food on the sand of the sea-shore. The eagle and vulture, which are rapacious birds, have large wings, strong talons, and sharp-edged beaks. The hooked form of the bills of parrots is of great service to them, in climbing, and catching hold of boughs. The upper bill of this bird is filled with rows of cross bars; and the under bill, which is much shorter, shuts within the upper, and draws against the roof of the mouth; by which means a kind of mastication is effected, before the meat passes into the craw. Ducks, geese, and many others, have long broad bills, to enable them to grope for their food in waters and mud. On the contrary, a thick, short, and sharp-edged bill is as useful to other birds, who have occasion to husk and flay the grain they swallow. The woodpecker's bill is strong, and sharp enough to dig

Hist. de l'Acad. des Sciences à Paris, 1773.

holes, and build in the heart of the hardest timber. The loxia, or crossbill, whose bill is thick and strong, with the tips crossing each other, breaks open fir-cones, apples, and other fruit, to come at the kernels, with such ease, as if the crossing of the bill were for this service. The sea-pies have a long, sharp, narrow bill, compressed sidewise, and in every respect so well adapted to the raising of limpets from the rocks, that Providence seems to have framed it on purpose to enable it to procure that fish, which is its chief, if not its only food'. The bills of swallows are slender and sharp-pointed: with a very wide mouth, to enable them the more conveniently to catch insects which are their food, in their swiftest flight.-Moreover, in the bills of all birds, there is an admirable provision for the judging of their food, by certain nerves calculated peculiarly for that purpose; small, and less numerous, in such as have the assistance of another sense, the eye, but large, more numerous, and thickly branched about to the very end of the bill, in such as hunt for their food, out of sight, in water, mud, or under ground. These observations on the structure of birds, might be extended to many pages: I shall, therefore, only observe further, with respect to their tail, that Willoughby, Ray, and many others, imagine its principal use to be to steer, and to turn the body in the air, as a rudder. But Borelli has demonstrated, that this is the least use of it, and that it is chiefly to assist the bird in ascending and descending in the air, and to obviate the vacillations

The ease with which this bird, by means of its bill, can raise the limpet, is the more wonderful, as this shell-fish adheres so firmly to the rock, as to be separated with great difficulty by a knife. To some that adhered horizontally to the rock, Mr. Reaumur caused a line and weight to be affixed: the least weight capable of moving it, he found to be thirty pounds, and even this it resisted for some time.

of the body and wings: for, with respect to the turning to either side, it is performed by the wings, and inclination of the body, and but very little by the assistance of the tail1.

The instinct and industry of birds are in nothing more apparent than in the building of their nests. How regular and admirable are these little edifices, formed of such different materials: collected and arranged with such judgment and labour, and constructed with such elegance and neatness, without other tools than a beak and two feet.

any

It wins my admiration,

To view the structure of that little work,
A bird's nest. Mark it well within, without,
No tool had he that wrought, no knife to cut,
No nail to fix, no bodkin to insert,

No glue to join: his little beak was all,
And yet how neatly finished! What nice hand
With every implement and means of art,
And twenty years apprenticeship to boot,
Could make ine such another? Fondly then
We boast of excellence, whose noblest skill
Instinctive genius foils.

VILLAGE CURATE.

Instinctive ingenuity is apparent in all their nests. But the extraordinary subtlety of the long-tailed titmouse deserves particular admiration. With great art she builds her nest with moss, hair, and the webs of spiders, cast out from them when they take their flight, with which the materials are strongly tied together. Having neatly built, and covered her nest with these materials, she thatches it on the top

Borelli de Motu Animalium.

Spiders, which cannot fly, have an admirable faculty to convey themselves with speed and safety, by the help of their webs, or some other artifice, to make their bodies lighter than the air. I have with pleasure often seen them dart out their webs, and sail away by the help thereof. Derham's Physico-Theology, book viii. ch. 4.

with the muscus arboreus ramosus, or such like broad whitish moss, to keep out rain, and to deceive the eye of any one that might pass near it. The in

terior part she lines with a great number of small feathers; with so many, that Mr. Derham says he could not but admire how so small a room could hold them; especially, that they could be laid so close and handsomely together, to afford sufficient room for a bird with so long a tail, and so numerous an issue as this bird commonly hath'.

Mr. Pennant, in his account of the taylor bird, exhibits another instance of the wonderful effect of animal instinct: Had Providence (says he) left the feathered tribe unendued with any particular instinct, the birds of the torrid zone would have built their nests in the same unguarded manner as those of Europe; but there the lesser species having a certain prescience of the dangers that surround them, and of their own weakness, suspend their nests at the extreme branches of the trees; conscious of inhabiting a clime replete with enemies to them and their young-snakes that twine up the bodies of trees, and apes that are perpetually in search of prey; but, heaven-instructed, they elude the gliding of the one, and the activity of the other. Some form their pensile nest in the shape of a purse, deep and open at top; others with a hole in the side; and others, still more cautious, with an entrance at the very bottom, forming their lodge near the summit.-But the little species here described seem to have greater diffidence than any of the others. It will not trust its nest even to the extremity of the slender twig, but makes one more advance to safety, by fixing it to the leaf itself. It picks up a dead leaf, and, surprising to relate, sews it to the side of a living one, its slender bill being

Physico-Theology, book iv. ch. 13.