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its needle, and its thread some fine fibres: the lining, feathers, gossamer, and down'.

The unerring instinct which guides every species of the feathered race, in contriving the most proper habitation for the hatching of their young, instructs them also to repair to the situation the most suitable for them, with respect to their food, their pleasure, and their safety. Hence, the choice of each species is invariably the same. Some repair to the rude thicket; some to the cleft or hollow tree. Some weave their humble nests in the grassy dale, or roughening waste. Others delight in shaggy banks, in woodland solitudes, and unfrequented glooms. Some build in the towering tree, or inaccessible rock; and others prefer the vicinity of man, and take shelter in his chimnies, or in his hospitable eaves.

But who the various nations can declare

That plough with busy wing the peopled air?
These cleave the crumbling bark for insect food;
Those dip the crooked beak in kindred blood;
Some haunt the rushy moor, the lonely woods;
Some bathe their silver plumage in the floods;
Some fly to man, his houshold gods implore,
And gather round his hospitable door,
Wait the known call, and find protection there
From all the lesser tyrants of the air.
The tawny eagle seats his callow brood

High on the cliff, and feasts his young with blood.
On Snowdon's rocks, or Orkney's wide domain,
Whose beetling cliffs o'erhang the western main,

Mr. Pennant has given a picture of this extraordinary piece of architecture: the live leaf, which serves for its basis, being that of the mango-tree, with the nest affixed to it, and the birds projecting their little heads above the entrance of their pendent habitations. He informs us also, that one of these curious nests is preserved in the British Museum. The colour of these ingenious flying taylors is a light yellow; its eggs are white; its length is three inches; its weight only three sixteenths of an ounce; so that the materials of the nest, and its own size, are not likely to draw down a habitation that depends on so slight a tenure. Indian Zoology, part i.

The royal bird his lonely kingdom forms,
Amid the gathering clouds and sullen storms:
Through the wide waste of air he darts his sight,
And holds his sounding pinions poised for flight;
With cruel eye premeditates the war,

And marks his destined victim from afar1:
Descending in a whirlwind to the ground,
His pinions like the rush of waters sound;
The fairest of the fold he bears away,
And to his nest compels the struggling prey.

BARBAULD.

Although the sparrows, in general, construct their nests under the tiles of houses, or in holes in the walls, some build them on the tops of trees. This difference of situation affords them an opportunity of exhibiting a singular instance of instinctive sagacity. In the nests built on trees they form an artificial roof, which covers the nest, and prevents the entrance of rain; forming, at the same time, an opening under it: on the contrary, when they build under cover, they abstain from this work of supererogation. Instinct (says the celebrated Buffon) is manifested in this case, in a manner nearly analogous to reason; as it supposes, at least, the comparing together of two ideas. In this little race, there is a diversity of manners, and a more varied and perfected instinct than in most other birds. This improvement he ascribes to their frequenting human society. They are in part domesticated; but without being subjected to it, or losing their independFrom this society they draw whatever suits their convenience, and in it they acquire that subtlety, circumspection, and improvement of the instinctive faculty, which is exhibited in the great va

ence.

Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high? She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of the rock, and the strong place: thence she seeketh the prey, and her eyes behold afar off. Job xxxix. 27-29.

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riety of their habits, relative to different situations, seasons, and other circumstances1.

I might here extend my observations to the incubation and migration of birds: but these shall be noticed in some future pages. I shall only add, at present, that from the consideration of the providential care so evidently manifested in the preservation of the aërial tribes, the divine Teacher of our holy religion has drawn an argument to prevent our sinking into anxiety and despondence, and to induce us to rely with filial confidence and piety in the goodness of our heavenly Parent: Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet our heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

Behold, and look away your low despair!

See the light tenants of the barren air :
To them, nor stores, nor granaries belong;
Nought, but the woodland, and the pleasing song;
Yet, your kind heavenly Father bends his eye
On the least wing that flits along the sky.
To him they sing when spring renews the plain,
To him they cry in winter's pinching reign;
Nor is their music, or their plaint in vain :
He hears the gay, and the distressful call,
And with unsparing bounty fills them all.
If, ceaseless, then the fowls of heaven he feeds,
If o'er the fields such lucid robes he spreads;
Will he not care for you, ye faithless, say?
Is he unwise? Or, are ye less than they?

Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux, tome iii.

THOMSON

The two succeeding Numbers are on the subject of migration; in No. LXVIII, On the Instinct of Brutes, are some observations on the uniformity of the nests of the different species of birds; and in No. LXX, On the Habitations of Animals, are some further observations on the nidification and incubation of several birds.

No. LXV.

ON THE MIGRATION OF BIRDS.

Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle, and the crane, and the swallow, observe the time of their coming.

Who bid the stork, Columbus-like, explore

JEREMIAH:

Heavens not his own, and worlds unknown before?
Who calls the council, states the certain day?
Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way?

POPE.

THE migration of birds has been justly considered as one of the most wonderful instincts of Nature. Milton, in the passage I quoted in my preceding paper, styles the feathered race, thus divinely taught, intelligent of seasons; and the ve nerable prophet above adduces this instinctive and invariable observation of their appointed times, as a circumstance of reproach to the chosen people of God, who, although taught by reason and religion, 'knew not the judgment of the Lord.'

The appearance and disappearance of the birds of season, particularly in the Hebrides, or Western Islands of Scotland, has not been disregarded by our own poets. Thus Mallet speaks of the birds that annually transmigrate to St. Kilda, the most remote and unfrequented of all those islands:

But, high above, the season full exerts
Its vernant force in yonder peopled rocks,
To whose wild solitude, from worlds unknown,
The birds of passage transmigrating come,
Unnumbered colonies of foreign wing,
At Nature's summons, their aerial state
Annual to found: and in bold voyage steer,
O'er this wide ocean, through yon pathless sky,

One certain flight to one appointed shore :
By Heaven's directive spirit, here to raise
Their temporary realm; and form secure,
Where food awaits them copious from the wave,
And shelter from the rock, their nuptial leagues :
Each tribe apart, and all on tasks of love,

To hatch the pregnant egg, to rear and guard
Their helpless infants, piously intent.

Their appearance in the same islands is thus noticed by Thomson:

Where the northern ocean, in vast whirls,
Boils round the naked melancholy isles
Of farthest Thulé, and th' Atlantic surge
Pours in among the stormy Hebrides;
Who can recount what transmigrations there
Are annual made? What nations come and go?
And how the living clouds on clouds arise ?
Infinite wings! till all the plume-dark air,
And rude resounding shore, are one wild cry.

And their disappearance from the same scenes is thus described by Mrs. Barbauld:

When winter bites upon the naked plain,
Nor food nor shelter in the groves remain,
By instinct led, a firm united band,
As marshalled by some skilful general's hand,
The congregated nations wing their way
In dusky columns o'er the trackless sea;
In clouds unnumbered annual hover o'er
The craggy Bass, or Kilda's utinost shore :

Thence spread their sails to meet the southern wind,
And leave the gathering tempest far behind,
Pursue the circling sun's indulgent ray,

Course the swift seasons, and o'ertake the day.

The migration of birds, which is common to the quail, the stork, the crane, the fieldfare, the woodcock, the cuckoo, the martin, the swallow, and various others, is, indeed, a very curious article in natural history, and furnishes a very striking instance of a powerful instinct impressed by the

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