252 STUDIES OF NATURE. 



Every ftep he advances in his courfe through 

 the Heavens, a new plant makes it's appearance 

 on the Earth. Each of them arifes in fucceffion, 

 and occupies it's proper ftation at the hour affigned 

 to it ; at one and the fame inftant it receives the 

 light in it's flowers, and the dew of Heaven on 

 it's foliage. In proportion to it's progrefs in 

 growth, the different infect-tribes which thence 

 derive their nourifliment, likewife difplay their 

 exiflence, and unfold their characters. At this 

 epocha, too, each fpecies of bird reforts to the 

 fpecies of plant with which me is acquainted, 

 there to build her neft, and to feed her young 

 with the animal prey which it prefents to her, to 

 fupply the want of the feeds which it has not as 

 yet produced. We prefently behold the tribes of 

 birds of paffage flock thither, in queft of the por- 

 tion which Nature has provided for them like- 

 wife. Firft comes the fwallow, to preferve our 

 habitations from the vermin, by planting her neft 

 around us. The quail forfakes Africa, and graz- 

 ing the billows of the Mediterranean, and in troops 

 innumerable, is fcattered over the boundlefs mea- 

 dows of the Ukraine. The heathcock purfues his 

 courfe northward as far as Lapland. The wild 

 ducks and geefe, the filvery (wans, forming long 

 triangular fquadrons in the air, advance to the 

 very iflands adjacent to the Pole. The ftork, in 

 former times adored in Egypt, which (he aban- 

 dons. 



