36 . TRANSACTIONS OF THE [NOv. 5, 
legs, so that when the bird perches, the bending of the leg con- 
tracts the toes around the perch, and so the bird rests securely 
without muscular effort? Will you study pneumatics? See 
the heavy condor floating in the air with outspread wings, or 
almost without motion, keeping the hollow bones exhausted of 
air and the cells heated, and then when it sees its prey, opening 
the valves and filling the cavities with cold air, so that it drops 
like a stone, and with unerring certainty, on its food. 
Will you further study? Notice the arrangement of the eye, 
which by constant change in the focal length of the lenses ex- 
pands or contracts the range of vision. Look at the adaptation 
of the feathers to keep the body warm and prevent evaporation, 
which, from their rapid flight in high regions would inevitably 
freeze their bodies, and to make this covering more perfect, it 
not only protects the bird from cold, but it is waterproof. If 
it was heavy, the bird could not carry it. All the feathers of 
some large birds do not weigh more than 14 ounces. Will you 
study color? Where will you find more splendid colors or 
more beautiful contrasts of color than in the plumage of birds? 
Will you study music? What can be more harmonious than 
the song of birds? What church organ or other musical instru- 
ment is so beautifully contrived as those air channels, which the 
bird fills and then uses with its double larynx, so that it seems 
as if the volume of air emitted must be ten times the volume of 
the body of the bird, and so intense that the songs of some of 
them can be heard four or five times the distance that the voice 
of a man can be distinguished. 
Religion and story take their examples of maternal devotion 
and affection from the birds. No better mental or moral train- 
ing can be had than that which results from the study and con- 
templation of such phenomena as these. No wonder we are 
called on to sing in thanksgiving, “O all ye fowls of the air, 
bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify Him forever.” It 
is well and fitting that we should have raised a monument in the 
form of a cross to the memory of a man who at the sound of the 
voice of a warbler should have found occasion for praise and 
thanksgiving to his Heavenly Father, and that we should have 
ornamented it with the beasts and the birds which he loved and 
with whom his name will always be associated. 
It is therefore with profound satisfaction that I, as the repre- 
sentative of the Academy of Sciences, present to you as the 
head of the venerable corporation of Trinity Church for its care 
and keeping this monument to Audubon. 
