By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 111 
adapted for wading on soft mud, for running lightly over water 
plants, and enabling them to move easily in their accustomed 
haunts. The herons, snipes, and plovers may serve as examples of 
this class. 
The fifth and last order contains the true water birds, whose 
domain is essentially the sea, or the inland lake and large river: 
these are bona fide inhabitants of the water, passing nearly all 
their time there, retiring far away from land as day approaches, 
feeding in the sea, sleeping on the sea, and only occasionally 
visiting the shore. These are the ‘ Natatores’ or ‘swimmers’ whose 
boat-shaped bodies and webbed feet attest their remarkable powers 
of swimming and diving, and render it impossible to mistake them 
as belonging to any other order. From the position and extent of 
the British islands, the birds which comprise this division are very 
numerous on our coasts, as any one will at once acknowledge who 
has seen the clouds of ducks, gulls, &c., darkening the sea shore in 
the autumn. 
Now, such being a sketch of the five great orders of birds, and 
such the characteristics of each, the lines of demarcation between 
them seem so broad, and well-defined, that one might almost be 
inclined to doubt the possibility of confusing them: yet, (as I 
before remarked) in nature there seem to be no sudden transitions : 
no rapid jumps from one kind to another: no gaps between them : 
all is done gradually and with becoming method: we are led almost 
insensibly from one order to another, so much does the last species 
of one assimilate to the first species of the next. Thus, for instance, 
when passing from the first to the second, from the birds of prey 
to the perchers, see the connecting link between the two, so ably 
sustained by the shrikes or butcher-birds: perchers indeed they 
are, with feet as perfect for grasping as any in the class; at the 
same time, how like to the birds of prey in their habits, in their 
cruel method of seizing, impaling on a thorn and devouring their 
prey. Again, in passing from the perchers to the ground birds, 
mark the pigeons, what a connecting link between the two orders 
do they form; some partaking of the character of true ‘Insessores,’ 
