THE STOMACH. 49 



certain other birds, requiring additional warmth, it would 

 be found to rise still higher. Now the gastric juice, from 

 some very ingenious experiments*, is supposed to contain 

 a much stronger principle of life and warmth than other 

 liquids; thus when water, salt and water, and gastric 

 juice were exposed to great cold, the gastric juice was 

 the last to freeze, and the first to thaw. The greater 

 portion of this juice, therefore, found in birds, may be 

 an additional means by which the wisdom of God fur- 

 nishes them with more warmth, and enables many of 

 them to resist very strong degrees of cold. In proof of 

 their endurance of cold, at the bird-market of St. Peters- 

 burgh, in Russia, during the intensity of those dreadfully 

 cold winters, several thousand cages, containing birds of 

 every description, are hung on the outside of about 

 eighty shops; in a part of each cage, a small quantity of 

 snow is placed, which is said to be necessary to keep 

 them alive. That birds, originally from warm climates, 

 suffer from the colder regions of the North, is, to a great 

 degree, true; but by far the greatest number of birds, 

 found dead in our severe winter, perish not from the 

 inclemency of the weather, bat the deficiency of food; 

 for instance, our little Wren is just as active and cheerful 

 in the severest frost as the warmest summer's day, his 

 supply of food, consisting of small insects, concealed under 

 the bark of trees, never failing him. 



As a proof that small birds are not affected so much 

 by temperature as want of food, Captain Kingt observed 

 the lesser Redpole existing without apparent incon- 

 venience in a climate, and at a season, when the thermo- 

 meter was not unfrequently at seven degrees below zero; 

 and in the inclement atmosphere of Cape Horn, on the 

 desolate shores of Terra del Fuego, Humming-birds were 

 constantly seen hovering over the blossom of a species 

 of Fuchsia, when the jungle composed of this shrub was 

 partially covered with snow. 



There is another singularity in this mysterious liquid, 



* Spallanzani. + KING'S Narrative, vol. i., p. 199. 



E 



