LONGEVITY OF BIRDS. l8/ 



flight to the same regions often to the same district, which they 

 previously inhabited, and there are good grounds to believe that 

 the same pair frequently find their way year after year to the same 

 nest. 



The duration of the life of birds in a state of nature is one of those 

 subjects on which little is known. Some ancient authors Hesiod 

 and Pliny for example give to the crow nine times the length of 

 life allotted to man, and to the raven three times that period ; in other 

 words, the crow, according to these authors, attains to 720 years, 

 and the raven 240. The swan, on the same authority, lives 200 years. 

 This longevity is doubtful. Parrots, however, are kfiown to have 

 reached more than a hundred years. Goldfinches, chaffinches, and 

 nightingales unquestionably, even in the confinement of a cage, 

 have lived four-and-twenty. Girardin tells us a heron lived fifty-two 

 years, which was testified by the ring which he bore on one of his 

 legs, and even then he lost his life by an accident, while in full vigour. 

 A couple of storks, moreover, have been known to nestle in the same 

 place for more than forty years. All that we can affirm is that Birds 

 live much longer than the Mammalia. 



We can easily fix a circumscribed geographical boundary to any 

 species of Mammalia. They may be limited to a country, or even 

 a district. Can we impose a like boundary on Birds ? At first sight 

 this seems difficult : their powerful organs of locomotion permit of 

 their travelling rapidly; and, moreover, their nature, essentially 

 mobile, and their wandering humour, lead them to continual change; 

 and then their organisation adapts them for great extremes of tem- 

 perature circumstances which would lead us to consider them quite 

 cosmopolite. Nevertheless, many species reside habitually in coun- 

 tries of very limited range. A sovereign hand has traced on the 

 surface of the globe limits that cannot be passed. How such dimi- 

 nutive creatures are able to perform such distant journeys, has always 

 been a matter of surprise. How can the quail, for instance, with 

 its short wing and plump body, traverse the Mediterranean twice in 

 the year ? Hasselquist tells us that small short-winged birds fre- 

 quently came on board his ship in squally weather, all the way from 

 the Channel to the Levant ; and Prince Charles Bonaparte was 

 agreeably surprised by the visit of a party of swallows to the ship 

 Delaware, in which he was a passenger, when 500 miles from the 

 coast of Portugal, and 400 from Africa. Audubon relates a similar 

 occurrence ; and numerous instances are recorded in which these 

 migratory birds have taken shelter in the first vessel they met, some- 

 times so weak as to be hardly able to move a wing. It is therefore 



