340 THE REASON WHY. 



4 As a bird that wandereth from her nest ; so is a man that wandereth from his 

 place." PSALM xxvii. 



ness was noticed by the early visitors. On the other hand, the small birds in 

 the arctic regions of America, which have never been persecuted, exhibit the 

 anomalous fact of great wildness. From a review of various facts, Mr. Darwin 

 concludes, " first, that the wildness of birds with regard to man is a particular 

 instinct directed against him, and not dependent on any general degree of 

 caution arising from other sources of danger ; secondly, that it is not acquired 

 by individual birds in a short time, even when much persecuted ; but that in 

 the course of successive generations it becomes hereditary. Comparatively few 

 young birds in any one year have been injured by man in England, yet almost 

 all, even nestlings, are afraid of him ; many individuals, however, both at *he 

 Galapagos and at the Falklands, have been pursued and injured by man, but 

 yet have not learned a salutary dread of him." 



1328. Numerous species of birds may be regarded as the favourites of nature 

 on account of the gracefulness given to their shape, and the richly-coloured 

 plumage with which they are adorned, as evidenced in the gaudy liveries of 

 many of the parrot tribe, and the forms and hues of the birds of paradise. But 

 they are especially interesting to man for the faculty of song with which they 

 are endowed ; in some, " most musical, most melancholy," in others, sprightly 

 and animating, inspiriting the sons of toil under the burdens peculiar to 

 their station. It deserves to be remarked, as an instance of compensation and 

 adjustment, that whilst the birds of the temperate zone are far inferior to those 

 of tropical climes in point of beauty, they have far more melodious notes in con- 

 nection with their less attractive appearance. 



1329 From the powerful means of locomotion possessed by several of the bird 

 tribe, and their great specific levity, air being admitted to the whole organi- 

 sation as water to a sponge, it might DC inferred, that the entire atmosphere 

 was intended to be their domain, so that no species would be limited to a 

 particular region. The common crow flies at the rate of twenty-five miles an 

 hour ; the rapidity of the eider-duck, Anas mollissima, is equal to ninety miles an 

 hour ; while the swifts and hawks travel at the astonishing speed of a hundred 

 and fifty miles in the same time. It is true that some species have a very exten- 

 sive range, as the nightingale, the common wild goose, and several of the 

 vulture tribe. The same kind of osprey or fishing-eagle that wanders along the 

 Scottish shores appears upon those of the south of Europe, and of New Holland. 

 The lammergeyer haunts the heights of the Pyrenees, the mountains of 

 Abyssinia, and the Mongolian steppes; and the penguin falcon occurs in 

 Greenland, Europe, America, and Australia. In general, however, like plants 

 and terrestrial quadrupeds, the birds are subject-to geographical laws, definite 

 limits circumscribing particular groups. The common grouse of our own 

 country affords a striking exemplification of this arrangement, as it is nowhere 

 met with out of Great Britain ; and other examples occur of a very scanty area 

 containing a species not to be found in any other region. The celebrated birds 

 of paradise are exclusively confined to a small part of the torrid zone, embracing 

 New Guinea and the contiguous islands ; and the beautiful Lories are inhabi- 

 tants of the same districts, being quite unknown to the New World. Parroquets 

 are chiefly occupants of a zonr extending a few degrees beyond each trop c, but 

 the American group is quite distinct from the African, and neither of these 

 have one in common with the parrots of India, The great eagle is limited to 

 the highest summits of the Alps; and the condor, which soars above the peak 

 of the tGftiest of the Andes, never quits that chain. Humming-birds are 



