ON BIRDS. 337 



these delicate creatures come to us from a distant 

 country, they will probably be exposed in their pas- 

 sages, as Mr. White justly remarks, to much greater 

 difficulties from storms and tempests than their 

 feeble powers appear to be able to surmount * : on 

 the other hand, if we suppose them to pass the 

 winter in a dormant state, in this country, concealed 

 in caverns, or other hiding places, sufficiently guarded 

 from the extreme cold of our winter to preserve their 

 life, and that, at the approach of spring, they revive 

 from their torpid state, and reassume their usual 

 powers of action, it will entirely remove the first 

 difficulty, arising from the storms and tempests they 

 are liable to meet with in their passage : but how 

 are we to get over the still greater difficulty of their 

 revivification from their torpid state ? What degree 

 of warmth in the temperature of the air is necessary 

 to produce that effect, and how it operates on the 

 functions of animal life, are questions not easily 

 answered. 



How could Mr. White suppose that Ray named 

 this species the honey-buzzard because it fed on 

 honey, when he not only named it in Latin buteo 

 apivorus et vespivorus, but expressly says, that " it 



* There certainly does exist a difficulty in conceiving how 

 some of the birds of passage, such feeble and bad fliers, should 

 be able to migrate to such a vast distance ; but some of our won- 

 der will perhaps diminish when we read the account of the 

 manner in which the quail crosses the Mediterranean, for the 

 coast of Africa. " Towards the end of September the quails 

 avail themselves of a northerly wind to take their departure from 

 Europe, and flapping one wing, while they present the other to 

 the gale, half sail, half oar, they graze the billows of the Medi- 

 terranean with their fattened rumps, and bury themselves in the 

 sands of Africa, that they may serve as food to the famished in- 

 habitants of Zara." ST. PIERRE'S Studies of Nature, vol. u 



p. 91. MlTFORD. 



z 



