48 JANUARY. 



the equator, to the palm-thatched eaves of the 

 African hut ; that the small birds which populate 

 our summer hedges and fields will quickly spread 

 themselves with the cuckoo, and its av ant- courier, the 

 wryneck, over the warm regions beyond the pillars 

 of Hercules, and the wilds of the Levant, of Greece 

 and Syria ; the nightingale will be serenading in the 

 chestnut groves of Italy, and the rose-gardens of 

 Persia ; that the thrush and the fieldfare, which 

 share our winter, will pour out triumphant music in 

 their native wastes, in the sudden summers of Scan- 

 dinavia ; that even some of the wild fowls which 

 frequent our winter streams will return with the 

 spring, to the far tracts of North America ; and 

 when we call to our imagination the desolate rocks 

 in the lonely ocean, the craggy and misty isles of 

 the Orkneys and Shetlands, where others congregate 

 in myriads ; or the wild-swan, which sometimes 

 pays a visit to our largest and most secluded waters, 

 re-winging its way through the lofty regions of the 

 air to Iceland, and other arctic lands, we cannot 

 avoid feeling how much poetry is connected with 

 these wanderers of the earth and air. 



I have endeavoured to mark the arrivals and de- 

 partures of this class of birds, in their respective 

 months, in a more clear and complete manner than 

 has hitherto been done. 



No migratory birds arrive this month, if we ex- 

 cept grosbeaks and silktails, which in this, as in the 

 last, occasionally appear in very severe weather, as 

 well as flocks of Norway spinks. According to 



