582 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



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 anyone year have been injured by man in England, yet almost all, even nestlings, 

 are afraid of him ; many individuals, however, both at the Galapagos and at the Falk- 

 lands, have been pursued and injured by man, but yet have not learned a salutary dread 

 of him." 



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 form 

 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 while 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 connection with their less at 

 tractive appearance. Our best songster, the nightingale, a summer visitor, has only a 

 limited distribution in the kingdom. It does not frequent the south-west angle of 

 England, or usually range westerly and northerly, beyond a wavy line drawn from the Bristol 

 Channel, through the midland counties, by York, to the south of Flamborough Head. It is 

 consequently absent from Cornwall and West Devon, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. The 

 blackcap, the rival of the nightingale, also a visitor, has not been noticed in many parts of 

 Scotland, and only once or twice in any part of Ireland, though general in England and Wales. 



Birds are ranged in the following six orders : Rapaces Birds of Prey ; Scansores 

 Climbers; Oscines Songsters; Gallinacece Gallinaceous birds; Grallatores Waders; 

 Natatores Swimmers. The total number of species now known amounts to about 8000. 

 Tropical and warm countries have the greatest number of species and individuals, with one 

 exception, that of the Swimmers, which are most abundant in and near the arctic zone. 

 The most peculiar specimen of ornithology at present existing is found in New Zealand, 

 apparently the last remnant of departed races. This is a small bird, absolutely wingless, 

 and covered with hair, called the apteryx, the largest animal found in the island at the 

 time of its discovery. But in the gravel, fossil bones are met with nearly as large as the 

 thigh-bone of an ox, which are the remains of a series of birds of various sizes, more or 

 less corresponding to the surviving species, all being wingless, and some of them much 

 more gigantic than any ostrich. 



Omitting accidental stragglers belonging to the fauna of other countries, with the 

 domesticated breeds, but including the periodical migrants whose journeying to and fro 

 is a part of their natural economy, the number of species of birds in Great Britain and 

 the adjacent islands amounts to about 300. The stragglers include the Egyptian vulture, 

 shot in Somersetshire in 1825; the griffon vulture, from the Alps and Pyrenees, taken in 

 Ireland in 1843; the red- winged starling of America, caught near London in 1844; and 

 the Bonapartian gull, from the fur countries of North America, captured in Ireland, tlic 

 only individual of the species known to have visited Europe. 



From the powerful means of locomotion possessed by several of the bird tribe, and 

 their great specific levity, air being admitted to the whole organisation as water to a 

 sponge, it might be inferred, that the entire atmosphere was intended to be their 



