N ATI-HE IN MOTION. 73 



distances, in order to avoid the hardships of winter, and 

 to exchange the snow-covered fields of the north for the 

 sunny regions of lower latitudes. Some are perfect cos- 

 mopolites. The raven is met with, not only throughout 

 Europe, but croaks mournfully on the shores of the Black 

 and the Caspian Seas; he wings his sombre, heavy flight 

 to distant India, and haunts the houses of Calcutta. He 

 forces his way, with daring impudence, over the guarded 

 shores of Japan, dwells a free citizen in the United States, 

 looks with equal gravity into Mount Etna and ice-covered 

 Hecla, and braves the rigor of the Arctic regions as far 

 as Melville Island. 



Generally, however, birds have a home, from which they 

 only migrate at stated times, to find a supply of food 

 and a temperature well suited to reproduction. Their ad- 

 mirable powers of motion enable them to circulate, for 

 these purposes, more widely and more freely all over the 

 earth than any other class of animals. In this they are 

 led by the same instincts from the Almighty, that direct 

 alike the life-withering flights of the locust, and the cheerful 

 migrations of the swallow. They are never deceived in 

 their time by any peculiarity of wind and weather; for 

 truly, "the stork in the heavens knoweth her appointed 

 time, and the turtle, and the crane, and the swallow, ob- 

 serve the time of their coming." It even seems as if 

 certain impulses were given to birds, independent of their 

 early imitative propensities, which must proceed directly 

 from the Almighty power that governs the universe. How 

 else could the instinct of migration be felt by birds kept 

 in cages, whom neither cold nor want of food could in- 

 4 



