BIRD. 



429 



that grand stimulus of material life, the sun, is in the 

 very maximum of activity. Man is the only creature 

 that languishes, or appears to be out of his element, 

 riot merely in his mental powers, but in his physical 

 structure. This by the way is a proof, among 1 many 

 others, which the study of nature in all its varieties 

 affords, of the existence of a spirit in man an imma- 

 terial principle, and consequently one over which 

 material death and dissolution have no power. For 

 if he were wholly material, and obedient only to those 

 physical laws to which the whole of material nature 

 is subjected, he needs must be in the state of greatest 

 development in those places where natural action is 

 the most intense. It is no argument to allege that 

 these ardent climates are not to well suited to the 

 human constitution as those which are more tempe- 

 rate ; for though this may be true of a native of 

 Europe visiting those countries, it is not true of 

 their native population. Nor can it be said that, 

 physically, man is better adapted to the colder cli- 

 mates than to the warmer, but rather the reverse. 

 Man has naturally no furry coat like the polar mam- 

 malia, nor downy feathers like the polar birds ; and 

 his only natural clothing is a sort of thatch to the 

 head, as if more immediately to protect that portion 

 of his fabric from the action of the vertical sun. 

 Therefore, in as far as man can be said to be physi- 

 cally adapted to one climate more than another, the 

 adaptation is to the warm rather than to the cold. 

 But we find that the more energetic and valuable 

 part of his character is less developed in those places 

 where nature also is most energetic, and where he, 

 if he were merely the produce of material nature, 

 should, according to all the evidence that we have, 

 be most energetic also. 



But though here, as in all cases, man must be put 

 aside as being over the system, not of it, the rest of 

 the system in these beaming and blooming lands works 

 vigorously and, at the same time, beautifully in con- 

 cert. The birds may, in all countries, be regarded 

 as the keys to natural history ; because in conse- 

 quence of their aerial nature, and their capacity of 

 better accommodating themselves to such food as 

 they may find when they are very hungry, they can 

 so speedily adjust themselves to changes of season, 

 that the adjustment is made before we are aware of 

 the necessity for making it, as the bird is to us the 

 harbinger of that very change in nature, of which its 

 change of place or of action is the consequence. 



There are no places to which the native birds are 

 better keys than the tropical forests. The great 

 majority of them all this order, with the very few 

 exceptions which have been noticed, are forest birds, 

 either on the trees, or passing from tree to tree, or if 

 they feed on the ground in the open places, not 

 ranging on foot, as the ground birds of our latitudes 

 do, but finding a full meal at the places where they 

 alight. 



The vegetation of every region determines the 

 character of all its living inhabitants, and though the 

 birds, as the most sensitive to change, are the keys or 

 indices, the vegetable tribes are the foundation of the 

 whole, which support many of the animals imme- 

 diately, and the rest indirectly through the medium of 

 each other. There are few small farinaceous seeds 

 in those forests ; and the leaves of the trees are not 

 so succulent and so well adapted for the food oi 

 insects as the deciduous leaves of the mean latitudes. 

 Their average production is perhaps not so great as 



that of our forest trees, during the short period that 

 they are in activity ; but in all tropical countries the 

 season of growth is double, and in many it is of more 

 frequent occurrence, and where there is humidity 

 enough the growth is constant. The leaves are 

 required for shade ; and as natural circumstances 

 always produce that very organisation or structure 

 which suits them best, the shading leaf is firm in its 

 structure, and not liable to be gnawed and eaten like 

 the more tender ones. 



Woody substance is that which has the tendency 

 ;o accumulate to excess in those forests ; and, there- 

 fore, the great body of the insects there attack the 

 wood of the trees. As these insects have much 

 labour to perform in clearing the forests of their lum- 

 ber, they exist in proportionate numbers, generally 

 social, and in bands which no man can count. These 

 crowd all parts of the trees, and indeed many of the 

 spaces between them ; but they are on the boles and 

 branches, and in the decaying wood, rather than on 

 the leaves. The winged ones, too, crowd over the 

 trees and the flowers of those climbing plants, with 

 which the boles are intvvined and the branches 

 interlaced. These are, however, more seasonal than 

 the races which inhabit the trees, or rear themselves 

 huts and towns on the ground ; and therefore they 

 do not form so large a portion of the food of the more 

 typical scandent birds. The bee-eaters, the cuckoos, 

 some resident and others migrant, and the warblers, 

 and other soft- billed birds which are driven from the 

 temperate climates as the winter sets in, are the chief 

 consumers of this more temporary produce of the 

 tropical forests. 



The same absence of farinaceous seeds which pre- 

 vents the number of ground-feeding birds from being 

 so great in these places, also prevents the smaller 

 seed-eating mammalia. The small mammalia there 

 gnaw bark, and roots, and bulbs and fallen fruits. 

 The number of insect eating reptiles is also very 

 great. All these contribute to the food of the omni- 

 vorous races of those climbing birds ; but though 

 some of these eat eggs often and birds sometimes, 

 the destruction of bird by bird is not so great in those 

 forests as on the more bleak and barren portions of 

 the earth. There is no scope there for the rush of a 

 falcon, or the stoop of an eagle ; and in the depths 

 of the forest, the birds stand more in danger of prey- 

 ers that commonly crawl, than in those which have 

 wings or even feet. The snakes are the greatest 

 enemies both of the birds and their eggs. Vultures 

 are found in the openings of such forests, for places 

 where there is so much production, and by conse- 

 quence so much waste of life, require a great deal of 

 scavengership ; and where the forest " crops out," 

 towards the mountain, there are also hawks and 

 eagles ; but in the depth of the shade, bird is in a 

 great measure at peace with bird. Accordingly 

 though there are some very curiously formed bills 

 among them, there are none that can be considered 

 as of a very murderous character, for the most formi- 

 dable ones belong to those which feed on vegetable 

 substances ; and the owners are so completely tree 

 birds that the bill is a climbing instrument, by the 

 hooked upper mandible of which they can, if neces- 

 sary, hang a considerable time without sustaining 

 any injury. 



The bills, though not admitting of typical ex 

 ample or description, as appropriate to the whole 

 order, may yet be conveniently explained in groups. 



