318 THE MOUNTAIN. 



nature. With the bird, the voice, properly speaking, breaks 

 forth for the first time, and that, too, in a high grade of per- 

 fection, as melody." 



In the bird, nature seems to have ultimated her first most 

 delicate and elaborate form of sensuous existence. Whether 

 we contemplate the furnishing of its structure by special 

 styles of organic mechanisms, adapting its body to existence, 

 and motion in a gaseous medium, and a life of ethereal sus- 

 pensions, or the wisdom of its wonderful instincts, far tran- 

 scending the deductions of reason, or the intuitions of the 

 intellect in executing migrations almost circum-mundane in 

 their extents, or other extraordinary endowments, as of 

 love and fidelity almost human, or of music, beyond all 

 imitations of science in depth and touching compass, the 

 bird appears the sure and ineffable consummation and 

 earnest fruitage, of the whole lower or purely animal do- 

 main. 



"In the bird, also, all the spiritual or mental faculties 

 make their appearance for the first time, and suddenly, 

 whereas, in the preceding classes, (Reptiles, Fishes, etc.,) 

 but slight traces of them are observed. Such, for example, 

 are their mechanical instincts, varied modes of nidification, 

 powers of imitation, susceptibility to instruction, knowledge 

 of their benefactors, sentiment of joy, wheedling or coax- 

 ing manners, and so on. We have no example of fishes and 

 reptiles having learned any artificial tricks." (?) 



Surely human are these revelations, certainly detached and 

 individual, as endowed with organic will, comes this wonder- 

 ful being, elevated and ennobled by the enchanting elements 

 and specific attributes of character. Hence the enthusiasm of 

 its lovers ; hence the devotion and life-long faithfulness of its 

 scientific votaries, and the deep absorption of the true student 

 of ornithology. The names of zealous worshipers come with 

 the voice of the bird and the murmur of the woods, and Wil- 

 son, Audubon, Bonaparte, and Cassin, are aptly associated 

 in the imagination with musical groves, and the lives and 

 habitudes of the light-winged denizens of the air. Of the 



