36 



PLEASURES OF ORNITHOLOGY. 



In different birds, to each adapted well, 

 Whose numerous glands a potent juice secrete 

 That pour'd into the Bulbous Ventricule {') — 

 Where many a pebble rolls to comminute 

 The hard, the grainy food, — concocts the chyle. 

 Pulmonic structure too your care demands : 

 In birds of race Colymhid small the lungs— 

 The liver large, so that the sanguine stream. 

 Without the intervention of the air, 

 Becomes decarbonis'd.(*) 



Of Oviduct f 

 ^^ -^99 the wondrous structure now peruse; 

 But chief the evolution of the Chick— 

 How with appendage horny (') he effects 



(') The Gizzard y called by some Naturalists Ventrkulm 

 bulbosus, from its shape and structure, its sides consisting of 

 thick and strong muscles. In birds, however, whose food is 

 animal, this strong muscular structure of the stomach is less 

 conspicuous, or in great measure absent. 



(•) This fact is a very remarkable one. Anatomists, how- 

 ever, begin to turn their attention to, and endeavour to ascer- 

 tain, the real functions of the liver, not only in birds, but also in 

 the mammalia / there seems much reason for presuming that the 

 liver performs one or more important offices besides that of 

 secreting the bile, which it is known to do ; one of the offices 

 is probably that of separating carbon from the blood. 



(3) See Mr. Yarrell's Paper on this curious subject in the 

 second volume of the Zoological Journal; or my Ornilhologia^ 

 page 63. 



