68 "Behold the Birds of the Air" 



on our shelves can tell us beforehand what we shall see 

 them do, down to the most minute particular, can the 

 thought fail to arise, that for manoeuvres so complicated 

 there must be a word of command ? Every Blackbird, 

 for example, flies at our approach from his bush with pre- 

 cisely the same cackle ; every Black-cap we try to watch 

 will persistently manage to be behind a tuft of leaves ; 

 every Water-ousel settling on a stone sits there curtseying 

 to things in general; a flock of Golden Plover will 

 always turn with a simultaneous precision to which no 

 battalion was ever drilled; Rooks, which appear to go 

 about their affairs so deliberately, will always come back 

 some time in autumn to sit lugubriously beside their 

 nests; a flock of Bullfinches will always fly down a 

 hedge in the same follow-my-leader fashion, making 

 them impossible to mistake for any other species ; a 

 flock of Greenfinches can be no less easily distinguished, 

 even at a distance, from other small birds, by their 

 inveterate habit of wheeling about several times with 

 such absolute precision before they alight as to appear 

 and disappear to the eye according as the lighter portion 

 of their plumage or the darker is turned towards the 

 observer ; while Siskins may be known by the occasional 

 evolutionary excursions they simultaneously make to 

 interrupt their feeding, and by their unselfish habit of 

 inviting by general acclamation passers-by of their own 

 kind to come and share their banquet ; no Jackdaw has 

 ever yet learnt the futility of trying to bring a stick 

 crosswise through a crevice; the Tree-pipit's song is 

 always delivered in precisely the same fashion, while 

 with quivering wings and expanded tail he floats down 

 in a semicircle to the spot he has but a moment left; 

 and the Stone-chat will always be at the top of anything 

 he settles on, be it a furze-bush or only a tussock of 

 grass. 



Examples of this sort might be multiplied ad infinitum 

 and drawn from every one of the species we see around 

 us. So absolute is the uniformity of their conduct, as 

 to force upon us a conviction of their unity, as is shown 



