8 INTRODUCTION. 



light squadrons. The bird knows, by an ad- 

 mirable instinct, the winds and weather which 

 are favourable to his voyage. He can long 

 foresee the approaches of frost, or the return of 

 spring. He needs no compass to direct his cours 

 through the empire of the cloud, the thunder, 

 and the tempest; and, while man and beast are 

 creeping on the earth, he breathes the pure air 

 of heaven, and soars upward nearer to the spring 

 of day. He arrives at the term of his voyage, 

 and touches the hospitable land of his destina- 

 tion. He finds there a subsistence prepared by 

 the hand of Providence, and a safe asylum in 

 the grove, the forest, or the mountain, where he 

 revisits the habitation he had tenanted before, 

 the scene of his former delights, the cradle of 

 his infancy. The stork resumes his ancient 

 tower, the nightingale the solitary thicket, the 

 swallow his old window, and the redbreast the 

 mossy trunk of the same oak in which he for- 

 merly nestled."* 



In conclusion, we must beg to appropriate to 

 our use another interesting passage from the 

 same writer, on the touching exhibitions of pa- 

 rental tenderness displayed by the feathered race, 

 in the patient hatching of their eggs, and the 



* See Griffith's Cuvier. 



