130 MIGRATION OF BIRDS. 



and the feeble to pick up the fragments that are left, in 

 those places which they are unable to quit. 



It has been said that the teachableness which is the 

 characteristic of man, has nothing to do with the 

 instincts of the animals ; but it does not follow that he 

 should not take a lesson from those instincts ; because 

 the instincts of animals and the reason of man are all 

 intended to forward the very same objects the good 

 of the individual and of the race. Now, in this very 

 fact of the migration of birds, simple and natural as 

 it may seem, and unheeded as it is by careless observers, 

 we have an example worth copying, even in the most 

 refined and best governed society. The strong and 

 the active go upon far journeys, and subsist in distant 

 lands, and leave what food there is for their more 

 helpless brethren. Would men do the same would 

 they temper the work to the capacity of the worker, 

 in the way that it is done by the instincts of those 

 migratory birds the world would be spared a deal of 

 misery. It is thus that, in the careful study of nature, 

 man stands reproved at the example of the lower 

 creatures, and learns, by doing by reason as they do 

 by instinct, to be grateful to that Power, " who teacheth 

 us more than the beasts of the field, and maketh us 

 wiser than the fowls of heaven." 



The migrating birds that spend part of the year in 

 the British islands, may be divided into two classes, 

 summer birds and winter birds; but of both classes 

 some are only occasional visitants, and others are mere 

 birds of passage, tarrying only for a short time, as they 

 are on their route to other countries. 



The two general classes observe the same law in 



