VOL. X.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 253 



criminately what has been already published, whether true or false, on this sub- 

 ject : but to illustrate and set in order the history of birds, partly by describing 

 the birds themselves from ocular inspection, partly by borrowing the descrip- 

 tion of those, of which the author and editor themselves could not get a sight, 

 from the best writers; endeavouring principally to describe all the different 

 known species of birds, and to reduce them to their several classes. 



The work itself is divided into three books, the first treating of birds in ge- 

 neral ; the second, of land-fowl ; and the third, of water-fowl. In the first are 

 described the principal, both external and internal, parts of birds, such as are 

 either peculiar to them, or show a peculiar structure and use in them. In the 

 external parts the author observes, that the pectoral muscles in birds are the 

 thickest and strongest of all, serving for the motion of their wings that require 

 great strength ; whereas in man, the crural muscles are stronger than those of 

 his arms ; whence, if flying were either possible or fit for man, his legs, fur- 

 nished with a succedaneum to wings for compressing and beating the air, would 

 serve him better for that purpose than his arms. In the internal parts, he 

 notes, among many other things, the considerable difference there is between 

 the brain of birds and that of man and quadrupeds ; adapted in birds more for 

 the exercise of the locomotive faculty, than for imagination and memory. 



Discoursing, in this part, of the generation of birds, he thinks it highly pro- 

 bable, that their females have in them, from the time of their being first born, 

 all the eggs or the primordials of eggs, that they shall lay as long as they live; 

 which he thinks to be true of human and all other females; making the incuba- 

 tion of the eggs of fowl to be equivalent to the gestation or bearing of other 

 animals ; and calling the ovum a uterus expositus, forasmuch as it ministers 

 aliment to the foetus of those that are commonly called oviparous, like as the 

 womb does in the viviparous. 



Treating 'of the age of birds, and of some of their observable properties and 

 qualities, he remarks that they live long, that their structure somewhat resem- 

 bles the formation of a ship; that some of them, as partridges and pigeons, lead 

 a conjugal life; and that of these there are more males than females, as among 

 those where one male is sufficient for many females, there are more females 

 than males; that some of them are very ingenious, and imitate the human 

 voice, as parrots, thrushes, blackbirds, jackdaws, starlings, nightingales, of 

 which last, and of parrots, he relates some very extraordinary things. Con- 

 cluding this first book with an accurate division of birds, and with a cata- 

 logue, both of such as constantly abide in England, and such as migrate. 



In the second book, treating of land-fowl, he considers first those with 

 hooked beaks and claws; and secondly those that have them more straiglit^ 



