CLASS II AVES. 



THE YOUNG CUELEW. 



presents a barn-owl, which has reached the comparative old age of a month, and yet — though it 

 may possess something of the serious and knowing aspect of the Bird of Wisdom — seems still sadly 

 puzzled to know which foot he ought to put first. 



The longevity of birds is various, and, differing from the case of men and quadrupeds, seems to 

 bear little proportion to the age at which they acquire maturity. A few months, or even a few 

 weeks, are sufficient to bring them to their perfection of stature, instincts, and powers. . Land 

 animals generally live five or six times as long as the period of their growth, that is, the time re- 

 quired for reaching their maturity ; while birds live ten times as long as the period of their growth. 

 Domestic fowls, pigeons, and canaries live to the age of twenty years ; parrots thirty, geese fifty, 

 pelicans eighty; swans, ravens, and eagles exceed a century. 



The velocity with which birds are able to ^.avel in their aeriai element has no parallel among 

 terrestrial animals. The swiftest horse m'.y run a mile in something less than two minutes, but 

 this speed can only be sustained for a vf /y brief period, while birds in their migrations move at 

 the rate of a mile a minute for several successive hours. Many of them, no doubt, actually travel 

 six to eight hundred miles a day, and are thus able to go from the arctic to the torrid zones in 

 three or four days. A falcon, sent to the Duke of Lerraa from Teneriffe to Andalusia, returned 

 in sixteen hours, a distance of seven hundred and eighty miles. The gulls of Barbadoes go to the 

 distance of two hundred miles in search of their food, making a daily flight of four hundred miles. 



The migrations of birds are among the most curious and wonderful phenomena connected with 

 their natural history. In some cases these are of comparatively small extent, being prompted 

 only by the necessity of obtaining a supply of food ; but many species, known as Birds of Pas- 

 sage, perform long journeys twice in the year, visiting temperate or even cold climates during the 

 summer, and quitting them on the approach of winter for more genial climes. The great object 

 of this movement in the economy of nature is to rear their young in the solitude or security 

 of the colder zones, away from the destructive animals— serpents, monkeys, cats, and other preda- 

 ceous beasts— which infest the tropics. As these birds have neither reason nor experience, they 

 are endowed with instincts which guide them in their wanderings, often extending across seas 



