352 



INTRODUCTION TO ZOOLOGY. 



left some distant place at an early hour." The greatest 

 number ever seen in one day in their course of flight, amounted 

 to 1,500; and the entire number thus seen during the migra- 

 tory period, to about 15,000. 



Mr. Yarrell mentions localities in which these birds con- 

 gregate by thousands; in one case in the vicinity of Bristol, 

 by millions. Their food consists of worms, insects, snails, 

 berries, and grain. They build in ruins, old trees, church- 

 steeples, rocks, and holes about buildings; and Mr. Ball has 

 remarked, that the celebrated round towers of Ireland are 

 favourite nesting-places. The evolutions of a large body of 

 Starlings before retiring to rest have been so graphically 

 described in the "Familiar History of Birds," that it would 

 be doing injustice to the learned and right reverend author, 

 not to give the words there employed. 



" At first they might be seen advancing high in the air, 

 like a dark cloud, which in an instant, as if by magic, became 

 almost invisible, the whole body by some mysterious watch- 

 word or signal changing their 

 course, and presenting their 

 wings to view edgeways, in- 

 stead of exposing, as before, 

 their full expanded spread. 

 Again, in another moment, the 

 cloud might be seen descend- 

 ing in a graceful sweep, so as 

 almost to brush the earth as 

 they glanced along. Then once 

 more they were seen spiring in 

 wide circles on high, till at 

 length with one simultaneous 

 rush down they glide, with a 

 roaring noise of wing till its 

 vast mass buried itself unseen, 

 but not unheard, amid a bed 

 of reeds projecting from the 

 bank, adjacent to the wood. For no sooner were they perched 

 than every throat seemed to open itself, forming one incessant 

 confusion of tongues." 



This is perhaps the place where reference may be made to 

 the Birds of Paradise (Fig. 268), which according to eastern 

 fable, lived upon dew and vapour, and carried on without 



Fig. 268 BIRD Off PAR ARISE. 



