2 GRAMINIVOR.E. 



insectivorous, or graminivorous (or granivorous), as descriptive 

 of an order of birds, all that we can mean by it is, that their 

 principal dependence is upon that species of food.* 



This, however, is sufficient to lead to other distinctions, 

 such as those of locality and season. Insects in their advanced 

 state, whether as larvae or as perfect, are children of the sun 

 and the summer; and it is when they are in those states, 

 that they are best suited for the food of birds. The supply 

 of them is consequently an equatorial and a summer supply,, 

 fluctuating northward and southward with the apparent 

 annual motions of the sun ; and the summer migratory birds 

 flit along with it, for a greater or less range, according to 

 their structure and habits. 



The supply of vegetable food is, to a considerable extent, 

 just the reverse. Birds do not feed upon the perfect or 

 growing vegetable the stalk, the leaf, or the flowers ; vege- 

 table matter in an inactive state, accumulated in the lobes of" 

 seeds and kernels, or in the hybernacula of buds, is that upon 

 which they feed ; and though there be a succession of small 

 seeds upon some herbaceous plants during the greater part of" 

 the summer, the grand vegetable harvest is a store prepared 

 in the autumn, to last during winter, and be ready for new 

 action when spring returns. As the situation is farther dis- 

 tant from the equator, the vegetable harvest becomes more 

 decided, and the seeds of plants become more firm in their- 

 integuments, so as better to resist the cold. 



The fertility of some of those plants is astonishing ; the 

 dock or thistles of a single acre would sow a county ; and 

 there are others even more prolific. The hundredth part of 

 them is not wanted for the supply of vegetation, and there is, 

 therefore, abundance to spare for the birds. Annual vege- 

 tation proceeds more from seeds, and less from bulbs and 

 tubers, in the cold countries than in the warm ones : and in: 

 |* The order graminivorce is not adopted by ornithologists. M. 



