212 GRALL^E. 



a nose, an eye, a tongue, and a hand, we may cease to be 

 puzzled about the exquisite sensibility of the birds to the 

 most minute atmospheric changes. An organ of sense is not 

 a detached being, sentient in itself, and confined to that per- 

 ception of which it is more immediately the organ ; it is an 

 organ of sensation generally, and of a particular modification 

 of that general sensation, according to its structure. We 

 find in ourselves, though, as our sensations are in a great 

 measure controllable by our trains of inward thought, we may 

 suppose them to be as detached from each other as they can 

 be, consistently with our animal system, that our organs of 

 sense are very easily affected by causes which do not apply to 

 them as the instruments of particular senses that they sym- 

 pathize with each other, and are pleased or offended in con- 

 cert, and that they are also remarkably sensitive to atmo- 

 spheric changes. We all, more or less, feel the coming 

 changes of the atmosphere, though, when we are high in 

 health and activity, we do not always heed them ; but when, 

 from any cause, the sensitive system is in a state of irrita- 

 tion, and we have leisure, or are compelled (for it is often too 

 powerful for both reason and necessity) to listen to it, we are 

 as meteorologic, live as much at the mercy of even the minor 

 changes of the atmosphere, and prognosticate them as early, 

 as the woodcock. 



The whole economy of that bird, and indeed of all the 

 snipes and birds which have their bills tipped, margined, or 

 otherwise covered by nervous and sentient membrane, is 

 highly useful, as well as curious, in a meteorological point of 

 view : they all have the bill much in water, or in earth which 

 is rendered soft by the admixture of water ; and cold, drought, 

 and light, seem equally painful to them, probably by stiffen- 

 ing the membrane, and rendering the circulation in its deli- 

 cate tissues interrupted and laborious. The noise made by 

 ducks and geese before rain ; and the glee and joy which they 



