THE SCOOPING AVOCET. 231 



to fill its place. Every link in the chain of nature is thus 

 "legion," as inexhaustible by human inquiry as the whole. 

 Some of these successions appear mysterious to us, because 

 we are unable to fathom the means and modes of their com- 

 ing, but the bird comes on wings through the open sky, and 

 therefore we, at least, fancy that it is more within the reach 

 of cur observation. 



Yet, take one of our most able and unsophisticated Orni- 

 thologists, one of those men who have measured their own 

 ken and capacity against the pages of the opened, and the 

 gigantic volume of the unopened book of nature, take him 

 to any one kind of locality, field, forest, or fen, and ask him, 

 "What bird should nestle here?" take one of the arti- 

 ficers, and he will muster his hard names, erect his horo- 

 scope, and become " a soothsayer without saying sooth j" 

 whose words would less inform you than the silence of the 

 other. 



One would wish to speak with great hesitation and difii- 

 deiice on a subject, the datum for the investigation of which 

 is the knowledge of all nature ; but in accordance with the 

 geographical aspect of countries there seems to be two distinct 

 tendencies in birds a tendency to wander, and a tendency to 

 be staid. The former leads through a succession of species to 

 the storm petrels perhaps, or any race that may be more dis- 

 cursive the latter to the Gallinse, which dwell in the same 

 field, the same jungle, or on the same mountain, for life. On 

 an. island like Britain, the former tendency is to the seas 

 the pelagic bird, which rides on the far sea-wave, being the last 

 link that we know ; the latter tends to the hill, and the last 

 bird is the ptarmigan. The marsh birds are geographically 

 upon the confines of both ; and they seem to be so physio- 

 logically. The heron and the bittern, though they may seem 

 to be anomalies, and, where we have placed them, to have 

 broken the chain, which otherwise is traceable from the stilt 



