148 AXIMALS IX MENAGERIES. 



by the powerful and united assistance of those who di- 

 rect their time and attention ahuost exclusively to the 

 rearing and management of birds. 



The second plan that suggested itself, was to write a 

 popular account of those birds only which were usually 

 seen in menageries, and wdiich, with few exceptions, 

 would comprise the most remarkable in the feathered 

 creation : but this is the sort of selection commonly 

 made in all popular histories of birds, whether large or 

 small, and would have been somewhat unsuited to the 

 nature cf these Treatises. The histories of such birds 

 as the ostrich, eagle, vulture, nightingale. Sec. Sec. are 

 now so well known, that, through the pages of the 

 '^'^ Penny ^Magazines," they are already in the hands of half 

 the artisans in the kingdom ; and the subject has been 

 so exhausted, that the ablest pen could only repeat, 

 under a different form of words, the same anecdotes and 

 the same facts that the pubhc are now pretty well tired 

 of hearihg. The biography of birds, no less than of 

 quadrupeds, is a distinct branch of Natural History. A 

 writer in this department can only give original inform- 

 ation, when he treats of subjects which he has seen in a 

 state of nature : he has nothing to do with science, 

 properly so called ; his business lies only with facts, and 

 these he is to go out in the fields and gather as best he 

 can. Now, in regard to the native birds, this is a 

 matter of no great difficulty, as the materials for original 

 remarks are all before him. "With him, indeed, Natural 

 History is a pursuit of observation, and nothing else. 

 But if he wishes to extend his sphere, and to describe 

 the manners of birds he has never seen, from that mo- 

 ment he must virtually become nothing more than a 

 compiler : his subject is one which not only precludes, 

 but absolutely forbids, all deviation from the materials 

 he may gather from others ; he has to pin his faith on 

 the statements that have been already made, and merely 

 become an arranger and narrator of other men's say- 

 ings. Compilations, therefore, on the natural histories of 

 birdsj and, indeed, of animals generally, are innuraerablej 



