Ill 



The traveller, for example, who wishes to collect 

 the more curious subjects of Natural History, finds a 

 bird, whose name, habits, and economy, he is desirous 

 of investigating ; from its conic, sharp-pointed bill, 

 slender legs, and divided toes, he finds that it belongs 

 to the order Passeres ; and from its thick, strong, 

 convex-bill, with the lower mandible bent in at the 

 edges, and the tongue abruptly cut off at the end, he 

 refers it to the genus Loxia, or Grosbeak ; and run- 

 ning his eye over the specific diffeiences, he imme- 

 diately determines it, from its exactly answering to 

 the specific character, *'Body above, brown ; beneath, 

 yellowish-white ; crown and breast, pale yellow ; 

 chin, brown; to be the Phillippine Grosbeak {Loxia 

 Phillippina) a little bird which he finds is a native of 

 the Phillippine Islands, and endowed by nature with 

 instinctive notions of preservation and comfort, nearly 

 approaching to human intelligence; that it constructs 

 a curious nest with the long fibres of plants, or dry 

 grass, and suspends it by a kind of cord, nearly half 

 an ell long, from the end of a slender branch of a tree, 

 that it may be inaccessible to snakes, and safe from 

 the prying intrusion of the numerous monkies which 

 inhabit those regions ; at the end of this cord is a 

 gourd-shaped nest, divided into three apartments, the 

 first of which is occupied by the male, the second by 

 the female, and the third containing the young; and 

 in the first apaitment, where the male keeps watch 

 while the female is hatching, is placed, on one side, a 

 little tough clay, and on the top of this clay is fixed 9 

 glow-worm, to afford its inhabitants light in the night* 

 time. 



The angler catches a fish, and from the singularity 

 of its appearance is desirous to ascertain its place in 

 the Science of Ichthyology, its name and habits ; 

 by its " broad pectoral fins, which more or less re- 

 semble the feet of quadrupeds," he finds it belongs 



