18 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 



what regions of the globe these birds emigrate. It will rot, 

 therefore, be amiss to close the subject with these beautiful lines 

 of the poet : — 



" Amusive birds, say where your hid retreat, 

 "When the frost rages and the tempests beat; 

 Whence your return, by such nice instinct led, 

 When Spring, sweet season I lifts her bloomy head ? 

 Such baffled searches mock man's prying pride; 

 The God of Nature is your secret guide." 



CHAPTER II. 



" Gavest thou the goodly wings with the peacock, or wings and 

 feathers with the ostrich ?" — Job. 



In proceeding to give a sketch of some of the most remarkable 

 of the winged inhabitants of the air, which, by the vivacity of 

 their motions, the beauty of their plumage, or the melody of 

 their notes, enliven the general picture of Nature ; we shall, for 

 the sake of methodical arrangement, endeavour to follow thfe 

 divisions which most naturalists have adopted, and class them 

 under the following heads, viz. the rapacious kind, the poultry 

 kind, the pie kind, the sparrow kind, the crane kind, and the 

 aquatic kind; but not, perhaps, without indulging in some prac- 

 tical deviations. 



We shall, in the first place, make another division, which 

 gome ornithologists have adopted, and others neglected; and 

 consider in a distinct view a few of the feathered tribes which 

 do not seem properly to come under any of the above-men- 

 tioned denominations. 



Among volatiles, each genus is not only distinguished by its 

 appropriate characteristics of size, colour, and conformation, but 

 also by the difference of their notes, and the various modes of 

 flight, which, to a practical ornithologist, afford, at a distance, 

 the surest means of discrimination. From the bold and lofty 

 soaring of the eagle, to the short and sudden flittings of the 

 wren, there is an ample field for the curious investigator of 

 Nature, in which the mind may expatiate with delight, in con- 

 templating the various movements of the winged nations, soaring 

 or fluttering around on every side. A certain class, however, 

 does not possess the faculty of flying ; and, like the bat among 

 quadrupeds, these seem to form one of the connecting links in 

 the great chain of animal life. 



As the bat seems, in the class of quadrupeds, to make the 

 nearest approach to that of volatile, so the ostrich, the emu, the 



