98 CLASS AVES. 



actions of the winged tribes. They dwell, for the most part, 

 peaceably upon the earth, and man either subdues them to 

 obedience with facility, confines them to the desert waste, 

 or strikes them with terror by his hostility. 



But the bird, the untamed denizen of the air, easily evades 

 the tyranny of man. Independent in the solitude of his native 

 skies, he has little to fear from the chains of captivity, or the 

 constraint of domestication. The eagle, the condor, the swal- 

 low, the bird of paradise, shooting through the air on rapid and 

 energetic wing, seem almost to despise those heavy species whom 

 their weight attaches to the earth, and subjects to the domi- 

 nion of man. It is only the races mal-organized for flight, and, 

 so to express ourselves, the most terrestrial, that man has been 

 enabled to subdue, the gallinse, a grovelling and gormandising 

 tribe, or geese, ducks, and other clamorous and voracious 

 species, which prefer the wretched boon with which we repay 

 their servitude, to poverty with independence. Man, indeed, 

 abuses his power and dexterity in imprisoning, from infancy, the 

 enchanting musicians of the grove. He rather retains them as 

 captives by violence, than as subjects by domestication; they are 

 slaves, not friends, and if they sing m their captivity, it is less 

 for the purpose of charming their masters, than of distracting 

 their own ennui, and solacing their own cares : for birds are still 

 greater lovers of liberty than quadrupeds, and the most un- 

 tameable among them are also the best organized for flight, and 

 the most generally agile. The more their wings are powerful 

 and extended, the more the pectoral muscles that move them 

 are robust, the less are the legs of these same birds adapted for 

 walking. The ostrich, which runs so admirably, cannot fly ; 

 but the swallow, the martin, the sea-swallow, the gull, which 

 fly so well, have feet so small that they can hardly make use 

 of them. We might say that the one kind have wings at the 

 expense of the feet, and that the others run at the expense of 

 the capacity for flying ; nature principally making more per- 

 fect the organs which are most exercised, and weakening those 



