ORDER PASSERES. 201 



approaching departure with a part of the birds which com- 

 pose them. The majority of naturalists have denied, without 

 reason, that the larks are birds of passage. They have been 

 met at sea in crossing the Mediterranean, and several of them 

 have dropped upon the decks of vessels. The island of Malta, 

 and other eastern islands of the Mediterranean, serve them as 

 resting places ; and they terminate their voyage on the coasts 

 of Syria and Egypt, from where they spread even into 

 Nubia, and over the shores of the Red Sea into Abyssinia. 



These migrations of the larks have been noticed by several 

 scientific observers. M. Thevenot has seen them arrive in 

 Egypt. The Chevalier Desmazis, quoted by Montbeillard, 

 was an ocular witness of their passage in the island of Malta. 

 M. Lottinger, an ornithologist of some eminence, has observed 

 a considerable passage of them every year in Lorraine, termi- 

 nating precisely at the time in which they arrived in Malta, 

 at which time very few are seen in Lorraine, and the emigrants 

 detach with them many that are born in the country. In 

 fine, all the fowlers who are capable of observation make the 

 same remark. 



But though there can be no sort of doubt respecting the 

 emigration of the larks, yet it is equally certain that this 

 emigi'ation is but partial, and that a great number of them 

 remain in the countries in which they have been born. 

 Similar, however, is the case of many other species of birds, 

 as well as the larks, part of wliich migrate, while part remain 

 sedentary. We are wholly ignorant of the motive and cause 

 which determine this separation in the same family, and 

 produce eifects so very different in the same animals. To 

 discover these would be an object worthy of the researches of 

 a true philosopher, of an observer of expanded mind, who 

 studies nature in her own proper and immense domain, and 

 does not shut himself up in his cabinet, with the inanimate 

 relics of her productions, founding his pretensions to science 



