558 CLASS AVES. ^ 



most part, to those which are most important and heroic. We 

 are presented with little beyond the achievements or the 

 apothegms of the warrior, the statesman, or the philosopher. 

 All the minor occurrences of domestic life, all the more 

 endearing traits of private feeling, are cast into the shade. 

 We see the ancients almost always in full dress, almost always 

 in the stately attitude, and on the exalted pedestals of life. It 

 is only by scattered references that we are enabled to enter 

 their homes and their bosoms, and investigate — the most attrac- 

 tive of all subjects — the windings and variations of the human 

 heart. Natural history affords us an occasional insight into 

 feelings of this nature. Through its means we possess a 

 subject of common interest, by which we find ourselves, as it 

 were, on familiar terms with those who are removed from us, 

 not merely by time, but by that imposing dignity which time 

 never fails to confer. When our feelings are called forth in 

 admiration of a bird or insect, which is known to have equally 

 excited the admiration of an Alexander or an Aristotle, we 

 become almost unconscious of the lapse of time which has 

 separated us from such characters : we feel ourselves attracted 

 to them by a community of sentiment, and rejoice in that 

 sympathy which brings us in contact with the patron of science, 

 and the man of genius of the days that are gone by. Science, 

 it is said, levels all distinctions of rank and station, and unites 

 all the adventitious differences in society under the powerful 

 influence of genius and of knowledge : but science goes still 

 farther in the present case, for it appears to level all the dis- 

 tinctions of time and space. In pursuing such researches into 

 antiquity, we find not merely that external nature was the same 

 two thousand years ago as it is at the present time, but that 

 human nature itself has undergone but little variation." 



The group of psittacidae, thus known to the ancients, con- 

 stitutes a distinct and detached division, which Mr. Vigors 

 has characterized under the name of " Palceornisr The 



