322 THE PHILOSOPHY 



the bodies of the trees, and apes that are perpetually in fearch of 

 prey ; but, heaven-inftruded, they elude the gliding of the one, 

 and the aftivity of the other. — The brute creation are more at 

 enmity with one another than in other climates; and the birds 

 are obliged to exert an unufual artifice in placing their little broods 

 out of the reach of an invader. Each aims at the fame end, though, 

 by different means ; fome form their penfile neft in ftiape ot a 

 purfe, deep and open at top, others with a hole in the fide, and 

 others, ftill more cautious, with an entrance at the very bottom, 

 forming their lodge near the fummit *. But the taylorbird feems 

 to have greater diffidence than any of the others : It will not truft 

 its neft even to the extremity of a flender twig, but makes one 

 more advance to fafety by fixing it to the leaf itielf. It picks up 

 a dead leaf, and, furprifing to relate, lews it to the fide of a living 

 one t) its flender bill being its needle, and its thread fome fine 

 fibres, the lining feathers, goflamer, and down. Its eggs are white, 

 the colour of the bird light yellow; its length three inches ; its 

 weight only three fixteenths of an ounce ; fo that the materials of 

 the neft, and its own fize, are not likely to draw down a habita- 

 tion that depends on fo flight a tenure {.' 



Birds of the gallinaceous or poultry kind lay their eggs on the 

 ground. Some of them fcrape a kind of hole in the earth, and line 

 it with a little long grafs or ftraw. 



It 



• This inftinft prevails alfo among the birds on the banks of the Gambia, in 



[ Africa, which abounds with monkeys and fnakes ; others, foi the fame end, make 



their neft in holes of the banks that overhang that vaft river; Purchas, vol. 2. pag. 



1576. 



f A neft of this bird is preferved in the Britifh Mufaeum. 

 J Pennant's Indian Zoology, pag. 7. 



