22 



CASSELLS BOOK OF BIRDS. 



them to peck and eat, and gather food for themselves, and, in a word, perform the part of so many 

 nurses deputed by the Sovereign Lord and preserver of the world to help such young and shiftless 

 creatures." 



It would lead us far beyond the limits of our space were we to do more than indicate the close 

 relationship that exists between the exalted temperature and warm clothing of the feathered creation 

 and the wonderful instinct which urges them to build nests for the reception of their eggs, or 

 the still more remarkable blind perseverance with which they devote themselves to the task of 

 incubation. " There is nothing," says Paley, " either in the aspect or in the internal composition 

 of an egg which could lead even the most daring imagination to conjecture that it was hereafter 

 to turn out from its shell a perfect living bird. From the contents of an egg would any one 

 expect the production of a feathered goldfinch? To suppose the female bird to act in this 

 process from a sagacity and reason of her own is to suppose her to arrive at conclusions there 

 are no premises to justify." And yet He who made the egg not only ordained that such should 

 be the result of the simple process of incubation ; but, as though to confound scepticism, by giving, 

 as it were, the last touch to His inscrutable work, provided the young bird with the means of 

 escaping from incarceration, by attaching to the end of its beak a little hammer, called the " bill- 

 scale," the only use of which is to crack the egg-shell, and allow the little prisoner to come forth. 

 (See Fig. 14.) 



With these few prefatory remarks, we leave our author in the reader's hands, at the same rime 

 promising that he will find in the succeeding pages a rich store of valuable information. 



Fig. 15.— A YOUNG BLACKBIRD SHORTLY AFTER ITS ESCAPE FROM THE EGO, SHOWING THE 

 ARRANGEMENT AND CONDITION OF THE FEATHERS. 



