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Cats too were always on the look out there. Yet the toads were 

 never absent during summer. The rats never touched them, and 

 if they abstained, probably a fox too would have done so. Dogs 

 always show disgust at a toad. Hedgehogs however are perhaps 

 the natural destroyers of these reptiles, so repulsive, though so 

 harmless. Some of the fishes which look hideous, as set up in 

 glass cases in museums, do not habitually present any such ap- 

 pearance, but only inflate themselves and erect their formidable 

 spines when threatened by an enemy. 



Nevertheless the devil fish of our coasts, and many other forms 

 of warmer seas, are of awful hideousness to the human eye, far 

 surpassing any results of mere brute evolution, non-intelligent 

 and inexpressive, that I am able to conceive of. It is as impos- 

 sible to me to ignore them as not to see that the oak and the pine, 

 the flowers of the field, the shells of the sea, (the pencillings on 

 the plumage of a thrush, a linnet, or a lark,) are all works of de- 

 sign, akin to works of the very highest grades of human intelli- 

 gence and skill, yet infinitely more marvellous. 



If we turn our thoughts from such reflections as these to prac- 

 tical observations, in detail, on a branch of natural science so 

 popular and unceasingly attractive as British ornithology, it will 

 be seen that much yet remains to be done which could not be 

 effected in the days when no railways existed, such as now enable 

 us to pass from the north to the south, from the east to the west, 

 so easily within a day's compass. "We ought now to be able to 

 trace, with far better results than our fathers, the movements of 

 a large number of birds which ought to be denominated semi- 

 migratory, or pullo-migratory ; since their yearlings, (their pro- 

 geny of the recent nesting season,) instinctively seek refuge in 

 warmer tracts, as the days become sensibly shorter, and the nights 

 cooler; often, indeed, they pass over to the Continent. Meanwhile 

 frequently the parent birds remain at home, doubtless as being 

 hardier of constitution and well-seasoned to the climate. And 

 as these latter arc seen the whole winter long, not far from their 

 usual haunts, the great migratory departure on the part of their 

 yearling young has been hardly suspected. 



That the mistlc-thrush, or scrickct assembles into small flocks 



