156 



THE CABINET OF NATURAL HISTORY 



if we would come to the living productions of nature with 

 minds fit for learning those lessons which they are so well 

 calculated for imparting, we must equally avoid two ex- 

 tremes, the one of which would lead us to confound organic 

 being with the mere inorganic clods of the valley, and the 

 other would lead us to confound their instantaneous im- 

 pulses with deliberation, and measure instinct by the stand- 

 ard of reason. 



The migrations of birds are more remarkable, and have 

 been more early and more carefully observed; and that 

 birds should have a greater range, is in perfect accordance 

 with the general law of nature. The apparatus with which 

 the majority of birds are furnished for preparing their food 

 for digestion in the stomach, confines that food within a 

 smaller compass than tlie food of the quadrupeds. With 

 the exception of the birds of prey, which can rend other 

 animals for their subsistence, and are thus capable of living 

 at all seasons of the year, the birds must subsist upon soft 

 substances, as insects and their larva;, or the seeds, and 

 green and succulent leaves of plants; while quadrupeds, 

 being furnished with organs of mastication which, along 

 with the saliva, reduce their food to a sort of pulp before 

 it be swallowed, can subsist upon dry leaves and bark, and 

 even upon twigs. Thus, in even the coldest countries, 

 there is still some food for a portion of those quadrupeds 

 that live upon vegetables; and these again afford subsistence 

 for the carnivorous ones, as well as for the more powerful 

 birds of prey. In very cold places too, the smaller quad- 

 rupeds, and even some of the larger ones, are so constituted 

 that they hibernate, or pass the winter in a state of tor- 

 pidity, in which they have no necessity for food, and con- 

 sequently none for change of place. 



But in the severity of the northern winter, the food of 

 the feathered tribes fails. The earth and the waters are 

 bound up in ice, so that the worms and larva; are beyond 

 their reach; the air, which in summer is so peopled with 

 insects, is left without a living thing; the buds of the lowly 

 evergreen shrubs, and those seeds which have fallen to the 

 ground, are hid under that cold but fertilizing mantle of 

 snow, which, cold as it seems, secures the vegetation of the 

 coming summer; the berries and capsules that rise above 

 the snow are soon exhausted; and the buds of the alpine 

 trees are generally so enveloped in resin and other indi- 

 gestible matters, that they cannot be eaten. Thus the birds 

 must roam in quest of food: nor is it a hardship, — it is a 

 wise provision. Were they to remain, and had they access 

 to the embryos of life in their then state, one season would 

 go far to make the country a desart; and even the birds 

 would be deprived of their summer subsistence for them- 

 selves and their young. They are also provided with 

 means by which they can transport themselves, in average 

 states of the weather, without much inconvenience; and 



thus, while in migration they seek their own immediate 

 comfort, they preserve other races of being. In some of 

 the species, too, they preserve a portion of their own race. 

 It has been mentioned that the young of the swan are una- 

 ble to migrate the first year; and of most migratory birds, 

 there are always a few that are unable for the fatigue of 

 migration. If the strong did not go away, the whole of the 

 weak, and in cases like that of the swan, the whole of the 

 young, would perish. After the moulting takes place, in 

 most birds, perhaps in all of them in a state of nature, the 

 paternal instinct ceases to operate; they feel no more for the 

 brood of that year. It is each for itself individually during 

 the necessity of the winter; and when the genial warmth 

 of the spring again awakens the more kindly feelings, the 

 objects of those feelings are a new brood. In her march, 

 nature never looks back; her instinct is fixed on the pre- 

 sent, and thus leads to the future, without any reference to 

 that experience which the progress of reason and thought 

 requires. In consequence of tliis, the strong would take 

 the food from the weak, the active from the feeble, and the 

 full-grown from their ofTspring, if nature were not true to 

 her purpose, and prompted the powerful to wing their way 

 to regions in which food is more easily to be found, and 

 leave the young and the feeble to pick up the fragments that 

 are left, in those places which they are unable to quit. 



It has been said that the teachableness which is the cha- 

 racteristic of man, has nothing to do with the instincts of 

 the animals; but it does not follow that he should not take 

 a lesson from those instincts; because the instincts of ani- 

 mals and the reason of man are all intended to forward the 

 very same objects — the good of the individual and of the 

 race. Now, in this very fact of the migration of birds, 

 simple and natural as it may seem, and unheeded as it is 

 by careless observers, we have an example worth copying, 

 even in the most refined and best governed society. The 

 strong and the active go upon far journeys, and subsist in 

 distant lands, and leave what food there is for their more 

 helpless brethren. Would men do the same — would they 

 temper the work to the capacity of the worker, in the way 

 that it is done by the instincts of those migratory birds — 

 the world would be spared a deal of misery. It is thus 

 that, in the careful study of nature, man stands reproved 

 at the example of the lower creatures, and learns, by doing 

 by reason as they do by instinct, to be grateful to that 

 Power, " who teacheth us more than the beasts of the field, 

 and maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven." 



The migrating birds that spend part of the year in the 

 British islands, may be divided into two classes, — sum- 

 mer birds and winter birds; but of both classes some are 

 only occasional visitants, and others are mere birds of 

 passage, tarrying only for a short time, as they are on their 

 route to other countrie.t. 



