EOTATION AND DISTRIBTJTION. 35 



many a once fertile country from being converted into a 

 barren waste, and may serve yet to restore such regions 

 to their former happy condition. But these little facts 

 are not of sufficient magnitude to excite our admiration, 

 and they involve a certain process of reasoning that is not 

 agreeable to common minds, or even to the more culti- 

 vated, which have been confined chiefly to technology. 

 The few facts to which I have alluded in this essay are 

 such as lie at the vestibule of a vast temple that has 

 not yet been entered. I am not ready to say that no sin- 

 gle species of the animal creation may not be destroyed 

 without derangement of the method of nature ; for thou- 

 sands have, in the course of time, become extinct by the 

 spontaneous action of natural agents. But there is reason 

 to believe that, if any species should be destroyed by arti- 

 ficial means, certain evils of grievous magnitude might 

 follow their destruction. 



The frugivorous birds are the victims of constant per- 

 secution from the proprietors of fruit gardens. Their per- 

 secutors do not consider that their feeding habits have 

 preserved the trees and shrubs that bear fruit from utter 

 annihilation. They are the agents of nature for dis- 

 tributing vegetables of all kinds that bear a pulpy fruit 

 in places entirely inaccessible to their seeds by any other 

 means. Notwithstanding the strong digestive organs of 

 birds, which are capable of dissolving some of the hardest 

 substances, the stony seeds of almost all kinds of pulpy 

 fruit pass through them undigested. By this providence 

 of nature the whole earth is planted with fruit-bearing 

 trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants, while without it these 

 would ultimately become extinct. This may seem an un- 

 warrantable assertion. It is admitted that birds alone could 

 distribute the seeds of this kind of plants upon the tops 

 of mountains and certain inaccessible declivities, which, 

 without their agency, must be entirely destitute of this 



