KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



277 



jurious to the living bird. To defend the tender 

 lining of this inner passage, the sides and under- 

 surface of the tongue, and the upper part of the 

 gullet, are furnished with numerous glands; 

 supplying a slimy moisture, which softens the 

 gullet and smooths the way for the admission of 

 the hard substances which are occasionally in- 

 troduced. 



Iu the upper and back part of the palate of the 

 Ostrich there are two remarkable reservoirs, from 

 which a very tenacious mucus may be expressed, 

 of infinite importance to the bird ; for it is so 

 little choice in its food, that in the stomach of 

 one belonging to the King, which died at Wind- 

 sor, and was forwarded to the Zoological Society 

 for dissection, some pieces of wood of considerable 

 size, several large nails, and a hen's egg, entire 

 and uninjured, were discovered ; and in another, 

 in addition to some long cabbage- stalks, were 

 masses of bricks of the size of a man's fist. 



This large space and capacity of the gullet is 

 clearly intended to counterbalance the disadvan- 

 tages of uncertain subsistence. Thus, Herons and 

 Cormorants will devour as much fish at once as 

 will last them for a long time. 



There is another peculiarity, too, in the gullets 

 of fish-feeding birds — it is usually wider near 

 the mouth, thus enabling them to gulp down their 

 slippery food in an instant, without giving them 

 an opportunity of escaping. In all these birds 

 the width and space of the gullet does away with 

 the use of the crop, which is accordingly, in this 

 class of birds, exceedingly small, or altogether 

 wanting. 



The crop is furnished with a number of vessels 

 secreting an oily fluid, something similar to the 

 liquid in the gullet just mentioned. In such 

 birds as feed their young from the crop, these 

 vessels are observed to swell considerably at that 

 particular time ; in order to provide a great in- 

 crease of this unctuous liquid. Those who have kept 

 Turtledoves or Pigeons, must be familiar with the 

 manner by which the young birds receive their 

 food; almost thrusting their heads down the very 

 throats of the old ones, to reach the nourishment 

 provided in the enormous crops of their parents, 

 where this lubricating liquid is provided in great 

 quantity when the nestlings are young. It 

 decreases in abundance as they grow' older, and 

 require less nourishing food. 



This portion of the digestive organs is the most- 

 capacious in what is called the gallinaceous or 

 poultry tribe, which feed chiefly on grain, re- 

 quiring much softening ; and there, accordingly, 

 we find the food retained, till it is sufficiently 

 softened to pass onwards to the stomach. And in 

 this tribe it almost forms a distinct bag, as may 

 be easily seen on examining a fowl — the gullet 

 opening into it at the upper part, and quitting it 

 about the middle. Its texture is very fine and 

 thin ; so much so that the craw of a full-sized 

 Turkey will contain nearly a quart, and when 

 scraped and varnished, is sufficiently light to 

 form small air-balloons, for which purpose they 

 are now prepared and sold in London. 



We next come to the part called the second 

 stomach, which, like the rest of the digestive 

 organs, varies very much in size and internal 

 arrangement. ^ In some birds it is extremely 

 small ; in certain cases, as in the Kingfisher, it 



is actually wanting ; whereas, in the Ostrich it 

 considerably exceeds even the real stomach, being 

 capable of holding several pints of water. It is 

 in this cavity that the grand business or process 

 of digestion is earned on ; it being abundantly 

 supplied with a number of glands or vessels 

 secreting that very curious liquid called the 

 gastric juice, which acts most powerfully on every 

 variety of food. They are called the solvent 

 glands on this account ; and, as birds generally 

 require a more rapid digestion, they are larger 

 and more distinct from the other organs of diges- 

 tion than in other animals. 



There may also be another reason why this 

 liquid may be more essentially necessary for birds, 

 which seem to require greater warmth than other 

 animals ; since it is found that their blood circu- 

 lates more rapidly, and is warmer than the blood 

 of the human body. For instance, the heat of 

 the human body will raise the mercury of a 

 thermometer to about 95 or 96 degrees, the true 

 blood-heat being 98 ; but if the same thermometer 

 is placed under the wing of a Parrot, or a Canary, 

 it will raise it to 100 or 101 ; of a Fowl, to 1G8; 

 of a Sparrow or Robin, sometimes to 110 or 111 ; 

 and no doubt, if tried on certain other birds, 

 requiring additional warmth, it would be found 

 to rise still higher. .Now the gastric juice, from 

 some very ingenious experiments,* is supposed 

 to contain a much stronger principle of life and 

 warmth than other liquids ; thus, when water, salt 

 and water, and gastric juice were exposed to 

 great cold, the gastric juice was the last to freeze, 

 and the first to thaw. The greater portion of this 

 juice, therefore, found in birds, may be an 

 additional means by which the wisdom of God 

 furnishes them with more warmth, and enables 

 many of them to resist very strong degrees of 

 cold. In proof of their endurance of cold, at the 

 bird-market of St. Petersburg, in Russia, during 

 the intensity of those dreadfully cold winters, 

 several thousand cages, containing birds of every 

 description, are hung on the outside of about 

 eighty shops ; in a part of each cage, a small 

 quantity ot snow is placed, which is said to be 

 necessary to keep them alive. That birds, ori- 

 ginally from warm climates, suffer from the colder 

 regions of the north, is, to a great degree, true; 

 but by far the greatest number of birds, found 

 dead in our severe winter, perish, not from the 

 inclemency of the weather, but the deficiency of 

 food; for instance, our little Wren is just as 

 active and cheerful in the severest frost as the 

 warmest summer's day — his supply of food, 

 consisting of small insects, concealed under the 

 bark of trees, never failing him. 



As a proof that small birds are not affected so 

 much by temperature as want of food, Captain 

 Kingf observed the lesser Redpole existing 

 without apparent inconvenience in a climate, and 

 at a season, when the thermometer was not 

 unfrequently at seven degrees below zero ; and in 

 the inclement atmosphere of Cape Horn, on the 

 desolate shores of Terra del Fuego, Humming- 

 birds were constantly seen hovering over the 

 blossom of a fuchsia, when the jungle composed of 

 this shrub was partially covered with sno\* . 



* Spallanzani. 

 f King's Narrative, vol. i., p. 199. 



