l80 REPTILES AND BIRDS. 



charming songsters, which add so much attraction to country life and 

 solitary rambles. In the silence of night, when Nature sleeps, and 

 life seems suspended, all at once certain notes of harmony rise from 

 under the dense foliage, as if to protest against the universal silence. 

 It is sometimes a plaintive cry, prolonged into a sigh, now a con- 

 tinuous warbling, now a lively song, gay and melodious, which the 

 whole forest re-echoes to. 



When the darkness of night gives place to the first dawn of day 

 — when the soft gleam of Aurora has appeared on the horizon, all is 

 transformed, all is vivified on the new-born earth, lately asleep and 

 apparently deserted. The larger birds rise higher and higher in the 

 air, till they are lost in the clouds. The small birds hop from branch 

 to branch with joyous gambols, communicating a feeling of happi- 

 ness and content to all Nature. What a wonderful variety of 

 music they produce — what dazzling brilliancy decks their plumage — 

 what a charm pervades the whole scene, enlivened by these living 

 flowers flitting about in intense enjoyment ! Be it a titmouse, which 

 seems to spend its life in constant motion ; or the fly-catcher, on the 

 other hand, always perched ; the lark, performing its graceful circles 

 in the air as it rises higher and higher, pouring forth its melodious 

 song more vigorously with each circle described ; the thrush, which 

 runs along the grassy path, watching for its prey, or the house 

 sparrow chirping from the straw-built roof, or the robin warbling 

 from some leafless bower — how much the little winged wanderers 

 decorate the landscape and improve the picture with their innocent 

 gambols ! 



Assuredly birds have a language, for when danger threatens them 

 a peculiar cry is uttered by one, and immediately all of the same 

 species hide until their fears are dispelled or confidence restored ; or 

 when the presence of a bird of prey is announced by the plaintive 

 voice of the thrush, all the feathered race of the neighbourhood are 

 hushed into silence. 



Birds of prey with carnivorous instincts frequent the most solitary 

 places. The eagle lives with its mate in some unapproachable 

 mountain pass, where its nest is placed on the sides of a steeply- 

 scarped precipice, or on the verge of an inaccessible ravine, whence 

 they sally forth in search of prey. 



It is very difficult to comprehend the intelligence exhibited by 

 Birds. In the Mammifers, whose organisation approaches nearer to 

 our own, we are enabled partially to comprehend their joys and 

 griefs ; but in the case of Birds we are reduced to conjecture in 

 order to arrive at an estimate of their sensations. To explain this 



