ANIMATED NATURE. 



139 



any other genus of birds; as if in fact it had taken from 

 all the other orders a portion of their peculiar qualities, 

 for the purpose of exhibiting in what manner they could 

 be combined. From the rapacious birds this * type of 

 types,' as the crow has been justly called, takes the powei 

 of soaring in the air, and of seizing upon living birds, like 

 the hawks, while its habit of devouring putrid substances, 

 and picking out the eyes of young animals, is borrowed 

 from the vultures. From the scansorial or climbing or- 

 der it takes the faculty of picking the ground, and discov- 

 ering its food when hidden from the eye, while the par- 

 rot family gives it the taste for vegetable food, and fur- 

 nishes it with great cunning, sagacity, and powers of imi- 

 tation, even to counterfeiting the human voice. Next come 

 the order of waders, who impart their quota to the per- 

 fection of the crow by giving it great powers of flight, and 

 perfect facility in walking, such being among the chief 

 attributes of the suctorial order. Lastly, the aquatic birds 

 contribute their portion, by giving this terrestrial bird the 



f>ower of feeding not only on fish, which are their pecu- 

 iar food, but actually of occasionally catching it.* In this 

 wonderful manner do we find the crow partially invested 

 with the united properties of all other birds, while in its 

 own order, that of the incessores or perchers, it stands the 

 pre-eminent type. We cannot also fail to regard it as a 

 remarkable proof of the superior organization and charac- 

 ter of the corvidae, that they are adapted for all climates, 

 and accordingly found all over the world." 



Mr. Swainson's description of the zoological status of 

 the crow, written without the least design of throwing 

 any light upon that of man, evidently does so in a re- 

 markable degree. It prepares us to expect in the place 

 among the mammalia, corresponding to that of the corvi- 

 dae in the aves, a being or set of beings possessing a re- 

 markable concentration of qualities from all the other 

 groups of their order, but in general character as far above 

 the corvidae as a typical group is above an aberrant one, 

 the mammalia above the aves. Can any of the simiadae 

 pretend to such a place, narrowly and imperfectly endow- 

 ed as these creatures are — a mean reflection apparently ot 

 something higher ? Assuredly not, and in this considera- 

 tion alone, Mr. Swainson's arrangement must fall to the 

 ground. To fill worthily so lofty a station in the anima- 

 * See Wilson's American Ornithology j artic.e, Fishing Crow 



