76 OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF BAIN. 



pleasing, since it was universally espoused, I need only say, that 

 the feathers of our tailless, or, as 1 call them, rumpless hens, are as 

 much proof against rain as those of the other hens, and of many other 

 birds that are provided with a rump, in which the secretion of an 

 unctuous liquor is made. It is, however, a real fact, that birds are at 

 times seen pecking their rump : this imposed upon the observers ; 

 they thence concluded that they squeezed from their rump an unctu- 

 ous liquor, which they took upon the end of their bill to stroke it 

 afterwards over their feathers ; they did not consider that the extre- 

 mity of the bill could never fetch out a quantity of that matter, suffi-* 

 cient to make itself greasy. All that might have been concluded from 

 it, is, that some slight pain, or barely an itching, perhaps, caused the 

 bird to squeeze his rump, or the reservoir, or the extraordinary canal 

 of the unctuous matter, to force it out of the place where it caused 

 an obstruction being grown too thick. Our very school-boys know 

 that this obstruction may take place and occasion an illness in birds : 

 when their sparrows look poorly, and are in a drooping condition, they 

 examine the state of the rump ; and when they think they perceive 

 any more swelled than they naturally are, they press, and even some- 

 times tap them, to force their contained fluid out of them. I do not 

 know whether the success of this last operation is very certain, but it 

 would be better, in my opinion, to endeavour to cure the obstruction 

 of the excretory canal, whose orifice is sometimes stopped by the 

 liquor inspissated ; and in order to do this, to moisten it, or to intro- 

 duce into it some small solid body. So long as we shall be ignorant 

 why a secretion is made in our ears of a certain matter, though in a 

 very small quantity, we shall not think ourselves obliged to give an 

 account, why a secretion of a certain matter is in a particular manner 

 effected in a very small quantity on the rump of birds. 



OBJECTIONS TO THE RECEIVED THEORY OF RAIN. 



BY MR. EDMUND HART, NOTTINGHAM. 



It is the received opinion, that rain is caused by the heat of the 

 sun's rays raising the water in a state of vapour, into the higher 

 regions of the atmosphere; and it being there condensed by the cold, 

 it descends again, and thus forms rain. 



Objection 1st. That water requires a heat equal to sixty degrees of 

 Fahrenheit's thermometer, to raise it into the least vapour, according 



