NUMIDIAN CRANE. 
lar; and the French, who are skilled in the' 
arts of elegant gesticulationj consider all it's* 
motions as lady-like and graceful. Our Eng- 
lish sailors, however, who have not entered 
so deeply into the dancing art, think that, while 
thus in motion, the bird cuts but a very ridi- 
culous figure. It stoops ; rises ; lifts one wing, 
then another ; turns round ; sails forward, 
then back again: ail which highly diverts our 
seamen ; not imagining, perhaps, that all these 
contortions are but the aukward expression, 
not of the poor animal's pleasures, but it's 
fears. 
" The ancients," adds Goldsmith, *' have 
described a Buffoon Bird ; but there are many 
reasons to believe that their's is not the Numi- 
dian Crane." We should have been glad to 
have seen some of these reasons; for, at pre- 
sent, we cannot but suspe6t, that the do6lor 
has derived them from a misapprehension of 
what has been advanced in that respedt by ; 
Buffon, who is doubtless of the dircdlly oppo-i 
site opinion. The moderns have mistaken; 
what the ancients meant. I 
