156 
THE CABINET OF NATURAL HISTORY 
if we would come to the living productions of nature with 
minds fit for learning those lessons which they are so well 
calculated for imparting, we must equally avoid two ex- 
tremes, the one of which would lead us to confound organic 
being with the mere inorganic clods of the valley, and the 
other would lead us to confound their instantaneous im- 
pulses with deliberation, and measure instinct by the stand- 
ard of reason. 
The migrations of birds are more remarkable, and have 
been more early and more carefully observed; and that 
birds should have a greater range, is in perfect accordance 
with the general law of nature. The apparatus with which 
the majority of birds are furnished for preparing their food 
for digestion in the stomach, confines that food within a 
smaller compass than the food of the quadrupeds. With 
the exception of the birds of prey, which can rend other 
animals for their subsistence, and are thus capable of living 
at all seasons of the year, the birds must subsist upon soft 
substances, as insects and their larvae, or the seeds, and 
green and succulent leaves of plants; while quadrupeds, 
being furnished with organs of mastication which, along 
with the saliva, reduce their food to a sort of pulp before 
it be swallowed, can subsist upon dry leaves and bark, and 
even upon twigs. Thus, in even the coldest countries, 
there is still some food for a portion of those quadrupeds 
that live upon vegetables; and these again afford subsistence 
for the carnivorous ones, as well as for the more powerful 
birds of prey. In very cold places too, the smaller quad- 
rupeds, and even some of the larger ones, are so constituted 
that they hibernate , or pass the winter in a state of tor- 
pidity, in which they have no necessity for food, and con- 
sequently none for change of place. 
But in the severity of the northern winter, the food of 
the feathered tribes fails. The earth and the waters are 
bound up in ice, so that the worms and larvae are beyond 
their reach; the air, which in summer is so peopled with 
insects, is left without a living thing; the buds of the lowly 
evergreen shrubs, and those seeds which have fallen to the 
ground, are hid under that cold but fertilizing mantle of 
snow, which, cold as it seems, secures the vegetation of the 
coming summer; the berries and capsules that rise above 
the snow are soon exhausted; and the buds of the alpine 
trees are generally so enveloped in resin and other indi- 
gestible matters, that they cannot be eaten. Thus the birds 
must roam in quest of food: nor is it a hardship, — it is a 
wise provision. Were they to remain, and had they access 
to the embryos of life in their then state, one season would 
go far to make the country a desart; and even the birds 
would be deprived of their summer subsistence for them- 
selves and their young. They are also provided with 
means by which they can transport themselves, in average 
states of the weather, without much inconvenience; and 
thus, while in migration they seek their own immediate 
comfort, they preserve other races of being. In some of 
the species, too, they preserve a portion of their own race. 
It has been mentioned that the young of the swan are una- 
ble to migrate the first year; and of most migratory birds, 
there are always a few that are unable for the fatigue of 
migration. If the strong did not go away, the whole of the 
weak, and in cases like that of the swan, the whole of the 
young, would perish. After the moulting takes place, in 
most birds, perhaps in all of them in a state of nature, the 
paternal instinct ceases to operate; they feel no more for the 
brood of that year. It is each for itself individually during 
the necessity of the winter; and when the genial warmth 
of the spring again awakens the more kindly feelings, the 
objects of those feelings are a new brood. In her march, 
nature never looks back; her instinct is fixed on the pre- 
sent, and thus leads to the future, without any reference to 
that experience which the progress of reason and thought 
requires. In qonsequence of this, the strong would take 
the food from the weak, the active from the feeble, and the 
full-grown from their offspring, if nature were not true to 
her purpose, and prompted the powerful to wing their way 
to regions in which food is more easily to be found, and 
leave the young and the feeble to pick up the fragments that 
are left, in those places which they are unable to quit. 
It has been said that the teachableness which is the cha- 
racteristic of man, has nothing to do with the instincts of 
the animals; but it does not follow that he should not take 
a lesson from those instincts; because the instincts of ani- 
mals and the reason of man are all intended to forward the 
very same objects — the good of the individual and of the 
jace. Now, in this very fact of the migration of birds, $ 
simple and natural as it may seem, and unheeded as it is 
by careless observers, we have an example worth copying, 
even in the most refined and best governed society. The 
strong and the active go upon far journeys, and subsist in 
distant lands, and leave what food there is for their more 
Jielpless brethren. Would men do the same — would they 
temper the work to the capacity of the worker, in the way 
that it is done by the instincts of those migratory birds — 
the world would be spared a deal of misery. It is thus 
that, in the careful study of nature, man stands reproved 
at the example of the lower creatures, and learns, by doing 
by reason as they do by instinct, to be grateful to that 
Power, “ who teacheth us more than the beasts of the field, 
and maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven.” 
The migrating birds that spend part of the year in the 
British islands, may be divided into two classes, — sum- 
mer birds and winter birds; but of both classes some are 
only occasional visitants, and others are mere birds of 
passage, tarrying only for a short time, as they are on their 
route to other countries. 
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