274 
WINTER SUBSISTENCE OF BIRDS. 
food, and the chats, larks, and gray wagtails, seem busily 
engaged in providing for their wants upon the furze 
sprays, amidst frozen grass, or upon the banks of ditches 
and pools ; and as no insect but the winter gnat is now 
found in such places, it is probable that this creature, 
which sports in numbers in every sunny gleam, yields 
them in this season much of their support. Some of 
the insectivorous birds have at such periods no apparent 
difficulty in supporting their existence, finding their 
food in a dormant state in mosses, lichens, and crevices 
of trees and buildings ; but for those which require 
animated creatures, I am sensible of none that are to be 
procured but this gnat, and it possibly has been endow- 
ed with its peculiar habits and dispositions for a purport 
like this. We have many examples in nature of simi- 
lar provisions, wherein one race supports the existence 
and requirements of another. The molusca and insects 
of the deep continue the life of some, the feeble races 
of the air and waters maintain the beings of others, and 
the beast of the wild seeks his food amidst those which 
inhabit with him ; but where this chain ends, human 
faculties will probably never be able to ascertain. The 
remarkable fact which our microscopes make known to 
us, that all infusions of natural substances in water 
will produce life, however extraordinary the form may 
be, seems to denote a continuation of being beyond 
any possible comprehension, and probably subservient 
to the existence of each other : the minute creature 
that floats a hardly perceptible atom in the water of 
the ditch, and which subsists many of the animals 
which inhabit those places, feeds upon smaller than it- 
self, and those again, possibly, upon more minute ones 
which the vegetable infusions of those places give ex- 
istence to : here the investigation terminates, but the 
thread unbroken continues, probably through endless 
gradations, perceptible to infinity alone. 
Having applauded the operations of Nature with so 
much cordiality, possibly I may be called her “ enthusi- 
astic adorer,” but the epithet must be disclaimed. 
None can respect the works of creation more, but ’tis 
not with an ecstasy that glows, fades, and expires, but 
