WILD ANIMALS IN CAPTIVITY 
native country, and increased and multiplied their own 
species, they leave with their progeny for a less severe 
climate, arriving in good time on our own shore to afford 
food just as the most severe part of the winter renders 
their appearance most welcome, thus balancing their 
favours by periodical visits to the hungry poor of both 
regions. Not only are the starving people of the cold 
regions supplied with food by migratory birds, but also 
were the famished Israelites suppled with food in the 
wilderness by the same means, as our much-loved British 
naturalist, the late Mr. Yarrell, in vol. ii., p. 358, quotes 
from the Psalms : — 
“ He caused an east wind to blow in the heaven : and by His 
power He brought in the south wind. He rained flesh also 
upon them as dust, and feathered fowls ... in the midst of 
their camp, round about their habitations. So they did eat, and 
were well fllled : for He gave them their own desire.” 
Mr. Yarrell, after a careful investigation of this passage, 
remarks at p. 360, vol. ii. : — 
“ With these facts before us, considering the positive 
testimony of the Psalmist, that the unexpected supply of 
food to the Israelites was a bird, and that bird, agreeably 
to the Septuagint and Josephus, a quail, that only one 
species of quail migrates in prodigious numbers, that 
species, the subject of the present notice, we are authorized 
to pronounce the Goturnix dactylisonans to be the identical 
species with which the Israelites were fed. We have here 
proof of the perpetuation of an instinct through 3300 years 
not pervading a whole species, but that part of a species 
existing within certain geographical limits ; an instinct 
characterized by a peculiarity, which modern observers 
have also noticed, of making their migratory flights by 
night.” 
Innumerable lives are lost during the migratory move- 
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