o 
BEAUTIFUL BIEDS. 
provided with the means of conveyance to another, 
though that may be at a considerable distance. Their 
wings are long and powerful, and they occasionally 
perform long journeys, when driven by a scarcity of 
food to a different part of the country. Their pecu- 
liar construction is so beautifully adapted to their 
wants and to their haunts, that they are enabled to 
climb and scramble over the trees with the greatest 
rapidity, and to scrutinize every twig with the same 
perseverance as the ruminating animals show in 
browsing their pastures. They associate in large 
docks, and although the depredations that they com- 
mit among the buds, flowers, and fruits may be con- 
siderable, Ave must take into consideration the prolific 
tendency of nature in these climes, and may conclude 
that a beneficial service is also performed by these 
birds in keeping under the destructive exuberance 
of the trees, Avhose luxuriance might otheiuvise be 
checked by the very excess of their own fruitfulness. 
The propensity to gnaw Avood into chips, Avhich they 
do, not for the sake of food, but apparently out of 
mere wantonness, no doubt answers some pimpose in 
nature, and may, it has been observed, contribute not 
a little to the more rapid decay of dead trees, by 
enlarging the holes in their trunks, and thus rain is 
admitted and retained, and the tree is A'ery speedily 
reduced to dust. 
As Ave have before observed, the Avhole may be 
' V 
said to live upon vegetable food. Among the greater 
nundier this food is the kernels of fruits, and those 
fruits AA'hich have large seeds, enclosed in a hard shell 
or nut Avithin the pericarp, appear to be the favourites 
