INTRODUCTION- 
Vll 
CHAPTER IT 
Cursory Description of Birds. 
In the survey of our habitable globe, we perceive the never-ceasing 
efforts of nature, producing animal life in every part of its regions. The 
whole scene is embellished with animated beings ; even in the burning and 
barren deserts, under the torrid zone, where one might at first presume 
nothing living could subsist, the Ostrich finds security and food. And as 
of all the productions of nature, birds are the most innocent, and most 
beautiful, she has dispersed them with a lavish exuberance over the sea 
and the earth ; they inhabit alike the burning climes of Africa, and the 
cold regions of the poles. They find subsistence on the face of the ocean, 
and on stagnant pools, on mountains, and on plains ; in places, untamed 
by the hand of man, as well as in fertile fields, which boast of his cultiva- 
tion. Our great ornithologist, Willughby, classed them under two grand 
divisions, land birds and water-fowl ; and these, from the nature of 
their food, have been divided into carnivorous, and granivorous kinds. 
However excellent these divisions are in most respects, they are not in all 
instances accurate ; as some birds, as the duck kinds, like other amphibi- 
ous animals, are furnished with suitable organs, that enable them to live 
on the water, and the land ; others, as the Woodcock, the Plover, the Cur- 
lew, the Sanderling, the Heron, and the Snipe, search for food in watery 
places, without possessing the power of swimming for their safety, or sub- 
sistence : and all species of birds are neither strictly granivorous, nor car- 
nivorous, but some of them participate in the qualities of both, which have 
