Ixxii 
INTRODUCTION. 
man, and, as if they received the reward of their exertions from his bounty, 
they seem to endeavour to repay him with their songs. When winter 
drives the busy insect throngs to their retreats, the summer birds retire; 
and nature, pivotting her cornucopia on the margin of a circle perpetually 
in motion, scatters her blessings, in its revolutions, over every climate, and 
every land ; and, while abstracting one pleasure, with the benevolent 
hand of the kindest mother, she leaves another in its stead. To birds that 
quit us in the autumn must be added our winter visitors, among which are 
the Redwing, the Fieldfare, the Woodcock, and the Snipe, and all that 
innumerable assemblage of water fowls, which are bred in the north. 
When the places to which these birds resort to breed can no longer afford 
them nutriment, when the earth is locked up in bars of chilling ice, and 
the current of the stream is fixed and motionless, they are compelled to 
wander in quest of food. By what principle they are guided in these dis- 
tant excursions has been a question often agitated ; our own sweet poet, in 
his nicely-framed numbers, asks, — 
“ Who bade the Stork, Columbus like, explore 
Heavens not its own, and worlds unknown before; 
Who form’d the council, fix’d the certain day, 
Who guides the phalanx, and who points the way ?” 
We would answer. Reason ! 
Reason, the mov'er of the human soul. 
Acts not on part of being, but the whole : 
For nature’s laws, in due proportions, give 
This high prerogative to all that live ; 
From him, the favorite in her mighty plan. 
Him first, and foremost— speaking, laughing man ; 
To the light forms, that in the blaze of day. 
Float on the winds, or on the sun-beams play. 
Guided by its dictates, the Crane wings its way from the cold Arctic Circle, 
