BIRDS. 
Reas’ning at every step he treads, 
Man yet mistakes his way, 
While meaner things, whom instinct leads, 
Are rarely known to stray. 
Cowper. 
The universe is replenished with life, and every 
part of nature abounds with its proper animals. We 
cannot proceed one step without discovering new 
traces of a wisdom as inexhaustible in the variety of 
its plans, as in the richness and fertility of the exe- 
cution. Nothing is more natural than the flight of 
a bird, to eyes that have been habituated to such a 
sight, and nothing is more astonishing to a mind 
disposed to contemplate the phenomenon. A bird 
in flight is a mass raised aloft, notwithstanding the 
weight of the air, and the powerful gravitation im- 
pressed on all bodies, and which impels them to 
the earth. This mass is transported, not by any 
foreign force, but by a movement accommodated to 
the purpose of the bird, and which sustains it a long 
