i 
224 BIRDS. 
the Siskin for instance has in some years been 
noticed with us only in winter, and the Black¬ 
headed gull has on rare occasions been observed 
off our coast in summer, and the Common godwit 
been found at the mouths of our rivers in some 
years at the same season ; again, w r e find cases of 
birds suddenly appearing in countries and localities 
where before they had not been noticed, and vice 
versa of birds entirely withdrawing from neigh¬ 
bourhoods and countries where previously they 
had maintained citizenship, examples of w r hich 
have been already given. In all which instances 
I maintain, we gain the information that birds 
(and indeed all the higher animals,) are capable of 
being actuated by volition, and that instead of 
being solely the blind creatures of a supposed over¬ 
ruling agent—Instinct, they have the power of 
drawing from us a far greater surprise than that 
elicited through the results of the operations of that 
principle by demonstrating to us their combined 
faculties of Reason and Instinct, the one prompting 
them to act in great degree through choice and 
caprice, the other conducting them securely on the 
path their volition pointed out. 
But, unfortunately for science, naturalists have 
been hitherto greatly insensible of one direct w r ay 
in which this doubted truth might all along have 
been made apparent. It is but recently that they 
have been any way prepared to admit that the 
economy and actions of animals vary greatly within 
small compasses,—a fact however daily being made 
manifest, and since furnishing a most important key 
to many of the mysteries of animal life, should hence¬ 
forth excite observers to put aside prepossession, 
and endeavour to illustrate the truth still further 
w r ithin the limits of their own fields of observation. 
Perhaps there is no more opposite case in proof 
of the necessity of this species of attention to local 
