Слике страница
PDF
ePub

The eagle

sand years ago nothing less, nothing more. is as incapable of advancement as the sparrow. The common fowl, which is found in all regions and climates of the globe, is in each one exactly alike in its functions, faculties, and habits. The song-birds warble now just as they have done ever since human history has noticed them. It is this confining identity which separates birds and all animals so widely from man. They never improve; while his capability of progression is as yet illimitable, and may perhaps

ever be so.

Yet the bird mind, although thus limited, displays all the common faculties of animal intellect. Its memory is tenacious. The bullfinch never forgets the songs he has learned, though placed amid many others with different melodies.* Most of the singing-birds may be taught the notes of others, and to pipe and whistle as their instructer pleases.f Their aptness to acquire little acts of exhibition shows attention, comprehension, docility, and recollection.‡

Some

exhibit a taste for the little gratifications of human vanity ;§ others, a spontaneous intellectual observation and perception of the intention of human actions. Even the highly mental emotion of emulation is visible among them. The

* Albin. Nat. Hist. p. 16.

The starling learns to whistle tunes.-Alb. 12. So the blackbird.P. 2. The goldfinch will acquire a canary's or woodlark's song.-P. 24. The linnet, besides its own sweet song, will learn others.-P. 34. The robin, from the nest, may be taught to pipe or whistle finely.-P. 65. So the greenfinch.-31.

The greenfinch will learn to ring bells in a contrived cage.-Alb. p. 31. And a goldfinch may be trained to draw water or food in a small ivory bucket, fastened to a chain; open it, take out its contents, and return it for more.-Ib. 21.

Goldfinches "are delighted with viewing themselves in a glass fixed to the back of their bucket-board, where they will sit upon their perch, pruning and dressing themselves with the greatest care, often looking in the glass, and placing every feather in the nicest order."-Albin. p. 22.

The painted bunting is very fond of flies. Six of them were in a ship on a voyage to New Orleans. Several of the passengers caught flies to give them, "till at length the birds became so well acquainted with this, that as soon as they perceived any of the people attempting to catch the insects, they assembled at the front of the cage, stretching out their heads through the wires with eager expectation, evidently much interested in the issue of the efforts."-Wilson, vol. ii. p. 240.

"If the woodlark be hung in the same room with the nightingale he will strive with it for the mastery; as likewise it sometimes happens in the woods, where is a strong contention between these two choristers to excel and outdo each other. If brought up from the nest, and caged

perception, that their eggs in hatching should have a proper degree of heat, and the alternate movement of them for that purpose displays both a right reasoning and acting rightly on it. Nor are they sometimes destitute of ani mal or human pugnacity. We expect this in the game birds that can be trained to it; but even the more gentle and peaceable can sometimes exert the petulant irritability.† But it is in their nests that they display the most striking and varied indications of contriving and judging, and there fore of thinking intellect, confined indeed in the extent of its operations, but resembling reasoning intellect within this compass. Their affection for their young, their anxious

in the same room with a nightingale, he will learn its notes, and incorporate them with its own."--Albin. p. 50....." Each strives to outvie the other; so that, like true-bred game cocks, they seem resolved to die rather than lose the victory. If the nightingale carries it in stoutness and fierceness of song, so does the woodlark in his pleasing variety of soft, warbling, harmonious note."-Ib. 73... Handel has admirably imitated both these competitors, in the "Mirth! admit me of thy crew;" and in the "Sweet bird, who shunnest the noise of folly;" of his Allegro and Penseroso.

*"Almost all birds are in the habit, while sitting, of changing the eggs from the centre to the circumference, and vice versa, that all of them may receive an equal share of warmth."-Jameson's Note to Wilson, vol. i. p. 215.

"The males of the cardinal grosbeak, when confined together in a cage, fight violently."-Wilson, vol. iii. p. 276.....The pinnated grouse seem to vie with each other in stateliness; and as they pass each other, frequently cast-looks of insult, and utter notes of defiance." These are the signals for battles, and they engage with wonderful spirit and fierceness.-lb. 337.....One of the titmouse species "sometimes fight violently with each other, always directing their blows against the scull."—Ib. 216... Even the beautiful humming bird, as he passes from flower to flower, will at peculiar seasons attempt a contest. "When two males meet at the same bush or flower a battle instantly takes place; and the combatants ascend in the air, chirping, darting, and circling round each other, till the eye is no longer able to follow them."-Ib. p. 209.

The oriole forms his nest of long and flexible grass, which is knitted or sewed through-and-through in a thousand directions, as if done by a needle; which made a lady inquire if it could not be taught to darn stockings.-Wilson, vol. i. p. 189.....The Baltimore-bird, seeking materials for his nest, when the women hang out their thread to bleach, perceives that this will suit him, and carries it off. "Skeins of silk and hanks of thread have been often found hanging round his nest; but so woven up and entangled as to be irreclaimable."-Witson, vol. i. p. 180. "The birds of the Indian climates are obliged to exert unusual artifice in placing their little broods out of the reach of an invader. Each aims at the same end, though by different means. Some form their pensile nest in the shape of a purse, deep, and open at the top; others with a hole in the side; and others, still more cautious, with an entrance at the

contrivances to protect them, and little stratagems to mislead the marauder from their nests, evince feelings and mental activities analogous to those of other reasoning beings.*

LETTER XIII.

The Formation of Quadrupeds-Their Linnean Classification into Orders and Genera-Their general Qualities-Number-Food-Organs of Sense, Voice, and Feelings.

THE sixth stage or day of creation began with the formation of quadrupeds, insects, and reptiles, which completed the animals that inhabit our globe. These were, like the preceding, so many other incorporations of the living principle and animal mind in three distinct and very different systems of organized matter. Each were also peculiar conceptions and inventions of the Deity, both in external figure and in physical powers. These were so many new effusions and display of his rich and multiform imagination. The structure, appearance, functions, and

very bottom, forming their lodge at the summit."-Pennant's Ind. Zool. 46..... This instinct prevails also among the birds on the banks of the Gambia, which abound with monkeys and snakes. Others, for the same end, make their nest in the holes of the banks that overhang that river.-Purchas, vol. ii. p. 1576.

"The lesser species, having a certain prescience of the dangers that surround them, and of their own weakness, suspend their nests at the extreme branches of the trees. They are conscious of inhabiting a climate replete with enemies to them and their young; with snakes that twine up the bodies of the trees; and apes that are perpetually in search of prey; but, Heaven instructed, they elude the gliding of the one and the activity of the other."-Penn. Ind. Zool. p. 44.

The motacilla sutoria, the tailor-bird," will not trust its nest even to the extremity of a slender twig, but makes one more advance to safety, by fixing itself to the leaf itself. It picks up a dead leaf, and sews it to the side of a living one; its slender bill being its needle, and its thread some fine fibres. The lining is feathers, gossamer, and down. The bird, in colour a light yellow, is but three inches long, and its weight only three-sixteenths of an ounce. A nest of this kind is in the British Museum."-Penn. Ind. Zool. p. 46.

* See Wilson, vol. ii. pp. 93, 230, 250, 210, 317; and vol. iii. p. 4; and in many other places.

organizations of each had to be designed, and the means of producing them to be perceived and put in action. The whole plan having been fully settled, the mandate was given for their simultaneous existence; and all the three very dissimilar orders of animal being arose obediently to the command, as their material elements moved into the appointed combinations and dispositions which were to constitute their respective bodies.

The quadrupeds were those with which the pleasure, he sustenance, and the convenience of man are more immediately concerned. None are indispensable to him, as he can subsist without either; but he derives such important benefits from all these three classes, that it is rational to suppose, that one of the main ends of their creation was to contribute, in some of their species, to his comfort and service. Nothing can be supposed to have been exclusively formed for our use; but several were manifestly made that this application of their powers. and qualities might take place. Each exists for its own benefit, as well as for that of others, or for ours; but many have been designed on purpose to be also instrumental to our convenience and improvement.

A natural division of quadrupeds would be into the fierce and the gentle, the wild and the tame,-the carnivorous and those which feed on herbs and grasses. Such a distinction exists in all the orders of animal life. Fish, birds, beasts, insects, and reptiles have each a predatory and a peaceful class; the latter always the most numerous,-the former confined to particular objects of pursuit, but always now appearing as an inseparable part of the economy of our varied world in its present state. Yet, as geology teaches us that the present was not our earth's primeval state, it has been confessedly altered in its planetary, rocky, animal, and vegetable relations and substances, and in its life-connected caloric-we have no right to affirm that the predatory tendency was the primitive law, or that either animals or man were, in their first condition, carnivorous. Their structure was prepared for it as their most lasting state, but can live in other habits. Carnivorous animals, notwithstanding their adapted teeth, claws, and intestines, may be brought up on vegetable produce: as man can subsist wholly on plants, or wholly on flesh, as he chooses.

[ocr errors]

The prophetic writers of the Old Testament indicate that this destructive anomaly is not to be perpetual. In the last ages of earthly being, when wars and vices, sin and evil, are to depart from human society, the predatory system is also to cease in all the animal kingdom. It may therefore have some connexion with human immorality and its disturbing consequences, and with the new moral economy that was established after the deluge. But putting aside for the present this curious subject of our more difficult contemplations, it is sufficient to know, that at least from the time of the diluvian catastrophe to the age we live in, the quadrupeds of the earth have been in these two grand divisions, of the fierce or wild, who are all carnivorous-and of the gentler, the tame, and the domesticated, which are mostly graminivorous. Perhaps originally all of this class were so; for our cat and dog are rather two species of the wild, tamed into the gentle, than eiginal natives of the pacific genera. The frame of each kind now corresponds with its present habits.

Linnæus has distinguished the quadrupeds of the earth into six orders, and added another for the cetaceous fishes; with the general term of MAMMALIA for all, because they have all been created with the peculiar habit of nurturing their offspring in a manner similar to the human race.* These seven orders, subdivided into forty-eight genera, include above eight hundred species. The characters of the orders were taken by Linnæus from the number, situation, and structure of the teeth.*

"The mammalia are such animals as nourish their young by means of milky teats or paps. In their structure

* These orders are-I. Primates; II. Bruta; III. Feræ; IV. Glires; V. Pecora; VI. Bellum; VII. Cete.-Turt. Linn. i p. 4-6.

†The genera of the mammalia are

I. Man, ape, macauco, and bat.

II. The sloth, anteater, manis, armadillo, rhinoceros, sukotyro, elephant, walrus.

III. Seal, dog, cat, fitchet, weasel (comprising otters), bear, opossum, mole, shrew, urchin.

IV. Porcupine, cavy, beaver, rats and mice, marmot, squirrel, dormouse, jerboa, hare, ashkoko,

V. Camel, musk, deer, giraffe, antelope, goat, sheep, ox.
VI. Horse, hippopotamus, tapir, hog.

VII Narval, whale, cachalot, dolphin.-Kerr's Linn. 31-33.
Later naturalists have made some additions and modifications.

« ПретходнаНастави »