to each; and others again have the four toes fully webbed together. The thighs, in the most expert divers, are placed very far back; their legs are almost as flat and thin as a knife; and they are enabled to fold up their toes so closely, that the least possible resistance is made while they are drawing them forwards to repeat their strokes in the water. Many of these divers are provided internally with a receptacle, seated about the windpipe, for a stock of air, which serves the purpose of respiration, whilst they remain under water: and the whole of the tribe of swimmers have their feathers bedded upon a soft, close, warm down; and are furnished with a natural oil, supplied from a gland in the rump. This oil they press out with their bills from a kind of nipple, and with it preen and dress their plumage, which is thereby rendered impenetrable to the water, and, in a great degree, to the most extreme cold. Of the number of these birds, both waders and swimmers, a great proportion may not improperly be termed fresh-water birds, as they rear their young, and spend the greater part of their time inland. In this class are the Ardea, Scolopax, and Tringa, with divided toes-the Fulica, Phalaropus, and Podiceps, with finned feet; together with others of the web-footed kinds, chiefly of the genera of the Mergus and Anas. Among these various kinds, some species are found, which only occasionally visit the sea-shore: others have not been noticed there at all; while others are seen there frequently, feeding on the beach: some, like little boats, keep within bays and creeks, near the shores; others, meanwhile, adventure into the ocean, and sport amidst its waves. To particularize these, with their various places of abode, and the times of their migrations, would here be tedious and unnecessary: they are noticed in the description of each bird. The northern extremities of the earth seem as if they were set apart for the nations of the feathered race, as their B peculiar heritage-a possession which they have held coeval with creation. There, amidst lakes and endless swamps, where the human foot never trod, and where, excepting their own cries, nothing is heard but the winds, they find an asylum where they can rear their young in safety, unmolested, and surrounded by a profusion of plenty. This ample provision consists chiefly of the larvæ of gnats and other insects, with which the atmosphere must be loaded in that region, during the summer months. The eggs of these insects being deposited in the mud, and hatched by the influence of the unsetting summer's sun, they arise like exhalations, in multiplied myriads, and, as we may conceive, afford a never-failing supply of food to the feathered tribes. An equal abundance of food is also provided for the young of those kinds of birds, which seek it from the waters, in the spawn of fishes, or the small fry, which fearlessly sport in their native element, undisturbed by the angler or the fisherman. In these retirements they remain, or only change their haunts from one lake or misty bog to another, to procure food, or to mix with their kind; and thus they pass the long enlightened season. As soon as the sun begins, in shortened peeps, to quit his horizontal course, the falling snows, and the hollow blasts foretel the change, and are the signals for their departure: then it is, that the widely-spreading winged host, having gathered together, in separate tribes, their plump well-fledged families, directed by instinctive knowledge, leave their native wilds, the arctic regions, that prolific source, whence these multiplied migrators, in flocks innumerable, and in directions like radii from the centre of a circle, are poured forth to replenish the more southern quarters of the globe. In their route, they are impelled forwards, or stop short, in greater or less numbers, according to the severity or mildness of the season, and are thus more equally distributed over the cultivated world; where man, habituated to consider every thing in the creation as subservient to his use, and ever watchful to seize all within his grasp, makes them feel the full force of his power. Wherever they settle under his dominion, these pretty wanderers afford a supply to the wants of some, pamper the luxury of others, and keep the eager sportsman in constant employment. Leaving the lakes and inland watery wastes, to pursue his researches by the brooks and the rivers, in their lengthened course to the estuaries and to the sea, the ornithologist is delighted with the view of the various clean-feathered inhabitants, feeding or preening themselves on the shores, swimming or diving in the current, or wheeling aloft on the wing. Many of these divide their time between the fresh and the salt waters, and serve as aerial guides, to direct his sight over the vast expanse, to other classes of birds that almost entirely commit themselves to the ocean; and with those tribes, at certain seasons, these associate. This multifarious host, thus assembled in distinct families, is sometimes seen to cover the surface of the water to a vast extent: and of all these various families, those of the Anas genus, which keep much at sea, form the most considerable, amounting in the whole to ninety-eight species, besides varieties,* a number exceeding that of any other kind. And, when we consider that each family of this genus is often seen in considerable flocks, and add them to those which may more properly be called sea-fowl-beginning with the Alca, and ending with the Pelicanus-consisting of nine distinct British genera and their species, we shall find the aggregate far to exceed in number the whole of the birds that are supported on the land. Whilst these fishers, in their flying squadrons, are viewed from the cliffs *It is very probable that many of these varieties, as well perhaps as others that are accounted distinct species, may be a mixed breed, the produce of a kind somewhat different; and that this may also be the case with the varieties of other genera of birds. and shores of the sea, soaring aloft, or resting secure on the lowering precipice, the ear is often pierced with their harsh shrill cries, screamed forth in mingled discord with the roaring of the surge. Grating as their cries are, these birds are often hailed by the mariner, as his only pilots, while he is tossed to and fro, amidst solitary rocks and isles inhabited only by the sea-fowl. Although it is not certainly known to what places some of these kinds retire to breed, yet it is ascertained that the greater part of them hatch and rear their young on the rocky promontories and inlets of the sea, and on the innumerable little isles with which the extensive coast of Norway is studded, from its southern extremity-the Lindesness, or Naze, to the North Cape, that opposes itself to the Frozen Ocean. The Hebrides, or Western Scottish Isles, are also well known to be a principal rendezvous to sea-fowl, and celebrated as such by Thomson: "Or where the northern ocean, in vast whirls, "Boils round the naked melancholy isles Other parts of the world—the bleak shores and isles of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, &c. with the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, are also enlivened in their seasons by swarms of sea-fowl, which range the intervening open parts of the seas to the shoreless frozen ocean. There a barrier is put to further enquiry, beyond which the prying eye of man must not look, and there his imagination only must take the view, to supply the place of reality. In these forlorn regions of unknowable dreary space, this reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulations of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, surround the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold; even here, so far as human intelligence has been able to penetrate, there appears to subsist an abundance of animals, in the air, and in the waters: and, perhaps, it may not be carrying conjecture too far to suppose, that every region of the earth, air, and water, however ungenial the clime may appear to us, is replete with animals, suited, each kind, to the place assigned to it. Certain it is, however, that the deeps of the frozen zone are the great receptacle whence the finny tribes issue, in so wonderful a profusion, to restock all the watery world of the northern hemisphere; and that this immense icy protube rance of the globe, this gathering together, this hoard of congealed waters, is periodically diminished by the influence of the unsetting summer's 'sun, whose rays being perpetually, though obliquely, shed, during that season, on the widely extended rim of the frozen continent, gradually dissolve its margin, which is thus crumbled into innumerable floating isles, that are driven southward to replenish the seas of warmer climates.* Amidst these drifts of ice, and following this widely spreading current, teeming with life, the whole host of sea-fowl find in the waters an inexhaustible supply of food: for the great movement, the immense southward migration of fishes is then begun, and shoal after shoal, probably as the removal of their dark icy canopy unveils them to the sun, are invited forth, and, guided by its light and heat, poured forward in thousands of myriads, in multitudes which set all calculation at defiance. The flocks of sea birds, for their numbers, baffle *The same happens in the southern hemisphere, by the melting of the ice at the south pole. |