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tuous when made prisoners, they forget equally their former companions, and the pleasures of freedom. Satisfied with the single enjoyment of eating, they grow tame, contented, and fat in their confinement; and are peculiarly fitted for the purposes for which they are destined by their owners.

The various kinds of domestic fowl are thus grouped in a truly rural landscape :—

Should I my steps turn to the rural seat,
Whose lofty elins, and venerable oaks,
Invite the rook, who high amid the boughs,
In early spring, his airy city builds,

And ceaseless caws amusive; there, well-pleased,
I might the various polity survey

Of the mixt household kind. The careful hen
Calls all her chirping family around,

Fed and defended by the fearless cock;

Whose breast with ardour flames, as on he walks,
Graceful, and crows defiance. In the pond,
The finely-chequered duck before her train
Rows garrulous. The stately-sailing swan
Gives out his snowy plumage to the gale;
And, arching proud his neck, with oary feet
Bears forward fierce, and guards his osier isle,
Protective of his young. The turkey nigh,
Loud-threat'ning, reddens; while the peacock spreads
His every-coloured glory to the sun,

And swims in radiant majesty along.

O'er the whole homely scene, the cooing dove
Flies thick in amorous chace, and wanton rolls
The glancing eye, and turns the changeful neck.

The genera of the order GALLINE are: 1. Tetrao, grouse, quail, partridge. 2. Numida, guinea-fowl. 3. Meleagris, turkey. 4. Phasianus, pheasant. 5. Pavo, peacock. 6. Otis, bustard. 7. Didus, dodo. 8. Struthio, ostrich. 9. Casuarius, cassowary or emu.

The common bustard is the largest land fowl which is a native of Britain, measuring nearly four feet in length, and in breadth nine. The head and neck are ash-coloured, the back is transversely barred with black and bright ferruginous, and the belly is white. On each side of the lower mandible is a tuft of fea

thers, about nine inches long. The female is only about half the size of the male, and her colours are less bright. The bustard is sometimes seen in Dorsetshire, on Salisbury Plain, near Newmarket, and on the Wolds of Yorkshire, but has of late years become very rare. It is of a timid and solitary disposition, runs swiftly, takes wing with difficulty, and therefore is commonly hunted with dogs. It feeds on seeds, herbage, and worms.

In the thirty-ninth chapter of Job, there is a most beautiful description of the ostrich. They had at that time observed the manner in which the female ostrich abandons her brood to the natural heat of the sand: "She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not her's. Her labour is in vain; without fear, because God hath deprived her of wisdom; neither has he imparted to her understanding. What time she lifteth up her head on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider.'

Order v. GRALLE or WADERS. The bill is generally rather long, the legs lengthened, and the thighs often bare of feathers above the knee. Their chief residence is in watery situations, and their food consists of various kinds of aquatic animals, though some feed also on vegetable substances. Their nests are often on the ground, but sometimes on tall trees. Though incapable of launching out into the vast ocean, they all venture into the lakes and rivers by swimming. Some of them, as the coots and grebes, reside upon the water almost constantly, being incapable of walking to any distance on the shore. In the power of flight they are almost as defective as in walking. In consequence of these limited powers their journeys are commonly short, being only from one lake to another; they are performed, too, mostly during night, with great effort and difficulty.

Several of the pinnated tribes are endowed with a capacity of seeing in the night, like the owls. At that season they gather their food, and perform the

most important functions of their economy. This quality is not indeed peculiar to them alone; for it is shared, in a greater or less degree, by almost the whole of the water-fowls. Thus accomplished, they issue forth from the reeds along the lakes and shores, when the finny tribes are at rest, and plunder and devour them without molestation. The different genera of these birds are variously endowed with aquatic powers: while some are confined to rivers and lakes, others venture into the sea, and engage in a wider range of depredation upon the shores.

As the duck is the most useful of all the inhabitants of the water, so nature has happily multiplied this genus more than any other aquatic tribes. It appears in a thousand varieties; and the numbers of each species far exceed all computation. The waterfowls, of which this forms the chief, that frequent the shores of Europe, are prodigious: but still they bear no proportion to those immense flocks that swarm upon the shores of the American continent; where the numbers of the human race are fewer, and their dominion over the animal world far less extensive before they became acquainted with the use of fire-arms.

The water-fowls are mostly all fit for food, though the flesh of none of them be so palatable as that of the gallinaceous or passerine orders. It uniformly contracts a rancid and oily taste, from the nature of the food upon which these birds subsist. This taste still, in some measure, remains in the flesh of the goose and the duck, which all the arts of domestication are not able to remove. It is, however, much lessened by confining these birds to the land, and feeding them with grain.

The aquatic tribes seem not even bounded in their residence by the limits of the land itself. The floating mountains of ice towards the poles afford them a retreat during tempestuous weather, and a cradle for their young. They require no grain or vegetable

food, which nature in these frozen regions cannot produce. Hence they have been seen fixing their residence upon these islands of ice in the same manner as upon land. There they sleep; there too they sometimes hatch their young*.

Who the various nations can declare

That plough with busy wing the peopled air?
These cleave the crumbling bark for insect food;
Those dip the crooked beak in kindred blood;
Some haunt the rushy moor, the lonely woods;
Some bathe their silver plumage in the floods;
Some fly to man, his household gods implore,
And gather round his hospitable door,
Wait the known call, and find protection there
From all the lesser tyrants of the air.

BARBAULD.

The genera of the class GRALLE are: 1. Ardea, crane, stork, heron †, bittern. 2. Mycteria, jabiru. 3. Tantalus, ibis. 4. Numenius, curlew. 5. Parra, jacuna. 6. Psophia, trumpeter. 7. Platalea, spoonbill. 8, 9. Tringa and Charadrius, snipe and plover tribe. 10. Phoenicopterus, flamingo.

ORDER VI. ANSERES consist of such birds as have very strongly or conspicuously webbed feet, and are, from their general structure, calculated for swimming. The feet, in all, are very widely webbed, the legs strong and short, and the whole body stout, fat, and muscular. Their food consists of fish and other water-animals, and frequently of water-plants. Their rest is generally on the ground, but sometimes on lofty rocks. The genera are: 1. Colymbus, diver. 2. Larus, gull. 3. Procellaria, petrel. 4. Diomedia, albatross. 5. Pelecanus, pelican, cormorant.

See 'PANTOLOGIA,' art. ZOOLOGY.

+ When watchful herons leave their wat❜ry stand,
And mounting upwards with erected flight,
Gain on the skies, and soar above the sight.

6.

DRYDEN.

Anas, swan, duck, goose*. 7. Mergus, goosander. 8. Alca, awk, puffin. 9. Aptenodytes, penguin.

Cormorants were formerly tamed in England for the purpose of catching fish, as the falcons and hawks for chasing the fleet inhabitants of the air. We are told that the custom is still in full practice in China. This bird, although of the aquatic kind, is often seen, like the pelican, perched upon trees; and Milton tells us that Satan,

On the tree of life,

The middle tree, and highest there that grew,
Sat like a cormorant.

CLASS VI.-Mammalia.

Out of the ground up rose,

As from his lair, the wild beast where he wons
In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den;
Among the trees in pairs they rose, they walked :
The cattle in the fields and meadows green:
Those rare and solitary, these in flocks
Pasturing at once, and in broad herds upsprung.
The grassy clods now calved; now half appeared
The tawny lion, pawing to get free

His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds,
And rampant shakes his brinded mane; the ounce,
The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole

Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw
In hillocks: the swift stag from under ground
Bore up his branching head: scarce from his mould
Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheaved

His vastness: fleeced the flocks and bleating rose,
As plants.

MILTON.

THE MAMMALIA are so named from their being provided with mamma, or teats, for the purpose of suckling their young; which circumstance sufficiently distinguishes them from all other animals. They are also called viviparous quadrupeds, as producing perfectly formed living young; in opposition to what were

The silver goose before the shining gate

There flew, and by her cackle saved the state,

DRYDEN.

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