hat may be familiar to all, gain credence
with the weak and ignorant, and in process of time compose even a sort
of system of the vilest superstition. It would be a very curious inquiry
to trace the operation of the causes that, in different lands, have
produced with respect to birds national prejudices of admiration or
contempt, love or even hatred; and in doing so, we should have to open
up some strange views of the influence of imagination on the head and
heart. It may be remarked that an excuse will be generally found for
such fallacies in the very sources from which they spring; but no excuse
can be found--on the contrary, in every sentence the fool scribbles, a
glaring argument is shown in favour of his being put to a lingering and
cruel death--the fool who keeps gossiping every week in the year,
penny-a-line-wise, with a gawky face and a mawkish mind, about God's
creatures to whom reason has been denied, but instinct given, in order
that they may be happy on moor and mountain, in the hedge-roots and on
the tops of heaven-kissing trees--by the side of rills whose sweet low
voice gives no echo in the wild, and on the hollow thunder of seas on
which they sit in safety around the sinking ship, or from all her
shrieks flee away to some island and are at rest.

Turn to the true Ornithologist, and how beautiful, each in the
adaptation of its own structure to its own life, every bird that walks
the land, wades the water, or skims the air! In his pages, pictured by
pen or pencil, all is wondrous--as nature ever is to

"The quiet eye
That broods and sleeps on its own heart,"

even while gazing on the inferior creatures of that creation to which we
belong, and are linked in being's mysterious chain--till our breath,
like theirs, expire. All is wondrous--but nothing monstrous in his
delineations--for the more we know of nature in her infinite varieties,
her laws reveal themselves to us in more majestic simplicity, and we are
inspired with awe, solemn but sweet, by the incomprehensible, yet in
part comprehended, magnificence of Truth. The writings of such men are
the gospel of nature--and if the apocrypha be bound up along with
it--'tis well; for in it, too, there is felt to be inspiration--and
when, in good time, purified from error, the leaves all make but one
Bible.

Hark to the loud, clear, mellow, bold song of the BLACKBIRD. There he
flits along upon a strong wing, with his yellow bill visible i