. The bird. Birds. ILLUSTEATIYE NOTES. 329 Many depart, few return ; at each stage of their route they must pay a tribute of blood. The eagle waits on his crag, man watches in the valley. He who escapes the tyrant of the air, falls a victim to the tja-ant of the earth. "A fortunate opportunity !" exclaims the child or the sportsman, the ferocious child with whom murder is a jest. "God has willed it so !" mutters the pious glutton; "let us be resigned !" These are the judgments of man upon the carnival of massacre. As yet we know nothing more, for history has not w
. The bird. Birds. ILLUSTEATIYE NOTES. 329 Many depart, few return ; at each stage of their route they must pay a tribute of blood. The eagle waits on his crag, man watches in the valley. He who escapes the tyrant of the air, falls a victim to the tja-ant of the earth. "A fortunate opportunity !" exclaims the child or the sportsman, the ferocious child with whom murder is a jest. "God has willed it so !" mutters the pious glutton; "let us be resigned !" These are the judgments of man upon the carnival of massacre. As yet we know nothing more, for history has not written the opinions of the massacred. Migrations are exchanges for every country (except the poles, at the epoch of winter). The particular condition of climate or food, which decides the departure of one species of birds, is precisely that which determines the arrival of another species. When the swallow quits us at the autumn rains, we note the amval of the army of plovers and peewits in quest of the lobworms driven from their lurking- places by the floods. In October, and as the cold increases, the gi-een- finches, the yellow-hammers, the wrens, replace the song-birds which have deserted us. The snipes and partridges descend from their moun- tains at the moment when the quail and the thrush emigrate towards the south. It is then, too, that the leg-ions of the aquatic species quit the extreme north for those temperate climes where the seas, the lakes, and the pools, do not freeze. The wild geese, the swans, the divers, the ducks, the teal, cleave the air in battle array, and swoop do"\vn upon the lakes of Scotland and Hungary, and our marshes of the south. The delicate stork flies southward, when his cousin, the. crane, sets out from the north, where his supplies begin to fail him. Passing over our lands, he pays us tribute by delivering us from the. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability
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Keywords: ., bookauthormich, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, booksubjectbirds
