Few phenomena have attracted more attention than the migration of birds. That some of our delicate songsters, with no great power of wing, should cross the seas periodically, returning, as they undoubt edly do, to those spots which they have before haunted, and which are associated in their memories with the pleasing cares of former years, excites our admiration, if not our astonishmeut. As regularly as the seasons, of which many of them are the harbingers, do these littlo travellers visit us, and as regularly do they take their departure. The immediate cause of migration is no doubt to be found in temperature and food, particularly that which is adapted for the sustenance of the young; and the instinct of the bird accordingly leads it from one climate to another.
Systematic Arrangement and Natural llistory.
Birds appear to have been objects of interest from the earliest periods. In comparatively later times we find them mingling in the superstitions of Greece and Rome ; and it is evident that their history and habits were familiar not only to the husbandman and the augur, but to the great mass of the people. Without such a familiarity on the part of the Athenians, Aristophanes would hardly have ventured on introducing his audience to NespeAcucouutryta (see his play entitled '"Opytees,' ' The Birds ' ) ; nor would other poets, Grecian and Roman, so often have referred to these animals as well-known harbingers of certain times and seasons. But it remained for Aristotle, and after him Pliny, to take up the subject philosophically. The former, in his ' History of Animals,' has distinguished the species, and recorded the habits of birds with the accuracy and power which distinguished that great observer ; the latter, in the tenth book of his Natural History' has displayed much learning but not a great deal of originality.
In modern literature the first writer of note on this subject is Pierre Belon, who in 1555 arranged these animals according to their habits and their haunts. In his system the rapacious birds form the first division, the waders the second, the swimmers the third, and the birds which nestle in trees or on the ground, the fourth. He was an able zoologist and accurate observer, and has pointed out the comparative anatomy of birds with reference to that of man especially.
The third part of Conrad Gesner's History of Animals,' published in 1555, consists of his treatise on birds, where he has with some labour collected their various national names, and referred to the writers who had noticed the subject.
In 1599 Aldrovandus of Bologna published his Ornithology.' Pur
suing the plan of Belon, he arranged the birds according to their haunts and their food, adding many new descriptichis.
These three works are all illustrated with woodcuts.
In 1657 Johnston published his Natural History,' a kind of Reper torium Zoologicum,' wherein all that had been done before his time was condensed, and where every monstrous zoological fable was per petuated, even in the copper-plates, which ministered to the appetites of those who loved to see what mermen and mermaids were like, and delighted in the sight of "hydras and chimeras dire." We now approach a period wherein the reign of System commenced ; and we owe one of the first natural arrangements, if not the first, to Francis Willughby, an English gentleman, whose 'System of Orni thology' was edited by our celebrated countryman Ray in 1678, after the author's death. It is a work of very great merit. The general divisions are two, Land-Birds,' and Water-Birds? The land-birds are further divided into those which have a crooked beak and crooked talons, and those which have those parts nearly straight.
The water-birds are arranged in three sections. The first consists of waders, and those which haunt watery places ; the second of those that are of a " middle nature, between swimmers and waders, or rather that partake of both kinds, some whereof are cloven-footed and yet swim ; others whole-footed, but yet very long-legged, like the waders ;" the third is formed by the palmated birds, or swimmers.
The same friendly office that was performed for Willughby by Ray, Dr. Derham executed for the latter, whose Synopsis Methodiea Avium,' a posthumous work, but entirely completed by the author before his death, was published by the Doctor in 1713. In this Synop sis Ray carried out and further improved Willughby's system. Upon the works of these English naturalists rested in great measure tho zoological system of Linnaius.
The first sketch of the Swedish naturalist's Systema Nature' appeared in folio, at Leyden, in 1735. It consisted of twelve pages, and was, as Linnwus himself says, "Conspectus tantmn operis et quasi mappa geographica." Eight subsequent editions, iu various forms, with gradually increasing information, were published in various places, and in 1753 the ninth edition (." lunge auetius factum a me ipso," says the author) was sent forth In 8vo. In this edition the birds are arranged under the same orders' as they are in the twelfth and last edition, which appeared in 1766. The thirteenth edition was not the author's, but Omelin's.