ferent birds. What appears certain of the present species is, that it is often taught to fight by the natives of Bengal; one being held up opposite to another, on the hand of a man, to whose finger the bird is fastened by a string, sufficiently long to enable it to fly and peck at its adversary. It is said to be of a remarkably docile disposition, and is sometimes carried by the young Indians, in order to execute little commissions of gallantry; and at a signal given by the lover, will seize and carry off, with much dexterity, the small gold ornament usually worn on the head of a young Indian lady, and convey it to his master. It will, also, with admirable celerity, follow the descent of a ring purposely thrown down a deep well, catching it in its fall, and returning it to its owner. The Persian poets represent the bulbul as enamoured of the rose, and grieved, or angry, at seeing it rudely cropped. Whatever may be said by poets, and unscientific observers, Mr. Pennant has not scrupled to declare his opinion, that the natural note of this bird is harsh and unmelodious. If this be the case, the music of the bulbul may be considered as nearly allied to the celebrated song of the swan, so often recorded in the flights of poetic fiction.

[Shaw.

SECTION III.

Humming-bird.

Trochilus.-LINN.

IN forming this minute animal, nature appears to have been hesitating whether she would fabricate a bird or an insect. They are the least of the feathered tribe; they feed, like insects, on the nectar of flowers, particularly those with long tubes, which they extract, like bees, while on the wing, fluttering about the place, and making a humming noise: the legs and bill are very weak; the tail feathers are ten.

Of all animated beings, the humming-bird is perhaps the most elegant in form, and brilliant in its colours. Activity, rapidity, and richness of drapery, sometimes sparingly bestowed by nature on the other tenants of the air, she has heaped upon the hummingbird without measure. The emerald, ruby, and topaz, sparkle on its apparel, which is never soiled by the dust, for in its aerial life it scarcely ever descends so low as to touch the grass. It flies

from flower to flower, extracting their quintessence alone; and never quits a climate where perpetual spring renews without ceasing the delicious luxuries on which it banquets. It is seldom that the humming-bird retires from the intratropical regions; appearing successively to advance and recede with the sun on either side of the line, in pursuit of an uninterrupted summer.

The Indians, struck with the lustre and fire of its plumage, call it the sun-beam; and the Spaniards tomino, from its minute weight. The tongue resembles the section of a silken thread, and the bill has the appearance of a fine needle. The little eyes appear like sparks of a diamond, and the feathers of the wings are so delicate, as to look transparent.

The feet of this creature are so small, that they are scarcely perceptible. He uses them, indeed, but little; for he is continually employed in a humming and rapid flutter, in which the agitation of his wings are so quick, that they are altogether invisible. Like an inconstant lover, he hastens from flower to flower, to gratify his desires and multiply his enjoyments.

The courage and vivacity of these birds are nevertheless surprising. They pursue, with a furious audacity, birds twenty times their size; fasten themselves upon their body, and allow themselves to be carried away by their flight; while they are, in the meanwhile, pecking them with redoubled strokes of their bill, till their little wrath is appeased. They are solitary till the pairing season, when they engage busily, by pairs, in constructing with moss, lined with the down of the great mullein, a small, round, elegant nest, corresponding with the delicacy of their body. It is the female that completes this cradle for her progeny, while the male charges himself with the task of bringing the materials, which are ingeniously knit into the consistency of a thick and soft piece of cloth. The whole fabric is attached to two leaves, or a single twig, of the citron or orange-tree. It is soon furnished with two small white eggs, of the size of a pea, which the male and female hatch by turns, for twelve days. After this period, the young make their appearance; but it is impossible to say with what nourishment their mother supplies them, unless it be with the moisture which they suck from her tongue, while yet humid with the juice of flowers.

There is no possibility of taming birds so tender. No food could be had by human industry, sufficiently delicate to supply

the place of the nectar which they gather in their wild state. Some have been kept alive for a few weeks, by syrups; but this nourishment, fine as it may seem, must be gross, when compared with what is commonly gathered by these little flutterers among the flowers. Buffon thinks that honey would have proved a better substitute for their ordinary food.

These little birds are neither shy nor suspicious. They allow themselves to be approached within five or six steps, and thus fall an easy prey to the Indians, who catch them by the artifice of a twig covered with lime, and held out near the flower about which they are fluttering. When taken they instantly expire; and after their death are worn as ear-rings by the young Indian ladies. The Peruvians had at one time the art of composing paintings of their feathers, of very great elegance and lustre.

The smallest species of the whole genus is called emphatically trochilus minimus, or least humming-bird. This is smaller than several of our bees; being scarcely a quarter of an inch in length. Some of them do not weigh more than twenty grains; and none of them more than about forty-five.

[Pantologia.

SECTION IV.

Parrot.

Psittacus. LINN.

THIS is a numerous kind, and includes the common parrot, cockatoos, lories, paroquets, and maccaws.

Of all foreign birds, this genus is the best known in Europe: from its docility, and the beauty of its plumage, it has been imported in great numbers, and in those countries where it is indigenous, it is the most numerous of all the feathered tribes. The parrot is an intratropical bird, and is found from twenty-four to twenty-five degrees on either side of the equator. Although it lives in the temperate climates of Europe, yet it does not frequently breed there; and its spirits and longevity are diminished in a temperature so little suited to the warmth of its constitution. Parrots are so various in size, and in the shades and distributions of their colours, that it is utterly impossible for language to follow these countless gradations; and the task, though it could be accomplished, would neither prove instructive nor entertaining.

It is remarkable, that of the different species of parrots that are known and described, there is not one common to the New and the Old World. Something like this is observable also in the case of quadrupeds; none of those belonging to the tropical regions in the one continent being discoverable in the same latitudes of the other. No animal that is incapable of bearing the rigours of cold is found to pass from the Old to the New World, because it is only in the regions of the north that these are ascertained to approximate. Notwithstanding its attribute of flight, the parrot is incapable of traversing that vast space which lies between Africa and the East Indies; and all the different tribes of this large class remain confined to their primitive stations on each hemisphere. So short and heavy indeed are their flights, that they can hardly cross an arm of the sea seven or eight leagues broad; hence, almost every island in the West Indies is distinguished by a race of parrots peculiar to itself.

Man has always most admired those animals that seemed to participate most largely of his own nature. The monkey, by its resemblance to his external form, and the parrot by imitating his voice, have excited his wonder, and been deemed a peculiar and privileged race, destined to fill up the intermediate space between him and the brute creation. Savages, who are in general so insensible to the grand spectacle of nature, have viewed these animals with astonishment and delight. They stop their canoes for hours together, to behold the gesticulations of the monkey; and they take such pleasure in taming and educating parrots, that they are said by Buffon to possess the secret of enriching and varying the hue of their plumage; an art to which the more civilized nations of Europe are still strangers.

The Greeks at first knew only one species of parrot, which was imported from the East by one of the captains of Alexander's fleet. Aristotle, the father of naturalists, speaks of it, as a rare bird, of which he had only heard by report. The beauty of parrots, and their faculty of speech, soon made them objects of high request among the luxurious Romans, whom the virtuous Cato justly reproaches for this puerile attachment. In his time, they kept them in cages of silver and of ivory, and bought them at a price as high as that of a slave. Till the time of Nero, however, they knew no other species than the Indian; when those who ministered to the pleasure of that extravagant and luxurious emperor, found them in an island far up the river Nile, called Gaganda.

The Portuguese, who first doubled the Cape of Good Hope, found all the coast of Africa, and the islands of the Indian ocean, peopled with various tribes of parrots totally unknown in Europe, and in such vast numbers, that it was with difficulty they could be prevented from devouring the rice and maize. These, however, were far inferior to the numbers and variety that presented themselves to the first adventurers in the New World: some of the islands there were called the Parrot Isles, from the prodigious quan• tity of these birds which flocked upon them. They constituted the first article of commerce between the inhabitants of the Old and New Continents. In these regions every forest swarms with them; and the rook is not better known in Europe than the parrot in the East and West Indies.

The genus of parrots, which comprehends such infinite varieties, may easily be discriminated from every other tribe by the formation of the bill. The upper mandible, as well as the lower, in the whole race is moveable. It is not connected, and in one piece with the skull, as in most other birds, but is joined to the head by a strong membrane on each side, that lifts and depresses it at pleasure. By this contrivance, the bird can open its bill wider than it could otherwise do, and thus receive large nuts and fruits, which it can break with great facility.

The toes of parrots display also a peculiar conformation: when walking, two are placed before, and one behind; but when employed to carry food to the bill, one of the back toes is occasionally brought forward. Both the beak and claws of the parrot are used in climbing, an exercise in which the animal appears singularly awkward: the tongue somewhat resembles that of a man; and it is from this circumstance, that some alledge it is so well qualified to imitate the human speech. The formation of the throat, however, and the cavity of the beak, all contribute to its articulation, and to confer on it this distinguished privilege.

Parrots in their wild state feed on almost every kind of fruit and grain. Their flesh, it is said, always contracts the peculiar taste and flavour of the food they eat. At the season when the guava is ripe they are fat and tender, and some of the small tribes of the paroquet are then sought after by the savages as delicate food. If they feed upon the seeds of the acajou, their flesh acquires the flavour of garlic; when fed upon the seeds of the spicy trees, their flesh tastes of cloves and cinnamon. The seed of the cotton tree intoxicates them,