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Wonderful Birds

IRDS, says Figuier, are landscape with the most lovely motion the favorites of creation. and beautiful association; they come and Their plumage often as- go with the change of the seasons, and sumes the most resplen- give an added beauty to the surrounding dent colors. They have scene. the happy privilege of With what grateful sensations do we moving in space-now hail these faithful messengers of spring fluttering through the and summer after the lapse of the dreary air, hunting the insect winter, which compelled them to forsake which flits from flower to flower, us for more favored climes! Their songs or soaring high aloft, to swoop now heard from the leafy groves and upon the victim marked for their shadowy forests, inspire delight or recolprey; again cleaving the atmo- lections of the pleasing past in every sphere, and performing journeys breast. How musical and happy are these of vast extent with great rapidity. Man- roving sylphs of nature, to whom the kind cannot fail to admire these winged earth, the air and the waters are almost beings, which charm at once by the ele- alike habitable! Their lives are spent in gance of their form, the melody of their boundless action, and Nature, with an song, and the graceful impetuosity of omniscient benevolence, has assisted and their movements. formed them for this wonderful display almost their own. 66 HE school-boy, wandering through the wood To pull the primrose gay, Starts, the new voice of spring to hear, And imitates the lay.

Of all the animals by which we are of perpetual life and vigor in an element surrounded in the ample field of Nature, there are none more remarkable in their appearance and habits than the feathered inhabitants of the air. They play around us like fairy spirits; elude approach in an element which defies pursuit; soar out of sight in the yielding sky; journey over our heads in marshalled ranks; dart like meteors in the sunshine of summer; or, seeking the solitary recesses of the forest or the waters, they glide before us like beings of fancy. They diversify the still "Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green, Thy sky is ever clear; Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year! "O, could I fly, I'd fly with thee!

We'd make, with joyful wing, Our annual visit o'er the globe, Companions of the spring."

It is impossible to conceive any covering | tends to press them more closely to the more beautifully adapted to the peculiar body, and the warm air, confined among the wants of these creatures than that with inner downy fibres, is thus effectually pre-