roosted on the terraced roofs of Cairo, or among the sacred walls of
Phylæ; the condor, have built in the ruined palaces of the Incas of
Peru; the flamingo or the ibis have waded through the lakes and marshes
which surround the desolation of Babylon; the eagle of America have
ranged, perhaps daily, over those narrow straits which separate two
worlds and bid defiance to all navigation! The emu has long since
tracked the vast interior of that fifth continent whose inland rivers,
tribes of mankind, quadrupeds, and mineral and vegetable productions,
remain still, to us, sealed mysteries. The crowned crane has drawn its
food from the waters of that vast lake of Tschad, in the search for
which so many Europeans have perished; the little stormy petrel, borne
on the surge, or wafted by the gale, has travelled to every shore that
has been visited by the tempests in which it loves to rove; and the
wandering stork, like the restless swallow, has nestled, indifferently,
among the chimneys of Amsterdam, the campaniles of Rome or of Pisa, and
on the housetops of Timbuctoo. In looking round upon these various birds
and quadrupeds of all the regions of our globe--in considering the
distant countries of their birth--their strangeness to us in feature or
in form--the endless varieties of their instincts, their habits, their
affections, their antipathies, their appetites--the several important
offices they are destined to perform in what may be called the physical
economy of the world,--in observing the powers of offence in some, of
defence in others, and the astonishing means which have been supplied to
certain classes of them destitute both of one and the other, of
procuring their subsistence with equal facility,--it is surely
impossible not to ascend to the contemplation of that all-wise and
benevolent Power which has called all these creations into being, and
thus informed and thus endowed them!"

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