entire rat, an operation, however, not accomplished without some difficulty, the bird making several efforts before it succeeded, and even then the tail remained visible for several minutes. But the voracity of Gulls is exceeded by some other fish-eating birds. Thus the Pelican, it is said, will at one repast, if hungry, devour as many fish as would suffice for half-a-dozen people; and, like the Gulls above mentioned, will in confinement snap up rats and other small quadrupeds. The Gannet, another fishing bird, has been known to swallow an entire cod of moderate size, and a Puffin kept in a menagerie to eat as much fish as its whole body weighed. Well might the eyewitness to such an extraordinary exhibition of gluttony declare, that "he never saw so unsatiable a devourer;" and what was still more surprising, "that the body did not appear to swell the bigger.” * Of the destructive character of Herons with regard to fish some idea may be formed, from no less than five eels having been found in the stomach of one which was shot. Voracity is not, however, entirely confined to the fishing tribe, for some that live upon fruits can dispose of an equally surprising quantity. For instance, the Cedar-bird of America will devour every fruit or berry that comes in its way; and will gorge itself to such excess, as sometimes to be unable to fly, and may be taken by the hand. Some, indeed, although wounded and confined in a cage, have eaten apples until suffocation deprived them of life in the course of a few days; and when opened they were found to be crammed to the very mouth.

Very frequently in woods, or solitary places, round balls, or lumps of semidigested substances, composed of small bones, claws, feathers, hair, &c., may be found on gateposts or rails. These are the discarded remnants of food thrown from the gullets of Hawks, Owls, &c., which, if allowed to pass into the stomach, might remain so long in an undissolved state as to prove injurious to the living bird. To defend the tender lining of this inner passage, the sides and under-surface of the tongue, and the upper part of the gullet, are furnished with * EVELYN'S Memoirs.

numerous glands, supplying a slimy moisture which softens the gullet and smooths the way for the admission of the hard substances which are occasionally introduced.

In the upper and back part of the palate of the Ostrich, there are two remarkable reservoirs from which a very tenacious mucus may be expressed of infinite importance to the bird: for it is so little choice in its food, that in the stomach of one belonging to the King, which died at Windsor, and was forwarded to the Zoological Society for dissection, some pieces of wood of considerable size, several large nails, and a hen's egg, entire and uninjured, were discovered; and in another, in addition to some long cabbage-stalks, were masses of bricks of the size of a man's fist.

This large space and capacity of the gullet is clearly intended to counterbalance the disadvantages of uncertain subsistence. Thus, Herons and Cormorants will devour as much fish at once as will last them for a long time.

There is another peculiarity, too, in the gullet of fish-feeding birds, that it is usually wider near the mouth, thus enabling them to gulp down their slippery food in an instant, without giving them an opportunity of escaping. In all these birds the width and space of the gullet does away with the use of the crop, which is accordingly, in this class of birds, exceedingly small, or altogether wanting.

The crop is furnished with a number of vessels secreting an oily fluid, something similar to the liquid in the gullet just mentioned. In such birds as feed their young from the crop, these vessels are observed to swell considerably at that particular time, in order to provide a great increase of this unctuous liquid. Those who have kept Turtledoves or Pigeons, must be familiar with the manner by which the young birds receive their food, almost thrusting their heads down the very throats of the old ones, to reach the nourishment provided in the enormous crops of their parents, where this liquid is provided in great quantity when the nestlings are young; but decreases in abundance as they grow older, and require less nourishing food.

This portion of the digestive organs is the most capacious in what is called the gallinaceous or poultry tribe, which feed chiefly on grain, requiring much softening; and there, accordingly, we find the food retained, till it is sufficiently softened to pass onwards to the stomach. And in this tribe it almost forms a distinct bag, as may be easily seen on examining a fowl,—the gullet opening into it at the upper part, and quitting it about the middle. Its texture is very fine and thin; so much so that the craw of a full-sized Turkey will contain nearly a quart, and when scraped and varnished, is sufficiently light to form small air-balloons, for which purpose they are now prepared and sold in London.

We next come to the part called the second stomach, which, like the rest of the digestive organs, varies very much in size and internal arrangement. In some birds it is extremely small; in certain cases, as in the Kingfisher, it is actually wanting; whereas in the Ostrich it considerably exceeds even the real stomach, being capable of holding several pints of water. It is in this cavity that the grand business or process of digestion is carried on, it being abundantly supplied with a number of glands or vessels secreting that very curious liquid, called the gastric juice, which acts most powerfully on every variety of food. They are called the solvent glands on this account; and as birds generally require a more rapid digestion, they are larger, and more distinct from the other organs of digestion, than in other animals.

There may also be another reason why this liquid may be more essentially necessary for birds, which seem to require greater warmth than other animals, since it is found that their blood circulates more rapidly, and is warmer than the blood of the human body. For instance, the heat of the human body will raise the mercury in the thermometer to about 95 or 96 degrees, the true blood-heat being 98; but if the same thermometer is placed under the wing of a Parrot, or a Canary, it will raise it to 100 or 101; of a Fowl, to 103; of a Sparrow or Robin, sometimes to 110 or III; and no doubt, if tried on certain other birds, requiring additional warmth, it would be

found to rise still higher. Now the gastric juice, from some very ingenious experiments,* is supposed to contain a much stronger principle of life and warmth than other liquids; thus when water, salt and water, and gastric juice were exposed to great cold, the gastric juice was the last to freeze, and the first to thaw. The greater portion of this juice, therefore, found in birds, may be an additional means by which the wisdom of God furnishes them with more warmth, and enables many of them to resist very strong degrees of cold. In proof of their endurance of cold, at the bird-market of St. Petersburg, in Russia, during the intensity of those dreadfully cold winters, several thousand cages, containing birds of every description, are hung on the outside of about eighty shops; in a part of each cage, a small quantity of snow is placed, which is said to be necessary to keep them alive. That birds, originally from warm climates, suffer from the colder regions of the North, is to a great degree, true; but by far the greatest number of birds, found dead in our severe winter, perish not from the inclemency of the weather, but the deficiency of food; for instance, our little Wren is just as active and cheerful in the severest frost as the warmest summer's day, his supply of food, consisting of small insects concealed under the bark of trees, never failing him.

As a proof that small birds are not affected so much by temperature as want of food, Captain King † observed the Lesser Redpoll existing without apparent inconvenience in a climate, and at a season, when the thermometer was not unfrequently at seven degrees below zero; and in the inclement atmosphere of Cape Horn, on the desolate shores of Tierra del Fuego, Humming-birds were constantly seen hovering over the blossom of a species of fuchsia, when the jungle composed of this shrub was partially covered with snow.

There is another singularity in this mysterious liquid, namely, the different force with which it acts on the various substances used for food by different birds. Thus the gastric

juice in the stomach of those birds which live on flesh acts very sparingly on vegetable substances. On examining the castings or pellets of some Eagles, which had been occasionally fed with dead Pigeons, it was found that the vegetable food, peas, wheat, and barley, which had been swallowed by these birds of prey, enclosed within the crops of the Pigeons, remained entire, being only somewhat enlarged by heat and moisture; though the fleshy substances, even to the very bones, were entirely consumed.*

Again, it has been observed, that this juice will not act upon the grain swallowed by poultry and other granivorous birds while it remains whole and entire.

This fact has been further proved by actual experiment. Some gastric juice was poured into a cup containing some whole seeds, but it produced no effect upon them till they were crushed. Hence it has been found, that if oats and barley given to horses are previously killed by heating, and crushed, the animal only requires half the quantity, and yet thrives equally well.

In considering the real stomach or gizzard, by which name it will be more familiarly known, we shall find additional cause for admiration in the mode by which Providence, with reference to the food introduced, so nicely balances the grinding powers of the gizzard with the dissolving or melting powers of the gastric juice. This third or real stomach differs, like the gullet, crop, and second stomach, very materially in different birds; but generally speaking, the action of the gizzard may be compared to that of a coffee-mill, grinding down the various substances introduced into a pulpy matter. In those which feed on flesh and insects, substances of no very hard texture, this stomach appears as a thin membranous bag in comparison with the thick muscular globes or gizzards of the grain-devouring class; and the reason is evident; for the animal matter on which they feed requires no actual grinding to reduce it, the action of the gastric juice being sufficient for the purpose of dissolving it; whereas, without the powerful * Zoological Journal, vol. x. p. 186.