British Zoology, Volume 2

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W. Eyres, 1776 - Zoology - 278 pages

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Page 483 - Goose-Herd, attends the flock, and twice a day drives the whole to water ; then brings them back to their habitations, helping those that live in the upper stories to their nests, without ever misplacing a single bird.
Page 570 - Thofe who live in the country, on the other hand, do not hear birds fing in their woods for above two months in the year, when the confufion of notes prevents their attending to the fong of any particular bird ; nor does he continue long enough in a' place, for the hearer to recolleft his notes with, accuracy.
Page 554 - The ascendancy by this call, or invitation, is so great, that the wild bird is stopped in its course of flight, and if not already acquainted with the nets, lights boldly within twenty yards of perhaps three or four bird-catchers, on a spot which...
Page 566 - ... that it is well known, before the bird is heard, what notes you are to expect from him...
Page 586 - ... alfo account for the inferiority in point of plumage. I TRIED once an experiment, which might indeed have poffibly made fome alteration in the tone of a bird, from what it might have been when the animal was at its full growth, by procuring an operator who caponifed a. young blackbird of about fix weeks old ; as it died, however, foon afterwards, * The plough, indeed, may turn up fome few feeds, which may ftill be in an eatable ftate.
Page 562 - Barrington defines a bird's song to be a succession of three or more different notes, which are continued without interruption during the same interval with a musical bar of four crotchets in an adagio movement, or whilst a pendulum swings four seconds.
Page 568 - I ihall now make fome general obfervations on their finging; though perhaps the fubjeft may appear to many a very minute one. Every poet, indeed, fpeaks with raptures of the harmony of the groves ; yet thofe even, who have good mufical ears, feem to pay little attention to it but as a pleating noife.
Page 463 - Kilda, says-—-"No bird is of such use to the islanders as this: the Fulmar supplies them with oil for their lamps, down for their beds, a delicacy for their tables, a balm for their wounds, and a medicine for their distempers.
Page 561 - What the nestling is not thus thoroughly master of, he hurries over, lowering his tone, as if he did not wish to be heard, and could not yet satisfy himself.
Page 568 - I have,, however, fince tried the following experiment, which convinces me, fo much depends upon circumftances, and perhaps caprice in the fcholar, that no general inference, or rule, can be laid down with regard to either of thefe fuppofitions. I educated a neftling robin under...

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