How beautifully has an English naturalist remarked: "When we think for a moment that the swallows, martins, and swifts, that sport in our summer skies, and become inhabitants of our houses, will presently be dwelling in the heart of regions which we long in vain to know, and whither we travellers toil in vain to penetrate; that they will anon affix their nests to the Chinese pagoda, the Indian temple, or beneath the Equator, to the palm-thatched eaves of the African hut, that the small birds which populate our hedges and fields, will quickly spread themselves with the cuckoo over the warm regions beyond the pillars of Hercules, and the wilds of the Levant, of Greece and Syria; that the nightingale will be serenading in the chestnut groves of Italy and the rose-gardens of Persia; that the thrush and the field-fare, that share our winter, will pour out triumphant music in their native wastes, in the sudden summers of Scandinavia, the desolate rocks in the lonely ocean, the craggy and misty isles of the Orkneys and Shetlands; the wild swan rewinging its way through the lofty regions of the cloud to Iceland, and other arctic lands,—we feel how much poetry is connected with these wanderers of the earth."
We are led still more to feel His infinite wisdom and goodness, who maketh them to know their appointed time:—
Who marketh their course through the tropics bright,
Who nerveth their wing for its weary flight,
