Among the mammalians the instinct appears
almost universal; but their displays are, as a rule, less admirable than
those seen in birds. There are some kinds, it is true, like the
squirrels and monkeys, of arboreal habits, almost birdlike in their
restless energy, and in the swiftness and certitude of their motions, in
which the slightest impulse can be instantly expressed in graceful or
fantastic action; others, like the Chinchillidae family, have greatly
developed vocal organs, and resemble birds in loquacity; but mammals
generally, compared with birds, are slow and heavy, and not so readily
moved to exhibitions of the kind I am discussing.
The terrestrial dances, often very elaborate, of heavy birds, like those
of the gallinaceous kind, are represented in the more volatile species
by performances in the air, and these are very much more beautiful;
while a very large number of birds--hawks, vultures, swifts, swallows,
nightjars, storks, ibises, spoonbills, and gulls--circle about in the
air, singly or in flocks. Sometimes, in serene weather, they rise to a
vast altitude, and float about in one spot for an hour or longer at a
stretch, showing a faint bird-cloud in the blue, that does not change
its form, nor grow lighter and denser like a flock of starlings; but in
the seeming confusion there is perfect order, and amidst many hundreds
each swift- or slow-gliding figure keeps its proper distance with such
exactitude that no two ever touch, even with the extremity of the
long-wings, flapping or motionless:--such a multitude, and such
miraculous precision in the endless curving motions of all the members
of it, that the spectator can lie for an hour on his back without
weariness watching this mystic cloud-dance in the empyrean.
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