The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1873-09-13
The Intellectual Powers Of Birds.

On the whole, however, it may be Safely
said that birds seem to have much more
capacity for perceiving beauty, much more
gift for social enjoyment, finer knowl-
edge of distance and direction, and more
power of vocal imitation, than any other
order of animals of which we know any
thing. On the other hand, they have less
sense of power and sympathy than the dog,
and therefore much less sense of RESPONSE
bility to their superiors, whom they often
love, but seldom serve. Perhaps we might
generalize these mental qualification by
saying that birds are chiefly educated by
perceptions, wonderfully accurate indeed,
but still of things at distance, of things
at an almost telescope range; that their
rapidity of flight makes them creatures of
wide experience, but not Of full experience
of any species but their own; and that, as
a result, they cannot know men well
enough to learn as much from men as dogs
and cats and elephants and even other
orders of creatures learn. Birds, in short,
get birds eye views of the earth, and bird S
eye views, however instructive to those
who have previously mastered the details
carefully, do not exactly furnish a good
basis for progressive knowledge. They
obviously get a knowledge Of geography,
and in some sense of the air and it's cur
rents, such rs no other creatures can have.
They have an ear for music and an eye for
bar Of nd tho III
of movement-for there are bird-da noes,
which Taglioni would have despairecl of
imitatins-such as no other member of the
animal world possesses; and the perception
of beauty, we know, depends on nothing
so much as the coup d'aeil, and this birds
can always command. But they lose, by
their great privilege of wings, that slow
and sure experience of the ways of man
which some less gifted animals acquire. A
swift bird which flies at the rate of 27O
miles an hour, according to Mr.. Leith
Adams, clearly cannot have brain to
utilize an experience acquired at that rate
in any but very perfunctory way. There
fore, Though birds have so strange per-
eeption of beauty, which hardly needs close
analysis, they are too fast, too migratory
in their habits to learn anything which
needs perfect fidelity and vigilance con-
fined to very narrow circle of facts
They are the musicians, and we might
almost say the sensuous poets of the ami
NAL world; but musicians and sensuous
poets do not conclude to progressive knowl-
edge and ethical culture. Birds range too
man, and so it happens that their intelec-
tual powers, remarkable and unique as
they are in the animal world, never become
so human and so almost spiritual as those
of creatures which can only boast of very
inferior powers.-Spectator.
PORCELAIN differs from glass
in the great preponderance of silicate of
alumina in its composition. 1t consists
mainly of clay, which is infusible, and
some alkaline silcate, which fuses and
binds the clay together, rendering it i'm
pervious to moisture. The fiusness of the
ware entirely depends on the purity of the
clays, &C., from which it is made. The
glaze which covers porcelain is produced
by dipping the "biscuit ware into water
in which is suspended finely ground felspar;
the porous mass absorbs the moisture, leav-
ing the surface covered uniformly with the
felspar. 1t is then exposed in se9gars to a
very high temperature, by which the fell
spar is melted and the glaze produced
Stone ware and common pottery ware"
are glazed by means of common salt. The
ware is dipped in md and water, placed
in the furnace, into which has been thrown
moist salt. The heat quickly converts the
salt into vapor. In the presence of the
steam the silica on the ware decomposes
the salt, forming siicate of sodium which
glazes the article, and hydrochloric acid
which escapes