The Incubation of a Golden Finch

There is nothing in the aspect or internal composition of an egg which could lead even the most daring imagination to conjecture that it was hereafter to turn out from its shell a perfect living bird. To suppose the female bird, to act in this process from a sagacity and reason of her own, is to suppose her to arrive at conclusions there are no premises to justify. And yet he who made the egg not only ordained that such should be the result of the simple process of incubation, but as though to confound skepticism by giving as it were the last touch to his inscrutable work,. provided the young bird with the means of escaping from incarceration by attaching to the end of its beak