During the day, also, how easy it is for you to admire the Creator everywhere!  See how the domestic cock calls you to work with his shrill cry, and how, forerunner of the sun, and early as the traveller, he sends forth labourers to the harvest!  What vigilance in geese!  With what sagacity they divine secret dangers!  Did they not once upon a time save the imperial city?  When enemies were advancing by subterranean passages to possess themselves of the capitol of Rome, did not geese announce the danger? cf. Livy v. 47 and Plutarch, Camillus, or Verg. viii. 655.  The alternative tradition of the mine is preserved by Servius.  Is there any kind of bird whose nature offers nothing for our admiration?  Who announces to the vultures that there will be carnage when men march in battle array against one another?  You may see flocks of vultures following armies and calculating the result of warlike preparations; cf. Ælian, H.A. ii. 46.  καὶ μέντοι καὶ ταῖς ἐκδήμοις στρατιαῖς ἕπονται γῦπες καὶ μάλα γε μαντικῶς ὅτι εἰς πόλεμον χωροῦσιν εἰδότες καὶ ὅτι μάχη πᾶσα ἐργάζεται νεκροὺς καὶ τοῦτο ἐγνωκότες. cf. Pliny x. 88:  “vultures sagacius odorantur.” a calculation very nearly approaching to human reasoning.  How can I describe to you the fearful invasions of locusts, which rise everywhere at a given signal, and pitch their camps all over a country?  They do not attack crops until they have received the divine command.  Or shall I describe how the remedy for this curse, the thrush, follows them with its insatiable appetite, and the devouring nature that the loving God has given it in His kindness for men? cf. Galen. vi. 3.  How does the grasshopper modulate its song? Fialon, quoting the well known ode of Anakreon, “μακαρίζομέν σε τέττιξ,” and Plato’s theory of the affection of grasshoppers and the muses in the Phædrus, contrasts the “cantu querulæ rumpent arbusta cicadæ” of Vergil (George. iii. 328) and points out that the Romans did not share the Greek admiration for the grasshopper’s song.  Why is it more melodious at midday owing to the air that it breathes in dilating its chest?