Chapter VIII: Part 8

The useful friendship of the horse originated in the same cause. You may trace it in the indescribable and convulsive horror which every young horse experiences at the mere odour of the lion. He attaches, he surrenders himself to man.

Had he not possessed the horse, the ox, and the camel--had he been compelled to bear on his back and shoulders the heavy burdens of which they relieve him--man would have remained the miserable slave of his feeble organization. Borne down by the habitual disproportion of weight and strength, either he would have abandoned labour, have lived upon chance victims, without art or progress; or, rather, he would have lived earth's everlasting porter--crooked, dragging, and drawing, with sunken head, never gazing on the sky, never thinking, never raising himself to the heights of invention.

Page 132. _On the power of insects._--It is not only in the Tropical world that they are formidable; at the commencement of the last century half Holland perished because the piles which strengthen its dykes simultaneously gave way, invisibly undermined by a worm named the _taret_.

This redoubtable nibbler, which is often a foot in length, never betrays itself; it only works within. One morning the beam breaks, the framework yields, the ship engulfed founders in the waves.

How shall we reach, how discover it? A bird knows it--the lapwing, the guardian of Holland. And it is thus a notable imprudence to destroy, as has been done, his eggs. (Quatrefages, _Souvenirs d'un Naturaliste_.)

France, for more than a century, has suffered from the importation of a monster not less terrible--the _termite_, which devours dry wood just as the taret consumes wet wood. The single female of each swarm has the horrible fecundity of laying daily eighty thousand eggs. La Rochelle begins to fear the fate of that American city which is suspended in the air, the termites having devoured all its foundations, and excavated immense catacombs beneath.

In Guiana the dwellings of the termites are enormous hillocks, fifteen feet in height, which men only venture to attack from a distance, and by means of gunpowder. You may judge, therefore, the importance of the ant-eater, which dares to enter this gulf, and seek out the horrible female whence issues so accursed a torrent. (Smeathmann, _Mémoire sur les Termites_.)

Does climate save us? The termites prosper in France. Here, too, the cockchafer flourishes; and even on the northern slopes of the Alps, under the very breath of the glaciers, it devours vegetation. In the presence of such an enemy every insectivorous bird should be respected; at least, the canton of Vaud has recently placed the swallow under the protection of the law. (See the work of Tschudi.)

Page 134. _You frequently detect there a strong odour of musk._--The plain of Cumana, says Humboldt, presents, after heavy rains, an extraordinary phenomenon. The earth, moistened and reheated by the sun's rays, gives forth that odour of musk which, under the torrid zone, is common to animals of very different classes--to the jaguar, the small species of the tiger-cat, the cabiai, the galinazo vulture, the crocodile, the viper, the rattlesnake. The gaseous emanations which are the vehicles of this aroma appear only to disengage themselves in proportion as the soil enclosing the _débris_ of an innumerable quantity of reptiles, worms, and insects, becomes impregnated with water. Everywhere that one stirs up the soil, one is struck by the mass of organic substances which alternately develop, transform, or decompose. Nature in these climates appears more active, more prolific, one might say more lavish of life.

Pages 136, 137. _Humming-birds and colibris._--The eminent naturalists (Lesson, Azara, Stedmann, &c.) who have supplied so many excellent descriptions of these birds, are not, unfortunately, as rich in details of their manners, their food, their character.

As to the terrible unhealthiness of the places where they live (and live with so intense a life), the narratives of the old travellers--of Labat and others--are folly confirmed by the moderns. Messieurs Durville and Lesson, in their voyage to New Guiana, scarcely dared to cross the threshold of its profound virgin forests, with their strange and terrible beauty.

The most fantastic aspect of these forests--their prodigious fairylike enchantment of nocturnal illumination by myriads of fire-flies--is attested and very forcibly described, as far as relates to the countries adjoining Panama, by a French traveller, M. Caqueray, who has recently visited them. (See his Journal in the new _Revue Française_, 10th June 1855.)

Page 153. _The valuable museum of anatomical collections_--that of Doctor Auzoux.--I cannot too warmly thank, on this occasion, our esteemed and skilful professor, who condescends to instruct us ignorant people, men of letters, men of the world, and women. He willed that anatomy should descend to all, should become popular; and it is done. His admirable imitations, his lucid demonstrations, gradually work out that great revolution whose full extent can already be perceived. Shall I dare to tell men of science my inmost thought? They themselves will have an advantage in possessing always at hand these objects of study under so convenient a form and in enlarged proportions, which greatly diminish the fatigue of attention. A thousand objects, which seem to us different because different in size, recover their analogies, and reappear in their true relative forms, through the simple process of enlargement.

America, I may add, appears more keenly sensible of these advantages than we are. An American speculator had desired M. Auzoux to supply him yearly with two thousand copies of his figure of man, being certain of disposing of them in all the small towns, and even in the villages. Every American village, says M. Auzoux, endeavours to obtain a museum, an observatory, &c.

Page 157. _The suppression of pain._--To prevent death is undoubtedly impossible; but we may prolong life. We may eventually render rarer, less cruel, and almost _suppress pain_.

That the hardened old world laughs at this expression is so much the better. We have seen this spectacle in the days when our Europe, barbarized by war, centred all medical art in surgery, and only knew how to cure by the knife by a horrible prodigality of suffering, young America discovered the miracle of that profound dream in which all pain is annihilated.[28]

Page 157. _The useful equilibrium of life and death._--Numerous species of birds no longer make a halt in France. One with difficulty descries them flying at inaccessible elevations, deploying their wings in haste, accelerating their passage, saying,--"Pass on, pass on quickly! Let us avoid the land of death, the land of destruction!"

Provence, and many other departments in the south, are barren deserts, peopled by every living tribe, and therefore vegetable nature is sadly impoverished. You do not interrupt with impunity the natural harmonies. The bird levies a tax on the plant, but he is its protector.

It is a matter of notoriety that the bustard has almost disappeared from Champagne and Provence. The heron has passed away; the stork is rare. As we gradually encroach upon the soil, these species, partial to dusty wastes and morasses, depart to seek a livelihood elsewhere. Our progress in one sense is our poverty. In England the same fact has been observed. (See the excellent articles on Sport and Natural History, translated from Messrs. St. John, Knox, Gosse, and others, in the _Revue Britannique_.) The heath-cock retires before the step of the cultivator; the quail passes into Ireland. The ranks of the herons grow daily thinner before the _utilitarian improvements_ of the nineteenth century. But to these causes we must add the barbarism of man, which so heedlessly destroys a throng of innocent species. Nowhere, says M. Pavie, a French traveller, is game more timid than in our fields.

Woe to the ungrateful people! And by this phrase I mean the sporting crowd who, unmindful of the numerous benefits we owe to animals, have exterminated innocent life. A terrible sentence of the Creator weighs upon the tribes of sportsmen,--_they can create nothing_. They originate no art, no industry. They have added nothing to the hereditary patrimony of the human species. What has their heroism profited the Indians of North America? Having organized nothing, having accomplished nothing permanent, these races, despite their singular energy, have disappeared from the earth before inferior men, the last emigrants of Europe.

Do not believe the axiom that huntsmen gradually develop into agriculturists. It is not so--they kill or die; such is their whole destiny. We see it clearly through experience. He who has killed, will kill; he who has created, will create.

In the want of emotion which every man suffers from his birth, the child who satisfies it habitually by murder, by a miniature ferocious drama of surprise and treason, of the torture of the weak, will find no great enjoyment in the gentle and tranquil emotions arising from the progressive success of toil and study, from the limited industry which does everything itself. To create, to destroy--these are the two raptures of infancy: to create is a long, slow process; to destroy is quick and easy. The least act of creation implies those best gifts of the Creator and of kindly Nature: gentleness and patience.

It is a shocking and hideous thing to see a child partial to "sport;" to see woman enjoying and admiring murder, and encouraging her child. That delicate and sensitive woman would not give him a knife, but she gives him a gun: kill at a distance--be it so! for we do not see the suffering. And this mother will think it admirable that her son, kept confined to his room, shall drive off _ennui_ by plucking the wings from flies, by torturing a bird or a little dog.

Far-seeing mother! She will know when too late the evil of having formed a hard heart. Aged and weak, rejected of the world, she will experience in her turn her son's brutality.

* * * * *

But rifle practice? They will object to you. Must not the child grow skilful in killing, that, from murder to murder, he may at last arrive at the surpassing feat of killing the flying swallow? The only country in Europe where everybody knows how to handle a musket is that where the bird is least exposed to slaughter. The land of William Tell knew how to place before her children a juster and more exalted object when they liberated their country.

* * * * *

France is not cruel. Why, then, this love of murder, this extermination of the animal world?

It is the _impatient people_, the _young people_, the _childish people_, in a rude and restless childhood. If they cannot be doing in creating, they will be doing by destroying.

But what they most fatally injure is--themselves! A violent education, stormily impassioned in love or severity, crushes in the child, withers, chokes up the first moral flower of natural sensitiveness, all that was purest of the maternal milk, the germ of universal love which rarely blooms again.

Among too many children we are saddened by their almost incredible sterility. A few recover from it in the long circle of life, when they have become experienced and enlightened men. But the first freshness of the heart? It shall return no more.[29]

How is it that this nation, otherwise born under such felicitous circumstances, is, with rare and local exceptions, accursed with so singular an incapacity for harmony? It has its own peculiar songs, its charming little melodies of vivacity and mirth. But it needs a prolonged effort, a special education, to attain to harmony.

Page 158. _Flattening of the brain._--The weight of the brain, compared with that of the body, is, in the

Ostrich, in the ratio of 1 to 1200
Goose, 1 to 360
Duck, 1 to 257
Eagle, 1 to 160
Plover, 1 to 122
Falcon, 1 to 102
Paroquet, 1 to 45
Robin, 1 to 32
Jay, 1 to 28
Chaffinch, cock, sparrow, goldfinch, 1 to 25
Hooded tomtit, 1 to 16
Blue-cap tomtit, 1 to 12

(_Estimate of Haller and Leuret._)

Page 158. _The noble falcon._--The _noble_ birds (the falcon, gerfalcon, saker) are those which _hold_ their prey by the _talon_, and kill it with the bill: their bill, for this purpose, is toothed. The _ignoble_ birds (the eagle, the kite, &c.) are for the most part swift of flight (_voiliers_): these employ their talons to rend and choke their victims. The _rameurs_ rise with difficulty, which enables the _voiliers_ to escape them the more easily. The tactics of the former are to feign, in the first place, to rise to a great height; and then, by suffering themselves to drop, they disconcert the manoeuvres of the _voiliers_. (Huber, _Vol des Oiseaux de Proie_, 1784, 4to. He was the first of that clever lineage, Huber of the birds, Huber of the bees, Huber of the ants.)

Page 177. _Its happiness in the morning, when terrors vanish!_--"Before" (says Tschudi) "the vermeil tints of the early dew have announced the approach of the sun, oftentimes before even the lightest gleam has heralded dawn in the east, while the stars still sparkle in the sombre azure of heaven, a low murmur resounds on the summit of a venerable pine, and is speedily followed by a more or less distinct prattling; then the notes arise, and an interminable series of keen sounds strike the air on every side like a clang of swords continually hurtled one against another. It is the coupling time of the wood-cock. With his eye a-flame, he dances and springs on the branch, while below him, in the copse, his hens repose tranquilly, and reverently contemplate the mad antics of their lord and master. He is not long left alone to animate the forest. The mavis rises in his turn, shaking the dew from his glittering feathers. Behold him whetting his bill upon the branch, and leaping from bough to bough, up to the very crest of the maple tree where he has slept, astonished to find nearly all life still slumbering in the forest, though the dawn has taken the place of night. Twice, thrice, he hurls his _fanfare_ at the echoes of the mountain and the valley, which a dense mist still envelopes.

"Thin columns of white smoke escape from the roof of the cottages; the dogs bark around the farm-yards; and the bells ring suspended to the neck of the cow. The birds now quit their thickets, flutter their wings, and dart into the air to salute the sun, which once more comes to bless them with his bounteous light. More than one poor little sparrow rejoices that he has escaped the perils of the darkness. Perched on a little twig, he had trusted to enjoy his slumber without alarm, his head buried beneath his wing, when, by the ray of a star, he discerned the noiseless screech-owl gliding through the trees, intent upon some misdeed. The pole-cat stole from the valley-depth, the ermine descended from the rock, the pine-marten quitted his nest, the fox prowled among the bushes. All these enemies the poor little one watched during this terrible night. On his tree, on the earth, in the air--destruction menaced him on every side. How long, how long were the hours when, not daring to move, his only protection was the young leaves which screened him! And now, how great the pleasure to ply his unfettered wing, to live in safety, protected, defended by the light!

"The chaffinch raises with all his energy his clear and sonorous note; the robin sings from the summit of the larch, the goldfinch amid the alder-groves, the blackbird and the bullfinch beneath the leafy arbours. The tomtit, the wren, and the troglodyte mingle their voices. The stockdove coos, and the woodpecker smites his tree. But far above these joyous utterances re-echo the melodious strains of the woodlark and the inimitable song of the thrush."

Page 185. _Migrations._--For the famished Arab, the lank inhabitant of the desert, the arrival of the migrating birds, weary and heavy at this season, and, therefore, easy to catch, is a blessing from God, a celestial manna. The Bible tells us of the raptures of the Israelites, when, during their wanderings in Arabia Petræa, fasting and enfeebled, they suddenly saw descending upon them the winged food: not the locusts of abstemious Elias, not the bread with which the raven nourished his bowels, but the quail heavy with fat, delicious and yet substantial, which voluntarily fell into their hands. They ate to repletion; and no longer regretted the rich flesh-pots of Pharaoh.

I willingly excuse the gluttony of the famished. But what shall I say of our people, in the richest countries of Europe, who, after harvest and vintage-time, with barns and cellars brimming full, pursue with no less fury these poor travellers? Thin or fat, they are equally good: they would eat even the swallows; they devour the song-birds, "those which have only a voice." Their wild frenzy dooms the nightingale to the spit, plucks and kills the household guest, the poor robin, which yesterday fed from their hands.

The migration season is a season of slaughter. The law which impels southward the tribes of birds is, for millions, a law of death. Many depart, few return; at each stage of their route they must pay a tribute of blood. The eagle waits on his crag, man watches in the valley. He who escapes the tyrant of the air, falls a victim to the tyrant of the earth. "A fortunate opportunity!" exclaims the child or the sportsman, the ferocious child with whom murder is a jest. "God has willed it so!" mutters the pious glutton; "let us be resigned!" These are the judgments of man upon the carnival of massacre. As yet we know nothing more, for history has not written the opinions of the massacred.

* * * * *

Migrations are exchanges for every country (except the poles, at the epoch of winter). The particular condition of climate or food, which decides the departure of one species of birds, is precisely that which determines the arrival of another species. When the swallow quits us at the autumn rains, we note the arrival of the army of plovers and peewits in quest of the lobworms driven from their lurking-places by the floods. In October, and as the cold increases, the greenfinches, the yellow-hammers, the wrens, replace the song-birds which have deserted us. The snipes and partridges descend from their mountains at the moment when the quail and the thrush emigrate towards the south. It is then, too, that the legions of the aquatic species quit the extreme north for those temperate climes where the seas, the lakes, and the pools, do not freeze. The wild geese, the swans, the divers, the ducks, the teal, cleave the air in battle array, and swoop down upon the lakes of Scotland and Hungary, and our marshes of the south. The delicate stork flies southward, when his cousin, the crane, sets out from the north, where his supplies begin to fail him. Passing over our lands, he pays us tribute by delivering us from the last reptiles and batrachians which a warm autumnal breeze has restored to life.

Page 188. _My muse is the light._--And yet the nightingale loses it when he returns to us from Asia. But all true artists require that it should be softly ordered, blended with rays and shadows. Rembrandt in his paintings has exhausted the effects, at once warm and soft, of the science of chiaro-oscuro. The nightingale begins his song when the gloom of evening mingles with the last beams of the sun; and hence it is that we tremble at his voice. Our soul in the misty and uncertain hours of the gloaming regains possession of the inner light.

Page 215. _Do not say, "Winter is on my side."_--While M. de Custine was travelling in Russia, he tells us that, at the fair of Nijni-Novgorod, he was frightened by the multitude of _blattes_ which thronged his chamber, with an infectious smell, and which could not be got rid of. Dr. Tschudi, a careful traveller, who has explored Switzerland in its smallest details, assures us that at the breath of the south wind, which melts the snow in twelve hours, innumerable hosts of cockchafers ravage the country. They are not a less terrible scourge than the locusts to the south.

During our Italian tour, my wife and I made an observation which will not have escaped the notice of naturalists; namely, that the cockchafer does not die in autumn. From the inhabited portions of our palazzo, almost entirely shut up in winter, we saw clouds of these insects emerge in the spring, which had slept peacefully in expectation of its warmth. Moreover, in that country, even ephemeral insects do not perish. Gigantic gnats wage war against us every night, demanding our blood with sharp and strident voice.

If, by the side of these proofs of the multiplication of insects, even in temperate or cold countries, we put the fact that the swallow is not satisfied with less than one thousand flies _per diem_; that a couple of sparrows carry home to their young four thousand three hundred caterpillars or beetles weekly; a tomtit three hundred daily; we see at once the evil and the remedy. We quote these figures from M. Quatrefages (_Souvenirs_), and from a letter written by Mr. Walter Trevelyan to the editor of "The Birds of Great Britain," translated in the _Revue Britannique_, July 7, 1850.

I offer the reader a very incomplete summary of the services rendered to us by the birds of our climate.

Many are the assiduous guardians of our herds. The heron _garde-boeuf_, making use of his bill as a lancet, cuts the flesh of the ox to extract from it a parasitical worm which sucks the blood and life of the animal. The wagtails and the starlings render very similar services to our cattle. The swallows destroy myriads of winged insects which never rest, and which we see dancing in the sun's rays; gnats, midges, flies. The goat-suckers and the martinets, twilight hunters, effect the disappearance of the cockchafers, the gnats, the moths, and a swarm of nibbling insects (_rongeurs_), which work only by night. The magpie hunts after the insects which, concealed beneath the bark of the tree, live upon its sap. The humming-bird, the fly-catcher, the _soui-mangas_, in tropical countries, purify the chalice of the flower. The bee-eater, in all lands, carries on a fierce hostility against the wasps which ruin our fruit. The goldfinch, partial to uncultivated soil and the seeds of the thistle, prevents the latter from spreading over the ground. Our garden birds, the chaffinches, blackcaps, blackbirds, tits, strip our fruit-bushes and great trees of the grubs, caterpillars, and beetles, whose ravages would be incalculable. A large number of these insects remain during winter in the egg or the larva, waiting for spring to burst into life; but in this state they are diligently hunted up by the mavis, the wren, the troglodyte. The former turn over the leaves which strew the earth; the latter climb to the loftiest branches, or clear out the trunk. In wet meadows, you may see the crows and storks boring the ground to seize on the white worm (_ver blanc_) which, for three years before metamorphosing into a cockchafer, gnaws at the roots of our grasses.

Here we pause, not to weary our reader, and yet the list of useful birds is scarcely glanced at.

Page 228. _The woodpecker, as an augur._--Are the methods of observation adopted by meteorology serious and efficacious? Some men of science doubt it. It might, perhaps, be worth while examining if we could not deduce any part of the meteorology of the ancients from their divination by birds. The principal passages are pointed out in Pauly's Encyclopædia (Stuttgard), article _Divinatio_.

"The woodpecker is a favoured bird in the steppes of Poland and Russia. In these sparsely wooded plains he constantly directs his course towards the trees; by following him, you discover a hidden ravine, a little later some springs, and finally descend towards the river. Under the bird's guidance you may thus explore and reconnoitre the country." (Mickiewicz, _Les Slaves_, vol. i., p. 200.)

Page 235. _Song._--Do not separate what God has joined together. If you place a bird in a cage beside you, his song quickly fatigues you with its sonorous timbre and its monotony. But in the grand concert of Nature, that bird would supply his note, and complete the harmony. This powerful voice would subdue itself to the modulations of the air; soft and tender it would glide, borne upon the breeze.

And then, in the deep woody depths, the singer incessantly moves from place to place, now drawing near, and now receding; hence arise those distant effects which induce a delightful reverie, and that delicate cadence which thrills the heart.

Under our roof his song would be ever the same; but on the pinions of the wind the music is divine, it penetrates and ravishes the soul.

Page 241. _The robin hastens, singing, to enjoy his share of the warmth._--I find this admirable passage in "The Conquest of England by the Normans" (by Augustin Thierry). The chief of the barbarous Saxons assembles his priests and wise men to ascertain if they will become Christians. One of them speaks as follows:--

"Thou mayst remember, O king, a thing which sometimes happens, when thou art seated at table with thy captains and men-at-arms, in the winter season, and when a fire is kindled and the hall well warmed, while there are wind and rain and snow without. There comes a little bird, which traverses the room on fluttering wing, entering by one door and flying out at another: the moment of its passage is full of sweetness for it, it feels neither the rain nor the storm; but this interval is brief, the bird vanishes in the twinkling of an eye, and _from winter passes away into winter_. Such seems to me the life of man upon this earth, and its limited duration, compared with the length of the time which precedes and follows it."

From winter he passes into winter. "Of wintra in winter eft cymeth."

Page 247. _Nests and Hatching._--In the vast extent of the islands linking India to Australia, a species of bird of the family _Gallinaceæ_ dispenses with the labour of hatching her eggs. Raising an enormous hillock of grasses whose fermentation will produce a degree of heat favourable to the process, the parents, as soon as this task is completed, trust to Nature for the reproduction of their kind. Mr. Gould, who furnishes these curious details, speaks also of some curious nests constructed by another species of bird. It consists of an avenue formed by small branches planted in the ground, and woven together at their upper extremities in the fashion of a dome. The structure is consolidated by enlaced and intertwined herbs. This first stage of their labour accomplished, the artists proceed to the work of decoration. They seek in every direction, and often at a distance, the gaudiest feathers, the finest polished shells, and the most brilliant stones, to strew over the entrance. This avenue would seem, however, not to be the nest, but the place where the birds hold their first rendezvous. (See the coloured plates in Mr. Gould's magnificent volume, "Australian Birds.")

Page 266. _Instinct and Reason._--The ignorant and inattentive think all things _nearly alike_. And Science perceives that all things differ. According as we learn to observe, do these differences become apparent; that imperceptible "shade," and worthless "almost," which at the outset does not prevent us from confusing all things with one another, really distinguishes them, and points out a notable discrepancy, a wide interval betwixt this object and that, a blank, a _hiatus_, sometimes an enormous abyss, which separates and holds them apart,--so much so, that occasionally between these things, at first sight _so nearly alike_, a whole world will intervene, without the power of bringing them together.

It has been asserted and repeated that the works of insects presented an absolute similarity, a mechanical regularity. And yet our Reaumurs and our Hubers have discovered numerous facts which positively contradict this pretended symmetry, especially in the case of the ant, whose life is complicated with so many incidents, so many unforeseen exigencies, that she would never provide against them but for the rapid discernment, the promptitude of mind, which is one of the most striking characteristics of her individuality.

It has been supposed that the nests of birds are always constructed on identical principles. Not at all. A close observation reveals the fact that they differ according to the climate and the weather. At New York, the baltimore makes a closely fitted nest, to shelter him from the cold. At New Orleans his nest is left with a free passage for the air to diminish the heat. The Canadian partridges, which in winter cover themselves with a kind of small pent-roof at Compiègne, under a milder sky do away with this protection, because they judge it to be useless. The same discernment prevails in relation to the seasons. The American spring, in the opening years of the present century, occurring very late, the woodpecker (of Wilson) wisely made his nest two weeks later. I will venture to add that I have seen, in southern France, this delicate appreciation of climatic changes varying from year to year; by an inexplicable foresight, when the summer was likely to be cold, the nests were always more thickly woven.

The guillemot of the north (_mergula_), which fears above all things the fox, on account of his partiality for her eggs, builds her nest on a rock level with the water, so that, no sooner are they hatched than the brood, however closely dogged by the plunderer, have time to escape in the waves. On the other hand, here, on our coasts, where her only enemy is man, she makes her nest on the loftiest and most precipitous cliffs, where man can with difficulty reach it.

Ignorant persons, and no less those naturalists who study natural history in books only, acknowledge the differences existing between species, but believe that the actions and labours of the individuals of a species invariably correspond. Such a view is possible when you have only seen things from above and afar, in a sublime generality. But when the naturalist takes in hand his pilgrim's staff--when, as a modest, resolute, indefatigable pilgrim of Nature, he assumes his shoes of iron--all things change their aspect: he sees, notes, compares numerous individual works in the labours of each species, seizes their points of difference, and soon arrives at the conclusion which logic had already suggested,--that, in truth, _no one thing resembles another_. In those works which appear identical to inexperienced eyes, a Wilson and an Audubon have detected the diversities of an art very variable--according to means and places, according to the characters and talents of the artists--in a spontaneous infinity. So extensive is the region of liberty, fancy, and _ingegno_.

Let us hope that our collections will bring together several specimens of each species, arranged and classified according to the talent and progress of the individual, recording as near as may be the age of the birds which constructed the nests.

If these boundless diversities do not result from unrestrained activity and personal spontaneity, if you wish to refer them all to an identical instinct, you must, to support so miraculous a theory, make us believe another miracle: that this instinct, although identical, possesses the singular elasticity of accommodating and proportioning itself to a variety of circumstances which are incessantly changing, to an infinity of hazardous chances.

What, then, will be the case if we find, in the history of animals, such an act of pretended instinct as supposes a resistance to that very course our instinctive nature would apparently desire? What will you say to the wounded elephant spoken of by Fouché d'Obsonville?

That judicious traveller, so utterly disinclined to romantic tendencies, saw an elephant in India, which, having been wounded in battle, went daily to the hospital that his wound might be dressed. Now, guess what this wound might be. A burn. In this dangerous Indian climate, where everything grows putrid, they are frequently constrained to cauterize the sores. He endured this treatment patiently, and went every day to undergo it. He felt no antipathy towards the surgeon who inflicted upon him so sharp an agony. He groaned; nothing more. He evidently understood that it was done for his benefit; that his torturer was his friend; that this necessary cruelty was designed for his cure.

Plainly this elephant acted upon reflection, and upon a blind instinct; he acted against nature in the strength and enlightenment of his will.

Page 270. _The master-nightingale._--I owe this anecdote to a lady well entitled to a judgment upon such questions--to Madame Garcia Viardot (the great singer). The Russian peasants, who possess a fine ear and a keen sensibility for Nature (compared with her harshness towards them), said, when they occasionally heard the Spanish _cantatrice_: "The nightingale does not sing so well."

Page 273. _Still the little one hesitates, &c._--"One day I was walking with my son in the neighbourhood of Montier. We perceived towards the north, on the Little Salève, an eagle emerging from the windings of the rocks. When he was tolerably near the Great Salève he halted, and two eaglets, which he had carried on his back, attempted to fly, at first very close to their teacher, and in narrow circles; then, a few minutes afterwards, feeling fatigued, they returned to rest upon his back. Gradually their essays were protracted, and at the close of the lesson the eaglets effected some much more important flights, still under the eyes of their teacher of gymnastics. After about an hour's occupation the two scholars resumed their post on the paternal back, and the eagle returned to the rock from which he had started." (M. Chenvières, of Geneva.)

Page 304. _The small Chili falcon_ (cernicula).--I extract this statement from a new, curious, but little known work, written in French by a Chilian: _Le Chili_, by B. Vicuna Mackenna (ed. 1855, p. 100). Chili I take to be a most interesting country, which, by the energy of its citizens, should considerably modify the unfavourable opinion entertained by the citizens of the United States in reference to South Americans. America will not exist as a world, so long as a common feeling shall be wanting between the two opposite poles which ought to create her majestic harmony.

_Final Note on the Winged Life._--To appreciate beings so alien from the conditions of our prosaic existence, we must for a moment abandon earth, and become a sense apart. We get a glimpse of something inferior and superior, of something on this side and on that, the limbs of the animal life on the borders of the life of the angels. In proportion as we assume this sense, we lose the temptation of degrading the winged life--that strange, delicate, mighty dream of God--to the vulgarities of earth.

To-day even, in a place infinitely unpoetic, neglected, squalid, and obscure, among the black mud of Paris, and in the dank darkness of an apartment scarcely better than a cavern, I saw, and I heard chirping, in a subdued voice, a little creature which seemed not to belong to this low world. It was a warbler, and one of a common species--not the blackcap, which is prized so highly for his song. This one was not then singing; she chattered to herself, just a few notes, as monotonous as her situation. For winter, shadow, captivity, all were around her. The captive of a rough, rude man, of a speculator in birds, she heard on every side sounds which silenced her song; powerful voices were above her head, a mocking-bird among them, which rang out every moment their brilliant clarions. Generally, she would be condemned to silence. She was accustomed, one could perceive, to sing in a low tone. But in this limited flight, this habitual resignation and half lamentation, might be detected a charming delicacy, a more than feminine softness (_morbidezza_). Add to this the unique grace of her bosom and her motions, of her modest red and white attire, which sparkled, however, with a bright sheeny reflex.

I recalled to my mind the pictures in which Ingres and Delacroix have shown us the captives of Algiers or the East, and exactly depicted the dull resignation, the indifference, the weariness of their monotonous lives, and also the decline (must we say the extinction?) of the inner fire.

But, alas! it was wholly different here. The flame burned in all its strength. She was more and less than a woman. No comparison was of any use. Inferior by right of her animal nature, by her pretty bird-masquerade, she was lifted above by her wings, and by the winged soul which sang in that little body. An all-powerful _alibi_ held her enthralled afar off, in her native grove, in the nest whence she had been stolen in her infancy, or in her future love-nest. She warbled five or six notes, and they kindled my very soul; I myself, for the moment armed with wings, accompanied her in her distant dream.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The book referred to was the "Études de la Nature."--_Translator._

[2] Dittany was formerly much used as a cordial and sedative.--_Translator._

[3] Jean Baptiste de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck, was born August 1, 1744; died December 20, 1829. His chief work is his "History of Invertebrate Animals."--Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was born in 1772, and died in 1844. He expounds his theory of natural history in the "Philosophie Anatomique," 2 vols., 1818-20.--_Translator._

[4] Alphonse Toussenel, an illustrious French _littérateur_, born in 1803. The first edition of his "Le Monde des Oiseaux, Ornithologie Passionelle," was published in 1852.--_Translator._

[5] The frigate bird, or man-of-war bird (_Trachypetes aquila_).--_Translator._

[6] Alluding to a popular superstition, which Béranger has made the subject of a fine lyric:--

"What means the fall of yonder star,
Which falls, falls, and fades away?...
My son, whene'er a mortal dies,
Earthward his star drops instantly."--_Translator._

[7] It was with this exordium Toussaint commenced his appeal to Napoleon Bonaparte.

[8] Napoleon's treatment of Toussaint L'Ouverture is one of the darkest spots on his fame. He flung this son of the Tropics into a dungeon among the icy fastnesses of the Alps, where he died, slain by cold and undeserved ill-treatment, on the 27th of April 1803.--_Translator._

[9] There are two lights, of which the more elevated is 396 feet above the sea-level.--_Translator._

[10] La Hève is the ancient Caletorum Promontorium, and situated about three miles north-west of Havre.--_Translator._

[11] That the reader may feel the full force of this passage, I subjoin the original: "Nous n'en vivions pas moins d'un grand souffle d'âme, de la rajeunissante haleine de cette mère aimée, la Nature."

[12] Compare the interesting descriptions of the huge dams erected by beavers across the American rivers, in Milton and Cheadle's valuable narrative of travel, "The North-West Passage by Land."--_Translator._

[13] The reader will hardly require to be reminded of the poet Cowper and his hares.--_Translator._

[14] Family _Trochilidæ_.

[15] Felix de Azara was an eminent Spanish traveller, who died at Arragon in 1811. He acted as one of the commissioners appointed to trace the boundary-line between the Spanish and Portuguese possessions in the New World. His researches in Paraguay made many valuable contributions to natural history.--_Translator._

[16] Lesson was a French traveller of repute; but his works are little known beyond the limits of his own country.--_Translator._

[17] François Levaillant was born at Paramaribo in Dutch Guiana, in 1753. Passionately fond of natural history, and scarcely less fond of travel, he gratified both passions in 1780 by undertaking a series of explorations in Southern Africa. His last journey extended a little beyond the tropic of Capricorn. He returned to Europe in 1784, published several valuable works of travel and zoology, and died in 1824.--_Translator._

[18] The unfortunate navigator, Jean François de Calaup, Comte de La Perouse, was born in 1741. At an early age he entered the French navy, rose to a high grade, and distinguished himself by his services against the English in North America. In 1783 he was appointed to command an expedition of discovery, and on the 1st of August 1785, sailed from Brest with two frigates, the _Boussole_ and the _Astrolabe_. He reached Botany Bay in January 1788, and thenceforward was no more heard of for years. Several vessels were despatched to ascertain his fate, but could obtain no clue to it. In 1826, however, Captain Dillon, while sailing amongst the Queen Charlotte Islands, discovered at Wanicoro the remains of the shipwrecked vessels. A mausoleum and obelisk to the memory of their unfortunate commander was erected on the island in 1828.--_Translator._

[19] Mungo Park, the illustrious African traveller (born near Selkirk in 1771), perished on his second expedition to the Niger towards the close of the year 1805. No exact information of his fate has been obtained, but from the evidence collected by Clapperton and Lander, it seems probable that he was drowned in attempting to navigate a narrow channel of the river in the territory of Houssa. Another account, however, represents him to have been murdered by the natives.--_Translator._

[20] See Virgil, "Georgics."

[21] Alexander Wilson, the eminent ornithologist, was born at Paisley in 1766. He was bred a weaver, but emigrating to the United States in 1794, found means to pursue the studies for which he had a natural bias, and in which he earned an enduring reputation. The first volume of his "American Ornithology" was published in 1808. He died of dysentery, in August 1813.--_Translator._

[22] We subjoin Dryden's version of the above passage ("_Georgics_," Book I.):--

"Wet weather seldom hurts the most unwise,
So plain the signs, such prophets are the skies:
The wary crane foresees it first, and sails
Above the storm, and leaves the lowly vales;
The cow looks up, and from afar can find
The change of heaven, and snuffs it in the wind.
The swallow skims the river's watery face,
The frogs renew the croaks of their loquacious race....
Besides, the several sorts of watery fowls,
That swim the seas, or haunt the standing pools;
The swans that sail along the silver flood,
And dive with stretching necks to search their food,
Then lave their back with sprinkling dews in vain,
And stem the stream to meet the promised rain.
The crow, with clamorous cries, the shower demands,
And single stalks along the desert sands.
The nightly virgin, while her wheel she plies,
Foresees the storm impending in the skies.
When sparkling lamps their sputtering light advance,
And in the sockets oily bubbles dance.

"Then, after showers, 'tis easy to descry,
Returning suns, and a serener sky;
The stars shine smarter, and the moon adorns,
As with unborrowed beams, her sharpened horns;
The filmy gossamer now flits no more,
Nor halcyons bask on the short sunny shore:
Their litter is not tossed by sows unclean,
But a blue draughty mist descends upon the plain.
And owls, that mark the setting sun, declare
A star-light evening, and a morning fair....
Then thrice the ravens rend the liquid air,
And croaking notes proclaim the settled fair.
Then, round their airy palaces they fly
To greet the sun: and seized with secret joy,
When storms are over-blown, with food repair
To their forsaken nests, and callow care."

[23] The favourite haunt of Jean Jacques Rousseau, on the bank of Lake Leman.

[24] This was written before the annexation of Lombardy to the new Italian kingdom.

[25] It is unnecessary to remind the reader that this is true only of _French_ poets.--_Translator._

[26] The reader must not identify the translator with these opinions, which, however, he did not feel at liberty to modify or omit.

[27] Everybody knows the beautiful story of the "Musician's Duel"--the rivalry between a nightingale and a flute-player--as told by Ford and Crashaw.--_Translator._

[28] Our author refers to the discovery of the anæsthetic properties of ether by an American. It was a surgeon of old Europe, however, that gave the world the far more powerful anæsthetic of _chloroform_.--_Translator._

[29] Compare Byron, in "Don Juan."