would have been accomplished. They, then, had copied the form, but
not the internal structure. They thought that the bird's power of
ascension lay in its flight alone, forgetting the secret auxiliary
which nature conceals in the plumage and the bones. The mystery, the
true marvel lies in the faculty with which she endows the bird, of
rendering itself light or heavy at its will, of admitting more or less
of air into its expressly constructed reservoirs. Would it grow light,
it inflates its dimension, while diminishing its relative weight; by
this means it spontaneously ascends in a medium heavier than itself.
To descend or drop, it contracts itself, grows thin and small; cutting
through the air which supported and raised it in its former heavy
condition. Here lay the error, the cause of man's fatal ignorance. He
assumed that the bird was a ship, not a balloon. He imitated the wing
only; but the wing, however skilfully imitated, if not conjoined with
this internal force, is but a certain means of destruction.
[Illustration]
But this faculty, this rapid inhalation or expulsion of air, of
swimming with a ballast variable at pleasure, whence does it proceed?
From an unique, unheard-of power of respiration. The man who should
inhale a similar quantity of air at once would be suffocated. The
bird's lung, elastic and powerful, quaffs it, grows full of it, grows
intoxicated with vigour and delight, pours it abundantly into its
bones, into its aerial cells. Each aspiration is renewed second after
second with tremendous rapidity. The blood, ceaselessly vivified with
fresh air, supplies each muscle with that inexhaustible energy which
no other being possesses, and which belongs only to the elements.
The clumsy image of Antæus regaining strength each time he touched
the earth, his mother, does but rudely and weakly render an idea of
this reality. The bird does not need to seek the air that he may be
reinvigorated by touching it; the air seeks and flows into him--it
incessantly kindles within him the burning fires of life.
It is this, and not the wing, which is so marvellous. Take the pinions
of the condor, and follow in its track, when, from the summit of the
Andes and their Siberian glaciers, it swoops down upon the glowing
shore of Peru, traversing in a minute all the temperatures and all
the climates of the globe, breathing at one breath the frightful mass
of air--scorched, frozen, it matters not. You would reach the earth
stricken as by thunder.
The smallest bird in this matter shames the strongest quadruped. Place
me, says Toussenel, a chained lion in a balloon, and his harsh roaring
will be lost in space. Far more powerful in voice and respiration, the
little lark mounts upward, trilling its song, and makes itself heard
when it can be seen no longer. Its light and joyous strain, uttered
without fatigue, and costing nothing, seems the bliss of an invisible
spirit which would fain console the earth.
Strength makes joy. The happiest of beings is the bird, because it
feels itself strong beyond the limits of its action; because, cradled,
sustained by the breath of heaven, it floats, it rises without effort,
like a dream. The boundless strength, the exalted faculty, obscure
among inferior beings, in the bird clear and vital, of deriving at will
its vigour from the maternal source, of drinking in life at full flood,
is a divine intoxication.
The tendency of every human being--a tendency wholly rational, not
arrogant, not impious--is to liken itself to Nature, the great Mother,
to fashion itself after her image, to crave a share of the unwearied
wings with which Eternal Love broods over the world.
Human tradition is fixed in this direction. Man does not wish to be
a man, but an angel, a winged deity. The winged genii of Persia
suggest the cherubim of Judea. Greece endows her Psyche with wings,
and discovers the true name of the soul, #asthma#, _aspiration_. The
soul has preserved her pinions; has passed at one flight through the
shadowy Middle Age, and constantly increases in heavenly longings. More
spotless and more glowing, she gives utterance to a prayer, breathed
in the very depths of her nature and her prophetic ardour: "Oh, that I
were a bird!" saith man.
Woman never doubts but that her offspring will become an angel. She has
seen it so in her dreams.
Dreams or realities? Winged visions, raptures of the night, which we
shall weep so bitterly in the morning! If ye really _were_! If, indeed,
ye lived! If we had lost some of the causes of our regret! If, from
stars to stars, re-united, and launched on an eternal flight, we all
performed in companionship a happy pilgrimage through the illimitable
goodness!
At times one is apt to believe it. Something whispers us that these
dreams are not all dreams, but glimpses of a world of truth, momentary
flashes revealed through these lower clouds, certain promises to be
hereafter fulfilled, while the pretended reality it is that should be
stigmatized as a foul delusion.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: THE FIRST FLUTTERINGS OF THE WING.]
[Illustration]
THE FIRST FLUTTERINGS OF THE WING.
There is never a man, unlettered, ignorant, exhausted, insensible,
who can deny himself a sentiment of reverence, I might almost say of
terror, on entering the halls of our Museum of Natural History.
No foreign collection, as far as my knowledge extends, produces this
impression.
Others, undoubtedly, as the superb museum of Leyden, are richer in
particular branches; but none are more complete, none more harmonious.
This sublime harmony is felt instinctively; it imposes and seizes
on the mind. The inattentive traveller, the chance visitor, is
unwillingly affected; he pauses, and he dreams. In the presence of
this vast enigma, of this immense hieroglyph which for the first time
is displayed before him, he may consider himself fortunate if he can
read a character or spell a letter. How often have different classes
of persons, surprised and tormented by such fantastic forms, inquired
of us their meaning! A word has set them in the right path, a simple
indication charmed them; they have gone away contented, and promising
themselves to return. On the other hand, they who traversed this ocean
of unknown objects without comprehending them, have departed fatigued
and melancholy.
Let us express our wish that an administration so enlightened, so high
in the ranks of science, may return to the original constitution of the
museum, which appointed _gardiens démonstrateurs_--attendants who were
also cicerones--and will only admit as guardians of this treasure men
who can understand it, and, on occasion, become its interpreters.
Another wish we dare to form is, that by the side of our renowned
naturalists they will place those courageous navigators, those
persevering travellers who, by their labours, their fruits, by a
hundred times hazarding their lives, have procured for us these costly
spoils. Whatever their intrinsic value, it is, perhaps, increased by
the heroism and grandeur of heart of these adventurers. This charming
colibris,[14] madam, a winged sapphire in which you could see only a
useless object of personal decoration, do you know that an Azara[15] or
a Lesson[16] has brought it from murderous forests where one breathes
nothing but death? This magnificent tiger, whose skin you admire, are
you aware that before it could be planted here, there was a necessity
that it should be sought after in the jungles, encountered face to
face, fired at, struck in the forehead by the intrepid Levaillant?[17]
These illustrious travellers, ardent lovers of nature, often without
means, often without assistance, have followed it into the deserts,
watched and surprised it in its mysterious retreats, voluntarily
enduring thirst and hunger and incredible fatigues; never complaining,
thinking themselves too well recompensed, full of devotion, of
gratitude at each fresh discovery; regretting nothing in such an event,
not even the death of La Perouse[18] or Mungo Park,[19] death by
shipwreck, or death among the savages.
[Illustration]
Bid them live again here in our midst! If their lonely life flowed
free from Europe for Europe's benefit, let their images be placed in
the centre of the grateful crowd, with a brief exposition of their
fortunate discoveries, their sufferings, and their sublime courage.
More than one young man shall be moved by the sight of these heroes,
and depart to dream enthusiastically of following in their footsteps.
Herein lies the twofold grandeur of the place. Its treasures were sent
by heroic men, and they were collected, classified, and harmonized by
illustrious physicists, to whom all things flowed as to a legitimate
centre, and whom their position, no less than their intellect, induced
to accomplish here the centralization of nature.
In the last century, the great movement of the sciences revolved around
a man of genius, influential by his rank, his social relations, his
fortune--M. the Count de Buffon. All the donations of men of science,
travellers, and kings, came to him, and by him were classified in this
museum. In our own days a grander spectacle has fixed upon this spot
the eager eyes of all the nations of the world, when two mighty men (or
rather two systems), Cuvier and Geoffroy, made this their battle-field.
All the world enrolled itself on the one side or the other; all took
part in the strife, and despatched to the Museum, either in support of
or opposition to the experiments, books, animals, or facts previously
unknown. Hence these collections, which one might suppose to be dead,
are really living; they still throb with the recollections of the fray,
are still animated by the lofty minds which invoked all these beings to
be the witnesses of their prolific struggle.
It is no fortuitous gathering yonder. It consists of closely connected
series, formed and systematically arranged by profound thinkers. Those
species which form the most curious transitions between the genera are
richly represented. There you may see, far more fully than elsewhere,
what Linné and Lamarck have said, that just as our museums gradually
grew richer, became more complete, exhibited fewer _lacunæ_, we should
be constrained to acknowledge that nature does nothing abruptly, in
all things proceeds by gentle and insensible transitions. Wherever we
seem to see in her works a bound, a chasm, a sudden and inharmonious
interval, let us ascribe the fault to ourselves; that blank is our own
ignorance.
[Illustration]
Let us pause for a few moments at the solemn passages where life
uncertain seems still to oscillate, where Nature appears to question
herself, to examine her own volition. "Shall I be fish or mammal?"
says the creature. It falters, and remains a fish, but warm-blooded;
belongs to the mild race of lamentins and seals. "Shall I be bird or
quadruped?" A great question; a perplexed hesitancy--a prolonged and
changeful combat. All its various phases are discussed; the diverse
solutions of the problems naïvely suggested and realized by fantastic
beings like the ornithorhynchus, which has nothing of the bird but
the beak; like the poor bat, a tender and innocent animal in its
family-circle, but whose undefined form makes it grim-looking and
unfortunate. You perceive that nature has sought in it _the wing_, and
found only a hideous membranous skin, which nevertheless performs a
wing's function:
"I am a bird; see you my wings?"
Yes; but even the wing does not make the bird.
[Illustration]
Place yourself towards the centre of the museum, and close to the
clock. There you perceive, on your left, the first rudiment of the wing
in the penguin of the southern pole, and its brother, the Arctic auk,
one degree more developed; scaly winglets, whose glittering feathers
rather recall the fish than the bird. On land the creature is feeble;
but while earth is difficult for it, air is impossible. Do not complain
too warmly. Its prescient mother destines it for the Polar Seas, where
it will only need to paddle. She clothes it carefully in a fine coat
of fat and an impenetrable covering. She will have it warm among the
icebergs. Which is the better means? It seems as if she had hesitated,
had wavered. By the side of the booby we see with surprise an essay
at quite another genus, yet one not less remarkable as a maternal
precaution. I refer to a very rare gorfou--which I have seen in no
other museum--attired in the rough skin of a quadruped, resembling a
goat's fleece, but more shining, perhaps, in the living animal, and
certainly impermeable to water.
To link together the birds which do not fly, we must find the
connecting point in the navigator of the desert--the bird-camel, the
ostrich, resembling the camel itself in its internal structure. At
least, if its imperfect wings cannot raise it above the earth, they
assist it powerfully in walking, and endow it with extraordinary
swiftness: it is the sail with which it skims its arid African ocean.
Let us return to the penguin, the true starting-point of the series--to
the penguin, whose rudimentary pinion cannot be employed as a sail,
does not aid it in walking, is only an indication, like a memorial of
nature.
[Illustration]
She loosens her bonds, she rises with difficulty in a first attempt
at flight by means of two strange figures, which appear to us both
grotesque and pretentious. The penguin is not of these; a simple, silly
creature, you see that it never had the ambition to fly. But here are
they who emancipate themselves, who seem in quest of the adornment or
the grace of motion. The gorfou may be taken for a penguin which has
decided to quit its condition. It assumes a coquettish tuft of plumes,
that throws into high relief its ugliness. The shapeless puffin, which
seems the very caricature of a caricature, the paroquet, resembles
it in its great beak, rudely chipped, but without edge or strength.
Tail-less and ill-balanced, it may always be upset by the weight of its
large head. It ventures, nevertheless, to flutter about, at the hazard
of toppling over. It swoops nobly close to the surface of earth, and
is, perhaps, the envy of the penguins and the seals. Sometimes it even
risks itself at sea--ill-fated ship, which the lightest breeze will
wreck!
It is, however, impossible to deny that the first flight is taken.
Birds of various kinds carry on the enterprise more successfully. The
rich genus of _divers_ (Brachypteræ), in its species widely different,
connects the sailor-birds with the natatores, or swimmers: those, with
wings perfected, with a bold and secure flight, accomplish the longest
voyages; these, still clothed with the glittering feathers of the
penguin, frisk and sport at the bottom of the seas. They want but fins
and respiratory organs to become actual fishes. They are alternately
masters of both elements, air and water.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: TRIUMPH OF THE WING.]
[Illustration]
TRIUMPH OF THE WING.
THE FRIGATE BIRD.
Let us not attempt to particularize all the intermediate gradations.
Let us proceed to yonder snow-white bird, which I perceive floating
on high among the clouds; the bird which one sees everywhere--on the
water, on land, on rocks alternately concealed and exposed by the
waves; the bird which one loves to watch, familiar as it is, and
greedy, and which might well be named "the little vulture of the seas."
I speak of those myriads of petrels, or gulls, with whose hoarse cries
every waste resounds. Find me, if you can, creatures endowed with
fuller liberty. Day and night, south or north, sea or shore, dead prey
or living, all is one to them. Using everything, at home everywhere,
they indifferently display their white sails from the waves to the
heaven; the fresh breeze, ever shifting and changing, is the bounteous
wind which always blows in the direction they most desire.
What are they but air, sea, the elements, which have taken wing and
fly? I know nothing of it. To see their gray eye, stern and cold (never
successfully imitated in our museums), is to see the gray, indifferent
sea of the north in all its icy impassiveness. What do I say? That sea
exhibits more emotion. At times phosphorescent and electrical, it will
rise into strong animation. Old Father Ocean, saturnine and passionate,
often revolves, under his pale countenance, a host of thoughts. His
sons, the goëlands, have less of animal life than he has. They fly,
with their dead eyes seeking some dead prey; and in congregated flocks
they expedite the destruction of the great carcasses which float upon
the sea for their behoof. Not ferocious in aspect, amusing the voyager
by their sports, by frequent glimpses of their snowy pinions, they
speak to him of remote lands, of the shores which he leaves behind or
is about to visit, of absent or hoped-for friends. And they are useful
to him, also, by announcing and predicting the coming storm. Ofttimes
their sail expanded warns him to furl his own.
[Illustration]
For do not suppose that when the tempest breaks they deign to fold
their wings. Far from this: it is then that they set forth. The storm
is their harvest time; the more terrible the sea, so much the less
easily can the fish escape from these daring fishers. In the Bay of
Biscay, where the ocean-swell, driven from the north-west, after
traversing the Atlantic, arrives in mighty billows, swollen to enormous
heights, with a terrific clash and shock, the tranquil petrels labour
imperturbably. "I saw them," says M. de Quatrefages, "describe in the
air a thousand curves, plunge between two waves, reappear with a fish.
Swiftest when they followed the wind, slowest when they confronted it,
they nevertheless poised always with the same ease, and never appeared
to give a stroke of the wing the more than in the calmest weather. And
yet the billows mounted up the slopes, like cataracts reversed, as high
as the platform of Nôtre Dame, and their spray higher than Montmartre.
They did not appear more moved by it."
[Illustration]
Man has not their philosophy. The seaman is powerfully affected when,
at the decline of day, a sudden night darkening over the sea, he
descries, hovering about his barque, an ominous little pigeon, a bird
of funereal black. _Black_ is not the fitting word; black would be
less gloomy: the true tint is that of a smoky-brown, which cannot be
defined. It is a shadow of hell, an evil vision, which strides along
the waters, breasts the billows, crushes under its feet the tempest.
The stormy petrel (or "St. Peter") is the horror of the seaman, who
sees in it, according to his belief, a living curse. Whence does it
come? How is it able to rise at such enormous distances from all land?
What wills it? What does it come in quest of, if not of a wreck? It
sweeps to and fro impatiently, and already selects the corpses which
its accomplice, the atrocious and iniquitous sea, will soon deliver up
to its mercies.
Such are the fables of fear. Less panic-stricken minds would see in
the poor bird another ship in distress, an imprudent navigator, which
has also been surprised far from shore and without an asylum. Our
vessel is for him an island, where he would fain repose. The track of
the barque, which rides through both wind and wave, is in itself a
refuge, a succour against fatigue. Incessantly, with nimble flight,
he places the rampart of the vessel between himself and the tempest.
Timid and short-sighted, you see it only when it brings the night.
Like ourselves, it dreads the storm--it trembles with fear--it would
fain escape--and like you, O seaman, it sighs, "What will become of my
little ones?"
But the black hour passes, day reappears, and I see a small blue point
in the heaven. Happy and serene region, which has rested in peace far
above the hurricane! In that blue point, and at an elevation of ten
thousand feet, royally floats a little bird with enormous pens. A gull?
No; its wings are black. An eagle? No; the bird is too small.
It is the little ocean-eagle, first and chief of the winged race, the
daring navigator who never furls his sails, the lord of the tempest,
the scorner of all peril--the man-of-war or frigate-bird.
We have reached the culminating point of the series commenced by the
wingless bird. Here we have a bird which is virtually nothing more
than wings: scarcely any body--barely as large as that of the domestic
cock--while his prodigious pinions are fifteen feet in span. The great
problem of flight is solved and overpassed, for the power of flight
seems useless. Such a bird, naturally sustained by such supports,
need but allow himself to be borne along. The storm bursts; he mounts
to lofty heights, where he finds tranquillity. The poetic metaphor,
untrue when applied to any other bird, is no exaggeration when applied
to him: literally, he sleeps upon the storm.
When he chooses to oar his way seriously, all distance vanishes: he
breakfasts at the Senegal; he dines in America.
Or, if he thinks fit to take more time, and amuse himself _en
route_, he can do so. He may continue his progress through the night
indefinitely, certain of reposing himself. Upon what? On his huge
motionless wing, which takes upon itself all the weariness of the
voyage; or on the wind, his slave, which eagerly hastens to cradle him.
Observe, moreover, that this strange being is gifted with the proud
prerogative of fearing nothing in this world. Little, but strong and
intrepid, he braves all the tyrants of the air. He can despise, if need
be, the pygargue and the condor: those huge unwieldy creatures will
with great difficulty have put themselves in motion when he shall have
already achieved a distance of ten leagues.
Oh, it is then that envy seizes us, when, amid the glowing azure of
the Tropics, at incredible altitudes, almost imperceptible in the dim
remoteness, we see him triumphantly sweeping past us--this black,
solitary bird, alone in the waste of heaven: or, at the most, at a
lower elevation, the snow-white sea-swallow crosses his flights in easy
grace!
Why dost not thou take me upon thy pens, O king of the air, thou
fearless and unwearied master of space, whose wondrously swift
flight annihilates time? Who more than thou is raised above the mean
fatalities of existence?
One thing, however, has astonished me: that, when contemplated from
near at hand, the first of the winged kingdom should have nothing of
that serenity which a free life promises. His eye is cruelly hard,
severe, mobile, unquiet. His vexed attitude is that of some unhappy
sentinel doomed, under pain of death, to keep watch over the infinity
of ocean. He visibly exerts himself to see afar. And if his vision does
not avail him, the doom is on his dark countenance; nature condemns
him, he dies.
On looking at him closely, you perceive that he has no feet. Or at all
events, feet which being palmate and exceedingly short, can neither
walk nor perch. With a formidable beak, he has not the talons of a
true eagle of the sea. A pseudo-eagle, and superior to the true in his
daring as in his powers of flight, he has not, however, his strength,
his invincible grasp. He strikes and slays: can he seize?
Thence arises his life of uncertainty and hazard--the life of a corsair
and a pirate rather than of a mariner--and the fixed inquiry ever
legible on his countenance: "Shall I feed? Shall I have wherewithal to
nourish my little ones this evening?"
[Illustration]
The immense and superb apparatus of his wings becomes on land a danger
and an embarrassment. To raise himself he needs a strong wind and a
lofty station, a promontory, a rock. Surprised on a sandy level, on
the banks, the low reefs where he sometimes halts, the frigate-bird is
defenceless; in vain he threatens, he strikes, for a blow from a stick
will overcome him.
At sea, those vast wings, of such admirable utility in ascent, are
ill-fitted for skimming the surface of the water. When wetted, they may
over-weight and sink him. And thereupon, woe to the bird! He belongs to
the fishes, he nourishes the mean tribes on which he had relied for his
own behoof; the game eats the hunter, the ensnarer is ensnared.
And yet, what shall he do? His food lies in the waters. He is ever
compelled to draw near them, to return to them, to skim incessantly the
hateful and prolific sea which threatens to engulf him.