the loftiest trees, even the cedar, bent. Torrents of rain dashed
headlong, all was afloat. What became of the poor little nest, exposed
on the ground, with no other shelter than the periwinkle's leaf? It
escaped; for when the sun reappeared, I saw my bird flying in the
purified air, gayer than ever, with his heart full of song. All the
world of wings then hymned the light; but he more loudly than any.
His clarion voice had returned. I saw him beneath my window, his eye
on fire and his breast swollen, intoxicating himself with the same
happiness that made my heart palpitate.
"Tender alliance of souls! Why does it not everywhere exist, between us
and our winged brothers, between man and the universal living nature?"
[Illustration]
[Illustration: CONCLUSION.]
[Illustration]
CONCLUSION.
At the very moment that I am about to pen the conclusion of this book,
our illustrious master arrives from his great autumnal sport. Toussenel
brings me a nightingale.
I had requested him to assist me with his advice, to guide me in
choosing a singing nightingale. He does not write, but he comes; he
does not advise, he looks about, finds, gives, realizes my dream. This,
of a truth, is friendship.
Be welcome, bird, both for the sake of the cherished hand which brings
thee, and for thy own, for thy hallowed muse, the genius which dwells
within thee!
Wilt thou sing readily for me, and, by thy puissance of love and calm,
shed harmony on a heart troubled by the cruel history of men?
It was an event in our family, and we established the poor
artist-prisoner in a window-niche, but enveloped with a curtain; in
such wise that, being both in solitude and yet in society, he might
gradually accustom himself to his new hosts, reconnoitre the locality,
and assure himself that he was under a safe, a peaceful, and benevolent
roof.
No other bird lived in this saloon. Unfortunately, my familiar robin,
which flies freely about my study, penetrated into the apartment.
We had troubled ourselves the less about him, because he saw daily,
without any emotion, canaries, bullfinches, nightingales; but the sight
of the nightingale threw him into an incredible transport of fury.
Passionate and intrepid, without heeding that the object of his hate
was twice his own size, he pounced on the cage with bill and claws; he
would fain have killed its inmate. The nightingale, however, uttered
cries of alarm, and called for help with a hoarse and pitiful voice.
The other, checked by the bars, but clinging with his claws to the
frame of an adjacent picture, raged, hissed, _crackled_ (the popular
word _petillait_ alone expresses his short, sharp cry), piercing him
with his glances. He said, in effect:--
"King of song, what dost thou here? Is it not enough that in the woods
thy imperious and absorbing voice should silence all our lays, hush
our strains into whispers, and singly fill the desert? Yet thou comest
hither to deprive me of the new existence which I have found for
myself, of this artificial grove where I perch all the winter, a grove
whose branches are the shelves of a library, whose leaves are books!
Thou comest to share, to usurp the attention of which I was the object,
the reverie of my master, and my mistress's smile! Woe to thee! I _was_
loved!"
[Illustration]
The robin does, in reality, attain to a very high degree of familiarity
with man. The experience of a long winter proves to me that he much
prefers human society to that of his own kind. In our absence he shares
in the small talk of the birds of the aviary; but as soon as we
arrive, he abandons them, and comes curiously to place himself before
us, remains with us, seems to say, "You are here, then! But where have
you been? And why have you absented yourself so long from home?"
The invasion of the robin, which we soon forgot, was not forgotten, it
appears, by his timorous victim. The unfortunate nightingale fluttered
about ever afterwards with an air of alarm, and nothing could reassure
him.
Care was taken, however, that no one should approach him. His mistress
had charged herself with the necessary attentions. The peculiar mixture
which alone can nourish this ardent centre of life (blood, hemp, and
poppy), was conscientiously prepared. Blood and flesh, these are the
substance; hemp is the herb of intoxication; but the poppy neutralizes
it. The nightingale is the only creature which it is necessary to feed
incessantly with sleep and dreams.
But all was in vain. Two or three days passed in a violent agitation,
and in abstinence through despair. I was melancholy, and filled with
remorse. I, a friend of freedom, had nevertheless a prisoner, and a
prisoner who would not be consoled! It was not without some scruples
that I had formed the idea of procuring a nightingale; for the mere
sake of pleasure, I should never have come to such a decision. I knew
well that the very spectacle of such a captive, deeply sensible of its
captivity, was a permanent source of sorrow. But how should I set him
free? Of all questions, that of slavery is the most difficult; the
tyrant is punished by the impossibility of finding a remedy for it.
My captive, before coming into my possession, had been two years in a
cage, and had neither wings nor the impulse of industry to seek his own
food; but had it been otherwise, he could return no more to the free
birds. In their proud commonwealth, whoever has been a slave, whoever
has languished in a cage and not died of grief, is pitilessly condemned
and put to death.
We should not easily have escaped from this dilemma, if song had not
come to our assistance. A soft, almost monotonous strain, sung at a
distance, especially just before evening, appeared to influence and
win upon him. If we did but look at him, he listened less attentively,
and grew disturbed; but if we turned aside our gaze, he came to the
brink of the cage, stretched out his long, fawn-like neck (of a
charming mouse-like gray), raised every now and then his head, his
body remaining motionless, with a keen inquiring eye. With evident
avidity, he tasted and enjoyed this unexpected pleasure, with grateful
recollection, and delicate and sensitive attention.
This same avidity he felt a minute afterwards for his food. He was fain
to live, he devoured the poppy, forgetfulness.
A woman's songs, Toussenel had told me, are those which affect them
most; not the vivacious aria of a wayward damsel, but a soft, sad
melody. Schubert's "Serenade" had a peculiar influence upon our
nightingale. He seemed to feel and recognize himself in that German
soul, as tender as it was profound.
His voice, however, he did not regain. When transported to my house, he
had begun his December songs. The emotions of the journey, the change
of _locale_ and of persons, the inquietude which he had experienced in
his new condition, and, above all, the ferocious welcome, the robin's
assault, had too deeply moved him. He grew tranquil, asked no more of
us; but the muse, so rudely interrupted, was thenceforth silent, and
did not awake until spring.
Meanwhile, he certainly knew that the person who sang afar off wished
him no evil; he apparently supposed her to be a nightingale of another
form. She might without difficulty approach, and even put her hand in
his cage. He regarded intently what she did, but did not stir.
It became a curious question to me, who had not contracted with him
this musical alliance, to know if he would also accept me. I showed no
indiscreet eagerness, knowing that even a look, at certain moments,
vexes him. For many days, therefore, I kept my attention fixed on the
old books or papers of the fourteenth century, without observing him.
But he, he would examine me very curiously when I was alone. Be it
understood, however, that when his mistress was present, he entirely
forgot me, I was annulled!
Thus he grew accustomed to see me daily without any uneasiness, as an
inoffensive, pacific being, with little of movement or noise about me.
The fire in the grate, and near the fire this peaceable reader, were,
during the absences of the preferred individual, in the still and
almost solitary hours, his objects of contemplation.
I ventured yesterday, being alone, to approach him, to speak to him
as I do to the robin, and he did not grow agitated, he did not appear
disturbed; he listened quietly, with an eye full of softness. I saw
that peace was concluded, and that I was accepted.
This morning I have with my own hand placed the poppy seed in the cage,
and he is not the least alarmed. You will say: "Who gives is welcome."
But I assert that our treaty was signed yesterday, before I had given
him anything, and was perfectly disinterested.
See, then, in less than a month, the most nervous of artists, the
most timid and mistrustful of beings, grows reconciled with the human
species.
A curious proof of the natural union, of the pre-existent alliance
which prevails between us and these creatures of instinct, which we
call _inferior_.
[Illustration]
This alliance, this eternal fact, which our brutality and our ferocious
intelligences have not yet been able to rend asunder, to which these
poor little ones so readily return, to which we shall ourselves
return, when we shall be truly men, is exactly the conclusion this book
has aimed at, and which I was about to write, when the nightingale
entered, and the father with the nightingale.
The bird himself has been, in that facile amnesty which he has granted
to us, his tyrants, my living conclusion.
* * * * *
Those travellers who have been the first to penetrate into lands
hitherto untrodden by man, unanimously report that all animals,
mammals, amphibians, birds, do not shun them, but, on the contrary,
rather approach to regard them with an air of benevolent curiosity, to
which they have responded with musket-shots.
Even to-day, after man has treated them so cruelly, animals, in their
times of peril, never hesitate to draw near him.
The bird's ancient and natural foe is the serpent; the enemy of
quadrupeds is the tiger. And their protector is man.
From the furthest distance that the wild dog smells the scent of the
tiger or the lion, he comes to press close to us.
And so, too, the bird, in the horror which the serpent inspires,
especially when it threatens his callow brood, finds a language of the
most forcible character to implore man's help, and to thank him if he
kills his enemy.
[Illustration]
For this reason the humming-bird loves to nestle near man. And it is
probably from the same motive that the swallows and the storks, in
times fertile in reptiles, have acquired the habit of dwelling among us.
Here an observation becomes essential. We often construe as a sign of
mistrust the bird's flight and his fear of the human hand. This fear
is only too well founded. But even if it did not exist, the bird is
an infinitely nervous and delicate creature, which suffers if simply
touched.
My robin, which belongs to a very robust and friendly race of birds,
which continually draws near us, as near as possible, and which
assuredly has no fear of his mistress, trembles to fall into her hand.
The rustling of his plumes, the derangement of his down, all bristling
when he has been handled, he keenly dislikes. The sight, above
all, of the outstretched hand about to seize him, makes him recoil
instinctively.
When he lingers about in the evening, and does not return into his
cage, he does not refuse to be replaced within it; but sooner than see
himself caught, he turns his back, hides in a crease or fold of the
gown where he well knows he must infallibly be taken.
All this is not mistrust.
* * * * *
The art of domestication will make no progress if it occupies itself
only with the services which tamed animals may render to man.
It ought to proceed in the main from the consideration of the service
which man may render the animals;
Of his duty to initiate all the tenants of this world into a gentler,
more peaceable, and superior society.
* * * * *
In the barbarism in which we are still plunged, we know of only two
conditions for the animal, absolute liberty or absolute slavery; but
there are many forms of demi-servitude which the animals themselves
would willingly accept.
The small Chili falcon (_cernicula_), for example, loves to dwell with
his master. He goes alone on his hunting expeditions, and faithfully
returns every evening with what he has captured, to eat it _en
famille_. He feels the want of being praised by the father, flattered
by the dame, and, above all, caressed by the children.
[Illustration]
Man, formerly protected by the animals, while he was indifferently
armed, has gradually risen into a position to become their protector,
especially since he has had powder, and enjoyed the possibility of
shooting down from a distance the most formidable creatures. He has
rendered birds the essential service of infinitely diminishing the
number of the robbers of the air.
He may render them another, and not a less important one--that of
sheltering at night the innocent species. Night! sleep! complete
abandonment to the most frightful chances! Oh! harshness of Nature! But
she is justified, inasmuch as she has planted here below the far-seeing
and industrious being who shall more and more become for all others a
second providence.
"I know a house on the Indre," says Toussenel, "where the greenhouses,
open at even, receive every honest bird which seeks an asylum against
the dangers of the night, where he who has delayed till late knocks
with his bill in confidence. Content to be immured during the night,
secure in the loyalty of their host, they fly away happy in the
morning, and repay him for his hospitality with the spectacle of their
joy and their unrestricted strains."
* * * * *
I shall exercise great caution in speaking of their domestication,
since my friend, M. Isidore Geoffrey Saint Hilaire, reopens in so
praiseworthy a manner this long-forgotten question.
An allusion will suffice. Antiquity in this special branch has
bequeathed us the admirable patrimony which has supported the human
race: the domestication of the dog, the horse, and the ass; of the
camel, the elephant, the ox, the sheep, the goat, and poultry.
What progress has been made in the last two thousand years? What new
acquisition?
Two only, and these unquestionably trivial: the importation of the
turkey and the China pheasant.
[Illustration]
No direct effort of man has accomplished so much for the welfare of the
globe as the humble toil of the modest auxiliaries of human life.
To descend to that which we so foolishly despise, to the poultry-yard,
when one sees the millions of eggs which the ovens of Egypt hatch, or
with which our Normandy loads the ships and fleets that every year
traverse the Channel, one learns to appreciate how the small agencies
of domestic economy produce the greatest results.
If France did not possess the horse, and some person introduced it,
such a conquest would be of greater benefit to her than the conquest of
the Rhine, of Belgium, of Savoy; the horse alone would be worth three
kingdoms.
But here now is an animal which represents in itself the horse, the
ass, the cow, the goat; which combines all their useful qualities, and
which yields moreover an incomparable wool; a hardy, robust animal,
enduring cold with wonderful vigour. You understand, of course, that
I refer to the lama, which M. Isidore Geoffrey Saint Hilaire exerts
himself, with so laudable a perseverance, to naturalize in France.
Everything seems leagued in his despite: the fine flock at Versailles
has perished through malice; that of the Jardin des Plantes will perish
through the confined area and dampness of the locality.
The conquest of the lama is ten times more important than the conquest
of the Crimea.
* * * * *
But again, this species of transplantation needs a generosity of means,
a combination of precautions, let us say a tenderness of education,
which are rarely found united.
One word here--one small fact--whose bearing is not small.
A great writer, who was not a man of science, Bernardin de Saint
Pierre, had remarked that we should never succeed in transplanting the
animal unless we imported along with him the plant to which he was
especially partial. This observation fell to the ground, like so many
other theories which excite the philosophical smile, and which men of
science name _poetry_.
But it has not been made in vain, for an enlightened amateur had
formed here, in Paris, a collection of living birds. However constant
his attentions, a very rare she-parrot which he had obtained remained
obstinately barren. He ascertained in what kind of plant she made her
nest, and commissioned a person to procure it for him. It could not
be got alive; he received it leafless and branchless; a simple dead
trunk. It mattered not; the bird, in this hollow trunk discovered her
accustomed place, and did not fail to make therein her nest. She laid
eggs, she hatched them, and now her owner has a colony of young ones.
* * * * *
To re-create all the conditions of abode, food, vegetable environment,
the harmonies of every kind which shall deceive the exile into a
forgetfulness of his country, is not only a scientific question, but a
task of ingenious invention.
To determine the limit of slavery, of freedom, of alliance and
collaboration with ourselves, proper for each individual creature, is
one of the gravest subjects which can occupy us.
A new art is this; nor shall you succeed in it without a moral gravity,
a refinement, a delicacy of appreciation which as yet are scarcely
understood, and shall only exist perhaps when Woman undertakes those
scientific studies from which she has hitherto been excluded.
This art supposes a tenderness unlimited in justice and wisdom.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.]
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.
The chief illustration of a book is incontestably the formula in which
it is summed up. Here it is, then, in few words:--
This book has considered the bird _in himself_, and but little in
relation to man.
The bird, born in a much lower condition than man (oviparous, like the
serpent), possesses three advantages over him, which are his special
mission:--
I. _The wing_, _flight_, an unique power, which is the dream of man.
Every other creature is slow. Compared with the falcon or swallow, the
Arab horse is a snail.
II. Flight itself does not appertain solely to the wing, but to an
incomparable power of _respiration and vision_. The bird is peculiarly
the son of air and light.
III. An essentially electrical being, the bird sees, knows, and
foresees earth and sky, the weather, the seasons. Whether through an
intimate relation with the globe, whether through a prodigious memory
of localities and routes, he is always facing eastward, and always
knows his path.
He swoops; he penetrates; he attains what man shall never attain. This
is evident, particularly in his marvellous war against the reptile and
the insect.
Add the marvellous work of continual purification of everything
dangerous and unclean, which some species accomplish. If this war and
this work ceased but for one day, man would disappear from the earth.
This daily victory of the beloved son of light over death, over a
murderous and tenebrous life, is the fitting theme of his _song_, of
that hymn of joy with which the bird salutes each Dawn.
But, besides song, the bird has many other languages. Like man, he
prattles, recites, converses. He and man are the only beings which have
really a language. Man and the bird are the voice of the world.
The bird, with its gift of augury, is ever drawing near to man, who
is ever inflicting injury upon him. He undoubtedly divines, and has a
presentiment of, what he will one day become when he emerges from the
barbarism in which he is now unhappily plunged.
He recognizes in him the creature unique, sanctified, and blessed, who
ought to be the arbiter of all, who should accomplish the destiny of
this globe by one supreme act of good--the union of all life and the
reconciliation of all beings.
This pacific union must after a time be effected by a great art of
education and initiation, which man begins to comprehend.
[Illustration]
Page 64. _Training for flight_ (see also p. 84).--Is it wrong for man,
in his reveries, to beguile himself into a belief that he will one day
be more than man, to attribute to himself wings? Dream or presentiment,
it matters not.
It is certain that a power of flight such as the bird possesses
is truly a _sixth sense_. It would be absurd to see in it only an
auxiliary of touch. (See, among other works, Huber, _Vol des oiseaux
de proie_, 1784).
The wing is so rapid and so infallible only because it is aided by a
visual faculty which has not its equal in all creation.
The bird, we must confess, lives wholly in the air, in the light. If
there be a sublime life, a life of fire, it is this.
Who surveys and descries all earth? Who measures it with his glance and
his wing? Who knows all its paths? And not in any beaten route, but at
the same time in every direction: for where is not the bird's track?
His relations with heat, electricity, and magnetism, all the
imponderable forces, are scarcely known to us; we see them, however, in
his singular meteorological prescience.
If we had seriously studied the matter, we should have had the balloon
for some thousands of years; but even with the balloon, and the balloon
capable of being _steered_, we should still be enormously behind the
bird. To imitate its mechanism, and exactly reproduce its details, is
not to possess the agreement, the _ensemble_, the unity of action,
which moves the whole with so much facility and with such terrible
swiftness.
Let us renounce, for this life at least, these higher gifts, and
confine ourselves to examine the two machines--our own and the
bird's--in those points where they differ least.
The human machine is superior in what is its smallest peculiarity, its
susceptibility of adaptation to the most diverse purposes, and, above
all, in its omnipuissance of the hand.
On the other hand, he has far less unity and centralization. Our
inferior limbs, our thighs, and legs, which are very long, perform
eccentric movements far from the central point of action. Circulation
is very slow; a thing perceptible in those last moments, when the body
is dead at the feet before the heart has ceased to throb.
The bird, almost spherical in form, is certainly the apex, divine and
sublime, of living centralization. We can neither see nor imagine a
higher degree of unity. From his excess of concentration he derives
his great personal force, but it implies his extreme individuality, his
isolation, his social weakness.
The profound, the marvellous solidarity, which is found in the higher
genera of insects, as in the bees and ants, is not discovered among
birds. Flocks of them are common, but true republics are rare.
Family ties are very strong in their influence, such as maternity and
love. Brotherhood, the sympathy of species, the mutual assistance
rendered even by different kinds, are not unknown. Nevertheless,
fraternity is strong among them in the inferior line. The whole heart
of the bird is in his love, in his nest.
There lies his isolation, his feebleness, his dependence; there also
the temptation to seek for himself a defender.
The most exalted of living beings is not the less one of those which
the most eagerly demand protection.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Page 67. _On the life of the bird in the egg._--I draw these details
from the accurate M. Duvernoy. Ovology in our days has become a
science. Yet I know but a few treatises specially devoted to the
bird's egg. The oldest is that of an Abbé Manesse, written in the last
century, very verbose, and not very instructive (the MS. is preserved
in the Museum Library). The same library possesses the German work
of Wirfing and Gunther on nests and eggs; and another, also German,
whose illustrations appear of a superior character, although still
defective. I have seen a part of a new collection of engravings, much
more carefully executed.
Page 74. _Gelatinous and nourishing seas._--Humboldt, in one of his
early works ("Scenes in the Tropics"), was the first, I think, to
authenticate this fact. He attributes it to the prodigious quantity of
medusæ, and other analogous creatures, in a decomposed state in these
waters. If, however, such a cadaverous dissolution really prevailed
there, would it not render the waters fatal to the fish, instead of
nourishing them? Perhaps this phenomenon should be attributed rather to
nascent life than to life extinct, to that first living fermentation in
which the lowest microscopic organizations develop themselves.