desolate, that this characteristic is observed. Life there abounds in
such excess that the colour of the waters is completely changed by
it. They are of an intense olive-green, thick with living matter and
nutriment.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Page 91. _Our Museum._--In speaking of its collections, I may not
forget its valuable library, which now includes that of Cuvier, and
has been enriched by donations from all the physicists of Europe.
I have had occasion to acknowledge very warmly the courtesy of the
conservator, M. Desnoyers, and of M. le Docteur Lemercier, who has
obligingly supplied me with a number of pamphlets and curious memoirs
from his private collection.
Page 94. _Buffon._--I think that now-a-days too readily forget that
this great _generalizer_ has not the less received and recorded a
number of very accurate observations furnished him by men of special
vocations, officers of the royal hunt, gamekeepers, marines, and
persons of every profession.
[Illustration]
Page 96. _The Penguin._--The brother of the auk, but less degraded;
he carries his wings like a veritable bird, though they are only
membranes floating on an evoided breast. The more rarified air of our
northern pole, where he lives, has already expanded his lungs, and the
breast-bone begins to project. The legs, less closely confined to the
body, better maintain its equilibrium, and the port and attitude gain
in confidence. There is here a notable difference between the analogous
products of the two hemispheres.
[Illustration]
Page 103. _The Petrel, the mariner's terror._--The legend of the
petrel gliding upon the waves, around the ship which he appears to
lead to perdition, is of Dutch origin. This is just as it ought to
be. The Dutch, who voyage _en famille_, and carry with them their
wives, their children, even their domestic animals, have been more
susceptible to evil auguries than other navigators. The hardiest of
all, perhaps--true amphibians--they have not the less been anxious and
imaginative, hazarding not only their lives, but their affections, and
exposing to the fantastic chances of the sea the beloved home, a world
of tenderness. That small lumbering bark, which is in truth a floating
house, will nevertheless go, ever rolling across the seas of the North,
the great Arctic Ocean, and the furious Baltic, accomplishing without
pause the most dangerous voyages, as from Amsterdam to Cronstadt. We
laugh at these ugly vessels and their antiquated build, but he who
observes how plenteously they combine the two purposes of store-room
for the cargo and accommodation for the family, can never see them in
the ports of Holland without a lively interest, or without lavishing on
them his good wishes.
[Illustration]
Page 113. _Epiornis._--The remains of this gigantic bird and its
enormous egg may be seen in the Museum. It is computed that its size
was fivefold that of the ostrich. How much we must regret that our rich
collection of fossils, or the major part, lies buried in the drawers
of the Museum for want of room. For thirty or forty thousand francs
a wooden gallery might be constructed, in which the whole could find
opportunities of display.
Meanwhile, we argue as if these vast studies, now in their very
infancy, had already been exhausted. Who knows but that man has only
seen the threshold of the prodigious world of the dead? He has scarcely
scratched the surface of the globe. The deeper explorations to which
he is constrained by the thousand novel needs of art and industry (as
that, for example, of piercing the Alps for a new railway) will open
to science unexpected prospects. Palæontology as yet is built upon
the narrow foundation of a _minimum_ number of facts. If we remember
that the dead--owing to the thousands of years the globe has already
lived--are enormously more numerous than the living, we cannot but
consider this method of reasoning upon a few specimens very audacious.
It is a hundred, nay, a thousand to one, that so many millions of dead,
once disinterred, will convict us of having erred, at least, through
_incomplete enumeration_.
[Illustration]
Page 113. _Man had perished a hundred times._--Here we trace one of the
early causes of the limited confederacy originally existing between
man and the animal--a compact forgotten by our ungrateful pride, and
without which, nevertheless, the existence of man had been impossible.
When the colossal birds whose remains we are constantly exhuming had
prepared for him the globe, had subjugated the crawling, climbing life
which at first predominated--when man came upon the earth to confront
what remained of the reptiles, to confront those new but not less
formidable inhabitants of our planet, the tiger and the lion--he found
on his side the bird, the dog, and the elephant.
At Alexandria may be seen the last few individuals of those giant dogs
which could strangle a lion. It was not through terror that these
formidable animals allied themselves with man, but through natural
sympathy, and their peculiar antipathy to the feline race, the giant
cat (the tiger or lion).
Without the alliance of the dog against beasts of prey, and that of the
bird against serpents and crocodiles (which the bird kills in the very
egg), man had assuredly been lost.
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.
[Illustration]
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.)
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.)
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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]
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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._)
[Illustration]
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.)
[Illustration]
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."
[Illustration]
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.
* * * * *
[Illustration]