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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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.)
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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."
[Illustration]
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.")
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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."
[Illustration]
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.)
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
_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.
[Illustration]
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.):--