TRIUMPH OF THE WING.THE FRIGATE BIRD.

TRIUMPH OF THE WING.

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.

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, aftertraversing 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."

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.Blackis 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 init, 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 poeticmetaphor, 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 himselfen 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?"

The immense and superb apparatus of his wings becomes on landa 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.

Thus, then, this being so well-armed, winged, superior to all others in power of flight and vision as in daring, leads but a trembling and precarious life. He would die of hunger had he not the industry to create for himself a purveyor, whom he cheats of his food. His ignoble resource, alas, is to attack a dull and timorous bird, the noddy, famous as a fisher. The frigate-bird, which is of no larger dimensions, pursues him, strikes him on the neck with his beak, and constrains him to yield up his prey. All these incidents transpire in the air; before the fish can fall, he catches it on its passage.

If this resource fail, he does not shrink from attacking man. "On landing at Ascension Island," says a traveller, "we were assailed by some frigate-birds. One tried to snatch a fish out of my very hand. Others alighted on the copper where the meat was being cooked to carry it off, without taking any notice of the sailors who were around it."

Dampier saw some of these birds, sick, aged, or crippled, perched upon the rocks which seemed their sanatorium, levying contributions upon the young noddies, their vassals, and nourishing themselves on the results of their fishing. But in the vigour of their prime they do not rest on earth; living like the clouds, constantly floating on theirvast wings from one world to the other, patiently awaiting their fortune, and piercing the infinite heaven—the infinite waters—with implacable glance.

The lord of the winged race is he who does not rest. The chief of navigators is he who never reaches hisbourne. Earth and sea are almost equally prohibited to him. He is for ever banished.

Let us envy nothing. No existence is really free here below, no career is sufficiently extensive, no power of flight sufficiently great, no wing can satisfy. The most powerful is but a temporary substitute. The soul waits, demands, and hopes for others:—

"Wings to soar above life:Wings to soar beyond death!"

[Note.—The Frigate-Bird.This interesting bird (Tachypetes) is allied to the cormorants, but differs from them in the possession of a forked tail, short feet, a curved beak, and extraordinary spread of wing. Its plumage is coloured of a rich purple black, but the beak is varied with vermilion red, and the throat with patches of white. It is an inhabitant of the Tropics, where it lives a predatory life, forcing the gannet and the gull to disgorge their prey, and retiring to breed in lonely uninhabited islands.Of its voracity, Dr. Chamberlaine gives a curious illustration. When the fishermen are pursuing their vocation on the sand-banks in Kingston Harbour, Jamaica, the gulls, pelicans, and other sea-birds gather round in swarms, and as the loaded net is hauled ashore, pounce upon their struggling prey. But no sooner does this take place, than the frigate-birds attack them with such furious violence that they are glad to surrender their hard-earned booty to antagonists so formidable.The lightness of his body, his short tarsi, his enormous spread of wing, together with his long, slender, and forked tail, all combine to give this bird a superiority over his tribe, not only in length and swiftness of flight, but also in the capability of maintaining himself on extended pinions in his aerial realm, where, at times, he will soar so high that his figure can scarce be discerned by the spectator in this nether world.—Translator.]

Of its voracity, Dr. Chamberlaine gives a curious illustration. When the fishermen are pursuing their vocation on the sand-banks in Kingston Harbour, Jamaica, the gulls, pelicans, and other sea-birds gather round in swarms, and as the loaded net is hauled ashore, pounce upon their struggling prey. But no sooner does this take place, than the frigate-birds attack them with such furious violence that they are glad to surrender their hard-earned booty to antagonists so formidable.

The lightness of his body, his short tarsi, his enormous spread of wing, together with his long, slender, and forked tail, all combine to give this bird a superiority over his tribe, not only in length and swiftness of flight, but also in the capability of maintaining himself on extended pinions in his aerial realm, where, at times, he will soar so high that his figure can scarce be discerned by the spectator in this nether world.—Translator.]

THE SHORES.

I have frequently observed, in my days of sadness, a being sadder still, which Melancholy might have chosen for its symbol: I mean, the Dreamer of the Marshes, the meditative bird that, in all seasons, standing solitarily before the dull waters, seems, along with his image, to plunge in their mirror his monotonous thought.

His noble ebon-black crest, his pearl-gray mantle—this semi-royal mourning contrasts with his puny body and transparent leanness. When flying, the poor heron displays but a couple of wings; low as is the elevation to which he rises, there is no longer any question of his body—he becomes invisible. An animal truly aerial, to bear so light a frame,the heron has enough, nay, he has a foot too many; he folds under his wing the other; and nearly always his lame figure is thus defined against the sky in a fantastical hieroglyph.

Whoever has lived in history, in the study of fallen races and empires, is tempted to see herein an image of decay. Yonder bird is a great ruined lord, a dethroned king, or I am much mistaken. No creature issues from Nature's hands in so miserable a condition. Therefore I ventured to interrogate this dreamer, and I said to him from a distance the following words, which his most delicate hearing caught exactly:—"My fisher-friend, wouldst thou oblige me by explaining (without abandoning thy present position), why, always so melancholy, thou seemest doubly melancholy to-day? Hath thy prey failed thee? Have the too subtle fish deceived thine eyes? Does the mocking frog defy thee from the bottom of the waters?"

"No; neither fish nor frogs have made sport of the heron. But the heron laughs at himself, despises himself, when he remembers the glory of his noble race, and the bird of the olden times.

"Thou wouldst know wherefore I dream? Ask the Indian chief of the Cherokees, or the Iowas, why for long days he leans his head upon his hand, marking on the tree before him an object which was never there?

"The earth was our empire, the realm of the aquatic birds in the Transitional age when, young and fresh, she emerged from the waters. An era of strife, of battle, but of abundant subsistence. Not a heron then but earned his life. There was need neither to attack nor pursue; the prey hunted the hunter; it whistled, or it croaked on every side. Millions of creatures of undefined natures, bird-frogs, winged fish, infested the uncertain limits of the two elements. What would ye have done, ye feeble mortals, the latest-born of the world? The Bird prepared earth for ye. Colossal encounters were waged against the enormous monster-births of the ooze; the son of air, the bird, attaining the dimensions of an Anak, shrunk not from battle with the giant. If your ungrateful histories have not traced these events, God's grand record narrates them in the depths of the earth, where she deposits the conquered and the conquerors, the monsters exterminated by us, and we who have exterminated them.

"Your lying myths make us contemporaries of a human Hercules. What had his club availed against the plesiosaurus? Who would have met, face to face, the horrible leviathan? The capacity of flight was absolutely needed, the strong intrepid wing which from the loftiest height bore downwards the Herculean bird, the epiornis, an eagle twenty feet in stature, and fifty feet from wing-tip to wing-tip, the implacable hunter, who, lord of three elements, in the air, in the water, and in the deep slime, pursued the dragon with ceaseless hostility.

"Man had perished a hundred times. Through our agency man became possible on a pacified earth. But who will be astonished that these awful wars, which lasted for myriads of years, spent the conquerors, wearied the winged Hercules, transformed him into a feeble Perseus, a pale and lustreless memory of our heroic times?

"Lowered in strength and stature, but not in heart, famished by our very victory, by the disappearance of evil races, by the division of the elements which held our prey concealed at the bottom of the waters, we in our turn were hunted upon the earth, in the forestsand the marsh, by those new-comers who, without our help, had never been. The malice and dexterity of the woodman were fatal to our nests. Like a coward, in the thick of the branches which impede flight and shackle combat, he laid his hand on our young ones. A new war, and a less fortunate one, this, which Homer calls the War of the Pigmies and the Cranes. The lofty intelligence of the cranes, their truly military tactics, have not prevented man their enemy from gaining the advantage by a thousand execrable arts. Time was on his side, and earth, and nature: she moves forward, drying up the earth, exhausting the marshes, narrowing the undefined region where we reigned. It will be with us, in the end, as with the beaver. Many species perish: another century, perhaps, and the heronwill havelived."

The story is too true. Except those species which have taken their side, have abandoned earth, have given themselves up frankly and unreservedly to the liquid element; except the divers, the cormorant, the wise pelican, and a few others, the aquatic tribes seem in a state of decay. Restlessness and sobriety maintain them still. It is this persistent anxiety which has gifted the pelican with a peculiar organ, hollowing for her under her distended beak a movable reservoir, a living sign of economy and of attentive foresight.

Others, skilful voyagers, like the swan, live by constantly changing their abode. But the swan herself, which, though uneatable, is trained by man on account of her beauty and her grace—the swan, formerly so common in Italy, and to which Virgil so constantly refers, is now very rare there. In vain the traveller would seek for those snow-white flotillas which covered with their sails the waters of the Mincio, the marshes of Mantua; which mourned for Phaëton in despite of his sisters, or in their sublime flight, pursuing the stars with harmonious song, repeated to them the name of Varus.[20]

That song, of which all antiquity speaks, is it a fable? These organs of singing, which are so largely developed in the swan, werethey always useless? Did they never disport themselves in happy freedom when enjoying a more genial atmosphere, and spending the greater portion of the year in the mild climates of Greece and Italy? One might be tempted to believe it. The swan, driven back to the north, where his amours secure mystery and repose, has sacrificed his song, has gained the accent of barbarism, or become voiceless. The muse is dead; the bird has survived.

Gregarious, disciplined, full of tactic and resources, the crane, the superior type of intelligence among these species, might contrive, one would fancy, to prosper, and to maintain herself everywhere in her ancient royalty. She has lost two kingdoms, however: France, where she now only appears as a bird of passage; England, where she rarely ventures to deposit her eggs.

The heron, in the days of Aristotle, was full of industry and sagacity. The ancients consulted him in reference to fine weather or tempest, as one of the gravest of augurs. Fallen in the mediæval days, but preserving his beauty, his heavenward flight, he was still aprince, a feudal bird; kings esteemed it kingly sport to hunt him, and considered him a meet quarry for the noble falcon. And so keenly was he hunted, that already, in the reign of Francis I., he had grown rare: that monarch lodged him near his own palace at Fontainebleau, and established there some heronries. Two or three centuries pass, and Buffon can still believe that there are no provinces in France where heronries could not be found. In our own days, Toussenel knows of but one in all the country—at least in its northern districts, in Champagne: a wood between Rheims and Epernay conceals the last asylum where the poor lonely bird still dares to hide his loves.

Lonely! In that lies his condemnation. Less gregarious than the crane, less domesticated than the stork, he seems to have grown harsh towards his progeny, towards the mate whom he loves. His brief rare fits of desire scarcely beguile him for a day from his melancholy. He cares little for life. In captivity he often refuses nourishment, and pines away without complaint and without regret.

The aquatic birds, creatures of great experience, for the most part reflective and learned in two elements, were, at their palmiest epoch,more advanced than many others. They well deserved the care of man. All of them possessed merits of diverse originality. The social instinct of the cranes, and their various imitative talent, rendered them amusing and agreeable. The joviality of the pelican, and his joyous humour; the tenderness of the goose, and his strong faculty of attachment; and, finally, the good disposition of the storks, their piety towards their aged parents, confirmed by so many witnesses, formed between this world and our own firm ties of sympathy, which human levity ought not barbarously to have rent asunder.

[Note.—Heronries in England.The heron, though rare in England, is certainly not so scarce as he seems to be in France, perhaps because it is against the laws of sport to hunt him. In some districts the man who shot a heron would be regarded with as much scorn as if he had killed a fox. He is a very rapacious bird, and it is asserted that, on an average, he will destroy daily half a hundred small roach and dace.There is a fine heronry at Cobham, near Gravesend, in Kent, the seat of the Earl of Darnley. Another, in Great Sowdens Wood, on the Rye road, one mile from Udimere, in Sussex, contains fully four hundred nests. That at Parham, the Hon. R. Curzon's beautiful seat has quite a history.The original birds were brought from Wales to Penshurst, by the Earl of Leicester's steward, in the reign of James I. Thence, some two centuries later, they migrated to Michel Grove, at Angmering. It may be about twenty years since that the Duke of Norfolk caused two or three trees to be felled near their retreat, and the offended birds immediately commenced their migrations, and, in the course of three seasons, all assembled in Parham Woods. Here, in the thick shelter of pine and spruce-fir, are now about fifty-seven nests. (See Knox's "Ornithological Rambles in Kent and Sussex.")—Translator.]

There is a fine heronry at Cobham, near Gravesend, in Kent, the seat of the Earl of Darnley. Another, in Great Sowdens Wood, on the Rye road, one mile from Udimere, in Sussex, contains fully four hundred nests. That at Parham, the Hon. R. Curzon's beautiful seat has quite a history.

The original birds were brought from Wales to Penshurst, by the Earl of Leicester's steward, in the reign of James I. Thence, some two centuries later, they migrated to Michel Grove, at Angmering. It may be about twenty years since that the Duke of Norfolk caused two or three trees to be felled near their retreat, and the offended birds immediately commenced their migrations, and, in the course of three seasons, all assembled in Parham Woods. Here, in the thick shelter of pine and spruce-fir, are now about fifty-seven nests. (See Knox's "Ornithological Rambles in Kent and Sussex.")—Translator.]

THE HERONRIES OF AMERICA.

The decay of the heron is less perceptible in America. He is not so frequently hunted. The solitudes are of vaster dimensions. He can still find, among his beloved marshes, gloomy and almost impenetrable forests. In these shadowy recesses he is more gregarious: ten or fifteen "domestic exiles" establish themselves in the same locality, or at but a short distance from each other. The complete obscurity which the huge cedars throw over the livid waters re-assures and rejoices them. Towards the summit of these trees they build with sticks a wide platform, which they cover with small branches: this is the residence of the family, and the shelter of their loves; there, the eggs are laid and hatched in quiet, the young are taught to fly, and all those paternal lessons are given which will perfect the young fisher. They have little cause to fear the intrusion of man into their peacefulretreats: these they find near the sea-shore, especially in North and South Carolina, in low swampy levels, the haunt of yellow fever. Such morasses—an ancient arm of the sea or a river, an old swamp left behind in the gradual recession of the waters—extend sometimes over a length of five or six miles, and a breadth of one mile. The entry is not very inviting: a barrier of trees confronts you, their trunks perfectly upright and stripped of branches, fifty or sixty feet high, and bare to the very summit, where they mingle and bring together their leafy arches of sombre green, so as to shed upon the waters an ominous twilight. What waters! A seething mass of leaves and débris, where the old stems rise pell-mell one upon another; the whole of a muddy yellow colour, coated on the surface with a green frothy moss. Advance, and the seemingly firm expanse is a quicksand, into which you plunge. A laurel-tree at each step intercepts you; you cannot pass without a painful struggle with their branches, with wrecks of trees, with laurels constantly springing up afresh. Rare gleams of light shoot athwart the darkness, and the silence of death prevails in these terrible regions. Except the melancholy notes of two or three small birds, which you catch at intervals, or the hoarse cry of the heron, all is dumb and desolate; but when the wind rises, from the summit of the trees comes the heron's moans and sighs. If the storm bursts, these great naked cedars, these tall "ammiral's masts," waver and clash together; the forest roars, cries, groans, and imitates with singular exactness the voices of wolves, and bears, and all the beasts of prey.

It was not then without astonishment that, about 1805, the heron, thus securely settled, saw a rare face, a man's, roaming under their cedars, and in the open swamp. One man alone was capable of visiting them in their haunts, a patient indefatigable traveller, no less courageous than peaceable—the friend and the admirer of birds, Alexander Wilson.

If these people had been acquainted with their visitor's character, far from feeling terrified at his appearance, they would undoubtedly have gone forth to meet him, and, with clapping of wings and loud cries, have given him an amicable salute, a fraternal ovation.

In those terrible years when man waged against man the most destructive war that had ever been known, there lived in Scotland a man of peace. A poor Paisley weaver,[21]in his damp dull lodging, he dreamed of nature, of the infinite liberty of the woods, and, above all, of the winged life. A cripple, and condemned to inactivity, his very bondage inspired him with an ecstatic love of light and flight. If he did not take to himself wings, it was because that sublime gift is, upon earth, only the dream and hope of another world.

At first he attempted to gratify his love of birds by the purchase of those illustrated works which pretend to represent them. Clumsy caricatures, which convey but a ridiculous idea of their form, and none at all of their movement; and whatisthe bird deprived of grace and motion? These did not suffice. He took a decisive resolution: to abandon everything, his trade, his country. A new Robinson Crusoe, he was willing, by a voluntary shipwreck, to exile himself to the solitudes of America; where he might see with his own eyes, observe, describe, and paint. He then remembered one little fact: that he neither knew how to draw, to paint, or to write. But this strong and patient man, whom no difficulties could discourage, soon learned to write, and to write an excellent style. A good writer, a minutely accurate artist, with a delicate and certain hand, he seemed, under the guidance of Nature, his mother and mistress, less to learn than to remember.

Provided with these weapons, he plunges into the desert, the forest, and the pestiferous savannahs; becomes the friends of buffaloes and the guest of bears; lives upon wild fruits, under the splendid ceiling of heaven. Wherever he chances to observe a rare bird, he halts, encamps, and is "at home." What, indeed, is to there hurry him onward? He has no house to recall him, and neither wife nor child awaits him. He has a family, it is true: that great family which he observes and describes. And friends, he hasthem, too: those which have not yet learned to mistrust man, and which perch upon his tree, and chatter with him.

And, O birds, you are right; you have there a truly loyal friend, who will secure you many others, who will teach men to understand you, being himself as a bird in thought and heart. One day, perhaps, the traveller, penetrating into your solitudes, and seeing some of you fluttering and sparkling in the sun, will be tempted with the hope of spoil, but will bethink himself of Wilson. Why kill the friends of Wilson? And when this name flashes on his memory, he will lower his gun.

I do not see, let me add, why we should extend to infinity our massacre of birds, or, at least, of these species which are represented in our museums, or in the museums painted by Wilson, and his disciple Audubon, whose truly royal book, exhibiting both race, and the egg, the nest, the forest, the very landscape, is a rivalry with nature.

These great observers have one speciality which separates them from all others. Their feeling is so delicate, so precise, that no generalities could satisfy it; they must always examine the individual. God, I think, knows nothing of our classifications: he created such and such a creature, and gives but little heed to the imaginary lines with which we isolate the species. In the same manner, Wilson knew nothing of birds in the mass; but such an individual, of such an age, with such plumage, in such circumstances. He knows it, has seen it, has seen it again, and again, and he will tell you what it does, what it eats, how it comports itself, and will relate certain adventures, certain anecdotes of its life. "I knew a woodpecker. I have frequently seen a Baltimore." When he uses these expressions, you may wholly trust yourself to him; they mean that he has held close relations with them in a species offriendly and family intimacy. Would that we knew the men with whom we transact business as well as Wilson knew the birdqua, or the heron of the Carolinas!

It is easily understood, and not difficult to imagine, that when thisbird-manreturned among men, he met with none that could comprehend him. His peculiarly novel originality, his marvellous exactness, his unique faculty ofindividualization(the only means of re-making of re-creating the living being), were the chief obstacles to his success. Neither publishers nor public cared for more than noble, lofty, and vague generalities, in faithful observance of Buffon's precept: To generalize is to ennoble; therefore, adopt the word "general."

It required time, and, more than all, it required that this fertile genius should after his death inspire a similar genius, the accurate and patient Audubon, whose colossal work has astonished and subjugated the public, by demonstrating that the true and living in representation of individuality is nobler and more majestic than the forced products of the generalizing art.

Wilson's sweetness of disposition, so unworthily misunderstood, shines forth in his beautiful preface. To some it may appear infantine, but no innocent heart can be otherwise than moved by it.

"On a visit to a friend, I found that his young son, about eight or nine years of age, who had been brought up in the town, but was then living in the country, had just collected, while wandering in the fields, a fine nosegay of wild-flowers of every hue. He presented it to his mother, with the greatest animation, saying: 'Dear mamma, see what beautiful flowers I have gathered! Oh, I could pluck a host of others which grow in our woods, and are still more lovely! Shall I not bring you some more, mamma?' She took the nosegay with a smile of tenderness, silently admired the simple and touching beauty of nature, and said to him, 'Yes, my son.' The child started off on the wings of happiness.

"I saw myself in that child, and was struck with the resemblance.If my native country receive with gracious indulgence the specimens which I now humbly offer it, if it express a desire thatI should bring it some more, my highest ambition will be satisfied. For, as my little friend said, our woods are full of them; I can gather numerous others which are still more beautiful."—(Philadelphia, 1808.)

THE COMBAT.

A lady of our family, who resided in Louisiana, was nursing her young child. Every night her sleep was troubled by the strange sensation of a cold gliding object which sought to draw the milk from her breast. On one occasion she felt the same impression, and it aroused her. She sprang up, summoned her attendants; a light was brought; they search every corner, turn over the bed, and at last discover the frightful nursling—a serpent of great size and of a dangerous species. The horror which she felt instantly dried up her milk.

Levaillant relates that at the Cape of Good Hope, in a circle of friends, and during a quiet conversation, the lady of the house turned pale, and uttered a terrible cry. A serpent had crept up her legs, one of those whose sting is death in a couple of minutes. With great difficulty it was killed.

In India, a French soldier, resuming his knapsack which he had placed on the ground, discovered behind it the dangerous blackserpent, the most venomous of his tribe. He was about to cut it in two when a merciful Hindu interposed, obtained its pardon, and took up the serpent. Stung by it, he died immediately.

Such are the terrors of nature in those formidable climates. But reptiles, now-a-days rare, are not the greatest curse. In all places and at all times it is now the insect. Insects everywhere, and in everything; they possess an infinity of means for attacking you; they walk, swim, glide, fly; they are in the air, and you breathe them. Invisible, they make known their presence by the most painful wounds. Recently, in one of our sea-ports, an official of the customs opened a parcel of papers brought from the colonies a long time previously. A fly furiously darted out of it; it pursued, it stung him; two days afterwards he was a corpse.

The hardiest of men, the buccaneers and filibusters, declared that of all dangers and of all pains they dreaded most the wounds of insects.

Frequently intangible, invisible, irresistible, they are destruction itself under an unavoidable form. How shall you oppose them when they make war upon you in legions? Once, at Barbadoes, the inhabitants observed an immense army of great ants, which, impelled by unknown causes, advanced in a serried column and in the same direction against the houses. To kill them was only trouble lost. There were no means of arresting their progress. At last an ingenious mind fortunately suggested that trains of gunpowder should be laid across their route, and set on fire. These volcanoes terrified them, and the torrent of invasion gradually turned aside.

No mediæval armoury, with all the strange weapons then made use of; no chirurgical implement factory, with the thousands of dreadful instruments invented by modern art, can be compared with the monstrous armour of Tropical insects—their pincers, their nippers, their teeth, their saws, their horns, their augers, all their tools of combat, of death, and of dissection, with which they come armed to the battle, with which they labour, pierce, cut, rend, and finely partition, with skill and dexterity equal to their furious blood-thirstiness.

Our grandest works may not defy the energetic force of theseterrible legions. Give them a ship of the line—what do I say? a town—to devour, and they charge at it with eager joy. In course of time they have excavated under Valentia, near Caraccas, vast abysses and catacombs; the city is now literally suspended. A few individuals of this voracious tribe, unfortunately transported to Rochelle, have set to work to eat up the place, and already more than one edifice trembles upon timbers which are only externally sound, and at the core are rotten.

What would be the fate of a man given up to the insects? One dares not think of it. An unfortunate wretch, while intoxicated, fell down near a carcass. The insects which were devouring the dead could not distinguish from it the living; they took possession of his body, entered at every avenue, filled all the natural cavities. It was impossible to save him. He expired in the midst of frightful convulsions.

In those lands of fire, where the rapidity of decomposition renders every corpse dangerous, where all death threatens life, these terrible accelerators of the disappearance of animal bodies multiplyad infinitum. A corpse scarcely touches the earth before it is seized, attacked, disorganized, dissected. Only the bones are left. Nature, endangered by her own fecundity, invites, stimulates, encourages them by the heat, by the irritation of a world of spices and acrid substances. She makes them furious hunters, insatiable gluttons. The tiger and the lion, compared with the vulture, are mild, sober, moderate creatures; but what is the vulture in the presence of an insect which, in four-and-twenty hours, consumes thrice its own weight?

Greece personified nature under the calm and noble image of Cybele chariot-drawn by lions. India dreams of her god Siva, the divinity of life and death, who incessantly winks his eye, never gazing fixedly, because his single glance would reduce all the worlds to dust. How weak these fancies of men in the presence of the reality! What avail their fictions before the burning centre where, by atoms or by seconds, life dies, is born, blazes, scintillates?Who could sustain the thunderous flash without reeling and without terror?

Just, indeed, and legitimate, is the traveller's hesitancy at the entrance of these fearful forests where Tropical Nature, under forms oftentimes of great beauty, wages her keenest strife. It is the place to pause when one knows that the most formidable defence of the Spanish fortresses is found in a simple grove of cactus, which, planted around them, speedily swarms with serpents. You frequently detect there a strong odour of musk, a nauseous, a sinister odour. It tells you that you are treading on the very dust of the dead: the wreck of animals which possessed that peculiar savour, tiger-cats, and crocodiles, vultures, vipers, and rattle-snakes.

The peril is greatest, perhaps, in those virgin-forests where everything is eloquent of life, where nature's seething crucible eternally boils and bubbles.

Here and there their living shadows thicken with a threefold canopy—the colossal trees, the entwining and interlacing lianas, and herbs of thirty feet high with magnificent leaves. At intervals, these herbs sink into the ancient primeval slime; while, at the height of a hundred feet, the lofty and puissant flowers break through the deep night to display themselves in the burning sun.

In the clearances—the narrow alleys where his rays penetrate—there is a scintillation, an eternal murmuring, of beetles, butterflies,humming-birds, and fly-catchers—gems animated and mobile, which incessantly flutter to and fro. At night—a far more astonishing scene!—begins the fairylike illumination of shining fire-flies, which, by thousands of millions, weave the most fantastic arabesques, dazzling fantasias of light, magical scrolls of fire.

With all this splendour there lurks in the lower levels an obscure race, a hideous and foul world of caymans, of water-serpents. To the trunks of enormous trees the fanciful orchids, the well-loved daughters of fever, the children of a miasmatic atmosphere, quaint vegetable butterflies, suspend themselves in seeming flight. In these murderous solitudes they take their delight, and bathe in the putrid swamps, drink of the death which inspires them with vitality, and, by the caprice of their unheard-of colours, make sport of the intoxication of nature.

Do not yield—defend yourself—let not the fatal charm bow down your sinking head. Awake! arouse! under a hundred forms the danger surrounds you. Yellow fever lurks beneath these flowers, and the blackvomito; reptiles trail at your feet. If you gave way to fatigue, a noiseless army of implacable anatomists would take possession of you, and with a million lancets convert all your tissues into an admirable bit of lacework, a gauze veil, a breath, nothingness.

To this all-absorbing abyss of devouring death, of famished life, what does God oppose to re-assure us? Another abyss, not less famished, thirsty of life, but less implacable to man. I see the Bird, and I breathe!

What! is it in you, ye living flowers, ye winged topazes and sapphires, that I shall find my safety? Your saving vehemence it is, excited to the purification of this superabundant and furious fecundity, that alone renders practicable the entrance to this dangerous realm of faëry. Were you absent, jealous Nature would perform her mysterious labour of solitary fermentation, and not even the most daring savant would venture upon observing her. Who am I here? And how shall I defend myself? What power would be sufficient? Theelephant, the ancient mammoth, would perish defenceless against a million of deadly darts. Who will brave them? The eagle or the condor? No; a people far more mighty—the intrepid and the innumerable legion of fly-catchers.

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