Part 13

Thus, the work is imprinted with a force of extraordinary will, of a passion singularly persevering. You see in it especially this fact, that it is not, like our works, prepared from a model, which settles the plan, conducts and regulates the labour. Here the conception is so thoroughly _in_ the artist, the idea so clearly defined, that, without frame or carcase, without preliminary support, the aerial ship is built up piece by piece, and not a hitch disturbs the ensemble. All adjusts itself exactly, symmetrically, in perfect harmony; a thing infinitely difficult in such a deficiency of tools, and in this rude effort of concentration and kneading by the mere pressure of the breast. The mother does not trust to the male bird for all this; but she employs him as her purveyor. He goes in quest of the materials--grasses, mosses, roots, or branches. But when the ship is built, when the interior has to be arranged--the couch, the household furniture--the matter becomes more difficult. Care must be taken that the former be fit to receive an egg peculiarly sensitive to cold, every chilled point of which means for the little one a dead limb. That little one will be born naked. Its stomach, closely folded to the mother's, will not fear the cold; but the back, still bare, will only be warmed by the bed; the mother's precaution and anxiety are, therefore, not easily satisfied. The husband brings her some horse-hair, but it is too hard; it will only serve as an under-stratum, a sort of elastic mattress. He brings hemp, but that is too cold; only the silk or silky fibre of certain plants, wool or cotton, are admissible; or better still, her own feathers, her own down, which she plucks away, and deposits under the nursling. It is interesting to watch the male bird's skilful and furtive search for materials; he is apprehensive lest you should learn, by watching him with your eyes, the track to his nest. Frequently, if you look at him, he will take a different road, to deceive you. A hundred ingenious little thefts respond to the mother's desire. He will follow the sheep to collect a little wool. From the poultry-yard he will gather the dropped feathers of the mother hen. If the farmer's wife quit for a moment her seat in the porch, and leave behind her distaff or ball of thread, he will spy his opportunity, and go off the richer for a thread or two.

Collections of nests are very recent, not numerous, and, as yet, not rich. In that of Rouen, however, which is remarkable for its arrangement; in that of Paris, where many very curious specimens may be examined; you can distinguish already the different industries which create this master-piece of the nest. What is the chronology, the gradual growth of it? Not from one art to another (not from masonry to weaving, for example); but in each separate art, the birds which abandon themselves to it are more or less successful, according to the intelligence of the species, the abundance of material, or the exigency of climate.

Among the burrowing birds, the booby, and the penguin, whose young, as soon as born, spring into the sea, content themselves with hollowing out a rude hole. But the bee-eater, the sea-swallow, which must educate their young, excavate under the ground a dwelling which is admirably proportioned, and not without some geometrical design. They furnish it, moreover, and strew it with soft yielding substances on which the fledgling will be less sensitive to the hardness or freshness of the humid soil.

Among the building-birds, the flamingo, which raises a pyramid of mud to isolate her eggs from the inundated earth, and, while standing erect, hatches them under her long legs, is contented with a rude, rough work. It is, moreover, a stratagem. The true mason is the swallow, which suspends her house to ours.

The marvel of its kind is, perhaps, the wonderful carpentry which the thrush executes. The nest, very much exposed under the moist shelter of the vines, is made externally of moss, and amid the surrounding verdure escapes the eye; but look within: it is an admirable cupola, neat, polished, shining, and not inferior to glass. You may see yourself in it as in a mirror.

The rustic art, appropriate to the forests, of timber-work, joining, wood-carving, is attempted on the lowest scale by the toucan, whose bill, though enormous, is weak and thin: he attacks only worm-eaten trees. The woodpecker, better armed, as we have seen, accomplishes more: he is a true carpenter; until love inspires him, and he becomes a sculptor.

Infinite in varieties and species is the guild of basket-makers and weavers. To note the starting-point, the advance, and the climax of an industry so varied, would be a prolonged labour.

The shore birds plait, to begin with, but very unskilfully. Why should they do better? So warmly clothed by nature with an unctuous and almost impermeable coat of plumage, they have little need to allow for the elements. Their great art is the chase; always lank, and insufficiently fed, the piscivora are controlled by the wants of a craving stomach.

The very elementary weaving of the herons and storks is already outstripped, though to no great extent, by the basket-makers of the woods, the jay, the mocking-bird, the bullfinch. Their more numerous brood impose on them more arduous toil. They lay down rude enough foundations, but thereupon plant a basket of more or less elegant design, a web of roots and dry twigs strongly woven together. The cistole delicately interlaces three reeds or canes, whose leaves, mingled with the web, form a safe and mobile base, undulating as the bird rocks. The tomtit suspends her purse-like cradle to a bough, and trusts to the wind to nurse her progeny.

The canary, the goldfinch, the chaffinch, are skilful _felters_. The latter, restless and suspicious, attaches to the finished nest, with much skill and address, a quantity of white lichens, so that the spotted appearance of the whole completely misleads the seeker, and induces him to take this charming and cunningly disguised nest for an accident of vegetation, a fortuitous and natural object.

Glueing and felting play an important part in the work of the weavers. It would be a mistake to separate these arts too widely. The humming-bird consolidates its little house with the gum of trees. Most birds employ saliva. Some--a strange thing, and a subtle invention of love!--here make use of processes for which their organs are least adapted. An American starling contrives to sew the leaves with its bill, and does so very adroitly.

A few skilful weavers, not satisfied with the bill, bring into play their feet. The chain prepared, they fix it with their feet, while the beak inserts the weft. They become genuine weavers.

In fine, skill never fails them. It is very astonishing, but implements _are_ wanting. They are strangely ill-adapted for the work. Most insects, in comparison, are wonderfully furnished with arms and utensils. But these are true workmen, are born workmen. The bird is so but for a time, through the inspiration of love.

THE COMMUNITIES OF BIRDS.

ESSAYS AT A REPUBLIC.

The more I reflect upon it, the more clearly I perceive that the bird, unlike the insect, is not an industrial animal. He is the poet of nature, the most independent of created beings, with a sublime, an adventurous, but on the whole an ill-protected existence.

Let us penetrate into the wild American forests, and examine the means of safety which these isolated beings invent or possess. Let us compare the bird's resources, the efforts of his genius, with the inventions of his neighbour, man, who inhabits the same localities. The difference does honour to the bird; human invention is always acting on the offensive. While the Indian has fashioned a club and a tomahawk, the bird has built only a nest.

For decency, warmth, and elegant gracefulness, the nest is in every respect superior to the Indian's wigwam or the Negro's hut, which, frequently, in Africa, is nothing but a baobab hollowed by time.

The negro has not yet invented the door; his hut remains open. Against the nocturnal forays of wild beasts, he obstructs the entrance with thorns.

Nor does the bird know how to close his nest. What shall be its defence? A great and terrible question.

He makes the entry narrow and tortuous. If he selects a natural nest, as the wryneck does, in the hollow of a tree, he contracts the opening by skilful masonry. Many, like the pine-pine, build a double nest in two apartments: the mother sits in the alcove; in the vestibule watches the father, an attentive sentinel, to repulse invasion.

What enemies has he to fear! Serpents, men or apes, squirrels! And what do I say? The birds themselves! This people, too, has its robbers. His neighbours sometimes assist a feeble bird to recover his property, to expel by force the unjust usurper. Naturalists assure us that the rooks (a kind of crow) carry further the spirit of justice. They do not pardon a young couple who, to complete their establishment the sooner, rob the materials--"the movables"--of another nest. They assemble in a troop of eight or ten to rend in fragments the nest of the criminals, and completely destroy that house of theft. And punished thieves are driven afar, and forced to begin all over again.

Is there not here an idea of property, and of the sacred lights of labour?

Where shall they find securities, and how assure a commencement of public order? It is curious to know in what way the birds have resolved the question.

Two solutions presented themselves. The first was that of _association_--the organization of a government which should concentrate force, and by the reunion of the weak form a defensive power. The second (but miraculous? impossible? imaginative?) would have been the realization of the _aerial city_ of Aristophanes,--the construction of a dwelling-place guarded by its lightness from the unwieldy brigands of the air, and inaccessible to the approaches of the brigands of the earth--the hunter, the serpent.

These two things--the one difficult, the other apparently impossible--the bird has realized.

At first, association and government. Monarchy is the inferior venture. Just as the apes have a king to conduct each band, several species of birds, especially in dangerous emergencies, appear to follow a chief.

The ant-eaters have a king; so have the birds of paradise. The tyrant, an intrepid little bird of extraordinary audacity, affords his protection to some larger species, which follow and confide in him. It is asserted that the noble hawk, repressing its instincts of prey for certain species, allows the trembling families which trust in his generosity to nestle under and around him.

But the safest fellowship is that between equals. The ostrich, the penguin, a crowd of species, unite for this purpose. Several kinds, associating for the purpose of travel, form, at the moment of emigration, into temporary republics. We know the good understanding, the republican gravity, the perfect tactic of the storks and cranes. Others, smaller in size or less completely armed--in climates, moreover, where nature, cruelly prolific, engenders without pause their formidable foes--place their abodes close together, but do not mingle them, and under a common roof, living in separate partitions, form veritable hives.

The description given by Paterson appeared fabulous; but it has been confirmed by Levaillant, who frequently encountered in Africa, studied, and investigated the strange community. The engraving given in the "Architecture of Birds" enables the reader more readily to comprehend his narration. It is the image of an immense umbrella planted on a tree, and shading under its common roof more than three hundred habitations. "I caused it to be brought to me," says Levaillant, "by several men, who set it on a vehicle. I cut it with an axe, and saw that it was in the main a mass of Booschmannie grass, without any mixture, but so strongly woven together that it was impossible for the rain to penetrate. This is only the framework of the edifice; each bird constructs for himself a separate nest under the common pavilion. The nests occupy only the reverse of the roof; the upper part remains empty, without, however, being useless; for, raised more than the remainder of the pile, it gives to the whole a sufficient inclination, and thus preserves each little habitation. In two words, let the reader figure to himself a great oblique and irregular roof, whose edge in the interior is garnished with nests ranged close to one another, and he will have an exact idea of these singular edifices.

"Each nest is three or four inches in diameter, which is sufficiently large for the bird; but as they are in close contact around the roof, they appear to the eye to form but a single edifice, and are only separated by a small opening which serves as an entry to the nest; and one entrance frequently is common to three nests, one of which is placed at the bottom, and the others on each side. It has 320 cells, and will hold 640 inhabitants, if each contains a couple, which may be doubted. Every time, however, that I have aimed at a swarm, I have killed the same number of males and females."

A laudable example, and worthy of imitation! I wish I could but believe that the fraternity of those poor little ones was a sufficient protection. Their number and their noise may sometimes alarm the enemy, disturb the monster, make him take another direction. But if he should persist; if, strong in his scaly skin, the boa, deaf to their cries, mounts to the attack, invades the city at the time when the fledglings have as yet no wings for flight, their numbers then can but multiply the victims.

There remains the idea of Aristophanes, the _aerial city_--to isolate it from earth and water, and build in the air.

This is a stroke of genius. And to carry it out is needed the miracle of the two foremost powers in the world--love and fear.

Of the most vivid fear; of that which freezes your blood: if, peering through a hole in a tree, the black flat head of a cold reptile rises and hisses in your face, though you are a man, and a brave man, you tremble.

How much more must the little, feeble, disarmed creature, surprised in its nest, and unable to make use of its wings--how much more must it tremble, and sink panic-stricken!

The invention of the aerial city took place in the land of serpents.

Africa, the realm of monsters, in its horrible arid wastes, sees them cover the earth. Asia, on the burning shore of Bombay, in her forests where the mud ferments, makes them swarm, and fatten, and swell with venom. In the Moluccas they are innumerable.

Thence came the inspiration of the _Loxia pensilis_ (the grosbeak of the Philippines). Such is the name of the great artist.

He chooses a bamboo growing close to the water. To the branches of this tree he delicately suspends some vegetable fibres. He knows beforehand the weight of the nest, and never errs. To the threads he attaches, one by one (not supporting himself on anything, but working in the air) some sufficiently strong grasses. The task is long and fatiguing; it presupposes an infinite amount of patient courage.

The vestibule alone is nothing less than a cylinder of twelve to fifteen feet, which hangs over the water, the opening being below, so that one enters it ascending. The upper extremity may be compared to a gourd or an inflated bag, like a chemist's retort. Sometimes five or six hundred nests of this kind hang to a single tree.

Such is my city of the air; not a dream and a phantasy, like that of Aristophanes, but actual, realized, and answering the three conditions: security both on the side of land and water, and inaccessibility to the robbers of the air through its narrow openings, where one can only enter by ascending with great difficulty.

Now, that which was said to Columbus when he defied his guests to make an egg stand upright, you perhaps will say to the ingenious bird in reference to his suspended city. You will observe, "It was very simple." To which the bird will reply, like Columbus, "Why did you not discover it?"

EDUCATION.

Behold, then, the nest made, and protected by every prudential means which the mother can devise. She rests upon her perfected work, and dreams of the new guest which it shall contain to-morrow.

At this hallowed moment, ought not we, too, to reflect and ask ourselves what it is this mother's heart contains?

A soul? Shall we dare to say that this ingenious architect, this tender mother, has _a soul_?

Many persons, nevertheless, full of sense and sympathy, will denounce, will reject this very natural idea as a scandalous hypothesis.

Their heart would incline them towards it; their mind leads them to repel it; their mind, or at least their education, the idea which, from an early age, has been impressed upon them.

Beasts are only machines, mechanical automata; or if we think we can detect in them some glimmering rays of sensibility and reason, those are solely the effect of _instinct_. But what is instinct? A sixth sense--I know not what--which is undefinable, which has been implanted in them, not acquired by themselves--a blind force which acts, constructs, and makes a thousand ingenious things, without their being conscious of them, without their personal activity counting for aught.

If it is so, this instinct would be invariable, and its works immovably regular, which neither time nor circumstances would ever change.

Indifferent minds--distracted, busy about other matters--which have no time for observation, accept this statement upon parole. Why not? At the first glance certain actions and also certain works of animals appear _almost_ regular. To come to a different conclusion, more attention, perhaps, is needed, more time and study, than the question is fairly worth.

Let us adjourn the dispute, and see the object itself. Let us take the humblest example, an individual example; let us appeal to our eyes, our own observation, such as each one of us can make with the most vulgar of the senses.

Perhaps the reader will permit me here to introduce, in all honesty and simpleness, the journal of my canary, Jonquille, as it was written hour by hour from the birth of her first child; a journal of remarkable exactness, and, in short, an authentic register of birth.

* * * * *

"It must be stated, at the outset, that Jonquille was born in a cage, and had not seen how nests were made. As soon as I saw her disturbed, and became aware of her approaching maternity, I frequently opened her door, and allowed her freedom to collect in the room the materials of the bed the little one would stand in need of. She gathered them up, indeed, but without knowing how to employ them. She put them together, and stored them in a corner of her cage. It was very evident that the art of construction was not innate in her, that (exactly like man) the bird does not know until it has learned.

"I gave her the nest ready made, at least the little basket which forms the framework and walls of the structure. Then she made the mattress, and felted the interior coating, but in a very indifferent manner. Afterwards she sat on her egg for sixteen days with a perseverance, a fervour, a maternal devotion which were astonishing, scarcely rising for a few minutes in the day from her fatiguing position, and only when the male was ready to take her place.

"At noon on the sixteenth day the shell was broken in two, and we saw, struggling in the nest, a pair of little wings without feathers, a couple of tiny feet, a something which struggled to rid itself entirely of its envelopment. The body was one large stomach, round as a ball. The mother, with great eyes, outstretched neck, and fluttering wings, from the edge of the basket looked at her child, and looked at me also, as if to say: '_Do not come near!_'

"Except some long down on the wings and head, it was completely naked.

"On this first day she only gave it some drink. It opened, however, already a bill of good proportions.

"From time to time, that it might breathe the more easily, she moved a little, then replaced it under her wing, and rubbed it gently.

"The second day it ate but a very light beakful of chickweed, well prepared, brought in the first place by the father, received by the mother, and transmitted by her with short, quick chirps. In all probability this was given rather for medicinal purposes than as food.

"So long as the nursling has all it requires, the mother permits the male bird to fly to and fro, to go and come, to attend to his occupations. But as soon as it asks for more, the mother, with her sweetest voice, summons the purveyor, who fills his beak, arrives in all haste, and transmits to her the food.

"The fifth day the eyes are less prominent; on the sixth, in the morning, feathers stretch along the wings, and the back grows darker; on the eighth it opens its eyes when called, and begins to stutter: the father ventures to nourish it. The mother takes some relaxation, and frequently absents herself. She often perches on the rim of the nest, and lovingly contemplates her offspring. But the latter stirs, feels the need of movement. Poor mother! in a little while it will escape thee.

"In this first education of the still passive and elementary life, as in the second (and active, that of flight), of which I have already spoken, one fact, evident and clearly discernible at every moment, was, that everything was proportioned with infinite prudence to the condition least foreseen, a condition essentially variable, the nursling's individual strength; the quantity, quality, and mode of preparation of the food, the cares of warmth, friction, cleanliness, were all ordered with a skill and an attention to detail, modified according to circumstance, such as the most delicate and provident woman could hardly have surpassed.

"When I saw her heart throbbing violently, and her eye kindling as she gazed on her precious treasure, I exclaimed: 'Could I do otherwise near the cradle of my son?'"

* * * * *

Ah, if she be a machine, what am I myself? and who will then prove that I am a person? If she has not a soul, who will answer to me for the human soul? To what thereafter shall we trust? And is not all this world a dream, a phantasmagoria, if, in the most individual actions, actions the most plainly reasoned over and calculated upon, I am to conclude there is nothing but a lack of reason, a mechanism, an "automatism," a species of pendulum which sports with life and thought?

Note that our observations were made on a captive, who worked in fatal and predetermined conditions of dwelling-place, nourishment, &c. But how, if her action had been more evidently chosen, willed, and meditated; if all this had transpired in the freedom of the forests, or she had had cause to disquiet herself about many other circumstances which captivity enabled her to ignore? I am thinking especially of the anxiety for security, which, for the bird in savage life, is the foremost of all cares, and which more than anything else exercises and develops her free genius.

This first initiation into life, of which I have just given an example, is followed by what I shall call the _professional education_; every bird has a vocation.