Part 18

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.

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."

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.)

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.

_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.

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.):--

"Wet weather seldom hurts the most unwise, So plain the signs, such prophets are the skies: The wary crane foresees it first, and sails Above the storm, and leaves the lowly vales; The cow looks up, and from afar can find The change of heaven, and snuffs it in the wind. The swallow skims the river's watery face, The frogs renew the croaks of their loquacious race.... Besides, the several sorts of watery fowls, That swim the seas, or haunt the standing pools; The swans that sail along the silver flood, And dive with stretching necks to search their food, Then lave their back with sprinkling dews in vain, And stem the stream to meet the promised rain. The crow, with clamorous cries, the shower demands, And single stalks along the desert sands. The nightly virgin, while her wheel she plies, Foresees the storm impending in the skies. When sparkling lamps their sputtering light advance, And in the sockets oily bubbles dance.

"Then, after showers, 'tis easy to descry, Returning suns, and a serener sky; The stars shine smarter, and the moon adorns, As with unborrowed beams, her sharpened horns; The filmy gossamer now flits no more, Nor halcyons bask on the short sunny shore: Their litter is not tossed by sows unclean, But a blue draughty mist descends upon the plain. And owls, that mark the setting sun, declare A star-light evening, and a morning fair.... Then thrice the ravens rend the liquid air, And croaking notes proclaim the settled fair. Then, round their airy palaces they fly To greet the sun: and seized with secret joy, When storms are over-blown, with food repair To their forsaken nests, and callow care."

[23] The favourite haunt of Jean Jacques Rousseau, on the bank of Lake Leman.

[24] This was written before the annexation of Lombardy to the new Italian kingdom.

[25] It is unnecessary to remind the reader that this is true only of _French_ poets.--_Translator._

[26] The reader must not identify the translator with these opinions, which, however, he did not feel at liberty to modify or omit.

[27] Everybody knows the beautiful story of the "Musician's Duel"--the rivalry between a nightingale and a flute-player--as told by Ford and Crashaw.--_Translator._

[28] Our author refers to the discovery of the anæsthetic properties of ether by an American. It was a surgeon of old Europe, however, that gave the world the far more powerful anæsthetic of _chloroform_.--_Translator._

[29] Compare Byron, in "Don Juan."