Part 5

It is in his sunniest time, his first and richest existence, in his day-dreams of youth, that man has sometimes the good fortune to forget that he is a man, a slave to hard fate, and chained to earth. Behold, yonder, him who flies abroad, who hovers, who dominates over the world, who swims in the sunbeam; he enjoys the ineffable felicity of embracing at a glance an infinity of things which yesterday he could only see one by one. Obscure enigma of detail, suddenly made luminous to him who perceives its unity! To see the world beneath one's self, to embrace, to love it! How divine, how lofty a dream! Do not wake me, I pray you, never wake me! But what is this? Here again are day, uproar, and labour; the harsh iron hammer, the ear-piercing bell with its voice of steel, dethrone and dash me headlong; my wings are rent. Dull earth, I fall to earth; bruised and bent, I return to the plough.

When, at the close of the last century, man formed the daring idea of giving himself up to the winds, of mounting in the air without rudder, or oar, or means of guidance, he proclaimed aloud that at length he had secured his pinions, had eluded nature, and conquered gravitation. Cruel and tragical catastrophes gave the lie to this ambition. He studied the economy of the bird's wing, he undertook to imitate it; rudely enough he counterfeited its inimitable mechanism. We saw with terror, from a column of a hundred feet high, a poor human bird, armed with huge wings, dart into air, wrestle with it, and dash headlong into atoms.

The gloomy and fatal machine, in its laborious complexity, was a sorry imitation of that admirable arm (far superior to the human arm), that system of muscles, which co-operate among themselves in so vigorous and lively a movement. Disjointed and relaxed, the human wing lacked especially that all-powerful muscle which connects the shoulder to the chest (the _humerus_ to the _sternum_), and communicates its impetus to the thunderous flight of the falcon. The instrument acts so directly on the mover, the oar on the rower, and unites with him so perfectly that the martinet, the frigate-bird, sweeps along at the rate of eighty leagues an hour, five or six times swifter than our most rapid railway trains, outstripping the hurricane, and with no rival but the lightning.

But even if our poor imitators had exactly imitated the wing, nothing would have been accomplished. They, then, had copied the form, but not the internal structure. They thought that the bird's power of ascension lay in its flight alone, forgetting the secret auxiliary which nature conceals in the plumage and the bones. The mystery, the true marvel lies in the faculty with which she endows the bird, of rendering itself light or heavy at its will, of admitting more or less of air into its expressly constructed reservoirs. Would it grow light, it inflates its dimension, while diminishing its relative weight; by this means it spontaneously ascends in a medium heavier than itself. To descend or drop, it contracts itself, grows thin and small; cutting through the air which supported and raised it in its former heavy condition. Here lay the error, the cause of man's fatal ignorance. He assumed that the bird was a ship, not a balloon. He imitated the wing only; but the wing, however skilfully imitated, if not conjoined with this internal force, is but a certain means of destruction.

But this faculty, this rapid inhalation or expulsion of air, of swimming with a ballast variable at pleasure, whence does it proceed? From an unique, unheard-of power of respiration. The man who should inhale a similar quantity of air at once would be suffocated. The bird's lung, elastic and powerful, quaffs it, grows full of it, grows intoxicated with vigour and delight, pours it abundantly into its bones, into its aerial cells. Each aspiration is renewed second after second with tremendous rapidity. The blood, ceaselessly vivified with fresh air, supplies each muscle with that inexhaustible energy which no other being possesses, and which belongs only to the elements.

The clumsy image of Antæus regaining strength each time he touched the earth, his mother, does but rudely and weakly render an idea of this reality. The bird does not need to seek the air that he may be reinvigorated by touching it; the air seeks and flows into him--it incessantly kindles within him the burning fires of life.

It is this, and not the wing, which is so marvellous. Take the pinions of the condor, and follow in its track, when, from the summit of the Andes and their Siberian glaciers, it swoops down upon the glowing shore of Peru, traversing in a minute all the temperatures and all the climates of the globe, breathing at one breath the frightful mass of air--scorched, frozen, it matters not. You would reach the earth stricken as by thunder.

The smallest bird in this matter shames the strongest quadruped. Place me, says Toussenel, a chained lion in a balloon, and his harsh roaring will be lost in space. Far more powerful in voice and respiration, the little lark mounts upward, trilling its song, and makes itself heard when it can be seen no longer. Its light and joyous strain, uttered without fatigue, and costing nothing, seems the bliss of an invisible spirit which would fain console the earth.

Strength makes joy. The happiest of beings is the bird, because it feels itself strong beyond the limits of its action; because, cradled, sustained by the breath of heaven, it floats, it rises without effort, like a dream. The boundless strength, the exalted faculty, obscure among inferior beings, in the bird clear and vital, of deriving at will its vigour from the maternal source, of drinking in life at full flood, is a divine intoxication.

The tendency of every human being--a tendency wholly rational, not arrogant, not impious--is to liken itself to Nature, the great Mother, to fashion itself after her image, to crave a share of the unwearied wings with which Eternal Love broods over the world.

Human tradition is fixed in this direction. Man does not wish to be a man, but an angel, a winged deity. The winged genii of Persia suggest the cherubim of Judea. Greece endows her Psyche with wings, and discovers the true name of the soul, #asthma#, _aspiration_. The soul has preserved her pinions; has passed at one flight through the shadowy Middle Age, and constantly increases in heavenly longings. More spotless and more glowing, she gives utterance to a prayer, breathed in the very depths of her nature and her prophetic ardour: "Oh, that I were a bird!" saith man.

Woman never doubts but that her offspring will become an angel. She has seen it so in her dreams.

Dreams or realities? Winged visions, raptures of the night, which we shall weep so bitterly in the morning! If ye really _were_! If, indeed, ye lived! If we had lost some of the causes of our regret! If, from stars to stars, re-united, and launched on an eternal flight, we all performed in companionship a happy pilgrimage through the illimitable goodness!

At times one is apt to believe it. Something whispers us that these dreams are not all dreams, but glimpses of a world of truth, momentary flashes revealed through these lower clouds, certain promises to be hereafter fulfilled, while the pretended reality it is that should be stigmatized as a foul delusion.

THE FIRST FLUTTERINGS OF THE WING.

There is never a man, unlettered, ignorant, exhausted, insensible, who can deny himself a sentiment of reverence, I might almost say of terror, on entering the halls of our Museum of Natural History.

No foreign collection, as far as my knowledge extends, produces this impression.

Others, undoubtedly, as the superb museum of Leyden, are richer in particular branches; but none are more complete, none more harmonious. This sublime harmony is felt instinctively; it imposes and seizes on the mind. The inattentive traveller, the chance visitor, is unwillingly affected; he pauses, and he dreams. In the presence of this vast enigma, of this immense hieroglyph which for the first time is displayed before him, he may consider himself fortunate if he can read a character or spell a letter. How often have different classes of persons, surprised and tormented by such fantastic forms, inquired of us their meaning! A word has set them in the right path, a simple indication charmed them; they have gone away contented, and promising themselves to return. On the other hand, they who traversed this ocean of unknown objects without comprehending them, have departed fatigued and melancholy.

Let us express our wish that an administration so enlightened, so high in the ranks of science, may return to the original constitution of the museum, which appointed _gardiens démonstrateurs_--attendants who were also cicerones--and will only admit as guardians of this treasure men who can understand it, and, on occasion, become its interpreters.

Another wish we dare to form is, that by the side of our renowned naturalists they will place those courageous navigators, those persevering travellers who, by their labours, their fruits, by a hundred times hazarding their lives, have procured for us these costly spoils. Whatever their intrinsic value, it is, perhaps, increased by the heroism and grandeur of heart of these adventurers. This charming colibris,[14] madam, a winged sapphire in which you could see only a useless object of personal decoration, do you know that an Azara[15] or a Lesson[16] has brought it from murderous forests where one breathes nothing but death? This magnificent tiger, whose skin you admire, are you aware that before it could be planted here, there was a necessity that it should be sought after in the jungles, encountered face to face, fired at, struck in the forehead by the intrepid Levaillant?[17] These illustrious travellers, ardent lovers of nature, often without means, often without assistance, have followed it into the deserts, watched and surprised it in its mysterious retreats, voluntarily enduring thirst and hunger and incredible fatigues; never complaining, thinking themselves too well recompensed, full of devotion, of gratitude at each fresh discovery; regretting nothing in such an event, not even the death of La Perouse[18] or Mungo Park,[19] death by shipwreck, or death among the savages.

Bid them live again here in our midst! If their lonely life flowed free from Europe for Europe's benefit, let their images be placed in the centre of the grateful crowd, with a brief exposition of their fortunate discoveries, their sufferings, and their sublime courage. More than one young man shall be moved by the sight of these heroes, and depart to dream enthusiastically of following in their footsteps.

Herein lies the twofold grandeur of the place. Its treasures were sent by heroic men, and they were collected, classified, and harmonized by illustrious physicists, to whom all things flowed as to a legitimate centre, and whom their position, no less than their intellect, induced to accomplish here the centralization of nature.

In the last century, the great movement of the sciences revolved around a man of genius, influential by his rank, his social relations, his fortune--M. the Count de Buffon. All the donations of men of science, travellers, and kings, came to him, and by him were classified in this museum. In our own days a grander spectacle has fixed upon this spot the eager eyes of all the nations of the world, when two mighty men (or rather two systems), Cuvier and Geoffroy, made this their battle-field. All the world enrolled itself on the one side or the other; all took part in the strife, and despatched to the Museum, either in support of or opposition to the experiments, books, animals, or facts previously unknown. Hence these collections, which one might suppose to be dead, are really living; they still throb with the recollections of the fray, are still animated by the lofty minds which invoked all these beings to be the witnesses of their prolific struggle.

It is no fortuitous gathering yonder. It consists of closely connected series, formed and systematically arranged by profound thinkers. Those species which form the most curious transitions between the genera are richly represented. There you may see, far more fully than elsewhere, what Linné and Lamarck have said, that just as our museums gradually grew richer, became more complete, exhibited fewer _lacunæ_, we should be constrained to acknowledge that nature does nothing abruptly, in all things proceeds by gentle and insensible transitions. Wherever we seem to see in her works a bound, a chasm, a sudden and inharmonious interval, let us ascribe the fault to ourselves; that blank is our own ignorance.

Let us pause for a few moments at the solemn passages where life uncertain seems still to oscillate, where Nature appears to question herself, to examine her own volition. "Shall I be fish or mammal?" says the creature. It falters, and remains a fish, but warm-blooded; belongs to the mild race of lamentins and seals. "Shall I be bird or quadruped?" A great question; a perplexed hesitancy--a prolonged and changeful combat. All its various phases are discussed; the diverse solutions of the problems naïvely suggested and realized by fantastic beings like the ornithorhynchus, which has nothing of the bird but the beak; like the poor bat, a tender and innocent animal in its family-circle, but whose undefined form makes it grim-looking and unfortunate. You perceive that nature has sought in it _the wing_, and found only a hideous membranous skin, which nevertheless performs a wing's function:

"I am a bird; see you my wings?"

Yes; but even the wing does not make the bird.

Place yourself towards the centre of the museum, and close to the clock. There you perceive, on your left, the first rudiment of the wing in the penguin of the southern pole, and its brother, the Arctic auk, one degree more developed; scaly winglets, whose glittering feathers rather recall the fish than the bird. On land the creature is feeble; but while earth is difficult for it, air is impossible. Do not complain too warmly. Its prescient mother destines it for the Polar Seas, where it will only need to paddle. She clothes it carefully in a fine coat of fat and an impenetrable covering. She will have it warm among the icebergs. Which is the better means? It seems as if she had hesitated, had wavered. By the side of the booby we see with surprise an essay at quite another genus, yet one not less remarkable as a maternal precaution. I refer to a very rare gorfou--which I have seen in no other museum--attired in the rough skin of a quadruped, resembling a goat's fleece, but more shining, perhaps, in the living animal, and certainly impermeable to water.

To link together the birds which do not fly, we must find the connecting point in the navigator of the desert--the bird-camel, the ostrich, resembling the camel itself in its internal structure. At least, if its imperfect wings cannot raise it above the earth, they assist it powerfully in walking, and endow it with extraordinary swiftness: it is the sail with which it skims its arid African ocean.

Let us return to the penguin, the true starting-point of the series--to the penguin, whose rudimentary pinion cannot be employed as a sail, does not aid it in walking, is only an indication, like a memorial of nature.

She loosens her bonds, she rises with difficulty in a first attempt at flight by means of two strange figures, which appear to us both grotesque and pretentious. The penguin is not of these; a simple, silly creature, you see that it never had the ambition to fly. But here are they who emancipate themselves, who seem in quest of the adornment or the grace of motion. The gorfou may be taken for a penguin which has decided to quit its condition. It assumes a coquettish tuft of plumes, that throws into high relief its ugliness. The shapeless puffin, which seems the very caricature of a caricature, the paroquet, resembles it in its great beak, rudely chipped, but without edge or strength. Tail-less and ill-balanced, it may always be upset by the weight of its large head. It ventures, nevertheless, to flutter about, at the hazard of toppling over. It swoops nobly close to the surface of earth, and is, perhaps, the envy of the penguins and the seals. Sometimes it even risks itself at sea--ill-fated ship, which the lightest breeze will wreck!

It is, however, impossible to deny that the first flight is taken. Birds of various kinds carry on the enterprise more successfully. The rich genus of _divers_ (Brachypteræ), in its species widely different, connects the sailor-birds with the natatores, or swimmers: those, with wings perfected, with a bold and secure flight, accomplish the longest voyages; these, still clothed with the glittering feathers of the penguin, frisk and sport at the bottom of the seas. They want but fins and respiratory organs to become actual fishes. They are alternately masters of both elements, air and water.

TRIUMPH OF THE WING.

THE FRIGATE BIRD.

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, after traversing 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. _Black_ is 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 in it, 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 poetic metaphor, 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 himself _en 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.