an independent being, in contradistinction to
the quadruped, or the fish.

With the exception of two chapters, the
book is written as if the bird were alone in
the world, as if man had never existed.
Man! We meet with him often enough
elsewhere. Here, on the contrary, we want
the human race to take an alibi, and leave us
the profound solitude and the wilderness of
ancient days. Man could not have lived
without the bird, who alone was able to
rescue him from the insect and the reptile.
But the bird could have lived without man.
With man existing, or non-existing, the eagle
would equally reign on his Alpine throne;
the swallow would equally perform her
annual migration. Without awaiting a human
audience, the nightingale in the forest would
chant his sublime hymn in all the greater
security. For whom, then? For her whom
he loves, for his nestlings, for the woods, for
himself in short—the most delicate auditor
and the most passionately fond of vocal
music.

Entire races of living creatures, of the
greatest importance and interest, are in the
act of perishing. The primates of ocean,
gentle and affectionate beings on whom nature
has bestowed warm blood and the secretion
of milk—the whales, videlicet—to what
scanty numbers are they reduced? Many
large quadrupeds have ceased to exist on the
globe. Many animals of every kind, without
entirely disappearing, have retreated before
the advance of man. The class of winged
creatures, the highest, the tenderest, and the
most sympathetic with man, is the class
which he now persecutes with the greatest
cruelty. What can be done to protect it?
Reveal the bird as animated by a soul;
demonstrate that it is a person. The bird,
therefore, one sole bird, is the whole of
Michelet's book, tracking the varieties of its
destiny as it accommodates itself to the
thousand conditions of earth, to the thousand
conditions of winged life. Without taking
cognisance of the systems, more or less
ingenious, of transformations, the heart unifies
its object; it does not allow its course to be
checked either by the external diversity of
species nor by the crisis of death which seems
to break the thread. Death presents itself,
in this book, harsh and cruel, in the midst of
life, but merely as a passing accident; life
continues all the same.

The agents of death, the assassin species,
so highly glorified by man, because in them
he recognises his own image, are here placed
very low in the scale, abased to the rank
which reason assigns them. They are the
clumsiest practitioners of the bird's two
arts, architecture and song. Sad instruments
of the fatal passage, they are to be regarded
as the blind ministers of nature in her
hardest necessity. The eagle, therefore, is
dethroned, and the nightingale is advanced to
honour. In the moral crescendo which the
bird gradually attains, the climax and the
supreme point is not a brutal force which is
easily surpassed by man, but a power of art,
sentiment, and aspiration which he has not
yet reached, and which occasionally transports
him beyond the limits of this world to
enjoy a foretaste of a better world to come.

In considering the bird, we ought to begin
with the beginning, and take some little
notice of the Egg. According to the ancient
oracle, the universe itself sprang from an egg.
A more modern axiom is, everything that
lives comes from an egg. All creatures
therefore, have the same origin; but the
diversity of their destiny depends especially
upon the mother. She acts and foresees;
she loves, more or less; she is more or less
maternal. The more she is so, the more the
creature to be born rises in the scale of being;
every degree in existence depends upon the
degree of love. What can the mother do for
her offspring, in the unsettled existence of
the fish? Nothing, except to confide her egg
to the ocean. What can she do, in the world
of insects, where she generally dies as soon
as she has laid her egg? No more than,
before dying, to find a safe spot for it to
hatch and feed in.

With the superior animals, the quadrupeds,
in whom we might expect that the warmth of
their blood would double the force of their
affections, the cares of maternity are
proportionally less. The little one is born
sufficiently formed, clad, exactly like his mother;
a fountain of milk is in store for him. At an
early age, the quadruped knows as much as
he ever will know: many can gallop as soon
as they see the light. The young bird has a
different destiny; he would perish, were he
not beloved. Beloved? Every mother loves,
from the ocean to the starry heavens. By
"beloved" here is meant anxiously cared-for,
surrounded by infinite love, enveloped by the
heat of the maternal magnetism. Even in
the egg, where you see him protected by a
calcareous shell, he is susceptible to
atmospheric influences. Hence the long labour of
incubation, which causes the most restless
of animated beings to submit voluntarily to
a painful captivity.

The little nestling comes to life; but he is
naked. Whilst the little quadruped, well
clothed from his very first birth-day, can
crawl or walk, the young bird (especially in
the superior species), lies naked and helpless
on his back. The foal knows how to suck,
and easily takes his natural nourishment; the
little bird is obliged to wait till his mother
has sought, selected, and prepared his food.
She cannot leave home, and so the father
comes to her aid. Here is a true family
compact: fidelity in love, and the first
dawn of morality. We say nothing of the
prolonged, very special, and very hazardous
education required for the art of flight; still
less of song, so delicate an accomplishment
with artistic birds.