VALUE or BIEDS TO MAN BUCKLAND. 457 



at dawn from my couch of fern, I heard the approach of the coming 

 day heralded by a chorus of glad bird voices. Never have I experi- 

 enced emotions which have so lastingly impressed my mind as when, 

 in the inexpressible mystery of the darkened forest, with the stars 

 drifting over, I listened to the sublime notes of some feathered 

 psalmist, itself in night invisible. 



The world itself is but an outline sketch; it is the birds which 

 fill in the details and complete the picture. Towered vapors of the 

 summer firmament hang on the wall of the sky against a setting 

 of immutable blue ; the trees are motionless ; the glassy waters of the 

 lake too idle to curve and break upon the shore. Nothing speaks of 

 life or action. Suddenly, hitherto unseen in leafy tracery, a bird 

 rushes out and up into the air, telling the sunshine all its joy. One 

 can almost hear the mechanism start. The world begins to live and 

 move. What artist is there who does not know this? Even when 

 painting either of the two most majestic scenes on the earth — the 

 ocean or the Himalayas — ^lie adds this stimulating power to his 

 canvas. 



To turn from the palette to the pen, what poet is there who has not 

 been inspired by birds? From the background of my memory a 

 thousand instances of such inspiration come leaping forth. Shelley, 

 Coleridge, and Longfellow, to mention three only of our singers, 

 have been each rendered immortal in virtue of the power exerted on 

 their minds by the bird. " To a Skylark," " The Ancient Mariner," 

 and "The Birds of Killingworth " are poems that are imperishable. 



The Mexicans felt the poetry when they looked upon the humming- 

 birds as emblems of the soul, as the Greeks regarded the butterfly, 

 and held that the spirits of their warriors who had died in the de- 

 fense of their religion were transformed into these exquisite creatures 

 in the mansion of the sun. 



Earth holds no joy to the eye more sweet than the sight of one of 

 these living gems as it flits to and fro with the shrillest vibration 

 of swiftly beating wings, hovers for an instant in the shade of a 

 pendulous blossom, shoots out again into the sunshine, darts away 

 after an insect, wheels round and round in sheer exuberance of 

 spirit, returns to sip at the nectarecl cup, then flashes up again, glit- 

 tering with all the colors of the prism, into its home in the air. 



Was all this beauty for no purpose but for the gratification of a 

 passing fashion? Is man constitutionally unable to realize that in 

 the beauty of these feathered jewels there is a value greater than 

 the value that is entered in a ledger? Children gather flowers of 

 the field, and, presently, their fleeting fancy sated, toss them aside 

 to wither and die. But the seeds, the roots, remain. The daisy will 

 bloom another year; the cowslip will stain the meadows yellow as 

 of yore; but these blossoms of the air will never bloom again. 

 Once gone, they are gone forever. 



