love's mkinie. 53 



taint from their own, and Icuve behind them, diffused 

 among thousands on. earth, the happiness tliey never 

 hoped, for themselves, in the skies ; and the other, capable 

 onl}" of a\arice, hatred, and shame, who in their lives are 

 the companions of the swine, and leave in deatli nothing 

 but food for the worm and the vulture. 



62. Now I have first traced for you the relations of the 

 creature we are examinino- to those beneath it and above, 

 to the bat and to the falcon. Uut you will find that it 

 lias still others to entirely another world. As you watch 

 it glance and skim over the surface of the waters, has it 

 never struck you what relation it bears to the creatures 

 that glance and glide under their surface % Fly-catchers, 

 some of them, also, — fly-catchers in the same manner, 

 with wide mouth ; while in motion the bird almost ex- 

 actly combines the dart of the trout with the dash of the 

 dolphin, to the rounded forehead and projecting muzzle 

 of which its own bullet head and bill exactly correspond. 

 In its plunge, if you watch it bathing, you may see it dip 

 its breast just as much under the water as a porpoise 

 shows its back above. You can only rightly describe the 

 bird bv the resemblances, and images of what it seems 

 to have changed from, — then adding the fantastic and 

 beautiful contrast of the unimaginable chano^e. It is 

 an owl that has been trained by the Graces. It is a 

 bat that loves the morning lio^ht. It is the aerial reflec- 

 tion of a dolphin. It is the. tender domestication of a 

 tri)ut. 



