THE STUDY OF NATURE. 65 



The storm-beaten mountain relates to you the epopea of earth, its rude 

 dramatic history, and shows its bones in evidence of its truth. But 

 these young children of chance, who spring up on its arid flank, prove 

 that she is still fertile, that her de'bris contain the elements of a new 

 organization, that all death is a life begun. 



So these ruins have never caused us* any sadness. We have con- 

 versed among them freely of destiny, providence, death, the life to 

 come. I, whom age and toil have given a right to die she, whose 

 brow is already bent by the trials of infancy and a wisdom beyond 

 her years, we have not lived the less for a grand inspiration of soul, 

 for the rejuvenescent breath of that much-loved mother, Nature.* 



Sprung from her at so great, a distance from one another, so united 

 in her to-day, we would fain have rendered eternal this rare moment 

 of existence, " have cast anchor on the island of time." And how 

 could we better realize our idea than by this work of tenderness, of 

 universal brotherhood, of adoption of all life ! 



My wife incessantly recalled me to it, enlarging my sentiments of 

 individual tenderness by her facile, bright, emotional interpretation 

 of the spirit of the country and the voices of solitude. 



It was then, among other things, that I learned to understand 

 birds which, like the swallows, sing little, but talk much^ prattling 

 of the fine weather, of the chase, of scanty or abundant food, of 

 their approaching departure ; in fact, of all their affairs. I had 

 listened to them at Nantes in October, at Turin in June. Their 

 September causeries were more intelligible at La Heve. We trans- 

 lated them easily in all their fond vivacity, all their joyousness of 

 youth and good-humour, free from ostentation or satire, in accord 

 with the happy moderation of a bird so free and so wise, which 

 appears not ungratefully to recognize that he has received from God 

 a lot of such signal felicity. 



Alas ! even the swallow is not spared in that senseless warfare 



* 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'ame, de la rajeunissante haleine de cette mere 

 aimee, la Nature." 



