114 THE SHOKES. 



and the marsh, by those new-comers who, without our help, had never 

 been. The malice and dexterity of the woodman were fatal to our 

 nests. Like a coward, in the thick of the branches which impede 

 flight and shackle combat, he laid his hand on our young ones. A 

 new war, and a less fortunate one, this, which Homer calls the War 

 of the Pigmies and the Cranes. The lofty intelligence of the cranes, 

 their truly military tactics, have not prevented man their enemy 

 from gaining the advantage by a thousand execrable arts. Time was 

 on his side, and earth, and nature: she moves forward, drying up 

 the earth, exhausting the marshes, narrowing the undefined region 

 where we reigned. It will be with us, in the end, as with the 

 beaver. Many species perish: another centuiy, perhaps, and the 

 heron will have lived." 



The story is too true. Except those species which have taken 

 their side, have abandoned earth, have given themselves up frankly 

 and unreservedly to the liquid element; except the divers, the cor- 

 morant, the wise pelican, and a few others, the aquatic tribes seem in 

 a state of decay. Restlessness and sobriety maintain them still. It 

 is this persistent anxiety which has gifted the pelican with a peculiar 

 organ, hollowing for her under her distended beak a movable 

 reservoir, a living sign of economy and of attentive foresight. 



Others, skilful voyagers, like the swan, live by constantly 

 changing their abode. But the swan herself, which, though un- 

 eatable, is trained by man on account of her beauty and her grace 

 the swan, formerly so common in Italy, and to which Virgil so con- 

 stantly refers, is now very rare there. In vain the traveller would 

 seek for those snow-white flotillas which covered with their sails the 

 waters of the Mincio, the marshes of Mantua ; which mourned for 

 Phaeton in despite of his sisters, or in their sublime flight, pursuing 

 the stars with harmonious song, repeated to them the name of 

 Varus.* 



That song, of which all antiquity speaks, is it a fable? These 

 organs of singing, which are so largely developed in the swan, were 

 * See Virgil, " Georgics." 



