146 PURIFICATION. 



by the conditions of atmosphere and temperature ; essentially hygro- 

 S metrical, they are living barometers. The morning's humidity 

 burdens their heavy wings ; the weakest prey at that hour might 

 pass with impunity before them. So great is their subjection to ex- 

 ternal nature, that the American species, perched in uniform ranks on 

 the cocoa-nut branches, follow, as we have said, the exact hour when 

 the leaves fold up, retire to rest long before evening, and only awake 

 when the sun, already high above the horizon, re-opens the leaves of 

 the tree and their white, heavy eyelids. 



These admirable agents of that beneficent chemistry which preserves 

 and balances life here below, labour for us in a thousand places where 

 we ourselves may never penetrate. We clearly discern their presence 

 and their services in our towns ; but no one can measure the full 

 extent of their benefits in those deserts where every breath of the 

 winds is death. In the fathomless forest, in the deep morasses, under 

 the impure shadow of mangoes and mangroves, where ferment the 

 corpses of two worlds, dashed to and fro by the sea, the great purify- 

 ing army seconds and shortens the action both of the waves and the 

 insects. Woe to the inhabited world, if their mysterious and unknown 

 toil ceased but for an instant ! 



In America these public benefactors are protected by the law. 



Egypt does more for them ; she reveres, she loves them. If the 

 ancient worship no longer exists, they receive from men as kindly an 

 hospitality as in the time of Pharaoh. Ask an Egyptian fellah why 

 he allows himself to be infested and deafened by birds ? why he so 

 patiently endures the insolence of the crow posted on his buffalo's 

 horn or his camel's hump, or gathering on the date-palms in flocks 

 and beating down the fruit ? he will answer nothing. To the bird 

 everything is lawful. Older than the Pyramids, he is the ancient 

 inhabitant of the countiy. Man is there only through his instrument- 

 ality ; he could not exist without the persistent toil of the ibis, the 

 stork, the crow, and the vulture. 



Hence arises an universal sympathy for the animal, an instinctive 

 tenderness for all life, which, more than anything else, makes the 



