230 THE UNIVERSE. 



would dare to do them harm. Almost all the other species 

 flee us ; they alone install themselves securely near us : 

 they are our guests. 



A chimney-swallow, the nest of which is preserved in the 

 Kouen Museum, built its nest in the centre of a foundry be- 

 longing to an esteemed friend of mine, in the vault of a 

 forge in full work, without being alarmed either at the 

 fierceness of the fire, the torrents of smoke, or the continual 

 clang of the hammers. 



In the bird maternal love becomes ingenious in the 

 highest degree. Although the quail and the partridge, 

 like too confident mothers, deposit their young uncovered 

 on the ground, and expose them to the rapacity of every 

 carnivorous animal that passes, other species take infinite 

 precautions to defend them. The king-fisher hollows out a 

 deep and winding underground passage to shelter its young. 

 The magpie, to protect its little ones, constructs a regular 

 casemated citadel, into which it enters, and from which it 

 issues merely by a narrow passage ; only that, in lieu of 

 wood work and earth, the nest is covered with closely in- 

 terlaced branches, which also defend it against the eagles 

 and falcons, the brigands of the air. 



Among the different tribes of the air, only one species, a 

 singular one in all respects, almost as much fish as bird, 

 evades the general law, and does not commit its offspring 

 to any kind of nest ; it is the Patagonian penguin, which 

 lives amid ice, rocks, and waves, and of which the wings 

 are quite unfitted for flying. But we must admit that the 

 love displayed by the parents for their brood makes one at 

 once forgive their idleness and stupidity. 



