lit THE SHORES. 
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 century, 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 
Phaéton 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.” 
