214 THE BIRD 
the insects have avenged the bird. It has become necessary to recall 
in all haste the banished. In the island of Bourbon, for example, a 
price was set on each martin’s head; they disappeared, and then the 
grasshoppers took possession of the island, devouring, extinguishing, 
burning up with harsh acridity all that they did not devour. The 
same thing has occurred in North America with the starling, the pro- 
tector of the maize. The sparrow even, which attacks the grain, but 
also defends it—the thieving, pilfering sparrow, loaded with so many 
insults, and stricken with so many maledictions—it has been seen 
that without him Hungary would perish; that he alone could wage 
the mighty war against the cockchafers and the myriad winged foes 
which reign in the low-lying lands: his banishment has been revoked, 
and the courageous militia hastily recalled which, if not strictly dis- 
ciplined, are not the less the salvation of the country. 
No long time ago, near Rouen, and in the valley of Monville, the. 
crows had for a considerable period been proscribed. The cockchafers, 
accordingly, profited to such an extent—their larve, multipled ad 
infinitum, pushed so far their subterranean works—that an entire 
meadow was pointed out to me as completely withered on the surface; 
every root of grass or herb was eaten up; and all the turf, easily 
detached, could be rolled back on itself just as one raises a 
carpet. 
All toil, all appeals of man to nature, supposes the intelligence of 
the natural order. Such is the order, and such the law: Life has 
around it and within it its enemy—most frequently as its guest—the 
parasite which undermines and cankers it. 
Inert and defenceless life, especially vegetable, deprived of loco- 
motion, would succumb to it but for the stronger support of the inde- 
fatigable enemy of the parasite, the merciless pursuer, the winged 
conqueror of the monsters. 
The war rages without under the Tropics, where they surge up on 
all sides. Within in our climates, where everything is hidden, more 
profound, and more mysterious. 
In the exuberant fecundity of the Torrid Zone, the insects, those 
