AS THE LABOURER OF MAN. 219 
forms and a bundred legions, differing in arms and character, but 
all endowed with wings, all sharing a seeming privilege of ubi- 
quity. 
To the universal presence of the insect, to its ubiquity of numbers, 
responds that of the bird, of his swiftness, of his wing. The great 
moment is that when the insect, developing itself through the heat, 
meets the bird face to face; the bird multiplied in numbers; the bird 
which, having no milk, must feed at this very moment a numerous 
family with her living prey. Every year the world would be en- 
dangered if the bird could suckle, if its aliment were the work of an 
individual, of a stomach. But see, the noisy, restless brood, by ten, 
twenty, or thirty little bills, cry out for their prey; and the exigency 
is so great, such the maternal ardour to respond to this demand, that the 
desperate tomtit, unable to satisfy its score of children with three 
hundred caterpillars a day, will even invade the nests of other birds 
and pick out the brains of their young. 
From our windows, which opened on the Luxemburg, we observed 
every winter the commencement of this useful war of the bird against 
the insect. We saw it in December inaugurate the year’s labour. 
The honest and respectable household of the thrush, which one might 
call the leaf-lifter (¢ourne-fewilles), did their work by couples; when 
the sunshine followed rain, they visited the pools, and lifted the 
