314 ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES. 
his great personal force, but it implies his extreme individuality, his 
isolation, his social weakness. 
The profound, the marvellous solidarity, which is found in the 
higher genera of insects, as in the bees and ants, is not discovered 
among birds. Flocks of them are common, but true republics are 
rare. 
Family ties are very strong in their influence, such as maternity 
and love. Brotherhood, the sympathy of species, the mutual assist- 
ance rendered even by different kinds, are not unknown. Never- 
theless, fraternity is strong among them in the inferior line. The 
whole heart of the bird is in his love, in his nest. 
There lies his isolation, his feebleness, his dependence ; there also 
the temptation to seek for himself a defender. 
The most exalted of living beings is not the less one of those 
which the most eagerly demand protection. 
Page 67. On the life of the bird in the egg.—I draw these details 
from the accurate M. Duvernoy. Ovology in our days has become a 
science, Yet I know but a few treatises specially devoted to the bird’s 
egg. The oldest is that of an Abbé Manesse, written in the last cen- 
tury, very verbose, and not very instructive (the MS. is preserved in 
the Museum Library). The same library possesses the German work 
of Wirfing and Gunther on nests and eggs; and another, also German, 
