ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES. 323 
Page 157. The useful equilibrium of life and death.—Numerous 
species of birds no longer make a halt in France. One with difficulty 
descries them flying at inaccessible elevations, deploying their wings 
in haste, accelerating their passage, saying, —‘ Pass on, pass on 
quickly! Let us avoid the land of death, the land of destruction !” 
Provence, and many other departments in the south, are barren 
deserts, peopled by every living tribe, and therefore vegetable 
nature is sadly impoverished. You do not interrupt with impunity 
the natural harmonies. The bird levies a tax on the plant, but he is 
its protectoy. 
It is a matter of notoriety that the bustard has almost disappeared 
from Champagne and Provence. The heron has passed away ; the 
stork is rare. As we gradually encroach upon the soil, these species, 
partial to dusty wastes and morasses, depart to seek a livelihood else- 
where. Our progress in one sense is our poverty. In England the 
same fact has been observed. (See the excellent articles on Sport 
and Natural History, translated from Messrs. St. John, Knox, Gosse, 
and others, in the Revue Britannique.) The heath-cock retires before 
the step of the cultivator ; the quail passes into Ireland. The ranks 
of the herons grow daily thinner before the utilitarian improvements 
of the nineteenth century. But to these causes we must add the 
barbarism of man, which so heedlessly destroys a throng of innocent 
species. Nowhere, says M. Pavie, a French traveller, is game more 
timid than in our fields, 
Woe to the ungrateful people! And by this phrase I mean the 
sporting crowd who, unmindful of the numerous benefits we owe to 
animals, have exterminated innocent life. A terrible sentence of the 
Creator weighs upon the tribes of sportsmen,—they can create nothing. 
