Song Birds and Water Fowl 



speak, upon the level of the human painter, by 

 using material dyes which, in the form of chlo- 

 rophyll and other coloring matter, are laid be- 

 neath the epidermis. But when she embel- 

 lishes the wing of this gay creature, a brilliant 

 fancy seizes her ; and, with one of those sud- 

 den revelations of consummate ease, before un- 

 dreamed, with which at will she dashes off the 

 most stupendous stroke of genius, as if the very 

 universe were a plaything in her hands, she dips 

 her magic brush, not into the rarest pigments 

 of earthly texture, but into that most subtle 

 fountain of all color — the pure prismatic rays 

 of light streaming direct from heaven. 



Perhaps no judgment of mankind is more un- 

 just and superficial than that which exalts the 

 bee into a paragon of most praiseworthy dili- 

 gence, while it degrades the butterfly into an 

 odious emblem of frivolity and indolence. Al- 

 most the earliest taste of poetry which the in- 

 fant mind enjoys — or suffers — is an indirect in- 

 junction, in "common metre," to admire and 

 emulate this painfully industrious hymenopta; 

 and this early impression is doubtless the foun- 

 dation of its universal and impregnable reputa- 

 tion. It is not at all difficult, however, to show 

 that the life and habits of the calumniated but- 

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