• BIRDS OF THE ROCKS. 175 



just now reached the hither confine of the 

 ancient domain of the birds. A mere outcrop 

 here, a quarry there, with now and then a rail- 

 way-cutting or a mining-drift or shaft, can 

 afford no more than casual glimpses of what is 

 pictured in the rocks. With Palaospiza as 

 the initial, or rather the closing sketch, what if 

 we could thumb the pages back through all 

 the forms to Archczopteryx and beyond, should 

 we not have a volume of almost weirdly unique 

 impressions ! I have imagined that we should, 

 in fact, find a long series of editions of the 

 same volume, amended, remodelled, revised, 

 but ever showing the same great development 

 purpose. The owl was before Minerva, music 

 was before Pan, beauty was before Venus, 

 love was before the woman was made for 

 Adam ; the spirit of God walked in the dawn. 

 The labors of A. Milne-Edwards have, to 

 my mind, opened mines of rich suggestion to 

 the poet as well as the philosopher and scien- 

 tist, and I am sure that there is as much stim- 

 ulus for the imagination as there is food for 

 the mere reason in the discoveries of Prof. 

 Marsh. And yet I cannot join the group who 

 regard science as the basis of future poetry. 

 It is not science, but the atmosphere of sug- 

 gestion that stirs the pages of science, that is 

 generative of poetry. If genius cannot see 

 past the hard, dry fossils of to-day, far back 

 into the living by-gone and catch those tints 

 that are faded forever from sea and land, then 

 genius fails at the cheapest test. It is a func- 

 tion of science to restore the lost head and 

 breast bones to Archceopteryx, but it is the 

 privilege of the poet to restore the colors to its 

 feathers and to " flood its throat wirh song." 



