158 
MICHELET’S “ L’OISEAU.” 
[Nature and Art, May 1, 18Gf. 
once more upon her treasures. She will press her soft breast 
upon them, feeling' a strange pleasure in the pain, till she 
can hear a faint chirp within them ; she will help her chicks, 
one after another, to break through the shell, and then 
Master Blackcap will have four or five more mouths to 
feed. All this, we are apt to assert, is known only to our 
human selves ; and we complacently repeat the lines of 
Gray,— 
“ ’Tis man alone that joy descries, 
With forward and reverted eyes.” 
But some animals must enjoy pleasures of memory, or else 
the dog would not “ hunt in dreams,” and so let us allow 
that the brooding bird may, in her turn, enjoy pleasures of 
hope. The notes of her mate, too, may convey more than 
a blind thrill of consolation to her, during her long hours 
of watching. We are not clever enough to understand his 
song, any more than we can understand the debates of a 
rookery. But if one observes a great community of rooks 
breaking up in the morning, after caw-caws of every variety 
of intonation, and following their several leaders to the 
right and to the left, whilst others remain at home to guard 
the nests, one can hardly doubt there being many meanings 
in a caw. As for ourselves, we hold that a bird’s language 
consists of much more than a love-note or two, a call-note, 
and an alarm note. Surely the gentle pair before us are 
looking- forward to their joys of hatching and rearing ; and 
we cannot see why they should not be holding some sort of 
converse about them. 
Michelet’s book is an eloquent rhapsody on the bird, its 
place in creation, its beauty and song, and its services to 
man. He naturally begins ab ovo : and our specimen bears 
the heading of his first chapter, “ L’oeuf.” In the nest 
chapter he treats of the first development of the wing. 
At its threshold the artist has placed the unshapely ice- 
bergs of the Antarctic pole, streaked with sharp white 
fantastic outlines ; the barriers of a primaeval world, 
sentinelled by solemn spectres in the form of birds. These 
are the penguins, — bird-fislies, as the author calls them, 
that have stretched their fins into scaly dwarf wings, and 
all to no purpose. In this solitary realm of ice they look 
gigantic and imposing ; but they are poor harmless 
creatures. Further on we see their northern cousins, the 
Great Auks, watched by two sly Arctic foxes. They may 
easily escape, if they are near the sea, and unencumbered ; 
for, though lubberly birds, they are still able-bodied fishes. 
But we should tremble for the fate of a poor mother- 
bird, such as we see on another page, squatting gravely, 
with her young one, just as gravely squatting, between her 
ungainly feet. They both seem to be plunged in thought, 
and would take some time to shuffle off a yard or so. The 
penguins are of various heights, from 1 foot to 4 feet. 
The tallest bear an absurd resemblance to short-legged 
gentlemen in long white waistcoats. One might suppose 
them, says our author, to be near relations of their 
neighbours, the seals ; whom they rival, not by any means 
in intelligence, but at least in good nature. When they 
first beheld man, they looked at him with placid wonder- 
ment, and never thoug’ht of moving away from him. The 
sailors returned the stare, almost as ignorantly, though not 
quite so innocently. At their first glimpse of the penguins, 
ranged on some sandy island, they had taken them for a 
row of charity-school girls in white pinafores. They soon 
taught the poor scholars their first lesson, the fear of man. 
From birds with mere flappers we turn to a bird which is 
nothing but wings. Michelet describes a stormy night on 
the Atlantic. “But the black weather begins to clear,” 
(he continues) ; “ day returns. I see a little speck of blue 
in the sky. Happy and serene region, which has been at 
peace, up above the storm. In this blue speck, at the 
height of ten thousand feet, floats a slight figure upon 
enormous wings. A gull ? no, for the wings are black. 
An eagle ? no, for the bird is small. It is the daring 
voyager that never furls its sails, the Frigate-bird. With a 
body hardly larger than a dunghill cock’s, he stretches out 
his wings over a span of 14 feet. Such a bird, so 
sustained, has nothing to do but to let himself be borne 
upwards. The storm comes, and raises him into the calm 
ether. The poetical metaphor is true of him, and him 
alone, — he sleeps upon the storm.” His bill is powerful, 
but his feet are weak, and partially webbed. He could not 
fight the eagle, but he could defy any pursuit. He can 
cross the Atlantic in a day. Yet he is not without his 
cares. His hard eyes are restless, as he sails about, 
watching for his prey. He can dart upon the fish like 
lightning ; but his feathers will not bear much wetting ; so 
that he cannot plunge under the waves, like the Gannet. 
He has one resource :. he makes the Gannet work for him. 
When the latter (poor Booby, as the seamen call him) rises 
with a herring in his bill, his master often swoops down on 
him, strikes him, makes him let go his hold, and snaps up 
the fish before it falls into the sea. Giacomelli has 
drawn two figures of the Frigate-bird : the one perched on 
a rock, with his wings in a short interval of repose ; the 
other rushing' over a surging moonlit sea, in the full 
“ triumph of the wing-.” 
Michelet very properly rebukes the Frigate-bird as a 
bully ; but he absolutely mouths when he comes to the 
downright bird of prey. One day, says he, in examining 
an anatomical collection, he came across the model of the 
head of a viper. He was scandalized at Nature : she had 
so carefully provided her hideous child with the means of 
killing. There was not only an armoury of pointed and 
poisonous fangs, but a magazine to supply the broken ones. 
Almost equally painful, he continues, are one’s impressions 
when one examines a bird of prey. His beak may strike 
death home at once ; but his talons too often fix a writhing 
victim, which dies with a prolonged agony. The vulture, 
indeed, frequently becomes a respectable member of society, 
for he turns scavenger ; but the eagle, Michelet concludes, 
is only fit to figure upon the banners of emperors, and 
other brigand chieftains. He is a fitter emblem for them 
than they may imagine ; for he is by no means a type of 
true nobility. He whets his iron beak upon the timidest 
and meanest of animals, the hare or even the mouse ; and 
ho drives his young ones abroad, sometimes before they are 
well able to cater for themselves. The raven meets with 
more grace from Michelet. True, he is naturally a bird of 
prey, and he was the emblem of the old Northern war-god. 
But he can make himself at home with the modern 
citizen ; and he displays a fund of grave humour. We 
will pause for the present, after telling a short anecdote of 
him. There was one at Nantes, says Michelet, who used to 
console himself for his broken wing by playing tricks upon 
the dogs. He would sit on his door-step, looking' up and 
down the street. Wretched mangy curs might go by as 
they pleased. But whenever he saw a stately hound, or a 
sleek lap-dog, he would pounce right on the animal’s back, 
and give him just two good digs with his beak. The dog 
would slink off, howling and crestfallen ; and then Balpho 
would resume his seat with an air of satisfaction, as grave 
as ever, and looking quite incapable of engaging in such a 
facetious pastime. 
