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LIFE, IN ITS HIGHER FORMS. 
CHAPTER XXXII. 
Aves (Birds). 
Everybody loves Birds. The pinafored schoolboy dares 
the awful frown of the pedagogue, and his birch too, that 
he may peer into the brambles and hedgerow-trees, for the 
callow young which he desires to rear. The fair maiden 
teaches her pet canary to hop on her finger and take his 
sugar from her own sweet lips, bestowing on him the kisses 
which many a bigger biped would be proud to share. The 
solitary weaver, gray with premature age induced by cease- 
less toil, hangs his thrush in wicker outside his shattered 
casement, and throws his shuttle more blithely as he listens 
to the mellow notes which carry him back to the fields and 
groves of his boyhood. The weather-beaten sailor greets 
the little land-bird with a hearty welcome, that flutters on 
feeble wing around his ship, clinging to the shrouds and 
stays, and loves the tiny messenger that tells him of his 
approach to his native shore. The world’s care must have 
indurated that heart, indeed, that can hear without a gush 
of emotion the sweet melody of a singing-bird ! 
We must not, however, just now consider the bird as a 
loveable little pet, but look at it physiologically as an 
animal — as one of the meshes in the grand net-work of 
organic existence. We call it a biped, but structurally a 
