MAN AND THE BIRD, 
19 
lias raised up that enormous backbone of America, 
the Cordilleras. 
Having arrived at this point, we think our review 
is ended. Patience! The molluscs, which in the 
Southern Seas have created so many islands,—which 
literally pave, as recent soundings have shown, the 
twelve hundred leagues of Ocean separating us from 
America, — these molluscs are qualified by many 
naturalists with the name of embryo insects; so that 
their fertile tribes form, as it were, a dependency of 
the higher race,—candidates, one might say, for the 
rank of Insect. 
This is sublime. The reason that, nevertheless, 
makes me regret the little world of Birds,—those 
charming companions which bore me aloft on their 
wings not long ago,—is not their harmonious concerts, 
is not even the spectacle of their airy and sublime life 
—but because they understood me ! 
We comprehended and we loved one another; we 
interchanged our languages. I spoke for the Bird, 
and the Bird sang for me. 
Having fallen from heaven at the threshold of the 
sombre kingdom, and in the presence of the mute and 
mysterious sons of night, what language am I to 
invent, and what signs of intelligence ? How am I to 
exercise my wits to discover a mode of communicating 
with them ? My voice and gestures do but drive 
them away. There is no glance of recognition in their eyes; no 
emotion visible on their inscrutable mask. Under its warrior- 
