Part 26

Is there not here an idea of property, and of the sacred lights of labour?

Where shall they find securities, and how assure a commencement of public order? It is curious to know in what way the birds have resolved the question.

Two solutions presented themselves. The first was that of association--the organization of a government which should concentrate force, and by the reunion of the weak form a defensive power. The second (but miraculous? impossible? imaginative?) would have been the realization of the aerial city of Aristophanes,--the construction of a dwelling-place guarded by its lightness from the unwieldy brigands of the air, and inaccessible to the approaches of the brigands of the earth--the hunter, the serpent.

These two things--the one difficult, the other apparently impossible--the bird has realized.

At first, association and government. Monarchy is the inferior venture. Just as the apes have a king to conduct each band, several species of birds, especially in dangerous emergencies, appear to follow a chief.

The ant-eaters have a king; so have the birds of paradise. The tyrant, an intrepid little bird of extraordinary audacity, affords his protection to some larger species, which follow and confide in him. It is asserted that the noble hawk, repressing its instincts of prey for certain species, allows the trembling families which trust in his generosity to nestle under and around him.

But the safest fellowship is that between equals. The ostrich, the penguin, a crowd of species, unite for this purpose. Several kinds, associating for the purpose of travel, form, at the moment of emigration, into temporary republics. We know the good understanding, the republican gravity, the perfect tactic of the storks and cranes. Others, smaller in size or less completely armed--in climates, moreover, where nature, cruelly prolific, engenders without pause their formidable foes--place their abodes close together, but do not mingle them, and under a common roof, living in separate partitions, form veritable hives.

The description given by Paterson appeared fabulous; but it has been confirmed by Levaillant, who frequently encountered in Africa, studied, and investigated the strange community. The engraving given in the "Architecture of Birds" enables the reader more readily to comprehend his narration. It is the image of an immense umbrella planted on a tree, and shading under its common roof more than three hundred habitations. "I caused it to be brought to me," says Levaillant, "by several men, who set it on a vehicle. I cut it with an axe, and saw that it was in the main a mass of Booschmannie grass, without any mixture, but so strongly woven together that it was impossible for the rain to penetrate. This is only the framework of the edifice; each bird constructs for himself a separate nest under the common pavilion. The nests occupy only the reverse of the roof; the upper part remains empty, without, however, being useless; for, raised more than the remainder of the pile, it gives to the whole a sufficient inclination, and thus preserves each little habitation. In two words, let the reader figure to himself a great oblique and irregular roof, whose edge in the interior is garnished with nests ranged close to one another, and he will have an exact idea of these singular edifices.

"Each nest is three or four inches in diameter, which is sufficiently large for the bird; but as they are in close contact around the roof, they appear to the eye to form but a single edifice, and are only separated by a small opening which serves as an entry to the nest; and one entrance frequently is common to three nests, one of which is placed at the bottom, and the others on each side. It has 320 cells, and will hold 640 inhabitants, if each contains a couple, which may be doubted. Every time, however, that I have aimed at a swarm, I have killed the same number of males and females."

A laudable example, and worthy of imitation! I wish I could but believe that the fraternity of those poor little ones was a sufficient protection. Their number and their noise may sometimes alarm the enemy, disturb the monster, make him take another direction. But if he should persist; if, strong in his scaly skin, the boa, deaf to their cries, mounts to the attack, invades the city at the time when the fledglings have as yet no wings for flight, their numbers then can but multiply the victims.

There remains the idea of Aristophanes, the aerial city--to isolate it from earth and water, and build in the air.

This is a stroke of genius. And to carry it out is needed the miracle of the two foremost powers in the world--love and fear.

Of the most vivid fear; of that which freezes your blood: if, peering through a hole in a tree, the black flat head of a cold reptile rises and hisses in your face, though you are a man, and a brave man, you tremble.

How much more must the little, feeble, disarmed creature, surprised in its nest, and unable to make use of its wings--how much more must it tremble, and sink panic-stricken!

The invention of the aerial city took place in the land of serpents.

Africa, the realm of monsters, in its horrible arid wastes, sees them cover the earth. Asia, on the burning shore of Bombay, in her forests where the mud ferments, makes them swarm, and fatten, and swell with venom. In the Moluccas they are innumerable.

Thence came the inspiration of the Loxia pensilis (the grosbeak of the Philippines). Such is the name of the great artist.

He chooses a bamboo growing close to the water. To the branches of this tree he delicately suspends some vegetable fibres. He knows beforehand the weight of the nest, and never errs. To the threads he attaches, one by one (not supporting himself on anything, but working in the air) some sufficiently strong grasses. The task is long and fatiguing; it presupposes an infinite amount of patient courage.

The vestibule alone is nothing less than a cylinder of twelve to fifteen feet, which hangs over the water, the opening being below, so that one enters it ascending. The upper extremity may be compared to a gourd or an inflated bag, like a chemist's retort. Sometimes five or six hundred nests of this kind hang to a single tree.

Such is my city of the air; not a dream and a phantasy, like that of Aristophanes, but actual, realized, and answering the three conditions: security both on the side of land and water, and inaccessibility to the robbers of the air through its narrow openings, where one can only enter by ascending with great difficulty.

Now, that which was said to Columbus when he defied his guests to make an egg stand upright, you perhaps will say to the ingenious bird in reference to his suspended city. You will observe, "It was very simple." To which the bird will reply, like Columbus, "Why did you not discover it?"

EDUCATION.

Behold, then, the nest made, and protected by every prudential means which the mother can devise. She rests upon her perfected work, and dreams of the new guest which it shall contain to-morrow.

At this hallowed moment, ought not we, too, to reflect and ask ourselves what it is this mother's heart contains?

A soul? Shall we dare to say that this ingenious architect, this tender mother, has a soul?

Many persons, nevertheless, full of sense and sympathy, will denounce, will reject this very natural idea as a scandalous hypothesis.

Their heart would incline them towards it; their mind leads them to repel it; their mind, or at least their education, the idea which, from an early age, has been impressed upon them.

Beasts are only machines, mechanical automata; or if we think we can detect in them some glimmering rays of sensibility and reason, those are solely the effect of instinct. But what is instinct? A sixth sense--I know not what--which is undefinable, which has been implanted in them, not acquired by themselves--a blind force which acts, constructs, and makes a thousand ingenious things, without their being conscious of them, without their personal activity counting for aught.