The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 32, June, 1860. Various
spark, hidden in the ashes, kept a-light ever since, it had gone hard with us; Nature might have kept her pet, her darling, high, high above us,—almost out of roach of our dull senses.
What is our boasted speech, with its harsh, rude sounds, to their gushing melody? We learn music, certainly, with much pains and care. The bird cannot tell if it be A sharp or B flat, but he sings.
Our old friend, the friend of our childhood, Mr. White of Selborne, (who had attended much to the life and conversation of birds,) says, "Their language is very elliptical; little is said, and much is meant and understood." Something like a lady's letter, is it not?
How wise we might grow, if we could only "the bird-language rightly spell"! In the olden times, we are told, the Caliphs and Viziers always listened to what the birds said about it, before they undertook any new enterprise. I have often thought I heard wise old folk discoursing, when a company of hens were busy on the side-hill, scratching and clucking together. Perchance some day we shall pick up a leaf of that herb which shall open our ears to these now inarticulate sounds.
Why may we not (just for this summer) believe in Transmigrations, and find some elder civilization embodied in this community of birds,—all those lost arts taken wings, not to fly away, but to come flitting and building in our trees, picking crumbs from our door-steps?
Do they say birds are limited? Who are we that set bounds to this direct knowledge, this instinct? Mathematical, constructive, they certainly are. What bold architect has builded so snug, so airy a house,—well concealed, and yet with a good outlook? We make our dwellings conspicuous; they hide their pretty art.
We wiseacres, who stay at home, instead of following the seasons round the globe, should learn the art of making happy homes; yet what housekeeper will not hang her head in shame and despair, to see this nice adaptation of use to wants, shown each year in multitudes of nests? Now, only look at it! always just room enough,—none to spare. First, the four or five eggs lie comfortably in the small round at the bottom of the nest, with room enough for the mother robin to give them the whole warmth of her broad red breast,—her sloping back and wings making a rain-proof roof over her jewels. Then the callow younglings rise a little higher into the wider circle. Next the fledglings brim the cup; at last it runs over; four large clumsy robins flutter to the ground, with much noise, much anxious calling from papa and mamma,—much good advice, no doubt. They are fairly turned out to shift for themselves; with the same wise, unfathomable eyes which have mirrored the round world for so many years, which know all things, say nothing, older than time, lively and quick as to-day; with the same touching melody in their long monotonous call; soon with the same power of wing; next year to build a nest with the same wise economy, each young robin carrying in his own swelling, bulging breast the model of the hollow circle, the cradle of other young robins. So you see it is a nest within a nest,—a whole nest of nests; like Vishnu Sarma's fables, or Scheherazade's stories, you can never find where one leaves off and another begins, they shut so one into the other. No wonder the children and philosophers are they who ask, whether the egg comes from the bird, or the bird from the egg. Yes, it is a Heimskringla, a world-circle, a home-circle, this nest.
You remember that little, old, withered man who used to bring us eggs; the boys, you know, called him Egg Pop. When the thrifty housewife complained of the small size of his ware, he always said,—
"Yes, Marm, they be small; but they be monstrous full."
Yes, the packing of the nest is close; but closer is the packing of the egg. "As full as an egg of meat" is a wise proverb.
Let us look at these first-fruits which the bountiful Spring hangs on our trees.
"To break the eggshell after the meat is out we are taught in our childhood, and practise it all our lives; which, nevertheless, is but a superstitious relict, according to the judgment of Pliny, and the intent hereof was to prevent witch-craft [to keep the fairies out]; for lest witches should draw or prick their names therein, and veneficiously mischief their persons, they broke the shell, as Dalecampius hath observed." This is what Sir Thomas Browne tells us about eggshells. And Dr. Wren adds, "Least they [the witches] perchance might use them for boates to sayle in by night." But I, who have no fear of witches, would not break them,—rather use them, try what an untold variety of forms we may make out of this delicate oval.
By a little skilful turning and reversing, putting on a handle, a lip here, a foot there, always following the sacred oval, we shall get a countless array of pitchers and vases, of perfect finished form, handsome enough to be the oval for a king's name. Should they attempt to copy our rare vases in finest Parian, alabaster, or jasper, their art would fail to hit the delicate tints and smoothness of this fine shell; and then those dots and dashes, careless as put on by a master's hand!
Are not these rare lines? They look to me as wise as hieroglyphics. Who knows what rhyme and reason are written there,—what subtile wisdom rounded into this small curve,—repeated on the breasts and backs of the birds,—their own notes, it may be, photographed on their swelling breasts like the musical notes on the harp-shell,—written in bright, almost audible colors on the petals of flowers,—harmonies, melodies, for ear and eye? Has this language, older than Erse, older than Sanscrit, ever got translated? I am afraid, dear, the key has been turned in the lock, and thrown into the well.
The ornithologists tell us that some birds build nicer nests, sing sweeter songs, than their companions of the same species. Can experience add wisdom to instinct? or is it the right of the elder-born,—the birthright of the young robin who first breaks the shell? Who has rightly looked into these things?
I half remember the story of a beautiful princess who had all imaginable wealth in her stately palace, itself builded up of rare and costly jewels. She had everything that heart could desire,—everything but a roc's egg. Her mind was contracted with sorrow, till she could procure this one ornament more to her splendors. I think it turned out that the palace itself was built within the roc's egg. These birds are immense, and take up three elephants at a time in their powerful talons, (almost as many as Gordon Cumming himself, on a good day's hunt,) and their eggs are like domes.
Now, do not you be like the foolish princess, and desire a roc's egg; it will prove a stone, the egg of a rock, indeed. Be content rather with this ostrich-egg I send you; with your own slender fingers lift the lid;—pretty, is it not, the tea-service I send you? The tidy warblers threw out the emptied shells; one by one I picked them up, and have made cups and saucers, bowls and pitchers for you: a roc's egg never held anything one-half so fine.
You will say I am a fairy, as brother Evelyn says, when I relate to him the fine sights and sounds I have seen and heard in the woods. No, but the little silent people are very good to me.
Let me, then, go on my bird's-egging and tell you one more fact about our fairy, our Humming-Bird. Audubon says "that an all-wise Providence has made this little hero an exception to a rule which prevails almost universally through Nature,—namely, that the smallest species of a tribe are the most prolific. The eagle lays one, sometimes two eggs; the small European wren fifteen; the humming-bird two: and yet this latter is abundantly more numerous in America than the wren in Europe." All on account of his wonderful courage, admirable instinct, or whatever it is that guards and guides him so unerringly.
You see we may well love him whom
Nature herself loves so dearly.
"Ce que Dieu garde est bien gardé."
Ah, Estelle! your bonnie birdie, with his wild whirr, darting back and forth like a weaver's shuttle weaving fine wefts, has got into my head; not "bee-bonneted," but bird-bonneted, I go. Yes, this day shall be given to the king, as our country-folk say, when they go a-pleasuring. I am off with the little wool-gatherers, to see what thorn and brier and fern-stalk and willow-catkin will give me. Good-day! good-day!
Your own
SUSAN, SUSY, SUE.
P. S. "May our friendship never moult a feather!"
CHESS
Schatrenschar, the Persian, who could count the stars one by one, who is known to have been borne, (by the Simorg, the Eternal Fowl,) at midnight, first to the evening