The more I reflect upon it, the more clearly I perceive that the bird, unlike the insect, is not an industrial animal. He is the poet of nature, the most independent of created beings, with a sublime, an adventurous, but on the whole an ill-protected existence.

Let us penetrate into the wild American forests, and examine the means of safety which these isolated beings invent or possess. Let us compare the bird's resources, the efforts of his genius, with the inventions of his neighbour, man, who inhabits the same localities. The difference does honour to the bird; human invention is always acting on the offensive. While the Indian has fashioned a club and a tomahawk, the bird has built only a nest.

For decency, warmth, and elegant gracefulness, the nest is in every respect superior to the Indian's wigwam or the Negro's hut, which, frequently, in Africa, is nothing but a baobab hollowed by time.

The negro has not yet invented the door; his hut remains open. Against the nocturnal forays of wild beasts, he obstructs the entrance with thorns.

Nor does the bird know how to close his nest. What shall be its defence? A great and terrible question.

He makes the entry narrow and tortuous. If he selects a natural nest, as the wryneck does, in the hollow of a tree, he contracts the opening by skilful masonry. Many, like the pine-pine, build a double nest in two apartments: the mother sits in the alcove; in the vestibule watches the father, an attentive sentinel, to repulse invasion.

What enemies has he to fear! Serpents, men or apes, squirrels! And what do I say? The birds themselves! This people, too, has its robbers. His neighbours sometimes assist a feeble bird to recover his property, to expel by force the unjust usurper. Naturalists assure us that the rooks (a kind of crow) carry further the spirit of justice. They do not pardon a young couple who, to complete their establishment the sooner, rob the materials—"the movables"—of another nest. They assemble in a troop of eight or ten to rend in fragments the nest of the criminals, and completely destroy that house of theft. And punished thieves are driven afar, and forced to begin all over again.

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.