. The bird . marck, was born August 1, 1744; diedDecember 20, 1829. His chief work is his History of Invertebrate Animals.—EtienneGeoffroy Saint-Hilaire was born in 1772, and died in 1844. He expounds his theory ofnatural history in tiie Philosophie Anatomique, 2 vols., 1818-20.—Translator. t Alphonse Toussenel, an illustrious French litterateur, born in 1803. The flrat editionof his Le Monde des Oiseaux, Ornithologie Passionelle, was published in 1852.—Translator. THE STUDY OF NATURE. 1? He has wronged himself by saying that, in his noble work, hehas only sought a pretext for a discourse on m
. The bird . marck, was born August 1, 1744; diedDecember 20, 1829. His chief work is his History of Invertebrate Animals.—EtienneGeoffroy Saint-Hilaire was born in 1772, and died in 1844. He expounds his theory ofnatural history in tiie Philosophie Anatomique, 2 vols., 1818-20.—Translator. t Alphonse Toussenel, an illustrious French litterateur, born in 1803. The flrat editionof his Le Monde des Oiseaux, Ornithologie Passionelle, was published in 1852.—Translator. THE STUDY OF NATURE. 1? He has wronged himself by saying that, in his noble work, hehas only sought a pretext for a discourse on man. On the contrary,numerous pages demonstrate that, apart from all analogy, he has lovedand studied the Bird for its own sake. And it is for this reasonthat he has surrounded it with so many legends, with such vivid andprofound personifications. Each bird which Toussenel treats of isnow, and will for ever remain, a person. ■^ ■■■■■ --,/!,.> -■■ ; Nevertheless, the book now before the reader starts from a point ofview which differs in all things from that of our illustrious master. A point of view by no means contraiy, yet symmetricallyopposed, to his. For I, as much as possible, seeking only the bird in the bird,avoid the human analogy. With the exception of two chapters, Ihave written as if only the bird existed, as if man had never been. Man! we have already met with him sufficiently often in otherplaces. Here, on the contrary, we have sought an alihi from the humanworld, from the profound solitude and desolation of ancient days. Man could not have lived without the bird, which alone couldsave him from the insect and the reptile; but the bird had livedwithout man. Man or no man, the eagle had reigned on his Alpine swallow would not the less have performed her yearly frigate bird,* unseen by human eyes, had still hovered over the * The frigate bird, or man-of-war bird [Trachypetes aquila).— Translat
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