. The bird . e aboutme. The fire in the grate, and near the fire this peaceable reader,were, during the absences of the preferred individual, in the still andalmost solitary hours, his objects of contemplation. I ventured yesterday, being alone, to approach him, to speak tohim as I do to the robin, and he did not grow agitated, he did notappear disturbed ; he listened quietly, with an eye full of softness. Isaw that peace was concluded, and that I was accepted. This morning I have with my own hand placed the poppy seedin the cage, and he is not the least alarmed. You will say : Whogives is wel
. The bird . e aboutme. The fire in the grate, and near the fire this peaceable reader,were, during the absences of the preferred individual, in the still andalmost solitary hours, his objects of contemplation. I ventured yesterday, being alone, to approach him, to speak tohim as I do to the robin, and he did not grow agitated, he did notappear disturbed ; he listened quietly, with an eye full of softness. Isaw that peace was concluded, and that I was accepted. This morning I have with my own hand placed the poppy seedin the cage, and he is not the least alarmed. You will say : Whogives is welcome. But 1 assert that our treaty was signed yesterday,before I had given him anything, and was perfectly disinterested. See, then, in less than a month, the most nervous of artists,the most timid and mistrustful of beings, grows reconciled with thehuman species. A curious proof of the natural union, of the pre-existent alliancewhich prevails between us and these creatures of instinct, which wecall This alliance, this eternal fact, which our bnitality and ourferocious intelligences have not yet been able to rend asunder, towhich tliese poor little ones so readily return, to which we shall 802 CONCLUSION. ourselves return, when we shall be truly men, is exactly the con-clusion this book has aimed at, and which I was about to write,when the nightingale entered, and the father with the nightin-gale. The bird himself has been, in that facile amnesty which he hasgranted to us, his tyrants, my living conclusion. Those travellers who have been the first to penetrate into landshithei-to untrodden by man, unanimously report that all animals,mammals, amphibians, birds, do not shun them, but, on the contrary,rather approach to regard them with an air of benevolent curiosity,to which they have responded with musket-shots. Even to-day, after man has treated them so ciuelly, animals,in their times of peril, never hesitate to draw near him. The birds ancient and natural foe is the
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, bookidbird00mi, booksubjectbirds
