. The bird . me. The fire in the grate, and near the fire this peaceable i-eader,were, during the absences of the prefen-ed 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, ho 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: A^Hiogives is welcome.
. The bird . me. The fire in the grate, and near the fire this peaceable i-eader,were, during the absences of the prefen-ed 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, ho 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: A^Hiogives is welcome. But I 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, gi-ows 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 inferior. .^^. This alliance, this eternal fact, which our brutality and ourferocious intelligences have not yet been able to rend asunder, towhich these poor little ones so readily return, to which we shall 302 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 hasgi-anted to us, his tyrants, my living conclusion. Those travellers who have been the first to penetrate into landshitherto 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 cruelly, 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: ., bookauthormich, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, booksubjectbirds
