"The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land."—SONG OF SOLOMON ii. 12.
It was on the FIFTH DAY of Creation that the silence was broken by the voice of birds. We are so accustomed to the various cries of animals, the buzzing of insects, and above all to the chirping and twittering and singing of birds, that we can hardly imagine what a voiceless world would be like.
I have heard that far away in New Zealand, travellers who try to make their way through the great tangle of trees and creepers which is called the "Bush," speak of the silence and loneliness of the dense forests as dreadful, and they particularly mention that there is no voice of bird to be heard there. Very different is a place I know, where, although the trees in which they perch are by the roadside, and noisy carts and carriages are coming and going all day long, yet the sparrows overhead keep up such a constant chatter and flutter that once as I passed that way a countryman looked up at the trees and smiled, and said to me, "Plenty of company up there!"
When I told the children this they were much amused, and I am sure they thought it would be very dull never to hear the crowing of a cock or the "quack, quack" of a duck—to say nothing of the soft cooing of doves in the wood, and the sweet, rich notes of the thrushes and blackbirds.
A Frenchman, who has written a very large book all about birds, says that if we were not so accustomed to them we should think a bird flying through the air the most wonderful thing we had ever seen—and I think he is right; but before we speak of these wonderful and beautiful creatures, let us read once more the verses in Genesis which tell us of their birthday, beginning with, "And God said," and ending with, "And the evening and the morning were the fifth day."
We have been speaking of the living creatures which the waters brought forth, and now we must think a little of the "winged fowl," which were made to people the "expansion," and are sometimes called the "fish of the air," as the fishes are called the "birds of the ocean."
Of all the happy living things I think none seem so full of joy as the birds. Their very flight has such buoyancy and gladness in it, and their songs seem always to be telling of happiness. Did you ever watch the sea-gulls flashing and darting about, and then floating quietly above your head, or the swallows in their rapid flight, wheeling round and round, and think how beautiful a thing it is just to see them on the wing, fluttering, soaring, floating in that ocean of air which is their home?
[Illustration: A "WINGED FOWL.">[
Birds are marked off from all other vertebrate animals by the possession of feathers. How wonderful is the wing of a bird; spread wide when it is flying, and folded up like a fan when it is resting, perched upon the branch of a tree, swaying to and fro in the sunshine. But how sad it is to see such a wild, free creature as a lark, or even a thrush or a linnet, pent up in a narrow cage, where there is no room to stretch those wings so strong and light, no swinging branch to rest upon; but all the little prisoner can do is to hop from one perch to another, and beat its wings against the "wiry grate" which shuts it in so hopelessly. I suppose we don't think so much of captive birds as of other captives, because a bird in a cage is such a common sight, and when we hear it sing so sweetly it seems as if it could not be _un_happy; but when we say "as happy as a bird," I doubt if it is of birds in cages we are thinking after all.
The cage may be of gilded wires, or of willow twigs; but both are alike prison bars which keep the birdie back from the liberty to which it was born. At least this was what an English sailor felt when he met a man carrying a cage full of birds. He had been a prisoner himself, away in France, and had many a time longed to be free; and now when he saw the birds in their gilded prison, he was not happy until he had made a bargain and got them, cage and all, to do what he liked with. What was the astonishment of the man from whom he had bought them, when he saw the sailor open the cage door and let them out, one by one, until all the little prisoners were free!