[STORM AND WINTER.
MIGRATIONS. ]
One of Nature's confidants, a sacred soul, as simple as profound, the poet Virgil, saw in the bird, as the ancient Italian wisdom had seen in it, an augur and a prophet of the changes of the skies:—
"Nul, sans être averti, n'éprouva les orages—
La grue, avec effroi, s'élançant des vallées,
Fuit ces noires vapeurs de la terre exhalées—
L'hirondelle en volant effleure le rivage;
Tremblante pour ses œufs, la fourmi déménage.
Des lugubres corbeaux les noires légions
Fendent l'air, qui frémit sous leurs longs bataillons—
Vois les oiseaux de mer, et ceux que les prairies
Nourrissent près des eaux sur des rives fleuries.
De leur séjour humide on les voit s'approcher,
Offrir leur tête aux flots qui battent le rocher,
Promener sur les eaux leur troupe vagabonde,
Se plonger dans leur sein, reparaître sur l'onde,
S'y replonger encore, et, par cent jeux divers,
Annoncer les torrents suspendus dans les airs.
Seule, errante à pas lents sur l'aride rivage,
La corneille enrouée appelle aussi l'orage.
Le soir, la jeune fille, en tournant son fuseau,
Tire encore de sa lampe un présage nouveau,
Lorsque la mèche en feu, dont la clarté s'émousse,
Se couvre en petillant de noirs flocons de mousse.
Mais la sécurité reparaît à son tour—
L'alcyon ne vient plus sur l'humide rivage,
Aux tiédeurs du soleil étaler son plumage—
L'air s'éclaircit enfin; du sommet des montagnes,
Le brouillard affaissé descend dans les campagnes,
Et le triste hibou, le soir, au haut des toits,
En longs gémissements ne traîne plus sa voix.
Les corbeaux même, instruits de la fin de l'orage,
Folâtrent à l'envi parmi l'épais feuillage,
Et, d'un gosier moins rauque, annonçant les beaux jours,
Vont revoir dans leurs nids le fruit de leurs amours."
"The Georgics," translated by Delille.[22]
A being eminently electrical, the bird is more en rapport than any other with numerous meteorological phenomena of heat and magnetism, whose secrets neither our senses nor our appreciation can arrive at. He perceives them in their birth, in their early beginnings, even before they manifest themselves. He possesses, as it were, a kind of physical prescience. What more natural than that man, whose perception is much slower, and who does not recognize them until after the event, should interrogate this instructive precursor which announces them? This is the principle of auguries. And there is no truer wisdom than this pretended "folly of antiquity."
Meteorology, especially, may derive from hence a great advantage. It will possess the surest means. And already it has found a guide in the foresight of the birds. Would to Heaven that Napoleon, in September 1811, had taken note of the premature migration of the birds of the North! From the storks and the cranes he might have secured the most trustworthy information. In their precocious departure, he might have divined the imminency of a severe and terrible winter. They hastened towards the South, and he—he remained at Moscow!
In the midst of the ocean, the weary bird which reposes for a night on the vessel's mast, beguiled afar from his route by this moving asylum, recovers it, nevertheless, without difficulty. So complete is his sympathy with the globe, so exactly does he know the true realm of light, that, on the following morning, he commits himself to the breeze without hesitation; the briefest consultation with himself suffices. He chooses, on the immense abyss, uniform and without other path than the vessel's track, the exact course which will lead him whither he wishes to go. There, not as upon land, exists no local observation, no landmark, no guide; the currents of the atmosphere alone, in sympathy with those of water—perhaps, also, some invisible magnetic currents—pilot this hardy voyager.
How strange a science! Not only does the swallow in Europe know that the insect which fails him there awaits him elsewhere, and goes in quest of it, travelling upon the meridian; but in the same latitude, and under the same climates, the loriot of the United States understands that the cherry is ripe in France, and departs without hesitation to gather his harvest of our fruits.