For myself, I had long hailed, with all my heart, the great French Revolution which had occurred in the Natural Sciences—the era of Lamarck and of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,[3] so fertile in method, the mighty restorers of all science. With what happiness I traced their features in their legitimate sons—those ingenious children who have inherited their intellect!
At their head let me name the amiable and original author of the "Monde des Oiseaux,"[4] whom the world has long recognized as one of the most solid, if not also the most amusing, of naturalists. I shall refer to him more than once; but I hasten, on the threshold of my book, to pay this preliminary homage to a truly great observer, who, in all that concerns his own observations, is as weighty, as special, as Wilson or Audubon.
He has wronged himself by saying that, in his noble work, "he has only sought a pretext for a discourse on man." On the contrary, numerous pages demonstrate that, apart from all analogy, he has loved and studied the Bird for its own sake. And it is for this reason that he has surrounded it with so many legends, with such vivid and profound personifications. Each bird which Toussenel treats of is now, and will for ever remain, a person.
Nevertheless, the book now before the reader starts from a point of view which differs in all things from that of our illustrious master.
A point of view by no means contrary, yet symmetrically opposed, 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, I have written as if only the bird existed, as if man had never been.
Man! we have already met with him sufficiently often in other places. Here, on the contrary, we have sought an alibi from the human world, from the profound solitude and desolation of ancient days.