[THE NEST.
ARCHITECTURE OF BIRDS. ]
I am writing opposite a graceful collection of nests of French birds, made for me by a friend. I am able thus to appreciate, to verify the descriptions of authors, to improve them, perhaps, if the very limited resources of style can give any just idea of a wholly special art, less analogous to ours than one would be tempted to believe at the first glance. Nothing in this branch of study can supply the place of actual sight of the objects. You must see and touch; you will then perceive that all comparison is false and inaccurate. These things belong to a world apart. Shall we say above, or below the works of man? Neither the one nor the other; but essentially different, and whose supposed similarities (or relations) are only external.
Let us recollect, at the outset, that this charming object, so much more delicate than words can describe, owes everything to art, to skill, to calculation. The materials are generally of the rudest, and not always those which the artist would have preferred. The instruments are very defective. The bird has neither the squirrel's hand nor the beaver's tooth. Having only his bill and his foot (which by no means serves the purpose of a hand), it seems that the nest should be to him an insoluble problem. The specimens now before my eyes are for the most part composed of a tissue or covering of mosses, small flexible branches, or long vegetable filaments; but it is less a weaving than a condensation; a felting of materials, blended, beaten, and welded together with much exertion and perseverance; an act of great labour and energetic operation, for which the bill and the claw would be insufficient. The tool really used is the bird's own body—his breast—with which he presses and kneads the materials until he has rendered them completely pliable, has thoroughly mixed them, and subdued them to the general work.
And within, too, the implement which determines the circular form of the nest is no other than the bird's body. It is by constantly turning himself about, and ramming the wall on every side, that he succeeds in shaping the circle.
Thus, then, his house is his very person, his form, and his immediate effort—I would say, his suffering. The result is only obtained by a constantly repeated pressure of his breast. There is not one of these blades of grass but which, to take and retain the form of a curve, has been a thousand and a thousand times pressed against his bosom, his heart, certainly with much disturbance of the respiration, perhaps with much palpitation.