File:The bird (1869) (14564257198).jpg

Identifier: cu31924090265392 (find matches)
Title: The bird
Year: 1869 (1860s)
Authors: Michelet, Jules, 1798-1874
Subjects: Birds
Publisher: London, New York (etc.) T. Nelson and sons
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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security. In the furthest Africa, at the Cape, the good serpent-eater defends man against the reptiles.Peaceable in disposition and gentle in aspect, he seemsto engage without passion in his dangerous encounters.The gigantic jahiru does not labour less in thedeserts of Guiana, where man as yet ventures notto live. Their perilous savannahs, alternately inun-dated and piarched, a dubious ocean teeming in thesunshine with a horrible population of monsters asyet unknown, possess, as their superior inhabitant,J their intrepid scavenger, a noble bird of battle, /^v\ retaining some relics of the ancient weapons with •^^~) which the primeval birds were very probably pro- ■^ vided in their struggle against the dragon. These are a horn on the head, and a spur on each of the -ndngs.With the first it stirs up, excites, and rouses out of the mud itsenemy. Tlie others serve as a guard and defence ; the reptile C-i^ THE TROPICAL REGIONS. 139
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I /If ll^ wliich hugs and folds it in its embrace, at thesame time phinges into its own body these keendarts, and by its constriction, its own actualexertions, is poniarded. This brave and beautiful bird, last-born ofthe ancient worlds and a surviving witness to forijottenencounters, which is born, lives, and dies in theslime, in the primitive cloaca, has no stain nevei-thelessof his unclean cradle. I know not what moral instinctraises and supports him above it. His grand andformidable voice, which sways the desert, announces fromafar the gravity and dignified heroism of the noble andliaughty purifier. The kamichi (Palamedea cornuta),as he is called, is rare ; he forms a genus of himself,a species which is not divided. Despising the ignoble promiscuousness of the low I «./world in wliich he lives, he lives alone, with but onemate. Undoubtedly, in his career of war, his mate isalso a companion-in-arms. They love, they fight to-gather; they follow the same destiny. Theirs is thatsoldie

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