ight hideous by his
masterly imitations of the screaking of a wheel-barrow (regreased at an
early period in self-defence) and the wheezy bark of Beppo, the
superannuated St. Bernard, there could of course be no doubt. There was
none of his kind to compare him with--not even a mate, for "sexual
selection" could not possibly operate in face of so inharmonious a
love-song. His isolation had its parallel in the one white guinea-fowl that
haunted the shrubbery like a ghost, much more silent and placid than it
would have been in society, and its antitype in the hennery, where
individuality of course ran riot among the Brahmas, Dominicas and
Hamburgs--hens that would and would not lay, that would and would not set,
that would and would not scratch up seeds, and presented generally as great
a variety of vagaries as of feathers. So, when we turned our back at last
on lovely Boscobel, itself shut out, as the common phrase goes, "from the
world" by serried ramparts of maple, elm, acacia and catalpa, we knew well
that that enceinte of leafage enclosed many little worlds of its
own--winged microcosms, epicycles of the grand cycle of dateless life which
man in his humility assumes to be merely a subsidiary appendage of his own
orbit.

Birds should be studied seriously. The naturalists will tell us more about
them, and interest us more, than the poets. Mr. Bryant makes fun of the
bobolink, and turns into an aimless whistle the solemn oration on domestic
matters uttered by that small but energetic American to his mate. The
waterfowl he treats more gravely and respectfully, but he still makes it
only a part of the landscape and the theme, without ascribing any
intelligent purpose to its flight. The bird, proceeding steadily and calmly
to its business, may well have confounded its versifier with his fellow the
fowler, and looked upon him, too, as regretting only that it was out of
gunshot. Audubon or Wilson would have noted more sensibly the floating
figure, far above "falling dew," and the earth-bound mortal who was
evidently afraid of rheumatics and calculating whether he could walk home
before dark. The bird, they would have been perfectly aware, was neither
"wandering" nor "lost," and no more in need of the special interposition of
a protecting Providence than they or Mr. Bryant. They would infer its
motives, its point of departure and its destination, the character of the
friends it left behind or sought--whether it was carrying out