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Cornugaya Directory 05
Page 05
In the trees that line one of the main streets and fashionable drives
leading out of Washington city, and less than half a mile from the
boundary, I have counted the nests of five different species at one
time, and that without any very close scrutiny of the foliage, while
in many acres of woodland, half a mile off, I searched in vain for a
single nest. Among the five that interested me most was that of a blue
grossbeak. Here this bird, which, according to Audubon's observations,
in Louisiana is shy and recluse, affecting remote marshes and the
borders of large ponds of stagnant water, had placed its nest in the
lowest twig of the lowest branch of a large sycamore, immediately over
a great thoroughfare, and so near the ground that a person standing in
a cart or sitting on a horse could have reached it with his hand. The
nest was composed mainly of fragments of newspaper and stalks of
grass, and, though so low, was remarkably well concealed by one of the
peculiar clusters of twigs and leaves which characterize this tree.
The nest contained young when I discovered it, and though the parent
birds were much annoyed by my loitering about beneath the tree, they
paid little attention to the stream of vehicles that was constantly
passing. It is a wonder to me when the birds could have built it, for
they are much shyer when building than at other times. No doubt they
worked mostly in the morning, having the early hours all to
themselves.
Professor Max Muller admits that we share with the lower animals
what he calls an emotional language, and continues that we may call
their interjections and imitations language if we like, as we speak
of the language of the eyes or the eloquence of mute nature, but he
warns us against mistaking metaphor for fact. It is indeed mere
metaphor to talk of the eloquence of mute nature, or the language of
winds and waves. There is no intercommunion of mind with mind by
means of a covenanted symbol; but it is only an apparent, not a
real, metaphor to say that two pairs of eyes have spoken when they
have signalled to one another something which they both understand.
A schoolboy at home for the holidays wants another plate of pudding,
and does not like to apply officially for more. He catches the
servant's eye and looks at the pudding; the servant understands,
takes his plate without a word, and gets him some. Is it metaphor
to say that the boy asked the servant to do this, or is it not
rather pedantry to insist on the letter of a bond and deny its
spirit, by denying that language passed, on the ground that the
symbols covenanted upon and assented to by both were uttered and
received by eyes and not by mouth and ears? When the lady drank to
the gentleman only with her eyes, and he pledged with his, was there
no conversation because there was neither noun nor verb? Eyes are
verbs, and glasses of wine are good nouns enough as between those
who understand one another. Whether the ideas underlying them are
expressed and conveyed by eyeage or by tonguage is a detail that
matters nothing.
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