DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11636#0337
AND LOWER EGYPT. 307
abandon them to a strange mother, whose hopes
she has had the barbarity to annihilate ; the only
one, in fine, which nature has deprived of the
happiness of rearing her brood, and of lavishing
on them those tender cares which, in our woods,
are observed in these little winged communities;
the cuckow, I say, is too dissimilar from its habits,
which form an exception in the history of animals,
to a bird whose manners possess nothing but what
is highly interesting. The houhou is not a solitary
bird : they go in pairs, and the attachment which
unites them appears durable ; she sits on her eggs
and rears her brood. It docs not go to seek for
the thick shades of the forests, it takes pleasure
in places inhabited. It does not dread the neigh-
bourhood of man; and modest in its plumage,
from the grave tone of its voice, and from the
gentleness of its manners, it employs itself in ren-
dering him services, by continually hunting those
insects which devour the harvests; a new proof
that brilliancy and noise are not always the com-
panions of utility. A difference in their manners
equally characteristic, whatever may be, in other
respects, the outward resemblance, separates very
distinctly two species of birds, which have only
some slight similarity in form, and even this si-
milarity abundantly remote, as the houhou has the
nail of the posterior claw bending inward, straight
and lengthened, like that of the lark; whereas
x 2 this
abandon them to a strange mother, whose hopes
she has had the barbarity to annihilate ; the only
one, in fine, which nature has deprived of the
happiness of rearing her brood, and of lavishing
on them those tender cares which, in our woods,
are observed in these little winged communities;
the cuckow, I say, is too dissimilar from its habits,
which form an exception in the history of animals,
to a bird whose manners possess nothing but what
is highly interesting. The houhou is not a solitary
bird : they go in pairs, and the attachment which
unites them appears durable ; she sits on her eggs
and rears her brood. It docs not go to seek for
the thick shades of the forests, it takes pleasure
in places inhabited. It does not dread the neigh-
bourhood of man; and modest in its plumage,
from the grave tone of its voice, and from the
gentleness of its manners, it employs itself in ren-
dering him services, by continually hunting those
insects which devour the harvests; a new proof
that brilliancy and noise are not always the com-
panions of utility. A difference in their manners
equally characteristic, whatever may be, in other
respects, the outward resemblance, separates very
distinctly two species of birds, which have only
some slight similarity in form, and even this si-
milarity abundantly remote, as the houhou has the
nail of the posterior claw bending inward, straight
and lengthened, like that of the lark; whereas
x 2 this