Concerning Animals and Other Matters

The bird, occupied with thoughts of love and beauty, with fields, or waves, or mountains and shapes of sky or plain, has made little advance in the art and instruments of good living. It swallows its food whole, scarcely knowing the taste of it, and a pair of forceps for picking it up, tipped and cased with horn, is the whole of its dining furniture. For the bill of a bird, primarily and essentially, is that and nothing else. In the chickens and the sparrows that come to steal their food, and the robin that looks on, and all the little dicky-birds, you may see it in its simplicity.