The author of the ‘Vestiges of Creation’ would, I presume, say
that, after a certain unknown number of generations, some bird had given birth to
the woodpecker, and some plant to the misseltoe, and that these had been produced
perfect as we now see them; but this assumption seems to me to be no explanation
…
— Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species,
1st edition, 1859, pp. 3-4.
‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things: of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot — and whether pigs have wings.’
— Lewis Carroll (1832 – 1898), Through the
Looking Glass, Penguin edition 235.
The sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
— John Keats (1795 – 1821), La Belle Dame
sans Merci.
You force the birds to wing too high,
Where your unnatural vapours creep:
Surely living rocks shall die
When birds no rightful distance keep.
— Gordon Bottomley (b. 1874), To Iron-Founders
and Others.
… out of at least three hundred and fifty land birds inhabiting
Java and Borneo, not more than ten have passed eastward into Celebes. Yet the straits
of Macassar are not nearly so wide as the Java sea, and at least a hundred species
are common to Borneo and Java.
— Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), The Malay
Archipelago (1869), 111.
The island of Timor … bears this relation to Australia; for while
it contains several birds and insects of Australian forms, no Australian mammal
or reptile is found in it, and a great number of the most abundant and characteristic
forms of Australian birds and insects are entirely absent.
— Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), The Malay
Archipelago (1869), 373.
BOSWELL: ‘Had not you some desire to go upon this expedition,
sir?’
JOHNSON: ‘Why, yes; but I soon laid it aside. Sir, there is very
little of intellectual in the course. Besides, I see but a small distance. So it
was not worth my while to go see birds fly which I should not have seen fly; and
fishes swim, which I should not have seen swim.’
— Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784) explains why he did not tour the South Sea, New Zealand
and Australia on HM bark Endeavour. Quoted
in Barton’s History of NSW from the Records,
Vol I, lv.
A Bat who fell upon the ground and was caught by a Weasel pleaded
to be spared his life. The Weasel refused, saying that he was by nature the enemy
of all birds. The Bat assured him that he was not a bird, but a mouse, and thus
was set free. Shortly afterwards the Bat again fell to the ground and was caught
by another Weasel, whom he likewise entreated not to eat him. The Weasel said that
he had a special hostility to mice. The Bat assured him that he was not a mouse,
but a bird, and thus a second time escaped.
It is wise to turn circumstances to good account.
— Aesop, The Bat and the Weasels.
No movement either of the hand or the fingers is produced by
the muscles above the elbow; and it is so with birds, and it is for this reason
that they are so powerful, because all the muscles which lower the wings spring
from the breast and these have in themselves a greater weight than all the rest
of the bird.
— Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks: Hands and
Wings.
Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring,
The Winter garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly — and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.
— Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat.
There was an old man who averred
He had learned how to fly like a bird.
Cheered by thousands of people
He leapt from the steeple —
This tomb states the date it occurred.
— Anon.
A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His mouth can hold more than his belican,
He can take in his beak
Enough food for a week —
I’m damned if I know how the helican.
— Anon.
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