Excerpt from Our Poor Relations: A Philozoic Essay
Baker observes that when an animal is slain in the Nubian wilderness, within a few seconds a succession of birds, hitherto invisible, descend on the prey, and always in the same order. First the black-and-white crow arrives, then the buzzard, then the small vulture, then the large vulture, lastly the marabout stork. I believe, says Sir Samuel, that every species keeps to its own particular elevation, and that the atmos phere contains regular strata of birds of prey, who, invisible to the human eye at their enor mous height, are constantly resting upon their widespread wings and soaring in circles, watch ing with telescopic sight the world beneath. It is like a tale born of Persian or Arabian fan tasy to hear that above the traveller in the desert hangs a huge mansion, impalpable to feeling as to sight, with its basement, its first and second floors, its attics, and its turrets or (to vary the image) that the social system of the atmosphere comprises its lower orders, its mid dle classes, and its upper ten thousand.
It is a pleasant, if somewhat extravagant, fancy, to figure to one’s self man dwelling amid his fellow-tenants of the earth in completest harmony, the friend and companion of some.
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