not
graphical or composed of letters, but of their several forms,
constitutions, parts, and operations, which, aptly joined together,
do make one word that doth express their natures. By these letters
God calls the stars by their names; and by this alphabet Adam
assigned to every creature a name peculiar to its nature.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE.

CHARACTER IN FEATHERS.

In this economically governed world the same thing serves many uses. Who
will take upon himself to enumerate the offices of sunlight, or water,
or indeed of any object whatever? Because we know it to be good for this
or that, it by no means follows that we have discovered what it was made
for. What we have found out is perhaps only something by the way; as if
a man should think the sun were created for his own private convenience.
In some moods it seems doubtful whether we are yet acquainted with the
real value of anything. But, be that as it may, we need not scruple to
admire so much as our ignorance permits us to see of the workings of
this divine frugality. The piece of woodland, for instance, which skirts
the village,--how various are its ministries to the inhabitants, each of
whom, without forethought or question, takes the benefit proper to
himself! The poet saunters there as in a true Holy Land, to have his
heart cooled and stilled. Mr. A. and Mr. B., who hold the deeds of the
"property," walk through it to look at the timber, with an eye to
dollars and cents. The botanist has his errand there, the zoologist his,
and the child his. Oftenest of all, perhaps (for barbarism dies hard,
and even yet the ministers of Christ find it a capital sport to murder
small fishes),--oftenest of all comes the man, poor soul, who thinks of
the forest as of a place to which he may go when he wishes to amuse
himself by killing something. Meanwhile, the rabbits and the squirrels,
the hawks and the owls, look upon all such persons as no better than
intruders (do not the woods belong to those who live in them?); while
nobody remembers the meteorologist, who nevertheless smiles in his
sleeve at all these one-sided notions, and says to himself that he knows
the truth of the matter.

So is it with everything; and with all the rest, so is it with the
birds. The interest they excite is of all grades, from that which looks
upon them as items of millinery, up to that of the makers