It was quite a public calamity in this rural empire, and all
seemed to feel for the poor rooks as for fellow-citizens in distress.
The ground had been strewed with the callow young, which were now
cherished in the aprons and bosoms of the maid-servants, and the
little ladies of the family. I was pleased with this touch of nature;
this feminine sympathy in the sufferings of the offspring, and the
maternal anxiety of the parent birds.
It was interesting, too, to witness the general agitation and distress
that seemed to prevail throughout the feathered community; the common
cause that was made of it; and the incessant hovering, and fluttering,
and lamenting, that took place in the whole rookery. There is a cord
of sympathy, that runs through the whole feathered race, as to any
misfortunes of the young; and the cries of a wounded bird in the
breeding season will throw a whole grove in a flutter and an alarm.
Indeed, why should I confine it to the feathered tribe? Nature seems
to me to have implanted an exquisite sympathy on this subject, which
extends through all her works. It is an invariable attribute of the
female heart, to melt at the cry of early helplessness, and to take an
instinctive interest in the distresses of the parent and its young.
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