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Trumantia Resource Directory 01
Page 02
The eagle in all cases uses one nest, with more or less repair, for several years. Many of our common birds do the same. The birds may be divided, with respect to this and kindred points, into five general classes. First, those that repair and appropriate the last year's nest, as the wren, swallow, blue-bird, great-crested flycatcher, owls, eagles, fish-hawk, and a few others. Secondly, those that build anew each season, though frequently rearing more than one brood in the same nest. Of these, the phoebe-bird is a well-known example. Thirdly, those that build a new nest for each brood, which includes by far the greatest number of species. Fourthly, a limited number that make no nest of their own, but appropriate the abandoned nests of other birds. Finally, those who use no nest at all, but deposit their eggs in the sand, which is the case with a large number of aquatic fowls. Thus the common gull breeds in vast numbers on the sand bars or sand islands off the south coast of Long Island. A little dent is made in the sand, the eggs are dropped, and the old birds go their way. In due time the eggs are hatched by the warmth of the sun, and the little creatures shift for themselves. In July countless numbers of them, of different ages and sizes, swarm upon these sandy wastes. As the waves roll out, they rush down the beach, picking up a kind of sea gluten, and then hasten back to avoid the next breaker.
Affection for children is, however, not limited to the day of their birth or the period of their infancy. In judging of the relative possession by different races of affection for children, we must ask how the children are treated during all their succeeding years. It must be confessed that the advantage is then entirely on the side of the Occidental. Not only does this appear in the demonstrations of affection which are continued throughout childhood, often even throughout life, but more especially in the active parental solicitude for the children's welfare, striving to fit them for life's duties and watching carefully over their mental and moral education. In these respects the average Occidental is far in advance of the average Oriental.
The Anglo-Saxons commenced their career as pirates and robbers, and as pirates and robbers of the most desperate and dangerous description. In fact, the character which the Anglo-Saxons have obtained in modern times for energy and enterprise, and for desperate daring in their conflicts with foes, is no recent fame. The progenitors of the present race were celebrated every where, and every where feared and dreaded, not only in the days of Alfred, but several centuries before. All the historians of those days that speak of them at all, describe them as universally distinguished above their neighbors for their energy and vehemence of character, their mental and physical superiority, and for the wild and daring expeditions to which their spirit of enterprise and activity were continually impelling them. They built vessels, in which they boldly put forth on the waters of the German Ocean or of the Baltic Sea on excursions for conquest or plunder. Like their present posterity on the British isles and on the shores of the Atlantic, they cared not, in these voyages, whether it was summer or winter, calm or storm. In fact, they sailed often in tempests and storms by choice, so as to come upon their enemies the more unexpectedly.
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