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diff --git a/21138.txt b/21138.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d69d524 --- /dev/null +++ b/21138.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4937 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Love's Meinie, by John Ruskin + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Love's Meinie + Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds + +Author: John Ruskin + +Release Date: April 18, 2007 [EBook #21138] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOVE'S MEINIE *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +LOVE'S MEINIE. + + +THREE LECTURES ON GREEK AND ENGLISH BIRDS. + + + +By + +JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D., D.C.L. + +HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD; AND +HONORARY FELLOW OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD + + + +THIRD EDITION + + +GEORGE ALLEN, SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON +AND +156, CHARING CROSS ROAD, LONDON + +1897 + +[_All rights reserved_] + + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + PAGE + +PREFACE v + +LECTURE I. + THE ROBIN 1 + +LECTURE II. + THE SWALLOW 25 + +LECTURE III. + THE DABCHICKS 52 + +APPENDIX 107 + + + + +PREFACE. + + +BRANTWOOD, 9_th June_, 1881. + +_Quarter past five, morning._ + +The birds chirping feebly,--mostly chaffinches answering each other, +the rest discomposed, I fancy, by the June snow;[1] the lake neither +smooth nor rippled, but like a surface of perfectly bright glass, ill +cast; the lines of wave few and irregular, like flaws in the planes of +a fine crystal. + + [1] The summits of the Old Man, of Wetherlam, and Helvellyn, + were all white, on the morning when this was written. + +I see this book was begun eight years ago;--then intended to contain +only four Oxford lectures: but the said lectures also 'intended' to +contain the cream of forty volumes of scientific ornithology. Which +intentions, all and sundry, having gone, Carlyle would have said, to +water, and more piously-minded persons, to fire, I am obliged now to +cast my materials into another form: and here, at all events, is a +bundle of what is readiest under my hand. The nature and name of which +I must try to make a little more intelligible than my books have lately +been, either in text or title. + +'Meinie' is the old English word for 'Many,' in the sense of 'a many' +persons attending one, as bridesmaids, when in sixes or tens or +dozens;--courtiers, footmen, and the like. It passes gradually into +'Menial,' and unites the senses of Multitude and Servitude. + +In the passages quoted from, or referred to in, Chaucer's translation +of the Romance of the Rose, at the end of the first lecture, any reader +who cares for a clue to the farther significances of the title, may +find one to lead him safely through richer labyrinths of thought than +mine: and ladder enough also,--if there be either any heavenly, or pure +earthly, Love, in his own breast,--to guide him to a pretty bird's +nest; both in the Romances of the Rose and of Juliet, and in the +Sermons of St. Francis and St. Bernard. + +The term 'Lecture' is retained, for though I lecture no more, I still +write habitually in a manner suited for oral delivery, and imagine +myself speaking to my pupils, if ever I am happily thinking in myself. +But it will be also seen that by the help of this very familiarity of +style, I am endeavoring, in these and my other writings on Natural +History, to compel in the student a clearness of thought and precision +of language which have not hitherto been in any wise the virtues, or +skills, of scientific persons. Thoughtless readers, who imagine that my +own style (such as it is, the one thing which the British public +concedes to me as a real power) has been formed without pains, may +smile at the confidence with which I speak of altering accepted, and +even long-established, nomenclature. But the use which I now have of +language has taken me forty years to attain; and those forty years +spent, mostly, in walking through the wilderness of this world's vain +words, seeking how they might be pruned into some better strength. And +I think it likely that at last I may put in my pruning-hook with +effect; for indeed a time must come when English fathers and mothers +will wish their children to learn English again, and to speak it for +all scholarly purposes; and, if they use, instead, Greek or Latin, to +use them only that they may be understood by Greeks or Latins;[2] and +not that they may mystify the illiterate many of their own land. Dead +languages, so called, may at least be left at rest, if not honored; and +must not be torn in mutilation out of their tumuli, that the skins and +bones of them may help to hold our living nonsense together; while +languages called living, but which live only to slack themselves into +slang, or bloat themselves into bombast, must one day have new grammars +written for their license, and new laws for their insolence. + + [2] Greek is now a living nation's language, from Messina to + Delos--and Latin still lives for the well-trained churchmen + and gentlemen of Italy. + +Observe, however, that the recast methods of classification adopted in +this book, and in 'Proserpina,' must be carefully distinguished from +their recastings of nomenclature. I am perfectly sure that it is wiser +to use plain short words than obscure long ones; but not in the least +sure that I am doing the best that can be done for my pupils, in +classing swallows with owls, or milkworts with violets. The +classification is always given as tentative; and, at its utmost, +elementary: but the nomenclature, as in all probability conclusive. + +For the rest, the success and the service of all depend on the more or +less thorough accomplishment of plans long since laid, and which would +have been good for little if their coping could at once have been +conjectured or foretold in their foundations. It has been throughout my +trust, that if Death should write on these, "What this man began to +build, he was not able to finish," God may also write on them, not in +anger, but in aid, + + "A stronger than he, cometh." + + + + +LOVE'S MEINIE. + +"Il etoit tout convert d'oisiaulx." + + _Romance of the Rose._ + + + + +LECTURE I.[3] + +THE ROBIN. + + +1. Among the more splendid pictures in the Exhibition of the Old +Masters, this year, you cannot but remember the Vandyke portraits of +the two sons of the Duke of Lennox. I think you cannot but remember it, +because it would be difficult to find, even among the works of Vandyke, +a more striking representation of the youth of our English noblesse; +nor one in which the painter had more exerted himself, or with better +success, in rendering the decorous pride and natural grace of honorable +aristocracy. + + [3] Delivered at Oxford, March 15th, 1873. + +Vandyke is, however, inferior to Titian and Velasquez, in that his +effort to show this noblesse of air and persons may always be detected; +also the aristocracy of Vandyke's day were already so far fearful of +their own position as to feel anxiety that it should be immediately +recognized. And the effect of the painter's conscious deference, and of +the equally conscious pride of the boys, as they stood to be painted, +has been somewhat to shorten the power of the one, and to abase the +dignity of the other. And thus, in the midst of my admiration of the +youths' beautiful faces, and natural quality of majesty, set off by all +splendors of dress and courtesies of art, I could not forbear +questioning with myself what the true value was, in the scales of +creation, of these fair human beings who set so high a value on +themselves; and,--as if the only answer,--the words kept repeating +themselves in my ear, "Ye are of more value than many sparrows." + +2. Passeres, [Greek: strouthos]--the things that open their wings, and +are not otherwise noticeable; small birds of the land and wood; the +food of the serpent, of man, or of the stronger creatures of their own +kind,--that even these, though among the simplest and obscurest of +beings, have yet price in the eyes of their Maker, and that the death +of one of them cannot take place but by His permission, has long been +the subject of declamation in our pulpits, and the ground of much +sentiment in nursery education. But the declamation is so aimless, and +the sentiment so hollow, that, practically, the chief interest of the +leisure of mankind has been found in the destruction of the creatures +which they professed to believe even the Most High would not see perish +without pity; and, in recent days, it is fast becoming the only +definition of aristocracy, that the principal business of its life is +the killing of sparrows. + +Sparrows, or pigeons, or partridges, what does it matter? "Centum mille +perdrices plumbo confecit;"[4] that is, indeed, too often the sum of +the life of an English lord; much questionable now, if _indeed_ of +more value than that of many sparrows. + + [4] The epitaph on Count Zachdarm, in "Sartor Resartus." + +3. Is it not a strange fact, that, interested in nothing so much for +the last two hundred years, as in his horses, he yet left it to the +farmers of Scotland to relieve draught horses from the bearing-rein?[5] +Is it not one equally strange that, master of the forests of England +for a thousand years, and of its libraries for three hundred, he left +the natural history of birds to be written by a card-printer's lad of +Newcastle?[6] Written, and not written, for indeed we have no natural +history of birds written yet. It cannot be written but by a scholar and +a gentleman; and no English gentleman in recent times has ever thought +of birds except as flying targets, or flavorous dishes. The only piece +of natural history worth the name in the English language, that I know +of, is in the few lines of Milton on the Creation. The only example of +a proper manner of contribution to natural history is in White's +Letters from Selborne. You know I have always spoken of Bewick as +pre-eminently a vulgar or boorish person, though of splendid honor and +genius; his vulgarity shows in nothing so much as in the poverty of the +details he has collected, with the best intentions, and the shrewdest +sense, for English ornithology. His imagination is not cultivated +enough to enable him to choose, or arrange. + + [5] Sir Arthur Helps. "Animals and their Masters," p. 67. + + [6] Ariadne Florentina, vi. 45. + +4. Nor can much more be said for the observations of modern science. It +is vulgar in a far worse way, by its arrogance and materialism. In +general, the scientific natural history of a bird consists of four +articles,--first, the name and estate of the gentleman whose gamekeeper +shot the last that was seen in England; secondly, two or three stories +of doubtful origin, printed in every book on the subject of birds for +the last fifty years; thirdly, an account of the feathers, from the +comb to the rump, with enumeration of the colors which are never more +to be seen on the living bird by English eyes; and, lastly, a +discussion of the reasons why none of the twelve names which former +naturalists have given to the bird are of any further use, and why the +present author has given it a thirteenth, which is to be universally, +and to the end of time, accepted. + +5. You may fancy this is caricature; but the abyss of confusion +produced by modern science in nomenclature, and the utter void of the +abyss when you plunge into it after any one useful fact, surpass all +caricature. I have in my hand thirteen plates of thirteen species of +eagles; eagles all, or hawks all, or falcons all--whichever name you +choose for the great race of the hook-headed birds of prey--some so +like that you can't tell the one from the other, at the distance at +which I show them to you, all absolutely alike in their eagle or falcon +character, having, every one, the falx for its beak, and every one, +flesh for its prey. Do you suppose the unhappy student is to be allowed +to call them all eagles, or all falcons, to begin with, as would be the +first condition of a wise nomenclature, establishing resemblance by +specific name, before marking variation by individual name? No such +luck. I hold you up the plates of the thirteen birds one by one, and +read you their names off the back:-- + + The first, is an Aquila. + The second, a Haliaetus. + The third, a Milvus. + The fourth, a Pandion. + The fifth, an Astur. + The sixth, a Falco. + The seventh, a Pernis. + The eighth, a Circus. + The ninth, a Buteo. + The tenth, an Archibuteo. + The eleventh, an Accipiter. + The twelfth, an Erythropus. + And the thirteenth, a Tinnunculus. + +There's a nice little lesson to entertain a parish school-boy with, +beginning his natural history of birds! + +6. There are not so many varieties of robin as of hawk, but the +scientific classifiers are not to be beaten. If they cannot find a +number of similar birds to give different names to, they will give two +names to the same one. Here are two pictures of your own redbreast, out +of the two best modern works on ornithology. In one, it is called +"Motacilla rubecula;" in the other, "Rubecula familiaris." + +7. It is indeed one of the most serious, as one of the most absurd, +weaknesses, of modern naturalists to imagine that _any_ presently +invented nomenclature can stand, even were it adopted by the consent of +nations, instead of the conceit of individuals. It will take fifty +years' digestion before the recently ascertained elements of natural +science can permit the arrangement of species in any permanently (even +over a limited period) namable order; nor then, unless a great man is +born to perceive and exhibit such order. In the meantime, the simplest +and most descriptive nomenclature is the best. Every one of these +birds, for instance, might be called falco in Latin, hawk in English, +some word being added to distinguish the genus, which should describe +its principal aspect or habit. Falco montium, Mountain Hawk; Falco +silvarum, Wood Hawk; Falco procellarum, Sea Hawk; and the like. Then, +one descriptive epithet would mark species. Falco montium, aureus, +Golden Eagle; Falco silvarum, apivorus, Honey Buzzard; and so on; and +the naturalists of Vienna, Paris, and London should confirm the names +of known creatures, in conclave, once every half-century, and let them +so stand for the next fifty years. + +8. In the meantime, you yourselves, or, to speak more generally, the +young rising scholars of England,--all of you who care for life as well +as literature, and for spirit,--even the poor souls of birds,--as well +as lettering of their classes in books,--you, with all care, should +cherish the old Saxon-English and Norman-French names of birds, and +ascertain them with the most affectionate research--never despising +even the rudest or most provincial forms: all of them will, some day or +other, give you clue to historical points of interest. Take, for +example, the common English name of this low-flying falcon, the most +tamable and affectionate of his tribe, and therefore, I suppose, +fastest vanishing from field and wood, the buzzard. That name comes +from the Latin "buteo," still retained by the ornithologists; but, in +its original form, valueless, to you. But when you get it comfortably +corrupted into Provencal "Busac," (whence gradually the French busard, +and our buzzard,) you get from it the delightful compound "busacador," +"adorer of buzzards"--meaning, generally, a sporting person; and then +you have Dante's Bertrand de Born, the first troubadour of war, bearing +witness to you how the love of mere hunting and falconry was already, +in his day, degrading the military classes, and, so far from being a +necessary adjunct of the noble disposition of lover or soldier, was, +even to contempt, showing itself separate from both. + + "Le ric home, cassador, + M'enneion, e'l buzacador. + Parlan de volada, d'austor, + Ne jamais, d'armas, ni d'amor." + + The rich man, the chaser, + Tires me to death; and the adorer of buzzards. + They talk of covey and hawk, + And never of arms, nor of love. + +"Cassador," of course, afterwards becomes "chasseur," and "austor" +"vautour." But after you have read this, and familiarized your ear with +the old word, how differently Milton's phrase will ring to you,--"Those +who thought no better of the Living God than of a buzzard idol,"--and +how literal it becomes, when we think of the actual difference between +a member of Parliament in Milton's time, and the Busacador of to-day;--and +all this freshness and value in the reading, observe, come of your +keeping the word which great men have used for the bird, instead of +letting the anatomists blunder out a new one from their Latin +dictionaries. + +9. There are not so many namable varieties, I just now said, of robin +as of falcon; but this is somewhat inaccurately stated. Those thirteen +birds represented a very large proportion of the entire group of the +birds of prey, which in my sevenfold classification I recommended you +to call universally, "hawks." The robin is only one of the far greater +multitude of small birds which live almost indiscriminately on grain or +insects, and which I recommended you to call generally "sparrows"; but +of the robin itself, there are two important European varieties--one +red-breasted, and the other blue-breasted. + +10. You probably, some of you, never heard of the blue-breast; very +few, certainly, have seen one alive, and, if alive, certainly not wild +in England. + +Here is a picture of it, daintily done,[7] and you can see the pretty +blue shield on its breast, perhaps, at this distance. Vain shield, if +ever the fair little thing is wretched enough to set foot on English +ground! I find the last that was seen was shot at Margate so long ago +as 1842,--and there seems to be no official record of any visit before +that, since Mr. Thomas Embledon shot one on Newcastle town moor in +1816. But this rarity of visit to us is strange; other birds have no +such clear objection to being shot, and really seem to come to England +expressly for the purpose. And yet this blue-bird--(one can't say "blue +robin"--I think we shall have to call him "bluet," like the +cornflower)--stays in Sweden, where it sings so sweetly that it is +called "a hundred tongues." + + [7] Mr. Gould's, in his "Birds of Great Britain." + +11. That, then, is the utmost which the lords of land, and masters of +science, do for us in their watch upon our feathered suppliants. One +kills them, the other writes classifying epitaphs. + +We have next to ask what the poets, painters, and monks have done. + +The poets--among whom I affectionately and reverently class the sweet +singers of the nursery, mothers and nurses--have done much; very nearly +all that I care for your thinking of. The painters and monks, the one +being so greatly under the influence of the other, we may for the +present class together; and may almost sum their contributions to +ornithology in saying that they have plucked the wings from birds, to +make angels of men, and the claws from birds, to make devils of men. + +If you were to take away from religious art these two great helps of +its--I must say, on the whole, very feeble--imagination; if you were to +take from it, I say, the power of putting wings on shoulders, and claws +on fingers and toes, how wonderfully the sphere of its angelic and +diabolic characters would be contracted! Reduced only to the sources of +expression in face or movements, you might still find in good early +sculpture very sufficient devils; but the best angels would resolve +themselves, I think, into little more than, and not often into so much +as, the likenesses of pretty women, with that grave and (I do not say +it ironically) majestic expression which they put on, when, being very +fond of their husbands and children, they seriously think either the +one or the other have misbehaved themselves. + +12. And it is not a little discouraging for me, and may well make you +doubtful of my right judgment in this endeavor to lead you into closer +attention to the bird, with its wings and claws still in its own +possession;--it is discouraging, I say, to observe that the beginning +of such more faithful and accurate observation in former art, is +exactly coeval with the commencement of its decline. The feverish and +ungraceful natural history of Paul, called, "of the birds," Paolo degli +Uccelli, produced, indeed, no harmful result on the minds of his +contemporaries, they watched in him, with only contemptuous admiration, +the fantasy of zoological instinct which filled his house with painted +dogs, cats, and birds, because he was too poor to fill it with real +ones. Their judgment of this morbidly naturalistic art was conclusively +expressed by the sentence of Donatello, when going one morning into the +Old Market, to buy fruit, and finding the animal painter uncovering a +picture, which had cost him months of care, (curiously symbolic in its +subject, the infidelity of St. Thomas, of the investigatory fingering +of the natural historian,) "Paul, my friend," said Donatello, "thou art +uncovering the picture just when thou shouldst be shutting it up." + +13. No harm, therefore, I repeat, but, on the contrary, some wholesome +stimulus to the fancy of men like Luca and Donatello themselves, came +of the grotesque and impertinent zoology of Uccello. + +But the fatalest institutor of proud modern anatomical and scientific +art, and of all that has polluted the dignity, and darkened the +charity, of the greater ages, was Antonio Pollajuolo of Florence. +Antonio (that is to say) the Poulterer--so named from the trade of his +grandfather, and with just so much of his grandfather's trade left in +his own disposition, that being set by Lorenzo Ghiberti to complete one +of the ornamental festoons of the gates of the Florentine Baptistery, +there, (says Vasari) "Antonio produced a quail, which may still be +seen, and is so beautiful, nay, so perfect, that it wants nothing but +the power of flight." + +14. Here, the morbid tendency was as attractive as it was subtle. +Ghiberti himself fell under the influence of it; allowed the borders of +his gates, with their fluttering birds and bossy fruits, to dispute the +spectators' favor with the religious subjects they inclosed; and, from +that day forward, minuteness and muscularity were, with curious harmony +of evil, delighted in together; and the lancet and the microscope, in +the hands of fools, were supposed to be complete substitutes for +imagination in the souls of wise men: so that even the best artists are +gradually compelled, or beguiled, into compliance with the curiosity of +their day; and Francia, in the city of Bologna, is held to be a "kind +of god, more particularly" (again I quote Vasari) "after he had painted +a set of caparisons for the Duke of Urbino, on which he depicted a +great forest all on fire, and whence there rushes forth an immense +number of every kind of animal, with several human figures. This +terrific, yet truly beautiful representation, was all the more highly +esteemed for the time that had been expended on it in the plumage of +the birds, and other minutiae in the delineation of the different +animals, and in the diversity of the branches and leaves of the various +trees seen therein;" and thenceforward the catastrophe is direct, to +the ornithological museums which Breughel painted for gardens of Eden, +and to the still life and dead game of Dutch celebrities. + +15. And yet I am going to invite you to-day to examine, down to almost +microscopic detail, the aspect of a small bird, and to invite you to do +this, as a most expedient and sure step in your study of the greatest +art. + +But the difference in our motive of examination will entirely alter the +result. To paint birds that we may show how minutely we can paint, is +among the most contemptible occupations of art. To paint them, that we +may show how beautiful they are, is not indeed one of its highest, but +quite one of its pleasantest and most useful; it is a skill within the +reach of every student of average capacity, and which, so far as +acquired, will assuredly both make their hearts kinder, and their lives +happier. + +Without further preamble, I will ask you to look to-day, more carefully +than usual, at your well-known favorite, and to think about him with +some precision. + +16. And first, Where does he come from? I stated that my lectures were +to be on English and Greek birds; but we are apt to fancy the robin all +our own. How exclusively, do you suppose, he really belongs to us? You +would think this was the first point to be settled in any book about +him. I have hunted all my books through, and can't tell you how much he +is our own, or how far he is a traveler. + +And, indeed, are not all our ideas obscure about migration itself? You +are broadly told that a bird travels, and how wonderful it is that it +finds its way; but you are scarcely ever told, or led to think, what it +really travels for--whether for food, for warmth, or for seclusion--and +how the traveling is connected with its fixed home. Birds have not +their town and country houses,--their villas in Italy, and shooting +boxes in Scotland. The country in which they build their nests is their +proper home,--the country, that is to say, in which they pass the +spring and summer. Then they go south in the winter, for food and +warmth; but in what lines, and by what stages? The general definition +of a migrant in this hemisphere is a bird that goes north to build its +nest, and south for the winter; but, then, the one essential point to +know about it is the breadth and latitude of the zone it properly +inhabits,--that is to say, in which it builds its nest; next, its +habits of life, and extent and line of southing in the winter; and +finally, its manner of traveling. + +17. Now, here is this entirely familiar bird, the robin. Quite the +first thing that strikes me about it, looking at it as a painter, is +the small effect it seems to have had on the minds of the southern +nations. I trace nothing of it definitely, either in the art or +literature of Greece or Italy. I find, even, no definite name for it; +you don't know if Lesbia's "passer" had a red breast, or a blue, or a +brown. And yet Mr. Gould says it is abundant in all parts of Europe, in +all the islands of the Mediterranean, and in Madeira and the Azores. +And then he says--(now notice the puzzle of this),--"In many parts of +the Continent it is a migrant, and, contrary to what obtains with us, +is there treated as a vagrant, for there is scarcely a country across +the water in which it is not shot down and eaten." + +"In many parts of the Continent it is a migrant." In what parts--how +far--in what manner? + +18. In none of the old natural history books can I find any account of +the robin as a traveler, but there is, for once, some sufficient reason +for their reticence. He has a curious fancy in his manner of traveling. +Of all birds, you would think he was likely to do it in the cheerfulest +way, and he does it in the saddest. Do you chance to have read, in the +Life of Charles Dickens, how fond he was of taking long walks in the +night and alone? The robin, en voyage, is the Charles Dickens of birds. +He always travels in the night, and alone; rests, in the day, wherever +day chances to find him; sings a little, and pretends he hasn't been +anywhere. He goes as far, in the winter, as the north-west of Africa; +and in Lombardy, arrives from the south early in March; but does not +stay long, going on into the Alps, where he prefers wooded and wild +districts. So, at least, says my Lombard informant. + +I do not find him named in the list of Cretan birds; but even if often +seen, his dim red breast was little likely to make much impression on +the Greeks, who knew the flamingo, and had made it, under the name of +Phoenix or Phoenicopterus, the center of their myths of scarlet birds. +They broadly embraced the general aspect of the smaller and more +obscure species, under the term [Greek: xonthos], which, as I +understand their use of it, exactly implies the indescribable silky +brown, the groundwork of all other color in so many small birds, which +is indistinct among green leaves, and absolutely identifies itself with +dead ones, or with mossy stems. + +19. I think I show it you more accurately in the robin's back than I +could in any other bird; its mode of transition into more brilliant +color is, in him, elementarily simple; and although there is nothing, +or rather because there is nothing, in his plumage, of interest like +that of tropical birds, or even of our own game-birds, I think it will +be desirable for you to learn first from the breast of the robin what a +feather is. Once knowing that, thoroughly, we can further learn from +the swallow what a wing is; from the chough what a beak is; and from +the falcon what a claw is. + +I must take care, however, in neither of these last two particulars, to +do injustice to our little English friend here; and before we come to +his feathers, must ask you to look at his bill and his feet. + +20. I do not think it is distinctly enough felt by us that the beak of +a bird is not only its mouth, but its hand, or rather its two hands. +For, as its arms and hands are turned into wings, all it has to depend +upon, in economical and practical life, is its beak. The beak, +therefore, is at once its sword, its carpenter's tool-box, and its +dressing-case; partly also its musical instrument; all this besides its +function of seizing and preparing the food, in which functions alone it +has to be a trap, carving-knife, and teeth, all in one. + +21. It is this need of the beak's being a mechanical tool which chiefly +regulates the form of a bird's face, as opposed to a four-footed +animal's. If the question of food were the only one, we might wonder +why there were not more four-footed creatures living on seeds than +there are; or why those that do--field-mice and the like--have not +beaks instead of teeth. But the fact is that a bird's beak is by no +means a perfect eating or food-seizing instrument. A squirrel is far +more dexterous with a nut than a cockatoo; and a dog manages a bone +incomparably better than an eagle. But the beak has to do so much more! +Pruning feathers, building nests, and the incessant discipline in +military arts, are all to be thought of, as much as feeding. + +Soldiership, especially, is a much more imperious necessity among birds +than quadrupeds. Neither lions nor wolves habitually use claws or teeth +in contest with their own species; but birds, for their partners, their +nests, their hunting-grounds, and their personal dignity, are nearly +always in contention; their courage is unequaled by that of any other +race of animals capable of comprehending danger; and their pertinacity +and endurance have, in all ages, made them an example to the brave, and +an amusement to the base, among mankind. + +22. Nevertheless, since as sword, as trowel, or as pocket-comb, the +beak of the bird has to be pointed, the collection of seeds may be +conveniently intrusted to this otherwise penetrative instrument, and +such food as can only be obtained by probing crevices, splitting open +fissures, or neatly and minutely picking things up, is allotted, +pre-eminently, to the bird species. + +The food of the robin, as you know, is very miscellaneous. Linnaeus says +of the Swedish one, that it is "delectatus euonymi baccis,"--"delighted +with dogwood berries,"--the dogwood growing abundantly in Sweden, as +once in Forfarshire, where it grew, though only a bush usually in the +south, with trunks a foot or eighteen inches in diameter, and the tree +thirty feet high. But the Swedish robin's taste for its berries is to +be noted by you, because, first, the dogwood berry is commonly said to +be so bitter that it is not eaten by birds (Loudon, "Arboretum," ii., +497, 1.); and, secondly, because it is a pretty coincidence that this +most familiar of household birds should feed fondly from the tree which +gives the housewife her spindle,--the proper name of the dogwood in +English, French, and German being alike "Spindle-tree." It feeds, +however, with us, certainly, most on worms and insects. I am not sure +how far the following account of its mode of dressing its dinners may +be depended on: I take it from an old book on Natural History, but find +it, more or less, confirmed by others: "It takes a worm by one +extremity in its beak, and beats it on the ground till the inner part +comes away. Then seizing it in a similar manner by the other end, it +entirely cleanses the outer part, which alone it eats." + +One's first impression is that this must be a singularly unpleasant +operation for the worm, however fastidiously delicate and exemplary in +the robin. But I suppose the real meaning is, that as a worm lives by +passing earth through its body, the robin merely compels it to quit +this--not ill-gotten, indeed, but now quite unnecessary--wealth. We +human creatures, who have lived the lives of worms, collecting dust, +are served by Death in exactly the same manner. + +23. You will find that the robin's beak, then, is a very prettily +representative one of general bird power. As a weapon, it is very +formidable indeed; he can kill an adversary of his own kind with one +blow of it in the throat; and is so pugnacious, "valde pugnax," says +Linnaeus, "ut non una arbor duos capiat erithacos,"--"no single tree can +hold two cock-robins;" and for precision of seizure, the little flat +hook at the end of the upper mandible is one of the most delicately +formed points of forceps which you can find among the grain eaters. But +I pass to one of his more special perfections. + +24. He is very notable in the exquisite silence and precision of his +movements, as opposed to birds who either creak in flying, or waddle in +walking. "Always quiet," says Gould, "for the silkiness of his plumage +renders his movements noiseless, and the rustling of his wings is never +heard, any more than his tread on earth, over which he bounds with +amazing sprightliness." You know how much importance I have always +given, among the fine arts, to good dancing. If you think of it, you +will find one of the robin's very chief ingratiatory faculties is his +dainty and delicate movement,--his footing it featly here and there. +Whatever prettiness there may be in his red breast, at his brightest he +can always be outshone by a brickbat. But if he is rationally proud of +anything about him, I should think a robin must be proud of his legs. +Hundreds of birds have longer and more imposing ones--but for real +neatness, finish, and precision of action, commend me to his fine +little ankles, and fine little feet; this long stilted process, as you +know, corresponding to our ankle-bone. Commend me, I say, to the robin +for use of his ankles--he is, of all birds, the pre-eminent and +characteristic Hopper; none other so light, so pert, or so swift. + +25. We must not, however, give too much credit to his legs in this +matter. A robin's hop is half a flight; he hops, very essentially, with +wings and tail, as well as with his feet, and the exquisitely rapid +opening and quivering of the tail-feathers certainly give half the +force to his leap. It is in this action that he is put among the +motacillae, or wagtails; but the ornithologists have no real business +to put him among them. The swing of the long tail feathers in the true +wagtail is entirely consequent on its motion, not impulsive of it--the +tremulous shake is _after_ alighting. But the robin leaps with wing, +tail, and foot, all in time, and all helping each other. Leaps, I say; +and you check at the word; and ought to check: you look at a bird +hopping, and the motion is so much a matter of course, you never think +how it is done. But do you think you would find it easy to hop like a +robin if you had two--all but wooden--legs, like this? + +26. I have looked wholly in vain through all my books on birds, to find +some account of the muscles it uses in hopping, and of the part of the +toes with which the spring is given. I must leave you to find out that +for yourselves; it is a little bit of anatomy which I think it highly +desirable for you to know, but which it is not my business to teach +you. Only observe, this is the point to be made out. You leap +yourselves, with the toe and ball of the foot; but, in that power of +leaping, you lose the faculty of grasp; on the contrary, with your +hands, you grasp as a bird with its feet. But you cannot hop on your +hands. A cat, a leopard, and a monkey, leap or grasp with equal ease; +but the action of their paws in leaping is, I imagine, from the fleshy +ball of the foot; while in the bird, characteristically [Greek: +gampsonux], this fleshy ball is reduced to a boss or series of bosses, +and the nails are elongated into sickles or horns; nor does the +springing power seem to depend on the development of the bosses. They +are far more developed in an eagle than a robin; but you know how +unpardonably and preposterously awkward an eagle is when he hops. When +they are most of all developed, the bird walks, runs, and digs well, +but leaps badly. + +27. I have no time to speak of the various forms of the ankle itself, +or of the scales of armor, more apparent than real, by which the foot +and ankle are protected. The use of this lecture is not either to +describe or to exhibit these varieties to you, but so to awaken your +attention to the real points of character, that, when you have a bird's +foot to draw, you may do so with intelligence and pleasure, knowing +whether you want to express force, grasp, or firm ground pressure, or +dexterity and tact in motion. And as the actions of the foot and the +hand in man are made by every great painter perfectly expressive of the +character of mind, so the expressions of rapacity, cruelty, or force of +seizure, in the harpy, the gryphon, and the hooked and clawed evil +spirits of early religious art, can only be felt by extreme attention +to the original form. + +28. And now I return to our main question, for the robin's breast to +answer, "What is a feather?" You know something about it already; that +it is composed of a quill, with its lateral filaments terminating +generally, more or less, in a point; that these extremities of the +quills, lying over each other like the tiles of a house, allow the wind +and rain to pass over them with the least possible resistance, and form +a protection alike from the heat and the cold; which, in structure much +resembling the scale-armor assumed by man for very different objects, +is, in fact, intermediate, exactly, between the fur of beasts and the +scales of fishes; having the minute division of the one, and the +armor-like symmetry and succession of the other. + +29. Not merely symmetry, observe, but extreme flatness. Feathers are +smoothed down, as a field of corn by wind with rain; only the swathes +laid in beautiful order. They are fur, so structurally placed as to +imply, and submit to, the perpetually swift forward motion. In fact, I +have no doubt the Darwinian theory on the subject is that the feathers +of birds once stuck up all erect, like the bristles of a brush, and +have only been blown flat by continual flying. + +Nay, we might even sufficiently represent the general manner of +conclusion in the Darwinian system by the statement that if you fasten +a hair-brush to a mill-wheel, with the handle forward, so as to develop +itself into a neck by moving always in the same direction, and within +continual hearing of a steam-whistle, after a certain number of +revolutions the hair-brush will fall in love with the whistle; they +will marry, lay an egg, and the produce will be a nightingale. + +30. Whether, however, a hog's bristle can turn into a feather or not, +it is vital that you should know the present difference between them. + +The scientific people will tell you that a feather is composed of three +parts--the down, the laminae, and the shaft. + +But the common-sense method of stating the matter is that a feather is +composed of two parts, a shaft with lateral filaments. For the greater +part of the shaft's length, these filaments are strong and nearly +straight, forming, by their attachment, a finely warped sail, like that +of a wind-mill. But towards the root of the feather they suddenly +become weak, and confusedly flexible, and form the close down which +immediately protects the bird's body. + +To show you the typical arrangement of these parts, I choose, as I have +said, the robin; because, both in his power of flying, and in his +color, he is a moderate and balanced bird;--not turned into nothing but +wings, like a swallow, or nothing but neck and tail, like a peacock. +And first for his flying power. There is one of the long feathers of +robin's wing, and here (Fig. 1) the analysis of its form. + +31. First, in pure outline (A), seen from above, it is very nearly a +long oval, but with this peculiarity, that it has, as it were, +projecting shoulders at _a_ 1 and _a_ 2. I merely desire you to observe +this, in passing, because one usually thinks of the contour as sweeping +unbroken from the root to the point. I have not time to-day to enter on +any discussion of the reason for it, which will appear when we examine +the placing of the wing feathers for their stroke. + +Now, I hope you are getting accustomed to the general method in which I +give you the analysis of all forms--leaf, or feather, or shell, or +limb. First, the plan; then the profile; then the cross-section. + +I take next, the profile of my feather (B, Fig. 1), and find that it is +twisted as the sail of a windmill is, but more distinctly, so that you +can always see the upper surface of the feather at its root, and the +under at its end. Every primary wing-feather, in the fine flyers, is +thus twisted; and is best described as a sail striking with the power +of a cimeter, but with the flat instead of the edge. + +[Illustration: FIG. 1.] + +(Twice the size of reality.) + +A + +_a_ 1 + +_a_ 2 + +B] + +32. Further, you remember that on the edges of the broad side of +feathers you find always a series of undulations, irregularly sequent, +and lapping over each other like waves on sand. You might at first +imagine that this appearance was owing to a slight ruffling or disorder +of the filaments; but it is entirely normal, and, I doubt not, so +constructed, in order to insure a redundance of material in the plume, +so that no accident or pressure from wind may leave a gap anywhere. How +this redundance is obtained you will see in a moment by bending any +feather the wrong way. Bend, for instance, this plume, B, Fig. 2, into +the reversed curve, A, Fig. 2; then all the filaments of the plume +become perfectly even, and there are no waves at the edge. But let the +plume return into its proper form, B, and the tissue being now +contracted into a smaller space, the edge waves are formed in it +instantly. + +[Illustration: FIG. 2. + +A + +B] + +Hitherto, I have been speaking only of the filaments arranged for the +strength and continuity of the energetic plume; they are entirely +different when they are set together for decoration instead of force. +After the feather of the robin's wing, let us examine one from his +breast. + +33. I said, just now, he might be at once outshone by a brickbat. +Indeed, the day before yesterday, sleeping at Lichfield, and seeing, +the first thing when I woke in the morning, (for I never put down the +blinds of my bedroom windows,) the not uncommon sight in an English +country town of an entire house-front of very neat, and very flat, and +very red bricks, with very exactly squared square windows in it; and +not feeling myself in anywise gratified or improved by the spectacle, I +was thinking how in this, as in all other good, the too much destroyed +all. The breadth of a robin's breast in brick-red is delicious, but a +whole house-front of brick-red as vivid, is alarming. And yet one +cannot generalize even that trite moral with any safety--for infinite +breadth of green is delightful, however green; and of sea or sky, +however blue. + +You must note, however, that the robin's charm is greatly helped by the +pretty space of gray plumage which separates the red from the brown +back, and sets it off to its best advantage. There is no great +brilliancy in it, even so relieved; only the finish of it is exquisite. + +34. If you separate a single feather, you will find it more like a +transparent hollow shell than a feather (so delicately rounded the +surface of it),--gray at the root, where the down is,--tinged, and only +tinged, with red at the part that overlaps and is visible; so that, +when three or four more feathers have overlapped it again, all +together, with their joined red, are just enough to give the color +determined upon, each of them contributing a tinge. There are about +thirty of these glowing filaments on each side, (the whole being no +larger across than a well-grown currant,) and each of these is itself +another exquisite feather, with central quill and lateral webs, whose +filaments are not to be counted. + +The extremity of these breast plumes parts slightly into two, as you +see in the peacock's, and many other such decorative ones. The +transition from the entirely leaf-like shape of the active plume, with +its oblique point, to the more or less symmetrical dualism of the +decorative plume, corresponds with the change from the pointed green +leaf to the dual, or heart-shaped, petal of many flowers. I shall +return to this part of our subject, having given you, I believe, enough +of detail for the present. + +35. I have said nothing to-day of the mythology of the bird, though I +told you that would always be, for us, the most important part of its +natural history. But I am obliged, sometimes, to take what we +immediately want, rather than what, ultimately, we shall need chiefly. +In the second place, you probably, most of you, know more of the +mythology of the robin than I do, for the stories about it are all +northern, and I know scarcely any myths but the Italian and Greek. You +will find under the name "Robin," in Miss Yonge's exhaustive and +admirable "History of Christian Names," the various titles of honor and +endearment connected with him, and with the general idea of +redness,--from the bishop called "Bright Red Fame," who founded the +first great Christian church on the Rhine, (I am afraid of your +thinking I mean a pun, in connection with robins, if I tell you the +locality of it,) down through the Hoods, and Roys, and Grays, to Robin +Goodfellow, and Spenser's "Hobbinol," and our modern "Hob,"--joining on +to the "goblin," which comes from the old Greek [Greek: Kobalos]. But I +cannot let you go without asking you to compare the English and French +feeling about small birds, in Chaucer's time, with our own on the same +subject. I say English and French, because the original French of the +Romance of the Rose shows more affection for birds than even Chaucer's +translation, passionate as he is, always, in love for any one of his +little winged brothers or sisters. Look, however, either in the French +or English at the description of the coming of the God of Love, leading +his carol-dance, in the garden of the Rose. + +His dress is embroidered with figures of flowers and of beasts; but +about him fly the _living_ birds. The French is: + + Il etoit tout convert d'oisiaulx + De rossignols et de papegaux + De calendre, et de mesangel. + Il semblait que ce fut une angle + Qui fuz tout droit venuz du ciel. + +36. There are several points of philology in this transitional French, +and in Chaucer's translation, which it is well worth your patience to +observe. The monkish Latin "angelus," you see, is passing through the +very unpoetical form "angle," into "ange;" but, in order to get a rhyme +with it in that angular form, the French troubadour expands the bird's +name, "mesange," quite arbitrarily, into "mesangel." Then Chaucer, +not liking the "mes" at the beginning of the word, changes that +unscrupulously into "arch;" and gathers in, though too shortly, a +lovely bit from another place about the nightingales flying so close +round Love's head that they strike some of the leaves off his crown of +roses; so that the English runs thus: + + But nightingales, a full great rout + That flien over his head about, + The leaves felden as they flien + And he was all with birds wrien, + With popinjay, with nightingale, + With chelaundre, and with wodewale, + With finch, with lark, and with archangel. + He seemed as he were an angell, + That down were comen from Heaven clear. + +Now, when I first read this bit of Chaucer, without referring to the +original, I was greatly delighted to find that there was a bird in his +time called an archangel, and set to work, with brightly hopeful +industry, to find out what it was. I was a little discomfited by +finding that in old botany the word only meant "dead-nettle," but was +still sanguine about my bird, till I found the French form descend, as +you have seen, into a mesangel, and finally into mesange, which is a +provincialism from [Greek: meion], and means, the smallest of +birds--or, specially here,--a titmouse. I have seldom had a less +expected or more ignominious fall from the clouds. + +37. The other birds, named here and in the previous description of the +garden, are introduced, as far as I can judge, nearly at random, and +with no precision of imagination like that of Aristophanes; but with a +sweet childish delight in crowding as many birds as possible into the +smallest space. The popinjay is always prominent; and I want some of +you to help me (for I have not time at present for the chase) in +hunting the parrot down on his first appearance in Europe. Just at this +particular time he contested favor even with the falcon; and I think it +a piece of good fortune that I chanced to draw for you, thinking only +of its brilliant color, the popinjay, which Carpaccio allows to be +present on the grave occasion of St. George's baptizing the princess +and her father. + +38. And, indeed, as soon as the Christian poets begin to speak of the +singing of the birds, they show themselves in quite a different mood +from any that ever occurs to a Greek. Aristophanes, with infinitely +more skill, describes, and partly imitates, the singing of the +nightingale; but simply as beautiful sound. It "fills the thickets +with honey;" and if in the often-quoted--just because it is _not_ +characteristic of Greek literature--passage of the Coloneus, a deeper +sentiment is shown, that feeling is dependent on association of the +bird-voices with deeply pathetic circumstances. But this troubadour +finds his heart in heaven by the power of the singing only:-- + + Trop parfoisaient beau servise + Ciz oiselles que je vous devise. + Il chantaient un chant ytel + Com fussent angle esperitel. + +We want a moment more of word-chasing to enjoy this. "Oiseau," as you +know, comes from "avis;" but it had at this time got "oisel" for its +singular number, of which the terminating "sel" confused itself with +the "selle," from "ancilla" in domisella and demoiselle; and the +feminine form "oiselle" thus snatched for itself some of the +delightfulness belonging to the title of a young lady. Then note that +"esperitel" does not here mean merely spiritual, (because all angels +are spiritual) but an "angle esperitel" is an angel of the air. So +that, in English, we could only express the meaning in some such +fashion as this:-- + + They perfected all their service of love, + These maiden birds that I tell you of. + They sang such a song, so finished-fair, + As if they were angels, born of the air. + +39. Such were the fancies, then, and the scenes, in which Englishmen +took delight in Chaucer's time. England was then a simple country; we +boasted, for the best kind of riches, our birds and trees, and our +wives and children. We had now grown to be a rich one; and our first +pleasure is in shooting our birds; but it has become too expensive for +us to keep our trees. Lord Derby, whose crest is the eagle and +child--you will find the northern name for it, the bird and bantling, +made classical by Scott--is the first to propose that wood-birds should +have no more nests. We must cut down all our trees, he says, that we +may effectively use the steam-plow; and the effect of the steam-plow, I +find by a recent article in the _Cornhill Magazine_, is that an English +laborer must not any more have a nest, nor bantlings, neither; but may +only expect to get on prosperously in life, if he be perfectly +skillful, sober, and honest, and dispenses, at least until he is +forty-five, with the "luxury of marriage." + +40. Gentlemen, you may perhaps have heard me blamed for making no +effort here to teach in the artisans' schools. But I can only say that, +since the future life of the English laborer or artisan (summing the +benefits to him of recent philosophy and economy) is to be passed in a +country without angels and without birds, without prayers and without +songs, without trees and without flowers, in a state of exemplary +sobriety, and (extending the Catholic celibacy of the clergy into +celibacy of the laity) in a state of dispensation with the luxury of +marriage, I do not believe he will derive either profit or +entertainment from lectures on the Fine Arts. + + + + +LECTURE II.[8] + +THE SWALLOW. + + +41. We are to-day to take note of the form of a creature which gives us +a singular example of the unity of what artists call beauty, with the +fineness of mechanical structure, often mistaken for it. You cannot but +have noticed how little, during the years of my past professorship, I +have introduced any questions as to the nature of beauty. I avoided +them, partly because they are treated of at length in my books; and +partly because they are, in the last degree, unpractical. We are born +to like or dislike certain aspects of things; nor could I, by any +arguments, alter the defined tastes which you received at your birth, +and which the surrounding circumstances of life have enforced, without +any possibility of your voluntary resistance to them. And the result of +those surrounding circumstances, to-day, is that most English youths +would have more pleasure in looking at a locomotive than at a swallow; +and that many English philosophers would suppose the pleasure so +received to be through a new sense of beauty. But the meaning of the +word "beauty" in the fine arts, and in classical literature, is +properly restricted to those very qualities in which the locomotion of +a swallow differs from that of an engine. + + [8] Delivered at Oxford, May 2d, 1873. + +42. Not only from that of an engine; but also from that of animals in +whose members the mechanism is so complex as to give them a resemblance +to engines. The dart of the common house-fly, for instance, in full +strength, is a more wonderful movement than that of a swallow. The +mechanism of it is not only more minute, but the swiftness of the +action so much greater, that the vibration of the wing is invisible. +But though a school-boy might prefer the locomotive to the swallow, he +would not carry his admiration of finely mechanical velocity into +unqualified sympathy with the workmanship of the God of Ekron; and +would generally suppose that flies were made only to be food for the +more graceful fly-catcher,--whose finer grace you will discover, upon +reflection, to be owing to the very moderation and simplicity of its +structure, and to the subduing of that infinitude of joints, claws, +tissues, veins, and fibers which inconceivably vibrate in the +microscopic[9] creature's motion, to a quite intelligible and simple +balance of rounded body upon edged plume, maintained not without +visible, and sometimes fatigued, exertion, and raising the lower +creature into fellowship with the volition and the virtue of humanity. + + [9] I call it so because the members and action of it cannot be + seen with the unaided eye. + +43. With the virtue, I say, in an exceedingly qualified sense; meaning +rather the strength and art displayed in overcoming difficulties, than +any distinct morality of disposition. The bird has kindly and homely +qualities; but its principal "virtue" for _us_, is its being an +incarnate voracity, and that it moves as a consuming and cleansing +power. You sometimes hear it said of a humane person that they would +not kill a fly: from 700 to 1,000 flies a day are a moderate allowance +for a baby swallow. + +44. Perhaps, as I say this, it may occur to some of you to think, for +the first time, of the reason of the bird's name. For it is very +interesting, as a piece of language study, to consider the different +power on our minds,--nay, the different sweetness to the ear,--which, +from association, these same two syllables receive, when we read them +as a noun, or as a verb. Also, the word is a curious instance of the +traps which are continually open for rash etymologists. At first, +nothing would appear more natural than that the name should have been +given to the bird from its reckless function of devouring. But if you +look to your Johnson, you will find, to your better satisfaction, that +the name means "bird of porticos," or porches, from the Gothic "swale;" +"subdivale,"--so that he goes back in thought as far as Virgil's, "Et +nunc porticibus vacuis, nunc humida circum, stagna sonat." Notice, in +passing, how a simile of Virgil's, or any other great master's, will +probably tell in two or more ways at once. Juturna is compared to the +swallow, not merely as winding and turning swiftly in her chariot, but +as being a water-nymph by birth,--"Stagnis quae, fluminibusque sonoris, +praesidet." How many different creatures in one the swallow is by +birth, as a Virgilian simile is many thoughts in one, it would take +many more lectures than one to show you clearly; but I will indicate +them with such rough sketch as is possible. + +45. It belongs, as most of you know, to a family of birds called +Fissirostres, or, literally, split-beaks. Split heads would be a better +term, for it is the enormous width of mouth and power of gaping which +the epithet is meant to express. A dull sermon, for instance, makes +half the congregation "fissirostres." The bird, however, is most +vigilant when its mouth is widest, for it opens as a net to catch +whatever comes in its way,--hence the French, giving the whole family +the more literal name, "Gobble-fly"--Gobe-mouche, extend the term to +the open-mouthed and too acceptant appearance of a simpleton. + +46. Partly in order to provide for this width of mouth, but more for +the advantage in flight, the head of the swallow is rounded into a +bullet shape, and sunk down on the shoulders, with no neck whatever +between, so as to give nearly the aspect of a conical rifle bullet to +the entire front of the body; and, indeed, the bird moves more like a +bullet than an arrow--dependent on a certain impetus of weight rather +than on sharp penetration of the air. I say dependent on, but I have +not yet been able to trace distinct relation between the shapes of +birds and their powers of flight. I suppose the form of the body is +first determined by the general habits and food, and that nature can +make any form she chooses volatile; only one point I think is always +notable, that a complete master of the art of flight must be +short-necked, so that he turns altogether, if he turns at all. You +don't expect a swallow to look round a corner before he goes round it; +he must take his chance. The main point is that he may be able to stop +himself, and turn, in a moment. + +47. The stopping, on any terms, is difficult enough to understand; nor +less so, the original gaining of the pace. We always think of flight as +if the main difficulty of it were only in keeping up in the air;--but +the buoyancy is conceivable enough, the far more wonderful matter is +the getting along. You find it hard work to row yourself at anything +like speed, though your impulse-stroke is given in a heavy element, and +your return-stroke in a light one. But both in birds and fishes, the +impelling stroke and its return are in the same element; and if, for +the bird, that medium yields easily to its impulses, it secedes as +easily from the blow that gives it. And if you think what an effort you +make to leap six feet, with the earth for a fulcrum, the dart either of +a trout or a swallow, with no fulcrum but the water and air they +penetrate, will seem to you, I think, greatly marvelous. Yet of the +mode in which it is accomplished you will as yet find no undisputed +account in any book on natural history, and scarcely, as far as I know, +definite notice even of the rate of flight. What do you suppose it is? +We are apt to think of the migration of a swallow, as we should +ourselves of a serious journey. How long, do you think, it would take +him, if he flew uninterruptedly, to get from here to Africa? + +48. Michelet gives the rate of his flight (at full speed, of course,) +as eighty leagues an hour. I find no more sound authority; but do not +doubt his approximate accuracy;[10] still how curious and how +provoking it is that neither White of Selborne, Bewick, Yarrell, nor +Gould, says a word about this, one should have thought the most +interesting, power of the bird.[11] + + [10] I wrote this some time ago, and the endeavors I have since + made to verify statements on points of natural history which I + had taken on trust have given me reason to doubt everybody's + accuracy. The ordinary flight of the swallow does not, assuredly, + even in the dashes, reach anything like this speed. + + [11] Incidentally suggestive sentences occur in the history of + Selborne, but its author never comes to the point, in this case. + +Taking Michelet's estimate--eighty French leagues, roughly two hundred +and fifty miles, an hour--we have a thousand miles in four hours. That +is to say, leaving Devonshire after an early breakfast, he could be in +Africa to lunch. + +49. He could, I say, if his flight were constant; but though there is +much inconsistency in the accounts, the sum of testimony seems definite +that the swallow is among the most fatiguable of birds. "When the +weather is hazy," (I quote Yarrell) "they will alight on fishing-boats +a league or two from land, so tired that when any one tries to catch +them, they can scarcely fly from one end of the boat to the other." + +I have no time to read to you the interesting evidence on this point +given by Yarrell, but only that of the brother of White of Selborne, at +Gibraltar. "My brother has always found," he himself writes, "that some +of his birds, and particularly the swallow kind, are very sparing of +their pains in crossing the Mediterranean; for when arrived at +Gibraltar, they do not 'set forth their airy caravan, high over seas,' +but scout and hurry along in little detached parties of six or seven in +a company; and sweeping low, just over the surface of the land and +water, direct their course to the opposite continent at the narrowest +passage they can find." + +50. You will observe, however, that it remains an open question whether +this fear of sea may not be, in the swallow, like ours of the desert. +The commissariat department is a serious one for birds that eat a +thousand flies a day when just out of the egg; and it is possible that +the weariness of swallows at sea may depend much more on fasting than +flying. Captain (or Admiral?) Sir Charles Wager says that "one +spring-time, as he came into soundings in the English Channel, a great +flock of swallows came and settled on all his rigging; every rope was +covered; they hung on one another like a swarm of bees; even the decks +were filled with them. They seemed almost famished and spent, and were +only feathers and bone; but, being recruited with a night's rest, took +their flight in the morning." + +51. Now I detain you on this point somewhat, because it is intimately +connected with a more important one. I told you we should learn from +the swallow what a wing was. Few other birds approach him in the beauty +of it, or apparent power. And yet, after all this care taken about it, +he gets tired; and instead of flying, as we should do in his place, all +over the world, and tasting the flavor of the midges in every marsh +which the infinitude of human folly has left to breed gnats instead of +growing corn,--he is of all birds, characteristically, except when he +absolutely can't help it, the stayer at home; and contentedly lodges +himself and his family in an old chimney, when he might be flying all +over the world. + +At least you would think, if he built in an English chimney this year, +he would build in a French one next. But no. Michelet prettily says of +him, "He is the bird of return." If you will only treat him kindly, +year after year, he comes back to the same niche, and to the same +hearth, for his nest. + +To the same niche; and builds himself an opaque walled house within +that. Think of this a little, as if you heard of it for the first time. + +52. Suppose you had never seen a swallow; but that its general habit +of life had been described to you, and you had been asked, how you +thought such a bird would build its nest. A creature, observe, whose +life is to be passed in the air; whose beak and throat are shaped +with the fineness of a net for the catching of gnats; and whose feet, +in the most perfect of the species, are so feeble that it is called +the Footless Swallow, and cannot stand a moment on the ground with +comfort. Of all land birds, the one that has least to do with the +earth; of all, the least disposed, and the least able, to stop to +pick anything up. What will it build with? Gossamer, we should +say,--thistledown,--anything it can catch floating, like flies. + +But it builds with stiff clay. + +53. And observe its chosen place for building also. You would think, by +its play in the air, that not only of all birds, but of all creatures, +it most delighted in space and freedom. You would fancy its notion of +the place for a nest would be the openest field it could find; that +anything like confinement would be an agony to it; that it would almost +expire of horror at the sight of a black hole. + +And its favorite home is down a chimney. + +54. Not for your hearth's sake, nor for your company's. Do not think +it. The bird will love you if you treat it kindly; is as frank and +friendly as bird can be; but it does not, more than others, seek your +society. It comes to your house because in no wild wood, nor rough +rock, can it find a cavity close enough to please it. It comes for the +blessedness of imprisonment, and the solemnity of an unbroken and +constant shadow, in the tower, or under the eaves. + +Do you suppose that this is part of its necessary economy, and that a +swallow could not catch flies unless it lived in a hole? + +Not so. This instinct is part of its brotherhood with another race of +creatures. It is given to complete a mesh in the reticulation of the +orders of life. + +55. I have already given you several reasons for my wish that you +should retain, in classifying birds, the now rejected order of Picae. I +am going to read you a passage from Humboldt, which shows you what +difficulties one may get into for want of it. + +You will find in the second volume of his personal narrative, an +account of the cave of Caripe in New Andalusia, which is inhabited by +entirely nocturnal birds, having the gaping mouths of the goat-sucker +and the swallow, and yet feeding on fruit. + +Unless, which Mr. Humboldt does not tell us, they sit under the trees +outside, in the night time, and hold their mouths open, for the berries +to drop into, there is not the smallest occasion for their having wide +mouths, like swallows. Still less is there any need, since they are +fruit eaters, for their living in a cavern 1,500 feet out of daylight. +They have only, in consequence, the trouble of carrying in the seeds to +feed their young, and the floor of the cave is thus covered, by the +seeds they let fall, with a growth of unfortunate pale plants, which +have never seen day. Nay, they are not even content with the darkness +of their cave; but build their nests in the funnels with which the roof +of the grotto is pierced like a sieve; live actually in the chimney, +not of a house, but of an Egyptian sepulcher! The color of this bird, +of so remarkable taste in lodging, Humboldt tells us, is "of dark +bluish-gray, mixed with streaks and specks of black. Large white spots, +which have the form of a heart, and which are bordered with black, mark +the head, the wings, and the tail. The spread of the wings, which are +composed of seventeen or eighteen quill feathers, is three feet and a +half. Suppressing, with Mr. Cuvier, the order of Picae, we must refer +this extraordinary bird to the _Sparrows_." + +56. We can only suppose that it must be, to our popular sparrows, what +the swallow of the cinnamon country is to our subordinate swallow. Do +you recollect the cinnamon swallows of Herodotus, who build their +mud-nests in the faces of the cliffs where Dionusos was brought up, and +where nobody can get near them; and how the cinnamon merchants fetch +them joints of meat, which the unadvised birds, flying up to their +nests with, instead of cinnamon,--nest and all come down together,--the +original of Sindbad's valley-of-diamond story? + +57. Well, Humboldt is reduced, by necessities of recent classification, +to call a bird three feet and a half across the wings, a sparrow. I +have no right to laugh at him, for I am just going, myself, to call the +cheerfulest and brightest of birds of the air, an owl. All these +architectural and sepulchral habits, these Egyptian manners of the +sand-martin, digging caves in the sand, and border-trooper's habits of +the chimney swallow, living in round towers instead of open air, +belonging to them as connected with the tribe of the falcons through +the owls! and not only so, but with the mammalia through the bats! A +swallow is an emancipated owl, and a glorified bat; but it never +forgets its fellowship with night. + +58. Its _ancient_ fellowship, I had nearly written; so natural is it to +think of these similarly-minded creatures, when the feelings that both +show are evidently useless to one of them, as if the inferior had +changed into the higher. The doctrine of development seems at first to +explain all so pleasantly, that the scream of consent with which it has +been accepted by men of science, and the shriller vociferation of the +public's gregarious applause, scarcely permit you the power of +antagonistic reflection. I must justify to-day, in graver tone than +usual, the terms in which I have hitherto spoken,--it may have been +thought with less than the due respect to my audience,--of the popular +theory. + +59. Supposing that the octohedrons of galena, of gold, and of oxide of +iron, were endowed with powers of reproduction, and perished at +appointed dates of dissolution or solution, you would without any doubt +have heard it by this time asserted that the octohedric form, which was +common to all, indicated their descent from a common progenitor; and it +would have been ingeniously explained to you how the angular offspring +of this eight-sided ancestor had developed themselves, by force of +circumstances, into their distinct metallic perfections; how the galena +had become gray and brittle under prolonged subterranean heat, and the +gold yellow and ductile, as it was rolled among the pebbles of +amber-colored streams. + +60. By the denial to these structures of any individually reproductive +energy, you are forced to accept the inexplicable (and why expect it to +be otherwise than inexplicable?) fact, of the formation of a series of +bodies having very similar aspects, qualities, and chemical relations +to other substances, which yet have no connection whatever with each +other, and are governed, in their relation with their native rocks, by +entirely arbitrary laws. It has been the pride of modern chemistry to +extricate herself from the vanity of the alchemist, and to admit, with +resignation, the independent, though apparently fraternal, natures, of +silver, of lead, of platinum,--aluminium,--potassium. Hence, a rational +philosophy would deduce the probability that when the arborescence of +dead crystallization rose into the radiation of the living tree, and +sentient plume, the splendor of nature in her more exalted power would +not be restricted to a less variety of design; and the beautiful +caprice in which she gave to the silver its frost and to the opal its +fire, would not be subdued under the slow influences of accident and +time, when she wreathed the swan with snow, and bathed the dove in +iridescence. That the infinitely more exalted powers of life must +exercise more intimate influence over matter than the reckless forces +of cohesion;--and that the loves and hatreds of the now conscious +creatures would modify their forms into parallel beauty and +degradation, we might have anticipated by reason, and we ought long +since to have known by observation. But this law of its spirit over the +substance of the creature involves, necessarily, the indistinctness of +its type, and the existence of inferior and of higher conditions, which +whole eras of heroism and affection--whole eras of misery and +misconduct,--confirm into glory, or confuse into shame. Collecting the +causes of changed form, in lower creatures, by distress, or by +adaptation,--by the disturbance or intensifying of the parental +strength, and the native fortune--the wonder is, not that species +should sometimes be confused, but that the greater number of them +remain so splendidly, so manifestly, so eternally distinct; and that +the vile industries and vicious curiosities of modern science, while +they have robbed the fields of England of a thousand living creatures, +have not created in them one. + +61. But even in the paltry knowledge we have obtained, what unanimity +have we?--what security? Suppose any man of ordinary sense, knowing the +value of time, and the relative importance of subjects of thought, and +that the whole scientific world was agog concerning the origin of +species, desired to know first of all--what was meant by a species. + +He would naturally look for the definition of species first among the +higher animals, and expect it to be best defined in those which were +best known. And being referred for satisfaction to the 226th page of +the first volume of Mr. Darwin's "Descent of Man," he would find this +passage:-- + +"Man has been studied more carefully than any other organic being, and +yet there is the greatest possible diversity among capable judges, +whether he should be classed as a single species or race, or as two +(Virey), as three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five (Blumenbach), six +(Buffon), seven (Hunter), eight (Agassiz), eleven (Pickering), fifteen +(Bory St. Vincent), sixteen (Desmoulins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty +(Crawford), or as sixty-three according to Burke." + +And in the meantime, while your men of science are thus vacillating, in +the definition of the species of the only animal they have the +opportunity of studying inside and out, between one and sixty-three; +and disputing about the origin, in past ages, of what they cannot +define in the present ones; and deciphering the filthy heraldries which +record the relation of humanity to the ascidian and the crocodile, you +have ceased utterly to distinguish between the two species of man, +evermore separate by infinite separation: of whom the one, capable of +loyalty and of love, can at least conceive spiritual natures which have +no taint from their own, and leave behind them, diffused among +thousands on earth, the happiness they never hoped, for themselves, in +the skies; and the other, capable only of avarice, hatred, and shame, +who in their lives are the companions of the swine, and leave in death +nothing but food for the worm and the vulture. + +62. Now I have first traced for you the relations of the creature we +are examining to those beneath it and above, to the bat and to the +falcon. But you will find that it has still others to entirely another +world. As you watch it glance and skim over the surface of the waters, +has it never struck you what relation it bears to the creatures that +glance and glide _under_ their surface? Fly-catchers, some of +them, also,--fly-catchers in the same manner, with wide mouth; while in +motion the bird almost exactly combines the dart of the trout with the +dash of the dolphin, to the rounded forehead and projecting muzzle of +which its own bullet head and bill exactly correspond. In its plunge, +if you watch it bathing, you may see it dip its breast just as much +under the water as a porpoise shows its back above. You can only +rightly describe the bird by the resemblances, and images of what it +seems to have changed from,--then adding the fantastic and beautiful +contrast of the unimaginable change. It is an owl that has been trained +by the Graces. It is a bat that loves the morning light. It is the +aerial reflection of a dolphin. It is the tender domestication of a +trout. + +63. And yet be assured, as it cannot have been all these creatures, so +it has never, in truth, been any of them. The transformations believed +in by the mythologists are at least spiritually true; you cannot too +carefully trace or too accurately consider them. But the +transformations believed in by the anatomist are as yet proved true in +no single instance, and in no substance, spiritual or material; and I +cannot too often, or too earnestly, urge you not to waste your time in +guessing what animals may once have been, while you remain in nearly +total ignorance of what they are. + +64. Do you even know distinctly from each other,--(for that is the real +naturalist's business; instead of confounding them with each +other),--do you know distinctly the five great species of this familiar +bird?--the swallow, the house-martin, the sand-martin, the swift, and +the Alpine swift?--or can you so much as answer the first question +which would suggest itself to any careful observer of the form of its +most familiar species,--yet which I do not find proposed, far less +answered, in any scientific book,--namely, why a swallow has a +swallow-tail? + +It is true that the tail feathers in many birds appear to be +entirely,--even cumbrously, decorative; as in the peacock, and birds of +paradise. But I am confident that it is not so in the swallow, and that +the forked tail, so defined in form and strong in plume, has indeed +important functions in guiding the flight; yet notice how surrounded +one is on all sides with pitfalls for the theorists. The forked tail +reminds you at once of a fish's; and yet, the action of the two +creatures is wholly contrary. A fish lashes himself forward with his +tail, and steers with his fins; a swallow lashes himself forward with +his fins, and steers with his tail; partly, not necessarily, because in +the most dashing of the swallows, the swift, the fork of the tail is +the least developed. And I never watch the bird for a moment without +finding myself in some fresh puzzle out of which there is no clue in +the scientific books. I want to know, for instance, how the bird turns. +What does it do with one wing, what with the other? Fancy the pace that +has to be stopped; the force of bridle-hand put out in an instant. +Fancy how the wings must bend with the strain; what need there must be +for the perfect aid and work of every feather in them. There is a +problem for you, students of mechanics,--How does a swallow turn? + +You shall see, at all events, to begin with, to-day, how it gets along. + +65. I say you shall see; but indeed you have often seen, and felt,--at +least with your hands, if not with your shoulders,--when you chanced to +be holding the sheet of a sail. + +I have said that I never got into scrapes by blaming people wrongly; +but I often do by praising them wrongly. I never praised, without +qualification, but one scientific book in my life (that I +remember)--this of Dr. Pettigrew's on the Wing;[12] and now I must +qualify my praise considerably, discovering, when I examined the book +farther, that the good doctor had described the motion of a bird as +resembling that of a kite, without ever inquiring what, in a bird, +represented that somewhat important part of a kite, the string. You +will, however, find the book full of important observations, and +illustrated by valuable drawings. But the point in question you must +settle for yourselves, and you easily may. Some of you perhaps, knew, +in your time, better than the doctor, how a kite stopped; but I do not +doubt that a great many of you also know, now, what is much more to the +purpose, how a ship gets along. I will take the simplest, the most +natural, the most beautiful of sails,--the lateen sail of the +Mediterranean. + + [12] "On the Physiology of Wings." Transactions of the Royal + Society of Edinburgh. Vol. xxvi., Part ii. I cannot sufficiently + express either my wonder or regret at the petulance in which men + of science are continually tempted into immature publicity, by + their rivalship with each other. Page after page of this book, + which, slowly digested and taken counsel upon, might have been a + noble contribution to natural history, is occupied with dispute + utterly useless to the reader, on the question of the priority of + the author, by some months, to a French savant, in the statement + of a principle which neither has yet proved; while page after + page is rendered worse than useless to the reader by the author's + passionate endeavor to contradict the ideas of unquestionably + previous investigators. The problem of flight was, to all serious + purpose, solved by Borelli in 1680, and the following passage is + very notable as an example of the way in which the endeavor to + obscure the light of former ages too fatally dims and distorts + that by which modern men of science walk, themselves. "Borelli, + and all who have written since his time, are unanimous in + affirming that the horizontal transference of the body of the + bird is due to the perpendicular vibration of the wings, and to + the yielding of the posterior or flexible margins of the wings in + an upward direction, as the wings descend. I" (Dr. Pettigrew) + "am, however, disposed to attribute it to the fact (1st), that + _the wings_, both when elevated and depressed, _leap forwards_ in + curves, those curves uniting to form a continuous waved track; + (2d), _to the tendency which the body of the bird has to swing + forwards_, in a more or less horizontal direction, _when once set + in motion_; (3d), to the construction of the wings; they are + elastic helices or screws, which twist and untwist while they + vibrate, _and tend to bear upwards and onwards any weight + suspended from them_; (4th), _to the action of the air on the + under surfaces_ of the wings; (5th), _to the ever-varying power + with which the wings are urged_, this being greatest at the + beginning of the down-stroke, and least at the end of the up one; + (6th), _to the contraction of the voluntary muscles_ and elastic + ligaments, and to the effect produced by the various inclined + surfaces formed by the wings during their oscillations; (7th), + _to the weight of the bird_--weight itself, when acting upon + wings, becoming a propelling power, and so contributing to + horizontal motion." + + I will collect these seven reasons for the forward motion, in the + gist of them, which I have marked by italics, that the reader may + better judge of their collective value. The bird is carried + forward, according to Dr. Pettigrew-- + + 1. Because its wings leap forward. + + 2. Because its body has a tendency to swing forward. + + 3. Because its wings are screws so constructed as to screw + upwards and onwards any body suspended from them. + + 4. Because the air reacts on the under surfaces of the wings. + + 5. Because the wings are urged with ever-varying power. + + 6. Because the voluntary muscles contract. + + 7. Because the bird is heavy. + + What must be the general conditions of modern science, when it is + possible for a man of great experimental knowledge and practical + ingenuity, to publish nonsense such as this, becoming, to all + intents and purposes, insane, in the passion of his endeavor to + overthrow the statements of his rival? Had he merely taken + patience to consult any elementary scholar in dynamics, he would + have been enabled to understand his own machines, and develop, + with credit to himself, what had been rightly judged or noticed + by others. + +66. I draw it rudely in outline, as it would be set for a side-wind on +the boat you probably know best,--the boat of burden on the Lake of +Geneva (Fig. 3), not confusing the drawing by adding the mast, which, +you know, rakes a little, carrying the yard across it (_a_). Then, with +your permission, I will load my boat thus, with a few casks of Vevay +vintage--and, to keep them cool, we will put an awning over them, so +(_b_). Next, as we are classical scholars, instead of this rustic stern +of the boat, meant only to run easily on a flat shore, we will give it +an Attic [Greek: embolon] (_c_). (We have no business, indeed, yet, to +put an [Greek: embolon] on a boat of burden, but I hope some day to see +all our ships of war loaded with bread and wine, instead of artillery.) +Then I shade the entire form (_c_); and, lastly, reflect it in the +water (_d_)--and you have seen something like that before, besides a +boat, haven't you? + +[Illustration: FIG. 3.] + +There is the gist of the whole business for you, put in very small +space; with these only differences: in a boat, the air strikes the +sail; in a bird, the sail strikes the air: in a boat, the force is +lateral, and in a bird downwards; and it has its sail on both sides. I +shall leave you to follow out the mechanical problem for yourselves, as +far as the mere resolution of force is concerned. My business, as a +painter, is only with the exquisite organic weapon that deals with it. + +67. Of which you are now to note farther, that a bird is required to +manage his wing so as to obtain two results with one blow:--he has to +keep himself up, as well as to get along. + +But observe, he only requires to keep himself up _because_ he has to +get along. The buoyancy might have been given at once, if nature had +wanted _that_ only; she might have blown the feathers up with the hot +air of the breath, till the bird rose in air like a cork in water. But +it has to be, not a buoyant cork, but a buoyant _bullet_. And therefore +that it may have momentum for pace, it must have weight to carry; and +to carry that weight, the wings must deliver their blow with effective +vertical, as well as oblique, force. + +Here, again, you may take the matter in brief sum. Whatever is the +ship's loss, is the bird's gain; whatever tendency the ship has to +leeway, is all given to the bird's support, so that every atom[13] of +force in the blow is of service. + + [13] I don't know what word to use for an infinitesimal degree or + divided portion of force: one cannot properly speak of a force + being cut into pieces; but I can think of no other word than + atom. + +68. Therefore you have to construct your organic weapon, so that this +absolutely and perfectly economized force may be distributed as the +bird chooses at any moment. That, if it wants to rise, it may be able +to strike vertically more than obliquely;--if the order is, go-ahead, +that it may put the oblique screw on. If it wants to stop in an +instant, that it may be able to throw its wings up full to the wind; if +it wants to hover, that it may be able to lay itself quietly on the +wind with its wings and tail, or, in calm air, to regulate their +vibration and expansion into tranquillity of gliding, or of pausing +power. Given the various proportions of weight and wing; the conditions +of possible increase of muscular force and quill-strength in proportion +to size; and the different objects and circumstances of flight,--you +have a series of exquisitely complex problems, and exquisitely perfect +solutions, which the life of the youngest among you cannot be long +enough to read through so much as once, and of which the future +infinitudes of human life, however granted or extended, never will be +fatigued in admiration. + +69. I take the rude outline of sail in Fig. 3, and now considering it +as a jib of one of our own sailing vessels, slightly exaggerate the +loops at the edge, and draw curved lines from them to the opposite +point, Fig. 4; and I have a reptilian or dragon's wing, which would, +with some ramification of the supporting ribs, become a bat's or +moth's; that is to say, an extension of membrane between the ribs (as +in an umbrella), which will catch the wind, and flutter upon it, like a +leaf; but cannot strike it to any purpose. The flying squirrel drifts +like a falling leaf; the bat flits like a black rag torn at the edge. +To give power, we must have plumes that can strike, as with the flat of +a sword-blade; and to give _perfect_ power, these must be laid over +each other, so that each may support the one below it. I use the word +below advisedly: we have to strike _down_. The lowest feather is the +one that first meets the adverse force. It is the one to be supported. + +[Illustration: FIG. 4.] + +Now for the manner of the support. You must all know well the look of +the machicolated parapets in mediaeval castles. You know they are +carried on rows of small projecting buttresses constructed so that, +though the uppermost stone, far-projecting, would break easily under +any shock, it is supported by the next below, and so on, down to the +wall. Now in this figure I am obliged to separate the feathers by white +spaces, to show you them distinctly. In reality they are set as close +to each other as can be, but putting them as close as I can, you get +_a_ or _b_, Fig. 5, for the rough section of the wing, thick towards +the bird's head, and curved like a sickle, so that in striking down it +catches the air, like a reaping-hook, and in rising up, it throws off +the air like a pent-house. + +[Illustration: FIG. 5.] + +70. The stroke would therefore be vigorous, and the recovery almost +effortless, were even the direction of both actually vertical. But +they are vertical only with relation to the bird's body. In space they +follow the forward flight, in a softly curved line; the downward +stroke being as effective as the bird chooses, the recovery scarcely +encounters resistance in the softly gliding ascent. Thus, in Fig. 5, +(I can only explain this to readers a little versed in the elements of +mechanics,) if B is the locus of the center of gravity of the bird, +moving in slow flight in the direction of the arrow, w is the locus of +the leading feather of its wing, and _a_ and _b_, roughly, the +successive positions of the wing in the down-stroke and recovery. + +71. I say the down-stroke is as effective as the bird chooses; that is +to say, it can be given with exactly the quantity of impulse, and +exactly the quantity of supporting power, required at the moment. Thus, +when the bird wants to fly slowly, the wings are fluttered fast, giving +vertical blows; if it wants to pause absolutely in still air, (this +large birds cannot do, not being able to move their wings fast enough,) +the velocity becomes vibration, as in the humming-bird: but if there is +wind, any of the larger birds can lay themselves on it like a kite, +their own weight answering the purpose of the string,[14] while they +keep the wings and tail in an inclined plane, giving them as much +gliding ascent as counteracts the fall. They nearly all, however, use +some slightly gliding force at the same time; a single stroke of the +wing, with forward intent, seeming enough to enable them to glide on +for half a minute or more without stirring a plume. A circling eagle +floats an inconceivable time without visible stroke: (fancy the pretty +action of the inner wing, _backing_ air instead of water, which gives +exactly the breadth of circle he chooses). But for exhibition of the +complete art of flight, a swallow on rough water is the master of +masters. A sea-gull, with all its splendid power, generally has its +work cut out for it, and is visibly fighting; but the swallow plays +with wind and wave as a girl plays with her fan, and there are no words +to say how many things it does with its wings in any ten seconds, and +does consummately. The mystery of its dart remains always inexplicable +to me; no eye can trace the bending of bow that sends that living +arrow. + +But the main structure of the noble weapon we may with little pains +understand. + + [14] See App. p. 112, Sec. 145. + +72. In the sections _a_ and _b_ of Fig. 5, I have only represented the +quills of the outer part of the wing. The relation of these, and of the +inner quills, to the bird's body may be very simply shown. + +Fig. 6 is a rude sketch, typically representing the wing of any bird, +but actually founded chiefly on the sea-gull's. + +[Illustration: FIG. 6.] + +It is broadly composed of two fans, A and B. The out-most fan, A, is +carried by the bird's hand; of which I rudely sketch the contour of the +bones at _a_. The innermost fan, B, is carried by the bird's forearm, +from wrist to elbow, _b_. + +The strong humerus, _c_, corresponding to our arm from shoulder to +elbow, has command of the whole instrument. No feathers are attached to +this bone; but covering and protecting ones are set in the skin of it, +completely filling, when the active wing is open, the space between it +and the body. But the plumes of the two great fans, A and B, are set +into the bones; in Fig. 8, farther on, are shown the projecting knobs +on the main arm bone, set for the reception of the quills, which make +it look like the club of Hercules. The connection of the still more +powerful quills of the outer fan with the bones of the hand is quite +beyond all my poor anatomical perceptions, and, happily for me, also +beyond needs of artistic investigation. + +73. The feathers of the fan A are called the primaries. Those of the +fan B, secondaries. Effective actions of flight, whether for support or +forward motion, are, I believe, all executed with the primaries, every +one of which may be briefly described as the strongest cimeter that can +be made of quill substance; flexible within limits, and elastic at its +edges--carried by an elastic central shaft--twisted like a windmill +sail--striking with the flat, and recovering with the edge. + +The secondary feathers are more rounded at the ends, and frequently +notched; their curvature is reversed to that of the primaries; they are +arranged, when expanded, somewhat in the shape of a shallow cup, with +the hollow of it downwards, holding the air therefore, and aiding in +all the pause and buoyancy of flight, but little in the activity of it. +Essentially they are the brooding and covering feathers of the wing; +exquisitely beautiful--as far as I have yet seen, _most_ beautiful--in +the bird whose brooding is of most use to us; and which has become the +image of all tenderness. "How often would I have gathered thy children +... and ye would not." + +74. Over these two chief masses of the plume are set others which +partly complete their power, partly adorn and protect them; but of +these I can take no notice at present. All that I want you to +understand is the action of the two main masses, as the wing is opened +and closed. + +Fig. 7 roughly represents the upper surface of the main feathers of the +wing closed. The secondaries are folded over the primaries; and the +primaries shut up close, with their outer edges parallel, or nearly so. +Fig. 8 roughly shows the outline of the bones, in this position, of one +of the larger pigeons.[15] + +[Illustration: FIG. 7.] + +[Illustration: FIG. 8.] + + [15] I find even this mere outline of anatomical structure so + interferes with the temper in which I wish my readers to think, + that I shall withdraw it in my complete edition. + +75. Then Fig. 9 is (always sketched in the roughest way) the outer, +Fig. 10 the inner, surface of a sea-gull's wing in this position. Next, +Fig. 11 shows the tops of the four lowest feathers in Fig. 9, in mere +outline; A separate (pulled off, so that they can be set side by side), +B shut up close in the folded wing, C, opened in the spread wing. + +[Illustration: FIG. 9.] + +[Illustration: FIG. 10.] + +[Illustration: FIG. 11.] + +76. And now, if you will yourselves watch a few birds in flight, or +opening and closing their wings to prune them, you will soon know as +much as is needful for our art purposes; and, which is far more +desirable, feel how very little we know, to any purpose, of even the +familiar creatures that are our companions. + +Even what we have seen to-day[16] is more than appears to have been +noticed by the most careful painters of the great schools; and you will +continually fancy that I am inconsistent with myself in pressing you to +learn, better than they, the anatomy of birds, while I violently and +constantly urge you to refuse the knowledge of the anatomy of men. But +you will find, as my system develops itself, that it is absolutely +consistent throughout. I don't mean, by telling you not to study human +anatomy, that you are not to know how many fingers and toes you have, +nor how you can grasp and walk with them; and, similarly, when you look +at a bird, I wish you to know how many claws and wing-feathers it has, +and how it grips and flies with them. Of the bones, in either, I shall +show you little; and of the muscles, nothing but what can be seen in +the living creature, nor, often, even so much. + + [16] Large and somewhat carefully painted diagrams were shown at + the lecture, which I cannot engrave but for my complete edition. + +77. And accordingly, when I now show you this sketch of my favorite +Holbein, and tell you that it is entirely disgraceful he should not +know what a wing was, better, I don't mean that it is disgraceful he +should not know the anatomy of it, but that he should never have looked +at it to see how the feathers lie. + +Now Holbein paints men gloriously, but never looks at birds; Gibbons, +the wood-cutter, carves birds, but can't men;--of the two faults the +last is the worst; but the right is in looking at the whole of nature +in due comparison, and with universal candor and tenderness. + +78. At the whole of nature, I say, not at _super_-nature--at what you +suppose to be above the visible nature about you. If you are not +inclined to look at the wings of birds, which God has given you to +handle and to see, much less are you to contemplate, or draw +imaginations of, the wings of angels, which you can't see. Know your +own world first--not denying any other, but being quite sure that the +place in which you are now put is the place with which you are now +concerned; and that it will be wiser in you to think the gods +themselves may appear in the form of a dove, or a swallow, than that, +by false theft from the form of dove or swallow, you can represent the +aspect of gods. + +79. One sweet instance of such simple conception, in the end of the +Odyssey, must surely recur to your minds in connection with our subject +of to-day, but you may not have noticed the recurrent manner in which +Homer insists on the thought. When Ulysses first bends and strings his +bow, the vibration of the chord is shrill, "like the note of a +swallow." A poor and unwarlike simile, it seems! But in the next book, +when Ulysses stands with his bow lifted, and Telemachus has brought the +lances, and laid them at his feet, and Athena comes to his side to +encourage him,--do you recollect the gist of her speech? "You fought," +she says, "nine years for the sake of Helen, and for another's +house:--now, returned, after all those wanderings, and under your own +roof, for it, and its treasures, will you not fight, then?" And she +herself flies up to the house-roof, and thence, _in the form of the +swallow_, guides the arrows of vengeance for the violation of the +sanctities of home. + +80. To-day, then, I believe verily for the first time, I have been able +to put before you some means of guidance to understand the beauty of +the bird which lives with you in your own houses, and which purifies +for you, from its insect pestilence, the air that you breathe. Thus the +sweet domestic thing has done, for men, at least these four thousand +years. She has been their companion, not of the home merely, but of the +hearth, and the threshold; companion only endeared by departure, and +showing better her loving-kindness by her faithful return. Type +sometimes of the stranger, she has softened us to hospitality; type +always of the suppliant, she has enchanted us to mercy; and in her +feeble presence, the cowardice, or the wrath, of sacrilege has changed +into the fidelities of sanctuary. Herald of our summer, she glances +through our days of gladness; numberer of our years, she would teach us +to apply our hearts to wisdom;--and yet, so little have we regarded +her, that this very day, scarcely able to gather from all I can find +told of her enough to explain so much as the unfolding of her wings, I +can tell you nothing of her life--nothing of her journeying: I cannot +learn how she builds, nor how she chooses the place of her wandering, +nor how she traces the path of her return. Remaining thus blind and +careless to the true ministries of the humble creature whom God has +really sent to serve us, we in our pride, thinking ourselves surrounded +by the pursuivants of the sky, can yet only invest them with majesty by +giving them the calm of the bird's motion, and shade of the bird's +plume:--and after all, it is well for us, if, when even for God's best +mercies, and in His temples marble-built, we think that, "with angels +and archangels, and all the company of Heaven, we laud and magnify His +glorious name"--well for us, if our attempt be not only an insult, and +His ears open rather to the inarticulate and unintended praise, of "the +Swallow, twittering from her straw-built shed." + + + + +LECTURE III. + +THE DABCHICKS. + + +81. I believe that somewhere I have already observed, but permit +myself, for immediate use, to repeat what I cannot but think the +sagacious observation,--that the arrangement of any sort of animals +must be, to say the least, imperfect, if it be founded only on the +characters of their feet. And, of all creatures, one would think birds +were those which, continually dispensing with the use of their feet, +would require for their classification some attention also to be paid +to their bodies and wings,--not to say their heads and tails. +Nevertheless, the ornithological arrangement at present in vogue may +suffice for most scientific persons; but in grouping birds, so that the +groups may be understood and remembered by children, I must try to make +them a little more generally descriptive. + +82. In talking of parrots, for instance, it is only a small part of the +creature's nature which is told by its scientific name of 'Scansor,' or +'Climber.' That it only clutches with its claws, and does not snatch or +strike with them;--that it helps itself about with its beak, on +branches, or bars of cage, in an absurd manner, as if partly imagining +itself hung up in a larder, are by no means the most vital matters +about the bird. Whereas, that its beak is always extremely short, and +is bent down so roundly that the angriest parrot cannot peck, but only +_bite_, if you give it a chance; that it _can_ bite, pinch, or +otherwise apply the mechanism of a pair of nut-crackers from the back +of its head, with effect; that it has a little black tongue capable of +much talk; above all, that it is mostly gay in plumage, often to +vulgarity, and always to pertness;--all these characters should surely +be represented to the apprehensive juvenile mind, in sum; and not +merely the bird's climbing qualities. + +83. Again, that the race of birds called in Latin 'Rasores' _do_, in +the search for their food, usually scratch, and kick out their legs +behind, living for the most part in gravelly or littery places, of +which the hidden treasures are only to be discovered in that manner, +seems to me no supremely interesting custom of the animal's life, but +only a _manner_ of its household, or threshold, economy. But that the +tribe, on the whole, is unambitiously domestic, and never predatory; +that they fly little and low, eat much of what they can pick up without +trouble--and are _themselves_ always excellent eating;--yet so +exemplary in their own domestic cares and courtesies that one is +ashamed to eat them except in eggs;--that their plumage is for the most +part warm brown, delicately and even bewitchingly spotty;--and that, in +the goodliest species, the spots become variegated, and inlaid as in a +Byzantine pavement, deepening to imperial purple and azure, and +lightening into luster of innumerable eyes;--all this, I hold, very +clearly and positively, should be explained to children as a part of +science, quite as exact, and infinitely more gracious, than that which +reckons up the whole tribe of loving and luminous creatures under the +feebly descriptive term of 'Scratchers.' + +I will venture therefore to recommend my younger readers, in classing +birds, to think of them literally from top to toe--from toe to top I +should say,--foot, body, and head, studying, with the body, the wings +that bear it; and with the head, what brains it can bring to bear on +practical matters, and what sense on sentimental. But indeed, +primarily, you have to consider whether the bird altogether may not be +little more than a fat, cheerful little stomach, in a spotted +waistcoat, and with legs to it. That is the main definition of a great +many birds--meant to eat all day, chiefly, grubs, or grain--not at all, +unless under wintry and calamitous conditions, meant to fast painfully, +or be in concern about their food. Faultless in digestion--dinner +lasting all day long, with the delight of social intercourse--various +chirp and chatter. Flying or fluttering in a practical, not stately, +manner: hopping and creeping intelligently. Sociable to man extremely, +building and nestling and rustling about him,--prying and speculating, +curiously watchful of him at his work, if likely to be profitable to +themselves, or even sometimes in mere pitying sympathy, and wonder how +such a wingless and beakless creature can do _any_thing.[17] + + [17] Compare 'Paradise of Birds,' (song to the young Roc, page + 67,) and see close of lecture for notes on that book. + +84. The balance of this kind of bird on its legs is a very important +part of its--diagnosis; (we must have a fine word now and then!) Its +action on the wing, is mere flutter or flirt, in and out of the hedge, +or over it; but its manner of perch, or literally 'bien-seance,' is +admirable matter of interest. So also in the birds which are on the +water what these are on land; picking up anything anywhere; lazy and +fortunate, mostly, themselves; fat, floating, daintiest +darlings;--_their_ balance on the water, also, and under it, in +'ducking,' a most essential part of their business and being. + +85. Then, directly opposed to these, in both kinds, you have the birds +which must fast long, and fly far, and watch or fight for their food. +Not stomachic in profile; far from cheerful in disposition; more or +less lonely in habit; or, if gregarious, out of the way of men. The +balance of these on the wing, is no less essential a part of their +picturing, than that of the buntings, robins, and ducks on the foot, or +breast: and therefore, especially the position of the head in flying. + +86. Accordingly, for complete ornithology, _every_ bird must be drawn, +as every flower for good botany, both in profile, and looking down upon +it: but for the perchers, the standing profile is the most essential; +and for the falcons and gulls, the flying _plan_,--the outline of the +bird, as it would be seen looking down on it, when its wings were +full-spread. + +Then, in connection with these general outlines, we want systematic +plan and profile of the foot and head; but since we can't have +everything at once, let us say the plan of the foot, and profile of the +head, quite accurately given; and for every bird consistently, and to +scale. + +Profile and plan in outline; then, at least the _head_ in light and +shade, from life, so as to give the expression of the eye. Fallacious, +this latter, often, as an indication of character; but deeply +significant of habit and power: thus the projecting, full, bead, which +enables the smaller birds to see the smallest insect or grain with good +in it, gives them much of their bright and often arch expression; while +the flattened iris under the beetling brow of the falcons,--projecting, +not in frown, but as roof, to shade the eye from interfering +skylight,--gives them their apparently threatening and ominous gaze; +the iris itself often wide and pale, showing as a lurid saturnine ring +under the shadow of the brow plumes. + +87. I speak of things that are to be: very assuredly they will be done, +some day--not far off, by painters educated as gentlemen, in the +strictest sense--working for love and truth, and not for lust and gold. +Much has already been done by good and earnest draughtsmen, who yet had +not received the higher painter's education, which would have enabled +them to see the bird in the greater lights and laws of its form. It is +only here and there, by Duerer, Holbein, Carpaccio, or other such men, +that we get a living bird rightly drawn;[18] but we may be greatly +thankful for the unspared labor, and attentive skill, with which many +illustrations of ornithology have been produced within the last seventy +or eighty years. Far beyond rivalship among them, stands Le Vaillant's +monograph, or dualgraph, on the Birds of Paradise, and Jays: its +plates, exquisitely engraved, and colored with unwearying care by hand, +are insuperable in plume-texture, hue, and action,--spoiled in effect, +unhappily, by the vulgar boughs for sustentation. Next, ranks the +recently issued history of the birds of Lombardy; the lithographs by +Herr Oscar Dressler, superb, but the coloring (chromo-lithotint) poor: +and then, the self-taught, but in some qualities greatly to be +respected, art of Mr. Gould. Of which, I would fain have spoken with +gratitude and admiration in his lifetime; had not I known, that the +qualified expressions necessary for true estimate of his published +plates, would have caused him more pain, than any general praise could +have counteracted or soothed. Without special criticism, and rejoicing +in all the pleasure which any of my young pupils may take in his +drawing,--only guarding them, once for all, against the error of +supposing it exemplary as art,--I use his plates henceforward for +general reference; finding also that, following Mr. Gould's practical +and natural arrangement, I can at once throw together in groups, easily +comprehensible by British children, all they are ever likely to see of +British or Britain-visitant birds: which I find fall, with frank +casting, into these following divisions, not in any important matters +varying from the usual ones, and therefore less offensive, I hope, to +the normal zoologist than my heresies in botany; while yet they enable +me to make what I have to say about our native birds more simply +presentable to young minds.[19] + + [18] The Macaw in Sir Joshua's portrait of the Countess of Derby + is a grand example. + + [19] See the notes on classification, in the Appendix to the + volume; published, together with the Preface, simultaneously with + this number. + +88. 1. The HAWKS come first, of course, massed under the single Latin +term 'Falco,' and next them, + + 2. The OWLS second, also of course,--unmistakable, these two tribes, +in all types of form, and ways of living. + + 3. The SWALLOWS I put next these, being connected with the owls by +the Goatsucker, and with the falcons by their flight. + + 4. The PIES next, whose name has a curious double meaning, derived +partly from the notion of their being painted or speckled birds; and +partly from their being, beyond all others, pecking, or pickax-beaked, +birds. They include, therefore, the Crows, Jays, and Woodpeckers; +historically and practically a most important order of creatures to +man. Next which, I take the great company of the smaller birds of the +dry land, under these following more arbitrary heads. + + 5. The SONGSTERS. The Thrush, Lark, Blackbird, and Nightingale, and +one or two choristers more. These are connected with the pheasants in +their speckledness, and with the pies in pecking; while the nightingale +leads down to the smaller groups of familiar birds. + + 6. The ROBINS, going on into the minor warblers, and the Wrens; +the essential character of a Robin being that it should have some front +red in its dress somewhere; and the Cross-bills being included in the +class, partly because they have red in their dress, and partly because +I don't know where else to put them. + + 7. The CREEPERS and TITS--separated chiefly on the ground of their +minuteness, and subtle little tricks and graces of movement. + + 8. The SPARROWS, going on into Buntings and Finches. + + 9. The PHEASANTS (substituting this specific name for that of +Scratchers). + + 10. The HERONS; for the most part wading and fishing creatures, +but leading up to the Stork, and including any long-legged birds that +run well, such as the Plovers. + + 11. The DABCHICKS--the subject of our present chapter. + + 12. The SWANS and GEESE. + + 13. The DUCKS. + + 14. The GULLS. + +Of these, I take the Dabchicks first, for three sufficient reasons;--that +they give us least trouble,--that they best show what I mean by broad +principles of grouping,--and that they are the effective clasp, if not +center, of all the series; since they are the true link between land +and water birds. We will look at one or two of their leading examples, +before saying more of their position in bird-society. I shall give for +the heading of each article, the name which I propose for the bird in +English children's schools--_Dame_-schools if possible; a perfectly +simple Latin one, and a familiar English one. The varieties of existing +nomenclature will be given in the Appendix, so far as I think them +necessary to be known or remembered. + + +I. + +MERULA FONTIUM. TORRENT-OUZEL. + +89. There are very few good popular words which do not unite two or +more ideas, being founded on one, and catching up others as they go +along. Thus I find 'dabchick' to be a corruption of 'dip-chick,' +meaning birds that only dip, and do not dive, or even duck, for any +length of time: but in its broader and customary use it takes up the +idea of dabbling; and, as a class-name, stands for 'dabbling-chick,' +meaning a bird of small size, that neither wades, nor dives, nor runs, +nor swims, nor flies, in a consistent manner; but humorously dabbles, +or dips, or flutters, or trips, or plashes, or paddles, and is always +doing all manner of odd and delightful things: being also very +good-humored, and in consequence, though graceful, inclined to +plumpness;[20] and though it never waddles, sometimes, for a minute or +two, 'toddles,' and now and then looks more like a ball than a bird. +For the most part, being clever, they are also brave, and would be as +tame as any other chickens, if we would let them. They are mostly shore +birds, living at the edge of irregularly broken water, either streams +or sea; and the representative of the whole group with which we will +begin is the mysterious little water-ouzel, or 'oiselle,' properly the +water-blackbird,--Buffon's 'merle d'eau'--for ouzel is the classic and +poetic word for the blackbird, or ouzel-_cock_, "so black of hue," in +'Midsummer Night's Dream.' Johnson gives it from the Saxon 'osle'; but +in Chaucer it must be understood simply as the feminine of oiseau. The +bird in question might, however, be more properly called, as Bewick +calls it, 'water pyot,' or water magpie, for only its back and wings +are black,--its head brown, and breast snow white. + + [20] Or in French, 'embonpoint.' + +90. And now I must, once for all, get over a difficulty in the +description of birds' costume. I can always describe the neck-feathers, +as such, when birds have any neck to speak of; but when, as the +majority of dabchicks, they have not any,--instead of talking of +'throat-feathers' and 'stomach-feathers,' which both seem to me rather +ugly words, I shall call the breast feathers the 'chemisette,' and all +below them the 'bodice.' + +I am now able, without incivility, to distinguish the two families of +Water-ouzel. Both have white chemisettes, but the common water-ouzel +(Cinclus aquaticus of Gould) has a white bodice, and the other a black +one, the bird being called therefore, in ugly Greek, 'Melanogaster,' +'black-stomached.' The black bodice is Norwegian fashion--the white, +English; and I find that in Switzerland there is an intermediate +Robin-ouzel, with a red bodice: but the ornithologists are at variance +as to his 'specific' existence. The chemisette is always white. + +91. However dressed, and wherever born, the Ouzel is essentially a +mountain-torrent bird, and, Bewick says, may be seen perched on a stone +in the midst of a stream, in a continual _dipping_ motion, or short +curtsey often repeated, while it is watching for its food, which +consists of small fishes and insects,--water insects, that is to say, +caught mostly at the bottom; many-legged and shrimpy things, according +to Gould's plate. The popular tradition that it can walk under the +water has been denied by scientific people; but there is no doubt +whatever of the fact,--see the authentic evidence of it in the +delightful little monograph of the bird published by the Carlisle +Naturalist's Society; but how the thing is done nobody but the ouzel +knows. Its strong little feet, indeed, have plenty of grip in them, but +cannot lay hold of smooth stones, and Mr. Gould himself does not solve +the problem. "Some assert that it is done by clinging to the pebbles +with its strong claws; others, by considerable exertion and a rapid +movement of the wings. Its silky plumage is impervious to wet; and +hence when the bird returns to the surface, the pearly drops which roll +off into the stream are the only evidence of its recent submersion. It +is, indeed, very interesting to observe _this pretty bird walk down a +stone, quietly descend into the water_, rise again perhaps at a +distance of several yards down the stream, and 'fly'[21] back to the +place it had just left, to perform the same maneuver the next minute, +the silence of the interval broken by its cheerful warbling song." + + [21] "Wing its way" in the ornithological language. I shall take + leave usually to substitute the vulgar word 'fly,' for this + poetical phrase. + +92. In which, you see, we have the reason for its being called +'water-blackbird,' being, I think, the only one of the dabchicks that +really sings. Some of the others, (sand-pipers) pipe; and others, the +stints, say 'stint' in a charming manner; but none of them _sing_ +except the oiselle. Very singularly, the black-bodiced one seems to +like living near manufactories. "The specimen in the Norwich Museum," +says Mr. Gould, "is the one mentioned by Mr. Lubbock, in 1845, as +'lately' shot at Hellesdon Mills; and two others are stated by the same +author to have been seen at different times by trustworthy observers at +Marlingford and Saxthorpe. Of more recent occurrence I may mention a +male in my own collection, which was brought to me in the flesh, having +been shot in November, 1855, whilst hovering over the river between the +foundry bridge and the ferry. It is not a little singular that a bird +so accustomed to the clear running streams of the north, and the quiet +haunts of the 'silent angler,' should be found, as in this case, almost +within the walls of the city, sporting over a river turbid and +discolored from the neighboring factories, and with the busy noise of +traffic on every side. About the same time that this bird appeared near +the city, three others were observed on more than one occasion on the +Earlham river, by Mr. Fountaine, of Easton, who is well acquainted with +our British birds; but these suddenly disappeared, and were not seen +again." + +And all will disappear, and never be seen again, but in skeleton, +ill-covered with camphorated rags of skin, under the present scientific +dispensation; unless some kind-hearted northern squire will let them +have the run and the dip of his brooks; and teach the village children +to let them alone if they like to wade down to the village. + +I am sixty-two, and have passed as much time out of those years by +torrent sides as most people. But I have never seen a water-ouzel +alive. + + +II. + +ALLEGRETTA NYMPHAEA. LILY-OUZEL. + +93. We have got so far, by help of our first example, in the etymology +of our entire class, as to rest in the easily memorable root 'dab,' +short for dabble, as the foundation of comprehensive nomenclature. But +the earlier (if not Aryan!) root 'dip,' must be taken good heed to, +also, because, as we further study the customs of aquatic chickens, we +shall find that they really mass themselves under the three great heads +of 'Duckers,' birds that duck their heads only, and stick up their +tails in the air;--'Dippers,' birds that take real dips under, but not +far down, in shallow water mostly, for things at the bottom, or else to +get out of harm's way, staying down about as long as we could +ourselves, if we were used to it;--and 'Divers,' who plunge like stones +when they choose,--can go nobody knows how deep in the deep sea,--and +swim under the water just as comfortably as upon it, and as fast, if +not faster. + +But although this is clearly the practical and poetical division, we +can't make it a scientific one; for the dippers and dabblers are so +like each other that we must take them together; and so also the +duckers and divers are inseparable in some of their forms: so that, for +convenience of classing, we must keep to the still more general rank I +have given--dabchick, duck, and gull,--the last being essentially the +aerial sea-bird, which _lives_ on the wing. + +94. But there is yet one more 'mode of motion' to be thought of, in the +class we are now examining. Several of them ought really to be +described, not as dipchicks, but as _trip_-chicks; being, as far as I +can make out, little in the habit of going under water; but much in the +habit of walking or tripping daintily over it, on such raft or float as +they may find constructed for them by water-lily or other buoyant +leaves. Of these "come and trip it as you come" chicks,--(my emendation +of Milton is surely more reasonable than the emendations of commentators +as a body, for we do not, any of us, like to see our mistresses "trip +it as they _go_")--there are, I find, pictured by Mr. Gould, three +'species,' called by him, Porzana Minuta, Olivaceous Crake; Porzana +Pygmaea, Baillon's Crake; and Porzana Maruetta, Spotted Crake. + +Now, in the first place, I find 'Porzana' to be indeed Italian for +'water-hen,' but I can't find its derivation; and in the second place, +these little birds are neither water-hens nor moor-hens, nor +water-cocks nor moor-cocks; neither can I find, either in Gould, +Yarrell, or Bewick, the slightest notice of their voices!--though it is +only in implied depreciation of their quality, that we have any +business to call them 'Crakes,' 'Croaks,' or 'Creaks.' In the third +place, 'Olivaceous' is not a translation of 'Minuta,' nor 'Baillon's' +of 'Pygmaea,' nor 'spotted' of 'Maruetta'; which last is another of the +words that mean nothing in any language that I know of, though the +French have adopted it as 'Marouette.' And in the fourth place, I can't +make out any difference, either in text or picture, between Mr. +Baillon's Crake, and the 'minute' one, except that the minute one is +the bigger, and has fewer white marks in the center of the back. + +95. For our purposes, therefore, I mean to call all the three +varieties neither Crake nor Porzan, but 'Allegretta,' which will at +once remind us of their motion; the larger one, nine inches long, I +find called always Spotted Crake, so that shall be 'Allegretta +Maculata,' Spotty Allegret; and the two little ones shall be, one, the +Tiny Allegret, and the other the Starry Allegret (Allegretta Minuta, +and Allegretta Stellaris); all the three varieties being generally +thought of by the plain English name I have given at the head of this +section, 'Lily-Ouzel' (see, in Sec. 7, page 5, the explanation of my +system of dual epithet, and its limitations. I note, briefly, what may +be properly considered distinctive in the three kinds.) + + +II.A. + +ALLEGRETTA NYMPHAEA, MACULATA. SPOTTED ALLEGRET. + +96. Water-Crake or 'Skitty' of Bewick,--French, 'Poule d'eau +Marouette,' (we may perhaps take Marouette as euphonious for Maculata, +but I wish I knew what it meant);--though so light of foot, flies +heavily; and, when compelled to take wing, merely passes over the tops +of the reeds to some place of security a short distance off. (Gould.) +The body is "in all these Rails _compressed_" (Yarrell,--he means +laterally thin), which enables them to make their way through dense +herbage with facility. I can't find anything clear about its country, +except that it 'occasionally visits' Sweden in summer, and Smyrna in +winter, and that it has been found in Corfu, Sicily, Crete,--Whittlesea +Mere,--and Yarley Fen;--in marshes always, wherever it is; (nothing +said of its behavior on ice,) and not generally found farther north +than Cumberland. Its food is rather nasty--water-slugs and the +like,--but it is itself as fat as an ortolan, "almost melts in the +_hand_." (Gould.) Its own color, brown spotted with white; "the spots +on the wing coverts surrounded with black, which gives them a studded +or pearly appearance." (Bewick,--he means by 'pearly,' rounded or +projecting.) Hence my specific epithet. Its young are of the liveliest +black, "little balls of black glistening down," beautifully put by Mr. +Gould among the white water Crowfoot (Ranunculus Aquatilis), looking +like little ducklings in mourning. "Its nest is made of rushes and +other buoyant materials matted together, so as to float on, and rise or +fall with, the ebbing or flowing of the water like a boat; and to +prevent its being carried away, it is moored or fastened to a reed." +(Bewick.) + + +II.B. + +ALLEGRETTA NYMPHAEA, STELLARIS. STARRY ALLEGRET. + +97. Called 'Stellaris' by Temminck.--I do not find why, but it is by +much the brightest in color of the three, and may be thought of as the +star of them. Gould says it is the least, also, and calls it the +'Pigmy'; but we can't keep that name without confusing it with the +'Minuta.' 'Baillon's Crake' seems the most commonly accepted title,--as +the worst possible. Both this, and the more quietly toned Tiny, in Mr. +Gould's delightful plates of them, have softly brown backs, exquisitely +ermined by black markings at the root of each feather, following into +series of small waves, like little breakers on sand. They have lovely +gray chemisettes, striped gray bodices, and green bills and feet; a +little orange stain at the root of the green bill, and the bright red +iris of the eye have wonderful effect in warming the color of the whole +bird: and with beautiful fancy Mr. Gould has put the Stellaris among +yellow water-lilies to set off its gray; and a yellow butterfly with +blue and red spots, and black-speckled wings (Papilio Machaon), to +harmonize both. It is just as if the flower were gradually turning into +the bird. Examples of the Starry Allegret _have_ been 'obtained'--in +the British Islands. It is said to be numerous, unobtained, in India, +China, Japan, Persia, Greece, North Africa, Italy, and France. I have +never heard of anybody's seeing it, however. + + +II.C. + +ALLEGRETTA NYMPHAEA, MINUTA. TINY ALLEGRET. + +98. 'Tiny Allegret,'--Yarrell's 'Little Crake,' (but see names in +Appendix). It is a little more rosy than 'Stellaris' in the gray of its +neck, passing into brown; and Mr. Gould has put it with a pink water +plant, which harmonizes with it to the bird's advantage; while the tiny +creature stands on the bent leaf of a reed, and scarcely bends it more! +"It runs with rapidity over broken reeds, and moves gracefully, raising +and displaying its tail at every step." It has so very small a tail to +display, however, that I should hardly think the display was worth +while. "It is very cunning, and especially noticeable for the subtlety +with which it wearies the dog of the sportsman by executing a thousand +evolutions with surprising celerity; whence comes the trivial name of +'kill-dog' bestowed upon it in some localities. Pursued to extremity, +it casts itself into the water, swims with ease, and dives at the +moment its enemy is about to seize it; or it conceals itself in a tuft +of reeds or a bush, and by this means often escapes with impunity. It +loves to breed among the reeds, and in long and thick grass, frequently +in small companies of its own species, or of the Stellaris. The female +lays her eggs on an inartificially constructed platform of decayed +leaves or stalks of marsh plants, slightly elevated above the water." +How elevated, I cannot find proper account,--that is to say, whether it +is hung to the stems of growing reeds, or built on hillocks of soil, +but the bird is always liable to have its nest overflowed by floods. +The full-grown bird is dressed in an exquisite perfection of barred +bodice, spotted chemisette, and waved feathers edged with gray on the +back. + +99. The reader will please recollect these three Allegrets as the +second group of the dab- or dabble-chicks; and, while the water-ouzel +is a mountain and torrent bird, these inhabit exclusively flat lands +and calm water, belonging properly to temperate, inclining to warm, +climates, and able to gladden for us--as their name now given +implies--many scenes and places otherwise little enlivened; and to make +the very gnats of them profitable to us, were we wise enough. Dainty +and delightful creatures in all their ways,--voice only dubitable, but +I hope not a shriek or a squeak;--and there seems to be no reason +whatever why half our fen lands should not be turned into beds of white +water lilies and golden ducks, with jetty ducklings, to the great +comfort of English souls.[22] + + [22] Compare Bishop Stanley's account of the larger tropical + 'Jacana,' p. 311. "One species is often tamed, and from its being + a resolute enemy to birds of prey, the inhabitants of the + countries where it is found" (which be they?) "rear it as a + protector for their fowls, as it not only feeds with them, but + accompanies them into the fields, and brings them back in the + evening!" + + +III. + +TREPIDA STAGNARUM. LITTLE GREBE. + +100. The two birds--Torrent-ouzel, and Lily-ouzel,--which we have been +just describing, agree, you will observe, in delicate and singular use +of their feet in the water; the torrent-ouzel holding itself +mysteriously at the bottom; and the lily-ouzel, less mysteriously, but +as skillfully, on the top (for I forgot to note, respecting this +raft-walking, that the bird, however light, must be always careful not +to tread on the edges of leaves, but in the middle, or, rather, as +nearly as may be where they are set on the stalk; it would go in at +once if it trod on the edges). But both the birds have the foot which +is really characteristic of land, not water-birds; and especially of +those land species that run well. Of the real action of the toes, +either in running, or hopping, nothing is told us by the +anatomists--(compare lecture on Robin, Sec. 26); but I hope before long to +get at some of the facts respecting the greater flexibility of the +gripping and climbing feet, and elasticity of running ones; and to draw +up something like a properly graduated scale of the length of the toes +in proportion to that of the body. + +[Illustration: FIG. 12.] + +And, for one question, relative to this--the balance of a bird +_standing_, not gripping--is to be thought of. Taking a typical profile +of bird-form in its abstract, with beak, belly, and foot, horizontal +(Fig. 12), the security of the standing, (supposing atomic weight equal +through the bird's body, and the _will_, in the ankle, of iron,) is the +same as of an inverted cone, between the dotted lines from the +extremities of the foot to those of the body; and, of course, with a +little grip of the foot or hind claw, the bird can be safe in almost +any position it likes. Nevertheless, when the feet are as small in +proportion as the Torrent-ouzel's, I greatly doubt the possibility of +such a balance as Bewick has given it (Fig. 13 _a_). Gould's of the +black-bodiced Ouzel (Fig. 13 _b_) is, I imagine, right. Bewick was +infallible in plume texture, and expression either of the features of +animals, or of any action that had meaning in it; but he was singularly +careless of indifferent points in geometry or perspective; and even +loses character in his water-birds, by making them always swim on the +top of the water. + +[Illustration: FIG. 13_a_.] + +101. But, whatever their balance of body, or use of foot, the two birds +just examined are, as I said, essentially connected with the running +land birds, or broadly, the Plovers; and with the Sand-runners, or +(from their cry) Sandpipers, which Mr. Gould evidently associates +mentally with the Plovers, in his description of the plumage of the +Dunlin; while he gives to them in his plates of that bird--the little +Stint, and common Sandpiper--most subtle action with their fine +feet,--thread-fine, almost, in the toes; requiring us, it seems to me, +to consider them as entirely land-birds, however fond of the wave +margins. But the next real water-ouzel we come to, belongs to a group +with feet like little horse-chestnut leaves; each toe having its +separate lobes of web. Why separated, I cannot yet make out, but the +bird swims, or even dives, on occasion, with dexterity and force. These +lobe-footed birds consist first of the Grebes, which are connected with +fresh-water ducks; and, secondly, of the Phalaropes, which are a sort +of sea-gulls. No bird which is not properly web-footed has any business +to think itself either true duck or true gull; but as, both in size and +habit of life, the larger grebes and phalaropes are entirely aquatic +and marine, I shall take out of them into my class of dabchicks, only +those which are literally dabblers in habit, and chickens in size. And +of the Grebes, therefore, only the one commonly known as the Dabchick, +the 'Little Grebe,' 'Colymbus Minutus' (Minute Diver), of Linnaeus. A +summary word or two, first, respecting the Grebe family, will be +useful. + +[Illustration: FIG. 13_b_.] + +102. Grebe, properly, I suppose, Grebe, from the French, is not in +Johnson, nor do any of my books tell me what it means. I retain it, +however, as being short, not ugly, and well established in two +languages. We may think of it as formed from gre, and meaning 'a nice +bird.' The specialities of the whole class, easily remembered, are, +first, that they have chestnut-leaf feet; secondly, that their legs are +serrated behind with a double row of notches--(why?); thirdly, that +they have no tails; fourthly, that they have, most of them, very fine +and very comic crests, tufts, tippets, and other variously applied +appendages to their heads and chins, so that some are called 'crested,' +some 'eared,' some 'tippeted,' and so on; but the least of them, our +proper Dabchick, displays no absurdity of this sort, and I have the +less scruple in distinguishing it from others. I find, further, in +Stanley's classes, the Grebes placed among the short-winged birds, and +made to include all the divers; but he does not say how short their +wings are; and his grouping them with guillemots and puffins is +entirely absurd, all their ways and looks, and abodes, being those of +ducks. We can say no more of them as a family, accordingly, until we +know what a duck is;--and I go on to the little pet of them, whose ways +are more entirely its own. + +103. Strangely, the most interesting fact (if _fact_ it be) that it +builds a floating nest, gains scarcely more than chance notice from its +historians. Here is Mr. Gould's account of it: "The materials composing +this raft or nest are weeds and aquatic plants carefully heaped +together in a rounded form; it is very large at the base, and is so +constantly added to, that a considerable portion of it becomes +submerged; at the same time it is sufficiently buoyant to admit of its +saucer-like hollow top being always above the surface. In this wet +depression five or six eggs are laid. The bird, always most alert, is +still more so now, and scarcely ever admits of a near examination of +the nest-making, or of a view of the eggs. In favorable situations, +however, and with the aid of a telescope, the process may be watched; +and it is not a little interesting to notice with what remarkable +quickness the dabchick scratches the weeds over her eggs with her feet, +when she perceives herself observed, so as not to lead even to the +suspicion that any were deposited on the ill-shapen floating mass. This +work of an instant displays as much skill in deception as can well be +imagined." + +104. It is still left to question, first, what is meant by a wet +depression?--does the bird actually sit in the water, and are the eggs +under it? and, if not, how is the water kept out? Secondly, is the +floating nest anchored, and how? Looking to other ornithologists for +solution of these particulars, I find nobody else say anything about a +floating nest at all. Bewick describes it as being of a large size, and +composed of a very great quantity of grass and water plants, at least a +foot in thickness, and so placed in the water that the female hatches +her eggs amidst the continual wet in which they were first laid. +Yarrell says only that it is a large flat nest made of aquatic plants; +while Morris finally complicates the whole business by telling us that +the nest is placed often as much as twenty or thirty yards from the +water, that it is composed of short pieces of roots, reeds, rushes, and +flags, and that when dry the whole naturally becomes very brittle.[23] + + [23] I hear, from a friend in whose statements I have absolute + confidence, that he has found the eggs of the water-hen laid on a + dead sycamore leaf by the side of a shallow stream, one of the + many brooks near Uxbridge. + +105. While, out of my fifteen volumes of ornithology, I can obtain only +this very vague account of the prettiest bird, next to the kingfisher, +that haunts our English rivers, I have no doubt the most precise and +accurate accounts are obtainable of the shapes of her bones and the +sinuosities of her larynx; but about these I am low-minded enough not +to feel the slightest curiosity. I return to Mr. Gould, therefore, to +gather some pleasanter particulars; first, namely, that she has a +winter and summer dress,--in winter olive gray and white, but in +summer, (changing at marriage time) deep olive black, with dark +chestnut chemisette. Infant dabchicks have "delicate rose-colored +bills, harlequin-like markings, and rosy-white aprons." The +harlequin-like markings I should call, rather, agate-like, especially +on the head, where they are black and white, like an onyx. The bodies +look more like a little walnut-shell, or nutmeg with wings to it, or +things that are to be wings, some day. + +106. Even when full-grown, the birds never fly much,--never more, says +Morris, "than six or ten feet above the water, and for the most part +trailing their legs in it; but either on the water or under it, every +movement is characterized by the most consummate dexterity, and facile +agility. The most expert waterman that sculls his skiff on the Thames +or Isis, is but an humble and unskillful imitator of the dabchick. In +moving straightforward (under water?), the wings are used to aid its +progress, as if in the air, and in turning it has an easy gliding +motion, feet and wings being used, as occasion requires, sometimes on +one side and sometimes on the other. It walks but indifferently, as may +readily be imagined from the position of the legs, so very far back. It +is pleasant to watch the parent bird feeding her young: down she dives +with a quick turn, and presently rises again with, five times out of +six, a minnow, or other little fish, glittering like silver in her +bill. The young rush towards the spot where the mother has come up, but +she does not drop the fish into the water for them to receive until she +has well shaken it about and killed it, so that it may not escape, when +for the last time in its own element. I have seen a young one which had +just seized, out of its turn I have no doubt, the captured prey, chased +away by her, and pursued in apparent anger, as if for punishment, the +following one being willingly given the next fish without any demur." + +107. Mr. Gould seems to think that the dabchick likes insects and fish +spawn better than fish, or at least more prudently dines upon them. +"That fish are taken we have positive evidence from examples having +been repeatedly picked up dead by the fishermen of the Thames, with a +bull-head or miller's thumb in their throats, and by which they had +evidently been choked in the act of swallowing them. That it is +especially fond of insects is shown by the great activity it displays, +when in captivity, in capturing house-flies and other diptera. Those +who have visited Paris will probably have seen the grebes in the window +of the restaurateur in the Rue de Rivoli. For years have a pair of +these birds been living, apparently in the greatest enjoyment, within +the glass window, attracting the admiration of all the passers-by. The +extreme agility with which they sailed round their little prison, or +scrambled over the half-submerged piece of rock for a fly, was very +remarkable. That no bird can be more easily kept in a state of +confinement is certain." + +108. This question about its food is closely connected with that of +its diving. So far as I understand Mr. Morris, it dives only when +disturbed, and to escape,--remaining under water, however, if need +be, an almost incredible time, and swimming underneath it to great +distances. Here we have, if we would only think of it, the same +question as that about the water-ouzel, how it _keeps down_; and +we must now note a few general points about diving birds altogether. + +It is easy to understand how the properly so-called divers can plunge +with impetus to great depths, or keep themselves at the bottom by +continued strokes of the webbed feet; but neither how the ouzel walks +at the bottom, if it be specifically lighter than the water, nor how a +bird can swim horizontally under the surface; at least it is not enough +explained that the action must be always that of oblique diving, the +bird regulating the stroke according to the upward pressure of the +water at different depths. + +109. But there are many other points needing elucidation. It is said +(and beautifully insisted on, by Michelet,) that great spaces in the +bones of birds that pass most of their lives in flight are filled with +air: presumably the bones of the divers are made comparatively solid, +or it is even conceivable--if conceptions or suppositions were of any +use,--that the deep divers may take in water, to help themselves to +sink. The enormous depths at which they have been caught, according to +report, cannot be reached by any mere effort of strength, if the body +remained as buoyant as it evidently is on the surface. The strength of +the wing must, however, be enormous, for the great northern diver is +described as swimming under water "as it were with the velocity of an +arrow in the air" (Yarrell, vol. iii., page 431); or to keep to more +measured fact, Sir William Jardine says, "I have pursued this bird in a +Newhaven fishing-boat with four sturdy rowers, and notwithstanding it +was kept almost constantly under water by firing as soon as it +appeared, the boat could not succeed in making one yard upon it" +(_ibid._, p. 432). + +110. But this is followed by the amazing statement of Mr. Robert Dunn, +p. 433, that in the act of diving it does not appear to make the least +exertion, but sinks gradually under the surface, without throwing +itself forward, the head being the last part that disappears. I am not +fond of the word 'impossible,' but I think I am safe in saying that +according to the laws of nature no buoyant body can sink merely by an +act of volition; and that it must pull itself down by some hitherto +unconceived action of the feet, which in this bird are immensely broad +and strong, and so flat that it cannot walk with them, any more than we +could with two flat boards a yard square tied to our feet; but, when it +is caught on land, shoves its body along upon the ground, like a seal, +by jerks. All these diving motions are executed in a more delicate but +quite as wonderful way by the dabchick,--more wonderful indeed it may +be said, because it has only the divided or chestnut-leaf-like foot, to +strike with. We shall understand it perhaps a little better after +tracing, in a future talk, the history of its relations among the +smaller sea-gulls; meantime, in quitting the little dainty creature, I +must plead for a daintier Latin name than it has now--'Podiceps.' No +one seems to have the least idea what that means; and 'Colymbus,' +diver, must be kept for the great Northern Diver and his deep-sea +relatives, far removed from our little living ripple-line of the pools. +I can't think of any one pretty enough; but for the present 'Trepida' +may serve; and perhaps be applied, not improperly, to all the Grebes, +with reference to their subtle and instant escape from any sudden +danger. (See Stanley, p. 419.) "It requires all the address of a keen +sportsman to get within shot," and when he does, the bird may still be +too shrewd for him. "I fired at the distance of thirty yards; my gun +went quick as lightning, but the grebe went quicker, and scrambling +over, out of sight, came up again in a few seconds perfectly unhurt." + +I think, therefore, that unless I receive some better suggestion, +'Trepida Stagnarum' may be the sufficiently intelligible Latin renaming +of our easily startled favorite. + + +IV. + +TITANIA ARCTICA. ARCTIC FAIRY. + +111. I must first get quit of the confusion of names for this bird. +Linnaeus, in the Fauna Suecica, p. 64, calls it 'Tringa Lobata,' but +afterwards 'Northern Tringa'; and his editor, Gmelin, 'Dark Tringa.' +Other people agree to call it a 'phalarope,' but some of them +'northern' phalarope, some, the 'dark' phalarope; some, the 'ashy' +phalarope, some, the 'disposed to be ashy' phalarope; some, the +'red-necked' phalarope; and some, 'Mr. Williams's' phalarope; finally, +Cuvier calls it a 'Lobipes,' and Mr. Gould, in English, 'red-necked +phalarope.' Few people are likely to know what 'Phalarope' means,[24] +and I believe nobody knows what 'Tringa' means; and as, also, nobody +ever sees it, the little bird being obliged to live in Orkney, +Greenland, Norway, and Lapland, out of human creatures' way, I shall +myself call it the Arctic Fairy. It would come south if we would let +it, but of course Mr. Bond says, "The first specimen I ever had was +shot by a friend of mine in September, 1842, near Southend, Essex, +where he saw the phalarope swimming on the water, like a little duck, +about a mile from land; not knowing what it was, he shot it, and kindly +brought it to me." Another was shot while running between the metals of +the Great Eastern Railway, near the Stratford station, early in June, +1852; and on the Norfolk coast, four others have been killed during the +last fifteen years; and the birds' visits, thus, satisfactorily, put a +stop to. I can therefore study it only in Mr. Gould's drawing, on +consulting which, I find the bird to be simply a sea dabchick,--brown +stripes on the back, and all; but the webs of the feet a little finer, +and in its habits it is more like the Lily-ouzel, according to the +following report of Mr. St. John: "The red-necked phalarope is +certainly the most beautiful little wader of my acquaintance. There +were a pair of them, male and female, feeding near the loch, in a +little pool which was covered with weeds of different kinds. Nothing +could be more graceful than the movements of these two little birds, as +they swam about in search of insects, etc. Sometimes _they ran lightly +on the broad leaves of the water-lily which served them for a raft_, +and entirely kept them out of the water. Though not exactly web-footed, +the phalarope swims with the greatest ease. The attachment of these two +birds to each other seemed very great: whenever in their search for +food they wandered so far apart as to be hidden by the intervening +weeds, the male bird stopped feeding suddenly, and, looking round, +uttered a low and musical call of inquiry, which was immediately +answered by the female in a different note, but perfectly expressive of +her answer, which one might suppose to be to the purport that she was +at hand and quite safe; on hearing her, the male immediately +recommenced feeding, but at the same time making his way towards her; +she also flew to meet him; they then joined company for a moment or +two, and, after a few little notes of endearment, turned off again in +different directions. This scene was repeated a dozen times while I was +watching them. They seemed to have not the slightest fear of me, for +frequently they came to within a yard of where I was sitting, and after +looking up they continued catching the small water-insects, etc., on +the weeds, without minding my presence in the least." What reward the +birds got for this gentle behavior, we learn from the sentence +following after the next two lines, containing the extremely valuable +contribution to their natural history, that "on dissecting the female +we found two eggs in her." + + [24] The terminal 'pe' is short for pus, (pous!) and 'phalero,' + from phalera, fringes--"Fringe-foot" (Morris). + +112. All other accounts concur in expressing (with as much admiration +as is possible to naturalists) the kindly and frank disposition of this +bird; which for the rest is almost a central type of all bird power +with elf gifts added: it flies like a lark, trips on water-lily leaves +like a fairy, swims like a duck, and roves like a sea-gull, having been +seen sixty miles from land: and, finally, though living chiefly in +Lapland and Iceland, and other such northern countries, it has been +seen serenely swimming and catching flies in the hot water of the +geysers, in which a man could not bear his hand. + +And no less harmoniously than in report of the extreme tameness, grace, +and affectionateness of this bird do sportsmen agree also in the +treatment and appreciation of these qualities. Thus says Mr. Salmon: +"Although we shot two pairs, those that were swimming about did not +take the least notice of the report of the gun, and they seemed to be +much attached to each other; for when one of them flew to a short +distance, the other directly followed; and while I held a wounded +female in my hand, its mate came and fluttered before my face." +(Compare the scene between Irene and Hector, at page 393 of the May +number of _Aunt Judy's Magazine_.) And, again, says Mr. Wolley: "The +bird is extremely tame, swimming about my india-rubber boat so near +that I could almost catch it in my hand; I have seen it even, when far +from its nest, struck at many times with an oar before it flew away." +In its domestic habits also the creature seems as exemplary as, in its +social habits, it is frank; for on the approach of danger to her +nestlings, the hen uses all the careful subtleties of the most cunning +land birds, "spreading her wings, and counterfeiting lameness, for the +purpose of deluding the intruder; and after leading the enemy from her +young, she takes wing and flies to a great height, at the same time +displaying a peculiar action of the wings; then descending with great +velocity, and making simultaneously a noise with her wings. On her +return to her young, she uses a particular cry for the purpose of +gathering them together. As soon as she has collected them, she covers +them with her wings, like the domestic hen." + +113. I cannot quite make out the limits of the fairy's migrations; but +it is said by Morris to 'occur' in France, Holland, Germany, Italy, and +Switzerland. I find that one was what sportsmen call 'procured' near +York, in full summer dress; and another killed at Rottingdean, swimming +in a pond in the middle of the village, in the company of some ducks. +At Scarborough, Louth, and Shoreham, it has also been captured or shot, +and has been 'found' building nests in Sutherland: and, on the whole, +it seems that here is a sort of petrel-partridge, and duckling-dove, +and diving-lark, with every possible grace and faculty that bird can +have, in body and soul; ready, at least in summer, to swim on our +village ponds, or, wait at our railway stations, and make the wild +north-eastern coasts of Scotland gay with its dancing flocks upon the +foam; were it not that the idle cockneys, and pot-headed squires fresh +out of Parliament, stand as it were on guard all round the island, +spluttering small-shot at it, striking at it with oars, cutting it open +to find how many eggs there are inside, and, in fine, sending it for +refuge into the hot water of Hecla, and any manner of stormy solitude +that it can still find for itself and its amber nestlings. I have never +seen one, nor I suppose ever shall see, but hear of some of my friends +sunning themselves at midnight about the North Cape, of whom, if any +one will bring me a couple of Arctic fairies in a basket, I think I can +pledge our own Squire's and Squire's lady's faith, for the pair's +getting some peace, if they choose to take it, and as many water-lily +leaves as they can trip upon, on the tarns of Monk-Coniston. + + +IV.B. + +TITANIA INCONSTANS. CHANGEFUL FAIRY. + +_Phalaropus Fulicarius._ (_Coot-like Phalarope--Gould._) + +114. I think the epithet 'changeful' prettier, and, until we know what +a coot _is_ like, more descriptive, than 'coot-like'; the bird having +red plumage in summer, and gray in winter, while the coot is always +black. It is a little less pretty and less amiable than its sister +fairy; otherwise scarcely to be thought of but as a variety, both of +them being distinguished from the coot, not only by color, but by their +smaller size;--(they eight inches long, it sixteen)--and by the slender +beaks, the coot having a thick one, half-way to a puffin's. + +And here, once for all,--for I see I have taken no note yet of the +beaks or bills of my dabchicks,--I will at once arrange a formula of +the order of questions which it will be proper to ask, and get +answered, concerning any bird, in the same order always, so that we +shall never miss anything that we ought to think of. And I find these +questions will naturally and easily fall into the following twelve: + + 1. Country, and scope of migration. + 2. Food. + 3. Form and flight. + 4. Foot. + 5. Beak and eye. + 6. Voice and ear. + 7. Temper. + 8. Nest. + 9. Eggs. +10. Brood. +11. Feathers. +12. Uses in the world. + +It may be thought that I have forced--and not fallen into--my number +12, by packing the faculties of sight and hearing into by-corners. But +the expression of a bird's head depends on the relation of eye to beak, +as the getting of its food depends on their practical alliance of +power; and the question, for instance, whether peacocks and parrots +have musical ears, seems to me not properly debatable unless with due +respect to the quality of their voices. It is curious, considering how +much, one way or another, we are amused or pleased by the chatter and +song of birds, that you will scarcely find in any ornithic manual more +than a sentence, if so much, about their hearing; and I have not +myself, at this moment, the least idea where a nightingale's ears are! +But see Appendix, p. 122. + +I retain, therefore, my dodecahedric form of catechism as sufficiently +clear; and without binding myself to follow the order of it in +strictness, if there be motive for discursory remark, it will certainly +prevent my leaving any bird insufficiently distinguished, and enable me +to arrange the collected statements about it in the most easily +compared order. + +115. We will try it at once on this second variety of the Titania, of +which I find nothing of much interest in my books, and have nothing +discursive myself to say. + + 1. Country. Arctic mostly; seen off Greenland, in lat. 68 deg., swimming +among icebergs three or four miles from shore. Abundant in Siberia, and +as far south as the Caspian. Migratory in Europe as far as Italy, yet +always rare. (Do a few only, more intelligently curious than the rest, +or for the sake of their health, travel?) + + 2. Food. Small thin-skinned crustacea, and aquatic surface-insects. + + 3. Form and flight. Stout, for a sea-bird; and they don't care to fly, + preferring to _swim_ out of danger. Body 7 to 8 inches long; wings, + from carpal joint to end, 4-3/4,--say 5. These quarters of inches, are + absurd pretenses to generalize what varies in every bird. 8 inches + long, by 10 across the wings open, is near enough. In future, the + brief notification 8 x 10, 5 x 7, or the like, will enough express a + bird's inches, unless it possess decorative appendage of tail, which + must be noted separately. + + 4. Foot. Chestnut-leaved in front toes, the lobes slightly serrated +on the edges. Hind toe without membrane. Color of foot, always black. + + 5. Beak. Long, slender, straight. (How long? Drawn as about a fifth +of the bird's length--say an inch, or a little over.) Upper mandible +slightly curved down at the point. In Titania arctica, the beak is +longer and more slender. + + 6. Voice. A sharp, short cry, not conceived by me enough to spell any +likeness of it. + + 7. Temper. Gentle, passing into stupid, (it seems to me); one, in +meditative travel, lets itself be knocked down by a gardener with his +spade. + + 8. Nest. Little said of it, the bird breeding chiefly in the North. +Among marshes, it is of weeds and grass; but among icebergs, of what? + + 9. Eggs. Pear-shape; narrow ends together in nest; never more than +four. + +10. Brood. No account of. + +11. Feathers. Mostly gray, passing into brown in summer, varied with +white on margin. Reddish chestnut or bay bodice--well oiled or +varnished. + +12. Uses. Fortunately, at present, unknown. + + +V. + +RALLUS AQUATICUS. WATER-RAIL. + +116. Thus far, we have got for representatives of our dabchick group, +eight species of little birds--namely, two Torrent-ouzels, three +Lily-ouzels, one Grebe, and two Titanias. And these we associate, +observe, not for any specialty of feature in them, but for common +character, habit, and size; so that, if perchance a child playing by +any stream, or on the sea-sands, perceives a companionable bird +dabbling in an equally childish and pleasant manner, he may not have to +look through half a dozen volumes of ornithology to find it; but may be +pretty sure it has been one of these eight. And having once fastened +the characters of these well in his mind, he may with ease remember +that the little grebe is the least of a family of chestnut-leaf-footed, +and sharp-billed creatures, which yet in size, color, and diving power, +go necessarily among Ducks, and cannot be classed with Dabblers; though +it must be always as distinctly kept in mind that a duck _proper_ has a +flat beak, and a fully webbed foot. + +Again, he may recollect that with these leaf-footed ducks of the calm +and fresh waters, must be associated the leaf-footed or fringe-footed +ducks of the sea;--'phalaropes,' which by their short wings connect +themselves with many clumsy marine creatures, on their way to become +seals instead of birds; and that I have kept the two little Titanias +out of this class, not merely for their niceness, but because they are +not short-winged in any vulgar degree, but seem to have wings about as +long as a sandpiper's;--and indeed I had put the purple sandpiper, +Arquatella maritima, with them, in my own folio; only as the +Arquatella's feet are not chestnutty, she had better go with her own +kind in our notes on them. + +117. But there are yet two birds, which I think well to put with our +eight dabchicks, though they are much larger than any of them,--partly +because of their disposition, and partly because of their plumage,--the +water-rail, and water-hen. Modern science, with instinctive horror of +all that is pretty to see, or easy to remember, entirely rejects the +plumage, as any element or noticeable condition of bird-kinds; nor have +I ever yet tried to make it one myself; yet there are certain qualities +of downiness in ducks, fluffiness in owls, spottiness in thrushes, +patchiness in pies, bronzed or rusty luster in cocks, and pearly +iridescence in doves, which I believe may be aptly brought into +connection with other defining characters; and when we find an entirely +similar disposition of plumage, and nearly the same form, in two birds, +I do not think that _mere_ difference in size should far separate them. + +Bewick, accordingly, calls the water-rail the 'Brook-ouzel,' and puts +it between the little crake and the water-ouzel; but he does not say a +word of its living by brooks,--only 'in low wet places.' Buffon, +however, takes it with the land-rail; Gould and Yarrell put it between +the little crake and water-hen. Gould's description of it is by no +means clear to me:--he first says it is, in action, as much "like a rat +as a bird;" then that it "bounds like a ball," (before the nose of the +spaniel); and lastly, in the next sentence, speaks of it as "this +_lath_-like bird"! It is as large as a bantam, but can run, like the +Allegretta, on floating leaves; itself, weighing about four ounces and +a half (Bewick), and rarely uses the wing, flying very slowly. I +imagine the 'lath-like' must mean, like the more frequent epithet +'compressed,' that the bird's body is vertically thin, so as to go +easily between close reeds. + +118. We will try our twelve questions again. + + 1. Country. Equally numerous in every part of Europe, in Africa, +India, China, and Japan; yet hardly anybody seems to have seen it. +Living, however, "near the perennial fountains" (wherever those may +be;--it sounds like the garden of Eden!) "during the greater part of +the winter, the birds pass Malta in spring and autumn, and have been +seen fifty leagues at sea off the coast of Portugal" (Buffon); but +where coming from, or going to, is not told. Tunis is the most +southerly place named by Yarrell. + + 2. Food. Anything small enough to be swallowed, that lives in mud or +water. + + 3. Form and flight. I am puzzled, as aforesaid, between its likeness +to a ball, and a lath. Flies heavily and unwillingly, hanging its legs +down. + + 4. Foot. Long-toed and flexible. + + 5. Beak. Sharp and strong, some inch and a half long, showing +distinctly the cimeter-curve of a gull's, near the point. + + 6. Voice. No account of. + + 7. Temper. Quite easily tamable, though naturally shy. Feeds out of +the hand in a day or two, if fed regularly in confinement. + + 8. Nest. "Slight, of leaves and strips of flags" (Gould); "of sedge +and grass, rarely found," (Yarrell). Size not told. + + 9. Eggs. Eight or nine! cream-white, with rosy yolk!! rather larger +than a blackbird's!!! + +10. Brood. Velvet black, with white bills; hunting with the utmost +activity from the minute they are hatched. + +11. Feathers. Brown on the back, a beautiful warm ash gray on the +breast, and under the wings transverse stripes of very dark gray and +white. The disposition of pattern is almost exactly the same as in the +Allegretta. + +12. Uses. By many thought delicious eating. (Bewick.) The fact is, or +seems to me, that this entire group of marsh birds is meant to become +to us the domestic poultry of marshy land; and I imagine that by +proper irrigation and care, many districts of otherwise useless bog +and sand, might be made more profitable to us than many fishing-grounds. + + +VI. + +PULLA AQUATICA. WATER-HEN. + +(_Gallinula Chloropus.--Pennant, Bewick, Gould, and Yarrell._) + +119. 'Green-footed little cock, or hen,' that is to say, in English; +only observe, if you call the Fringe-foot a Phalarope, you ought in +consistency to call the Green-foot a Chlorope. Their feet are not only +notable for greenness, but for size: they are very ugly, having the +awkward and ill-used look of the feet of Scratchers, while a trace of +beginning membrane connects them with the fringe-foots. + +Their proper name would be Marsh-cock, which would enough distinguish +them from the true Moor-cock or Black-cock. 'Moat-cock' would be +prettier, and characteristic; for in the old English days they used to +live much in the moats of manor-houses; mine is the name nearest to the +familiar one; only note there is no proper feminine of 'pullus,' and I +use the adjective 'pulla' to express the dark color. + +It is a dark-_brown_ bird, according to the colored pictures--iron +_gray_, Buffon says, with white stripes of little order on the bodice, +clumsy feet and bill, but makes up for all ungainliness by its gentle +and intelligent mind; and seems meant for a useful possession to +mankind all over the world, for it lives in Siberia and New Zealand; in +Senegal and Jamaica; in Scotland, Switzerland, and Prussia; in Corfu, +Crete, and Trebizond; in Canada, and at the Cape. I find no account of +its migrations, and one would think that a bird which usually flies +"dip, dip, dipping with its toes, and leaving a track along the water +like that of a stone at 'ducks and drakes'" (Yarrell), would not +willingly adventure itself on the Atlantic. It must have a kind of +human facility in adapting itself to climate, as it has human +domesticity of temper, with curious fineness of sagacity and sympathies +in taste. A family of them, petted by a clergyman's wife, were +constantly adding materials to their nest, and "made real havoc in the +flower-garden,--for though straw and leaves are their chief ingredients, +they seem to have an eye for beauty, and the old hen has been seen +surrounded with a brilliant wreath of scarlet anemones." Thus Bishop +Stanley, whose account of the bird is full of interesting particulars. +This aesthetic water-hen, with her husband, lived at Cheadle, in +Staffordshire, in the rectory moat, for several seasons, "always +however leaving it in the spring," (for Scotland, supposably?): being +constantly fed, the pair became quite tame, built their nest in a +thorn-bush covered with ivy which had fallen into the water; and "when +the young are a few days old, the old ones bring them up close to the +drawing-room window, where they are regularly fed with wheat; and, as +the lady of the house pays them the greatest attention, they have +learned to look up to her as their natural protectress and friend; so +much so, that one bird in particular, which was much persecuted by the +rest, would, when attacked, fly to her for refuge; and whenever she +calls, the whole flock, as tame as barn-door fowls, quit the water, and +assemble round her, to the number of seventeen. (November, 1833.) + +120. "They have also made other friends in the dogs belonging to the +family, approaching them without fear, though hurrying off with great +alarm on the appearance of a strange dog. + +"The position of the water, together with the familiarity of these +birds, has afforded many interesting particulars respecting their +habits. + +"They have three broods in a season--the first early in April; and they +begin to lay again when the first hatch is about a fortnight old. They +lay eight or nine eggs, and sit about three weeks,--the cock +alternately with the hen. The nest in the thorn-bush is placed usually +so high above the surface of the water, they cannot climb into it +again; but, as a substitute, within an hour after they leave the nest, +the cock bird builds a larger and more roomy nest for them, with +sedges, at the water's edge, which they can enter or retire from at +pleasure. For about a month they are fed by the old birds, but soon +become very active in taking flies and water-insects. Immediately on +the second hatch coming out, the young ones of the first hatch assist +the old ones in feeding and hovering over them, leading them out in +detached parties, and making additional nests for them, similar to +their own, on the brink of the moat. + +"But it is not only in their instinctive attachments and habits that +they merit notice; the following anecdote proves that they are gifted +with a sense of observation approaching to something very like +reasoning faculties. + +"At a gentleman's house in Staffordshire, the pheasants are fed out of +one of those boxes described in page 287, the lid of which rises with +the pressure of the pheasant standing on the rail in front of the box. +A water-hen observing this, went and stood upon the rail as soon as the +pheasant had quitted it; but the weight of the bird being insufficient +to raise the lid of the box, so as to enable it to get at the corn, the +water-hen kept jumping on the rail to give additional impetus to its +weight: this partially succeeded, but not to the satisfaction of the +sagacious bird. Accordingly it went off, and soon returning with a bird +of its own species, the united weight of the two had the desired +effect, and the successful pair enjoyed the benefit of their ingenuity. + +"We can vouch for the truth of this singular instance of penetration, +on the authority of the owner of the place where it occurred, and who +witnessed the fact." + +121. But although in these sagacities, and teachablenesses, the bird +has much in common with land poultry, it seems not a link between these +and water-fowl; but to be properly placed by the ornithologists between +the rail and the coot: this latter being the largest of the fringefoots, +singularly dark in color, and called 'fulica' (sooty), or, with +insistence, 'fulica atra' (black sooty), or even 'fulica aterrima' +(blackest sooty). 'Coot' is said by Johnson to be Dutch; and that it +became 'cotee' in French; but I cannot find cotee in my French +dictionary. In the meantime, putting the coot and water-hen aside for +future better knowledge, we may be content with the pentagonal group of +our dabchicks--passing at each angle into another tribe, thus,--(if +people must classify, they at least should also _map_). Take the Ouzel, +Allegret, Grebe, Fairy, and Rail, and, only giving the Fairy her Latin +name, write their fourpenny-worth of initial letters (groat) round a +pentagon set on its base, putting the Ouzel at the top angle,--so. +Then, the Ouzels pass up into Blackbirds, the Rails to the left into +Woodcocks, the Allegrets to the right into Plovers, the Grebes, down +left, into Ducks, and the Titanias, down right, into Gulls. And +_there's_ a bit of pentagonal Darwinism for you, if you like it, and +learn it, which will be really good for something in the end, or the +five ends. + +122. And for the bliss of classification pure, with no ends of any sort +or any number, referring my reader to the works of ornithologists in +general, and for what small portion of them he may afterwards care to +consult, to my Appendix, I will end this lecture, and this volume, with +the refreshment for us of a piece of perfect English and exquisite wit, +falling into verse,--the Chorus of the Birds, in Mr. Courthope's +Paradise of them,--a book lovely, and often faultless, in most of its +execution, but little skilled or attractive in plan, and too thoughtful +to be understood without such notes as a good author will not write on +his own work; partly because he has not time, and partly because he +always feels that if people won't look for his meaning, they should not +be told it. My own special function, on the contrary, is, and always +has been, that of the Interpreter only, in the 'Pilgrim's Progress;' +and I trust that Mr. Courthope will therefore forgive my arranging his +long cadence of continuous line so as to come symmetrically into my own +page, (thus also enforcing, for the inattentive, the rhymes which he is +too easily proud to insist on,) and my division of the whole chorus +into equal strophe and antistrophe of six lines each, in which, +counting from the last line of the stanza, the reader can easily catch +the word to which my note refers. + +123. We wish to declare, + How the birds of the air + All high institutions designed, + And, holding in awe + Art, Science, and Law, + Delivered the same to mankind. 6 + + To begin with; of old + Man went naked, and cold, + Whenever it pelted or froze, + Till _we_ showed him how feathers + Were proof against weathers, + With that, _he_ bethought him of hose. 12 + + And next, it was plain, + That he, in the rain, + Was forced to sit dripping and blind, + While the Reed-warbler swung + In a nest, with her young + Deep sheltered, and warm, from the wind. 18 + + So our homes in the boughs + Made _him_ think of the House; + And the Swallow, to help him invent, + Revealed the best way + To economize clay, + And bricks to combine with cement. 24 + + The knowledge withal + Of the Carpenter's awl, + Is drawn from the Nuthatch's bill; + And the Sand-Martin's pains + In the hazel-clad lanes + Instructed the Mason to drill. 30 + + Is there _one_ of the Arts, + More dear to men's hearts? + To the bird's inspiration they owe it; + For the Nightingale first + Sweet music rehearsed, + Prima-Donna, Composer, and Poet. 36 + + The Owl's dark retreats + Showed sages the sweets + Of brooding, to spin, or unravel + Fine webs in one's brain, + Philosophical--vain; + The Swallows,--the pleasures of travel. 42 + + Who chirped in such strain + Of Greece, Italy, Spain + And Egypt, that men, when they heard, + Were mad to fly forth, + From their nests in the North, + And follow--the tail of the Bird. 48 + + Besides, it is true, + To _our_ wisdom is due + The knowledge of Sciences all; + And chiefly, those rare + Metaphysics of Air + Men 'Meteorology' call, 54 + + And men, in their words, + Acknowledge the Birds' + Erudition in weather and star; + For they say, "'Twill be dry,-- + The swallow is high," + Or, "Rain, for the Chough is afar." 60 + + 'Twas the Rooks who taught men + Vast pamphlets to pen + Upon social compact and law, + And Parliaments hold, + As themselves did of old, + Exclaiming 'Hear, Hear,' for 'Caw, Caw.' 66 + + And whence arose Love? + Go, ask of the Dove, + Or behold how the Titmouse, unresting, + Still early and late + Ever sings by his mate, + To lighten her labors of nesting. 72 + + _Their_ bonds never gall, + Though the leaves shoot, and fall, + And the seasons roll round in their course, + For their marriage, each year, + Grows more lovely and dear; + And they know not decrees of Divorce. 78 + + That these things are truth + We have learned from our youth, + For our hearts to our customs incline, + As the rivers that roll + From the fount of our soul, + Immortal, unchanging, divine. 84 + + Man, simple and old, + In his ages of gold, + Derived from our teaching true light, + And deemed it his praise + In his ancestors' ways + To govern his footsteps aright. 90 + + But the fountain of woes, + Philosophy, rose; + And, what between reason and whim, + He has splintered our rules + Into sections and schools, + So the world is made bitter, for _him_. 96 + + But the birds, since on earth + They discovered the worth + Of their souls, and resolved with a vow + No custom to change, + For a new, or a strange, + Have attained unto Paradise, _now_. 102 + + Line 9. PELTED, said of _hail_, not rain. Felt by nakedness, in + a more severe manner than mere rain. + + 11. 'WEATHERS,' _i.e., both_ weathers--hail and cold: the _armor_ + of the feathers against hail; the down of them against cold. See + account of Feather-mail in 'Laws of Fesole,' chap, vi., p. 53, + with the first and fifth plates, and figure 15. + + 15. BLIND. By the beating of the rain in his face. In _hail_, + there is real danger and bruising, if the hail be worth calling + so, for the whole body; while in rain, if _it_ be rain also worth + calling rain, the great plague is the beating and drenching in + the face. + + 16. SWUNG. Opposed to 'sit' in previous line. The human creature, + though it sate steady on this unshakable earth, had no house over + its head. The bird, that lived on the tremblingest and weakest of + bending things, had her _nest_ on it, in which even her + infinitely tender brood were _deep_ sheltered and warm, from the + _wind_. It is impossible to find a lovelier instance of pure + poetical antithesis. + + 20. HOUSE. Again antithetic to the perfect word 'Home' in the + line before. A house is exactly, and only, half-way to a 'home.' + Man had not yet got so far as even that! and had lost, the chorus + satirically imply, even the power of getting the other half, + ever, since his "_She_ gave me of the tree." + + 24. BRICKS. The first bad inversion permitted, for "to combine + bricks with cement." In my Swallow lecture I had no time to go + into the question of her building materials; the point is, + however, touched upon in the Appendix (pp. 110, 112, and note). + + 30. 'DRILL,' for 'quarry out,' 'tunnel,' etc., the best general + term available. + + 36. COMPOSER of the music; POET of the meaning. + + Compare, and think over, the Bullfinch's nest, etc., Sec. 48 to 61 + of 'Eagle's Nest.' + + In modern music the _meaning_ is, I believe, by the reputed + masters omitted. + + 39. To SPIN, or _un_ravel. Synthesis and analysis, in the vulgar + Greek slang. + + 46. MAD. Compare Byron of the English in _his_ day. "A parcel of + staring boobies who go about gaping and wishing to be at once + cheap and magnificent. A man is a fool now, who travels in France + or Italy, till that tribe of wretches be swept home again. In two + or three years, the first rush will be over, and the Continent + will be roomy and agreeable." (Life, vol. ii., p. 319.) For + sketches of the English of seventeen years later, at the same + _spots_ (Wengern Alp and Interlachen), see, if you _can_ see, in + any library, public or private, at Geneva, Topffer's 'Excursions + dans les Alpes, 1832.' Douzieme, Treizieme, and Quatorzieme + Journee. + + 48. THE TAIL. Mr. Courthope does not condescend to italicize his + pun; but a swallow-tailed and adder-tongued pun like this must be + paused upon. Compare Mr. Murray's Tale of the Town of Lucca, to + be seen between the arrival of one train and the departure of the + next,--nothing there but twelve churches and a cathedral,--mostly + of the tenth to thirteenth century. + + 60. AFAR. I did not know of this weather sign; nor, I suppose, + did the Duke of Hamilton's keeper, who shot the last pair of + Choughs on Arran in 1863. ('Birds of the West of Scotland,' p. + 165.) I trust the climate has wept for them; certainly our + Coniston clouds grow heavier, in these last years. + + 63. SOCIAL. Rightly sung by the Birds in three syllables; but the + lagging of the previous line (probably intentional, but not + pleasant,) makes the lightness of this one a little dangerous for + a clumsy reader. The 'i-al' of 'social' does not fill the line as + two full short syllables, else the preceding word should have + been written '_on_,' not 'upon.' The five syllables, rightly + given, just take the time of two iambs; but there _are_ readers + rude enough to accent the 'on' of upon, and take 'social' for two + short syllables. + + 64. HOLD. Short for 'to hold'--but it is a licentious + construction, so also, in next line, 'themselves' for 'they + themselves.' The stanza is on the whole the worst in the poem, + its irony and essential force being much dimmed by obscure + expression, and even slightly staggering continuity of thought. + The Rooks may be properly supposed to have taught men to dispute, + but not to write. The Swallow teaches building, literally, and + the Owl moping, literally; but the Rook does not teach + pamphleteering literally. And the 'of old' is redundant, for + rhyme's sake, since Rooks hold parliaments now as much as ever + they did. + + 76. EACH YEAR. I doubt the fact; and too sadly suspect that birds + take different mates. What a question to have to ask at this time + of day and year! + + 82. RIVERS. Read slowly. The 'customs' are rivers that 'go on + forever' flowing from the fount of the soul. The Heart drinks of + them, as of waterbrooks. + + 92. PHILOSOPHY. The author should at least have given a note or + two to explain the sense in which he uses words so wide as this. + The philosophy which begins in pride, and concludes in malice, is + indeed _a_ fountain--though not _the_ fountain--of woes, to + mankind. But true philosophy such as Fenelon's or Sir Thomas + More's, is a well of peace. + + 98. WORTH. Again, it is not clearly told us what the author means + by the worth of a bird's soul, nor how the birds learned it. The + reader is left to discern, and collect for himself--with patience + such as not one in a thousand now-a-days possesses, the + opposition between the "fount of our soul" (line 83) and fountain + of philosophy. + +124. I could willingly enlarge on these last two stanzas, but think my +duty will be better done to the poet if I quote, for conclusion, two +lighter pieces of his verse, which will require no comment, and are +closer to our present purpose. The first,--the lament of the French +Cook in purgatory,--has, for once, a note by the author, giving M. +Soyer's authority for the items of the great dish,--"symbol of +philanthropy, served at York during the great commemorative banquet +after the first exhibition." The commemorative soul of the tormented +Chef--always making a dish like it, of which nobody ever eats--sings +thus:-- + + "Do you veesh + To hear before you taste, of de hundred-guinea deesh? + Has it not been sung by every knife and fork, + 'L'extravagance culinaire a l'Alderman,' at York? + Vy, ven I came here, eighteen Octobers seence, + I dis deesh was making for your Royal Preence, + Ven half de leeving world, cooking all de others, + Swore an oath hereafter, to be men and brothers. + All de leetle Songsters in de voods dat build, + Hopped into the kitchen asking to be kill'd; + All who in de open furrows find de seeds, + Or de mountain berries, all de farmyard breeds,-- + Ha--I see de knife, vile de deesh it shapens, + Vith les petits noix, of four-and-twenty capons, + Dere vere dindons, fatted poulets, fowls in plenty, + Five times nine of partridges, and of pheasants twenty; + Ten grouse, that should have had as many covers, + All in dis one deesh, with six preety plovers, + Forty woodcocks, plump, and heavy in the scales, + Pigeons dree good dozens, six-and-dirty quails, + Ortulans, ma foi, and a century of snipes, + But de preetiest of dem all was twice tree dozen pipes + Of de melodious larks, vich each did clap the ving, + And veeshed de pie vas open, dat dey all might sing!" + +125. There are stiff bits of prosody in these verses,--one or two, +indeed, quite unmanageable,--but we must remember that French meter +will not read into ours. The last piece I will give flows very +differently. It is in express imitation of Scott--but no nobler model +could be chosen; and how much better for minor poets sometimes to write +in another's manner, than always to imitate their own. + +This chant is sung by the soul of the Francesca of the Bird-ordained +purgatory; whose torment is to be dressed only in falling snow, each +flake striking cold to her heart as it falls,--but such lace +investiture costing, not a cruel price per yard in souls of women, nor +a mortal price in souls of birds. + +Her 'snow-mantled shadow' sings: + + "Alas, my heart! No grief so great + As thinking on a happy state + In misery. Ah, dear is power + To female hearts! Oh, blissful hour + When Blanche and Flavia, joined with me, + Tri-feminine Directory, + Dispensed in latitudes below + The laws of flounce and furbelow; + And held on bird and beast debate, + What lives should die to serve our state! + We changed our statutes with the moon, + And oft in January or June, + At deep midnight, we would prescribe + Some furry kind, or feathered tribe. + At morn, we sent the mandate forth; + Then rose the hunters of the North: + And all the trappers of the West + Bowed at our feminine behest. + Died every seal that dared to rise + To his round air-hole in the ice; + Died each Siberian fox and hare + And ermine trapt in snow-built snare. + For us the English fowler set + The ambush of his whirling net; + And by green Rother's reedy side + The blue kingfisher flashed and died. + His life for us the seamew gave + High upon Orkney's lonely wave; + Nor was our queenly power unknown + In Iceland or by Amazon; + For where the brown duck stripped her breast + For her dear eggs and windy nest, + Three times her bitter spoil was won + For woman; and when all was done, + She called her snow-white piteous drake, + Who plucked his bosom for our sake." + +126. "See 'Hartwig's Polar World' for the manner of taking +Eiderdown."--Once more, we have thus much of author's note, but edition +and page not specified, which, however, I am fortunately able to +supply. Mr. Hartwig's miscellany being a favorite--what can I call it, +sand-hill?--of my own, out of which every now and then, in a rasorial +manner, I can scratch some savory or useful contents;--one or two, it +may be remembered, I collected for the behoof of the Bishop of +Manchester, on this very subject, (_Contemporary Review_, Feb. 1880); +and some of Mr. Hartwig's half-sandy, half-soppy, political opinions, +are offered to the consideration of the British workman in the last +extant number of 'Fors.' Touching eider ducks, I find in his fifth +chapter--on Iceland--he quotes the following account, by Mr. Shepherd, +of the shore of the island of 'Isafjardarjup'--a word which seems to +contain in itself an introduction to Icelandic literature:-- + +127. "The ducks and their nests were everywhere, in a manner that was +quite alarming. Great brown ducks sat upon their nests in masses, and +at every step started up from under our feet. It was with difficulty +that we avoided treading on some of the nests. The island being but +three-quarters of a mile in width, the opposite shore was soon reached. +On the coast was a wall built of large stones, just above the +high-water level, about three feet in height, and of considerable +thickness. At the bottom, on both sides of it, alternate stones had +been left out, so as to form a series of square compartments for the +ducks to make their nests in. Almost every compartment was occupied; +and, as we walked along the shore, a long line of ducks flew out one +after another. The surface of the water also was perfectly white with +drakes, who welcomed their brown wives with loud and clamorous cooing. +When we arrived at the farmhouse, we were cordially welcomed by its +mistress. The house itself was a great marvel. The earthen wall that +surrounded it and the window embrasures were occupied by ducks. On the +ground, the house was fringed with ducks. On the turf-slopes of the +roof we could see ducks; and a duck sat in the scraper. + +"A grassy bank close by had been cut into square patches like a +chess-board, (a square of turf of about eighteen inches being removed, +and a hollow made,) and all were filled with ducks. A windmill was +infested, and so were all the out-houses, mounds, rocks, and crevices. +The ducks were everywhere. Many of them were so tame that we could +stroke them on their nests; and the good lady told us that there was +scarcely a duck on the island which would not allow her to take its +eggs without flight or fear." + +128. But upon the back of the canvas, as it were, of this pleasant +picture--on the back of the leaf, in his book, p. 65,--this description +being given in p. 66,--Doctor Hartwig tells us, in his own peculiar +soppy and sandy way--half tearful, half Dryasdusty, (or may not we +say--it sounds more Icelandic--'Dry-as-sawdusty,') these less cheerful +facts. "The eiderdown is easily collected, as the birds are quite tame. +The female having laid five or six pale greenish-olive eggs, in a nest +thickly lined with her beautiful down, the collectors, after carefully +removing the bird, rob the nest of its contents; after which they +replace her. She then begins to lay afresh--though this time only three +or four eggs,--and again has recourse to the down on her body. But her +greedy persecutors once more rifle her nest, and oblige her to line it +for the third time. Now, however, her own stock of down is exhausted, +and with a plaintive voice she calls her mate to her assistance, who +willingly plucks the soft feathers from his breast to supply the +deficiency. If the cruel robbery be again repeated, which in former +times was frequently the case, the poor eider-duck abandons the spot, +never to return, and seeks for a new home where she may indulge her +maternal instinct undisturbed by the avarice of man." + +129. Now, as I have above told you, these two statements are given on +the two sides of the same leaf; and the reader must make what he may of +them. Setting the best of my own poor wits at them, it seems to me that +the merciless abstraction of down is indeed the usual custom of the +inhabitants and visitors; but that the 'good lady,' referred to by Mr. +Shepherd, manages things differently; and in consequence we are +presently farther told of her, (bottom of p. 65,) that "when she first +became possessor of the island, the produce of down from the ducks was +not more than fifteen pounds weight in the year; but under her careful +nurture of twenty years it had risen to nearly one hundred pounds +annually. It requires about one pound and a half to make a coverlet for +a single bed, and the down is worth from twelve to fifteen shillings +per pound. Most of the eggs are taken and pickled for winter +consumption, one or two only being left to hatch." + +But here, again, pulverulent Dr. Hartwig leaves us untold who +'consumes' all these pickled eggs of the cooing and downy-breasted +creatures; (you observe, in passing, that an eider-duck coos instead of +quacking, and must be a sort of Sea-Dove,) or what addition their price +makes to the good old lady's feather-nesting income of, as I calculate +it, sixty to seventy-five pounds a year,--all her twenty years of skill +and humanity and moderate plucking having got no farther than that. And +not feeling myself able, on these imperfect data, to offer any +recommendations to the Icelandic government touching the duck trade, I +must end my present chapter with a rough generalization of results. For +a beginning of which, the time having too clearly and sadly come for +me, as I have said in my preface, to knit up, as far as I may, the +loose threads and straws of my raveled life's work, I reprint in this +place the second paragraph of the chapter on Vital Beauty in the second +volume of 'Modern Painters,' premising, however, some few necessary +words. + +130. I intended never to have reprinted the second volume of 'Modern +Painters'; first, because it is written in affected imitation of +Hooker, and not in my own proper style; and, secondly, yet chiefly, +because I did not think the analytic study of which it mainly consists, +in the least likely to be intelligible to the general student, or, +therefore, profitable to him. But I find now that the 'general student' +has plunged himself into such abysses, not of analytic, but of +dissolytic,--dialytic--or even diarrhoeic--lies, belonging to the +sooty and sensual elements of his London and Paris life, that, however +imperfectly or dimly done, the higher analysis of that early work of +mine ought at least to be put within his reach; and the fact, somehow, +enforced upon him, that there were people before _he_ lived, who knew +what 'aesthesis' meant, though they did not think that pigs' flavoring +of pigs'-wash was ennobled by giving it that Greek name: and that there +were also people before his time who knew what vital beauty meant, +though they did not seek it either in the model-room, or the Parc aux +Cerfs. + +Therefore, I will republish (D.V.) the analytic parts of the second +volume of 'Modern Painters' as they were written, but with perhaps an +additional note or two, and the omission of the passages concerning +Evangelical or other religious matters, in which I have found out my +mistakes. + +131. To be able to hunt for these mistakes, and crow over them, in the +original volume, will always give that volume its orthodox value in +sale catalogues, so that I shall swindle nobody who has already bought +the book by bringing down its price upon them. Nor will the new edition +be a cheap one--even if I ever get it out, which is by no means +certain. Here, however, at once, is the paragraph above referred to, +quite one of the most important in the book. The reader should know, +preparatorily, that for what is now called 'aesthesis,' _I_ always used, +and still use, the English word 'sensation'--as, for instance, the +sensation of cold or heat, and of their differences;--of the flavor of +mutton and beef, and their differences;--of a peacock's and a lark's +cry, and their differences;--of the redness in a blush, and in rouge, +and their differences;--of the whiteness in snow, and in almond-paste, +and their differences;--of the blackness and brightness of night and +day, or of smoke and gaslight, and their differences, etc., etc. But +for the Perception of Beauty, I always used Plato's word, which is the +proper word in Greek, and the only possible _single_ word that can be +used in any other language by any man who understands the +subject,--'Theoria,'--the Germans only having a term parallel to it, +'Anschauung,' assumed to be its equivalent in p. 22 of the old edition +of 'Modern Painters,' but which is not its real equivalent, for +Anschauung does not (I believe) _include_ bodily sensation, whereas +Plato's Theoria does, so far as is necessary; and mine, somewhat more +than Plato's. "The first perfection," (then I say, in this so long in +coming paragraph) of the theoretic faculty, "is the kindness and +unselfish fullness of heart, which receives the utmost amount of +pleasure from the happiness of all things. Of which in high degree the +heart of man is incapable; neither what intense enjoyment the angels +may have in all that they see of things that move and live, and in the +part they take in the shedding of God's kindness upon them, can we know +or conceive: only in proportion as we draw near to God, and are made in +measure like unto Him, can we increase this our possession of charity, +of which the entire essence is in God only. But even the ordinary +exercise of this faculty implies a condition of the whole moral being +in some measure right and healthy, and to the entire exercise of it +there is necessary the entire perfection of the Christian character; +for he who loves not God, nor his brother, cannot love the grass +beneath his feet, and the creatures which live not for his uses, +filling those spaces in the universe which he needs not; while, on the +other hand, none can love God, nor his human brother, without loving +all things which his Father loves; nor without looking upon them, every +one, as in that respect his brethren also, and perhaps worthier than +he, if, in the under concords they have to fill, their part be touched +more truly. It is good to read of that kindness and humbleness of S. +Francis of Assisi, who never spoke to bird or cicala, nor even to wolf +and beast of prey, but as his brother; and so we find are moved the +minds of all good and mighty men, as in the lesson that we have from +the mariner of Coleridge, and yet more truly and rightly taught in the +Hartleap Well:-- + + 'Never to blend our pleasure, or our pride, + With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.' + +And again in the White Doe of Rylstone, with the added teaching, that +anguish of our own + + 'Is tempered and allayed by sympathies, + Aloft ascending, and descending deep, + Even to the inferior kinds;' + +so that I know not of anything more destructive of the whole theoretic +faculty, not to say of the Christian character and human intellect, +than those accursed sports, in which man makes of himself, cat, tiger, +serpent, chaetodon, and alligator in one; and gathers into one +continuance of cruelty, for his amusement, all the devices that brutes +sparingly, and at intervals, use against each other for their +necessities." + +132. So much I had perceived, and said, you observe, good reader, +concerning S. Francis of Assisi, and his sermons, when I was only +five-and-twenty,--little thinking at that day how, Evangelical-bred as +I was, I should ever come to write a lecture for the first School of +Art in Oxford in the Sacristan's cell at Assisi,[25] or ever--among such +poor treasures as I have of friends' reliquaries--I should fondly keep +a little 'pinch' of his cloak. + + [25] See 'Ariadne Florentina,' chap. v., Sec. 164; compare 'Fors,' + Letter V. + +Rough cloak of hair, it is, still at Assisi; concerning which, and the +general use of camels' hair, or sackcloth, or briars and thorns, in the +Middle Ages, together with seal-skins (not badgers'), and rams' skins +dyed gules, by the Jews, and the Crusaders, as compared with the use of +the two furs, Ermine and Vair, and their final result in the operations +of the Hudson's Bay Company, much casual notice will be found in my +former work. And now, this is the sum of it all, so far as I can +shortly write it. + +There is no possibility of explaining the system of life in this world, +on any principle of _conqueringly_ Divine benevolence. That piece of +bold impiety, if it be so, I have always asserted in my well-considered +books,--I considering it, on the contrary, the only really pious thing +to say, namely, that the world is under a curse, which we may, if we +will, gradually remove, by doing as we are bid, and believing what we +are told; and when we are told, for instance, in the best book we have +about our own old history, that "unto Adam also, and to his wife, did +the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them," we are to accept +it as the best thing to be done under the circumstances, and to wear, +if we can get them, wolf skin, or cow skin, or beaver's, or ermine's; +but not therefore to confuse God with the Hudson's Bay Company, nor to +hunt foxes for their brushes instead of their skins, or think the poor +little black tails of a Siberian weasel on a judge's shoulders may +constitute him therefore a Minos in matters of retributive justice, or +an AEacus in distributive, who can at once determine how many millions a +Railroad Company are to make the public pay for not granting them their +exclusive business by telegraph. + +133. And every hour of my life, since that paragraph of 'Modern +Painters' was written, has increased, I disdain to say my _feeling_, +but say, with fearless decision, my _knowledge_, of the bitterness of +the curse, which the habits of hunting and 'la chasse' have brought +upon the so-called upper classes of England and France; until, from +knights and gentlemen, they have sunk into jockeys, speculators, +usurers, butchers by battue; and, the English especially, now, as a +political body, into what I have called them in the opening chapter of +'The Bible of Amiens,'--"the scurviest louts that ever fouled God's +earth with their carcasses." + +The language appears to be violent. It is simply brief, and accurate. +But I never meant it to remain without justification, and I will give +the justification here at once. + +Take your Johnson, and look out the adjective Scurvy, in its higher or +figurative sense. + +You find the first quotation he gives is from 'Measure for Measure,' +spoken of the Duke, in monk's disguise: + + "I know him for a man divine and holy; + Not scurvy, nor a temporary meddler." + +In which passage, Shakspeare, who never uses words in vain, nor with a +grain less than their full weight, opposes the divineness of men, or +their walking with God, to the scurviness of men, or their wallowing +with swine; and again, he opposes the holiness of men,--in the sense of +"Holy--harmless, undefiled," and more than that, helpful or healthful +in action--to the harmful and filthy action of temporary meddlers, such +as the hanging of seventeen priests before breakfast, and our +profitable military successes, in such a prolonged piece of 'temporary +meddling' as the Crimean war. + +134. But, secondly, if you look down Johnson's column, you will find +his last quotation is not in the higher or figurative, but the lower +and literal sense, from Swift, to the effect that "it would be +convenient to prevent the excess of drink, with that scurvy custom of +taking tobacco." And you will also find, if you ever have the sense or +courage to look the facts of modern history in the face, that those two +itches, for the pot and the pipe, have been the roots of every other +demoralization of the filthiest and literally 'scurviest' sort among +_all_ classes;--the dirty pack of cards; the church pavement _running_ +with human saliva,--(I have seen the spittings in ponds half an inch +deep, in the choir of Rouen cathedral); and the entirely infernal +atmosphere of the common cafes and gambling-houses of European +festivity, infecting every condition of what they call 'aesthesis,' left +in the bodies of men, until they cannot be happy with the pines and +pansies of the Alps, until they have mixed tobacco smoke with the scent +of them; and the whole concluding in the endurance--or even +enjoyment--of the most squalid conditions of filth in our capital +cities, that have ever been yet recorded, among the disgraces of +mankind. + +135. But, thirdly, Johnson's central quotation is again from 'Measure +for Measure':-- + + "He spoke _scurvy_ and _provoking_ terms against your honor." + +The debates in the English House of Commons, for the last half-century, +having consisted virtually of nothing else! + +I next take the word 'lout,' of which Johnson gives two derivations for +our choice: it is either the past participle of 'to lower, or make +low;' a lowed person, (as our House of Lords under the direction of +railway companies and public-house keepers); or else--and more strictly +I believe in etymology--a form of the German 'leute,' 'common people.' +In either case, its proper classical English sense is given by Johnson +as "a mean, awkward fellow; a bumpkin, a clown." + +Now I surely cannot refer to any general representation of British +society more acceptable to, and acknowledged by, that society, than the +finished and admirably composed drawings of Du Maurier in _Punch_ which +have become every week more and more consistent, keen, and comprehensive, +during the issues of the last two years. + +I take three of them, as quite trustworthy pictures, and the best our +present arts of delineation could produce, of the three Etats, or +representative orders, of the British nation of our day. + +Of the Working class, take the type given in Lady Clara Robinson's +garden tea party, p. 174, vol. 79. + +Of the Mercantile class, Mr. Smith, in his drawing-room after dinner, +p. 222, vol. 80. + +And of the Noblesse, the first five gentlemen on the right (spectator's +right) of the line, in the ball at Stilton House, (July 3d, 1880). + +136. Of the manner or state of lout, to which our manufacturing +prosperity has reduced its artisan, as represented in the first of +these frescoes, I do not think it needful to speak here; neither of the +level of sublime temperament and unselfish heroism to which the dangers +of commercial enterprise have exalted Mr. Smith. But the five +consecutive heads in the third fresco are a very notable piece of +English history, representing the polished and more or less lustrous +type of lout; which is indeed a kind of rolled shingle of former +English noblesse capable of nothing now in the way of resistance to +Atlantic liberalism, except of getting itself swept up into ugly harbor +bars, and troublesome shoals in the tideway. + +And observe also, that of the three types of lout, whose combined +chorus and tripudiation leads the present British Constitution its +devil's dance, this last and smoothest type is also the dullest. Your +operative lout cannot indeed hold his cup of coffee with a grace, or +possess himself of a biscuit from Lady Clara's salver without +embarrassment; but, in his own mill, he can at least make a needle +without an eye, or a nail without a head, or a knife that won't cut, or +something of that sort, with dexterity. Also, the middle class, or +Smithian lout, at least manages his stockbroking or marketing with +decision and cunning; knows something by eye or touch of his wares, and +something of the characters of the men he has to deal with. But the +Ducal or Marquisian lout has no knowledge of anything under the sun, +except what sort of horse's quarters will carry his own, farther +weighted with that smooth block or pebble of a pow; and no faculty +under the sun of doing anything, except cutting down the trees his +fathers planted for him, and selling the lands his fathers won. + +137. That is indeed the final result of hunting and horse-racing on the +British landlord. Of its result on the British soldier, perhaps the +figures of Lord George Sackville at the battle of Minden, and of Lord +Raglan at the battle of Alma, (who in the first part of the battle did +not know where he was, and in the second plumed himself on being where +he had no business to be,) are as illustrative as any I could name; but +the darkest of all, to my own thinking, are the various personages, +civil and military, who have conducted the Caffre war to its last +successes, of blowing women and children to death with dynamite, and +harrying the lands of entirely innocent peasantry, because they would +not betray their defeated king. + +138. Of the due and noble relations between man and his companion +creatures, the horse, dog, and falcon, enough has been said in my +former writings--unintelligible enough to a chivalry which passes six +months of its annual life in Rotten Row, and spends the rents of its +Cumberland Hills in building furnaces round Furness Abbey; but which +careful students either of past knighthood, or of future Christianity, +will find securely and always true. For the relations between man and +his beast of burden, whether the burden be himself or his goods, become +beautiful and honorable, just in the degree that both creatures are +useful to the rest of mankind, whether in war or peace. The Greeks gave +the highest symbol of them in the bridling of Pegasus for Bellerophon +by Athena; and from that myth you may go down to modern +times--understanding, according to your own sense and dignity, what all +prophecy, poetry, history, have told you--of the horse whose neck is +clothed with thunder, or the ox who treadeth out the corn--of Joseph's +chariot, or of Elijah's--of Achilles and Xanthus--Herminius and Black +Auster--down to Scott and Brown Adam--or Dandie Dinmont and Dumple. +That pastoral one is, of all, the most enduring. I hear the proudest +tribe of Arabia Felix is now reduced by poverty and civilization to +sell its last well-bred horse; and that we send out our cavalry +regiments to repetitions of the charge at Balaclava, without horses at +all; those that they can pick up wherever they land being good enough +for such military operations. But the cart-horse will remain, when the +charger and hunter are no more; and with a wiser master. + + "I'll buy him, for the dogs shall never + Set tooth upon a friend so true; + He'll not live long; but I forever + Shall know I gave the beast his due. + + Ready as bird to meet the morn + Were all his efforts at the plow; + Then the mill-brook--with hay or corn, + Good creature! how he'd spatter through. + + I left him in the shafts behind, + His fellows all unhook'd and gone; + He neigh'd, and deemed the thing unkind; + Then, starting, drew the load alone. + + * * * * + + Half choked with joy, with love, and pride, + He now with dainty clover fed him; + Now took a short, triumphant ride, + And then again got down, and led him." + +139. Where Paris has had to lead _her_ horses, we know; and where +London had better lead hers, than let her people die of starvation. But +I have not lost my hope that there are yet in England Bewicks and +Bloomfields, who may teach their children--and earn for their +cattle--better ways of fronting, and of waiting for, Death. + +Nor are the uses of the inferior creatures to us less consistent with +their happiness. To all that live, Death must come. The manner of it, +and the time, are for the human Master of them, and of the earth, to +determine--not to his pleasure, but to his duty and his need. + +In sacrifice, or for his food, or for his clothing, it is lawful for +him to slay animals; but not to delight in slaying any that are +helpless. If he choose, for discipline and trial of courage, to leave +the boar in Calydon, the wolf in Taurus, the tiger in Bengal, or the +wild bull in Aragon, there is forest and mountain wide enough for them: +but the inhabited world in sea and land should be one vast unwalled +park and treasure lake, in which its flocks of sheep, or deer, or fowl, +or fish, should be tended and dealt with, as best may multiply the life +of all Love's Meinie, in strength, and use, and peace. + + + + +APPENDIX. + + +140. This part of the book will, I hope, be continuous with the text of +it, containing henceforward, in each number, the nomenclature hitherto +used for the birds described in it, and the Author's reason for his +choice or change of names. In the present number, it supplies also the +nomenclature required for the two preceding ones, and thus finishes the +first volume. + +The names given first, in capitals, for each bird, are those which the +Author will in future give it, and proposes for use in elementary +teaching. They will consist only of a plain Latin specific name, with +one, or at the most two, Latin epithets; and the simplest popular +English name, if there be one; if not, the English name will usually be +the direct translation of the Latin one. + +Then in order will follow-- + +I. Linnaeus's name, marked L. + +II. Buffon's name, marked F, the F standing also for 'French' when any +popular French name is given with Buffon's. + +III. The German popular name, marked T (Teutonic), for I want the G for +Mr. Gould; and this T will include authoritative German scientific +names also. + +IV. The Italian popular name, if one exists, to give the connection +with old Latin, marked I. + +V. Mr. Gould's name, G; Yarrell's, Y; Dressler's, D; and Gesner's, Ges, +being added, if different. + +VI. Bewick's, B. + +VII. Shakspeare's and Chaucer's, if I know them; and general +references, such as may be needful. + +The Appendix will thus contain the names of all the birds I am able to +think or learn anything about, as I can set down what I think or learn; +and with no other attempt at order than the slight grouping of +convenience: but the numbers of the species examined will be +consecutive, so that L. M. 25,--Love's Meinie, Number twenty-five,--or +whatever the number may be, will at once identify any bird in the +system of the St. George's schools. + +The following note by the Author has in previous editions faced the +first page of Lecture III., with the exception of the Nos. i.-vii., +which are now added by the Editor for the sake of completeness. + + * * * * + + Names of the birds noticed, according to the Author's system, with + reference to the sections of the text and the Appendix in which the + reader will find their more melodious scientific nomenclature:-- + + Sect. Sect. + + I. _Rutila Familiaris._ _Robin Redbreast_ + Text 1 seqq. App. 141 + II. _Hirundo Domestica._ _House Swallow_ + " 41 seqq. " 142 + III. _Hirundo Monastica._ _Martlet_ + " -- " 143 + IV. _Hirundo Riparia._ _Bank Martlet_ + " -- " 144 + V. _Hirundo Sagitta._ _Swift_ + " 64 " 145 + VI. _Hirundo Alpina._ _Alpine Swift_ + " -- " 146 + VII. _Noctua Europaea._ _Night-jar of Europe_ + " -- " 147 + VIII. _Merula Fontium._ _Torrent Ouzel_ + " 89 " 148 + IX. _Allegretta Nymphaea._ _Lily Ouzel_ + " 93 " 149 + IX.A. _Allegretta Maculata._ _Spotted Allegret_ + " 96 " 149 + IX.B. _Allegretta Stellaris._ _Starry Allegret_ + " 97 " 149 + IX.C. _Allegretta Minuta._ _Tiny Allegret_ + " 98 " 149 + X. _Trepida Stagnarum._ _Little Grebe_ + " 100 " 150 + XI.A. _Titania Arctica._ _Arctic Fairy_ + " 111 " 151 + XI. _Titania Inconstans._ _Changeful Fairy_ + " 114 " 151 + XII. _Rallus Aquaticus._ _Water Rail_ + " 116 " 152 + XII.A. _Pulla Aquatica._ _Water Hen_ + " 133 " 153 + + +I. + +141. RUTILA FAMILIARIS. ROBIN REDBREAST. + +Motacilla Rubecula. L. +Rouge-Gorge. F. +Roth-breustlein.--Wald-roetele.--Winter-roetele.--Roth-kehlschen. T. +Petti-rosso. I. + +Erythacus Rubecula. G. Rubecula Erythacus. Ges. + Erythaca Rubecula. Y. + Rebecula Familiaris. D. + +Ruddock. B. +Ruddock, in Cymbeline; _tame_ Ruddocke, in Assembly of Fowles; full + robin-redebreast, in the Court of Love: + + "The second lesson, Robin Redebreast sang." + +It is rightly classed by F. and Y. with the Warblers. Gould strangely +puts it with his rock-birds, 'saxicolinae,'--in which, however, he also +includes the sedge warbler. + +The true Robin is properly a wood-bird; the Swedish blue-throated one +lives in marshes and arable fields. I have never seen a robin in really +wild mountain ground. + +There is only one European species of the red-breasted Robin. Gould +names two Japanese ones. + + +II. + +142. HIRUNDO DOMESTICA. HOUSE SWALLOW. + +Hirundo Rustica. L. +Hirondelle Domestique. F. +Schwalbe. T. Swala, Swedish, and Saxon, whence our Swallow: but compare + Lecture II., Sec. 44. +Rondine Comune. I. (note Rond_i_ne, the Swallow; Rondone, the Swift). +Hirundo Rustica. G. and Y. +Chimney-Swallow. B. + + +III. + +143. HIRUNDO MONASTICA. MARTLET. + +Hirundo Urbica. L. +Hirondelle de Fenetre. F. +Kirch-schwalbe. (Church-Swallow.) T. +Balestruccio. I. +Chelidon Urbica. D. and G. +Hirundo Urbica. Martin. Y. +Martlet, Martinet, or Window-Swallow. Y. + +I cannot get at the root of this word, 'Martlet,' which is the really +classical and authoritative English one. I have called it Monastica, in +translation of Shakspeare's "temple-haunting." The main idea about this +bird, among people who have any ideas, seems to be that it haunts and +builds among grander masses or clefts of wall than the common Swallow. +Thus the Germans, besides Church-Swallow, call it wall,--rock,--roof,--or +window, swallow, and Mur-Spyren, or Munster Spyren. (Wall-walker? +Minster-walker?) But by the people who have no ideas, the names 'town' +and 'country,' 'urbica' and 'rustica,' have been accepted as indicating +the practical result, that a bird which likes walls will live in towns, +and one which is content with eaves may remain in farms and villages, +and under their straw-built sheds. + +My name, Monastica, is farther justified by the Dominican severity of +the bird's dress, dark gray-blue and white only; while the Domestica +has a red cap and light brown bodice, and much longer tail. As far as I +remember, the bird I know best is the Monastica. I have seen it in +happiest flocks in all-monastic Abbeville, playing over the Somme in +morning sunlight, dashing deep through the water at every stoop, like a +hardcast stone. + + +IV. + +144. HIRUNDO RIPARIA. BANK MARTLET. + +Hirundo Riparia. L. +Hirondelle de Rivage. F. +Rhein-schwalbe, (Rhine-Swallow,)--ufer-schwalbe, + (Shore-Swallow,)--erd-schwalbe, (Earth-Swallow). T. +Topino, (The mouse-color.)--Rondine de riva. I. +Cotyle Riparia. G. Hirundo Riparia. Y. +Bank-Martin. B. + +The Italian name, 'Topino,' is a good familiar one, the bird being +scarcely larger than a mouse, and "the head, neck, breast, and back of +a mouse-color." (B.) It is the smallest of the Swallow tribe, and +shortest of wing; accordingly, I find Spallanzani's experiment on the +rate of swallow-flight was, for greater certainty and severity, made +with this apparently feeblest of its kind:--a marked Topino, brought +from its nest at Pavia to Milan, (fifteen miles,) flew back to Pavia in +thirteen minutes. I imagine a Swift would at least have doubled this +rate of flight, and that we may safely take a hundred miles an hour as +an average of swallow-speed. This, however, is less by three-fifths +than Michelet's estimate. See above, Lecture II., Sec. 48. + +I have substituted 'bank' for 'sand' in the English name, since all the +six quoted authorities give it this epithet in Latin or French, and +Bewick in English. Also, it may be well thus to distinguish it from +birds of the sea-shore. + + +V. + +145. HIRUNDO SAGITTA. SWIFT. + +Hirundo Apus. L. +Martinet Noir. F. +Geyr-schwalbe. (Vulture-Swallow.) T. +Rondone. (Plural, Rondini.) I. +Cypselus Apus. G. and Y. +Swift, Black Martin, or Deviling. B. + +I think it will be often well to admit the license of using a +substantive for epithet, (as one says rock-bird or sea-bird, and not +'rocky,' or 'marine,') in Latin as well as in English. We thus greatly +increase our power, and assist the brevity of nomenclature; and we gain +the convenience of using the second term by itself, when we wish to do +so, more naturally. Thus, one may shortly speak of 'The Sagitta' (when +one is on a scientific point where 'Swift' would be indecorous!) more +easily than one could speak of 'The Stridula,' or 'The Velox,' if we +gave the bird either of those epithets. I think this of Sagitta is the +most descriptive one could well find; only the reader is always to +recollect that arrow-birds must be more heavy in the head or shaft than +arrow-weapons, and fly more in the manner of rifle-shot than bow-shot. +See Lecture II., Sec.Sec. 46, 67, 71, in which last paragraph, however, I +have to correct the careless statement, that in the sailing flight, +without stroke, of the larger falcons, their weight ever acts like the +_string_ of a kite. Their weight acts simply as the _weight_ of a kite +acts, and no otherwise. (Compare Sec. 65.) The impulsive force in sailing +can be given only by the tail feathers, like that of a darting trout by +the tail fin. I do not think any excuse necessary for my rejection of +the name which seems most to have established itself lately, 'Cypselus +Apus,' 'Footless Capsule.' It is not footless, and there is no sense in +calling a bird a capsule because it lives in a hole, (which the Swift +does not.) The Greeks had a double idea in the word, which it is not +the least necessary to keep; and Aristotle's cypselus is not the swift, +but the bank-martlet--"they bring up their young in cells made out of +clay, _long_ in the entrance." The swift being precisely the one of the +Hirundines which does _not_ make its nest of clay, but of miscellaneous +straws, threads, and shreds of any adaptable rubbish, which it can +snatch from the ground as it stoops on the wing,[26] or pilfer from any +half-ruined nests of other birds. + + [26] "I have in different times and places opened ten or twelve + swifts' nests; in all of them I found the same materials, and + these consisting of a great variety of substances--stalks of + corn, dry grass, moss, hemp, bits of cord, threads of silk and + linen, the tip of an ermine's tail, small shreds of gauze, of + muslin and other light stuffs, the feathers of domestic birds, + _charcoal_,--in short, whatever they can find in the sweepings of + towns."--Buffon. + + Belon asserts (Buffon does not venture to guarantee the + assertion), that "they will descry a fly at the distance of a + quarter of a league"! + +'Cotyle' is only a synonym for Cypselus, enabling ornithologists to +become farther unintelligible. We will be troubled no more either with +cotyles or capsules, but recollect simply that Hirundo, [Greek: chelidon], +swallow, schwalbe, and hirondelle, are in each language the sufficing +single words for the entire Hirundine race. + + +VI. + +146. HIRUNDO ALPINA. ALPINE SWIFT. + +Hirundo Melba. L. +Le grand Martinet a Ventre Blanc. F. +Cypselus Melba. G. +Cypselus Alpinus. Y. +Alpine Swift,--White-bellied Swift. Y. +Not in Bewick. + +I cannot find its German name. The Italians compare it with the +sea-swallow, which is a gull. What 'Melba' means, or ever meant, I have +no conception. + +The bird is the noblest of all the swallow tribe--nearly as large as a +hawk, and lives high in air, nothing but rocks or cathedrals serving it +for nest. In France, seen only near the Alps; in Spain, among the +mountains of Aragon. "Almost every person who has had an opportunity of +observing this bird speaks in terms of admiration of its vast powers of +flight; it is not surprising, therefore, that an individual should now +and then wing its way across the Channel to the British Islands, and +roam over our meads and fields until it is shot." (G.) It is, I +believe, the swallow of the Bible,--abundant, though only a summer +migrant, in the Holy Land. I have never seen it, that I know of, nor +thought of it in the lecture on the Swallow; but give here the complete +series of Hirundines, of which some notice may incidentally afterwards +occur in the text. + + +VII. + +147. NOCTUA EUROPAEA. NIGHT-JAR OF EUROPE. + +Caprimulgus Europaeus. L. +L'Engoulevent. F. (Crapaud-volant, popular.) +Geissmelcher.--Nacht-schade. T. +Covaterra. I. +Caprimulgus Europaeus. G. and Y. +Night-jar. B. + +Dorrhawk and Fern-owl, also given by Bewick, are the most beautiful +English names for this bird; but as it is really neither a hawk nor an +owl, though much mingled in its manners of both, I keep the usual one, +Night-jar, euphonious for Night-Churr, from its continuous note like +the sound of a spinning wheel. The idea of its sucking goats, or any +other milky creature, has long been set at rest; and science, +intolerant of legends in which there is any use or beauty, cannot be +allowed to ratify in its dog or pig-Latin those which are eternally +vulgar and profitless. I had first thought of calling it Hirundo +Nocturna; but this would be too broad massing; for although the +creature is more swallow than owl, living wholly on insects, it must be +properly held as a distinct species from both. Owls cannot gape like +constrictors; nor have swallows whiskers or beards, or combs to keep +both in order with, on their middle toes. This bird's cat-like bristles +at the base of the beak connect it with the bearded Toucans, and so +also the toothed mandibles of the American cave-dwelling variety. I +shall not want the word Noctua for the owls themselves, and it is a +pretty and simple one for this tribe, enabling the local epithet +'European,' and other necessary ones, of varieties, to be retained for +the second or specific term. Nacht-schade, Night-_loss_, the popular +German name, perhaps really still refers to this supposed nocturnal +thieving; or may have fallen euphonious from Nacht-schwalbe, which in +some places abides. 'Crapaud-volant' is ugly, but descriptive, the +brown speckling of the bird being indeed toadlike, though wonderful and +beautiful. Bewick has put his utmost skill into it; and the cut, with +the Bittern and White Owl, may perhaps stand otherwise unrivaled by any +of his hand. + +Gould's drawing of the bird on its ground nest, or ground contentedly +taken for nest, among heath and scarlet-topped lichen, is among the +most beautiful in his book; and there are four quite exquisite drawings +by Mr. Ford, of African varieties, in Dr. Smith's zoology of South +Africa. The one called by the doctor Europaeus seems a grayer and more +graceful bird than ours. Natalensis wears a most wonderful dark +oak-leaf pattern of cloak. Rufigena, I suppose, blushes herself +separate from Ruficollis of Gould? but these foreign varieties seem +countless. I shall never have time to examine them, but thought it not +well to end the titular list of the swallows without notice of the +position of this great tribe. + + +VIII. + +148. MERULA FONTIUM. TORRENT-OUZEL. + +Sturnus Cinclus. L. +Merle d'Eau. F. +Bach-Amsel. T. +Merla Aquaiola. I. +Cinclus Aquaticus. G. and Y. +Water Ouzel. B. + +Turdus Cinclus, Pennant; Common Dipper, Y.; Didapper, Doucker, Water +Crow, Water Piot, B.; Cincle Plongeur, Temminck; Wasser Trostel, Swiss. + +The scientific full arrangement, according to Yarrell, is thus:-- + +1. Order--INSESSORES. +2. Tribe--Dentirostres. +3. Genus--Merulidae. +4. Species--Cinclus. +5. Individual--Aquaticus. + +You will please observe that some of the scientific people call it a +blackbird--some a thrush--some a starling--and the rest a Cincle, +whatever that may be. It remains for them now only to show how the +Cincle has been developed out of the Winkle, and the Winkle out of the +Quangle-Wangle. You will note also that the Yorkshire and Durham mind +is balanced between the two views of its being a crow or a magpie. I am +content myself to be in harmony with France and Italy, in my 'Merula,' +and with Germany in my _Torrent_-Ouzel. Their 'bach' (as in Staubbach, +Giesbach, Reichenbach) being essentially a mountain waterfall; and +their 'amsel,' as our Damsel, merely the Teutonic form of the +Demoiselle or Domicilla--'House-Ouzel,' as it were, (said of a nice +girl)--Domicilla again being, I think, merely the transposition of +Ancilla Domini,--Behold, the handmaid of the Lord: (see frontispiece to +third volume of 'Modern Painters') which, if young ladies in general +were to embroider on their girdles--though their dresses, fitting at +present 'as close as a glove' (see description of modern American ideal +in 'A Fair Barbarian') do not usually require girdles either for their +keys or their manners,--it would probably be thought irreverent by +modern clergymen; but if the demoiselle were none the better for it, +she _could_ certainly be none the worse. + +149. ALLEGRETTA NYMPHAEA. LILY-OUZEL. + +Var. 1 (IX.A.) + +ALLEGRETTA NYMPHAEA, MACULATA. SPOTTED ALLEGRET. + +Rallus Porzana. L. +Poule d'Eau Maronette. F. +Winkernell. T. +Porzana. I. +Zapornia Porzana. G. +Crex Porzana. Y. +Ortygometra Porzana. Steph. +Gallinula Maculata et Punctata. Brehmen. +Spotted Crake. B. + +The 'Winkernell' is I believe provincial (Alsace); so, Girardina, +Milanese, and Girardine, Picard.--I can make nothing whatever of any of +these names;--Porzana, Bolognese and Venetian, might perhaps mean +Piggy-bird; and Ortygometra Porzana would then mean, in serious +English, the 'Quail-sized Pig-bird.' I am sorry not to be able to do +better as Interpreter for my scientific friends. + + +IX.B. + +ALLEGRETTA NYMPHAEA, STELLARIS. STARRY ALLEGRET. + +Not separated by Linnaeus, or Buffon, or Bewick, nor by popular German + or French names, from the Marouette. +Crex Baillonii, Baillon's Crake. Y. +Porzana Pygmaea. G. +Gallinula Stellaris. Temminck. + + +IX.C. + +ALLEGRETTA NYMPHAEA, MINUTA. TINY ALLEGRET. + +Porzana Minuta, Olivaceous Crake. G. +Crex Pusilla, Little Crake. Y. +Poule d'Eau Poussin. Temminck. +Little Gallinule. B. + +It never occurred to me, when I was writing of classical landscape, +that 'Poussin' to a French ear conveyed the idea of 'chicken,' or of +the young of birds in general. (Is it from 'pousser,' as if they were a +kind of budding of bird?) Everybody seems to agree in feeling that this +is a kind of wren among the dabchicks. Bewick's name, 'Little +Gallinule,' meaning of course, if he knew it, the twice-over little +Gallina;--and here again the question occurs to me about its voice. Is +it a twice-over little crow, called a 'creak,' or anything like the +Rail's more provokingly continuous objurgation?--compare notes below on +Rallus Aquaticus. I find, with some alarm, in Buffon, that one with a +longer tail, the Cau-rale or Tail-rail of Cayenne, is there called +'Little Peacock of the Roses;' but its cry is represented by the liquid +syllables 'Piolo,' while the black-spotted one of the Society +Islands--Magellan's 'Water-quail'--says 'Poo-a-nee,' and the Bidi-bidi +of Jamaica says 'Bidi-bidi.' + + +X. + +150. TREPIDA STAGNARUM. LITTLE GREBE. + +Colymbus Minor. L. +Le Castagneux. F. +Deutchel. T. +Tropazarola? I. +Podiceps Minor. C. +Little Grebe. B. + +The Yorkshire accents and changes of its name are given by Bewick: +Dobchick--small doucker; Dipper, or Didapper. + +In Barbadoes--Two-penny chick. + +It seems to me curious that without knowing Buffon's name, which I have +only looked up now, 'the Chestnutty,' given from the brown on its back, +I should have, myself, always called its foot 'chestnutty,' from the +shape of its lobes. + +My 'Trepida' will do well enough, I think, for a Latin rendering of +Grebe, and will include the whole group of them,--'stagnarum' remaining +for this species only, and the others being called Tippeted Trepids, or +Muffed Trepids, Eared Trepids or Majestic Trepids, as I find out what +they wear, and how they behave. Grebe is used by Buffon only for the +larger ones, and Castagneux for the smaller, which is absurd enough, +unless the smaller are also the browner. + +But I find in Buffon some interesting particulars not given in my +text--namely, that the whole group differs from common chicks, not only +in the lobed feet, but in these being set so far back, (becoming almost +a fish's tail indeed, rather than a bird's legs,) that they are quite +useless for walking, and could support the bird only on land if it +stood upright: but that it "dashes through the waves" (i.e., the larger +varieties through sea waves), and "runs on the surface"? (i.e., the +smaller varieties on pools,) with surprising rapidity; its motions are +said to be never quicker and brisker than when under water. It pursues +the fish to a very great depth, and is often caught in fishermen's +nets. It dives deeper than the scoter duck, which is taken only on beds +of shellfish left bare by the ebb-tide; while the Grebes are taken in +the open sea, often at more than twenty feet depth. + + +XI. + +151. TITANIA ARCTICA. ARCTIC FAIRY. + +Tringa Fulicaria. L. +(No French name given in my edition of Buffon!) +No German, anywhere. +No Italian, anywhere. + +But of suggestions by scientific authors, here are enough to choose +from:-- + +Lobipes Hyperboreus, G. Lobipes Hyperborea, Selby. Phalaropus +Hyperboreus, Penn. Phalarope Hyperbore, Temm. Phalaropus Fulicaria, +Mont. Phalaropus Fuscus, Bewick. Phalaropus Rufescens, Briss. Red +Coot-footed Tringa, Edw. Red-necked Phalarope, Gould. Lobe-foot, Selby. +Coot-foot, Fleming. + +I am a little shocked at my own choice of name in this case, not quite +pleasing my imagination with the idea of a Coot-footed Fairy. But since +Athena herself thinks it no disgrace to take for disguise the likeness +either of a sea-gull or a swallow, a sea-fairy may certainly be thought +of as condescending to appear with a diving bird's foot; and the rather +that, if one may judge by painters' efforts to give us sight of +Fairyland, the general character of its inhabitants is more that of +earthly or marine goblins than aerial ones. + +Now this is strange! At the last moment, I find this sentence in +Gould's introduction: "The generic terms Phalaropus and Lobipes have +been instituted for the _fairy-like_ phalaropes." + + +XI.A. + +TITANIA INCONSTANS. CHANGEFUL FAIRY. + +Tringa Lobata. L. +Phalaropus Fulicarius (Gray Phalarope). G. +Phalaropus Lobatus. Latham. + +"Phalarope with indented festoons," English trans. of Buffon.--It is of +no use to ring the changes farther. + + +XII. + +152. RALLUS AQUATICUS. WATER RAIL. + +Rallus Aquaticus. L., G., Y. +Rale d'Eau. F. +Samet-Hennle--Velvet (silken?) hen. Ges. +Schwartz-Wasser-Hennle. T.? +Vagtel-Konge. Danish. +Porzana, or Forzana, at Venice. +Brook-Ouzel--Velvet Runner. B. + +I take this group of foreign names from Buffon, but question the German +one, which must belong to the Water Hen; for the Rail is not black, but +prettily gray and spotted, and I think Buffon confuses the two birds, +as several popular names do. Thus, the Velvet Hen also, I fancy, is the +Water Hen; but Bewick's Velvet-Runner partly confirms it to the Rail. I +find nothing about velvet said in describing the plumage. + +I leave Linnaeus's for our Latin name, under some protest. Rallus is a +late Latin adjective, meaning 'thin,' and if understood as 'Thin-bird,' +or 'Lath-like' bird, would be reasonable; but if it stand, as it does +practically, for Railing or Rattling bird, it is both bad Latin, and, +as far as I can make out, calumnious of the usually quiet creature. + +Note also, for a connected piece of scholarship, that our English verb +to 'rail' does not properly mean to scold, or to abuse noisily; it is +from 'railler,' and means to 'rally,' or jest at, which is often a much +wickeder thing to do, if the matter be indeed no jest. + +Note also of Samet or Samite, its derivation from late Greek [Greek: +examitos], silken stuff woven of six threads, of which I believe two +were of gold. The French oriflamme was of crimson samite, and I don't +see why the French shouldn't call this bird Poule de Soie, instead of +by their present ugly name--more objectionable on all grounds, of +sense, scholarship, and feeling, than the English one. But see the next +species. + + +153. XII.A. + +PULLA AQUATICA. WATER HEN. + +There seems so much confusion in the minds, or at least the language, +of ornithologists, between the Water Rail and Water Hen, that I give +this latter bird under the number XII.A. rather than XIII., (which +would, besides, be an unlucky number to end my Appendix with); and it +would be very nice, if at all possible or proper, to keep these two +larger dabchicks connected pleasantly in school-girl minds by their +costumes, and call one 'Silken Runner,' and this,--which, as said +above, Gesner seems to mean, Velvet Runner, or Velvet Hen.--Poule de +Soie or Poule de Velours? I am getting a little confused myself, +however, I find at last, between Poules, Poussins, Pullets, and Pullas; +and must for the present leave the matter to the reader's choice and +fancy, till I get some more birds looked at, and named:--only, for a +pretty end of my Appendix, here are two bits of very precious letters, +sent me by friends who know birds better than most scientific people, +but have been too busy--one in a 'Dorcas Society,' and the other in a +children's hospital--to write books, and only now write these bits of +letters on my special petition. The member of the Dorcas Society sends +me this brief but final and satisfactory answer to my above question +about birds' ears:-- + +"We talk and think of birds as essentially musical and mimetic, or at +least vocal and noisy creatures; and yet we seem to think that although +they have an ear, they have no ears. Little or nothing is told us of +the structure of a bird's ear. We are now too enlightened to believe in +what we can't see; and ears that are never pricked, or cocked, or laid +back,--that merely receive and learn, but don't express,--that are +organs, not features, don't interest our philosophers now. + +"If you blow gently on the feathers of the side of a bird's head, a +little above and behind the corner of the beak, a little below and +behind the eye, the parted feathers will show the listening place; a +little hole with convolutions of delicate skin turning inwards, very +much like what your own ear would be if you had none,--I mean, if all +of it that lies above the level of the head had been removed, leaving +no trace. No one who looks at the little hole could fail to see that it +is an ear, highly organized--an ear for music; at least, I found it so +among the finches I have examined; I know not if a simpler structure is +evident in the ear of a rook or a peacock. + +"The feathers are so planted round a bird's ears, that however ruffled +or wet, they can't get in--and possibly they conduct sound. Birds have +no need of ears with a movable cowl over them, to turn and twist for +the catching of stray sounds, as foxes have, and hares, and other +four-footed things; for a bird can turn his whole head so as to put his +ear wherever he pleases in the twinkling of an eye; and he has too many +resources, whatever bird he may be, of voice and gesture, to need any +power of ear-cocking to welcome his friends, or ear-flattening to +menace his foes. + +"The long and the short of it is, that we may as well take the trouble +first to look for, and then to look at, a bird's ear--having first made +the bird like us and trust us so much, that he won't mind a human +breath upon his cheek, but will let us see behind the veil, into the +doorless corridor that lets music into the bird-soul." + +154. Next; the physician (over whom, to get the letter out of him, I +had to use the authority of a more than ordinarily imperious patient) +says,-- + +"Now for the grebes lowering themselves in water, (which Lucy said I +was to tell you about). The way in which they manage it, I believe to +be this. Most birds have under their skins great air-passages which +open into the lungs, and which, when the bird is moving quickly, and +consequently devouring a great deal of air, do, to a certain extent, +the work of supplementary lungs. They also lessen the bird's specific +gravity, which must be of some help in flying. And in the gannet, which +drops into the sea from a great height after fish, these air-bags +lessen the shock on striking the water. Now the grebes (and all +diving-birds) which can swim high up out of water when the air-cushions +are full, and so feel very little the cold of the water beneath them, +breathe out all spare air, and sink almost out of sight when they wish +to be less conspicuous;--just as a balloon sinks when part of the gas +is let out. And I have often watched the common divers and cormorants +too, when frightened, swimming about with only head and neck out of +water, and so looking more like snakes than birds. + +"Then about the Dippers: they 'fly' to the bottom of a stream, using +their wings, just as they would fly up into the air; and there is the +same difficulty in flying to the bottom of the stream, and keeping +there, as there would be in flying up into the air, and keeping +there,--perhaps greater difficulty. + +"They can never walk comfortably along the bottom of a river, as they +could on the bank, though I know they are often talked of as doing it. +They too, no doubt, empty their air-bags, to make going under water a +little less difficult." + +155. This most valuable letter, for once, leaves me a minute or two, +disposed to ask a question which would need the skinning of a bird in a +diagram to answer--about the "air-passages, which are a kind of +supplementary lungs." Thinking better of it, and leaving the bird to +breathe in its own way, I _do_ wish we could get this Dipper question +settled,--for here we are all at sea--or at least at brook, again, +about it: and although in a book I ought to have examined before--Mr. +Robert Gray's 'Birds of the West of Scotland,' which contains a +quantity of useful and amusing things, and some plates remarkable for +the delicate and spirited action of birds in groups,--although, I say, +this unusually well-gathered and well-written book has a nice little +lithograph of two dippers, and says they are quite universally +distributed in Scotland, and called 'Water Crows,' and in Gaelic 'Gobha +dubh nan allt,' (which I'm sure must mean something nice, if one knew +what,) and though it has a lively account of the bird's ways out of the +water--says not a word of its ways _in_ it! except that "dippers +everywhere delight in _deep_ linns and brawling rapids, where their +interesting motions never fail to attract the angler and bird-student;" +and this of their voices: "In early spring, the male birds may be seen +perched on some moss-covered stone, trilling their fine clear notes;" +and again: "I have stood within a few yards of one at the close of a +blustering winter's day, and enjoyed its charming music unobserved. The +performer was sitting on a stake jutting from a mill-pond in the midst +of a cold and cheerless Forfarshire moor, yet he joyously warbled his +evening hymn with a fullness which made me forget the surrounding +sterility." + +Forget it not, thou, good reader; but rather remember it in your own +hymns, and your own prayers, that still--in Bonnie Scotland, and Old +England--the voices, almost lost, of Brook, and Breeze, and Bird, may, +by Love's help, be yet to their lovers audible. Ainsi soit il. + + +BRANTWOOD, 8_th July_, 1881. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Love's Meinie, by John Ruskin + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOVE'S MEINIE *** + +***** This file should be named 21138.txt or 21138.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/1/1/3/21138/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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