initial commit of ebook 37787HEADmain

1 files changed, 7195 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/37787.txt b/37787.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4e2f2b3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/37787.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7195 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Birds and Man, by W. H. Hudson
+
+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: Birds and Man
+
+Author: W. H. Hudson
+
+Release Date: October 18, 2011 [EBook #37787]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIRDS AND MAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Tom Cosmas and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BIRDS AND MAN
+
+
+
+
+  +----------------------------+
+  |    _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_    |
+  |                            |
+  | Birds in a Village         |
+  |                            |
+  | Adventures among Birds     |
+  |                            |
+  | Nature in Downland         |
+  |                            |
+  | Hampshire Days             |
+  |                            |
+  | The Land's End             |
+  |                            |
+  | A Shepherd's Life          |
+  |                            |
+  | Afoot in England           |
+  |                            |
+  | The Purple Land            |
+  |                            |
+  | Green Mansions             |
+  |                            |
+  | A Crystal Age              |
+  |                            |
+  | South American Sketches    |
+  |                            |
+  | The Naturalist in La Plata |
+  |                            |
+  | A Little Boy Lost          |
+  |                            |
+  +----------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+   [Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+BIRDS AND MAN
+
+BY
+
+W. H. HUDSON
+
+
+LONDON
+
+DUCKWORTH & CO.
+
+3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
+
+
+_New Edition published by Duckworth & Co. 1915_
+
+Re-issued 1920
+
+
+
+
+This book has been out of print for several years and has been somewhat
+altered for this new edition. The order in which the chapters originally
+appeared is changed. One chapter dealing mainly with bird life in the
+Metropolis, a subject treated fully in another work, has been omitted;
+two new chapters are added, and some fresh matter introduced throughout
+the work.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAP.                                                         PAGE
+
+     I. Birds at their Best                                        1
+    II. Birds and Man                                             37
+   III. Daws in the West Country                                  58
+    IV. Early Spring in Savernake Forest                          79
+     V. A Wood Wren at Wells                                     101
+    VI. The Secret of the Willow Wren                            117
+   VII. Secret of the Charm of Flowers                           133
+  VIII. Ravens in Somerset                                       159
+    IX. Owls in a Village                                        173
+     X. The Strange and Beautiful Sheldrake                      187
+    XI. Geese: an Appreciation and a Memory                      199
+   XII. The Dartford Warbler                                     222
+  XIII. Vert--Vert; or Parrot Gossip                             249
+   XIV. Something Pretty in a Glass Case                         269
+    XV. Selborne                                                 283
+        Index                                                    303
+
+
+
+
+BIRDS AND MAN
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+BIRDS AT THEIR BEST
+
+
+_By Way of Introduction_
+
+Years ago, in a chapter concerning eyes in a book of Patagonian
+memories, I spoke of the unpleasant sensations produced in me by the
+sight of stuffed birds. Not bird skins in the drawers of a cabinet, it
+will be understood, these being indispensable to the ornithologist, and
+very useful to the larger class of persons who without being
+ornithologists yet take an intelligent interest in birds. The
+unpleasantness was at the sight of skins stuffed with wool and set up on
+their legs in imitation of the living bird, sometimes (oh, mockery!) in
+their "natural surroundings." These "surroundings" are as a rule
+constructed or composed of a few handfuls of earth to form the floor of
+the glass case--sand, rock, clay, chalk, or gravel; whatever the
+material may be it invariably has, like all "matter out of place," a
+grimy and depressing appearance. On the floor are planted grasses,
+sedges, and miniature bushes, made of tin or zinc and then dipped in a
+bucket of green paint. In the chapter referred to it was said, "When the
+eye closes in death, the bird, except to the naturalist, becomes a mere
+bundle of dead feathers; crystal globes may be put into the empty
+sockets, and a bold life-imitating attitude given to the stuffed
+specimen, but the vitreous orbs shoot forth no life-like glances: the
+'passion and the life whose fountains are within' have vanished, and the
+best work of the taxidermist, who has given a life to his bastard art,
+produces in the mind only sensations of irritation and disgust."
+
+That, in the last clause, was wrongly writ. It should have been _my_
+mind, and the minds of those who, knowing living birds intimately as I
+do, have the same feeling about them.
+
+This, then, being my feeling about stuffed birds, set up in their
+"natural surroundings," I very naturally avoid the places where they are
+exhibited. At Brighton, for instance, on many occasions when I have
+visited and stayed in that town, there was no inclination to see the
+Booth Collection, which is supposed to be an ideal collection of British
+birds; and we know it was the life-work of a zealous ornithologist who
+was also a wealthy man, and who spared no pains to make it perfect of
+its kind. About eighteen months ago I passed a night in the house of a
+friend close to the Dyke Road, and next morning, having a couple of
+hours to get rid of, I strolled into the museum. It was painfully
+disappointing, for though no actual pleasure had been expected, the
+distress experienced was more than I had bargained for. It happened that
+a short time before, I had been watching the living Dartford warbler, at
+a time when the sight of this small elusive creature is loveliest, for
+not only was the bird in his brightest feathers, but his surroundings
+were then most perfect--
+
+   The whin was frankincense and flame.
+
+His appearance, as I saw him then and on many other occasions in
+the furze-flowering season, is fully described in a chapter in
+this book; but on this particular occasion while watching my bird
+I saw it in a new and unexpected aspect, and in my surprise and
+delight I exclaimed mentally, "Now I have seen the furze wren at
+his very best!"
+
+It was perhaps a very rare thing--one of those effects of light on
+plumage which we are accustomed to see in birds that have glossed
+metallic feathers, and, more rarely, in other kinds. Thus the
+turtle-dove when flying from the spectator with a strong
+sunlight on its upper plumage, sometimes at a distance of two to
+three hundred yards, appears of a shining whiteness.
+
+I had been watching the birds for a couple of hours, sitting quite
+still on a tuft of heather among the furze-bushes, and at
+intervals they came to me, impelled by curiosity and solicitude,
+their nests being near, but, ever restless, they would never
+remain more than a few seconds at a time in sight. The prettiest
+and the boldest was a male, and it was this bird that in the end
+flew to a bush within twelve yards of where I sat, and perching on
+a spray about on a level with my eyes exhibited himself to me in
+his characteristic manner, the long tail raised, crest erect,
+crimson eye sparkling, and throat puffed out with his little
+scolding notes. But his colour was no longer that of the furze
+wren: seen at a distance the upper plumage always appears
+slaty-black; near at hand it is of a deep slaty-brown; now it was
+dark, sprinkled or frosted over with a delicate greyish-white, the
+white of oxidised silver; and this rare and beautiful appearance
+continued for a space of about twenty seconds; but no sooner did
+he flit to another spray than it vanished, and he was once
+more the slaty-brown little bird with a chestnut-red breast.
+
+It is unlikely that I shall ever again see the furze wren in this
+aspect, with a curious splendour wrought by the sunlight in the
+dark but semi-translucent delicate feathers of his mantle; but its
+image is in the mind, and, with a thousand others equally
+beautiful, remains to me a permanent possession.
+
+As I went in to see the famous Booth Collection, a thought of the
+bird I have just described came into my mind; and glancing round
+the big long room with shelves crowded with stuffed birds, like
+the crowded shelves of a shop, to see where the Dartford warblers
+were, I went straight to the case and saw a group of them fastened
+to a furze-bush, the specimens twisted by the stuffer into a
+variety of attitudes--ancient, dusty, dead little birds, painful to
+look at--a libel on nature and an insult to a man's intelligence.
+
+It was a relief to go from this case to the others, which were not
+of the same degree of badness, but all, like the furze wrens, were
+in their natural surroundings--the pebbles, bit of turf, painted
+leaves, and what not, and, finally, a view of the wide world
+beyond, the green earth and the blue sky, all painted on
+the little square of deal or canvas which formed the back of the
+glass case.
+
+Listening to the talk of other visitors who were making the round
+of the room, I heard many sincere expressions of admiration: they
+were really pleased and thought it all very wonderful. That is, in
+fact, the common feeling which most persons express in such
+places, and, assuming that it is sincere, the obvious explanation
+is that they know no better. They have never properly seen
+anything in nature, but have looked always with mind and the inner
+vision preoccupied with other and familiar things--indoor scenes
+and objects, and scenes described in books. If they had ever
+looked at wild birds properly--that is to say, emotionally--the
+images of such sights would have remained in their minds; and,
+with such a standard for comparison, these dreary remnants of dead
+things set before them as restorations and as semblances of life
+would have only produced a profoundly depressing effect.
+
+We hear of the educational value of such exhibitions, and it may be
+conceded that they might be made useful to young students of zoology,
+by distributing the specimens over a large area, arranged in scattered
+groups so as to give a rough idea of the relationship existing among
+its members, and of all together to other neighbouring groups, and to
+others still further removed. The one advantage of such a plan to the
+young student would be, that it would help him to get rid of the false
+notion, which classification studied in books invariably produces,
+that nature marshals her species in a line or row, or her genera in a
+chain. But no such plan is ever attempted, probably because it would
+only be for the benefit of about one person in five hundred visitors,
+and the expense would be too great.
+
+As things are, these collections help no one, and their effect is
+confusing and in many ways injurious to the mind, especially to
+the young. A multitude of specimens are brought before the sight,
+each and every one a falsification and degradation of nature, and
+the impression left is of an assemblage, or mob, of incongruous
+forms, and of a confusion of colours. The one comfort is that
+nature, wiser than our masters, sets herself against this rude
+system of overloading the brain. She is kind to her wild children
+in their intemperance, and is able to relieve the congested mind,
+too, from this burden. These objects in a museum are not and
+cannot be viewed emotionally, as we view living forms and all
+nature; hence they do not, and we being what we are, cannot,
+register lasting impressions.
+
+It needed a long walk on the downs to get myself once more
+in tune with the outdoor world after that distuning experience;
+but just before quitting the house in the Dyke Road an old memory
+came to me and gave me some relief, inasmuch as it caused me to
+smile. It was a memory of a tale of the Age of Fools, which I
+heard long years ago in the days of my youth.
+
+I was at a small riverine port of the Plata river, called Ensenada
+de Barragan, assisting a friend to ship a number of sheep which he
+had purchased in Buenos Ayres and was sending to the Banda
+Oriental--the little republic on the east side of the great
+sea-like river. The sheep, numbering about six thousand, were
+penned at the side of the creek where the small sailing ships were
+lying close to the bank, and a gang of eight men were engaged in
+carrying the animals on board, taking them one by one on their
+backs over a narrow plank, while I stood by keeping count. The men
+were gauchos, all but one--a short, rather grotesque-looking
+Portuguese with one eye. This fellow was the life and soul of the
+gang, and with his jokes and antics kept the others in a merry
+humour. It was an excessively hot day, and at intervals of about
+an hour the men would knock off work, and, squatting on the muddy
+bank, rest and smoke their cigarettes; and on each occasion
+the funny one-eyed Portuguese would relate some entertaining
+history. One of these histories was about the Age of Fools, and
+amused me so much that I remember it to this day. It was the
+history of a man of that remote age, who was born out of his time,
+and who grew tired of the monotony of his life, even of the
+society of his wife, who was no whit wiser than the other
+inhabitants of the village they lived in. And at last he resolved
+to go forth and see the world, and bidding his wife and friends
+farewell he set out on his travels. He travelled far and met with
+many strange and entertaining adventures, which I must be pardoned
+for not relating, as this is not a story-book. In the end he
+returned safe and sound to his home, a much richer man than when
+he started; and opening his pack he spread out before his wife an
+immense number of gold coins, with scores of precious stones, and
+trinkets of the greatest value. At the sight of this glittering
+treasure she uttered a great scream of joy and jumping up rushed
+from the room. Seeing that she did not return, he went to look for
+her, and after some searching discovered that she had rushed down
+to the wine-cellar and knocking open a large cask of wine had
+jumped into it and drowned herself for pure joy.
+
+"Thus happily ended his adventures," concluded the
+one-eyed cynic, and they all got up and resumed their work of
+carrying sheep to the boat.
+
+It was one of the adventures met with by the man of the tale in
+his travels that came into my mind when I was in the Booth Museum,
+and caused me to smile. In his wanderings in a thinly settled
+district, he arrived at a village where, passing by the church,
+his attention was attracted by a curious spectacle. The church was
+a big building with a rounded roof, and great blank windowless
+walls, and the only door he could see was no larger than the door
+of a cottage. From this door as he looked a small old man came out
+with a large empty sack in his hands. He was very old, bowed and
+bent with infirmities, and his long hair and beard were white as
+snow. Toddling out to the middle of the churchyard he stood still,
+and grasping the empty sack by its top, held it open between his
+outstretched arms for a space of about five minutes; then with a
+sudden movement of his hands he closed the sack's mouth, and still
+grasping it tightly, hurried back to the church as fast as his
+stiff joints would let him, and disappeared within the door. By
+and by he came forth again and repeated the performance, and then
+again, until the traveller approached and asked him what
+he was doing. "I am lighting the church," said the old man; and he
+then went on to explain that it was a large and a fine church,
+full of rich ornaments, but very dark inside--so dark that when
+people came to service the greatest confusion prevailed, and they
+could not see each other or the priest, nor the priest them. It
+had always been so, he continued, and it was a great mystery; he
+had been engaged by the fathers of the village a long time back,
+when he was a young man, to carry sunlight in to light the
+interior; but though he had grown old at his task, and had carried
+in many, many thousands of sackfuls of sunlight every year, it
+still remained dark, and no one could say why it was so.
+
+It is not necessary to relate the sequel: the reader knows by now
+that in the end the dark church was filled with light, that the
+traveller was feasted and honoured by all the people of the
+village, and that he left them loaded with gifts.
+
+Parables of this kind as a rule can have no moral or hidden
+meaning in an age so enlightened as this; yet oddly enough we do
+find among us a delusion resembling that of the villagers who
+thought they could convey sunshine in a sack to light their dark
+church. It is one of a group or family of indoor delusions
+and illusions, which Mr Sully has not mentioned in his book on
+that fascinating subject. One example of the particular delusion I
+have been speaking of, in which it is seen in its crudest form,
+may be given here.
+
+A man walking by the water-side sees by chance a kingfisher fly
+past, its colour a wonderful blue, far surpassing in beauty and
+brilliancy any blue he has ever seen in sky or water, or in flower
+or stone, or any other thing. No sooner has he seen than he wishes
+to become the possessor of that rare loveliness, that shining
+object which, he fondly imagines, will be a continual delight to
+him and to all in his house,--an ornament comparable to that
+splendid stone which the poor fisherman found in a fish's belly,
+which was his children's plaything by day and his candle by night.
+Forthwith he gets his gun and shoots it, and has it stuffed and
+put in a glass case. But it is no longer the same thing: the image
+of the living sunlit bird flashing past him is in his mind and
+creates a kind of illusion when he looks at his feathered mummy,
+but the lustre is not visible to others.
+
+It is because of the commonness of this delusion that stuffed
+kingfishers, and other brilliant species, are to be seen in the
+parlours of tens of thousands of cottages all over the land. Nor is it
+only those who live in cottages that make this mistake; those who care
+to look for it will find that it exists in some degree in most
+minds--the curious delusion that the lustre which we see and admire is
+in the case, the coil, the substance which may be grasped, and not in
+the spirit of life which is within and the atmosphere and
+miracle-working sunlight which are without.
+
+To return to my own taste and feelings, since in the present chapter I
+must be allowed to write on Man (myself to wit) and Birds, the other
+chapters being occupied with the subject of Birds and Man. It has
+always, or since I can remember, been my ambition and principal
+delight to see and hear every bird at its best. This is here a
+comparative term, and simply means an unusually attractive aspect of
+the bird, or a very much better than the ordinary one. This may result
+from a fortunate conjunction of circumstances, or may be due to a
+peculiar harmony between the creature and its surroundings; or in some
+instances, as in that given above of the Dartford warbler, to a rare
+effect of the sun. In still other cases, motions and antics, rarely
+seen, singularly graceful, or even grotesque, may give the best
+impression. After one such impression has been received, another
+equally excellent may follow at a later date: in that case the second
+impression does not obliterate, or is not superimposed upon the former
+one; both remain as permanent possessions of the mind, and we may thus
+have several mental pictures of the same species.
+
+It is the same with all minds with regard to the objects and scenes
+which happen to be of special interest. The following illustration
+will serve to make the matter clearer to readers who are not
+accustomed to pay attention to their own mental processes. When any
+common object, such as a chair, or spade, or apple, is thought of or
+spoken of, an image of a picture of it instantly comes before the
+mind's eye; not of a particular spade or apple, but of a type
+representing the object which exists in the mind ready for use on all
+occasions. With the question of the origin of this type, this spade or
+apple of the mind, we need not concern ourselves here. If the object
+thought or spoken of be an animal--a horse let us say, the image seen
+in the mind will in most cases be as in the foregoing case a type
+existing in the mind and not of an individual. But if a person is
+keenly interested in horses generally, and is a rider and has owned
+and loved many horses, the image of some particular one which he has
+known or has looked at with appreciative eyes will come to mind; and
+he will also be able to call up the images of dozens or of scores of
+horses he has known or seen in the same way. If on the other hand we
+think of a rat, we see not any individual but a type, because we have
+no interest in or no special feeling with regard to such a creature,
+and all the successive images we receive of it become merged in
+one--the type which already existed in the mind and was probably
+formed very early in life. With the dog for subject the case is
+different: dogs are more with us--we know them intimately and have
+perhaps regarded many individuals with affection; hence the image that
+rises in the mind is as a rule of some dog we have known.
+
+The important point to be noted is, that while each and everything we
+see registers an impression in the brain, and may be recalled several
+minutes, or hours, or even days afterwards, the only permanent
+impressions are of the sights which we have viewed emotionally. We may
+remember that we have seen a thousand things in which at some later
+period an interest has been born in the mind, when it would be greatly
+to our pleasure and even profit to recover their images, and we strive
+and ransack our brains to do so, but all in vain: they have been lost
+for ever because we happened not to be interested in the originals,
+but viewed them with indifference, or unemotionally.
+
+With regard to birds, I see them mentally in two ways: each species
+which I have known and observed in its wild state has its type in the
+mind--an image which I invariably see when I think of the species;
+and, in addition, one or two or several, in some cases as many as
+fifty, images of the same species of bird as it appeared at some
+exceptionally favourable moment and was viewed with peculiar interest
+and pleasure.
+
+Of hundreds of such enduring images of our commonest species I will
+here describe one before concluding with this part of the subject.
+
+The long-tailed or bottle-tit is one of the most delicately pretty of
+our small woodland birds, and among my treasures, in my invisible and
+intangible album, there were several pictures of him which I had
+thought unsurpassable, until on a day two years ago when a new and
+better one was garnered. I was walking a few miles from Bath by the
+Avon where it is not more than thirty or forty yards wide, on a cold,
+windy, very bright day in February. The opposite bank was lined with
+bushes growing close to the water, the roots and lower trunks of many
+of them being submerged, as the river was very full; and behind this
+low growth the ground rose abruptly, forming a long green hill crowned
+with tall beeches. I stopped to admire one of the bushes across the
+stream, and I wish I could now say what its species was: it was low
+with widespread branches close to the surface of the water, and its
+leafless twigs were adorned with catkins resembling those of the black
+poplar, as long as a man's little finger, of a rich dark-red or maroon
+colour. A party of about a dozen long-tailed tits were travelling, or
+drifting, in their usual desultory way, through the line of bushes
+towards this point, and in due time they arrived, one by one, at the
+bush I was watching, and finding it sheltered from the wind they
+elected to remain at that spot. For a space of fifteen minutes I
+looked on with delight, rejoicing at the rare chance which had brought
+that exquisite bird- and plant-scene before me. The long deep-red
+pendent catkins and the little pale birdlings among them in their grey
+and rose-coloured plumage, with long graceful tails and minute round,
+parroty heads; some quietly perched just above the water, others
+moving about here and there, occasionally suspending themselves back
+downwards from the slender terminal twigs--the whole mirrored below.
+That magical effect of water and sunlight gave to the scene a somewhat
+fairy-like, an almost illusory, character.
+
+Such scenes live in their loveliness only for him who has seen and
+harvested them: they cannot be pictured forth to another by words, nor
+with the painter's brush, though it be charged with _tintas
+orientales_; least of all by photography, which brings all things down
+to one flat, monotonous, colourless shadow of things, weary to look
+at.
+
+From sights we pass to the consideration of sounds, and it is
+unfortunate that the two subjects have to be treated consecutively
+instead of together, since with birds they are more intimately joined
+than in any other order of beings; and in images of bird life at its
+best they sometimes cannot be dissociated;--the aerial form of the
+creature, its harmonious, delicate tints, and its grace of motion; and
+the voice, which, loud or low, is aerial too, in harmony with the
+form.
+
+We know that as with sights so it is with sounds: those to which we
+listen attentively, appreciatively, or in any way emotionally, live in
+the mind, to be recalled and reheard at will. There is no doubt that
+in a large majority of persons this retentive power is far less strong
+with regard to sounds than sights, but we are all supposed to have it
+in some degree. So far, I have met with but one person, a lady, who is
+without it: sounds, in her case, do not register an impression in the
+brain, so that with regard to this sense she is in the condition of
+civilised man generally with regard to smells. I say of civilised man,
+being convinced that this power has become obsolete in us, although it
+appears to exist in savages and in the lower animals. The most common
+sounds, natural or artificial, the most familiar bird-notes, the
+lowing of a cow, the voices of her nearest and dearest friends, and
+simplest melodies sung or played, cannot be reproduced in her brain:
+she remembers them as agreeable sounds, just as we all remember that
+certain flowers and herbs have agreeable odours; but she does not
+_hear_ them. Probably there are not many persons in the same case; but
+in such matters it is hard to know what the real condition of
+another's mind may be. Our acquaintances refuse to analyse or turn
+themselves inside out merely to gratify a curiosity which they may
+think idle. In some cases they perhaps have a kind of superstition
+about such things: the secret processes of _their_ mind are their
+secret, or "business," and, like the secret and _real_ name of a
+person among some savage tribes, not to be revealed but at the risk of
+giving to another a mysterious power over their lives and fortunes.
+Even worse than the reticent, the superstitious, and the simply
+unintelligent, is the highly imaginative person who is only too ready
+to answer all inquiries, who catches at what you say in explanation,
+divines what you want, and instantly (and unconsciously) invents
+something to tell you.
+
+But we may, I think, take it for granted that the faculty of retaining
+sounds is as universal as that of retaining sights, although, speaking
+generally, the impressions of sounds are less perfect and lasting than
+those which relate to the higher, more intellectual sense of vision;
+also that this power varies greatly in different persons. Furthermore,
+we see in the case of musical composers, and probably of most
+musicians who are devoted to their art, that this faculty is capable
+of being trained and developed to an extraordinary degree of
+efficiency. The composer sitting pen in hand to write his score in his
+silent room hears the voices and the various instruments, the solos
+and orchestral sounds, which are in his thoughts. It is true that he
+is a creator, and listens mentally to compositions that have never
+been previously heard; but he cannot imagine, or cannot _hear_
+mentally, any note or combination of notes which he has never heard
+with his physical sense. In creating he selects from the infinite
+variety of sounds whose images exist in his mind, and, rearranging
+them, produces new effects.
+
+The difference in the brains, with regard to their sound-storing
+power, of the accomplished musician and the ordinary person who does
+not know one tune from another and has but fleeting impressions of
+sounds in general, is no doubt enormous; probably it is as great as
+that which exists in the logical faculty between a professor of that
+science in one of the Universities and a native of the Andaman Islands
+or of Tierra del Fuego. It is, we see, a question of training: any
+person with a normal brain who is accustomed to listen appreciatively
+to certain sounds, natural or artificial, must store his mind with the
+images of such sounds. And the open-air naturalist, who is keenly
+interested in the language of birds, and has listened with delight to
+a great variety of species, should be as rich in such impressions as
+the musician is with regard to musical sounds. Unconsciously he has
+all his life been training the faculty.
+
+With regard to the durability of the images, it may be thought by some
+that, speaking of birds, only those which are revived and restored, so
+to speak, from time to time by fresh sense-impressions remain
+permanently distinct. That would naturally be the first conclusion
+most persons would arrive at, considering that the sound-images which
+exist in their minds are of the species found in their own country,
+which they are able to hear occasionally, even if at very long
+intervals in some cases. My own experience proves that it is not so;
+that a man may cut himself off from the bird life he knows, to make
+his home in another region of the globe thousands of miles away, and
+after a period exceeding a quarter of a century, during which he has
+become intimate with a wholly different bird life, to find that the
+old sound-images, which have never been refreshed with new
+sense-impressions, are as distinct as they ever were, and seem indeed
+imperishable.
+
+I confess that, when I think of it, I am astonished myself at such an
+experience, and to some it must seem almost incredible. It will be
+said, perhaps, that in the infinite variety of bird-sounds heard
+anywhere there must be innumerable notes which closely resemble, or
+are similar to, those of other species in other lands, and, although
+heard in a different order, the old images of cries and calls and
+songs are thus indirectly refreshed and kept alive. I do not think
+that has been any real help to me. Thus, I think of some species which
+has not been thought of for years, and its language comes back at call
+to my mind. I listen mentally to its various notes, and there is not
+one in the least like the notes of any British species. These images
+have therefore never received refreshment. Again, where there is a
+resemblance, as in the trisyllabic cry of the common sandpiper and
+another species, I listen mentally to one, then to the other, heard so
+long ago, and hear both distinctly, and comparing the two, find a
+considerable difference, one being a thinner, shriller, and less
+musical sound than the other. Still again, in the case of the
+blackbird, which has a considerable variety in its language, there is
+one little chirp familiar to every one--a small round drop of sound of
+a musical, bell-like character. Now it happens that one of the true
+thrushes of South America, a bird resembling our song-thrush, has an
+almost identical bell-like chirp, and so far as that small drop of
+sound is concerned the old image may be refreshed by new
+sense-impressions. Or I might even say that the original image has
+been covered by the later one, as in the case of the laughter-like
+cries of the Dominican and the black-backed gulls. But with regard to
+the thrushes, excepting that small drop of sound, the language of the
+two species is utterly different. Each has a melody perfect of its
+kind: the song of the foreign bird is not fluty nor mellow nor placid
+like that of the blackbird, but has in a high degree that quality of
+plaintiveness and gladness commingled which we admire in some fresh
+and very beautiful human voices, like that described in Lowell's lines
+"To Perdita Singing":--
+
+   It hath caught a touch of sadness,
+       Yet it is not sad;
+   It hath tones of clearest gladness,
+       Yet it is not glad.
+
+Again, that foreign song is composed of many notes, and is poured out
+in a stream, as a skylark sings; and it is also singular on account of
+the contrast between these notes which suggest human feeling and a
+purely metallic, bell-like sound, which, coming in at intervals, has
+the effect of the triangle in a band of wind instruments. The image of
+this beautiful song is as distinct in my mind as that of the blackbird
+which I heard every day last summer from every green place.
+
+Doubtless there are some and perhaps a good many ornithologists among
+us who have been abroad to observe the bird life of distant countries,
+and who when at home find that the sound-impressions they have
+received are not persistent, or, if not wholly lost, that they grow
+faint and indistinct, and become increasingly difficult to recall.
+They can no longer _listen_ to those over-sea notes and songs as they
+can, mentally, to the cuckoo's call in spring, the wood-owl's hoot, to
+the song of the skylark and of the tree-pipit, the reeling of the
+night-jar and the startling scream of the woodland jay, the deep
+human-like tones of the raven, the inflected wild cry of the curlew,
+and the beautiful wild whistle of the widgeon, heard in the silence of
+the night on some lonely mere.
+
+The reason is that these, and numberless more, are the sounds of the
+bird life of their own home and country; the living voices to which
+they listened when they were young and the senses keener than now, and
+their enthusiasm greater; they were in fact heard with an emotion
+which the foreign species never inspired in them, and thus heard, the
+images of the sounds were made imperishable.
+
+In my case the foreign were the home birds, and on that account alone
+more to me than all others; yet I escaped that prejudice which the
+British naturalist is never wholly without--the notion that the home
+bird is, intrinsically, better worth listening to than the bird
+abroad. Finally, on coming to this country, I could not listen to the
+birds coldly, as an English naturalist would to those of, let us say,
+Queensland, or Burma, or Canada, or Patagonia, but with an intense
+interest; for these were the birds which my forbears had known and
+listened to all their lives long; and my imagination was fired by all
+that had been said of their charm, not indeed by frigid
+ornithologists, but by a long succession of great poets, from Chaucer
+down to those of our own time. Hearing them thus emotionally their
+notes became permanently impressed on my mind, and I found myself the
+happy possessor of a large number of sound-images representing the
+bird language of two widely separated regions.
+
+To return to the main point--the durability of the impressions both of
+sight and sound.
+
+In order to get a more satisfactory idea of the number and comparative
+strength or vividness of the images of twenty-six years ago remaining
+to me after so long a time than I could by merely thinking about the
+subject, I drew up a list of the species of birds observed by me in
+the two adjoining districts of La Plata and Patagonia. Against the
+name of each species the surviving sight- and sound-impressions were
+set down; but on going over this first list and analysis, fresh
+details came to mind, and some images which had become dimmed all at
+once grew bright again, and to bring these in, the work had to be
+redone; then it was put away and the subject left for a few days to
+the "subliminal consciousness," after which I took it up once more and
+rewrote it all--list and analysis; and I think it now gives a fairly
+accurate account of the state of these old impressions as they exist
+in memory.
+
+This has not been done solely for my own gratification. I confess to a
+very strong feeling of curiosity as to the mental experience on this
+point of other field naturalists; and as these, or some of them, may
+have the same wish to look into their neighbours' minds that I have,
+it may be that the example given here will be followed.
+
+My list comprises 226 species--a large number to remember when we
+consider that it exceeds by about 16 or 18 the number of British
+species; that is to say, those which may truly be described as
+belonging to these islands, without including the waifs and strays and
+rare visitants which by a fiction are described as British birds. Of
+the 226, the sight-impressions of 10 have become indistinct, and one
+has been completely forgotten. The sight of a specimen might perhaps
+revive an image of this lost one as it was seen, a living wild bird;
+but I do not know. This leaves 215, every one of which I can mentally
+see as distinctly as I see in my mind the common species I am
+accustomed to look at every day in England--thrush, starling, robin,
+etc.
+
+A different story has to be told with regard to the language. To begin
+with, there are no fewer than 34 species of which no sound-impressions
+were received. These include the habitually silent kinds--the stork,
+which rattles its beak but makes no vocal sound, the painted snipe,
+the wood ibis, and a few more; species which were rarely seen and
+emitted no sound--condor, Muscovy duck, harpy eagle, and others;
+species which were known only as winter visitants, or seen on
+migration, and which at such seasons were invariably silent.
+
+Thus, those which were heard number 192. Of these the language of 7
+species has been completely forgotten, and of 31 the sound-impressions
+have now become indistinct in varying degrees. Deducting those whose
+notes have become silent and are not clearly heard in the mind, there
+remain 154 species which are distinctly remembered. That is to say,
+when I think of them and their language, the cries, calls, songs, and
+other sounds are reproduced in the mind.
+
+Studying the list, in which the species are ranged in order according
+to their affinities, it is easy to see why the language of some,
+although not many, has been lost or has become more or less
+indistinct. In some cases it is because there was nothing distinctive
+or in any way attractive in the notes; in other cases because the
+images have been covered and obliterated by others--the stronger
+images of closely-allied species. In the two American families of
+tyrant-birds and woodhewers, neither of which are songsters, there is
+in some of the closely-related species a remarkable family resemblance
+in their voices. Listening to their various cries and calls, the
+trained ear of the ornithologist can easily distinguish them and
+identify the species; but after years the image of the more powerful
+or the better voices of, say, two or three species in a group of four
+or five absorb and overcome the others. I cannot find a similar case
+among British species to illustrate this point, unless it be that of
+the meadow- and rock-pipit. Strongly as the mind is impressed by the
+measured tinkling notes of these two songs, emitted as the birds
+descend to earth, it is not probable that any person who had not heard
+them for a number of years would be able to distinguish or keep them
+separate in his mind--to hear them in their images as two distinct
+songs.
+
+In the case of the good singers in that distant region, I find the
+voices continue remarkably distinct, and as an example will give the
+two melodious families of the finches and the troupials (Icteridae),
+the last an American family, related to the finches, but starling-like
+in appearance, many of them brilliantly coloured. Of the first I am
+acquainted with 12 and of the second with 14 species.
+
+Here then are 26 highly vocal species, of which the songs, calls,
+chirps, and various other notes, are distinctly remembered in 23. Of
+the other three one was silent--a small rare migratory finch
+resembling the bearded-tit in its reed-loving habits, its long tail
+and slender shape, and partly too in its colouring. I listened in vain
+for this bird's singing notes. Of the remaining two one is a finch,
+the other a troupial; the first a pretty bird, in appearance a small
+hawfinch with its whole plumage a lovely glaucous blue; a poor singer
+with a low rambling song: the second a bird of the size of a starling,
+coloured like a golden oriole, but more brilliant; and this one has a
+short impetuous song composed of mixed guttural and clear notes.
+
+Why is this rather peculiar song, of a species which on account of its
+colouring and pleasing social habits strongly impresses the mind, less
+distinct in memory than the songs of other troupials? I believe it is
+because it is a rare thing to hear a single song. They perch in a tree
+in company, like birds of paradise, and no sooner does one open his
+beak than all burst out together, and their singing strikes on the
+sense in a rising and falling tempest of confused sound. But it may be
+added that though these two songs are marked "indistinct" in the list,
+they are not very indistinct, and become less so when I listen
+mentally with closed eyes.
+
+In conclusion, it is worthy of remark that the good voices, as to
+quality, and the powerful ones, are not more enduring in their images
+than those which were listened to appreciatively for other reasons.
+Voices which have the quality of ventriloquism, or are in any way
+mysterious, or are suggestive of human tones, are extremely
+persistent; and such voices are found in owls, pigeons, snipe, rails,
+grebes, night-jars, tinamous, rheas, and in some passerine birds.
+Again, the swallows are not remarkable as singers compared with
+thrushes, finches, and other melodists; but on account of their
+intrinsic charm and beauty, their interesting habits, and the
+sentiment they inspire, we listen to them emotionally; and I
+accordingly find that the language of the five species of swallows I
+was formerly accustomed to see and hear continues as distinct in my
+mind as that of the chimney swallow, which I listen to every summer in
+England.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had meant in this chapter to give three or four or half a dozen
+instances of birds seen at their best, instead of the one I have
+given--that of the long-tailed tit; and as many more images in which a
+rare, unforgettable effect was produced by melody. For as with sights
+so it is with sounds: for these too there are "special moments," which
+have "special grace." But this chapter is already longer than it was
+ever meant to be, and something on another subject yet remains to be
+said.
+
+The question is sometimes asked, What is the charm which you find, or
+say you find, in nature? Is it real, or do these words so often
+repeated have a merely conventional meaning, like so many other words
+and phrases which men use with regard to other things? Birds, for
+instance: apart from the interest which the ornithologists must take
+in his subject, what substantial happiness can be got out of these shy
+creatures, mostly small and not too well seen, that fly from us when
+approached, and utter sounds which at their best are so poor, so thin,
+so trivial, compared with our soul-stirring human music?
+
+That, briefly, is the indoor view of the subject--the view of those
+who, to begin with, were perhaps town-born and town-bred; who have
+existed amid conditions, occupied with work and pleasures, the reflex
+effect of which, taken altogether and in the long-run, is to dim and
+even deaden some of the brain's many faculties, and chiefly this best
+faculty of preserving impressions of nature for long years or to the
+end of life in all their original freshness.
+
+Some five or six years ago I heard a speech about birds delivered by
+Sir Edward Grey, in which he said that the love and appreciation and
+study of birds was something fresher and brighter than the second-hand
+interests and conventional amusements in which so many in this day try
+to live; that the pleasure of seeing and listening to them was purer
+and more lasting than any pleasures of excitement, and, in the
+long-run, "happier than personal success." That was a saying to stick
+in the mind, and it is probable that some who listened failed to
+understand. Let us imagine that in addition to this miraculous faculty
+of the brain of storing innumerable brilliant images of things seen
+and heard, to be reproduced at call to the inner sense, there existed
+in a few gifted persons a correlated faculty by means of which these
+treasured images could be thrown at will into the mind of another; let
+us further imagine that some one in the audience who had wondered at
+that saying, finding it both dark and hard, had asked me to explain
+it; and that in response I had shown him, as by a swift succession of
+lightning flashes a score or a hundred images of birds at their
+best--the unimaginable loveliness, the sunlit colour, the grace of
+form and of motion, and the melody--how great the effect of even that
+brief glance into a new unknown world would have been! And if I had
+then said: All that you have seen--the pictures in one small room in a
+house of many rooms--is not after all the main thing; _that_ it would
+be idle to speak of, since you cannot know what you do not feel,
+though it should be told you many times; this only can be told--the
+enduring images are but an incidental result of a feeling which
+existed already; they were never looked for, and are a free gift from
+nature to her worshipper;--if I had said this to him, the words of the
+speech which has seemed almost sheer insanity a little while before
+would have acquired a meaning and an appearance of truth.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It has curiously happened that while writing these concluding
+sentences some old long-forgotten lines which I read in my youth came
+suddenly into my mind, as if some person sitting invisible at my side
+and thinking them apposite to the subject had whispered them into my
+ear. They are lines addressed to the Merrimac River by an American
+poet--whether a major or minor I do not know, having forgotten his
+name. In one stanza he mentions the fact that "young Brissot" looked
+upon this stream in its bright flow--
+
+   And bore its image o'er the deep
+       To soothe a martyr's sadness,
+   And fresco in his troubled sleep
+       His prison walls with gladness.
+
+Brissot is not generally looked upon as a "martyr" on this side of the
+Atlantic, nor was he allowed to enjoy his "troubled sleep" too long
+after his fellow-citizens (especially the great and sea-green
+Incorruptible) had begun in their fraternal fashion to thirst for his
+blood; but we can easily believe that during those dark days in the
+Bastille the image and vision of the beautiful river thousands of
+miles away was more to him than all his varied stores of knowledge,
+all his schemes for the benefit of suffering humanity, and perhaps
+even a better consolation than his philosophy.
+
+It is indeed this "gladness" of old sunshine stored within us--if we
+have had the habit of seeing beauty everywhere and of viewing all
+beautiful things with appreciation--this incalculable wealth of images
+of vanished scenes, which is one of our best and dearest possessions,
+and a joy for ever.
+
+"What asketh man to have?" cried Chaucer, and goes on to say in
+bitterest words that "now with his love" he must soon lie in "the
+colde grave--alone, withouten any companie."
+
+What he asketh to have, I suppose, is a blue diamond--some
+unattainable good; and in the meantime, just to go on with, certain
+pleasant things which perish in the using.
+
+These same pleasant things are not to be despised, but they leave
+nothing for the mind in hungry days to feed upon, and can be of no
+comfort to one who is shut up within himself by age and bodily
+infirmities and the decay of the senses; on the contrary, the
+recollection of them at such times, as has been said, can but serve to
+make a present misery more poignantly felt.
+
+It was the nobly expressed consolation of an American poet, now dead,
+when standing in the summer sunshine amid a fine prospect of woods and
+hills, to think, when he remembered the darkness of decay and the
+grave, that he had beheld in nature, though but for a moment,
+
+   The brightness of the skirts of God.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+BIRDS AND MAN
+
+
+To most of our wild birds man must appear as a being eccentric and
+contradictory in his actions. By turns he is hostile, indifferent,
+friendly towards them, so that they never quite know what to expect.
+Take the case of a blackbird who has gradually acquired trustful
+habits, and builds its nest in the garden or shrubbery in sight of the
+friends that have fed it in frosty weather; so little does it fear
+that it allows them to come a dozen times a day, put the branches
+aside and look upon it, and even stroke its back as it sits on its
+eggs. By and by a neighbour's egg-hunting boy creeps in, discovers the
+nest, and pulls it down. The bird finds itself betrayed by its
+confidence; had it suspected the boy's evil intentions it would have
+made an outcry at his approach, as at the appearance of a cat, and the
+nest would perhaps have been saved. The result of such an accident
+would probably be the unsettling of an acquired habit, the return to
+the usual suspicious attitude.
+
+Birds are able sometimes to discriminate between protectors and
+persecutors, but seldom very well I should imagine; they do not view
+the face only, but the whole form, and our frequent change of dress
+must make it difficult for them to distinguish the individuals they
+know and trust from strangers. Even a dog is occasionally at fault
+when his master, last seen in black and grey suit, reappears in straw
+hat and flannels.
+
+Nevertheless, if birds once come to know those who habitually protect
+them and form a trustful habit, this will not be abandoned on account
+of a little rough treatment on occasions. A lady at Worthing told me
+of her blackbirds breeding in her garden that they refused to be kept
+from the strawberries when she netted the ripening fruit. One or more
+of the birds would always manage to get under the net; and when she
+would capture the robber and carry him, screaming, struggling and
+pecking at her fingers, to the end of the garden and release him, he
+would immediately follow her back to the bed and set himself to get at
+the fruit again.
+
+In a bird's relations with other mammals there is no room for doubt or
+confusion; each consistently acts after its kind; once hostile, always
+hostile; and if once seen to be harmless, then to be trusted for ever.
+The fox must always be feared and detested; his disposition, like his
+sharp nose and red coat, is unchangeable; so, too, with the cat,
+stoat, weasel, etc. On the other hand, in the presence of herbivorous
+mammals, birds show no sign of suspicion; they know that all these
+various creatures are absolutely harmless, from the big
+formidable-looking bull and roaring stag, to the mild-eyed, timorous
+hare and rabbit. It is common to see wagtails and other species
+attending cattle in the pastures, and keeping close to their noses, on
+the look-out for the small insects driven from hiding in the grass.
+Daws and starlings search the backs of cattle and sheep for ticks and
+other parasites, and it is plain that their visits are welcome. Here a
+joint interest unites bird and beast; it is the nearest approach to
+symbiosis among the higher vertebrates of this country, but is far
+less advanced than the partnership which exists between the rhinoceros
+bird and the rhinoceros or buffalo, and between the spur-winged plover
+and crocodile in Africa.
+
+One day I was walking by a meadow, adjoining the Bishop's palace at
+Wells, where several cows were grazing, and noticed a little beyond
+them a number of rooks and starlings scattered about. Presently a
+flock of about forty of the cathedral jackdaws flew over me and
+slanted down to join the other birds, when all at once two daws
+dropped out of the flock on to the back of the cow standing nearest to
+me. Immediately five more daws followed, and the crowd of seven birds
+began eagerly pecking at the animal's hide. But there was not room
+enough for them to move freely; they pushed and struggled for a
+footing, throwing their wings out to keep their balance, looking like
+a number of hungry vultures fighting for places on a carcase; and soon
+two of the seven were thrown off and flew away. The remaining five,
+although much straitened for room, continued for some time scrambling
+over the cow's back, busy with their beaks and apparently very much
+excited over the treasure they had discovered. It was amusing to see
+how the cow took their visit; sinking her body as if about to lie down
+and broadening her back, and dropping her head until her nose touched
+the ground, she stood perfectly motionless, her tail stuck out behind
+like a pump-handle. At length the daws finished their feeding and
+quarrelling and flew away; but for some minutes the cow remained
+immovable in the same attitude, as if the rare and delightful
+sensation of so many beaks prodding and so many sharp claws scratching
+her hide had not yet worn off.
+
+Deer, too, like cows, are very grateful to the daw for its services.
+In Savernake Forest I once witnessed a very pretty little scene. I
+noticed a hind lying down by herself in a grassy hollow, and as I
+passed her at a distance of about fifty yards it struck me as singular
+that she kept her head so low down that I could only see the top of it
+on a level with her back. Walking round to get a better sight, I saw a
+jackdaw standing on the turf before her, very busily pecking at her
+face. With my glass I was able to watch his movements very closely; he
+pecked round her eyes, then her nostrils, her throat, and in fact
+every part of her face; and just as a man when being shaved turns his
+face this way and that under the gentle guiding touch of the barber's
+fingers, and lifts up his chin to allow the razor to pass beneath it,
+so did the hind raise and lower and turn her face about to enable the
+bird to examine and reach every part with his bill. Finally the daw
+left the face, and, moving round, jumped on to the deer's shoulders
+and began a minute search in that part; having finished this he jumped
+on to the head and pecked at the forehead and round the bases of the
+ears. The pecking done, he remained for some seconds sitting perfectly
+still, looking very pretty with the graceful red head for a stand, the
+hind's long ears thrust out on either side of him. From his living
+perch he sprang into the air and flew away, going close to the
+surface; then slowly the deer raised her head and gazed after her
+black friend--gratefully, and regretting his departure, I could not
+but think.
+
+Some birds when breeding exhibit great anxiety at the approach of any
+animal to the nest; but even when most excited they behave very
+differently towards herbivorous mammals and those which they know to
+be at all times the enemies of their kind. The nest of a
+ground-breeding species may be endangered by the proximity of a goat,
+sheep, deer, or any grazing animal, but the birds do not winnow the
+air above it, scream, make threatening dashes at its head, and try to
+lead it away as they would do in the case of a dog or fox. When small
+birds dash at and violently attack large animals and man in defence of
+their nest, even though the nest may not have been touched, the action
+appears to be purely instinctive and involuntary, almost unconscious,
+in fact. Acts of this kind are more often seen in humming-birds than
+in birds of other families; and humming-birds do not appear to
+discriminate between rapacious and herbivorous mammals. When they see
+a large animal moving about they fly close to and examine it for a few
+moments, then dart away; if it comes too near the nest they will
+attack it, or threaten an attack. When examining their nests I have
+had humming-birds dash into my face. The action is similar to that of
+a stingless, solitary carpenter bee, common in La Plata: a round burly
+insect with a shining steel-blue body: when the tree or bush in which
+this bee has its nest is approached by a man it darts about in an
+eccentric manner, humming loudly, and at intervals remains suspended
+motionless for ten or fifteen seconds at a height of seven or eight
+yards above his head; suddenly it dashes quick as lightning into his
+face, inflicting a sharp blow. The bee falls, as if stunned, a space
+of a couple of feet, then rises again to repeat the action.
+
+There is certainly a wide difference between so simple an instinctive
+action as this, which cannot be regarded as intelligent or conscious,
+and the actions of most birds in the presence of danger to their eggs
+or young. In species that breed on the ground in open situations the
+dangers to which bird and nest are exposed are of different kinds,
+and, leaving out the case of that anomalous creature, man, we see that
+as a rule the bird's judgment is not at fault. In one case it is
+necessary that he should guard himself while trying to save his nest;
+in another case the danger is to the nest only, and he then shows that
+he has no fear for himself. The most striking instance I have met
+with, bearing on this last point, relates to the action of a
+spur-winged lapwing observed on the Pampas. The bird's loud excited
+cries attracted my attention; a sheep was lying down with its nose
+directly over the nest, containing three eggs, and the plover was
+trying to make it get up and go away. It was a hot day and the sheep
+refused to stir; possibly the fanning of the bird's wings was grateful
+to her. After beating the sheep's face for some time it began pecking
+sharply at the nose; then the sheep raised her head, but soon grew
+tired of holding it up, and no sooner was it lowered than the blows
+and peckings began again. Again the head was raised, and lowered again
+with the same result, and this continued for about twelve or fourteen
+minutes, until the annoyance became intolerable; then the sheep raised
+her head and refused to lower it any more, and in that very
+uncomfortable position, with her nose high in the air, she appeared
+determined to stay. In vain the lapwing waited, and at last began to
+make little jumps at the face. The nose was out of reach, but by and
+by, in one of its jumps, it caught the sheep's ear in its beak and
+remained hanging with drooping wings and dangling legs. The sheep
+shook her head several times and at last shook the bird off; but no
+sooner was it down than it jumped up and caught the ear again; then at
+last the sheep, fairly beaten, struggled up to her feet, throwing the
+bird off, and lazily walked away, shaking her head repeatedly.
+
+How great the confidence of the plover must have been to allow it to
+act in such a manner!
+
+This perfect confidence which birds have in the mammals they have been
+taught by experience and tradition to regard as harmless must be
+familiar to any one who has observed partridges associating with
+rabbits. The manners of the rabbit, one would imagine, must be
+exceedingly "upsetting" to birds of so timorous a disposition. He has
+a way, after a quiet interval, of leaping into activity with startling
+suddenness, darting violently away as if scared out of his senses; but
+his eccentric movements do not in the least alarm his feathered
+companions. One evening early in the month of March I witnessed an
+amusing scene near Ockley, in Surrey. I was walking towards the
+village about half an hour after sunset, when, hearing the loud call
+of a partridge, I turned my eyes in the direction of the sound and saw
+five birds on a slight eminence nearly in the centre of a small green
+field, surrounded by a low thorn hedge. They had come to that spot to
+roost; the calling bird was standing erect, and for some time he
+continued to call at intervals after the others had settled down at a
+distance of one or two yards apart. All at once, while I stood
+watching the birds there was a rustling sound in the hedge, and out of
+it burst two buck rabbits engaged in a frantic running fight. For some
+time they kept near the hedge, but fighting rabbits seldom continue
+long on one spot; they are incessantly on the move, although their
+movements are chiefly round and round now one way--flight and
+pursuit--then, like lightning, the foremost rabbit doubles back and
+there is a collision, bitings, and rolling over and over together, and
+in an instant they are up again, wide apart, racing like mad.
+Gradually they went farther and farther from the hedge; and at length
+chance took them to the very spot on which the partridges had settled,
+and there for three or four minutes the duel went on. But the birds
+refused to be turned out of their quarters. The bird that had called
+still remained standing, expectant, with raised head, as if watching
+for the appearance of some loiterer, while the others all kept their
+places. Their quietude in the midst of that whirlwind of battle was
+wonderful to see. Their only movement was when one of the birds was in
+a direct line with a flying rabbit, when, if it stayed still, in
+another moment it would be struck and perhaps killed by the shock;
+then it would leap a few inches aside and immediately settle down
+again. In this way every one of the birds had been forced to move
+several times before the battle passed on towards the opposite side of
+the field and left the covey in peace.
+
+Social animals, Herbert Spencer truly says, "take pleasure in the
+consciousness of one another's company;" but he appears to limit the
+feeling to those of the same herd, or flock, or species. Speaking of
+the mental processes of the cow, he tells us just how that large
+mammal is impressed by the sight of birds that come near it and pass
+across its field of vision; they are regarded in a vague way as mere
+shadows, or shadowy objects, flitting or blown about hither and
+thither over the grass or through the air. He didn't know a cow's
+mind. My conviction is that all animals distinctly see in those of
+other species, living, sentient, intelligent beings like themselves;
+and that, when birds and mammals meet together, they take pleasure in
+the consciousness of one another's presence, in spite of the enormous
+difference in size, voice, habits, etc. I believe that this sympathy
+exists and is just as strong between a cow and its small volatile
+companion, the wagtail, as between a bird and mammal that more nearly
+resemble each other in size; for instance, the partridge, or pheasant,
+and rabbit.
+
+The only bird with us that appears to have some such feeling of
+pleasure in the company of man is the robin. It is not universal, not
+even very common, and Macgillivray, in speaking of the confidence in
+men of that bird during severe weather, very truly says, "In ordinary
+times he is not perfectly disposed to trust in man." Any person can
+prove this for himself by going into a garden or shrubbery and
+approaching a robin. We see, too, that the bird shows intense anxiety
+when its nest is approached by a man; this point, however, need not be
+made much of, since all visitors, even its best friends, are unwelcome
+to the breeding bird. Still, there is no doubt that the robin is less
+distrustful of man than other species, but not surely because this
+bird is regarded by most persons with kindly feelings. The curious
+point is that the young birds find something in man to attract them.
+This is usually seen at the end of summer, when the old birds have
+gone into hiding, and it is then surprising to find how many of the
+young robins left in possession of the ground appear to take pleasure
+in the company of human beings. Often before a person has been many
+minutes in a garden strolling about, he will discover that the quiet
+little spotted bird is with him, hopping and flying from twig to twig
+and occasionally alighting on the ground, keeping company with him,
+sometimes sitting quite still a yard from his hand. The gardener is
+usually attended by a friendly robin, and when he turns up the soil
+the bird will come down close to his feet to pick up the small grubs
+and worms. Is it not probable that the tameness of the tame young
+robin so frequently met with is, like that of the robin who keeps
+company with the gardener or woodman, an acquired habit; that the
+young bird has made the discovery that when a person is moving about
+among the plants, picking fruit perhaps, lurking insects are disturbed
+at the roots and small spiders and caterpillars shaken from the
+leaves? We are to the robin what the cow is to the wagtail and the
+sheep to the starling--a food finder.
+
+Among the birds of the homestead the swallow is another somewhat
+exceptional species in his way of regarding man. He is too much a
+creature of the air to take any pleasure in the company of heavy
+animals, bound to earth; the distance is too great for sympathy to
+exist. When we consider how closely he is bound and how much he is to
+us, it is hard to believe that he is wholly unconscious of our
+benefits, that when he returns in spring, overflowing with gladness,
+to twitter his delightful airy music round the house, he is not
+singing to us, glad to see us again after a long absence, to be once
+more our welcome guest as in past years. But so it is. When there were
+no houses in the land he built his nest in some rocky cavern, where a
+she-wolf had her lair, and his life and music were just as joyous as
+they are now, and the wolf suckling her cubs on the stony floor
+beneath was nothing to him. But if by chance she climbed a little way
+up or put her nose too near his nest, his lively twittering quickly
+changed to shrill cries of alarm and anger. And we are no more than
+the vanished wolf to the swallow, and so long as we refrain from
+peeping into his nest and handling his eggs or young, he does not know
+us, and is hardly conscious of our existence. All the social feelings
+and sympathy of the swallow are for creatures as aerial and
+swift-winged as itself--its playmates in the wide fields of air.
+
+Swallows hawking after flies in a village street, where people are
+walking about, is a familiar sight, Swifts are just as confident. A
+short time ago, while standing in the churchyard at Farnham, in
+Surrey, watching a bunch of ten or twelve swifts racing through the
+air, I noticed that on each return to the church they followed the
+same line, doubling round the tower on the same side, then sweeping
+down close to the surface, and mounting again. Going to the spot I put
+myself directly in their way--on their race-course as it were, at that
+point where it touched the earth; but they did not on that account
+vary their route; each time they came back they streamed screaming
+past my head so near as almost to brush my face with their wings. But
+I was never more struck by the unconcern at the presence of man shown
+by these birds--swallows, martins, and swifts--as on one occasion at
+Frensham, when the birds were very numerous. This was in the month of
+May, about five weeks after I had witnessed the fight between two
+rabbits, and the wonderful composure exhibited by a covey of
+partridges through it all. It was on a close hot morning, after a
+night of rain, when, walking down to Frensham Great Pond, I saw the
+birds hawking about near the water. The may-flies were just out, and
+in some mysterious way the news had been swiftly carried all over the
+surrounding country. So great was the number of birds that the entire
+population of swallows, house- and sand-martins, and swifts, must have
+been gathered at that spot from the villages, farms, and sand-banks
+for several miles around. At the side of the pond I was approaching
+there is a green strip about a hundred and twenty or a hundred and
+thirty yards in length and forty or fifty yards wide, and over this
+ground from end to end the birds were smoothly and swiftly gliding
+backwards and forwards. The whole place seemed alive with them.
+Hurrying to the spot I met with a little adventure which it may not be
+inapt to relate. Walking on through some scattered furze-bushes,
+gazing intently ahead at the swallows, I almost knocked my foot
+against a hen pheasant covering her young chicks on the bare ground
+beside a dwarf bush. Catching sight of her just in time I started
+back; then, with my feet about a yard from the bird, I stood and
+regarded her for some time. Not the slightest movement did she make;
+she was like a bird carved out of some beautifully variegated and
+highly-polished stone, but her bright round eyes had a wonderfully
+alert and wild expression. With all her stillness the poor bird must
+have been in an agony of terror and suspense, and I wondered how long
+she would endure the tension. She stood it for about fifty seconds,
+then burst screaming away with such violence that her seven or eight
+chicks were flung in all directions to a distance of two or three feet
+like little balls of fluff; and going twenty yards away she dropped to
+the ground and began beating her wings, calling loudly.
+
+I then walked on, and in three or four minutes was on the green ground
+in the thick of the swallows. They were in hundreds, flying at various
+heights, but mostly low, so that I looked down on them, and they
+certainly formed a curious and beautiful spectacle. So thick were
+they, and so straight and rapid their flight, that they formed in
+appearance a current, or rather many currents, flowing side by side in
+opposite directions; and when viewed with nearly closed eyes the birds
+were like black lines on the green surface. They were silent except
+for the occasional weak note of the sand-martin; and through it all
+they were perfectly regardless of me, whether I stood still or walked
+about among them; only when I happened to be directly in the way of a
+bird coming towards me he would swerve aside just far enough to avoid
+touching me.
+
+In the evening of that very day the behaviour of a number of
+gold-crests, disturbed at my presence, surprised and puzzled me not a
+little; their action had a peculiar interest just then, as the
+encounter with the pheasant, and the sight of the multitude of
+swallows and their indifference towards me were still very fresh in
+memory. The incident has only an indirect bearing on the subject
+discussed here, but I think it is worth relating.
+
+About two miles from Frensham ponds there is a plantation of fir-trees
+with a good deal of gorse growing scattered about among the trees; in
+walking through this wood on previous occasions I had noticed that
+gold-crests were abundant in it. Soon after sunset on the evening in
+question I went through this wood, and after going about eighty to a
+hundred yards became conscious of a commotion of a novel kind in the
+branches above my head--conscious too that it had been going on for
+some time, and that absorbed in thought I had not remarked it. A
+considerable number of gold-crests were flitting through the branches
+and passing from tree to tree, keeping over and near me, all together
+uttering their most vehement cries of alarm. I stopped and listened to
+the little chorus of shrill squeaking sounds, and watched the birds as
+well as I could in the obscurity of the branches, flitting about in
+the greatest agitation. It was perfectly clear that I was the cause of
+the excitement, as the birds increased in number as long as I stood at
+that spot, until there could not have been less than forty or fifty,
+and when I again walked on they followed. One expects to be mobbed and
+screamed at by gulls, terns, lapwings, and some other species, when
+approaching their nesting-places, but a hostile demonstration of this
+kind from such minute creatures as gold-crests, usually indifferent to
+man, struck me as very unusual and somewhat ridiculous. What, I asked
+myself, could be the reason of their sudden alarm, when my previous
+visits to the wood had not excited them in the least? I could only
+suppose that I had, without knowing it, brushed against a nest, and
+the alarm note of the parent birds had excited the others and caused
+them to gather near me, and that in the obscure light they had
+mistaken me for some rapacious animal. The right explanation (I think
+it the right one) was found by chance three months later.
+
+In August I was in Ireland, staying at a country house among the
+Wicklow hills. There were several swallows' nests in the stable, one
+or two so low that they could be reached by the hand, and the birds
+went in and out regardless of the presence of any person. In a few
+days the young were out, sitting in rows on the roof of the house or
+on a low fence near it, where their parents fed them for a short time.
+After these young birds were able to take care of themselves they
+still kept about the house, and were joined by more swallows and
+martins from the neighbourhood. One bright sunny morning, when not
+fewer than two or three score of these birds were flying about the
+house, gaily twittering, I went into the garden to get some fruit. All
+at once a swallow uttered his loud shrill alarm cry overhead and at
+the same time darted down at me, almost grazing my hat, then mounting
+up he continued making swoops, screaming all the time. Immediately all
+the other swallows and martins came to the spot, joining in the cry,
+and continued flying about over my head, but not darting at me like
+the first bird. For some moments I was very much astonished at the
+attack; then I looked round for the cat--it must be the cat, I
+thought. This animal had a habit of hiding among the gooseberry
+bushes, and, when I stooped to pick the fruit, springing very suddenly
+upon my back. But pussy was nowhere near, and as the swallow continued
+to make dashes at me, I thought that there must be something to alarm
+it on my head, and at once pulled off my hat and began to examine it.
+In a moment the alarm cries ceased and the whole gathering of swallows
+dispersed in all directions. There was no doubt that my hat had caused
+the excitement; it was of tweed, of an obscure grey colour, striped or
+barred with dark brown. Throwing it down on the ground among the
+bushes it struck me that its colour and markings were like those of a
+grey striped cat. Any one seeing it lying there would, at the first
+moment, have mistaken it for a cat lying curled up asleep among the
+bushes. Then I remembered that I had been wearing the same delusive,
+dangerous-looking round tweed fishing-hat on the occasion of being
+mobbed by the gold-crests at Frensham. Of course the illusion could
+only have been produced in a bird looking down upon the top of the hat
+from above.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+DAWS IN THE WEST COUNTRY
+
+
+Daws are more abundant in the west and south-west of England generally
+than in any other part of the kingdom; and they abound most in
+Somerset, or so it has seemed to me. It is true that the largest
+congregations of daws in the entire country are to be seen at
+Savernake in Wiltshire, where the ancient hollow beeches and oaks in
+the central parts of the forest supply them with all the nesting holes
+they require. There is no such wood of old decaying trees in Somerset
+to attract them to one spot in such numbers, but the country generally
+is singularly favourable to them. It is mainly a pastoral country with
+large areas of rich, low grass land, and ranges of high hills, where
+there are many rocky precipices such as the daw loves. For very good
+reasons he prefers the inland to the sea-cliff as a breeding site. It
+is, to begin with, in the midst of his feeding ground, whereas the
+sea-wall is a boundary to a feeding ground beyond which the bird
+cannot go. Better still, the inland bird has an immense advantage over
+the other in travelling to and from his nest in bad weather.
+When the wind blows strong from the sea the seaside bird must
+perpetually fight against it and win his home by sheer muscular
+exertion. The other bird, able to go foraging to this side or that,
+according to the way the wind blows, can always have the wind as a
+help instead of a hindrance.
+
+Somerset also possesses a long coast-line and some miles of
+sea-cliffs, but the colonies of jackdaws found here are small compared
+with those of the Mendip range. The inland-cliff breeding daws that
+inhabit the valley of the Somerset Axe alone probably greatly
+outnumber all the daws in Middlesex, or Surrey, or Essex.
+
+Finally, besides the cliffs and woods, there are the old towns and
+villages--small towns and villages with churches that are almost like
+cathedrals. No county in England is richer in noble churches, and no
+kind of building seems more attractive to the "ecclesiastical daw"
+than the great Perpendicular tower of the Glastonbury type, which is
+so common here.
+
+Of the old towns which the bird loves and inhabits in numbers, Wells
+comes first. If Wells had no birds it would still be a city one could
+not but delight in. There are not more than half a dozen towns in all
+the country where (if I were compelled to live in towns) life would
+not seem something of a burden; and of these, two are in
+Somerset--Bath and Wells. Of the former something will be said further
+on: Wells has the first place in my affections, and is the one town in
+England the sight of which in April and early May, from a neighbouring
+hill, has caused me to sigh with pleasure. Its cathedral is assuredly
+the loveliest work of man in this land, supremely beautiful, even
+without the multitude of daws that make it their house, and may be
+seen every day in scores, looking like black doves perched on the
+stony heads and hands and shoulders of that great company of angels
+and saints, apostles, kings, queens, and bishops, that decorate the
+wonderful west front. For in this building--not viewed as in a
+photograph or picture, nor through the eye of the mere architect or
+archaeologist, who sees the gem but not the setting--nature and man
+appear to have worked together more harmoniously than in others.
+
+But it is hard to imagine a birdless Wells. The hills, beautiful with
+trees and grass and flowers, come down to it; cattle graze on their
+slopes; the peewit has its nest in their stony places, and the kestrel
+with quick-beating wings hangs motionless overhead. Nature is round
+it, breathing upon and touching it caressingly on every side; flowing
+through it like the waters that gave it its name in olden days, that
+still gush with noise and foam from the everlasting rock, to send
+their crystal currents along the streets. And with nature, in and
+around the rustic village-like city, live the birds. The green
+woodpecker laughs aloud from the group of old cedars and pines, hard
+by the cathedral close--you will not hear that woodland sound in any
+other city in the kingdom; and the rooks caw all day from the rookery
+in the old elms that grow at the side of the palace moat. But the
+cathedral daws, on account of their numbers, are the most important of
+the feathered inhabitants of Wells. These city birds are familiarly
+called "Bishop's Jacks," to distinguish them from the "Ebor Jacks,"
+the daws that in large numbers have their home and breeding-place in
+the neighbouring cliffs, called the Ebor Rocks.
+
+The Ebor daws are but the first of a succession of colonies extending
+along the side of the Cheddar valley. A curious belief exists among
+the people of Wells and the district, that the Ebor Jacks make better
+pets than the Bishop's Jacks. If you want a young bird you have to pay
+more for one from the rocks than from the cathedral. I was assured
+that the cliff bird makes a livelier, more intelligent and amusing pet
+than the other. A similar notion exists, or existed, at Hastings,
+where there was a saying among the fisher folks and other natives that
+"a Grainger daa is worth a ha'penny more than a castle daa." The
+Grainger rock, once a favourite breeding-place of the daws at that
+point, has long since fallen into the sea, and the saying has perhaps
+died out.
+
+At Wells most of the cathedral birds--a hundred couples at
+least--breed in the cavities behind the stone statues, standing, each
+in its niche, in rows, tier above tier, on the west front. In April,
+when the daws are busiest at their nest-building, I have amused myself
+early every morning watching them flying to the front in a constant
+procession, every bird bringing his stick. This work is all done in
+the early morning, and about half-past eight o'clock a man comes with
+a barrow to gather up the fallen sticks--there is always a big
+barrowful, heaped high, of them; and if not thus removed the
+accumulated material would in a few days form a rampart or zareba,
+which would prevent access to the cathedral on that side.
+
+It has often been observed that the daw, albeit so clever a bird,
+shows a curious deficiency of judgment when building, in his
+persistent efforts to carry in sticks too big for the cavity. Here,
+for instance, each morning in turning over the litter of fallen
+material I picked up sticks measuring from four or five to seven feet
+in length. These very long sticks were so slender and dry that the
+bird was able to lift and to fly with them; therefore, to his corvine
+mind, they were suitable for his purpose. It comes to this: the daw
+knows a stick when he sees one, but the only way of testing its
+usefulness to him is to pick it up in his beak, then to try to fly
+with it. If the stick is six feet long and the cavity will only admit
+one of not more than eighteen inches, he discovers his mistake only on
+getting home. The question arises: Does he continue all his life long
+repeating this egregious blunder? One can hardly believe that an old,
+experienced bird can go on from day to day and year to year wasting
+his energies in gathering and carrying building materials that will
+have to be thrown away in the end--that he is, in fact, mentally on a
+level with the great mass of meaner beings who forget nothing and
+learn nothing. It is not to be doubted that the daw was once a builder
+in trees, like all his relations, with the exception of the
+cliff-breeding chough. He is even capable of reverting to the original
+habit, as I know from an instance which has quite recently come to my
+knowledge. In this case a small colony of daws have been noticed for
+several years past breeding in stick nests placed among the clustering
+foliage of a group of Scotch firs. This colony may have sprung from a
+bird hatched and reared in the nest of a carrion crow or magpie.
+Still, the habit of breeding in holes must be very ancient, and
+considering that the jackdaw is one of the most intelligent of our
+birds, one cannot but be astonished at the rude, primitive, blundering
+way in which the nest-building work is generally performed. The most
+we can see by carefully watching a number of birds at work is that
+there appears to be some difference with regard to intelligence
+between bird and bird. Some individuals blunder less than others; it
+is possible that these have learned something from experience; but if
+that be so, their better way is theirs only, and their young will not
+inherit it.
+
+One morning at Wells as I stood on the cathedral green watching the
+birds at their work, I witnessed a rare and curious scene--one amazing
+to an ornithologist. A bird dropped a stick--an incident that occurred
+a dozen times or oftener any minute at that busy time; but in this
+instance the bird had no sooner let the stick fall than he rushed down
+after it to attempt its recovery, just as one may see a sparrow drop a
+feather or straw, and then dart down after it and often recover it
+before it touches the ground. The heavy stick fell straight and fast
+on to the pile of sticks already lying on the pavement, and instantly
+the daw was down and had it in his beak, and thereupon laboriously
+flew up to his nesting-place, which was forty to fifty feet high. At
+the moment that he rushed down after the falling stick two other daws
+that happened to be standing on ledges above dropped down after him,
+and copied his action by each picking up a stick and flying with it to
+their nests. Other daws followed suit, and in a few minutes there was
+a stream of descending and ascending daws at that spot, every
+ascending bird with a stick in his beak. It was curious to see that
+although sticks were lying in hundreds on the pavement along the
+entire breadth of the west front, the daws continued coming down only
+at that spot where the first bird had picked up the stick he had
+dropped. By and by, to my regret, the birds suddenly took alarm at
+something and rose up, and from that moment not one descended.
+
+Presently the man came round with his rake and broom and barrow to
+tidy up the place. Before beginning his work he solemnly made the
+following remark: "Is it not curious, sir, considering the distance
+the birds go to get their sticks, and the work of carrying them, that
+they never, by any chance, think to come down and pick up what they
+have dropped!" I replied that I had heard the same thing said before,
+and that it was in all the books; and then I told him of the scene I
+had just witnessed. He was very much surprised, and said that such a
+thing had never been witnessed before at that place. It had a
+disturbing effect on him, and he appeared to me to resent this
+departure from their old ancient conservative ways on the part of the
+cathedral birds.
+
+For many mornings after I continued to watch the daws until the
+nest-building was finished, without witnessing any fresh outbreak of
+intelligence in the colony: they had once more shaken down into the
+old inconvenient traditional groove, to the manifest relief of the man
+with the broom and barrow.
+
+Bath, like Wells, is a city that has a considerable amount of nature
+in its composition, and is set down in a country of hills, woods,
+rocks and streams, and is therefore, like the other, a city loved by
+daws and by many other wild birds. It is a town built of white stone
+in the hollow of an oblong basin, with the river Avon flowing through
+it; and though perhaps too large for perfect beauty, it is exceedingly
+pleasant. Its "stone walls do not a prison make," since they do not
+shut you out from rural sights and sounds: walking in almost any
+street, even in the lowest part, in the busiest, noisiest centre of
+the town, you have but to lift your eyes to see a green hill not far
+away; and viewed from the top of one of these hills that encircle it,
+Bath, in certain favourable states of the atmosphere, wears a
+beautiful look. One afternoon, a couple of miles out, I was on the top
+of Barrow Hill in a sudden, violent storm of rain and wind; when the
+rain ceased, the sun burst out behind me, and the town, rain-wet and
+sun-flushed, shone white as a city built of whitest marble against the
+green hills and black cloud on the farther side. Then on the slaty
+blackness appeared a complete and most brilliant rainbow, on one side
+streaming athwart the green hill and resting on the centre of the
+town, so that the high, old, richly-decorated Abbey Church was seen
+through a band of green and violet mist. That storm and that rainbow,
+seen by chance, gave a peculiar grace and glory to Bath, and the
+bright, unfading picture it left in memory has perhaps become too much
+associated in my mind with the thought of Bath, and has given me an
+exaggerated idea of its charm.
+
+When staying in Bath in the winter of 1898-9 I saw a good deal of bird
+life even in the heart of the town. At the back of the house I lodged
+in, in New King Street, within four minutes' walk of the Pump Room,
+there was a strip of ground called a garden, but with no plants except
+a few dead stalks and stumps and two small leafless trees.
+Clothes-lines were hung there, and the ground was littered with old
+bricks and rubbish, and at the far end of the strip there was a
+fowl-house with fowls in it, a small shed, and a wood-pile. Yet to
+this unpromising-looking spot came a considerable variety of birds.
+Starlings, sparrows, and chaffinches were the most numerous, while the
+blackbird, thrush, robin, hedge-sparrow and wren were each represented
+by a pair. The wrens lived in the wood-pile, and were the only members
+of the little feathered community that did not join the others at
+table when crumbs and scraps were thrown out.
+
+It was surprising to find all or most of these birds evidently
+wintering on that small plot of ground in the middle of the town,
+solely for the sake of the warmth and shelter it afforded them, and
+the chance crumbs that came in their way. It is true that I fed them
+regularly, but they were all there before I came. Yet it was not an
+absolutely safe place for them, being much infested by cats,
+especially by a big black one who was always on the prowl, and who had
+a peculiarly murderous gleam in his luminous yellow orbs when he
+crouched down to watch or attempted to stalk them. One could not but
+imagine that the very sight of such eyes in that black, devilish face
+would have been enough to freeze their blood with sudden terror, and
+make them powerless to fly from him. But it was not so: he could
+neither fascinate nor take them by surprise. No sooner would he begin
+to practise his wiles than all the population would be up in arms--the
+loud, sharp summons of the blackbird sounding first; then the
+starlings would chatter angrily, the thrush scream, the chaffinches
+begin to _pink-pink_ with all their might, and the others would join
+in, even the small hideling wrens coming out of their fortress of
+faggots to take part in the demonstration. Then puss would give it up
+and go away, or coil himself up and go to sleep on the sloping roof of
+the tiny shed or in some other sheltered spot; peace and quiet would
+once more settle on the little republic, and the birds would be
+content to dwell with their enemy in their midst in full sight of
+them, so long as he slept or did not watch them too narrowly.
+
+Finding that blue tits were among the visitors at the back, I hung up
+some lumps of suet and a cocoa-nut to the twigs of the bushes. The
+suet was immediately attacked, but judging from the suspicious way in
+which they regarded the round brown object swinging in the wind, the
+Bath tits had never before been treated to a cocoa-nut. But though
+suspicious, it was plain that the singular object greatly excited
+their curiosity. On the second day they made the discovery that it was
+a new and delightful dish invented for the benefit of the blue tits,
+and from that time they were at it at all hours, coming and going from
+morning till night. There were six of them, and occasionally they were
+all there at once, each one anxious to secure a place, and never able
+when he got one to keep it longer than three or four seconds at a
+time. Looking upon them from an upper window, as they perched against
+and flitted round and round the suspended cocoa-nut, they looked like
+a gathering of very large pale-blue flies flitting round and feeding
+on medlar.
+
+No doubt the sparrow is the most abundant species in Bath--I have got
+into a habit of not noticing that bird, and it is as if I did not see
+him; but after him the starling is undoubtedly the most numerous. He
+is, we know, increasing everywhere, but in no other town in England
+have I found him in such numbers. He is seen in flocks of a dozen to
+half a hundred, busily searching for grubs on every lawn and green
+place in and round the town, and if you go up to some elevated spot so
+as to look down upon Bath, you will see flocks of starlings arriving
+and departing at all points. As you walk the streets their metallic
+_clink-clink-clink_ sounds from all quarters--small noises which to
+most men are lost among the louder noises of a populous town. It is as
+if every house had a peal of minute bells hidden beneath the tiles or
+slates of the roof, or among the chimney-pots, that they were
+constantly being rung, and that every bell was cracked.
+
+The ordinary or unobservant person sees and hears far more of the
+jackdaw than of any other bird in Bath. Daws are seen and heard all
+over the town, but are most common about the Abbey, where they soar
+and gambol and quarrel all day long, and when they think that nobody
+is looking, drop down to the streets to snatch up and carry off any
+eatable-looking object that catches their eye.
+
+It was here at this central spot, while I stood one day idly watching
+the birds disporting themselves about the Abbey and listened to their
+clamour, that certain words of Ruskin came into my mind, and I began
+to think of them not merely with admiration, as when I first read them
+long ago, but critically.
+
+Ruskin, one of our greatest prose writers, is usually at his best in
+the transposition of pictures into words, his descriptions of what he
+has seen, in nature and art, being the most perfect examples of "word
+painting" in the language. Here his writing is that of one whose
+vision is not merely, as in the majority of men, the most important
+and intellectual of the senses, but so infinitely more important than
+all the others, and developed and trained to so extraordinary a
+degree, as to make him appear like a person of a single sense. We may
+say that this predominant sense has caused, or fed upon, the decay of
+the others. This is to me a defect in the author I most admire; for
+though he makes me see, and delight in seeing, that which was
+previously hidden, and all things gain in beauty and splendour, I yet
+miss something from the picture, just as I should miss light and
+colour from a description of nature, however beautifully written, by a
+man whose sense of sight was nothing or next to nothing to him, but
+whose other senses were all developed to the highest state of
+perfection.
+
+No doubt Ruskin is, before everything, an artist: in other words, he
+looks at nature and all visible things with a purpose, which I am
+happily without: and the reflex effect of his purpose is to make
+nature to him what it can never appear to me--a painted canvas. But
+this subject, which I have touched on in a single sentence, demands a
+volume.
+
+Ruskin wrote of the cathedral daws, "That drift of eddying black
+points, now closing, now scattering, now settling suddenly into
+invisible places among the bosses and flowers, the crowd of restless
+birds that fill the whole square with that strange clangour of theirs,
+so harsh and yet so soothing." For it seemed to me that he had seen
+the birds but had not properly heard them; or else that to his mind
+the sound they made was of such small consequence in the effect of the
+whole scene--so insignificant an element compared with the sight of
+them--that it was really not worth attending to and describing
+accurately.
+
+Possibly, in this particular case, when in speaking of the daws he
+finished his description by throwing in a few words about their
+voices, he was thinking less of the impression on his own mind,
+presumably always vague about natural sounds, than of what the poet
+Cowper had said in the best passage in his best work about "sounds
+harsh and inharmonious in themselves," which are yet able to produce a
+soothing effect on us on account of the peaceful scenes amid which
+they are heard.
+
+Cowper's notion of the daw's voice, by the way, was just as false as
+that expressed by Ruskin, as we may find in his paraphrase of Vincent
+Bourne's lines to that bird:--
+
+   There is a bird that by his coat,
+   And by the hoarseness of his note
+   Might be supposed a crow.
+
+Now the daw is capable at times of emitting both hoarse and harsh
+notes, and the same may perhaps be said of a majority of birds; but
+his usual note--the cry or caw varied and inflected a hundred ways,
+which we hear every day and all day long where daws abound--is neither
+harsh like the crow's, nor hoarse like the rook's. It is, in fact, as
+unlike the harsh, grating caw of the former species as the clarion
+call of the cock is unlike the grunting of swine. It may not be
+described as bell-like nor metallic, but it is loud and clear, with an
+engaging wildness in it, and, like metallic sounds, far-reaching; and
+of so good a quality that very little more would make it ring
+musically.
+
+Sometimes when I go into this ancient abbey church, or into some
+cathedral, and seating myself, and looking over a forest of
+bonnets, see a pale young curate with a black moustache, arrayed
+in white vestments, standing before the reading-desk, and hear him
+gabbling some part of the Service in a continuous buzz and rumble
+that roams like a gigantic blue-bottle through the vast dim
+interior, then I, not following him--for I do not know where he is,
+and cannot find out however much I should like to--am apt to
+remember the daws out of doors, and to think that it would be well
+if that young man would but climb up into the highest tower, or on
+to the roof, and dwell there for the space of a year listening to
+them; and that he would fill his mouth with polished pebbles, and
+medals, and coins and seals and seal-rings, and small porcelain
+cats and dogs, and little silver pigs, and other objects from the
+chatelaines of his lady admirers, and strive to imitate that
+clear, penetrating sound of the bird's voice, until he had
+mastered the rare and beautiful arts of voice production and
+distinct understandable speech.
+
+To go back to Cowper--the poet who has been much in men's thoughts of
+late, and who appears to us as perhaps the most modern-minded of those
+who ceased to live a century ago. Undoubtedly he was as bad a
+naturalist as any singer before or after him, and as any true poet has
+a perfect right to be. As bad, let us say, as Shakespeare and
+Wordsworth and Tennyson. He does not, it is true, confound the sparrow
+and hedge-sparrow like Wordsworth, nor confound the white owl with the
+brown owl like Tennyson, nor puzzle the ornithologist with a "sea-blue
+bird of March." But we must not forget that he addressed some verses
+to a nightingale heard on New Year's Day. It is clear that he did not
+know the crows well, for in a letter of May 10, 1780, to his friend
+Newton, he writes: "A crow, rook, or raven, has built a nest in one of
+the young elm-trees, at the side of Mrs Aspray's orchard." But when he
+wrote those words--
+
+   Sounds inharmonious in themselves, and harsh,
+   Yet heard in scenes where peace for ever reigns,
+   And only there, please highly for their sake--
+
+words which I have suggested misled Ruskin, and have certainly
+misled others--he, Cowper, knew better. His real feeling, and
+better and wiser thought, is expressed in one of his incomparable
+letters (Hayley, vol. ii. p. 230)--
+
+"My green-house is never so pleasant as when we are just
+on the point of surrendering it.... I sit with all the windows and
+the door wide open, and am regaled with the scent of every flower
+in a garden as full of flowers as I have known how to make it. We
+keep no bees, but if I lived in a hive I could hardly have more of
+their music. All the bees in the neighbourhood resort to a bed of
+mignonette opposite to the window, and pay me for the honey they
+get out of it by a hum, which, though rather monotonous, is as
+agreeable to my ears as the whistling of my linnets. All the
+sounds that nature utters are delightful, at least in this
+country. I should not perhaps find the roaring of lions in Africa,
+or of bears in Russia, very pleasing; but I know no beast in
+England whose voice I do not account as musical, save and except
+always the braying of an ass. The notes of all our birds and fowls
+please me, without one exception. I should not indeed think of
+keeping a goose in a cage that I might hang him up in the parlour
+for the sake of his melody, but a goose upon a common, or in a
+farmyard, is no bad performer; and as to insects, if the black
+beetle, and beetles indeed of all hues, will keep out of my way, I
+have no objection to any of the rest; on the contrary, in whatever
+key they sing, from the gnat's fine treble to the bass of
+the bumble-bee, I admire all. Seriously, however, it strikes me as
+a very observable instance of providential kindness to men, that
+such an exact accord has been contrived between his ear and the
+sounds with which, at least in a rural situation, it is almost
+every moment visited."
+
+Who has not felt the truth of this saying, that all natural sounds
+heard in their proper surroundings are pleasing; that even those
+which we call harsh do not distress, jarring or grating on our
+nerves, like artificial noises! The braying of the donkey was to
+Cowper the one exception in animal life; but he never heard it in
+its proper conditions. I have often listened to it, and have been
+deeply impressed, in a wild, silent country, in a place where
+herds of semi-wild asses roamed over the plains; and the sound at
+a distance had a wild expression that accorded with the scene, and
+owing to its much greater power effected the mind more than the
+trumpeting of wild swans, and shrill neighing of wild horses, and
+other far-reaching cries of wild animals.
+
+About the sounds emitted by geese in a state of nature, and the
+effect produced on the mind, I shall have something to say in a
+chapter on that bird.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+EARLY SPRING IN SAVERNAKE FOREST
+
+
+When the spring-feeling is in the blood, infecting us with vague
+longings for we know not what; when we are restless and seem to be
+waiting for some obstruction to be removed--blown away by winds, or
+washed away by rains--some change that will open the way to liberty
+and happiness,--the feeling not unfrequently takes a more or less
+definite form: we want to go away somewhere, to be at a distance
+from our fellow-beings, and nearer, if not to the sun, at all
+events to wild nature. At such times I think of all the places
+where I should like to be, and one is Savernake; and thither in
+two following seasons I have gone to ramble day after day,
+forgetting the world and myself in its endless woods.
+
+It is not that spring is early there; on the contrary, it is actually
+later by many days than in the surrounding country. It is flowerless
+at a time when, outside the forest, on southern banks and by the
+hedge-side, in coppices and all sheltered spots, the firstlings of the
+year are seen--purple and white and yellow. The woods, which are
+composed almost entirely of beech and oak, are leafless. The aspect on
+a dull cold day is somewhat cheerless. On the other hand, there is
+that largeness and wildness which accord with the spring mood; and
+there are signs of the coming change even in the greyest weather.
+Standing in some wide green drive or other open space, you see all
+about you acres on acres, miles on miles, of majestic beeches, and
+their upper branches and network of terminal twigs, that look at a
+distance like heavy banked-up clouds, are dusky red and purple with
+the renewed life that is surging in them. There are jubilant cries of
+wild creatures that have felt the seasonal change far more keenly than
+we are able to feel it. Above everything, we find here that
+solitariness and absence of human interest now so rare in England. For
+albeit social creatures in the main, we are yet all of us at times
+hermits in heart, if not exactly wild men of the woods; and that
+solitude which we create by shutting ourselves from the world in a
+room or a house, is but a poor substitute--nay, a sham: it is to
+immure ourselves in a cage, a prison, which hardly serves to keep out
+the all-pervading atmosphere of miserable conventions, and cannot
+refresh and invigorate us. There are seasons and moods when even the
+New Forest does not seem sufficiently remote from life: in its most
+secluded places one is always liable to encounter a human being, an
+old resident, going about in the exercise of his commoner's rights; or
+else his ponies or cows or swine. These last, if they be not of some
+improved breed, may have a novel or quaint aspect, as of wild
+creatures, but the appearance is deceptive; as you pass they lift
+their long snouts from grubbing among the dead leaves to salute you
+with a too familiar grunt--an assurance that William Rufus is dead,
+and all is well; that they are domestic, and will spend their last
+days in a stye, and end their life respectably at the hands of the
+butcher.
+
+At Savernake there is nothing so humanised as the pig, even of the old
+type; you may roam for long hours and see no man and no domestic
+animal. You have heard that this domain is the property of some
+person, but it seems like a fiction. The forest is nature's and yours.
+There you are at liberty to ramble all day unchallenged by any one; to
+walk, and run to warm yourself; to disturb a herd of red deer, or of
+fallow deer, which are more numerous; to watch them standing still to
+gaze back at you, then all with one impulse move rapidly away, showing
+their painted tails, keeping a kind of discipline, row behind row,
+moving over the turf with that airy tripping or mincing gait that
+strikes you as quaint and somewhat bird-like. Or you may coil yourself
+up, adder-like, beside a thick hawthorn bush, or at the roots of a
+giant oak or beech, and enjoy the vernal warmth, while outside of your
+shelter the wind blows bleak and loud.
+
+To lie or sit thus for an hour at a time listening to the wind is an
+experience worth going far to seek. It is very restorative. That is a
+mysterious voice which the forest has: it speaks to us, and somehow
+the life it expresses seems nearer, more intimate, than that of the
+sea. Doubtless because we are ourselves terrestrial and woodland in
+our origin; also because the sound is infinitely more varied as well
+as more human in character. There are sighings and moanings, and wails
+and shrieks, and wind-blown murmurings, like the distant confused
+talking of a vast multitude. A high wind in an extensive wood always
+produces this effect of numbers. The sea-like sounds and rhythmic
+volleyings, when the gale is at its loudest, die away, and in the
+succeeding lull there are only low, mysterious agitated whisperings;
+but they are multitudinous; the suggestion is ever of a vast
+concourse--crowds and congregations, tumultuous or orderly, but all
+swayed by one absorbing impulse, solemn or passionate. But not always
+moved simultaneously. Through the near whisperings a deeper, louder
+sound comes from a distance. It rumbles like thunder, falling and
+rising as it rolls onwards; it is antiphonal, but changes as it
+travels nearer. Then there is no longer demand and response; the
+smitten trees are all bent one way, and their innumerable voices are
+as one voice, expressing we know not what, but always something not
+wholly strange to us--lament, entreaty, denunciation.
+
+Listening, thinking of nothing, simply living in the sound of the
+wind, that strange feeling which is unrelated to anything that
+concerns us, of the life and intelligence inherent in nature,
+grows upon the mind. I have sometimes thought that never does the
+world seem more alive and watchful of us than on a still,
+moonlight night in a solitary wood, when the dusky green foliage
+is silvered by the beams, and all visible objects and the white
+lights and black shadows in the intervening spaces seem
+instinct with spirit. But it is not so. If the conditions be
+favourable, if we go to our solitude as the crystal-gazer to his
+crystal, with a mind prepared, this faculty is capable of awaking
+and taking complete possession of us by day as well as by night.
+
+As the trees are mostly beeches--miles upon miles of great trees,
+many of them hollow-trunked from age and decay--the fallen leaves
+are an important element in the forest scenery. They lie half a
+yard to a yard deep in all the deep hollows and dells and old
+water-worn channels, and where the ground is sheltered they cover
+acres of ground--millions and myriads of dead, fallen beech leaves.
+These, too, always seem to be alive. It is a leaf that refuses to
+die wholly. When separated from the tree it has, if not
+immortality, at all events a second, longer life. Oak and ash and
+chestnut leaves fade from month to month and blacken, and finally
+rot and mingle with the earth, while the beech leaf keeps its
+sharp clean edges unbroken, its hard texture and fiery colour, its
+buoyancy and rustling incisive sound. Swept by the autumn winds
+into sheltered hollows and beaten down by rains, the leaves lie
+mingled in one dead, sodden mass for days and weeks at a time, and
+appear ready to mix with the soil; but frost and sun suck
+up the moisture and the dead come to life again. They glow like
+fire, and tremble at every breath. It was strange and beautiful to
+see them lying all around me, glowing copper and red and gold when
+the sun was strong on them, not dead, but sleeping like a
+bright-coloured serpent in the genial warmth; to see, when the
+wind found them, how they trembled, and moved as if awakening; and
+as the breath increased rose up in twos and threes and half-dozens
+here and there, chasing one another a little way, hissing and
+rustling; then all at once, struck by a violent gust, they would
+be up in thousands, eddying round and round in a dance, and,
+whirling aloft, scatter and float among the lofty branches to
+which they were once attached.
+
+On a calm day, when there was no motion in the sunlit yellow leaves
+below and the reddish-purple cloud of twigs above, the sounds of
+bird-life were the chief attraction of the forest. Of these the cooing
+of the wood-pigeon gave me the most pleasure. Here some reader may
+remark that this pigeon's song is a more agreeable sound than its
+plain cooing note. This, indeed, is perhaps thought little of. In most
+biographies of the bird it is not even mentioned that he possesses
+such a note. Nevertheless I prefer it to the song. The song
+itself--the set melody composed of half a dozen inflected notes,
+repeated three or four times with little or no variation--is
+occasionally heard in the late winter and early spring, but at this
+time of the year it is often too husky or croaky to be agreeable. The
+songster has not yet thrown off his seasonal cold; the sound might
+sometimes proceed from a crow suffering from a catarrh. It improves as
+the season advances. The song is sometimes spelt in books:
+
+   _Coo-coo-roo, coo-coo-roo._
+
+A lady friend assures me the right words of this song are:
+
+   Take _two_ cows, David.
+
+She cannot, if she tries, make the bird say anything different,
+for these are the words she was taught to hear in the song, as a
+child, in Leicestershire. Of course they are uttered with a great
+deal of emotion in the tone, David being tearfully, almost
+sobbingly, begged and implored to take two cows; the emphasis is
+very strong on the two--it is apparently a matter of the utmost
+consequence that David should not take one, nor three, nor any
+other number of cows, but just two.
+
+In East Anglia I have been informed that what the bird really and
+truly says is--
+
+   My toe bleeds, Betty.
+
+Many as are the species capable of articulate speech, as we may
+see by referring to any ornithological work, there is no bird in
+our woods whose notes more readily lend themselves to this
+childish fancy than the wood-pigeon, on account of the depth and
+singularly human quality of its voice. The song is a passionate
+complaint. One can fancy the human-like feathered creature in her
+green bower, pleading, upbraiding, lamenting; and, listening, we
+will find it easy enough to put it all into plain language:
+
+   O swear not you love me, for you cannot be true,
+   O perjured wood-pigeon! Go from me--woo
+   Some other! Heart-broken I rue
+   That softness, ah me! when you cooed your false coo.
+   Soar to your new love--the creature in blue!
+   Who, who would have thought it of you!
+   And perhaps you consider her beau--
+   Oo--tiful! O you are too too cru--
+   Bid them come shoo--oot me, do, do!
+   Would I had given my heart to a hoo--
+   Oo-ting wood-owl, cuckoo, woodcock, hoopoo!
+
+One morning, at a village in Berkshire, I was walking along the
+road, about twenty-five yards from a cottage, when I heard, as I
+imagined, the familiar song of the wood-pigeon; but it sounded
+too close, for the nearest trees were fifty yards distant.
+Glancing up at the open window of an upper room in the cottage, I
+made the discovery that my supposed pigeon was a four-year-old
+child who had recently been chastised by his mother and sent
+upstairs to do penance. There he sat by the open window, his face
+in his hands, crying, not as if his heart would break, but seeming
+to take a mournful pleasure in the rhythmical sound of his own
+sobs and moans; they had settled into a rising and falling
+_boo-hoo_, with regularly recurring long and short notes, agreeable
+to the ear, and very creditable to the little crier's musical
+capacity. The incident shows how much the pigeon's plaint
+resembles some human sounds.
+
+The plain cooing note is so common in this order of birds that it
+may be regarded as the original and universal pigeon language, out
+of which the set songs have been developed, with, in most
+instances, but little change in the quality of the sound. In the
+multitude of species there are voices clear, resonant, thick, or
+husky, or guttural, hollow or booming, grating and grunting; but,
+however much they vary, you can generally detect the _pigeon_ or
+_family_ sound, which is more or less human-like. In some species
+the set song has almost superseded the plain single note,
+which has diminished to a mere murmur; in others, on the contrary,
+there is no song at all, unless the single unvarying coo can be
+called a song. In most species in the typical genus Columba the
+plain coo is quite distinct from the set song, but has at the same
+time developed into a kind of second song, the note being
+pleasantly modulated and repeated many times. We find this in the
+rock-dove: the curious guttural sounds composing its set song,
+which accompany the love antics of the male, are not musical,
+while the clear inflected cooing note is agreeable to most ears.
+It is a pleasing morning sound of the dove-cote; but the note, to
+be properly appreciated, must be heard in some dimly lighted
+ocean-cavern in which the bird breeds in its wild state. The
+long-drawn, oft-repeated musical coo mingles with and is heard
+above the murmuring and lapping of the water beneath; the hollow
+chamber retains and prolongs the sound, and makes it more
+sonorous, and at the same time gives it something of mystery.
+
+Of all the cooing notes of the different species I am acquainted with,
+that of the stock-dove, a pigeon with no set song, is undoubtedly the
+most attractive: next in order is that of the wood-pigeon on account
+of its depth and human-like character. And it is far from monotonous.
+In this wood in March I have often kept near a pigeon for half an hour
+at a time hearing it uttering its cooing note, repeated half a dozen
+or more times, at intervals of three or four minutes; and again and
+again the note has changed in length and power and modulation. In the
+profound stillness, on a windless day, of the vast beechen woods,
+these sonorous notes had a singularly beautiful effect.
+
+After spending a short time in the forest, one might easily get
+the idea that it is a sanctuary for all the persecuted creatures
+of the crow family. It is not quite that; the ravens have been
+destroyed here as in most places; but the other birds of that
+tribe are so numerous that even the most bloodthirsty keeper might
+be appalled at the task of destroying them. The clearance would
+doubtless have been effected if this noble forest had passed, as
+so nearly happened, out of the hands of the family that have so
+long possessed it: that calamity was happily averted. Not only are
+the rooks there in legions, having their rookeries in the park,
+but, throughout the forest, daws, carrion crows, jays, and magpies
+are abundant. The jackdaws outnumber all the other species (rooks
+included) put together; they literally swarm, and their
+ringing, yelping cries may be heard at all hours of the day in any
+part of the forest. In March, when they are nesting, their numbers
+are concentrated in those parts of the wood where the trees, beech
+and oak, are very old and have hollow trunks. In some places you
+will find many acres of wood where every tree is hollow and
+apparently inhabited. Yet there are doubtless some hollow trees
+into which the daw is not permitted to intrude. The wood-owl is
+common here, and is presumably well able to hold his castle
+against all aggressors. If one could but climb into the airy
+tower, and, sitting invisible, watch the siege and defence and the
+many strange incidents of the war between these feathered foes!
+The daw, bold yet cautious, venturing a little way into the dim
+interior, with shrill threats of ejectment, ruffling his grey pate
+and peeping down with his small, malicious, serpent-like grey
+eyes; the owl puffing out his tiger-coloured plumage, and lifting
+to the light his pale, shield-like face and luminous eyes,--would
+indeed be a rare spectacle; and then, what hissings, snappings,
+and beak-clatterings, and shrill, cat-like, and yelping cries!
+But, although these singular contests go on so near us, a few
+yards above the surface, Savernake might be in the misty
+mid-region of Weir, or on the slopes of Mount Yanik, for all the
+chance we have of witnessing them.
+
+An experience I had one day when I was new to the forest and used
+occasionally to lose myself, gave me some idea of the numbers of
+jackdaws breeding in Savernake. During my walk I came to a spot
+where all round me and as far as could be seen the trees were in
+an advanced state of decay: not only were they hollow and rotten
+within, but the immense horizontal branches and portions of the
+trunks were covered with a thick crop of fern, which, mixed with
+dead grass and moss, gave the dying giants of the forest a
+strange, ragged and desolate appearance. Many a time looking at
+one of these trees I have been reminded of Holman Hunt's forlorn
+Scapegoat. Here the daws had their most populous settlement. As I
+advanced, the dead twigs and leaves crackling beneath my feet,
+they rose up everywhere, singly and in twos and threes and
+half-dozens, darting hurriedly away and disappearing among the
+trees before me. The alarm-note they emit at such times is like
+their usual yelping call subdued to a short, querulous chirp; and
+this note now sounded before me and on either hand, at a distance
+of about one hundred yards, uttered continually by so many
+birds that their voices mingled into a curious sharp murmur. Tired
+of walking, I sat down on a root in the shelter of a large oak,
+and remained there perfectly motionless for about an hour. But the
+birds never lost their suspicion; all the time the distant subdued
+tempest of sharp notes went on, occasionally dying down until it
+nearly ceased, then suddenly rising and spreading again until I
+was ringed round with the sound. At length the loud, sharp
+invitation or order to fly was given and taken up by many birds;
+then, through the opening among the trees before me, I saw them
+rise in a dense flock and circle about at a distance: other flocks
+rose on the right and left hands and joined the first; and finally
+the whole mass come slowly overhead as if to explore; but when the
+foremost birds were directly over me the flock divided into two
+columns, which deployed to the right and left, and at a distance
+poured again into the trees. There could not have been fewer than
+two thousand birds in the flock that came over me, and they were
+probably all building in that part of the forest.
+
+The daw, whether tame or distrustful of man, is always
+interesting. Here I was even more interested in the jays, and it
+was indeed chiefly for the pleasure of seeing them, when they are
+best to look at, that I visited this forest. I had also
+formed the idea that there was no place in England where the jay
+could be seen to better advantage, as they are, or until recently
+were, exceedingly abundant at Savernake, and were not in constant
+fear of the keeper and his everlasting gun. Here one could witness
+their early spring assemblies, when the jay, beautiful at all
+times, is seen at his very best.
+
+It is necessary to say here that this habit of the jay does not appear
+to be too well known to our ornithologists. When I stated in a small
+work on British Birds a few years ago that jays had the custom of
+congregating in spring, a distinguished naturalist, who reviewed the
+book in one of the papers, rebuked me for so absurd a statement, and
+informed me that the jay is a solitary bird except at the end of
+summer and in the early autumn, when they are sometimes seen in
+families. If I had not made it a rule never to reply to a critic, I
+could have informed this one that I knew exactly where his knowledge
+of the habits of the jay was derived-that it dated back to a book
+published ninety-nine years ago. It was a very good book, and all it
+contains, some errors included, have been incorporated in most of the
+important ornithological works which have appeared during the
+nineteenth century. But though my critic thus "wrote it all by rote,"
+according to the books, "he did not write it right." The ancient error
+has not, however, been repeated by all writers on the subject.
+Seebohm, in his History of British Birds, wrote: "Sometimes,
+especially in Spring, fortune may favour you, and you will see a
+regular gathering of these noisy birds.... It is only at this time
+that the jay displays a social disposition; and the birds may often be
+heard to utter a great variety of notes, some of the modulations
+approaching almost to a song."
+
+The truth of the statement I have made that most of our writers on
+birds have strictly followed Montague in his account of the jay's
+habits, unmistakably shows itself in all they say about the bird's
+language. Montagu wrote in his famous Dictionary of Birds (1802):--
+
+"Its common notes are various, but harsh; will sometimes in spring
+utter a sort of song in a soft and pleasing manner, but so low as
+not to be heard at any distance; and at intervals introduce the
+bleatings of a Lamb, mewing of a Cat, the note of a Kite or
+Buzzard, hooting of an Owl, and even the neighing of a Horse.
+
+"These imitations are so exact, even in a natural wild state, that
+we have frequently been deceived."
+
+This description somewhat amplified, and the wording
+varied to suit the writer's style, has been copied into most books
+on British birds--the lamb and the cat, and the kite and the horse,
+faithfully appearing in most cases. Yet it is certain that if all
+the writers had listened to the jay's vocal performances for
+themselves, they would have given a different account. It is not
+that Montagu was wrong: he went to nature for his facts and put
+down what he heard, or thought he heard, but the particular sounds
+which he describes they would not have heard.
+
+My experience is, that the same notes and phrases are not
+ordinarily heard in any two localities; that the bird is able to
+emit a great variety of sounds--some highly musical; that he is
+also a great mimic in a wild irregular way, mixing borrowed notes
+with his own, and flinging them out anyhow, so that there is no
+order nor harmony, and they do not form a song.
+
+But he also has a real song, which may be heard in any assembly of
+jays and from some male birds after the congregating season is
+over and breeding is in progress. This singing of the jay is
+somewhat of a puzzle, as it is not the same song in any two
+places, and gives one the idea that there is no inherited and no
+traditional song in this species, but that each bird that
+has a song has invented it for himself. It varies from "a sort of
+low song," as Montagu said,--a soft chatter and warble which one
+can just hear at a distance of thirty or forty yards,--to a song
+composed of several musical notes harmoniously arranged, which may
+be heard distinctly a quarter of a mile away. This set and
+far-reaching song is rare, but some birds have a single very
+powerful and musical note, or short phrase, which they repeat at
+regular intervals by way of song. If by following up the sound one
+can get near enough to the tree where the meeting is being held to
+see what is going on, it is most interesting to watch the
+vocalist, who is like a leader, and who, perched quietly,
+continues to repeat that one powerful, unchanging, measured sound
+in the midst of a continuous concert of more or less musical
+sounds from the other birds.
+
+What I should very much like to know is, whether these powerful
+and peculiar notes, phrases, and songs of the jay, which are
+clearly not imitations of other species, are repeated year after
+year by the birds in the same localities, or are dropped for ever
+or forgotten at the end of each season. It is hard for me to find
+this out, because I do not as a rule revisit the same places in
+spring, and on going to a new or a different spot I find
+that the birds utter different sounds. Again, the places where
+jays assemble in numbers are very few and far between. It is true,
+as an observant gamekeeper once said to me, that if there are as
+many as half a dozen to a dozen jays in any wood they will
+contrive to hold a meeting; but when the birds are few and much
+persecuted, it is difficult to see and hear them at such times,
+and when seen and heard, no adequate idea is formed of the beauty
+of their displays, and the power and variety of their language, as
+witnessed in localities where they are numerous, and fear of the
+keeper's gun has not damped their mad, jubilant spirits.
+
+In genial weather the jays' assembly may be held at any hour, but
+is most frequently seen during the early part of the day: on a
+fine warm morning in March and April one can always count on
+witnessing an assembly, or at all events of hearing the birds, in
+any wood where they are fairly common and not very shy. They are
+so vociferous and so conspicuous to the eye during these social
+intervals, and at the same time so carried away by excitement,
+that it is not only easy to find and see them, but possible at
+times to observe them very closely.
+
+The loud rasping alarm- and angry-cry of the jay is a
+sound familiar to every one; the cry used by the bird to call his
+fellows together is somewhat different. It resembles the cry or
+call of the carrion crow, in localities where that bird is not
+persecuted, when, in the love season, he takes his stand on the
+top of the nesting-tree and calls with a prolonged, harsh,
+grating, and exceedingly powerful note, many times repeated. The
+jay's call has the same grating or grinding character, but is
+louder, sharper, more prolonged, and in a quiet atmosphere may be
+heard distinctly a mile away. The wood is in an uproar when the
+birds assemble and scream in concert while madly pursuing one
+another over the tall trees.
+
+At such times the peculiar flight of the jay is best seen and is very
+beautiful. In almost all birds that have short, round wings, as we may
+see in our little wren, and in game birds, and the sparrow-hawk, and
+several others, the wing-beats are exceedingly rapid. This is the case
+with the magpie; the quickness of the wing-beats causes the black and
+white on the quills to mingle and appear a misty grey; but at short
+intervals the bird glides and the wings appear black and white again.
+The jay, although his wings are so short and round, when not in a
+hurry progresses by means of comparatively slow, measured wing-beats,
+and looks as if swimming rather than flying.
+
+It is when the gathered birds all finally settle on a tree that they
+are most to be admired. They will sometimes remain on the spot for
+half an hour or longer, displaying their graces and emitting the
+extraordinary medley of noises mixed with musical sounds. But they do
+not often sit still at such times; if there are many birds, and the
+excitement is great, some of them are perpetually moving, jumping and
+flitting from branch to branch, and springing into the air to wheel
+round or pass over the tree, all apparently intent on showing off
+their various colours--vinaceous brown, sky blue, velvet black, and
+glistening white--to the best advantage.
+
+Again and again, when watching these gatherings at Savernake and at
+other places where jays abound, I have been reminded of the
+description given by Alfred Russel Wallace of the bird of paradise
+assemblies in the Malayan region. Our jay in some ways resembles his
+glorious Eastern relation; and although his lustre is so much less, he
+is at his very best not altogether unworthy of being called the
+British Bird of Paradise.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A WOOD WREN AT WELLS
+
+
+East of Wells Cathedral, close to the moat surrounding the bishop's
+palace, there is a beautifully wooded spot, a steep slope, where the
+birds had their headquarters. There was much to attract them there:
+sheltered by the hill behind, it was a warm corner, a wooded angle,
+protected by high old stone walls, dear to the redstart, masses of
+ivy, and thickets of evergreens; while outside the walls were green
+meadows and running water. When going out for a walk I always passed
+through this wood, lingering a little in it; and when I wanted to
+smoke a pipe, or have a lazy hour to myself among the trees, or
+sitting in the sun, I almost invariably made for this favourite spot.
+At different hours of the day I was a visitor, and there I heard the
+first spring migrants on their arrival--chiff-chaff, willow wren,
+cuckoo, redstart, blackcap, white-throat. Then, when April was drawing
+to an end, I said, There are no more to come. For the wryneck, lesser
+white-throat, and garden warbler had failed to appear, and the few
+nightingales that visit the neighbourhood had settled down in a more
+secluded spot a couple of miles away, where the million leaves in
+coppice and brake were not set a-tremble by the melodious thunder of
+the cathedral chimes.
+
+Nevertheless, there was another still to come, the one I perhaps love
+best of all. On the last day of April I heard the song of the wood
+wren, and at once all the other notes ceased for a while to interest
+me. Even the last comer, the mellow blackcap, might have been singing
+at that spot since February, like the wren and hedge-sparrow, so
+familiar and workaday a strain did it seem to have compared with this
+late warbler. I was more than glad to welcome him to that particular
+spot, where if he chose to stay I should have him so near me.
+
+It is well known that the wood wren can only be properly seen
+immediately after his arrival in this country, at the end of April or
+early in May, when the young foliage does not so completely hide his
+slight unresting form, as is the case afterwards. For he,
+too, is green in colour; like Wordsworth's green linnet,
+
+   A brother of the leaves he seems.
+
+There is another reason why he can be seen so much better during the
+first days of his sojourn with us: he does not then keep to the higher
+parts of the tall trees he frequents, as his habit is later, when the
+air is warm and the minute winged insects on which he feeds are
+abundant on the upper sun-touched foliage of the high oaks and
+beeches. On account of that ambitious habit of the wood wren there is
+no bird with us so difficult to observe; you may spend hours at a
+spot, where his voice sounds from the trees at intervals of half a
+minute to a minute, without once getting a glimpse of his form. At the
+end of April the trees are still very thinly clad; the upper foliage
+is but an airy garment, a slight golden-green mist, through which the
+sun shines, lighting up the dim interior, and making the bed of old
+fallen beech-leaves look like a floor of red gold. The small-winged
+insects, sun-loving and sensitive to cold, then hold their revels near
+the surface; and the bird, too, prefers the neighbourhood of the
+earth. It was so in the case of the wood wren I observed at Wells,
+watching him on several consecutive days, sometimes for an hour or two
+at a stretch, and generally more than once a day. The spot where he
+was always to be found was quite free from underwood, and the trees
+were straight and tall, most of them with slender, smooth boles.
+Standing there, my figure must have looked very conspicuous to all the
+small birds in the place; but for a time it seemed to me that the wood
+wren paid not the slightest attention to my presence; that as he
+wandered hither and thither in sunlight and shade at his own sweet
+will, my motionless form was no more to him than a moss-grown stump or
+grey upright stone. By and by it became apparent that the bird knew me
+to be no stump or stone, but a strange living creature whose
+appearance greatly interested him; for invariably, soon after I had
+taken up my position, his careless little flights from twig to twig
+and from tree to tree brought him nearer, and then nearer, and finally
+near me he would remain for most of the time. Sometimes he would
+wander for a distance of forty or fifty yards away, but before long he
+would wander back and be with me once more, often perching so near
+that the most delicate shadings of his plumage were as distinctly seen
+as if I had had him perched on my hand.
+
+The human form seen in an unaccustomed place always excites a good
+deal of attention among the birds; it awakes their curiosity,
+suspicion, and alarm. The wood wren was probably curious and nothing
+more; his keeping near me looked strange only because he at the same
+time appeared so wholly absorbed in his own music. Two or three times
+I tried the experiment of walking to a distance of fifty or sixty
+yards and taking up a new position; but always after a while he would
+drift thither, and I would have him near me, singing and moving, as
+before.
+
+I was glad of this inquisitiveness, if that was the bird's motive
+(that I had unconsciously fascinated him I could not believe); for of
+all the wood wrens I have seen this seemed the most beautiful, most
+graceful in his motions, and untiring in song. Doubtless this was
+because I saw him so closely, and for such long intervals. His fresh
+yellowish-green upper and white under plumage gave him a wonderfully
+delicate appearance, and these colours harmonised with the tender
+greens of the opening leaves and the pale greys and silvery whites of
+the slender boles.
+
+Seebohm says of this species: "They arrive in our woods in
+marvellously perfect plumage. In the early morning sun they look
+almost as delicate a yellowish-green as the half-grown leaves amongst
+which they disport themselves. In the hand the delicate shading of the
+eye-stripe, and the margin of the feathers of the wings and tail, is
+exquisitely beautiful, but is almost all lost under the rude handling
+of the bird-skinner."
+
+The concluding words sound almost strange; but it is a fact that this
+sylph-like creature is sometimes shattered with shot and its poor
+remains operated on by the bird-stuffer. Its beauty "in the hand"
+cannot compare with that exhibited when it lives and moves and sings.
+Its appearance during flight differs from that of other warblers on
+account of the greater length and sharpness of the wings. Most
+warblers fly and sing hurriedly; the wood wren's motions, like its
+song, are slower, more leisurely, and more beautiful. When moved by
+the singing passion it is seldom still for more than a few moments at
+a time, but is continually passing from branch to branch, from tree to
+tree, finding a fresh perch from which to deliver its song on each
+occasion. At such times it has the appearance of a delicately coloured
+miniature kestrel or hobby. Most lovely is its appearance when it
+begins to sing in the air, for then the long sharp wings beat time to
+the first clear measured notes, the prelude to the song. As a rule,
+however, the flight is silent, and the song begins when the new perch
+is reached--first the distinct notes that are like musical strokes,
+and fall faster and faster until they run and swell into a long
+passionate trill--the woodland sound which is like no other.
+
+Charming a creature as the wood wren appears when thus viewed closely
+in the early spring-time, he is not my favourite among small birds
+because of his beauty of shape and colour and graceful motions, which
+are seen only for a short time, but on account of his song, which
+lasts until September; though I may not find it very easy to give a
+reason for the preference.
+
+It comforts me a little in this inquiry to remember that Wordsworth
+preferred the stock-dove to the nightingale--that "creature of
+ebullient heart." The poet was a little shaky in his ornithology at
+times; but if we take it that he meant the ring-dove, his preference
+might still seem strange to some. Perhaps it is not so very strange
+after all.
+
+If we take any one of the various qualities which we have agreed to
+consider highest in bird-music, we find that the wood wren compares
+badly with his fellow-vocalists--that, measured by this standard, he
+is a very inferior singer. Thus, in variety, he cannot compare with
+the thrush, garden-warbler, sedge-warbler, and others; in brilliance
+and purity of sound with the nightingale, blackcap, etc.; in strength
+and joyousness with the skylark; in mellowness with the blackbird; in
+sprightliness with the goldfinch and chaffinch; in sweetness with the
+wood-lark, tree-pipit, reed-warbler, the chats and wagtails, and so on
+to the end of all the qualities which we regard as important. What,
+then, is the charm of the wood wren's song? The sound is unlike any
+other, but that is nothing, since the same can be said of the wryneck
+and cuckoo and grasshopper warbler. To many persons the wood wren's
+note is a bird-sound and nothing more, and it may even surprise them
+to hear it called a song. Indeed, some ornithologists have said that
+it is not a song, but a call or cry, and it has also been described as
+"harsh."
+
+I here recall a lady who sat next to me on the coach that took me from
+Minehead to Lynton. The lady resided at Lynton, and finding that I was
+visiting the place for the first time, she proceeded to describe its
+attractions with fluent enthusiasm. When we arrived at the town, and
+were moving very slowly into it, my companion turned and examined my
+face, waiting to hear the expressions of rapturous admiration that
+would fall from my lips. Said I, "There is one thing you can boast of
+in Lynton. So far as I know, it is the only town in the country where,
+sitting in your own room with the windows open, you can listen to the
+song of the wood wren." Her face fell. She had never heard of the wood
+wren, and when I pointed to the tree from which the sound came and she
+listened and heard, she turned away, evidently too disgusted to say
+anything. She had been wasting her eloquence on an unworthy
+subject--one who was without appreciation for the sublime and
+beautiful in nature. The wild romantic Lynn, tumbling with noise and
+foam over its rough stony bed, the vast wooded hills, the piled-up
+black rocks (covered in places with beautiful red and blue lettered
+advertisements), had been passed by in silence--nothing had stirred me
+but the chirping of a miserable little bird, which, for all that she
+knew or cared, might be a sparrow! When we got down from the coach a
+couple of minutes later, she walked away without even saying good-bye.
+
+There is no doubt that very many persons know and care as little about
+bird voices as this lady; but how about the others who do know and
+care a good deal--what do they think and feel about the song of the
+wood wren? I know two or three persons who are as fond of the bird as
+I am; and two or three recent writers on bird life have spoken of its
+song as if they loved it. The ornithologists have in most cases been
+satisfied to quote Gilbert White's description of Letter XIX.: "This
+last haunts only the tops of trees in high beechen woods, and makes a
+sibilous grasshopper-like noise now and then, at short intervals,
+shaking a little with its wings when it sings."
+
+White was a little more appreciative in the case of the willow wren
+when he spoke of its "joyous, easy, laughing note"; yet the willow
+wren has had to wait a long time to be recognised as one of our best
+vocalists. Some years ago it was greatly praised by John Burroughs,
+who came over from America to hear the British songsters, his thoughts
+running chiefly on the nightingale, blackcap, throstle, and blackbird;
+and he was astonished to find that this unfamed warbler, about which
+the ornithologists had said little and the poets nothing, was one of
+the most delightful vocalists, and had a "delicious warble." He waxed
+indignant at our neglect of such a singer, and cried out that it had
+too fine a song to please the British ear; that a louder coarser voice
+was needed to come up to John Bull's standard of a good song. No one
+who loves a hearty laugh can feel hurt at his manner of expressing
+himself, so characteristic of an American. Nevertheless, the fact
+remains that only since Burroughs' appreciation of the British
+song-birds first appeared, several years ago, the willow wren, which
+he found languishing in obscurity, has had many to praise it. At all
+events, the merits of its song are now much more freely acknowledged
+than they were formerly.
+
+Perhaps the wood wren's turn will come by and by. He is still an
+obscure bird, little known, or not known, to most people: we are more
+influenced by what the old writers have said than we know or like to
+believe; our preferences have mostly been made for us. The species
+which they praised and made famous have kept their places in popular
+esteem, while other species equally charming, which they did not know
+or said nothing about, are still but little regarded. It is hardly to
+be doubted that the wood wren would have been thought more of if
+Willughby, the Father of British Ornithology, had known it and
+expressed a high opinion of its song; or that it would have had
+millions to admire it if Chaucer or Shakespeare had singled it out for
+a few words of praise.
+
+It is also probably the fact that those who are not students, or close
+observers of bird life, seldom know more than a very few of the most
+common species; and that when they hear a note that pleases them they
+set it down to one of the half-dozen or three or four songsters whose
+names they remember. I met with an amusing instance of this common
+mistake at a spot in the west of England, where I visited a castle on
+a hill, and was shown over the beautiful but steep grounds by a stout
+old dame, whose breath and temper were alike short. It was a bright
+morning in May, and the birds were in full song. As we walked through
+the shrubbery a blackcap burst into a torrent of wild heart-enlivening
+melody from amidst the foliage not more than three yards away. "How
+well that blackcap sings!" I remarked. "That blackbird," she
+corrected; "yes, it sings well." She stuck to it that it was a
+blackbird, and to prove that I was wrong assured me that there were no
+blackcaps there. Finding that I refused to acknowledge myself in
+error, she got cross and dropped into sullen silence; but ten or
+fifteen minutes later she returned of her own accord to the subject.
+"I've been thinking, sir," she said, "that you must be right. I said
+there are no blackcaps here because I've been told so, but all the
+same I've often remarked that the blackbird has two different songs.
+Now I know, but I'm so sorry that I didn't know a few days sooner." I
+asked her why. She replied, "The other day a young American lady came
+to the castle and I took her over the grounds. The birds were singing
+the same as to-day, and the young lady said, 'Now, I want you to tell
+me which is the blackcap's song. Just think,' she said, 'what a
+distance I have come, from America! Well, when I was bidding good-bye
+to my friends at home I said, "Don't you envy me? I'm going to Old
+England to hear the blackcap's song."' Well, when I told her we had no
+blackcaps she was so disappointed; and yet, sir, if what you say is
+right, the bird was singing near us all the time!"
+
+Poor young lady from America! I should have liked to know whose
+written words first fired her brain with desire of the blackcap's
+song--a golden voice in imagination's ear, while the finest home
+voices were merely silvern. I think of my own case; how in boyhood
+this same bird first warbled to me in some lines of a poem I read; and
+how, long years afterwards, I first heard the real song--beautiful,
+but how unlike the song I had imagined!--one bright evening in early
+May, at Netley Abbey. But the poet's name had meanwhile slipped out of
+memory; nothing but a vague impression remained (and still persists)
+that he flourished and had great fame about the beginning of the
+nineteenth century, and that now his (or her) fame and works are
+covered with oblivion.
+
+To return to the subject of this paper: the wood wren--the secret of
+its charm. We see that, tried by ordinary standards, many other
+singers are its superiors; what, then, is the mysterious something in
+its music that makes it to some of us even better than the best?
+Speaking for myself, I should say because it is more harmonious, or in
+more perfect accord with the nature amid which it is heard; it is the
+truer woodland voice.
+
+The chaffinch as a rule sings in open woods and orchards and groves
+when there is light and life and movement; but sometimes in the heart
+of a deep wood the silence is broken by its sudden loud lyric: it is
+unexpected and sounds unfamiliar in such a scene; the wonderfully
+joyous ringing notes are like a sudden flood of sunshine in a shady
+place. The sound is intensely distinct and individual, in sharp
+contrast to the low forest tones: its effect on the ear is similar to
+that produced on the sight by a vivid contrast in colours, as by a
+splendid scarlet or shining yellow flower blooming solitary where all
+else is green. The effect produced by the wood wren is totally
+different; the strain does not contrast with, but is complementary to,
+the "tremulous cadence low" of inanimate nature in the high woods, of
+wind-swayed branches and pattering of rain and lisping and murmuring
+of innumerable leaves--the elemental sounds out of which it has been
+fashioned. In a sense it may be called a trivial and a monotonous
+song--the strain that is like a long tremulous cry, repeated again and
+again without variation; but it is really beyond criticism--one would
+have to begin by depreciating the music of the wind. It is a voice of
+the beechen woods in summer, of the far-up cloud of green, translucent
+leaves, with open spaces full of green shifting sunlight and shadow.
+Though resonant and far-reaching it does not strike you as loud, but
+rather as the diffused sound of the wind in the foliage concentrated
+and made clear--a voice that has light and shade, rising and passing
+like the wind, changing as it flows, and quivering like a
+wind-fluttered leaf. It is on account of this harmony that it is not
+trivial, and that the ear never grows tired of listening to it: sooner
+would it tire of the nightingale--its purest, most brilliant tone and
+most perfect artistry.
+
+The continuous singing of a skylark at a vast height above the green,
+billowy sun and shadow-swept earth is an etherealised sound which
+fills the blue space, fills it and falls, and is part of that visible
+nature above us, as if the blue sky, the floating clouds, the wind and
+sunshine, has something for the hearing as well as for the sight. And
+as the lark in its soaring song is of the sky, so the wood wren is of
+the wood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE SECRET OF THE WILLOW WREN
+
+
+The willow wren is one of the commonest and undoubtedly the most
+generally diffused of the British songsters. A summer visitor, one of
+the earliest to arrive, usually appearing on the South Coast in the
+last week in March; a little later he may be met with in very nearly
+every wood, thicket, hedge, common, marsh, orchard, and large garden
+throughout the kingdom--it is hard to say, writes Seebohm, where he is
+not found. Wherever there are green perching-places, and small
+caterpillars, flies and aphides to feed upon, there you will see and
+hear the willow wren. He is a sweet and constant singer from the date
+of his arrival until about the middle of June, when he becomes silent
+for a season, resuming his song in July, and continuing it throughout
+August and even into September. This late summer singing is, however,
+fitful and weak and less joyous in character than in the spring. But
+in spite of his abundance and universality, and the charm of his
+little melody, he is not familiarly known to the people generally, as
+they know the robin redbreast, pied wagtail, dunnock, redstart,
+wheatear, and stonechat. The name we call him by is a very old one; it
+was first used in English by Ray, in his translation of Willughby's
+Ornithology, about three centuries ago; but it still remains a
+book-name unknown to the rustic. Nor has this common little bird any
+widely known vernacular name. If by chance you find a country-man who
+knows the bird, and has a name for it, this will be one which is
+applied indiscriminately to two, three, or four species. The willow
+wren, in fact, is one of those little birds that are "seen rather than
+distinguished," on account of its small size, modest colouring, and
+its close resemblance to other species of warblers; also on account of
+the quiet, gentle character of its song, which is little noticed in
+the spring and summer concert of loud, familiar voices.
+
+One day in London during the late summer I was amused and at the same
+time a little disgusted at this general indifference to the delicate
+beauty in a bird-sound which distinguishes the willow wren even among
+such delicate singers as the warblers: it struck me as a kind of
+aesthetic hardness of hearing. I heard the song in the flower walk, in
+Kensington Gardens, on a Sunday morning, and sat down to listen to it;
+and for half an hour the bird continued to repeat his song two or
+three times a minute on the trees and bushes within half a dozen yards
+of my seat. Just after I had sat down, a throstle, perched on the
+topmost bough of a thorn that projected over the walk, began his song,
+and continued it a long time, heedless of the people passing below.
+Now, I noticed that in almost every case the person approaching lifted
+his eyes to the bird above, apparently admiring the music, sometimes
+even pausing for a moment in his walk; and that when two or three came
+together they not only looked up, but made some remark about the
+beauty of the song. But from first to last not one of all the
+passers-by cast a look towards the tree where the willow wren was
+singing; nor was there anything to show that the sound had any
+attraction for them, although they must have heard it. The loudness of
+the thrush prevented them from giving it any attention, and made it
+practically inaudible. It was like a pimpernel blossoming by the side
+of a poppy, or dahlia, or peony, where, even if seen, it would not be
+noticed as a beautiful flower.
+
+In the chapter on the wood wren, I endeavoured to trace to its source
+the pleasurable feelings which the song of that bird produces in me and
+in many others--a charm exceeding that of many more celebrated
+vocalists. In that chapter the song of the willow wren was mentioned
+incidentally. Now, these two--wood wren and willow wren--albeit nearly
+related, are, in the character of their notes, as widely different as it
+is possible for two songsters to be; and when we listen attentively to
+both, we recognise that the feeling produced in us differs in each
+case--that it has a different cause. In the case of the willow wren it
+might be said off-hand that our pleasure is simply due to the fact that
+it is a melodious sound, associated in our minds with summer scenes. As
+much could be said of any other migrant's song--nightingale, tree-pipit,
+blackcap, garden warbler, swallow, and a dozen more. But it does not
+explain the individual and very special charm of this particular
+bird--what I have ventured to call the secret of the willow wren. After
+all, it is not a deeply hidden secret, and has indeed been half guessed
+or hinted by various writers on bird melody; and as it also happens to
+be the secret of other singers besides the willow wren, we may, I think,
+find in it an explanation of the fact that the best singers do not
+invariably please us so well as some that are considered inferior.
+
+The song of the willow wren has been called singular and unique among
+our birds; and Mr Warde Fowler, who has best described it, says that
+it forms an almost perfect cadence, and adds, "by which I mean that it
+descends gradually, not, of course, on the notes of our musical scale,
+by which no birds in their natural state would deign to be fettered,
+but through fractions of one or perhaps two of our tones, and without
+returning upward at the end." Now, this arrangement of its notes,
+although very rare and beautiful, does not give the little song its
+highest aesthetic value. The secret of the charm, I imagine, is
+traceable to the fact that there is distinctly something human-like in
+the quality of the voice, its timbre. Many years ago an observer of
+wild birds and listener to their songs came to this country, and
+walking one day in a London suburb he heard a small bird singing among
+the trees. The trees were in an enclosure and he could not see the
+bird, but there would, he thought, be no difficulty in ascertaining
+the species, since it would only be necessary to describe its peculiar
+little song to his friends and they would tell him. Accordingly, on
+his return to the house he proceeded to describe the song and ask the
+name of the singer. No one could tell him, and much to his surprise,
+his account of the melody was received with smiles of amusement and
+incredulity. He described it as a song that was like a wonderfully
+bright and delicate human voice talking or laughingly saying something
+rather than singing. It was not until some time afterwards that the
+bird-lover in a strange land discovered that his little talker and
+laugher among the leaves was the willow wren. In vain he had turned to
+the ornithological works; the song he had heard, or at all events the
+song as he had heard it, was not described therein; and yet to this
+day he cannot hear it differently--cannot dissociate the sound from
+the idea of a fairy-like child with an exquisitely pure, bright,
+spiritual voice laughingly speaking in some green place.
+
+And yet Gilbert White over a century ago had noted the human quality
+in the willow wren's voice when he described it as an "easy, joyous,
+laughing note." It is still better to be able to quote Mr Warde
+Fowler, when writing in A Year with the Birds, on the futile attempts
+which are often made to represent birds' songs by means of our
+notation, since birds are guided in their songs by no regular
+succession of intervals. Speaking of the willow wren in this
+connection, he adds: "Strange as it may seem, the songs of birds may
+perhaps be more justly compared with the human voice when speaking,
+than with a musical instrument, or with the human voice when singing."
+The truth of this observation must strike any person who will pay
+close attention to the singing of birds; but there are two criticisms
+to be made on it. One is that the resemblance of a bird's song to a
+human voice when speaking is confined to some or to a few species; the
+second is that it is a mistake to think, as Mr Fowler appears to do,
+that the resemblance is wholly or mainly due to the fact that the
+bird's voice is free when singing--that, like the human voice in
+talking, it is not tied to tones and semitones. For instance, we note
+this peculiarity in the willow wren, but not in, say, the wren and
+chaffinch, although the songs of these two are just as free, just as
+independent of regular intervals as our voices when speaking and
+laughing. The resemblance in a bird's song to human speech is entirely
+due to the human-like quality in the voice; for we find that other
+songsters--notably the swallow--have a charm similar to that of the
+willow wren, although the notes of the former bird are differently
+arranged, and do not form anything like a cadence. Again, take the
+case of the blackbird. We are accustomed to describe the blackbird's
+voice as flute-like, and the flute is one of the instruments which
+most nearly resemble the human voice. Now, on account of the leisurely
+manner in which the blackbird gives out his notes, the resemblance to
+human speech is not so pronounced as in the case of the willow wren or
+swallow; but when two or three or half a dozen blackbirds are heard
+singing close together, as we sometimes hear them in woods and
+orchards where they are abundant, the effect is singularly beautiful,
+and gives the idea of a conversation being carried on by a set of
+human beings of arboreal habits (not monkeys) with glorified voices.
+Listening to these blackbird concerts, I have sometimes wondered
+whether or not they produced the same effect on others' ears as on
+mine, as of people talking to one another in high-pitched and
+beautiful tones. Oddly enough, it was only while writing this chapter
+that I by chance found an affirmative answer to my question. Glancing
+through Leslie's Riverside Letters, which I had not previously seen, I
+came upon the following remarks, quoted from Sir George Grove, in a
+letter to the author, on the blackbird's singing: "He selects a spot
+where he is within hearing of a comrade, and then he begins quite at
+leisure (not all in a hurry like the thrush) a regular conversation.
+'And how are you? Isn't this a fine day? Let us have a nice talk,'
+etc., etc. He is answered in the same strain, and then replies, and so
+on. Nothing more thoughtful, more refined, more feeling, can be
+conceived." In another passage he writes: "I love them (the robins),
+but they fill a much smaller part than the blackbird does in my heart.
+To hear the blackbird talking to his mate a field off, with
+deliberate, refined conversation, the very acme of grace and courtesy,
+is perfectly splendid."
+
+There are two more common British songsters that produce much the same
+effect as the willow wren and blackbird; these are the swallow and
+pied wagtail. They are not in the first rank as melodists, and I can
+find no explanation of the fact that they please me better than the
+great singers other than their more human-like tones, which to my
+hearing have something of an exceedingly beautiful contralto sound.
+The swallow's song is familiar to every one, but that of the wagtail
+is not well known. The bird has two distinct songs: one, heard
+oftenest in early spring, consists of a low rambling warble, with some
+resemblance to the whinchat's song; it is the second song, heard
+occasionally until late June, frequently uttered on the wing--a
+torrent of loud, rapidly uttered, and somewhat swallow-like
+notes--that comes nearest in tone to the human voice, and has the
+greatest charm.
+
+After these, we find other songsters with one or two notes, or a
+phrase, human-like in quality, in their songs. Of these I will only
+mention the blackcap, linnet, and tree-pipit. The most beautiful of
+the blackcap's notes, which come nearest to the blackbird, have this
+human sound; and certainly the most beautiful part of the linnet's
+song is the opening phrase, composed of notes that are both
+swallow-like and human-like.
+
+It may appear strange to some readers that I put the tree-pipit, with
+his thin, shrill, canary-like pipe, in this list; but his notes are
+not all of this character; he is moreover a most variable singer; and
+it happens that in some individuals the concluding notes of the song
+have more of that peculiar human quality than any other British
+songster. No doubt it was a bird in which these human-like,
+languishing notes at the close of the song were very full and
+beautiful that inspired Burns to write his "Address to a Wood-lark."
+The tree pipit is often called by that name in Scotland, where the
+true wood-lark is not found.
+
+   O stay, sweet warbling wood-lark, stay,
+   Nor quit for me the trembling spray,
+   A hopeless lover courts thy lay,
+       Thy soothing, fond complaining.
+
+   Again, again that tender part,
+   That I may catch thy melting art;
+   For surely that would touch her heart
+       Who kills me wi' disdaining.
+
+   Say, was thy little mate unkind,
+   And heard thee as the passing wind?
+   O nocht but love and sorrow joined
+       Sic notes o' wae could waken!
+
+   Thou tells o' never-ceasing care,
+   O' speechless grief and dark despair;
+   For pity's sake, sweet bird, nae mair,
+       Or my poor heart is broken!
+
+Much more could be said about these and other species in the passerine
+order that have some resemblance, distinct or faint, to the human
+voice in their singing notes--an echo, as it were, of our own common
+emotions, in most cases simply glad or joyous, but sometimes, as in
+the case of the tree-pipit, of another character. And even those
+species that are furthest removed from us in the character of the
+sounds they emit have some notes that suggest a highly brightened
+human voice. Witness the throstle and nightingale. The last approaches
+to the human voice in that rich, musical throb, repeated many times
+with passion, which is the invariable prelude to his song; and again,
+in that "one low piping note, more sweet than all," four times
+repeated in a wonderfully beautiful crescendo. Who that ever listened
+to Carlotta Patti does not remember sounds like these from her lips?
+It was commonly said of her that her voice was bird-like; certainly it
+was clarified and brightened beyond other voices--in some of her notes
+almost beyond recognition as a human voice. It was a voice that had a
+great deal of the quality of gladness in it, but less depth of human
+passion than other great singers. Still, it was a human voice; and,
+just as Carlotta Patti (outshining the best of her sister-singers even
+as the diamond outsparkles all other gems) rose to the birds in her
+miraculous flights, so do some of the birds come down to and resemble
+us in their songs.
+
+If I am right in thinking that it is the human note in the voices of
+some passerine birds that gives a peculiar and very great charm to
+their songs, so that an inferior singer shall please us more than one
+that ranks high, according to the accepted standard, it remains to ask
+why it should be so. Why, I mean, should the mere likeness to a human
+tone in a little singing-bird impart so great a pleasure to the mind,
+when the undoubtedly human-like voices of many non-passerine species
+do not as a rule affect us in the same way? As a matter of fact, we
+find in the multitude of species that resemble us in their voices a
+few, outside of the order of singers, that do give us a pleasure
+similar to that imparted by the willow wren, swallow, and tree-pipit.
+Thus, among British birds we have the wood-pigeon, and the stock-dove;
+the green woodpecker, with his laugh-like cry; the cuckoo, a universal
+favourite on account of his double fluty call; and (to those who are
+not inclined to be superstitious) the wood-owl, a most musical
+night-singer; and the curlew, with, in a less degree, various other
+shore birds. But in a majority of the larger birds of all orders the
+effect produced is different, and often the reverse of pleasant. Or if
+such sounds delight us, the feeling differs in character from that
+produced by the melodious singer, and is mainly due to that wildness
+with which we are in sympathy expressed by such sounds. Human-like
+voices are found among the auks, loons, and grebes; eagles and
+falcons; cuckoos, pigeons, goatsuckers, owls, crows, rails, ducks,
+waders, and gallinaceous birds. The cries and shrieks of some among
+these, particularly when heard in the dark hours, in deep woods and
+marshes and other solitary places, profoundly impress and even startle
+the mind, and have given rise all the world over to numberless
+superstitious beliefs. Such sounds are supposed to proceed from
+devils, or from demons inhabiting woods and waters and all desert
+places; from night-wandering witches; spirits sent to prophesy death
+or disaster; ghosts of dead men and women wandering by night about the
+world in search of a way out of it; and sometimes human beings who,
+burdened with dreadful crimes or irremediable griefs, have been
+changed into birds. The three British species best known on account of
+their supernatural character have very remarkable voices with a human
+sound in them: the raven with his angry, barking cry, and deep, solemn
+croak; the booming bittern; and the white or church owl, with his
+funereal screech.
+
+It is, I think, plain that the various sensations excited in us by the
+cries, moans, screams, and the more or less musical notes of different
+species, are due to the human emotions which they express or seem to
+express. If the voice simulates that of a maniac, or of a being
+tortured in body or mind, or overcome with grief, or maddened with
+terror, the blood-curdling and other sensations proper to the occasion
+will be experienced; only, if we are familiar with the sound or know
+its cause, the sensation will be weak. Similarly, if in some deep,
+silent wood we are suddenly startled by a loud human whistle or
+shouted "Hi!" although we may know that a bird, somewhere in that
+waste of foliage around us, uttered the shout, we yet cannot help
+experiencing the feelings--a combination of curiosity, amusement, and
+irritation--which we should have if some friend or some human being
+had hailed us while purposely keeping out of sight. Finally, if the
+bird-sounds resemble refined, bright, and highly musical human voices,
+the voices, let us say, of young girls in conversation, expressive of
+various beautiful qualities--sympathy, tenderness, innocent mirth, and
+overflowing gladness of heart--the effect will be in the highest
+degree delightful.
+
+Herbert Spencer, in his account of the origin of our love of music in
+his Psychology, writes: "While the tones of anger and authority are
+harsh and coarse, the tones of sympathy and refinement are relatively
+gentle and of agreeable timbre. That is to say, the timbre is
+associated in experience with the receipt of gratification, has
+acquired a pleasure-giving quality, and consequently the tones which
+in music have an allied timbre become pleasure-giving and are called
+beautiful. Not that this is the sole cause of their pleasure-giving
+quality.... Still, in recalling the tones of instruments which
+approach the tones of the human voice, and observing that they seem
+beautiful in proportion to their approach, we see that this secondary
+aesthetic element is important."
+
+As with instruments, so it is with bird voices; in proportion as they
+approach the tones of the human voice, expressive of sympathy,
+refinement, and other beautiful qualities, they will seem
+beautiful--in some cases even more beautiful than those which, however
+high they may rank in other ways, are yet without this secondary
+aesthetic element.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+SECRET OF THE CHARM OF FLOWERS
+
+
+When my mind was occupied with the subject of the last chapter--the
+human quality in some sweet bird voices--it struck me forcibly that
+all resemblances to man in the animal and vegetable worlds and in
+inanimate nature, enter largely into and strongly colour our aesthetic
+feelings. We have but to listen to the human tones in wind and water,
+and in animal voices; and to recognise the human shape in plant, and
+rock, and cloud, and in the round heads of certain mammals, like the
+seal; and the human expression in the eyes, and faces generally, of
+many mammals, birds and reptiles, to know that these casual
+resemblances are a great deal to us. They constitute the expression of
+numberless natural sights and sounds with which we are familiar,
+although in a majority of cases the resemblance being but slight, and
+to some one quality only, we are not conscious of the cause of the
+expression.
+
+It was principally with flowers, which excite more attention and give
+more pleasure than most natural objects, that my mind was occupied in
+this connection; for here it seemed to me that the effect was similar
+to that produced on the mind by sweet human-like tones in bird music.
+In other words, a very great if not the principal charm of the flower
+was to be traced to the human associations of its colouring; and this
+was, in some cases, more than all its other attractions, including
+beauty of form, purity and brilliance of colour, and the harmonious
+arrangement of colours; and, finally, fragrance, where such a quality
+existed.
+
+We see, then, that there is an intimate connection between the two
+subjects--human associations in the colouring of flowers and in the
+voices of birds; and that in both cases this association constitutes,
+or is a principal element in, the expression. This connection, and the
+fact that the present subject was suggested and appeared almost an
+inevitable outcome of the one last discussed, must be my excuse for
+introducing a chapter on flowers in a book on birds--or birds and man.
+But an excuse is hardly needed. It must strike most readers that a
+great fault of books on birds is, that there is too much about birds
+in them, consequently that a chapter about something else, which has
+not exactly been dragged in, may come as a positive relief.
+
+As the word expression which occurs with frequency in this chapter was
+not understood in the sense in which I used it on the first appearance
+of the book, it may be well to explain that it is not used here in its
+ordinary meaning as the quality in a face, or picture, or any work of
+art, which indicates thought or feeling. Here the word has the meaning
+given to it by writers on the aesthetic sense as descriptive of the
+quality imparted to an object by its associations. These may be
+untraceable: we may not be conscious and as a rule we are not
+conscious that any such associations exist; nevertheless they are in
+us all the time, and with what they add to an object may enhance and
+even double its intrinsic beauty and charm.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have somewhere read a very ancient legend, which tells that man was
+originally made of many materials, and that at the last a bunch of
+wild flowers was gathered and thrown into the mixture to give colour
+to his eyes. It is a pretty story, but might have been better told,
+since it is certain that flowers which have delicate and beautiful
+flesh-tints are attractive mainly on that account, just as blue and
+some purples delight us chiefly because of their associations with the
+human iris. The skin, too, needed some beautiful colour, and there
+were red as well as blue flowers in the bunch; and the red flowers
+being most abundant in nature and in greater variety of tints, give us
+altogether more pleasure than their beautiful rivals in our affection.
+
+The blue flower is associated, consciously or not, with the human blue
+eye; and as the floral blue is in all or nearly all instances pure and
+beautiful, it is like the most beautiful human eye. This association,
+and not the colour itself, strikes me as the true cause of the
+superior attraction which the blue flower has for most of us. Apart
+from association blue is less attractive than red, orange, and yellow,
+because less luminous; furthermore green is the least effective
+background for such a colour as blue in so small an object as a
+flower; and, as a fact, we see that at a little distance the blue of
+the flower is absorbed and disappears in the surrounding green, while
+reds and yellows keep their splendour. Nevertheless the blue has a
+stronger hold on our affections. As a human colour, blue comes first
+in a blue-eyed race because it is the colour of the most important
+feature, and, we may say, of the very soul in man.
+
+Some purple flowers stand next in our regard on account of their
+nearness in colour to the pure blue. The wild hyacinth, blue-bottle,
+violet, and pansy, and some others, will occur to every one. These are
+the purple flowers in which blue predominates, and on that account
+have the same expression as the blue. The purples in which red
+predominates are akin in expression to the reds, and are associated
+with flesh-tints and blood. And here it may be noted that the blue and
+blue-purple flowers, which have the greatest charm for us, are those
+in which not only the colour of the eye but some resemblance in their
+form to the iris, with its central spot representing the pupil,
+appears. For example, the flax, borage, blue geranium, periwinkle,
+forget-me-not, speedwell, pansy and blue pimpernel, are actually more
+to us than some larger and handsomer blue flowers, such as the
+blue-bottle, vipers' bugloss, and succory, and of blue flowers seen in
+masses.
+
+With regard to the numerous blue and purple-blue flowers which we all
+admire, or rather for which we all feel so great an affection, we find
+that in many cases their very names have been suggested by their human
+associations--by their expression.
+
+Love-in-a-mist, angels' eyes, forget-me-not, and heartsease, are
+familiar examples. Heartsease and pansy both strike us as peculiarly
+appropriate to one of our commonest and most universal garden flowers;
+yet we see something besides the sympathetic and restful expression
+which suggested these names in this flower--a certain suggestion of
+demureness, in fact, reminding those who have seen Guido's picture of
+the "Adoration of the Virgin," of one of his loveliest angels whose
+angelical eyes and face reveal some desire for admiration and love in
+the spectator. And that expression, too, of the pansy named
+Love-in-Idleness, has been described, coarsely or rudely it may be, in
+some of its country names: "Kiss me behind the garden gate," and,
+better (or worse) still, "Meet-her-i'-th'-entry-kiss-her-i'-th'-buttery."
+Of this order of names are None-so-pretty and Pretty maids, Pretty
+Betsy, Kiss-me-quick. Even such a name as Tears of the blood of Christ
+does not sound extravagantly fanciful or startling when we look at the
+glowing deep golden crimson of the wall flower; nor of a blue flower,
+the germander speedwell, such names as The more I see you the more I
+love you, and Angels' tears, and Tears of Christ, with many more.
+
+A writer on our wild flowers, in speaking of their vernacular names of
+this kind, has said: "Could we penetrate to the original suggestive
+idea that called forth its name, it would bring valuable information
+about the first openings of the human mind towards nature; and the
+merest dream of such a discovery invests with a strange charm the
+words that could tell, if we could understand, so much of the
+forgotten infancy of the human race."
+
+What a roll of words and what a mighty and mysterious business is here
+made of a very simple little matter! It is a charming example of the
+strange helplessness, not to say imbecility, which affects most of
+those who have been trained in our mind-killing schools; trained not
+to think, but taught to go for anything and everything they desire to
+know to the books. If the books in the British Museum fail to say why
+our ancestors hundreds of years ago named a flower None-so-pretty or
+Love-in-a-mist, why then we must be satisfied to sit in thick darkness
+with regard to this matter until some heaven-born genius descends to
+illuminate us! Yet I daresay there is not a country child who does not
+occasionally invent a name for some plant or creature which has
+attracted his attention; and in many cases the child's new name is
+suggested by some human association in the object--some resemblance to
+be seen in form or colour or sound. Not books but the light of nature,
+the experience of our own early years, the look which no person not
+blinded by reading can fail to see in a flower, is sufficient to
+reveal all this hidden wonderful knowledge about the first openings of
+the heart towards nature, during the remote infancy of the human race.
+
+From this it will be seen that I am not claiming a discovery; that
+what I have called a secret of the charm of flowers is a secret known
+to every man, woman, and child, even to those of my own friends who
+stoutly deny that they have any such knowledge. But I think it is best
+known to children. What I am here doing is merely to bring together
+and put in form certain more or less vague thoughts and feelings which
+I (and therefore all of us) have about flowers; and it is a small
+matter, but it happens to be one which no person has hitherto
+attempted.
+
+It may be that in some of my readers' minds--those who, like the
+sceptical friends I have mentioned, are not distinctly conscious of
+the cause or secret of the expression of a flower--some doubt may
+still remain after what has been said of the blue and purple-blue
+blossom. Such a doubt ought to disappear when the reds are considered,
+and when it is found that the expression peculiar to red flowers
+varies infinitely in degree, and is always greatest in those shades of
+the colour which come nearest to the most beautiful flesh-tints.
+
+When I say "beautiful flesh-tints" I am thinking of the aesthetic
+pleasure which we receive from the expression, the associations, of
+the red flower. The expression which delights is in the soft and
+delicate shades; and in the texture which is sometimes like the
+beautiful soft skin; but the expression would exist still in the case
+of floral tints resembling the unpleasant reds, or the reds which
+disgust us, in the human face. And we most of us know that these
+distressing hues are to be seen in some flowers. I remember that I
+once went into a florist's shop, and seeing a great mass of hard
+purple-red cinerarias on a shelf I made some remark about them. "Yes,
+are they not beautiful?" said the woman in the shop. "No, I loathe the
+sight of them," I returned. "So do I!" she said very quickly, and then
+added that she called them beautiful because she had to sell them.
+She, too, had no doubt seen that same purple-red colour in the evil
+flower called "grog-blossom," and in the faces of many middle-aged
+lovers of the bottle, male and female, who would perish before their
+time, to the great relief of their kindred, and whose actions after
+they were gone would not smell sweet and blossom in the dust.
+
+The reds we like best in flowers are the delicate roseate and pinky
+shades; they are more to us than the purest and most luminous tints.
+And here, as with bird notes which delight us on account of their
+resemblance to fresh, young, highly musical human voices, flowers
+please us best when they exhibit the loveliest human tints--the apple
+blossom and the bindweed, musk mallow and almond and wild rose, for
+example. After these we are most taken with the deeper but soft and
+not too luminous reds--the red which we admire in the red
+horse-chestnut blossom, and many other flowers, down to the minute
+pimpernel. Next come the intense rosy reds seen in the herb-robert and
+other wild geraniums, valerian, red campion and ragged robin; and this
+shade of red, intensified but still soft, is seen in the willow-herb
+and foxglove, and, still more intensified, in the bell- and
+small-leafed heath. Some if not all of these pleasing reds have purple
+in them, and there are very many distinctly purple flowers that appeal
+to us in the same way that red flowers do, receiving their expression
+from the same cause. There is some purple colour in most skins, and
+even some blue.
+
+   The azured harebell, like thy veins,
+
+is a familiar verse from Cymbeline; any one can see the resemblance to
+the pale blue of that admired and loved blossom in the blue veins of
+any person with a delicate skin. Purples and purplish reds in masses
+are mostly seen in young persons of delicate skins and high colour in
+frosty weather in winter, when the eyes sparkle and the face glows
+with the happy sensations natural to the young and healthy during and
+after outdoor exercise. The skin purples and purple-reds here
+described are beautiful, and may be matched to a nicety in many
+flowers; the human purple may be seen (to name a very common wild
+flower) in purple loosestrife and the large marsh mallow, and in
+dozens and scores of other familiar purple flowers; and the purple-red
+hue in many richly coloured skins has its exact shade in common
+hounds' tongue, and in other dark and purple-red flowers. But we
+always find, I fancy, that the expression due to human association in
+a purple flower is greatest when this colour (as in the human face) is
+placed side by side or fades into some shade of red or pink. I think
+we may see this even in a small flower like the fumitory, in which one
+portion is deep purple and all the rest of the blossoms a delicate
+pink. Even when the red is very intense, as in the common field poppy,
+the pleasing expression of purple on red is very evident.
+
+To return to pure reds. We may say that just as purples in flowers
+look best, or have a greater degree of expression, when appearing in
+or with reds, so do the most delicate rose and pink shades appeal most
+to us when they appear as a tinge or blush on white flowers. Probably
+the flower that gives the most pleasure on account of its beautiful
+flesh-tints of different shades is the Gloire de Dijon rose, so common
+with us and so universal a favourite. Roses, being mostly of the
+garden, are out of my line, but they are certainly glorious to look
+at--glorious because of their associations, their expression, whether
+we know it or not. One can forgive Thomas Carew the conceit in his
+lines--
+
+   Ask me no more where Jove bestows
+   When June is past, the fading rose,
+   For in your beauty's orient deep
+   These flowers as in their causes sleep.
+
+But all reds have something human, even the most luminous scarlets and
+crimsons--the scarlet verbena, the poppy, our garden geraniums,
+etc.--although in intensity they so greatly surpass the brightest colour
+of the lips and the most vivid blush on the cheek. Luminous reds are
+not, however, confined to lips and cheeks: even the fingers when held up
+before the eyes to the sun or to firelight show a very delicate and
+beautiful red; and this same brilliant floral hue is seen at times in
+the membrane of the ear. It is, in fact, the colour of blood, and that
+bright fluid, which is the life, and is often spilt, comes very much
+into the human associations of flowers. The Persian poet, whose name is
+best left unwritten, since from hearing it too often most persons are
+now sick and tired of it, has said,
+
+   I sometimes think that never blooms so red
+   The rose as where some buried Caesar bled.
+
+There is many and many a "plant of the blood of men." Our most common
+Love-lies-bleeding with its "dropping wells" of crimson serves to
+remind us that there are numberless vulgar names that express this
+resemblance and association. The thought or fancy is found everywhere
+in poetic literature, in the fables of antiquity, in the tales and
+folk-lore of all nations, civilised and barbarous.
+
+I think that we can more quickly recognise this human interest in a
+flower, due to its colour, and best appreciate its aesthetic value from
+this cause, when we turn from the blues, purples, and reds, to the
+whites and the yellows. The feeling these last give us is distinctly
+different in character from that produced by the others. They are not
+like us, nor like any living sentient thing we are related to: there
+is no kinship, no human quality.
+
+When I say "no kinship, no human quality," I refer to flowers that are
+entirely pure white or pure yellow; in some dull or impure yellows,
+and in white and yellow flowers that have some tinge or mixture of red
+or purple, we do get the expression of the red and purple flower. The
+crystalline and snow white of the whitest flowers do indeed resemble
+the white of the eyeballs and the teeth in human faces; but we may see
+that this human white colour by itself has no human association in a
+flower.
+
+The whiteness of the white flower where there is any red is never
+unhuman, probably because a very brilliant red or rose colour on some
+delicate skins causes the light flesh-tints to appear white by
+contrast, and is the complexion known as "milk and roses." The
+apple-blossom is a beautiful example, and the beloved daisy--the "wee,
+modest, crimson-tipped flower," which would be so much less dear but
+for that touch of human crimson. This is the herb-Margaret of so many
+tender and pretty legends, that has white for purity and red for
+repentance. Even those who have never read these legends and that
+prettiest, most pathetic of all which tells of the daisy's origin,
+find a secret charm in the flower. Among other common examples are the
+rosy-white hawthorn, wood anemone, bindweed, dropwort, and many
+others. In the dropwort the rosy buds are seen among the creamy white
+open flowers; and the expression is always very marked and beautiful
+when there is any red or purple tinge or blush on cream-whites and
+ivory-whites. When we look from the dropwort to its nearest relative,
+the common meadow-sweet, we see how great a charm the touch of
+rose-red has given to the first: the meadow-sweet has no expression of
+the kind we are considering--no human association.
+
+In pure yellow flowers, as in pure white, human interest is wanting.
+It is true that yellow is a human colour, since in the hair we find
+yellows of different shades--it is a pity that we cannot find, or have
+not found, a better word than "shades" for the specific differences of
+a colour. There is the so-called tow, the tawny, the bronze, the
+simple yellow, and the golden, which includes many varieties, and the
+hair called carroty. But none of these has the flower yellow. Richard
+Jefferies tells us that when he placed a sovereign by the side of a
+dandelion he saw how unlike the two colours were--that, in fact, no
+two colours could seem more unlike than the yellow of gold and the
+yellow of the flower. It is not necessary to set a lock of hair and
+any yellow flower side by side to know how utterly different the hues
+are. The yellow of the hair is like that of metals, of clay, of stone,
+and of various earthy substances, and like the fur of some mammals,
+and like xanthophyll in leaf and stalk, and the yellow sometimes seen
+in clouds. When Ossian, in his famous address to the sun, speaks of
+his yellow hair floating on the eastern clouds, we instantly feel the
+truth as well as beauty of the simile. We admire the yellow flower for
+the purity and brilliance of its colour, just as we admire some bird
+notes solely for the purity and brightness of the sound, however
+unlike the human voice they may be. We also admire it in many
+instances for the exquisite beauty of its form, and the beauty of the
+contrast of pure yellow and deep green, as in the yellow flag,
+mimulus, and numerous other plants. But however much we may admire, we
+do not experience that intimate and tender feeling which the blues and
+reds inspire in us; in other words, the yellow flower has not the
+expression which distinguishes those of other colours. Thus, when
+Tennyson speaks of the "speedwell's darling blue," we know that he is
+right--that he expresses a feeling about this flower common to all of
+us; but no poet would make so great, so absurd a mistake as to
+describe the purest and loveliest yellow of the most prized and
+familiar wild flower--buttercup or kingcup, yellow flag, sea poppy,
+marsh marigold, or broom, or furze, or rock-rose, let us say--by such
+a word--the word that denotes an intimate and affectionate
+feeling--the feeling one cherishes for the loved ones of our kind. Nor
+could that word of Tennyson be properly used of any pure white
+flower--the stitchwort for instance; nor of any white and yellow
+flower like the Marguerite. But no sooner do you get a touch of rose
+or crimson in the whitest flower, as we see in the daisy and
+eyebright, than you can say of it that it is a "dear" or a "darling"
+colour, and no one can find fault with the expression.
+
+When we consider the dull and impure yellows sometimes seen in
+flowers, and some soft yellows seen in combination with pleasing
+wholesome reds, as in the honeysuckle, we may find something of the
+expression--the human association--in yellow flowers. For there is
+yellow in the skin, even in perfect health; it appears strongest on
+the neck, and spread round to the throat and chin, and is a warm buff,
+very beautiful in some women; but very little of this tint appears in
+the face. When a tinge of this warm buffy yellow and creamy yellow is
+seen mixed with warmer reds, as in the Gloire de Dijon rose, the
+effect is most beautiful and the expression most marked. But the
+expression in flowers of a pale dull, impure yellow, where there is an
+expression, is unpleasant. It is the yellow of unhealthy skins, of
+faces discoloured by jaundice, dyspepsia, and other ailments. We
+commonly say of such flowers that they are "sickly" in colour, and the
+association is with sick and decaying humanity. Gerarde, in describing
+such hues in flowers, was fond of the word "overworn"; and it was a
+very good word, and, like the one now in use, is derived from the
+association.
+
+It will be noted by those who are acquainted with many flowers that I
+have given the names of but few--it may be too few--as examples, and
+that these are nearly all of familiar wild flowers. My reason for not
+going to the garden is, that our cultivated blooms are not only
+artificially produced, and in some degree monstrosities, but they are
+seen in unnatural conditions, in crowds and masses, the various kinds
+too near together, and in most cases selected on account of their
+gorgeous colouring. The effect produced, however delightful it may be
+in some ways, is confusing to those simple natural feelings which
+flowers in a state of nature cause in us.
+
+I confess that gardens in most cases affect me disagreeably; hence I
+avoid them, and think and know little about garden flowers. It is of
+course impossible not to go into gardens. The large garden is the
+greatly valued annexe of the large house, and is as much or more to
+the mistress than the coverts to the master; and when I am asked to go
+into the garden to see and admire all that is there, I cannot say,
+"Madam, I hate gardens." On the contrary, I must weakly comply and
+pretend to be pleased. And when going the rounds of her paradise my
+eyes light by chance on a bed of tulips, or scarlet geraniums, or blue
+larkspurs, or detested calceolarias or cinerarias--a great patch of
+coloured flame springing out of a square or round bed of grassless,
+brown, desolate earth--the effect is more than disagreeable: the mass
+of colour glares at and takes possession of me, and spreads itself
+over and blots out a hundred delicate and prized images of things seen
+that existed in the mind.
+
+But I am going too far, and perhaps making an enemy of a reader when I
+would much prefer to have him (or her) for a friend.
+
+I have named few flowers, and those all the most familiar kinds,
+because it seemed to me that many examples would have had a confusing
+effect on readers who do not intimately know many species, or do not
+remember the exact colour in each case, and are therefore unable to
+reproduce in their minds the exact expression--the feeling which every
+flower conveys. On the other hand, the reader who knows and loves
+flowers, who has in his mind the distinct images of many scores,
+perhaps of two or three hundreds of species, can add to my example
+many more from his own memory.
+
+There is one objection to the explanation given here of the cause of
+the charm of certain flowers, which will instantly occur to some
+readers, and may as well be answered in advance. This view, or theory,
+must be wrong, a reader will perhaps say, because my own preference is
+for a yellow flower (the primrose or daffodil, let us say), which to
+me has a beauty and charm exceeding all other flowers.
+
+The obvious explanation of such a preference would be that the
+particular flower preferred is intimately associated with
+recollections of a happy childhood, or of early life. The associations
+will have made it a flower among flowers, charged with a subtle magic,
+so that the mere sight or smell of it calls up beautiful visions
+before the mind's eye. Every person bred in a country place is
+affected in this way by certain natural objects and odours; and I
+recall the case of Cuvier, who was always affected to tears by the
+sight of some common yellow flower, the name of which I have
+forgotten.
+
+The way to test the theory is to take, or think of, two or three or
+half-a-dozen flowers that have no personal associations with one's own
+early life--that are not, like the primrose and daffodil in the
+foregoing instance, sacred flowers, unlike all others; some with and
+some without human colouring, and consider the feeling produced in
+each case on the mind. If any one will look at, say, a Gloire de Dijon
+rose (in some persons its mental image will serve as well as the
+object itself) and then at a perfect white chrysanthemum, or lily, or
+other beautiful white flower; then at a perfect yellow chrysanthemum,
+or an allamanda, and at any exquisitely beautiful orchid, that has no
+human colour in it, which he may be acquainted with, he will probably
+say: I admire these chrysanthemums and other flowers more than the
+rose; they are most perfect in their beauty--I cannot imagine anything
+more beautiful; but though the rose is less beautiful and splendid,
+the admiration I have for it appears to differ somewhat in
+character--to be mixed with some new element which makes this flower
+actually more to me than the others.
+
+That something different, and something more, is the human association
+which this flower has for us in virtue of its colour; and the new
+element--the feeling it inspires, which has something of tenderness
+and affection in it--is one and the same with the feeling which we
+have for human beauty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The foregoing has been given here with a few alterations,
+mainly verbal, as it appeared originally: something now remains to
+be added.
+
+When writing about the wild flowers of West Cornwall in a work on
+The Land's End (1908), I returned to the subject of the charm of
+flowers due to their human colouring, and will repeat here much of
+what was there said.
+
+Some of the readers of my flower chapter were not convinced that I had
+made out my case: it came as a surprise to them, and in some instances
+they cherished views of their own which they did not want to give up.
+Thus, two of my critics, writing independently, expressed their belief
+that flowers are precious to us and seem more beautiful than they are,
+because they are absolutely unrelated to our human life with its
+passions, sorrows, and tragedies--because, looking at flowers, we are
+taken into, or have glimpses of, another and brighter world such as a
+disembodied spirit might find itself in. It was nothing more than a
+pretty fancy; but I had other more thoughtful critics, and during my
+correspondence with them I became convinced of a serious omission in
+my account of the blue flower, when I said that its expression was due
+to association with the blue eye in man. The strongest of my friendly
+adversaries informed me that any man can revel at will among his own
+personal feelings and associations; that these were a "kind of bloom
+on the intrinsic beauty of things"--a happy phrase! He then asks:
+"What does blue suggest to a sailor? Sometimes the sea, sometimes the
+sky, sometimes the Blue Peter; but if you ask him what does blue paint
+suggest he would say mourning, that being the colour of a ship's
+mourning. Dr Sutton always called blue no colour, because it was the
+colour of death, the sign of the withdrawal of life."
+
+This was interesting but fails as an argument since it was taken
+for granted in the chapter that blue in a flower or anything else,
+and in fact any colour, possesses individual associations for
+every one of us, according to what we are, to the temper of our
+minds, to the conditions in which we exist, our vocation, our
+early life, and so on. Blue may suggest sea and sky and the Blue
+Peter to a sailor, and yet the blue flower have an expression due
+to its human association in him as in another.
+
+But my critic dropped by chance into something better, when he
+went on to ask, "Why shouldn't the heaven's blue make us love
+flowers? It does in my case I know, and I can feel the different
+blues of skies and air and distance in flower blue."
+
+Undoubtedly he was right; the blue sky, fair weather, the open air,
+was a suggestion of the blue flower. It amazed me to think of the
+years I had spent under blue skies and of all I had felt about blue
+flowers, without stumbling upon this very simple fact. So simple, so
+near to the surface that you no sooner hear it than you imagine you
+have always known it! It was impossible to look at blue flowers and
+not be convinced of its truth, especially when the flowers were spread
+over considerable areas, as when I looked at wild hyacinths in the
+spring woods, or followed the interminable blue band of the vernal
+squill on the west Cornish coast, or saw large arid tracts of land in
+Suffolk blue with viper's bugloss.
+
+Oddly enough just after the letter containing this criticism had
+reached me, another correspondent who was also among my opponents,
+sent me this fine passage from the old writer Sir John Ferne, on azure
+in blazoning: "Which blew colour representeth the Aire amongst the
+elements, that of all the rest is the greatest favourer of life, as
+the only nurse and maintainer of spirits in any living creature. The
+colour blew is commonly taken from the blue skye which appeareth so
+often as the tempests be overblowne, and notes prosperous successe and
+good fortune to the wearer in all his affayres."
+
+In conclusion, after having adopted this new idea, my view is still
+that the human association is the principal factor in the expression
+of the blue flower, or at all events in a majority of flowers that
+bloom more or less sparingly and are usually seen as single blooms,
+not as mere splashes of colour. Such are the pansy, violet, speedwell,
+hairbell, lungwort, blue geranium, etc. It may be that in all flowers
+of this kind too an element in the expression is due to the
+fair-weather associations with the colour; but these associations must
+be very much stronger in the case of a blue flower always seen in
+masses and sheets of colour as the wild hyacinth. Among dark-eyed
+races the fair-weather associations would alone give the blue flower
+its expression. I shouldn't wonder, if some explorer with a curious
+mind would try to find out what savages feel about flowers, that he
+would discover in them a special regard for the blue flower.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+RAVENS IN SOMERSET
+
+
+Mr Warde Fowler in his Summer Studies of Birds and Books has a
+pleasant chapter on wagtails, in which he remarks incidentally that he
+does not care for the big solemn birds that please, or are dear to,
+"Mr Hudson." Their bigness disturbs and their solemnity oppresses him.
+They do not twitter and warble, and flit hither and thither, flirting
+their feathers, and with their dainty gracefulness and airy, fairy
+ways wind themselves round his heart. Wagtails are quite big enough
+for him; they are, in fact, as big as birds should be, and so long as
+these charming little creatures abound in these islands he (Mr Fowler)
+will be content. Indeed, he goes so far as to declare that on a desert
+island, without a human creature to share its solitude with him, he
+would be happy enough if only wagtails were there to keep him company.
+Mr Fowler is not joking; he tells us frankly what he thinks and feels,
+and when we come to consider the matter seriously, as he wishes us to
+do, we discover that there is nothing astonishing in his
+confession--that his mental attitude is capable of being explained. It
+is only natural, in an England from which most of the larger birds
+have been banished, that he should have become absorbed in observing
+and in admiration of the small species that remain; for we observe and
+study the life that is nearest to us, and seeing it well we are
+impressed by its perfection--the perfect correspondence that exists
+between the creature and its surroundings--by its beauty, grace, and
+other attractive qualities, as we are not impressed by the life which
+is at a distance, and of which we only obtain rare and partial
+glimpses.
+
+These thoughts passed through my mind one cold, windy day in spring,
+several hours of which I spent lying on the short grass on the summit
+of a cliff, watching at intervals a pair of ravens that had their nest
+on a ledge of rock some distance below. Big and solemn, and solemn and
+big, they certainly were, and although inferior in this respect to
+eagle, pelican, bustard, crane, vulture, heron, stork, and many
+another feathered notable, to see them was at the same time a pleasure
+and a relief. It also occurred to me at the time that, alone on a
+desert island, I should be better off with ravens than wagtails for
+companions; and this for an excellent reason. The wagtail is no doubt
+a very lively, pretty, engaging creature--so for that matter is the
+house fly--but between ourselves and the small birds there exists,
+psychologically, a vast gulf. Birds, says Matthew Arnold, live beside
+us, but unknown, and try how we will we can find no passages from our
+souls to theirs. But to Arnold--in the poem to which I have alluded at
+all events--a bird simply meant a caged canary; he was not thinking of
+the larger, more mammal-like, and therefore more human-like, mind of
+the raven, and, it may be added, of the crows generally.
+
+The pair I spent so long a time in watching were greatly disturbed at
+my presence on the cliff. Their anxiety was not strange, seeing that
+their nest is annually plundered in the interest of the "cursed
+collector," as Sir Herbert Maxwell has taught us to name the worst
+enemy of the rarer British birds. The "worst," I say; but there is
+another almost if not quite as bad, and who in the case of some
+species is really worse. At intervals of from fifteen to twenty
+minutes they would appear overhead uttering their angry, deep croak,
+and, with wings outspread, seemingly without an effort on their parts
+allow the wind to lift them higher and higher until they would look no
+bigger than daws; and, after dwelling for a couple of minutes on the
+air at that great height, they would descend to the earth again, to
+disappear behind a neighbouring cliff. And on each occasion they
+exhibited that wonderful aerial feat, characteristic of the raven, and
+rare among birds, of coming down in a series of long drops with closed
+wings. I am inclined to think that a strong wind is necessary for the
+performance of this feat, enabling the bird to fall obliquely, and to
+arrest the fall at any moment by merely throwing out the wings. At any
+rate, it is a fact that I have never seen this method of descent used
+by the bird in calm weather. It is totally different to the tumbling
+down, as if wounded, of ravens when two or more are seen toying with
+each other in the air--a performance which is also practised by rooks
+and other species of the crow family. The tumbling feat is indulged in
+only when the birds are playing, and, as it would appear, solely for
+the fun of the thing; the feat I am describing has a use, as it
+enables the bird to come down from a great height in the air in the
+shortest time and with the least expenditure of force possible. With
+the vertical fall of a bird like the gannet on its prey we are not
+concerned here, but with the descent to earth of a bird soaring at a
+considerable height. Now, many birds when rushing rapidly down appear
+to close their wings, but they are never wholly closed; in some cases
+they are carried as when folded, but are slightly raised from the
+body; in other cases the wing is tightly pressed against the side, but
+the primaries stand out obliquely, giving the descending bird the
+figure of a barbed arrow-head. This may be seen in daws, choughs,
+pipits, and many other species. The raven suddenly closes his
+outspread wings, just as a man might drop his arms to his sides, and
+falls head downwards through the air like a stone bird cast down from
+its pedestal; but he falls obliquely, and, after falling for a space
+of twenty or thirty or more feet, he throws out his wings and floats
+for a few seconds on the air, then falls again, and then again, until
+the earth is reached.
+
+Let the reader imagine a series of invisible wires stretched, wire
+above wire, at a distance of thirty or forty yards apart, to a height
+of six or seven hundred yards from the earth. Let him next imagine an
+acrobat, infinitely more daring, more agile, and graceful in action
+than any performer he has ever seen, standing on the highest wire of
+all, in his black silk tights, against the blue sky, his arms
+outstretched; then dropping his arms to his sides and diving through
+the air to the next wire, then to the next, and so on successively
+until he comes to the earth. The feat would be similar, only on a
+larger scale and less beautiful than that of the ravens as I witnessed
+it again and again from the cliff on that windy day.
+
+While watching this magnificent display it troubled me to think that
+this pair of ravens would probably not long survive to be an ornament to
+the coast. Their nest, it has been stated, is regularly robbed, but I
+had been informed that in the summer of 1894 a third bird appeared, and
+it was then conjectured that the pair had succeeded in rearing one of
+their young. About a month later a raven was picked up dead on the coast
+by a boatman,--killed, it was believed, by his fellow-ravens,--and since
+then two birds only have been seen. There are only two more pair of
+ravens on the Somersetshire coast, and, as one of these has made no
+attempt to breed of late, we may take it that the raven population of
+this county, where the species was formerly common, has now been reduced
+to two pairs.
+
+Anxious to find out if there was any desire in the place to preserve the
+birds I had been observing, I made many inquiries in the neighbourhood,
+and was told that the landlord cared nothing about them, and that the
+tenant's only desire was to see the last of them. The tenant kept a
+large number of sheep, and always feared, one of his men told me, that
+the ravens would attack and kill his lambs. It was true that they had
+not done so as yet, but they might kill a lamb at any time; and,
+besides, there were the rabbits--the place swarmed with them--there was
+no doubt that a young rabbit was taken occasionally.
+
+Why, then, I asked, if they were so destructive, did not his master go
+out and shoot them at once? The man looked grave, and answered that
+his master would not do the killing himself, but would be very glad to
+see it done by some other person.
+
+How curious it is to find that the old superstitions about the raven
+and the evil consequences of inflicting wilful injury on the bird
+still survive, in spite of the fact that the species has been
+persecuted almost to extirpation!
+
+"Have you not read, sir," Don Quixote is made to say, "the annals and
+histories of England, wherein are renowned and famous exploits of King
+Arthur, of whom there goes a tradition, and a common one, all over
+that kingdom of Great Britain, that the king did not die, but that by
+magic art he was transformed into a raven, and that in process of time
+he shall reign again and recover his kingdom and sceptre, for which
+reason it cannot be proved that, from that day to this, any Englishman
+has killed a raven?"
+
+Now, it is certain that many Englishmen kill ravens, also that if the
+country people in England ever had any knowledge of King Arthur they
+have long forgotten it. Nevertheless this particular superstition
+still exists. I have met with it in various places, and found an
+instance of it only the other day in the Midlands, where the raven no
+longer breeds. Near Broadway, in Worcestershire, there is a farm
+called "Kite's Nest," where a pair of ravens bred annually up to about
+twenty-eight or thirty years ago, when the young were taken and the
+nest pulled down by three young men from the village: to this day it
+is related by some of the old people that the three young men all
+shortly came to bad ends. Near Broadway an old farmer told me that
+since the birds had been driven away from "Kite's Nest" he had not
+seen a raven in that part of the country until one made its appearance
+on his farm about four years ago. He was out one day with his gun,
+cautiously approaching a rabbit warren, when the bird suddenly got up
+from the mouth of a burrow, and coming straight to him, hovered for
+some seconds above his head, not more than thirty yards from him. "It
+looked as if he wanted to be shot at," said the old man, "but he's no
+bird to be shot at by I. 'Twould be bad for I to hurt a raven, and no
+mistake."
+
+Continuing my inquiries about the Somerset ravens, I found a man who
+was anxious that they should be spared. His real reason was that their
+eggs for him were golden eggs, for he lived near the cliff, and had an
+eye always on them, and had been successful for many years in robbing
+their nest, until he had at length come to look on these birds almost
+as his own property. Being his he loved them, and was glad to talk
+about them to me by the hour. Among other things he related that the
+ravens had for very near neighbours on the rocks a pair of peregrine
+falcons, and for several years there had always been peace between
+them. At length one winter afternoon he heard loud, angry cries, and
+presently two birds appeared above the cliff--a raven and a
+falcon--engaged in desperate battle and mounting higher and higher as
+they fought. The raven, he said, did not croak, but constantly uttered
+his harsh, powerful, barking cry, while the falcon emitted shrill,
+piercing cries that must have been audible two miles away. At
+intervals as they rose, wheeling round and round, they struck at each
+other, and becoming locked together fell like one bird for a
+considerable distance; then they would separate and mount again,
+shrieking and barking. At length they rose to so great a height that
+he feared to lose sight of them; but the struggle grew fiercer; they
+closed more often and fell longer distances, until they were near the
+earth once more, when they finally separated, flying away in opposite
+directions. He was afraid that the birds had fatally injured each
+other, but after two or three days he saw them again in their places.
+
+It was not possible for him, he told me, to describe the feelings he
+had while watching the birds. It was the most wonderful thing he had
+ever witnessed, and while the fight lasted he looked round from time
+to time, straining his eyes and praying that some one would come to
+share the sight with him, and because no one appeared he was
+miserable.
+
+I could well understand his feeling, and have not ceased to envy him
+his good fortune. Thinking, after leaving him, of the sublime conflict
+he had described, and of the raven's savage nature, Blake's question
+in his "Tiger, tiger, burning bright" came to my mind:
+
+   Did He who made the lamb make thee?
+
+We can but answer that it was no other; that when the Supreme Artist
+had fashioned it with bold, free lines out of the blue-black rock, he
+smote upon it with his mallet and bade it live and speak; and its
+voice when it spoke was in accord with its appearance and temper--the
+savage, human-like croak, and the loud, angry bark, as if a
+deep-chested man had barked like a blood-hound.
+
+How strange it seems, when we come to think of it, that the owners of
+great estates and vast parks, who are lovers of wild nature and animal
+life, and should therefore have been most anxious to preserve this
+bird, have allowed it to be extirpated! "A raven tree," says the
+author of the Birds of Wiltshire, "is no mean ornament to a park, and
+speaks of a wide domain and large timber, and an ancient family; for
+the raven is an aristocratic bird and cannot brook a confined property
+and trees of a young growth. Would that its predilection were more
+humoured and a secure retreat allowed it by the larger proprietors in
+the land!"
+
+The wide domains, the large timber, and the ancient families survive,
+but the raven has vanished. It occasionally takes a young rabbit. But
+the human ravens of Somerset--to wit, the men and boys who have as
+little right to the rabbits--do the same. I do not suppose that in
+this way fewer than ten thousand to twenty thousand rabbits are
+annually "picked up," or "poached"--if any one likes that word
+better--in the county. Probably a larger number. The existence of a
+pair of ravens on an estate of twenty or thirty thousand acres would
+not add much to the loss. No doubt the raven kills other creatures
+that are preserved for sport, but it does not appear that its
+extermination has improved things in Somerset. Thirty years ago, when
+black-game was more plentiful than it is now, the raven was to be met
+with throughout the county, and was abundant on Exmoor and the
+Quantocks. The old head keeper on the Forest of Exmoor told me that
+when he took the place, twenty-five years ago, ravens, carrion crows,
+buzzards, and hawks of various kinds were very abundant, and that the
+war he had waged against them for a quarter of a century had well-nigh
+extirpated all these species. He had kept a careful record of all
+birds killed, noting the species in every case, as he was paid for
+all, but the reward varied, the largest sum being given for the
+largest birds--ravens and buzzards. His book shows that in one year, a
+quarter of a century ago, he was paid for fifty-two ravens shot and
+trapped. After that the number annually diminished rapidly, and for
+several years past not one raven had been killed.
+
+At present one may go from end to end of the county, which is a long
+one, and find no raven; but in very many places, from North Devon to
+the borders of Gloucestershire, one would find accounts of "last
+ravens." Even in the comparatively populous neighbourhood of Wells at
+least three pairs of ravens bred annually down to about twenty years
+ago--one pair in the tower on Glastonbury Tor, one on the Ebor rocks,
+and one at Wookey Hole, two miles from the town.
+
+But Somerset is no richer in memories of "last ravens" than most
+English counties. A selection of the most interesting of such memories
+of ravens expelled from their ancestral breeding-places during the
+last half-century would fill a volume. In conclusion I will give one
+of the raven stories I picked up in Somerset. It was related to me by
+Dr Livett, who has been the parish doctor in Wells for over sixty
+years, and was able to boast, before retiring in 1898, that he was the
+oldest parish doctor in the kingdom. About the year 1841 he was sent
+for to attend a cottage woman at Priddy--a desolate little village
+high up in the Mendips, four or five miles from Wells. He had to
+remain some hours at the cottage, and about midnight he was with the
+other members of the family in the living-room, when a loud tapping
+was heard on the glazed window. As no one in the room moved, and the
+tapping continued at intervals, he asked why some one did not open the
+door. They replied that it was only the ravens, and went on to tell
+him that a pair of these birds roosted every night close by, and
+invariably when a light was seen burning at a late hour in any cottage
+they would come and tap at the window. The ravens had often been seen
+doing it, and their habit was so well known that no notice was taken
+of it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+OWLS IN A VILLAGE
+
+
+In November, when tramping in the Midlands, I paid a visit to a friend
+who had previously informed me, in describing the attractions of the
+small, remote, rustic village he lived in, that it was haunted by
+owls.
+
+The night-roving bird that inhabits the country village and its
+immediate neighbourhood is, in most cases, the white or barn owl, the
+owl that prefers a loft in a barn or a church tower for home and
+breeding-place to the hollow, ivied tree. The loft is dry and roomy,
+the best shelter from the storm and the tempest, although not always
+from the tempest of man's insensate animosity. The larger wood owl is
+supposed to have a different disposition, to be a dweller in deep
+woods, in love with "seclusion, gloom, and retirement,"--a thorough
+hermit. It is not so everywhere, certainly not in my friend's
+Gloucestershire village, where the white owl is unknown, while the
+brown or wood owl is quite common. But it is not a thickly wooded
+district; the woods there are small and widely separated. There is,
+however, a deal of old hedgerow timber and many large trees scattered
+about the fields. These the owl inhabits and is abundant simply
+because the gamekeeper is not there with his everlasting gun; while
+the farmers look on the bird rather as a friend than an enemy.
+
+To go a little further into the matter, there are no gamekeepers
+because the landowners cannot afford the expensive luxury of
+hand-reared pheasants. The country is, or was, a rich one; but the
+soil is clay so extraordinarily stiff that four or five horses are
+needed to draw a plough. It is, indeed, strange to see five huge
+horses, all in line, dragging a plough, and moving so slowly that,
+when looked at from a distance, they appear not to move at all. If
+here and there a little wheat is still grown, it is only because, as
+the farmers say, "We mun have straw." The land has mostly gone out of
+cultivation, many vacant farms could be had at about five shillings an
+acre, and the landlords would in many cases, when pay day came round,
+be glad to take half a crown and forgive the rest.
+
+The fields that were once ploughed are used for grazing, but the sheep
+and cattle on them are very few; one can only suppose that the land is
+not suitable for grazing purposes, or else that the farmers are too
+poor to buy sufficient stock.
+
+Viewed from some eminence, the wide, green country appears a veritable
+waste; the idle hedges enclosing vacant fields, the ancient scattered
+trees, the absence of life, the noonday quiet, where the silence is
+only broken at intervals by some distant bird voice, strangely impress
+the mind as by a vision of a time to come and of an England
+dispeopled. It is restful; there is a melancholy charm in it similar
+to that of a nature untouched by man, although not so strong. Here,
+everywhere are visible the marks of human toil and ownership--the
+wave-like, parallel ridges in the fields, now mantled with grass, and
+the hedges that cut up the surface of the earth into innumerable
+segments of various shapes and sizes. It is not wild, but there is
+something in it of the desolaton that accompanies wildness--a promise
+soon to be fulfilled, now that grass and herbage will have freedom to
+grow, and the hedges that have been trimmed for a thousand years will
+no longer be restrained from spreading.
+
+In this district the farmhouses and cottages are not scattered over
+the country. The farm-buildings, as a rule, form part of the village;
+the villages are small and mostly hidden from sight among embowering
+trees or in a coombe. From the high ground in some places it is
+possible to gaze over many miles of surrounding country and not see a
+human habitation; hours may sometimes be passed in such a spot without
+a human figure appearing in the landscape.
+
+The village I was staying at is called Willersey; the nearest to it, a
+little over a mile away, is Saintbury. This last was just such a
+pretty peaceful spot as would tempt a world-weary man to exclaim on
+first catching sight of it, "Here I could wish to end my days." A
+little old-world village, set among trees in the sheltering hollow of
+a deep coombe, consisting of thatched stone cottages, grouped in a
+pretty disorder; a modest ale-house; a parsonage overgrown with ivy;
+and the old stone church, stained yellow and grey with lichen, its low
+square tower overtopped by the surrounding trees. It was a pleasure
+merely to sit idle, thinking of nothing, on the higher part of the
+green slope, with that small centre of rustic life at my feet. For
+many hours of each day it was strangely silent, the hours during which
+the men were away at a distance in the fields, the children shut up in
+school, and the women in their cottages. An occasional bird voice
+alone broke the silence--the distant harsh call of a crow, or the
+sudden startled note of a magpie close at hand, a sound that resembles
+the broken or tremulous bleat of a goat. If an apple dropped from a
+tree in the village, its thud would be audible from end to end of the
+little crooked street in every cottage it would be known that an apple
+had dropped. On some days the sound of the threshing-machine would be
+heard a mile or two away; in that still atmosphere it was like the
+prolonged hum of some large fly magnified a million times. A musical
+sound, buzzing or clear, at times tremulous, rising or falling at
+intervals, it would swell and fill the world, then grow faint and die
+away. This is one of the artificial sounds which, like distant chimes,
+harmonise with rural scenes.
+
+Towards evening the children were all at play, their shrill cries and
+laughter sounding from all parts of the village. Then, when the sun
+had set and the landscape grew dim, they would begin to call to one
+another from all sides in imitation of the wood owl's hoot. During
+these autumn evenings the children at this spot appeared to drop
+naturally into the owl's note, just as in spring in all parts of
+England they take to mimicking the cuckoo's call. Children are like
+birds of a social and loquacious disposition in their fondness for a
+set call, a penetrative cry or note, by means of which they can
+converse at long distances. But they have no settled call of their
+own, no cry as distinctive as that of one of the lower animals. They
+mimic some natural sound. In the case of the children of these Midland
+villages it is the wood owl's clear prolonged note; and in every place
+where some animal with a striking and imitable voice is found its call
+is used by them. Where no such sound is heard, as in large towns, they
+invent a call; that is, one invents it and the others immediately take
+it up. It is curious that the human species, in spite of its long wild
+life in the past, should have no distinctive call, or calls,
+universally understood. Among savage tribes the men often mimic the
+cry of some wild animal as a call, just as our children do that of an
+owl by night, and of some diurnal species in the daytime. Other tribes
+have a call of their own, a shout or yell peculiar to the tribe; but
+it is not used instinctively--it is a mere symbol, and is artificial,
+like the long-drawn piercing coo-ee of the Australian colonists in the
+bush, and the abrupt Hi! with which we hail a cab, with other forms of
+halooing; or even the lupine gurgled yowl of the morning milkman.
+
+After dark the silence at the village was very profound until about
+half-past nine to ten o'clock, when the real owls, so easily to be
+distinguished from their human mockers, would begin their hooting--a
+single, long, uninflected note, and after it a silent interval of
+eight or ten seconds; then the succeeding longer, much more beautiful
+note, quavering at first, but growing steady and clear, with some
+slight modulation in it. The symbols hoo-hoo and to-whit to-who, as
+Shakespeare wrote it, stand for the wood owl's note in books; but you
+cannot spell the sound of an oaten straw, nor of the owl's pipe. There
+is no w in it, and no h and no t. It suggests some wind instrument
+that resembles the human voice, but a very un-English one--perhaps the
+high-pitched somewhat nasal voice of an Arab intoning a prayer to
+Allah. One cannot hit on the precise instrument, there are so many;
+perhaps it is obsolete, and the owl was taught his song by lovers in
+the long ago, who wooed at twilight in a forgotten tongue,
+
+       And gave the soft winds a voice,
+   With instruments of unremembered forms.
+
+No, that cannot be; for the wood owl's music is doubtless older than
+any instrument made by hands to be blown by human lips. Listening by
+night to their concert, the many notes that come from far and near,
+human-like, yet airy, delicate, mysterious, one could imagine that the
+sounds had a meaning and a message to us; that, like the fairy-folk in
+Mr Yeats's Celtic lyric, the singers were singing--
+
+   We who are old, old and gay,
+         O, so old;
+   Thousands of years, thousands of years,
+         If all were told!
+
+The fairies certainly have a more understandable way of putting it
+than the geologists and the anthropologists when we ask them to tell
+us how long it is since Palaeolithic man listened to the hooting of the
+wood owl. Has this sound the same meaning for us that it had for
+him--the human being that did not walk erect, and smile, and look on
+heaven, but went with a stoop, looking on the earth? No, and Yes.
+Standing alone under the great trees in the dark still nights, the
+sound seems to increase the feeling of loneliness, to make the gloom
+deeper, the silence more profound. Turning our visions inward on such
+occasions, we are startled with a glimpse of the night-side of nature
+in the soul: we have with us strange unexpected guests, fantastic
+beings that are in no way related to our lives; dead and buried since
+childhood, they have miraculously been restored to life. When we are
+back in the candlelight and firelight, and when the morrow dawns,
+these children of night and the unsubstantial appearance of things
+
+                      fade away
+   Into the light of common day.
+
+The villagers of Saintbury are, however, still in a somewhat primitive
+mental condition; the light of common day does not deliver them from
+the presence of phantoms, as the following instance will show.
+
+Near Willersey there is a group of very large old elm-trees which is a
+favourite meeting-place of the owls, and one very dark starless night,
+about ten o'clock, I had been listening to them, and after they ceased
+hooting I remained for half an hour standing motionless in the same
+place. At length, in the direction of Saintbury, I heard the dull
+sound of heavy stumbling footsteps coming towards me over the rough,
+ridgy field. Nearer and nearer the man came, until, arriving at the
+hedge close to which I stood, he scrambled through, muttering
+maledictions on the thorns that scratched and tore him; then, catching
+sight of me at a distance of two or three yards, he started back and
+stood still very much astonished at seeing a motionless human figure
+at that spot. I greeted him, and, to explain my presence, remarked
+that I had been listening to the owls.
+
+"Owls!--listening to the owls!" he exclaimed, staring at me. After a
+while he added, "We have been having too much of the owls over at
+Saintbury." Had I heard, he asked, about the young woman who had
+dropped down dead a week or two ago, after hearing an owl hooting near
+her cottage in the daytime? Well, the owl had been hooting again in
+the same tree, and no one knew who it was for and what to expect next.
+The village was in an excited state about it, and all the children had
+gathered near the tree and thrown stones into it, but the owl had
+stubbornly refused to come out.
+
+That about the young woman he had spoken of is a queer little story to
+read in this enlightened land. She was apparently in very good health,
+a wife, and the mother of a small child; but a few weeks before her
+sudden death a strange thing occurred to trouble her mind. One
+afternoon, when sitting alone in her cottage taking tea, she saw a
+cricket come in at the open door, and run straight into the middle of
+the room. There it remained motionless, and without stirring from her
+seat she took a few moist tea-leaves and threw them down near the
+welcome guest. The cricket moved up to the leaves, and when it touched
+them and appeared just about to begin sucking their moisture, to her
+dismay it turned aside, ran away out at the door, and disappeared. She
+informed all her neighbours of this startling occurrence, and sadly
+spoke of an aunt who was living at another village and was known to be
+in bad health. "It must be for her," she said; "we'll soon be hearing
+bad news of her, I'm thinking." But no bad news came, and when she was
+beginning to believe that the strange cricket that had refused to
+remain in the house had proved a false prophet, the warning of the owl
+came to startle her afresh. At noonday she heard it hooting in the
+great horse-chestnut overgrown with ivy that stands at the roadside,
+close to her cottage. The incident was discussed by the villagers with
+their usual solemnity and head-shakings, and now the young woman gave
+up all hopes of her sick aunt's recovery; for that one of her people
+was going to die was certain, and it could be no other than that
+ailing one. And, after all, the message and warning was for her and
+not the aunt. Not many days after the owl had hooted in broad
+daylight, she dropped down dead in her cottage while engaged in some
+domestic work.
+
+On the following morning I went with the friend I was visiting at
+Willersey to Saintbury, and the story heard overnight was confirmed.
+The owl had been hooting in the daytime in the same old horse-chestnut
+tree from which it had a short time ago foretold the young woman's
+death. One of the villagers, who was engaged in repairing the thatch
+of a cottage close to the tree, informed us that the owl's hooting had
+not troubled him in the least. Owls, he truly said, often hoot in the
+daytime during the autumn months, and he did not believe that it meant
+death for some one.
+
+This sceptical fellow, it is hardly necessary to say, was a young man
+who had spent a good deal of his time away from the village.
+
+At Willersey, a Mr Andrews, a lover of birds who owns a large garden and
+orchard in the village, gave me an entertaining account of a pet wood
+owl he once had. He had it as a young bird and never confined it. As a
+rule it spent most of the daylight hours in an apple loft, coming forth
+when the sun was low to fly about the grounds until it found him, when
+it would perch on his shoulder and spend the evening in his company. In
+one thing this owl differed from most pet birds which are allowed to
+have their liberty: he made no difference between the people of the
+house and those who were not of it; he would fly on to anybody's
+shoulder, although he only addressed his hunger-cry to those who were
+accustomed to feed him. As he roamed at will all over the place he
+became well known to every one, and on account of his beauty and perfect
+confidence he grew to be something of a village pet. But short days with
+long, dark evenings--and how dark they can be in a small, tree-shaded,
+lampless village!--wrought a change in the public feeling about the owl.
+He was always abroad in the evening, gliding about unseen in the
+darkness on downy silent wings, and very suddenly dropping on to the
+shoulder of any person--man, woman, or child--who happened to be out of
+doors. Men would utter savage maledictions when they felt the demon
+claws suddenly clutch them; girls shrieked and fled to the nearest
+cottage, into which they would rush, palpitating with terror. Then there
+would be a laugh, for it was only the tame owl; but the same terror
+would be experienced on the next occasion, and young women and children
+were afraid to venture out after nightfall lest the ghostly creature
+with luminous eyes should pop down upon them.
+
+At length, one morning the bird came not back from his night-wandering,
+and after two days and nights, during which he had not been seen, he was
+given up for lost. On the third day Mr Andrews was in his orchard, when,
+happening to pass near a clump of bushes, he heard the owl's note of
+recognition very faintly uttered. The poor bird had been in hiding at
+that spot the whole time, and when taken up was found to be in a very
+weak condition and to have one leg broken. No doubt one of the villagers
+on whose shoulders it had sought to alight, had struck it down with his
+stick and caused its injury. The bone was skilfully repaired and the
+bird tenderly cared for, and before long he was well again and strong as
+ever; but a change had come over his disposition. His confidence in his
+human fellow-creatures was gone; he now regarded them all--even those of
+the house--with suspicion, opening wide his eyes and drawing a little
+back when any person approached him. Never more did he alight on any
+person's shoulder, though his evenings were spent as before in flying
+about the village. Insensibly his range widened and he became wilder.
+Human companionship, no longer pleasant, ceased to be necessary; and at
+length he found a mate who was willing to overlook his pauper past, and
+with her he went away to live his wild life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE STRANGE AND BEAUTIFUL SHELDRAKE
+
+
+At the head of the Cheddar valley, a couple of miles from the
+cathedral city of Wells, the Somerset Axe is born, gushing out
+noisily, a mighty volume of clear cold water, from a cavern in a black
+precipitous rock on the hillside. This cavern is called Wookey Hole,
+and above it the rough wall is draped with ivy and fern, and many
+small creeping plants and flowery shrubs rooted in the crevices; and
+in the holes in the rock the daws have their nests. They are a
+numerous and a vociferous colony, but the noise of their loudest
+cawings, when they rush out like a black cloud and are most excited,
+is almost drowned by the louder roar of the torrent beneath--the
+river's great cry of liberty and joy on issuing from the blackness in
+the hollow of the hills into the sunshine of heaven and the verdure of
+that beautiful valley. The Axe finishes its course fifteen miles away,
+for 'tis a short river, but they are pleasant miles in one of the
+fairest vales in the west of England, rich in cattle and in corn. And
+at the point where it flows into the Severn Sea stands Brean Down, a
+huge isolated hill, the last of the Mendip range on that side. It has
+a singular appearance: it might be likened in its form to a
+hippopotamus standing on the flat margin of an African lake, its
+breast and mouth touching the water, and all its body belly-deep in
+the mud; it is, in fact, a hill or a promontory united to the mainland
+by a strip of low flat land--a huge, oblong, saddle-backed hill
+projected into the sea towards Wales. Down at its foot, at the point
+where it touches the mainland, close to the mouth of the Axe, there is
+a farmhouse, and the farmer is the tenant of the entire hill, and uses
+it as a sheep-walk. The sheep and rabbits and birds are the only
+inhabitants. I remember a delightful experience I had one cold windy
+but very bright spring morning near the farmhouse. There is there, at
+a spot where one is able to ascend the steep hill, a long strip of
+rock that looks like the wall of a gigantic ruined castle, rough and
+black, draped with ancient ivy and crowned with furze and bramble and
+thorn. Here, coming out of the cold wind to the shelter of this giant
+ivy-draped black wall, I stood still to enjoy the sensations of warmth
+and a motionless air, when high above appeared a swift-moving little
+cloud of linnets, seemingly blown across the sky by the gale; but
+quite suddenly, when directly over me, the birds all came straight
+down, to drop like a shower of small stones into the great masses of
+ivy and furze and bramble. And no sooner had they settled, vanishing
+into that warm and windless greenery, than they simultaneously burst
+into such a concert of sweetest wild linnet music, that I was
+enchanted, and thought that never in all the years I had spent in the
+haunts of wild birds had I heard anything so fairy-like and beautiful.
+
+On this hill, or down, at the highest point, you have the Severn Sea
+before you, and, beyond, the blue mountains of Glamorganshire, and, on
+the shore, the town of Cardiff made beautiful by distance, vaguely
+seen in the blue haze and shimmering sunlight like a dream city. On
+your right hand, on your own side of the narrow sea, you have a good
+view of the big young growing town of Weston-super-Mare--Bristol's
+Margate or Brighton, as it has been called. It is built of Bath stone,
+and at this distance looks grey, darkened with the slate roofs, and a
+little strange; but the sight is not unpleasant, and if you wish to
+retain that pleasant impression, go not nearer to it than Brean Down,
+since on a closer view its aspect changes, and it is simply ugly. On
+your left hand you look over long miles, long leagues, of low flat
+country, extending to the Parret River, and beyond it to the blue
+Quantock range. That low land is on a level with the sea, and is the
+flattest bit of country in England, not even excepting the Ely
+district. Apart from the charm which flatness has in itself for some
+persons--it has for me a very great charm on account of early
+associations--there is much here to attract the lover of nature. It is
+the chief haunt and paradise of the reed warbler, one of our sweetest
+songsters, and here his music may be heard amid more perfect
+surroundings than in any other haunt of the bird known to me in
+England.
+
+This low level strip of country is mostly pasture-land, and is drained
+by endless ditches, full of reeds and sedges growing in the stagnant
+sherry-coloured water; dwarf hawthorn grows on the banks of the
+ditches, and is the only tree vegetation. Standing on one of the wide
+flat green fields or spaces, at a distance from the sandy dyke or
+ditch, it is strangely silent. Unless a lark is singing near, there is
+no sound at all; but it is wonderfully bright and fragrant where the
+green level earth is yellowed over with cowslips, and you get the
+deliciousness of that flower in fullest measure. On coming to the dyke
+you are no longer in a silent land with fragrance as its principal
+charm--you are in the midst of a perpetual flow and rush of sound. You
+may sit or lie there on the green bank by the hour and it will not
+cease; and so sweet and beautiful is it, that after a day spent in
+rambling in such a place with these delicate spring delights, on
+returning to the woods and fields and homesteads the songs of thrush
+and blackbird sound in the ear as loud and coarse as the cackling of
+fowls and geese.
+
+It is in this district, from Brean Down westwards along the coast to
+Dunster, that I have been best able to observe and enjoy the beautiful
+sheldrake--almost the only large bird which is now permitted to exist
+in Somerset.
+
+The sheldrake of the British Islands, called the common sheldrake (or
+sheld-duck) in the natural history books, for no good reason, since
+there is but one, is now becoming common enough as an ornamental
+waterfowl. It is to be seen in so many parks and private grounds all
+over the country that the sight of it in its conspicuous plumage must
+be pretty familiar to people generally. And many of those who know it
+best as a tame bird would, perhaps, say that the descriptive epithets
+of strange and beautiful do not exactly fit it. They would say that it
+has a striking appearance, or that it is peculiar and handsome in a
+curious way; or they might describe it as an abnormally slender and
+elegant-looking Aylesbury duck, whiter than that domestic bird, with a
+crimson beak and legs, dark-green glossy head, and sundry patches of
+chestnut-red and black on its snowy plumage. In calling it "strange" I
+was thinking of its manners and customs rather than of the singularity
+of its appearance.
+
+As to its beauty, those who know it in a state of nature, in its
+haunts on the sea coast, will agree that it is one of the handsomest
+of our large wild birds. It cannot now be said that it is common,
+except in a few favoured localities. On the south coast it is all but
+extinct as a breeding species, and on the east side of England it is
+becoming increasingly rare, even in spots so well suited to it as Holy
+Island, and the coast at Bamborough Castle, with its great sand-hills.
+These same hills that look on the sea, and are greener than ivy with
+the everlasting green of the rough marram grass that covers them,
+would be a very paradise to the sheldrake, but for man--vile man!--who
+watches him through a spy-glass in the breeding season to rob him of
+his eggs. The persecuted bird has grown exceedingly shy and cautious,
+but go he must to his burrow in the dunes, and the patient watcher
+sees him at a great distance on account of his conspicuous white
+plumage, and marks the spot, then takes his spade to dig down to the
+hidden eggs.
+
+On the Somerset coast the bird is not so badly off, and I have had
+many happy days with him there. Simply to watch the birds at feed,
+when the tide goes out and they are busy searching for the small
+marine creatures they live on among the stranded seaweed, is a great
+pleasure. At such times they are most active and loquacious, uttering
+a variety of wild goose-like sounds, frequently rising to pursue one
+another in circles, or to fly up and down the coast in pairs, or
+strings of half a dozen birds, with a wonderfully graceful flight. If,
+after watching this sea-fowl by the sea, a person will go to some park
+water to look on the same bird, pinioned and tame, sitting or
+standing, or swimming about in a quiet, listless way, he will be
+amazed at the difference in its appearance. The tame bird is no bigger
+than a domestic duck; the wild sheldrake, flying about in the strong
+sunshine, looks almost as large as a goose. A similar illusion is
+produced in the case of some other large birds. Thus, the common
+buzzard, when rising in circles high above us, at times appears as big
+as an eagle, and it has been conjectured that this magnifying effect,
+which gives something of sublimity to the soaring buzzard, is caused
+by the sunlight passing through the semi-translucent wing and tail
+feathers. In the case of the sheldrake, the exaggerated size may be an
+effect of strong sunlight on a flying white object. Seen on the wing
+at a distance the plumage appears entirely of a surpassing whiteness,
+the dark patches of chestnut, black, and deep green colour showing
+only when the bird is near, or when it alights and folds its white
+wings.
+
+When the tide has covered their feeding-ground on the coast, the
+sheldrakes are accustomed to visit the low green pasture-lands, and
+may be seen in small flocks feeding like geese on the clover and
+grass. Here one day I saw about a dozen sheldrakes in the midst of an
+immense congregation of rooks, daws, and starlings feeding among some
+cows. It was a curious gathering, and the red Devons, shining white
+sheldrakes, and black rooks on the bright green grass, produced a
+singular effect.
+
+Best of all it is to observe the birds when breeding in May. Brean
+Down is an ancient favourite breeding-site, and the birds breed there
+in the rabbit holes, and sometimes under a thick furze-bush on the
+ground. At another spot on this coast I have had the rare good fortune
+to find a number of pairs breeding at one spot on private enclosed
+land, where I could approach them very closely, and watch them any day
+for hours at a stretch, studying their curious sign-language, about
+which nothing, to my knowledge, has hitherto been written. There were
+about thirty pairs, and their breeding-holes were mostly
+rabbit-burrows scattered about on a piece of sandy ground, about an
+acre and a half in extent, almost surrounded by water. When I watched
+them the birds were laying; and at about ten o'clock in the morning
+they would begin to come in from the sea in pairs, all to settle down
+at one spot; and by creeping some distance at the water-side among the
+rushes, I could get within forty yards of them, and watch them by the
+hour without being discovered by them. In an hour or so there would be
+forty or fifty birds forming a flock, each couple always keeping close
+together, some sitting on the short grass, others standing, all very
+quiet. At length one bird in the flock, a male, would all at once
+begin to move his head in a slow, measured manner from side to side,
+like a pianist swaying his body in time to his own music. If no notice
+was taken of this motion by the duck sitting by his side dozing on the
+grass, the drake, would take a few steps forward and place himself
+directly before her, so as to compel her to give attention, and rock
+more vigorously than ever, haranguing her, as it were, although
+without words; the meaning of it all being that it was time for her to
+get up and go to her burrow to lay her egg. I do not know any other
+species in which the male takes it on himself to instruct his mate on
+a domestic matter which one would imagine to be exclusively within her
+own province; and some ornithologists may doubt that I have given a
+right explanation of these curious doings of the sheldrake. But mark
+what follows: The duck at length gets up, in a lazy, reluctant way,
+perhaps, and stretches a wing and a leg, and then after awhile sways
+her head two or three times, as if to say that she is ready. At once
+the drake, followed by her, walks off, and leads the way to the
+burrow, which may be a couple of hundred yards away; and during the
+walk she sometimes stops, whereupon he at once turns back and begins
+the swaying motion again. At last, arriving at the mouth of the
+burrow, he steps aside and invites her to enter, rocking himself
+again, and anon bending his head down and looking into the cavity,
+then drawing back again; and at last, after so much persuasion on his
+part, she lowers her head, creeps quietly down and disappears within.
+Left alone, the drake stations himself at the burrow's mouth, with
+head raised like a sentinel on duty; but after five or ten minutes he
+slowly walks back to the flock, and settles down for a quiet nap among
+his fellows. They are all married couples; and every drake among them,
+when in some mysterious way he knows the time has come for the egg to
+be laid, has to go through the same long ceremonious performance, with
+variations according to his partner's individual disposition.
+
+It is amusing to see at intervals a pair march off from the flock; and
+one wonders whether the others, whose turn will come by and by, pass
+any remarks; but the dumb conversation at the burrow's mouth is always
+most delightful to witness. Sometimes the lady bird exhibits an
+extreme reluctance, and one can imagine her saying, "I have come thus
+far just to please you, but you'll never persuade me to go down into
+that horrid dark hole. If I must lay an egg, I'll just drop it out
+here on the grass and let it take its chance."
+
+It is rather hard on the drake; but he never loses his temper, never
+boxes her ears with his carmine red beak, or thrashes her with his
+shining white wings, nor does he tell her that she is just like a
+woman--an illogical fool. He is most gentle and considerate, full of
+distress and sympathy for her, and tells her again what he has said
+before, but in a different way; he agrees with her that it is dark and
+close down there away from the sweet sunlight, but that it is an old,
+old custom of the sheldrakes to breed in holes, and has its
+advantages; and that if she will only overcome her natural repugnance
+and fear of the dark, in that long narrow tunnel, when she is once
+settled down on the nest and feels the cold eggs growing warm again
+under her warm body she will find that it is not so bad after all.
+
+And in the end he prevails; and bowing her pretty head she creeps
+quietly down and disappears, while he remains on guard at the
+door--for a little while.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+GEESE: AN APPRECIATION AND A MEMORY
+
+
+One November evening, in the neighbourhood of Lyndhurst, I saw a flock
+of geese marching in a long procession, led, as their custom is, by a
+majestical gander; they were coming home from their feeding-ground in
+the forest, and when I spied them were approaching their owner's
+cottage. Arrived at the wooden gate of the garden in front of the
+cottage, the leading bird drew up square before it, and with repeated
+loud screams demanded admittance. Pretty soon, in response to the
+summons, a man came out of the cottage, walked briskly down the garden
+path and opened the gate, but only wide enough to put his right leg
+through; then, placing his foot and knee against the leading bird, he
+thrust him roughly back; as he did so three young geese pressed
+forward and were allowed to pass in; then the gate was slammed in the
+face of the gander and the rest of his followers, and the man went
+back to the cottage. The gander's indignation was fine to see, though
+he had most probably experienced the same rude treatment on many
+previous occasions. Drawing up to the gate again he called more loudly
+than before; then deliberately lifted a leg, and placing his broad
+webbed foot like an open hand against the gate actually tried to push
+it open! His strength was not sufficient; but he continued to push and
+to call until the man returned to open the gate and let the birds go
+in.
+
+It was an amusing scene, and the behaviour of the bird struck me as
+characteristic. It was this lofty spirit of the goose and strict
+adhesion to his rights, as well as his noble appearance and the
+stately formality and deliberation of his conduct, that caused me very
+long ago to respect and admire him above all our domestic birds.
+Doubtless from the aesthetic point of view other domesticated species
+are his superiors in some things: the mute swan, "floating double,"
+graceful and majestical, with arched neck and ruffled scapulars; the
+oriental pea-fowl in his glittering mantle; the helmeted guinea-fowl,
+powdered with stars, and the red cock with his military bearing--a
+shining Elizabethan knight of the feathered world, singer, lover, and
+fighter. It is hardly to be doubted that, mentally, the goose is above
+all these; and to my mind his, too, is the nobler figure; but it is a
+very familiar figure, and we have not forgotten the reason of its
+presence among us. He satisfies a material want only too generously,
+and on this account is too much associated in the mind with mere
+flavours. We keep a swan or a peacock for ornament; a goose for the
+table--he is the Michaelmas and Christmas bird. A somewhat similar
+debasement has fallen on the sheep in Australia. To the man in the
+bush he is nothing but a tallow-elaborating organism, whose destiny it
+is to be cast, at maturity, into the melting vat, and whose chief use
+it is to lubricate the machinery of civilisation. It a little shocks,
+and at the same time amuses, our Colonial to find that great artists
+in the parent country admire this most unpoetic beast, and waste their
+time and talents in painting it.
+
+Some five or six years ago, in the Alpine Journal, Sir Martin Conway
+gave a lively and amusing account of his first meeting with A. D.
+M'Cormick, the artist who subsequently accompanied him to the
+Karakoram Himalayas. "A friend," he wrote, "came to me bringing in his
+pocket a crumpled-up water sketch or impression of a lot of geese. I
+was struck by the breadth of the treatment, and I remember saying that
+the man who could see such monumental magnificence in a flock of geese
+ought to be the kind of man to paint mountains, and render somewhat of
+their majesty."
+
+I will venture to say that he looked at the sketch or impression with
+the artist's clear eye, but had not previously so looked at the living
+creature; or had not seen it clearly, owing to the mist of images--if
+that be a permissible word--that floated between it and his
+vision--remembered flavours and fragrances, of rich meats, and of sage
+and onions and sweet apple sauce. When this interposing mist is not
+present, who can fail to admire the goose--that stately bird-shaped
+monument of clouded grey or crystal white marble, to be seen standing
+conspicuous on any village green or common in England? For albeit a
+conquered bird, something of the ancient wild and independent spirit
+survives to give him a prouder bearing than we see in his fellow
+feathered servants. He is the least timid of our domestic birds, yet
+even at a distance he regards your approach in an attitude distinctly
+reminiscent of the grey-lag goose, the wariest of wild fowl,
+stretching up his neck and standing motionless and watchful, a
+sentinel on duty. Seeing him thus, if you deliberately go near him he
+does not slink or scuttle away, as other domestic birds of meaner
+spirits do, but boldly advances to meet and challenge you. How keen
+his senses are, how undimmed by ages of captivity the ancient instinct
+of watchfulness is in him, every one must know who has slept in lonely
+country houses. At some late hour of the night the sleeper was
+suddenly awakened by the loud screaming of the geese; they had
+discovered the approach of some secret prowler, a fox perhaps, or a
+thievish tramp or gipsy, before a dog barked. In many a lonely
+farmhouse throughout the land you will be told that the goose is the
+better watch-dog.
+
+When we consider this bird purely from the aesthetic point of view--and
+here I am speaking of geese generally, all of the thirty species of
+the sub-family Anserinae, distributed over the cold and temperate
+regions of the globe--we find that several of them possess a rich and
+beautiful colouring, and, if not so proud, often a more graceful
+carriage than our domestic bird, or its original, the wild grey-lag
+goose. To know these birds is to greatly admire them, and we may now
+add that this admiration is no new thing on the earth. It is the
+belief of distinguished Egyptologists that a fragmentary fresco,
+discovered at Medum, dates back to a time at least four thousand years
+before the Christian era, and is probably the oldest picture in the
+world. It is a representation of six geese, of three different
+species, depicted with marvellous fidelity, and a thorough
+appreciation of form and colouring.
+
+Among the most distinguished in appearance and carriage of the
+handsome exotic species is the Magellanic goose, one of the five or
+six species of the Antarctic genus Chloephaga, found in Patagonia and
+the Magellan Islands. One peculiarity of this bird is that the sexes
+differ in colouring, the male being white, with grey mottlings,
+whereas the prevailing colour of the female is a ruddy brown,--a fine
+rich colour set off with some white, grey, intense cinnamon, and
+beautiful black mottlings. Seen on the wing the flock presents a
+somewhat singular appearance, as of two distinct species associating
+together, as we may see when by chance gulls and rooks, or sheldrakes
+and black scoters, mix in one flock.
+
+This fine bird has long been introduced into this country, and as it
+breeds freely it promises to become quite common. I can see it any
+day; but these exiles, pinioned and imprisoned in parks, are not quite
+like the Magellanic geese I was intimate with in former years, in
+Patagonia and in the southern pampas of Buenos Ayres, where they
+wintered every year in incredible numbers, and were called "bustards"
+by the natives. To see them again, as I have seen them, by day and all
+day long in their thousands, and to listen again by night to their
+wild cries, I would willingly give up, in exchange, all the
+invitations to dine which I shall receive, all the novels I shall
+read, all the plays I shall witness, in the next three years; and some
+other miserable pleasures might be thrown in. Listening to the birds
+when, during migration, on a still frosty night, they flew low,
+following the course of some river, flock succeeding flock all night
+long; or heard from a herdsman's hut on the pampas, when thousands of
+the birds had encamped for the night on the plain hard by, the effect
+of their many voices (like that of their appearance when seen flying)
+was singular, as well as beautiful, on account of the striking
+contrasts in the various sounds they uttered. On clear frosty nights
+they are most loquacious, and their voices may be heard by the hour,
+rising and falling, now few, and now many taking part in the endless
+confabulation--a talkee-talkee and concert in one; a chatter as of
+many magpies; the solemn deep, honk-honk, the long, grave note
+changing to a shuddering sound; and, most wonderful, the fine silvery
+whistle of the male, steady or tremulous, now long and now short,
+modulated a hundred ways--wilder and more beautiful than the night-cry
+of the widgeon, brighter than the voice of any shore bird, or any
+warbler, thrush or wren, or the sound of any wind instrument.
+
+It is probable that those who have never known the Magellanic goose in
+a state of nature are best able to appreciate its fine qualities in
+its present semi-domestic state in England. At all events the
+enthusiasm with which a Londoner spoke of this bird in my presence
+some time ago came to me rather as a surprise. It was at the studio in
+St John's Wood of our greatest animal painter, one Sunday evening, and
+the talk was partly about birds, when an elderly gentleman said that
+he was pleased to meet some one who would be able to tell him the name
+of a wonderful bird he had lately seen in St James's Park. His
+description was vague; he could not say what its colour was, nor what
+sort of beak it had, nor whether its feet were webbed or not; but it
+was a large tall bird, and there were two of them. It was the way this
+bird had comported itself towards him that had so taken him. As he
+went through the park at the side of the enclosure, he caught sight of
+the pair some distance away on the grass, and the birds, observing
+that he had stopped in his walk to regard them, left off feeding, or
+whatever they were doing, and came to him. Not to be fed--it was
+impossible to believe that they had any such motive; it was solely and
+purely a friendly feeling towards him which caused them immediately to
+respond to his look, and to approach him, to salute him, in their way.
+And when they had approached to within three or four yards of where he
+stood, advancing with a quiet dignity, and had then uttered a few soft
+low sounds, accompanied with certain graceful gestures, they turned
+and left him; but not abruptly, with their backs towards him--oh, no,
+they did nothing so common; they were not like other birds--they were
+perfect in everything; and, moving from him, half paused at intervals,
+half turning first to one side then the other, inclining their heads
+as they went. Here our old friend rose and paced up and down the
+floor, bowing to this side and that and making other suitable
+gestures, to try to give us some faint idea of the birds' gentle
+courtesy and exquisite grace. It was, he assured us, most astonishing;
+the birds' gestures and motions were those of a human being, but in
+their perfection immeasurably superior to anything of the kind to be
+seen in any Court in Europe or the world.
+
+The birds he had described, I told him, were no doubt Upland Geese.
+
+"Geese!" he exclaimed, in a tone of surprise, and disgust. "Are you
+speaking seriously? Geese! Oh, no, nothing like geese--a sort of
+ostrich!"
+
+It was plain that he had no accurate knowledge of birds; if he had
+caught sight of a kingfisher or green woodpecker, he would probably
+have described it as a sort of peacock. Of the goose, he only knew
+that it is a ridiculous, awkward creature, proverbial for its
+stupidity, although very good to eat; and it wounded him to find that
+any one could think so meanly of his intelligence and taste as to
+imagine him capable of greatly admiring any bird called a goose, or
+any bird in any way related to a goose.
+
+I will now leave the subject of the beautiful antarctic goose, the
+"bustard" of the horsemen of the pampas, and "sort of ostrich" of our
+Londoner, to relate a memory of my early years, and of how I first
+became an admirer of the familiar domestic goose. Never since have I
+looked on it in such favourable conditions.
+
+Two miles from my home there stood an old mud-built house, thatched
+with rushes, and shaded by a few ancient half-dead trees. Here lived a
+very old woman with her two unmarried daughters, both withered and
+grey as their mother; indeed, in appearance, they were three amiable
+sister witches, all very very old. The high ground on which the house
+stood sloped down to an extensive reed- and rush-grown marsh, the
+source of an important stream; it was a paradise of wild fowl, swan,
+roseate spoonbill, herons white and herons grey, ducks of half a dozen
+species, snipe and painted snipe, and stilt, plover and godwit; the
+glossy ibis, and the great crested blue ibis with a powerful voice.
+All these interested, I might say fascinated, me less than the tame
+geese that spent most of their time in or on the borders of the marsh
+in the company of the wild birds. The three old women were so fond of
+their geese that they would not part with one for love or money; the
+most they would ever do would be to present an egg, in the laying
+season, to some visitor as a special mark of esteem.
+
+It was a grand spectacle, when the entire flock, numbering upwards of
+a thousand, stood up on the marsh and raised their necks on a person's
+approach. It was grand to hear them, too, when, as often happened,
+they all burst out in a great screaming concert. I can hear that
+mighty uproar now!
+
+With regard to the character of the sound: we have seen in a former
+chapter that the poet Cowper thought not meanly of the domestic grey
+goose as a vocalist, when heard on a common or even in a farmyard. But
+there is a vast difference in the effect produced on the mind when the
+sound is heard amid its natural surroundings in silent desert places.
+Even hearing them as I did, from a distance, on that great marsh,
+where they existed almost in a state of nature, the sound was not
+comparable to that of the perfectly wild bird in his native haunts.
+The cry of the wild grey-lag was described by Robert Gray in his Birds
+of the West of Scotland. Of the bird's voice he writes: "My most
+recent experiences (August 1870) in the Outer Hebrides remind me of a
+curious effect which I noted in connection with the call-note of this
+bird in these quiet solitudes. I had reached South Uist, and taken up
+my quarters under the hospitable roof of Mr Birnie, at Grogarry ...
+and in the stillness of the Sabbath morning following my arrival was
+aroused from sleep by the cries of the grey-lags as they flew past the
+house. Their voices, softened by distance, sounded not unpleasantly,
+reminding me of the clanging of church bells in the heart of a large
+town."
+
+It is a fact, I think, that to many minds the mere wildness
+represented by the voice of a great wild bird in his lonely haunts is
+so grateful, that the sound itself, whatever its quality may be,
+delights, and is more than the most beautiful music. A certain
+distinguished man of letters and Church dignitary was once asked, a
+friend tells me, why he lived away from society, buried in the
+loneliest village on the dreary East coast; at that spot where,
+standing on the flat desolate shore you look over the North Sea, and
+have no land between you and far Spitzbergen. He answered, that he
+made his home there because it was the only spot in England in which,
+sitting in his own room, he could listen to the cry of the pink-footed
+goose. Only those who have lost their souls will fail to understand.
+
+The geese I have described, belonging to the three old women, could
+fly remarkably well, and eventually some of them, during their flights
+down stream, discovered at a distance of about eight miles from home
+the immense, low, marshy plain bordering the sea-like Plata River.
+There were no houses and no people in that endless green, wet land,
+and they liked it so well that they visited it more and more often, in
+small flocks of a dozen to twenty birds, going and coming all day
+long, until all knew the road. It was observed that when a man on foot
+or on horseback appeared in sight of one of these flocks, the birds at
+this distance from home were as wary as really wild birds, and watched
+the stranger's approach in alarm, and when he was still at a
+considerable distance rose and flew away beyond sight.
+
+The old dames grieved at this wandering spirit in their beloved birds,
+and became more and more anxious for their safety. But by this time
+the aged mother was fading visibly into the tomb, though so slowly
+that long months went by while she lay on her bed, a weird-looking
+object--I remember her well--leaner, greyer, more ghost-like, than the
+silent, lean, grey heron on the marsh hard by. And at last she faded
+out of life, aged, it was said by her descendants, a hundred and ten
+years; and, after she was dead, it was found that of that great
+company of noble birds there remained only a small remnant of about
+forty, and these were probably incapable of sustained flight. The
+others returned no more; but whether they met their death from duck
+and swan shooters in the marshes, or had followed the great river down
+to the sea, forgetting their home, was never known. For about a year
+after they had ceased going back, small flocks were occasionally seen
+in the marshes, very wild and strong on the wing, but even these, too,
+vanished at last.
+
+It is probable that, but for powder and shot, the domestic goose of
+Europe, by occasionally taking to a feral life in thinly-settled
+countries, would ere this have become widely distributed over the
+earth.
+
+And one wonders if in the long centuries running to thousands of
+years, of tame flightless existence, the strongest impulse of the wild
+migrant has been wholly extinguished in the domestic goose? We regard
+him as a comparatively unchangeable species, and it is probable that
+the unexercised faculty is not dead but sleeping, and would wake again
+in favourable circumstances. The strength of the wild bird's passion
+has been aptly described by Miss Dora Sigerson in her little poem,
+"The Flight of the Wild Geese." The poem, oddly enough, is not about
+geese but about men--wild Irishmen who were called Wild Geese; but the
+bird's powerful impulse and homing faculty are employed as an
+illustration, and admirably described:--
+
+   Flinging the salt from their wings, and despair from their hearts
+   They arise on the breast of the storm with a cry and are gone.
+   When will you come home, wild geese, in your thousand strong?...
+   Not the fierce wind can stay your return or tumultuous sea,...
+   Only death in his reaping could make you return no more.
+
+Now arctic and antarctic geese are alike in this their devotion to
+their distant breeding-ground, the cradle and true home of the species
+or race; and I will conclude this chapter with an incident related to
+me many years ago by a brother who was sheep-farming in a wild and
+lonely district on the southern frontier of Buenos Ayres. Immense
+numbers of upland geese in great flocks used to spend the cold months
+on the plains where he had his lonely hut; and one morning in August
+in the early spring of that southern country, some days after all the
+flocks had taken their departure to the south, he was out riding, and
+saw at a distance before him on the plain a pair of geese. They were
+male and female--a white and a brown bird. Their movements attracted
+his attention and he rode to them. The female was walking steadily on
+in a southerly direction, while the male, greatly excited, and calling
+loudly from time to time, walked at a distance ahead, and constantly
+turned back to see and call to his mate, and at intervals of a few
+minutes he would rise up and fly, screaming, to a distance of some
+hundreds of yards; then finding that he had not been followed, he
+would return and alight at a distance of forty or fifty yards in
+advance of the other bird, and begin walking on as before. The female
+had one wing broken, and, unable to fly, had set out on her long
+journey to the Magellanic Islands on her feet; and her mate, though
+called to by that mysterious imperative voice in his breast, yet would
+not forsake her; but flying a little distance to show her the way, and
+returning again and again, and calling to her with his wildest and
+most piercing cries, urged her still to spread her wings and fly with
+him to their distant home.
+
+And in that sad, anxious way they would journey on to the inevitable
+end, when a pair or family of carrion eagles would spy them from a
+great distance--the two travellers left far behind by their fellows,
+one flying, the other walking; and the first would be left to continue
+the journey alone.
+
+Since this appreciation was written a good many years ago I have seen
+much of geese, or, as it might be put, have continued my relations
+with them and have written about them too in my Adventures among Birds
+(1913). In recent years it has become a custom of mine to frequent
+Wells-next-the-Sea in October and November just to welcome the wild
+geese that come in numbers annually to winter at that favoured spot.
+Among the incidents related in that last book of mine about the wild
+geese, there were two or three about the bird's noble and dignified
+bearing and its extraordinary intelligence, and I wish here to return
+to that subject just to tell yet one more goose story: only in this
+instance it was about the domestic bird.
+
+It happened that among the numerous letters I received from readers of
+Birds and Man on its first appearance there was one which particularly
+interested me, from an old gentleman, a retired schoolmaster in the
+cathedral city of Wells. He was a delightful letter-writer, but
+by-and-bye our correspondence ceased and I heard no more of him for
+three or four years. Then I was at Wells, spending a few days looking
+up and inquiring after old friends in the place, and remembering my
+pleasant letter-writer I went to call on him. During our conversation
+he told me that the chapter which had impressed him most in my book
+was the one on the goose, especially all that related to the lofty
+dignified bearing of the bird, its independent spirit and fearlessness
+of its human masters, in which it differs so greatly from all other
+domestic birds. He knew it well; he had been feelingly persuaded of
+that proud spirit in the bird, and had greatly desired to tell me of
+an adventure he had met with, but the incident reflected so
+unfavourably on himself, as a humane and fair-minded or sportsmanlike
+person, that he had refrained. However, now that I had come to see him
+he would make a clean breast of it.
+
+It happened that in January some winters ago, there was a very great
+fall of snow in England, especially in the south and west. The snow
+fell without intermission all day and all night, and on the following
+morning Wells appeared half buried in it. He was then living with a
+daughter who kept house for him in a cottage standing in its own
+grounds on the outskirts of the town. On attempting to leave the house
+he found they were shut in by the snow, which had banked itself
+against the walls to the height of the eaves. Half an hour's vigorous
+spade work enabled him to get out from the kitchen door into the open,
+and the sun in a blue sky shining on a dazzling white and silent
+world. But no milkman was going his rounds, and there would be no
+baker nor butcher nor any other tradesman to call for orders. And
+there were no provisions in the house! But the milk for breakfast was
+the first thing needed, and so with a jug in his hand he went bravely
+out to try and make his way to the milk shop which was not far off.
+
+A wall and hedge bounded his front garden on one side, and this was
+now entirely covered by an immense snowdrift, sloping up to a height
+of about seven feet. It was only when he paused to look at this vast
+snow heap in his garden that he caught sight of a goose, a very big
+snow-white bird without a grey spot in its plumage, standing within a
+few yards of him, about four feet from the ground. Its entire snowy
+whiteness with snow for a background had prevented him from seeing it
+until he looked directly at it. He stood still gazing in astonishment
+and admiration at this noble bird, standing so motionless with its
+head raised high that it was like the figure of a goose carved out of
+some crystalline white stone and set up at that spot on the glittering
+snowdrift. But it was no statue; it had living eyes which without the
+least turning of the head watched him and every motion he made. Then
+all at once the thought came into his head that here was something,
+very good succulent food in fact, sent, he almost thought
+providentially, to provision his house; for how easy it would be for
+him as he passed the bird to throw himself suddenly upon and capture
+it! It had belonged to some one, no doubt, but that great snowstorm
+and the furious north-east wind had blown it far far from its native
+place and it was lost to its owner for ever. Practically it was now a
+wild bird free for him to take without any qualms and to nourish
+himself on its flesh while the snow siege lasted. Standing there, jug
+in hand, he thought it out, and then took a few steps towards the bird
+in order to see if there was any sign of suspicion in it; but there
+was none, only he could see that the goose without turning its head
+was all the time regarding him out of the corner of one eye. Finally
+he came to the conclusion that his best plan was to go for the milk
+and on his return to set the jug down by the gate when coming in, then
+to walk in a careless, unconcerned manner towards the door, taking no
+notice of the goose until he got abreast of it, and then turn suddenly
+and hurl himself upon it. Nothing could be easier; so away he went and
+in about twenty minutes was back again with the milk, to find the bird
+in the same place standing as before motionless in the same attitude.
+It was not disturbed at his coming in at the gate, nor did it show the
+slightest disposition to move when he walked towards it in his studied
+careless manner. Then, when within three yards of it, came the supreme
+moment, and wheeling suddenly round he hurled himself with violence
+upon his victim, throwing out his arms to capture it, and so great was
+the impulse he had given himself that he was buried to the ankles in
+the drift. But before going into it, in that brief moment, the
+fraction of a second, he saw what happened; just as his hands were
+about to touch it the wings opened and the bird was lifted from its
+stand and out of his reach as if by a miracle. In the drift he was
+like a drowning man, swallowing snow into his lungs for water. For a
+few dreadful moments he thought it was all over with him; then he
+succeeded in struggling out and stood trembling and gasping and
+choking, blinded with snow. By-and-bye he recovered and had a look
+round, and lo! there stood his goose on the summit of the snow bank
+about three yards from the spot where it had been! It was standing as
+before, perfectly motionless, its long neck and head raised, and was
+still in appearance the snow-white figure of a carved bird, only it
+was more conspicuous and impressive now, being outlined against the
+blue sky, and as before it was regarding him out of the corner of one
+eye. He had never, he said, felt so ashamed of himself in his life! If
+the bird had screamed and fled from him it would not have been so bad,
+but there it had chosen to remain, as if despising his attempt at
+harming it too much even to feel resentment. A most uncanny bird! it
+seemed to him that it had divined his intention from the first and had
+been prepared for his every movement; and now it appeared to him to be
+saying mentally: "Have you got no more plans to capture me in your
+clever brain, or have you quite given it up?"
+
+Yes, he had quite, quite given it up!
+
+And then the goose, seeing there were no more plans, quietly unfolded
+its wings and rose from the snowdrift and flew away over the town and
+the cathedral away on the further side, and towards the snow-covered
+Mendips; he standing there watching it until it was lost to sight in
+the pale sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE DARTFORD WARBLER
+
+
+HOW TO SAVE OUR RARE BIRDS
+
+The most interesting chapter in John Burroughs' Fresh Fields
+contains an account of an anxious hurried search after a
+nightingale in song, at a time of the year when that "creature of
+ebullient heart" somewhat suddenly drops into silence. A few days
+were spent by the author in rushing about the country in Surrey
+and Hampshire, with the result that once or twice a few musical
+throbs of sound, a trill, a short detached phrase, were heard--just
+enough to convince the eager listener that here was a vocalist
+beautiful beyond all others, and that he had missed its music by
+appearing a very few days too late on the scene.
+
+During the last seven or eight years I have read this chapter
+several times with undiminished interest, and with a feeling of
+keen sympathy for the writer in his disappointment; for it is the
+case that I, too, all this time, have been in chase of a
+small British songster--a rare elusive bird, hard to find at any
+time as it is to hear a nightingale pour out its full song in the
+last week in June. In these years I have, at every opportunity, in
+spring, summer, and autumn, sought for the bird in the southern
+half of England, chiefly in the south and south-western counties.
+In the Midlands, and in Devonshire, where he was formerly well
+known, but where the authorities say he is now extinct, I failed
+to find him. I found him altogether in four counties, in a few
+widely-separated localities; in every case in such small numbers
+that I was reluctantly forced to give up a long-cherished hope
+that this species might yet recover from the low state, with
+regard to numbers, in which it fingers, and be permanently
+preserved as a member of the British avifauna.
+
+It would indeed hardly be reasonable to entertain such a hope, when we
+consider that the furze wren, or Dartford warbler, as it is named in
+books, is a small, frail, insectivorous species, a feeble flyer that
+must brave the winters at home; that down to within thirty years ago
+it was fairly common, though local, in the south of England, and
+ranged as far north as the borders of Yorkshire, and that in this
+period it has fallen to its present state, when but a few pairs and
+small colonies, wide apart, exist in isolated patches of furze in four
+or five, possibly six, counties.
+
+There can be no doubt that the decline of this species, which, on
+account of its furze-loving habits, must always be restricted to
+limited areas, is directly attributable to the greed of private
+collectors, who are all bound to have specimens--as many as they can
+get--both of the bird and its nest and eggs. Its strictly local
+distribution made its destruction a comparatively easy task. In 1873
+Gould wrote in his large work on British Birds: "All the commons south
+of London, from Blackheath and Wimbledon to the coast, were formerly
+tenanted by this little bird; but the increase in the number of
+collectors has, I fear, greatly thinned them in all the districts near
+the metropolis; it is still, however, very abundant in many parts of
+Surrey and Hampshire." It did not long continue "very abundant." Gould
+was shown the bird, and supplied with specimens, by a man named
+Smithers, a bird-stuffer of Churt, who was at that time collecting
+Dartford warblers and their eggs for the trade and many private
+persons, on the open heath and gorse-grown country that lies between
+Farnham and Haslemere. Gould in the work quoted, adds: "As most
+British collectors must now be supplied with the eggs of the furze
+wren, I trust Mr Smithers will be more sparing in the future." So
+little sparing was he, that when he died, but few birds were left for
+others of his detestable trade who came after him.
+
+Three or four years ago I got in conversation with a heath-cutter on
+Milford Common, a singular and brutal-looking fellow, of the
+half-Gypsy Devil's Punch-Bowl type, described so ably by Baring-Gould
+in his Broom Squire. He told me that when he was a boy, about
+thirty-five years ago, the furze wren was common in all that part of
+the country, until Smithers' offer of a shilling for every clutch of
+eggs, had set the boys from all the villages in the district hunting
+for the nests. Many a shilling had he been paid for the nests he
+found, but in a few years the birds became rare; and he added that he
+had not now seen one for a very long time.
+
+In Clark's Kennedy's Birds of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire we get a
+glimpse of the furze wren collecting business at an earlier date and
+nearer the metropolis. In 1868 he wrote:--"The only locality in the
+two counties in which this species is at all numerous, is a common in
+the vicinity of Sunninghill, where it is found breeding every summer,
+and from whence a person in the neighbourhood obtains specimens at all
+times of the year, with which to supply the London bird-stuffers."
+
+When the district worked by Smithers, and the neighbouring commons
+round Godalming, where Newman in his Letters of Rusticus says he had
+seen the "tops of the furze quite alive with these birds," had been
+depleted, other favourite haunts of the little doomed furze-lover were
+visited, and for a time yielded a rich harvest. In a few years the
+bird was practically extirpated; in the sixties and seventies it was
+common, now there are many young ornithologists with us who have never
+seen it (in this country at all events) in a state of nature. In some
+cases even persons interested in bird life, some of them naturalists
+too, did not know what was going on in their immediate neighbourhood
+until after the bird was gone. I met with a case of the kind, a very
+strange case indeed, in the summer of 1899, at a place near the south
+coast where the bird was common after it had been destroyed in Surrey,
+but does not now exist. In my search for information I paid a visit to
+the octogenarian vicar of a small rustic village. He was a native of
+the parish, and loved his home above all places, even as White loved
+Selborne, and had been a clergyman in it for over sixty years;
+moreover he was, I was told, a keen naturalist, and though not a
+collector nor a writer of books, he knew every plant and every wild
+animal to be found in the parish. He better than another, I imagined,
+would be able to give me some authentic local information.
+
+I found him in his study--a tall, handsome, white-haired old man, very
+feeble; he rose, and supporting his steps with a long staff, led me
+out into the grounds and talked about nature. But his memory, like his
+strength, was failing; he seemed, indeed, but the ruin of a man,
+although still of a very noble presence. What he called the vicarage
+gardens, where we strolled about among the trees, was a place without
+walks, all overgrown with grass and wildings; for roses and dahlias he
+showed me fennel, goat's-beard, henbane, and common hound's tongue;
+and when speaking of their nature he stroked their leaves and stems
+caressingly. He loved these better than the gardener's blooms, and so
+did I; but I wanted to hear about the vanished birds of the district,
+particularly the furze wren, which had survived all the others that
+were gone.
+
+His dim eyes brightened for a moment with old pleasant memories of
+days spent in observing these birds; and leading me to a spot among
+the trees, from which there was a view of the open country beyond, he
+pointed to a great green down, a couple of miles away, and told me
+that on the other side I would come on a large patch of furze, and
+that by sitting quietly there for half an hour or so I might see a
+dozen furze wrens. Then he added: "A dozen, did I say? Why, I saw not
+fewer than forty or fifty flitting about the bushes the very last time
+I went there, and I daresay if you are patient enough you will see
+quite as many."
+
+I assured him that there were no furze wrens at the spot he had
+indicated, nor anywhere in that neighbourhood, and I ventured to add
+that he must be telling me of what he had witnessed a good many years
+ago. "No, not so many," he returned, "and I am astonished and grieved
+to hear that the birds are gone--four or five years, perhaps. No, it
+was longer ago. You are right--I think it must be at least fifteen
+years since I went to that spot the last time. I am not so strong as I
+was, and for some years have not been able to take any long walks."
+
+Fifteen years may seem but a short space of time to a man verging on
+ninety; in the mournful story of the extermination of rare and
+beautiful British birds for the cabinet it is in reality a long
+period. Fifteen years ago the honey buzzard was a breeding species in
+England, and had doubtless been so for thousands of years. When the
+price of a "British-killed" specimen rose to L25, and of a
+"British-taken" egg to two or three or four pounds, the bird quickly
+ceased to exist. Probably there is not a local ornithologist in all
+the land who could not say of some species that bred annually, within
+the limits of his own country, that it has not been extirpated within
+the last fifteen years.
+
+In the instance just related, when the aged vicar, sorrying at the
+loss of the birds, began to recall the rare pleasure it had given him
+to watch them disporting themselves among the furze-bushes, something
+of the illusion which had been in his mind imparted itself to mine,
+for I could see what he was mentally seeing, and the fifteen years
+dwindled to a very brief space of time. Like Burroughs with the
+nightingale, I, too, had arrived a few days too late on the scene; the
+"cursed collector" had been beforehand with me, as had indeed been the
+case on so many previous occasions with regard to other species.
+
+A short time after my interview with the aged vicar, at an inn a very
+few miles from the village, I met a person who interested me in an
+exceedingly unpleasant way. He was a big repulsive-looking man in a
+black greasy coat--a human animal to be avoided; but I overheard him
+say something about rare birds which caused me to put on a friendly
+air and join in the talk. He was a Kentish man who spent most of his
+time in driving about from village to village, and from farm to farm,
+in the southern counties, in search of bargains, and was prepared to
+buy for cash down anything he could find cheap, from an old teapot, or
+a print, or copper scuttle, to a horse, or cart, or pig, or a houseful
+of furniture. He also bought rare birds in the flesh, or stuffed, and
+was no doubt in league with a good many honest gamekeepers in those
+counties. I had heard of "travellers" sent out by the great bird
+stuffers to go the rounds of all the big estates in some parts of
+England, but this scoundrel appeared to be a traveller in the business
+on his own account. I asked him if he had done anything lately in
+Dartford warblers. He at once became confidential, and said he had
+done nothing but hoped shortly to do something very good indeed. The
+bird, he said, was supposed to be extinct in Kent, and on that account
+specimens obtained in that county would command a high price. Now he
+had but recently discovered that a few--two or three pairs--existed at
+one spot, and he was anxious to finish the business he had on hand so
+as to go there and secure them. In answer to further questions, he
+said that the birds were in a place where they could not very well be
+shot, but that made no difference; he had a simple, effective way of
+getting them without a gun, and he was sure that not one would escape
+him.
+
+On my mentioning the fact that the Kent County Council had obtained an
+order for an all the year round protection of this very bird, he
+looked at me out of the corners of his eyes and laughed, but said
+nothing. He took it as a rather good joke on my part.
+
+There is not the slightest doubt that our wealthy private collectors
+have created the class of injurious wretches to which this man
+belonged.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To some who have glanced at a little dusty, out of shape mummy of a
+bird, labelled "Dartford Warbler," in a museum, or private collection,
+or under a glass shade, it may seem that I speak too warmly of the
+pleasure which the sight of the small furze-lover can give us. They
+have never seen it in a state of nature, and probably never will. When
+I consider all these British Passeres, which, seen at their best, give
+most delight to the aesthetic sense--the jay, the "British Bird of
+Paradise," as I have ventured to call it, displaying his vari-coloured
+feathers at a spring-time gathering; the yellow-green, long-winged
+wood wren, most aerial and delicate of the woodland warblers; the
+kingfisher, flashing turquoise blue as he speeds by; the elegant
+fawn-coloured, black-bearded tit, clinging to the grey-green, swaying
+reeds, and springing from them with a bell-like note; and the
+rose-tinted narrow-shaped bottle-tit as he drifts by overhead in a
+flock; the bright, lively goldfinch scattering the silvery
+thistle-down on the air; the crossbill, that quaint little
+many-coloured parrot of the north, feeding on a pine-cone; the grey
+wagtail exhibiting his graceful motions; and the golden-crested wren,
+seen suspended motionless with swiftly vibrating wings above his mate
+concealed among the clustering leaves, in appearance a great green
+hawk-moth, his opened and flattened crest a shining, flame-coloured
+disc or shield on his head,--when I consider all these, and others, I
+find that the peculiar charm of each does not exceed in degree that of
+the furze wren--seen at his best. He is of the type of the
+white-throat, but idealised; the familiar brown, excitable Sylvia,
+pretty as he is and welcome to our hedges in April, is in appearance
+but a rough study for the smaller, more delicately-fashioned and
+richly-coloured Melizophilus, or furze-lover. On account of his
+excessive rarity he can now be seen at his best only by those who are
+able to spend many days in searching and in watching, who have the
+patience to sit motionless by the hour; and at length the little
+hideling, tired of concealment or overcome by curiosity, shows himself
+and comes nearer and nearer, until the ruby red of the small gem-like
+eye may been seen without aid to the vision. A sprite-like bird in his
+slender exquisite shape and his beautiful fits of excitement;
+fantastic in his motions as he flits and flies from spray to spray,
+now hovering motionless in the air like the wooing gold-crest, anon
+dropping on a perch, to sit jerking his long tail, his crest raised,
+his throat swollen, chiding when he sings and singing when he chides,
+like a refined and lesser sedge warbler in a frenzy, his slate-black
+and chestnut-red plumage showing rich and dark against the pure
+luminous yellow of the massed furze blossoms. It is a sight of
+fairy-like bird life and of flower which cannot soon be forgotten. And
+I do not think that any man who has in him any love of nature and of
+the beautiful can see such a thing, and exist with its image in his
+mind, and not regard with an extreme bitterness of hatred those among
+us whose particular craze it is to "collect" such creatures, thereby
+depriving us and our posterity of the delight the sight of them
+affords.
+
+Of many curious experiences I have met in my quest of the rare little
+bird, or of information concerning it, I have related two or three: I
+have one more to give--assuredly the strangest of all. I was out for a
+day's ramble with the members of a Natural History Society, at a place
+the name of which must not be told, and was walking in advance of the
+others with a Mr A., the leading ornithologist of the county, one
+whose name is honourably known to all naturalists in the kingdom. The
+Dartford warbler, he said in the course of conversation, had unhappily
+long been extinct in the county. Now it happened that among those just
+behind us there was another local naturalist, also well known outside
+his own county--Mr B., let us call him. When I separated from my
+companion this gentleman came to my side, and said that he had
+overheard some of our talk, and he wished me to know that Mr A. was in
+error in saying that the Dartford warbler was extinct in the county.
+There was one small colony of three or four pairs to be found at a
+spot ten to eleven miles from where we then were; and he would be glad
+to take me to the place and show me the birds. The existence of this
+small remnant had been known for several years to half a dozen
+persons, who had jealously kept the secret;--to their great regret
+they had had to keep it from their best friend and chief supporter of
+their Society, Mr A., simply because it would not be safe with him. He
+was enthusiastic about the native bird life, the number of species the
+county could boast, etc., and sooner or later he would incautiously
+speak about the Dartford warbler, and the wealthy local collectors
+would hear of it, with the result that the birds would quickly be
+gathered into their cabinets.
+
+My informant went on to say that the greatest offenders were four or
+five gentlemen in the place who were zealous collectors. The county
+had obtained a stringent order, with all-the-year-round protection for
+its rare species. Much, too, had been done by individuals to create a
+public opinion favourable to bird protection, and among the educated
+classes there was now a strong feeling against the destruction by
+private collectors of all that was best worth preserving in the local
+wild bird life. But so far not the slightest effect had been produced
+in the principal offenders. They would have the rare birds, both the
+resident species and the occasional visitants, and paid liberally for
+all specimens. Bird-stuffers, gamekeepers--their own and their
+neighbours'--fowlers, and all those who had a keen eye for a feathered
+rarity, were in their pay; and so the destruction went merrily on. The
+worst of it was that the authors of the evil, who were not only
+law-breakers themselves, but were paying others to break the law,
+could not be touched; no one could prosecute nor openly denounce them
+because of their important social position in the county.
+
+There was nothing new to me in all this: it was an old familiar story;
+I have given it fully, simply because it is an accurate statement of
+what is being done all over the country. There is not a county in the
+kingdom where you may not hear of important members of the community
+who are collectors of birds and their eggs, and law-breakers, both
+directly and indirectly, every day of their lives. They all take, and
+pay for, every rare visitant that comes in their way, and also require
+an unlimited supply of the rarer resident species for the purpose of
+exchange with other private collectors in distant counties. In this
+way our finest species are gradually being extirpated. Within the last
+few years we have seen the disappearance (as breeding species) of the
+ruff and reeve, marsh harrier, and honey buzzard; and the species now
+on the verge of extinction, which will soon follow these and others
+that have gone before, if indeed some of them have not already gone,
+are the sea-eagle, osprey, kite, hen harrier, Montagu's harrier, stone
+curlew, Kentish plover, dotterel, red-necked phalarope, roseate tern,
+bearded tit, grey-lag goose, and great skua. These in their turn will
+be followed by the chough, hobby, great black-backed gull, furze wren,
+crested tit, and others. These are the species which, as things are
+going, will absolutely and for ever disappear, as residents and
+breeders, from off the British Islands. Meanwhile other species that,
+although comparatively rare, are less local in their distribution, are
+being annually exterminated in some parts of the country: it is poor
+comfort to the bird lover in southern England to know that many
+species that formerly gave life and interest to the scene, and have
+lately been done to death there, may still be met with in the wilder
+districts of Scotland, or in some forest in the north of Wales.
+Finally, we have among our annual visitants a considerable number of
+species which have either bred in these islands in past times (some
+quite recently), or else would probably remain to breed if they were
+not immediately killed on arrival--bittern, little bittern, night
+heron, spoonbill, stork, avocet, black tern, hoopoe, golden oriole,
+and many others of less well-known names.
+
+This is the case, and that it is a bad one, and well-nigh hopeless, no
+man will deny. Nevertheless, I believe that it may be possible to find
+a remedy.
+
+That "destruction of beautiful things," about which Ruskin wrote
+despairingly, "of late ending in perfect blackness of catastrophe, and
+ruin of all grace and glory in the land," has fallen, and continues to
+fall, most heavily on the beautiful bird life of our country. But the
+destruction has not been unremarked and unlamented, and the existence
+of a strong and widespread public feeling in favour of the
+preservation of our wild birds has of late shown itself in many ways,
+especially in the unopposed legislation on the subject during the last
+few years, and the willingness that Government and Parliament have
+shown recently to consider a new Act. There is no doubt that this
+feeling will grow until it becomes too strong even for the selfish
+Philistines, who are blind to all grace and glory in nature, and
+incapable of seeing anything in a rare and beautiful bird but an
+object to be collected. Those who in the years to come will inherit
+the numberless useless private collections now being formed will make
+haste to rid themselves of such unhappy legacies, by thrusting them
+upon local museums, or by destroying them outright in their anxiety to
+have it forgotten that one of their name had a part in the detestable
+business of depriving the land of these wonderful and beautiful forms
+of life--a life which future generations would have cherished as a
+dear and sacred possession.
+
+But we cannot afford to wait: we have been made too poor in species
+already, and are losing something further every year; we want a remedy
+now.
+
+So far two suggestions have been made. One is an alteration in the
+existing law, which will allow the infliction of far heavier fines on
+offenders. All those who are acquainted with collectors and their ways
+will at once agree that increased penalties will not meet the case;
+that the only effect of such an alteration in the law would be to make
+collectors and the persons employed by them more careful than they
+have yet found it necessary to be. The other suggestion vaguely put
+forth is that something of the nature of a private inquiry agency
+should be established to find out the offenders, and that they should
+be pilloried in the columns of some widely-circulating journal, a
+method which has been tried with some success in the cases of other
+classes of obnoxious persons. This suggestion may be dismissed at once
+as of no value; not one offence in a hundred would be discovered by
+such means, and the greatest sinners, who are not infrequently the
+most intelligent men, would escape scot free.
+
+Perhaps I should have said that three suggestions have been made, for
+there is yet another, put forward by Mr Richard Kearton in one of his
+late books. He is thoroughly convinced, he tells us, that the County
+Council orders are perfectly useless in the case of any and every rare
+bird which collectors covet; and on that point we are all agreed; he
+then says: "We should select a dozen species admitted by a committee
+of practical ornithologists to be in danger, and afford them personal
+protection during the whole of the breeding season by placing reliable
+watchers, night and day, upon the nesting-ground."
+
+Watchers provided and paid by individuals and associations have been
+in existence these many years, and this is undoubtedly the best plan
+in the case of all species which breed in colonies. These are mostly
+sea-birds--gulls, terns, cormorants, guillemots, razor-bills, etc. Our
+rare birds are distributed over the country, and in the case of some,
+if a hundred pairs of a species exist in the British Islands, a
+hundred or two hundred watchers would have to be engaged. But who that
+has any knowledge of what goes on in the collecting world does not
+know that the guarded birds would be the first to vanish? I have seen
+such things--pairs of rare birds breeding in private grounds, where
+the keepers had strict orders to watch over them, and no stranger
+could enter without being challenged, and in a little while they have
+mysteriously disappeared. The "watcher" is good enough on the exposed
+sea-coast or island where an eye is kept on his doings, and where the
+large number of birds in his charge enables him to do a little
+profitable stealing and still keep up an appearance of honesty. I have
+visited most of the watched colonies, and therefore know. The
+watchers, who were paid a pound a week for guarding the nests, were
+not chary of their hints, and I have also been told in very plain
+words that I could have any eggs I wanted.
+
+It is hardly necessary to say here that the proposed alteration in the
+law to make it protective of all species will, so far as the private
+collector is concerned, leave matters just as they are.
+
+There is really only one way out of the difficulty,--one remedy for an
+evil which grows in spite of penalties and of public opinion,--namely,
+a law to forbid the making of collections of British birds by private
+persons. If all that has been done in and out of Parliament since 1868
+to preserve our wild birds--not merely the common abundant species,
+which are not regarded by collectors, but all species--is not to be so
+much labour wasted, such a law must sooner or later be made. It will
+not be denied by any private collector, whether he clings to the old
+delusion that it is to the advantage of science that he should have
+cabinets full of "British killed" specimens or not,--it will not be
+denied that the drain on our wild bird life caused by collecting is a
+constantly increasing one, and that no fresh legislation on the lines
+of previous bird protection Acts can arrest or diminish that drain.
+Thirty years ago, when the first Act was passed, which prohibited the
+slaughter of sea-birds during the breeding season, the drain on the
+bird life which is valued by collectors was far less than it is now;
+not only because there are a dozen or more collectors now where there
+was one in the sixties, but also because the business of collecting
+has been developed and brought to perfection. All the localities in
+which the rare resident species may be looked for are known, while the
+collectors all over the country are in touch with each other, and have
+a system of exchanges as complete as it is deadly to the birds. Then
+there is the money element; bird-collecting is not only the hobby of
+hundreds of persons of moderate means and of moderate wealth, but,
+like horse-racing, yachting, and other expensive forms of sport, it
+now attracts the very wealthy, and is even a pastime of millionaires.
+All this is a familiar fact, and clearly shows that without such a law
+as I have suggested it has now become impossible to save the best of
+our wild bird life.
+
+The collectors will doubtless cry out that such a law would be a
+monstrous injustice, and an unwarrantable interference with the
+liberty of the subject; that there is really no more harm in
+collecting birds and their eggs than in collecting old prints,
+Guatemalan postage stamps, samplers, and first editions of minor
+poets; that to compel them to give up their treasures, which have cost
+them infinite pains and thousands of pounds to get together, and to
+abandon the pursuit in which their happiness is placed, would be worse
+than confiscation and downright tyranny; that the private collectors
+cannot properly be described as law-breakers and injurious persons,
+since they count among their numbers hundreds of country gentlemen of
+position, professional men (including clergymen), noblemen,
+magistrates, and justices of the peace, and distinguished
+naturalists--all honourable men.
+
+To put in one word on this last very delicate point: Where, in
+collecting, does the honourable man draw the line, and sternly refuse
+to enrich his cabinet with a long-wished-for specimen of a rare
+British species?--a specimen "in the flesh," not only "British killed"
+but obtained in the county; not killed wantonly, nor stolen by some
+poaching rascal, but unhappily shot in mistake for something else by
+an ignorant young under-keeper, who, in fear of a wigging, took it
+secretly to a friend at a distance and gave it to him to get rid of.
+The story of the unfortunate killing of the rare bird varies in each
+case when it has to be told to one whose standard of morality is very
+high even with regard to his hobby. My experience is, that where there
+are collectors who are men of means, there you find their parasites,
+who know how to treat them, and who feed on their enthusiasms.
+
+In my rambles about the country during the last few years, I have
+neglected no opportunity of conversing with landowners and large
+tenants on this subject, and, with the exception of one man, all those
+I have spoken to agreed that owners generally--not nine in every ten,
+as I had put it, but ninety-nine in every hundred--would gladly
+welcome a law to put down the collecting of British birds by private
+persons. The one man who disagreed is the owner of an immense estate,
+and he was the bitterest of all in denouncing the scoundrels who came
+to steal his birds; and if a law could be made to put an end to such
+practices he would, he said, be delighted; but he drew the line at
+forbidding a man to collect birds on his own property. "No, no!" he
+concluded; "that would be an interference with the liberty of the
+subject." Then it came out that he was a collector himself, and was
+very proud of the rare species in his collection! If I had known that
+before, I should not have gone out of my way to discuss the subject
+with him.
+
+Clearly, then, there is a very strong case for legislation. How strong
+the case is I am not yet able to show, my means not having enabled me
+to carry out an intention of discussing the subject with a much
+greater number of landowners, and of addressing a circular later
+stating the case to all the landlords and shooting-tenants in the
+country. That remains to be done; in the meantime this chapter will
+serve to bring the subject to the attention of a considerable number
+of persons who would prefer that our birds should be preserved rather
+than that they should be exterminated in the interests of a certain
+number of individuals whose amusement it is to collect such objects.
+
+That a law on the lines suggested will be made sooner or later is my
+belief: that it may come soon is my hope and prayer, lest we have to
+say of the Dartford warbler, and of twenty other species named in this
+chapter, as we have had to say of so many others that have gone
+
+   The beautiful is vanished and returns not.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+   Note.--The foregoing chapter, albeit written so many years ago,
+   is still "up-to-date"--still represents without a shadow of a
+   shade of difference the state of the case. The extermination of
+   our rare birds and "occasional visitors" still goes merrily on
+   in defiance of the law, and the worst offenders are still
+   received with open arms by the British Ornithologists' Union.
+   Indeed, that Society, from the point of view of many of its
+   members would have no raison d'etre if membership were denied
+   to the private collector of rare "British killed" birds and
+   their eggs and to the "scientific" ornithologist whose mission
+   is to add several new species annually to the British list.
+   They still dine together and exhibit their specimens to one
+   another. On the last occasion of my attending one of these
+   meetings a member exhibited a small bird "in the flesh"--a bird
+   from some far country which had been shot somewhere on the east
+   coast and was so knocked to pieces by the shot that the
+   ornithologists had great difficulty in identifying it. Although
+   a collector himself he was anxious to dispose of the specimen,
+   but none of his brother collectors would give him a five-pound
+   note for it owing to its condition. It was handed round and
+   examined and discussed by all the authorities present. I stood
+   apart, looking at a group of ornithologists bending over the
+   shattered specimen, all talking and arguing, when another
+   member who by chance was not a collector moved to my side and
+   whispered in my ear: "Just like a lot of little children!"
+
+   Is it not time to say to these "little children" that they must
+   find a new toy--a fresh amusement to fill their vacant hours:
+   that birds--living flying birds--are a part of nature, of this
+   visible world in this island, the dwelling-place of some
+   forty-five or fifty millions of souls; that these millions have
+   a right in the country's wild life too--surely a better one
+   than that of a few hundreds of gentlemen of leisure who have
+   money to hire gamekeepers, bird-stuffers, wild-fowlers, and
+   many others, to break the law for them, and to take the
+   punishment when any is given?
+
+   By saying it will be understood that I mean enacting a law to
+   prohibit private collection. It is surely time. But what
+   prospects are there of such an Act being passed by a Parliament
+   which has spent six years playing with a Plumage Prohibition
+   Bill!
+
+   Well, just now we have a committee appointed by the Government
+   to consider the whole question of bird protection with a view
+   to fresh legislation. Will this committee recommend the one and
+   only way to put a stop to the continuous destruction of our
+   rarer birds? I don't think so. For such a law would be aimed at
+   those of their own class, at their friends, at themselves.
+
+   At the end of the chapter I gave an account of an interview I
+   had with a great landowner who happened to be a collector, and
+   who cried out that such a law as the one I suggested would be
+   an unwarrantable interference with the liberty of the subject.
+   Another interview years later was with one who is not only a
+   landowner, the head of a branch of a great family in the land,
+   but a great power in the political world as well, and, finally,
+   (not wonderful to relate) a great "protector of birds." "No,"
+   he said warmly, "I will not for a moment encourage you to hope
+   that any good will come of such a proposal. If any person
+   should bring in such a measure I would do everything in my
+   power to defeat it. I am a collector myself and I am perfectly
+   sure that such an interference with the liberty of the subject
+   would not be tolerated."
+
+   That, I take it, is or will be the attitude of the committee
+   now considering the subject of our wild bird life and its
+   better protection.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+VERT--VERT; OR PARROT GOSSIP
+
+
+I am not an admirer of pet parrots. To me, and I have made the
+discovery that to many others too, it is a depressing experience, on a
+first visit to nice people, to find that a parrot is a member of the
+family. As a rule he is the most important member. When I am compelled
+to stand in the admiring circle, to look on and to listen while he
+exhibits his weary accomplishments, it is but lip service that I
+render: my eyes are turned inward, and a vision of a green forest
+comes before them resounding with the wild, glad, mad cries of flocks
+of wild parrots. This is done purposely, and the sound which I
+mentally hear and the sight of their vari-coloured plumage in the
+dazzling sunlight are a corrective, and keep me from hating the bird
+before me because of the imbecility of its owners. In his proper
+place, which is not in a tin cage in a room of a house, he is to be
+admired above most birds; and I wish I could be where he is living his
+wild life; that I could have again a swarm of parrots, angry at my
+presence, hovering above my head and deafening me with their
+outrageous screams. But I cannot go to those beautiful distant
+places--I must be content with an image and a memory of things seen
+and heard, and with the occasional sight of a bird, or birds, kept by
+some intelligent person; also with an occasional visit to the Parrot
+House in Regent's Park. There the uproar, when it is at its greatest,
+when innumerable discordant voices, shrill and raucous, unite in one
+voice and one great cry, and persons of weak nerves stop up their ears
+and fly from such a pandemonium, is highly exhilarating.
+
+Of the most interesting captive parrots I have met in recent years I
+will speak here of two. The first was a St Vincent bird, Chrysotis
+guildingi, brought home with seven other parrots of various species by
+Lady Thompson, the wife of the then Administrator of the Island. This
+is a handsome bird, green, with blue head and yellow tail, and is a
+member of an American genus numbering over forty species. He received
+his funny specific name in compliment to a clergyman who was a zealous
+collector not of men's souls, but of birds' skins. To ornithologists
+this parrot is interesting on account of its rarity. For the last
+thirty years it has existed in small numbers; and as it is confined to
+the island of St Vincent it is feared that it may become extinct at no
+distant date. Altogether there are about five hundred species of
+parrots in the world, or about as many parrots as there are species of
+birds of all kinds in Europe, from the great bustard, the hooper swan,
+and golden eagle, to the little bottle-tit whose minute body, stript
+of its feathers, may be put in a lady's thimble. And of this multitude
+of parrots the St Vincent Chrysotis, if it still exists, is probably
+the rarest.
+
+The parrot I have spoken of, with his seven travelling companions,
+arrived in England in December, and a few days later their mistress
+witnessed a curious thing. On a cold grey morning they were enjoying
+themselves on their perches in a well-warmed room in London, before a
+large window, when suddenly they all together emitted a harsh cry of
+alarm or terror--the sound which they invariably utter on the
+appearance of a bird of prey in the sky, but at no other time. Looking
+up quickly she saw that snow in big flakes had begun to fall. It was
+the birds' first experience of such a phenomenon, but they had seen
+and had been taught to fear something closely resembling falling
+flakes--flying feathers to wit. The fear of flying feathers is
+universal among species that are preyed upon by hawks. In a majority
+of cases the birds that exhibit terror and fly into cover or sit
+closely have never actually seen that winged thunderbolt, the
+peregrine falcon, strike down a duck or pigeon, sending out a small
+cloud of feathers; or even a harrier or sparrow-hawk pulling out and
+scattering the feathers of a bird it has captured, but a tradition
+exists among them that the sight of flying feathers signifies danger
+to bird life.
+
+When I was in the young barbarian stage, and my playmates were gaucho
+boys on horseback on the pampas, they taught me to catch partridges in
+their simple way with a slender cane twenty to twenty-five feet long,
+a running noose at its tip made from the fine pliant shaft of a rhea's
+wing feather. The bird was not a real partridge though it looks like
+it, but was the common or spotted tinamou of the plains, Nothura
+maculosa, as good a table bird as our partridge. Our method was, when
+we flushed a bird, to follow its swift straight flight at a gallop,
+and mark the exact spot where it dropped to earth and vanished in the
+grass, then to go round the spot examining the ground until the
+tinamou was detected in spite of his protective colouring sitting
+close among the dead and fading grass and herbage. The cane was put
+out, the circle narrowed until the small noose was exactly over the
+bird's head, so that when he sprang into the air on being touched by
+the slender tip of the cane he caught and strangled himself. To make
+the bird sit tight until the noose was actually over his head, we
+practised various tricks, and a very common one was, on catching sight
+of the close-squatting partridge, to start plucking feathers from a
+previously-killed bird hanging to our belt and scatter them on the
+wind. Sometimes we were saved the trouble of scattering feathers when
+we were followed by a pair of big carrion hawks on the look-out for an
+escaped bird or for any trifle we throw to them to keep them with us.
+The effect was the same in both cases; the sight of the flying
+feathers was just as terrifying as that of the big hovering hawks, and
+caused the partridge to sit close.
+
+This way of taking the tinamou may seem unsportsmanlike. Well, if I
+were a boy in a wild land again--with my present feelings about bird
+life, I mean--I should not do it. Nor would I shoot them; for I take
+it that the gun is the deadliest instrument our cunning brains have
+devised to destroy birds in spite of their bright instinct of
+self-preservation, their faculty of flight, and their intelligence. It
+is a hundred times more effective than the boy-on-horseback's long
+cane with its noose made of an ostrich feather--therefore more
+unsportsmanlike.
+
+To return. The resemblance of falling flakes to flying white feathers
+does not deceive birds accustomed to the sight of snow: it is very
+striking, nevertheless, and so generally recognised that most persons
+in Europe have heard of the old woman plucking her geese in the sky.
+It is curious to find the subject discussed in Herodotus. In Book IV.
+he says: "The Scythians say that those lands which are situated in the
+northernmost parts of their territories are neither visible nor
+practicable by reason of the feathers that fall continually on all
+sides; for the earth is so entirely covered, and the air is so full of
+these feathers, that the sight is altogether obstructed." Further on
+he says: "Touching the feathers ... my opinion is that perpetual snows
+fall in those parts, though probably in less quantity during the
+summer than in winter, and whoever has observed great abundance of
+snow falling will easily comprehend what I say, for snow is not unlike
+feathers."
+
+Probably the Scythians had but one word to designate both. To go back
+to the St Vincent parrot. Concerning a bird of that species I have
+heard, and cannot disbelieve, a remarkable story. During the early
+years of the last century a gentleman went out from England to look
+after some landed property in the island, which had come to him by
+inheritance, and when out there he paid a visit to a friend who had a
+plantation in the interior. His friend was away when he arrived, and
+he was conducted by a servant into a large, darkened, cool room; and,
+tired with his long ride in the hot sun, he soon fell asleep in his
+chair. Before long a loud noise awoke him, and from certain scrubbing
+sounds he made out that a couple of negro women were engaged in
+washing close to him, on the other side of the lowered window blinds,
+and that they were quarrelling over their task. Of course the poor
+women did not know that he was there, but he was a man of a sensitive
+mind and it was a torture to him to have to listen to the torrents of
+exceedingly bad language they discharged at one another. It made him
+angry. Presently his friend arrived and welcomed him with a hearty
+hand-shake and asked him how he liked the place. He answered that it
+was a very beautiful place, but he wondered how his friend could
+tolerate those women with their tongues so close to his windows. Women
+with their tongues! What did he mean? exclaimed the other in great
+surprise. He meant, he said, those wretched nigger washerwomen outside
+the window. His host thereupon threw up the blind and both looked out:
+no living creature was there except a St Vincent parrot dozing on his
+perch in the shaded verandah. "Ah, I see, the parrot!" said his
+friend. And he apologised and explained that some of the niggers had
+taken advantage of the bird's extraordinary quickness in learning to
+teach him a lot of improper stuff.
+
+Another parrot, which interested me more than the St Vincent bird, was
+a member of the same numerous genus, a double-fronted amazon,
+Chrysotis lavalainte, a larger bird, green with face and fore-part of
+head pure yellow, and some crimson colour in the wings and tail. I
+came upon it at an inn, the Lamb, at Hindon, a village in the South
+Wiltshire downs. One could plainly see that it was a very old bird,
+and, judging from the ragged state of its plumage, that it had long
+fallen into the period of irregular or imperfect moult--"the sere, the
+yellow leaf" in the bird's life. It also had the tremor of the very
+aged--man or bird. But its eyes were still as bright as polished
+yellow gems and full of the almost uncanny parrot intelligence. The
+voice, too, was loud and cheerful; its call to its mistress--"Mother,
+mother!" would ring through the whole rambling old house. He talked
+and laughed heartily and uttered a variety of powerful whistling notes
+as round and full and modulated as those of any grey parrot. Now, all
+that would not have attracted me much to the bird if I had not heard
+its singular history, told to me by its mistress, the landlady. She
+had had it in her possession fifty years, and its story was as
+follows:--
+
+Her father-in-law, the landlord of the Lamb, had a beloved son who
+went off to sea and was seen and heard of no more for a space of
+fourteen years, when one day he turned up in the possession of a
+sailor's usual fortune, acquired in distant barbarous lands--a parrot
+in a cage! This he left with his parents, charging them to take the
+greatest care of it, as it was really a very wonderful bird, as they
+would soon know if they could only understand its language, and he
+then began to make ready to set off again, promising his mother to
+write this time and not to stay away more than five or at most ten
+years.
+
+Meanwhile, his father, who was anxious to keep him, succeeded in
+bringing about a meeting between him and a girl of his acquaintance,
+one who, he believed, would make his son the best wife in the world.
+The young wanderer saw and loved, and as the feeling was returned he
+soon married and endowed her with all his worldly possessions, which
+consisted of the parrot and cage. Eventually he succeeded his father
+as tenant of the Lamb, where he died many years ago; the widow was
+grey when I first knew her and old like her parrot; and she was like
+the bird too in her youthful spirit and the brilliance of her eyes.
+
+Her young sailor had picked up the bird at Vera Cruz in Mexico. He saw
+a girl standing in the market place with the parrot on her shoulder.
+She was talking and singing to the bird, and the bird was talking,
+whistling, and singing back to her--singing snatches of songs in
+Spanish. It was a wonderful bird, and he was enchanted and bought it,
+and brought it all the way back to England and Wiltshire. It was, the
+girl had told him, just five years old, and as fifty years had gone by
+it was, when I first knew it, or was supposed to be, fifty-five. In
+its Wiltshire home it continued to talk and sing in Spanish, and had
+two favourite songs, which delighted everybody, although no one could
+understand the words. By and by it took to learning words and
+sentences in English, and spoke less in Spanish year after year until
+in about ten to twelve years that language had been completely
+forgotten. Its memory was not as good as that of Humboldt's celebrated
+parrot of the Maipures, which had belonged to the Apures tribe before
+they were exterminated by the Caribs. Their language perished with
+them, only the long-living parrot went on talking it. This parrot
+story took the fancy of the public and was re-told in a hundred books,
+and was made the subject of poems in several countries--one by our own
+"Pleasures of Hope" Campbell.
+
+Nevertheless I thought it would be worth while trying a little Spanish
+on old Polly of the Lamb, and thought it best to begin by making
+friends. It was of little use to offer her something to eat. Poll was
+a person who rather despised sweeties and kickshaws. It had been the
+custom of the house for half a century to allow Polly to eat what she
+liked and when she liked, and as she--it was really a he--was of a
+social disposition she preferred taking her meals with the family and
+eating the same food. At breakfast she would come to the table and
+partake of bacon and fried eggs, also toast and butter and jam and
+marmalade, at dinner it was a cut off the joint with (usually) two
+vegetables, then pudding or tart with pippins and cheese to follow.
+Between meals she amused herself with bird seed, but preferred a meaty
+mutton-bone, which she would hold in one hand or foot and feed on with
+great satisfaction. It was not strange that when I held out food for
+her she took it as an insult, and when I changed my tactics and
+offered to scratch her head she lost her temper altogether, and when I
+persisted in my advances she grew dangerous and succeeded in getting
+in several nips with her huge beak, which drew blood from my fingers.
+
+It was only then, after all my best blandishments had been exhausted,
+and when our relations were at their worst, that I began talking to
+her in Spanish, in a sort of caressing falsetto like a "native" girl,
+calling her "Lorito" instead of Polly, coupled with all the endearing
+epithets commonly used by the women of the green continent in
+addressing their green pets. Polly instantly became attentive. She
+listened and listened, coming down nearer to listen better, the one
+eye she fixed on me shining like a fiery gem. But she spoke no word,
+Spanish or English, only from time to time little low inarticulate
+sounds came from her. It was evident after two or three days that she
+was powerless to recall the old lore, but to me it also appeared
+evident that some vague memory of a vanished time had been
+evoked--that she was conscious of a past and was trying to recall it.
+At all events the effect of the experiment was that her hostility
+vanished, and we became friends at once. She would come down to me,
+step on to my hand, climb to my shoulder, and allow me to walk about
+with her.
+
+It saddened me a few months later to receive a letter from her
+mistress announcing Polly's death, on 2nd December 1909.
+
+I have thought since that this bird, instead of being only five years
+old when bought, was probably aged twenty-five years or more.
+Naturally, the girl who had been sent into the market-place to dispose
+of the bird would tell a possible buyer that it was young; the parrots
+one wants to buy are generally stated to be five years old. However,
+it may be that the bird grew old before its time on account of its
+extraordinary dietary. The parrot may have an adaptive stomach, still,
+one is inclined to think that half a century of fried eggs and bacon,
+roast pork, boiled beef and carrots, steak and onions, and stewed
+rabbit must have put a rather heavy strain on its system.
+
+Many parrots have lived longer than Polly in captivity, long as her
+life was; and here it strikes me as an odd circumstance that Polly's
+specific name was bestowed on the species, the double-fronted amazon,
+as a compliment to the distinguished French ornithologist, La
+Valainte, who has himself recorded the greatest age to which a captive
+parrot has been known to attain. This bird was the familiar African
+grey species. He says that it began to lose its memory at the age of
+sixty, to moult irregularly at sixty-five, that it became blind at
+ninety, and died aged ninety-three.
+
+We may well believe that if parrots are able to exist for fifty years to
+a century in the unnatural conditions in which they are kept, caged or
+chained in houses, over-fed, without using their enormously-developed
+wing-muscles, the constant exercise of which must be necessary to
+perfect health and vigour, their life in a state of nature must be twice
+as long.
+
+To return to parrots in general. This bird has perhaps more points of
+interest for us than any other of the entire class: his long life,
+unique form, and brilliant colouring, extreme sociability,
+intelligence beyond that of most birds, and, last, his faculty of
+imitating human speech more perfectly than the birds of other
+families.
+
+The last is to most persons the parrot's greatest distinction; to me
+it is his least. I do not find it so wonderful as the imitative
+faculty of some mocking birds or even of our delightful little
+marsh-warbler, described in another book. This may be because I have
+never had the good fortune to meet with a shining example, for we know
+there is an extraordinary difference in the talking powers of parrots,
+even in those of the same species--differences as great, in fact, as
+we find in the reasoning faculty between dog and dog, and in the songs
+of different birds of the same species. Not once but on several
+occasions I have heard a song from some common bird which took my
+breath away with astonishment. I have described in another book
+certain blackbirds of genius I have encountered. And what a wonderful
+song that caged canary in a country inn must have had, which tempted
+the great Lord Peterborough, a man of some shining qualities, to get
+the bird from its mistress, an old woman who loved it and refused to
+sell it to him, by means of a dishonest and very mean trick. Denied
+the bird, he examined it minutely and went on his way. In due time he
+returned with a canary closely resembling the one he wanted in size,
+colour, and markings, concealed on his person. He ordered dinner, and
+when the good woman was gone from the room to prepare it, changed his
+bird for hers, then, having had his meal, went on his way rejoicing.
+Still he was curious to learn the effect of his trick, and whether or
+not she had noticed any difference in her loved bird; so, after a long
+interval, he came once more to the inn, and seeing the bird in its
+cage in the old place began to speak in praise of its beautiful
+singing as he had heard it and remembered it so well. She replied
+sadly that since he listened to and wanted to buy it an unaccountable
+change had come over her bird. It was silent for a spell, perhaps
+sick, but when it resumed singing its voice had changed and all the
+beautiful notes which everyone admired were lost. The great man
+expressed his regret, and went away chuckling at his deliciously funny
+joke.
+
+The ordinary talking parrot is no more to me than the ordinary or
+average canary, piping his thin expressionless notes; he is a prodigy
+I am pleased not to know. On the other hand there are numerous
+authenticated cases of parrots possessed of really surprising powers,
+and it was doubtless the mimicking powers of such birds of genius
+which suggested such fictions as that of the Tota Kuhami in the East;
+and in Europe, Gresset's lively tale of Vert Vert and the convent
+nuns.
+
+It was perhaps a parrot of this rare kind which played so important a
+part in the early history of South America. It is nothing but a legend
+of the Guarani nation, which inhabit Paraguay, nevertheless I do
+believe that we have here an account mainly true of an important event
+in the early history of the race or nation. This parrot is not the
+impossible bird of the fictitious Tota Kahami order we all know, who
+not only mimics our speech but knows the meaning of the words he
+utters. He was nothing but a mimic, exceptionally clever, and the
+moral of the story is the familiar one that great events may proceed
+from the most trivial causes, once the passions of men are inflamed.
+
+The tradition was related centuries ago to the Jesuit Fathers in
+Paraguay, and I give it as they tell it, briefly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the beginning a great canoe came over the waters from the east and
+was stranded on the shores of Brazil. Out of the canoe came the
+brothers Tupi and Guarani and their sons and daughters with their
+husbands and wives and their children and children's children.
+
+Tupi was the leader, and being the eldest was called the father, and
+Tupi said to his brother: Behold, this great land with all its rivers
+and forests, abounding in fish and birds and beasts and fruit, is
+ours, for there are no other men dwelling in it; but we are few in
+number, let us therefore continue to live together with our children
+in one village.
+
+Guarani consented, and for many years they lived together in peace and
+amity like one family, until at last there came a quarrel to divide
+them. And it was all about a parrot that could talk and laugh and sing
+just like a man. A woman first found it in the forest, and not wishing
+to burden herself with the rearing of it she gave it to another woman.
+So well did it learn to talk from its new mistress that everybody
+admired it and it grew to be the talk of the village.
+
+Then the woman who had found and brought it, seeing how much it was
+admired and talked about, went and claimed it as her own. The other
+refused to give it up, saying that she had reared it and had taught it
+all it knew, and by doing so had become its rightful owner.
+
+Now, no person could say which was in the right, and the dispute was
+not ended and tongues continued wagging until the husbands of the two
+women became engaged in the quarrel. And then brothers and sisters and
+cousins were drawn into it, until the whole village was full of
+bitterness and strife, all because of the parrot, and men of the same
+blood for the first time raised weapons against one another. And some
+were wounded and others killed in open fight, and some were
+treacherously slain when hunting in the forest.
+
+Now when things had come to this pass Tupi the Father, called his
+brother to him and said: O brother Guarani, this is a day of grief to
+us who had looked to the spending of our remaining years together with
+all our children at this place where we have lived so long. Now this
+can no longer be on account of the great quarrel about a parrot, and
+the shedding of blood; for only by separating our two families can we
+save them from destroying one another. Come then, let us divide them
+and lead them away in opposite directions, so that when we settle
+again they may be far apart. Guarani consented, and he also said that
+Tupi was the elder and their head, and was called the Father, and it
+was therefore in his right to remain in possession of the village and
+of all that land and to end his days in it. He, on his part, would
+call his people together and lead them to a land so distant that the
+two families would never see nor hear of each other again, and there
+would be no more bitter words and strife between them.
+
+Then the two old brothers bade each other an eternal farewell, and
+Guarani led his people south a great distance and travelled many moons
+until he came to the River Paraguay, and settled there; and his people
+still dwell there and are called by his name to this day.
+
+Only, I beg to add, they do not call their nation by that word, as the
+Spanish colonists first spelt it in their carelessness, and as they
+pronounce it. Heaven knows how we pronounce it! They, the Guarani
+people, call themselves Wae-rae-nae-ee, in a soft musical voice. Also
+they call their river, which we spell Paraguay, and pronounce I don't
+know how, Pae-rae-wae-ee.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+SOMETHING PRETTY IN A GLASS CASE
+
+
+It was said by a Norfolk naturalist more than three-quarters of a
+century ago, that the desire to possess "something pretty in a glass
+case" caused the killing of very many birds, especially of such as
+were rare and beautiful, which if allowed to exist in our country
+would maintain the species and be a constant source of pleasure to all
+who beheld them. For who, walking by a riverside, does not experience
+a thrill of delight at the sudden appearance in the field of vision of
+that living jewel, the shining blue kingfisher! This is one of the
+favourites of all who desire to have something pretty in a glass case
+in the cottage parlour in room of the long-vanished pyramid of wax
+flowers and fruit. It is, however, not only the common people, the
+cottager and the village publican who desire to possess such
+ornaments. You see them also in baronial halls. Many a time on
+visiting a great house the first thing the owner has drawn my
+attention to has been his stuffed birds in a glass case: but in the
+great houses the peregrine, and hobby, and goshawk, and buzzard and
+harrier are more prized than the kingfisher and other pretty little
+birds.
+
+The Philistine we know is everywhere and is of all classes.
+
+It is to me a cause of astonishment that these mournful mementoes
+should be regarded as they appear to be, as objects pleasing to the
+eye, like pictures and statues, tapestries, and other decorative works
+of art. The sight of a stuffed bird in a house is revolting to me; it
+outrages our sense of fitness, and is as detestable as stuffed birds
+and wings, tails and heads, and beaks of murdered and mutilated birds
+on women's headgear. "Properly speaking," said St George Mivart in his
+greatest work, "there is no such thing as a dead bird." The life is
+the bird, and when that has gone out what remains is the case. These
+dead empty cases are as much to me as to any naturalist, and I can
+examine the specimens in a museum cabinet with interest. But the
+mental attitude is changed at the sight of these same dead empty cases
+set up in imitation of the living creature; and the more cleverly the
+stuffer has done his work the more detestable is the result.
+
+It may be that some vague notion of a faint remnant of life lingering
+in the life-like specimen with glass eyes, is the cause of my hatred
+of the feathered ornament in a glass case. At all events I have had
+one experience, to be related here, which has almost made me believe
+that the idea of a sort of post-mortem life in the stuffed bird is not
+wholly fanciful. I will call it:
+
+
+A DIALOGUE OF THE DEAD (AND STUFFED)
+
+Ever since I came the wind has been blowing a gale on this
+furthermost, lonely, melancholy coast, as if I had got not only to the
+Land's End, but to the end of the world itself, to the confines of Old
+Chaos his kingdom, a region where the elements are in everlasting
+conflict. Two or three times during the afternoon I have resolutely
+put on my cap and water-proof and gone out to face it, only to be
+quickly driven in again by the bitter furious blast. Yet it was almost
+as bad indoors to have to sit and listen by the hour to its ravings.
+From time to time I get up and look through the window-pane at the few
+cold grey naked cottages and empty bleak fields, divided by naked grey
+stone fences, and, beyond the fields, the foam-flecked, colder,
+greyer, more desolate ocean. Would it be better, I wonder, to fight my
+way down to those wave-loosened masses of granite by the sea, where I
+would hear the roar and thunder of the surf instead of this perpetual
+insane howling and screaming of the wind round the house? I turn from
+the window with a shiver; a splash of rain hurled against it has
+blotted the landscape out; I go back once more to my comfortable
+easy-chair by the fire. Patience! Patience! By and by, I say to
+myself--I say it many times over--daylight will be gone; then the lamp
+will be brought in, the curtains drawn, and tea will follow, with
+buttered toast and other good things. Then the solacing pipe, and
+thoughts and memories and some pleasant waking drawn to while away the
+time.
+
+What shall this dream be? Ah, what but the best of all possible dreams
+on such a day as this--a dream of spring! Somewhere in the sweet west
+country I shall stand in a wood where beeches grow; and it will be
+April, near the end of the month, before the leaves are large enough
+to hide the blue sky and the floating white clouds so far above their
+tops. Perhaps I shall sit down on one of the huge root-branches,
+"coiled like a grey old snake," so as to gaze at ease before me at the
+cloud of purple-red boughs, and interlacing twigs, sprinkled over with
+golden buds and silky opening leaves of a fresh brilliant green that
+has no match on the earth or sea, nor under the earth in the emerald
+mines. I shall watch the love-flight of the cushat above the wood,
+mounting higher and higher, then gliding down on motionless
+dove-coloured wings; and I shall listen to the wood wren, ever
+wandering and singing in the tree-tops--singing that same insistent,
+passionate--passionless strain to which one could listen for ever.
+
+I shall ask for no other song, but there will be other creatures
+there. Down the tall grey trunk of a beech tree before me a squirrel
+will slip--down, down nearly to the mossy roots, then pause and remain
+so motionless as to seem like a squirrel-shaped patch of bright
+chestnut-red moss or lichen or alga on the grey bark. And on the next
+tree, but a little distance off, I shall presently catch sight of
+another listener and watcher--a green woodpecker clinging vertically
+against the trunk, so still as to look like a bird figure carved in
+wood and painted green and gold and crimson.
+
+Just when I had got so far with the thought of what my dream was to
+be, I raised my eyes from the fire and allowed them to rest
+attentively for the first time on a collection of ornaments crowded
+together in a niche in the wall at the side of the fireplace. The
+ornamental objects one sees in a cottage are as a rule offensive to
+me, and I have acquired the habit of not seeing them; now I was
+compelled to look at these. There were photographs, little china vases
+and cups with boys or cupids, and things of that kind; these I did not
+regard; my whole attention was directed to a pair of glass-fronted
+cases and the living creatures in them. They were not really alive,
+but dead and stuffed and set up in life-like attitudes, and one was a
+squirrel, the other a green woodpecker. The squirrel with his back to
+his neighbour sat up on his mossy wood, his bushy tail thrown along
+his back, his two little hands grasping a hazel-nut, which he was in
+the act of conveying to his mouth. The green woodpecker was placed
+vertically against his branch, his side towards his neighbour, his
+head turned partly round so that he looked directly at him with one
+eye. That wide-open white glass eye and the whole attitude of the
+bird, with his wings half open and beak raised, gave him a wonderfully
+alert look, so that after regarding him fixedly for some time I began
+to imagine that, despite the old dead dusty look of the feathers,
+there was something of life still remaining in him and that he really
+was watching his neighbour with the nut very intently.
+
+Why, of course he was alive--alive and speaking to the squirrel! I
+could hear him distinctly. The wind outside was madly beating against
+the house and trying to force its way through the window, and was
+making a hundred strange noises--little sharp shrill broken sounds
+that mixed with and filled the pauses between the wailing and
+shrieking gusts, and somehow the woodpecker was catching these small
+sounds in his beak and turning them into words.
+
+"Hullo!" he said. "Who are you and what are you doing there?"
+
+"I'm a squirrel," responded the other. "I've said so over and over
+again, but you will go on worrying me! My only wish is that I could
+bring my tail just a little more to the right so as to hide my head
+and paws altogether from you."
+
+"But you can't. Hullo! squirrel, what are you doing there? You forgot
+to tell me that."
+
+"I'm eating a nut, confound you! You know it; I've told you ten
+thousand times. I can't ever get it up quite close enough to bite it
+and I haven't tasted one for seventeen years. One forgets what a thing
+tastes like."
+
+"I know. I've been fasting just as long myself. Never an ant's egg!
+Hullo! Have you got it up? How does it taste?"
+
+"Taste! You fool! If I could only move I wouldn't mind the nut; I'd go
+for you like a shot, and if I could get at you I'd tear you to pieces.
+I hate you!"
+
+"Why do you hate me, squirrel?"
+
+"More questions! Because you're green and yellow like the woods where
+I lived. There were beeches and oaks. And because your head is crimson
+red like the agarics I used to find in the woods in autumn. I used to
+eat them for fun just because they said they were poisonous and it
+would kill you to eat them."
+
+"And that's what you died of? Hullo! Why don't you answer me? Where
+did you find red agarics?
+
+"I've told you, I've told you, I've told you, in Treve woods where I
+lived, very far from here on the other side of Lostwithiel."
+
+"Treve woods, between the hills away beyond Lostwithiel! Why,
+squirrel, that's where I lived."
+
+"So I've heard; you have said it every day and every night these
+seventeen years. I hate you."
+
+"Hullo! Why do you hate me?"
+
+"I always disliked woodpeckers. I remember a pair that made a hole in
+a beech near the tree my drey was in. I played those two yafflers with
+their laugh laugh laugh some good tricks, and the best of all was when
+their young began to come out. One morning when the old birds were
+away I hid myself in the fork above the hole and waited till they
+crept out and up close to me, when I suddenly burst out upon them,
+chattering and flourishing my tail, and they were so terrified they
+actually lost their hold on the bark and tumbled right down to the
+ground. How I enjoyed it!"
+
+"You malicious little red beast! You chattering little red devil! They
+were my young ones, and I remember what a fright we were in when we
+came back and saw what had happened. It was lucky we didn't lose one!
+I shall never speak to you again. There you may sit trying to eat your
+nut for another seventeen years, and for a hundred years if this
+horrible life is going to last so long, but you'll never get another
+word from me."
+
+"I thought that would touch you, woodpecker! Ha, ha, ha--who's the
+yaffler now? What a relief; at last I shall be left to eat my nut in
+peace and quiet, here in this glass case where they put me."
+
+"Why did they put us here?"
+
+"You are speaking to me! Are the hundred years over so soon?"
+
+"There's no one else--what am I to do? Answer me, why did they put us
+here? Answer me, little red wretch! I don't mind now what you
+did--they were not hurt after all. You didn't know what you were
+doing--you had no young ones of your own."
+
+"Hadn't I indeed! My little ones were there close by in the drey."
+
+"And when they were out of the drey did you teach them to run about in
+the tree, and jump from one branch to another, and pass from tree to
+tree?"
+
+"I never saw them leave the drey--I was shot."
+
+"Where was that, squirrel?"
+
+"In the Treve Woods where the big beeches are, beyond Lostwithiel."
+
+"Never! Why, that's just where I lived and was shot, too. Did it hurt
+you, squirrel?"
+
+"I don't know. I saw a flash and remembered no more until I found
+myself dead in the man's pocket pressed against some wet soft thing.
+Did it hurt you?"
+
+"Yes, very much. I fell when he fired and tried to get away, but he
+chased and caught me and the blood ran out on to his hand. He wiped it
+off on his coat, then squeezed my sides with his finger and thumb
+until I was dead, then put me in his pocket. There was some dead warm
+soft thing in it."
+
+Here there was a break in the talk owing to a momentary lull in the
+wind. I listened intently, but the shrieking and wailing noises
+without had ceased and with them the sharp little voices had died
+away. Then suddenly the wind rose and shrieked again and the talk
+recommenced.
+
+"Hullo!" said the woodpecker. "Do you see a man sitting by the fire
+looking at us? He has been staring at us that way all the evening."
+
+"What of it! Everyone who comes into this room and sits by the fire
+does the same. It's nothing new."
+
+"It is--it is! Listen to me, squirrel. He looks as if he could hear
+and understand us. That's new, isn't it? And he has a strange look in
+his eyes. Do you know, I think he is going mad."
+
+"I don't mind, woodpecker. I shouldn't care if he were to run out on
+to the rocks at the Land's End and cast himself into the sea."
+
+"Nor should I. But just think, if before rashing out to put an end to
+himself he should, in his raving madness, snatch down our cases from
+the niche and crush them into the grate with his heel!"
+
+"What do you mean, woodpecker? Could such a thing happen?"
+
+"Yes, if he really is insane, and if he is listening to us, and we are
+making him worse."
+
+"If I could believe such a thing! I should cease to hate you,
+woodpecker. No, no, I can't believe it!"
+
+"Just think, old neighbour, to have it end at last! Burnt up to ashes
+and smoke--feathers and hair, glass eyes, cottonwool stuffing and
+all!"
+
+"Never again to hear that everlasting Hullo! To hate you and hate you
+and tell you a thousand thousand times, only to begin it all over
+again!"
+
+"To fly up away in the smoke, out out out in the wind and rain!"
+
+"The rain! the rain!"
+
+"The rain from the south-west that made me laugh my loudest! Raining
+all day, wetting my green feathers, wetting every green leaf in the
+woods beyond Lostwithiel. Raining until all the stony gullies were
+filled to overflowing, and the water ran and gurgled and roared until
+the whole wood was filled with the sound."
+
+"No, no, woodpecker, I can't, I can't believe it!"
+
+"It's true! It's true! Don't you see it coming, squirrel? Look at him!
+Look at him! Now, now! At last! At last! At last!"
+
+Suddenly their sharp agitated voices fell to a broken whispering and
+died into silence. For the wind had lulled again. Looking closely at
+them I thought I could see a new expression in their immovable glass
+eyes. It frightened me, I began to be frightened at myself; for it now
+seemed to me that I really was becoming insane, and I was suddenly
+seized with a fierce desire to snatch the cases down and crush them
+into the fire with my heel. To save myself from such a mad act I
+jumped up, and picking up my candle, hurried upstairs to my bedroom.
+No sooner did I reach it than the wind was up again, wailing and
+shrieking louder than ever, and between the gusts there were the
+murmurings and strange small noises of the wind in the roof, and once
+more I began to catch the sound of their renewed talk. "Gone! gone!"
+they said or seemed to say. "Our last hope! What shall we do, what
+shall we do? Years! Years! Years!" Then by and by the tone changed,
+and there were question and answer. "When was that, squirrel?" I
+heard; and then a furious quarrel with curses from the squirrel, and
+"hullos" and renewed questions from the woodpecker, and memories of
+their life and death in Treve Wood, beyond Lostwithiel.
+
+What wonder that, when hours later I fell asleep, I had the most
+distressing and maddest dreams imaginable!
+
+One dream was that when men die and go to hell, they are sent in large
+baskets-full to the taxidermists of the establishment, who are highly
+proficient in the art, and set them up in the most perfect life-like
+attitudes, with wideawake glass eyes, blue or dark, in their sockets,
+their hair varnished to preserve its natural colour and glossy
+appearance. They are placed separately in glass cases to keep them
+from the dust, and the cases are set up in pairs in niches in the
+walls of the palace of hell. The lord of the place takes great pride
+in these objects; one of his favourite amusements is to sit in his
+easy-chair in front of a niche to listen by the hour to the endless
+discussions going on between the two specimens, in which each
+expresses his virulent but impotent hatred of the other, damning his
+glass eyes; at the same time relating his own happy life and
+adventures in the upper sunlit world, how important a person he was in
+his own parish of borough, and what a gorgeous time he was having when
+he was unfortunately nabbed by one of the collectors or gamekeepers in
+his lordship's service.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+SELBORNE
+
+
+(1896)
+
+First impressions of faces are very much to us; vivid and persistent,
+even long after they have been judged false they will from time to time
+return to console or mock us. It is much the same with places, for
+these, too, an ineradicable instinct will have it, are persons. Few in
+number are the towns and villages which are dear to us, whose memory is
+always sweet, like that of one we love. Those that wake no emotion, that
+are remembered much as we remember the faces of a crowd of shop
+assistants in some emporium we are accustomed to visit, are many. Still
+more numerous, perhaps, are the places that actually leave a
+disagreeable impression on the mind. Probably the reason of this is
+because most places are approached by railroad. The station, which is
+seen first, and cannot thereafter be dissociated from the town, is
+invariably the centre of a chaotic collection of ugly objects and
+discordant noises, all the more hateful because so familiar. For in
+coming to a new place we look instinctively for that which is new, and
+the old, and in themselves unpleasant sights and sounds, at such a
+moment produce a disheartening, deadening effect on the stranger:--the
+same clanging, puffing, grinding, gravel-crushing, banging, shrieking
+noises; the same big unlovely brick and metal structure, the long
+platform, the confusion of objects and people, the waiting vehicles, and
+the glittering steel rails stretching away into infinitude, like
+unburied petrified webs of some gigantic spider of a remote past--webs
+in which mastodons were caught like flies. Approaching a town from some
+other direction--riding, driving, or walking--we see it with a clearer
+truer vision, and take away a better and more lasting image.
+
+Selborne is one of the noted places where pilgrims go that is happily
+without a station. From whichever side you approach it the place itself,
+features and expression, is clearly discerned: in other words you see
+Selborne, and not a brick and metal outwork or mask; not an excrescence,
+a goitre, which can make even a beautiful countenance appear repulsive.
+There is a station within a few miles of the village. I approached by a
+different route, and saw it at the end of a fifteen miles' walk. Rain
+had begun to fall on the previous evening; and when in the morning I
+looked from my bedroom window in the wayside inn, where I had passed the
+night, it was raining still, and everywhere, as far as I could see,
+broad pools of water were gleaming on the level earth. All day the rain
+fell steadily from a leaden sky, so low that where there were trees it
+seemed almost to touch their tops, while the hills, away on my left,
+appeared like vague masses of cloud that rest on the earth. The road
+stretched across a level moorland country; it was straight and narrow,
+but I was compelled to keep to it, since to step aside was to put my
+feet into water. Mile after mile I trudged on without meeting a soul,
+where not a house was visible--a still, wet, desolate country with trees
+and bushes standing in water, unstirred by a breath of wind. Only at
+long intervals a yellow hammer was heard uttering his thin note; for
+just as this bird sings in the sultriest weather which silences other
+voices, so he will utter his monotonous chant on the gloomiest day.
+
+It may be because he sung
+
+   The yellow hammer in the rain
+
+that I have long placed Faber among my best-loved minor poets of the
+past century. He alone among our poets has properly appreciated that the
+singer who never stops, but, "pleased with his own monotony," shakes off
+the rain and sings on in a mood of cheerfulness dashed with melancholy:
+
+   And there he is within the rain,
+   And beats and beats his tune again,
+   Quite happy in himself.
+
+   Within the heart of this great shower
+   He sits, as in a secret bower,
+   With curtains drawn about him:
+   And, part in duty, part in mirth,
+   He beats, as if upon the earth
+   Rain could not fall without him.
+
+I remember that W. E. Henley once took me severely to task on account of
+some jeering remarks made about our poet's way of treating the birds and
+their neglect of so many of our charming singers. In the course of our
+correspondence he questioned me about the cirl bunting, that lively
+singer and pretty first cousin of the yellow hammer; and after I had
+supplied him with full information, he informed me that it was his
+intention to write a poem on that bird, and that he would be the first
+English poet to sing the cirl bunting.
+
+He never wrote that lyric, "part in duty, part in mirth"; he was
+then near his end.
+
+To return to my walk. At last the aspect of the country changed: in
+place of brown heath, with gloomy fir and furze, there was cheerful
+verdure of grass and deciduous trees, and the straight road grew deep
+and winding, running now between hills, now beside woods, and
+hop-fields, and pasture lands. And at length, wet and tired, I reached
+Selborne--the remote Hampshire village that has so great a fame.
+
+To very many readers a description of the place would seem superfluous.
+They know it so well, even without having seen it; the little, old-world
+village at the foot of the long, steep, bank-like hill, or Hanger,
+clothed to its summit with beech-wood as with a green cloud; the
+straggling street, the Plestor, or village green, an old tree in the
+centre, with a bench surrounding its trunk for the elders to rest on of
+a summer evening. And, close by, the grey immemorial church, with its
+churchyard, its grand old yew-tree, and, overhead, the bunch of swifts,
+rushing with jubilant screams round the square tower.
+
+I had not got the book in my knapsack, nor did I need it. Seeing the
+Selborne swifts, I thought how a century and a quarter ago Gilbert White
+wrote that the number of birds inhabiting and nesting in the village,
+summer after summer, was nearly always the same, consisting of about
+eight pairs. The birds now rushing about over the church were twelve,
+and I saw no others.
+
+If Gilbert White had never lived, or had never corresponded with Pennant
+and Daines Barrington, Selborne would have impressed me as a very
+pleasant village set amidst diversified and beautiful scenery, and I
+should have long remembered it as one of the most charming spots which I
+had found in my rambles in southern England. But I thought of White
+continually. The village itself, every feature in the surrounding
+landscape, and every object, living or inanimate, and every sound,
+became associated in my mind with the thought of the obscure country
+curate, who was without ambition, and was "a still, quiet man, with no
+harm in him--no, not a bit," as was once said by one of his
+parishioners. There, at Selborne--to give an altered meaning to a verse
+of quaint old Nicholas Culpepper--
+
+   His image stamped is on every grass.
+
+With a new intense interest I watched the swifts careering through the
+air, and listened to their shrill screams. It was the same with all the
+birds, even the commonest--the robin, blue tit, martin, and sparrow. In
+the evening I stood motionless a long time intently watching a small
+flock of greenfinches settling to roost in a hazel-hedge. From time to
+time they became disturbed at my presence, and fluttering up to the
+topmost twigs, where their forms looked almost black against the pale
+amber sky, they uttered their long-drawn canary-like note of alarm. At
+all times a delicate, tender note, now it had something more in
+it--something from the far past--the thought of one whose memory was
+interwoven with living forms and sounds.
+
+The strength and persistence of this feeling had a curious effect. It
+began to seem to me that he who had ceased to five over a century ago,
+whose Letters had been the favourite book of several generations of
+naturalists, was, albeit dead and gone, in some mysterious way still
+living. I spent a long time groping about in the long rank grass of the
+churchyard in search of a memorial; and this, when found, turned out to
+be a modest-sized headstone, and I had to go down on my knees, and put
+aside the rank grass that half covered it, just as when we look into a
+child's face we push back the unkempt hair from its forehead; and on the
+stone were graved the name, and beneath, "1793," the year of his death.
+
+Happy the nature-lover who, in spite of fame, is allowed to rest, as
+White rests, pressed upon by no ponderous stone; the sweet influences of
+sun and rain are not kept from him; even the sound of the wild bird's
+cry may penetrate to his narrow apartment to gladden his dust!
+
+Perhaps there is some truth in the notion that when a man dies he does
+not wholly die; that is to say, the earthly yet intelligent part of him,
+which, being of the earth, cannot ascend; that a residuum of life
+remains, like a perfume left by some long-vanished, fragrant object; or
+it may be an emanation from the body at death, which exists thereafter
+diffused and mixed with the elements, perhaps unconscious and yet
+responsive, or capable of being vivified into consciousness and emotions
+of pleasure by a keenly sympathetic presence. At Selborne this did not
+seem mere fantasy. Strolling about the village, loitering in the
+park-like garden of the Wakes, or exploring the Hanger; or when I sat on
+the bench under the churchyard yew, or went softly through the grass to
+look again at those two letters graved on the headstone, there was a
+continual sense of an unseen presence near me. It was like the sensation
+a man sometimes has when lying still with closed eyes of some one moving
+softly to his side. I began to think that if that feeling and sensation
+lasted long enough without diminishing its strength, it would in the end
+produce something like conviction. And the conviction would imply
+communion. Furthermore, between the thought that we may come to believe
+in a thing and belief itself there is practically no difference. I began
+to speculate as to the subjects about to be discussed by us. The chief
+one would doubtless relate to the bird life of the district. There are
+fresh things to be related of the cuckoo; how "wonder has been added to
+wonder" by observers of that bird since the end of the eighteenth
+century. And here is a delicate subject to follow--to wit, the
+hibernation of swallows--yet one by no possibility to be avoided. It
+would be something of a disappointment to him to hear it stated, as an
+established fact, that none of our hirundines do winter, fast asleep
+like dormice, in these islands. But there would be comfort in the
+succeeding declaration that the old controversy is not quite dead
+yet--that at least two popular writers on British birds have boldly
+expressed the belief that some of our supposed migrants do actually "lay
+up" in the dead season. The deep interest manifested in the subject
+would be a temptation to dwell on it. I should touch on the discovery
+made recently by a young English naturalist abroad, that a small species
+of swallow in a temperate country in the Southern Hemisphere shelters
+itself under the thick matted grass, and remains torpid during spells of
+cold weather. We have now a magnificent monograph of the swallows, and
+it is there stated of the purple martin, an American species, that in
+some years bitter cold weather succeeds its arrival in early spring in
+Canada; that at such times the birds take refuge in their nesting holes
+and lie huddled together in a semi-torpid state, sometimes for a week or
+ten days, until the return of genial weather, when they revive and
+appear as full of life and vigour as before. It is said that these and
+other swallows are possessed of habits and powers of which we have as
+yet but slight knowledge. Candour would compel me to add that the author
+of the monograph in question, who is one of the first living
+ornithologists, is inclined to believe that some swallows in some
+circumstances do hibernate.
+
+At this I should experience a curious and almost startling sensation, as
+if the airy hands of my invisible companion had been clapped together,
+and the clap had been followed by an exclamation--a triumphant "Ah!"
+
+Then there would be much to say concerning the changes in the bird
+population of Selborne parish, and of the southern counties generally. A
+few small species--hawfinch, pretty chaps, and gold-crest--were much
+more common now than in his day; but a very different and sadder story
+had to be told of most large birds. Not only had the honey buzzard never
+returned to nest on the beeches of the Hanger since 1780, but it had
+continued to decrease everywhere in England and was now extinct. The
+raven, too, was lost to England as an inland breeder. It could not now
+be said that "there are bustards on the wide downs near
+Brighthelmstone," nor indeed anywhere in the kingdom. The South Downs
+were unchanged, and there were still pretty rides and prospects round
+Lewes; but he might now make his autumn journey to Ringmer without
+seeing kites and buzzards, since these had both vanished; nor would he
+find the chough breeding at Beachy Head, and all along the Sussex coast.
+It would also be necessary to mention the disappearance of the quail,
+and the growing scarcity of other once abundant species, such as the
+stone plover and curlew, and even of the white owl, which no longer
+inhabited its ancient breeding-place beneath the caves of Selborne
+Church.
+
+Finally, after discussing these and various other matters which once
+engaged his attention, also the little book he gave to the world so long
+ago, there would still remain another subject to be mentioned about
+which I should feel somewhat shy--namely, the marked difference in
+manner, perhaps in feeling, between the old and new writers on animal
+life and nature. The subject would be strange to him. On going into
+particulars, he would be surprised at the disposition, almost amounting
+to a passion, of the modern mind to view life and nature in their
+aesthetic aspects. This new spirit would strike him as something odd and
+exotic, as if the writers had been first artists or landscape-gardeners,
+who had, as naturalists, retained the habit of looking for the
+picturesque. He would further note that we moderns are more emotional
+than the writers of the past, or, at all events, less reticent. There is
+no doubt, he would say, that our researches into the kingdom of nature
+produce in us a wonderful pleasure, unlike in character and perhaps
+superior to most others; but this feeling, which was indefinable and not
+to be traced to its source, was probably given to us for a secret
+gratification. If we are curious to know its significance, might we not
+regard it as something ancillary to our spiritual natures, as a kind of
+subsidiary conscience, a private assurance that in all our researches
+into the wonderful works of creation we are acting in obedience to a
+tacit command, or, at all events in harmony with the Divine Will?
+
+Ingenious! would be my comment, and possibly to the eighteenth century
+mind it would have proved satisfactory. There was something to be said
+in defence of what appeared to him as new and strange in our books and
+methods. Not easily said, unfortunately; since it was not only the
+expression that was new, but the outlook, and something in the heart. We
+are bound as much as ever to facts; we seek for them more and more
+diligently, knowing that to break from them is to be carried away by
+vain imaginations. All the same, facts in themselves are nothing to us:
+they are important only in their relations to other facts and things--to
+all things, and the essence of things, material and spiritual. We are
+not like children gathering painted shells and pebbles on a beach; but,
+whether we know it or not, are seeking after something beyond and above
+knowledge. The wilderness in which we are sojourners is not our home; it
+is enough that its herbs and roots and wild fruits nourish and give us
+strength to go onward. Intellectual curiosity, with the gratification of
+the individual for only purpose, has no place in this scheme of things
+as we conceive it. Heart and soul are with the brain in all
+investigation--a truth which some know in rare, beautiful intervals, and
+others never; but we are all meanwhile busy with our work, like myriads
+of social insects engaged in raising a structure that was never planned.
+Perhaps we are not so wholly unconscious of our destinies as were the
+patient gatherers of facts of a hundred years ago. Even in one brief
+century the dawn has come nearer--perhaps a faint whiteness in the east
+has exhilarated us like wine. Undoubtedly we are more conscious of many
+things, both within and without--of the length and breadth and depth of
+nature; of a unity which was hardly dreamed of by the naturalists of
+past ages, a commensalism on earth from which the meanest organism is
+not excluded. For we are no longer isolated, standing like starry
+visitors on a mountain-top, surveying life from the outside; but are on
+a level with and part and parcel of it; and if the mystery of life daily
+deepens, it is because we view it more closely and with clearer vision.
+A poet of our age has said that in the meanest floweret we may find
+"thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." The poet and prophet is
+not alone in this; he expresses a feeling common to all of those who,
+with our wider knowledge, have the passion for nature in their hearts,
+who go to nature, whether for knowledge or inspiration. That there
+should appear in recent literature something of a new spirit, a
+sympathetic feeling which could not possibly have flourished in a former
+age, is not to be wondered at, considering all that has happened in the
+present century to change the current of men's thoughts. For not only
+has the new knowledge wrought in our minds, but has entered, or is at
+last entering, into our souls.
+
+Having got so far in my apology, a feeling of despair would all at once
+overcome me at the thought of the vastness of the subject I had entered
+upon. Looking back it seems but a little while since the introduction of
+that new element into thought, that "fiery leaven" which in the end
+would "leaven all the hearts of men for ever." But the time was not
+really so short; the gift had been rejected with scorn and bitterness by
+the mass of mankind at first; it had taken them years--the years of a
+generation--to overcome repugnance and resentment, and to accept it.
+Even so it had wrought a mighty change, only this had been in the mind;
+the change in the heart would follow, and it was perhaps early to boast
+of it. How was I to disclose all this to him? All that I had spoken was
+but a brief exordium--a prelude and note of preparation for what should
+follow--a story immeasurably longer and infinitely more wonderful than
+that which the Ancient Mariner told to the Wedding Guest. It was an
+impossible task.
+
+At length, after an interval of silence, to me full of trouble, the
+expected note of dissent would come.
+
+I had told him, he would say, either too much or not enough. No doubt
+there had been a very considerable increase of knowledge since his day;
+nevertheless, judging from something I had said on the hibernation, or
+torpid condition, of swallows, there was still something to learn with
+regard to the life and conversation of animals. The change in the
+character of modern books about nature, of which I had told him, quoting
+passages--a change in the direction of a more poetic and emotional
+treatment of the subject--he, looking from a distance, was inclined to
+regard as merely a literary fashion of the time. That anything so
+unforeseen had come to pass,--so important as to change the current of
+thought, to give to men new ideas about the unity of nature and the
+relation in which we stood towards the inferior creatures,--he could not
+understand. It should be remembered that the human race had existed some
+fifty or sixty centuries on the earth, and that since the invention of
+letters men had recorded their observations. The increase in the body of
+facts had thus been, on the whole, gradual and continuous. Take the case
+of the cuckoo. Aristotle, some two thousand years ago, had given a
+fairly accurate account of its habits; and yet in very recent years, as
+I had informed him, new facts relating to the procreant instincts of
+that singular fowl had come to light.
+
+After a short interval of silence I would become conscious of a change
+in him, as if a cloud had lifted--of a quiet smile on his, to my earthly
+eyes, invisible countenance, and he would add: "No, no; you have
+yourself supplied me with a reason for questioning your views; your
+statement of them--pardon me for saying it--struck me as somewhat
+rhapsodical. I refer to your commendations of my humble history of the
+Parish of Selborne. It is gratifying to me to hear that this poor little
+book is still in such good repute, and I have been even more pleased at
+that idea of modern naturalists, so flattering to my memory, of a
+pilgrimage to Selborne; but, if so great a change has come over men's
+minds as you appear to believe, and if they have put some new
+interpretation on nature, it is certainly curious that I should still
+have readers."
+
+It would be my turn to smile now--a smile for a smile--and silence would
+follow. And so, with the dispersal of this little cloud, there would be
+an end of the colloquy, and each would go his way: one to be re-absorbed
+into the grey stones and long grass, the ancient yew-tree, the wooded
+Hanger; the other to pursue his walk to the neighbouring parish of Liss,
+almost ready to believe as he went that the interview had actually taken
+place.
+
+It only remains to say that the smile (my smile) would have been at the
+expense of some modern editors of the famous Letters, rather than at
+that of my interlocutor. They are astonished at Gilbert White's
+vitality, and cannot find a reason for it. Why does this "little
+cockle-shell of a book," as one of them has lately called it, come gaily
+down to us over a sea full of waves, where so many brave barks have
+foundered? The style is sweet and clear, but a book cannot live merely
+because it is well written. It is chock-full of facts; but the facts
+have been tested and sifted, and all that were worth keeping are to be
+found incorporated in scores of standard works on natural history. I
+would humbly suggest that there is no mystery at all about it; that the
+personality of the author is the principal charm of the Letters, for in
+spite of his modesty and extreme reticence his spirit shines in every
+page; that the world will not willingly let this small book die, not
+only because it is small, and well written, and full of interesting
+matter, but chiefly because it is a very delightful human document.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+   A
+
+   Adventures among Birds, 216
+   "Age of Fools," story of the, 8
+   Agriculture, decay of, in Gloucestershire, 174
+   Amazon, double-fronted, 256
+   Arnold, Matthew, on birds, 161
+   Arthur, King, legend of, 165
+   Asses, wild, their braying, 78
+   Axe, daws in the valley of Somerset, 59, 61, 187
+
+
+   B
+
+   Baring-Gould's Broom Squire, 225
+   Bath, 66;
+       bird life in, 68
+   Bee, stingless, in La Plata, its mode of attack, 43
+   Beech leaves, 84
+   Birds, stuffed, effect of, 1-7;
+       at their best, 13-18;
+       mental reproduction of voices of, 18-26;
+       durability of images of, 28-32;
+       their relations with man, 37, 48-50;
+       human suggestions in voices of, 121-132;
+       rare, their gradual extirpation, 236-248
+   Birds of Berkshire, 225
+   Birds of Wiltshire, 169
+   "Bishops Jacks," at Wells, 61
+   Blackbird, 124
+   Blackcap, its song, 112-114
+   Blue, in flowers, 136, 154
+   Booth collection, the, at Brighton, 3
+   Brean Down, singular appearance of, 188;
+       shildrakes binding at, 194
+   Brissot and the Merrimac River, 35
+   "British Bird of Paradise," 100
+   British Ornithologists's Union, 24
+   Broadway, raven superstitions at, 114
+   Burns, "Address to a Wood-lark," 127
+   Burroughs, John, on the willow wren, 101;
+       search for the nightingale, 222
+
+
+   C
+
+   Carew, Thomas, lines quoted, 144
+   Cathedral Daws at Wells, 61
+   Cattle, tended by birds, 39
+   Chaffinch, song of, 114
+   Children, imitative calls of, 177
+   Chrysotis guildingi, 250
+   Chrysotis lavalaniti, 256
+   Collections of birds, small educational value of, 6
+   Collectors, destruction of Dartford warblers by, 224-231;
+       as law-breakers, 234-237
+   Cowper, the poet, on the daw's voice, 74;
+       as naturalist, 76
+
+
+   D
+
+   Dartford warbler, 3;
+       dead and alive, 4;
+       search for the, 223;
+       cause of decrease of, 224;
+       gradual extirpation by collectors, 229;
+       at its best, 31, 231-234
+   Daws, cows and, 39;
+       at Savernake, 58, 90-93;
+       choice of a breeding site, 58;
+       stick-carrying and dropping by, 62-64;
+       originally builders in trees, 63;
+       at Bath, 66, 71-78;
+       their voices, 72-75;
+       alarm cry, 92
+   Deer and jackdaw, 41
+   Destruction of British birds and pressing need for remedy, 224-248
+
+
+   E
+
+   "Ebor Jacks," 61
+   Ebor rocks, former presence of ravens at the, 171
+   Exmoor, extirpation of birds by keepers in the Forest of, 170
+   Expression in natural objects due to human associations, 133;
+       in flowers, 135-137
+
+
+   F
+
+   Faber, Father, lines on the yellow hammer, 285
+   Feathers, falling, birds' fear of, 252
+   Ferne, Sir John, on azure in blazoning, 157
+   Flowers, expression in, 133, 153;
+       human colours in, 135-137;
+       vernacular names of, 137-140, 145;
+       yellow and white, lack of human associations in, 146-149;
+       personal preferences, 153;
+       charm due to human associations, 154
+   Fowler, Mr Warde, on wagtails, 159;
+       on the willow wren's song, 121
+   Frensham Pond, swallows and swifts at, 51;
+       gold-crests at, 53
+   Furze wren, see Dartford Warbler
+
+
+   G
+
+   Gardens, 151
+   Geese, on a common, 78;
+       at Lyndhurst, 199;
+       their lofty demeanour, 200, 206, 216-221;
+       degraded by culinary associations, 201;
+       as watch-dogs, 203;
+       Egyptian representations of, 203;
+       voice of, 210;
+       migratory instinct in domestic, 213
+   Geese, Magellanic, 204;
+       voices of, 205;
+       courtly demeanour of, 206;
+       a migrating pair of, 214
+   Gerarde, 150
+   Gold-crests alarmed, 53, 57
+   Gould, on abundance of the Dartford warbler, 224
+   Gray, Robert, on the gray-lag goose, 210
+   Gresset, the story of Vert Vert by, 264
+   Grey, Sir Edward, on the study of birds, 33
+   Grove, Sir George, blackbird's singing described by, 124
+   Guarani, legend of a parrot, 264
+
+
+   H
+
+   Hastings, daws at, 62
+   Henley, W. E. on bird poems, 286
+   Herodotus, on flying feathers and snow, 254
+   Honey buzzard, destruction of the, 228, 236
+   Humming-bird, defending its nest, 42
+
+
+   I
+
+   Impressions, emotion a condition of their permanence, 6, 15;
+       sound, 18;
+       durability of, 26
+
+
+   J
+
+   Jackdaws, see Daws
+   Jays, spring assemblies, 94-100;
+       mimicry, 95;
+       variability of song, 97;
+       their call, 99;
+       mode of flight, 99;
+       British bird of Paradise, 100
+   Jefferies, Richard, on yellow flowers, 148
+
+
+   K
+
+   Kearton, Mr Richard, suggestion for the protection of rare birds
+   by, 240
+   Kennedy, Clark, on the furze wren in Berkshire, 225
+   King Arthur, legend of, 165
+   Kingfishers, alive and dead, 12
+
+
+   L
+
+   Land's End, the, 155
+   La Plata and Patagonia, images of birds of, 26
+   Lapwing, the spur-winged, and sheep, 44
+   Leslie's Riverside Letters, 124
+   Letters of Rusticus, 226
+   Linnets, a concert of, 188
+   Livett, Dr, a raven story told by, 171
+   Long-tailed tit at its best, 16
+   Lynton, wood wren at, 97
+
+
+   M
+
+   Macgillivray, on the redbreast, 48
+   Magellanic geese. See Geese
+   Magpie, manner of flight of, 284
+   Mammals, relations of birds with, 38
+   Man, from the birds' point of view, 37;
+       the robin's pleasure in his company, 48
+   Maxwell, Sir Herbert, on the "cursed collector," 161
+   Medum, representation of geese at, 203
+   Memory of things seen, 18;
+       of things heard, 18
+   Montagu's Dictionary of Birds, account of the jay in, 95
+   Mivart, St George, on dead birds, 270
+
+
+   N
+
+   Naturalist, the old and new, 294
+   Nature, modern sense of the unity of, 294
+   Newman on the Dartford warbler, 226
+   Nightingale, quality of its voice, 128
+   Nothura maculosa, the "partridge" of Argentina, 252
+
+
+   O
+
+   Ossian's address to the sun, 148
+   Owl, wood, hooting of the, 178;
+       superstitions regarding the, 181;
+       a pet, 184
+   Owls, in a village, 173
+
+
+   P
+
+   Parrot, caged and free, 249;
+       the St Vincent, 250, 254;
+       history of a double-fronted amazon, 256;
+       a lost language talked by a, 258;
+       longevity of the, 261;
+       tales and legends of the, 264-268
+   Partridges and rabbits, 45
+   Patti, Carlota, bird-like voice of, 128
+   Peregrine falcon, fight with raven, 167
+   Peterborough, the great Lord, and a canary, 263
+   Pheasant and chicks, 52
+   Pigeon family, the, original notes of, 88
+   Pigs in the New Forest, 81
+
+
+   Q
+
+   Quixote, Don, as to tradition of King Arthur, 165
+
+
+   R
+
+   Rabbits, how regarded by partridges, 45
+   Ravens, in Somerset, 160;
+       aereal feat of, 161;
+       decrease and disappearance of, 169-170;
+       superstitious fear of killing, 165;
+       last, 170;
+       tapping at lighted windows, 170
+   Raven tree, a, 169
+   Red, in flowers, human associations of, 141-145
+   Redbreast, tameness of the, 48
+   Reed warbler, the, in Somerset, 190-191
+   Ruskin, "word painting," 72;
+       on cathedral daws, 73;
+       on the distinction of beauty, 238
+
+
+   S
+
+   Saintbury, village of, 176;
+       owl superstitions at, 180
+   St Vincent parrot, 250;
+       anecdote of, 254
+   Savernake Forest, early spring in, 76;
+       daws in, 90;
+       jays in, 94
+   Sea-birds, protection of, 240, 242
+   Seebohm, on the wood wren, 105;
+       on the willow wren, 117;
+       on jay assemblies, 95
+   Selborne, a first sight of, 284;
+       changes in its bird population, 293
+   Sheep, tended by birds, 39;
+       quarrel of a spur-winged lapwing with, 44
+   Sheldrake in Somerset, 191;
+       tame and wild, 193;
+       appearance when flying, 193;
+       singular breeding habits, 194-195
+   Sigerson, Miss Dora (Mrs Shorter) in "Flight of the Wild Geese,"
+   213
+   Skylark, song, 116
+   Somerset, daws in, 59;
+       ravens in, 160;
+       red warbler in, 190
+   Sound-images, their durability, 18, 21
+   Spencer, Herbert, on social animals, 47;
+       on the origin of music, 131
+   Starlings, their services to cattle, 39;
+       abundance at Bath of, 71
+   Summer Studies of Birds and Books, 159
+   Sunlight, effects on plumage of birds, 3, 12
+   Swallows, how man is regarded by, 49-53, 55;
+       alarmed by a grey hat, 57;
+       quality of the voice of, 125;
+       Gilbert White on hybernation of, 291
+   Swifts, unconcern of in man's presence, 51;
+       at Selborne, 287
+
+
+   T
+
+   Tennyson, on the speedwell, 149
+   Throstle, loudness of its song, 118
+   Tits, blue, at Bath, 71;
+       long-tailed, seen at their best, 16
+   Tree-pipit, quality of voice of, 126
+
+
+   U
+
+   Upland geese. See Geese.
+
+
+   V
+
+   Visitants, rare annual slaughter of, 237
+
+
+   W
+
+   Wagtail, pied, attending cows in the pasture ... quality of voice
+   of, 125
+   Wallace, Alfred Russel, Bird of Paradise assemblies described by,
+   100
+   Wells, daws at the cathedral, 60;
+       a wood wren at, 102
+   White, Gilbert, wood wren's song, described by, 106;
+       willow wren's song described by, 122;
+       associations with, at Selborne, 288;
+       an imaginary conversation with, 291
+   Whiteness, in flowers, 146;
+       magnifying effect of, 193
+   Willersey, owls at, 173;
+       a pet wood owl at, 184
+   Willow wren, Burroughs on the song of the, 101;
+       Gilbert White's description of its song, 122;
+       Warde Fowler's description of its song, 121, 122;
+       abundance and wide distribution of, 117
+   Willoughby, Father of British Ornithology, willow wren described
+   by, 118
+   Wood lark, Burns' address to, 127
+   Wood owl. See Owls.
+   Wood pigeon, song of, 85;
+       human quality in voice of, 87-90
+   Wood wren, at Wells, 102;
+       difficulty in seeing, 103;
+       inquisitiveness, 104;
+       secret of its charm, 114
+   Wookey Hole, source of the Somerset Axe, 59
+   Wordsworth, bird voices preferred by, 107
+
+
+   Y
+
+   Year with the Birds, A, 122
+   Yellow, in flowers, 146
+   Yellow-hammer, singing in the rain, 285
+
+
+
+
+PRINTED BY
+
+TURNBULL AND SPEARS,
+
+EDINBURGH
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes
+
+Beyond the list of corrections detailed below, a number of minor
+corrections may have been applied where commas, or periods were either
+missing or existed where other similar usage (for example, index
+listings) does not have it.
+
+
+Typographical Corrections
+
+   Page Correction
+     8 Barragan => Barragan
+    14 procesess => processes
+    19 has becomes => has become
+    34 scare => score
+    48 een => even
+    49 comany => company
+    89 accompnay => accompany
+   112 shubbery => shrubbery
+   150 beauitful => beautiful
+   151 adnire => admire
+   152 destested => detested
+   161 pasages => passages
+   175 intervvals => intervals
+   203 if => of
+   214 yon => you
+   226 vey => very
+   232 torquoise => turquoise
+   233 curosity => curiosity
+   246 offender's => offenders
+   252 tinamu => tinamou (twice on this page)
+   253 tinamu => tinamou
+   256 dosing => dozing
+   267 familes => families
+   303 ascociations => associations
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Birds and Man, by W. H. Hudson
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIRDS AND MAN ***
+
+***** This file should be named 37787.txt or 37787.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/7/8/37787/
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Tom Cosmas and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+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.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.