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niiiiitfi.'-

THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

THE BOOR OF
A NATURALIST

BY

W. H.HUDSON

Author of
'The Naturalist inLaPlata*

HODDERAND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEWYORK TORONTO

i

PREFACE

It is necessary that a book should have a title, and
important that this should ^e descriptiv» of the book:
accordingly, I was pleased w.th my gi fortune and
myself when I hit upon one w^iich \ a- not merely
descriptive but was attractive a^^ veil.

This was a long ' '>->t ago w'len these studies,
essays and sketches of animal lL*e began to accumu-
late on my hands and I foresaw the book. U uhappily,
long before my book was ready my nice title had
occurred to some one else and was dulv given by Sir
E. Ray Lankester to his Diversions of a Naturalist
—a collection of papers on a vast variety of subjects
which had been appearing serially under another title.
I was very much annoyed, n^t only because he is
a big man and I am a little one and my need was
therefore greater, but also because it appeared to me
better suited to my book than to his. He deals with
the deep problems of biolo.^y and is not exactly a
naturalist in the old original sense of the word— one
who is mainly concerned with the "life and conversa-
tion of animals," and whose work is consequently more
like play than his can be, even wnen it is Science from
an Eos J Chair.

vi THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

What then was I to do, seeing that aU possible
changes had been rung on such general titles as
Journals, Letters, Notes, Gleanings, and what not, of
a Naturalist? There was no second string to my
bow since Recreations had already been used by my
Mend J. E. Harting for his book. In sheer despera-
tion I took this title, which would fit any work on
Natural History ever published. Doubtless it would
have been an improvement if I could have put in
the " Field " before " Naturalist " to show that it was
not a compilation, but the title could not be made
longer even by a word.

Some of the chapters in this volume now appear
for the first time ; more of them, however, are taken
from or based on articles which have appeared in
various periodicals : the Fortnightly Review, National
Review, Country Life, Nation, the Nerv Statesman,
and others. I am obUged to the Editors of the
Times and Chambers's Journal for permission to use
two short copyright articles on the Rat and Squirrel
which appeared in those journals.

CONTENTS

CBAP.

1. Life in a Pink Wood

1

2. Hints to Aoder-Sekkbrs . . . .

15

3. Bats .......

33

4. Beauty or the Fox . . . . .

50

5. A Sentimentalist on Foxes . . . .

55

6. The Discontented Squirrel . . . .

63

7. My Neighbour's Bird Stories . . . .

74

8. The Toad as Traveller . . . .

!'

9. The Heron: A Feathered Notable .

93 1

10. The Heron as a Table-Bird

106

11. The Mole Question ....

113

12. Cristiano: A Horse ....

119

13. Mary's Little Lamb ....

123

14. The Serpent's Tongue ....

134
153

15. The Serpent's Strangeness

16. The Bruised Serpent ....

172 [

17. The Serpent in Literature

186

18. Wasps ......

210

19. Beautiful Hawk-Moths

217

20. The Strenuous Mole ....

225 1

• • •

VUl

THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

omtr.

21. A Friendly Rat

22. The Little Red Doo .

23. Doos IN London

24. The Great Dog-Superstition .

25. My Friend the Fig

26. The Potato at Home and in Engiand

27. John-Go-To-Bed-At-Noon

28. The Chequered Daffodil

29. Concerning Lawns and Earthworms

Index ....

PAoa
232

238

247

265

295

303

316

326

337

357

IBHIII

LIFE IN A PINE WOOD

People, Birds, Ants

Some years ago a clever gentleman, a landowner
no doubt with pine plantations on his property,
made the interesting discovery that the ideal place
to live in was a pine wood, owing to the antiseptic
and medicinal qualities emanating from the trees.
You could smell them and began to feel better the
moment you entered the wood. Naturally there
was a rush to the pines just as there had been a
rush to the hill-tops in response to Tyndall's flag-
waving and exultant shouts from Hindhead, and
as there had been a rush over a century earlier to
the seaside in obedience to Dr. Russell's clarion call.
I have no desire myself to live among pines, simply
because I cannot endure to be shut off from this
green earth with sight of flocks and herds. Woods
are sometimes good to live in : I have spent happy
months in a woodman's cottage in a forest ; but
the trees were mostly oak and beech and there
were wide green spaces and an abimdant wild
life. Pine woods, especially plantations, are

1 B

THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

i

monotonous because the trees are nearly ell pines
and one tree is like another, and their tall, bare
trunks wall you in, and their dark stiff foliage
is like a roof above you. I, too, like being in a
pine wood, just as T like being by the sea, for a
few hours or a day, but for a place to live in I
should prefer a moor, a marsh, a sea-salting, or
any other empty, desolate place with a wide
prospect.

In spite of this feeling I actually did spend a
great part of last summer in such a place. It is
an extensive tract, which when the excitement
and rush for the medicinal pines began, was first
seized upon by builders as being near London
and in a highly aristocratic neighbourhood. Im-
mediately, as by a miracle, large ornate houses
sprang up like painted agarics in the autumn
woods — houses suitable for the occupation of im-
portant persons. The wood itself was left un-
touched ; the houses, standing a quarter of a mile
or more apart, with their gardens and lawns, were
like green, flowery oases scattered about in its
sombre wilderness. Gardens and lawns are a
great expense, the soil being a hungry sand, and
for all the manuring and watering the flowers
have a somewhat sad and sickly look, and the
lawns a poor thin turf, half grass and half moss.

As a naturalist I was curious to observe the
effect of life in a pine wood on the inhabitants.
It struck me that it do. j not improve llicir health,
or make them happy, and that they suffer most in

LIFE IN A PINE WOOD

summer, especially on warm windless days. They
do not walk in t^^eir woods ; they hasten to the
gate which vS tliem out on le road and takes
them to the village — or to some point from which
they can get a sight of earth outside the pines.
They are glad to escape from their surroimdings,
and are never so happy as when going away on
a long visit to friends living no matter where, in
the country or abroad, so long as it was not in
a pine wood. I should unagine that Mariana
hers'lf, supposing that she had survived to the
present day and had been persuaded to come
down south to try the effect of living in a pine
wood, would soon wish to go back to her moated
grange on a Lincolnshire flat, for all its ancient
d^ist and decay, ^ith no sound to break the sultry
noonday brooding silence save the si.iging of the
blue fly i' the pane and the small shrill shriek of
the mouse behind the rotting wainscot.

So much for the human dwellers among the
" crepuscular pines." I am quoting an expression
of the late lamented Henry James, which he used
not of pine woods generally but of this very
wood, well known to him too when he was a guest
in the house. But he didn't love it or he would
have been a more frequent visitor; i., it was, he
preferred to see his dear friends — all his friends
were very dear to him — when they were away
from the twilight shelter of their trees in ever
bright and beautiful London.

I vas perhaps more interested in the non-

I?

! i

4 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

human inhabitants of the wood. The wood that
was mine to walk in, the part which belonged to
the house and which as a far! I alone used, covered
an area of about sixty acres and was one with the
entire wood, only divided from the rest by oak
palings. When one turned from the lawns and
gardens into the wood it was like passing from
the open suiJit air to the twiUght and still
atmosphere of a cathedral interior. It was also
a strangely silent place ; if a thrush or chaffinch
was heard to sing, the sound came from the garden
I had quitted or from some other garden in the
wood stiU farther away. The only smaU birds in
these pines were those on a brief visit, and little
pa-ties of tits drifted through. Nevertheless, the
wood — the part I was privileged to walk in —
had its own appropriate fauna— squirrels, wood-
pigeons, a family of jays, another of magpies, a
pair of yaffles, and one of sparrow-hawks. Game
is not preserved in these woods which are par-
celled out to the different houses in lots of a dozen
to fifty or more acres; consequently several
species which are on the gamekeeper's black list
are allowed to exist. Most of the birds I have
named bred during the summer— the hawks and
yaffles, a dozen or more pairs of wood-pigeons,
and a pair each of magpies and jays. The other
members of the family parties of the last two
species had no doubt been induced by means of
sharp beaky arguments to go and look for nesting-
places elsewhere.

LIFE IN A PINE WOOD

But not one small bird could I find nesting in
the woou. This set me thinking on a question
which h&s vexed my mind for years — ^How do
small birds safeguard their tender helpless
fledgelings from the ants ? This wood swarmed
with ants : their nests, half hidden by the bracken,
were eveiyw^here, some of the old mounds being
of huge size, twelve to fourteen feet in circumfer-
ence, and some over four feet high. As their eggs
were not wanted the ants were never disturbed,
and the marvel was how they could exist in such
excessive nimibers in a naked pine wood, which
of all woods is the poorest in insect life.

I have said to myself a hundred times that
birds, especially the small woodland species that
nest on or near the ground, such as the nightii-
gale, robin, wren, chiff-chaff, wood and willow
wrens, and tits that brc^H low down in old stumps,
must occasionally have their nestlings destroyed
by ants ; yet I have never found a nest showing
plainly that such an accident had occurred, nor
had I seen anything on the subject in books
about birds ; and of such books I had read
hundreds.

The subject was in my mind when I received
evidence from an unexpected quarter that tender
fledgelings are sometimes destroyed by ants. This
was in an accoimt of the wren by a little boy
which I came upon in a bundle of Bird and Tree
Competition essays from the village schools in
Lancashire, sent on to me to read and judge from

i

e

THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

r :■

i :!l

the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
The boy stated in his essay that having selected
the wren as his subject he watched the birds and
looked for nests ; that among the nests he found
one containing five eggs, and that four y^ung
were hatched but were destroyed the same day
by ants. I wrote to the master of the school, at
Newburgh, near Wigan, and to the boy, Harry
Southworth, asking for full particulars. The
master's reply gave a satisfactory account of
Harry as l keen and careful observer, and Harry's
answer was that the nest was built in a small
hole in a bank beside a brook, that he hal
kept his eye on it during the time the bird was
sitting on her five eggs, that on his last visit he
foimd the parent bird in a terrified state outside
the nest, and that on examination he found that
four young birds had been hatched, and were
all dead but still warm, and swarming with
small reddish-brown ants which were feeding on
them.

This goes to show that not only do ants some-
times attack the fledgelings in the nest, but also
that the parent birds in such cases are powerless
to save their young from destruction. My con-
clusion was that small ground-nesting birds have
an instinctive fear of ants and avoid building at
places infested by them.

But how does it happen, I now asked, that the
larger birds that nest high up in the pines escape
the danger ? The ants go up the tallest and

LIFE IN A PINE WOOD 7

smoothest trunks with the ease and at the same
rate of speed as when moving on the sorface.
They are seen ascending and descending all day
long in countless numbers, so that the entire tree-
top must be swarming with then\, searching every
twig and every needle ; and being ants and
ready to fasten their jaws on any provender, dead
or alive, without regard to the size of the object,
the newly-hatched young wood-pigeons or magpies
can be no safer in their lofty cradles than the
robin or willow- wren fledgelings in their nest on the
ground.

Unfortunately, when I got to this point it was
too late in the season to follow the matter much
further, since most of the birds had finished breed-
ing. Whether all or most of them had been suc-
cessful or not 1 was not able to discover ; however,
the young were not yet out of the one nest which
interested me the most. This was the sparrow-
hawks', and was in the lowest branches of a tall,
slim pine about forty-five feet from the ground.
It was an exceptionally big nest. The birds, I
knew, had brought off their young successfully in
this same wood in the three previous years, and I
came to the conclusion that the same nest had
been used every time and had grown to its present
size by the addition of fresh materials each season.
By standing on a high mound situated at a dis-
tance of fifty yards from the tree I could, with my
binocular, get a perfect sight of the four young
hawks on their platform, looking like owls with

8

THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

11

I

ill

their big round heads and their fluffy white
down.

As their feathers grew they became more active ;
they were less and less inclined to sit in a close
bmich ; they would draw as far apart as they
were able and sit on the extreme edge of the
nest, and frou that high perch they would stare
curiously down at me when I looked up at them.
The habits of the parent birds were unUke those
of sparrow - hawks breeding in woods and wild
places where people are rarely seen. Instead of
displaying intense anxiety and screaming at the
sight of a human fomi, causing the yoimg birds to
squat low down in the nest, they would slink off
in silence and vanish frcn the scene. This ex-
treme secretiveness was, in the circumstances,
their safest policy, to express it in that way, but,
of course, it had one drawback — it left the young
uninstructed as to the dangerous character of
man. That lesson would have to come later,
when they were off the nest.

As the hawks grew, the supply of food in-
creased, and the birds supplied were so carefuUy
plucked, not a feather being left, also the head
removed, that in some instances it was actually
difficult to identify the species; but I think that
most of the birds brought to the nest were star-
lings. The young hawks had now to feed them-
selves on what was on the table, and when one
felt peckish he would take up a bird and carry
it to the edge of the big nest so as to be out of

LIFE IN A PINE WOOD •

the way of the others, and setting a foot on it, go
to work to tear it to pieces. But he sometimes
mismanaged the business, and when transferring
the bird from his beak to his claws he wo:Jd drop
it over the edge and lose it. The dropped bird
would be quickly found and attacked by the ants,
and before many hours it would be a well-cleaned
skeleton.

But the ants never ascended this tree. It
then occiured to me that ants are always seen
swarming up certain trees — always the same trees ;
and that a vast majority of the trees were never
invaded by them at all. I now began going round
and visiting all the trees where I distinctly remem-
be. ''d having seen ants ascending, and on all
those trees I foimd them still swarming up in
immense numbers as if to some place containing
an inexhaustible supply of food. It was now,
however, too late in the season to make sure that
they do not from time to time invade fresh trees.
That they should go on from day to day for weeks,
and perhaps for the whole season, ascending the
same trees strikes one as very strange ; yet such
a fact would accord witn ^e know of these

puzzling insects — ^their aln '. incredible wisdom
in their complex actions and system of life, coupled
with an almost incredible stupidity. Or do the
ants know just why they go up this particular tree
and not any of the surrounding trees ? Can it be
that on this particular tree they have their care-
fully tended flocks and herds to supply them with

i

10 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

honey-dew— their milk, butter and cheete ? Such
flocks and herds they do keep and tend on oak
trees, as I discovered in Harewood Forest ; and
I wish that readers of this chapter who live in or
p ar a pine wood and are the happy po88««sors of
ladders forty or fifty feet long will make some
further investigation into the matter.

My conclusion for the present is that wood-
pigeons and other birds that breed in the pines
do not build their nests in trees used by the ants.

Let us now follow the fortunes of the young
sparrow-hawks, bred in a wood where people
inhabit.

I watched them day by day, and, gradually, as
their fluffy coat was replaced by feathers, nnd
their lumpi»h appearance changed to the sh rp-
cut hawk figure, they grew more adventurous and
would mount upon a branch accessible from the
nest, the maturest bird taking the lead, the others,
one by one, slowly and cautiously following.
Finally, all four would be on the branch at a dis-
tance of six to ten inches apart, the one nearest
the nest being always the least hawk-like in appear-
ance— more lumpish and with more down on it
than the others.

One morning in September I found the nest
empty ; the young had been persuaded to leave
for good early that morning. Just how they had
been persuaded — feelingly, perhaps with sudden
smart blows — it would have been a great thing to
witness, but I had never looked for it on account

LIFE IN A PINE WOOD

II

of the vigilance and extraordinary secretiveness of
the parent birds. Never once had they uttered a
sound or allowed themselves to be seen. Now
that their young were out and able to fly, they no
longer found it necessary to make themselves in-
visible on the appearance of the human form in
the wood. At all events, after keeping the young
concealed for the space of thrc3 or four days, they
began to show themselves openly, pursued by the
young, wailing and screaming to be fed. All day
long these whining cries were heard, and it was
plain that a new system had been adop • d by the
parent birds at this stage, which was to keep their
young on short commons, instead of supplying
vhem with more food than they could consume.
The result was that th young, instead of sitting
idly waiting for small birds, properly plucked,
to be brought and dropped at their feet, were
driven by hunger to fly after the parent birds,
who led them an endless chase in and out and
above the trees. It all looKed like a great waste
of energy, but it had an important use in teach-
ing the young to fly and to develop the wing
muscles by incessant exercise. These exercises con-
tinued for five or six days in the wood, then followed
a fresh move ; every morning early the wood was
quitted by the whole family, the young, no doubt,
being conducted to a climip on one of the extensive
tracts of heath in the neighbourhood. There they
wovild have other and more important lessons to
learn. The young hawk would have to pluck the

12

THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

i

feathers out himself or else swallow them along
with the flesh ; the next stage would be that the
bird would be delivered alive, but partially disabled,
and he would have to kill it himself; finally, he
would have to capture his own prey — the last and
most difficult lesson of all.

That they were still kept on short commons was
evident from the perpetual hunger - cries of the
young when they returned each evening to their
roosting-place in the wood. From the moment of
their arrival an hour before sunset, until it was
almost dark, the clamour went on, the young
birds following their parents the whole time.
This continued for a fortnight, and during the
last few evenings the parent birds introduced yet
another new subject or feature into their educa-
tional system. They would rise over the trees,
both male and female, but keeping wide apart,
followed by the clamouring yoimg; and floating
and circling up with easy harrier-like movement,
they would mount to a height of two or three
hundred yards above the tree-tops, then suddenly
hurl themselves down hke stones and vanish
among the trees, still followed at a long distance
by the young. Once down beneath the tree-tops
it was marvellous to see them, dashing at their
topmost sparrow-hawk speed hither and thither
among the tall, naked boles, with many sudden
sharp twistings which apparently just enabled
them to escape being dashed to death against a
trunk or branch. Every time I witnessed this

LIFE IN A PiJJE WOOD

18

^^u\

seemingly mad violent action, yet accomplished
with such ease, such certainty, such grace, I was
astonished afresh.

This would be the last act in the day's business,
for immediately afterwards they would fly to the
roosting-place and the hungry young would hush
their cries.

Then at the end of the third week in September
the whole family disappeared. The young had now
to learn that they could not always stay in the
one place which they knew, soon to be followed
with the last and hardest of all their lessons, that
they must make their own living or else starve.

Note. — Since this paper appeared in the National Review,
my idea concerning the destructiveness of ants to young birds
has received further confirmation from two widely separated
quarters. One, oddly enough, is contained in another country
schoolboy essay, for a Bird and Tree Day Competition, in this
case from a village in Hampshire. The skylark was the bird
observed, and on one of the visits the little observer paid to
the nest, when the nestlings were a few days old, he found them
outside of the nest covered with small red ants and in a dying
condition.

The second case is contained in a letter ftom one of my
correspondents in Australia, Mr. Charles Barrett, well Known
in the Colony and in this country as a student of the native
avifauna. He had in reading seen an extract ftom my paper
on " Life in a Pine Wood," and wrote : " I believe that in
Australia, where ants of many species swarm in the dry regions,
large numbers of nestlings fall victims to these insects. Of
course it is the birds that nest on the ground that suffer the
most, but some of the ants ascend trees and attack the fledge-
lings in nests in the highest branches. ... In November I
noticed a stream of large reddish ants streaming up a gum
sapling, and found it was pouring into a nest of wood swallows,
ArtamiM sarolida, which contained three chicks about a week

14 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

old. They were being devoured alive by ants. ... I put the
nestlings out of their misery, but felt miserable myself for the
remainder of that golden afternoon, thinking that many similar
tragedies to that were being enacted in the Bush. The odour
and fragrance of the wattle bloom along the creek and the
blithe songs of birds failed to cheer for the time."

He also described finding the nest of a song •thrush (our
English bird) with nestling? in a similar state.

n

HINTS TO ADDER -SEEKERS

It has occurred to me that a few hints or wrinkles
on the subject of adder -seeking might prove
serviceable to some readers of this work, seeing
that there are very many persons desirous of
making the acquaintance of this rare and elusive
reptile. They wish to know it — at a safe distance
— in a state of Nature, in its own home, and have
sought and have not found it. Quite frequently —
about once or twice each week in summer — I am
asked by some one for instructions in the matter.

One of my sweetest-tempered and most bene-
volent friends, who loves, he imagines, all things
both great and small, pays the children of his
village sixpence for every dead adder or grass-
snake they bring him. He does not distinguish
between the two ophidians. It is to be hoped that
no such lover of God's creatures, including His
" wild wormes in woods," will take advantage of
these hints. Let him that finds an adder treat it
properly, not without reverence, and his findintf
it will be to his gain in knowledge of that rare
and personal kind which cannot be written or

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16 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

imparted in any way. That which we seek is not
the viper, the subject of Fontana's monumental
work, the little rope of clay or dead flesh in the
British Museum, coiled in its bottle of spirits, and
labelled " Vipera beruSt Linn."

We seek the adder or nadder, that being
venerated of old and generator of the sacred
adder-stone of the Druids, and he dwells not in a
jar of alcohol in the still shade and equable tem-
perature of a museum. He is a lover of the sim,
and must be sought for after his winter sleep in
dry incult places, especially in open forest-lands,
stony hill -sides, and furze -grown heaths and
commons. After a little training the adder-seeker
gets to know a viperish locaUty by its appearance.
It is, however, not necessary to go out at random
in search of a suitable hunting-ground, seeing that
all places haunted by adders are well known to
the people in the neighbourhood, who are only too
ready to give the information required. There are
no preservers of adders in the land, and so far as
I know there has been but one person in England
to preserve that beautiful and innocuous creature,
the ringed-snake. Can any one understand such
a hobby or taste ? Certainly not that friend of
animals who pays sixpence for a dead snake.
He, the snake - saviour, our unknown httle
Melampus, paid his village boys sixpence for every
one they brought to him alive and uninjured, and
to inspire confidence in them he would go with
half a dozen large snakes in his coat pockets into

HINTS TO ADDER-SEEKERS

17

the village school, and pulling his pets out, would
play with and make the children handle them
and take note of their beautiful form and motions.

This snake-lover possessed at Aldermaston one
of the largest parks in southern England, abounding
in oak trees so ancient and of so noble a growth
that they are a wonder to all who see them. This
vast park was his snake-preserve, and in moist
green places, by running waters, he planted thickets
for their shelter. But when his time came and he
died, the son who succeeded him thought he would
get more glory and sport by preserving pheasants,
and accordingly engaged a Uttle army of men and
boys to extirpate the reptiles. There is nothing
now to recall the dead man' fantastic hobby "
but a stained-glass window- wish it had been
done by a better artist — placed by his pious widow
in the beautiful parish church, where you can see
him among angelic figures surrounded by a Coiu-
pany of birds and beasts and reptiles of many
shapes and colours, and at the margins the familiar
words. He prayeth bejt who loveth best, etc.

Let us return to our quest. The trouble is
wh'" ou have arrived at the adder-haunt to find
thi er. A m-. i may spend years, even a Ufe-
time, without seeing one. Some time ago I talked
to an aged shepherd whose flock fed in a wide
furze - grown hollow in the South Downs where
adders were not uncommon. He told me he had
been shepherding forty years in that place, and
during the entire period had found three adders !

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18 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

If he had said 800 I should not have been sur-
prised. The man on the soil does not often see
an adder, because for one thing he does not look
for it, and still more because of the heavy boots he
wears, with which he pounds the earth like a dray-
horse with its ponderous iron-shod hoofs. Even
men who walk lightly and wear light foot-gear
make, as a rule, an amazing noise in walking over
dry heathy places with brittle sticks and dry
vegetable matter covering the ground. I have had
persons thrust their company on me when going
for a stroll on ground abounding in adders, and
have known at once from their way of walking in
an unaccustomed place that the quest would prove
an idle one. Their lightest, most cautious tread
would alarm and send into hiding every adder a
dozen or twenty yards in advance of us.

In spring the adders are most alert and shyest.
Later in the season some adders, as a rule the
females, become sluggish and do not slip quickly
away when approached ; but in summer the
herbage is apt to hide them, and they lie more in
the shade than in March, April, and the early part
of May. In spring you must go alone and softly,
but you need not fear to whistle and sing, or even
to shout, for the adder is deaf and cannot hear you ;
on the other hand, his body is sensitive in an
extraordinary degree to earth vibrations, and the
ordinary tread of even a very light man will
disturb him at a distance of fifteen or twenty
yards. That sense of the adder, which has no

HINTS TO ADDER-SEEKERS

10

special organ yet may serve better than vision,
hearing, smell, and touch together, is of the greatest
importance to it, since to a creature that lies and
progresses prone on the ground and has a long
brittle backbone, the heavy mammalian foot is one
of the greatest dangers to its life.

Not only must the seeker go softly, but he must
have a quick-seeing, ever-searching eye, and behind
the eye a mind intent on the object. The sharpest
sight is useless if he falls to thinking of something
else, since it is not possible for him to be in two
places at once. To empty the mind as in crystal-
gazing is a good plan, but if it cannot be emptied,
if thought will not rest still, it must be occupied
with adders and nothing else. The exercise and
discipline is interesting even if we find no adders ;
it reveals in swift flickering glimpses a vanished
experience or state of the primitive mind — the
mind whiith, like that of the inferior animals, is
a polished mirror, undimmed by speculation, in
which the extraneous world is vividly reflected. If
the adder quest goes on for days, it is still best to
preserve the mood, to think of adders all day, and
when asleep to dream of them. The dreams, I
have found, are of two sorts — pleasant and un-
pleasant. In the former we are the happy first
finders of the loveliest and most singular serpents
ever looked upon ; in the second we unwittingly
go up barefooted into a place from which we cannot
escape, a vast flat region extending to the horizon,
littered w^ith adders. We have lifted a foot and

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20 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

don't know where to set it, for there is not one
square foot of ground which is not abeady occupied
by an adder coiled in readiness to strike.

In adder-seeking, the main thing is to find your
adder without disturbing it, so as to be able to
stand near and watch it lying quiescent in the sun.
The best plan is to come almost to a stop as soon
as the creature has been caught sight of, then to
advance so slowly and stealthily as to appear
stationary, for the adder although unalarmed is,
I believe, always conscious of your presence. In
this way you may approach to within two or three
yards, or nearer, and remain a long time regard-
ing it.

But what is the seeker to do if, after long
searching, he discovers his adder already in retreat,
and knows that in two or three seconds it will
vanish from his sight ? As a rule, the person who
sees an adder gliding from him aims a blow at it
with his stick so as not to lose it. Now to kill your
adder is to lose it. It is true you will have some-
thing to show for it, or something of it which is
left in your hands, and which, if you feel disposed,
you may put in a glass jar and label " Vipera bents."
But this would not be an adder. Must we then
never kill an adder ? That is a question I do not
undertake to answer, but I can say that if we are
seeking after knowledge, or something we call
knowledge because it is a convenient word and can
be made to cover many things it would be difficult
to name, then to kill is no profit, but, on the contrary.

I

HINTS TO ADDER-SEEKERS

81

a distinct loss. Fontana dissected 40,000 adders in
his long and busy day, but if there is anything we
want to know about the adder beyond the number
of scales on the integument, and the number,
shape, and size of the bones in the dead coil, he
and the innumerable ophiologists and herpetologists
who came after him are unable to tell us. We can
read p' lut the scales and bones in a thousand
books. We want to know more about the living
thing, even abcut its common life habits. It has
not yet been settled whether or not the female
adder swallows its yoimg, not, like the fer-de-lance,
to digest them in her stomach, but to save their
threatened lives. It is true that many persons
have, during the last half century, witnessed the
thmg and have described what they saw in The
Zoologist, Land and Water, Field and other journals ;
nevertheless the compilers of our Natural Histories
regard the case as not yet proved beyond a doubt.

Here, then, we have one of several questions
which can only be answered by field-naturalists
who abstain from killing. But a better reason for
not killing may be given than this desire to discover
a new fact — ^the mere satisfying of a mental curiosity.
I know good naturalists who have come to hate
the very sight of a gun, simply because that useful
instrument has become associated in their case with
the thought and the memory of the degrading or
disturbing effect on the mind of killing the creatures
we love, whose secrets we wish to find out.

Alas ! it took me a long time to discover the

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22 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

advantages of not killing. The following account
of killing an adder — the last time I did t,i\ch a
thing — may serve to throw a little light on the
question. Adders were common at a place where
I was staying at a farm in the New Forest, but I
had never seen one near the house until one sultry
afternoon in July, when coming into a path which
led from the farm-yard into and through a hazel
copse, I came upon one lying in the middle of the
path. It was a large adder, so sluggish that it
made no attempt to escape, but tiumed and struck
at me when I approached it. I thought of the
little children, for this was the very spot where
they came to play and himt for fowls' eggs every
afternoon; the adder, if left there, might be a
danger to them ; it was necessary either to kill
or remove it. Then it occurred to me that to
remove it would be useless, since if the creature's
place was there, it would imallibly return to it
from any distance. The homing instinct is strong
in the adder and in most serpents. Ad so to
end the matter I killed and buried it, and went
on my way. My way was through the copse and
over a fence and ditch on the other side, and I
was no sooner over the ditch than I beheld a
second adder, bigger than the last and just as
sluggish. It was, however, not strange, as in July
the female adder is often like that, especially in
sultry thunderous weather. I teased it to make it
move away, then picked it up to examine it, after
which I released it and watched it gliding slowly

HINTS TO ADDER-SEEKERS 28

away into the shadow of the bushes. And, watching
it, T became conscious of a change in my mental
attitude towards the lining things that were so
much to mw, my chief happiness having always
been in observing their ways. The curiosity was
not diminished, but the feeUng that had gone with
it for a very long time past was changed to what
it had been when I was sportsman and collector,
always killing things. The serpent gUding away
before me was nothing but a worm with poison
fangs in its head and a dangerous habit of striking
at unwary leg*— a creature to be crushed with the
heel and no more thought about. I had lost
something precious, not, I should say, in any
ethical sense, seeing that we are in a world where
we must kill to live, but valuable in my special
case, to me as a field-naturalist. Abstention from
kill 'ig had made me a better observer and a happier
being, on account of the new or different feeling
towards animal life which it had engendered. And
what was this new feeling— wherein did it differ
from the old of my shooting and collecting days,
seeing that since childhood I had always had the
same intense interest in all wHd life ? The power,
beauty, nd grace of the wild creature, its perfect
harmony in nature, the exquisite correspondence
between organism, form and faculties, and the
environment, with the plasticity and intelligence
for the readjustment of the vital machinery, daily,
hourly, momentarily, to meet all changes in the
conditions, all contingencies; and thus, amidst

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24 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

perpetual mutations and conflict with hostile and
destructive forces, to perpetuate a form, a type, a
species for thousands and millions of years ! — all
this was always present to my mind ; yet even so
it was but a lesser element in the complete feeling.
The main thing was the wonderfulness and eternal
mystery of Ufe itself; this formative, informing
energy — this flame that bums in and shines through
the case, the habit, which in Ughting another dies,
and albeit dying yet endures for c i r ; and the
sense, too, that this flame of life was one, and of my
kinship with it in all its appearances, in all organic
shapes, however different from the human. Nay,
the very fact that the forms were imhimian but

ved to heighten the interest ; — ^the roe-deer, the
'd and wild horse, the swaUow cleaving the
a... ae butterfly toying with a flower, and the
dragon-fly dreaming on the river ; the monster
whale, the silver flying-fish, and the nautilus with
rose and purple tinted sails spread to the wind.

Happily for me the loss of this sense and feeling
was but a temporary one, and was recovered in the
course of the next two days, which I spent in the
woods and on the adjacent boggy heath, finding
many adders and snakes, also young birds and
various other creatures which I handled and played
with, and I could afford once more to laugh at
those who laughed at or were annoyed with me
on account of my fantastic notions about animals.
My next great adventure with an adder, which
came a year later, gave m; so good a laugh that

HINTS TO ADDER-SEEKERS 25

I am tempted to go further with thii digression to
give an account of it.

The adventure was the finding of my biggest
adder. It was in a tract of ground overgrown with
furze and thorn, at a spot not far from the turn-
pike road that rtms from Salisbury to Blandford.
Having discovered that this spot, with an area of
several hundred acres, teemed with interesting wild
Ufe, I made it a haunt for several weeks. I soon
found out that it was a valuable game preserve
and that the keeper had strict orders from the
shooting tenant not to aUow any person on the
land. However, I approached him in the proper
way, and he left me to enjoy myself in my own

fashion.

Never had I seen adders so abundant as at this
spot, yet the keeper assured me that he had been
trying for years to extirpate them, and often killed
as many as half a dozen in a day.

One morning, near the end of June, I found my
big adder, and picking it up, held it suspended by
the tip of its tail for nearly half an hour, until,
exhausted with its vain wriggUng, it allowed itself
to hang limp and straight. Then I got out my
tape-measure and set about the difficult task of
getting the exact length ; but the adder would not
have it, for invariably when the tape was dropped
at its side it drex' itself up into a series of curves
and defeated r ic. Tired of the long business, I set
it down at length and stunned it with a rap on its
head with my stick, then setting the tape on its

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99 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

flat head and pressing it with my thumb, I pulled
the body straight and succeeded in getting the
exact length. It was twenty-eight inches. The
biggest adder I had hitherto found was twenty-five
and a half; this was in the New Forest, in the
wildest part, where it is most thinly inhabited and
adders are most abundant. None of the other
biggest adders I had measured before and since
exceeded twenty-four inches.

We see that the adder, when we come to measure
it, is not a big snake ; it looks bigger than it is,
partly on account of its strange conspicuous colour-
ing, with the zigzag shape of the band, and its
reputation as a dangerous serpent ; this makes an
adder two feet long look actually bigger than the
grass-snake of three feet— the size to which this
snake usually grows.

In a minute or two my adder recovered from the
effects of the tap on his head and was permitted to
glide away into the furze bushes. And leaving the
spot I went on, but had not gone forty yards
before catching sight of another adder lying coiled
up. I stopped to look at it, then slowly advanced
to within about five feet of it, and there remained
standing still, just to see whether or not my presence
so close to it would affect it in any way. Presently,
hearing a shout, I looked up and saw two horsemen
coming up over the down in front of me. They
pulled up and sat staring down at me— a big man
on a big horse, and a rather small man on a small
horse. The big man was the shooting tenant, and

HINTa iO AD'OER-SEEKERS 27

the shout was evidently meant for me, but I took
no notice. I kept my eyes on my adder, and soon
the two horsemen came down at a gallop to me,
and of course before they were fifty yards from me,
the thunder of the hoofs had sent the creature into
hiding. Sitting on their horses they stared in angry
silence at me, and finding I had to speak first, I
apologised for being in the preserve, and said the
keeper, knowing me to be a harmless naturahst,
had given me permission to come there to find a
flower I was interested in— also an adder. What,
he demanded, did I want with adders ? Just to
see them, I said ; I had found one and was watch-
ing it when his approach had driven it away. I
then added that adders were exceedingly abundant
on this land of his, that I had just found and
measured one which was twenty-eight inches long
—the biggest adder I had ever found.

" Where is it?— let's see it ! " shouted both men,
and I had to tell them that I had released it, and
it had gone into a bush about forty yards from
where we stood.

They stared at me, then exchanged glances, then
the big man asked me if I meant what I had said—
if I had actually caught a big adder only to release
it unharmed ?

That, I said, was what I had done.
"Then you did wrong," almost yelled the
second man. " To catch and release an adder that
might bite and kiU some one any day— I consider it
a crime."

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« THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

I laughed and said I didn't mind being a
cnminal m that way. and I also thought people
greatly exaggerated the danger of adder bites:

You are wrong again I » he yeUed. quite in a
temper now « As a naturalist, you ought to know

lot. ,tr' *'" ^^" ***** **^* ^""™^'' I nearly

lost my httle son through an adder bite. He

was m the Isle of Wight with his nurse, and

trod on th. thing and was bitten on the leg. For

a whole c«v his life was trembling in the balance.

dangJrT" "' '' ''" "' *^^* ^""^^ "^ -* -
I apologised for having made light of the subject.
He was nght and I was wrong. But I couldn't
exp am to him why I could not kiU adders-or
anythmg else.

Let us now return to the adder-seeker who has
unwittingly disturbed the adder he has found, and
who sees ,t about to vanish into the brake. He
has been waitmg all this time to know what to do

wr.t " Tlu "' """' ''' '* ^"""h, and comfort
himself w,th the thought that he has discovered
Its haunt ^d may re-flnd it another day, especially
.f he ,s so fortunate as to scare it f™m Its favourite
bed on which It IS accustomed to lie sunning itself
at certam hours each day until the progress „f the

S^°1"h ""^ ;* *"° '"'™ o' other^-'*!
suitable, when the old basking-placc will be changed

Z" "Z °T u^"* ''"'"''' •>' °°t be satisfied .0
lose sight of the adder immediately after dis"

!

HINTS TO ADDER-SEEKERS 29

covering it, he must be provided with some simple
contrivance for its capture.

My plan, which cannot be recommended to
timid persons Uable in moments of excitement to
get flustered and awkward, is to catch the retreat-
ing adder quickly by the tail, which is a perfectly
safe proceeding if there is no blundering, since the
creature when going from you is not in a position

to strike.

I confess I am always a little reluctant to offer
such an ' -nity to the adder as grasping and
holding it ;nraged and impotent, by the tail,

although such treatment may be to its advantage
in the end. We have a naturalist in England who
picks up every adder he finds and pinches its tail
before releasing it, just to teach it caution. The
poor creeping thing with a zigzag band on its
back to advertise its dangerous character has of
all creatures the fewest friends among men. My
sole object in picking up an adder by the tail
is to be able to look at its under-surface, which
is often the most beautiful pari:. As a rule the
colour is deep blue, but it varies; the darkest
specimens being blue-black or even quite black,
while the exceedingly rare light blue is too
beautiful for words. Occasionally we find an
adder with the belly-plates of the same ground
colour, a dull or pale straw yellow, as the upper
pari: of the body, with the dark blue colour in
broken spots and dots and Imes inscribed on it.
These markings in some cases resemble written

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80 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

characters, and it was said of old that they formed

the words :

If I could hear as well as see,
No man of life would master me.

Probably these letter-like markings on the creature's
be''y, like the minute black lines, resembling writ-
.iig, on the pale bark of the holly tree, suggested
some other more important meaning to the priests
of an ancient cult, and gave the adder a peculiarly
sacred character.

To conclude, let me relate here how I once had
to congratulate myself on having hurriedly snatched
at and captured an adder at the moment of seeing
it, and of its attempted escape. I was cautiously
strolling along, hoping to see some good thing, in
a copse in private grounds in the New Forest, a
place abounding in adders and other interesting
creatures. Night-jars were common there, and by
and by one rose almost at my feet over the roots
of an oak tree, and casting my eyes down at the
spot from which it had risen, I spied a large adder,
which, alarmed either at my step or the sudden
flight of the bird, was gliding quickly away over
the bed of old dry bleached leaves to its refuge at
the roots of the tree. Oddly enough, it v as not the
first occasion on which I had come upon a night-jar
and adder dozing peacefully side by side. It was
a beautiful adder of a rich tawny yellow hue, with
an intensely black broad zigzag mark, and as
there was no time to lose, I dashed at and managed
to catch it ; then holding it up by the tail, what

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HINTS TO ADDER-SEEKERS 81

was my surprise and delight at finding its under-
surface of a colour or " shade " I had never previ-
ously seen— the lovely blue I have raentioaed.
There was no break in the colour; every belly-
plate from the neck to the tip of the tail was of a
uniform exquisite turquoise blue, or considering
chat turquoise blues vary in depth and purity, it
would be more exact to describe the colour as
most like that of the forget-rne-not, but being
enamelled, it reminded me rather of the most
exquisite blue one has seen on some priceless piece
of old Chinese pottery. I think that if some
famous aged artist of the great period, a worshipper
of colour whose life had been spent in the long
endeavour to capture and make permanent the
most exquisite fleeting tints in Nature, had seen
the blue on that adder he would have been over-
come at the same time with rapture and despair.
And I think, too, that if Mother Nature in turning
out this ophidian had muddled things, as she is apt
to do occasionally, and had reversed the position
of the colours, putting the tawny yellow and
black zigzag band on the belly and the blue
above, the sight of the creature would have given
rise to a New Forest myth. It would have been
spread abroad that an angelic being had appeared
in those parts in the form of a serpent but in its
natural celestial colour.

After keeping it a long time in my hand, I
released it reluctantly, and saw it steal away into
the cavitv at the roots of the oak. Here was its

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82 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

home, and I fondly hoped to see it again many
times. But it was not there when I called on many
successive days — ^neither serpent nor night-jar ; but
though we three shall meet no more, I remember
the finding of that adder as one of the loveliest
experiences I have met with during all the years I
have spent in conversing with wild animals.

Ill

BATS

The bat was formerly looked upon as an uncanny
sort of bird, and described as such in the o\e
natural histories. Oh, those ever delightful olc
natural histories, and the vision of the wise old
naturalist examining a recently-taken specimen
through his horn-bound spectacles, and setting it
gravely down in his books that it is the only known
bird which was clothed in fur in place of feathers !
Or, as Plinius puts it, the only bird which brings
forth and suckles its young, just as we say that the
Australian water-mole is the only mammal which
lays eggs. The modem ornithologist will have
nothing to do with the creature; but after his
expulsion from the feathered nation it was his
singular good fortune not to sink lower in the
scale; he was, on the contrary, raised to the
mammalians, or quadrupeds, as our fathers called
them ; then on the discovery being made that he
was anatomically related to the lemurs, he was
eventually allotted a place in our systems next
after that ancient order of fox-faced monkeys.
And thus it has come to pass that when some

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84 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

one writes a book on the mammals of this
island, which has no monkeys or lemurs, and man
cannot be included in such works on account
of an old convention or prejudice, he is obliged
to give the proud first place to this very poor
relation.

It is his misfortune, since it would have been
more agreeable to the general reader if he could
have led off with some imposing beast — the extinct
wolf or tusky wild boar, for example— or, better
still, with the white cattle of Chillingham, or the
roaring stag with his grand antlers. The last is
an undoubted survival, one which, encountered in
some incult place where it is absolutely free and
wild, moves us to a strange joy — an inherited
memory and a vision of a savage, prehistoric land
of which we are truer natives than we can ever be
of this smooth sophisticated England. The science
of zoology could not have it so, since it does not
and cannot take man and his mental attitude
towards other forms of life into account — cannot
consider the fact that he is himself an animal of
prey, several feet high, with large eyes fitted to
look at large objects, and that he measures and
classifies all creatures by an instinctive rule and
standard, mentally pitting his strength and ferocity
against thei^ What a discrepancy, then, between
things as seen by the natural man and as they
appear in our scientific systems, which make the
small negligible bat the leader of the procession of
British beasts — even this repulsive little rearmouse.

BATS

85

or flittermouse, that flits from his evil-smelling
cranny, in appearance a misshapen insect of un-
usual size, to pursue his crooked, broken-boned,
squeaky flight in the obscurity of evening.

Imagine the effect of this modem rearrange-
ment of the mammals on the mammals if they
knew 1 * The white bull of Chillingham would shake
his frowning front und the stag his branching
antlers in scorn ; the wolf, in spite of being extinct,
would howl ; the British seal bark ; the wild cat
snarl, and the badger make free use of his most
underground expressions of rage at such an insult ;
rabbit and hare would exchange looks of astonish-
ment and apprehension ; the hedgehog would roll
himself into a ball with disgust; the mole sink
back into his run ; the fox smile sardonically ; and
the whole concourse, turning their backs on the
contemptible leader thrust on them, would march
off in the opposite direction.

Now the imaginary case of these beasts offended
in their dignity fairly represents that of humanity
angry at the intolerable insult implied in the
Darwinian notion. But we have now so far out-
grown that feeling that it is no longer pn offence
for the zoologist to tell us not only that we are
related to the lemur with its limiinous opalescent
or topaz eyes, that are like the eyes of angels and
are instinct with a mysterious intelligence when
they look at us with a strange friendliness in them
as if they knew what we, after thousands of years of
thinkmg, have only just found out— not only that

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86

THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

this animal is our relation, but even such a creature
as the bat !

Look on this picture, and on this ! On the eyes,
for instance, of these two beasts, and we see at
once that the bat is an example of extreme degenera-
tion ; also that it is the most striking example in
the anin'-'' world of a degenerate in which the
c'ownw^r' rocess has at length been arrested, and
instead of extinction a new, different, and probably
infinitely longer life given to it.

We are reminded of the flea — the remote de-
scendant, as we deem, of a gilded fly that was
once free of the air and feasted at the same sunlit
flowery table with bright-winged butterflies and
noble wasps and bees.

There are those who have doubts about this
genealogical tree of the bat, and would have it
that he is an insectivore related to moles, shrews,
and such-like low-down animals, but the main facts
all point the other way. And we may assume that
the bat — our familiar flittermouse, since we are not
concerned with the somewhat different frugivorous
bats of the tropics — is the remote descendant of a
small degenerate lemur that inhabited the upper
branches of high trees in the African forest ; that
he became exclusively insectivorous and developed
an extreme activity in capturing his winged prey,
and was in fact like the existing small lemur, the
golago, which in pursuing insects " seems literally
to fly through the air," as Sir H. Johnston has
said. Finally, there was the further development.

BATS

87

the ovidean metamorphosis, when the loose ex-
panding membrane of th^ hands and arms and
sides grew to wings.

But albeit like a bird in its faculty of flight, the
bat was a mammal still, and was rather like a badly
constructed flying-machine, at best an improvement
on the parachute. This then was a risky experi-
ment Cii Nature's part, seeing that to launch a
mammal on the air is to put it into competition
with birds, and throw it in the way of its rapacious
bird enemies, natives of that element and infinitely
its superior in flying powers. But Nature, we see,
takes risks of this kind with a very light heart ;
her busy brain teems with thousands, millions, of
inventions, and if nine hundred and ninety-nine in
a thousand go wrong, she simply scraps them and
goes cheerfully on with her everlasting business.
An amusing person! One can imagine some
Principality m High Intelligence, a visitor from
Aldebaran, let us s*^ , looking on at these queer
doings on her part and remarking: "My dear,
what a silly fool you are to waste so much energy
in trying to do an impossible thing."

And— nettled at his air of superiority— her

sharp reply :

" Oh yes, now you say that, I'm reminded of a
visitor I once had from— oh, I don't know exactly
where— somewhere in the Milky Way— just when
I was experimenting with my snake idea. To make
a vertebrate without any organs of progression, yet
capable of getting freely about— ha, ha, ha, how

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88 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

very funny 1 I'd like him to come back now to
show him a tree-snake with a cylindrical body t^vo
yards long and no thicker than a man's middle
finger, green as a green leaf and smooth as ivory,
going as freely about in a tree as a cat or a monkey.
Also my blue sea-snake, cleaving the water like a
fish ; also my ground -serpents of numberless types,
moving swiftly over the earth with a grace sur-
passing that of creatures endowed with organs of
progression."

But not a word did she say about the flying-fish,
which was not a great success.

Then he : " Well, I should advise the person
from the Milky Way to keep out of your way. No
doubt you have done clever things, but the snake
problem was not so very difficult after all. You
thought of the rib and the scale, and the thing
was done."

And she : " Yes, it was quite simple, and so
when I wanted to make reptiles fly I thought of
this and of that and of something else and the
thing was done,"

Then he : " Yes, yes, my dear lady— that was
clever, too, no doubt; only your flying lizard
wasn't wound up to go on for ever — not as a lizard
at all events ; and what I should Irl-e you to tell
me is : When you have got your little beast in the
air how are you going to get him to stay there ? "

Her sharp reply was : " By thinking,' for she
was angry at his supercilious Aldebaran airs. And,
put on her mettle, it was only by sheer hard think-

BATS

80

ing that 8he Anally succeeded in accomplishing her
objed^this, too, as it were, by means of a subtle
trick. For the ' problem had been a very
different one • \u periments with flying lizards
had suggt-y.v it, and she was able to create this
new and finer being an inhabitant of the air by
giving it its peculiar pointed wedge shape, its
covering of feathers, with feathers for flight— hard
as steel, light as gossamer, bloodless, nerveless.
And correlated with shape and flight and life in
the air, a development of power of vision which,
compared with that of mammals and reptiles, is
like a supernatural faculty.

Her subtle trick, in the case of the bat, was to
reverse the process followed in building up the bird ;
to suspend her beast head down by the toes instead
of making him perch with his head up to keep it cool ;
to neglect the vision altogether as of little or no
account ; and, on the other hand, instead of the
light, hard, nerveless feather wings, to make the
flying apparatus the most sensitive thing in Nature^
barring the antennae of insects; a bed and field of
nerves, so closely placed as to give the membrane
the appearance of the finest, softest shot silk. The
brains of the creature, as it were, are carried spread
out on its wings, and so exquisitely delicate is the
sensitiveness of these parts that in comparison
our finger-tips are no more quick of feeling than
the thick tough hide of some lumbering pachyderm.
I have handled scores of bats in my time, and
have never had one in my hand without being

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40 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

struck by its shrinking, shivering motions, the
tremors that passed over it like wave following
wave, and it has seemed to me that the touch of
a soft finger-tip on its wing was to the bat like a
blow of a cheese- or bread-grater on his naked body
to a man.

Now any one, even the intelligent foreigner from
Aldebaran, would have imagined that such a
creature so constructed would not have main-
tained its existence in this rough world : a sudden
storm of rain or hail encountered in mid-air would
have destroyed it, and in its pursuit of insects in
leafy places it would have been exposed every
minute to disabling accidents. But it did not
happen so. That exquisite super-sensitiveness, that
extra sense, or extra senses, since we do not know
how many there are, not only kept it in the air,
able to continue the struggle of life in the particular
forest, the district, the region, the continent where
it came into being, but sent it abroad, an invader
and colonist, to other lands, other continents all
over the globe, including those far-off isolated
islands which had been cut off from all connexion
with the rest of the earth before mammalian life
was evolved, and had no higher life than birds,
until this small beast came flying over the illimit-
able ocean on his wings, to be followed a million
years later by his noble relation in a canoe.

We see then that the bat is a very wonderful
creature, one of Nature's triimiphs and master-
pieces, and on this account he has received a good

BATS

41

share of attention from the zoologists. Neverthe-
less, after looking through a large amount of
literature on the subject, the old idea persists that
we know little about the bat— little, that is to say,
compared with all there is to be known. How very
little my own researches can add to its life history
these meagre observations and comments will serve

to show.

Walking by the Test, near Longparish, one
evening, I noticed a number of noctules, our great
bat, gathered at a spot where some high trees, elms
and beeches, grew on the edge of a wet meadow.
The bats were flying up and down in front of the
trees, feasting on the moths and other insects that
abounded there. I wondered how it came about
that these big bats had this rich table all to them-
selves, seeing that the small common bat is by far
the most numerous species in that locality. After
I had stood there watching them for a few minutes
a common bat appeared, and at once began flying
to and fro among them ; but very soon he was
spotted and attacked by a big bat, and then began
the maddest chase it was possible to see, the little
one doubling wildly this way and that, now mount-
ing high in the air, then plunging downward to the
grass, anon losing himself in the trees, to reappear
in a few moments with his vicious persecutor
sticking so close that the two often seemed like one
bat. Finally, they went away out of sight in the
distance, and keeping my eyes in the direction they
had gone, I saw the big one return alone in about

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seven or eight minutes and resume his flying up
and down with the others. It struck me that if I
could have followed or kept them in sight to the
finish I should probably have witnessed a little
tragedy : the terror of the one and the fury of the
other suggested such an end. The keen teeth once
fixed in his victim's neck, the noctule would wash
his supper of moths and beetles down with a
draught of warm blood, then drop the dead body
to the earth befcie returning to his companions.
This is conjecture ; but we know that bats have
carnivorous propensities, and that in some exotic
kmds the big will kill the little, even their own
young. Probably they all have something of the
vampire in them. The female bat is a most devoted
parent, carrying her young about when flying,
wrapping them round with her silken wings as with
a shawl when in repose, suckling them at her breast
even as the highest of the mammalians do. One
would not be surprised to learn that the deadliest
enemy of her little ones, the one she fears most, is
her own consort.

Whether bats migrate or not has long been a
moot question, and Millais, our latest authority,
and certainly one of the best, has answered it in
the affirmative. But the migration he describes
is nothing but a change of locality — a retirement
from their sxraimer haunts to some spot suitable
for hibernation, in some instances but a few miles
distant. Other hibernating creatures — serpents, for
example — have the same habit, and though com-

BATS

48

peUed to travel on their bellies, they do neverthe-
less return year after year to the old laying-up
places. The question of a seasonal movement in
bats, simUar to migration in birds, gieatly exercised
my young mind in former years in a country where
bats had no business to be. This was the level,
grassy, practically treeless immensity c. the pampas,
where there were no hollow trunks, nor caves and
holes for bats to shelter in, nor ruins and buildings
of brick and stone which would be a substitute for
natural caverns. Human dwellings were mostly
mud and straw hovels, and the only trees were those
planted by man, and were not large and could not
grow old. The violent win 's swept this floor of the
world, which was unsheltered like the sea. Yet
punctually in spring the bats appeared along with
the later bird migrants, and were common until
April, when they vanished, and then for six months
no bat would be seen in or out of doors. Clearly,
then, they were strictly migratory, able like birds
to travel hundreds of miles and to distribute them-
selves over a vast area. They were, in fact, both
migrants and hibemators, since we cannot but
suppose that they forsook the pampas only to find
some distant place where they could pass their
inactive period in safety.

At one pomt, about two hundred miles south
of Buenos Ayres city, the level pampa is broken by
a range of stony hills, or sierras, scanding above
the flat earth like precipitous cliffs that face the
sea. On my first visit to that spot I travelled

44

THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

with a party of eight or nine gauchos, and evening
coming on near our destination, we camped about
a league from the foot of the hills and built a big
fire. Just as we had got a good blaze a loud cry
of " Morcielagos I " (bats) from one of the men
made us look up, and there, overhead, appeared a
multitude of bats, attracted by the glare, rushing
about in the maddest manner, like a cloud of
demented swifts. In a few moments they vanished,
and we saw no more of them. Bats, I found, were
extremely abundant among these hills, and here
they were probably non-migratory.

But the main question about bats is always that
of their sense-organs, in which they differ not only
from all other mammalians but from all verte-
brates, and if in this there is any resemblance or
analogue to any other ibrm of life it is to the
insect. As to insect senses we are very much in
the dark. The number of them may be seven or
seventeen, since insects appear to be affected by
vibrations which do not touch us. We exist, it
has been said, in a bath of vibrations ; so do all
living things ; but in our case the parts by which
they enter are few ; so too with all other verte-
brates except the bat alone, and a puzzle and
mystery he remains. What, for example, are the
functions of the transverse bands on the wings
formed of minute glands ; the enormous expanse
of ears in the long-eared bat ; the earlet, a curious
development of the tragus ; and the singular leaf-
like developments on the nose of the horseshoe

BATS

45

bat ? We suppose that they are sense-organs, but
aU we know, or half know, about the matter is
ancient history ; it dates back to the eighteenth
century, when SpaUanzani, finding that bats were
independent of sight when blinded and set flying
in winding tunnels and other confined places,
conjectured that they were endowed with a sixth
sense. Cuvier's explanation of these experiments
was that the propinquity of solid bodies is per-
ceived by the way in which the air, moved by the
pulsations, reacts on the surface of the wings.
Thus the sixth sense wa, a refinement, or extension,
of the sense of touch— an excessive sensitiveness in
the membrane. Blind men, we know, somethnes
have a similar extreme sensibility of the skm of the
face. I have known one who was accustomed to
spend some hours walking every day in Kensington
Gardens, taking short cuts in any direction among
the trees and never touching one, and no person
seeing him moving so freely about would have
imagined that he was totally blind.

My own experiments on bats in South America
were inconclusive. I used to collect a dozen or
twenty at a time, finding them sleeping by day
on the trees in shady places, and after sealing up
their eyes with adhesive gum, liberate them in a
large room furnished with hanging ropes and
objects of various sizes suspended from the rafters.
The bats flew about without touching the walls,
and deftly avoiding the numerous obstacles ; but
I soon discovered that they were able when flying

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46 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

to use the hooked claw on the wing to scratch the
gum away and pull the eyelids open, and when-
ever one came to grief I found that its lids had not
been opened.

One can see at once that an experiment of this
kind is useless. The irritation of the gum and the
efforts being made to remove it by the animal while
flying cloud the extra sense or senses, and it loses
its efficiency.

What the bat can do I discovered by chance one
summer afternoon in an English lane. It was one
of those deep Hampshire lanes one finds between
Selbome and Prior's Dean, where I was walking
just before sunset, when two common bats appeared
flying up and down the lane in quest of flies, and
always on coming to me they circled round and
then made a vicious little stoop at my head as if
threatening to strike. My brown and grey striped
or mottled tweed caps and hats have often got me
into trouble with birds, as I have told in a chapter
in Birds and Man, and it was probably the colour
of my cap on this occasion that excited the
animosity of this pair of bats. Again and again
I waved my stick over my head on seeing one
approach, but it had not the slightest effect— the
bat would duck past it and pass over my cap, just
grazing it boldly as ever. Then I thought of a
way to frighten them. My cane was a slim pliable
one, which gave me no support, and was used
merely to have something in my hand — a thin
little cane such as soldiers carry in their hands off

BATS

47

duty. Holding it above my head, I catised it to
spin round so rapidly that it was no lo r a cane
in appearance, but a funnel-shaped mist moving
with and above me as I walked. " Now, you little
rascal," said I, chuckling to myself as the bat
came; then making the usual quick circle he
dashed down through the side of the misty ob-
struction, made his demonstration over my cap,
and passed out c ^ the other side. I could hardly
credit the evidence of my own eyes, and thought
he had escaped a blow by pure luck, and that if
he attempted it a second time he would certainly
be killed. I didn't want to kill him, but the thing
was really too remarkable to be left in doubt, and
so I resumed the whirling of the stick over my
head, and in another moment the second bat came
along, and, like the first, dashed down at my cap,
passing in and out of the vortex with perfect ease
and safety ! Again and again they doubled back
and repeated the action without touching the
stick, and after witnessing it a dozen or fifteen
times I could still hardly believe that their escape
from injury was anything but pure chance.

Here I recall the most wonderful flying feat I
have witnessed in birds— a very common one.
Frequently when standing still among the trees
of a plantation or wood where humming-birds
abounded, I have had one dart at me, invisible
owing to the extreme swiftness of its flight, to
become visible — to materialise, as it were — only
when it suddenly arrested its flight within a few

48 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

inches of my face, to remain there suspended
motionless like a hover-fly on misty wings that
produced a loud humming sound ; and when thus
suspended, it has turned its body to the right, then
to the left, then completely round as if to exhibit
its beauty— its brilliant scale-like feathers changing
their colours in the sunlight as it turned. Then,
in a few seconds, its curiosity gratified, it has
darted away, barely visible as a faint dark line in
the air, and vanished perhaps into the intricate
branches of some tree, a black acacU perhaps,
bristling with long needle-sharp thorns.

The humming-bird is able to perform this feat a
hundred times every day with impunity by means
of its brilliant vision and the exquisitely perfect
judgement of the brilliant little brain behind the
sight. But I take it that if the bird had attempted
the feat of the bat it would have killed itself.

It is a rule in wild life that nothing is attempted
which is not perfectly safe, though to us the action
may appear dangerous in the extreme, or even
impossible. At all events, I can say that these
bats in a Selbome lane taught me more than all
the books— they made me see and understand the
perfection of that extra sense.

But it is just that same sense which Spallanzani
and Cuvier wrote about, and we cannot but think
that tiie bat has something more than this. That
peculiar disposition of glands and nerves on the
wings, the enormous size of the ear in the great-
eared bat, the ear-leaf, and leaf-nose, and the other

BATS

49

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developments and excrescences on the face which
give to some species a more grotesque countenance
than was ever imagined by any medieval artist in
stone— these are doubtless all sense-organs, and the
question is, are these all additions to the one sense
we know of — an extension and refinement of the
sense of touch ? I think they are more than that,
and there are a few facts that incline one to believe
that knowledge comes to the bat through more
ports than one— knowledge of things far as well
as near. One observation made by Millais points
to this conclusion. He noticed that a crowd of
noctule bats that sheltered in a hollow tree by day,
on issuing in the evening all took flight in the same
direction, and that the line of flight was not the
same, but varied from day to day ; that on follow-
ing them up to the feeding area he discovered that
insects were always most abundant at that spot on
that evening. It came to this— that on issuing
from the hollow tree every bat in the crowd,
issuing one or two at a time and flying straight
away, knew where to go, south, east, west, or
north, to some spot a mile or two away. The bat
too, then, like the far-seeing vulture, is " sagacious
of his quarry from afar," but what Nature has
given hun in place of his dim, degenerate eyes to
make him sagacious in this way remains to be
found out.

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IV

BEAUTY OF THE FOX

It is only by a fortunate chance, a rare conjunction
of circumstances, that we are able to see any wild
animal at its best. And by animal it ' , ast be
explained is here meant a hair-clothed v :ebrate
that suckles its young and goes on four fe ..

Chiefly on this account it would be hard in any
company of men well acquainted with our fauna
to find two persons to agree as to which is the
handsomest or prettiest of our indigenous mammals.
Undoubtedly the stag, one would exclaim:
another w ild perhaps venture to name the field-
mouse, or the dormouse, or the water-vole, that
quaint miniature beaver in his sealskin-coloured
coat, sitting erect on the streamlet's margin
busily nibbling at the pale end of a polished rush
stalk which he has cut off at the root and is now
holding clasped to his breast with his little hands.
Any one who had thus seen hhn, the brown sunlit
bank, with its hanging drapery of foliage and
flowers for background, reflected in the clear water
below, could well be pardoned for praising his
beauty and giving him the pahn. Another would

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BEAUTY OF THE FOX

51

champion the squirrel, that pretty, passionate
creature, most birdlike of mammals ; and some
white-haired veteran sportsman would perhaps
speak in glowing terms of the wild cat as seen in a
tearing rage. A word, too, would be spoken for
the otter, and the weasel, and the hare, and the
harvest -mouse, and the white Chillingham bull,
and the wild goat on the Welsh mountains. These
two last, after some discussion, would doubtless be
disqualified, and the roe and fallow deer entered
instead ; but no person would say a word about
the wolf and wild boar, the last of these noble
quadrupeds having been slain by some Royal
hunter half a thousand or more years ago. And
no one would mention the marten, or even know
whether or not, like the wolf and boar, it had
become " part and parcel of the dreadful past."
Some one would, however, put m a plea for the
hermit badger — one with sharper sight or more
patient than the others, or perhaps more fortunate ;
and the company would be highly amused.

The rouglt, grizzled brock, our little British bear,
would perhaps be better described as a fearsome
or sublime than a beautiful beast. At all events,
I lately had a singular instance of the terrifying
effect of a badger related to me by a rural police-
man in West Cornwall, a giant six feet six in height,
a mighty wrestler, withal a sober, religious man,
himself a terror to all evil-doers in the place. His
beat extends on one side to the border of a wide,
level moor, and one very dark night last winter

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5S THE BOOi' IF A NATURALIST

he was at tins desolate spot when he heard the
distant sound -f i^ hoi^e cantering over the ground.
The heavy rail >: hao i oded the land, and he heard
the splash of the hoois as the horse came towards
him. "Who could this be out on horseback at
twelv -'clock on a dark winter night ? " he asked
himj and listened and waited while the sound
grew louder and louder and came nearer and
nearer, and he strained his eyes to see the figure
of a man on horseback emerging from the gloom,
and could see nothing. Then it suddenly came into
his mind that it was no material horseman, but a
spirit accustomed to ride at that hour in that place,
and his hair stood up on his head like the bristles
on a pig's back. " It ahnost lifted my helmet off,"
he confessed, and he would have fled, but his
trembling legs refused to move. Then, all at once,
when he was about to drop, fainting with extreme
terror, the cause of the sound appeared — an old
dog badger trotting over the flooded moor, vigor-
ously pounding the water with his feet, and making
as much noise as a trotting horse with his hoofs.
The badger was seven or eight ards away when
he first caught sight of him, and the badger, too.
then saw a su ''me and terrifying creature stan(:
ing motionless before him, and for a few moment*
they stared at one another ; then the badger turned
aside and vanished into the darkness.

To return. It was the sight of a fox that set
me speculating on this subject. I hav- sf n more
foxes than I can remember, but never one r hat was

BEAUTY OF THE FOX

58

the equal of this onr ; vet he was, I daresay, an
ordinary specimen, with nothing to distinguish him
from any other larg( dog t>x in good condition
with a fii^e coat of har and thick .rush. It was
in Savemake Forest that, m en rging from a
beech- wot <i, I noticed it a distance )t seventy to
eighty yards away on the wide green level open
space before me a number of rabbits sitting up at
the mouths of their burrows, all staring in wide-
eyed alarm in one direction. Not at me, but
towards a patch of dead rust-red bracken, me
clumps of which were stUl standing, although aie
time was now the end of March. At interval
some of the rabbits world drop their tV^p-fef
dovn and begin ni bling ut the grass : tht a in ^
moment they would all start u^ and are ' ace
more at the patch of bracken. I \^alk? u aiowly to
this red patch, and when I approt h< it a large
fox got up and moved reluctant away. The
rough red em on which he d bf en lying had
made hiiu m visible to me until h noved ; but he
had been plainly visible to th ra bbits all tiie time.
He trotted quietly away to a Hst of about

forty } aids, then si )pped, and 1 nmg round,

stood regarding mc for some tiii; Standing on
that carpet of ^ ivic' gretii spring gr ss, with^the
clear morning sunlight full on him, his red colour
took an intensity and richness never previously
seen. In form he appeared no less distinguished
than in colou His sharp, s«H* ■ face, large, l^^af-
shaped point d ears, black without and white

if

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54 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

within, and graceful bushy tail, gave him the
appearance of a dog idealised and made beautiful ;
and he was to the rough brown or red common dog
what the finest human type— a model for a Phidias
or a Praxiteles — is to a Connemara peasant or a
Greenlander.

A SENTIMENTALIST ON FOXES

It was inevitable in these tremendous times that
among the many voices suggesting various drastic
measures for our salvation, those of Mr. Brown
and Mr. Smith, the poultry farmers, should be
heard loud as any advocating the extirpation of
foxes, a measure, they say, which would result in
a considerable addition to the food supply of the
country in the form of eggs and chickens. Even
so do the fruit-growers remind us in each recurring
spring that it would be an immense advantage to
the country if the village children were given one
or two holidays each week in March and April, and
sent out to hunt and destroy queen wasps, every
wasp brought in to be paid for by a bun at the
public cost. That the wasp, an eater of ripe fruit,
is also for six months every year a greedy devourer
of caterpillars and flies injurious to plant life, is a
fact the fruit-grower ignores. The fox, too, has
his uses to the farmer, seeing that he subsists
largely on rats, mice, and voles, but he has a greater
and nobler use, as the one four-footed creature left
to us in these islands to be hunted, seeing that

60

56 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

without this glorious sport we should want horses
for our cavalry, and men of the right kind on their
backs, to face the Huns who would destroy us.

Apart from all these questions and considera-
tions, which humanitarians would laugh at, the fox
is a being one cannot help loving. For he is, like
man's servant and friend the dog, highly intelligent,
and is to the good honest dog like the picturesque
and predatory gipsy to the respectable member of
the community. He is a rascal, if you like, but a
handsome red rascal, with a sharp, clever face and
a bushy tail, and good to meet in any green place.
This feeling of admiration and friendliness for the
fox is occasionally the cause of a quahn of conscience
in even the most hardened old hunter. " By gad,
he deserved to escape ! " is a not uncommon ex-
clamation in the field, or, " I wish we had been
able to spare him 1 " or even, " It was really hardly
fair to kill him."

Here let me relate an old forgotten fox story —
a hunting incident of about eighty years ago— and
how it first came to be told. When J. Britton, a
labourer's son in a small agricultural village in
Wiltshire, and in later life the author of many big
volumes on the " Beauties of England and Wales,"
came up to London to earn a precarious living as
bottle-washer, newspaper office boy, and in various
other ways, it was from the first his ambition to
see himself in print, and eventually, because of his
importimity, he was allowed by a kindly editor to
write a paragraph relating some little incident of

A SENTIMENTALIST ON FOXES 57

his early years. What he wrote was the fox story —
a hunting incident in the village that had deeply
impressed his boy mind. The fox, hard pressed,
and running for dear life, came into the village and
took refuge in a labourer's cottage, and entering
by the kitchen door, passed into an inner room,
and, jumping into a cradle where a baby was
sleeping, concealed himself under the covering.
The baby's mother had gone out a little way, but
presently seeing the street in a commotion, full
of dogs and mounted men, she flew back to her
cottage and rushed to the cradle, and plucking
off the coverlet saw the fox snugly curled up by
the side of her child, pretending to be, like the
baby, fast asleep. She snatched the sleeping child
up, then began screaming and beating the fox,
until, leaping out of the cot, he fled from that
inhospitable place, only to encounter the whole
yelling pack at the threshold, where he was quickly
worried to death.

The editor was so pleased with the anecdote
that he not only printed it but encouraged the
little rustic to write other things, and that is how
his career as a writer began.

Now, albeit a sentimentalist, I would not say
that the fox took refuge in a cradle with a sleeping
baby and pretended to be asleep just to work on
the kindly, maternal feelings of the cottage woma^
and so save his life, but I do say, and am pretty
sure that not one of the Hunt and not a villager
but felt that the killing of that particular fox was

♦1

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58 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

not quite the right thing to do, or not altogether

fair.

This incident has served to remind me of another
from South America, told to me by an Anglo-
Argentine friend as we sat and talked one evening
in Buenos Ayres, comparing notes about the ways
of beasts and birds. The fox of that distant land
is not red like his English cousin ; his thick coat is
composed of silver white and jet black hairs in
about equal proportion, resulting in an iron grey
colour, with fulvous tints on the face, legs and
under parts. If not as pretty as our red fox, he is
a fine-looking anunal, with as sharp a nose and as
thick a brush, and, mentally, does not differ in the
least from him. He is not preserved or hunted in
that country, but being injurious to poultry, is
much persecuted.

My friend had been sheep farming on the
western frontier, and one winter evening when he
was alone in his ranch he was sitting by the fire
whiling away the long hours before bed-time by
playing on his flute. Two or three times he thought
he heard a soimd of a person pressing heavily
against the door from the outside, but being very
intent on his music, he took no notice. By and by
there was a distinct creaking of the wood, and
getting up and putting down his flute he took up
the gun, and, stepping to the door, seized the
handle and pulled it open very suddenly, when
down at his feet on the floor of the room tumbled
a big dog fox. He had been standing up on his

A SENTIMENTALIST ON FOXES 59

hind legs, his fore feet pressed against the door
and his ear at the keyhole, listening to the dulcet
sounds. The fox rolled on the floor, frightened and
confused by the light ; then, picking himself up,
dashed out, but before going twenty yards he
pulled up and looked back just when the gun was
at my friend's shoulder. There had been no time
for reflection, and in a moment Reynard, or
Robert as we sometimes call him, was on the
ground bleeding his life out.

I did not like the end of his story, and I fancied,
too, from his look that he rather hated himself for
having killed that particular fox, and regretted
having told me about it.

In another instance which remains to be told,
the fox, m England this time, who had got into
trouble, and was in dire danger, was saved not
once, but twice, just because there was tune for
reflection. It was told to me at Sidmouth by an
old fisherman well known to the people in that
town as " Uncle Sam," a rank sentimentalist, like
myself, to whom birds and beasts were as much
as human beings. It chanced that in 1887 he was
occupied in collecting materials for a big bonfire
on the summit of Barrow tlill, a high hill on the
coast west of the town, in preparation for Queen
Victoria's first Jubilee, when one day, on coming
down from his work, he met a band of excited boys,
all armed with long, stoat sticks, which they had
just cut in the adjacent wood.

Uncle Sam stopped them and told them he

60

THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

knew very well what they were after; they had
got their sticks to beat the bushes for birds, and
he was determined to prevent their doing such
thing. The boys all cried out, denying that they
had any such intention, and told him they had
found a fox caught in a steel trap with one of its
fore legs crushed, and as it would perhaps be a long
time before the keeper would come round, they
were going to kill the fox with their sticks to put
it out of its misery. Uncle Sam said it would be
better to save its life, and asked them to take him
to the spot. This they did willingly, and there,
sure enough, was a big fine fox held by one leg,
crushed above the knee. He was in a savage
temper, and with ears laid back and teeth bared
he appeared ready to fight for his life against the
crowd. Uncle Sam made them place themselves
before the tortured beast, and tease him with their
sticks, pretending to aim blows at his head. He
in the meantime succeeded in setting the end of
his stick on the shaft of the gin, and, pressing down,
caused the teeth to relax their grip, and in a moment
the fox was free, and, darting away, disappeared
from their sight in the wood.

A year or so later. Uncle Sam heard of his
rescued fox, a three-legged one, the crushed limb
having fallen or been gnawed off. He had been
seen near that spot where he had been caught.
This was close to the highest part of the wall-like
cliff, and he had a refuge somewhere among the
rocks in the face of it some forty or more feet

A SENTDHENTALIST ON FOXES 61

below the summit. Those, too, who walked on the
sands beneath the cliff sometimes saw his tracks —
the footprints of a three-legged iojc. Doubtless he
had modified his way of life, and subsisted partly
on small crabs and anything eatable the sea cast
up on the beach, and for the rest on voles and
other small deer obtainable near the cliff. At all
events he was never met with at any distance
from the sea, and was in no danger from the Hunt,
as he was always close to his fortress in the pre-
cipitous cliff.

One day a fanner, the tenant of the land at
that spot, who was out with his gun and walking
quickly on the narrow path in the larch wood
close to the cliff, looking cut for rabbits, came face
to face with the three-legged fox. He stopped
short, and so did the fox, and the gun was brought
to the shoulder and the finger to the trigger, for it
is a fact that foxes are shot in England by farmers
when they are too numerous, and in any case here
was a useless animal for hunting purposes, since he
had but three legs. But before the finger touched
the trigger, it came into the man's mind that this
animal had done him no harm, and he said, " Why
should I kill him ? No, I'll let him keep his life,"
and so the fox escaped again.

More was heard from time to time about the
three-legged fox, and that went on until quite
recently — about four years ago, I was told. If we
may suppose the fox to have been two or three
years old when caught in a trap, and that he

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62 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

finished his life four or five years ago, he must
have lived about twenty-six years. That would be
a much longer period than the domestic dog has,
and for all I know the fox may be living still, or,
if dead, he may have ended his life accidentally.

I

H

VI

I

THE DISCONTENTED SQUIRREL

Hurrying along the street the other day, intent
on business, I was brought to a sudden full stop
by the sight of a heap of old books in tattered
covers outside a second-hand furniture shop. I
didn't want old books, and had no time to spare ;
the action was purely automatic, like that of the
old horse ridden or driven by a traveller who often
refreshes himself, in stopping short on coming to a
public-house on the roadside. On the top of the
heap was a small pamphlet or booklet in blue
covers, entitled Tfu Discontented Squirrel, and this
attracted my attention. It seemed to touch a
chord, but a chord of what I did not know. I
picked it up, and, opening it, saw on the first page
an ancient rude woodcut of a squirrel eating a nut.

The old picture looked famiUar, but I was still
at a loss until I read the first few lines of the letter-
press, and then I immediately dropped the booklet
and hastened on faster than ever, to make up for a
wasted minute.

Why, of course, the Discontented Squirrel, that
dear little ancient beastie ! The whole of the

83

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•4 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

child's tale came back with a rush to memory,
for I had read and re-read it when my age was
seven; though I had never since met with it in
the himdreds of boxes of old books turned over in
my time, or in any collection of children's books
of the early nineteenth century. I once made a
small collection of such literature myself, and
others have collected and still collect it in a large
way. I sometimes wonder why some enterprising
publisher doesn't start an Every Child's Library,
and rescue many of the most charming of these
small publications from total oblivion. Un-
doubtedly he would find the best period was from
1800 to about 1840.

Once upon a time — so ran the story as I remem-
bered it, and retold it to myself while walking on—
a squirrel lived in a wood, as pliunp and playful
and happy a squirrel as one would wish to see. He
had a favourite tree, an old giant oak, which was
his home, and when summer was nearing its end
he began to amuse himself by making a warm nest
in a cavity down at the roots ; also by hoarding a
quantity of hazel-nuts, which were plentiful just
then in the wood. This he did, not because he
had any reason for doing it, or thought there was
any use in it, but solely because it was an old time-
honoured custom of the squirrel tribe to do these
things.

While occupied in this way he all at once
became aware of a new restlessness and excite-
ment among the birds, and when he asked his

THE DISCONTENTED SQUIRREL 65

feathered neighbours what it was all about, they
were surprised at his innocence, and answered that
it was about migration. And what was migration ?
A funny question to put to a bird ! However,
they condescen .^ed to inform their ignorant young
friend that migration meant going away from the
country in order to escape the winter. For now
winter was coming, that sad season of leafless trees
and of short, dark days ; if wet and wind and
bitter, bitter cold, when lakes and streams would
be frozen over, and the earth buried in white,
awful snow.

And where would they go to escape these awful
changes ?

They would go to a land where there was no
winter; where the trees were green all the year
round, with flowers always blooming, and fruit and
nuts always ripening.

** Oh beautiful land I oh happy birds t " thought
the squirrel. " But where is that desirable country? "
he asked.

" Over that way," replied the birds, pointing to
the south, just as if it were a place quite near.
" It was," they added, " beyond the ridge of blue
hills one could see on that side."

These tidings threw the squirrel into a great
state of excitement, and he spent his whole time
running after and questioning every bird he knew.
" When," he asked, " would the migration begin ? "

They laughed at the question, and said it had
begun some time ago, and was going on at the

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! I

m THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

present moment. The swift had long been gone ;
so had the night-jar ; the cuckoo too ; and others
were beginning to follow.

The cuckoo— his own neighbour and familiar
friend ! Ah, that was why he hadn't seen him for
some days past! And then began an unhappy
time for the squirrel, and every day and every
hour increased his discontent. The yellowing leaves,
the chillier evenings, and long nights filled him with
apprehension of the coming change, and at last he
resolved that he would not endure it. For why
should he stay in such a land when all his feathered
neighbours and friends were now hurr;^ ing away to
a better one ?

Having made up his mind to migrate, he set out
at dawn of day, and travelled many miles toward
those blue hills in the south, which turned out to
be much farther than he had thought. It was not
until the late afternoon that he arrived at the foot
of the ridge, feeling more tired and sore-footed
than he had ever been in his life. Nevertheless he
was determined not to give in, but to cross the
hills before dark, and in crossing them perhaps
view from the simimit that beautiful land to which
he was travelling. And so up and ever up he
went, finding it more fatiguing every minute, until
he began to despair of ever reaching the summit.
And he never did ; it was too high, and he was
now spent with hunger and weakness after his
long fatiguing day. Furthermore, the hillside grew
more and more barren and desolate as he got higher,

THE DISCONTENTED SQtTIRREL 87

until he founr< himself in a place where it ^vas all
stony, without trees and bushes or even grass ;
and there was no food to be found, and no sheltrr
from the cold, violent winti .

He could go no farthtr, and the > ummit was
still far, far above him. Hunching himself up on
the stony ground, with his nose tl. \vn between his
paws and his uushy tail spread along hus back, he
began to reflect on his condition.

Why had he not taken into account that he
could not travel like a bird with wings to bear him
through the air, and over hills and rivers and long
stretches of rough country ? And when he asked
the birds how long it would take them to reach
that happy land of everlasting sunshine beyond the
blue ridge, had they not answered in a careless way,
as if they thought little of it, " Oh, not long ; two
or three weeks, according to one's powers " ? And
it never occurred to him that a bird can fly farther
in half an hour than a squirrel can travel in a whole
day ! Now, when it was too late, when he could
not go forward, and his home was too far, far
behind him, he remembered and considered these
things. Oh poor squirrel ! Oh miserable end of
all your liappy dreams !

And while he was sitting hunched up, shivering
with cold and thinking these bitter, desponding
thoughts, a passing kite spied him, and swooping
down, snatched him up in his talons and carried
him off. Little strength had he now to struggle,
and at his least movement the sharp, crooked claws

it

11

68 THE BOOK OF A NATURALiST

tightened their grasp ; and even if he had been
able to free himself, it would only have been to
fall that vast distance through the void air and
be crushed on the earth.

Then all at once the bird's flight grew swifter
and rose higher, for now a second kite had appeared,
and had given chase to the first to deprive him of
his prey.

The first, burdened with the squirrel, could not

escape from his persecutor, and they were soon at

close quarters. The marauding bird now began

making furious swoops at the other, aiming blows

at his back with his claws, and every time he

swooped down he uttered savage cries and mock-

ings. " Aha ! " he cried, " you can't save yourself

with all your speed and all your doublings. Drop

that squirrel if you don't want your back cut into

strips. Do you remember, you red rascal, that you

found me carrying home a duckling I had picked

up at a farm, and made me drop it? Do you

remember what you said on that occasion — that

I was burdened while you were free, so that you

had the advantage of me, and would claw my

back to ribbons unless I dropped the duckling ?

Well, robber — pirate! who has the advantage

now ? "

It vas awful, that battle in the sky ; the blows,
the shrieks, the dreadful imprecations they hurled
at one another ; but in the end the kite was obliged
to drop the squirrel to defend himself with his
claws, and the poor little beastie fell earthward

THE DISCONTENTED SQUIRREL 69

like a stone, and would have been crushed if he
had fallen upon the ground ; but, luckily, he first
struck a close mass of twigs and foliage on the top
of a large tree. This broke the violence of the fall,
and he came down gently to the branches beneath,
when he managed to catch hold of a twig and come
to a stop. He was bruised and bleeding, and half-
dead with the shock ; but by and by he revived,
and then what was his relief and joy to discover
that he was at home — that he had fallen into
his own favourite old oak-tree I On recovering a
little strength he crept down the trunk, and after
satisfying his hunger with two or three hazel-nuts
from his store, he crawled into his unfinished nest,
where he coiled himself up, and drawing the blankets
over his ears, mused drowsily on his unspeakable
folly in having forsaken so comfortable a home.
And as to migration — well, " Never again I " he
murmured as he dropped off to sleep.

The story greatly pleased me as I retold it to
myself, after having forgotten it for so many long
years, since I now perceived that it was a fable of
the right sort ; that, in fact, it was a true story —
in other words, true to the creature's character.
Stories about reasoning and talking animals do
not always conform to this rule, which has made
the terse fables of iEsop a joy for ever. Whether
the author knew it or not, it is a fact that the
squirrel is subject to fits of discontent with his
surroundings, which send him rushing off in quest
of some better place to live in ; and at such times

t:

»-.-- _i._

TO THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

he will make his way, or try to, over wide stretches
of barren, unpromising country. Thus, when trees
are planted in a treeless district, by and by
squirrels make their appearance, even when their
nearest known haunts are many miles distant. Nor
is this only an occasional outbreak of a gipsy roving
disposition of the animal, since he too is subject
to migratory impulses at the same time of year
as the birds. In some countries large numbers I't
squirrels are affected simultaneously in this way,
and have been observed migrating, many perishing
when attempting to cross rivers too wide or swift
for them.

I also liked the story because it recalled a
squirrel's adventure told to me a short time before by
an old fisherman at Wells-next-the-Sea, in Norfolk.
Wells lies at the edge of a marsh a mile and a
quarter back from the sea, and has a harbour, a
river or estuary which at full tide is deep enough
to enable small vessels to come up to the town.
Near the river's mouth there is a row of tall guiding
poles in the channel, and one afternoon my in-
formant noticed a squirrel sitting hunched up on
the aummit of the outermost pole, about thirty
feet above the water. Evidently he had come
through the pine plantation on the sand-dunes on
the Holkham or north side of the river; but,
anxious to continue his travels southward along
the shore and over the vast flat saltings towards
Blakeney, he had cast himself into the river at low
tide, and fmding the current too strong, had just

.

THE DISCONTENTED SQUIRREL 71

saved himself from being carried out to sea by
climbing up the last pole. Now the current was
the other way, and the river full from bank to
bank : the poor squirrel on his pole-top was in the
middle of the swirling current, and dared not
venture into the water again, either to go forward
^T back to the wood.

The fisherman went home to his tea ; but, two
hours later, just about sunset, he strolled back to
the sea-front, and there still sat the squirrel
hunched up on the top of his pole. Presently a
fishing-boat came in from the sea, with only
one person, a young man, in it. The old
man hailed him, and called his attention to the
squirrel on the pole. " All right ; I see him ! "
shouted back the young fellow. " I'll try to get
him off ! "

Then, as the swirling current carried the boat
up to within about three yards of the pole, he leant
forward and thrust out an oar until the blade
touched the pole ; and no sooner had it touched
than down like lightning came the squirrel from
his perch, leaped upon the oar, and from the oar
to the boat, then quickly bounded up the mast and
perched himself on the top.

The squirrel had not understood the man's
friendly intentions, and his lightning-quick action
appeared not to have been prompted either by
reason or instinct, but rather by that intuitive
faculty one is lialf-inclined to believe in, which
causes an animal suddenly threatened with destruc-

l!

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|f|f

n THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

tion to take instantly the one line by which it may
be saved.

The boat went swiftly on, driven by the rushing
tide, until it reached the quay at Wells, and no
sooner did the keel touch the stones at the landing-
stage than down the squirrel flew from the mast-
top, and rushing to the bow, took a flying leap
to the land, then dashed off toward the town at
topmost speed. A number of children playing on
the quay saw him, and with a wild cry of '* Squirrel !
squirrel I " went after him. Luckily there was no
dog about ; and the squirrel being faster than the
boys, kept well ahead, and, dodging this way and
that among coal-trucks and wagons and horses,
and men occupied in imloading, got through them
all, then crossing the lower or coast road, dashed
into one of the wynds or narrow streets which run
up to the higher part of the town. There more
yelling children joined the hunt, and the people of
the wvnd ran out of their houses to find out what
all the uproar was about.

The wynd ends at the upper street, and facing it
is a long brick wall ten feet high, and up this wall
went the squirrel without a pause or slip, as
swiftly as when going over the level earth, and
disappeared over the top into the orchard on the
other side. There the loud advancing wave of
young barbarians was stayed by the wall, as by an
ocean-facing cliff.

It had been a dashing performance, and the
squirrel could now have settled safely down in tha.t

THE DISCONTENTED SQUIRREL 78

sheltered spot among its fruit and shade trees,
since the tenant, who lived a hermit life in the
house, was friendly to all wild creatures, and
allowed neither dogs nor cats nor fiends in shape
of boys with loud halloo and brutal noise to intrude
into his sacred grounds.

But this would not have suited the squirrel ;
the town noises and lights, the shrill cries of children
at play in the evening, and the drum and fife band
of the Boy Scouts would have kept him in a con-
stant state of apprehension. Squirrels are nervy
creatures. No doubt when the town was asleep
and silent that night he scaled the back-wall and
crossed other orchards and gardens until he came
out to the old unkept hedge on that side, and
followed it all the way to Holkham Park, a vast
green solitude with many ancient noble trees, in
one of which he probably first saw the light.

And there, at home once more, he perhaps
resolved, like the Discontented Squirrel of the
fable, never again to attempt to better himself by
migrating.

^^i

ill

I

vn

MY NEIGHBOUR'S BIRD STORIES

We sometimes make mistakes, and I certainly
made one about my neighbour over the way, Mr.
Redbum, when I formed the conclusion that I
had no use for him. For I was just then birding
in an east-coast village, and when engaged on that
business I look for some interest in the subject
which absorbs me, some bird-lore in those I meet
and converse with. If they are entirely without it,
they are negligible persons ; nnd Mr. Redbum, a
retired bank manager and a widower, living alone
in a house opposite my lodgings, fell quite naturally
into this category. A kindly man with friendly
feelings towards a stranger, one it was pleasant
to talk with, but unfortunately he knew nothing
about birds.

One day we met a mile from the village, he out
for a constitutional, and I returning from a prowl ;
and as he seemed inclined to have a talk, we sat
down on a green bank at the roadside and got out
our pipes.

" You are always after birds," he said, " and 1
know so little about them 1 " Then to prove how

74

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MY NEIGHBOUR'S BIRD STORIES 75

little he knew of their ways and wants, he related
the history of a thrush he once kept in a cage
hanging at the back of his house, where there was
a garden, and where he amused himself by
cultivating flowers and vegetables. The bird had
been taken from the nest and reared by hand;
consequently it had never learnt to sing a true
thrush song, but had invented a song of its own,
composed of imitations — cackling fowls, whistling
boys, and various other village noises, including
those from the smithy. The village postman, who
lived close by, had a peculiar shrill double whistle
which he always emitted when nearing his house,
to bring his wife to the door. This sound, too, the
thrush mimicked so cleverly that poor Mrs. Post-
man was always running to the door for nothing,
and at length had to beg her husband to invent
some other sound to announce his approach.

Seeing that the bird was always cheerful and
noisy, it was a puzzle to Mr. Redbum that it never
looked well. It was supplied with clean water and
good food — bread and milk and crushed rape-seed
— every day ; but it never seemed to enjoy its
food, and its plumage had a dry, loose, disarranged
appearance, and was without a gloss. It was a
perfect contrast in this respect to a wild thrush
that used to visit the garden.

One day, when the bird had been in his possession
for a little over a year, he happened to be sitting in
his garden smoking, when this wild thrush came on
ihe scene and began running about the lawn looking

P I!

76

THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

for something to eat. By chance he noticed that
his thnish in its cage was watching the wild bird
intently. Presently the bird on the lawn spied a
worm which had incautiously put its head out of
its hole, and dashed at and seized it, then began
tugging away until it pulled it out, after which it
proceeded to kill and devour it with a good appetite.
The caged bird had watched all this with increasing
excitement, which culminated when the worm was
killed and swallowed.

" Now I wonder if he wants a worm too ? "
said Mr. Redbum to himself, and getting up he
took a spade and dug up two big worms, which he
placed in the cage as an experiment ; and no sooner
did the thrush see than he flew at and killed and
devoured them as if mad with himger. Even day
after that he dug up a few worms for his thrush,
and the sight of him with a spade in his hand
would always start the bird hopping wildly about
his cage.

As 9 result of this addition to his diet the
thrush in due time took on a brighter, glossier coat.

Mr. Redbiirn had congratulated himself on
having made a happy discovery — happy for his
thrush. It iiad taken him a year of twelve months,
but he had never made the more important dis-
covery, which it appeared to me he had come so
near making, that the one and only way to give
perfect happiness to your captive thrush is to open
the cage and let him fly to find worms for himself,
and to get a mate, and with her assistance build a

MY NEIGHBOUR'S BIRD STORIES 77

deep nest in a holly bush, and be the parent of five
beautiful gem-like blue eggs spotted with black.

The only other bird he had ever possessed was a
jackdaw, a charming fellow, full of fun, with uncut
wings, so that he was free to go and come at will ;
but he was a home-loving bird, very affectionate,
though loving mischief too, and never happier than
when his indulgent master allowed him to use his
head as a perch.

One day, when Mr. Redbum was busy in his
study, his little daughter, aged seven, came crying
to him to complain that Jack was plaguing her so !
He wanted to pull the buttons off her shoes, and
because she wovddn't let him he pecked her ankle:;,
and it hurt her so, and made her cry. He gave her
his stick, and told her, with a laugh, to give Jack
a good smart rap on the head with it, and that
would make him behave himself. He never for a
moment imagined that such a clever, quick bird as
Jack would allow himself to be struck by a little
girl with a long walking-stick ; nevertheless this
incredible thing happened, and the stick actually
came down on Jack's head, and the child screamed,
and, running to her, he found her crying, and Jack
lying to all appearance dead on the floor ! They
took him up tenderly and examined him, and said
he was really and truly dead, and then tenderly,
sorrowfully, put him down again. All at once, to
their astonishment and delight, he opened his
mischievous little grey eyes and looked at his
friends standing over him. Then he got up on his

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THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

legs and began rocking his head from side to side,
after which he shook his feathers two or three
times ; then tried to scratch his poll with his claw,
but didn'i. succeed. He was in a queer state, and
didn't know what had happened to him ; but he
soon recovered, and was just as fond of his little
playmate as ever, although he never again attempted
to pull her buttons off or peck her ankles.

Some time after this Jack disappeared for a
day or two, and was brought back by a boy of the
village, who was warmly thanked and rewarded
with a few pence. From that day every little boy
who was so lucky as to find Jack out of bounds,
and could catch him, expected a gratuity on taking
him to the house ; and as the little boys were all
very poor and hungry for sweets, they were per-
petually on the look-out for Jack, and went about
with something in their ragged little pockets to
entice him into their cottages. Every day Jack
was lost and foimd again, until the good man, who
was not rich, concluded that he could not afford
to keep so expensive a pet ; and so Jack was given
to a gentleman who had a pet daw of las own and
wanted another. In his new home he ha^i nice
large grounds with big trees, and Jack u:.h a
chum of his own tribe was very happy until his
end, which came very suddenly. The two birds
roosted side by side together on a tall tree near
the house, and one summer night this tree was
struck by lightning; next morning the two birds
were found lying dead at the roots.

MY NEIGHBOUR'S BIRD STORIES 70

My neighbour had one more bird story, the be«t
of all to tell, and this about rooks, the only wild
birds he had ever observed with the object of
finding out something about their habits. There
was a small rookery in some elm trees growing at
the bottom of the garden of the house he then
lived in, and the way the birds went on during
nest-building time moved his curiosity to such a
degree that one Sunday morning he resolved to
give the whole day to a careful inquiry into the
domestic affairs of these black neighbours. No
doubt, he thought, they were subject to a law or
custom which enabled them to exist in a com-
munity, living and rearing their young in nests
pimped close together. Nevertheless it was evident
that it was not an ideal society, and that the noise
was not due merely to animal spirits, as in the
case of a lot of boys out of school ; there was a
great deal of scolding and quarrelling, and from
time to time a mighty hubbub, as if the entire
colony had suddenly been seized with an angry
excitement. What occasioned these outbursts ?
It was just to try to find this out that he planted
himself in a chair near the trees on that Sunday
momi'ig. The nearest tree contained one nest only,
a pew one not yet finished, and eventually he
thought it best to concentrate his attention on this
point, and watch the movements of the one pair
of birtls. He had quickly found that it only worried
and confused him to keep a watch on the move-
ments and actions of several birds and their nests.

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80 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

The two birds he attended to went and came,
sometimes together, then first one, and then the
other, and sometimes one would remain at the
nest during the absence of its mate. This went
on for about three hours, and nothing unusual
happened at the nest ; at other points of the
rookery there were little storms of noise and
some shindies, but he was determined not to let
his attention wander from his two birds. At
length he was rewarded by seeing one of the pair
fly to an unguarded nest about thirty yards away,
on a neighbouring tree, and deliberately pull out
a stick, which it brought back and carefully
adjusted in its own nest. By and by the two
birds who had been robbed returned together and
immediately appeared to be aware that something
was wrong with their home. Standing on the nest,
they put their heads together, fluttering their
wings and cawing excitedly, and presently they
were joined by others, and others still, until almost
the entire colony was congregated on the tree, all
making a great noise. After two or three minutes
they began to quarrel among themselves, and there
were angry blows with beaks and wings, after
which the tumult subsided, and the company broke
up, every pair going back to its own nest. After
that comparative peace and quiet continued for
some time, but Mr. Redburn now noticed that one
bird always remained on guard on the nest where
the stick had been stolen. His two birds quietly
continued to work and go and come, and by and

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MY NEIGHBOUR'S BmD STORIES 81

by, about two hours after the commotion, they
both flew away to the fields together, and no
sooner were they gone than the bird they had
robbed, keeping guard on his tree, flew straight
to the nest they had left, and after what appeared
like a careful examination took hold of a stick
and tugged vigorously until he succeeded in pulling
it out. With the stick in his beak he flew back
to his nest and proceeded to adjust it in the
fabric.

What would happen now, Mr. Redburn asked,
when the dishonest couple came back and dis-
covered that they had been deprived of their loot ?
He watched for their return with keen interest, and
by and by they came, and, to his astonishment,
nothing happened. They settled on their nest,
looked it over in the usual way to see that it was
as they had left it, and although they no doubt
saw that it was not so they made no fuss.

The most remarkable thing in all this affair was,
to Mr. Redbum's mind, that the robbed birds
appeared to know so well who the thief was and
where the stick could be looked for.

To me it was remarkable that my neighbour,
who " knew nothing about birds," had yet, in one
day's watching, succeeded in seeing something
which throws a stronger light on the law of the
rookery than any single obser\-ation contained in
the ornithological books.

In this case, as he relates it, the robbed birds
appeared to know very well who the culprits were

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THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

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among their neighbours. Why, ther, were the
robbers not attacked, and seeing that they waited
their time and went quietly and recovered their
own, why all that preliminary fuss ? It sometimes
happens, we know, that the entire rookery becomes
infuriated against a particular pair; that in such
cases they fall upon and demolish the ne^l, and in
extreme cases expel the offenders from the rookery.
I take it that such attacks are made only on the in-
corrigible ones, those that obtain all their materials
by thieving, and so make themselves a nuisance to
the community. It seems probable that in this
instance the colony, although excited at the news
of the robbery and the outcry made by the
victimised pair, declined to take too serious a view
of the matter, and after some discussion and
quarrelling left the angry couple to manage their
own affairs. We may think, too, that in a majority
of cases an occasional offence is condoned among
birds that have a social law but do not observe it
very strictly. Thus, at home, the rook is a stealer
of sticks when the occasion offers, and a wooer of
his neighbour's wife when his neighbour is out of
the way. Too severe a code would not do ; it
would, in fact, upset the whole community, and
rooks would have to go and live like carrion crows,
each pair by itself. At all events, in this instance
we see that only after the angry outcry made by
the victims had failed to bring about an attack
they quietly waited their opportunity to recover
their property. Then the meek way in which the

MY NEIGHBOUR'S BIRD STORIES 88

robbers took it appears to show that they too
understood the whole business very well indeed.
They were in a dangerous position, and were quite
ready to lose what they had taken and say no
more about it.

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THE TOAD AS TRAVELLER

One summer day I sat myself down on the rail of
a small wooden foot-bridge — a very old bridge it
looked, bleached to a pale grey colour with grey,
green, and yellow lichen growing on it, and very
creaky with age, but the rail was still strong enough
to support my weight. The bridge was at the hedge
side, and the stream under it flowed out of a thick
wood over the road and into a marshy meadow on
the other side, overgrown with coarse tussocky
grass. It was a relief to be in that open sunny
spot, with the sight of water and green grass and
blue sky before me, after prowling for hours in the
wood — a remnant of the old Silchester forest —
wonird by wood-flies in the dense undergrowth.
These same wood -flies and some screaming jays
were all the wild creatiures I had seen, and I
would now perhaps see something better at that
spot.

It was very still, and for some time I saw
nothing, until my wandering vision lighted on a
toad travelling towards the water. He was right
out in the middle of the road, a most dangerous

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THE TOAD AS TRAVELLEK

85

place for him, and also difficult to travel in, seeing
that it had a rough surface full of loosened stones,
and was very dusty. His progress was very
slow ; he did not hop, but crawled laboriously
for about five inches, then sat up and rested
foiu" or five minutes, then crawled and rested
again. When I first caught sight of him he was
about forty yards from the water, and look? ig
at him through my binocular when he sat up
and rested I could see the pulling movements
of his throat as though he panted with fatigue,
and the yellow eyes on the summit of his head
gazing at that delicious coolness where he wished
to be. If toads can see things forty yards away
the stream was visible to him, as he was on
that part of the road which sloped down to the
stream.

Lucky for you, old toad, thought 1, that it is
not market day at Basingstoke or somewhere with
farmers and small general dealers flying .luout the
Country in their traps, or you would be flattened
by a hoof or a wheel long before the end of your
pilgrimage.

By and by another creature appeared and
caused me to forget the toad. A young water-
vole came up stream, swimming briskly from the
swampy meadow on the other side of the road.
As he approached I tapped the wood with my
st<ck to make him turn back, but this only made
him swiin faster towards me, and determined to
have my own way I jumped down and tried to

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Se THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

stop him, but he dived past the stick and got
away where he wanted to be in the wood, and I
resumed my seat.

There was the toad, when I looked his way, just
about where I had last seen him, within perhaps a
few inches. Then a turtle-dove flew down, alighting
within a yard of the water, and after eyeing me
suspiciously for a few moments advanced and took
one long drink and flew away. A few minutes later
I heard a faint complaining and whining sound in
or close to the hedge on my left hand, and turning
my eyes in that direction caught sight of a stoat,
his head and neck visible, peeping at me out of the
wood ; he was intending to cross the road, and seeing
me sitting there hesitated to do so. Still having
come that far he would not turn back, and by and
by he drew himself snake-like out of the concealing
herbage, and was just about to make a dash across
the road when I tapped sharply on the wood with
my stick and he fled back into cover. In a few
seconds he appeared again, and I played the same
trick on him with the same result; this was
repeated about four times, after which he plucked
up courage enough to make his dash and was
quickly lost in the coarse grass by the stream on
the other side.

Then a curious thing happened : flop, flop, flop,
went vole following vole, escaping madly from their
hiding-places along the bank into the water, all
swimming for dear life to the other si 'e of the
stream. Their deadly enemy did not swim after

THE TOAD AS TRAVELLER

87

them, and in a few seconds all was peace and quiet

again.

And when I looked at the road once more, the
toad was still there, still travelling, painfully
crawling a few inches, then sitting up and gazing
with his yellow eyes over the forty yards of that
weary via dolorosa which still had to be got over
before he could bathe and make himself young for
ever in that river of life. Then all at once the
feared und ter:ific thing came upon him : a farmer's
trap 'r-A':n by a fast trotting horse, suddenly
app . the bend of the road and came flying

dov . 'ope. That's the end of you, old toad,

said *, ^s the ; orse and trap came over him ; but
when I had seen them cross the ford and vanish
from sight at the next bend, my eyes went back,
and to my amazement there sat ray toad, his
throat still pulsing, his prominent eyes still gazing
forward. The four dread hoofs and two shining
wheels had all missed hrni ; then at long last I
took pity on him, although vexed at having to
play providence to a toad, and gettmg off the rail
I went and picked him up, which made him very
angry. But when I put him in the water he ex-
panded and floated for a few moments with legs
spread out, then slowly sank his body and remained
with just the top of his head and the open eyes
above the surface for a little while, and finalh
settled down into the cooler depths below.

It is st-ang^ to think that when water would
appear to be so much to these water-born and

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THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

amphibious creatures they yet seek it for so short
a period in each year, and for the rest of the time
are practically without it ! The toad comes to it
in the love season, b.id at that time one is often
astonished at the number of toads seen gathered in
some solitary pool, where perhaps not a toad has
been seen for months past, and with no other water
for miles around. The fact is, the solitary pool has
drawn to itself the entire toad population of the
surrounding country, which may comprise an area
of several square miles. Each toad has his own
home or hermitage somewhere in that area, where
he spends the greater portion of the siunmer season
practically without water excepting in wet weather,
hiding by day in moist and shady places, and
issuing forth in the evening. And there too he
hibernates in winter. When spring retiu-ns he sets
out on his annual pilgrimage of a mile or two, or
even a greater distance, travelling in the slow,
deliberate manner of the one described, crawling
and resting until he arrives at the sacred pool —
his Tipperary. They arrive singly and are in
hundreds, a gathering of hermits from the desert
places, drunk with excitement, and filling the place
with noise and commotion. A strange sound, when
at intervals the leader or precentor or bandmaster
for the moment blows himself out into a wind
instrument — ^a fairy bassoon, let us say, with a
tremble to it — and no sooner does he begin than
a hundred more join in ; and the sound, which the
scientific books describe as " croaking," floats far

THE TOAD AS TRAVELLER

80

and wide, and produces a beautiful, mysterious
effect on a still evening when the last heavy-footed
labourer has trudged home to his tea, leaving the
world to darkness and to me.

Li England we are almost as rich in toads as in
serpents, since there are two species, the common
toad, universally distributed, and the rarer natter-
jack, abimdanc only in the south of Surrey. The
breeding habits ar? the same in both species, the
concert-si" <^ng included, but there is a difference in
the timtn, A their voices, the sound produced by
the natterjac*: being more resonant and musical to
most ears than that of the common toad.

The music and revels over, the toads vanish,
each one taking his own road, long and hard to
travel, to his own solitary home. Their homing
instinct, like that of many fishes and of certain
serpents that hibe^ i^e in numbers together, and
of migrating birds, i practically infallible. They
will not go astray, and the hungriest raptorial
beasts, foxes, stoats, and ci cs, for example, decline
to poison themselves by killing and devouring
them.

In the late spring or early summer one occasion-
ally encoimters a traveller on his way back to his
hermitage. I met one a mile or so from the valley
of the Wylie, half-way up a high down, with his
face to the simimit of Salisbuiy Plain. He was
on the bank at the side of a deep narrow path,
and was resting on the velvety green turf, gay
with little flowers of the chalk-hills — eye-bright.

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THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

squinancy-wort, daisies, and milkwort, both white
and blue.

Thr toad, as a rule, strikes one as rather an
ugly creature, but this one sitting on the green
turf, with those variously coloured fairy flowers all
about him, looked almost beautiful. He was very
dark, almost black, and with his shining topaz eyes
had something of the appearance of a yellow-eyed
black cat. I sat down by his side and picked him
up, which action he appeared to regard as an
unwarrantable liberty on my part ; but when I
placed him on my knee and began stroking his
blackish corrugated back with my finger-tips his
anger vanished, and one could almost imagine his
golden eyes and wide lipless mouth smiling with
satisfaction.

A good many flies . 3 moving about at that
spot — a pretty fly whose name I do not know, a
little bigger than a house-fly, all a shining blue,
with head and large eyes a bright red. These flies
kept lighting on my hand, and by and by I
cautiously moved a hand imtil a fly on it was
within tongue-distance of the toad, whereupon the
red tongue flicked out like lightning and the fly
vanished. Again the process was repeated, and
altogether I put over half-a-dozen flies in his way,
and they all vanished in the same manner, so
quickly that the action eluded my sight. One
moment and a blue and red-headed fly was on my
hand sucking t'^*^ moisture from the skin, and then,
lo! he was .^ne, while the toad still sat there

THE TOAD AS TRAVELLER

91

motionless on my knee like a toad carved out of a
piece of biack atone ' th two yellow gems for
eyes.

After helping him to a dinner, I took him off my
knee with a little trouble, as he squatted ciose
down, desiring to stay where he was, and putting
him back among the small flowers to get more flies
for himself if he could, I went on my way.

It is easy to establish friendly relations with
these lowly creatures, amphibious r 'd reptiles, ^y
a few gentle strokes with the finger-tips on e
back. Shortly after my adventure with this toad
I was visiting a naturalist friend, who loid me of
an adventure he had had with snake. He was
out walking with his wife near his home among the
Mendips when they spied the snake basking in the
sun on the turf, and at the same moment the snake
saw them and began quietly gliding away. Put
they succeeded in overtaking and capturing it,
and, although it was a large snake and struggled
violently to escape, they soon quieted it down by
stroking its back with their fingers. They kept
and played with it for half an hour, then put it
down, whereupon it went away, but quite slowly,
almost as if reluctant to leave them.

So far this was a common experii^nce ; I have
tamed many grass-snakes in the same way, and the
only smooth snake I have ever captured in England
was made tame in about ten minutes by holding
it on my knee and stroking it. In the instance
related by my friend, it would appear that the

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THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

tameness does not always vanish as soon as the
creature finds itself free again. About three days
after the incident I have related he was again
walking with his wife, and they again found the
snake at the same spot, whereupon he, anxious to
capture it again, made a dash at it, but the snake
on this occasion made no attempt to escape, and
when picked up did not struggle. They again kept
it some time, caressing it with their fingers, then
releasing it as before ; later they saw their snake
on several occasions, when it acted in the same
way, allowing itself to be taken up and kept as
long as it was wanted, and then, when released,
going very slowly away.

That one first delightful experience of having
its back stroked with finger-tips had made a tame
snake of it.

IX

THE HERON: A FEATHERED NOTABLE

The bird-watcher's life is an endless succession of
surprises. Almost every day he appears fated to
witness some habit, some action, which he had
never seen or heard of before, and will perhaps
never see again. Who but Waterton ever beheld
herons hovering like gulls over the water, attracted
by the fish swimming near the surface ? And who,
I wonder, except myself ever saw herons bathing
and wallowing after the manner of beasts, not
birds ? At all events I do not remember any
notice of such a habit in any accoimt of the heron
I have read ; and I have read many. At noon,
one hot summer day, I visited Sowley Pond, which
has a heronry near it on the Hampshire coast ; and
peeping through the trees on the bank I spied
five herons about twenty yards from the margin
bathing in a curious way among the floating poa
grass, where the water was about two feet deep or
more. All were quietly resting in different positions
in the water — one was sitting on his knees with
head and neck and shoulders out of it, another
was lying on one side with one half-open wing

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THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

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above the surface, a third had only head and neck
out, the whole body being submerged ; and it
puzzled me to think how he could keep himself
down unless it was by grasping the roots of the
grass with his claws. Occasionally one of the
bathers would shift his position, coming partly
up or going lower down, or turning over on the
other side ; but there was no flutter or bird - like
excitement. They rested long in one position,
and moved in a leisurely, deliberate manner,
lying and luxuriating in the tepid water like pigs,
buffaloes, hippopotamuses, and other water-loving
mammalians. I watched them for an hour or so,
and when I left, two were still lying down in the
water. The other three had finished their bath,
and were standing drying their plumage in the
hot sun.

This was not the first surprise the heron had
given me, but the first was received far from this
land in my early shooting and collecting days, and
the species was not our well-known historical bird,
the Ardea cinerea of Britain and Europe generally,
and Asia and Africa, but the larger Ardea cocoi of
South America, a bird with a bigger wing-spread,
but so like it in colour and action that any person
from England on first seeing it would take it for
a very large specimen of his familiar home bird.

It happened that I was making a collection of
the birds of my part of the country and was in
want of a specimen of our common heron. A few
of these birds haunted the river near my home, and

THE HERON : A FEATHERED NOTABLE 95

one day when out with the gun I caught sight of
one fishing in the river. It was deep there, and the
bird was standing under and close to the bank,
where the water came up to his feathered thighs.
Moving back from the bank I got within shooting
distance and then had a look at him and saw that
he was very intently watching the water, with
head drawn back and apparently about to strike.
And just as I pulled the trigger he struck, and
stricken himself at the same moment he threw him-
self up into the air and rose to a height of about
thirty feet, then fell back to earth close to the margin
and began beating with his wings. When I came
up he was at his last gasp, and what was my
astonishment to find a big fish impaled by his
beak. It was an uneatable fish, of a peculiar South
American family, its upper part cased in bony plates ;
an ugly and curious-looking creature called Vieja
("old woman ") by the natives. It was a common
fish in our stream and a nuisance when caught, as
it invariably sucked the hook into its belly. Now
I had often found dead " old women " lying on or
near the bank with a hole in their bony back and
wondered at it. I had concluded that some of the
native boys in our neighbourhood had taken to
spearing the fish, and naturally these useless ones
they killed were thrown away. Now I knew that
they were killed by the heron with a blow of his
powerful beak ; a serious mistake on the bird's
part, but an inevitable one in the circumstances,
since even the shining, piercing eyes of a heron

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96 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

woula only be able to surmise the presence of a
fish a few inches below the surface in the muddy
streams of the pampas. To distinguish the species
would never be possible.

In this case the iron -hard dagger -like beak
had been driven right through the fish from the
bone -plated back to the belly, from which it
projected about an inch and a half. With such
power had the blow been delivered that it was only
by exerting a good deal of force that I was able to
wrench the beak out. My conclusion was that the
bird would never have been able to free himself, and
that by shooting him I had only saved him from the
torture of a lingering death from starvation. The
strange thing was that bird and fish had met their
end simultaneously in that way : I doubted that
such a thing had ever happened before or would
ever happen again. From that time I began to pay
a good deal of attention to the dead "old women "
I found along the river -bank with a hole in their
back, and could never find one in which the beak
had been driven right through the body. In every
case the beak had gone in about half-way through
— ^just far enough to enable the bird to fly to the
shore with its inconvenient captive and there get
rid of it.

Death by accident is common enough in wild
life, and a good proportion of such deaths are due
to an error of Judgement, often so slight as not to

THE HERON : A FEATHERED NOTABLE 97

seem an error at all. For example, a hawking
swallow may capture and try to bolt a wasp or
other dangerous insec without first ki ing or
crushing it, and in doing so receive a fatal sting
in the throat. The flight of hawking swallows and
swifts is so rapid that it hardly gives them time to
judge of the precise nature of the insect appearing
before them which a second's delay would lose.
This is seen in swallows and swifts so frequently
getting hooked by dry-fly anglers. Birds of prey,
too, occasionally meet their death in a similar way,
as when a kite or falcon or buzzard or eagle lifts
a stoat or weasel, and the lithe little creature
succeeds in wriggling up and fixing its teeth in the
bird's flesh. Tf they fall from a considerable
height both are killed. Agam, birds sometimes get
killed by attempting to swallow too big a morsel,
and I think this is oftenest the case with birds
that have rather weak beaks and have developed
a rapacious habit. I remember once seeing a Guira
cuckoo with head hanging and wings drooping,
struggling in vain to swallow a mouse stuck fast
in its giillet, the tail still hanging from its beak.
Undoubtedly the bird perished, as I failed in my
attempts to capture it and save its life by pullir*-
the mouse out. A common tyrant-bird of South
America, Pitangus, preys on mice, small snakes,
lizards and frogs, as well as on large insects, but
invariably hammers its prey on a branch until it
is bruised to a p'^lp and broken up. It will work
at a mouse in thw way until the skin is so bruised

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THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

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that it can be torn open with its long, weak bill,
but it never attempts to bolt it whole as the
cuckoo does.

One day when sitting on the bank of BeauUeu
River in Hampshire I saw a cormorant come up
with a good -sized eel it had captured and was
holding by the neck close to the head, but the
long body of the eel had wound itself serpent-wise
about the bird's long neck, and the cormorant was
struggling furiously to free itself. Unable to do
so it dived, thinking perhaps to succeed better
under water, but when it reappeared on the sur-
face the folds of the eel appeared to have tightened
and the bird's struggles were weaker. Again it
dived, and then again three oi* four times, still
keeping its hold Oii the eel, but struggling more
feebly each time. Finally it came up without
the eel and so saved itself, since if it had
kept its hold a little longer it would have been
drowned.

In my Land's End book I have given an account
of a duel between a seal and a huge conger-eel it
had captured by the middle of the body, the
conger-eel having fastened its teeth in the seal's
head.

An odd way in which birds occasionally kill
themselves is by getting a foot caught in long
horse -hair or thread used in building. I have
seen sparrows and house-martins dead, suspended
from the nest by a hair or thread under the nest
in this way.

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THE HERON : A FEATHERED NOTABLE 99

When I killed my heron, and by doing so
probably saved :t from a lingering death by starva-
tion, it struck me as an odd coincidence that it
was within a stone's throw of the spot where a
few weeks before I had saved another bird from a
like fate — not in this instance by shooting it. The
bird was the painted snipe, Rhynchaea semicollaria,
a prettily coloured and mottled species with a
green curved beak, and I found it on the low grassy
margin of the stream with the point of its middle
toe caught in one of Nature's traps for the unwary
— the closed shell of a large fresh-water clam. The
stream at this spot was almost entirely overgrown
with dense beds of bulrushes, and the clams were
here so abundant that the bottom of the stream
was covered with them. The snipe wading into
the water a foot or so from the margin had set
its middle toe inside a partially open shell, which
had instantly closed and caught it. Only by
severing the point off could the bird have delivered
itself, but its soft beak was useless for such a
purpose. It had succeeded in dragging the clam
out, and on my approach it first tried to hide
itself by crouching in the grass, and then struggled
to drag itself away. It was, when I picked it up,
a mere bundle of feathers and had probably been
lying thus captive for three or four days in constant
danger of being spied by a passing carrion-hawk
and killed and eaten. But when I released the toe
it managed to flutter up and go away to a distance
of thirty or forty yards before it dropped down

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100 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

among the aquatic grasses and sedges on a marshy
islet in the stream.

A large heronry is to the naturalist one of the
most fascinating spectacles in the wild bird life of
this country. Heaven be thanked that all our
landowners are not like those of South Devon,
who are anxious to extirpate the heron in that
district in the interest of the angler. On account
of their action one is inclined to look on the whole
fraternity of dry-fly fisiiers as a detestable lot of
Philistines. Some years ago they raised a howl
about the swallows — their worst enemies, that
devoured all the mayflies, so that the trout were
starved ! Well, they can rejoice now to know that
swallow and martin return to England in ever-
decreasing numbers each summer, and they must
be grateful to our neighbours across the Channel
who are exterminating these noxious birds on
migration.

I have known and know many heronries all
over England, and I think the one I liked t; visit
best of all was in a small wood in a flat green
country in the Norfolk Broads district. It was
large, containing about seventy inhabited nests —
huge nests, many of them, and near together, so
that it looked like a rookery made by giant rooks.
And it has had a troubled history, like that of an
old Norfolk town in the far past when Saxons and
Danes were at variance. For this heronry had been
established alongside of an old populous rookery,

THE HERON : A FEATHERED NOTABLE 101

and the rooks hated the herons and mobbed them
and demolished their nests, and persecuted then
in every rookish way ; but they refused to quit,
and at length the rooks, unable to tolerate them,
shifted their rookery a little farther away, and there
was an uncomfortable sort of truce between the big
black hostile birds and their grey ghostly neigh-
bours with very long, sharp, and very unghostly
beaks.

On the occasion of my last visit this heronry
was in the most interesting stage, when the young
birds were fully grown and were to be seen standing
up on their big nests or on the topmost branches of
the trees waiting to be fed. At some spots in the
wood where the trees stand well apart I could
count as many as forty to fifty yoimg birds standing
in this way, in families of two, three, and four. It
was a fine sight, and the noise they made at inter-
vals was a fine thing to hear. The heron is a bird
with a big voice. When nest-building is going on,
and in fact until most of the eggs are laid, herons
are noisy birds, and the sounds they emit are most
curious — the loud familiar squalk or "frank,"
which resembles the hard, powerful alarm-note of
the peacock, but is more harsh, while other grinding
metallic cries remind one of the carrion-crow.
Other of their loud sounds are distinctly mammalian
in character ; there is a dog-like sound, partly bark
and partly yelp, swine-like grunting, and other
sounds which recall the peculiar, unhappy, desolate
cries of the large felines, especially of the puma.

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102 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

One need not take it for granted that these strange
vocal noises are nothing but love calls. They may
be in part expressions of anger, since it is hardly to
be believed that the members of these rude com-
munities invariably respect one another's rights.
We see how it is with the rook, which has a more
developed social instinct than the lonely savage
heron.

During incubation quiet reigns in the heronry ;
when the young are out, especially when they are
well grown and ravenously hungry all c^ay long,
the wood is again filled with the uproar ; and a
noisier heronry than the one I am describing could
not have been found. For one thing, it was situated
on the very edge of the wood, overlooking the green
flat expanse towards Breydon Water, where the
parent birds did most of their fishing, so that the
returning birds were visible from the tree-tops at
a great distance, travelling slowly with eel and
frog and fish-laden gullets on their wide-spread
blue wings — dark blue against the high shining
blue cf the sky. All the young birds, stretched up
to their full height, would watch its approach, and
each and every one of them would regard the
returning bird as its own too-long absent parent
with food to appease its own furious hunger ; and
as it came sweeping over the colony there would
be a tremendous storm of wild expectant cries —
strange cat- and dig-like growling, barking, yelping,
whining, screaming ; and this would last until the
newcomer would drop upon its own tree and nest

THE HERON : A FEATHERED NOTABLE 108

and feed its own young, whereupon the tempest
would slowly subside, only to be renewed on the
appearance of the next great blue bird coming
down over the wood.

One of the most delightful, the most exhilarating
spectacles of wild bird life is that of the soaring
heron. The great blue bird, with great round
wings so measured in their beats, yet so buoyant
in the vast void airl It is indeed a sight which
moves all men to admiration in all countries which
the great bird inhabits ; and I remember one of
the finest passages in old Spanish poetry describes
the heron rejoicing in its placid flight. " Have you
seen it, be utiful in the heavens I " the poet
exclaims in untranslatable lines, in which the
harmonious words, delicado y sonoroso, and the
peculiar rhythm are made to mimic the slow
pulsation of the large wings. Who has not seen
it and experienced something of the feeling which
stirred the old writer centuries ago :

Has visto hermosa en el cielo
La g&rza sonre4rse con placido vuelo ?
Has visto, torciendo de la mauo
Sacra que la deribe por el suelo .

The most perfect example I know of in literature
in which the soimd is an echo to the sense. How
artificial and paltry that ornament often seems to
us in our poets, even in much-admired passages,
such as Goldsmith's white -washed walls and
nicely-sanded floor, and the varnished clock that

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104 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

clicked behind the door. The beauty of the passage
quoted — the heavenward sublime flight of the
hti-on and the furious zigzag pursuit of the falcon,
who will presently overtake and hurl it back to
earth — is in its perfect naturalness, its spontaneity,
as if some one in delight at the spectacle had
exclaimed the words.

This is one of the sights in bird life which makes
m*- envy the sportsmen of the old time when
falconry was followed and the peregrine was
flown, not at skulking magpies, as the way is with
our Hawking Club, but at noble heron. They saw
the great bird at its best, when it mounts with
powerful wing-beats almost vertically to a vast
height in the sky. The heron, in these days, when
all the hawks have been extirpated by our Philistine
pheasant-breeders who own the country, has no
need to exercise that instinct and faculty.

The question has sometimes come into my
mind. Why does the heron at all times, when,
seen on the wing, it strikes us as beautiful, and
when only strange or quaint-looking, or actually
"gly. produce in some of us a feeling akin to melan-
choly ? We speak of it as a grey, a ghost-like bird ;
and grey it certainly is, a haunter of lonely waters
at the dim twilight hour ; mysterious in its comings
and goings. Ghostly, too, it is in another sense,
and here we may see that the feeling, the sense of
melancholy, is due to association, to the fact that
the heron is a historical bird, part of the country's

THE HERON : .. LEATHERED NOTABLE lOff

p«it, when it was more to the country gentleman
than the semi-domestic pheasant and the par-
tridge on the arable land and the blackcock and
red-grouse on the moors all together to the man of
to-day. The memory of that vanished time, the
thought that the ruder life of the past, wh'^n men
lived nearer to Nature, had a keener flavour, is
accompanied with a haunting regret. It is true
that the regret is for something we have not known,
that we have only heard or read of it, but it has
become mixed in our mind with our very o^n
experienced past — our glad beautiful "days tLiit
are no more." And when we remember that in
those distant days the heron was a table-bird, we
may well believe that men were healthier and had
better appetites than now — that they were all and
always young.

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THE HERON AS A TABLE -BIRD

In reading the Hampshire children's Bird and Tree
Essays for 1916 I came upon one by a httle boy
which ends as follows : " One of our schoolboys
had a heron given him, so his mother cooked it
and when it was done it was tough and had a

NASTY TASTE."

Mine r,re the capitals, but the concluding words
seemed crying for them ; they also served to
remind me of a story about eating heron told me
by the only person I had ever met who had some
first-hand knowledge about the heron as a table-
bird. It is a rather long story ; perhaps a painful
one to persons of a squeamish stomach, but as it
is pure natural history I must be allowed to tell it.

I was staying at Bath, and wishing to get some
work copied I set out with the name and address
of a lady typist, furnished by a bookseller of the
tov, to look for her in the Camden Road. A long
road it proved. Like Pope's wounded serpent it
dragged its slow length along to the distant horizon
and beyond it. It also reminded me of Upper
Wigmore Street, as it seemed to poor dying Sydney

106

THE HERON AS A TABLE-BIRD 107

Smith, except that Camden Road was about a
thousand times longer. At length, a mile or so
short of the far end, I came to the number I was
looking for on the door of a small, pretty, old-
looking vine-clad cottage set well back from the
road with trees and flowers about it, and there I
found my typist and her sister — two little un-
married ladies, no longer young, who in their gentle
subdued manner, low soft speech, and quiet move-
ments appeared to harmonise very well with the
old-world little house they lived in. They were, I
fancy, somewhat startled at the apparition of so
big a man in their small interior — one whose head
came within an inch or two of the low ceiling :
they seemed timid and troubled and anxious in
their minds when I gave them my scrawl to
decipher and copy.

One day, wanting a good long walk, I paid
them a second visit, to find them less shy and
reticent than at first ; and afterwards I went again
on several occasions, until we became quite friendly,
and they gratified my De Quincey-like craving to
know everything about the life of every person I
meet from its birth onwards, by telling me all about
themselves.

They had been left with very little to live on,
and one was an invalid ; yet they had to do some-
thing, and typewriting at home was the only
thing, as this enabled them to keep together, so
that the invalid would always have her sister with
her. The work they had done hitherto, they said.

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108 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

was copying tradesmen's circulars, also some
copying for two of the local clergy and for an
attorney of the town. My work had come as a
relief to them. The very first thing I had given
them was a paper about the sheldrake. What a
strange subject — they could hardly believe their
eyes when they saw it. The sheldrake ! — that bird
about which they had so many memories, pleasant,
and some not quite pleasant. It was all very
wonderful. Before they came to Bath they lived
with a bachelor brother who had come into a small
farm, left him by a distant relation, on the Welsh
coast. As he had nothing els in the world he
went to live on it and work it himself, and kindly
took them to keep house and do the indoor work.
The farm was on a very wild, lonely spot, close to
the sea, and abounded in birds of many kinds —
sea and shore and land — they had never seen
before. And though it was a rough place they
loved it because of the sea and woods and hills
and the birds, and they wished they had never had
anything to do with the birds except just to see
and admire them. But there was their brother,
who was a great sportsman and who had some
very strange ideas. One was that most birds were
good to eat, and he was always shooting some
queer-looking bird and bringing it in to them to
dress and cook it for dinner. And the sheldrake
was one he often shot. He said it was a sort of
duck, and therefore just as good to eat as a mallard,
or widgeon, or teal, and that it was nothing but a

THE HERON AS A TABLE-BIRD 109

silly prejudice which prevented people from eating
them. And though they never had one on the
table ^aat wasn't tough and dry and fishy -tasted
he would still bring them in and argue that they
were very good. " We loved," they said, " to see
the sheldrakes flying about on the coast, but how
we hated to see them brought in to be cooked for
dinner ! But he was always very masterful with
us and we never dared to go against his wishes."

One day he brought in a heron, and they were
quite startled at the sight of such a huge, lank,
grey, loose-feathered creature with such irrunense
legs and such a dreadful beak. But when he said
it would be a grand experience for them to eat
heron they thought he must be joking, although
it was not a common thing for him to say anything
in fun. He was a very serious sort of man. Finally
they ventured to ask him if he really meant that
this upsetting bird was to be eaten ? He was
quite indignant : of course it was to be eaten, he
said ; did they imagine that he killed birds just
for the pleasure of killing them ! He said it would
be a grand day for them when they sat down to a
heron on the table. Didn't they know that it
was one of the most famous birds of the old time
— that the heron was regarded as a noble, a royal
bird, that it was a great dish at the feast in
' jironial halls; and that's how he went on until
they were quite ashamed of their ignorance of the
old days and humbly promised to cook the bird.
Very well, he said, he was going to hang it in the

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110 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

big empty room next the dairy and let it remain
imtil fit to cook. The longer it hung the more
tender it would be.

There was an iron hook in the central beam of
the big vacant room he had spoken of, and on this
hook he suspended the heron by its legs, its long
pointed beak nearly touching the tiled floor, and
hanging there with nothing else in the room it
looked bigger than ever. It troubled them greatly
to have to go through this room many times a
day, but it was far worse at night. They were
accustomed, especially on moonlight nights, to go
that way to the dairj' without a candle ; and they
sometimes forgot about the bird, and then the
sight of it in its pale grey plumage would startle
thtm as if they had seen a ghost. How awful it
looked, with its wings like great arms half -open
as if to scare them !

Days and weeks went by, and still the heron
was suspended in the big vacant room to make
their life on the farm a burden to them, then one
morning after finishing his breakfast their brother
said that he had been looking at the heron and
found it was just about in perfect condition to be
cooked, and that they would have it for dinner
that day. Then he added : "I don't mean at
our twelve o'clock dinner. There would be no
time to prepare it and it would not be proper to
eat it at such an hour. To-day we must have a
real eight o'clock dinner so us f.o do honour to the
heron."

THE HEPON AS A TABLE-BIRD 111

Then he went out and left them staring into
each other's pale face. However, the painful task
had to be performed, and they loyally went to
work and plucked it, but in cleaning it received a
shock at finding a trout about a foot in length in
a semi-decomposed condition in its gullet. After
refreshing themselves with sal -volatile and half
an hour in the garden, they finished the hateful
business by singeing it and pumping many gallons
of water over its carcase, and then towards evening
put it in the oven to roast or bake. The smell of
it was very trying and not only made the kitchen
atmosphere almost not to be borne but pervaded
the whole house, causing them tn look forward
more and more apprehensively the evening

dinner. Still, they were determinet. to do every-
thing to please their brother, and got out their
best table-cloth and silver, flowers for decoration,
and wine and coloured glasses ; and the brother
when he sat down smiled on them approvingly.
Then the heron on a big dish was brought in, and
the brother rose to carve it, and heaped their
plates with ^enerous slices of the lean black flesh,
and helj imself even more generously. They

having be .. helped firs^ had to begin, but to put
even the smallest morsel into their mouths was
more than they could do. They pretended to cut
and eat it while confining themselves to the
vegetables on their plates. Their brother was not
affected with such squeamishness and straightway
started operations, and did honour to the heron

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112 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

by taking a tremendous mouthful. The sisters
exchanged frightened glances and watched him
furtively, wondering at his courage — wondering,
too, if he would be able to keep it up and consume
the whole monstrous plateful. Then something
happened : a change C8".ne over his face, he turned
pale, and stopped chewing ; then, with mouth still
full, he suddenly rose and fled from the room.

That was the end of their gorgeous dinner !
Feeling pretty sure that he would not call for the
cold remains of the bird next morning for breakfast
they took it out and buried it in the garden, then
threw all the doors and windows in the house open
to get rid of the savour. It was late that evening
when they next saw their brother ; he was looking
pale as if but lately recovering from a serious
illness ; but he sauntered in with an air of not
knowing anything about it, and remarked casually
that he had been for a stroll and didn't know it
was so late. But never a word about the heron he
had dined on, nor did he ever after allude to the
subject.

XI

THE MOLE QUESTION

As to whether the mole is injurious or not, the
farmer appears not yet to have made up his mind.
Mole clubs flourish throughout the country, which
fact may be taken by some as proof that the
creature is regarded as an enemy. Is it so ? There
are many farmers who subscribe to the local mole
club, and occasionally have their grounds cleared,
yet they say that they do not know that they are
doing themselves any good, some are even inclined
to think that it would perhaps be better to leave
the moles alone. They go on subscribing to clubs
in the same way that so many of us give our crowns
or half -guineas year by year for objects we care
nothing about, and do not know whether they
are good or bad. All the other farmers in the
place have paid their subscriptions, and Jones
gives his so as not to be set down as a mean or
singular person, and because it would be a bother
to have any controversy over the subject. The
others have probably subscribed for the same poor
reason.

Occasionally we meet a farmer who is quite

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114 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

positive on one side or the other ; he knows all
about it, and is angry with his neighbours either
because they do or do not kill their moles. There
are always a few extremists. Every one has heard
of Mr. Joseph Nunn, who maintains that the
sparrow is the farmer's best feathered friend, and
is carried by his zeal to the length of declaring that
all those who shoot the sparrow ought themselves
to be shot. I hear of another farmer who buys
moles from mole-catchers to put on his land ; he
is convinced that their presence is wholly bene-
ficial, that when those inhabiting the lands adjoin-
ing his farm have been killed off, his own moles
flow out into these depleted grounds to enjoy the
greater abundance of food they find there ; and it
is to make good this loss inflicted on him by the
ignorance and stupidity of his neighbours that he
is obliged to act as he does.

Recently I was with a man who takes the
opposite view ; one who revolves schemes and
projects for the suppression of the mole. This
enemy of the mole is in possession of three or four
water-meadows, infested by these animals to an
extraordinary degree. As he is partly dependent
for a livelihood on a few milch-cows he keeps, the
condition of this mea low land is a matter of im-
portance to him ; and he has come to the con-
clusion that he loses a large portion (a fourth, he
imagines) of his grass crop on account of the
uneven condition of the surface caused by the
moles. It is true that he could roll the ground,

THE MOLE QUESTION lis

and it would then probably be in a sufficiently
level state at the next grass-cutting for the scythe,
but by the following season it would again be in a
hummocky condition, and repeated rollings would
be a serious item in his expenses. He considers
that if the damage thus inflicted on him in these
small mp'dows where the scythe is used is
sufficient to be seriously felt, the loss must indeed
be great on large farms where the machine is used
for mowing, and the ground must be kept in a
smooth condition at considerable expense.

Pondering over these things, and fighting the
moles, which, not content with making a sort of
physical geography raised map of his little grass
meadows, nightly invade his garden to spoil his
work there, he has come to look upon it as a
tremendously important question. It is his con-
viction that he who invents a means of suppressing
the mole will be a great benefactor to the country,
and he has set himself to find out the means, and
he has even strong hopes of success. So long (he
argues) as we continued to 'fight the moles with
the traps now in use, made to take one mole at a
time, the very utmost we can do is to keep their
numbers down with a great deal of trouble and
at a considerable expense. They increase rapidly,
and no sooner are our efforts relaxed than they
again become abundant. We want a trap that
will not take a single mole but as many moles as
are accustomed to use the run in which it is placed.
That a large number do constantly use the same

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116 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

main road by which they migrate from one hunting
ground to the other is to him a settled fact. One
of his neighbours took thirty-two moles, one by
one, in the course of a few days in a single trap
placed at the same place in a run — a proof that all
the moles in the place that range any day over an
area of many acres have roads that are free to the
colony. All we have got to do, then, is to find one
of these principal roads, usually at the side of a
hedge, and to place a trap capable of holding as
many moles as may come into it, and the thing
is done.

To inform my rural friend that he was not the
first person to have great dreams anent the mole
question, I related to him the history of the famous
Henri le Court, described by Bell in his British
Quadrupeds as " a person, who having held a
lucrative situation about the Court at the epoch of
the French Revolution, retired from the horrors of
that fearful period into the country, and ther**
devoted the remainder of his life to a study of the
habits of the mole, and of the most efficient means
for its extirpation."

It surprised him to hear that men of brains had
begun to occupy themselves with this question as
long ago as the eighteenth century ; but the
thouiffht that nothing important had resulted from
their efforts in so long a time did not discourage
him : it was simply the case that, brains or no
brains, he had been so lucky as to hit upon the
one efficacious means for the extirpation of the

THE MOLE QUESTION

117

mole, which all hefci^e him had missed — to wit,
his trap.

This frightful engine of destruction is not yet
perfected, and perhaps the moles need not be in a
hurry to say their prayers. In the meantime,
while the farmers are waiting to be delivered from
their subterranean enemy, I cannot help thinking
that it is not much to the credit of the science of
agriculture, and the Royal Agricultural Society,
that some practical steps have not been taken
before now to ascertain whether or not the mole
is an injurious beast ; or, to put it differently,
whether the direct loss he causes by throwing
up hills in meadows and grass-lands exceeds any
benefit that may result from his presence in drain-
ing and ventilating the soil and in clearing it of
grubc.

Willi gardens and lawns we are not concerned ;
moles are a nuisance when they come too near,
and if some one could devise a means to inflict
sudden death on every underground intruder into
such places it would be a great advantage. Ex-
periments in a small way could be made at a very
slight cost. For instance, take a meadow, like one
of those belonging to my friend, very much infested
with moles ; divide it in two equal portions, one
half to be open to moles, the other half to be
strictly protected from them by means of a fence
of fine wire-netting sunk to a proper depth in
the soil. Then let the grass crops of the two
portions be compared as to weight and quality for

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118 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

a period of four or five years. Such an experi-
ment carried out by a number of farmers at the
same time in different parts of the country would
probably result in the settlement of this old vexed
question.

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XII

CRISTIANO : A HORSE

A GAUCHO of my acquaintance, when I lived on
the pampas and was a very young man, owned
a favourite riding -horse which he had named
Cristiano. To the gaucho " Christian " is simply
another word for white man : he gave it that
name because one of its eyes was a pale blue-grey,
almost white — a colour sometimes seen in the eyes
of a white man, but never in an Indian. The other
eye was normal, though of a much lighter brown
than usual. Cristiano, however, could see equally
well out of both eyes, nor was the blue eye on one
side correlated with deafness, as in a white cat. His
sense of hearing was quite remarkable. His colour
was a fine deep fawn, with black mane and tail, and
altogether he was a handsome and a good, strong,
soimd animal ; his owner was so much attached
to him that he would seldom ride any other horse,
and as a rule he hat! him saddled every day.

Now if it har only been the blue eye I should
probably have forgotten Cristiano, as I made no
notes about him, but I remember him vividly to
this day on account of something arresting in his

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120 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

psychology : he was an example of the powerful
effect of the conditions he had been reared in and
of the persistence of habits acquired at an early
period after they have ceased to be of any signifi-
cance in the creature's life. Every tin e I was in
my gaucho friend's company, when his favourite
Cristiano, along with other saddle horses, was
standing at the palenque, or row of posts set up
before the door of a native rancho for visitors to
fasten their horses to, my attention would be
attracted to his singular behaviour. His master
always tied him to the palenque with a long cabresto,
or lariat, to give him plenty of space to move his
head and whole body about quite freely. And that
was just what he was always doing. A more
restless horse I had never seen. His head was
always raised as high as he could raise it — like an
ostrich, the gauchos would say — his gaze fixed
excitedly on some far object; then presently he
would wheel round and stare in another direction,
pointing his ears forward to listen intently to some
faint far sound, which had touched his sense. The
sounds that excited him most were as a rule the
alarm cries of lapwings, and the objects he gazed
fixedly at with a great show of apprehension
would usually turn out to be a horseman on the
horizon ; but the sounds and sights would for some
time be inaudible and invisible to us on account of
their distance. Occasionally, when the bird's alarm
cries grew loud and the distant rider was found
to be approaching, his excitement would increase

CRISTIANO : A HORSE

121

until it would discharge itself in a resounding snort
— the warning or alarm note of the wild horse.

One day I remarked to my gaucho friend that
his blue-eyed Cristiano amused me more than any
other horse I knew. He was just like a child, and
when tired of the monotony of standing tethered
to the palenque he would start playing sentinel.
He would imagine it was war-time or that an
invasion of Indians was expected, and every cry
of a lapwing or other alarm-giving bird, or the
sight of a horseman in the distance would cause
him to give a warning. But the other horses would
not join in the game ; they let him keep watch
and wheel about this way and that, spying or
pretending to spy something, and blowing his loud
trumpet, without taking any notice. They simply
dozed with heads down, occasionally switching off
the flies with their tails or stamping a hoof to get
them off their legs, or rubbing their tongues over
the bits to make a rattling sound with the little
iron rollers on the bridle-bar.

He laughed and said I was mistaken, that
Cristiano was not amusing himself with a game he
had invented. He was born wild and belonged to
a district not many leagues away but where there
was an extensive marshy area impracticable for
hunting on horseback. Here a band of wild horses,
a small remnant of an immense troop that had
formerly existed in that part, had been able to
keep their freedom down to recent years. As they
were frequently hunted in dry seasons when the

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122 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

ground was not so bad, they had become exceed-
ingly alert and cunning, and the sight of men on
horseback would send them flying to the most
inaccessible places in the marshes, where it was
impossible to follow them. Eventually plans were
laid and the troop driven from their stronghold
out into the open country, where the ground was
firm, and most cf them were captured. Cristiano
was one of thei i a colt about four or five months
old, and my '1 iend took possession of him,
attracted by his blue eye and fine fawn colour.
In quite a short time the colt became perfectly
tame, and when broken turned out an exceptionally
good riding-horse. But though so young when
captured the wild alert habit was never dropped.
He could never be still : when out grazing with
the other horses or when standing tied to the
palenque he was perpetually on the watch, and the
cry of a plover, the sound of galloping hoofs, the
sight of a horseman, would startle him and cause
him to tnunpet his alarm.

It strikes me as rather curious that in spite of
Cristiano's evident agitation at certain sounds and
sights, it never went to the length of a panic ; he
never attempted to break loose and run away.
He behaved just as if the plover's cry or the
sound of hoofs or the sight of mounted men had
produced an illusion — that he was once more a
wild hunted horse — yet he never acted as though
it was an illusion. It was apparently nothing more
than a memory and a habit.

XIII

MARY'S LITTLE LAMB

This is the hi-^-iy of a pet lamb that differed
mentally from ' lambs I have known. One

does not look f( anything approaching to marked
individuality in that animal, yet sheep do show it
on occasions though not in the same degree as
cats and dogs. Goats exhibit more character than
sheep, probably because we do not compel them to
live in a crowd. Indeed, when we consider how
our poor domesticated sheep is kept we can see
that they have little chance of developing in-
dividuality of mind. A sheep cannot " follow his
own genius," so to speak, without infringing the
laws we have made for his kind. His condition in
this respect is similar to that of himian beings
under a purely socialistic form of government :
for example, like that of the ancient civilised
Peruvians. In that . ate every man did as he was
told : worked and rested, got up and sat down,
ate, drank, and slept, married, grew old and died
in the precise way prescribed. And I daresay if
he tried to be original or to do something out of
the common he was knocked on the head. So

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124 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

with our sheep. The shepherd, assisted by his
dog, maps out his whole life for him, from birth
to death, and he is not permitted to stray from the
path in which he is made to walk. But if a lamb
be tai^en from the flock and reared at a farm and
giv: vhe same liberty that cats and dogs and even
many goats enjoy, he will in almost every case
develop a character of his own.

I remember a tame sheep we once had at my
home on the pampas who in thieving could give
points to many thievish dogs, not excepting the
pointer himself, the most accomplished thief in the
entire canine gang. Tobacco and books were the
objects this mischievous beast was perpetually
foraging for when she could get into the house.
Tobacco was hard to come at even when she had
a good long time to look for it before some one
came on the scene to send her about her business
with a good whack or a kick. But books were
often left lying about on tables and chairs and
were easily got at. She knew very well that it was
wrong and that if detected she would have to
suffer, but she was exceedingly cimning, and from
a good distance would keep an eye on the house,
and when she saw or cunningly guessed chat no
person was in the sitting- or dining-room or any
other room with the door standing open, she would
steal quietly in and finding a book would catch
it hastily up and make off with it. Carrying it off
to the plantation she would set it down, put her
hoof on it, and start tearing out the leaves and

MARY'S LITTLE LAMB

125

devouring them as expeditiously as possible. Once
she had got hold of a book she would not give t
up — not all the shouting and chasing after her
would make her drop it. Away she would rush
until fifty yards or more ahead of her hunters ;
then she would stop, set it down and beg n hurriedly
tearing out the leaves ; then when the hunt drew
near with loud halloo she would snatch it up and
rush on with it flapping about her face, and leave
us all far behind. Eventually, when her depreda-
tions could no longer be tolerated, she was sent
away to the flock.

An English settler in Patagonia I used to stay
with when visiting that part kept a tame guanaco
at his estancia, which had a habit resembling that
of our book-stealing sheep. This animal had been
captured when small by some guanaco-hunters,
and my friend reared and made a pet of it. When
grown up it associated with the sheep and other
domestic animals and was friendly with the dogs,
but spent much of its time roaming by itself over
the plains. He had the run of the house as well,
but at length had to be excluded on account of his
passion for devouring any white linen or cotton
which he could get hold of. But the guanaco, like
our sheep, was cunning and would approach the
house from the back and make his way into a
bedroom to snatch up and make off with a towel,
night-shirt, handkerchief, or anything he could find
of linen or cotton, so long as it was white. One
day my host came in to get himself ready to attend

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126 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

a meeting and dinner at a neighbouring estancia,
and after putting out his linen on his bed he went
into an adjoining room for a hot bath. Coming
back to his bedroom he was just in time to see his
pet guanaco pick up his beautifally-got-up snow-
white shirt from the bed and make a dash for the
open door. He uttered a wild yell, which had no
effect, but he was determined not to lose his shirt,
for at that moment he remembered that it was the
only clean '"ne he possessed ; he rushed out just
as he was with nothing but a towel round him, and
jumping on to his horse, which stood saddled at
the gate, started in pursuit. Away he went,
shouting to the dogs to come and help him recover
his shirt. His yell and shouts brought all the men
about the place on the scene, and running out they
too mounted their horses in hot haste and started
after him. And away far ahead of them went the
guanaco at a pace no horse could equal, the shirt
held firmly in his teeth waving and flapping like a
white banner in the wind. But from time to time
he made a stop, and bringing the shirt down to the
ground would hurriedly tear a piece out of it, then
picking it up would rush on again. The dogs over-
took him only to dance round him, barking joy-
fully to encourage him to run on and keep the fun
going. He was their friend and playmate, and it
was to them nothing but a jolly sham hunt got up
by their sport-loving master for their amusement.
The chase led up the valley of the river, a great
flat plain, and continued for about four to five

MARY'S LITTLE LAMB

127

miles ; by that time the precious shirt had dwindled
to something quite small — nothing in fact was
left but the hard starched front, which the guanaco
found it difficult to masticate and swallow. Then
at long last the hunt was given up and my poor
shirtless friend in his towel rode mournfully home
in the midst of laughing companions, attended, too,
by a lot of dogs, lolling their tongues out and over-
flowingly happy at having had such an exciting run.
Let me now come to the subject I sat down to
write about — namely, Mary's little lamb. It was
little to begin with, when my youngest sister, who
was not then very big herself, and was always
befriending forlorn creatures, came in one day
from the shepherd's ranch with a young lamb
which had unhappily lost its mother. Oddly
enough this little sister's name was Mary — one
seldom hears it in these Doris, Doreen days, but
in that distant Mary-Jane-Elizabeth period it was
quite common. And the motherless lamb she had
brought in grew to be her pet lamb, with fleece
as white as snow ; nor was the whiteness strange
seeing that it was washed every day with scented
soap, its beauteous neck beribboned and often
decor8<-ed with garlands of scarlet verbenas which
looked exceedingly brilliant against the snowy fleece.
A pretty, sweet-tempered and gentle creature it
proved and never developed any niughty proclivi-
ties like the tobacco- and book-plundering sheep of
an earlier date. They were very fond of each
other, those two simple beings, and just as in the

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128 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

old familiar rhyme wherever Mary went her little
lamb would go. But there was a little rift within
the lute which by and by would widen till it made
the music mute. The lamb was excessively playful
and frisky, but its mistress had her little lessons
and duties to attend to, and the lamb couldn't
understand it, and often after frisking and jumping
about to challenge the other to a fresh race in vain
it would run away to get up a race or game of
some sort with the youngest of the dogs. The
dogs were responsive, so that they were quite
happy together.

We kept eight dogs at that time ; two were
pointers, all the others just the common dog of the
country, a smooth-haired animal about the size of
a collie. Like all dogs allowed to exist in their own
way, they formed a pack, the most powerful one
being their leader and master. They spent most
of their time lying stretched dog-fashion in the
sun in some open place near the house, fast asleep.
They had little to do except bark at strangers
approaching the house and to hunt off the cattle
that tried to force their way through the fences
into the plantation. They would also go off on
hunting expeditions of their own. Strange play-
mates and companions for Libby, as she was
named, the pi .ty pet lamb with fleece as white
as snow ; yet so congenial did she find the dogs'
society that by and by she passed her whole time
with them, day and night. When they came to
tl.c door to bark and whine and wag their tails to

.

mary's little lamb

129

call attention to their wants or to be noticed, the
lamb would be with them but would not cross the
threshold since the dogs were not permitted in the
rooms. Nor would she come to her mistress when
called, and having discovered that grass was her
proper food she wanted nothing that human
beings could give her. Not even a lump of sugar !
She was no longer a pet lamb ; she was one of the
dogs. The dogs on their part, although much given
to quarrels and fights among themselves, never
growled or snapped at Libby ; she never tried to
snatch a bone from them, and she made them a
comfortable pillow when they slept and slumbered
for hours at a stretch. And Libby, just to be always
with them and to do exactly as they did, would
sleep too. Or rather she would lie stretched out
on the ground pretending to sleep, always with the
head of one of the dogs pillowed on her neck. Two
or three or four of the other dogs who had failed
to secure the pillow would lie round her with their
heads pressed against her fleece. They would form
a curiously amusing group. Then if a shrill whistle
was emitted by some one, or the cry of " Up and
at 'em," the lamb would spring like lightnmg to
her feet, throwing the drowsy dog off, and away
she would dash down the avenue to get outside tiie
plantation and find out what the trouble was.
Then the dogs, shaking off their sleep, would start
off and perhaps overtake her a couple of hundred
yards away.

Most amusing of all the lamb's acting was when

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180 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

the dogs had their periodical hunting fits, when
they would vanish for half a day's vizcacha-hunting
on the plain, just as fox-terriers and other dogs
in which the hunting instinct still survives steal
out of the village to chase or dig out rabbits on
their own account.

The vi-^ct a is a big rodent and lives in
communities, in warrens or villages composed of a
group of huge burrows, and the native dogs are
fond of assaulting these strongholds but seldom
succeed in getting at their quarry. A dog no bigger
than a fox-terrier can make his way in till he
comes to grips with the vizcacha, usually with the
result that he gets well punished for his audacity.
Our dogs would simply labour to enlarge the
burrows by scratching and biting away the earth
and furiously barking at the animal inside who
would emit curious noises and cries, which the dogs
appeared to regard as insults and would only
cause them to redouble their efforts.

On several occasions, when riding on the plain
a mile or two from home, I would come on our
dogs — the entire pack and the lamb with them,
engaged in the siege and assault of a vizcacha
village or earth. A funny sight ! The dogs would
jump up barking and wagging their tails as if to
say, " Here we are, you see, just in the middle of
our fight with no time to spare for friendly con-
versation." And back they would fly to their
burrows. The lamb too would dance up to give
me a welcome and then back to her duties. Her

MARY'S LITTLE LAMB

181

im

part was to go frisking about from burrow to
burrow, now taking a flying ' -ap over the pit-like
mouth, then diving down to see how things were
progressing inside, where the dog was tearing at
the earth and trying to force himself in and keep-
ing up a running dialogue of threats and insults
with the beast inside.

But though Libby, in these her dog days, was a
continual joy to us, we thought it best for her own
sake to put an end to them. For in spite of her
activities she was in very good condition, and any
poor gaucho who came upon her, hunting with our
dogs a few miles from home, would be justified in
saying : " Here is a good fat animal without an
ear-mark, consequently without an owner; and
though I find it in the company of Neighbour
So-and-So's dogs, it can't be his since he has put
no mark on it, and as I've found it I have a right
to it, and I'm qL'- sure from its appearance that
its flesh when roasted will prove tender and
savoury."

Accordingly we took Libby away from her
companions and put her with the flock, where in
due time she would learn that a sheep is a sheep
i.nd not a dog.

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There arc, I imagine, few old sportsmen, field
naturalists, and observers of animal life generally
who have not met with similai- instances of animals
of widely different natures, in some instances

• 182 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

natural enemies, living and even acting in harmony
together. We see it chiefly in the domesticated
and in tamed wild animals. When visiting a friend
in Patagonia I was greatly astonished one day on
going out with a gun to shoot something followed
by the dogs to find a black cat in their company,
and to see her when I fired my first shot actually
dashing off before the dogs to retrieve the bird !

One of the amusing recollections of an old lady
friend of mine, a lover of animals, was of a pet cat
and rabbit which had been reared from babyhood
together and were always fed out of one saucer of
milk, and when they grew up from one dish. It
was common to see them exchange foods, and the
cat would be seen laboriously gnawing at a cabbage
stalk while the rabbit picked a bone.

My friend Mr. Tregarthen, author of Wild Life at
the Land^s End, has just kindly furnished me with
two or three remarkable instances known to him of
hunting and hunted animals living together in
happy companionship. One is of a tame fox,
taken «.'hen small and reared in the kennels with
fox-hounds. When fully grown its great game
when the dogs were taken out for exercise was
to scamper off and give them a chase. Invariably
when overtaken it would throw itself on its back
and allow itself to be worried in fun. They never
hurt it. Then there are two instances of otters
reared from puppyhood with otter-hounds. In one
case the otter would go otter-hunting with the
hounds ; in the second case the otter did not

MARY'S LITTLE LAMB

188

accompany the hounds, or was not allowed to go
with them, but tht he -''s, although they hunted
their quarry with all seal and fury natural to

them, refused t. ite or hurt it in any way when
they got it. Their friendship with an otter had
had a psychological effect on their otter-hound
natures.

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XIV

THE SERPENT'S TONGUE

** But now," says Ruskin, " here's the first thing,
it seems to me, we've got to ask the scientific
people what use a serpent has for its tongue, since
it neither works it to talk with, or taste with, or
hiss with, nor, as far as I know, to lick with, and,
least of all, to sting with — and yet, for people who
do not know the creature, the little vibrating
forked thread, flicked out of its mouth and back
again, as quick as lightning, is the most striking
part of the beast ; but what is the use of it ?
Nearly every creature but a snake can do some sort
of mischief with its tongue. A woman worries with
it, a chameleon catches flies with it, a cat steals
milk with it, a pholas digs holes in the rock with
it, and a gnat digs holes in us with it ; but the
poor snake cannot do any manner of harm with it
whatsoever ; and what is his tongue forked for ? "

The writer's manner in this paragraph, and the
unexpectedness of the mocking question that leaps
out at the end, suggest the idea that there are, in
man, two sorts of forked tongues, and that one
sort is not worked for mischief. Certainly few of

134

THE SERPENT'S TONGUE 185

these " vibrating forked threads " in literature have
flickered more startlingly, like forked lightning, and
to the purpose, than Ruskin's own. The passage
is admirable, both in form and essence ; it shines
even in that brilliant lecture on Living Waves from
which it is taken, and where there are very many
fine things, along with others indifferent, and a few
that are bad. But there is this fault to be found
with it: after putting his question to the
"scientific people," the questioner assumes that
no answer is possible ; that the stinging and hissing
and licking theories having been discarded, the
serpent's tongue can do no manner of mischief, and is
quite useless. A most improbable conclusion, since
the fact stares us in the face that the serpent does
use its tongue ; for instance, it exserts and makes it
vibrate rapidly, but why it does so remains to be
known. It is true that in the long life of a species
an organ does sometimes lose its use without
dwindling away, but persists as a mere idle append-
age : it is, however, very unlikely that this has
happened in the case of the serpent's tongue ; the
excitability and extreme activity at times of that
organ rather incline one to the opinion that it has
only changed its original use for a new one, as has
happened in the case of some of the creatures
mentioned in the passage quoted above.

"A chameleon," says Ruskin, "catches flies
with its tongue," inferring that the snake has no
such accomplishment. Yet the contrary has been
often maintained. "The principal use of the

180 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

tongue," says Lacepede in his Natural History of
Serpents, " is to catch insects, which it catches by
means of its double tongue." This notion about
the use of the double tongue is quite common
among the older ophiologists, and, along with it,
the belief that snakes prey chiefly on insects. And
here I cannot resist the temptation to quote a few
more words touching on this point from Lacepede
— a very perfect example of the teleological spirit
in science which flourished a century ago, and made
things easy for the naturalist. " We are not," he
says, " to be amazed at the vast number of serpents,
both species and individuals, which inhabit the
intertropical countries. There they find the degree
of warmth which seems congenial to their natures,
and the smaller species find abundance of insects to
serve them for food. In those torrid regions, where
Nature has produced an infinite multitude of
insects and worms, she has likewise produced the
greatest number of serpents to destroy the worms
and insects ; which otherwise would multiply so
exceedingly as to destroy all vegetable productions,
and to reduce the most fertile regions of the earth
into barren deserts, inaccessible to man and animals ;
nay, even these noxious and troublesome insects
would be finally obliged to destroy each other, and
nothing would remain but their mangled limbs."

Here the French naturalist pauses, aghast at the
frightful picture of desolation he has himself con-
jured up.

When enumerating the uses to which a serpent

U-^d.

THE SERPENT'S TONGUE 187

does not put its tongue, Ruskin might very well
have said that it is not used as a t»,ctile organ.
That it is a tactile organ is a very modem supposi-
tion—a small hypothesis about a small matter, but
with a curious and rather amusing history. It was
in the first place given out merely as a conjecture,
but no sooner given than accepted as an i -efragable
fact by some of the greatest authorities among us.
Thus Dr. Gunther, in his article on snakes in the
Encyclopasdia Britannica, ninth edition, says, " The
tongue is exserted for the purpose of feeling some
object, and sometimes under the influence of anger

or fear."

Doubtless those who invented this use for the
organ were misled by observing snakes in captivity,
'n the glass cases or cages in which it is usual to
■jep them ; observing them in such conditions, it
7as easy to fall into the mistake, since the serpent,
when moving, is frequently seen to thrust his
tongue against the obstructing glass. It should be
remembered that glass is glass, a substance that
does not exist in nature ; that a long and some-
times painful experience is necessary before even
the most intelligent among the lower animals are
brought to understand its character ; and, finally,
that the delicate, sensitive tongue comes against
it for the same reason that the fly buzzes and the
confined wild bird dashes itself against it in their
efforts to escape. In a state of nature when the
snake is approached, whether by its prey or by
some large animal, the tongue is obtruded ; again.

It:

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188 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

when it is cautiously progressing through the
herbage, even when unalarmed, the tongue is
exserted at frequent intervals; but I can say,
after a long experience of snakes, that the exserted
organ never touches earth, or rock, or leaf, or
anything whatsoever, consequently that it is not
a tactile organ.

Another suggestion, less improbable on the face
of it than the one just cited, is that the tongue,
without touching anything, may, in some way not
yet known to us, serve as an organ of intelligence.
The serp.^nt's senses are defective ; now when, in
the presence o^ a strange object or animal, the
creature protrudes its long slender tongue — not to
feel the object, as has been shown — does it not do
so to test the air, to catch an emanation from the
object which might in somr unknown way convey
to the brain its character, whether animate or
inanimate, cold or warm blooded, bird, beast, or
reptile, also its size, etc. ? The structure of the
organ itself does not give support to this supposi-
tion ; it could not taste an emanation without some
such organs as are found in the wonderfully formed
antennae of insects, and with these it is not pro-
vided.

Only by means of a sensitiveness to air waves
and vibrations from other living bodies near it, in
degree infinitely more delicate than that of the
bat's wing — the so-called sixth sense of that animal
— could the serpent's tongue serve as an organ of
intelligence. Here, again, the structure of the

LLita

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THE SERPENT'S TONGUE 189

tongue is against such an hypothesis ; and if the
structure were different it would only remain to
be said that the instrument performs its work very

badly.

Another explanation which has been put tor-
ward by two well-known writers on serpent life,
Dr. Stradling and Miss Hopley, remains to be
noticed. These observers came independently to
the conclusion that the snake makes use of his
tongue as a decoy to attract its prey.

In the case of one of these writers, the idea was
suggested by an incident i.. our Zoological Gardens.
A fowl was placed in a boa's cage to be eaten, and
immediately began hunting about for food on the
floor of the cage; the serpent— apparently seen
merely as an inanimate object— protruded its
tongue, whereupon the fowl rushed and pecked at
it, mistaking it for a wriggling worm. Such a thing
could not well happen in a state of nature. The
tongue may resemble a wriggling worm, or, when
vibrated very quickly, a fluttering moth ; but we
cannot assume that the serpent, however motion-
less it may lie, however in its colour and pattern
it may assimilate to its surroundings, is not recog-
nised as a separate and living thing by a bird or
any other wild animal.

From the foregoing it will be seen that so far
from being silent on this subject, as Ruskin
imagined, the " scientific people " have found out
or invented a variety of uses for the serpent's
tongue. By turns it las been spoken of as an

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140 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

insect-catching organ, a decoy, a tactile organ, and,
' in some mysterious way, an organ of intelligence.
And, after all, it is none of these things, and the
way is still open for fresh speculation.

I have on numberless occasions observed the
common pit-viper of southern South America,
which is of a sluggish disposition, lying in the sun
on a bed of sand or dry grass, coiled or extended at
full length. Invariably, on approaching a sndce of
this kind, I have seen the tongue exserted ; that
nimble, glistening organ was the first, and for
some time the only sign of life or wakefulness in
the motionless creature. If I stood still at a dis-
tance of some yards to watch it, the tongue would
be exserted again at intervals ; if I moved nearer,
or lifted my arms, or made any movement, the
intervals would be shorter and the vibrations more
rapid, and still the creature would not move. Only
when I drew very near would other signs of excite-
ment follow. At such times the tongue has scarcely
seemed to me the "mute forked flash" that
Ruskin calls it, but a tongue that said something,
which, although not audible, was clearly understood
and easy to translate into words. What it said or
appeared to say was : " I am not dead nor sleeping,
and I do not wish to be disturbed, much less
trodden upon ; keep your distance, for your own
good as well as for mine." In other words, the
tongue was obtruded and vibrated with a warning
purpose.

Doubtless every venomous serpent of sluggish

THE SERPENT'S TONGUE 141

habits has more ways than one of making itself
conspicuous to and warning off any la^ heavy
animal that might injure by passing over and
treading on it ; and I think that in ophidians of
this temper the tongue has become, incidentally,
a warning organ. Small as it is, its obtrusion is
the first of a series of warning motions, and may
therefore be considered advantageous to the animal ;
and, in spite of its -^^mallness, I believe that in very
many instances it accomplishes its purpose with-
out the aid of those larger and violent movements
and actions resorted to when the danger becomes

pressing.

All large animals, including man, when walking
on an open space, see the ground before them, with
every object on it, even when the head is raised
and when the animal's attention is principally
directed to something in the distance. The motions
of the legs, the exact measurement of every slight
obstruction and object in the way— hillocks, de-
pressions in the soil, stones, pebbles, sticks, etc.—
are almost automatic ; the puma may have nothing
but his far-seen quarry in his mind, and the philo-
sopher be thinking only of the stars, as they move,
both quite unconscious of what their feet are doing ;
but the ground must be seen all the same, otherwise
they could not go smoothly even over a compara-
tively smooth surface.

When the man or other animal progressing in
this ordinary way comes to where a serpent, with
a protective or assimilative colour and appearance,

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142 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

lies motionless in the path, he certainly sees it, but
without distinguishing it as a serpent. The vari-
coloured surface it rests on and with which it is
in harmony is motionless, consequently without
animal life and safe to tread on — a rough flooring
composed of mould, pebbles and sand, dead and
green herbage, withered leaves, twisted vines, and
sticks warped by the sun, brown and grey and
mottled. But if the smallest thing moves on that
still surface, if a blade trembles, or a minute insect
flutters or flies up, the vision is instantly attracted
to the spot and concentrated on a small area,
and as by a flash every object on it is clearly seen,
and its character recognised. Those who have
been accustomed to walk much in dry, open places,
in districts where snakes are abundant, have often
marvelled at the instantaneous manner in which
something that had been previously seen as a mere
strip or patch of dull colour on the mottled earth,
as a part of its indeterminate pattern, has taken
the serpent form. And when once it has been
recognised as a serpent it is seen so vividly and
in such sharp contrast to its surroundings as to
appear the most conspicuous and unmistakable
object in nature. Why, in such cases, they ask in
astonishment, did they not recognise its character
sooner ? I believe that in such cases it is the
suddenly exserted, glistening, vibrating tongue that
first attracts the eye to the dangerous spot and
reveals the serpent to the mind.

This warning character is, I believe, as has

[UA.

THE SERPENT'S TONGUE

148

already been intimated, an incidental use of the
tongue, probably confined, or at all events most
advantageous to the vipers and to other venomous
serpents of lethargic habits. In the case of the
extremely active, non-venomous snake, that glides
away into hiding on the slightest alarm, the tongue
would be of little use or no value as a warning organ.
Between a snake of this kind and the slumberous
pit-viper the difference in habit is extreme. But
at bottom, all ground snakes are alike in disposi-
tion--all hate to be disturbed, and move only
when necessity drives ; and we can imagine that
when the tremendous weapon of a lethal tooth had
been acquired, when experience began to teach the
larger mammalians to view the serpentine form
with suspicion and to avoid it, the use of the
tongue as a warning would react on the serpent,
making it more and more lethargic in habit— as
inactive, in fact, as every snake loves to be.

There is, I imagine, another and more important
use of the tongue, older than its warning use,
although this may date back in time to the Miocene
period, when the viperine form existed— a use of
the tongue common to all ophidians that possess
the habit of exserting and vibrating that organ
when excited. The subject is somewhat com-
plicated, for we have not only to consider the
tongue, but the whole creature of which the tongue
is so small a part ; its singularity and anomalous
position in nature, and the many and diverse ways
in which the animals it preys on are affected by

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144 THE BOOK OP A NATURALIST

its appearance. Furthermore, I have now in my
mind two separate functions, the first of which
occasionally, perhaps often, passes into and becomes
one with the other.

When the common or ring snake pursues a frog,
the chase would in most cases prove a very vain
one but for that fatal weakness in the hunted
animal, which quickly brings its superior activity
to naught. The snake need not even be seen for
the effect to be produced, as any one can prove for
himself by pushing his walking-stick, snake-wise,
through the grass and causing it to follow up '^he
frog's motions, whereupon, after some futile c' rts
to escape, the creature collapses, and stretchii > out
its fore-feet like arms that implore mercy, emits a
series of piteous, wailing screams. Thus, all that
is necessary for this end to be reached is that the
frog should be conscious of something, no matter
what, pushing after it through the grass. There is
here, apart fro: the question in animal psychology,
a little mystery involved ; for how comes it that
in the course of the countless generations during
which the snake has preyed on the frog, this
peculiar weakness has not been eliminated by
means of the continual destruction of the in-
dividuals most subject to it, and, on the other
hand, the preservation of all those possessing it in
a less degree, or not at all ? It is hard for a good
Darwinian to believe that the frog is excessively
prolific for the snake's advant€tge rather than for
its own. But this question need not detain us ;

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THE SERPENT'S TONGUE

145

there are vulnerable spots and weak joints in the
defensive annour of all animals. What I wish to
draw attention to is the fact that, speaking meta-
phorically, the serpent, of all creatures that kill
their own meat, is the most unsportsmanlike in its
methods, that it has found out and subtly taken
advantage of the most secret and unsuspected
weaknesses of the animals on which it preys.

We have seen how the common snake catches
the frog ; but frogs are found only in wet places,
and snakes abound everywhere, and the sedentary
snake of the dry uplands must feed on the nimble
rodent, volatile bird, and elusive lizard. How does
he manage to catch them ? For considering how
alert and quick-sighted these small hunted creatures
are, it must, I think, be assumed that the snake
cannot, except in rare instances, approach them
unseen and take them unawares. I believe that
in many cases the snake succeeds by approaching
its intended victim while appearing to be stationary.
This stratagem is not confined to the ophidians :
in a somewhat different form it is found in a great
variety of animals. Perhaps the most familiar
example is afforded by the widely distributed
hunting-spider. The plan followed by this spider,
on a smooth surface where it cannot hide its form,
is to advance boldly towards its prey, and when
the fly, who has been suspiciously watching its
approach, is about to dart away, to become motion-
less. This appears to excite the fly's curiosity, and
he does not take flight ; but very soon his restive

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146 THE BOO V )F A NATURALIST

i m

spirit returns hv w.ywi iAn-nt this way and that,
to see all ro*' ul him and each time he turns his
bright eyes away th'; .pider rapidly moves a little
nearer; but nhen th<' fly looks again, appears
motionless as betore. In this way, little by little,
the space is Ic jsened, and yet the fly, still turning
at int Is to regard the suspicious-looking object,
does uot make his escape, simply because he does
not know that the space has been lessened. Seeing
the spider always motionless the illusion is pro-
duced that it has not moved : the dividing distance
has been accurately measured once for all, and no
second act of judgement is required ; the fly, know-
ing his own quickness and volatile powers, feels
himself perfectly safe ; and this goes on until by
chance he detects the motion and instantly flies
away, or else fails to detect it and is caught. Cats
often succeed in capturing birds by a similar
stratagem.

The snake, unlike the spider and cat, cannot
make the final spring and rush, but must glide up
to within striking distance : this he is able to do
by means of the faculty he possess< s of progressing
so gradually and evenly as to appear almost
motionless ; the tongue which nt exserts and
rapidly vibrates a. intervals when approaching his
victim helps in producing the deception.

Long observation has convinced me that a
snake on the ground, moving or restinar, ii> not a
sight that violently excites birds, as the are
excited by the appearance of a ox, cat, teasel,

THE SERPENT'S TONGUE 147

hawk, or any other creature whose enmity is well
known to them. I hav* h\ quently seen little birds
nmning about and feeding on the ground within a
few feet of i snake lying ' ''nspi' ously ir their sight ;
furthemior*', I have been convii ed on uch occasioi'
that tlu birds kn« w the snake was lere, having
observed them raise their neads at inte vals, regard
the reptile )r a few moments attentively, then go
on seeking food. This shows that birds do some-
times come near snakes and see them with little or
no f'-ar, but probably with some slight suspi< m
and a great deal of curiosity, on ai 'ount of the
singularity ol' their appearance, their res snb lance
to vegetable rather than t > animal form; nf life,
and, above all, to ^heir st.ange manner ^jro
gression. Now the biid, ov iizard, o- smal' "^ onm vl,
thus brought by chance near to a hi ngr vatch.ul
snake, once it begins to regard tht s? ak curiously,
is in inimine; t danger of dcstructioi i one ul two
ways, or b} a combination of ^^oth ; in the first
case it ma>' be deluded as to tht dif^ ar^f-e of the
suspicious-looking object and n
just as the fly is seized by tht
before i an make 'ts escape ; >^
while ! egarding its singular eia
into a raiioe or convulsive tit ana
powerless to escape, or it may even b
cast itself into the open jaws of the snake. In
either case, the serpent's tongue would, I believe,
nlay a verv imnortant part, hi f case of the first
kind the snake vould approach its intended victim

the end
S8 ieus

zO

seized,

spider,

,, it may,

be thrown

i rendered

moved to

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148 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

so slowly and continuously as almost to appear not
to be moving ; still, in most cases the movement
probably would be detected but for the tongue,
which attracts the eye by its eccentric motions, its
sudden successive appearances and disappearances ;
watching the tongue, the long, sinuous body slowly
gliding over the intervening space would not be
observed; only the statuesque raided head and
neck would be visible, and these would appear not
to move. The snake's action in such a case would
resemble the photographer's trick to make a restive
child sit still while its picture is being taken by
directing its attention to some curious object, or
by causing a pocket-handkerchief to flutter above
the camera.

Snakes have been observed to steal upon their
victims in this quiet, subtle manner; the victim,
bird or lizard, has been observed to continue
motionless in a watchful attitude, as if ready to
dart away, but still attentively regarding the
gradually approaching head and flickering tongue ;
and in the end, by a sudden, quick-darting motion
on the part of the snake, the capture has been
effected. Cases of this description are usually set
down to " fascination," which I think is a mistake.

Fascination is a fine old word, which has done
good service and has had a long day and happily
outlived its evil repute : but it had its faults at
the best of times ; it originally expressed things
purely human, and therefore did not exactly fit
things serpentine, and was, to some extent, mis-

■

THE SERPENT'S TONGUE

149

leading. What its future history — in science —
will be cannot be guessed. In France it has been
used to describe a mild form of hypnotism in-
duced by the contemplation of a bright spot, and
no doubt there would be a certain propriety in
applying the word to the soothing somnolent effect
produced nn the human subject by the revolving
mirror invented by Dr. Luys. But this is not the
form we are concerned with. Fascination in
serpent life is something very different ; in the
present state of knowledge on the subject the old
word cannot be discarded. We are now in pos-
session of a very large number of well-authenticated
cases of undoubted fascination in which the victims
are seen to act in a variety of ways, but all alike
exhibit very keen distress. The animal that falls
under the spell appears to be conscious of his loss
of power, as in the case of the frog pursued by the
ring-snake. He is thrown into violent convulsions,
or trembles, or screams, or struggles to escape, and
sometimes rushes in terror away only to return
again, perhaps in the end to jirnip into the serpent's
jaws. A brother of mine* once observed a pipit
running with flutterings round and round a coiled
snake, uttering distressed chirps and cries ; the
snake, vibrating its tongue, moved its head round
to follow the motions of the bird. This is a common
form — ^the desire and vain striving to escape. But
when an animal is seen to remain motionless,
showing no signs of distress or fear, attentively
regarding the gradually approaching snake, such

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150 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

a case cannot, I think, be safely set down to fascina-
tion, nor to anything more out of the common than
curiosity, and, as in the case of the volatile, sprightly
fly and terrestrial spider, to the illusion produced
in the victim's mind that the suspicious-looking
object is stationary.

Concerning the use, here suggested, of the
tongue in fascination, I can scarcely expect that
those whose knowledge of the snake is derived
from books, from specimens in museums, and from
seeing the animal alive in confinement, will regard
it as anything more than an improbable supposition,
unsupported by facts. But to those who have
attentively observed the creature in a state of
nature, and have been drawn to it by, and won-
dered at, its strangeness, the explanation, I venture
to think, will not seem improbable. To weigh,
count, measure, and dissect for purposes of
identification, classification, and what not, and to
search in bones and tissues for hidden affinities, it
is necessary to see closely ; but this close seeing
would be out of place and a hindrance in other
lines of inquiry. To know the creature, undivested
of life or liberty or of anything belonging to it, it
must be seen with an atmosphere, in the midst of
the nature in which it harmoniously moves and has
its being, and the image it casts on the observer's
retina and mind must be identical with its image
in the eye and mind of the other wild creatures that
share the earth with it. It is not here maintained
that the tongue is everything, nor that it is the

Mi

THE SERPENT'S TONGUE

151

principal agent in fascination, but only that it is
a necessary part of the creature, and of the creature's
strangeness, which is able to produce so great and
wonderful an effect. The long, limbless body,
lithely and mysteriously gliding on the surface;
the glittering scales and curious mottlings, bright
or lurid; the statuesque, arrowy head, sharp-cut
and immovable ; the round lidless eyes, fixed and
brilliant ; and the long, bifurcated tongue, shining
black or crimson, with its fantastic flickering play
before the close-shut, lipless mouth— that is the
serpent, and probably no single detail in the fateful
creature's appearance could be omitted and the
effect of its presence on other animals be the same.

When, years ago, I had finished writing the
above paper, which appeared later in the Fort-
nightly Review, I made the following entry in my
Diary, and reproduce it here just to show that I
am not apt to set too high a value on my own
theory.

*' This paper was not too long, but I'm glad it's
finished and done with. Not because the subject
didn't interest me— on the contrary, it had a
tremendous attraction for me — but because, having
written it, a difficulty has been removed, a pain
reUeved, a want satisfied. True, that I've only
imagined this use for a serpent's tongue, and that
it may not be the true use — if any use there be ;
but if we have a need to build, and there is any
wind or cloud to build on, 'tis best to go on bravely

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152 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

with the building business. Who cares if the
structure is all to tumble down again? Not I.
Nevertheless the mere building is a pleasure, and
the completion of the structure a satisfaction in
that it puts something where before there was
nothing. The speculative soul which is in man
abhors the desert, vacant spaces and waters and
islands of nothingness. Thus, to illustrate this
little thing by a big thing— the little flickering
tongue of the serpent by something so big that it
fills the entire universe— the existence of an ethereal
medium is possibly no more than a figment of the
mind, an invention to get us out of a difficulty,
or a 'purely hypothetical supposition,' as was
boldly said by one of our greatest physicists. At
all events, a lady lean and pale who came at our
call, tottering forth wrapped in a gauzy veil-
surely the most attenuated and shadowy of all the
daughters of Old Father Speculation. But having
got her in our arms, thin and pale though she be,
we imagine her beautiful and love her dearly, and
rest satisfied with the breasts of her consolations,
albeit they are of no more substance than thistle-
down."

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XV

THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS

The following passages from the Queen of the Air,

which refer to the serpent myth and the serpent's

strange appearance and manner of progression,

have, apart from their exceeding beauty, a very

special bearing on the subject of this paper. And

in quoting them I am only following Ruskin's own

plan, when, in his lectures on Natural History at

Oxford, he considered in each case, first, what had

been "beautifully thought about the creature."

It would be hard, I imagine, to find a passage of

greater beauty on this subject than Ruskin's own,

imless it be that famous fragment concerning the

divine nature of the serpent and the serpent tribe

from Sanchoniathan the Phoenician, who flourished

some thirty centuries a^o It is true that among

the learned some hold that he never flourished at

all, nor existed ; but doctors disagree on that point ;

and, in any case, the fragment exists, and was most

certainly written by some one.

Ruskin writes :

Next, in the serpent we approach the source of a group of
myths, world-wide, founded on great and common human

163

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154 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

instincts. . . . There are such things as natural myths
... the dark sayings of men may be difficult to read, and
not always worth reading ; but the dark sayings of nf - -e
will probably become clearer for the looking into, and - j
very certainly be worth reading. And, indeed, all guidance
to the right sense of the human and variable myths will
probably depend on our first getting at the sense of the
natural and invariable ones. ... Is there indeed no
tongue, except the mute forked flash from its lips, in that
running brook of horror on the ground ? Why that horror ?
We all feel it, yet how imaginative it is, how dispropor-
tioned to the real strength of the creature I ... But
that horror is of the myth, not of the creature ; ... it
IS the strength of the base element that is so dreadful in
the serpent ; it is the ommpotence of the earth. ... It
is a divine hieroglyph of the demoniac power of the earth,
of the entire earthly nature.

Of the animal's motions he says :

That rivulet of smooth silvei^-how does it flow, think
you ? It literally rows on the earth, with every scale for
an oar; it bites the dust with the ridges of its body.
Watch it when it moves slowly; a wave, but without
wind ! a current, but with no fall ! all the body moving
at the same instant, yet some of it to one side, some to
another, and some forward, and the rest of the coil back-
wards; but all with the same calm wUl and equal way
—no contraction, no extension ; one soundless, causeless
march of sequent rings, a spectral procession of spotted
dust, with dissolution in its fangs, dislocation in its coils.
Startle it: the winding stream will become a twisted
arrow ; the wave of poisoned life will lash through the
grass like a cast lance.

He adds : "I cannot understand this forward
motion of the snake," which is not strange, seeing
that Solomon, the wise man, found in " the way of
a serpent upon a rock " one of the three wonderful

THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 155

things that baffled his intellect. And before
Solomon, the old Phoenician wrote that Taautus
esteemed the serpent as the most inspired of all
the reptiles, and of a fiery nature, inasmuch as it
exhibits an incredible celerity, moving by its spirit
without either hands or feet. Thanks to modem
anatomists, this thing is no longer a puzzle to us ;
but with the mere mechanical question we are not
concerned in this place, but only with the sense of
wonder and mystery produced in the mind by the
apparently " causeless march of sequent rings."

From English Coniston, where snakes are few
and diminutive, let us go to the pine forest of the
new world, where dwells the famous Pituophis
melanoleticus, the serpent of the pines. This is the
largest, most active and beautiful of the North
American ophidians, attaining a length of ten to
twelve feet, and arrayed in a " bright coat of soft
creamy-white, upon which are laid, much in the
Dolly Varden mode, shining blotches or mottlings,
which beginning at the neck are of an intensely
dark brown or chocolate colour, but which towards
the tail lighten into a pale chestnut." A local
Ruskin, the Rev. Samuel Lockwood, a lover of
snakes, kept some of these reptiles in his house,
and referring to their wonderful muscular feats, he
writes as follows :

Owing to this command of the muscles the pine snake
is capable of performing some evolutions which arc not
only beautiful, but so intricate and delicate as to make
them seem imbued with the nature we call spiritual. I

T.,-

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156 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

have often seen the Pituophis, spread out in loose coUs
with its head in the central one, wake up after a long
repose and begin a movement in every curve, the entire
body engaged in the mazy movements, with no going out
or deviation from the complicated pattern marked on the
floor. Observing this intricate harmoniousness of move-
ment, I thought of the seer's vision of mystic wheels.
Those revolving coils—*' and their appearance and their
work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel." . . .
The movements of a serpent are never started, rope-like,
at one end, and then transmitted to the other ; nor is the
movement like the force-waves sent through a ribbon
vibrating in the air. The movement consists of numberless
units of individual activities, all regulated by and under
control of one individual will that is felt in every curve
and line. There is some likeness to the thousand personal
activities of a regiment seen on their windmg way. And
all this perfection of control of so many complicated
activities is true, whether the serpent, like an ogre, be
crushing its victim's bones, or, as a limbless posturist, be
going through its inimitable evolutions. In our thinking
a serpent ranks as a paradox amojg animals. There is so
much seeming contradiction. At one time encircling its
prey as in iron bands; again assuming the immov le
posturing of a statue ; then melting into movement, .o
intncate and delicate that the lithe limbless thing loo.s
like gossamei incarnate. In this creature all the unities
seem to be set aside. Such weakness and such strength ;
such gentleness and such vindictiveness ; so much of
beauty and yet so repulsive; fascination and terror:
what need to wonder that, whether snake or python, the
serpent should so figure in the myths of all ages and the
literature of the whole worid ! Yes, in the best and worst
thinkings of man !

In the literature of the whole world, true ; but
let no one run away with the idea that gems of
this kind are to be picked up anywhere, and go

.

THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 157

out to seek for them, since for every one equalling
these in lustre he will burden himself with many a
bushel of common pebbles.

Lockwood called to mind the mystic wheels in
Ezekiel's splendid imaginings— " for the spirit of
the living creature was in the wheels." His lissom
beautiful captive might also have been likened to
Shelley's dream-serpent in the Witch of Atlas—

In the flame
Of its own volumes intcrvolved.

He had abundant reason to admire the creature's
intricate and delicate movements when it appeared
like " gossamer incarnate," after having witnessed
its motions of another kind, and its deadly power.
He had seen it lying extended, apparently psleep,
on the floor of its box, when a rat, which had been
placed with it, ran over it, but not quite over it,
for, quick as lightning, it had wound itself round
the rat's body, coil over coil, like hand grasping
hand in squeezing a lemon, until the bones of the
constricted animal cracked audibly; then it was
dropped, dead and crushed and limp, on to the
floor; and the serpent, having revenged the
indignity, resumed its interrupted repose. With
this lightning-like deadly quickness of motion and
the melting mazy evolutions at the other times,
he also contrasted its statue-like immobility, when,
with head raised high and projecting forwards, it
would actually remain for hours at a stretch, its
brilliant eyes fixed on some object that had alarmed
it or excited its .curiosity.

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158 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

This power of continuing motionless, with the
lifted head projecting forwards, for an indefinite
time, is one of the most wonderful of the serpent's
muscular feats, and is of the highest importance
to the animal both when fascinating its victim and
when mimicking some inanimate object, as, for
instance, the stem and bud of an aquatic plant ;
here it is only referred to on account of the effect
it produces on the human mind, as enhancing the
serpent's strangeness. In this attitude, with the
round, unwinking eyes fixed on the beholder's face,
the effect may be very curious and uncanny.
Ernest Glanville, a South African writer, thus
describes his own experience. When a boy he
frequently went out into the bush in quest of
game, and on one of these solitary excursions he
sat down to rest in the shade of a willow on the
bank of a shallow stream; sitting there, with
cheek resting on his hand, he fell into a boyish
reverie. After some time he became aware in a
vague way that on the white sandy bottom of the
stream there was stretched a long black line which
had not been there at first. He continued for some
time regarding it without recognising what it was ;
but all at once, with an inward shock, became fully
conscious that he was looking at a large snake.

Presently, without apparent motion, so softly and
silently was it done, the snake reared its head above the
surface and held it there, erect and still, with gleaming
eyes fixed on me in question of what I was. It flashed
upon mc then that it would be a good opportunity to test
the power of the human eye on a snake, and I set myself

THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 159

the Usk of looking it down. It was a foolish effort. The
bronze head and sinewy neck, about which the water
flowed without a ripple, were as if carved in stone, and the
cruel unwinking eyes, with the light coming and going in
them, appeared to glow the brighter the longer I looked.
Gradually there came over me a sensation of sickening
fear, which, if had yielded to it, would have left me
powerless to move ; but with a cry I leapt up, and, seizing
a fallen willow branch, attacked the reptile with a species
of fury. . . . Probably the idea of the Icanti originated in
a simUar experience of some i ive.

The Icanti, it must be explained, is a powerful
and malignant being that takes the form of a great
serpent, and lies at night in some deep dark pool ;
and should a man incautiously approach and look
down into the water he would be held there by the
power of the great gleaming eyes, and finally drawn
down against his will, powerless and speechless, to
disappear for ever in the black depths.

Not less strange than this statue-like immobility
of the serpent, the effect of which is increased and
made more mysterious by the flickering lambent
tongi'.e, suddenly appearing at intervals like light-
ning playing on the edge of an unmoving cloud, is
that kind of progressive motion so even and slow
as to be scarcely perceptible. But on this and
other points relating to the serpent's strangeness I
have spoken in the preceding chapter. Even in
our conditions of self-absorption and aloofness —
the mental habit of regarding nature as something
outside of ourselves and interesting only to men
of curious minds — ^this quality of the serpent is
yet able to affect us powerfully. How great was

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160 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

its effect on the earlier races, and what great
things resulted from it, when the floating scattered
threads of all strange sensations and experiences,
all unaccountable things, were gatliered and woven
into the many-coloured and quaintly figured cloth
of religion, anthropology has for some time past
been engaged in telling us.

We have seen in the history of palaeontology
that, when the fossil remains of some long-extinct
animal have been discovered, in some district still
perhaps inhabited by one or more representatives
of archaic form, naturalists have concluded that the
type was peculiar to the district ; but ubsequently
fresh remains have been discovered in other widely
separated districts, and then others, until it has
been established that the type once supposed local
has, at one time or another,, ranged over a very
large portion of the habitable globe. Something
similar has been the case in the extension of the
area over which evidences of serpent-worship have
been brought to light by inquiries into the early
history of mankind. It had existed in Phoenicia,
India, Babylonia, and, in a mild form, in Greece
and Italy in Europe ; Persia was added, and, little
by little, Cashmir, Cambodia, Thibet, China, Ceylon,
the Kalmucks ; in Lithuania it was universal ; it
was found in Madagascar and Abyssinia ; the area
over which it once flourished or still flourishes in
Africa grows wider and wider, and promises to take
in the entire continent; across the Atlantic it
extended over a greater part of North, Central, and

THE SERPENT'S STIIaNGENESS 161

South Amerir^, and exists still among som* tribes,
as it still does in Egypt, India, and Ciuna. Mean-
while the area over which it oner held svay in
Europe has also been ext( sxled ; among thos**' who
once regarded the serpei t s a sacrt? animal wo
now include the Goths, British Cc ts, S< iindinHvinns,
Esthonians, and Finns. It would o longer be rash
to say that in every part of the earth inhabited by
the -f'rpent this animal has at one time or other been
reverenced by man.

Into the subject of serpent - w orship, about
which scores of books and hundreds of papers
have been written, I do not wish to go one step
further than I am compelled by my theme, which
is, primarily, the serpent, and the effect on the
human intelligence of its unique appearance and
faculties. At the same time the two matters are so
closely connected that we cannot treat of one
without touching on the other. We find that the
authorities are divided in their opinions as to the
origin of this kind of worship, some holding that it
had its rise in one centre— Furgussoa goes so far
as to give the precise spot — from which it spread
to other regions and eventually over the earth ;
others, on the contrary, believe that it sprang up
spontaneously in ma'^y places and at different
periods.

The solution of this question is, I believe, to be
found in ourselves — in the effect of the serpent on
us. Much is to be gained by personal experience
and observation, and by close attention to our own

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162 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

sensations. Just as the individual who has passed
the middle period of life, or attained to old age, has
outlived many conditions of mind and body so
different and distinct that when recalled they seem
to represent separate identities, and yet has pre-
served within himself something of them all — of
adolescence, of boyhood, even of childhood and
infancy — an ineradicable something corresponding
to the image, bright or dim, existing in his memory ;
so do we inherit and retain something of our for-
gotten progenitors, the old emotions and obsolete
modes of thought of races that have preceded us
by centuries and by thousands of years.

In the next chapter, dealing with the subject of
man's irrational enmity to the serpent, there will
be more said on this subject ; nevertheless, at the
risk of some overlapping, I must in this place dwell
a little on my own early experiences, which serve
to illustrate the familiar biological doctrine that
the ancient, outlived characters of the organism tend
to reappear for a season in its young. The mental
stripes on the human whelp are very perceptible.
From an aesthetic, that is, our aesthetic, point of
view, there is not much to choose between an
English infant, whether of aristocratic or plebeian
descent, and a Maori, Patagonian, Japanese, or
Greenland infant. The Greenland infant might be
the fattest — I do not know. After the features
and expression change, when infancy and early
childhood is past, they are still alike in mind. The
similarity of all children all the world over some-

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THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 168

times strikes us very forcibly. One day I stood
watching a group of a dozen children playing in a
small open green space in London ; its openness to
the sky and the green, clastic turf under their feet
had suddenly made them mad with joy. Watching
them I could not help laughing when all at once
I remembered having once watched a group of
children of about the same size as these on a spot
of green turf in a distant region, playing the same
rude game in the same way, with the same shrill,
excited cries; and these were children of un-
adulterated savages — the nomad Tehuelches of
Patagonia! In some savage tribes the adults are
invariably of a gloomy, taciturn disposition — the
" buoyant child surviving in the man " would be
as astonishing a phenomenon to them as a fellow-
creature with the melodious throat of a Rubini,
or a pair of purple wings on his shoulders. The
children of these people sit silent and unsmiling
among their elders in the house, as if the burden,
of eternal care had been inherited by them from
birth ; but every day the grave young monkeys
find a chance to steal off, and when they have got
to some secluded spot in the woods, out of earshot
of the village, a sudden transformation takes
place : they are out of school, and as merry and
shrill at their games and mock battles as any
rough set of urchins just released from their lessons
in our own land.

Many pages might be filled with similar instances.
And when we consider what the law is, and that

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164 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

the period during which the human species has
existed in any kind of civilisation, making its own
conditions, is but a span compared with its long
life of simple barbarism, it would be strange indeed
if we did not find in the civilised chiU the
psychological representative of primitive man. We
do not look for the emotions and inherited or
traditional habits proper to the adult. The higher
mental faculties, which have had their growth u^ a
developed social state, are latent in him. His
senses and lower mental faculties are, on the con-
trary, at their best : in the acuteness of his senses,
and the vividness and durability of the impressions
made on him by external stimuli ; in his nearness
to or oneness with Nature, resulting from his
mythical faculty, and in the quick response of the
organism to every outward change, he is like the
animals. His world is small, but the bright mirror
of his mind has reflected it so clearly, with all it
contains, from sun and stars and floating clouds
above, to the floating motes in the beam, and the
grass blades and fine grains of yellow sand he
treads upon, that he knows it as intimately as if
he had existed in it for a thousand years. And
whatever is rare and strange, or outside of Nature's
usual order, and opposed to his experience, affects
him powerfully and excites the sense of mystery,
which remains thereafter associated with the object.
I remember that as a child, or small boy, I was
iiffectcd in this way on seeing mushrooms growing
in a chain of huge rings in a meadow ; also by the

ti ■

THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 165

sensitive-plant, when I saw it shrink and grow pale
at the touch of my fingers. Other plants and
flowers have affected me with a sense of mystery
in the same way ; and throughout the world,
among inferior or savage races, plants of strange
fonns are often regarded with superstitious fear
or veneration. Something of this — the mythical
faculty of the primitive man and of the child —
remains in all of us, even the most intellectueV
There is a story told of an atheist who, coming
from an orchid show, said that he had been con-
verted to belief in the existence of a devil. A
feeling, about which he probably knew little, Mas
father to the witticism.

To pass from plants to animals. As a child I
was powerfully moved at my first meeting with a
large owl. 1 was exploring a dimly lighted loft
in a barn, when, peering into an empty cask, I
met its eyes fixed on mine — a strange monster of
a bird with fluffed, tawny plumage, barred and
spotted with black, and a circular, pale-coloured
face, and set in it a pair of great luminous yellow
eyes I My nerves tingled and my hair stood up
as if I had received an electric shock. Recalling
this experience, the vividness of the image printed
on my mind, and the sense of mystery so long
afterwards associated with this bird, it does not
seem strange that among all races in all parts of
the globe it should have been regarded as some-
thing more than a bird, and supernatural — a
wise being, something evil and ghostly, a messenger

( '

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166 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

from spirit-land, and prophet of death and disaster ;
a little sister or s(»ne other relation of the devil ;
and finally the devil himself; also, as in Samoa,
a god incarnate. Its voice, as well as its strange
appearance, had doubtless much to do with the
owl's supernatural reputation. The owl is first,
but only one, of a legion of feathered demons,
ghosts, witches, and other unearthly beings, usually
nocturnal birds with cries and notes that resemble
the himian voice expressing physical agony,
incurable grief, despair and frenzy, always with
something aerial and ventriloquial in it, heighten-
ing its mysterious and terrible character ; and the
birds that emit these sounds are of many families
— night- jars, herons, rails, curlews, grebes, loons,
and others.

But great as the owl is among birds that have
been regarded as supernatural, or in league with
the unseen powers, it has never risen to the height
of the serpent in this respect : it had only its
strange appearance, silent flight, and weird voice ;
the serpent had many and more impressive qualities.
First and foremost is the strength and lastingness
of the impression produced by its strangeness, and
its beautiful, infinitely varied, and, to the un-
scientific mind, causeless motions ; its spectre-like
silence and subtlety ; its infinite patience and
watchfulness, and its power to continue with raised
head and neck rigid as if frozen to stone for a long
period ; and its wonderful quietude when lying
day after day in sun or shade on the same spot, ns

Lii

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THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 167

if in a deep perpetual sleep, yet eternally awake,
with open brilliant eyes fixed on whosoever re-
gards it. A sense of mystery becomes insepar-
ably associated with its appearance; and when
habitually regarded with such a feeling, other
qualities and faculties possessed by it would seem
in harmony with this strangeness, and outside of
the common order of nature :— its periodical re-
newal of youth; the power of existing without
aliment and with no sensible diminution of vigour
for an indefinite time ; the faculty of fascination

a miraculous power over the ordinary lower

animals ; and the deadliness which its venom and
the lightning-like swiftness of its stroke give it,
and which is never exercised against man except
in revenge for an insult or injury. To this in-
offensiveness of the lethal serpent, together with
its habit of attaching itself to human habitations,
about which it glides in a ghostly manner, may be
traced the notion of its friendliness and guardian-
ship and of its supernatural power and wisdom ;
the belief that it was a reincarnation of a dead
man's soul, a messenger from the gods, and, finally,
the Agathodaemon of so many lands and so many

races of men.

The serpent's strangeness and serpent -worship
are thus seen as cause and effect. Now, there is
another effect, or another subject, so mixed up
with the one I have been considering that this
paper fngi; appear incomplete without some notice
of it-— 1 refer to tlie widely prevalent belief in the

t

168 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

existence of serpents of vast size and supernatural
powers ; in many cases tiie daemons or guardian
spirits of rivers, lakes, and mountains. Given the
profound veneration for the natural serpent, and
the mental condition in which the mythical faculty
is very strong, men would scarcely fail to see such
monsters in certain aspects of Nature coinciding
with certain mental moods; and that which any
person saw, and gave an account of, as he would
have done of a singular tree, rock, or cloud which
he had seen, the others would believe in ; and
believing, they would expect to see it also ; and
with this expectation exciting them, when the
right mood and aspect came they probably would
see it.

Even to our purged and purified vision Nature
is full of suggestions of the serpent — that is, to
those who are familiar with the serpent's form and
have been strongly impressed with its strangeness.
Ruskin has called the serpent a " living wave," and
compares it in motion to a " wave without wind."
In many of its aspects the sea is serpent-like ;
never more so than when the tide rises on a calm
day, when wave succeeds to wave, lifting itself up
serpentwise, gliding noiselessly and mysteriously
shorewards, to break in foam on the low beach and
withdraw with a prolonged hissing sovmd to the
deep. Again, he has compared the serpent in
motion to a "current without a fall." Befor*- I
had read Ruskin, or knew Iiis name, the swift
current oi a shallow stream had reminded me on

THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 169

numberless occasions of a serpent in rapid motion.
When rushing away at its greatest speed, the
creature, as one looks down on it, changes its
appearance from a narrow body moving in a
sinuous line to a broad straight band, the outward
and inward curves of the body appearing as curved
lines on its surface, and the spots and blotches of
colour forming the pattern as shorter lines. The
shallow pebbly current shows a similar pattern on
its swiftly moving surface, the ripples appearing as
light and dark slanting lines that intersect, cross,
and mingle with each other.

Viewed from an elevation, all rivers winding
through the lower levels, glistening amidst the
greens and greys and browns of earth, suggest the
serpent form and appear like endless serpents
lying across the world. Probably it is this con-
figuration and shining quality of rivers, as well as
the even, noiseless motion of flowing water, which
has given rise to the belief among many savage
tribes of huge water-serpents, like that of the
stupendous Motl.er of the Waters, supposed to lie
extended at the bottom of the Amazon, Orinoco,
and other great rivers of tropical South America.
The river boa of these regions is probably the
largest existing serpent on the globe, but it is a
small creature to the fabled monster that rests
beneath the flood — so small comparatively that it
might well be regarded as one of the unseen
monster's newly born young.

There is also something in the hypnotic effect

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170 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

produced by deep dear water when gazed on
steadily and for a long time which may have given
rise to the African superstition of the Icanti already
mentioned. Among some North American tribes
there also existed a belief in a serpent of enormous
size that reposed at the bottom of some river or
lake, and once every year rose to the surface showing
a shining splendid stone on his head.

The mountains, too, have their serpent-shaped
guardians : thus, it was believed by the neigh-
bouring tribes that a huge camoodi, or boa, rested
its league-long coils on the flat top of the table
mountain of Roraima in Venezuela. Doubtless a
serpent of cloud and mist ; of the white vapour
that, forming at the summit, dropped down in a
long coil, or crept earthwards along t*>e deep
fissures that score the precipitous sides.

Other beliefs of this kind might be adduced,
and other resemblances to the serpent's form and
motion in nature traced, but enough on this point
has been said. If it is due to these resemblances
that the savage is disposed to see the life and
intelligent spirit he attributes to Nature, and to all
natural objects, take the serpent form, may we
not believe that the serpent-myths of the earlier
civilised races originated in the same way ? Doubt-
less in many cases, with the development of the
reasoning powers and the decay of the mythical
faculty, the fable would be somewhat changed in
form and embellished, and perhaps come at last
to be regarded as merely symbolical. But sym-

THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 171

holism does not exist among barbarians and
savages : it comes in only when the intellect has
progressed sufficiently far to become enamoured of
subtleties. When the savage Shawnees heard the
hissing of a great snake in the thunder, and sew
in the lightning a fiery serpent descending to the
earth, the beings they heard and saw were real--
as real as the rattlesnake. The same may be said
of the monster serpent with a precious stone for a
crown of the Iroquois and Algonquins ; and of the
mighty OnnierU, the serpent of the Hurons, bearing
a horn on its head with which it was able to pierce
through rocks and hills.

Greater than these (as gods are greater than
heroes) were some of the serpents of old, and they
also had a vastly greater influence on human
destiny ; but in their origins they were probably
the same— merely the strange births of the mythical
faculty and the lawless imagination of the primitive
mind : the Mexican Cihua Cohuatl. " tV.e woman
of the serpent,' and mother of the hmiian race ;
and the serpent of the Edda that encircled the
world; and Persian Ahriman, "the old serpent
having two feet," who seduced Meehia and
Mechiana, the first man and woman ; and, most
awful of all, Aphophis, " the destroyer, the enemy
of the gods, and devourer of the souls of men ;
dweller in that mysterious ocean upon which the
Boris, or boat of the sun, was navigated by the
gods through the liours of day and night, in the
celestial region."

A:

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XVI
THE BRUISED SERPENT

Some hold that our abhorrence of the serpent
tribe, the undiscriminating feeling which involves
the innocent with the harmful, is instinctive in
man. Many primitive, purely animal promptings
and imp'jlses survive in us, of which, they argue,
this may be one. It is common knowledge that
the sight of a serpent affects many persons, especially
Europeans, in a sudden violent manner, with a
tremor and tingling of the nerves, like a million
messages of startling import flying from the centre
of intelligence to all outlying parts of the bodily
kingdom ; and these sensations of alarm, horror,
and disgust are, in most cases, accompanied or
instantly followed by an access of fury, a powerful
impulse to crush the offensive reptile tr death.
The commonness of the feeling and its s.olence,
so utterly out of proportion to the danger to be
apprehended, do certainly give it the appearance
of a true instinctive impulse; nevertheless, such
appearance may be deceptive. Fear, however it
may originate, is of ail emotions the least rational ;
and the actions of a person greatly excited by

173

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THE BRUISED SERPENT ITS

it will most nearly resemble those of the lower

animals.

Darwin, on the slightest evidence, affirms that
monkeys display an instinctive or inherited fear of
snakes. There are many who would think any
further inquiry into the matter superfluous ; for,
they would argue, if monkeys fear snakes in that
way, then assuredly we, developed monkeys, must
regard them with a feeling identical in character
and origin. To be able thus to skim with the
swallow's grace and celerity over dark and possibly
unfathomable questions is a very engaging accom-
plishment, and apparently a very popular one.
What is done with ease will always be done with
pleasure ; and what can be easier or more agreeable
than to argue in this fashion : " Fear of snakes is
merely another example of historical memory, re-
calling a time when man, like his earliest ancestors,
the anthropoid apes, was sylvan and solitary ; a
mighty climber of trees whose fingers were fre-
quently bitten by bird-nesting colubers, and who
was occasionally swallowed entire by colossal
serpents of arboreal habits."

The instinctive fear of enemies, although plainly
traceable in insects, with some other creatures low
in the organic scale, is exceedingly rare among the
higher vertebrates; so rare indeed as to incline
any one who has made a real study of their actions
to doubt its existence. It is certain that zoo-
logical writers are in the habit of confusing in-
stinctive or inherited with traditional fear, the

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174 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

last being the fear of an enemy which the young
learn from their parents or other adults they
associate with. Fear is contagious ; the alarm of
the adults communicates itself to the young, with
the result that the object that excited it remains
thereafter one of terror. Not only in this matter
of snakes and monkeys, but with regard to other
creatures, Darwin lays it down that in the higher
vertebrates the habit of fear of any particular
enemy quickly becomes instinctive ; and this false
inference has been accepted without question by
Herbert Spencer, who was obliged to study animal
habits in books, and was consequently to some
extent at the mercy of those who wrote them.

It is frequently stated in narratives of travel
in the less settled portions of North America that
all domestic animals, excepting the pig, have an
instinctive dread of the rattlesnake ; that they
know its whirring sound, and are also able to smell
it at some distance, and instantly come to a dead
halt, trembling with agitation. The fear is a fact ;
but why instinctive ? Some time ago, while reading
over again a very delightful book of travels, I
came to a passage descriptive of the acute sense
of smell and sagacity of the native horse ; and the
writer, as an instance in point, related that fre-
quently, when riding at a swift pace across country
on a dark night, over ground made dangerous by
numerous concealed burrows, his beast had swerved
aside suddenly, as if he had trod on a snake. His
sense of smell had warned him in time of some

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THE BRUISED SERPENT

175

grass-covered kennel in the way. But that image
of the snake, introduced to give a more vivid idea
of the animal's action in swerving aside, was
false ; and because of its falseness and the want
of observation it betrayed, the charm of the
passage was sensibly diminished. For not once
or twice, but many scores of times it has happened
to me, in that very country so graphically de-
scribed in the book, while travelling at a swinging
gallop in the bright daylight, that my horse has
trodden on a basking serpent and has swerved not
at all, nor appeared conscious of a living, fleshy
thing that yielded to his unshod hoof. Passing
on, I have thrown back a glance to see my victim
writhing on the ground, and hoped that it was
bruised only, not broken or fatally injured, like
the serpent of the Roman poet's simile, over which
the brazen chariot wheel has passied. Yet if the
rider saw it — saw it, I mean, before the accident,
although too late for any merciful action— the
horse must have seen it. The reason he did not
swerve was because serpents are very abundant
in that country, in the proportion of about thirty
harmless individuals to one that is venomous ; con-
sequently it is a rare thing for a horse to be bitten ;
and the serpentine form is familiar to and excites
no fear in him. He sr .v the reptile lying just in his
way, motionless in the sunlight, " lit with colour like
a rock with flowers," and it caused no emotion, a' d
was no more to him than the yellow and purple
blossoms he trampled upon at every yard.

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176 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

It is not the same in the western prairies of
North America. Venomous serpents are relatively
more abundant there, and grow larger, and their
bite is more dangerous. The horse learns to fear
them., especially the rattlesnake, on account of
its greater power, its sluggish habits and warning
faculties. The sound of the rattle calls up the
familiar ophidian image to his mind ; and when
the rattle has failed to sound, the smell will often
serve as a warning ; which is not strange when we
consider that even man, with his feeble olfactory
sense, is sometimes able to discover the presence
of a rattlesnake, even at a distance of several feet,
by means of its powerful musky effluvium. The
snake-eating savages of Queensland track their
game by the slight scent it leaves on the ground
in travelling, which is quite imperceptible to
Eiuropeans. In the same way the horse is said to
smell wolves, and to exhibit instinctive terror when
they are still at a distance and invisible. The
terror is not instinctive. The horses of the white
settlers on some frontier lands, exposed to frequent
attacks from savages, smell the coming enemy, and
fly in panic before he makes his appearance ; yet
when horses are taken from the savages and used
by the whites, these too after a time learn to
show terror at the smell of their former masters.
Their terror is derived from the horses of the
whites. The hunter Selous, as a result of ten years
of observation while engaged in the pursuit of big
game in the heart of Africa, affirms that the horse

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THE BRUISED SERPENT

177

has no instinctive fear of the lion ; if he has never
been mauled or attacked by them, nor associated
with horses that have learnt from experience or
tradition to dread them, he exhibits no more fear
of lions than of zebras and camelopards. The fact
is the horse fears in different regions the lion, wolf,
puma, red-skin, and rattlesnake, just as the burnt
child dreads the fire.

But here is an incident, say the believers in
Darwin's notion, which proves that the fear of
certain animals is instinctive in the horse. A
certain big -game hunter brought home a lion's
hide, rolled up before it was properly dried and
wrapped up in canvas. It was opened in the
stable where there were several horses, and the
covering was no sooner removed and the hide
peeled open than the horses were thrown into a
panic. The true explanation is that horses are
terrified at any strange animal smell, and a powerful
smell from the hide of any animal unknown to
them would have had the same effect. That fear
of a strange animal smell is probably an instinct,
but it may not be. In a state of nature the horse
learns from experience that certain smells indicate
danger, and in Patagonia and on the pampas,
when he flies in terror from the scent of a puma
which is imperceptible to a man, he pays not the
slightest cittention to the two most powerful
mammalian stenches Jn the world — that of the
skunk, and that of tae pampas male deer, Cervus
campestris. Experience has taught him — or it has

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178 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

come down to him as a tradition — that these most
violent odours emanate from animals that cannot
harm him.

So much for this view. On the other hand, our
enmity to the serpent, which often exists together
with a mythic and anthropomorphic belief in the
serpent's enmity to us, might be regarded as
purely traditional, having its origin in the
Scriptural narrative of man's disobedience and
expulsion from Paradise. Whether we believe with
theologians that our great spiritual enemy was
the real tempter, who merely made use of the
serpent's form as a convenient disguise in which
to approach the woman, or take without gloss the
simple story as it stands in Genesis, which only
says that the serpent was the most subtle of all
things made and the sole cause of our undoing,
the result for the creature is equally disastrous.
A mark is set upon him : " Because thou hast done
this thing thou art cursed above all cattle, and
above every beast of the field ; upon thy belly
shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days
of thy life : and I will place enmity between thy
seed and her seed ; and it shall bruise thy head,
and thou shalt bruise its heel." This prophecy, so
far as it tells against the creature, has been literally
fulfilled.

The Satanic theory concerning snakes — that
"destructive delusion," which Sir Thomas Browne
shrewdly remarks, " hath much enlarged the
opinion of their mischief " — makes it necessary for

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THE BRUIF'ilD SFRPENT

179

the theologian to believe not only that the serpent
of Paradise before its degradation walked erect on
two legs, as the Fathers taught— some going so far
as to give it a beautiful head as well as a ready
tongue— but also that after tht- devil had cast aside
the temporary coil something of his demoni iC
spirit remained thereafter in it, to be transmitted
by inheritance, like a variation in structure or a
new instinct, to its remotest descenda^tf . There
is the further objection, although not ai ^ortant
one, that it would be unji "^^t to afflict the serpent
so grievously for a crime of which it had only beeii
made the involuntary agent.

Believers in an instmct in man inimical to the
serpent might still argue that the Scriptural curse
only goes to show that this reptile was already held
in general abhorrence— that, in fact, the feeling
suggested the fable. That the fable had some such
origin is probable, but we are just as far from an
instinct as ever. The general feeling of mankind,
or, at any rate, of the leading men duriKg the
earUest civilised periods of which we have any
knowledge, was one of veneration, even of love,
for the serpent. The Jews alone were placed by
their m^^nocheistic doctrine in direct antagonism to
all nature-worship and idolatry. In their leaders
—prophets and priests— the hatred of tiie heathen
and of heathen modes of thought was kept alive,
and constantly fanned into a fierce flame by the
prevalent tendency in the common people to revert
to the surrounding older and lower forms of religion,

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180 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

which were more in harmony with their mental
condition. The proudest boast of their highest
intellects was that they had never bowed in rever-
ence or kissed their hand to anything in nature.
In such circumstances it was unavoidable that the
specific object — rock, or tree, or animal — singled
out for worship, or for superstitious veneration,
should to some extent become involved in the
feeling first excited against the worshipper. If the
Jews hated the serpent with a peculiarly bitter
hatred, it was doubtless because all others looked
on it as a sacred animal, an incarnation of tl t
Deity. The chosen people had also been its wo
shippers at an earlier period, as the Bible shoM
and while hating it, they still retained the ola
belief, intimately connected with serpent-worship
everywhere, in the creature's preternatural subtlety
and wisdom. The priests of other Eastern nations
introduced it into their sacred rites and mysteries ;
the Jewish priests introduced it historically into the
Garden of Eden to account for man's transgression
and fall. " Be ye wise as serpents," was a saying
of the deepest significance. In Europe men were
anciently taught by the Druids to venerate the
adder ; the Jews — or Jewish books — taught them
to abhor it. To my way of thinking, neither
blessing nor banning came by instinct.

Veneration of the serpent still survives in a
great part of the world, as in Hindustan and other
parts of Asia. It ir strong in Madagascar, and
flourishes more or i ss throughout Africa. It

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THE BRUISED SERPENT

181

lingers in North America, and is strong in some
places where the serpents, used in religious serpent
dances, unlike those of Madagascar, are venomous,
and it has not yet wholly died out in Europe. The
Finns have a great regard for the adder.

It may be added here that there are many
authenticated instances of children becoming at-
tached to snakes and making pets of them. The
solution of a question of this kind is sometimes
to be found in the child-mind. My e ., ^rience is
that when young children see this creature, its
strange appearance and manner of progression, so
unlike those of other animals known to them,
affect them with amazement and a sense of mys-
tery, and that they fear it just as they would fear
any other strange thing. Monkeys are doubtless
affected in much the same way, although, in a
state of nature, where they inhabit forests abound-
ing with the larger constrictors and venomous tree-
snakes, it is highly probable that they also possess
a traditional fear of the serpent form. It would be
strange if they did not. The experiment of pre-
senting a caged monkey with a serpent carefully
wrapped up in paper and watching his behaviour
when he gravely opens the parcel, expecting to
find nothing more wonderful than the familiar
sponge-cake or succulent banana — well, such an
experiment has been recorded in half a hundred
important scientific works, and out of respect to
one's masters one should endeavour not to smile
when reading it.

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182 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

A third view might be taken, which would
account for our feehng towards the serpent without
either instinct or tradition. Extreme fear of all
opuidians may simply result from a vague know-
ledge of the fact that some kinds are venomous,
that in some rare cases d<^ath follows swiftly on
their bite, and that, not being sufficiently intelli-
gent to distinguish the noxious from the innocuous
— at all events while under the domination of a
sudden violent emotion — we destroy them all alike,
thus adopting Herod's rough-and-ref»'1y method of
ridding his city of one inconvenient babe by a
general massacre of innocents.

It might be objected that in Europe, where
animosity to the serpent is greatest, death from
snake-bite is hardly to be feared, that Fontana's
six thousand experiments with the viper, showing
how small is the amount of venom possessed by
this species, how rarely it has the power to destroy
human life, have been before the world for a
century. And although it must be admitted that
Fontana's work is not in the hand of every peasant,
the fact remains that death from snake-bite is a
rare thing in Europe, probably not more than one
person losing his life from this cause for every two
hundred and fifty who perish by hydrophobia, of
all forms of death the most terrible. Yet while
the sight of a snake excites in a majority of persons
the most violent emotions, dogs are universal
favourites, and we have them always with us and
make pets of them, in spite of the knowledge that

THE BRUISED SERPENT 188

they may at any time become rabid and inflict
that unspeakable dreadful suffering and destruction
on us. This leads to the following question : Is
it not at least probable that our excessive fear of
the serpent, so unworthy of us as rational beings
and the cause of so much unnecessary cruelty, is,
partly at all events, a result of our superstitious
fear of sudden death ? For there exists, we know,
an exceedingly widespread delusion that the bite
of a venomous serpent must kill, and kill quickly.
Compared with such ophidian monarchs as the
bush-master, fer-de-lance, hamadryad, and tic-
polonga, the viper of Europe— the poor viper of
many experiments and much, not too readable,
literature— may be regarded as almost harmless,
at all events not much more harmful than the
hornet. Nevertheless, in this coid northern world,
ev.n as in other -,-orlds where nature elaborates
nnre potent juices, the delusion prevails, and may
be taken in account here, although its origin cannot
now be r iscussed.

Against sudden death we are taught to pray
from infancy, and those who believe that their
chances of 'a happy immortality are enormously
increased when death comes slowly, approachmg
them, as it were, visibly, so that the soul has
ample time to make its peace with an incensed
Deity, have not far to look for the cause of tl-
feeling. It is true that death from hydrophobia
is very horrible, and, comparatively, of frequent
occurrence, but it does not find its victim wholly

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unprepared. After being bitten he has had time
to reflect on the possible, even probable, con-
sequence, and to make due preparation for the
end ; and even at the last, although tortured to
frenzy at intervals by strange unhuman agonies,
however clouded with apprehensions his intellect
may be, it is not altogether darkened and un-
conscious of approaching dissolution. We know
that men in other times have had no such fear of
sudden death, that among the niost advanced of
the ancients sc ne even regarded death from
lightning-stroke as a signal mark of Heaver's
favour. We, on the contrary, greatly fear the
lightning, seldom as it hurts ; and the serpent
and the lightning are objects of terror to us in
about the same degree, and perhaps for the same
reason.

In as any view which we may take of this
widespread and irrational feeling is at once found
to be so complicated with other feelings and matters
affecting us that no convincing solution seems
possible. Perhaps it would be as well to regard
it as a compound of various elements : traditional
feeling having its origin in the Hebrew narrative
of man's fall from innocency and happiness ; our
ignorance concerning serpents and the amount of
injury they are able to do us ; and, lastly, our
superstitious dread of swift and unexpeuced death.
Sticklers for the simple — and to my mind erroneous
— theory that a primitive instinct is under it all,
may throw in something of that element if they

THE BRUIP 0 SERPENT 1«5

like — o small residuum existing in race- H .
emerged in comparatively recent times from ar-
barisi.i but which has been eliminated from a
long-civilised people like the Hindoos.

For my own part I am inclined to believe that
we regard serpents with a destructive hatred
purely and simply because we are so taught from
childhood. A tradition m^y be handed down
without writing, or even articulate speech. We
have not altogether ceased to be " lower animals "
ouraelves. Show ' child b y'^ur gestures and
actions that a thing is fearfu o you, aad he will
fear it, that you hrte it, c*nd he will catch your
hatred. So far back c^ memory carries me I find
the snake, in ^ unwar antable intrusion on the
scene, ever associated witli loud exclamations of
astonishment and rage, with a hurried search for
those primitive weapons always lying ready to
hand, sticks and stones, t'.en the onset and
triumphant crushing of that wonderfully fashioned
vertebra in its scaly vari-coloured mantle, coilmg
and writhing for a few moments under the cruel
rain of blows, appea) ng not with voice but with
agonised yet ever graceful action for mercy to the
merciless ; and finally, the paean of victory from
the slayer, lifting his face still aglow with righteous
wrath, a little St. George in b^s own estimation ;
for has he not rid the earth of another monster, one
of that demoniac brood that was cursed of old, and
this without injury to his sacred heel ?

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XVII

THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE

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Preamble

Among the thousand and one projects I have
entertained at various times was one for a work
on snakes, with the good though somewhat
ambitious title of "The Book of the Serpent."
This was not to be the work of one who must
write a book about something, but a work on a
subject which had long had a peculiar fascination
for the author, which for years had cried to be
written, and finally had to be written.

As it was a work requiring a great deal of
research, it would take a long time to write, long
years, in fact, since it would have to be done at
odd times, when hours or days or weeks could be
spared from the hard business of manufacturing
mere bread-and-cheese books. Collecting material
would have to be a slow process, involving the
perusal or consultation of a thousand volumes,
and probably ten thousand periodicals and annals
and proceedings and journals of many natural
history societies, great and small, of many countries.
And all this research, with the classification and

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THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 187

indexing of notes, would be exceeded by the task
of selection to foUow-selection and compression
—since " The Book of the Serpent " would be in
one volume and not in half-a-dozen. And after
selection, or let us say deglutition, there would
ensue the dilatory process of digestion and assimila-
tion If properly assimilated, the personal impres-
sions of a hundred independent observers, field-
naturalists and travellers, and of a hundred in-
dependent students of ophiology, would be fused,
as it were, and run into one along with the author s
personal observations and his deductions.

Now. even if all this could have been done, and
the best form hit upon, and the work eloquently
written, it would still fall far short of the ideal
" Book of the Serpent " on account of insufficient
knowledge of a particular kind-I don't mean
anatomy. And had I been a person of means I
should, before beginning my work-getting a pale,
wan face through poring over misciable books-
have gone away on a five or ten years' serpent
quest to get that particular kind of knowledge by
becoming acquainted personally with all the niost
distinguished ophidians on the globe. The first
sight of a thing, the shock of emotion, the vivid
and ineffaceable image registered in the bram, is
worth more than all the knowledge acquired by
reading, and this applies to the serpent above all
creatures. There is indeed but little difference
between this creature dead and in confinement.
It was the serpent in motion on the rock that was

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188 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

a wonder and mystery to the wisest man. In
one of my snake-books by a French naturalist in
the West Indies there is an account of a fer-de-lance
which he kept confined in order to study its habits.
He watched it hour after hour, day after day,
lying prone on the floor of its cage as if asleep or
stupefied, until he was sick and tired of seeing it
in that dull, dead-alive state, and in his disgust he
threw open the door to let it go free. He watched
it. Slowly the head turned, and slowly, slowly it
began to move towards the open door, and so
dragged itself out, then over the space of bare
ground towards the bushes and trees beyond. But
once well out in the open air its motions and
aspect began to change. The long, straightened-
out, dull-coloured, dragging body was smitten with
a sudden new life and became sinuous in form ;
its slow motion grew swift, aid from a dragging
became a gliding motion ; the dangerous head
with its flickering tongue lifted itself high up, the
stony eyes shone, and all along the body the
scales sparkled like wind-crinkled water in the
sun : watching it, he was thrilled at the sight
and amazed at this wonderful change in its
appearance.

And that is how I, too, would have liked to see
the fer-de-lance in its dreadful beauty and power ;
the cribo too, that gives it battle, and conquers
and devours it in spite of its poison fangs ; also
its noble relations, the rattlesnakes and pit-vipers,
led by the Surucurti, the serpent monarch of the

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THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 189

West; and the constricting anacondas, with the
greatest of them all, the giant Camudi, " mother
of the waters " ; also the bull snake and the black
snake, and that brilliant deadly harlequin, the
coral snake. These all are in the New World, and
I should then go to the Old in quest of blue sea-
snakes and wonderful viridescent tree-snakes, and
many historic serpents— the ticpolonga, the hooded
cobras, and their king and slayer, the awful
hamadryad.

A beautiful dream all this, like that of the
poor little pale-faced quill-driver at his desk,
summing up colimins of figures, who falls to think-
ing what his life would be with ten thousand a
year. All the thorny and stony and sandy wilder-
ness, the dark Amazonian and Arawhimi forests,
the mighty rivers to be ascended three thousand
miles from the sea to their source, the great moun-
tain-chains to be passed, Alps and Andes, and
Himalayas and the Mountains of the Moon, the
entire globe to be explored in quest of serpents,
from the hot tropical jungles and malarious marshes
to the desolate windy roof of the world— all would
have to be sought in the British Museum and one
or two other dim stuffy libraries, where a man sits
in a chair all day and all the year round with a
pile of books before him.

Alas I in such conditions, without the necessary
precious personal knowledge so much desired, " The
Book of the Serpent" would never be written.
So I said and repeated, yet still went on with the

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190 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

preliminary work, and after two or three years,
finding that so far as material went I had got
almost more than I could manage, I thought I
would begin to try my hand at writing a few
chapters, each dealing with some special aspect of
or question relating to the serpent, and about a
dozen were written, but left in the rough, unfinished,
as all would eventually have to go back into the
melting-pot once more. By and by I took up and
finished three or four of these tentative chapters
just to see how they would look in print ; these
appeared in three or four monthly reviews and are
all that is left of my ambitious book.

It could not be done, because, as I tried to
make myself believe, it was too long a task for
one who had to make a living by writing, but a
still small voice told me that I was deceiving
myself, that if I had just gone on, slowly, slowly,
like the released fer-de-lance, until I had got out
into the open air and sunshine — until I had a full
mind and full command of my subject — I too
might have gone on to a triumphant end. No, it
was not because the task was too long ; the secret
and real reason was a discouraging thought which
need not be given here, since it is stated in the
paper to follow. There's nothing more to say
about it except that I now make a present of the
title — " The Book of the Serpent " — to any person
who would like to use it, and I only ask thnt it
be not given to j. handbook on ^nakes, nor to a
monograph — God deliver us I as Huxley said. Or

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THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 191

if he did not use that particular expression he
protested against the multiplication of such works,
and even feared that we should all be buried alive
unde^ vnem— the ponde, us tomes which nobody
reads, elephantine bodies without souls; or shall
we say, carcasses, dressed and placed in their
canvas coverings on shelves in the cold storage of
the zoological libraries.

As to the paper which follows, it was never
intended to use it as it stands for the book. It is
nothing but a little exercise, and merely touches
the fringe of a subject for a great book— not an
anthology (Heaven save us !), but a history and
review of the literature of the serpent from Rus!an
back to Sanconiathon, and I now also generously
give away this title of " The Serpent in Literature."

When the snakists of the British Museum or
other biological workshop have quite done > A
their snake, have pulled it out of its jar and pop^ d
it in again to their hearts' content; weighed,
measured, counted ribs and scales, identified its
species, sub-species, and variety ; and have duly
put it all down in a book, made a fresh label,
perhaps written a paper— when all is finished,
something remains to be said ; something about
the snake; the cieature thLt- was not a spiral-
shr.ped, rigid, cylindrical piece of clay-coloured
guttapercha, no longer capable of exciting strange
emotions in us— the unsightly dropped coil of a
spirit that was fiery and cold. Where shall that

it:

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192 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

something be found ? Not assuredly in the paper
the snakist has written, nor in the monographs and
Natural Histories; where then? — since in the
absence of the mysi> rious creature itself it might
be interesting to read it.

It is true that in spite of a great deal of bruising
by Christian heels the serpent still survives in this
country, although it can hardly be said to flourish.
Sometimes, walking by a hedge -side, a slight
rustling sound and movement of the grass betrays
the presence of the common or ring snake ; then,
if chance favours and eyes are sharp, a glimpse may
be had of the shy creature, gliding with swift
sinuous motions out of harm's way. Or on the
dry open common one may all at once catch sight
of a strip of coppery-red or dull brown colour with
a curious black mark on it — an adder lying at ease
in the warm sunshine ! Not sleeping, but awake ;
a little startled at the muffled thunder of approach-
ing footfalls, with crackling of dead leaves and
sticks, as of a coming conflagration ; then, per-
haps, the appearance of a shape, looming vast and
cloudlike on its dim circtunscribed field of vision ;
but at the same time lethargic, disinclined to move,
heavy with a meal it will never digest, or big with
young that, jarred with their parent, have some
vague sense of peril within the living prison from
which they will never issue.

Or a strange thing may be seen — a cluster of
hibernating adders, unearthed by workmen in the
winter time when engaged in quarrying stone or

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THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 198

grubbing up an oH stump. Still more wonderful
it is to witness a knot or twined mass of adders,
not self-buried, semi-torpid, and of the temperature
of the cold ground, but hot-blooded in the hot sun,
active, hissing, swinging their tails. In a remote
comer of this island there exists an extensive boggy
heath where adders are still abundant, and grow
black as the stagnant rushy pools, and the slime
under the turf, which invites the foot with its
velvety appearance, but is dangerous to tread upon.
In this snaky heath-land, in the warm season, when
the frenzy takes them, twenty or thirty or more
adders are sometimes found twined together ; they
are discovered perhaps by some solitary pedestrian,
cautiously picking his way, gun in hand, end the
sight amazes fnd sends a sharp electric shock
along his spinal cord. All at once he remembers
his gun and discharges it into the middle of the
living mass, to bo^st thereafter to the very f.nd of
his life of how he killed a score of adders at one
shot.

To witness this strange thing, and experience the
peculiar sensation it gives, it is necessary to go far
and to spend much time in seeking and waiting and
watching. A bright spring morning in England no
longer " craves wary wa'king," as in the days of
Elizabeth. Practically the serpent hardly exists
for us, so seldom do we see it, so completely has it
dropped out of our consciousness. But if we have
known the creature, at home or abroad, and wish
in reading to recover the impression of a sweet

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194 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

summer -hot Nature that invites our caresses,
always with a subtle serpent somewhere concealed
in the folds of her garments, we must go to litera-
ture rather than to science. The poet has the
secret, not the naturalist. A book or an article
about snakes moves us not at all— not in the way
we should like to be moved— because, to begin
with, there is too much of the snalie in it. Nature
does not teem with snakes ; furthermore, we are
not familiar with these creatures, and do not
har^dle and examine them as a game-dealer handles
dead rabbits. A rare and solitary being, the sharp
effect it produces on the mind is in a measure due
to its rarity— to its appearance being unexpected

to surprise and the shortness of the time during

which it is visible. It is not seen distinctly as in
a museum or laboratory, dead on a table, but in
an atmosphere and surroundings that take some-
thing from and add something to it ; seen at first
as a chance disposition of dead leaves or twigs or
pebbles on the ground — a handful of Nature's
mottled riff-raff blown or thrown fortuitously
together so as to form a peculiar pa tern ; all at
once, as by a flash, it is seen to be no dead leaves or
twigs or grass, but a living active coil, a serpent
lifting its flat arrowy head, vibrating a glistening
forked tongue, hissing with dangerous fury ; and
in another moment it has vanished into the thicket,
and is nothing but a memory— merely a thread of
brilliant colour woven into the ever-changing vari-
coloured embroidery of Nature's mantle, seen

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THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 195

vividly for an instant, then changing to dull grey
and fading from sight.

It is because the poet does not see his subject
apart from its surroundings, deprived of its atmo-
sphere—a mere fragment of beggarly matter—does
not see it too well, with all the details which be-
come visible only after a minute and, therefore,
cold examination, but as a part of the picture, a
light that quivers and quickly passes, that we,
through him, are able to see it too, and to experi-
ence the old mysterious sensations, restored by his
magic touch. For the poet is emotional, and in a
few verses, even in one verse, in a single well-
chosen epithet, he can vividly recall a forgotten
picture to the mind and restore a lost emotion.

Matthew Arnold probably knew very little about
the serpent scientifically ; but in his solitary walks
and communings with Nature he, no doubt, became
acquainted with our two common ophidians, and
was familiar with the sight of the adder, bright and
glistening in its renewed garment, reposing peace-
fully in the spring sunshine ; seeing it thus, the
strange remoteness and quietude of its silent life
probably moved him and sank deeply into his mind.
Thir is not the first and most common feeling
of the serpent -seer — the feeling which Matthew
Arnold himself describes in a ringing couplet :

Hast thou so rare a poison ? — ^let me be
Keener to slay thee lest thou poison me.

When no such wildly improbable contingency is
feared as that the small drop of rare poison in the

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196 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

creature's tooth may presently be injected iLtc the
beholder's veins to darken his life ; when the fear
is slight and momentary, and passing away gives
place to other sensations, he is impressed by its
wonderful quietude, and is not for the moment
without the ancient belief in its everlastingness and
supernatural character; and, if curiosity be too
great, if the leaf-crackling and gravel-crunching
footsteps approach too near, to rouse and send it
into hiding, something of compunction is felt, as
if an indignity had been offered :

O thoughtless, why did I
Thus violate thy slumberous solitude ?

In those who have experienced such a feeling as
this at sight of the basking serpent it is most t>ower-
fully recalled by his extremely beautiful " Cadmus
and Harmonia " :

Two bright and aged snakes,
Who once were Cadmus and Harmonia,
Bask in the glens and on the warm sea-shore.
In breathless quiet after all their ills ;
Nor do they see their country, nor the place
Where the Sphinx lived among the frowning hills,
Nor the unhappy palace of their race,
Nor Thebes, nor the Ismenus any more.

There those two Hve far in the lUyrian brakes.

They had stayed long enough to see

In Thebes the billows of calamity

Over their own dear children rolled,

Curse upon curse, pang upon pang,

For years, they sitting helpless in their home,

A grey old man and woman.

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THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 197

Therefore they did not end their days

In sight of blood ; but were rapt, far away.

To where the west wind plays.

And murmurs of the Adriatic come

To those untrodden mountain lawns ; and there

Placed safely in changed forms, the pair

Wholly forget their first sad life, and home.

And all that Theban woe, and stray

Forever through the glens, placid and dumb.

How the immemorial fable — the vain and faded
imaginings of thousands of years ago — is freshened
into life by the poet's genius, and the heart stirred
as by a drama of the day we live in 1 But here we
are concerned with the serpentine nature rather
than with the human tragedy, and to those who
are familiar with the serpent, and have been pro-
foundly impressed by it, there is a rare beauty
and truth in that picture of its breathless quiet, its
endless placid dumb existence amid the flowery
brakes.

But the first and chief quality of the snake —
the sensation it excites in us— is its snakiness, our
best word for a feeling compounded of many
elements, not readily analysable, which has in it
something of fear and something of the sense of
mystery. I doubt '^ . re exists in our literature,
verse or prose, ai i. -g that revives this feeling
so strongly as Dr. Gordon Hake's ballad of the
dying serpent-charmer. " The snake-charm^ c is a
bad naturalist," says Sir Joseph Fayrer, himself a
prince among ophiologists ; it may be so, and
perhaps he charms all the better for it, and it is
certainly not a lamentable thing, since it detracts

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198 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

not from the merit of the poem, that Dr. Hake is
a bad naturalist, even as Shakespeare and Brown-
ing and Tennyson were, and draws his snake badly,
with venomous stinging tongue, and flaming eyes
that fascinate at too great a distance. Fables
notwithstanding, he has with the poet's insight,
in a moment of rare inspiration, captured the very
illusive spirit of Nature, to make it pervade and
glorify his picture. The sunny, brilliant, declining
day, the joyous wild melody of birds, the low
whispering wind, the cool greenness of earth,

where

The pool is bright with glossy dyes
And cast-up bubbles of decay :

and everywhere, hidden in grass an 1 brake, re-
leased at length from the spell that made them
powerless, coming ever nearer and nearer, yet as
though they came not, the subtle, silent, watchful
snakes. Strangely real and vivid is the picture
conjured up ; the everlasting life and gladness at
the surface, the underlying mystery and melan-
choly— the failing power of the old man and
vanishing incantation ; the tremendous retribution
of Nature, her ministers of vengeance ever imper-
ceptibly gliding nearer.

Yet where his notd w he must go,

albeit now only to be mocked on the scene of his
old beloved triumphs :

For all that live in brake and bough-
All know the brand is on his brow.

THE SERPENT ^N LITERATURE 199
Even dying he cannot stay away ; the fascina-
tion of the lost power is too strong on him ; even
dying he rises and goes forth, creeping from tree to
tree, to the familiar sunlit green spot of earth,

where

Bewildered at the pool he lies.

And sees as through a serpent's eyes ;

his Uwny, trembling hand stilJ fingering, his feeble
lips still quivering, oa the useless flute. He cannot
draw the old potent music from it :

The witching air

That tamed the snake, decoyed the bird,

Worried the she-wolf fr ^ her lair.

It is all fantasy, a mere juggling arrangement
of brain -distorted fact and ancient fiction; the
essence of it has no existence in Nature and the
soul for the good naturalist, who dwells in a glass
house full of intense light without shadow ; but
the naturalists are not a munerous people, and for
all others the effect is like that which Nature itself
produces on our twilight intellect. It is snaky in
the extreme ; reading it we are actually there in
the bright smiling sunshine; ours is the failmg
spirit of the worn-out old man, striving to drown
the hissing sounds of death in our ears, as of a
serpent that hisses. But the lost virtue cannot be
recovered ; our eyes too

are swimming in a mist
That films the earth like serpent's breath ;

and the shadows of the waving boughs on the
sward appear like hollow, cast-off coils rolled beibre

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200 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

the wind ; fixed, lidless eyes are watching us from
the brake ; everywhere about us serpents lie
matted on the ground.

If serpents were not so rare, so small, so elusive,
in our brakes we should no doubt have had other
poems as good as this about them and the strange
feelings they wake. As it is, the poet, although he
has the secret of seeing rightly, is in nost cases
compelled to write (or sing) of something he does
not know personally. He cannot go to the wilds
of Guiana for the bush-master, nor to the Far
East in search of the hamadryad. Even the poor
little native adder as a rule succeeds in escaping
his observation. He must go to books for his
serpent or else evolve it out of his inner conscious-
ness. He is dependent on the natural historians,
from Pliny onwards, or to the writer of fairy-tales :
a Countess d'Aulnoy, for example, or Meredith,
in The Shaving of Shagpat, or Keats his Lamia,
an amazing creature, bright and cirque-couchant,
vermilion-spotted and yellow and green and blue ;
also striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard, eyed
like a peacock, and barred with crimson and full
of silver moons. Lamia may be beautiful and
may please the fancy with her many brilliant
colours, her moons, stars, and what not, and
she may even move us with a sense of the super-
natural, but it is not the same kind of feeling
as that experienced when we see a serpent. That
comes of the mythical faculty in us, and the poet
who would reproduce it must himself go to the

THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 201

serpent, even as the Dniids did for their sacred
nadder-stone.

In prose literature the best presentation of
serpent life known to me is that of Oliver Wendell
Holmes : and being the best, in fiction at all
events, I am tempted to write of it at some
length.

Now, very curiously, although, as we have just
seen, the incorrect drawing takes nothing from
the charm and, in one sense, from the truth of
Dr. Hake's picture, we no sooner turn to Elsie
Venner than we find ourselves crossing over to
the side of the good naturalist, with apologies for
having insulted him, to ask the loan of his fierce
light — for this occasion only. Ordinarily in con-
sidering an excellent romance, we are rightly
careless about the small inaccuracies with regard
to matters of fact which may appear in it ; for the
writer who is able to produce a work of art must
not and cannot be a specialist or a microscopist,
but one who views Nature as the ordinary man
does, at a distance and as a whole, with the vision
common to all men, and the artist's insight added.
Dr. Holmes's work is an exception; since it is a
work of art of some excellence, yet cannot be read
in this tolerant spirit ; we distinctly refuse to
overlook its distortions of fact and false inferences
in the province of zoology ; and the author has
only himself to blame for this uncomfortable
temper of mind in his reader.

The story of the New England serpent-girl is

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202 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

in its esRonce a romance ; the author thought
proper to cast it in the form of a realistic novel,
and to make the teller of the story a clear-headed,
calm, critical onlooker of mature age, one of the
highest attainments in biological science who is
nothing if not philosophical.

How strange that this superior person should
select and greatly exaggerate for the purposes of
his narrative one of the stupid prejudices and
superstitions of the vulgar he is supposed to
despise ! Like the vulgar who are without light
he hates a snake, and it is to him, as to the meanest
peasant, typical of the spirit of evil and a thing
accurst. This unphilosophical temper (the super-
stitious belief in the serpent's enmity to man),
with perhaps too great a love of the picturesque,
have inspired some of the passages in the book
which make the snakist smile. Let me quote one,
in which the hero's encounter with a huge Crotalus
in a mountain cave is described.

His look was met by the glitter of two diamond eyes,
small, sharp, cold, shining out of the darkness, but gliding
with a smooth and steady motion towards the light, and
himself. He stood fixed, struck dumb, staring back into
them with dilating pupils and sudden numbness of fear
that cannot move, as in a terror of dreams. The two
sparks of fire came forward until they grew to circles of
flame, and all at once lifted themselves up in angry sur-
prise. Then for the first time trilled in Mr. Barnard's ears
the dreadful sound which nothing that breathes, '. it
man or brute, can hear unmoved — the loud, long stiiging
whir, as the huge thick-bodied reptile shook his many-
jointed rattle, and adjusted his loops for the fatal stroke.

THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 208

His eyes were drawn as with magnets towards the circle
of flame. His ears nmg as in the overture to the swoonmg
dream of chloroform.

And so on, until Elsie appears on the scene and
rescues the too easily fascinated schoolmaster.

The writing is fine, but to admire it one must
be unconscious of its exaggeration ; or, in other
words, ignorant of the serpent as it is in Nature.
Even worse than the exaggerations are the half-
poetic, half-scientific tirades against the creature's
ugliness and malignity.

It was surely one of destiny's strange pranks to
bestow such a subject on ^he " Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table," and, it may be added, to put it
in him to treat it from the scientific standpoint.
I cannot but wish that this conception had been
Hawthorne's ; for though Hawthorne wrote no
verse, he had in large measure the poetic spirit
to which such a subject appeals most powerfully.
Possibly it would have inspired him to something
beyond his greatest achievement. Certainly not
in The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven
Gables, nor in any of his numerous shorter tales
did he possess a theme so admirably suited to
his sombre and beautiful genius as the tragedy
of Elsie Venner. Furthermore, the exaggerations
and inaccuracies which are unpardonable in Holmes
would not have appeared as blemishes in Haw-
thorne; for he would have viewe'^i the animal
world and the peculiar facts of the case— the
intervolved human and serpentine nature of the

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204 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

heroine — from the standpoint of the ordinary man
who is not an ophiologist ; the true and the false
about the serpent would have been blended in his
tale as chey exist blended in the popular imagina-
tion, and the illusion would have been n. re perfect
and the effect greater.

Elsie's biographer appears to have found his
stock of materials bearing on the main point too
slender for his purpose, and to fill out his work he
is obliged to be very discursive. Meanwhile, the
reader's interest in the chief figure is so intense
that in following it the best breakfast-table talk
comes in as a mere impertinence. There is no
other interest ; among the other personages of the
story Elsie appears like a living palpitating being
among shadows. One finds it difficult to recall the
names of the scholarly father in his library ; the
good hero and his lady-love; the pale school-
mistress, and the melodramatic villain on his
black horse, to say nothing of the vulgar villagers
and the farmer, some of them supposed to be
comic. If we except the rattlesnake mountain,
and the old nurse with her animal-like affection
and fidelity, there is no atmosphere, or, if an
atmosphere, one which is certainly wrong and
produces a sense of incongruity. A better artist
—Hawthorne, to wit — would have used the painful
mystery of Elsie's life, and the vague sense of some
nameless impending horror, not merely to put
sombre patches here and there on an otherwise
sunny landscape, but to give a tone to the whole

THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 205

picture, and the effect would have been more
harmonious. This inability of the author to mix
and shade his colours shows itself in the passages
descriptive of Elsie herself ; he insists a great deal
too much on her ophidian, or crotaline, character-
istics— her stillness and silence and sinuous motions;
her bizarre taste in barred gowns; her drowsy
condition in cold weather, with intensity oi life
and activity during the solstitial heats — even
her dangerous impulse to strike with her teeth
when angered. These traits require to '^e touched
upon very lightly indeed; as it is, the pro-
found pity and love, with a mixture of horror
which was the effect sought, come too near
to repulsion. W^ 'e on this point it may be
mentioned that author frequently speaks of

the slight sibilatic a in Elsie's speech — a strange
blunder for the man of science to fall into, since
he does not make Elsie like any snake, or like
snakes in general, but like the Crotalus durissus
only, the New England rattlesnake, which does not
hiss, like some other venomous serpents that are
not provided with an instrument of sound in
their tails.

Af^er all is said, the conception of Elsie Venner
is one so imique and wonderful, and so greatly
moves our admiration and pity with her strange
beauty, her inarticulate passion, her unspeakably
sad destiny, that in spite of many and .nost serious
faults the book must ever remain a classic in our
literature, among romances a gem t'>at has not its

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206 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

like, perennial in interest as Nature itself, and
Nature's serpent.

If it had only been left for ever unfinished, or
had ended differently ! For it is impossible for
cne who admires it to pardon the pitifully common-
place and untrue denouement. Never having read
a revi^'w of the book I do not know what the
professional critic or the fictionist would say on
this point ; he might say that the story could not
properly have ended differently ; that, from an
artistic point of view, it was necessary that the
girl should be made to outgrow the malign influence
which she had so strangely inherited ; that this
was rightly brought about by making her fall in
love with the good and handsome young school-
master— the effect of the love, or " dull ache of
passion," being so great as to deliver and kill her
at the same time.

If the interest of the story had all been in the
dull and pious villagers, their loves and marriages
and trivial affairs, then it would have seemed right
that Elsie, who maac them all so uncomfortable,
should be sent from the village, which was no
place for her, to Heaven by the shortest and most
convenient route. Miserably weak is that dying
scene with its pretty conventional pathos ; the
ending somewhat after the fashion set by Fouque,
which so many have followed since his time — the
childish " Now-I-have-got-a-soul " transformation
scene with which Fouque himself spoilt one of the
most beautiful things ever written. The end is not

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THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 207

in harmony with the conception of Elsie, of a being
in whom the human and serpentine natures were
indissolubly joined ; and no accident, not assuredly
that " dull ache of passion," could have killed the
one without destroying the other.

The author was himself conscious of the in-
adequacy of the reason he gave for the change
and deliverance. He no doubt asked himself the
following question : " Will the reader believe that
a fit of dumb passion, however intense, was sufficient
to cause one of Elsie's splendid physique and
vitality to droop and wither into the grave like
any frail consumptive schoolgirl who loves and
whose love is not requited ? " He recognises and
is led to apologise for its weakness ; and, finally,
still unsatisfied, advances an alternative theory,
which is subtle and physiological — a sop thrown to
those among his readers who, unlike the proverbial
ass engaged in chewing hay, meditate on what they
are taking in. The alternative theory is, that an
animal's life is of short duration compared with
man's ; that the serpent in Elsie, having arrived at
the end of its natural term, died out of the human
life with which it had been intervolved, leaving her
still in the flower of youth and wholly human;
but that this decay and death in her affected her
with so great a shock that her own death followed
immediately on her deliverance.

If the first explanation was weak the second will
not bear looking at. Some animals have compara-
tively short lives, as, for instance, the earthworm,

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208 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

canary, dog, mouse, etc. ; but the serpent is not of
them ; on the contrary, the not too numerous facts
we possess which relate to the comparative longevity
of animals give support to the universal belief that
the reptilians — tortoise, lizard, and serpent — are
extremely long-lived.

Now this fact — namely, that science and
popular belief are at one in the matter — might very
well have suggested to the author a more suitable
ending to the story of Elsie than the one he made
choice of. I will even be so venturesome as to say
what that ending should be. Let us imagine the
girl capable of love, even of " a dull ache of passion,"
doomed by the serpent-nature in her, which was
physical if anything, to a prolonged existence,
serpent-like in its changes, waxing and waning,
imperceptibly becoming dim as with age in the
wintry season, only to recover the old brilliant
beauty and receive an access of strength in each
recurring spring. Let us imagine that the fame of
one so strange in life and history and of so excellent
an appearance was bruited far and wide, that many
a man who sought her village merely to gratify an
idle curiosity loved and remained to woo, but
feared at the last and left her with a wound in his
heart. Finally, let us imagine that as her relatives
and ''fiends, and all who had known her intimately,
stricken with years and worn with grief, faded one
by one into the tomb, she grew more lonely and
apart from her fellow-creatures, less human in her
life and pursuits ; joy and sorrow and all human

THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 209

failings touching her only in a faint vague way, like
the memories of her childhood, of her lost kindred,
and of her passion. And after long years, during
which she has been a wonder and mystery to the
villagers, on one of her solitary rambles on the
mountain occurs the catastrophe which the author
has described — the fall of the huge overhanging
ledge of rock under which the serpent brood had
their shelter — burying her for ever with her ophidian
relations, and thus bringing to an end the strange
story of " Elsie Venner Infelix."

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XVIII

WASPS

One rough day in early autumn I paused in my
walk in a Surrey orchard to watch a curious scene
in insect life — a pretty little insect comedy I
might have called it had it not brought back to
remembrance old days when my mind was clouded
with doubts, and the ways of certain insects,
especially of wasps, were much in my thoughts.
For we live through and forget many a tempest
that shakes us ; but long afterwards a very little
thing— the scent of a flower, the cry of a wild
bird, even the sight of an insect — may serve to
bring it vividly back and to revive a feeling that
seemed dead and gone.

In the orchard there was an old pear-tree which
produced very large late pears, and among the
fruit the September wind had shaken down that
mc-ning there was one over-ripe in which the
wasps had eaten a deep cup-shaped cavity. Inside
the cavity six or seven wasps were revelling in the
sweet juice, lying flat and motionless, crowded
together. Outside the cavity, on the pear, thirty or
forty blue-bottle flies had congregated, and were

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WASPS

211

hungry for the juice, but apparently afraid to
begin feeding on it ; they were standing round in
a compact crowd, the hindmost pressing on and
crowding over the others : but still, despite the
pressure, the foremost row of flies refused to
advance beyond the rim of the eaten-out part.
From time to time one of a more venturesome
spirit would put out his proboscis and begin
sucking at the edge; the slight tentative move-
ment would instantly be detected by a wasp, and
he would turn quickly round to face the presump-
tuous fly, lifting his wings in a threatening manner,
and the fly would take his proboscis off the rim of
the cup. Occasionally hunger would overcome
their fear ; a general movement of the flies would
take place, and several would begin sucking at the
same time ; then the wasp, seeming to think that
more than a mere menacing look or gesture was
required in such a case, would start up with an
angry buzz, and away the whole crowd of flies
would go to whirl round and round in a little blue
cloud with a loud, excited hum, only to settle
again in a few moments on the big yellow pear
and begin crowclmg round the pit as before.

Never once during the time I spent observing
them did the guardian wasp relax his vigilance.
When he put his head down to suck with the others
his eyes still appeared able to reflect every move-
ment in the surrounding crowd of flies into his
little spiteful brain. They could crawl round and
crawl round as much as they liked on the very

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212 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

rim, but let one begin to suck and he was up in
anns in a moment.

The question that occurred to me was : How
much of all this behaviour could be set down to
instinct and how much to intelligence and temper ?
The wasp certainly has a waspish disposition, a
quick resentment, and is most spiteful and tyran-
nical towards other inoffensive insects. He is a
slayer and devourer of them, too, as well as a
feeder with them on nerla^ ^nd sweet juices ; but
when he kills, and when the solitary wasp paralyses
spiders, caterpillars, and various insects and stores
them in cells to provide a horrid food for the
grubs which will eventually hatch from the still
undeposited eggs, the wasp then acts automatically,
or by instinct, and is driven, as it were, by an
extraneous force. In a case like the one of the
wasp's behaviour on the pear, and in innumerable
other cases which one may read of or see for him-
self, there appears to be a good deal of the element
of mind. Doubtless it exists in all insects, but
differs in degree ; and some Orders appear to be
more intelligent than others. Thus, any person
accustomed to watch insects closely and note
their little acts would probably say that there is
less mind in the beetles and more in the Hymen-
optera than in other insects ; also that in the last-
named Order the wasps rank highest.

The scene in the orchard also served to remind
me of a host of wasps, greatly varying in size,
colour, and hal'ts, although in their tyrannical

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WASPS

218

temper very much alike, which I had been accus-
tomed to observe in boyhood and youth in a
distant region. They attracted me more, perhaps,
than any other insects on account of their singular
and brilliant coloration and their formidable char-
acter. They were beautiful but painful creatures ;
the pain they caused me was first bodily, when I
interfered in their concerns or handled them care-
lessly, and was soon over ; later it was mental and
more enduring.

To the very young colour is undoubtedly the
most attractive quality in nature, and these insects
were enamelled in colours that made them the
rivals of butterflies and shining metallic beetles.
There were wasps with black and yellow rings and
with black and scarlet rings ; wasps of a uniform
golden brown ; others like our demoiselle dragon-
fly that looked as if fresh from a bath of splendid
metallic blue; otherr with steel-blue bodies and
bright red wings ; others with crimson bodies,
yellow head and legs, and bright blue wings ; others
black and gold, with pink head and legs ; and so
on through scores and hundreds of species " as
Nature list to play with her little ones," until one
marvelled at so great a variety, so many singular
and beautiful contrasts, produced by half-a-dozen
lirilliant colours.

It was when I began to find out the ways of
wasps with other insects on which they nourish
their young that my pleasure in them became
mixed with pain. For they did not. like spiders,

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214 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

ants, dragon-flies, tiger-beetles, and other rapacious
kinds, kill their prey at once, but paralysed it by
stinging its nerve centres to make it incapable of
resistance, and stored it in a closed cell, so that the
grub to be hatched by and by should have fresh
meat to feed on — not fresh-killed but live meat.

Thus the old vexed question — How reconcile
these facts with the idea of a beneficent Being who
designed it all — did not come to me from reading,
nor from teachers, since I had none, but was thrust
upon me by nature itself. In spite, however, of its
having come in that sharp way, I, like many another,
succeeded in putting the painful question from me
and keeping to the old traditions. The noise of the
battle of Evolution, which had been going on for
years, hardly reached me ; it was but a faintly
heard murmur, as of storms immeasurably far away
" on alien shores." This could not last.

One day an elder brother, on his return from
travel in distant lands, put a copy of the famous
Origin of Species in my hands and advised me to
read it. When I had done so^ he asked me what I
thought of it. " It's false I " I exclaimed in a
passion, and he laughed, little knowing how import-
ant a matter this was to me, and told me I could
have the book if I liked. I took it without thanks
and read it again and thought a good deal about it,
and was nevertheless able to resist its teachings
for years, solely because I could not endure to part
with a philosophy of life, if I may so describe it,
which could not logically be held, if Darwin was

WASPS

215

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right, and without which life wo Id not be worth
having. So I thought at the time; it is a most
common delusion of the human mind, for we see
that the good which is so much to us is taken
forcibly away, and that we get over our loss and
go on very much as before.

It is curious to see now that Darwin himself
gave the first comfort to those who, convinced
against their will, were anxious to discover some
way of escape which would not involve the total
abandonment of their cherished beliefs. At all
events, he suggested the idea, which religious minds
were quick to seize upon, that the new explanation
of the origin of the innumerable forms of life which
people the earth from one or a few primordial
organisms afforded us a nobler conception of the
creative mind than the traditional one. It does not
bear examination, probably it originated in the
author's kindly and compassionate feelings rather
than in his reasoning faculties ; but it gave tem-
porary relief and served its purpose. Indeed, to
some, to very many perhaps, it still serves as a
refuge — this poor, hastily made straw shelter, which
lets in the rain and wind, but seems better to them
than no shelter at all.

But of the intentionally consoling passages in
the book, the most impressive to me was that in
which he refers to instincts and adaptation such
as those of the wasp, which writers on natural
history subjects are accustomed to describe, in a
way that seems quite just and natural, as diabolical.

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216 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

That, for example, of the young cuckoo ejecting
its foster-brothers from the nest ; of slave-making
ants, and of the larvae of the Ichneumonidae feeding
on the live tissues of the caterpillars in whose bodies
they have been hatched. He said that it was not
perhaps a logical conclusion, but it seemed to him
more satisfactory to regard such things "not as
specially endowed or created instincts, but as small
consequences of one general law" — the law of
variation and the survival of the fittest.

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XIX

BEAUTIFUL HAWK-MOTHS

In the late summer I often walk by flowery places
'^ an evening, or at some late hour by moonlight,
.. the hope of seeing that rare night-wanderer, the
death's - head moth ; but the hope is now an old
one, so worn and faded that it is hardly more than
the memory of a hope. Why, I have asked myself
times without number, am I so luckless in my
quest of an insect which is not only a large object
to catch the eye but has a voice, or sound, as well
to attract a seeker's attention ? On consulting
others on this point, some of them lepidopterists
and diligent collectors, they have assured me that
they have never once had a glimpse of the living
free Acherontia atropas going about on his flowery
business.

A few years ago, while on a ramble in a southern
county, I heard of a gentleman in the neighbour-
hood who had a taste for adders and death's-head
moths and was accustomed to collect and keep
them in considerable numbers in his house. My
own partiality for adders induced me to call on
him, and we exchanged experiences and had some

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218 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

pleasant talk about these shy, beautiful and (to
us) hannless creatures. I am speaking of adders
now ; I had not yet heard of his predilection for
the great moth ; when he spoke of this second
favourite I begged him to show me a specimen or
two. Turning to his wife, who was present and
shared his queer tastes, he told her to go and get
me some. She left the room, and returned by and
by with a large cardboard box, such as milliners
and dressmakers use ; removing the lid, she raised
it above my head and emptied the contents over
me — a shower of living, shivering, fluttering,
squeaking or creaking death's-head moths ! In a
moment they were all over me, from my head
right down to my feet, not atteiapting to fly, but
running, quivering, and shaking their wings, so that
I had a bath and feast of them.

At that moment it mattered not that I was a
st: anger there, in the library or study of a country
house, with those two looking on and laughing at
my plight. It is what we feel that matters : I
might have been standing in some wilderness never
trodden by human foot, myself an unhimian solitary,
and merely by willing it I had drawn those beautiful
beings of the dark to n 3, charming them as with
a flowery fragrance from their secret hiding-places
in a dim world of leaves to gather upon and cover
me over with their downy, trembling, mottled grey
and rich yellow velvet wings.

Even this fascinating experience did not wholly
satisfy me : nothing, I said, would satisfy me short

BEAUTIFUL HAWK-MOTHS

219

of seeing the undomesticated moth Ir 'ing his proper
life in the open air. He smiled ard shook his head.
Useless to look for such a thing ! He had never
seen it and didn't believe that I ever would ; he
couldn't say why. He got his moths by paying
sixpence apiece for th chrysahds to workmen in
the potato fields and rearing them himself; in
this way he obtained as many as he wanted— sixty
or seventy or eighty every year.

I can only hope that time will prove him wrong,
and I go on as before haunting the flowery places
in the last light of day and when the moon shines.

Another surprisingly beautiful moth which, they
say, is as rarely seen as the Acherontia is the crimson
underwing. Once only have I been able to observe
this lovely moth flying about— and it was in a
room ! I was staying with friends at the Anglers'
Inn at Bransbury on the Test when one evening
after the lamps were lit the moth appeared in our
sitting-room and remained two days and nights
with us in spite of our kind persecutions and artful
plans for his expulsion. It was early September,
with mild sunny days and misty or wet nights, and
in the evening, when the room was very warm, we
would throw the windows and doors open, thinking
of the delicious relief it would be for our prisoner
to pass out of that superheated atmosphere, that
painful brightness, into his own wide, wet world,
its darkness and silence and fragrance, and a
mysterious signal wafted to him from a distance
out of clouds of whispering leaves, from one there

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220 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

waiting for him. Then with fans and hats and
folded newspapers we would try to fan him out,
but it only made him wild — wild as a newly caught
linnet in a cage ; he would dart hither and thither
about the room, now among us, now over our
heads, still refusing to go out. We didn't want
him to go, so that after religiously doing our best
for him we were pleased to have him stay. We
even tried to make him happy as our guest by
offering him honey and golden-syrup and placing
flowers in vases all about the room, but he would
accept nothing from us.

At rest on a wall or curtain he appeared as a
grey triangular patch, ornamented, when viewed
closely, with mottlings of a dusky hue; but on
lifting his fore-wings, the lovely crimson colour of
the underwings was displayed. No crimson flower,
no sea-shell, no sunset cloud, can show a hue to
compare in loveliness with it. Another hidden
beauty was revealed when the lamps were lighted
to start him flying up and down the room over our
heads, always keeping close to the low ceiMng. He
then had a surprisingly bird-like appearance, and
the under-surface of the bird-shaped body being
pure white and downy he was like a miniature
martin with crimson on the wings. He was then at
his best, our " elf-darling " ; no one dared touch him
even with a finger-tip lest that exquisitely delicate
down should be injured. I have frequently had
humming-birds blunder into a room where I sat and
fly round seeking an exit, but never one of these.

BEAUTIFUL HAWK-MOTHS 221

'or all the glittering scale-like feathers, seemed so
perfectly beautiful as our dark crimson underwing.

On the third evening, to our regret, we succeeded
in getting him to fly out.

Now, we asked, what had the books-about-
moths-makers to tell us concerning this particular
elf-darling ? I proceeded to get out my work on
Butterflies and Moths — one recently published.
It gave a description of the insect — colour and
measurements ; then, under the heading of " general
remarks," came the following: "T is moth will
never be seen, but by judicious suga ing as many
as half-a-dozen specimens may be obtained in a
single night." That was all 1 It was a shock to
us, and we wondered whether any of our naturalists
had tried the plan of " judicious sugaring " to
obtain a few specimens of that rarer, more elusive
creature, the fairy, before its final extinction in

Britain.

The memory of those two evenings with a
crimson underwing brings to mind just now yet
another enchanting evening I spent in the valley
of the Wiltshire Avon. It was June, just before
hay-cutting, and for most of the time, until the
last faint underglow had faded and the stars were
out, I was standing motionless, knee-deep in the
plumy seeded grasses, watching the ghost-moths,
as I had never seen them before, in scores and in
hundreds, dimly visible in their whiteness all over
the dusky meadow, engaged in their quaint, beauti-
ful, rhythmic love-dance. It was the wide silent

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222 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

night and the moths' strange motions and white-
ness in the dark that gave it a magic on that
occasion. Seen by daylight or lamplight it is Lord
de Tabley's " owl-white moth with mealy wings,"
or one of them, and nothing more.

Moths are mostly haunters of the twilight and
the dark, but we have one of the larger and highly
distinguished species, the humming-bird hawk-
moth, which flies abroad by day, even during the
hottest seasons, and visits our gardens in the full
blaze of noon. It has no glory of colour like the
crimson underwing and death's-head moth, nor
ghostly white, yet it outshines all the others in
beauty and in the sense of wonder and delight its
appearance produces. Here I will quote part of a
letter written to me some years ago by a lady who
wanted to know if I could identify an insect she
was particularly interested in, from her description.
She had seen it when a child in the garden at her
early home in Wiltshire, and never since, nor had
she ever discovered what it was.

" When I was a child," the letter says, " I had
a great fancy for a rare, strange, fascinating insect
called by the children of my day the Merrylee-
dance-a-pole. Only on the hottest and longest of
summer days did the radiant being delight our
eyes ; to have seen it conferred high honour and
distinction on the fortunate beholder. We re-
garded it with mingled awe and joy, and followed
its erratic and rapid flight with ecstasy. It was
soft and warm and brown, fluffy and golden, too.

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BEAUTIFUL HAWK-MOTHS 228

and created in our infantile minds an indescribable
impression of glory, brilliance, aloofness, elusive-
ness. We thought it a being from some other
world, and during each of its frequent sudden
disappearances among the flowering bushes we
held our breath, fearing it would return no more,
but had flown right through the blossoming screen
and back to the sun and stars. To me it was an
apparition of inexpressible delight, and I longed
to be a Merrylee-dance-a-pole myself to fly to
unheard-of, unthought-of, undreamed-of beautiful

flowery lands."

A descriptive passage this by one who is not
a literary person, a student of expression anxiously
seeking after the " explicit word," yet an expres-
sion rare and beautiful as the thing described : one
reads it with a quickened pulse. Who should
dream of finding its like anywhere in the thousand
books of British Butterflies and Moths which our
exceedingly industrious lepidopterists have pro-
duced during the last six or seven decades ? Yet
these same thousand volumes were written less for
the scientific student of entomology than for the
general reader, or for ever, person who on seeing
a white admiral or a privet moth wants to know
what it is and goes to a book to find out all about
it. These writers all fail in the very thing which
one would imagine to be most important in books
intended for such a purpose— the power to convey
to the reader's mind a vivid image of the thing
described. One would like to know what the

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224 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

professional entomologist or writer of books about
moths would say of the passage I have quoted
from a letter asking for information about an
insect. Probably he would say that the lady wrote
more from the heart than the head, that writing
so she is rhapsodical and as inaccurate as one
would expect her to be, although one is able to
identify her Merrylee-dance-a-pole as the Macro-
glossa stellatarum.

It would be perfectly true — she is inaccurate,
yet succeeds in producing the effect aimed at
while the accurate writers fail. She succeeds
because she saw the object as a child, emotionally,
and after thirty years was still able to recover the
precise feeling experienced then and to convey to
another the image in her mind. We may say that
impressions are vivid and live vividly in the mind,
even to the end of life, in those alone in whom
something that is of the child survives in the
adult — the measureless delight in all this visible
world, experienced every day by the millions of
children happily born outside the city's gates, but
so rarely expressed in literature, as Traherne, let
us say, expressed it ; and, with the delight, the
sense of wonder in all life, which is akin to, if not
one with, the mythical faculty, and if experienced
in a high degree is a sense of the supernatural in all
natural things. We may say, in fact, that unless
the soul goes out to meet what we see we do not see
it ; nothing do we see, not a beetle, not a blade of
grass.

Ml.

XX

THE STRENUOUS MOLE

We read in the books of the astounding strength
and energy of this creature that " swims in the
earth," as they say, just as a diving auk, guillemot,
or puffin does in the water. The energy of a
squirrel that runs up a very tall tree-trunk, darts
along a far-reaching horizontal branch, flings him-
self from the end of it to the branch of another
tree, and is a hundred feet high and away before
you can finish speaking a sentence of twenty words,
•s nothing to compare with the feats of the mole
undergiound. But, being out of sight, he is out
of mind, on which account his most remarkable
qualities are not properly appreciated. He is also
a small beast— no bigger than a lady's gloved
hand— consequently his strength, like that of the
beetle, does not matter to us. It would matter a
great deal if moles grew to the size of cows and
bulls. In or under London they would excavate
numberless tunnels which would serve as subways
for the foot-passengers and for the tubular rail-
ways. Th'^ would be an advantage, but as a set-
off they would, in throwing up their hills, cause a

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226 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

considerable amount of damage. A mole of that
size would easily overturn the Royal Exchange,
and even Westminster Palace would be tumbled
down, burying our congregated law-givers in its
ruins.

The life of the mole is an amazingly strenuous
one ; his appetite surpasses that of any other
creature of land or sea, and he does not " eat to
burstness " only because his digestion is just as
powerful and rapid in its action as his digging
muscles. He feeds like a Gargantua, and having
dug out and devoured his dinner, he digs again to
where a spring exists, and refreshes himself with
copious draughts of cold water.

The West Country field labourer, who gets
through his two or three gallons of cider at a sitting,
is a poor drinker in comparison. After digging and
eating and drinking, he goes to sleep, and so
soundly does he sleep that you could not wake
him by beating drums and firing guns off over his
head. Out of this condition he comes very suddenly,
like a giant refreshed, and goes furiously to work
again at his digging.

If by chance you catch a mole above ground
and seize him with your hand you find him a
difficult creature to hold. The prickly hedgehog
and slippery snake or eel are more easy to manage.
You are puzzled by finding that you cannot keep
your grip on him, and, if you are a novice, he will
probably slip back through his skin until his head
is in your hand, and then, when half-a-dozen of

THE STRENUOUS MOLE 227

his needle-like teeth are deep in your flesh, you will

be f^'ad to drop him.

s not, when caught, a submissive creature,
noi ..as he a friendly or social disposition : in the
rutting season the moles have the most savage
battles; the floors and walls of the tunnels are
washed with blood, and he that falls is worried to
death, and his corpse devoured by the victor.

But the mole is seldom seen out of doors, so
to speak, taking his walks abroad; when he is
striking out in shallow runs in hot pursuit of
earthworms and throwing up little hills at short
intervals you can often see him when he comes to
the surface; he just shows you his back for a
few moments ; then, having pushed up the loose
soil, sinks below again. Now it once happened
that a mole showing himself, or his back, to me in
this way, taught me something about the creature
which I did not know, not having found it in the
books. It was on a bright March morning, and I
was seated on a stump m a beech wood near the
village of Ockley, in Surrey. The ground all
about me was covered with a deep carpet of drad
leaves, glowing gold and red and russet in the
sunlight, when presently, attracted by a rustling
among the leaves, I saw that they were being
thrust up by some creature under them. It was
not the small animal I was listening and watching
for just then— the shrew who comes out to sun
himself— but a mole throwing up a hill at that
spot within a yard of my foot. By and by his

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228 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

velvety-black back became visible, and made in
its setting of red and yellow leaves a prettily
coloured picture. Presently he disappeared, then
quickly rose again with more earth ; but the
leaves evidently annoyed him, and to rid himself
of them he suddenly began agitating his body in
an astonishing way, for while the movement lasted
he looked like a black ball spinning round so rapidly
as to give it the misty appearance of a revolving
wheel or the wings of a hovering hawk-moth.
This swift motion on his part set the leaves flying,
and mole and dust and dancing leaves together
formed a little whirlwind or maelstrom. When
it was over the leaves settled again on the mound,
and twice again the extraordinary performance was
repeated, and the little animal being then almost
above the ground I foolishly put out my hand to
pick him up, and before I could properly grasp him
he was gone.

The spinning or revolving motion was an illusion
of the sight produced by the exceedingly rapid
motions of the skin while the animal was stationary,
and the deluding motions were effected by means
of what the anatomists call the " twitching muscle,"
which is possessed in some degree by most, if not
by all, mammalians. We see it every day in our
domestic animals, especially in the dog when he
shakes himself after a swim ; and if he has shaggy
hair and it is full of water he throws it off so
violently that it fills the air with a dense spray
for several feet around him. He could not do this

THE STRENUOUS MOLE

229

by merely shaking or rocking his whole body from
side to side ; he does rock his body too, but at the
same time he gives the rapid vibratory motion to
the whole skin which discharges the wet. So it is
with the horse when he shakes oft the wet or the
dust after rolling.

But in the horse the twitching power does not
extend, or is not uniformly powerful, over the
whole surface; it is feeble on the hind quarters,
and we can only suppose that in the horse, and
other large mammalians, the chief use of the
twitching act is to shake off dust, flies, and other
tormenting insects, and that the growth of the
hairy tail in the horse, used to switch insects off,
has made the twitching power less useful on this
portion of the body. In other words, when this
highly specialised tail had fully taken this office or
function on itself it caused the decay of the twitch-
ing muscle through disuse in those parts of his

body.

We see, too, that the muscle has its greatest
power in that part of the body which is just out
of reach of the tail, and is also more difficult for
the animal to reach with his mouth — that is to
say, his back over the shoulders. A man riding
bare-back can feel it powerfully when the horse
shakes himself. " It is like riding on an earth-
quake," I heard a man say once ; to me, with no
experience of earthquakes, the sensation was like
that of an electric shock.

In man we can imagine the loss of the twitching

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280 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

power has had a twofold cause : first the hands,
which, like the beak in birds, can reach to pretty
well any part of the body, and, secondly, the
custom of wearing clothes, which protect the skin
and make the twitching unnecessary.

The twitching power survives only in the face,
and is almost confined to the forehead : but even
*>here it is, with its slow up-and-down motion, a
poor faculty compared with the rapid shaking or
trembling motion other mammals are capable of,
which they are able to confine to the exact spot
on which an insect has alighted. In a few persons
the power extends over the scalp, and I have
heard of a man who could cause his hat to fall off,
not with shaking his head, but simply by wc \ -j
the muscles of his forehead and scalp. Alto - tl .,
we may say that the faculty is weakest in i^' —
that he is at one end of the pole, and the mole is
at the other. The mole exists in the earth, moving
in and covered with the dust he creates in digging,
and he no doubt frees himself from it by means of
his twitching muscle a hundred times a day.

That this wonderful muscle can do anything
more to increase his happiness I doubt, and this I
say, because it is told in the sacred writings of the
East that Buddha changed himself into a hare and
jumped into a fire to roast himself to provide a
meal for a hungry beggar, and that before jumping
in, he — Buddha as a hare — shook himself three
times so that none of the insects in his fur should
perish with him.

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THE STRENUOUS MOLE

281

I don't believe it 1 My Ockley mole has proved
to me that insect pwasites cannot be got rid of m
that way. The hare s. twitching muscle is not more
powerful than that of the generality of animals. I
have seen him make the water fly like a mist out
of his fur, but the do^ can do it nearly as well.
In the mole the movement is more sustained and,
I imagine, more rapid, yet the fleas must be able
to keep their hold on him since we always find him
much infested by them.

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XXI

A FRIENDLY RAT

Most of our animals, also many creeping things,
such as our " wilde wormes in woods," common
toads, natterjacks, newts, and lizards, and stranger
still, many insects, have been tamed and kept as
pets.

Badgers, otters, foxes, hares, and voles are
easily dcc't with; but that any person should
desire to fondle so prickly a creature as a hedgehog,
or so diabolical a mammaUan as the bloodthirsty,
flat-headed little weasel, seems very odd. Spiders,
too, are uncomfortable pets ; you can't caress them
as you could a dormouse ; the most you can do
is to provide your spider with a clear glass bottle to
live in, and teach him to come out in response to
a musical sound, drawn from a banjo or fiddle,
to take a fly from your fingers and go back again
to its bottle.

An acquaintance of the writer is partial to adders
as pets, and he handles them as freely as the
schoolboy does his innocuous ring-snake ; Mr.
Benjamin Kidd once gave us a delightful account
of his pet humble-bees, who used to fly about his

A FRIENDLY RAT 288

room, and come at call to be fed, and who mani-
fested an almost painful interest in his coat buttons,
examining them every day as if anxious to find out
their true significance. Then there was my old
friend. Miss Hopley, the writer on reptiles, who
died recently, aged 99 years, who tamed newts,
but whose favourite pet was a slow-worm. She
was never tired of expatiating on its lovable
qualities. One finds Viscount Grey's pet squirrels
more engaging, for these are wild squirrels in a
wood in Northumberland, who quickly find out
when he is at home and make their way to the
house, scale the walls, and invade the library;
then, jumping upon his writing-table, are rewarded
with nuts, which they take from his hand. Another
Northumbrian friend of the writer keeps, or
kept, a pet cormorant, and finds him no less greedy
in the domestic than in the wild state. After
catching and swallowing fish all the morning in a
neighboming river, he wings his way home at
meal-times, screaming to be fed, and ready to
devour all the meat and pudding he can get.

The list of strange creatures might be extended
indefinitely, even fishes included; but who has
ever heard of a tame pet rat? Not the small
white, pink-eyed variety, artificially bred, which
one may buy at any dealers, but a common brown
rat, Mus decumanus, one of the commonest wild
animals in England and certainly the most dis-
liked. Yet this wonder has been witnessed recently
in the village of Lelant, in West Cornwall. Here

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284 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

is the strange story, which is rather sad and at the
same time a little funny.

This was not a case of " wild nature won by
kindness " ; the rat simply thrust itself and its
friendship on the woman of the cottage : and she,
being childless and much alone in her kitchen and
living-room, was not displeased at its visits : on
the contrary, she fed it ; in return the rat grew
more and more friendly and familiar towards her,
and the more familiar it grew, the more she liked
the rat. The trouble was, she possessed a cat, a
nice, gentle animal not often at home, but it was
dreadful to think of what might happen at any
moment should pussy walk in when her visitor
was with her. Then, one day, pussy did walk in
when the rat was present, purring loudly, her tail
held stiffly up, showing that she was in her usual
sweet temper. On catching sight of the rat, she
appeared to know intuitively that it was there as
a privileged guest, while the rat on its part seemed
to know, also by intuition, that it had nothing to
fear. At all events these two quickly became
friends and were evidently pleased to be together^
as they now spent most of the time in the room,
and would drink milk from the same saucer, and
sleep bunched up together, and were extremely
intimate.

By and by the rat began to busy herself making
a nest in a corner of the kitchen under a cupboard,
and it became evident that there would soon be
an increase in the rat population. She now spent

A FRIENDLY RAT

285

her time running about J gathering little straws,
feathers, string, and anything of the kind she
could pick up, also stealing or begging for strips
of cotton, or bits of wool and thread from the
work-basket. Now it happened that her friend
was one of those cats with huge tufts of soft hair
OP the two sides of her face ; a cat of that type,
wlach is not uncommon, has a quaint resemblance
to a Mid-Victorian gentleman with a pair of mag-
nificent side-whiskers of a silky softness covering
both cheeks and flowing down like a double beard.
The rat suddenly discovered that this hair was
just what she wanted to add a cushion-like lining
to her nest, so that her naked pink little ratlings
should be bom into the softest of all possible
worlds. At once she started plucking out the
hairs, and the cat, taking it for a new kind of
game, but a little too rough to please her, tried
for a while to keep her head out of reach and to
throw the rat off. But she wouldn't be thrown
off, and as she persisted in flying back and jumping
at the cat's face and plucking the hairs, the cat
quite lost her temper and administered a blow with
her claws unsheathed.

The rat fled to her refuge to lick her wounds,
and was no doubt as much astonished at the
sudden change in her friend's disposition as the
cat had been at the rat's new way of showing her
playfulness. The result was that when, after
attending to her scratches, she started upon her
task of gathering soft materials, she left the cat

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286 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

severely alone. They were no longer friends;
they simply ignored one another's presence in the
room. The little ones, numbering about a dozen,
presently came to light and were quietly removed
by the woman's husband, who didn't mind his
missis keeping a rat, but drew the line at one.

The rat quickly recovered from her loss and
was the same nice affectionate little thing she had
always been to her mistress ; then a fresh wonder
came to light — cat and rat were fast friends once
more I This happy state of things lasted a few
weeks; but, as we know, the rat was married,
though her lord and master never appeared on the
scene, indeed, he was not wanted ; and very soon
it became plain to see that more little rats were
coming. The rat is an exceedingly prolific creature ;
she can give a month's start to a rabbit and beat
her at the end by about 40 points.

Then came the building of the nest in the same
old corner, and when it got to the last stage and
the rat was busily running about in search of soft
materials for the lining, she once more made the
discovery that those beautiful tufts of hair on her
friend's face were just what she wanted, and once
more she set vigorously to work pulling the hairs
out. Again, as on the former occasion, the cat
tried to keep her friend off, hitting her right and
left with her soft pads, and spitting a little, just
to show that she didn't like it. But the rat was
determined to have the hairs, and the more she
was thrown off the more bent was she on getting

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A FRIENDLY RAT

287

them, until the breaking -point was reached and
puss, in a sudden rage, let fly, dealing blow after
blow with lightning rapidity and with all the claws
out. The rat, shrieking with pain and terror, rushed
out of the room and was never seen again, to the
lasting grief of her mistress. But its memory will
long remain like a fragrance in the cottage— perhaps
the only cottage in all this land where kindly
feelings for the rat are cherished.

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XXII

THE LITTLE RED DOG

Sauntering along a lane -like road between
Charterhouse Hinton and V'oolverton, in the West
Country, I spied a smaP \id dog trotting along
some distance behind m* He was in the middle
of the road, but seeing that he was observed he
sheered off to the other side, and when nearly
abreast of me paused suspiciously, sniffed the air
to get the exact smell, then made a dash past, and
after going about twenty or thirty yards full speed,
dropped once more into his travelling trot, to
vanish from sight at the next bend in the road.

Though alone, I laughed, for he was a very old
acquaintance of mine. I knew him well, although
he did not know me, and regarding me as a stranger
he very naturally associated my appearance with
that well-aimed stone or half-brick which had
doubtless registered an impression on his small
brain. I knew him because he is a common type,
widely distributed on the earth ; I doubt if there
are many countries where you will not meet him
— a degenerate or dwarf variety of the universal
cur, smaller than a fox-terrier and shorter-legged ;

238

THE LITTLE RED DOG

280

the low stature, long body, small ears, and blunt
nose giving him a somewhat stoaty or even reptilian
appearance among the canines. His red colour is,
indeed, the commonest hue of the common dog,
or cur, wherever found. It is rarely a bright red.
like that of the Irish setter, or any pleasing shade
of red, as in the dingo, the fox, and the South
American maned wolf; it is dull, often inclining
to yellow, sometimes mixed with grey as in the
jackal, sometimes with a dash of ginger in it. The
unbeautiful yellowish-red is the prevailing hue of
the pariah dog. At all events that is the impression
one gets from the few of the numberless travellers
in the East who have condescended to tell us any-
thing about this low-down animal.

Where the cur or pariah flourishes, there you
are sure to find the small red dog, and perhaps
wonder at his ability to maintain his existence.
He is certainly placed at a great disadvantage.
If he finds or steals a bone, the first big dog he
meets will say to him, " Drop it ! " And he will
drop it at once, knowing very well that if he refuses
to do so it will be taken from him, and his own
poor little bones perhaps get crunched in the process.
As compensation he has, I fancy, a somewhat
quicker intelligence, a subtler cunning. His brains
weigh less by a great deal than those of the bull-
dog or a big cur, but— like ladies' brains compared
with men's— they are of a finer quality.

When I encountered this animal in the quiet
Somerset road, and laughed to see him and

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2i0 '"Hi: BOOK OF A NATURALIST

cxc aimed mentally, "There be goes, the same old
htiii- red dog, suspicious and sneaky as ever, and
vcr> brisk and busy although his years must be
weli-nigh as many as my own," I was thinking of
the far past, and the sight of him brought back a
memory of one of the first of the small red dogs
I have known intimately. I was a boy then, and
my home was in the pampas of Buenos Avres. I
had a young sister, a bright, lively girl, and I
remember that a poor native woman who lived in
a smoky hovel a few miles away was fond of her,
and that she came one day with a present for her
—something precious wrapped up ii. a shawl— a
little red pup, one of a litter which her own beloved
dog had brought forth. My sister a( cepted the
present joyfully, for though wt possessed fourteen
or fifteen dogs at the time, these all belonged to
the house; they were ever>'body's and n- body's
in particular, and she was delighted to have one
that would be her very own. It grew into a common
red dog, rather better-looking than most of its kind,
having a bushx r tail, longer and brighter-coloured
hair, and a Sijniewhat foxy head an.' face. In
spite of these good points, we ' ys never tired of
laughing at ber little Reddie, as le was called, and
his intense devotion to his \uunj; mistress and
faith in her power to protect hii; iily made him
seem more ludicrous. When ^vo all walked to-
gether on the grass plai' , my brot er and I used
to think it great fun to -eparate Reddie from his
mistress by making a su ten dash, and then hunt

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THE LITTLE B.2D DOG

241

him c= fT 'he turf. Away he would go, 'crformmg
a wid« circuit then, doubling back, would fly to
her fo! "iafet' She, stooping and holding out her
hands o hii woui wait his c< ming, and at the
end, with one flyin^. leap, he would land limself
in her arms, almost apsizing her with th«- force
of the impact, and from that refugt 1« ok back
reproachfully at us.

The cunning little ways of the sni. U red dog
were learned later when I ca ne to know m in
the city f»f Buenos Wres. Loir -ring at th water-
side one iay, I became i ware of «'i animal of this
kind following me, and n^ sooner id he catch my
eye than le came up, « gmt wriggling, and
grinning, smiling, so to s^ eak, al. ver his body ;
and I, thinking lu ha( '»st h. ne id friends and
touched by his ip ^a allowed him to follow me
thiough the street; t' ne viuse of relations where
I was staying I ioid them I intended keeping
the outcast awiiile ti see what could be done with
him. My fn-ncss liid not welcome him warmly,
and they e\ en me 'e some disparaging remarks
about little red ^( general; but they gave

hii ■■ his dinner u plateful of meat — which he

devoured preedih . i then, very much at home,
ne ..tretchi i himself out on the heartiv rug and
went fast asleep. When he woke an hou later he
jumped up and ran to the hall, and, fir ling the
street-door closed, made a great row, howling and
scratching at lu. panels. I hurried out and opened
the door, and out and off he went, without so

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242 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

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much as a thank-you. He had found a fool and
had succeeded in getting something out of him, and
his business with me was ended. There was no
hesitation ; he was going straight home, and knew
his way quite well.

Years afterwards it was a surprise to me to
find that the little red dog was an inhabitant of
London. There was no muzzling order then, in
the 'seventies, and quite a common sight was the
independent dog, usually a cm*, roaming the streets
in search of stray scraps of food. He shared the
sparrows' broken bread; he turned over the
rubbish heaps left by the road - sweepers ; he
sniffed about areas, on the look-out for an open
dust - bin ; and he hung persistently about the
butcher's shop, where a jealous eye was kept on
his movements. These dogs doubtless had owners,
who paid the yearly tax ; but it is probable that
in most cases they found for themselves. Probably,
too, the adventurous life of the streets, where
carrion was not too plentiful, had the effect of
sharpening their wits. Here, at all events, I was
witness of an action on the part of a small red dog
which fairly astonished me ; that confidence trick
the little Argentine beast had practised on me was
nothing to it.

In Regent Street, of all places, one bright
winter morning, I caught sight of a dog lying on
the pavement close to the wall, hungrily gnawing
at a big beef bone which he had stolen or picked
out of a neighbouring dust-hole. He was a miserable-

THE LITTLE RED DOG

248

looking object, a sort of lurcher, of a dirty red
colour, with ribs showing like the bars of a grid-
iron through his mangy side. Even in those
pre-muzzling days, when we still had the pariah,
it was a little strange to see him gnawing his bone
at that spot, jv^t by Peter Robinson's, where the
broad pavement was full of shopping ladies ; and
I stood still to watch him. Presently a small red
dog came trotting along the pavement from the
direction of the Circus, and catching sight of the
mangy lurcher with the bone he was instantly
struck motionless, and crouching low as if to
make a dash at the other, his tail stiff, his hair
bristling, he continued gazing for some moments ;
and then, just when I thought the rush and struggle
was about to take place, up jumped this little red
cur and rushed back towards the Circus, uttering
a succession of excited shrieky barks. The con-
tagion was irresistible. Off went the lurcher,
furiously barking too, and quickly overtakmg the
small dog dashed on and away to the middle of
the Circus to see what all the noise was about.
It was something tremendously important to dogs
in general, no doubt. But the little red dog, the
little liar, had no sooner been overtaken and passed
by the other, than back he ran, and picking up the
bone, made off with it in the opposite direction.
Very soon the lurcher returned and appeared
astonished and puzzled at the disappearance of his
bone. There I left him, still looking for it and
sniflBng at the open shop doors. He perhaps thought

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244 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

in his simplicity that some kind lady had picked it
up and left it with one of the shopmen to be claimed
by its rightful owner.

I had heard of such actions on the part of dogs
before, but always with a smile ; for we know the
people who tell this kind of story — the dog-
worshippers, or canophilists as they are sometimes
called, a people weak in their intellectuals, and as
a rule imveracious, although probably not con-
sciously so. But now I had myself witnessed this
thing, which, when read, will perhaps cause others
to smile in their turn.

But what is one to say of such an action ? Just
now we are all of us, philosophers included, in a
muddle over the questions of mind and intellect
in the lower animals, and just how much of each
element goes to the composition of any one act ;
but probably most persons would say at once that
the action of the little red dog in Regent Street
was purely intelligent. I am not sure. The swift-
ness, smoothness, and certainty with which the
whole thing was carried out gave it the appearance
of a series of automatic movements rather than a
reasoned act which had never been rehearsed.

Recently during my country rambles I have
been on the look-out for the small red dog, and
have met with several interesting examples in the
southern counties. One, in Hampshire, moved me
to laughter like that small animal at Charterhouse

Hinton.

This was at Sway, a village near Lymington. A

THE LITTLE RED DOG

245

boy, mounted on a creaking old bike, was driving
some cows to the common, and had the greatest
difficulty in keeping on while following behind the
lazy beasts on a rough track among the furze
bushes ; and behind the boy at a distance of ten
yards trotted the little red dog, tongue out, looking
as happy and proud as possible. As I passed him
he looked back at me as if to make sure that 1 had
seen him and noted that he formed part of that
important procession. On another day I went to
the village and renewed my acquaintance with the
little fellow and heard his history. Everybody
praised him for his affectionate disposition and his
value as a watch-dog by night, and I was told that
his mother, now dead, had been greatly prized,
and was the smallest red dog ever seen in that pait
of Hampshire.

Some day one of the thousand writers on " man's
friend " will conceive the happy idea of a chapter
or two on the dog — the universal cur — and he will
then perhaps find it necessary to go abroad to
study this well-marked dwarf variety, for with us
he has fallea on evil days. There is no doubt that
the muzzling order profoundly affected the char-
acter of our dog population, since it went far
towards the destruction of the cur and of mongrels
— the races already imperilled by the extraordinary
predominance of the fox-terrier. The change was
most marked in the metropolis, and after Mr.
Long's campaign I came to the conclusion that
here at all events the little red dog had been

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246 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST
extirpated. He, with other varieties of the cur,
was the dog of the poor, and when the muzzle
deprived him of the power to fend for himself, he
became a burden to his master. But I was mis-
taken ; he is still with us, even here in London,
though now very rare.

XXIII

DOGS IN LONDON

The subject of this paper, for which I am unable
to find a properly descriptive title, will be certain
changes noticeable during recent years in the dogs
of the metropolis, and, in a less degree, of the
country generally. At the same time there has
been an improvement in the character of the dog
population, due mainly to the weeding out of the
baser breeds, but this matter does not concern
us here ; the change with which I propose to deal
is in the temper and, as to one particular, the
habits of the animal. This was the result of the
famous (it used to be called the infamous) muzzling
order of 1897, which restrained dogs throughout
the country from following their ancient custom of
quarreilJig with and biting one another for the
unprecedented period of two and a half years.
Nine hundred days and over may not seem too
long a period of restraint in the case of a being
whose natural term runs to threescore years and
ten, tut m poor Tatters' or Towzer's brief existence
of a dozen summers it is the equivalent of more
than twenty years in the life of the human animal.

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248 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

As a naturalist I was interested in the muzzling
order, and after noting its efte<.\^ my interest in the
subject has continued ever since. It should also,
I imagine, be a matter of interest and importance
to all who have a special regard for the dog or who
are " devoted to dogs," who regard them as the
'* friends of man," even holding with the canophilists
of the old Youatt period of the last century that
the dog was specially created to fill the place of
man's servant and companion. Strange to say, I
have not yet met with any person of the dog-loving
kind who has himself noticed any change in the
temper or habits of the dog during the last fourteen
or fifteen years or has any knowledge of it. One
can only suppose — and this applies not only to
those who cherish a peculiar affection for the dog,
but to the numerous body of London naturalists
as well — that the change was unmarked on account
of the very long period during which the order was
in force, when dogs were deprived of the power
to bite, so that when the release came the former
condition of things in the animal world was no
longer distinctly remembered. It was doubtless
assumed that, the muzzle once removed, all things
were exactly as they had been Lcfore : if a few
remembered and noticed the change, they failed
to record it — at all events I have seen nothing
about it in print. Circumstances made it impossible
for me not to notice the immediate effect of the
order, and at the end of the time to forget the state
of things as they existed before its imposition.

DOGS IN LONDON

249

I was probably more confined to London during
the years 1897-9 than most persons who are keenly
interested in animal life, and being so confined, I
was compelled to gratify my taste or passion by
paying a great deal of attention to the only animals
that there are to observe in our streets, the dog
being the most important. I also took notes of
what I observed— my way of remembering not to
forget ; and, refreshing my mind by returning to
them, I am able to recover a distinct picture of the
state of things in the pre-muzzling times. It is
a very different state from that of to-day. One
thing that was a cause of surprise to me in those
days was the large number of dogs, mostly mongrels
and curs, to be seen roaming masterless about the
streets. These I classed as pariahs, although they
all, no doubt, had their homes in mean streets and
courts, just as the ownerless pariah dogs in Eastern
towns have their homes— their yard or pavement
or spot of waste ground where they live and bask
in the sun when not roaming in quest of food and
adventures. Many of these London pariahs were
wretched -looking objects, full of sores and old
scars, some like skeletons and others with half
their hair off from mange and other skin diseases.
They were to be seen all over London, always
hunting for food, hanging about areas, like the
bone- and bottle-buyers, looking for an open dust-
bin where something might be found to comfort
their stomachs. They also haunted butchers' shops,
where the butcher kept a jealous eye on their

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250 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

movements and sent them away with a kick and
a curse whenever he got the chance. Most, if not
all, of these poor dogs had owners who gave them
shelter but no food or very little, and probably in
most cases succeeded in evading the licence duty.

There is no doubt that in the past the dog
population of London was always largely composed
of animals of this kind — " curs of low degree," and
a great variety of mongrels, mostly living on their
wits. An account of the dogs of London of two or
three or four centuries ago would have an extra-
ordinary interest for us now, but, unfortimately,
no person took the pains to write it. Caius, our
oldest writer on dogs, says of " curres of the
mungrel and rascall sort" — the very animals we
want to know about : ** Of such dogs as keep not
their kind, of such as are mingled out of sundr>'
sortes not imitating the conditions of some one
certaine Spece, because they ^semble no notable
shape, nor exercise any worthy ^ roperty of the true,
perfect, and gentle kind, it is not necesarye that
1 write any more of them, but to banish them as
unprofitable implements out of the boundes of my
Booke." It is regrettable that he did " banish "
them, as he appears to have been something of an
observer on his own account. Had he given us a
few pages on the life and habits of the " rascall
sort" of animal, his Booke of Englishe Dogges,
which after so many centuries is still occasionally
reprinted, would have been as valuable to us now
as Turner's on British birds (1.544) and Willughby's

DOGS IN LONDON

251

half a century later on the same subject, and as
Gould's briUiant essay on the habits of British ants
—which, by the way, has never been reprinted—
and as Gilbert White's classic, which came later in
the eighteenth century.

That the bond uniting man and dog in all
instances when the poor brute was obliged to fend
for himself in the inhospitable streets of London
was an exceedingly frail one was plainly seen when
the muzzling order of 1897 was made. An extra-
ordinary number of apparently ownerless dogs,
unmuzzled and coUarless, were found roammg
about the streets and taken by hundreds every
week to the lethal chamber. In thirty months the
dog population of the metropolis had decreased by
about one hundred thousand. The mongrels and
dogs of the " rascall sort " had all but vanished,
and this was how the improvement in the character
of the dog population mentioned before came about
immediately. But a far more important change
had been going on at the same time— the change
in the temper of our dogs ; and it may here be
well to remark that this change in disposition was
not the result of the weeding-out process I have
described. The better breeds are not more amiable
than the curs of low degree. The man who has
made a friend and companion of the cur will tell
you that he is as nice - tempered, affectionate,
faithful, and intelligent as the nobler kinds, the
dogs of " notable shape."

Let us now go back to the muzzling time of

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252 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

1897-9, and I will give here the substance of the
notes I made at the time. They have among my
notes on many subjects a peculiar interest to me as
a naturalist because in the comments I made at
the time I ventured to make a prediction which
has not been fulfilled. I was astonished and
delighted to find that (on this one occasion) I had
proved a false prophet.

The dog-muzzling question (I wrote) does not
interest me personally, since I keep no dog, nor
love to see so intelligent and serviceable a beast
degraded to the position of a mere pet or plaything
— a creature that has lost or beeii robbed of its
true place in the scheme of things. Looking at the
matter from the outside, simply as a student of
the ways of animals, I am surprised at the outcry
made against Mr. Long's order, especially here in
London, where there is so great a multitude of
quite useless animals. No doubt a large majority
of the dogs of the metropolis are household pets,
pure and simple, living indoors in the same rooms
as their owners, in spite of their inconvenient
instincts. On this subject I have had my say in
an article on "The Great Dog Superstition," for
which I have been well abused ; the only instinct
of the dog with which I am concerned at present
is that of pugnacity. This is like his love of certain
smells disgusting to us, part and parcel of his
being, so that for a dog to be perfectly gentle and
without the temper that barks and bites must be

DOGS IN LONDON 2W

taken as evidence of its decadence— not of the
individual but of the race or breed or variety.
Whether this fact is known or only dimly surmised
by dog-lovers, more especially by those who set
the fashion in dogs, we see that in recent years
there has been a distinct reaction against the more
degenerate kinds*— those in whose natures the
jackal at ^ wild-dog writing has quite or all but
faded out— the numerous small toy terriers; the
Italian greyhound, shivering like an aspen leaf;
the drawing-room pug, ugliest of man's (the
breeder's) many inventions ; the pathetic Blenheim
and King Charles spaniels, the Maltese, the
Pomeranian, and all the others that have, so to
speak, rubbed themselves out by acquiring a white
liver to please their owners' fantastic tastes. A
more vigorous beast is now in favour, and one of
the most popular is undoubtedly the fox-terrier.
This is assuredly the doggiest dog we possess, the
most aggressive, bom to trouble as the sparks fly
upward. From my own point of view it is only
right that fox-terriers and all other good fighters
should have liberty to go out daily into the streets
in their thousands in search of shindies, to strive
with and worry one another to their hearts' content ;

« Alas I Bince these notes were made, fourteen years ago, there has been
a recrudescence of the purely woman's drawing-room pet doR- The
wretched griffon, looking like a mean cheap copy of the httle Yorkshire
-one of the few small pet animals which has not wholly lost its soul-
appears to have vanished. But the country has now been flooded with
the Pekinese, and one is made to loathe it from the constant sight of it
in every drawing-room and railway carriage and motor-car and omnibus,
clasped in a woman's anna.

354 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

then to skulk home, smelling abominably of carrion
and carnage, and, hiding under their master's sofa,
or other dark place, to spend the time licking their
wounds until they are well again and ready to go
out in search of fresh adventures. For God hath
made them so.

But this is by no means the view of the gentle
ladies and mild-tempered gentlemen who own them ,
nor, I dare say, of any canophilist, whether the
owner of a dog or not. What these people want
ih that their canine friends shall have the sami
liberty enjoyed by themselves to make use of our
streets and parks without risk of injur>' or insult ;
that they shall be free to notice or not the saluta-
tions and advances of others of their kind; to
graciously accept or contemptuously refuse, with
nose in air, according to the mood they may happen
to be in or to the state of their digestive organs, an
invitation to a game of romps. This liberty and
safety they do now undoubtedly enjoy, thanks to
the much-abused muzzling order.

It is true that to the canine mind this may not
be an ideal liberty : " For on a knight that hath
neither hardihood nor valour in himself, may not
another knight that hath more force in him reason-
ably prove his mettle ; for many a time have I
heard say that one is better than other." These
words, spoken by the Best Knight in the World,
exactly fit the case of the fox-terrier, or any other
vigorous variety whose one desire when he goes
out into the world is reasonably to prove his

DOGS IN LONDON

295

mettle. 'Tis an ancient and noble principle of
action, conceivably advantageous in certain circum-
stances ; but in tlw <onditi«)ns m which we human
beings fin<- ourselves placed it is not tolerated, and
the valour and liardu ^od of our Percivals may t>o
longer shine in the dark forests of this modem

world.

Is it, then, so monstrous a thing, so great a
tyranny, that the same restraint which has this
long time :>een put upon the best and brightest
of our own kind should now, for the public good,
be imposed .n our four-footed companir- u i
servants ! True, we think solely of ourselves when
we impose the restraint, but incidentally (and
entirely apart from the question of rabies) we are
at the same time giving the greatest protection to
the dogs themselves. Furthermore— and here we
come to the point which mainly concerns us— the
reflex effect of the muzzle on the dogs themselves
may now be seen to be purely beneficial. Confining
ourselves to London, the change m the animals'
disposition, or at all events behaviour, has been
very remarkable. It has forcibly reminded me of
the change of temper I have witnessed in a rude,
semi - barbarous community when some one in
auti/>rity has issued an order that at all festivals
and other public gatherings every man shall yield
up his weapons— knives, pistols, iron -handled
whips, etc.— to some person appointed to receive
them, or be turned back from the gates. The
result of such a general disarmament has been an

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256 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

all-round improvement in temper, a disposition of
the people to mix freely instead of separating into
well-defined groups, each with some famoiis fight-
ing-man, wearing a knife as long as a sword, for
its centre ; also instead o^ wild and whirling words,
dust raised, and blood shed, great moderation in
language, good humour, and reasonableness in
argument.

In the same way we may see that our dogs
grow less and less quarrelsome as they become
more conscious of their powerlessness to inflict
injury. Their confidence, and with it their friend-
liness towards one another, increases; the most
masterful or truculent cease from bullying, the
timid outgrow their timidity, and in their new-
found glad courage dare to challenge the fiercest
among them to a circular race and rough-and-
tumble on the grass.

Now all this, from the point of view of those
who make toys of sentient and intelligent beings,
is or should be considered pure gain. Moreover,
this undoubted improvement could not have come
about if the muzzle had been the painful instrument
that some dog-owners believe or say. It seems to me
that those who cry out against torturing our dogs,
as they put it, do not love their pets wisely and
are bad observers. Undoubtedly every restraint
is in some degree disagreeable, but it is only when
an animal has been deprived of the power to
exercise his first faculties and obey his most impor-
tunate impulses that the restraint can properly

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DOGS IN LONDON

257

be described as painful. Take the case of a chained
dog; he is miserable, as any one may see since
there are many dogs in that condition, because
eternally conscious of the restraint ; and the per-
petual craving for liberty, like that of the healthy
energetic man immured in a cell, rises to positive
torture. Again, we know that smell is the most
important sense of the dog, that it is as much to
him as vision to the bird ; consequently, to deprive
him of the use of this all-important faculty by, let
us say, plugging up his nostrils, or by destroying
the olfactory nerve in some devilish way known
to the vivisectors, would be to make him perfectly
miserable, just as the destruction of its sense of
sight would make a bird miserable. By comparison
the restraint of the muzzle is very slight indeed :
smell, hearing, vision are unaffected, and there is
no interference with free locomotion ; indeed so
slight is the restraint that after a while the animal
is for vhe most part unconscious of it except when
the impulse to bite or to swallow a luscious bit of
carrion is excited.

We frequently see or hear of dogs that joyfully
run off to fetch their muzzles when they are called
to go out for a walk, or even before they are called
if they but see any preparations being made for a
walk : no person will contend that these are made
unhappy by the muzzle, or that they deliberately
weigh two evils in their mind and make choice of
the lesser. The most that may be said is that these
muzzle - fetcbers are exceptions, though they may

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258 THE BOOK OF A NATURAIJST

be somewhat numerous. For how otherwise can
the fact be explained that some dogs, however
ready and anxious to go for a walk they may be,
will, on catching sight of the muzzle, turn away
with Uil between their legs and the expression of
a dog that has been kicked or unjustly rebuked ?
My experience is that this attitude towards the
muzzle of some dogs, which was quite common
in the early muzzling days, is now rare and is dying
out. The explanation, I think, is that as the
muzzle is at Erst keenly felt as a restraint, imposed
for no cause that the dog sees, it is in fact taken
as a punishment, and resented as much as an
undeserved blow or angry word would be. Every
one who observes dogs must be familiar with the
fact that they do very often experience the feeling
of injury and resentment towards their human
masters and companions. As a rule this feeling
vanishes with the exciting cause; unfortunately,
in some cases the sight of the muzzle becomes
associa«^d with the feeling and is slow to disappear.
But if dogs still exist in this city of dogs that
show any sign of such a feeling when a muzzle is
held up before them, we can see that even in these
super-sensitive ones it vanishes the instant they
are out of doors. Again, let any person watch the
scores and hundreds of dogs that disport themselves
in our grassy parks on any fine day, and h^. will
quickly be convinced that not only are they happy
but that they are far happier than any company
of unmuzzled dogs thrown casually together. They

DOGS IN LONDON

250

are happier, madly happy, because they know —
this knowledge having now filtered down into their
souls — that it is perfectly safe for them to associate
with their fellows, to be hail-fellow-well-met witli
all the dogs in the place, from the tiniest trembling
lap-dog to the burliest and most truculent-looking
bull-dog and the most gigantic St. Bernard or
Danish boarhound. It is for us a happiness to see
their confidence, their mad games, the way they
all chase and tumble over one another, pretending
to be furious and fighting a grand battle.

I do not say that there is any radical or any
permanent change in the dog's character. Like
other beasts, he is morally and mentally non-
progressive ; that which the uninformed canophilist
takes as progression is merely decadence. Remove
the muzzle, and in a short time the habit which
the muzzle has bred will fade away and the old
bickerings and bullyings and blood-sheddings begin
afresh. As it is, some dogs refuse to let tiieir
fighting temper rust in spite of the muzzle.

In Hyde Park some time ago I witnessed a
sublime but bloodless battle between a Danish
boarhound and a bull-dog. Neither of them lost
consciousness of the muzzle which prevented them
from "' washing " their teeth in one another's
blood ; they simply dashed themselves against
each other, then drew back and dashed together
again and again, with such fury that they would,
no doubt, have succeeded in injuring each other
had not their owners, assisted by several persons

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260 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

who were looking on, succeeded in drawing them

apart. . . T u

One more instance of many which I have
observed during the last two years. This is of a
rather large and exceptionally powerful fox-terrier,
who when out for a walk keeps a very sharp look-
out for other dogs, and the instant he spies one
not bigger than hunself charges him furiously and
with the impact hurls him to the ground, and,
leaving him there, he dashes on in search of a

fresh victim. .

These are, however, exceptions, few individuals
having intelligence enough to find out a new way
of inflicting injury. As a rule the dog of ineradicably
savage temper looks at his fellows as if saying,
"Oh, for five minutes with this cursed muzzle
off ! " And the others, seeing his terrible aspect,
are glad that the muzzle is on— a bUssed muzzle
it is to them ; and if they only knew what the
doggie people were saying in the papers and could
express their views on the subject, many of them
would be heard to cry out, " Save us from our
friends 1 "

The muzzling order had thus appeared to me
as a sort of Golden Age of the metropolitan dogs
—and cats, for these too had incidentally been
affected and strangely altered in their habits. And
here I must say that all I wrote in my note-book
about the dogs during and just after the muzzling
period has been compressed into as short a space

DOGS IN LONDON

261

as possible, and all I wrote about the cato (as
indirectly affected by the order) has been left cut
for want of space to deal with the entire subject in
a single chapter.

When dog-owners were rejoicing to hear that
the Board of Agriculture had come to the conclusion
that rabies had been completely stamped out, and
were eagerly looking forward to the day when they
would be allowed to remove the hated muzzle from
their pets, the prospect did not seem a very pleasant
one to me and to many others who kept no pets.
I was prepared once more for the old familiar but
unforgotten spectacle of a big dog-fight in the
streets producing a joyful excitement in a crowd,
quickly sprung out of the stones of the pavement
as it were, of loafers and wastrels of all kinds —
keen sportsmen every one of them — a spectacle
which was witnessed every day by any person who
took a walk in London before the muzzling time.
These scenes would be common again : in one day
the dogs' (and cats') dream of perpetual peace
would be ended, and all canines of a lofty spirit
would go forth again like the good Arthurian knight
and the Zulu warrior to wash his long-unused
weapons in an adversary's blood. Bu^ I was
wrong. A habit had been formed in those two and
a half years of restraint which did not lose its
power at once : the something new which had
come into the dog's heart still held him. But it
would not, it could not, hold him long.

Days followed and nothing happened — the

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262 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

Golden Age was still on. I walked the streets and
watched and waited ; then, when nearly a week
had elapsed, I witnessed a fine old-fashioned dog-
fight, with two dogs in a tangle on the ground
biting and tearing each other with incredible fury
and with all the growls and shrieks and other
warlike noises appropriate to the occasion. From
all parts around the " wond'ring neighbours ran "
to look on, even as in former times down to the
blessed year 1897.

" Just as I thought 1 " I exclaimed, and heartily
wished that the President of tiie Board of Agriculture
had made the muzzling order a perpetual one.

Other days and weeks followed and I witnessed
no serious quarrel, and later it was so rare to see
a dog-fight in the streets and parks, fights which
one used to witness every day, that I began to
think the new pacific habit had got a tighter grip
on the animal than I could have believed. It
would, I thought, perhaps take them two or three
months to outgrow it and go back to their true

natures.

I was wrong again : not months only but years
have gone by— fourteen to fifteen years— and the
beneficent change which had been wrought in those
thirty months of restraint about which so great a
pother was made at the time by dog-owners has
continued to the present time.

We may say that in more senses than one the
dogs (and cats) of the London of to-day are not
the same beings we were familiar with in the pre-

DOGS IN LONDON

268

muzzling days. The object of that order we have
seen was gained in the brief period of thirty months.
Hydrophobia for the first time in the annals of
England had ceased to exist, and so long as the
quarantine law is faithfully observed will perhaps
never return. Rabies broke out again in this
country in 1917, its first reappearance since 1897,
owing to some person having succeeded in eluding
the quarartine order and bringing an infected dog
to Plymouth. From that centre it spread to
other parts of Devon and to Cornwall, and
despite the prompt action of the authorities in
imposing a new muzzling order in these two
counties, the infection has spread to other parts
of the country, and new muzzling orders are
being issued just now — April 1919. Up till
the year of 1897 the average number of persons
who perished annually as the result of a dog -bite
was twenty -nine. " Well, that's not many in a
population of forty millions," cried the canophilists ;
but for twenty -nine who actually died of dog-
madness, the most horrible shape in which death
can appear to a human being, there were hundreds,
and probably thousands, every year who lived for
weeks and months in a constant state of appre-
hension lest some slight bite or abrasion received
from the tooth of an angry or playful dog should
result in that frightful malady.

This was unquestionably a great, a ver>' great
gain; but Mr. Long had builded better than he
knew, and I am not sure that the accidental result,

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264 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

the change in the dog's habits in one particular,
will not be regarded as the most important gain
by those who are fond of dogs and by all who
recognise that, in spite of some disgusting instincts
which can't be changed, the dog is and probably
always will be with us — our one and only four-
footed associate.

XXIV

THE GREAT DOG -SUPERSTITION

No person can give a careftjl and loving study to
animal life for a long period without meeting with
species exhibiting aptitudes of which a great deal
might be made in a domestic state, and which,
together with their beauty and cleanly habits,
seem specially to fit them fc? companionship with
man in a greater degree than those which we now
possess. For it is an undoubted fact that some
animals are more intelligent than others, slight
differences in this respect being perceptible even
among the species of a single group or genus. We
measure the animal mind by ours; and looking
down from the summit of our mountain the earth
beneath us at first seems level ; but it is not quite
level, as we are able to see by regarding it atten-
tively. Even more important are the differences
in temper, ranging from the morose and truculent
to the placable and sweet; more important,
because compared with this diversity in disposition
that which we find in intelligence is not great.
There are also animals solitary by nature, and
almost or quite incapable of any attachment

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M« THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

excepting that of the sexes; whUe others are
gregarious or social, and able to form attach-
ments not only among themselves, but also with
those of other species, and, when domesticated,
with man. There is a third matter, which is doubt-
less the most important of all, to be considered
when weighing the comparative advantages of
different kinds, namely, the habits, or instincts,
which change so slowly that they are practically
immutable, even in altered conditions, and which,
in the domesticated or pet animal, according to
their character, may prove a source of pleasure and
profit to man, or, on the contrary, a perpetual
annoyance and trouble. When our progenitors fat
ba'k in time tamed the animals we now possess, it
cannot be supposed that they expended much
thought on such considerations as these : probably
chance determined everything for them, and they
took and tamed the animals which came first to
hand, or which promised to be most useful to them,
either as food or in assisting them to procure food.
If they were barbarians they would think little of
beauty, little of the smal' -'. ferences in intelligence,
and of the much greater Uiiferences in disposition,
and, naturally, nothing at all about certain instinctsi
in some animals which would become increasingly
repugnant to man in a civilised state.

We have the dog so constantly with us ; the
grand result of centuries of artificial selection and
training is so patent to every one, that we have
actually come to look on this animal as by nature

THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 267

•uperior in mcnUl endowment, genial qualitiei, and
general adaptivenew to all others. Yet the qualities
which .nake the dog valuable to us now formed no
part of ite original character ; it is valuable chiefly
for its various instinctive tendencies, and these arc
a later growth and purely the result of individual
spontaneous variations, and of man's unconscious
selection. The dog's affection for his master— the
anxiety to be constantly with and to be noticed
and caressed by him, the impatience at his absence
and grief at his loss, and the courage to defend him
and his house and his belongings from strangers—
this affection of which we are accustomed to think
so highly, regarding it as something unique in
Nature, is in reality a very small and a very low
thing ; and by low is here meant common in the
animal worid, for it exists in a great many, prob-
ably in a large majority, of mammalian brains m
every order and every family. Nor is it nfined
to mammalians. The duck does not occupy a
distinguished place in the scale of being, and the
Ume duck that attached itself to Mr. Caxton, and
affectionately followed him up and down in his
walk, might seem an exceptionally gifted bird to
those who know little of animal life. It is of
course here assumed that Bulwer did not invent
the lame duck : a peacock or bird of paradise,
with all its organs complete, would have suited his
fancy better. Probably the incident— for such
incidents are very common— was told to him as
true, and thinking that it would give a touch of

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reality and homely pathos to the description of
Mr. Caxton's mild and lovable character he intro-
duced it into his novel. A friend of the vrriter
owned a duck far more worthy of admiration than
Bulwer's immortal bird. This was not a domestic
duck, but a teal, which he brought down with his
gun slightly wounded in the wing, and feeling all
at once a strange compassion for it, he tied it up
in a handkerchief and carried it to his home in the
suburbs of a large town. The captive was turned
into a courtyard and its wants attended to ; it
soon grew accustomed to its new mode of existence,
and furthermore became strongly attached to all
the members of the family, seeking for them in the
rooms when it felt lonely, and always exhibiting
distress of mind and anger in the presence of
strangers. When a cat nr dog was fondled in its
presence it would run to the spot, administer a few
vindictive blows to the animal with its soft bill,
and solicit a caress for itself. The most curious
thing in its history was that it took a special liking
to its captor, and singled him out for its most
marked attentions. When he went away to business
in the morning the teal would accompany him to
the street door to see him off, returning afterwards
contentedly to the yard ; and in the afternoon it
would again repair to the door, always left open,
and standing composedly on the middle of the
step wait its master's return — for this teal took
count of time. If, while it stood there watching
the road, a stranger came in, it would open its

THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 269

beak and hiss and strike at his legs, showing as
much suspicion and " sense of proprietorship " as
a dog does when it barks and snaps at a visitor.
Its owner's arrival would be greeted with demonstra-
tions of affection and joy, and following him into
the house it would spend an hour or two very
happily if allowed to sit on his feet, or nestling close
against them on the hearth-rug.

The behaviour of this poor teal might seem a
very great thing, but it amounts to very little
after all ; the memory that all animals have, and
perhaps a little judgement— the "small dose of
reason" which Huber found that even insects
possessed— and attachment to the beings it was
accustomed to see and associate with, and who
attended to all its wants and gently caressed it.
In the matter of the affections it has no advantage
even over Darwin's celebrated snail. No doubt the
self-sacrificing snail proved too much for Darwin's
argument, as Professor Mivart has pointed out;
fortunately the case of the teal, which can be
substantiated, does not prove too much for the
argument contained in this article. To be astonished
at the display of such faculties and affections in a
bird so low down in the scale would show ignorance
of Nature. And there is no doubt tha* most men
are very ignorant about her ; so ignorant that if
the teal had the place in our life which belongs to
the dog, and had been with us for centuries, a
companion and pet in our houses to the exclusion
of other kinds, we should now believe that it

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270 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

surpassed all other creatures in human-like feelings ;
our periodicals would teem with anecdotes of its
marvellous intelligence ; innumerable books would
be written on the subject, and the psychological
biologists would put it next to man in their systems,
one step below him on the throne of life, and far
above the general herd of animals.

It is a fact, that might well stagger belief in the
dog's superior intellect, that mammalians so low
down as rats and mice when properly treated and
trained make attached and intelligent pets ; and
that a mouse, or a sparrow, or a snake, or even a
creature so small and far down in the organic scale
as a flea, may be taught, without very great diffi-
culty, to perform tricks which, if performed by a
dog, would be pronounced very clever indeed.
Most people who witness the pretty performances
of small mammals, birds and insects — which are
usually up to the level of the dog's performances
seen at the music-halls — probably think, if they
think anything at all about the matter, that the
exhibitor in such cases is the possessor of a mysteri-
ous kind of talent by means of which he is able to
make these small creatures come for a few moments
out of the instinctive groove they move in to do
the things he wishes, much as little toy ducks and
swans, which are hollow inside, are made to swim
round in a basin of water after a stick of loadstone ;
only in the case of the exhibitor of animals the
loadstone is hidden from the spectators. His
trick, or mysterious talent, consists in the know-

THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 271

ledge that the animal he wishes to train is not a
little hollow duck or automaton, but that it has
faculties corresponding to the lower psychical
faculties in man, and that by the exercise of con-
siderable patience it may be made, when the
stimulus is applied, to repeat again and again a
few actions in the same order. The question which
concerns us to know is, has the dose of reason or
have these lower psychical faculties in the dog
been so greatly developed during its long com-
panionship with man as to raise it a great deal
nearer to man's level, and place a great gulf be-
tween its mind and that of the pig or the crow ?
The gulf exists only in our imagination, and the
" development " is a fairy-tale, of which Science
was probably not the original author, but which
she has thought proper to include, somewhat
amplified and with new illustrations, in the recent
editions of her collected works. The dog, taken
directly from a wild life, if taken young, will be
tame and understand and obey his master —
numerous instances are on record — and if patiently
trained will perform tricks just as wonderful as
those that were related to an astonished audience
at the late meeting of the British Association by
a well-known writer and authority on zoological
science. And in the mammalian division there are
hundreds of species, some higher, som<^ lower than
the dog, which may be taught the same things, or
other things equally wonderful. These greatly
vaunted performances of the dog only prove that

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272 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

its mind is, and ever will be, what it was when,
thousands of years ago, some compassionate woman
took the pup her owner threw into her arms, and
reared it, suckling it perhaps at her own breast ;
and when in after days it followed at the heels of
its savage master and astonished him by assistmg
in the capture of his quarry.

It is not, then, the dog's intelligence, which is
less than that of many other species, and is non-
progressive in spite of all that training and selection
can do, which makes it valuable to us. Nor has
it any advantage over other species in those
qualities of affection, fidelity, and good temper
about which we hear so much rapturous language ;
for these things are lower down than reason and
exist throughout the mammalian world, in animals
high and low, little and big. from the harvest mouse
to the hippopotamus. The dog is more valuable
to us than other species because we have got him.
We inherited him and were thereby saved a large
amount of trouble. He is tame ; the others are
wild. His intellect is small and stationary, but his
structure is variable, and, more important still, so
are his instincts ; or perhaps it would be more
correct to say that new propensities, which often
prove hereditary, and which by selection and
training may be fixed and strengthened until they
are made to resemble instincts, are of frequent
occurrence in him. The more or less settled pro-
pensities in our domestic animals, origmatmg in
the domestic state, are no doubt in one sense

THE GREAT DOGSUPERSTITION 278

instincts, since they are of the nature of instinct
and its beginnings; but the difference between
them and the true natural instinct, which has had
incalculable time to crystallise in, is greater than
can be expressed. The last is the rock and eternal ;
the others are snow-flakes, formed in a moment,
that settle and show white, and even before our
sight is withdrawn melt away and vanish. This
same variability, or habit of varying, is in some
vague way taken as a proof of versatility ; hrnce
one reason of the popular notion that the dog is
so vastly superior to other four-footed creatures.
If a dog could be taught to turn a spit, find truffles,
save a man from drowning or from perishing in a
snow-drift, point out a partridge, retrieve a wounded
duck, kill twenty rats in as many seconds, and herd
a flock of sheep, then it would indeed be an animal
to marvel at. These are special instincts or in-
cipient instincts, and to bestow such epi nets as
" kCiierous " and " noble " on a dog for pulling a
drowning man out of the wf.ter, or scratching him
out of a snow-drift, is fully as irrational as it would
be to call the swallow and cuckoo intrepid explorers
of the Dark Continent, or to praise the hive-bees of
the working caste for their chastity, loyalty, and
patriotism, and for their profound knowledge of
chemistry and the higher mathematics, as shown
in their works. Cross the dogs and these various
propensities, which being useful to man and not
to the animals themselves are preserved artificially,
fade away and disappear, and from moving arti-

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274 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

flcially apart in twenty different grooves the
animals all revert to the one old simple groove in
which they were first found by man. This much
may then be said in favour of the dog : he is plastic.
The plasticity is probably due to domestication, to
the variety of conditions to which he is subjected
as man's companion in all regions of the globe,
the selection which separates and preserves new
varieties as they arise, and the crossing again of
widely separated breeds. That he is plastic must
be our excuse for determining to make the most
we can of him to the complete exclusion of all
other species, which might or might not prove
plastic in the same degree. The fowl and pigeon
are plastic, while the goose, guinea-fowl, pheasant,
and peacock vary little or not at all. Nature may
have better things than the dog, but we cannot
guess her secrets, and to find them out by experi-
ment would take a very long time. A bird in the
hand, any bird, even a cock-sparrow, is better than
all the birds of paradise that are in the bush. The
other animals will serve us for sport while they last ;
and when they are gone we of this age shall be
gone too, and deaf to whatever unkind things our
posterity may say of us. The dog is with us,
esteemed above all brutes, our favourite, and we
shall give him no cause for jealousy.

If we had him not, if we had never had him or
had forgotten his memory, and were v > go out
again to select a friend and companion from the
beasts of the field, the wild dog would be passed

THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 275

by without a thought. There is nothing in him to
attract, but on the contrary much to repel. In a
state of nature he is an animal of disgusting habits,
with a vulture-like preference for dead and decom-
posing meat. Cowardly he also is, yet when
unopposed displays a bloodthirstiness almost with-
out a parallel among true beasts of prey. Nor
does he possess any compensating beauty or
sagacity, and compared with many carnivores he
is ^- sharp-sighted nor fleet of foot. Some

ki *aogist might be tempted to ask, Which

wi ' iS here meant ? He may follow his fancy

and choose his own wild dog— jackal, dhole,
baunsuah, wolf; or take them all, and even
include the coyote, as Darwin did. The multiple
origin of the domestic dog is by no means an
improbable theory ; but it is also highly probable
that the jackal had by far the largest share in his
parentage. There are also reasons for believing
that most of the wild dogs, including the dingo,
have sprung from tame breeds; and, as a fact,
the wild dogs with which the writer is most familiar
are known to be the descendants of domestic
animals which ran away from their masters and
adopted a feral life.

Out of this same coarse material man, uncon-
sciously imitating Nature's method, has fashioned
his favourite ; or rather, since the dog has become
so divergent in his keeping, his large group of
favourites, with their various forms and propen-
sities. Only now, too lat" ^^ some thousands of

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276 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

years, he is able to see that it was a mistake to go
so low in the first plr'^e, to have contentedly taken
base metal, dull-witted barbarian that he was,
when he might just as well have taken gold. For
the baseness of the metal shows in spite of much
polishing to make it shine. Polishing powders
we have, but not the powders of projection ; and
the dog, with all his new propensities, remains
mentally a jackal, above some mammalians and
below others ; nor can he outlive ancient, obscene
instincts which become increasingly offensive as
civilisation raises and refines his master man.

How did our belief in the mental superiority of
this animal come to exist ? Doubtless it came
about through our intimacy with the dog, in the
fields where he helped us, and in our houses where
we made a pet of him, together with our ignorance
of the true character of other animals. All animals
were to us simply " brutes that perish," and
" natural brute beasts made to be taken and de-
stroyed," with no faculties at all resembling
ours ; and when it was discovered that the dog
could be made to understand many things, and
that he had some feelings in common with us,
and was capable of great affection, which sometimes
caused him to pine at his master's loss, and in
some instances even to die of gr'-^f ; and that in
all these things he was, or seemed to be, widely
separated from other domestic brutes, the notion
grew up that he was essentially different, an
animal set apart for man's benefit, and, finally.

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THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 277

that he had been specially created for such an
object. Thus, Youatt says, " The dog, next to the
human being, ranks highest in intelligence, and was
evidently designed to be the companion and friend
of man " ; and in another place he says that it is
highly probable that he descended from no such
inferior and worthless animal as the jackal or wolf,
but was originally created, somewhat as we now
find hirr the associate and friend of man.

This as not so very hard to believe in the
pre-DarwinUn days, since domesticated dogs, and
even some of the breeds which we now possess, were
known to have existed between three and four
thousand years ago, while the world was only
supposed to have existed about six thousand years.
It seems probable that this curious superstition of
the dog's special .^cation grew up gradually and
only became popul; ' in very recent times. It was
gladly seized on by the poets, who made as much
out of it as they had formerly done out of the
melody of the dying swan ; and the artists were
not slow in following their example. A dog may
be choked with pudding, but the human mind
greedily gulped down as much of this mawkish
dog-sentimtnt as any person, with misdirected
talents, chose to manufacture for it.

Before proceeding with the story of our dog
superstition, I will here interpose a remark anent
that which obtains in the other half, or more than
half, of the world— the East. ^' The people of the
East," says Youatt, " have a -trange superstition

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278 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

with regard to the dog." Strange indeed, aknost
incred'ble to our properly enlightened Western
minds » We, who in a manner despise these
" people of the East," and object to many of their
habits with regard to personal cleanliness, and so
on, to be told that our friend and associate the
dog, our pet who shares our living and sleeping
rooms, and is caressed with our hands and lips, is
an unclean beast and unfit to be touched by man !
And so we find that the East is East, and the West
is West, with regard to this as well as to most
things, and that there are two great dog supersti-
tions. And now to proceed with the story of the
one which is ours.

In due time the evolutionists came, teaching
that the earth is old, .. . all the living things on
it are the descendants of one or of a very few
primordial forms, and as a consequence of such
teaching the special creation of the dog was no
longer tenable. How then came the dog-super-
stition— the belief in its superiority — to survive so
rude a shock ? For the evolutionists taught that all
the brutes possess, potentially and in germ, all the
faculties foimd in man, and the conclusion seems
unavoidable that there must be a correspondence in
the physical and psychical development, and that
the root of the higher mental and moral powers
must exist in the animals of the highest grades ;
that the mam'^^il must be more rational than the
bird, and th Avd than the reptile, and the reptile
than the fish; and that the hyena, civet, and

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THE GREAT DOGSUPERSTITION 279

mongoose are nearer tn us than the dog, the caU
above the mongoose, a:.d the monkeys higher still.
Why then was not the dog relegated to a lower
place ? Dr. Lauder Lindsay has given the reason :
" The menUl scale— the scale of intellectual and
moral development— is not quite synonymous with
the zoological scale. The most intellectual and '
moral animals are not necessarily those nearest to
man in the classification commonly adopted by
zoologists." Furthermore it has bee. assumef hat
contact with man has had the effect cf enle ^ing
the dog's mind, and making him, btyord all other
animals, intellectual, moral, ar'.l *^ven vl i^^ous.

It ought to be a great cc...lort to those who
devote themselves to canine pets, and to cano-
philists generally, to know that the philosophers
are at one with them. To some others it will
perhaps add a new terror to existence if students
of dog-psychology generally should feel themselves
tempted to imitate a recent illustrious example,
and go about the country lecturing on the mar-
vellous development of mind in th.ir respective
pets. Leibnitz once gave an account of a dog that
talked ; and quite recently a writer in a London
journal related how, in a sheltered spot among the
rocks on a lonely Scotch moor, ht stumbled on an
old shepherd playing whist with his collie. Nothing
approaching to these cases in dramatic interest can
be looked for in the apprehended disc, arses. The
animal to be described will as a rule be of a quiet,
thoughtful character proper in a philosopher's

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dog; not fond of display or much given to wild
flights of imagination. He will only show that he
possesses that faculty when asleep and barking at
the heels of a dream-hare. He will show a deep
affection for his master, like the teal spoken of in
this article ; also a strong sense of proprietorship,
again like the teal and like the tame snake described
by White of Selborne — a display of intellect which
strangely simulates an instinct common to all
creatures. And he will also show an intelligent
curiosity, and examine things to find out what
they are, and prove himself a very agreeable
companion ; as much so as Mr. Benjamin Kidd's
pet hiunble-bee. Moreover he will be accomplished
enough to sit up and beg, retrieve a walking-stick
from the Serpentine, close an open door, etc. ;
and besides these ordinary things he will do things
extraordinary, such as picking up numbered or
lettered cards, red, blue, and yellow, at his master's
bidding ; in fact such tricks as a pig will perform
without being very learned, not a Porson of its
kind, but only possessing the ordinary porcine
abilities. In conclusion the lecturer will bring up
the savage, not in person, but a savage evolved
from his inner consciousness, and compare its
understanding with that of the dog, or of his dog,
and the poor savage will have very much the worst
of it.

We have come to the end of the dog's mind, and
have arrived at that other question to which allusion
has been made. The dog has a body as well as a

THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 281

soul, senses, appetites, and instincts, and it is
worth while inquiring whether contact with man
has had the same ameliorating effect on these as it
is supposed to have had on his psychical faculties.
In other words, has he ceased to be a jackal ? For
if a negative answer must be given, it follows that,
however fit to be the servant, the dog is scarcely
fit to be the intimate associate and friend of man ;
for friendship implies a similarity in habits, if
nothing more, and man is not by nature an unclean

animal.

Dr. Romanes, in his work on Mental Evolution
in Animals, speaks of what he calls unpleasant
survivals in the dog, such as burying food until it
becomes offensive before eating it, turning round
and round on the hearth-rug before lying down,
rolling in filth, etc., etc., and he says that they have
remained imaffected by contact with man because
these instincts being neither useful nor harmful
have never been either cultivated or repressed.
From which it may be inferred that in his opinion
these disagreeable habits may be got rid of in
time. But why does he call them survivals ? If
the action, so frequently observed in the dog, of
turning round several times before lying down, is
correctly ascribed to an ancient habit in the wild
animal of treading down the grass to make a bed
to sleep on, it is rightly called a survival, and is a
habit neither useful nor harmful in the domesticated
state, which has never been either cultivated or
repressed, and will in time disappear. Thus far

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282 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

it is easy to agree with Dr. Romanes. The other
offensive instinct of the dog, of which burying meat
to make it putrid, rolling in filth, etc., etc., are
different manifestations, is not a survival, in the
sense in which zoologists use that word, any more
than the desire of the well-fed cat for the canary,
and of the hen-hatched ducklings for the pond, are
survivals. These are important instincts which
have never ceased to operate. The dog is a flesh-
eater with a preference for carrion, and his senses
of tastp and smell are correlated, and carrion
attracts him just as fruit attracts the frugivorous
bat. Man's smelling sense and the dog's do not
correspond ; they are inverted, and what is delight-
ful to one is disgusting to the other. " A cur's
tail may be warmed and pressed and bound round
with ligatures, and after twelve years of labour
bestowed on it, it will retain its original form,"
is an Oriental saying. In like manner the dog may
be shut up in an atmosphere of opoponax and
frangipani for twelve hundred years and he will
love the smell of carrion still. When the dog runs
frisking and barking, he expresses gladness ; and
he expresses a still greater degree of gladness by
madly rolling, feet up, on the grass, uttering a
continuous purring growl. The discovery of a
carrion smell on the grass will always cause the
dog to behave in this way. It is the something
wanting still in the life of enforced separation from
the odours that delight him ; and when he unex-
pectedly discovers a thing of this kind his joy is

THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 288

uncontrolled. His sense of smeU is much keener
than ours ; it is probably more to him than sight
is to us ; he lives in it, and the odours that are
agreeable to him afford him the highest pleasure of
which he is capable. We can do much with a dog,
but there is a limit to what we can do ; we can no
more alter the character of his sense of smell than
we can alter the colour of his blood.

" The dog is a worshipper of man," says Dr.
Lauder Lindsay, " and is, or may be, made in the
image of the being he worships." That refers
merely to the animal's intellectual and moral
nature ; or, in other words, it is the fashionable
" inverted or biological anthropomorphism " of the
day, of which we shall all probably be heartily
ashamed by and by ; just now we are concerned
with a more important matter, to wit, the dog's
nose. Its character may be seen even in the most
artificial breeds, that is to say, in those which have
most widely diverged from the parent-form and are
entirely dependent on us, such as pugs and toy-
terriers. The pampered lap-dog in the midst of
his comforts has one great thorn in his side, one
perpetual misery to endure, in the perfumes which
please his mistress. He too is a little Venetian in
his way, but his way is not hers. The camphor-
wood chest in her room is an offence to him, the
case of glass-stoppered scents an abomination. All
fragrant flowers are as asafoetida to his exquisite
nostrils, and his face is turned aside in very ill-
concealed disgust from the sandal-wood box or fan

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284 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

It is wanxi and soft on her lap, but an incurable
grief to be so near her pocket-handkerchief,
saturated with nasty white-rose or lavender. If
she must perfume herself with flowery essences he
would prefer an essential oil expressed from the
gorgeous Rafflesia Amoldi of the Bomean forest,
or even from the humble carrion-flower which
blossoms nearer home.

The moral of all this is, that while the dog has
become far too useful for us to think of parting
with it — ^useful in a thousand ways, and likely to
be useful in a thousand more, as new breeds arise
with modified forms and with new unimagined pro-
pensities— it would be a blessed thing, both for
man and dog, to draw the line at useful animals,
to put and keep them in their place, which is not
in the house, and value them at their proper worth,
as we do our horses, pigs, cows, goats, sheep, and
rabbits.

But there is a place in the human heart, the
female heart especially, which would be vacant
without an animal to love and fondle, a desire to
have some furred creature for a friend — not a
feathered creature, albeit feathered pets are common
enough, because, owing to the bird's organisation,
to be handled is often painful and injurious to it,
and in any case it deranges the feathers ; and this
love is unsatisfied and feels itself ' ' jfrauded of its
due unless it can be expressed in the legitimate
mammalian way, which is to have contact with
its object, to touch with the fingers and caress.

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THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 285

Fortunately such a feeling or instinct can be amply
gratified without the ^; there are sc( es, per-
haps hundreds, of species incomparably betore this
animal in all estimable qualities, which can be
touched with hand and lips without defilement.
Only a few need be mentioned in this place.

One of the first animals worthy of so high a
distinction, which would occur to many travelled
men, is the marmoset: a fairy monkey in its
smallness and extreme beauty, clothed in long soft
hair with a lustre as of spun silk ; in manners
pleasantly tricksy, but not scatter-brained and
wildly capricious like its larger irresponsible rela-
tions, which is an advantage. No visitor to the
Brazils can have failed to be charmed with these
small animals, which are frequently kept as pets by
ladies, and among pets they are surpassed by none
in attachment to their mistress.

A nobler animal, capable of endearing itself to
man as well as woman, is the lemur, of which there
are several very beautiful species. Strong, agile,
swift and graceful in action as the monkey, to
which it is related, but with an even, placid dis-
position ; monkey-like in form, but without the
monkey's angularities and that appearand of
spareness which reminds one of a naked, half-
starved Hindoo, he has e better - proportioned
figure for beauty, and his dark, richly coloured
coat of woolly fur gives a pleasing roundness to his
form. More, er, he has not got the monkey's
pathetic old man's withered countenance, but a

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286 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

sharp, somewhat vulpine face, black as ebony, a
suitable setting for his chief glory — the luminous
eyes, of every shining yellow colour seen in gold,
topaz, and cat's-eye. "Night wood-ghost," the
natives name it on account of its brilliant eyes
which shine by night, and its motions in the trees,
swift and noiseless as the flight of an owl. He is
of ancient lineage, one of Nature's aristocrats ; a
child of the savage forest, as you can see in the
flashing hostile orbs, and in the combined ease and
power of its motions ; yet withal of a sweet and
placable temper.

Even among the small -brained rodents we
should not look 'n vain for favourites ; and fore-
most in attractiveness are perhaps the squirrels,
inhabiting all climates. Blithe-hearted as birds
and as volatile in disposition, almost aerial in
their habits, and in some tropical, richly coloured
forms resembling cuckoos and other long-tailed,
graceful avians, as they run leaping from branch
to branch among the trees ; what animation and
marvellous swiftness of motion they display, what
an endless variety of pretty whimsical attitudes
and gestures ! " All the motions of a squirrel imply
spectators as much as those of a dancing-girl," says
Thoreau. They are easily tamed, coming at call
to be fed from the hand ; how strange it seems that
they are not domestic, and found at every house in
town and country where there are trees ! Their
unfailing spirits and fantastic performances would
have a wholesome effect on our too sombre minds.

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THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION

i37

and in cities like London would bring us a thought
of the alert life and eternal gladness of Nature.

For those who would prefer a more terrestrial
rodent, yet one more daintily fashioned than the
rough-cast rabbit and guinea-pig. the.e are others.
For a large animd the beautiful Patagonian
dolichotis, like no other mammalian in its form,
double the size of the hare, and a docue pet when
tamed ; and for a small one the charmmg agidium
or Andean vizcacha. with rabbit-like ears, long tail,
arched like a squirrel's, the fur blue-grey m colour
above, and beneath golden yellow. And the
chinchilla, white and pale grey, with round leaf-
like ears, and soft dove's eyes-a rare and deli-
cate creature. There is in this small mountam
troglodyte something poetic, tender, flower-like-
a mammalian edelweiss. Poor little hunted chm-
chiUa, did the Incas of old love you more than we
do now. who love you only dead ? For you were
also of the great mountains, where Viracocha sal
on his throne of snow, and the coming sun-god
first touched your stony dwelling-places with rose
and amber flame ; and perhaps they regarded you
as an animal sacred to the Immortals. If so, then
you have indeed lost your friends, for we have no
such fancies, and spare not.

It is a great descent, in more senses than one,
to the prairie marmot-from the mountain to the
plain, and from the beautiful to the grotesque ;
yet this dweller on the flat earth, gross m form
and drab in colour, is a great pleasure-giver. He

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288 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

tickles the sense of the ludicrous, and it is good to
laugh. His staring eyes, spasmodic gestures, and
barking exclamations are almost paimul, they are
so genuine ; for what an unearthly-looking monster
one must seem to him! He is a gnome who
has somehow stumbled out of his subterranean
abode, and, like the young mole in Lessing's
fable, is overwhelmed with astonishment at every-
thing he sees in this upper world. Then there is
the agouti, with pointed head, beautifully arched
back, and legs slender, proportionally, as the
gazelle's; its resemblance in form to the small
musk deer has been remarked— a rodent moulded
in the great Artist-Mother's happiest mood. The
colour of its coat, relieved only by its pink ears
and a broad shining black stripe on the back, is
red Venetian gold, the hue which the old Italian
masters gave to the tresses of their angelic women.
A mild-tempered animal, which may be taken from
its native woods and made tame in a few days.
Many of the smaller rodents might also he men-
tioned, such as the quaint, bird-like jerboa, and
the variegated loucheres ; and so on down even
to the minute harvest-mouse. Forms and sizes to
suit all tastes ; for why should we all have alike ?
Let fashion in pets go out with the canines.

To go back to the other extreme, from low to
high, there are the wild cats inhabiting all desert
places on the globe. Tigers and leopards made
small; clouded, or with a clear golden ground-
colour, pale or red gold or grey, and black-striped.

THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 289

barred zebra-like, or spotted, or with the colours
disposed in strange patterns, beautifully harmonious.
As in the lemurs, and surpassing them, here are
brilliant luminous eyes and great strength of
sinew ; but these are not of peace : the serpent-
like silence of the movements and fateful stillness
of the lithe form, and the round watchful orbs that
seem like the two fiery gems set in a carved figure
of rich stone-these betray the deadly purpose.
Yet their hearts may also be conquered with
kindness. The domestic cat is a proof of it ; she
is found in most houses, and whether we make a
pet of her or not, long familiarity has given her a
place in our affections. But when we go from home
and visit regions infinitely richer in life than our
own, it surprises and offends us to meet with the
same cat still ; for it looks as if man had failed, in
the midst of so much variety, to find anything
better or equally good. Nature abhors monotony ;
why should we force it on her to our own dis-
advantage ? ,. -

Here then we have a few mammahan forms
gathered at random from several widely separated
families, each as it were the final and highest effort
of Nature in one particular direction—" the bright
consummate flower " in a group, the other members
of which seem by comparison coarse and unfinished.
We boast to be lovers of the beautiful, and it is
here in its highest form. Birds may be said to
have a greater beauty, but it is different in kind ;
and thev are winged and far from us. They are

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290 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

of the sky and their forms are aerial ; and their
aerial nature is not in touch with ours. For the
mammalians wfe. who are also mammals and bound
to earth, have a greater sympathy, and their
beauty has for us a more enduring charm. If it
is out of our sight and far removed from most of
us, and growing farther year by year, we have
only ourselves to blame. For how rich are the
mountains and forests and desert pUces of the
earth, where we sometimes go to slav Nature's
untamed beautiful children, assisted in our task by
that servant and friend that is so worthy of us !
And on the other hand, how poor are our houses
and viUages and cities I The dog is there, inherited
from barbarous progenitors, who tamed him not
to be a pet or friend, but to assist them in their
quest for flesh, and for other purposes ; to be a
scavenger, as he still is in Eastern countries, or,
as in the case of the ancient Hyrcanians, to devour
the corpses of their dead. He is there, but his
title is bad; why should we suffer him ? We may
wash him daily with many waters, but the jackal
taint remains. That which Nature has made
unclean let it be unclean still, for we cannot make
it different. Her lustral water which purifies for
ever is a secret to our chemistry. Or if not alto-
gether a secret, if, as some imagine, the ingredients
may be dimly guessed, they are too slow for us in
their working. Man's years are limited and his
purposes change. Nature has all time for her
processes ; " the eternal years of God are hers."

THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 291

Moreover, there is nothing we can desire and not
find in her garden, which has infinite variety. Why
should we cherish a carrion-flower and wear it m
our bosoms while carelessly trampling on so many
britfht and beautiful blooms ? It is a pity to
trample on them, since the effect of so destructive
a habit is to make them rare ; and " ranty, as
certain of our great naturalists have told us,
" is the precursor to extinction." And perhaps
by and by, blaming ourselves for the past, we
shall be dUigently seeking everywhere for them,
anxious to find and to bring them into our houses,
where, after long companionship with the dog, they
will serve tc sweeten our imaginations and be a
joy for ever.

Note -I had pronounced the foregoing old magazine
article unusable, partly because of the manner of it. its care-
t's ^nd partly because it was somewhat polemical and
touS on questions which are not natural history, pure and
staple Now at the last moment I have resolved to put it m

"^ ta^l'd anonymously ages ago in ^^--^^'^-l^^^Zi
then edited by Mowbray Morris, who wrote to me that my
^H^rcjtadV- him a painful shock, that it --l«i l^"f -<^
disgust many readers of the Magazine, and • j;hat ^^ J

■"" Ml 'nX'^I -pS. •• Send me back the MS Of »^e
you mlX'Jw anything appear in your naagazme to hurt the

-tr^\ i^^y'^^i^sr ercohhe. who„ i

gjluy eS^L^ id -taired for her courage .n eombaUng

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292 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

one of the mott horrible forms of cruelty practised on «nimals,
hMl a book in the press entitled " The Friend of Man and his
Friends, the Poets." Reading njy unsigned paper in the
Magasine, she picked up her pen in a noble rage to add sonte
words to her T .troduction. in which she hurled at me certain
sayings of Schopenhauer describing man as a very contemptible
creature when compared with the dog, and also saying that the
writer of the article was " worse than a vivisectionist."

This struck me as a bit thick, seeing that a vivisectionist had
1 ways been to her the most damnable being in the universe.
One or two of my friends, vho knew I had written the article,
then remonstrated with the lady for using such expressions of
one who, though tactless and somewhat brutal, was also a
lover of all the creatures, and didn't like to hear so much praise
of the dog at the expense of the other animals. The result was
that she smoothed her ruffled plumes and sent her regrets and
a promise to excise the obnoxious passage in her prefact; in the
next edition.

Of course it doesn't matter two straws whether she ever
had the opportunity of doing so or not : the best part of the
story is still to come — the funny part, and a wise word which,
though laughingly spoken, may yet do good.

The lady's book in the meantime had fallen by chance into
the hands of Andrew Lang, and as it was just the sort of thing
to delight him, he made it the subject of one of his most charm-
ingly amusing leaders in the Daily News of that time. In
this article, after the usual pleasant word for the book and its
author, he deals with the subject of the dog and man's feeling
for it in ancient and modem times, and of the great length to
which it has been carried recently, and concludes with a passage
which I must q-ote in full, as I don't think this article ever
reappeared among his Loat Leaders, and it is worth preserving
for the sake of its Andrew Langishness, as well as of its moral.
After quoting some of the most notable sayings in praise of the
dog, he concludes :

"There is perhaps some slight danger of reaction against
all this, and Miss Cobbe seems to have anticipated it in a
sharp attack on a writer hostile to dogs. This writer, as
though in his t\im anticipating the coming worship of the dog,
has expressed himself with considerable force against the
• great dog superstition,' and has gone so far as to characterise

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THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 298

the dog's affection, devotion, and courage in defence of hit
matter at a * very small and very low thing.' It it eaty to
imagine how Mitt Cobbe characterites Aim. Warned by thit
example, we shall take care not to say that, nowadays perhaps,
the dog is too much with ut in literature. It may be thought
—we do not say it is our opinion— that the dog's worst peril
awaits him at the moment of his highest fortune, whe.i he has
become the pet and prot6g6 of women. Women may spoil
him, so the cynic might say— if a cynic couid be xpected
to say anything unkind on such a tubject— as they spoil all
their favourites. Under their enervating patronage he may
gradually lose some of his most cherished qualities, untU he
whines with the poet, * What is it, in this world of ours, that
m.ikes it fatal to be loved ? ' For fatal it would be if the t g
were gradually evolved into a thing of tricks, a suppliant for
sugar at afternoon tea, a pert assailant only of the people who
never mean to rob the house, or a being deaf to the cry ot ' rats,'
but fiercely active in the pursuit of a worsted ball— a fine-
coated dandy with his initials embroir?«red on hi J back. His
affection, his fidelity, his reasoning power are very good things,
but it is not all a blessing for him that they are finding their
way into li^-^rature. For literature never can take a thing
simply for what it is worth. The plain dealing dog must be
distinctly bored by the ever-growing obligation to live up to
the anecdotes of him ia the philosophic journals. These
anecdotes are not told for his sake ; they are told to save the
self-respect of people who want an idol, and who are distorting
him into a figure of pure convention for their domestic altars.
He is now expected to discriminate between relations and mere
friends of the house ; to wag his tail at ' God save the Queen ' ;
to count up to five in chips of firewood, and to seven in mutton
bones ; to howl for all deaths in the family above the degree
of second cousin ; to post letters, and refuse them when they
have been insufficiently stamped ; and last and most intoler-
able, to show a tender solicitude when the tabby is out of sorts.
He will do these things when they are required of him, for he
is the most good-natnred and obliging fellow in the world, but
it ought never to bt forgotten that he hates to do theni, and
that all he really cares for is his daily dinner, his run, his rat,
and his occasional caress. He is not in the least concerned
about the friendship of the poets, and the attempt to live up

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294 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

to their interest in him is playing havoc with his sincerity, and
making him only less of a nevroae than the quite unnecessary
cat. His earlier difficulty with the Egyptians is a warning
that ought to serve for all time. If he ate up Apis it was but
as a rough and ready way of inviting the worshippers of Apis
to leave him alone."

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XXV

MY FRIEND THE PIG

Is there a man among us who on running through
a list of his friends is unable to say that there is
one among them who is a perfect pig ? 1 thmk
not ; and if any reader says that he has no such
an one for the sunple reason that he would not and
could not make a friend of a perfect pig. I shall
maintain that he is mistaken, that if he goes over
the list a second time and a little more carefully,
he will find in it not only a pig, but a sheep, a cow,
a fox, a cat, a stoat, and even a perfect toad.

But all this is a question I am not concerned
with, seeing that the pig I wish to write about is
a real one— a four-footed beast with parted hoofs,.
I have a friendly feeling towards pigs generally,
and consider them the most intelligent of beasts, not
excepting the elephant and the anthropoid ape—
the dog is not to be mentioned in this connection.
I also like his disposition and attitude towards
all other creatures, especially man. He is not
suspicious, or shrinkingly submissive, like horses,
cattle, and sheep ; nor an impudent devil-may-care
like the goat; nor hostile like the goose; nor

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296 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

condescending like the cat ; nor a flattering parasite
like the dog. He views us from a totally different,
a sort of democratic, standpoint as fellow-citizens
and brothers, and takes it for granted, or grunted,
that we understand his language, and without
servility or insolence he has a natural, pleasant,
camerados-all or hail-fellow-well-met air with us.

It may come as a shock to some of my readers
when I add that I like him, too, in the form of
rashers on the breakfast-table ; and this I say
with a purpose on accoimt of much wild and idle
talk one hears on this question even from one's
dearest friends — the insincere horror expressed and
denunciation of the revolting custom of eating our
fellow-mortals. The other day a lady of my
acquaintance told me that she went to call on
some people who lived a good distance from her
house, and was obliged to stay to luncheon. This
consisted mainly of roast pork, and as if that was
not enough, her host, when helping her, actually
asked if she was fond of a dreadful thing called the
crackling !

It is a common pose ; but it is also something
more, since we find it mostly in persons who are
frequently in bad health and are restricted to a low
diet ; naturally at such times vegetarianism appeals
to them. As their health improves they think less
of their fellow-mortals. A little chicken broth is
found uplifting; then follows the inevitable sole,
then calves' brains, then a sweetbread, then a
partridge, and so on, progressively, until they are

MY FRIEND THE PIG

297

once more able to enjoy their salmon or turbot,
veal and lamb cutlets, fat capons, turkeys and
geese, .irloins of beef, and, finally, roast pig.
That's the limit ; we have outgrown cannibalism,
and are not keen about haggis, though it is still
eaten by the wild tribes inhabiting the northern
portion of our island. All this should serve to
teach vegetarians not to be in a hurry. Thoreau's
" handful of rice " is not sufficient for us, and not
good enough yet. It will take long years and
centuries of years before the wolf with blood on
his iron jaws can be changed into the white innocent
lamb that nourishes itself on grass.

Let us now return to my friend the pig. He
inhabited a stye at the far end of the back garden
of a cottage or small farmhouse in a lonely little
village in the Wiltshire downs where I was staying.
Close to the stye was a gate opening into a long
green field, shut in by high hedges, where two or
three horses and four or five cows were usually
grazing. These beasts, not knowing my sentiments,
looked askance at me and moved away when I first
began to visit them, but when they made the
discovery that I generally had apples and lumps
of sugar in my coat pockets they all at once became
excessively friendly and followed me about, and
w-uld put their heads in my way to be scratched,
.nd licked my hands with their rough tongues to
show that they liked me. Every time I visited the
cows and horses I had to pause beside the pig-pen
to open the gate into the field ; and invariably the

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298 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

pig would get up and coming towards me salute me
with a friendly grunt. And I would pretend not to
hear or see, for it made me sick to look at his pen
in which he stood belly-deep in the fetid mire, and
it made me ashamed to think that so intelligent
and good-tempered an animal, so profitable to man,
should be kept in such abominable conditions. Oh,
raor beast, excuse me, but I'm in a hurry and have
no time to return your greeting or even to look
at you !

In this village, as in most of the villages in all
this agricultural and pastoral county of Wiltshire,
there is a pig-club, and many of the cottagers keep
a pig ; they think and talk a great deal about their
pigs, and have a grand pig-day gathering and
dinner, with singing and even dancing to follow,
once a year. And no wonder that this is so, con-
sidering what they get out of the pig ; yet in any
village you will find it kept in this same unspeak-
able condition. It is not from indolence nor
because they take pleasure in seeing their pig
unhappy before killing him or sending him away
to be killed, but because they cherish the belief
that the filthier the state in which they keep their
pig the better the pork will be ! I have met even
large prosperous farmers, many of them, who
cling to this delusion. One can imagine a conversa-
tion between one of these Wiltshire pig-keepers
and a Danish farmer. " Yet.," the visitor would
say, " we too had the same notion at one time, and
thought it right to keep our pigs as you do ; but

MY FRIEND THE PIG

299

that was a long time back, when English and
Danes were practically one people, seeing that
Canute was king of both countries. We have since
then adopted a different system ; we now believe,
and the results prove that we are in the right way,
that it is best to consider the animal's nature and
habits and wants, and to make the artificial con-
ditions imposed on him as little oppressive as may
be. It is true that in a state of nature the hog
loves to go into pools and wallow in the mire, just
as stags, buffaloes, and many other beasts do,
especially in the dog-days when the flies are most
troublesome. But the swine, like the stag, is a
forest animal, and does not love f^ for its own
sake, nor to be left in a miry pen, though not

as fastidious as a cat about his coat, i.e is naturally
as clean as any other forest creature."

Here I may add that in scores of cases when 1
have asked a cottager why he didn't keep a pig.
his answer has been that he would gladly do so, but
for the sanitary inspector:,, who would soon order
him to get rid of it, or remove it to a distance on
account e offensive smell. It is probable that

if it cou 0 got out *• the cottager's mind that
there must need be an offensive smell, the number
of pigs fattened in the villages would be trebled

I hope now after all these digressions I shall be
able to go on with the history of my friend the
pig. One morning as I passed the pen he gmnted
-spoke, I may say-in such a pleasant friendly
way that I had to stop and return his greeting ;

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800 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

then, taking an apple from my pocket, I placed it
in his trough. He turned it over with his snout,
then looked up and said something like ** Thank-
you " in a series of gentle grunts. Then he bit
off and ate a small piece, then another small bite,
and eventually taking what was left in his mouth
he finished eating it. After that he always expected
me to stay a minute and speak to him when I went
to the field ; I knew it from his way of greeting
me, and on such occasions I gave him an apple.
But he never ate it greedily : he appeared more
inclined to talk than to eat, until by degrees I
came to understand what he was saying. What
he said was that he appreciated my kind intentions
in giving him apples. But, he went on, to tell the
real truth, it is not a fruit I am particularly fond
of. I am familiar with its taste as they sometimes
give me apples, usually the small unripe or bad
ones that fall from the trees. However, I don't
actually dislike them. I get skim mil! and am
rather fond of it ; then a bucket of mash, which is
good enough for hunger ; but what I enjoy most is
a cabbage, only I don't get one very often now. I
sometimes think that if they would let me out of
this muddy pen to ramble like the sheep and other
beasts in the field or on the downs I should be able
to pick up a number of morsels which would taste
better than anything they give me. Apart from
the subject of food I hope you won't mind my
telling you that I'm rather fond of being scratched
on the back.

MY FRIEND THE PIG 801

So I scratched him vigorously with my stick,
and made him wriggle his body and wink and
blink and smile delightedly all over his face. Then
I said to myself : " Now what the juice can I do
more to please him ? " For though under sentence
of death, he had done no wrong, but was a good,
honest-hearted fellow-mortal, so that I felt bound
to do something to make the miry remnant of his
existence a little less miserable.

I think it was the word juice I had just used—
lor that was how I pronounced it to make it less
like a swear-word— that gave me an inspiration.
In the garden, a few yards back from the pen,
there was a large clump of old elder-trees, now
overloaded with ripening fruit— the >iggest clusters
I had ever seen. Going to the trees I selected and
cut the finest bunch I could find, as big round as
my cap, and weighing over a pound. This I de-
posited in his trough and invited him to try it.
He sniffed at it a little doubtfully, and looked at
me and made a remark or two, then nibbled at the
edge of the cluster, taking a few berries into his
mouth, and holding them some time before he
ventured to crush them. At length he did venture,
then looked at me again and made more remarks,
" Queer fruit this ! Never tasted anything quite
like it before, but I really can't say yet whether I

like it or not."

Then he took another bite, then more bites,
looking up at me and saying something between
the bites, till, little by little, he had consumed the

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802 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

whole bunch ; then turning round, he went back
to his bed with a Uttle grunt to say that I was now
at liberty to go on to the cows and horses.

However, on the following morning he hailed my
approach in such a lively manner, with such a note
of expectancy in his voice, that I concluded he had
been thinking a great deal about elder-berries, and
was anxious to have another go at them. Accord-
ingly I cut him another bunch, which he quickly
consumed, making little exclamations the while —
"Thank you, thank you, very good — very good
indeed I " It was a new sensation in his life, and
made him very happy, and was almost as good as
a day of liberty in the fields and meadows and on
the open green downs.

From that time I visited him two or three times
a day to give him huge clusters of elder-berries.
There were plenty for the starlings as well ; the
clusters on those trees would have filled a cart.

Then one morning I heard an indignant scream
from the garden, and peeping out saw my friend, the
pig, bound hand and foot, being lifted by a dealer
into his cart with the assistance of the farmer.

" Good-bye, old boy ! " said I as the cart drove
off ; and I thought that by and by, in a month or
two, if several persons discovered a peculiar and
fascinating flavour in their morning rasher, it
would be due to the elder-berries I had supplied to
my friend the pig, which had gladdened his heart
for a week or two before receiving his quietus.

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XXVI

THE POTATO AT HOME AND IN
ENGLAND

When I was a small boy running about wild on
the pampas, amazingly interested in everythmg
and making wonderful discoveries every day, l
was attracted by a small flower among the grasses
-pale and meek-looking, with a yellow centre,
petals faintly washed with purple, and a lovely
scent It charmed me with its gentle beauty and
new fragrance, and surprised me with its resem-
blance, both in flower and leaf, to the potato-plant.
On showing a spray to my parents, they told me
that it was a potato-flower. This seemed mcredible,
since the potato wns a big plant with large clusters
of purplish flowers, almost scentless, and, further-
more, it was a cultwated plant. They explained
that all cultivated plants were origmally wild;
that long cultivation had had the effect of changmg
their appearance and making them larger ; that
was how we had got our wheat, which came from
a poor little grass with a seed scarcely bigger than
a pin's head. Even the botanists had had great
difficulty in identifying it as the original wheat-

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804 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

plant. Also our maize and huge pumpkins and
water-melons, and all our vegetables and fruit. I
then took a table-knife and went to look for a
plant, and when I found one I dug down to a depth
of six inches, and there sure enough was the tuber,
attached to the root, but quite small— not bigger
than a hazel-nut— perfectly round with a pimply
skin, curiously light-coloured, almost pearly. A
pretty little thing to add to my collection of curios,
but all the same a potato. How strange !

From that time I began to take a new interest
in the potato, and would listen eagerly when the
subject of potatoes was discussed at table. When
the potatoes were taken up about the beginning of
December, and then the second crop in autumn-
April or May — my father would tell the gardener to
pick out a few of the biggest for him, and these,
when washed and weighed, would be placed as
ornaments on the dining-room mantelpiece, in a
row of half-a-dozen. They were not pretty to look
at, but they were astonishingly big when I put my
small marble of a wild potato by the side of them.
Then when some English neighbour, ten or twenty
miles away, would ride over to see us and stay to
lunch, my father wouiu take up the potatoes one
by one and hand them to him and say : " What
do you think of this one ? And of this one ? "
Then : " And of this one ? " This one would be
the biggest. Then he would add: " Whfet does
your biggest potato weigh ? " And when the other
replied: "Ten" — or perhaps twelve— " ounces,"

H

THE POTATO AT HOME

805

my father would laugh and say: "This one
weighs fourteen ounces and a half; this fifteen
and three-quarter: ; this one just turns the balance
at sixteen, and this one seventeen ounces. What
do you say to that ? " The other would reply that
he couldn't have believed it if he hadn't seen and
handled the potato himself, and my father would
be happy and triumphant.

Not only were the potatoes of that land as large
as any in the world, but they were probably the
best in the world to eat. They were beautifully
white and mealy, with that crystalline sparkle of the
properly cooked potato in them which one rarely
sees in this country. Strange to say, our Spanish
neighbours, even those who had a garden, did not
grow or eat them ; they were confined to the
English settlers and a few foreigners of other
nationalities.

Here I will venture to relate an incident which,
though trivial, goes to show how little our native
neighbours knew about the potato, which was so
important to us; and at the same time it will
serve to illustrate a trait common to the native of
that U.nd— th- faculty of keeping his face.

A young girl of about twelve, the child of poor
natives living in a small ranch a couple of miles
from us, was invited by a little sister of mine to
come and spend a day with her, to look at dolls
and other treasures, eat peaches, and enjoy herself
generally. We were a big family, but my sister's
little guest, Juanita, took her place at table as if

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806 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST
to the manner bom. Lamb cutleta with a nice
big potato on the plate were placed before her,
also a cup of tea, for in those days tea was drunk
. at every meal. After a glance round to see how
eating was managed in ♦hese novel conditions, she
began on the cutlets, and presently my little sister,
anxious to guide her, called attention to the un-
tasted potato. She looked at it, hesitated a moment,
then, taking it up in her fingers, dropped i^ nto
her tea-cup I The poor girl had never seen a boiled
potato before and had never had a cup of tea, and
had just made a guess at what she was expected
to d- We youngsters exploded with laughter and
ou. miled, but the girl kept her balance-

not a . t a change in her countenance.

" Oh, yo« must not do that 1 " cried my sister.
" You must eat the potato with the cutlet on the
plate, with salt on it."

And Juanita, turning towards her little hostess,
replied in a quiet but firm tone : " I prefer to eat
it this way." And in this way she did eat it, first
mashing it up, stirring it about in the tea, making
a sort of gruel of it, " not too thick and not too
thin," then eating it with a spoon.

This singular presence of mind and faculty of
keeping their dignity under difficulties is, I imagine,
an instinct of all uncivilised people, and is in some
curious way related to the instinct of self-preserva-
tion, as when they are brought face to face with a
great danger and are perfectly cool .vhere one would
expect them to be in a state of confusion and panic.

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THE POTATO AT HOME

807

Other memories connected with the potato
come back to me. I had a small brother, and one
day we were discussing that most important subject
to small boys, the things we liked best to eat, when
it occurred to us as very strange that certain
articles of food were only eaten in combination
with certain other things; some with salt, and
others with sugar, and so on, and we agreed to try
and discover a new and better way of combining
different flavours. We started on our boiled eggs
and ate them with sugar or treacle and cinnamon
instead of salt, and found that it wasn't very nice.
By and by we found that peaches cut up and eaten
with cream and sugar tasted delicious. And after
that we broke the peach-stones and made a mash
of the kernels in a mortar and ate that with cream
and sugar, and agreed that it was a great success.
By and by one of our elders told us that the peculiar
flavour of the peach-stone pip which delighted us
and was so good with cream and sugar was due
to the presence of prussic acid, and that if we went
on with this dish it would certainly kill us all in a
little while. That frightened us, and we started
experimenting with the harmless potato. And here
we met with our greatest success ; let all gourmets
make a note of it. Select a good-sized egg-shaped
baked potato and place it in a small cup and treat
it as you would ar egg, cutting off the top. Then
with your spoon break it up inside, pour in oil and
vinegar, and add pepper and salt. A delightful
combination! We tried to improve on it by

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808 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

substituting cream or butter for the oil, but it was
the flavour of olive oil and vinegar combined with
that of the potato which made it perfect.

Other experimenters may have discovered this
way of eating a potato, but the only approach to
it I have found in reading is contained in an anecdote
of Byron, at the time when he was the hero of
London society. He dined with a friend who had
got together a company of the poet's ardent admirers
to meet him. But he was in a difficult mood : he
declined soup and fish and meats of all kinds.
" What then will you eat ? " asked his host, getting
impatient. "Oh, a potato," said Byron. And
when a big potato was put before him, he broke it
up, drenched it in vinegar and ate it, and this was
his dinner. And dinner over, he took himself off,
to the deep disappointment of all those who had
come to gaze and listen and worship.

" How long," said one of them to his host, " will
his lordship be able to keep this dietary ? "

" How long— how long ! " said his host. " As
long as people think it worth while to pay any
attention to what he eats."

The story goes on to say that, quitting his
friend's house, the poet walked to his club in
Piccadilly and told the waiter to bring him an
underdone beef-steak. He had perhaps discovered
that a potato drenched in vinegar was good as an
appetiser, but he probably did not know how
much better it would have been with the addition
of oil.

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THE POIAIO AT HOME

809

The other most interesting memory of the
potato refers to its chief enemy, an insect called
in the vernacular Bicho moro—& blister-beetle or
Cantharides, its full scientific name being Epicauta
adspersa. Not every year but from time to time
this pest would make its appearance in numbers,
and invariably just when the potato-plant was at
its best, when the bloom was coming. On a warm,
still, bright day when the sun began to grow hot,
all at once the whole air would be filled with
myriads of the small grey beetles, about twice as
big as a house-fly, and the buzzing sound of their
innumerable wings, and the smell they emit. It
was something like the smell of the fire-fly when
they are in swarms— a heavy musty and phos-
phorous smell in the fire-fly. The blister-beetle
had the mustiness but not the phosphorus m its
odour ; in place of it there was another indescribable
and disagreeable element, which perhaps came from
that acrid or venomous principle in the beetle's pale
blood. Though we heartily detested it, the insect
was not without a modest beauty, its entire oblong
body being of a pleasing smoke grey, the wing-
cases minutely dotted with black.

The sight and sound and smell of them would
call forth a lamentation from all those who possessed
a potato-patch and had rejoiced for weeks past m
their little green plants with their green embossed
leaves, since now there would be no potatoes for
the table except very small ones, until the autumn
crop, which would come along after the grey blister-

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810 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

fly had vanished like smoke from the earth after
leaving his evil seed in it.

The beetle feeds on the leaves of solanaceous
plants and prefers the potato above all others, so
that when he comes in a slow-flying swarm over
the potato-field, you see the beetles dropping in
thousands like a grey rain upon it, and know that
before the sun sea the whole of the leaves will be
devoured, the staL i being left till the following day,
when he will eat :hem pretty well down to the
ground before passing on to attack the tomatoes.
Attempts were sometimes made to drive them off
by lighting smoky fires of half-dried weeds round
the potato-patch, but never once did we succeed in
saving the plants.

As a small boy I was naturally incapable of
entering into the bitter feelings of our elders with
regard to the blister-beetle. Its appearance excited
me and had the exhilarating effect produced by any
and every display of life on a great scale. At the
same time I hated it, not because it devoured the
potato-plants, but for the reason that I had been
feelingly persuaded of its power to produce blisters.
I was out running about in the sunshine all day,
and the air being full of beetles, they were always
dropping upon me and had to be brushed or shaken
off my straw hat, my jacket and trousers and boots
continually ; but from time to time one would get
into my shoe or slip down my neck or creep up my
sleeve to get broken on the skin, and in due time a
pain would set in just at that spot ; then on pulling

THE POTATO AT HOME 811

off my clothes a noble blister would come to light,
a boss of a pale amber colour and a jelly-like
appearance. It was ornamental but pamful, and
I would go sore for a day in that part.

Being a boy naturalist, I tried to discover the
secret of its breeding habits and transformations,
but failed utterly. However, they are known, and
are like those of our familiar English oil-beetle,
which stagger the mind that contemplates the
strange case of a big beetle whose eggs produce
mites-mere an! d specks-endowed with an
extraordinary ac. and a subtle devilish know-

ledge and cunning in building up their own lives
out of others' lives. I did, however, succeed m
discovering one singular fact when on this quest
There is a family of big rapacious flies common al
over the world, the Asilidae, and we have several
species on the pampas, some arrayed in the colours
and markings of bees and wasps. One is black and
has bright red instead of transparent wmgs, and
appears to mimic our common red-winged wasp.
I found out that this fly preyed on the blister-beetle
and it amazed me to see that almost every one of
these flies I could find had one grasped in its teet
and was diligently sucking its juices through its
long proboscis. Yet those juices had so potent a
poison in them that a lew drops of them on a man s
skin would raise a big blister !

Although the potato was very much to me m
those early years, all my feelings regarding it having
originated in the chance discovery of the meek-

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812 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

looking little flower with a delicate perfiime among
the grasses, it grew to be more when I heard the
history of the plant in cultivation, and how it had
been used as food by the Aborigines both in North
and Sout*- America for long centuries before the
dl^covox-y of the great green continent, and just as
the yellow-haired Demeter, the Com Mother, and
her loved lost daughter Persephone, the Corn
Maiden, we-e worshipped in ancient Greece ; and
as the Rice Mother is worshipped in the East, in
many lands and islands ; and as the Maize Mother
and God were worshipped in all the Americas, by
nations savage and civiUsed, so did the Peruvians,
who built temples glittering with gold to their
chief god, the sun, and to the sun's children, the
lightning and rainbow, worship the Potato Mother,
and pray to her to look kindly on their labours
when the seed was committed to the ground and to
give them good increase.

Finally I came to know the history of the
introduction of the potato into these islands by
Sir Walter Raleigh. This action served to make
him appear to me the greatest of all the shining
Elizabethans— greatest in all he thought, said, and
did, good or evil ; as courtier, poet, explc .er and
buccaneering adventurer and seeker after a golden
city in savage wildernesses; as prisoner in the
Tower and author of that most eloquent History
of the World ; and, most beautiful of all, on the
scaffold, by the block, the headsman with his
glittering axe standing by him, when, like a king

THE POTATO AT HOME 818

who was to come after him, he nothing said or did
on that memorable scene to cast a shadow on h-.s
lustre or cause any lover then and in the ages to
follow to grieve at even a momentary weakness on

his part.

All this served to make the potato so important
to me that when I stood among the plants, growmg
higher than mv knees, in their lush-green embossed
leaves and purple bloom, with a cloud of red and
black and yellow and orange and white butterflies
hovering about them, it seemed to me that America
had given the two greatest food-bearing plants to
the world— maize and potato ; and which was the
greatest 1 could not say, although the great maize-
plant was certainly the most beautiful in its green
dress and honey-coloured tresses, which the hot
sun would soon turn to gold and by and by to a
Venetian red of a tint which one sees but rarely
in his life, in the hair of some woman of almost
supernatural loveliness.

The potato, then, as I have said before, was
very much to me. How natural, then, when I
came to England that I should have been shocked
at the sight of my first dish of potatoes on the

table. , J • 4.U-

" Is this the way potatoes are cooked in this

country ? " I asked in astonishment.

"Why, yes; how else would you have them

cooked ? '' I was asked in return ; and they too

were shocked when I said the sight of that sodden

mass of flavourless starch and water made me sick

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814 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

—that it looked like the remains of a boiled baby
in the dish, boiled .to a rag. For up to then I had
seen potatoes on the table as they appear when
boUed in their skins, peeled, and placed in a large
shallow dish with a little butter on them ; and in
that way they have the appearance of large cream-
coloured fruit, and send out an agreeable smell and
have a nice flavour.

Here was quite a different thing : this was the
"homely potato" of the British journalist —
homely indeed !— stripped of its romance, spoiled
in the cooking, and made nasty to the eye. Yet
this is how it is eaten in every house in England 1
In Ireland and Scotland I found that the potato
was usually cooked in the proper way by people
of the peasant class. But what do the doctors,
who make our digestions their life study, say of this
misuse of the potato ? I don't know. All I hear
them say about the potato is that if your digestion
is bad you must not eat it. What, then, will they
say when I tell them that I have a weak digestion,
and whenever I have a bad turn I cure myself by
dining for a day or two on nothing but potatoes ?
Cooked in their skins, I scarcely need add, and
eaten with pepper and salt and butter. No soup
or fish or meats or sweets— nothing but potatoes
for a day or two and I'm weU again. Perhaps they
will say that I am not a normal subject. But we
needn't bother about the doctors. Just now,
while writing this chapter, I asked my landlady's
daughter in the village in Cornwall where I am

THE POTATO AT HOME 815

staying if she had ever tasted a potato boiled in
its jacket. Yes. she had. once only, and didnt
like it because it didn't taste like a potato-such

a funny flavour 1 ., 4. * „f

That " funny " flavour, so unlike the taste 01
the tuber boiled and water-logged in the homely
English way. is precisely the flavour which makes
it so nice to eat and so valuable as food ; also, if
I may slip in the personal pathology or idiosyn-
cratic abnormality, so perfect a cure for indigestion
It is in fact, the taste imparted by the salts which
mostly lie close beneath the skin, and are con-
sequently thrown away when the potato is peeled
before boiling. You cannot avoid this waste by
scraping your potato, since scraping removes the
waterproof skin. and. the skin gone, the boiling
water saturates the potato and carries the salts

away. , ,

This is a serious matter in these days, when—
as some of the newspapers say-we are trying to
economise in the matter of food, and when the
potato is beginning to be talked about. I suppose
that there are about thirty or forty millions of us
who consume about half a pound of potatoes every
day ; and it is not only the case that hundreds of
tons of excellent food are thrown away every day m
the peeling process, but that the most valuable
elements in the potato are wasted. Perhaps the
war will teach us to value the potato properly, as.
I believe, it is and always has been valued m most
countries outside these islands.

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XXVII
JOHN-GO-TO-BED-AT-NOON

A LONGiSH name for a flower— one of its three
names ! After all it is not saying very much ; we
have another better, more familiar one with at
least six names, and one of them not composed of
six words like our John's, but of ten 1

When it is spring I walk in sheltered places, by
wood and hedge-side, to look for and welcome the
first comers. Oh those first flowers so glad to be
alive and out in the sun and wind once more —
their first early ineffable spring freshness, remem-
brancers of our lost childhood, dead and lost these
many dim and sorrowful years, now recovered with
the flowers, and immortal once more with spring's
immortality I

Do we not all experience a feeling something like
that in an early spring walk ? Even a stockbroker
or stockjobber knows a primrose when he sees one,
and it is a yellow primrose to him too — and some-
thing more. A something to give him a thrill. It
is as if he met a fairy-like child in his walk who
tossed back her shining tresses at his approach to
look up into his face with eyes full of laughter.

316

JOHN-GC-TO-BEDATNOON 817

To me they are all like that. Look at this
celandine, how it shines with joy and ^t^^s "P *«
meet you half-way, throwing its arms out for the
expected caress I And here too is my dear oW
little white friend, the wild garhc-a whole merry
crowd of them by the stone hedge ; happy meetmg
and happy greeting ! Let me stoop to caress them
and inhale their warm breath. It is true there are
those who don't like it and take their nice noses
away when the flower would be glad to kiss them.
But when a flower has no fragrance to it, like the
hyacinth and blue columbine of these parts, or even
red valerian-Pretty Betsy herself blushing bright
pink all over-it docs not seem that they love as
warmly as the flower with a scented breath-sweet
violet and sweet gale and vernal squill and cowslip
and many more, down to the water-mmt by the
stream and my loving little white friend here by

the stone hedge.

And when the first early blooms are gone with
March, April, and May, when it is full June, I
wade in the lush meadow (when the farmer is not
about) to greet and talk to the taller ones, and
alas ! to say good-bye to them at the -me^ ti|ne
seeing that the mower will soon come to make hay
of them. One of the old friends I diligently seek
at this season is John, or Johnnie, tall as any there
-tall as the flaunting ox-eye daisies. Not that it
is a particularly attractive flower; I ^^ave never
regarded it as pretty, but merely as one of those
yellow dandelion-shaped flowers which are so

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818 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

common with us. And it is indeed in appearance a
lesser dandelion on a thin tall plant, the blooms,
half-a-dozen or so to a plant, on long fine stems.
It interests me chiefly on account of its singular,
unflowerlike behaviour, which the name describes ;
also on account of its other queer name and the
meanirg theret I don't mean goat's-beard, but
its third old English name which now, like many
another, has grown offensive to ears polite, and has
long been banished from our flower books, and even
the dictionaries. One must go back to the old
writers to find it in print : not necessarily so far
back as Chaucer, who is too disgusting for anything,
but to the Elizabethan and Carolines. The banned
name, however, is still in use in the rural districts.

What I have written so far was all I could have
said about this yellow flower until last summer;
and if in time gone by any one had said to me that
a day would come when Johnnie would appear to
me as a wonder and delight, I should have laughed.
Yet the strange experience actually came to me

last June.

At a Cornish village there was a field near the
cottage where I was staying, where my host had
allowed his half-a-dozen cows to graze during the
winter months : in April he turned them out, and
a month later, passing by the field, it appeared to
me that it would yield him a heavy crop of grass.
One morning in June, looking at the field from a
distance, it struck me that the hay would not be
of a very good quality since the entire area had now

JOHN-GO-TO-BEDAT-NOON 819

turned to bright yellow with some tall flower that
iookedlikeragwortaniongthegrar.es.

" What's happened to your field— what is that
yellow weed in it ? " I said to my man.

" Oh, that's only " then he pulled himself up.

thinking in time that I might be of the polite-eared
tribe " That's a yellow flower," he finished.

"Yes, I set it is," said I. " I'll bnve a look at
your flower after lunch."

But the pleasure of luncheon, especially of the
omelettes my landlady made so wonderfully well,
caused me to forget all about it.

About three o'clock 1 was out walking, halt a
mile from the house, when I looked back from the
high ground at the village beneath me, and my eye
rested on the field about which we had talked that
morning. " Now what was it about that field ?
said I to myself, trying to recover something all
but forgotten. Then I remembered that at noon
it had appeared all a sheet of yellow colour and was
now of a uniform deep rather dull green ! It was
very odd, but I had no time to investigate until
the following morning when, on visiting the field
about ten o'clock, I saw it in all its glory, the
whole area resplendent with its multitudinous
crowded blooms of the dandelion orange-yellow,
the most luminous colour in Nature ; and but for
the wind that waved the tall plants like a field of
com, mingling the vivid flower-tint with the green
beneath, the colour would hav been too dazzling
in that brilliant sunshine. But it was the sunlight

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820 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

and the motion imparted by the wind which made
it so wonderful. A sheet of yellow buttercups or
a field thickly grown with dandelions does not
produce this effect owing to its want of motion.
The stiffer the flower on its stem the less vivid in
appearance is its sentient life — the less does it
enjoy the air it breathes. These flowers, on tall
pliant stems, danced in the wind with a gladness
greater than that of Wordsworth's daffodils. It
was only when the first shock of wonder and delight
was over, that, looking closely at a flower, I made
the discovery that it was the goat's-beard, the
homely John-go-to-bed-at-noon, and the hardly
respectable — I dare not say what I

After that I visited the field three or four times
a day and found that the flower begins to open
some time after sunrise and comes into its fullest
bloom about ten o'clock ; that at noon it begins
to close, but for an hour or two the change is
imperceptible, after which one notices that the
field is losing its lustre, the dimness gradually
growing until by three o'clock the field is all dark
green again. John's in bed, tucked up, and in a
deep sleep which will last quite seventeen hours ;
then he won't wake with a start, but slowly,
slowly, yawning and rubbing his yellow eyes and
taking at least two hours to get out of bed.

I do not know what has been said by the authori-
ties on the physiology of plants on this habit of the
flower, but it strikes the ordinary person as some-
thing abnormal or unnatural. We all know many

JOHN-GO-TO-BED-AT-NOON 821

flowers (the familiar daisy is one) which close in
the evening, folding th. ^es up or covering
their round discs wiH the. ^etals as a child covers
her face with her Augers, and this seems right and
natural and consistent with Nature's plan. We are
not yet acquainted with all the secrets of a flower,
but we at least know that its life and growth are
from the sun and suppose that when the light and
heat are withdrawn the work of elaboration going
on within it is suspended, that the flower is asleep
and at rest until the vitalising influence returns.
Why then the extraordinary waste of daylight by
this one flower, when all others require all the
light and heat they can get? Has Johnnie's
"unconscious intelligence" found out an easier
way— a method of work by means of which he is
able to accomplish in his day of three or four hours
as much as others can do in their twelve to sixteen
hours' day? Johnnie then should be the right
flower for the Socialist to wear on his day, which
would have to be in June.

I had asked my man how he could have let his
field get into such a condition, since the tough wiry
stems of the goat's-beard could not be very good
for his cows as winter feed, and all he could say
was that it " had come like that of itself " ; that
in the two previous years there had been a slight
sprinkling of the yellow flower-he didn't like to
name it. But how it had come about was now
plain to see, for before he started mowing balls of
down could be seen all over the field, shedding

Mr

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822 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

myriads of seeds which would produce another
undesirable but exceedingly beautiful crop the
following summer. The lazy stay-in-bed-for-
seventeen-hours goat's-beard was actually ahead of
the other flowers in ripening its seed !

That shining yellow field, which continues to
shine in memory, just now serves to remind me of
other plants and flowers that, commonly seen, have
no special attraction, but which occasionally find
their day of fullest perfection and triumph on some
abandoned and waste ground — a field perhaps once,
long years ago, under cultivation.

I have described some cases of this kind in
Nature in Downland, where the turf was ruined for
ever by the plough on the high South Downs a
century ago, then left for Nature to work her will on
the desolated spot. But we are most familiar with
the sight of her beautifying processes in the remains
of mediaeval buildings scattered about the land, in
old castles and abbeys and towers, draped with ivy,
the rough stone walls flushed with green and grey and
yellow colours of moss and lichen and rainbow-
tinted algae, decorated too with yellow wallflower,
ivy -leafed toad -flax, and red valerian. Thus
Nature glorifies our " builders of ruins."

And going back to remoter ages, 1 have in my
rambles come upon two wonderfully beautiful
flower effects, one in a Roman road, unused probably
since Roman times; the other more ancient still
on a British earthwork. I found the first one

JOHN-GO-TO-BED-AT-NOON 828

spring day when cycling over the high down country
near Dorchester. I caught sight of what looked to
me like a broad band of snow lying across the green
hills. Coming to it I found the old Roman road,
which is there very distinct and has a closer turf and
a brighter green than the downs it lies across, so
thickly overgrown with daisies that the crowded
flowers were actually touching and had obliterated
the green colour of the ground under them. It was
a wonderful sight, for aU these millions of small
blossoms occupied the road only, not a daisy being
seen on the green down on either side, and the
loveliness was of so rare a quality, so rich yet so
deUcate, a beauty almost supernatural, that I could
not bear to walk or ride on it. It was like a road
leadmg to some unearthly brighter place— some
paradise of flowers.

In the other case the site was an earthwork in
Wiltshire, built probably thousands of years ago,
and the flower selected to decorate it was the
yellow bird's-foot trefoil.

There are in that part of Wiltshire many such
remains, grim dykes, with or without walls at the
side, and walls with a foss on one or in some instances
on both sides. This one was a very deep ditch at
the side of a wall ten to fifteen feet high, with a
flat top eight to ten feet broad. It winds over a
large down then dips down to a broad level valley,
and rising over the hill opposite disappears at last m
the arable land on that side. Standing on the high
down or on the top of the wall it has the shape and

m

824 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

appearance of a vast green serpent with its mile-long
coil lying in a series of curves across the earth. As
in the case of the old Roman green roads, the turf
of the earthwork is a different and brighter shade
of green than that of the valley.

At this place I once met and had a long talk
about the far past with a man of a singularly lively
mind for a Wiltshire peasant. He told me that
on numberless occasions since his boyhood he had
stood looking at this great earthwork in wonder,
asking himself who and what the people were that
made it. " I have often," he said, " had the idea
that they must have been mad ; for allowing that
they had a use for such a wall and ditch why did
they make it go winding all over the place instead
of carrying it in a straight line and saving more than
half the labour it cost to build it ? " I could only
suggest in reply that it was no doubt a very ancient
earthwork, dating back to the time when metal tools
were unknown in England and that the chalk had
to be scooped up with sharp flints ; that when they
came to a very hard bit they had to make a bend
to get round it. I also assured him that they could
not have been mad as no such disease was known
to the old ancient people.

Now in spring the flat top of this earthwork in
all that space where it lies across the level valley,
the broad level top of the bank is grown over with
the bird's-foot trefoil, the yellow flowers as crowded
as the daisies on the old Roman road, with not one
flower to be seen growing on the green sloping

tl s

JOHN-GO-TO-BED-AT-NOON 826

sides. A green serpent stiU in appearance but its
whole back now a shining yellow.

When I dream of South Wiltshire in spnng,
when the wild flowers are in bloom, it is to look
again on that wonderful green and yellow serpent.

§

XXVIII

I

I

THE CHEQUERED DAFFODIL
AND THE GLORY OF WILD FLOWERS

Never a season passes, never a month nor a week,
nor even a day, when I'm wandering in quest of
the sights and sounds that draw the field naturalist,
but I stumble on something notable never pre-
viously seen, or never seen in the same charming
aspect. And the fact that u is stumbled on when
not looked for, that it comes as a complete surprise,
greatly enhances the charm. It may be a bird or
mammal, or some rare or lustrous insect, but it is
in plant life where the happy discoveries are most
frequent, even to one who is not a " painfull and
industrious searcher of plantes " and knows little
of their science. For not only are the species so
nmnerous as to be practically innumerable to one
who desires to see all things for himself, but many
of the most attractive kinds are either rare or
exceedingly local in their distribution. I will give
a few instances.

What a delightful experience it was one cold
sunny day in April when I sought shelter from the
furious wind at a huge rocky headland at Zennor

_

THE CHEQUERED DAFFODIL 827

on the Cornish coast, and found the turf at the
foot of the rocks jeweUed with the first vernal
squills I And what a thrill of joy in Scotland one
June, wh^n coming to a narrow green vaUey
between high rocks and woods I had my hrst
sight of the exquisite grass of Parnassus flowenng

in profusion 1

One day, cycling from Salisbury to Wmter-
boume Gunner, I found a pretty red flower new to
me growing by the roadside in great abundance;
for a distance of three or four hundred yards the
hedge-side was thickly sprinkled with its lovely
little stars. It was a geranium, prettier than any
red geranium known to me, the delicate colour
resembling that of the red horse-chestnut. It was
the Geramum pyrenaicum, native of central and
eastern Europe, and by some botanists supposed to
be indigenous in this country. Probably the colour
varies, as some of the books describe it as purple or

pale purple.

My delight was greater when I first came upon
the large blue geranium growing among the South
Wiltshire downs. The large loose plant with large
flowers and deep-cut leaves reminded me of the
geranium -leafed scented mallow, one of my
favourites, and these two plants became associated
in my mind, but the maUow is -osy pink and the
geranium a pure divine (or human) blue.

One of the rarest, and to my mind one of the
most beautiful, flowers in England is the bastard
balm • I have never found it but once, and it was

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828 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

the way in which it came before me that has given
it such a lustre in my mind. I was motoring with
friends from Land's End to London, when in coming
through the hilly country near Tavistock I caught
sight of a flower unknown to me on a tall stalk
among the thick herbage at the roadside, and
shouted to the chauffeur to stop. He did so after
rushing on a farther hundred yards or so, but very
reluctantly, as he was angry with the hills and
anxious to get to Exeter. I walked back and
secured my strange lovely flower, and for the rest
of the day it was a delight to us, and I'm pretty
sure that its image exists still and shines in the
memory of all who were with me in the car that
day — the chauffeur excepted.

I am bringing too many flowers into this chapter,
since only one is named in the title, but once I
begin to think of them they keep me, and a dream
of fair flowers is as much to me as that Dream of
Fair Women is to the Tennysons and Swinbumes
who write poetry. Or perhaps they are more like
fair little girls than grown women, the beautiful
little dear ones I loved and remember — Alice and
Doris, and pensive Monica, " laughing AUegra and
Edith with golden hair," and dozens more. But
I must really break away from this crowd to
concentrate on my chequered daffodil, only I must
first be allowed to mention just one more — the
blue colmnbine, the wild flower, always true blue
and supposed to be indigenous. I don't believe
it ; I imagine for various reasons that it is a garden

THE CHEQUERED DAFFODIL 829

escape dating back to the Roman occupation, hich
gives it a better title by some eighteen centuries to
be described as British than dozens of our wild
flowers. The charming sanfoin, common as the
gipsy rose in our fields, the wild musk that flourishes
by a thousand streams from Land's End to the
Western Islands, the winter heliotrope that spreads
its green mantle over iO much of England, are by
comparison aliens that emigrated but yesterday

to our shores.

It was in Wiltshire again that I found my first
columbines, in a vast thicket of furze, may. and
blackthorn covering about twenty acres of ground.
The plants were tall, the thin wiry stems being two
or three feet long, and produced few leaves, but
flowers as large as those of the garden plant. An
old keeper who had charge of the ground told me
he had known the flower from his boyhood, and
that formerly he could fill a barrow with " coUar-
binds," as he caUed them, any day. It was a rare
pleasure to see that columbine in its own home—
the big blue quaint flower that looked at you from
its shelter of rough furze and thorn bushes ; and
for the first time in my life I admired it, since m
the garden, where as a rule its peculiar beauty is
dimmed by other garden blooms, it has an mhar-
monious setting. But I must say of the colour
that albeit a true floral blue it is a blue of the
earth, the material worid we inhabit, not the divme
(or human) blue of the blue geranium nor the more
ethereal blue of the vernal squill on the sea-cliffs.

'1'

880 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

and of the wild hyacinth seen in sheets of colour
under the woodland trees. These are the floral blues
that bring heaven down to us.

It is not strange perhaps that this flower should
be known by bird names, but it is odd that the
names should be of birds so wide apart in our
minds as eagle and dove. Aquilegia, because the
inverted tubes at the base of the flower are like
the curved claws of an eagle; and columbine from
its dove-like appearance, each blossom forming a
cluster of fine dark blue fairy fan-tails, with beaks
that meet at the stem, wings open, and tails out-
spread.

This great find made me think that I had come
into a columbine country, and I set out to look for
it, but failed to find or even hear of it anywhere in
that district except at one spot on the border of
Wilts and Dorset. This was a tiny rustic viUage
hidden among high downs, one of the smallest,
loveliest, most out-of-the-world villages in England.
In the small ancient church I found a mural tablet
to the memory of the poet Browning's grandfather,
whose humble life had been spent in that neigh-
bourhood. So rare was it for a stranger to appear
in this lost village that half of the population, all
the forty schoolchildren included, were eager to
talk to me all the time I spent in it, and they all
knew all about the columbine. It had been
abundant half a mile from the village by the hedges
and among the furze bushes, and every summer
the children were accustomed to go out and gather

THE CHEQUERED DAFFODIL 881

the flowers, and they were seen in every cottage ;
and as a result of this misuse the flower had been

extirpated.

They wished it would come again I

If comparatively few persons have seen the blue
tative columbine, just as few perhaps have found,
growing wild, that more enchanting flower, the
snake's-head or fritillary . Guinea-flower and bastord
narcissus and turkey-caps are some of its old
English names, the last still in common use;
but the name by which all educated persons now
call it is also very old. Two centuries and a half
ago a writer on plants spoke of it as " a certaine
strange flower which is called by some FritiUaria."
Another very old name, which I like best, is
chequered daffodil. As a garden flower we know
it, and we also know the wild flower bought m
shops or sent as a gift from friends at a distance.
In most instances the flowers I have seen m houses
were from the Christchurch Meadows at Oxford.

I know what white, what purple firitillaries

The grassy harvest of the river-fields

Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields.

says Matthew Arnold in his beautiful monody;
the wonder is that it should yield so many. But
to see the flower in its native river-fields is the
main thing ; in a vase on a table in a dim room
it is no better than a blushing briar-rose or any
other lovely wild bloom removed from its proper
atmosphere and surroundings.

It was but a twelvemonth before first finding

I

882 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

wild columbine that I had the happiness of seeing
this better flower in its green home, a spot where
it is, perhaps, more abundant than anywhere in
England ; but the spot I will not name, nor even
the county ; the locality is not given in the books
I have consulted, yet it is, alas 1 too well known
to many whose only pleasure in wild flowers is to
gather them greedily to see them die indoors. For
we live indoors and reck not that Nature is de-
flowered, so that we return with hands or arms full
of some new brightness to add to the decoratior > of
our interiors.

Coming one May Day to a small rustic vi!:age,
I passed the schoolhouse just when the children
were trooping back in the afternoon, and noticed
that many of them were carrying bunches of
fritillaries. They told me where they had got
them, in a meadow by the neighbouring river;
then one little ^irl stepped forward and asked me
very prettily to accept her bunch. I took it and
gave her two or three pence, whereupon the other
children, disregarding the imperious calls of their
schoolmistress, who was standing outside, all
flocked round and eagerly pressed their nosegays
on me. But I had as many as I wanted; my
desu-e was to see the flower growing, so I went my
way and returned another day to look for the
favoured spot. I found it a mile from the village,
at a place where the lovely little river divides into
three or four, with long strips of greenest meadow-
land between the currents, with ancient pollard

THE CHEQUERED DAFFODIL 888

willows growing on the banks. These were the
biggest pollards I have ever seen, and were like
huge rudely shaped pillars with brushwood and ivy
for Capitols, some still upright, others leaning over
the water, and many of them quite hollow with
great gaps where the rind had perished. I saw no
chequered daffodils, but it was a beautiful scene, a
green, peaceful place, with but one blot on it— a dull,
dark brown patch where ground had been recently
ploughed in the middle of the largest and fairest
meadow in sight. A sudden storm of rain drove
me to seek shelter at one of the old crumbling
pollards, where, by cramming myself into the
hollow trunk, I managed to keep dry. In half-an-
hour it was over and the sky blue again ; then,
coming out, that brown piece of ground in the
distence looked darker than ever amidst the wet
sun-lit verdure, and I marvelled at the folly of
ploughing up a green meadow in spring ; for what
better or more profitable crop than grass could be
grown in such a spot ?

Presently, as I walked on and got nearer, the
unsightly brown changed to dark purple; then
I discovered that it was no ploughed ground before
me, but a vast patch of flowers— of fritillaries
growing so close that they darkened the earth over
an area of about three acres 1 It was a marvellous
sight, and a pleasure indescribable to walk about
among them ; to stand still in that garden with
its flowers, thick as spikes in a ripe wheat-field,
on a level with my knees ; to see them in such

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884 THE BOnK 07 A NATURALIST

surroundings ui.d i th« wide sky in that lucid
atmosphere after ttie rai i, 'he pendulous cups still
sparkling with the w^t ami trembling in the lightest
wind. It would have been a joy to find a single
blossom; '-ere, to my surprise, they were in
thousan.^ .id in tens and in hundreds of thousands,
an island of purple on the green earth, or rather
purple flecked with white, smce to every hundred
or more dark-spotted flowers there was one of an
ivory whiteness and unspotted.

But it is not this profusion of blossoms, which
may be a rare occurrence — it is the individual
flower which has so singular an attractiveness. It
:3, I have said, a better flower than the blue colum-
bine ; in a way this tulip is better than any British
flower. A tulip without the stiffness and appearance
of solidity which makes the garden kinds look as
if they had been carved out of wood and painted,
but pendulous, like the harebell, on a tall slender
stem, among the tall fine -leafed grasses, and
trembling like the grasses at every breath; in
colour unlike any other tulip or any flower, a pink
that is like a delicate, luminous flesh -tint, minutely
chequered with dari maroon purple.

Our older writers on plants waxed eloquent in
describing their " fritillaria " or " Ginny-flower,'
and even the driest of modem botanists writes that
it is a flower which, once seen, cannot be forgf^tten.
That is because of its unlikeness tt all other —its
strangeness. In the arrangement » f its colou s it
is unique, and furthermore, it is the darkest ii wer

THE CHEQUERED DAFFODH. 885

wc have. This effect is dy^ t< the smallness of the
tesselUted squares, since at a distance of a few feet
the dark violet maroon kilts or a sorbs the bright
delicate pink c-olour, and n Jtes e enti e blossom
appear unitormly dart

Tlic flower which, combining strange .ess with
beauty, comes nearest to the chequered daffodil is
the henbane, with an exceedingly dark purple
centre and petals a pale clouded amber yellow
delicately veined with purple brown. But m the
henbane the dark and pale hues are seen ontrasteti.
In flowers like these, but ch.efly in the che. lered
daffodil, we see that the quality of Strang ness,
which is not in itself an elei. ent of beauty. I as
yet the effect of inteiisifvutg the beautv is
associated with. Thus, if we consider other tmired
species-briar-rose, pink convolvulus rr w-rose,
,ea-poppy, yeli>w flag, bugloss. blu .ran mm.
water forget-tne-not, flowering ru'^h. am grass of
Parnassus, for example-and many mon might be
named— we see that in beauty, nuie and sin pie,
these eqiml and exceed the fntillary vet this
impresses more than the others ai prises

us into thinking it aore beauti ^^^s^»*^

beauty strike, us more sharply It is ^* sufficient
to say that the sharper impres^.on is due nerely to
the unusual appearance. I rather incline to believe
that the source of the vivid interest excited is that
faculty of the mind supposed m be obsolete, but
which stiU faintl lives in all of u., hough we may
be unconscious i it-a faculty which sees a hidden

^ i

886 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

meaning or spirit in all strange appearances in the
natural world. It is the " sense of mystery," and
is with us in sight of a magnificent and strange
sunset, and of any unusual atmospheric strange-
ness, down to the smallest objects that engage our
attention— an insect, a flower, even our chequered
daffodil of the river-fields.

XXIX

CONCERNING LAWNS, WITH INCIDENTAL
OBSERVATIONS ON EARTHWORMS

I AM not a lover of lawns; on the contrary, I
regard them, next to gardens, as the least interesting
adjuncts of the country-house. Grass, albeit the
commonest, is yet one of the most beautiful things
in Nature when allowed to grow as Nature intended,
or when not too carefully trimmed and brushed.
Rather would I see daisies in their thousands,
ground ivy, hawkweed, and even the hated plantain
with tall' stems, and dandelions with splendid
flowers and fairy down, than the too-well tended
lawn grass. This may be regarded as the mental
attitude of the wild man from the woods, but
something may be said for it. Sir Walter Raleigh
explained, centuries ago, the reason of our desire
for and pleasure in trim gardens, lawns, parks, and
neatly cut hedges of box and privet and holly :
those surroundings of the house were invented as
a refuge from the harsh, brambly outside wilderness,
the stinging nettles, scratching thorns, sharp hurt-
ful stones and hidden pits— from all the roughnesses
and general horriblenesses of an incult Nature.

S37 z

i

888 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

But that's aU a feeling of long ago, it may be
answered ; it has gone out now, and we have come
back to Nature— the dear old beautiful mother I
Have we indeed ? Lawns have not gone out ; on
the contrary, it appears to me that the idea of
the lawn, like the idea of clothes, has entered into
our souls and manifests itself more and more in all
our surroundings, our dwellings, our persons, our
habits. Su- Ahnroth Wright cried out a little whUe
ago against our habit of scrubbing our bodies every
day and rubbing them dry with rough towels to
poUsh and make them shine like our glass, china,
and plated table-ware. When Nathaniel Haw-
thorne came to the Old Home from an outlandish
United States of America where this idea of the
lawn had not yet penetrated so deeply, he spent
some time at a great country-house where he
stayed in running about the lawns and park in
search of a nettle, or weed, or wilding of some kind
to rest his eyes on. The novel smoothness and
artificiality of everything made him mad. And
if Sir Walter Raleigh himself were to return to us
in all his glory and splendour, and if some one,
opening the History of the World, should read that
passage about lawns to him, I think he would cry
out : " Oh, but you have now gone too iar in that
direction I Your rooms, your tables, all the
thousand appointments of your establishment,
your own appearance, your hard -scraped skins,
your conversation suffocate me. Let me out —
let me go back to the place I came from ! "

CONCERNING LAWNS 889

What then of aU the beautiful things we say of
Nature ? it may be asked. Why, only this : it
amounts to as much as all the beautiful things we
say about painted pictures, jewels, tapestries, old
lace, Chippendale furniture, and what not. We
are not in Nature ; we are out of her, having made
our own conditions; and our conditions have
reacted upon and made us what we are— artificial
creatures. Nature is now something pretty to go
and look at occasionally, but not too often, nor for

too long a time.

So much in defence of my attitude concerning
lawns. There is no doubt that, seen at a right
distance, a fine country-house or mansion, standing
isolated from other buildings and from trees and
gardens, looks best on a level green expanse. At
this moment I recall Shaw House, Avington House,
and two or three others, but every reader who
knows England will have the image of half-a-dozen
or more such buildings in his mind.

Now I think that this grass setting would be
just as effective or more effective if left more in its
natural state. Seen closely, the smooth lawn is a
weariness to the eye like all smooth monotonous
surfaces ; like the smooth or oily unwrinkled sea,
for example, which the eye refuses to dwell on ; or
like the blue sky without a cloud or a soaring bird
on it. Such a sky may be good to be under but
tiresome to the vision after three seconds. If you
look at it for a whole minute, or for an hour without
weariness, it is because you are thinking of some-

840 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

thing, which means that you are occupied with
seeing mental unages and not the sky. An acre
or so of green linoleum or drugget, drawn evenly
and smoothly over the ground surrounding a large
house, would probably have as good an effect as a
perfectly smooth grass lawn. But into this question
I am not going any further. I write about lawns
because there are such things, and I have to see
them and sometimes live, in sight of one. I have
had one before my eyes for hours this very day
while staying at a friend's house in the country.
A week ago I went up to London for a couple of
days, and on my return piy hostess informed me
that I had no sooner left than the gardener pre-
sented himself before her to ask her if now that her
visitor had gone away for a day or two she would
allow him to sweep the lawn and make it tidy.

It was a good-sized lawn, with a group of well-
grown birches on the west side, and one day in
early November the south-west wind blew and
carried thousands of small yellow heart-shaped
leaves over the green expanse, making it beautiful
to look at. By and by the gardener came with his
abhorred brushwood-broom and swept that lovely
novel appearance away, to my great disgust. Then
the blessed wind blew again and roared all night,
swaying the trees and tossing out fresh clouds on
clouds of the brilliant little leaves all over the
monotonous sheet of green, and lo 1 in the morning
it was beautiful once more. And I stood and
admired it, and it was like walking on a velvet

CONCERNING LAWNS 841

green carpet embroidered with heart-shaped golden
leaves. Naturally, when I saw the gardener coming
on with his broom, I cried out aloud and brought
the lady of the house on the scene, and she graciously
ordered him off. It was only when I went up to
town that he was allowed to work his will.

I now propose to tell the story of another lawn
of which I had the supervision for two or three
months; a small lawn at a cottage surrounded by
green fields lent to me by a friend one summer
end • it was mowed and looked after generally by
a man who came once a week from the village,
and he also had the garden to see after. In July
and August, when the sun was low enough to
allow one to sit out of doors and of the shade of
trees I lounged and read and drai:k my tea there
and noticed that it was abundantly sprinkled with
plantains. Now I don't mind plantains on a lawn
because, as I have already said and ingeminated
lawns are nothing to me unless flowers are allowed
to blossom and leaves blown from coloured woods
to lie on them, but I remembered my friends who
had lent me their paradisaical retreat with its
areen lawn from which, idl^rg in my canvas chair.
I looked on a green valley and a swift chalk stream
with coots and moorhens disporting themselves on
it. and beautiful hanging woods beyond. I remem-
bered them, and in my desire to do somethmg to
express my gratitude I said I would clear this one
lawn of its plantains.

Going to the tool-house, I found a long, narrow,

842 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

sharp-pointed trowel, which was just what I wanted,
and also saw there an important-looking weed-
killing instrument and a can of poison, which I
certainly did not want. I started taking up the
plantains, working the trowel down to the end of
the root so as to leave nothing of the tenacious
cunning creature in the ground. By and by the
man from the village came and saw the beginning
of my work— my little harvest gathered from four
or five square yards of lawn. He smiled, and
when I asked him why he smiled, he said the lawn
had been in that condition for the past ten years
and nothing could be done to get rid of the plantains.
He couldn't say how many quarts of poison had
been squirted into the roots, but they refused to
die, and so on and so forth. On his next visit he
found a huge heap of uprooted plantains in the
middle of the lawn, left there for his special benefit,
and not one growing plantain left on the lawn.

"Ah, yes," he said— it was just what I had
expected him to say—" the fact is I've never had
the time to do it properly. Always too busy with
the rose garden, and plantains take a lot of time,
you know. Certainly we did what we could with
the weed -killer, but it seems it didn't amount

to much."

What it amounted to was this : here and there
all about the lawn were round brown spots, the
size of a crown-piece or larger, where the grass had
perished and refused to grow again. These un-
sightly spots marked the places where plantains

CONCERNING LAWNS »«•

h«i been destroyed by the w"^**""- *' T^
point of which is thrust into the centre of the
^t.nd the poison squirted in. Now th« poison
does not kiU the pUnUin only but the roots of the
passes as well-hence the naked brown spots.
How long does the poison keep its potency m the
™oL mould t A long time. 1 should thmk. seeing
that these naked spots were some -"ontl^ ^d I
also wanted to know if the po«on was deadly to
other forms of life in the soU, especially to earth-
w«^r To ascerUin this I took up mould enough
Tr^rone of the barren spots to fill a flower-pot^
to ftUed a second flower-pot with -""uKl/"'"
oSide the lawn, then went to the --g'^^^J^
the back to dig for worms, and selecting two f>d -
irown vigorous specimens, put one m each pot
f^e following day I turned them out a«d^ found
that the first one had lost its vigour, and not only
was it languid in iU motions, but the colour had
changed tfa dull pink and had wholly lost the
rain^w bloom of the healthy earthworm. There
Z no change in the healthy colour and activity
of the second worm. 1 put them back m their
respective pots and examined them a?"™ "«"*
rr the first was dead, its body a dull red and
flabbv The second was still just as strong and
Sve and of as fresh and healthy a colour as when
first taken from the earth.

I was SHUsfied that weed-killers are even more
potent than I had thought them. As a bird-love^
i had always hated them on account of their

il

A
■it

844 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

destructiveness to the small birds of the homestead,
the blackbird and song-thrush, chaffinch, robin,
dunnock, and other species that are accustomed
to seek for small morsels on the gravelled walks
where these poisons are so much used by gardeners
to extirpate the small hardy weeds that root them-
selves in such places.

I didn't pursue the matter further, and the
subject of lawns and earthworms was out of my
mind for two or three weeks when something
happened at the end of August to revive my interest
in it. There came a wet day followed by a gale of
wind which lasted a part of the night, and next
morning I found that the wind in its violence had
well-nigh stripped a row of young false acacia
trees growing on the south side of their still living
green leaves and sprinkled them abundantly all
over the lawn. As I sat out of doors that afternoon
I didn't quite like the disorderly appearance of the
long green leave?; torn off before their time lying
all about me, and I took it into my head to sweep
them away, but when I set myself to do it with
the brushwood broom, not a leaf could I sweep
from its place ! I then discovered to my surprise
that the leaves were all made fast to the ground ;
every leaf had been seized and dragged by an
earthworm to its run, the terminal leaflet rolled
up and pulled into the hole, but no further could
the leaf go, since the next two opposite leaflets on
the stem were like a cross-bar and prevented further
progress. In every case the terminal leaflet was

CONCERNING LAWNS 846

buried and the rest of the leaf lying out on the

grass.

We know that earthworms live on the vegetable
mould in which they move and have their being,
and nourish themselves by passing the earth they
remove in excavating their tunnels through their
bodies. It is assumed by naturalists that they
extract certain " salts " on which they live from
the soil they swallow. But as the worm is not a
vegetable I prefer to believe that they exist on the
microscopic organisms in the mould. Be this as
it may, the worm does not live by mould alone ;
he is also a vegetable eater and feeds on decayed
leaves of trees when they fall in his way, dragging
them into his hole by night. But the leaf he
prefers is the decayed one. and it struck me that
these lawn worms were in an extraordinary state
of leaf-hunger to seize upon and drag these fresh
living leaves into their holes as soon as the wind
had torn them off.

The conclusion I formed was that the lawn
earthworm is a starved worm, and I began to
examine and compare the lawn worms with those
living in the soil away from the lawn. I found
that when I dug for worms in the moist earth m
likely spots away from the lawn, the mere act of
striking the spade or fork deep into the soil brought
the worms with a rush to the surface, and in many
instances the rush was so rapid that at the moment
when the spade was being driven deep down by
the foot, a big vigorous worm would appear on the

846 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

surface thrusting half the length of his long body
straight up and looking like the round polished
stem of some species of squill or lily springing
miraculously from the earth. Worms, I found, are
extraordinarily sensitive to earth vibration : thus
when one walks upon or strikes the ground with a
stick, they go deeper down ; but when the vibra-
tions come from beneath or from the earth around
them, they rush to the surface to escape from a
subterranean enemy pursuing them in their own
element. On the lawn I never succeeded in making
the worms rush up to the surface by striking a
spade or fork into the soil ; and when I dug up a
number of worms from the lawn and compared
them with others from the soil outside, I found a
great difference in them. The lawn worms were
much smaller and were not nearly so vigorous in
their movements as the others. The wonder was
that worms should be found living in such numbers
in the lawn soil in these somewhat unnatural
conditions, when just outside the lawn there was
a soil easier to penetrate and abundance of decaying
leaves for them to feed on.

These incidental observations on earthworms in
their relation to lawns caused me to regret that I
had not made a better use of my opportunities of
studying these creatures on former occasions, as
it now appeared to me that much yet remains to
be discovered anent their habits and effect on the
soil and vegetation. My knowledge of them was
little more than that of the ordinary person, and

CONCERNING LAWNS M7

how much he knows about the subject let the
following incident show.

One evening I was with Mr. Frank E. Beddard
at his club, and ta' 'ng advantage of the occasion,
asked him some question about earthworms, he
being the greatest authority in the universe on the
subject. It happened that another friend of his,
a famous angler, was sitting net and overheard our

conversation.

" Ah, yes— worms," he said. " Before I forget
all about it, I want to ask you if the worm we dig
up in the sand for bait is the same as the common
earthworm."

" No," said the other.

"Well, but they are both worms, are they

not ? "

" Yes." ,

"And if they are both worms, what s the

difference ? "

" They are both worms, and differ as much as a
cat from a squirrel — ^both mammals."

And that was all he would say : the subject of
their differences could not be profitably discussed
on that occasion and with persons who knew so

little. . , , .

Like everybody else I had read Darwin s classic,
but what one reads does not inform the mind
much unless one observes and thinks for oneself
at the same tirae. The wonderful story of the
action of earthworms on the earth's surface only
came home to mc during the excavations at

1

848 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

Silchestcr, when year after year the pavcmenU and
floors and foundations of hoiises and temples and
public and private baths were uncovered until the
entire 200 acres within the walls had been dis-
closed. It is not necessary to describe here, since
we have it all in Darwin, just how the worms
succeeded in burying in a century or two all that
remained of a ruined Silchester— the outside wall
excepted— to a depth of three to four feet beneath
the surface. We know that for the last 800 years
the groimd has been cultivated above the buried
city. When watching these excavations 1 dis-
covered one fact about worms which Darwin
missed. Among the best finds at Silchester were
the large and in some cases uninjured mosaic
floors of the more important houses, some of
which were removed intact to Reading Museum,
and may be seen there.

When one of these fine large floors was un-
covered it remained in situ until the late autimin,
when it was taken up and removed. Observing
these floors, after they had been washed and scrubbed
until they looked as fresh as if made yesterday
instead of nigh on twenty centuries ago, it surprised
me to find that worms were quite abundant beneath
them, that they came to the surface through small
borings which were not noticed imless closely
looked for; they came up by night, and in the
morning the workmen had to sweep the castings
away to make the floors clean. The question that
suggested itself was : why did the worms continue

CONCERNING LAWNS 84i»

to penetrate beneath the stone and cement fl. or
after it had been buried so deep in the ground,
and when they had, and had enjoyed fc over a
thousand years at the least sell formed of
vegetable mould as deep as earthworvas rt<^ure to
live and flourish in ? A depth of thrcr or four feet
of mould is as much as they require, but they will,
Darwin s>*vs. occasionally ^o deeper to five or six
feet and he gives nine feet as the greatest depth
at which they have been found. Now at Silchester
I saw some taken from a depth of twenty five feet,
and very many at eighteen to twenty feet. This
was when the old Roman wells and other deep
pits were cleaned out.

It struck me that these Silchesttr observations
made a valuable contribution to a history of the
earthworm's life habits. For it should be borne
in mind that the soil covering the buried city is a
rich mould, which has been under cultivation for
the last nine or ten centuries, and is the kind of
soil in which the earthworm finds his l>est con-
ditions and attains his greatest size and vigour.
Consider next that the soil in the deep pits and
everywhere beneath the Roman pavements is a
cold, heavy, hardly-pressed earth undisturbed for
many centuries, unpierced by root of plant or ray
of sun, and probably to a great extent devoid of
the microbic life which makes the upper soil alive.
When you turn over this long-buried soil with the
spade it has a heavy damp smell, but not the
famiUar earth-smell of Clodotkrix odorifera. Yet

H

I
It

850 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

down in this dark dead soil the worms will insist
on descending, although their only way to it is
through the few small cylindrical holes they have
succeeded in boring through the partially rotted
cement between the tiles, or where a minute stone
has dropped out of the tesserae pavements. Their
descent into these difficult places and down into
the old pits involves long double journeys daily
when they are forced to come up to deposit their
castings on the surface.

What then is the force impelling them ? Why
do they leave a rich feeding-ground for a poor one ?
I take these facts in their relation to other well-
known facts, as for example that of the quite
extraordinary difference in size and vigour and
colouring in the earthworms inhabiting different
soils. They are like different species. Let us take
the case of the London earthworm to be found in
every few square yards of earth unbuilt on, even
in the very heart of the City itself. Judging from
all the specimens I have examined, this wonn
attains to about half the full normal size and is
comparatively languid in his movements and rarely
exhibits the brilliant play of colours seen in the
large country worm in rich soil — the colour which
is the sign of intensity of life. Doubtless he was
once a big vigorous worm, but that was long ago
in an old London, or Londineum, and he has had
ample time to degenerate. In this state he is now
biding his time, under our feet, and his time will
come when our seven millions have faded or

CONCERNING LAWNS

851

drifted away; then indeed he will recover his
power, and slowly, patiently, unhasting and un-
resting, day and night, year by year, century
after century, he will labour to sink away brick
and stone beneath the surface and cover it all with
a deep rich mould and a mantle of everlasting

verdure.

Then we have the earthworms inhabiting heaths
and all sandy soils throughout the land. They are
no better than the London earthworms. One day
last autumn I found the gardener at the house in
a pine wood where I was staying at Ascot digging
potetoes. I took a spade and went to him and
started digging for worms at his side. There was
a magnificent crop of potatoes, as it has been
everywhere this autumn of 1918, but the earth-
worms we turned up were few in number and very
poor specimens. " It is useless," said the gardener,
" to look for a big worm here— I never see one. It
is the sand that starves them."

I am not sure that this is a sufficient explana-
tion : in the rich soils in these highly cultivated
gardens in this heath and pine district where
wealthy people have their homes, the worms, one
would think, must find sufficient nourishment. It
is more probable that their poor condition is due
to something inimical to earthworms in the sand

itself.

On the chalk, where the soil is thm, as m the
sheep-walks, the earthworms are comparatively
small in size, but vigorous and quick in their move-

if

v.).

852 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

ments amidst the interlacing fibrous roots of the
close turf. In the hollow places between the hills,
where a deeper soil has been formed, the worms
attain to their full size— all which goes to show
that chalk itself is not inimical to worms. In
heavy clays the appearance of the worms show that
the conditions are not favourable.

Thus vc see that earthworms are perpetually
invading and peopling all soils, good and bad;
also that if you have a piece of hard ground barren
of food for worms and free of worms, where for
long years they have not been permitted to exist,
they will constantly flow in from all the surrounding
rich soils where worms abound and flourish in order
to get possession of it. The cause, I take it, is that
the earthworm abhors the soil frequented by other
worms, which is impregnated with the acid the
worm secretes and discharges into the soil. The
acid spoib the ground for him, and he prefers to go
outside into the most barren and unsuitable places
to remaining in it. And the perpetual desire
to get away and seek pastures new is the reason
of the wide distribution of the earthworm, of its
universality, so that there is not a clod on the
surface of the earth without a worm for inhabitant.

Three or four days after witnessing the remark-
able phenomenon I described some pages back—
the rush of hungry earthworms to secure a windfall
of leaves torn before their time from the trees and
consequently not well suited to their masticating
powers— I paid a visit at a country-house a few miles

CONCERNING LAWNS 858

away, and found there one of the finest lawns I had
ever seen. The old Georgian house was built on an
eminence overlooking the valley and stood in the
centre of a square and perfectly flat piece of ground,
which ^ as all lawn ; then the ground sloped on
all 8 Jes to a terrace, and slope and terrace were all
lawn too and one with the level ground above.
The great extent and marvellous smoothness of
this lawn filled me with admiration— when I saw
it at a distance ; but I no sooner set foot on it
than I began to quarrel with it. To begin with,
the ground was hard; there was no elastic, no
real turf; it was like walking on flagstones. Noth-
ing but grass grew on that Uwn, not in a matted
turf, but each grass or grass plant by itself, so
that when looking closely down at one's feet
one saw the hard ground between the blades and
roots. On all that ground there was not a daisy
to be seen, nor any of the small creeping plants
and clovers usually found on lawns.

Before my visit was over I succeeded in getting
hold of the gardener and asked him how he managed
to keep his large lawn so clean and smooth. He
took it that I was praising his work and began to
tell me what a tremendous task it was to keep it m
that perfect condition.

" But I think," said I, " that if you would call
in the earthworms to help you and did less yourself
vou would have a better lawn."
* At first he thought I was joking and was much
amused. Earthworms, he assured me, were the

M A

854 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

wont enemies of lawns— they made such a mess I
His greatest trouble was to keep them down. He
was always going round with a bucket of brine,
particularly about the lower borders, where they
were always trying to come in, and poured the
brine down their holes. Brine was the best worm-
killer he knew ; and the result of his care and use
of it was that you wouldn't be able to find a worm
on all that immense lawn.

I asked him if he could not understand that it
was no pleasure to walk or sit or lie on a lawn
where the ground was always dry and hard in spite
of all the watering he gave it. To walk on his
lawn tired and depressed me, whereas on the
chalk-hill behind the house I could walk miles with
pure delight, simply because it was a close-matted
turf and was felt beneath the feet like a pile-carpet
drawn over a thick rubber floor. It lifted me when
I walked on it, and was better than the most
luxurious couch to lie on, to say nothing of the
pleasure one received from the sight of its small
gem-like flowers and from its aromatic scent. As
to the castings, they were unpleasant only when
the lawn was wet in the morning, and only then
when the grass was too thin. You do not see the
castings on the thick turf on the downs, although
if you take up a sod you find earthworms at the
roots in abundance.

Well, he answered, a lawn could not have a turf
like a chalk-hill fed by sheep, because— such a turf
wasn't the right one for a lawn to have. Then, as

CONCERNING LAWNS 856

this seemed a rather poor argument, he suddenly
brightened up and said : " And what about the
moles ? Do you know that with a large lawn like
this, with grass fields all round it, you are always
in danger of getting a mole-that is to say if there
are any earthworms to attract him. And a mole
can disfigure a lawn as much as if you had made a
furrow with a plough across it."

No doubt he was right there ; but when I said
that moles could be kept out by sinking a rabbit
net to a depth of two or three feet beneath the
surface and would save a lot of labour and expense,
he only smiled and shook his head.

The gardener, like the gamekeeper, is never a
person who will allow you to teach him anything,
but after our conversation I was more convinced
than ever that it would be better for the lawn if,
instead of killing and starving the worms, we were
to feed them and allow them to make and keep

a turf. „ ,

With this idea in my mind I tried a fresh expen-
ment. I pegged out a strip of the lawn at the
cottage, about ten feet wide, and ran a cord on each
side to keep it distinct from the rest of the ground,
and over that strip I sprinkled leaves from the
acacia ana other trees abundantly. I examined the
ground on the following day and saw no change
Leaves were still lying thickly on the ground, and
it was im "e to tell whether any had been
carried awa, or not. The next day it was the
same. On the morning of the third day there was

MM THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

something new to note : it looked as if the wonns
inhabiting the quartered-off ground had suddenly
developed a wonderful vigour and activity, or as
if a rush of worms from all over the lawn to that
favoured spot had taken place. The ground was
thickly sprinkled over with castings, mostly under
the herbage, although after a careful search I could
not find a single casting anywhere else on the lawn.
It was evident that the worms had been taking the
leaves into their runs and feeding greedily on them,
and I confidently expected that the result would
be that m a little while the turf on the marked
strip of ground would be thicker, greener, more
elastic to the tread. Unfortunately I was obliged
to leave the place when the experiment was just
at its beginning, so that nothing was proved ; and
I hope that some reader of this paper, who possesses
a lawn, or is about to form one, will carry the
matter further and try to find out whether or not
a better result may be had by encouraging the
earthworms to work with and for us instead of
regarding them as enemies and trying to suppress
them.

i !

r

INDEX

Aeherontia atroptu, 2n-^9
Adder., the quest of, 15 ; diwuning
of 19 ; wamom for not kilUng,
ao-as; iwallowing their young,
21 ; mewuring, 25 ; <»Pt«jn'»8!
28-9 ; beautiful colour* in, 29-82
Adder-stone, Itt
Asouti, beauty of the, 288
ABebaVan. ^ intelUgent vwitor

ftom, 87-40
Aldermarton, snake pre^rve at. 17
Ants, a danger to fledgehngs, S-e ,

9-10; 18-U
Aquikgia. See Columbine
Ardea cinerea and A. eocm. a«
Heron ,

Arnold. Matthew, serpent poetry of,
195-7 ; lines on fntillary, 881

Badoer, encounter with a, 61-3
Bamtt, Chariefi, on ants destroying

fledgelings in Australia, 14
Bastard bdm, beauty and ranty of
the, 827 , -

Bats. Pliny on. 88 ; geneakw of.
88-« ; how Nature made, B'-*' •
ferocity of, 41-2 ; migration. 4i-
44 ; sense organs. 44-0 ; tuvier
and Spallanaani on extra senses
in, 45-8; J. G. Millais on facul-
ties of, 49 ^ .^
Beddard, Dr. F. E., an authority on

earthworms. 347
Bell's BTitith Quadrupedn, campaign

asainst moles related in. 110
JNdb nwro. See Blister-beeUe
Birds, stories about, 74-83
Birds-foot trefoil, on a prehistoric

earthwork. 828-5
BUster-beetle, myuhe* ot tiie^W» ,
appearance and Kniell of, aw» , «
rapacious fly enemy of, 811
Book of the Serpent, a, 186
Breydon Water, herons Ashing in,
102

Britton. J., a story of a tox told by,

5« , . „»

Browne, Sir Thomas, on fear ol

serpents, 178 ^^

Browning, grandfi»ther of the poet,

380 . ,. . . ^.

Byron, poUto with vinegar de-
voured by, 808

Caius, Dr., Uie British dogs of,

250
Cantharides, 800

Cat, friendship of, with rat, 384-7
Chaucer, 818 , _ .^.„

Chequered daffodil. S« Fntillarjr
' Chimngham. the white bull of, his
low place in the scheme of things.

Chinchilla, beauty and grace or,

287
Clodothrix odori/era, 849
Cobbe. Miss Frances Power, an

admirer of Schopenhauer, 292
ColumMne, the blue, in bngland,

828-31
Cormorant struggling with eel, 98 ;

jwajict, 288 ^ t A

Crolatua durissua. New England

rattlesnake, 205
Cuvicr. on senses of baU. 4.'i-8

Daisies, on old Komaii Road. 822
Danish farmer, imaginary conversa-
tion with a Wiltshire pig-keeper,
298~0
Darwin, on the origin of the
domestic dog. 275; on earth-
worms. 848-9
Daw, history of a tame. 77-8
Death by accident in wild life. 99
Death s-'head moth, seen in num-
bers. 217-19
Demeter. the Com Mother, Sli
Dob, the little red. character and
iiecdotes of. 288-4tt

357

858 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

Do||, Mendly with lamb, IM;
effect of muBBUng order oo. %4lt-
SM : Mtifldal inaUnoU in, STS

Doiiohotia, • Patacouian rodent,
187

Eartliwonns, effect of weed-ldUer
on, 848 : habits of, in relation to
lawna, 845-a : London, 8M-51 ;
heath and landy aoil, 881 ; chalk
■oil, 851 -8 ; catue of wide dis-
tribution of, 853-6

EUe Venner Infelix, SOB

tSpieaula adtperta. See Blister-
beetle

Fayrer, Sir Joseph, a great ophio-
lo^, 197

Fer-de-lance, an impression of the.
188

Flea, origin of the, 86

Floweis, oeautv and charm of wild,
8i6 ; adorning waste lands and
ruins, 822 ; on on old Roman
road, 828 ; on a prehistoric
earthwock, ?S8-5 ; rare and local,
828

Fox, beauty of the, 60-54 ; senti-
ment concerning the, 55 ; a
South American music-lovinR,
58 ; adventures of a three-legged,
50-62

Fox terrier, character of the, 258

Fiitillary, appearance of, seen
growing in profusion, 381 -4 ;
beauty and singularity of th<-,
334-6

Geranium, «'.'. pyrettaicuni, 827 ;

the blue, 827
Ghost-mnth, dance of tlic, 921-2
Glanvillr, I'^mest, on the African

Icunti, liH-0
Goat'it-beard, various folk-names of,

:n7-Itt ; singulur hohit of, 318-22
Ciould, earliest writer on habits of

ants, 251
Grass of I'lirnoHsus, Ix-uMtv of the,

827
Grey, Viwount, squirrel* tamed by,

238
Guaniuii, u |iet, in I'atagnnia and

itr liabitM, 125
Guinea (or (iinny) itower. Set

Kritillury
(iuira ruekoo, u niouiie-killer, 07

Hake, Dr. GorJon, striK-nt jKM'fry
of. 107-200

Hawk-motiM, 217; deaUiVhcad,
917-10 : erimaon underwing, Sl»-
Sai ; hummiaf-btid. 199-4

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, cbaraeter of
his genhia, 908-4 ; in search of a
weed, 888

HeroD, bathing, 08 ; strange adven-
ture with a, 94-0 ; flight of the,
108 ; a ghostly bird, 104 ; as a
Ubie-bird, 106-12

Heronry, a great, 47

Hobnea, Oliver Wendell, story of a
serpent girl, 901-0

Hopley, BUM C. C, on the serpent's
tongue, 189; her pet slow-
worm, 988

Horse, habit of a tamed wild, 110-
122 ; twitching muscle in the,
220

House-martin, accidentally killed,
98

Humming-bird, flight in the, 47 ;
hawk-moth, 222-4

Huxley, on monographs, 100

Icanti, African serpent myth, 150

James, Henry, on living in a pine

wo«)d, 8
John -go -to -bed at -noon, singular

habit of, 816

Keats, serpent poetry of, 200
Kidd, Benjamin, humble-bees tamed
by, 232, 280

L4tccpede, on the serpent's uses, 186
IiOgidium, an Andean rodent, 287
L4ing, Andrew, on drawing-room

dogs, 202-4
Lawns, feeling about, i)87 ; Sir

Walter Haleigh quoted, 387-8;

in relation to earthworms, 340-

344
I^ibnitz, on a talking doff, 270
lemurs, beauty ^md docility of the,

28fl-7
Lindsay, Dr. louder, Mental Lucht-

tion quoted, 279 : on (he dog'M

Hpiritiial nature, 'iHH
Long, Sir Walter, dog-muzaUng

order of, 252
Luys, l/r., the revolving mirror of,

140

MacTogioaaa tUUalantm, 224
Maize Mother, ancient worship of
ttic, 312

INDEX

859

Mallow, gennium-lealled toented,

MT
lUrmoMt, charm of the domesti-

oatcd, S85
MMinot. the prairie, 287.8

Mental evolution of animali, 281

Merry-lee^dance-a-pole, folk-name
of a hawk-moth. 22-2

MillaiM, J. (i., on the aeiun of baU,
48

Mole, whether injurioiu or not, 118-
118; periecutlon of the, in
tVanoe, 116; impending de-
■truction of the, 116; the
■trenuoiM, 225-7; twitching
muacle of the. 227-ai

Morri«, Mowbray, on dog» and their

detractors, 291
Mother of the Wateia, the mythical

■eriient, lAB
Mum dteumanut, 288
Muahroonu, growing in nngi, 104

Natterjack, music of the, 89
Nunn. Mr. Joseph, the sparrows |
friend, 114

Origin of Speeira, 214
Owl. iU supernatural repuUtlon.
165

Painted snipe, caught in a mussel-
shell, 99 „^
Peaches and jieach-stones, 807
Pig, social disposition of the, 2»5 ;
a friendly. 297-:W2 ; a forest
animal, 298; eating elder-bcrnes,

aoi . .■ t

Pine-snake, beauty and motions of

the. 155 ^ .. .

Pine woods, effect of bving in, 1 ,
wildlife in, 414

Pipit, a fascinated, 149

Potato, the wild. :m ; cultivated.
.'KM • eaten with oil and vinegar.
am ! ravages of the blister-
beetle. 809-11; Mother of the.
312 • manner uf cooking the. m
England. 81« ; what the d«K-tors
•ay, 314

Raleigh, Sir Walter, a shmmg
Elixabethan, M'i ; his praise ol
gardens and lawns, 887-8

Rat, the unloved, 233 ; friendship
with rat, 23V7

Rice Mother. 812 ., , ,. /

Romanes. Dr.. Menlol Evolution of
Animati; 281

Rooks, their looae todal law, 79-

88
Royal Society for the Protection

of Birds : Bird and Tree Day

essays by school children, 6
Ruskin, on the serpent's tongue,

134 ; on the serpent myth. 158 ;

on serpent motions. 154
Russell, I)r., of Brighton. 1

SanclMiniathan, the Phoenician.

153. 191
Savemake Forest, a fox in, 52
Seal and conger eel. duel between,

98
SeloUB, on instinctive fear in horses,

Seriient, use of its tongue, 134-52 ;
myths of a great. 158-9. 1H9-71 ;
stranginohs. 15;« ; origin and
univentality of worship. Itii ;
instinctive fear of the, r;4-8 ;
Satanic theory. 178-80 ; -i iv«M»:r
of the, 186-91 : the. in lilerHtiire.

191
Sheep. in<lividuality m. 123 ; a
book-destroying. 124; a frieiKl
of douH, 127
Sheldrake, beauty »»f the, lOH
Shelley, his Witch of AtluH, LIT
Silchestcr. the forest of, 84 ; exca-
vation iit, :U7-9
Snake, a prewrvcr of tlif, I» r
taming a wild. 01-2; a frog-
hunter, 144 ; shyness, 102 ; a
tame, 28(»
Spallanzani, ex}>erinK'nts on oats,

♦5-8 , . _

Sparrow-hawks, in pine wooti, t. 7
Spider, strategy of liuntintr. 14j ;

as a l>et, 2:12
Squirrel, fable of a. 83-9 ; adven-
tures of a migraUng. 7«-78 ;
migratory impulses. 70 ; taming
the. 233; volatile character of
the, 286
Stradling. Dr. Arthur, on the

sen>ent's tongue. 139
Stag, lower than the bat. 34
Stariings, killed by sparrow-hawk. 8
Stoal. a water-vole hunting. »«

Tabley. Ixird dc. ghost-moth poetry
of, '.422 . ^ ,, ^

Tchaelches, children of the Pata-
gonian. IKS

Thoieau, on the squirnl. 286 ; nis
" handful of rice,' JWi

860 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST

ThnMtte. dcdre tot wonaa of the

CMsd, 75-7
Tcwd, Uw, u trawlW, M-9 ; oon-

c«rt musie and mamace custonu,

M-0: pleMed tolMOSKMcd, 90;

tongue and flrcatdiing of, SO-I
Traherne, the HerefoKUhln mytie,

Tregarthcn, J. C, anecdote! of fox

and otters learad with hounds,

18S
INvHching muscle, mole, a«8-81 ;

dog, 828 : hone, aSB ; man, 2S»-

380 ; bore, 231
Tyndall and Hindhead, I
Tyrant-bird, rapacious habits of a,

Vernal squill, firrt a|>pcaranoe of,

817
Viper, K^psm kmu. Bm AMu
Viaoaeha, aooount of the, 180

Wasps, spitefkil temper. SIO-IS ;

brilliant colourinf. S18i dla-

boUcal insUncts of, 814
Waterton, on heron's fishing, M
White, Gilbert, on a tanie snake,

880
Willugfaby. the ornithologist, 880
Wright, Sir Ahnroth, on our skin>

scraping habit, 888

Youatt, on a strange dog supersti-
tion, 877

THE END

Prmltd m Grtml Brtlmin ^ R. A R. Claik. Lihitsd, Eaimimrft.

m^^mma^am