R
G

A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE SCIENCE OF POWER, 1918.

SOCIAL EVOLUTION, 1894.

PRINCIPLES OF WESTERN CIVILISATION, 1902.

A PHILOSOPHER
WITH NATURE

BY

BENJAMIN KIDD

METHUEN & GO. LTD.

36 ESSEX STREET W.C.

LONDON

Published in

PREFACE

T^ENJAMIN KIDD was always a keen observer
1-^of nature. He was engaged more or less con-
m Jtinuously throughout his life in carrying out
systematic observations and experiments on the
habits and intelligence of animals, and in the pursuit
of this hobby collected a large number of careful
notes which it was always his intention to publish.
He died, however, without bringing this side of his
life to fruition, and it has not yet been possible to
publish his records and notes on this subject.

From time to time, however, throughout his life
he wrote essays and articles of general interest on
subjects of natural history. In the present volume
a selection of these has been brought together for
the first time. The first two in the book — the
latest written — have not before been published.
The remainder appeared in the author's lifetime,
over a period of some twenty years, in periodical
literature. We are able to reproduce them now by
the courtesy of the journals in which they appeared.

Owing to the manner in which these essays were
in the first place written they contain a certain
amount of repetition which, though to a certain
extent unavoidable, has been as far as possible
reduced in editing the present selection. The

501039

vi A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

student of Benjamin Kidd's sociological writings
will find interesting side-lights upon the develop-
ment of the author's mind and of the strong in-
fluence of biological studies upon his sociological
work. In the literary sense some of the essays
undoubtedly reach higher levels than others. In a
few the artistic and dramatic genius of the author
which is in evidence in his more profound works,
" Social Evolution " and " The Science of Power,"
finds expression and renders these essays worthy
of preservation on this ground alone.

The essays here collected do not pretend to be
scientific contributions, being in origin written
more for the author's and the reader's recreation
than for purposes of advancing knowledge.

FRANKLIN KIDD.
May, 1921.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I WILD BIRD LIFE IN THE SEVERN ESTUARY, I i

II WILD BIRD LIFE IN THE SEVERN ESTUARY, II 18

III WILD BEES 39

IV EELS 62

V HARES 68

VI A MIDSUMMER NIGHT .... 73

VII THE HAUNTS OF COOT AND HERON . . 87

VIII CONCERNING THE CUCKOO .... 102

IX THE HABITS AND INTELLIGENCE OF BEES . 123

X THE HABITS OF FROGS . . . .143

XI SEA TROUT 148

XII THE INSTINCT OF ANIMALS . . . 153

XIII THE BIRDS OF LONDON .... 171

XIV THE PLAGUE OF BIRDS . . . .189
XV WHAT DO YOUNG ANIMALS KNOW ? . . 195

XVI THE MIND OF A DOG . . . .201

XVII INTELLIGENCE OF SQUIRRELS . . . 207

vii

A PHILOSOPHER WITH
NATURE

I

WILD BIRD LIFE IN THE SEVERN
ESTUARY

IT is low tide and early in the morning, and our
boat drawing only a few inches of water is as far
in as we can get, with her nose buried in the soft
mud. On the right, far away to the south and
looking through the morning mist like a dark bank
of clouds over the horizon, stretches the steep line
of the North Somerset and North Devon coast
guarding the Exmoor highlands and the wild country
of Blackmore's novels. In front of us is a scene to
which it would be difficult to do full justice in
description. High water mark is nearly three miles
inland, where the low line of sand dunes rises to the
skyline. Between, and stretching away on each
side as far almost as the eye can reach, are mud-flats
now uncovered, a great expanse of feeding ground
where no human foot can travel, where no shot-gun
can carry and where the wild sea-fowl find one of
the greatest natural bird sanctuaries which still
remain to them in Great Britain.

2 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

In this wilderness flung between sea and land we
are on the borders of a country steeped in historic
associations and in legends far older. Beyond the
sand dunes and scarcely more than a dozen miles
inland lies the site of Avalon of Arthurian legend ;
whither according to William of Malmesbury Joseph
of Arimathea is said to have come bearing the Holy
Grail, where he planted his pilgrim's staff which
grew into the Holy Thorn, and where he founded the
first Christian Church of Britain. It is a land where
almost every site is connected not alone with history
but with deeds long previous to its record, where
the plains have been historic battle fields, but where
the hills are moulded by pre-historic camps, or by
mounds which have been places of sepulture after
battle for the successive waves of invaders who
came hither to take the rich land beyond before
existing nations were named. Full many a heart
the Danube to the Severn gave before the poet
sang. Over these mud-flats Saxons and Danes,
Romans and Celts, and a hundred unnamed peoples
before them have sailed their keels on the flowing
tide. Yet they lie before us now in the morning
sun a lone expanse without mark of man on them,
untamed and untoiled by any record, churning the
salt tides twice daily and echoing the plaintive
notes of the wild sea-fowl even as they did in the
days when the fourth dynasty still reigned in
Egypt.

Towards low water the tides, following ever the
same channels in their retreat, have worn the mud
into furrows and groins. Some are but a hand's
breadth, others are wide like miniature rivers, others
also are both deep and wide, for they are the mouths

WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 8

of inland streams which have carried their waters
hither through the mud to the open sea. Following
one of these natural creeks for a space, we leave the
splash of the waves gradually behind us ; as the
boat grounds again the eye travels over the scene
in search of details, while the ear in the seeming deep
silence begins to pick out the sounds that reach
it.

The night-feeding birds which have followed the
retreating tide are still scattered upon the flats in
large numbers, and the eye soon begins to distinguish
the masses of black and white plumage and the
specks of grey upon the brown expanse. A flock
of gulls are surrounding some object in the immedi-
ate foreground and the barking, musical and goose-
like notes of the larger birds come clear across the
air with an indescribable suggestion of solitude and
unlimited open space in the sound. A dead steer
from a trans-Atlantic cattle-ship has been cast up
by the waves and the birds are feeding upon it.
Those of the smaller species stand in the background,
only helping themselves as they may ; for the
larger kinds are the masters at these feasts.

We have come too near ; a restless air has taken
possession of the birds. A single black-backed
gull resenting the intrusion sails majestically away
seawards. A herring gull with pinions wide out-
spread circles and soars upon the breeze close over-
head, directing a searching black eye of inquiry and
protest upon us. The gleam of the sun on the wet
surface underneath is reflected upwards upon the
white plumage immaculate. There is no stain of
mud ; and no taint even of the recent feast upon the
glorious yellow beak. These are birds in full plum-

4 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

age, but you notice as you look through a glass
that the greater majority of the others have im-
mature markings ; for it is the breeding time and
only these young birds of the previous year have
this leisure. The older birds are all at the nesting
haunts on the cliffs beneath the horizon.

At the line of the water's edge many different
kinds of sea-fowl are congregated. The great shel-
ducks which have followed the tide outwards stand
in groups upon the higher mounds of mud, preening
themselves in the morning sun after their meal, the
pure black and white plumage showing strangely
conspicuous against the grey background. The
little merry dunlins are wading knee-deep in the
water or racing on the mud ; oyster catchers, feeling
less at home here than on their native rocks, stand
apart from the others ; and mallards and shelducks
rise and fall with the swell in the shallow water.
Some of the latter are standing inland, resting on
one leg and with beak thrust into the back feathers,
but with eyes open, a picture of repose and alertness.
Now a flight of ring-dotterel skims low over the
water, the mass of birds swerving and curving as if
it were directed by a single will, the white of the
under-plumage flashing suddenly in the sun and
being as instantly occulted. It is a sight which
when the flocks of birds number thousands sends a
ripple down the back as if one watched the evolu-
tions of an army rendering instant obedience to a
signal from the mind of a commander. Yet observ-
ing the movement now, it may be seen how the effect
is produced. The passing impulse which gives rise
to the sudden change of flight is often capricious and
confined to few of the birds. But the rapidity of the

WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 5

instinctive movement of imitation by the others
produces the striking effect of an army manoeuvring
under command.

There is a peculiar fascination in watching wild
nature thus in the abandon of its native haunts and
at close quarters. One of the first results that it
produces is the conviction that many of the currently
received theories of the origin of language will be
revised when we are wiser. The most primitive
language is undoubtedly a language of the emotions.
But the language of emotions is not, as might be
expected, confined only to members of the same
species ; it is amongst birds, at least, a kind of
lingua franca understood even by widely different
species. When one has lived under other conditions
with some of the wild birds here seen in their native
surroundings it comes with a certain surprise to
observe how the signs and sounds with which one
has been familiar elsewhere are interpreted in their
wild haunts by their own kind and by other birds
for values which are evidently well understood. It
is the breeding season. The eye lingers on the
actions of a sheldrake standing before his mate with
other birds of his kind in the background. The
excited pump-handled movement of the head and
neck is accompanied by a continued protesting and
haranguing series of notes which has evidently its
exact emotional significance. Yet you become
conscious that the declamation possesses depths
of meaning even like the song of a nightingale.
The emotion rises and falls until the scene re-
- minds you irresistibly of the declamations of the
South African negroes as you have seen them
under the influence of native narcotics, when it

6 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

was the sounds and not the words which con-
veyed to the listeners the intense emotion of the
speaker.

Now there comes up the wind a flight of mallards.
These wild ancestors of all our domestic ducks
lower themselves into the pool from their flight,
cutting the surface with the action of a swift boat
taking the water. They have been feeding inland,
and the sight of this sunny sheltered backwater soon
produces a remarkable effect. A preliminary chat-
ter and a single bird seems to go suddenly mad.
With half-outstretched wings and with lightning-
like rapidity it takes short glancing dives beneath
the surface. The chatter is taken up by the other
birds, and the infection spreads instantly. Within
a few seconds every duck is darting through the
water, under or over it, as if bewitched. The excite-
ment is communicated to the swimming birds of
other kinds standing near and within a brief space
one kind after another, each keeping apart by
itself and threatening or protesting to the others,
joins with wild cries in the boisterous scene in the
water. It is all play. Yet the signs and cries
which accompany the wild movements are evidently
as clearly interpreted by the various kinds of birds
as if the language had been spoken words and as if
the scene and actors had been exclusively human.
Now at a low raucous note from a single bird all
action is instantly frozen and every neck erect.
From the outskirts of the crowd comes the quick
plaintive call of the warning curlew ; and every
bird, thrilled by some primordial instinct of alarm,
is instantly in the air with a roaring sound of wings.
It has been a scene of life excited, full of understand-

WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 7

ing, eloquent of communicated feeling. There is
indeed, one feels, a language of the emotions among
animals. Yet it is not, as it is often absurdly
imagined, a language of words. It is a language of
sounds and sometimes of signs. But the sounds
do not represent words. They are thrills and utter-
ances which reach the depths of primitive emotion.
They are declamations, intonations, cadences, incan-
tations. And beyond doubt they are capable of
powerfully and instantly reproducing corresponding
states and shades of intense feeling in those affected
by them.

The tide has turned and has now begun t6 flow, the
water rapidly lapping its way over the mud and
singing on the half-dried surface as it recovers it.
Remote in the distance a kestrel hangs in mid-air
over the sand dunes, looking, save for the difference
of size, curiously like the turkey-buzzard as it may
often be seen on the wing in Southern California.
Yet not, like the latter, on the look-out for carrion,
but with an alert eye watching the small birds in
the brambles below and ready at an opportune
instant to swoop on its prey like a bolt from above.
Nearer still but higher in the air a large bird, long
and slim in body and strong of flight, is making
for the south-west, looking almost headless as it
wheels in the air. It is the peregrine falcon of
lordly fame in the spacious days of hawking. The
bird still nests near by, and with the single exception
of the raven it is the master of all that flies here.
And yonder, travelling high over the inland marshes
with its large wings flapping in slow and stately
progress, is its ancient and noble quarry the heron.
Many of the old heronries still exist. There are

8 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

two not far distant and the birds come here daily
to fish in the marshes.

As the tide advances it is possible to land and make
a long detour to reach the belt of shingle which runs
east and west at the line which marks the reach of
the highest tides. A solitary ring-dotterel or ring-
plover, and now another, runs with suspicious
motions which avoid notice across the ribbon of sand
toward the sea. It is the nesting season. Above
high-water mark the birds have been scooping
shallow depressions among the small pebbles. These
are the " cock " nests which precede and accompany
the real ones, and the eye searches the beach closely
for the characteristic eggs.

On this solitary coast, where one looks out along
the fifty-first parallel toward the Western Continent
across many of the main ocean highways of the world,
the beach beyond reach of the highest waves is
covered with undisturbed mounds of the flotsam
and jetsam of sea traffic. The buried cities of the
world have left us relics of the ages of man. But
what a record of the present civilization of the world
these heaps would yield to the followers of some
post-historic Schliemann if they were to be suddenly
entombed and to give up their secrets again to a
distant age ! Floated fragments of every kind, drift-
wood and bark, cinders, seaweed, and the white
stones of the beach, are intermingled with the offal
of ships and fleets, the droppings of ocean-liners and
tramps, of fishing craft and the floating fortresses
of war. There are relics of divers nationalities, of
many kinds of human products, of universal art and
literature and of most human customs. It is the
story of a world of labour and sweat and the silent

WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 9

tyranny of things that are strong ; with here and
there a grimmer relic of the deep speaking of some
unrecorded tragedy of the sea. But everywhere
corks, corks, corks. Thousands and millions of
them. Most of them worn and fretted by the waves.
Some new and familiar ; some with the marks of
the lordly vintages of France still stamped upon
them ; some evidently cast away in distant latitudes
and longitudes, bearing strange devices and legends
in unknown tongues ; but all borne here by the sea.
There have been ages of stone, and of metal, and of
the potter's art. But few of us realize that we are
ourselves living in the most characteristic age of
all — the Great Bottle Age ; the age when universal
man drank things out of bottles and strewed the
earth with the shards thereof and the ocean itself,
with the corks.

And here in the pebbles amid all these disjected
sweepings of the world and just above high-water
mark, the little ring-dotterel still places her nest,
even as she did before man moved on the waters or
troubled the earth by going up and down in it.
Only a slight depression is scooped in the grey
pebbles and coarse sand. The grey-yellow and
spotted eggs, which are four in number, lie with their
small ends together. They look like emblems of a
peace enfolding all things as they lie here in the
warm sun. Yet do they too bear the marks of the
world-old stress upon them. For they are so pro-
tectively coloured to their surroundings that they
are almost invisible at a short distance. Thus do
the ages of stress overlap each other and ever with
the same meaning in them.

The lapwings are tumbling and crying over the

10 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

marsh pastures. Pee-wit, pee-oi-ku-si, pee-wit, their
plaintive musical calls resound through the air over-
head. The nesting season is well advanced and the
birds rise one by one out of the herbage with sub-
dued excitement visible in their movements. These
grass-covered flats which extend for miles have all
been reclaimed from the sea, and much of the salvage
would again be retaken at high tides but for the
system of banks and dykes. They are a favourite
breeding ground for great flocks of the lapwing, as
the common plover is generally called.

The birds place their nests in fixed relationship
to the lie of the ground, desiring above all things to
be able to get off the eggs and slip away unobserved
by taking advantage of some neighbouring hollow
or depression. Without knowing this one might
look here for hours and not find a nest ; and yet with
such local lore half a dozen or more are discovered
in almost as many minutes. The eggs lie in little
round depressions in the ground with scarcely any
attempt at providing lining materials. They are
no larger than pigeons' eggs, and they lie always four
in a nest with the small ends together. If you
would have it otherwise and change the position and
return you will find that the birds have altered
your handiwork. The ground colour is grey with
a blend of yellow and green in it, and it is thickly
splashed with large and small blotches of black.
On the rough ground and in a bright light and sur-
rounded with grass they are almost invisible at a
short distance. These are the plovers' eggs of fame
which fetch such high prices in London for con-
sumption at fashionable weddings. As they lie
here amid the lush herbage starred with flowers, with

WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 11

the gleam of water everywhere around them, and with
the open air and bright sunshine and blue sky above
them, they seem indeed no unfit emblem of hope.

And the wanton lapwing himself ? There he
stands in the distance, with an anxious eye turned
upon us ; poised on one leg with the other half lifted ;
now bending forward his body gracefully, now
breaking into a quick run with his plumage showing
the shimmering of green amid the black and pure
white in the sunlight. And now at last turning to
us his beautiful crest.

In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself
another crest. Well did poet immortalize him and
link him with other vernal emblems of the season
in a passage which here in particular one feels to
breathe the spirit of refulgent life as it glows ardent
and radiant in the increasing procession of our
northern year.

Some of the birds come quite close with strange
and anxious antics, both in the air and on the ground,
as if inviting us to follow them. The practised eye
reads the situation. . The young, which leave the nest
as soon as they are hatched, must be somewhere
close by. You look and stare ; there can be nothing,
for there is absolutely no cover. Yet even as the eye
relinquishes its quest something stirs ; and you see
it is a young lapwing among the clods, just hatched,
which with its protective colouring has been hiding
itself with extraordinary effectiveness against the lap
of mother earth. You take the quaint little piebald
ball of fluff in your hand and it stands erect, looking,
as very young animals so often do, wizened and aged
after the tremendous experience of an hour's inde-
pendent existence.

12 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

In the long grass where the furrow slopes steeply
and the ground is dry it is a delight to fling the body
at full length. The swallows fly high overhead in
the still air. The harsh laugh of the green wood-
pecker comes from far inland. The whistling wings
of the wild ducks sound above in the air as the birds
change their feeding grounds with the tide. They
are nearly all males to be seen here at this season,
for the females are sitting elsewhere and their
partners have to shift by themselves. A large dark
bird with steady and powerful beats of its black
wings is making for the hills in the east. It is the
raven, now far less commonly seen here than form-
erly, but the bird of superstition which shared the sea
journeyings of the Norsemen when they came here
still lingers on this coast despite persecution.

As the eye descends it rests on something brown
quite close in the thick grass. As the herbage is
pressed down gently to bring it into view two little
hares are exposed to sight, lying as close as possible
together head to tail. There is not the slightest
movement from them ; even when one stands up
and walks round them they stir not. The ears are
laid back flat against the body and only the just
perceptible motion of the beautiful brown eyes, ex-
posing at times the faintest rim of white at the
edges, shows that every sense is alert. These little
creatures form the easy quarry of many birds of
prey overhead. They know instinctively that the
slightest movement is revealing, often sealing their
doom instantly. Hunted creatures are they from
birth to death. And yet when tamed, and you
speak from experience, full to overflowing of the
frolic and wanton of life.

WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 13

The shallow creeks run far into the grass country,
and along the edges of the tidal water the redshank
sandpiper loves to place her nest. Where the rhines
holding the surface water broaden out the sides are
fringed with rushes and young sedge. As you look
a moor-hen with the movements peculiar to all the
rails sails shyly across the water, jerking her body
as she swims just like her Virginian relative. From
her movements it is easy to discover her secret.
The nest, with nine buff eggs spotted with reddish
brown, is in a tuft of rushes by the bank where the
cattle feed almost to the edge. Further on in a
surface-pool another nest of the true water rail, with
six eggs, lies in the rushes on the brink, the billows of
rich grass flecked thickly with flowers surrounding it.

On the top of the embankment which divides the
saltings covered by the tides from the marshes
beyond a black and white object attracts attention.
It has evidently recently come there. As you ad-
vance toward it you are conscious of a slight shock.
It is a pair of large black and white wings. You
lift one of them and find that it is connected with
the other by the whole framework of a bird plucked
of the flesh and with some of the fresh fragments
of red meat still hanging to the bones. The wings
are those of a lapwing certainly alive not more than
an hour or two ago. Scarcely a feather has been
disturbed. The beautiful green and black and white
plumage still gleams in the sunshine almost like that
of some tropical parrot. It is the recent kill of the
peregrine falcon. You passed a similar pair of
wings belonging to a large sea-bird on the beach and
just now another pair of pigeon's wings on the grass.
They have all had the same history.

14 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

In the midst of this world of beauty thus is nature
red with rapine. Yet would it be the profoundest
of mistakes to endeavour to read the emotions appro-
priate to a different plane of being into these inci-
dents of the universal stress of nature. For to this
stress the whole of this glowing world of fitness and
potency is undoubtedly alhed. It is the product,
born of it and in it. To suspend the stress might
indeed be to take from life something of the sting
of its pain. But it would certainly also be to take
from it that constituent of its deepest pleasures
which passeth understanding — the joy of a world of
fitness functioning in achievement. Even to human-
ize the stress is not to suspend it. Far otherwise.
The secret of ripening humanity is indeed nothing
else than the secret of this higher fitness ; the fit-
ness of apparent failure ; to be able not only to suc-
ceed consummately but to fail infinitely for others.

The tide creeps quickly over the lower fringes of
the saltings. On this no-man's land the life of the
ocean struggles with that of the land and here the
sea-fowl and the land-fowl meet. The surface is
covered with salt herbage, on which the sheep
thrive, cropping it between the tides, and it is hol-
lowed in places into long irregular pools. These
hold the sea-water and, surrounded by the pre-
vailing dark grey tints, they reflect the sunlight as
if they had been pools of white molten metal. The
mud at the bottom is marked with the feet of many
birds. Some pools have dried up, leaving the mark-
ings legible and the footprints of the land-birds,
rooks, carrion crows and jackdaws, are seen mingled
with the prints of the webbed feet of the sea-fowl.
Here a pool which has run dry has been missed and it

WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 15

reveals at a glance the kind of harvest the birds
have gathered. On the damp surface just at the
lowest part of the bottom there lies a small heap
of sea shrimps, mostly dead but with some of the
survivors still gasping in the hot sun. The high
spring tides brought the shrimps here but the
treacherous sea has gone and so left them. We
speak of the unerring instinct of nature, but often,
as in this case, it is indeed no more unerring than
the chequered wisdom of man.

With the incoming tide the sea-birds move from
the beach to higher quarters, and where the long
line of the Mendips drops at last into the sea the
slopes of the cliff are dotted with white plumage.
It is a steep climb upwards. The springy turf
which clothes the high ground is close-cropped and
the little rock-rose, a botanical survival almost
peculiar in Britain to this headland, stars the green
in places. The view opens over the water till it
includes, far in the mist on the horizon, the spectral-
seeming ships on the sea roads. They might indeed
be phantom ships of another world for all the relation
they have to this. Thus have they passed day by
day, even since Cabot set his prow to the setting
sun on these waters and discovered a western
continent ; and thus have they passed long before
him. But the wilderness is still the wilderness here.
In some of the almost inaccessible slopes the rabbits
find safe refuge and their white cotton tails twinkle
everywhere as they scud to their holes at the ap-
proach of an intruder.

This is the nesting-ground of the great shelducks,
the characteristic sea-fowl of the mud-flats of the
Severn Estuary. The birds circle round uneasily in

16 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

the air. Some stand alert on the ground, well out
of range, with their long necks erect but with the
black heads always in motion. When the birds
think they are safe the curious habits of these sea-
fowl may be watched from a distance. They waddle
amongst the rabbit burrows quite at home, ever and
anon disappearing in the dense growth of low bushes.
They are on the best of terms with the rabbits, and
the association is curiously suggestive of the owls and
prairie dogs as one sees them on the western
plateaus of America two days out from Chicago.
The birds rise when they are approached and with
the hold of some primitive instinct strong upon one
the rough intervening ground is soon covered.
Peering among the ferns and thick undergrowth,
scratched with the brambles, hot in face and daubed
with the red earth, you are rewarded at last. A
roughly made nest full of large eggs, much larger
than those of the common wild duck and approach-
ing in size those of the wild goose, lies in the mouth
of a rabbit burrow in the dim light under the dense
bushes.

The sight has an indescribable effect upon a range
of latent emotions. One watches the unloading of
tons of bullion bricks from an ocean liner without
the stirring of a pulse, and even with a sense of the
uninteresting squalor of the scene. But this nest
full of large creamy-white eggs, stained with the
red earth, revealing the last, inmost, anxious
privacy of wild nature in its secret haunts, what
primordial depths it uncovers ! How one turns
again glowing and transformed, the hunter, the
savage, the utterly unknown man, with the gorgeous
sense of achievement holding him by the throat.

WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 17

What an incomprehensible world it is ! Are these
things of the realities of life ? Nay, rather are
they not after all the ultimate realities : the emotions
which, pent at last in the machinery of social
systems and civilizations, in the conflicts of national
history, in the adventures of financial strife, even
in the daring quests of science after the secrets of
the world on lonely mountain tops and in the inner-
most recesses of the laboratory, lead men ever on
to the same goal — the last exulting sense of self
realizing itself in achievement ?

There are last things as well as first things. Yon-
der where the wild sea-fowl circle and scream, the day
falls towards the only sign of man's handiwork
here — the dismantled fort, silent and obsolete, at the
end of the promontory. For the devices of war
have changed, and with new knowledge have come
other inventions which render the purpose of this
battlement vain. In a few hours as the sun sinks
it will be what the poet saw in imagination, a loom-
ing bastion fringed with fire ; but empty, useless,
abandoned. Thus it is that science ever from hour
to hour condemns her own handiwork. It is the
things of nature alone which are eternal.

II

WILD BIRD LIFE IN THE SEVERN
ESTUARY

ii

aiR boat is on the flood tide with the wind
ehind us. There are few places in the
rorld where the tides rise higher or advance
more rapidly than in this estuary where the impulse
from the Atlantic received in a mouth fifty miles
wide is gradually compressed between long narrow-
ing shores as it ascends inland. The leagues of
mud flats, impassable by human foot, which at low
water stretch in all directions on the Somerset
coast, are the safe retreat and feeding grounds of
great multitudes of wading seafowl. Yet these
are scarcely more of a natural sanctuary for one
class of birds than are the wide ranges of the marsh
country beyond them for another — country all
reclaimed from the sea and at many points still
below its level. In this flat land the tidal waters
flood the surface-leads and river mouths far inland.
A few hours ago our boat fell seaward on a slight
river at the bottom of a trough, a ribbon of water
with the blue sky above and the sloping banks of
mud ascending to the skyline from either side.

18

WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 19

But now it is borne rapidly in the opposite direction,
on a heaving breast of waters, with a view stretching
far to the horizon on both sides and with pulses
which have drawn from out the ocean bounding
under our keel.

As we ascend into the land on a tide almost at the
flood the long lush grass at the full sides streams
in the salt sea-water. One after another we pass
the mouths of shallow creeks which bifurcate into
the marsh country. Entering one of these and
following it for some distance the boat drifts in
the sunshine level with a waving sea of flowers and
herbage, out of which the tumbling and crying
lapwings rise. Almost at one's elbow one of the
birds furtively takes wing, and its nest with the
eggs chipped, in the last stage of incubation, is
plainly visible from the water. A little further a
beautiful and graceful grey-brown bird with long
legs showing bright orange-red rises. It is the
redshank, a bird that loves to sit close to water,
and the nest with four pear-shaped buff eggs flecked
with dark brown is in the grass almost at the edge
and not a dozen yards from that of the plover. The
boat brings to where the green surface, studded
with cowslips, reaches to the tide. It rocks gently
as it rests, and the soft swish of the water as it
rises and falls amongst the grass sounds almost
like regular breathing. It is the pulse of the far
distant Atlantic losing itself here at last among the
summer herbage.

We are in the ancient land of Damnonia, the local
kingdom of that name of the Britons before the
coming of the English. It is the country of King
Arthur and his knights of story and legend. It

20 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

represents a corner of the earth where the Celt
has struggled for ages with his compeers, where he
has met the Roman, and mingled with the Saxon
and his kindred, and left a rich compost which has
wonderfully fermented and fertilized the world.
But the tide of history has flowed round rather than
over these plains. Yonder on the horizon where
the limestone hills climb upward, the Romans came
to the lead mines and the road ran west and east
to meet the Roman fosse which crossed the country
to the ancient Aquae Solis — the modern city of Bath.
On the slopes of the hills the Roman villas rose and
flourished. But when the soldiers of the second
legion under the Emperor Claudius looked out
from the heights over this country they saw only a
swamp and the waters of an inland lake with the
Tor which is now Glastonbury rising at one end.
The inland lake has gone, and the swamp has been
partly reclaimed. But it has become a land of
water-courses overgrown with tall bushes, and deep
rhines, which carry the drainage to the sea. It is
for this reason a country in which wild nature
has remained in large part unchanged for cen-
turies.

In the still warm air the rooks sail overhead carry-
ing in their throats to their young the food which
they have gathered in the open country. The
distant cawing of the birds at the nests in the elms
round the hamlets far at the foot of the hills just
reaches the ears and suggests an infinite tranquillity.
In the nearer stillness the subdued krack, krack
of a moor-hen in one of the water-leads comes on
the air mingled with the twittering notes of the
swallows as they skim the surface. Down the wind

WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 21

reaches the sound of whistling wings, and a flight
of wild ducks, all males — for the females are occu-
pied elsewhere — passes in the middle distance, the
beautiful plumage of the birds with the white
neck-circles showing plainly in the sunshine. And
from far overhead, from above the crying plovers,
falls the song of the invisible sky-lark — Shelley's
" blithe spirit " — dropping its cascade of notes
from the blue heaven. Another song comes from
a second bird in a different quarter of the sky.
And yet another from a third, the notes mellowed
almost to stillness in the distance.

As the sounds of the landscape mingle with the
faint but all-pervading and indescribable odour of
growing herbage and young leaves, and the scent
of the early hawthorn and the late cowslips, one
feels on the brink of one of the secrets which primi-
tive man probably shared with wild nature, the
secret which is still presented to us in the unfath-
omed mystery of the migration of birds and wild
creatures. For these elusive scents and sounds
hold one by the throat and bring up to the surface
of consciousness by association a hidden world
of the most powerful emotions. A native of this
land, a man of education and culture, landing at a
neighbouring port after many years' absence and
going at once into the country on such a morning
as this amidst the growing herbage and flowers was
found rolling himself on the ground in the smell of
his native fields like a wild animal. One realizes
thus how the call of the wilderness or the desert
reaches men pent in cities in something on the
spring air, or on the autumn wind, and overmasters
them and commands them. And so doubtless it is

22 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

with wild birds and wild nature in the uncontroll-
able impulses of migration.

In this country, chequered by watercourses, and
where the game-keeper comes not, the balance of
nature is preserved as of old. A black and white
bird, as large as a pigeon and with long graceful
tail, chattering as it flies, alights on the ground
some distance off. It is followed by its mate,
and you see they are both in anxious attendance
on seven quaint-looking young ones just from the
nest and as yet almost tailless. It is a family of
magpies. This bird which has its place so firmly
established in the folk-lore and literature of Euro-
pean peoples has become extinct in many parts of
the country because of the persecution to which
it is subjected by game-preservers. There are
many nests here, and in the spring-time the dome-
shaped structure silhouetted against the sky in
the low trees is a characteristic feature of the
landscape. Yonder in the topmost branches of a
low ash sits the solitary carrion crow. He also has
lost character elsewhere, but he finds a refuge in
this land, and the nest, always built alone, is in
keeping with the hunted habits of the bird.

In one of the distant water-leads the eye catches
a grey object against the background of green,
looking strangely foreign to the landscape. As
you advance cautiously it proves to be a large
blue-grey bird standing in the shallow water. It
is a striking sight at close quarters, with something
quite eastern in the appearance. The tall legs
lift the body high above the surface. The flexed
neck is tucked into the shoulders. The long murder-
ous looking beak is poised downwards as the bird

WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 23

stands in an attitude of rapt attention. It is the
heron watching for its prey in the water, the most
beautiful bird of Western Europe.

Save for the difference in length of the body, it
might be the great blue heron of the United States,
so similar is the appearance. It is the same general
look of the plumage, the same stoop of the shoulders,
the same trick of attitude, the same poise of the
same bayonet-shaped bill. We marvel at the varia-
bility of life. Yet it is surpassed by the still more
astonishing conservatism. One is startled when
meeting the second of two brothers who have lived
in different countries, and who have themselves
never met, to find that they have developed each
the same mannerism of stroking the side of the
nose in the midst of an argument. But these little
identical tricks and mannerisms of biological rela-
tives who have never met and who have been
separated in their careers by vast intervals of
geographical space and geological time, are more
startling. They serve to reveal to us as by a flash
not only the profound complexity, but the almost
incredible stability of the matter which constitutes
the physical basis of life.

As we travel inland on foot the scene changes.
The surface of rich land formed from mud covered
by the sea at a previous time gives place to a layer
of peat marking the site of the swamp and lake of
ancient days. Many parts are still covered with
water and are overgrown with deep sedge. In
other parts the heather has nearly extinguished the
rival vegetation, while in others still the rich
meadows march with the wilderness. This land is
the retreat of vast numbers of water-fowl in winter

24 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

— wild geese, mallards, water-rails, teal, curlews,
coots, snipe, bitterns, moor-hens, and various kinds
of plover, and many remain to breed.

The wild scene which opens up to the sky on
every side suggests the past and the history of the
past at almost every point on which the eye rests.
Yet one walks far through this country in the early
summer noonday without encountering any human
creature. It might be nature in her primeval
mood, so silent is the landscape. In the prevailing
stillness one becomes gradually conscious of only
one sound which seems to haunt the footsteps. The
cause of it must be in the distant wood in front, but
there is no one when you arrive. It must be in the
open space beyond and you expect to see figures
in the fields and busy men at work, but you emerge
again and still there is no one. The sound is as
difficult to define as it is to localize. It suggests
now the hum of machinery or again the distant
bleating of goats, or yet again the subdued con-
verse of people close at hand at work. But there
is never any one, and it remains a whispering sound
always about one in the air.

A snipe, uttering its sharp tscaaap, tscaap, rises
from the heather, and now another, and you look
long in the coarse grass for a nest. The carrion crow
has been busy, and the traces of broken shells
strewn in the marsh mark his work. At length a
nest is found containing eggs. It is the slightest
of structures, a few grass stalks in a dry depression
in the ground. The four beautiful, almost invisible
eggs, like all others in the open, bear the imprint
of their surroundings in their protective colouring.
Olive-tinted they are, but with unusually large peat-

WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 25

coloured blotches which almost run together on
the surface. Another bird rises from the marsh,
and the eye follows it upward in the air. It ascends
till it reaches a height of about a thousand feet,
when it begins a series of peculiar evolutions, the
bird descending rapidly in a curve and again mount-
ing to repeat the action. As the eye searches the
sky several birds, all snipe, are seen in other direc-
tions, each engaged in similar evolutions. Suddenly
the cause of the peculiar ghostly sound in the land-
scape is revealed. It comes from these birds high
in the air. It is the bleating or drumming note
of the snipe in the breeding season. The sound is
emitted by each bird at the moment of its downward
course through the air, and it ceases immediately
the lowest point of the curve is reached. It is
supposed — as the result of experiments — to be
produced by the vibration of the inner web of the
outermost tail feathers of the bird, as it makes
its descent.

In these various ways among animals of express-
ing the intense emotions of the mating season we
catch a glimpse, almost as if we looked down the
corridors of time, of the infinite possibilities that
have always been latent in life. We imagine the
complexity of language and we think then of the
mechanism of voice among the higher animals,
and immediately we conceive it as if it were the
sole means for communicating by sound emotion
from one creature to another. Yet with what a
range of instruments have the sounds and emotions
of the love moods of life been in reality communi-
cated. From the shrillings of the cicadas, or the
scrapings of the crickets, or the lonely ecstatic love-

26 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

tappings of the death — watches, to the thrills of the
bob-o'-link — from the tail features of the snipe
to the throat of the nightingale. The higher
animals are built on the simple and effective lines
that have won out in the struggle for existence.
But the fact is that life would have honoured any
draft whatever on her, even, as she has proved, to
gills on our fingers or lungs on our toes — according
to circumstances. Our ears are in our heads indeed,
but life would not have boggled at placing them
anywhere, even in our legs, as in the grasshoppers.

East and west through the shaking land run the
narrow raised ways which mark the original level
of the country. The surface on either side has long
since been cut away and these strips of high ground
which have been left have served as primitive
roads over which the peat harvest in former days
has been carried away. Bunyan must have seen
a road like this, for, as in the way through the
Valley of the Shadow there is on either side a deep
ditch — here filled with black water — or a dangerous
quag. But on the narrow ground between it is
dry, with flowers everywhere : while the crisp smell
of the moor, and of the antiseptic peat, lingers on
the nostrils like the pungent aroma of the pepper
trees and the blue gums in Southern California.

Overhead in the air the wild ducks circle — still all
males. Thick on the air, travelling ever in one
direction, come the feathered reed-seeds of last year.
On all hands stretch the meres and leads of dark
water. The deeper parts are thick with tall reeds
of last year, showing at this season large heads of
white down scattering on the wind. The shallows
are overgrown with long sedgy grass, rising in places

WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 27

into high billows or still higher rounded tussocks.
The firm ground between is covered with heather
and low birch trees. And everywhere, and between
everything, shining water. We have reached the
breeding-ground of the mallards.

It is but a moment to make preparation for
wading. There is no bird that swims or flies which
is capable of exciting so persistent an interest in
the secrets of her life as the mallard. In alertness
and shyness, in craftiness in placing her eggs, in
devotion to her young, and in the extraordinary
tricks of avoiding pursuit which both parent and
young have developed, the wild ancestor of our
breeds of domestic ducks has few equals in the wild ;
and if blood be the price of efficiency, beyond doubt
she has paid in full : for war from times primeval
has man waged on her for her eggs and succulent
flesh. As we advance through the marsh a scene of
disquiet spreads in front. A few ducks have
joined the drakes circling in the air. The moor-hens
croak in the water-leads. A water-rail's nest
resting in the water but daintily woven in the reeds
and containing eight eggs is passed. Not thus
lightly does the coot build in the water close by
here a nest which is always founded on a submerged
heap, laboriously gathered, of last year's sedge.
Emerging at last on the dry heather and wading
knee-deep through it a small duck-like bird which
disappears with rapid flight is disturbed. The nest,
containing nine creamy-white eggs almost concealed
in feathers, is in the thick cover. But it is a teal's
and there is still no trace of the mallard.

Where the water is ankle-deep in the long marsh
grass strewn with last year's reed-stalks something

28 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

at length catches the eye. When the sedge-bents,
which stream over it and serve to screen the sitting
bird, are pushed aside a mallard's nest with eggs is
disclosed to view. The yellow-blue eggs are quite
warm and the mother-duck has evidently only just
left them. In the thick sedge-grass with water
still over the ankles you pause later with back to the
sun to watch the birds circling uneasily overhead.
Lifting a foot to advance again, the marsh seems
suddenly to explode at the spot on which you in-
tended to put it down, and a dark mass lifted an
instant in the air falls again in front. It is a second
or two before you realize that the object is only a
brown duck quacking loudly and wildly flapping
an injured wing.

Instantly as the eye gets back to the spot from
which the bird has risen the cause is revealed. It
is a sight which makes one feel like a bungler and
intruder upon the privacies of life. No wonder the
mother duck all but allowed herself to be trodden
on. She has been sitting on a nest full of little
ones just emerging from the shell.

All the little ducks save three have freed them-
selves from the shells, and some are already so
active and so ready to scamper out of the nest
that they have to be restrained by hand. But as
the mother, still beating her apparently broken
wing, passes out of eye-shot quiet is gradually
restored. You have heard from the beginning of
the instinctive fear of young wild animals for man.
But what a libel it proves to be on nature when
taken thus at the font. You have read that the
young of the mallard, when hatched out with tame
ducks by a foster-mother, are inherently wild and

WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 29

intractable. Although you have tried it again and
again with eggs from the wild and have found no
fact to justify such imaginings, yet are you still
scarcely prepared for what follows.

The little ducks missing the cover of the mother
come out of the nest into the sedge and shallow
water. They find one's bare feet as one stands
urgent that the camera should arrive and, without
the slightest instinctive fear, begin to nestle on them
for warmth, one and another turning a comical
and intelligent little black eye upwards, as if with
nascent wonder at the size and aloofness of this
parent. You wonder how long the wild duck has
been here. No doubt the hosts of King Alfred,
when he hid in these marshes from the Norsemen a
thousand years ago, found her here. No doubt the
soldiers of Claudius long before him flushed her when
they came. Probably even in the days when the
woolly rhinoceros left its remains with those of the
cave-man in the hills yonder, she was here. During
all this time she has probably been the most uni-
versally hunted creature on earth. And the spent
cartridges of the modern man strew the bog around
you. Yet here are these little creatures on your
feet. You take one of them in your hand, and
this heir of the ages of the blood-feud shows no fear
of you, even tilting its little beak to look inquiringly
in your face ; evidently thinking no evil, to all
appearance hoping all things and believing all things,
but certainly quite willing to take you on your
merits for good or evil entirely without prejudice.

You put the little creature down in deep thought
and pass on. Looking back, the mother bird has
alighted on a tussock near by, and the more active

30 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

little ones are streaming out of the sedge to her.
She is chattering with emotion, every feather
quivering with excitement. The hold of the Great
Terror of Man is upon her. In a few days, nay, in a
few hours, she will have taught it to them and they
will have passed irrevocably into another world.
And yet you saw the little ducks. They knew no-
thing of it.

Oh, you wise men who would reconstruct the
world. Give us the young. Give us the young.
Do what you like with the world, only give us the
young. It is the dreams which they dream, the
Utopias which they conceive, the thoughts which
they think, which will build the world. Give us
the young before the evil past has claimed them, and
we will create a new heaven and a new earth.

The afternoon shadows fall with lengthening
lines on the black ground as we advance up the
valley. Here the peat cutters have been at work,
and the deep brown-black of the bare surface
absorbs the light and gives a sombre effect to the
landscape. The lines of freshly cut peat stretch
away to the distance with water gleaming between
them. The latest cut blocks look like huge slabs
of moist black cheese, and are laid nearly flat.
The dry ones, shrunken to a third of the size, are
piled in heaps which in the last stage of all are in
size and shape almost like hayricks. Where the
ground rises and the long ferns grow beneath the
trees a bird the size of a small dove, mottled brown
on the back, but marked like an owl or cuckoo on
the under plumage, lies dead on the ground. It is
a nightjar, one of the last summer migrants to arrive,
and the neck is torn where it has struck in flight

WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 31

against overhead telegraph wires. One recognizes
the night hunter at a glance. The profession of
these insect-feeders who have abandoned the
struggle for existence in the day and taken to
hawking for moths in the night must be a successful
one, for the dispersion of the birds in the present
age of the world is almost universal. The general
resemblance of the bird to the American night-
hawk and to the whip-poor-will is immediately
apparent. The enormously wide gape with the
mouth fringed with bristles and coated inside with
a sticky secretion is noticeable.

A rail swims across one of the pits of inky water,
jerking her tail with exactly the same little manner-
isms which one sees in her relatives in other lands.
Through the reeds in the further distance the long
neck and motionless grey head of a solitary heron
watching the intruding footsteps is just visible.
The bird in this attitude resembles the stork as one
sees it fishing in the reed-marshes along the Rhine ;
but it does not stay to be approached, taking
flight immediately, the gaunt legs straggling behind
as it rises in the air; while the long neck, at first
outstretched, is tucked rapidly into the shoulders.

Low down across the sky comes a bird which
looks like a pigeon. Yet it still more closely re-
sembles a hawk. It is being followed and mobbed
by small birds and the grey plumage is seen to be
barred like a hawk's, as the bird comes to rest in the
topmost branches of the thick clump of high bushes
on the right. Suddenly there rings out from the
bough, clear, soft, and penetrating in the stillness,
the most characteristic bird-note of early summer
throughout Europe — the double note of the cuckoo.

32 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

The bird is easily visible through the leaves as it
sits for a moment repeating the well-known call
from which it takes its name. A certain fascina-
tion attaches to every movement of the cuckoo
seen thus at close quarters. The vast wanderings
of the bird during the year in two hemispheres ;
the shy and solitary habits ; the sudden return in
spring from out of the unknown, uttering as it
comes the mating cry which resounds everywhere
over the plains and woods, the mountains and wastes
of a continent ; the remarkable instincts of a crea-
ture whose males greatly outnumber the females ;
and above all the parasitic habit which has rendered
every cuckoo at the beginning of its life the central
figure in a tragedy, the details of which while they
run counter to the strongest instincts of human
nature exceed in grim actuality any possible des-
cription of them, have so fixed the cuckoo in the
imagination of European peoples that it has left
its mark indelibly impressed on their languages and
folk-lore.

The extraordinary restlessness of the bird is
apparent. It moves through the branches and
thick foliage still uttering its call, for now is the
full noon of the mating season ; but still also search-
ing for food, for always is the cuckoo hungry. It
flits now to a bare stump, and with a pocket-glass
you catch a full view of the bird so rarely seen at
close quarters. It is a beautiful creature, the
glorified and perfected image of the young bird of
an earlier stage ; for the young cuckoo in its browner
immature plumage has shared many a midnight
vigil with you as the long nights of our northern
winter have closed down upon it in captivity.

WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 33

The long tail hangs gracefully down ; the large
projecting wings reveal the immense powers of
flight ; the short legs and the look and general
poise of the bird suggest to the eye even of the artist
some hidden kinship, now with the swifts or night-
jars of the Eastern hemisphere, and now again
with the insect-feeding night-hawks and whip-poor-
wills of the Western. The plumage and actions
of the bird on the other hand stir something deep
in the mind which associates the cuckoo with the
birds of prey and with the owls in particular.
But if the mind lingers thereon the weak claws
immediately rule the bird out of all such categories.

But the beak, the graceful, slender, slightly
curved beak. Even a tyro in the knowledge of
evolution recognizes the significance of the problems
which it suggests. Thereby is <the bird evidently
placed apart from all the birds of prey which have
solved the problem of existence by tearing and
feeding on flesh. Thereby is it apart from birds
like the parrots who with their strong beaks have
solved the problem of the mastery of the fruits of
the earth. Thereby is it apart from the foraging
families of the crows all the world over. And there-
by is it placed apart also from the immense army
of birds who have solved the problem of feeding
on hard seeds by grinding them afterwards in their
gizzards. A bird, large almost as a pigeon you see :
and yet with the beak of the innumerable small
species which hunt the succulent caterpillar among
the green leaves of the world.

This indeed, taken in connexion with the nature
of its range in the Old World, is the problem of the
European cuckoo. One sees how the bird stands
3

34 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

related to many orders, but related to them at the
parting of the ways from whence evolution has
carried life to new horizons. In the solution of the
problem of feeding itself the cuckoo has simply
followed the sun north and south of the Equator.
But in the solution of the problem of feeding its
young it has been masterful, sinister, original.

The bird flies down rapidly into the open space
close to some low gorse bushes from whence a
peculiar gurgling sound seems to come. As you
reach the spot with some difficulty through the long
ferns two cuckoos rise from the surface. It is
in one of these open spaces on another occasion
that you have found the bird in the act of laying
upon the ground and have picked up the egg still
warm. For the cuckoo does not usually lay her
egg in the nest of her victim, but carries it thither
in her bill. The selected victim in these parts is
generally the little hedge-sparrow, which feeds its
young exclusively on soft insect food.

In a few weeks more the tragedy in which the
young cuckoo figures will be in full progress in the
hedges here. If you had not personally witnessed
every detail of it, it would be almost impossible to
believe fully in the concentrated purposeness of
the long series of acts by which the end is attained.
The young cuckoo after it is hatched out by the
foster-parent lies for about two days helpless at the
bottom of the nest. Then the spirit of its ancestry
descends upon it. The young of the parasitic
American cowbird is usually content to take its
chances in the nest with the young of its foster
parent. But not so the young of this bird. About
the third day, and while it is still blind and without

WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 35

the vestige of a feather, the young cuckoo begins
to sidle up to one of its fellow-occupants of the nest
and to lift it on its peculiarly shaped flat back. The
effort continues for long, and there can be no doubt
from the beginning about its deliberate intent.
Climbing backward up the side of the nest and using
its long naked wing processes as props, it gradually
lifts and gradually pushes its fellow-nestling over
the side to its certain doom. The blind little imp
even feels round to make sure that the deed is
properly accomplished. Then it descends again,
and after a rest proceeds similarly with the other
nestlings. If the cuckoo is hatched out first it
treats the eggs in the nest in the same manner. For
hours, and even for days, the struggle continues, the
end being always the same — that the cuckoo remains
the sole occupant of the nest. The concentrated
intent of so immense and prolonged an effort on the
part of a creature so young and apparently so mind-
less at this stage is one of the most uncanny sights
in the whole range of nature to watch.

But this is only the beginning. In a few days, and
long before it is fully fledged, the bird completely
fills and overflows the small nest. It now exercises
a kind of fascination on the foster parents, a fascina-
tion which extends even to human beings. For
when brought up by hand have you not seen the
members of a whole family, yourself included, con-
tinuously hunting for caterpillars to maintain it ?
A bird with an evil past it may be, a bird greedy
beyond compare ; but a bird so gentle, so abso-
lutely trustful of its friends, so evidently well-bred,
so surrounded with an indescribable air of distinc-
tion, so evidently expecting every helpless want to

36 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

be attended to — who could resist it ? But a para-
site withal ; outside human society the most dis-
tinguished and accomplished parasite in life.

The black swifts screaming loudly and hawking
for insects overhead move slowly across the sky to
the west. As the light wanes in the late afternoon
an effect that must have some deep bearing on the
migration of birds is noticeable in this landscape
where the ground is always black. In the west the
sun floods the sky, the golden light shining through
the transparent wings of the flying insects, and
through the tops of the birches where more than one
song-thrush is now pouring forth its evening melody.
But all the east is sombre. The shadows fall
towards it, long, dark and gloomy, and with a
depressing effect which is like a leaden weight on
the senses and emotions. It is remarkable in the
psychology of wild life as in the psychology of peoples
how insufficiently we have taken account of the
deep-reaching, soul-seizing effects of waning light
which is falling away from us.

It is one of the facts in the migrations of birds
over which naturalists have always found a difficulty
that the migrants both in the eastern and western
hemispheres should in their journey to the south
often begin to leave their haunts before the food
supply in any way fails them, and before they have
any physical want known to us indicating a coming
change in the conditions of life. But students of
the subject have probably not fully reckoned with
the deep emotional effect on all wild nature of the
waning light in the declining year, and on the
uncontrollable instinct to follow the sinking sun
begotten in those whose habits of life it affects.

WILD LIFE IN SEVERN ESTUARY 87

Deep down in the psychology of peoples lies the
corresponding primordial instinct of the waning
day. How dying men have begged to have their
faces raised to the setting sun. How we have built
our houses open towards the west, intolerant of the
depressing shadows between us and the sinking
day. How the towns and cities of European
peoples have, where possible, grown as by a natural
law towards the lighted west. How it has been the
west-end which has become in consequence the
residence of wealth and fashion. Beneath the
face of history the same sub-conscious instinct has
moved to results massive and enduring. How the
individuals and races, emotional, adventurous,
sanguine, have ever turned their backs on the east
and followed the sun. In these western lands which
leaned at last against the impassable ocean they
could get no further, and the successive waves of
the warring peoples, pent together, were heaped
one upon each other till they have become what they
have become in history, and we search downward
now through their records as through geological
strata. And how when the ocean itself was con-
quered at last the flood of peoples with accumulated
impulse burst once more westward over the virgin
continent of the New World !

Down the valley comes the little local train,
shaking the bog like an earthquake. The feeding
water-rail in the deep rhine by the side scarcely
lifts her head. The sitting lapwing still covers her
nest undisturbed. From over the open comes the
laughing note of the green woodpecker in the little
farm orchard carpeted with flowers which nestles
by the hills. Further, far distant down the valley,

38 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

sounds faintly the shriek of the locomotive on the
main roads tearing its way to the metropolis with
ocean mails from the peoples beyond the sea. In
the little station the travellers bear the marks of
many occupations and of residence in distant lands.
The starlings fly overhead with food in their beaks
close by the spot where the coiners in the days of
the Roman occupation imitated in these swamps
the imperial coinage and left their coin-moulds
to this day. Around lie the silent hills scarred with
the works of the unknown and forgotten races.
And everywhere eternal nature. How old the world
is ! Nay, but rather how young ; in what callow
infancy ! The morning and the evening are as yet
scarcely the first day. The conscious history of the
race has as yet hardly circled the earth in its spread
from east to west.

Ill

WILD BEES

THE wilder humble bees are a much-wronged
and slighted family. Their showy relatives,
the hive bees, make such a noise in the world
that they have appropriated most of the attention
which we have to bestow upon bees in general.
The naturalist and bee farmer vie with each other
in enlarging on the merits of the hive bee ; the
one extolling her as an example of intelligence and
the other as a source of profit, they have together
managed to induce us to devote to her an expendi-
ture of printers' type which ought to satisfy the
hungriest ambition for fame. But the poor humble
bee, like most poor relations, has been sadly over-
looked. Even the naturalist is inclined to treat
her as he does ordinary moths and beetles, bestowing
on her little more notice than is required to classify
and describe varieties ; and so the world follows
suit and nicknames the poor bees in disparaging
reference to their supposed inferior position in insect
society — nicknames them, for the name humble bee
is but a'corruption of the true title bumble-bee,
which — like the scientific generic term Bombus, from

39

40 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

an imitative word — has reference to the
booming sound made by the insect in flying.

The bee family has an interesting history.
It is in all probability descended from certain
solitary wasps which, like an ranting species, were
in the habit of providing living animal food for the
young larvae. Like a family of solitary wasps of
the present day, they probably possessed the power
of stinging their animal prey so as to paralyse with-
out killing it, laying an egg beside this living store of
food, and leaving it to be the prey of the resulting
larva. The first step upwards was the abandonment
of this habit, the more enlightened individuals taking
to feeding the young with food disgorged from their
own stomachs, the perfect insect feeding on honey
or pollen. Hermann Muller states that the new
race at first differed only in this habit, but in course
of time, filling an unoccupied place in nature, it
increased enormously, and at last formed the widely
ramified family of bees as we have come to know it.
The steps in the development of the family have
been marked by the gradual elongation of the
tongue and the adaptation of the mouth parts to
honey-collecting habits, the acquisition and perfect-
ing of pollen-collecting appendages, and the develop-
ment of social instincts in some species. The steps
may still be traced through surviving types, and
Muller has sketched the development upward
through the species of Prosopis, which differ little
from many sand-wasps, Sphccodcs, Halictus, Andrcna,
until the Bombus or humble bee family is reached,
this being the nearest ally to the hive bee, in which
the series aihninates. The resulting changes which
have taken place elsewhere in nature pari passu

WILD BEES 41

with this change of habits in the bee family
must be left to the imagination. Nearly all the
endless variety of flowers with their perfumes and
colours as we know them have since been evolved,
as well as most of the beautiful arrangements for
bee-fertilization upon which thousands of species
of plants are dependent for their existence. Truly
very small causes sometimes have prodigious results !
How many people know or realize that much of
the variety in plants, most of the colours in our
gardens, many of the perfumes on our toilet tables,
much of the beauty in many of our canvases, a good
deal of the poetry in our language, and even a con-
siderable development of the beauty sense in our-
selves, result from that rather vulgar historical
incident dated an aeon or two back, when the young
of the bee family left off a taste for butchers' meat
and took to vegetarianism !

Lord Avebury puts forward on behalf of the ants
what he calls a fair claim to rank next to man in
the scale of intelligence, if they are to be judged by
their social organizations, their architectural abilities,
and their relations to other animals. Their relations
the bees are, however, scarcely less interesting, and
most of their wonderful habits must have been
developed since they acquired their social instincts,
since to the acquirement and development of these
most of their importance is due. For this reason
the present condition and habits of the humble
bees are of special interest, for here we have, as
it were, the starting point where we may see the
community just in process of development, the
social ties which hold it together being as yet of
the loosest.

42 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

Every one must, I presume, admit a general
acquaintance with the humble bee. From the
first sunny day in March to the last in September
she is with us, industrious, contented, and entirely
devoted to her own affairs, a worthy example to
her betters. About forty species variously habili-
tated in artistic patterns in black, red, brown, and
yellow are known in the British Isles, and are
familiar under various names — bumble bees, humble
bees, dumble dors, wild bees, foggie bees, field bees,
boom bees, hummel bees, etc. Most persons must
also admit a general acquaintance with her habits,
and will have seen her in early spring, sleek after
her long hibernation, and big with the projects of
maternity, curiously spying into dark corners in
search of suitable quarters where she soon hopes to
be mistress of an extensive menage. The desirable
building site for which she is prospecting on these
occasions is a retreat in the sunny side of a moss
bank, or a nook in a stone heap, or an eligible rat-
hole, according to the family notions on the subject
prevalent among the species to which she belongs.
If there are any who have not made the acquaintance
of the humble bee at this stage of her career, there
will be few at all events who can plead ignorance
of the presence of the numerous family which she
brings into the world later on in the year, the indi-
viduals of which diligently ransack most of our wild
flowers, unconsciously the while providing for next
year's crop of those glories of the field to delight
the eye of the beauty-seeker and vex the soul of the
farmer. The humble bee is, above all her sisters,
nature's chosen high priestess to our indigenous
flowers, good and bad alike ; by her aid even the

WILD BEES 43

latest thistle blossom is secured against the risk
of scattering its downy filaments innocuously on
the wind. The humble bees, like the hive species,
do not, however, thrive in all localities ; this is
perhaps due to the absence of particular flowers in
certain districts ; it is remarked that the hive bees
will not prosper in a locality which does not produce
an abundance of white clover — a plant upon which
they largely depend for supplies during the swarming
season.

No one is likely to confuse the humble bee with
the hive bee, the smoother body and small size of
the latter being in strong contrast with the large
rough-looking and very hairy body of the former.
The thick covering of hair on the body of the humble
bee, besides its use in pollen collecting, is intended
to be a protection against the weather, and it indicates
the climatic distribution of the family. The genus
Bombus is essentially a cold climate form, and it is
particularly associated with the north temperate
zone. The bees have, however, managed to extend
themselves far beyond these limits ; their familiar
boom being heard all round the world, and at both
sides of the equator. In Europe they fly as far'
north as Lapland, and in Asia they extend from
Northern Siberia to the confines of India. Most of
our species are found in North America, and some
of them in the southern continent. They are, how-
ever, entirely unknown in Australasia. The native
bee which takes their place in Australia is a puny
stingless weakling, resembling the aborigines, even
to the extent that it is being rapidly exterminated
by a higher civilization, progress being represented
by the hive bee imported from Europe. But to

44 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

return to the history of the humble bee. When the
queen issues forth in spring, after her long winter
sleep, to found a new community, she, as soon as
she has fixed upon a suitable spot to build in, collects
a small store of honey and pollen as a provision for
the first members of the family which she is about
to bring into the world. When the queen bee of
the hive species has made up her mind to start on
her own account she issues forth from the parent
hive followed by thousands of ready subjects. The
swarm is, indeed, already a miniature state with a
perfectly organized government, and with suitable
quarters the machinery of government works smoothly
from the first. With the queen mother of the humble
bees the case is entirely different. As yet there is
no state, and she has no subjects ; she represents
the whole in her own royal person ; " 'Letat c'est
moi / " is just now in her case literally as well as
figuratively true. She lays at first a few eggs, and
continues depositing at short intervals from half a
dozen to a dozen at a time. These eggs all produce
neuter workers, and directly the first bees hatch
out they relieve the queen of all the inferior duties
thrust upon her by the necessities of the situation.
They are soon in the fields, collecting supplies for
the increasing wants of the young colony, and the
queen having resumed her proper position, she,
like her sister of the hive species, in future devotes
her attention solely to the production of eggs, her
subjects taking charge of all the duties of nursing,
food-producing, house-building, and defence.

My observation of the colonies which I have kept
has always dated from about this stage. I have
never been able to induce a queen to commence

WILD BEES 45

housekeeping under observation. I have kept
the young queens from my nests till the following
spring, as well as those captured in the fields late
in the autumn, and I have also tried with two caught
in the early spring, but in all cases I have failed.
My colonies have always been taken from the
meadow.

On the sill of one of the windows of the room in
which I am writing is a shallow wooden box open
at the top, in which is established a flourishing colony
of humble bees, one of four which I have kept since
last May. This is the third season in which I
have had colonies of the humble bee under observa-
tion, and I have found them to thrive unexpectedly
well in London. This colony in particular has flour-
ished. Beneath the round moss-covered dome in
the centre of the box it has stored up a supply of
honey and pollen large for its kind, and, having
brought into the world a numerous progeny of
workers during the season, it is now hatching out
an unusually large number of young queens and
males to carry on the species next year. Bohemians
as these bees are, it is curious and not a little inter-
esting to see the intelligent active little creatures
so much at home here, and to watch them coming
to my window over the houses and trees laden with
spoil. It is always a pleasing duty to bring deserving
claims to notice, and I shall feel that I have dis-
charged a duty if a pretty intimate acquaintance of
the family affairs of the colonies which I have kept
under observation will enable me to say anything
which might tend to the removal of the badge of
inferiority which by common consent seems to have
been bestowed on the humble bee. -

46 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

Those colonies which I have this year are just
now (July) in the heyday of their prosperity. The
one to which I have already referred is arranged
for observation. The. bees resent any interference
with the nest during the daytime, but here beneath
the shade of my reading-lamp I can remove the
mossy dome, lined inside with wax and waterproof,
exposing the busy scene underneath, without any
hostile demonstration being attempted against me.
After a few moments' perturbation the bees do not
seem to miss the covering, and the work of the nest
goes on as usual. It is an interesting sight. The
bees are all employed in some way, some excavating
round the edges of the nest to make room for the
growing bulk within, others attending to the multitu-
dinous duties connected with the shaping of cells
and cocoons and the wants of the young larvae.
Even those which appear to be lazily stretched at
full length over the cells are not lying luxuriously
at their ease as might be thought, but are helping
to keep warm the young larvae within, assisting their
development by a kind of incubation. The so-
called honeycomb in the nests of the humble bee
is a poor affair compared with the beautiful structure
manufactured by the hive bees ; it is not really
of the same nature, but consists simply of the cocoons
of the young insects irregularly fastened together.
Some of those in the nest still contain the young
brood, but others out of which the young insects
have emerged have been used for the storage of
honey. Those dark brown protuberances affixed
in some places to the cocoons, looking like small
accumulations of wax kept in reserve, have an
interesting history ; they contain the young bees

WILD BEES 47

in various stages of development before they spin
their cocoons. The queen generally lays in one of
the little recesses formed where two or more cocoons
join, and the eggs are afterwards covered with a
thin layer of wax and pollen, which the bees add to
as the larvae inside increase in bulk. Instead of
each grub occupying a separate cell, like those of
the hive species, many are here wrapped together
under a common blanket. It is easy to expose the
eggs or larvae underneath by raising the thin covering
of wax with the point of a long needle, and it is
amusing to see how the bees crowd excitedly round,
and in a few moments repair the damage under
one's eyes. They show some suspicion of outside
influence, and even bite inquiringly at the needle
as if not altogether satisfied that its innocent-looking
exterior may not be a cover for hostile intentions.
Some time ago, being curious to see, amongst other
things, whether the young of the hive bee could
be reared under the same conditions as those of
the humble bee, and vice versa, I made some trials
with the eggs and larvae of each. Among other
experiments I placed some larvae of the hive bee in
one of the nests of the humble bees. Having care-
fully removed part of the waxen covering of one
of the little groups of larvae, I placed a grub taken
fresh from the hive amongst the others, and covered
the whole roughly up again, expecting that as usual
the bees would complete the repairs, and so seal
up the intruder with the others. I was, however,
disappointed ; they were not to be cheated in this
way, and they would not repair the Broken wax
until they had smelt out the stranger, whom they
dragged out and carried outside the nest, after

48 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

which they repaired the breach in the usual way.
Several times I tried, but with no better success.
Unlike the ants, who will rear the young of other
species, these bees would not allow the strange children
of their betters to be fathered on them, and the
helpless little aristocrats were always detected and
dragged ignominiously out. As some species of
the humble bee tolerate a kind of cuckoo bee (apathus),
which lays its eggs in their nests to be hatched out
with the offspring of the legitimate proprietors,
whom they much resemble in appearance, I was
not altogether prepared for this intelligent opposition
to my ideas. Thinking that I might have better
success with the eggs, I took some fresh from the
hive and placed them amongst a little group just
deposited by the humble bee queen. The bees at
first appeared to be rather puzzled at these eggs.
One or two of them took them up somewhat aim-
lessly, and again replaced them as if they hardly
liked to openly accuse their sovereign of misconduct,
which they seemed to suspect. After a little
hesitation a decision was arrived at. Natura non
facit saltum was surely as safe a motto for bees as
it is for philosophers, but instead of carrying the
eggs out of the nest as they did the larvae, the bees,
one after the other, proceeded, apparently with
considerable relish to nibble them — a relapse into
barbarism which, after ages of aesthetic culture, was
quite startling — and so appreciative did they become
of the flavour of these new-laid eggs that they would
soon accept them readily when I offered them at
the end of a needle. Once or twice I think I suc-
ceeded in smuggling some of the strange eggs in
with the others, but, whether it was that the bees

WILD BEES 49

afterwards detected them or that they were hatched
out and the strange surroundings and low company
proved too much for the refined tastes of the hive
grubs, they never came to anything.

The wax which the humble bees use to stick their
cocoons together, to plaster the inside of their nests,
and sometimes to form rough cells to hold honey,
is very dark, almost black when compared with
the beautiful white material secreted by the hive
bees. I think they mix earth with it, for I soon
found that my colonies did not flourish so well
unless I provided a supply of earth kept constantly
moist within reach of the bees, and in this they
were constantly burrowing.

The humble bees never swarm ; there is nothing
amongst them analogous to what happens when
a colony of hive bees with the queen at their head
issues forth from the parent stock to found a new
community. About the middle of July a colony
is at its best. Up to this time nothing but workers
have been produced in the nest, and the bees will
have garnered a supply of honey and pollen which,
in the case of the underground species, where the
colonies are larger, will have assumed considerable
dimensions. This is all, however, but a means to a
great end, none of the present occupants of the nest
having the slightest interest in its prosperity. They
have borne the heat and burthen of the day only
that others may reap the fruits of their labours.
About the beginning of July a change comes over
the queen. Hitherto she has produced only neuter
worker bees or imperfect females, but now, whether
by instinct or necessity is not yet clear, she com-
mences to lay eggs which produce only males and

50 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

perfect females or queens in about equal proportion.
When these attain to maturity the dissolution of
the commonwealth is at hand. Neither the males
nor the young queens take any interest in the affairs
of the colony, and they both forsake the nest soon
after they are able to fly. The males pass a brief
roving existence, exhibiting a marked spirit of
masculine independence, stopping out all day and
all night too. They spend the sunny days in
looking for their mates, till having fulfilled their
mission in the world, they, like the workers, all
die at the approach of winter. Only the queens
remain, and these wander about till the cold weather
warns them that it is time to search for a warm corner,
where haply they may survive the winter to start
the following year on their own account.

It is generally supposed that the old queen does
not survive a second winter. The queen bee of
the hive species it is well known lives and remains
fruitful for several years. I have often missed
the old queen from my nests towards the end of
the year, and have often wondered what had become
of her. One morning early in July last year I was
watching one of my colonies at work when I was
surprised to see the old queen come out unattended,
and after a little hesitation fly away. I watched
for a long time but did not see her come back, and
as far as I could learn she did not return during
the day. Next day I opened the nest. The
colony was in a very flourishing condition ; some
young queens had just been hatched out, and there
was a good deal of young brood in various stages
of development, and some eggs which had not been
long laid, but, as I expected, the old queen was

WILD BEES 5-1

missing. She never returned, but the affairs of the
colony went on as I should have otherwise expected
until all the bees dispersed at the usual time. It
is likely that the old queen is one of the first to
leave the nest towards the end of the season, and
it is not improbable that after spending the autumn
like the younger queens she should in some cases
survive till the second season.

As far as my observation of the humble bee goes,
I have found the individuals more intelligent than
those of the hive bees. This may seem strange
considering the work and the wonderful social
organization of the latter. Yet it is doubtless in
result, to quote from Mr. Herbert Spencer, a ques-
tion of altruism versus egoism. The specialized
instincts of the hive bee have been for countless
generations developed on the strictest lines of
altruism, that is for the benefit of the colony rather
than of the individual bee. A glaring example of
this altruism carried to its extreme limits is witnessed
when the hive bee, Spartan-like in its public spirit,
but pathetic in its stupidity, sacrifices itself on the
smallest provocation for the good of the common-
wealth, when it inflicts a slightly more serious wound
by leaving its barbed sting, which it cannot with-
draw, rankling in the flesh of the intruder, and
dying itself from the injury caused by the loss of
it. So it is with most of its instincts ; they have
been developed and specialized for the good of the
community and do not necessarily imply what might
have been looked for as a corresponding degree of
intelligence in the individual. When the humble
bees long ago branched off from the parent stock,
the individuals of the species were doubtless still

52 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

so sunk in barbarism as to be quite incapable of
even unconsciously entertaining any designs which
had not a direct bearing on the interest of number
one. The habits of the humble bee, still living a
single-handed existence for a great part of the
year, have made it necessary for her to retain a good
deal of this primitive wisdom, and even to cultivate
it. The development of the two branches of the
family has been on entirely different lines. The
humble bees in fact have not yet learnt to sacrifice
the individual to the community, and despite their
very rude social economy, and the popular prejudice
against them in consequence, it is not at all improb-
able that we may have yet to allow that the individual
humble bee is in advance of her cousin the hive bee
in " general intelligence."

I need not refer amongst other things to the intelli-
gence displayed particularly by the members of the
underground species, in their ingenious plan of
getting at the honey in some flowers by piercing
the corolla, a habit which the hive bees are ready
enough to take advantage of without having the
intelligence to imitate it. There is a sense of
individuality about the humble bee which it is
hardly possible to attach to a single bee of the hive
species. One sunny day in March I captured a
large female of the species Bombus terrestris on the
willows in the wood above Weston-super-Mare.
Taking her to London with me, I placed her in an
empty nest in which I had kept a colony the previous
year, and having filled part of the empty comb
with honey and given her a supply of pollen I was
in hopes that she might be induced to rear a young
family under observation. I was, however, dis-

WILD BEES 58

appointed to find that beyond helping herself to the
honey she evinced no desire to take up her quarters
in the vacant nest, and eventually despairing of
success in my endeavour to reconcile her to her
new surroundings, I gave up the attempt and
let her have her own way. She then spent several
days in beating against the glass of my windows in
the endeavour to get outside. Being much from
home at the time I took little further notice of her
then, and soon missing her, I concluded she had
found her way through the open window. One
warm day some weeks after, as I was quietly reading
in the room, I was a little surprised, on hearing a
slight scratching noise near me, to observe her,
engaged upon her toilette, perched beside me on
the table-cover, out of the folds of which she had
evidently just emerged. She had apparently take;
up her quarters permanently there, for after a few
short flights round the room she returned and event-
ually retired to her old quarters for the day. This
was the beginning of a long and interesting acquaint-
ance with my humble friend. Nearly every day
during the early summer she came out, and her
behaviour on these occasions was very curious. Her
early experience with the windows had evidently
made a great impression on her, and she never
attempted to escape that way now. Sometimes,
indeed, after a long interval, she would fly towards
the light, but before she reached the glass she invari-
ably turned back from what she had evidently come
to regard from painful experience as a delusion and
a snare. She made short trips about the room
all day, generally retiring in the evening to the
folds of the table-cover. On these occasions her

54 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

interest in the objects in the room was of a peculiar
kind ; the long confinement must have acted upon
her as it often does on prisoners, when it leads
them to take an unusual interest in objects
they would not otherwise have noticed. All
the bright objects seemed to attract her.
The brass handles of some cupboards greatly
interested her, and the polished knobs of a set
of drawers were also a source of great attention.
From time to time she would alight on one of these
latter, and having walked all over it would fly to
another and another without again alighting, as
if she had been visiting flowers. She was on the
most friendly terms with me, but I felt rather
slighted to find that her interest in me was principally
centred in the buttons of my waistcoat, which were
made of some polished material which doubtless
attracted her like the knobs of the drawers. A great
object of interest to her also was a bookcase, the
backs of the books in which in various coloured
bindings, labelled in gilt letters, were an unfailing
source of interest. Here again she rarely sought
to approach the glass, but remained on the wing
outside while she studied the gilt titles beyond. It
seemed to me strange that she should return again
and again to such a profitless occupation ; yet she
made many visits in the day to the same objects.
I am inclined to think that in her visits to the
bookcase the books which received most attention
were those in green covers (there were very few in
blue), although the rather florid lettering of some
of the poets in red binding also seemed very attract-
ive. The greatest object of attraction in the room
was, however, the keyhole of the door. Into this

WILD BEES 55

she would try to squeeze herself, and failing, would
alight near it and walk round and round it. It is
no impropriety to say that the instinct which moved
her here was essentially a feminine one, for she
doubtless associated the small dark opening with
the entrance which the females of her species usually
choose for their underground nests. Acting on the
hint, indeed, I afterwards took the discarded nest
before mentioned, and placing it in a small wooden
box entirely covered over, in the side of which I
had previously cut a small opening, I fixed it in a
prominent position and soon had the satisfaction
of finding her enter and take permanent possession.
She would not, however, be induced to breed, and
one morning towards the end of May I found her
dead in the nest, although she had a plentiful supply
of food within reach.

During the few months this bee was with me her
general relationship both to her surroundings and
myself evidenced an individuality which we are not
accustomed to associate with the members of the
insect family. She certainly regarded me without
fear, and I am inclined to think with some degree
of favour. I used occasionally to stroke her with the
end of a light feather, and she used at times to
show her keen enjoyment of this by stretching at
her full length during the operation, often putting
herself in this position before the feather had
touched her. At other times, very curiously,
she would not submit to be stroked at all, and
seeing me make preparation to do so, and while
yet the feather was some inches distant from
her, she would throw herself on her back and
scratch and bite viciously, although she would

56 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

allow me to take her in my hand without attempt-
ing to sting.

As already mentioned, one of my colonies contains
an unusually large stock of young queens this year.
I have fed the nest liberally during the year with
pollen taken from the hive bees, and this may
account for the superabundance of royalty. Royalty
amongst the bees is not a matter of birth, but of
breeding, or to speak more correctly, of feeding.
When the hive bees want to manufacture a queen
to order they take an egg or young larva, which
under ordinary circumstances would develop into
a neuter worker, and by special feeding and the
necessary enlargement of its cell, it blossoms forth
into a fully developed queen. In the bee-hive, indeed,
the plebeian worker may at any moment in her
youth have greatness thrust upon her, for as in the
great Republic, the meanest citizen (if caught
young and of the feminine gender) is eligible for
the highest honour which the state has to bestow.

With the humble bees royalty is doubtless manu-
factured in a similar way. Any one who has
disturbed a nest towards the end of the year may
have noticed that the workers are sometimes of
various sizes. Those produced at the beginning
of the year are often only slightly smaller than the
queens, but towards the end of the season I have
seen worker bees little bigger than house flies pro-
duced in the same nest with those large workers.
It has been stated that the difference in size in these
cases is due simply to difference in feeding during
the larva stage, and if this be true, it means that
those small workers produced later in the year are
the stunted victims of the process of gorging to

WILD BEES 57

which the crop of young queens is subjected, the
workers being robbed of their proper quota of food
to supply the wants of what may not inaptly be
called a bloated aristocracy.

This case of neuters or sterile females among the
social Hymenoptera is one of the deepest interest
in all its bearings. Darwin, while explaining in the
" Origin of Species " the action of natural selection
here, has left it on record that the case presented
to him difficulties which at first appeared insuperable,
and actually fatal to the whole theory of natural
selection. The question of sex among the humble
bees is most interesting, as tending to throw some
light upon the subject where it presents more
difficulties, namely, amongst the hive bees. Amongst
the humble bees the differentiation of sex has hardly
begun. The queen performs the duties of an ordinary
worker for part of the year, and the worker female
differs little from her in anything beyond what may
easily be understood as under-development conse-
quent upon less generous feeding during the larva
stage. But with the hive bees the divergence is
far wider and more significant, involving not only
difference in development but in instinct, and what
is more important, in structure. The queen of
the humble bees, like the neuters, possesses pollen-
collecting appendages, and a curved almost unbarbed
sting (which does not remain in the wound), which
heritage she of course still transmits intact to her
royal descendants and to the neuters. Now the
queen of the hive species, besides differing altogether
from the neuters in instinct, has lost, with other
slight peculiarities, the pollen-collecting appendages,
but she still preserves the power of transmitting

58 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

them to the neuters, while on the other hand she
has retained her curved unbarbed sting, but strange
to say has acquired the power of transmitting an
improved and more deadly weapon to the neuters.
In the case of the neuters of the hive species it is
interesting and not inexplicable that the peculiari-
ties of instinct and structure which are correlated
with sterility should be developed in them by the
principle of natural selection act ing on the community,
though transmitted to them by the queen in whom
such peculiarities have never been developed. This
may be explained ; for as in the course of time
modifications of structure and instinct in the neuters
were found to be advantageous to the community,
there was a tendency for the fertile females in the
communities in which those modifications were
most pronounced to flourish, and so transmit to
their fertile offspring a tendency to produce sterile
members with the same peculiarities. Yet the
most wonderful feature of the case remains to be
mentioned, namely, that in the hive bees those
peculiarities which the fertile female or queen
transmits to her offspring can be controlled and
profoundly modified simply at the will of the worker
bees by the course of treatment to which the young
insect is subjected while in the larva stage, so that
from the same egg may be produced either an ordinary
neuter — with pollen baskets and barbed sting — or
a queen without the pollen-collecting appendages,
which would be useless, and without the barbed
sting, which would be a dangerous if not a fatal
equipment.

That natural selection has been the causa efficiens
in bringing about this remarkable combination of

WILD BEES 59

peculiar endowments working together for the good
of the species, there can be no reasonable doubt ;
nevertheless, the mind cannot withhold its tribute
of admiration when we consider the exquisite adjust-
ment of means to that end here presented, and reflect
what the steps must have been before the present
advanced stage towards perfection had been attained.
The males of the humble bee are an interesting
section of the community. They differ in colour
from the females and are more brightly marked,
but it is peculiar that there is no permanence of
pattern, the males of the same species differing in
the arrangement and intensity of the colours dis-
played. Besides other structural peculiarities they
possess much longer antennas than the females,
and like the drones of the hive bees they are not
armed with a sting. Comparing them with these
latter one cannot help being struck, here as else-
where, with the greatness of the penalty which the
individuals amongst the hive bees have had to
pay for the social organization which has contributed
so much to the success of the species in the great
struggle for existence. The male bee of the Bombus
family is still far from having become the helpless
pitiful creature which we find his male relative the
hive drone to be. True, nature has already made it
clear that he is a creature of infinitely less importance
to her than the females who are to carry on the
species ; but beyond this he is not to be despised.
Although he has no sting he submits to no dictation
from the neuters in the nest, for he leaves it imme-
diately, and what is more important, he is under
no necessity of returning, for he can forage for himself
among the flowers, and he is not therefore like the

60 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

hive drone, reduced to that most dismal of all neces-
sities— sponging on unwilling relations. He enjoys
himself in an independent way while he can, and
he is not likely to remain long unmated. The poor
degraded hive drone suffers much in comparison ;
he has fared badly while the great principles of free
competition and laissez-faire were winning for his
species a worthy place beside the ants. The hive
drone is produced and maintained by the colony
for one purpose, and all his instincts which do not
tend directly or indirectly to further that single
purpose have been retrograding. He has lost most
of what intelligence his kind ever possessed ; he
has lost the power of seeking his own food, being
helplessly dependent on the earnings of the colony.
Of his miserable life the bees are so contemptuously
generous that for one queen which requires to be
mated they generally produce at least one hundred
drones, ninety-nine of which, excluding accidents,
live to be ruthlessly slaughtered by the bees at the
end of the season. The favoured one which meets
the queen on her marriage flight pays the penalty
of being chosen to such a lofty destiny. The queen
returns to the hive alone, and during her life remains
true to her first love, but her elect returns no more ;
he has been the hero of a love tragedy, and even in
articulo mortis has become the father of a mighty
host. This peculiar fate, which happily is rare in
the animal kingdom, is, however, said to be shared
by the male of the humble bee, but here I cannot
speak from personal observation.

Has the present condition of the humble bees
and their evolution to a higher social development
any bearing on other questions ? The family or

WILD BEES 61

clan stage of social development is represented in
the village communities of the humble bee, still
held together by the loosest ties. The independence
and welfare of the individual is still preserved, and
the community still largely exists for the individual,
and not the individual for the community. But
with the hive bees the individual has ceased to
be of much account ; even its life is wantonly
expended, as, for instance, in order that the colony
may secure the infinitesimal advantage derived
from the slightly more serious wound inflicted when
the worker leaves her barbed sting in the flesh of
an enemy ; one-half the community (the neuters)
are unsexed, and the other half (the drones), while
preserving their sex, have lost nearly everything
else to become the degraded victims of the meanest
kind of slavery. But the species has prospered,
the government is highly centralized, and the state
is rich, populous, and powerful beyond comparison
with its less civilized competitors. What are the
lessons ? Has progress been dearly bought as we
should count the cost ?

IV
EELS

NOVEMBER is the season when there is
silently taking place through all the broad
waters of the land a pilgrimage which exceeds
even the annual migration of birds in the interest
which attaches to it. The eels are seeking their
spawning grounds. It is only within the last few
years that science, in the case of the common eel,
has found the clue to one of the problems of natural
history which for long resisted all attempts to
explain it. Up to the date when, some years ago,
a paper on the subject was read before the Royal
Society, the life-history of the eel remained a subject
of mystery and uncertainty. Now that the facts
have been in some measure pieced together by patient
investigation, the reality has outstripped the imagin-
ation of the naturalist, and the life-story of our
familiar eel, soberly recounted, reads like a page from
the " Arabian Nights." Last spring, as the present
writer sat swinging his legs on a low bridge over
a river in Somersetshire, there were to be seen in
the water beneath thousands of little eels wriggling
up-stream in constant procession. It was a sight
which was to be witnessed at the same time in many
other rivers. The eels in the spring ascend in this

EELS 63

way against the current in the streams all over
the country, wriggling through grass and weeds
and even climbing damp walls under the instinct
which drives them. Every river and lake through-
out the country, and even the smallest isolated
pond has its eels, and the question has always been :
Where do they come from and whither do they go ?
All kinds of stories are current amongst country
people as to the origin of eels from other forms of
life, or by spontaneous generation. The great
mystery, however, twenty-five years ago in scientific
circles was : How do eels produce their young, and
where do they spawn ? Eels, it was well known,
remained years in the same waters ; they attained
a large size ; they had even been kept under observa-
tion for twenty years or more. But no one had
ever seen an eel containing spawn or producing
young.

It appears now that all the large eels return to
the sea to spawn after they spend some years in
fresh water. This, however, is not the most remark-
able fact of the case. In noteworthy researches
made by Grassi and others in the Mediterranean,
it was discovered that the spawning of our common
eel takes place at considerable depths in the sea,
probably never less than two hundred fathoms. The
eggs of the trout and salmon will only hatch out
in the shallowest water. But pressure at this great
depth appears to be necessary to the vital functions
in the production of the young eels. It is commonly
known in this country that the big eels go down the
rivers in the autumn. Those that are caught on
the journey are usually observed to be undergoing
a curious change. Their eyes have become larger

64 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

and their bodies covered with silvery scales.
The eyes are now known to reach an enormous
size when the eels reach very deep water. A glance
at the map of the sea surrounding the coasts of
Northern Europe will show what an extraordinary
interest has begun to attach to the life-history of
the eel that so familiarly takes the worm with which
the schoolboy baits his hook in every little stream
and inland pond. There is, for instance, no depth
of two hundred fathoms in the North Sea or in the
English Channel or anywhere near our coasts. All
the eels that come down the rivers of the British
Islands and of North-Western Europe appear to
be making for a region farther out in the Atlantic.
A considerable distance west of the British Islands
young eels have been found in water of great depth,
and it is apparently from such a region that the
young eels return which ascend our rivers in spring.
Eels on their migration go down the rivers in the
autumn generally with floods. They are caught
for the markets in vast numbers at such times.
They generally move at night and they seem to
prefer stormy weather. As in the case of the migra-
tion of some birds the males precede the females
in this journey towards the depths of the ocean.
The usual stay of the eel in fresh water seems to be
about five or six years. We never see the mature
form, for the eel which we know develops into a
creature of very different appearance when it reaches
the rendezvous in the deep waters of the ocean where
it spawns, and to which it is drawn by these strange
forces of life.

It is curious how all this seems to fit in with much
that was formerly known. Seventy years ago a

EELS 65

paper was read before one of the Natural History
societies in Edinburgh giving accounts of the habits
of some tame eels that were kept in a pond. It
was said that in the autumn they invariably became
very restless, and took every opportunity of the
pond overflowing from rain to get out. It was noted
as a fact of interest that the eels on these occasions
were without exception found travelling over the
surface in an eastern direction, that being the
direction in which the sea lay. The observation
was the more interesting as it was unaccompanied
by any theories as to why the eels should want to
get to the sea. They were indeed supposed to
breed in the pond, and the fact that young eels
had been found there was given as proof of the truth
of this supposition.

As the problem of the eel has been explained we
would appear to have in its life history the reverse
of that of the salmon. The interest of the eel is,
however, far greater. There are many points also
at which the parallelism entirely fails. It is a
curious feature, for instance, that the mature eel
never seems to return to fresh water after it revisits
the sea. All information at present seems to point
to the conclusion that the eels die after spawning in
the depths of the ocean. Unlike the salmon, the
eel never seems to make more than once in a life-
time the journey to meet its mate. Another inter-
esting point is that, although the span of existence
of the eel which, thus completes its life-cycle appears
to be comparatively short, it may apparently be
indefinitely prolonged in certain circumstances.
Eels that continue in fresh water remain barren.
But they will live indefinitely. They have been
5

66 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

kept in confinement in ponds thirty and forty years.
They obtain a great size in such circumstances,
feeding voraciously in the summer, and, as is the
habit of eels, burying themselves in the bottom and
remaining in a more or less torpid state during the
winter.

The mystery of the migration of eels remains.
It has indeed only been added to and deepened
by these observations. The young elvers which
ascend the rivers in countless millions in the spring-
time are already a year old. They have, indeed,
by the time they reach fresh water, travelled far
through the trackless waters of the oceans. How do
they find the way ? In the case of the migration of
birds there is always the suggestion that the young
birds have found the way by accompanying others
that have made the journey before. But here
this explanation fails us. The parent eels never
return. The little eels, which are about two or
three inches in length, and which have already
undergone metamorphosis in developing from the
egg in the deep sea, can obviously possess nothing
in the shape of memory to direct them. Yet they
press onwards to their destination with an unerring
sense. This one may readily observe if it be sought
to interrupt them or to place any obstacles in their
way. The common eel is found over the greater
part of Europe, and if the development of the eggs,
as appears to be proved, will only take place at
considerable depths in the ocean, it is evident that
journeys of immense length have to be made by the
parent eels in returning to their breeding-places,
and then by the little elvers in seeking the rivers
and inland waters. It seems one of the most remark-

EELS 67

able of the facts of migration that we should have
thus to think of the eels of the countries bordering
on the North Sea, after their term of years in fresh
water, finding their way out of the ponds, down
the rivers, and along the dim vistas of the sea to
meet their mates in the still depths of the distant
Atlantic. The large eels that go in the autumn
have been traced to some extent in the course
which they take. And we see every spring the
little eels which return from the depths, after
they have been already a year in the sea. But
what a sight it would be if we could see it, this
meeting-place fof the hosts of eels from many
countries which have come to spawn in the depths
of the ocean.

HARES

THE hare in this country usually begins to
breed in March, and by this season (August)
the members of the first litters are well ad-
vanced in growth. The young are placed amongst
the tufts of short cover in open grass land, and even
after they are grown to a considerable size they nearly
always try to secure safety by concealment rather
than by flight. The young hares in their form in
the grass constitute one of the most characteristic
sights in nature, although it is one much less generally
observed than might be supposed. The leverets
are usually to be found in pairs, and they nearly
always lie head to tail, and rarely with the heads
together, probably an instinct inherited for purposes
of better concealment. When they are in this
position concealed in the grass, one may walk
round and round them, and do everything but sit
on them or tread on them, while the timid little
creatures will never move a muscle. The present
writer, when photographing, has bent down the
grass at the side of a well-grown pair, so as to catch
the reflection of the light on the eyes, almost

68

HARES 69

brushing the fur of each in the act, while they still
remained motionless.

There is no more remarkable type in nature than
that of the hare when it is considered in relation to its
specialization for speed. The wonderful symmetry
of the greyhound, one of the oldest of the dog types
bred by man, is but the corollary, through artificial
selection, of what had been attained in the case of
the hare by longer ages of natural selection. Our
common wild hare, seen in an attitude of attention,
is a beautiful creature, displaying in every movement
the nature of the history which has produced it.
The large, bright, intelligent eye, so different from
that of the rabbit ; the deep, cup-shaped ears,
capable of being bent in any direction to form a
receptacle to catch the slightest sound ; the well-
correlated movements, showing intention and intelli-
gence at every turn ; the body itself, with its mar-
vellous blend of protective colours and its suggestion
of speed in every line ; the long and remarkably
built hind legs, moved by the powerful muscles
above and tapering to the slender feet ; the character-
istic leaps and gambols of the creature, which is
capable of tucking or folding itself when at ease
into a space only one-fifth of its fully extended
length ; and, lastly, the pervading consciousness,
manifest in all its actions, if it be in the least suspicious
of being watched or pursued, of the betraying scent
given off by its body, all form a blend of qualities
irresistibly suggestive of the untold ages of stress
and selection out of which the hare has come. The
principal natural enemies of the hare in this country
are the fox, the weasel, and the polecat. The be-
haviour of the hare on being hunted by the weasel

70 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

or polecat much resembles that of the rabbit. It is
in both cases inexplicable. The hare, which could
easily far outpace its enemy, shambles uneasily
forward ; it allows its pursuer to overtake it, and
it often, like the rabbit, squeals as if in mortal
terror long before the bloodsucker fastens upon it.
The hare breeds in this country several times in
the year, and with all the protection which is afforded
it, the destruction which goes on must be immense
or otherwise the land would be overrun with hares.
The mortality amongst the early litters is great,
particularly in cold and inclement seasons. It is
indeed a singular fact in natural history that the
hare, every detail of whose body is related to the
fact that it numbers nearly every beast or bird of
prey amongst its enemies, should be so delicate in
constitution. A cold night in spring, as many an
observer must have noticed, kills numbers of the
young in the early litters. Shock or slight injury
is also readily fatal, even when growth is well
advanced.

The stories told about the intelligence of hares
when being hunted by dogs are innumerable. The
animal will return over its scent, cross and recross
it with springs, and make off at right angles. It
will go down one side of a hedge and then up the
other, passing its pursuers with only the screen
between. It will take to water or endeavour to
lose the scent amongst domestic animals. We have
even known it to jump on the shoulders of a man
when hard pressed. Even the little leverets, as
they hide in the grass in the spring, seem to have a
highly-developed sense of the necessity for cunningly
meeting the dangers to which they are exposed.

HARES 71

If a pair are marked in a form the entire lack of
motion only lasts while they are under observation.
It is preliminary to immediately shifting their
quarters as soon as they feel safe to move. They
will invariably be found to have disappeared if one
returns to look for them soon after. Our common
wild hare becomes a delightful companion when
tamed. One which the present writer obtained at
an early age grew as familiar and playful as a kitten.
It would sleep in a basket by the fire during part
of the day, and come out for its gambols about the
room as evening approached. The animal, during
some months it was under observation, displayed in
all its movements how deeply the hunted life of its
kind had left impress on all its qualities, and how
watchfulness as to the necessities arising therefrom
formed as it were the dominant character of the
hare's mind. If it was introduced to a strange room,
for instance, its first behaviour was always the same.
Although it showed no fear if accompanied by any
one it knew, it invariably continued in a state of
mental tension until it had satisfied itself on one
point. It made sure that there was a place to
which it could retire at will, and if possible remain
screened from view. Then and then only would
it relax into playfulness and ease. One of its
continual frolics was to come out of this hiding-
place and then pretend to be chased back at full
speed. On some occasions the mixture of shyness
and daring was most fascinating to watch. There
was apparently a mental process going on in which
native timidity was being continually corrected
by the assurance that everything was quite safe.
It was boldest and most familiar at night. It

72 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

would then come on the table while writing was
going on and stretch itself out at full length, or
sit and watch'with four legs tucked underneath like
a cat.

It is a moot question whether the hare is a rabbit
which has taken to the open or the rabbit is a degener-
ate hare which has obtained comparative safety by
taking to a stupid life in the earth. It is an inter-
esting fact in this connection, and one not often
remarked on by observers, that a hare, if it finds an
obstacle it wishes to get rid of, will naturally scratch
with its front legs with considerable strength and
with exactly the same movement as a rabbit. Thus,
although the hare lives in the open grass country,
never takes to earth, and much dislikes ground infested
by rabbits, it has to all appearance latent in its
muscles the beginnings of an instinct which might
be developed into the rabbit's capacity for burrowing.

VI
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT

IT is one a.m. We are on the open chalk downs
under the stars, and twenty miles due south
from London as the crow flies. The low summer
moon, which has been but a few hours above the
horizon, is already sinking away in the south-west.
There is but little light, for the pale yellow beams
do not illuminate ; now, even before the dawn has
come, they are waning, and a ghostly air has settled
upon the almost invisible landscape. The northerly
breeze has come through the wood which meets
the sky in the foreground, and the aroma of leaves,
still in all their delicate summer freshness, lingers
on the night air. The distant bay of the watch-dog
comes over the hills, to be answered by another still
farther away, and yet now by another in the valley
below. But the sounds themselves are part of the
solitude ; they seem only to increase the silence.

Under the clear sky the heavy dew has made the
grass dripping wet, and in the uncertain light it is
difficult to keep to the steep pathway through the
upland meadows. In the low ground below, where
the trees rise spectre-like through the mist, the
railway runs. It is but a few hours since the roar

73

74 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

and crash of wheels echoed up here, and the tail-
lights of the Continental express flashed through
the trees ; but shadowy and unreal seems the world
to which such life belongs, a part of a far-off existence
which has no touch or communication with these
rural fastnesses. It is a silent land. Celt and
Roman and Saxon alike have carried highways of
the world through it. But it is still silent ; now,
as ever, the life of the highways tarries not in these
solitudes which sleep between London and the
southern sea.

Chur-r-r-r-r ! — distinct and eerie, the sound comes
up the hillside, the air vibrating with the harsh
rolling note. Now it is answered by a similar sound,
and the belt of small oaks and bracken below seems
suddenly possessed by a troop of invisible spirits.
It is the fern-owl, or night-jar, calling to his mate —
a sound which has caused a growth of superstition
to follow the bird into every land in which it has
travelled. The female, who nests on the ground, is
usually sitting when the male makes the night air
thrill with his strange note. The bird is heard here
only about this season. Out of the unknown it
comes with the rising year, and thither it returns
with its decline, reaching here on the crest of that
great migratory wave of life from the south, of
which we know so little, and which now, almost
with the summer solstice, will turn again as mys-
teriously as it came.

Slowly the splendid summer night opens out as
the ground still rises. Far away in the north, in
the direction of London, a soft opal light hangs upon
the horizon. It is the fringe of twilight from the
midnight sun circling below the horizon, though it

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT 75

is still more than two hours to sunrise. The moon
has almost ceased to shine, but the planets burn
more brightly as the light wanes, and a deeper
hush seems to fall upon the darkening landscape.
Hark ! in the still night air at this altitude the ear
catches now for the first time a solemn undertone
of the night. It is like the subdued echo of the
surf, but from a shore so distant that the sound is
here only the gentlest sigh in the air ; the ear
strains after it when at times it seems to melt back
again into the silence. The ground here is the
watershed between two rivers, the northern Thames
and the eastern Medway . It has been raining heavily
during the past week ; every little rill is full, and
the river in the valley below is still in flood. It is
the faint sound of the plash and fall of many waters
which reaches here in the stillness. This is that
voice which, once heard at night on the open hills
or moors, is never forgotten ; that sound which,
more than any other audible to human ear, suggests
the infinite —

The sound of streams that swift or slow
Draw down Ionian hills, and sow
The dust of continents to be.

The pathway through the fields runs close to
the hedge now. The scent of white clover comes
down the breeze. In front, where the ground rises
highest, the Southdown sheep lie huddled against
the sky-line. They have given an historic name to
a breed famous for its mutton ; yet even in such
descendants survive the instincts of long-forgotten
ancestors. It is the highest spot of the pasture
they have chosen to rest in, and they lie with noses
to the wind, waiting, they know not why, for an

76 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

enemy that will never more disturb the slumber
of their degenerate lives. Faint brushing sounds
come through the grass ; shadowy forms which the
eye does not catch seem to move before ; a hollow,
sepulchral double knock comes from the depths of
the hedge : it is only the angry, warning stamp of
the rabbits that have been disturbed feeding.

As the road goes north the scene changes. These
rolling chalk downs, with the deep combes nestling
at intervals between, have given trouble to the
ancient road-makers : now the track mounts
suddenly and steeply, and in an instant descends
again almost precipitously. Here the hills have
closed round again, the breeze is no longer felt in
the valley, and the shadows seem to come closer.
The long, lush grass, almost ripe for cutting, still
stands by the road, and the green wheat, already
in the ear, makes a sombre gloom on the southern
slopes under the hazel copses. Crake-crake, crake-
crake ! — far and wide the sound echoes through the
still air. It is not a stone's throw off now, and it
comes from the thick cover by the roadside, harsh,
loud, and strident, drowning all other noises of the
night. It is only the love-note of the land-rail, one
of the most familiar of all the night sounds in this
strange wanton honeymoon of our Northern year,
when for a few short weeks all nature stirs and glows
and seeks to utter herself of a life that passeth
understanding. Thus still for a little does the male
bird cheer the female as she sits on the eggs. Yet
a few weeks more, and he will be no longer heard ;
for he will change and relapse into silence and other
moods when the young are hatched out. The sound
ceases suddenly now, only to render audible a

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT 77

similar note in the distance. When it is renewed,
after a short interval, the bird has moved. He
travels quickly through the long grass. Well do
you remember how in other days you hunted him,
what good sp^0rt he made, how fleetly the long legs
carried the slim, brown body, how loth he was
to fly, and how heavily he rose. The country-
people said, indeed, that his wings were of little
use ; that, left to himself, he never used them ; and
even that he shed his feathers, and slept through
the winter in the rabbit-burrows. Yet not the
least of nature's mysteries are the now well-estab-
lished wanderings of this familiar land-rail of our
homestead meadows. By what strange routes has
he been tracked over land and ocean with the waning
year, south along the Nile valley, and even across
the equator into southern Africa ! And yet, withal,
what faithful ardour drives him, that he should
return again to woo his mate and rear his chicks in
this grey twilight of our Northern night.

The path leaves the road and crosses the fields
again. The shrill cry of the partridge comes up
the breeze. A little while ago, leaving the beaten
track, the foot stumbled into a cut thorn-bush on
the open ground. Now where the grass is smooth
and short the same accident happens again. We are
in a land where the love of wild nature has left many
a strange mark on character — a land in which respect
for law still struggles unsuccessfully with the inborn
belief that a man may take wild game and yet scorn
to be a thief. The poacher loves these long even
slopes as they will be later in the year, and the cut
thorn-bushes have relation to his visits. The men
walk them at night, two abreast and far apart,

78 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

carrying a long, narrow net between them, slightly
lifted in front and weighted behind. The birds lie
on the open ground and do not rise. As soon as
the net is over them they are doomed, and a whole
covey may be captured at once. The thorn-bushes
are the snares which wreck the net.

In the dim light mansions begin to loom out of
the trees, and to take up the best positions on the
higher grounds. The outskirts of the Metropolis
have met us ; just now, where no landmark showed
the spot, the first boundary line was crossed — the
line which marks the limits of the London Metropoli-
tan Police area, a circle within which sleeps a popu-
lation of millions. Under the oak copses the way
winds. It is sheltered here from the north, and
the air is warm and still. Hark ! From the depths
of the straggling thicket which skirts the wood there
comes now a sound in which there is something
curiously weird when heard for the first time and
from a distance. It is a bird singing in the night.
Clear, soft, and distinct, the notes rise and fall in
the silence. It is the nightingale ; this is a favourite
haunt of the birds. It is surprising how far the
sound travels ; even after a quarter of a mile has
been traversed in its direction it is still a considerable
distance off. Similar sounds come now from the
copses above, but the birds have each appropriated
a situation ; solitary they sit without changing
position, each in continuous song throughout the
night. It is the male bird which thus sings to the
female as she sits on the nest. It is only a few
steps from the thicket at last, and the songster
cannot be more than twenty yards off. You do
not wonder now at the estimate of the extraordinary

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT 79

quality of the bird's song, nor that it should have
stirred the tongues of men to strophes in many
languages. Full, rich, and liquid, the notes fall
with a strange loudness into the still night. Yet
it is not so much the form of the song itself which is
remarkable as the passion with which it seems to
thrill. Sweet, sw-e-e-t, sw-e-e-e-t — lower and ten-
derer the long-drawn-out notes come, the last of
the series prolonged till the air vibrates as if a wire
had been struck, and the solitary singer seems almost
to choke with the overmastering intensity of feeling
in the final effort. The stars shine through the
feathery branches of the silver birches as you listen ;
the hoarse bay of the watch-dog still comes at inter-
vals on the breeze ; far down the valley burns the
red eye of the railway signal ; in the distance a coal-
train is slowly panting southward, a pillar of fire
seeming to precede it when the white light from the
engine fire shines upon the steam : but the bird still
sings on and on. It is lost in a world to which
you have no key ; it has not changed its position
nor ceased its song since sunset, and it will be singing
still with the dawn. Strange infinity of nature !
Thus must its kind have sung here while the name
of England was yet unfashioned on men's lips, and
it was still a pathless wood to the northern Thames.
Thus do the birds sing still on the fringes of modern
Babylon, oblivious and indifferent to all that men
consider the vast import of the seething life beyond.
The nesting season, when the birds sing, is drawing
to a close. As the road winds near the copses the
voices of other nightingales are heard, but they
are not nearly so numerous as a few years ago.
The birds are slowly retiring before the growth of

80 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

the Metropolis. The writer's experience must have
been that of many a Londoner in the outer zone.
He has heard the bird from his bedroom window
at night for a season ; then the builder has come,
its favourite grove or thicket has been cut down,
and it has flown farther out, to return no more.
The nightingales begin song here by the end of
April, and they are almost silent by the end of
June. They do not migrate till much later, and
they continue year after year to frequent a locality
until driven away ; for, like the swallow, the same
nightingale returns each year, faithful to its old
haunts. The nightingale is not the very shy bird
it is often supposed to be ; although it usually keeps
in the depths of its thicket, it may be easily seen
moving about in the daytime. It sings then also,
but its song is usually not continuous as at night.
The opal light in the north-east is spreading to
the zenith. The path is through the fields again —
another of those public footways which render
England dear to the lover of nature. Although it
is yet an hour and a half to sunrise, a red tinge is
on the horizon, but everything is still ghostly and
indistinct. Flip, flip ! — a parr of larks flutter up
from under the feet in the half light ; they do not
rise skyward, but they are already on the alert
waiting to welcome the dawn. Hark ! There is
the first songster away on the right, the herald of
the approaching day. This ridge is the last wrinkle
of the chalk downs, the land which the larks love ;
from the next we shall overlook the outer rim of the
great clay basin on which the Metropolis is built,
and London will have straggled to our feet. A large
grey bird, slimmer than a pigeon, sails out of the

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT 81

elms by the wayside into the morning twilight.
It is the restless cuckoo, already astir. She does
not call — it is too early. Besides, she has grown
silent ; the purpose of her strange, feckless life here
is spent ; a fortnight more, and her voice will no
longer be heard in the land. The chorus of larks
grows louder in the growing light. Already the
southern slopes of London are in sight, shadowy
and indistinct in outline, yet with a clearness rarely
seen, and peculiar only to the smokeless summer
dawn. Away still on the horizon runs the inner
rim of the London basin, the line along which rise
the heights of Richmond, Wimbledon, Sydenham,
and Blackheath. Not so long ago, and its southern
limit was still a wooded solitude ; now the life of
London has flowed far over its crest to the south,
west, and east.

The bats are still wheeling in the streets of Croy-
don ; a railway signalman swinging a red lamp crosses
the way in front, and passes homeward ; two men
carrying lanterns and searching the ground pass
down a yet unfinished side street. They are looking
for the water-valves ; this is the hour at which
they can try the water in the new-laid connections
with least fear of protest from the sleeping house-
holder. Through the deserted roadways and sleep-
ing squares the way mounts to the hill on which
the water-tower stands. No other footsteps have
broken the silence. Our janitor has kept his pro-
mise, and the key grates in the lock in a moment.
Up we go the many steps — almost in the dark, it
seems, for it is still nearly an hour to sunrise —
and then out into the open at the top.

It is a strange world, dim and silent, which unrolls
6

82 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

itself before the eye here. There are in many ways
few aspects of life more impressive than the awaken-
ing of nature on the fringes of a great city, and there
are not many points of vantage better than this.
Far below, the rows of houses and streets spread
away on every side, the southern outskirts of the
great circle, twenty miles across, which London
occupies. Away to the north, farther in, though
still only in the outer zone, rises the last ridge which
shuts in the Thames valley ; on its crest the gaunt
glass structure of the Crystal Palace sits darkly on
the horizon. Behind, to the south, stretch the downs
we have traversed in the night. Between lies a
great suburban land of brick buildings, new for the
most part, here ranged in great solid blocks deep
and wide, there straggling loosely apart. Every-
where between rise tall trees, now dark in their full
summer foliage, the last survivors of that great North
Wood in which, down almost into recent times, the
charcoal-burners plied their trade — the North Wood
which still gives its name to the district of Norwood,
and which was so called to distinguish it from the other
great wood, the Southern Weald, which stretched
through Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. It is a fair land
still, as it sleeps now under a cloudless sky out of
which the stars have not yet faded, a battle-field
withal — a land upon which the invading Celt and
Roman and Saxon has in turn left his hand, it is
true — but a battlefield, most of all, where nature
fights year after year a losing stand against the
blighting and despoiling forces of civilization.

Hark ! There comes now the first sound from
below. It is a thrush tuning for the opening
symphony. After a few tentative notes it bursts

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT 83

into full song. Cherry-dew, cherry-dew ! Be-quick,
be-quick ! Strangely clear and distinct, the full notes
ring out in the still morning. Soon it is joined by
another, and in a moment another and another have
answered from the high elms around. The volume
of sound continues to grow, but as yet it is only the
thrushes which greet the dawn. Soon there reaches
the ear a faint, harsh murmur ; now it is louder,
and soon it swells into a hoarse din. It is as if a
great army of workmen had suddenly begun to
labour below, and the harsh chip and fret of countless
iron tools rose upward in blended discord. It is
the multitudinous voice of the house-sparrow. He
rears three families in the year, and he has begun
his day's work of eighteen hours. He it is who,
alone of wild birds, can regard the nineteenth
century as an era of unexampled prosperity. He has
multiplied in incredible numbers with the growth
of towns. Nay, more : following the Anglo-Saxon,
he has spread with the extending race to the ends
of the world, till over two continents, with a certain
appropriate inaccuracy, he is known and banned
as the English sparrow. From the lower shrubs of
the private gardens the rich, mellow note of the black-
bird begins now to blend with the others. Louder
and louder swells the chorus of voices, as the finches,
robins, and other small birds join in at last. It is
a strange harmony — one which is seldom heard by
the sleeping world. The strangest feature is, indeed,
the almost complete absence of any human sound ;
save for the occasional scream of the whistle of a
locomotive shunting on the distant line, all but the
voices of the birds is silent.

Round the tower the bats are still hawking.

84 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

From below there reaches up a familiar twitter.
It comes from a line of swallows which stand huddled
up after the night on the paling, their white breasts
showing in marked contrast to the black-painted
fence. One takes wing now, at last, to begin that
long chase after flying insects which the bats have
not yet abandoned. Thus do the fringes of the night
overlap the coming day.

As the light grows, the features of the land open
out. One does not wonder here why the migratory
wild birds come to us in the far North-west in such
numbers. Why should they linger amid the barren
larch plantations and the petite culture of the Con-
tinent ? Where else, despite the growth of the
towns, has the country been preserved so unchanged
as in England ? To the right stretch the natural
woods and copses in the direction of Chiselhurst ;
nearer at hand lie the Addington hills and the splen-
did wooded lands of the manor of Croydon. Away
to the left roll the level plains toward Windsor, the
great trees so thickly strewn over the land as almost
to give it the appearance of a thickly wooded country
— trees which rise unkempt in the free air of heaven,
with limbs unlopped, in all their natural beauty.
To the south stretches the open land, the commons
of Epsom and Banstead, and the range of the North
Downs, with the little village of Purley, associated
with the fame of Home Tooke, sleeping on the edge.
It is all little changed since the days of the author of
the " Diversions," always and except for the vast
growth of London. What would the eccentric
parson and politician have thought of the age if
he had lived to see the Metropolis almost at his
doors, and all that the whirligig of time had brought

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT S5

with it ? Would he have thought any better now
of the crime which split the Anglo-Saxon peoples in
two, or of his countrymen who fined and imprisoned
him for opening a subscription for the widows and
orphans of the Americans " murdered by the King's
troops at Lexington and Concord " ?

The rooks are spreading out across the sky as
they sail from their nests to the distant pastures.
As the light ripens, the view enlarges of greater
London stretching away to the north. Like the
arms of a great octopus, its fringes . strike far into
the open land. Farther in, caught between them,
rises bravely many a pleasant grove ; parks, open
spaces, and even fields gleam a fitful green among the
bricks in the morning light — but surrounded all;
doomed, injected morsels waiting to be digested at
leisure, to serve the strenuous purposes of another
life. And yet only the outer suburban zone is
visible here — a land of beauty without refinement,
of wealth without distinction ; a land of groves and
spires and villas hedged round with reformatories,
schools, and asylums. And everywhere, from horizon
to horizon, the unfinished brick and timber of the
builder, emblems of the ever-rising flood, of a move-
ment of which the springs are at the ends of the earth,
of a life which takes toll of every land under heaven.

Now at last, away in the north-east, the fiery
red rim of the sun shows above the horizon. There
has been no gorgeous preparatory display, no massing
of shades and colours for the opening ceremony.
With scarce an anticipatory flush he rises full into
a grey, expressionless sky, and a moment afterward
disappears into a bank of fog which hangs on the
horizon over the Essex marshes. A fitting tribute,

86 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

perhaps, to the race and clime. For he has risen
over the first meridian, over the mother city of
the Northern Vikings. It is from here that the
nations have learned to count their distance. It is
from here that they measure his course in his race
round the trackless seas.

VII
THE HAUNTS OF COOT AND HERON

IT is early morning. A grey steam rises from
the surface of the water through which we wade,
hidden in the long green sedge which, although it
is only the growth of a few weeks, already meets
overhead. Later on in the day the long May sun-
shine will warm the shallows, but now the keen night
of the early sunmmer has chilled the air, and the
water appears to break into vapour with every step.
Wade gently, for in these lonely haunts of coot and
heron we at this hour steal upon Nature in one of
her most private moods.

The soft peaty bottom has changed, and we have
reached an opening among the reeds and flags. It is
a pool half a dozen yards across, strewn deeply with
clear gravel below, and circled almost completely
round with rank sedge, which hides the view on all
sides. It is a miniature delta in process of forma-
tion by the tiny rivulet whose waters, the murmur of
which is just heard in the distance, here lose them-
selves in the lake. There is a splash and a deep
swirl as the foot grates upon the gravel ; another
and another. We have disturbed the pike, which
had come here to feed in the night. The practised

87

88 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

eye can just distinguish the flat head and grey-
green outline of one which has not yet moved and
which is still lurking in the deeper water. Every
living thing of suitable size is prey to these hungry
jaws. Many a pair of bright eyes belonging to a
little ball of black down has set out to cross this
treacherous pool but has never reached the other
side. A dull splash, an eddy in the water, and the
owner has disappeared.

The water is nearly over our deep wading boots.
Drive your stick into the sand and listen as you
lean. We are in a land three hours from the nearest
railway station, and ten hours even then from Lon-
don. Over the wide expanse of water in front
which you cannot see, comes the harsh sound of
many voices. It is the screaming of the water-fowl,
but so subdued by distance that it almost forms
part of the silence. A few notes with long spaces
between from the wood-pigeons in the wood behind
sound so clear and distinct that they render the
early morning stillness in the interval more marked.
A loud croak close at hand causes you to turn.
There is a faint rustle and a glint of white and bright
red amongst the green, as a moor-hen, jerking her
tail impatiently, looks out from the reeds. She
wants to cross to the other side, and finds herself
intercepted. Her movements betray the mother,
and it is easy to tell that her nest is not a dozen
yards off. She strikes out now into the deep jumps
clear on to her feet, and races with outstretched
neck to the other side, apparently on the surface
of the water, but in reality supported by the broad
leaves of the water-lilies — which the country folk
here call drowning lilies, from the belief that the

THE HAUNTS OF COOT AND HERON 89

long rope-like stems on which the leaves rise from
the deep bottom will entangle and drown the strong-
est swimmer.

Motionless and without a sound as we stand, the
knowledge of our presence appears to have travelled
mysteriously on every side. All wild nature has
an instinctive knowledge of the proximity of man.
An air of suspicion and caution seems to spread all
round ; the ear strains after faint rustlings and
plashings, which it fails to distinguish. Hark ! a
peculiar note breaks the silence. It comes from the
open water in front. It can be compared to nothing
else than the sound caused by dragging a jagged
piece of metal over a slate. It comes closer in, till
at last the outline of a bird, smaller in size than a
full grown duck, can be distinguished through the
reeds. It turns its face towards us now — a face
perfectly white as seen against the deep black plum-
age of the rest of the bird. We do not move, and
the creature presently works itself into a royal rage ;
it sails up and down furiously, even stopping at
times to stamp in the water with its feet, like a child
in a passion. Foolish creature ! only a bird with
a long line of inedible ancestors like the common
coot would venture into such tantrums in the pre-
sence of the lord of creation ; even a tyro with a
gun could not miss it now. But you remember
that it is the breeding season, and many and strange
are the instincts with which Nature has endowed
her creatures at this time.

Here in deep water amongst the sedge is the cause
of all these angry passions. It is a curious structure
to look at, but, when the adaptations of means to
an end are considered, one which must exact admira-

90 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

tion. A huge submerged heap of water-soaked
rushes and reeds is surmounted by a deep layer of
the same materials, warm and dry, and lined inside
with smaller chops and fibres. The deep hollow
in the centre holds nine large eggs speckled with
black on a grey ground colour. The eggs are quite
warm, for the bird has been sitting during the night,
and she has doubtless only just slipped into the
water.

We have reached a spot now where the rushes
grow thinner, and where the reeds, which abhor a
gravelly bottom, are found only in patches. The fat
perch, which always share these inland waters with
the pike, move lazily into deeper water as we ad-
vance. You notice a wild movement amongst the
sedge in front. Something is beating its way before
us. It is not a dozen yards off now, and the bul-
rushes and long reeds are violently agitated as it
moves along. It cannot be a dog, it is not an otter,
and no fish would cause such a disturbance. Nor
is there any bird which would exactly suggest such
a movement. We press forward, and the distance
is lessened : it travels slowly. Now we catch sight
of something brown moving. Another stride, and
the cause of the agitation is revealed. It is a wild
duck — the mother bird — pressing her way through
the sedge ; not alone, however, but closely followed
by eight or nine recently hatched little ones, the
latter so closely packed together as they swim that
they seem to move through the water like a solid
bank of dark brown fur. We are seen. Now you
witness one of the most curious sights in nature.
The mother at once abandons the efforts she has
been so far making to glide away with her charges

THE HAUNTS OF COOT AND HERON 91

without attracting attention. She jumps clean out
of the water — not, however, to fly away, for alas !
she falls back again heavily and apparently helplessly
a yard away, painfully flapping a broken wing.
You are conscious that her brood scattered cheeping
in all directions as she rose from the water, but your
eye is back again in an instant, and lo ! there is not
one to be seen, and the cheeping has ceased almost as
soon as it began. There is no longer, you notice,
the least tell-tale tremor in the sedge to show where
they have gone. The old bird continues her antics
with the broken wing. You have seen the sports-
man's victim acted in real life, and you know that
even a professional medium could not more thor-
oughly abandon herself to her part. You may watch
her at leisure, for she does not in her sad plight
seem able to get under cover quickly. Her callow
offspring you will see no more.

Often as the writer has witnessed this little scene
enacted, it has never ceased to fill him with surprise.
He has often set himself to watch how it is done,
but he has never been successful. He has surprised
the mother bird in a patch of sedge so short that
there has been practically no cover, and yet he has
not seen the young birds dive — for dive they must
— the antics of the mother bird always, in spite of
self, engaging the first glance of the eye. Nor,
stranger still, has he ever seen the little divers emerge
again, although of course they cannot remain per-
manently under water. Sometimes, but very rarely,
you will come across a little downy body in the
water with legs hanging motionless downwards, and
only the little beak projecting just above the water,
looking like the broken-off end of a last year's bul-

92 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

rush. But if this is how the birds hide themselves,
how do they render their otherwise buoyant little
bodies suddenly heavy enough to enable them to
retain such a position under water ?

As we continue to move through the sedge you
notice that the unusual exertion is having a wonder-
fully curative effect on the broken wing of the
mother. She is already taking short flights with it,
although still occasionally flopping back heavily
into the water. As you look she sits up and flaps
both wings airily enough. Now she springs into the
air, and, wheeling several times nimbly overhead,
actually takes her departure altogether, with a series
of wild, derisive quacks as a parting salute. You
feel somehow as if you had not got the best of the
encounter, and that you have been treated through-
out as a creature of inferior intelligence.

Here, where the ground has become spongy again
the green mare's- tail spikes grow thickly together
near the edge of the water. A spot where a number
of spikes have been brought together at the top
attracts attention, and, following the tell-tale ap-
pearance downwards, you are moved to admiration
by the sight below. A snugly placed ball of dry
warm rushes and grass has been put together. In
the hollow are packed eleven eggs, considerably
smaller than those of the coot, and speckled with
rather larger dark-brown spots. It is the nest of a
moor-hen. One of the eggs is already fractured by
the little chick within, and within a few hours the
whole brood will be in the water.

We must leave the water now, for the sedge has
suddenly ceased, and it is too deep to wade here.
We sit down on the grey shingle, worn smooth by

THE HAUNTS OF COOT AND HERON 93

the winter floods, but now high and dry in the
morning sunshine. See, slowly over the wood
comes the monarch of these waters, his wings
flapping slowly and deliberately while his keen eye
examines the landscape. The first heron has come
to break his fast, and he will soon be followed by
others. Slowly lowering in flight, he wheels over
the long shore line, taking it first from the lake and
then from the land side, to see that all is safe. He
has seen us long before we were aware of his ap-
proach, and he will give our neighbourhood a wide
berth. No bird is more wary than the heron ; he
is choosing his position with all the caution of a
general. Three points of vantage it must combine
to suit him : it must give him a view of all the
approaches ; it must at the same time screen him
from view ; and it must be a good fishing ground.
He alights at length, and you see how well the posi-
tion has been selected. Were it not that the eye
has kept the grey plumage in sight the whole time,
it would not now readily distinguish it, partly
screened as it is by the sedge, which you notice is
at the spot chosen short enough to allow him, when
the long neck is fully extended, to command a view
of the whole neighbourhood.

He stands where the water reaches half-way up
his long legs, and with a pocket glass it is interesting
to watch his movements. He does not walk about
after his prey, as the waders often do — as you may
see the storks do on the flats in Holland or in the
Rhine marshes below Mayence. The heron some-
times wades — when necessary — but here he stands
motionless as a sentinel, occasionally bending his
head slowly downwards or on one side, to see better

94 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

what is going on. Nearly everything that moves
in the water is prey to him, but here he often aims
at big game, and even the large perch and hungry
jack do not always escape him. Deceived by his
motionless attitude, and doubtless taking it as part
of the fixed and natural order of things that such a
colossus should bestride their narrow world, they
swim between his legs to their doom. The sharp,
powerful, bayonet-like beak is a most formidable
weapon. The fish is struck in the water, caught in
the bill and held aloft. If it is a small one it is
swallowed forthwith, with a toss of the head ; if the
capture is too large to swallow, the bird's action is
different. In these waters, at certain times, parti-
cularly during the spawning time, the heron captures
many larger fish ; the prey in such cases is carried
to land and the eyes are picked out ; as a rule the
rest of the body is not eaten.

A beautiful bird is the heron at close quarters.
The rich yet delicate grey colour of the greater part
of the plumage, the black breast with its white patch
in front, the crest of black plumes on the head, and
the pendent breast feathers of the adult, all com-
bine to give a peculiar air of distinction to the bird.
It is for this reason that it is so often shot at, and
in consequence it has become shy and wary to an
extraordinary degree. It is in many districts a
feat requiring no small skill and patience to shoot a
heron. He knows a gun in the hand at a distance
as surely as a rook. He keeps out of range as care-
fully as a curlew, and he has to be stalked to wind-
ward with nearly as much caution and cunning as a
royal stag.

A few of the birds breed not far from here. Be-

THE HAUNTS OF COOT AND HERON 95

hind the spot on which we are seated the land slopes
gradually upwards till it rises into a bold, craggy
ridge two miles away. Then it drops down again,
not now gradually, but suddenly and almost pre-
cipitously, forming a deep, narrow valley, shut in
on the other side by a similar formation. The
silver -firs which have grown here have been well
protected, and they rise to a great height, as they
sometimes do in the lower valleys of the Alps in
similar situations ; and here, too, they are straight
and shapely from the ground upwards. On the
tops of the highest trees there are about half a dozen
nests ; and the sight as seen across the valley from
either side in the breeding season is not soon for-
gotten. The tall, gaunt forms of the birds, perched
like sentinels on the nests or branches, or occasionally
arriving and taking flight amid a chorus of solemn
croaks, the young in the great flat nests — not seated
as young birds usually are, but also standing, the
stilt-like legs supporting bodies covered with long
loose down — all combine to give a peculiar air of
old-world stateliness to the picture, which is very
striking. No wonder the heron was a bird held in
favour by our ancestors ! The heron begins to sit
about the end of March, and the nest is always built
on a tree of considerable altitude, and generally
near the top ; it is constructed of twigs principally.
From three to five eggs, of a blue-green colour, are
laid, and the young remain long in the nest after
they are hatched out.

Two more of the birds come now over the hill.
They fly close together, but separate as they descend,
closely examining the while the lake-shore in wide
leisurely circles of flight. They have chosen for their

96 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

fishing-ground the end of the lake where the over-
flow water spreads out over a vast level expanse of
peaty ground, converting it into an immense swamp
where no boat can penetrate. If we would follow,
we must be careful. The water is not deep ; but in
long past days, probably when the sluggish river at
the end of the valley was less choked with weeds,
the unremembered inhabitants cut peat where the
water now covers, and their deep pits, overgrown
with weeds and nearly obliterated, still yawn
treacherous in the way of the unwary. This part
is the resort of great numbers of water-fowl, and in
the winter season it is visited by many migrant
species. The wild ducks in particular come here,
and many pairs, attracted by the seclusion and
abundant cover, remain to breed. Great bosses of
coarse grass, which rise high and dry out of the
water, mark where the lake ends and the shallower
water begins. Closer and closer these miniature
islands get, and the long rough sedge blades, which
at certain angles cut like a knife, stream from off
them into the water, forming cover through which
the wild fowl have worn openings like those which
the rabbit makes through the hedgerows. Farther
back the reeds rise higher, and there are deep pools
of open water, and then again more sedgy islands
on which the black willows eke out an amphibious
existence, maintaining an unequal struggle against
their many aquatic rivals.

One may wade for long here and see little or
nothing of the bird-life with which the place abounds.
It is necessary to lean silently against one of the
clumps of sedge grass and wait for it to venture out
into the stillness. We may step out of the water

THE HAUNTS OF COOT AND HERON 97

here. The long coarse grass is virgin to human
foot, and, mixed with the short willow twigs which
struggle through, it forms excellent cover. We
must search here. The scrutiny is close ; every
tuft of tangled sedge grass is explored, yet without
finding anything. Just as we are about to give up
hope we are successful. Not where the cover is
thickest, but, after all, where the nest is best hidden,
we find it. The wild duck is a wary bird in all her
movements, but most of all is she careful in risking
the safety of her nest or her young. There are nine
eggs, large, warm, and nearly hatched, and of a very
pale blue colour ; for the eggs of the mallard have
not nearly so much green in them as those of her
domestic relative. The nest is made of dry grass
and is lightly lined with feathers. You have to
acknowledge that you are not superior to a slight
tightening of the throat at the sight of this nestful
of the large eggs of this shy bird. Yet you remember
that they are perfectly useless to you. You would
not, moreover, willingly remove one of them. It
is the fascination of meeting wild nature face to
face, and wresting her spoils from her fairly, which
stirs the old Viking blood. The strain is there ; it
breeds pirates or poachers, merchant adventurers
or world-builders — according to circumstances.

A movement overhead causes you to look up. A
great black bird, almost as large as a goose, but of
slimmer build, is circling in wide descending circles.
It is evidently going to alight in the water, but at
a distance, for it will keep carefully out of range.
The bird is a cormorant. Individuals of the family
often come here to fish in certain states of the
weather, and they prefer the still early morning.

7

98 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

Looking westward, we are not a dozen miles from
the sea, and the birds are equally at home in fresh
and salt water. It alights at last well out from the
shore, where the limestone crag rises highest out of
the water. The bird for the greater part of a minute
remains motionless on the surface, with neck erect,
surveying its surroundings before getting to work.
Now it has dived. The still black water into which
it has gone down is said by the simple country folk
to be bottomless. You know it is not, but you
know also that it is deep — sixty feet at least — and
the bird will reach the bottom. The moments go
by, and it does not reappear ; a man, you think,
could not hold his breath so long ; and yet it does
not return. At last, after what appears a surpris-
ingly long interval, it emerges. The long neck is not
now erect, but is held in position as if the bird were
panting after a supreme effort. Now it raises its
head again, and you see that it has not returned
empty. It has got something in its beak, something
which twists and knots itself about the outstretched
neck. The bird jerks and tosses its head in the
effort to swallow it ; it is an eel, you see plainly, an
eel which must have been brought up from the
depths below — one, too, which is by no means
resigned to its fate, and which is resisting to the last.
With no inconsiderable effort the bird at last suc-
ceeds in swallowing the prey, after which it sits
for an interval quietly on the water resting after its
exertion.

Now it is down again, but it soon returns, this
time empty. It is off again, and after another pro-
longed absence it returns with a second eel, and the
same struggle between the fish and its captor is

THE HAUNTS OF COOT AND HERON 99

gone through before the prey is swallowed. There
can be no doubt as to the skill of the bird in fishing,
and it is hard to imagine how it has acquired such
extraordinary keenness of vision and swiftness of
movement under water as to be thus able to out-
manoeuvre the fish in their own element. One can
readily imagine how such exceptional powers should
have suggested to various peoples the idea of
utilizing the bird in the service of man. * The mate is
now seen circling overhead, but it does not alight,
and the bird in the water takes flight at length, the
two wheeling round and round in wide circles until
they reach a considerable altitude, when they sail
out of sight seaward.

As we return by the lake shore the rabbits are
feeding close up to their burrows, and the rooks have
long since scattered to the distant pastures. The
coots are taking their families out on the surface of
the lake, leaving the friendly shelter of the sedge ;
and the queer little black balls swim obediently
behind, scarcely venturing out of line even after the
most tempting morsels. Foolish mothers! Not
thus does the mallard risk her offspring in the open.
They look safe enough, you think, but they are not
really so. Ah ! to be a boy was to look upon every
young water-fowl which took the open water as
delivered into your hands. It was only a question
of time and dexterity to effect their capture, bare-
handed and without boat or net.

It was not so very difficult. Only two qualifica-
tions were necessary. You must be a boy, and a
good swimmer — especially the first. A tyro might
capture one, or even a pair ; but to secure a whole
brood of the nimble little swimmers at a single

100 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

stretch was a feat which justly entitles to distinction.
How was it done ? To be successful it was necessary
to take the water bravely, like a retriever, and with
a strong breast stroke, which soon lessened the dis-
tance between you and your quarry. As you ap-
proached, the struggle in the mind of the mother
bird was always ludicrous. She was torn between
the two great forces which move nature's world —
self-interest and parental instinct. First she would
and then she wouldn't leave them. But she always
did, after all. It is a very pretty sight. Down all
the little swimmers go immediately the old bird flies
away ; they feel they are left to their own resources
now, and they scatter in all directions as they dive.
Now, if you are to return successful, your strategy
begins. Slowly swimming in the direction in which
you have come, you wait. Bravely the little divers
act their part, long do they stay down, and far do
they travel before they emerge. They come up at
last ; and, singling out one from the rest, you again
pursue it. Down it goes once more, and it always
swims under water in a straight line away from you
— a fatal mistake. This time it stays below a shorter
interval ; and a few more trials and you overtake
it, and it submits to be caught. The little black
leg must be held gently in the mouth, and the little
owner floats comfortably in the water without
struggling while you proceed to capture the others
one after another in similar fashion. Then, having
covered over two miles in the water, panting, flushed
and triumphant, with five little cheepers, frightened
but not hurt, streaming from your mouth, you swim
to land under the envious and admiring eyes of
your equals. You may afterwards worst your

THE HAUNTS OF COOT AND HERON 101

fellows in competitive examinations ; you may
climb up the ladder of life two steps at a time ; you
may woo and wed the woman you love ; you may
even publish your first book and read the reviews
of it. But never will you be any happier than that.
The sun has warmed the shingle when we return
to it again. The steam appears to have ceased to rise
from the water : it has only become invisible in
the warmer air. The wood-pigeons have left off
calling to each other, and are flitting to and fro in
the neighbourhood of their nests. The perch are
already chasing their own offspring near the surface,
the little fugitives at times jumping clear out of the
water to escape capture, and falling back again with
a sound as if a handful of fine gravel had been
thrown into the deep. Hark ! over the water comes
the only sound from the outer world which reaches
these solitudes — the faint tinkle of the morning bell
calling the toilers to work in the distant quarry in
the hills. The long, still, early summer morning,
when all wild nature lives and moves, is waning at
last. The day has begun.

VIII
CONCERNING THE CUCKOO

r I "\HE cuckoo has the distinction of being
one of the best known and least understood

1 of our British birds. If all the literature
which this strange bird has inspired were collected
together it would form a small library in itself.
Yet there is scarcely a point in connection with
its curious life-history which is not from time to
time made the subject of question and even contra-
diction by competent observers. The brief, mys-
terious visits to our shores, the sudden appearance
everywhere in the early spring, and disappearance
equally sudden when the year has but reached its
zenith, the shy and unsociable habits, and above
all the legend which from time immemorial has
attributed to the bird conduct both as a parent
and a nestling so unnatural as to be almost without
a parallel, all combine to give the cuckoo a place
in popular imagination which no other bird can
lay claim to.

When the month of April reaches its teens the
cuckoo comes amongst us in the south of England.
It goes north with the advancing year, and appears
generally in Scotland about the beginning of May.

102

CONCERNING THE CUCKOO 103

One of the first things which attract the attention
of every observer of the habits of the bird is the
manner in which it distributes itself over every
variety of country in these annual invasions. Other
migrants have their favourite haunts : the nightin-
gale seeks the copses of the southern counties ; the
lark and plover the open moors; the swallow the
pastures, open waters, and the haunts of men ;
the mud-flats, the deep woods, and the rocky places
have each their special habitues. But the cuckoo
is to be found nearly everywhere. It takes the
woods of Hampshire as familiarly as the trim poplars
of the Continent, and it spreads itself over hill,
dale, and open country indiscriminately. The cuckoo
is common round the fringes of London, apparently
because of the presence of the numerous thickets
in which it delights ; but it remains where trees
and even hedgerows fail, for it may be seen in the
bare mountain-limestone country, with not a bush
in sight, flying familiarly from stone to stone and
making the rocks echo with its well-known call.

The cuckoo cannot properly be viewed from one
standpoint. All its habits form part of a single
study. Even this apparently incidental question
of wide distribution and adaptation to diverse
localities is probably intimately associated with the
other unusual habits of the bird, and must be con-
sidered in connection with them.

Of the actual existence of the most widely reputed
habit of the cuckoo, that which has led to the
popular estimation of the bird as a monster of
treachery and immorality, there can now be no
possible doubt. The tradition respecting it is of
great antiquity ; but, unlike most traditions in

104 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

natural history, it has been for long supported by
observations numerous and authentic enough to
satisfy the most exacting. Where the cuckoo is
plentiful almost any painstaking observer will be
able to find for himself the intruder's egg in the
nest of one or other of the species of birds commonly
made use of. The mother has been caught by
many observers in the very act of foisting her
offspring on her neighbours, and the young bird
has been followed in every step of its adventurous
career from the egg to the adult. Nothing in fact
has been left undone necessary to satisfy the utmost
scruples of anyone gifted with that sceptical bias
in these matters which the pursuit of science is
supposed to demand.

The eggs of the cuckoo have been found in the
nests of nearly every species of bird in Great Britain
and the Continent suitable for its purpose. The
nests principally made use of in England are those
of the meadow-pipit, hedge-sparrow, and pied-wag-
tail. In certain districts where the reed-warbler
is common the nest of this bird is a great favourite,
and the same may be said of the redstart. Although
the range of choice which the cuckoo exercises is very
wide it is a noteworthy fact that the bird nearly
always chooses a nest belonging to a species the
natural food of which is suitable to her own young.
The foster-parent is thus nearly always insectivorous,
the nests of birds which feed on vegetable substances
being rarely used. Even the best regulated instinct,
of course, sometimes errs, and the cuckoo's is no
exception to the rule, the unnatural parent sometimes
providing foster-parents equally unnatural for her
young by occasionally depositing her eggs in nests

CONCERNING THE CUCKOO 105

such as those of the wood-pigeon and house-sparrow.
But the instinct which leads the bird to choose
the right nest is well marked despite these occasional
lapses, and we shall have a word to say directly
as to the manner in which it probably 'originated,
in common with the cuckoo's other peculiar instincts.
Nothing connected with the cuckoo has given
rise to so much discussion as the extraordinary
character of its egg and the manner in which it is
placed in the nest chosen to receive it. Every one
who has collected birds' eggs, or indulged in the
juvenile habit of birds' -nest ing, or who has even
gone so far as to take an intelligent interest in the
dozen of new-laids ordered from the grocer's, must
have noticed one rudimentary fact respecting the
eggs of birds. The eggs of each species have certain
marked characteristics which distinguish them from
those of other birds : the common fowl's egg is
white, the duck's pale blue, the thrush's speckled
green, the skylark's dark brown. The eggs of each
kind of bird also vary but little in size. Now, strange
to say, the cuckoo's egg is a marked exception to
this almost invariable rule. The eggs of the cuckoo
have no particular colour. They have been found
green, grey blue, grey-mottled, green-mottled, and
pure white. Neither have they any particular
size. They vary in the most puzzling fashion, from
the size of a skylark's egg to almost that of a pigeon's.
Few of the authorities on the subject can agree
even as to what the average size should be. For
instance, two of the best known, to whom I refer
at random, state the size of the cuckoo's egg to be
respectively J-g- inch by f& inch, and i inch to
1*8 inch by 75 inch to -61 inch — a sufficiently wide

106 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

difference almost to suggest a doubt whether they
are really speaking of the egg of the same bird.

Closely associated with this question of the unusual
variation in the appearance and size of the cuckoo's
egg is that of the character of the nest in which
it is laid. Formerly, before the habits of the cuckoo
had been made the subject of such close study, the
prevailing idea was that the bird sought out a con-
venient nest, apparently at random, and laid an
egg in it in the absence of the owner. More sys-
tematic observation has, however, revealed that the
cuckoo's meanness has more method in it, and
method too which is apparently most skilfully
devised to attain certain ends.

A great number of authentic observations, made
in a variety of places, appear to have established
it as a fact beyond doubt that the eggs of the cuckoo
are as a rule deposited in the nests of birds whose
eggs approximate both in size and appearance to the
strange egg placed among them. The view pre-
viously held that the cuckoo actually laid her egg
in the chosen nest has been considerably modified
by observations both in this country and on the
Continent. It seems still probable that the cuckoo
sometimes lays in the nest, particularly when it is
open and conveniently situated, but the general
habit of the bird would appear to be to lay her egg
on the ground first and then to take it in her bill
and deposit it in the selected nest.

This method of depositing the egg, taken in
connection with the acknowledged fact of the vari-
ability of the cuckoo's eggs and their general approxi-
mation in appearance to the eggs with which they
are placed, has led to the formulation of two theories

CONCERNING THE CUCKOO 107

on the subject, both of which are steadfastly held
to by their advocates.

According to the first view, the cuckoo, having
chosen the nest of a bird in which she is about to
lay, has the extraordinary power of being able to
control at will the appearance of her egg. She is
supposed to be influenced in some unknown way by
the surroundings or the appearance of the eggs
already in the nest, and so proceeds to produce an
egg resembling those of the foster-parent. The other
theory credits the bird with scarcely less originality,
though with more shrewdness. According to the
second view, having laid an egg on the ground, she
takes a kind of mental inventory of its appearance,
and then proceeds to deposit it in the nest of the
bird whose egg it resembles.

Without staying at this point to discuss these
and other theories which have been put forward
to account for the curious fact that there is usually
a general resemblance between the cuckoo's egg and
those of the widely different species of birds with
which it is found, it may be mentioned that it is
likely that the cuckoo often lays on the ground
without the intention of placing the egg in any
nest, and even possibly occasionally settles all
question of its destination by quietly making a meal
of it. The bird seems in some manner to have
obtained the reputation of an egg-sucker, but
whether on the strength of reliable evidence or not
it seems hard to say. I recently caught a cuckoo
in the act of laying on the ground in somewhat
peculiar circumstances which have some bearing
on this point. Returning across Wimbledon Com-
mon about dusk, on passing a thicket in one of the

108 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

retired corners, I saw a cuckoo, which was calling,
flying low and in a peculiar way over the bracken.
I stopped and watched the bird, and saw it alight
down suddenly out of sight in a meaningful way.
Hastening up to the place, I came upon two cuckoos
in a dry open space among the ferns, one of them
apparently in the act of depositing an egg. Both
birds flew awkwardly away on my approach, and
I took possession of the egg, which was quite warm.
Most careful search was made all round the spot
within a considerable radius, in the hope of finding
the nest of some small bird for which the egg might
have been intended, but no nest of any kind was
found. A point which, however, seems worthy
of remark is that on afterwards returning to the
spot where the egg was picked up I found the broken
remains of a similar egg which had apparently been
sucked. The conclusion which presented itself
to my mind at the time was that the bird had not
intended to deposit the egg in any nest. She had
probably laid in the same spot before, and had
either feasted on the first egg herself or had left it,
and it had been found and sucked by some animal.
The second egg would most probably have suffered
the same fate.

It is somewhat strange to find that there is still
a difference of opinion as regards the behaviour of
the nestling cuckoo towards the young of its foster-
parents. That the presence of the young bird is
fatal to the other birds in the nest is universally
conceded, but that the interloper actually and
deliberately throws out the rightful owners of the
nest, in order to monopolize the whole of the parental
care, is still questioned by writers of authority.

CONCERNING THE CUCKOO 109

The presence in the nest of a bird so greedy as the
young cuckoo, and usually so much bigger than
its fellows, would, it is urged, in any case bring about
the death of the latter, and without it being neces-
sary to assume any malice prepense on the part of
the young cuckoo.

There seem, however, to be no grounds for acquit-
ting the bird of the charge of deliberately and
intentionally causing the death of its fellow-nestlings.
Not only is it certain that the young cuckoo ejects
the other birds from the nest, but it would appear
to be also true that several details of its anatomical
structure, and even the temper and disposition of
the bird during the first few days of its life, have
been acquired for the special purpose of executing
its murderous work as swiftly and efficiently as
possible. Soon after the young cuckoo is hatched
out it exhibits an extraordinarily irritable and
restless disposition. It keeps on beating its stumps
of wings, it tries to get underneath anything that
may be placed in the nest. Anyone may see by a
simple experiment how the bird regards itself in
relation to all comers. Not only will it put out
the other occupants, but it will throw out pieces
of wood, lumps of earth, the eggs of other birds, or
anything of the kind which may be placed by the
observer in the nest. The other nestlings are
usually disposed of at once — that is to say, during
the first or second day — and any eggs that may
still remain unhatched in the nest are put over the
side at the same time.

The surprising and exceptional nature of this
phenomenon, and in some measure also the difficulty
of accepting the explanation usually given of the

110 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

origin of the instinct in the young bird, must be
held to account for the disposition shown to accept
accounts of it with reserve. One of the most
graphic sketches of the occurrence by an eye-witness
is that in Mr. Gould's " Birds of Great Britain."
The account by Mrs. Blackburn, who watched the
movements of the young cuckoo, is full of interest.
The nest under observation was that of the common
meadow-pipet, and it had at first two eggs in it
besides that of the cuckoo. " At one visit," con-
tinues Mrs. Blackburn, " the pipets were found to
be hatched, but not the cuckoo. At the next visit,
which was after an interval of forty-eight hours,
we found the young cuckoo alone in the nest,
and both the young pipets lying down the bank,
about ten inches from the margin of the nest, but
quite lively after being warmed in the hand. They
were replaced in the nest beside the cuckoo, which
struggled about until it got its back under one of
them, when it climbed backwards directly up the
open side of the nest, and hitched the pipet from
its back on to the edge. It then stood quite upright
on its legs, which were straddled wide apart, with
the claws firmly fixed half-way down the inside of
the nest, among the interlacing fibres of which the
nest was woven, and, stretching its wings apart
and backwards, it elbowed the pipet fairly over
the margin so far that its struggles took it down
the bank instead of back into the nest. After this
the cuckoo stood a minute or two, feeling back with
its wings, as if to make sure that the pipet was fairly
overboard, and then subsided into the bottom of the
nest." The ejected bird was replaced, but on again
visiting the nest on the following morning both

CONCERNING THE CUCKOO 111

pipets were found dead out of the nest. Mrs.
Blackburn continues : " The cuckoo was perfectly
naked, without the vestige of a feather, or even a
hint of future feathers ; its eyes were not yet opened,
and its neck seemed too weak to support the weight
of its head. . . . The most singular thing of all
was the direct purpose with which the blind little
monster made for the open side of the nest, the
only part where it could throw its burthen down
the bank. I think all the spectators felt the sort
of horror and awe at the apparent inadequacy of
the creature's intelligence to its acts that one might
have felt at seeing a toothless hag raise a ghost
by an incantation. It was horribly uncanny and
gruesome ! "

In a nest which the writer had under observation,
t-he little cuckoo had put one of four hedge-sparrow's
eggs over the side on the second day of its existence.
In another nest under observation at the same time,
the young hedge-sparrows were hatched out so
long before that soon after the cuckoo was hatched
its nest mates were at least four times its size.
But at this stage the young cuckoo was seen to
put the hedge-sparrows, one after another, over
the side of the nest till it was the sole occupant.
No one who has not actually seen the process of
ejection of the other young birds can fully realize
the uncanniness and almost incredible purposiveness
of the whole series of actions. At the time when
the bird's instinct is at its maximum the young
cuckoo is only a few days old. It is blind and naked,
without the vestige of even the beginnings of a
feather, so that it presents the very image of weakness
and helplessness. Yet in such circumstances it

112 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

sidles up to the other occupants of the nest, using as
feelers the long and bare wing processes, which have
an appearance strangely suggestive of the arms of
an ape. Getting gradually under its fellow-nestling,
it lifts it on to the flat back ; then using the ape-
like arms as props and the strong legs as levers, it
partly raises and partly pushes the victim upwards,
clambering backwards up the side of the nest.
When it reaches the edge the victim is hitched over
and the last scene of all almost takes one's breath
away, for the blind little creature, before returning
to the bottom of the nest, feels round as if to assure
itself that the difficult business had been in all
respects successfully accomplished. After its efforts
the cuckoo appears completely exhausted. But
it resumes its attempts when rested, and it will
continue for days to eject any other birds or eggs
that may be placed with it in the nest.

The number of the theories which have been put
forward from time to time to account for the
unusual habits of the cuckoo is legion. The instinct
of the young bird is surprising enough in itself, but
the disappearance of the parental instinct in the
old bird, the habit of depositing its eggs in the nests
of other birds, the extraordinary variability of the
egg and the character of the nest in which it is
placed, appear to be quite as difficult to explain.

One of the theories respecting the cuckoo which
has received general support is that the bird's
parasitic habits are the natural result of the character
of its food. This matter has an interesting aspect.
Those who are familiar with the natural selection
theories of Darwin, Wallace, and Lubbock will
know that certain hairy caterpillars are supposed

CONCERNING THE CUCKOO 113

to have acquired their striking appearance as a
protection from birds. Strange to say, however,
it is these caterpillars of the hairy kind, which other
birds leave, which form the staple food of the cuckoo.
The bird, by universal consent, is enormously greedy,
and it devours great quantities of them. Now, it
is pointed out that, as the supply of this food soon
fails, the cuckoo is obliged to migrate so early that
it would not have time to take upon itself the cares
of maternity, and so it has acquired the convenient
habit of placing its offspring out to nurse. Unfor-
tunately, however, for this theory, there are several
difficulties in the way of accepting it as it stands.
The habit is said to be found in the Indian species,
which do not migrate. The old birds leave us in
July and August, but the young remain a month
or six weeks longer ; and if they can find food, why
not the old birds ?

Another theory which has its supporters is that
the parasitic habit is the result of a peculiarity in
the manner in which the cuckoo's eggs are laid.
It is now well known that the bird does not deposit
her eggs rapidly like most birds, but that an interval
of four or five or even eight days intervenes between
them. Hence it is said that the cuckoo evidently
could not utilize a nest of her own, for the first
eggs would be addled or hatched before the last
were laid. There are difficulties in the way of this
theory too. There are other birds who lay their
eggs in the manner of the cuckoo, but without having
acquired its parasitic habits. Irregularity in this
respect exists doubtless to some extent in many
kinds of birds, and in some to a considerable degree.
Mr. Cones says of the American species (Coccygus)
8

114 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

that the nests commonly contain young by the time
the last egg is laid. The evidence would seem to
suggest that this habit has been developed in the
cuckoo rather as the result of its other habits than
as the cause of them.

There is another theory which has received the
adherence of many persons of weight. One of the
strangest of many unusual facts regarding the cuckoo
is the proportion of the sexes. The males greatly
outnumber the females. The males have been
estimated at ten to each female, and by some
observers as high as fifteen to one ; even the most
moderate estimates do not place the proportion at
less than five to one. The theorists who find in
this fact the cause of the peculiar habits of the
birds are, however, not agreed among themselves
as to how it has operated. Some regard it as pre-
cluding the cuckoo from mating in the ordinary
way, and so from building a nest and rearing her
young. Others regard the temperament of the
bird as a kind of physiological accompaniment of
the relationship of the sexes, but on grounds which
seem rather unsatisfactory, if not obscure.

It is probable that any satisfactory explanation
of the unusual habits of the cuckoo must be sought
for in the operation of natural selection. The great
difficulty is, however, to find the key of the situation.
Why has the cuckoo developed in a certain direction
and become such an exception to other birds ?
Many of the peculiarities which observers have taken
for causes are without doubt effects acquired after
the bird had already made progress in a certain
direction. But what has been the starting point,
and where are we to find the cause which first led

CONCERNING THE CUCKOO 115

to the development of the bird along such a peculiar
line?

The proper point at which to begin an inquiry
of this nature would seem to be that to which all
the theorists are willing to return. There can be
no doubt that the cuckoo, like all parasites, at one
time lived a respectable existence. The bird must
at some time or other have built a nest and reared
its own young. There are many recorded observa-
tions of the reversion of the bird at the present day
to this long lost and aboriginal instinct of nidification.
The cuckoo has been seen to sit on her own eggs
on the ground, and she has been observed feeding
her own young. It is even stated that she sometimes
makes attempts at nest-building. Herr Adolph
Miiller has recently given an account of a case
which he claims to have observed of a cuckoo hatch-
ing her own eggs. Comparing the cuckoo at the
present day with other birds nesting under normal
conditions, we find the parasitic habit associated
with three remarkable characteristics. There are :
(i) the undoubted gluttony of the bird and the
peculiarity of its food ; (2) the great preponderance
of males ; and (3) the extraordinary habit of the
young cuckoo in the nest. Any theory of the origin
of the cuckoo's habits through natural selection
should be able not only to account for the parasitic
instinct, but to explain in what way these peculiari-
ties are associated with this instinct and with each
other.

The only other bird in which the cuckoo's habits
are known to be developed to a considerable extent
is the American cow-bird. These birds exhibit in
different degrees habits with regard to their eggs,

116 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

varying from simple carelessness to the stage in
which the parasitic habit is almost as well developed
as in our own cuckoo. Some of the birds only show
a disposition to lay their eggs carelessly about,
occasionally dropping them in other birds' nests.
In others the nest-building instinct has in great
measure disappeared. The birds congregate together
in flocks, and they often lay their eggs in heaps,
so that only a small proportion are hatched, the
parents assisting indiscriminately in the task of
hatching the eggs and feeding the young. Lastly,
in one species the cuckoo's habit is developed. A
single egg is laid in the nests of other birds ; the
young stranger monopolizes the attention of the
foster-parent ; and though it is said not to eject
its fellow-nestlings, like the cuckoo, these generally
come by their death in consequence of its presence.
The one noteworthy peculiarity which the cow-bird
is said to have besides in common with the cuckoo
is its gluttony. The bird is generally spoken of as
possessing an insatiable appetite.

Returning now to our own cuckoo, there is one
peculiarity of the young bird which seems very
significant. It appears open to question whether
the true meaning of the habit of ejecting its fellows
from the nest has not been overlooked by observers.
That the young cuckoo could have acquired this
habit merely in order to be able to turn out the
weak and small fellow-nestlings with which it is
usually associated seems hard to conceive. These
would beyond doubt be either starved or smothered
in any case (as the companions of the American
cow-bird appear to be) and it seems almost impossible
that natural selection should develop so deep-seated

CONCERNING THE CUCKOO 117

a change merely to obtain so small an advantage.
The alternative conclusion is that the cuckoo must
have developed this peculiarity under conditions
different from those now existing.

We may be able to realize to some extent what
those conditions must have been, if we try to
imagine for a moment what would happen if the
cuckoo of the present day were to return to its abori-
ginal habits and endeavour to rear its own young.
Two considerations immediately present themselves.
A single pair would in the first place be quite
unable to feed and rear an ordinary brood. In
the second place, the young birds would not tolerate
each other in the nest. There have been rare cases
known where the cuckoo has deposited two eggs in
the same nest, and one of the young birds has been
known to eject the other after a prolonged struggle.

The cuckoo, whether from some change in environ-
ment, such as the disappearance of its natural food
or through some other cause, is evidently at the
present time a bird which finds great difficulty in
feeding itself. Each bird is said to have its own
feeding grounds, which it defends against all comers,
and the early migration, and the significant fact
that the caterpillars which other birds reject form
the staple food, all point to the conclusion that the
cuckoo obtains sufficient food only with difficulty.
Now it is not difficult to conceive what the effect
upon the young was when these conditions first
arose and the cuckoo was still a normally nesting
bird. The nesting period is the time when the
demand for food is greatest, and the rivalry must
immediately and in the first place have made itself
felt among the young birds. The advantage must

118 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

now have inevitably been with those birds which
from generation to generation obtained the most
food in the struggle which ever went on in the nest.
This is where, in all probability, we must look for
the origin in the young cuckoo of the habit of ejecting
its fellows from the nest, and the development in
the surviving birds, through the operation of natural
selection, of the peculiar temperament which accom-
panies it.

If we are right so far, it is probable that we are
now also in view of the explanation of the pheno-
menon of the great preponderance of males. It is
a well-known fact that amongst most birds the
males are always the stronger and more active in the
nest. The advantage in such a struggle must always
have been with the males, and the broods of which
the greatest number survived were those of birds
which produced the largest proportion of males.
This selection may have continued after the cuckoo
had acquired its parasitic habits. It would operate,
it must be noticed, not simply by weeding out the
females, but by selecting for survival the descend-
ants of those cuckoos which produced a preponder-
ance of males, and which would consequently transmit
a similar tendency to their offspring. This tendency
thus developed through an immense number of
generations would inevitably become in course of
time what we find it to be at the present day, the
normal habit of the bird.

The origin of the parasitic habit of the cuckoo
is now less difficult to account for. We have here,
in fact, only to follow in the main the explanation
already suggested by Darwin, always remembering,
however, that this habit is probably itself but an

CONCERNING THE CUCKOO 119

incident in a peculiar course of development rather
than the cause of the development. The habit
probably had its beginning in either one of two
tendencies common among birds — viz., the inclination
to steal from each other nest-building materials and
the disposition to lay occasionally in each other's
nests. Of the habit of stealing nest-building material
we have a familiar example in the rooks, and it is
widely distributed among birds. The Baltimore
oriole, a near relative of the American cow-bird,
is described as being very active in appropriating
materials collected by other birds. Some of the
cow-birds either build a nest of their own or seize
pne belonging to another bird, while in others, as
already mentioned, the cuckoo's habit is developed.
On the other hand, we have many familiar examples
of the habit of occasionally laying in other nests,
especially among the gallinaceous birds.

It is not difficult in either case to imagine how
the present habit of the cuckoo was developed,
doubtless by easy stages. If the cuckoo of the
present day finds great difficulty in feeding itself
during its stay with us, it was obviously a great ad-
vantage for the voracious young bird to be entrusted
to the care of foster-parents. The young birds
developing from eggs which chanced to be deposited
in the nests of other birds, stood a much better
chance of survival, and this chance was further
increased when but a single egg was laid in each
nest. From a small beginning the habit would,
in fact, be developed and perfected by the operation
of natural selection alone.

There remains to be mentioned what is perhaps
the most interesting example of gradual adaptation

120 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

of means to an end which the habits of the cuckoo
afford. Many strange and ingenious theories, a
few examples of which have been given, have been
propounded to account for the instinct which appar-
ently leads the cuckoo to deposit her eggs in nests
containing others resembling them in appearance.
As a matter of fact, however, we have here only
another beautiful example of appropriate results
produced by natural selection. The great variation
in the cuckoo's eggs has been already referred to.
Anyone who has ever placed, as I have done, a
cuckoo's egg of the largest type in a nest with the
eggs of one of the smaller birds utilized, could not
help being struck with the incongruity of the
appearance. There would be little doubt in his
mind that if the cuckoo herself deposited her eggs
thus unsuitably, they must often not be hatched
out. That this happens sometimes at present is
not unlikely ; that it happened more often in the
past there can be little doubt. Mr. Nuttall relates
significant instances of the sagacity of the American
summer yellow bird in refusing to hatch the egg
of the cow-bird placed among her own. The strange
egg is sometimes broken, or being too large for
ejectment, it is enclosed in the bottom of the nest
and a new lining built over it, and the bird is said
sometimes to enclose even her own eggs in this
manner rather than hatch out that of the intruder.
Some selection of this kind must undoubtedly have
been going on in the case of the cuckoo's eggs for
an immense period. The eggs which had most
chance of being hatched out were always those most
closely resembling the eggs of the foster-parent.
But now comes the most curious part. Natural

CONCERNING THE CUCKOO 121

selection it may be said has acted thus far, but how
comes it that a particular cuckoo lays a certain type
of egg in a particular nest ? The answer is very
interesting. It has been noted by several observers
that the same cuckoo always lays eggs of the same
type, and recent observations also establish a strong
probability that each cuckoo generally lays in the
nest of the same species of bird. Now both these
peculiarities would in all probability be hereditary.
The cuckoo, in fact, deposits her egg in a suitable
nest, not from any extraordinary or mysterious
instinct, but because the descendant of a bird reared,
for instance, in a skylark's, from an egg resembling
those of the foster-parent, would herself probably
lay in a skylark's nest, and produce an egg of similar
appearance. We appear to have here an exceedingly
interesting state of things. Natural selection has,
as it were, developed in individuals of the cuckoo
tribe the tendency to produce certain varying types
of eggs, and at one and the same time has also
developed the tendency to deposit these eggs in
the nest of the suitable species of bird. The great
variation in size and appearance in the cuckoo eggs,
therefore, simply corresponds roughly to the variation
among the eggs of the numerous species of foster-
parents made use of by the bird.

If the facts have justified us in regarding the cuckoo
as a bird which experiences great difficulty in obtain-
ing sufficient food, we have found, therefore, in the
operation of natural selection alone a sufficient
explanation of the extraordinary series of habits
and instincts which have rendered the bird remark-
able from time immemorial. That the difficulty
has been an increasing one from some distant time

122 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

in the past the evidence seems to show. Whether it
still continues to increase, and whether we must
regard the bird as travelling slowly on the down
grade towards extinction, it would be more difficult
to say. Some of the facts may appear to point to
this conclusion. The wide distribution of the bird,
the extraordinary limits which it reaches in its
migrations (it extends from South Africa through
the tropics, and as far north as the pines go in Europe),
the short period over which its visits extend, the
nature of its food, and the well-known gluttony and
rivalry for the feeding-grounds, are facts which,
taken in connection with the parasitic habit, can
at all events leave no doubt that the cuckoo of the
present day maintains its position amid the com-
petition of life only with extreme difficulty.

IX

THE HABITS AND INTELLIGENCE OF
BEES

THE little busy bee has been a great favourite
with the moralists and philosophers of this
much-preached-at world. She and her
works have been used to point so many morals to
the intended disadvantage of the lord of creation,
when his teachers take him to task in their sermons
from the book of nature, that it is time some one
undertook a serious examination of the claims of
the little creature to be always posing as an example
to the rest of the world. Not that it is to be expected
that she would become less a subject of wonder and
admiration, but rather because it would be inter-
esting to be able to judge the exact amount of credit
and respect to which she is entitled as an intelligent
author of her own exemplary conduct.

There is no doubt at all events about the place
of the bee in the insect tribe. In common with her
cousins the ants, wasps, etc., she belongs to the
order of Hymenopiera, ranking first in the insect
series not only in the higher development of the
cerebral ganglia, and general intelligence in habits
and mode of living which this implies, but also in

123

124 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

general completeness of form and structure. When
bees are spoken of, the representative of the family
most familiarly associated with the name is the
ordinary honey-bee which has for countless gen-
erations lived, laboured, and died an ignominious
death in the straw skeps of our rustic gardens. The
common variety is often known as the German bee,
its original home having been the woods and moun-
tains of Central Europe. A successful rival of late
for the notice of the intelligent apiarist is the Ligurian
bee introduced from Italy, where in course of time,
thanks to enforced separation from its relations
north of the high ranges of mountains which hem
in its native land, it developed those slight differ-
ences in structure and colour which now mark it
as a separate variety. Both varieties were un-
known in North America, until they were introduced
from Europe ; but they have thriven and multiplied
enormously in their new home, especially in the
Western States, where they are still known amongst
the Indians as the white man's fly. The other bees
known in this country are the humble-bees, of which
there are several varieties ; but, although very
interesting in their behaviour and habits, as will be
seen further on, these are but the bumpkins of the
bee family, who are content to spend their rude
lives in arcadian dulness, living from hand to mouth,
with no capacity for the aspiring life and higher
civilization of their more gifted relations.

I am not a bee-keeper in the proper sense of the
word. In my opinion, that occupation, on a large
scale at all events, should in this country be left
entirely to those possessed of an unwavering faith
in our variable climate. My bees are not required,

HABITS AND INTELLIGENCE OF BEES 125

as the British workman sometimes holds himself to
be, to toil from early morning to night, that the
fruit of so much labour may one day be thanklessly
appropriated for the benefit of a greedy master. If
they choose, they need trouble themselves little for
the future ; for, if they have finished an unsuccess-
ful season spent in rummaging the gardens of my
neighbours around Clapham Common, the sweet
stores of the nearest grocer are always liberally
drawn upon for their benefit. One small colony is
quite at home on a small stand in my room, having
access to the outside through a little tube passing
underneath my window-sill. The little creatures
are, however, quite as anxious to get into the room
as they are to go outside, for they probably think
from experience that the world would be on the
whole a very fine place to live in, if the good things
thereof were within such easy reach as they usually
find them when they are admitted from this side.
Let me draw up the slide a little. There they are ;
the little heads thrust expectantly forward, squeezing
each other in the endeavour to force a passage
underneath. One little amazon has pushed her way
through ; and, as I want to introduce her to you,
we will shut the door on the rest.

She is too much preoccupied rushing about in
search of expected sweets to make her bow to the
British public at the present moment. Look at her
as she travels inquiringly round ; is she not a
well-bred, intelligent-looking little creature ? Any
one can judge for himself, without finding it necessary
to take a slice of her little brain to look at through
a microscope. Intelligent in every motion, clean
cut, compact in form, with no gaudy patches of

126 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

colour in questionable taste, but refined yet
business-like in appearance — there is a general look
about her which stamps her at once as belonging to
the highest type of the insect race. We do not enter-
tain a proper opinion of the importance of the
little creature. In our dull way we are inclined to
estimate her place in the world by the amount of
sugar-water she and her tribe can contribute in the
year, reserving a shrewd suspicion in the backgound
that if the whole species were to be extinguished
to-morrow it might unaccountably happen in these
days of Yankee enterprise that the supply of honey
in the market would be in no way diminished. But
we greatly underrate the importance of our little
friend. If the British nation were to be suddenly
blotted out of the world, the even tenor of nature's
ways would be very little disturbed ; and, whatever
the political world might do, the natural world
would soon go on as smoothly and indifferently as
if nothing had happened. But if our little friend
the bee were suddenly to cease to exist, who shall
describe the desolation and confusion which would
invade the harmony of nature ? How many shy
flower- virgins, in plain and hillside, would droop and
pine for her coming ! How many noble, long-
pedigreed families in wood and valley, finding life
insupportable, would give up the struggle for exist-
ence, and become extinct ! How would nature
herself change her brightest hues and dress herself
in sombre colours to mourn our little friend !

In these days of popular science it is hardly neces-
sary to make more than passing reference to the
part which the bee plays in nature. In the vegetable
world it is a vital necessity that the fertilizing pollen

HABITS AND INTELLIGENCE OF BEES 127

from the stamens of certain flowers should be carried
to the pistils of other flowers, and the mission of the
bee is unconsciously to carry the precious dust from
blossom to blossom in her search after the tempting
drop of nectar with which the shy flowerets reward
the winged bearer of their love-messages. A wonder-
ful and fascinating chapter in natural history is that
which treats of the relations existing between flowers
and insects. Flowers may be divided into two
classes, those fertilized through the action of the
wind, and those in which fertilization is effected
through the intervention of insects or a like agency.
Darwin and others have shown what interesting
stratagems flowers of the latter class resort to in
order to secure the services of insects in this respect.
Every little foible and weakness of the winged visitor
is pandered to. What is commonly called a flower
is indeed nothing more than a skilfully devised trap
to attract the attention of insects, and thus ensure
their services towards fertilization. Our little friend
the bee is aesthetic in her tastes, and behold the
varieties of flowers vie with each other to beguile her
attention in the display of the most artistic blending
of colours and beauty of design. She likes sweet
scents, and the laboratory of nature is called upon
to distil the choicest perfumes to humour her. But
these are but an advertisement for the nectar which
it is the principal object of the bee to obtain, and
when she has alighted in search of it, it is only to
find that the flowers have in many cases devised
the most exquisite little mechanical arrangements
whereby she is unconsciously compelled to effect the
object towards the fulfilment of which they have
indulged in such a lavish expenditure of beauty and

128 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

sweetness. It is all effected in the simplest manner
through the great law of natural selection, here seen
in operation in its severe simplicity ; for the flowers
of those plants which present the greatest facilities
for fertilization get their seeds set, and so ensure the
continuance of their species, while the unsuitable
and unaccommodating kinds remain barren and
are gradually weeded out. In a babel of tongues,
and since first he found a voice, the poet has sung
of the loves and sorrows of mankind, but nature
still waits for him to interpret her heart ; if he ever
learns to do so, there will be a new song in his mouth,
for he will have a wonderful theme.

But nothing is perfect in this world, and I may,
perhaps, be permitted a moment's digression here
to refer to an instance on record of a wicked attempt
to frustrate the design in all this adaptation of means
to an end. My attention was first directed to the
subject on the occasion of a letter which appeared
in print some years ago referring to the export to
New Zealand of two nests of our ordinary English
humble-bees, in the hope that their descendants
would come to the rescue of the colonists, who
found that the red clover introduced from Europe
would not set its seed and propagate its species in
their country in the absence of the kindly help of the
little attendants for whom it provides its honey.
The writer expressed the hope that the humble-bees
exported were not of a variety which he had observed
had fallen into bad habits, in that the individuals,
instead of obtaining the honey from the red clover in
the manner intended by nature, had learnt to take
unlawful possession of it by snipping a hole through
the base of the tube containing it, without, of course,

HABITS AND INTELLIGENCE OF BEES 129

effecting the fertilization of the flower in the act. I
have myself often since had my attention directed
to this habit in these bees, and it appears to be well
established that this propensity to subvert the
purposes of nature is largely developed in humble-
bees under certain circumstances, and not only in
the case of the flowers of the red clover, but also
those of the scarlet-runner and other plants. It
appears, indeed, that our hive-bees also, if they are
not actually guilty of the practice, do not scruple
to take advantage of the easy access to the honey
thus provided for them. Such practices, if they were
to become the rule, would soon bring their own
obvious punishment.

Like many of the disreputable shifts resorted to
in trade, this habit is in all probability the result
of fierce competition for the means of obtaining an
honest livelihood — another example of the action
and interaction of the various causes which silently
produce change and progress in nature. The hive-
bee, thanks to its habit of storing up food for winter
use, as well as to the protection of man, is able to
start work early in the year, and during the months
of April, May, and June, it practically has the range
of our fields and meadows all to itself. The colonies
of humble-bees, however, store up no honey, and do
not live through the winter, only a few of the young
queens of last season surviving. In April and May
the poor queen-mother has to seek out a retreat in
which single-handed she proceeds to rear what only
towards the beginning of July becomes a large
family. Now when these issue forth to forage in
the fields they find in many districts that, what with
a host of competitors of their own kind — and the hive-

130 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

bees, which are masters of the situation, having
already turned the best part of the year to account
— they can eke out but a very scanty subsistence,
and so, like others in reduced circumstances, they
take to the mostly illegal occupation of living by
their wits. The humble-bee, no doubt, finds it
saves time to obtain possession of the honey in the
manner described, the stratagem in all probability
being principally resorted to in order to forestall her
rivals by obtaining first access to the honey stored
in young flowers which have not yet opened of their
own accord. This interfering with the purposes
of nature is not to be commended, perhaps, but the
poor humble-bees, for all that, deserve, in my opinion,
considerable credit for the ingenuity thus displayed
in seeking to hold their own under difficult circum-
stances in this hard world. Any one may convince
himself of the keen competition which prevails
amongst bees of all sorts towards the end of the
season if he will take the trouble to observe our
fields or hedgerows for a very short space at this
time of year, or if he will count the number of times
in an hour that a particular blossom is visited by
a bee — or would be visited if it contained honey, as
it is not necessary for a bee to alight on a flower to
know that she must go away empty. Darwin has
left it on record, after carefully watching certain
flowers, that each one was visited by bees at least
thirty times in a day, and it cannot be supposed
that the little visitors in such circumstances find
much to reward their industry. It has been also
shown that they will often visit from twenty to
twenty-five flowers in a minute. It is very interest-
ing to note that on such occasions bees always keep

HABITS AND INTELLIGENCE OF BEES 131

to the same species of flower during each visit to
the fields, a seemingly unimportant fact first re-
corded by Aristotle, which has acquired new signifi-
cance since we have learned what is the true relation
existing between the bees and the flowers they visit.

Is the bee entitled to the eulogies which have
been lavished upon her for so long as a tribute to
instincts which some naturalists have held to be
little short of reason ? Entomologists of the present
day seem to incline to the opinion that she is not.
Despite the habits and wonderful social economy
of bees, their acts upon analysis do not appear to be
the result of such a highly developed intelligence
as has been supposed.

For many generations naturalists have been loud
in their praises of the architecture of the honeycomb,
and they went into ecstasies when the mathema-
ticians conclusively proved — after much disputing
amongst themselves — that the bee in the structure
of her hexagonal cell had solved the recondite
problem of constructing her waxen storehouses with
the maximum of strength and capacity combined
with the minimum expenditure of material. Yet,
however difficult it may be to believe it, it is now
quite certain that the bee evinces no very extraordin-
ary intelligence in producing the exquisite workman-
ship displayed in the honeycomb, with all its inter-
esting arrangements of planes and angles. The first
instinct of the bee was undoubtedly to construct a
circular cell, and at present the work is always com-
menced by excavating a circular pit in the layer of
wax from which the work proceeds. A moment's
reflection will show that if all the cells were circular
they would not fit closely together, and this would

132 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

entail a great waste of space, as well as a large
-expenditure of wax in constructing a separate wall
for each cell. Now, as the work of construction
proceeds, both these undesirable contingencies are
avoided in making the cell hexagonal, by simply
straightening out, as it were, and eating away to a
single thickness the original circular wall at the six
points where it comes into contact with the walls of
the surrounding cells.

If it were desirable to go into detail, it would be
easy to show how easily and naturally this is accom-
plished in the manner in which bees work, and that
without it being necessary to assume any extra-
ordinary intelligence on the part of the little archi-
tects, who are guided by a few simple instincts,
after the exercise of which the shape of the cell
becomes a mathematical necessity.

Nevertheless, the honeycomb of the hive-bee is a
wonderful instance of perfection in nature, and it has
a place of its own in the story of evolution. Between
it and the rude agglomeration of cells of the humble-
bee there is a wide distance, and every step in the
progress upwards has, no doubt, been taken through
the operation of the law of natural selection.

The cells formed in the nest of the humble-bee
arise in this way. The queen-mother commences
by laying her eggs in a mass in a lump of matter
composed of pollen and honey kneaded together, to
form the food of the young grubs. When these are
hatched out they burrow in the substance, and
eventually spin their cocoons, and it is these cocoons,
rudely fastened together with wax, which form the
greater part of the irregular collection of cells found
in the nests of humble-bees. When the young bees

HABITS AND INTELLIGENCE OF BEES 133

have emerged, the empty cocoons are used for the
storage of honey, and it is only when storage room
of this sort is not available, that the bees display
their rude attempts at the art of cell-building in
forming rough waxen cups to hold the surplus
honey. These last are the only cells which the
humble-bee actually builds, and in their structure
it is not possible to trace even the rudiments of
the wax-economizing art of the hive-bee.

In tracing the development of the highly finished
work of the hive-bee from such a rude beginning as
this, it is only necessary to remember how vitally
important to bees is the art of economizing wax.
It has been shown that the secretion of one pound
of that costly material necessitates the consumption
by the bees of from fifteen to twenty pounds of
honey. It is easy to see, therefore, what an immense
advantage it must have been to those colonies
which long ago devised expedients for saving this
precious material, and so were able to store up for
winter use the large amount of honey which would
otherwise have been consumed in its production.
The advantage soon told in competition with other
colonies, and so the progress was continued until
the limit has been reached ; for at the present time,
in the structure of the honeycomb, perfection has
been attained, there being simply no room for
further progress.

The question to what extent bees possess the
power of communication with each other has en-
gaged the attention of many observers. Experi-
ments with bees, and also with ants, have thrown
some light on this subject. It has been shown that
the ants of a colony recognized each other even after

134 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

a separation lasting fifteen months. The bees of
one colony always recognize each other also, even
after prolonged absence, and, although it has not
yet been clearly established, there seems to be good
reason to believe that they do so principally by the
sense of smell, and not by a pass-word or signal, as
has been supposed. There is no doubt that bees
possess a very keen sense of smell, and they are
perhaps guided by it in many ways which it is
difficult for us to understand. They evince a very
strong dislike to all bad odours, and show a general
preference for those smells which are pleasing to us.
An amusing instance of the dislike of bees to bad
smells came under my notice some years ago. At
the time in question there was in my father's garden
a plot of early potatoes, some distance in front of a
spot where stood several hives. Early in the season
the rooks commenced to help themselves to the
potatoes, grubbing the young tubers out of the
ground, and doing so much mischief that some had
to be shot, and the dead body of one was impaled
in the middle of the plot as a warning and example
to the rest. Soon after this a most unaccountable
fury took possession of the bees. No one dared to
approach them, for they attacked and instantly
put to flight every person or animal which ventured
into the garden. This went on for some days, with
most unpleasant results, and the bees were fast
becoming a nuisance in the neighbourhood, when
the mystery was accidentally explained. Some one
happening to pass by the impaled rook in the evening
discovered the cause and centre of all the mischief.
Every exposed part of the poor bird's body, especi-
ally about the mouth and eyes, was literally bristling

HABITS AND INTELLIGENCE OF BEES 135

with the stings of hundreds of bees, which had
sacrificed themselves in a vain and senseless revenge
upon its offensive presence. As the little creatures
always die from the injury caused by the loss of the
sting, the destruction must have been considerable
amongst the bees, who in this case fell victims to
their own extreme sensitiveness of smell.

It is often assumed that bees possess the power
of communicating to each other ideas of a complex
nature ; for instance, it has been stated that if a
bee finds a store of honey, she will return with the
news to her companions, who soon accompany her
to share in the find. This is undoubtedly true of
ants, but in their case the explanation is obvious,
and observation and experiment leave no doubt
that ants are guided principally by the sense of
smell in following up the traces of a companion to
the source from whence she has brought the food.
This explanation, however, cannot be accepted in
the case of bees, for it is not to be supposed that
they could follow the track of a companion through
the air by scent. It has not, however, been proved
beyond doubt that a bee will lead her companions
to a store of food in this way, though experiments
point to the conclusion that bees can bring friends,
though they have not the power of directing them,
to treasures at a distance.

As we owe to the bees' taste in colours most of
the artistic arrangement of tints in our bright-
coloured flowers, experiments on the colour-sense
in bees have attracted considerable attention. Ex-
periments show that blue is essentially the bees'
favourite colour ; after which come, in order of
preference, white, yellow, red, green, and orange.

136 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

That there are not so many blue flowers as might
be expected is explained by the probability that all
plants with blue flowers are descended from ances-
tors with green flowers, which, under the influence
of what may be called bee-culture, have passed
through stages of white, yellow, and generally red
before becoming blue.

Although the vision of bees is very good in some
respects, they show little intelligence in finding their
way in certain circumstances. Sir J. Lubbock
experimented with a bee which he put into a bell-
glass, turning the closed end to the light, only to
find that she generally buzzed about for a long time
in a vain endeavour to get out at the closed end,
while flies placed in the glass in the same way soon
made their escape.

I have always found bees very stupid in this way.
Last summer I placed a nest of humble-bees in a
large glass vase, some fifteen inches in diameter, and
nine in height. I kept the nest in my room, and,
for several days after it was placed in position, the
workers crowded towards the side next the light,
making vain attempts all day long to get out, and
this although the top was quite open, and the surface
of the nest only a few inches below the rim of the
vase. It was some time before I noticed any of the
bees get out, other than by what could only have
been accident, although I watched the nest for some
hours daily. It could not be said that the change
in position of their home had unduly confused the
older bees, for those born while the nest was under
observation showed the same want of intelligence,
and up to the end of the season in the daytime a few
bees were always at the side of the glass next the

HABITS AND INTELLIGENCE OF BEES 137

light, beating about in a vain endeavour to get out.

Bees do not seem to possess the feeling of affection
or attachment ; even the respect for their queen
savours of the coldest utilitarianism, and when
through either accident or circumstances she ceases
to be of use to the colony for the one purpose for
which she is maintained, she is abandoned, or super-
seded, apparently without the slightest compunction
or regret by her so-called subjects. Bees never seem
to help each other in difficulty or distress, as is often
done by ants. If you hold a bee captive by the leg,
the others either take no notice of her struggles or
do not attempt in any way to assist her. If you go
further, and crush her to death, they quietly crowd
around, and, in the most callous fashion, show their
utter indifference by helping themselves to the sweet
juices expressed from the body of their unfortunate
companion. Yet if bees are fed regularly they often
exhibit a kind of selfish friendliness somewhat akin
to that displayed by the cats of the neighbourhood
towards the cat's-meat man on his round. During
several attempts which I have made to keep alive
during the winter the queens of colonies of humble-
bees, I have particularly noticed it in those bees.

I first tried keeping the bees in little wooden boxes,
which I always opened at feeding time, allowing
the occupants to walk about for a little before putting
them back in their boxes. I was surprised to find
after a little time how the bees expected to be fed
when the boxes were opened, coming familiarly on
to my hand in search of food, and making themselves
quite at home. One royal princess I had who always
made such intelligent attempts to escape on these
occasions that I was obliged to discontinue the

138 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

practice in her case, and I fed her instead through
an air-hole in the lid of her box. I, however, con-
tinued to take out her box with the others, and after
a short time I was much amused to find her generally
thrusting her long flexible tongue through the hole
in the lid as soon as she knew that feeding operations
were going on, as if she would by this means remind
me that I must not overlook her. This bee I used
to believe had a brilliant future before her, and it
was a matter of great regret to me when I was one
day the unintentional agent of her destruction. In
mild weather she used to be always on the watch for
an opportunity to get out of her box, and one fine
December morning when I lifted the lid she took a
short flight across the room. In searching for her
I accidentally crushed her on the carpet beneath my
slipper, and so ended her brief career.

Sir J. Lubbock, after many experiments on the
power of hearing in bees and ants, states that he
never could satisfy himself that these insects heard
any sounds which he could produce. In the case
of bees it would be a great surprise to many to hear
that they are absolutely incapable of hearing, and
it must not be assumed that they are so because
experiments have as yet yielded no satisfactory
result. From time immemorial it has been the habit
with rustic bee-keepers at the time of swarming to
invoke the aid of noise to hasten the alighting of the
bees. With some, it takes the form of drumming
on a tin kettle, others beat candlesticks together, or
even put their faith in the strains of a concertina
or violin. Everyone has his own theory as to the
object of this performance. One does it to over-
power the hum of the swarm so that the individual

HABITS AND INTELLIGENCE OF BEES 139

bees may think they are left alone, and so make
haste to alight. Another does it to keep the bees
in the neighbourhood with the charms of the music ;
and a third hopes to drown the notes of the guides
which may be ready to lead off the swarm to distant
parts previously explored in search of an eligible
spot to alight in. It is remarkable, however, that
all agree in assuming that the bees hear and are
acted upon by the noise produced.

Sir John Lubbock has recently tried a further
series of interesting experiments to decide the
question as to how far the power of hearing is devel-
oped in bees. To what extent music has power to
charm the bee or guide her instincts may be judged
from the result of an experiment of which he read
an account at a meeting of the Linnean Society in
"November 1882.

Some honey was placed on a musical box on his
lawn, and the box was kept going for a fortnight,
during which time the bees regularly helped
themselves to the honey. The box and honey were
then removed out of sight into the house, and,
although placed near an open window and only
seven yards from the previous position, the bees
failed to find the honey, although those brought to
it in its new position afterwards found the way
readily enough. He, however, declines to say that
bees are incapable of hearing, and thinks it not
impossible that insects may perceive higher notes
than we can hear, and may even possess a sense or
perhaps sensations of which we can form no idea ;
for although we have no special organs adapted to
certain sensations, there is no reason why it shduld be
the case with other animals, while the problematical

140 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

organs possessed by some of the lower forms favour
this suggestion. He is of opinion that the sounds
which bees hear may be not the low loud sounds but
the higher overtones at the verge of or beyond our
range of hearing.

It is, however, remarkable that bees certainly do
seem to hear on some occasions. The note with
which the old queen threatens the royal brood as
they come to maturity, and swarming time ap-
proaches, and so well known to apiarists under the
name of " piping," can often be distinctly heard
some distance from the hive, and is evidently intel-
ligible to the young queens, for they respond in
tones perfectly audible to the listener. Although
bees will take no notice of a very loud noise even
quite close to the hive, it is, however, remarkable
that the slightest tap on the hive itself, or any of its
attachments, or even a heavy tread some distance
off, immediately disturbs them.

Despite the study and observation to which bees
have been subjected, their habits and instincts are
still a promising and most interesting subject of
inquiry. The strange relation of the sexes has
received more attention than perhaps any other
subject connected with these little insects, both on
account of the interest attaching to it, and also
because of its bearing upon other questions. The
subject is, however, still full of difficulty, and the
more it is investigated the more the interest at-
taching to it seems to grow.

In a colony of bees there are the drones (males), the
queen (female), and the workers (neuters). It has
long been known that the neuters are merely im-
perfect females, and the bees possess the wonderful

HABITS AND INTELLIGENCE OF BEES 141

instinct which leads them, in the event of the loss
of their queen, to take a young worker grub or egg,
and, by special feeding and the enlargement of its
cell, to rear from it a new queen. It has been
proved that parthenogenesis always prevails in the
production of the male bee, the egg which produces a
drone being always unimpregnated even when laid
by an impregnated queen. A virgin queen will also
lay eggs abundantly, and it has been conclusively
proved that these eggs will come to maturity, and
that they will invariably produce drones. Now,
the bees always build a certain quantity of what is
called drone-comb, in which the cells are larger than
ordinary, and it is in these cells, and in these only,
that the queen lays the eggs which produce drones.
A knowledge of this circumstance first led to the
assumption that the sex of the young bee was deter-
mined simply by the size of its cell, but this theory
was soon abandoned, as it is settled beyond doubt
that the sex of the egg is determined at the very
moment at which it is laid. The theorists were then
driven back on an ingenious explanation as to the
mechanical effect of the shape of the cell upon the
queen in the act of depositing the egg. This view
has, however, also been rendered untenable by the
result of experiments which place it beyond question
that the sex of the eggs is altogether independent of
the shape or size of the cells in which they are laid ;
for, with no drone-comb, the queen will sometimes
lay drone-eggs in worker cells, from which eggs
drones will be produced, and she will also, if necessary,
though with great reluctance, lay worker-eggs in
drone-cells. It would thus appear that we must
concede to the queen bee the surprising instinct or

142 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

intelligence which enables her to lay at will a drone-
egg or a worker-egg, for in the hive she often passes
immediately from the worker to the drone cells or
vice versa, depositing an egg at the bottom of each
which always produces a bee of the sex intended.
This instinct is rendered more wonderful when it is
remembered that the number of drones produced
in a hive is always regulated by the wants of the
colony. The questions suggested by the manner
of the production of the worker-bee are also highly
interesting. It has been mentioned that the bees,
when they require a queen, will take a worker-egg
or grub and by especial feeding rear from it an
ordinary queen bee. It has generally been stated
that the young queen is in such cases fed with richer
food known as royal food, but it seems by no means
unlikely that we shall soon learn that this is slightly
incorrect, and that the queen grub is in such cases
simply fed with as much food as it requires. This
would mean that the queen state is that to which
all the worker-grubs would develop in normal cir-
cumstances, and that the bees deliberately and for
social reasons prevent this natural development by
a regime of low diet. One who has made a special
study of bees gives it as the result of his observations
that the bees feed the worker-grubs sparingly, as if
fearing an excessive development — a truly wonder-
ful instinct which has enabled the bees to solve
one of the most difficult of social problems. In the
construction of the honeycomb the bees anticipated
the mathematicians : have they not here again
anticipated the philosophers ?

X
THE HABITS OF FROGS

THE mild days of March witness in many of
the more secluded parts of the country a sight
which is not to be quite matched by anything
in nature. Frogs pass the winter in a state of
torpidity. They bury themselves deeply out of sight
in moist banks or beneath the roots of trees, or, best
of all, in the spaces between large stones loosely
piled together. Great numbers are sometimes dug
out of such retreats in winter, and they generally
lie packed and flattened together almost in a solid
mass ; probably, like hibernating bees, in order that
the temperature may be kept a degree or two above
a minimum-point at which it soon becomes fatal.
Frogs when they retire for the winter take leave of
food, for they eat nothing for four or five months.
Yet the remarkable fact is that when they emerge
from their long sleep in the month of March the
females are ready to spawn. Both sexes almost
immediately make for water, and it is one of the
most remarkable sights to come across a meeting-
place of a certain established kind. Everyone of
course has seen occasional frogs seeking water in
early spring. This is not what is meant. Hidden

143

144 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

in woods and marshes there are pieces of water in the
country which at this season have been trysting-
places of frogs for hundreds, and it may be for
thousands, of generations. From far and near the
frogs in early spring move towards these spots by
unerring instinct. The surface of the water may
sometimes be seen broken and rippled, as if a shoal
of mackerel were underneath. The writer recently
saw such a meeting-place where the frogs thus
collected must have numbered thousands, and the
croaking, splashing, and gurgling of the creatures
blended together into a curious body of sound which
was audible a long distance away.

Strange as it may seem, there is a certain fascina-
tion in the frog as a tame creature. There is
probably no other animal which has been so much
studied and experimented on by science as the
common frog. Yet it is surprising how little we
know about the personal side of him. Taken young
in the spawn stage, he develops into a tadpole
through a series of uncanny metamorphoses which,
while they certainly suggest as seen under the
microscope strange scenes and climates in the past
history of the world, do not lend themselves much
< • a study of his elusive personality. It is only

ten the creature absorbs his tadpole's tail (it does
,, )t drop off) and emerges from the water a little
irog about the size of a sixpence that his true
personality can be said to begin. The writer has
kept many little frogs from this stage upwards. They
soon begin to take an interest in their surroundings
and to show intelligence in their habits. They will
readily feed on small grubs, worms, and insects.
The frog is peculiar in one respect about his food.

THE HABITS OF FROGS 145

It must not only be alive, it must be stirring, other-,
wise he will not touch it. The tongue is shot out
at a lightning pace, and retracted with equal speed,
taking the prey with it. The frog will get to know
persons, and there have been instances recorded in
which they have answered to their names and would
come to be fed when called. Frogs certainly have
very highly developed gifts of instinct or intelligence
of their own kind. When necessary they are,
for instance, able to make straight for water even
from a very long distance. The large bull-frogs of
America are almost as intelligent as rabbits. The
little French climbing tree-frogs have also a very
keen sense of locality. The writer once, after much
effort, captured one of these, and, taking it home,
placed it, apparently securely fastened up, in a large
room. During the night it got loose, climbed the
wall, and finding the only opening in the room,
escaped through an inch of space which had been
left over the top of a window-sash. Frogs will show
no mark of satisfaction when pleased, but our
common frog can express feelings of fear or terror in
a most striking manner. If chased, especially by-
an animal which it fears, it will sometimes, if it
thinks escape to be impossible, give utterance to a
squeal which is almost human in its pitch and
intensity. All frogs have a keen appreciation of
coming changes of weather, and they will adjust
their habits accordingly.

It is not easy to say, in the case of the frog, how
much is due to intelligence and how much to instinct
or even to reflex action. It is one of the common-
places of science what a frog will do even after his
brain is removed. If care is taken to keep them

10

146 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

alive after the operation, brainless frogs will catch
flies and even proceed to bury themselves in the
earth at the beginning of winter. A decapitated
frog will jump naturally ; if it be placed on a table
and if irritation be applied, it will scratch at the
place. If the irritation be continued the itching
apparently at last becomes intolerable and it will
make a most natural dive for the floor. The frog
in this respect is not peculiar. Dr. W. H. Thomson
tells an amusing story of how when fishing out west
in America the bait was taken by a mud turtle
which swallowed the hook. Being unable to get the
hook free the angler hung the turtle over a branch
and sawed the head off with a pocket-knife. Down
dropped the turtle's headless body, when to Dr.
Thomson's astonishment it straightway walked some
two yards right into the water and dived into the
deep pool just as if the creature's brain had still
been directing it.

The frog very nearly resembles the toad in many
of its habits and instincts. In one respect, however,
it seems to differ considerably, as any one may readily
prove. A toad will survive a long period, certainly
more than a year, buried without food and almost
without air. The frog soon dies in similar circum-
stances. It used to be a matter of mystery as to
how frogs after hibernation came forth in the spring
well nourished and ready to spawn. The explan-
tion is now fairly evident. In the autumn, frogs
consume great quantities of food, earthworms and
snails being their principal prey. Frogs and all their
kind possess internal organs which are technically
known as fat-bodies. These become richly stored
with globules of fat and oil. Their function is now

THE HABITS OF FROGS 147

known to be that of reservoirs. In the spring they
enable the spawn to be ripened by drawing on the
food material which they contain. Frogs do not
feed during the excitement of the spawning season
in March, and if it were not for this effective resource
their bodies would certainly sink exhausted during
the exceptional strain of this period.

XI
SEA TROUT

AS the long summer daylight has slowly waned
with the past month or two the angler has
assiduously courted that sporting trout
which, having moved in deep waters, has at this
season returned to his inland haunts with the
mystery of the sea upon him. On the larger
waters of the north the angler has gone out morning
after morning in the early light, with only his trusty
boat-man. Rowing far and taking note of wind
and weather he has, if possible, set himself a silent
drift for miles with his back to the wind while he has
whipped the grey waters hour by hour with the
gaudy lures that are sufficient to draw S. truita from
the depths. The salmon trout or, as he is more
generally known in the north, the sea trout, is the
most esteemed of all our fishes after the lordly
salmon. Sport he gives in plenty when he is hooked ;
and excitement and trial above all his kind in that
lightning moment ere he rejects, as he often does,
the lure which brought him from below. He is born
in fresh water like the salmon, and like the salmon
that is to be he passed the first epoch of his life-
history a little untravelled trout knowing only the

148

SEA TROUT 149

shallow pebbly bottom of the upland streamlet in
which he found himself. He had to all appearance
no knowledge of the sea even of that kind which
creatures are said to have in dreams, and he would
choke and die if placed in salt water. But the time
came when he lived in another world. The lust of
life came upon him and he travelled. Now when the
angler meets him he is back from the unknown with
the grey and silver livery of the sea upon him, a
salmon, or all but a salmon, in appearance. Large
he has grown, plump and strong and full of the fight
of life. Very different must have been the fare upon
which he lived in the sea from that which his
mountain eddy provided, yet here he is now return-
ing to meet his mate in the mountain burn and with
all the old life being slowly reimposed as it were
upon him.

It is one of the most interesting of life-studies how
it can all possibly happen. Here, for instance, when
the skilful boatman drifts before the wind, there is a
long reach of particular bottom. Elsewhere the
waters of the loch may be deep, but here the point
is that they range from a few fathoms to a couple of
feet, and that the ground is pebbly or stony. It is
the kind of bottom which produces feeding which
reminds the returning trout of his early haunts. He
thinks again of the larvae of water-flies and water-
beetles. He rises after the winged and perfect
creatures almost as soon as he has left the sea.
Swish ! he rushes upwards like a streak of silver to
your own teal and yellow monstrosity, " coming
short," as the sea trout so often does. In a little
time more these same fish will be back in mountain
streams, where there is water scarcely deep enough

150 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

to cover them, fish of two pounds, of five pounds, of
ten pounds, meeting their mates, scratching in the
gravel, depositing their spawn. And then returning
once more, spent and exhausted, to the sea.

What is the real explanation of this instinct which
drives the sea trout, like the salmon, thus to return
from their sea-going life to spawn, not merely in fresh
water and in running streams, but in particular
places and in quite shallow water, often of a few
inches ? It is interesting to note in most hatcheries
how extremely significant are the conditions under
which the eggs of salmon trout and salmon have
to be hatched out. The eel returns from inland
waters to spawn in the depths of the ocean.
Probably considerable pressure is necessary to its
eggs, as it is to the eggs of many sea fishes, before
they will hatch out. In the case of the migratory
trout the fact which probably determines the curious
life-history of the fish is the very interesting,
although withal very simple one, connected with
the eggs. The eggs of the trout will not hatch out
in any but the shallowest water. The least pressure
is quite fatal to them. This is a fact well known at
all artificial hatcheries, and all arrangements have to
be made accordingly. It was no doubt around this
little tuft of circumstance that the strange and
eventful history of the salmon family slowly evolved
itself. When the trout took to migrating to the
sea or the river estuaries at first there probably was
no universal instinct to return to their old haunts
for spawning purposes. For ages there must have
been, as indeed there may be now, salmon trout
tending to shed their spawn where they lived, in the
rivers, in the estuaries, in the seas. But in the

SEA TROUT 151

nature of things no grain of it has ever come to
maturity. Only the fish which happened to return
to spawn to the shallow upland waters have ever
left any descendants. Hence the rigid process of
long-continued natural selection which evolved the
present habits of the salmon and which every year
drives all the existing members of the salmon family
to their spawning-grounds. Hence the imperative-
ness of the instinct to which they are subject. They
are, as it were, the survivors of a vast army which
must have become extinct through lack of the
instinct now developed in them.

Salmon trout are persistent travellers within a
certain limited area. A fish of a few pounds weight
which rises to the fly of the angler has in all pro-
bability journeyed through the same waters before.
The salmon moves far in its migrations and even
goes far to sea, but the sea trout has a more local
range. For instance, a considerable proportion of
marked fish have been known to return to the same
small stream and to exactly the same locality the
year following that in which they were marked. It
is one of the most interesting features of the migra-
tion of salmon trout that large fish of several pounds
weight will ascend quite narrow rivulets for spawn-
ing purposes. If one may judge, indeed, by facts
obtained from artificial experiences, the conditions
which the fish seek for successful spawning are not
easy to find. Not only must the water be extremely
shallow and running, but the eggs cannot be hatched
out in strong light, nor will they come to maturity
except the water be kept at a low temperature. The
salmon trout, therefore, seem naturally to deposit
their eggs in dark or shaded situations and between

152 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

banks which run east and west rather than north and
south.

We may see also why it is that the salmon trout
which the angler meets like the salmon in certain
waters in certain seasons has reached the place
where he is found at that particular time. The
eggs of his mate will hatch out only in water at a
temperature not high above freezing-point. All the
flit tings of the fish must therefore be arranged so
that he may arrive at the spawning-ground in the
colder months of the year, according to locality.
Others may suit their journey to more convenient
seasons ; for him it is expedient that his flight should
be in winter. It is probably for a similar reason
that we find many of the movements of salmon so
puzzling. It has often been pointed out that it
cannot be simply in obedience to the sexual instinct
that the salmon ascends the rivers, for many of the
fish have little development of roe when they leave
the sea. But when the object is kept in mind, it is
all quite clear. Some of the fish ascend rivers to
spawn which are but a few miles long, while others
have to travel to their destination for hundreds of
miles. In all cases the spawning time of the salmon,
like the sea trout, is in the same months of the winter,
so that the journeys which it undertakes must be
arranged accordingly.

XII
THE INSTINCT OF ANIMALS

I WAS standing in the small zoological garden
in Pretoria, established by the late President
Kruger for the instruction and amusement of
his people. I had been in the place some time,
and was watching half a dozen monkeys which were
chained to trees inside a wire fence. One of these
had attracted my attention. This was at first
merely because of his behaviour to a certain class of
visitors. It was soon after the South African war,
and some of those who were strolling through the
place were soldiers who had taken part in it. This
particular monkey, whether by training or other-
wise, always flew into a great rage at the sight of
the British uniform, chattering furiously, and grin-
ning at the worn khaki-clad men who from time to
time approached the rails to look at him. The
visitors had been throwing various kinds of food to
the monkeys, and some of it had fallen beyond the
limit of the chains and lay on the ground out of
reac h. The other monkeys kept each near the foot
of his respective tree, but this one remained on the
ground near the railings with an air of preoccupation
which was noticeable. Now and then visitors
approached who carried sticks, and presently one of

153

154 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

these was dangled loosely outside the rails. In an
instant the monkey had snatched it, and had fled
chattering with it to the foot of his tree. I expected
to see him examine it curiously, and perhaps break
it in pieces, as is the way of monkeys. But no ;
he had a more deliberate aim. Advancing on all
fours to the limit of his chain, and with the stick
stretched out in his hand, he proceeded, amid the
greatest excitement among the other monkeys, to
rake in, one by one, the titbits which had accumu-
lated, hitherto beyond reach. Although there was
nothing new to me in the act, for I had previously
lived with and studied monkeys at close quarters, I
shall not forget the effect for the moment on my
mind, and on the minds of some of the spectators
as I saw it reproduced in their faces. Had not the
zoologists been right in placing the monkey among
the primates ? Here was something more than
mere animal instinct. Was not this an example of
mind conquering the dull tyranny of things as they
are, and the first tool-using animal emerging beneath
our eyes ?

It has been my experience to be able to study
animal instincts and animal intelligence, both in the
lower and higher animals, in many conditions, for
a period now extending over more than twenty
years. Deep and lasting, on the whole, has been
the impression left as to the results of animal
instincts. Nevertheless, it yields place to a deeper
feeling as to the character of the enormous interval
which separates the highest example of animal
instinct from even such a simple act of intelligence
as that recorded above. The most permanent
result of my own studies in animal capacities has

THE INSTINCT OF ANIMALS 155

been a gradually increasing conviction as to the as
yet unimagined significance of mind in the further
evolution of the universe. But I think that a first
step toward a truer appreciation of the almost
inconceivable potentialities of mind in the future is
a clearer perception of the difference which marks
off its higher manifestations from even the most
remarkable examples of animal instinct.

On the table before me is a little red-covered box
connected underneath the window-frame with the
outer air, and corresponding in some respects to
that used by bee-keepers when they wish to start
a new colony. It contains a single full-sized comb
filled with bee-brood in all stages of development,
which was transferred four days ago from an ordinary
bar-framed hive. The excitement now visible
among the bees as I let down the shutter is intense.
In one spot they have broken down the worker-
cells and are building up a large structure, at the
bottom of which one catches occasional glimpses of
a white grub that an eager crowd of bees, jostling
one another in their excitement, are endeavouring to
feed. It is the new queen that is to be. This
action of the bees in thus, on the loss of the mother
of the hive, selecting a worker-grub and rearing
from it a new queen, has often been described.
There is no example of animal capacity in nature
which is more striking or which has been oftener
remarked upon as displaying reasoning power. It
exhibits an apparent intelligence and foreknowledge
which call forth the admiration of all observers.
Nevertheless, it has to be admitted that the same
bees in other circumstances show no particular
gifts of intelligence. Bees when short of food

156 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

readily steal honey from other hives. But in a great
number of experiments which I have tried in which
the queenless bees have been left without either
egg or larva from which to begin a new queen, I
have never had a case in which they have attempted
to avoid extinction by obtaining a larva or egg from
another hive, which they might easily do. Bees
have a wonderful instinct for finding their way.
Yet out of their usual habits they readily lose it.
If one among her companions is killed, the others
exhibit neither fear, nor resentment, nor interest.
If one is provoked to use her sting, she makes no
intelligent attempt to withdraw it, as she sometimes
might do, but walks away, stupidly dragging out
her entrails and causing her own death by the act.
The instincts by which migratory birds find their
way, year after year, for thousands of miles, over
wastes of sea and land, appear to us little short of
marvellous, and seem often to indicate in like manner
a high order of intelligence. Yet it by no means
follows that we are witnessing in these cases also
any more than a mechanical or unreflecting response
of the organism to its environment. Why the
powers appear to us so wonderful is that we do not
always know the exact nature of the stimulus, and
possibly do not ourselves possess, or possess only in
a very rudimentary form, the senses which are
concerned in responding to it. The attunement of
an organism in this manner to the calls of its environ-
ment, through senses which are beyond us, but
senses which compel it to do mechanically what in
the higher animals is done by intelligence, is, never-
theless, one of the most wonderful products of
natural selection.

THE INSTINCT OF ANIMALS 157

Some years ago it was my good fortune to rear
from the beginning a specimen of the young of the
common cuckoo. The habits of this migratory bird,
which is a spring visitor in Europe, though it is not
found on the North American continent, are well
known by repute. The female lays her eggs in the
nests of small birds, and the young cuckoo, when
only a few days old, and while it is yet blind and
almost naked, ejects from the nest, with a purposive-
ness which is almost uncanny to watch, its fellow-
nestlings, and receives thereafter the sole care of
its foster-parents. As my young cuckoo became
full-grown, the degree of complexity and perfection
obtained by nature in mechanically attuning this
bird to the wants of its curious migratory life was
extraordinary to witness, and made an unusual
impression on my mind. The cuckoo, it may be
mentioned, travels, in its annual migrations, enor-
mous distances over land and sea, sometimes from
the extreme north of Europe, across the equator,
into the Southern Hemisphere. In this case there
is no room for thinking that the young birds find
their way as the result of any teaching from the
older birds, for these leave many weeks later than
the older birds, and so travel apart.

As the season waned, and the time for the migra-
tion of my young cuckoo approached and passed,
its behaviour grew interesting. The bird always
became very restless in the evening. Being much
attached to me, it generally settled at last, so as to
be near me, on the stationery case on the table on
which I was writing, in the dim light thrown by the
upper surface of the green shade of the reading-lamp
by which I worked. Here, as the hours wore on,

158 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

the same thing happened every night. After a short
interval the muscles of the wings began to quiver,
this action being to all appearance involuntary.
The movement gradually increased, the bird other-
wise remaining quite still, until it grew to a noiseless
but rapid fanning motion of the kind that one sees
in a moth when drying its wings on emerging from
the chrysalis. This movement still tended to grow
both in degree and intensity, and it generally lasted
as long as I sat up during the night. In the early
stages of this mood the bird responded when I
spoke to it ; but in time it ceased to do this, and
became lost in a kind of trance, with eyes open and
wings ceaselessly moving. Brain, muscles, nervous
system, and will, all seemed inhibited by the stimu-
lus that excited it. The bird became, as it were,
locked in the passion of that sense by which the
movement of flying was thus simulated. It was
one of the strangest sights I have ever witnessed —
this young migratory creature of the air which had
never been out of my house, and which had never
known any of its kind, sitting beside me in the gloom
of our Northern winter, and in the dim lamplight,
and by a kind of inherited imagination, which was
yet not imagination in our sense, flying thus through
the night, league-long, over lands and oceans it had
never seen.

There was, I think, no question of the exercise
of intelligence in this case. What had rather to
be noticed was the entire physical system of the
bird thus hereditarily attuned, and in an inconceiv-
able degree of perfection, to react to stimuli related
to the necessities of its migratory habit of life. In
instances like this the stimuli to which the organism

THE INSTINCT OF ANIMALS 159

responds, as a wound-up spring responds to the
touch which sets it loose, are mostly beyond our
senses. We may form some conception of them as
being probably similar in character to those which
enable the sexes of various animals to distinguish
each other, and often, in certain forms to find each
other even when immense distances apart. These
stimuli are, no doubt, of various kinds. Sometimes,
as when one sees birds migrating south against a
head wind, they may be related to a highly sub-
limated sense of smell, or something akin to it.
It may be mentioned in this connection how even
a slight peculiar odour often serves in our own case
to evoke immediately and powerfully ideas and
emotions associated with it ; and it would seem not
improbable that we have in such a fact suggestion
of the rudimentary survival in man of a faculty
which has played a great part in the evolution of
life on a lower scale.

One of the senses in birds and other animals
giving rise to remarkable results', is the sense of
direction. Darwin relates an incident of a horse
which he had sent by railway from his home
in Kent, over a hundred miles westward to the
Isle of Wight. " On the first day that I rode
eastward," he continues, " my horse was very
unwilling to return towards his stable, and he
several times turned round. This led me to make
repeated trials, and every time that I slackened the
reins he turned sharply round, and began to trot
to the eastward by a little north, which was nearly in
the direction of his home in Kent." Darwin con-
cluded that the horse knew, even at so great distance,
the direction in which his old home lay. Similar

160 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

facts will be familiar to most persons who have had
experience with horses. They have been related to
me in great number by cattlemen in the Western
States of America, and by Australians who have
lived in the bush. A similar faculty is highly
developed in dogs, cats, and other domestic animals.
It has been proved not to be due to any conscious
noting of landmarks, for animals have found their
way back over immense distances, even when they
have been sent on the outward journey in closed
boxes.

It is interesting to note that this faculty of judging
direction seems to bear no relation to the place of
the animal in the general scale of intelligence. It is
possessed to a considerable degree by dogs and
cats ; but it is possessed in a very high degree by
seals, who find their way unerringly back every
year to their rookeries from enormous distances to
which they disperse in the open sea. It reaches an
extremely high degree of perfection in migratory
birds not otherwise noted for intelligence. Even
animals low in the scale, like fish, find their way
regularly for great distances to their spawning-
grounds. A case is related of a snake, carried in a
closed carriage from Madras to Pondicherry, a
distance of 100 miles, which found its way back.

Possibly we have in man in this case also a sugges-
tion of the survival in rudimentary form of a faculty
far more highly developed in lower animals. Those
used to the open life of the West have told me that
many of those bred to it come to carry with them,
even when out of sight of all landmarks, an over-
powering instinct of direction. In the case of men
this sense appears to work by a process of sub-

THE INSTINCT OF ANIMALS 161

conscious dead-reckoning in the mind ; but in the
case of animals it is doubtless often supplemented
and directed by stimuli which do not reach our
senses. The character or direction of the light,
changes of temperature, nature of the wind, odours,
emanations, or radiations which mean nothing to
us, or which do not reach our senses at all, may pro-
foundly influence animals whose safety or welfare
for innumerable generations in the past has depended
on correctly interpreting in action the message which
they convey.

That the clue or explanation in all these cases of
instinct is a comparatively simple one, if we only
knew it, is, I think, highly probable. Recently, in
South Africa, in discussing the scouting during the
late war with one who had acted as a scout, I
challenged a test. We were taken out on a dark,
cloudy, and still night, turned round many times,
and at last asked to point in the direction of the
place whence we had started. My companion
failed ; I succeeded without hesitation, and I
seemed to him for the time being to be endowed
with a special and unaccountable sense of direction.
What I had done, however, was simply to experi-
ment with a trick known to poachers and sportsmen
in England. I had wetted my fingers, and, holding
them up, was enabled to distinguish the direction of
the very slight air current. My inexplicable gift
was, in short, due to no more than the simple device
which had rendered me, for a moment, extra sensitive
to the direction of the wind.

However wonderful and however inexplicable
animal instincts like the foregoing may be, they
are not, I think, usually accompanied by the exercise
11

162 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

of any high degree of intelligence. They represent
rather the mechanism of mind in an early stage in
the evolution of life. The instincts in question are
always born with the animals ; but what is inherited
is not, as is sometimes imagined, knowledge or
ideas ; it is simply the physical organization,
common to a whole species, adjusted, often with
exquisite perfection, to respond more or less mechani-
cally to stimuli related to the average welfare of
the animal. Why the instinct often appears wonder-
ful to us is that we do not possess the same organiza-
tion, and that the stimuli to which it responds are
therefore often beyond the reach of our own senses.
A more noteworthy class of instincts than these
belong to a higher class. Most students of wild
nature in northern Europe, Asia, or North America
will have made the acquaintance of the wild duck
from which our common domestic duck is descended.
If this shy bird is surprised in the spring in sedge
or reeds with her young, she possesses a peculiar
habit which is interesting to watch, and about which
Darwin and Romanes held some difference of opinion.
I have many times witnessed the habit myself. If
one comes on the mother bird in wading through the
sedge, she first attempts to escape through the
cover without attracting notice. As soon as the eye
catches her, she is seen to be swimming rapidly in
front, followed by the brood of ducklings, the latter
packed together so closely that they seem to move
through the water behind her like a solid bank of
dark-brown fur. The moment the mother duck
perceives that she is seen, she springs clear out of
the water. Not, however, to fly away ; for, as you
see, she falls back, painfully flapping a broken wing,

THE INSTINCT OF ANIMALS 163

and beating heavily about in her attempts to escape.
The eye always momentarily loses sight of the young
birds in following these movements, and the duck-
lings invariably have disappeared when it seeks
them again. It is next to impossible to find them
afterward, although they are never far off. As to
the final scene, I quote my own words as I have
used them elsewhere to describe it : "As you
continue to move, you notice that the unusual
exertion is having a wonderfully curative effect on
the broken wing of the mother. She is already
taking short flights with it, still occasionally flopping
back heavily into the water. As you look she sits
up and flaps both wings airily enough. Now she
springs into the air, and wheeling several times
nimbly overhead, actually takes her departure
altogether, with a series of wild derisive quacks as a
parting salute. You feel somehow as if you had
not got the best of the encounter, and that you have
been treated throughout as a creature of inferior
intelligence."

Darwin, in explanation of this instinct in the wild
duck, thought that it was impossible to conceive
the mother bird as consciously imitating the actions
of a wounded duck, for she, in the vast majority of
cases, could never have seen such. The original
groundwork of the habit he considered to have
been such action as one sees in the common hen,
which, when her chickens are approached by a
stranger, rushes excitedly about with ruffled plumage
and extended wings. Natural selection, he con-
sidered, had accumulated in the wild duck those
variations of this habit in which the actions of a
wounded bird were mimicked, until in time a fairly

164 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

good imitation resulted. The instinct was, in
short, an example of those more or less perfect
but unconscious and mechanical adjustments to the
conditions of existence that we have been already
discussing. Romanes, however, went further than
this ; he agreed in the main with Darwin's view as
to the origin of the instinct, but he held that direct
intelligence in misleading an enemy now played a
considerable part in the exercise of this peculiar
habit on the part of the mother wild duck.

I am inclined to think that this view of Romanes
is correct, and that there may be conscious, delibe-
rate, and individual intention on the part of the
mother to deceive, and so to adjust her actions
as to cover the retreat of her young. Experiments
which I have made since this article was begun with
wild ducks which I have tamed, have, however, led
me to think that there is a physical cause for the
action, and that the conscious purpose may be only
secondary. I have purposely chosen this example
because it well illustrates the way in which an
instinct of the lowest class merges into a higher
order of intelligence. But I have also noticed it
because it gives us a probable clue, to be referred to
presently, as to the conditions favourable to the
display of individual intelligence in animals in a
large class of examples that attract attention.

As we rise in the scale of animal intelligence,
there are two leading facts which have to be noticed.
In the first place, it has to be observed that the
organized mechanical response to stimuli which has
been so far described, and which constitutes instinct
in its lowest form, becomes replaced by something
higher. We begin to have conscious intelligence

THE INSTINCT OF ANIMALS 165

in the individual initiating and directing action in
such circumstances as may arise, and doing this
with a growing perception of the relations between
cause and effect. In the second place, it has to
be remarked that zoological affinity does not indicate
the line of this upward advance. The rat and the
beaver, for instance, which furnish two of the most
notable examples of animal intelligence, belong to a
group comparatively low in the scale. The positions
of the horse, the dog, the parrot, and even that of
the elephant and the monkey, are similarly not
clearly suggested by their structural affinities.

The conditions just referred to as favourable to
the display of individual intelligence in animals
are, I think, worthy of closer attention than they
have hitherto received. Civilized man thinks so
readily, and so easily, that we do not realize what a
special and concentrated effort the mere rudiments
of thought must imply in an animal. The expression
of unutterable weariness which overspreads the faces
of some savages when they are asked questions
requiring a little mental effort has often been recorded
by observers. How much more should we expect
thought to require a supreme effort in an animal.
In the valuable series of experiments recently
conducted it is interesting to notice the efforts
made to fix the attention of the animals, and how
difficult it often was to retain it.

It may be observed that in most of the striking
instances of individual intelligence that are from
time to time recorded, there is a condition that is
usually present. The circumstances are nearly
always those in which some overpowering cause
tends to concentrate the animal's mind on one

166 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

subject. Among ourselves it is well known how
such a condition stimulates thought. Every public
speaker who has held a large audience knows how
it tends to promote the flow of ideas. In animals,
in those cases of exceptional individual intelligence
referred to, it may be noticed how often this condi-
tion prevails. Cats, birds, and almost all animals,
may be noticed to exhibit, as in the case of the wild
duck just mentioned, greatly quickened intelligence
in their actions in supreme crises where the safety
of their young is concerned. Similarly, in cases
of extreme individual danger, or of great desire, we
often get marked instances of animal intelligence.
Where both these conditions are combined, as in
the attitude of wolves, jackals, foxes, and other
animals to traps, we get those surprising instances
of intelligence which are recounted, and often
received with incredulity, though they are probably
in the great majority of cases quite true. The
experiences of professional trappers in northern
Michigan give instances of foxes acting so intelli-
gently in regard to the mechanism of the ordinary
spring-trap that they consistently burrowed beneath
the jaws so as to push down the pan from beneath,
and thus spring the trap with safety.

Similarly, in cases of concentration of attention
under the influence of strong emotional excitement,
as when the animal is wounded, there is often
evidence of great stimulation of intelligence.
Menault relates the case of an eagle caught in a trap
and afterwards undergoing a surgical operation.
" Though his head was left loose, he made no attempt
to interfere with the agonizing extraction of the
splinters, or to disturb the arrangements of the

THE INSTINCT OF ANIMALS 167

annoying bandages. He seemed really to under-
stand the nature of the services rendered, and that
they were for his good." Most persons will have
had, some time or other, similar experiences with
cats or dogs, or in relieving animals caught in traps.
Romanes quotes a number of instances of elephants
intelligently submitting to surgical operations,
bracing themselves against pain and, in the words
of the operators, behaving as if they understood the
object of the acts. Monkeys when wounded are
almost human in their behaviour.

The impression left on the mind by long and close
study of animal instinct and intelligence is apt to
be different from that which is popularly conceived.

When all due consideration is given to the powers
possessed by the higher animals, one is, I think,
impressed most in the end by the enormous interval
of progress beyond this which the human mind so
evidently represents. When it is considered how
naturaUy it comes to man to use tools, it seems
matter for surprise not that we should occasionally
see this faculty in animals, but rather that we should
so rarely, even in the higher animals, see intelligence
rise to this level. When we observe an elephant
prepare a branch to switch off flies, or see a monkey
use a stick to rake in nuts, as in the example quoted
at the beginning of this article, we are much
impressed. Yet how far off, after all, do these
efforts leave the animal mind ! The monkey,
although he rises to this level, will sit and warm
himself at a fire without ever grasping the relation-
ship between the fire and the fuel which feeds it.
He will be the intelligent companion of man, and
yet all his life never reach the communionship of

168 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

the most elementary forms of speech. An intelli-
gent bird like the parrot, on the other hand, will
articulate human language perfectly, and yet with
no mind behind to furnish the link between the
spoken words and the ideas they represent.

The relationship between cause and effect appears
to the human mind so self-evident that in certain
systems of philosophy it is regarded as the most
elementary and fundamental of all knowledge. Yet
there is certainly no conception of it in the minds
of most animals. The common domestic fowl will
suffer the utmost inconvenience in tossing loose
pieces of green food over her head in the endeavour
to break off morsels small enough to swallow.
After a time she learns by experience that pieces
under her, upon which she happens to be standing,
are conveniently fixed, and she will look for them
there. Yet for two seasons in which I had a group
of Buff Orpingtons under close and almost daily
observation in relation to this fact, I never once,
during the hundreds of times I witnessed the act,
could be sure that I saw any of them connect the
cause with the effect, and consciously grasp with
her claw, or hold down in position, a piece of food.
Green food did not grow in detached pieces in
nature, and the automaton, adjusted to nature,
contained, therefore, no response. Even where
animals perform such acts with apparent intelligence,
we never can be sure how far the result is due to
inherited reflex action. We ourselves blink at a
blow which threatens the eye, and duck our heads
at the sound of shells ; but we do so without any
conscious intervention of mind reasoning from cause
to effect. We do it because we have inherited the

THE INSTINCT OF ANIMALS 169

reflex which compels us to act thus in response to
the necessary stimuli.

It is often asked, If the action of instinct is thus
so automatic and often so perfect in nature, where
does the higher function of mind come in ? Let
me give an example in reply. I had in my house a
wasps' nest in being. Three-fourths of the work of
the insects during the season has been directed
toward raising the large crop of queens and males
which marks the end of the year. Every instinct
of the nest has been for months adjusted to this
social need. Yet what is the final result ? The
number of young queens in my nest is about 3,000,
there being almost as many males. As the number
of wasps in the world does not presumably increasje,
and as such a nest is always begun in the spring by
a single queen, it follows that for one male and fertile
female to attain their perfect end, some 5998 must on
the average perish and fail. Such is the stupendous
cost of life before the epoch of mind.

It is for reasons like these that there is to be
observed everywhere throughout life one definite
upward line of development, namely, the rising
curve which marks the ascent of mind. We marvel
at the complexity and history of the single cell in
which the individual life in the higher forms always
begins, a speck of matter capable of transmitting
all the features and potentialities of inheritance
which separate the various forms of life and dis-
tinguish one individual from another. But who
can estimate the almost inconceivable complexity
of the inherited forces which organize, in a single
lifetime, the few ounces of grey matter of the human
brain ? But yesterday the components were a

170 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

handful of inert material, to-day they have become
the physical basis of the supreme reasoning conscious-
ness of man and all that it implies. It is only by
the comparative study and analysis of animal
instinct and animal intelligence that we begin to
have some feeble idea of the cost of the process in
evolution, and of the unfathomable epochs of
development which separate such a result from the
first beginnings of life. No one who has grasped
in any real sense the significance of mind in the
evolution of life can hold the belief that the cycle
of the manifestations of it which we have begun to
witness will ever cease, or that it is destined to be
in any way bounded even by the life of the planet
on which we live.

XIII
THE BIRDS OF LONDON

THE rooks no longer build their nests in the
Temple Gardens, and the thrushes and red-
breasts, which, even fifty years ago, were
wont to haunt the suburban gardens in the neigh-
bourhood of what are now the main arteries of
London traffic have long since retired before the
ever-rising tide of bricks and mortar. Nevertheless
what is left of London bird-life has not ceased to
be interesting. On the contrary as the fog-pall has
thickened over modern Babylon it has acquired a
new interest which is peculiar to itself.

It is early morning in the month of May, and I
am leaning against the window casement. It is
light, but still some time before sunrise, and the air
has that feeling which is peculiar to London air
only in the spring in this hour out of twenty-four.
The faint fresh odour brings into the mind for a
moment a vision of a far off lake amongst my native
hills from whose still surface the mist is just now
beginning to rise, and the familiar cry of the coot
as she sails out from the sedge, where during the
night she has added another speckled egg to the

171

172 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

store in her floating nest among the tall bulrushes.
As I lean out of the window and catch the rumble of
a belated cab my ears are filled with a peculiar noise
which. Londoners do not often listen to ; for it is
only to be heard about this time, and this is just the
hour at which the great city falls into such short and
fitful sleep as she gets. In the still air it sounds not
unlike an army of stone-cutters at work with chisels
and mallets on hard stone ; but strange to say it
does not come from anything so harsh as steel and
stone, but from the throats of innumerable spar-
rows.

It is everywhere, along the street, on the slates
overhead, in the trees in the gardens below, and a
good deal of it comes from the sooty ivy on the
wall where the birds have their nests. As the grey
light grows brighter the eye begins to follow the
movements of the birds in the back gardens below,
and the sight is one worth seeing. It is the London
sparrow at work in the breeding season during the
first hour after the dawn. The incessant chirrup-
ing which goes on comes principally from the young
birds. Some of them are still fledglings in the nests
hidden away out of sight ; others are standing about
in lines and groups, along the ledge under the roofs,
on the walls and palings, and on the branches of the
trees. They are cold after the night and sit huddled
up in their feathers, and they are all hungry. Their
impatient cries drive the old birds frantic ; I can
see these going and coming in short quick flights over
the opposite house to and from the deserted cab-
rank in the adjacent street ; they are hopping with
quick anxious gait over the gravel below exploring
everywhere for food ; they are round the doors, on

THE BIRDS OF LONDON 173

the window-sills and in the dust-bins. Few morsels
will escape their sharp eyes ; the city is asleep and
they have the world to themselves.

An interesting study in bird-life is the London
sparrow now. All the birds are not looking for
food. Some are collecting building materials and
are making short flights backwards and forwards,
returning with straws, bits of rag, and odds and ends
in their beaks. This is not the first venture in
housekeeping with these ; they have already
reared one brood this year, and now they have
begun again, and they will rear another before the
season is out. The London sparrow is a by- word
and proverb among birds for his breeding pro-
pensities ; poor little fellow ! it is the only way in
which he can manage to make headway against
the risks which continually beset his life, and the
consequent high death-rate amongst his tribe.

Look at the crowd of eager nest-builders around
that heap of house-sweepings against the dust-bin
yonder. One after another of the little odds and
ends of rubbish are taken up, weighed in the tiny
bills, and found wanting according to some occult
standard of the sparrow mind, until at last one
suggests some element of fitness and the owner
flies merrily away with his find. To give them their
due these nest-builders look a somewhat disreputable
lot. Sooty they are, hard worked, and with many
a feather missing. The cab-horse has a luxurious
and well-to-do look compared with a London
sparrow in the height of the breeding season. The
latter quarrels with his comrades for straws, loses
his tail-feathers in duels and love-affairs, plucks
out his breast feathers himself to line his nest, and

174 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

works himself to the bone for his family in the
intervals of quarrelling and love-making.

A quick harsh note and a flutter of wings. Every
sparrow has left the ground. One looks round to
find the cause of the alarm, but sees nothing at
first. But we have been on the brink of a tragedy.
A familiar form comes out from behind the wooden
paling which tops the brick wall of the garden ; it
is my own cat, and he slinks into the open with that
foolish sullen look peculiar to all the members of
the feline tribe when they have been baulked of their
prey. I call him softly by his name and he looks
up and blinks his grey eyes at me. The marks of
nocturnal dissipation are upon him. As he walks
along the wall one may see the advantage of that
grey fur striped with dark lines which is so common
among the London cats ; in the half light he is
almost invisible on the dull background. The
London cats mostly go their own ways and natural
selection is only slightly tempered by human inter-
ference. This one walked into our house as a kitten
and we took him in ; he was housed and fed and
petted ; but a street arab he was born and will
remain. From an early age he took to sparrow-
hunting ; we tried to break the old Adam in him,
but after he had tasted blood and the pleasures of
the chase the attempt had to be given up in despair.
Some one sat in the room with him and a young
tame sparrow for four hours, scarcely taking eyes off
him. Blandishments were tried, but he was deaf
to them ; the attempt was given up and a stick was
tried, but his spirit was unaffected. He feared the
stick but he meant to have the sparrow — and he
had it, under our eyes. He killed it with a stroke

THE BIRDS OF LONDON 175

of his paw at a distance of some two feet even
while he crouched down in fear from the punishment
he knew would follow. I do not think any power
could curb the lust for sparrow-killing in that grey
blinking creature on the wall.

He is off now after some other mischief and the
sparrows came back again. Along the flower-
border there is a dark discoloured patch. It has
been raining recently and it was here that the
water collected in a shallow pool. The water is
gone, absorbed by the sandy sub-soil beneath, and
the surface is covered with a thin film of black mud,
on which here and there the blades of a tiny bunch
of grass lie stretched out, whitened now with the
heavy dew they have gathered in the night. It is
just the spot the earthworms like to come to the
surface to feed in, and last night has been a night
such as they love ; one can see the fresh casts which
have been thrown up since the rain. One of the
blue and pink burrowers has evidently come to the
surface to stay, and he wriggles feebly and aimlessly
on the moist ground. Presently a sparrow hops
this way, the early bird is about to have his worm,
you think. But no, he passes by and almost over
it without appearing to see it.

The sparrow is no lover of creeping things, but
it conies quite as a surprise to many of his admirers
to learn that he is a vegetarian. Yet this is the
trait in his character which will probably earn for
him a place in history. It is because he is a vege-
tarian that the English sparrow has followed in the
wake of the great Anglo-Saxon invasion of the
world's wildernesses, even as his ancestors probably
followed long ages ago in the wake of the Aryan

176 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

invasion of Europe. The sparrow does not love
the wood and the silent haunts of nature. He
follows the settler with a very practical purpose
in his head ; he comes to steal his corn, and to hang
about the homestead to pick up scraps. He is no
solitary hunter of winged and creeping things in
waste places, but has always grown fat amongst
the sheaves and pig-troughs of his patron. Nor has
the revolution in our habits affected the sparrow.
In these days some of us, alas ! no longer keep
flocks and herds or grow our own corn ; we show an
unmistakable tendency to crowd together in towns ;
we shut out most of the sky and cover the face of
nature for league upon league with bricks and
asphalt ; nearly every feathered thing retires
before the desolation we make. But the sparrow
remains, for our habits suit him better than ever.

It is because the sparrow is a vegetarian that he
is the only wild bird which really lives in London.
' We have many occasional feathered visitors to
favoured spots in London, but none of them except
the sparrow can truly be said to inhabit the great
circle twelve miles in diameter which stretches
outwards from St. Paul's. Here it is that the
sparrow has the world practically to himself. For
him our hundreds of miles of streets spread daily a
bounteous feast ; even the poorest neighbourhoods
find him a congenial home, and their dust-bins and
cab-ranks spread a table continually before him in
the presence of his enemies the cats. No wonder
the London sparrow endures the soot and risks the
cats ; few others of the feathered tribe have their
daily bread provided so regularly.

It used to be said that the London sparrows went

THE BIRDS OF LONDON 177

out of town in August and took to the corn-fields.
Some of the sparrows in the outskirts of the city may
do this, but it cannot be true of the London sparrow
proper, for he has no reason to migrate, and he is
certainly never absent from his usual haunts. Did
the London sparrow take it into his head to strike
wing for the country it would be a vast exodus
and the Kentish farmer might almost as hopefully
prepare for a flight of locusts.

The song thrush and the blackbird are still visitors
to the open spaces and private gardens in suburban
London. The thrush may occasionally be both seen
and heard in Kensington Gardens and Regent's
Park, especially in the early morning. The thrush,
though a shy bird, loves the earthworm, and he likes
to hunt it amongst the short grass or under the
fallen leaves, one reason doubtless why he still finds
so many spots which suit him in and about London.
It would be hard to find earthworms anywhere so
plentiful as they are in many of the open spaces in
London. Whether this is the result of abundant
food and a favourable soil, or of the absence of the
enemies which keep them in check, or of the great
age of the turf, which is not broken up from time to
time as it would be if under cultivation, it is difficult
to say. Probably all three conditions have some-
thing to do with it. Kensington Gardens in parti-
cular is at the present time a splendid hunting
ground ; all through last winter, even in frosty
weather, I was able to get a constant supply there
for some frogs with no further aid than the point
of my umbrella.

The starling is another bird which hunts the
earthworm and which is occasionally to be seen on

12

178 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

the turf in the Parks and open spaces in London.
There is no bird which goes to work in such business-
like fashion ; his constant swingings from side to
side so as to work the ground on both sides of him,
the incessant jerking of his head up and down as
he drives his beak inquiringly into the earth, and
his motions varied every now and then by a short
quick run as he seeks a more favourable spot, all
combine to give one the idea that the bird feels he
has not got a moment to lose over his work. The
starling breeds in large numbers round London and
is said to be on the increase in some neighbourhoods,
Chislehurst for instance. He frequents the better
class villa-residences a good deal, and likes to build
in holes in trees or about houses. He particularly
affects a hole in the wall out of reach or a broken
roof. Starlings are generally to be seen in the open
spaces in London in flocks of three or four birds to
a dozen. One January I counted twenty-five birds
in a single flock on the turf in Gray's Inn Gardens.

One of the most interesting birds which still
figure in London bird life is, beyond doubt, the rook.
His connexion with London is historic. We are
all familiar with Goldsmith's experiences of the rooks
which he watched at work on their nests in the
Temple Gardens. The rook has however long since
forsaken the precincts of the Temple and even
living memory cannot now connect him with the
place. But it may surprise many Londoners to
hear that we have still a rookery in the very centre
of London, a sight which certainly constitutes one
of the greatest curiosities connected with the city.

Almost within a stone's throw of the heart of
London, a little to the east of where Chancery Lane

THE BIRDS OF LONDON 179

debouches into High Holborn, one may notice on the
opposite side of the way a low archway. Through
it a passage leads between high buildings to an open
space nearly surrounded on all sides by legal offices.
The place is known as Gray's Inn Gardens, and is
well kept and little frequented. The sooty stretch
of grass which looks as green and fresh as it is possible
to look in the centre of London, is studded with a
large number of tall plane trees in good condition
which give the place a charmingly rural aspect
quite unexpected in such a quarter. It is here,
separated by some miles on every side from the
open country, that there still exists in dwindling
numbers one of the most ancient colonies of rooks ;
the nests still hang in the branches of the plane
trees and up to the present the birds have always
returned in the spring to put them in repair and
hatch out their young.

At one time this rookery was far more extensive
than it is now. Even in 1878 there were twenty-
eight full nests in the breeding season ; this year I
count eighteen nests only. An interesting feature
of the place, and one which, doubtless, tends to
attach the colony to it, is the care which is taken of
the birds. They are fed regularly, the food given
being dog-biscuit steeped in water. It is spread
by the gardener on an enclosed mound in the
centre of the gardens, and it proves very attractive
to a host of sparrows as well as to the rooks.

The rook, most conservative of all birds as he is,
is now almost driven out of London. Even twelve
years ago there were still several extensive rookeries
in London. Writing so recently as 1878 Dr. E.
Hamilton gives in the Zoologist an account of the

180 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

rook in London which seems to separate the time
by a long interval from the present. The rookery
in Kensington Gardens was then still in existence
and was said to contain thirty-one nests, which
makes the writer recall with regret the year 1836
when the rookery extended from the Broad Walk to
the Serpentine and contained close on one hundred
nests. Since some of the higher trees were cut down
in the gardens some years ago the birds have left
the gardens, doubtless never to return, and there
is not now a single nest in the place. Dr. Hamilton
also mentions other places which the rooks then
frequented but which they have since forsaken.
He says : "In 1875 a rook's nest was built and the
young hatched out in a tree at the back of Hereford
Square, Brompton. The following year the birds
returned with others and ten nests were built in
the fine elm and plane trees there." But in 1879
there is a note in the same paper stating that the
rooks' nests near Hereford Square, Brompton,
which had been for several years frequented in the
spring, had been that year deserted, the result
being attributed to the noise of the workmen in
the numerous buildings which were being erected in
the vicinity.

This or a similar fate has now befallen nearly
all the rook settlements in London. That the birds
cling so long to their old haunts, despite many incon-
gruous surroundings, is due to the well-known
conservative instincts of the family. The rook is
like the salmon : when he grows up he goes abroad
far afield to sow his wild oats and seek his fortune,
but when he settles down in life and elects to take
upon himself parental responsibilities he always

THE BIRDS OF LONDON 181

returns to the haunts of his youth. So it is that the
family breeding grounds are tenanted from genera-
tion to generation until it becomes impossible to hold
them any longer. Richard Jefferies once suggested
the planting of the Thames Embankment thickly
with trees in the hope of attracting the rooks to
build there ; but it is much to be doubted if this
plan would now be successful ; such feeding grounds
as are within reach in London are now very
restricted, and are much too frequented for the
rook's taste.

The rook is however still occasionally to be seen
in London. He used to affect the grounds of
Lambeth Palace as much as anywhere, probably
because of the seclusion. He might sometimes be
seen there at work on the sward, or perched on a
sooty branch of one of the trees that have become
almost as black as his own plumage. In his visits
to town he may be seen at times accompanied by
his friend the jackdaw. It would be interesting
to know the grounds of the friendship which every-
where seems to prevail between the rooks and the
jackdaws. In the winter time in the country a
flight of rooks is usually seen thickly interspersed
with jackdaws. Starlings and other gregarious
birds often fly with rooks too and mingle with them
on the ground, but when they take to the wing the
former always keep together. The jackdaws how-
ever mingle with the rooks indiscriminately both
on the ground and on the wing and even in the
roosting places. White of Selborne suggested that
perhaps the jackdaws followed the rooks from
interested motives : " because rooks have a more
discerning scent than their attendants and can

182 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

lead them to spots more productive of food. Anato-
mists," he quaintly adds, " say that rooks, by reason
of two large nerves which run down between the
eyes into the upper mandible, have a more delicate
feeling in their beaks than other round-billed birds,
and can grope for their meat when out of sight.
Perhaps then their associates attend on them from
motives of interest, as greyhounds wait on the
motions of their finders, and as lions are said to
do on the yelpings of jackals."

The jackdaws, like the rooks, used to be much
commoner about London than they are now. They
go in flocks in the winter but pair off in the breeding
season. If they bred in London they would pro-
bably keep the sparrow down, for the jackdaw is
rather an awkward neighbour for the smaller birds ;
he robs their nests and carries off the unfledged
young as dainty morsels. Church steeples and ivy-
covered ruins within easy reach of the open country
are the jackdaw's favourite breeding places. In the
absence of such he has forsaken London at present ;
but he will doubtless return to await the advent of
Macaulay's New Zealander, for the promised sketch
of the ruins of St. Paul's would not be complete
without him. Cathedral towns he is generally
associated with. The birds also build in the dis-
used chimneys and continue dropping the twigs
down until one lodges crosswise and holds the
others, so enabling the foundations of the nest to
be laid.

Although the rooks have forsaken Kensington
Gardens some interesting country birds have
recently established themselves there. In recent
years some wood-pigeons have built their nests

THE BIRDS OF LONDON 183

and reared their young in the Gardens, and these
extremely shy birds may now be seen almost any
day flying from tree to tree or on the ground feeding.
These birds must not be confused with the true
London pigeon of the blue-rock blood, which never
takes to the trees and from which the wood-pigeon is
quite distinct.

The term wild bird would technically exclude
what is perhaps the most truly London bird after
the sparrow, namely the pigeon, without which no
description of bird-life in London would be complete.
The London pigeon may not be called a wild bird
but he is so in reality. He makes his nest where
he pleases, and like the sparrow and the street
arab, he lives in the streets. One of these days the
London County Council may claim suzerainty over
him ; at present he owns allegiance to no man.
Nearly all the larger public buildings and many of
the churches in London are inhabited by pigeons ;
the birds make their nests in the inaccessible nooks
and corners of the roofs and they increase and
multiply from year to year. St. Paul's Cathedral,
the British Museum, the Houses of Parliament,
Somerset House, the Guildhall, the Law Courts,
and nearly every building of the kind, has each its
own particular flight of pigeons. These places with
their carved masonry and wide spacious roofs with
many an aerial nook and cranny offer just the kind
of retreat which every descendant of the rock-
pigeon loves. The pigeons which frequent some of
the buildings are fed regularly, others forage for
themselves, and it is one of the pleasantest sights
of the city, and not an uncommon one, to see the
London cabby emptying the remains of his nose-

184 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

bag in the middle of a flock of pigeons which show
every sign of appreciation of the largess.

One of the most interesting things about the
London pigeon is the way in which he is working
out and confirming one of the most striking of the
Darwinian theories. The wild pigeons in London
are beyond doubt the descendants of stray birds
which, finding food plentiful, took to their present
mode of life, and their numbers are still occasionally
recruited by tame birds which join them with the
usual instinct of pigeons in such cases. The present
pigeons are in fact the descendants of a motley crew
of birds of many breeds and all colours. It is
generally acknowledged that all varieties of our
domestic pigeon came originally from one wild
species, the common blue-rock, still found wild on
many parts of the coast. This bird has a character-
istic colour and very peculiar markings which
distinguish it from all other species of pigeons
throughout the world. The colour is slaty-blue,
and the wings are marked with two dark transverse
bands, the tail feathers having also a dark band
across the end, while the outer tail-feathers are
edged with white at the base. Despite the many
distinct breeds of domestic pigeons at the present
day, not only is it held that they are all descended
from a common stock, but it is asserted, that if all
the varieties were turned loose and allowed to inter-
breed freely, their descendants would, in course of
time, all once more return to this blue-rock type in
which they all originated. The London pigeon is
doing something to work out this experiment.
Any one who watches a flock of the pigeons which
frequent the buildings in London will certainly see

THE BIRDS OF LONDON 185

amongst them traces of many breeds and will find
nearly all the colours represented. The blue-rock is,
however, the predominant type and there is little
doubt that if uninterrupted it would be only a
question of time till it extinguished all minor
peculiarities.

One result of the crowding of buildings in the
central parts of London is that winged insect life
is driven away, and as it has failed the swallows
have retreated to the suburban fringes of London.
The swallow, like the rook, has no objection to town
life in itself, but insect food must be abundant to
enable it to thrive. Early last September, great
numbers of swallows were to be seen in the Crystal
Palace neighbourhood circling high up in the air
previous to their annual flight. For some days
previously they were to be noticed from the South
Eastern Railway, between St. John's and Grove
Park stations, perched together in groups on every
available roosting-place and chattering loudly, as
they always do in these yearly meetings.

The swallow breeds freely round London. It is
indeed curious to see the attachment of this shy
gentle bird to the places frequented by man and
the buildings used by him. The rafters of a roomy
shed is the place which, above all others, the swallow
loves to build in ; failing this he is content with a
place under the eaves or he will make shift as best
he can with any other corner about the house.
Like the sparrow the swallow has always been with
us, and he probably twittered from his clay-built
nest beneath the roof-tree of our Aryan forefathers ;
he has clung to us through all the varying phases
of our architectural progress, and he takes to the

186 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

capital of the Corinthian column as a nesting place
as familiarly as he probably did to the crevices in
the roof of the family cave in primeval times. Even
our habit of living in towns does not drive him away,
and it is only when his food supply fails that he retires
from the London smoke and leaves us alone with
the sparrow.

It may have occurred to others, as it has to me,
to question whether some explanation is not to be
sought of the curious habit which the swallow so
persistently clings to, of building its nest about our
houses. There is no reason why we should expect
to find the swallow, like the sparrow, in association
with man. It is by nature a shy bird ; we do not
provide for it in any way, for it subsists on a diet
of insects which it hunts abroaol on the wing ; and,
above all, it is a migrant, leaving us after a short
interval for strange quarters in distant lands. Why
is it that such a bird should come and build its nest
familiarly round our windows and under our eaves ?
I have often wondered whether there may not be
some connection between the instincts of the swallow
and the rock-dwelling habits of our ancestors the
cave-men. Judging by the relics which he has left
behind him, primeval man must have occupied, and
for enormously long periods, most of the suitable
caves within reach in the greater part of the world.
The swallow is naturally a cave-frequenting bird ;
it builds and breeds in great numbers about the
roofs and walls of caves at the present time, and
beyond doubt it must often have been the sharer of
these rocky shelters of early man.

The sparrowhawk is a casual visitor to London
and the neighbourhood, and like all his kind he is

THE BIRDS OF LONDON 187

often mobbed by the swallows and other birds.
Here on a southern common just outside the smoke
zone one may see him sometimes. The swallows
have been flying all the afternoon over the smooth
surface of the pond, dipping occasionally into the
tepid water, and in the still air sending the tiny
wavelets travelling all the way to the distant edges.
The house-martins, distinguished by the white patch
on the lower part of the back, fly in and out amongst
them. But what is this excitement which has
suddenly come amongst the birds ? They have
forsaken the water and are flying overhead, the
swallow's shrill excited note — tweet — tweet —
coming from several throats at once. The eye
travels inquiringly round. There is a flash of wings
at the corner of the copse where the furze ceases and
the white-thorns grow thickly, followed by a little
bird-like cry of agony. A sparrowhawk has swooped
down among the bushes and some little nest of
half-fledged yellow-hammers hidden in the gorse
has been orphaned. Now you may see the meaning
of the swallow's note of alarm ; the air is full of
birds which seem to have gathered as if by magic.
The hawk has secured his prey and stands for a
moment holding it beneath him in his talons on a
branch of the stunted oak. The swallows dash
down furiously at him within an inch of his head,
screaming loudly as they pass and rise again on
the wing. He is off now with his prize in the
direction of the wood, mobbed by the whole troop
of birds which continue screaming in anger and
making dashes at him the whole of the way. Nature
is still red in tooth and claw even in these quiet
neighbourhoods close to London. The excitement

188 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

amongst the swallows does not calm down for a long
time.

The great city grows apace and the feathered
tribe retires steadily before it. Even our parks
and open spaces do not seem to tempt the birds to
linger with us. The nightingale still sings on
Hampstead Heights, and the blackbird pipes on the
fringes of Clapham Park ; but even there they are
in retreat before the speculative builder. Only
the sparrow and the pigeon remain with us.

XIV
THE PLAGUE OF BIRDS

ONE of the results of the increased and growing
interest in nature study in this country is a
very curious one. Any one who has much
experience of country habits, or who in particular
has gained insight into the standards of the present
generation of boys and girls in rural districts, must
be struck with a change which has taken place.
" The attitude of the country boy to birds and
bird-nesting has much altered in my time/' said
recently an inspector of elementary schools of long
and wide rural experience. A change is undoubtedly
in progress ; and the correlative is to be seen in the
increased attention directed to nature subjects in
many periodicals, the more general inculcation in
elementary schools of a humanitarian attitude
towards wild birds and their nests, and the gradual
extension to nearly all parts of the country of the
influence of the restrictive spirit of the Wild Birds'
Protection Acts. This forms one aspect of the
subject. To most thoughtful persons who have
given attention to the matter these are the results
which were to be expected and the change is regarded
in a favourable light. Yet there is another side to

189

190 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

the subject. It is now becoming clear that there
has undoubtedly been of late years an enormous
increase in the numbers of the commoner kinds of
wild birds in this country. The protective causes
just mentioned have operated very powerfully in
favour of these birds. Their restrictive influences
happen also to have been supplemented to a marked
degree by the extension of game preserving which
has taken place, and which has led in some districts
to the wholesale extermination of the enemies of
the birds or of their eggs and young in the breeding
season. The result is forcing itself on attention in
many places. It is a plague of birds which is
attaining serious proportions.

In many of the home counties during the fruit
season one wonders at the patience and endurance
of the farmer and grower, so hard hit in many other
ways, as one sees the extensive and organized service
of precautions which has to be undertaken against
the growing depredations of the birds. On the
protection of the strawberry crop and the bush-
fruit crop much labour and money have to be
expended. It used to be the general custom to
cover only wall fruit trees with nets, but it is now
by no means uncommon to see the large trees and
entire cherry orchards enveloped in a veil of netting.
This means the sacrifice of one year's crop as an
initial outlay. Without either this device or a
constant service to scare the birds no fruit would be
left on the trees. Starlings, blackbirds, and thrushes,
the commonest of our country birds, are the principal
offenders in this respect. All three kinds of birds
have increased enormously in numbers in the South
of England. Any intelligent observer who has gone

THE PLAGUE OF BIRDS 191

bird-nesting in his youth may easily convince
himself of this fact by noticing in the spring the
prevalence of the nests of these birds nowadays
as compared with former times. All these birds
devour great quantities of both bush and tree fruit.
Their appetites are enormous, and the rapidity
with which they work is almost incredible. On
a particular tree in a district in mid-Kent some late
pears were allowed to hang last autumn until the
end of September. During a few hours in which
it was left unprotected a group of blackbirds
managed to leave scarcely a single pear untouched
of a bounteous crop, many of the larger fruit being
eaten quite to the stem. It is a matter of common
knowledge how greatly the sparrows have increased
in- many parts of England with the continuous
growth of towns and the comparative safety these
birds enjoy in urban neighbourhoods during the
nesting season. In the autumn the sparrows come
to fields some distance round London in almost
incredible numbers just as the grain is ripening.
The farmers say the birds come down from London
for the season like the hoppers and bring their young
ones with them. It must be heart-breaking to the
cultivator of the land who has to live by the hard-
won produce to see the havoc wrought by these
birds. The writer a season or two ago walked
along the edge of a seventy-acre wheat-field just
beyond the Outer London district. There had been
a scarcity of labour for a day or two in scaring the
birds, and the sparrows had settled on the crop in
vast crowds. He walked deep into the wheat in
several directions, but was unable to find a single
ear containing grain. It had all been picked out

192 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

and nothing of value remained but the straw. All
the excuses which used to be made for the sparrow
as to the supposed services rendered to the agri-
culturist have now been exploded. He is known
to be exclusively vegetarian, and so much a parasite
on man and his labours that he is never found in
woods or remote rural districts apart from human
habitations. The rat is indeed a comparatively
harmless creature compared with the common
sparrow. In the country he will rob a wheat-field
of its harvest in the manner described. In the
suburban garden he will clear the rows of young
peas as they appear above ground equally system-
atically. In the flower garden he will take the
foliage of the pinks or carnations, or the blooms of
the polyanthus, clearing the season's growth in a
few days with the same businesslike thoroughness.
Another most destructive bird which has much
increased in numbers in recent years in the South
of England is the lesser blue-tit. This little bird
is a great favourite in suburban gardens, where
boxes are often put up for it to nest in, and where
in the winter-time it is a common practice to hang out
pieces of cocoa-nut for it to feast on. The havoc
which this bird works is wrought in the winter-
time in gardens and fruit plantations. Its favourite
food at this season consists of the next season's
buds of the red currant and gooseberry bushes.
The damage which one little creature will work in
a day is astonishing, and can hardly be credited by
any one who has not actually seen it. The bird
will alight on a twig of a gooseberry bush and clear
every little rolled-up bud in which lies all the hidden
promise of next season. It will rapidly go through

THE PLAGUE OF BIRDS 193

the bush in this way. The birds come in family
parties day after day to the same places, working
systematically. The damage is scarcely perceptible
to the naked eye until the following spring, when
the bush is like a blind giant, full of sap but unable
to grow through having all its eyes picked out.
Many of them die in part or altogether, and numbers
are permanently injured. Gardeners do not always
put the injury down to the true cause, and bull-
finches— most destructive birds in other ways and
greatly on the increase — are sometimes blamed.
A few months back the writer went over a fine old
country place in one of the home counties, which
had recently become vacant through the death of
the owner. Noticing the well-known maimed look
and the absence of promise of fruit on most of the
fruit bushes, he spoke of it to the coachman, who
accompanied him. " Yes," said he, with a grim
smile, " it's them bullfinches. The old master
wouldn't hear of touching 'em ; but when the
furniture went the gardener got a gun and the
morning after shot over twenty of 'em."

There is no doubt that if the tillers of the soil
were as vocal and had as much access to the period-
ical press as nature-lovers and bird-lovers, a very
bitter cry would go up throughout the land against
the increasing bird-plague and the damage that is
is being done. The increase in game preserving
has been mentioned as a secondary cause which
operates by diminishing the number of the birds'
natural enemies. It is no doubt a cause which has
to be taken into consideration. The magpie, for
instance, is a great destroyer of eggs and young
birds. It used to be a fairly common bird in the
id

194 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

South of England a few generations ago. But over
wide districts in Kent, Surrey and Sussex it has
practically become extinct through the war waged
against it. One may live for years in the country
in these counties now without seeing one. The
same may be said in lesser degree of the jay and
some other bird enemies proscribed by game-
keepers. The balance of nature is tending to be
disturbed.

XV
WHAT DO YOUNG ANIMALS KNOW?

IN these days when physicists are to be found
discussing under new forms the old question as
to the all-pervading character of mind in the
universe, there is no subject which possesses more
interest of a certain kind than that which relates to
the mind of young animals. Any one who has
made a systematic study of intelligence amongst
young animals has generally found that his own
mind has passed through various stages of growth.
The belief in the simplicity of the subject soon gives
way to a conviction of its profound complexity.
It is an old Scottish tradition to incline to a certain
reverence for the mind of the child, the view being
that it possesses faculties and perceptions related
to universal intelligence which are lost with later
growth. It is a peculiarity of the study of the
young that the observer often tends — even without
admitting the fact to himself — to extend a somewhat
similar view to the mind of young animals.

If a young queen wasp is imprisoned in the nest
late in the autumn before she has mated, the sense of
the latent future which is thwarted in her is a most
striking spectacle to witness. That it is not simply

195

196 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

the thwarting of the mating instinct which produces
the results may readily be proved by experiment.
The sense of the future which lies enfolded within
her, and of the fact that her whole object in life is
being defeated, is almost human to witness. When
the same young queen wasp hibernates and survives
the winter she does so undoubtedly through some
unexplained effect on her nervous system of the
knowledge of the fact that her part in the future is
still to be played. For if she feels that she is being
prevented from fulfilling it, she will die. When in
the spring she seeks out the site for her underground
nest, and proceeds single-handed to rear the first
members of the future wasp-colony, every one of a
long series of acts appears to the observer to be
almost uncanny in their sequence, so clearly do they
appear to be directed by an insight into needs in
the future of which she can have no possible experi-
ence. It is this kind of knowledge in young animals
which often conforms to Kant's definition of " pure
reason " rather than intelligence of the ordinary
kind which is so remarkable. If in the midst of
all this preoccupied labour towards definite ends the
same wasp be removed with her nest a few yards
off, she will fly out and be quite unable to find it
again. She will stupidly return time after time to
the site where she first placed it. However impera-
tive may be the indication to refer all the explana-
tions of the working of the mind in young animals to
the explanation of natural selection, we are still
confronted with much that is inexplicable.

Take the example of a habit which is possessed by
young wild ducks very soon after they are hatched
out, and as they greedily seek their food in shallow

WHAT DO YOUNG ANIMALS KNOW ? 197

muddy water. This habit is to stand up to the
thighs in water, and, stamping gently and rapidly
with their webbed feet on the muddy bottom,
make the water rise in a constant eddy before them.
It brings up any particles of food it may contain,
which are then seized and devoured. The writer
observed this spring young wild ducks hatched
under a domestic hen practising this habit the
third day after they had emerged from the egg.
They every one stood and watched the muddy
water eagerly as it swirled beneath their eyes,
stamping rapidly on the bottom meanwhile and
snatching continuously at the particles of food as
they made them come to the surface. There was
an evident knowledge of the action of the water
under these complex movements which was quite
surprising. No human actions could be better
adjusted as a means to an end. The little ducks
appeared by their movements and eager looks to
know all about the cause and the effect as well as
if they had been through the experience a thousand
times. And yet they were but three days old !
Some light is thrown on the subject by the actions
of a young sheldrake, kept with the ducks, which
went through nearly the same movements in search-
ing for its food in the same water, but exhibited
others quite as interesting. In its natural haunts
the sheldrake feeds on the mud-flats and sands left
by the receding tide. When it was fed on the dry
ground it exhibited a very curious modification of
the young wild ducks' habit. It went through a
kind of dancing or prancing movement, stamping
rapidly on the floor with its feet. The writer was
interested to find, on looking the subject up, that

198 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

Darwin had noticed this habit in the sheldrake,
and had attributed it to degraded reflex action —
an instance, in short, of " an habitual and purpose-
less movement " in a changed environment. The
sheldrake, it appears, in its natural haunts feeds on
worms found in the sands and mud left uncovered
by the tide. When a wormcast is discovered, it
begins patting the ground with its feet, dancing as
it were, over the hole, " and this makes the worm
come to the surface." Hence the association of
the stamping movement with its impatience for
food on being fed. This may be ; but one would
have thought better of the worm than that it should
come out to be eaten on such an invitation. It
might even be considered that natural selection
would in its turn have developed the worm's intelli-
gence so that it would have recognized so obvious
a challenge from its enemy as an unmistakable
danger-signal. Despite the great authority of
Darwin, it seems reasonable to conclude that the
young sheldrake's habit is related to its instinct or
intelligence in stirring up the water so as to see
its food in the muddy estuaries which form its
natural haunts.

In the case of young animals all the old dispute as
to where the border-line is to be drawn between
reflex action and instinct, and again between instinct
and reason, comes up, but with many new aspects.
There is no doubt that young animals possess a
remarkable kind of knowledge of the world which
they afterwards lose to a great extent. It is often
offered as one of the explanations of the unexplained
problems of bird migration through vast distances
that the young birds learn the way through travel-

WHAT DO YOUNG ANIMALS KNOW? 199

ling at first with a crowd of older birds which have
done the journey before. In this way, it is pointed
out, a tradition of the route would be passed down
through indefinite generations of birds. There
would be no mystery about the matter. The only
difficulty about this explanation is that the young
birds do not always go with the old. In the case
of one of the greatest migratory species of all —
namely, our common cuckoo — the young birds
leave our shores many weeks later than the old
ones. The conditions of life are so difficult for the
cuckoo that the young have to remain in this way
to attain their full strength and growth. How do
the young find the way without any guidance or
assistance from birds that have made the journey
before ? The answer sometimes given is that the
young birds do not go at all, or at all events go only
a short distance. There can be no doubt that this
explanation is incorrect. Any one who has kept a
young cuckoo through the autumn and winter
months will feel convinced as to the immense
distances which the young birds must traverse in
flight during this period. For months during the
declining season of the year every muscle of the
young cuckoo's body will appear to be tense with
the uncontrollable instinct of flight which seems to
overmaster it. Preyer described the action of
very young naked hermit-crabs, which at an early
age have to find deserted shells in which to shelter
themselves. Soon after leaving the egg they rush
with extraordinary animation for suitable shells
that are given to them in the water. They examine
the opening at the mouth, and take up their quarters
inside with remarkable alacrity. But if it chances

200 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

that the shells are still occupied by molluscs, then
they stay close by the opening and wait till the snail
dies, which generally occurs soon after the beginning
of the imprisonment and the strict watch. Upon
this the small crab pulls out the carcase, devours it,
and moves into the lodging himself. All this is
said by other observers to be partly the result of
inherited instinct and partly the result of the mind
working in response to the call of urgent needs.
It is doubtful, however, whether we know all that
we think we do about the workings of mind in young
animals in such circumstances. The more the
subject- is closely studied the less the observer finds
himself inclined to accept ready explanations. The
mind of young animals contains much that is very
difficult to explain with our existing knowledge.
Even in the case of the human child, all the present
tendency of study is to show that it contains more
than we recently would have found it possible to
believe.

XVI
THE MIND OF A DOG

LONG ago Herbert Spencer set evolutionists
thinking about the connection between in-
telligence in animals and the possession of
a grasping organ. Parrots, squirrels, elephants,
monkeys and many other animals were held to
exemplify its existence. The explanation of the
relationship has, of course, become obvious ; for
the creature which obtained the power of grasping
could apply any intelligence it possessed so much
more effectively than the same intelligence could
be used by another animal without the power, that
from the beginning natural selection doubtless
placed a premium on the combination of the two
faculties. In pursuit of this line of development, it
has become an interesting fact that we are beginning
to distinguish the existence of certain clues by which,
as soon as we know them, we can understand much
that would otherwise be obscure in the working of
the intelligence of certain classes of animals. The
intelligence of the dog is an example in point. When
the mind of the dog is systematically compared
with that of a monkey, it soon becomes evident
that the former differs from the latter in quality.

201

202 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

The intelligence of the dog, that is to say, is quite
different from that of the monkey in kind. Some
time ago the writer was standing watching a monkey
which was chained to a tree. The bystanders had
been throwing him nuts. The monkey had eaten all
within reach and had made several unsuccessful
attempts to reach others which had fallen outside
the radius of his chain. To the surprise and slight
consternation of the little crowd watching him he
snatched a stick from one of them and began deliber-
ately to use it to rake the distant nuts within his
reach. I have read how a dog, which had given
proof of the highest intelligence in other experiments,
was tried under somewhat similar circumstances.
The animal was chained up and was given a stick,
while a biscuit was put just out of his reach. When
the biscuit was placed in the crook of the stick the
dog rapidly learnt to pull in the stick with the
biscuit. But he could never get beyond this point.
The dog made no attempt to get the stick into the
position in which he could use it. When a monkey,
however, was tried in exactly the same circumstances
he proved to have no difficulty at all in learning to
obtain the biscuit by using a stick intelligently and
almost in the manner of a human being. The infer-
ence usually drawn from facts of this kind is that
the intelligence of the monkey is altogether superior
to that of the dog. In short, it is this fundamental
fact of the monkey's life, the perpetual handling
of things, which gives us the clue as to the line along
which the intelligence of the monkey has probably
been evolved. We are led therefore to ask if there
are similar clues by which we can better understand
the intelligence of other animals. What, for

THE MIND OF A DOG 203

instance, is the key to the inner workings of the
mind of a dog ?

Nearly all the probable ancestors of the dog are
animals whose natural habit it is to hunt in packs.
Wolves and jackals still do so. The Indian wild
dogs and the hyaena dogs of South Africa exhibit
similar habits. Even the scavenger dogs which
infest the towns of the East show the same natural
tendency to hunt in bands. We may take it,
therefore, that the most fundamental instincts of
the dog's mind have arisen out of association with
his fellows for a common object like the hunting of
game. At first sight the dog's more or less solitary
life as the friend and associate of man would seem
to take us out of the region of these ideas. Yet
it will be seen on reflection that this is not so, and
that it is probably in such ideas that we have now
the clue to all the workings of the dog's mind and
to the remarkable and exceptional kind of intelli-
gence displayed by dogs in certain circumstances.
One of the most obvious and striking of a dog's
qualities is the sense of devotion and exclusive
attachment to his master and his master's household.
His eye will kindle at the approach of a friend. But
not even the eye of the Oxford undergraduate who
looked through Jude the Obscure without being
even conscious of his presence could have been
more unseeing than that of the dog can be when he
looks through a stranger. His attitude is no doubt
prompted by feelings towards an outsider whom he
regards as not a member of his pack. Similarly as
to the dog's extraordinary loyalty, the remarkable
sense of obedience which will hold him to a command
for days and weeks, the power of control which he

204 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

exercises over his strongest emotions, and the innate
moral sense which may be observed to render a
well- trained dog miserable if he fails in what is
expected of him. All these qualities are character-
istic of the dog. They are of a very high order :
and yet they would seem to be less highly developed
in the monkey than in the dog. The clue to the
dog's mind is probably that the ideas related to
these" qualities were originally connected with his
place in association with others in pursuing or
attaining a common object. The dog has probably
still some sort of conception of his place as member
of a co-operative group and of his master as the wise
and resourceful leader of it. In those most remark-
able displays of almost human intelligence on the
part of dogs, where the power of instantly compre-
hending the nature and possibilities of a locality or
the contents of a difficult situation is involved, we
probably see the dog's mind at its best. For here
the governing ideas are probably of the kind which
originally had their function in intelligent co-opera-
tion in hunting with companions. In the various
breeds of dogs we get these fundamental ideas
carried by development in widely different directions.
In the pointer and setter the co-operation of the
dog with his master to circumvent the game still
remains obvious, even under highly artificial condi-
tions. In many other characteristic qualities of
the dog's mind, as displayed in various breeds, we
may obtain much light on the working of canine
intelligence if we keep this clue to the dog's original
nature always before us. To many persons, for
instance, one of the most difficult cases to explain

THE MIND OF A DOG 205

in the light of this hypothesis would be that of the
collie or sheep-dog. The writer was recently staying
on a South African farm where the owner was
seriously plagued with the ravages amongst his
sheep of black-backed jackals. The extraordinary
intelligence of the animals in shepherding the prey
to their malign purposes was bitterly remarked
upon. As the outward resemblances of a jackal to
a collie were pointed out, the question was asked
as to how we could imagine any relationship between
animals whose fundamental instincts appeared to be
so widely apart. Thus the sheep-dog was the friend
of man and its leading characteristic was a desire for
the preservation of the sheep and the power to
employ most remarkable instincts in furthering his
master's purposes to this end. The jackals, on the
contrary, regarded the sheep simply as their natural
prey. Yet the explanation even in this case is
probably not far to seek when we have the clue to
a dog's mind. For in a dim way the ordinary collie
probably regards the sheep as no more than property
or game belonging to his pack. He thinks of himself
in all probability as assisting the wise dog at the
head of the pack in the exciting occupation of
shepherding the captured game. That there is a
close natural relationship between the jackal and
the collie as regards the sheep one pregnant fact
will illustrate. Every experienced shepherd knows
that a collie is more liable than most other dogs to
take to killing or worrying sheep, and that when
this happens he is the most inveterate, the most
cunning and the most to be feared of all dogs. The
cause is easy to understand. The degeneration in

206 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

the dog's mind in this case has probably followed the
path of transition from the social duty of taking
care of the game in the joint interest to the ultimate,
but now illegitimate, purpose of killing and eating
it.

XVII
INTELLIGENCE OF SQUIRRELS

TO our common squirrel belongs the distinc-
tion of being almost the only native creature
we possess which furnishes an example of a
curious fact remarked upon by Herbert Spencer.
Throughout nature, he pointed out, there exists
among all classes of animals a marked relationship
between the power of grasping or handling and a
high level of intelligence. It is this power of
grasping — for it holds its food and all objects which
attract its interest in almost human fashion — com-
bined with the high intelligence it displays on almost
all occasions, which renders the squirrel such a
fascinating object of study. In March, when occa-
sional sunny days begin to divide the cold spells of
weather, the squirrel may often be seen to advantage
on the bare boughs in the more secluded woods
and copses. The little creatures still wear their
winter outfit, the dark grey tints of the fur, so
different from the rich, ruddy brown of the summer,
harmonizing well with the naked trees and no doubt
tending to make the owners less conspicuous in
the absence of all cover. Squirrels, although they
pass the greater part of the winter asleep, snugly

207

208 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

rolled together in the warm nests which they con-
struct for themselves, feed to a considerable extent
even in the colder months. They wake up in the
fine intervals and come out to visit the stores of
nuts and acorns they have hidden away in the
autumn.

Its winter habits seem to give the squirrel a half-
way place between animals which during the cold
season fall into a state of suspended animation
almost resembling death and those which remain
in the ordinary functional state of activity. It is
very interesting to watch the onset of the hiber-
nating mood, which appears to be accompanied by
deep physiological changes. In a pair which the
writer had under observation last autumn, in condi-
tions closely resembling those in nature, the great
activity which is natural to squirrels in the summer
season began to fail as early as the end of August.
The little creatures passed a longer and longer
time asleep each day as the year declined, and
towards the end of November they came out for
only a few minutes daily to be fed. Still later they
could not be roused during cold weather, and the
animal functions seemed at last in large part sus-
pended.

The intelligence of squirrels makes them often
resemble miniature monkeys. Even in its wild
state, in its gambols on the trees, our native squirrel
always seems as if it were conscious of being watched
and to have, like a monkey, a certain eye to effect
in all its doings. It never appears, like most wild
animals, to want simply to disappear from view,
but will mostly manage to keep in sight of the
spectator. There are curious lacunae in the intelli-

INTELLIGENCE OF SQUIRRELS 209

gence of squirrels when kept under observation which
would seem to suggest that a very considerable
mind development, comparatively measured, lies
behind intelligent acts of animals higher in the
scale. A squirrel will, for instance, almost from its
birth hold with its hands the food which it eats.
It will grasp and handle and use its hands and
fingers in some respects almost as intelligently as a
human being. Yet it retains till it is almost full
grown a very curious limitation marking its relation-
ship to lower and less intelligent forms of life. It
always attempts, the writer has observed, to seize
hold of things with its mouth, never with its hands.
So ingrained is this remarkable peculiarity that for
the first months of its existence the squirrel, although
using its hands freely to hold things, will never
think of using them to reach things. If it should
be unable to seize the food offered to it with its
mouth it will think it out of reach, and will go
hungry, even though the food be in reach of hand
or arm. It will never think of using these to obtain
the food.

Squirrels bury stores of nuts and other food
during the autumn, but they often entirely forget
what they have done, or where they have placed
their hoards. This habit of burying food seems to
be not entirely a matter of intelligence with squirrels.
It is in all probability largely an instinctive or
automatic habit. The pair the writer had under
observation would perform the make-believe of
burying a nut in the floor of a room. They would
press the nut down on the carpet and go through
all the motions of patting the earth over it, after
which they went away, apparently satisfied that

14

210 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE

the nut was safely buried. Many persons must
have observed a habit of the little chipmunk
squirrels, often kept tame in America. This
squirrel when cleaning itself, after the manner of
a cat — as squirrels of all kinds do, with charming
and taking movements — is given to sneezing into
its paws as if to damp them for application to its
fur. It has become a moot question with observers
as to how far this action is the result of intelligence
or merely reflex. There can be no doubt, however,
of the high level of intelligence amongst squirrels
of all kinds, the true tree-squirrels being, as a rule,
more gifted than those which live in the ground or
burrow in the earth. Even the little ground chip-
munks, which are so plentiful in Western America,
suggest the unusual intelligence of the squirrel in
every movement. When the writer was in South
California he used silently to watch them playing
on the ground and be struck by the same conscious-
ness in their movements of being under observation
which is so characteristic of our English squirrel
in its antics in the trees overhead. It is said that
these ground squirrels when kept in captivity will
get as used to a revolving cage as the ordinary tree-
squirrel, and will take just as much delight in making
it turn rapidly.

It is an interesting fact, the cause of which remains
at present unexplained, that our common squirrel
is much on the increase in certain parts of Great
Britain. Over wide districts in Scotland where
the squirrel is now very numerous it was an unknown
animal a few decades ago, and this though thick
woods abounded. In many places observant pro-
prietors attribute the present invasion of the

INTELLIGENCE OF SQUIRRELS 211

squirrel to a cycle of milder seasons, but it would
be difficult to say whether this is the correct explana-
tion. Squirrels seem to be able to adapt themselves
to all kinds of climates and weathers. The facts
already mentioned of the hibernation of the squirrel
in this country show how easily its habits might
graduate, either towards activity all the winter
through in a milder climate, or towards absolute
torpor and insensibility throughout the whole
season, as happens in North America and in other
colder countries. It is probably this adaptability
of habit, coupled with the fact that no kind of food,
animal or vegetable, comes entirely amiss to it,
that makes the squirrel so cosmopolitan. It is
one of the most widely distributed of families.
While the squirrel is nearly related to the rat and
the rabbit, many of the burrowing forms closely
imitating the habits of these creatures, it quite rises
to the suggestion of the monkey in its arboreal
habits and general intelligence. The flying squirrels
have even attempted the solution of some of the
problems of aerial navigation. Squirrels of all kinds
breed rapidly. The month of March in this country
marks the resumption of a life of full activity after
the winter. They pair soon after they wake up and
there are sometimes two broods, each of three or
four or more, in the season. If taken young squirrels
make delightful pets, their gambols and intelligent
antics being a constant source of pleasure. They
seem to be almost without natural fear of persons,
readily treating them quite as companions and
evidently regarding them as no more than wiser
squirrels of a larger kind.

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