ENGLISH AND AMERICAN BIRDS.
"What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see,
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody."
SHELLEY'S "SKYLARK."
"Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these?
Do you ne'er think who made them, and who taught
The dialect they speak, whose melodies
Alone are the interpreters of thought?
Whose household words are songs in many keys,
Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught!
Whose habitations in the tree-tops, even,
Are half-way houses on the road to heaven."
LONGFELLOW.
Having spent a couple of hours very pleasantly at Tiptree Hall, I
turned my face in a northerly direction for a walk through the best
agricultural section of Essex. While passing through a grass field
recently mown, a lark flew up from almost under my feet. And there,
partially overarched by a tuft of clover, was her little all of
earth--a snug, warm nest with two small eggs in it, about the size
and color of those of the ground-chirping-bird of New England, which
is nearer the English lark than any other American bird. I bent
down to look at them with an interest an American could only feel.
To him the lark is to the bird-world's companionship and music what
the angels are to the spirit land. He has read and dreamed of both
from his childhood up. He has believed in both poetically and
pleasantly, sometimes almost positively, as real and beautiful
individualities. He almost credits the poet of his own country, who
speaks of hearing "the downward beat of angel wings." In his facile
faith in the substance of picturesque and happy shadows, he
sometimes tries to believe that the phoenix may have been, in some
age and country, a real, living bird, of flesh and blood and genuine
feathers, with long, strong wings, capable of performing the strange
psychological feats ascribed to it in that most edifying picture
emblazoned on the arms of Banking Companies, Insurance Offices, and
Quack Doctors. He is not sure that dying swans have not sung a
mournful hymn over their last moments, under an affecting and human
sense of their mortality. He has believed in the English lark to
the same point of pleasing credulity. Why should he not give its
existence the same faith? The history of its life is as old as the
English alphabet, and older still. It sang over the dark and
hideous lairs of the bloody Druids centuries before Julius Caesar
was born, and they doubtless had a pleasant name for it, unless true
music was hateful to their ears. It sang, without loss or change of
a single note of this morning's song, to the Roman legions as they
marched, or made roads in Britain. It rang the same voluntaries to
the Saxons, Danes, and Normans, through the long ages, and, perhaps,
tended to soften their antagonisms, and hasten their blending into
one great and mighty people. How the name and song of this happiest
of earthly birds run through all the rhyme and romance of English
poetry, of English rural life, ever since there was an England!
Take away its history and its song from her daisy-eyed meadows, and
shaded lanes, and hedges breathing and blooming with sweetbrier
leaves and hawthorn flowers--from her thatched cottages, veiled with
ivy--from the morning tread of the reapers, and the mower's lunch of
bread and cheese under the meadow elm, and you take away a living
and beautiful spirit more charming than music. You take away from
English poetry one of its pleiades, and bereave it of a
companionship more intimate than that of the nearest neighborhood of
the stars above. How the lark's life and song blend, in the rhyme
of the poet, with "the sheen of silver fountains leaping to the
sea," with morning sunbeams and noontide thoughts, with the sweetest
breathing flowers, and softest breezes, and busiest bees, and
greenest leaves, and happiest human industries, loves, hopes, and
aspirations!
The American has read and heard of all this from his youth up to the
day of setting his foot, for the first time, on English ground. He
has tried to believe it, as in things seen, temporal and tangible.
But in doing this he has to contend with a sense or suspicion of
unreality--a feeling that there has been great poetical exaggeration
in the matter. A patent fact lies at the bottom of this
incredulity. The forefathers of New England carried no wild bird
with them to sing about their cabin homes in the New World. But
they found beautiful and happy birds on that wild continent, as
well-dressed, as graceful in form and motion, and of as fine taste
for music and other accomplishments, as if they and their ancestors
had sung before the courts of Europe for twenty generations. These
sang their sweet songs of welcome to the Pilgrims as they landed
from the "Mayflower." These sang to them cheerily, through the
first years and the later years of their stern trials and
tribulations. These built their nests where the blue eyes of the
first white children born in the land could peer in upon the
speckled eggs with wonder and delight. What wonder that those
strong-hearted puritan fathers and mothers, who
"Made the aisles of the dim wood ring
With the anthems of the free,"
should love the fellowship of these native singers of the field and
forest, and give them names their hearts loved in the old home land
beyond the sea! They did not consult Linnaeus, nor any musty Latin
genealogy of Old World birds, at the christening of these songsters.
There was a good family resemblance in many cases. The blustering
partridge, brooding over her young in the thicket, was very nearly
like the same bird in England. For the mellow-throated thrush of
the old land they found a mate in the new, of the same size, color,
and general habits, though less musical. The blackbird was nearly
the same in many respects, though the smaller American wore a pair
of red epaulettes. The swallows had their coat tails cut after the
same old English pattern, and built their nests after the same
model, and twittered under the eaves with the same ecstacy, and
played the same antics in the air. But the two dearest home-birds
of the fatherland had no family relations nor counterparts in
America; and the pilgrim fathers and their children could not make
their humble homes happy without the lark and the robin, at least in
name and association; so they looked about them for substitutes.
There was a plump, full-chested bird, in a chocolate-colored vest,
with a bluish dress coat, that would mount the highest tree-top in
early spring, and play his flute by the hour for very joy to see the
snow melt and the buds swell again. There was such a rollicking
happiness in his loud, clear notes, and he apparently sang them in
such sympathy with human fellowships, and hopes, and homes, and he
was such a cheery and confiding denizen of the orchard and garden
withal, that he became at once the pet bird of old and young, and
was called the _robin_; and well would it be if its English namesake
possessed its sterling virtues; for, with all its pleasant traits
and world-wide reputation, the English robin is a pretentious,
arrogant busybody, characteristically pugilistic and troublesome in
the winged society of England. In form, dress, deportment,
disposition, and in voice and taste for vocal music, the American
robin surpasses the English most decidedly. In this our grave
forefathers did more than justice to the home-bird they missed on
Plymouth Rock. In this generous treatment of their affection for
it, they perhaps condoned for mating the English lark so
incongruously; but it was true their choice was very limited. To
match the prima donna carissima of English field and sky, it was
necessary to select a meadow bird, with some other features of
resemblance. It would never do to give the cherished name and
association to one that lived in the forest, or built its nest in
the tree-tops or house-tops, or to one that was black, yellow, or
red. Having to conciliate all these conditions, and do the best
with the material at hand, they pitched upon a rather large,
brownish bird, in a drab waistcoat, slightly mottled, and with a
loud, cracked voice, which nobody ever liked. So it never became a
favorite, even to those who first gave it the name of lark. It was
not its only defect that it lacked an ear and voice for music.
There is always a scolding accent that marks its conversation with
other birds in the brightest mornings of June. He is very noisy,
but never merry nor musical. Indeed, compared with the notes of the
English lark, his are like the vehement ejaculations of a maternal
duck in distress.
Take it in all, no bird in either hemisphere equals the English lark
in heart or voice, for both unite to make it the sweetest, happiest,
the welcomest singer that was ever winged, like the high angels of
God's love. It is the living ecstacy of joy when it mounts up into
its "glorious privacy of light." On the earth it is timid, silent,
and bashful, as if not at home, and not sure of its right to be
there at all. It is rather homely withal, having nothing in
feather, feature, or form, to attract notice. It is seemingly made
to be heard, not seen, reversing the old axiom addressed to children
when getting voicy. Its mission is music, and it floods a thousand
acres of the blue sky with it several times a day. Out of that
palpitating speck of living joy there wells forth a sea of
twittering ecstacy upon the morning and evening air. It does not
ascend by gyrations, like the eagle or birds of prey. It mounts up
like a human aspiration. It seems to spread out its wings and to be
lifted straight upwards out of sight by the afflatus of its own
happy heart. To pour out this in undulating rivulets of rhapsody is
apparently the only motive of its ascension. This it is that has
made it so loved of all generations. It is the singing angel of
man's nearest heaven, whose vital breath is music. Its sweet
warbling is only the metrical palpitation of its life of joy. It
goes up over the roof-trees of the rural hamlet on the wings of its
song, as if to train the rural soul to trial flights heavenward.
Never did the Creator put a voice of such volume into so small a
living thing. It is a marvel--almost a miracle. In a still hour
you can hear it at nearly a mile's distance. When its form is lost
in the hazy lace-work of the sun's rays above, it pours down upon
you all the thrilling semitones of its song as distinctly as if it
were warbling to you in your window.
The only American bird that could star it with the English lark, and
win any admiration at a popular concert by its side, is our
favourite comic singer, the Bobolink. I have thought often, when
listening to British birds at their morning rehearsals, what a
sensation would ensue if Master Bob, in his odd-fashioned bib and
tucker, should swagger into their midst, singing one of those Low-
Dutch voluntaries which he loves to pour down into the ears of our
mowers in haying time. Not only would such an apparition and
overture throw the best-trained orchestra of Old World birds into
amazement or confusion, but astonish all the human listeners at an
English concert. With what a wonderment would one of these
blooming, country milkmaids look at the droll harlequin, and listen
to those familiar words of his, set to his own music:-
Go to milk! go to milk!
Oh, Miss Phillisey,
Dear Miss Phillisey,
What will Willie say
If you don't go to milk!
No cheese, no cheese,
No butter nor cheese
If you don't go to milk.
It is a wonder that in these days of refined civilization, when
Jenny Lind, Grisi, Patti, and other celebrated European singers,
some of them from very warm climates, are transported to America to
delight our Upper-Tendom, that there should be no persistent and
successful effort to introduce the English lark into our out-door
orchestra of singing-birds. No European voice would be more welcome
to the American million. It would be a great gain to the nation,
and be helpful to our religious devotions, as well as to our secular
satisfactions. In several of our Sabbath hymns there is poetical
reference to the lark and its song. For instance, that favorite
psalm of gratitude for returning Spring opens with these lines:--
"The winter is over and gone,
The thrush whistles sweet on the spray,
The turtle breathes forth her soft moan,
The _lark_ mounts on high and warbles away."
Now, not one American man, woman, or child in a thousand ever heard
or saw an English lark, and how is he, she, or it to sing the last
line of the foregoing verse with the spirit and understanding due to
an exercise of devotion? The American lark never mounts higher than
the top of a meadow elm, on which it see-saws, and screams, or
quacks, till it is tired; then draws a bee-line for another tree, or
a fence-post, never even undulating on the voyage. It may be said,
truly enough, that the hymn was written in England. Still, if sung
in America from generation to generation, we ought to have the
English lark with us, for our children to see and hear, lest they
may be tempted to believe that other and more serious similes in our
Sabbath hymns are founded on fancy instead of fact.
Nor would it be straining the point, nor be dealing in poetical
fancies, if we should predicate upon the introduction of the English
lark into American society a supplementary influence much needed to
unify and nationalise the heterogeneous elements of our population.
Men, women, and children, speaking all the languages and
representing all the countries and races of Europe, are streaming in
upon us weekly in widening currents. The rapidity with which they
become assimilated to the native population is remarkable. But
there is one element from abroad that does not Americanise itself so
easily--and that, curiously, is one the most American that comes
from Europe--in other words, the _English_. They find with us
everything as English as it can possibly be out of England--their
language, their laws, their literature, their very bibles, psalm-
books, psalm-tunes, the same faith and forms of worship, the same
common histories, memories, affinities, affections, and general
structure of social life and public institutions; yet they are
generally the very last to be and feel at home in America. A
Norwegian mountaineer, in his deerskin doublet, and with a dozen
English words picked up on the voyage, will Americanise himself more
in one year on an Illinois prairie than an intelligent, middle-class
Englishman will do in ten, in the best society of Massachusetts.
Now, I am not dallying with a facetious fantasy when I express the
opinion, that the life and song of the English lark in America,
superadded to the other institutions and influences indicated, would
go a great way in fusing this hitherto insoluble element, and
blending it harmoniously with the best vitalities of the nation.
And this consummation would well repay a special and extraordinary
effect. Perhaps this expedient would be the most successful of all
that remain untried. A single incident will prove that it is more
than a mere theory. Here it is, in substance:--
Some years ago, when the Australian gold fever was hot in the veins
of thousands, and fleets of ships were conveying them to that far-
off, uncultivated world, a poor old woman landed with the great
multitude of rough and reckless men, who were fired to almost frenzy
by dreams of ponderous nuggets and golden fortunes. For these they
left behind them all the enjoyments, endearments, all the softening
sanctities and surroundings of home and social life in England. For
these they left mothers, wives, sisters and daughters. There they
were, thinly tented in the rain, and the dew, and the mist, a busy,
boisterous, womanless camp of diggers and grubbers, roughing-and-
tumbling it in the scramble for gold mites, with no quiet Sabbath
breaks, nor Sabbath songs, nor Sabbath bells to measure off and
sweeten a season of rest. Well, the poor widow, who had her cabin
within a few miles of "the diggings," brought with her but few
comforts from the old homeland--a few simple articles of furniture,
the bible and psalm-book of her youth, and an English lark to sing
to her solitude the songs that had cheered her on the other side of
the globe. And the little thing did it with all the fervor of its
first notes in the English sky. In her cottage window it sang to
her hour by hour at her labor, with a voice never heard before on
that wild continent. The strange birds of the land came circling
around in their gorgeous plumage to hear it. Even four-footed
animals, of grim countenance, paused to hear it. Then, one by one,
came other listeners. They came reverently, and their voices
softened into silence as they listened. Hard-visaged men, bare-
breasted and unshaven, came and stood gentle as girls; and tears
came out upon many a tanned and sun-blistered cheek as the little
bird warbled forth the silvery treble of its song about the green
hedges, the meadow streams, the cottage homes, and all the sunny
memories of the fatherland. And they came near unto the lone widow
with pebbles of gold in their hard and horny hands, and asked her to
sell them the bird, that it might sing to them while they were
bending to the pick and the spade. She was poor, and the gold was
heavy; yet she could not sell the warbling joy of her life. But she
told them that they might come whenever they would to hear it sing.
So, on Sabbath days, having no other preacher nor teacher, nor
sanctuary privilege, they came down in large companies from their
gold-pits, and listened to the devotional hymns of the lark, and
became better and happier men for its music.
Seriously, it may be urged that the refined tastes, arts, and genius
of the present day do not develop themselves symmetrically or
simultaneously in this matter. Here are connoisseurs and
enthusiasts in vegetable nature hunting up and down all the earth's
continents for rare trees, plants, shrubs, and flowers. They are
bringing them to England and America in shiploads, to such extent
and variety, that nearly all the dead languages and many of the
living are ransacked to furnish names for them. Llamas,
dromedaries, Cashmere goats, and other strange animals, are brought,
thousands of miles by sea and land, to be acclimatised and
domesticated to these northern countries. Artificial lakes are made
for the cultivation of fish caught in Antipodean streams. That is
all pleasant and hopeful and proper. The more of that sort of thing
the better. But why not do the other thing, too? Vattemare made it
the mission of his life to induce people of different countries to
exchange books, or unneeded duplicates of literature. We need an
Audubon or Wilson, not to make new collections of feathered
skeletons, and new volumes on ornithology, but to effect an exchange
of living birds between Europe and America; not for caging, not for
Zoological gardens and museums, but for singing their free songs in
our fields and forests. There is no doubt that the English lark
would thrive and sing as well in America as in this country. And
our bobolink would be as easily acclimatised in Europe. Who could
estimate the pleasure which such an exchange in the bird-world would
give to millions on both sides of the Atlantic?
There are some English birds which we could not introduce into the
feathered society of America, any more than we could import a score
of British Dukes and Duchesses, with all their hereditary dignities
and grand surroundings, into the very heart and centre of our
democracy. For instance, the grave and aristocratic rooks, if
transported to our country, would turn up their noses and caw with
contempt at our institutions--even at our oldest buildings and most
solemn and dignified oaks. It is very doubtful if they would be
conciliated into any respect for the Capitol or The White House at
Washington. They have an intuitive and most discriminating
perception of antiquity, and their adhesion to it is invincible.
Whether they came in with the Normans, or before, history does not
say. One thing would seem evident. They are older than the Order
of the Garter, and belonged to feudalism. They are the living
spirits of feudalism, which have survived its human retainers by
several hundred years, and now represent the defunct institution as
pretentiously as in King Stephen's day. They are as fond of old
Norman castles, cathedrals, and churches, as the very ivy itself,
and cling to them with as much pertinacity. For several hundred
generations of bird-life, they and their ancestors have colonised
their sable communities in the baronial park-trees of England, and
their descendants promise to abide for as many generations to come.
In size, form, and color they differ but little from the American
crow, but are swifter on the wing, with greater "gift of the gab,"
and less dignified in general deportment, though more given to
aristocratic airs. Although they emigrated from France long before
"La Democratic Sociale" was ever heard of in that country, they may
be considered the founders of the _Socialistic_ theory and practice;
and to this day they live and move in phalansteries, which succeed
far better than those attempted by the American "Fourierites" some
years ago. As in human communities, the collision of mind with mind
contributes fortuitous scintillations of intelligence to their
general enlightenment; so gregarious animals, birds and bees seem to
acquire especial quick-wittedness from similar intercourse. The
English rook, therefore, is more astute, subtle, and cunning than
our American crow, and some of his feats of legerdemain are quite
vulpine.
The jackdaw is to the rook what the Esquimaux is to the Algonquin
Indian; of the same form, color, and general habits, but smaller in
size. They are as fond of ancient abbeys and churches as ever were
the monks of old. Indeed, they have many monkish habits and
predilections, and chatter over their Latin rituals in the storied
towers of old Norman cathedrals, and in the belfries of ivy-webbed
churches in as vivicacious confusion.
There is no country in the world of the same size that has so many
birds in it as England; and there are none so musical and merry.
They all sing here congregationalwise, just as the people do in the
churches and chapels of all religious denominations. As these
buildings were fashioned in early times after the Gothic order of
elm and oak-tree architecture, so the human worshippers therein
imitated the birds, as well as the branches, of those trees, and
learned to sing their Sabbath hymns together, young and old, rich
and poor, in the same general uprising and blending of multitudinous
voices. I believe everything sings that has wings in England. And
well it might, for here it is safe from shot, stones, snares, and
other destructives. "Young England" is not allowed to sport with
firearms, after the fashion of our American boys. You hear no
juvenile popping at the small birds of the meadow, thicket, or
hedge-row, in Spring, Summer, or Autumn. After travelling and
sojourning nearly ten years in the country, I have never seen a boy
throw a stone at a sparrow, or climb a tree for a bird's-nest. The
only birds that are not expected to die a natural death are the
pheasant, partridge, grouse, and woodcock; and these are to be
killed according to the strictest laws and customs, at a certain
season of the year, and then only by titled or wealthy men who hold
their vested interest in the sport among the most rigid and sacred
rights of property. Thus law, custom, public sentiment, climate,
soil, and production, all combine to give bird-life a development in
England that it attains in no other country. In no other land is it
so multitudinous and musical; in none is there such ample and varied
provision for housing and homing it. Every field is a great bird's-
nest. The thick, green hedge that surrounds it, and the hedge-trees
arising at one or two rods' interval, afford nesting and refuge for
myriads of these meadow singers. The groves and thickets are full
of them and their music; so full, indeed, that sometimes every leaf
seems to pulsate with a little piping voice in the general concert.
Nor are they confined to the fields, groves, and hedges of the quiet
country. If the census of the sparrows alone in London could be
taken, they would count up to a larger figure than all the birds of
a New England county would reach. Then there is another interesting
feature of this companionship. A great deal of it lasts through the
entire year. There are ten times as many birds in England as in
America in the winter. Here the fields are green through the
coldest months. No deep and drifting snows cover a frozen earth for
ten or twelve weeks, as with us. There is plenty of shelter and
seeds for birds that can stand an occasional frost or wintry storm,
and a great number of them remain the whole year around the English
homesteads.
If such a difference were a full compensation, our North American
birds make up in dress what they fall short of English birds in
voice and musical talent. The robin redbreast and the goldfinch
come out in brighter colors than any other beaux and belles of the
season here; but the latter is only a slender-waisted brunette, and
the former a plump, strutting, little coxcomb, in a mahogany-colored
waistcoat. There is nothing here approaching in vivid colors the
New England yellow-bird, hang-bird, red-bird, indigo-bird, or even
the bluebird. In this, as well as other differences, Nature adjusts
the system of compensation which is designed to equalise the
conditions of different countries.