[Illustration: Portrait of "EHA."]
CONCERNING ANIMALS AND OTHER MATTERS
BY E.H. AITKEN ("EHA")
AUTHOR OF "FIVE WINDOWS OF THE SOUL," "TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER," ETC.
WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR BY
SURGEON-GENERAL W.B. BANNERMAN I.M.S., C.S.I.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY J A. SHEPHERD AND A PORTRAIT
LONDON
1914
CONTENTS
"EHA"
I FEET AND HANDS
II BILLS OF BIRDS
III TAILS
IV NOSES
V EARS
VI TOMMY
VII THE BARN OWL
VIII DOMESTIC ANIMALS
IX SNAKES
X THE INDIAN SNAKE-CHARMER
XI CURES FOR SNAKE-BITE
XII THE COBRA BUNGALOW
XIII THE PANTHER I DID NOT SHOOT
XIV THE PURBHOO
XV THE COCONUT TREE
XVI THE BETEL NUT
XVII A HINDU FESTIVAL
XVIII INDIAN POVERTY
XIX BORROWED INDIAN WORDS
Special thanks are due to the Editors and Proprietors of the _Strand
Magazine, Pall Mall Magazine_ and _Times of India_ for their courtesy in
permitting the reprinting of the articles in this book which originally
appeared in their columns.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
HALF-TONES
"EHA"
THE NOSE OF THE ELEPHANT BECOMING A HAND HAS REDEEMED ITS MIND
GOOD FOR ANY ROUGH JOB
HERE THE COMPETITION HAS BEEN VERY KEEN INDEED
THE RAT IS A NEAR RELATION OF THE SQUIRREL ZOOLOGICALLY
BUT PERSONALLY HE IS A GUTTER-SNIPE, AND
YOU MAY KNOW THAT BY ONE LOOK AT THE TAIL, WHICH
HE DRAGS AFTER HIM LIKE A DIRTY ROPE
A BLACKBIRD AND A STARLING--THE ONE LIFTS ITS SKIRTS,
WHILE THE OTHER WEARS A WALKING DRESS
THE NOSTRILS OF THE APTERYX ARE AT THE TIP OF ITS BEAK
THE LONG-NOSED MONKEY
LINE BLOCKS
AN AUTHENTIC STANDARD FOOT
THESE BEASTS ARE ALL CLODHOPPERS, AND THEIR FEET
ARE HOBNAILED BOOTS
IT HAS TO DOUBLE THEM UNDER AND HOBBLE ABOUT LIKE
A CHINESE LADY
NO DOUBT EACH BIRD SWEARS BY ITS OWN PATTERN
ITS BILL DESERVES STUDY
AS WONDERFUL AS THE PELICAN, BUT HOW OPPOSITE!
THERE ARE SOME ECCENTRICS, SUCH AS JENNY WREN, WHICH
HAVE DESPISED THEIR TAILS
AT THE SIGHT OF A RIVAL THE DOG HOLDS ITS TAIL UP STIFFLY
A SHREW CAN DO IT, BUT NOT A MAN
A BOLD ATTEMPT TO GROW IN THE CASE OF A TAPIR
I HAVE SEEN HUMAN NOSES OF A PATTERN NOT UNLIKE THIS,
BUT THEY ARE NOT CONSIDERED ARISTOCRATIC
WHO CAN CONSIDER THAT NOSE SERIOUSLY?
OR PERHAPS WHEN IT WANTS TO LISTEN IT RAISES A FLIPPER TO ITS EAR
"TEAR OUT THE HOUSE LIKE THE DOGS WUZ ATTER HIM"
A GREAT CATHOLIC CONGRESS OF DISTINGUISHED EARS
THE CURLS OF A MOTHER'S DARLING
INTRODUCTION
"EHA"
Edward Hamilton Aitken, the author of the following sketches, was well
known to the present generation of Anglo-Indians, by his pen-name of
Eha, as an accurate and amusing writer on natural history subjects.
Those who were privileged to know him intimately, as the writer of this
sketch did, knew him as a Christian gentleman of singular simplicity and
modesty and great charm of manner. He was always ready to help a
fellow-worker in science or philanthropy if it were possible for him to
do so. Thus, indeed, began the friendship between us. For when plague
first invaded India in 1896, the writer was one of those sent to Bombay
to work at the problem of its causation from the scientific side,
thereby becoming interested in the life history of rats, which were
shown to be intimately connected with the spread of this dire disease.
Having for years admired Eha's books on natural history--_The Tribes on
my Frontier, An Indian Naturalist's Foreign Policy_, and _The
Naturalist on the Prowl_, I ventured to write to him on the subject of
rats and their habits, and asked him whether he could not throw some
light on the problem of plague and its spread, from the naturalist's
point of view.
In response to this appeal he wrote a most informing and characteristic
article for _The Times of India_ (July 19, 1899), which threw a flood of
light on the subject of the habits and characteristics of the Indian rat
as found in town and country. He was the first to show that _Mus
rattus_, the old English black rat, which is the common house rat of
India outside the large seaports, has become, through centuries of
contact with the Indian people, a domestic animal like the cat in
Britain. When one realises the fact that this same rat is responsible
for the spread of plague in India, and that every house is full of them,
the value of this naturalist's observation is plain. Thus began an
intimacy which lasted till Eha's death in 1909.
The first time I met Mr. Aitken was at a meeting of the Free Church of
Scotland Literary Society in 1899, when he read a paper on the early
experiences, of the English in Bombay. The minute he entered the room I
recognised him from the caricatures of himself in the _Tribes_. The
long, thin, erect, bearded man was unmistakable, with a typically Scots
face lit up with the humorous twinkle one came to know so well. Many a
time in after-years has that look been seen as he discoursed, as only he
could, on the ways of man and beast, bird or insect, as one tramped
with him through the jungles on the hills around Bombay during week-ends
spent with him at Vehar or elsewhere. He was an ideal companion on such
occasions, always at his best when acting the part of _The Naturalist on
the Prowl._
Mr. Aitken was born at Satara in the Bombay Presidency on August 16,
1851. His father was the Rev. James Aitken, missionary of the Free
Church of Scotland. His mother was a sister of the Rev. Daniel Edward,
missionary to the Jews at Breslau for some fifty years. He was educated
by his father in India, and one can well realise the sort of education
he got from such parents from the many allusions to the Bible and its
old Testament characters that one constantly finds used with such effect
in his books. His farther education was obtained at Bombay and Poona. He
passed M.A. and B.A. of Bombay University first on the list, and won the
Homejee Cursetjee prize with a poem in 1880. From 1870 to 1876 he was
Latin Reader in the Deccan College at Poona, which accounts for the
extensive acquaintance with the Latin classics so charmingly manifest in
his writings. That he was well grounded in Greek is also certain, for
the writer, while living in a chummery with him in Bombay in 1902, saw
him constantly reading the Greek Testament in the mornings without the
aid of a dictionary.
He entered the Customs and Salt Department of the Government of Bombay
in April 1876, and served in Kharaghoda (the Dustypore of the _Tribes_),
Uran, North Kanara and Goa Frontier, Ratnagiri, and Bombay itself. In
May, 1903, he was appointed Chief Collector of Customs and Salt Revenue
at Karachi, and in November, 1905, was made Superintendent in charge of
the District Gazetteer of Sind. He retired from the service in August
1906.
He married in 1883 the daughter of the Rev. J. Chalmers Blake, and left
a family of two sons and three daughters.
In 1902 he was deputed, on special duty, to investigate the prevalence
of malaria at the Customs stations along the frontier of Goa, and to
devise means for removing the Salt Peons at these posts, from the
neighbourhood of the anopheles mosquito, by that time recognised as the
cause of the deadly malaria, which made service on that frontier dreaded
by all.
It was during this expedition that he discovered a new species of
anopheline mosquito, which after identification by Major James, I.M.S.,
was named after him _Anopheles aitkeni_. During his long service there
are to be found in the Annual Reports of the Customs Department frequent
mention of Mr. Aitken's good work, but it is doubtful whether the
Government ever fully realised what an able literary man they had in
their service, wasting his talent in the Salt Department. On two
occasions only did congenial work come to him in the course of his
public duty--namely, when he was sent to study, from the naturalist's
point of view, the malarial conditions prevailing on the frontier of
Goa; and when during the last two years of his service he was put in
literary charge of _The Sind Gazetteer_. In this book one can see the
light and graceful literary touch of Eha frequently cropping up amidst
the dry bones of public health and commercial statistics, and the book
is enlivened by innumerable witty and philosophic touches appearing in
the most unlikely places, such as he alone could enliven a dull subject
with. Would that all Government gazetteers were similarly adorned! But
there are not many "Ehas" in Government employ in India.
On completion of this work he retired to Edinburgh, where most of the
sketches contained in this volume were written. He was very happy with
his family in his home at Morningside, and was beginning to surround
himself with pets and flowers, as was his wont all his life, and to get
a good connection with the home newspapers and magazines, when, alas!
death stepped in, and he died after a short illness on April 25, 1909.
He was interested in the home birds and beasts as he had been with those
in India, and the last time the writer met him he was taking home some
gold-fish for his aquarium. A few days before his death he had found his
way down to the Morningside cemetery, where he had been enjoying the
sunshine and flowers of Spring, and he remarked to his wife that he
would often go there in future to watch the birds building their nests.
Before that time came, he was himself laid to rest in that very spot in
sure and certain hope of a blessed resurrection.
The above imperfect sketch fails to give the charm and magnetic
attraction of the man, and for this one must go to his works, which for
those who knew him are very illuminating in this respect. In them one
catches a glimpse of his plan for keeping young and cheerful in "the
land of regrets," for one of his charms was his youthfulness and
interest in life. He refused to be depressed by his lonely life. "I am
only an exile," he remarks, "endeavouring to work a successful existence
in Dustypore, and not to let my environment shape me as a pudding takes
the shape of its mould, but to make it tributary to my own happiness."
He therefore urges his readers to cultivate a hobby.
"It is strange," he says, "that Europeans in India know so little, see
so little, care so little, about all the intense life that surrounds
them. The boy who was the most ardent of bug-hunters, or the most
enthusiastic of bird-nesters in England, where one shilling will buy
nearly all that is known, or can be known, about birds or butterflies,
maintains in this country, aided by Messrs. B. &. S., an unequal strife
with the insupportableness of an _ennui_-smitten life. Why, if he would
stir up for one day the embers of the old flame, he could not quench it
again with such a prairie of fuel around him. I am not speaking of
Bombay people, with their clubs and gymkhanas and other devices for
oiling the wheels of existence, but of the dreary up-country exile,
whose life is a blank, a moral Sahara, a catechism of the Nihilist
creed. What such a one needs is a hobby. Every hobby is good--a sign of
good and an influence for good. Any hobby will draw out the mind, but
the one I plead for touches the soul too, keeps the milk of human
kindness from souring, puts a gentle poetry into the prosiest life. That
all my own finer feelings have not long since withered in this land of
separation from 'old familiar faces,' I attribute partly to a pair of
rabbits. All rabbits are idiotic things, but these come in and sit up
meekly and beg a crust of bread, and even a perennial fare of village
_moorgee_ cannot induce me to issue the order for their execution and
conversion into pie. But if such considerations cannot lead, the
struggle for existence should drive a man in this country to learn the
ways of his border tribes. For no one, I take it, who reflects for an
instant will deny that a small mosquito, with black rings upon a white
ground, or a sparrow that has finally made up its mind to rear a family
in your ceiling, exercises an influence on your personal happiness far
beyond the Czar of the Russias. It is not a question of scientific
frontiers--the enemy invades us on all, sides. We are plundered,
insulted, phlebotomised under our own vine and fig-tree. We might make
head against the foe if we laid to heart the lesson our national history
in India teaches--namely, that the way to fight uncivilised enemies is
to encourage them to cut one another's throats, and then step in and
inherit the spoil. But we murder our friends, exterminate our allies,
and then groan under the oppression of the enemy. I might illustrate
this by the case of the meek and long-suffering musk-rat, by spiders or
ants, but these must wait another day."
Again he says, "The 'poor dumb animals' can give each other a bit of
their minds like their betters, and to me their fierce and tender little
passions, their loves and hates, their envies and jealousies, and their
small vanities beget a sense of fellow-feeling which makes their
presence society. The touch of Nature which makes the whole world kin is
infirmity. A man without a weakness is insupportable company, and so is
a man who does not feel the heat. There is a large grey ring-dove that
sits in the blazing sun all through the hottest hours of the day, and
says coo-coo, coo, coo-coo, coo until the melancholy sweet monotony of
that sound is as thoroughly mixed up in my brain with 110° in the shade
as physic in my infantile memories with the peppermint lozenges which
used to 'put away the taste,' But as for these creatures, which confess
the heat and come into the house and gasp, I feel drawn to them. I
should like to offer them cooling drinks. Not that all my midday guests
are equally welcome: I could dispense, for instance, with the
grey-ringed bee which has just reconnoitred my ear for the third time,
and guesses it is a key-hole--she is away just now, but only, I fancy,
for clay to stop it up with. There are others also to which I would give
their _congé_ if they would take it. But good, bad, or indifferent they
give us their company whether we want it or not."
Eha certainly found company in beasts all his life, and kept the charm
of youth about him in consequence to the end. If his lot were cast, as
it often was, in lonely places, he kept pets, and made friends besides
of many of the members of the tribes on his frontier; if in Bombay city
he consoled himself with his aquarium and the museum of the Bombay
Natural History Society. When the present writer chummed with him in a
flat on the Apollo Bunder in Bombay, he remembers well that aquarium and
the Sunday-morning expeditions to the malarious ravines at the back of
Malabar Hill to search for mosquito larvae to feed its inmates. For at
that time Mr. Aitken was investigating the capabilities for the
destruction of larvae, of a small surface-feeding fish with an
ivory-white spot on the top of its head, which he had found at Vehar in
the stream below the bund. It took him some time to identify these
particular fishes (_Haplochilus lineatus_), and in the meantime he
dubbed them "Scooties" from the lightning rapidity of their movements,
and in his own admirable manner made himself a sharer of their joys and
sorrows, their cares and interests. With these he stocked the ornamental
fountains of Bombay to keep them from becoming breeding-grounds for
mosquitoes, and they are now largely used throughout India for this very
purpose. It will be recognised, therefore, that Mr. Aitken studied
natural history not only for its own sake, but as a means of benefiting
the people of India, whom he had learned to love, as is so plainly shown
in _Behind the Bungalow_.
He was an indefatigable worker in the museum of the Bombay Natural
History Society, which he helped to found, and many of his papers and
notes are preserved for us in the pages of its excellent _Journal_, of
which he was an original joint-editor. He was for long secretary of the
Insect Section, and then president. Before his retirement he was elected
one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society.
Mr. Aitken was a deeply religious man, and was for some twenty years an
elder in the congregation of the United Free Church of Scotland in
Bombay. He was for some years Superintendent of the Sunday School in
connection with this congregation, and a member of the Committee of the
Bombay Scottish Orphanage and the Scottish High Schools. His former
minister says of him, "He was deeply interested in theology, and
remained wonderfully orthodox in spite of" (or, as the present writer
would prefer to say, _because of_) "his scientific knowledge. He always
thought that the evidence for the doctrine of evolution had been pressed
for more than it was worth, and he had many criticisms to make upon the
Higher Critics of the Bible. Many a discussion we had, in which, against
me, he took the conservative side."
He lets one see very clearly into the workings of his mind in this
direction in what is perhaps the finest, although the least well known
of his books, _The Five Windows of the Soul_ (John Murray), in which he
discourses in his own inimitable way of the five senses, and how they
bring man and beast into contact with their surroundings. It is a book
on perceiving, and shows how according as this faculty is exercised it
makes each man such as he is. The following extract from the book shows
Mr. Aitken's style, and may perhaps induce some to go to the book itself
for more from the same source. He is speaking of the moral sense. "And
it is almost a truism to say that, if a man has any taste, it will show
itself in his dress and in his dwelling. No doubt, through indolence and
slovenly habits, a man may allow his surroundings to fall far below what
he is capable of approving; but every one who does so pays the penalty
in the gradual deterioration of his perceptions.
"How many times more true is all this in the case of the moral sense?
When the heart is still young and tender, how spontaneously and sweetly
and urgently does every vision of goodness and nobleness in the conduct
of another awaken the impulse to go and do likewise! And if that impulse
is not obeyed, how certainly does the first approving perception of the
beauty of goodness become duller, until at last we may even come to hate
it where we find it, for its discordance with the 'motions of sins in
our members'!
"But not less certainly will every earnest effort to bring the life into
unison with what we perceive to be right bring its own reward in a
clearer and more joyful perception of what is right, and a keener
sensitiveness to every discord in ourselves. How all such discord may be
removed, how the chords of the heart may be tuned and the life become
music,--these are questions of religion, which are quite beyond our
scope. But I take it that every religion which has prevailed among the
children of Adam is in itself an evidence that, however debased and
perverted the moral sense may have become, the painful consciousness
that his heart is 'like sweet bells jangled' still presses everywhere
and always on the spirit of man; and it is also a conscious or
unconscious admission that there is no blessedness for him until his
life shall march in step with the music of the 'Eternal Righteousness.'"
Mr. Aitken's name will be kept green among Anglo-Indians by the
well-known series of books published by Messrs. Thacker & Co., of London
and Calcutta. They are _The Tribes on my Frontier, An Indian
Naturalist's Foreign Policy_, which was published in 1883, and of which
a seventh edition appeared in 1910. This book deals with the common
birds, beasts, and insects in and around an Indian bungalow, and it
should be put into the hands of every one whose lot is cast in India. It
will open their eyes to the beauty and interests of their surroundings
in a truly wonderful way, and may be read again and again with
increasing pleasure as one's experience of Indian life increases.
This was followed in 1889 by _Behind the Bungalow_, which describes with
charming insight the strange manners and customs of our Indian domestic
servants. The witty and yet kindly way in which their excellencies and
defects are touched off is delightful, and many a harassed _mem-sahib_
must bless Eha for showing her the humorous and human side of her life
surrounded as it is by those necessary but annoying inhabitants of the
Godowns behind the bungalow. A tenth edition of this book was published
in 1911.
_The Naturalist on the Prowl_ was brought out in 1894, and a third
edition was published in 1905. It contains sketches on the same lines as
those in _The Tribes_, but deals more with the jungles, and not so much
with the immediate surroundings of the bungalow. The very smell of the
country is in these chapters, and will vividly recall memories to those
who know the country along the West Coast of India southward of Bombay.
In 1900 was published _The Common Birds of Bombay_, which contains
descriptions of the ordinary birds one sees about the bungalow or in the
country. As is well said by the writer of the obituary notice in the
_Journal_ of the Bombay Natural History Society, Eha "had a special
genius for seizing the striking and characteristic points in the
appearance and behaviour of individual species and a happy knack of
translating them into print so as to render his descriptions
unmistakable. He looked upon all creatures in the proper way, as if each
had a soul and character of its own. He loved them all, and was
unwilling to hurt any of them." These characteristics are well shown in
this book, for one is able to recognise the birds easily from some
prominent feature described therein.[1]
_The Five Windows of the Soul_, published by John Murray in 1898, is of
quite another character from the above, and was regarded by its author
with great affection as the best of his books. It is certainly a
wonderfully self-revealing book, and full of the most beautiful
thoughts. A second impression appeared in the following year, and a new
and cheaper edition has just been published. The portrait of Eha is
reproduced from one taken in 1902 in a flat on the Apollo Bunder, and
shows the man as he was in workaday life in Bombay. The humorous and
kindly look is, I think, well brought out, and will stir pleasant
memories in all who knew Mr. Aitken.
W. B. B.
MADRAS, _January_ 1914.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: The illustrations are his own work, but the blocks having
been produced in India, they do not do justice to the extreme delicacy
of workmanship and fine perception of detail which characterise the
originals, as all who have been privileged to see these will agree.]
CONCERNING ANIMALS
I
FEET AND HANDS
It is evident that, in what is called the evolution of animal forms, the
foot came in suddenly when the backboned creatures began to live on the
dry land--that is, with the frogs. How it came in is a question which
still puzzles the phylogenists, who cannot find a sure pedigree for the
frog. There it is, anyhow, and the remarkable point about it is that the
foot of a frog is not a rudimentary thing, but an authentic standard
foot, like the yard measure kept in the Tower of London, of which all
other feet are copies or adaptations. This instrument, as part of the
original outfit given to the pioneers of the brainy, backboned, and
four-limbed races, when they were sent out to multiply and replenish the
earth, is surely worth considering well. It consists essentially of a
sole, or palm, made up of small bones and of _five_ separate digits,
each with several joints.
[Illustration: AN AUTHENTIC STANDARD FOOT.]
In the hind foot of a frog the toes are very long and webbed from point
to point. In this it differs a good deal from the toad, and there is
significance in the difference. The "heavy-gaited toad," satisfied with
sour ants, hard beetles, and such other fare as it can easily pick up,
and grown nasty in consequence, so that nothing seeks to eat it, has
hobbled through life, like a plethoric old gentleman, until the present
day, on its original feet. The more versatile and nimble-witted frog,
seeking better diet and greater security of life, went back to the
element in which it was bred, and, swimming much, became better fitted
for swimming. The soft elastic skin between the fingers or toes is just
the sort of tissue which responds most readily to inward impulses, and
we find that the very same change has come about in those birds and
beasts which live much in water. I know that this is not the accepted
theory of evolution, but I am waiting till it shall become so. We all
develop in the direction of our tendencies, and shall, I doubt not, be
wise enough some day to give animals leave to do the same.
It seems strange that any creature, furnished with such tricky and
adaptable instruments to go about the world with, should tire of them
and wish to get rid of them, but so it happened at a very early stage.
It must have been a consequence, I think, of growing too fast. Mark
Twain remarked about a dachshund that it seemed to want another pair of
legs in the middle to prevent it sagging. Now, some lizards are so long
that they cannot keep from sagging, and their progress becomes a painful
wriggle. But if you must go by wriggling, then what is the use of legs
to knock against stems and stones? So some lizards have discarded two of
their legs and some all four. Zoologically they are not snakes, but
snakes are only a further advance in the same direction. That snakes did
not start fair without legs is clear, for the python has to this day two
tell-tale leg-bones buried in its flesh.
When we pass from reptiles to birds, lo! an astounding thing has
happened. That there were flying reptiles in the fossil ages we know,
and there are flying beasts in our own. But the wings of these are
simple mechanical alterations, which the imagination of a child, or a
savage, could explain.
The hands of a bat are hands still, and, though the fingers are hampered
by their awkward gloves, the thumbs are free. The giant fruit bats of
the tropics clamber about the trees quite acrobatically with their
thumbs and feet.
That Apollyonic monster of the prime, the pterodactyl, did even better.
Stretching on each little finger a lateen sail that would have served to
waft a skiff across the Thames, it kept the rest of its hands for other
uses. But what bearing has all this on the case of birds? Here is a
whole sub-kingdom, as they call it, of the animal world which has
unreservedly and irrevocably bartered one pair of its limbs for a
flying-machine. The apparatus is made of feathers--a new invention,
unknown to amphibian or saurian, whence obtained nobody can say--and
these are grafted into the transformed frame of the old limbs. The
bargain was worth making, for the winged bird at once soared away in all
senses from the creeping things of earth, and became a more ethereal
being; "like a blown flame, it rests upon the air, subdues it, surpasses
it, outraces it; it is the air, conscious of itself, conquering itself,
ruling itself." But the price was heavy. The bird must get through life
with one pair of feet and its mouth. But this was all the bodily
furniture of Charles François Felu, who, without arms, became a famous
artist.
A friend of mine, standing behind him in a _salon_ and watching him at
work, saw him lay down his brush and, raising his foot to his head, take
off his hat and scratch his crown with his great toe. My friend was
nearly hypnotised by the sight, yet it scarcely strikes us as a wonder
when a parrot, standing on one foot, takes its meals with the other. It
is a wonder, and stamps the parrot as a bird of talent. A mine of hidden
possibilities is in us all, but those who dig resolutely into it and
bring out treasure are few.
And let us note that the art of standing began with birds. Frogs sit,
and, as far as I know, every reptile, be it lizard, crocodile,
alligator, or tortoise, lays its body on the ground when not actually
carrying it. And these have each four fat legs. Contrast the flamingo,
which, having only two, and those like willow wands, tucks up one of
them and sleeps poised high on the other, like a tulip on its stem.
Note also that one toe has been altogether discarded by birds as
superfluous. The germ, or bud, must be there, for the Dorking fowl has
produced a fifth toe under some influence of the poultry-yard, but no
natural bird has more than four. Except in swifts, which never perch,
but cling to rocks and walls, one is turned backwards, and, by a cunning
contrivance, the act of bending the leg draws them all automatically
together. So a hen closes its toes at every step it takes, as if it
grasped something, and, of course, when it settles down on its roost,
they grasp that tight and hold it fast till morning. But to birds that
do not perch this mechanism is only an encumbrance, so many of them,
like the plovers, abolish the hind toe entirely, and the prince of all
two-legged runners, the ostrich, has got rid of one of the front toes
also, retaining only two.
[Illustration: THESE BEASTS ARE ALL CLODHOPPERS, AND THEIR FEET ARE
HOBNAILED BOOTS.]
To a man who thinks, it is very interesting to observe that beasts have
been led along gradually in the very same direction. All the common
beasts, such as cats, dogs, rats, stoats, and so on, have five ordinary
toes. On the hind feet there may be only four. But as soon as we come to
those that feed on grass and leaves, standing or walking all the while,
we find that the feet are shod with hoofs instead of being tipped with
claws. First the five toes, though clubbed together, have each a
separate hoof, as in the elephant; then the hippopotamus follows with
four toes, and the rhinoceros with practically three. These beasts are
all clodhoppers, and their feet are hobnailed boots. The more active
deer and all cattle keep only two toes for practical purposes, though
stumps of two more remain. Finally, the horse gathers all its foot into
one boot, and becomes the champion runner of the world.
It is not without significance that this degeneracy of the feet goes
with a decline in the brain, whether as cause or effect I will not
pretend to know. These hoofed beasts have shallow natures and live
shallow lives. They eat what is spread by Nature before their noses,
have no homes, and do nothing but feed and fight with each other. The
elephant is a notable exception, but then the nose of the elephant,
becoming a hand, has redeemed its mind. As for the horse, whatever its
admirers may say, it is just a great ass. There is a lesson in all this:
"from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath."
There is another dull beast which, from the point of view of the mere
systematist, seems as far removed from those that wear hoofs as it could
be, but the philosopher, considering the point at which it has arrived,
rather than the route by which it got there, will class it with them,
for its idea of life is just theirs turned topsy-turvy. The nails of the
sloth, instead of being hammered into hoofs on the hard ground, have
grown long and curved, like those of a caged bird, and become hooks by
which it can hang, without effort, in the midst of the leaves on which
it feeds. A minimum of intellect is required for such an existence, and
the sloth has lost any superfluous brain that it may have had, as well
as two, or even three, of its five toes.
To return to those birds and beasts with standard feet, I find that the
first outside purpose for which they find them serviceable is to scratch
themselves. This is a universal need. But a foot is handy in many other
ways. A hen and chickens, getting into my garden, transferred a whole
flower-bed to the walk in half an hour. Yet a bird trying to do anything
with its foot is like a man putting on his socks standing, and birds as
a race have turned their feet to very little account outside of their
original purpose. Such a simple thing as holding down its food with one
foot scarcely occurs to an ordinary bird. A hen will pull about a
cabbage leaf and shake it in the hope that a small piece may come away,
but it never enters her head to put her foot on it. In this and other
matters the parrot stands apart, and also the hawk, eagle, and owl; but
these are not ordinary birds.
Beasts, having twice as many feet as birds, have learned to apply them
to many uses. They dig with them, hold down their food with them, fondle
their children with them, paw their friends, and scratch their enemies.
One does more of one thing and another of another, and the feet soon
show the effects of the occupation, the claws first, then the muscles,
and even the bones dwindling by disuse, or waxing stout and strong. Then
the joy of doing what it can do well impels the beast further on the
same path, and its offspring after it.
[Illustration: THE NOSE OF THE ELEPHANT BECOMING A HAND HAS REDEEMED
ITS MIND]
And this leads at last to specialism. The Indian black bear is a "handy
man," like the British Tar--good all round. Its great soft paw is a very
serviceable tool and weapon, armed with claws which will take the face
off a man or grub up a root with equal ease. When a black bear has found
an ant-hill it takes but a few minutes to tear up the hard, cemented
clay and lay the deep galleries bare; then, putting its gutta-percha
muzzle to the mouth of each, it draws such a blast of air through them
that the industrious labourers are sucked into its gullet in drifts.
Afterwards it digs right down to the royal chamber, licks up the bloated
queen, and goes its way.
But there is another worker in the same mine which does not go to work
this way. The ant-eater found fat termites so satisfying that it left
all other things and devoted its life to the exploiting of anthills, and
now it has no rival at that business, but it is fit for nothing else.
Its awkward digging tools will not allow it to put the sole of its foot
to the ground, so it has to double them under and hobble about like a
Chinese lady. It has no teeth, and stupidity is the most prominent
feature of its character. It has become that poor thing, a man of one
idea.
But the bear is like a sign-post at a parting of the ways. If you
compare a brown bear with the black Indian, or sloth bear, as it is
sometimes called, you may detect a small but pregnant difference. When
the former walks, its claws are lifted, so that their points do not
touch the ground. Why? I have no information, but I know that it is not
content with a vegetarian diet, like its black relative, but hankers
after sheep and goats, and I guess that its murderous thoughts flow down
its nerves to those keen claws. It reminds me of a man clenching his
fist unconsciously when he thinks of the liar who has slandered him.
[Illustration: IT HAS TO DOUBLE THEM UNDER AND HOBBLE ABOUT LIKE A
CHINESE LADY.]
But what ages of concentration on the thought and practice of
assassination must have been required to perfect that most awful weapon
in Nature, the paw of a tiger, or, indeed, of any cat, for they are all
of one pattern. The sharpened flint of the savage has become the
scimitar of Saladin, keeping the keenness of its edge in a velvet sheath
and flashing out only on the field of battle. Compare that paw with the
foot of a dog, and you will, perhaps, see with me that the servility and
pliancy of the slave of man has usurped a place in his esteem which is
not its due. The cat is much the nobler animal. Dogs, with wolves,
jackals, and all of their kin, love to fall upon their victim in
overwhelming force, like a rascally mob, and bite, tear, and worry until
the life has gone out of it; the tiger, rushing single-handed, with a
fearful challenge, on the gigantic buffalo, grasps its nose with one paw
and its shoulder with the other, and has broken its massive neck in a
manner so dexterous and instantaneous that scarcely two sportsmen can
agree about how the thing is done.
I have said that the foot first appeared when the backboned creatures
came out of the waters to live upon the dry land. But all mundane things
(not excepting politics) tend to move in circles, ending where they
began; and so the foot, if we follow it far enough, will take us back
into water. See how the rat--I mean our common, omnivorous, scavenging,
thieving, poaching brown rat--when it lives near a pond or stream,
learns to swim and dive as naturally as a duck. Next comes the vole, or
water-rat, which will not live away from water. Then there are water
shrews, the beaver, otter, duck-billed platypus, and a host of others,
not related, just as, among birds, there are water ousels, moorhens,
ducks, divers, etc., which have permanently made the water their home
and seek their living in it. All these have attained to web-footedness
in a greater or less degree.
That this has occurred among reptiles, beasts, and birds alike shows
what an easy, or natural, or obvious (put it as you will) modification
it is. And it has a consequence not to be escaped. Just as a man who
rides a great deal and never walks acquires a certain indirectness of
the legs, and you never mistake a jockey for a drill-sergeant, so the
web-footed beasts are not among the things that are "comely in going."
Following this road you arrive at the seal and sea-lion. Of all the feet
that I have looked at I know only one more utterly ridiculous than the
twisted flipper on which the sea-lion props his great bulk in front,
and that is the forked fly-flap which extends from the hinder parts of
the same. How can it be worth any beast's while to carry such an absurd
apparatus with it just for the sake of getting out into the air
sometimes and pushing itself about on the ice and being eaten by Polar
bears? The porpoise has discarded one pair, turned the other into decent
fins, and recovered a grace and power of motion in water which are not
equalled by the greyhound on land. Why have the seals hung back? I
believe I know the secret. It is the baby! No one knows where the
porpoise and the whale cradle their newborn infants--it is so difficult
to pry into the domestic ways of these sea-people--but evidently the
seals cannot manage it, so they are forced to return to the land when
the cares of maternity are on them.
I have called the feet of these sea beasts ridiculous things, and so
they are as we see them; but strip off the skin, and lo! there appears a
plain foot, with its five digits, each of several joints, tipped with
claws--nowise essentially different, in short, from that with which the
toad, or frog, first set out in a past too distant for our infirm
imagination. Admiration itself is paralysed by a contrivance so simple,
so transmutable, and so sufficient for every need that time and change
could bring.
There remains yet one transformation which seems simple compared with
some that I have noticed, but is more full of fate than they all; for
by it the foot becomes a hand. This comes about by easy stages. The
reason why one of a bird's four toes is turned back is quite plain:
trees are the proper home of birds, and they require feet that will
grasp branches. So those beasts also that have taken to living in trees
have got one toe detached more or less from the rest and arranged so
that it can co-operate with them to catch hold of a thing. Then other
changes quickly follow. For, in judging whether you have got hold of a
thing and how much force you must put forth to keep hold of it, you are
guided entirely by the pressure on the finger-points, and to gauge this
pressure nicely the nerves must be refined and educated. In fact, the
exercise itself, with the intent direction of the mind to the
finger-points, brings about the refinement and education in accordance
with Sandow's principle of muscle culture.
For an example of the result do not look at the gross paw of any
so-called anthropoid ape, gorilla, orang-outang, or chimpanzee, but
study the gentle lemur. At the point of each digit is a broad elastic
pad, plentifully supplied with delicate nerves, and the vital energy
which has been directed into them appears to have been withdrawn from
the growth of the claws, which have shrunk into fine nails just
shielding the fleshy tips. In short, the lemur has a hand on each of its
four limbs, and no feet at all. And as it goes about its cage--I am at
the Zoo in spirit--with a silent wonder shining out of its great eyes,
it examines things by _feeling_ them with its hands.
How plainly a new avenue from the outer world into its mind has been
opened by those fingers! But how about scratching? What would be the
gain of having higher susceptibilities and keener perceptions if they
only aggravated the triumph of the insulting flea? Nay, this disaster
has been averted by reserving a good sharp claw on the forefinger (not
the thumb) of each hind hand.
The old naturalists called the apes and lemurs Quadrumana, the
"four-handed," and separated the Bimana, with one species--namely, _Homo
sapiens_. Now we have anatomy cited to belittle the difference between a
hand and a foot, and geology importuned to show us the missing link,
pending which an order has been instituted roomy enough to hold monkeys,
gorillas, and men. It is a strange perversity. How much more fitting it
were to bow in reverent ignorance before the perfect hand, taken up from
the ground, no more to dull its percipient surfaces on earth and stones
and bark, but to minister to its lord's expanding mind and obey his
creative will, while his frame stands upright and firm upon a single
pair of true feet, with their toes all in one rank.
II
BILLS OF BIRDS
The prospectus, or advertisement, of a certain American typewriting
machine commences by informing the public that "The ---- typewriter is
founded on an idea." When I saw this phrase I secured it for my
collection, for I felt that, without jest, it contained the kernel of a
true philosophy of Nature. The forms, the _phainomena_, of Nature are
innumerable, multifarious, interwoven, and infinitely perplexing, and
you may spend a happy life in unravelling their relations and devising
their evolutions; but until you have looked through them and seen the
ideas that are behind them you are a mere materialist and a blind
worker. The soul of Nature is hid from you.
What is the bill of a bird and what does it mean? I do not refer to the
bill of a hawk, or a heron, or an owl, or an ostrich, but to that which
is the abstract of all these and a thousand more. I hold, regardless of
anatomy and physiology, that a bird is a higher being than a beast. No
beast soars and sings to its sweetheart; no beast remains in lifelong
partnership with the wife of its youth; no beast builds itself a
summer-house and decks it with feathers and bright shells. A beast is a
grovelling denizen of the earth; a bird is a free citizen of the air.
And who can say that there is not a connection between this difference
and other developments? The beast, thinking only of its appetites, has
evolved a delicate nose, a discriminating palate, three kinds of teeth
to cut, tear, and grind its food, salivary glands to moisten the same,
and a perfected apparatus of digestion.
[Illustration: GOOD FOR ANY ROUGH JOB]
The bird, occupied with thoughts of love and beauty, with "fields, or
waves, or mountains" and "shapes of sky or plain," has made little
advance in the art and instruments of good living. It swallows its food
whole, scarcely knowing the taste of it, and a pair of forceps for
picking it up, tipped and cased with horn, is the whole of its dining
furniture. For the bill of a bird, primarily and essentially, is that
and nothing else. In the chickens and the sparrows that come to steal
their food, and the robin that looks on, and all the little dicky-birds,
you may see it in its simplicity. The size and shape may vary, as a
Canadian axe differs from a Scotch axe; some are short and stout and
have a sharp edge for shelling seeds; some are longer and fine-pointed,
for picking worms and caterpillars out of their hiding-places; some a
little hooked at their points, and one, that of the crossbill, with
points crossed for picking the small seeds out of fir-cones; but all
are practically the same tool. Yet the last distinctly points the way to
those modifications by which the simple bill is gradually adapted to one
special purpose or another, until it becomes a wonderful mechanism in
which the original intention is quite out of sight.
At this point I find an instructive parable in my tool chest. Fully half
of the tools are just knives. A chisel is a knife, a plane is a knife
set in a block of wood, a saw is a knife with the edge notched.
Moreover, there are many sorts of curious planes and saws, each intended
for one distinct kind of fine work. All these the joiner has need of,
but a schoolboy would rather have one good, strong pocket-knife than the
whole boxful. For, just in proportion as each tool is perfected for its
own special work, it becomes useless for any other. And your schoolboy
is not a specialist. He wants a tool that will cut a stick, carve a
boat, peel an apple, dig out a worm--in short, one that will do whatever
his active mind wants done.
Now apply this parable to the birds. If you see a bill that is nothing
but a large and powerful pair of forceps, good for any rough job, you
may know without further inquiry that the owner is no limited
specialist, but a "handy man," bold, enterprising, resourceful, and good
all round. He will not starve in the desert. No wholesome food comes
amiss to him--grub, slug, or snail, fruit, eggs, a live mouse or a dead
rat, and he can deal with them all. Such are the magpie, the crow, the
jackdaw, and all of that ilk; and these are the birds that are found in
all countries and climates, and prosper wherever they go.
[Illustration: NO DOUBT EACH BIRD SWEARS BY ITS OWN PATTERN.]
But all birds cannot play that part. One is timid, another fastidious,
another shy but ingenious. So, in the universal competition for a
living, each has taken its own line according to the bent of its nature,
and its one tool has been perfected for its trade until it can follow no
other. The thrush catches such worms as rashly show themselves
above-ground; but an ancient ancestor of the snipe found that, if it
followed them into marshy lands, it could probe the soft ground and drag
them out of their chambers. For this operation it has now a bill three
inches long, straight, thin and sensitive at the tip, a beautiful
instrument, but good for no purpose except extracting worms from soft
ground. If frost or drought hardens the ground, the snipe must starve or
travel. Among the many "lang nebbit" birds that follow the same
profession as the snipe, some, like the curlew and the ibis, have curved
bills of prodigious length. I do not know the comparative advantages of
the two forms, but no doubt each bird swears by its own pattern, as
every golfer does by his own putter.
But now behold another grub-hunter, which, distasting mud, has
discovered an unworked mine in the trunks of trees. There, in deep
burrows, lurked great succulent beetle-grubs, demanding only a tool with
which they might be dug out. This has been perfected by many stages, and
I have now before me a splendid specimen of the most improved
pattern--namely, the bill of the great black woodpecker of Western
India, a bird nearly as big as a crow. It is nothing else than a hatchet
in two parts, which, when locked together, present a steeled edge about
three-eighths of an inch in breadth. The hatchet is two and a half
inches long by one in breadth at the base, and a prominent ridge, or
keel, runs down the top from base to point. It is further strengthened
by a keel on each side. Inside of it, ere the bird became a mummy, was
her tongue, which I myself drew out three inches beyond the point of the
bill. It was rough and tough, like gutta-percha, tipped with a fine
spike, and armed on each side, for the last inch of its length, with a
row of sharp barbs pointing backwards. The whole was lubricated with
some patent stickfast, "always ready for use." That grub must sit tight
indeed which this corkscrew will not draw when once the hatchet has
opened a way.
The swallows and swifts, untirable on their wings, but too gentle to
hold their own in a jostling crowd, soared away after the midges and
May-flies and pestilent gnats that rise from marsh and pond to hold
their joyous dances under the blue dome. Continually rushing
open-mouthed after these, they have stretched their gape from ear to
ear; but their bills have dwindled by disuse and left only an apology
for their absence.