lead an easy life. They have just to pluck and eat--that is, if they are
pleased with small fruits and content to swallow them whole. But the
hornbills, being too bulky to hop among twigs, need a long reach; hence
the portentous machines which they carry on their faces. The beak of a
hornbill is nothing else than a pair of tongs long enough to reach and
strong enough to wrench off a wild fig from its thick stem. If it were
of iron it would be thin and heavy; being of cellular horn-stuff it is
bulky but light. If you ask why it should rise up into an absurd helmet
on the queer fowl's head, I cannot tell. Nature has quaint ways of using
up surplus material.
[Illustration: ITS BILL DESERVES STUDY]
An easy life begets luxury, and among fruit-eaters the parrot has become
an epicure. It will not swallow its food whole, and its bill deserves
study. In birds generally the upper mandible is more or less joined to
the skull, leaving only the lower jaw free to move. But in the parrot
the upper mandible is also hinged, so that each plays freely on the
other. The upper, as we all know, is hooked and pointed; the lower has a
sharp edge. The tongue is thick, muscular, and sensitive. The whole
makes a wonderful instrument, unique among birds, for feelingly
manipulating a dainty morsel, shelling, peeling, and slicing, until
nothing is left but the sweetest part of the core. Of all gourmands
Polly is the most shameless waster.
Long before land, trees, and air had been exploited the primitive bird
must have discovered the harvest of the waters, and here the competition
has been very keen indeed. Yet the form of bill most in use is very
simple--just a plain pair of forceps, long and sharp-pointed like
scissors. This is evidently hard to beat, for birds of many sorts use
it, handling it variously. The kingfisher plumps bodily down on the
minnow from an overhanging perch; the solan goose, soaring, plunges from
a "pernicious height"; the heron, high on its stilts, darts out a long
and serpentine neck; the diver, with similar beak and neck, but
different legs, pursues the fleeing shoals under water; to the swift and
slippery fish all are alike terrible in their certainty.
There are, however, other varieties of the fishing bill. Some have a
hook at the point, as that of the cormorant, and some are straight at
the top, but curved on the under side. This last form is handy for
storks, which do not pluck fish out of water so much, but scoop up
frogs, crabs, and reptiles from the ground. The ridiculous bill of the
puffin, or sea-parrot, is an eccentricity. There may be some idea in it,
but I suspect it is an effect of vanity merely, being coloured blue,
yellow, and red, and quite in keeping with the other absurdities of the
wearer.
Apart from all these and by itself stands a princely fisher whose bill
is no modification, but an original invention and a marvellous one.
Larger than a swan and gluttonous withal, the pelican cannot live on
single fishes. It has given up angling altogether and taken to netting;
and the way in which the net has been constructed out of the pair of
forceps provided in the original plan of its construction is as well
worth your examining as anything I know. It is a foot in length, the
upper jaw is flat and broad, while the lower consists of two thin,
elastic bones joined at the point, a mere ring to carry the curious
yellow bag that hangs from it. In pictures this is represented as a
creel in which the kind pelican carries home the children's breakfast;
you are allowed to see the tail of a big fish hanging out. But it is not
a creel; it is a net. The great birds, marshalled in line on some broad
lake or marsh, and beating the water with their wings, drive the fish
before them until they have got a dense crowd huddled in panic and
confusion between them and the shore. Now watch them narrowly. As
each monstrous bill opens, the thin bones of the lower jaw stretch
sideways to the breadth of a span by some curious mechanism not
described in the books, and at the same time the shrunken bag expands
into a deep, capacious net. Simultaneously the whole instrument is
plunged into the struggling, silvery mass and comes up full. The side
bones instantly contract again, and the upper jaw is clapped on them
like a lid. No wonder the fishermen of the East detest the pelican.
[Illustration: HERE THE COMPETITION HAS BEEN VERY KEEN INDEED.]
[Illustration: AS WONDERFUL AS THE PELICAN, BUT HOW OPPOSITE!]
In the same marsh, perhaps, standing with unequalled grace upon the
longest legs known in this world, is a troop of giant birds as wonderful
as the pelican, but how opposite! The beautiful flamingo is a bird of
feeble intellect, delicate appetite, and genteel tastes. It cannot eat
fish, for its slender throat would scarcely admit a pea. Besides, the
idea of catching anything, or even picking up food from the ground, does
not occur to its simple mind. Its diet consists of certain small
crustaceans, classed by naturalists with water-fleas, which abound in
brackish water; and it has an instrument for taking these which it knows
how to use. I kept flamingos once, and, after trying many things in
vain, offered them bran, or boiled rice, floating in water. Then they
dined, and I learned the construction and working of the most marvellous
of all bills. The lower jaw is deep and hollow, and its upper edges turn
in to meet each other, so that you may fairly describe it as a pipe
with a narrow slit along the upper side. In this pipe lies the tongue,
and it cannot get out, for it is wider than the slit, but it can be
pressed against the top to close the slit, and then the lower jaw
becomes an actual pipe. The root of the tongue is furnished on both
sides with a loose fringe which we will call the first strainer. The
upper jaw is thin and flat and rests on the lower like a lid, and it is
beautifully fringed along both sides with small, leathery points, close
set, like the teeth of a very fine saw. This is the second strainer. To
work the machine you dip the point into dirty water full of water-fleas,
draw back the tip of the tongue a little, and suck in water till the
lower jaw (the pipe) is full, then close the point again with the tip of
the tongue and force the water out. It can only get out by passing
through the first strainers at the root of the tongue, then over the
palate, and so through the second strainers at the sides of the bill;
and all the solid matter it contained will remain in the mouth. The
sucking in and squirting out of the water is managed by the cheeks, or
rather by the cheek, for a flamingo has only one cheek, and that is
situated under the chin. When the bird is feeding you will see this
throbbing faster than the eye can follow it, while water squirts from
the sides of the mouth in a continuous stream. I should have said that
the whole bill is sharply bent downwards at the middle. The advantage of
this is that when the bird lets down its head into the water, like a
bucket into a well, the point of the bill does not stick in the mud, but
lies flat on it, upside down.
In conclusion, let us not fail to note, whatever be our political creed,
that, while all the birds pursue their respective industries, there sit
apart, in pride of place, some whose bills are not tools wherewith to
work, but weapons wherewith to slay. And these take tribute of the rest,
not with their consent, but of right.
III
TAILS
The secrets of Nature often play like an iridescence on the surface, and
escape the eye of her worshipper because it is stopped with a
microscope. There are mysteries all about us as omnipresent as the
movement of the air that lifts the smoke and stirs the leaves, which I
cannot find that any philosopher has looked into. Often and deeply have
I been impressed with this. For example, there is scarcely, in this
world, a commoner or a humbler thing than a tail, yet how multifarious
is it in aspect, in construction, and in function, a hundred different
things and yet one. Some are of feathers and some of hair, and some bare
and skinny; some are long and some are short, some stick up and some
hang down, some wag for ever and some are still; the uses that they
serve cannot be numbered, but one name covers them all. In the course of
evolution they came in with the fishes and went out with man. What was
their purpose and mission? What place have they filled in the scheme of
things? In short, what is the true inwardness of a tail?
If we try to commence--as scientific method requires--with a
definition, we stumble on a key, at the very threshold, which opens the
door. For there is no definition of a tail; it is not, in its nature,
anything at all. When an animal's fore-legs are fitted on to its
backbone at the proper distance from the hind-legs, if any of the
backbone remains over, we call it a tail. But it has no purpose; it is a
mere surplus, which a tailor (the pun is unavoidable) would have trimmed
off. And, lo! in this very negativeness lies the whole secret of the
multifarious positiveness of tails. For the absence of special purpose
is the chance of general usefulness. The ear must fulfil its purpose or
fail entirely, for it can do nothing else. Eyes, nose and mouth, hands
and feet, all have their duties; the tail is the unemployed. And if we
allow that life has had any hand in the shaping of its own destiny, then
the ingenuity of the devices for turning the useless member to account
affords one of the most exhilarating subjects of contemplation in the
whole panorama of Nature. The fishes fitted it up at once as a
twin-propeller, with results so satisfactory that the whale and the
porpoise, coming long after, adopted the invention. And be it noted that
these last and their kin are now the only ocean-going mammals in the
world. The whole tribe of paddle-steamers, such as seals and walruses
and dugongs, are only coasters.
Among those beasts that would live on the dry land, the primitive
kangaroo could think of nothing better to do with his tail than to make
a stool of it. It was a simple thought, but a happy one. Sitting up
like a gentleman, he has his hands free to scratch his ribs or twitch
his moustache. And when he goes he needs not to put them to the ground,
for his great tail so nearly equals the weight of his body that one pair
of legs keeps the balance even. And so the kangaroo, almost the lowest
of beasts, comes closer to man in his postures than any other. The
squirrel also sits up and uses his forepaws for hands, but the squirrel
is a sybarite who lies abed in cold weather, and it is every way
characteristic of him that he has sent his tail to the furrier and had
it done up into a boa, or comforter, at once warm and becoming. See,
too, how daintily he lifts it over his back to keep it clean. 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. Others of the same family, cleaner,
though not more ingenious, like the guinea-pig, have simply dispensed
with the encumbrance; but the rabbit has kept enough to make a white
cockade, which it hoists when bolting from danger. This is for the
guidance of the youngsters. Nearly every kind of deer and antelope
carries the same signal, with which, when fleeing through dusky woods,
the leader shows the way to the herd and the doe to her fawn.
But of beasts that graze and browse, a large number have turned their
tails rather to a use which throws a pathetic light on misery of which
we have little experience. We do, indeed, growl at the gnats of a summer
evening and think ourselves very ill-used. How little do we know or
think of the unintermitted and unabated torment that the most harmless
classes of beasts suffer from the bands of beggars which follow them
night and day, demanding blood, and will take no refusal. Driven from
the brow they settle on the neck, shaken from the neck they dive between
the legs, and but for that far-reaching whisk at the end of the tail,
they would found a permanent colony on the flanks and defy ejection,
like the raiders of Vatersay. Darwin argues that the tail-brush may have
materially helped to secure the survival of those species of beasts that
possessed it, and no doubt he is right.
The subject is interminable, but we must give a passing glance to some
quixotic tails. The opossum scampers up a tree, carrying all her
numerous family on her back, and they do not fall off because each
infant is securely moored by its own tail to the uplifted tail of its
mother. The opossum is a very primitive beast, and so early and useful
an invention should, one would think, have been spread widely in after
time; but there appears to be some difficulty in developing muscles at
the thin end of a long tail, for the animals that have turned it into a
grasping organ are few and are widely scattered. Examples are the
chameleon among lizards, our own little harvest mouse, and, pre-eminent
above all, the American monkeys. To a howler, or spider-monkey, its
long tail is a swing and a trapeze in its forest gymnasium. Humboldt saw
(he says it) a cluster of them all hanging from a tree by one tail,
which proceeded from a Sandow in the middle. I should like to see that
too. It is worth noting, by the way, that no old-world monkey has
attained to this application of its tail.
Then there is the beaver, whose tail I am convinced is a trowel. I know
of no naturalist who has mentioned this, but such negative evidence is
of little weight. The beaver, as everybody knows, is a builder, who cuts
down trees and piles log upon log until he has raised a solid, domed
cabin from seven to twenty feet in diameter, which he then plasters over
with clay and straw. If he does not turn round and beat the work smooth
with his tail, then I require to know for what purpose he carries that
broad, heavy, and hard tool behind him.
How few even among lovers of Nature know why a frog has no tail! The
reason-is simply that it used that organ up when it was in want. In
early life, as a jolly tadpole, it had a flourishing tail to swim with,
and gills for breathing water, and an infantile mouth for taking
vegetable nourishment. But when it began to draw near to frog's estate,
serious changes were required in its structure to fit it for the life of
a land animal. Four tiny legs appeared from under its skin, the gills
gave place to air-breathing lungs, and the infant lips to a great,
gaping mouth. Now, during this "temporary alteration of the premises"
all business was of necessity stopped. The half-fish, half-frog could
neither sup like an infant nor eat like a man. In this extremity it fed
on its own tail--absorbed it as a camel is said to absorb its hump when
travelling in the foodless desert--and so it entered on its new life
without one.
Aeronautics have changed the whole perspective of life for birds, as
they may for us shortly; so it is no surprise to find that birds have,
almost with one consent, converted their tails into steering-gear. A
commonplace bird, like a sparrow, scarcely requires this except as a
brake when in the act of alighting; but to those birds with which flight
is an art and an accomplishment, an expansive forked or rounded tail
(there are two patents) is indispensable. We have shot almost all the
birds of this sort in our own country, and must travel if we would enjoy
that enchanting sight--a pair of eagles or a party of kites gone aloft
for a sail when the wind is rising, like skaters to a pond when the ice
is bearing. For an hour on end, in restful ease or swift joy, they trace
ever-varying circles and spirals against the dark storm-cloud, now
rising, now falling, turning and reversing, but never once flapping
their widespread pinions.
How is it done? How does the _Shamrock_ sail? Watch, and you will see.
When the wind is behind, each stiff quill at the end of the wing stands
out by itself and is caught and driven by the blast; but as the bird
turns round to face the gale, they all close up and form a continuous
mainsail, close-hauled. And all the while the expanded tail is in play,
dipping first at one side and then at the other, and turning the trim
craft with easy grace "as the governor listeth."
[Illustration: THERE ARE SOME ECCENTRICS, SUCH AS JENNY WREN, WHICH HAVE
DESPISED THEIR TAILS.]
Besides ground birds, like the quail, there are some eccentrics, such as
Jenny wren, which have despised their tails, and there are specialists
also which require them for other purposes than flying. The woodpecker's
tail is quite useless as a rudder, for he is a woodman and has altered
and adapted it for a portable stool to rest against as he plies his axe.
But that man must be very blind to the place which birds have taken in
the progress of civilisation who can suppose it possible that they
should think only of utility in such a question as the disposal of their
tails. It is a common notion among those who have acquired some
smattering of the theory of evolution that fishes developed into
reptiles, reptiles into birds, and birds into beasts; but this is as
wrong as it could be. Whatever the genealogy of the beasts may be, they
certainly were not evolved from birds, and are in many respects not
above them but below them. These are two independent branches of the
tree of living forms, as the Greeks and Romans were branches of the
stock of Japheth. The beasts may stand for the conquering Romans if you
like, but the birds are the Greeks, and have advanced far beyond them in
all emotional and artistic sensibility. They worship in the temple of
music and beauty. And, like ourselves, they have found no subject so
worthy of the highest efforts of art as their own dress. But the
clothing of the body must conform more or less to the figure, and so,
for a field in which invention and fancy may sport untrammelled, a lady
turns to her hat and a bird to its tail. And by both, with equal
heroism, every consideration of mere comfort, convenience, health, or
safety is swept aside in obedience to the higher aim. Is this only a
flippant jocularity, or is there here in very truth some profound law of
the mind revealing itself in spheres seemingly so disconnected?
Look at a peacock. Its train, by the way, is a false tail, like the
chignon of twenty years ago, or the fringe of the present day; the true
tail is under it, and serves no purpose but to support it. Now the
peacock lives on the ground, among scrub and brushwood, haunted by
jackals and wild cats. They, like soldiers in khaki, reconnoitre him in
a uniform expressly designed to elude the eye, but he flaunts a flag
resplendent with green and gold. And when his one chance of life lies in
springing nimbly from the ground and committing himself to his strong
wings, he must lift and carry this ponderous paraphernalia with him. And
the terrible Bonelli's eagle is soaring above. But all is risked proudly
for the sake of the morning hour in the glade where the ladies assemble.
And the peacock is only one of many. Not to mention the lyre bird, the
Argus pheasant, the bird of paradise, and other splendid examples, there
are common dicky-birds which point the moral and adorn the tail as
emphatically.
If the tail is a rudder, where should you look to find it in its most
simple and efficient form but among the flycatchers, which make their
living by aerial acrobatics after flies? Yet this family seems to be
peculiarly prone to the vanity of a stylish tail. The paradise
flycatcher flutters two streamers a foot long, like white ribbons,
behind it. The fantail could hide behind its own fan. The bee-eater has
the two central feathers prolonged and pointed. The drongos, which are
flycatchers in habit, wear their tails very long and deeply forked; and
one of them, the racket-tailed drongo, has the two side feathers
extended beyond the rest for nearly a foot, and as thin as wires,
expanding into a blade at the ends. I have seen nothing in ladies' hats
more preposterous. It is vain to object that there can be no proper
comparison between tails and hats because the woman chooses her own hat
while the bird has to wear what Nature has given it. I know that, but
the contention is utterly superficial. What choice has a woman as to the
style of her hat? Fashion prescribes for her, and Nature for the birds;
that is all the difference. No doubt she acquiesces when theoretically
she might rebel. The bird cannot rebel, but does it not acquiesce? Does
a lyre bird submit to its tail--wear it under protest, so to speak?
Believe me, every bird that has an aesthetic tail knows the fact, and
tries to live up to it. We may push the argument even further, for the
motmot of Brazil is not content with a ready-made tail, but actually
strips the web off the two long side feathers with its own beak, except
a little patch at the end, so as to get the pattern which Nature, if one
must use the phrase, gave to the racket-tailed drongo. A specimen is
exhibited in the hall of the South Kensington Museum.
[Illustration: A BLACKBIRD AND A STARLING--THE ONE LIFTS ITS SKIRTS,
WHILE THE OTHER WEARS A WALKING DRESS.]
In this connection I may also say that the shape or colour of a tail is
not everything. An observant eye may find much to note in the wearing of
them. There is a stylish way of carrying a tail and a slovenly way, and
there are coquettish arts for the display of recherche tails. A
blackbird and a starling are both tidy birds, and both walk much on the
ground, but the one lifts its skirts, while the other, more practical
and less fashionable, wears a walking dress and saves itself trouble.
This line of observation leads to a higher, and reveals the most
important purpose that tails have served in the economy of beast, bird,
and reptile, and, perhaps, even cold-blooded fish. Before the godlike
countenance of man appeared on the earth, with its contractile forehead
and erectile eyebrows, the answering light of the eye, the expansive
nostrils, and subtilely mobile lips; before that the tail was the prime
vehicle of emotion and safety-valve of passion. It is a great truth, too
often buried in these days under rubbish of materialistic theories, that
some way of self-manifestation is a supreme necessity of all sentient
life. From the hot centre of thought and feeling the currents rush along
the nervous ways and pervade the whole frame, seeking an outlet. But
many passages are barred by duty, or fear, or eager purpose. A strong
gust of passion may burst all barriers and force its way out at every
point, but gentle currents flow along the lines of least resistance and
find the idle tail. I do not know a better illustration of this than a
cat watching a mouse. The ears are pricked forward, the eyes are fixed
on the unsuspecting victim, every muscle of the legs is tense, like a
bent bow ready to speed the arrow on its way. But see, the excitement
with which the whole body is charged cannot be wholly restrained, and
oozes out at the point of the tail.
[Illustration: AT THE SIGHT OF A RIVAL THE DOG HOLDS ITS TAIL UP
STIFFLY]
Every emotion and passion takes this course. The happy kid wags its tail
as it runs to its mother, the donkey when it has executed a successful
bray, and the dog when it sees its master. At the sight of a rival the
dog holds its tail up stiffly, unless, indeed, the rival is a bigger dog
than itself, in which case the index goes down quickly between the legs.
An elated horse elevates its tail, and so does a duck in the same mood.
A lizard preparing to fight another lizard
Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail,
and the raging lion of fiction lashes its sides with the same nervous
instrument.
It would be tedious to dwell on the pretty part which the tail plays in
the courtships of sparrows and pigeons, or on the sprightly attitudes by
which birds of all sorts let off their spirits when shower and sunshine
have overfilled their hearts with gladness. But birds twitch their tails
constantly, without meaning anything by it. The ceaseless wagging of a
wagtail is a mere habit of cheerfulness, like the twirling of her thumbs
by an idle Scotswoman. The long tail is there and something must be done
with it. Look at the embarrassment which a nervous young man shows about
the disposal of his hands; how he thrusts them into his trouser pockets,
hangs them by their thumbs from the arm-holes of his waistcoat, or gives
them a walking-stick to play with. I like to imagine what such a fellow
would do with a long tail if he had it--how he would wind it round each
leg in turn, rub up his back hair, and describe figures on the floor.
But no animal so self-conscious as man could bear up long under the
nervous strain of having to think continually of its tail. It would die
young and the race would become extinct. Perhaps it did.