THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM
The Natural History Museum at South Kensington is a large building, and
it is newer than the British Museum and not so gloomy. It is built of
different sorts of yellow brick, and has tall towers, and stands among
well-kept green lawns. When you go into the hall you see long galleries
stretching out on each side. In one there are most beautifully stuffed
birds of every sort you could name, and a great many you could not name.
All of these are set up in glass cases, with the flowers and grass or
bushes round that the birds choose to make their nests in when they are
alive. We can see here all the different ways that birds take to hide
their nests and young ones. Poor birds! they have so many enemies--the
weasel, who sucks their eggs; the cat, who loves to eat their young
ones; the birds larger than themselves, who prey upon them; and last,
but not least, the cruel boys who destroy the nests 'for fun,' and a
poor sort of fun it is.
There are two ways birds hide their nests: one by really hiding
them--that is to say, building them under a deep bank or in the thickest
part of a tree--and the other by making them so like their surroundings
that it is difficult to see them at all. You all know instances of the
first way; the second is not so common. But perhaps the commonest is the
plover, who just brings together a few straws on the mud of a field and
lays her eggs there without any protection; yet the eggs are so like the
mud-coloured surroundings that you might hunt for a long time, and even
walk over them without seeing them.
Down the middle of the room at the Museum are the more common British
birds, and we will look at one or two. But it is quite impossible to
talk about all of them, or we should still be talking when the keeper of
the Museum came to turn everyone out and shut up the building for the
night.
Look first at this pretty clump of grass, with a bramble trailing over
it and a bunch of primroses growing near. You would hardly have found
the nest, so well hidden, unless you had known it must be there. It is a
robin's, and the mother is bringing a caterpillar for her little
family. Which of the three gaping yellow mouths will get the delicious
morsel? Quite near is a wren's nest in some ivy, and so neatly is the
nest made of moss woven together that there is only one tiny little hole
left for the heads of the little wrens to peep out. The perky little
father, with his tail cocked up, stands near. He is very shy and
jealous, and so is his mate; if you put just the tip of your finger on
the edge of a wren's nest the birds would desert at once, leaving the
wretched young ones to starve. The little brown bird in the next case is
the nightingale, who sings so sweetly; he is not much to look at, yet he
has a picturesque home, with meadow-sweet and wild roses growing over
it.
It is odd how many birds build on or near the ground, which you would
think was dangerous. The robin is particularly fond of this; it chooses
an overhanging bank if it can find one, and though the nest is well
hidden, there is nearly always a cat prowling near to seize the young
ones just when their first feathers are growing, so it seems wonderful
that robins ever escape at all. On the left side is the wood-wren, with
a nest just like a handful of hay flung down among some dead leaves.
Near here, too, are the house-martins, and further on the swallows and
other birds, who build under the projecting eaves of houses; of all the
nests, these look the most safe and cosy. The house-martin is a really
clever builder; he takes little mouthfuls of clay in his beak and sticks
them one by one under the deep overhanging tiles or slates of a house or
barn, and gradually forms a complete nest like a ball of clay, which
dries hard, and is stuck against the wall, with only one opening like a
lip at the top. The nest does not look comfortable, but it is, for
inside it is lined with the softest white feathers, whereon are laid the
pearly-white eggs. The sand-martin, the house-martin's cousin, prefers
the side of a cliff. He digs into a cliff or sandbank a long tunnel
quite as long as your arm, and just big enough for him to pop in and out
with comfort. At the very far end of this in the warm darkness he puts
bits of straw and feathers to make a bed, and here the young are
hatched. Until they grow older they never go down that long mysterious
tunnel where mother and father run in and out, but only see in the
distance the white gleam of a round hole. What a wonderful world it must
seem to the young bird when he first steps out! He is very timid, and as
he gets near the opening he hears the beating of the waves on the shore
perhaps, and then the great wide ocean opens before him and the
illimitable sky. What a big world! He must turn almost giddy with fright
and amazement.
Some birds choose furze-bushes to build in, which must be prickly and
uncomfortable, but are thick. Here there is a woodpecker family. The
woodpecker is a fairly big bird, and he has a beautiful crimson streak
on his head; with his strong bill he carves out a deep hole in a tree,
right into the trunk--it is wonderful that the bird should have the
strength and patience to cut into the solid wood--and when he has made a
deep hole, he begins to make it bend down, and in the dip he makes his
nest. The young woodpeckers are therefore shut in very tightly and
safely. The parent birds run up and down the trees seeking for insects,
on which they live. To see them run straight up a tree as a cat would do
is very curious; but they are shy birds, and not often seen.
Other birds, like the reed-warbler, build in reeds; this seems a very
safe plan. Here you see several tall green reeds growing out of the
water, and about a foot above the water the bird has made a clever nest,
twisting bits of roots and grass together, and lacing them in with the
reeds, which are strong enough to hold such a dainty thing. So the
little nest swings and sways with the wind over the water, and the
reed-warbler is safe from cats, at all events; but one imagines the
young birds must sometimes tumble out and get drowned before they can
fly.
A very odd bird is quite near this, and that is the butcher bird. He
really is a butcher--that is to say, he kills tiny animals and even
other little birds, and keeps them in a larder for use. For this purpose
he chooses a bush with thorns, perhaps a hawthorn, and then when he
catches any small creature he sticks it on the thorns and leaves it
there spiked until it is wanted. Look at this one's larder. He has a
wretched little dead sparrow hanging by its neck from a big thorn, and
two or three bumble-bees spiked too. We can imagine the mamma saying to
the little ones: 'No, dears, you mustn't have any sparrow to-night just
before you go to bed; it would give you indigestion and make you dream.
Papa will have some of that for his supper, but if you'll be good
children I'll give you each a bit of bumble-bee.' The mother bird is
talking to a young one who has got out of its nest. They are fat, strong
little birds, as they should be with such food.
After this we come to bigger birds--ducks and puffins. Puffins have
beaks like poll parrots, and are about the size of a rook; they have
neat white shirt-fronts, and their beaks are red and yellow and blue,
but they have silly faces, as if they thought of nothing but their own
fine clothes. They live near water on cliffs, and sometimes use an old
rabbit burrow for a nest, in which they lay one pure white egg, and one
only. When the young one is hatched the parent birds feed it on tiny
fish and minnows. You can see here the puffin bringing up a minnow in
his beak for supper.
Beyond are great grey and white gulls, with their keen beaks and strong
legs. They are pirates, the gulls, and will eat other birds' eggs if
they can get them; they are wild and fierce. Another sea-bird, very
different in appearance, is the little stormy petrel. Very small and
graceful; he is a thin little bird, with a dark-brown coat, but at heart
as wild as the proud gulls. He is never happy except when dancing over
the cold grey waves and feeling the dash of the spray. The petrel is at
sea all day, and scorns the quiet land and delights of home. The howl of
the storm, the clash of the water is music to it, and it would pine and
die in a cage on land. When it wants to lay an egg, it makes a nest not
far from its beloved sea, and lays there one egg; but even when the
young one is hatched the mother cannot give up her wandering life. She
is a wanderer by nature, and she only comes back at nights to see that
the little one has food; then away to the wild tossing grey water again.
The next set of birds are the owls, and very wicked and ferocious some
of them look. There is the long-eared owl, with his bent-in, short,
hooked nose and funny feathered ears standing straight up. The little
owls are balls of soft fluff, and are eagerly looking at the dead mouse
that father owl has brought for them to eat. They have a very rough
nest, merely a platform of pine-twigs thrown together in the fork of a
fir-tree; but they are hardy little birds, and do not mind that at all.
Close by is a monster owl, called the great eagle owl. He has bright
yellow eyes, with very large pupils as black as jet; his tail is spread
like a turkey-cock's, and altogether he looks very terrifying. You would
not like to meet him alone if you had made him angry, for he is as large
as a fair-sized dog, and his ugly claws and savage beak would make short
work of your soft face and bright eyes. Luckily, you are not likely to
meet him, for he doesn't live in England.
It is worth while to cross over here to the other side of the gallery
and see the great bustard, with his wonderful curving white feathers. He
is about the size of a small turkey, whose cousin he is, and his plumes
are like those on a field-marshal's helmet. Near here are two curious
sorts of nests--one the Norfolk plover, or, as he is called, thick-knee;
the eggs are just laid on the sand, and are so much the same colours as
the speckled stones around that you have to look hard to find them, and
at a little distance they seem to vanish altogether. The funny little
wee birds, too, are just like rough sand, and have two black lines down
their backs; crouching down without moving, they would be well hidden.
The common tern lays its eggs amongst rough stones, where you would
think that anything so fragile as an egg would easily get broken. Near
his case there is a beautiful pure white gull, who lives in the Arctic
regions among the ice and snow. It is a wonderful law of Nature that
birds and animals often resemble their surroundings. We have seen that
the tiger is not easily seen among his bamboo-stems, and that birds the
colour of sand live on sand; well in the Arctic regions, where there is
perpetual ice and snow, nearly all the creatures are pure white, from
the great Polar bear down to the rabbits and gulls. This is explained by
the fact that if an animal is not white he shows up against the ground,
and then his enemies, other animals waiting to prey upon him, see him,
and catch him and eat him; so the white ones escape, and as children
take after their parents they are white, too. And if one of the children
happens to be darker he is quickly eaten, and his whiter brothers and
sisters escape. This white gull has made a nest that looks like nothing
but a muff of moss lying on very rough and sharp stones; there is not
much reason why the little ones should want to climb out, at all events,
while their feet are tender. Some enormous eagles attract attention: one
with strong beak and claws. A condor near is one of the largest birds in
the world. His native place is in South America, and at first when
travellers brought accounts of this gigantic bird they were not
believed; but at last someone managed to shoot one and brought it to
England, so then he had to be believed. The one here in the Museum has
spread his wings, and the length from end to end is larger than the
tallest man. The hideous vultures near have scraggy necks, with a ruff
round them. The vultures never kill animals for their own food, but live
on the refuse that is left by other animals or men. The eagle is like
the lion among the animals, and the vulture is like the jackal, who runs
about picking up all the nasty bits no one else will have. In the cases
beyond there are graceful swans and chubby ducks and flamingoes, birds
whose long pink legs make them look as if they stood on painted stilts,
and who have beautiful rose-coloured edges to their white wings. At the
very end of the gallery there are two huge cases as big as the side of
an ordinary room, and it is well to sit down here and look at them, for
both are full of interest. In part of one the space is taken up with a
great cliff, in which is the home of the golden eagle, wildest and most
untameable of all eagles. He lives far up on lonely mountain heights,
where the air is cold and pure. His great wings sail over vast dark
chasms, where men have sometimes lost their lives. His eye sees an
extraordinary distance, and his flight is very swift. He chooses for his
home a cave or natural hole on the face of a high cliff; this is called
the eyrie, and here he gathers together sticks, and odds and ends to
make a kind of bedding for his young. When the little eaglets are young
they are just like balls of white cotton-wool, with streaks of black
here and there, all fluff and down, like those you see here. The mother
and father birds go sailing high up in the sky, and suddenly they
descend with a swift dive and pounce on some tiny lamb who has strayed
from his mother's side, and perhaps fallen over the edge of a cliff and
cannot get back again. He has been bleating loudly to call his mother to
him, for he is too little to know he may attract enemies as well as
friends; and his cries have been heard by the eagle, who comes down like
an avalanche, and, seizing him firmly in its great talons, carries him
away higher and higher to the nest in the cliff. Then there is a whirr
and swoop, and the mother or father eagle, whichever it is, alights on
the rough platform in the cliff and lays the still warm and only
half-dead woolly lamb before the young ones. There is not much chance
for it then, but let us hope it has been stunned and made unconscious
long before this by its swift whirling voyage through the air. Eagles
catch rabbits, too, and anything they can find. In one nest there were
found the remains of nine grouse, four hares, part of a lamb, and many
other things. Here in the eagles' nest in the gallery you can see a
half-eaten rabbit's leg hanging out over the edge, and other nasty
remains.
Crossing over to the big case on the other side, we see another cliff,
bare and gray, and covered with white birds--geese and gulls of many
different sorts. This is a copy of a bit of a famous rock off the coast
of Scotland called the Bass Rock, which rises out of the sea like an
enormous stone many hundreds of feet high. At the times of the year when
birds make their nests it is white with wild sea-birds, and the nests
are laid along the crevices and shelves of the bare rock, so near
together that the birds can easily touch one another while they are
sitting on them. If anyone fired a gun near the rock there would be a
sudden flight up into the air of hundreds of birds all at once, like a
gigantic cloud, flying, whirling, screaming, mixed up together, rising
higher and higher in great circles till you would feel stunned and
deafened and almost frightened, as if a piece of the sky had suddenly
taken shape and broken up over your head. These wild birds know they are
safe on the Bass Rock, and they take no care to protect their nests; no
one could climb up those sheer precipices and steal the eggs. The birds
sit there safely, looking down upon such heights as would make you
giddy even to see; and in front the blue sea stretches for miles. It is
a wild, free life.
Going back down the room, there may be time to notice the cases on the
sides of the partitions full of stuffed birds, many very beautiful, but
not so interesting as those that are shown with their nests and young
ones. Quite near the door is a case with some large birds as tall as a
child of seven in it. They are cassowaries, with drooping dark-brown
feathers that look rather out of curl, and necks of crimson and blue.
Further on there is a family of ostriches, the great father bird very
grand and with a black coat, and magnificent white tail-feathers--those
feathers that ladies buy for their hats, and for which they give so much
money. Ostriches are kept on farms in South Africa, and their
tail-feathers are pulled out at certain seasons of the year; and then
they grow, again and are soon ready to be pulled out again, and people
make much money this way. I do not know how much pain this gives the
ostrich, but it cannot be pleasant; and perhaps he wishes sometimes he
was not quite so grand, but was dressed in a plain dull-brown suit
trimmed with dirty white like his humble wife. The ostrich is very
savage, and can never be depended on; he may turn upon the keeper who
has fed him and cared for him for years, and, seizing him, kick him with
his great feet until he is stunned, or dance upon him for no reason at
all. He does not look safe; his narrow flat head and cruel eyes would
make you think he was a tyrant. The little ones running about at his
feet look so ridiculously small in comparison that you would hardly
think they could be his children; but in time they, too, will grow big
like papa and have splendid tails, and lord it over their poor wives.
On the other side of the room are birds of paradise, who have also
beautiful tails, but in quite a different style from the ostrich. They
are smallish birds, but their long tails, reddish or yellowish in
colour, fall like cascades or fountains of water on both sides. Ladies
also wear these in their hats sometimes when they want to be very grand.
Near them is one of the birds with the queerest habits of any bird. It
builds a little bower or grotto, and decorates it with shells and
whatever else it can pick up--it really seems to like to make it pretty;
and then it runs about in and out of its bower for amusement. So it is
called the bower bird. These birds live in Australia, and their bowers
are made of bits of strong grass or thin stick woven over to make a
sort of tunnel through which the bird can run. But the funniest thing is
that they like to put bright things, such as shells or pretty stones
about for decoration.
We must now leave the birds, which have taught us so much, and go on to
other galleries. Just across the great hall is a long gallery entirely
filled with the bones and skeletons of animals which are now no longer
found on earth. This does not sound attractive, but it is, almost more
so than the birds we have just left, though, of course, we shall not
find anything pretty here.
Have you ever heard that there was a time when huge animals, larger than
the largest elephant, lived and walked about on earth, not only in hot
countries, but in England, too? If man lived at all in those days he
must have been a poor, frightened, trembling little creature going in
peril of his life from all the monsters who were around him. In England
the river Thames was surrounded by a thick jungle, with mighty trees and
creeping plants, like the jungles in India; and the climate was hot and
steamy like the inside of a greenhouse. Here lived enormous elephants
called mammoths. As we enter the gallery we see one in front of us, a
monstrous creature, who makes the ordinary elephant put behind him to
compare with him seem small. But larger still is the head of another
behind that again. Can you even imagine a beast that could carry tusks
about twelve feet long? That is to say, if two of the tallest men were
laid end to end they would be as long as that elephant's tusks, and the
thickness of the tusks was as great as a man's thigh. Think of all this
weight! And it was resting on the head and neck of the elephant! His
strength must have been like the strength of an engine. You would have
been less to him than a mouse is to us. It is not only guessing that
makes us say these animals lived in England, for here are the real
skulls and skeletons actually found buried in the earth. Further on is
what is called a sea-cow, a great fat beast weighing an enormous amount,
which floated in the sea. And at the end of the room is one of the
strangest of animals. Picture a creature as high as the room, standing
up on its hind legs like a kangaroo, and having very strong fore-arms,
with which it clutches a small tree. This is the skeleton we see now. It
could have packed you away inside it and never known you were there;
but, luckily for the children who lived on earth when it did (if there
were any), it did not eat flesh, but only the leaves of trees and other
vegetable things. It was called the giant ground sloth, and, as you may
judge from this name, was not very quick in its movements. It was not
found in England, but in South America, and there are now no more like
it in existence; and if we had not got its skeleton we should never have
known it had lived at all. There were many other curious creatures on
earth then--some that lived in the water and had long necks like snakes,
and fat bodies, and others like enormous lizards. There was also a big
bird, bigger even than the ostrich, this you can see in a case near the
sloth. Then in the centre of the room is the tall skeleton of a very,
very big stag, which is to other stags as a giant would be to you. He is
the Irish elk, and his skeleton was found in the peat bogs of Ireland;
he must have been a magnificent creature to look at when alive, with his
proud, free head and branching horns.
Passing through the hall, we see three or four cases showing examples of
the different colours of animals--the white ones among the snow, and the
yellow ones on the sand, the protective colouring of which we spoke
before; and on the staircase sits a statue of Darwin, the wonderful man
who found out this about animals, and also many other wonderful things,
and made us see animal life in altogether a new way. When you are a
little older you will find many things of great interest in Darwin's
books. Upstairs on one side is a gallery full of humming-birds, tiny
birds some of them, no bigger than butterflies, and as brilliant as
jewels, red and blue and green and yellow. It must be wonderful to see
them flashing about in their native land and hovering over the gorgeous
flowers; but here, so many together in one case, they lose half their
beauty, and they lack the sunshine to bring out their lovely colours.
There is also a gallery full of pressed flowers, and here you can learn
anything about flowers, leaves, and seeds; and on the other side there
is one full of stuffed animals. Now, we have seen the living animals at
the Zoo, and we do not care to see the dead ones here so much, though we
can just glance around it. But there is one animal you must see, because
there is no living animal like it in the Zoo.
This is a new animal called the okapi, only discovered during the last
fifty years in the dense forests of Africa, and its skin was stuffed and
set up and is now here. One would have thought that all the animals now
living would have been known long ago, and it seems almost ridiculous
to speak of a 'new' animal; but this one was new to us. He is very much
like a mixture of several other animals. He is about the size of a large
antelope, and he has a long upper lip like a giraffe, and a meek,
patient face. His back slopes down like a giraffe's, too, and his body
is a reddish colour like that of a cow; but his hind-legs are striped
like a zebra. Now, what do you think of that for a new animal? You or I
might have invented something more original. It is just as if he had
been round to the other animals, and said: 'Please, I want to live. Will
you give me something?' And the antelope had said: 'Well, you may be
rather like me in size, but don't make yourself a shape that anyone
could mistake for me.' So the poor, meek okapi had made himself the
colour and size of the antelope, but had taken the sloping back of a
giraffe; and then he had gone to the antelope, and said: 'Will this do?'
And the antelope had not been altogether pleased, and he had said:
'Humph! I'm not sure if it will; you've taken my colour, too. Some fool
might think you were me at a distance.' So the meek okapi had added a
few stripes on his legs, like a zebra, just to make him less like the
scornful antelope.
He lives in dense forests, and eats grass as a cow does, and is very
shy; and the only people who have seen him alive are the natives, who
told an Englishman about him, and then managed to shoot one, and bring
its skin to sell to the Englishman. But now that he is known of, it will
probably not be long before a live one is captured. He is so gentle that
they might make him into what is called a domestic animal, like the cow;
if he once understood that men were his friends and did not want to hurt
him, then his shyness might vanish, and his gentleness would make him
safe and easy to deal with.
In this gallery we see all the animals of the Zoo, stuffed and peaceful.
The tiger no longer prowls round and round his cage when the dinner-hour
draws near, he will never be hungry again; the lion no longer is angry
when the crowd stare, he cannot see them; the patient elephant has given
up for ever carrying children on his back, and the hippo has ceased to
wallow in the waters of his beloved bath. Even the silver-white polar
bear does not mind the heat, and pines no longer for his ice and snow.
All are at rest, at rest!