UNORTHODOX ATTITUDES
When I saw eider-ducks eating seaweed off the coast of my island I was
aware that they were doing something which they had no business to be
doing; for it is stated in works of authority that they are purely
animal feeders. I have had misgivings, therefore, ever since making
the observation, but now, having seen a black guillemot also eating a
piece of this same brown seaweed, I feel more comfortable about it, for
surely this bird should be as exclusively a fish-eater as the eider-duck
is supposed to be a devourer of shell-fish, crustaceans, etc. It was
certainly, I think, a piece of this seaweed--short, brown, bunchy, and
covered with little lobes--that this particular bird had in its bill.
Through the glasses I could see it distinctly, and most distinctly it
swallowed it. I doubt myself if there is any bird that feeds exclusively
on anything, or that is absolutely confined to an animal or vegetable
diet. They seem ever ready to enlarge their experience according to
their opportunities of doing so, thus illustrating one of Darwin's most
pregnant remarks.
When this "tysty" dived it presented a beautiful appearance under the
water, owing to the snow-white patches on its wing-coverts, which flashed
out distinguishably for some time. Besides this--whether or not this
had anything to do with it--it became all at once of a lovely glaucous
green colour, luminous, and with bubbles flashing about it. Gradually
the form became lost, but the luminous green was never lost, and after
becoming dimmer and dimmer began to get brighter and brighter again, till
the bird reappeared out of it on the surface at some distance off. It
seems just possible that this effect may be due in some measure to the
white patches, since when the shag dives nothing of the sort, or, at any
rate, nothing so marked, is to be seen, nor do I remember noticing it
either in the guillemot, razorbill, or puffin, which are all dark above
and only white underneath. On second thoughts, however, the colouring can
have little or nothing to do with it, since the effect is very marked in
the eider-duck of both sexes, and the female is uniformly dark. But how
is the effect produced? by the clinging of innumerable small air-bubbles
to the bird's plumage? If so, they may not cling equally to that of all
species. The seal presented the finest appearance of all, but his size
may perhaps have had something to do with this. Whatever may be the
cause, I do not remember to have remarked the same thing in river-birds
when diving. It is more difficult, indeed, to follow them under water
when they dive, on account of the absence of cliffs to look down from.
Still, one sees them sometimes, and, as I say, I do not remember noticing
this luminous effect, so that it must be, at any rate, much less
striking. I have seen the same thing with a shark at sea.
This morning the ravens again flew over the ness, going the other way,
however, and I only saw three of them. As before, it was the skuas
who informed me of this, but, in spite of their shrieking, they did
not seem to meddle much with the grim, black birds. Though there is
an impressiveness about the raven's whole appearance which, with the
knowledge of what it is, sets the imagination working, yet there is
nothing majestic in its actual flight, and these three, with their
measured, laboured flappings, offer a clumsy contrast to the arrow-like
grace of the skuas.
The chick is still upon the ledge, so I have still a chance of seeing
him leave it; but even with two plaids, on one of which I lie and in the
other wrap myself, like an embalmed mummy, it is cold work waiting--and
still more when one has the lumbago. I was awakened early this morning by
nasty pains, more right on the hip--the very bone of it--than in the true
lumbagoey region; but it plays right lumbago music--"'tis enough, 'twill
serve." This comes of lying on the rocks for six hours at a time in a
Shetland summer. I was a fool, I think, to come here; but is there any
one who is not, either in thinking or acting at any time _ici bas_?
When we are born we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools.
Now I have the lumbago, with very little for it, and had I not come here
I should be regretting the loss of ten times as much as I have found,
with no thought of the lumbago thereby avoided. Thus each way would have
had its own particular foolery; and which way has not? Does not this
apply to much greater matters, and often where there might seem to be no
doubt as to where the foolery lay? The way of sin, for instance, that
leads to remorse, has always been thought a foolish way, and that of
virtue and clear conscience a wise one. Nevertheless, he who goes the
first gains such knowledge by experience as can never be acquired in any
other way, and is therefore to this extent the superior of the other
unless _he_ has already gained it, either in a life before this or in
some other manner. If he has not, it seems probable that he will have to
do so at one time or another, by the laws of development--assuming that
personal life and personal development survive the thing called death.
Who, then, if we make these assumptions, stands the better off, he who
has learnt a great truth through his sinning, or he who, often owing to
circumstances merely, has neither the sin nor the truth? Quite possibly,
as it seems to me, the former; for what do we really know except through
our own actual experience? What a dream must this life soon become to us
if we are born, through death, into another one widely different from
it! and seeing what death does to this body of ours, how can it be other
than widely different? If, therefore, we could pass from life to life,
or rather from stage to stage of life, keeping the knowledge gained in
each to help us in the next, such knowledge, however bitterly, or, as we
call it, evilly gained, would be really all in all good. The gain would
be eternal and the pain transient as well as necessary. We may suppose,
too, that it would become an ever-lessening quantity, as "John Brown went
marching on." But somewhere and somehow all deep, essential knowledge--as
the knowledge of good and evil--must, I believe, be individually gained
if the individual is to advance. Innocence, though so highly recommended,
is really a very trumpery thing.
That the path of individual advance should be through evil to good seems,
in itself, likely, since it has been that of the race, and, moreover,
what other can be imagined? Perhaps, however, it should rather be said
to be through ignorance to knowledge. Evil is a misleading word. We
speak of it as though it were something fixed and unchangeable, whereas
there is no thing, however evil it may be in one set of circumstances,
that may not be good in another. Murder, for instance, is good amongst
bees, and sometimes also--so statesmen who make wars must think--amongst
ourselves. Knowledge of good and evil consequently is knowledge of
conditions; and how can one learn the conditions of anything better than
by acting in disaccord with them? Putting aside, therefore, the question
of inherited experience--another perplexing element in this perplexing
problem--is it not possible that sometimes, at any rate, a sinner may be
in a state of advance whilst a virtuous person is stagnating merely, or
that the former at any rate--for most virtuous persons sin pettily--may
be advancing more quickly than the latter? I feel sure of it myself.
"My dukedom," however (if I had one), "to a beggarly denier," that said
virtuous person would think very differently--which makes him, perchance,
just a little more but one of the "fools" on "this great stage," where
there are so many.
It might well be argued, I think--at any rate, I have seen many such
arguments--that Shakespeare, in the lines I have quoted, intended to
convey all this, in which case I have his great authority to shelter
under. Goethe, however--at least, I am told so--supports me, if not
more plainly, yet more categorically. He thought--or somebody, perhaps
Eckermann, thought he thought--that we became good by sinning out our
evil, and that evil still in us, in the shape of desire, was like
prurient matter which ought to be discharged, and, at some time, would
have to be, to the consequent benefit of the constitution. Given, as I
say, a continuance of life and advance--I cannot, for myself, imagine the
one without the other--there seems to me much force in this doctrine,
and I commend it--as that sort of physic which Lady Macbeth so much
needed--to the members of any cabinet that has made any war, and to
politicians and millionaires generally, and to South African millionaires
in particular.
All this must be the effect of lumbago, which is the effect of the
Shetlands; but let me shake it off. The chick has been fed once, but I
was taken by surprise, and almost missed it. Now, at only a quarter of
an hour's interval, he is fed again, and over this there is quite an
interesting little scene. The chick, when a very substantial fish is
brought in for him, is asleep under his mother's wing, and both parents
seem averse to disturbing him. The plain one with the fish seems quite
embarrassed. He approaches, stands still, looks at his partner as if
for advice, shuffles about, turns this way and that, and several times,
bending his head, gives a choked and muffled _jodel_, for his mouth is
almost too full to speak. Still the chick sleeps on and still the parents
seem to doubt the advisability of waking him. At length, however, they
admit it to be necessary. The father shuffles up into his usual position,
the mother rises by slow and reluctant stages, as though apologetically,
and finally stirs the chick several times with her bill till at last he
rouses. Then, in a moment, he brisks up, and, seizing the large fish,
swallows it in one good whole-hearted gulp. Perhaps there may have been
a second, but it was a weak one if there was, and hardly necessary. It
was more like the grace after the meal, that can very well be dispensed
with. Instantly then the father, having done his business, flies off, the
mother sinks down, and the chick, retiring with the taste of the fish
still in his mouth, there is peace on the ledge again. The eye of the
guillemot is very bright, and seems to beam with intelligence. No bird, I
believe, ever looked more intelligent, albeit embarrassed, than the one
just gone as he stood with the fish in his bill waiting for the chick to
wake up. He, it will be remembered, was the plain bird; and such are very
greatly in the majority. The white mark round the eye impairs this look
of intelligence. It is lost in strangeness, and the bird so adorned has
something the appearance of one of those queer kind of demons that one
sees in Japanese drawings. The eye itself is black.
The chick, therefore, has had two good fish--one a particularly large
one--within twenty minutes. There is now an interval of near three
hours, and then the father flies in again with yet another fish--a very
long sand-eel it looks like, even bigger than the last--and the chick
seizing it as it is let drop, before it touches the ledge, it disappears
by a process which looks like magic. They are like little bag-purses,
these guillemot chicks, and when they are full of money--_i.e._
fishes--it is difficult to think that there is room for anything more
inside them--anatomy seems out of the question. Just before this, this
particular one has lain in the queerest way under his mother's wing,
flat upon the rock, with his legs stretched straight out behind him
as one sometimes sees dogs lie. He has lain like this several times
altogether, but never for long at a time. Now, after his surfeit, he
has retired again. By the way, the inside of the little chick's mouth
is pinky-flesh-coloured merely, whereas that of the old bird is of a
fine lemon. Why should we, in so many species, find this difference in
coloration between young and old in such a region--the mature tint
being, in all of them, so vivid and so often exposed--unless sexual
selection has been the operating cause? We would not, I suppose, find a
corresponding difference in the colour of the internal organs, according
to the age of the bird.
The mother guillemot, now, for the first time whilst I have been here,
utters that guttural, yet sharp "ik, ik, ik," note, which, two years
ago, in June and early July, was the only one I ever heard on the ledge
I watched so closely. When another fish is brought in there is some more
of it, mixed with the _jodel_-ing; so that it seems now to be becoming
more frequent. But never have I been able to make out with anything like
clearness that the chick has uttered any note at all. No undoubted sound
from it has reached me. The time before last that it was fed, however,
I thought I heard a sharp little cry, but it was impossible to be sure
whether this was from the chick or some of the thronging and clamouring
kittiwakes perched and flying all about. In any case, it was nothing
particular.
On the ledge, where there were fifteen birds yesterday, there are now
only eight; on my ledge, which from here I see in its entirety, only the
mother and chick, another bird--not the father--having just flown off.
On all the others together I make out only thirty-six. I see but one
other chick, but a bird is sitting as if she might have one under her.
Nothing can be plainer than that the old birds have stayed behind on the
ledges after the young ones have left them, though whether the latter
went by themselves or were conducted by their parents, who afterwards
returned, I cannot tell. As the ledges, when I first came, were thick
with guillemots, and as both sexes were represented, there being still
a considerable amount of coquetry and dalliance, carried sometimes to
an extreme length, there is no room for the hypothesis that the great
majority had gone with their chicks, leaving only a few, who, for some
reason, had not reared one. Had I got here to-day only I might have
thought this, but, as it is, I should rather think that, full as the
ledges were on my arrival, they were fuller still a few days earlier,
and that the proportion of chicks was not much greater. The statement,
therefore, which is made in works of authority, that, at the end of the
breeding season, the young and old guillemots go off together for good,
seems not to be in accordance with the facts of the case. Certainly it
does not apply to the state of things here, in this particular year.
The chick is again stretched out quite flat on the rock with its legs
behind it, looking most funny. Well, funny as you are, I must leave you
for a little, for I've the cramp, as well as lumbago, so
I am gone, sir, and anon, sir,
I will be with you again.
And I am back at about seven, and find my little Sir still on the
ledge, clasped by his mother's wing. I almost expected he would be
gone, but have still a chance now to see the flight down--if it should
not take place in the night--a parlous fear. I was away for some four
hours, and during this time had a splendid sight of seals. Quite near
to where I watch the guillemots there is a little iron-bound creek or
cove, walled by the precipice, guarded by mighty "stacks," and divided
for some way into two by a long rocky peninsula running out from the
shore. On the rocks in one of these alcoves were lying eight seals,
which were afterwards joined by another, making nine, whilst in the
adjoining one were four--also, as it happened, joined by another whilst
I watched--making fourteen in all: such a sight as I had never seen
before, except something like it as the steamboat passed a small rocky
islet on my way to Gutcher. Here lay, indeed, some nine or ten seals; but
oh, the difference in the conditions! The horrid, vulgar steamboat, with
the whistle blowing to frighten them; the men, the women, the remarks--a
stick pointed gunwise--oh, dear! Oh, the difference, the difference! They
were soon all in the water and, with their little oasis, left far behind.
The sooner the better. Worse than "crabbed age and youth" "together" is
wild nature seen from amidst vulgar surroundings, in vulgar company--like
a drive through paradise with the Eltons "in the barouche-landau." But
here--ah, here it is different. Not one human being save myself (and one
excuses oneself), no tiresome prosaic figure--"god-like erect"--to break
the sky-line above the mighty towering precipice that rises just behind
this dark, still, frowning bay. I can gloat on what I see here.
I watched these seals of mine on this, my first meeting with them, for
a considerable time from the top of the cliffs--the glasses giving me a
splendid view--and soon knew more about them than I had before, and got
rid of some popular errors. For instance, I had always imagined that
seals had one set attitude for lying on the rocks--viz. flat on their
bellies--a delusion which every picture of them in this connection had
helped to foster. Imagine my surprise and delight when it burst upon
me that only some three or four were in this attitude, and that even
these did not retain it for long. No; instead of being in this state of
uninteresting orthodoxy, they lay in the most delightful free-thinking
poses, on their sides, or much more than on their sides, showing their
fine portly columnar bellies in varying degrees and proportions, whilst
one utter infidel was right and full upon his broad back--yet looked
like the carved image of some old crusader on the lid of his stone
sarcophagus. Then every now and again they would give themselves a
hitch, and bring their heads up, showing their fine round foreheads and
large mild eyes; a very human--mildly human--and extremely intelligent
appearance they had, looking down upon them from above. Again, they had
the oddest or oddest-appearing actions, especially that of pressing their
two hind feet or flippers together, with all their five webbed toes
spread out in a fan, with an energy and in a manner which suggested the
fervent clasping of hands. Then they would scratch themselves with their
fore feet lazily and sedately, raising their heads the while, looking
extremely happy, having sometimes even a beatific expression. And then
again they would curl themselves a little and roll more over, seeming
to expatiate and almost lose themselves in large luxurious ease--more
variety and expression about them lying thus dozing than one will see in
many animals awake and active.
Even in this little time I learnt that they were animals of a finely
touched spirit, extremely playful, with a grand sense of humour and--once
again--filled "from the crown to the toe, top-full" of happiness. Thus
one that came swimming up the little quiet bay, in quest of a rock to
lie upon, seemed to delight in pretending to find first one and then
another too steep and difficult to get up on to (for obviously they were
not) and would fling himself off from them in a sort of little sham
disappointment, gambolling and rolling about, twisting himself up with
seaweed, and, generally, having a most lively solitary romp. A piece of
bleached spar, some four or five feet long, happened--and I am glad that
it happened--to be floating in the water at quite the other side of the
creek, and, espying it, this delightful animal swam over to it and began
to play with it as a kitten might with a reel of cotton or a ball of
worsted. More frolicsome, kitten-hearted, and withal intelligent play I
never saw. He passed just underneath it, and, coming up on the opposite
side, rolled over upon it, cuffed it with one fore-foot, again with
the other, flipped it, then, with his footy tail as he dived away, and
returning, in a fresh burst of rompiness, waltzed round and round with
it, embracing it one might almost say. At last, going off, he swam to a
much steeper rock than any he had made believe to find so difficult, and,
scrambling up it with uncouth ease, went quietly to sleep in the best
possible humour.
What intelligence all this shows! Much more, I think, than the sporting
of two animals together. This seal was alone, saw the spar floating at a
distance, and swam to it with the evident intention of amusing himself in
this manner. That spar may be a piece of a shipwreck, may have floated
out of the crash and confusion of human agony, hands may have grasped
it, arms clung around it, to be washed off, stiffened in death. Now, in
these silent dream-pools of the sea's oblivion, it is played with by
a happy animal. And of all those influences that cling about a thing
life-touched, and tell their several tales to the clairvoyant, I would
choose to feel and breathe this last.
[Illustration: A SEAL'S PLAYTHING]
Later, another seal played with this same spar in much the same way; yet
both of them seemed to be quite full-grown animals. Then I saw something
which looked like a spirit of real humour, as well as fun. Three seals
were lying on a slab of rock together, and one of them, raising himself
half up, began to scratch the one next him with his fore-foot. The
scratched seal--a lady, I believe--took it in the most funny manner--a
sort of serio-comic remonstrance, shown in action and expression. "Now
do leave off, really. Come now, do leave me alone"--and when this had
reached a climax the funny fellow left off and lay still again; but as
soon as all was quiet, he heaved up and began to scratch her again. This
he did--and she did the other--three times, at the least, and if not to
have a little fun with her I can hardly see why.
On my last return from the guillemots, the tide was rising, and most of
the rocks where the seals had been lying were covered. I was in time,
however, to see one--an immense parti-coloured seal--gradually floated
off. He lay upon a great mass of seaweed, and as long as he could stay
there, he did; but little by little, as the waves came in, he rose
unwillingly, seeming to cling to it to the last. Whether he really did
grasp the seaweed with his hind feet, and stay, thus anchored, as long
as he possibly could, I cannot say; but certainly, for a good many
minutes, and keeping in much the same place, he stood, or rather floated,
perpendicularly in the water, even including his head, so that his nose,
which projected just a little above the surface, pointed straight up
into the air. This was, at once, seen to be the case when he brought it
down and stood with head in the usual position, as he did at intervals.
Finally, he rolled slowly over and sought the depths in a vanishing blue
streak. Another seal clung, in like manner, to the smooth rock he was on,
letting the rising waves wash him about till at last he swam off.