GULLS AND GIBBON
All doubt as to the real nature of these horrid feastings of the
herring-gulls on floating carcases of kittiwakes is now at an end. I had
been watching the seals in one pool, when, turning to the other, I saw,
as I thought, two gulls fighting together on one of the great rocks in
the midst of it--a smaller "stack" one might almost call it. Raising the
glasses, the truth was revealed. It was a herring-gull murdering a young
kittiwake, and very soon it would have been "got done"--as Carlyle says
with such a gusto--if I had not, in rising to follow it more closely,
alarmed the murderer, who at once flew away. The poor little kittiwake
got up--for it had been thrown on its back--and stood without moving on
the rock, presenting a sick and sorry appearance, though there was as yet
no blood about it, and it did not appear to have been seriously hurt. Its
only chance now was to have flown away, but it stayed and stayed, seeming
to doze after a while--the certain victim of the returning gull, as soon
as the latter should have watched me off.
Turning my eyes from this disquieting spectacle--one brick in God's
architecture--I looked over the water, and there, in this quiet little
bay, which seems such a haven of rest and peace--_il mio retiro_, one
would think, to every creature in it--I saw another kittiwake being
savagely murdered by another herring-gull. This was a repulsive sight,
and through the glasses I could watch it closely, not a detail escaping.
The gull, with the hook of its bill fixed in the kittiwake's throat,
pressed it down on the water, shook it with violence, paused, got a
better purchase, shook it again, then, opening and gobbling up with
the mandibles, seemed to be trying to crush the head, or compress the
throat, between them. By this the young bird's struggles, which had been
of an innocent and quite ineffectual kind, had almost ceased, but its
legs still kicked in the air as it lay on its back in the water--just
as the other had lain on the rock. The gull now, having managed the
preliminaries, ceased to be so rough and violent, but, backing a little
out from the body, so as to get the proper swing, began, in a cold,
deliberate manner, to pickaxe down into the exposed breast, each blow
ending in a bite and tear. A crimson spot, becoming gradually larger and
larger till it represented almost the whole upper surface, as the body
cavity was laid open, responded to this treatment; and now the gull,
seizing upon entrail and organ, helped each backward pull with a flap or
two of the wings, feasting redly and royally.
So it goes on, and, in time, both the part-players in this little sample
fragment of an infinitely great whole are drifted by the waves to that
same towering "stack" which has lately been the scene of the puffin
tragedy. On it the gull lands, and, having dragged the carcase some way
up, flings his head into the air, and exults with a wild, vociferous cry,
in which his mate, who has now joined him, takes part. Then there is
more feasting; but in spite of the community of feeling which this duet
implies, the second gull is not allowed to partake of the good cheer,
but must wait till the provider of it has finished. Should she approach
too near, such intrusion is vigorously repelled. Well, thank God for the
touch of poetry, whenever it appears! There is something picturesquely
wild, as well as savage, in the latter part of this sea-scene--the gull's
_te deum_, flung out to sea and sky; but anything more horrid, more
ignobly, sordidly vile than what has preceded it, it would be hard to
imagine. A kittiwake in its first full plumage, which differs much from
the parents', is a very pretty bird, dove-like and innocent-looking. To
see it savagely shaken and flung about, a huge hooked implement fastened
in its slender throat, and that soft little head towzled, bitten on,
mumbled, the wings all the while flapping in helpless and quite futile
efforts to escape, is sickening. It is not the worst scene in nature
certainly--serious deliberation amongst enlightened statesmen can produce
things a good deal more horrible--but it is bad enough, bad enough. It
looks like the negation of God, but a much better case can be made out
for its being the affirmation, so here is the consolatory reflection for
which optimists are never at a loss. "There's comfort yet," as Macbeth
says.
[Illustration: "NATURE RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW"]
I suppose it sounds like a truism to say that the actual witnessing
of nature's ruthlessness--of her "red tooth and claw"--has a very
different effect upon one than is produced by the mere reading of it,
however powerful the description may be. Judging by my own sensations,
however, the difference is not merely of degree, but of kind, for such
accounts, with the reflections made upon them, have in them a certain
tone and tinting of the mind through which they pass, so that we get,
not nature, but man softening her. "Why softening?" it may be asked. I
am here speaking only of civilised man--who alone, perhaps, reflects
about such matters--and it is my firm conviction that civilised man, in
unconscious deference to his own peace of mind, does soften everything of
a disagreeable nature, or if he cannot soften the thing itself--and it
_is_ difficult sometimes--yet, at least, his hopes and faith and longings
fling a balm upon it, which, rather than the sore, is what we receive.
So, too, in all general reference. Man, not nature, is what we get.
Thus, when Tennyson speaks of "nature red in tooth and claw," it is not
only--or so much--this stern and horrid truth, that the line calls up.
Tennyson himself, if we recognise it as his, immediately comes into our
mind, and with him the idea of one who, though he can admit so much, yet
sees comfort and hope through it all, who believes, or at least trusts--
That somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill.
Other nobly optimistic lines slide into the memory, sunlight passes over
the desolate landscape, and the discomforting words, almost as they are
uttered, are atoned for by the comforting personality of the poet who
penned them. Thus nature, passing through the lips of man, is tempered
and dulcified in the passage.
But supposing that such lines as the ones quoted, because their source
is unknown to the hearer, can have no such comfort annexed to them, or
supposing that the poet does not trust, but is a gloomy pessimist, or,
which is more to the point, that instead of lines, with their music
and generalisation, we have an actual horrid description, merely, of
an actual horrid thing, all in the plainest prose, from some one whose
personality we neither know, nor is worth the knowing--I have supplied
an example--what softening influence is there here? Is not this but one
degree better, in the sense I mean, than seeing the horror itself? I
believe that here, too, the difference is of kind, and that a consolation
is extracted which we cannot extract when brought face to face with
nature herself, because the truth, then, is too overwhelming. The
comfort, in such cases, comes not through the mind of the individual
who is telling us, but through the general mind of which his is but a
part, through the human ocean, rather than the human drop in it. For
their own comfort, as I believe--in self-defence, to exclude misery--the
great mass of mankind are optimistic, nor can any unit of the mass
impart, or suggest, to us, ideas which are in opposition to this view,
without suggesting, by association, the more popular and disseminated
one, which we instantly lay hold of for our relief. If A can see no
bright side to the thing he has witnessed, and can extract no comforting
reflections out of it, yet B, C, D, etc., who have not witnessed it,
can, and to the general alphabet, as against some exceptional letters
of it, we immediately turn, and, enrolling ourselves amongst "_les gros
bataillons_," feel that we are "in tune with the infinite," and of course
that the infinite is in tune. But when, alone and amidst gloomy and stern
scenery, we see a disagreeable little piece of this infinite, suggesting
the whole, in actual manufacture before us, it is wonderful how little
of music we find, either in it or ourselves. All seems "jangled, out of
tune and harsh"; but for the "sweet bells," where are they? and were they
ever there? We hear them not, even as a something behind, an undersong
of hope. No, for there are no faces about us now, no comfortable looks
and smiles, no good dinner or snug little circle round the fireside; no
volumes of the poets either, and not a line of them, not one "smooth
comfort false," comes to assist us. Man and his distortions are gone, and
we have only nature--hard, stern, cold, uncompromising, truth-telling
nature--before us. We look one way, and there are the huge cliffs and the
iron rocks: another, and there is the great, wide, desolate sea: upwards,
and there is the cold, grey sky--stern and cheerless as either. Nothing
else but the birds in their thousands; and there, on the insensate waves
or rocks, amidst spectators as indifferent as they, one of them is
slowly, methodically, almost fastidiously, hacking, hewing, and picking
another to death. You see the struggles, the flights of escape, the
horrid, remorseless re-catchings; you see it proceeding and proceeding,
see the wound growing larger and larger, the blood running redder and
redder, and reason, with an impetuous inrush, says to you, suddenly, and
as though for the first time, "This is nature--_this_ is your God of
Love--_His_ scheme, _His_ plan!"
And it _is_ for the first time if you have not seen the same thing, or
something like it, before, and even then, if there has been anything of
an interval. You have got a fact at first hand, from nature herself,
instead of through the falsifying medium of humanity--truth strained
through benevolent minds--and the difference is so great that it is,
I maintain, one of kind, and not merely of degree. You cannot, whilst
actually seeing these things, get that sort of comfort that you can and
do get when only hearing or reading about them. It is nature that is
speaking to you, not a man, whose voice, be it ever so harsh, is mild
and puny in comparison, and which, moreover, calls up, by association,
the extenuating voices of a host of other men, that sea of human comfort
on whose waves you float off and escape. No, but you are, and you feel,
alone. You forget, almost, for the time, your own personality, and
no thoughts of other personalities come to relieve you. Afterwards,
perhaps, as you walk away, they may; but for some time they have a
strangely hollow ring about them. One quotation indeed, not of comfort,
but as descriptive of the kind of impression made upon me by such sights
as these, has often since come into my mind. It is not, however, from the
poets, but out of the pages of a great historian--of Gibbon--that I get
it, and it is this: "The son of Arcadius, who was accustomed only to the
voice of flattery, heard with astonishment the severe language of truth;
he blushed and trembled." This, I think, describes more nearly the sort
of effect which getting away from man and his optimistic chirruppings,
and seeing gulls kill kittiwakes, by myself, has had upon me. I have
heard, all at once, the severe language of truth, and I have blushed
and trembled--trembled at what I saw--blushed for what I had tried to
believe. Afterwards, as I reflect upon it, there come to me with sterner
meaning, even, than they had before, those words of Shakespeare--pointed
by your friends, through life--
From Rumour's tongues
They bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs.
Well, there are pleasanter sights than the one that has called forth
this rigmarole, and I have just seen a seal playing with the long brown
seaweed growing at the bottom of the sea, in a very delicious manner. He
seized it in his mouth, and, rolling over and over, wrapped himself all
round with it. Having thus put himself into mock fetters, his delight
was to break out of them, which he did with consummate ease, and the
grace of a merman. He did not keep hold of the seaweed all the while, but
grasped it now and again, often opening his mouth and making pretence to
bite. He acted like a very playful dog, but had a distinct idea of thus
entangling himself with the seaweed. No one could have mistaken this. The
design was perfectly evident. Two other seals, on a rock, played together
most humorously, or rather one kept playing with the other, teasing him,
but in a kindly way, by which it differed from most teasing. He would
scratch him softly on the chest with one of his fore-flippers, and when
this was parried, with a protest in look and action, he got farther down
and scratched, or, as I think one may say, tickled him on the belly,
beyond the reach of his guard. This caused the poor animal to flounce
about in a very absurd way, and, at last, to half rise, and put on that
funny, expostulatory look, half appealing, half resenting, and wholly
humorous, which I have noted before. Most playful and humorously playful
animals these are.
Could we see something of the inner life--the domestics--of many animals,
the record of it might be very interesting. This is what is really
wanted. But who has done so? Who has cared to do so? Instead, we have
a few bald, jejune facts--habitat, diet, time of bringing forth young,
period of gestation (on which latter point a good deal of prurient
curiosity is manifested), etc. But the heart of a wild animal is seldom
explored, for it needs a heart to explore it. She bears and tigresses
have been robbed of their cubs, but who has waited by their cubs to
see them return and fondle them? To do so might be both dangerous and
difficult; but what danger is not undergone, what difficulty is not
overcome, when merely to kill is the object? The zoologist of the future
should be a different kind of man altogether: the present one is not
worthy of the name. He should go out with glasses and notebook, prepared
to see and to think. He should stalk the gorilla, follow up the track
of the elephant, steal on the bear, get to windward of the moose or
antelope, and lie in wait for the tiger returning to his _kill_; but
it should be to biographise these animals, not to shoot them. The real
naturalist should be a Boswell, and every creature should be, for him, a
Dr. Johnson. He should think of nothing but his hero's doings; he should
love a beast and hate a gun. That is the naturalist that I believe in, or
that I would believe in if ever he appeared on earth; and I would rather
found a school of such than establish a triumphant religion, or make the
bloodiest war that ever delighted a people or rolled a statesman into
Westminster Abbey. Every man has his ambition. To make a naturalist who
shall use neither a gun nor a cabinet, is mine.
Some men have strange ambitions. I have one:
To make a naturalist without a gun.
"Pretty, i' faith."
The great seal is again asleep upon his rock (it seems to belong to him
and the common one in turn), and looking down upon him, now, from the
tops of the cliffs, through the glasses, there does not appear to be any
admixture of brown whatever in the shade of his fur. Wherever the light
falls upon it, it is an absolute silver, and, where in shadow, tends to
shade a little into the colouring of a very light-skinned mole. But this
last is merely an effect: the real colouring is, I believe, a uniform
silver--very pretty indeed, where the light catches it. The fur seems
close and thick--very mole-like in texture--the general appearance,
indeed, is very much that of a gigantic mole, if only the head, the
character of which is different, be not well seen. In the water,
however, when more or less immersed, even the head partakes of this
resemblance, or lends itself to it, and the whole animal becomes "perfect
_mole_" ("mine eye hath well examined his parts, and finds him perfect
Richard"). In itself, however, the head is not mole-like--as may well be
believed--but, when held in some positions, looks remarkably like that of
a polar-bear--a resemblance much more _à la_ Richard. He seems extremely
fat--Falstaff's "three fingers on the ribs," I should say, at the very
least.
A common seal has now, once or twice, swum close round him, and looks a
mere pigmy by comparison. This latter may not be a large seal--I do not
think he is--still, the juxtaposition of the two gives me a better idea
of Falstaff's proportions than I had before. He must be more than twice
the weight, I think, of the very largest _phoca_--_phoca Antiquarius_, as
I would call the latter: lovers of Scott will take me. It is the great
barrel of the body that is so immense. The build and general appearance
is much more that of a walrus than of an ordinary seal. The fore-feet
seem more modified, are more fin-like in appearance, than those of the
latter, which are rounded--soft, round, fat pads--muffin-shaped, more
like little cushions than fins; but here there is an approach to the true
fin, an elongation and narrowing, and the toes all point inwards and
tailwards.
As the water steals imperceptibly upon him, Falstaff--as I shall
now always call him--stretches himself enjoyably, and makes some
leviathan-like movements of his hinder, or tail, parts, looking
somnolently up, from time to time, seeming to say, "O ocean, let me
rest." How consummately happy he looks! lazily, sleepily happy--a
god-like condition. Heroics for those who enjoy them--they are generally
all in falsetto. The "cycle of Cathay" for me, and the untroubled
sea-sleep of this grand old Proteus here! A good deal of his lower
surface, and the whole of the rock he lies on, is now quite hidden by
the sea, but still he sleeps or dozes on--immense, immovable--as though
he were life-anchored there. At length, with a mighty yawn and stretch,
he turns full upon his vasty stomach, and immediately, by virtue of the
different appearance which his fur has when wet or dry, becomes a much
smaller seal that has climbed up upon a buoy--the lower, wet part of him
looks like that; the upper, alone, is himself. Then gradually he soaks
all over, till he is, again, huge and indivisible, a great, naked, blue,
greasy, oiled bladder,--yet firm still, as though he grew to the rock.
But the end is now near. Sparkling and gleaming, the waves come tumbling
in; they dance about him like fairies, like little familiar elves; they
slap him and pat him, lap up to--then over--his back, sway him this way
and that, speak to him, call him by his familiar pet name, tell him it
is time to go, until, at last, with a great somnolent heave, he floats,
and they float him--it is done together--right off the now sunken rock:
his body sinks down, his head, with the fur yet dry, remains, for a time,
straight up in the water, then follows--his nose, to the last, still
pointing, like the "stern finger" of "his duty"--not so stern as with us,
though--"heavenwards." As he goes down, you see that his eyes are still
shut--he continues to sleep.