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LOVE'S MEINIE.
THREE LECTURES ON GREEK AND ENGLISH BIRDS.
By
JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D., D.C.L.
HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD; AND
HONORARY FELLOW OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD
THIRD EDITION
GEORGE ALLEN, SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON
AND
156, CHARING CROSS ROAD, LONDON
1897
[_All rights reserved_]
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE v
LECTURE I.
THE ROBIN 1
LECTURE II.
THE SWALLOW 25
LECTURE III.
THE DABCHICKS 52
APPENDIX 107
PREFACE.
BRANTWOOD, 9_th June_, 1881.
_Quarter past five, morning._
The birds chirping feebly,--mostly chaffinches answering each other,
the rest discomposed, I fancy, by the June snow;[1] the lake neither
smooth nor rippled, but like a surface of perfectly bright glass, ill
cast; the lines of wave few and irregular, like flaws in the planes of
a fine crystal.
[1] The summits of the Old Man, of Wetherlam, and Helvellyn,
were all white, on the morning when this was written.
I see this book was begun eight years ago;--then intended to contain
only four Oxford lectures: but the said lectures also 'intended' to
contain the cream of forty volumes of scientific ornithology. Which
intentions, all and sundry, having gone, Carlyle would have said, to
water, and more piously-minded persons, to fire, I am obliged now to
cast my materials into another form: and here, at all events, is a
bundle of what is readiest under my hand. The nature and name of which
I must try to make a little more intelligible than my books have lately
been, either in text or title.
'Meinie' is the old English word for 'Many,' in the sense of 'a many'
persons attending one, as bridesmaids, when in sixes or tens or
dozens;--courtiers, footmen, and the like. It passes gradually into
'Menial,' and unites the senses of Multitude and Servitude.
In the passages quoted from, or referred to in, Chaucer's translation
of the Romance of the Rose, at the end of the first lecture, any reader
who cares for a clue to the farther significances of the title, may
find one to lead him safely through richer labyrinths of thought than
mine: and ladder enough also,--if there be either any heavenly, or pure
earthly, Love, in his own breast,--to guide him to a pretty bird's
nest; both in the Romances of the Rose and of Juliet, and in the
Sermons of St. Francis and St. Bernard.
The term 'Lecture' is retained, for though I lecture no more, I still
write habitually in a manner suited for oral delivery, and imagine
myself speaking to my pupils, if ever I am happily thinking in myself.
But it will be also seen that by the help of this very familiarity of
style, I am endeavoring, in these and my other writings on Natural
History, to compel in the student a clearness of thought and precision
of language which have not hitherto been in any wise the virtues, or
skills, of scientific persons. Thoughtless readers, who imagine that my
own style (such as it is, the one thing which the British public
concedes to me as a real power) has been formed without pains, may
smile at the confidence with which I speak of altering accepted, and
even long-established, nomenclature. But the use which I now have of
language has taken me forty years to attain; and those forty years
spent, mostly, in walking through the wilderness of this world's vain
words, seeking how they might be pruned into some better strength. And
I think it likely that at last I may put in my pruning-hook with
effect; for indeed a time must come when English fathers and mothers
will wish their children to learn English again, and to speak it for
all scholarly purposes; and, if they use, instead, Greek or Latin, to
use them only that they may be understood by Greeks or Latins;[2] and
not that they may mystify the illiterate many of their own land. Dead
languages, so called, may at least be left at rest, if not honored; and
must not be torn in mutilation out of their tumuli, that the skins and
bones of them may help to hold our living nonsense together; while
languages called living, but which live only to slack themselves into
slang, or bloat themselves into bombast, must one day have new grammars
written for their license, and new laws for their insolence.
[2] Greek is now a living nation's language, from Messina to
Delos--and Latin still lives for the well-trained churchmen
and gentlemen of Italy.
Observe, however, that the recast methods of classification adopted in
this book, and in 'Proserpina,' must be carefully distinguished from
their recastings of nomenclature. I am perfectly sure that it is wiser
to use plain short words than obscure long ones; but not in the least
sure that I am doing the best that can be done for my pupils, in
classing swallows with owls, or milkworts with violets. The
classification is always given as tentative; and, at its utmost,
elementary: but the nomenclature, as in all probability conclusive.
For the rest, the success and the service of all depend on the more or
less thorough accomplishment of plans long since laid, and which would
have been good for little if their coping could at once have been
conjectured or foretold in their foundations. It has been throughout my
trust, that if Death should write on these, "What this man began to
build, he was not able to finish," God may also write on them, not in
anger, but in aid,
"A stronger than he, cometh."
LOVE'S MEINIE.
"Il etoit tout convert d'oisiaulx."
_Romance of the Rose._
LECTURE I.[3]
THE ROBIN.
1. Among the more splendid pictures in the Exhibition of the Old
Masters, this year, you cannot but remember the Vandyke portraits of
the two sons of the Duke of Lennox. I think you cannot but remember it,
because it would be difficult to find, even among the works of Vandyke,
a more striking representation of the youth of our English noblesse;
nor one in which the painter had more exerted himself, or with better
success, in rendering the decorous pride and natural grace of honorable
aristocracy.
[3] Delivered at Oxford, March 15th, 1873.
Vandyke is, however, inferior to Titian and Velasquez, in that his
effort to show this noblesse of air and persons may always be detected;
also the aristocracy of Vandyke's day were already so far fearful of
their own position as to feel anxiety that it should be immediately
recognized. And the effect of the painter's conscious deference, and of
the equally conscious pride of the boys, as they stood to be painted,
has been somewhat to shorten the power of the one, and to abase the
dignity of the other. And thus, in the midst of my admiration of the
youths' beautiful faces, and natural quality of majesty, set off by all
splendors of dress and courtesies of art, I could not forbear
questioning with myself what the true value was, in the scales of
creation, of these fair human beings who set so high a value on
themselves; and,--as if the only answer,--the words kept repeating
themselves in my ear, "Ye are of more value than many sparrows."
2. Passeres, [Greek: strouthos]--the things that open their wings, and
are not otherwise noticeable; small birds of the land and wood; the
food of the serpent, of man, or of the stronger creatures of their own
kind,--that even these, though among the simplest and obscurest of
beings, have yet price in the eyes of their Maker, and that the death
of one of them cannot take place but by His permission, has long been
the subject of declamation in our pulpits, and the ground of much
sentiment in nursery education. But the declamation is so aimless, and
the sentiment so hollow, that, practically, the chief interest of the
leisure of mankind has been found in the destruction of the creatures
which they professed to believe even the Most High would not see perish
without pity; and, in recent days, it is fast becoming the only
definition of aristocracy, that the principal business of its life is
the killing of sparrows.
Sparrows, or pigeons, or partridges, what does it matter? "Centum mille
perdrices plumbo confecit;"[4] that is, indeed, too often the sum of
the life of an English lord; much questionable now, if _indeed_ of
more value than that of many sparrows.
[4] The epitaph on Count Zachdarm, in "Sartor Resartus."
3. Is it not a strange fact, that, interested in nothing so much for
the last two hundred years, as in his horses, he yet left it to the
farmers of Scotland to relieve draught horses from the bearing-rein?[5]
Is it not one equally strange that, master of the forests of England
for a thousand years, and of its libraries for three hundred, he left
the natural history of birds to be written by a card-printer's lad of
Newcastle?[6] Written, and not written, for indeed we have no natural
history of birds written yet. It cannot be written but by a scholar and
a gentleman; and no English gentleman in recent times has ever thought
of birds except as flying targets, or flavorous dishes. The only piece
of natural history worth the name in the English language, that I know
of, is in the few lines of Milton on the Creation. The only example of
a proper manner of contribution to natural history is in White's
Letters from Selborne. You know I have always spoken of Bewick as
pre-eminently a vulgar or boorish person, though of splendid honor and
genius; his vulgarity shows in nothing so much as in the poverty of the
details he has collected, with the best intentions, and the shrewdest
sense, for English ornithology. His imagination is not cultivated
enough to enable him to choose, or arrange.
[5] Sir Arthur Helps. "Animals and their Masters," p. 67.
[6] Ariadne Florentina, vi. 45.
4. Nor can much more be said for the observations of modern science. It
is vulgar in a far worse way, by its arrogance and materialism. In
general, the scientific natural history of a bird consists of four
articles,--first, the name and estate of the gentleman whose gamekeeper
shot the last that was seen in England; secondly, two or three stories
of doubtful origin, printed in every book on the subject of birds for
the last fifty years; thirdly, an account of the feathers, from the
comb to the rump, with enumeration of the colors which are never more
to be seen on the living bird by English eyes; and, lastly, a
discussion of the reasons why none of the twelve names which former
naturalists have given to the bird are of any further use, and why the
present author has given it a thirteenth, which is to be universally,
and to the end of time, accepted.
5. You may fancy this is caricature; but the abyss of confusion
produced by modern science in nomenclature, and the utter void of the
abyss when you plunge into it after any one useful fact, surpass all
caricature. I have in my hand thirteen plates of thirteen species of
eagles; eagles all, or hawks all, or falcons all--whichever name you
choose for the great race of the hook-headed birds of prey--some so
like that you can't tell the one from the other, at the distance at
which I show them to you, all absolutely alike in their eagle or falcon
character, having, every one, the falx for its beak, and every one,
flesh for its prey. Do you suppose the unhappy student is to be allowed
to call them all eagles, or all falcons, to begin with, as would be the
first condition of a wise nomenclature, establishing resemblance by
specific name, before marking variation by individual name? No such
luck. I hold you up the plates of the thirteen birds one by one, and
read you their names off the back:--
The first, is an Aquila.
The second, a Haliætus.
The third, a Milvus.
The fourth, a Pandion.
The fifth, an Astur.
The sixth, a Falco.
The seventh, a Pernis.
The eighth, a Circus.
The ninth, a Buteo.
The tenth, an Archibuteo.
The eleventh, an Accipiter.
The twelfth, an Erythropus.
And the thirteenth, a Tinnunculus.
There's a nice little lesson to entertain a parish school-boy with,
beginning his natural history of birds!
6. There are not so many varieties of robin as of hawk, but the
scientific classifiers are not to be beaten. If they cannot find a
number of similar birds to give different names to, they will give two
names to the same one. Here are two pictures of your own redbreast, out
of the two best modern works on ornithology. In one, it is called
"Motacilla rubecula;" in the other, "Rubecula familiaris."
7. It is indeed one of the most serious, as one of the most absurd,
weaknesses, of modern naturalists to imagine that _any_ presently
invented nomenclature can stand, even were it adopted by the consent of
nations, instead of the conceit of individuals. It will take fifty
years' digestion before the recently ascertained elements of natural
science can permit the arrangement of species in any permanently (even
over a limited period) namable order; nor then, unless a great man is
born to perceive and exhibit such order. In the meantime, the simplest
and most descriptive nomenclature is the best. Every one of these
birds, for instance, might be called falco in Latin, hawk in English,
some word being added to distinguish the genus, which should describe
its principal aspect or habit. Falco montium, Mountain Hawk; Falco
silvarum, Wood Hawk; Falco procellarum, Sea Hawk; and the like. Then,
one descriptive epithet would mark species. Falco montium, aureus,
Golden Eagle; Falco silvarum, apivorus, Honey Buzzard; and so on; and
the naturalists of Vienna, Paris, and London should confirm the names
of known creatures, in conclave, once every half-century, and let them
so stand for the next fifty years.
8. In the meantime, you yourselves, or, to speak more generally, the
young rising scholars of England,--all of you who care for life as well
as literature, and for spirit,--even the poor souls of birds,--as well
as lettering of their classes in books,--you, with all care, should
cherish the old Saxon-English and Norman-French names of birds, and
ascertain them with the most affectionate research--never despising
even the rudest or most provincial forms: all of them will, some day or
other, give you clue to historical points of interest. Take, for
example, the common English name of this low-flying falcon, the most
tamable and affectionate of his tribe, and therefore, I suppose,
fastest vanishing from field and wood, the buzzard. That name comes
from the Latin "buteo," still retained by the ornithologists; but, in
its original form, valueless, to you. But when you get it comfortably
corrupted into Provençal "Busac," (whence gradually the French busard,
and our buzzard,) you get from it the delightful compound "busacador,"
"adorer of buzzards"--meaning, generally, a sporting person; and then
you have Dante's Bertrand de Born, the first troubadour of war, bearing
witness to you how the love of mere hunting and falconry was already,
in his day, degrading the military classes, and, so far from being a
necessary adjunct of the noble disposition of lover or soldier, was,
even to contempt, showing itself separate from both.
"Le ric home, cassador,
M'enneion, e'l buzacador.
Parlan de volada, d'austor,
Ne jamais, d'armas, ni d'amor."
The rich man, the chaser,
Tires me to death; and the adorer of buzzards.
They talk of covey and hawk,
And never of arms, nor of love.
"Cassador," of course, afterwards becomes "chasseur," and "austor"
"vautour." But after you have read this, and familiarized your ear with
the old word, how differently Milton's phrase will ring to you,--"Those
who thought no better of the Living God than of a buzzard idol,"--and
how literal it becomes, when we think of the actual difference between
a member of Parliament in Milton's time, and the Busacador of to-day;--and
all this freshness and value in the reading, observe, come of your
keeping the word which great men have used for the bird, instead of
letting the anatomists blunder out a new one from their Latin
dictionaries.
9. There are not so many namable varieties, I just now said, of robin
as of falcon; but this is somewhat inaccurately stated. Those thirteen
birds represented a very large proportion of the entire group of the
birds of prey, which in my sevenfold classification I recommended you
to call universally, "hawks." The robin is only one of the far greater
multitude of small birds which live almost indiscriminately on grain or
insects, and which I recommended you to call generally "sparrows"; but
of the robin itself, there are two important European varieties--one
red-breasted, and the other blue-breasted.
10. You probably, some of you, never heard of the blue-breast; very
few, certainly, have seen one alive, and, if alive, certainly not wild
in England.
Here is a picture of it, daintily done,[7] and you can see the pretty
blue shield on its breast, perhaps, at this distance. Vain shield, if
ever the fair little thing is wretched enough to set foot on English
ground! I find the last that was seen was shot at Margate so long ago
as 1842,--and there seems to be no official record of any visit before
that, since Mr. Thomas Embledon shot one on Newcastle town moor in
1816. But this rarity of visit to us is strange; other birds have no
such clear objection to being shot, and really seem to come to England
expressly for the purpose. And yet this blue-bird--(one can't say "blue
robin"--I think we shall have to call him "bluet," like the
cornflower)--stays in Sweden, where it sings so sweetly that it is
called "a hundred tongues."
[7] Mr. Gould's, in his "Birds of Great Britain."
11. That, then, is the utmost which the lords of land, and masters of
science, do for us in their watch upon our feathered suppliants. One
kills them, the other writes classifying epitaphs.
We have next to ask what the poets, painters, and monks have done.
The poets--among whom I affectionately and reverently class the sweet
singers of the nursery, mothers and nurses--have done much; very nearly
all that I care for your thinking of. The painters and monks, the one
being so greatly under the influence of the other, we may for the
present class together; and may almost sum their contributions to
ornithology in saying that they have plucked the wings from birds, to
make angels of men, and the claws from birds, to make devils of men.
If you were to take away from religious art these two great helps of
its--I must say, on the whole, very feeble--imagination; if you were to
take from it, I say, the power of putting wings on shoulders, and claws
on fingers and toes, how wonderfully the sphere of its angelic and
diabolic characters would be contracted! Reduced only to the sources of
expression in face or movements, you might still find in good early
sculpture very sufficient devils; but the best angels would resolve
themselves, I think, into little more than, and not often into so much
as, the likenesses of pretty women, with that grave and (I do not say
it ironically) majestic expression which they put on, when, being very
fond of their husbands and children, they seriously think either the
one or the other have misbehaved themselves.
12. And it is not a little discouraging for me, and may well make you
doubtful of my right judgment in this endeavor to lead you into closer
attention to the bird, with its wings and claws still in its own
possession;--it is discouraging, I say, to observe that the beginning
of such more faithful and accurate observation in former art, is
exactly coeval with the commencement of its decline. The feverish and
ungraceful natural history of Paul, called, "of the birds," Paolo degli
Uccelli, produced, indeed, no harmful result on the minds of his
contemporaries, they watched in him, with only contemptuous admiration,
the fantasy of zoological instinct which filled his house with painted
dogs, cats, and birds, because he was too poor to fill it with real
ones. Their judgment of this morbidly naturalistic art was conclusively
expressed by the sentence of Donatello, when going one morning into the
Old Market, to buy fruit, and finding the animal painter uncovering a
picture, which had cost him months of care, (curiously symbolic in its
subject, the infidelity of St. Thomas, of the investigatory fingering
of the natural historian,) "Paul, my friend," said Donatello, "thou art
uncovering the picture just when thou shouldst be shutting it up."
13. No harm, therefore, I repeat, but, on the contrary, some wholesome
stimulus to the fancy of men like Luca and Donatello themselves, came
of the grotesque and impertinent zoology of Uccello.
But the fatalest institutor of proud modern anatomical and scientific
art, and of all that has polluted the dignity, and darkened the
charity, of the greater ages, was Antonio Pollajuolo of Florence.
Antonio (that is to say) the Poulterer--so named from the trade of his
grandfather, and with just so much of his grandfather's trade left in
his own disposition, that being set by Lorenzo Ghiberti to complete one
of the ornamental festoons of the gates of the Florentine Baptistery,
there, (says Vasari) "Antonio produced a quail, which may still be
seen, and is so beautiful, nay, so perfect, that it wants nothing but
the power of flight."
14. Here, the morbid tendency was as attractive as it was subtle.
Ghiberti himself fell under the influence of it; allowed the borders of
his gates, with their fluttering birds and bossy fruits, to dispute the
spectators' favor with the religious subjects they inclosed; and, from
that day forward, minuteness and muscularity were, with curious harmony
of evil, delighted in together; and the lancet and the microscope, in
the hands of fools, were supposed to be complete substitutes for
imagination in the souls of wise men: so that even the best artists are
gradually compelled, or beguiled, into compliance with the curiosity of
their day; and Francia, in the city of Bologna, is held to be a "kind
of god, more particularly" (again I quote Vasari) "after he had painted
a set of caparisons for the Duke of Urbino, on which he depicted a
great forest all on fire, and whence there rushes forth an immense
number of every kind of animal, with several human figures. This
terrific, yet truly beautiful representation, was all the more highly
esteemed for the time that had been expended on it in the plumage of
the birds, and other minutiæ in the delineation of the different
animals, and in the diversity of the branches and leaves of the various
trees seen therein;" and thenceforward the catastrophe is direct, to
the ornithological museums which Breughel painted for gardens of Eden,
and to the still life and dead game of Dutch celebrities.
15. And yet I am going to invite you to-day to examine, down to almost
microscopic detail, the aspect of a small bird, and to invite you to do
this, as a most expedient and sure step in your study of the greatest
art.
But the difference in our motive of examination will entirely alter the
result. To paint birds that we may show how minutely we can paint, is
among the most contemptible occupations of art. To paint them, that we
may show how beautiful they are, is not indeed one of its highest, but
quite one of its pleasantest and most useful; it is a skill within the
reach of every student of average capacity, and which, so far as
acquired, will assuredly both make their hearts kinder, and their lives
happier.
Without further preamble, I will ask you to look to-day, more carefully
than usual, at your well-known favorite, and to think about him with
some precision.
16. And first, Where does he come from? I stated that my lectures were
to be on English and Greek birds; but we are apt to fancy the robin all
our own. How exclusively, do you suppose, he really belongs to us? You
would think this was the first point to be settled in any book about
him. I have hunted all my books through, and can't tell you how much he
is our own, or how far he is a traveler.
And, indeed, are not all our ideas obscure about migration itself? You
are broadly told that a bird travels, and how wonderful it is that it
finds its way; but you are scarcely ever told, or led to think, what it
really travels for--whether for food, for warmth, or for seclusion--and
how the traveling is connected with its fixed home. Birds have not
their town and country houses,--their villas in Italy, and shooting
boxes in Scotland. The country in which they build their nests is their
proper home,--the country, that is to say, in which they pass the
spring and summer. Then they go south in the winter, for food and
warmth; but in what lines, and by what stages? The general definition
of a migrant in this hemisphere is a bird that goes north to build its
nest, and south for the winter; but, then, the one essential point to
know about it is the breadth and latitude of the zone it properly
inhabits,--that is to say, in which it builds its nest; next, its
habits of life, and extent and line of southing in the winter; and
finally, its manner of traveling.
17. Now, here is this entirely familiar bird, the robin. Quite the
first thing that strikes me about it, looking at it as a painter, is
the small effect it seems to have had on the minds of the southern
nations. I trace nothing of it definitely, either in the art or
literature of Greece or Italy. I find, even, no definite name for it;
you don't know if Lesbia's "passer" had a red breast, or a blue, or a
brown. And yet Mr. Gould says it is abundant in all parts of Europe, in
all the islands of the Mediterranean, and in Madeira and the Azores.
And then he says--(now notice the puzzle of this),--"In many parts of
the Continent it is a migrant, and, contrary to what obtains with us,
is there treated as a vagrant, for there is scarcely a country across
the water in which it is not shot down and eaten."
"In many parts of the Continent it is a migrant." In what parts--how
far--in what manner?
18. In none of the old natural history books can I find any account of
the robin as a traveler, but there is, for once, some sufficient reason
for their reticence. He has a curious fancy in his manner of traveling.
Of all birds, you would think he was likely to do it in the cheerfulest
way, and he does it in the saddest. Do you chance to have read, in the
Life of Charles Dickens, how fond he was of taking long walks in the
night and alone? The robin, en voyage, is the Charles Dickens of birds.
He always travels in the night, and alone; rests, in the day, wherever
day chances to find him; sings a little, and pretends he hasn't been
anywhere. He goes as far, in the winter, as the north-west of Africa;
and in Lombardy, arrives from the south early in March; but does not
stay long, going on into the Alps, where he prefers wooded and wild
districts. So, at least, says my Lombard informant.
I do not find him named in the list of Cretan birds; but even if often
seen, his dim red breast was little likely to make much impression on
the Greeks, who knew the flamingo, and had made it, under the name of
Phoenix or Phoenicopterus, the center of their myths of scarlet birds.
They broadly embraced the general aspect of the smaller and more
obscure species, under the term [Greek: xonthos], which, as I
understand their use of it, exactly implies the indescribable silky
brown, the groundwork of all other color in so many small birds, which
is indistinct among green leaves, and absolutely identifies itself with
dead ones, or with mossy stems.
19. I think I show it you more accurately in the robin's back than I
could in any other bird; its mode of transition into more brilliant
color is, in him, elementarily simple; and although there is nothing,
or rather because there is nothing, in his plumage, of interest like
that of tropical birds, or even of our own game-birds, I think it will
be desirable for you to learn first from the breast of the robin what a
feather is. Once knowing that, thoroughly, we can further learn from
the swallow what a wing is; from the chough what a beak is; and from
the falcon what a claw is.
I must take care, however, in neither of these last two particulars, to
do injustice to our little English friend here; and before we come to
his feathers, must ask you to look at his bill and his feet.
20. I do not think it is distinctly enough felt by us that the beak of
a bird is not only its mouth, but its hand, or rather its two hands.
For, as its arms and hands are turned into wings, all it has to depend
upon, in economical and practical life, is its beak. The beak,
therefore, is at once its sword, its carpenter's tool-box, and its
dressing-case; partly also its musical instrument; all this besides its
function of seizing and preparing the food, in which functions alone it
has to be a trap, carving-knife, and teeth, all in one.
21. It is this need of the beak's being a mechanical tool which chiefly
regulates the form of a bird's face, as opposed to a four-footed
animal's. If the question of food were the only one, we might wonder
why there were not more four-footed creatures living on seeds than
there are; or why those that do--field-mice and the like--have not
beaks instead of teeth. But the fact is that a bird's beak is by no
means a perfect eating or food-seizing instrument. A squirrel is far
more dexterous with a nut than a cockatoo; and a dog manages a bone
incomparably better than an eagle. But the beak has to do so much more!
Pruning feathers, building nests, and the incessant discipline in
military arts, are all to be thought of, as much as feeding.
Soldiership, especially, is a much more imperious necessity among birds
than quadrupeds. Neither lions nor wolves habitually use claws or teeth
in contest with their own species; but birds, for their partners, their
nests, their hunting-grounds, and their personal dignity, are nearly
always in contention; their courage is unequaled by that of any other
race of animals capable of comprehending danger; and their pertinacity
and endurance have, in all ages, made them an example to the brave, and
an amusement to the base, among mankind.
22. Nevertheless, since as sword, as trowel, or as pocket-comb, the
beak of the bird has to be pointed, the collection of seeds may be
conveniently intrusted to this otherwise penetrative instrument, and
such food as can only be obtained by probing crevices, splitting open
fissures, or neatly and minutely picking things up, is allotted,
pre-eminently, to the bird species.
The food of the robin, as you know, is very miscellaneous. Linnæus says
of the Swedish one, that it is "delectatus euonymi baccis,"--"delighted
with dogwood berries,"--the dogwood growing abundantly in Sweden, as
once in Forfarshire, where it grew, though only a bush usually in the
south, with trunks a foot or eighteen inches in diameter, and the tree
thirty feet high. But the Swedish robin's taste for its berries is to
be noted by you, because, first, the dogwood berry is commonly said to
be so bitter that it is not eaten by birds (Loudon, "Arboretum," ii.,
497, 1.); and, secondly, because it is a pretty coincidence that this
most familiar of household birds should feed fondly from the tree which
gives the housewife her spindle,--the proper name of the dogwood in
English, French, and German being alike "Spindle-tree." It feeds,
however, with us, certainly, most on worms and insects. I am not sure
how far the following account of its mode of dressing its dinners may
be depended on: I take it from an old book on Natural History, but find
it, more or less, confirmed by others: "It takes a worm by one
extremity in its beak, and beats it on the ground till the inner part
comes away. Then seizing it in a similar manner by the other end, it
entirely cleanses the outer part, which alone it eats."
One's first impression is that this must be a singularly unpleasant
operation for the worm, however fastidiously delicate and exemplary in
the robin. But I suppose the real meaning is, that as a worm lives by
passing earth through its body, the robin merely compels it to quit
this--not ill-gotten, indeed, but now quite unnecessary--wealth. We
human creatures, who have lived the lives of worms, collecting dust,
are served by Death in exactly the same manner.
23. You will find that the robin's beak, then, is a very prettily
representative one of general bird power. As a weapon, it is very
formidable indeed; he can kill an adversary of his own kind with one
blow of it in the throat; and is so pugnacious, "valde pugnax," says
Linnæus, "ut non una arbor duos capiat erithacos,"--"no single tree can
hold two cock-robins;" and for precision of seizure, the little flat
hook at the end of the upper mandible is one of the most delicately
formed points of forceps which you can find among the grain eaters. But
I pass to one of his more special perfections.
24. He is very notable in the exquisite silence and precision of his
movements, as opposed to birds who either creak in flying, or waddle in
walking. "Always quiet," says Gould, "for the silkiness of his plumage
renders his movements noiseless, and the rustling of his wings is never
heard, any more than his tread on earth, over which he bounds with
amazing sprightliness." You know how much importance I have always
given, among the fine arts, to good dancing. If you think of it, you
will find one of the robin's very chief ingratiatory faculties is his
dainty and delicate movement,--his footing it featly here and there.
Whatever prettiness there may be in his red breast, at his brightest he
can always be outshone by a brickbat. But if he is rationally proud of
anything about him, I should think a robin must be proud of his legs.
Hundreds of birds have longer and more imposing ones--but for real
neatness, finish, and precision of action, commend me to his fine
little ankles, and fine little feet; this long stilted process, as you
know, corresponding to our ankle-bone. Commend me, I say, to the robin
for use of his ankles--he is, of all birds, the pre-eminent and
characteristic Hopper; none other so light, so pert, or so swift.
25. We must not, however, give too much credit to his legs in this
matter. A robin's hop is half a flight; he hops, very essentially, with
wings and tail, as well as with his feet, and the exquisitely rapid
opening and quivering of the tail-feathers certainly give half the
force to his leap. It is in this action that he is put among the
motacillae, or wagtails; but the ornithologists have no real business
to put him among them. The swing of the long tail feathers in the true
wagtail is entirely consequent on its motion, not impulsive of it--the
tremulous shake is _after_ alighting. But the robin leaps with wing,
tail, and foot, all in time, and all helping each other. Leaps, I say;
and you check at the word; and ought to check: you look at a bird
hopping, and the motion is so much a matter of course, you never think
how it is done. But do you think you would find it easy to hop like a
robin if you had two--all but wooden--legs, like this?
26. I have looked wholly in vain through all my books on birds, to find
some account of the muscles it uses in hopping, and of the part of the
toes with which the spring is given. I must leave you to find out that
for yourselves; it is a little bit of anatomy which I think it highly
desirable for you to know, but which it is not my business to teach
you. Only observe, this is the point to be made out. You leap
yourselves, with the toe and ball of the foot; but, in that power of
leaping, you lose the faculty of grasp; on the contrary, with your
hands, you grasp as a bird with its feet. But you cannot hop on your
hands. A cat, a leopard, and a monkey, leap or grasp with equal ease;
but the action of their paws in leaping is, I imagine, from the fleshy
ball of the foot; while in the bird, characteristically [Greek:
gampsônux], this fleshy ball is reduced to a boss or series of bosses,
and the nails are elongated into sickles or horns; nor does the
springing power seem to depend on the development of the bosses. They
are far more developed in an eagle than a robin; but you know how
unpardonably and preposterously awkward an eagle is when he hops. When
they are most of all developed, the bird walks, runs, and digs well,
but leaps badly.
27. I have no time to speak of the various forms of the ankle itself,
or of the scales of armor, more apparent than real, by which the foot
and ankle are protected. The use of this lecture is not either to
describe or to exhibit these varieties to you, but so to awaken your
attention to the real points of character, that, when you have a bird's
foot to draw, you may do so with intelligence and pleasure, knowing
whether you want to express force, grasp, or firm ground pressure, or
dexterity and tact in motion. And as the actions of the foot and the
hand in man are made by every great painter perfectly expressive of the
character of mind, so the expressions of rapacity, cruelty, or force of
seizure, in the harpy, the gryphon, and the hooked and clawed evil
spirits of early religious art, can only be felt by extreme attention
to the original form.
28. And now I return to our main question, for the robin's breast to
answer, "What is a feather?" You know something about it already; that
it is composed of a quill, with its lateral filaments terminating
generally, more or less, in a point; that these extremities of the
quills, lying over each other like the tiles of a house, allow the wind
and rain to pass over them with the least possible resistance, and form
a protection alike from the heat and the cold; which, in structure much
resembling the scale-armor assumed by man for very different objects,
is, in fact, intermediate, exactly, between the fur of beasts and the
scales of fishes; having the minute division of the one, and the
armor-like symmetry and succession of the other.
29. Not merely symmetry, observe, but extreme flatness. Feathers are
smoothed down, as a field of corn by wind with rain; only the swathes
laid in beautiful order. They are fur, so structurally placed as to
imply, and submit to, the perpetually swift forward motion. In fact, I
have no doubt the Darwinian theory on the subject is that the feathers
of birds once stuck up all erect, like the bristles of a brush, and
have only been blown flat by continual flying.
Nay, we might even sufficiently represent the general manner of
conclusion in the Darwinian system by the statement that if you fasten
a hair-brush to a mill-wheel, with the handle forward, so as to develop
itself into a neck by moving always in the same direction, and within
continual hearing of a steam-whistle, after a certain number of
revolutions the hair-brush will fall in love with the whistle; they
will marry, lay an egg, and the produce will be a nightingale.
30. Whether, however, a hog's bristle can turn into a feather or not,
it is vital that you should know the present difference between them.
The scientific people will tell you that a feather is composed of three
parts--the down, the laminæ, and the shaft.
But the common-sense method of stating the matter is that a feather is
composed of two parts, a shaft with lateral filaments. For the greater
part of the shaft's length, these filaments are strong and nearly
straight, forming, by their attachment, a finely warped sail, like that
of a wind-mill. But towards the root of the feather they suddenly
become weak, and confusedly flexible, and form the close down which
immediately protects the bird's body.
To show you the typical arrangement of these parts, I choose, as I have
said, the robin; because, both in his power of flying, and in his
color, he is a moderate and balanced bird;--not turned into nothing but
wings, like a swallow, or nothing but neck and tail, like a peacock.
And first for his flying power. There is one of the long feathers of
robin's wing, and here (Fig. 1) the analysis of its form.
31. First, in pure outline (A), seen from above, it is very nearly a
long oval, but with this peculiarity, that it has, as it were,
projecting shoulders at _a_ 1 and _a_ 2. I merely desire you to observe
this, in passing, because one usually thinks of the contour as sweeping
unbroken from the root to the point. I have not time to-day to enter on
any discussion of the reason for it, which will appear when we examine
the placing of the wing feathers for their stroke.
Now, I hope you are getting accustomed to the general method in which I
give you the analysis of all forms--leaf, or feather, or shell, or
limb. First, the plan; then the profile; then the cross-section.
I take next, the profile of my feather (B, Fig. 1), and find that it is
twisted as the sail of a windmill is, but more distinctly, so that you
can always see the upper surface of the feather at its root, and the
under at its end. Every primary wing-feather, in the fine flyers, is
thus twisted; and is best described as a sail striking with the power
of a cimeter, but with the flat instead of the edge.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
(Twice the size of reality.)
A
_a_ 1
_a_ 2
B]
32. Further, you remember that on the edges of the broad side of
feathers you find always a series of undulations, irregularly sequent,
and lapping over each other like waves on sand. You might at first
imagine that this appearance was owing to a slight ruffling or disorder
of the filaments; but it is entirely normal, and, I doubt not, so
constructed, in order to insure a redundance of material in the plume,
so that no accident or pressure from wind may leave a gap anywhere. How
this redundance is obtained you will see in a moment by bending any
feather the wrong way. Bend, for instance, this plume, B, Fig. 2, into
the reversed curve, A, Fig. 2; then all the filaments of the plume
become perfectly even, and there are no waves at the edge. But let the
plume return into its proper form, B, and the tissue being now
contracted into a smaller space, the edge waves are formed in it
instantly.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.
A
B]
Hitherto, I have been speaking only of the filaments arranged for the
strength and continuity of the energetic plume; they are entirely
different when they are set together for decoration instead of force.
After the feather of the robin's wing, let us examine one from his
breast.
33. I said, just now, he might be at once outshone by a brickbat.
Indeed, the day before yesterday, sleeping at Lichfield, and seeing,
the first thing when I woke in the morning, (for I never put down the
blinds of my bedroom windows,) the not uncommon sight in an English
country town of an entire house-front of very neat, and very flat, and
very red bricks, with very exactly squared square windows in it; and
not feeling myself in anywise gratified or improved by the spectacle, I
was thinking how in this, as in all other good, the too much destroyed
all. The breadth of a robin's breast in brick-red is delicious, but a
whole house-front of brick-red as vivid, is alarming. And yet one
cannot generalize even that trite moral with any safety--for infinite
breadth of green is delightful, however green; and of sea or sky,
however blue.
You must note, however, that the robin's charm is greatly helped by the
pretty space of gray plumage which separates the red from the brown
back, and sets it off to its best advantage. There is no great
brilliancy in it, even so relieved; only the finish of it is exquisite.
34. If you separate a single feather, you will find it more like a
transparent hollow shell than a feather (so delicately rounded the
surface of it),--gray at the root, where the down is,--tinged, and only
tinged, with red at the part that overlaps and is visible; so that,
when three or four more feathers have overlapped it again, all
together, with their joined red, are just enough to give the color
determined upon, each of them contributing a tinge. There are about
thirty of these glowing filaments on each side, (the whole being no
larger across than a well-grown currant,) and each of these is itself
another exquisite feather, with central quill and lateral webs, whose
filaments are not to be counted.
The extremity of these breast plumes parts slightly into two, as you
see in the peacock's, and many other such decorative ones. The
transition from the entirely leaf-like shape of the active plume, with
its oblique point, to the more or less symmetrical dualism of the
decorative plume, corresponds with the change from the pointed green
leaf to the dual, or heart-shaped, petal of many flowers. I shall
return to this part of our subject, having given you, I believe, enough
of detail for the present.
35. I have said nothing to-day of the mythology of the bird, though I
told you that would always be, for us, the most important part of its
natural history. But I am obliged, sometimes, to take what we
immediately want, rather than what, ultimately, we shall need chiefly.
In the second place, you probably, most of you, know more of the
mythology of the robin than I do, for the stories about it are all
northern, and I know scarcely any myths but the Italian and Greek. You
will find under the name "Robin," in Miss Yonge's exhaustive and
admirable "History of Christian Names," the various titles of honor and
endearment connected with him, and with the general idea of
redness,--from the bishop called "Bright Red Fame," who founded the
first great Christian church on the Rhine, (I am afraid of your
thinking I mean a pun, in connection with robins, if I tell you the
locality of it,) down through the Hoods, and Roys, and Grays, to Robin
Goodfellow, and Spenser's "Hobbinol," and our modern "Hob,"--joining on
to the "goblin," which comes from the old Greek [Greek: Kobalos]. But I
cannot let you go without asking you to compare the English and French
feeling about small birds, in Chaucer's time, with our own on the same
subject. I say English and French, because the original French of the
Romance of the Rose shows more affection for birds than even Chaucer's
translation, passionate as he is, always, in love for any one of his
little winged brothers or sisters. Look, however, either in the French
or English at the description of the coming of the God of Love, leading
his carol-dance, in the garden of the Rose.
His dress is embroidered with figures of flowers and of beasts; but
about him fly the _living_ birds. The French is:
Il etoit tout convert d'oisiaulx
De rossignols et de papegaux
De calendre, et de mesangel.
Il semblait que ce fut une angle
Qui fuz tout droit venuz du ciel.
36. There are several points of philology in this transitional French,
and in Chaucer's translation, which it is well worth your patience to
observe. The monkish Latin "angelus," you see, is passing through the
very unpoetical form "angle," into "ange;" but, in order to get a rhyme
with it in that angular form, the French troubadour expands the bird's
name, "mesange," quite arbitrarily, into "mesangel." Then Chaucer,
not liking the "mes" at the beginning of the word, changes that
unscrupulously into "arch;" and gathers in, though too shortly, a
lovely bit from another place about the nightingales flying so close
round Love's head that they strike some of the leaves off his crown of
roses; so that the English runs thus:
But nightingales, a full great rout
That flien over his head about,
The leaves felden as they flien
And he was all with birds wrien,
With popinjay, with nightingale,
With chelaundre, and with wodewale,
With finch, with lark, and with archangel.
He seemed as he were an angell,
That down were comen from Heaven clear.
Now, when I first read this bit of Chaucer, without referring to the
original, I was greatly delighted to find that there was a bird in his
time called an archangel, and set to work, with brightly hopeful
industry, to find out what it was. I was a little discomfited by
finding that in old botany the word only meant "dead-nettle," but was
still sanguine about my bird, till I found the French form descend, as
you have seen, into a mesangel, and finally into mesange, which is a
provincialism from [Greek: meion], and means, the smallest of
birds--or, specially here,--a titmouse. I have seldom had a less
expected or more ignominious fall from the clouds.