suppose to be above the visible nature about you. If you are not
inclined to look at the wings of birds, which God has given you to
handle and to see, much less are you to contemplate, or draw
imaginations of, the wings of angels, which you can't see. Know your
own world first--not denying any other, but being quite sure that the
place in which you are now put is the place with which you are now
concerned; and that it will be wiser in you to think the gods
themselves may appear in the form of a dove, or a swallow, than that,
by false theft from the form of dove or swallow, you can represent the
aspect of gods.
79. One sweet instance of such simple conception, in the end of the
Odyssey, must surely recur to your minds in connection with our subject
of to-day, but you may not have noticed the recurrent manner in which
Homer insists on the thought. When Ulysses first bends and strings his
bow, the vibration of the chord is shrill, "like the note of a
swallow." A poor and unwarlike simile, it seems! But in the next book,
when Ulysses stands with his bow lifted, and Telemachus has brought the
lances, and laid them at his feet, and Athena comes to his side to
encourage him,--do you recollect the gist of her speech? "You fought,"
she says, "nine years for the sake of Helen, and for another's
house:--now, returned, after all those wanderings, and under your own
roof, for it, and its treasures, will you not fight, then?" And she
herself flies up to the house-roof, and thence, _in the form of the
swallow_, guides the arrows of vengeance for the violation of the
sanctities of home.
80. To-day, then, I believe verily for the first time, I have been able
to put before you some means of guidance to understand the beauty of
the bird which lives with you in your own houses, and which purifies
for you, from its insect pestilence, the air that you breathe. Thus the
sweet domestic thing has done, for men, at least these four thousand
years. She has been their companion, not of the home merely, but of the
hearth, and the threshold; companion only endeared by departure, and
showing better her loving-kindness by her faithful return. Type
sometimes of the stranger, she has softened us to hospitality; type
always of the suppliant, she has enchanted us to mercy; and in her
feeble presence, the cowardice, or the wrath, of sacrilege has changed
into the fidelities of sanctuary. Herald of our summer, she glances
through our days of gladness; numberer of our years, she would teach us
to apply our hearts to wisdom;--and yet, so little have we regarded
her, that this very day, scarcely able to gather from all I can find
told of her enough to explain so much as the unfolding of her wings, I
can tell you nothing of her life--nothing of her journeying: I cannot
learn how she builds, nor how she chooses the place of her wandering,
nor how she traces the path of her return. Remaining thus blind and
careless to the true ministries of the humble creature whom God has
really sent to serve us, we in our pride, thinking ourselves surrounded
by the pursuivants of the sky, can yet only invest them with majesty by
giving them the calm of the bird's motion, and shade of the bird's
plume:--and after all, it is well for us, if, when even for God's best
mercies, and in His temples marble-built, we think that, "with angels
and archangels, and all the company of Heaven, we laud and magnify His
glorious name"--well for us, if our attempt be not only an insult, and
His ears open rather to the inarticulate and unintended praise, of "the
Swallow, twittering from her straw-built shed."
LECTURE III.
THE DABCHICKS.
81. I believe that somewhere I have already observed, but permit
myself, for immediate use, to repeat what I cannot but think the
sagacious observation,--that the arrangement of any sort of animals
must be, to say the least, imperfect, if it be founded only on the
characters of their feet. And, of all creatures, one would think birds
were those which, continually dispensing with the use of their feet,
would require for their classification some attention also to be paid
to their bodies and wings,--not to say their heads and tails.
Nevertheless, the ornithological arrangement at present in vogue may
suffice for most scientific persons; but in grouping birds, so that the
groups may be understood and remembered by children, I must try to make
them a little more generally descriptive.
82. In talking of parrots, for instance, it is only a small part of the
creature's nature which is told by its scientific name of 'Scansor,' or
'Climber.' That it only clutches with its claws, and does not snatch or
strike with them;--that it helps itself about with its beak, on
branches, or bars of cage, in an absurd manner, as if partly imagining
itself hung up in a larder, are by no means the most vital matters
about the bird. Whereas, that its beak is always extremely short, and
is bent down so roundly that the angriest parrot cannot peck, but only
_bite_, if you give it a chance; that it _can_ bite, pinch, or
otherwise apply the mechanism of a pair of nut-crackers from the back
of its head, with effect; that it has a little black tongue capable of
much talk; above all, that it is mostly gay in plumage, often to
vulgarity, and always to pertness;--all these characters should surely
be represented to the apprehensive juvenile mind, in sum; and not
merely the bird's climbing qualities.
83. Again, that the race of birds called in Latin 'Rasores' _do_, in
the search for their food, usually scratch, and kick out their legs
behind, living for the most part in gravelly or littery places, of
which the hidden treasures are only to be discovered in that manner,
seems to me no supremely interesting custom of the animal's life, but
only a _manner_ of its household, or threshold, economy. But that the
tribe, on the whole, is unambitiously domestic, and never predatory;
that they fly little and low, eat much of what they can pick up without
trouble--and are _themselves_ always excellent eating;--yet so
exemplary in their own domestic cares and courtesies that one is
ashamed to eat them except in eggs;--that their plumage is for the most
part warm brown, delicately and even bewitchingly spotty;--and that, in
the goodliest species, the spots become variegated, and inlaid as in a
Byzantine pavement, deepening to imperial purple and azure, and
lightening into luster of innumerable eyes;--all this, I hold, very
clearly and positively, should be explained to children as a part of
science, quite as exact, and infinitely more gracious, than that which
reckons up the whole tribe of loving and luminous creatures under the
feebly descriptive term of 'Scratchers.'
I will venture therefore to recommend my younger readers, in classing
birds, to think of them literally from top to toe--from toe to top I
should say,--foot, body, and head, studying, with the body, the wings
that bear it; and with the head, what brains it can bring to bear on
practical matters, and what sense on sentimental. But indeed,
primarily, you have to consider whether the bird altogether may not be
little more than a fat, cheerful little stomach, in a spotted
waistcoat, and with legs to it. That is the main definition of a great
many birds--meant to eat all day, chiefly, grubs, or grain--not at all,
unless under wintry and calamitous conditions, meant to fast painfully,
or be in concern about their food. Faultless in digestion--dinner
lasting all day long, with the delight of social intercourse--various
chirp and chatter. Flying or fluttering in a practical, not stately,
manner: hopping and creeping intelligently. Sociable to man extremely,
building and nestling and rustling about him,--prying and speculating,
curiously watchful of him at his work, if likely to be profitable to
themselves, or even sometimes in mere pitying sympathy, and wonder how
such a wingless and beakless creature can do _any_thing.[17]
[17] Compare 'Paradise of Birds,' (song to the young Roc, page
67,) and see close of lecture for notes on that book.
84. The balance of this kind of bird on its legs is a very important
part of its--diagnosis; (we must have a fine word now and then!) Its
action on the wing, is mere flutter or flirt, in and out of the hedge,
or over it; but its manner of perch, or literally 'bien-séance,' is
admirable matter of interest. So also in the birds which are on the
water what these are on land; picking up anything anywhere; lazy and
fortunate, mostly, themselves; fat, floating, daintiest
darlings;--_their_ balance on the water, also, and under it, in
'ducking,' a most essential part of their business and being.
85. Then, directly opposed to these, in both kinds, you have the birds
which must fast long, and fly far, and watch or fight for their food.
Not stomachic in profile; far from cheerful in disposition; more or
less lonely in habit; or, if gregarious, out of the way of men. The
balance of these on the wing, is no less essential a part of their
picturing, than that of the buntings, robins, and ducks on the foot, or
breast: and therefore, especially the position of the head in flying.
86. Accordingly, for complete ornithology, _every_ bird must be drawn,
as every flower for good botany, both in profile, and looking down upon
it: but for the perchers, the standing profile is the most essential;
and for the falcons and gulls, the flying _plan_,--the outline of the
bird, as it would be seen looking down on it, when its wings were
full-spread.
Then, in connection with these general outlines, we want systematic
plan and profile of the foot and head; but since we can't have
everything at once, let us say the plan of the foot, and profile of the
head, quite accurately given; and for every bird consistently, and to
scale.
Profile and plan in outline; then, at least the _head_ in light and
shade, from life, so as to give the expression of the eye. Fallacious,
this latter, often, as an indication of character; but deeply
significant of habit and power: thus the projecting, full, bead, which
enables the smaller birds to see the smallest insect or grain with good
in it, gives them much of their bright and often arch expression; while
the flattened iris under the beetling brow of the falcons,--projecting,
not in frown, but as roof, to shade the eye from interfering
skylight,--gives them their apparently threatening and ominous gaze;
the iris itself often wide and pale, showing as a lurid saturnine ring
under the shadow of the brow plumes.
87. I speak of things that are to be: very assuredly they will be done,
some day--not far off, by painters educated as gentlemen, in the
strictest sense--working for love and truth, and not for lust and gold.
Much has already been done by good and earnest draughtsmen, who yet had
not received the higher painter's education, which would have enabled
them to see the bird in the greater lights and laws of its form. It is
only here and there, by Dürer, Holbein, Carpaccio, or other such men,
that we get a living bird rightly drawn;[18] but we may be greatly
thankful for the unspared labor, and attentive skill, with which many
illustrations of ornithology have been produced within the last seventy
or eighty years. Far beyond rivalship among them, stands Le Vaillant's
monograph, or dualgraph, on the Birds of Paradise, and Jays: its
plates, exquisitely engraved, and colored with unwearying care by hand,
are insuperable in plume-texture, hue, and action,--spoiled in effect,
unhappily, by the vulgar boughs for sustentation. Next, ranks the
recently issued history of the birds of Lombardy; the lithographs by
Herr Oscar Dressler, superb, but the coloring (chromo-lithotint) poor:
and then, the self-taught, but in some qualities greatly to be
respected, art of Mr. Gould. Of which, I would fain have spoken with
gratitude and admiration in his lifetime; had not I known, that the
qualified expressions necessary for true estimate of his published
plates, would have caused him more pain, than any general praise could
have counteracted or soothed. Without special criticism, and rejoicing
in all the pleasure which any of my young pupils may take in his
drawing,--only guarding them, once for all, against the error of
supposing it exemplary as art,--I use his plates henceforward for
general reference; finding also that, following Mr. Gould's practical
and natural arrangement, I can at once throw together in groups, easily
comprehensible by British children, all they are ever likely to see of
British or Britain-visitant birds: which I find fall, with frank
casting, into these following divisions, not in any important matters
varying from the usual ones, and therefore less offensive, I hope, to
the normal zoologist than my heresies in botany; while yet they enable
me to make what I have to say about our native birds more simply
presentable to young minds.[19]
[18] The Macaw in Sir Joshua's portrait of the Countess of Derby
is a grand example.
[19] See the notes on classification, in the Appendix to the
volume; published, together with the Preface, simultaneously with
this number.
88. 1. The HAWKS come first, of course, massed under the single Latin
term 'Falco,' and next them,
2. The OWLS second, also of course,--unmistakable, these two tribes,
in all types of form, and ways of living.
3. The SWALLOWS I put next these, being connected with the owls by
the Goatsucker, and with the falcons by their flight.
4. The PIES next, whose name has a curious double meaning, derived
partly from the notion of their being painted or speckled birds; and
partly from their being, beyond all others, pecking, or pickax-beaked,
birds. They include, therefore, the Crows, Jays, and Woodpeckers;
historically and practically a most important order of creatures to
man. Next which, I take the great company of the smaller birds of the
dry land, under these following more arbitrary heads.
5. The SONGSTERS. The Thrush, Lark, Blackbird, and Nightingale, and
one or two choristers more. These are connected with the pheasants in
their speckledness, and with the pies in pecking; while the nightingale
leads down to the smaller groups of familiar birds.
6. The ROBINS, going on into the minor warblers, and the Wrens;
the essential character of a Robin being that it should have some front
red in its dress somewhere; and the Cross-bills being included in the
class, partly because they have red in their dress, and partly because
I don't know where else to put them.
7. The CREEPERS and TITS--separated chiefly on the ground of their
minuteness, and subtle little tricks and graces of movement.
8. The SPARROWS, going on into Buntings and Finches.
9. The PHEASANTS (substituting this specific name for that of
Scratchers).
10. The HERONS; for the most part wading and fishing creatures,
but leading up to the Stork, and including any long-legged birds that
run well, such as the Plovers.
11. The DABCHICKS--the subject of our present chapter.
12. The SWANS and GEESE.
13. The DUCKS.
14. The GULLS.
Of these, I take the Dabchicks first, for three sufficient reasons;--that
they give us least trouble,--that they best show what I mean by broad
principles of grouping,--and that they are the effective clasp, if not
center, of all the series; since they are the true link between land
and water birds. We will look at one or two of their leading examples,
before saying more of their position in bird-society. I shall give for
the heading of each article, the name which I propose for the bird in
English children's schools--_Dame_-schools if possible; a perfectly
simple Latin one, and a familiar English one. The varieties of existing
nomenclature will be given in the Appendix, so far as I think them
necessary to be known or remembered.
I.
MERULA FONTIUM. TORRENT-OUZEL.
89. There are very few good popular words which do not unite two or
more ideas, being founded on one, and catching up others as they go
along. Thus I find 'dabchick' to be a corruption of 'dip-chick,'
meaning birds that only dip, and do not dive, or even duck, for any
length of time: but in its broader and customary use it takes up the
idea of dabbling; and, as a class-name, stands for 'dabbling-chick,'
meaning a bird of small size, that neither wades, nor dives, nor runs,
nor swims, nor flies, in a consistent manner; but humorously dabbles,
or dips, or flutters, or trips, or plashes, or paddles, and is always
doing all manner of odd and delightful things: being also very
good-humored, and in consequence, though graceful, inclined to
plumpness;[20] and though it never waddles, sometimes, for a minute or
two, 'toddles,' and now and then looks more like a ball than a bird.
For the most part, being clever, they are also brave, and would be as
tame as any other chickens, if we would let them. They are mostly shore
birds, living at the edge of irregularly broken water, either streams
or sea; and the representative of the whole group with which we will
begin is the mysterious little water-ouzel, or 'oiselle,' properly the
water-blackbird,--Buffon's 'merle d'eau'--for ouzel is the classic and
poetic word for the blackbird, or ouzel-_cock_, "so black of hue," in
'Midsummer Night's Dream.' Johnson gives it from the Saxon 'osle'; but
in Chaucer it must be understood simply as the feminine of oiseau. The
bird in question might, however, be more properly called, as Bewick
calls it, 'water pyot,' or water magpie, for only its back and wings
are black,--its head brown, and breast snow white.
[20] Or in French, 'embonpoint.'
90. And now I must, once for all, get over a difficulty in the
description of birds' costume. I can always describe the neck-feathers,
as such, when birds have any neck to speak of; but when, as the
majority of dabchicks, they have not any,--instead of talking of
'throat-feathers' and 'stomach-feathers,' which both seem to me rather
ugly words, I shall call the breast feathers the 'chemisette,' and all
below them the 'bodice.'
I am now able, without incivility, to distinguish the two families of
Water-ouzel. Both have white chemisettes, but the common water-ouzel
(Cinclus aquaticus of Gould) has a white bodice, and the other a black
one, the bird being called therefore, in ugly Greek, 'Melanogaster,'
'black-stomached.' The black bodice is Norwegian fashion--the white,
English; and I find that in Switzerland there is an intermediate
Robin-ouzel, with a red bodice: but the ornithologists are at variance
as to his 'specific' existence. The chemisette is always white.
91. However dressed, and wherever born, the Ouzel is essentially a
mountain-torrent bird, and, Bewick says, may be seen perched on a stone
in the midst of a stream, in a continual _dipping_ motion, or short
curtsey often repeated, while it is watching for its food, which
consists of small fishes and insects,--water insects, that is to say,
caught mostly at the bottom; many-legged and shrimpy things, according
to Gould's plate. The popular tradition that it can walk under the
water has been denied by scientific people; but there is no doubt
whatever of the fact,--see the authentic evidence of it in the
delightful little monograph of the bird published by the Carlisle
Naturalist's Society; but how the thing is done nobody but the ouzel
knows. Its strong little feet, indeed, have plenty of grip in them, but
cannot lay hold of smooth stones, and Mr. Gould himself does not solve
the problem. "Some assert that it is done by clinging to the pebbles
with its strong claws; others, by considerable exertion and a rapid
movement of the wings. Its silky plumage is impervious to wet; and
hence when the bird returns to the surface, the pearly drops which roll
off into the stream are the only evidence of its recent submersion. It
is, indeed, very interesting to observe _this pretty bird walk down a
stone, quietly descend into the water_, rise again perhaps at a
distance of several yards down the stream, and 'fly'[21] back to the
place it had just left, to perform the same maneuver the next minute,
the silence of the interval broken by its cheerful warbling song."
[21] "Wing its way" in the ornithological language. I shall take
leave usually to substitute the vulgar word 'fly,' for this
poetical phrase.
92. In which, you see, we have the reason for its being called
'water-blackbird,' being, I think, the only one of the dabchicks that
really sings. Some of the others, (sand-pipers) pipe; and others, the
stints, say 'stint' in a charming manner; but none of them _sing_
except the oiselle. Very singularly, the black-bodiced one seems to
like living near manufactories. "The specimen in the Norwich Museum,"
says Mr. Gould, "is the one mentioned by Mr. Lubbock, in 1845, as
'lately' shot at Hellesdon Mills; and two others are stated by the same
author to have been seen at different times by trustworthy observers at
Marlingford and Saxthorpe. Of more recent occurrence I may mention a
male in my own collection, which was brought to me in the flesh, having
been shot in November, 1855, whilst hovering over the river between the
foundry bridge and the ferry. It is not a little singular that a bird
so accustomed to the clear running streams of the north, and the quiet
haunts of the 'silent angler,' should be found, as in this case, almost
within the walls of the city, sporting over a river turbid and
discolored from the neighboring factories, and with the busy noise of
traffic on every side. About the same time that this bird appeared near
the city, three others were observed on more than one occasion on the
Earlham river, by Mr. Fountaine, of Easton, who is well acquainted with
our British birds; but these suddenly disappeared, and were not seen
again."
And all will disappear, and never be seen again, but in skeleton,
ill-covered with camphorated rags of skin, under the present scientific
dispensation; unless some kind-hearted northern squire will let them
have the run and the dip of his brooks; and teach the village children
to let them alone if they like to wade down to the village.
I am sixty-two, and have passed as much time out of those years by
torrent sides as most people. But I have never seen a water-ouzel
alive.
II.
ALLEGRETTA NYMPHÆA. LILY-OUZEL.
93. We have got so far, by help of our first example, in the etymology
of our entire class, as to rest in the easily memorable root 'dab,'
short for dabble, as the foundation of comprehensive nomenclature. But
the earlier (if not Aryan!) root 'dip,' must be taken good heed to,
also, because, as we further study the customs of aquatic chickens, we
shall find that they really mass themselves under the three great heads
of 'Duckers,' birds that duck their heads only, and stick up their
tails in the air;--'Dippers,' birds that take real dips under, but not
far down, in shallow water mostly, for things at the bottom, or else to
get out of harm's way, staying down about as long as we could
ourselves, if we were used to it;--and 'Divers,' who plunge like stones
when they choose,--can go nobody knows how deep in the deep sea,--and
swim under the water just as comfortably as upon it, and as fast, if
not faster.
But although this is clearly the practical and poetical division, we
can't make it a scientific one; for the dippers and dabblers are so
like each other that we must take them together; and so also the
duckers and divers are inseparable in some of their forms: so that, for
convenience of classing, we must keep to the still more general rank I
have given--dabchick, duck, and gull,--the last being essentially the
aerial sea-bird, which _lives_ on the wing.
94. But there is yet one more 'mode of motion' to be thought of, in the
class we are now examining. Several of them ought really to be
described, not as dipchicks, but as _trip_-chicks; being, as far as I
can make out, little in the habit of going under water; but much in the
habit of walking or tripping daintily over it, on such raft or float as
they may find constructed for them by water-lily or other buoyant
leaves. Of these "come and trip it as you come" chicks,--(my emendation
of Milton is surely more reasonable than the emendations of commentators
as a body, for we do not, any of us, like to see our mistresses "trip
it as they _go_")--there are, I find, pictured by Mr. Gould, three
'species,' called by him, Porzana Minuta, Olivaceous Crake; Porzana
Pygmæa, Baillon's Crake; and Porzana Maruetta, Spotted Crake.