part kept a tame guanaco at his estancia, which had a habit resembling
that of our book-stealing sheep. This animal had been captured when
small by some guanaco-hunters, and my friend reared and made a pet
of it. When grown up it associated with the sheep and other domestic
animals and was friendly with the dogs, but spent much of its time
roaming by itself over the plains. He had the run of the house as
well, but at length had to be excluded on account of his passion for
devouring any white linen or cotton which he could get hold of. But
the guanaco, like our sheep, was cunning and would approach the house
from the back and make his way into a bedroom to snatch up and make
off with a towel, night-shirt, handkerchief, or anything he could find
of linen or cotton, so long as it was white. One day my host came in
to get himself ready to attend a meeting and dinner at a neighbouring
estancia, and after putting out his linen on his bed he went into
an adjoining room for a hot bath. Coming back to his bedroom he was
just in time to see his pet guanaco pick up his beautifully-got-up
snow-white shirt from the bed and make a dash for the open door. He
uttered a wild yell, which had no effect, but he was determined not to
lose his shirt, for at that moment he remembered that it was the only
clean one he possessed; he rushed out just as he was with nothing but
a towel round him, and jumping on to his horse, which stood saddled at
the gate, started in pursuit. Away he went, shouting to the dogs to
come and help him recover his shirt. His yell and shouts brought all
the men about the place on the scene, and running out they too mounted
their horses in hot haste and started after him. And away far ahead of
them went the guanaco at a pace no horse could equal, the shirt held
firmly in his teeth waving and flapping like a white banner in the
wind. But from time to time he made a stop, and bringing the shirt down
to the ground would hurriedly tear a piece out of it, then picking it
up would rush on again. The dogs overtook him only to dance round him,
barking joyfully to encourage him to run on and keep the fun going. He
was their friend and playmate, and it was to them nothing but a jolly
sham hunt got up by their sport-loving master for their amusement.
The chase led up the valley of the river, a great flat plain, and
continued for about four to five miles; by that time the precious
shirt had dwindled to something quite small--nothing in fact was left
but the hard starched front, which the guanaco found it difficult to
masticate and swallow. Then at long last the hunt was given up and my
poor shirtless friend in his towel rode mournfully home in the midst
of laughing companions, attended, too, by a lot of dogs, lolling their
tongues out and overflowingly happy at having had such an exciting run.
Let me now come to the subject I sat down to write about--namely,
Mary’s little lamb. It was little to begin with, when my youngest
sister, who was not then very big herself, and was always befriending
forlorn creatures, came in one day from the shepherd’s ranch with a
young lamb which had unhappily lost its mother. Oddly enough this
little sister’s name was Mary--one seldom hears it in these Doris,
Doreen days, but in that distant Mary-Jane-Elizabeth period it was
quite common. And the motherless lamb she had brought in grew to be her
pet lamb, with fleece as white as snow; nor was the whiteness strange
seeing that it was washed every day with scented soap, its beauteous
neck beribboned and often decorated with garlands of scarlet verbenas
which looked exceedingly brilliant against the snowy fleece. A pretty,
sweet-tempered and gentle creature it proved and never developed any
naughty proclivities like the tobacco- and book-plundering sheep of
an earlier date. They were very fond of each other, those two simple
beings, and just as in the old familiar rhyme wherever Mary went her
little lamb would go. But there was a little rift within the lute
which by and by would widen till it made the music mute. The lamb was
excessively playful and frisky, but its mistress had her little lessons
and duties to attend to, and the lamb couldn’t understand it, and often
after frisking and jumping about to challenge the other to a fresh race
in vain it would run away to get up a race or game of some sort with
the youngest of the dogs. The dogs were responsive, so that they were
quite happy together.
We kept eight dogs at that time; two were pointers, all the others just
the common dog of the country, a smooth-haired animal about the size of
a collie. Like all dogs allowed to exist in their own way, they formed
a pack, the most powerful one being their leader and master. They spent
most of their time lying stretched dog-fashion in the sun in some open
place near the house, fast asleep. They had little to do except bark at
strangers approaching the house and to hunt off the cattle that tried
to force their way through the fences into the plantation. They would
also go off on hunting expeditions of their own. Strange playmates and
companions for Libby, as she was named, the pretty pet lamb with fleece
as white as snow; yet so congenial did she find the dogs’ society that
by and by she passed her whole time with them, day and night. When
they came to the door to bark and whine and wag their tails to call
attention to their wants or to be noticed, the lamb would be with them
but would not cross the threshold since the dogs were not permitted in
the rooms. Nor would she come to her mistress when called, and having
discovered that grass was her proper food she wanted nothing that human
beings could give her. Not even a lump of sugar! She was no longer a
pet lamb; she was one of the dogs. The dogs on their part, although
much given to quarrels and fights among themselves, never growled or
snapped at Libby; she never tried to snatch a bone from them, and she
made them a comfortable pillow when they slept and slumbered for hours
at a stretch. And Libby, just to be always with them and to do exactly
as they did, would sleep too. Or rather she would lie stretched out
on the ground pretending to sleep, always with the head of one of the
dogs pillowed on her neck. Two or three or four of the other dogs who
had failed to secure the pillow would lie round her with their heads
pressed against her fleece. They would form a curiously amusing group.
Then if a shrill whistle was emitted by some one, or the cry of “Up and
at ’em,” the lamb would spring like lightning to her feet, throwing
the drowsy dog off, and away she would dash down the avenue to get
outside the plantation and find out what the trouble was. Then the
dogs, shaking off their sleep, would start off and perhaps overtake her
a couple of hundred yards away.
Most amusing of all the lamb’s acting was when the dogs had their
periodical hunting fits, when they would vanish for half a day’s
vizcacha-hunting on the plain, just as fox-terriers and other dogs in
which the hunting instinct still survives steal out of the village to
chase or dig out rabbits on their own account.
The vizcacha is a big rodent and lives in communities, in warrens or
villages composed of a group of huge burrows, and the native dogs are
fond of assaulting these strongholds but seldom succeed in getting at
their quarry. A dog no bigger than a fox-terrier can make his way in
till he comes to grips with the vizcacha, usually with the result that
he gets well punished for his audacity. Our dogs would simply labour
to enlarge the burrows by scratching and biting away the earth and
furiously barking at the animal inside who would emit curious noises
and cries, which the dogs appeared to regard as insults and would only
cause them to redouble their efforts.
On several occasions, when riding on the plain a mile or two from home,
I would come on our dogs--the entire pack and the lamb with them,
engaged in the siege and assault of a vizcacha village or earth. A
funny sight! The dogs would jump up barking and wagging their tails as
if to say, “Here we are, you see, just in the middle of our fight with
no time to spare for friendly conversation.” And back they would fly
to their burrows. The lamb too would dance up to give me a welcome and
then back to her duties. Her part was to go frisking about from burrow
to burrow, now taking a flying leap over the pit-like mouth, then
diving down to see how things were progressing inside, where the dog
was tearing at the earth and trying to force himself in and keeping up
a running dialogue of threats and insults with the beast inside.
But though Libby, in these her dog days, was a continual joy to us, we
thought it best for her own sake to put an end to them. For in spite
of her activities she was in very good condition, and any poor gaucho
who came upon her, hunting with our dogs a few miles from home, would
be justified in saying: “Here is a good fat animal without an ear-mark,
consequently without an owner; and though I find it in the company of
Neighbour So-and-So’s dogs, it can’t be his since he has put no mark
on it, and as I’ve found it I have a right to it, and I’m quite sure
from its appearance that its flesh when roasted will prove tender and
savoury.”
Accordingly we took Libby away from her companions and put her with the
flock, where in due time she would learn that a sheep is a sheep and
not a dog.
* * * * *
There are, I imagine, few old sportsmen, field naturalists, and
observers of animal life generally who have not met with similar
instances of animals of widely different natures, in some instances
natural enemies, living and even acting in harmony together. We see it
chiefly in the domesticated and in tamed wild animals. When visiting
a friend in Patagonia I was greatly astonished one day on going out
with a gun to shoot something followed by the dogs to find a black cat
in their company, and to see her when I fired my first shot actually
dashing off before the dogs to retrieve the bird!
One of the amusing recollections of an old lady friend of mine, a lover
of animals, was of a pet cat and rabbit which had been reared from
babyhood together and were always fed out of one saucer of milk, and
when they grew up from one dish. It was common to see them exchange
foods, and the cat would be seen laboriously gnawing at a cabbage stalk
while the rabbit picked a bone.
My friend Mr. Tregarthen, author of _Wild Life at the Land’s End_,
has just kindly furnished me with two or three remarkable instances
known to him of hunting and hunted animals living together in happy
companionship. One is of a tame fox, taken when small and reared in the
kennels with fox-hounds. When fully grown its great game when the dogs
were taken out for exercise was to scamper off and give them a chase.
Invariably when overtaken it would throw itself on its back and allow
itself to be worried in fun. They never hurt it. Then there are two
instances of otters reared from puppyhood with otter-hounds. In one
case the otter would go otter-hunting with the hounds; in the second
case the otter did not accompany the hounds, or was not allowed to
go with them, but the hounds, although they hunted their quarry with
all the zeal and fury natural to them, refused to bite or hurt it in
any way when they got it. Their friendship with an otter had had a
psychological effect on their otter-hound natures.
XIV
THE SERPENT’S TONGUE
“But now,” says Ruskin, “here’s the first thing, it seems to me,
we’ve got to ask the scientific people what use a serpent has for its
tongue, since it neither works it to talk with, or taste with, or hiss
with, nor, as far as I know, to lick with, and, least of all, to sting
with--and yet, for people who do not know the creature, the little
vibrating forked thread, flicked out of its mouth and back again, as
quick as lightning, is the most striking part of the beast; but what is
the use of it? Nearly every creature but a snake can do some sort of
mischief with its tongue. A woman worries with it, a chameleon catches
flies with it, a cat steals milk with it, a pholas digs holes in the
rock with it, and a gnat digs holes in _us_ with it; but the poor snake
cannot do any manner of harm with it whatsoever; and what is _his_
tongue forked for?”
The writer’s manner in this paragraph, and the unexpectedness of the
mocking question that leaps out at the end, suggest the idea that there
are, in man, two sorts of forked tongues, and that one sort is not
worked for mischief. Certainly few of these “vibrating forked threads”
in literature have flickered more startlingly, like forked lightning,
and to the purpose, than Ruskin’s own. The passage is admirable, both
in form and essence; it shines even in that brilliant lecture on
_Living Waves_ from which it is taken, and where there are very many
fine things, along with others indifferent, and a few that are bad. But
there is this fault to be found with it: after putting his question
to the “scientific people,” the questioner assumes that no answer is
possible; that the stinging and hissing and licking theories having
been discarded, the serpent’s tongue can do no manner of mischief, and
is quite useless. A most improbable conclusion, since the fact stares
us in the face that the serpent does use its tongue; for instance, it
exserts and makes it vibrate rapidly, but why it does so remains to
be known. It is true that in the long life of a species an organ does
sometimes lose its use without dwindling away, but persists as a mere
idle appendage: it is, however, very unlikely that this has happened in
the case of the serpent’s tongue; the excitability and extreme activity
at times of that organ rather incline one to the opinion that it has
only changed its original use for a new one, as has happened in the
case of some of the creatures mentioned in the passage quoted above.
“A chameleon,” says Ruskin, “catches flies with its tongue,” inferring
that the snake has no such accomplishment. Yet the contrary has been
often maintained. “The principal use of the tongue,” says Lacepede
in his _Natural History of Serpents_, “is to catch insects, which it
catches by means of its double tongue.” This notion about the use of
the double tongue is quite common among the older ophiologists, and,
along with it, the belief that snakes prey chiefly on insects. And here
I cannot resist the temptation to quote a few more words touching on
this point from Lacepede--a very perfect example of the teleological
spirit in science which flourished a century ago, and made things
easy for the naturalist. “We are not,” he says, “to be amazed at the
vast number of serpents, both species and individuals, which inhabit
the intertropical countries. There they find the degree of warmth
which seems congenial to their natures, and the smaller species find
abundance of insects to serve them for food. In those torrid regions,
where Nature has produced an infinite multitude of insects and worms,
she has likewise produced the greatest number of serpents to destroy
the worms and insects; which otherwise would multiply so exceedingly as
to destroy all vegetable productions, and to reduce the most fertile
regions of the earth into barren deserts, inaccessible to man and
animals; nay, even these noxious and troublesome insects would be
finally obliged to destroy each other, and nothing would remain but
their mangled limbs.”
Here the French naturalist pauses, aghast at the frightful picture of
desolation he has himself conjured up.
When enumerating the uses to which a serpent does _not_ put its
tongue, Ruskin might very well have said that it is not used as
a tactile organ. That it is a tactile organ is a very modern
supposition--a small hypothesis about a small matter, but with a
curious and rather amusing history. It was in the first place given
out merely as a conjecture, but no sooner given than accepted as an
irrefragable fact by some of the greatest authorities among us. Thus
Dr. Gunther, in his article on snakes in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_,
ninth edition, says, “The tongue is exserted for the purpose of feeling
some object, and sometimes under the influence of anger or fear.”
Doubtless those who invented this use for the organ were misled by
observing snakes in captivity, in the glass cases or cages in which it
is usual to keep them; observing them in such conditions, it was easy
to fall into the mistake, since the serpent, when moving, is frequently
seen to thrust his tongue against the obstructing glass. It should
be remembered that glass _is_ glass, a substance that does not exist
in nature; that a long and sometimes painful experience is necessary
before even the most intelligent among the lower animals are brought to
understand its character; and, finally, that the delicate, sensitive
tongue comes against it for the same reason that the fly buzzes and the
confined wild bird dashes itself against it in their efforts to escape.
In a state of nature when the snake is approached, whether by its prey
or by some large animal, the tongue is obtruded; again, when it is
cautiously progressing through the herbage, even when unalarmed, the
tongue is exserted at frequent intervals; but I can say, after a long
experience of snakes, that the exserted organ never touches earth, or
rock, or leaf, or anything whatsoever, consequently that it is not a
tactile organ.
Another suggestion, less improbable on the face of it than the one just
cited, is that the tongue, without touching anything, may, in some way
not yet known to us, serve as an organ of intelligence. The serpent’s
senses are defective; now when, in the presence of a strange object or
animal, the creature protrudes its long slender tongue--not to _feel_
the object, as has been shown--does it not do so to _test_ the air,
to catch an emanation from the object which might in some unknown
way convey to the brain its character, whether animate or inanimate,
cold or warm blooded, bird, beast, or reptile, also its size, etc.?
The structure of the organ itself does not give support to this
supposition; it could not _taste_ an emanation without some such organs
as are found in the wonderfully formed antennae of insects, and with
these it is not provided.
Only by means of a sensitiveness to air waves and vibrations from other
living bodies near it, in degree infinitely more delicate than that
of the bat’s wing--the so-called sixth sense of that animal--could
the serpent’s tongue serve as an organ of intelligence. Here, again,
the structure of the tongue is against such an hypothesis; and if
the structure were different it would only remain to be said that the
instrument performs its work very badly.
Another explanation which has been put forward by two well-known
writers on serpent life, Dr. Stradling and Miss Hopley, remains to be
noticed. These observers came independently to the conclusion that the
snake makes use of his tongue as a decoy to attract its prey.
In the case of one of these writers, the idea was suggested by an
incident in our Zoological Gardens. A fowl was placed in a boa’s cage
to be eaten, and immediately began hunting about for food on the floor
of the cage; the serpent--apparently seen merely as an inanimate
object--protruded its tongue, whereupon the fowl rushed and pecked at
it, mistaking it for a wriggling worm. Such a thing could not well
happen in a state of nature. The tongue may resemble a wriggling worm,
or, when vibrated very quickly, a fluttering moth; but we cannot assume
that the serpent, however motionless it may lie, however in its colour
and pattern it may assimilate to its surroundings, is not recognised as
a separate and living thing by a bird or any other wild animal.
From the foregoing it will be seen that so far from being silent on
this subject, as Ruskin imagined, the “scientific people” have found
out or invented a variety of uses for the serpent’s tongue. By turns
it has been spoken of as an insect-catching organ, a decoy, a tactile
organ, and, in some mysterious way, an organ of intelligence. And,
after all, it is none of these things, and the way is still open for
fresh speculation.
I have on numberless occasions observed the common pit-viper of
southern South America, which is of a sluggish disposition, lying in
the sun on a bed of sand or dry grass, coiled or extended at full
length. Invariably, on approaching a snake of this kind, I have seen
the tongue exserted; that nimble, glistening organ was the first, and
for some time the only sign of life or wakefulness in the motionless
creature. If I stood still at a distance of some yards to watch it,
the tongue would be exserted again at intervals; if I moved nearer, or
lifted my arms, or made any movement, the intervals would be shorter
and the vibrations more rapid, and still the creature would not move.
Only when I drew very near would other signs of excitement follow. At
such times the tongue has scarcely seemed to me the “mute forked flash”
that Ruskin calls it, but a tongue that said something, which, although
not audible, was clearly understood and easy to translate into words.
What it said or appeared to say was: “I am not dead nor sleeping,
and I do not wish to be disturbed, much less trodden upon; keep your
distance, for your own good as well as for mine.” In other words, the
tongue was obtruded and vibrated with a _warning_ purpose.
Doubtless every venomous serpent of sluggish habits has more ways
than one of making itself conspicuous to and warning off any large
heavy animal that might injure by passing over and treading on it;
and I think that in ophidians of this temper the tongue has become,
incidentally, a warning organ. Small as it is, its obtrusion is the
first of a series of warning motions, and may therefore be considered
advantageous to the animal; and, in spite of its smallness, I believe
that in very many instances it accomplishes its purpose without the aid
of those larger and violent movements and actions resorted to when the
danger becomes pressing.
All large animals, including man, when walking on an open space,
see the ground before them, with every object on it, even when
the head is raised and when the animal’s attention is principally
directed to something in the distance. The motions of the legs, the
exact measurement of every slight obstruction and object in the
way--hillocks, depressions in the soil, stones, pebbles, sticks,
etc.--are almost automatic; the puma may have nothing but his far-seen
quarry in his mind, and the philosopher be thinking only of the stars,
as they move, both quite unconscious of what their feet are doing;
but the ground must be seen all the same, otherwise they could not go
smoothly even over a comparatively smooth surface.
When the man or other animal progressing in this ordinary way comes
to where a serpent, with a protective or assimilative colour and
appearance, lies motionless in the path, he certainly sees it, but
without distinguishing it as a serpent. The vari-coloured surface it
rests on and with which it is in harmony is motionless, consequently
without animal life and safe to tread on--a rough flooring composed
of mould, pebbles and sand, dead and green herbage, withered leaves,
twisted vines, and sticks warped by the sun, brown and grey and
mottled. But if the smallest thing moves on that still surface, if a
blade trembles, or a minute insect flutters or flies up, the vision is
instantly attracted to the spot and concentrated on a small area, and
as by a flash every object on it is clearly seen, and its character
recognised. Those who have been accustomed to walk much in dry, open
places, in districts where snakes are abundant, have often marvelled at
the instantaneous manner in which something that had been previously
seen as a mere strip or patch of dull colour on the mottled earth, as
a part of its indeterminate pattern, has taken the serpent form. And
when once it has been recognised as a serpent it is seen so vividly
and in such sharp contrast to its surroundings as to appear the most
conspicuous and unmistakable object in nature. Why, in such cases,
they ask in astonishment, did they not recognise its character sooner?
I believe that in such cases it is the suddenly exserted, glistening,
vibrating tongue that first attracts the eye to the dangerous spot and
reveals the serpent to the mind.