that its body offered a scarcely greater obstacle to the passage of the
sunlight than the water in which it swam, was decorated on either side
by one, or sometimes two, of those exquisite ornaments seen in the
greatest perfection in the train of the peacock, which are perhaps best
described as the “peacock-eye.” It was no mere spot, lying in a ring of
a different colour, such as decorates the sides of a trout or salmon,
but a perfectly-developed peacock-gem, lying in its gorgeous rings of
blue, green, and gold, equally rich and dark in tint, and even more
striking from its contrast with the colourless and semi-transparent body
of the creature it adorned. The analogy with the pattern on the
peacock’s tail was even more complete than that which a first glance
disclosed; for on many of the fish a third or rudimentary eye appeared,
fainter and elongated, like a smudge of wet colour, and corresponding
exactly with the gradation or evolutionary process of ornament, which
Charles Darwin noted in the side-feathers of the peacock-train. This
wonderful decoration, which was assumed, like the brilliant red and
emerald of the English sticklebacks, for the period of courtship only,
disappears later in the year; and the creatures abide in plain clothes
till next spring. But the character of the ornament they wear suggests a
further and separate interest, beyond that which their beauty naturally
claims. _Pattern_, by which we mean the repetition of certain and
regular forms, so as to produce an ornament which pleases the eye
without making any demands on the mind, is by no means a common form of
natural decoration in the higher animals. Contrasts of brilliant
colours, as in the plumage of the birds of paradise, and of the parrots
and lorys, are the usual and beautiful adornments of birds. Any visitor
to the cases of a good natural history collection, will find a hundred
instances of this form of decoration for one of true pattern. Even the
wings of butterflies, though spangled with colours in dots, lines, and
spots, are usually devoid of pattern, though the juxtaposition of a
number of the same species would instantly produce the effect of
pattern. But that effect, so far as it is given in a single individual,
is, as a rule, only due to the fact that the creature is itself
symmetrical, and that the lines and markings on one side of the body are
repeated upon the other. The stripes upon a tiger’s skin, for instance,
though in the nature of ornament, are not a pattern, though a number of
tigers’ skins laid side by side might produce to the eye the effect of
pattern. The patterns themselves are also few in number; and these
limited and favourite forms of enrichment are applied indiscriminately,
and with a certain indifference to congruity of species, yet with
unfailing success in the result, to the most widely-different forms in
the animal creation. Take, for example, the most complex, and perhaps
the most beautiful of all, natural ornaments, which appears in the
“eyes” in the peacock’s tail. The same pattern, with slight variations,
is found, not only on the feathers of the beautiful grouse-like
Polyplectron of Malacca, though modified, as Darwin noted, by the white
edging, which makes it even more conspicuous than the bronze circle
round the peacock-eye, but also in the peacock-pheasant, and the
Ocelated Turkey of Honduras. In this splendid bird, the “eyes” are
placed in a row at the end of the tail-feathers, and upon some of the
upper tail-coverts, and are rimmed with gold. The same pattern, by a
leap from an order of birds not distantly connected, appears in
undiminished beauty in the little fish from Trinidad; and with an almost
incredible difference of subject and sameness in effect, in the
peacock-butterfly and eyed hawk-moth of England, in the emperor-moth,
and a number of allied insects; and lastly, with a startling
resemblance, in the centre of the beautiful peacock iris, which is now
cultivated in English gardens. It would, perhaps, not be difficult to
add to the instances of repetition of this particular pattern which we
have given, by a careful survey of the specimens exhibited in the
Natural History Museum at South Kensington. But the fact of the
repetition of the “peacock-eye” as ornament in the case of birds,
fishes, moths, butterflies, and lastly of a common and beautiful flower,
will sufficiently illustrate the fact to which we draw attention. The
pattern, if less elaborate and exact in reproduction when found among
the moths and butterflies, is an “impressionist” rendering of the same
scheme, and if it were the reproduction of some human hand, would leave
no doubt as to the identity of the motive and idea in each. The
remaining natural patterns, even though of less complex form, may almost
be counted on the fingers of the hand, and are applied with the same
careless profusion to the adornment of creatures, like and unlike,
without distinction, though the range is in most cases far more limited
than in that of the peacock-eye. The most perfect form of the
cup-and-ball pattern, which is seen in the feathers of the Argus
pheasant, seems only to reappear on the wings of the Brahma moth, and of
the eyed tortoise, though in one or two other small tortoises the effect
of the ball ornament is produced by an actual embossing of the shell.
Yet even in this case, not only is the form of the pattern reproduced,
but also the beautiful brown colouring, which, by its soberness and
exquisite gradation, produces the effect of low relief in monochrome.
The wave-line, the spot, the scale-pattern, the bar-pattern, and, in
rare instances, a chequer or diaper in black and white, almost exhaust
the list of other natural patterns, and these, like the peacock-eye,
recur in non-allied species in exactly the same arrangement, not only of
form, but of colour. A most effective spot-pattern is that in which a
rich chestnut ground is covered with minute white or cream-coloured
spots. The result is most rich and beautiful, and it seems to be
reserved for use in highly-decorated creatures of any class or family.
It is seen at its best on the breast of the lovely harlequin-duck, in
which the whole surface shines like enamel. But exactly the same pattern
in the same colours appears on the neck of such a widely-different
species as the chestnut-eared finch of Australia; and with the order of
colour reversed, under the wings of the bar-breasted finch, both of
which may be seen in the Parrot House at the Zoological Gardens. In the
smaller wing-feathers of the Argus pheasant, this spot-pattern is
reproduced on almost the same minute scale as on the harlequin-duck and
the little finches. Then by a sudden change it is found on the back of
the larvæ of the _Gallium_ hawk-moth, a chestnut-coloured insect, with a
row of minute white spots down the middle of its back, and two rows of
rather larger white spots, one on each side. The larvæ of the spurge
hawk-moth, of the white-satin moth, and of the sycamore dagger-moth,
also show it. Among butterflies, the _Salatura Melanippus_ has a border
of white spots on chestnut ground round the edges of its wings; and the
same arrangement may be seen on a shell—some kind of _Gastropoda_, if we
remember rightly—which is “commonly observed” on cottage mantelpieces.
The “scale-pattern” is generally due in the case of birds to the natural
shape of the feathers, and not to surface-pattern. A good example is the
neck of the Amherst pheasant, in which the feathers are scale-shaped,
and being edged with black, produce a beautiful pattern, and the neck of
the golden pheasant, in which the corresponding feathers have square
ends, and the black edging merely falls into parallel lines. The perfect
rectangular diaper pattern is extremely rare in birds, but not uncommon
in the larvæ of moths and butterflies. It is seen in perfection on the
backs of the great northern diver and its relations; and in a faint
reproduction on the wings of the wood-leopard moth. A very elegant and
decorative ornament is the “wave-line” pattern. This, like the chestnut
ground and white spot, is constantly reproduced in the same colours,
black on grey, or grey on black. It appears on the side of the wild
duck, on Swinhoe’s pheasant, in which bird it is the main form of
ornament, on the neck of the grass-parakeet, on the sand-grouse, on
several common species of iris, and on the wings of the Brahma moths,
surrounding the ball ornament to which we have referred. The inference
to be drawn from these coincidences must be left to practical
zoologists. But the fact that natural patterns, as applied to animals
and plants, while at times showing the utmost elaboration of design, are
so limited in number, and applied with so little modification in colour
or form to birds, fishes, insects, and plants alike, seems an inviting
subject for inquiry.
Meantime it would be a charming amusement to any one who desires a new
and not too exacting intellectual interest in a visit to the Zoological
Gardens, to go from the aviaries to the wild-fowl ponds, and from the
pheasants in their runs to the finches in their cages in the Parrot
House, and make a complete list of the possessors of each form of these
distinct and arbitrary animal patterns. By so doing, he would
incidentally secure an acquaintance with the most beautiful of all the
birds, for the possessors of these ornaments are generally among the
most elaborately marked of any of their species. The list given above is
far from exhaustive, and as the first, and often the most pleasing, part
of these minor inquiries into nature consists in the collection and
classifying of likenesses, it offers an attraction as great as any
obvious inducements to observation in the Society’s collection. Some day
we shall perhaps see in the cases at South Kensington a collection of
examples of the repetition of ornament, as well as of the evolution of
ornament in nature. The origin of the first is now explained. But on
what hypothesis can we account for the second?
The observation of these patterns should extend throughout the year if
it is to be complete. The typical pheasants are only in perfect plumage
in winter, and these delicate ornaments are much affected by the
physical condition of the wearer. In the fish, as we have seen, they
almost entirely disappear after the bodily vigour of the spring season
has departed. In late summer and early autumn the pheasants and peacocks
are moulting; the tropical moths, on the other hand, which have such
beautiful analogies with the bird plumage, are hatching out in May. The
pretty little tropical finches take far less time to moult than some of
the larger birds, or are less affected in plumage, and the minute but
accurate reproductions of the patterns on the wood-duck, wild duck, and
jungle-fowl which appear on their diminutive bodies may be seen at
almost any season in the Parrot House. The flower gardening at the Zoo
is now maintained at so high a pitch of elaboration and beauty, that it
would not be difficult to provide instances of animal pattern in beds of
peacock iris, and of other plants which reproduce the less elaborate but
equally distinct forms of pattern of which examples have been given
above.
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THE GIRAFFE’S OBITUARY.
THE winter of the year 1892, like the days of pestilence before the
walls of Troy, was fatal both to man and beast. Even the carefully
tended inmates of the Zoological Society’s Gardens did not escape; and
as the new year opened with the death within a week of “Sally,” most
human and most intelligent of apes, and of her neighbour “Tim,” the
silver gibbon, who was almost as great a favourite of the London public
as the educated chimpanzee, so the spring saw the death of the two
beautiful giraffes, the sole survivors left in the collection. The
experience which the Society has had in maintaining its stock of these
interesting creatures has not, however, been altogether discouraging.
Since the first four specimens were brought to England in 1836, no less
than seventeen fawns have been born in the Gardens, and many of these
lived to grow up. But the stock gradually diminished, until in 1866 two
were burnt to death in their stable, and a third died of old age,
leaving only the pair now lost.
[Illustration:
THE LAST GIRAFFE. From a photograph by Gambier
Bolton.
]
The time of their death, unfortunately, coincided with the complete
interruption of the ancient trade in wild animals up the Valley of the
Nile by the Mahdi’s occupation of the Soudan, a trade as old as the days
of Solomon, never organized, often interrupted for centuries, yet always
ready to spring up again, and always dependent for its rarest products
on the free navigation of the river of Egypt. Giraffes—which, not
excepting the hippopotamus, have most excited the imagination of
European capitals after the long intervals in which they have remained
unseen by the nations of the West—seem always to have found their way
hither from the land of the Pharaohs. The first seen in Europe since the
“tertiary epoch” was obtained from Alexandria by Julius Cæsar, and
exhibited at the Circensian Games to crowds who expected, from its name,
“camelopard,” to find in it a combination of the size of a camel and the
ferocity of a panther. Pliny, who described it, echoed the public
disappointment. “It was as quiet,” he wrote, “as a sheep.” The trade
probably reached its maximum after it became the fashion to exhibit
combats of wild beasts at Rome; yet even then giraffes seem to have been
scarce in the popular shows, though Pompey could exhibit five hundred
lions at a time, and the Emperor Titus, at the dedication of his new
theatre, caused the slaughter of five thousand wild beasts. Either the
number of wild animals in the provinces must have been beyond anything
since known, or the Roman Governors must have used their despotic powers
freely to oblige their friends. No doubt they did this. Cælius, Cicero’s
gossiping correspondent, says, when writing to him in Cilicia—“In nearly
every letter I have written to you about panthers. It is a great shame.
Pray send to Pamphylia, where most are said to be taken. You have only
to give an order, and the thing is done. You know I hate trouble, while
you like it, and yet you will not do this, which is no trouble. I have
sent men to look after them and bring them here.”
Despots are the best collectors; and from the fall of the Roman Empire
till the arrival of those placed in the Zoological Gardens in 1836, the
rare appearances of the giraffe in Europe were in each case due to the
munificence of Eastern Sultans and Pashas. The Prince of Damascus gave
one to the Emperor Frederick II. in 1215; and the Soldan of Egypt
presented another to Lorenzo the Magnificent, which became the pet of
Florence, and used to be allowed to walk in the streets, and take the
presents of fruit and cakes extended to it from the balconies. From this
time the giraffe was not seen in Europe until, in 1827, the Pasha of
Egypt sent four to Constantinople, Venice, England, and France
respectively. The giraffe sent to England was in bad health, and soon
died; but the Parisians went wild with excitement over the Pasha’s
present. It had spent the winter at Marseilles, and throve there on the
milk of the cows which the Pasha had sent over for its use from Egypt.
The Prefect of Marseilles had the arms of France embroidered on its
body-cloth, and it entered Paris escorted by a Darfour negro, Hassan, an
Arab, a Marseilles groom, a mulatto interpreter, the Prefect of
Marseilles himself, and a professor from the Jardin des Plantes, while
troops kept back the crowd. Thousands came every day to see it, and men
and women wore gloves, gowns, and waistcoats of the colour of its spots.
But the successful expedition by which, in 1836, M. Thibaut procured a
stock of giraffes for the Zoological Society, owed nothing to the
patronage of the Pasha of Egypt, beyond permission to enter the Soudan.
The caravan left the Nile near Dongola, and thence passed on to the
desert of Kordofan. There M. Thibaut engaged the services of the Arab
sword-hunters, whose skill and courage were of such service to Sir
Samuel Baker in his expedition thirty years later to the sources of the
Nile tributaries; and in two days they sighted the giraffes. A female
with a fawn was first pursued by the Arabs, who killed the animal with
their swords, and next day tracked and caught the fawn in the thorny
mimosa scrub. For four days the young giraffe was secured by a cord, the
end of which was held by one of the Arabs; at the end of that time it
was perfectly tame, and trotted after the caravan with the female camels
which had been brought to supply it with milk. The Arabs were excellent
nurses, and taught the young creature to drink milk by putting their
fingers into its mouth and so inducing it to suck. Four others which M.
Thibaut caught died in the cold weather in the desert. But he replaced
three of these, and brought four, including that first taken, down the
Nile to Alexandria, and then by ship to Malta. “Providence alone,” he
wrote, “enabled me to surmount these difficulties.”
The Report of the Council of the Society as to the progress of this
great undertaking is worth quoting in full.
“The Council are now (April 1836) looking forward with interest to the
completion of an attempt in which the Society is engaged for the
importation of several giraffes, which they hope to see added to the
Society’s collection in a very few weeks. In the earlier days of the
Society’s existence, the acquisition of this singular and rare animal
was among the most important objects to which the attention of the
Council was directed, and they made many inquiries as to the probable
means of effecting it, and then named a price which would be paid for
one or two of them, on their being delivered, in good health, at the
Society’s Gardens.
“In 1833 the inquiries were again resumed, through Mr. Bourchier of
Malta, to whose valuable aid on numerous occasions the Society is almost
incessantly indebted. Through his intervention, and the kindness of
Colonel Campbell, her Majesty’s Consul-General for Egypt, an arrangement
was made during the close of that year with M. Thibaut, who was then at
Cairo, and he agreed to proceed to Nubia for the purpose of procuring
giraffes on the Society’s behalf. The terms of his agreement imposed
upon him the whole risk of the undertaking, previously to the delivery
of the animals in Malta, and it was not until his landing them in that
island that he was entitled to receive the stipulated price, which was
at a fixed rate for each individual, diminishing in proportion to the
number he should bring with him.”
After a brief reference to the capture of the animals, the report states
that he reached Malta in safety with his valuable charges, three males
and a female, on November 21, 1834. “Having thus fulfilled his
engagement, M. Thibaut became entitled to receive the stipulated sum of
£700, which has accordingly been paid him. But the Council has
considered it so desirable to avail themselves of his experience with
respect to these valuable animals, that they have arranged with him for
the continuation of his services until their arrival in England. For the
conveyance of the giraffes to this country, the Council have availed
themselves of the _Manchester_, a steam vessel of great size and power,
which proceeded to Lisbon at the beginning of the present month, having
been specially engaged for the service of Prince Ferdinand of Portugal.
From Lisbon the _Manchester_ is to proceed to Malta, whence she will
return to London. Her arrival may be expected before the end of May. For
the conveyance of the animals to England £1000 will be paid, and the
necessary fittings for the accommodation of the giraffes will be
prepared at the cost of the Society in her Majesty’s dockyard at Malta,
orders to that effect having been sent thither by the Lords of the
Admiralty.” Thus the giraffes came to this country under circumstances
almost as imposing as those which marked the reception of that sent by
the Pasha of Egypt to Paris. They travelled in one of the first steam
vessels of the mercantile marine, one which had just conveyed a prince,
and their comfort was provided for by the Admiralty and the Royal
Dockyards.
All four were safely lodged in the Zoological Gardens on May 24, 1836,
an event which the Council of the Society justly claimed as highly
creditable to its resources. One died in the following winter, but the
rest continued in excellent health, and became the greatest public
favourites in the menagerie.
At the time of their arrival the largest was then about 11 ft. high, the
height of an adult male being 12 ft. at the shoulder and 18 ft. at the
head. For many years, as we have said, the giraffes throve and
multiplied. They readily took to European food, and ate hay and fresh
grass from the tall racks with which their stables were fitted. _Onions_
and sugar were their favourite delicacies, and in search of sugar they
would follow their keeper, and slip their long prehensile tongues into
his hands or pockets. But they always retained a liking for eating
flowers, a reminiscence, perhaps, of the days when their parents feasted
on mimosa blossoms in the desert. Some years ago, one was seen to
stretch its neck over the railings, and to delicately nip off an
artificial rose in a young lady’s hat. They were most affectionate
creatures, and, as M. Thibaut noticed when in charge of them in Upper
Egypt, would shed tears if they missed their companions or their usual
attendants. But the development of the lachrymal ducts, which enables
the giraffe to express its emotions in this very human fashion, is less
obvious than the wonderful size and beauty of the eyes themselves, which
are far larger than those of any other quadruped. On May 27, 1840, four
years after their arrival, the female giraffe bore and afterwards reared
a fine fawn, and it was not until they had been eleven years in the
menagerie that the death occurred of one of the pair of males which had
survived the first year in England. In 1849 two more males and one
female giraffe were waiting the Society’s pleasure at Cairo, and the
stock continued to increase by births in the menagerie. In 1867 the
straw in the giraffes’ house caught fire at night, and a female and her
fawn were suffocated. A sum of £545 was claimed as compensation for
their loss, and duly paid to the Society by the “Sun” Fire Insurance
Office, probably the first claim of the kind paid in Europe. For
curiosity, now that we have no living giraffe left in England, we would
suggest a comparison of the beautifully-stuffed giraffe heads in Mr.
Rowland Ward’s collection in Piccadilly, with the innumerable specimens
of other large game, such as wapiti, buffaloes, hippopotami, or
rhinoceros, which fill the rooms. In all these, the size and character
of the eye has been carefully reproduced, though no art could preserve
the lustre and softness of the eye of the giraffe in life. While the
Mahdi’s power remains unbroken at Khartoum, there is little probability
that the Soudan traders will be able to supply any to occupy the empty
house in Regent’s Park. Yet the southern range of these beautiful
creatures, though it has greatly receded, still extends to the North
Kalahari Desert, and to part of Khama’s country, where the
“camel-thorn,” as the Boers call the giraffe-acacia, abounds. There the
great chief carefully preserves the giraffes, and allows only his own
people, or his own white friends, to kill them. The other point at which
the giraffe country is still accessible to European hunters or
naturalists is Somaliland, and the “unknown horn” of Africa. This
district is so far accessible, that parties of English sportsmen yearly
penetrate it from Berbera, making Aden their starting-point from British
territory. But from the point of view of those who would delay as long
as possible the extermination of the large game of Africa, the Dervish
empire is not altogether matter for regret. No doubt the Arabs will
still kill giraffes to make their shields from the hides, as they have
done for centuries; but for the present the Soudan giraffes will be
protected from raids like that in which those in the Kalahari Desert
were destroyed in hundreds, because the price of “sjambok whips” had
doubled. The Mahdi is, in fact, the involuntary protector of the wild
animals of Central Africa, to which Sir Samuel Baker bore unconscious
testimony when he lamented that, “owing to British interference in
Egypt, where the ‘courbatch’ (hippopotamus whip) has been abolished, the
hippopotamus will remain undisturbed on the great White Nile, monarch of
the river upon which fifteen British steamers were flying when the
Soudan was abandoned by the despotic order of Great Britain, and handed
back to savagedom and wild beasts.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE ELECTRIC EEL.