The hooded crow is common in this part of the country, during the
winter; to the extent, indeed, of being quite a feature of it. With
the country people he is the carrion crow merely, and they do not
appear to make any distinction between him and the ordinary bird of
that name, which is not seen nearly so often. He is the one they have
grown up with, and know best, but his pied colouring does not seem to
have gained him any specially distinctive title. For the most part,
these crows haunt the open warren-lands, and, owing to their wariness
and the absence of cover, are very difficult to get near to. Like the
rooks, they spend most of the day in looking for food, and eating it
when found, their habit being to beat about in the air, making wider
or narrower circles, whilst examining the ground beneath for any
offal that may be lying there. This is not so much the habit of rooks,
for they, being more general feeders, march over the country, eating
whatever they can find. They would be neglecting too much, were they to
look for any class of thing in particular, though equally appreciative
of offal when it happens to come in their way. “The Lord be praised!”
is then their attitude of mind.
The crows, however, feed a good deal in this latter way, too, and, as
a consequence, mingle much with the rooks, from whom, perhaps, they
have learnt a thing or two. Each bird, in fact, knows and practises
something of the other’s business, so that, without specially seeking
one another’s society, they are a good deal thrown together. Were there
never any occasion for them to mingle, they would probably not feel the
wish to do so, but the slightest inducement will bring crows amongst
rooks, and rooks amongst crows, and then, in their actions towards
each other, they seem to be but one species. They fight, of course; at
least there are frequent disagreements and bickerings between them,
but these have always appeared to me to be individual, merely--not to
have any specific value, so to speak. Both of them fall out, amongst
themselves, as do most other birds. Rooks, especially, are apt to
resent one another’s success in the finding of food, but such quarrels
soon settle themselves, usually by the bird in possession swallowing
the morsel; they are seldom prolonged or envenomed. So it is with the
rooks and hooded crows, and, on the whole, I think they meet as equals,
though there may, perhaps, be a slightly more “coming-on disposition”
on the part of the latter, and a slightly more giving-way one on that
of the former bird. One apparent instance of this I have certainly
seen. In this case, two rooks who were enjoying a dead rat between
them, walked very tamely away from it, when a crow came up; and, later,
when they again had the rat, a pair of crows hopping down upon them,
side by side, in a very bold and piratical manner, again made them
retreat, with hardly a make-believe of resistance. But one of these two
crows may have been the bird that had come up before, and the rat may
have belonged to it and its mate, by right of first discovery, which,
in important finds, there is, I think, a tendency to respect, even if
it needs some amount of enforcing. I have observed this when rooks
and hooded crows have been gathered together about some offal which
they were devouring. One or, at most, two birds seemed always to be in
possession, whilst the rest stood around. For any other to insinuate
itself into a place at the table was an affair demanding caution, nor
could he do so without making himself liable to an attack, serious in
proportion to the hunger of the privileged bird. As it began to appear,
however, either from the latter’s languidness, or by his moving a
little away, that this was becoming appeased, another--either rook or
crow--would, at first warily, and then more boldly, fall to; and thus,
without, probably, any actual idea of the thing, the working out of
the situation was, more or less, to take it in turns. At least it was
always the few that ate, and the many that waited, and a general sense
that this should and must be so seemed to obtain. Always, at such
scenes, there will be many small outbreaks, and when these have been
between the two species, I have been unable to make out that one was
inferior to the other. But such ebullitions have more of threatening
in them than real fighting, so, taking into consideration the incident
just recorded, it may be that the crow, when really in earnest, is
recognised by the rook as the better bird, though, if anything, I think
he is a little the smaller of the two. Jackdaws, on the other hand,
seem conscious of their inferiority when with rooks, and slip about
demurely amongst them, as though wishing not to be noticed.
On the part of either rook or crow, a combative inclination is
indicated by the sudden bending down of the head, and raising and
fanning out of the tail. The fan is then closed and lowered, as the
head goes up again, and this takes place several times in succession.
If a bird come within slighting distance of one that has thus expressed
himself, there is, at once, an _affaire_, the two jumping suddenly
at one another. After the first pass or two, they pause by mutual
consent--just as duellists do in a novel--and then stand front to
front, the beaks--or rapiers--being advanced, and pointed a little
upwards, their points almost touching. Then, instantaneously, they
spring again, each bird trying to get above the other, so as to strike
him down. These fireworks, indeed, belong more to the rooks than
the crows, for the former, being more social birds, are also more
demonstrative. Not that the crows are without the gregarious instinct.
Here, at least, in East Anglia, one may see in them something like
the rude beginnings of the state at which rooks have arrived. They
do not flock in any numbers, but bands of six or seven, and upwards,
will sometimes fly about together, or sit in the same tree or group of
trees. On the ground, too, though they feed in a much more scattered
manner than do rooks, not seeming to think of one another, they yet get
drawn together by any piece of garbage or carrion that one or other of
them may find. In this we, perhaps, see the origin of the gregarious
instinct in most birds, if not in all. Self-interest first makes a
habit, which becomes, by degrees, a want, and so a necessity; for if
“custom is the king of all men,” as Pindar has pronounced it to be, so
is it the king of all birds, and, equally, of all other animals.
[Illustration: THE RULES OF PRECEDENCE
_Hooded Crows and Rooks Feeding_]
I think, myself, that their association with the rooks tends to make
these crows more social. They get to feed more as they do, and this
brings them more together. In the evening I have, sometimes, seen a few
fly down into a plantation where rooks roosted, and which they already
filled, and one I once saw flying, with a small band of them, on their
bedward journey. Whether this bird, or the others, actually roosted
with the rooks, for the night, I cannot say, but it certainly looked
like it. On the other hand, if one watches rooks, one will, sometimes,
see what looks like a reversion, on the part of an individual or two,
to a less advanced social state than that in which the majority now
are. Whether there are solitary rooks, as there are rogue elephants, I
do not know, but the gregarious instinct may certainly be for a time
in abeyance with some, if not with all of them. I have watched one
feeding, sometimes, for a length of time, quite by itself. Not only,
on such occasions, have there been no others with it, but often none
were in sight, nor did any join it, when it flew up. Nothing, in fact,
can look more solitary than these black specks upon the wide, empty
warrens, or the still more desolate marshes--fens, as they are called,
though, as I say, Icklingham is separated from the real fenlands by
some seven miles. These fens are undrained, and unless the weather has
been dry for some time, it is difficult to get about in them. At first
sight, indeed, it looks as though one could do so easily enough, for
the long, coarse grass grows in tufts, or cushions--one might almost
call them--each one of which is raised, to some height, upon a sort of
footstalk. But if one steps on these they often turn over, causing one
to plunge into the water between them, which their heads make almost
invisible. These curious, matted tufts were used here in old days
for church hassocks--called _pesses_--and several of them, veritable
curiosities, are now in the old thatched church at Icklingham, which
has been abandoned--why I know not--and is fast going to ruin.
Rooks sometimes visit these marshes for the sake of thistles which
grow there, or just on their borders, the roots of which they eat,
as do also, I believe, some of the hooded crows, since I have seen
them excavating in the same places. I know of no more comfortless
sight than one or two of these crows standing about on the sodden
ground, whilst another sits motionless, like an overseer, in some
solitary hawthorn bush, in the grey dawn of a cold winter’s morning.
In the dank dreariness they look as dank and dreary themselves, and
seem to be regretting having got up. There is, indeed, something
particularly shabby and dismal-looking in the aspect of the hooded
crow, when seen under unfavourable circumstances. They impress one,
I believe, as squalid savages would--as the Tierra del Fuegians did
Darwin. The rook, at all times, looks much more civilised, even when
quite alone. I am not sure whether the latter bird, to return to his
occasional adoption of less social habits, ever roosts alone, but I
have some reason to suspect that he does. I have seen one flying from
an otherwise untenanted clump of trees, before the general flight out
from the rook-roost, two or three miles distant, had begun; to judge by
appearances, that is to say, for the usual stream in one direction did
not begin till some little time afterwards. A populous roosting-place
drains the whole rook population of the country, for a considerable
distance all around it--far beyond that at which this rook was from
his--and in January, which was the date of the observation, such
establishments would not have begun to break up. This process, which
leads to scattered parties of the birds passing the night in various
new places, does not begin before March.
I had heard this particular rook cawing, for some time, before I saw
it, and, on other occasions, I have been struck by hearing solitary
caws, in unfrequented places, at a similarly early hour. Some rooks,
therefore, may be less social in their ways than the majority, and
if these could be separately studied, we might know what all rooks
had once been. The present natural history book contents itself with
a summary of the general habits of each species, as far as these are
known or surmised, or rather as far as one compiler may learn them
from another _sæcula sæculorum_. It is to be hoped that, some day in
the future, a work may be attempted which will record those variations
from the general mode of life, which have been observed and noted down
by successive generations of field-naturalists. A collection of these
would help as much, perhaps, to solve some of the problems of affinity,
as the dissection of the body, and there would be this advantage in the
method, viz., that any species under discussion would be less likely
to leave a still further gap in the various classificatory systems, by
disappearing during the process of investigation.
I have said that rooks and crows meet and mingle together, as though
they were of the same species, but is there, to the boot of this, some
special relation--what, it would puzzle me to say--existing between
them? I remember once, whilst standing under a willow tree by the
little stream here, my attention being attracted by a hooded crow,
which, whilst flying, kept uttering a series of very hoarse, harsh
cries, “Are-rr, are-rr, are-rr” (or “crar”)--the intonation is much
rougher and less pleasant than that of rooks. He did not fly right
on, and so away, but kept hovering about, in approximately the same
place, and still continuing his clamour. I fancied I heard an answer
to it from another hooded crow in the distance, and then, all at once,
up flew about a score of rooks and joined him. For some minutes they
hovered about, over a space corresponding with a fair-sized meadow,
the crow making one of them, and still, at intervals, continuing to
cry, the rooks talking much less. Then, all at once, they dispersed
again over the country. What, if anything, could have been the meaning
of this _rendezvous_? All I can imagine is that, when the rooks heard
the repeated cries of the crow, they concluded he had found something
eatable, and, therefore, flew up to share in it, but that, seeing
nothing, they hovered about for a time on the look-out and then gave
it up and flew off. I can form no idea, however, of what it was that
had excited the crow, for excited he certainly seemed--it was a sudden
burst of “are”-ing. He did not go down anywhere, so that it can have
had nothing to do with a find, and I feel sure from the way he came
up, and the place and distance at which he began to cry, that he had
not seen me. This, then, was my theory, at the time, to account for
the action of the rooks; but on the very next day something of the
same sort occurred, which was yet not all the same, and which could
not be explained in this way. This time, when a crow rose with his
“crar, crar” and flew to some trees, a number of rooks rose also from
all about, and after circling a little, each where it had gone up,
flew to a plantation, where shortly the crow flew also. Here, again,
there was no question of the crow having found anything, for he rose
from where he had for some time been, and flew straight away. Nor could
the rooks have imagined that he had, for they all rose as at a signal,
and, without going to where he had been, flew to somewhere near where
he had gone, and here they were shortly joined by him. Certainly the
rooks were influenced by the crow--the crow afterwards by the rooks, I
think--but in what way, or whether there was any definite idea on the
part of either of them, I am unable to say. Birds of different species
often affect one another, psychically, in some way that one cannot
quite explain. I have seen some small tits flying, seemingly full of
excitement, with the first band of rooks from the roosting-place in the
morning, and, evening after evening, a wood-pigeon would beat about
amongst the hosts of starlings, which filled the whole sky around their
dark little dormitory. He would join first one band and then another,
seeming to wish to make one of them, and this he continued to do almost
as long as the starlings remained. Peewits, again, seem to have an
attraction for starlings, and other such instances, either of mutual or
one-sided interest--generally, I think, the latter--may be observed.
We need not, I think, assume that every case of commensalism amongst
animals has had a utilitarian origin, even when we can now see the link
of mutual benefit.
Rooks, when once introduced, are not birds that can be lightly
dismissed. The most interesting thing about them, in my opinion, is
their habit of repairing daily to their nesting-trees during the
winter. Two visits are paid--at least two clearly marked ones--one in
the morning, the other in the later afternoon, taking the shortness
of the days into consideration. The latter is the longer and more
important one, and, to give a general idea of what happens upon it, I
will describe the behaviour of some birds on which I got the glasses
fixed, whilst watching, one Christmas, a small rookery, in some elms
near the house. It is always stated that rooks visit their nests,
during the winter, in order to repair them. The following slight but
accurate account of what the birds really do during these visits, is to
be read in connection with that statement, which, as it appears to me,
is either inaccurate, or, at least, not sufficiently full. Towards 3,
then, as I have it, like Mr. Justice Stareleigh, in my notes, the rooks
flew in, and of these a certain number settled in the largest elm of
the group. This contained, besides other nests, two, if not more, that
were built close against each other, making one great mass of sticks.
One rook perched upon the topmost of these nests, whilst another sat in
the lower one. The standing rook kept uttering deep caws, and, at each
caw, he made a sudden dip forward, with his head and whole body. At the
same time he shot up and spread open the feathers of his tail, which
he also arched, becoming, thus, a much finer figure of a bird. The
action seemed to express sexual emotion, with concomitant bellicosity,
and the latter element was soon manifested in a spirited attack upon
the poor sitting rook, who was, then and there, turned out of the
nest. Shortly afterwards, a pair of rooks peaceably occupied this same
lower nest, and continued there for some time. One of them sat in it,
and, looking long and steadily through the glasses, I could see the
tail of this bird thrown, at short intervals, spasmodically upwards.
Then, as the raised and spread feathers were folded and lowered, the
anal portion of the body was moved--wriggled--in a very special and
suggestive manner, about which I shall have more to say when I come
to the peewit. Whilst the sitting bird was behaving in this way, the
other one of the pair--which I put down as the female--stood beside
him, and as she occasionally bent forward towards him, the black of her
feathers becoming lost in his, I felt assured that she was cossetting
and caressing him, much as the hen pigeon caresses the male, whilst
he sits brooding on the place where the nest will be. There were also
several other combats, and more turnings of one bird out of the nest,
by another. At 3.15 four rooks sit perched on the boughs, all round the
great mass of sticks, but not one upon it. One of the four bends the
head, with a look and motion as though about to hop down. Instantly
there is an excited cawing--half, as it seems, remonstrative, half in
the tone of “Well, if you do, then I will, too,”--from the other three,
which is responded to, of course, by the first, the originator of the
uproar, and then all four drop on to the sticks, a pair upon each nest.
By 3.20 every rook is gone, but in ten minutes they are all back,
again, with much cawing. Four birds--the same four as I suppose--are
instantly on the great heap, but as quickly off it, again, amongst the
growing twigs, and this takes place three or four times in succession.
Two others, though they never come down upon the heap, remain close
beside it, and seem to feel a friendly interest in it. Sometimes they
fly away for a little, but they return, again, and sit there as before,
their right to do so seeming to be admitted. Thus there are six birds
in all, who seem primarily interested in the great heap of sticks,
which may, perhaps, indicate that it is composed of three rather than
of two nests. Once, however, for a little while, another rook is
associated with the six, making seven. At 3.45 the rooks again fly
off, but return in another ten minutes, and this time the tree with
the great communal nest in it is left empty. There is a great deal of
cawing, mingled with a higher, sharper note, all very different to
the cries made by the rooks, at this same time of the year, in their
roosting-places, or when leaving or returning to them in the morning
or evening. It was for this latter purpose, doubtless, that the final
exodus took place at a little past 4. During the last visit no nest was
entered by any bird.
Do the rooks, then, come to their nests in winter, in order to repair
them? Not once, so far as I could catch their actions, did I see
one of these lift a stick, and their behaviour on other occasions,
when I have watched them, has been more or less the same. On the
other hand we have the combats, the clamorous vociferation, the
caressing of one bird by another, the raising and fanning of the tail,
with the curious wriggling of it--bearing, in my mind, a peculiar
significance--everything, in fact, to suggest sexual emotion. To me it
appears that the nests are visited rather for the sake of sport and
play, than with any set business-like idea of putting them in order.
The birds come to them to be happy and excited, to have genial feelings
aroused by the sight of them--
“Venus then wakes and wakens love”
They come, in fact, as it seems to me, in an emotional state a good
deal resembling that of the bower-birds of Australia, when they play
at their “runs” or “bowers”; nor do the nests now--though in the
spring they were true ones--differ essentially, as far as the purpose
to which they are put is concerned, from these curious structures, of
which Gould says: “They are used by the birds as a playing-house, and
are used by the males to attract the females.” This latter statement
is certainly true, in the case, at least, of the satin bower-bird
(_Ptilorhynchus violaceus_), which I have watched at the Zoological
Gardens. That the mainspring, so to speak, of this bird’s actions is
sexual, no naturalist, seeing them, could doubt. But was the “bower”
originally made for the purpose which it now serves? Did the idea of
putting it to such a use precede its existence in some shape or form,
or did it not rather grow out of something else, because about it, as
it then was, certain emotions were more and more indulged in, till at
last it became the indispensable theatre for their display? Then, as
the theatre grew, no doubt the play did also, and _vice versâ_, the two
keeping pace with each other. I believe that this original something
was the nest, and that when we see a bird toy, court, or pair upon
the latter--thus putting it to a use totally different from that of
incubation, but similar to that which is served by the bower--we get a
hint as to the process by which the one structure has given rise to the
other.
Wonderful as is the architecture and ornamentation of some of the
bowers, as we now know them, especially the so-called garden of
_amblyornis_, their gradual elaboration from a much simpler structure
presents no more difficulty than does that of a complicated nest from a
quite ordinary one. All that we want is the initial directing impulse,
and this we have when once a bird uses its nest, not only as a cradle
for its young, but, also, as a nuptial bed or sporting-place. In a
passage of this nature, the nest, indeed, must remain, but why should
it not? Let us suppose that, like the rooks, the bower-birds--or,
rather, their ancestors--used, at one time, to use their old nests
of the spring, as play-houses during the winter. If, then, they had
built fresh nests as spring again came round, might they not gradually
have begun to build fresh play-houses too? The keeping up of the old
nest--but for a secondary purpose--would naturally have passed into
this, and the playing about it would, as naturally, have led to the
keeping of it up. That duality of use should gradually have led to
duality of structure--that from one thing used in two different ways
there should have come to be two things, each used in one of these
ways--does not seem to me extraordinary, but, rather, what we might
have expected, in accordance with the principle of differentiation and
specialisation, which has played so great a part in organic evolution.
It is by virtue of this principle that limbs have been developed out of
the vertebral column, and the kind of advantage which all vertebrate
animals have gained by this multiplication and differentiation of
parts, in their own bodily structure, is precisely that which a bird of
certain habits would have gained, by a similar increase in the number
and kind of the artificial structures made by it. It is, indeed,
obvious that the “bower,” in many cases, could not be quite what it
is, if it had also to answer the purpose of a nest, and still more so,
perhaps, that the nest could never have made a good bower. The extra
structure, therefore, represents a greater capacity for doing a certain
thing--just as do the extra limbs--which makes it likely that it has
been evolved from the earlier one, in accordance with the same general
law which has produced the latter.
Thus, in our own rook we see, perhaps, a bower-bird _in posse_, nor is
there any wide gap, but quite the contrary, between the crow family and
that to which the bower-birds belong. “The bower-birds,” says Professor
Newton, “are placed by most systematists among the _Paradiseidæ_,” and
Wallace, in his “Malay Archipelago,” tells us that “the _Paradiseidæ_
are a group of moderate-sized birds allied, in their structure and
habits, to crows, starlings, and to the Australian honey-suckers.” It
is, surely, suggestive that the one British bird that uses its nest--or
nests, collectively--as a sort of recreation ground, where the sexes
meet and show affection, during the winter, should be allied to the
one group of birds that make separate structures, which they use in
this same manner. Of course there are differences, but what I suggest
is that there is an essential similarity, which, alone, is important.
Probably the common ancestor of the bower-birds was not social in
its habits like the rook, and this difference may have checked the
development of the bower in the latter bird. As far, however, as the
actions of the two are concerned, they do not appear to me to differ
otherwise than one might expect the final stages of any process to
differ from its rough and rude beginnings. The sexual impulse is, so
it seems to me, the governing factor in both, so that, in both, it may
have led up to whatever else there is. In regard to the rooks, they did
not, when I watched them, appear to be repairing their nests. I think
it quite likely, however, that they do repair them after a fashion,
though I would put another meaning upon their doing so. That, being at
the nest, there should often be some toying with and throwing about of
the sticks, one can understand, and also that this should have passed
into some amount of regular labour: for all these things--with the
emotional states from which they spring--are interconnected through
association of ideas, so that one would glide easily into another, and
it is in this, as I believe, that we have the rationale of that amount
of repairing which the rook does do. Personally, as said before, I have
seen little or nothing of it.
When we consider that many birds are in the habit of building one or
more supernumerary nests--not with any definite purpose, as it seems
to me, but purely in obedience to the, as yet, unsatisfied instinct
which urges them to build--we can, perhaps, see a line along which the
principle of divergence and specialisation, as applied to the nest
structure, may, on the above hypothesis, have been led. Given two
uses of a nest, and more nests made than are used, might not we even
prophesy that one of the redundant ones would, in time, serve one of
the uses, supposing these to be very distinct, and to have a tendency
to clash with one another? Now courting leads up to pairing, and I can
say positively from my own observation that rooks often pair upon the
nest. This is the regular habit with the crested grebes, and I have
seen it in operation between them after some, or at least one, of the
eggs had been laid--possibly they had all been. But this must surely be
to the danger of the eggs, so that, as these birds build several nests,
natural selection would favour such of them as used separate ones for
pairing and laying. It does not, of course, follow that a tendency to
make a secondary nest and use it for a secondary purpose would develop
itself in any bird that was accustomed to pair or court upon the true
one; but it might in some, and, whenever it did, the evolution of the
“run” or “bower” would be but a matter of time, if, indeed, it should
not be rather held to exist, as soon as such separation had come about.
There would be but a slight line of demarcation, as it appears to me,
between an extra nest, which was used for nuptial purposes only, and
the so-called bowers of the bower-birds. As for the ornamentation which
is such a feature of these latter structures, the degree of it differs
amongst them, and we see the same thing--also in varying degrees--in
the nest proper. The jackdaw, for instance--and the proclivity has been
embalmed in our literature--is fond of putting a ring “midst the sticks
and the straw” of his, and shags, as I have noticed, will decorate
theirs with flowers, green leaves, and bleached spars or sticks. It
seems natural, too, that an æsthetic bird, owning two domiciles, one
for domestic duties and the other for love’s delights, should decorate
the latter, more and more to the neglect of the former. We see the
same principle at work amongst ourselves, for even in the most artistic
households, the nursery is usually a plain affair compared with the
boudoir or drawing-room.
As bower-building prevails only amongst one group of birds--not being
shared by allied groups--and as birds, universally almost, make some
sort of nest, we may assume that the latter habit preceded the former.
If so, the ancestral bower-bird, from which the various present species
may be supposed to be descended, would have built a nest before he
built a bower. Is it not more probable, therefore, that the new
structure should have grown out of the old one, than that the two are
not in any way connected? The orthodox view, indeed, would seem to be
the reverse of this, for we read in standard works of ornithology that
the bowers have nothing to do with the nests of the species making
them; whilst, at the same time, complete ignorance as to their origin
and meaning is confessed. But if we know nothing about a thing, how do
we know that it has nothing to do with some other thing? One argument,
brought forward to show that the nests of the bower-bird are not in
any way connected with their bowers, is that the former present no
extraordinary feature. But if the bower has grown out of the nest, in
the way and by the steps which I suppose, there is no reason why the
latter--and the bird’s general habits of nidification--should not have
remained as they were. As long as a single structure was used for a
double purpose, the paramount importance of the original one--that of
incubation--would have kept it from changing in any great degree, and
when there had come to be two structures for two purposes, that only
would have been subjected to modification which stood in need of it.
For the rest, as incubation and courtship are very different things,
one might expect the architecture in relation to them to be of a very
different kind. For these reasons, and having watched rooks at their
nests in the winter, and the breeding habits of some other birds, I
think it possible (1) that the bower has grown out of the nest, and (2)
that the sexual activities of which it is, as it were, the focus, were
once displayed about the nest itself. On the whole, however--though
I suggest this as a possible explanation--it is perhaps more likely
that the cleared arena where so many birds meet for the purposes
of courtship--as, _e.g._ the blackcock, capercailzie, ruff, argus
pheasant, cock-of-the-rock, &c. &c.--is the starting-point from which
the bower-birds have proceeded, especially as one species of the family
has not got so very much farther than this, even now.
Rooks, then, to leave speculation and return to fact, are swayed,
even in winter, by love as well as by hunger--those two great forces
which, as Schiller tells us, rule the world between them. They wake,
presumably, hungry; yet, before they can have fed much, make shift to
spend a little while on the scene of their domestic blisses. Hunger
then looks after them till an hour or so before evening, when they
return to their rookeries, and love takes up the ball for as long as
daylight lasts. And so, with birds as men--
“Erfüllt sich der Getriebe
Durch Hunger und durch Liebe.”
But there is a third great ruling power in the life of both, which
Schiller seems to have forgotten--sleep--and as its reign, each day,
is as long, or longer, than that of the other two conjoined, and as it
long outlasts one of them, it may be called, perhaps, the greatest of
the three.
[Illustration: HERON FISHING]