on the motions of the upper limbs, and to put one's self quite in their
position, one has only to recall to mind the well-known trick of the
Australian bushrangers. "Bail up!" is their order when they suddenly
produce their revolvers; "Bail up!" they shout to the clerks of the
bank they are about to sack, to the inmates of a house, or to the
travellers they meet on the road. "Hold your arms above your head" is
the meaning; and, if it is not immediately obeyed, they fire. They know
that every man has a pistol in his pocket or belt; but he cannot use it
if compelled to keep his arms high over his head. One or more of the
band keep a sharp look-out on the upheld arms while the rest plunder;
and, if any are lowered--bang! Like the animals, they know the extreme
danger to be apprehended from movements of the human arms. So long as
the human arms are "bailed" (though in this case in an opposite
direction, i.e. held down), animals are not afraid. Could they make us
"bail up," we should be helpless to injure them. Moving his arms as
gently as possible, with the elbows close to his sides, the poacher
proceeds to slowly push his rod and wire loop towards the basking jack.
If he were going to shoot partridges at roost on the ground, he would
raise his gun in an equally slow and careful manner. As a partridge is
a small bird, and stands at about a shilling in the poacher's
catalogue, he does not care to risk a shot at one, but likes to get
several at once. This he can do in the spring, when the birds have
paired and remain so near together, and again in the latter part of the
summer, when the coveys are large, not having yet been much broken up
by the sportsmen. These large coveys, having enjoyed an immunity from
disturbance all through the summer, wandering at their own will among
clover and corn, are not at all difficult to approach, and a shot at
them through a gap in a hedge will often bring down four or five. Later
on the poacher takes them at roost. They roost on the ground in a
circle, heads outwards, much in the same position as the eggs of a
lapwing. The spot is marked; and at night, having crept up near enough,
the poacher fires at the spot itself rather than at the birds, with a
gun loaded with a moderate charge of powder, but a large quantity of
shot, that it may spread wide. On moderately light nights he can
succeed at this game. It is in raising the arms to point the gun that
the risk of alarming the birds has to be met; and so with a hare
sitting in a form in daytime. Lift your arms suddenly, and away she
goes; keep your arms still, and close to your side, and she will sit
till you have crept up actually to her very side, and can pounce on her
if you choose.
Sometimes, where fish have not been disturbed by poachers, or loafers
throwing stones and otherwise annoying them, they will not heed a
passer-by, whose gentle walk or saunter does not affright them with
brisk emotion, especially if the saunterer, on espying them, in no
degree alters his pace or changes his manner. That wild creatures
immediately detect a change of manner, and therefore of mood, any one
may demonstrate for himself They are as quick to see it as the dog, who
is always with his master, and knows by the very way he puts a book on
the table what temper he is in. When a book goes with a bang on the
table the dog creeps under it. Wild creatures, too, catch their manners
from man. Walk along a lane with your hands in your pockets, and you
will see twice as much of the birds and animals, because they will not
set themselves to steadfastly watch you. A quick movement sets wings
quickly beating. I have noticed that even horses in stables do not like
visitors with jerky, brisk, angular ways of moving. A stranger entering
in a quiet, easy manner is not very objectionable, but if he comes in
in a bustling, citizen-like style, it is quite probable that one or
other horse will show a wicked white corner in his eye. It roughs them
up the wrong way. Especially all wild creatures dislike the shuffling,
mincing step so common in towns. That alone will disturb everything.
Indeed, I have often thought that a good and successful wild
hunter--like the backwoods man, or the sportsman in African bush or
Indian jungle--is really made as much by his feet as his eyes or hands.
Unconsciously he feels with his feet; they come to know the exact time
to move, whether a long or short stride be desirable, and where to put
down, not to rustle or cause a cracking sound, and accommodate
themselves to the slope of the ground, touching it and holding it like
hands. A great many people seem to have no feet; they have boots, but
no feet. They stamp or clump, or swing their boots along and knock the
ground at every step; this matters not in most callings, but if a man
wish to become what I have called a wild hunter, he must let his feet
learn. He must walk with hands in his boots. Now and then a person
walks like this naturally, and he will come in and tell you that he has
seen a fish basking, a partridge, a hare, or what not, when another
never gets near anything. This is where they have not been much
disturbed by loafers, who are worse than poachers.
As a rule, poachers are intermittent in their action, and they do not
want to disturb the game, as it makes it wild and interferes with their
profits. Loafers are not intermittent--they are always about, often in
gangs, and destroy others' sports without having any themselves. Near
large towns there are places where the fish have to be protected with
hurdles thrown across the stream on poles, that the stones and
brickbats hurled by every rascal passing may not make their very life a
burden. A rural poacher is infinitely preferable. The difference in the
ways of fish when they have been much disturbed and when they have been
let alone is at at once discerned. No sooner do you approach a fish who
has been much annoyed and driven than he strikes, and a quick-rotating
curl on the surface shows with what vehemence his tail was forced
against it. In other places, if a fish perceives you, he gives himself
so slight a propulsion that the curl hardly rises, and you can see him
gliding slowly into the deeper or overshadowed water. If in terror he
would go so quickly as to be almost invisible. In places where the fish
have been much disturbed the poacher, or any one who desires to watch
their habits, has to move as slowly as the hands of a clock, and even
then they will scarcely bear the very sight of a man, sometimes not at
all. The least briskness of movement would send them into the depths
out of sight. Cattle, to whom they are accustomed, walk slowly, and so
do horses left to themselves in the meads by water. The slowest man
walking past has quicker, perhaps because shorter, movements than those
of cattle and horses, so that, even when bushes intervene and conceal
his form, his very ways often proclaim him.
Most people will only grant a moderate degree of intelligence to fish,
linking coldness of blood to narrowness of intellect, and convinced
that there can be but little brain in so small a compass as its head.
That the jack can compete with the dog, of course, is out of the
question: but I am by no means prepared to admit that fish are so
devoid of sense as supposed. Not long since an experiment was tried
with a jack, an account of which appeared in the papers. The jack was
in a tank, and after awhile the tank was partly divided by inserting a
plate of glass. He was then hunted round, and notes taken of the number
of times he bumped his head against the plate of glass, and how long it
took him to learn that there was something to obstruct his path.
Further statistics were kept as to the length of his memory when he had
learnt the existence of the glass--that is, to see if he would
recollect it several days afterwards. The fish was some time learning
the position of the glass; and then, if much alarmed, he would forget
its position and dash against it. But he did learn it, and retained his
memory some while. It seems to me that this was a very hard and unfair
test. The jack had to acquire the idea of something transparent, and
yet hard as wood. A moment's thought will show how exactly opposite the
qualities of glass are to anything either this particular fish or his
ancestors could have met with--no hereditary intelligence to aid him,
no experience bearing, however slightly, upon the subject.
Accustomed all his life to transparent water, he had also been
accustomed to find it liquid, and easily parted. Put suddenly face to
face with the transparent material which repelled him, what was he to
think? Much the same effect would be produced if you or I, having been
accustomed, of course, all our lives, to the fluidity of air, which
opens for our passage, were opposed by a solid block of transparent
atmosphere. Imagine any one running for a train, and striking his head
with all his might against such a block. He would rise, shake himself
together, and endeavour to pursue his journey, and be again repelled.
More than likely he would try three times before he became convinced
that it really was something in the air itself which stopped him. Then
he would thrust with his stick and feel, more and more astounded every
moment, and scarcely able to believe his own senses. During the day,
otherwise engaged, he would argue himself into the view that he had
made a mistake, and determine to try again, though more cautiously. But
so strong is habit that if a cause for alarm arose, and he started
running, he might quite probably go with tremendous force up to the
solid block of transparent air, to be hurled back as the jack was.
These are no mere suppositions, for quite recently I heard of a case
which nearly parallels the conduct of the jack. A messenger was
despatched by rail to a shop for certain articles, and was desired to
return by a certain time. The parcel was made up, the man took it,
heard an engine whistle, turned to run, and in his haste dashed himself
right through a plate-glass window into the street. He narrowly escaped
decapitation, as the great pieces of glass fell like the knife of a
guillotine. Cases of people injuring themselves by walking against
plate-glass are by no means uncommon; when the mind is preoccupied it
takes much the same place as the plate of glass in the water and the
jack. Authorities on mythology state that some Oriental nations had not
arrived at the conception of a fluid heaven--of free space; they
thought the sky was solid, like a roof. The fish was very much in the
same position. The reason why fish swim round and round in tanks, and
do not beat themselves against the glass walls, is evidently because
they can see where the water ends. A distinction is apparent between it
and the air outside; but when the plate of glass was put inside the
tank the jack saw water beyond it, or through it. I never see a fish in
a tank without remembering this experiment and the long train of
reflections it gives rise to. To take a fish from his native brook, and
to place him suddenly in the midst of such, to him, inconceivable
conditions, is almost like watching the actual creation of mind. His
mind has to be created anew to meet it, and that it did ultimately meet
the conditions shows that even the fish--the cold-blooded, the
narrow-brained--is not confined to the grooves of hereditary knowledge
alone, but is capable of wider and novel efforts. I thought the jack
came out very well indeed from the trial, and I have mentioned the
matter lest some should think I have attributed too much intelligence
to fish.
Other creatures besides fish are puzzled by glass. One day I observed a
robin trying to get in at the fanlight of a hall door. Repeatedly he
struck himself against it, beat it with his wings, and struggled to get
through the pane. Possibly there was a spider inside which tempted him;
but allowing that temptation, it was remarkable that the robin should
so strive in vain. Always about houses, he must have had experience of
the properties of glass, and yet forgot it so soon. His ancestors for
many generations must have had experience of glass, still it did not
prevent him making many trials. The slowness of the jack to learn the
impenetrable nature of the glass plate and its position is not the
least indication of lack of intelligence. In daily life we constantly
see people do things they have observed injure them, and yet, in spite
of experience, go and do the same again.
The glass experiment proves to me that the jack, like all other
creatures, really has a latent power of intelligence beyond that
brought into play by the usual circumstances of existence. Consider the
conditions under which the jack exists--the jack we have been
approaching so carefully. His limits are the brook, the ponds it feeds,
and the ditches that enter it. He can only move a short distance up the
stream because there is a high hatch, nor can he go far down because of
a mill; if he could, the conditions would be much the same; but, as a
matter of fact, the space he has at his command is not much. The
running water, the green flags, the lesser fishes, the water-rats, the
horses and cattle on the bank--these are about all the things that he
is likely to be interested in. Of these only the water, the lesser
fishes, the flags, and the bottom or sides of the brook, are actually
in his touch and complete understanding. As he is unable to live out of
water, the horse on the bank, in whose very shadow he sometimes lies,
might be a mile away for aught it concerns him. By no possible means
can he discover anything about it. The horse may be itself nothing more
than a shadow, unless in a shallow place he steps in and splashes.
Night and day he knows, the cool night, and the sunbeams in which he
basks; but he has no way of ascertaining the nature of anything outside
the water. Centuries spent in such conditions could add but little to
his experience.
Does he hear the stream running past him? Do the particles of water, as
they brush his sides and fins, cause a sound, as the wind by us? While
he lurks beneath a weed in the still pool, suddenly a shoal of roach
rush by with a sound like a flock of birds whose wings beat the air.
The smooth surface of the still water appears to cover an utter
silence, but probably to the fish there are ceaseless sounds.
Water-fowl feeding in the weedy corners, whose legs depend down into
the water and disturb it; water-rats diving and running along the
bottom; water-beetles moving about; eels in the mud; the lower parts of
flags and aquatic grasses swinging as the breeze ruffles their tips;
the thud, thud of a horse's hoofs, and now and then the more distant
roll of a hay-laden waggon. And thunder--how does thunder sound under
the surface? It seems reasonable to suppose that fish possess a wide
gamut of hearing since their other senses are necessarily somewhat
curtailed, and that they are peculiarly sensitive to vibratory
movements is certain from the destruction a charge of dynamite causes
if exploded under water. Even in the deep sea the discharge of a
torpedo will kill thousands of herrings. They are as it were killed by
noise. So that there are grounds for thinking that my quiet jack in the
pool, under the bank of the brook, is most keenly alive by his sense of
hearing to things that are proceeding both out and in the water. More
especially, no doubt, of things in the water itself. With all this
specialised power of hearing he is still circumscribed and limited to
the groove of the brook. The birds fly from field to field, from valley
to mountain, and across the sea. Their experience extends to whole
countries, and their opportunities are constant. How much more
fortunate in this respect than the jack! A small display of
intelligence by the fish is equivalent to a large display by the bird.
When the jack has been much disturbed no one can do more than obtain a
view of him, however skilfully he may conceal himself. The least sign
of further proceedings will send the jack away; sometimes the mere
appearance of the human form is sufficient. If less suspicious, the rod
with the wire attached--or if you wish to make experiments, the rod
without the wire--can be placed in the water, and moved how you choose.
SPORT AND SCIENCE
Kingfisher Corner was the first place I made for when, as a lad, I
started from home with my gun. The dew of September lies long on the
grass, and by the gateway I often noticed wasps that had spent the
night in the bunches, numbed and chilled, crawling up the blades bent
into an arch by the weight of the drops. Thence they got on the gate,
where, too, the flies congregated at that time in the morning; for
while it was still cool at the surface on the ground, the dry wood soon
absorbed the heat of the sun. This warmth brought them to life again,
and after getting well charged with it, the insects flew off to any
apples they could discover. These heavy dews, as the summer declines,
keep the grass fresh and green, and maintain the leaves on hedge and
tree; yet they do not reach the earth, which remains dry. It is a
different dew to the spring dew, or acts in another manner: the spring
dews moisten the earth, and from the arable lands as the sun shines
forth you may see the vapour rise and drift along the surface, like the
smoke of a gun on a damp day. The mottled geometrical giant spiders
find their webs thick with this September dew, which seems as if a
little unctuous. Stepping through the gateway with the morning sun
behind me, I saw at each step a fresh circle of dewdrops gleam, some
ruby, some emerald, some brightly white, at the same distance in front.
The angle of refraction advanced as I moved; there was a point at which
the dewdrop shot back a brilliant ray, and then became invisible, or
appeared a mere drop of dull water.
By moonlight there is thus formed a semicircle of light on the grass,
which continually moves before you; it is a halo on the grass-tips. I
noticed this as a boy, and tried all sorts of experiments respecting
it, but never met with any mention of it in books till quite lately, in
Benvenuto Cellini's "Autobiography." He says, "There appeared a
resplendent light over my head, which has displayed itself
conspicuously to all I have thought proper to show it to, but those
were very few. This shining light is to be seen in the morning over my
shadow till two o'clock in the afternoon, and it appears to the
greatest advantage when the grass is moist with dew; it is likewise
visible in the evening at sunset. This phenomenon I took notice of in
Paris, because the air is exceedingly clear in that climate, so that I
could distinguish it there much plainer than in Italy, where mists are
much more frequent; but I can still see it even here, and show it to
others, though not to the same advantage as in France." Benvenuto
thought this one of the most extraordinary things that had happened to
him; and records it after a wonderful dream, as if it, too, were
supernatural. It is, however, possible that some eyes are so
constituted as not to be able to see this phenomenon in their own case;
at least, I have sometimes tried in vain to get other people to see it.
I should not have noticed it had I not been about at all hours with my
gun as a boy. It is much more visible by moonlight, when the rabbits'
white tails go dot, dot, lightly over the grass, and you are just as
likely to shoot at their shadows as at their bodies. As the scythe of
the mower mows a swathe before him, so the semicircle of light moves in
front over the dew, and the grass appears another tint, as it does
after a roller has passed.
In a scientific publication not long since, a letter was published
describing what the writer supposed was indeed something extraordinary.
He had seen a fragment of rainbow--a square piece, as it were--by
itself in the sky, some distance to one side of the sun. In provincial
papers such letters may often be found, and even, until lately, in
papers issued in London; now with accurate accounts of an ordinary halo
about the sun, now with a description of a prismatic cloud round the
moon, and one day some one discovered that there were two currents of
air, as the clouds went in two directions. Now, it is clear enough that
none of these writers had ever been out with a gun or a rod; I mean out
all day, and out in the full sense of the phrase. They had read books
of science; from their language they were thoroughly educated, and felt
a deep interest in natural phenomena. Yet what a marvel was here made
out of the commonest incidents of the sky! Halos about the sun happen
continually; the prismatic band or cloud about the moon is common; so
is the detached rainbow; as for the two currents of air, the clouds
often travel in three directions, occasionally in four. These incidents
are no more surprising to a sportsman than the sunset. I saw them, as a
boy, almost day by day, and recorded the meteors in the evening. It
seems to me that I used to see scores of meteors of various degrees of
brightness. Once the path, the woods, the fields, and the distant hills
were lit as if with a gigantic electric light; I was so interested in
tracing the well-known scene so suddenly made apparent in the darkness
that it was not for some seconds I thought of looking for the bolide,
but even then I was in time to see it declining just before extinction.
Others who have been out with their guns have, of course, seen exactly
the same things; I do not mention them to claim for myself any special
powers of observation, but as instances of the way in which sport
brings one in contact with nature. Other sportsmen, too, must have
smiled at the marvel made of such appearances by clever and
well-educated, but indoor, people.
This very spring (1883), as I walked about a town in the evening, I
used to listen to find if I could hear any one mention the zodiacal
light, which, just after sunset, was distinctly visible for a fortnight
at a time. It was more than usually distinct, a perfect cone, reaching
far up into the sky among the western stars. No one seemed to observe
it, though it faced them evening after evening. Here was an instance in
the opposite direction--a curious phenomenon, even now rather the
subject of hypothesis than of demonstration, entirely overlooked. The
common phenomenon made a marvel, and the unexplained phenomenon
unnoticed. Both in the eyes of a thoughtful person are equally
wonderful; but that point of view is apart from my present object,
which is to show that sport trains the eye. As a boy, roving about the
hedges with my gun, it was my especial delight to see Mercury, because
one of the great astronomers had never seen that planet, and because in
all the books it was stated as difficult to see. The planet was
favourably situated, and I used to see it constantly after sunset then,
pale, and but just outside the sunset glow, only a little way above the
distant hills. Now it is curious, to remark in passing, that as the sun
sets behind a hill the slope of the hill towards you is often obscured
by his light. It appears a luminous misty surface, rosy-tinted, and
this luminous mist hides the trees upon it, so that the slope is
apparently nothing but a broad sweep of colour; while those hills
opposite the sun, even if twice as distant, are so clearly defined that
the smallest object is evident upon them. Sometimes, instead of the
mist on the western hill, there is a blood-like purple almost startling
in its glory of light.
There have been few things I have read of, or studied, which in some
manner or other I have not seen illustrated in this country while out
in the fields. It is said that in the Far West, on the level prairies,
when the snow covers them, you see miles and miles away, a waggon
stopping; you hurry on, and in half a day's journey overtake it, to
find the skull of an ox--so greatly has distance and the mirage of the
snow magnified its apparent size. But a few days since I saw some rooks
on the telegraph wires against a bright sky, but as I approached they
flew and resolved into starlings, so much had the brilliant light
deceived me. A hare sometimes, on the open ground, looks at a distance,
in the sunny days of May when hares are often abroad in daylight, as
big as a good-sized dog, and, except by the leap and the absence of
visible tail, can hardly be told from a dog. The bamboo fishing-rods,
if you will glance at the bamboo itself as you fish, seem the most
singular of growths. There is no wood in the hedge like it, neither
ash, hazel, oak, sapling, nor anything; it is thoroughly foreign,
almost unnatural. The hard knots, the hollow stem, the surface glazed
so as to resist a cut with a knife and nearly turn the steel--this is a
tropical production alone. But while working round the shore presently
you come to the sedges, and by the sedges stands a bunch of reeds. A
reed is a miniature bamboo, the same shape, the same knots, and glazy
surface; and on reference to any intelligent work of botany, it appears
that they both belong to the same order of inward-growing Endogens, so
that a few moments bestowed on the reed by the waters give a clear idea
of the tropical bamboo, and make the singular foreign production
home-like and natural.