think, not ten feet from the ground. Now I always build as high as I
can--just underneath the rooks'-nests, in fact. You're safe from boys;
they don't shoot your nest to bits for fear of shooting the rooks'-nests
too; and there's abundance of insect food on the spot. The nest itself was
mostly feathery stuff, though I remember a piece of pink paper, which used
to tickle me. I suppose the colour of it took the old birds' fancy. Of
course the nest was distinct from the casing. That was the usual straw. I
think it is the casing of sparrows'-nests that you humans object to as
untidy."
"We chiefly object to the portion which stops up the water-pipes," said I.
"What did you have to eat?"
"Insects, I expect, to start with. At least, that is what I always give my
youngsters; then, as my gizzard strengthened, small, hard seeds; then
bigger ones; finally, corn itself. That is my favourite diet at the
present time. Three parts of what I eat is corn, the rest is insects,
seeds, and scraps."
[Illustration: IT WAS IN A HOLE OF A TREE-STUMP.]
"You can get corn all the year round?"
"Oh! easily enough. In the fields, when it is growing; round the
wheat-stacks later, or among the poultry--people don't shoot into the
middle of the poultry--anywhere, in fact."
"And you really like corn better than anything?"
"There is nothing quite so nice in the world," said the sparrow, "as
fresh, young corn in the ear, which you can just squeeze the juice out of
and then drop."
"And are you aware of the amount of damage which you do to the poor,
struggling farmer?" said I, assuming a judicial severity which I was far
from feeling.
The flippancy was infectious.
"A recent estimate places it at £770,094 per annum," said the sparrow.
"Just think of that!"
"In this country alone," said I. "You seem to forget America, Australia,
South Africa, and all the other places to which you have been unhappily
introduced as an insecticide."
"You seem to forget," he retorted, "that it was you yourselves who made
the introduction. You tried to improve on the natural balance which was
ordained for this string of countries, and a pretty mess you have made of
it. Now you want to crown your folly of introducing the sparrow where
Nature said it was not wanted, by exterminating it where Nature says it is
wanted--and that's here."
"I don't think any one has suggested that you should be exterminated,"
said I.
"'To lessen their numbers in our country, every possible means must be had
recourse to.' There's a pretty piece of grammar for you."
He was obviously quoting again.
"You couldn't exterminate me if you tried, and, therefore, you very
properly don't suggest it. I have been called the Avian Rat, and I _am_
the Avian Rat. You can no more get rid of me than you can of my
four-footed counterpart. It would be a bad day for you if you could."
"But you must admit that both you and the rat are increasing in numbers,
and, therefore, in destructiveness. What is to be the end of it?"
"The end of it will be that you will preserve our enemies instead of
shooting them at sight."
"Meaning?"
"Hawks, owls, weasels, and so on."
"But hawks would never come near the towns?"
"We aren't in town the whole year round. Even the cockneyest of sparrows
has his month or two in the cornfields. I don't mind telling you that one
of the reasons we have for clinging to human habitations is that we are
thus sure of sanctuary. Our natural enemies will always be welcomed with a
gun. They know that, too, and keep away. Make it an offence to kill a bird
or beast of prey, and you will see a difference in the rats and
sparrows."
"What about the pheasants?" said I.
"There would be fewer pheasants," said the sparrow; "and, if you only knew
it, they would taste better, if there were."
[Illustration: YOU HAVE BEEN SHOT AT.]
"Sparrow," said I, "to speak disrespectfully of the battue places you at
once outside the pale. You _are_ an Avian Rat. You _do_ consume an
inordinate quantity of corn. Since history began you have been an impudent
parasite on man. As a hieroglyphic character you signified the enemy.
Choleric old gentlemen have been roused to frenzy over your misdeeds. You
have been shot at, trapped, poisoned, netted. Like the chafers, you have
been excommunicated. You have been made into a yearly tribute, by the
thousand. Laws have been enacted to compass your destruction, letters have
been written to the _Field_, and yet--and yet--an inscrutable Providence
has decreed that you shall survive, increase, and multiply. What _good_ do
you do?"
[Illustration: TRAPPED.]
"Have you ever heard me sing?" said the sparrow.
"Sing!" I cried; "that sempiternal twitter, that intolerable chirrup that
destroys the best and latest hours of sleep! Do you call that singing?"
"What bird would you prefer?" he blandly inquired.
I considered for a moment. The grim possibility of ten thousand
nightingales yodelling in chorus, of ten thousand skylarks, or of ten
thousand cuckoos, determined my answer.
"I cannot think of one," said I. "But this is no merit on your part, it is
merely a qualification of evil."
[Illustration: NETTED.]
"I thought you would acknowledge _that_," said the sparrow. "But,
seriously, you ask me what good I do, and I will tell you. That my infant
food consisted entirely of insects and caterpillars you already know. Turn
the statistician to work who has so cunningly reduced my corn-depredations
to pounds, shillings, and pence, and he will assuredly find that the
insects devoured by the infant sparrow population in a year will amount to
hundreds of millions. These, mind you, are insects large enough to be
brought to us in our parent's beaks.
[Illustration: AVIAN RAT, INDEED! RATHER AVIAN SCAVENGER!]
"But what of the insect eggs devoured by us in winter, when most of your
pretty insect-eating birds have flown to where the insect is commoner,
fatter, and fuller-flavoured? It is we stay-at-home British birds that
really keep the insects down. I know that insect eggs do not appear in our
poor dissected gizzards. How should they? How would you recognize their
remains, O sapient sparrow-shooters? But they are there, for all that.
Those blessed with eyes can see us hunting for them in the fallen leaves,
among the garbage, in the crannies of the very pavement.
[Illustration: I FELT ASHAMED.]
"What, again, of weed seeds in general, and knotgrass in particular? Avian
Rat, indeed! rather Avian Scavenger, who draws his hard-earned pay in
corn. Can you grudge him a few paltry millions? Would you exterminate him
because in your blindness you only note the debit side? There is a Power
behind the sparrow. It is Nature herself, and against Her fixed resolve
nothing avails."
He had worked himself into an incoherent frenzy; but, even as he relapsed
from this fierce air of consequence to his vulgarian self, I felt
ashamed.
THE AWAKENING OF THE DORMOUSE
He lay face downwards--two tiny fists tight-clenched against his cheeks,
his feet curled up to meet them, his tail swung gracefully across his
eyes.
Nine weeks had he lain thus, self-entombed. Within the hollow of the old
hazel-stump he had fashioned a rough sphere of honeysuckle bark; within
this, again, a nest of feathery grass stems. He had put the roof on last
of all.
A winter sunbeam pierced the screen of woodbine, and, for a moment, shed
the warmth of springtime on the nest. His whiskers gave a feeble flicker
in response. Next day the treacherous radiance lingered. He unclenched one
fist, and wound four tiny fingers round a grass-stem. On the fourth day he
half-opened his eyes (even half-opened they were beautiful), and sat up,
dazed and blinking. The sunbeam had reached his heart.
[Illustration: "WHAT, AWAKE?" SHOUTED THE SQUIRREL.]
Yet it was a full hour before he was conscious that he lived. At first he
felt nothing but a dull quickening throb within his body. His feet and
hands were ice-cold, and he swayed from side to side, feeling for his
strength. Then came the pricking of ten thousand tiny needles in his
limbs. His heart beat as though it would burst its prison. His whole
frame quivered. His bristles stood stiff-pointed from their roots. As the
heart-throb slowed, his muscles slackened and obeyed his will, but yet he
felt that something was amiss. Before him danced a yellow quivering haze,
his feet were heavy and awkward, his chest ached as he breathed, and he
was cold, oh, so cold! It was no easy matter to reach the nest-top. He
climbed mechanically upwards, digging his toes into the meshwork of the
sides, and sobbing from sheer weakness as he climbed.
He made a small parting in the roof, and peeped out. It was only for a
moment, for he fell back stunned and blinded by the glare. Still, in that
moment, he had caught a glimpse of an unfamiliar world, leafless,
lifeless, silent, miserable. He tucked his nose between his four paws,
swung his tail across his eyes, and waited patiently for the darkness.
With the darkness came the cold. It stole upon him gently, quelled the
heart-throb, reclenched the tiny fists, and lulled him to forget.
* * * * *
It was better the next time. The old hazel was making coquettish efforts
to renew its youth. It had hung its last remaining shoot with dancing
catkins. Here and there lurked a crimson bud, ready to catch the floating
pollen. On the sloping banks below were splotches of violet and primrose,
and, over all, hung the green shimmer of spring.
To the dormouse's eyes the glare was, for the first few moments, as
painful as before, but this time it was tempered with moisture. Great
rain-drops swung on the swaying grass-stems and twinkled with a thousand
prismatic colours. The slow drip of the woods resounded in his ears.
As his hearing sharpened, the old familiar sounds returned, the chirping
of the titmice, the starling's discord, the sniggering of the robin, the
squirrel's bullying cough. How he had hated the squirrel--a midget
incarnation of mischief, whose whole life was spent in practical joking.
How often had he heard that hateful cough shot into his ear, as My Lady
Shadowtail whisked past him, a sinuous brown flash curling round the tree
trunk! How often had he promptly dropped his hard-earned nut in
consequence, only to see it seized by a field-mouse! How often had he
swung at the end of a tapering twig, while the squirrel feinted at him
with all four paws!
He looked up, and caught the squirrel's eye.
"What, awake?" she shouted. "It's not quite time for good little dormice.
You wait till it's dark, and see how cool it is. Why, even with my tail
(and she bent it into a figure of eight to show its amplitude) it is hard
enough to keep warm."
[Illustration: MY LADY SHADOWTAIL. MOTHER!]
"Chuc!"
The dormouse had felt it coming, and had discreetly retired. As it was,
the better part of the roof caved in, the result of slight mistiming on
the part of the squirrel.
"I wish you wouldn't do that," said the dormouse.
He was addressing vacancy, for the squirrel had in the mean time completed
the circuit of three tree-tops. She was back again, however, in time to
catch the next remark.
"Have you any nuts?" said the dormouse. "I feel most horribly hungry, and
this light is very trying to my eyes. It will have to be darker before I
can hunt for any myself."
"You'll be asleep two hours before it's dark," said the squirrel, "and I
haven't any nuts, or rather, I haven't the least idea where I put them.
Didn't you make a store?"
"Only a small one--seeds, I think," said the dormouse. "I was very drowsy
when I made it, and I daren't hope that it is in good order."
"Where is it?" said the squirrel.
"The second hazel on the left," said the dormouse; "the third hollow from
the top."
The second hazel on the left was twenty yards away. Before the dormouse
had finished speaking the squirrel had started, and the boughs by which
she reached it were still quivering as she returned.
"There's your store."
The dormouse looked up, and gave a dolorous squeal of disappointment. A
straggling nosegay was being thrust through the roof, and he realized at
once that the seeds had sprouted.
"Why didn't you nibble the ends off?" said the squirrel. "You can't expect
seeds to be seeds for ever. Oh, it's your first hibernation, is it? Well,
you'll know better next time. Here's a nut for you." She had held it
concealed in her palm, and produced it like a conjuror.
"She's not such a bad sort, after all," thought the dormouse, as he
proceeded to examine the nut.
It was a hard nut, and would take some getting through. He sat back on his
haunches, grasped it in his eight little fingers, gave it a twirl or two,
and commenced gnawing three strokes a second. He gnawed for two minutes
without a break.
It was harder than any other nut he remembered. He had never been more
than a minute getting through one; sometimes they had obligingly split in
half before he had fairly started. He tried another part, and worked even
more vigorously than before.
Assuredly it was the very hardest nut in all the world. Twenty minutes'
hard work produced a small round hole, ten minutes more enlarged it so
that he could thrust his lips inside. Then he sucked vigorously to secure
the kernel, and secured instead a mouthful of black dust.
Of course the squirrel had known it all along. It did not need the guffaw
he heard above to tell him that. This time he did not even protest. His
spirit was broken. He was cold and tired and hungry. He merely huddled in
a corner, still grasping the nut, and breathing in queer short gasps.
"Never mind, dormouse," shouted the squirrel, "you will know a bad egg
next time. Try this."
For five seconds there was a faint rasping sound, then a sharp crack, and
the rustle of two half-nutshells through the leaves. One of them struck
the side of the hazel-stump and bounded off like an elastic ball. Before
the dormouse had collected his wits, a fine kernel was thrust through the
nest and the squirrel had once more regained her bough.
"Eat it," she shrieked; "eat it before the sun goes down. It's going now."
And it was. Before a quarter of the kernel was accounted for, the western
sky had turned to lurid orange; before the half was gone, the chill struck
him. The nut dropped from his nerveless hands, his limbs tightened, his
ears sank into his skin, his eyelids drooped, and he was asleep once more.
* * * * *
The primroses had long yielded pride of place to the daffodils; these in
turn had paled before the marsh marigolds, but the most glorious yellow in
the picture was the Sulphur Butterfly. He zigzagged lightly down the
hedgerow, catching the sunshine at every turn, and the marigolds drooped
their heads at the sight of him. Close to the nest he dropped on a
briar-leaf, like a floating petal. He was more than colour now--he was
form. For a full minute he poised there motionless, the most exquisitely
graceful, the most exquisitely coloured of all our butterflies, and, for
a full minute, the dormouse watched him.
Next came a quivering, amber-tinted flight, resolved at rest into a
delicate medley of green and white and saffron. It was the orange-tip,
and the dormouse rejoiced, for the orange-tip meant spring. Such dainty
frailty could never stand the winter.
To tell of all he heard and saw that day would fill a book. At first, as
he peered through the crevices, he only grasped the more vivid tints--the
azure of the hyacinth, the roseblush of the almond, the crimson glow of
the clover, the purple of the foxglove. Then, as his senses quickened, the
whole glorious colour-scale, from ashbud to whitethorn, stood revealed.
From heaven above came the skylark's defiant challenge; from earth
beneath the fussy scream of the blackbird; on all sides the tweetings,
twitterings, chirrupings, chirrings and pipings of petulant finches, and,
in tender modulation to the avian chorus, the deep-throated, innumerable,
drowsy hum of insects. Colour and sound, love and war, it was spring
indeed.
[Illustration: IT WAS THE ORANGE-TIP.]
For the dormouse, one tiny penetrating note dominated all. He knew that
the singer of that note was four-footed. Have you ever heard a cricket's
serenade? It was something like that. Have you ever heard a tree-creeper
talking to itself? It was something like that also. He looked down and
saw, as he expected, a round fur ball rolling in and out the grass-stems.
At times the ball sat up and sniffed. He knew the puny fists and tapering
snout at once. It was the shrewmouse. "Shrewmouse!" he cried, "is it
time?" But the shrewmouse had crouched to dodge the shadow of a passing
bird, and he saw him no more. However, he had seen enough. He stretched
his hands and feet as though he would rack them from their sockets. Like
Tennyson's rabbit, he fondled his harmless face in the most elaborate of
toilets, then he took one nibble at the remnant of the squirrel's nut,
and dropped off to sleep till the twilight.
[Illustration: BEFORE HIM LAY THE TWILIGHT WORLD HE LOVED.]
[Illustration: "FIGURE SOMEWHAT STOUT," SAYS THE BOOK.]
It is time to describe him.
"Figure somewhat stout," says the book, "a single pair of pre-molars in
each jaw, first toe of the fore-foot rudimentary, tail cylindrical," etc.
The dormouse was anything but stout--six months' fasting, save for half a
nut, had effectually restrained any tendency that way. No doubt in other
respects he was in fair accordance with museum pattern, but he differed in
one essential particular--he was alive.
[Illustration: HIS EYES? NOR PEN NOR CAMERA CAN PRESENT THEM.]
His colour? When he had first retired to rest he had closely resembled a
young red vole, buff grey all over save for his white waistcoat and the
hair-parting along his back and down the ridges of his limbs. This was a
delicate auburn. During his sleep the auburn had overspread his back,
softened into cream colour on his sides, and thence into a pure white
front. Ages ago his ancestors had been white all over; now, amid changed
surroundings, the white only lingered where it was least conspicuous.
His eyes? Nor pen nor camera can present them. Imagine a black pearl
imprisoning a diamond; imagine a dewdrop trembling on polished jet; add
to these beauties _life_, and you will have the dormouse eye.
His tail? Distichous, say the books. Feathers are mostly distichous,
hair-partings are distichous, the moustache is distichous. So is the
dormouse tail; but the hairs along it do more than merely part. They
curl, upwards from the root, downwards to the point, and form a plume.
The plume is a natural parachute, not so obvious, perhaps, as in the
squirrel's case, but, weight for weight, of equal service.
His feet? Ten toes behind and eight before, sharp-pointed toes that grip
the slenderest twig, and catch the slightest foothold in the bark.
His ears? Small, say the books. Not small, but rather hidden in the deep
surrounding fur.
Had you seen the dormouse at the moment of his final awakening, you might
have recognized him from this description. A few minutes later and the
grey, flitting shadow might easily have baffled you. For, as he reached
the surface of his nest, the sun went down.
[Illustration: SHARP-POINTED TOES THAT CATCH THE SLIGHTEST FOOTHOLD IN THE
BARK.]
Before him, at last, lay the twilight world he loved. Nature had ceased
her noise and commenced her melody. From the brook below came the dull
plash of the rising trout; now and then one could catch a stealthy rustle
in the herbage--the beetles were abroad, ay and the mice and the beasts
of prey; a hare paced by with easy lilting stride; his gentle footfall
hardly stirred the dust. In the distance sounded the cry of a lost soul.
It was the barn owl starting on her rounds. The dormouse cowered back
until she passed--white--gleaming, swift and silent as a moth.
There was no discordant note. Wood, meadow, and hedgerow were bathed in
liquid blue. The very tree trunks stood out as indigo against the sky.
Daisy and marigold, hyacinth and clover were attuned to the same soothing
minor chord. The work-a-day world was at rest, but the sleep-a-day world
was holding high revel.
Before he was halfway down the stump he had caught the glint of twenty
pairs of eyes. The voles and wood-mice had waited, like himself, until the
owl had passed. Before each tuft of grass now stood its latest tenant.
From beneath the root of a neighbouring hazel came a stealthy procession
of five bank voles. Each, as it gained the entrance, performed its normal
round. First it sniffed for weasel, then it sat up and washed its face,
then it sniffed again, finally it stole off, foraging among the
grass-stems. He saw his friend the shrewmouse scuffling with its mate;
he saw the wood-mice nut-grubbing; he saw the night reunion of the
stump-tailed voles; but the first of his own kind that he saw was mother.
[Illustration: IT WAS THE SAME SOFT FUR THAT HE HAD NESTLED IN LAST YEAR.]
[Illustration: ONCE MORE HE FELT THE MAGIC PULSE OF LIFE WITHIN HIM.]
He had swung himself to the top of a broken twig, and, as he looked down,
perceived her climbing stiffly up towards him. Mother had aged since the
autumn, but, when she drew closer, he knew her well enough; it was the
same soft fur that he had nestled in last year.
Together they went out into the night. Once more he felt the magic pulse
of life within him, and ran to the top of the hedge and down again twenty
times for the mere joy of running. Head upwards he flew, head downwards,
backwards, forwards, sideways. Sometimes he paused for a moment, lightly
balanced on a branch end, then swung himself to the next friendly
projection. Sometimes there was no pause. In one easy unbroken course he
travelled to the end, cleared the intervening gap, and landed on the
neighbouring branch below. He never missed, he never stumbled; for he
was tumbler and wire-walker and saltimbanque in one.
[Illustration: HE WAITED FOR HER AS LONG AS HE DARED.]
And mother? Mother had lost some of her spring, but she had developed
judiciousness, and a fine eye for country. It was this latter which, to
her son's amazement, usually kept her two bushes ahead. It was this which
made him miss her as the day broke.
He had been to the very topmost pinnacle of a thorn-bush; halfway down
he had leapt four feet on to a neighbouring hazel; he had looked back in
self-congratulation at the abyss, and, when he had turned again, she had
disappeared.
He waited for her as long as he dared, and then crept back subdued and
lonely to his nest. Next evening perhaps he would see her again. But the
next evening passed, and the next, and the next, and he never saw her
again until the end.
Some other time I will tell you how he passed that summer, how he
fought for and won a wife, how they built a nest together and made a store
together, of the four little dormice, and of the sad fate that befel two
of them. Here I can only tell the last scene.
It was late autumn. His wife had already felt the coming of winter, and
retired to her six months' sleep. He himself had sealed her in.
He had taught the two small dormice how to build their nests (honeysuckle
fibre and dead leaf), and pointed out the necessity of getting into them
before Christmas. He had rebuilt his own nest in the same old hollow, for
he knew that he could not hold out much longer.
[Illustration: MOTHER WAS CLIMBING PAINFULLY UP TO HIM.]
With every light breeze that crept down the hedgerow now came the rustle
of the falling leaf. Each night he had seemed less inclined to wake, and
this night he seemed less inclined than ever.
The sun had scarcely set before he felt chilled and uncomfortable. To
warm himself he did three minutes' gymnastics. The end of them found him
perched on the same old broken twig, and, when he looked down, even as
before, mother was climbing painfully up to him.
It needed but a glance to see that she would not outlive the winter. Had
she made a nest? No, she had not troubled. The hole she was in last year
would do. Perhaps she would take his nest, he could easily build another.
Most certainly she would not. He could help her to put some leaves into
hers to-morrow. But that night came the first frost.
[Illustration: BUT THAT NIGHT CAME THE FIRST FROST.]
THE PURPLE EMPEROR
Down by the brookside the Sallow drooped her sunburnt leaves despondently.
Things were at their dullest.
Three months ago she had been a tree of importance. Her dark, slender
branches had formed a fashionable _rendez-vous_. Each evening she had seen
her golden catkins studded with opals--the eyes of soft, furry, blundering
moths. Each day the bees had thronged to pay court to her.
Then came Palm Sunday. Her catkins were stripped from her, worn for a few
hours in yokels' hats, and flung aside. The moths came no more; the bees
forsook her for the bluebells.