Nnrtli Olarnltna BtnU 
 
 This book was presented by 
 
 Charles A. Poe 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE DATE 
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 JECT TO AN OVERDUE FINE AS 
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THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 W. H. HUDSON 
 
THE BOOK OF 
 A NATURALIST 
 
 ■BY 
 
 W.H.HUDSON 
 
 Author of 
 
 "The Naturalist in LaPlata'* 
 
 **Grecn Mansions "etc. 
 
 NEW ^tW YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
COPYRIGHT. 1919 
 BY GEORGE H, DORAN COMPANY 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
PREFACE 
 
 It is necessary that a book should have a title, and 
 important that this should be descriptive of the book: 
 accordingly, I was pleased with my good fortune and 
 myself when I hit upon one which was not merely 
 descriptive but was attractive as well. 
 
 This was a long time ago when these studies, 
 essays and sketches of animal life began to accumu- 
 late on my hands and I foresaw the book. Unhappily, 
 long before my book was ready my nice title had 
 occurred to some one else and was duly given by Sir 
 E. Ray Lankester to his Diversions of a Naturalist 
 — a collection of papers on a vast variety of subjects 
 which had been appearing serially under another title. 
 I was very much annoyed, not only because he is 
 a big man and I am a little one and my need was 
 therefore greater, but also because the title appeared 
 to me better suited to my book than to his. He deals 
 with the deep problems of biology and is not exactly 
 a naturalist in the old original sense of the word : one 
 who is mainly concerned with the " life and conversa- 
 tion of animals " and whose work is consequently 
 piore like play than his can be, even when it is 
 Science from an Easy Chair. 
 
vi THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 What then was I to do, seeing that all possible 
 changes had been rung on such general titles as 
 Journals, Letters, Notes, Gleanings, and what not, of 
 a Naturalist? There was no second string to my 
 bow since Recreations had already been used by my 
 friend J. E. Harting for his book. In sheer despera- 
 tion I took this title, which would fit any work on 
 Natural History ever published. Doubtless it would 
 have been an improvement if I could have put in 
 the " Field " before " Naturalist " to show that it was 
 not a compilation, but the title could not be made 
 longer even by a word. 
 
 Some of the chapters in this volume now appear 
 for the first time; more of them, however, are taken 
 from or based on articles which have appeared in 
 various periodicals : the Fortnightly Review, National 
 Review, Country Life, Nation, the New Statesman, 
 and others. I am obhged to the Editors of the 
 Times and Chamhers*s Journal for permission to use 
 two short copyright articles on the Rat and Squirrel 
 which appeared in those journals. 
 
 W. H. Hudson. 
 

 CONTENTS 
 
 
 HAPTtE 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 Life in a Pine Wood .... 
 
 1 
 
 II 
 
 Hints to Addee-Seekebs . 
 
 . 15 
 
 III 
 
 Eats 
 
 . 33 
 
 IV 
 
 Beauty of the Fox .... 
 
 60 
 
 V 
 
 A Sentimentalist on Foxes . 
 
 . 55 
 
 VI 
 
 The Discontented Squirrel . 
 
 . 63 
 
 VII 
 
 My Neighbour's Bird Stories . 
 
 . 74 
 
 VIII 
 
 The Toad as Traveller . 
 
 . 84 
 
 IX 
 
 The Heron: A Feathered Notable 
 
 . 93 
 
 X 
 
 The Heron as a Table-Bird . 
 
 . 106 
 
 XI 
 
 The Mole Question .... 
 
 . 113 
 
 XII 
 
 Cristiano: A Horse .... 
 
 . 119 
 
 XIII 
 
 Mary's Little Lamb .... 
 
 . 123 
 
 XIV 
 
 The Serpent's Tongue 
 
 . 134 
 
 XV 
 
 The Serpent's Strangeness . 
 
 153 
 
 XVI 
 
 The Bruised Serpent 
 
 172 
 
 XVII 
 
 The Serpent in Literature . 
 
 186 
 
 s^VIII 
 
 Wasps 
 
 210 
 
 XIX 
 
 Beautiful Hawk-Moths . 
 
 217 
 
 XX 
 
 The Strenuous Mole . . . . 
 
 225 
 
 XXI 
 
 A Friendly Rat 
 
 232 
 
 vii 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER Pj^OE 
 
 XXII The Little Red Dog 238 
 
 XXIII Dogs in London 247 
 
 XXIV The Great Dog-Supeestition . . . 265 
 XXV My Friend the Pig 295 
 
 XXVI The Potato at Home and in England . 303 
 XXVII John-Go-To-Bed-at-Noon,. . . .316 
 XXVIII The Chequered Daffodil and the 
 
 Glory op Wild Flowers . . . 326 
 
 XXIX Concerning Lawns, with Incidental 
 
 Observations on Earthworms . . 337 
 
 Index 357 
 
THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
LIFE IN A PINE WOOD 
 
 People, Birds, Ants 
 
 Some years ago a clever gentleman, a landowner 
 no doubt with pine plantations on his property, 
 made the interesting discovery that the ideal place 
 to live in was a pine wood, owing to the antiseptic 
 and medicinal qualities emanating from the trees. 
 You could smell them and began to feel better the 
 moment you entered the wood. Naturally there 
 was a rush to the pines just as there had been a 
 rush to the hill-tops in response to Tyndall's flag- 
 waving and exultant shouts from Hindhead, and 
 as there had been a rush over a century earlier to 
 the seaside in obedience to Dr. Russell's clarion call. 
 I have no desire myself to live among pines, simply 
 because I cannot endure to be shut off from this 
 green earth with sight of flocks and herds. Woods 
 are sometimes good to live in: I have spent happy 
 months in a woodman's cottage in a forest; but 
 the trees were mostly oak and beech and there 
 were wide green spaces and an abundant wild 
 life. Pine woods, especially plantations, are 
 
2 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 monotonous because the trees are nearly all pines 
 and one tree is like another, and their tall, bare 
 trunks wall you in, and their dark stiff foliage 
 is like a roof above you. I, too, like being in a 
 pine wood, just as I like being by the sea, for a 
 few hours or a day, but for a place to live in I 
 should prefer a moor, a marsh, a sea-salting, or 
 any other empty, desolate place with a wide 
 prospect. 
 
 In spite of this feeling I actually did spend a 
 great part of last summer in such a place. It is 
 an extensive tract, which when the excitement 
 and rush for the medicinal pines began, was first 
 seized upon by builders as being near London 
 and in a highly aristocratic neighbourhood. Im- 
 mediately, as by a miracle, large ornate houses 
 sprang up like painted agarics in the autumn 
 woods — houses suitable for the occupation of im- 
 portant persons. The wood itself was left un- 
 touched; the houses, standing a quarter of a mile 
 or more apart, with their gardens and lawns, were 
 like green, flowery oases scattered about in its 
 sombre wilderness. Gardens and lawns are a 
 great expense, the soil being a hungry sand, and 
 for all the manuring and watering the flowers 
 have a somewhat sad and sickly look, and the 
 lawns a poor thin turf, half grass and half moss. 
 
 As a naturalist I was curious to observe the 
 effect of life in a pine wood on the inhabitants. 
 It struck me that it does not improve their health, 
 or make them happy, and that they suffer most in 
 
LIFE IN A PINE WOOD 3 
 
 summer, especially on warm windless days. They 
 do not walk in their woods; they hasten to the 
 gate which lets them out on the road and takes 
 them to the village — or to some point from which 
 they can get a sight of earth outside the pines. 
 They are glad to escape from their surroundings, 
 and are never so happy as when going away on 
 a long visit to friends hving no matter where, in 
 the country or abroad, so long as it was not in 
 a pine wood. I should imagine that Mariana 
 herself, supposing that she had survived to the 
 present day and had been persuaded to come 
 down south to tiy the effect of living in a pine 
 wood, would soon wish to go back to her moated 
 grange on a Lincolnshire flat, for all its ancient 
 dust and decay, with no sound to break the sultry 
 noonday brooding silence save the singing of the 
 blue fly i' the pane and the small shrill shriek of 
 the mouse behind the rotting wainscot. 
 
 So much for the human dwellers among the 
 " crepuscular pines." I am quoting an expression 
 of the late lamented Henry James, which he used 
 not of pine woods generally but of this very 
 wood, well known to him too when he was a guest 
 in the house. But he didn't love it or he would 
 have been a more frequent visitor; as it was, he 
 preferred to see his dear friends — all his friends 
 were very dear to him — when they were away 
 from the twihght shelter of their trees in ever 
 bright and beautiful London. 
 
 I was perhaps more interested in the non- 
 
4 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 human inhabitants of the wood. The wood that 
 was mine to walk in, the part which belonged to 
 the house and which as a fact I alone used, covered 
 an area of about sixty acres and was one with the 
 entire wood, only divided from the rest by oak 
 palings. When one turned from the lawns and 
 gardens into the wood it was like passing from 
 the open sunlit air to the twilight and still 
 atmosphere of a cathedral interior. It was also 
 a strangely silent place; if a thrush or chaffinch 
 was heard to sing, the sound came from the garden 
 I had quitted or from some other garden in the 
 wood still farther away. The only small birds in 
 these pines were those on a brief visit, and little 
 parties of tits drifted through. Nevertheless, the 
 wood — the part I was privileged to walk in — 
 had its own appropriate fauna — squirrels, wood- 
 pigeons, a family of jays, another of magpies, a 
 pair of yaffles, and one of sparrow-hawks. Game 
 is not preserved in these woods which are par- 
 celled out to the diiferent houses in lots of a dozen 
 to fifty or more acres; consequently several 
 species which are on the gamekeeper's black list 
 are allowed to exist. Most of the birds I have 
 named bred during the summer — the hawks and 
 yaffles, a dozen or more pairs of wood-pigeons, 
 and a pair each of magpies and jays. The other 
 members of the family parties of the last two 
 species had no doubt been induced by means of 
 sharp beaky arguments to go and look for nesting- 
 places elsewhere. 
 
LIFE IN A PINE WOOD 5 
 
 But not one small bird could I find nesting in 
 the wood. This set me thinking on a question 
 which has vexed my mind for years — How do 
 small birds safeguard their tender helpless 
 fledgelings from the ants? This wood swarmed 
 with ants: their nests, half hidden by the bracken, 
 were everywhere, some of the old mounds being 
 of huge size, twelve to fourteen feet in circumfer- 
 ence, and some over four feet high. As their eggs 
 were not wanted the ants were never disturbed, 
 and the marvel was how they could exist in such 
 excessive numbers in a naked pine wood, which 
 of all woods is the poorest in insect life. 
 
 I have said to myself a hundred times that 
 birds, especially the small woodland species that 
 nest on or near the ground, such as the nightin- 
 gale, robin, wren, chiff-chaff, wood and willow 
 wrens, and tits that breed low down in old stumps, 
 must occasionally have their nestlings destroyed 
 by ants; yet I have never found a nest showing 
 plainly that such an accident had occurred, nor 
 had I seen anything on the subject in books 
 about birds; and of such books I had read 
 hundreds. 
 
 The subject was in my mind when I received 
 evidence from an unexpected quarter that tender 
 fledgelings are sometimes destroyed by ants. This 
 was in an account of the wren by a little boy 
 which I came upon in a bundle of Bird and Tree 
 Competition essays from the village schools in 
 Lancashire, sent on to me to read and judge from 
 
6 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. 
 The boy stated in his essay that having selected 
 the wren as his subject he watched the birds and 
 looked for nests; that among the nests he found 
 one containing five eggs, and that four young 
 were hatched but were destroyed the same day 
 by ants. I wrote to the master of the school, at 
 Newburgh, near Wigan, and to the boy, Harry 
 South worth, asking for full particulars. The 
 master's reply gave a satisfactory account of 
 Harry as a keen and careful observer, and Harry's 
 answer was that the nest was built in a small 
 hole in a bank beside a brook, that he had 
 kept his eye on it during the time the bird was 
 sitting on her five eggs, that on his last visit he 
 found the parent bird in a terrified state outside 
 the nest, and that on examination he found that 
 four young birds had been hatched, and were 
 all dead but still warm, and swarming with 
 small reddish-brown ants which were feeding on 
 them. 
 
 This goes to show that not only do ants some- 
 times attack the fledgelings in the nest, but also 
 that the parent birds in such cases are powerless 
 to save their young from destruction. My con- 
 clusion was that small ground-nesting birds have 
 an instinctive fear of ants and avoid building at 
 places infested by them. 
 
 But how does it happen, I now asked, that the 
 larger birds that nest high up in the pines escape 
 the danger? The ants go up the tallest and 
 
LIFE IN A PINE WOOD 7 
 
 smoothest trunks with the ease and at the same 
 rate of speed as when moving on the surface. 
 They are seen ascending and descending all day- 
 long in countless numbers, so that the entire tree- 
 top must be swarming with them, searching every 
 twig and every needle; and being ants and 
 ready to fasten their jaws on any provender, dead 
 or alive, without regard to the size of the object, 
 the newly-hatched young wood-pigeons or magpies 
 can be no safer in their lofty cradles than the 
 robin or willow-wren fledgelings in their nest on the 
 ground. 
 
 Unfortunately, when I got to this point it was 
 too late in the season to follow the matter much 
 further, since most of the birds had finished breed- 
 ing. Whether all or most of them had been suc- 
 cessful or not I was not able to discover; however, 
 the young were not yet out of the one nest which 
 interested me the most. This was the sparrow- 
 hawks', and was in the lowest branches of a tall, 
 slim pine about forty-five feet from the ground. 
 It was an exceptionally big nest. The birds, I 
 knew, had brought off their young successfully in 
 this same wood in the three previous years, and I 
 came to the conclusion that the same nest had 
 been used every time and had grown to its present 
 size by the addition of fresh materials each season. 
 By standing on a high mound situated at a dis- 
 tance of fifty yards from the tree I could, with my 
 binocular, get a perfect sight of the four young 
 hawks on their platform, looking like owls with 
 
8 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 their big round heads and their fluffy white 
 down. 
 
 As their feathers grew they became more active; 
 they were less and less inclined to sit in a close 
 bunch; they would draw as far apart as they 
 were able and sit on the extreme edge of the 
 nest, and from that high perch they would stare 
 curiously down at me when I looked up at them. 
 The habits of the parent birds were unlike those 
 of sparrow - hawks breeding in woods and wild 
 places where people are rarely seen. Instead of 
 displaying intense anxiety and screaming at the 
 sight of a human form, causing the young birds to 
 squat low down in the nest, they would slink off 
 in silence and vanish from the scene. This ex- 
 treme secretiveness was, in the circumstances, 
 their safest policy, to express it in that way, but, 
 of course, it had one drawback — it left the young 
 uninstructed as to the dangerous character of man. 
 That lesson would have to come later, when they 
 were off the nest. 
 
 As the hawks grew, the supply of food in- 
 creased, and the birds supplied were so carefully 
 plucked, not a feather being left, also the head 
 removed, that in some instances it was actually 
 difficult to identify the species; but I think that 
 most of the birds brought to the nest were star- 
 lings. The young hawks had now to feed them- 
 selves on what was on the table, and when one 
 felt peckish he would take up a bird and carry 
 it to the edge of the big nest so as to be out of 
 
LIFE IN A PINE WOOD 9 
 
 the way of the others, and setting a foot on it, go 
 to work to tear it to pieces. But he sometimes 
 mismanaged the business, and when transferring 
 the bird from his beak to his claws he would drop 
 it over the edge and lose it. The dropped bird 
 would be quickly found and attacked by the ants, 
 and before many hours it would be a well-cleaned 
 skeleton. 
 
 But the ants never ascended this tree. It 
 then occurred to me that ants are always seen 
 swarming up certain trees — always the same trees; 
 and that a vast majority of the trees were never 
 invaded by them at all. I now began going round 
 and visiting all the trees where I distinctly remem- 
 bered having seen ants ascending, and on all 
 those trees I found them still swarming up in 
 immense numbers as if to some place containing 
 an inexhaustible supply of food. It was now, 
 however, too late in the season to make sure that 
 they do not from time to time invade fresh trees. 
 That they should go on from day to day for weeks, 
 and perhaps for the whole season, ascending the 
 same trees strikes one as very strange; yet such 
 a fact would accord with what we know of these 
 puzzling insects — their almost incredible wisdom 
 in their complex actions and system of life, coupled 
 with an almost incredible stupidity. Or do the 
 ants know just why they go up this particular tree 
 and not any of the surrounding trees? Can it be 
 that on this particular tree they have their care- 
 fully tended flocks and herds to supply them with 
 
10 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 honey-dew — their milk, butter and cheese? Such 
 flocks and herds they do keep and tend on oak 
 trees, as I discovered in Harewood Forest; and 
 I wish that readers of this chapter who live in or 
 near a pine wood and are the happy possessors of 
 ladders forty or fifty feet long will make some 
 further investigation into the matter. 
 
 My conclusion for the present is that wood- 
 pigeons and other birds that breed in the pines 
 do not build their nests in trees used by the ants. 
 
 Let us now follow the fortunes of the young 
 sparrow-hawks, bred in a wood where people 
 inhabit. 
 
 I watched them day by day, and, gradually, as 
 their fluffy coat was replaced by feathers, and 
 their lumpish appearance changed to the sharp- 
 cut hawk figure, they grew more adventurous and 
 would mount upon a branch accessible from the 
 nest, the maturest bird taking the lead, the others, 
 one by one, slowly and cautiously following. 
 Finally, all four would be on the branch at a dis- 
 tance of six to ten inches apart, the one nearest 
 the nest being always the least hawk-like in appear- 
 ance — more lumpish and with more down on it 
 than the others. 
 
 One morning in September I found the nest 
 empty; the young had been persuaded to leave 
 for good early that morning. Just how they had 
 been persuaded — feelingly, perhaps with sudden 
 smart blows — it would have been a great thing to 
 witness, but I had never looked for it on account 
 
LIFE IN A PINE WOOD 11 
 
 of the vigilance and extraordinary secretiveness of 
 the parent birds. Never once had they uttered a 
 sound or allowed themselves to be seen. Now 
 that their young were out and able to fly, they no 
 longer found it necessary to make themselves in- 
 visible on the appearance of the human form in 
 the wood. At all events, after keeping the young 
 concealed for the space of three or four days, they 
 began to show themselves openly, pursued by the 
 young, wailing and screaming to be fed. All day 
 long these whining cries were heard, and it was 
 plain that a new system had been adopted by the 
 parent birds at this stage, which was to keep their 
 young on short commons, instead of supplying 
 them with more food than they could consume. 
 The result was that the young, instead of sitting 
 idly waiting for small birds, properly plucked, 
 to be brought and dropped at their feet, were 
 driven by hunger to fly after the parent birds, 
 who led them an endless chase in and out and 
 above the trees. It all looked like a great waste 
 of energy, but it had an important use in teach- 
 ing the young to fly and to develop the wing 
 muscles by incessant exercise. These exercises con- 
 tinued for five or six days in the wood, then followed 
 a fresh move; every morning early the wood was 
 quitted by the whole family, the young, no doubt, 
 being conducted to a clump on one of the extensive 
 tracts of heath in the neighbourhood. There they 
 would have other and more important lessons to 
 learn. The young hawk would have to pluck the 
 
12 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 feathers out himself or else swallow them along 
 with the flesh; the next stage would be that the 
 bird would be delivered alive, but partially disabled, 
 and he would have to kill it himself; finally, he 
 would have to capture his own prey — the last and 
 most difficult lesson of all. 
 
 That they were still kept on short commons was 
 evident from the perpetual hunger-cries of the 
 young when they returned each evening to their 
 roosting-place in the wood. From the moment of 
 their arrival an hour before sunset, until it was 
 almost dark, the clamour went on, the young 
 birds following their parents the whole time. 
 This continued for a fortnight, and during the 
 last few evenings the parent birds introduced yet 
 another new subject or feature into their educa- 
 tional system. They would rise over the trees, 
 both male and female, but keeping wide apart, 
 followed by the clamouring young; and floating 
 and circling up with easy harrier-like movement, 
 they would mount to a height of two or three 
 hundred yards above the tree-tops, then suddenly 
 hurl themselves down like stones and vanish 
 among the trees, still followed at a long distance 
 by the young. Once down beneath the tree-tops 
 it was marvellous to see them, dashing at their 
 topmost sparrow-hawk speed hither and thither 
 among the tall, naked boles, with many sudden 
 sharp twistings which apparently just enabled 
 them to escape being dashed to death against a 
 trunk or branch. Every time I witnessed this 
 
LIFE IN A PINE WOOD 13 
 
 seemingly mad violent action, yet accomplished 
 with such ease, such certainty, such grace, I was 
 astonished afresh. 
 
 This would be the last act in the day's business, 
 for immediately afterwards they would fly to the 
 roosting-place and the hungry young would hush 
 their cries. 
 
 Then at the end of the third week in September 
 the whole family disappeared. The young had now 
 to learn that they could not always stay in the 
 one place which they knew, soon to be followed 
 with the last and hardest of all their lessons, that 
 they must make their own living or else starve. 
 
 Note. — Since this paper appeared in the National Review, 
 my idea concerning the destructiveness of ants to young birds 
 has received further confirmation from two widely separated 
 quarters. One, oddly enough, is contained in another country 
 schoolboy essay, for a Bird and Tree Day Competition, in 
 this case from a village in Hampshire. The skylark was the 
 bird observed, and on one of the visits the little observer paid 
 to the nest, when the nestlings were a few days old, he found 
 them outside of the nest covered with small red ants and in a 
 dying condition. 
 
 The second case is contained in a letter from one of my cor- 
 respondents in Australia, Mr. Charles Barrett, well known in 
 the Colony and in this country as a student of the native avi- 
 fauna. He had in reading seen an extract from my paper on 
 "Life in a Pine Wood," and wrote: " I believe that in Aus- 
 tralia, where ants of many species swarm in the dry regions, 
 large numbers of nestings fall victims to these insects. Of 
 course it is the birds that nest on the ground that suffer the 
 most, but some of the ants ascend trees and attack the fledge- 
 lings in nests in the highest branches. ... In November I 
 noticed a stream of large reddish ants streaming up a gum 
 sapling, and found it was pouring into a nest of ;wood swallows, 
 Artamus sarolida, which contained three chicks about a week 
 
14 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 old. They were being devoured alive by ants. ... I put 
 the nestlings out of their misery, but felt miserable myself for 
 the remainder of that golden afternoon, thinking that many 
 similar tragedies to that were being enacted in the Bush, The 
 odour and fragrance of the wattle bloom along the creek and 
 the blithe songs of birds failed to cheer for the time." 
 
 He also described finding the nest of a song-thrush (our 
 English bird) with nestlings in a similar state. 
 
II 
 
 HINTS TO ADDER - SEEKERS 
 
 It has occurred to me that a few hints or wrinkles 
 on the subject of adder - seeking might prove 
 serviceable to some readers of this work, seeing 
 that there are very many persons desirous of 
 making the acquaintance of this rare and elusive 
 reptile. They wish to know it — at a safe distance 
 — in a state of Nature, in its own home, and have 
 sought and have not found it. Quite frequently — 
 about once or twice each week in summer — I am 
 asked by some one for instructions in the matter. 
 
 One of my sweetest-tempered and most bene- 
 volent friends, who loves, he imagines, all things 
 both great and small, pays the children of his 
 village sixpence for every dead adder or grass- 
 snake they bring him. He does not distinguish 
 between the two ophidians. It is to be hoped that 
 no such lover of God's creatures, including His 
 " wild wormes in woods," will take advantage of 
 these hints. Let him that finds an adder treat it 
 properly, not without reverence, and his finding 
 it will be to his gain in knowledge of that rare 
 and personal kind which cannot be written or 
 15 
 
16 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 imparted in any way. That which we seek is not 
 the viper, the subject of Fontana's monumental 
 work, the little rope of clay or dead flesh in the 
 British Museum, coiled in its bottle of spirits, and 
 labelled " Vipera heriis, Linn." 
 
 We seek the adder or nadder, that being 
 venerated of old and generator of the sacred 
 adder-stone of the Druids, and he dwells not in a 
 jar of alcohol in the still shade and equable tem- 
 perature of a museum. He is a lover of the sun, 
 and must be sought for after his winter sleep in 
 dry incult places, especially in open forest-lands, 
 stony hill - sides and furze - grown heaths and 
 commons. After a httle training the adder-seeker 
 gets to know a viperish locahty by its appearance. 
 It is, however, not necessary to go out at random 
 in search of a suitable hunting-ground, seeing that 
 all places haunted by adders are well known to 
 the people in the neighbourhood, who are only too 
 ready to give the information required. There are 
 no preservers of adders in the land, and so far as 
 I know there has been but one person in England 
 to preserve that beautiful and innocuous creature, 
 the ringed-snake. Can any one understand such 
 a hobby or taste? Certainly not that friend of 
 animals who pays sixpence for a dead snake. 
 He, the snake - saviour, our unknown little 
 Melampus, paid his village boys sixpence for every 
 one they brought to him ahve and uninjured, and 
 to inspire confidence in them he would go with 
 half a dozen large snakes in his coat pockets into 
 
HINTS TO ADDER-SEEKERS 17 
 
 the village school, and pulling his pets out, would 
 play with and make the children handle them 
 and take note of their beautiful form and motions. 
 
 This snake-lover possessed at Aldermaston one j 
 of the largest parks in southern England, abounding 
 in oak trees so ancient and of so noble a growth 
 that they are a wonder to all who see them. This j 
 vast park was his snake-preserve, and in moist 
 green places, by running waters, he planted thickets 
 for their shelter. But when his time came and he 
 died, the son who succeeded him thought he would 
 get more glory and sport by preserving pheasants, 
 and accordingly engaged a little army of men and 
 boys to extirpate the reptiles. There is nothing 
 now to recall the dead man's " fantastic hobby " 
 but a stained-glass window — I wish it had been 
 done by a better artist — placed by his pious widow 
 in the beautiful parish church, where you can see 
 him among angelic figures surrounded by a com- 
 pany of birds and beasts and reptiles of many 
 shapes and colours, and at the margins the familiar 
 words. He prayeth best who loveth best, etc. 
 
 Let us return to our quest. The trouble is 
 when you have arrived at the adder-haunt to find 
 the adder. A man may spend years, even a life- 
 time, without seeing one. Some time ago I talked 
 to an aged shepherd whose flock fed in a wide 
 furze -grown hollow in the South Downs where 
 adders were not uncommon. He told me he had 
 been shepherding forty years in that place, and 
 during the entire period had found three adders! 
 
18 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 If he had said 300 I should not have been sur- 
 prised. The man on the soil does not often see 
 an adder, because for one thnig he does not look 
 for it, and still more because of the heavy boots he 
 wears, with which he pounds the earth like a dray- 
 horse with its ponderous iron-shod hoofs. Even 
 men who walk lightly and wear light foot - gear 
 make, as a rule, an amazing noise in walking over 
 dry heathy places with brittle sticks and dry 
 vegetable matter covering the ground. I have had 
 persons thrust their company on me when going 
 for a stroll on ground abounding in adders, and 
 have known at once from their way of walking in 
 an unaccustomed place that the quest would prove 
 an idle one. Their lightest, most cautious tread 
 would alarm and send into hiding every adder a 
 dozen or twenty yards in advance of us. 
 
 In spring the adders are most alert and shyest. 
 Later in the season some adders, as a rule the 
 females, become sluggish and do not slip quickly 
 away when approached; but in summer the 
 herbage is apt to hide them, and they lie more in 
 the shade than in March, April, and the early part 
 of May. In spring you must go alone and softly, 
 but you need not fear to whistle and sing, or even 
 to shout, for the adder is deaf and cannot hear you; 
 on the other hand, his body is sensitive in an 
 Extraordinary degree to earth vibrations, and the 
 ordinary tread of even a very light man will 
 disturb him at a distance of fifteen or twenty 
 yards. That sense of the adder, which has no 
 
HINTS TO ADDER-SEEKERS 19 
 
 special organ yet may serve better than vision, 
 hearing, smell, and touch together, is of the greatest 1 
 importance to it, since to a creature that lies and \ 
 progresses prone on the ground and has a long i 
 brittle backbone, the heavy mammalian foot is one > 
 of the greatest dangers to its life. 
 
 Not only must the seeker go softly, but he must 
 have a quick-seeing, ever-searching eye, and behind 
 the eye a mind intent on the object. The sharpest 
 sight is useless if he falls to thinking of something 
 else, since it is not possible for him to be in two 
 places at once. To empty the mind as in crystal- 
 gazing is a good plan, but if it cannot be emptied, 
 if thought will not rest still, it must be occupied 
 with adders and nothing else. The exercise and 
 discipline is interesting even if we find no adders; 
 it reveals in swift flickering glimpses a vanished 
 experience or state of the primitive mind — the 
 mind which, like that of the inferior animals, is 
 a polished mirror, undimmed by speculation, in 
 which the extraneous world is vividly reflected. If 
 the adder quest goes on for days, it is still best to 
 preserve the mood, to think of adders all day, and 
 when asleep to dream of them. The dreams, I 
 have found, are of two sorts — pleasant and un- 
 pleasant. In the former we are the happy first 
 finders of the loveliest and most singular serpents 
 ever looked upon; in the second we unwittingly 
 go up barefooted into a place from which we cannot 
 escape, a vast flat region extending to the horizon, 
 littered with adders. We have lifted a foot and 
 
20 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 don't know where to set it, for there is not one 
 square foot of ground which is not ah-eady occupied 
 by an adder coiled in readiness to strike. 
 
 In adder-seeking, the main thing is to find your 
 adder without disturbing it, so as to be able to 
 stand near and watch it lying quiescent in the sun. 
 The best plan is to come almost to a stop as soon 
 as the creature has been caught sight of, then to 
 advance so slowly and stealthily as to appear 
 stationary, for the adder although unalarmed is, 
 I believe, always conscious of your presence. In 
 this way you may approach to within two or three 
 yards, or nearer, and remain a long time regard- 
 ing it. 
 
 But what is the seeker to do if, after long 
 searching, he discovers his adder already in retreat, 
 and knows that in two or three seconds it will 
 vanish from his sight? As a rule, the person who 
 sees an adder gliding from him aims a blow at it 
 with his stick so as not to lose it. Now to kill your 
 adder is to lose it. It is true you will have some- 
 thing to show for it, or something of it which is 
 left in your hands, and which, if you feel disposed, 
 you may put in a glass jar and label " Vipera herus." 
 But this would not be an adder. Must we then 
 never kill an adder? That is a question I do not 
 undertake to answer, but I can say that if we are 
 seeking after knowledge, or something we call 
 knowledge because it is a convenient word and can 
 be made to cover many* things it would be difficult 
 to name, then to kill is no profit, but, on the contrary. 
 
HINTS TO ADDER-SEEKERS 21 
 
 a distinct loss. Fontana dissected 40,000 adders in 
 his long and busy day, but if there is anything we 
 want to know about the adder beyond the number 
 of scales on the integument, and the number, 
 shape, and size of the bones in the dead coil, he 
 and the innumerable ophiologists and herpetologists 
 who came after him are unable to tell us. We can 
 read about the scales and bones in a thousand 
 books. We want to know more about the living 
 thing, even about its common life habits. It has 
 not yet been settled whether or not the female 
 adder swallows its young, not, like the fer-de-lance, 
 to digest them in her stomach, but to save their i 
 threatened lives. It is true that many persons j 
 have, during the last half century, witnessed the ' 
 thing and have described what they saw in The 
 Zoologist, Land and Water, Field and other journals ; 
 nevertheless the compilers of our Natural Histories 
 regard the case as not yet proved beyond a doubt. 
 
 Here, then, we have one of several questions 
 which can only be answered by field-naturalists 
 who abstain from killing. But a better reason for 
 not killing may be given than this desire to discover 
 a new fact — the mere satisfying of a mental curiosity. 
 I know good naturalists who have come to hate 
 the very sight of a gun, simply, because that useful 
 instrument has become associated in their case with 
 the thought and the memory of the degrading or 
 disturbing effect on the mind of killing the creatures 
 we love, whose secrets we wish to find out. 
 
 Alas! it took me a long time to discover the 
 
22 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 advantages of not killing. The following account 
 of killing an adder — the last time I did such a 
 thing — may serve to throw a little light on the 
 question. Adders were common at a place where 
 I was staying at a farm in the New Forest, hut I 
 had never seen one near the house until one sultry 
 afternoon in July, when coming into a path which 
 led from the farm-yard into and through a hazel 
 copse, I came upon one lying in the middle of the 
 path. It was a large adder, so sluggish that it 
 made no attempt to escape, but turned and struck 
 at me when I approached it. I thought of the 
 little children, for this was the very spot where 
 they came to play and hunt for fowls' eggs every 
 afternoon; the adder, if left there, might be a 
 danger to them; it was necessary either to kill 
 or remove it. Then it occurred to me that to 
 remove it would be useless, since if the creature's 
 place was there, it would infallibly return to it 
 from any distance. The homing instinct is strong 
 in the adder and in most serpents. And so to 
 end the matter I killed and buried it, and went 
 on my way. My way was through the copse and 
 over a fence and ditch on the other side, and I 
 was no sooner over the ditch than I beheld a 
 second adder, bigger than the last and just as 
 sluggish. It was, however, not strange, as in July 
 the female adder is often like that, especially in 
 sultry thunderous weather. I teased it to make it 
 move away, then picked it up to examine it, after 
 which I released it and watched it gliding slowly 
 
HINTS TO ADDER-SEEKERS 23 
 
 away into the shadow of the bushes. And, watching 
 it, I became conscious of a change in my mental 
 attitude towards the living things that were so 
 much to me, my chief happiness having always 
 been in observing their ways. The curiosity was 
 not diminished, but the feeling that had gone with 
 it for a very long time past was changed to what 
 it had been when I was sportsman and collector, 
 always killing things. The serpent gliding away 
 before me was nothing but a worm with poison 
 fangs in its head and a dangerous habit of striking 
 at unwarj^ legs — a creature to be crushed with the 
 heel and no more thought about. I had lost 
 something precious, not, I should say, in any 
 ethical sense, seeing that we are in a world where 
 we must kill to live, but valuable in my special 
 case, to me as a field-naturalist. Abstention from 
 kilhng had made me a better observer and a happier 
 being, on account of the new or different feeling 
 towards animal life which it had engendered. And 
 what was this new feeling — wherein did it differ 
 from the old of my shooting and collecting days, 
 seeing that since childhood I had always had the 
 same intense interest in all wild hfe? The power, 
 beauty, and grace of the wild creature, its perfect 
 harmony in nature, the exquisite correspondence 
 between organism, form and faculties, and the 
 environment, with the plasticity and intelligence 
 for the readjustment of the vital machinery, daily, 
 hourly, momentarily, to meet all changes in the 
 conditions, all contingencies; and thus, amidst 
 
24 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 perpetual mutations and conflict with hostile and 
 destructive forces, to perpetuate a form, a type, a 
 species for thousands and millions of years! — all 
 this was always present to my mind; yet even so 
 it was but a lesser element in the complete feeling. 
 The main thing was the wonderfulness and eternal 
 mystery of life itself; this formative, informing 
 energy — this flame that burns in and shines through 
 the case, the habit, which in lighting another dies, 
 and albeit dying yet endures for ever; and the 
 sense, too, that this flame of life was one, and of my 
 kinship with it in all its appearances, in all organic 
 shapes, however different from the human. Nay, 
 the very fact that the forms were unliuman but 
 served to heighten the interest; — the roe-deer, the 
 leopard and wild horse, the swallow cleaving the 
 air, the butterfly toying with a flower, and the 
 dragon-fly dreaming on the river; the monster 
 whale, the silver flying-fish, and the nautilus with 
 rose and purple tinted sails spread to the wind. 
 
 Happily for me the loss of this sense and feeling 
 was but a temporary one, and was recovered in the 
 course of the next two days, which I spent in the 
 woods and on the adjacent boggy heath, finding 
 many adders and snakes, also young birds and 
 various other creatures which I handled and played 
 with, and I could afford once more to laugh at 
 those who laughed at or were annoyed with me 
 on account of my fantastic notions about animals. 
 My next great adventure with an adder, which 
 came a year later, gave me so good a laugh that 
 
HINTS TO ADDER-SEEKERS 25 
 
 I am tempted to go further with this digression to 
 give an account of it. 
 
 The adventure was the finding of my biggest 
 adder. It was in a tract of ground overgrown with 
 furze and thorn, at a spot not far from the turn- 
 pike road that runs from Sahsbury to Blandford. 
 Having discovered that this spot, with an area of 
 several hundred acres, teemed with interesting wild 
 life, I made it a haunt for several weeks. I soon 
 found out that it was a valuable game preserve 
 and that the keeper had strict orders from the 
 shooting tenant not to allow any person on the 
 land. However, I approached him in the proper 
 way, and he left me to enjoy myself in my own 
 fashion. 
 
 Never had I seen adders so abundant as at this 
 spot, yet the keeper assured me that he had been 
 trying for years to extirpate them, and often killed 
 as many as half a dozen in a day. 
 
 One morning, near the end of June, I found my 
 big adder, and picking it up, held it suspended by 
 the tip of its tail for nearly half an hour, imtil, 
 exhausted with its vain wriggling, it allowed itself 
 to hang limp and straight. Then I got out my 
 tape-measure and set about the difficult task of 
 getting the exact length; but the adder would not 
 have it, for invariably when the tape was dropped 
 at its side it drew itself up into a series of curves 
 and defeated me. Tired of the long business, I set 
 it down at length and stunned it with a rap on its 
 head with my stick, then setting the tape on its 
 
26 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 flat head and pressing it with my thumb, I pulled 
 the body straight and succeeded in getting the 
 exact length. It was twenty-eight inches. The 
 biggest adder I had hitherto found was twenty-five 
 and a half; this was in the New Forest, in the 
 wildest part, where it is most thinly inhabited and 
 adders are most abundant. None of the other 
 biggest adders I had measured before and since 
 exceeded twenty-four inches. 
 
 We see that the adder, when we come to measure 
 it, is not a big snake; it looks bigger than it is, 
 partly on account of its strange conspicuous colour- 
 ing, with the zigzag shape of the band, and its 
 reputation as a dangerous serpent; this makes an 
 adder two feet long look actually bigger than the 
 grass-snake of three feet — the size to which this 
 snake usually grows. 
 
 In a minute or two my adder recovered from the 
 effects of the tap on his head and was permitted to 
 glide away into the furze bushes. And leaving the 
 spot I went on, but had not gone forty yards 
 before catching sight of another adder lying coiled 
 up. I stopped to look at it, then slowly advanced 
 to within about five feet of it, and there remained 
 standing still, just to see whether or not my presence 
 so close to it would affect it in any way. Presently, 
 hearing a shout, I looked up and saw two horsemen 
 coming up over the down in front of me. They 
 pulled up and sat staring down at me — a big man 
 on a big horse, and a rather small man on a small 
 horse. The big man was the shooting tenant, and 
 
HINTS TO ADDER-SEEKERS 27 
 
 the shout was evidently meant for me, but I took 
 no notice. I kept my eyes on my adder, and soon 
 the two horsemen came down at a gallop to me, 
 and of course before they were fifty yards from me, 
 the thunder of the hoofs had sent the creature into 
 hiding. Sitting on their horses they stared in angry 
 silence at me, and finding I had to speak first, I 
 apologised for being in the preserve, and said the 
 keeper, knowing me to be a harmless naturahst, 
 had given me permission to come there to find a 
 flower I was interested in — also an adder. What, 
 he demanded, did I want with adders? Just to 
 see them, I said; I had found one and was watch- 
 ing it when his approach had driven it away. I 
 then added that adders were exceedingly abundant 
 on this land of his, that I had just found and 
 measured one which was twenty-eight inches long 
 — the biggest adder I had ever found. 
 
 "When is it? — let's see it!" shouted both men, 
 and I had to tell them that I had released it, and 
 it had gone into a bush about forty yards from 
 where we stood. 
 
 They stared at me, then exchanged glances, then 
 the big man asked me if I meant what I had said — 
 if I had actually caught a big adder only to release 
 it unharmed? 
 
 That, I said, was what I had done. 
 
 " Then you did wrong," almost yelled the 
 second man. " To catch and release an adder that 
 might bite and kill some one any day — I consider it 
 a crime." 
 
28 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 I laughed and said I didn't mind being a 
 criminal in that way, and I also thought people 
 greatly exaggerated the danger of adder bites. 
 
 "You are wrong again!" he yelled, quite in a 
 temper now. "As a naturahst, you ought to know 
 better. Let me tell you that last summer I nearly 
 lost my little son through an adder bite. He 
 was in the Isle of Wight with his nurse, and 
 trod on the thing and was bitten on the leg. For 
 a whole day his life was trembling in the balance, 
 and you dare to tell me that adders are not a 
 danger! " 
 
 I apologised for having made light of the subject. 
 He was right and I was wrong. But I couldn't 
 explain to him why I could not kiU adders — or 
 anything else. 
 
 Let us now return to the adder-seeker who has 
 unwittingly disturbed the adder he has found, and 
 who sees it about to vanish into the brake. He 
 has been waiting all this time to know what to do 
 in such a case. He must let it vanish, and comfort 
 himself with the thought that he has discovered 
 its haunt and may re-find it another day, especially 
 if he is so fortunate as to scare it from its favourite 
 bed on which it is accustomed to lie sunning itself 
 at certain hours each day until the progress of the 
 season will make it too warm or otherwise un- 
 suitable, when the old basking-place will be changed 
 for a new one. But should he not be satisfied to 
 lose sight of the adder immediately after dis- 
 
HINTS TO AJDDER-SEEKERS 29 
 
 covering it, he must be provided with some simple 
 contrivance for its capture. 
 
 My plan, which cannot be recommended to 
 timid persons liable in moments of excitement to 
 get flustered and awkward, is to catch the retreat- 
 ing adder quickly by the tail, which is a perfectly 
 safe proceeding if there is no blundering, since the 
 creature when going from you is not in a position 
 to strike. 
 
 I confess I am always a little reluctant to offer 
 such an indignity to the adder as grasping and 
 holding it up, enraged and impotent, by the tail, 
 although such treatment may be to its advantage 
 in the end. We have a naturalist in England who 
 picks up every adder he finds and pinches its tail 
 before releasing it, just to teach it caution. The 
 poor creeping thing with a zigzag band on its 
 back to advertise its dangerous character has of 
 all creatures the fewest friends among men. My 
 sole object in picking up an adder by the tail 
 is to be able to look at its under-surface, which 
 is often the most beautiful part. As a rule the 
 colour is deep blue, but it varies; the darkest 
 specimens being blue-black or even quite black, 
 while the exceedingly rare light blue is too 
 beautiful for words. Occasionally we find an 
 adder with the belly plates of the same ground 
 colour, a dull or pale straw yellow, as the upper 
 part of the body, with the dark blue colour in 
 broken spots and dots and lines inscribed on it. 
 These markings in some cases resemble written 
 
30 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 characters, and it was said of old that they formed 
 the words: 
 
 If I could hear as well as see, 
 No man of life would master me. 
 Probably these letter-like markings on the creature's 
 belly, like the minute black lines, resembling writ- 
 ing, on the pale bark of the holly tree, suggested 
 some other more important meaning to the priests 
 of an ancient cult, and gave the adder a peculiarly 
 sacred character. 
 
 To conclude, let me relate here how I once had 
 to congratulate myself on having hurriedly snatched 
 at and captured an adder at the moment of seeing 
 it, and of its attempted escape. I was cautiously 
 strolling along, hoping to see some good thing, in 
 a copse in private grounds in the 'New Forest, a 
 place abounding in adders and other interesting 
 creatures. Night- jars were common there, and by 
 and by one rose almost at my feet over the roots 
 of an oak tree, and casting my eyes down at the 
 spot from which it had risen, I spied a large adder, 
 which, alarmed either at my step or the sudden 
 flight of the bird, was gliding quickly away over 
 the bed of old dry bleached leaves to its refuge at 
 the roots of the tree. Oddly enough, it was not the 
 first occasion on which I had come upon a night- jar 
 and adder dozing peacefully side by side. It was 
 a beautiful adder of a rich tawny yellow hue, with 
 an intensely black broad zigzag mark, and as 
 there was no time to lose, I dashed at and managed 
 to catch it; then holding it up by the tail, what 
 
HINTS TO ADDER-SEEKERS 31 
 
 was my surprise and delight at finding its under- 
 surface of a colour or " shade " I had never previ- 
 ously seen — the lovely blue I have mentioned. 
 There was no break in the colour; every belly- 
 plate from the neck to the tip of the tail was of a 
 uniform exquisite turquoise blue, or considering 
 that turquoise blues vary in depth and purity, it 
 would be more exact to describe the colour as 
 most like that of the forget-me-not, but being 
 enamelled, it reminded me rather of the most 
 exquisite blue one has seen on some priceless piece 
 of old Chinese pottery. I think that if some 
 famous aged artist of the great period, a worshipper 
 of colour whose life had been spent in the long 
 endeavour to capture and make permanent the 
 most exquisite fleeting tints in Nature, had seen 
 the blue on that adder he would have been over- 
 come at the same time with rapture and despair. 
 And I think, too, that if Mother Nature in turning 
 out this ophidian had muddled things, as she is apt 
 to do occasionally, and had reversed the position 
 of the colours, putting the tawny yellow and 
 black zigzag band on the belly and the blue 
 above, the sight of the creature would have given 
 rise to a New Forest myth. It would have been 
 spread abroad that an angelic being had appeared 
 in those parts in the form of a serpent but in its 
 natural celestial colour. 
 
 After keeping it a long time in my hand, I 
 released it reluctantly, and saw it steal away into 
 the cavity at the roots of the oak. Here was its 
 
32 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 home, and I fondly hoped to see it again many 
 times. But it was not there when I called on manj^ 
 successive days — neither serpent nor night-jar; but 
 though we three shall meet no more, I remember 
 the finding of that adder as one of the loveliest 
 experiences I have met with during all the years I 
 have spent in conversing with wild animals. 
 
Ill 
 
 BATS 
 
 The bat was formerly looked upon as an uncanny- 
 sort of bird, and described as such in the old 
 natural histories. Oh, those ever delightful old 
 natural histories, and the vision of the wise old 
 naturalist examining a recently-taken specimen 
 through his horn-bound spectacles, and setting it 
 gravely down in his books that it is the only known 
 bird which was clothed in fur in place of feathers I 
 Or, as Plinius puts it, the only bird which brings 
 forth and suckles its young, just as we say that the 
 Australian water-mole is the only mammal which 
 lays eggs. The modern ornithologist will have 
 nothing to do with the creature; but after his 
 expulsion from the feathered nation it was his 
 singular good fortune not to sink lower in the 
 scale; he was, on the contrary, raised to the 
 mammalians, or quadrupeds, as our fathers called 
 them; then on the discovery being made that he 
 was anatomically related to the lemurs, he was 
 eventually allotted a place in our systems next 
 after that ancient order of fox-faced monkeys. 
 And thus it has come to pass that when some 
 
 83 
 
34 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 one writes a book on the mammals of this 
 island, which has no monkeys or lemurs, and man 
 cannot be included in such works on account 
 of an old convention or prejudice, he is obliged 
 to give the proud first place to this very poor 
 relation. 
 
 It is his misfortune, since it would have been 
 more agreeable to the general reader if he could 
 have led off with some imposing beast — the extinct 
 wolf or tusky wild boar, for example — or, better 
 still, with the white cattle of Chillingham, or the 
 roaring stag with his grand antlers. The last is 
 an undoubted survival, one which, encountered in 
 some incult place where it is absolutely free and 
 wild, moves us to a strange joy — an inherited 
 memory and a vision of a savage, prehistoric land 
 of which we are truer natives than we can ever be 
 of this smooth sophisticated England. The science 
 of zoology could not have it so, since it does not 
 and cannot take man and his mental attitude 
 towards other forms of life into account — cannot 
 consider the fact that he is himself an animal of 
 prey, several feet high, with large eyes fitted to 
 look at large objects, and that he measures and 
 classifies all creatures by an instinctive rule and 
 standard, mentally pitting his strength and ferocity 
 against theirs. What a discrepancy, then, between 
 things as seen by the natural man and as they 
 appear in our scientific systems, which make the 
 small negligible bat the leader of the procession of 
 British beasts — even this repulsive little rearmouse, 
 
BATS 35 
 
 or flittermouse, that flits from his evil-smelling 
 cramiy, in appearance a misshapen insect of un- 
 usual size to pursue his crooked, broken-boned, 
 squeaky flight in the obscurity of evening. 
 
 Imagine the effect of this modern rearrange- 
 ment of the mammals on the mammals if they 
 knew! The white bull of Ghillingham would shake 
 his frowning front and the stag his branching 
 antlers in scorn; the wolf, in spite of being extinct, 
 would howl; the British seal bark; the wild cat 
 snarl, and the badger make free use of his most 
 underground expressions of rage at such an insult; 
 rabbit and hare would exchange looks of astonish- 
 ment and apprehension; the hedgehog would roll 
 himself into a ball with disgust; the mole sink 
 back into his run; the fox smile sardonically; and 
 the whole concourse, turning their backs on the 
 contemptible leader thrust on them, would march 
 off in the opposite direction. 
 
 Now the imaginary case of these beasts offended 
 in their dignity fairly represents that of humanity 
 angry at the intolerable insult implied in the 
 Darwinian notion. But we have now so far out- 
 grown that feeling that it is no longer an offence 
 for the zoologist to tell us not only that we are 
 related to the lemur with its luminous opalescent 
 or topaz eyes, that are like the eyes of angels and 
 are instinct with a mysterious intelligence when 
 they look at us with a strange friendliness in them 
 as if they knew what we, after thousands of years of 
 thinking, have only just found out — not only that 
 
36 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 this animal is our relation, but even such a creature 
 as the bat! 
 
 Look on this picture, and on this! On the eyes, 
 for instance, of these two beasts, and we see at 
 once that the bat is an example of extreme degenera- 
 tion; also that it is the most striking example in 
 the animal world of a degenerate in which the 
 downward process has at length been arrested, and 
 instead of extinction a new, different, and probably 
 infinitely longer life given to it. 
 
 We are reminded of the flea — the remote de- 
 scendant, as we deem, of a gilded fly that was 
 once free of the air and feasted at the same sunlit 
 flowery table with bright-winged butterflies and 
 noble wasps and bees. 
 
 There are those who have doubts about this 
 genealogical tree of the bat, and would have it 
 that he is an insectivore related to moles, shrews, 
 and such-like low-down animals, but the main facts 
 all point the other way. And we may assume that 
 the bat — our familiar flittermouse, since we are not 
 concerned with the somewhat different frugivorous 
 bats of the tropics — is the remote descendant of a 
 small degenerate lemur that inhabited the upper 
 branches of high trees in the African forest; that 
 he became exclusively insectivorous and developed 
 an extreme activity in capturing his winged prey, 
 and was in fact like the existing small lemur, the 
 golago, which in pursuing insects " seems literally 
 to fly through the air," as Sir H. Johnston has 
 said. Finally, there was the further development, 
 
BATS 37 
 
 the ovidean metamorphosis, when the loose ex- 
 panding membrane of the hands and arms and 
 sides grew to wings. 
 
 But albeit like a bird in its faculty of flight, the 
 bat was a mammal still, and was rather like a badly 
 constructed flying-machine, at best an improvement 
 on the parachute. This then was a risky experi- 
 ment on Nature's part, seeing that to launch a 
 mammal on the air is to put it into competition 
 with birds, and throw it in the way of its rapacious 
 bird enemies, natives of that element and infinitely 
 its superior in flying powers. But Nature, we see, 
 takes risks of this kind with a very light heart; 
 her busy brain teems with thousands, millions, of 
 inventions, and if nine hundred and ninety-nine in 
 a thousand go wrong, she simply scraps them and 
 goes cheerfully on with her everlasting business. 
 An amusing person! One can imagine some 
 Principality or High Intelligence, a visitor from 
 Aldebaran, let us say, looking on at these queer 
 doings on her part and remarking: "My dear, 
 what a silly fool you are to waste so much energy 
 in trying to do an impossible thing." 
 
 And — nettled at his air of superiority — her 
 sharp reply: 
 
 " Oh yes, now you say that, I'm reminded of a 
 visitor I once had from — oh, I don't know exactly 
 where — somewhere in the Milky Way — just when 
 I was experimenting with my snake idea. To make 
 a vertebrate without any organs of progression, yet 
 capable of getting freely about — ha, ha, ha, how 
 
38 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 very funny! I'd like him to come back now to 
 show him a tree-snake with a cylindrical body two 
 yards long and no thicker than a man's middle 
 finger, green as a green leaf and smooth as ivory, 
 going as freely about in a tree as a cat or a monkey. 
 Also my blue sea-snake, cleaving the water like a 
 fish; also my ground-serpents of numberless types, 
 moving swiftly over the earth with a grace sur- 
 passing that of creatures endowed with organs of 
 progression." 
 
 But not a word did she say about the flying-fish, 
 which was not a great success. 
 
 Then he: "Well, I should advise the person 
 from the Milky Way to keep out of your way. No 
 doubt you have done clever things, but the snake 
 problem was not so very difficult after all. You 
 thought of the rib and the scale, and the thing 
 was done." 
 
 And she: " Yes, it was quite simple, and so 
 when I wanted to make reptiles fly I thought of 
 this and of that and of something else and the 
 thing was done." 
 
 Then he: "Yes, yes, my dear lady — that was 
 clever, too, no doubt; only your flying lizard 
 wasn't wound up to go on for ever — not as a lizard 
 at all events; and what I should like you to tell 
 me is: When you have got your little beast in the 
 air how are you going to get him to stay there?" 
 
 Her sharp reply was : " By thinking," for she 
 was angry at his supercilious Aldebaran airs. And, 
 put on her mettle, it was only by sheer hard think- 
 
BATS 39 
 
 ing that she finally succeeded in accomplishing her 
 object — this, too, as it were, by means of a subtle 
 trick. For the bird problem had been a very 
 different one; her experiments with flying lizards 
 had suggested it, and she was able to create this 
 new and finer being an inhabitant of the air by 
 giving it its peculiar pointed wedge shape, its 
 covering of feathers, with feathers for flight — hard 
 as steel, hght as gossamer, bloodless, nerveless. 
 And correlated with shape and flight and life in 
 the air, a development of power of vision which, 
 compared with that of mammals and reptiles, is 
 like a supernatural faculty. 
 
 Her subtle trick, in the case of the bat, was to 
 reverse the process followed in building up the bird; 
 to suspend her beast head down by the toes instead 
 of making him perch with his head up to keep it cool; 
 to neglect the vision altogether as of little or no 
 account; and, on the other hand, instead of the 
 light, hard, nerveless feather wings, to make the 
 flying apparatus the most sensitive thing in Nature, 
 barring the antennae of insects; a bed and field of 
 nerves, so closely placed as to give the membrane 
 the appearance of the finest, softest shot silk. The 
 brains of the creature, as it were, are carried spread 
 out on its wings, and so exquisitely delicate is the 
 sensitiveness of these parts that in comparison 
 our finger-tips are no more quick of feeling than 
 the thick tough hide of some lumbering pachyderm. 
 
 I have handled scores of bats in my time, and 
 have never had one in my hand without being 
 
40 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 struck by its shrinking, shivering motions, the 
 tremors that passed over it like wave following 
 wave, and it has seemed to me that the touch of 
 a soft finger-tip on its wing was to the bat like a 
 blow of a cheese- or bread-grater on his naked body 
 to a man. 
 
 Now any one, even the intelligent foreigner from 
 Aldebaran, would have imagined that such a 
 creature so constructed would not have main- 
 tained its existence in this rough world: a sudden 
 storm of rain or hail encountered in mid-air would 
 have destroyed it, and in its pursuit of insects in 
 leafy places it would have been exposed every 
 minute to disabling accidents. But it did not 
 happen so. That exquisite super-sensitiveness, that 
 extra sense, or extra senses, since we do not know 
 how many there are, not only kept it in the air, 
 able to continue the struggle of life in the particular 
 forest, the district, the region, the continent where 
 it came into being, but sent it abroad, an invader 
 and colonist, to other lands, other continents all 
 over the globe, including those far - off isolated 
 islands which had been cut off from all connexion 
 with the rest of the earth before mammalian life 
 was evolved, and had no higher life than birds, 
 until this small beast came flying over the illimit- 
 able ocean on his wings, to be followed a million 
 years later by his noble relation in a canoe. 
 
 We see then that the bat is a very wonderful 
 creature, one of Nature's triumphs and master- 
 pieces, and on this account he has received a good 
 
BATS 41 
 
 share of attention from the zoologists. Neverthe- 
 less, after looking through a large amount of 
 literature on the subject, the old idea persists that 
 we know little about the bat — little, that is to say, 
 compared with all there is to be known. How very 
 little my own researches can add to its life history 
 these meagre observations and comments will serve 
 to show. 
 
 Walking by the Test, near Longparish, one 
 evening, I noticed a number of noctules, our great 
 bat, gathered at a spot where some high trees, elms 
 and beeches, grew on the edge of a wet meadow. 
 The bats were flying up and down in front of the 
 trees, feasting on the moths and other insects that 
 abounded there. I wondered how it came about 
 that these big bats had this rich table all to them- 
 selves, seeing that the small common bat is by far 
 the most numerous species in that locality. After 
 I had stood there watching them for a few minutes 
 a common bat appeared, and at once began flying 
 to and fro among them; but very soon he was 
 spotted and attacked by a big bat, and then began 
 the maddest chase it was possible to see, the little 
 one doubling wildly this way and that, now mount- 
 ing high in the air, then plunging downward to the 
 grass, anon losing himself in the trees, to reappear 
 in a few moments with his vicious persecutor 
 sticking so close that the two often seemed like one 
 bat. Finally, they went away out of sight in the 
 distance, and keeping my eyes in the direction they 
 had gone, I saw the big one return alone in about 
 
42 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 seven or eight minutes and resume his flying up 
 and down with the others. It struck me that if I 
 could have followed or kept them in sight to the 
 finish I should probably have witnessed a little 
 tragedy: the terror of the one and the fury of the 
 other suggested such an end. The keen teeth once 
 fixed in his victim's neck, the noctule would wash 
 his supper of moths and beetles down with a 
 draught of warm blood, then drop the dead body 
 to the earth before returning to his companions. 
 This is conjecture; but we know that bats have 
 carnivorous propensities, and that in some exotic 
 kinds the big will kill the little, even their own 
 young. Probably they all have something of the 
 vampire in them. The female bat is a most devoted 
 parent, carrying her young about when fiying, 
 wrapping them round with her silken wings as with 
 a shawl when in repose, suckling them at her breast 
 even as the highest of the mammalians do. One 
 would not be surprised to learn that the deadliest 
 enemy of her little ones, the one she fears most, is 
 her own consort. 
 
 Whether bats migrate or not has long been a 
 moot question, and Millais, our latest authority, 
 and certainly one of the best, has answered it in 
 the affirmative. But the migration he describes 
 is nothing but a change of locality — a retirement 
 from their summer haunts to some spot suitable 
 for hibernation, in some instances but a few miles 
 distant. Other hibernating creatures — serpents, for 
 example — have the same habit, and though com- 
 
BATS 43 
 
 pelled to travel on their bellies, they do neverthe- 
 less return year after year to the old laying-up 
 places. The question of a seasonal movement in 
 bats, similar to migration in birds, greatly exercised 
 my young mind in former years in a country where 
 bats had no business to be. This was the level, 
 grassy, practically treeless immensity of the pampas, 
 where there were no hollow trunks, nor caves and 
 holes for bats to shelter in, nor ruins and buildings 
 of brick and stone which would be a substitute for 
 natural caverns. Human dwellings were mostly 
 mud and straw hovels, and the only trees were those 
 planted by man, and were not large and could not 
 grow old. The violent winds swept this floor of the 
 world, which was unsheltered like the sea. Yet 
 punctually in spring the bats appeared along with 
 the later bird migrants, and were common until 
 April, when they vanished, and then for six months 
 no bat would be seen in or out of doors. Clearly, 
 then, they were strictly migratory, able like birds 
 to travel hundreds of miles and to distribute them- 
 selves over a vast area. They were, in fact, both 
 migrants and hibernators, since we cannot but 
 suppose that they forsook the pampas only to find 
 some distant place where they could pass their 
 inactive period in safety. 
 
 At one point, about two hundred miles south 
 of Buenos Ayres city, the level pampa is broken by 
 a range of stony hills, or sierras, standing above 
 the flat earth like precipitous cliffs that face the 
 sea. On my first visit to that spot I travelled 
 
44 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 with a party of eight or nine gauchos, and evening 
 coming on near our destination, we camped about 
 a league from the foot of the hills and built a big 
 fire. Just as we had got a good blaze a loud cry 
 of " Morcielagos ! " (bats) from one of the men 
 made us look up, and there, overhead, appeared a 
 multitude of bats, attracted by the glare, rushing 
 about in the maddest manner, like a cloud of 
 demented swifts. In a few moments they vanished, 
 and we saw no more of them. Bats, I found, were 
 extremely abundant among these hills, and here 
 they were probably non-migratory. 
 
 But the main question about bats is always that 
 of their sense-organs, in which they differ not only 
 from all other mammalians but from all verte- 
 brates, and if in this there is any resemblance or 
 analogue to any other form of life it is to the 
 insect. As to insect senses we are very much in 
 the dark. The number of them may be seven or 
 seventeen, since insects appear to be affected by 
 vibrations which do not touch us. We exist, it 
 has been said, in a bath of vibrations; so do all 
 living things; but in our case the parts by which 
 they enter are few; so too with all other verte- 
 brates except the bat alone, and a puzzle and 
 mystery he remains. What, for example, are the 
 functions of the transverse bands on the wings 
 formed of minute glands; the enormous expanse 
 of ears in the long-eared bat; the earlet, a curious 
 development of the tragus; and the singular leaf- 
 like developments on the nose of the horseshoe 
 
BATS 45 
 
 bat? We suppose that they are sense-organs, but 
 all we know, or half know, about the matter is 
 ancient history; it dates back to the eighteenth 
 century, when Spallanzani, finding that bats were 
 independent of sight when blinded and set flying 
 in winding tunnels and other confined places, 
 conjectured that they were endowed with a sixth 
 sense. Cuvier's explanation of these experiments 
 was that the propinquity of solid bodies is per- 
 ceived by the way in which the air, moved by the 
 pulsations, reacts on the surface of the wings. 
 Thus the sixth sense was a refinement, or extension, 
 of the sense of touch — an excessive sensitiveness in 
 the membrane. Blind men, we know, sometimes 
 have a similar extreme sensibility of the skin of the 
 face. I have known one who was accustomed to 
 spend some hours walking every day in Kensington 
 Gardens, taking short cuts in any direction among 
 the trees and never touching one, and no person 
 seeing him moving so freely about would have 
 imagined that he was totally blind. 
 
 My own experiments on bats in South America 
 were inconclusive. I used to collect a dozen or 
 twenty at a time, finding them sleeping by day 
 on the trees in shady places, and after seahng up 
 their eyes with adhesive gum, liberate them in a 
 large room furnished with hanging ropes and 
 objects of various sizes suspended from the rafters. 
 The bats flew about without touching the walls, 
 and deftly avoiding the numerous obstacles; but 
 I soon discovered that they were able when flying 
 
46 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 to use the hooked claw on the wing to scratch the 
 gum away and pull the eyelids open, and when- 
 ever one came to grief I found that its lids had not 
 been opened. 
 
 One can see at once that an experiment of this 
 kind is useless. The irritation of the gum and the 
 efforts being made to remove it by the animal while 
 flying cloud the extra sense or senses, and it loses 
 its efficiency. 
 
 What the bat can do I discovered by chance one 
 summer afternoon in an English lane. It was one 
 of those deep Hampshire lanes one finds between 
 Selborne and Prior's Dean, where I was walking 
 just before sunset, when two common bats appeared 
 flying up and down the lane in quest of flies, and 
 always on coming to me they circled round and 
 then made a vicious little stoop at my head as if 
 threatening to strike. My brown and grey striped 
 or mottled tweed caps and hats have often got me 
 into trouble with birds, as I have told in a chapter 
 in Birds and Man, and it was probably the colour 
 of my cap on this occasion that excited the 
 animosity of this pair of bats. Again and again 
 I waved my stick over my head on seeing one 
 approach, but it had not the slightest effect — the 
 bat would duck past it and pass over my cap, just 
 grazing it boldly as ever. Then I thought of a 
 way to frighten them. My cane was a slim pliable 
 one, which gave me no support, and was used 
 merely to have something in my hand — a thin 
 little cane such as soldiers carry in their hands off 
 
BATS 47 
 
 duty. Holding it above my head, I caused it to 
 spin round so rapidly that it was no longer a cane 
 in appearance, but a funnel-shaped mist moving 
 with and above me as I walked. " Now, you little 
 rascal," said I, chuckling to myself as the bat 
 came; then making the usual quick circle he 
 dashed down through the side of the misty ob- 
 struction, made his demonstration over my cap, 
 and passed out on the other side. I could hardly 
 credit the evidence of my own eyes, and thought 
 he had escaped a blow by pure luck, and that if 
 he attempted it a second time he would certainly 
 be killed. I didn't want to kill him, but the thing 
 was really too remarkable to be left in doubt, and 
 so I resumed the whirling of the stick over my 
 head, and in another moment the second bat came 
 along, and, like the first, dashed down at my cap, 
 passing in and out of the vortex with perfect ease 
 and safety! Again and again they doubled back 
 and repeated the action without touching the 
 stick, and after witnessing it a dozen or fifteen 
 times I could still hardly believe that their escape 
 from injury was anything but pure chance. 
 
 Here I recall the most wonderful flying feat I 
 have witnessed in birds — a very common one. 
 Frequently when standing still among the trees 
 of a plantation or wood where humming-birds 
 abounded, I have had one dart at me, invisible 
 owing to the extreme swiftness of its flight, to 
 become visible — to materialise, as it were — only 
 when it suddenly arrested its flight within a few 
 
48 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 inches of my face, to remain there suspended 
 motionless like a hover-fly on misty wings that 
 produced a loud humming sound; and when thus 
 suspended, it has turned its body to the right, then 
 to the left, then completely round as if to exhibit 
 its beauty — its brilliant scale-like feathers changing 
 their colours in the sunlight as it turned. Then, 
 in a few seconds, its curiosity gratified, it has 
 darted away, barely visible as a faint dark line in 
 the air, and vanished perhaps into the intricate 
 branches of some tree, a black acacia perhaps, 
 bristling with long needle-sharp thorns. 
 
 The humming-bird is able to perform this feat a 
 hundred times every day with impunity by means 
 of its brilliant vision and the exquisitely perfect 
 judgement of the brilliant little brain behind the 
 sight. But I take it that if the bird had attempted 
 the feat of the bat it would have killed itself. 
 
 It is a rule in wild life that nothing is attempted 
 which is not perfectly safe, though to us the action 
 may appear dangerous in the extreme, or even 
 impossible. At all events, I can say that these 
 bats in a Selborne lane taught me more than all 
 the books — they made me see and understand the 
 perfection of that extra sense. 
 
 But it is just that same sense which Spallanzani 
 and Cuvier wrote about, and we cannot but think 
 that the bat has something more than this. That 
 peculiar disposition of glands and nerves on the 
 wings, the enormous size of the ear in the great- 
 eared bat, the ear-leaf, and leaf -nose, and the other 
 
BATS 49 
 
 developments and excrescences on the face which 
 give to some species a more grotesque comitenance 
 than was ever imagined by any medieval artist in 
 stone — these are doubtless all sense-organs, and the 
 question is, are these all additions to the one sense 
 we know of — an extension and refinement of the 
 sense of touch? I think they are more than that, 
 and there are a few facts that incline one to believe 
 that knowledge comes to the bat through more 
 ports than one — knowledge of things far as well 
 as near. One observation made by Millais points 
 to this conclusion. He noticed that a crowd of 
 noctule bats that sheltered in a hollow tree by day, 
 on issuing in the evening all took flight in the same 
 direction, and that the line of flight was not the 
 same, but varied from day to day; that on follow- 
 ing them up to the feeding area he discovered that 
 insects were always most abundant at that spot on 
 that evening. It came to this — that on issuing 
 from the hollow tree every bat in the crowd, 
 issuing one or two at a time and flying straight 
 away, knew where to go, south, east, west or 
 north, to some spot a mile or two away. The bat 
 too, then, like the far-seeing vulture, is " sagacious 
 of his quarry from afar," but what Nature has 
 given him in place of his dim, degenerate eyes to 
 make him sagacious in this way remains to be 
 found out. 
 
IV 
 
 BEAUTY OF THE FOX 
 
 It is only by a fortunate chance, a rare conjunction 
 of circumstances, that we are able to see any wild 
 animal at its best. And by animal it must be 
 explained is here meant a hair-clothed vertebrate 
 that suckles its young and goes on four feet. 
 
 Chiefly on this account it would be hard in any 
 company of men well acquainted with our fauna 
 to find two persons to agree as to which is the 
 handsomest or prettiest of our indigenous mammals. 
 
 Undoubtedly the stag, one would exclaim: 
 another would perhaps venture to name the field- 
 mouse, or the dormouse, or the water-vole, that 
 quaint miniature beaver in his sealskin-coloured 
 coat, sitting erect on the streamlet's margin 
 busily nibbling at the pale end of a polished rush 
 stalk which he has cut off at the root and is now 
 holding clasped to his breast with his little hands. 
 Any one who had thus seen him, the brown sunlit 
 bank, with its hanging drapery of foliage and 
 flowers for background, reflected in the clear water 
 below, could well be pardoned for praising his 
 beauty and giving him the palm. Another would 
 
 50 
 
BEAUTY OF THE FOX 51 
 
 champion the squirrel, that pretty, passionate 
 creature, most birdhke of mammals; and some 
 white-haired veteran sportsman would perhaps 
 speak in glowing terms of the wild cat as seen in a 
 tearing rage. A word, too, would be spoken for 
 the otter, and the weasel, and the hare, and the 
 harvest - mouse, and the white Chillingham bull, 
 and the wild goat on the Welsh mountains. These 
 two last, after some discussion, would doubtless be 
 disquahfied, and the roe and fallow deer entered 
 instead; but no person would say a word about 
 the wolf and wild boar, the last of these noble 
 quadrupeds having been slain by some Royal 
 hunter half a thousand or more years ago. And 
 no one would mention the marten, or even know 
 whether or not, like the wolf and 'boar, it had 
 become " part and parcel of the dreadful past." 
 Some one would, however, put in a plea for the 
 hermit badger — one with sharper sight or more 
 patient than the others, or perhaps more Tortunate; 
 and the company would be highly amused. 
 
 The rough, grizzled brock, our little British bear, 
 would perhaps be better described as a fearsome 
 or sublime than a beautiful beast. At all events, 
 I lately had a singular instance of the terrifying 
 effect of a badger related to me by a rural pohce- 
 man in West Cornwall, a giant six feet six in height, 
 a mighty wrestler, withal a sober, rehgious man, 
 himself a terror to all evil-doers in the place. His 
 beat extends on one side to the border of a wide, 
 level moor, and one very dark night last winter 
 
52 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 he was at this desolate spot when he heard the 
 distant sound of a horse cantering over the ground. 
 The heavy rains had flooded the land, and he heard 
 the splash of the hoofs as the horse came towards 
 him. "Who could this be out on horseback at 
 twelve o'clock on a dark winter night? " he asked 
 himself; and listened and waited while the sound 
 grew louder and louder and came nearer and 
 nearer, and he strained his eyes to see the figure 
 of a man on horseback emerging from the gloom, 
 and could see nothing. Then it suddenly came into 
 his mind that it was no material horseman, but a 
 spirit accustomed to ride at that hour in that place, 
 and his hair stood up on his head like the bristles 
 on a pig's back. " It almost hfted my helmet off," 
 he confessed, and he would have fled, but his 
 trembling legs refused to move. Then, all at once, 
 when he was about to drop, fainting with extreme 
 terror, the cause of the sound appeared — an old 
 dog badger trotting over the flooded moor, vigor- 
 ously pounding the water with his feet, and making 
 as much noise as a trotting horse with his hoofs. 
 The badger was seven or eight yards away when 
 he first caught sight of him, and the badger, too, 
 then saw a sublime and terrifying creature stand- 
 ing motionless before him, and for a few moments 
 they stared at one another; then the badger turned 
 aside and vanished into the darkness. 
 
 To return. It was the sight of a fox that set 
 me speculating on this subject. I have seen more 
 foxes than I can remember, but never one that was 
 
BEAUTY OF THE FOX 53 
 
 the equal of this one; yet he was, I daresay, an 
 ordinary specimen, with nothing to distinguish him 
 from any other large dog fox in good condition 
 with a fine coat of hair and a thick brush. It was 
 in Savernake Forest that, on emerging from a 
 beech-wood, I noticed at a distance of seventy to 
 eighty yards away on the wide green level open 
 space before me a number of rabbits sitting up at 
 the mouths of their burrows, all staring in wide- 
 eyed alarm in one direction. Not at me, but 
 towards a patch of dead rust-red bracken, some 
 clumps of which were still standing, although the 
 time was now the end of March. At intervals 
 some of the rabbits would drop their fore-feet 
 down and begin nibbling at the grass; then in a 
 moment they would all start up and stare once 
 more at the patch of bracken. I walked slowly to 
 this red patch, and when I approached it a large 
 fox got up and moved reluctantly away. The 
 rough red fern on which he had been lying had 
 made him invisible to me until he moved; but he 
 had been plainly visible to the rabbits all the time. 
 He trotted quietly away to a distance of about 
 forty yards, then stopped, and half turning round, 
 stood regarding me for some time. Standing on 
 that carpet of vivid green spring grass, with the 
 clear morning sunlight full on him, his red colour 
 took an intensity and richness never previously 
 seen. In form he appeared no less distinguished 
 than in colour. His sharp, subtle face, large, leaf- 
 shaped pointed ears, black without and white 
 
54 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 within, and graceful bushy tail, gave him the 
 appearance of a dog idealised and made beautiful; 
 and he was to the rough brown or red common dog 
 what the finest human type — a model for a Phidias 
 or a Praxiteles — is to a Connemara peasant or a 
 Greenlander. 
 
A SENTIMENTALIST ON FOXES 
 
 It was inevitable in these tremendous times that 
 among the many voices suggesting various drastic 
 measures for our salvation, those of Mr. Brown 
 and Mr. Smith, the poultry farmers, should be 
 heard loud as any advocating the extirpation of 
 foxes, a measure, they say, which would result in 
 a considerable addition to the food supply of the 
 country in the form of eggs and chickens. Even 
 so do the fruit-growers remind us in each recurring 
 spring that it would be an immense advantage to 
 the country if the village children were given one 
 or two holidays each week in March and April, and 
 sent out to hunt and destroy queen wasps, every 
 wasp brought in to be paid for by a bun at the 
 pubhc cost. That the wasp, an eater of ripe fruit, 
 is also for six months every year a greedy devourer 
 of caterpillars and flies injurious to plant life, is a 
 fact the fruit-grower ignores. The fox, too, has 
 his uses to the farmer, seeing that he subsists 
 largely on rats, mice, and voles, but he has a greater 
 and nobler use, as the one four-footed creature left 
 to us in these islands to be hunted, seeing that 
 65 
 
56 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 without this glorious sport we should want horses 
 for our cavalry, and men of the right kind on their 
 backs, to face the Huns who would destroy us. 
 
 Apart from all these questions and considera- 
 tions, which humanitarians would laugh at, the fox 
 is a being one cannot help loving. For he is, like 
 man's servant and friend the dog, highly intelligent, 
 and is to the good honest dog like the picturesque 
 and predatory gipsy to the respectable member of 
 the community. He is a rascal, if you like, but a 
 handsome red rascal, with a sharp, clever face and 
 a bushy tail, and good to meet in any green place. 
 This feehng of admiration and friendliness for the 
 fox is occasionally the cause of a qualm of conscience 
 in even the most hardened old hunter. " By gad, 
 he deserved to escape!" is a not uncommon ex- 
 clamation in the field, or, " I wish we had been 
 able to spare him! " or even, " It was really hardly 
 fair to kill him." 
 
 Here let me relate an old forgotten fox story — 
 a hunting incident of about eighty years ago — and 
 how it first came to be told. When J. Britton, a 
 labourer's son in a small agricultural village in 
 Wiltshire, and in later life the author of many big 
 volumes on the " Beauties of England and Wales," 
 came up to London to earn a precarious living as 
 bottle-washer, newspaper office boy, and in various 
 other ways, it was from the first his ambition to 
 see himself in print, and eventually, because of his 
 importunity, he was allowed by a kindly editor to 
 write a paragraph relating some little incident of 
 
A SENTIMENTALIST ON FOXES 57 
 
 his early years. What he wrote was the fox story — 
 a hunting incident in the village that had deeply 
 impressed his boy mind. The fox, hard pressed, 
 and running for dear life, came into the village and 
 took refuge in a labourer's cottage, and entering 
 by the kitchen door, passed into an inner room, 
 and, jumping into a cradle where a baby was 
 sleeping, concealed himself under the covering. 
 The baby's mother had gone out a little way, but 
 presently seeing the street in a commotion, full 
 of dogs and mounted men, she flew back to her 
 cottage and rushed to the cradle, and plucking 
 off the coverlet saw the fox snugly curled up by 
 the side of her child, pretending to be, like the 
 baby, fast asleep. She snatched the sleeping child 
 up, then began screaming and beating the fox, 
 until, leaping out of the cot, he fled from that 
 inhospitable place, only to encounter the whole 
 yelling pack at the threshold, where he was quickly 
 worried to death. 
 
 The editor was so pleased with the anecdote 
 that he not only printed it but encouraged the 
 little rustic to write other things, and that is how 
 his career as a writer began. 
 
 Now, albeit a sentimentalist, I would not say 
 that the fox took refuge in a cradle with a sleeping 
 baby and pretended to be asleep just to work on 
 the kindly, maternal feelings of the cottage woman 
 and so save his life, but I do say, and am pretty 
 sure that not one of the Hunt and not a villager 
 but felt that the kilHng of that particular fox was 
 
58 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 not quite the right thing to do, or not altogether 
 fair. 
 
 This incident has served to remind me of another 
 from South America, told to me by an Anglo- 
 Argentine friend as we sat and talked one evening 
 in Buenos Ayres, comparing notes about the ways 
 of beasts and birds. The fox of that distant land 
 is not red like his English cousin; his thick coat is 
 composed of silver white and jet black hairs in 
 about equal proportion, resulting in an iron grey 
 colour, with fulvous tints on the face, legs and 
 under parts. If not as pretty as our red fox, he is 
 a fine-looking animal, with as sharp a nose and as 
 thick a brush, and, mentally, does not differ in the 
 least from him. He is not preserved or hunted in 
 that country, but being injurious to poultry, is 
 much persecuted. 
 
 My friend had been sheep farming on the 
 western frontier, and one winter evening when he 
 was alone in his ranch he was sitting by the fire 
 whiling away the long hours before bed-time by 
 playing on his flute. Two or three times he thought 
 he heard a sound of a person pressing heavily 
 against the door from the outside, but being very 
 intent on his music, he took no notice. By and by 
 there was a distinct creaking of the wood, and 
 getting up and putting down his flute he took up 
 the gun, and, stepping to the door, seized the 
 handle and pulled it open very suddenly, when 
 down at his feet on the floor of the room tumbled 
 a big dog fox. He had been standing up on his 
 
A SENTIMENTALIST ON FOXES 59 
 
 hind legs, his fore-feet pressed against the door 
 and his ear at the keyhole, listening to the dulcet 
 sounds. The fox rolled on the floor, frightened and 
 confused by the light; then, picking himself up, 
 dashed out, but before going twenty yards he 
 pulled up and looked back just when the gun was 
 at my friend's shoulder. There had been no time 
 for reflection, and in a moment Reynard, or 
 Robert as we sometimes call him, was on the 
 ground bleeding his life out. 
 
 I did not like the end of his story, and I fancied, 
 too, from his look that he rather hated himself for 
 having killed that particular fox and regretted 
 having told me about it. 
 
 In another instance which remains to be told, 
 the fox, in England this time, who had got into 
 trouble, and was in dire danger, was saved not 
 once, but twice, just because there was time for 
 reflection. It was told to me at Sidmouth by an 
 old fisherman well known to the people in that 
 town as " Uncle Sam," a rank sentimentalist, like 
 myself, to whom birds and beasts were as much 
 as human beings. It chanced that in 1887 he was 
 occupied in collecting materials for a big bonfire 
 on the summit of Barrow Hill, a high hill on the 
 coast west of the town, in preparation for Queen 
 Victoria's first Jubilee, when one day, on coming 
 down from his work, he met a band of excited boys, 
 all armed with long, stout sticks, which they had 
 just cut in the adjacent wood. 
 
 Uncle Sam stopped them and told them he 
 
60 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 knew very well what they were after; they had 
 got their sticks to beat the bushes for birds, and 
 he was determined to prevent their doing such a 
 thing. The boys all cried out, denying that they 
 had any such intention, and told him they had 
 found a fox caught in a steel trap with one of its 
 forelegs crushed, and as it would perhaps be a long 
 time before the keeper would come round, they 
 were going to kill the fox with their sticks to put 
 it out of its misery. Uncle Sam said it would be 
 better to save its life, and asked them to take him 
 to the spot. This they did wilhngly, and there, 
 sure enough, was a big fine fox held by one leg, 
 crushed above the knee. He was in a savage 
 temper, and with ears laid back and teeth bared 
 he appeared ready to fight for his life against the 
 crowd. Uncle Sam made them place themselves 
 before the tortured beast, and tease him with their 
 sticks, pretending to aim blows at his head. He 
 in the meantime succeeded in setting the end of 
 his stick on the shaft of the gin, and, pressing down, 
 caused the teeth to relax their grip, and in a mo- 
 ment the fox was free, and, darting away, disap- 
 peared from their sight in the wood. 
 
 A year or so later, Uncle Sam heard of his 
 rescued fox, a three-legged one, the crushed limb 
 having fallen or been gnawed off. He had been 
 seen near that spot where he had been caught. 
 This was close to the highest part of the wall-like 
 cliff, and he had a refuge somewhere among the 
 rocks in the face of it some forty or more feet 
 
A SENTIMENTALIST ON FOXES 61 
 
 below the summit. Those, too, who walked on the 
 sands beneath the cliff sometimes saw his tracks — 
 the footprints of a three-legged fox. Doubtless he 
 had modified his way of life, and subsisted partly 
 on small crabs and anything eatable the sea cast 
 up on the beach, and for the rest on voles and 
 other small deer obtainable near the cHff. At all 
 events he was never met with at any distance 
 from the sea, and was in no danger from the Hunt, 
 as he was always close to his fortress in the pre- 
 cipitous cliff. 
 
 One day a farmer, the tenant of the land at 
 that S]^ot who was out with his gun and walking 
 quickly on the narrow path in the larch wood 
 close to the cliff, looking out for rabbits, came face 
 to face with the three-legged fox. He stopped 
 short, and so did the fox, and the gun was brought 
 to the shoulder and' the finger to the trigger, for it 
 is a fact that foxes are shot in England by farmers 
 when they are too numerous, and in any case here 
 was a useless animal for hunting purposes, since he 
 had but three legs. But before the finger touched 
 the trigger, it came into the man's mind that this 
 animal had done him no harm, and he said, " Why 
 should I kill him? No, I'll let him keep his life," 
 and so the fox escaped again. 
 
 More was heard from time to time about the 
 three-legged fox, and that went on until quite 
 recently — about four years ago, I was told. If we 
 may suppose the fox to have been two or three 
 years old when caught in a trap, and that he 
 
62 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 finished his life four or five years ago, he must 
 have hved about twenty-six years. That would be 
 a much longer period than the domestic dog has, 
 and for all I know the fox may be living still, or, 
 if dead, he may have ended his life accidentally. 
 
VI 
 
 THE DISCONTENTED SQUIRREL 
 
 Hurrying along the street the other day, intent 
 on business, I was brought to a sudden full stop 
 by the sight of a heap of old books in tattered 
 covers outside a second-hand furniture shop, I 
 didn't want old books, and had no time to spare; 
 the action was purely automatic, like that of the 
 old horse ridden or driven by a traveller who often 
 refreshes himself, in stopping short on coming to a 
 public-house on the roadside. On the top of the 
 heap was a small pamphlet or booklet in blue 
 covers, entitled The Discontented Squirrel, and this 
 attracted my attention. It seemed to touch a 
 chord, but a chord of what I did not know. I 
 picked it up, and, opening it, saw on the first page 
 an ancient rude woodcut of a squirrel eating a nut. 
 
 The old picture looked familiar, but I was still 
 at a loss until I read the first few lines of the letter- 
 press, and then I immediately dropped the booklet 
 and hastened on faster than ever, to make up for a 
 wasted minute. 
 
 Why, of course, the Discontented Squirrel, that 
 dear little ancient beastie! The whole of the 
 
64 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 child's tale came back with a rush to memory, 
 for I had read and re-read it when my age was 
 seven; though I had never since met with it in 
 the hundreds of boxes of old books turned over in 
 my time, or in any collection of children's books 
 of the early nineteenth century. I once made a 
 small collection of such literature myself, and 
 others have collected and still collect it in a large 
 way. I sometimes wonder why some enterprising 
 pubhsher doesn't start an Every Child's Libraiy, 
 and rescue many of the most charming of these 
 small publications from total oblivion. Un- 
 doubtedly he would find the best period was from 
 1800 to about 1840. < 
 
 Once upon a time — so ran the story as I remem- 
 bered it, and retold it to myself while walking on — 
 a squirrel lived in a wood, as plump and playful 
 and happy a squirrel as one would wish to see. He 
 had a favourite tree, an old giant oak, which was 
 his home, and when summer was nearing its end 
 he began to amuse himself by making a warm nest 
 in a cavity down at the roots; also by hoarding a 
 quantity of hazel-nuts, which were plentiful just 
 then in the wood. This he did, not because he 
 had any reason for doing it, or thought there was 
 any use in it, but solely because it was an old time- 
 honoured custom of the squirrel tribe to do these 
 things. 
 
 While occupied in this way he all at once 
 became aware of a new restlessness and excite- 
 ment among the birds, and when he asked his 
 
THE DISCONTENTED SQUIRREL 65 
 
 feathered neighbours what it was all about, they 
 were surprised at his innocence, and answered that 
 it was about migration. And what was migration? 
 A funny question to put to a bird! However, 
 they condescended to inform their ignorant young 
 friend that migration meant going away from the 
 country in order to escape the winter. For now 
 winter was coming, that sad season of leafless trees 
 and of short, dark days; of wet and wind and 
 bitter, bitter cold, when lakes and streams would 
 be frozen over, and the earth buried in white, 
 awful snow. 
 
 And where would they go to escape these awful 
 changes ? 
 
 They would go to a land where there was no 
 winter; where the trees were green all the year 
 round, with flowers always blooming, and fruit and 
 nuts always ripening. 
 
 "Oh beautiful land! oh happy birds!" thought 
 the squirrel. " But where is that desirable coun- 
 try? " he asked. 
 
 " Over that way," replied the birds, pointing to 
 the south, just as if it were a place quite near. 
 " It was," they added, " beyond the ridge of blue 
 hills one could see on that side." 
 
 These tidings threw the squirrel into a great 
 state of excitement, and he spent his whole time 
 running after and questioning every bird he knew. 
 "When," he asked, "would the migration begin?" 
 
 They laughed at the question, and said it had 
 begun some time ago, and was going on at the 
 
66 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 present moment. The swift had long been gone; 
 so had the night-jar; the cuckoo too; and others 
 were beginning to follow. 
 
 The cuckoo — his own neighbour and familiar 
 friend! Ah, that was why he hadn't seen him for 
 some days past! And then began an unhappy 
 time for the squirrel, and every day and every 
 hour increased his discontent. The yellowing leaves, 
 the chillier evenings, and long nights filled him with 
 apprehension of the coming change, and at last he 
 resolved that he would not endure it. For why 
 should he stay in such a land when all his feathered 
 neighbours and friends were now hurrying away to 
 a better one. 
 
 Having made up his mind to migrate, he set out 
 at dawn of day, and travelled many miles toward 
 those blue hills in the south, which turned out to 
 be much farther than he had thought. It was not 
 until the late afternoon that he arrived at the foot 
 of the ridge, feeling more tired and sore-footed 
 than he had ever been in his life. Nevertheless he 
 was determined not to give in, but to cross the 
 hills before dark, and in crossing them perhaps 
 view from the summit that beautiful land to which 
 he was travelling. And so up and ever up he 
 went, finding it more fatiguing every minute, until 
 he began to despair of ever reaching the summit. 
 And he never did; it was too high, and he was 
 now spent with hunger and weakness after his 
 long fatiguing day. Furthermore, the hillside grew 
 more and more barren and desolate as he got higher. 
 
THE DISCONTENTED SQUIRREL 67 
 
 until he found himself in a place where it was all 
 stony, without trees and bushes or even grass; 
 and there was no food to be found, and no shelter 
 from the cold, violent wind. 
 
 He could go no farther, and the summit was 
 still far, far above him. Hunching himself up on 
 the stony ground, with his nose down between his 
 paws and his bushy tail spread along his back, he 
 began to reflect on his condition. 
 
 Why had he not taken into account that he 
 could not travel like a bird with wings to bear him 
 through the air, and over hills and rivers and long 
 stretches of rough country? And when he asked 
 the birds how long it would take them to reach 
 that happy land of everlasting sunshine beyond the 
 blue ridge, had they not answered in a careless way, 
 as if they thought little of it, " Oh, not long; two 
 or three weeks, according to one's powers " ? And 
 it never occurred to him that a bird can fly farther 
 in half an hour than a squirrel can travel in a whole 
 day! Now, when it was too late, when he could 
 not go forward, and his home was too far, far 
 behind him, he remembered and considered these 
 things. Oh poor squirrel! Oh miserable end of 
 all your happy dreams! 
 
 And while he was sitting hunched up, shivering 
 with cold and thinking these bitter, desponding 
 thoughts, a passing kite spied him, and swooping 
 down, snatched him up in his talons and carried 
 him off. Little strength had he now to struggle, 
 and at his least movement the sharp, crooked claws 
 
68 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 tightened their grasp; and even if he had been 
 able to free himself, it would only have been to 
 fall that vast distance through the void air and 
 be crushed on the earth. 
 
 Then all at once the bird's flight grew swifter 
 and rose higher, for now a second kite had appeared, 
 and had given chase to the first to deprive him of 
 his prey. 
 
 The first, burdened with the squirrel, could not 
 escape from his persecutor, and they were soon at 
 close quarters. The marauding bird now began 
 making furious swoops at the other, aiming blows 
 at his back with his claws, and every time he 
 swooped down he uttered savage cries and mock- 
 ings. "Aha!" he cried, "you can't save yourself 
 with all your speed and all your doublings. Drop 
 that squirrel if you don't want your back cut into 
 strips. Do you remember, you red rascal, that you 
 found me carrying home a duckling I had picked 
 up at a farm, and made me drop it? Do you 
 remember what you said on that occasion — that 
 I was burdened while you were free, so that you 
 had the advantage of me, and would claw my 
 back to ribbons unless I dropped the duckling? 
 Well, robber — pirate! who has the advantage 
 
 now 
 
 It was awful, that battle in the sky; the blows, 
 the shrieks, the dreadful imprecations they hurled 
 at one another; but in the end the kite was obliged 
 to drop the squirrel to defend himself with his 
 claws, and the poor little beastie fell earthward 
 
THE DISCONTENTED SQUIRREL 69 
 
 like a stone, and would have been crushed if he 
 had fallen upon the ground; but, luckily, he first 
 struck a close mass of twigs and foliage on the top 
 of a large tree. This broke the violence of the fall, 
 and he came down gently to the branches beneath, 
 when he managed to catch hold of a twig and come 
 to a stop. He was bruised and bleeding, and half- 
 dead with the shock; but by and by he revived, 
 and then what was his relief and joy to discover 
 that he was at home — that he had fallen into 
 his own favourite old oak-tree! On recovering a 
 little strength he crept down the trunk, and after 
 satisfying his hunger with two or three hazel-nuts 
 from his store, he crawled into his unfinished nest, 
 where he coiled himself up, and drawing the blankets 
 over his ears, mused drowsily on his unspeakable 
 folly in having forsaken so comfortable a home. 
 And as to migration — well, "Never again!" he 
 murmured as he dropped off to sleep. 
 
 The story greatly pleased me as I retold it to 
 myself, after having forgotten it for so many long 
 years, since I now perceived that it was a fable of 
 the right sort; that, in fact, it was a true story — 
 in other words, true to the creature's character. 
 Stories about reasoning and talking animals do 
 not always conform to this rule, which has made 
 the terse fables of ^sop a joy for ever. Whether 
 the author knew it or not, it is a fact that the 
 squirrel is subject to fits of discontent with his 
 surroundings, which send him rushing off in quest 
 of some better place to live in; and at such times 
 
70 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 he will make his way, or try to, over wide stretches 
 of barren, unpromising country. Thus, when trees 
 are planted in a treeless district, by and by 
 squirrels make their appearance, even when their 
 nearest known haunts are many miles distant. Nor 
 is this only an occasional outbreak of a gipsy roving 
 disposition of the animal, since he too is subject 
 to migratory impulses at the same time of year 
 as the birds. In some countries large numbers of 
 squirrels are affected simultaneously in this way, 
 and have been observed migrating, many perishing 
 when attempting to cross rivers too wide or swift 
 for them. 
 
 I also liked the story because it recalled a 
 squirrel's adventure told to me a short time before 
 by an old fisherman at Wells-next-the-Sea, in Nor- 
 folk. Wells lies at the edge of a marsh a mile and 
 a quarter back from the sea, and has a harbour, a 
 river or estuary which at full tide is deep enough 
 to enable small vessels to come up to the town. 
 Near the river's mouth there is a row of tall guiding 
 poles in the channel, and one afternoon my in- 
 formant noticed a squirrel sitting hunched up on 
 the summit of the outermost pole, about thirty 
 feet above the water. Evidently he had come 
 through the pine plantation on the sand-dunes on 
 the Holkham or north side of the river; but, 
 anxious to continue his travels southward along 
 the shore and over the vast flat saltings towards 
 Blakeney, he had cast himself into the river at low 
 tide, and finding the current too strong, had just 
 
THE DISCONTENTED SQUIRREL 71 
 
 saved himself from being carried out to sea by- 
 climbing up the last pole. Now the current was 
 the other way, and the river full from bank to 
 bank: the poor squirrel on his pole-top was in the 
 middle of the swirling current, and dared not 
 venture into the water again, either to go forward 
 or back to the wood. 
 
 The fisherman went home to his tea; but, two 
 hours later, just about sunset, he strolled back to 
 the sea-front, and there still sat the squirrel 
 hunched up on the top of his pole. Presently a 
 fishing-boat came in from the sea, with only 
 one person, a young man, in it. The old man 
 hailed him, and called his attention to the 
 squirrel on the pole. "All right; I see him!" 
 shouted back the young fellow. "I'll try to get 
 him off!" 
 
 Then, as the swirling current carried the boat 
 up to within about three yards of the pole, he leant 
 forward and thrust out an oar until the blade 
 touched the pole; and no sooner had it touched 
 than down like lightning came the squirrel from 
 his perch, leaped upon the oar, and from the oar 
 to the boat, then quickly bounded up the mast and 
 perched himself on the top. 
 
 The squirrel had not understood the man's 
 friendly intentions, and his lightning-quick action 
 appeared not to have been prompted either by 
 reason or instinct, but rather by that intuitive 
 faculty one is half-inclined to believe in, which 
 causes an animal suddenly threatened with destruc- 
 
72 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 tion to take instantly the one line by which it may 
 be saved. 
 
 The boat went swiftly on, driven by the rushing 
 tide, until it reached the quay at Wells, and no 
 sooner did the keel touch the stones at the landing- 
 stage than down the squirrel flew from the mast- 
 top, and rushing to the bow, took a flying leap 
 to the land, then dashed off toward the town at 
 topmost speed. A number of children playing on 
 the quay saw him, and with a wild cry of " Squirrel! 
 squirrel! " went after him. Luckily there was no 
 dog about; and the squirrel being faster than the 
 boys, kept well ahead, and, dodging this way and 
 that among coal-trucks and wagons and horses, 
 and men occupied in unloading, got through them 
 all, then crossing the lower or coast road, dashed 
 into one of the wynds or narrow streets which run 
 u ) to the higher part of the town. There more 
 yelling children joined the hunt, and the people of 
 the wynd ran out of their houses to find out what 
 all the uproar was about. 
 
 The wynd ends at the upper street, and facing it 
 is a long brick wall ten feet high, and up this wall 
 went the squirrel without a pause or slip, as 
 swiftly as when going over the level earth, and 
 disappeared over the top into the orchard on the 
 other side. There the loud advancing wave of 
 young barbarians was stayed by the wall, as by an 
 ocean-facing cliff. 
 
 It had been a dashing performance, and the 
 squirrel could now have settled safely down in that 
 
THE DISCONTENTED SQUIRREL 73 
 
 sheltered spot among its fruit and shade trees, 
 since the tenant, who lived a hermit life in the 
 house, was friendly to all wild creatures, and 
 allowed neither dogs nor cats nor fiends in shape 
 of boys with loud halloo and brutal noise to intrude 
 into his sacred grounds. 
 
 But this would not have suited the squirrel; 
 the town noises and lights, the shrill cries of children 
 at play in the evening, and the drum and fife band 
 of the Boy Scouts would have kept him in a con- 
 stant state of apprehension. Squirrels are nervy 
 creatures. No doubt when the town was asleep 
 and silent that night he scaled the back-wall and 
 crossed other orchards and gardens until he came 
 out to the old unkept hedge on that side, and 
 followed it all the way to Holkham Park, a vast 
 green solitude with many ancient noble trees, in 
 one of which he probably first saw the light. 
 
 And there, at home once more, he perhaps 
 resolved, like the Discontented Squirrel of the 
 fable, never again to attempt to better himself by 
 migrating. 
 
VII 
 
 MY NEIGHBOUR'S BIRD STORIES 
 
 We sometimes make mistakes, and I certainly- 
 made one about my neighbour over the way, Mr. 
 Redburn, when I formed the conclusion that I 
 had no use for him. For I was just then birding 
 in an east-coast village, and when engaged on that 
 business I look for some interest in the subject 
 which absorbs me, some bird-lore in those I meet 
 and converse with. If they are entirely without it, 
 they are negligible persons; and Mr. Redburn, a 
 retired bank manager and a widower, living alone 
 in a house opposite my lodgings, fell quite naturally 
 into this category. A kindly man with friendly 
 feelings towards a stranger, one it was pleasant 
 to talk with, but unfortunately he knew nothing 
 about birds. 
 
 One day we met a mile from the village, he out 
 for a constitutional, and I returning from a prowl; 
 and as he seemed inclined to have a talk, we sat 
 down on a green bank at the roadside and got out 
 our pipes. 
 
 " You are always after birds," he said, " and I 
 know so little about them ! " Then to prove how 
 
 .74 
 
MY NEIGHBOUR'S BIRD STORIES 75 
 
 little he knew of their ways and wants, he related 
 the history of a thrush he once kept in a cage 
 hanging at the back of his house, where there was 
 a garden, and where he amused himself by 
 cultivating flowers and vegetables. The bird had 
 been taken from the nest and reared by hand; 
 consequently it had never learnt to sing a true 
 thrush song, but had invented a song of its own, 
 composed of imitations — cackling fowls, whistling 
 boys, and various other village noises, including 
 those from the smithy. The village postman, who 
 lived close by, had a pecuhar shrill double whistle 
 which he always emitted when nearing his house, 
 to bring his wife to the door. This sound, too, the 
 thrush mimicked so cleverly that poor Mrs. Post- 
 man was always running to the door for nothing, 
 and at length had to beg her husband to invent 
 some other sound to announce his approach. 
 
 Seeing that the bird was always cheerful and 
 noisy, it was a puzzle to Mr. Redburn that it never 
 looked well. It was supplied with clean water and 
 good food — bread and milk and crushed rape-seed 
 — every day; but it never seemed to enjoy its 
 food, and its plumage had a dry, loose, disarranged 
 appearance, and was without a gloss. It was a 
 perfect contrast in this respect to a wild thrush 
 that used to visit the garden. 
 
 One day, when the bird had been in his possession 
 for a little over a year, he happened to be sitting in 
 his garden smoking, when this wild thrush came on 
 the scene and began running about the lawn looking 
 
76 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 for something to eat. By chance he noticed that 
 his thrush in its cage was watching the wild bird 
 intently. Presently the bird on the lawn spied a 
 worm which had incautiously put its head out of 
 its hole, and dashed at and seized it, then began 
 tugging away until it pulled it out, after which it 
 proceeded to kill and devour it with a good appetite. 
 The caged bird had watched all this with increasing 
 excitement, which culminated when the worm was 
 killed and swallowed. 
 
 "Now I wonder if he wants a worm too?" 
 said Mr. Redburn to himself, and getting up he 
 took a spade and dug up two big worms, which he 
 placed in the cage as an experiment; and no sooner 
 did the thrush see than he flew at and killed and 
 devoured them as if mad with hunger. Every day 
 after that he dug up a few worms for his thrush, 
 and the sight of him with a spade in his hand 
 would always start the bird hopping wildly about 
 his cage. 
 
 As a result of this addition to his diet the thrush 
 in due time took on a brighter, glossier coat. 
 
 Mr. Redburn had congratulated himself on 
 having made a happy discovery — happy for his 
 thrush. It had taken him a year of twelve months, 
 but he had never made the more important dis- 
 covery, which it appeared to me he had come so 
 near making, that the one and only way to give 
 perfect happiness to your captive thrush is to open 
 the cage and let him fly to find worms for himself, 
 and to get a mate, and with her assistance build a 
 
MY NEIGHBOUR'S BIRD STORIES 77 
 
 deep nest in a holly bush, and be the parent of five 
 beautiful gem-like blue eggs spotted with black. 
 
 The only other bird he had ever possessed was a 
 jackdaw, a charming fellow, full of fun, with uncut 
 wings, so that he was free to go and come at will; 
 but he was a home-loving bird, very affectionate, 
 though loving mischief too, and never happier than 
 when his indulgent master allowed him to use his 
 head as a perch. 
 
 One day, when Mr. Redburn was busy in his 
 study, his little daughter, aged seven, came crying 
 to him to complain that Jack was plaguing her so! 
 He wanted to pull the buttons off her shoes, and 
 because she wouldn't let him he pecked her ankles, 
 and it hurt her so, and made her cry. He gave her 
 his stick, and told her, with a laugh, to give Jack 
 a good smart rap on the head with it, and that 
 would make him behave himself. He never for a 
 moment imagined that such a clever, quick bird as 
 Jack would allow himself to be struck by a little 
 girl with a long walking-stick; nevertheless this 
 incredible thing happened, and the stick actually 
 came down on Jack's head, and the child screamed, 
 and, running to her, he found her crying, and Jack 
 lying to all appearance dead on the floor! They 
 took him up tenderly and examined him, and said 
 he was really and truly dead, and then tenderly, 
 sorrowfully, put him down again. All at once, to 
 their astonishment and dehght, he opened his 
 mischievous little grey eyes and looked at his 
 friends standing over him. Then he ^ot up on his 
 
78 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 legs and began rocking his head from side to side, 
 after which he shook his feathers two or three 
 times; then tried to scratch his poll with his claw, 
 but didn't succeed. He was in a queer state, and 
 didn't know what had happened to him; but he 
 soon recovered, and was just as fond of his little 
 playmate as ever, although he never again at- 
 tempted to pull her buttons off or peck her ankles. 
 Some time after this Jack disappeared for a 
 day or two, and was brought back by a boy of the 
 village, who was warmly thanked and rewarded 
 with a few pence. From that day every little boy 
 who was so lucky as to find Jack out of bounds, 
 and could catch him, expected a gratuity on taking 
 him to the house; and as the little boys were all 
 very poor and hungry for sweets, they were per- 
 petually on the look-out for Jack, and went about 
 with something in their ragged little pockets to 
 entice him into their cottages. Every day Jack 
 was lost and found again, until the good man, who 
 was not rich, concluded that he could not afford 
 to keep so expensive a pet; and so Jack was given 
 to a gentleman who had a pet daw of his own and 
 wanted another. In his new home he had nice 
 large grounds with big trees, and Jack with a 
 chum of his own tribe was very happy until his 
 end, which came very suddenly. The two birds 
 roosted side by side together on a tall tree near 
 the house, and one summer night this tree was 
 struck by lightning; next morning the two birds 
 were found lying dead at the roots. 
 
MY NEIGHBOUR'S BIRD STORIES 79 
 
 My neighbour had one more bird story, the best 
 of all to tell, and this about rooks, the only wild 
 birds he had ever observed with the object of 
 finding out something about their habits. There 
 was a small rookery in some elm trees growing at 
 the bottom of the garden of the house he then 
 lived in, and the way the birds went on during 
 nest-building time moved his curiosity to such a 
 degree that one Sunday morning he resolved to 
 give the whole day to a careful inquiry into the 
 domestic affairs of these black neighbours. No 
 doubt, he thought, they were subject to a law or 
 custom which enabled them to exist in a com- 
 munity, living and rearing their young in nests 
 placed close together. Nevertheless it was evident 
 that it was not an ideal society, and that the noise 
 was not due merely to animal spirits, as in the 
 case of a lot of boys out of school; there was a 
 great deal of scolding and quarrelling, and from 
 time to time a mighty hubbub, as if the entire 
 colony had suddenly been seized with an angry 
 excitement. What occasioned these outbursts? It 
 was just to try to find this out that he planted 
 himself in a chair near the trees on that Sunday 
 morning. The nearest tree contained one nest only, 
 a new one not yet finished, and eventually he 
 thought it best to concentrate his attention on this 
 point, and watch the movements of the one pair 
 of birds. He liad quickly found that it only worried 
 and confused him to keep a watch on the move- 
 ments and actions of several birds and their nests. 
 
80 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 The two birds he attended to went and came, 
 sometunes together, then first one, and then the 
 other, and sometimes one would remain at the 
 nest during the absence of its mate. This v/ent 
 on for about three hours, and nothing unusual 
 happened at the nest; at other points of the 
 rookery there were little storms of noise and 
 some shindies, but he was determined not to let 
 his attention wander from his two birds. At 
 length he was rewarded by seeing one of the pair 
 fly to an unguarded nest about thirty yards away, 
 on a neighbouring tree, and deliberately pull out 
 a stick, which it brought back and carefully 
 adjusted in its own nest. By and by the two 
 birds who had been robbed returned together and 
 immediately appeared to be aware that something 
 was wrong with their home. Standing on the nest, 
 they put their heads together, fluttering their 
 wings and cawing excitedly, and presently they 
 were joined by others, and others still, until almost 
 the entire colony was congregated on the tree, all 
 making a great noise. After two or three minutes 
 they began to quarrel among themselves, and there 
 were angry blows with beaks and wings, after 
 which the tumult subsided, and the company broke 
 up, every pair going back to its own nest. After 
 that comparative peace and quiet continued for 
 some time, but Mr. Redburn now noticed that one 
 bird always remained on guard on the nest where 
 the stick had been stolen. His two birds quietly 
 .continued to work and go and come, and by and 
 
MY NEIGHBOUR'S BIRD STORIES 81 
 
 by, about two hours after the commotion, they 
 both flew away to the fields together, and no 
 sooner were they gone than the bird they had 
 robbed, keeping guard on his tree, flew straight 
 to the nest they had left, and after what appeared 
 like a careful examination took hold of a stick 
 and tugged vigorously until he succeeded in pulling 
 it out. With the stick in his beak he flew back 
 to his nest and proceeded to adjust it in the 
 fabric. 
 
 What would happen now, Mr. Redbui-n asked, 
 when the dishonest couple came back and dis- 
 covered that they had been deprived of their loot? 
 He watched for their return with keen interest, and 
 by and by they came, and, to his astonishment, 
 nothing happened. They settled on their nest, 
 looked it over in the usual way to see that it was 
 as they had left it, and although they no doubt 
 saw that it was not so they made no fuss. 
 
 The most remarkable thing in all this affair was, 
 to Mr. Redburn's mind, that the robbed birds 
 appeared to know so well who the thief was and 
 where the stick could be looked for. 
 
 To me it was remarkable that my neighbour, 
 who " knew nothing about birds," had yet, in one 
 day's watching, succeeded in seeing something 
 which throws a stronger light on the law of the 
 rookery than any single observation contained in 
 the ornithological books. 
 
 In this case, as he relates it, the robbed birds 
 appeared to know very well who the culprits were 
 
82 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 among their neighbours. Why, then, were the 
 robbers not attacked, and seeing that they waited 
 their time and went quietly and recovered their 
 own, why all that preliminary fuss? It sometimes 
 happens, we know, that the entire rookery becomes 
 infuriated against a particular pair; that in such 
 cases they fall upon and demolish the nest, and in 
 extreme cases expel the offenders from the rookery. 
 I take it that such attacks are made only on the in- 
 corrigible ones, those that obtain all their materials 
 by thieving, and so make themselves a nuisance to 
 the community. It seems probable that in this 
 instance the colony, although excited at the news 
 of the robbery and the outcry made by the 
 victimised pair, declined to take too serious a view 
 of the matter, and after some discussion and 
 quarrelling left the angry couple to manage their 
 own affairs. We may think, too, that in a majority 
 of cases an occasional offence is condoned among 
 birds that have a social law but do not observe it 
 very strictly. Thus, at home, the rook is a stealer 
 of sticks when the occasion offers, and a wooer of 
 his neighbour's wife when his neighbour is out of 
 the way. Too severe a code would not do; it 
 would, in fact, upset the whole community, and 
 rooks would have to go and live like carrion crows, 
 each pair by itself. At all events, in this instance 
 we see that only after the angry outcry made by 
 the victims had failed to bring about an attack 
 they quietly waited their opportunity to recover 
 their property. Then the meek way in which the 
 
^ MY NEIGHBOUR'S BIRD STORIES 83 
 
 robbers took it appears to show that they too 
 understood the whole business very well indeed. 
 They were in a dangerous position, and were quite 
 ready to lose what they had taken and say no 
 more about it. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE TOAD AS TRAVELLER 
 
 One summer day I sat myself down on the rail of 
 a small wooden foot-bridge — a very old bridge it 
 looked, bleached to a pale grey colour with grey, 
 green, and yellow lichen growing on it, and very 
 creaky with age, but the rail was still strong enough 
 to support my weight. The bridge was at the hedge- 
 side, and the stream under it flowed out of a thick 
 wood over the road and into a marshy meadow on 
 the other side, overgrown with coarse tussocky 
 grass. It was a relief to be in that open sunny 
 spot, with the sight of water and green grass and 
 blue sky before me, after prowling for hours in the 
 wood — a remnant of the old Silchester forest — 
 worried by wood-flies in the dense undergrowth. 
 These same wood-flies and some screaming jays 
 were all the wild creatures I had seen, and I 
 would now perhaps see something better at that 
 spot. 
 
 It was very still, and for some time I saw 
 nothing, until my wandering vision lighted on a 
 toad travelling towards the water. He was right 
 out in the middle of the road, a most dangerous 
 
THE TOAD AS TRAVELLER 85 
 
 place for him, and also difficult to travel in, seeing 
 that it had a rough surface full of loosened stones, 
 and was very dusty. His progress was very 
 slow; he did not hop, but crawled laboriously 
 for about five inches, then sat up and rested 
 four or five minutes, then crawled and rested 
 again. When I first caught sight of him he was 
 about forty yards from the water, and looking 
 at him through my binocular when he sat up 
 and rested I could see the pulsing movements 
 of his throat as though he panted with fatigue, 
 and the yellow eyes on the summit of his head 
 gazing at that delicious coolness where he wished 
 to be. If toads can see things forty yards away 
 the stream was visible to him, as he was on 
 that part of the road which sloped down to the 
 stream. 
 
 Lucky for you, old toad, thought I, that it is 
 not market day at Basingstoke or somewhere with 
 farmers and small general dealers flying about the 
 country in their traps, or you would be flattened 
 by a hoof or a wheel long before the end of your 
 pilgrimage. i 
 
 By and by another creature appeared and 
 caused me to forget the toad. A young water- 
 vole came up stream, swimming briskly from the 
 swampy meadow on the other side of the road. 
 As he approached I tapped the wood with my 
 stick to make him turn back, but this only made 
 him swim faster towards me, and determined to 
 have my own way I jumped down and tried to 
 
86 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 stop him, but he dived past the stick and got 
 away where he wanted to be in the wood, and I 
 resumed my seat. 
 
 There was the toad, when I looked his way, just 
 about where I had last seen him, within perhaps a 
 few inches. Then a turtle-dove flew down, ahghting 
 within a yard of the water, and after eyeing me 
 suspiciously for a few moments advanced and took 
 one long drink and flew away. A few minutes later 
 I heard a faint complaining and whining sound in 
 or close to the hedge on my left hand, and turning 
 my eyes in that direction caught sight of a stoat, 
 his head and neck visible, peeping at me out of the 
 wood; he was intending to cross the road, and seeing 
 me sitting there hesitated to do so. Still having 
 come that far he would not turn back, and by and 
 by he drew himself snake-like out of the concealing 
 herbage, and was just about to make a dash across 
 the road when I tapped sharply on the wood with 
 my stick and he fled back into cover. In a few 
 seconds he appeared again, and I played the same 
 trick on him with the same result; this was 
 repeated about four times, after which he plucked 
 up courage enough to make his dash and was 
 quickly lost in the coarse grass by the stream on 
 the other side. 
 
 Then a curious thing happened: flop, flop, flop, 
 went vole following vole, escaping madly from their 
 hiding-places along the bank into the water, all 
 swimming for dear life to the other side of the 
 stream. Their deadly enemy did not swim after 
 
THE TOAD AS TRAVELLER 87 
 
 them, and in a few seconds all was peace and quiet 
 again. 
 
 And when I looked at the road once more, the 
 toad was still there, still travelling, painfully 
 crawling a few inches, then sitting up and gazing 
 with his yellow eyes over the forty ysuds of that 
 weary via dolorosa which still had to be got over 
 before he could bathe and make himself young for 
 ever in that river of life. Then all at once the 
 feared and terrific thing came upon him: a farmer's 
 trap, drawn by a fast trotting horse, suddenly 
 appeared at the bend of the road and came flying 
 down the slope. That's the end of you, old toad, 
 said I, as the horse and trap came over him; but 
 when I had seen them cross the ford and vanish 
 from sight at the next bend, my eyes went back, 
 and to my amazement there sat my toad, his 
 throat still pulsing, his prominent eyes still gazing 
 forward. The four dread hoofs and two shining 
 wheels had all missed him; then at long last I 
 took pity on him, although vexed at having to 
 play providence to a toad, and getting off the rail 
 I went and picked him up, which made him very 
 angry. But when I put him in the water he ex- 
 panded and floated for a few moments with legs 
 spread out, then slowly sank his body and remained 
 with just the top of his head and the open eyes 
 above the surface for a little while, and finally 
 settled down into the cooler depths below. 
 
 It is strange to think that when water would 
 appear to be so much to these water-born and 
 
88 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 amphibious creatures they yet seek it for so short 
 a period in each year, and for the rest of the time 
 are practically without it! The toad comes to it 
 in the love season, and at that time one is often 
 astonished at the number of toads seen gathered in 
 some sohtary pool, where perhaps not a toad has 
 been seen for months past, and with no other water 
 for miles around. The fact is, the solitary pool has 
 drawn to itself the entire toad population of the 
 surrounding country, which may comprise an area 
 of several square miles. Each toad has his own 
 home or hermitage somewhere in that area, where 
 he spends the greater portion of the summer season 
 practically without water excepting in wet weather, 
 hiding by day in moist and shady places, and 
 issuing forth in the evening. And there too he 
 hibernates in winter. When spring returns he sets 
 out on his annual pilgrimage of a mile or two, or 
 even a greater distance, travelling in the slow, 
 deliberate manner of the one described, crawling 
 and resting until he arrives at the sacred pool — 
 his Tipperary. They arrive singly and are in 
 hundreds, a gathering of hermits from the desert 
 places, drunk with excitement, and filling the place 
 with noise and commotion. A strange sound, when 
 at intervals the leader or precentor or bandmaster 
 for the moment blows himself out into a wind 
 instrument — a fairy bassoon, let us say, with a 
 tremble to it — and no sooner does he begin than 
 a hundred more join in; and the sound, which the 
 scientific books describe as " croaking," floats far 
 
THE TOAD AS TRAVELLER 89 
 
 and wide, and produces a beautiful, mysterious 
 effect on a still evening when the last heavy-footed 
 labourer has trudged home to his tea, leaving the 
 world to darkness and to me. 
 
 In England we are almost as rich in toads as in 
 serpents, since there are two species, the common 
 toad, universally distributed, and the rarer natter- 
 jack, abundant only in the south of Surrey. The 
 breeding habits are the same in both species, the 
 concert-singing included, but there is a difference in 
 the timbre of their voices, the sound produced by 
 the natterjack being more resonant and musical to 
 most ears than that of the common toad. 
 
 The music and revels over, the toads vanish, 
 each one taking his own road, long and hard to 
 travel, to his own solitary home. Their homing 
 instinct, like that of many fishes and of certain 
 serpents that hibernate in numbers together, and 
 of migrating birds, is practically infallible. They 
 will not go astray, and the hungriest raptorial 
 beasts, foxes, stoats, and cats, for example, decline 
 to poison themselves by killing and devouring 
 them. 
 
 In the late spring or early summer one occasion- 
 ally encounters a traveller on his way back to his 
 hermitage. I met one a mile or so from the valley 
 of the Wylie, half-way up a high down, with his 
 face to the summit of Salisbury Plain. He was 
 on the bank at the side of a deep narrow path, 
 and was resting on the velvety green turf, gay 
 with little flowers of the chalk-hills— eye-bright, 
 
90 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 squinancy-wort, daisies, and milkwort, both white 
 and blue. 
 
 The toad, as a rule, strikes one as rather an 
 ugly creature, but this one sitting on the green 
 turf, with those variously coloured fairy flowers all 
 about him, looked almost beautiful. He was very 
 dark, almost black, and with his shining topaz eyes 
 had something of the appearance of a yellow-eyed 
 black cat. I sat down by his side and picked him 
 up, which action he appeared to regard as an 
 unwarrantable liberty on my part; but when I 
 placed him on my knee and began stroking his 
 blackish corrugated back with my finger-tips his 
 anger vanished, and one could almost imagine his 
 golden eyes and wide lipless mouth smiling with 
 satisfaction. 
 
 A good many flies were moving about at that 
 spot — a pretty fly whose name I do not know, a 
 little bigger than a house-fly, all a shining blue, 
 with head and large eyes a bright red. These flies 
 kept lighting on my hand, and by and by I 
 cautiously moved a hand until a fly on it was 
 within tongue-distance of the toad, whereupon the 
 red tongue flicked out like lightning and the fly 
 vanished. Again the process was repeated, and 
 altogether I put over half-a-dozen flies in his way, 
 and they all vanished in the same manner, so 
 quickly that the action eluded my sight. One 
 moment and a blue and red-headed fly was on my 
 hand sucking the moisture from the skin, and then, 
 lo! he was gone, while the toad still sat there 
 
THE TOAD AS TRAVELLER 91 
 
 motionless on my knee like a toad carved out of a 
 piece of black stone with two yellow gems for 
 eyes. 
 
 After helping him to a dinner, I took him off my 
 knee with a little trouble, as he squatted close 
 down, desiring to stay where he was, and putting 
 him back among the small flowers to get more flies 
 for himself if he could, I went on my way. 
 
 It is easy to establish friendly relations with 
 these lowly creatures, amphibious and reptiles, by 
 a few gentle strokes with the finger-tips on the 
 back. Shortly after my adventure with this toad 
 I was visiting a naturalist friend, who told me of 
 an adventure he had had with a snake. He was 
 out walking with his wife near his home among the 
 Mendips when they spied the snake basking in the 
 sun on the turf, and at the same moment the snake 
 saw them and began quietly gliding away. But 
 they succeeded in overtaking and capturing it, 
 and, although it was a large snake and struggled 
 violently to escape, they soon quieted it down by 
 stroking its back with their fingers. They kept 
 and played with it for half an hour, then put it 
 down, whereupon it went away, but quite slowly, 
 almost as if reluctant to leave them. 
 
 So far this was a common experience; I have 
 tamed many grass-snakes in the same way, and the 
 only smooth snake I have ever captured in England 
 was made tame in about ten minutes by holding 
 it on my knee and stroking it. In the instance 
 related by my friend, it would appear that the 
 
92 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 tameness does not always vanish as soon as the 
 creature finds itself free again. About three days 
 after the incident I have related he was again 
 walking with his wife, and they again found the 
 snake at the same spot, whereupon he, anxious to 
 captui-e it again, made a dash at it, but the snake 
 on this occasion made no attempt to escape, and 
 when picked up did not struggle. They again kept 
 it some time, caressing it with their fingers, then 
 releasing it as before; later they saw their snake 
 on several occasions, when it acted in the same 
 way, allowing itself to be taken up and kept as 
 long as it was wanted, and then, when released, 
 going very slowly away. 
 
 That one first delightful experience of ha\'ing 
 its back stroked with finger-tips had made a tame 
 snake of it. 
 
IX 
 
 THE HERON: A FEATHERED NOTABLE 
 
 The bird-watcher's life is an endless succession of 
 surprises. Almost every day he appears fated to 
 witness some habit, some action, which he had 
 never seen or heard of before, and will perhaps 
 never see again. Who but Waterton ever beheld 
 herons hovering like gulls over the water, attracted 
 by the fish swimming near the surface? And who, 
 I wonder, except myself ever saw herons bathing 
 and wallowing after the manner of beasts, not 
 birds? At all events I do not remember any 
 notice of such a habit in any account of the heron 
 I have read; and I have read many. At noon, 
 one hot summer day, I visited Sowley Pond, which 
 has a heronry near it on the Hampshire coast; and 
 peeping through the trees on the bank I spied 
 five herons about twenty yards from the margin 
 bathing in a curious way among the floating poa 
 grass, where the water was about two feet deep or 
 more. All were quietly resting in different positions 
 in the water — one was sitting on his knees with 
 head and neck and shoulders out of it, another 
 was lying on one side with one half-open wing 
 
94 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 above the surface, a third had only head and neck 
 out, the whole body being submerged; and it 
 puzzled me to think how he could keep himself 
 down unless it was by grasping the roots of the 
 grass with his claws. Occasionally one of the 
 bathers would shift his position, coming partly 
 up or going lower down, or turning over on the 
 other side; but there was no flutter or bird-like 
 excitement. They rested long in one position, 
 and moved in a leisurely, deliberate manner, 
 lying and luxuriating in the tepid water like pigs, 
 buffaloes, hippopotamuses, and other water-loving 
 mammalians. I watched them for an hour or so, 
 and when I left, two were still lying down in the 
 water. The other three had finished their bath, 
 and were standing drying their plumage in the 
 hot sun. 
 
 This was not the first surprise the heron had 
 given me, but the first was received far from this 
 land in my early shooting and collecting days, and 
 the species was not our well-kno^vn historical bird, 
 the Ardea cinerea of Britain and Europe generally, 
 and Asia and Africa, but the larger Ardea cocoi of 
 South America, a bird with a bigger wing-spread, 
 but so like it in colour and action that any person 
 from England on first seeing it would take it for 
 a very large specimen of his familiar home bird. 
 
 It happened that I was making a collection of 
 the birds of my part of the country and was in 
 want of a specimen of our common heron. A few 
 of these birds haunted the river near my home, and 
 
A FEATHERED NOTABLE 95 
 
 one day when out with the gun I caught sight of 
 one fishing in the river. It was deep there, and the 
 bird was standing under and close to the bank, 
 where the water came up to his feathered thighs. 
 Moving back from the bank I got within shooting 
 distance and then had a look at him and saw that 
 he was very intently watching the water, with 
 head drawn back and apparently about to strike. 
 And just as I pulled the trigger he struck, and 
 stricken himself at the same moment he threw him- 
 self up into the air and rose to a height of about 
 tliirty feet, then fell back to earth close to the 
 margin and began beating with his wings. When I 
 came up he was at his last gasp, and what was my 
 astonishment to find a big fish impaled by his 
 beak. It was an uneatable fish, of a peculiar South 
 American family, its upper part cased in bony 
 plates; an ugly and curious-looking creature called 
 Vieja ("old woman") by the natives. It was a 
 common fish in our stream and a nuisance when 
 caught, as it invariably sucked the hook into its 
 belly. Now I had often found dead " old women " 
 lying on or near the bank with a hole in their bony 
 back and wondered at it. I had concluded that 
 some of the native boys in our neighbourhood had 
 taken to spearing the fish, and naturally these use- 
 less ones they killed were thrown away. Now I 
 knew that they were killed by the heron with a blow 
 of his powerful beak ; a serious mistake on the bird's 
 part, but an inevitable one in the circumstances, 
 since even the shining, piercing eyes of a heron 
 
06 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 would only be able to surmise the presence of a 
 fish a few inches below the surface in the muddy 
 streams of the pampas. To distinguish the species 
 would never be possible. 
 
 In this case the iron-hard dagger-like beak 
 had been driven right through the fish from the 
 bone-plated back to the belly, from which it 
 projected about an inch and a half. With such 
 power had the blow been delivered that it was only 
 by exerting a good deal of force that I was able to 
 wrench the beak out. My conclusion was that the 
 bird would never have been able to free himself, and 
 that by shooting him I had only saved him from the 
 torture of a lingering death from starvation. The 
 strange thing was that bird and fish had met their 
 end simultaneously in that way: I doubted that 
 such a thing had ever happened before or would 
 ever happen again. From that time I began to pay 
 a good deal of attention to the dead " old women " 
 I found along the river-bank with a hole in their 
 back, and could never find one in which the beak 
 had been driven right through the body. In every 
 case the beak had gone in about half-way through 
 — just far enough to enable the bird to fly to the 
 shore with its inconvenient captive and there get 
 rid of it. 
 
 Death by accident is common enough in wild 
 life, and a good proportion of such deaths are due 
 to an error of judgement, often so slight as not to 
 
A FEATHERED NOTABLE 97 
 
 seem an error at all. For example, a hawking 
 swallow may capture and try to bolt a wasp or 
 other dangerous insect without first killing or 
 crushing it, and in doing so receive a fatal sting 
 in the throat. The flight of hawking swallows and 
 swifts is so rapid that it hardly gives them time 
 to judge of the precise nature of the insect appear- 
 ing before them which a second's delay would lose. 
 This is seen in swallows and swifts so frequently 
 getting hooked by dry-fly anglers. Birds of prey, 
 too, occasionally meet their death in a similar way, 
 as when a kite or falcon or buzzard or eagle lifts 
 a stoat or weasel, and the lithe little creature 
 succeeds in wriggling up and fixing its teeth in the 
 bird's flesh. If they fall from a considerable 
 height both are killed. Again, birds sometimes get 
 killed by attempting to swallow too big a morsel, 
 and I think this is oftenest the case with birds 
 that have rather weak beaks and have developed 
 a rapacious habit. I remember once seeing a Guira 
 cuckoo with head hanging and wings drooping, 
 struggling in vain to swallow a mouse stuck fast 
 in its gullet, the tail still hanging from its beak. 
 Undoubtedly the bird perished, as I failed in my 
 attempts to capture it and save its life by pulling 
 the mouse out. A common tyrant-bird of South 
 America, Pitangus, preys on mice, small snakes, 
 lizards and frogs, as well as on large insects, but 
 invariably hammers its prey on a branch until it 
 is bruised to a pulp and broken up. It will work 
 at a mouse in this way until the skin is so bruised 
 
98 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 that it can be torn open with its long, weak bill, 
 but it never attempts to bolt it whole as the 
 cuckoo does. 
 
 One day when sitting on the bank of Beaulieu 
 River in Hampshire I saw a cormorant come up 
 with a good-sized eel it had captured and was 
 holding by the neck close to the head, but the 
 long body of the eel had wound itself serpent-wise 
 about the bird's long neck, and the cormorant was 
 struggling furiously to free itself. Unable to do 
 so it dived, thinking perhaps to succeed better 
 under water, but when it reappeared on the sur- 
 face the folds of the eel appeared to have tightened 
 and the bird's struggles were weaker. Again it 
 dived, and then again three or four times, still 
 keeping its hold on the eel, but struggling more 
 feebly each time. Finally it came up without 
 the eel and so saved itself, since if it had 
 kept its hold a little longer it would have been 
 drowned. 
 
 In my Land*s End book I have given an account 
 of a duel between a seal and a huge conger-eel it 
 had captured by the middle of the body, the 
 conger-eel having fastened its teeth in the seal's 
 head. 
 
 An odd way in which birds occasionally kill 
 themselves is by getting a foot caught in long 
 horse-hair or thread used in building. I have 
 seen sparrows and house-martins dead, suspended 
 from the nest by a hair or thread under the nest 
 in this way. 
 
A FEATHERED NOTABLE 99 
 
 When I killed my heron, and by doing so 
 probably saved it from a lingering death by starva- 
 tion, it struck me as an odd coincidence that it 
 was within a stone's throw of the spot where a 
 few weeks before I had saved another bird from a 
 like fate — not in this instance by shooting it. The 
 bird was the painted snipe, Rhynchaea semicollaris, 
 a prettily coloured and mottled species with a 
 green curved beak, and I found it on the low grassy 
 margin of the stream with the point of its middle 
 toe caught in one of Nature's traps for the unwary 
 — the closed shell of a large fresh- water clam. The 
 stream at this spot was almost entirely overgrown 
 with dense beds of bulrushes, and the clams were 
 here so abundant that the bottom of the stream 
 was covered with them. The snipe wading into 
 the water a foot or so from the margin had set 
 its middle toe inside a partially open shell, which 
 had instantly closed and caught it. Only by 
 severing the point off could the bird have delivered 
 itself, but its soft beak was useless for such a 
 purpose. It had succeeded in dragging the clam 
 out, and on my approach it first tried to hide 
 itself by crouching in the grass, and then struggled 
 to drag itself away. It was, when I picked it up, 
 a mere bundle of feathers and had probably been 
 lying thus captive for three or four days in constant 
 danger of being spied by a passing carrion-hawk 
 and killed and eaten. But when I released the toe 
 it managed to flutter up and go away to a distance 
 of thirty or forty yards before it dropped down 
 
100 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 among the aquatic grasses and sedges on a marshy 
 islet in the stream. 
 
 A large heronry is to the naturalist one of the 
 most fascinating spectacles in the wild bird life of 
 this country. Heaven be thanked that all our 
 landowners are not like those of South Devon, 
 who are anxious to extirpate the heron in that 
 district in the interest of the angler. On account 
 of their action one is inclined to look on the whole 
 fraternity of dry-fly fishers as a detestable lot of 
 Philistines. Some years ago they raised a howl 
 about the swallows — their worst enemies, that 
 devoured all the mayflies, so that the trout were 
 starved! Well, they can rejoice now to know that 
 swalloAV and martin return to England in ever- 
 decreasing numbers each summer, and they must 
 be grateful to our neighbours across the Channel 
 who are exterminating these noxious birds on 
 migi-ation. 
 
 I have known and know many heronries all 
 over England, and I think the one I liked to visit 
 best of all was in a small wood in a flat green 
 country in the Norfolk Broads district. It was 
 large, containing about seventy inhabited nests — 
 huge nests, many of them, and near together, so 
 that it looked like a rookery made by giant rooks. 
 And it has had a troubled history, like that of an 
 old Norfolk town in the far past when Saxons and 
 Danes were at variance. For this heronry had been 
 established alongside of an old populous rookery. 
 
A FEATHERED NOTABLE 101 
 
 and the rooks hated the herons and mobbed them 
 and demolished their nests, and persecuted them 
 in every rookish way; but they refused to quit, 
 and at length the rooks, unable to tolerate them, 
 shifted their rookery a little farther away, and there 
 was an uncomfortable sort of truce between the big 
 black hostile birds and their grey ghostly neigh- 
 bours with very long, sharp, and veiy unghostly 
 beaks. 
 
 On the occasion of my last visit this heronry 
 was in the most interesting stage, when the young 
 birds were fully grown and were to be seen standing 
 up on their big nests or on the topmost branches of 
 the trees waiting to be fed. At some spots in the 
 wood where the trees stand well apart I could 
 count as many as forty to fifty young birds standing 
 in this way, in famihes of two, three, and four. It 
 was a fine sight, and the noise they made at inter- 
 vals was a fine thing to hear. The heron is a bird 
 with a big voice. When nest-building is going on, 
 and in fact until most of the eggs are laid, herons 
 are noisy birds, and the sounds they emit are most 
 curious — the loud familiar squalk or " frank," 
 which resembles the hard, powerful alarm-note of 
 the peacock, but is more harsh, while other grinding 
 metallic cries remind one of the carrion-crow. 
 Other of their loud sounds are distinctly mammalian 
 in character; there is a dog-like sound, partly bark 
 and partly yelp, swine-hke grunting, and other 
 sounds which recall the peculiar, unhappy, desolate 
 cries of the large felines, especially of the puma. 
 
102 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 One need not take it for granted that these strange 
 vocal noises are nothing but love calls. They may 
 be in part expressions of anger, since it is hardly 
 to be beheved that the members of these rude com- 
 munities invariably respect one another's rights. 
 We see how it is with the rook, which has a more 
 developed social instinct than the lonely savage 
 heron. 
 
 During incubation quiet reigns in the heronry; 
 when the young >are out, especially when they are 
 well grown and ravenously hungry all day long, 
 the wood is again filled with the uproar; and a 
 noisier heronry than the one I am describing could 
 not have been found. For one thing, it was situated 
 on the very edge of the wood, overlooking the green 
 flat expanse towards Breydon Water, where the 
 parent birds did most of their fishing, so that the 
 returning birds were visible from the tree-tops at 
 a great distance, travelling slowly with eel and 
 frog and fish-laden gullets on their wide-spread 
 blue wings — dark blue against the high shining 
 blue of the sky. All the young birds, stretched up 
 to their full height, would watch its approach, and 
 each and every one of them would regard the 
 returning bird as its own too-long absent parent 
 with food to appease its own furious hunger; and 
 as it came sweeping over the colony there would 
 be a tremendous storm of wild expectant cries — 
 strange cat- and dog-like growling, barking, yelping, 
 whining, screaming; and this would last until the 
 newcomer would drop upon its own tree and nest 
 
A FEATHERED NOTABLE 103 
 
 and feed its own young, whereupon the tempest 
 would slowly subside, only to be renewed on the 
 appearance of the next great blue bird coming 
 down over the wood. 
 
 One of the most delightful, the most exhilarating 
 spectacles of wild bird life is that of the soaring 
 heron. The great blue bird, with great round 
 wings so measured in their beats, yet so buoyant 
 in the vast void air! It is indeed a sight which 
 moves all men to admiration in all countries which 
 the great bird inhabits; and I remember one of 
 the finest passages in old Spanish poetiy describes 
 the heron rejoicing in its placid flight. " Have you 
 seen it, beautiful in the heavens!" the poet 
 exclaims in untranslatable lines, in which the 
 harmonious words, delicado y sonoroso, and the 
 peculiar rhythm are made to mimic the slow 
 pulsation of the large wings. Who has not seen 
 it and experienced something of the feeling which 
 stirred the old writer centuries ago: 
 
 Has visto hermosa en el cielo 
 La garza sonrearse con placido vuelo.? 
 Has visto, torciendo de la mano, 
 Sacra que la deribe por el suelo? 
 
 The most perfect example I know of in literature 
 in which the sound is an echo to the sense. How 
 artificial and paltry that ornament often seems to 
 us in our poets, even in much-admired passages, 
 such as Goldsmith's white - washed walls and 
 nicely-sanded floor, and the varnished clock that 
 
104 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 clicked behind the door. The beauty of the passage 
 quoted — the heavenward sublime flight of the 
 heron and the furious zigzag pui'suit of the falcon, 
 who will presently overtake and hurl it back to 
 earth — is in its perfect naturalness, its spontaneity, 
 as if some one in delight at the spectacle had 
 exclaimed the words. 
 
 This is one of the sights in bird life which makes 
 me envy the sportsmen of the old time when 
 falconry was followed and the peregrine was 
 flown, not at skulking magpies, as the way is with 
 our Hawking Club, but at noble heron. They saw 
 the great bird at its best, when it mounts with 
 powerful wing-beats almost vertically to a vast 
 height in the sky. The heron, in these days, wlie^ 
 all the hawks have been extirpated by our Philistine 
 pheasant-breeders who own the country, has no 
 need to exercise that instinct and faculty. 
 
 The question has sometimes com.e into my 
 mind, Why does the heron at all times, when, 
 seen on the wing, it strikes us as beautiful, and 
 when only strange or quaint-looking, or actually 
 ugly, produce in some of us a feeling akin to melan- 
 choly? We speak of it as a grey, a ghost-like bird; 
 and grey it certainly is, a haunter of lonely waters 
 at the dim twilight hour; mysterious in its comings 
 and goings. Ghostly, too, it is in another sense, 
 and here we may see that the feeling, the sense of 
 melancholy, is due to association, to the fact that 
 the heron is a historical bird, part of the country's 
 
A FEATHERED NOTABLE 105 
 
 past, when it was more to the country gentleman 
 than the semi-domestic pheasant and the par- 
 tridge on the arable land and the blackcock and 
 red-grouse on the moors all together to the man of 
 to-day. The memory of that vanished time, the 
 thought that the ruder life of the past, when men 
 lived nearer to Nature, had a keener flavour, is 
 accompanied with a haunting regret. It is true 
 that the regret is for something we have not known, 
 that we have only heard or read of it, but it has 
 become mixed in our mind with our very own 
 experienced past — our glad beautiful " days that 
 are no more." And when we remember that in 
 those distant days the heron was a table-bird, we 
 may well believe that men were healthier and had 
 better appetites than now — that they were all and 
 always young. 
 
THE HERON AS A TABLE - BIRD 
 
 In reading the Hampshire children's Bird and Tree 
 Essays for 1916 I came upon one by a httle boy 
 which ends as follows: "One of our schoolboys 
 had a heron given him, so his mother cooked it 
 and when it was done it was tough and had a 
 
 NASTY TASTE." 
 
 Mine are the capitals, but the concluding words 
 seemed crying for them; they also served to 
 remind me of a story about eating heron told me 
 by the only person I had ever met who had some 
 first-hand knowledge about the heron as a table- 
 bird. It is a rather long story; perhaps a painful 
 one to persons of a squeamish stomach, but as it 
 is pure natural history I must be allowed to tell it. 
 
 I was staying at Bath, and wishing to get some 
 work copied I set out with the name and address 
 of a lady typist, furnished by a bookseller of the 
 town, to look for her in the Camden Road. A long 
 road it proved. Like Pope's wounded serpent it 
 dragged its slow length along to the distant horizon 
 and beyond it. It also reminded me of Upper 
 Wigmore Street, as it seemed to poor dying Sydney 
 
 106 
 
THE HERON AS A TABLE - BIRD 107 
 
 Smith, except that Camden Road was about a 
 thousand times longer. At length, a mile or so 
 short of the far end, I came to the number I was 
 looking for on the door of a small, pretty, old- 
 looking vine-clad cottage set well back from the 
 road with trees and flowers about it, and there I 
 found my typist and her sister — two little un- 
 married ladies, no longer young, who in their gentle 
 subdued manner, low soft speech, and quiet move- 
 ments appeared to harmonise very well with the 
 old-world little house they lived in. They were, I 
 fancy, somewhat startled at the apparition of so 
 big a man in their small interior — one whose head 
 came within an inch or two of the low ceiling: 
 they seemed timid and troubled and anxious in 
 their minds when I gave them my scrawl to 
 decipher and copy. 
 
 One day, wanting a good long walk, I paid 
 them a second visit, to find them less shy and 
 reticent than at first; and afterwards I went again 
 on several occasions, until we became quite friendly, 
 and they gratified my De Quincey-like craving to 
 know everj^thing about the life of every person I 
 meet from its birth onwards, by telhng me all about 
 themselves. 
 
 They had been left with very little to live on, 
 and one was an invalid; yet they had to do some- 
 thing, and typewriting at home was the only 
 thing, as this enabled them to keep together, so 
 that the invalid would always have her sister with 
 her. The work they had done hitherto, they said, 
 
108 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 was copying tradesmen's circulars, also some 
 copying for two of the local clergy and for an 
 attorney of the town. My work had come as a 
 relief to them. The very first thing I had given 
 them was a paper about the sheldrake. What a 
 strange subject — they could hardly believe their 
 eyes when they saw it. The sheldrake! — that bird 
 about which they had so many memories, pleasant, 
 and some not quite pleasant. It was all very 
 wonderful. Before they came to Bath they lived 
 with a bachelor brother who had come into a small 
 farm, left him by a distant relation, on the Welsh 
 coast. As he had nothing else in the world he 
 went to live on it and work it himself, and kindly 
 took them to keep house and do the indoor work. 
 The farm was on a very wild, lonely spot, close to 
 the sea, and abounded in birds of many kinds — 
 sea and shore and land — they had never seen 
 before. And though it was a rough place they 
 loved it because of the sea and woods and hills 
 and the birds, and they wished they had never had 
 anything to do with the birds except just to see 
 and admire them. But there was their brother, 
 who was a great sportsman and who had some 
 very strange ideas. One was that most birds were 
 good to eat, and he was always shooting some 
 queer-looking bird and bringing it in to them to 
 dress and cook it for dinner. And the sheldrake 
 was one he often shot. He said it was a sort of 
 duck, and therefore just as good to eat as a mallard, 
 or widgeon, or teal, and that it was nothing but a 
 
THE HERON AS A TABLE - BIRD 109 
 
 silly prejudice which prevented people from eating 
 them. And though they never had one on the 
 table that wasn't tough and dry and fishy - tasted 
 he would still bring them in and argue that they 
 were very good. " We loved," they said, " to see 
 the sheldrakes flying about on the coast, but how 
 we hated to see them brought in to be cooked for 
 dinner! But he was always very masterful with 
 us and we never dared to go against his wishes." 
 
 One day he brought in a heron, and they were 
 quite startled at the sight of such a huge, lank, 
 grey, loose-feathered creature with such immense 
 legs and such a dreadful beak. But when he said 
 it would be a grand experience for them to eat 
 heron they thought he must be joking, although 
 it was not a common thing for him to say anything 
 in fun. He was a very serious sort of man. Finally 
 they ventured to ask him if he really meant that 
 this upsetting bird was to be eaten? He was 
 quite indignant: of course it was to be eaten, he 
 said; did they imagine that he killed birds just 
 for the pleasure of killing them! He said it would 
 be a grand day for them when they sat down to a 
 heron on the table. Didn't they know that it 
 was one of the most famous birds of the old time 
 — that the heron was regarded as a noble, a royal 
 bird, that it was a great dish at the feast in 
 baronial halls; and that's how he went on until 
 they were quite ashamed of their ignorance of the 
 old days and humbly promised to cook the bird. 
 Very well, he said, he was going to hang it in the 
 
110 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 big empty room next the dairy and let it remain 
 until fit to cook. The longer it hung the more 
 tender it would be. 
 
 There was an iron hook in the central beam of 
 the big vacant room he had spoken of, and on this 
 hook he suspended the heron by its legs, its long 
 pointed beak nearly touching the tiled floor, and 
 hanging there with nothing else in the room it 
 looked bigger than ever. It troubled them greatly 
 to have to go through this room many times a 
 day, but it was far worse at night. They were 
 accustomed, especially on moonlight nights, to go 
 that way to the dairy without a candle; and they 
 sometimes forgot about the bird, and then the 
 sight of it in its pale grey plumage would startle 
 them as if they had seen a ghost. How awful it 
 looked, with its wings like great arms half - open 
 as if to scare them! 
 
 Days and weeks went by, and still the heron 
 was suspended in the big vacant room to make 
 their life on the farm a burden to them, then one 
 morning after finishing his breakfast their brother 
 said that he had been looking at the heron and 
 found it was just about in perfect condition to be 
 cooked, and that they would have it for dinner 
 that day. Then he added : " I don't mean at 
 our twelve o'clock dinner. There would be no 
 time to prepare it and it would not be proper to 
 eat it at such an hour. To-day we must have a 
 real eight o'clock dinner so as to do honour to the 
 heron." 
 
THE HERON AS A TABLE -BIRD 111 
 
 Then he went out and left them staring into 
 each other's pale face. However, the painful task 
 had to be performed, and they loyally went to 
 work and plucked it, but in cleaning it received a 
 shock at finding a trout about a foot in length in 
 a semi-decomposed condition in its gullet. After 
 refreshing themselves with sal - volatile and half 
 an hour in the garden, they finished the hateful 
 business by singeing it and pumping many gallons 
 of water over its carcase, and then towards evening 
 put it in the oven to roast or bake. The smell of 
 it was very trying and not only made the kitchen 
 atmosphere almost not to be borne but pervaded 
 the whole house, causing them to look forward 
 more and more apprehensively to the evening 
 dinner. Still, they were determined to do every- 
 thing to please their brother, and got out their 
 best table-cloth and silver, flowers for decoration, 
 and wine and coloured glasses; and the brother 
 when he sat down smiled on them approvingly. 
 Then the heron on a big dish was brought in, and 
 the brother rose to carve it, and heaped their 
 plates with generous slices of the lean black flesh, 
 and helped himself even more generously. They 
 having been helped first had to begin, but to put 
 even the smallest morsel into their mouths was 
 more than they could do. They pretended to cut 
 and eat it while confining themselves to the 
 vegetables on their plates. Their brother was not 
 affected with such squeamishness and straightway 
 started operations, and did honour to the heron 
 
112 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 by taking a tremendous mouthful. The sisters 
 exchanged frightened glances and watched him 
 furtively, wondering at his courage — wondering, 
 too, if he would be able to keep it up and consume 
 the whole monstrous plateful. Then something 
 happened: a change came over his face, he turned 
 pale, and stopped chewing; then, with mouth still 
 full, he suddenly rose and fled from the room. 
 
 That was the end of their gorgeous dinner! 
 Feeling pretty sure that he would not call for the 
 cold remains of the bird next morning for breakfast 
 they took it out and buried it in the garden, then 
 threw all the doors and windows in the house open 
 to get rid of the savour. It was late that evening 
 when they next saw their brother; he was looking 
 pale as if but lately recovering from a serious 
 illness; but he sauntered in with an air of not 
 knowing anything about it, and remarked casually 
 that he had been for a stroll and didn't know it 
 was so late. But never a word about the heron he 
 had dined on, nor did he ever after allude to the 
 subject. 
 
XI 
 
 THE MOLE QUESTION 
 
 As to whether the mole is injurious or not, the 
 farmer appears not yet to have made up his mind. 
 Mole clubs flourish throughout the country, which 
 fact may be taken by some as proof that the 
 creature is regarded as an enemy. Is it so? There 
 are many farmers who subscribe to the local mole 
 club, and occasionally have their grounds cleared, 
 yet they say that they do not know that they are 
 doing themselves any good, some are even inclined 
 to think that it would perhaps be better to leave 
 the moles alone. They go on subscribing to clubs 
 in the same way that so many of us give our crowns 
 or half-quineas year by year for objects we care 
 nothing about, and do not know whether they 
 are good or bad. All the other farmers in the 
 place have paid their subscriptions, and Jones 
 gives his so as not to be set down as a mean or 
 singular person, and because it would be a bother 
 to have any controversy over the subject. The 
 others have probably subscribed for the same poor 
 reason. 
 
 Occasionally we meet a farmer who is quite 
 
114 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 positive on one side or the other; he knows all 
 about it, and is angry with his neighbours either 
 because they do or do not kill their moles. There 
 are always a few extremists. Every one has heard 
 of Mr. Joseph Nunn, who maintains that the 
 sparrow is the farmer's best feathered friend, and 
 is carried by his zeal to the length of declaring that 
 all those who shoot the sparrow ought themselves 
 to be shot. I hear of another farmer who buys 
 moles from mole-catchers to put on his land; he 
 is convinced that their presence is wholly bene- 
 ficial, that when those inhabiting the lands adjoin- 
 ing his farm have been killed off, his own moles 
 flow out into these depleted grounds to enjoy the 
 greater abundance of food they find there; and it 
 is to make good this loss inflicted on him by the 
 ignorance and stupidity of his neighbours that he 
 is obhged to act as he does. 
 
 Recently I was with a man who takes the 
 opposite view; one who revolves schemes and 
 projects for the suppression of the mole. This 
 enemy of the mole is in possession of three or four 
 water-meadows, infested by these animals to an 
 extraordinary degree. As he is partly dependent 
 for a livelihood on a few milch-cows he keeps, the 
 condition of this meadow land is a matter of im- 
 portance to him; and he has come to the con- 
 clusion that he loses a large portion (a fourth, he 
 imagines) of his grass crop on account of the 
 uneven condition of the surface caused by the 
 molps. It is true that he could roll the ground, 
 
THE MOLE QUESTION 115 
 
 and it would then probably be in a sufficiently 
 level state at the next grass-cutting for the scythe, 
 but by the following season it would again be in a 
 hummocky condition, and repeated rollings would 
 be a serious item in his expenses. He considers 
 that if the damage thus inflicted on him in these 
 small meadows where the scythe is used is 
 sufiicient to be seriously felt, the loss must indeed 
 be great on large farms where the machine is used 
 for mowing, and the ground must be kept in a 
 smooth condition at considerable expense. 
 
 Pondering over these things, and fighting the 
 moles, which, not content with making a sort of 
 physical geography raised map of his little grass 
 meadows, nightly invade his garden to spoil his 
 work there, he has come to look upon it as a 
 tremendously important question. It is his con- 
 viction that he who invents a means of suppressing 
 the mole will be a great benefactor to the country, 
 and he has set himself to find out the means, and 
 he has even strong hopes of success. So long (he 
 argues) as we continued to fight the moles with 
 the traps now in use, made to take one mole at a 
 time, the very utmost we can do is to keep their 
 numbers down with a great deal of trouble and 
 at a considerable expense. They increase rapidly, 
 and no sooner are our efforts relaxed than they 
 again become abundant. We want a trap that 
 will not take a single mole but as many moles as 
 are accustomed to use the run in which it is placed. 
 That a large number do constantly use the same 
 
116 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 main road by which they migrate from one hunting- 
 ground to the other is to him a settled fact. One 
 of his neighbours took thirty-two moles, one by 
 one, in the course of a few days in a single trap 
 placed at the same place in a run — a proof that all 
 the moles in the place that range any day over an 
 area of many acres have roads that are free to the 
 colony. All we have got to do, then, is to find one 
 of these principal roads, usually at the side of a 
 hedge, and to place a trap capable of holding as 
 many moles as may come into it, and the thing 
 is done. 
 
 To inform my rural friend that he was not the 
 first person to have great dreams anent the mole 
 question, I related to him the history of the famous 
 Henri le Court, described by Bell in his British 
 Quadrupeds as "a person, who having held a 
 lucrative situation about the Court at the epoch of 
 the French Revolution, retired from the horrors of 
 that fearful period into the country, and there 
 devoted the remainder of his life to a study of the 
 habits of the mole, and of the most efficient means 
 for its extirpation." 
 
 It surprised him to hear that men of brains had 
 begun to occupy themselves with this question as 
 long ago as the eighteenth century; but the 
 thought that nothing important had resulted from 
 their efforts in so long a time did not discourage 
 him: it was simply the case that, brains or no 
 brains, he had been so lucky as to hit upon the 
 one efficacious means for the extirpation of the 
 
THE MOLE QUESTION 117 
 
 mole, which all before him had missed — to wit, 
 his trap. 
 
 This frightful engine of destruction is not yet 
 perfected, and perhaps the moles need not be in a 
 hurry to say their prayers. In the meantime, 
 while the farmers are waiting to be delivered from 
 their subterranean enemy, I cannot help thinking 
 that it is not much to the credit of the science of 
 agriculture, and the Royal Agricultural Society, 
 that some practical steps have not been taken 
 before now to ascertain whether or not the mole 
 is an injurious beast; or, to put it differently, 
 whether the direct loss he causes by throwing 
 up hills in meadows and grass-lands exceeds any 
 benefit that may result from his presence in drain- 
 ing and ventilating the soil and in clearing it of 
 grubs. 
 
 With gardens and lawns we are not concerned; 
 moles are a nuisance when they come too near, 
 and if some one could devise a means to inflict 
 sudden death on every underground intruder into 
 such places it would be a great advantage. Ex- 
 periments in a small way could be made at a very 
 slight cost. For instance, take a meadow, like one 
 of those belonging to my friend, very much infested 
 with moles; divide it in two equal portions, one 
 half to be open to moles, the other half to be 
 strictly protected from them by means of a fence 
 of fine wire-netting sunk to a proper depth in 
 the soil. Then let the grass crops of 'he two 
 portions be compared as to weight and quality for 
 
118 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 a period of four or five years. Such an experi- 
 ment carried out by a number of farmers at the 
 same time in different parts of the country would 
 probably result in the settlement of this old vexed 
 question. 
 
XII 
 
 CRISTIANO: A HORSE 
 
 A GAUCHO of my acquaintance, when I lived on 
 the pampas and was a very young man, owned 
 a favourite riding - horse which he had named 
 Cristiano. To the gaucho " Christian " is simply 
 another word for white man: he gave it that 
 name because one of its eyes was a pale blue-grey 
 almost white — a colour sometimes seen in the eyes 
 of a white man, but never in an Indian. The other 
 eye was normal, though of a much lighter brown 
 than usual. Cristiano, however, could see equally 
 well out of both eyes, nor was the blue eye on one 
 side correlated with deafness, as in a white cat. His 
 sense of hearing was quite remarkable. His colour 
 was a fine deep fawn, with black mane and tail, and 
 altogether he was a handsome and a good, strong, 
 sound animal; his owner was so much attached 
 to him that he would seldom ride any other horse, 
 and as a rule he had him saddled every day. 
 
 Now if it had only been the blue eye I should 
 probably have forgotten Cristiano, as I made no 
 notes about him, but I remember him vividly to 
 this day on account of something arresting in his 
 
120 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 psychology: he was an example of the powerful 
 effect of the conditions he had been reared in and 
 of the persistence of habits acquired at an early 
 period after they have ceased to be of any signifi- 
 cance in the creature's life. Every time I was in 
 my gaucho friend's company, when his favourite 
 Cristiano, along with other saddle horses, was 
 standing at the palenque, or row of posts set up 
 before the door of a native rancho for visitors to 
 fasten their horses to, my attention would be 
 attracted to his singular behaviour. His master 
 always tied him to the palenque with a long cabresto, 
 or lariat, to give him plenty of space to move his 
 head and whole body about quite freely. And that 
 was just what he was always doing. A more 
 restless horse I had never seen. His head was 
 always raised as high as he could raise it — like an 
 ostrich, the gauchos would say — his gaze fixed 
 excitedly on some far object; then presently he 
 would wheel round and stare in another direction, 
 pointing his ears forw^ard to listen intently to some 
 faint far sound, which had touched his sense. The 
 sounds that excited him most were as a rule the 
 alarm cries of lapwings, and the objects he gazed 
 fixedly at with a great show of apprehension 
 would usually turn out to be a horseman on the 
 horizon; but the sounds and sights would for some 
 time be inaudible and invisible to us on account of 
 their distance. Occasionally, when the bird's alarm 
 cries grew loud and the distant rider was found 
 to be approaching, his excitement would increase 
 
CRISTIANO: A HORSE 121 
 
 until it would discharge itself in a resounding snort 
 — the warning or alarm note of the wild horse. 
 
 One day I remarked to my gaucho friend that 
 his blue-eyed Cristiano amused me more than any 
 other horse I knew. He was just like a child, and 
 when tired of the monotony of standing tethered 
 to the palenque he would start playing sentinel. 
 He would imagine it was war-time or that an 
 invasion of Indians was expected, and every cry 
 of a lapwing or other alarm-giving bird, or the 
 sight of a horseman in the distance would cause 
 him to give a warning. But the other horses would 
 not join in the game; they let him keep watch 
 and wheel about this way and that, spying or 
 pretending to spy something, and blowing his loud 
 trumpet, without taking any notice. They simply 
 dozed with heads down, occasionally switching off 
 the flies with their tails or stamping a hoof to get 
 them off their legs, or rubbing their tongues over 
 the bits to make a rattling sound with the little 
 iron rollers on the bridle-bar. 
 
 He laughed and said I was mistaken, that 
 Cristiano was not amusing himself with a game he 
 had invented. He was born wild and belonged to 
 a district not many leagues away but where there 
 was an extensive marshy area impracticable for 
 hunting on horseback. Here a band of wild horses, 
 a small remnant of an immense troop that had 
 formerly existed in that part, had been able to 
 keep their freedom down to recent years. As they 
 were frequently hunted in dry seasons when the 
 
122 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 ground was not so bad, they had become exceed- 
 ingly alert and cunning, and the sight of men on 
 horseback would send them flying to the most 
 inaccessible places in the marshes, where it was 
 impossible to follow them. Eventually plans were 
 laid and the troop driven from their stronghold 
 out into the open country, where the ground was 
 firm, and most of them were captured. Cristiano 
 was one of them, a colt about four or five months 
 old, and my friend took possession of him, 
 attracted by his blue eye and fine fawn colour. 
 In quite a short time the colt became perfectly 
 tame, and when broken turned out an exceptionally 
 good riding-horse. But though so young when 
 captured the wild alert habit was never dropped. 
 He could never be still: when out grazing with 
 the other horses or when standing tied to the 
 palenque he was perpetually on the watch, and the 
 cry of a plover, the sound of galloping hoofs, the 
 sight of a horseman, would startle him and cause 
 him to trumpet his alarm. 
 
 It strikes me as rather curious that in spite of 
 Cristiano's evident agitation at certain sounds and 
 sights, it never went to the length of a panic; he 
 never attempted to break loose and run away. 
 He behaved just as if the plover's cry or the 
 sound of hoofs or the sight of mounted men had 
 produced an illusion — that he was once more a 
 wild hunted horse — yet he never acted as though 
 it was an illusion. It was apparently nothing more 
 than a memory and a habit. 
 
XIII 
 
 MARY'S LITTLE LAMB 
 
 This is the history of a pet lamb that differed 
 mentally from other lambs I have known. One 
 does not look for anything approaching to marked 
 individuality in that animal, yet sheep do show it 
 on occasions though not in the same degree as 
 cats and dogs. Goats exhibit more character than 
 sheep, probably because we do not compel them to 
 live in a crowd. Indeed, when we consider how 
 our poor domesticated sheep is kept we can see 
 that they have little chance of developing in- 
 dividuality of mind. A sheep cannot " follow his 
 own genius," so to speak, without infringing the 
 laws we have made for his kind. His condition in 
 this respect is similar to that of human beings 
 under a purely socialistic form of government: 
 for example, like that of the ancient civilised 
 Peruvians. In that state every man did as he was 
 told: worked and rested, got up and sat down, 
 ate, drank, and slept, married, grew old and died 
 in the precise way prescribed. And I daresay if 
 he tried to be original or to do something out of 
 the common he was knocked on the head. So 
 
 123 
 
124 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 with our sheep. The shepherd, assisted by his 
 dog, maps out his whole hfe for him, from birth 
 to death, and he is not permitted to stray from the 
 path in which he is made to walk. But if a lamb 
 be taken from the flock and reared at a farm and 
 given the same liberty that cats and dogs and even 
 many goats enjoy, he will in almost every case 
 develop a character of his own. 
 
 I remember a tame sheep we once had at my 
 home on the pampas who in thieving could give 
 points to many thievish dogs, not excepting the 
 pointer himself, the most accomplished thief in the 
 entire canine gang. Tobacco and books were the 
 objects this mischievous beast was perpetually 
 foraging for when she could get into the house. 
 Tobacco was hard to come at even when she had 
 a good long time to look for it before some one 
 came on the scene to send her about her business 
 with a good whack or a kick. But books were 
 often left lying about on tables and chairs and 
 were easily got at. She knew very well that it was 
 wrong and that if detected she would have to 
 suffer, but she was exceedingly cunning, and from 
 a good distance would keep an eye on the house, 
 and when she saw or cunningly guessed that no 
 person was in the sitting- or dining-room or any 
 other room i\'ith the door standing open, she would 
 steal quietly in and finding a book would catch 
 it hastily up and make off with it. Carrying it off 
 to the plantation she would set it down, put her 
 hoof on it, and start tearing out the leaves and 
 
MARY'S LITTLE LAMB 125 
 
 devouring them as expeditiously as possible. Once 
 she had got hold of a book she would not give it 
 up — not all the shouting and chasing after her 
 would make her drop it. Away she would rush 
 until fifty yards or more ahead of her hunters; 
 then she would stop, set it down and begin hurriedly 
 tearing out the leaves; then when the hunt drew 
 near with loud halloo she would snatch it up and 
 rush on with it flapping about her face, and leave 
 us all far behind. Eventually, when her depreda- 
 tions could no longer be tolerated, she was sent 
 away to the flock. 
 
 An English settler in Patagonia I used to stay 
 with when visiting that part kept a tame guanaco 
 at his estancia, which had a habit resembling that 
 of our book-stealing sheep. This animal had been 
 captured when small by some guanaco-hunters, 
 and my friend reared and made a pet of it. When 
 grown up it associated with the sheep and other 
 domestic animals and was friendly with the dogs, 
 but spent much of its time roaming by itself over 
 the plains. He had the run of the house as well, 
 but at length had to be excluded on account of his 
 passion for devouring any white linen or cotton 
 which he could get hold of. But the guanaco, like 
 our sheep, was cunning and would approach the 
 house from the back and make his way into a 
 bedroom to snatch up and make off with a towel, 
 night-shirt, handkerchief, or anything he could find 
 of linen or cotton, so long as it was white. One 
 day my host came in to get himself ready to attend 
 
126 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 a meeting and dinner at a neighbouring estancia, 
 and after putting out his linen on his bed he went 
 into an adjoining room for a hot bath. Coming 
 back to his bedroom he was just in time to see his 
 pet guanaco pick up his beautifuUy-got-up snow- 
 white shirt from the bed and make a dash for the 
 open door. He uttered a wild yell, which had no 
 effect, but he was determined not to lose his shirt, 
 for at that moment he remembered that it was the 
 only clean one he possessed; he rushed out just 
 as he was with nothing but a towel round him, and 
 jumping on to his horse, which stood saddled at 
 the gate, started in pursuit. Away he went, 
 shouting to the dogs to come and help him recover 
 his shirt. His yell and shouts brought all the men 
 about the place on the scene, and running out they 
 too mounted their horses in hot, haste and started 
 after him. And away far ahead of them went the 
 guanaco at a pace no horse could equal, the shirt 
 held firmly in his teeth waving and flapping like a 
 white banner in the wind. But from time to time 
 he made a stop, and bringing the shirt down to the 
 ground would hurriedly tear a piece out of it, then 
 picking it up would rusH on again. The dogs over- 
 took him only to dance round him, barking joy- 
 fully to encourage him to run on and keep the fun 
 going. He was their friend and playmate, and it 
 was to them nothing but a jolly sham hunt got up 
 by their sport-loving master for their amusement. 
 The chase led up the valley of the river, a great 
 flat plain, and continued for about four to five 
 
MARY'S LITTLE LAMB 127 
 
 miles; by that time the precious shirt had dwindled 
 to something quite small — nothing in fact was 
 left but the hard starched front, which the guanaco 
 found it difficult to masticate and swallow. Then 
 at long last the hunt was given up and my poor 
 shirtless friend in his towel rode mournfully home 
 in the midst of laughing companions, attended, too, 
 by a lot of dogs, lolling their tongues out and over- 
 flowingly happy at having had such an exciting run. 
 Let me now come to the subject I sat down to 
 write about — namely, Mary's little lamb. It was 
 little to begin with, when my youngest sister, who 
 was not then very big herself, and was always 
 befriending forlorn creatures, came in one day 
 from the shepherd's ranch with a young lamb 
 which had unhappily lost its mother. Oddly 
 enough this little sister's name was Mary — one 
 seldom hears it in these Doris, Doreen days, but 
 in that distant Mary-Jane-Elizabeth period it was 
 quite common. And the motherless lamb she had 
 brought in grew to be her pet lamb, with fleece 
 as white as snow; nor was the whiteness strange 
 seeing that it was washed every day with scented 
 soap, its beauteous neck beribboned and often 
 decorated with garlands of scarlet verbenas which 
 looked exceedingly brilliant against the snowy fleece. 
 A pretty, sweet-tempered and gentle creature it 
 proved and never developed any naughty proclivi- 
 ties like the tobacco- and book-plundering sheep of 
 an earlier date. They were very fond of each 
 other, those two simple beings, and just as in the 
 
128 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 old familiar rhyme wherever Mary went her little 
 lamb would go. But there was a little rift within 
 the lute which by and by would widen till it made 
 the music mute. The lamb was excessively playful 
 and frisky, but its mistress had her little lessons 
 and duties to attend to, and the lamb couldn't 
 understand it, and often after frisking and jumping 
 about to challenge the other to a fresh race in vain 
 it would run away to get up a race or game of 
 some sort with the youngest of the dogs. The 
 dogs were responsive, so that they were quite 
 happy together. 
 
 We kept eight dogs at that time; two were 
 pointers, all the others just the common dog of the 
 country, a smooth-haired animal about the size of 
 a collie. Like all dogs allowed to exist in their own 
 way, they formed a pack, the most powerful one 
 being their leader and master. They spent most 
 of their time lying stretched dog-fashion in the 
 sun in some open place near the house, fast asleep. 
 They had little to do except bark at strangers 
 approaching the house and to hunt off the cattle 
 that tried to force their way through the fences 
 into the plantation. They would also go off on 
 hunting expeditions of their own. Strange play- 
 mates and companions for Libby, as she was 
 named, the pretty pet lamb with fleece as white 
 as snow; yet so congenial did she find the dogs' 
 society that by and by she passed her whole time 
 with them, day and night. When they came to 
 the door to bark and whine and wag their tails to 
 
MARY'S LITTLE LAMB 129 
 
 call attention to their wants or to be noticed, the 
 lamb would be with them but would not cross the 
 threshold since the dogs were not permitted in the 
 rooms. Nor would she come to her mistress when 
 called, and having discovered that grass was her 
 proper food she wanted nothing that human 
 beings could give her. Not even a lump of sugar! 
 She was no longer a pet lamb; she was one of the 
 dogs. The dogs on their part, although much given 
 to quarrels and fights among themselves, never 
 growled or snapped at Libby; she never tried to 
 snatch a bone from them, and she made them a 
 comfortable pillow when they slept and slumbered 
 for hours at a stretch. And Libby, just to be always 
 with them and to do exactly as they did, would 
 sleep too. Or rather she would lie stretched out 
 on the ground pretending to sleep, always with the 
 head of one of the dogs pillowed on her neck. Tv/o 
 or three or four of the other dogs who had failed 
 to secure the pillow would lie round her with their 
 heads pressed against her fleece. They would form 
 a curiously amusing group. Then if a shrill whistle 
 was emitted by some one, or the cry of " Up and 
 at 'em," the lamb would spring like lightning to 
 her feet, throwing the drowsy dog off, and away 
 she would dash down the avenue to get outside the 
 plantation and find out what the trouble was. 
 Then the dogs, shaking off their sleep, would start 
 off and perhaps overtake her a couple of hundred 
 yards away. 
 
 Most amusing of all the lamb's acting was when 
 
130 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 the dogs had their periodical hunting fits, when 
 they would vanish for half a day's vizcacha-hunting 
 pn the plain, just as fox-terriers and other dogs 
 in which the hunting instinct still survives steal 
 out of the village to chase or dig out rabbits on 
 their own account. 
 
 The vizcacha is a big rodent and hves in 
 communities, in warrens or villages composed of a 
 group of huge burrows, and the native dogs are 
 fond of assaulting these strongholds but seldom 
 succeed in getting at their quarry. A dog no bigger 
 than a fox-terrier can make his way in till he 
 comes to grips with the vizcacha, usually with the 
 result that he gets well punished for his audacity. 
 Our dogs would simply labour to enlarge the 
 burrows by scratching and biting away the earth 
 and furiously barking at the animal inside who 
 would emit curious noises and cries, which the dogs 
 appeared to regard as insults and would only 
 cause them to redouble their efforts. 
 
 On several occasions, when riding on the plain 
 a mile or two from home, I would come on our 
 dogs — ^the entire pack and the lamb with them, 
 engaged in the siege and assault of a vizcacha 
 village or earth. A funny sight! The dogs would 
 jump up barking and wagging their tails as if to 
 say, " Here we are, you see, just in the middle of 
 our fight with no time to spare for friendly con- 
 versation." And back they would fly to their 
 burrows. The lamb too would dance up to give 
 me a welcome and then back to her duties. Her 
 
MARY'S LITTLE LAMB 131 
 
 part was to go frisking about from burrow to 
 burrow, now taking a flying leap over the pit-like 
 mouth, then diving down to see how things were 
 progressing inside, where the dog was tearing at 
 the earth and trying to force himself in and keep- 
 ing up a running dialogue of threats and insults 
 with the beast inside. 
 
 But though Libby, in these her dog days, was a 
 continual joy to us, we thought it best for her own 
 sake to put an end to them. For in spite of her 
 activities she was in very good condition, and any 
 poor gaucho who came upon her, hunting with our 
 dogs a few miles from home, would be justified in 
 saying: "Here is a good fat animal without an 
 ear-mark, consequently without an owner; and 
 though I find it in the company of Neighbour 
 So-and-So's dogs, it can't be his since he has put 
 no mark on it, and as I've found it I have a right 
 to it, and I'm quite sure from its appearance that 
 its flesh when roasted will prove tender and 
 savoury." 
 
 Accordingly we took Libby away from her 
 companions and put her with the flock, where in 
 due time she would learn that a sheep is a sheep 
 and not a dog. 
 
 There are, I imagine, few old sportsmen, field 
 naturalists, and observers of animal life generally 
 who have not met with similar instances of animals 
 of widely different natures, in some instances 
 
132 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 natural enemies, living and even acting in harmony 
 together. We see it chiefly in the domesticated 
 and in tamed wild animals. When visiting a friend 
 in Patagonia I was greatly astonished one day on 
 going out with a gim to shoot something followed 
 by the dogs to find a black cat in their company, 
 and to see her when I fired my first shot actually 
 dashing off before the dogs to retrieve the bird! 
 
 One of the amusing recollections of an old lady 
 friend of mine, a lover of animals, was of a pet cat 
 and rabbit which had been reared from babyhood 
 together and were always fed out of one saucer of 
 milk, and when they grew up from one dish. It 
 was common to see them exchange foods, and the 
 cat would be seen laboriously gnawing at a cabbage 
 stalk while the rabbit picked a bone. 
 
 My friend Mr. Tregarthen, author of Wild Life at 
 the Land's End, has just kindly furnished me with 
 two or three remarkable instances known to him of 
 hunting and hunted animals living together in 
 happy companionship. One is of a tame fox, 
 taken when small and reared in the kennels with 
 fox-hounds. When fully grown its great game 
 when the dogs were taken out for exercise was 
 to scamper off and give them a chase. Invariably 
 when overtaken it would throw itself on its back 
 and allow itself to be worried in fun. They never 
 hurt it. Then there are two instances of otters 
 reared from puppyhood with otter-hounds. In one 
 case the otter would go otter-hunting with the 
 hounds; in the second case the otter did not 
 
MARY'S LITTLE LAMB 133 
 
 accompany the hounds, or was not allowed to go 
 with them, but the hounds, although they hunted 
 their quarry with all the zeal and fury natural to 
 them, refused to bite or hurt it in any way when 
 they got it. Their friendship with an otter had 
 had a psychological effect on their otter-hound 
 natures. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE SERPENT'S TONGUE 
 
 " But now," says Ruskin, " here's the first thing, 
 it seems to me, we've got to ask the scientific 
 people what use a serpent has for its tongue, since 
 it neither works it to talk with, or taste with, or 
 hiss with, nor, as far as I know, to lick with, and, 
 least of all, to sting with — and yet, for people who 
 do not know the creature, the little vibrating 
 forked thread, flicked out of its mouth and back 
 again, as quick as lightning, is the most striking 
 part of the beast; but what is the use of it? 
 Nearly every creature but a snake can do some sort 
 of mischief with its tongue. A woman worries with 
 it, a chameleon catches flies with it, a cat steals 
 milk with it, a pholas digs holes in the rock with 
 it, and a gnat digs holes in us with it; but the 
 poor snake cannot do any manner of harm with it 
 whatsoever; and what is his tongue forked for? " 
 
 The writer's manner in this paragraph, and the 
 unexpectedness of the mocking question that leaps 
 out at the end, suggests the idea that there are, in 
 man, two sorts of forked tongues, and that one 
 sort is not worked for mischief. Certainly few of 
 134 
 
THE SERPENT'S TONGUE 135 
 
 these " vibrating forked threads " in literature have 
 flickered more starthngly, hke forked lightning, and 
 to the purpose, than Ruskin's own. The passage 
 is admirable, both in form and essence; it shines 
 even in that brilliant lecture on Living Waves from 
 which it is taken, and where there are very many 
 fine things, along with others indifferent, and a few 
 that are bad. But there is this fault to be found 
 with it: after putting his question to the 
 " scientific people," the questioner assumes that 
 no answer is possible; that the stinging and hissing 
 and licking theories having been discarded, the 
 serpent's tongue can do no manner of mischief, and is 
 quite useless. A most improbable conclusion, since 
 the fact stares us in the face that the serpent does 
 use its tongue; for instance, it exserts and makes it 
 vibrate rapidly, but why it does so remains to be 
 known. It is true that in the long life of a species 
 an organ does sometimes lose its use without 
 dwindling away, but persists as a mere idle append- 
 age: it is, however, very unlikely that this has 
 happened in the case of the serpent's tongue; the 
 excitability and extreme activity at times of that 
 organ rather incline one to the opinion that it has 
 only changed its original use for a new one, as has 
 happened in the case of some of the creatures 
 mentioned in the passage quoted above. 
 
 "A chameleon," says Ruskin, "catches flies 
 with its tongue," inferring that the snake has no 
 such accomplishment. Yet the contrary has been 
 often maintained. " The principal use of the 
 
136 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 tongue/' says Lacepede in his Natural History of 
 Serpents, " is to catch insects, which it catches by 
 means of its double tongue." This notion about 
 the use of the double tongue is quite common 
 among the older ophiologists, and, along with it, 
 the belief that snakes prey chiefly on insects. And 
 here I cannot resist the temptation to quote a few 
 more words touching on this point from Lacepede 
 — a very perfect example of the teleological spirit 
 in science which flourished a century ago, and made 
 things easy for the naturahst. " We are not," he 
 says, "to be amazed at the vast number of serpents, 
 both species and individuals, which inhabit the 
 intertropical countries. There they find the degree 
 of warmth which seems congenial to their natures, 
 and the smaller species find abundance of insects to 
 serve them for food. In those torrid regions, where 
 Nature has produced an infinite multitude of 
 insects and worms, she has likewise produced the 
 greatest number of serpents to destroy the worms 
 and insects; which othei-wise would multiply so 
 exceedingly as to destroy all vegetable productions, 
 and to reduce the most fertile regions of the earth 
 into barren deserts, inaccessible to man and animals; 
 nay, even these noxious and troublesome insects 
 would be finally obhged to destroy each other, and 
 nothing would remain but their mangled limbs.'* 
 
 Here the French naturalist pauses, aghast at the 
 frightful picture of desolation he has himself con- 
 jured up. 
 
 When enumerating the uses to which a serpent 
 
THE SERPENT'S TONGUE 137 
 
 does not put its tongue, Ruskin might very well 
 have said that it is not used as a tactile organ. 
 That it is a tactile organ is a very modern supposi- 
 tion — a small hypothesis about a small matter, but 
 with a curious and rather amusing history. It was 
 in the first place given out merely as a conjecture, 
 but no sooner given than accepted as an irrefragable 
 fact by some of the greatest authorities among us. 
 Thus Dr. Gunther, in his article on snakes in the 
 Encyclopcedia Britannica, ninth edition, says, " The 
 tongue is exserted for the purpose of feeling some 
 object, and sometimes under the influence of anger 
 or fear." 
 
 Doubtless those who invented this use for the 
 organ were misled by observing snakes in captivity, 
 in the glass cases or cages in which it is usual to 
 keep them; observing them in such conditions, it 
 was easy to fall into the mistake, since the serpent, 
 when moving, is frequently seen to thrust his 
 tongue against the obstructing glass. It should be 
 remembered that glass is glass, a substance that 
 does not exist in nature; that a long and some- 
 times painful experience is necessary before even 
 the most intelligent among the lower animals are 
 brought to understand its character; and, finally, 
 that the delicate, sensitive tongue comes against 
 it for the same reason that the fly buzzes and the 
 confined wild bird dashes itself against it in their 
 efforts to escape. In a state of nature when the 
 snake is approached, whether by its prey or by 
 some large animal, the tongue is obtruded; again. 
 
138 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 when it is cautiously progressing through the 
 herbage, even when unalarmed, the tongue is 
 exserted at frequent intervals; but I can say, 
 after a long experience of snakes, that the exserted 
 organ never touches earth, or rock, or leaf, or 
 anything whatsoever, consequently that it is not 
 a tactile organ. 
 
 Another suggestion, less improbable on the face 
 of it than the one just cited, is that the tongue, 
 without touching anything, may, in some way not 
 yet known to us, serve as an organ of intelhgence. 
 The serpent's senses are defective; now when, in 
 the presence of a strange object or animal, the 
 creature protrudes its long slender tongue — not to 
 feel the object, as has been shown — does it not do 
 so to test the air, to catch an emanation from the 
 object which might in some unknown way convey 
 to the brain its character, whether animate or 
 inanimate, cold or warm blooded, bird, beast, or 
 reptile, also its size, etc.? The structure of the 
 organ itself does not give support to this supposi- 
 tion; it could not taste an emanation without some 
 such organs as are found in the wonderfully formed 
 antennae of insects, and with these it is not pro- 
 vided. 
 
 Only by means of a sensitiveness to air waves 
 and vibrations from other living bodies near it, in 
 degree infinitely more delicate than that of the 
 bat's wing — the so-called sixth sense of that animal 
 — could the serpent's tongue serve as an organ of 
 intelligence. Here, again, the structure of the 
 
THE SERPENT'S TONGUE 139 
 
 tongue is against such an hypothesis; and if the 
 structure were different it would only remain to 
 be said that the instrument performs its work very 
 badly. 
 
 Another explanation which has been put for- 
 ward by two well-known writers on serpent life. 
 Dr. Stradling and Miss Hopley, remains to be 
 noticed. These observers came independently to 
 the conclusion that the snake makes use of his 
 tongue as a decoy to attract its prey. 
 
 In the case of one of these writers, the idea was 
 suggested by an incident in our Zoological Gardens. 
 A fowl was placed in a boa's cage to be eaten, and 
 immediately began hunting about for food on the 
 floor of the cage; the serpent — apparently seen 
 merely as an inanimate object — protruded its 
 tongue, whereupon the fowl rushed and pecked at 
 it, mistaking it for a wriggling worm. Such a thing 
 could not well happen in a state of nature. The 
 tongue may resemble a wriggling worm, or, when 
 vibrated very quickly, a fluttering moth; but we 
 cannot assume that the serpent, however motion- 
 less it may lie, however in its colour and pattern 
 it may assimilate to its surroundings, is not recog- 
 nised as a separate and living thing by a bird or 
 any other wild animal. 
 
 From the foregoing it will be seen that so far 
 from being silent on this subject, as Ruskin 
 imagined, the " scientific people " have found out 
 or invented a variety of uses for the serpent's 
 tongue. By turns it has been spoken of as an 
 
140 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 insect-catching organ, a decoy, a tactile organ, and, 
 in some mysterious way, an organ of intelligence. 
 And, after all, it is none of these things, and the 
 way is still open for fresh speculation. 
 
 I have on numberless occasions observed the 
 common pit-viper of southern South America, 
 which is of a sluggish disposition, lying in the sun 
 on a bed of sand or dry grass, coiled or extended at 
 full length. Invariably, on approaching a snake of 
 this kind, I have seen the tongue exserted; that 
 nimble, glistening organ was the first, and for 
 some time the only sign of life or wakefulness in 
 the motionless creature. If I stood still at a dis- 
 tance of some yards to watch it, the tongue would 
 be exserted again at intervals; if I moved nearer, 
 or lifted my arms, or made any movement, the 
 intervals would be shorter and the vibrations more 
 rapid, and still the creature would not move. Only 
 when I drew very near would other signs of excite- 
 ment follow. At such times the tongue has scarcely 
 seemed to me the " mute forked flash " that 
 Ruskin calls it, but a tongue that said something, 
 which, although not audible, was clearly understood 
 and easy to translate into words. What it said or 
 appeared to say was : " I am not dead nor sleeping, 
 and I do not wish to be disturbed, much less 
 trodden upon; keep your distance, for your own 
 good as well as for mine." In other words, the 
 tongue was obtruded and vibrated with a 'warning 
 purpose. 
 
 Doubtless every venomous serpent of sluggish 
 
THE SERPENT'S TONGUE 141 
 
 habits has more ways than one of making itself 
 conspicuous to and warning off any large heavy 
 animal that might injure by passing over and 
 treading on it; and I think that in ophidians of 
 this temper the tongue has become, incidentally, 
 a warning organ. Small as it is, its obtrusion is 
 the first of a series of warning motions, and may 
 therefore be considered advantageous to the animal; 
 and, in spite of its smallness, I believe that in very 
 many instances it accomplishes its purpose with- 
 out the aid of those larger and violent movements 
 and actions resorted to when the danger becomes 
 pressing. 
 
 All large animals, including man, when walking 
 on an open space, see the ground before them, with 
 every object on it, even when the head is raised 
 and when the animal's attention is principally 
 directed to something in the distance. The motions 
 of the legs, the exact measurement of every slight 
 obstruction and object in the way — hillocks, de- 
 pressions in the soil, stones, pebbles, sticks, etc. — 
 are almost automatic; the puma may have nothing 
 but his far-seen quarry in his mind, and the philo- 
 sopher be thinking only of the stars, as they move, 
 both quite unconscious of what their feet are doing; 
 but the ground must be seen all the same, otherwise 
 they could not go smoothly even over a compara- 
 tively smooth surface. 
 
 When the man or other animal progressing in 
 this ordinary way comes to where a serpent, with 
 a protective or assimilative colour and appearance. 
 
142 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 lies motionless in the path, he certainly sees it, but 
 without distinguishing it as a serpent. The vari- 
 coloured surface it rests on and with which it is 
 in harmony is motionless, consequently without 
 animal life and safe to tread on — a rough flooring 
 composed of mould, pebbles and sand, dead and 
 green herbage, withered leaves, twisted vines, and 
 sticks warped by the sun, brown and grey and 
 mottled. But if the smallest thing moves on that 
 still surface, if a blade trembles, or a minute .asect 
 flutters or flies up, the vision is instantly attracted 
 to the spot and concentrated on a small area, 
 and as by a flash every object on it is clearly seen, 
 and its character recognised. Those who have 
 been accustomed to walk much in dry, open places, 
 lA districts where snakes are abundant, have often 
 marvelled at the instantaneous manner in which 
 something that had been previously seen as a mere 
 strip or patch of dull colour on the mottled earth, 
 as a part of its indeterminate pattern, has taken 
 the serpent form. And when once it has been 
 recognised as a serpent it is seen so vividly and 
 in such sharp contrast to its surroundings as to 
 appear the most conspicuous and unmistakable 
 object in nature. Why, in such cases, they ask in 
 astonishment, did they not recognise its character 
 sooner? I believe that in such cases it is the 
 suddenly exserted, glistening, vibrating tongue that 
 first attracts the eye to the dangerous spot and 
 reveals the serpent to the mind. 
 
 This warning character is, I believe, as has 
 
THE SERPENT'S TONGUE 143 
 
 already been intimated, an incidental use of the 
 tongue, probably confined, or at all events most 
 advantageous to the vipers and to other venomous 
 serpents of lethargic habits. In the case of the 
 extremely active, non-venomous snake, that glides 
 away into hiding on the slightest alarm, the tongue 
 would be of little use or no value as a warning organ. 
 Between a snake of this kind and the slumberous 
 pit-viper the difference in habit is extreme. But 
 at bottom, all ground snakes are alike in disposi- 
 tion — all hate to be disturbed, and move only 
 when necessity drives; and we can imagine that 
 when the tremendous weapon of a lethal tooth had 
 been acquired, when experience began to teach the 
 larger mammalians to view the serpentine form 
 with suspicion and to avoid it, the use of the 
 tongue as a warning would react on the serpent, 
 making it more and more lethargic in habit — as 
 inactive, in fact, as every snake loves to be. 
 
 There is, I imagine, another and more important 
 use of the tongue, older than its warning use, 
 although this may date back in time to the Miocene 
 period, when the viperine form existed — a use of 
 the tongue common to all ophidians that possess 
 the habit of exserting and vibrating that organ 
 when excited. The subject is somewhat com- 
 plicated, for we have not only to consider the 
 tongue, but the whole creature of which the tongue 
 is so small a part; its singularity and anomalous 
 position in nature, and the many and diverse ways 
 in which the animals it preys on are affected by 
 
144 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 its appearance. Furthermore, I have now in my 
 mind two separate functions, the first of which 
 occasionally, perhaps often, passes into and becomes 
 one with the other. 
 
 When the common or ring snake pursues a frog,, 
 the chase would in most cases prove a very vain 
 one but for that fatal weakness in the hunted 
 animal, which quickly brings its superior activity 
 to naught. The snake need not even be seen for 
 the effect to be produced, as any one can prove for 
 himself by pushing his walking-stick, snake-wise, 
 through the grass and causing it to follow up the 
 frog's motions, whereupon, after some futile efforts 
 to escape, the creature collapses, and stretching out 
 its fore-feet like arms that implore mercy, emits a 
 series of piteous, wailing screams. Thus, all that 
 is necessary for this end to be reached is that the 
 frog should be conscious of something, no matter 
 what, pushing after it through the grass. There is 
 here, apart from the question in animal psychology, 
 a little mystery involved; for how comes it that 
 in the course of the countless generations during 
 which the snake has preyed on the frog, this 
 peculiar weakness has not been eliminated by 
 means of the continual destruction of the in- 
 dividuals most subject to it, and, on the other 
 hand, the preservation of all those possessing it in 
 a less degree, or not at all? It is hard for a good 
 Darwinian to believe that the frog is excessively 
 prolific for the snake's advantage rather than for 
 its own. But this question need not detain us; 
 
THE SERPENT'S TONGUE 145 
 
 there are vulnerable spots and weak joints in the 
 defensive armour of all animals. What I wish to 
 draw attention to is the fact that, speaking meta- 
 phorically, the serpent, of all creatures that kill 
 their own meat, is the most unsportsmanlike in its 
 methods, that it has found out and subtly taken 
 advantage of the most secret and unsuspected 
 weaknesses of the animals on which it preys. 
 
 We have seen how the common snake catches 
 the frog; but frogs are found only in wet places, 
 and snakes abound everywhere, and the sedentary 
 snake of the dry uplands must feed on the nimble 
 rodent, volatile bird, and elusive lizard. How does 
 he manage to catch them? For considering how 
 alert and quick-sighted these small hunted creatures 
 are, it must, I think, be assumed that the snake 
 cannot, except in rare instances, approach them 
 unseen and take them unawares. I believe that 
 in many cases the snake succeeds by approaching 
 its intended victim while appearing to be stationary. 
 This stratagem is not confined to the ophidians: 
 in a somewhat different form it is found in a great 
 variety of animals. Perhaps the most familiar 
 example is afforded by the widely distributed 
 hunting-spider. The plan followed by this spider, 
 on a smooth surface where it cannot hide its form, 
 is to advance boldly towards its prey, and when 
 the fly, who has been suspiciously watching its 
 approach, is about to dart away, to become motion- 
 less. This appears to excite the fly's curiosity, and 
 he does not take flight; but very soon his restive 
 
146 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 spirit returns, he moves about this way and that, 
 to see all round him, and each time he turns his 
 bright eyes away the spider rapidly moves a little 
 nearer; but when the fly looks again, appears 
 motionless as before. In this way, little by little, 
 the space is lessened, and yet the fly, still turning 
 at intervals to regard the suspicious-looking object, 
 does not make his escape, simply because he does 
 not know that the space has been lessened. Seeing 
 the spider always motionless the illusion is pro- 
 duced that it has not moved: the dividing distance 
 has been accurately measured once for all, and no 
 second act of judgement is required; the fly, know- 
 ing his own quickness and volatile powers, feels 
 himself perfectly safe; and this goes on until by 
 chance he detects the motion and instantly flies 
 away, or else fails to detect it and is caught. Cats 
 often succeed in capturing birds by a similar 
 stratagem. 
 
 The snake, unlike the spider and cat, cannot 
 make the final spring and rush, but must glide up 
 to within striking distance: this he is able to do 
 by means of the faculty he possesses of progressing 
 so gradually and evenly as to appear almost 
 motionless; the tongue which he exserts and 
 rapidly vibrates at intervals when approaching his 
 victim helps in producing the deception. 
 
 Long observation has convinced me that a 
 snake on the ground, moving or resting, is not a 
 sight that violently excites birds, as they are 
 excited by the appearance of a fox, cat, weasel. 
 
THE SERPENT'S TONGUE 147 
 
 hawk, or any other creature whose enmity is well 
 known to them. I have frequently seen little birds 
 running about and feeding on the ground within a 
 few feet of a snake lying conspicuously in their sight ; 
 furthermore, I have been convinced on such occasions 
 that the birds knew the snake was there, having 
 observed them raise their heads at intervals, regard 
 the reptile for a few moments attentively, then go 
 on seeking food. This shows that birds do some- 
 times come near snakes and see them with httle or 
 no fear, but probably with some slight suspicion 
 and a great deal of curiosity, on account of the 
 singularity of their appearance, their resemblance 
 to vegetable rather than to animal forms of life, 
 and, above all, to their strange manner of pro- 
 gression. Now the bird, or lizard, or small mammal, 
 thus brought by chance near to a hungiy, watchful 
 snake, once it begins to regard the snake curiously, 
 is in imminent danger of destruction in one of two 
 ways, or by a combination of both: in the first 
 case it may be deluded as to the distance of the 
 suspicious-looking object and in the end seized, 
 just as the fly is seized by the salticus spider, 
 before it can make its escape; secondly, it may, 
 while regarding its singular enemy, be thrown 
 into a trance or convulsive fit and so rendered 
 powerless to escape, or it may even be moved to 
 cast itself into the open jaws of the snake. In 
 either case, the serpent's tongue would, I believe, 
 play a very important part. In a case of the first 
 kind the snake would approach its intended victim 
 
148 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 so slowly and continuously as almost to appear not 
 to be moving; still, in most cases the movement 
 probably would be detected but for the tongue, 
 which attracts the eye by its eccentric motions, its 
 sudden successive appearances and disappearances; 
 watching the tongue, the long, sinuous body slowly 
 gliding over the intervening space would not be 
 observed; only the statuesque raised head and 
 neck would be visible, and these would appear not 
 to move. The snake's action in such a case would 
 resemble the photographer's trick to make a restive 
 child sit still while its picture is being taken by 
 directing its attention to some curious object, or 
 by causing a pocket-handkerchief to flutter above 
 the camera. 
 
 Snakes have been observed to steal upon their 
 victims in this quiet, subtle manner; the victim, 
 bird or lizard, has been observed to continue 
 motionless in a watchful attitude, as if ready to 
 dart away, but still attentively regarding the 
 gradually approaching head and flickering tongue; 
 and in the end, by a sudden, quick-darting motion 
 on the part of the snake, the capture has been 
 effected. Cases of this description are usually set 
 down to " fascination," which I think is a mistake. 
 
 Fascination is a fine old word, which has done 
 good service and has had a long day and happily 
 outlived its evil repute: but it had its faults at 
 the best of times; it originally expressed things 
 purely himdan, and therefore did not exactly fit 
 things serpentine, and was, to some extent, mis- 
 
THE SERPENT'S TONGUE 149 
 
 leading. What its future history — in science — 
 will be cannot be guessed. In France it has been 
 used to describe a mild form of hypnotism in- 
 duced by the contemplation of a bright spot, and 
 no doubt there would be a certain propriety in 
 applying the word to the soothing somnolent effect 
 produced on the human subject by the revolving 
 mirror invented by Dr. Luys. But this is not the 
 form we are concerned with. Fascination in 
 serpent life is something very different; in the 
 present state of knowledge on the subject the old 
 word cannot be discarded. We are now in pos- 
 session of a very large number of well-authenticated 
 cases of undoubted fascination in which the victims 
 are seen to act in a variety of ways, but all alike 
 exhibit very keen distress. The animal that falls 
 under the spell appears to be conscious of his loss 
 of power, as in the case of the frog pursued by the 
 ring-snake. He is thrown into violent convulsions, 
 or trembles, or screams, or struggles to escape, and 
 sometimes rushes in terror away only to return 
 again, perhaps in the end to jump into the serpent's 
 jaws. A brother of mine once observed a pipit 
 running with flutterings round and round a coiled 
 snake, uttering distressed chirps and cries; the 
 snake, vibrating its tongue, moved its head round 
 to follow the motions of the bird. This is a common 
 form — the desire and vaui striving to escape. But 
 when an animal is seen to remain motionless, 
 showing no signs of distress or fear, attentively 
 regarding the gradually approaching snake, such 
 
150 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 a case cannot, I think, be safely set down to fascina- 
 tion, nor to anything more out of the common than 
 curiosity, and, as in the case of the volatile, sprightly 
 fly and terrestrial spider, to the illusion produced 
 in the victim's mind that the suspicious-looking 
 object is stationary. 
 
 Concerning the use, here suggested, of the 
 tongue in fascination, I can scarcely expect that 
 those whose knowledge of the snake is derived 
 from books, from specimens in museums, and from 
 seeing the animal alive in confinement, will regard 
 it as anything more than an improbable supposition, 
 unsupported by facts. But to those who have 
 attentively observed the creature in a state of 
 nature, and have been drawn to it by, and won- 
 dered at, its strangeness, the explanation, I venture 
 to think, will not seem improbable. To weigh, 
 count, measure, and dissect for purposes of 
 identification, classification, and what not, and to 
 search in bones and tissues for hidden affinities, it 
 is necessary to see closely; but this close seeing 
 would be out of place and a hindrance in other 
 lines of inquiry. To know the creature, undivested 
 of life or liberty or of anything belonging to it, it 
 must be seen with an atmosphere, in the midst of 
 the nature in which it harmoniously moves and has 
 its being, and the image it casts on the observer's 
 retina and mind must be identical with its image 
 in the eye and mind of the other wild creatures that 
 share the earth with it. It is not here maintained 
 that the tongue is everything, nor that it is the 
 
THE SERPENT'S TONGUE 151 
 
 principal agent in fascination, but only that it is 
 a necessary part of the creature, and of the creature's 
 strangeness, which is able to produce so great and 
 wonderful an effect. The long, limbless body, 
 lithely and mysteriously gliding on the surface; 
 the glittering scales and curious mottlings, bright 
 or lurid; the statuesque, arrowy head, sharp-cut 
 and immovable; the round lidless eyes, fixed and 
 brilHant; and the long, bifurcated tongue, shining 
 black or crimson, with its fantastic flickering play 
 before the close-shut, lipless mouth — that is the 
 serpent, and probably no single detail in the fateful 
 creature's appearance could be omitted and the 
 effect of its presence on other animals be the same. 
 
 When, years ago, I had finished writing the 
 above paper, which appeared later in the Fort- 
 nightly Review, I made the following entry in my 
 Diary, and reproduce it here just to show that I 
 am not apt to set too high a value on my own 
 theory. 
 
 " This paper was not too long, but I'm glad it's 
 finished and done with. Not because the subject 
 didn't interest me — on the contrary, it had a 
 tremendous attraction for me — but because, having 
 written it, a difficulty has been removed, a pain 
 reheved, a want satisfied. True, that I've only 
 imagined this use for a serpent's tongue, and that 
 it may not be the true use — if any use there be; 
 but if we have a need to build, and there is any 
 wind or cloud to build on, 'tis best to go on bravely 
 
152 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 with the building business. Who cares if the 
 structure is all to tumble down again? Not I. 
 Nevertheless the mere building is a pleasure, and 
 the completion of the structure a satisfaction in 
 that it puts something where before there was 
 nothing. The speculative soul which is in man 
 abhors the desert, vacant spaces and waters and 
 islands of nothingness. Thus, to illustrate this 
 little thing by a big thing — the little flickering 
 tongue of the serpent by something so big that it 
 fills the entire universe — the existence of an ethereal 
 medium is possibly no more than a figment of the 
 mind, an invention to get us out of a difficulty, 
 or a * purely hypothetical supposition,' as was 
 boldly said by one of our greatest physicists. At 
 all events, a lady lean and pale who came at our 
 call, tottering forth wrapped in a gauzy veil — 
 surely the most attenuated and shadowy of all the 
 daughters of Old Father Speculation. But having 
 got her in our arms, thin and pale though she be, 
 we imagine her beautiful and love her dearly, and 
 rest satisfied with the breasts of her consolations, 
 albeit they are of no more substance than thistle- 
 down." 
 
XV 
 
 THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 
 
 The following passages from the Queen of the Air, 
 which refer to the serpent myth and the serpent's 
 strange appearance and manner of progression, 
 have, apart from their exceeding beauty, a very 
 special bearing on the subject of this paper. And 
 in quoting them I am only following Ruskin's own 
 plan, when, in his lectures on Natural History at 
 Oxford, he considered in each case, first, what had 
 been " beautifully thought about the creature." 
 It would be hard, I imagine, to find a passage of 
 greater beauty on this subject than Ruskin's own, 
 unless it be that famous fragment concerning the 
 divine nature of the serpent and the serpent tribe 
 from Sanchoniathan the Phoenician, who flourished 
 some thirty centuries ago. It is true that among 
 the learned some hold that he never flourished at 
 all, nor existed; but doctors disagree on that point; 
 and, in any case, the fragment exists, and was most 
 certainly written by some one. 
 Ruskin writes: 
 
 Next, in the serpent we approach the source of a group of 
 myths, world-wide, founded on great and common hrnnan 
 163 
 
154 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 instincts. . . . There are such things as natural myths 
 . . . the dark sayings of men may be difficult to read, and 
 not always worth reading; but the dark sayings of nature 
 will probably become clearer for the looking into, and will 
 very certainly be worth reading. And, indeed, all guidance 
 to the right sense of the human and variable myths will 
 probably depend on our first getting at the sense of the 
 natural and invariable ones. ... Is there indeed no 
 tongue, except the mute forked flash from its lips, in that 
 ininning brook of horror on the ground.'' Why that horror? 
 We all feel it, yet how imaginative it is, how dispropor- 
 tioned to the real strength of the creature ! . . . But 
 that horror is of the myth, not of the creature ; . . .it 
 is the strength of the base element that is so dreadful in 
 the serpent; it is the omnipotence of the earth. ... It 
 is a divine hieroglyph of the demoniac power of the earth, 
 of the entire earthly nature. 
 
 Of the animal's motions he says: 
 
 That rivulet of smooth silver — how does it flow, think 
 you,'^ It literally rows on the earth, with every scale for 
 an oar; it bites the dust with the ridges of its body. 
 Watch it when it moves slowly ; a wave, but, without 
 wind ! a current, but with no fall ! all the body moving 
 at the same instant, yet some of it to one side, some to 
 another, and some forward, and the rest of the coil back- 
 wards ; but all with the same calm will and equal way 
 — no contraction, no extension; one soundless, causeless 
 march of sequent rings, a spectral procession of spotted 
 dust, with dissolution in its fangs, dislocation in its coils. 
 Startle it : the winding stream will become a twisted 
 arrow; the wave of poisoned life will lash through the 
 grass like a cast lance. 
 
 He adds: "I cannot understand this forward 
 motion of the snake," which is not strange, seeing 
 that Solomon, the wise man, found in " the way of 
 a serpent upon a rock " one of the three wonderful 
 
THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 155 
 
 things that baffled his intellect. And before 
 Solomon, the old Phoenician wrote that Taautus 
 esteemed the serpent as the most inspired of all 
 the reptiles, and of a fiery nature, inasmuch as it 
 exhibits an incredible celerity, moving by its spirit 
 wivliout either hands or feet. Thanks to modern 
 anatomists, this thing is no longer a puzzle to us; 
 but with the mere mechanical question we are not 
 concerned in this place, but only with the sense of 
 wonder and mystery produced in the mind by the 
 apparently " causeless march of sequent rings." 
 
 From English Coniston, where snakes are few 
 and diminutive, let us go to the pine forest of the 
 new world, where dwells the famous Pituophis 
 melanoleucus, the serpent of the pines. This is the 
 largest, most active and beautiful of the North 
 American ophidians, attaining a length of ten to 
 twelve feet, and arrayed in a " bright coat of soft 
 creamy-white, upon which are laid, much in the 
 Dolly Varden mode, shining blotches or mottlings, 
 which beginning at the neck are of an intensely 
 dark brown or chocolate colour, but which towards 
 the tail lighten into a pale chestnut." A local 
 Ruskin, the Rev. Samuel Lockwood, a lover of 
 snakes, kept some of these reptiles in his house, 
 and referring to their wonderful muscular feats, he 
 writes as follows: 
 
 Owing to this command of the muscles the pine snake 
 is capable of performing some evolutions which are not 
 only beautiful, but so intricate and delicate as to make 
 them seem imbued with the nature we call spiritual. I 
 
156 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 have often seen the Pituophis, spread out in loose coils 
 with its head in the central one, wake up after a long 
 repose and begin a movement in every curve, the entire 
 body engaged in the mazy movements, with no going out 
 or deviation from the complicated pattern marked on the 
 floor. Observing this intricate harmoniousness of move- 
 ment, I thought of the seer's vision of mystic wheels. 
 Those revolving coils — " and their appearance and their 
 work was as if it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel." . . . 
 The movements of a serpent are never started, rope-like, 
 at one end, and then transmitted to the other ; nor is the 
 movement like the force-waves sent through a ribbon 
 vibrating in the air. The movement consists of numberless 
 units of individual activities, all regulated by and under 
 control of one individual will that is felt in every curve 
 and line. There is some likeness to the thousand personal 
 activities of a regiment seen on their winding way. And 
 all this perfection of control of so many complicated 
 activities is true, whether the serpent, like an ogre, be 
 crushing its victim's bones, or, as a limbless posturist, be 
 going through its inimitable evolutions. In our thinking 
 a serpent ranks as a paradox among animals. There is so 
 much seeming contradiction. At one time encircling its 
 prey as in iron bands ; again assuming the immovable 
 posturing of a statue ; then melting into movements so 
 intricate and delicate that the lithe limbless thing looks 
 like gossamer incarnate. In this creature all the unities 
 seem to be set aside. Such weakness and such strength; 
 such gentleness and such vindictiveness ; so much of 
 beauty and yet so repulsive ; fascination and terror : 
 what need to wonder that, whether snake or python, the 
 serpent should so figure in the myths of all ages and the 
 literature of the whole world! Yes, in the best and worst 
 thinkings of man! 
 
 In the literature of the whole world, true; but 
 let no one run away with the idea that gems of 
 this kind are to be picked up anywhere, and go 
 
THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 157 
 
 out to seek for them, since for every one equalling 
 these in lustre he will burden himself with many a 
 bushel of common pebbles. 
 
 Lockwood called to mind the mystic wheels in 
 Ezekiel's splendid imaginings — " for the spirit of 
 the living creature was in the wheels." His lissom 
 beautiful captive might also have been likened to 
 Shelle^^'s dream-serpent in the Witch of Atlas — 
 
 In the flame 
 Of its own volumes intervolved. 
 
 He had abundant reason to admire the creature's 
 
 intricate and delicate movements when it appeared 
 
 like " gossamer incarnate," after having witnessed 
 
 its motions of another kind, and its deadly power. 
 
 He had seen it lying extended, apparently asleep, 
 
 on the floor of its box, when a rat, which had been 
 
 placed with it, ran over it, but not quite over it, 
 
 for, quick as lightning, it had wound itself round 
 
 the rat's body, coil over coil, like hand grasping 
 
 hand in squeezing a lemon, until the bones of the 
 
 constricted animal cracked audibly; then it was 
 
 dropped, dead and crushed and limp, on to the 
 
 floor; and the serpent, having revenged the 
 
 indignity, resumed its interrupted repose. With 
 
 this lightning-like deadly quickness of motion and 
 
 the melting mazy evolutions at the other times, 
 
 he also contrasted its statue-like immobility, when, 
 
 with head raised high and projecting forwards, it 
 
 would actually remain for hours at a stretch, its 
 
 brilliant eyes fixed on some object that had alarmed 
 
 it or excited its curiosity. 
 
158 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 This power of continuing motionless, with the 
 lifted head projecting forwards, for an indefinite 
 time, is one of the most wonderful of the serpent's 
 muscular feats, and is of the highest importance 
 to the animal both when fascinating its victim and 
 when mimicking some inanimate object, as, for 
 instance, the stem and bud of an aquatic plant; 
 here it is only referred to on account of the effect 
 it produces on the human mind, as enhancing the 
 serpent's strangeness. In this attitude, with the 
 round, unwinking eyes fixed on the beholder's face, 
 the effect may be very curious and uncanny. 
 Ernest Glanville, a South African writer, thus 
 describes his own experience. When a boy he 
 frequently went out into the bush in quest of 
 game, and on one of these solitary excursions he 
 sat down to rest in the shade of a willow on the 
 bank of a shallow stream; sitting there, with 
 cheek resting on his hand, he fell into a boyish 
 reverie. After some time he became aware in a 
 vague way that on the white sandy bottom of the 
 stream there was stretched a long black line which 
 had not been there at first. He continued for some 
 time regarding it without recognising what it was; 
 but all at once, with an inward shock, became fully 
 conscious that he was looking at a large snake. 
 
 Presently, without apparent motion, so softly and 
 silently was it done, the snake reared its head above the 
 surface and held it there, erect and still, with gleaming 
 eyes fixed on me in question of what I was. It flashed 
 upon me then that it would be a good opportunity to test 
 the power of the human eye on a snake, and I set myself 
 
THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 159 
 
 the task of looking it down. It was a foolish effort. The 
 bronze head and sinewy neck, about which the water 
 flowed without a ripple, were as it carved in stone, and the 
 cruel unwinking eyes, with the light coming and going in 
 them, appeared to glow the brighter the longer I looked. 
 Gradually there came over me a sensation of sickening 
 fear, which, if I had yielded to it, would have left me 
 powerless to move; but with a cry I leapt up, and, seizing 
 a fallen willow branch, attacked the reptile with a species 
 of fury. , . . Probably the idea of the Icanti originated in 
 a similar experience of some native. 
 
 The Icanti, it must be explained, is a powerful 
 and malignant being that takes the form of a great 
 serpent, and lies at night in some deep dark pool; 
 and should a man incautiously approach and look 
 down into the water he would be held there by the 
 power of the great gleaming eyes, and finally drawn 
 down against his will, powerless and speechless, to 
 disappear for ever in the black depths. 
 
 Not less strange than this statue-like immobility 
 of the serpent, the effect of which is increased and 
 made more mysterious by the flickering lambent 
 tongue, suddenly appearing at intervals like light- 
 ning playing on the edge of an unmoving cloud, is 
 that kind of progressive motion so even and slow 
 as to be scarcely perceptible. But on this and 
 other points relating to the serpent's strangeness I 
 have spoken in the preceding chapter. Even in 
 our conditions of self-absorption and aloofness — 
 the mental habit of regarding nature as something 
 outside of ourselves and interesting only to men 
 of curious minds — this quality of the serpent is 
 yet able to affect us powerfully. How great was 
 
160 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 its effect on the earlier races, and what great 
 things resulted from it, when the floating scattered 
 threads of all strange sensations and experiences, 
 all unaccountable things, were gathered and woven 
 into the many-coloured and quaintly figured cloth 
 of religion, anthropology has for some time past 
 been engaged in telling us. 
 
 We have seen in the history of palaeontology 
 that, when the fossil remains of some long-extinct 
 animal have been discovered, in some district still 
 perhaps inhabited by one or more representatives 
 of archaic form, naturalists have concluded that the 
 type was peculiar to the district; but subsequently 
 fresh remains have been discovered in other widely 
 separated districts, and then others, until it has 
 been established that the type once supposed local 
 has, at one time or another, ranged over a very 
 large portion of the habitable globe. Something 
 similar has been the case in the extension of the 
 area over which evidences of serpent-worship have 
 been brought to light by inquiries into the early 
 history of mankind. It had existed in Phoenicia, 
 India, Babylonia, and, in a mild form, in Greece 
 and Italy in Europe; Persia was added, and, little 
 by little, Cashmir, Cambodia, Thibet, China, Ceylon, 
 the Kalmucks; in Lithuania it was universal; it 
 was found in Madagascar and Abyssinia; the area 
 over which it once flourished or still flourishes in 
 Africa grows wider and wider, and promises to take 
 in the entire continent; across the Atlantic it 
 extended over a greater part of North, Central, and 
 
THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 161 
 
 South America, and exists still among some tribes, 
 as it still does in Egypt, India, and China. Mean- 
 while the area over which it once held sway in 
 Europe has also been extended; among those who 
 once regarded the serpent as a sacred animal we 
 now include the Goths, British Celts, Scandinavians, 
 Esthonians, and Finns. It would no longer be rash 
 to say that in every part of the earth inhabited by 
 the serpent this animal has at one time or other been 
 reverenced by man. 
 
 Into the subject of serpent - worship, about 
 which scores of books and hundreds of papers 
 have been written, I do not wish to go one step 
 further than I am compelled by my theme, which 
 is, primarily, the serpent, and the effect on the 
 human intelhgence of its unique appearance and 
 faculties. At the same time the two matters are so 
 closely connected that we cannot treat of one 
 without touching on the other. We find that the 
 authorities are divided in their opinions as to the 
 origin of this kind of worship, some holding that it 
 had its rise in one centre — Furgusson goes so far 
 as to give the precise spot — from which it spread 
 to other regions and eventually over the earth; 
 others, on the contrary, believe that it sprang up 
 spontaneously in many places and at different 
 periods. 
 
 The solution of this question is, I believe, to be 
 found in ourselves — in the effect of the serpent on 
 us. Much is to be gained by personal experience 
 and observation, and by close attention to our own 
 
162 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 sensations. Just as the individual who has passed 
 the middle period of life, or attained to old age, has 
 outlived many conditions of mind and body so 
 different and distinct that when recalled they seem 
 to represent separate identities, and yet has pre- 
 served within himself something of them all — of 
 adolescence, of boyhood, even of childhood and 
 infancy — an ineradicable something corresponding 
 to the image, bright or dim, existing in his memory; 
 so do we inherit and retain something of our for- 
 gotten progenitors, the old emotions and obsolete 
 modes of thought of races that have preceded us 
 by centuries and by thousands of years. 
 
 In the next chapter, dealing with the subject of 
 man's irrational enmity to the serpent, there will 
 be more said on this subject; nevertheless, at the 
 risk of some overlapping, I must in this place dwell 
 a little on my own early experiences, which serve 
 to illustrate the familiar biological doctrine that 
 the ancient, outlived characters of the organism tend 
 to reappear for a season in its young. The mental 
 stripes on the human whelp are very perceptible. 
 From an aesthetic, that is, our aesthetic, point of 
 view, there is not much to choose between an 
 English infant, whether of aristocratic or plebeian 
 descent, and a Maori, Patagonian, Japanese, or 
 Greenland infant. The Greenland infant might be 
 the fattest — I do not know. After the features 
 and expression change, when infancy and early 
 childhood is past, they are still alike in mind. The 
 similarity of all children all the world over some- 
 
THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 163 
 
 times strikes us very forcibly. One day I stood 
 watching a group of a dozen children playing in a 
 small open green space in London; its openness to 
 the sky and the green, elastic turf under their feet 
 had suddenly made them mad with joy. Watching 
 them I could not help laughing when all at once 
 I remembered having once watched a group of 
 children of about the same size as these on a spot 
 of green turf in a distant region, playing the same 
 rude game in the same way, with the same shrill, 
 excited cries; and these were children of un- 
 adulterated savages — the nomad Tehuelches of 
 Patagonia! In some savage tribes the adults are 
 invariably of a gloomy, taciturn disposition — the 
 " buoyant child surviving in the man " would be 
 as astonishing a phenomenon to them as a fellow- 
 creature with the melodious throat of a Rubini, 
 or a pair of purple wings on his shoulders. The 
 children of these people sit silent and unsmiling 
 among their elders in the house, as if the burden 
 of eternal care had been inherited by them from 
 birth; but every day the grave young monkeys 
 find a chance to steal off, and when they have got 
 to some secluded spot in the woods, out of earshot 
 of the village, a sudden transformation takes 
 place: they are out of school, and as merry and 
 shrill at their games and mock battles as any 
 rough set of urchins just released from their lessons 
 in our own land. 
 
 Many pages might be filled with similar instances. 
 And when we consider what the law is, and that 
 
164 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 the period during which the human species has 
 existed in any kind of civilisation, making its own 
 conditions, is but a span compared with its long 
 life of simple barbarism, it would be strange indeed 
 if we did not find in the civilised child the 
 psychological representative of primitive man. We 
 do not look for the emotions and inherited or 
 traditional habits proper to the adult. The higher 
 mental faculties, which have had their growth in a 
 developed social state, are latent in him. His 
 senses and lower mental faculties are, on the con- 
 trary, at their best: in the acuteness of his senses, 
 and the vividness and durability of the impressions 
 made on him by external stimuli; in his nearness 
 to or oneness with Nature, resulting from his 
 mythical faculty, and in the quick response of the 
 organism to every outward change, he is like the 
 animals. His world is small, but the bright mirror 
 of his mind has reflected it so clearly, with all it 
 contains, from sun and stars and floating clouds 
 above, to the floating motes in the beam, and the 
 grass blades and fine grains of yellow sand he 
 treads upon, that he knows it as intimately as if 
 he had existed in it for a thousand years. And 
 whatever is rare and strange, or outside of Nature's 
 usual order, and opposed to his experience, affects 
 him powerfully and excites the sense of mystery, 
 which remains thereafter associated with the object. 
 I remember that as a child, or small boy, I was 
 affected in this way on seeing mushrooms growing 
 in a chain of huge rings in a meadow; also by the 
 
THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 165 
 
 sensitive-plant, when I saw it shrink and grow pale 
 at the touch of my fingerj. Other plants and 
 flowers have affected me with a sense of mystery 
 in the same way; and throughout the world, 
 among inferior or savage races, plants of strange 
 forms are often regarded with superstitious fear 
 or veneration. Something of this — the mythical 
 faculty of the primitive man and of the child — 
 remains in all of us, even the most intellectual. 
 There is a story told of an atheist who, coming 
 from an orchid show, said that he had been con- 
 verted to behef in the existence of a devil. A 
 feeling, about which he probably knew little, was 
 father to the witticism. 
 
 To pass from plants to animals. As a child I 
 was powerfully moved at my first meeting with a 
 large owl. I was exploring a dimly lighted loft 
 in a barn, when, peering into an empty cask, I 
 met its eyes fixed on mine — a strange monster of 
 a bird with fluffed, tawny plumage, barred and 
 spotted with black, and a circular, pale-coloured 
 face, and set in it a pair of great luminous yellow 
 eyes! My nerves tingled and my hair stood up 
 as if I had received an electric shock. Recalling 
 this experience, the vividness of the image printed 
 on my mind, and the sense of mystery so long 
 afterwards associated with this bird, it does not 
 seem strange that among all races in all parts of 
 the globe it should have been regarded as some- 
 thing more than a bird, and supernatural — a 
 wise being, something evil and ghostly, a messenger 
 
166 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 from spirit-land, and prophet of death and disaster; 
 a httle sister or some other relation of the devil; 
 and finally the devil himself; also, as in Samoa, 
 a god incarnate. Its voice, as well as its strange 
 appearance, had doubtless much to do with the 
 owl's supernatural reputation. The owl is first, 
 but only one, of a legion of feathered demons, 
 ghosts, witches, and other unearthly beings, usually 
 nocturnal birds with cries and notes that resemble 
 the human voice expressing physical agony, 
 incurable grief, despair and frenzy, always with 
 something aerial and ventriloquial in it, heighten- 
 ing its mysterious and terrible character; and the 
 birds that emit these sounds are of many families 
 — night- jars, herons, rails, curlews, grebes, loons, 
 and others. 
 
 But great as the owl is among birds that have 
 been regarded as supernatural, or in league with 
 the unseen powers, it has never risen to the height 
 of the serpent in this respect: it had only its 
 strange appearance, silent flight, and weird voice; 
 the serpent had many and more impressive qualities. 
 First and foremost is the strength and lastingness 
 of the impression produced by its strangeness, and 
 its beautiful, infinitely varied, and, to the un- 
 scientific mind, causeless motions; its spectre-like 
 silence and subtlety; its infinite patience and 
 watchfulness, and its power to continue with raised 
 head and neck rigid as if frozen to stone for a long 
 period; and its wonderful quietude when lying 
 day after day in sun or shade on the same spot, as 
 
THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 167 
 
 if in a deep perpetual sleep, yet eternally awake, 
 with open brilliant eyes fixed on whosoever re- 
 gards it. A sense of mystery becomes insepar- 
 ably associated with its ^appearance; and when 
 habitually regarded with such a feeling, other 
 qualities and faculties possessed by it would seem 
 in harmony with this strangeness, and outside of 
 the common order of nature: — its periodical re- 
 newal of youth; the power of existing without 
 ailment and with no sensible diminution of vigour 
 for an indefinite time; the faculty of fascination 
 — a miraculous power over the ordinary lower 
 animals; and the deadliness which its venom and 
 the lightning-like swiftness of its stroke give it, 
 and which is never exercised against man except 
 in revenge for an insult or injury. To this in- 
 offensiveness of the lethal serpent, together with 
 its habit of attaching itself to human habitations, 
 about which it glides in a ghostly manner, may be 
 traced the notion of its friendliness and guardian- 
 ship and of its supernatural power and wisdom; 
 the belief that it was a reincarnation of a dead 
 man's soul, a messenger from the gods, and, finally, 
 the Agathodaemon of so many lands and so many 
 races of men. 
 
 The serpent's strangeness and serpent-worship 
 are thus seen as cause and effect. Now, there is 
 another effect, or another subject, so mixed up 
 with the one I have been considering that this 
 paper might appear incomplete without some notice 
 of it — I refer to the widely prevalent behef in the 
 
168 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 existence of serpents of vast size and supernatural 
 powers; in many cases the daemons or guardian 
 spirits of rivers, lakes, and mountains. Given the 
 profound veneration for the natural serpent, and 
 the mental condition in which the mythical faculty 
 is very strong, men would scarcely fail to see such 
 monsters in certain aspects of Nature coinciding 
 with certain mental moods; and that which any 
 person saw, and gave an account of, as he would 
 have done of a singular tree, rock, or cloud which 
 he had seen, the others would believe in; and 
 believing, they would expect to see it also; and 
 with this expectation exciting them, when the 
 right mood and aspect came they probably would 
 see it. 
 
 Even to our purged and purified vision Nature 
 is full of suggestions of the serpent — that is, to 
 those who are familiar with the serpent's form and 
 have been strongly impressed with its strangeness. 
 Ruskin has called the serpent a " living wave," and 
 compares it in motion to a " wave without wind." 
 In many of its aspects the sea is serpent -like ; 
 never more so than when the tide rises on a calm 
 day, when wave succeeds to wave, lifting itself up 
 serpentwise, gliding noiselessly and mysteriously 
 shorewards, to break in foam on the low beach and 
 withdraw with a prolonged hissing sound to the 
 deep. Again, he has compared the serpent in 
 motion to a " current without a fall." Before I 
 had read of Ruskin, or knew his name, the swift 
 current of a shallow stream had reminded me on 
 
THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 169 
 
 numberless occasions of a serpent in rapid motion. 
 When rushing away at its greatest speed, the 
 creature, as one looks down on it, changes its 
 appearance from a narrow body moving in a 
 sinuous line to a broad straight band, the outward 
 and inward curves of the body appearing as curved 
 lines on its surface, and the spots and blotches of 
 colour forming the pattern as shorter lines. The 
 shallow pebbly current shows a similar pattern on 
 its swiftly moving surface, the ripples appearing as 
 light and dark slanting lines that intersect, cross, 
 and mingle with each other. 
 
 Viewed from an elevation, all rivers winding 
 through the lower levels, glistening amidst the 
 greens and greys and browns of earth, suggest the 
 serpent form and appear like endless serpents 
 lying across the world. Probably it is this con- 
 figuration and shining quality of rivers, as well as 
 the even, noiseless motion of flowing water, which 
 has given rise to the belief among many savage 
 tribes of huge water-serpents, hke that of the 
 stupendous Mother of the Waters, supposed to lie 
 extended at the bottom of the Amazon, Orinoco, 
 and other great rivers of tropical South America. 
 The river boa of these regions is probably the 
 largest existing serpent on the globe, but it is a 
 siTall creature to the fabled monster that rests 
 beieath the flood — so small comparatively that it 
 might well be regarded as one of the unseen 
 monster's newly born young. 
 
 There is also something in the hypnotic effect 
 
170 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 produced by deep clear water when gazed on 
 steadily and for a long time which may have given 
 rise to the African superstition of the Icanti already 
 mentioned. Among some North American tribes 
 there also existed a belief in a serpent of enormous 
 size that reposed at the bottom of some river or 
 lake, and once every year rose to the surface showing 
 a shining splendid stone on his head. 
 
 The mountains, too, have their serpent-shaped 
 guardians: thus, it was believed by the neig^i- 
 bouring tribes that a huge camoodi, or boa, rested 
 its league-long coils on the flat top of the table 
 mountain of Roraima in Venezuela. Doubtless a 
 serpent of cloud and mist; of the white vapour 
 that, forming at the summit, dropped down in a 
 long coil, or crept earthwards along the deep 
 fissures that score the precipitous sides. 
 
 Other beliefs of this kind might be adduced, 
 and other resemblances to the serpent's form and 
 motion in nature traced, but enough on this point 
 has been said. If it is due to these resemblances 
 that the savage is disposed to see the life and 
 intelligent spirit he attributes to Nature, and to all 
 natural objects, take the serpent form, may we 
 not believe that the serpent-myths of the earher 
 civilised races originated in the same way? Doubt- 
 less in many cases, with the development of i\e 
 reasoning powers and the decay of the mythi(al 
 faculty, the fable would be somewhat changed in 
 form and embellished, and perhaps come at )ast 
 to be regarded as merely symbolical. But sjrm- 
 
THE SERPENT'S STRANGENESS 171 
 
 holism does not exist among barbarians and 
 savages: it comes in only when the intellect has 
 progressed sufficiently far to become enamoured of 
 subtleties. When the savage Shawnees heard the 
 hissing of a great snake in the thunder, and saw 
 in the lightning a fiery serpent descending to the 
 earth, the beings they heard and saw were real — 
 as real as the rattlesnake. The same may be said 
 of the monster serpent with a precious stone for a 
 crown of the Iroquois and Algonquins; and of the 
 mighty Onnient, the serpent of the Hurons, bearing 
 a horn on its head with which it was able to pierce 
 through rocks and hills. 
 
 Greater than these (as gods are greater than 
 heroes) were some of the serpents of old, and they 
 also had a vastly greater influence on human 
 destiny; but in their origins they were probably 
 the same — merely the strange births of the mythical 
 faculty and the lawless imagination of the primitive 
 mind: the Mexican Cihua Cohuatl, "the woman 
 of the serpent," and mother of the human race; 
 and the serpent of the Edda that encircled the 
 world; and Persian Ahriman, "the old serpent 
 having two feet," who seduced Mechia and 
 Mechiana, the first man and woman; and, most 
 awful of all, Aphophis, "the destroyer, the enemy 
 of the gods, and devourer of the souls of men; 
 dweller in that mysterious ocean upon which the 
 Boris, or boat of the sun, was navigated by the 
 gods through the hours of day and night, in the 
 celestial region." 
 
XVI 
 
 THE BRUISED SERPENT 
 
 Some hold that our abhorrence of the serpent 
 tribe, the undiscriminating feehng which involves 
 the innocent with the harmful, is instinctive in 
 man. Many primitive, purely animal promptings 
 and impulses survive in us, of which, they argue, 
 this may be one. It is common knowledge that 
 the sight of a serpent affects many persons, especially 
 Europeans, in a sudden violent manner, with a 
 tremor and tingling of the nerves, like a million 
 messages of startling import flying from the centre 
 of intelhgence to all outlying parts of the bodily 
 kingdom; and these sensations of alarm, horror, 
 and disgust are, in most cases, accompanied or 
 instantly followed by an access of fury, a powerful 
 impulse to crush the offensive reptile to death. 
 The commonness of the feeling and its violence, 
 so utterly out of proportion to the danger to be 
 apprehended, do certainly give it the appearance 
 of a true instinctive impulse; nevertheless, such 
 appearance may be deceptive. Fear, however it 
 may originate, is of all emotions the least rational; 
 and the actions of a person great\y excited by 
 
 J72 
 
THE BRUISED SERPENT 173 
 
 it will most nearly resemble those of the lower 
 animals. 
 
 Darwin, on the slightest evidence, affirms that 
 monkeys display an instinctive or inherited fear of 
 snakes. There are many who would think any 
 further inquiry into the matter superfluous; for, 
 they would argue, if monkeys fear snakes in that 
 way, then assuredly we, developed monkeys, must 
 regard them with a feeling identical in character 
 and origin. To be able thus to skim with the 
 swallow's grace and celerity over dark and possibly 
 unfathomable questions is a very engaging accom- 
 plishment, and apparently a very popular one. 
 What is done with ease will always be done with 
 pleasure; and what can be easier or more agreeable 
 than to argue in this fashion: "Fear of snakes is 
 merely another example of historical memory, re- 
 calling a time when man, like his earliest ancestors, 
 the anthropoid apes, was sylvan and solitary; a 
 mighty climber of trees whose fingers were fre- 
 quently bitten by bird-nesting colubers, and who 
 was occasionally swallowed entire by colossal 
 serpents of arboreal habits." 
 
 The instinctive fear of enemies, although plainly 
 traceable in insects, with some other creatures low 
 in the organic scale, is exceedingly rare among the 
 higher vertebrates; so rare indeed as to incline 
 any one who has made a real study of their actions 
 to doubt its existence. It is certain that zoo- 
 logical writers are in the habit of confusing in- 
 stinctive or inherited with traditional fear, the 
 
174 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 last being the fear of an enemy which the young 
 learn from their parents or other adults they 
 associate with. Fear is contagious; the alarm of 
 the adults communicates itself to the young, with 
 the result that the object that excited it remains 
 thereafter one of terror. Not only in this matter 
 of snakes and monkeys, but with regard to other 
 creatures, Darwin lays it down that in the higher 
 vertebrates the habit of fear of any particular 
 enemy quickly becomes instinctive; and this false 
 inference has been accepted without question by 
 Herbert Spencer, who was obliged to study animal 
 habits in books, and was consequently to some 
 extent at the mercy of those who wrote them. 
 
 It is frequently stated in narratives of travel 
 in the less settled portions of North America that 
 all domestic animals, excepting the pig, have an 
 instinctive dread of the rattlesnake; that they 
 know its whirring sound, and are also able to smell 
 it at some distance, and instantly come to a dead 
 halt, trembling with agitation. The fear is a fact; 
 but why instinctive? Some time ago, while reading 
 over again a very delightful book of travels, I 
 came to a passage descriptive of the acute sense 
 of smell and sagacity of the native horse; and the 
 writer, as an instance in point, related that fre- 
 quently, when riding at a swift pace across country 
 on a dark night, over ground made dangerous by 
 numerous concealed burrows, his beast had swerved 
 aside suddenly, os if he had trod on a snake. His 
 sense of smell had warned him in time of some 
 
THE BRUISED SERPENT 175 
 
 grass-covered kennel in the way. But that image 
 of the snake, introduced to give a more vivid idea 
 of the animal's action in swerving aside, was 
 false; and because of its falseness and the want 
 of observation it betrayed, the charm of the 
 passage was sensibly diminished. For not once 
 or twice, but many scores of times it has happened 
 to me, in that very country so graphically de- 
 scribed in the book, while travelling at a swinging 
 gallop in the bright daylight, that my horse has 
 trodden on a basking serpent and has swerved not 
 at all, nor appeared conscious of a living, fleshy 
 thing that yielded to his unshod hoof. Passing 
 on, I have thrown back a glance to see my victim 
 writhing on the ground, and hoped that it was 
 bruised only, not broken or fatally injured, like 
 the serpent of the Roman poet's simile, over which 
 the brazen chariot wheel has passed. Yet if the 
 rider saw it — saw it, I mean, before the accident, 
 although too late for any merciful action — the 
 horse must have seen it. The reason he did not 
 swerve was because serpents are very abundant 
 in that country, in the proportion of about thirty 
 harmless individuals to one that is venomous; con- 
 sequently it is a rare thing for a horse to be bitten; 
 and the serpentine form is famihar to and excites 
 no fear in him. He saw the reptile lying just in his 
 way, motionless in the sunlight, " lit with colour like 
 a rock with flowers," and it caused no emotion, and 
 was no more to him than the yellow and purple 
 blossoms he trampled upon at every yard. 
 
176 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 It is not the same in the western prairies of 
 North America. Venomous serpents are relatively 
 more abundant there, and grow larger, >and their 
 bite is more dangerous. The horse learns to fear 
 them, especially the rattlesnake, on account of 
 its greater power, its sluggish habits and warning 
 faculties. The sound of the rattle calls up the 
 familiar ophidian image to his mind; and when 
 the rattle has failed to sound, the smell will often 
 serve as a warning; which is not strange when we 
 consider that even man, with his feeble olfactory 
 sense, is sometimes able to discover the presence 
 of a rattlesnake, even at a distance of several feet, 
 by means of its powerful musky effluvium. The 
 snake-eating savages of Queensland track their 
 game by the slight scent it leaves on the ground 
 in travelling, which is quite imperceptible to 
 Europeans. In the same way the horse is said to 
 smell wolves, and to exhibit instinctive terror when 
 they are still at a distance and invisible. The 
 terror is not instinctive. The horses of the white 
 settlers on some frontier lands, exposed to frequent 
 attacks from savages, smell the coming enemy, and 
 fly in panic before he makes his appearance; yet 
 when horses are taken from the savages and used 
 by the whites, these too after a time learn to 
 show terror at the smell of their former masters. 
 Their terror is derived from the horses of the 
 whites. The hunter Selous, as a result of ten years 
 of observation while engaged in the pursuit of big 
 game in the heart of Africa, affirms that the horse 
 
THE BRUISED SERPENT 177 
 
 has no instinctive fear of the hon; if he has never 
 been mauled or attacked by them, nor associated 
 with horses that have learnt from experience or 
 tradition to dread them, he exhibits no more fear 
 of lions than of zebras and camelopards. The fact 
 is the horse fears in different regions the lion, vi^olf, 
 puma, red-skin, and rattlesnake, just as the burnt 
 child dreads the fire. 
 
 But here is an incident, say the believers in 
 Darwin's notion, which proves that the fear of 
 certain animals is instinctive in the horse. A 
 certain big -game hunter brought home a lion's 
 hide, rolled up before it was properly dried and 
 wrapped up in canvas. It was opened in the 
 stable where there were several horses, and the 
 covering was no sooner removed and the hide 
 peeled open than the horses were thrown into a 
 panic. The true explanation is that horses are 
 terrified at any strange animal smell, and a powerful 
 smell from the hide of any animal unknown to 
 them would have had the same effect. That fear 
 of a strange animal smell is probably an instinct, 
 but it may not be. In a state of nature the horse 
 learns from experience that certain smells indicate 
 danger, and in Patagonia and on the pampas, 
 when he flies in terror from the scent of a puma 
 which is imperceptible to a man, he pays not the 
 slightest attention to the two most powerful 
 mammalian stenches in the world — that of the 
 skunk, and that of the pampas male deer, Cermis 
 campestris. Experience has taught him — or it has 
 
178 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 come down to him as a tradition — that these most 
 violent odours emanate from animals that cannot 
 harm him. 
 
 So much for this view. On the other hand, our 
 enmity to the serpent, which often exists together 
 with a mythic and anthropomorphic belief in the 
 serpent's enmity to us, might be regarded as 
 purely traditional, having its origin in the 
 Scriptural narrative of man's disobedience and 
 expulsion from Paradise. Whether we believe with 
 theologians that our great spiritual enemy was 
 the real tempter, who merely made use of the 
 serpent's form as a convenient disguise in which 
 to approach the woman, or take without gloss the 
 simple story as it stands in Genesis, which only 
 says that the serpent was the most subtle of all 
 things made and the sole cause of our undoing, 
 the result for the creature is equally disastrous. 
 A mark is set upon him: "Because thou hast done 
 this thing thou art cursed above all cattle, and 
 above every beast of the field; upon thy belly 
 shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days 
 of thy life: and I will place enmity between thy 
 seed and her seed; and it shall bruise thy head, 
 and thou shalt bruise its heel." This prophecy, so 
 far as it tells against the creature, has been literally 
 fulfilled. 
 
 The Satanic theory concerning snakes — ^that 
 ** destructive delusion," which Sir Thomas Browne 
 shrewdly remarks, " hath much enlarged the 
 opinion of their mischief " — makes it necessary for 
 
THE BRUISED SERPENT 179 
 
 the theologian to believe not only that the serpent 
 of Paradise before its degradation walked erect on 
 two legs, as the Fathers taught — some going so far 
 as to give it a beautiful head as well as a ready- 
 tongue — but also that after the devil had cast aside 
 the temporary coil something of his demoniac 
 spirit remained thereafter in it, to be transmitted 
 by inheritance, like a variation in structure or a 
 new instinct, to its remotest descendants. There 
 is the further objection, although not an important 
 one, that it would be unjust to afflict the serpent 
 so grievously for a crime of which it had only been 
 made the involuntary agent. 
 
 Believers in an instinct in man inimical to the 
 serpent might still argue that the Scriptural curse 
 only goes to show that this reptile was already held 
 in general abhorrence — that, in fact, the feeling 
 suggested the fable. That the fable had some such 
 origin is probable, but we are just as far from an 
 instinct as ever. The general feeling of mankind, 
 or, at any rate, of the leading men during the 
 earliest civilised periods of which we have any 
 knowledge, was one of veneration, even of love, 
 for the serpent. The Jews alone were placed by 
 their monotheistic doctrine in direct antagonism to 
 all nature-worship and idolatry. In their leaders 
 — prophets and priests — the hatred of the heathen 
 and of heathen modes of thought was kept alive, 
 and constantly fanned into a fierce flame by the 
 prevalent tendency in the common people to revert 
 to the surrounding older and lower forms of religion. 
 
180 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 which were more in harmony with their mental 
 condition. The proudest boast of their highest 
 intellects was that they had never bowed in rever- 
 ence or kissed their hand to anything in nature. 
 In such circumstances it was unavoidable that the 
 specific object — rock, or tree, or animal — singled 
 out for worship, or for superstitious veneration, 
 should to some extent become involved in the 
 feeHng first excited against the worshipper. If the 
 Jews hated the serpent with a peculiarly bitter 
 hatred, it was doubtless because all others looked 
 on it as a sacred animal, an incarnation of the 
 Deity. The chosen people had also been its wor- 
 shippers at an earlier period, as the Bible shows, 
 and while hating it, they still retained the old 
 behef, intimately connected with serpent-worship 
 everywhere, in the creature's preternatural subtlety 
 and wisdom. The priests of other Eastern nations 
 introduced it into their sacred rites and mysteries; 
 the Jewish priests introduced it historically into the 
 Garden of Eden to account for man's transgression 
 and fall. " Be ye wise as serpents," was a saying 
 of the deepest significance. In Europe men were 
 anciently taught by the Druids to venerate the 
 adder; the Jews — or Jewish books — taught them 
 to abhor it. To my way of thinking, neither 
 blessing nor banning came by instinct. 
 
 Veneration of the serpent still survives in a 
 great part of the world, as in Hindustan and other 
 parts of Asia. It is strong in Madagascar, and 
 flourishes more or less throughout Africa. It 
 
THE BRUISED SERPENT 181 
 
 lingers in North America, and is strong in some 
 places where the serpents, used in religious serpent 
 dances, unlike those of Madagascar, are venomous, 
 and it has not yet wholly died out in Europe. The 
 Finns have a great regard for the adder. 
 
 It may be added here that there are many 
 authenticated instances of children becoming at- 
 tached to snakes and making pets of them. The 
 solution of a question of this kind is sometimes 
 to be found in the child-mind. My experience is 
 that when young children see this creature, its 
 strange appearance and manner of progression, so 
 unlike those of other animals known to them, 
 affect them with amazement and a sense of mys- 
 tery, and that they fear it just as they would fear 
 any other strange thing. Monkeys are doubtless 
 affected in much the same way, although, in a 
 state of nature, where they inhabit forests abound- 
 ing with the larger constrictors and venomous tree- 
 snakes, it is highly probable that they also possess 
 a traditional fear of the serpent form. It would be 
 strange if they did not. The experiment of pre- 
 senting a caged monkey with a serpent carefully 
 wrapped up in paper and watching his behaviour 
 when he gravely opens the parcel, expecting to 
 find nothing more wonderful than the familiar 
 sponge-cake or succulent banana — well, such an 
 experiment has been recorded in half a hundred 
 important scientific works, and out of respect to 
 one's masters one should endeavour not to smile 
 when reading it. 
 
182 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 A third view might be taken, which would 
 account for our feeling towards the serpent without 
 either instinct or tradition. Extreme fear of all 
 ophidians may simply result from a vague know- 
 ledge of the fact that some kinds are venomous, 
 that in some rare cases death follows swiftly on 
 their bite, and that, not being sufficiently intelli- 
 gent to distinguish the noxious from the innocuous 
 — at all events while under the domination of a 
 sudden violent emotion — we destroy them all alike, 
 thus adopting Herod's rough-and-ready method of 
 ridding his city of one inconvenient babe by a 
 general massacre of innocents. 
 
 It might be objected that in Europe, where 
 animosity to the serpent is greatest, death from 
 snake-bite is hardly to be feared, that Fontana's 
 six thousand experiments with the viper, showing 
 how small is the amount of venom possessed by 
 this species, how rarely it has the power to destroy 
 human life, have been before the world for a 
 century. And although it must be admitted that 
 Fontana's work is not in the hand of every peasant, 
 the fact remains that death from snake-bite is a 
 rare thing in Europe, probably not more than one 
 person losing his life from this cause for every two 
 hundred and fifty who perish by hydrophobia, of 
 all forms of death the most terrible. Yet while 
 the sight of a snake excites in a majority of persons 
 the most violent emotions, dogs are universal 
 favourites, and we have them always with us and 
 make pets of them, in spite of the knowledge that 
 
THE BRUISED SERPENT 183 
 
 they may at any time become rabid and inflict 
 that unspeakable dreadful suffering and destruction 
 on us. This leads to the following question: Is 
 it not at least probable that our excessive fear of 
 the serpent, so unworthy of us as rational beings 
 and the cause of so much unnecessary cruelty, is, 
 partly at all events, a result of our superstitious 
 fear of sudden death? For there exists, we know, 
 an exceedingly widespread delusion that the bite 
 of a venomous serpent must kill, and kill quickly. 
 Compared with such ophidian monarchs as the 
 bush-master, fer-de-lance, hamadryad, and tic- 
 polonga, the viper of Europe — the poor viper of 
 many experiments and much, not too readable, 
 literature — may be regarded as almost harmless, 
 at all events not much more harmful than the 
 hornet. Nevertheless, in this cold northern world, 
 even as in other worlds where nature elaborates 
 more potent juices, the delusion prevails, and may 
 be taken in account here, although its origin cannot 
 now be discussed. 
 
 Against sudden death we are taught to pray 
 from infancy, and those who believe that their 
 chances of a happy immortality are enormously 
 increased when death comes slowly, approaching 
 them, as it were, visibly, so that the soul has 
 ample time to make its peace with an incensed 
 Deity, have not far to look for the cause of the 
 feehng. It is true that death from hydrophobia 
 is very horrible, and, comparatively, of frequent 
 occurrence, but it does not find its victim wholly 
 
184 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 unprepared. After being bitten he has had time 
 to reflect on the possible, even probable, con- 
 sequence, and to make due preparation for the 
 end; and even at the last, although tortured to 
 frenzy at intervals by strange unhuman agonies, 
 however clouded with apprehensions his intellect 
 may be, it is not altogether darkened and un- 
 conscious of approaching dissolution. We know 
 that men in other times have had no such fear of 
 sudden death, that among the most advanced of 
 the ancients some even regarded death from 
 lightning-stroke as a signal mark of Heaven's 
 favour. We, on the contrary, greatly fear the 
 lightning, seldom as it hurts; and the serpent 
 and the lightning are objects of terror to us in 
 about the same degree, and perhaps for the same 
 reason. 
 
 Thus any view which we may take of this 
 widespread and irrational feeling is at once found 
 to be so complicated with other feelings and matters 
 affecting us that no convincing solution seems 
 possible. Perhaps it would be as well to regard 
 it as a compound of various elements: traditional 
 feeling having its origin in the Hebrew narrative 
 of man's fall from innocency and happiness; our 
 ignorance concerning serpents and the amount of 
 injury they are able to do us; and, lastly, our 
 superstitious dread of swift and unexpected death. 
 Sticklers for the simple — and to my mind erroneous 
 — theory that a primitive instinct is under it all, 
 may throw in something of that element if they 
 
THE BRUISED SERPENT 185 
 
 like — a small residuum existing in races that 
 emerged in comparatively recent times from bar- 
 barism, but which has been eliminated from a 
 long-civilised people like the Hindoos. 
 
 For my own part I am inclined to believe that 
 we regard serpents with a destructive hatred 
 purely and simply because we are so taught from 
 childhood. A tradition may be handed down 
 without writing, or even articulate speech. We 
 have not altogether ceased to be " lower animals " 
 ourselves. Show a child by your gestures and 
 actions that a thing is fearful to you; and he will 
 fear it, that you hate it, and he will catch your 
 hatred. So far back as memory carries me I find 
 the snake, in its unwarrantable intrusion on the 
 scene, ever associated with loud exclamations of 
 astonishment and rage, with a hurried search for 
 those primitive weapons always lying ready to 
 hand, sticks and stones, then the onset and 
 triumphant crushing of that wonderfully fashioned 
 vertebra in its scaly vari-coloured mantle, coihng 
 and writhing for a few moments imder the cruel 
 rain of blows, appealing not with voice but with 
 agonised yet ever graceful action for mercy to the 
 merciless; and finally, the paean of victory from 
 the slayer, lifting his face still aglow with righteous 
 wrath, a little St. George in his own estimation; 
 for has he not rid the earth of another monster, one 
 of that demoniac brood that was cursed of old, and 
 this without injury to his sacred heel? 
 
XVII 
 THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 
 
 Preamble 
 
 Among the thousand and one projects I have 
 entertained at various times was one for a work 
 on snakes, with the good though somewhat 
 ambitious title of " The Book of the Serpent." 
 This was not to be the work of one who must 
 write a book about something, but a work on a 
 subject which had long had a peculiar fascination 
 for the author, which for years had cried to be 
 written, and finally had to be written. 
 
 As it was a work requiring a great deal of 
 research, it would take a long time to write, long 
 years, in fact, since it would have to be done at 
 odd times, when hours or days or weeks could be 
 spared from the hard business of manufacturing 
 mere bread-and-cheese books. Collecting material 
 would have to be a slow process, involving the 
 perusal or consultation of a thousand volumes, 
 and probably ten thousand periodicals and annals 
 and proceedings and journals of many natural 
 history societies, great and small, of many countries. 
 And all this research, with the classification and 
 
 186 
 
THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 187 
 
 indexing of notes, would be exceeded by the task 
 of selection to follow — selection and compression 
 — since " The Book of the Serpent " would be in 
 one volume and not in half-a-dozen. And after 
 selection, or let us say deglutition, there would 
 ensue the dilatory process of digestion and assimila- 
 tion. If properly assimilated, the personal impres- 
 sions of a hundred independent observers, field- 
 naturalists and travellers, and of a hundred in- 
 dependent students of ophiology, would be fused, 
 as it were, and run into one along with the author's 
 personal observations and his deductions. 
 
 Now, even if all this could have been done, and 
 the best form hit upon, and the work eloquently 
 written, it would still fall far short of the ideal 
 " Book of the Serpent " on account of insufficient 
 knowledge of a particular kind — I don't mean 
 anatomy. And had I been a person of means I 
 should, before beginning my work — getting a pale, 
 wan face through poring over miserable books — 
 have gone away on a five or ten years' serpent 
 quest to get that particular kind of knowledge by 
 becoming acquainted personally with all the most 
 distinguished ophidians on the globe. The first 
 si^ht of a thing, the shock of emotion, the vivid 
 and ineffaceable image registered in the brain, is 
 worth more than all the knowledge acquired by 
 reading, and this applies to the serpent above all 
 creatures. There is indeed but little difference 
 between this creature dead and in confinement. 
 It was the serpent in motion on the rock that was 
 
188 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 a wonder and mystery to the wisest man. In 
 one of my snake-books by a French naturalist in 
 the West Indies there is an account of a fer-de-lance 
 which he kept confined in order to study its habits. 
 He watched it hour after hour, day after day, 
 lying prone on the floor of its cage as if asleep or 
 stupefied, until he was sick and tired of seeing it 
 in that dull, dead-alive state, and in his disgust he 
 threw open the door to let it go free. He watched 
 it. Slowly the head turned, and slowly, slowly it 
 began to move towards the open door, and so 
 dragged itself out, then over the space of bare 
 ground towards the bushes and trees beyond. But 
 once well out in the open air its motions and 
 aspect began to change. The long, straightened- 
 out, dull-coloured, dragging body was smitten with 
 a sudden new life and became sinuous in form; 
 its slow motion grew swift, and from a dragging 
 became a gliding motion; the dangerous head 
 with its flickering tongue lifted itself high up, the 
 stony eyes shone, and all along the body the 
 scales sparkled like wind-crinkled water in the 
 sun: watching it, he was thrilled at the sight 
 and amazed at this wonderful change in its 
 appearance. 
 
 And that is how I, too, would have liked to see 
 the fer-de-lance in its dreadful beauty and power; 
 the cribo too, that gives it battle, and conquers 
 and devours it in spite of its poison fangs; also 
 its noble relations, the rattlesnakes and pit-vipers, 
 led by the Surucuru, the serpent monarch of the 
 
THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 189 
 
 West; and the constricting anacondas, with the 
 greatest of them all, the giant Camudi, " mother 
 of the waters " ; also the bull snake and the black 
 snake, and that brilliant deadly harlequin, the 
 coral snake. These all are in the New World, and 
 I should then go to the Old in quest of blue sea- 
 snakes and wonderful viridescent tree-snakes, and 
 many historic serpents — the ticpolonga, the hooded 
 cobras, and their king and slayer, the awful 
 hamadryad. 
 
 A beautiful dream all this, like that of the 
 poor little pale-faced quill-driver at his desk, 
 summing up columns of figures, who falls to think- 
 ing what his life would be with ten thousand a 
 year. All the thorny and stony and sandy wilder- 
 ness, the dark Amazonian and Arawhimi forests, 
 the mighty rivers to be ascended three thousand 
 miles from the sea to their source, the great moun- 
 tain-chains to be passed, Alps and Andes, and 
 Himalayas and the Mountains of the Moon, the 
 entire globe to be explored in quest of serpents, 
 from the hot tropical jungles and malarious marshes 
 to the desolate windy roof of the world — all would 
 have to be sought in the British Museum and one 
 or two other dim stuffy libraries, where a man sits 
 in a chair all day and all the year round with a 
 pile of books before him. 
 
 Alas I in such conditions, without the necessary 
 precious personal knowledge so much desired, " The 
 Book of the Serpent " would never be written. 
 So I said and repeated, yet still went on with the 
 
190 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 preliminary work, and after two or three years, 
 finding that so far as material went I had got 
 almost more than I could manage, I thought I 
 would begin to try my hand at writing a few 
 chapters, each dealing with some special aspect of 
 or question relating to the serpent, and about a 
 dozen were written, but left in the rough, unfinished, 
 as all would eventually have to go back into the 
 melting-pot once more. By and by I took up and 
 finished three or four of these tentative chapters 
 just to see how they would look in print; these 
 appeared in three or four monthly reviews and are 
 all that is left of my ambitious book. 
 
 It could not be done, because, as I tried to 
 make myself believe, it was too long a task for 
 one who had to make a living by writing, but a 
 still small voice told me that I was deceiving 
 myself, that if I had just gone on, slowly, slowly, 
 like the released fer-de-lance, until I had got out 
 into the open air and sunshine — until I had a full 
 mind and full command of my subject — I too 
 might have gone on to a triumphant end. No, it 
 was not because the task was too long; the secret 
 and real reason was a discouraging thought which 
 need not be given here, since it is stated in the 
 paper to follow. There's nothing more to say 
 about it except that I now make a present of the 
 title — " The Book of the Serpent " — to any person 
 who would like to use it, and I only ask that it 
 be not given to a handbook on snakes, nor to a 
 monograph — God deliver us! as Huxley said. Or 
 
THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 191 
 
 if he did not use that particular expression he 
 protested against the multiphcation of such works, 
 and even feared that we should all be buried alive 
 under them — the ponderous tomes which nobody 
 reads, elephantine bodies without souls; or shall 
 we say, carcasses, dressed and placed in their 
 canvas coverings on shelves in the cold storage of 
 the zoological libraries. 
 
 As to the paper which follows, it was never 
 intended to use it as it stands for the book. It is 
 nothing but a little exercise, and merely touches 
 the fringe of a subject for a great book — not an 
 anthology (Heaven save us I), but a history and 
 review of the literature of the serpent from Ruskin 
 back to Sanconiathon, and I now also generously 
 give away this title of " The Serpent in Literature." 
 
 When the snakists of the British Museum or 
 other biological workshop have quite done with 
 their snake, have pulled it out of its jar and popped 
 it in again to their hearts' content; weighed, 
 measured, counted ribs and scales, identified its 
 species, sub-species, and variety; and have duly 
 put it all down in a book, made a fresh label, 
 perhaps written a paper — when all is finished, 
 something remains to be said; something about 
 the snake; the creature that was not a spiral- 
 shaped, rigid, cylindrical piece of clay-coloured 
 gutta-percha, no longer capable of exciting strange 
 emotions in us — the unsightly dropped coil of a 
 spirit that was fiery and cold. Where shall that 
 
192 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 something be found? Not assuredly in the paper 
 the snakist has written, nor in the monographs and 
 Natural Histories; where then? — since in the 
 absence of the mysterious creature itself it might 
 be interesting to read it. 
 
 It is true that in spite of a great deal of bruising 
 by Christian heels the serpent still survives in this 
 country, although it can hardly be said to flourish. 
 Sometimes, walking by a hedge - side, a slight 
 rustling sound and movement of the grass betrays 
 the presence of the common or ring snake; then, 
 if chance favours and eyes are sharp, a glimpse may 
 be had of the shy creature, gliding with swift 
 sinuous motions out of harm's way. Or on the 
 dry open common one may all at once catch sight 
 of a strip of coppery-red or dull brown colour with 
 a curious black mark on it — an adder lying at ease 
 in the warm sunshine! Not sleeping, but awake; 
 a little startled at the muffled thunder of approach- 
 ing footfalls, with crackling of dead leaves and 
 sticks, as of a coming conflagration; then, per- 
 haps, the appearance of a shape, looming vast and 
 cloudlike on its dim circumscribed field of vision; 
 but at the same time lethargic, disinclined to move, 
 heavy with a meal it will never digest, or big with 
 young that, jarred with their parent, have some 
 vague sense of peril within the living prison from 
 which they will never issue. 
 
 Or a strange thing may be seen — a cluster of 
 hibernating adders, unearthed by workmen in the 
 winter time when engaged in quarrying stone or 
 
THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 193 
 
 grubbing up an old stump. Still more wonderful 
 it is to witness a knot or twined mass of adders, 
 not self -buried, semi-torpid, and of the temperature 
 of the cold ground, but hot-blooded in the hot sun, 
 active, hissing, swinging their tails. In a remote 
 corner of this island there exists an extensive boggy 
 heath where adders are still abundant, and grow 
 black as the stagnant rushy pools, and the slime 
 under the turf, which invites the foot with its 
 velvety appearance, but is dangerous to tread upon. 
 In this snaky heath-land, in the warm season, when 
 the frenzy takes them, twenty or thirty or more 
 adders are sometimes found twined together; they 
 are discovered perhaps by some solitary pedestrian, 
 cautiously picking his way, gun in hand, and the 
 sight amazes and sends a sharp electric shock 
 along his spinal cord. All at once he remembers 
 his gun and discharges it into the middle of the 
 living mass, to boast thereafter to the very end of 
 his life of how he killed a score of adders at one 
 shot. 
 
 To witness this strange thing, and experience the 
 peculiar sensation it gives, it is necessary to go far 
 and to spend much time in seeking and waiting and 
 watching. A bright spring morning in England no 
 longer *' craves wary walking," as in the days of 
 Elizabeth. Practically the serpent hardly exists 
 for us, so seldom do we see it, so completely has it 
 dropped out of our consciousness. But if we have 
 known the creature, at home or abroad, and wish 
 in reading to recover the impression of a sweet 
 
194 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 summer - hot Nature that invites our caresses, 
 always with a subtle serpent somewhere concealed 
 in the folds of her garments, we must go to litera- 
 ture rather than to science. The poet has the 
 secret, not the naturalist. A book or an article 
 about snakes moves us not at all — not in the way 
 we should like to be moved — because, to begin 
 with, there is too much of the snake in it. Nature 
 does not teem with snakes; furthermore, we are 
 not familiar with these creatures, and do not 
 handle and examine them as a game-dealer handles 
 dead rabbits. A rare and solitary being, the sharp 
 effect it produces on the mind is in a measure due 
 to its rarity — to its appearance being unexpected 
 — to surprise and the shortness of the time during 
 which it is visible. It is not seen distinctly as in 
 a museum or laboratory, dead on a table, but in 
 an atmosphere and surroundings that take some- 
 thing from and add something to it; seen at first 
 as a chance disposition of dead leaves or twigs or 
 pebbles on the ground — a handful of Nature's 
 mottled riff - raff blown or thrown fortuitously 
 together so as to form a peculiar pattern; all at 
 once, as by a flash, it is seen to be no dead leaves or 
 twigs or grass, but a living active coil, a serpent 
 lifting its flat arrowy head, vibrating a glistening 
 forked tongue, hissing with dangerous fury; and 
 in another moment it has vanished into the thicket, 
 and is nothing but a memory — merely a thread of 
 brilliant colour woven into the ever-changing vari- 
 coloured embroidery of Nature's mantle, seen 
 
THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 195 
 
 vividly for an instant, then changing to dull grey 
 and fading from sight. 
 
 It is because the poet does not see his subject 
 apart from its surroundings, deprived of its atmo- 
 sphere — a mere fragment of beggarly matter — does 
 not see it too well, with all the details which be- 
 come visible only after a minute and, therefore, 
 cold examination, but as a part of the picture, a 
 light that quivers and quickly passes, that we, 
 through him, are able to see it too, and to experi- 
 ence the old mysterious sensations, restored by his 
 magic touch. For the poet is emotional, and in a 
 few verses, even in one verse, in a single well- 
 chosen epithet, he can vividly recall a forgotten 
 picture to the mind and restore a lost emotion. 
 
 Matthew Arnold probably knew very little about 
 the serpent scientifically; but in his sohtary walks 
 and communions with Nature he, no doubt, became 
 acquainted with our two common ophidians, and 
 was familiar with the sight of the adder, bright and 
 glistening in its renewed garment, reposing peace- 
 fully in the spring sunshine; seeing it thus, the 
 strange remoteness and quietude of its silent life 
 probably moved him and sank deeply into his mind. 
 This is not the first and most common feeling 
 of the serpent - seer — the feeling which Matthew 
 Arnold himself describes in a ringing couplet: 
 
 Hast thou so rare a poison? — let me be 
 Keener to slay thee lest thou poison me. 
 
 When no such wildly improbable contingency is 
 feared as that the small drop of rare poison in the 
 
196 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 creature's tooth may presently be injected into the 
 beholder's veins to darken his life; when the fear 
 is slight and momentary, and passing away gives 
 place to other sensations, he is impressed by its 
 wonderful quietude, and is not for the moment 
 without the ancient belief in its everlastingness and 
 supernatural character; and, if curiosity be too 
 great, if the leaf-crackling and gravel-crunching 
 footsteps approach too near, to rouse and send it 
 into hiding, something of compunction is felt, as 
 if an indignity had been offered: 
 
 O thoughtless, why did I 
 Thu5 violate thy slumberous soHtude? 
 
 In those who have experienced such a feeling as 
 this at sight of the basking serpent it is most power- 
 fully recalled by his extremely beautiful " Cadmus 
 and Harmonia " : 
 
 Two bright and aged snakes, 
 Who once were Cadmus and Harmonia, 
 Bask in the glens, and on the warm sea-shore. 
 In breathless quiet after all their ills ; 
 Nor do they see their country, nor the place 
 Where the Sphinx lived among the frowning hills. 
 Nor the unhappy palace of their race. 
 Nor Thebes, nor the Ismenus any more. 
 
 There those two live far in the Illyrian brakes, 
 
 They had stayed long enough to see 
 
 In Thebes the billows of calamity 
 
 Over their own dear children rolled. 
 
 Curse upon curse, pang upon pang, 
 
 For years, they sitting helpless in their home, 
 
 A grey old man and woman. 
 
THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 197 
 
 Therefore they did not end their days 
 
 In sight of blood ; but were rapt, far away, 
 
 To where the west wind plays, 
 
 And murmurs of the Adriatic come 
 
 To those untrodden mountain lawns ; and there 
 
 Placed safely in changed forms, the pair 
 
 Wholly forget their first sad life, and home. 
 
 And all that Theban woe, and stray 
 
 Forever through the glens, placid and dumb. 
 
 How the immemorial fable — the vain and faded 
 imaginings of thousands of years ago — is freshened 
 into life by the poet's genius, and the heart stirred 
 as by a drama of the day we live in I But here we 
 are concerned with the serpentine nature rather 
 than with the human tragedy, and to those who 
 are familiar with the serpent, and have been pro- 
 foundly impressed by it, there is a rare beauty 
 and truth in that picture of its breathless quiet, its 
 endless placid dumb existence amid the flowery 
 brakes. 
 
 But the first and chief quality of the snake — 
 the sensation it excites in us — is its snakiness, our 
 best word for a feeling compounded of many 
 elements, not readily analysable, which has in it 
 something of fear and something of the sense of 
 mystery. I doubt if there exists in our literature, 
 verse or prose, anything that revives this feeling 
 so strongly as Dr. Gordon Hake's ballad of the 
 dying serpent-charmer. " The snake-charmer is a 
 bad naturalist," says Sir Joseph Fayrer, himself a 
 prince among ophiologists ; it may be so, and 
 prehaps he charms all the better for it, and it is 
 certainly not a lamentable thing, since it detracts 
 
198 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 not from the merit of the poem, that Dr. Hake is 
 a bad naturalist, even as Shakespeare and Brown- 
 ing and Tennyson were, and draws his snake badly, 
 with venomous stinging tongue, and flaming eyes 
 that fascinate at too great a distance. Fables 
 notwithstanding, he has with the poet's insight, 
 in a moment of rare inspiration, captured the very 
 illusive spirit of Nature, to make it pervade and 
 glorify his picture. The sunny, brilliant, declining 
 day, the joyous wild melody of birds, the low 
 whispering wind, the cool greenness of earth, 
 where 
 
 The pool is bright with glossy dyes 
 And cast-up bubbles of decay: 
 
 and everywhere, hidden in grass and brake, re- 
 leased at length from the spell that made them 
 powerless, coming ever nearer and nearer, yet as 
 though they came not, the subtle, silent, watchful 
 snakes. Strangely real and vivid is the picture 
 conjured up; the everlasting life and gladness at 
 the surface, the underlying mystery and melan- 
 choly — the failing power of the old man and 
 vanishing incantation; the tremendous retribution 
 of Nature, her ministers of vengeance ever imper- 
 ceptibly gliding nearer. 
 
 Yet where his soul is he must go, 
 
 albeit now only to be mocked on the scene of his 
 old beloved triumphs : 
 
 For all that live in brake and bough — 
 All know the brand is on his brow. 
 
THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 199 
 
 Even dying he cannot stay away; the fascina- 
 tion of the lost power is too strong on him; even 
 dying he rises and goes forth, creeping from tree to 
 tree, to the famihar sunht green spot of earth, 
 where 
 
 Bewildered at the pool he lies, 
 
 And sees as through a serpent's eyes ; 
 
 his tawny, trembling hand still fingering, his feeble 
 lips still quivering, on the useless flute. He cannot 
 draw the old potent music from it: 
 
 The witching air 
 That tamed the snake, decoyed the bird. 
 Worried the she-wolf from her lair. 
 
 It is all fantasy, a mere juggling arrangement 
 
 of brain-distorted fact and ancient fiction; the 
 
 essence of it has no existence in Nature and the 
 
 soul for the good naturalist, who dwells in a glass 
 
 house full of intense light without shadow; but 
 
 the naturalists are not a numerous people, and for 
 
 all others the effect is like that which Nature itself 
 
 produces on our twilight intellect. It is snaky in 
 
 the extreme; reading it we are actually there in 
 
 the bright smiling sunshine; ours is the failing 
 
 spirit of the worn-out old man, striving to drown 
 
 the hissing sounds of death in our ears, as of a 
 
 serpent that hisses. But the lost virtue cannot be 
 
 recovered; our eyes too 
 
 are swimming in a mist 
 That films the earth like serpent's breath; 
 
 and the shadows of the waving boughs on the 
 sward appear like hollow, cast-off coils rolled before 
 
200 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 the wind; fixed, lidless eyes are watching us from 
 the brake; everywhere about us serpents lie 
 matted on the ground. 
 
 If serpents were not so rare, so small, so elusive, 
 in our brakes we should no doubt have had other 
 poems as good as this about them and the strange 
 feelings they wake. As it is, the poet, although he 
 has the secret of seeing rightly, is in most cases 
 compelled to write (or sing) of something he does 
 not know personally. He cannot go to the wilds 
 of Guiana for the bush-master, nor to the Far 
 East in search of the hamadryad. Even the poor 
 little native adder as a rule succeeds in escaping 
 his observation. He must go to books for his 
 ness. He is dependent on the natural historians, 
 serpent or else evolve it out of his inner conscious- 
 from Pliny onwards, or to the writer of fairy-tales: 
 a Countess d'Aulnoy, for example, or Meredith, 
 in The Shaving of Shagpat, or Keats his Lamia, 
 an amazing creature, bright and cirque-couchant, 
 vermilion-spotted and yellow and green and blue; 
 also striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard, eyed 
 like a peacock, and barred with crimson and full 
 of silver moons. Lamia may be beautiful and 
 may please the fancy with her many brilliant 
 colours, her moons, stars, and what not, and 
 she may even move us with a sense of the super- 
 natural, but it is not the same kind of feeling 
 as that experienced when we see a serpent. That 
 comes of the mythical faculty in us, and the poet 
 who would reproduce it must himself go to the 
 
THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 201 
 
 serpent, even as the Druids did for their sacred 
 nadder-stone. 
 
 In prose literature the best presentation of 
 serpent life known to me is that of Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes: and being the best, in fiction at all 
 events, I am tempted to write of it at some 
 length. 
 
 Now, very curiously, although, as we have just 
 seen, the incorrect drawing takes nothing from 
 the charm and, in one sense, from the truth of 
 Dr. Hake's picture, we no sooner turn to Elsie 
 Tenner than we find ourselves crossing over to 
 the side of the good naturalist, with apologies for 
 having insulted him, to ask the loan of his fierce 
 light — for this occasion only. Ordinarily in con- 
 sidering an excellent romance, we are rightly 
 careless about the small inaccuracies with regard 
 to matters of fact which may appear in it; for the 
 writer who is able to produce a work of art must 
 not and cannot be a specialist or a microscopist, 
 but one who views Nature as the ordinary man 
 does, at a distance and as a whole, with the vision 
 common to all men, and the artist's insight added. 
 Dr. Holmes's work is an exception; since it is a 
 work of art of some excellence, yet cannot be read 
 in this tolerant spirit; we distinctly refuse to 
 overlook its distortions of fact and false inferences 
 in the province of zoology; and the author has 
 only himself to blame for this uncomfortable 
 temper of mind in his reader. 
 
 The story of the New England serpent-girl is 
 
202 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 in its essence a romance; the author thought 
 proper to cast it in the form -of a reahstic novel, 
 and to make the teller of the story a clear-headed, 
 calm, critical onlooker of mature age, one of the 
 highest attainments in biological science who is 
 nothing if not philosophical. 
 
 How strange that this superior person should 
 select and greatly exaggerate for the purposes of 
 his narrative one of the stupid prejudices and 
 superstitions of the vulgar he is supposed to 
 despise! Like the vulgar who are without light 
 he hates a snake, and it is to him, as to the meanest 
 peasant, typical of the spirit of evil and a thing 
 accurst. This unphilosophical temper (the super- 
 stitious belief in the serpent's enmity to man), 
 with perhaps too great a love of the picturesque, 
 have inspired some of the passages in the book 
 which make the snakist smile. Let me quote one, 
 in which the hero's encounter with a huge Crotalus 
 in a mountain cave is described. 
 
 His look was met by the glitter of two diamond eyes, 
 small, sharp, cold, shining out of the darkness, but ghding 
 with a smooth and steady motion towards the light, and 
 himself. He stood fixed, struck dumb, staring back into 
 them with dilating pupils and sudden numbness of fear 
 that cannot move, as in a terror of dreams. The two 
 sparks of fire came forward until they grew to circles of 
 flame, and all at once lifted themselves up in angry sur- 
 prise. Then for the first time trilled in Mr. Barnard's ears 
 the dreadful sound which nothing that breathes, be it 
 man or brute, can hear unmoved — the loud, long stinging 
 whir, as the huge thick-bodied reptile shook his many- 
 jointed rattle, and adjusted his loops for the fatal stroke. 
 
THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 203 
 
 His eyes were drawn as with magnets towards the circle 
 of flame. His ears rung as in the overture to the swooning 
 dream of chloroform. 
 
 And so on, until Elsie appears on the scene and 
 rescues the too easily fascinated schoolmaster. 
 
 The writing is fine, but to admire it one must 
 be unconscious of its exaggeration; or, in other 
 words, ignorant of the serpent as it is in Nature. 
 Even worse than the exaggerations are the half- 
 poetic, half-scientific tirades against the creature's 
 ugliness and malignity. 
 
 It was surely one of destiny's strange pranks to 
 bestow such a subject on the " Autocrat of the 
 Breakfast Table," and, it may be added, to put it 
 in him to treat it from the scientific standpoint. 
 I cannot but wish that this conception had been 
 Hawthorne's; for though Hawthorne wrote no 
 verse, he had in large measure the poetic spirit 
 to which such a subject appeals most powerfully. 
 Possibly it would have inspired him to something 
 beyond his greatest achievement. Certainly not 
 in The Scarlet Letter, The Home of the Seven 
 Gables, nor in any of his numerous shorter tales 
 did he possess a theme so admirably suited to 
 his sombre and beautiful genius as the tragedy 
 of Elsie Venner. Furthermore, the exaggerations 
 and inaccuracies which are unpardonable in Holmes 
 would not have appeared as blemishes in Haw- 
 thorne; for he would have viewed the animal 
 world and the peculiar facts of the case — the 
 intervolved human and serpentine nature of the 
 
204 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 heroine — from the standpoint of the ordinary man 
 who is not an ophiologist; the true and the false 
 about the serpent would have been blended in his 
 tale as they exist blended in the popular imagina- 
 tion, and the illusion would have been more perfect 
 and the effect greater. 
 
 Elsie's biographer appears to have found his 
 stock of materials bearing on the main point too 
 slender for his purpose, and to fill out his work he 
 is obliged to be very discursive. Meanwhile, the 
 reader's interest in the chief figure is so intense 
 that in following it the best breakfast-table talk 
 comes in as a mere impertinence. There is no 
 other interest; among the other personages of the 
 story Elsie appears like a living palpitating being 
 among shadows. One finds it difiicult to recall the 
 names of the scholarly father in his library; the 
 good hero and his lady-love; the pale school- 
 mistress, and the melodramatic villain on his 
 black horse, to say nothing of the vulgar villagers 
 and the farmer, some of them supposed to be 
 comic. If we except the rattlesnake mountain, 
 and the old nurse with her arjimal-like affection 
 and fidelity, there is no atmosphere, or, if an 
 atmosphere, one which is certainly wrong and 
 produces a sense of incongruity. A better artist 
 — Hawthorne, to wit — would have used the painful 
 mystery of Elsie's life, and the vague sense of some 
 nameless impending horror, not merely to put 
 sombre patches here and there on an otherwise 
 sunny landscape, but to give a tone to the whole 
 
THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 205 
 
 picture, and the effect would have been more 
 harmonious. This inabihty of the author to mix 
 and shade his colours shows itself in the passages 
 descriptive of Elsie herself; he insists a great deal 
 too much on her ophidian, or crotaline, character- 
 itics — her stillness and silence and sinuous motions; 
 her bizarre taste in barred gowns; her drowsy- 
 condition in cold weather, with intensity of life 
 and activity during the solstitial heats — even 
 her dangerous impulse to strike with her teeth 
 when angered. These traits require to be touched 
 upon very lightly indeed; as it is, the pro- 
 found pity and love, with a mixture of horror 
 which was the effect sought, come too near 
 to repulsion. While on this point it may be 
 mentioned that the author frequently speaks of 
 the slight sibilation in Elsie's speech — a strange 
 blunder for the man of science to fall into, since 
 he does not make Elsie like any snake, or like 
 snakes in general, but like the Crotaliis durissus 
 only, the New England rattlesnake, which does not 
 hiss, like some other venomous serpents that are 
 not provided with an instrument of sound in 
 their tails. 
 
 After all is said, the conception of Elsie Venner 
 is one so unique and wonderful, and so greatly 
 moves our admiration and pity with her strange 
 beauty, her inarticulate passion, her unspeakably 
 sad destiny, that in spite of many and most serious 
 faults the book must ever remain a classic in our 
 literature, among romances a gem that has not its 
 
206 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 like, perennial in interest as Nature itself, and 
 Nature's serpent. 
 
 If it had only been left for ever unfinished, or 
 had ended differently! For it is impossible for 
 one w'ho admires it to pardon the pitifully common- 
 place and untrue denouement. Never having read 
 a review of the book I do not know what the 
 professional critic or the fictionist would say on 
 this point; he might say that the story could not 
 properly have ended differently; that, from an 
 artistic point of view, it was necessary that the 
 girl should be made to outgrow the malign influence 
 which she had so strangely inherited; that this 
 was rightly brought about by making her fall in 
 love with the good and handsome young school- 
 master — the effect of the love, or " dull ache of 
 passion," being so great as to deliver and kill her 
 at the same time. 
 
 If the interest of the story had all been in the 
 dull and pious villagers, their loves and marriages 
 and trivial affairs, then it would have seemed right 
 that Elsie, who made them all so uncomfortable, 
 should be sent from the village, which was no 
 place for her, to Heaven by the shortest and most 
 convenient route. Miserably weak is that dying 
 scene with its pretty conventional pathos; the 
 ending somewhat after the fashion set by Fouque, 
 which so many have followed since his time — the 
 childish " Now-I-have-got-a-soul " transformation 
 scene with which Fouque himself spoilt one of the 
 most beautiful things ever written. The end is not 
 
THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 207 
 
 in harmony with the conception of Elsie, of a being 
 in whom the human and serpentine natures were 
 indissolubly joined; and no accident, not assuredly 
 that " dull ache of passion," could have killed the 
 one without destroying the other. 
 
 The author was himself conscious of the in- 
 adequacy of the reason he gave for the change 
 and deliverance. He no doubt asked himself the 
 following question : " Will the reader believe that 
 a fit of dumb passion, however intense, was sufficient 
 to cause one of Elsie's splendid physique and 
 vitality to droop and wither into the grave like 
 any frail consumptive schoolgirl who loves and 
 whose love is not requited?" He recognises and 
 is led to apologise for its weakness; and, finally, 
 still unsatisfied, advances an alternative theory, 
 which is subtle and physiological — a sop thrown to 
 those among his readers who, unlike the proverbial 
 ass engaged in chewing hay, meditate on what they 
 are taking in. The alternative theory is, that an 
 animal's life is of short duration compared with 
 man's; that the serpent in Elsie, having arrived at 
 the end of its natural term, died out of the human 
 life with which it had been intervolved, leaving her 
 still in the flower of youth and wholly human; 
 but that this decay and death in her affected her 
 with so great a shock that her own death followed 
 immediately on her deliverance. 
 
 If the first explanation was weak the second will 
 not bear looking at. Some animals have compara- 
 tively short lives, as, for instance, the earthworm. 
 
208 THE BOOK OF A NATUKALIST 
 
 canary, dog, mouse, etc.; but the serpent is not of 
 them; on the contrary, the not too numerous facts 
 we possess which relate to the comparative longevity 
 of animals give support to the universal belief that 
 the reptilians — tortoise, lizard, and serpent — are 
 extremely long-lived. 
 
 Now this fact — namely, that science and 
 popular belief are at one in the matter — might very 
 well have suggested to the author a more suitable 
 ending to the story of Elsie than the one he made 
 choice of. I will even be so venturesome as to say 
 what that ending should be. Let us imagine the 
 girl capable of love, even of " a dull ache of passion," 
 doomed by the serpent-nature in her, which was 
 physical if anything, to a prolonged existence, 
 serpent-hke in its changes, waxing and waning, 
 imperceptibly becoming dim as with age in the 
 wintry season, only to recover the old brilliant 
 beauty and receive an access of strength in each 
 recurring spring. Let us imagine that the fame of 
 one so strange in life and history and of so excellent 
 an appearance was bruited far and wide, that many 
 a man who sought her village merely to gratify an 
 idle curiosity loved and remained to woo, but 
 feared at the last and left her with a wound in his 
 heart. Finally, let us imagine that as her relatives 
 and friends, and all who had known her intimately, 
 stricken with years and worn with grief, faded one 
 by one into the tomb, she grew more lonely and 
 apart from her fellow-creatures, less human in her 
 life and pursuits; joy and sorrow and all human 
 
THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 209 
 
 failings touching her only in a faint vague way, like 
 the memories of her childhood, of her lost kindred, 
 and of her passion. And after long years, during 
 which she has been a wonder and mystery to the 
 villagers, on one of her solitary rambles on the 
 mountain occurs the catastrophe which the author 
 has described — the fall of the huge overhanging 
 ledge of rock under which the serpent brood had 
 their shelter — burying her for ever with her ophidian 
 relations, and thus bringing to an end the strange 
 story of " Elsie Vernier Infelix." 
 
XVIII 
 
 WASPS 
 
 One rough day in early autumn I paused in my 
 walk in a Surrey orchard to watch a curious scene 
 in insect life — a pretty little insect comedy I 
 might have called it had it not brought back to 
 remembrance old days when my mind was clouded 
 with doubts, and the ways of certain insects, 
 especially of wasps, were much in my thoughts. 
 For we live through and forget many a tempest 
 that shakes us; but long afterwards a very little 
 thing — the scent of a flower, the cry of a wild 
 bird, even the sight of an insect — may serve to 
 bring it vividly back and to revive a feehng that 
 seemed dead and gone. 
 
 In the orchard there was an old pear-tree which 
 produced very large late pears, and among the 
 fruit the September wind had shaken down that 
 morning there was one over-ripe in which the 
 wasps had eaten a deep cup-shaped cavity. Inside 
 the cavity six or seven wasps were revelling in the 
 sweet juice, lying flat and motionless, crowded 
 together. Outside the cavity, on the pear, thirty or 
 forty blue-bottle flies had congregated, and were 
 
 210 
 
WASPS 211 
 
 hungry for the juice, but apparently afraid to 
 begin feeding on it; they were standing round in 
 a compact crowd, the hindmost pressing on and 
 crowding over the others: but still, despite the 
 pressure, the foremost row of flies refused to 
 advance beyond the rim of the eaten-out part. 
 From time to time one of a more venturesome 
 spirit would put out his proboscis and begin 
 sucking at the edge; the slight tentative move- 
 ment would instantly be detected by a wasp, and 
 he would turn quickly round to face the presump- 
 tuous fly, lifting his wnigs in a threatening manner, 
 and the fly would take his proboscis off the rim of 
 the cup. Occasionally hunger would overcome 
 their fear; a general movement of the flies would 
 take place, and several would begin sucking at the 
 same time; then the wasp, seeming to think that 
 more than a mere menacing look or gesture was 
 required in such a case, would start up with an 
 angrj^ buzz, and away the whole crowd of flies 
 would go to whirl round and round in a little blue 
 cloud with a loud, excited hum, only to settle 
 again in a few moments on the big yellow pear 
 and begin crowding round the pit as before. 
 
 Never once during the time I spent observing 
 them did the guardian wasp relax his vigilance. 
 When he put his head down to suck with the others 
 his eyes still appeared able to reflect every move- 
 ment in the surrounding crowd of flies into his 
 little spiteful brain. They could crawl round and 
 crawl round as much as they liked on the very 
 
212 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 rim, but let one begin to suck and he was up in 
 arms in a moment. 
 
 The question that occurred to me was: How 
 much of all this behaviour could be set down to 
 instinct and how much to intelhgence and temper? 
 The wasp certainly has a waspish disposition, a 
 quick resentment, and is most spiteful and tyran- 
 nical towards other inoffensive insects. He is a 
 slayer and devourer of them, too, as well as a 
 feeder with them on nectar and sweet juices; but 
 when he kills, and when the solitarj^ wasp paralyses 
 spiders, caterpillars, and various insects and stores 
 them in cells to provide a horrid food for the 
 grubs which will eventually hatch from the still 
 undeposited eggs, the wasp then acts automatically, 
 or by instinct, and is driven, as it were, by an 
 extraneous force. In a case hke the one of the 
 wasp's behaviour on the pear, and in innumerable 
 other cases which one may read of or see for him- 
 self, there appears to be a good deal of the element 
 of mind. Doubtless it exists in all insects, but 
 differs in degree; and some Orders appear to be 
 more intelligent than others. Thus, any person 
 accustomed to watch insects closely and note 
 their little acts would probably say that there is 
 less mind in the beetles and more in the Hymen- 
 optera than in other insects; also that in the last- 
 named Order the wasps rank highest. 
 
 The scene in the orchard also served to remind 
 me of a host of wasps, greatly varying in size, 
 colour, and habits, although in their tyrannical 
 
WASPS 213 
 
 temper very much alike, which I had been accus- 
 tomed to observe in boyhood and youth in a 
 distant region. They attracted me more, perhaps, 
 than any other insects on account of their singular 
 and brilliant coloration and their formidable char- 
 acter. They were beautiful but painful creatures; 
 the pain they caused me was first bodily, when I 
 interfered in their concerns or handled them care- 
 lessly, and was soon over; later it was mental and 
 more enduring. 
 
 To the very young colour is undoubtedly the 
 most attractive quality in nature, and these insects 
 were enamelled in colours that made them the 
 rivals of butterflies and shining metallic beetles. 
 There were wasps with black and yellow rings and 
 with black and scarlet rings; wasps of a uniform 
 golden brown; others like our demoiselle dragon- 
 fly that looked as if fresh from a bath of splendid 
 metalhc blue; others with steel-blue bodies and 
 bright red wings; others with crimson bodies, 
 yellow head and legs, and bright blue wings; others 
 black and gold, with pink head and legs; and so 
 on through scores and hundreds of species " as 
 Nature list to play with her little ones," until one 
 marvelled at so great a variety, so many singular 
 and beautiful contrasts, produced by half-a-dozen 
 brilliant colours. 
 
 It was when I began to find out the ways of 
 wasps with other insects on which they nourish 
 their young that my pleasure in them became 
 mixed with pain. For they did not, like spiders, 
 
214 THE BOOK OV A NATURALIST 
 
 ants, dragon-flies, tiger-beetles, and other rapacious 
 kinds, kill their prey at once, but paralysed it by 
 stinging its nerve centres to make it incapable of 
 resistance, and stored it in a closed cell, so that the 
 grub to be hatched by and by should have fresh 
 meat to feed on — not fresh-killed but live meat. 
 
 Thus the old vexed question — How reconcile 
 these facts with the idea of a beneficent Being who 
 designed it all — did not come to me from reading, 
 nor from teachers, since I had none, but was thrust 
 upon me by nature itself. In spite, however, of its 
 having come in that sharp way, I, like many another, 
 succeeded in putting the painful question from me 
 and keeping to the old traditions. The noise of the 
 battle of Evolution, which had been going on for 
 years, hardly reached me; it was but a faintly 
 heard murmur, as of storms immeasurably far away 
 " on alien shores." This could not last. 
 
 One day an elder brother, on his return from 
 travel in distant lands, put a copy of the famous 
 Origin of Species in my hands and advised me to 
 read it. When I had done so, he asked me what I 
 thought of it. "It's false!" I exclaimed in a 
 passion, and he laughed, little knowing how import- 
 ant a matter this was to me, and told me I could 
 have the book if I liked. I took it without thanks 
 and read it again and thought a good deal about it, 
 and was nevertheless able to resist its teachings 
 for years, solely because I could not endure to part 
 with a philosophy of life, if I may so describe it, 
 which could not logically be held, if Darwin was 
 
WASPS 215 
 
 right, and without which life would not be worth 
 having. So I thought at the time; it is a most 
 common delusion of the human mind, for we see 
 that the good which is so much to us is taken 
 forcibly away, and that we get over our loss and 
 go on very much as before. 
 
 It is curious to see now that Darwin himself 
 gave the first comfort to those who, convinced 
 against their will, were anxious to discover some 
 way of escape which would not involve the total 
 abandonment of their cherished beliefs. At all 
 events, he suggested the idea, which religious minds 
 were quick to seize upon, that the new explanation 
 of the origin of the innumerable forms of life which 
 people the earth from one or a few primordial 
 organisms afforded us a nobler conception of the 
 creative mind than the traditional one. It does not 
 bear examination, probably it originated in the 
 author's kindly and compassionate feelings rather 
 than in his reasoning faculties; but it gave tem- 
 porary rehef and served its purpose. Indeed, to 
 some, to very many perhaps, it still serves as a 
 refuge — this poor, hastily made straw shelter, which 
 lets in the rain and wind, but seems better to them 
 than no shelter at all. 
 
 But of the intentionally consoling passages in 
 the book, the most impressive to me was that in 
 which he refers to instincts and adaptation such 
 as those of the wasp, which writers on natural 
 history subjects are accustomed to describe, in a 
 way that seems quite just and natural, as diabolical 
 
216 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 That, for example, of the young cuckoo ejecting 
 its foster-brothers from the nest; of slave-making 
 ants, and of the larvae of the Ichneumonidae feeding 
 on the live tissues of the caterpillars in whose bodies 
 they have been hatched. He said that it was not 
 perhaps a logical conclusion, but it seemed to him 
 more satisfactory to regard such things " not as 
 specially endowed or created instincts, but as small 
 consequences of one general law" — the law of 
 variation and the survival of the fittest. 
 
XIX 
 
 BEAUTIFUL HAWK-MOTHS 
 
 In the late summer I often walk by flowery places 
 of an evening, or at some late hours by moonlight, 
 in the hope of seeing that rare night-wanderer, the 
 death's-head moth; but the hope is now an old 
 one, so worn and faded that it is hardly more than 
 the memory of a hope. Why, I have asked myself 
 times without number, am I so luckless in my 
 quest of an insect which is not only a large object 
 to catch the eye but has a voice, or sound, as well 
 to attract a seeker's attention? On consulting 
 others on this point, some of them lepidopterists 
 and diligent collectors, they have assured me that 
 they have never once had a glimpse of the living 
 free Acherontia atropas going about on his flowery 
 business. 
 
 A few years ago, while on a ramble in a southern 
 county, I heard of a gentleman in the neighbour- 
 hood who had a taste for adders and death's-head 
 moths and was accustomed to collect and keep 
 them in considerable numbers in his house. My 
 own partiality for adders induced me to call on 
 him, and we exchanged experiences and had some 
 ai7 
 
218 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 pleasant talk about these shy, beautiful and (to 
 us) harmless creatures. I am speaking of adders 
 now; I had not yet heard of his predilection for 
 the great moth; when he spoke of this second 
 favourite I begged him to show me a specimen or 
 two. Turning to his wife, who was present and 
 shared his queer tastes, he told her to go and get 
 me some. She left the room, and returned by and 
 by with a large cardboard box, such as milliners 
 and dressmakers use; removing the lid, she raised 
 it above my head and emptied the contents over 
 me — a shower of living, shivering, fluttering, 
 squeaking or creaking death's-head moths! In a 
 moment they were all over me, from my head 
 right down to my feet, not attempting to fly, but 
 running, quivering, and shaldng their wings, so that 
 I had a bath and feast of them. 
 
 At that moment it mattered not that I was a 
 stranger there, in the library or study of a country 
 house, with those two looking on and laughing at 
 my plight. It is what we feel that matters: I 
 might have been standing in some wilderness never 
 trodden by human foot, myself an unhuman solitary, 
 and merely by willing it I had drawn those beautiful 
 beings of the dark to me, charming them as with 
 a flowery fragrance from their secret hiding-places 
 in a dim world of leaves to gather upon and cover 
 me over with their downy, trembling, mottled grey 
 and rich yellow velvet wings. 
 
 Even this fascinating experience did not wholly 
 satisfy me: nothing, I said, would satisfy me short 
 
BEAUTIFUL HAWK - MOTHS 219 
 
 of seeing the undomesticated moth living his proper 
 life in the open air. He smiled and shook his head. 
 Useless to look for such a thing! He had never 
 seen it and didn't believe that I ever would; he 
 couldn't say why. He got his moths by paying 
 sixpence apiece for the chrysahds to workmen in 
 the potato fields and rearing them himself; in 
 this way he obtained as many as he wanted — sixty 
 or seventy or eighty every year. 
 
 I can only hope that time will prove him wrong, 
 and I go on as before haunting the flowery places 
 in the last light of day and when the moon shines. 
 
 Another surprisingly beautiful moth which, they 
 say, is as rarely seen as the Acherontia is the crimson 
 underwing. Once only have I been able to observe 
 this lovely moth flying about — and it was in a 
 room! I was staying with friends at the Anglers' 
 Inn at Bransbury on the Test when one evening 
 after the lamps were lit the moth appeared in our 
 sitting-room and remained two days and nights 
 with us in spite of our kind persecutions and artful 
 plans for his expulsion. It was early September, 
 with mild sunny days and misty or wet nights, and 
 in the evening, when the room was very warm, we 
 would throw the windows and doors open, thinking 
 of the delicious relief it would be for our prisoner 
 to pass out of that superheated atmosphere, that 
 painful brightness, into his own wide, wet world, 
 its darkness and silence and fragrance, and a 
 mysterious signal wafted to him from a distance 
 out of clouds of whispering leaves, from one there 
 
220 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 waiting for him. Then with fans and hats and 
 folded newspapers we would try to fan him out, 
 but it only made him wild — wild as a newly caught 
 linnet in a cage; he would dart hither and thither 
 about the room, now among us, now over our 
 heads, still refusing to go out. We didn't want 
 him to go, so that after religiously doing our best 
 for him we were pleased to have him stay. We 
 even tried to make him happy as our guest by 
 offering him honey and golden-syrup and placing 
 flowers in vases all about the room, but he would 
 accept nothing from us. 
 
 At rest on a wall or curtain he appeared as a 
 grey triangular patch, ornamented, when viewed 
 closely, with mottlings of a dusky hue; but on 
 lifting his fore-wings, the lovely crimson colour of 
 the underwings was displayed. No crimson flower, 
 no sea-shell, no sunset cloud, can show a hue to 
 compare in loveliness with it. Another hidden 
 beauty was revealed when the lamps were lighted 
 to start him flying up and down the room over our 
 heads, always keeping close to the low ceiling. He 
 then had a surprisingly bird-like appearance, and 
 the under-surface of the bird-shaped body being 
 pure white and downy he was like a miniature 
 martin with crimson on the wings. He was then at 
 his best, our "elf-darling"; no one dared touch him 
 even with a finger-tip lest that exquisitely delicate 
 down should be injured. I have frequently had 
 humming-birds blunder into a room where I sat and 
 fly round seeking an exit, but never one of these. 
 
BEAUTIFUL HAWK - MOTHS 221 
 
 for all the glittering scale-like feathers, seemed so 
 perfectly beautiful as our dark crimson underwing. 
 
 On the third evening, to our regret, we succeeded 
 in getting him to fly out. 
 
 Now, we asked, what had the books - about- 
 moths-makers to tell us concerning this particular 
 elf -darling? I proceeded to get out my work on 
 Butterflies and Moths — one recently published. 
 It gave a description of the insect — colour and 
 measurements; then, under the heading of "general 
 remarks," came the following: " This moth will 
 never be seen, but by judicious sugaring as many 
 as half-a-dozen specimens may be obtained in a 
 single night." That was all I It was a shock to 
 us, and we wondered whether any of oiu* naturalists 
 had tried the plan of " judicious sugaring " to 
 obtain a few specimens of that rarer, more elusive 
 creature, the fairy, before its final extinction in 
 Britain. 
 
 The memory of those two evenings with a 
 crimson underwing brings to mind just now yet 
 another enchanting evening I spent in the valley 
 of the Wiltshire Avon. It was June, just before 
 hay-cutting, and for most of the time, until the 
 last faint underglow had faded and the stars were 
 out, I was standing motionless, knee-deep in the 
 plumy seeded grasses, watching the ghost-moths, 
 as I had never seen them before, in scores and in 
 hundreds, dimly visible in their whiteness all over 
 the dusky meadow, engaged in their quaint, beauti- 
 ful, rhythmic love-dance. It was the wide silent 
 
222 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 night and the moths' strange motions and white- 
 ness in the dark that gave it a magic on that 
 occasion. Seen by daylight or lamplight it is Lord 
 de Tabley's " owl-white moth with mealy wings," 
 or one of them, and nothing more. 
 
 Moths are mostly haunters of the twilight and 
 the dark, but we have one of the larger and highly 
 distinguished species, the humming - bird hawk- 
 moth, which flies abroad by day, even during the 
 hottest seasons, and visits our gardens in the full 
 blaze of noon. It has no glory of colour like the 
 crimson underwing and death's-head moth, nor 
 ghostly white, yet it outshines all the others in 
 beauty and in the sense of wonder and delight its 
 appearance produces. Here I will quote part of a 
 letter written to me some years ago by a lady who 
 wanted to know if I could identify an insect she 
 was particularly interested in, from her description. 
 She had seen it when a child in the garden at her 
 early home in Wiltshire, and never since, nor had 
 she ever discovered what it was. 
 
 " When I was a child," the letter says, " I had 
 a great fancy for a rare, strange, fascinating insect 
 called by the children of my day the Merrylee- 
 dance-a-pole. Only on the hottest and longest of 
 summer days did the radiant being delight our 
 eyes; to have seen it conferred high honour and 
 distinction on the fortunate beholder. We re- 
 garded it with mingled awe and joy, and followed 
 its erratic and rapid flight with ecstasy. It was 
 soft and warm and brown, fluffy and golden, too, 
 
BEAUTIFUL HAWK - MOTHS 223 
 
 and created in our infantile minds an indescribable 
 impression of glory, brilliance, aloofness, elusive- 
 ness. We thought it a being from some other 
 world, and dui'ing each of its frequent sudden 
 disappearances among the flowering bushes we 
 held our breath, fearing it would return no more, 
 but had flown right through the blossoming screen 
 and back to the sun and stars. To me it was an 
 apparition of inexpressible delight, and I longed 
 to be a Merrylee-dance-a-pole myself to fly to 
 unheard-of, unthought-of, undreamed-of beautiful^ 
 flowery lands." 
 
 A descriptive passage this by one who is not 
 a literary person, a student of expression anxiously 
 seeking after the " explicit word," yet an expres- 
 sion rare and beautiful as the thing described: one 
 reads it with a quickened pulse.' Who should 
 dream of finding its like anywhere in the thousand 
 books of British Butterflies and Moths which our 
 exceedingly industrious lepidopterists have pro- 
 duced during the last six or seven decades? Yet 
 these same thousand volumes were written less for 
 the scientific student of entomology than for the 
 general reader, or for every person who on seeing 
 a white admiral or a privet moth wants to know 
 what it is and goes to a book to find out all about 
 it. These writers all fail in the very thing which 
 one would imagine to be most important in books 
 intended for such a purpose — the power to convey 
 to the reader's mind a vivid image of the thing 
 described. One would like to know what the 
 
224 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 professional entomologist or wi'iter of books about 
 moths would say of the passage I have quoted 
 from a letter asking for information about an 
 insect. Probably he would say that the lady wrote 
 more from the heart than the head, that writing 
 so she is rhapsodical and as inaccurate as one 
 would expect her to be, although one is able to 
 identify her Merrylee-dance-a-pole as the Macro- 
 glossa stellatarzmi. 
 
 It would be perfectly true — she is inaccurate, 
 yet succeeds in producing the effect aimed at 
 while the accurate writers fail. She succeeds 
 because she saw the object as a child, emotionally, 
 and after thirty years was still able to recover the 
 precise feeling experienced then and to convey to 
 another the image in her mind. We may say that 
 impressions are vivid and live vividly in the mind, 
 even to the end of life, in those alone in whom 
 something that is of the child survives in the 
 adult — the measureless delight in all this visible 
 world, experienced every day by the millions of 
 children happily born outside the city's gates, but 
 so rarely expressed in literature, as Traherne, let 
 us say, expressed it; and, with the delight, the 
 sense of wonder in all life, which is akin to, if not 
 one with, the mythical faculty, and if experienced 
 in a high degree is a sense of the supernatural in all 
 natural things. We may say, in fact, that unless 
 the soul goes out to meet what we see we do not see 
 it; nothing do we see, not a beetle, not a blade of 
 grass. 
 
XX 
 
 THE STRENUOUS MOLE 
 
 We read in the books of the astounding strength 
 and energy of this creature that " swims in the 
 earth," as they say, just as a diving auk, guillemot, 
 or puffin does in the water. The energy of a 
 squirrel that runs up a very tall tree-trunk, darts 
 along a far-reaching horizontal branch, flings him- 
 self from the end of it to the branch of another 
 tree, and is a hundred feet high and away before 
 you can finish speaking a sentence of twenty words, 
 is nothing to compare with the feats of the mole 
 underground. But, being out of sight, he is out 
 of mind, on which account his most remarkable 
 qualities are not properly appreciated. He is also 
 a small beast — no bigger than a lady's gloved 
 hand — consequently his strength, like that of the 
 beetle, does not matter to us. It would matter a 
 great deal if moles grew to the size of cows and 
 bulls. In or under London they would excavate 
 numberless tunnels which would serve as subways 
 for the foot-passengers and for the tubular rail- 
 ways. This would be an advantage, but as a set- 
 off they would, in throwing up their hiUs, cause a 
 
228 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 velvety-black back became visible, and made in 
 its setting of red and yellow leaves a prettily 
 coloured picture. Presently he disappeared, then 
 quickly rose again with more earth; but the 
 leaves evidently annoyed him, and to rid himself 
 of them he suddenly began agitating his body in 
 an astonishing way, for while the movement lasted 
 he looked like a black ball spinning round so rapidly 
 as to give it the misty appearance of a revolving 
 wheel or the wings of a hovering hawk-moth. 
 This swift motion on his part set the leaves flying, 
 and mole and dust and dancing leaves together 
 formed a little whirlwind or maelstrom. When 
 it was over the leaves settled again on the mound, 
 and twice again the extraordinary performance was 
 repeated, and the little animal being then almost 
 above the ground I foolishly put out my hand to 
 pick him up, and before I could properly grasp him 
 he was gone. 
 
 The spinning or revolving motion was an illusion 
 of the sight produced by the exceedingly rapid 
 motions of the skin while the animal was stationary, 
 and the deluding motions were effected by means 
 of what the anatomists call the " twitching muscle," 
 which is possessed in some degree by most, if not 
 by all, mammalians. We see it every day in our 
 domestic animals, especially in the dog when he 
 shakes himself after a swim; and if he has shaggy 
 hair and it is full of water he throws it off so 
 violently that it fills the air with a dense spray 
 for several feet around him. He could not do this 
 
THE STRENUOUS MOLE 229 
 
 by merely shaking or rocking his whole body from 
 side to side; he does rock his body too, but at the 
 same time he gives the rapid vibratory motion to 
 the whole skin which discharges the wet. So it is 
 with the horse when he shakes off the wet or the 
 dust after rolling. 
 
 But in the horse the twitching power does not 
 extend, or is not uniformly powerful, over the 
 whole surface; it is feeble on the hind quarters, 
 and we can only suppose that in the horse, an^. 
 other large mammalians, the chief use of the 
 twitching act is to shake off dust, flies, and other 
 tormenting insects, and that the growth of the 
 hairy tail in the horse, used to switch insects off, 
 has made the twitching power less useful on this 
 portion of the body. In other words, when this 
 highly specialised tail had fully taken this office or 
 function on itself it caused the decay of the twitch- 
 ing muscle through disuse in those parts of his 
 body. 
 
 We see, too, that the muscle has its greatest 
 power in that part of the body which is just out 
 of reach of the tail, and is also more difficult for 
 the animal to reach with his mouth — that is to 
 say, his back over the shoulders. A man riding 
 bare-back can feel it powerfully when the horse 
 shakes himself. " It is like riding on an earth- 
 quake," I heard a man say once; to me, with no 
 experience of earthquakes, the sensation was like 
 that of an electric shock. 
 
 In man we can imagine the loss of the twitching 
 
230 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 power has had a twofold cause: first the hands, 
 which, hke the beak in birds, can reach to pretty 
 well any part of the body, and, secondly, the 
 custom of wearing clothes, which protect the skin 
 and make the twitching unnecessary. 
 
 The twitching power survives only in the face, 
 and is almost confined to the forehead: but even 
 there it is, with its slow up-and-down motion, a 
 poor faculty compared with the rapid shaking or 
 trembling motion other mammals are capable of, 
 which they are able to confine to the exact spot 
 on which an insect has alighted. In a few persons 
 the power extends over the scalp, and I have 
 heard of a man who could cause his hat to fall off, 
 not with shaking his head, but simply by working 
 the muscles of his forehead and scalp. Altogether, 
 we may say that the faculty is weakest in man — 
 that he is at one end of the pole, and the mole is 
 at the other. The mole exists in the earth, moving 
 in and covered with the dust he creates in digging, 
 and he no doubt frees himself from it by means of 
 his twitching muscle a hundred times a day. 
 
 That this wonderful muscle can do anything 
 more to increase his happiness I doubt, and this I 
 say, because it is told in the sacred writings of the 
 East that Buddha changed himself into a hare and 
 jumped into a fire to roast himself to provide a 
 meal for a hungry beggar, and that before jumping 
 in, he — Buddha as a hare — shook himself three 
 times so that none of the insects in his fur should 
 perish with him. 
 
THE STRENUOUS MOLE 231 
 
 I don't believe it! My Ockley mole has proved 
 to me that insect parasites cannot be got rid of in 
 that way. The hare's twitching muscle is not more 
 powerful than that of the generality of animals. I 
 have seen him make the water fly like a mist out 
 of his fur, but the dog can do it nearly as well. 
 In the mole the movement is more sustained and, 
 I imagine, more rapid, yet the fleas must be able 
 to keep their hold on him since we always find him 
 much infested by them. 
 
230 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 power has had a twofold cause: first the hands, 
 which, hke the beak in birds, can reach to pretty 
 well any part of the body, and, secondly, the 
 custom of wearing clothes, which protect the skin 
 and make the twitching unnecessary. 
 
 The twitching power survives only in the face, 
 and is almost confined to the forehead: but even 
 there it is, with its slow up-and-down motion, a 
 poor faculty compared with the rapid shaking or 
 trembling motion other mammals are capable of, 
 which they are able to confine to the exact spot 
 on which an insect has alighted. In a few persons 
 the power extends over the scalp, and I have 
 heard of a man who could cause his hat to fall off, 
 not with shaking his head, but simply by working 
 the muscles of his forehead and scalp. Altogether, 
 we may say that the faculty is weakest in man — 
 that he is at one end of the pole, and the mole is 
 at the other. The mole exists in the earth, moving 
 in and covered with the dust he creates in digging, 
 and he no doubt frees himself from it by means of 
 his twitching muscle a hundred times a day. 
 
 That this wonderful muscle can do anything 
 more to increase his happiness I doubt, and this I 
 say, because it is told in the sacred writings of the 
 East that Buddha changed himself into a hare and 
 jumped into a fire to roast himself to provide a 
 meal for a hungry beggar, and that before jumping 
 in, he — Buddha as a hare — shook himself three 
 times so that none of the insects in his fur should 
 perish with him. 
 
THE STRENUOUS MOLE 231 
 
 I don't believe it! My Gckley mole has proved 
 to me that insect parasites cannot be got rid of in 
 that way. The hare's twitching muscle is not more 
 powerful than that of the generality of animals. I 
 have seen him make the water fly like a mist out 
 of his fur, but the dog can do it nearly as well. 
 In the mole the movement is more sustained and, 
 I imagine, more rapid, yet the fleas must be able 
 to keep their hold on him since we always find him 
 much infested by them. 
 
XXI 
 
 A FRIENDLY RAT 
 
 Most of our animals, also many creeping things, 
 such as our " wilde wormes in woods," common 
 toads, natterjacks, newts, and lizards, and stranger 
 still, many insects, have been tamed and kept as 
 pets. 
 
 Badgers, otters, foxes, hares, and voles are 
 easily dealt with; but that any person should 
 desire to fondle so prickly a creature as a hedgehog, 
 or so diabolical a mammalian as the bloodthirsty, 
 flat-headed little weasel, seems very odd. Spiders, 
 too, are uncomfortable pets; you can't caress them 
 as you could a dormouse; the most you can do 
 is to provide your spider with a clear glass bottle to 
 live in, and teach him to come out in response to 
 a musical sound, drawn from a banjo or fiddle, 
 to take a fly from your fingers and go back again 
 to its bottle. 
 
 An acquaintance of the writer is partial to adders 
 as pets, and he handles them as freely as the 
 schoolboy does his innocuous ring-snake; Mr. 
 Benjamin Kidd once gave us a delightful account 
 of his pet humble-bees, who used to fly about his 
 232 
 
A FRIENDLY RAT 233 
 
 room, and come at call to be fed, and who mani- 
 fested an almost painful interest in his coat buttons, 
 examining them every day as if anxious to find out 
 their true significance. Then there was my old 
 friend, Miss Hopley, the writer on reptiles, who 
 died recently, aged 99 years, who tamed newts, 
 but whose favourite pet was a slow-worm. She 
 was never tired of expatiating on its lovable 
 qualities. One finds Viscount Grey's pet squirrels 
 more engaging, for these are wild squirrels in a 
 wood in Northumberland, who quickly find out 
 when he is at home and make their way to the 
 house, scale the walls, and invade the library; 
 then, jumping upon his writing-table, are rewarded 
 with nuts, which they take from his hand. Another 
 Northumbrian friend of the writer keeps, or 
 kept, a pet cormorant, and finds him no less greedy 
 in the domestic than in the wild state. After 
 catching and swallowing fish all the morning in a 
 neighbouring river, he wings his way home at 
 meal-times, screaming to be fed, and ready to 
 devour all the meat and pudding he can get. 
 
 The list of strange creatures might be extended 
 indefinitely, even fishes included; but who has 
 ever heard of a tame pet rat? Not the small 
 white, pink-eyed variety, artificially bred, which 
 one may buy at any dealer's, but a common brown 
 rat, Mus decumanus, one of the commonest wild 
 animals in England and certainly the most dis- 
 liked. Yet this wonder has been witnessed recently 
 in the village of Lelant, in West Cornwall. Here 
 
234 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 is the strange story, which is rather sad and at the 
 same time a little funny. 
 
 This was not a case of "wild nature won by 
 kindness " ; the rat simply thrust itself and its 
 friendship on the woman of the cottage: and she, 
 being childless and much alone in her kitchen and 
 living-room, was not displeased at its visits: on 
 the contrary, she fed it; in return the rat grew 
 more and more friendly and familiar towards her, 
 and the more familiar it grew, the more she liked 
 the rat. The trouble was, she possessed a cat, a 
 nice, gentle animal not often at home, but it was 
 dreadful to think of what might happen at any 
 moment should pussy walk in when her visitor 
 was with her. Then, one day, pussy did walk in 
 when the rat was present, purring loudly, her tail 
 held stiffly up, showing that she was in her usual 
 sweet temper. On catching sight of the rat, she 
 appeared to know intuitively that it was there as 
 a privileged guest, while the rat on its part seemed 
 to know, also by intuition, that it had nothing to 
 fear. At all events these two quickly became 
 friends and were evidently pleased to be together, 
 as they now spent most of the time in the room, 
 and would drink milk from the same saucer, and 
 sleep bunched up together, and were extremely 
 intimate. 
 
 By and by the rat began to busy herself making 
 a nest in a corner of the kitchen under a cupboard, 
 and it became evident that there would soon be 
 an increase in the rat population. She now spent 
 
A FRIENDLY RAT 235 
 
 her time running about and gathering little straws, 
 feathers, string, and anything of the kind she 
 could pick up, also stealing or begging for strips 
 of cotton, or bits of wool and thread from the 
 work - basket. Now it happened that her friend 
 was one of those cats with huge tufts of soft hair 
 on the two sides of her face; a cat of that type, 
 which is not uncommon, has a quaint resemblance 
 to a Mid- Victorian gentleman with a pair of mag- 
 nificent side-whiskers of a silky softness covering 
 both cheeks and flowing down like a double beard. 
 The rat suddenly discovered that this hair was 
 just what she wanted to add a cushion-hke lining 
 to her nest, so that her naked pink little ratlings 
 should be born into the softest of all possible 
 worlds. At once she started plucking out the 
 hairs, and the cat, taking it for a new kind of 
 game, but a little too rough to please her, tried 
 for a while to keep her head out of reach and to 
 throw the rat off. But she wouldn't be thrown 
 off, and as she persisted in flying back and jumping 
 at the cat's face and plucking the hairs, the cat 
 quite lost her temper and administered a blow with 
 her claws unsheathed. 
 
 The rat fled to her refuge to lick her wounds, 
 and was no doubt as much astonished at the 
 sudden change in her friend's disposition as the 
 cat had been at the rat's new way of showing her 
 playfulness. The result was that when, after 
 attending to her scratches, she started upon her 
 task of gathering soft materials, she left the cat 
 
236 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 severely alone. They were no longer friends; 
 they simply ignored one another's presence in the 
 room. The little ones, numbering about a dozen, 
 presently came to light and were quietly removed 
 by the woman's husband, who didn't mind his 
 missis keeping a rat, but drew the line at one. 
 
 The rat quickly recovered from her loss and 
 was the same nice affectionate little thing she had 
 always been to her mistress; then a fresh wonder 
 came to light — cat and rat were fast friends once 
 more! This happy state of things lasted a few 
 weeks; but, as we know, the rat was married, 
 though her lord and master never appeared on the 
 scene, indeed, he was not wanted; and very soon 
 it became plain to see that more little rats were 
 coming. The rat is an exceedingly prolific creature; 
 she can give a month's start to a rabbit and beat 
 her at the end by about 40 points. 
 
 Then came the building of the nest in the same 
 old corner, and when it got to the last stage and 
 the rat was busily running about in search of soft 
 materials for the lining, she once more made the 
 discovery that those beautiful tufts of hair on her 
 friend's face were just what she wanted, and once 
 more she set vigorously to work pulling the hairs 
 out. Again, as on the former occasion, the cat 
 tried to keep her friend off, hitting her right and 
 left with her soft pads, and spitting a little, just 
 to show that she didn't like it. But the rat was 
 determined to have the hairs, and the more she 
 was thrown off the more bent was she on getting 
 
A FRIENDLY RAT 237 
 
 them, until the breaking - point was reached and 
 puss, in a sudden rage, let fly, dealing blow after 
 blow with lightning rapidity and with all the claws 
 out. The rat, shrieking with pain and terror, rushed 
 out of the room and was never seen again, to the 
 lasting grief of her mistress. But its memory will 
 long remain like a fragrance in the cottage — perhaps 
 the only cottage in all this land where kindly 
 feelings for the rat are cherished. 
 
XXII 
 
 THE LITTLE RED DOG 
 
 Sauntering along a lane - like road between 
 Charterhouse Hinton and Woolverton, in the West 
 Country, I spied a small red dog trotting along 
 some distance behind me. He was in the middle 
 of the road, but seeing that he was observed he 
 sheered off to the other side, and when nearly 
 abreast of me paused suspiciously, sniffed the air 
 to get the exact smell, then made a dash past, and 
 after going about twenty or thirty yards full speed, 
 dropped once more into his travelling trot, to 
 vanish from sight at the next bend in the road. 
 
 Though alone, I laughed, for he was a very old 
 acquaintance of mine. I knew him well, although 
 he did not know me, and regarding me as a stranger 
 he very naturally associated my appearance with 
 that well-aimed stone or half-brick which had 
 doubtless registered an impression on his small 
 brain. I knew him because he is a common type, 
 widely distributed on the earth; I doubt if there 
 are many countries where you will not meet him 
 — a degenerate or dwarf variety of the universal 
 cur, smaller than a fox-terrier and shorter-legged; 
 
THE LITTLE RED DOG 239 
 
 the low stature, long body, small ears, and blunt 
 nose giving him a somewhat stoaty or even reptilian 
 appearance among the canines. His red colour is, 
 indeed, the commonest hue of the common dog, 
 or cur, wherever found. It is rarely a bright red, 
 like that of the Irish setter, or any pleasing shade 
 of red, as in the dingo, the fox, and the South 
 American maned wolf; it is dull, often inclining 
 to yellow, sometimes mixed with grey as in the 
 jackal, sometimes with a dash of ginger in it. The 
 unbeautiful yellowish-red is the prevailing hue of 
 the pariah dog. At all events that is the impression 
 one gets from the few of the numberless travellers 
 in the East who have condescended to tell us any- 
 thing about this low-down animal. 
 
 Where the cur or pariah flourishes, there you 
 are sure to find the small red dog, and perhaps 
 wonder at his ability to maintain his existence. 
 He is certainly placed at a great disadvantage. 
 If he finds or steals a bone, the first big dog he 
 meets will say to him, " Drop it ! " And he will 
 drop it at once, knowing very well that if he refuses 
 to do so it will be taken from him, and his own 
 poor little bones perhaps get crunched in the process. 
 As compensation he has, I fancy, a somewhat 
 quicker intelligence, a subtler cunning. His brains 
 weigh less by a great deal than those of the bull- 
 dog or a big cur, but — like ladies' brains compared 
 with men's — they are of a finer quality. 
 
 When I encountered this animal in the quiet 
 Somerset road, and laughed to see him and 
 
240 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 exclaimed mentally, " There he goes, the same old 
 little red dog, suspicious and sneaky as ever, and 
 very brisk and busy although his years must be 
 well-nigh as many as my own," I was thinking of 
 the far past, and the sight of him brought back a 
 memory of one of the first of the small red dogs 
 I have known intimately. I was a boy then, and 
 my home was in the pampas of Buenos Ayres. I 
 had a young sister, a bright, lively girl, and I 
 remember that a poor native woman who lived in 
 a smoky hovel a few miles away was fond of her, 
 and that she came one day with a present for her 
 — something precious wrapped up in a shawl — a 
 little red pup, one of a litter which her own beloved 
 dog had brought forth. My sister accepted the 
 present joyfully, for though we possessed fourteen 
 or fifteen dogs at the time, these all belonged to 
 the house; they were everybody's and nobody's 
 in particular, and she was delighted to have one 
 that would be her very own. It grew into a common 
 red dog, rather better-looking than most of its kind, 
 having a bushier tail, longer and brighter-coloured 
 hair, and a somewhat foxy head and face. In 
 spite of these good points, we boys never tired of 
 laughing at her little Reddie, as he was called, and 
 his intense devotion to his young mistress and 
 faith in her power to protect him only made him 
 seem more ludicrous. When we all walked to- 
 gether on the grass plain, my brother and I used 
 to think it great fun to separate Reddie from his 
 mistress by making a sudden dash, and then hunt 
 
THE LITTLE RED DOG 241 
 
 him over the turf. Away he would go, performing 
 a wide circuit, then, doubhng back, would fly to 
 her for safety. She, stooping and holding out her 
 hands to him, would wait his coming, and at the 
 end, with one flying leap, he would land himself 
 in her arms, almost capsizing her with the force 
 of the impact, and from that refuge look back 
 reproachfully at us. 
 
 The cunning little ways of the small red dog 
 were learned later when I came to know him in 
 the city of Buenos Ayres. Loitering at the water- 
 side one day, I became aware of an animal of this 
 kind following me, and no sooner did he catch my 
 eye than he came up, wagging, wriggling, and 
 grinning, smiling, so to speak, all over his body; 
 and I, thinking he had lost home and friends and 
 touched by his appeal, allowed him to follow me 
 through the streets to the house of relations where 
 I was staying. I told them I intended keeping 
 the outcast awhile to see what could be done with 
 him. My friends did not welcome him warmly, 
 and they even made some disparaging remarks 
 about little red dogs in general; but they gave 
 him his dinner — a big plateful of meat — which he 
 devoured greedily, and then, very much at home, 
 he stretched himself out on the hearth-rug and 
 went fast asleep. When he woke an hour later he 
 jumped up and ran to the hall, and, finding the 
 street-door closed, made a great row, howling and 
 scratching at the panels. I hurried out and opened 
 the door, and out and off he went, without so 
 
242 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 much as a thank-you. He had found a fool and 
 had succeeded in getting something out of him, and 
 his business with me was ended. There was no 
 hesitation; he was going straight home, and knew 
 his way quite well. 
 
 Years afterwards it was a surprise to me to 
 find that the little red dog was an inhabitant of 
 London. There was no muzzling order then, in 
 the 'seventies, and quite a common sight was the 
 independent dog, usually a cur, roaming the streets 
 in search of stray scraps of food. He shared the 
 sparrows' broken bread; he turned over the 
 rubbish heaps left by the road - sweepers ; he 
 sniffed about areas, on the look-out for an open 
 dust - bin ; and he hung persistently about the 
 butcher's shop, where a jealous eye was kept on 
 his movements. These dogs doubtless had owners, 
 who paid the yearly tax; but it is probable that 
 in most cases they found for themselves. Probably, 
 too, the adventurous life of the streets, where 
 carrion was not too plentiful, had the effect of 
 sharpening their wits. Here, at all events, I was 
 witness of an action on the part of a small red dog 
 which fairly astonished me; that confidence trick 
 the little Argentine beast had practised on me was 
 nothing to it. 
 
 In Regent Street, of all places, one bright 
 winter morning, I caught sight of a dog lying on 
 the pavement close to the wall, hungrily gnawing 
 at a big beef bone which he had stolen or picked 
 out of a neighbouring dust-hole. He was a miserable- 
 
THE LITTLE RED DOG 243 
 
 looking object, a sort of lurcher, of a dirty red 
 colour, with ribs showing like the bars of a grid- 
 iron through his mangy side. Even in those 
 pre-muzzling days, when he still had the pariah, 
 it was a little strange to see him gnawing his bone 
 at that spot, just by Peter Robinson's, where the 
 broad pavement was full of shopping ladies; and 
 I stood still to watch him. Presently a small red 
 dog came trotting along the pavement from the 
 direction of the Circus, and catching sight of the 
 mangy lurcher with the bone he was instantly 
 struck motionless, and crouching low as if to 
 make a dash at the other, his tail stiff, his hair 
 bristling, he continued gazing for some moments; 
 and then, just when I thought the rush and struggle 
 was about to take place, up jumped this little red 
 cur and rushed back towards the Circus, uttering 
 a succession of excited shrieky barks. The con- 
 tagion was irresistible. Off went the lurcher, 
 furiously barking too, and quickly overtaking the 
 small dog dashed on and away to the middle of 
 the Circus to see what all the noise was about. 
 It was something tremendously important to dogs 
 in general, no doubt. But the little red dog, the 
 little liar, had no sooner been overtaken and passed 
 by the other, than back he ran, and picking up the 
 bone, made off with it in the opposite direction. 
 Very soon the lurcher returned and appeared 
 astonished and puzzled at the disappearance of his 
 bone. There I left him, still looking for it and 
 sniffing at the open shop doors. He perhaps thought 
 
244 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 in his simplicity that some kind lady had picked it 
 up and left it with one of the shopmen to be claimed 
 by its rightful owner. 
 
 I had heard of such actions on the part of dogs 
 before, but always with a smile; for we know the 
 people who tell this kind of story — the dog- 
 worshippers, or canophilists as they are sometimes 
 called, a people weak in their intellectuals, and as 
 a rule unveracious, although probably not con- 
 sciously so. But now I had myself witnessed this 
 thing, which, when read, will perhaps cause others 
 to smile in their turn. 
 
 But what is one to say of such an action? Just 
 now we are all of us, philosophers included, in a 
 muddle over the questions of mind and intellect 
 in the lower animals, and just how much of each 
 element goes to the composition of any one act; 
 but probably most persons would say at once that 
 the action of the little red dog in Regent Street 
 was purely intelligent. I am not sure. The swift- 
 ness, smoothness, and certainty with which the 
 whole thing was carried out gave it the appearance 
 of a series of automatic movements rather than a 
 reasoned act which had never been rehearsed. 
 
 Recently during my country rambles I have 
 been on the look-out for the small red dog, and 
 have met with several interesting examples in the 
 southern counties. One, in Hampshire, moved me 
 to laughter like that small animal at Charterhouse 
 Hinton. 
 
 This was at Sway, a village near Lymington. A 
 
THE LITTLE RED DOG 245 
 
 boy, mounted on a creaking old bike, was driving 
 some cows to the common, and had the greatest 
 difficulty in keeping on while following behind the 
 lazy beasts on a rough track among the furze 
 bushes; and behind the boy at a distance of ten 
 yards trotted the little red dog, tongue out, looking 
 as happy and proud as possible. As I passed him 
 he looked back at me as if to make sure that I had 
 seen him and noted that he formed part of that 
 important procession. On another day I went to 
 the village and renewed my acquaintance with the 
 little fellow and heard his history. Everybody 
 praised him for his affectionate disposition and his 
 value as a watch-dog by night, and I was told that 
 his mother, now dead, had been greatly prized, 
 and was the smallest red dog ever seen in that part 
 of Hampshire. 
 
 Some day one of the thousand writers on " man's 
 friend " will conceive the happy idea of a chapter 
 or two on tlie dog — the universal cur — and he will 
 then perhaps find it necessary to go abroad to 
 study this well-marked dwarf variety, for with us 
 he has fallen on evil days. There is no doubt that 
 the muzzling order profoundly affected the char- 
 acter of our dog population, since it went far 
 towards the destruction of the cur and of mongrels 
 — the races already imperilled by the extraordinary 
 predominance of the fox-terrier. The change was 
 most marked in the metropolis, and after Mr. 
 Long's campaign I came to the conclusion that 
 here at all events the httle red dog had been 
 
246 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 extirpated. He, with other varieties of the cur, 
 was the dog of the poor, and when the muzzle 
 deprived him of the power to fend for himself, he 
 became a burden to his master. But I was mis- 
 taken; he is still with us, even here in London, 
 though now very rare. 
 
XXIII 
 
 DOGS IN LONDON 
 
 The subject of this paper, for which I am unable 
 to find a properly descriptive title, will be certain 
 changes noticeable during recent years in the dogs 
 of the metropolis, and, in a less degree, of the 
 country generally. At the same time there has 
 been an improvement in the character of the dog 
 population, due mainly to the weeding out of the 
 baser breeds, but this matter does not concern 
 us here; the change with which I propose to deal 
 is in the temper and, as to one particular, the 
 habits of the animal. This was the result of the 
 famous (it used to be called the infamous) muzzling 
 order of 1897, which restrained dogs throughout 
 the country from following their ancient custom of 
 quarrelling with and biting one another for the 
 unprecedented period of two and a half years. 
 Nine hundred days and over may not seem too 
 long a period of restraint in the case of a being 
 whose natural term runs to threescore years and 
 ten, but in poor Tatters' or Towzer's brief existence 
 of a dozen summers it is the equivalent of more 
 than twenty years in the life of the human animal. 
 
 247 
 
248 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 As a naturalist I was interested in the muzzling 
 order, and after noting its effects my interest in the 
 subject has continued ever since. It should also, 
 I imagine, be a matter of interest and importance 
 to all who have a special regard for the dog or who 
 are " devoted to dogs," who regard them as the 
 " friends of man," even holding with the canophilists 
 of the old Youatt period of the last century that 
 the dog was specially created to fill the place of 
 man's servant and companion. Strange to say, I 
 have not yet met with any person of the dog-loving 
 kind who has himself noticed any change in the 
 temper or habits of the dog during the last fourteen 
 or fifteen years or has any knowledge of it. One 
 can only suppose — and this applies not only to 
 those who cherish a peculiar affection for the dog, 
 but to the numerous body of London naturalists 
 as well — that the change was unmarked on account 
 of the very long period during which the order was 
 in force, when dogs were deprived of the power 
 to bite, so that when the release came the former 
 condition of things in the animal world was no 
 longer distinctly remembered. It was doubtless 
 assumed that, the muzzle once removed, all things 
 were exactly as they had been before: if a few 
 remembered and noticed the change, they failed 
 to record it — at all events I have seen nothing 
 about it in print. Circumstances made it impossible 
 for me not to notice the immediate effect of the 
 order, and at the end of the time to forget the state 
 of things as they existed before its imposition. 
 
DOGS IN LONDON 249 
 
 I was probably more confined to London during 
 the years 1897-9 than most persons who are keenly 
 interested in animal life, and being so confined, I 
 was compelled to gratify my taste or passion by 
 paying a great deal of attention to the only animals 
 that there are to observe in our streets, the dog 
 being the most important. I also took notes of 
 what I observed — my way of remembering not to 
 forget; and, refreshing my mind by returning to 
 them, I am able to recover a distinct picture of the 
 state of things in the pre-muzzling times. It is 
 a very different state from that of to-day. One 
 thing that was a cause of surprise to me in those 
 days was the large number of dogs, mostly mongrels 
 and curs, to be seen roaming masterless about the 
 streets. These I classed as pariahs, although they 
 all, no doubt, had their homes in mean streets and 
 courts, just as the ownerless pariah dogs in Eastern 
 towns have their homes — their yard or pavement 
 or spot of waste ground where they live and bask 
 in the sun when not roaming in quest of food and 
 adventures. Many of these London pariahs were 
 wretched - looking objects, full of sores and old 
 scars, some like skeletons and others with half 
 their hair off from mange and other skin diseases. 
 They were to be seen all over London, always 
 hunting for food, hanging about areas, like the 
 bone- and bottle-buyers, looking for an open dust- 
 bin where something might be found to comfort 
 their stomachs. They also haunted butchers' shops, 
 where the butcher kept a jealous eye on their 
 
250 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 movements and sent them away with a kick and 
 a curse whenever he got the chance. Most, if not 
 all, of these poor dogs had owners who gave them 
 shelter but no food or very little, and probably in 
 most cases succeeded in evading the license duty. 
 
 There is no doubt that in the past the dog 
 population of London was always largely composed 
 of animals of this kind — " curs of low degree," and 
 a great variety of mongrels, mostly living on their 
 wits. An account of the dogs of London of two or 
 three or four centuries ago would have an extra- 
 ordinary interest for us now, but, unfortunately, 
 no person took the pains to write it. Caius, our 
 oldest writer on dogs, says of " curres of the 
 mungrel and rascall sort " — the very animals we 
 want to know about: " Of such dogs as keep not 
 their kind, of such as are mingled out of sundry 
 sortes not imitating the conditions of some one 
 certaine Spece, because they resemble no notable 
 shape, nor exercise any worthy property of the true, 
 perfect, and gentle kind, it is not necesarye that 
 I write any more of them, but to banish them as 
 unprofitable im.plements out of the boundes of my 
 Booke." It is regrettable that he did " banish " 
 them, as he appears to have been something of an 
 observer on his own account. Had he given us a 
 few pages on the life and habits of the " rascall 
 sort " of animal, his Booke of Englishe Dogges, 
 which after so many centuries is still occasionally 
 reprinted, would have been as valuable to us now 
 as Turner's on British birds (1544) and Willughby's 
 
DOGS IN LONDON 251 
 
 half a century later on the same subject, and as 
 Gould's brilliant essay on the habits of British ants 
 — which, by the way, has never been reprinted — 
 and as Gilbert White's classic, which came later in 
 the eighteenth century. 
 
 That the bond uniting man and dog in all 
 instances when the poor brute was obliged to fend 
 for himself in the inhospitable streets of London 
 was an exceedingly frail one was plainly seen when 
 the muzzling order of 1897 was made. An extra- 
 ordinary number of apparently ownerless dogs, 
 unmuzzled and collarless, were found roaming 
 about the streets and taken by hundreds every 
 week to the lethal chamber. In thirty months the 
 dog population of the metropolis had decreased by 
 about one hundred thousand. The mongrels and 
 dogs of the " rascall sort " had all but vanished, 
 and this was how the improvement in the character 
 of the dog population mentioned before came about 
 immediately. But a far more important change 
 had been going on at the same time — the change 
 in the temper of our dogs; and it may here be 
 well to remark that this change in disposition was 
 not the result of the weeding-out process I have 
 described. The better breeds are not more amiable 
 than the curs of low degree. The man who has 
 made a friend and companion of the cur will tell 
 you that he is as nice - tempered, affectionate, 
 faithful, and intelligent as the nobler kinds, the 
 dogs of " notable shape." 
 
 Let us now go back to the muzzling time of 
 
252 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 1897-9, and I will give here the substance of the 
 notes I made at the time. They have among my 
 notes on many subjects a peculiar interest to me as 
 a naturalist because in the comments I made at 
 the time I ventured to make a prediction which 
 has not been fulfilled. I was astonished and 
 delighted to find that (on this one occasion) I had 
 proved a false prophet. 
 
 The dog-muzzling question (I wrote) does not 
 interest me personally, since I keep no dog, nor 
 love to see so intelligent and serviceable a beast 
 degraded to the position of a mere pet or plaything 
 • — a creature that has lost or been robbed of its 
 true place in the scheme of things. Looking at the 
 matter from the outside, simply as a student of 
 the ways of animals, I am surprised at the outcry 
 made against Mr. Long's order, especially here in 
 London, where there is so great a multitude of 
 quite useless animals. No doubt a large majority 
 of the dogs of the metropolis are household pets, 
 pure and simple, living indoors in the same rooms 
 as their owners, in spite of their inconvenient 
 instincts. On this subject I have had my say in 
 an article on " The Great Dog Superstition," for 
 which I have been well abused; the only instinct 
 of the dog with which I am concerned at present 
 is that of pugnacity. This is like his love of certain 
 smells disgusting to us, part and parcel of his 
 being, so that for a dog to be perfectly gentle and 
 without the temper that barks and bites must be 
 
DOGS IN LONDON 253 
 
 taken as evidence of its decadence — not of the 
 individual but of the race or breed or variety. 
 Whether this fact is known or only dimly surmised 
 by dog-lovers, more especially by those who set 
 the fashion in dogs, we see that in recent years 
 there has been a distinct reaction against the more 
 degenerate kinds * — those in whose natures the 
 jackal and wild-dog writing has quite or all but 
 faded out — the numerous small toy terriers; the 
 Italian greyhound, shivering like an aspen leaf; 
 the drawing-room pug, ugliest of man's (the 
 breeder's) many inventions; the pathetic Blenheim 
 and King Charles spaniels, the Maltese, the 
 Pomeranian, and all the others that have, so to 
 speak, rubbed themselves out by acquiring a white 
 liver to please their owners' fantastic tastes. A 
 more vigorous beast is now in favour, and one of 
 the most popular is undoubtedly the fox-terrier. 
 This is assuredly the doggiest dog we possess, the 
 most aggressive, born to trouble as the sparks fly 
 upward. From my own point of view it is only 
 right that fox-terriers and all other good fighters 
 should have liberty to go out daily into the streets 
 in their thousands in search of shindies, to strive 
 with and worry one another to their hearts' content; 
 
 1 Alas ! since these notes were made, fourteen years ago, there has 
 been a recrudescence of the purely woman's drawing-room pet dog. 
 The wretched griffon, looking like a mean cheap copy of the little 
 Yorkshire — one of the few small pet animals which has not wholly lost 
 its soul — appears to have vanished. But the country has now been 
 flooded with the Pekinese, and one is made to loathe it from the 
 constant sight of it in every drawing-room and railway carriage and 
 motor-car and omnibus, clasped in a woman's arms. 
 
254 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 then to skulk home, smelling abominably of carrion 
 and carnage, and, hiding under their master's sofa, 
 or other dark place, to spend the time licking their 
 wounds until they are well again and ready to go 
 out in search of fresh adventures. For God hath 
 made them so. 
 
 But this is by no means the view of the gentle 
 ladies and mild-tempered gentlemen who own them, 
 nor, I dare say, of any canophihst, whether the 
 owner of a dog or not. What these people want 
 is that their canine friends shall have the same 
 liberty enjoyed by themselves to make use of our 
 streets and parks without risk of injury or insult; 
 that they shall be free to notice or not the saluta- 
 tions and advances of others of their kind; to 
 graciously accept or contemptuously refuse, with 
 nose in air, according to the mood they may happen 
 to be in or to the state of their digestive organs, an 
 invitation to a game of romps. This liberty and 
 safety they do now undoubtedly enjoy, thanks to 
 the much-abused muzzling order. 
 
 It is true that to the canine mind this may not 
 be an ideal liberty: "For on a knight that hath 
 neither hardihood nor valour in himself, may not 
 another knight that hath more force in him reason- 
 ably prove his mettle; for many a time have I 
 heard say that one is better than other." These 
 words, spoken by the Best Knight in the World, 
 exactly fit the case of the fox-terrier, or any other 
 vigorous variety whose one desire when he goes 
 out into the world is reasonably to prove his 
 
DOGS IN LONDON 255 
 
 mettle. 'Tis an ancient and noble principle of 
 action, conceivably advantageous in certain circum- 
 stances; but in the conditions in whjfh we human 
 beings find ourselves placed it is not tolerated, and 
 the valour and hardihood of our Perclvals may no 
 longer shine in the dark forests of this modern 
 world. 
 
 Is it, then, so monstrous a thing, so great a 
 tyranny, that the same restraint which has this 
 long time been put upon the best and brightest 
 of our own kind should now, for the pubhc good, 
 be imposed on our four - footed companions and 
 servants! True, we think solely of ourselves when 
 we impose the restraint, but incidentally (and 
 entirely apart from the question of rabies) we are 
 at the same time giving the greatest protection to 
 the dogs themselves. Furthermore — and here we 
 come to the point which mainly concerns us — the 
 reflex effect of the muzzle on the dogs themselves 
 may now be seen to be purely beneficial. Confining 
 ourselves to London, the change in the animals' 
 disposition, or at all events behaviour, has been 
 very remarkable. It has forcibly reminded me of 
 the change of temper I have witnessed in a rude, 
 semi - barbarous community when some one in 
 authority has issued an order that at all festivals 
 and other pubhc gatherings every man shall yield 
 up his weapons — knives, pistols, iron - handled 
 whips, etc. — to some person appointed to receive 
 them, or be turned back from the gates. The 
 result of such a general disarmament has been an 
 
256 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 all-round improvement in temper, a disposition of 
 the people to mix freely instead of separating into 
 well-defined groups, each with some famous fight- 
 ing-man, wearing a knife as long as a sword, for 
 its centre; also instead of wild and whirling words, 
 dust raised, and blood shed, great moderation in 
 language, good humour, and reasonableness in 
 argument. 
 
 In the same way we may see that our dogs 
 grow less and less quarrelsome as they become 
 more conscious of their powerlessness to inflict 
 injury. Their confidence, and with it their friend- 
 liness towards one another, increases; the most 
 masterful or truculent cease from bullying, the 
 timid outgrow their timidity, and in their new- 
 found glad courage dare to challenge the fiercest 
 among them to a circular race and rough-and- 
 tumble on the grass. 
 
 Now all this, from the point of view of those 
 who make toys of sentient and intelligent beings, 
 is or should be considered pure gain. Moreover, 
 this undoubted improvement could not have come 
 about if the muzzle had been the painful instrument 
 that some dog-owners believe or say. It seems to me 
 that those who cry out against torturing our dogs, 
 as they put it, do not love their pets wisely and 
 are bad observers. Undoubtedly every restraint 
 is in some degree disagreeable, but it is only when 
 an animal has been deprived of the power to 
 exercise his first faculties and obey his most impor- 
 tunate impulses that the restraint can properly 
 
DOGS IN LONDON 257 
 
 be described as painful. Take the case of a chained 
 dog; he is miserable, as any one may see since 
 there are many dogs in that condition, because 
 eternally conscious of the restraint; and the per- 
 petual craving for liberty, like that of the healthy 
 energetic man immured in a cell, rises to positive 
 torture. Again, we know that smell is the most 
 important sense of the dog, that it is as much to 
 him as vision to the bird; consequently, to deprive 
 him of the use of this all-important faculty by, let 
 us say, plugging up his nostrils, or by destroying 
 the olfactory nerve in some devilish way known 
 to the vivisectors, would be to make him perfectly 
 miserable, just as the destruction of its sense of 
 sight would make a bird miserable. By comparison 
 the restraint of the muzzle is very slight indeed: 
 smell, hearing, vision are unaffected, and there is 
 no interference with free locomotion; indeed so 
 slight is the restraint that after a while the animal 
 is for the most part unconscious of it except when 
 the impulse to bite or to swallow a luscious bit of 
 carrion is excited. 
 
 We frequently see or hear of dogs that joyfully 
 run off to fetch their muzzles when they are called 
 to go out for a walk, or even before they are called 
 if they but see any preparations being made for a 
 walk: no person will contend that these are made 
 unhappy by the muzzle, or that they deliberately 
 weigh two evils in their mind and make choice of 
 the lesser. The most that may be said is that these 
 muzzle - f etchers are exceptions, though they may 
 
258 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 be somewhat numerous. For how otherwise can 
 the fact he explained that some dogs, however 
 ready and anxious to go for a walk they may be, 
 will, on catching sight of the muzzle, turn away 
 with tail between their legs and the expression of 
 a dog that has been kicked or unjustly rebuked? 
 My experience is that this attitude towards the 
 muzzle of some dogs, which was quite common 
 in the early muzzling days, is now rare and is dying 
 out. The explanation, I think, is that as the 
 muzzle is at first keenly felt as a restraint, imposed 
 for no cause that the dog sees, it is in fact taken 
 as a punishment, and resented as much as an 
 undeserved blow or angry word would be. Every 
 one who observes dogs must be familiar with the 
 fact that they do very often experience the feeling 
 of injury and resentment towards their human 
 masters and companions. As a rule this feeling 
 vanishes with the exciting cause; unfortunately, 
 in some cases the sight of the muzzle becomes 
 associated with the feeling and is slow to disappear. 
 But if dogs still exist in this city of dogs that 
 show any sign of such a feeling when a muzzle is 
 held up before them, we can see that even in these 
 super-sensitive ones it vanishes the instant they 
 are out of doors. Again, let any person watch the 
 scores and hundreds of dogs that disport themselves 
 in our grassy parks on any fine day, and he will 
 quickly be convinced that not only are they happy 
 but that they are far happier than any company 
 of unmuzzled dogs thrown casually together. They 
 
DOGS IN LONDON 259 
 
 are happier, madly happy, because they know — 
 this knowledge having now jfiltered down into their 
 souls — that it is perfectly safe for them to associate 
 with their fellows, to be hail-fellow-well-met with 
 all the dogs in the place, from the tiniest trembling 
 lap-dog to the burliest and most truculent-looking 
 bull-dog and the most gigantic St. Bernard or 
 Danish boarhound. It is for us a happiness to see 
 their confidence, their mad games, the way they 
 all chase and tumble over one another, pretending 
 to be furious and fighting a grand battle. 
 
 I do not say that there is any radical or any 
 permanent change in the dog's character. Like 
 other beasts, he is morally and mentally non- 
 progressive; that which the uninformed canophilist 
 takes as progression is merely decadence. Remove 
 the muzzle, and in a short time the habit which 
 the muzzle has bred will fade away and the old 
 bickerings and bullyings and blood-sheddings begin 
 afresh. As it is, some dogs refuse to let their 
 fighting temper rust in spite of the muzzle. 
 
 In Hyde Park some time ago I witnessed a 
 sublime but bloodless battle between a Danish 
 boarhound and a bull-dog. Neither of them lost 
 consciousness of the muzzle which prevented them 
 from " washing " their teeth in one another's 
 blood; they simply dashed themselves against 
 each other, then drew back and dashed together 
 again and again, with such fury that they would, 
 no doubt, have succeeded in injuring each other 
 had not their owners, assisted by several persons 
 
260 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 who were looking on, succeeded in drawing them 
 apart. 
 
 One more instance of many which I have 
 observed during the last two years. This is of a 
 rather large and exceptionally powerful fox-terrier, 
 who when out for a walk keeps a very sharp look- 
 out for other dogs, and the instant he spies one 
 not bigger than himself charges him furiously and 
 with the impact hurls him to the ground, and, 
 leaving him there, he dashes on in search of a 
 fresh victim. 
 
 These are, however, exceptions, few individuals 
 having intelligence enough to find out a new way 
 of inflicting injury. As a rule the dog of ineradic- 
 ably savage temper looks at his fellows as if saying, 
 " Oh, for five minutes with this cursed muzzle 
 off! " And the others, seeing his terrible aspect, 
 are glad that the muzzle is on — a blessed muzzle 
 it is to them; and if they only knew what the 
 doggie people were saying in the papers and could 
 express their views on the subject, many of them 
 would be heard to cry out, " Save us from our 
 friends ! " 
 
 The muzzling order had thus appeared to me 
 as a sort of Golden Age of the metropolitan dogs 
 — and cats, for these too had incidentally been 
 affected and strangely altered in their habits. And 
 here I must say that all I wrote in my note-book 
 about the dogs during and just after the muzzling 
 period has been compressed into as short a space 
 
DOGS IN LONDON 261 
 
 as possible, and all I wrote about the cats (as 
 indirectly affected by the order) has been left out 
 for want of space to deal with the entire subject in 
 a single chapter. 
 
 When dog-owners were rejoicing to hear that 
 the Board of Agriculture had come to the conclusion 
 that rabies had been completely stamped out, and 
 were eagerly looking forward to the day when they 
 would be allowed to remove the hated muzzle from 
 their pets, the prospect did not seem a very pleasant 
 one to me and to many others who kept no pets. 
 I was prepared once more for the old familiar but 
 unforgotten spectacle of a big dog-fight in the 
 streets producing a joyful excitement in a crowd, 
 quickly sprung out of the stones of the pavement 
 as it were, of loafers and wastrels of all kinds — 
 keen sportsmen every one of them — a spectacle 
 which v/as witnessed every day by any person who 
 took a walk in London before the muzzling time. 
 These scenes would be common again: in one day 
 the dogs' (and cats') dream of perpetual peace 
 would be ended, and all canines of a lofty spirit 
 would go forth again like the good Arthurian knight 
 and the Zulu warrior to wash his long-unused 
 weapons in an adversary's blood. But I was 
 wrong. A habit had been formed in those two and 
 a half years of restraint which did not lose its 
 power at once: the something new which had 
 come into the dog's heart still held him. But it 
 would not, it could not, hold him long. 
 
 Days followed and nothing happened — the 
 
262 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 Golden Age was still on. I walked the streets and 
 watched and waited; then, when nearly a week 
 had elapsed, I witnessed a fine old-fashioned dog- 
 fight, with two dogs in a tangle on the ground 
 biting and tearing each other with incredible fury 
 and with all the growls and shrieks and other 
 warlike noises appropriate to the occasion. From 
 all parts around the " wond'ring neighbours ran " 
 to look on, even as in former times down to the 
 blessed year 1897. 
 
 "Just as I thought!" I exclaimed, and heartily 
 wished that the President of the Board of Agricul- 
 ture had made the muzzling order a perpetual one. 
 
 Other days and weeks followed and I witnessed 
 no serious quarrel, and later it was so rare to see 
 a dog-fight in the streets and parks, fights which 
 one used to witness every day, that I began to 
 think the new pacific habit had got a tighter grip 
 on the aninial than I could have believed. It 
 would, I thought, perhaps take them two or three 
 months to outgrow it and go back to their true 
 natures. 
 
 I was wrong again: not months only but years 
 have gone by — fourteen to fifteen years — and the 
 beneficent change which had been wrought in those 
 thirty months of restraint about which so great a 
 pother was made at the time by dog-owners has 
 continued to the present time. 
 
 We may say that in more senses than one the 
 dogs (and cats) of the London of to-day are not 
 the same beings we were familiar with in the pre- 
 
DOGS IN LONDON 263 
 
 muzzling days. The object of that order we have 
 seen was gained in the brief period of thirty months. 
 Hydrophobia for the first time in the annals of 
 England had ceased to exist, and so long as the 
 quarantine law is faithfully observed will perhaps 
 never return. Rabies broke out again in this 
 country in 1917, its first reappearance since 1897, 
 owing to some person having succeeded in eluding 
 the quarantine order and bringing an infected dog 
 to Plymouth. From that centre it spread to 
 other parts of Devon and to Cornwall, and 
 despite the prompt action of the authorities in 
 imposing a new muzzling order in these two 
 counties, the infection has spread to other parts 
 of the country, and new muzzling orders are 
 being issued just now — April 1919. Up till 
 the year of 1897 the average number of persons 
 who perished annually as the result of a dog - bite 
 was twenty - nine. " Well, that's not many in a 
 population of forty millions," cried the canophilists; 
 but for twenty - nine who actually died of dog- 
 madness, the most horrible shape in which death 
 can appear to a human being, there were hundreds, 
 and probably thousands, every year who lived for 
 weeks and months in a constant state of appre- 
 hension lest some slight bite or abrasion received 
 from the tooth of an angry or playful dog should 
 result in that frightful malady. 
 
 This was unquestionably a great, a very great 
 gain; but Mr. Long had builded better than he 
 knew, and I am not sure that the accidental result. 
 
264 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 the change in the dog's habits in one particular, 
 will not be regarded as the most important gain 
 by those who are fond of dogs and by all who 
 recognise that, in spite of some disgusting instincts 
 which can't be changed, the dog is and probably 
 always will be with us — our one and only four- 
 footed associate. 
 
XXIV 
 
 THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 
 
 No person can give a careful and loving study to 
 animal life for a long period without meeting with 
 species exhibiting aptitudes of which a great deal 
 might be made in a domestic state, and which, 
 together with their beauty and cleanly habits, 
 seem specially to fit them for companionship with 
 man in a greater degree than those which we now 
 possess. For it is an undoubted fact that some 
 animals are more intelligent than others, slight 
 differences in this respect being perceptible even 
 among the species of a single group or genus. We 
 measure the animal mind by ours; and looking 
 down from the summit of our mountain the earth 
 beneath us at first seems level; but it is not quite 
 level, as we are able to see by regarding it atten- 
 tively. Even more important are the differences 
 in temper, ranging from the morose and truculent 
 to the placable and sweet; more important, 
 because compared with this diversity in disposition 
 that which we find in intelligence is not great. 
 There are also animals solitary by nature, and 
 almost or quite incapable of any attachment 
 
 265 
 
266 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 excepting that of the sexes; while others are 
 gregarious or social, and able to form attach- 
 ments not only among themselves, but also with 
 those of other species, and, when domesticated, 
 with man. There is a third matter, which is doubt- 
 less the most important of all, to be considered 
 when weighing the comparative advantages of 
 different kinds, namely, the habits, or instincts, 
 which change so slowly that they are practically 
 immutable, even in altered conditions, and which, 
 in the domesticated or pet animal, according to 
 their character, may prove a source of pleasure and 
 profit to man, or, on the contrary, a perpetual 
 annoyance and trouble. When our progenitors far 
 back in time tamed the animals we now possess, it 
 cannot be supposed that they expended much 
 thought on such considerations as these: probably 
 chance determined everything for them, and they 
 took and tamed the animals which came first to 
 hand, or which promised to be most useful to them, 
 either as food or in assisting them to procure food. 
 If they were barbarians they would think little of 
 beauty, little of the small differences in intelligence, 
 and of the much greater differences in disposition, 
 and, naturally, nothing at all about certain instincts 
 in some animals which would become increasingly 
 repugnant to man in a civilised state. 
 
 We have the dog so constantly with us; the 
 grand result of centuries of artificial selection and 
 training is so patent to every one, that we have 
 actually come to look on this animal as by nature 
 
THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 267 
 
 superior in mental endowment, genial qualities, and 
 general adaptiveness to all others. Yet the qualities 
 which make the dog valuable to us now formed no 
 part of its original character; it is valuable chiefly 
 for its various instinctive tendencies, and these are 
 a later growth and purely the result of individual 
 spontaneous variations, and of man's unconscious 
 selection. The dog's affection for his master — the 
 anxiety to be constantly with and to be noticed 
 and caressed by him, the impatience at his absence 
 and grief at his loss, and the courage to defend him 
 and his house and his belongings from strangers — 
 this affection of which we are accustomed to think 
 so highly, regarding it as something unique in 
 Nature, is in reality a very small and a very low 
 thing; and by low is here meant common in the 
 animal world, for it exists in a great many, prob- 
 ably in a large majority, of mammahan brains in 
 every order and every family. Nor is it confined 
 to mammalians. The duck does not occupy a 
 distinguished place in the scale of being, and the 
 lame duck that attached itself to Mr. Caxton, and 
 affectionately followed him up and down in his 
 walk, might seem an exceptionally gifted bird to 
 those who know little of animal life. It is of 
 course here assumed that Bulwer did not invent 
 the lame duck: a peacock or bird of paradise, 
 with all its organs complete, would have suited his 
 fancy better. Probably the incident — for such 
 incidents are very common — was told to him as 
 true, and thinking that it would give a touch of 
 
268 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 reality and homely pathos to the description of 
 Mr. Caxton's mild and lovable character he intro- 
 duced it into his novel. A friend of the writer 
 owned a duck far more worthy of admiration than 
 Bulwer's immortal bird. This was not a domestic 
 duck, but a teal, which he brought down with his 
 gun slightly wounded in the wing, and feeling all 
 at once a strange compassion for it, he tied it up 
 in a handkerchief and carried it to his home in the 
 suburbs of a large town. The captive was turned 
 into a courtyard and its wants attended to; it 
 soon grew accustomed to its new mode of existence, 
 and furthermore became strongly attached to all 
 the members of the family, seeking for them in the 
 rooms when it felt lonely, and always exhibiting 
 distress of mind and anger in the presence of 
 strangers. When a cat or dog was fondled in its 
 presence it would run to the spot, administer a few 
 vindictive blows to the animal with its soft bill, 
 and solicit a caress for itself. The most curious 
 thing in its history was that it took a special liking 
 to its captor, and singled him out for its most 
 marked attentions. When he went away to business 
 in the morning the teal would accompany him to 
 the street door to see him off, returning afterwards 
 contentedly to the yard; and in the afternoon it 
 would again repair to the door, always left open, 
 and standing composedly on the middle of the 
 step wait its master's return — for this teal took 
 count of time. If, while it stood there watching 
 the road, a stranger came in, it would open its 
 
THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 269 
 
 beak and hiss and strike at his legs, showing as 
 much suspicion and " sense of proprietorship " as 
 a dog does when it barks and snaps at a visitor. 
 Its owner's arrival would be greeted with demonstra- 
 tions of affection and joy, and following him into 
 the house it would spend an hour or two very 
 happily if allowed to sit on his feet, or nestling close 
 against them on the hearth-rug. 
 
 The behaviour of this poor teal might seem a 
 very great thing, but it amounts to very little 
 after all; the memory that all animals have, and 
 perhaps a little judgement — the " small dose of 
 reason " which Huber found that even insects 
 possessed — and attachment to the beings it was 
 accustomed to see and associate with, and who 
 attended to all its wants and gently caressed it. 
 In the matter of the affections it has no advantage 
 even over Darwin's celebrated snail. No doubt the 
 self-sacrificing snail proved too much for Darwin's 
 argument, as Professor Mivart has pointed out; 
 fortunately the case of the teal, which can be 
 substantiated, does not prove too much for the 
 argument contained in this article. To be astonished 
 at the display of such faculties and affections in a 
 bird so low down in the scale would show ignorance 
 of Nature. And there is no doubt that most men 
 are very ignorant about her; so ignorant that if 
 the teal had the place in our life which belongs to 
 the dog, and had been with us for centuries, a 
 companion and pet in our houses to the exclusion 
 of other kinds, we should now believe that it 
 
270 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 surpassed all other creatures in human-like feelings; 
 our periodicals would teem with anecdotes of its 
 marvellous intelligence; innumerable books would 
 be written on the subject, and the psychological 
 biologists would put it next to man in their systems, 
 one step below him on the throne of life, and far 
 above the general herd of animals. 
 
 It is a fact, that might well stagger belief in the 
 dog's superior intellect, that mammalians so low 
 down as rats and mice when properly treated and 
 trained make attached and intelhgent pets; and 
 that a mouse, or a sparrow, or a snake, or even a 
 creature so small and far down in the organic scale 
 as a flea, may be taught, without very great diffi- 
 culty, to perform tricks which, if performed by a 
 dog, would be pronounced very clever indeed. 
 Most people who witness the pretty performances 
 of small mammals, birds and insects — which are 
 usually up to the level of the dog's performances 
 seen at the music-halls — probably think, if they 
 think anything at all about the matter, that the 
 exhibitor in such cases is the possessor of a mysteri- 
 ous kind of talent by means of which he is able to 
 make these small creatures come for a few moments 
 out of the instinctive groove they move in to do 
 the things he wishes, much as little toy ducks and 
 swans, which are hollow inside, are made to swim 
 round in a basin of water after a stick of loadstone; 
 only in the case of the exhibitor of animals the 
 loadstone is hidden from the spectators. His 
 trick, or mysterious talent, consists in the know- 
 
THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 271 
 
 ledge that the animal he wishes to train is not a 
 little hollow duck or automaton, but that it has 
 faculties corresponding to the lower psychical 
 faculties in man, and that by the exercise of con- 
 siderable patience it may be made, when the 
 stimulus is applied, to repeat again and again a 
 few actions in the same order. The question which 
 concerns us to know is, has the dose of reason or 
 have these lower psychical faculties in the dog 
 been so greatly developed during its long com- 
 panionship with man as to raise it a great deal 
 nearer to man's level, and place a great gulf be- 
 tween its mind and that of the pig or the crow? 
 The gulf exists only in our imagination, and the 
 " development " is a fairy-tale, of which Science 
 was probably not the original author, but which 
 she has thought proper to include, somewhat 
 amplified and with new illustrations, in the recent 
 editions of her collected works. The dog, taken 
 directly from a wild life, if taken young, will be 
 tame and understand and obey his master — 
 numerous instances are on record — and if patiently 
 trained will perform tricks just as wonderful as 
 those that were related to an astonished audience 
 at the late meeting of the British Association by 
 a well-known writer and authority on zoological 
 science. And in the mammalian division there are 
 hundreds of species, some higher, some lower than 
 the dog, which may be taught the same things, or 
 other things equally wonderful. These greatly 
 vaunted performances of the dog only prove that 
 
272 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 its mind is, and ever will be, what it was when, 
 thousands of years ago, some compassionate woman 
 took the pup her owner threw into her arms, and 
 reared it, suckling it perhaps at her own breast; 
 and when in after days it followed at the heels of 
 its savage master and astonished him by assisting 
 in the capture of his quarry. 
 
 It is not, then, the dog's intelligence, which is 
 less than that of many other species, and is non- 
 progressive in spite of all that training and selection 
 can do, which makes it valuable to us. Nor has 
 it any advantage over other species in those 
 qualities of affection, fidelity, and good temper 
 about which we hear so much rapturous language; 
 for these things are lower down than reason and 
 exist throughout the mammalian world, in animals 
 high and low, little and big, from the harvest mouse 
 to the hippopotamus. The dog is more valuable 
 to us than other species because we have got him. 
 We inherited him and were thereby saved a large 
 amount of trouble. He is tame; the others are 
 wild. His intellect is small and stationary, but his 
 structure is variable, and, more important still, so 
 are his instincts; or perhaps it would be more 
 correct to say that new propensities, which often 
 prove hereditary, and which by selection and 
 training may be fixed and strengthened until they 
 are made to resemble instincts, are of frequent 
 occurrence in him. The more or less settled pro- 
 pensities in our domestic animals, originating in 
 the domestic state, are no doubt in one sense 
 
THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 273 
 
 instincts, since they are of the nature of instinct 
 and its beginnings; but the difference between 
 them and the true natural instinct, which has had 
 incalculable time to crystallise in, is greater than 
 can be expressed. The last is the rock and eternal; 
 the others are snow-flakes, formed in a moment, 
 that settle and show white, and even before our 
 sight is withdrawn melt away and vanish. This 
 same variability, or habit of varying, is in some 
 vague way taken as a proof of versatihty; hence 
 one reason of the popular notion that the dog is 
 so vastly superior to other four-footed creatures. 
 If a dog could be taught to turn a spit, find truffles, 
 save a man from drowning or from perishing in a 
 snow-drift, point out a partridge, retrieve a wounded 
 duck, kill twenty rats in as many seconds, and herd 
 a flock of sheep, then it would indeed be an animal 
 to marvel at. These are special instincts or in- 
 cipient instincts, and to bestow such epithets as 
 " generous " and " noble " on a dog for pulling a 
 drowning man out of the water, or scratching him 
 out of a snow-drift, is fully as irrational as it would 
 be to call the swallow and cuckoo intrepid explorers 
 of the Dark Continent, or to praise the hive-bees of 
 the working caste for their chastity, loyalty, and 
 patriotism, and for their profound knowledge of 
 chemistry and the higher mathematics, as shown 
 in their works. Cross the dogs and these various 
 propensities, which being useful to man and not 
 to the animals themselves are preserved artificially, 
 fade away and disappear, and from moving arti- 
 
274 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 ficially apart in twenty different grooves the 
 animals all revert to the one old simple groove in 
 which they were first found by man. This much 
 may then be said in favour of the dog: he is plastic. 
 The plasticity is probably due to domestication, to 
 the variety of conditions to which he is subjected 
 as man's companion in all regions of the globe, 
 the selection which separates and preserves new 
 varieties as they arise, and the crossing again of 
 widely separated breeds. That he is plastic must 
 be our excuse for determining to make the most 
 we can of him to the complete exclusion of all 
 other species, which might or might not prove 
 plastic in the same degree. The fowl and pigeon 
 are plastic, while the goose, guinea-fowl, pheasant, 
 and peacock vary little or not at all. Nature may 
 have better things than the dog, but we cannot 
 guess her secrets, and to find them out by experi- 
 ment would take a very long time. A bird in the 
 hand, any bird, even a cock-sparrow, is better than 
 all the birds of paradise that are in the bush. The 
 other animals will serve us for sport while they last; 
 and when they are gone we of this age shall be 
 gone too, and deaf to whatever unkind things our 
 posterity may say of us. The dog is with us, 
 esteemed above all brutes, our favourite, and we 
 shall give him no cause for jealousy. 
 
 If we had him not, if we had never had him or 
 had forgotten his memory, and were to go out 
 again to select a friend and companion from the 
 beasts of the field, the wild dog would be passed 
 
THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 275 
 
 by without a thought. There is nothing in him to 
 attract, but on the contrary much to repel. In a 
 state of nature he is an animal of disgusting habits, 
 with a vulture-like preference for dead and decom- 
 posing meat. Cowardly he also is, yet when 
 unopposed displays a bloodthirstiness almost with- 
 out a parallel among true beasts of prey. Nor 
 does he possess any compensating beauty or 
 sagacity, and compared with many carnivores he 
 is neither sharp-sighted nor fleet of foot. Some 
 keen genealogist might be tempted to ask. Which 
 wild dog is here meant? He may follow his fancy 
 and choose his own wild dog — jackal, dhole, 
 baunsuah, wolf; or take them all, and even 
 include the coyote, as Darwin did. The multiple 
 origin of the domestic dog is by no means an 
 improbable theory; but it is also highly probable 
 that the jackal had by far the largest share in his 
 parentage. There are also reasons for believing 
 that most of the wild dogs, including the dingo, 
 have sprung from tame breeds; and, as a fact, 
 the wild dogs with which the writer is most familiar 
 are known to be the descendants of domestic 
 animals which ran away from their masters and 
 adopted a feral life. 
 
 Out of this same coarse material man, uncon- 
 sciously imitating Nature's method, has fashioned 
 his favourite; or rather, since the dog has become 
 so divergent in his keeping, his large group of 
 favourites, with their various forms and propen- 
 sities. Only now, too late by some thousands of 
 
276 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 years, lie is able to see that it was a mistake to go 
 so low in the first place, to have contentedly taken 
 base metal, dull-witted barbarian that he was, 
 when he might just as well have taken gold. For 
 the baseness of the metal shows in spite of much 
 polishing to make it shine. Polishing powders 
 we have, but not the powders of projection; and 
 the dog, with all his new propensities, remains 
 mentally a jackal, above some mammalians and 
 below others; nor can he outlive ancient, obscene 
 instincts which become increasingly offensive as 
 civilisation raises and refines his master man. 
 
 How did our belief in the mental superiority of 
 this animal come to exist? Doubtless it came 
 about through our intimacy with the dog, in the 
 fields where he helped us, and in our houses where 
 we made a pet of him, together with our ignorance 
 of the true character of other animals. All animals 
 were to us simply " brutes that perish," and 
 " natural brute beasts made to be taken and de- 
 stroyed," with no faculties at all resembling 
 ours; and when it was discovered that the dog 
 could be made to understand many things, and 
 that he had some feelings in common with us, 
 and was capable of great affection, which sometimes 
 caused him to pine at his master's loss, and in 
 some instances even to die of grief; and that in 
 all these things he was, or seemed to be, widely 
 separated from other domestic brutes, the notion 
 grew up that he was essentially different, an 
 animal set apart for man's benefit, and, finally, 
 
THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 277 
 
 that he had been specially created for such an 
 object. Thus, Youatt says, " The dog, next to the 
 human being, ranks highest in intelligence, and was 
 evidently designed to be the companion and friend 
 of man"; and in another place he says that it is 
 highly probable that he descended from no such 
 inferior and worthless animal as the jackal or wolf, 
 but was originally created, somewhat as we now 
 find him — the associate and friend of man. 
 
 This was not so very hard to believe in the 
 pre-Darwinian days, since domesticated dogs, and 
 even some of the breeds which we now possess, were 
 known to have existed between three and four 
 thousand years ago, while the world was only 
 supposed to have existed about six thousand years. 
 It seems probable that this curious superstition of 
 the dog's special creation grew up gradually and 
 only became popular in very recent times. It was 
 gladly seized on by the poets, who made as much 
 out of it as they had formerly done out of the 
 melody of the dying swan; and the artists were 
 not slow in following their example. A dog may 
 be choked with pudding, but the human mind 
 greedily gulped down as much of this mawkish 
 dog-sentiment as any person, with misdirected 
 talents, chose to manufacture for it. 
 
 Before proceeding with the story of our dog 
 superstition, I will here interpose a remark anent 
 that which obtains in the other half, or more than 
 half, of the world — the East. " The people of the 
 East," says Youatt, " have a strange superstition 
 
278 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 with regard to the dog." Strange indeed, almost 
 incredible to our properly enlightened Western 
 minds! We, who in a manner despise these 
 " people of the East," and object to many of their 
 habits with regard to personal cleanliness, and so 
 on, to be told that our friend and associate the 
 dog, our pet who shares our living and sleeping 
 rooms, and is caressed with our hands and lips, is 
 an unclean beast and unfit to be touched by man! 
 And so we find that the East is East, and the West 
 is West, with regard to this as well as to most 
 things, and that there are two great dog supersti- 
 tions. And now to proceed with the story of the 
 one which is ours. 
 
 In due time the evolutionists came, teaching 
 that the earth is old, that all the living things on 
 it are the descendants of one or of a very few 
 primordial forms, and as a consequence of such 
 teaching the special creation of the dog was no 
 longer tenable. How then came the dog-super- 
 stition — the belief in its superiority — to survive so 
 rude a shock? For the evolutionists taught that all 
 the brutes possess, potentially and in germ, all the 
 faculties found in man, and the conclusion seems 
 unavoidable that there must be a correspondence in 
 the physical and psychical development, and that 
 the root of the higher mental and moral powers 
 must exist in the animals of the highest grades; 
 that the mammal must be more rational than the 
 bird, and the bird than the reptile, and the reptile 
 than the fish; and that the hyena, civet, and 
 
THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 279 
 
 mongoose are nearer to us than the dog, the cats 
 above the mongoose, and the monkeys higher still. 
 Why then was not the dog relegated to a lower 
 place? Dr. Lauder Lindsay has given the reason: 
 " The mental scale — the scale of intellectual and 
 moral development — is not quite synonymous with 
 the zoological scale. The most intellectual and 
 moral animals are not necessarily those nearest to 
 man in the classification commonly adopted by 
 zoologists." Furthermore it has been assumed that 
 contact with man has had the effect of enlarging 
 the dog's mind, and making him, beyond all other 
 animals, intellectual, moral, and even religious. 
 
 It ought to be a great comfort to those who 
 devote themselves to canine pets, and to cano- 
 philists generally, to know that the philosophers 
 are at one with them. To some others it will 
 perhaps add a new terror to existence if students 
 of dog-psychology generally should feel themselves 
 tempted to imitate a recent illustrious example, 
 and go about the country lecturing on the mar- 
 vellous development of mind in their respective 
 pets. Leibnitz once gave an account of a dog that 
 talked; and quite recently a writer in a London 
 journal related how, in a sheltered spot among the 
 rocks on a lonely Scotch moor, he stumbled on an 
 old shepherd playing whist with his collie. Nothing 
 approaching to these cases in dramatic interest can 
 be looked for in the apprehended discourses. The 
 animal to be described will as a rule be of a quiet, 
 thoughtful character proper in a philosopher's 
 
280 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 dog; not fond of display or much given to wild 
 flights of imagination. He will only show that he 
 possesses that faculty when asleep and barking at 
 the heels of a dream-hare. He will show a deep 
 affection for his master, like the teal spoken of in 
 this article; also a strong sense of proprietorship, 
 again like the teal and like the tame snake described 
 by White of Selborne — a display of intellect which 
 strangely simulates an instinct common to all 
 creatures. And he will also show an intelligent 
 curiosity, and examine things to find out what 
 they are, and prove himself a very agreeable 
 companion; as much so as Mr. Benjamin Kidd's 
 pet humble-bee. Moreover he will be accomplished 
 enough to sit up and beg, retrieve a walking-stick 
 from the Serpentine, close an open door, etc.; 
 and besides these ordinary things he will do things 
 extraordinary, such as picking up numbered or 
 lettered cards, red, blue, and yellow, at his master's 
 bidding; in fact such tricks as a pig will perform 
 without being very learned, not a Porson of its 
 kind, but only possessing the ordinary porcine 
 abilities. In conclusion the lecturer will bring up 
 the savage, not in person, but a savage evolved 
 from his inner consciousness, and compare its 
 understanding with that of the dog, or of his dog, 
 and the poor savage will have very much the worst 
 of it. 
 
 We have come to the end of the dog's mind, and 
 have arrived at that other question to which allusion 
 has been made. The dog has a body as well as a 
 
THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 281 
 
 soul, senses, appetites, and instincts, and it is 
 worth while inquiring whether contact with man 
 has had the same ameliorating effect on these as it 
 is supposed to have had on his psychical faculties. 
 In other words, has he ceased to be a jackal? For 
 if a negative answer must be given, it follows that, 
 however fit to be the servant, the dog is scarcely- 
 fit to be the intimate associate and friend of man; 
 for friendship implies a similarity in habits, if 
 nothing more, and man is not by nature an unclean 
 animal. 
 
 Dr. Romanes, in his work on Mental Evolution 
 in Animals, speaks of what he calls unpleasant 
 survivals in the dog, such as burying food until it 
 becomes offensive before eating it, turning round 
 and round on the hearth-rug before lying down, 
 rolling in filth, etc., etc., and he says that they have 
 remained unaffected by contact with man because 
 these instincts being neither useful nor harmful 
 have never been either cultivated or repressed. 
 From which it may be inferred that in his opinion 
 these disagreeable habits may be got rid of in 
 time. But why does he call them survivals? If 
 the action, so frequently observed in the dog, of 
 turning round several times before lying down, is 
 correctly ascribed to an ancient habit in the wild 
 animal of treading down the grass to make a bed 
 to sleep on, it is rightly called a survival, and is a 
 habit neither useful nor harmful in the domesticated 
 state, which has never been either cultivated or 
 repressed, and will in time disappear. Thus far 
 
282 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 it is easy to agree with Dr. Romanes. The other 
 offensive instinct of the dog, of which burying meat 
 to make it putrid, rolhng in filth, etc., etc., are 
 different manifestations, is not a survival, in the 
 sense in which zoologists use that word, any more 
 than the desire of the well-fed cat for the canary, 
 and of the hen-hatched ducklings for the pond, are 
 survivals. These are important instincts which 
 have never ceased to operate. The dog is a flesh- 
 eater with a preference for carrion, and his senses 
 of taste and smell are correlated, and carrion 
 attracts him just as fruit attracts the frugivorous 
 bat. Man's smelhng sense and the dog's do not 
 correspond; they are inverted, and what is delight- 
 ful to one is disgusting to the other. " A cur's 
 tail may be warmed and pressed and bound round 
 with ligatures, and after twelve years of labour 
 bestowed on it, it will retain its original form," 
 is an Oriental saying. In like manner the dog may 
 be shut up in an atmosphere of opoponax and 
 frangipani for twelve hundred years and he will 
 love the smell of carrion still. When the dog runs 
 frisking and barking, he expresses gladness; and 
 he expresses a still greater degree of gladness by 
 madly rolling, feet up, on the grass, uttering a 
 continuous purring growl. The discovery of a 
 carrion smell on the grass will always cause the 
 dog to behave in this way. It is the something 
 wanting still in the life of enforced separation from 
 the odours that dehght him; and when he unex- 
 pectedly discovers a thing of this kind his joy is 
 
THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 283 
 
 uncontrolled. His sense of smell is much keener 
 than ours; it is probably more to him than sight 
 is to us; he lives in it, and the odours that are 
 agreeable to him afford him the highest pleasure of 
 which he is capable. We can do much with a dog, 
 but there is a limit to what we can do; we can no 
 more alter the character of his sense of smell than 
 we can alter the colour of his blood. 
 
 " The dog is a worshipper of man," says Dr. 
 Lauder Lindsay, " and is, or may be, made in the 
 image of the being he worships." That refers 
 merely to the animal's intellectual and moral 
 nature; or, in other words, it is the fashionable 
 " inverted or biological anthropomorphism " of the 
 day, of which we shall all probably be heartily 
 ashamed by and by; just now we are concerned 
 with a more important matter, to wit, the dog's 
 nose. Its character may be seen even in the most 
 artificial breeds, that is to say, in those which have 
 most widely diverged from the parent-form and are 
 entirely dependent on us, such as pugs and toy- 
 terriers. The pampered lap-dog in the midst of 
 his comforts has one great thorn in his side, one 
 perpetual misery to endure, in the perfumes which 
 please his mistress. He too is a little Venetian in 
 his way, but his way is not hers. The camphor- 
 wood chest in her room is an offence to him, the 
 case of glass-stoppered scents an abomination. All 
 fragrant flowers are as asafoetida to his exquisite 
 nostrils, and his face is turned aside in very ill- 
 concealed disgust from the sandal-wood box or fan. 
 
284 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 It is warm and soft on her lap, but an incurable 
 grief to be so near her pocket - handkerchief, 
 saturated with nasty white-rose or lavender. If 
 she must perfume herself with flowery essences he 
 would prefer an essential oil expressed from the 
 gorgeous Rafflesia Arnoldi of the Bornean forest, 
 or even from the humble carrion-flower which 
 blossoms nearer home. 
 
 The moral of all this is, that while the dog has 
 become far too useful for us to think of parting 
 with it — useful in a thousand ways, and likely to 
 be useful in a thousand more, as new breeds arise 
 with modified forms and with new unimagined pro-, 
 pensities — it would be a blessed thing, both for 
 man and dog, to draw the line at useful animals, 
 to put and keep them in their place, which is not 
 in the house, and value them at their proper worth, 
 as we do our horses, pigs, cows, goats, sheep, and 
 rabbits. 
 
 But there is a place in the human heart, the 
 female heart especially, which would be vacant 
 without an animal to love and fondle, a desire to 
 have some furred creature for a friend — not a 
 feathered creature, albeit feathered pets are common 
 enough, because, owing to the bird's organisation, 
 to be handled is often painful and injurious to it, 
 and in any case it deranges the feathers; and this 
 love is unsatisfied and feels itself defrauded of its 
 due unless it can be expressed in the legitimate 
 mammalian way, which is to have contact with 
 its object, to touch with the fingers and caress. 
 
THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 285 
 
 Fortunately such a feeling or instinct can be amply 
 gratified without the dog; there are scores, per- 
 haps hundreds, of species incomparably before this 
 animal in all estimable quahties, which can be 
 touched with hand and lips without defilement. 
 Only a few need be mentioned in this place. 
 
 One of the first animals worthy of so high a 
 distinction, which would occur to many travelled 
 men, is the marmoset: a fairy monkey in its 
 smallness and extreme beauty, clothed in long soft 
 hair with a lustre as of spun silk; in manners 
 pleasantly tricksy, but not scatter-brained and 
 wildly capricious like its larger irresponsible rela- 
 tions, which is an advantage. No visitor to the 
 Brazils can have failed to be charmed with these 
 small animals, which are frequently kept as pets by 
 ladies, and among pets they are surpassed by none 
 in attachment to their mistress. 
 
 A nobler animal, capable of endearing itself to 
 man as well as woman, is the lemur, of which there 
 are several very beautiful species. Strong, agile, 
 swift and graceful in action as the monkey, to 
 which it is related, but with an even, placid dis- 
 position; monkey-like in form, but without the 
 monkey's angularities and that appearance of 
 spareness which reminds one of a naked, half- 
 starved Hindoo, he has a better - proportioned 
 figure for beauty, and his dark, richly coloured 
 coat of woolly fur gives a pleasing roundness to his 
 form. Moreover, he has not got the monkey's 
 pathetic old man's withered countenance, but a 
 
286 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 sharp, somewhat vulpine face, black as ebony, a 
 suitable setting for his chief glory — the luminous 
 eyes, of every shining yellow colour seen in gold, 
 topaz, and cat's-eye. " Night wood-ghost," the 
 natives name it on account of its brilliant eyes 
 which shine by night, and its motions in the trees, 
 swift and noiseless as the flight of an owl. He is 
 of ancient lineage, one of Nature's aristocrats; a 
 child of the savage forest, as you can see in the 
 flashing hostile orbs, and in the combined ease and 
 power of its motions; yet withal of a sweet and 
 placable temper. 
 
 Even among the small - brained rodents we 
 should not look in vain for favourites; and fore- 
 most in attractiveness are perhaps the squirrels, 
 inhabiting all climates. Blithe-hearted as birds 
 and as volatile in disposition, almost aerial in 
 their habits, and in some tropical, richly coloured 
 forms resembling cuckoos and other long-tailed, 
 graceful avians, as they run leaping from branch 
 to branch among the trees; what animation and 
 marvellous swiftness of motion they display, what 
 an endless variety of pretty whimsical attitudes 
 and gestures! " All the motions of a squirrel imply 
 spectators as much as those of a dancing-girl," says 
 Thoreau. They are easily tamed, coming at call 
 to be fed from the hand; how strange it seems that 
 they are not domestic, and found at every house in 
 town and country where there are trees! Their 
 unfailing spirits and fantastic performances would 
 have a wholesome effect on our too sombre minds, 
 
THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 287 
 
 and in cities like London would bring us a thought 
 of the alert life and eternal gladness of Nature. 
 
 For those who would prefer a more terrestrial 
 rodent, yet one more daintily fashioned than the 
 rough-cast rabbit and guinea-pig, there are others. 
 For a large animal the beautiful Patagonian 
 dohchotis, like no other mammalian in its form, 
 double the size of the hare, and a docile pet when 
 tamed; and for a small one the charming lagidium 
 or Andean vizcacha, with rabbit-like ears, long tail, 
 arched like a squirrel's, the fur blue-grey in colour 
 above, and beneath golden yellow. And the 
 chinchilla, white and pale grey, with round leaf- 
 like ears, and soft dove's eyes — a rare and deli- 
 cate creature. There is in this small mountain 
 troglodyte something poetic, tender, flower-like — 
 a mammalian edelweiss. Poor little hunted chin- 
 chilla, did the Incas of old love you more than we 
 do now, who love you only dead? For you were 
 also of the great mountains, where Viracocha sat 
 on his throne of snow, and the coming sun-god 
 first touched your stony dwelhng-places with rose 
 and amber flame; and perhaps they regarded you 
 as an animal sacred to the Immortals. If so, then 
 you have indeed lost your friends, for we have no 
 such fancies, and spare not. 
 
 It is a great descent, in more senses than one, 
 to the prairie marmot — from the mountain to the 
 plain, and from the beautiful to the grotesque; 
 yet this dweller on the flat earth, gross in form 
 and drab in colour, is a great pleasure-giver. He 
 
288 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 tickles the sense of the ludicrous, and it is good to 
 laugh. His staring eyes, spasmodic gestures, and 
 barking exclamations are almost painful, they are 
 so genuine; for what an unearthly-looking monster 
 one must seem to him! He is a gnome who 
 has somehow stumbled out of his subterranean 
 abode, and, like the young mole in Lessing's 
 fable, is overwhelmed with astonishment at every- 
 thing he sees in this upper world. Then there is 
 the agouti, with pointed head, beautifully arched 
 back, and legs slender, proportionally, as the 
 gazelle's; its resemblance in form to the small 
 musk deer has been remarked — a rodent moulded 
 in the great Artist-Mother's happiest mood. The 
 colour of its coat, reheved only by its pink ears 
 and a broad shining black stripe on the back, is 
 red Venetian gold, the hue which the old Italian 
 masters gave to the tresses of their angelic women. 
 A mild-tempered animal, which may be taken from 
 its native woods and made tame in a few days. 
 Many of the smaller rodents might also be men- 
 tioned, such as the quaint, bird-like jerboa, and 
 the variegated loucheres; and so on down even 
 to the minute harvest-mouse. Forms and sizes to 
 suit all tastes; for why should we all have alike? 
 Let fashion in pets go out with the canines. 
 
 To go back to the other extreme, from low to 
 high, there are the wild cats inhabiting all desert 
 places on the globe. Tigers and leopards made 
 small; clouded, or with a clear golden ground- 
 colour, pale or red gold or grey, and black-striped, 
 
THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 289 
 
 barred zebra-like, or spotted, or with the colours 
 disposed in strange patterns, beautifully harmonious. 
 As in the lemurs, and surpassing them, here are 
 brilliant luminous eyes and great strength of 
 sinew; but these are not of peace: the serpent- 
 like silence of the movements and fateful stillness 
 of the lithe form, and the round watchful orbs that 
 seem like the two fiery gems set in a carved figure 
 of rich stone — these betray the deadly purpose. 
 Yet their hearts may also be conquered with 
 kindness. The domestic cat is a proof of it; she 
 is found in most houses, and whether we make a 
 pet of her or not, long familiarity has given her a 
 place in our affections. But when we go from home 
 and visit regions infinitely richer in life than our 
 own, it surprises and offends us to meet with the 
 same cat still; for it looks as if man had failed, in 
 the midst of so much variety, to find anything 
 better or equally good. Nature abhors monotony; 
 why should we force it on her to our own dis- 
 advantage ? 
 
 Here then we have a few mammalian forms 
 gathered at random from several widely separated 
 families, each as it were the final and highest effort 
 of Nature in one particular direction — " the bright 
 consummate flower " in a group, the other members 
 of which seem by comparison coarse and unfinished. 
 We boast to be lovers of the beautiful, and it is 
 here in its highest form. Birds may be said to 
 have a greater beauty, but it is different in kind; 
 and they are winged and far from us. They are 
 
290 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 of the sky and their forms are aerial; and their 
 aerial nature is not in touch with ours. For the 
 mammalians we, who are also mammals and bound 
 to earth, have a greater sympathy, and their 
 beauty has for us a more enduring charm. If it 
 is out of our sight and far removed from most of 
 us, and growing farther year by year, we have 
 only ourselves to blame. For how rich are the 
 mountains and forests and desert places of the 
 earth, where we sometimes go to slay Nature's 
 untamed beautiful children, assisted in our task by 
 that servant and friend that is so worthy of us! 
 And on the other hand, how poor are our houses 
 and villages and cities! The dog is there, inherited 
 from barbarous progenitors, who tamed him not 
 to be a pet or friend, but to assist them in their 
 quest for flesh, and for other purposes; to be a 
 scavenger, as he still is in Eastern countries, or, 
 as in the case of the ancient Hyrcanians, to devour 
 the corpses of their dead. He is there, but his 
 title is bad; why should we suffer him? We may 
 wash him daily with many waters, but the jackal 
 taint remains. That which Nature has made 
 unclean let it be unclean still, for we cannot make 
 it different. Her lustral water which purifies for 
 ever is a secret to our chemistry. Or if not alto- 
 gether a secret, if, as some imagine, the ingredients 
 may be dimly guessed, they are too slow for us in 
 their working. Man's years are limited and his 
 purposes change. Nature has all time for her 
 processes ; " the eternal years of God are hers." 
 
THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 291 
 
 Moreover, there is nothing we can desire and not 
 find in her garden, which has infinite variety. Why- 
 should we cherish a carrion-flower and wear it in 
 our bosoms while carelessly trampling on so many 
 bright and beautiful blooms? It is a pity to 
 trample on them, since the effect of so destructive 
 a habit is to make them rare; and "rarity," as 
 certain of our great naturalists have told us, 
 " is the precursor to extinction." And perhaps 
 by and by, blaming ourselves for the past, we 
 shall be diligently seeking everywhere for them, 
 anxious to find and to bring them into our houses, 
 where, after long companionship with the dog, they 
 will serve to sweeten our imaginations and be a 
 joy for ever. 
 
 Note. — I had pronounced the foregoing old magazine 
 article unusable, partly because of the manner of it, its care- 
 fulness, and partly because it was somewhat polemical and 
 touched on questions which are not natural history, pure and 
 simple. Now at the last moment I have resolved to put it in 
 — just for fun. 
 
 It appeared anonymously ages ago in Macmillani's Maga- 
 zine, then edited by Mowbray Morris, who wrote to me that 
 my article had given him a painful shock, that it would hurt 
 and disgust many readers of the Magazine, and, finally, that 
 all I and others like me could say in derogation of the dog 
 would have no effect on those who loved and esteemed that 
 friend of man at its proper worth. 
 
 "All right," I replied. "Send me back the MS. Of 
 course you mustn't let anything appear in your magazine to 
 hurt the feelings of these dear people." 
 
 No, he wouldn't, he said. He had accepted the article and 
 would print it. And in due time print it he did. 
 
 Just then a lady named Frances Power Cobbe, whom I 
 greatly esteemed and admired for her courage in combating 
 
292 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 one of the most horrible forms of cruelty practised on animals, 
 had a book in the press entitled " The Friend of Man and his 
 Friends, the Poets." Reading my unsigned paper in the 
 Magazine, she picked up her pen in a noble rage to add some 
 words to her Introduction, in which she hurled at me certain 
 sayings of Schopenhauer describing man as a very contempti- 
 ble creature when compared with the dog, and also saying that 
 the writer of the article was " worse than a vivisectionist." 
 
 This struck me as a bit thick, seeing that a vivisectionist 
 had always been to her the most damnable being in the uni- 
 verse. One or two of my friends, who knew I had written the 
 article, then remonstrated with the lady for using such ex- 
 pressions of one who, though tactless and somewhat brutal, 
 was also a lover of all the creatures, and didn't like to hear 
 so much praise of the dog at the expense of the other animals. 
 The result was that she smoothed her ruffled plumes and sent 
 her regrets and a promise to excise the obnoxious passage in 
 her preface in the next edition. 
 
 Of course it doesn't matter two straws whether she ever 
 had the opportunity of doing so or not : the best part of the 
 story is still to come — the funny part, and a wise word which, 
 though laughingly spoken, may yet do good. 
 
 The lady's book in the meantime had fallen by chance into 
 the hands of Andrew Lang, and as it was just the sort of 
 thing to delight him, he made it the subject of one of his most 
 charming amusing leaders in the Daily News of that time. In 
 this article, after the usual pleasant word for the book and its 
 author, he deals with the subject of the dog and man's feeling 
 for it in ancient and modern times, and of the great length to 
 which it has been carried recently, and concludes with a pas- 
 sage which I must quote in full, as I don't think this article 
 ever reappeared among his Lost Leaders, and it is worth pre- 
 serving for the sake of its Andrew Langishness, as well as of 
 its moral. After quoting some of the most notable sayings in 
 praise of the dog, he concludes : 
 
 " There is perhaps some slight danger of reaction against all 
 this, and Miss Cobbe seems to have anticipated it in a sharp 
 attack on a writer hostile to dogs. This writer, as though 
 in his turn anticipating the coming worship of the dog, has 
 expressed himself with considerable force against the ' great 
 dog superstition,' and has gone so far as to characterise 
 
THE GREAT DOG-SUPERSTITION 293 
 
 the dog's affection, devotion, and courage in defence of his 
 master as a ' very small and very low thing.' It is easy to 
 imagine how Miss Cobbe characterises him. Warned by this 
 example, we shall take care not to say that, nowadays perhaps, 
 the dog is too much with us in literature. It may be thought 
 — we do not say it is our opinion — that the dog's worst peril 
 awaits him at the moment of his highest fortune, when he has 
 become the pet and protege of women. Women may spoil 
 him, so the cynic might say — if a cynic could be expected 
 to say anything unkind on such a subject — as they spoil all 
 their favourites. Under their enervating patronage he may 
 gradually lose some of his most cherished qualities, until he 
 whines with the poet, ' What is it, in this world of ours, that 
 makes it fatal to be loved .f* ' For fatal it would be if the dog 
 were gradually evolved into a thing of tricks, a suppliant 
 for sugar at afternoon tea, a pert assailant only of 
 the people who never mean to rob the house, or a 
 being deaf to the cry of ' rats ' but fiercely active in 
 the pursuit of a worsted ball — a fine-coated dandy with 
 his initials embroidered on his back. His affection, his 
 fidelity, his reasoning power are very good things, but 
 it is not all a blessing for him that they are finding their 
 way into literature. For literature never can take a thing 
 simply for what it is worth. The plain dealing dog must be 
 distinctly bored by the ever-growing obligation to live up to 
 the anecdotes of him in the philosophic journals. These anec- 
 dotes are not told for his sake ; they are told to save the self- 
 respect of people who want an idol, and who are distorting him 
 into a figure of pure convention for their domestic altars. He 
 is now expected to discriminate between relations and mere 
 friends of the house ; to wag his tail at ' God save the Queen ' ; 
 to count up to five in chips of firewood, and to seven in mutton 
 bones ; to howl for all deaths in the family above the degree of 
 second cousin ; to post letters, and refuse them when they have 
 been insufficiently stamped ; and last and most intolerable, to 
 show a tender solicitude when the tabby is out of sorts. He 
 will do these things when they are required of him, for he is 
 the most good-natured and obliging fellow in the world, but it 
 ought never to be forgotten that he hates to do them, and 
 that all he really cares for is his daily dinner, his run, his rat, 
 and his occasional caress. He is not in the least concerned 
 
^294 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 about the friendship of the poets, and the attempt to live up 
 to their interest in him is playing havoc with his sincerity, and 
 making him only less of a nevrose than the quite unnecessary 
 cat. His earlier difficulty with the Egyptians is a warning 
 that ought to serve for all time. If he ate up Apis it was but 
 as a rough and ready way of inviting the worshippers of Apis 
 to leave him alone." 
 
XXV 
 
 MY FRIEND THE PIG 
 
 Is there a man among us who on running through 
 a list of his friends is unable to say that there is 
 one among them who is a perfect pig? I think 
 not; and if any reader says that he has no such 
 an one for the simple reason that he would not and 
 could not make a friend of a perfect pig, I shall 
 maintain that he is mistaken, that if he goes over 
 the list a second time and a little more carefully, 
 he will find in it not only a pig, but a sheep, a cow, 
 a fox, a cat, a stoat, and even a perfect toad. 
 
 But all this is a question I am not concerned 
 with, seeing that the pig I wish to write about is 
 a real one — a four-footed beast with parted hoofs. 
 I have a friendly feeling towards pigs generally, 
 and consider them the most intelligent of beasts, not 
 excepting the elephant and the anthropoid ape — 
 the dog is not to be mentioned in this connection. 
 I also like his disposition and attitude towards 
 all other creatures, especially man. He is not 
 suspicious, or shrinkingly submissive, like horses, 
 cattle, and sheep; nor an impudent devil-may-care 
 like the goat; nor hostile like the goose; nor 
 
 295 
 
296 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 condescending like the cat; nor a flattering parasite 
 like the dog. He views us from a totally different, 
 a sort of democratic, standpoint as fellow-citizens 
 and brothers, and takes it for granted, or grunted, 
 that we understand his language, and without 
 servility or insolence he has a natural, pleasant, 
 camerados-all or hail-fellow-well-met air with us. 
 
 It may come as a shock to some of my readers 
 when I add that I like him, too, in the form of 
 rashers on the breakfast-table; and this I say 
 with a purpose on account of much wild and idle 
 talk one hears on this question even from one's 
 dearest friends — the insincere horror expressed and 
 denunciation of the revolting custom of eating our 
 fellow-mortals. The other day a lady of my 
 acquaintance told me that she went to call on 
 some people who lived a good distance from her 
 house, and was obliged to stay to luncheon. This 
 consisted mainly of roast pork, and as if that was 
 not enough, her host, when helping her, actually 
 asked if she was fond of a dreadful thing called the 
 crackling! 
 
 It is a common pose; but it is also something 
 more, since we find it mostly in persons who are 
 frequently in bad health and are restricted to a low 
 diet; naturally at such times vegetarianism appeals 
 to them. As their health improves they think less 
 of their fellow-mortals, A little chicken broth is 
 found uplifting; then follows the inevitable sole, 
 then calves' brains, then a sweetbread, then a 
 partridge, and so on, progressively, until they are 
 
MY FRIEND THE PIG 297 
 
 once more able to enjoy their salmon or turbot, 
 veal and lamb cutlets, fat capons, turkeys and 
 geese, sirloins of beef, and. finally, roast pig. 
 That's the limit; we have outgrown cannibalism, 
 and are not keen about haggis, though it is still 
 eaten by the wild tribes inhabiting the northern 
 portion of our island. All this should serve to 
 teach vegetarians not to be in a hurry. Thoreau's 
 " handful of rice " is not sufficient for us, and not 
 good enough yet. It will take long years and 
 centuries of years before the wolf with blood on 
 his iron jaws can be changed into the white innocent 
 lamb that nourishes itself on grass. 
 
 Let us now return to my friend the pig. He 
 inhabited a stye at the far end of the back garden 
 of a cottage or small farmhouse in a lonely little 
 village in the Wiltshire downs where I was stajnng. 
 Close to the stye was a gate opening into a long 
 green field, shut in by high hedges, where two or 
 three horses and four or five cows were usually 
 grazing. These beasts, not knowing my sentiments, 
 looked askance at me and moved away when I first 
 began to visit them, but when they made the 
 discovery that I generally had apples and lumps 
 of sugar in mj^ coat pockets they all at once became 
 excessively friendly and followed me about, and 
 would put their heads in my way to be scratched, 
 and licked my hands with their rough tongues to 
 show that they liked me. Every time I visited the 
 cows and horses I had to pause beside the pig-pen 
 to open the gate into the field; and invariably the 
 
298 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 pig would get up and coming towards me salute me 
 with a friendly grunt. And I would pretend not to 
 hear or see, for it made me sick to look at his pen 
 in which he stood belly-deep in the fetid mire, and 
 it made me ashamed to think that so intelligent 
 and good-tempered an animal, so profitable to man, 
 should be kept in such abominable conditions. Oh, 
 poor beast, excuse me, but I'm in a hurry and have 
 no time to return your greeting or even to look 
 at you! 
 
 In this village, as in most of the villages in all 
 this agricultural and pastoral county of Wiltshire, 
 there is a pig-club, and many of the cottagers keep 
 a pig; they think and talk a great deal about their 
 pigs, and have a grand pig-day gathering and 
 dinner, with singing and even dancing to follow, 
 once a year. And no wonder that this is so, con- 
 sidering what they get out of the pig; yet in any 
 village you will find it kept in this same unspeak- 
 able condition. It is not from indolence nor 
 because they take pleasure in seeing their pig 
 unhappy before killing him or sending him away 
 to be killed, but because they cherish the belief 
 that the filthier the state in which they keep their 
 pig the better the pork will be! I have met even 
 large prosperous farmers, many of them, who 
 cling to this delusion. One can imagine a conversa- 
 tion between one of these Wiltshire pig-keepers 
 and a Danish farmer. " Yes," the visitor would 
 say, " we too had the same notion at one time, and 
 thought it right to keep our pigs as you do; but 
 
MY FRIEND THE PIG 299 
 
 that was a long time back, when English and 
 Danes were practically one people, seeing that 
 Canute was king of both countries. We have since 
 then adopted a different system; we now believe, 
 and the results prove that we are in the right way, 
 that it is best to consider the animal's nature and 
 habits and wants, and to make the artificial con- 
 ditions imposed on him as little oppressive as may 
 be. " It is true that in a state of nature the hog 
 loves to go into pools and wallow in the mire, just 
 as stags, buffaloes, and many other beasts do, 
 especially in the dog-days when the flies are most 
 troublesome. But the swine, like the stag, is a 
 forest animal, and does not love filth for its own 
 sake, nor to be left in a miry pen, and though not 
 as fastidious as a cat about his coat, he is naturally 
 as clean as any other forest creature." 
 
 Here I may add that in scores of cases when I 
 have asked a cottager why he didn't keep a pig, 
 his answer has been that he would gladly do so, but 
 for the sanitary inspectors, who would soon order 
 him to get rid of it, or remove it to a distance on 
 account of the offensive smell. It is probable that 
 if it could be got out of the cottager's mind that 
 there must need be an offensive smell, the number 
 of pigs fattened in the villages would be trebled. 
 
 I hope now after all these digressions I shall be 
 able to go on with the history of my friend the 
 pig. One morning as I passed the pen he grunted 
 — spoke, I may say — in such a pleasant friendly 
 way that I had to stop and return his greeting; 
 
300 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 then, taking an apple from my pocket, I placed it 
 in his trough. He turned it over with his snout, 
 then looked up and said something like " Thank- 
 you " in a series of gentle grunts. Then he bit 
 off and ate a small piece, then another small bite, 
 and eventually taking what was left in his mouth 
 he finished eating it. After that he always expected 
 me to stay a minute and speak to him when I went 
 to the field; I knew it from his way of greeting 
 me, and on such occasions I gave him an apple. 
 But he never ate it greedily: he appeared more 
 inclined to talk than to eat, until by degrees I 
 came to understand what he was saying. What 
 he said was that he appreciated my kind intentions 
 in giving him apples. But, he went on, to tell the 
 real truth, it is not a fruit I am particularly fond 
 of. I am familiar with its taste as they sometimes 
 give me apples, usually the small unripe or bad 
 ones that fall from the trees. However, I don't 
 actually dislike them. I get skim milk and am 
 rather fond of it; then a bucket of mash, which is 
 good enough for hunger; but what I enjoy most is 
 a cabbage, only I don't get one very often now. I 
 sometimes think that if they would let me out of 
 this muddy pen to ramble like the sheep and other 
 beasts in the field or on the downs I should be able 
 to pick up a number of morsels which would taste 
 better than anything they give me. Apart from 
 the subject of food I hope you won't mind my 
 telling you that I'm rather fond of being scratched 
 on the back. 
 
MY FRIEND THE PIG 301 
 
 't^ So I scratched him vigorously with my stick, 
 and made him wriggle his body and wink and 
 blink and smile delightedly all over his face, v Then 
 I said to myself: " Now what the juice can I do 
 more to please him?" For though under sentence 
 of death, he had done no wrong, but was a good, 
 honest-hearted fellow-mortal, so that I felt bound 
 to do something to make the miry remnant of his 
 existence a little less miserable. 
 
 I think it was the word juice I had just used — 
 for that was how I pronounced it to make it less 
 like a swear-word — that gave me an inspiration. 
 In the garden, a few yards back from the pen, 
 there was a large clump of old elder-trees, now 
 overloaded with ripening fruit — the biggest clusters 
 I had ever seen. Going to the trees I selected and 
 cut the finest bunch I could find, as big round as 
 my cap, and weighing over a pound. This I de- 
 posited in his trough and invited him to try it. 
 He sniffed at it a little doubtfully, and looked at 
 me and made a remark or two, then nibbled at the 
 edge of the cluster, taking a few berries into his 
 mouth, and holding them some time before he 
 ventured to crush them. At length he did venture, 
 then looked at me again and made more remarks, 
 " Queer fruit this ! Never tasted anything quite 
 like it before, but I really can't say yet whether I 
 like it or not." 
 
 Then he took another bite, then more bites, 
 looking up at me and saying something between 
 the bites, till, httle by little, he had consumed the 
 
302 THE BOOK OF A T^ATURALIST 
 
 whole bunch; then turning round, he went back 
 to his bed with a little grunt to say that I was now 
 at liberty to go on to the cows and horses. 
 
 However, on the following morning he hailed my 
 approach in such a lively manner, with such a note 
 of expectancy in his voice, that I concluded he had 
 been thinking a great deal about elder-berries, and 
 was anxious to have another go at them. Accord- 
 ingly I cut him another bunch, which he quickly 
 consumed, making little exclamations the while — 
 " Thank you, thank you, very good — very good 
 indeed!" It was a new sensation in his life, and 
 made him very happy, and was almost as good as 
 a day of liberty in the fields and meadows and on 
 the open green downs. 
 
 From that time I visited him two or three times 
 a day to give him huge clusters of elder-berries. 
 There were plenty for the starlings as well; the 
 clusters on those trees would have filled a cart. 
 
 Then one morning I heard an indignant scream 
 from the garden, and peeping out saw my friend, the 
 pig, bound hand and foot, being lifted by a dealer 
 into his cart with the assistance of the farmer. 
 
 "Good-bye, old boy!" said I as the cart drove 
 off; and I thought that by and by, in a month or 
 two, if several persons discovered a peculiar and 
 fascinating flavour in their morning rasher, it 
 would be due to the elder-berries I had supplied to 
 my friend the pig, which had gladdened his heart 
 for a week or two before receiving his quietus. 
 
XXVI 
 
 THE POTATO AT HOME AND IN 
 ENGLAND 
 
 When I was a small boy running about wild on 
 the pampas, amazingly interested in everything 
 and making wonderful discoveries every day, I 
 was attracted by a small flower among the grasses 
 — pale and meek-looking, with a yellow centre, 
 petals faintly washed with purple, and a lovely 
 scent. It charmed me with its gentle beauty and 
 new fragrance, and surprised me with its resem- 
 blance, both in flower and leaf, to the potato-plant. 
 On showing a spray to my parents, they told me 
 that it was a potato-flower. This seemed incredible, 
 since the potato was a big plant with large clusters 
 of purplish flowers, almost scentless, and, further- 
 more, it was a cultivated plant. They explained 
 that all cultivated plants were originally wild; 
 that long cultivation had had the effect of changing 
 their appearance and making them larger; that 
 was how we had got our wheat, which came from 
 a poor little grass with a seed scarcely bigger than 
 a pin's head. Even the botanists had had great 
 difiiculty in identifying it as the original wheat- 
 
304 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 plant. Also our maize and huge pumpkins and 
 water-melons, and all our vegetables and fruit. I 
 then took a table-knife and went to look for a 
 plant, and when I found one I dug down to a depth 
 of six inches, and there sure enough was the tuber, 
 attached to the root, but quite small — not bigger 
 than a hazel-nut — perfectly round with a pimply 
 skin, curiously light-coloured, almost pearly. A 
 pretty little thing to add to my collection of curios, 
 but all the same a potato. How strange! 
 
 From that time I began to take a new interest 
 in the potato, and would listen eagerly when the 
 subject of potatoes was discussed at table. When 
 the potatoes were taken up about the beginning of 
 December, and then the second crop in autumn — 
 April or May — my father would tell the gardener to 
 pick out a few of the biggest for him, and these, 
 when washed and weighed, would be placed as 
 ornaments on the dining-room mantelpiece, in a 
 row of half-a-dozen. They were not pretty to look 
 at, but they were astonishingly big when I put my 
 small marble of a wild potato bj^ the side of them. 
 Then when some English neighbour, ten or twenty 
 miles away, would ride over to see us and stay to 
 lunch, my father would take up the potatoes one 
 by one and hand them to him and say: "What 
 do you think of this one? And of this one?" 
 Then: "And of this one?" This one would be 
 the biggest. Then he would add: "What does 
 your biggest potato weigh?" And when the other 
 replied: "Ten" — or perhaps twelve — "ounces," 
 
THE POTATO AT HOME 305 
 
 my father would laugh and say: "This one 
 weighs fourteen ounces and a half; this fifteen 
 and three-quarters; this one just turns the balance 
 at sixteen, and this one seventeen ounces. What 
 do you say to that?" The other would reply that 
 he couldn't have believed it if he hadn't seen and 
 handled the potato himself, and my father would 
 be happy and triumphant. 
 
 Not only were the potatoes of that land as large 
 as any in the world, but they were probably the 
 best in the world to eat. They were beautifully 
 white and mealy, with that crystalline sparkle of the 
 properly cooked potato in them which one rarely 
 sees in this country. Strange to say, our Spanish 
 neighbours, even those who had a garden, did not 
 grow or eat them; they were confined to the 
 English settlers and a few foreigners of other 
 nationalities. 
 
 Here I will venture to relate an incident which, 
 though trivial, goes to show how little our native 
 neighbours knew about the potato, which was so 
 important to us; and at the same time it will 
 serve to illustrate a trait common to the native of 
 that land — the faculty of keeping his face. 
 
 A young girl of about twelve, the child of poor 
 natives living in a small ranch a couple of miles 
 from us, was invited by a little sister of mine to 
 come and spend a day with her, to look at dolls 
 and other treasures, eat peaches, and enjoy herself 
 generally. We were a big family, but my sister's 
 little guest, Juanita, took her place at table as if 
 
306 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 to the manner born. Lamb cutlets with a nice 
 big potato on the plate were placed before her, 
 also a cup of tea, for in those days tea was drunk 
 at every meal. After a glance round to see how 
 eating was managed in these novel conditions, she 
 began on the cutlets, and presently my little sister, 
 anxious to guide her, called attention to the un- 
 tasted potato. She looked at it, hesitated a moment, 
 then, taking it up in her fingers, dropped it into 
 her tea-cup! The poor girl had never seen a boiled 
 potato before and had never had a cup of tea, and 
 had just made a guess at what she was expected 
 to do. We youngsters exploded with laughter and 
 our elders smiled, but the girl kept her balance — 
 not a flush, not a change in her countenance. 
 
 " Oh, you must not do that ! " cried my sister. 
 " You must eat the potato with the cutlet on the 
 plate, with salt on it." 
 
 And Juanita, turning towards her little hostess, 
 replied in a quiet but firm tone : " I prefer to eat 
 it this way." And in tJiis way she did eat it, first 
 mashing it up, stirring it about in the tea, making 
 a sort of gruel of it, " not too thick and not too 
 thin," then eating it with a spoon. 
 
 This singular presence of mind and faculty of 
 keeping their dignity under difficulties is, I imagine, 
 an instinct of all uncivilised people, and is in some 
 curious way related to the instinct of self-preserva- 
 tion, as when they are brought face to face with a 
 great danger and are perfectly cool where one would 
 expect them to be in a state of confusion and panic. 
 
THE POTATO AT HOME 307 
 
 Other memories comiected with the potato 
 come back to me. I had a small brother, and one 
 day we were discussing that most important subject 
 to small boys, the things we liiied best to eat, when 
 it occurred to us as very strange that certain 
 articles of food were only eaten in combination 
 with certain other things; some with salt, and 
 others with sugar, and so on, and we agreed to try 
 and discover a new and better way of combining 
 different flavours. We started on our boiled eggs 
 and ate them with sugar or treacle and cinnamon 
 instead of salt, and found that it wasn't very nice. 
 By and by we found that peaches cut up and eaten 
 with cream and sugar tasted delicious. And after 
 that we broke the peach-stones and made a mash 
 of the kernels in a mortar and ate that with cream 
 and sugar, and agreed that it was a great success. 
 By and by one of our elders told us that the peculiar 
 flavour of the peach-stone pip which delighted us 
 and was so good with cream and sugar was due 
 to the presence of prussic acid, and that if we went 
 on with this dish it would certainly kill us all in a 
 little while. That frightened us, and we started 
 experimenting with the harmless potato. And here 
 we met with our greatest success; let all gourmets 
 make a note of it. Select a good-sized egg-shaped 
 baked potato and place it in a small cup and treat 
 it as you would an egg, cutting off the top. Then 
 with your spoon break it up inside, pour in oil and 
 vinegar, and add pepper and salt. A delightful 
 combination! We tried to improve on it by 
 
308 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 substituting cream or butter for the oil, but it was 
 the flavour of olive oil and vinegar combined with 
 that of the potato which made it perfect. 
 
 Other experimenters may have discovered this 
 way of eating a potato, but the only approach to 
 it I have found in reading is contained in an anecdote 
 of Byron, at the time when he was the hero of 
 London society. He dined with a friend who had 
 got together a company of the poet's ardent admirers 
 to meet him. But he was in a diflicult mood: he 
 declined soup and fish and meats of all kinds. 
 "What then will you eat?" asked his host, getting 
 impatient. " Oh, a potato," said Byron. And 
 when a big potato was put before him, he broke it 
 up, drenched it in vinegar and ate it, and this was 
 his dinner. And dinner over, he took himself off, 
 to the deep disappointment of all those who had 
 come to gaze and listen and worship. 
 
 " How long," said one of them to his host, " will 
 his lordship be able to keep this dietary?" 
 
 " How long — how long! " said his host. " As 
 long as people think it worth while to pay any 
 attention to what he eats." 
 
 The story goes on to say that, quitting his 
 friend's house, the poet walked to his club in 
 Piccadilly and told the waiter to bring him an 
 underdone beef -steak. He had perhaps discovered 
 that a potato drenched in vinegar was good as an 
 appetiser, but he probably did not know how 
 much better it would have been with the addition 
 of oil. 
 
THE POTATO AT HOME 309 
 
 The other most interesting memory of the 
 potato refers to its chief enemy, an insect called 
 in the vernacular Bicho moi'o — a blister-beetle or 
 Cantharides, its full scientific name being Epicauta 
 adspersa. Not every year but from time to time 
 this pest would make its appearance in numbers, 
 and invariably just when the potato-plant was at 
 its best, when the bloom was coming. On a warm, 
 still, bright day, when the sun began to grow hot, 
 all at once the whole air would be filled with 
 myriads of the small grey beetles, about twice as 
 big as a house-fly, and the buzzing sound of their 
 innumerable wings, and the smell they emit. It 
 was something like the smell of the fire-fly when 
 they are in swarms — a heavy musty and phos- 
 phorous smell in the fire-fly. The blister-beetle 
 had the mustiness but not the phosphorus in its 
 odour ; in place of it there was another indescribable 
 and disagreeable element, which perhaps came from 
 that acrid or venomous principle in the beetle's pale 
 blood. Though we heartily detested it, the insect 
 was not without a modest beauty, its entire oblong 
 body being of a pleasing smoke grey, the wing- 
 cases minutely dotted with black. 
 
 The sight and sound and smeH of them would 
 call forth a lamentation from all those who possessed 
 a potato-patch and had rejoiced for weeks past in 
 their little green plants with their green embossed 
 leaves, since now there would be no potatoes for 
 the table except very small ones, until the autunm 
 crop, which would come along after the grey blister- 
 
310 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 fly had vanished hke smoke from the earth after 
 leaving his evil seed in it. 
 
 The beetle feeds on the leaves of solanaceous 
 plants and prefers the potato above all others, so 
 that when he comes in a slow-flying swarm over 
 the potato-field, you see the beetles dropping in 
 thousands like a grey rain upon it, and know that 
 before the sun sets the whole of the leaves will be 
 devoured, the stalks being left till the following day, 
 when he will eat them pretty well down to the 
 ground before passing on to attack the tomatoes. 
 Attempts were sometimes made to drive them off 
 by lighting smoky fires of half-dried weeds round 
 the potato-patch, but never once did we succeed in 
 saving the plants. 
 
 As a small boy I was naturally incapable of 
 entering into the bitter feelings of our elders with 
 regard to the blister-beetle. Its appearance excited 
 me and had the exhilarating effect produced by any 
 and every display of life on a great scale. At the 
 same time I hated it, not because it devoured the 
 potato-plants, but for the reason that I had been 
 feelingly persuaded of its power to produce blisters. 
 I was out running about in the sunshine all day, 
 and the air being full of beetles, they were always 
 dropping upon me and had to be brushed or shaken 
 off my straw hat, my jacket and trousers and boots 
 continually; but from time to time one would get 
 into my shoe or slip down my neck or creep up my 
 sleeve to get broken on the skin, and in due time a 
 pain would set in just at that spot; then on pulling 
 
THE POTATO AT HOME 311 
 
 off my clothes a noble blister would come to light, 
 a boss of a pale amber colour and a jelly-like 
 appearance. It was ornamental but painful, and 
 I would go sore for a day in that part. 
 
 Being a boy naturalist, I tried to discover the 
 secret of its breeding habits and transformations, 
 but failed utterly. However, they are known, and 
 are like those of our familiar English oil-beetle, 
 which stagger the mind that contemplates the 
 strange case of a big beetle whose eggs produce 
 mites^mere animated specks — endowed with an 
 extraordinary activity and a subtle devilish know- 
 ledge and cunning in building up their own lives 
 out of others' lives. I did, however, succeed in 
 discovering one singular fact when on this quest. 
 There is a family of big rapacious flies common all 
 over the world, the Asilidae, and we have several 
 species on the pampas, some arrayed in the colours 
 and markings of bees and wasps. One is black and 
 has bright red instead of transparent wings, and 
 appears to mimic our common red- winged wasp. 
 I found out that this fly preyed on the blister-beetle, 
 and it amazed me to see that ahiiost every one of 
 these flies I could find had one grasped in its feet 
 and was diligently sucking its juices through its 
 long proboscis. Yet those juices had so potent a 
 poison in them that a few drops of them on a man's 
 skin would raise a big blister! 
 
 Although the potato was very much to me in 
 those early years, all my feelings regarding it having 
 originated in the chance discovery of the meek- 
 
312 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 looking little flower with a delicate perfume among 
 the grasses, it grew to be more when I heard the 
 history of the plant in cultivation, and how it had 
 been used as food by the Aborigines both in North 
 and South America for long centuries before the 
 discovery of the great green continent, and just as 
 the yellow-haired Demeter, the Corn Mother, and 
 her loved lost daughter Persephone, the Corn 
 Maiden, were worshipped in ancient Greece; and 
 as the Rice Mother is worshipped in the East, in 
 many lands and islands; and as the Maize Mother 
 and God were worshipped in all the Americas, by 
 nations savage and civilised, so did the Peruvians, 
 who built temples glittering with gold to their 
 chief god, the sun, and to the sun's children, the 
 lightning and rainbow, worship the Potato Mother, 
 and pray to her to look kindly on their labours 
 when the seed was committed to the ground and to 
 give them good increase. 
 
 Finally I came to know the history of the 
 introduction of the potato into these islands by 
 Sir Walter Raleigh. This action served to make 
 him appear to me the greatest of all the shining 
 Elizabethans — greatest in all he thought, said, and 
 did, good or evil; as courtier, poet, explorer and 
 buccaneering adventurer and seeker after a golden 
 city in savage wildernesses; as prisoner in the 
 Tower and author of that most eloquent History 
 of the World; and, most beautiful of all, on the 
 scaffold, by the block, the headsman with his 
 glittering axe standing by him, when, like a king 
 
THE POTATO AT HOME 313 
 
 who was to come after him, he nothing said or did 
 on that memorable scene to cast a shadow on his 
 lustre or cause any lover then and in the ages to 
 follow to grieve at even a momentary weakness on 
 his part. 
 
 All this served to make the potato so important 
 to me that when I stood among the plants, growing 
 higher than my knees, in their lush-green embossed 
 leaves and purple bloom, with a cloud of red and 
 black and yellow and orange and white butterflies 
 hovering about them, it seemed to me that America 
 had given the two greatest food-bearing plants to 
 the world — maize and potato; and which was the 
 greatest I could not say, although the great maize- 
 plant was certainly the most beautiful in its green 
 dress and honey-coloured tresses, which the hot 
 sun would soon turn to gold and by and by to a 
 Venetian red of a tint which one sees but rarely 
 in his life, in the hair of some woman of almost 
 supernatural loveliness. 
 
 The potato, then, as I have said before, was 
 very much to me. How natural, then, when I 
 came to England that I should have been shocked 
 at the sight of my first dish of potatoes on the 
 table. 
 
 " Is this the way potatoes are cooked in this 
 country? " I asked in astonishment. 
 
 "Why, yes; how else would you have them 
 cooked?" I was asked in return; and they too 
 were shocked when I said the sight of that sodden 
 mass of flavourless starch and water made me sick 
 
314 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 — that it looked like the remains of a boiled baby- 
 in the dish, boiled to a rag. For up to then I had 
 seen potatoes on the table as they appear when 
 boiled in their skins, peeled, and placed in a large 
 shallow dish with a little butter on them; and in 
 that way they have the appearance of large cream- 
 coloured fruit, and send out an agreeable smell and 
 have a nice flavour. 
 
 Here was quite a different thing: this was the 
 "homely potato" of the British journalist — 
 homely indeed! — stripped of its romance, spoiled 
 in the cooking, and made nasty to the eye. Yet 
 this is how it is eaten in every house in England! 
 In Ireland and Scotland I found that the potato 
 was usually cooked in the proper way by people 
 of the peasant class. But what do the doctors, 
 who make our digestions their life study, say of this 
 misuse of the potato? I don't know. All I hear 
 them say about the potato is that if your digestion 
 is bad you must not eat it. What, then, will they 
 say when I tell them that I have a weak digestion, 
 and whenever I have a bad turn I cure myself by 
 dining for a day or two on nothing but potatoes? 
 Cooked in their skins, I scarcely need add, and 
 eaten with pepper and salt and butter. No soup 
 or fish or meats or sweets — notliing but potatoes 
 for a day or two and I'm well again. Perhaps they 
 will say that I am not a normal subject. But we 
 needn't bother about the doctors. Just now, 
 while writing this chapter, I asked my landlady's 
 daughter in the village in Cornwall where I am 
 
THE POTATO AT HOME 315 
 
 staying if she had ever tasted a potato boiled in 
 its jacket. Yes, she had, once only, and didn't 
 like it because it didn't taste like a potato — such 
 a funny flavour! 
 
 That " funny " flavour, so unlike the taste of 
 the tuber boiled and water-logged in the homely 
 English way, is precisely the flavour which makes 
 it so nice to eat and so valuable as food; also, if 
 I may slip in the personal pathology or idiosyn- 
 cratic abnormality, so perfect a cure for indigestion. 
 It is, in fact, the taste imparted by the salts which 
 mostly lie close beneath the skin, and are con- 
 sequently thrown away when the potato is peeled 
 before boiling. You cannot avoid this waste by 
 scraping your potato, since scraping removes the 
 waterproof skin, and, the skin gone, the boiling 
 water saturates the potato and carries the salts 
 away. 
 
 This is a serious matter in these days, when — 
 as some of the newspapers say — we are trying to 
 economise in the matter of food, and when the 
 potato is beginning to be talked about. I suppose 
 that there are about thirty or forty millions of us 
 who consume about half a pound of potatoes every 
 day; and it is not only the case that hundreds of 
 tons of excellent food are thrown away every day in 
 the peeling process, but that the most valuable 
 elements in the potato are wasted. Perhaps the 
 war will teach us to value the potato properly, as, 
 I believe, it is and always has been valued in most 
 countries outside these islands. 
 
XXVII 
 
 JOHN-GO-TO-BED-AT-NOON 
 
 A LONGiSH name for a flower — one of its three 
 names! After all it is not saying very much; we 
 have another better, more familiar one with at 
 least six names, and one of them not composed of 
 six words like our John's, but of ten! 
 
 When it is spring I walk in sheltered places, by 
 wood and hedge-side, to look for and welcome the 
 first comers. Oh those first flowers so glad to be 
 alive and out in the sun and wind once more — 
 their first early ineffable spring freshness, remem- 
 brancers of our lost childhood, dead and lost these 
 many dim and sorrowful years, now recovered with 
 the flowers, and immortal once more with spring's 
 immortality ! 
 
 Do we not all experience a feeling something like 
 that in an early spring walk? Even a stockbroker 
 or stockjobber knows a prim.rose when he sees one, 
 and it is a yellow primrose to him too — and some- 
 thing more. A something to give him a thrill. It 
 is as if he met a fairy-like child in his walk who 
 tossed back her shining tresses at his approach to 
 look up into his face with eyes full of laughter. 
 816 
 
JOHN-GO-TO-B]&D-AT-NOON 317 
 
 To me they are all like that. Look at this 
 celandine, how it shines with joy and starts up to 
 meet you half-way, throwing its arms out for the 
 expected caress I And here too is my dear old 
 little white friend, the wild garlic — a whole merry 
 crowd of them by the stone hedge; happy meeting 
 and happy greeting! Let me stoop to caress them 
 and inhale their warm breath. It is true there are 
 those who don't like it and take their nice noses 
 away when the flower would be glad to kiss them. 
 But when a flower has no fragrance to it, like the 
 hyacinth and blue columbine of these parts, or even 
 red valerian — Pretty Betsy herself blushing bright 
 pink all over — it does not seem that they love as 
 warmly as the flower with a scented breath — sweet 
 violet and sweet gale and vernal squill and cowslip 
 and many more, down to the water-mint by the 
 stream and my loving little white friend here by 
 the stone hedge. 
 
 And when the first early blooms are gone with 
 March, April, and May, when it is full June, I 
 wade in the lush meadow (when the farmer is not 
 about) to greet and talk to the taller ones, and 
 alas! to say good-bye to them at the same time, 
 seeing that the mower will soon come to make hay 
 of them. One of the old friends I diligently seek 
 at this season is John, or Johnnie, tall as any there 
 — tall as the flaunting ox-eye daisies. Not that it 
 is a particularly attractive flower; I have never 
 regarded it as pretty, but merely as one of those 
 yellow dandelion - shaped flowers which are so 
 
318 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 common with us. And it is indeed in appearance a 
 lesser dandelion on a thin tall plant, the blooms, 
 half-a-dozen or so to a plant, on long fine stems. 
 It interests me chiefly on account of its singular, 
 unflowerlike behaviour, which the name describes; 
 also on account of its other queer name and the 
 meaning thereof. I don't mean goat's-beard, but 
 its third old English name which now, like many 
 another, has grown offensive to ears polite, and has 
 long been banished from our flower books, and even 
 the dictionaries. One must go back to the old 
 writers to find it in print: not necessarily so far 
 back as Chaucer, who is too disgusting for anything, 
 but to the Elizabethan and Carolines. The banned 
 name, however, is still in use in the rural districts. 
 
 What I have written so far was all I could have 
 said about this yellow flower until last summer; 
 and if in time gone by any one had said to me that 
 a day would come when Johnnie would appear to 
 me as a wonder and delight, I should have laughed. 
 Yet the strange experience actually came to me 
 last June. 
 
 At a Cornish village there was a field near the 
 cottage where I was staying, where my host had 
 allowed his half-a-dozen cows to graze during the 
 winter months: in April he turned them out, and 
 a month later, passing by the field, it appeared to 
 me that it would yield him a heavy crop of grass. 
 One morning in June, looking at the field from a 
 distance, it struck me that the hay would not be 
 of a very good quality since the entire area had now 
 
JOHN-GO-TO-BED-AT-NOON 319 
 
 turned to bright yellow with some tall flower that 
 looked like ragwort among the grasses. 
 
 " What's happened to your field — what is that 
 yellow weed in it? " I said to my man. 
 
 " Oh, that's only " then he pulled himself up, 
 
 thinking in time that I might be of the polite-eared 
 tribe. " That's a yellow flower," he finished. 
 
 " Yes, I see it is," said I. " I'll have a look at 
 your flower after lunch." 
 
 But the pleasure of luncheon, especially of the 
 omelettes my landlady made so wonderfully well, 
 caused me to forget all about it. 
 
 About three o'clock I was out walking, half a 
 mile from the house, when I looked back from the 
 high ground at the village beneath me, and my eye 
 rested on the field about which we had talked that 
 mc.ning. "Now what was it about that field?" 
 said I to myself, trying to recover something all 
 but forgotten. Then I remembered that at noon 
 it had appeared all a sheet of yellow colour and was 
 now of a uniform deep rather dull green! It was 
 very odd, but I had no time to investigate until 
 the following morning when, on visiting the field 
 about ten o'clock, I saw it in all its glory, the 
 whole area resplendent with its multitudinous 
 crowded blooms of the dandelion orange-yellow, 
 the most luminous colour in Nature; and but for 
 the wind that waved the tall plants like a field of 
 corn, mingling the vivid flower-tint with the green 
 beneath, the colour would have been too dazzling 
 in that brilliant sunshine. But it was the sunlight 
 
320 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 and the motion imparted by the wind which made 
 it so wonderful. A sheet of yellow buttercups or 
 a field thickly grown with dandelions does not 
 produce this effect owing to its want of motion. 
 The stiffer the flower on its stem the less vivid in 
 appearance is its sentient life — the less does it 
 enjoy the air it breathes. These flowers, on tall 
 pliant stems, danced in the wind with a gladness 
 greater than that of Wordsworth's daffodils. It 
 was only when the first shock of wonder and delight 
 was over, that, looking closely at a flower, I made 
 the discovery that it was the goat's-beard, the 
 homely John-go-to-bed-at-noon, and the hardly 
 respectable — I dare not say what! 
 
 After that I visited the field three or four times 
 a day and found that the flower begins to open 
 some time after sunrise and comes into its fullest 
 bloom about ten o'clock; that at noon it begins 
 to close, but for an hour or two the change is 
 imperceptible, after which one notices that the 
 field is losing its lustre, the dimness gradually 
 growing until by three o'clock the field is all dark 
 green again. John's in bed, tucked up, and in a 
 deep sleep which will last quite seventeen hours; 
 then he won't wake with a start, but slowly, 
 slowly, yawning and rubbing his yellow eyes and 
 taking at least two hours to get out of bed. 
 
 I do not know what has been said by the authori- 
 ties on the physiology of plants on this habit of the 
 flower, but it strikes the ordinary person as some- 
 thing abnormal or unnatural. We all know many 
 
JOHN-GO-TO-BED-AT-NOON 321 
 
 flowers (the familiar daisy is one) which close in 
 the evening, folding themselves up or covering 
 their round discs with their petals as a child covers 
 her face with her fingers, and this seems right and 
 natural and consistent with Nature's plan. We are 
 not yet acquainted with all the secrets of a flower, 
 but we at least know that its life and growth are 
 from the sun and suppose that when the light and 
 heat are withdrawn the work of elaboration going 
 or within it is suspended, that the flower is asleep 
 and at rest until the vitalising influence returns. 
 Why then the extraordinary waste of daylight by 
 this one flower, when all others require all the 
 light and heat they can get? Has Johnnie's 
 " unconscious intelhgence " found out an easier 
 way — a method of work by means of which he is 
 able to accomplish in his day of three or four hours 
 as much as others can do in their twelve to sixteen 
 hours' day? Johnnie then should be the right 
 flower for the Socialist to wear on his day, which 
 would have to be in June. 
 
 I had asked my man how he could have let his 
 field get into such a condition, since the tough wiry 
 stems of the goat's-beard could not be very good 
 for his cows as winter feed, and all he could say 
 was that it " had come like that of itself " ; that 
 in the two previous years there had been a slight 
 sprinkling of the yellow flower — he didn't like to 
 name it. But how it had come about was now 
 plain to see, for before he started mowing balls of 
 down could be seen all over the field, shedding 
 
322 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 myriads of seeds which would produce another 
 undesirable but exceedingly beautiful crop the 
 following summer. The lazy stay-in-bed-for- 
 seventeen-hours goat's-beard was actually ahead of 
 the other flowers in ripening its seed! 
 
 That shining yellow field, which continues to 
 shine in memory, just now serves to remind me of 
 other plants and flowers that, commonly seen, have 
 no special attraction, but which occasionally find 
 their day of fullest perfection and triumph on some 
 abandoned and waste ground — a field perhaps once, 
 long years ago, under cultivation. 
 
 I have described some cases of this kind in 
 Nature, in Downland, where the turf was ruined for 
 ever by the plough on the high South Downs a 
 century ago, then left for Nature to work her will on 
 the desolated spot. But we are most familiar with 
 the sight of her beautifying processes in the remains 
 of mediaeval buildings scattered about the land, in 
 old castles and abbeys and towers, draped with ivy, 
 the rough stone walls flushed with green and grey 
 and yellow colours of moss and lichen and rainbow- 
 tinted algae, decorated too with yellow wallflower, 
 ivy - leafed toad - flax, and red valerian. Thus 
 Nature glorifies our " builders of ruins." 
 
 And going back to remoter ages, I have in my 
 rambles come upon two wonderfully beautiful 
 flower effects, one in a Roman road, unused probably 
 since Roman times; the other more ancient still 
 on a British earthwork. I found the first one 
 
JOHN-GO-TO-BED-AT-NOON 323 
 
 spring day when cycling over the high down country 
 near Dorchester. I caught sight of what looked to 
 me like a broad band of snow lying across the green 
 hills. Coming to it I found the old Roman road, 
 which is there very distinct and has a closer turf and 
 a brighter green than the downs it lies across, so 
 thickly overgrown with daisies that the crowded 
 flowers were actually touching and had obliterated 
 the green colour of the ground under them. It w^as 
 a wonderful sight, for all these millions of small 
 blossoms occupied the road only, not a daisy being 
 seen on the green down on either side, and the 
 loveliness was of so rare a quality, so rich yet so 
 delicate, a beauty almost supernatural, that I could 
 not bear to walk or ride on it. It was like a road 
 leading to some unearthly brighter place — some 
 paradise of flowers. 
 
 In the other case the site was an earthwork in 
 Wiltshire, built probably thousands of years ago, 
 and the flower selected to decorate it was the 
 yellow bird's-foot trefoil. 
 
 There are in that part of Wiltshire many such 
 remains, grim dykes, with or without walls at the 
 side, and walls with a f oss on one or in some instances 
 on both sides. This one was a very deep ditch at 
 the side of a wall ten to fifteen feet high, with a 
 flat top eight to ten feet broad. It winds over a 
 large down then dips down to a broad level valley, 
 and rising over the hill opposite disappears at last in 
 the arable land on that side. Standing on the high 
 down or on the top of the wall it has the shape and 
 
324 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 appearance of a vast green serpent with its mile-long 
 coil lying in a series of curves across the earth. As 
 in the case of the old Roman green roads, the turf 
 of the earthwork is a different and brighter shade 
 of green than that of the valley. 
 
 At this place I once met and had a long talk 
 about the far past with a man of a singularly lively 
 mind for a Wiltshire peasant. He told me that 
 on numberless occasions since his boyhood he had 
 stood looking at this great earthwork in wonder, 
 asking himself who and what the people were that 
 made it. " I have often," he said, " had the idea 
 that they must have been mad; for allowing that 
 they had a use for such a wall and ditch why did 
 they make it go winding all over the place instead 
 of carrying it in a straight line and saving more than 
 half the labour it cost to build it?" I could only 
 suggest in reply that it was no doubt a very ancient 
 earthwork, dating back to the time when metal tools 
 were unknown in England and that the chalk had 
 to be scooped up with sharp flints; that when they 
 came to a very hard bit they had to make a bend 
 to get round it. I also assured him that they could 
 not have been mad as no such disease was known 
 to the old ancient people. 
 
 Now in spring the flat top of this earthwork in 
 all that space where it lies across the level valley, 
 the broad level top of the bank is grown over with 
 the bird's-foot trefoil, the yellow flowers as crowded 
 as the daisies on the old Roman road, with not one 
 flower to be seen growing on the green sloping 
 
JOHN-GO-TO-BED-AT-NOON 325 
 
 sides. A green serpent still in appearance but its 
 whole back now a shining yellow. 
 
 When I dream of South Wiltshire in spring, 
 when the wild flowers are in bloom, it is to look 
 again on that wonderful green and yellow serpent. 
 
XXVIII 
 
 THE CHEQUERED DAFFODIL 
 AND THE GLORY OF WILD FLOWERS 
 
 Never a season passes, never a month nor a week, 
 nor even a day, when I'm wandering in quest of 
 the sights and sounds that draw the field naturahst, 
 but I stumble on something notable never pre- 
 viously seen, or never seen in the same charming 
 aspect. And the fact that it is stumbled on when 
 not looked for, that it comes as a complete surprise, 
 greatly enhances the charm. It may be a bird or 
 mammal, or some rare or lustrous insect, but it is 
 in plant life where the happy discoveries are most 
 frequent, even to one who is not a " painfull and 
 industrious searcher of plantes " and knows little 
 of their science. For not only are the species so 
 numerous as to be practically innumerable to one 
 who desires to see all things for himself, but many 
 of the most attractive kinds are either rare or 
 exceedingly local in their distribution. I will give 
 a few instances. 
 
 What a delightful experience it was one cold 
 sunny day in April when I sought shelter from the 
 furious wind at a huge rocky headland at Zennor 
 
THE CHEQUERED DAFFODIL 327 
 
 on the Cornish coast, and found the turf at the 
 foot of the rocks jewelled with the first vernal 
 squills! And what a thrill of joy in Scotland one 
 June, when coming to a narrow green valley 
 between high rocks and woods I had my first 
 sight of the exquisite grass of Parnassus flowering 
 in profusion! 
 
 One day, cychng from Salisbury to Winter- 
 bourne Gunner, I found a pretty red flower new to 
 me growing by the roadside in great abundance; 
 for a distance of three or four hundred yards the 
 hedge-side was thickly sprinkled with its lovely 
 little stars. It was a geranium, prettier than any 
 red geranium known to me, the delicate colour 
 resembling that of the red horse-chestnut. It was 
 the Geranium pyrenaicum, native of central and 
 eastern Europe, and by some botanists supposed to 
 be indigenous in this country. Probably the colour 
 varies, as some of the books describe it as purple or 
 pale purple. 
 
 My delight was greater when I first came upon 
 the large blue geranium growing among the South 
 Wiltshire downs. The large loose plant with large 
 flowers and deep -cut leaves reminded me of the 
 geranium - leafed scented mallow, one of my 
 favourites, and these two plants became associated 
 in my mind, but the mallow is rosy pink and the 
 geranium a pure divine (or human) blue. 
 
 One of the rarest, and to my mind one of the 
 most beautiful, flowers in England is the bastard 
 balm; I have never found it but once, and it was 
 
328 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 the way in which it came before me that has given 
 it such a lustre in my mind. I was motoring with 
 friends from Land's End to London, when in coming 
 through the hilly country near Tavistock I caught 
 sight of a flower unknown to me on a tall stalk 
 among the thick herbage at the roadside, and 
 shouted to the chauffeur to stop. He did so after 
 rushing on a farther hundred yards or so, but very 
 reluctantly, as he was angry with the hills and 
 anxious to get to Exeter. I walked back and 
 secured my strange lovely flower, and for the rest 
 of the day it was a delight to us, and I'm pretty 
 sure that its image exists still and shines in the 
 memory of all who were with me in the car that 
 day — the chauffeur excepted. 
 
 I am bringing too many flowers into this chapter, 
 since only one is named in the title, but once I 
 begin to think of them they keep me, and a dream 
 of fair flowers is as much to me as that Dream of 
 Fair Women is to the Tennysons and Swinburnes 
 who write poetry. Or perhaps they are more like 
 fair little girls than grown women, the beautiful 
 little dear ones I loved and remember — Alice and 
 Doris, and pensive Monica, "laughing Allegra and 
 Edith with golden hair," and dozens more. But 
 I must really break away from this crowd to 
 concentrate on my chequered daffodil, only I must 
 first be allowed to mention just one more — the 
 blue columbine, the wild flower, always true blue 
 and supposed to be indigenous. I don't believe 
 it; I imagine for various reasons that it is a garden 
 
THE CHEQUERED DAFFODIL 329 
 
 escape dating back to the Roman occupation, which 
 gives it a better title by some eighteen centuries to 
 be described as British than dozens of our wild 
 flowers. The charming sanfoin, common as the 
 gipsy rose in our fields, the wild musk that flourishes 
 by a thousand streams from Land's End to the 
 Western Islands, the winter hehotrope that spreads 
 its green mantle over so much of England, are by 
 comparison aliens that emigrated but yesterday 
 to our shores. 
 
 It was in Wiltshire again that I found my first 
 columbines, in a vast thicket of furze, may, and 
 blackthorn covering about twenty acres of ground. 
 The plants were tall, the thin wiry stems being two 
 or three feet long, and produced few leaves, but 
 flowers as large as those of the garden plant. An 
 old keeper who had charge of the ground told me 
 he had known the flower from his boyhood, and 
 that formerly he could fill a barrow with "collar- 
 binds," as he called them, any day. It was a rare 
 pleasure to see that columbine in its own home — 
 the big blue quaint flower that looked at you from 
 its shelter of rough furze and thorn bushes; and 
 for the first time in my life I admired it, since in 
 the garden, where as a rule its peculiar beauty is 
 dimmed by other garden blooms, it has an inhar- 
 monious setting. But I must say of the colour 
 that albeit a true floral blue it is a blue of the 
 earth, the material world we inhabit, not the divine 
 (or human) blue of the blue geranium nor the more 
 ethereal blue of the vernal squill on the sea-cliffs. 
 
330 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 and of the wild hyacinth seen in sheets of colour 
 under the woodland trees. These are the floral blues 
 that bring heaven down to us. 
 
 It is not strange perhaps that this flower should 
 be known by bird names, but it is odd that the 
 names should be of birds so wide apart in our 
 minds as eagle and dove. Aquilegia, because the 
 inverted tubes at the base of the flower are like 
 the curved claws of an eagle; and columbine from 
 its dove-like appearance, each blossom forming a 
 cluster of fine dark blue fairy fan-tails, with beaks 
 that meet at the stem, wings open, and tails out- 
 spread. 
 
 This great find made me think that I had come 
 into a colmubine country, and I set out to look for 
 it, but failed to find or even hear of it anywhere in 
 that district except at one spot on the border of 
 Wilts and Dorset. This was a tiny rustic village 
 hidden among high downs, one of the smallest, 
 loveliest, most out-of-the-world villages in England. 
 In the small ancient church I found a mural tablet 
 to the memory of the poet Browning's grandfather, 
 whose humble life had been spent in that neigh- 
 bourhood. So rare was it for a stranger to appear 
 in this lost village that half of the population, all 
 the forty schoolchildren included, were eager to 
 talk to me all the time I spent in it, and they all 
 knew all about the columbine. It had been 
 abundant half a mile from the village by the hedges 
 and among the furze bushes, and every summer 
 the children were accustomed to go out and gather 
 
THE CHEQUERED DAFFODIL 331 
 
 the flowers, and they were seen in every cottage; 
 and as a result of this misuse the flower had been 
 extirpated. 
 
 They wished it would come again! 
 
 If comparatively few persons have seen the blue 
 native columbine, just as few perhaps have found, 
 growing wild, that more enchanting flower, the 
 snake's-head or fritillary. Guinea-flower and bastard 
 narcissus and turkey-caps are some of its old 
 English names, the last still in common use; 
 but the name by which all educated persons now 
 call it is also very old. Two centuries and a half 
 ago a writer on plants spoke of it as " a certaine 
 strange flower which is called by some Fritillaria." 
 Another very old name, which I like best, is 
 chequered daffodil. As a garden flower we know 
 it, and we also know the wild flower bought in 
 shops or sent as a gift from friends at a distance. 
 In most instances the flowers I have seen in houses 
 were from the Christchurch Meadows at Oxford. 
 
 I know what white, what purple fritillaries 
 
 The grassy harvest of the river-fields 
 
 Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields, 
 
 says Matthew Arnold in his beautiful monody- 
 the wonder is that it should yield so many. But 
 to see the flower in its native river-fields is the 
 main thing; in a vase on a table in a dim room 
 it is no better than a blushing briar-rose or any 
 other lovely wild bloom removed from its proper 
 atmosphere and surroundings. 
 
 It was but a twelvemonth before first finding 
 
332 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 wild columbine that I had the happiness of seeing 
 this better flower in its green home, a spot where 
 it is, perhaps, more abundant than anywhere in 
 England; but the spot I will not name, nor even 
 the county; the locality is not given in the books 
 I have consulted, yet it is, alas! too well known 
 to many whose only pleasure in wild flowers is to 
 gather them greedily to see them die indoors. For 
 we live indoors and reck not that Nature is de- 
 flowered, so that we return with hands or arms full 
 of some new brightness to add to the decorations of 
 our interiors. 
 
 Coming one May Day to a small rustic village, 
 I passed the schoolhouse just when the children 
 were trooping back in the afternoon, and noticed 
 that many of them were carrying bunches of 
 fritillaries. They told me where they had got 
 them, in a meadow by the neighbouring river; 
 then one little girl stepped forward and asked me 
 very prettily to accept her bunch. I took it and 
 gave her two or three pence, whereupon the other 
 children, disregarding the imperious calls of their 
 schoolmistress, who was standing outside, all 
 flocked round and eagerly pressed their nosegays 
 on me. But T had as many as I wanted; my 
 desire was to see the flower growing, so I went my 
 way and returned another day to look for the 
 favoured spot. I found it a mile from the village, 
 at a place where the lovely little river divides into 
 three or four, with long strips of greenest meadow- 
 land between the currents, with ancient pollard 
 
THE CHEQUERED DAFFODIL 333 
 
 willows growing on the banks. These were the 
 biggest pollards I have ever seen, and were like 
 huge rudely shaped pillars wJth brushwood and ivy 
 for capitals, some still upright, others leaning over 
 the water, and many of them quite hollow with 
 great gaps where the rind had perished. I saw no 
 chequered daffodils, but it was a beautiful scene, a 
 green, peaceful place, with but one blot on it — a dull, 
 dark brown patch where ground had been recently 
 ploughed in the middle of the largest and fairest 
 meadow in sight. A sudden storm of rain drove 
 me to seek shelter at one of the old crumbling 
 pollards, where, by cramming myself into the 
 hollow trunk, I managed to keep dry. In half-an- 
 hour it was over and the sky blue again; then, 
 coming out, that brown piece of ground in the 
 distance looked darker than ever amidst the wet 
 sun-lit verdure, and I marvelled at the folly of 
 ploughing up a green meadow in spring; for what 
 better or more profitable crop than grass could be 
 grown in such a spot? 
 
 Presently, as I walked on and got nearer, the 
 unsightly brown changed to dark purple; then 
 I discovered that it was no ploughed ground before 
 me, but a vast patch of flowers — of fritillaries 
 growing so close that they darkened the earth over 
 an area of about three acres I It was a marvellous 
 sight, and a pleasure indescribable to walk about 
 among them; to stand still in that garden with 
 its flowers, thick as spikes in a ripe wheat-field, 
 on a level with my knees; to see them in such 
 
334 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 surroundings under the wide sky in that lucid 
 atmosphere after the rain, the pendulous cups still 
 sparkling with the wet and trembling in the lightest 
 wind. It would have been a joy to find a single 
 blossom; here, to my surprise, they were in 
 thousands, and in tens and in hundreds of thousands, 
 an island of purple on the green earth, or rather 
 purple flecked with white, since to every hundred 
 or more dark-spotted flowers there was one of an 
 ivory whiteness and unspotted. 
 
 But it is not this profusion of blossoms, which 
 may be a rare occurrence — it is the individual 
 flower which has so singular an attractiveness. It 
 is, I have said, a better flower than the blue colum- 
 bine; in a way this tulip is better than any British 
 flower. A tulip without the stiffness and appearance 
 of solidity which makes the garden kinds look as 
 if they had been carved out of wood and painted, 
 but pendulous, like the harebell, on a tall slender 
 stem, among the tall fine - leafed grasses, and 
 trembling like the grasses at every breath; in 
 colour unlike any other tulip or any flower, a pink 
 that is like a delicate, luminous flesh-tint, minutely 
 chequered with dark maroon purple. 
 
 Our older writers on plants waxed eloquent in 
 describing their " fritillaria " or " Ginny-flower," 
 and even the driest of modern botanists writes that 
 it is a flower which, once seen, cannot be forgotten. 
 That is because of its unlikeness to all others — its 
 strangeness. In the arrangement of its colours it 
 is imique, and furthermore, it is the darkest flower 
 
THE CHEQUERED DAFFODIL 335 
 
 we have. This effect is due to the smalhiess of the 
 tessellated squares, since at a distance of a few feet 
 the dark violet maroon kills or absorbs the bright 
 delicate pink colour, and makes the entire blossom 
 appear uniformly dark. 
 
 The flower which, combining strangeness with 
 beauty, comes nearest to the chequered daffodil is 
 the henbane, with an exceedingly dark purple 
 centre and petals a pale clouded amber yellow 
 delicately veined with purple brown. But in the 
 henbane the dark and pale hues are seen contrasted. 
 In flowers like these, but chiefly in the chequered 
 daffodil, we see that the quality of strangeness, 
 which is not in itself an element of beauty, has 
 yet the effect of intensifying the beauty it is 
 associated with. Thus, if we consider other admired 
 species — briar - rose, pink convolvulus, rock - rose, 
 sea-poppy, yellow flag, bugloss, blue geranium, 
 water forget-me-not, flowering rush, and grass of 
 Parnassus, for example — and many more might be 
 named — we see that in beauty, pure and simple, 
 these equal and exceed the fritillary; yet this 
 impresses us more than the others, and surprises 
 us into thinking it more beautiful because its 
 beauty strikes us more sharply. It is not sufficient 
 to say that the sharper impression is due merely to 
 the unusual appearance. I rather incline to believe 
 that the source of the vivid interest excited is that 
 faculty of the mind supposed to be obsolete, but 
 which still faintly lives in all of us, though we may 
 be unconscious of it — a faculty which sees a hidden 
 
336 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 meaning or spirit in all strange appearances in the 
 natural world. It is the "sense of mystery," and 
 is with us in sight of a magnificent and strange 
 sunset, and of any unusual atmospheric strange- 
 ness, down to the smallest objects that engage our 
 attention — an insect, a flower, even our chequered 
 daffodil of the river-fields. 
 
XXIX 
 
 CONCERNING LAWNS, WITH INCI- 
 DENTAL OBSERVATIONS ON 
 EARTHWORMS 
 
 I AM not a lover of lawns; on the contrary, I 
 regard them, next to gardens, as the least interesting 
 adjuncts of the country-house. Grass, albeit the 
 commonest, is yet one of the most beautiful things 
 in Nature when allowed to grow as Nature intended, 
 or when not too carefully trimmed and brushed. 
 Rather would I see daisies in their thousands, 
 ground ivy, hawkweed, and even the hated plantain 
 with tall stems, and dandelions with splendid 
 flowers and fairy down, than the too-well-tended 
 lawn grass. This may be regarded as the mental 
 attitude of the wild man from the woods, but 
 something may be said for it. Sir Walter Raleigh 
 explained, centuries ago, the reason of our desire 
 for and pleasure in trim gardens, lawns, parks, and 
 neatly cut hedges of box and privet and holly: 
 those surroundings of the house were invented as 
 a refuge from the harsh, brambly outside wilderness, 
 the stinging nettles, scratching thorns, sharp hurt- 
 ful stones and hidden pits — from all the roughnesses 
 and general horriblenesses of an incult Nature. 
 
 337 
 
338 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 But that's all a feeling of long ago, it may be 
 answered; it has gone out now, and we have come 
 back to Nature — the dear old beautiful mother! 
 Have we indeed? Lawns have net gone out; on 
 the contrary, it appears to me that the idea of 
 the lawn, like the idea of clothes, has entered into 
 our souls and manifests itself more and more in all 
 our surroundings, our dwellings, our persons, our 
 habits. Sir Almroth Wright cried out a little while 
 ago against our habit of scrubbing our bodies every 
 day and rubbing them dry with rough towels to 
 polish and make them shine like our glass, china, 
 and plated table-ware. When Nathaniel Haw- 
 thorne came to the Old Home from an outlandish 
 United States of America where this idea of the 
 lawn had not yet penetrated so deeply, he spent 
 some time at a great country - house where he 
 stayed in running about the lawns and park in 
 search of a nettle, or weed, or wilding of some kind 
 to rest his eyes on. The novel smoothness and 
 artificiality of everything made him mad. And 
 if Sir Walter Raleigh himself were to return to us 
 in all his glory and splendour, and if some one, 
 opening the History of the World, should read that 
 passage about lawns to him, I think he would cry 
 out: "Oh, but you have now gone too far in that 
 direction! Your rooms, your tables, all the 
 thousand appointments of your establishment, 
 your own appearance, your hard - scraped skins, 
 your conversation suffocate me. Let me out — 
 let me go back to the place I came from ! " 
 
CONCERNING LAWNS 339 
 
 What then of all the beautiful things we say of 
 Nature? it may be asked. Why, only this: it 
 amounts to as much as all the beautiful things we 
 say about painted pictures, jewels, tapestries, old 
 lace, Chippendale furniture, and what not. We 
 are not in Nature; we are out of her, having made 
 our own conditions; and our conditions have 
 reacted upon and made us what we are — artificial 
 creatures. Nature is now something pretty to go 
 and look at occasionally, but not too often, nor for 
 too long a time. 
 
 So much in defence of my attitude concerning 
 lawns. There is no doubt that, seen at a right 
 distance, a fine country-house or mansion, standing 
 isolated from other buildings and from trees and 
 gardens, looks best on a level green expanse. At 
 this moment I recall Shaw House, Avington House, 
 and two or three others, but every reader who 
 knows England will have the image of half-a-dozen 
 or more such buildings in his mind. 
 
 Now I think that this grass setting would be 
 just as effective or more effective if left more in its 
 natural state. Seen closely, the smooth lawn is a 
 weariness to the eye like all smooth monotonous 
 surfaces; like the smooth or oily un wrinkled sea, 
 for example, which the eye refuses to dwell on; or 
 like the blue sky without a cloud or a soaring bird 
 on it. Such a sky may be good to be under but 
 tiresome to the vision after three seconds. If you 
 look at it for a whole minute, or for an hour without 
 weariness, it is because you are thinking of some- 
 
340 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 thing, which means that you are occupied with 
 seeing mental images and not the sky. An acre 
 or so of green linoleum or drugget, drawn evenly 
 and smoothly over the ground surrounding a large 
 house, would probably have as good an effect as a 
 perfectly smooth grass lawn. But into this question 
 I am not going any further. I write about lawns 
 because there are such things, and I have to see 
 them and sometimes live in sight of one. I have 
 had one before my eyes for hours this very day 
 while staying at a friend's house in the country. 
 A week ago I went up to London for a couple of 
 days, and on my return my hostess informed me 
 that I had no sooner left than the gardener pre- 
 sented himself before her to ask her if now that her 
 visitor had gone away for a day or two she would 
 allow him to sweep the lawn and make it tidy. 
 
 It was a good-sized lawn, with a group of well- 
 grown birches on the west side, and one day in 
 early November the south-west wind blew and 
 carried thousands of small yellow heart-shaped 
 leaves over the green expanse, making it beautiful 
 to look at. By and by the gardener came with his 
 abhorred brushwood-broom and swept that lovely 
 novel appearance away, to my great disgust. Then 
 the blessed wind blew again and roared all night, 
 swaying the trees and tossing out fresh clouds on 
 clouds of the brilliant little leaves all over the 
 monotonous sheet of green, and lo! in the morning 
 it was beautiful once more. And I stood and 
 admired it, and it was like walking on a velvet 
 
CONCERNING LAWNS 341 
 
 green carpet embroidered with heart-shaped golden 
 leaves. Naturally, when I saw the gardener coming 
 on with his broom, I cried out aloud and brought 
 the lady of the house on the scene, and she graciously 
 ordered him off. It was only when I went up to 
 town that he was allowed to work his will. 
 
 I now propose to tell the story of another lawn 
 of which I had the supervision for two or three 
 months; a small lawn at a cottage surrounded by 
 green fields lent to me by a friend one summer 
 end; it was mowed and looked after generally by 
 a man who came once a week from the village, 
 and he also had the garden to see after. In July 
 and August, when the sun was low enough to 
 allow one to sit out of doors and of the shade of 
 trees I lounged and read and drank my tea there, 
 and noticed that it was abundantly sprinkled with 
 plantains. Now I don't mind plantains on a lawn 
 because, as I have already said and ingeminated, 
 lawns are nothing to me unless flowers are allowed 
 to blossom and leaves blown from coloured woods 
 to lie on them, but I remembered my friends who 
 had lent me their paradisaical retreat with its 
 green lawn from which, idhng in my canvas chair, 
 I looked on a green valley and a swift chalk stream 
 with coots and moorhens disporting themselves on 
 it, and beautiful hanging woods beyond. I remem- 
 bered them, and in my desire to do something to 
 express my gratitude I said I would clear this one 
 lawn of its plantains. 
 
 Going to the tool-house, I found a long, narrow, 
 
342 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 sharp-pointed trowel, which was just what I wanted, 
 and also saw there an important-looking weed- 
 killing instrument and a can of poison, which I 
 certainly did not want. I started taking up the 
 plantains, worl: :ng the trowel down to the end of 
 the root so as to leave nothing of the tenacious 
 cunning creature in the ground. By and by the 
 man from the village came and saw the beginning 
 of my work — my little harvest gathered from four 
 or five square yards of lawn. He smiled, and 
 when I asked him why he smiled, he said the lawn 
 had been in that condition for the past ten years 
 and nothing could be done to get rid of the plantains. 
 He couldn't say how many quarts of poison had 
 been squirted into the roots, but they refused to 
 die, and so on and so forth. On his next visit he 
 found a huge heap of uprooted plantains in the 
 middle of the lawn, left there for his special benefit, 
 and not one growing plantain left on the lawn. 
 
 " Ah, yes," he said — it was just what I had 
 expected him to say — " the fact is I've never had 
 the time to do it properly. Always too busy with 
 the rose garden, and plantains take a lot of time, 
 you know. Certainly we did what we could with 
 the weed - killer, but it seems it didn't amount 
 to much." 
 
 What it amounted to was this: here and there 
 all about the lawn were round brown spots, the 
 size of a crown-piece or larger, where the grass had 
 perished and refused to grow again. These un- 
 sightly spots marked the places where plantains 
 
CONCERNING LAWNS 343 
 
 had been destroyed by the weed-killer, the metal 
 point of which is thrust into the centre of the 
 plant and the poison squirted in. Now this poison 
 does not kill the plantain only but the roots of the 
 grasses as well — hence the naked brown spots. 
 How long does the poison keep its potency in the 
 moist mould? A long time, I should think, seeing 
 that these naked spots were some months old. I 
 also wanted to know if the poison was deadly to 
 other forms of life in the soil, especially to earth- 
 worms. To ascertain this I took up mould enough 
 from one of the barren spots to fill a flower-pot, 
 then filled a second flower-pot with mould from 
 outside the lawn, then went to the rose-garden at 
 the back to dig for worms, and selecting two full- 
 grown vigorous specimens, put one in each pot. 
 The following day I turned them out and found 
 that the first one had lost its vigour, and not only 
 was it languid in its motions, but the colour had 
 changed to a dull pink and had wholly lost the 
 rainbow bloom of the healthy earthworm. There 
 was no change in the healthy colour and activity 
 of the second worm. I put them back in their 
 respective pots and examined them again next 
 day: the first was dead, its body a dull red and 
 flabby. The second was still just as strong and 
 active and of as fresh and healthy a colour as when 
 first taken from the earth. 
 
 I was satisfied that weed-killers are even more 
 potent than I had thought them. As a bird-lover 
 I had always hated them on account of their 
 
344 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 destructiveness to the small birds of the homestead, 
 the blackbird and song-thrush, chaffinch, robin, 
 dunnock, and other species that are accustomed 
 to seek for small morsels on the gravelled walks 
 where these poisons are so much used by gardeners 
 to extirpate the small hardy weeds that root them- 
 selves in such places. 
 
 I didn't pursue the matter further, and the 
 subject of lawns and earthworms was out of my 
 mind for two or three weeks when something 
 happened at the end of August to revive my interest 
 in it. There came a wet day followed by a gale of 
 wind which lasted a part of the night, and next 
 morning I found that the wind in its violence had 
 well-nigh stripped a row of young false acacia 
 trees growing on the south side of their still living 
 green leaves and sprinkled them abundantly all 
 over the lawn. As I sat out of doors that afternoon 
 I didn't quite like the disorderly appearance of the 
 long green leaves torn off before their time lying 
 all about me, and I took it into my head to sweep 
 them away, but when I set myself to do it with 
 the brushwood broom, not a leaf could I sweep 
 from its place! I then discovered to my surprise 
 that the leaves were all made fast to the ground; 
 every leaf had been seized and dragged by an 
 earthworm to its run, the terminal leaflet rolled 
 up and pulled into the hole, but no further could 
 the leaf go, since the next two opposite leaflets on 
 the stem were like a cross-bar and prevented further 
 progress. In every Case the terminal leaflet was 
 
CONCERNING LAWNS 345 
 
 buried and the rest of the leaf lying out on the 
 grass. 
 
 We know that earthworms live on the vegetable 
 mould in which they move and have their being, 
 and nourish themselves by passing the earth they 
 remove in excavating their tunnels through their 
 bodies. It is assumed by naturalists that they 
 extract certain " salts " on which they live from 
 the soil they swallow. But as the worm is not a 
 vegetable I prefer to believe that they exist on the 
 microscopic organisms in the mould. Be this as 
 it may, the worm does not live by mould alone; 
 he is also a vegetable eater and feeds on decayed 
 leaves of trees when they fall in his way, dragging 
 them into his hole by night. But the leaf he 
 prefers is the decayed one, and it struck me that 
 these lawn worms were in an extraordinary state 
 of leaf-hunger to seize upon and drag these fresh 
 living leaves into their holes as soon as the wind 
 had torn them off. 
 
 The conclusion I formed was that the lawn 
 earthworm is a starved worm, and I began to 
 examine and compare the lawn worms with those 
 living in the soil away from the lawn. I found 
 that when I dug for worms in the moist earth in 
 likely spots away from the lawn, the mere act of 
 striking the spade or fork deep into the soil brought 
 the worms with a rush to the surface, and in many 
 instances the rush was so rapid that at the moment 
 when the spade was being driven deep down by 
 the foot, a big vigorous worm would appear on the 
 
346 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 surface thrusting half the length of his long body 
 straight up and looking like the round polished 
 stem of some species of squill or lily springing 
 miraculously from the earth. Worms, I found, are 
 extraordinarily sensitive to earth vibration: thus 
 when one walks upon or strikes the ground with a 
 stick, they go deeper down; but when the vibra- 
 tions come from beneath or from the earth around 
 them, they rush to the surface to escape from a 
 subterranean enemy pursuing them in their own 
 element. On the lawn I never succeeded in making 
 the worms rush up to the surface by striking a 
 spade or fork into the soil; and when I dug up a 
 number of worms from the lawn and compared 
 them with others from the soil outside, I found a 
 great difference in them. The lawn worms were 
 much smaller and were not nearly so vigorous in 
 their movements as the others. The wonder was 
 that worms should be found living in such numbers 
 in the lawn soil in these somewhat unnatural 
 conditions, when just outside the lawn there was 
 a soil easier to penetrate and abundance of decaying 
 leaves for them to feed on. 
 
 These incidental observations on earthworms in 
 their relation to lawns caused me to regret that I 
 had not made a better use of my opportunities of 
 studying these creatures on former occasions, as 
 it now appeared to me that much yet remains to 
 be discovered anent their habits and effect on the 
 soil and vegetation. My knowledge of them was 
 little more than that of the ordinary person, and 
 
CONCERNING LAWNS 347 
 
 how much he knows about the subject let the 
 following incident show. 
 
 One evening I was with Mr. Frank E. Beddard 
 at his club, and taking advantage of the occasion, 
 asked him some question about earthworms, he 
 being the greatest authority in the universe on the 
 subject. It happened that another friend of his, 
 a famous angler, was sitting near and overheard our 
 conversation. 
 
 " Ah, yes — worms," he said. " Before I forget 
 all about it, I want to ask you if the worm we dig 
 up in the sand for bait is the same as the common 
 earthworm." 
 
 " No," said the other. 
 
 " Well, but they are both worms, are they 
 not? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And if they are both worms, what's the 
 difference? " 
 
 " They are both worms, and differ as much as a 
 cat from a squirrel — both mammals." 
 
 And that was all he would say: the subject of 
 their differences could not be profitably discussed 
 on that occasion and with persons who knew so 
 little. 
 
 Like everybody else I had read Darwin's classic, 
 but what one reads does not inform the mind 
 much unless one observes and thinks for oneself 
 at the same time. The wonderful story of the 
 action of earthworms on the earth's surface only 
 came home to me during the excavations at 
 
348 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 Silchester, when year after year the pavements and 
 floors and foundations of houses and temples and 
 public and private baths were uncovered until the 
 entire 200 acres within the walls had been dis- 
 closed. It is not necessary to describe here, since 
 we have it all in Darwin, just how the worms 
 succeeded in burying in a century or two all that 
 remained of a ruined Silchester — the outside wall 
 excepted — to a depth of three to four feet beneath 
 the surface. We know that for the last 800 years 
 the ground has been cultivated above the buried 
 city. When watching these excavations I dis- 
 covered one fact about worms which Darwin 
 missed. Among the best finds at Silchester were 
 the large and in some cases uninjured mosaic 
 floors of the more important houses, some of 
 which were removed intact to Reading Museum, 
 and may be seen there. 
 
 When one of these fine large floors was un- 
 covered it remained in situ until the late autumn, 
 when it was taken up and removed. Observing 
 these floors, after they had been washed and scrubbed 
 until they looked as fresh as if made yesterday 
 instead of nigh on twenty centuries ago, it surprised 
 me to find that worms were quite abundant beneath 
 them, that they came to the surface through small 
 borings which were not noticed unless closely 
 looked for; they came up by night, and in the 
 morning the workmen had to sweep the castings 
 away to make the floors clean. The question that 
 suggested itself was: Why did the worms continue 
 
CONCERNING LAWNS 349 
 
 to penetrate beneath the stone and cement floor 
 after it had been buried so deep in the ground, 
 and when they had, and had enjoyed for over a 
 thousand years at the least, a soil formed of 
 vegetable mould as deep as earthworms require to 
 live and flourish in? A depth of three or four feet 
 of mould is as much as they require, but they will, 
 Darwin says, occasionally go deeper to five or six 
 feet, and he gives nine feet as the greatest depth 
 at which they have been found. Now at Silchester 
 I saw some taken from a depth of twenty-five feet, 
 and very many at eighteen to twenty feet. This 
 was when the old Roman wells and other deep 
 pits were cleaned out. 
 
 It struck me that these Silchester observations 
 made a valuable contribution to a history of the 
 earthworm's life habits. For it should be borne 
 in mind that the soil covering the buried city is a 
 rich mould, which has been under cultivation for 
 the last nine or ten centuries, and is the kind of 
 soil in which the earthworm finds his best con- 
 ditions and attains his greatest size and vigour. 
 Consider next that the soil in the deep pits and 
 everywhere beneath the Roman pavements is a 
 cold, heavy, hardly-pressed earth undisturbed for 
 many centuries, unpierced by root of plant or ray 
 of sun, and probably to a great extent devoid of 
 the microbic life which makes the upper soil alive. 
 When you turn over this long-buried soil with the 
 spade it has a heavy damp smell, but not the 
 familiar earth-smell of Clodothrix odorifera. Yet 
 
350 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 down in this dark dead soil the worms will insist 
 on descending, although their only way to it is 
 through the few small cylindrical holes they have 
 succeeded in boring through the partially rotted 
 cement between the tiles, or where a minute stone 
 has dropped out of the tesserae pavements. Their 
 descent into these difficult places and down into 
 the old pits involves long double journeys daily 
 when they are forced to come up to deposit their 
 castings on the surface. 
 
 What then is the force impelling them? Why 
 do they leave a rich feeding-ground for a poor one? 
 I take these facts in their relation to other well- 
 known facts, as for example that of the quite 
 extraordinary difference in size and vigour and 
 colouring in the earthworms inhabiting different 
 soils. They are like different species. Let us take 
 the case of the London earthworm to be found in 
 every few square yards of earth unbuilt on, even 
 in the very heart of the City itself. Judging from 
 all the specimens I have examined, this worm 
 attains to about half the full normal size and is 
 comparatively languid in his movements and rarely 
 exhibits the brilliant play of colours seen in the 
 large country worm in rich soil — the colour which 
 is the sign of intensity of life. Doubtless he was 
 once a big vigorous worm, but that was long ago 
 in an old London, or Londineum, and he has had 
 ample time to degenerate. In this state he is now 
 biding his time, under our feet, and his time will 
 come when our seven millions have faded or 
 
CONCERNING LAWNS 351 
 
 drifted away; then indeed he will recover his 
 power, and slowly, patiently, unhasting and un- 
 resting, day and night, year by year, century 
 after century, he will labour to sink away brick 
 and stone beneath the surface and cover it all with 
 a deep rich mould and a mantle of everlasting 
 verdure. 
 
 Then we have the earthworms inhabiting heaths 
 and all sandy soils throughout the land. They are 
 no better than the London earthworms. One day 
 last autumn I found the gardener at the house in 
 a pine wood where I was staying at Ascot digging 
 potatoes. I took a spade and went to him and 
 started digging for worms at his side. There was 
 a magnificent crop of potatoes, as it has been 
 everywhere this autumn of 1918, but the earth- 
 worms we turned up were few in number and very 
 poor specimens. " It is useless," said the gardener, 
 " to look for a big worm here — I never see one. It 
 is the sand that starves them." 
 
 I am not sure that this is a sufficient explana- 
 tion: in the rich soils in these highly cultivated 
 gardens in this heath and pine district where 
 wealthy people have their homes, the worms, one 
 would think, must find sufficient nourishment. It 
 is more probable that their poor condition is due 
 to something inimical to earthworms in the sand 
 itself. 
 
 On the chalk, where the soil is thin, as in the 
 sheep-walks, the earthworms are comparatively 
 small in size, but vigorous and quick in their move- 
 
352 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 ments amidst the interlacing fibrous roots of the 
 close turf. In the hollow places between the hills, 
 where a deeper soil has been formed, the worms 
 attain to their full size — all which goes to show 
 that chalk itself is not inimical to worms. In 
 heavy clays the appearance of the worms show that 
 the conditions are not favom-able. 
 
 Thus we see that earthworms are perpetually 
 invading and peophng all soils, good and bad; 
 also that if you have a piece of hard ground barren 
 of food for worms and free of worms, where for 
 long years they have not been permitted to exist, 
 they will constantly flow in from all the surrounding 
 rich soils where worms abound and flourish in order 
 to get possession of it. The cause, I take it, is that 
 the earthworm abhors the soil frequented by other 
 worms, which is impregnated with the acid the 
 worm secretes and discharges into the soil. The 
 acid spoils the ground for him, and he prefers to go 
 outside into the most barren and unsuitable places 
 to remaining in it. And the perpetual desire 
 to get away and seek pastures new is the reason 
 of the wide distribution of the earthworm, of its 
 universality, so that there is not a clod on the 
 surface of the earth without a worm for inhabitant. 
 
 Three or four days after witnessing the remark- 
 able phenomenon I described some pages back — 
 the rush of hungry earthworms to secure a windfall 
 of leaves torn before their time from the trees and 
 consequently not well suited to their masticating 
 powers — I pa\d a visit at a country-house a few miles 
 
CONCERNING LAWNS 353 
 
 away, and found there one of the finest lawns I had 
 ever seen. The old Georgian house was built on an 
 eminence overlooking the valley and stood in the 
 centre of a square and perfectly flat piece of ground, 
 which was all lawn; then the ground sloped on 
 all sides to a terrace, and slope and terrace were all 
 lawn too and one with the level ground above. 
 The great extent and marvellous smoothness of 
 this lawn filled me with admiration — when I saw 
 it at a distance; but I no sooner set foot on it 
 than I began to quarrel with it. To begin with, 
 the ground was hard; there was no elastic, no 
 real turf; it was like walking on flagstones. Noth- 
 ing but grass grew on that lawn, not in a matted 
 turf, but each grass or grass plant by itself, so 
 that when looking closely down at one's feet 
 one saw the hard ground between the blades and 
 roots. On all that ground there was not a daisy 
 to be seen, nor any of the small creeping plants 
 and clovers usually found on lawns. 
 
 Before my visit was over I succeeded in getting 
 hold of the gardener and asked him how he managed 
 to keep his large lawn so clean and smooth. Ke 
 took it that I was praising his work and began to 
 tell me what a tremendous task it was to keep it in 
 that perfect condition. 
 
 " But I think," said I, " that if you would call 
 in the earthworms to help you and did less yourself 
 you would have a better lawn." 
 
 At first he thought I was joking and was much 
 amused. Earthworms, he assured me, were the 
 
354 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 worst enemies of lawns — they made such a mess! 
 His greatest trouble was to keep them down. He 
 was always going round with a bucket of brine, 
 particularly about the lower borders, where they 
 were always trying to come in, and poured the 
 brine down their holes. Brine was the best worm- 
 killer he knew; and the result of his care and use 
 of it was that you wouldn't be able to find a worm 
 on all that immense lawn. 
 
 I asked him if he could not understand that it 
 was no pleasure to walk or sit or lie on a lawn 
 where the ground was always dry and hard in spite 
 of all the watering he gave it. To walk on his 
 lawn tired and depressed me, whereas on the 
 chalk-hill behind the house I could walk miles with 
 pure delight, simply because it was a close-matted 
 turf and was felt beneath the feet like a pile-carpet 
 drawn over a thick rubber floor. It lifted me when 
 I walked on it, and was better than the most 
 luxurious couch to lie on, to say nothing of the 
 pleasure one received from the sight of its Small 
 gem-like flowers and from its aromatic scent. As 
 to the castings, they were unpleasant only when 
 the lawn was wet in the morning, and only then 
 when the grass was too thin. You do not see the 
 castings on the thick turf on the downs, although 
 if you take up a sod you find earthworms at the 
 roots in abundance. 
 
 Well, he answered, a lawn could not have a turf 
 like a chalk-hill fed by sheep, because — such a turf 
 wasn't the right one for a lawn to have. Then, as 
 
CONCERNING LAWNS 355 
 
 this seemed a rather poor argument, he suddenly 
 brightened up and said: "And what about the 
 moles? Do you know that with a large lawn like 
 this, with grass fields all round it, you are always 
 in danger of getting a mole — that is to say if there 
 are any earthworms to attract him. And a mole 
 can disfigure a lawn as much as if you had made a 
 furrow with a plough across it." 
 
 No doubt he was right there; but when I said 
 that moles could be kept out by sinking a rabbit 
 net to a depth of two or three feet beneath the 
 surface and would save a lot of labour and expense, 
 he only smiled and shook his head. 
 
 The gardener, like the gamekeeper, is never a 
 person who will allow you to teach him anything, 
 but after our conversation I was more convinced 
 than ever that it would be better for the lawn if, 
 instead of killing and starving the worms, we were 
 to feed them and allow them to make and keep 
 a turf. 
 
 With this idea in my mind I tried a fresh experi- 
 ment. I pegged out a strip of the lawn at the 
 cottage, about ten feet wide, and ran a cord on each 
 side to keep it distinct from the rest of the ground, 
 and over that strip I sprinkled leaves from the 
 acacia and other trees abundantly. I examined the 
 ground on the follov/ing day and saw no change. 
 Leaves were still lying thickly on the ground, and 
 it was impossible to tell whether any had been 
 carried away or not. The next day it was the 
 same. On the morning of the third day there was 
 
356 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 something new to note: it looked as if the worms 
 inhabiting the quartered-off ground had suddenly- 
 developed a wonderful vigour and activity, or as 
 if a rush of worms from all over the lawn to that 
 favoured spot had taken place. The ground was 
 thickly sprinkled over with castings, mostly under 
 the herbage, although after a careful search I could 
 not find a single casting anyivhere else on the lawn. 
 It was evident that the worms had been taking the 
 leaves into their runs and feeding greedily on them, 
 and I confidently expected that the result would 
 be that in a little while the turf on the marked 
 strip of ground would be thicker, greener, more 
 elastic to the tread. Unfortunately I was obliged 
 to leave the place when the experiment was just 
 at its beginning, so that nothing was proved; and 
 I hope that some reader of this paper, who possesses 
 a lawn, or is about to form one, will carry the 
 matter further and try to find out whether or not 
 a better result may be had by encouraging the 
 earthworms to w^ork with and for us instead of 
 regarding them as enemies and trying to suppress 
 them. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Acherontia atropas, 217-19 
 Adders, the quest of, 15 ; dreaming 
 
 of, 19; reasons for not killing, 
 
 20-28; swallowing their young, 
 
 21; measuring, 25; capturing, 
 
 28-9; beautiful colours in, 29-32 
 Adder-stone, 16 
 Agouti, beauty of the, 288 
 Aldebaran, an intelligent visitor 
 
 from, 37-40 
 Aldermaston, snake preserve at, 
 
 17 
 Ants, a danger to fledgelings, 5-6; 
 
 9-10; 13-14 
 Aquihgta. See Columbine 
 Ardea cinerea and A. cocoi. See 
 
 Heron 
 Arnold, Matthew, serpent poetry 
 
 of, 195-7; lines on fritiUary, 
 
 331 
 
 Badger, encounter with a, 51-2 
 Barrett, Charles, on ants destroy- 
 ing fledgelings in Australia, 14 
 Bastard balm, beauty and rarity 
 
 of the, 327 
 Bats, Pliny on, 33; genealogy of, 
 33-6; how Nature made, 37-40; 
 ferocity of, 41-2; migration, 
 42-4; sense organs, 44-6; Cuvier 
 and Spallanzani on extra senses 
 in, 45-8; J. G. Millais on facul- 
 ties of, 49 
 Beddard, Dr. F. E., an authority 
 
 on earthworms, 347 
 Bell's British Quadrupeds, cam- 
 paign against moles related in, 
 116 
 Bicho moro. See Blister-beetle 
 Birds, stories about, 74-83 
 Bird's-foot trefoil, on a prehistoric 
 
 earthwork, 323-5 
 Blister-beetle, ravages of the, 309; 
 appearance and smell of, 309; a 
 rapacious fly enemy of, 311 
 Book of the Serpent, a, 186 
 Breydon Water, herons fishing in, 
 102 
 
 Britton, J., a story of a fox told 
 by, 56 
 
 Browne, Sir Thomas, on fear of 
 serpents, 178 
 
 Browning, grandfather of the 
 poet, 330 
 
 Byron, potato with vinegar de- 
 voured by, 308 
 
 Caius, Dr., the British dogs of, 
 
 250 
 Cantharides, 309 
 
 Cat, friendship of, with rat, 234-7 
 Chaucer, 318 
 
 Chequered dafl'odil. See FritiUary 
 Chillingham, the white bull of, his 
 
 low place in the scheme of 
 
 things, 34 - 
 Chinchilla, beauty and grace of, 
 
 287 
 Clodothrix odorifera, 349 
 Cobbe, Miss Frances Power, an 
 
 admirer of Schopenhauer, 292 
 Columbine, the blue, in England, 
 
 328-31 
 Cormorant struggling with eel, 98; 
 
 as a pet, 233 
 Crotalus durissus, New England 
 
 rattlesnaJie, 206 
 Cuvier, on senses of bats, 45-8 
 
 Daisies, on old Roman Road, 322 
 Danish farmer, imaginary con- 
 versation with a Wiltshire pig- 
 keeper, 298-9 
 Darwin, on the origin of the 
 domestic dog, 275; on earth- 
 worms, 348-9 
 Daw, history of a tame, 77-8 
 Death by accident in wild life, 96 
 Death's-head moth, seen in num- 
 bers, 217-19 
 Demeter, the Corn Mother, 312 
 Dog, the little red, character and 
 
 anecdotes of, 238-46 
 Dogs, friendly with Iamb, 128; 
 eff^ect of muzzling order on, 247- 
 264; artificial instincts in, 272 
 
 357 
 
358 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 Dolichotis, a Patagonian rodent, 
 
 287 
 
 Earthworms, effect of weed-killer 
 on, 343; habits of, in relation 
 to lawns, 345-6; London, 350- 
 351; heath and sandy soil, a51; 
 chalk soil, 351-2; cause of wide 
 distribution of, 352-6 
 Elsie Venner Infelix, 209 
 Epicauta adspersa. See Blister- 
 beetle 
 
 Fayrer, Sir Joseph, a great ophio- 
 logist, 197 
 
 Fer-de-lance, an impression of the, 
 X88 
 
 Flea, origin of the, 36 
 
 Flowers, beauty and charm of 
 wild, 316; adorning waste lands 
 and ruins, 322; on an old Roman 
 road, 323; on a prehistoric 
 earthwork, 323-6; rare and lo- 
 cal, 326 
 
 Fox, beauty of the, 60-54; senti- 
 ment concerning the, 66; a 
 South American music-loving, 
 68; adventures of a three- 
 legged, 59-62 
 
 Fox terrier, character of the, 263 
 
 Fritillary, appearance of, seen 
 growing in profusion, 331-4; 
 beauty and singularity of the. 
 
 Geranium, G. pyrevaicum, 327; 
 
 the blue, 327 
 Ghost-moth, dance of the, 221-2 
 Glanville, Ernest, on the African 
 
 Icanti, 158-9 
 Gioat's-beard, various folk-names 
 
 of, 317-18; singular habit of, 
 
 318-22 
 Gould, earliest writer on habits of 
 
 ants, 251 
 Grass of Parnassus, beauty of the, 
 
 327 
 Grey, Viscount, squirrels tamed 
 
 by, 233 
 Guanaco, a pet, in Patagonia and 
 
 its habits, 125 
 Guinea (or Ginny) flower. See 
 
 Fritillary 
 Guira cuckoo, a mouse-killer, 97 
 
 Hake, Dr. Gordon, serpent poetry 
 of, 197-200 
 
 Hawk-moths, 217; death's-head, 
 217-19; crimson underwing, 219- 
 221; humming-bird, 222-4 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, character 
 of his genius, 203-4; in search 
 of a weed, 338 
 
 Heron, bathing, 93; strange ad- 
 venture with a, 94-6; flight of 
 the, 103; a ghostly bird, 104; as 
 a table-bird, 106-12 
 
 Heronry, a great, 47 
 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, story of 
 a serpent girl, 201-9 
 
 Hopley, Miss C. C, on the ser- 
 pent's tongue, 139; her pet slow- 
 worm, 233 
 
 Horse, habit of a tamed wild, 119- 
 122; twitching muscle in the, 
 229 
 
 House-martin, accidentally killed, 
 98 
 
 Humming-bird, flight in the, 47; 
 hawk-moth, 222-4 
 
 Huxley, on monographs, 190 
 
 Icanti, African serpent myth, 169 
 
 James, Henry, on living in a pine 
 
 wood, 3 
 John-go-to-bed-at-noon, singular 
 
 habit of, 316 
 
 Keats, serpent poetry of, 200 
 Kidd, Benjamin, humble-bees 
 tamed by, 232, 280 
 
 Lacepede, on the serpent's uses, 
 
 136 
 Lagidium, an Andean rodent, 287 
 Lang, Andrew, on drawing-room 
 
 dogs, 292-4 
 Lawns, feeling about, 337; Sir 
 
 Walter Raleigh quoted, 337-8; 
 
 in relation to earthworms, 340- 
 
 344 
 Leibnitz, on a talking dog, 279 
 Lemurs, beauty and docility of the, 
 
 286-7 
 Lindsay, Dr. Lauder, Mental Evo- 
 lution quoted, 279; on the dog's 
 
 spiritual nature, 288 
 Long, Sir Walter, dog-muzzling 
 
 order of, 262 
 
INDEX 
 
 359 
 
 Luys, Dr., the revolving mirror of, 
 149 
 
 Macroglossa stellatarum, 224 
 
 Maize Mother, ancient worship of 
 the, 312 
 
 Mallow, geranium-leafed scented, 
 327 
 
 Marmoset, charm of the domesti- 
 cated, 285 
 
 Marmot, the prairie, 287-8 
 
 Mental evolution of animals, 281 
 
 Merry-lee-dance -a-pole, folk-name 
 of a hawk-moth, 222 
 
 Millais, J. G., on the senses of 
 bats, 49 
 
 Mole, whether injurious or not, 
 113-18; persecution of the, in 
 France, 116; impending de- 
 struction of the, 116; the stren- 
 uous, 225-7; twitching muscle of 
 the, 227-31 
 
 Morris, Mowbray, on dogs and 
 their detractors, 291 
 
 Mother of the Waters, the myth- 
 ical serpent, 169 
 
 Mu8 decumanus, 233 
 
 Mushrooms, growing in rings, 164 
 
 Natterjack, music of the, 89 
 Nunn, Mr. Joseph, the sparrow's 
 friend, 114 
 
 Origin of Species, 214 
 Owl, its supernatural reputation, 
 165 
 
 Painted snipe, caught in a mussel- 
 shell, 99 
 
 Peaches and peach-stones, 307 
 
 Pig, social disposition of the, 295; 
 a friendly, 297-302; a forest 
 animal, 298; eating elder-ber- 
 ries, 301 
 
 Pine-snake, beauty and motions of 
 the, 155 
 
 Pine woods, effect of living in, 1; 
 wild life in, 4-14 
 
 Pipit, a fascinated, 149 
 
 Potato, the wild, 303; cultivated, 
 304; eaten with oil and vinegar, 
 307; ravages of the blister- 
 beetle, 309-11; Mother of the, 
 312; manner of cooking the, in 
 England, 313; what the doctors 
 say, 314 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, a shining 
 Elizabethan, 312; his praise of 
 gardens and lawns, 337-8 
 
 Rat, the xmloved, 233; friendship 
 wi:h cat, 234-7 
 
 Rice Mother, 312 
 
 Romanes, Dr., Mental Evolution 
 of Animals, 281 
 
 Rooks, their loose social law, 79- 
 83 
 
 Royal Society for the Protection 
 of Birds: Bird and Tree Day 
 essays by school children, 6 
 
 Ruskin, on the serpent's tongue, 
 134; on the serpent myth, 153; 
 on serpent motions, 154 
 
 Russell, Dr., of Brighton, 1 
 
 Sanchoniathan, the Phoenician, 
 153, 191 
 
 Savernake Forest, a fox in, 62 
 
 Seal and conger eel, duel between, 
 98 
 
 Selous, on instinctive fear in 
 horses, 176 
 
 Serpent, use of its tongue, 134-52; 
 myths of a great, 158-9, 169-71; 
 strangeness, 153; origin and 
 universality of worship, 161; 
 instinctive fear of the, 174-8; 
 Satanic theory, 178-80; a Book 
 of the, 186-91; the, in literature, 
 191 
 
 Sheep, individuality in, 123; a 
 book-destroying, 124; a friend 
 of dogs, 127 
 
 Sheldrake, beauty of the, 198 
 
 Shelley, his Witch of Atlas, 157 
 
 Silchester, the forest of, 84; exca- 
 vation at, 347-9 
 
 Snake, a preserver of the, 16; 
 taming a wild, 91-2; a frog- 
 hunter, 144; shyness, 192; a 
 tame, 280 
 
 Spallanzani, experiments on bats, 
 45-8 
 
 Sparrow-hawks, in pine wood, 4, 7 
 
 Spider, strategy of hunting, 146; 
 as a pet, 232 
 
 Squirrel, fable of a, 63-9; adven- 
 tures of a migrating, 70-73; 
 migratory impulses, 70; taming 
 the, 233; volatile character of 
 the, 286 
 
 Stradling, Dr. Arthur, on the 
 serpent's tongue, 139 
 
360 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
 stag, lower than the bat, 
 
 34 
 Starlings, killed hy sparrow-hawk, 
 
 8 
 Stoat, a water-vole hunting, 86 
 
 Tabley, Lord de, ghost-moth po- 
 etry of, 222 
 
 Tehuelches, children of the Pata- 
 gonian, 163 
 
 Thoreau, on the squirrel, 286; his 
 "handful of rice," 297 
 
 Throstle, desire for worms of the 
 caged, 75-7 
 
 Toad, the, as traveller, 84-9; con- 
 cert music and marriage cus- 
 toms, 88-9; pleased to be ca- 
 ressed, 90; tongue and fly-catch- 
 ing of, 90-1 
 
 Traherne, the Herefordshire mys- 
 tic, 224 
 
 Tregarthen, J. C, anecdotes of 
 fox and otters reared with 
 hounds, 132 
 
 Twitching muscle, mole, 228-31; 
 
 dog, 228; horse, 229; man, 229- 
 
 230; hare, 231 
 Tyndall and Hindhead, 1 
 Tyrant-bird, rapacious habits of a, 
 
 *97 
 
 Vernal squill, first appearance of, 
 
 327 
 Viper, Vipera berus. See Adder 
 Vizcacha, accoimt of the, 130 
 
 Wasps, spiteful temper, 210-12; 
 brilliant colouring, 213; dia- 
 bolical instincts of, 214 
 Waterton, on heron's fishing, 93 
 White, Gilbert, on a tame snake, 
 
 280 
 Willughby, the ornithologist, 250 
 Wright, Sir Almroth, on our skin- 
 scraping habit, 338 
 
 Youatt, on a strange dog super- 
 stition, 277 
 
 THE END 
 
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 BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
 
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