Birds, companions more unknown, Live beside us, but alone; Finding not, do all they can, Pa.s.sage from their souls to man.
Kindness we bestow and praise, Laud their plumage, greet their lays; Still, beneath their feathered breast Stirs a history unexpressed.
Wishes there, and feeling strong, Incommunicably throng; What they want we cannot guess.
This, as poetry, is good, but it does not precisely fit my case; my "compunctious visitings" being distinctly different in origin and character from the poet"s. He--Matthew Arnold--is a poet, and the author of much good verse, which I appreciate and hold dear. But he was not a naturalist--all men cannot be everything. And I, a naturalist, hold that the wishes, thronging the restless little feathered breast are not altogether so incommunicable as the melodious mourner of "Poor Matthias"
imagines. The days--ay, and years--which I have spent in the society of my feathered friends have not, I flatter myself, been so wasted that I cannot small my soul, just as the preacher smalled his voice, to bring it within reach of them, and establish some sort of pa.s.sage.
And so, thinking that a little more knowledge of birds than most people possess, and consideration for them--for I will not be so harsh to speak of justice--and time and attention given to their wants, might remove this reproach, and silence these vague suggestions of a too fastidious conscience, I have taken the trouble to add something to the seed with which these little prisoners had been supplied. For we give sweetmeats to the child that cries for the moon--an alternative which often acts beneficially--and there is nothing more to be done. Any one of us, even a philosopher, would think it hard to be restricted to dry bread only, yet such a punishment would be small compared with that which we, in our ignorance or want of consideration, inflict on our caged animals--our pets on compulsion. Small, because an almost infinite variety of flavours drawn from the whole vegetable kingdom--a hundred flavours for every one in the dietary which satisfies our heavier mammalian natures--is a condition of the little wild bird"s existence and essential to its well-being and perfect happiness. And so, to remedy this defect, I went out into the garden, and with seeding gra.s.ses and pungent buds, and leaves of a dozen different kinds, I decorated the cage until it looked less like a prison than a bower. And now for an hour the little creatures have been busy with their varied green fare, each one tasting half a dozen different leaves every minute, hopping here and there and changing places with his fellows, glancing their bright little eyes this way and that, and all the time uttering gratulatory notes in the canary"s conversational tone. And their language is not altogether untranslatable. I listen to one, a pretty pure yellow bird, but slightly tyrannical in his treatment of the others, and he says, or seems to say: "This is good, I like it, only the old leaf is tough; the buds would be better... . These are certainly not so good. _I tasted them out of compliment to nature, though they were scarcely palatable... ._" No, that was not my own expression; it was said by Th.o.r.eau, perhaps the only human a little bird can quote with approval. "This is decidedly bitter--and yet--yes, it does leave a pleasant flavour on the palate. Make room for me there--or I shall make you and let me taste it again. Yes, I fancy I can remember eating something like this in a former state of existence, ages and ages ago."
And so on, and so on, until I began to imagine that the whole thing had been put right, and that the uncomfortable feeling would return to trouble me no more. But at the rate they are devouring their green stuff there will not be a leat, scarcely a stem left in another hour; and then? Why, then they will have the naked wires of their cage all round them to protect them from the cat and for hunger there will be seed in the box.
After all, then, what a little I have been able to do! But I flatter myself that if they were mine I should do more. I never keep captive birds, but if they were given to me, and I could not refuse, I should do a great deal more for them. All my knowledge of their ways and their requirements would teach me how to make their caged existence less unlike the old natural life, than it now is. To begin the ameliorating process, I should place them in a large cage, large enough to allow s.p.a.ce for flight, so that they might fly to and fro, a few feet each way, and rest their little feet from continual perching. That would enable them to exercise their most important muscles and experience once more, although in a very limited degree, the old delicious sensation of gliding at will through the void air. The wires of their new cage would be of bra.s.s or of some bright metal, and the wooden parts and perches green enamelled, or green variegated with brown and grey, and the roof would be hung with gla.s.s l.u.s.tres, to quiver and sparkle into drops of violet, red, and yellow light, gladdening these little lovers of bright colours; for so we deem them. I should also add gay flowers and berries, crocus and b.u.t.tercup and dandelion, hips and haws and mountain ash and yellow and scarlet leaves--all seasonable jewellery from woods and hedges and from the orchard and garden. Then would come the heaviest part of my task, which would be to satisfy their continual craving for new tastes in food, their delight in an endless variety. I should go to the great seed-merchants of London and buy samples of all the cultivated seeds of the earth, and not feed them in a trough, or manger, like heavy domestic brutes, but give it to them mixed and scattered in small quant.i.ties, to be searched for and gladly found in the sand and gravel and turf on the wide floor of the cage. And, higher up, the wires of their dwelling would be hung with an endless variety of seeded gra.s.ses, and sprays of all trees and plants, good, bad, and indifferent. For if the volatile bird dines on no more than twenty dishes every day he loves to taste of a hundred and to have at least a thousand on the table to choose from.
Feeding the birds and keeping the cage always sweet and clean would occupy most, if not the whole of my time. But would that be too much to give if it made me tranquil in my own mind? For it must be noted that I have done all this, mentally and on paper, for my own satisfaction rather than that of the canaries. Birds are not worth much--_to us_. Are not five sparrows sold for three farthings? I have even shot many birds and have felt no compunction. True, they perished before their time, but they did not languish, and being dead there was an end of them; but the caged canaries continuing with us, cannot be dismissed from the mind with the same convenient ease. After all, I begin to think that my imaginary reforms, if carried out, would not quite content me. The "compunctious visitings" would continue still. I look out of the window and see a sparrow on a neighbouring tree, loudly chirruping. And as I listen, trying to find comfort by thinking of the perils which do environ him, his careless unconventional sparrow-music resolves itself into articulate speech, interspersed with occasional bursts of derisive laughter. He knows, this fabulous sparrow, what I have been thinking about and have written. "How would you like it," I hear him saying, "O wise man that knows so much about the ways of birds, if you were shut up in a big cage--in Windsor Castle, let us say--with scores of menials to wait on you and antic.i.p.ate your every want? That is, I must explain, every want compatible with--ahem!--the captive condition. Would you be happy in your confinement, practising with the dumb-bells, riding up and down the floors on a bicycle and gazing at pictures and filigree caskets and big malachite vases and eating dinners of many, many courses? Or would you begin to wish that you might be allowed to live on sixpence a day--_and earn it_; and even envy the ragged tramp who dines on a handful of half-rotten apples and sleeps in a hay-stack, but is free to come and go, and range the world at will? You have been playing at nature; but Nature mocks you, for your captives thank you not. They would rather go to her without an intermediary, and take a scantier measure of food from her hand, but flavoured as she only can flavour it.
Widen your cage, naturalist; replace the little twinkling l.u.s.tres with sun and moon and milky way; plant forests on the floor, and let there be hills and valleys, rivers and wide s.p.a.ces; and let the blue pillars of heaven be the wires of your cage, with free entrance to wind and rain; then your little captives will be happy, even happy as I am, in spite of all the perils which do environ me--guns and cats and snares, with wet and fog and hard frosts to come."
And, seeing my error, I should open the cage and let them fly away. Even to death, I should let them fly, for there would be a taste of liberty first, and life without that sweet savour, whether of aerial bird or earth-bound man, is not worth living.
CHANTICLEER
During the month of September I spent several days at a house standing on high ground in one of the pleasantest suburbs of London, commanding a fine view at the back of the breezy, wooded, and not very far-off Surrey hills; and all round, from every window, front and back, such a ma.s.s of greenery met the eye, almost concealing the neighbouring houses, that I could easily imagine myself far out in the country. In the garden the omnipresent sparrow, and that always pleasant companion the starling, a.s.sociated with the thrush, blackbird, green linnet, chaffinch, redstart, wren, and two species of t.i.ts; and, better than all these, not fewer than half a dozen robins warbled their autumn notes from early morning until late in the evening. Domestic bird-life was also represented by fifteen fowls, and the wise laxity existing in the establishment made these also free of the grounds; for of eyesores and painful skeletons in London cupboards, one of the worst, to my mind, is that unwholesome coop at the back where a dozen unhappy birds are usually to be found immured for life. These, more fortunate, had ample room to run about in, and countless broad shady leaves from which to pick the green caterpillar, and red tortoise-shaped lady-bird, and parti-coloured fly, and soft warm soil in which to bathe in their own gallinaceous fashion, and to lie with outstretched wings luxuriating by the hour in the genial sunshine. And having seen their free wholesome life, I did not regard the new-laid egg on the breakfast-table with a feeling of repugnance, but ate it with a relish.
I have said that the fowls numbered fifteen; five were old birds, and ten were chickens, closely alike in size, colour and general appearance.
They were not the true offspring of the hen that reared them, but hatched from eggs bought from a local poultry-breeder. As they advanced in age to their teens, or the period in chicken-life corresponding to that in which, in the human species, boy and girl begin to diverge, their tails grew long, and they developed very fine red combs; but the lady of the house, who had been promised good layers when she bought the eggs clung tenaciously to the belief that long arching tails and stately crests were ornaments common to both s.e.xes in this particular breed. By and by they commenced to crow, first one, then two, then all, and stood confessed c.o.c.kerels. Incidents like this, which are of frequent occurrence, serve to keep alive the exceedingly ancient notion that the s.e.x of the future chick can be foretold from the shape of the egg. As I had no personal interest in the question of the future egg-supply of the establishment, I was not sorry to see the chickens develop into c.o.c.ks; what did interest me were their first attempts at crowing--those grating sounds which the young bird does not seem to emit, but to wrench out with painful effort, as a plant is wrenched out of the soil, and not without bringing away portions of the lungs clinging to its roots. The bird appears to know what is coming, like an amateur dentist about to extract one of his own double-p.r.o.nged teeth, and setting his feet firmly on the ground, and throwing himself well back before an imaginary looking-gla.s.s, and with arched-neck, wide-open beak, and rolling eyes, courageously performs the horrible operation. One cannot help thinking that a c.o.c.kerel brought up without any companions of his own s.e.x and age would not often crow, but in this instance there were no fewer than ten of them to encourage each other in the laborious process of tuning their harsh throats. Heard subsequently in the quiet of the early morning, these first tuning efforts suggested some reflections to my mind, which may not prove entirely without interest to fanciers who aim at something beyond a mere increase in our food-supply in their selecting and refining processes.
To continue my narration. I woke in the morning at my usual time, between three and four o"clock, which is not my getting-up time, for, as a rule, after half an hour or so I sleep again. The waking is not voluntary as far as I know; for although it may seem a contradiction in terms to speak of coming at will out of a state of unconsciousness, we do, in cases innumerable, wake voluntarily, or at the desired time, not perhaps being altogether unconscious when sleeping. If, however, this early waking were voluntary, I should probably say that it was for the pleasure of listening to the crowing of the c.o.c.ks at that silent hour when the night, so near its end, is darkest, and the mysterious tide of life, prescient of coming dawn, has already turned, and is sending the red current more and more swiftly through the sleeper"s veins. I have spent many a night in the desert, and when waking on the wide silent gra.s.sy plain, the first whiteness in the eastern sky, and the fluting call of the tinamou, and the perfume of the wild evening primrose, have seemed to me like a resurrection in which I had a part; and something of this feeling is always a.s.sociated in my mind with the first far-heard notes of Chanticleer.
It was very dark and quiet when I woke; my window was open, with only a lace curtain before it to separate me from the open air. Presently the profound silence was broken. From a distance of fifty or sixty yards away on the left hand came the crow of a c.o.c.k, soon answered by another further away on the same side, and then, further away still, by a third.
Other voices took up the challenge on the right, some near, some far, until it seemed that there was scarcely a house in the neighbourhood at which Chanticleer was not a dweller. There was no other sound. Not for another hour would the sparrows burst out in a chorus of chirruping notes, lengthened or shortened at will, variously inflected, and with a ringing musical sound in some of them, which makes one wonder why this bird, so high in the scale of nature, has never acquired a set song for itself. For there is music in him, and when confined with a singing finch he will sometimes learn its song. Then the robins, then the t.i.ts, then the starlings, gurgling, jarring, clicking, whistling, chattering.
Then the pigeons cooing soothingly on the roof and window-ledges, taking flight from time to time with sudden, sharp flap, flap, followed by a long, silken sound made by the wings in gliding. At four the c.o.c.ks had it all to themselves; and, without counting the c.o.c.kerels (not yet out of school), I could distinctly hear a dozen birds; that is to say, they were near enough for me to listen to their music critically. The variety of sounds they emitted was very great, and, if c.o.c.ks were selected for their vocal qualities, would have shown an astonishing difference in the musical tastes of their owners. A dozen dogs of as many different breeds, ranging from the boar-hound to the toy terrier, would not have shown greater dissimilarity in their forms than did these c.o.c.ks in their voices. For the fowl, like the dog, has become an extremely variable creature in the domestic state, in voice no less than in size, form, colour, and other particulars. At one end of the scale there was the raucous bronchial strain produced by the unwieldy Cochin. What a bird is that! Nature, in obedience to man"s behests, and smiling with secret satire over her work, has made it ponderous and ungraceful as any clumsy mammalian, wombat, ardvaark, manatee, or hippopotamus. The burnished red hackles, worn like a light mantle over the black doublet of the breast, the metallic dark green sickle-plumes arching over the tail, all the beautiful lines and rich colouring, have been absorbed into flesh and fat for gross feeders; and with these have gone its liveliness and vigour, its clarion voice and hostile spirit and brilliant courage; it is Gallus bankiva degenerate, with dulled brains and blunted spurs, and its hoa.r.s.e crow is a barbarous chant.
And far away at the other end, startling in its suddenness and impetuosity, was a trisyllabic crow, so brief, piercing, and emphatic, that it could only have proceeded from that peppery uppish little bird, the bantam. And of the three syllables, the last, which should be the longest, was the shortest, "short and sharp like the shrill swallow"s cry," or perhaps even more like the shrieky bark of an enraged little cur; not a _reveille_ and silvern morning song in one, as a crow should be, but a challenge and a defiance, wounding the sense like a spur, and suggesting the bustle and fury of the c.o.c.kpit.
If this style of crowing was known to Milton, it is perhaps accountable for the one bad couplet in the "Allegro":
While the c.o.c.k with lively din Scatters the rear of darkness thin.
Someone has said that every line in that incomparable poem brings at least one distinct picture vividly before the mind"s eye. The picture the first line of the couplet I have quoted suggests to ray mind is not of crowing Chanticleer at all, but of a stalwart, bare-armed, blowsy-faced woman, vigorously beating on a tin pan with a stick; but for what purpose--whether to call down a pa.s.sing swarm of bees, or to summon the chickens to be fed--I never know. It is only my mental picture of a "lively din." As to the second line, all attempts to see the thing described only bring before me clouds and shadows, confusedly rushing about in an impossible way; a chaos utterly unlike the serenity and imperceptible growth of morning, and not a picture at all.
By and by I found myself paying special attention to one c.o.c.k, about a hundred yards away, or a little more perhaps, for by contrast all the other songs within hearing seemed strangely inferior. Its voice was singularly clear and pure, the last note greatly prolonged and with a slightly falling inflection, yet not collapsing at the finish as such long notes frequently do, ending with a little internal sound or croak, as if the singer had exhausted his breath; but it was perfect in its way, a finished performance, artistic, and, by comparison, brilliant.
After once hearing this bird I paid little attention to the others, but after each resounding call I counted the seconds until its repet.i.tion.
It was this bird"s note, on this morning, and not the others, which seemed to bring round me that atmosphere of dreams and fancies I exist in at early c.o.c.kcrow--dreams and memories, sweet or sorrowful, of old scenes and faces, and many eloquent pa.s.sages in verse and prose, written by men in other and better days, who lived more with nature than we do now. Such a note as this was, perhaps, in Th.o.r.eau"s mind when he regretted that there were no c.o.c.ks to cheer him in the solitude of Walden. "I thought," he says, "that it might be worth while keeping a c.o.c.kerel for his music merely, as a singing bird. The note of this once wild Indian pheasant is certainly the most remarkable of any bird"s, and if they could be naturalized without being domesticated it would soon become the most famous sound in our woods... . To walk in a winter morning in a wood where these birds abounded, their native woods, and hear the wild c.o.c.kerels crow on the trees, clear and shrill for miles over the surrounding country--think of it! It would put nations on the alert. Who would not be early to rise, and rise earlier and earlier on each successive morning of his life, till he became unspeakably healthy, wealthy, and wise?"
Soon I fell into thinking of one in some ways greater than Th.o.r.eau, so unlike the skyey-minded New England prophet and solitary, so much more genial and tolerant, more mundane and lovable; and yet like Th.o.r.eau in his nearness to nature. Not only a lover of generous wines--"That mark upon his lip is wine"--and books "clothed in black and red," all natural sights and sounds also "filled his herte with pleasure and sola.s.s," and the early crowing of the c.o.c.k was a part of the minstrelsy he loved.
Perhaps when lying awake during the dark quiet hours, and listening to just such a note as this, he conceived and composed that wonderful tale of the "Nun"s Priest," in which the whole character of Chanticleer, his glory and his foibles, together with the homely virtues of Dame Partlett, are so admirably set forth.
And longer ago it was perhaps such a note as this, heard in imagination by the c.o.c.k-loving Athenians, which all at once made them feel so unutterably weary of endless fighting with the Lacedaemonians, and inspired their hearts with such a pa.s.sionate desire for the long untasted sweets of security and repose. Is it one of my morning fancies merely--for fact and fancy mingle strangely at this still, mysterious hour, and are scarcely distinguishable--or is it related in history that this strange thing happened when all the people of the violet-crowned city were gathered to witness a solemn tragedy, in which certain verses were spoken that had a strange meaning to their war-weary souls? "Those who sleep in the morning in the arms of peace do not start from them at the sound of the trumpet, and nothing interrupts their slumbers but the peaceful crowing of the c.o.c.k." And at these words the whole concourse was electrified, and rose up like one man, and from thousands of lips went forth a great cry of "Peace! Peace! Let us make peace with Sparta!"
Hark! once more that long clarion call: it is the last time--the very last; for all the others have sung a dozen times apiece and have gone to sleep again. So would this one have done, but c.o.c.ks, like minstrels among men, are vain creatures, and some kind officious fairy whispered in his ear that there was an appreciative listener hard by, and so to please me he sang, just one stave more.
Lying and listening in the dark, it seemed to me that there were two opposite qualities commingled in the sound, with an effect a.n.a.logous to that of shadow mingling with and chastening light at eventide. First, it was strong and clear, full of a.s.surance and freedom, qualities admirably suited to the song of a bird of Chanticleer"s disposition; a l.u.s.ty, ringing strain, not sung in the clouds or from a lofty perch midway between earth and heaven, but with feet firmly planted on the soil, and earthly; and compared with the notes of the grove like a versified utterance of Walt Whitman compared with the poems of the true inspired children of song--Blake, Sh.e.l.ley, Poe. Earthly, but not hostile and eager; on the contrary, leisurely, _peaceful_ even dreamy, with a touch of tenderness which brings it into relationship with the more aerial tones of the true singers; and this is the second quality I spoke of, which gave a charm to this note and made it seem better than the others.
This is partly the effect of distance, which clarifies and softens sound, just as distance gives indistinctness of outline and ethereal blueness to things that meet the sight. To objects beautiful in themselves, in graceful lines and harmonious proportions and colouring, the haziness imparts an additional grace; but it does not make beautiful the objects which are ugly in themselves, as, for instance, an ugly square house. So in the etherealizing effect of distance on sound, when so loud a sound as the crowing of a strong-lunged c.o.c.k becomes dreamy and tender at a distance of one hundred yards, there must be good musical elements in it to begin with. I do not remark this dreaminess in the notes of other birds, some crowing at an equal distance, others still further away. All natural music is heard best at a distance; like the chiming of bells, and the music of the flute, and the wild confused strains of the bagpipes, for among artificial sounds these come the nearest to those made by nature. The "shrill sharps" of the thrush must be softened by distance to charm; and the skylark, when close at hand, has both shrill and harsh sounds scarcely pleasing. He must mount high before you can appreciate his merit. I do not recommend any one to keep a caged c.o.c.k in his study for the sake of its music, crow it never so well.
To return to the ten c.o.c.kerels; they did not crow very much, and at first I paid little attention to them. After a few days I remarked that one individual among them was rapidly acquiring the clear vigorous strain of the adult bird. Compared with that fine note which I have described, it was still weak and shaky, but in shape it was similar, and the change had come while its brethren were still uttering brief and harsh screeches as at the beginning. Probably, where there is a great mixture of varieties, it is the same with the fowl as with man in the diversity of the young, different ancestral characters appearing in different members of the same family. This c.o.c.kerel was apparently the musical member, and promised in a short time to rival his neighbour.
Having heard that it was intended to keep one of the c.o.c.kerels to be the parent of future broods, I began to wonder whether the prize in the lottery--to wit, life and a modest harem--would fall to this fine singer or not. The odds were that his musical career would be cut short by an early death, since the ten birds were very much alike in other respects, and I felt perfectly sure that his superior note would weigh nothing in the balance. For when has the character of the voice influenced a fancier in selecting? Never I believe, odd as it seems. I have read a very big book on the various breeds of the fowl, but the crowing of the c.o.c.k was not mentioned in it. This would not seem so strange if fanciers had invariably looked solely to utility, and their highest ambition had ended at size, weight and quality of flesh, early maturity, hardihood, and the greatest number of eggs. This has not been the case. They possess, like others, the love of the beautiful, artificial as their standards sometimes appear; and there are breeds in which beauty seems to have been the princ.i.p.al object, as, for instance, in several of the gold and silver spangled and pencilled varieties. But, besides beauty of plumage, there are other things in the fowl worthy of being improved by selection. One of these has been cultivated by man for thousands of years, namely, the combative spirit and splendid courage of the male bird. But there is a spirit abroad now which condemns c.o.c.k-fighting, and to continue selecting and breeding c.o.c.ks solely for their game-points seems a mere futility. The energy and enthusiasm expended in this direction would be much better employed in improving the bird"s vocal powers.
The morning song of the c.o.c.k is a sound unique in nature, and of all natural sounds it is the most universal. "All climates agree with brave Chanticleer. He is more indigenous even than the natives. His health is ever good; his lungs are sound; his spirits never flag." He is a pet bird among tribes that have never seen the peac.o.c.k, goose, and turkey.
In tropical countries where the dog becomes dumb, or degenerates into a mere growler, his trumpet never rusts. It is true that he was cradled in the torrid zone, yet in all Western lands, where he "shakes off the powdery snow," with vigorous wings, his voice sounds as loud and inspiriting as in the hot jungle. Pale-faced Londoners, and blacks, and bronzed or painted barbarians, all men all the world over, wake at morn to the "peaceful crowing of the c.o.c.k," just as the Athenians woke of old, and the nations older still. It is not, therefore, strange that this song has more a.s.sociations for man than any other sound in nature.
But, apart from any advent.i.tious claims to our attention, the sound possesses intrinsic merits and pleases for its own sake. In our other domestic birds we have, with regard to this point, been unfortunate. We have the gobbling of turkeys, and the hoa.r.s.e, monotonous come back of the guinea-fowl, screaming of peac.o.c.ks and geese, and quacking, hissing, and rasping of mallard and mus-covy. Above all these sounds the ringing, l.u.s.ty, triumphant call of Chanticleer, as the far-reaching toll of the bell-bird sounds above the screaming and chattering of parrots and toucans in the Brazilian forest. A fine sound, which in spite of many changes of climate and long centuries of domestication still preserves that forest-born character of wildness, which gives so great a charm to the language of many woodland gallinaceous birds. As we have seen, it is variable, and in some artificial varieties has been suffered to degenerate into sounds harsh and disagreeable; yet it is plain that an improved voice in a beautiful breed would double the bird"s value from an aesthetic point of view. As things now are, the fine voices are in a very small minority. Some bad voices in artificial breeds, i.e., those which, like the Brahma and Cochin, diverge most widely from the original type--are perhaps incurable, like the carrion crow"s voice; for that bird will probably always caw harshly in spite of the musical throat which anatomists find in it. We can only listen to our birds, and begin experimenting with those already possessed of shapely notes and voices of good quality.
I am not going to be so ill-mannered as to conclude without an apology to those among us who under no circ.u.mstances can tolerate the crowing of the c.o.c.k. It is true that I have not been altogether unmindful of their prepossessions, and have freely acknowledged in divers places that Chanticleer does not always please, and that there is abundant room for improvement; but if they go further than that, if for them there exists not on this round globe a c.o.c.k whose voice would fail to irritate, then I have not shown consideration enough, and something is still owing to their feelings, which are very acute. It is possible that one of these sensitive persons may take up my book, and, attracted by its t.i.tle, dip into this paper, hoping to find in it a practical suggestion for the effectual muzzling of the obnoxious bird. The only improvement which would fall in with such a one"s ideas on the subject of c.o.c.k-crowing would be to improve this kind of natural music out of existence.
Naturally the paper would disappoint him; he would be grieved at the writer"s erroneous views. I hope that his feelings would take no acuter form. I have listened to a person, usually mild-mannered, denouncing a neighbour in the most unmeasured terms for the crime of keeping a crowing c.o.c.k. If the c.o.c.k had been a non-crower, a silent member, it would have been different: he would hardly have known that he had a neighbour. There is a very serious, even a sad, side to this question.
Mr. Sully maintains that as civilization progresses, and as we grow more intellectual, all noise, which is pleasing to children and savages, and only exhilarates their coa.r.s.e and juvenile brains, becomes increasingly intolerable to us. What unfortunate creatures we then are! We have got our pretty rattle and are now afraid that the noise it makes is going to be the death of us. But what is noise? Will any two highly intellectual beings agree as to the particular sound which produces the effect of rusty nails thrust in among the convolutions of the brain? Physicians are continually discovering new forms of nervous maladies, caused by the perpetual hurry and worry and excitement of our modern life; and perhaps there is one form in which natural sounds, which being natural should be agreeable, or at any rate innocent, become more and more abhorrent. This is a question which concerns the medical journals; also, to some extent, those who labour to forecast the future. Happily, all our maladies are thrown off, sooner or later, if they do not kill us; and we can cheerfully look forward to a time when the delicate chords in us shall no longer be made to vibrate "like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh" to any sound in nature, and when the peaceful crowing of the c.o.c.k shall cease to madden the early waker. For, whatever may be the fate awaiting our city civilization, brave Chanticleer, improved as to his voice or not, will undoubtedly still be with us.
IN AN OLD GARDEN
A sunny morning in June--a golden day among days that have mostly a neutral tint; a large garden, with no visible houses beyond, but green fields and unkept hedges and great silent trees, oak and ash and elm--could I wish, just now, for a more congenial resting-place, or even imagine one that comes nearer to my conception of an earthly paradise?
It is true that once I could not drink deeply enough from the sweet and bitter cup of wild nature, and loved nature best, and sought it gladly where it was most savage and solitary. But that was long ago. Now, after years of London life, during which I have laboured like many another "to get a wan pale face," with perhaps a wan pale mind to match, that past wildness would prove too potent and sharp a tonic; unadulterated nature would startle and oppress me with its rude desolate aspect, no longer familiar. This softness of a well-cultivated earth, and unbroken verdure of foliage in many shades, and harmonious grouping and blending of floral hues, best suit my present enervated condition. I had, I imagine, a swarter skin and firmer flesh when I could ride all day over great summer-parched plains, where there was not a bush that would have afforded shelter to a mannikin, and think that I was having a pleasant journey. The cloudless sky and vertical sun--how intolerable they would now seem, and scorch my brain and fill my shut eyes with dancing flames!
At present even this mild June sun is strong enough to make the old mulberry tree on the lawn appear grateful. It is an ancient, rough-barked tree, with wide branches, that droop downwards all round, and rest their terminal leaves on the sward; underneath it is a natural tent, or pavilion, with plenty of s.p.a.ce to move about and sling a hammock in. Here, then, I have elected to spend the hottest hours of my one golden day, reading, dreaming, listening at intervals to the fine bird-sounds that have a medicinal and restorative effect on the jarred and wounded sense.
From the elms hard by comes a subdued, airy prattle of a few sparrows.
It is rather pleasant, something like a low accompaniment to the notes of the more tuneful birds; the murmurous music of a many-stringed instrument, forming the indistinct ground over which runs the bright embroidery of clear melodious singing.
This morning, while lying awake from four to five o"clock, I almost hated the sparrows, they were there in such mult.i.tudes, and so loud and persistent sounded their jangling through the open window. It set me thinking of the England of the future--of a time a hundred years hence, let us say--when there will remain with us only two representatives of feral life--the sparrow and the house-fly. Doubtless it will come, unless something happens; but, doubtless, it will not continue. It will still be necessary for a man to kill something in order to be happy; and the sportsmen of that time, like great Gambetta, in the past, will sit in the balconies, popping with pea-rifles at the sparrows until not one is left to twitter. Then will come the turn of the untamed and untamable fly; and he will afford good sport if hunted a la Domitain, with fine, needle-tipped paper javelins, thrown to impale him on the wall.
One of our savants has lately prophesied that the time will come when only the microscopic organisms will exist to satisfy the hunting instinct in man. How these small creatures will be taken he does not tell us. Perhaps the hunters will station themselves round a table with a drop of preserved water on its centre, made large and luminous by means of a ray of magnifying light. When that time comes the amoeba--that "wandering Jew," as an irreverent Quarterly Reviewer has called it--will lose its immortality, and the spry rotifer will fall a victim to the infinitesimal fine bright arrows of the chase. A strange quarry for men whose paeliolithic progenitors hunted the woolly mastodon and many-horned rhinoceros and sabre-toothed tiger!
That sad day of very small things for the sportsman is, however, not near, nor within measurable distance; or, so it seemed to me when, an hour ago, I strolled round the garden, curiously peering into every shrub, to find the visible and comparatively n.o.ble insect-life in great abundance. Beetles were there--hard, round, polished, and of various colours, like sea-worn pebbles on the beach; and some, called lady-birds in the vernacular, were bound like the books that Chaucer loved in black and red. And the small gilded fly, not less an insect light-headed, a votary of vain delights, than in the prehistoric days when a white-headed old king, discrowned and crazed, railed against sweet Nature"s liberty. And ever waiting to welcome this inconstant lover (with falces) there sits the solitary geometric spider, an image and embodiment of patience, not on a monument, but a suspended wheel of which he is himself the hub; and so delicately fashioned are the silver spokes thereof, radiating from his round and gem-like body, and the rings, concentric tire within tire, that its exceeding fineness, like swift revolving motion, renders it almost invisible. Caterpillars, too, in great plenty--miniature porcupines with fretful quills on end, and some naked even as they came into the world. This one, called the earth-measurer, has drunk himself green with chlorophyll so as to escape detection. Vain precaution! since eccentric motion betrays him to keen avian eyes, when, like the traveller"s snake, he erects himself on the tip of his tail and sways about in empty s.p.a.ce, vaguely feeling for something, he knows not what. And the mechanical tortrix that rolls up a leaf for garment and food, and preys on his own case and shelter until he has literally eaten himself stark naked; after which he rolls up a second leaf, and so on progressively. Thus in his larval life does he symbolize some restless nation that makes itself many successive const.i.tutions and forms of government, in none of which it abides long; but afterwards some higher thing, when he rests motionless, in form like a sarcophagus, whence the infolded life emerges to haunt the twilight--a grey ghost moth. There is no end to rolled-up leaves, and to the variety of creatures that are housed in them; for, just as the "insect tribes of human kind" in all places and in all ages, while seeking to improve their condition, independently hit on the same means and inventions, so it is with these small six-legged people; and many species in many places have found out the comfort and security of the green cylinder.
So many did I open that I at last grew tired of the process, like a man to whom the post has brought too many letters; but there was one--the last I opened--the living active contents of which served to remind me that some insects are unable to make a cylinder for themselves, having neither gum nor web to fasten it with, and yet they will always find one made by others to shelter themselves in. Here were no fewer than six unbeautiful creatures, brothers and sisters, hatched from eggs on which their parent earwig sat incubating just like an eagle or dove or swallow, or, better still, like a pelican; for in the end did she not give of her own life-fluid to nourish her children? Unbeautiful, yet not without a glory superior to that of the Purple Emperor, and the angelic blue Morpho, and the broad-winged Ornithoptera, that caused an ill.u.s.trious traveller to swoon with joy at the sight of its supreme loveliness. Du Maurier has a drawing of a little girl in a garden gazing at two earwigs racing along a stem. "I suppose," she remarks interrogatively to her mamma, "that these are Mr. and Mrs. Earwig?" and on being answered affirmatively, exclaims, "What could they have seen in each other?" What they saw was blue blood, or something in insectology corresponding to it. The earwig"s l.u.s.tre is that of antiquity. He existed on earth before colour came in; and colour is old, although not so old as Nature"s unconscious aestheticism which, in the organic world, is first expressed in beauty of form. It is long since the great May flies, large as swifts, had their aerial cloudy dances over the vast everglades and ancient forests of ferns; and when, on some dark night, a brilliant Will-o"-the-wisp rose and floated above the feathery foliage, drawn in myriads to its light, they revolved about it in an immense mystical wheel, misty-white, glistening, and touched with prismatic colour. Floating fire and wheel were visible only to the stars, and the wakeful eyes of giant scaly monsters lying quiescent in the black waters below; but they were very beautiful nevertheless. The modest earwig was old on the earth even then; he dates back to the time, immeasurably remote, when scorpions possessed the earth, and taught him to frighten his enemies with a stingless tail--that curious antique little tail which has not yet forgot its cunning.
Greater than all these inhabitants of the garden, ancient or modern by reason of their numbers, which is the sign of predominance, are the small wingless people that have colonies on every green stem and under every green leaf.
These are the true generators of that heavenly sweat, or saliva of the stars, concerning which Pliny the Younger wrote so learnedly. And they are many tribes--green, purple, brown, isabel-line; but all are one nation, and sacred to that fair G.o.d whom the Carian water-nymph loved not wisely but too well. For, albeit the children of an ancient union, they marry not, nor are given in marriage, yet withal multiply exceedingly, so that one (not two) may in a single season produce a billion. And at last when autumn comes, won back from the cold G.o.d to his hot mother, they know love and wedlock, and die like all married things. These are the Aphides--sometimes unprettily called plant-lice, and vaguely spoken of by the uninformed as "blight"--and they nourish themselves on vegetable juices, that thin green blood which is the plant"s life.
This, then, is the fruit which the birds have, come to gather. In June is their richest harvest; it is more bountiful than September, when apples redden, and grapes in distant southern lands are gathered for the wine-press. In yon grey wall at the end of the lawn, just above the climbing rose-bush, there are now seven hungry infants in one small cradle, each one, some one says, able to consume its own weight of insect food every day. I am inclined to believe that it must be so, while trying to count the visits paid to the nest in one hour by the parent t.i.ts--those small t.i.ts that do the gardener so much harm! We know, on good authority, that the spider has a "nutty flavour"; and most insects in the larval stage afford succulent and toothsome, or at all events beaksome, morsels. These are, just now, the crimson cherries, purple and yellow plums, currants, red, white, and black--and sun-painted peaches, asking in their luscious ripeness for a mouth to melt in, that fascinate finch and flycatcher alike, and make the starlings smack their h.o.r.n.y lips with a sound like a loving kiss.
Not that I care, or esteem birds for what they eat or do not eat. With all these creatures that are at strife among themselves, and that birds prey upon, I am at peace, even to the smallest that are visible--the red spider which is no spider; and the minute gossamer spider clinging to the fine silvery hairs of the flying summer; and the coccus that fall from the fruit trees to float on their buoyant cottony down--a summer snow. Fils de la Vierge are these, and sacred. The man who can needlessly set his foot on a worm is as strange to my soul as De Quincey"s imaginary Malay, or even his "d.a.m.ned crocodile." The worm that one sees lying bruised and incapable on the gravel walk has fallen among thieves. These little lives do me good and not harm. I smell the acid ants to strengthen my memory. I know that if I set an overturned c.o.c.kchafer on his legs three sins shall be forgiven me; that if I am kindly tolerant of the spider that drops accidentally on my hand or face, my purse shall be mysteriously replenished. At the same time, one has to remember that such sentiments, as a rule, are not understood by those who have charge over groves and gardens, whose minds are ignorant and earthy, or, as they would say, practical. Of the balance of nature they know and care naught, nor can they regard life as sacred; it is enough to know that it is or may be injurious to their interests for them to sweep it away. The small thing that has been flying about and uttering musical sounds since April may, when July comes, devour a certain number of cherries. Nor is even this plea needed. If it is innocent for the lower creatures to prey upon one another, it cannot be less innocent for man to destroy them indiscriminately, if it gives him any pleasure to do so. It is idle to go into such subtle questions with those who have the power to destroy; if their hands are to be restrained it is not by appealing to feelings which they do not possess, but to their lower natures--to their greed and their cunning. For the rest of us, for all who have conquered or outgrown the killing instinct, the impartiality that pets nothing and persecutes nothing is doubtless man"s proper att.i.tude towards the inferior animals; a G.o.dlike benevolent neutrality; a keen and kindly interest in every form of life, with indifference as to its ultimate destiny; the softness which does no wrong with the hardness that sees no wrong done.
To return to the birds. The starlings have kissed like lovers, and fluttered up vertically on their short wings, trying to stream like eagles, only to return to the trees once more and sit there chattering pleasant nothings; at intervals throwing out those soft, round, modulated whistled notes, just as an idle cigarette-smoker blows rings of blue smoke from his lips; and now they have flown away to the fields so that I can listen to the others.