The third basal idea is that of Multiplication. Animals and plants multiply; they do not simply increase, they increase in a geometrical ratio. Anyone who has worked out one of these geometrical ratios knows how wondrously they mount up. There is an old familiar story of the blacksmith who asked the price at which the stranger would sell the horse he was shoeing. The owner of the horse replied that, if the blacksmith would give him one penny for the first nail he drove into the shoe, two for the second, four for the third, and so on, he might have the horse. No hundred horses in the world taken together have ever brought such a price as the blacksmith would have had to pay for the animal on which he was working. This is no circ.u.mstance to the awful story of what would happen to the earth if any animal could multiply unrestricted. The usual number of eggs laid by a mother robin for a single brood is four, and she may produce two broods in one season. This would mean that the original pair had produced eight offspring, four times their own number. If we can imagine these mating the next year and producing their kind in the same proportion; and, if we further suppose that each robin needs a s.p.a.ce one hundred feet square from which to gather his food, we realize the astonishing fact that in fifteen years every patch one hundred feet square in Pennsylvania and New York would each have its resident robin, while the following season would find a robin on every similar patch from Maine to the Carolinas. Of course this could never happen, this is simply what would happen if all the robins could grow to maturity and reproduce at the normal ratio. But the robin is a comparatively slow producer.
Our turtles are more prolific. Twenty eggs would probably not be an unusual number. If we could imagine a turtle to live in the sea and to produce at this rate; and, if each turtle should need as much room each way as the robin, and a depth of water equal to its width, before the robins had spread over New York and Pennsylvania the turtles would have filled all the seas of the globe. Frogs are even more remarkable in this respect. Two hundred eggs is not an uncommon number. If each frog required a s.p.a.ce twenty-five feet square on which to subsist, the entire earth would be more than covered with them within six years. It is ludicrous to think of such numbers, especially when we realize the hundreds of thousands of kinds of animals there are in the world, each of which is also multiplying, and it becomes evident at once that only an infinitely small proportion of all these creatures can possibly survive. This, then, is multiplication.
Here comes into play the fourth basal idea in Mr. Darwin"s explanation. This is the part of Selection. When man produces new varieties of animals he does it by picking out from his flocks or his herds such as conform most nearly to his idea of what is desirable.
These he mates, and from their progeny he selects the ones that suit him best. Generation by generation he gets his domesticated animals to conform more nearly to the standard of his desires. Natural selection works in exactly similar fashion. Of all the eggs that are produced by the animals at large in nature an overwhelming proportion never develop at all. They dry up, are eaten by their enemies, find no suitable place or time for development and decay, or are overtaken by some other calamity. Of the animals which emerge from the remainder an overwhelming majority come to an untimely end within the first few days of life. Each has countless enemies which prey upon him, and these have scarcely devoured him before they themselves become the prey of some stronger creature. Until Mr. Darwin gave us his elemental idea it was taken for granted that it was a matter of pure accident which survived and which yielded in the struggle and cares of life. It was Darwin who showed us that in this tremendous struggle against those of his own kind in the search for the same food, against the elements, in securing a mate, any animals possessing a superiority, however slight, must have some little advantage in the battle.
Certainly, where so many must utterly fail, only those could possibly succeed who were well fitted to the circ.u.mstances in which they must live. We used to think animals were destroyed by the "accidents" of life and no one could foretell accidents. Mr. Darwin made clear that it was not a question of chance. That which might happen to any individual animal might be what we, not knowing the process, called accident, and yet there could be no possible doubt that those who succeeded were better fitted to battle with life than those who failed, and that their success was due primarily to their being thus advantaged. Consequently, if generation by generation the so-called accidents of life are constantly eliminating the unfit in overwhelming proportions, not only must the positively unfit disappear, but even the less fit. The more keen the struggle, the fewer could survive and the fitter they must be to survive at all. This is Selection. These, then, are Darwin"s four great factors of evolution: Heredity, Variation, Multiplication, Selection.
From these it results that the animals and plants naturally become better adapted to the situation in which they are placed. When, as is constantly happening through the history of the earth, a change occurs in the physical geography of any region, when a plain is lifted to be a plateau, or a mountain chain is submerged until it becomes a row of small islands, this alteration will produce uncommon hardships among animals, even though they were well fitted to the old conditions. Any animal or any species of animals which meets such a calamity has before it only three possible outcomes of the struggle. First it may be plastic enough and it may vary enough in the right direction to adjust itself to the changed conditions. In this case it and a favored few like it will occupy the altered territory. The second possibility is that it may migrate while the actual change is going on, thus remaining in the sort of situation suited to it and its kind. The third possibility is the one which overtakes a great majority of animals--they die. Even the entire line dies out, and the strata of the rocks are filled with the bones, sh.e.l.ls, and teeth of such as have met this fate. They have become extinct.
Thus far in this chapter we have been considering the influences under which it is conceivable that animals should advance. There is no question whatever that there are too many animals born, nor is there any possible question that a very large proportion of them must certainly die. There is equally no doubt that every animal produces after its own kind, and that its offspring, while they resemble it closely, still vary a little from it and from each other. This fact is perfectly plain to the most superficial observer who thinks on the matter at all. It is not so plain, nor is it easily demonstrated, that all of these acting together do surely, even if slowly, alter the form and behavior of the animal world. It is difficult to prove that there is going on under our eyes a steady and real improvement in the adaptation of the animals and plants around us to the situation in which they are placed. As far back as man"s memory runs they seem to have been about what they now are; as far even as man"s historical record runs they seem to have suffered no great alteration. The Egyptian of the old tombs is much like the Egyptian of the same rank to-day. The African of the tombs has the African features of to-day.
Under such circ.u.mstances it is hard to prove that there is a steady and undoubted advance. For the most part the balance of the animal world is fairly even, and any species does not ordinarily change rapidly enough or migrate widely enough to show us its new features.
It is difficult to see the struggle which we are so sure is going on.
The life of animals is so hidden in many of its details that their joys and sorrows, if such we may call them, scarcely fall under our observation. Now and then an opportunity comes to see the process of adaptation work itself out. The struggle for existence begins anew and is carried on with special vigor, with victory, temporary or permanent, to one of the partic.i.p.ants in the struggle.
The opportunity to observe such a change is presented in the United States by the introduction of the so-called English sparrow. This little creature, received at first with such joy, soon became the object of an almost bitter hatred on the part of very many people.
This is really due to the fact that this bird is one of nature"s darlings and thoroughly succeeds where it has an even chance.
The number of birds of any particular species which a region will support seems to be fairly definite. If a species is especially protected until it becomes unusually abundant, the removal of the protection commonly brings it down promptly to its original numbers.
On the other hand, an accident of severe character or a special persecution may much diminish the number of the species, and still it will, within a comparatively few years, return to its previous abundance.
The inhabitants of Florida who own orange groves will never forget the winter of "94-5. A bitter cold wave swept along the coast and killed such large numbers of orange trees as almost to cut Florida out of the orange market and to open the gate to California, who was eagerly offering her fruit. This same frost caught the migrating blue birds and killed them by the thousands. When spring came bird-lovers throughout the eastern United States found an astonishing scarcity of these favorites. It was feared that with numbers so small they could not possibly compete with their enemies and with whatever untoward circ.u.mstances should be their lot. But there is room in this environment for a definite number of bluebirds. When this number was suddenly reduced the chances to make a bluebird"s living were so wondrously multiplied that young bluebirds had such an opportunity in life as their fellows had not had for many long years. Accordingly they thrived as never before, and, of their progeny, a larger proportion lived to the following year. It was only a few years before the number of bluebirds had risen. Now we probably have as many as we have had for a long time past. I cite this simply to show that a region can support a certain number of animals of any one particular kind, and that the animal is likely to multiply, if given a fair chance, until it has reached such proportions. Now to my story of the rapid development of a newcomer.
In the year 1850 a resident of Brooklyn came home from a trip to Europe. He was a lover of birds, and while in Europe had been particularly attracted, no one now knows quite why, to the common House Sparrow, as it should be called. It is no more abundant in England than in many parts of the continent of Europe. A name that has been used for a long time is very hard to cast aside, and we shall probably continue to mistakenly call him the English Sparrow to the end. Our Brooklyn traveler brought home with him from Europe eight of these interesting little birds and succeeded in inducing his colleagues in a scientific society to share his interest in them. Not wishing to commit the newcomers suddenly to the rigors of the American winter, these men built a large cage for the sparrows, meaning to set them free in the spring. For some reason or other when the winter was over the birds were all dead, and this first attempt to introduce the sparrow into America failed entirely. The little bird had won so many friends that his success was now sure. Finding a favorable opportunity, these Brooklyn men dispatched an order to a man in Europe, asking him to supply them with one hundred English sparrows.
The consignment came in good shape and the birds were liberated on the edge of Brooklyn. This was the first of a number of introductions. A little later New York City sent for two hundred and twenty of these interesting creatures and turned them loose in her parks, while Rochester, with what was then considered great public spirit, purchased one hundred for herself. But the most progressive city in this respect was Philadelphia. She had long been troubled with the spanworm on her trees. This detestable larva had the unpleasant fashion of lowering itself by a long silken thread from the shade trees then so abundant in that beautiful city. The spanworms traveling around over the clothing of the pa.s.sersby were so objectionable to everybody that it was with greatest delight that Philadelphia heard of the new birds which ate the pest. One wonders why some ornithologist did not look at the bird long enough to see that it had the sort of a bill characteristic of birds that eat seeds. It is true that most birds feed their young on insects, hence there is a time when any bird is apt to be insectivorous. But the structure of the sparrow"s bill, like that of all finches, should have warned these bird-lovers that the sparrow was not to be depended upon to earn his living by catching worms. It is easy, however, to be wise after the event. Philadelphia believed she was engaging in a particularly advanced movement when she imported from England one thousand English sparrows, nearly as many as were liberated by all other cities together. These birds were turned loose among the shady streets and wide spreading parks of the City of Brotherly Love.
It is a serious matter lightly to disturb the balance of nature by the introduction of a new species. It is true that the sparrow did eat some spanworms and for a while enthusiastic bird-lovers hoped that here was the solution of the difficulty. Philadelphians will also remember that, with the spanworm removed from compet.i.tion, the tussock moth, whose caterpillar carries on his back a series of yellow, red, and black paint brushes, at once become the permanent parasite of the long-suffering shade trees. This caterpillar is covered with bristling hairs, very closely set. Almost any bird objects to hair in his victuals; and this particular larva has hair more than ordinarily objectionable, for it irritates wherever it p.r.i.c.ks the sensitive skin.
This coating seems to protect the caterpillar from the sparrow, with the result that Philadelphia"s trees were soon nearly defoliated by this comparatively new pest, worse than the spanworm. With the paving of the city"s highways and the consequent shutting off of the air from the roots, the trees have largely disappeared from the streets of Philadelphia. With them have gone a fair portion of the tussock worms, but the sparrow holds his own. Here is a new bird in the field, and the struggle for existence on the part of every other kind of bird is now more complicated and severe. The sparrow can live where the rest of the birds have no possible chance. He throve so well in this country that by 1875 he had spread over five hundred square miles in the neighborhood of our larger Eastern cities. Thus far almost everybody was pleased with the new introduction. Within the next five years he had spread over more than fifteen thousand square miles, and wise men were beginning to feel doubtful of the virtues of their aforetime friend. When by 1885 more than five hundred thousand square miles had been occupied by the enterprising little fellow, there remained no longer a doubt in the minds of most people that the sparrow was an unmitigated nuisance and great fears were entertained that he had multiplied to such an extent as to be a serious menace.
Here, then, is a modern instance under our own eyes of a victory in the struggle. If the sparrow has multiplied rapidly, while all the other birds have either only held their own or even have diminished in numbers, it is quite evident he must be better fitted to the conditions than they are. What are his fit points? Why does he succeed while others fail? The thoughtful bird-lover will have little trouble in understanding at least some of his victory-winning characteristics.
How did he come to be almost the only bird who can live in large numbers in our great cities, without losing his ability to get along in less crowded situations?
In the first place this interesting bird is a clannish fellow. He has lost the ordinary sparrow habit and has come to like to live in crowded groups. Seclusion is not at all to his taste, and if there are only a few sparrows in the neighborhood those few will most certainly be found living near each other. One of the early adaptations of the sparrow to his city surroundings was the ability to find for himself a considerable proportion of his food in the undigested seed that could be picked up from the droppings of the horses. This naturally led the surplus sparrows out through the many thoroughfares leading from any large city. Where horses went sparrows could follow. Accordingly along the great lines of travel this bird found the simple path by which he could enter new territory. Meanwhile box-cars came into our large cities with freight. Sometimes they had carried grain, sometimes cattle. In either case it was not unlikely that a certain amount of grain should be found scattered over the floor of such cars. The sparrow visited these cars for the grain, and it must have been no infrequent accident that a door should be shut upon a group of sparrows, especially in inclement weather, when they were apt to be huddled in a dark corner of the car. These prisoners would be carried to the destination of the car and there liberated, thus producing a new center of what we are now inclined to call infestation. By such means the English sparrow has spread over much the larger portion of the American continent. Few birds are bold enough to visit a railroad car. Of the few who might be tempted, most are timid enough to fly on the first approach of man. Hence they fail to gain this chance of spreading. They must remain in the old crowded home. Meanwhile the sparrow, thus transported, finds a new home with fewer or no sparrows.
The struggle is less keen. More of his kind can live. His boldness has been here a fit quality and has helped him in the race.
Man is only slowly coming to be a city-dwelling animal. Although it is a voluntary process with him, he still usually visits the country with much enjoyment. He has not as yet learned to adapt himself thoroughly to the city, for somehow city life kills him. Families that move into the city gradually have a smaller number of children in each generation until shortly the family is wiped out. The population of the city must constantly be replenished from the country. But the English sparrow is more adaptable than are the people. He has made himself at home in the heart of the biggest city. The Wall Street canyon is not deep enough, nor contracted enough, nor free enough of food to blot out the life of the English sparrow. At the heart of the deepest gully among the skysc.r.a.pers of our biggest cities we find this little bird hopping between the horses" feet, darting out from under the wheel of the push-cart, fluttering only a few yards to a place of safety, to return at once to his scanty meal upon the pavement as soon as opportunity offers. He is a typical city dweller and has learned to thrive there. Again in this matter he has distanced other birds to whom the city is more deadly than it is to people.
Another very important element in his fitness for the struggle of life lies in the fact that he is unafraid of man. He is wary of man; by which I mean he will quickly fly up from in front of man"s feet. It is exceedingly difficult to catch a sparrow in one"s hand. It is far easier to lure a pigeon within reach. But the sparrow, when escaping your hands, comes to rest but a slight distance away, only to elude you quite as successfully if you try again. If the sparrow is let severely alone he becomes more and more familiar with men, flies less promptly, and goes a shorter distance, but any attempt to trap him renders him shy more quickly than almost any other bird we have. He soon learns to avoid a trap in which his companions have come to grief. Those who would poison or trap sparrows must change constantly the base of their operations. This fearlessness of man is a valuable a.s.set to the bird, for it is an important defense against other foes.
The most serious enemy the birds at large have, after man himself, is the bird of prey. Hawks and owls capture a large quant.i.ty of our smaller birds. Now the hawks and owls are for the most part shy of man. They have gotten a bad reputation, especially if they are of any size, because of their more or less p.r.o.nounced proclivities for seizing our domestic poultry, and consequently many people will fire upon a hawk or an owl who would probably fire upon no other bird. By living close to man the sparrow is largely saved from the danger of capture by these carnivorous creatures, and this is the first and a very important element of the advantage to the sparrow of living near man. But there is the additional advantage that man scatters about him, in one way or another, a very considerable amount of waste food.
I have suggested that the seeds in the droppings of the horse form a large proportion of the sparrow"s food, and horses are to be found only with men. In the neighborhood of man"s home, unless he has become sanitary to a degree which has only been attained in recent years, there is usually more or less garbage, kitchen offal of one sort or another. To this the sparrow has easy access and from it he makes many a meal. But this fearlessness of man gives him still another advantage which his compet.i.tors fear to use, it provides him with nesting sites.
Man has the faculty of putting up ornamental tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs on his house, and there is no spot the sparrow chooses more willingly in which to build his nest than the ornamental quirks and cornices of man"s architecture. A Corinthian column with comely leaves in its capital seems especially designed for the comfort of the sparrow, and his distinctly untidy nest is the familiar disfigurement of almost every ornate public building. These are the advantages which come to the sparrow from his willingness to a.s.sociate with man, and there are comparatively few birds with whom he must share them. Few birds select the immediate neighborhood of man"s home for their nests. They may live in the neighboring trees, they may haunt his orchard, but his house, for the most part, they decline to frequent.
Still another quality which makes for success in this buccaneer is the willingness with which he will vary his food as occasion requires. It is a not infrequent characteristic of the bird family that each species should have its own rather restricted diet. Birds are quite particular eaters, and many of them will come well nigh to starvation before they will use unaccustomed food. The sparrow, on the contrary, like man, eats almost anything he comes across that could reasonably be considered edible. He belongs to a group of birds which are structurally adapted to cracking the hard coats of seeds. This group of birds known as the finches is provided with the sort of bill familiar in the ordinary canary bird. It is short, heavy at the base, comes quickly to a point, and is firm and strong. With it the bird readily breaks through the hard outer coat of most seeds and feeds upon the rich cotyledons that are enclosed within. Nowhere in its entire structure does the plant crowd so much nourishment in so little s.p.a.ce as it does in the seeds. It is not by chance that the great human food is grain. The sparrow belongs to the one bird group that makes a specialty of such seeds.
Most of the English sparrow"s cousins in this finch group confine themselves rather rigidly to this diet. Here the variability of the sparrow again gives him the advantage. He may have the family fondness for seeds, but in their absence he can be content with almost anything edible. In the early springtime, when the seeds of last year are gone and those of the new year have not yet been produced, the sparrow is not averse to eating young buds from the trees. At this time he is not unlikely to eat our sprouting lettuce and peas. It is easy to be severe on him in this matter; but for a creature like man, who has the same tastes, who eats the enormous buds of the cabbage, the cauliflower, and the brussels sprouts, or the more tender buds which he calls heads of lettuce, it seems particularly inappropriate that he should throw stones at this little creature whose tastes are so similar to his own.
While seeds are more suitable for an elder bird they are altogether too indigestible to be the food of nestlings. So when the sparrow finds its nest full we know he must sally forth in search of nourishment more simple of digestion. Now for a few weeks he searches a.s.siduously, catching insects and caterpillars of various kinds, and feeds them to his young. This taste pa.s.ses as his children grow older, especially as shortly the seeds begin to ripen. Now is the time for the sparrow to fatten. Now he is eating the food for which he was really built. By the time the wheat is ripe there are sparrows enough about to form quite a flock, and when these settle down in a wheat, rye, or oats field and feed upon the grain, meanwhile shaking out upon the ground perhaps as much as they eat, the farmer begins to realize that the sparrow is not his friend.
When winter comes the struggle for existence among the birds is intensified, and comparatively few of them dare face it. Most of our birds betake themselves to less rigorous quarters, leaving to the sparrow a comparatively small number of compet.i.tors for the diminished supply of food. As long as the snow is off the ground the sparrows can find sufficient sustenance. They gather themselves into groups and sally out from the city into the open country. The immediate result is that great quant.i.ties of weed seeds are seized upon by the English sparrow, as, indeed, by every other finch which is with us in winter.
Perhaps we have not given the little fellow credit for the good he does at this particular time, for the rest of the account truly does not help him in our esteem.
There is a further direct advantage in the sparrow"s sociability. One robin may nest in the vines about your porch. If there were room for a dozen, scarcely more than one would be likely to use it, because he would drive away any other robin who attempted to share the neighborhood with him. To the sparrow company is always in order.
While he may quarrel from morning until night with his fellow, it is a sociable quarrel and neither would willingly forgo it. This union is strength among birds, as with man. Every animal is safer from his enemies when he can have the constant presence of others of his own kind. The deer that stays in the herd is safer from the wolves. It is only when the latter succeed in cutting out some weaker or less sagacious animal that these carnivorous creatures succeed in tearing down their prey. I think the superiority of the sparrow over most of our common birds, when considered as a city dweller, is scarcely understood. Because he had won in the race with other birds is no necessary indication that he warred directly against them. Bird-men often attribute to him a quarrelsome disposition, as if he actually drove other birds away. It almost seems like animosity against the sparrow to speak of him as attacking blackbirds and crows. It is a cowardly crow who can be driven away by a sparrow, and if the two cannot live together it seems to me certainly to the discredit of the crow and not of the sparrow. I believe the truth to be that, while the sparrow is undoubtedly a quarrelsome fellow, his bickerings are his form of social converse with those of his own kind. A quarrel among themselves seems not to indicate animosity, but would appear to be the sparrow"s idea of conviviality. It rarely leads to serious results. I have never seen a male sparrow trounce any other bird with half the vigor that I have occasionally seen the mother sparrow evince when she caught her male companion by the feathers of his head, hung him over the side of the limb, and vigorously and thoroughly shook him until he desisted from his annoying and possibly insulting attentions.
The truth of the matter is that a colony of these little birds, with their continual social chatter, including their quarrels, makes such a continuous noise that the ordinary bird, which is generally of rather quiet disposition, is too much annoyed by the unending nuisance to find the neighborhood at all to his taste. Where a large number of sparrows have gathered together the conditions are such as would give a robin or a bluebird nervous prostration, and his only recourse is to depart to a neighborhood where there is more peace and quiet. But our English sparrow is not only better fitted for the struggle than the robins and bluebirds, the orioles and the wrens. He has one important advantage over even his own sparrow cousins. The males are handsome--much more so than the females or than their sparrow cousins in general.
In the song sparrow, field sparrow, chipping sparrow, and the fox sparrow the male and female are very nearly alike in color. It often becomes necessary for the bird-man to examine the internal organs of the bird he is stuffing before he can certainly decide its s.e.x. But there is no difficulty whatever in telling the male from the female of the English sparrow. The male is far the more ornate bird. His back is striped with a richer brown; his head has two splendid dashes of chestnut over the eyes; his throat and breast are splashed with red and l.u.s.trous black; his bill is a clear fine black. Altogether the bird is strikingly colored for a sparrow, and this characteristic is the more remarkable when we see how quiet and somber is his more modest mate. This brilliancy of male plumage in the presence of the somber color of his mate would seem to indicate that the English sparrow is eye-minded rather than ear-minded. It is true among human beings that most of them are eye-minded. That is to say, they notice things with their eyes chiefly. Memories they have are memories of things seen; recollections of their friends bring up the appearance of their friends. Their language is full of metaphors which imply form and shape. But occasionally we come across an ear-minded person. He remembers voices quite as well as he remembers faces. To him music is an unending delight, and painting and sculpture fall into a distinctly secondary place. This is ear-mindedness. Now, most of the sparrows seem to be ear-minded, at least as far as their recognition of their mates are concerned. In this group beauty of song is developed many times oftener than is especial ornateness of plumage. The bird-lover who is himself keen of ear is never tired of listening, when in the field, for the two low notes with which the vesper sparrow introduces a song, the rest of which is not at all unlike the one of his song-sparrow cousin. The field sparrow begins more like the song sparrow, but ends with an often repeated note, which not a little resembles in general character the somewhat more monotonous song of the gra.s.shopper sparrow or of the chippy. In comparison with these melodious birds the English sparrow makes no showing whatever. His voice is harsh and querulous, although very occasionally it is possible for the bird-lover to detect a note or two which would indicate that, if he were properly educated, his voice might amount to something. He wins his wife not by his pleasant voice, but by his attractive appearance and his winning ways. We have every right to infer from the character of its fellow birds of the sparrow family that once the female and male sparrow were colored about alike. But Madam English Sparrow was apparently eye-minded rather than ear-minded. Whatever pleasant voice a suitor might have seems to have been to her without attraction, and there was nothing to encourage him in developing it, nor was she likely to mate with him for it and transmit it to her male children. On the other hand, let a suitor appear in whom a more brilliant coloring proclaimed his superior vigor, and this seems to catch her eye at once. The less accomplished rival in the tournament of love seems to have been already forgotten.
To their children these successful characteristics were naturally handed on and led to equal success on their part. If any of these children possessed this badge of honor in a more than ordinary degree, he was the more likely to win a mate and thus again the opportunity of pa.s.sing on to his offspring his own distinct advantage. Generation by generation the males have become more beautiful and the females more discriminating. That the bird is either instinctively or actually conscious of this advantage would appear from the constant fluffing of his feathers and spreading of his highly colored wings with which he evinces his admiration for his ladylove. Even the most hardened dweller in the city can scarcely have failed to see the sparrow spread his wings, fluff his feathers, and sink close to the ground, twirling and gyrating about the object of his affection. It must give him a shock to see how often she proves temporarily or hypocritically indifferent to the demonstrative proceedings. Indeed they may terminate in a thorough trouncing of the male on the part of the lady of his affections. Now this preference for color over song must have evidently evolved in connection with the development of social habits in the English sparrows. His cousins of the fields, our native sparrows, are much less social, much less likely to be met with in flocks. To birds who scatter more, beautiful song is a great advantage. It can be heard at a long distance. But when birds flock together a much better advantage is that of beautiful clothing, added to alluring ways.
But we have not nearly exhausted the catalogue of the traits belonging to our little friend which give him the advantage over other birds in the struggle for life. His ability to remain with us in winter when most birds are gone stands him in good stead.
It is readily observed by one who pays the least attention to outdoor life that winter finds us with comparatively few birds. North of Maryland and the Ohio River the robin is practically absent in the winter, except in much diminished numbers close to the border. The bluebird is similarly absent; the great flocks of blackbirds are gone; the bobolink is missing entirely; the thrush and the catbird have all left; the flicker and red-headed woodp.e.c.k.e.r are also spending their winter in the South. The great ma.s.s of our bird population has left us until warmer weather shall bring back to us once more our feathered friends. It is true that we are south to the s...o...b..rds or juncos, and their little slate-colored bodies, with their light b.r.e.a.s.t.s and their white on each side of the tail, make our bare hedge rows brighter by their presence. A few of our birds like the song sparrow and the cardinal are hidden away in the thicket, and have not all joined their comrades in the south.
The English sparrow was once probably quite as migratory as any of the rest of these, but a great change has come over his habits. With his newly acquired fondness for the haunts of men he has suffered a change in this respect also. Whatever may have been his reason for migrating, it no longer holds. He now finds himself quite able to stand the cold of winter. Accordingly he never leaves us, except very temporarily.
When the migrating season comes the sparrows of the neighborhood are very likely to gather themselves together in a single group and take to the neighboring country. I believe this flocking on their part at this time of the year is a remnant of the old migratory habit. Until snow covers the ground the sparrow is not likely to be seen again in such numbers in the city. The advantage the sparrow gains over his compet.i.tors by not going south does not appear during winter. When spring comes, however, his gain is evident. He has his choice of all the nesting sites in the region. When the migratory birds return every first-cla.s.s place is filled by a sparrow"s nest. Nothing but second choice situations remain, and with these the late comers must be content. When we consider how much the safety of the next generation depends upon the security of the young while helpless in the nest, we appreciate what the English sparrow has gained by staying throughout the year. Often while the season is so inclement that it would seem there is still danger of frost, the sparrow builds her nest. All sorts of places are open to her choice. She will find a protected corner under a roof, above a spout, in the corner of the porch, behind an open shutter, in the vines against the side of the house, on top of an old robin"s nest in the tree, in the bird boxes which have been put up for more desirable creatures; anywhere and everywhere this industrious little mother is liable to build her nest. Her husband will help her more or less in the task, often bringing material and helping to place it in the negligent pile of which their nest is composed. But he does a good deal more fussing and cheering up than he does actual work, and she seems to depend much upon his cheerful presence for her happiness.
It is hard to discourage Madam Sparrow when once she has set her mind on home-making. A bird-lover, some time since, reported how a pair of sparrows had started to build a nest upon his lawn. He, wishing to interfere with the process, took a small rifle and shot the male bird.
Within twenty minutes the female, who had scouted round the neighborhood, returned with another mate and resumed her nest-building process. Again he interjected the tragic note into her life by shooting her second husband, only to find her start out in pursuit of a third, with whom she returned in the course of an hour. He felt that by this time he had interfered with her domestic happiness as much as he had any right to do, and suffered her to continue her housekeeping with her third husband without further molestation. I imagine it would have puzzled both birds to tell who was the father of the nestlings who appeared two weeks later.
Not only do sparrows nest early, they nest often. I suggested to one of my students that she locate as early in the season as she could the nest of a pair of English sparrows, which was sufficiently accessible, and that she keep it under observation at intervals of a few days throughout the summer. In the fall she came to me with glowing eyes and gave me her report. "It is simply great," she said. "I never went to that nest a single time this summer to find it empty. When I first got there I found four eggs; after a while these hatched out, and the young were on the nest until they were old enough to fly; but before they had left she had slipped a fresh egg among them, ready to start a new batch. Whenever I saw the nest throughout the entire summer, I found in it either eggs, or young, or both." Such reproductive energy as this is hard to beat; compared with this rate of increase, the ordinary bird is the exponent of race suicide. How can a robin hope to compete with this family industry? What can a bluebird offer that will approach such chances of a worthy successor when his work shall be finished?
These, then, are the most important points in which the English sparrow has varied from his sparrow cousins and made of himself the most successful town dweller in the bird world. He has become clannish and gained the advantages of cooperation. He has used man"s highways and cars by means of which to expand his area. He has cultivated the presence of man and thus gained protection from his enemies, food from man"s waste, and nesting sites on man"s house. He has a.s.sumed a varied diet. The male has become handsome. He has given up migrating, and thus secured the best nesting sites. He has learned to produce many offspring. With all his versatility, why should he not succeed?
Thrown into compet.i.tion with our native birds, he easily beats them on their own ground. He survives against the compet.i.tion of birds which seem to us more estimable in every way. The very fact that he survives proclaims his superiority over them, and shows that our criterion is not the one by which nature judges. We like the birds which serve our purpose. We admire the brilliant plumage of the jay, cardinal and goldfinch. We love the mellow notes of the woodthrush, and of the veery, the clear, rollicking outpourings of the bobolink, the musical love song of the brown thrasher, the cheerful scolding of the wren. We are fond of the birds who busy themselves taking the insects out from among our grain and from off our fruit trees. We can only understand the value of the bird to nature when he is valuable to us. So, because the English sparrow does little that is to our advantage and much that is to our annoyance, he is in our estimation a reprobate and an unending nuisance.
All sensible bird-men must clearly acknowledge that he is a very undesirable citizen. I write the above sentence to show that I realize the whole duty of the bird-lover in the matter of the sparrow. This pestiferous creature should be exterminated by traps, by grain soaked in alcohol, or strychnia, by fair means or foul. But personally, I am taking no share in his destruction. Any bird-lover, after reading the foregoing account, can scarcely have missed the undercurrent of my affection for the little rascal. He is a thorough optimist; he is absolutely persistent; no hardship seems to dampen his ardor. His heart is valiant above that of most birds so that he has dared to make of man his near neighbor when other birds consider him their worst enemy. I love him for it. When I am in the midst of a big city with its cliffs of offices and its gorges of paved streets, it is to me a cheer and a delight to see this happy little fellow who has adapted himself to circ.u.mstances against which no other bird, excepting the pigeon, can cope. I confess that it would be with regret that I should see him disappear from the landscape. I have missed a long line of spring peas through his ravages, and he has objectionably decorated many places about my own home. But I have yet the first violent hand to lay upon the sparrow, and I doubt whether my hand is ever to be reddened with his blood.
I am going to ask bird-men to forgive me if I say that I believe, although I speak only from general impression, and not from careful research, that the sparrow within the past eight years has reached his equilibrium in the neighborhood of Philadelphia and is growing no more abundant. Meanwhile another and very desirable state of affairs is arising. Bird love and bird protection are so active in this neighborhood that there is growing to be a new race of birds who lack the fear of man their ancestors justly had. Under these conditions the wild birds, which for a while we believed to have been completely driven out by the sparrow, are rapidly returning to our villages and towns, and we have many more robins and catbirds, wrens and flickers than we had ten years ago. We have seen the worst of the English sparrow; he has now found his equilibrium.
CHAPTER IV
ADAPTATION FOR THE INDIVIDUAL
Among the standard books of the cla.s.sical curriculum in the denominational college of thirty years ago was a volume which I suppose has practically disappeared from such courses. It delighted many of its students for a reason entirely different from that which the author meant should be its taking feature. It was Paley"s "Natural Theology." The author started with a story of a watch found by a savage. This child of nature was supposed to examine its mechanism and to infer that the watch was made for a definite purpose. As I remember, he was even supposed to discover that its purpose was to mark time. It was at least to become clear to his savage mind that this was no chance object, but was the definite product of a designing mind. Having brought this hypothetical savage to these conclusions, the author turned himself to savages nearer home who fail to see design in nature. The book takes up a great many cases of interesting facts in animals and plants as clearly showing evidences of design as did the watch our savage picked up. But the inference we were expected to draw was that the design shown in nature argued clearly for a Designer above nature; in other words, that nature was unintelligible without G.o.d. Everyone in the cla.s.s believed in G.o.d without this preliminary, and consequently the book was unnecessary, so far as we were concerned. We started with the condition of mind which the author hoped to produce. One effect the book did have; in the absence of any other reputable course in zoology, it gave us an astonishing collection of interesting facts about animals.
Some of Paley"s statements were certainly peculiar. His Malay pig with its upper teeth wonderfully curved was said to be in the habit of hanging its head upon a bush while it slept, in order to save the strain upon its porcine neck. This was too much even for our credulity. None the less the impression made upon some of us by the evidence for design in nature has never left us.
Among many scientists to-day it is supposed to be crude to speak of purpose in nature, and there is reason for their att.i.tude. But the statement that there is no such plan conveys to the ordinary thinker a meaning that is far more erroneous than could possibly exist in his mind should he believe implicitly in design and purpose. As between design in the universe in the usual sense of the word, and a purely accidental connection of events in the universe, there can be no doubt as to the choice. The truth is far better expressed by the word design than by the chaos which is the alternative idea in the average mind. In these later years we have come to use a different word. We now conjure in such connection with the word adaptation. In every animal and every plant the trained eye sees unending examples of adaptation; that is, of a fittedness to the work it has to do. The modern scientist feels sure not only that the animal is fitted to his work, but that he has been so fitted by the work; that the very use he makes of his organs has determined their structure. This work has decided that the structure which he has is the structure that shall survive and shall produce other structures like itself. Adaptation therefore does not simply express the idea that the animal is adjusted to its surroundings, but it further suggests that the animal by gradual process has become thus adjusted. The word adaptation applies not simply to the result, but also to the process. The scientist does not consider the animal a final and complete result. He thinks it still in a state of flux, and so long as its line lasts it will be in a state of flux. Change is about it on every side, and it must adapt itself to this change or it will pa.s.s away. It may adjust itself, as has been previously stated, by moving to another environment in which it feels more at home, but unless it does this, if there come much change in its present surroundings, it must either meet the difficulty by altering itself, or it must give up the struggle. The alteration is unconscious so far as the animal is concerned. It is seriously to be doubted whether there is any recognition of the process on the part of any animal excepting man. But though the process be unconscious, it is none the less there. Slowly and gradually the animal and the environment are becoming adjusted to each other.
While it is exceedingly difficult to lay our hands on any animal which is at present visibly changing its structure, it is not hard to find closely related animals. These are nearly alike in structure in most respects. In a few points, however, they may differ materially, and these points are often directly concerned with different habits of life. Considered in this aspect, these adaptations of a single organ separately examined form an excellent argument in favor of that gradual alteration of the entire organism which evolution suggests.
The most primitive struggle in which an animal can possibly engage is the effort to maintain its own life and vigor. This struggle will result in certain adaptations for the individual, adjustments which make for the safety of the animal himself. These form the subject matter of the present chapter.
The farther up the animal kingdom we pa.s.s in the study of adaptation, the more likely we are to find changes which have but little bearing on the safety of the individual. They work for the good of the entire species, sometimes to the distinct disadvantage of the individual. The King Salmon may make its long run to the headwaters of our western rivers, deposit its eggs, have them fertilized, and then float down to death. But it does not die before abundant preparation has been made for the continuance of the race. Such adaptation for the good of the species will be considered in the next chapter.
The first and most important struggle any animal has to enter is the never-ending battle for its food. Occasionally there is a similar straining after the air it breathes. But ordinarily air is sufficiently abundant, except to animals living in the water, where the supply is always more or less restricted and easily becomes exhausted. But food is the constant need of every organism, and most creatures die for lack of it. In this struggle the animal is pitted against those of his own kind, rather than against those of other species. Even his brother is his enemy, for he desires the same food.
In many a nest of birdlings one of them fails to reach its development simply because the parent either is unable to find or it cannot carry enough food to satisfy all the hungry mouths in the same nest. Before the nestlings are ready to take their place in the struggle for life outside and hunt their own living, one or more of them has succ.u.mbed.