_ 140. This part of the book will, I hope, be continuous with the text of it, containing henceforward, in each number, the nomenclature hitherto used for the birds described in it, and the Author's reason for his choice or change of names. In the present number, it supplies also the nomenclature required for the two preceding ones, and thus finishes the first volume.
The names given first, in capitals, for each bird, are those which the Author will in future give it, and proposes for use in elementary teaching. They will consist only of a plain Latin specific name, with one, or at the most two, Latin epithets; and the simplest popular English name, if there be one; if not, the English name will usually be the direct translation of the Latin one.
Then in order will follow--
I. Linnaeus's name, marked L.
II. Buffon's name, marked F, the F standing also for 'French' when any popular French name is given with Buffon's.
III. The German popular name, marked T (Teutonic), for I want the G for Mr. Gould; and this T will include authoritative German scientific names also.
IV. The Italian popular name, if one exists, to give the connection with old Latin, marked I.
V. Mr. Gould's name, G; Yarrell's, Y; Dressler's, D; and Gesner's, Ges, being added, if different.
VI. Bewick's, B.
VII. Shakspeare's and Chaucer's, if I know them; and general references, such as may be needful.
The Appendix will thus contain the names of all the birds I am able to think or learn anything about, as I can set down what I think or learn; and with no other attempt at order than the slight grouping of convenience: but the numbers of the species examined will be consecutive, so that L. M. 25,--Love's Meinie, Number twenty-five,--or whatever the number may be, will at once identify any bird in the system of the St. George's schools.
The following note by the Author has in previous editions faced the first page of Lecture III., with the exception of the Nos. i.-vii., which are now added by the Editor for the sake of completeness.
* * * *
Names of the birds noticed, according to the Author's system, with reference to the sections of the text and the Appendix in which the reader will find their more melodious scientific nomenclature:--
Sect. Sect.
I. Rutila Familiaris. Robin Redbreast Text 1 seqq. App.141 II. Hirundo Domestica. House Swallow " 41 seqq. " 142 III. Hirundo Monastica. Martlet " -- " 143 IV. Hirundo Riparia. Bank Martlet " -- " 144 V. Hirundo Sagitta. Swift " 64 " 145 VI. Hirundo Alpina. Alpine Swift " -- " 146 VII. Noctua Europaea. Night-jar of Europe " -- " 147 VIII. Merula Fontium. Torrent Ouzel " 89 " 148 IX. Allegretta Nymphaea. Lily Ouzel " 93 " 149 IX.A. Allegretta Maculata. Spotted Allegret " 96 " 149 IX.B. Allegretta Stellaris. Starry Allegret " 97 " 149 IX.C. Allegretta Minuta. Tiny Allegret " 98 " 149 X. Trepida Stagnarum. Little Grebe " 100 " 150 XI.A. Titania Arctica. Arctic Fairy " 111 " 151 XI. Titania Inconstans. Changeful Fairy " 114 " 151 XII. Rallus Aquaticus. Water Rail " 116 " 152 XII.A.Pulla Aquatica. Water Hen " 133 " 153
I.
141. RUTILA FAMILIARIS. ROBIN REDBREAST.
Motacilla Rubecula. L.
Rouge-Gorge. F.
Roth-breustlein.--Wald-roetele.--Winter-roetele.--Roth-kehlschen. T.
Petti-rosso. I.
Erythacus Rubecula. G. Rubecula Erythacus. Ges.
Erythaca Rubecula. Y.
Rebecula Familiaris. D.
Ruddock. B.
Ruddock, in Cymbeline; _tame_ Ruddocke, in Assembly of Fowles; full
robin-redebreast, in the Court of Love:
"The second lesson, Robin Redebreast sang."
It is rightly classed by F. and Y. with the Warblers. Gould strangely puts it with his rock-birds, 'saxicolinae,'--in which, however, he also includes the sedge warbler.
The true Robin is properly a wood-bird; the Swedish blue-throated one lives in marshes and arable fields. I have never seen a robin in really wild mountain ground.
There is only one European species of the red-breasted Robin. Gould names two Japanese ones.
II.
142. HIRUNDO DOMESTICA. HOUSE SWALLOW.
Hirundo Rustica. L.
Hirondelle Domestique. F.
Schwalbe. T. Swala, Swedish, and Saxon, whence our Swallow: but compare
Lecture II., Sec. 44.
Rondine Comune. I. (note Rond_i_ne, the Swallow; Rondone, the Swift).
Hirundo Rustica. G. and Y.
Chimney-Swallow. B.
III.
143. HIRUNDO MONASTICA. MARTLET.
Hirundo Urbica. L.
Hirondelle de Fenetre. F.
Kirch-schwalbe. (Church-Swallow.) T.
Balestruccio. I.
Chelidon Urbica. D. and G.
Hirundo Urbica. Martin. Y.
Martlet, Martinet, or Window-Swallow. Y.
I cannot get at the root of this word, 'Martlet,' which is the really classical and authoritative English one. I have called it Monastica, in translation of Shakspeare's "temple-haunting." The main idea about this bird, among people who have any ideas, seems to be that it haunts and builds among grander masses or clefts of wall than the common Swallow. Thus the Germans, besides Church-Swallow, call it wall,--rock,--roof,--or window, swallow, and Mur-Spyren, or Munster Spyren. (Wall-walker? Minster-walker?) But by the people who have no ideas, the names 'town' and 'country,' 'urbica' and 'rustica,' have been accepted as indicating the practical result, that a bird which likes walls will live in towns, and one which is content with eaves may remain in farms and villages, and under their straw-built sheds.
My name, Monastica, is farther justified by the Dominican severity of the bird's dress, dark gray-blue and white only; while the Domestica has a red cap and light brown bodice, and much longer tail. As far as I remember, the bird I know best is the Monastica. I have seen it in happiest flocks in all-monastic Abbeville, playing over the Somme in morning sunlight, dashing deep through the water at every stoop, like a hardcast stone.
IV.
144. HIRUNDO RIPARIA. BANK MARTLET.
Hirundo Riparia. L.
Hirondelle de Rivage. F.
Rhein-schwalbe, (Rhine-Swallow,)--ufer-schwalbe,
(Shore-Swallow,)--erd-schwalbe, (Earth-Swallow). T.
Topino, (The mouse-color.)--Rondine de riva. I.
Cotyle Riparia. G. Hirundo Riparia. Y.
Bank-Martin. B.
The Italian name, 'Topino,' is a good familiar one, the bird being scarcely larger than a mouse, and "the head, neck, breast, and back of a mouse-color." (B.) It is the smallest of the Swallow tribe, and shortest of wing; accordingly, I find Spallanzani's experiment on the rate of swallow-flight was, for greater certainty and severity, made with this apparently feeblest of its kind:--a marked Topino, brought from its nest at Pavia to Milan, (fifteen miles,) flew back to Pavia in thirteen minutes. I imagine a Swift would at least have doubled this rate of flight, and that we may safely take a hundred miles an hour as an average of swallow-speed. This, however, is less by three-fifths than Michelet's estimate. See above, Lecture II., Sec. 48.
I have substituted 'bank' for 'sand' in the English name, since all the six quoted authorities give it this epithet in Latin or French, and Bewick in English. Also, it may be well thus to distinguish it from birds of the sea-shore.
V.
145. HIRUNDO SAGITTA. SWIFT.
Hirundo Apus. L.
Martinet Noir. F.
Geyr-schwalbe. (Vulture-Swallow.) T.
Rondone. (Plural, Rondini.) I.
Cypselus Apus. G. and Y.
Swift, Black Martin, or Deviling. B.
I think it will be often well to admit the license of using a substantive for epithet, (as one says rock-bird or sea-bird, and not 'rocky,' or 'marine,') in Latin as well as in English. We thus greatly increase our power, and assist the brevity of nomenclature; and we gain the convenience of using the second term by itself, when we wish to do so, more naturally. Thus, one may shortly speak of 'The Sagitta' (when one is on a scientific point where 'Swift' would be indecorous!) more easily than one could speak of 'The Stridula,' or 'The Velox,' if we gave the bird either of those epithets. I think this of Sagitta is the most descriptive one could well find; only the reader is always to recollect that arrow-birds must be more heavy in the head or shaft than arrow-weapons, and fly more in the manner of rifle-shot than bow-shot. See Lecture II., Sec.Sec. 46, 67, 71, in which last paragraph, however, I have to correct the careless statement, that in the sailing flight, without stroke, of the larger falcons, their weight ever acts like the _string_ of a kite. Their weight acts simply as the _weight_ of a kite acts, and no otherwise. (Compare Sec. 65.) The impulsive force in sailing can be given only by the tail feathers, like that of a darting trout by the tail fin. I do not think any excuse necessary for my rejection of the name which seems most to have established itself lately, 'Cypselus Apus,' 'Footless Capsule.' It is not footless, and there is no sense in calling a bird a capsule because it lives in a hole, (which the Swift does not.) The Greeks had a double idea in the word, which it is not the least necessary to keep; and Aristotle's cypselus is not the swift, but the bank-martlet--"they bring up their young in cells made out of clay, _long_ in the entrance." The swift being precisely the one of the Hirundines which does _not_ make its nest of clay, but of miscellaneous straws, threads, and shreds of any adaptable rubbish, which it can snatch from the ground as it stoops on the wing,[26] or pilfer from any half-ruined nests of other birds.
[26] "I have in different times and places opened ten or twelve swifts' nests; in all of them I found the same materials, and these consisting of a great variety of substances--stalks of corn, dry grass, moss, hemp, bits of cord, threads of silk and linen, the tip of an ermine's tail, small shreds of gauze, of muslin and other light stuffs, the feathers of domestic birds, _charcoal_,--in short, whatever they can find in the sweepings of towns."--Buffon.
Belon asserts (Buffon does not venture to guarantee the assertion), that "they will descry a fly at the distance of a quarter of a league"! 'Cotyle' is only a synonym for Cypselus, enabling ornithologists to become farther unintelligible. We will be troubled no more either with cotyles or capsules, but recollect simply that Hirundo, [Greek: chelidon], swallow, schwalbe, and hirondelle, are in each language the sufficing single words for the entire Hirundine race.
VI.
146. HIRUNDO ALPINA. ALPINE SWIFT.
Hirundo Melba. L.
Le grand Martinet a Ventre Blanc. F.
Cypselus Melba. G.
Cypselus Alpinus. Y.
Alpine Swift,--White-bellied Swift. Y.
Not in Bewick.
I cannot find its German name. The Italians compare it with the sea-swallow, which is a gull. What 'Melba' means, or ever meant, I have no conception.
The bird is the noblest of all the swallow tribe--nearly as large as a hawk, and lives high in air, nothing but rocks or cathedrals serving it for nest. In France, seen only near the Alps; in Spain, among the mountains of Aragon. "Almost every person who has had an opportunity of observing this bird speaks in terms of admiration of its vast powers of flight; it is not surprising, therefore, that an individual should now and then wing its way across the Channel to the British Islands, and roam over our meads and fields until it is shot." (G.) It is, I believe, the swallow of the Bible,--abundant, though only a summer migrant, in the Holy Land. I have never seen it, that I know of, nor thought of it in the lecture on the Swallow; but give here the complete series of Hirundines, of which some notice may incidentally afterwards occur in the text.
VII.
147. NOCTUA EUROPAEA. NIGHT-JAR OF EUROPE.
Caprimulgus Europaeus. L.
L'Engoulevent. F. (Crapaud-volant, popular.)
Geissmelcher.--Nacht-schade. T.
Covaterra. I.
Caprimulgus Europaeus. G. and Y.
Night-jar. B.
Dorrhawk and Fern-owl, also given by Bewick, are the most beautiful English names for this bird; but as it is really neither a hawk nor an owl, though much mingled in its manners of both, I keep the usual one, Night-jar, euphonious for Night-Churr, from its continuous note like the sound of a spinning wheel. The idea of its sucking goats, or any other milky creature, has long been set at rest; and science, intolerant of legends in which there is any use or beauty, cannot be allowed to ratify in its dog or pig-Latin those which are eternally vulgar and profitless. I had first thought of calling it Hirundo Nocturna; but this would be too broad massing; for although the creature is more swallow than owl, living wholly on insects, it must be properly held as a distinct species from both. Owls cannot gape like constrictors; nor have swallows whiskers or beards, or combs to keep both in order with, on their middle toes. This bird's cat-like bristles at the base of the beak connect it with the bearded Toucans, and so also the toothed mandibles of the American cave-dwelling variety. I shall not want the word Noctua for the owls themselves, and it is a pretty and simple one for this tribe, enabling the local epithet 'European,' and other necessary ones, of varieties, to be retained for the second or specific term. Nacht-schade, Night-_loss_, the popular German name, perhaps really still refers to this supposed nocturnal thieving; or may have fallen euphonious from Nacht-schwalbe, which in some places abides. 'Crapaud-volant' is ugly, but descriptive, the brown speckling of the bird being indeed toadlike, though wonderful and beautiful. Bewick has put his utmost skill into it; and the cut, with the Bittern and White Owl, may perhaps stand otherwise unrivaled by any of his hand.
Gould's drawing of the bird on its ground nest, or ground contentedly taken for nest, among heath and scarlet-topped lichen, is among the most beautiful in his book; and there are four quite exquisite drawings by Mr. Ford, of African varieties, in Dr. Smith's zoology of South Africa. The one called by the doctor Europaeus seems a grayer and more graceful bird than ours. Natalensis wears a most wonderful dark oak-leaf pattern of cloak. Rufigena, I suppose, blushes herself separate from Ruficollis of Gould? but these foreign varieties seem countless. I shall never have time to examine them, but thought it not well to end the titular list of the swallows without notice of the position of this great tribe.
VIII.
148. MERULA FONTIUM. TORRENT-OUZEL.
Sturnus Cinclus. L.
Merle d'Eau. F.
Bach-Amsel. T.
Merla Aquaiola. I.
Cinclus Aquaticus. G. and Y.
Water Ouzel. B.
Turdus Cinclus, Pennant; Common Dipper, Y.; Didapper, Doucker, Water Crow, Water Piot, B.; Cincle Plongeur, Temminck; Wasser Trostel, Swiss.
The scientific full arrangement, according to Yarrell, is thus:--
1. Order--INSESSORES.
2. Tribe--Dentirostres.
3. Genus--Merulidae.
4. Species--Cinclus.
5. Individual--Aquaticus.
You will please observe that some of the scientific people call it a blackbird--some a thrush--some a starling--and the rest a Cincle, whatever that may be. It remains for them now only to show how the Cincle has been developed out of the Winkle, and the Winkle out of the Quangle-Wangle. You will note also that the Yorkshire and Durham mind is balanced between the two views of its being a crow or a magpie. I am content myself to be in harmony with France and Italy, in my 'Merula,' and with Germany in my _Torrent_-Ouzel. Their 'bach' (as in Staubbach, Giesbach, Reichenbach) being essentially a mountain waterfall; and their 'amsel,' as our Damsel, merely the Teutonic form of the Demoiselle or Domicilla--'House-Ouzel,' as it were, (said of a nice girl)--Domicilla again being, I think, merely the transposition of Ancilla Domini,--Behold, the handmaid of the Lord: (see frontispiece to third volume of 'Modern Painters') which, if young ladies in general were to embroider on their girdles--though their dresses, fitting at present 'as close as a glove' (see description of modern American ideal in 'A Fair Barbarian') do not usually require girdles either for their keys or their manners,--it would probably be thought irreverent by modern clergymen; but if the demoiselle were none the better for it, she _could_ certainly be none the worse.
149. ALLEGRETTA NYMPHAEA. LILY-OUZEL.
Var. 1 (IX.A.)
ALLEGRETTA NYMPHAEA, MACULATA. SPOTTED ALLEGRET.
Rallus Porzana. L.
Poule d'Eau Maronette. F.
Winkernell. T.
Porzana. I.
Zapornia Porzana. G.
Crex Porzana. Y.
Ortygometra Porzana. Steph.
Gallinula Maculata et Punctata. Brehmen.
Spotted Crake. B.
The 'Winkernell' is I believe provincial (Alsace); so, Girardina, Milanese, and Girardine, Picard.--I can make nothing whatever of any of these names;--Porzana, Bolognese and Venetian, might perhaps mean Piggy-bird; and Ortygometra Porzana would then mean, in serious English, the 'Quail-sized Pig-bird.' I am sorry not to be able to do better as Interpreter for my scientific friends.
IX.B.
ALLEGRETTA NYMPHAEA, STELLARIS. STARRY ALLEGRET.
Not separated by Linnaeus, or Buffon, or Bewick, nor by popular German or French names, from the Marouette.
Crex Baillonii, Baillon's Crake. Y.
Porzana Pygmaea. G.
Gallinula Stellaris. Temminck.
IX.C.
ALLEGRETTA NYMPHAEA, MINUTA. TINY ALLEGRET.
Porzana Minuta, Olivaceous Crake. G.
Crex Pusilla, Little Crake. Y.
Poule d'Eau Poussin. Temminck.
Little Gallinule. B.
It never occurred to me, when I was writing of classical landscape, that 'Poussin' to a French ear conveyed the idea of 'chicken,' or of the young of birds in general. (Is it from 'pousser,' as if they were a kind of budding of bird?) Everybody seems to agree in feeling that this is a kind of wren among the dabchicks. Bewick's name, 'Little Gallinule,' meaning of course, if he knew it, the twice-over little Gallina;--and here again the question occurs to me about its voice. Is it a twice-over little crow, called a 'creak,' or anything like the Rail's more provokingly continuous objurgation?--compare notes below on Rallus Aquaticus. I find, with some alarm, in Buffon, that one with a longer tail, the Cau-rale or Tail-rail of Cayenne, is there called 'Little Peacock of the Roses;' but its cry is represented by the liquid syllables 'Piolo,' while the black-spotted one of the Society Islands--Magellan's 'Water-quail'--says 'Poo-a-nee,' and the Bidi-bidi of Jamaica says 'Bidi-bidi.'
X.
150. TREPIDA STAGNARUM. LITTLE GREBE.
Colymbus Minor. L.
Le Castagneux. F.
Deutchel. T.
Tropazarola? I.
Podiceps Minor. C.
Little Grebe. B.
The Yorkshire accents and changes of its name are given by Bewick: Dobchick--small doucker; Dipper, or Didapper.
In Barbadoes--Two-penny chick.
It seems to me curious that without knowing Buffon's name, which I have only looked up now, 'the Chestnutty,' given from the brown on its back, I should have, myself, always called its foot 'chestnutty,' from the shape of its lobes.
My 'Trepida' will do well enough, I think, for a Latin rendering of Grebe, and will include the whole group of them,--'stagnarum' remaining for this species only, and the others being called Tippeted Trepids, or Muffed Trepids, Eared Trepids or Majestic Trepids, as I find out what they wear, and how they behave. Grebe is used by Buffon only for the larger ones, and Castagneux for the smaller, which is absurd enough, unless the smaller are also the browner.
But I find in Buffon some interesting particulars not given in my text--namely, that the whole group differs from common chicks, not only in the lobed feet, but in these being set so far back, (becoming almost a fish's tail indeed, rather than a bird's legs,) that they are quite useless for walking, and could support the bird only on land if it stood upright: but that it "dashes through the waves" (i.e., the larger varieties through sea waves), and "runs on the surface"? (i.e., the smaller varieties on pools,) with surprising rapidity; its motions are said to be never quicker and brisker than when under water. It pursues the fish to a very great depth, and is often caught in fishermen's nets. It dives deeper than the scoter duck, which is taken only on beds of shellfish left bare by the ebb-tide; while the Grebes are taken in the open sea, often at more than twenty feet depth.
XI.
151. TITANIA ARCTICA. ARCTIC FAIRY.
Tringa Fulicaria. L.
(No French name given in my edition of Buffon!)
No German, anywhere.
No Italian, anywhere.
But of suggestions by scientific authors, here are enough to choose from:--
Lobipes Hyperboreus, G. Lobipes Hyperborea, Selby. Phalaropus Hyperboreus, Penn. Phalarope Hyperbore, Temm. Phalaropus Fulicaria, Mont. Phalaropus Fuscus, Bewick. Phalaropus Rufescens, Briss. Red Coot-footed Tringa, Edw. Red-necked Phalarope, Gould. Lobe-foot, Selby. Coot-foot, Fleming.
I am a little shocked at my own choice of name in this case, not quite pleasing my imagination with the idea of a Coot-footed Fairy. But since Athena herself thinks it no disgrace to take for disguise the likeness either of a sea-gull or a swallow, a sea-fairy may certainly be thought of as condescending to appear with a diving bird's foot; and the rather that, if one may judge by painters' efforts to give us sight of Fairyland, the general character of its inhabitants is more that of earthly or marine goblins than aerial ones.
Now this is strange! At the last moment, I find this sentence in Gould's introduction: "The generic terms Phalaropus and Lobipes have been instituted for the _fairy-like_ phalaropes."
XI.A.
TITANIA INCONSTANS. CHANGEFUL FAIRY.
Tringa Lobata. L.
Phalaropus Fulicarius (Gray Phalarope). G.
Phalaropus Lobatus. Latham.
"Phalarope with indented festoons," English trans. of Buffon.--It is of no use to ring the changes farther.
XII.
152. RALLUS AQUATICUS. WATER RAIL.
Rallus Aquaticus. L., G., Y.
Rale d'Eau. F.
Samet-Hennle--Velvet (silken?) hen. Ges.
Schwartz-Wasser-Hennle. T.?
Vagtel-Konge. Danish.
Porzana, or Forzana, at Venice.
Brook-Ouzel--Velvet Runner. B.
I take this group of foreign names from Buffon, but question the German one, which must belong to the Water Hen; for the Rail is not black, but prettily gray and spotted, and I think Buffon confuses the two birds, as several popular names do. Thus, the Velvet Hen also, I fancy, is the Water Hen; but Bewick's Velvet-Runner partly confirms it to the Rail. I find nothing about velvet said in describing the plumage.
I leave Linnaeus's for our Latin name, under some protest. Rallus is a late Latin adjective, meaning 'thin,' and if understood as 'Thin-bird,' or 'Lath-like' bird, would be reasonable; but if it stand, as it does practically, for Railing or Rattling bird, it is both bad Latin, and, as far as I can make out, calumnious of the usually quiet creature.
Note also, for a connected piece of scholarship, that our English verb to 'rail' does not properly mean to scold, or to abuse noisily; it is from 'railler,' and means to 'rally,' or jest at, which is often a much wickeder thing to do, if the matter be indeed no jest.
Note also of Samet or Samite, its derivation from late Greek [Greek: examitos], silken stuff woven of six threads, of which I believe two were of gold. The French oriflamme was of crimson samite, and I don't see why the French shouldn't call this bird Poule de Soie, instead of by their present ugly name--more objectionable on all grounds, of sense, scholarship, and feeling, than the English one. But see the next species.
153. XII.A.
PULLA AQUATICA. WATER HEN.
There seems so much confusion in the minds, or at least the language, of ornithologists, between the Water Rail and Water Hen, that I give this latter bird under the number XII.A. rather than XIII., (which would, besides, be an unlucky number to end my Appendix with); and it would be very nice, if at all possible or proper, to keep these two larger dabchicks connected pleasantly in school-girl minds by their costumes, and call one 'Silken Runner,' and this,--which, as said above, Gesner seems to mean, Velvet Runner, or Velvet Hen.--Poule de Soie or Poule de Velours? I am getting a little confused myself, however, I find at last, between Poules, Poussins, Pullets, and Pullas; and must for the present leave the matter to the reader's choice and fancy, till I get some more birds looked at, and named:--only, for a pretty end of my Appendix, here are two bits of very precious letters, sent me by friends who know birds better than most scientific people, but have been too busy--one in a 'Dorcas Society,' and the other in a children's hospital--to write books, and only now write these bits of letters on my special petition. The member of the Dorcas Society sends me this brief but final and satisfactory answer to my above question about birds' ears:--
"We talk and think of birds as essentially musical and mimetic, or at least vocal and noisy creatures; and yet we seem to think that although they have an ear, they have no ears. Little or nothing is told us of the structure of a bird's ear. We are now too enlightened to believe in what we can't see; and ears that are never pricked, or cocked, or laid back,--that merely receive and learn, but don't express,--that are organs, not features, don't interest our philosophers now.
"If you blow gently on the feathers of the side of a bird's head, a little above and behind the corner of the beak, a little below and behind the eye, the parted feathers will show the listening place; a little hole with convolutions of delicate skin turning inwards, very much like what your own ear would be if you had none,--I mean, if all of it that lies above the level of the head had been removed, leaving no trace. No one who looks at the little hole could fail to see that it is an ear, highly organized--an ear for music; at least, I found it so among the finches I have examined; I know not if a simpler structure is evident in the ear of a rook or a peacock.
"The feathers are so planted round a bird's ears, that however ruffled or wet, they can't get in--and possibly they conduct sound. Birds have no need of ears with a movable cowl over them, to turn and twist for the catching of stray sounds, as foxes have, and hares, and other four-footed things; for a bird can turn his whole head so as to put his ear wherever he pleases in the twinkling of an eye; and he has too many resources, whatever bird he may be, of voice and gesture, to need any power of ear-cocking to welcome his friends, or ear-flattening to menace his foes.
"The long and the short of it is, that we may as well take the trouble first to look for, and then to look at, a bird's ear--having first made the bird like us and trust us so much, that he won't mind a human breath upon his cheek, but will let us see behind the veil, into the doorless corridor that lets music into the bird-soul."
154. Next; the physician (over whom, to get the letter out of him, I had to use the authority of a more than ordinarily imperious patient) says,--
"Now for the grebes lowering themselves in water, (which Lucy said I was to tell you about). The way in which they manage it, I believe to be this. Most birds have under their skins great air-passages which open into the lungs, and which, when the bird is moving quickly, and consequently devouring a great deal of air, do, to a certain extent, the work of supplementary lungs. They also lessen the bird's specific gravity, which must be of some help in flying. And in the gannet, which drops into the sea from a great height after fish, these air-bags lessen the shock on striking the water. Now the grebes (and all diving-birds) which can swim high up out of water when the air-cushions are full, and so feel very little the cold of the water beneath them, breathe out all spare air, and sink almost out of sight when they wish to be less conspicuous;--just as a balloon sinks when part of the gas is let out. And I have often watched the common divers and cormorants too, when frightened, swimming about with only head and neck out of water, and so looking more like snakes than birds.
"Then about the Dippers: they 'fly' to the bottom of a stream, using their wings, just as they would fly up into the air; and there is the same difficulty in flying to the bottom of the stream, and keeping there, as there would be in flying up into the air, and keeping there,--perhaps greater difficulty.
"They can never walk comfortably along the bottom of a river, as they could on the bank, though I know they are often talked of as doing it. They too, no doubt, empty their air-bags, to make going under water a little less difficult."
155. This most valuable letter, for once, leaves me a minute or two, disposed to ask a question which would need the skinning of a bird in a diagram to answer--about the "air-passages, which are a kind of supplementary lungs." Thinking better of it, and leaving the bird to breathe in its own way, I _do_ wish we could get this Dipper question settled,--for here we are all at sea--or at least at brook, again, about it: and although in a book I ought to have examined before--Mr. Robert Gray's 'Birds of the West of Scotland,' which contains a quantity of useful and amusing things, and some plates remarkable for the delicate and spirited action of birds in groups,--although, I say, this unusually well-gathered and well-written book has a nice little lithograph of two dippers, and says they are quite universally distributed in Scotland, and called 'Water Crows,' and in Gaelic 'Gobha dubh nan allt,' (which I'm sure must mean something nice, if one knew what,) and though it has a lively account of the bird's ways out of the water--says not a word of its ways _in_ it! except that "dippers everywhere delight in _deep_ linns and brawling rapids, where their interesting motions never fail to attract the angler and bird-student;" and this of their voices: "In early spring, the male birds may be seen perched on some moss-covered stone, trilling their fine clear notes;" and again: "I have stood within a few yards of one at the close of a blustering winter's day, and enjoyed its charming music unobserved. The performer was sitting on a stake jutting from a mill-pond in the midst of a cold and cheerless Forfarshire moor, yet he joyously warbled his evening hymn with a fullness which made me forget the surrounding sterility."
Forget it not, thou, good reader; but rather remember it in your own hymns, and your own prayers, that still--in Bonnie Scotland, and Old England--the voices, almost lost, of Brook, and Breeze, and Bird, may, by Love's help, be yet to their lovers audible. Ainsi soit il.
BRANTWOOD, 8_th July_, 1881.
[THE END]
[John Ruskin's Lectures: Love's Meinie] _