Love's Meinie: Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds

"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, 8th July, 1881.

1

The summits of the Old Man, of Wetherlam, and Helvellyn, were all white, on the morning when this was written.

2

Greek is now a living nation's language, from Messina to Delos—and Latin still lives for the well-trained churchmen and gentlemen of Italy.

3

Delivered at Oxford, March 15th, 1873.

4

The epitaph on Count Zachdarm, in "Sartor Resartus."

5

Sir Arthur Helps. "Animals and their Masters," p. 67.

6

Ariadne Florentina, vi. 45.

7

Mr. Gould's, in his "Birds of Great Britain."

8

Delivered at Oxford, May 2d, 1873.

9

I call it so because the members and action of it cannot be seen with the unaided eye.

10

I wrote this some time ago, and the endeavors I have since made to verify statements on points of natural history which I had taken on trust have given me reason to doubt everybody's accuracy. The ordinary flight of the swallow does not, assuredly, even in the dashes, reach anything like this speed.

11

Incidentally suggestive sentences occur in the history of Selborne, but its author never comes to the point, in this case.

12

"On the Physiology of Wings." Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Vol. xxvi., Part ii. I cannot sufficiently express either my wonder or regret at the petulance in which men of science are continually tempted into immature publicity, by their rivalship with each other. Page after page of this book, which, slowly digested and taken counsel upon, might have been a noble contribution to natural history, is occupied with dispute utterly useless to the reader, on the question of the priority of the author, by some months, to a French savant, in the statement of a principle which neither has yet proved; while page after page is rendered worse than useless to the reader by the author's passionate endeavor to contradict the ideas of unquestionably previous investigators. The problem of flight was, to all serious purpose, solved by Borelli in 1680, and the following passage is very notable as an example of the way in which the endeavor to obscure the light of former ages too fatally dims and distorts that by which modern men of science walk, themselves. "Borelli, and all who have written since his time, are unanimous in affirming that the horizontal transference of the body of the bird is due to the perpendicular vibration of the wings, and to the yielding of the posterior or flexible margins of the wings in an upward direction, as the wings descend. I" (Dr. Pettigrew) "am, however, disposed to attribute it to the fact (1st), that the wings, both when elevated and depressed, leap forwards in curves, those curves uniting to form a continuous waved track; (2d), to the tendency which the body of the bird has to swing forwards, in a more or less horizontal direction, when once set in motion; (3d), to the construction of the wings; they are elastic helices or screws, which twist and untwist while they vibrate, and tend to bear upwards and onwards any weight suspended from them; (4th), to the action of the air on the under surfaces of the wings; (5th), to the ever-varying power with which the wings are urged, this being greatest at the beginning of the down-stroke, and least at the end of the up one; (6th), to the contraction of the voluntary muscles and elastic ligaments, and to the effect produced by the various inclined surfaces formed by the wings during their oscillations; (7th), to the weight of the bird—weight itself, when acting upon wings, becoming a propelling power, and so contributing to horizontal motion."

I will collect these seven reasons for the forward motion, in the gist of them, which I have marked by italics, that the reader may better judge of their collective value. The bird is carried forward, according to Dr. Pettigrew—

1. Because its wings leap forward.

2. Because its body has a tendency to swing forward.

3. Because its wings are screws so constructed as to screw upwards and onwards any body suspended from them.

4. Because the air reacts on the under surfaces of the wings.

5. Because the wings are urged with ever-varying power.

6. Because the voluntary muscles contract.

7. Because the bird is heavy.

What must be the general conditions of modern science, when it is possible for a man of great experimental knowledge and practical ingenuity, to publish nonsense such as this, becoming, to all intents and purposes, insane, in the passion of his endeavor to overthrow the statements of his rival? Had he merely taken patience to consult any elementary scholar in dynamics, he would have been enabled to understand his own machines, and develop, with credit to himself, what had been rightly judged or noticed by others.

13

I don't know what word to use for an infinitesimal degree or divided portion of force: one cannot properly speak of a force being cut into pieces; but I can think of no other word than atom.

14

See App. p. 112, § 145.

15

I find even this mere outline of anatomical structure so interferes with the temper in which I wish my readers to think, that I shall withdraw it in my complete edition.

16

Large and somewhat carefully painted diagrams were shown at the lecture, which I cannot engrave but for my complete edition.

17

Compare 'Paradise of Birds,' (song to the young Roc, page 67,) and see close of lecture for notes on that book.

18

The Macaw in Sir Joshua's portrait of the Countess of Derby is a grand example.

19

See the notes on classification, in the Appendix to the volume; published, together with the Preface, simultaneously with this number.

20

Or in French, 'embonpoint.'

21

"Wing its way" in the ornithological language. I shall take leave usually to substitute the vulgar word 'fly,' for this poetical phrase.

22

Compare Bishop Stanley's account of the larger tropical 'Jacana,' p. 311. "One species is often tamed, and from its being a resolute enemy to birds of prey, the inhabitants of the countries where it is found" (which be they?) "rear it as a protector for their fowls, as it not only feeds with them, but accompanies them into the fields, and brings them back in the evening!"

23

I hear, from a friend in whose statements I have absolute confidence, that he has found the eggs of the water-hen laid on a dead sycamore leaf by the side of a shallow stream, one of the many brooks near Uxbridge.

24

The terminal 'pe' is short for pus, (pous!) and 'phalero,' from phalera, fringes—"Fringe-foot" (Morris).

25

See 'Ariadne Florentina,' chap. v., § 164; compare 'Fors,' Letter V.

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"!