The Lark, which is our river here, and more particularly the little stream that runs into it, are, like most rivers and streams in England, much haunted by moorhens and dabchicks, especially by the former, though in winter I have seen as many as eleven of the latter—the little dabchicks—swimming, dipping, and skimming over the water, together. There is a fascination in making oneself acquainted with the ways of these little birds. They are not so easy to watch, and yet they are not so very very difficult. They seem made for concealment and retirement, which makes it all the more piquant when they come, plainly, into view, and remain there, at but a few yards’ distance, which, with patience, can be brought about. The whole thing lies in sitting still for an hour—or a few more hours—waiting for the dabchick to come to you, for as to your trying to go to him, that is no good whatever—“that way madness lies.” In watching birds, though it may not be quite true—certainly I have not found it so—that “all things come to him who knows how to wait,” this at least may be said, that nothing, as a rule, comes to him who does not know how to—least of all a dabchick.

Long before one sees the little bird—long before one could see it were it right in front of one, if one comes at the proper time—one hears its curious little note—accompanied, often, with scufflings and other sounds that make one long to be there—amongst the reeds and rushes, in the darkness. This note—which, until one knows all about it, fills one with a strange curiosity—is a thin chirrupy chatter, high and reed-like, rapidly repeated, and with a weak vibration in it. It is like no other bird-cry that I am acquainted with, but it resembles, or suggests, two things—first, the neigh or hinny of a horse heard very faintly in the distance (for which I have often mistaken it), and, again, if a tittering young lady were to be changed, or modified, into a grasshopper, but beg, as a favour, to be allowed still to titter—as a grasshopper—this would be it. Sometimes, too, when it comes, low and faint, in the near distance, one might think the fairies were laughing. This is the commonest of the dabchick’s notes, and though it has some other ones, they are uttered, for the most part, in combination with it, and, especially, lead up to, and usher it in, so that it becomes, through them, of more importance, as the grande finale of all, in which the bird rises to its emotional apogee, and then stops, because anything would be tame after that. Thus, when a pair of dabchicks play about in each other’s company—which they will do in December as well as in spring—their note, at first, may be a quiet “Chu, chu, chu,” “Queek, queek, queek,” or some other ineffective sound. Then, side by side, and with their heads close together, they burst suddenly forth with “Cheelee, leelee, leelee, leelee, leelee, leelee”—one thought, and both of one mind—

It is as though they said, “Shall we? Well then—Now then”—and started. Who that sees a pair do this in the winter—in the very depth of it, only a few days before Christmas—can doubt that the birds are mated, and will be constant through life? They are like an old couple by the fireside, now. As the spring comes round their youth will be renewed, and the same duet will express the warmer emotions. Now it is the bird’s contentment note. You know what it means, directly. It expresses satisfaction with what has been, already, accomplished, present complacency, and a robust determination to continue, for the future, to walk—or swim—in the combined path of duty and pleasure. What a pretty little scene it is!—and one may watch these little cool-dipping, reed-haunting things, so dapper and circumspect, as near as one’s vis-À-vis in a quadrille—nearer even—and tear out the heart of their mystery, with not a dabchick the wiser. No doubt about what they say for the future, for when a most authoritative work says “the note is a ‘whit, whit,’” and so passes on, it is time to bestir oneself. “Whit!” No. I deny it. Even when it ends there, when there is nothing more than that in the bird’s mind, it is not “whit,” but “queek” that it says—“queek, queek, queek, queek,” a quavering little note, with a sharp sound—the long e—always. “Queek,” then, “pas ‘whit,’ Monsieur Fleurant. Whit! Ah, Monsieur Fleurant, c’est se moquer. Mettez, mettez ‘queek,’ s’il vous plaÎt.” But what is this “queek”—though repeated more than twice—compared with such a jubilee as I have just described, and which the birds are constantly making? Express it syllabically as one may, it is something very uncommon and striking—a little thin burst of rejoicing—and it lasts for some time: not to be passed off as a mere desultory remark or so, therefore—call it what one will—which almost any bird might make.

Besides, it is not merely what a bird says, that one would like to know, but what it means, and how it says it. One would like a description, where there is anything to describe, and no one, I am sure, could see a pair of dabchicks put their heads together and break out like this, and then say, tout court—without comment, even, much less enthusiasm, as though it exhausted the matter—“the note is a whit, whit.” No, no one could be so cold-blooded. Though an alphabet of letters may follow his name, the dabchick is a sealed book to any one who writes of it like that. So now, coming again to the meaning of this little duet, there can, as I say, be no doubt that it expresses contentment, but this contentment is not of a quiet kind. It is raised, for the moment, to a pitch of exaltation that throws a sort of triumph into it. It is an access, an overflowing, of happiness, and the note of love, though, now, in winter, a little subdued, must be there too, for, as I say, these birds mate for life. So, at least, I feel sure, and so I believe it to be with most other birds. Permanent union, with recurrent incentive to unite, matrimony always and courtship every spring—as one aerates, at intervals, the water in an aquarium—that, I believe, is the way of it; a good way, too—the next best plan to changing the water is not to let it get stagnant.

Whenever I can catch at evidence in regard to the sexual relations of birds, it always seems to point in this direction. Take, for instance, that species to which I now devote the rest of this chapter, the moorhen, namely—Gallinula chloropus—for the dabchick has been an encroachment. A very small pond in my orchard of some three half-dead fruit-trees was tenanted by a single pair, who built their nest there yearly. Had it not been for a cat, whose influence and position in the family was fixed beyond my power of shaking, I should have made, one year, a very close study, indeed, of the domestic economy of these two birds; but this tiresome creature, either by the aid of a clump of rushes, amidst which it was situated, or by jumping out boldly from the bank, got at the nest, though it was at some distance, and upset the eggs into the water. As a consequence, the birds deserted both nest and pond, nor did the lost opportunity ever return. A few points of interest, however, I had been able to observe, before the cat intervened. The year before, I had noticed two slight nests in the pond, in neither of which were any eggs laid, whilst the pond itself remained always, as far as I could see, in possession of this one pair of birds only. In the following spring I again noted two moorhens’ nests, in approximately the same situations as before, and now I observed further. During the greater part of the day no moorhens were to be seen in the pond, but, as evening began to fall, first one and then another of these two birds would either steal silently into it, through a little channel communicating with the river, or else out of the clump of rushes where one of these nests had been built. The other one was amongst the half-submerged branches of a fallen tree, the trunk of which arched a corner of the pond. Over to here the birds would swim, and one of them, ascending and running along the tree-trunk, would enter the nest, and sit in it quietly, for a little while. Then it would creep, quietly, out of it, run down the trunk, again, into the water, and swim over to this same clump of rushes, from which, in some cases, it had come. Whether it then sat in the nest there, also, I cannot so positively affirm, but I have no doubt that it did, for I could see it, for some time, through the glasses, a perfectly still, dark object, somewhat raised above the surface of the water. Assuming it to have been sitting in this nest, then it had, certainly, just left the other one, and, moreover, there were the two nests, and only the one pair of birds. For, as I say, I never saw more than two moorhens, at a time, in this pond, which, being very small, was, probably, considered by these as their property. Intrusion on the part of any other bird would, no doubt, have been resented, but I never saw or heard any brawling. The pretty scene of peaceful, calm, loving proprietorship, was not once disturbed.

When the two birds were together, one swam, commonly, but just behind the other, and kept pressing against it in a series of little, soft impulses—a quietly amorous manner, much for edification to see. Each night, from a little before the darkness closed in, one of these moorhens—I believe always the same one—would climb out on a particular branch of the fallen tree, and standing there, just on the edge of the black water, bathe and preen itself till I could see it no longer. It never varied from just this one place on the branch, which, though a thin one, made there a sort of loop in the water, where it could stand, or sit, very comfortably. The other of the two had, no doubt, a tiring-place of its own—I judge so, at least, because it would, probably, have bathed and preened about the same time, but, if so, it did so somewhere where I could not see it. Moorhens have special bathing-places, to which one may see several come, one after the other. This is at various times of the day, but I have noticed, too, this special last bathe and preening, before retiring for the night; and here I do not remember seeing two birds resort to the same spot. There would seem, therefore, to be a general bathing-place for the daytime, and a private one for the evening.

Here, then, we have two nests built by one and the same pair of moorhens, both of which were sat in—whether as a matter of convenience, by both parties, or by the female, only, in order to lay, I cannot be sure—some days before the eggs appeared. But, two days afterwards, I found two other nests, or nest-like structures, at different points of the same pond, and these, for the reasons before given, must most certainly have been made by the same pair of birds; for they were moorhens’ nests, and to imagine that four pairs of moorhens had been building in so confined an area, without my ever having seen more than two birds together, within it, though watching morning and evening, and for hours at a time, is to pensar en lo imposible, as Don Quijote is fond of saying. On the next day, I found the first egg, in one of the two nests last noticed—not in either of those, therefore, that I had seen the bird sitting in. This was on the 5th of May, and in as many days six more were added, making seven, after which came the cat, and my record, which I had hoped would be a very close and full one, came to an end. During this time, however, I had remarked yet a fifth nest, built against the trunk of a young fir-tree, that had fallen into the same small clump of rushes where the one with the eggs, and another, were: and all these five had sprung up within the last few weeks, for they had certainly not been there before. The number of moorhens’ nests along the little stream, here, had often struck me with surprise, though knowing it to be much haunted by these birds. After these observations, I paid more particular attention, and found, in one place, four nests so close together as to make it very unlikely they could have been the work of different birds; and, of these, all but one remained permanently empty. Moreover, the three others, though obviously, as it seemed to me, the work of moorhens, had a very unfinished appearance compared to the one that fulfilled its legitimate purpose. Less material had been used—though they varied in regard to this—and they seemed to have been formed, to a more exclusive extent, by the bending over of the growing rushes. As I say, no eggs were ever laid in these three nests, but in one of them I once found the moorhen who had laid in the other, sitting with her brood of young chicks. I have little doubt but that she had made the four, and was accustomed thus to sit in all of them. Whether she had made the supernumerary ones with any definite object of the sort, it is more difficult to say. For myself, I doubt this; but, at any rate, the moorhen would seem to stand prominent amongst the birds which have this habit of over-building, as one may call it—a much larger body, I believe, than is generally supposed.

With the above habit, a much stranger one, which, from a single observation, I believe this species to have, is, perhaps, indirectly connected. Moorhens, as a rule, lay a good many eggs—from seven to eleven, if not, sometimes, more. I have, however, upon various occasions, found them sitting on a much smaller number—on four once, and once, even, upon only three—notwithstanding that these represented the first brood. The nest with only three eggs I had watched for some days before the hatching took place. It could hardly have been, therefore, that others had been hatched out before, and the chicks gone; nor had it ever occurred to me that the original number might have been artificially diminished, by the birds themselves. One day, however, I happened to be watching a pair of moorhens, by a lake in a certain park, when I noticed one of them walking away from the nest—to which, though it appeared quite built, they had both been adding—with some large thing, of a rounded shape, in its bill. Before I had time to make out what this thing was, the bird, still carrying it, became hidden behind some foliage, and this happened again on a second occasion, much to my disappointment, since my curiosity was now aroused. Resolved not to miss another opportunity if I could help it, I kept the glasses turned upon this bird whenever it was visible, and very soon I saw it go again to the nest, and, standing just outside it, with its head craned over the rim, spear down suddenly into it, and then walk away, with an egg transfixed on its bill. The nest was on a mudbank in the midst of shallow water, through which the bird waded to the shore, and deposited the egg there, somewhere where I could not see it. Twice, now, at short intervals, the same bird returned to the nest, speared down with its bill, withdrew it with an egg spitted on its point, and walked away with it, as before. Instead of landing with it, however, it, each of these times, dropped it in the muddy water, and I saw as clearly through the glasses as if I had been there, that the egg, each time, sank. This shows that they were fresh, for one can test eggs in this manner. Had it been, not the whole egg, but only the greater part of its shell that the bird was carrying, this would have floated, a conspicuous object on the black, stagnant water. That it was the whole egg, and transfixed, as I say, not carried, I am quite certain, for I caught, through the glasses, the full oval outline, and could see, where the beak pierced it, a thin, transparent streamer of the albumen depending from the hole, and being blown about by the wind. As birds remove the shells of their hatched eggs from the nest, I took particular pains not to be mistaken on this point, the result being absolute certainty as far as my own mind is concerned. The circumstances, however, were not such as to allow me to verify them by walking to the spot. Early on the following morning I returned to my post of observation, and now I at once saw, on using the glasses, the empty egg-shell, as it appeared to be, floating on the water just where I had seen it sink the day before. No doubt the yelk-sac had been pierced by the bill of the bird, so that the contents had gradually escaped, and the shell risen to the surface as a consequence. This moorhen, then, had destroyed, at the very least, as I now feel certain, five of its own eggs, for that, on the first two occasions, it had acted in the same way as on the last three, there can be no reasonable doubt, nor is it wonderful that I should not, then, have quite made out what it was doing, considering its quick disappearance and the hurried view of it that I got. Afterwards, I saw the whole thing from the beginning, and had a very good view throughout. At the nest, especially, the bird was both nearer to me, and stood in a good position for observation.

Here, then, we seem introduced to a new possibility in bird life—parental prudence, or something analogous to it, purposely limiting the number of offspring to be reared. I can conceive, myself, how a habit of this sort might become developed in a bird, for the number of eggs that can be comfortably sat upon must depend upon the size of the nest; and this might tend to decrease, not at all on account of a bird’s laziness, but owing to that very habit of building supernumerary nests, which appears to be so developed in the moorhen. That a second nest should, through eagerness, be begun before the first was finished, is what one might expect, and also that the nest, under these circumstances, would get gradually smaller—for what the bird was always doing would soon seem to it the right thing to do. As a matter of fact, the size of moorhens’ nests does vary very greatly, some being thick, deep, and massive, with a large circumference, whilst others are a mere shallow shell that the bird, when sitting, almost covers. Such a one was that which I have mentioned, as containing only four eggs—for they quite filled the nest, so that it would not have been easy for the bird to have incubated a larger number. The one from which the five eggs were carried, was, however, quite a bulky one. But whatever the explanation may be, this particular moorhen that I saw certainly did destroy five of its own eggs, carrying them off, speared on its bill, in the way I have described. Either it was an individual eccentricity on the part of one bird, or others are accustomed to do the same, which last, I think, is quite possible, when we consider how rarely it is that birds are seen removing the shells of the hatched eggs from their nests, which, however, they always do. Certain of the cow-birds of America have, it seems, the habit of pecking holes both in their own eggs and those of the bird in whose nest they are laid.29 The cow-bird is a very prolific layer, and it is possible that we may see, in this proceeding, the survival of a means which it once employed to avoid the discomfort attendant on the rearing of too large a family, before it had hit upon a still better way out of the difficulty. The way in which the moorhen carried the eggs is interesting, since it is that employed by ravens in the Shetlands, when they rob the sea-fowl. It would seem, indeed, the only way in which a bird could carry an egg of any size, without crushing it up.

As bearing on the strongly developed nest-building instinct of the moorhen, leading it, sometimes, to make four or five when only one is required, it is interesting to find that, in some cases, the building is continued all the while the eggs are being hatched, or even whilst the young are sitting in the nest—in fact as long as the nest is in regular occupation. The one bird swims up with reeds or rushes in his bill—sometimes with a long flag that trails far behind him on the water—and these are received and put into position by the other, in the nest. Thus the shape of the nest may vary, something, from day to day, and from a point where, yesterday, the eggs, as one stood, were quite visible, to-day they will be completely hidden by a sconce, or parapet that has since been thrown up. It may be thought, from this, that the birds have some definite object in thus continuing their labours, but, for myself, I believe that it is merely in deference to a blind impulse, which is its own pleasure and reward. It is a pretty thing to see a pair of moorhens building. During the later stages they will run about, together, on the land, their necks stretched eagerly out, the whole body craned forward, searching, examining, sometimes both seizing on something at the same time—the one a twig, the other a brown leaf—and then running with them, cheek by jowl, to the nest, on which both climb, and place them, standing side by side. On their next going forth, they may start in different directions, or become separated, so that when one goes back to the nest he may find the other already upon it. It is interesting, then, to see him reach up, with whatever he has brought, and present it to his partner’s bill, who takes it of him, and at once arranges it. The look, the general appearance of interest and tender solicitude, which the bird, particularly, that presents his offering, has, must be seen to be appreciated. Not that the other is deficient in this respect—a gracious, pleased acceptance, with an interest all as keen, speaks in each feather, too. The expression of a bird is given by its whole attitude—everything about it, from beak to toe and tail—and, by dint of this, it often appears to me to have as much as an intelligent human being has, by the play of feature; in which, of course, birds are deficient—at least to our eyes. Certain I am that no dressed human being could express more, in offering something to another, than a bird sometimes does; and if it be said that we cannot be sure of this, that it is mere inference based on analogy, it may be answered that, equally, we cannot be sure, in the other case—nor, indeed, in anything.

When the male and female moorhen stand, together, on the nest, it is impossible to distinguish one from the other. The legs, which in the male, alone, are gartered, are generally hidden, whilst the splendid scarlet cere—making a little conflagration amongst the rushes—and the coloration of the plumage, are alike in both—at least for field observation. In the early autumn, and onwards, one sees numbers of moorhens that have a green cere, instead of a red one, and the plumage of whose back and wings is of a very plain, sober brown, much lighter than we have known it hitherto. These are the young birds of the preceding spring and summer, and everything in regard to their different coloration would be simple enough, if it were not for a curious fact—or one which seems to me to be curious—viz. this, that the moorhen chicks have, when first hatched, and for some time afterwards, a red cere, as at maturity. It seems very strange that, being born with what is, probably, a sexual adornment, they should afterwards lose it, to reacquire it, again, later on. Darwin explains the difference between the young and the parent form, upon the principle that “at whatever period of life a peculiarity first appears, it tends to reappear in the offspring, at a corresponding age, though sometimes earlier.” Thus, in the plumage of the young and female pheasant, or the young green woodpecker, we may suppose ourselves to see the ancestral unadorned states of these birds. But what should we think if the young male pheasant was, at first, as brilliant as the mature bird, then became plain, like the female, and afterwards reassumed its original brilliancy, or if the woodpecker of either sex were first green, then brown, and then green again. If the young moorhen, having exchanged its scarlet cere for a much less showy one, kept this latter through life, we should, I suppose, assume that the first had been acquired long ago, and then lost for some reason, possibly because change of habits, or circumstances, had made it more of a disadvantage, by being conspicuous, than it had remained an advantage, by being attractive. Are we, now, to think that, having acquired, and then lost, the crimson, the bird has subsequently reacquired it? If so, what has been the reason for this? Were green ceres, for some time, preferred to scarlet ones? This hardly seems probable, since the green, in this instance, is pale and dull. However, birds are but birds, and even amongst ourselves anything may be fashionable, even downright ugliness, as is almost equally well seen in a milliner’s shop or a picture gallery. As far as the mere loss of beauty is concerned, a parallel example is offered by the coot, which, in its young state, is all-glorious, about the head, with orange and purple, which changes, later, to a uniform, sooty black. But the coot stops there; it does not get back, later on, the colours it has lost.

Young moorhens are almost, if not quite, as precocious as chickens. Out of three that were in the egg, the day before, I found two, once, sitting in the nest, from which the shells had already been removed. The nest was on a snag in the midst of a small pond, or, rather, pool, so that I could not get to it; but, as I walked up to the water’s edge, both the chicks evinced anxiety, though in varying degrees. One kept where it was, at the bottom of the nest, the other crawled to the edge and lay with its head partly over it, as though ready to take the water, which, no doubt, both would have done, had I been able to come nearer. Yet, in all probability, as the pool lay in a deep hollow, seldom visited, I was the first human being they had either of them ever seen. The third egg was, as yet, unhatched; but coming, again, on the following day, the nest was entirely empty, and I now found pieces of the egg-shells, lying high and dry upon the bank of the pool, to which they had evidently been carried by the parent birds. In the same way, it will be remembered, the moorhen that destroyed its eggs, walked with them through the water, to the bank, on which it placed three out of the five—two at some distance away.

Though so precocious, yet the young moorhens are, for some time, fed by their dams. I have seen them run to them, with their wings up, over a raft of water-plants, and then crouch and lift their heads to one of their parents, from whom they received a modicum of weed. Or they will sit down beside their mother, and look up in her face in a pretty, beseeching way. When frightened or disturbed, they utter a little wheezy, querulous note, like “kew-ee, kew-ee,” which has a wonderful volume of sound in it, for such little things. The mother soon appears, and gives a little purring croon, after which the cries cease; or she may answer them with a cry something like that of a partridge. She calls them to her with a clucking note, uttered two or three times together, and repeated at longer or shorter intervals. When one sees this, one would never doubt but that here is the special call-note of the mother to the chicks. Nevertheless, I have heard her thus clucking, whilst sitting on a first brood of eggs, and this shows how careful one ought to be in attributing a special and definite significance to any cry uttered by an animal. Besides the one which I have mentioned, young moorhens make a little shrilly sound that has something, almost, of a cackle in it. There is also a little “chillip, chillip”; nor does this exhaust their repertory. In fact they have considerable variety of expression, even at this early age. They swim as “to the manner born,” nid-nodding like their parents, but cannot progress against a stream that is at all swift. One paddling with all its might, neither advancing nor receding, and uttering, all the while, its little querulous cry, is a common sight. Up a steep bank they can climb with ease, and they have a manner of leaning forward, when running, to an extent which makes them seem always on the point of overbalancing, that is very funny to see. For some time, they are accustomed to return to the nest, after leaving it, and sit there with one of the parent birds. When surprised, under these circumstances, the mother (presumably), utters a short, sharp, shrilly note, which is instantly followed by another, equally short and much lower. As she utters them she retreats, and the chicks, with this warning, are left to themselves—to stay or to follow her, as best they can.

Having often disturbed birds under these or similar conditions, I can say confidently that the moorhen employs no ruse, to divert attention from its young. The following circumstance, therefore, as bearing on my theory of the origin of such stratagems, especially interested me. In this case I came suddenly upon a point of the stream where the bank was precipitous, on which a moorhen flew out upon the water, with a loud clacking note, and then, after some very disturbed motions, swam to the opposite shore, giving constant, violent flirts of the tail, the white feathers of which were, each time, broadened out, as when two male birds fight, or threaten one another. In this state she went but slowly, though most birds in her position would have flown right off. On my coming closer to the edge of the bank, six or seven young chicks started out, all in different directions, as though from a central point where they had been sitting together on the water, as, no doubt, they had been, the mother with them, just as though upon the nest. No one could have thought that this moorhen had any idea of diverting attention from her young to herself. Sudden alarm, producing, at first, a nervous shock, and then distress and apprehension, seemed to me, clearly, the cause of her actions, which yet bore a rude resemblance to highly specialised ones, and had much the same effect. From such beginnings, in my opinion, and not from successive “small doses of reason,” have the most elaborate “ruses” been evolved and perfected.

In one or two other instances—in a wood-pigeon, for example, and a pheasant—I have noticed the strange effect—amounting, for a few moments, to a sort of paralysis—which a very sudden surprise may produce in a bird, even when its young do not come into question. Moorhens, too, are excitable, even as birds. Their nerves, I think, are highly strung. I have often noticed that the report of a gun in the distance—even in the far distance—will be followed by half-a-dozen clanging cries from as many birds—in fact, from as many as are about. Especially is the hen moorhen of a nervous and sensitive temperament, open to “thick-coming fancies,” varying from minute to minute. How often have I watched her pacing, like a bride, on cold, winter mornings, along the banks of our little stream. Easy, elastic steps; head nodding and tail flirting in unison. She nestles, a moment, on the frosted grass, then rises and paces, as before, stops now, stands on one leg a little, puts the other down, again makes a step or two, then another pause, glances about, thinks she will preen herself, but does not, nestles once more, gives a glance over her shoulder, half spies a danger, rises and tip-toes out of sight. What a little bundle of caprices and apprehensions! But they all become her, “all her acts are queens.” Some special savour lies in each motion, in each frequent flirt of the tail. Though this flirtation of the tail is very habitual with moorhens, though nine times out of ten, almost, when you see them either on land or water, they are flirting it, still they do not always do so. “Nonnunquam dormitat bonus Homerus”—“Non semper tendit arcum Apollo.” It can be quite still, that tail. I have seen it so—even twenty together, whose owners were reposefully browsing. But let there be any kind of emotion, almost, and heavens! how it flirts!

Moorhens are pugnacious birds, even in the winter. At any time, one amongst several browsing over the meadow-land, may make a sudden, bull-like rush—its head down and held straight out—at another, and this, often, from a considerable distance. The bird thus suddenly attacked generally takes flight, and afterwards, as a solace to its feelings, runs at some other one, and drives it about, in its turn. This second bird will do the same by a third, and thus, in wild nature, we have a curious reproduction—much to the credit of Sheridan—of that scene in “The Rivals” where Sir Anthony bullies his son, his son the servant, and the servant the page. “It is still the sport” in natural history, to see poor humanity aped. Such likenesses are humiliating but humorous, and, by making us less proud, may do good. But chases like this are not in the grand style. There is nothing stately about them, no “pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war”—little, perhaps, of its true spirit. As the spring comes on it is different. Then male birds that, at three yards apart, have been quietly feeding, walk, if they come a yard nearer, with wary, measured steps, in a crouched attitude, holding their heads low, and with their tails swelled out. On the water these mannerisms are still more marked, and then it is that the bird’s true beauty—for beauty it is, and of no mean order—is displayed. Two will lie all along, facing each other, with the neck stretched out, and the head and bill, which are in one line with it, pointing straight forward, like the ram of a war-ship. Their tails, however, are turned straight up, in bold contrast with all the rest of them, so that, with the white feathers which this part bears, and which are now finely displayed, they have a most striking and handsome appearance. There is a little bunch of these feathers—the under tail-coverts—on either side of the true tail, and each of these is frilled and expanded outwards, to the utmost possible extent, which gives it the shape and appearance of one half, or almost half, of a palm-leaf fan. The tail is the whole fan, so that, what with its size, and the graceful form that it has now assumed, and the pure white contrasting with the rich brown in the centre, it has become quite beautiful, more so, I think, than the fan of any fan-tail pigeon. Indeed the whole bird seems to be different, and looks more than twice as handsome as it does under ordinary circumstances. Its spirit, which is now exalted and warlike, “shines through” it, and, with its rich crimson bill, it glows and burns on the water, like Cleopatra’s barge. A fierce and fiery little prow this bill makes, indeed, and there is the poop, too, for the elevated tail, with the part of the body adjoining, which has, also, a bold upward curve, has very much that appearance. Thus, in this most salient of attitudes, with tail erect, and with beak and throat laid, equally with the whole body, along the water, with proud and swelling port the birds make little impetuous rushes at one another, driving, each, their little ripple before them, from the vermilion prow-point. They circle one about another, approach and then glide away again, looking, for all the world, like two miniature war-ships of proud opposing nations: for their pride seems more than belongs to individuals—it is like a national pride. Yet even so, and just as great deeds seem about to be achieved, the two may turn and swim off in a stately manner, their tails still fanned, their heads, now, proudly erect, each scorning, yet, also, respecting the other, each seeming to say, “Satan, I know thy strength, and thou know’st mine.” Otherwise, however, as the upshot of all this warlike pomp, they close in fierce and doubtful conflict. This is extremely interesting to see. After lying, for some time, with the points of their beaks almost touching, both the birds make a spring, and, in a moment, are sitting upright in the water, on their tails, so to speak, and clawing forwards and downwards with their feet. The object of each bird seems to be to drag his adversary down in the water, so as to drown him, but what always happens is that the long claws interlock, and then, holding and pulling, both of them fall backwards from their previously upright position, and would be soon lying right on their backs, were it not that, to prevent this, they spread their wings on the water, so that they act as a prop and support, which, together with their hold on one another, prevents their sinking farther. Their heads are still directed as much as possible forward, and in this singular attitude they glare at each other, presenting an appearance which one would never have thought it possible they could do, from seeing them in their more usual, everyday life. They may sit thus, leaning backwards, as though in an arm-chair, and inactive from necessity, for a time which sometimes seems like several minutes, but which is, more probably, several seconds. Then, at length, with violent strugglings, they get loose, and either instantly grapple again, or, as is more usual, float about with the same proud display as before, each seeming to breathe out menace for the future, with present indignation at what has just taken place.

Moorhens fight in just the same manner as coots, and seeing what a very curious and uncommon-looking manner this is, it might be thought that it was specially adapted to the aquatic habits of the two species. It is not. It is related to their terrestrial ancestry, and the terrestrial portion of their own lives. One has only to see them fighting on land to become, at once, aware that they are doing so in exactly the same way as they do in the water, and, also, that this way, on land, is by no means peculiar, but very much that in which cocks, pheasants, partridges, and, indeed, most birds, fight. For, jumping up against one another, moorhens, like these, strike down with the feet, but, having no spurs, use their long claws and toes in the way most natural to them. And this, no doubt, their fathers did before them, in deeper and deeper water, as from land-rails they passed into water-rails, until, at last, they were doing it when bottom was not to be touched, and they had only water to leap up from. Even the falling back with the claws interlocked has nothing specially aquatic in it. I have seen moorhens do so in the meadows, and they then spread out their wings, to support themselves on the ground, just as they do in the water. The continual leaping up from the water, as from the ground, is extremely noticeable, especially in the coot, and, in fact, the strange appearance presented by the whole thing—its bizarrerie, which is very great—is entirely due to our seeing something which belongs, essentially, to the land, carried on in another element, for which it is not really fitted. How differently do the grebes fight—by diving, and using the beak under water! Yet they, like the coot, are only fin-footed, whilst the coot is almost as good a diver as themselves. No one, however, comparing the structure and general habits of the two families, can doubt that the one is much more distantly separated from its land ancestry than the other. In both the coot and the moorhen, indeed, we see an interesting example of the early stages of an evolution, but the coot has gone farther than the moorhen, for besides that it dives much better, and swims out farther from the shore, it bathes floating on the water, whilst the moorhen does so only where it is shallow enough to stand.

Readers of “The Naturalist in La Plata,” may remember the account there given of the curious screaming-dances—social, not sexual—of the Ypecaha rails. “First one bird among the rushes emits a powerful cry, thrice repeated; and this is a note of invitation, quickly responded to by other birds from all sides, as they hurriedly repair to the usual place.... While screaming, the birds rush from side to side, as if possessed with madness, the wings spread and vibrating, the long beak wide open and raised vertically.” Do moorhens do anything analogous to this, anything that might in time grow into it, or into something like it? In my opinion they do, for I think that I have seen a hint of it, on a few occasions, and on one in particular, of which I made a note. Two birds, in this case, had been floating, for some time, quietly on the water, when one of them, suddenly, threw up its wings, waved them violently and excitedly, and scudded, thus, rather than flew, along the surface, into a reed-bed not far off. Before it had got there the other moorhen, first making a quick turn or two in the water, threw up its wings also, and scudded after its friend, in just the same way. Then came from the reeds, and was continued for a little time, that melancholy-sounding, wailing, clucking note that I have so often listened to, wondering what it might mean, and convinced that it meant something interesting. But if “the heart of man at a foot’s distance is unknowable,” as a Chinese proverb says—and doubtless rightly—that it is, so is the whole of a moorhen, when it has got as far as that, amongst reeds and rushes. Here, however—and I have seen something very similar, which began on the land—we have the sudden, contagious excitement, À propos de rien it would seem, the motion of the wings—not so very common with moorhens, under ordinary circumstances—and the darting to a certain spot, with the cries immediately proceeding from it: all which, together, bears a not inconsiderable resemblance to the more finished performance of the Ypecaha rail, a bird belonging to the same family as the moorhen.

It is a pity, I think, that our commoner birds, when related to foreign ones in which some strikingly peculiar habit has long been matter for wonder, should not be more carefully and continuously observed, with a view to detecting something in their own daily routine, which might throw light on the origin of such eccentricities—something either just starting along, or already some way on the road to, the wonderful house at which their kinsfolk have arrived. Unfortunately, whilst the end arouses great interest, the beginnings, or, even, something more than the beginnings, either escape observation altogether, or are not observed properly. When a thing, by its saliency, has been forced upon our notice, it is comparatively easy to find out more about it; but when it is not known whether there is anything or not, but only that, if there is, it cannot be very remarkable, the initial incentive to investigation seems wanting. Yet the starting-place and the half-way house are as interesting as the final goal, and our efforts to find the former, in particular, ought to be unremitting. In a previous chapter, I have given my reasons for thinking that we might learn something in regard to the origin of the bower-building instinct—that crowning wonder, perhaps, of all that is wonderful in birds—by making a closer study of rooks. But for this proper observatories are needed, and whilst those who possess both the means of making these and the rookeries in which to make them, are not, as a rule, interested, those who are have too often neither the one nor the other—I, at least, stand in this predicament.

It may be thought that the above-described sudden excitement and activity on the part of these two moorhens was, more probably, of a nuptial character; but I do not myself think so, for the nuptial antics—or, rather, the nuptial pose—of the bird, is of a quite different character, being slow and stiff, a sort of solemn formality. It belongs to the land and not the water, where, indeed, it could hardly be carried out. In making it, the two birds advance, for a little—one behind the other—with a certain something peculiar and highly strung in their gait and general appearance. Then the foremost one stops, and whilst a strange rigidity seems to possess every part of him, he slowly bends the head downwards, till the beak, almost touching the ground, points inwards towards himself. Meantime the other bird walks on, with an increasingly stilted, and, withal, stealthy-looking step, and when a little way in front of its companion, makes the same pose in even an exaggerated manner, curving the bill so much inwards, with the head held so low down, that it may even overbalance and have to make a quick step forward, or two, in order to recover itself. Here we have another example—and there are many—of a nuptial pose—between which and true sexual display it is hard, even if it be possible, to fix a line of demarcation—common to both the sexes; and, just as with the peewit, it is seen to the greatest advantage, not before, but immediately after, coition, in the act, or, rather, the two acts of which, the male and female play interchangeable parts. There is hermaphroditism, in fact, which must be real, emotionally, if not functionally—for what else is its raison d’Être?

Surely facts such as these deserve more attention than they seem to have received. To me it appears that not only must they have a most important bearing on the question of the nature and origin of sexual display, and whether there is or is not, amongst certain birds, an intersexual selection, but that some of those odd facts, such as dual or multiplex personality, which have been made too exclusively the subject of psychical research—or rather of psychical societies—may receive, through them, a truer explanation than that suggested by the hypothesis of the subliminal self, in that they may help us to see the true nature of that part of us to which this name has been applied. Surely if both the male and the female bird act, in an important office for the performance of which they are structurally distinct, as though they were one and the same, this proves that the nature of either sex, though, for the most part, it may lie latent in the opposite one, must yet reside equally in each. Here, then, we have a subliminal element, but as this can only have been passed on, through individuals in the bird’s ancestral line, by the ordinary laws of inheritance, is it not likely that other characteristics which seldom, or perhaps never, emerge, have also been passed on, in the same way, thus making many subliminal selves, instead of one subliminal self, merely? Of what, indeed, is any self—is any personality—made up, but of those countless ones which have gone before it, in the direct line of its ancestry? What is any bird or beast but a blend between its parents, their parents, and the parents before those parents, going back to the beginnings of life? But that much—more, probably, than nineteen twentieths—of this complicated mosaic lies latent, is an admitted fact both in physiology and psychology, to justify which assertion the very naming of the word “reversion” is sufficient. But if this be a true explanation for the animal, what excuse have we for disregarding it, and dragging in a transcendental element, in our own case? None whatever that I can see; but by excluding from their purview—to use their own favourite word—every species except the human one, the Psychical Society, in my opinion, are making a gigantic error, through which all their conclusions suffer more or less, so that the whole speculative structure, reared on too narrow a basis of fact and observation, will, one day, come tumbling to the ground.

Why should so much be postulated, on the strength of mysterious faculties existing in ourselves, when equally mysterious, though less abnormal ones, exist in various animals? Can we, for instance, say that the sense of direction (and this is common to savage man and animals)30 is less extraordinary than what we call clairvoyance, or that the one is essentially different from the other? And what is more mysterious than this (which I have on good authority), that a certain spot should, year after year for some forty years, be chosen as a nesting-site by a pair of sparrow-hawks, although, during many of these years, not one only of the breeding birds, but both of them, have been shot by the game-keepers? What is it tells the new pair, next year, that, somewhere or other in the wide world, a certain spot is left vacant for them? Again, I have brought forward evidence to show that the same thought or desire can communicate itself, instantaneously, to a number of birds, in a way difficult to account for, other than on the hypothesis of thought-transference, or, as I should prefer to call it, collective thinking. Who can imagine, however—or, rather, why should we imagine—that faculties which, though we may not be able to understand them, yet do exist in animals, have become developed in them by other than the ordinary earth-laws of heredity and natural selection? It is, indeed, easy to imagine, that the power of conveying and receiving impressions, otherwise than through specialised sense-organs, may have been—and still be—of great advantage to creatures not possessing these; and how can such structures have come into being, except in relation to a certain generalised capacity which was there before them? Darwin, for instance, in speculating on the origin of the eye, has to presuppose a sensitiveness to light in the, as yet, eyeless organism. Again, it does not seem impossible that the hypnotic state—or something resembling it—may be the normal one in low forms of life, and this would make ordinary sleep, which occurs for the most part when the waking faculties are not needed, a return to that early semiconscious condition out of which a waking consciousness has been evolved. Be this as it may, we ought surely to assume that any sense or capacity, however mysterious, with which animals are endowed, was acquired by them on the same principles that others which we better understand were; and, moreover, where all is mystery—for ultimately we can explain nothing—why should one thing in nature be deemed more mysterious than another? It seems foolish to make a wonder out of our own ignorance; which, however, we are always doing. But, now, if such powers and faculties as we have been considering, transmitted, in a more or less latent condition, through millions of generations that no longer needed them, had come, at last, to man, they could, it seems probable, only manifest themselves in him, through and in connection with his own higher psychology; just, in fact, as sexual love does, for this, of course, is essentially the same in man and beast. Yet we have our novels and our plays. Thus, such endowments, answering no longer to the lowly needs which had brought them into being, would present, when wrought into the skein of our human mentality, a far higher and more exalted appearance, well calculated to put us in love with ourselves—never a very difficult business—to the tune of such lines as “We feel that we are greater than we know,” “Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep,” and many another d’este jaez, which, though they issue from the lips of great poets, may be born, none the less, of mere human pride and complacency. Yet, all the time, animal reversion, as opposed to godlike development, might be, as I believe it is, the vera causa of what seems so high and so holy.

Were the late Mr. Myers’ conception of the subliminal self—a part of us belonging, as far as one can understand the idea, not to this earth but to a spiritual state of things beyond and without it, and bringing with it intuitive knowledge and enlarged powers, from this outer sea, these extra-territorial waters—were, I say, this conception a true one, it is difficult to see why such knowledge and such powers should always have stood in an ordered relation to the various culture-states through which man—the terrestrial or supraliminal part of him, that is to say—has passed, and to his earthly advantages and means of acquiring knowledge. It is difficult to see why the subliminal part of such a gifted race as the Greeks, though proportionately high, yet knew, apparently, so much less than this same sleeping partner in the joint-firm, so to speak, of far less gifted, but later-living peoples: why genius, which is “a welling-up of the subliminal into the supraliminal region,” should bear, always, the impress of its age, race, and country: why it is governed by the law of deviation from an average, as laid down by Galton: why it should so often be ignorant in matters which ought to be well known to the subliminal ego, as thus conceived of: why it asserts what is false as frequently as what is true, and with the same inspired eloquence:31 why “the dÆmon of Socrates” was either ignorant of its own nature, or else deceived Socrates, who of all men, surely, was fitted to know the truth: why Aristotle perceived less than Darwin: why Pythagoras grasped only imperfectly what Copernicus saw fully: why no other Greek astronomer had an inkling of the same truths: why Shakespeares and Newtons do not spring out of low savage tribes: why the negro race has produced no man higher than Toussaint l’Ouverture, who to the giants of the Aryan stock is as Ben Nevis to Mount Everest: and so on, and so on—a multitude of difficulties, as it appears to me, which the theory has neither answered, nor, as far as I know, has yet been called upon to answer.

I really do wish that writers upon psychical subjects would sometimes make an allusion to the animal world—the very existence of which one might, almost, suppose they had forgotten. The perpetual ignoring of so vast a matter—as though one were to go about, affecting not to breathe—is not only irritating, but calculated to produce a bad impression. Surely the originator or maintainer of any view or doctrine of the nature and immortal destinies of man, ought to be delighted to enforce his arguments by showing that they are applicable, not to man only, but to millions of animals, to whom, as we all now very well know, he is more or less closely related. When, therefore, we constantly miss this most natural and necessary extension, it is difficult not to think that some flaw, some weak point in the hypothesis—and, if so, what a weak one!—is being carefully avoided. It is amusing to contrast the space which animals occupy in such a work as Darwin’s “Descent of Man” with that allotted to them—to be counted not by pages, but lines—in those two huge volumes of the late Mr. Myers’ “Human Personality and its Survival of Physical Death.” Yet, as clearly as man’s body, in the former work, is shown to have been evolved out of the bodies of animals, so clearly is his mind demonstrated to have come to him through their minds. That, mentally and corporeally, we are no more nor less than the chief animal in this world, is now indeed, a proven and, scientifically speaking, an admitted thing; and I think it is time that those who, with scientific pretensions, seem yearning, more and more, to spell man with a capital M, should be called upon to state their views in regard to that mighty assemblage of beings, but for which he (or He) would never have appeared here at all, yet which, notwithstanding, they seem determined to ignore.

Dabchicks and Nest