The Bird Watcher in the Shetlands, with Some Notes on Seals—and Digressions

THE

BIRD WATCHER IN THE SHETLANDS

WITH SOME NOTES ON SEALS—AND DIGRESSIONS

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A Seal's Dormitory.

THE
BIRD WATCHER

IN THE SHETLANDS

WITH SOME NOTES ON SEALS
—AND DIGRESSIONS

BY

EDMUND SELOUS

WITH 10 ILLUSTRATIONS

BY

J. SMIT

LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
1905

[PREFACE]

I

IN the spring of 1900 I paid my first visit to the Shetlands, and most of what I then saw is embodied in my work Bird Watching. Two years afterwards I went there again, arriving somewhat later, and it is the notes made by me during this second stay which fill the greater number of these pages. They are my journal, written from day to day, amidst the birds with whom I lived without another companion, nor did I look upon them as more than the rough material out of which I might, some day, make a book. When it came to making one, however, it struck me more and more forcibly that I was taking elaborate pains to stereotype and artificialise what was, at any rate, as it stood, an unforced utterance and natural growth. I found, in fact, that I could make it worse, but not better, so I resolved not to make it worse. Except for a few peckings, therefore, and minor interpolations—mostly having to do with the working out of ideas jotted down in the rough—I send it to press with this very negative sort of recommendation, and with only the hope added that what interested me so much will interest others also, even through the veil of my writing. Besides birds, I was lucky enough this time to have seals to watch, and I watched them hour after hour and day after day. I believe I know them better now, than I do anybody, or than anybody does me; but that is not to say much, for, as the true Russian proverb has it, "Another man's soul is darkness." But I have them in my heart for ever, and I would take them out of the Zoological Society's basins, and throw them back into the sea, if I could.

I have no doubt that these pages contain some errors of observation or inference which I am not yet aware of—but those who only glance at them may sometimes be inclined to correct me, where, later, I correct myself. It is best, I think, to let one's mistakes stand recorded against one, for mistakes have their interest, and often emphasize some truth. Honesty, too, would suffer in their suppression—and besides, if one has got in some idea or reflection that pleases one, or a piece of descriptive writing that does not seem amiss, how tiresome to have to scratch it out, merely because it is founded on a wrong apprehension!—the spire to come tumbling just for the want of a base! For these reasons, therefore—especially the last, when it applies—I have not suppressed my errors, even where I happen to know them. There they stand, if only to encourage others who may be labouring in the same field as myself—which makes one more high-minded motive.

For my digressions, etc.—for which I have been taken to task—I hope this fresh crop of them will make it apparent that they are a part of my method, or, rather, a part of myself. I have still a temperament I find—and it gives me a good deal of trouble—but as soon as I have become a nonentity, I will follow the advice given me, and write like one. I would say more if I could, but I must not promise what it is not in my power to perform.

EDMUND SELOUS

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[THE BIRD WATCHER]
IN THE SHETLANDS

WITH SOME NOTES ON SEALS
—AND DIGRESSIONS

[CHAPTER I]

MY ISLAND AGAIN!

M

MY island again!—and all the birds still there, looking just as they did when I left it. More, too, have come. At night, but in a sort of murky daylight, I walk over the breeding-ground of the terns, a long flat strip of pebbly beach—or rather the heather a little way above it, for on the beach itself they do not appear to have laid. Rising, all at once, as is their wont, they make a second smaller canopy, above me, floating midway beneath the all-overshadowing one of dreary low-lying cloud. Out of it, ever and anon, some single bird shoots down, with a cry so sharp and shrill that it seems to pierce the ear like a pointed instrument. Occasionally an oyster-catcher darts in amongst them all, on quickly quivering wings, its quavering high-pitched note of "teep, teep!—teep, teep, teep!" threading, as it were, the general clamour, whilst like a grey, complaining shadow, the curlew circles, beyond and solitary, shunning even the outer margin of the crowd. How lonely is this island, and yet how populous! The terns—a "shrieking sisterhood"—make, as I say, a canopy above me, when I pace or skirt their territories; but what is that to the great perpetual canopy of gulls that accompanies and shrieks down at me, almost wherever I go? Were it beneath any roof but that of heaven, how deafening, how ear-splitting would be the noise, how utterly unendurable! But going forth into the immensity of sky and air it sounds almost softly, harsh as it is, and even its highest, most distressful notes, sink peacefully at last into the universal murmur of the sea, making the treble to the bass of its lullaby.

Most of the cries seem to resolve themselves into the one note or syllable "ow," out of which, through varied tone and inflection, a language has been evolved. "Ow-ow, ow-ow, ow-ow!" sadly prolonged and most disconsolately upturned upon the last, saddest syllable—a despair, a dirge in "ow." Then a series of shrieking "ows," disjoined, but each the echo of the last, so that when the last has sounded, the memory hears but one. Then again a wail, intoned a little differently, but as mournful as the other. And now a laugh—discordant, mirthless, but a laugh, and with even a chuckle in it—"ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!" the syllables huddling one another like the "petit glou-glou" of water out of a bottle. All "ow" or variants of "ow," till the great black-backed (the bulk are herring-gulls) swooping upon you, almost like the great skua itself, breaks the spell with a "gugga, gugga, gugga!" or, right over your head, says "er" with a stress and feeling that amounts almost to solemnity.

How lonely and yet how populous! Does life, other than human life, around one, in any way diminish the sense of solitude? I do not think it does myself, except through human association, and for this, human surroundings are more or less requisite. Thus woodland birds seem homely and companionable in woods near which one has a home, and gulls upon the roofs of houses take the place of pigeons or poultry in the feelings they arouse. So, too, as long as a natural alacrity of the spirits prevails over that dead, void feeling which prolonged solitude brings to the most solitary, the wildest creatures in the wildest and loneliest places may seem to cheer us with their presence. But the feeling is a false one, dependent on that very condition, and treacherously forsaking us—even to the extent of making what seemed a relief, an accentuation—when it fails. How often, as I have wandered over this little, noisy, thickly crowded retreat, has all the fellowship around me served but to remind me of my own exclusion from it—as from that of fairies, ghosts, elementals—but what all this life could not do, the cheerful firelight on the bare stone walls of the solitary shepherd's hut did at once for me, and with bacon in the frying-pan I had all the companionship I wanted. A dog—one's own or that knew one—or even a cat, might do more by its own personality than such inanimate objects by association merely, to relieve the sense of solitude; but no quite indifferent creature could do as much, I believe, or indeed anything.

But with the gulls here—and still more with the terns—there is more than mere indifference. It is a disagreeable reflection that all these many birds—these beings everywhere about one—resent one's presence and wish one away, that every one of all the discordant notes uttered as one walks about under this screaming cloud of witnesses has a distinct and very unflattering reference to oneself, upbraids one, almost calls one a name. To be hated by thousands—and rightly hated too! It is strange, man's callousness in this respect—that he should see his presence affect bird and beast as that of the most odious tyrant affects his fellow-men, yet never sleep or eat a meal the less comfortably for it! So it is indeed—and the principle holds good as between races and classes of men—when one has one's fellow-tyrants to laugh and joke and chat with; but here, with but oneself and one's own thoughts, the hostility of all these gulls begins to trouble one. There is no one to share in the obloquy—it falls upon you alone. You are the most unpopular person in the island.

I get another odd sensation through being here. Gradually, as the days go on, it seems more and more as though gulls made all the world, and this feeling, which, for its singularity, I value, I can encourage by seeking out some spot from which the sight of all but them and inanimate nature is, with extra rigour, shut out. The centre of the island, which is the gulls' especial sanctuary, presents these conditions. It forms an extended grassy basin, ringed in with low, swelling peat-hills, above which—for the intervening space is invisible—rise the tops of hills far higher, belonging to islands of some size which lie spread about this little one, hiding it from all the world. Through dips in these, and in the rim of one's own brown basin, one gets the sea—dull, cold grey lakes of it, engirt by dimmer islands, far away. No human sight in it all; no sail, for hours, upon the sea—only the gulls which, in their thousands and their all-possession, seem to have subdued the world. Men are gone, and gulls now take their place, become ennobled for want of a superior. Like snowy-toga'd Roman senators, they stand grouped about, or walk over the grassy amphitheatre—their natural senate-house—and it is wonderful with how slight an effort of the imagination—or indeed with none—the dissonant cries and shrieks, the clang and the jangle, become as the dignified utterance, eloquent oratory, to which one has sat and listened, spell-bound, in the gallery of the House of Commons. "Such tricks has strong imagination." "How easy," indeed, as Shakespeare tells us, "is a bush supposed a bear!"

It is curious how the gulls cling to their breeding-places long after the breeding-time is over. Summer—or say July—is now fast waning, yet in the way they stand amidst the heather, rise as I approach, and float, shrieking, above me, it is just as it was last time I was here, which was in early June, when things were hardly more than beginning. Any one not knowing the time of the year—and it is difficult to tell in the Shetlands—might expect from the birds' actions and the general appearance of the whole community, to find eggs and newly-hatched chicks all about; but all are gone, and the nests now hardly to be distinguished from the surrounding heather. A few young birds there are, but they are of large size, though unable as yet—or scarcely able—to fly. It is the habit of these, when approached, to crouch and lie flat along the ground, without making any attempt to escape, even allowing themselves to be stroked and taken up in the hand. When set down again, however, they generally start off running, and often get to a great distance before they stop. Young terns and young peewits do just the same thing, and it is curious that in their manner of thus crouching, before the power of flight has been fully gained, they exactly resemble the stone-curlew, in which bird the habit is permanent, though not, I should say, very frequently indulged in after maturity has been reached. As no adult gull or peewit crouches in this way, we must suppose either that natural selection has infixed a certain habit in the young bird, suited to its flightless condition, or that in thus acting it reverts to a trick of its ancestors, which were presumably, in that case, flightless, through life. The clinging of the stone-curlew to the early habit seems to support the latter supposition, and primâ facie it is perhaps more probable that crouching in a bird should have come before flying than after it, or, at least, that it should have been resorted to by certain species, on account of their flight having become weak. It is conceivable that some birds may have alternately lost and reacquired the power of flight many times in their genealogical history. But where have the majority of the young gulls gone? That they have left the island seems evident, for, were it otherwise, they would either be all about the heather, or fill the air more numerously than do the mature birds, when they cluster above me in my walks. In the air, however, none are to be seen, though, as by far the greater number must now be full-fledged, it is there that they ought to be, with the rest. On the ground there are, as I say, a few that seem to have been later hatched, and are not yet matriculated in flight. Their proportion, however, is not more than one to a hundred of the grown gulls, whereas since every pair of these rears three young, it should be as three to two. Gilbert White speaks of that general law in accordance with which young birds are driven away by their parents, when they are no longer dependent upon the latter's attention, but can feed and look after themselves; but with social birds this law of expulsion is apt to merge in a larger one, that, namely, which is expressed in the old adage that "birds of a feather flock together." We often see this illustrated in the case of the sexes, and after watching kittiwakes at the close of the breeding-season, I can have no doubt that the same principle governs the motions of young and old birds. Of hostility on the part of the parents I have seen but little, nor is it necessary; for the young, which are now distinguished by a different coloration, both of plumage and bill, making them look like another and quite mature species, delight to associate together, so that both the rocks and the water become the scene of tolerably large gatherings of them, at which hardly an old bird is present. As the parents of these assemblies are now free from the cares of domesticity, it seems as though the reason for such a segregation must be of a psychical nature, since one can hardly suppose that the dissimilarity of plumage has anything to do with it, seeing that young and old are as familiar with one another's appearance as with their own. It is the same thing, no doubt, with the gulls on this island, but as the whole interior, or rather the crown of it, is little else than their nesting-ground, it would be difficult for the younger generation to foregather, without the constraining presence of the elder one. The inconveniences of this may be imagined. Not a remark but would be overheard, not a side-glance but would be supervised and harshly interpreted, not a giggle that would pass unreproved. In these irritating circumstances, apparently—this, at least, is my theory of it—the young people have migrated en masse, a striking proof that, with birds no less than with ourselves,

Crabbed age and youth cannot live together.

[CHAPTER II]

SPOILER AND SPOILED

T

TO the one smooth beach that there is here come the terns, each year, to breed, and from these, as well as from the various gulls that nest upon the island, the lesser or Arctic skua—whom some call Richardson's, as though it belonged to that gentleman—is accustomed to take toll. Sweeping the sea with the glasses, one detects, here and there upon its surface, a dusky but elegantly shaped bird, that sometimes rises from the water and descends upon it again, slowly and gracefully, but is never seen to poise and hawk at fish, like the terns themselves, or, more rarely, some of the gulls. These are those skuas who elect to take their chances at sea, and whenever a tern rises after making his plunge, with a fish in his bill, they rise also and pursue him. Then may be witnessed a long and interesting chase, in the course of which the two birds will sometimes mount up to a considerable height, rising alternately, one above the other, as though each were ascending an aerial ladder. There are no gyrations in these ascents. They are, or at least they have the appearance of being, almost perpendicular, so that they differ altogether from those of the heron and hawk, once familiar in falconry, and of which Scott has given us such a splendid description in "The Betrothed," that delightful work which an obtuse critic and publisher (l'un vaut bien l'autre very often) almost bullied its author into discontinuing. The victory is by no means always to the robber bird, and I believe that if a tern only persevere long enough it has nothing to fear, for, as in the case of the black-headed gull and the peewit, with much threatening, there is never, or, to be on the safe side, very rarely, an actual assault. It almost seems as if this logical sequence of what has gone before had dropped into desuetude, and that the skua, from having long been accustomed to succeed by the show of violence only, had become incapable of proceeding beyond the show. Why, if this were not the case, should he always leave a bird that holds out beyond a certain time? It is not that he is outstripped in the chase, for the skua's activity and powers of flight have always seemed to me to be sufficient to overtake any bird of his own size, however swift, with whom he has piratical relations. Of his own size, or something approaching to it, for I have seen him altogether baffled by the smaller turns and evasions of such a comparatively feeble flyer as the rock-pipit. But this was out of the ordinary way of his profession. The rock-pipit carried nothing, and, even if he had done, it would have been too insignificant for the skua's attention. Either amusement or murder—or the amusement of murder, which is felt by birds as well as men—must have been the object here, nor does this contravene the theory I have just laid down, since such generalised and legitimate longings are only indirectly related to the bird's special instinct.

I do not myself see how these curious relations of robber and robbed could have arisen, unless there had been, from the beginning, a marked difference in the relative powers of flight possessed by each. The skua, originally, must have caught fish, like the birds on whose angling it is now dependent, and only an easy mastery over the latter could have induced it to abandon the one way of living for the other. This superiority was probably first impressed upon the weaker species through bodily suffering, but it would have been less trouble for the stronger one could it have succeeded without coming to extremities, and this, and its constantly doing so, might in time have made it forget, as it were, the last act of the drama. But say that the skua has forgotten this, then it is likely that a certain number of the persecuted birds have by practice discovered that it has, and so emancipated themselves from the tyranny. Whether this be the reason or not, I have often noticed the persistence with which some terns refuse to yield the fish, though the nearness of the skua, and its sweeping rushes, seem quite sufficient to induce them to. Those, on the other hand, who drop it quickly, often do so whilst the enemy is still at a distance, in which case the fish falls upon the water before the skua can catch it. Upon this, the latter—if not invariably, as the fishermen assert, yet certainly in the greater number of instances—flies off without any further attempt to secure it, and I have then seen the tern sweep back, and, plunging down, retake possession of its booty. Whether, in such cases, the fish was designedly relinquished, in order to be secured again, I cannot say, but here, at any rate, we see another way in which the parasite might come to be outwitted by the more intelligent of its vaches à lait.

These competitions between skua and tern, both of them birds of such swift and graceful flight, are very interesting to watch. The skua, in the midst of the chase, will frequently sweep away, as if it had abandoned all hope, and then return in a wide circling rush, at the end of which there may be a sudden upward shoot, for the tern generally seeks to elude its pursuer by rising higher into the air. Often—and again this is just as with the peewit and gull—a pair of skuas will give chase to the same tern, and then one may see the slender, shining bird quite overshadowed by the two evil figures, as, pressing upon either side, they rise or sink towards it, often almost covering it up with their broad and dusky pinions. Twin evil geniuses they look like, seeking to corrupt a soul, or else dark shadows that this soul itself has summoned up, and that attend it, hardly now to be shaken off:

Da hab' ich viel blasse Leichen
Beschworen mit Wortesmacht.
Sie wollen, nun, nicht mehr weichen
Zurück in die alte Nacht.

For imagination can easily multiply the two into many—cares, shadows, sorrows, they are easily multiplied.

A tern that either eludes or is not molested by a skua at sea, flies home with its fish, to feed its young. But here it has often to run the gauntlet of other skuas, who wait and watch for it upon the land, sitting amidst the short stunted heather, with the brown of which their plumage, as a rule, harmonises. There are, therefore, land-robbers and sea-robbers—pirates, and highwaymen—amongst these aristocratic birds, and it would be interesting to know whether the two rôles are performed by different individuals, or indifferently by the same one. To ascertain this satisfactorily I have found a difficult matter, but I believe that here as elsewhere—in everything, as soon as one begins to watch it—a process of differentiation is going on.

Where there are terns to be robbed, the skuas—I am speaking always of the smaller and, as I have found it, the more interesting species—seem to prefer them to any other quarry, so that the gulls, generally, benefit by their presence; otherwise all are victimised, except, as I think, the great black-backed gull. The latter will, himself, attack the skua, who flies before him, so that, taking this and his size into consideration, it does not seem very likely that the parts should ever be reversed between them, nor can I recall any clear instance in which they were. Of all the birds attacked, the common gull—which, like common sense, seems to be anything but common—makes, in my experience, the stoutest resistance; for it will turn to bay and show fight, both in the air and on the water, when it has been driven down upon it. Generally it is able to hold its own, and I look upon it as a vigorous young Christian nationality, in course of establishing its independence against the intolerable yoke of Turkish oppression.

These skuas love brigandage so much that, amongst themselves, they play at it; swooping, fleeing, and pursuing, each feigns, in turn, to be spoiler or spoiled. So, at least, I understand it, for nothing ever comes of these mock skirmishings, no real fight or flight, or anything approaching to one. It is fun, frolic, with a sense of humour, maybe, as though two pirates were playfully to hoist the black flag at each other. I love the humour of it. I love the birds. Above all, I love that wild cry of theirs that rings out so beautifully "to the wild sky," to the mists and scudding clouds. By its general grace and beauty, by its sportings and piracies, its speed of flight and the rushing sweeps of its attack, this bird must ever live in the memories of those who have known it: but, most of all, it will live there by the inspiring music of its cry.

[CHAPTER III]

FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT

T

TO all that I have said concerning the Arctic skua in my last chapter (I do not say it is much) I will now add what the Germans call a Beitrag, on the subject of the multitudinous variety of colouring and arrangement of markings which the plumage of this species exhibits.

Hitherto, indeed, I have spoken as if it were always of a uniformly dusky shade, but that was because I wanted that shade (and, indeed, it happened so to be) in the two that were chasing my tern. Otherwise they would not have suited the part I assigned them of twin evil geniuses, or have contrasted sufficiently with the white soul that they were seeking to corrupt. So, till that was all over, there could be no light or half-light skuas, but now that it is, and the effect produced, I permit things to be as they are.

The Arctic skua, then, is supposed by ornithologists—or, at any rate, that is how they are accustomed to speak of it—to be a bird of two different outer appearances, independent of sex, which does not add another one: dimorphic we are told it is, which means, or should mean, that it is two- or double-formed, taking form here to mean colour. Two! A hundred would be nearer the mark, I think, but I have only had the time, or the patience, to note down fifteen, which I did very carefully, through the glasses, as the birds stood amidst the short heather on the ness-side. Here they are; not, perhaps, very precisely or scientifically defined, but none the less truthfully so, for all that, and as accurate, I think, as the fact that no two people see colours quite alike will allow. But they, at any rate, bring out four facts, which, together, have, I think, a distinct meaning, viz. (1) the unmistakable and, for the most part, pronounced difference in these fifteen forms of a two-formed species; (2) the likeness of the extremely plain, permanent form to the plain-coloured great skua; (3) the same resemblance in the first true plumage of the young bird; and (4) the absence in the young bird of the two lance-like feathers which, in the old ones, project beyond the rest of the rectrices, but which are also absent in the great skua. Well, here they are.

(1) The neck, from just below the head, with the throat, breast, and ventral surface, as far as the legs, a beautiful creamy white; the rest dark, as in the ordinary dark form, but I was not careful to note the precise shade; the crown of the head—and this, it seems, is universal—sufficiently dark to appear black. This bird represents, I think, the extreme of the light or ornate form, in which dark and light are almost equally divided.

(2) The light colouring extends, speaking roughly, over the same parts, but is very much less bright and pure. It might be described as a dun-cream or cream-dun, the two shades seeming to struggle for supremacy. The cream prevails on the neck, the dun on the other parts; but even the neck is of a much duller shade than in the bird just described (No. 1). There are parts of the breast where the original sombre hue, a little softened, encroaches, cloudily, upon the lighter surface. These two birds cannot, certainly, be described as more or less handsome, merely, in the same colouring. The lighter surface, at any rate, is plainly different in shade, also its amount and distribution, though in a less degree.

(3) Another bird is much like this last one (No. 2), but there is, here, a distinct, broad, dunnish space, dividing the throat and breast parts, making, of course, a very palpable difference.

(4) Another bird—one of two standing together—is the common uniformly dark form, except that the neck and throat just below the head is, for about an inch, very much lighter, making a considerable approach to cream without quite attaining it. This light part is conspicuous in the one bird—this that I have been describing (No. 4)—but not in the other (No. 5) that it is standing by.

(5) This other one might pass for the ordinary dark form, but on examining it through the glasses a lighter, though less salient, collar is distinctly visible.

(6) In a third bird, not far off these two (Nos. 4 and 5) the whole colouring, from immediately below the crown of the head—which seems always to be black or very dark—is of a uniform brown-drab or brown-dun colour, there being not the slightest approach to a lighter collar, or any lightness elsewhere, except, as in every bird, without exception, on the quill feathers of the wings as seen in flight.

(7) In another bird the breast and ventral surface is of a delicate silvery cream, or creamy silver, something like that on the same parts of the Great Crested Grebe. On the sides of the neck, and just below the chin it is the same, perhaps a little less silvered; but between these two spaces, and so between the chin and breast, a zone of faint brown or dun, somewhat broken and cloudy, pushes itself forward from the wings, thus breaking the continuity of the light surface by the strengthening of a tendency which is, perhaps, just traceable even in the lightest specimens. Besides this, a similar clouded space is continued downwards from the back of the head, first in a diminishing quantity, and then, again, broadening out, till it joins the upper body-colour. So that here only a little of the nape is white, hardly more than what may still be described as the two sides of the neck. This is a very pretty and delicate combination.

(8) Close beside this last bird (No. 7) is a uniformly dark brown one; and

(9) Not far off, on the other side of it, one which exhibits the same sort of general effect, in a dark, smoky dun. This latter bird would generally pass as representing the dark form, and, with fluctuations in either direction, dark or light, it does represent the common form. Nevertheless, it is both light and varied compared with the extreme or uniform dark brown form beside it (No. 8), which appears to me to be the least common one of all, less so than the extreme light one (No. 1) at the other end. When I say uniform, however, I do not mean to include the crown of the head or tips of the wings, which are always darker than the rest of the plumage, nor yet that lighter shade which is on the primary quills of every individual, but only seen in flight. These exceptions must always be understood, and, moreover, the expression uniform is not to be construed with mathematical accuracy, but only as conveying the general effect upon the eye.

(10) A bird that from the dark crown of the head to the dark tips of the wings is, above and below, a uniform dark, browny dun, yet some washes lighter than the uniformly brown one (No. 8) that I have spoken of.

(11) A bird that, from the dark crown to the dark wing-tips, is, above and below, a uniform light fawny dun.

(12) A bird that would be the extreme light form (No. 1) that I have first described, were it not that, both on the throat and breast, the cream is encroached upon by cloudy barrings of a soft greyey-brown (or something between the two) which extend also over the under surface of the wings. Moreover, a toning of the darker colour of the general upper surface encroaches a little upon the cream of the nape.

(13) A bird exhibiting the uniform, dusky-dunnish colour of the common form (a shade lighter, perhaps, on the under surface), but with a cream patch on each side of the neck, just below the head. These patches are not, perhaps, of the brightest cream, but they are very conspicuous, whether the bird is seen standing or flying—in fact, the salient feature.

(14) A bird that would be the extreme light form (No. 1), but for a distinct collar of soft brown dividing the cream of the neck and throat from that of the breast.

(15) A bird that is yellowish dun on the neck and throat, mottled-brown on the breast, and a fine cream on the ventral surface.

Moreover, all these birds differed to a greater or less extent in those lighter markings of the quill feathers, both on the upper and under surface, some being lighter and some darker; following, in this respect, the general colouring. This feature, however, is only apparent when the birds fly, and I found it too laborious to include.

I can say with certainty, I think—judging by the lance-like projecting feathers of the tail, absent in the young bird, and by every other indication—that all the individuals here described by me, were birds of mature plumage. They were all established in one locality, and I was able to compare most of them with each other. I think, therefore, that though there might, perhaps, be some difference of opinion in regard to some of my colour terms—as where would there not be?—yet that the variation between the different forms is properly brought out. Without my seeking it, the list includes the two extreme forms, as I believe them to be, of dark and light; the former represented by a uniformly dark-brown bird, the latter by one having the whole under surface of the body, as well as the sides and nape of the neck, of a beautiful cream colour, by virtue of which, and of the salient contrast exhibited between this and the dusky upper surface, it is extremely handsome, not to say beautiful—one of the handsomest of all our birds in my opinion. Both the extreme forms are uncommon, but only, I think, as compared with all the intermediate shades, not with any one of them. Also the extreme light, or handsome, form seems to me to be commoner than the extreme plain one. Should not a bird like this be described as multi-morphic rather than as dimorphic? I believe that there exists as perfect a series between the two extreme forms as between the least eye-like and the most perfect eye-feather in the tail of the peacock—to take the well-known illustration given by Darwin to enforce his arguments in favour of sexual selection. The eye, however, insensibly masses the less saliently distinguished individuals together, so that those in whose plumage the light colour is more en évidence than the dark, go down as the light form, and vice versâ. Moreover, the more prononcé a bird is, in one or another direction, the more it is remarked; so that, perhaps, the intermediate shadings are forgotten, on the same principle as that by which extreme characters, in any direction, are more appreciated than less extreme ones, by the breeders of fancy birds—pigeons, poultry, etc. The uniform brown form, however, as being less striking (though extreme at one end) is not, I believe, so much noticed as those various dunnish shades, which have, in my view, been classed all together, as the dark variety.

In regard to the young birds, I only remember those nestling ones which had feathers under the fluff, as brown, without any admixture of cream. But I had not, at that time, these matters in my mind, and, moreover, I did not see many. When older, however, and able to fly, all that I have seen have had a distinct colouring of their own—for their plumage has borne a considerable resemblance to that of the Great Skua (Stercorarius catarriactes), being mottled on the back with two shades of brown, a darker and a lighter one. I got the effect of this when I watched young birds flying or standing, and one day I caught one whose wing had been injured, and saw that it was so. This resemblance is increased by such birds wanting the two lance-like feathers in the tail. As I say, this mottled brown is the only kind of colouring which I have seen in these immature but comparatively advanced birds, and my impression is that, in the still younger birds, such mottling was either absent or not so noticeable. At any rate, I have no clear recollection of it.

My own explanation of all these facts is that Stercorarius crepidatus—by my faith, 'tis a pretty name, though not wholly deserved—having been, originally, a plain homely-coloured bird, like his relative, the great skua, is being gradually modified, under the influence of sexual selection, into a most beautiful one, as represented by the extreme light or half-cream form. Natural selection, in the more general sense, seems here excluded, or, at any rate, extremely doubtful; and if it be suggested that the lighter birds have the more vigorous constitutions, that they are fuller of verve and energy, to which they owe their cream colouring, I, for my part, can only say "Prodigious!" (or think it), like Dominie Sampson. But I can assure all those who hold this unmanageable view—for really there is no dealing with it—that the one sort came not a whit nearer to knocking my cap off than did the other. But, leaving shadows, the main facts here suggest choice in a certain direction. There is a gradation of colour and pattern, connecting two forms—one plain, the other lovely. This suggests a passage from one to the other, and if the plain mature form—I mean the uniform brown one—most resembles the young bird in colouring—which to me it seems to do—whilst the young bird resembles, more than any old one, an allied plainer species, this makes it more than likely that the passage has been from the plain to the lovely, and not from the lovely to the plain. Supporting and emphasising this, we have the absence, in the tail of the young bird, of those lance-like feathers which give so marked a character to, and add so infinitely to the grace of, the old one. Of what use can this thin projection, an inch or so beyond the serviceable fan of the tail, be to the bird? Seeing how well every other bird does without it, can we suppose it to be of any service? Its beauty, however—which one misses dreadfully in the young flying bird—is apparent to any one, and it goes hand in hand with an ascending scale of beauty in colour. All this seems to me to point strongly towards sexual selection as the agency by which these changes have been, and are being, effected;[1] since I am, personally, a believer in the reality of that power, having never heard or read anything against it, so convincing to my mind as what Darwin said for it, nor seen anything that has appeared to me to be inconsistent either with his facts or his arguments.

[1] It is a strong enforcement, I think, of this view, that in another variable species of skua—Stercorarius pomatorhinus—the same two feathers give the bird "the grotesque appearance of having a disk attached to its tail."

No doubt if the varied coloration of the Arctic skua is really to be explained in this way, the lighter-coloured forms, especially the extreme one, in which the whole under surface is cream, ought to be on the increase, whilst the dark ones should ultimately die out or remain, perhaps, as a separate species, the intermediate tintings having disappeared. It is very difficult to form an idea of the relative number of individuals constituting any one form, because one unconsciously compares such form with a great many others instead of with each separately; but, whereas I remember various repetitions of the extreme light or half-cream variety, I have not the same clear recollection in regard to birds exhibiting other shades and proportions of cream. It was the opinion, moreover, of the man engaged to protect the sea-birds during the breeding season on Unst, that the light birds, by which he meant the ones more markedly so, were increasing in numbers. It would appear, therefore, that the process one might expect, were sexual selection the agency here at work, is in operation, and, for the rest, it is no use being in a hurry. A little patience, the "rolling" of "a few more years"—say a million—will settle the matter either one way or the other.

[CHAPTER IV]

DUCKINGS AND BOBBINGS

T

THE eider-duck is here, but not its beauty, for at this fag-end of the summer and breeding season the males have all departed, and it is the sober-coloured female, either alone or accompanied by her little brood of ducklings, that one meets now along the shores of the island. True there must be males in their just proportion among the latter, but at this tender age—the age of fluff and innocence—the sex of a bird is in abeyance—a world that is not yet begun. A pretty thing it is to see such little family parties coasting quietly along the shore and following all its bends and indentations. There is one such now—mother and three—coming "slowly up this way," like the spring, though not so slowly as the spring, or anything at all spring or summer-like, comes to these islands. They are feeding, apparently, upon the brown seaweed that clothes, as with a mantle, each rock and smooth stone that lies upon the shallow bottom along a gently shelving beach—making a continuous fringe which is but just submerged at low tide. In this the heads of the young ones are continually buried, but the mother eats more sparingly, and seems all-in-all happy to be thus with her family. Now as the eider-duck is certainly very much of an animal feeder—supposed, indeed, to be wholly so—one would naturally think that here the food sought for is not the seaweed itself, but any live things that may be clinging to it. This, accordingly, was my provisional hypothesis, but practical investigation hardly supported it, for on examining some of the seaweed, first in one spot and then another, along the track in which the birds had swum, I could find nothing whatever upon it—noticeably bare, indeed, it was. The eyes of an eider-duck are, no doubt, sharper than my own—or anybody's. Still I do not believe that even the most sharp-sighted one could find anything on this seaweed, at least without searching for it, whereas these ducklings are constantly dipping and, apparently, as constantly feeding all the way along. Finding always, they never have the appearance of looking for what they find. To me they seem to be browsing in their little ducking way, just as sheep browse in a field.

The seaweed here is not the long, brown sort, but another and almost equally common kind, which is shorter and covered with little lobes, shaped something like an orange-pip, but of a slightly larger size—small grapes, perhaps, since they grow in bunches, is more what they resemble. They are full of a clear, gelatinous substance that might well be appreciated, and having, to the boot of all the other indications, actually seen something that looked very like one of them in the beak of a duckling, I imagine—and it is a pleasing imagination—that the latter, at any rate, derive some part of their sustenance from these their subaqueous vineries. But I have seen seaweed in the mother's bill also, and this was not only the brown sort, but a soft green variety which grows sparingly with it. When feeding, without any doubt, upon living prey, eider-ducks are accustomed to dive, going right to the bottom, and often coming up with what they find there—a crab or other kind of shell-fish—to dispose of it on the surface at their leisure. The chick can dive as easily as the grown bird, but one may watch these family excursions for a long time without once seeing either of them do so. Instead, they now merely duck to get the seaweed, which almost reaches the surface. The chicks, however, are often raised by the swell of the sea beyond the height at which they can nibble it comfortably, and it is then funny to see the hinder portion of their little bodies sticking up in the air, with their legs violently kicking, as they hold on with might and main to prevent being floated off on the wave. Sometimes a brisk one bids fair to tilt them right over, but they always ride it in the most buoyant manner. The motion with which they do so—or rather with which it is done for them—is sometimes very curious, for they look as though they were swung out at the end of a piece of elastic, and then drawn smoothly back again, just as they are on the point of turning a somersault; but more often it is a plain bob-bobbing. Thus over wave and ripple they bob lightly along, whilst their mother, floating deeper and heavier, bobs with more equipoise—a staider bob, that has much of deportment about it. Each kind has its charm—never was there a prettier family bobbing. All bob to each other—that, at least, is what it looks like—and their song, if they had one, would be certainly this:

If it wasna weel bobbit, weel bobbit, weel bobbit,
If it wasna weel bobbit, we'll bob it again.

But, for my part, I have never seen them bob it otherwise than well. They all of them bob to perfection.

Scenes like this belong to the pebbled beach and gently sloping shore. There are others in the deeply indented, rocky bays that bound the greater part of the island. Here, in the frowning shadow of beetling, cavern-worn precipices, one may often see the little eider-ducklings crawl out to feed upon the steeply-sloping sides of rocks or mightier "stacks"—as those great detached spurs of the cliff that the water swirls round are called here—whilst their mother waits and watches on the sea close at hand. She does not bob now. These sullen heaving waves sway her with a larger and more rhythmic motion, calm but portentous, like the breathings of a sleeping lion that may at any moment awake. Or she will follow her ducklings, sliding up on the heave of the wave, and remaining, most smoothly deposited, as though the sea, rough and rude as it cannot help being, yet really loved her, in its way, and were solicitous of her safety. There she will feed beside them till she tires, and with a deep note that brings them running after her down the smooth, wet slope of the rock, goes off on the wave that is waiting, like a ship with so many little pinnaces following in her wake. The most she ever sails with now is three, and very often she has only one to attend her.

[CHAPTER V]

A VENGEFUL COMMUNITY

I

IT was terns, I think, who, when some killing Scotch naturalist or other had wounded one of their number, came down to it, pitifully, as it lay on the sea, and bore it away upon their backs and wings. I can better realise this incident now, after having walked about a ternery in these northern parts, and again tried the experiment—which in the south produced no special consequences—of interfering with their young. Upon my taking one of them in my hand, the whole community, amounting, perhaps, to several hundreds, gathered in one great, air-filling cloud, a little above my head, and with violent sweeps and piercing cries, seemed to threaten an actual attack. When I let the young thing flutter to the ground, and it moved and struggled upon it, the excitement was redoubled. It seemed as though they were animated with hope at seeing it out of my grasp, and as I took it up and let it go twice again, each time with the same result, I have little doubt that this was really the case. It was not only the two parents—assuming them to have been there—who attacked me. Many did so; many, too, seemed to feel, at some time, an extra degree of fury, whilst not a bird in the whole crowd but was violently and vengefully moved. These terns, as they clustered and darted about, resembled, or at least made me think of an angry swarm of wasps or hornets; but how different is the anger of insects to that of any other sort of animal! Though so much smaller, they attack without any hesitation or mistrust as to the result whatever. A hornet or an ant threatening merely when its nest was attacked seems an absurdity, whilst in a creature many times their size it is the idea of courage only that is presented to us.

Yet it was not all threatening with these terns, for as the excitement and hubbub increased several of them attacked me, though only with missile weapons. To be explicit, they excreted upon me, as they swept down, in such an irate "Take that!" sort of manner and with such precision of aim, that the intention was quite evident. This habit I had heard of, though not felt, before, for a south coast fisherman told me that he once had a dog which had developed a strong liking for tern's eggs, to gratify which he used to make egg-hunting and feasting expeditions along a line of beach where they lived, from which he would return in a most unseemly plight, owing to the birds having "dunged" him. I did not doubt this account at the time, and I have now this interesting confirmation of it, but though I myself walked amongst these southern terns and often took the young ones up in my hand, they never vented their displeasure on me in this particular way, nor were such swoops and threatenings as they made of so pronounced and violent a character. They mobbed a hare, however, in a much more determined way, and certainly pecked at it, though, at the distance, this was all I could say with certainty. It is interesting if a means of defence resorted to against animals only, by some colonies of these birds, is by others employed to repel the intrusion of man also. For the habit itself, I do not remember reading of it, either in the case of terns or any other bird or animal, except one with which Swift has made us familiar—Swift, that great misanthrope, who, by the sheer force of his satire, has anticipated to some extent the reasoned truth of Darwin. As I say, I can hardly doubt that these terns acted as they did with malice prepense, yet, as their conduct is, perhaps, susceptible of another interpretation, I ought to mention that the bombardment was not continuous, but occasional only—a dropping fire, so to speak. As far as I could observe, however, the act was always in combination with the plunging sweep down, which makes me certain that, if not the mere mechanical effect of intense excitement, it was prompted by hostility—to which latter view I strongly incline.

A little way farther on I found two quite tiny terns—the other was of a fair size—lying together in the nest. There was excitement when I took up these also, but not nearly so great as just before, except, perhaps, on the part of the two parents. The first young bird had assumed almost its final appearance, though not quite able to fly. I concluded, therefore, that this had something to do with the different degree of excitement shown by the terns as a whole, but when, after some while, I found and took up another baby, almost as big as the first, there was still less demonstration than in the case of the two fluffy ones—again excepting the parents. Perhaps the boiling point of communal fury that had been aroused by my first unlawful act was not to be again reached; but birds are certainly capricious in their actions, and there is no judging from one to the next.

But, taking them at their best, why are these northern terns so much fiercer and more vengeful than those which breed in the south? Of the disposition of the latter I have had ample time to judge, and, though there was always anger when I walked over the great bank crowded with their nests, yet its manifestations were of a more ordinary kind, nor, as I say, did I notice any very acute development of it when I lifted a young one from the ground. Sometimes I think these Shetlanders look slightly smaller than the English kind, and always they seem to me to be more waspish and irritable in their disposition. Are they, therefore, of a different species—the Arctic, instead of the common tern, or vice versâ? The two, indeed, are so much alike that only an ornithologist—as ornithologists tell us—is capable of distinguishing them whilst the birds are alive and at liberty. However, as the sole mark of distinction appears to consist in a hardly appreciable difference in the length of the tarsus, it is easier to understand the difficulty than how the ornithological eye, even, unsupported by a measuring-tape, manages to surmount it. But when would any member of a fraternity admit himself on a level with mankind in general, in regard to his particular cult? The thing is always to ramp on one's pedestal, though it be no higher than the houses over the way. Personally I doubt the validity of a specific distinction so attenuated as this; but be that as it may, terns, in their northern and southern homes, seem to differ somewhat in their natures, even as do the respective beaches on which they lay, with their surrounding scenery of sea and sky. How different are these one from another! Here, in these desolate and wind-swept isles, I, at least, though I have sometimes seen the sun, have never caught one glimpse of summer—nothing at all nearer to it than a somewhat fresher and very much rougher November. But on that other great bank, in the more genial climate of southern England, not only is it summer, sometimes—and that in spring—for hours together, but one may even be, for a while, in the tropics. How else could there be the mirage? Yet there it is, or, at any rate, something like it; for as one lies at length and gazes through the golden haze that seems to beat in waves upon the hot, parched shingle, lo! this is gone, and where it lay, all glaring, a blue pellucid lake, that seems to partake equally of the nature of sea and sky, lies now, cool and delightful. Into it terns, ever descending, seem to plunge or softly dip, as though it were the sea itself; and as they do so they either disappear altogether, becoming lost in azure haze, or are seen through it, dimly and vaguely, sitting or performing such actions as are proper to their shore life, amidst those strange new waters, from which others as constantly ascend. Gulls, too, and sometimes cormorants, may be there, whilst dove-cot pigeons, with familiar, yet now half phantasmal strut and bow, mingle occasionally, like little household Pucks, with the more poetic figures of this fairy dream. A dream, indeed, it is; but, more and more, it passes into one of far-off, sunnier lands—seen once, remembered now. Bluer becomes the sky—the sea; softer the air. Palm-trees wave, the long, bright breakers are bursting on a coral shore, the surf roars in, hissing and sparkling, the gulls are the surf-riders, England is no more.

[CHAPTER VI]

METEMPSYCHOSIS

O

OH, if there is really a metempsychosis, has not the soul of Bardolph gone into an oyster-catcher, or at least has not his nose, which was his soul—Shakespeare, at any rate, has made it the most immortal part of him—gone into an oyster-catcher's bill? I believe it has, and it burns there, now, just as brightly, with nothing but the salt sea to drink. It is that bill, that wonderful bill, which makes the oyster-catcher a handsome bird. The ruby eye, the pale pink legs, and the gaily-chequered plumage, all help; but they are but adjuncts, and by themselves would work but small effect. This is well seen when the bird, having before been running actively about on the foreshore, becomes, all at once, oppressed with somnolence, stands still, turns its head over its shoulder, and thrusts its long, fierce, fiery tube amidst the plumage of the back. The transition from something showy to something plain, from brilliancy to mediocrity, is then quite remarkable; and equally so is it the other way when, for some imperative purpose, or in a wakeful moment, the red ray flashes out again. Every now and again come these swift conflagrations, and, between them, the bird stands like a little lighthouse, in the intervals between the flashes of the revolving light.

Oyster-catchers—or sea-pies, to give them their old name, which is a very much better one—seem somewhat sleepy birds, unless it be that in the Shetlands birds sleep more in the daytime and less at night than farther south. Sleep, I think, it may be called, taking the attitude and the complete quiescence into consideration. Yet the red eye is always open, seeming—for you see but one—to wake singly, keeping guard over the rest of the slumbering commonwealth to which it belongs. But there is another eye, and that, no doubt, is open too. A pair of these quaint birds will often rest thus, side by side, upon the rocks, and another, seeing them as he comes flying along the dividing-line of shore and sea, will wheel inwards, and, settling beside them, be a lotus-eater too.

[CHAPTER VII]

BIRD SYMPATHY

T

TO-DAY—which is my third here upon the island—I was actually assaulted by the terns. I saw a young one, now well advanced, that flew for a little and then went down on the grass. Walking towards it, a bird—presumably one of the parents—descended upon me twice in succession, and, with that angry and piercing cry that I have spoken or ought to have spoken of—it sounds very like a shrill "bah!"—delivered a fierce peck at my head, so that I felt it each time, quite unpleasantly, through the thin cloth of my cap. The difference is to be noted in this form of attack, to that employed by gulls and skuas, the former in battles inter se only, and the latter as against man in defence of their eggs or young. Both of them, when they thus "swoop to their revenge," use the feet only, and the superiority of the tern's method is so great that it makes this small bird almost as redoubtable—if this exaggerated word may be pardoned—as even the largest of the others. The Great Skua, especially, were it to use its powerful beak, would be really formidable, even to a man. In fighting with its fellows, it no doubt does so, and gulls, under these circumstances, make the greatest use of theirs. This, however, is when they struggle together on the ground; but when one fights on the ground and the other in the air, the latter uses its feet only, with effects that are irritating rather than to be feared. Now why is this, and what causes the difference in this respect as between gull and tern? From my own observation I think I can explain it. So long as two contending gulls fight with any equality, they do so upon the ground, but when one of them can no longer hold his own there, he rises into the air and, sweeping backwards and forwards over the other, who stays where he was, annoys him in this particular way. The bird, therefore, by whom these tactics are resorted to has already got the worst of it, and the last thing he wishes is again to close with a rival who has defeated him. This, however, is exactly what would happen were he to use his hooked beak in the manner proper to it, for it is adapted for seizing and tearing, and to these uses it has hitherto been put. To peck or stab with it would be like making a thrust with a sickle, and though possibly as against a weaker antagonist it might be made effectual in some other than the normal way, yet here there is always the fear of detention, to check any experiment of the sort. Let the hooked tip but pierce the skin to any extent, and the swoop would be checked sufficiently to allow of the flying bird's being seized. The feet, therefore, though without efficient claws and quite unadapted to anything except swimming, are employed by preference, and in the manner in which they are used we see the same principle at work, for instead of making any attempt at grasping or scratching, the flying gull, as it sweeps by, just gives a flick with the back of them, which the other revenges or parries with a blow of the wing.

The tern, however, having a straight and sharply pointed bill, adapted for pecking, and nothing else, can use it in this manner when flying also, though in other respects it delivers its attack in exactly the same manner as the gull does, allowing for the difference in bulk and aerial grace and mastery, between the two birds. Here, as it appears to me, we see structure affecting habit. As a rule, I think, it is rather the other way, for it is wonderful to how many uses, other than the primary one for the performance of which it has been specially adapted, almost any part of an animal's anatomy may be put. And indeed, if we look at it in another way, this truth is as strikingly illustrated by what we have just been considering as by almost anything, for the webbed foot of a gull or any swimming bird is extremely unadapted for fighting, and yet we here see it thus employed. But it is owing to the structure of the beak, in my opinion, that this has come about. That is the bird's real weapon, which I am convinced it would always use if it could or if it dared. Not even in their rough-and-tumbles, where they close and roll over and over together, have I seen gulls fight with their feet, upon the ground.

I had not gone far, after this episode with the terns, when I was pecked at, twice again, by another one, under similar circumstances. Each time, I believe, the sharp point of the beak went through the slight stuff of my cap, or I should hardly have felt it so sharply. It is not only the skuas, then, that attack you in defence of their young. These terns, though so much smaller, do so too, and, as appears by the story, they have more than one weapon in their armoury. But a more interesting experience was in store for me, which brought still more forcibly to my mind that incident with the wounded tern to which I have before alluded. Walking on, I noticed a bird which, though a young one, looked almost in its full plumage, and which kept flying for a little, and then going down again at some distance in front of me. Every time it alighted, a cloud of terns hovered excitedly over it, and first one, and then another of them kept swooping down, so as just or almost to touch it, until at last it flew up again, so that I could never approach it more nearly. It certainly seemed to me as though the grown community were trying to get this young one to fly, so as to be out of danger, and this they always succeeded in doing. I do not think they really prevented me from catching the bird, for, no doubt, it would have flown of itself before very long; but what interest and sympathy shown! Moreover, had I been pursuing it with a gun it might have made all the difference.

BIRD SYMPATHY

So, too, it must be considered how lethargic these young terns are before they can fly, and how easily they then let themselves be caught, though able to run quickly. When noticed, or approached closely, they crouch, but though this is probably due to an inherited instinct of self-preservation, they do not appear to have much fear of one. Therefore it seems likely that in their early flying days they might still be inclined to act in this way, and if so, any encouragement to fly which they received from their elders would be of assistance to them. It is noteworthy that the younger birds which I caught were not thus encouraged to run. The public attention, in this case, seemed concentrated on myself.

Terns vary much in the degree of resistance, or rather of evasion, which they offer to the attacks of the skuas—always I am speaking of the smaller of the two species. I have often seen them get off scot-free, without losing their fish, and, as before said, this has always seemed to me to be because of their persistency in holding out, and not at all on account of their superior speed. I have advanced a theory as to why the skuas should not actually attack the terns on these occasions, as they do not seem to me to do, and if there is any truth in it, we here see a road along which a certain number of the latter might become free of the tyranny under which they now suffer. It is doubtful, however, whether these more obstinate birds would gain, in this way, a sufficient advantage over the others to allow of natural selection coming into play. They could carry, no doubt, more fish to their young, but here, at least, the skuas seem hardly in sufficient numbers to make the difference a working one. With many birds, however, a similarly acquired change of habit would mean the difference between life and death. I remember once passing unusually close to a cock pheasant, which remained crouching all the while, though nineteen out of twenty birds would, I feel sure, have gone up. It struck me, then, that as all such pheasants as acted in this way would have a greater chance of not being shot than the others that rose more easily, whilst these latter were constantly being killed off, therefore, in course of time, the habit of crouching close ought to become more and more developed, and pheasants, in consequence, more and more difficult to shoot. Some time afterwards I met with some independent evidence that this was the case, for a gentleman who shot much in Norfolk, remarked, without any previous conversation on the subject, that the pheasants there had taken to refusing to rise, and that this unsportsmanlike conduct on their part was giving great trouble and causing general dissatisfaction. That was his statement. He spoke of it as something that had lately become more noticeable, but only, as far as his knowledge went, in Norfolk, which, I believe, is an extremely murderous county.

Beyond this I have no knowledge on the subject, but I feel sure that a gradual process of change and differentiation is every day going on amongst numbers of our British birds. I believe that I have myself, here and there, seen some traces of it, and my idea is that greater pains ought to be taken to collect evidence in this and similar directions. Along all those lines where fluctuation has been observed, or where modification might, in course of time, be expected, the present truth should be most carefully made out, and having been accurately recorded and published, observation, after a certain length of time, should again be focussed on the same points, and this being renewed every ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred years, the results could be compared. For instance, our green woodpecker feeds now largely upon ants in their nests, whilst it both fights and copulates upon the ground. How interesting would it be if we had a continuous record of observations of this bird's habits, dating, say, from William the Conqueror or the days of the Saxon Heptarchy, and if we found that no mention was made of these peculiarities, by the field naturalists of those times, but that they first began to be doubtfully recorded in the reign of Henry the Fifth, or Richard the Third. No doubt a connected chain of evidence of this kind will gradually grow up, owing to the accumulation of works of natural history, but it would, I think, be a great deal more satisfactory if the object were kept steadily in view, and I am quite sure that observations made in this spirit would produce much more interesting matter than that which is to be found in the ordinary bird or beast book. For the great idea would then be to compare the present with the past habits of any creature, in order to see whether, or in what degree, they have changed, and this could only be done by continual re-observation, which would assuredly lead to novelty of some sort, instead of mere repetition, which is what we have now; and not only so, but the thing that is so constantly repeated seems often to be founded either on nothing, or nothing that one can get at. Take, for instance—but no, that would lead to twenty more pages at the least, and I want them for something better.

[CHAPTER VIII]

ENCHANTED CAVERNS

A

ALONG the bolder coast-line of this island, where the cliffs, without being very high, are steep and frowning, there are some remarkable caves, which I to-day visited with Mr. Hoseason, in his boat—he having sailed over from Yell Island. To me, at least, they seemed remarkable, principally by reason of the various and vivid colours which the rock perforated by them begins to display as soon as their entrance is passed. This rock, as elsewhere in the Shetlands, is sedimentary, but broken here and there with veins of quartz, often of considerable thickness, which seem to have been shot up in a molten state and to have afterwards cooled—"seem," I say, for I have no proper knowledge as to their geological formation. This quartz, which when exposed to the light of day is white or whitish, is here of a deep rust-red, and this, distributed in long zigzag lines or meanderings, is sufficiently striking, but nothing compared to the much brighter reds, the lakes, and brilliant greens with which the interior of the cavern is, as it were, painted; so that the whole effect, lit up by the candles which we used as torches, resembled, in a surprising and quite unexpected way, those highly coloured and very artificial-looking representations of natural scenery which one sees on the stage—in pantomimes more particularly or on some very florid drop-scene. These colours are due to some low form of vegetation which is spread like a wash over the face of the stratified rock, but it seems surprising, since one is accustomed to associate colour with light, that in the absence of all sun they should not only exist, but be so very brilliant. I have never seen anything like such vivid hues on the surface of rock or cliff exposed to the light of day, nor, indeed, in any landscape, if flowers and the autumn tints of leaves are excluded. Gaudily painted stage scenery, some enchanted or robber's cavern in a pantomime—Ali Baba's, for instance—is really the best comparison I can think of, nor shall I ever again think these exaggerated. Nature is really harder to outdo or burlesque than one may fancy—even on the stage, where the effort is so constantly, and, one would swear, successfully made.

In shape these caverns are long and narrow—throatal, one might call them—and the sea, with the many weird and uncouth noises that it makes as it licks, tongue-like, in and out of them, helps to suggest this resemblance. Though their height is really but moderate, yet, owing to the narrowness of their walls, they have the appearance of being lofty, especially near the entrance, or where, after descending till it nearly reaches the water, the roof is suddenly carried up again. For the most part, however, the height decreases gradually, with the breadth, till at length the cave ends in a low, dark tunnel, which the sea almost fills, and up which the boat can no longer proceed. Yet far beyond, where all is opaque darkness, one still hears the muffled wash and sob of the waves as they ceaselessly eat and eat into the hidden bowels of the rock. As the whole force and vastness of the ocean lies beyond this little tip of its tongue, to where may not such burrows extend? and might not, by a knowledge of their position and the direction in which they run, some inland towns be supplied with the blessing of sea-water?

The water in these caverns is delightfully clear, revealing in every detail, through its lucid green, the smooth-rolled pebbles and great white rounded boulders which strew, or rather make, their floor. To look down at them is like looking up into the arched roof of some other cave. One might think it the reflection of the one overhead, till, glancing up, the difference is remarked—jagged, bright-hued peaks and niches instead of smooth, even whiteness. This effect, as of a roof beneath one, is due, I think, to the continuation downwards of the sides of the cavern, for this gives the same vaulted appearance, but reversed, that there is overhead, and the mind, as with the image on the retina of the eye, soon sets it the right way up.

These caves must have been known from time immemorial to as many as were accustomed to coast round the island, and it is interesting to think of who, and what kind of craft may, from age to age, have visited or sheltered in them. Recently, however, they were first explored, if not discovered, by Mr. Hoseason (who has for years rented the island and done his best to protect the bird life upon it) in the spring of the preceding year, and they were at that time tenanted by numbers both of shags and rock-pigeons, who sat incubating their eggs on any suitable ledge or projection of the rock. Of the latter birds, to-day, there were none, but several of the former, though so late in the season, were sitting on eggs which, to judge by their whiteness, must have been but lately laid, and, no doubt, represented a second brood, whilst others, whose young were still with them on the nest, although full-fledged and almost as big as themselves, plunged, attended by these, into the water. The hollow sounds of splash after splash were echoed and re-echoed from sea to roof, and the air seemed filled with sepulchral croakings. It was easy to follow these birds as they swam midway between the surface of the water and the white pebbled floor of the cavern, and I was thus able to confirm my previous conviction that the feet alone are used by them in swimming, without any help from the wings, which are kept all the while closed. I have many times observed this before, but never so clearly or for such a length of time.

The young birds, after diving, made for the nearest rock or ledge on to which they could scramble, and they were so unwilling again to take the water that some of them allowed themselves to be caught by us, though showing every sign of fear—indeed, of extreme terror—which one might naturally suppose them to feel. This is a puzzling thing to understand—at least, to me it is. An aquatic bird that swims and dives all as easily as it breathes, and which has just before plunged into the water from a considerable height, stands now upon a rock but little above its surface, and watches a boat, the object of its dread, coming nearer and nearer, till at last it stops in front of it, and the hand is stretched out to seize and take, without ever escaping, which it might easily do in the way that it has just before done. What is the explanation? We may suppose, perhaps, that these young birds have not yet got to look upon the ocean as a place of long abode, that they enter it only with the idea of getting quickly out again, and that the rock is as yet so much more their true home that they cling to it in preference, and may even have a feeling of safety in being there. But if this last were the case, why should they leave it in the first instance? There would be no difficulty in understanding the matter if they refused to take the sea at all, but having done so once, it seems strange that they should so fear or dislike to, again. Possibly the having soon to come out—as being impelled to do so—and finding themselves no better off, but menaced as before, may give a feeling of inevitability and hopelessness of escape, sufficient to take away the power of effort. But this I do not believe—despair hardly belongs to animals, and if it did, imminent peril, with at least a temporary refuge at hand, ought to conquer such a feeling. As the birds which we thus caught were only in the water for a very little while, exhaustion could have had nothing to do with their self-surrender. The paralysis of fear ought, one would think, to have acted from the first, instead of supervening after a period of activity, but perhaps mere bewilderment, by preventing sustained exertion, may have produced a similar effect. Had it always been the parent bird that led the way on the occasion of the first leap from the rock, this powerlessness on the part of the young to leave it a second time might be attributed to her absence—but as far as I can remember there was no fixed rule in this respect. Both old and young birds generally went off with great unwillingness, but at other times this was not nearly so marked.

In their swimming so quickly to the shore again, after their first plunge, and refusing thereafter to leave it, these young cormorants brought to my mind those amphibious lizards of the Galapagos Islands which Darwin mentions as never entering the sea to avoid danger, but, on the contrary, always swimming to land on the slightest alarm, though it might be there precisely that danger awaited them. This "strange anomaly" Darwin explains in the following manner: "Perhaps this singular piece of apparent stupidity may be accounted for by the circumstance that this reptile has no enemy whatever on shore, whereas at sea it must often fall a prey to the numerous sharks. Hence, probably, urged by a fixed and hereditary instinct that the shore is its place of safety, whatever the emergency may be, it there takes refuge." The shag, as far as I know, has nothing particular to fear, either by sea or shore. His only enemy is man, who is not confined to either, but is as brutal and ignorant on the one as the other. But in avoiding danger the instinct of any animal would probably be to leave the place to which it was less accustomed, and run to that with which it was familiar—and this we constantly see. Thus a land-bird that was beginning to take to the water would leave it for the land on any alarm, whilst a water-bird under similar circumstances would make for the water. But all water-birds were probably land-birds once, so that we might expect sometimes to see in their young that old instinct of taking refuge there, which had become reversed in the parents. We might also expect to find greater dislike, on their part, to entering the water; and certainly the young shags did enter it very unwillingly from the first. So, indeed, for that matter did the old ones, as already stated, but with them there was the love of being on their nests, or at least their nesting-ledges—a late continuance of the breeding habits—to be overcome. When once they had plunged, however, they did not, like the young birds, swim at once to the shore again, but made for the open sea, and it must have required a strong contrary instinct on the part of the latter not to follow them. The lizards on the Galapagos Islands have, no doubt, also taken to the sea gradually, so that their habit of swimming to the shore when alarmed may, possibly, be due to a long-enduring ancestral instinct, having nothing to do with sharks.

We passed, whilst exploring one of these caverns, just beneath a ledge of rock, where a shag sat brooding over two tiny little things, but just hatched, perfectly naked, and jet black all over. This poor bird showed an anxiety which could hardly have been overpassed in the most devoted of human mothers, and I almost believe her sufferings were as great—for surely all extremities are equal. Her hoarse, bellowing cries reverberated through all the place, and helped, with the gloom, the murky light flung by our candles, the lurid colouring, and the deep, gurgling noises of the sea, to make a weird, Tartarean picture, difficult to excel. But it was not in sound alone that she vented her displeasure, for she was angry as well as alarmed. As the boat passed, she rose on the nest, and, in a frenzy of apprehension, snapped her bill, and alternately advanced and retreated her long, snake-like and darkly iridescent green neck. Though my head was but a foot or two away from her, she kept her place on the nest, and becoming more and more beside herself, behaved, at last, in such a manner as it is difficult to describe, but which upon the human plane and amongst the lower classes, is called "taking on." Not until I actually took up one of the young ones, to examine it—for this I could not resist—did she fling herself into the water, and then it was with a dramatic suddenness that looked like despair. It was as though she had attempted suicide, but no cormorant, I suppose, would do so in such a way.

What a strange sight this was! What a gargoyle of a creature—alive, in these gloomy shades! It seemed not a bird, but something in The Faerie Queen, one of

The uncouth things of faerie,

—a line, by the way, which only resembles Spenser by being, probably, unfamiliar to most people. But our knowledge makes things commonplace. Did the fairies exist, they would be classified, and, with Latin names and description of their habits, would be no more really the fairies than are birds or beasts. Let one but know nothing, and these caverns are enchanted.

It is not often that one has so close a view of a shag as this. My head was but a foot or so off, and on a level with her own; my eyes looked into her glass-green ones. One thing about her struck me with wonder, and that was the intense brilliancy of the whole inside of her mouth, which, in a blaze of gamboge, seemed to imitate, in miniature, the cavern in which she sat. Most stupidly I did not think to open the bill of the chick whilst I had it in my hand, in order to see what its mouth was like. As bearing on the conjecture which I have formed, this would have interested me, and such an opportunity is not likely to come again. I noticed, however, that the naked skin about the beak, which, in the grown bird, is thus vividly coloured, was very much lighter, and consequently not nearly so handsome, in the larger fledged young ones. That here the intensity of the hue was gained gradually through sexual selection, I—being a believer in sexual selection—can have no doubt, and the lesser degree of it in the young bird would be due to a well-known principle of inheritance, which has been pointed out or, rather, discovered by Darwin. If, therefore, the inner colouring has been acquired in the same manner, it ought also to be first light and become brighter by degrees.[2] I must now watch for these young cormorants to open their bills, for it is a habit which they share, more or less, with their parents, and out of it, as I believe, the adornment has grown.

[2] This is, in fact, the case.

I have no doubt that numbers of shags roost in these caverns during the night, for when I was lost on Raasey Isle in Skye, I came to a huge vaulted chamber in the cliffs, into which scores—perhaps hundreds—both of these birds and the common cormorant flew, after the sun had set. When they were all settled, every ledge, crevice, and pinnacle seemed tenanted by them, and never shall I forget the gloom, the grandeur, and the loneliness of this scene. I admired it, though naked, except for a torn pair of trousers which were half wet through. I should like to see them come flying into their caves here also, where I am not so forlorn; but the distance of my hut from this part of the shore, the lateness of the hour up to which the light lasts, and my having to cook my supper, makes this difficult, or, at least, inconvenient. But if I cannot see them fly in in the evening, I may see them fly out in the morning, and that should be "a sight for sair een."

Whilst rowing to these caves we had seen one black guillemot, or "tysty," flying over the sea with a fish in its bill, and another swimming with a young one by its side. The latter was of a greyish colour, and about a third smaller than the parent bird, which in shape and movements it closely resembled. These birds, therefore, breed in the Shetlands—a fact well known before, I believe; but I like to rediscover things. Another and more interesting thing that we saw was a seal swimming very fast, and leaping, at intervals, out of the water. I think I may use this expression, for if he did not leap quite free of it, he very nearly did, so as to show his whole body. He rose in a very bluff, bold way, with great impetus, as it seemed, and went straight, or nearly straight up, for a little, before falling forward again. Each time one seemed to hear the splash and the blow, but this was only in imagination, the distance being too great. When I say that this seal was swimming very fast I am giving my impression merely. All I saw was the leaps, which were quickly repeated, yet with a good space between each, and all in one direction. Between them, therefore, he must have been speeding along at a great pace, so that, each time he plunged up, it was as from a spring-board of impetus and energy. I do not remember reading of seals leaping thus out of the water, but Mr. Hoseason had seen them do so before, though not often. There was a fine joyous spirit in the thing—"there is" joy, as well as "sorrow on the sea."

It is good to see an animal like this in this United Kingdom of ours—or at least in its seas—for, for a moment, it makes one think one is out of it, and in some wilder, more life-teeming part of the world. It is hard to have to live in a country, glorified as being "a network of railways," and to have no taste for railways. Oh, wretched modern world of ugliness, noise, improvement and extermination, what a vile place art thou becoming for one who loves nature, and only cares for man in books!—the best books bien entendu.

[CHAPTER IX]

DUCKS AND DIVERS

T

THE red-throated diver moves softly upon the gentle play of the ripples, seeming, rather, to float with the tide than to swim, for there is no defined swimming action. When it turns and goes the other way, it meets the opposing motion—the little dance of the sea—as if it were a ripple itself, assuming the shape of a bird. This shape is a graceful one, something between that of a grebe and a guillemot. One might say that a guillemot had been sent to a finishing-school and had very much profited by it; but this is not to imply that the grebe—I am thinking of Podiceps Cristatus—is slighted in the comparison—no bird that swims need think itself so. Much there is grebe-like in manner and action, and in shape, except for the crest. By the want of this, the bird, I think, rather gains than loses to the human eye, for handsome as the grebe's crest is, the delicate curve of head and neck is interrupted by it, and the effect is rather bizarre than beautiful—it loses something in purity, that beauty of the undraped statue, to which Cicero compares the style of Cæsar. The neck of the red-throated diver offers a wonderful example of delicate yet effective ornament. Down the back of it, and encroaching a little upon either side, run thin longitudinal stripes of alternate black and white, so cleanly and finely divided that they look as though they had been traced by a paint-brush in the hand of a Japanese artist. There is a gorget of rich ruddy chestnut on the throat, but the rest of it, with the head and chin, is of a very delicious plum-bloomy grey, which looks in the sunlight as though it would be purple if it dared, but were too modest—a lovely and æsthetic combination, soft, yet bright, and the whole with such a smoothness as no words can describe. There is another effect wrought by the sun, if it should happen to be shining, and if the bird should be swimming so as to give a profile view. It then looks as though there were a broad, white stripe—white, but having almost a prismatic brilliancy—along the contour-line of the nape. This appearance is most deceptive, and it is only when the bird turns its neck so as to show the several thin delicate stripings that one sees it to be illusory. It is produced, I think, by the light being reflected from the white stripes alone, so that the black ones between them are overlooked. Whatever may be the cause, the effect is most striking and lovely, and if the stripes themselves are due to sexual selection—which I do not doubt they are—this far more beautiful appearance, being the effect and crown of them, must assuredly also be. Here is a neck, then! and I have seen three, and once even seven, together!

In their way of diving, again, these birds resemble the grebes. Sometimes they go down with a very quiet little leap, but often they sink and disappear so gently and gradually that one is hardly conscious of what they are about till one sees them no more. As much as any creature, I think, they "softly and silently vanish away." Another habit which they have is shared by the cormorant and other sea-birds, and has often puzzled me. It is that of continually dipping their bills in the water and raising them up from it again, as though they were drinking, though that they should drink the salt sea like this, for hours at a time, seems a strange thing. What is the meaning of this action, which I have just seen a shag perform forty-six times in succession, at intervals of a few seconds, as if for a wager? And this was after having watched it doing the same thing for some time before. After the forty-sixth sip, as it were, this bird made a short pause, and then recommenced. Is this drinking, and, if not, what is it? The head and part of the bill are, each time, sunk in the water, so that, as the bird moves on, they plough it like the ram of a war-ship. Then, in a second or two, the head is raised, not so high indeed as in an unmistakable thirsty draught—which I do not remember at any time to have seen shags indulge in—but with much the action of drinking. The bill, it is true, is very little opened, hardly sufficiently so to be noticeable, but very little would allow of water entering it. But why should the bird drink like this? It cannot be that the salt water makes it more and more thirsty, for this, as with shipwrecked sailors, would produce evil consequences—probably death—but, of course, this is out of the question.

Sometimes it has struck me that some small disseminated matter in the water might serve as food, and in regard to this, I have seen some large white Muscovy ducks, in the Pittville Gardens at Cheltenham, engaged for a long time, apparently, in carefully sifting the quite clear water of a little rill. Here, too, there was some action, as of drinking. On the whole, however, they seemed obviously to be feeding, but whatever they got must have been extremely minute. The waters of the sea are, no doubt, full of tiny floating substances, which a bird might yet be able to appreciate, and which would perceptibly add to its nourishment. If this were so, then drinking, as a special function, might become almost merged in the constant swallowing of water whilst taking food, and this may be the case with various sea-birds. Guillemots and razor-bills also act in this way, but not, I think, gulls. Gulls drink the fresh water of lochs and streams; whether they, of set purpose, also drink the sea, I am not quite sure. If they do, then no doubt I have seen them; but I have not set it down, and have no clear recollection of it.

These Muscovy ducks that I spoke of have another curious habit of drinking dew in the early morning. This, at least, is what it looks like. They walk about for hours over the well-kept lawns, and with their heads stretched straight out, just above the herbage, continually just open and shut the mandibles very quickly and very slightly, nibbling the dew as it were. They certainly do drink it—one can see it disappear in their mouths; but whether that is all they do, or their chief object, it is not so easy to be sure of. Why should they walk about imbibing dew for such a length of time? and why should dew be so much preferred by them to ordinary water, of which there is abundance? These ducks, indeed, or at least the larger kind of them, which are of great size, are never to be seen swimming, but they often walk about by the edge of the lake. They have a most portentous appearance, and walk with an extraordinary swing of the body, first to one side and then another. They are fond of bread, but their ordinary eating and drinking is something of a mystery to me. I have seen them apparently browsing some long, coarse grass, more like rushes, but though occasionally they did crop a piece, the incessant nibbling was out of all proportion to what they got, and seemed for the most part to be simply in the air. They seem indeed to have a habit of incessantly moving the mandibles in this way, without any particular object, or, at any rate, without any clearly discernible result following upon their doing so.

But as I remember these fine white Muscovy ducks with their vermilion faces and wild, light eye, with something a look of insanity in it, I remember, too, that they are now gone, or, at any rate, that most of them are, and those the best—the hugest and most dragon-like. "Sometimes we see a cloud that's dragonish" and sometimes a duck. These wonderful, waddling, swinging red and white Muscovy ducks were, and to have them running after one, with uncouth hissings and with their heads held down, yet scooping up and wagged from side to side at one—and with that insane eye—made one think all sorts of odd things. Well, they are gone, nor are they the only ones that are. When I first, by necessity, came to live at Cheltenham, the ducks in the Pittville Gardens were a great consolation to me. There was quite a fleet of them, a gay little flotilla of all kinds and colours, and at the smallest hint of bread, on one side of the lake, they would all come flying over from the other; and then it was the sport to feed them. How diverting that was! Being in such numbers, one took notice of all the little differences in their dispositions, the different degrees of boldness or retiringness, of pugnacity, greediness, aggressiveness, pertness, impudence, swagger, imperialism, and so on, all of which one could bring out, in some amusing way or another, by the varied and nicely-schemed throwing of the bread. To contrive that a timid bird should always get it, whilst a boldly greedy one pursued in vain, that two should contend for a large piece, to the end that a third might swim securely away with it, to tempt some to walk on thin ice till it broke, and others to make little canals through it, each from a different place, each struggling to be first, to have one bird feeding from the hand, whilst a crowd stood round, looking enviously on, to see greed just drag on fear, or fear just drive back greed, or the two so nicely balanced that they produced a deadlock, so that the bird stood on a very knife-edge, trembling between a forward and a backward movement; and then, too, gradually to come to connect the look and bearing of each bird with its disposition, to know them, both outwardly and psychologically, to see them grow into their names that grew with them, and have the bold orange-bill, the modest grey, the swaggering white bird, the Duchess, the Fine Lady, the My Lord Tomnoddy, the Kaiser, the Swashbuckler, and so on, all about one, so many characters, so many amusing little burlesques of humanity—human nature stripped, without its guards, disguises, softenings and hypocrisies—all this was the solace and beguilement of many a tedious afternoon.

But there exists for some reason, in every town in England, a body of men who can do what they like, without asking anybody, to the annoyance of everybody, though everybody pays for them. One day, after an absence, I came with my bag of bread as usual, but there were no ducks to be fed; all had vanished—there was only the uninteresting pond. Alarmed, I inquired of the man at the entrance, and found that the Cheltenham Corporation had got rid of the whole of them on account of their being of no particular breed or strain, just ordinary tame ducks and no more. Their appearance, the indiscriminate diversity of their plumage, their infinite variety of colour and pattern, had been against them. It had, indeed, made the water gay, and gladdened the eyes of subscribers to the gardens, but it had not been creditable to the Corporation. True elegance, it appears, which can only come from true breeding, had been wanting. These ducks were "a mongrel lot," and though they might be pretty to look at and entertaining to feed, that was not what the Corporation cared about. What the Corporation did care about, presumably, was to read in the local papers, or be told by their friends that now, at last, there were some ducks on the Cheltenham lakes a little better than the "mongrel lot" one had so long been accustomed to see there, more worthy of themselves, more worthy of the town they represented, and so forth. So the poor "mongrel lot," the delight of all the children, and of many a grown-up person to boot—Charles the Second was grown up, and a clever man too—were done away with, and a few pairs of select, blue-blooded strangers (more soothing to gentle bourgeois feelings) were introduced in their place. The children who came to feed them said, "Where are the others? Where are all the rest gone to? There's no fun in feeding three or four." Nor is there, in comparison with feeding a hundred, as one grown-up person at least can testify. As additions, these new arrivals would have been welcome enough, and being of distinct species they would not, probably, have entered into mésalliances with the others, to make a correct Corporation blush. Why could they not have stayed? But this, I suppose, was the way of it. Here were pleasure gardens for which the public paid. This pretty little fleet of ducks, painted all sorts of colours and not one painted quite like another, made a very considerable part of the pleasure thus paid for. So the Corporation, vested with mysterious and almost unlimited powers of annoyance, decided that the proper thing to do was to do away with them, and they did do away with them, and the gardens have been the duller for it ever since. What they could have thought——But there! they were a Corporation and acted like one. They had a precedent. They had previously done away with the peacocks.

[CHAPTER X]

FROM THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE

I

I HAVE been watching the black guillemots. Like the common ones, they often carry a fish they have caught, for a very long time in the bill, before swallowing it, or even before giving it to their young. They will swim with it for half an hour or so, constantly dipping it beneath the water, and apparently nibbling on it with the bill, whilst they hold it thus submerged. Then finding themselves near a rock which is ascendable, they ascend it, and lie couched there for a while, resting, always with the fish in their bill. Anon, with refreshed energies, they re-enter the sea with it, and, if very patient, and prepared to watch indefinitely, one may at last see that fish swallowed; but I hardly think I should be exaggerating were I to say that hours may pass in this way. They usually hold the fish by the middle, or just below the head, and if they want to shift their hold from one place to the other, they sink down their bills into the water, as though better able to do so through its medium. To mandibulate a fish in the air, quite freely, as does the cormorant, is, perhaps, beyond their power. Any moment, however, may show me that it is not. So, too, when I have seen them swallow the fish, they have done so in the same way. Instead of raising the head and gulping it down, they gulped it up, with the water to help them; though I can hardly think that they are compelled to act in this way.

These little birds—old ocean's pets, his darlings—seem to me to play at fighting. Whilst swimming together in little changing troops—for the numbers are always increasing or diminishing—they constantly approach one another in a threatening manner, the body raised in the water, the head held straight up, and the mandibles opening and shutting like a slender pair of scissors—a thoroughly warlike appearance. Yet it hardly ever ends in anything, nor does the threatened bird seem really alarmed. Generally, the threatener, as he comes alongside, subsides into quiet humdrum, or two birds, after circling round one another in this way, each almost on its own pivot, like a pair of whirligig corks, both quiet down. Each, whilst thus acting, will, at intervals, drop the head and sink the beak a little in the water—one of their most usual actions. Sometimes, indeed, the menacing bird may fly at the one he menaces, who ducks at the right moment; but what makes me think it more play than wrath is that, often, instead of flying right at him, he flies to beside him only, and both then swim together, looking the best of friends. Yet too much stress is not to be laid on this either, and certainly it can be "miching malicho" on occasions. Often, when one bird is attacked, all the others will dive and scurry about under the water, in the most excited manner, seeming to pursue one another, as though it were a game or romp. Sometimes, indeed, there will be a little bit of a scuffle; but if there be fighting, still more, as it appears to me, is there the play or pretence of fighting, which is tending to pass into a social sport or dance.

The antics of birds are often so very curious, and the whole subject of their origin and meaning is so full of interest, that nothing which might by any possibility throw light upon this ought to be neglected, or can be too closely observed. I believe that the feelings of animals, still more than is known to be the case with savages, pass easily from one channel into another, and that, therefore, nervous excitement brought forth by one kind of emotion is apt, in its turn, to produce another kind, so that if any special transition of this sort were at all frequent, it might, through memory and association of ideas, become habitual. If, however, a mêlée or scrimmage—to meet the case of these guillemots—became, almost as soon as started, a mere hurrying and scurrying about, it would be difficult to detect the one as the cause of the other, and this is just the difficulty one might expect, for in such a sequence the tendency would, no doubt, be for the first or causal part of the activity to become more and more abbreviated (what should delay the passage?) till, at length, a mere start on the part of any one bird might set the others off dancing. Finally, what had become a mere pretence or starting-point might vanish entirely, or only survive as an indistinguishable part of the other, in which case there would be the dance or sport alone, which would then seem a very unaccountable thing. In this way I can imagine the evening dances or antics of the great plover, which used to impress me so when I lived in Suffolk, to have originated. One might watch these performances a great many times without seeing anything to suggest that a feeling of pugnacity entered into them. Nevertheless, there is, sometimes, a slight appearance of this, for I have several times seen a bird pursue and wave its wings over another one. My theory is that an initial energy or emotion sometimes flows out into subsidiary channels, and that gradually this secondary factor may encroach upon and take the place of the primary one.

At any rate, to come back from the general to the particular, it is apparent to me that these little ebullitions, or whatever they may be called, of the black guillemots are of a blended nature, and I should think it misleading to describe them simply as fights. Whatever they are, they are very pretty to see. The actions of all the little dumpling birds are so pert, brisk, and vivacious—so elegant, too. Yet a bird will go through it all, play every part in the little affaire, carrying, all the while, a fish in its bill. It makes no difference to him; he will even threaten in the way I have described, whilst thus encumbered. Whether this makes it more likely that the whole thing is sport, I hardly know.[3] It seems strange to seek one's enemy with one's dinner in one's hand—the beak is used more as a hand here than a mouth—yet what is done with entire ease is as though it were not done at all. Even so do the guillemots—the common ones, I mean—but then, they used to fight for their fish. Here I saw little or nothing of any real attempt on the part of one bird, to take the fish from another.

[3] On second thoughts it does not, since sparrows will attack martins though holding grass, etc., for nest-building, in their beaks—as I have seen.

In swimming under water the black guillemot uses its wings only—the rose-red legs trail behind it, a fading fire as it goes down. The body becomes one great glaucous-green bubble, which has, still more, a luminous appearance. The effect may almost be called beautiful, but it is still more odd and bottle-imp-like. Most diving sea-birds exhibit this appearance under water, but not all in the same degree. Whether sexual selection has come into play here I know not.

A pair of these birds are now feeding their young. The nest is in a hole in the earth, on a ridge of the precipitous grass-slope of the cliff, just above where it breaks into rocks, and drops sheer to the sea. Both parents feed the chick—for their family is no larger—but one more often than the other. They bring, each time, a single fish—a sand-eel, often of a fair size—and disappear with it into the hole, reappearing shortly afterwards. Once both are in the hole together, having entered in succession, each with a fish, but generally when the two meet at the entrance one only brings a fish and goes in, and the other, having nothing, stays outside. When the parent bird has fed its young and come out again, it will often sit for a little on the steep slope, above or below the hole, before flying away. It looks solicitously at the hole, and from time to time utters a little thin note that just reaches me where I am. Once both the birds sat like this, one above and one below the hole. What I particularly noticed was that when the bird that had taken a fish in had come out again, the other, even though it had nothing, would always go in too, as though to pay the chick a little visit. It stayed about the same time—less than a minute that is to say. How interesting are these little birds to watch, and how delightful is it to watch them from the summit of precipices that "beetle o'er their base into the sea," where all is wild and tremendous, and in the midst of utter solitude!

[CHAPTER XI]

DARWINIAN EIDER-DUCKS

I

I HAVE seen a fair number of eider-ducks within the last few days. All the grown ones are females—not a male to be seen now—and the greater number of them are unaccompanied by ducklings. Of those that are, most have but one, and three is the maximum number that I have seen swimming together with their mother. Yet two years ago, in early June, the males here were courting the females, and when I left, about the middle of the month, but very few eggs, I believe, had been laid. This year, I learn, the birds have been very late in breeding, there having been some very "rough weather," as it is euphoniously called, in the spring—that is to say, the spring has been like a bad winter, and now the summer, though it has no very close resemblance to any of the four seasons as I have seen them elsewhere, yet comes nearest to a phenomenally bad November. I wonder, therefore, that so many of these mother eiders are without their young ones, for they should all have hatched out a brood of them not so very long ago. Why, too, should so many be swimming with one duckling only? Were these single ones of any size, one could understand the others of the brood having escaped from tutelage, but, like all I have seen, they are but little fluffy things. It looks as though their fellow nestlings had come to grief in some way, and if so it is probable that many entire broods have also. Yet perhaps they have merely drifted away into the wide, watery world, where they may be able enough to shift for themselves thus early. To judge by these, however, they would not have left the mother duck voluntarily—they are dutiful, dependent little things.

Where the coast is iron-bound, in delightful little bays and inlets—those sea-pools lovely to look down upon—one may watch the eiders feeding on the rocks, and try, through the glasses, to make out exactly what they are getting. In this way I am amusing myself this morning, having just run round a projecting point, towards which a family of three were advancing, and concealed myself behind a projecting ridge. Over this I can just peep at some black rocks, up which, whilst their mother waits, the little ducklings now begin to crawl. So steep is the slope that sometimes they slip and roll a little way down it, but they always recover themselves and run up it again, none the worse. In the intervals between such little mishaps they seem to be picking minute shell-fish off the rock; but what shell-fish are they? for the small white ones, with which large areas of the rock are covered, are as hard as stone, and might defy anything short of a hammer and chisel to dislodge them. It is not on these assuredly that these soft little things are feeding, and now I see that where they are most active the rock is black. There are broad, black bands and streaks upon it, but what these consist of, or whether they are anything more than seaweed I cannot quite make out; and here, where I lie, being above the sea's influence, there is nothing similar to instruct me. Rocks now I find—as I have often before—are inferior to foliage for concealing oneself, that is, if one wishes to see as well as to be unseen. One's head, projecting over their hard, sharp, uncompromising lines, catches the eye of a wary bird, and recesses made by their angles are not often to be found where one wants them. Twice has the mother duck been slightly suspicious, and now, to my chagrin—though it really should not be, for what can be more entertaining?—she goes to the length of calling her ducklings off the rock. This she does by uttering a deep "quorl"—a curious sound, not a quack, but something like one—on which they come scurrying down to join her, putting off to sea with the greatest precipitation, like two little boats that have only just themselves to launch—no waiting for people to get into them. I have heard this note before, and always it has been uttered as a danger-signal to the chicks. There is another one that is used on ordinary occasions, and this much more resembles a true "quack."

In spite of these various alarms, however, the young eiders are soon on the rock again, and after a while the mother walks up it, too, and begins picking and pulling with her bill over these same black surfaces. I still cannot quite make out, though now I surmise, what it is that gives this black, or rather indigo, tinting to the rock, and in trying to get nearer, the mother duck is again alarmed, and with another deep "quorl" or two, runs quickly down the slant, and slides into the water, close followed by her two little children. This time she swims away with them and returns no more, leaving me as disappointed as though I had thirsted for her blood.

Going down now to the rocks, where they have just been, I find that the black appearance of which I have spoken is caused by immense numbers of quite small mussels which grow thickly wedged together. It is on these that all three have been feeding, and I have no doubt that they form one of the staples of the eider-duck's food just now. Earlier in the year it seemed to be all diving, and when they brought anything up it did not look like a mussel. All about the rocks there are certain little collections of broken mussel-shells—often of a very pretty violet tint—coagulated more or less firmly together, and these must evidently have been ejected, as indigestible, by birds that had swallowed them; but whether by gulls only, or by both gulls and eider-ducks, I cannot tell. Gulls, I know, disgorge these queer kinds of pellets as well as others still more peculiar, since they occur over the interior of the island in numbers too great for any other bird to have produced them.

The eider-ducks, therefore, feed on the beds of mussels that the sea exposes at low tide, but they also, to go by appearances, devour the actual seaweed, irrespective of anything that may be growing upon it. Having seen them do both, I see no reason why I should reject the evidence of my eyesight in the one case more than in the other. What interests me is that I have several times during this week seen the same duck, with her young ones, feeding along this one flat part of the coast-line, where it forms a beach, whereas all the others that I have seen have kept in the neighbourhood of the rocks. Even about the shores of this small island it seems as though a process of differentiation were going on, and that whilst the great majority of the eider-ducks affect a diet of shell-fish, and, therefore, haunt the broken, rocky parts where it is to be best obtained, some few prefer the seaweed growing on the smooth, shallow bottoms, which they therefore do not leave, or, at least, more frequently resort to.

A difference of food like this, involving a residence in different localities, must lead to change in other habits, to which structure would, in time, respond, so that, at last, upon Darwinian principles, two different birds would be produced. Thus anywhere and everywhere one may see with one's own eyes—or think that one sees, which is just as instructive—the early unregarded stages of some important evolutionary process.

It is a good thing, I think, thus to exercise one's imagination, and by observing this or that more or less slight deviation from the main stream of an animal's habits, to try and picture its remote future descendants. Too little, I think, has been done in this way. The imaginative element is one without which all things starve. In natural history it is particularly wanted, and would have particularly good effects. Most naturalists think only of what is the rule in any animal's habits—exceptions they do not care about—yet, looked at in a certain way, they are still more interesting. Moreover, there is a great tendency to see an animal do just what it is supposed to do, and this tendency does not conduce to keen and interested observation. But the future modification of any species must depend largely upon deviations, on the part of individuals belonging to it, from its more ordinary line of conduct, so that any man who should wish rationally to speculate on this future must become, perforce, a patient noticer of such deviations, and, therefore, a great observer of the animal in question.

To support a theory is a great motive towards the collection of facts, yet a number of small-minded people are always deprecating what they call "mere theory" in field natural history, and crying out for facts only. Theory, however, is a soil in which facts grow, and there is a greater crop from a false one than from none at all. The history of astrology and alchemy are instances of this—if, indeed, the latter, in its fundamental belief, does not turn out to have been true after all. When have men been much interested in facts—apart from mere gaping wonder or amusement—except in connection with some idea in their mind, which, by giving, or seeming to give, them significance, as it were irradiated them? The "matter-of-fact man," as that lowest type of one is called, is interested in comparatively few facts even, and such fancy and imagination as he does possess plays around those few.

To return to the eider-ducks, I cannot, of course, be quite certain that it is always the same family party that I see along the beach by the fringe of seaweed, but I have little doubt that it is; for, in the first place, it always consists of the mother and three ducklings, and in the next, there is never another bird or party of birds there at the same time with them. The double coincidence is, I think, decisive, for most of the eiders that have ducklings at all, have either one only or two, whilst the greater number are without any. But then, to be sure, I have only been here a week, nor have I given the matter any very special attention. It is not quite constaté, only I like to think things, and then think as though they were as I think.

[CHAPTER XII]

ON THE GREAT NESS-SIDE

T

TO-DAY I was to see the cormorants fly out from their caves, but my hopes were too high, and so proper for dashing. Having gone to bed at six, I awoke at ten, dozed till eleven, read Shakespeare till near twelve, and, soon after, got up. It was night when I first opened the door and looked out, morning when I went away. The moon had possessed the world in fullest sovereignty, had streamed her silver over land and sea. Now she was deposed, dethroned, yet there had only intervened the short time necessary to resuscitate the peat fire and make a cup of tea. Yet it is not morning either, even yet—or only on the eastern sea and in the eastern sky; the one a lake of lucid light, hung in an all but universal pall of dun cloud, the other lying beneath it, bathed in it, glowing with reflected colours, which yet seem deeper and more lurid than those from which they have their birth. Two seas of surpassing splendour: and long lines of heavy purple cloud hang, like ocean islands, in the one of the sky. The other, the true sea, has a strangely opaque appearance—it does not look like water at all. It is this that makes the morning; all else is dark and shrouded. Standing here, upon a cornerstone of this island, one looks from night into day. Just before the sun rises the clouds about become rosy red, and then take fire; but from the moment he has risen they begin to fade back into grey again. All flame himself, he puts all other out. It is a strange effect. The sun here wants his state. He has been up but a moment, yet, but for a very tempered glow just about him, all light and all colour is gone. Soon it will be all gone, for into the great grey cloudy continent that broods upon the one clear space and spreads from it, illimitable as the sky itself, he, "the King of Glory," is now entering, and there, in all probability, he will be for the rest of the sombre day. Here in the Shetlands the sky that waits for the sun is a much more wonderful sight than the actual sunrise, whereas elsewhere I have seen it throb to his coming and relume at his torch.

Walking to the caves, I miss my way and long overshoot the point. This is a pity, for it has grown lighter yonder, and I do not wish to disturb the shags, some of whom, no doubt, roost near the entrance. However, when I get there, the island is still dark and shrouded, and sitting, as I have to, with my face to the western sea, that, too, lies in a grey-blue something that is neither light nor dark. Through it and over it the Skerries Lighthouse still throws at regular intervals its revolving beam, showing that it still counts as night. The shags do not seem to wait for the true morning—the one over to the east. Many of them have flown out to sea like shadows, or great, uncouth bats, yet I hardly think they can have seen me in the greyness after I had sat down. I am not sure whether they came from the cavern itself or only from about its frowning portals. Wondrous noises the sea is making now, as, with the heaves of a dead calm, even—heaves that in their very quietude suggest a terrible reserve of power—it laps into and out of this awesome cavern—moans, rumblings, sullen sounds that want and seem to crave a name.

It is now near three, and the first gull yet—of its own free will, and not unsettled by me—has flown by. Just before, some very large fish—for I think it must be a shark, and not a cetacean—has passed on its silent way along the silent sea. It came several times to the surface, and showed each time a very long back, with one small pointed fin, very much out of proportion to its bulk, rising sharply and straightly from it, just as a shark's dorsal fin does. Each time it made that same sort of roll that a porpoise does, only more slowly and in a much greater space. This, indeed, does not suggest a shark—indeed, it can't be one—but one of the smaller cetaceans that is yet much larger than the common porpoise. Every time it comes up it makes a sort of grunting snort or blow. On account of this—for it gives itself more leisure to do it—and that its roll describes a longer curve, I doubt if it be the porpoise—the one we know so well. It must be a larger sort, nor should I ever have supposed it to be a shark had I not been assured that sharks of some size are common round the shores of these islands. This must be true, I think, for my informants could hardly have been mistaken.

At two I could see, though dimly, to write, and now, at a quarter-past three, I can as plainly as by full daylight, though it is not that yet. The Skerries light is still flashing, though it must be now superfluous; but even as I write this, it must have flashed its last, for the proper interval has gone by. There is now a great bellowing of shags from the cave, which may proceed either from a single pair or from several. No words can describe the strangeness of these sounds. They are more than guttural—stomachic rather. They harmonise finely with those of the sea, and sometimes, indeed, bear a curious resemblance to some of its minor, sullen gurgles, deep within the cavern. But no birds fly out.

Several times, again, now, I have seen this large small cetacean, and once another one, larger still—in fact, an unmistakable small whale, which came briskly up at no great distance away and blew a jet of oily-looking vapour from its nose. It looked almost black, and had the right whale shape, though not more, perhaps, than some dozen or twenty feet long. These small whales are common off the Shetlands, but suddenly to see one is very exciting. It reminds me of when, from the rocks of Raasey Isle, I saw in the clear, pale light of the morning, true whales—huge monsters of the deep—leaping, head first, out of the water and falling back into it again with a roar, which, though several miles off, I heard each time most distinctly, and attributed, at first, to the breaking away of portions of the cliff on the opposite shores of Skye. Nothing, it seemed to me, but a landslip was sufficient to account for such a tremendous sound, and it was with an interest the vividness of which I can even now feel that its true nature first dawned upon me. These whales, as, with their huge dimensions, I could see, though so far away, leapt almost if not entirely clear of the water, and perpendicularly into the air. At that time I was quite unaware that they ever did this, but since then I have both heard and read of it, and Darwin, somewhere in his journal, speaks of the cachalot or sperm-whale doing the same thing.

FROM THE ROCKS OF RAASEY ISLE

Puffins are beginning now to fly hither and thither over the sea, and terns are fishing about a low-lying eastern isle. They are the common kind, but some clouds above the island are becoming flame-touched, making them roseate terns. An Arctic skua goes by too, and a black guillemot flies with a fish to feed its young. Still from the recesses of the cavern come those deep, hoarse, bellowing sounds, but they must be uttered by shags upon their nests, and that do not mean to come forth. What there was to see I have seen—those bat-like shadows. There can be no more to speak of—it is too late—but, were there hundreds, I can no longer resist the impulse to walk and walk in the clear and cool-aired morning. The shags that roost in these caverns cannot, I think, be numerous, and they leave them, it would seem, whilst night still broods upon the sea.

True, there was the morning, clear and lovely, in the east, but, to see that, they would have had to peep round the point. Both in numbers, therefore, and impressiveness the Ausflug has been a failure, but the morning, with the almost midnight sun, a splendid success.

This was my last day on the island. In the afternoon my friends sailed over from Yell, bringing me my letters. One was from my sentry-box man, telling me the birds were still on the ledges, but advising me to come at once, if I wished to find them there—otherwise they might be flown. I therefore went back the same evening, and next day, which was Sunday, took steamer to Uyea Sound, from whence I walked through a barren desolation to Balta Sound, getting in, about 10 p.m., to tea and cakes at one of the most homelike, friendly-breathing hostels possible to find either in the Shetlands or the rest of the United Kingdom—or, indeed, the world, to judge by probabilities—to wit, Mrs. Hunter's establishment, where many a one has had cause to say, like myself:

"Sleep (or rather rest) after toil, port after stormie seas,
* * * * * does greatly please."

Next day I made what purchases I wanted, not forgetting a good serviceable porridge-spoon—I had used a stick before—and, on Tuesday, drove over to Burra Firth, where I was met by the watcher, and between us we carried my belongings up the great hill—or ness, to give it its Shetland name—to the little black sentry-box that I knew so well. The "pockmantle" fell to my share, and was the lesser burden. It was very heavy, however, and I had almost as lief be taken to a tea-party as have such another trudge. But how the skuas greeted me, again, with their wild cries, as we climbed the higher slopes where their nurseries are. Having set everything where it would best go, in the little cabin, I walked out and made my way to the cliffs.

[CHAPTER XIII]

MOTHER AND CHILD

T

THE young fulmar petrels here are still all in a state of fluff—not one true feather to be seen—just as I left them in the middle of July, on my last visit, though now it is the end of it. They are larger, however, which, with their softness, whiteness, and general appearance, as of a great powder-puff, makes them more marvellous-looking than ever. Their shape, as they lie on the rock, is that of a round flat disc—a muffin somewhat inflated, or an air-ball compressed. Only when they flutter their wings, or waggle out their legs, have they any more intricate shape than this, except that the funny little head, with the black eyes and black hooked beak, projects permanently out of their roundness. The latter is frequently held open, with the mandibles widely distended—sometimes fixed so, at others gently moving. The neck, on these occasions, is often stretched out and swayed from side to side, so that we have here, in embryo, those curious movements which, in the grown birds, are nuptial ones, and accompany the note then uttered. Although the chick, as would be naturally expected, often opens its bill in order to persuade the parent bird to feed it, yet after some hours' watching I came to the conclusion that the action was too frequent and too habitual to be altogether explained in this way, and I look upon it as an inherited tendency. But may not the habit have originated in the hunger of the chick, and have been worked in, sexually, at a later age, when the reproductive system had become active? Strong emotion, one may suppose, would require an outward manifestation in the shape of movements of some sort, and it would be such as were already known, that, by first coming to hand, would be likely to be first employed. If we had been accustomed to do one kind of work for which we had a suitable implement, and it became suddenly necessary to do some other for which we had none, it would be natural for us to catch up the one we had and make a shift with that. If a swim-bladder can be worked in as a lung, or a pair of legs as part of a mouth, then why not a hunger-signal as a love-signal? Be this as it may, it is certainly strange to see little fluffy chicks on the nest going through the same sort of pantomime as their parents do when in love. But why do I call them little? I have never seen such big baby things, and their size makes them look all the weirder. So great, indeed, is the chick's fluffiness that though the wings are tiny and the tail invisible, it looks almost, if not quite, as big as the graceful and delicately shaped parent bird sitting beside it.

The lethargy of these young fulmars is very noticeable. They do occasionally rise a little on their feet and shuffle about in the place where they sit, so that in this way they may, in time, turn quite round. But after watching them now, for some two hours, I should doubt if they ever moved more than an inch or so beyond an imaginary line drawn close round them, as they lie. Here natural selection seems a demonstrable thing, for often, were the chick to move so much as six inches forward, or a few feet in any other direction, it must fall and be dashed to pieces. What but this force—or, rather, process—can have produced such a want of all inclination to move? It is the same, I suppose, with birds that nest in trees or bushes. With the nightjar, however, though the chicks become, after a while, somewhat active, so that the nest, or rather nursery, is shifted from day to day, yet for some time they lie very quiet, though well able to run about. Here the above explanation does not apply, so that one can never be sure. "Theories," says Voltaire "are like mice. They run through nineteen holes, but are stopped by the twentieth." Still, it would generally be an advantage for young birds to keep still when left by themselves, even in a field or wood, and how much more so where a step or two, or one little run, would be death. Looking at these fat, fluffy, odd-looking creatures as they sit motionless from hour to hour, and then at the grown bird sailing on spread wings, all grace and beauty,—a being that seems born of the air—the change from one to the other—from the fixed to the free phase of life—seems hardly less or more remarkable than that by which a chrysalis becomes a butterfly. Not the egg itself differs more from this last stage of its inmate—this free flitting, gliding thing—than does the round, squat, stolid chick, which in appearance is nearer to an egg than to a full-blossomed bird.

The mother fulmar—for I suppose it is the mother—cossets the chick as she sits beside it, leaning tenderly over it, and nibbling with her bill amidst its long, soft, white fluff, the chick sitting still, the while, with its beak held open, but not at all as though it were thinking of food. Sometimes, by inadvertence, the mother pricks the chick a little, with her bill, upon which it turns indignantly towards her, with distended jaws. She, to cover her maladresse, does the same, but in a dignified, parental manner, as though it were she who had cause to be angry. But it is easy to see that she is really a little ashamed of herself, and purposes to be more careful another time. Mother and chick often sleep side by side on the rock, and then it is noticeable that whilst the mother has her head turned and partially hidden amongst the feathers of the back—"under her wing," as one says—the chick's is often held straight in the usual manner. Not always, however: at other times, it is disposed of in the same way. As far as I can see, the chick is in the charge of one parent only. On several occasions a bird, which I suppose to be the other one, has flown in, and settled on the rock near, but always, on its coming nearer than some three feet or so, the one in charge, distending its jaws, and with threatening gestures, has uttered an angry "ak, ak, ak, ak!" and, on two occasions, has squirted something—I presume, oil—at the intruder, causing it to go farther off. This cry is sometimes preceded by a more curious and less articulate one of "rherrrrrr!"—at a venture: I would not answer for the spelling being exact.

I believe it is the mother who takes charge of the chick, and becomes so intensely jealous of it that she will not suffer even her cáro spóso, to whom she was so much attached, to come within a certain distance of it. One cannot, indeed, say for certain that it is the husband who thus sometimes flies up, and seems to show a wish to approach his wife or child, but it is not likely that a strange bird would act in this way—for all are mated—and if both parents fed the young one, why should either repulse the other? I feel sure, therefore, that only one does, and this one is much more likely to be the female.

The chick, in order to be fed, places its bill within that of the parent bird, and evidently gets something which she brings up into it. This appears to be liquid and, I suppose, is oil. Had it been solid, I must, I think, at this close distance, have seen it—or at least have seen that it was. Where, however, this supply of oil comes from, or how it is procured, I have no very clear idea. Though the actions of the old bird in thus feeding the chick are something like those of a pigeon, yet they are much easier and, so to speak, softer. The liquid food is brought up without difficulty or straining, as one might, indeed, expect would be the case, seeing the ease with which the bird can at any moment squirt it out, when angry, and the distance to which it is shot. Nor is this the only power of the kind which these petrels possess, for they are able to eject their excrement to a quite astonishing distance—greater even, perhaps, than that to which the cormorant or shag attains in this art—at least it seems so at the time. This power is fully developed in the chick—by whom, indeed, it is the more needed—and I notice that the rock where each one lies is clean enough, though all round about it is whitened.

ON THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE

When the mother petrel leaves the chick, she, for the most part, continually circles round in the neighbourhood, and almost at every circle looks in at it, sometimes waking it up as it lies asleep, causing it to give an impatient little snap of the bill towards her. It is as though she could not sufficiently love, cherish, and look at it. It is her only child, and a spoilt one.

I must not forget to note down—now that it is full before me—that the inside of the chick's bill, with the mouth generally, is somewhat more lightly coloured than in the old bird; it is more pink—which may represent the natural colour—and less mauvy. This difference, as in the other cases, is what we might expect to see, were the colour a sexual adornment; but why, if it is not so, should there be any difference depending on age in such a region?

The great skua still reigns here in its accustomed territory, which, whilst encircled on all sides by that of the lesser one, is not intermingled with it, even on the frontiers. Many of the young birds are still about, but being now feathered and active in proportion to their size, they are more difficult to find than when I was here before. Though the old birds still swoop at one, they are not so savage as they were when the chicks were young and fluffy; they do not actually strike, but swerve off, particularly if one glances up at them as they approach. The Arctic skua, on the other hand, is still as bold as ever, and will strike one as repeatedly and come as near to knocking one's hat off without doing it (not near at all, that is to say) as ever it did before; or the great one either, I might add, as far as my own personal experience is concerned. I would not, however, be unduly sceptical, and this I can say, that I could easily set my hat on my head so that either bird—or any bird—might knock it off again.

[CHAPTER XIV]

"DREAM CHILDREN"

V

VISITING these islands in the late summer impresses me with a fact that it is easy to forget, viz. that even the most oceanic of sea-birds—the wandering albatross or stormy petrel, for instance—pass almost as much of their life upon the land as the water. The breeding season is no slight matter, lasting but a short time. It goes on for months and months, and sometimes, from its earliest beginnings, must represent a period not very far short of half the year. On the ——shire coast, for instance, the terns appeared in the earlier part of April, and I was told by the fishermen that they stayed sometimes till well into September. How the gulls at the end of July stand congregated on their nesting-grounds, as if the business of matrimony were rather beginning than ending, I have already mentioned, and it is the same thing here in August with the guillemots. Everywhere the ledges are crowded with them, as they were when I last came in June—indeed, if there is any difference, the numbers seem even greater. But though there is the same general appearance, the glasses soon reveal the fact that, with very few exceptions, all the young birds are departed. Such as remain are no larger than the chicks I saw in the spring, and as most of the parents were then still incubating, besides that the young guillemot is known to leave the ledge whilst quite small, there is no room for doubt on this point.

No; the young are gone. Why, then, do the parents stay? They will rear no second brood, so that it seems as though they love the ledges better than the little fluffy things that they were feeding upon them, up to the moment of their departure. Affection apparently must be bounded by the sea, for whilst the parents, if we suppose them to have accompanied the chicks down, and swum about with them for a little, must have soon flown back, the chicks, owing to the undeveloped state of their wings, would have been unable to make the return journey. It would seem, therefore, that the first night after the down-flight must have separated mother and child for ever; but if this is the case we may well wonder how the rising generation of guillemots are able to support themselves. Up to now they have been fed upon the ledges, but henceforth they must dive and catch fish for themselves. That they should at once and of their own initiative acquire the skill to do this, or learn the art in so very short a time, from the parent birds, hardly seems possible. We must perforce suppose—or at least I must—that either the mother, as is most probable, or both the parents, remain with the chick for a little, feeding it now on the sea as they did before on the ledge, until in time—and no doubt very quickly—it learns to feed itself. But how strange, if this is so, that the grown birds return to the ledges and stay there day after day—I know not for how long—without laying a second egg. If they do not do so, then none of these birds can have bred. But the ledges are alive with them, and they are of both sexes. How long does the mother bird remain with her chick upon the sea, and does she, during such period, remain with it there at night, thus abandoning the ledges for a time altogether, though she afterwards returns to them, or does she fly up each night to the ledges, whilst the chick roosts upon some rock at the cliff's base, to be rejoined by its mother next morning? I cannot answer these questions in a satisfactory manner. It seems as though time must be wanting for such a little family exodus as I am here suggesting, for on the 16th of July, upon the occasion of my first visit, I left these same ledges crowded with guillemots, all, or almost all, of whom were still feeding their young, and now, on the last day of the same month, I find all the old birds still upon them, but nearly all the young are gone. This gives about a fortnight for the birds I left to have gone off to sea with the young ones, and returned to the ledges alone, supposing the exodus to have commenced almost on the day I went away. But did it? As the few chicks that are still here are just about as big as the others were at the time I left them last year, I shall be better able to judge of this when I see how long they stay.

Meanwhile, there is something to interest me under my eyes—a curious matter as it seems to me, which requires some sort of explanation. As I have said, but very few of these guillemots have still a chick to look after, but those that have not, often seem to be under the hallucination that they are blessed in this way. But a little while ago, for instance, a bird—one of such a childless pair—flew in with a fish, and running with it to its partner, both of them stood together drooping their wings, and, at the same time, projecting them forwards, so as to make that little tent, within which the young one is so characteristically fed. Always either one or both of them had the wings thus drooped, as though to shield and protect something, though "nothing was but what was not." Standing in this way, they passed the fish several times to and from each other, and, alternately bending their heads down till its tail hung a little above the ground, appeared to wait for an imaginary chick to take it from them. Now had the fish, which was a sand-eel, been held by the head in the tip of the bill, very little stooping would have been necessary for this purpose, and therefore I might the more easily have imagined what I here describe. But instead of this it lay longitudinally within the beak, so that only about an inch of the tail projected beyond it, as is very commonly the case. Therefore, when the birds bent down as a preliminary to moving the fish forward along the bill—which, however, they can do as well in one position as another—it was in a quite unmistakable manner that they did so, and, looking almost directly down upon them from the edge of the cliff, at a height of not more than twenty feet or so, I was enabled to see the whole process. Judging by their actions, any one would have said that these birds had a chick, and were feeding it; and calling up the many such scenes that I was witness of when last here, I can think of no point in which they differed from this present one, except in the presence of the chick. This curious make-believe, or whatever it may be called, lasted for some little time, but at last, I think, one of the birds ate the fish. Between them, at any rate, it swam out of the ken of my glasses.

And now, what is the meaning of all this? Many birds, of course, are in the habit of feeding one another—conjugally or loverly—or the male is in the habit of feeding the female, and this seems the most obvious and natural explanation here. I do not, however, think that this is a special trait of the guillemot, and inasmuch as there are but few young birds now, it is quite a rare thing to see a bird flying in with a fish in its bill. I believe, myself, that when a childless one does so, it is with the idea of feeding the chick—the last one, the one that it remembers and pictures as still on the ledge—in its mind; and it is the more easy for me to think this, because I feel sure that this habit of conjugal feeding has grown out of the feeding of the young, and I can even imagine that, by one of those mental transitions which with animals (as with savages) are so quick and so easy, the bird offering the food, does, occasionally and for a moment, put its partner in place of the young one.

We must not think only of the forgetfulness of animals—of their inability to retain past actions or events clearly in the mind, so as to remember them, long afterwards, in the way that we do. We should bear in mind, also, that they are influenced, like ourselves, by association of ideas, and that savages, whose psychology should stand nearer to theirs than our own, often confound the subjective with the objective—the idea of a thing in their mind, that is to say, with the thing itself, outside it. It would be quite natural, in my idea, that any of these guillemots should, by the mere catching of a fish, be reminded of the occupation it had for so long previously been engaged in, and the mental picture, thus raised, of the chick on the ledge, might well be so vivid as to overcome the mere negative general impression that it was no longer there. Under the influence of this delusion—let us say, then—the bird flies in with its fish, and, seeing it do so, its partner, by a similar association of ideas, is affected in just the same way, seeing also in its mind's eye—less blurred, perhaps, by innumerable figures than our own—a lively image of its child. What follows we have seen—a little play or pretence, as it looked like, on the part of the two birds, who thus, as it were, reminded one another of what both so well remembered. Of such conscious reminiscence, however, I do not suppose them to have been capable, but they may both, I think, have acted in something the same way that a bereaved mother may be supposed to, when she almost unconsciously lays out clothes or goes through some other once habitual process, in behalf of a dead child—forgetful, for a moment, or half-forgetful, of the change. All would have been brought about through association of ideas, one appropriate act suggesting and leading to others no longer so, but of whose propriety or otherwise the bird—or any animal—has probably but one means of judging—the presence or absence, namely, of the idea of them in its mind.

Now when, as Miss Kingsley tells us, a negro, chatting in his hut, turns with a smile or a remark, to his mother—deceased, but whom he supposes to be sitting in the accustomed place there—may not this also be through association of ideas, producing a strong visual image of what he has so long been used to see? There is hardly anything that so readily summons up the image, with the remembrance, of the dead, as the place where they lived or the objects amongst which they moved. How much, for instance, does the familiar chair suggest the presence of some one who used habitually to sit in it. "I know," says Darwin—referring to a visit to his old home after his father's death, which had occurred during his absence on the famous voyage—"I know if I could have been left alone in that greenhouse for five minutes, I should have been able to see my father in his wheel-chair as vividly as if he had been there before me."[4] If such an effect, so produced, may be strong—and it varies greatly—in the civilised man, it is likely to be much stronger in the savage, who does not distinguish so clearly between the world without him and what is in his own mind. To him, therefore, the visual image of a deceased person, that is summoned up by the sight of anything that more particularly appertained to him, during life, might well seem to be that person himself, and thus, as it appears to me, a belief might arise of the continual presence amongst us of the departed, even without anything else to help it. That there is much else—real, as well as seeming evidence—I know, or at any rate I am of that opinion. I do not write as a disbeliever in real apparitions, in clairvoyance, premonitions, thought-transference, or a host of other things, for I am one of those who really go by evidence in such matters—very few do—and to me no one thing in "this great world of shows" is in itself more wonderful or incredible than another—which is my own idea of what the scientific attitude of mind should be. But because there may be much that goes to prove what Myers calls the survival of human (which, to me, involves animal) personality after physical death, it does not, therefore, follow that the belief in man's immortality has originated through this, and still less that it could not have arisen without it. Association of ideas, producing a strong mental image, with the confusion between thought and objective reality, would, I believe, have been sufficient; for it must be remembered that man's ancestry leads up, through the semi-human, to the primeval savage, and it is amongst the lowest tribes of existing savages that the tendency last indicated is most noticeable. In regard to this, one should read Tylor, as likewise Clodd, concerning the probable effect that dreams have had in producing the idea of a soul. From the dream figure to that of our waking mind's eye there is but a step; and as animals dream, we may suppose that they likewise see mentally.

[4] The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, p. 11.

This seems clear, that wherever the visualising faculty—to give it a name—produced the image of anything, it would be mistaken for that thing if reason did not convince to the contrary. In animals, reason is weaker than with us, but that the power of mental vision, within the narrower range of their experience, is weaker also, I can see no reason to conclude. Rather, I think, it is likely to be the other way, and this should make it an easier matter for a guillemot than for a negro to see, or seem to see, an absent relative. But possibly this vivid conjuring up of the mere outward form of anything may not be required in order to induce the belief of its being there. The negro, perhaps, rather feels the presence of his mother than thinks that he actually sees her; and might not this effect, also, be produced through a strong association of ideas? If so, this is all that would have been necessary to give man that belief in his immortal destinies which, upon the whole, we find him with.

[CHAPTER XV]

NEW DEVELOPMENTS

I

IT is curious to see the guillemot-ledges so thronged now, when everything speaks of the departure of summer, if that, indeed, can be said to depart which has never, apparently, arrived. As I said before, there are very few young birds to be seen, and since the sexes in the guillemot are alike, one might think, at first, that the mothers had all gone off with their chicks, leaving only the males on the ledges. This, however, cannot be the case, since there is much cossetting, and sometimes a touch of "the wren," and "small gilded fly," of King Lear—I trust I express myself clearly.

I was beginning to think that there were no young guillemots at all here now, but just at this moment a bird flies in with a fish in its bill, and, running up to another one, with it, the chick immediately appears from under a projecting cranny of the ledge, where it has been concealed, and receives and eats the fish. It is the usual thing—the wings of the two parents drooped, like a tent, in which the little thing stands, and both of them equally interested. This chick seems of considerable size—as guillemot chicks go—is properly feathered, and the plumage has the colouring of the grown birds, except that the throat and chin are white as well as the breast—a continuity of white, therefore, over the whole under surface. Moreover, from each eye to the base of the bill, on the corresponding side, there is a thick black line. The wings, which I have seen it flap, are small, with the quills not sufficiently developed for flight—at least, I should think not. Some time after this I saw a smaller chick which had been hidden hitherto behind the two parents. The non-locomotion of both was as marked a feature as ever—for this struck me very much the last time I was here. The smaller one I could never make out again. The other was for a long time invisible behind its slight escarpment, and then, though it came out and was active where it stood, it did not move more than an inch or so beyond it, or in any direction.

As this chick evidently could not fly, it, as evidently, could not have left the ledge, and returned to it. Imagine, therefore, that the chicks are conveyed down by the parents, in this state, as it is asserted that they are, and the emptiness of the ledges, of young birds, is explained; for by the time they could fly they would have forgotten all about them, even if they were not far away, as they probably by that time would be. But if they wait till they can fly before leaving the ledges, why do they not fly back to them, and then backwards and forwards, like the young kittiwakes, or the young shags? Why do they not accompany their parents when they return, since their parents will not stay with them upon the sea? All this is explained upon the supposition that the parent guillemot flies down with the chick on its back, but it does not follow that there is no other way of explaining it. I think there is another; for though the chick, when it leaves the ledge, may not be able to fly in any true sense of the word, yet it might make a shift to flutter down to the sea, in a line sufficiently diagonal to avoid the danger of striking upon the face of the cliff where it projected at a lower elevation, or upon the rocks at its base. This may not be likely, but at least it is possible, and, on the other hand, if the parent guillemots do really carry their chicks down, why do they not do so shortly after they are hatched, or, at least, much sooner than they do? Why should they feed them on the ledges for a fortnight or three weeks, for I think they are as long as that there, during all which time they are getting larger and heavier? Though the young guillemot keeps so quiet on the ledge, yet it has the full use of its limbs, and seems quite as forward and capable as are young chickens and ducklings. It would, no doubt, be at home in the water at once, if only it were put there. Does it, then, wait until it can get there itself, or does the parent bird take it? This question I hope to be able to answer before I leave here.

A bird that has no chick now brings in a fish to the ledge, and seems not to know what to do with it. At last he puts it down, and another bird—not, I think, the partner, but it may be—takes it. It seems as though the instinct of feeding the young still continued with this bird, though its young one is gone. We may think "out of sight, out of mind" with animals, but what is probably wanted to make them remember is a reminder of some sort; and when they are reminded, though their memory may be less capacious than ours, it does not follow that it is likewise less vivid within their own limited range. Indeed, I think there is some reason to conclude the contrary. The imagination of a great writer is such that he sees the scenes and persons that exist but in his own mind, as clearly, possibly, as we do our own familiar friends and their, or our, all as familiar surroundings. We must suppose so, at any rate, as we read Scott or Shakespeare; and indeed their productions are such that it cannot be far short of this. I question if any man ever saw his absent friend more clearly than did Shakespeare his Falstaff, for instance, or Scott his Balfour of Burleigh. But does it, therefore, follow that either of these great writers would, when hungry, have summoned up before him a clearer picture of his approaching dinner, than does the equally hungry or very much hungrier boor? This I doubt; and on the same principle I doubt if the said boor would see his dinner more clearly than a wolf, bear, or tiger would theirs when in quest of it.

The memory of an animal, as compared with that of a man, may be not so much weaker as less multitudinous. As a rule we remember those things best in which we take the greatest interest. This gives to man a much wider range of memory than any animal can possess, with a proportionately increased area for association to work over. But there are certain primitive interests, as we may call them, connected with food, and the family and sexual relations, which are very strong in animals, and in regard to which the memory, when put in action, may be equally strong. Who shall say that a man, returning to his home at the end of the day, sees in his mind's eye a clearer picture of what awaits him there than does the bird flying to its nest, or the bee to its hive? Now could anything, by association, call up this picture, suddenly, in the bird's or insect's mind, they would, no doubt, act for the moment as though it were real—as did Darwin's dog when he called him after five years' absence; and thus I can understand one of these guillemots flying with a fish to its ledge, to feed its chick, although its chick were no longer there. It might be so; I can see no reason against it. In the actions of these two birds there may lie—for me, now, there does lie—a great psychological interest. Suggestive they certainly are. I shall keep this in my mind and watch the ledges more closely.

The larger of the two young guillemots is now frequently flapping its wings, and latterly it has been jumping up, at the same time, though always it keeps in one place by its mother, and does not run about. Mother and chick often delectate themselves by nibbling the tip of each other's bills. And now there comes a surprise. For the first time that I have ever seen, the chick moves right away from where it was, leaving its father and mother. It travels along the ledge, often uncomfortably near to the edge of it, and at last gets round a corner, out of my sight. The parents, as far as I can make out, have not followed it. This is quite a new development in my experience of the chick, if not in the chick's own experience. It is not, then, quite immovable, till it flies or is carried down. Were it to fall now, how aptly would it illustrate that law of natural selection which I have called in to account for its general quiescence. I hope it won't though—which is to my credit surely.

I note one more thing before leaving. A bird picks up and, as it were, plays with some feathers lying on the ledge, one of which it now brings to its partner, lays it on the rock, and then both pull it about. This, too, I noticed when I was last here. I have mentioned it in my Bird Watching, and account for it by supposing that we here see a last trace of the once active nest-building instinct. Perhaps, however, the act is too trivial to need any special accounting for.

[CHAPTER XVI]

FLIGHT AND FANCY

W

WOULD God my home were here, that I might make a lifelong and continuous study of the wild sea-bird life about me! What more should I want, then? except, indeed, a better climate, which is not a matter of culture. Of all that civilisation has to give I value nothing much (that I can get) except books, and those I might have here, at least in a moderate profusion, "the hundred (or so) best" ones—of my own choice bien entendu; the devil take any other man's. "Oh, hell! to choose love by another's eyes." But all my own writers—with never an impudent, pert critic amongst them to échauffer ma bile—awaiting me at home, with these birds—these dear birds—to look down upon outside, and I think I might be happy, as things go. But with such a strange blending of tastes and desires as nature has put upon me, how can I ever hope to be, to any satisfactory extent? What I want, really, is the veldt, or Brazilian forests, or Lapland, or the Spanish Marisma, with the British Museum library round the corner; but, as Cleopatra says of two other things, "they do not go together."

"Well, here's my comfort" for a time—my half-measure of content. Oh, is there anything in life more piquant (if you care about it) than to lie on the summit of a beetling cliff, and watch the breeding sea-fowl on the ledges below? In the Shetlands, at least, it is possible to do this in perfect safety, for the strata of the rock have often been tilted up to such an extent that, whilst the precipice formed by their broken edges is of the most fearful description, their slope, even on the landward side, is so steep that when one has climbed it, and flung oneself full length at the top, one's head looks down—as mine does now—as from a slanting wall, against which one's body leans. To fall over, one would first have to fall upwards, and the knowledge of this gives a feeling of security, without which one could hardly observe or take notes. The one danger lies in becoming abstracted and forgetting where one is. Those steep, green banks—for the rock, except in smooth, unclimbable patches, is covered with lush grass—have no appearance of an edge, and I have often shuddered, whilst plodding mechanically upwards, to find myself but just awakened from a reverie, within a yard or so of their soft-curled, lap-like crests. But I think my "subliminal," in such cases, was always pretty well on the watch, or—to adopt a more prosaic and now quite obsolete explanation—the reverie was not a very deep one.

At any rate, here I am safe, and, looking down again from my old "coign of vantage" of two years before, the same wonderful and never forgotten—never-to-be-forgotten—sight presents itself. Here are the guillemots, the same individual birds, standing—each in the old place, perhaps, if the truth were known—in long, gleaming rows and little salient clusters, equally conspicuous by their compact shape and vividly contrasted colouring; whilst both above and below them, on nests which look like some natural, tufted growth of the sheer, jagged rock, and which touch, or almost touch, one another, sit hundreds and hundreds of kittiwakes, the soft bluey-grey and downier white of whose plumage, with their more yielding and accommodating outlines, make them as a tone and tinting of the rock itself, and delight with grace, as the others do with boldness. Seen from a distance all except the white is lost, and then they have the effect of snow, covering large surfaces of the hard, perpendicular rock. Nearer, they look like little nodules or bosses of snow projecting from a flatter and less pure expanse of it. An innumerable cry goes up, a vociferous, shrieking chorus, the sharp and ear-piercing treble to the deep, sombrous bass of the waves. The actual note is supposed to be imitated in the name of the bird, but to my own ear it much more resembles—to a degree, indeed, approaching exactitude—the words "It's getting late!" uttered with a great emphasis on the "late," and repeated over and over again in a shrill, harsh, and discordant shriek. The effect—though this is far from being really the case—is as though the whole of the birds were shrieking out this remark at the same time. There is a constant clang and scream, an eternal harsh music—harmony in discord—through and above which, dominating it as an organ does lesser instruments—or like "that deep and dreadful organ-pipe, the thunder"—there rolls, at intervals, one of the most extraordinary voices, surely, that ever issued from the throat of a bird: a rolling, rumbling volume of sound, so rough and deep, yet so full, grand, and sonorous, that it seems as though the very cliffs were speaking—ending sometimes in something like a gruff laugh, or, as some will have it, a bark.

This marvellous note is the nuptial one of the guillemot, or, rather, it is that, swelled and multiplied by the echoes to which it gives rise, and which roll and mutter along the face of the precipice, and mingle with the dash of the waves. The effect is most striking when heard at a little distance, and especially across the chasm that divides one precipice from another. Under these circumstances it is less the actual cry itself than what, by such help, it becomes, that impresses one. Uttered quite near, by some bird that stands conspicuous on the ledge one looks down upon, the sound is less impressive, though still extraordinary enough. It can then be better understood, and resolves itself into a sort of jodel, long continued and having a vibratory roll in it. It begins usually with one or two shorter notes, which have much the syllabic value of "hărāh, hărāh"—first ă as in "hat," with the accent on the last syllable, as in "hurrah." Very commonly the outcry ends here, but otherwise the final "rah" is prolonged into the sound I speak of, which continues rising and falling—which is why I call it a jodel—for a longer or shorter time, the volume of sound being increased, sometimes, to a wonderful extent. It ends, usually, as it began, with a few short, rough notes which may be called a bark, as the other is called a bray, though to neither is there much resemblance if we make either a dog or a donkey the basis of comparison. Altogether it is one of the strangest, weirdest sounds that can be imagined, and nobody, not accustomed to such surprises, would suppose it could issue from the lungs of so small an animal as a guillemot.

I made a strange error in regard to the utterer of this note when I first came to the Shetlands, and the history of it will show either what a fool I was (and am, in that case), or else how possible it is for such mistakes to arise, even with great care and close and continued observation—I should prefer it to show the latter. I thought it was impossible that I could have been mistaken, but now that I know I was I can see how it happened perfectly. At that time I knew nothing about the matter, for though I love natural history I hate the "British Bird" books, nor am I often in the way of being told anything, since, to be frank, I am as much a hermit as I am mercifully permitted to be: therefore, when I first heard the "bray" of the guillemot, as it is called, I was lost in wonder, and as it came but rarely, and never from any of the birds upon the one particular ledge that I watched day after day—often for many hours at a time—I never suspected its true origin. These particular birds never uttered any sound more extraordinary than a kind of "ik, ik, ik!" and this though they were constantly fighting, whilst the performance of the nuptial rite was frequent amongst them. The note which so astonished me never came from very near; I heard it, as I have said before, only occasionally, and it always seemed to come from a part of the rock where a few pairs of fulmar petrels were sitting. When I mentioned it to the watcher, who occupied the little sentry-box on the ness, during the daytime, when I was out, leaving it for me to sleep in at night, he said nothing about guillemots, but expressed his opinion that the sound was produced by these fulmar petrels. Now the fulmar petrel, though I have never met with any reference to it, does utter, when on the breeding-ledges—or at least, it does in the Shetlands—a note which is sufficiently marked and striking, a sort of angry, hoarse, gruff interjection—guttural too—several times repeated, and sounding sometimes like a laugh. Often too, these notes are not divided, or else are so quickly repeated that they sound like one, continuously uttered for some little space of time. As I now think, I must sometimes have caught this note at the beginning or end of the cry of the guillemot, and put it down as a part of it. Then, when, with this idea in my mind, I watched the petrels at but a few yards' distance, and heard them uttering the note they do utter, to my heart's content—swelling out the throat and rolling the head at one another, the while, in the way I have described—I was so foolish as to think that this was the cry that I thought so wonderful, but not at its best, and that the real one, when I heard it again in the distance—for, as I say, it never sounded very near—was the same one at its best. With this false idea in my head I went home, and when somebody, assuming the character of a "Fulmar Petrel" himself—assured me that I had mistaken the guillemot's note for his own, I was as convinced that he did not know what he was talking about, and that I did, as I am now to the contrary.

On one point, however, I am clear, and cannot possibly be mistaken, since I have verified it only in these last few days, having come, in fact, partly to do so—at least that made another motive for my journey. The fulmar petrel, if it does not bray like a guillemot, has at least a nuptial note—and that a sufficiently striking one—of its own, which is uttered by both sexes as they lie on the rock, but never, in my experience, whilst flying. Moreover, just as the vocal powers of the guillemot are now marvellously increased—or rather multiplied—compared with what they were some weeks earlier in the year, on my last visit, so, if I may trust my own memory—which, however, I never do trust—those of the fulmar petrel have suffered a corresponding diminution. I attribute both these facts to one and the same cause. At the earlier date the guillemots were in the very midst of their domestic duties, so that those feelings proper to the courting period were in abeyance. Now, however, they are free, and, under the influence of returning emotion, have become noisy again, as no doubt, at the very beginning, they were noisier still. Though their physical energy may not be sufficient to enable them to rear another brood, that, I am sure—and there is plenty of evidence of it—is what they feel like—there is dalliance and a "smart set" morality. But with the petrels, at the same time, things had not gone so far—some, if I remember rightly, had not even yet laid their egg—and so their nuptial vociferations were more energetic than they are now—or, at any rate, I think they were. Here, then, was a mistake, and I have shown clearly how it came about. Some perhaps—especially those who get all their information from books, and feel as if they had found it out for themselves—may admit no excuse for it, my explanation notwithstanding; but, for my part, I think it is easy to make mistakes. Had but one of the guillemots on my own ledge been so good as to bray for me, all would have been well, but never a word did any of them say except "ik, ik, ik!"

There was another point on which "Fulmar Petrel" took exception to what I said about him—or rather to what I seemed to say. In view of his oil-squirting and other unangelic propensities, he thought the descriptive phrase "half angel and half bird," which formed the title of my article, was not quite suitable to him. Well, I may tell him now that I never thought so either—titles, as most authors nowadays have good cause to know, are not always one's own. I never compare birds to angels, for fear of thinking slightingly of the latter, and though I admit that, in the hands of a skilled artist, a pelican's wings on a pair of human shoulders may make a pretty enough combination, and that the whole human body need not look so heavy and unmanageable as it, no doubt, would be in reality, still, as far as flight is concerned, I confess I think it takes a bird to beat a bird. Angels are out of it in my opinion, or, if they are not, at least my powers of imagination in regard to them are. I shall always think of "Fulmar Petrel" as flying much better than the best of them, though, as his habit of squirting oil does not in the least degree lessen his aerial grace and beauty, as far as that alone is concerned I see no reason why he should not be half an angel, at any rate, if not a whole one.

Yes, here are powers indeed! What buoyant ease! What marvellous, least-action grace! Surely no bird has ever flown before. This—this only—is flight; for a moment, at any rate, one forgets even the nightjar. And yet all these storm-riding, blast-defying powers belong to one of the most placid-looking, delicately dove-like beautiful beings of all air's kingdom. How soft is its colouring! How gentle its look! Was there ever a more "delicate Ariel" than this?

One cannot, indeed, watch for long the flight of the fulmar petrel without becoming dissatisfied, or at least critical, in regard to that of other sea-birds. The larger gulls grow hopelessly coarse and heavy; the kittiwake is not what it was, something is gone from the bold corsair-like sweeps of the Arctic skua, and even in the seeming-laboured grace of the tern the eye begins to dwell more on the labour and less on the grace. All these birds are bodies: the fulmar petrel more suggests a soul. Something of this it owes to its colouring, which, though approaching to blue above, and of the purest-looking white below, yet has in it that exquisitely smoked or shadowed quality which allows of no glint or gleam, avoids all saliency, and almost seems alien from substance itself. It blends with the air, of which it seems to be a condensation rather than something introduced into it. Yet most lies in the flight. In this there is conveyed to one a sense, not so much of power over as of actual partnership in the element in which the bird floats, as though it had been born there, as though it might sleep and awake there, as though it had never been, nor ever could be, anywhere else. It is, I suppose, the small apparent mechanism of the flight that gives this impression, the absence, or the ease, of effort. Sliding, as it were, from the face of the precipice, and often from the most towering heights of it, the thin cleaver-like wings are at once, or after a few quick, flickering vibrations, spread to their full extent, and on them the bird floats, sweeps, circles, now sinking towards the sea, now cresting the summit of the cliff,[5] but keeping, for the most part, within the middle space between the two. Ever and anon it sails smoothly in to its own rocky ledge, pauses above it, as though to think "My home!" then, with another quick shimmer or flicker of the thin shadow-wings, sweeps smoothly out again, to enter once more on those wonderful down-sliding, up-gliding circles that have more of magic in them, and are more drawn to charm, than had ever a necromancer's.

[5] The idea that the fulmar petrel never flies over the land is a delusion. I have often seen it do so, though that is not its habit. It goes but a trifling way, however, cutting off a cape or corner, and returns almost immediately.

This light flickering of the wings, as I have called it, for they cannot be said to flap or beat—even quiver is too gross a term for so delicate a motion—is a characteristic part of the fulmar petrel's flight. They move for a moment—for a few seconds more or less—in the way in which a shadow flickers on the wall, and then the bird glides and circles, holding them outspread and at rest, opposing their thin, flat surface, now to this point, now to that, by a turn of the head or body, but giving them no independent motion. Then another flicker, and again the gliding and circling. When spread thus, flat to the air, the wings have a very thin, paper-knifey appearance. The simile does not seem worthy either of them or of the bird, but as it is continually brought to my mind, I must employ it, albeit apologetically. It is the shape of them that suggests it. Their ends are smooth and rounded, and they are held so straight that they seem to be in one piece, without a joint; though, just when the wind catches them freshly, and drives the bird swiftly along, they are turned slightly upwards toward the tips, through the momentary yielding of the quills. Strange though it may seem, this straightness—almost stiffness—of the wing-contour adds to—nay, makes—the grace of the fulmar petrel's flight, and the pronounced bend at the joint, which, in the gull and kittiwake, causes the forepart of the wing to slope backwards in a marked degree, looks almost clumsy by comparison. The reason, I think, is that the petrel's straight, thin, flat-pressed wings look so splendidly set to the wind, suggesting a graceful ship—lateen-rigged—in fullest sail, whilst the others seem timidly furled and reefed, by the side of them. Sometimes, indeed, the wings do bend just a little—for, after all, they have a joint—but the straight-set attitude is more germane to them, and soon they assume it again, shooting forward so briskly, yet softly, that one seems to hear a soft little musical click.

And thus this dream and joy of glorious motion, this elemental spirit of a bird, floats and flickers along, cradled in air, looking like a shadow upon it, sweeping and gliding, rising and falling, in circles of consummate ease. No, this is not dominion, but union and sweet accord. There is no in-spite-of, no proud compelling, here. Lighter than the air that it rides on, the bird seems married to it, clasps it as a bride.

[CHAPTER XVII]

MOUTHS WITH MEANINGS

T

THE young kittiwake differs in appearance from the parent birds in a quite uncommon manner, for, being prettily and saliently marked, it looks like a mature gull of another species, whereas the young of other gulls, being plain brown things, suggest their juvenility on the analogy of pheasants or birds of paradise. The general colour is mauvy grey, but black, falling here and there upon it, seems striving to blot it out. Half of the wings are thus darkened, and a broad half-moon of sooty black nearly encircles the neck, looking like black velvet on the back of it, where it is by much the broadest. There is a clouded black mark, too, on either side of the head, with some nuances of black between, black tips the tail, and the beak is all black. The tout ensemble of all this is very pretty, and the young kittiwake is a pretty bird. Mauve and black velvet is the dress it comes out in, and it looks like a soft little dove. Many might admire it beyond the grown bird, but, personally, I prefer the latter.

One of these well-grown young kittiwakes has just been fed by the mother, or father—but call it the mother, it always sounds better. Being importuned by sundry little peckings at her beak, she opened it, and the young one, thrusting in its own, helped himself as though her throat were a platter. It was much the same as with the fulmar petrels. Numbers of the young have left their nests, and keep all together, standing on the rocks or floating on the sea. Others remain, and I notice that these keep flapping their wings. This must strengthen them, and have the effect of preparing Dædalus for his first flight—for it seems probable that these particular ones have not made it. But they have, though, and bang goes a provisional hypothesis! Every moment, to laugh at me, one or other of them is flying out from the ledges, whilst others are returning to them.

When one of these young kittiwakes opens its bill, it is at once apparent that the inside of its mouth is much less brilliantly coloured than it is in the parent bird, being of a pale pinkish, merely, with, perhaps, a tinge of light yellow. As for the grown bird's mouth, one can hardly exaggerate the lurid brightness of it. The whole buccal cavity, including, as I think is usual, the tongue, is of a fine rich red, or orange-red colour, carrying on that of the naked skin adjoining the mandibles outside, with which, indeed, it is continuous. It is just the same in the case of the old and young shag. The mouth of the former presents a uniform surface of splendid gamboge, whilst that of the latter is almost the natural pink, only just beginning to pass into yellow. In the young guillemot, also, the interior of the mouth is pinkish merely, whilst in the grown bird it is of a pleasing lemon or gamboge. With the fulmar petrel again, we have much the same thing, though here—and this is significant—the difference, as well as the actual colour, is less striking. These varying degrees of brilliancy of colouring in this particular region, as between the mature and immature form, must surely have some meaning, and as it goes hand-in-hand with a similar, if not, as I believe, an identical difference in the hue of the naked facial integument, as well as with the pattern and shade of the plumage, I feel persuaded that all three are governed by the same general law.

As explained by Darwin—and nothing better, that I can see, than opposition has ever been opposed to his views—the beauty of certain birds has been acquired through the principle of sexual selection, and the lesser degree of it, which we notice in the young, represents the earlier and less-finished beauty of the adult in times gone by. Of all the elements which go to make up the beauty thus acquired, colour, on the whole, plays the most conspicuous part, and nothing can be more brilliant and striking than some of the colours that I am here speaking of. The only reason, therefore, why, in their use, and the laws that have governed their acquirement, they should be thought to differ from the hues and tintings of the plumage, or of the naked outer skin—the cere or the labial region—would be their habitual, necessary concealment. If, then, it can be shown that, far from their being always concealed, they are prominently displayed during the breeding season by certain birds which possess them in a marked degree, then, as far as these birds are concerned, there ceases to be a reason for thus, in idea, separating them. Let us see, now, how far this is the case. To begin with these kittiwakes, in their courting, or rather connubial actions on the ledges—as may be seen now, but much more earlier in the year—both sexes open their bills widely, and crane about, with their heads turned toward each other, whilst at the same time uttering their shrieking, clamorous cry. The motion, however, is often continued after the cry has ceased, and this we might expect if the birds took any pleasure in the brilliant gleam of colour which each presents to, and, as it were, flashes about in front of the other. The effect of this it is not easy to exaggerate, and if it is extremely noticeable to an onlooker at some little distance, what must it be to the bird itself, who looks right into the almost scarlet cavity? We have only to think of the inside of some shells, or of a large, highly-coloured flower-cup, to understand the kind of æsthetic pleasure that may be derived from such a sight.

Similar, but much more striking, is the nuptial behaviour of the fulmar petrel. A pair of these birds lying near together, on some ledge or cranny of the rock, will, every few minutes, open their bills to the very widest extent, at the same time blowing and swelling out the skin of the throat, including that which lies between the two sides of the lower mandible, until it has a very inflated appearance. In this state they stretch their heads towards each other, and then, with languishing gestures and expression, keep moving them about from side to side, uttering whilst they do so, but by no means always, a hoarse, unlovely sort of note, like a series of hoarse coughs or grunts, as though in anger—and indeed, it is uttered in anger, too. But though these motions, with the distension of the jaws, always, as far as I have seen, accompany the note when it is uttered, yet they are often continued afterwards, and sometimes commence and end in silence, so that one has to conclude that they are themselves of importance, and may have as much, or even more, to do with the expression of the bird's feelings as the vocal utterance has.

It is difficult to give an adequate idea of the strange, lackadaisical appearance which these birds present while acting in the above-described manner. With widely-gaping bills, swelled throats, necks stretched out, and heads moving slowly all about, now up, now down, now to this side, now to that, they look sometimes "sick of love," like Solomon, and sometimes as though about to be sick indeed—in fact, on the point of vomiting. All the bird's actions are peculiar, but none more so than this wide gaping distension of the mandibles, with the full view that it offers of the whole interior cavity of the mouth. This last is not indeed brilliant, as is that of the kittiwake, but, for all that, it is very pleasing, of a delicate mauvy blue, æsthetic in its appearance, and in harmony with the soft and delicate tinting of the plumage. There is no reason to suppose that the latter beauty is unappreciated by the bird itself, when seen in the opposite sex. Why, then, should the pale mauve or blue of the inside of the mouth—this purple chamber flung open for inspection during the season of courtship or of nuptial dalliance—be not appreciated too?

The razorbill's mouth, inside, is of a conspicuous light yellow, which, when exposed suddenly to view, contrasts very forcibly with the black of the beak and upper plumage. In dalliance these birds throw the head straight up into the air, and, opening their clean-cut bills, so that one sees the gay interior like a line of bright gamboge, utter a deep guttural note, which is prolonged and has a vibratory roll in it, like the cry of the gorilla when angry—si parva licet componere magnis—as described by Du Chaillu. It is not loud, however, and so is easily lost amidst elemental sounds and the cries of other birds. The vibratory character of the note becomes more marked under the influence of excitement, and the mandibles themselves vibrate as they are opened at intervals, somewhat widely. In the midst of their duet the pair toss their heads about, catch hold of each other's beaks, and give quick little emotional nibbles at the feathers of their throats or breasts. If we can suppose that the birds are interested in each other's appearance whilst thus acting—that they admire or are sexually excited by one another—then it would be strange if the bright flashing yellow so constantly exhibited did not play its full part in producing this result. Imagine ourselves razor-bills, and thus acting. Could we be blind to such revelations? I think not.

The pretty little black guillemot—the dabchick of ocean—may often be seen sitting in a niche of the cliffs, and calling to another—its mate presumably—either above or below it. The cry is, for the most part, a weak, twittering sound, but occasionally rises into a very feeble little wail or scream. All the while the bird is uttering it he keeps raising and again depressing his head and opening his beak so as to show conspicuously the inside of his mouth, which is of a very pretty rose or blush-red hue, almost as vivid as that of the feet. The beak is opened more widely than would seem to be necessary for the production of the sound, as if to show this coloration, even though, for the moment, there may be no other bird there to see it. If, however, the rosy inward complexion were in any way an attraction, it would be natural for a bird, wanting its mate, to associate the wish with the action of opening the beak, just as a lonely dove in a cage will coo and bow as to a partner. As a matter of fact, the crying bird very soon flies to the other one (or vice versâ), and, standing beside her, utters his little twitter as a greeting. She, being couched down, responds by raising her head, so that the tip of her beak touches, or nearly touches, his. Then he couches also, and sitting thus, side by side—comfy on the sheer edge of the precipice—the two turn, from time to time, their heads towards each other, open their bills, and twitter together. Every time they open them the pretty rose tapestry of the mouth-chamber must be plain to each or either, and the more so that they are vis-a-vis.

In all these four birds, therefore, we have a nuptial habit of distending the jaws, side by side with a brilliant or pleasing coloration of the region which, by such action, is exhibited. Moreover, in the case of one of them, more particularly—viz. the fulmar petrel—this distension may be unaccompanied with any note, though it always is with the odd gestures and lackadaisical expression which I have tried to describe. In other words, the beak is sometimes opened as a part of the bird's nuptial actions, and not merely with a view to the production of sound. That originally this alone would have been the motive of its being so can hardly, I suppose, be doubted, but may it not be possible that the eye has gradually come to share in a pleasure which was, at first, communicated through the ear alone, and that a process of selection, founded, perhaps, on some initial freshness of colouring, has in time produced a special kind of adornment? If this were so, we might expect that some of the birds so adorned would have the habit of opening the bill in this manner without uttering any note at all, or, at least, that they would very frequently do so. Such an instance we have in the shag, that smaller and more adorned variety of the cormorant, which is much more common on our northern coasts than the so-called common one. One of the most ordinary nuptial actions of these birds is to throw the head into the air, and open and shut the beak several times in succession; and sometimes they hold it wide open for several seconds together. Each time, as the jaws gape, a splendid surface of bright gamboge yellow is exhibited, which the human eye, at any rate, has to admire, and which exactly matches with the naked yellow skin at the base of the two mandibles on either side, where they become lost in what may be called the bird's cheek. This exterior brightly-tinted surface is continuous with the interior and much larger one, and my view is that the colour of the latter represents an extension of that of the former, by a similar process of sexual selection. There is no doubt whatever that this outward adornment largely adds to the handsome appearance of the shag, and probably those naturalists who believe in sexual selection at all will think it as much due to that agency as the crest and the sheeny green plumage. But if the closely similar colouring of the adjacent interior region is to be looked on as merely fortuitous (we escape here, thank heaven, from the all-pervading protective theory), why should the other be thought to be anything more? If the shag had not this habit of opening its mouth and thus displaying what is, in itself, so very striking, it would be difficult, I think, to accept sexual selection as an explanation even of the facial adornment, since, if the one effect were nonsignificant, so might the other be. As it is, I can see no reason why it should not have brought about both.

I have often watched shags thus throwing up their heads and opening and shutting their jaws at one another, and though I have generally been fairly close to them I have never heard them utter a note whilst so doing. I consider these actions—together with other still more peculiar ones, which they indulge in during the breeding season—to be of a sexual character, and, if so, this silent and oft-repeated distension of the jaws must have some kind of meaning. The large and brilliantly-coloured surface which is thus displayed supplies this meaning, as I am inclined to think.

The fact that some birds—I have not the knowledge to say how many—which do not open the beak in this way, have yet the inside of the mouth brightly or conspicuously coloured, may seem to throw doubt on the theory here advanced; but of course sexual selection is not the only power which may have produced such coloration, and the likelihood of its having done so is decreased if there is no outer facial adornment to match that within. The cuckoo is one such example, for—I speak on the strength of young ones which I have seen in the nest—the whole of its inner mouth is of a really splendid salmon colour. When approached, the nestling cuckoo assumes a most threatening attitude, alternately dilating and drawing itself in, now receding into the nest, now rising up in it as though to strike, having all the while its mouth wide open and hissing violently. Its feathers are ruffled, and altogether it has a quite terrifying aspect, to which the triangular flaming patch that seems to burst out of the centre of it—for the head is drawn right back upon the body—very largely contributes. Especially is this so when, as is mostly the case, there is considerable shadow in the recess of the nest, amidst the surrounding foliage. If it can be supposed that the large false head and painted eyes of the puss or elephant hawk-moth caterpillars have been acquired as a protection against enemies—as to which see Professor Poulton's interesting suggestion[6]—then it certainly seems to me more than possible that the flame-like throat of the young cuckoo has been developed in the same manner, pari passu with the loud, snake-like hiss and intimidating gestures. In conclusion, I would suggest that the bright or pleasingly-coloured mouth-cavity which some birds possess may have a distinct meaning, and be the product either of natural or sexual selection.

[6] The Colours of Animals (International Scientific Series).

AERIAL PIRACY

[CHAPTER XVIII]

LEARNING TO SOAR

I

I HAD not before imagined that the puffin was one of those birds that suffered from the extortions of the Arctic or lesser skua, but I have found it out to-day without knowing whether it is in a British Bird book or not. Twice have the two passed me, close together, and flying with tremendous velocity, their wings—especially, I think, those of the skua—making a portentous sound just above my head. The puffin, though hotly pursued, was a little in front, and such was his speed that it seemed doubtful if the skua would overtake him. I suppose, however, that the latter must be competent to do so, or, having learnt otherwise by experience, he would long ago have ceased giving chase.

The puffin, like the partridge and other birds that progress by a succession of quick strokes with the wings, flies with great rapidity. He is so small and light that perhaps one ought not to be surprised at this, so I reserve my wonder for the guillemot. How this solid and weighty-looking bird can, with wings that are small out of all proportion to its bulk, narrow to a degree, and by no means long, get through the air at the rate it does, how it can even stay in it at all and not come plump down like the wooden bird that it looks, is to me a mystery. The wing, I think, is considerably smaller in proportion to the body than is that of the wild duck. When I see these birds going along over the sea at the rate they do, it does not seem to me impossible that a man should fly, if only his arms were to sprout feathers and his pectoral muscles enlarge sufficiently to enable him to move them with the same quickness. Is there, by the by, any special adaptation to the power of flight in the body and bones of a bat? We are generally referred to such arrangements in reference to the flight of birds, with a view to lessening the wonder of it, as if birds were the only things that flew. Bats, however, are mammals like ourselves, and their aerial performances are very wonderful. I have often watched them and the swifts together, at the close of a summer day, and have been hardly able to decide which of the two showed the greater mastery over the element in which both moved. The swifts indeed alone skimmed on outspread wings, without pulsating them; but in quick, sudden turns in every direction, in the power of instantaneously and abruptly changing the angle of their flight, and especially in descending, sometimes almost perpendicularly, the bats excelled them. In regard to speed, the disparity did not appear to be so great as I suppose it must have been. I do not know if any observations have been made to determine the speed at which bats fly, but they often seem to go very fast.

To return to the puffins, their powers of flight extend a little beyond mere speed gained by constant exertion, for they do sometimes make swift gliding circles through the air, not indeed without moving the wings at all, yet moving them but little, and at intervals—a few pulsations and then a sweep. Yet this is never very much. They seem to be just in the way of getting to something more advanced in flying, without quite knowing what they would be at. However, I think in time they will begin to understand, get a hint of their real feelings, like the heroines in novels, who find all at once that they have been in love for some while without noticing it. (Shakespeare's heroines, by the by, seem to have had a clearer insight into their state of mind—but then, there was more for them to know about.) They—the puffins, I mean, not the heroines—will often, when they leave their nests, mount up to a considerable height and then descend in a long slant to the sea. In this they are peculiar, as far as I have observed, and for some time I could not imagine why they did it; but tearing up some letters one day as I sat on the rock's edge and throwing them towards the sea, the pieces were carried upwards, some of them rising almost perpendicularly, and continuing to do so for some while before they were blown against the higher slopes of the cliff. The puffins, I then felt sure, must mount upon this upward current of air, either as a matter of enjoyment, or as finding it easier to do so. Probably it is the latter consideration which influences them, but ease is nearly allied to enjoyment, passes insensibly into it; and thus, in time, these little puffins may learn to soar. I was wrong, perhaps, to speak of them as light, for they are solidly made, and no doubt heavy enough in proportion to their bulk. Still, for their type of flight, they seem to me to fly lightly; and there is a little—just a little—tendency, as I have noticed, towards a higher development. I may be mistaken, but I hope that it is so; no one can become intimate with the puffin without wishing him well. It is most interesting to see things in their beginnings, and to speculate on what, if they continue, they are likely, in time, to become.

The puffin has other and far more fatal enemies than the skua. His remains, all picked and bleeding—often as though a feast had but just been made on him—I am constantly finding about, generally on the rocks, but sometimes—once, at least—on the heather above the cliffs. At first, when I began to find these bloody relics, I thought of nothing but peregrines, and the one inhabitant of this great lonely ness confirmed me in this view. But I have never seen one of these birds (or any other hawk) all the time I have been here, and this seems strange if it is really their doing; for I have been out all day long whenever it has not poured continuously—which last, indeed, in spite of the wretchedness of the weather, has not happened often. I hardly think I should have missed seeing one or other of these large birds beating about in wide circles, as is their custom, did they really sojourn here; and yet what more likely place could be found? Lately it has occurred to me the great skua, or the herring or black-backed gull, may be the authors of these tragic occurrences, but I have not seen any of them kill anything yet—not even young birds. However it be, many a scene of ruthless rapine is enacted on these black rocks, beneath these great cliffs, by the surge of the sullen sea. None see it; most, I verily believe, forget it. But it is there, and always there; and so, in ghastly and horrible multiplication, through the whole wide world. How unpitying, how godless is nature, when man, with his disguising smiles and honey-out-of-vinegar extractions, is not there to gloze and apologise, to strew his "smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs"!