llSIldyyMiiife 
 
 
BIOLOGY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Uibrarj f0r f 0ng Naturalists 
 
 EDITED BY F. G. AFLALO, F.R.G.S., F.Z.S. 
 
 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME 
 
 for fjfmut0 |lah:raUsts 
 
 EDITED BY F. G. AFLALO 
 
 ANIMALS OF AFRICA 
 
 BY H. A. BRYDEN. ILLUSTRATED BY E. CALDWELL 
 
 " It will be welcome news to boys who are fascinated by wild life that the second 
 volume of ' The Library for Young Naturalists' has made its appearance. . . . The 
 author's manner is engaging, and he gives just the kind of information that is wanted 
 by the lover of animals. " Morning Post, 
 
 " It is not only a genuinely instructive work, but one in which the simple and 
 engaging literary style and the bold pictures combine to give a lively interest to the 
 subject. It is a capital book for a growing boy who is eurious about beasts." 
 
 The Scotsman. 
 
 " No better writer of a book on the fauna of the Dark Continent could have been 
 selected than Mr. Bryden, whose personal acquaintance with the country and 
 knowledge of its wild beasts have been often exemplified in our columns. ... A 
 commendably full index adds to the value of a very useful and interesting work." 
 
 Field. 
 
 "Mr. Bryden is well known as amongst the highest authorities on the fauna of 
 Africa, and he has produced a decidedly attractive book on this fascinating subject, 
 well adapted to the needs of the intelligent young student. The book would 
 make a capital school prize for the junior forms." Liverpool Post. 
 
 " It is primarily meant for boys, and nothing could be better adapted to give 
 them an interest in natural history than such a series of entertaining chapters as 
 that before us." The Tablet. 
 
 TYPES OF BRITISH PLANTS 
 
 BY C. S. COLMAN 
 
 WITH 16 FULL-PAGE PLATES 
 AND NUMEROUS OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT 
 
 " We strongly recommend this book to all who are themselves interested in 
 Botany, or desire to encourage in others the taste for the most fascinating and 
 harmless of natural sciences. We can congratulate the author on the admirable 
 manner in which he has conceived and elaborated his method." 
 
 Land and^ Water. 
 
 " A really fascinating book . . everything is set forth in the most interesting 
 and lucid way." Spectator. 
 
 "An excellent book for boys and girls; clearly expressed, full of information; 
 compiled by an editor who will answer questions if any reader is in difficulty, and 
 illustrated intelligently and generously." Bookman. 
 
THE FOX 
 
 Frontispiece. 
 
TYPES 
 
 OF 
 
 BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 BY 
 
 F. G. AFLALO 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY E. CALDWELL 
 
 SECOND IMPRESSION 
 
 SANDS & CO. 
 
 LONDON: 15, KING STREET, STRAND 
 
 EDINBURGH : 21, HANOVER STREET 
 
 1909 
 
.- ..... . . * 
 
 ;.:-.;: .;/-\... : 
 
 - 
 
 UBRARY 
 G 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE 
 
 THESE little volumes have been planned to fill 
 what is thought to be a gap in modern Natural 
 History literature between the more advanced 
 manuals for adult readers and the one -syllable 
 picture-books of the nursery. As a matter of 
 fact, the keenest students of Nature at first hand 
 are probably boys, who do not want to be insulted 
 by the one or puzzled by the other. 
 
 While every attempt has been made to avoid 
 all purely technical matters, and to explain any 
 term not in everyday use, the authors have by 
 no means affected the extreme simplicity of 
 argument adopted in so many works of the 
 kind. At the same time, the Editor will be 
 only too glad to give any further explanations 
 in his power, or to correspond with any readers 
 on subjects of sufficient interest in which they 
 may find difficulties. 
 
 498170 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Scope of the book Types Vertebrates and Invertebrates Classes 
 Orders Family Genus Species Use of Latin names 
 Definition of mammals, birds, fishes, etc. Meaning of Fauna 
 Fauna of the British Isles Their geographical position Climatic 
 and other changes Origin of islands Our neglect of many useful 
 animals Silence of British mammals and birds Value of open- 
 air observation and use of books . . . 1 
 
 TYPES OF BRITISH QUADRUPEDS AND WHALES 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE WILD CAT AND THE Fox 
 
 Cats and Dogs Their character in captivity Their hatred of each 
 other Dogs in the Deluge Cats and Dogs at the Zoological 
 Gardens Sport and preservation The Fox preserved, the Wild 
 Cat shot Modern range of the Wild Cat in these islands 
 Mammals absent from Ireland St. Patrick and Irish Snakes 
 The work of the sea House Cats run wild Fox hunting 
 Continental sport Food of Foxes Hedgehogs as a delicacy 
 New method of unfolding Hedgehogs Appearance of the Fox 
 Its conspicuous tail Its " earth " and cubs Supposed habit of 
 feigning death . . . . , . 13 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE BADGER, THE OTTER AND THE STOAT 
 
 Different ideas of " sport " Badger-digging The old style Cock- 
 fighting Great strength of the Badger Not a Bear Range in 
 the British Islands " Brock "The Postal Guide and animal 
 distribution Nocturnal habits Another admirer of Hedgehogs 
 A poacher of game Size and appearance Protective colouring 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Death of a tame Badger Wtfght of Otters Trained Otters- 
 Asiatics and their rulers Kindness to animals The Arab Feet 
 of swimming mammals Range of the Otter Otter and Trout 
 Fond of Crayfish The Stoat and its kind The protection of 
 wild creatures Two sides to every question Ermine, real and 
 imitation Protective colouring Ptarmigan Agility of the Stoat 
 Poached eggs ' r . . . 25 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE SEAL 
 
 Intelligence of Seals and Elephants A poacher of Salmon Number 
 of British Seals Swimming mammals No commercial value in 
 our Seals The ears of Seals The nostril The young Reluctant 
 to enter water Food of Seal Method of catching Gulls Habit 
 of swallowing pebbles Birds also do this Fondness of music and 
 general susceptibility to sound Size, compared with the Fox . 37 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE WHALEBONE WHALE AND THE CACHALOT 
 
 The largest mammal and the smallest Number of British Whales 
 Whalebone Actual nature of this substance Its uses in Nature 
 The right Whale Its food and method of feeding Why a 
 Whale is not a fish Blubber : its nature and uses Atmospheric 
 pressure on ourselves Depth at which Whales and fishes can 
 exist The breathing of Whales " Spouting " : the ideal and 
 the real Wonderful mechanical devices in the Whale and Mole 
 Buckland's "evidence of design" Nature and Art Foot- 
 painting Sperm- Whales The Cruise of the Cachalot Food of 
 Sperm- Whales Cuttle-fish and Ambergris Commercial product 
 of Whales Great durability of whalebone * . 41 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 KINSMEN OF THE MOUSE 
 
 Great range in size of rodents Capybara and Harvest- Mouse The 
 Black Rat: its origin and persecution by the Brown Rat 
 "Norway" or "Hanover" Rat England formerly without Rats 
 Migratory rodents Great appetite Hamsters and lemmings 
 on the Continent British Voles Vole-plagues "Water-Rat" 
 a mistake Food of Voles Unjust accusations Characteristic 
 
CONTENTS !x 
 
 PAGE 
 
 teeth of rodents Tame Rats Silkworms " Pets " in general- 
 Other British Mice Squirrels and their cages Some views of 
 " cruelty " Damage done by Squirrels Their nests and young 
 Unfinished nests Ear-tufts Winter-sleep of the Dormouse Its 
 food-stores Appearance and distribution Hares and Rabbits 
 Difference in their ears Hairy lining to the Mouse Their food 
 Unwise introduction of Rabbits into Australia . . 49 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 OUR DEER 
 
 British, Deer and their Horns Richmond Park Deer and Cuckoo 
 The three British species Geological evidence Introduction 
 of the Fallow Deer The Red Deer The Story of a Red Deer 
 Our wild herds The Fallow Deer In Epping Forest The Roe 
 Deer Introduced into Ireland Measurements "Playing-rings" 
 of Roe Deer The young The antlers . . 58 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 THE BAT 
 
 A flying mammal Distinguished from birds on the wing Winter 
 sleep Food Tropical kinds German and French names Dis- 
 tinct from Mice Nose-leaf Probable object of this Bats not 
 blind Evidence of this Experiment of an Italian Teeth of 
 Bats A warning The female and young Progress on the 
 ground Swimming Number of British kinds . . . 63 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OUR REMAINING QUADRUPEDS 
 
 The Shrews Strange death of Shrews in Summer Shrews, Owls, 
 and Cats Dying of fright Our smallest quadruped The Water- 
 Shrew : its tail "Grass-Mice" and "Shrew-Mice" Food of 
 Shrews Winter sleep Families Strength of the Mole Its food 
 Worms Services performed by the Mole Wild Life at Home 
 Do Moles eat worms when tunnelling ? Difference of opinion 
 Hard life of the Mole Its activity Absent from Ireland and 
 parts of Scotland Family Peculiarities of the Hedgehog Self- 
 defence Winter sleep Services and misdeeds Appearance 
 Young Names of British quadrupeds "Mole," "Deer," 
 " Squirjel " Open-air natural history Burn the Catapult 1 . 67 
 A 2 
 
x CONTENTS 
 
 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 BIRDS OF THE HOUSETOP 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Elimination "British" birds Technical differencesGroups pro- 
 posed in this book Birds of our housetops Their drawbacks 
 The Sparrow a "bird of cultivation" Cats and Sparrows A 
 knowing Cat Sparrows as a nuisance Their food In America 
 and Australia Their plumage The nest and eggs Tree-Sparrow 
 and Hedge-SparrowHabits of Starlings The Starling as a cage- 
 bird Its food In the orchard Nest and eggs Eggs of burrow- 
 ing birds Differences between the Swift and Swallow Their 
 voice and flight On the ground Bird migrations African 
 visitors " Hibernation " of Swallows Nest of the Swallow 
 Eggs of both kinds Appearance of the Jackdaw and some of Iii8 
 kinsmen Unsuitable chimneys Food of the Jackdaw Nest 
 and eggs . . . . . .' . 77 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 BIRDS OF THE GARDEN 
 
 Gardens and gardens Appearance of the Blackbird Its food A 
 novel drinking-trough Thrushes and Snails Gifts of the Greeks 
 White Blackbirds Character of the Redbreast Its food- 
 Migrations Voice Nesting-places Number of eggs Voices of 
 the night Migrations of the Nightingale Its range in England 
 Reasons for this Nest and eggs Food A way of attracting 
 Titmice to the garden Voice of the Great Titmouse Its food 
 Nest and eggs Habits of the Tree-creeper Method of feeding 
 Nest and eggs The Spotted Fly-catcher and its meals Its 
 pied cousin Differences between the two Nest and eggs 
 Curious habit of the Shrikes Their victims The Woodchat in 
 Morocco The hands of birds Nest, eggs, and peculiar flight of 
 the Shrikes . . '. ' :" . . 90 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 BIRDS OF THE FIELDS 
 
 Typical field-birds Size and colouring of the Skylark The Wood- 
 lark The sitting of birds Larks and clover Nesting-places 
 Eggs of ground-birds Migration simplified A rascally family 
 Turnips or wireworms Rook-shooting Rookeries Defence of 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 PACK 
 
 Partridge-shooting Food of the Partridge Protective colouring 
 The French Partridge Flight and nest Voice and appearance 
 of the Landrail Its migrations Its nest Flight of the Kestrel 
 Its food Plumage Eggs Disadvantages of open fields for the 
 observation of birds . ' "'' : - "' fc '<' 102 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 BIRDS OP THE WOODS 
 
 Woodland voices Food and feeding of Woodpeckers The Green 
 Woodpecker Its tail, bill and tongue Spread of the species in 
 Ireland Storing food Migrations of the Cuckoo Its voice 
 Advantages of a small egg Foster-parents Habits of foreign 
 Cuckoos Why shoot the Cuckoo ? The Cuckoo's food Resem- 
 blance to Hawks Small birds and Hawks The fighting Nuthatch 
 A plasterer Plumage of the Nuthatch Meaning of the name 
 Its food Distribution in these islands Nature's scissors 
 Appearance and food of Crossbills Plumage of the Magpie- 
 Moulting Summer and winter dress Magpies in France Mag- 
 pies and dead Donkeys Poaching " Birds of cultivation " 
 Greed of the Ringdove The " crop " of birds" Pigeon's milk " 
 Natural history fables Australian Fruit-PigeonsSpread of 
 Woodpigeons in the United Kingdom Nest and eggs Reintro- 
 duction of the Capercailzie by Lord Breadalbane Food of the 
 Capercailzie Its appearance" Horse of the Woods " Sport and 
 difficulty The Long-eared Owl and Little Owl Owls in Morocco 
 Owls and Gamekeepers Owls' " castings" Nest and eggs . 110 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 BIRDS OF THE MOORS 
 
 Value of Grouse -moors Scandinavian Grouse Size and appearance 
 Food and food-stores Distribution of Grouse in these islands 
 Grouse disease Eggs Fables about the Nightjar Food and 
 manner of feeding Voice Serrated toe Mode of perching . 125 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 BIRDS OP THE MARSHES 
 
 Great diversity in size of marsh-birds Their Food Birds of the 
 Broads The Bearded Reedling not a Titmouse "Reed- 
 pheasant "Its food Nest and eggs The Warblers Dartford 
 Warblers in Morocco Limited range of the Marsh-Warbler Its 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
 PAOI 
 
 nest and eggg Herons in Richmond Park Curious choice of 
 nesting-site Nest and eggs Food of Herons and method of 
 feeding Heron -hawking Heron's survival remarkable Difficult 
 to shoot Heron's comb-like toe and its uses Appearance and 
 habits of the Bittern Its food American Bitterns Differences 
 between the Bittern and Heron The draining of the marshes- 
 Snipe and "Woodcock The wading birds Their food and migra- 
 tionsPlumage of Snipe Its "drumming" Nest and eggs- 
 Feeding of Snipe Mr. Morley's Chameleon Appearance and 
 flight of the Lapwing " Green Plover" "Plovers' eggs" 
 Lapwings and Moles A cunning parent Vanity of the males 
 
 131 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 BIRDS OF THE RIVER AND LAKE 
 
 Difference in rivers Requirements of the birds Habita and ap- 
 pearance of the Dipper The Mountains of California The 
 The Dipper and Trout-fly Trout and Pike in Hampshire 
 Probable food of the Dipper Alleged singing under water Feet 
 of the Wagtail Confusion between resident and migrant Wag- 
 tails Appearance and voice of the pied Wagtail Its food 
 Nest and eggs Fables about the Kingfisher Its real nesting 
 habits Its food Kingfishers and Goldfish at Bath Kingfishers 
 in Winter Toes of the Coot Mode of feeding Coots on the 
 Fleet pond Curious habit of the Grebe Various explanations 
 of this Its appearance and food Nest and eggs . 'j - . 140 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 BIRDS OF THE SHORE 
 
 Shore-birds and Sea-fowl proper Gulls and Terns Size and 
 appearance of the Herring-Gull and Common Tern Their fodd 
 Egg-eaters Gulls at Scoulton Mere Gulls and Terns as divers 
 Nest and eggs The Skua Differences between the Cormorant 
 and Gannet Gannet-fishing Cruel method of killing the Gannet 
 "Solan Goose" Nesting-places of Gannets in the British 
 Islands Trained Cormorants Nesting habits of the Storm- 
 Petrel Its food and appearance Sea-sick Petrels The egg of 
 the Guillemot Size, shape, and colouring Barnacles Food and 
 nest of the Diver Sea-Eagle and Osprey Differences between 
 Sea-Eagle and Golden Eagle Fish eaten by the Sea-Eagle Nest 
 and eggs Appearance of the Osprey Ospreys fishing Amateur 
 
CONTENTS xiii 
 
 PAQK 
 
 photography Ospreys and small birds Nest and eggs Colour 
 of the Turnstone Its food Measurements British bird types 
 Whistling Swan and Mute Swan Nesting of Swans Food of 
 Swans and Ducks Swans on the Thames Shooting Swans 
 Wild Duck and tame Duck Nest and eggs British Ducks . 147 
 
 TYPES OF BRITISH REPTILES 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE COMMON LIZARD, THE SLOW-WORM, THE ADDER AND 
 THE RINGED SNAKE 
 
 Irish reptiles Harmlessness of some reptiles A strange cabin- 
 companion Appearance and food of the Common Lizard Eggs 
 and young of Lizards Sloughing of Lizards Difference between 
 the Slow-worm and Snakes Food of some reptiles Tongue of 
 Slow- worm and Snakes Tail of the Slow-worm Its disposition 
 Its young Adders swallowing their young Are Adders dan- 
 gerous ? Killing Snakes at sight Suggested compromise Snakes 
 do not "sting" They are venomous or not venomous Their 
 tongue and its uses Food of the Adder Its distribution in 
 Great Britain Food and appearance of the Ringed-Snake 
 Curious fact about its eggs . . . . 161 
 
 TYPES OF BRITISH AMPHIBIANS 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 THE FROG, THE TOAD AND THE GREAT WARTY NEWT 
 
 Differences between amphibians and reptiles Early changes of 
 amphibians Their eggs and modes of depositing them The 
 development of the Tadpole Breathing of Frogs Their eye and 
 colour Legs and feet Appearance of the Toad Its behaviour 
 when disturbed Fables about Toads Feeding captive Toads 
 Wedding Garments of Newts Appearance and food of the Great 
 Warty Newt . . . . . . ^ . 171 
 
 TYPES OF BRITISH FISHES 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 THE SALMON AND THE TROUT 
 
 Definition of fishes Climbing fishes and lung-breathing fishes 
 Scaleless fishes Fishes that do not spawn Importance of the 
 
xir CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Salmon Close-times and licences Genera and species Feeding 
 in fresh water A sea-fish or river-fish ? Life-history Salmon 
 in the Avon and Stour Stour Pike Food of Salmon Rapid 
 digestion Curious habit when hooked What is " feeding " ? 
 " Natural food " Appearance of the Salmon Its hooked jaw and 
 its uses Salmon-leaping Different names Lateral line Trout 
 and May-fly Thames Trout Food of coarse fish . . .179 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 THE EEL AND THE CONGER 
 
 Recognised order of animal types Absence of such arrangement in 
 this book Differences between Eels and Congers Males and 
 females Spawning of Eels and Congers Researches of Professor 
 Grassi Salmon and Eel contrasted The Eel a sea-fish Proofs 
 of this Notion that Eels and Congers die after spawning The 
 early stage of the Eel Old beliefs Overland journeys Indiffer- 
 ence to temperature Eels in ice-blocks Differences between 
 habits of Eels and Congers The habits they have in common . 187 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 THE HALIBUT AND THE SOLE 
 
 Peculiarities of Flatfish Reasons for their habits and form Their 
 eyes Deformities Halibut An Australian rival Colour pro- 
 tectionFables of the Halibut Its teeth and food Features of 
 the Sole Its food and mode of feeding Spawning of Flatfish 
 Of Flounders Other species . . . . . 194 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 THE PILCHARD AND THE DORY 
 
 Reasons for selecting the Pilchard How to distinguish it from the 
 Sprat and Herring Migrations of the Herring family Pilchards 
 in Cornwall Anight on a Pilchard-boat "Whitebait" Eggs 
 of Pilchards and Herrings Family connection of the John Dory 
 Meaning of the name Dory Stalking its prey Naples 
 Aquarium Our piers as fish observatories Peculiar mouth of 
 the Dory Its hard skin Maximum size . ... 200 
 
CONTENTS xv 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 THE BASS AND THE PIKE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Important families necessarily omitted The River-Perch Bass and 
 Perch divorced by South Kensington Sporting fish Appearance 
 of Bass Preserving specimen fish out of condition Small Bass 
 in our Harbours Their favourite quarters in these islands 
 Difficulties of catching large Bass Bass in the lobsters-pots 
 Feeding at the surface Fly-fishing and "coarse "fish Bass at 
 Rome and Arundel Migrations of Bass Danger of losing a fish 
 Caution in handling Bass The solitary and villainous Pike 
 Great size Maximum "records" "Jack" and "Pike" Pug- 
 nacious character Pike and Tench Appearance of Pike Great 
 strength of jaw Distribution in the British Islands . .206 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 THE BLUE SHARK AND THE STING-RAY 
 
 Sub-classes of fishes Sharks found in all open seas Not merely 
 tropical Sharks in Cornwall Popular disbelief in this British 
 species Size and appearance of the Blue Shark Characters of 
 Sharks The air-bladder in fishes Its nature and uses Shark 
 skin Eyelid and spiracles Teeth of Sharks The tail Smell of 
 Sharks The Rays, eagles of the sea Spine of the Sting-Ray 
 Its weight and colour Electric force in Rays Food of the Sting- 
 RayEggs of Sharks and Raya . . . 213 
 
 TYPES OF BRITISH CRUSTACEANS, SPIDERS AND 
 INSECTS 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE LOBSTER, THE HERMIT-CRAB, THE PRAWN, AND 
 THE BARNACLE 
 
 Importance of the invertebrates Not merely one sub-kingdom, 
 but several Their hard parts and where carried Land and 
 water crustaceans Their breathing The eyes of the Lobster 
 Early changes Love of fighting Lulworth Lobsters Renewal 
 of shell Lobsters' eggs Our wasteful cooking Home of the 
 Hermit-Crab, and its method of taking apartments Its com- 
 panions Mutual Benefit Societies Food of the Hermit 
 Appearance and habits of the Prawn Its breathing Its antennae 
 Its saw Remarkable life-history of the Barnacle Its partner- 
 ships Fables Centipedes . '-'-" / :, - '"= . 225 
 
xvi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 THE WOLF-SPIDER, THE WATER-SPIDER AND THE GARDEN-SPIDER 
 
 MM 
 
 Prejudices against Spiders Difference between Spiders and insects 
 Different groups of Spiders Habits of the Wolf-Spiders The 
 Jumping Spiders as parents Nest of the Water-Spider Spider- 
 WebsHow a web is spun . fc . . . 236 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 THE BEE, THE MOTH, THE BURYING-BEETLE AND THE DRAGON-FLY 
 
 A numerous family The disadvantages of the Mosquito, Tse-tse 
 Fly and White Ant Favoured England Definition of the word 
 " Insect "Distinguishing features of Bees, Wasps, and Ants 
 The Mason and Humble Bees The Red Ant a slave-trader 
 War and Burial Scale- Winged Moths and Butterflies Peacock 
 Butterfly Tiger Moth and "Woolly Bear "Diptera Gnat and 
 Daddy-long-legs Cokoptera The Grave-digger, Ladybird, Glow- 
 worm and Dytiscus Parental instinct of the Earwig Water- 
 BoatmanLocusts in Morocco " Blackbeetles " Great age of 
 the race Caddis-fly and May-fly Peculiarities of the Dragon- 
 Fly Its pupa 'v . . ' .* , . 241 
 
 TYPES OF BRITISH MOLLUSCS 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 THE OYSTER, THE LIMPET AND THE SQUID 
 
 The feet and movements of molluscs Life of Oysters The Oyster's 
 "beard" Pearls and "Mother-of-Pearl" Shells Classes of 
 molluscs Adhesive power of the Limpet Different explanations 
 of this Hard parts of the Squid and Cuttle Catching Squid- 
 Feeding and spawning of the cephalopods . . . 263 
 
 TYPES OF BRITISH ECHINODERMS AND WORMS 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 THE STARFISH, THE LUGWORM AND THE ROCK-LEECH 
 
 The sea the cradle of life The "arms" of the Starfish Its mode 
 of crawling Its food Worms The longest British animal 
 Burrowing of Lugworms Muscular strength of the Rock-Leech 
 Breeding of Leeches Parasites . ... 273 
 
CONTENTS xvii 
 
 TYPES OF BRITISH JELLY-FISHES, SEA-ANEMONES 
 AND SPONGES 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 THE JELLY-FISH, THE ANEMONE AND THE SPONGE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Jelly-Fish and their ways "Stinging" Swimming and feeding of 
 Jelly-Fish Jelly-Fish as transports Their eggs and young The 
 watery Anemone Anemones as bait Uses of their tentacles 
 Feeding Anemones by hand Exact nature of Sponges British 
 Sponges From highest to lowest . ... 279 
 
 INDEX . , - 285 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE WILD CAT . . . . . 13 
 
 THE BADGER . . . . 25 
 
 THE OTTER . . . . 31 
 
 SUMMER COAT OF STOAT . 33 
 
 THE SQUIRREL . . . ... 49 
 
 HEAD OF HARE HEAD OF RABBIT . ... ,.. . . 57 
 
 HEADS OF OUR THREE DEER . . ... 59 
 
 THE GREAT TITMOUSE . . . . 96 
 
 THE RED-BACKED SHRIKE . . ... 99 
 
 THE KESTREL . . 108 
 
 THE LONG-EARED OWL . . .... 124 
 
 THE NIGHTJAR . . . . . . 130 
 
 HERON AND NEST . . 132 
 
 TH-E KINGFISHER . . . . . 144 
 
 SAND LIZARD . . ... 161 
 
 THE ADDER . . . . ... 167 
 
 THE NEWT . . .... 175 
 
 THE CONGER . . . ... 193 
 
 THE HALIBUT . . . ... . . 199 
 
 THE DORY . . . . * *' .205 
 
 THE BASS . ." . , . . 207 
 
 THE LOBSTER . . * ' 227 
 
xx LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE BARNACLE . ... . 
 
 THE LARGE WEB-SPIDER . . 
 
 THE BEE IN THREE STAGES 
 
 PEACOCK BUTTERFLY, LARVA, AND CHRYSALIS . 
 
 TIGER MOTH, "WOOLLY BEAR," AND CHRYSALIS . 
 
 COCKROACH AND LARVA . . * 
 
 DRAGON-FLY AND LARVA % -. . 
 
 CUTTLE FISH AND SQUID . 
 
 THE "MARIGOLD" JELLY-FISH , 
 
 PAOB 
 
 235 
 236 
 241 
 248 
 249 
 256 
 259 
 269 
 284 
 
 FULL-PAGE PLATES 
 
 THE Fox 
 
 THE SEAL 
 
 JACKDAWS ON A HOUSETOP 
 
 WOODPIGEONS AND NEST 
 
 GROUSE 
 
 THE WHITE-TAILED EAGLE 
 
 SALMON ANGLING , 
 
 THE BLUE SHARK 
 
 , Frontispiece 
 
 . To face page 37 
 
 77 
 
 . 'i HO 
 
 V ; 125 
 
 V ; 158 
 
 179 
 
 213 
 
TYPES 
 
 OF 
 
 BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Scope of the book Types Vertebrates and Invertebrates Classes 
 Orders Family Genus Species Use of Latin names Definition 
 of mammals, birds, fishes, etc. Meaning of Fauna Fauna of the 
 British Isles Their geographical position Climatic and other changes 
 Origin of islands Our neglect of many useful animals Silence of 
 British mammals and birds Value of open-air observation and use 
 of books. 
 
 THE theme of the following chapters is that portion of 
 the animal kingdom now found, at one time or another 
 01 the year, in or around the British Islands; and, like 
 the conjurer who at the commencement of his tricks 
 forswears mystery, I want, in a very few words, to explain 
 one or two terms that must unavoidably be used in this 
 book with meanings somewhat different from those in 
 everyday employment. 
 
 The animal kingdom, then, is our subject, and not 
 plants or stones. Both of these come within the field 
 of natural history in its widest sense; but botany deals 
 with the first, and geology and mineralogy with the 
 
2 '* ''' TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 second. Moreover, I shall concern myself in this volume 
 only with our wild animals ; and sheep, poultry, parrots, 
 and all the other creatures introduced by man will not 
 be discussed. Even our " wild " cattle, descended though 
 they may be from the old aurochs and still preserved in 
 a practically wild state in many parks, are thus omitted ; 
 and I would, on similar lines, have left out the fallow 
 deer, but very interesting differences must be noted be- 
 tween it and its fellows. 
 
 Now, all animals, you will admit, are not alike. Take, 
 for instance, the fox and the rabbit, the eagle and the 
 swan, the adder and lizard, the frog and newt, the 
 salmon and shark, the butterfly and the beetle. 
 
 Here, then, we have a dozen types of animals. By 
 types I mean those that represent many others with 
 which they have a good deal in common. All the above- 
 named have one thing in common, and that is life. In 
 fact, they are all animals. (You will sometimes see in 
 books the word " animals " used as if it meant four-footed 
 animals only, but this is wrong.) And if we take away 
 the last two, all the rest have another feature in common, 
 and that is a backbone. They are, therefore, called 
 vertebrates, and form a sub-kingdom, or a sub-division of 
 the entire animal kingdom. The last two have no back- 
 bone, and are called invertebrates, forming a group of 
 sub-kingdoms. Now let us go a step further. The first 
 two, the fox and hare, were both nourished in their 
 early days on milk; the rest were not. The fox and 
 hare, then, are mammals. The next two, the eagle and 
 swan, have feathers ; none of the others have such a 
 covering. The eagle and swan, then, are birds. Mammals 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 and birds each form a class. Other classes are the 
 reptiles, represented above by the adder 'and lizard ; the 
 amphibians, represented by the frog and newt ; the fishes, 
 represented by the salmon and shark ; and the insects, re- 
 presented by the butterfly and beetle. To these I might 
 add the molluscs, such as oysters and snails ; crustaceans, 
 as crabs and shrimps, and many other sub-kingdoms of 
 invertebrate animals. 
 
 Give me your patience a little longer, and I will have 
 done with these tiresome introductory notes. 
 
 There are, as you know, very different types of mam- 
 mals. The fox and hare are about as different as two 
 animals of the same class could be : the former is a 
 dog-like creature, that feeds on flesh; the latter is a 
 timid vegetarian. They belong to different orders: the 
 fox is one of the Carnivora (or flesh-eaters), and the 
 hare belongs to the Eodentia (or gnawers). Such orders 
 are not always named according to their food or mode 
 of feeding; but we also have the Insectivora (or insect- 
 eaters), as the hedgehog and mole, and the Euminantia 
 (or ruminants), as the deer. 
 
 I have just called the fox a "dog-like" animal, and, 
 indeed, he belongs to the dog family. The lion, which 
 is another of the carnivorous order, belongs to the cat 
 family. Now, the Cape hunting-dog, a wild dog found in 
 South Africa, also belongs to the dog family, and is yet 
 quite distinct from the true dogs, such as the fox, wolf 
 and jackal. This Cape dog is, therefore, said to belong to 
 another genus. Our fox belongs to what is known as the 
 typical genus of dogs, called by the Latin Canis, which 
 means dog, as of course you know. The Cape dog is given 
 
4 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 the name of Lycaon, the meaning of which need not 
 trouble you. But the fox and wolf, although of the genus 
 Canis, are obviously different animals. They are, there- 
 fore, said to be of different species, the fox being called 
 Canis vulpes (vulpes = iox in Latin), and the wolf Canis 
 lupus (lupus = wolf in Latin). You must not think that 
 the naming of all genera and species is to be done as 
 easily as this, by merely putting dog-fox, dog-wolf, etc., 
 into Latin, for by far the greater number of the animals 
 we now know were not known to the Romans at all, and 
 endless new words Latin, indeed, if you like, but not 
 always the Latin of your school-texts have had to be 
 coined to meet the difficulty. 
 
 It may seem to you making a needless bother to use 
 Latin at all, but you must bear in mind that Latin is 
 taught in all civilised countries, and is, therefore, most 
 convenient when two men of different races, neither 
 knowing the other's language, wish to name any animal. 
 Thus badger, Uaireau and Dachs may be excellent 
 English, French and German respectively, but call the 
 gentleman Meles taxus, and scientific men of every 
 nationality will know what you are driving at. It is 
 for similar reasons of convenience that men have in- 
 vented species. Nature knows no such distinction as 
 species, and no two professors are as a rule agreed as 
 to what differences are sufficient to make a distinct 
 or, as they call it, a valid species. It is the same 
 with genera. Nature laughs at these arbitrary limits, 
 and so, in such good company and for the moment, may 
 you and I. 
 
 At any rate, and at some risk of making you throw 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 down my book unread, I have, I think, given you some 
 idea of the meaning of type, class, order, family, genus, 
 and species. You will in future know that mammals are 
 vertebrate animals that are nourished in their early days 
 on milk. This separates them from all other animals, and, 
 whether they have four legs, like the fox, or none, like 
 the whale, they are, if they fulfil that condition, always 
 mammals. Birds you will recognise as the class that has 
 feathers. Reptiles and fishes are two classes of scaly 
 animals, both cold-blooded, the former residing on land, 
 the latter in the water. Between them comes a fifth 
 class, without scales, and living equally well either on 
 land or in the water, and therefore known, from this 
 dual life, as amphibians. (If you learn Greek, you know 
 the meaning of this; and if not, I am sure I am not 
 going to cram you with a lot of derivations.) 
 
 These five classes make up the vertebrates, at any 
 rate as far as you need trouble to remember, and are 
 dealt with in the first portion of the book. Of the 
 invertebrates I will say more hereafter. 
 
 Let us now come from the general to the particular, 
 from the animals of the earth to those of the British 
 Islands. The animals of any country or district are 
 collectively known as its fauna (fauna is a plural word, 
 yet we use it as a singular, on the same principle, 
 perhaps, as "news" and some other words), and the fauna 
 of these islands is very varied and very interesting. 
 
 Will you for a moment get out your atlas and look at 
 the Mercator's projection of the world? You will then 
 see how central these islands are between Africa and the 
 Arctic circle, or between Europe and America. This 
 
6 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 position is particularly convenient to wandering birds, 
 and rather more than four hundred from all parts have 
 been known to visit these islands or actually reside in 
 them. Ducks and geese come south to our mild winter 
 climate when the cruel north starves them out. Swifts 
 and swallows shun overheated Africa in summer, and rear 
 their families in cool glades where there is plenty of 
 insect food, and where moisture never fails. American 
 birds, blown over the ocean, seek our hospitality (and 
 are usually shot), and wonderful flocks of sand-grouse 
 make these isles their last resting-place on their western 
 wanderings from Russian steppes. Thus it is that our 
 comparatively few resident birds are nearly quadrupled 
 from all parts by these winter visitors and summer 
 visitors and stragglers of all seasons. 
 
 Our mammals are, with the exception of flying bats 
 and swimming whales, more restricted. They cannot 
 cross the seas that surround us. Yet, even leaving aside 
 these two classes and the equally venturesome seals, we 
 have some thirty four-footed animals of great variety 
 and interest. (At the same time our bats, seals and 
 whale kind make up another forty, so the balance is 
 decidedly in favour of the possible visitors.) The seals 
 and whales undoubtedly come and go, but most of our 
 bats are, however they got here in the first instance, now 
 strictly resident. 
 
 Our reptiles and amphibians are a very poor lot, but in 
 fishes, particularly in sea-fish, we can compare favourably 
 with most other countries. The great proportion of coast- 
 line, which, natural to all islands, is increased in ours by 
 the very indented and broken character of the west coast, 
 
INTKODUCTION 7 
 
 consequent on the mighty strength of the Atlantic (as 
 contrasted with the east coast, that has to bear the 
 anger of only narrow seas), would in itself account for 
 this wealth of sea -fish. Any ordnance -map, too, will 
 show those of you who have not travelled much within 
 these islands how great a variety of country they em- 
 brace, each kind having its own distinctive fauna: the 
 herons and frogs in the marshes, the grouse and night- 
 jars on the moors, the woodpeckers and squirrels in 
 the woods, even the mice and sparrows in the cities. 
 
 Do not imagine that our beasts and birds are what they 
 always were, or what they always will be. Great changes 
 are ever at work, though we puny and short-lived creatures 
 do not always perceive their majestic progress and fulfil- 
 ment. There were boars and bears and wolves in these 
 islands within the last thousand years; and they would be 
 here still if men had not exterminated them. In almost 
 all neighbouring Continental countries they still flourish, 
 for it is hard to exterminate wild animals on a continent, 
 where it is comparatively easy on a sea-girt island. At 
 any rate, you have a definite number to slay in the latter, 
 and no more can take the place of the dead. In Con- 
 tinental countries, things are different, and fresh intruders 
 can always sally over the frontier like an invading 
 army. Moreover, the lofty and all but inaccessible moun- 
 tain ranges of those lands lend a protection, to such at 
 any rate as can bear the cold of great altitudes, that they 
 cannot get in Great Britain. So the wolf and bear and 
 boar have gone. This was the work of man. The climate 
 remains as suitable for them as ever it was, and man, who 
 expelled them, could any day recall them. But nature 
 
8 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 also has had a hand in the shuffling of the cards. In 
 very early times, about which we need not trouble till 
 I get one of my friends to write you a companion volume 
 on geology and palaeontology, this country had mighty 
 elephants and noble elks. At one age, the climate of our 
 islands was fiercer than that of an African summer; at 
 another, it was more cruelly cold than a Siberian winter. 
 Nowadays, things have settled down ; and, with the fiercer 
 animals killed off by man and the larger wiped out by 
 nature, we have nothing left us that is larger than the red 
 deer, nothing fiercer than the wild cat, nothing perhaps 
 more powerful than the badger. A child may walk in 
 safety in our densest forests, and its most dangerous 
 encounter will perchance be with a wasp, for our only 
 venomous snake is always particularly anxious to keep 
 out of the way. Our fishes alone have undergone less 
 change, at any rate within what are known as historic 
 times, than any other class of animals. 
 
 The particular interest that underlies the study of our 
 fauna is inseparable from that of any island. In the 
 next chapter I shall have to say something of one aspect 
 of the origin of islands and its bearing on the relations 
 between the animals of the islands and those of the 
 neighbouring mainland. The greatest interest of all, of 
 course, attaches to the mammals of isolated islands that 
 lie far out in the ocean. To these our own islands do not 
 belong, since Great Britain at any rate was at no very 
 remote date (remote, I mean, as regards all time, not that 
 moment of it only which we, in our small, proud way, call 
 "history") part and parcel of the continent of Europe. 
 To the close resemblance between our mammals and those 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 of the Continent, as well as to the more remarkable 
 differences between the fauna of Great Britain and 
 Ireland, I shall allude later. 
 
 One fact must, I think, strike you in connection with 
 our animals, and that is the little use we make of them. 
 Of our indigenous wild quadrupeds, only four, the hare 
 and rabbit and red and roe deer, are eaten; the badger 
 furnishes hair for shaving-brushes, and the mole fur for 
 waistcoats. Of our hundreds of birds, only a few ducks 
 and geese, snipe and woodcock, are, in addition to the 
 highly preserved game-birds, eaten. None of our reptiles 
 or amphibians have any commercial value whatever, and 
 only the fishes do we use in fair proportion. Yet the 
 cooking of coarse fish we must learn from the Germans, 
 and nine out of ten of even our sea-fish are neglected. 
 
 Our mammals are a silent lot. Only in the Australian 
 bush have I experienced the same absence of sound. Our 
 deer, it is true, bark at some seasons of the year ; our 
 otters can both bark and whistle; our bats utter shrill 
 notes of very high pitch ; our hedgehogs can grunt ; and 
 even some of our mice can sing after a fashion. But, on 
 the whole, beside the howling jackals, roaring lions and 
 chattering monkeys of hotter lands, they are silent in- 
 deed. Our birds, too, though some of their number can 
 sing with a sweetness unrivalled in any land I know, 
 include none of the noisy babblers of the East, which 
 torture the sleepy man ere dawn and keep him awake 
 far into the night. 
 
 Above all, study your beasts and birds and fishes in the 
 open air. You will not perhaps always be able to set 
 
10 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 eyes on the scarcer among them and for these you may 
 consult books but there is more to be learnt of the 
 sparrow and starling in half an hour's watching than of 
 the golden eagle and bustard in a week of the library. 
 A pair of powerful field-glasses will, with proper use, 
 unlock more of nature's secrets in a week than all the 
 writers of all the books can tell you in a month. The 
 use of the latter is simply to whet your appetite for the 
 beauties of outdoor life, and perhaps to explain such 
 things as you cannot grasp at first hand. 
 
TYPES OF BRITISH QUADRUPEDS 
 AND WHALES 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 THE WILD OAT AND THE FOX 
 
 Cats and Dogs Their character in captivity Their hatred of each other 
 Dogs in the Deluge Cats and Dogs at the Zoological Gardens 
 Sport and preservation The Fox preserved, the Wild Cat shot 
 Modern range of the Wild Cat in these islands Mammals absent 
 from Ireland St. Patrick and Irish Snakes The work of the sea 
 House Cats run wild Fox hunting Continental sport Food of 
 Foxes Hedgehogs as a delicacy New method of unfolding Hedge- 
 hogs Appearance of the Fox Its conspicuous tail Its " earth " and 
 cubs Supposed habit of feigning death. 
 
 CATS and dogs play an important part in our indoor and 
 outdoor life. The cat, as you know, is an undemonstrative 
 animal, except when the cat's-meat-man is crying at the 
 front gate, and she 
 sulks before the fire 
 or on the rug most 
 of the day, getting 
 sleek on food she never 
 caught for herself, and 
 slaying an occasional 
 mouse, only for appear- 
 ance' sake, or by way 
 of taking exercise. 
 Perhaps she knows 
 
 that her original pur- THE WILD CAT< 
 
 pose in our dwellings 
 
 is as a check on the mice, though rarely enough does the 
 
 13 
 
14 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 pampered creature exert herself to perform what is ex- 
 pected of her. For some reason or other, the cat is the 
 pet of the ladies of the house, and finds little favour with 
 the men. You may perhaps have heard of the lecturer 
 (though I never yet met anyone who attended that 
 particular lecture) who commenced a logical discourse 
 on cats with the remark, doubtless in allusion to some 
 much-spoilt pet in the family circle, "All cats are animals; 
 some cats are beasts!" 
 
 The dog is quite a different animal. Noisy and fond of 
 company, he goes flying to the door at every ring, eager 
 to lick his master's hand, or to bury his teeth in the 
 stranger's calf. The dog is, in short, a very affectionate 
 creature. To the general rule of ladies favouring cats 
 and men preferring dogs there are, of course, numerous 
 exceptions ; and I know many ladies who infinitely prefer 
 dogs, while one man of my acquaintance has, or had, a 
 cat that followed him everywhere, and even slept on his 
 bed at night. He is a distinguished musical critic (critics 
 are people who write about things they cannot do them- 
 selves), and his tastes in this direction may account for his 
 love of cats. The enmity that exists between cats and dogs 
 is well known; and the expression "cat-and-dog life," more 
 particularly as applied to married ladies and gentlemen 
 who greet each other with sharp words and brickbats, 
 has passed into everyday use. This enmity is perfectly 
 wonderful, and there is nothing to explain it. So deeply 
 implanted is it that I have seen numbers of cats arch 
 their backs at first sight of a stuffed poodle that a lady 
 of my acquaintance has for years carried with her from 
 place to place whenever she changes her abode. In nature, 
 there is no such hatred between the two great families of 
 which our cat and dog are the types. There, the cats 
 
THE WILD CAT 15 
 
 are the larger and fiercer ; and the dogs can only attack 
 them in numbers, and even then come off badly. More 
 usually the wolves, jackals and other wild dogs sneak 
 after the great cats, the lions, tigers and leopards, at 
 a respectful distance, and content themselves with the 
 remains of the monarch's meal when he has departed 
 satisfied and sleepy after the feast. 
 
 Now, cats and dogs were not always tame about men's 
 dwellings as they are now. They had to be reclaimed 
 very gradually from their wild fellows, and they have 
 undergone during the taming process much alteration 
 in both habits and appearance. Only this last Christmas 
 I was greatly amused at finding among the refugees in 
 a magnificent toy Noah's ark a perfect little beagle, 
 collar and all. I fear the patriarch never held out his 
 helping hand to any dog resembling a beagle. The 
 beagle, like all our other dogs, is the result of many 
 generations of selection for certain qualities of body 
 and instinct that make it useful in hunting; and our 
 only dog that has perhaps altered little in appearance 
 from the fox and wolf is the pure collie. Even here 
 the differences, though less marked, are unmistakable 
 on close comparison. The wonder is rather that, more 
 particularly in their habits, our cat and dog should still 
 so closely resemble their wild brethren. If you are per- 
 mitted for a moment strictly in the quest of knowledge, 
 mind to tease the house cat, you will find her tail go 
 slowly swinging ; and if you fondle the dog, always sup- 
 posing there is one handy, or, better still, win his thanks 
 with a biscuit, there will be the same tail- wagging, only 
 brisker. The tail then serves the useful purpose of 
 showing annoyance in the cat and the reverse in the 
 dog. So much for the emotions of tame creatures. Now 
 
16 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 go, if you can, to the Zoological Gardens, and seek out the 
 lion-house. By clapping your hands before one of the 
 lions you may, if the lazy captive is not teo disdainful, 
 see him move his tail in anger, just like his small cousin, 
 the cat. Now go round to the back of the lion-house, 
 and find a row of cages containing wild dogs, dingoes, 
 wolves and the rest. If you can coax one of these close 
 enough to the bars to comb its hide gently with the point 
 of your stick, you will observe the same outward sign of 
 pleasure as in the dog at home. You have thus, by this 
 simple comparison, established to your own satisfaction 
 the very interesting fact that centuries of artificial life 
 have failed to alter in both cat and dog the simplest way 
 of expressing their feelings. This is practical natural 
 history. 
 
 There were wolves in Ireland as late as in the eighteenth 
 century, but our islands have to-day only one representa- 
 tive of each family : the Wild Cat and the Fox. Each is 
 admirably typical of its kind. The Wild Cat is only a cat 
 pure and simple, a cat twice as large and twenty times as 
 savage as any you ever handled; the Fox, for all his 
 short legs and bushy tail, is only an extra fleet and 
 cunning collie dog. For the rest, they are the creatures 
 of circumstance. Our own cat's distrust of man becomes 
 absolute hatred in its persecuted relative; and the dog's 
 love of human society is naturally lacking in a wild 
 creature to which human society also means bloodthirsty 
 hounds and short shrift if caught. The wild cat is very 
 scarce in Great Britain, and it never at any time occurred 
 in Ireland; the fox, on the other hand, is plentiful in 
 every county of both islands that suits its mode of life 
 and provides it with plenty of food. If I assure you 
 that the reason for this difference in the numbers of the 
 
THE WILD CAT 17 
 
 two animals lies in the fact that sportsmen delight in 
 killing foxes, whereas they would not touch a wild cat, 
 you would think I had made a mistake. But it is so. 
 When men find that the death of an animal provides 
 them with sport, whether of the quick-footed fox that 
 gives their horses a gallop, or of the grouse that tests 
 their skill with the gun, they take great pains to protect 
 it thoroughly during half the year, that there may be 
 more to kill during the other half. This may appear to 
 you very doubtful kindness, but it is certainly better, 
 even from the animal's point of view, than wasteful 
 slaughter all the year round. It is this desire to protect 
 at one season what we kill at another that has given 
 us the Game Laws. By an unwritten code the fox has 
 benefited, but not the wild cat. The latter, indeed, is 
 a direct misdemeanant under the Game Laws, for few 
 greater poachers of game go on four feet. Whenever 
 a fox is killed in this country by any means other 
 than fair hunting, even if a gamekeeper shoots it in 
 the act of eating his pheasants, there is a loud out- 
 cry; and, as there happen to be a good many hunting 
 squires in Parliament, the fox gets all the protection 
 so game an animal deserves. But the wild cat may 
 be trapped or poisoned without any fuss. The aver- 
 sion shown by sportsmen from stalking the wild cat is 
 curious when you come to think how readily they go 
 hundreds of miles after its larger relations, the lion and 
 tiger. The result of this aversion that here concerns us 
 most is the animal's great scarcity in this island. Only 
 one or two well-wooded mountainous districts in Wales 
 and Scotland can nowadays be seriously regarded as the 
 haunts of the British wild cat. Isolated examples may 
 now and again put in an appearance in Cumberland or 
 o 
 
18 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 further south, but there is too much confusion between 
 the genuine article and large house cats that have run 
 wild to allow of our accepting these without the most 
 careful inquiry. The only genuine wild cat I ever saw, 
 out of the Zoo and Museum, was at a village inn in 
 Spain, in the grounds of which the marauder had been 
 shot a couple of days before my arrival. 
 
 I have already mentioned the absence of the wild cat 
 from Ireland, and I may as well take this suitable oppor- 
 tunity of calling your attention to the large number of 
 English animals that are, curiously enough, not found in 
 the neighbouring island. You may perhaps have heard 
 the story of St. Patrick banishing snakes from Ireland. 
 Well, not only whether thanks to St. Patrick or not, I 
 cannot tell has the country no snakes, but it also has no 
 voles, no polecat, no weasel, no roedeer, no mole and but 
 one of our three shrews. Learned folks have offered 
 several more or less reasonable explanations of this re- 
 markable difference in the list of wild creatures on either 
 side of the sixty miles of blue marked in our atlas as 
 the Irish Sea, but these belong to the domain of geology, 
 the history of this old earth in the days when it was a 
 younger planet, about which I shall try and secure a 
 companion volume for you. For the moment I must ask 
 you to take it for granted that where there is now dry 
 land there was in some places, ages and ages ago, deep 
 sea ; and, on the other hand, where the fishing fleets now 
 drift at the head of their nets, cattle once roamed on 
 grassy plains. Examples of both cases, of the retiring 
 and of the encroachment of the sea, occur freely, as neai 
 Eye and Cromer, on our own shores. This behaviour 
 on the part of the sea is of great interest and importance 
 when we come to study the origin of islands, and to 
 
THE WILD CAT 19 
 
 compare their indigenous (indigenous being in this case 
 the reverse of imported) animals with those of the nearest 
 mainland. Many islands our own is an example 
 started their career as islands through the sudden inrush 
 of the sea; and the very strong resemblance between 
 our fauna and that of France is only what, knowing 
 that the two countries were at one time joined, we 
 should expect. Anyhow, the absentees from the Irish 
 roll have astonished a good many folks who are, as a 
 rule, remarkably unwilling to own themselves puzzled; 
 and some of their attempts to prove the existence in 
 Ireland of genuine weasels (they get over the difficulty 
 by giving the name of " weasel " to our stoat) have, been 
 most amusing. 
 
 But all this, you will say, has nothing to do with the 
 wild cat. Let us, then, for a moment get back to our 
 wild cat, though there is little enough to tell yon of so 
 rare and retiring a Briton. If, as I said above, you picture 
 to yourself a monster cat, fully five feet long, greyish in 
 colour, with a massive, square head, ears pointed and 
 erect, and tail short and stumpy, Mr. Caldwell's spirited 
 little drawing should give you an admirable notion of this 
 unamiable creature. I have already mentioned the con- 
 fusion existing between cats that have run wild and the 
 genuine wild cat, that was never otherwise; and it is a 
 curious fact that these fugitive cats, which revert to their 
 savagery in the same spirit that often moves retired sea- 
 captains to take another spell afloat, are far worse as 
 robbers of game and poultry than the real wild cat, far 
 more dreaded by the keepers, and, what is worse, far 
 more plentiful all over the country. Those folks, then, 
 who in mistaken kindness, instead of drowning them at 
 birth, turn superfluous kittens adrift to shift for them- 
 
20 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 selves, bring great discomfort to neighbouring farmers 
 and gamekeepers, and leave the grown cats to come to a 
 painful end with strychnine or the gin-trap, instead of 
 mercifully killing them when, but a few hours old, they 
 scarcely know what pain is. 
 
 The home in which this wild cat brings up its half- 
 dozen kittens is situated either in some hollow tree, or in 
 the ground, the deserted earth of a fox or badger being in 
 this case probably used, for I doubt whether the cat is 
 much of a burrower. In the more rocky parts of its 
 limited range there are endless caves and holes suitable 
 for the purpose. 
 
 In the Fox, of which something has already been said, we 
 have a very different animal, and one that has been much 
 more closely studied by man. Thanks to the popularity 
 of fox-hunting, the range of the fox in these islands is not 
 likely to decrease, for, wherever scarcity of foxes threatens 
 the local hunt, men import live foxes from other districts. 
 These, though necessarily inferior from the sporting point 
 of view, owing to their ignorance of the surrounding 
 country, enable hounds to meet within sight of London's 
 smoke, and bring a day's sport within reach of many busy 
 men who could not get away to the more fashionable 
 hunting shires further out. It is greatly to be regretted 
 that this protection of foxes should so often lead to trouble 
 between hunting men and shooting men, but the differ- 
 ences of opinion are unavoidable. 
 
 It is not, however, merely as something to gallop after 
 that I want the fox to interest you. Its value in the 
 chase is due to great pace, possessed in a measure by all 
 wild dogs, and also to excessive cunning, the outcome, 
 no doubt, of ages of hunting. It is marvellous what 
 
THE FOX 21 
 
 a dance the little red gentleman can lead the hounds, 
 even when every earth (or hole) in the neighbourhood 
 is stopped up, and with what skill he can double along 
 hedges, cross water to spoil the scent and generally baffle 
 his murderous pursuers. In the highlands of Scotland, 
 where hunting would in many parts be impossible, foxes 
 are freely shot, and I have come across cases in Switzer- 
 land in which the authorities grant permits for shooting 
 them. In parts of France, again, the fox is dug out of 
 its burrow and gripped with specially constructed tongs. 
 These methods are matters of taste, and it would be 
 ridiculous to cavil at Frenchmen for getting their fox 
 with spade and tongs when we recollect that Englishmen 
 employ precisely similar means in capturing the in- 
 offensive badger. 
 
 The food of foxes consists mostly of rabbits and other 
 small animals, as well as of pheasants, partridges, domes- 
 tic poultry and other birds, both tame and wild, that may 
 fall in their way. When such dainty fare is not to be had, 
 the fox is satisfied with rats and mice and an occasional 
 hedgehog. The hedgehog cannot be regarded as a tempt- 
 ing mouthful when curled in a prickly ball, its favourite 
 attitude for receiving visitors; but the fox is said to 
 roll it to the nearest pond or river and dip it in the 
 water, the sudden shock of which is believed to make 
 it more amenable to its captor's teeth. Now, you must 
 believe as much or as little of this tale as you please. 
 I can only say that I never yet saw a fox doing this, nor 
 did I ever meet anyone who had. And I would suggest 
 that the natural histories should tell us what the fox does 
 with his hedgehog when there is no water within reach. 
 It is all very well to take for granted the existence of 
 water anywhere and everywhere in country districts, but 
 
22 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 most of us know many places, great haunts of both foxes 
 and hedgehogs, where, in dry weather, there is no water 
 for hundreds of yards. Nor is it by any means certain 
 that the contact of cold water would make any self- 
 respecting hedgehog uncurl in the very teeth of a fox. 
 The very next wild hedgehog I come across shall be 
 experimented on with a cold bath, and, if you get the 
 chance first, I hope you will let me know the result. 
 
 Even if you have not ridden to hounds, the extremities 
 of the fox, its head and " brush," must be familiar to you 
 as favourite trophies of the chase. (A trophy of the 
 chase I am asked to make myself as intelligible as 
 possible is some part of an animal, its hide or its horns 
 or something, which comes in useful when sportsmen 
 want to show off.) Mr. Caldwell gives you a fox as 
 frontispiece to this book, and you can distinguish the dog- 
 like muzzle, the pointed and upright ears and the bushy 
 tail. This tail is said to be of use in steering when the 
 animal is putting country between itself and its pursuers, 
 and some such purpose it must certainly serve, for it 
 assuredly did not grow that magnificent brush, all against 
 its own interest, for appearance. It is all to the animal's 
 advantage, whether as hunter or hunted, to escape notice; 
 and the very conspicuous tail would not be allowed to 
 endanger this without strong reason. Philosophers of 
 a bygone age would have argued, no doubt, that the tail 
 was purposely put there in order that man might better 
 see the fox, but we do not nowadays regard every wild 
 creature as something only for man to kill. In many 
 foxes we find the tail with a white tip, and in such 
 cases it might perhaps act as a signal to its family in 
 the dim twilight in which they venture forth to gambol 
 and feed. 
 
THE FOX 23 
 
 The colour of the fox may be any shade of reddish 
 brown, with some proportion of grey. In size and 
 general appearance it strongly resembles the collie, 
 though its shorter legs and lower stature separate it 
 from most domestic dogs, except the dachshound. It 
 has the pointed teeth and powerful wedge-shaped jaws 
 of its tribe. 
 
 Its litter of cubs, numbering three or four, is brought 
 up in the underground " earth," or burrow, in which these 
 animals spend half their lives, and the play of fox-cubs 
 is among the most fascinating sights vouchsafed to the 
 nature -lover lying in ambush behind a friendly hedge. 
 One alleged I say alleged, though it may very possibly 
 be fact habit of the fox must be mentioned before I end 
 this chapter, and that is the trick, when in a tight place, 
 of pretending to be dead. When I was at school, there 
 used to be an elegant expression " foxing " which was 
 applied to youths who, not including foolhardiness among 
 their faults, preferred, when knocked down with more 
 force than politeness, to remain on the ground, as if 
 stunned. In this wise, at the sacrifice of their little- 
 prized dignity, they saved their bones further disturbance. 
 Whether the fox also practises this immoral deception 
 I know not. Many hunting men and gamekeepers I have 
 questioned on the truth of this, but those who do not 
 disbelieve it outright receive it with extreme caution. 
 No one among them ever saw it. This is, of course, only 
 negative evidence (when you know nothing whatever 
 about a thing, you can give only negative evidence), and 
 the only suggestion I can offer by way of throwing light 
 on the subject is that the Australian dingo is widely 
 believed, by both the settlers and the blacks, to play the 
 same game, Indeed, I met one man in the colonies who 
 
24 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 actually had seen an instance. If the dingo feigns death, 
 it is more than probable, seeing that these tricks run in 
 families, that the fox does likewise. But I hesitate, on 
 the assurance of one solitary colonial whose very name I 
 have forgotten, to give the habit as more than rumour. 
 You may believe it or not. Personally I do not. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE BADGER, THE OTTER AND THE STOAT 
 
 Different ideas of "sport" Badger-digging The old style Cock-fighting 
 Great strength of the Badger Not a Bear Range in the British 
 Islands "Brock" The Postal Guide and animal distribution 
 Nocturnal habits Another admirer of Hedgehogs A poacher of 
 game Size and appearance Protective colouring Death of a tame 
 Badger Weight of Otters Trained Otters Asiatics and their rulers 
 Kindness to animals The Arab Feet of swimming mammals 
 Range of the Otter Otter and Trout Fond of Crayfish The Stoat 
 and its kind The protection of wild creatures Two sides to every 
 question Ermine, real and imitation Protective colouring Ptar- 
 migan Agility of the Stoat Poached eggs. 
 
 IN commenting upon the so-called "unsportsmanlike" 
 methods of killing foxes, I had occasion in the last chapter 
 to refer to the manner 
 in which some folks 
 persuade the retiring 
 Badger to come out of 
 its retreat with the aid 
 of spades, tongs and 
 bull-dogs or terriers. 
 Quite a number of 
 gentlemen look upon 
 this as very good fun, 
 and I believe the badger 
 is even thought to enter 
 
 into the spirit of the thing, and enjoy being excavated 
 and slung head downwards in a sack. This, having never 
 
 25 
 
 THE BADGEE. 
 
26 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 taken part in such fascinating sport, it is not for me to 
 question. Still the badger is a peaceful and interesting 
 creature, perhaps the most attractive and mysterious of 
 our surviving quadrupeds ; and I never read of its perse- 
 cution, even from the pleasing pen of Mr. A. E. Pease, 
 without a sensation of keen regret. Great strength added 
 to gentleness of disposition is always admirable, and the 
 badger is probably our strongest animal, while it is, when 
 unmolested, unquestionably among the quietest of our 
 woodland folk. Of the prodigious strength of its jaws 
 gentlemen used to learn in a practical manner in the days 
 when their chief delight was to set favourite bull-terriers 
 on a badger penned in a cask. This somewhat disgusting 
 pastime, appropriately known as "badger-baiting," was 
 favoured by all classes, from the palace to the slums, but 
 is now forbidden by law. In like manner, but only within 
 the present century, we have made cock-fighting unlawful 
 in this country. I ask you therefore whether, having 
 regard for its comparatively recent prevalence in our 
 midst, not to mention our continued shooting of trapped 
 pigeons, it can be considered the best of taste to wring 
 our hands over the depravity of our Belgian neighbours, 
 who still take a pleasure in the struggles of gamecocks. 
 Surely, until we have given up one or two little cruelties 
 that shelter unobtrusively under the cloak of sport, we 
 shall agree, you and I, to moderate our condemnation of 
 others. 
 
 If the badger is the strongest of our wild friends in 
 these islands, the otter, its first cousin, comes probably 
 next. Under certain conditions, say in the branches of 
 a tree, the wild cat might prove a match for either ; but 
 neither would offer combat in a tree, and, as a matter of 
 fact, the wild cat never comes in contact with them. In 
 
THE BADGER 27 
 
 the majority of cases, if it did, it would, I fancy, come off 
 very badly with the badger, and would not even hanker after 
 a second meeting with the otter. You may perhaps have 
 seen in books that the badger is the last surviving British 
 bear. I feel a great responsibility in asking you to dis- 
 believe anything you see in books, for the practice is a 
 growing one, and difficult to shake off, once we get too 
 critical; but I must ask you most emphatically to dis- 
 believe this. The badger has, according to the arrange- 
 ment explained in the Introduction, no connection with the 
 bears, but belongs to the large and important family that 
 embraces the otter, stoat and many other species. 
 
 The present range of the badger in these islands is 
 fairly wide; but a good deal of the afore - mentioned 
 hunting for sport, without sufficient popularity in this 
 respect to obtain for it the protection afforded to the 
 fox and hare, has done much to thin its ranks, and game- 
 keepers, who persecute it out of all proportion to its 
 occasional raids on their birds, have done still more. In 
 the secluded woods of Devon, and some other strong- 
 holds, in which its persecution is discountenanced, the 
 animal is said to be on the increase. At one time, how- 
 ever, it was plentiful in many parts from which it has 
 long vanished, evidence of which is furnished by the Postal 
 Guide wherever we find the prefix "Brock" (the old English 
 name for the badger), as in Brockdish, Brockenhurst, 
 Brockham, Brockhampton, Brocklesby, and even Brockley, 
 the last being within a mile or two of London. 
 
 Like most flesh-eaters, the badger is chiefly active after 
 sunset, and it leaves its burrow in the pale moonlight 
 to feed on hedgehogs, rats, reptiles, insects and fruits. 
 Above everything, perhaps, it likes a fat hedgehog, and 
 its tough jaws are probably capable of crunching it with- 
 
28 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 out fear of the prickly skin that keeps so many other 
 animals at a respectful distance. As striking evidence of 
 the badger's fondness for hedgehogs (in the same way that 
 cannibals are fond of the whites who get shipwrecked on 
 their islands), the spines of the latter have been found in 
 the badger's throat and inside, in the same way as the 
 quills of the porcupine are found in tigers. Another 
 favourite food with the badger is honey, and it will also 
 dine greedily on wasp-grubs. A few hares and partridges 
 may likewise find their way into its larder, but it atones 
 for such thefts by its great destruction of hedgehogs and 
 rats, both very troublesome creatures. 
 
 In length the badger is shorter than the fox by about 
 one-fourth, and a yard may be given as the average 
 length of one of medium size. So deceptive, however, 
 is the effect of the short, stout legs, that one scarcely 
 realises at first sight the massive strength of the creature, 
 which can burrow in the ground more rapidly than men 
 can dig, and can bite to such good purpose as to ensure 
 its teeth meeting in the flesh of its opponent. In colour- 
 ing, each hair, most familiar in the form of shaving- 
 brushes, is alternately light and dark, a pleasing variation, 
 that makes a badger in good condition an attractive 
 creature. The blending of black and grey makes the 
 animal very hard to distinguish amid the evening shadows 
 of its native wood. This is the first instance I have given 
 you of what is known as protective colouring, but the 
 present chapter will furnish a better opportunity of ex- 
 plaining it more fully. There is a good deal of white 
 about the badger's face, and the head, in shape not unlike 
 a wedge of cheese, tapers like that of the fox, and carries 
 much smaller ears. The short tail is, like the body, 
 covered with hair. 
 
THE OTTER 29 
 
 I once kept a tame badger for over eight months, and 
 fed it on rats, which it greatly enjoyed. One morning I 
 found it dead in its barrel; cause of death unknown. 
 The four young badgers, born in spring-time, have left 
 their parents by the autumn, and the old couple sleep 
 through most of the cold weather. 
 
 The Otter is a more graceful animal, rather longer than 
 the badger, but so much slighter in build as to weigh little 
 over half as much : 20 pounds, perhaps, as against the 
 badger's 35 pounds. Much of the otter's time is passed in 
 the water, and the flat tail and webbed feet assist it in 
 swimming and diving with such marvellous skill as to 
 beat the fish in their own element. This beautiful 
 creature is seen at its best just as it emerges from the 
 swift stream to eat a fat fish and dry its matted skin on 
 some flat and slippery ledge. As a fisher, it is simply un- 
 rivalled, and this skill is turned to account by Chinamen 
 and other natives of the East, who train otters and cor- 
 morants to catch fish for them. We, in our high-born 
 superiority, are a little fond of looking down on these 
 "simple" Asiatics as a primitive herd, whom it is our 
 bounden duty, in all pity for their ovine stupidity, to 
 educate in the ways of the civilised world. In the arts 
 of government they cannot perhaps be said to excel, and 
 I devoutly hope that if you ever come to be either the 
 Governor-General or his lady, you may show them the 
 correct way to do things! Now and again, however, 
 particularly in their knowledge of animals and their uses, 
 you will find them ahead of us. This is a dreadful and 
 most unpatriotic admission, I know; but it is, believe 
 me, better to make it and face it than to refuse the 
 evidence of your own eyes. We talk a great deal of 
 
30 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 the beasts of the field and the fowl of the air being 
 here for our use, and we do not use the tenth of them. 
 We do not train otters and cormorants to catch our fish 
 not we ! We revile them instead as " vermin," and we 
 lie in wait for them with guns. Need I say that this is 
 gross stupidity on our part ? These beautiful and clever 
 creatures, whatever their purpose, were most certainly 
 not put here merely to be shot. I do not say they were 
 included in the scheme of earth's children to catch fish 
 for mankind. This is beyond our understanding, but we 
 should not at any rate deny the Oriental the admiration 
 due to his cleverness in turning to account a habit that 
 we regard only in the light of a nuisance. 
 
 Keflecting for a moment on other differences between 
 our attitude towards the dumb animals and those of 
 our neighbours, I always feel a shock when I read that 
 sympathy with the beasts is found only among English- 
 speaking nations. That there is some brutality towards 
 horses and mules in Southern Europe (and also a great 
 deal among our own East End costers) I am not going 
 to deny, any more than that much good is done by our 
 Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and its 
 many affiliated branches. At the same time, our absolute 
 cruelty to most of the wild creatures is sufficiently shown 
 by the intense fear of man exhibited by all our beasts 
 and birds, in striking contrast to the trust they show 
 in many Eastern lands. The dog alone is probably 
 better treated by Anglo-Saxons than by masters of any 
 other blood ; but if you fancy you know anything in this 
 country of the deepest sympathy that can exist between 
 men and horses, go and see the Arab in the desert, and 
 you will soon change your mind. He may at times exact 
 terrific work from his faithful friend ; in his warfare and 
 
THE OTTER 31 
 
 powder-play he may even treat him with momentary 
 brutality; but somehow the beasts are more responsive 
 than you see them in more northern climates, and that 
 must say something for their treatment. Why, even 
 the half-wild arui, or goats, of Morocco will, within a 
 day or two of their capture, follow their new masters 
 about with a confidence that could not be greater had 
 they been born on the farm ; and I have seen owls and 
 cattle-birds sit so close to the bridle-path that it would 
 have been easy to knock them over with a hunting-crop. 
 
 The otter, from whose interesting personality I have 
 sufficiently wandered, is not by any means an aquatic, 
 or water, animal in the same sense as the seals and whales 
 that I shall presently have to describe. For the seals 
 can get along on land only with difficulty, and the whales 
 and porpoises not at all. The feet of the otter are 
 webbed to aid it in swimming, but the claws are not 
 sufficiently gloved to prevent its moving with great 
 swiftness on shore. 
 
 THE OTTER. 
 
 Otters are found in most counties, on the smaller 
 tributaries perhaps in greater abundance than on the 
 
32 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 larger and more frequented waterways. Here, again, 
 the Postal Guide gives us in Otterburn, Otterbourne, 
 Otterham, and Otterton various clues to their distribution 
 in these islands. 
 
 Although there is no law protecting the otter at any 
 season of the year, it has unquestionably to thank those 
 who hunt it for the privilege of continuing to exist. 
 But for this, so greedy a destroyer of trout, and even 
 of game and poultry, would long since have been almost 
 exterminated by guns and traps, and not even its con- 
 sumption of eels, themselves terrible destroyers of trout 
 and their eggs, would save it. Another favourite item 
 in its bill of fare is the crayfish, that merry little river 
 lobster that is no fish at all, its English name being 
 simply a misspelling of the French word dcremsse. 
 
 The family of the otter, four or five in number, live 
 in a hole in the bank known as the animal's "holt." 
 In colour the otter is dark, the longer fur above being 
 almost black, the shorter fur beneath being grey. With its 
 flattened head and tail, rounded muzzle, surmounted by 
 prominent whiskers and bright eyes, its smooth fur and 
 webbed feet, it is distinct from any other British animal. 
 
 My third selection from this important family, which 
 must serve to represent the rest (the polecat, marten, 
 and weasel), is the Stoat, or Ermine, an animal measuring 
 about eighteen inches, including the tail. The others are 
 not less interesting, but my programme allows for types 
 only, otherwise I might have told you of the interesting 
 domestication of polecats as ferrets, of the tree-climbing 
 of martens, and of the protection extended by many 
 game-preservers to weasels on the ground that they 
 feed chiefly on mice and voles. (This may be true, 
 
THE STOAT 33 
 
 but I cannot forget a sight I once saw of a fluttering 
 partridge flying up with one of these weasels hanging 
 to its throat and quickly returning to earth, where a 
 keeper's gun put the one out of pain, and the other 
 out of mischief.) A word here, before I get back to 
 my friend, the stoat, on the subject of protecting the 
 wild creatures. Few subjects are more freely written 
 about in the papers by well-meaning people absolutely 
 ignorant of matters on which they readily publish an 
 opinion. One of these days you too may be writing 
 in this fashion in the papers, and I want you to keep 
 most carefully to reasonable lines of argument and to 
 weigh each case very jealously before committing your- 
 self to an opinion one way or the other. Eemember, 
 on the one hand, that these carnivorous animals are 
 not to blame for their tastes, and that as long as they 
 have families to support, so long must they go on killing 
 partridges and hares. Moreover, partridges and hares are 
 not everything, and there must always be large tracts of 
 mountainous country in which game - preserving is a 
 
 SUMMER COAT OF STOAT. 
 
34 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 secondary consideration, and in which these interesting 
 creatures might well roam unmolested. Eemember, on 
 the other side of the question, that the game killed by 
 stoats and weasels would, if left for the guns, have 
 furnished food for many human beings, and that the 
 shooting and preserving of it gives work and wage 
 to thousands of keepers, beaters, and other country 
 servants. A stoat, for instance, may be an attractive 
 object to anyone out on a country walk, but the land- 
 owner or his keeper may very properly kill the stoat, 
 and save a hundred pheasants for the market. Those 
 gentlemen, again, who devote money to introducing 
 yearling trout in their rivers do not care to stand 
 by and see these costly fish eaten by otters and king- 
 fishers. How, then, between these conflicting arguments, 
 shall we act for the best ? I think matters would about 
 right themselves if only those who lose by these creatures 
 were to kill them, either personally or by proxy through 
 their keepers. There is, I am convinced, no need for 
 self-appointed bands of otter-killers to patrol every river- 
 bank with guns and catapults, for these loafers persecute 
 the animals for sheer love of cruelty, and not out of any 
 desire to improve the local fishing. 
 
 And now for the stoat. Many among you are, no 
 doubt, familiar with the black and white fur called 
 ermine. There is a deal of sham ermine about, as there 
 is a deal of sham everything; but the real article is 
 costly, which is not surprising when you consider that 
 each of the black tips means the tail of a stoat, and 
 stoats are not always easy to catch. 
 
 It was suggested above that the present chapter would 
 furnish a better instance of "protective colouring" (or 
 wearing a colour that so closely resembles your surround- 
 
THE STOAT 35 
 
 ings as to make you almost invisible) than that of the 
 badger, and the stoat furnishes the case in point. Now, 
 if you wanted to pass anyone unseen in the darkness, you 
 would not, I think, wrap yourself in a white sheet. The 
 latter you would choose rather if you wanted to be con- 
 spicuous in the dark and play the part of ghost. Sup- 
 posing, however, you wanted to creep unseen over the 
 snow. Here, surely, the white sheet would serve admir- 
 ably to cover your conspicuous dark clothes. Precisely 
 thus does the stoat. In summer-time its dark yellowish 
 coat is sufficiently unobtrusive for it to avoid its enemies 
 and capture its prey, but as soon as winter whitens his 
 more northern haunts with driven snow the little gentle- 
 man dons a coat of purest white, and is thus in keeping 
 with the background on which he moves. Only the tip 
 of the tail retains the blackness it had in summer, and 
 this, you will see, does not much matter, for the stoat has 
 the trick, common, when you come to think of it, to most 
 animals, of carrying its tail behind, and the solitary black 
 tuft cannot therefore betray it to its victim till it is upon 
 it, or to its enemies till it is out of reach. Only where 
 the snow lies thick and long upon the earth does the 
 stoat change his coat in this fashion, and the difference is 
 perceptible between Scotch stoats, that change their colour, 
 and south of England stoats, that do not. In very cold 
 latitudes, where the snow is almost eternal, the animal 
 wisely retains the white coat all the year. In our ptarmi- 
 gan, a cousin of the grouse, there is a similar change of 
 colour in winter, and, strangely enough, there is a similar 
 patch over the eye of the male bird that refuses to 
 turn white, while both male and female retain some of 
 the black tail feathers. Whether the stoat sheds the 
 old coat, or whether the fur actually changes colour, 
 
36 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 is somewhat uncertan. Anyhow, the object is the 
 same. 
 
 But for this colour change there is nothing of special 
 interest in the life-history of the stoat, which is one long 
 record of killing rabbits, wild birds and poultry. Still, 
 the animal is a marvel of strength and agility. It can 
 cover the ground at a pace that would please a bicyclist ; 
 it is able to rob nests in the highest trees ; it can swim 
 rapidly after moorhens and water-voles. Eggs are among 
 its particular weaknesses, and a lighter -handed thief 
 never robbed a nest. In his Wild Life at Home, Mr. E. 
 Kearton tells an amusing story of a stoat removing two 
 eggs from a sitting pheasant without disturbing the bird, 
 and actually rolling them unbroken to an adjoining ditch. 
 In proof of its great tenderness, the eggs were recovered 
 by a keeper (who eliminated the stoat) and successfully 
 hatched out. Parties of stoats are said to attack men, 
 but I fancy that this may politely be read as a fairy tale. 
 
THE SEAL. 
 
 Face page 37. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 THE SEAL 
 
 Intelligence of Seals and Elephants A poacher of Salmon Number of 
 British Seals Swimming mammals No commercial value in our 
 Seals The ears of Seals The nostril The young Reluctant to 
 enter water Food of Seal Method of catching Gulls Habit of 
 swallowing pebbles Birds also do this Fondness of music and 
 general susceptibility to sound Size, compared with the Fox. 
 
 IF you have ever seen the seal at any zoological gardens 
 kneel, so to speak, on a chair and take fish from its 
 keeper's mouth, you have witnessed one of the most 
 beautiful instances of sympathy between man and beast 
 and also one of the most interesting from another aspect. 
 For the intelligence of the seal, like that of the elephant, 
 has long been a matter of discussion. The elephant has 
 a very small brain for its size, yet its readiness to learn 
 such tricks as stacking wood argues much intelligence of 
 a kind. The brain of the seal, like that of all flesh- 
 eating animals, shows considerable development, but the 
 creature's intelligence has probably been overrated. The 
 love of music, so called, which is freely attributed to seals, 
 is nothing more than a lively curiosity yielding to the 
 attractiveness of strange sounds. Indeed, the readiness 
 with which the unfortunate fur-seals allow themselves to 
 be clubbed, with no attempt at escape, points to a very 
 low standard of intelligence. Nor is the large and ex- 
 pressive eye much test, for the elephant has a very small 
 
 37 
 
38 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 eye that it may not injure it when dashing through the 
 jungle, and the seal has a very large eye that it may 
 make the most of the scanty light down in the deep sea 
 and under the ice. 
 
 Yet, considered physically, the seal is a very remark- 
 able creature. Unfortunately, it shares with ourselves 
 a fondness for salmon, and consequently its physical 
 attractions do not appeal to the river-keeper until at any 
 rate he has the poor trespasser stiff beside him, with 
 a great charge of shot in its head. I do not know that 
 the keeper is much to blame. He is a man of limited 
 views, and is honestly earning his salary ; but it is a pity, 
 all the same. For the seal eats far more flounders than 
 anything else, if only for the reason that they are so 
 much easier to catch. I have seen seals miss salmon and 
 give up the chase again and again, whereas flounders are 
 almost as nutritious and have only to be routed out of 
 the mud. 
 
 There are, if we include the formidable-tusked walrus, 
 some half-dozen British seals, of greater or less abun- 
 dance, in our seas ; but the species facing the head of this 
 chapter is rightly termed the common seal, for it is seen 
 on our coasts as often as the rest put together. 
 
 Seals are distinguished by their swimming-gloves from 
 the rest of the carnivorous order. In the otter, seal and 
 whale we have three convenient standards of aquatic 
 animals. The otter has, so to speak, swimming-mittens, 
 his claws projecting to help him on land. In the seal 
 we have what may be termed swimming-gloves, with only 
 the top of each finger removed; while in the whale the 
 hands have disappeared in the glove, and the feet have 
 gone altogether. 
 
 There is no commercial value in any of our seals, for 
 
THE SEAL 39 
 
 they all lack the silky under-fur which, when properly 
 dressed, we call sealskin. Thus, if British seals did not 
 find their way up salmon rivers, and there encounter the 
 jealous keeper, they might in all probability lead a blame- 
 less existence, untroubled by man. But their taste for 
 fish is fatal, and every now and then, particularly in the 
 Wash and on the east coast generally, there is a concerted 
 expedition against them by the outraged fishermen. 
 
 Our British seals lack prominent ears, and this serves 
 to distinguish them from the "eared" seals of the southern 
 hemisphere, though when you read of them as " earless " 
 seals you must not imagine that they are deaf. Ears of a 
 kind, like Elia, they certainly possess, but they are mere 
 holes. If you ever get the chance of watching a seal 
 fishing not in a fish -tank, for its movements are re- 
 stricted and unnatural under such conditions, but in an 
 estuary, as I once saw them from a high rock in Australia 
 you will not easily tear yourself away from the sight. 
 The marvellous grace of the animal's every movement will 
 strike you only less forcibly than its workmanlike adapta- 
 tion to such a life, the smooth skin, and the torpedo build, 
 tapering from the thick middle to the small head and hind 
 flippers. As in the otter and most other quadrupeds that 
 live much in the water, the nostrils can close very firmly 
 whenever the seal wants to dash after some fish. Its 
 large eyes, like those of the conger eel, enable it to make 
 the most of the little light there is in the deeper water. 
 
 At first glance the seal might be taken for a magnified 
 otter; but the tapering hind quarters, larger eyes, and 
 rounder head distinguish it, although the prominent 
 bristles over the muzzle lend a considerable resemblance. 
 The fur of the common seal is grey, with dark spots. 
 The young, which are two in number, and almost pure 
 
40 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 white in their first year, are, curiously enough, afraid of 
 the water at first, and have to be forced into it by their 
 parents. This is somewhat remarkable, and offers a 
 marked contrast to the eagerness with which ducklings 
 at once take to the water. 
 
 I have already mentioned fish as the principal food 
 of the seal, particularly salmon and flatfish, and it also 
 eats shell-fish (not fish at all, as I shall show you later) 
 and an occasional seagull. The last-named bird is caught 
 in a peculiar manner. The seal rests motionless beneath 
 the surface in the position known to swimmers as " tread- 
 ing water," and leaves only the tip of its nose showing. 
 Up to this curious bristled object there presently paddles 
 an inquisitive gull, whose curiosity is promptly satisfied 
 in the seal's teeth. An interesting habit in connection 
 with the feeding of seals is that of swallowing pebbles to 
 help digest their food. This practice, which is known 
 in the bustards and many other birds, is not unlike our 
 own habit of swallowing a crust when a fish-bone is stuck 
 fast in our throat. The seal's fondness for music, which 
 may, as above suggested, be regarded as a form of curiosity, 
 is but one instance of its general susceptibility to sound. 
 I have seen seals scared at the first vibration of gunnery- 
 practice twenty miles away. The common seal is not 
 much longer than a big fox, but some others that occasion- 
 ally visit our coasts are quite three times the length. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE WHALEBONE WHALE AND THE 
 CACHALOT 
 
 The largest mammal and the smallest Number of British Whales 
 Whalebone Actual nature of this substance Its uses in Nature 
 The right Whale Its food and method of feeding Why a Whale is 
 not a fish Blubber : its nature and uses Atmospheric pressure on. 
 ourselves Depth at which Whales and fishes can exist The breath- 
 ing of Whales "Spouting": the ideal and the real Wonderful 
 mechanical devices in the Whale and Mole Buckland's "evidence 
 of design " Nature and Art Foot-painting Sperm- Whales The 
 Cruise of the Cachalot Food of Sperm- Whales Cuttle-fish and 
 Ambergris Commercial product of Whales Great durability of 
 whalebone. 
 
 A WHALE known as Sibbald's Whale and the Pigmy Shrew 
 have a peculiar interest as, I believe, the largest and 
 smallest of known mammals. It is advisable to qualify 
 such statements, as we never know what the sea may 
 bring forth as dredging operations are perfected. That it 
 will produce a cetacean smaller than the shrew is very 
 doubtful, but it may easily conceal one larger than 
 Sibbald's whale. Why not? 
 
 Our own seas are visited with more or less regularity 
 by fully a score of cetaceans, as the whales and porpoises 
 are called, and they resolve themselves into two types: 
 those with teeth and those without. From these I have 
 selected for purposes of this chapter the toothless whale- 
 bone-whale and the toothed sperm-whale, or cachalot. 
 
 41 
 
42 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 Now, whalebone is a substance known in some form or 
 other to most of you, and I want at the outset of this 
 chapter to assure you that it is not bone at all, but a 
 much lighter and more elastic material, more correctly 
 known as " baleen." (Do not on any account be pedantic 
 and insist on asking at the saddler's for a baleen riding- 
 whip, for a little knowledge might easily, if the saddler 
 happened to be a choleric tradesman, prove a dangerous 
 thing, and you might get the riding-whip somewhat 
 suddenly.) If you look for a moment at the skull of 
 any of the whalebone-whales in the Natural History 
 Museum at South Kensington, you will at once see the 
 position of the plates of whalebone (I prefer to use the 
 more familiar term, now that I have told you its real 
 nature) in the whale's head. Their object is to filter the 
 sea-water containing the tiny animals on which the 
 monster feeds. For the Whalebone-whale it is also 
 known as the right whale, a term easily understood 
 from the whaler's point of view, as distinguishing it 
 from the many useless kinds that inhabit the same seas 
 eats nothing larger than creatures that would go on a 
 threepenny piece. Its throat is so narrow that a mackerel 
 would choke it, and, instead of taking risks of this kind, 
 it contents itself with eating millions of the minute 
 shell-fish and other creatures that float in long streaks 
 and patches on the face of the waters. I recollect on one 
 occasion losing a ship's bucket in a frantic endeavour to 
 secure some of this " whale-feed," through which we were 
 steaming at ten miles an hour. Assuredly, the amateur 
 naturalist is not much beloved by the captains of 
 passenger-boats! The whale's method of eating these 
 midgets is peculiar, and recalls somewhat the difficulties 
 at table of the fox and stork. For an animal fifty feet 
 
THE WHALEBONE WHALE 43 
 
 long to prey on another that measures perhaps half an 
 inch is, when you come to think of it, no mean feat ; and 
 the whale's plan is to swim leisurely through the carpets 
 of scum, taking in great gulps of water into its cavernous 
 mouth and expelling it through the plates of whalebone, 
 which retain the floating animals on their inner surface. 
 Then the enormous tongue gets to work and gathers in 
 the harvest. 
 
 A very wonderful creature is this whalebone-whale, 
 and interesting as is its manner of feeding, perhaps its 
 coat of blubber is the most remarkable of its properties. 
 Before explaining the nature and uses of the blubber, I 
 want, however, to show you why a whale is not a fish, 
 but I do not want you to flaunt your knowledge of the 
 difference before everyone who happens to be less well 
 informed than yourself. One of the most pitiful and 
 unpleasant aspects of natural history study is the fashion 
 of prigs, young or old, hastily examining such matters as 
 the difference between whales and fishes, frogs and rep- 
 tiles, or spiders and insects, and making game of anyone 
 who fails to answer a catechism on the subject. 
 
 Now, as for the difference between whales and fishes, I 
 should, were we dealing with the fishes of all countries, 
 have more difficulty in distinguishing them. For one of 
 the great differences lies in the fact of the whale's breath- 
 ing air, like ourselves, by means of lungs, whereas all our 
 fishes make use of the air absorbed in the water they 
 inhabit with the aid of gills. (Yet there are fishes with 
 lungs in some tropical countries, and from these the 
 whale would be distinguished by its covering of blubber, 
 of which I am about to tell you something, as well as by 
 the fact that the young are nourished on milk.) 
 
 Most fishes, again, have some form of scales (though 
 
44 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 our conger eel has none), and these distinguish them from 
 the whales. If you look carefully, moreover, at any 
 whale, you will, I think, find the resemblance to fishes 
 less striking than it appeared at the first glance. The 
 fins are absolutely distinct. The back fin in fishes is 
 perfectly unlike the back fin found in some whales. The 
 pectoral fins of fishes I shall tell you more of these 
 later are replaced in whales by the gloved hands. The 
 tail fin of a fish is set vertically, that is to say in the 
 same direction as a line through the back of the fish to 
 its stomach ; the tail of the whale is placed horizontally, 
 or in the direction of a straight line connecting its eyes. 
 The object of this horizontal tail fin is to assist the 
 whale in ascending rapidly from great depths whenever 
 it requires a breath of fresh air. 
 
 And now for the blubber, which has more remarkable 
 uses than you might suppose. Carelessly considered, the 
 whale's blubber is only a covering of fat, which men 
 run down to make oil; and as a warm blanket it must 
 certainly be welcome in those icy depths. But it is 
 something more. You may possibly know or you may 
 not, but it is a fact all the same that you are at this 
 moment existing under the weight of the air above you, 
 which presses to the extent of 15 pounds avoirdupois on 
 every square inch of you. It may never have occurred 
 to you that even forty miles of air could weigh anything, 
 but it would be very easy to show you, with the aid of 
 an air-pump, a glass bottle, and a delicate balance, that 
 a very small quantity of air weighs something. But, 
 you will say, you do not feel the inconvenience of this 
 pressure. Of course not, but that is because you are 
 specially constructed so as not to feel any discomfort. 
 If you want proof of this, go to the top of a mountain, 
 
THE WHALEBONE WHALE 45 
 
 or up in a balloon, until you experience the troubles 
 of heights you are not intended to inhabit. Now, whales 
 and fishes that live in the sea at great depths have to 
 bear a pressure that is fairly enormous. When I tell 
 you that every cubic foot of sea-water weighs rather 
 over 1000 ounces, and that whales are found at a 
 depth of 4000 feet, and fishes at 12,000 or more, 
 you can easily, by a process of mental arithmetic 
 (that may be your strong point, but never was mine), 
 work out the number of tons on the square inch under 
 which these creatures live without inconvenience. But 
 the deep-sea fish can exist only under this pressure, 
 whereas the whale, thanks to the blubber coming as a 
 buffer between it and the water, is indifferent to the 
 pressure. Bring one of the deep-sea fish from 1000 
 fathoms or so to the surface, and it will, as likely as 
 not, burst with a loud report. The body was so con- 
 structed as to resist so many tons of pressure, and, with 
 the pressure suddenly removed, it goes on resisting and 
 bursts. But the whale can live comfortably under tons 
 of water, or it can, when the fancy takes it, bask at the 
 surface with equal pleasure. 
 
 I have already mentioned that the whale comes to the 
 surface to breathe, and I must now tell you something 
 of the phenomenon known as "spouting," of which you 
 have probably seen very exaggerated pictures in whaling 
 stories. For a creature so enormous as the whale, a 
 creature whose weight is reckoned in tons as we reckon 
 ours in pounds, to come too often to the surface would 
 be .a nuisance, and it is therefore enabled to take in huge 
 draughts of air, which fill every crevice of its enormous 
 chest, and use it up at leisure, staying below perhaps 
 twenty minutes to half an hour if so minded. This 
 
46 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 must be a great convenience. I have seen Kanaka 
 pearl-divers in the Torres Strait stay below the surface 
 for a couple of minutes, I should think ; but we are not 
 all Kanakas, and with most of us some kind of diving 
 apparatus is necessary if we are to remain at the bottom 
 for more than a few seconds. 
 
 The first care of the whale on coming to the surface 
 to take in a store of fresh air is to empty its lungs of 
 the stale, which it obviously cannot do under water. 
 You know very well that your breath is always visible 
 on cold days, and that the steam from a kettle is 
 visible even in a warm room. The sudden condensing 
 of invisible vapour to visible moisture is the cause in 
 both cases, and the same fact explains the " spouting " 
 of the whale, which is no more than the column of 
 moist breath expelled from its huge lungs and con- 
 densed by the colder air. It may possibly be mixed 
 with a little water, if the whale starts blowing before 
 the top of its head (where the blowhole is situated) 
 is quite clear of the surface, and this would doubtless 
 give it a more imposing appearance. But it still falls 
 very far short of its presentments in books, where we 
 find shoals of whales performing like fountains in a park. 
 The first whales I ever saw spouting, somewhere in the 
 Indian Ocean, were a keen disappointment, but I soon got 
 reconciled to so indifferent a performance when I began 
 to realise the other marvels of whale life. 
 
 For, truly, it would seem as if all Nature's choicest 
 devices were perfected in the largest of her children. 
 The sieve and filter find their oldest form in its mouth, 
 and the valve is anticipated in the arrangement by which 
 it is able to rush open-mouthed through the water 
 without danger of choking. It would be a difficult 
 
THE CACHALOT 47 
 
 matter to find elsewhere, in the whole range of the 
 animal creation, a more admirable combination of means 
 to an end. If the British fauna contains anywhere else 
 such an embodiment of what Frank Buckland called 
 "evidence of design," I should seek it perhaps in the 
 little mole, confident that Nature can fulfil herself with 
 equal splendour in the highest and lowest. Each has 
 its own life to live, and each is perfectly equipped for 
 the work before it. Not one weapon is wanting in either; 
 not one is superfluous. 
 
 This is what we find in nature. The artificial life led 
 by ourselves puts a very different complexion on the 
 matter. Disuse has already rendered our toes practically 
 obsolete, and our boots and socks bury them away 
 altogether. It was not always so. I recollect seeing 
 somewhere on the Continent in Brussels, I think it 
 was a pavement artist who used the crayons with great 
 skill in a socket held between the toes. The poor fellow 
 had lost both arms. 
 
 I have now to tell you something of the larger and 
 fiercer Sperm-whale, and if you want to learn a great 
 deal more of it than the little I have space for, I would 
 strongly advise you to possess yourself of a copy of Mr. 
 F. T. Bullen's book, The Cruise of the Cachalot. Apart from 
 all it has to say on the capture and life story of the 
 sperm-whale, I never read a truer account of a seaman's 
 life, or one better calculated to cure small boys of their 
 remarkable craving for this career. 
 
 The sperm-whale has no whalebone, but it has large 
 teeth, set somewhat far apart, in its lower jaw, and its 
 enormous mouth and wide throat enable it to swallow 
 large fish and even porpoises. For all that, its favourite 
 food is thought to consist of cuttle-fish and squid, relatives 
 
48 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 of the octopus. (With one portion of the cuttle-fish you 
 are probably acquainted, if there is a canary in the house, 
 for it furnished the white bone that is generally stuck 
 in the cage for the bird to whet its beak on.) I have 
 already had occasion to allude to the quality of curiosity 
 in seals and seagulls, but it is particularly characteristic 
 of these cuttle-fish, and the sperm-whale is said to attract 
 them by dropping its lower jaw and displaying its white 
 teeth and mouth. The rest is easily guessed. But now 
 a curious thing happens. Having no teeth in its upper 
 jaw, the cachalot has to swallow its cuttle-fish whole. 
 Among its other attractions, this cuttle-fish wears a black 
 and horny beak, almost as hard as a parrot's, and these 
 beaks give the cachalot such a fit of indigestion that its 
 inside becomes inflamed and develops a greyish substance 
 known as " ambergris," which is used in fixing scents, and 
 is worth about 5 an ounce ! 
 
 So much for the whales, toothless and toothed. They 
 are among the most valuable of living creatures, though 
 the risks attending their capture set a very high price on 
 some of the products. Thus, besides ambergris, the 
 cachalot supplies spermaceti, used in making candles 
 and ointments, from its forehead, and oil from its blubber. 
 From the whalebone-whale we likewise get oil, and the 
 whalebone itself fetches between one and two thousand 
 sovereigns per ton, according to the market. It must be 
 remembered that it is very light, and that a good bulk 
 of it goes to the ton. Moreover, it is practically im- 
 perishable, strong as steel and unhurt by water. I bought 
 a whalebone ring for my landing-net ten years ago, and 
 I am now taking it, as good as when new, on a fishing 
 expedition in Africa. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 KINSMEN OP THE MOUSE 
 
 Great range in size of rodents Capybara and Harvest-Mouse The Black 
 Rat: its origin and persecution by the Brown Rat "Norway" or 
 ' ' Hanover " Rat England formerly without Rats Migratory rodents 
 Great appetite Hamsters and lemmings on the Continent British 
 Voles Vole-plagues ' Water-Rat " a mistake Food of Voles 
 Unjust accusations Characteristic teeth of rodents Tame Rats 
 Silkworms "Pets" in general Other British Mice Squirrels and 
 their cages Some views of "cruelty" Damage done by Squirrels 
 Their nests and young Unfinished nests Ear-tufts Winter-sleep of 
 the Dormouse Its food-stores Appearance and distribution Hares 
 and Rabbits Difference in their ears Hairy lining to the Mouse 
 Their food Unwise introduction of Rabbits into Australia. 
 
 I FEAR the little mouse, which rohs the larder, and 
 scratches in the wainscot, and makes ladies stand on 
 chairs and pull up their 
 skirts, is not a favourite. 
 It is also less interesting 
 perhaps in itself than as 
 the commonest British type 
 of the rodents, that wonder- 
 ful and destructive order of 
 quadrupeds that includes at 
 once the South American 
 capybara, weighing perhaps 
 100 pounds, and our own 
 little harvest -mouse, that 
 scales no more than a THE SQUIRREL. 
 
 E 49 
 
56 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 quarter of ah ounce. So wide a range is, so far as I can 
 call to mind, found in no other order of vertebrates. 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting of the English rodents 
 is the Ratton, or Black rat. Like the more powerful brown 
 rat, which is everywhere in these islands driving it into 
 extinction, it came from the East. This uncousinly treat- 
 ment is as mysterious as the afore-mentioned hostility 
 between cats and dogs. Why the commoner brown rat 
 should be called the " Norway " rat I do not know ; but 
 its alternative name of "Hanover" rat is easily under- 
 stood when we recollect that it reached this country in 
 the early days of the Hanover succession, when the then 
 Tories were not complimentary to the new dynasty that 
 resulted from Stuart misrule. 
 
 Until somewhere about the end of the reign of 
 Edward III., England is said to have had no rats of either 
 kind, so that the contemptuous exclamation which, in a 
 recently-written comic history, the Conqueror is made to 
 utter on hearing of Hereward's rebellion, must have been 
 pure invention on the part of the chronicler, unless per- 
 haps the Norman knew these animals in other lands. 
 
 You will have no difficulty in understanding why the 
 rodents include almost all the truly migratory quadrupeds, 
 for the explanation lies simply in their enormous appetites 
 and their practice of devouring all the vegetable food of 
 one neighbourhood until they have no choice but to starve 
 or move on to another. The Continental hamsters and 
 lemmings furnish the most striking examples of this 
 journeying for food, for the latter march hundreds of 
 miles eating all the while, and then drown themselves 
 in the Norwegian fjords. Our own voles, however, are 
 regular four-footed locusts in the rapidity with which 
 they devastate whole counties. But when Nature sends 
 
KINSMEN OF THE MOUSE 51 
 
 plagues of voles, she generally, if left wisely to herself, 
 supplies the corrective in the shape of owls and weasels, 
 that like a meal of voles all the better when fattened on 
 ripe grain. Of our three British voles the most interest- 
 ing is the Water-vole, commonly called Water-rat. This 
 is a mistake, for the true water-rat I have seen it in 
 Australia is quite a different animal. The confusion 
 becomes worse in this country owing to the fact of our 
 common brown rat being a capital swimmer. It steals in 
 this way many a duckling, for the death of which the 
 inoffensive vole is blamed. Yet the vole is easily distin- 
 guished at close quarters by its smaller ears and blunter 
 head. Whereas the rat is partial to almost any food, 
 animal or vegetable, the vole is far more dainty, and 
 probably eats little besides water-plants and the bark of 
 trees. It has also been accused of devouring the spawn 
 of fish ; but the offender in this case is much more 
 probably the water -shrew, of which I shall tell you 
 presently. The water-vole is chiefly interesting as an 
 excellent swimmer and diver, without any of the usual 
 apparatus of webbed feet and other special appliances. 
 
 All the rodents possess in common the two front teeth 
 in either jaw, that are ever growing and ever wearing 
 away with the gnawing action (compare the word corrosion, 
 meaning the gnawing action of acids) from which they 
 take their name. It is this peculiar action that gives 
 rise to the familiar noise in the wainscot, and not, as 
 some folks imagine, any process of scratching with the 
 claws. These rats and mice make interesting and tract- 
 able pets. I kept some very well-bred white rats as a 
 youngster; but when, in all the might of about three score 
 and ten, they had undermined the gardener's tool- shed 
 and started burying their dead beneath my father's bath, 
 
52 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 the house voted want of confidence, and the rats had to 
 go. I was bribed away to a confectioner's, or something, 
 and the gardener did the necessary clearing out. One of 
 the survivors, however, reverted to the wild state, and, 
 some three months later, its beautiful white coat sadly 
 grimy, and its pink eyes lacking their former lustre, all 
 but flew at me when I unsuspectingly cornered it in the 
 garden. I do not think I ever had more amusement out 
 of any pets, with the possible exception of a large and 
 prosperous family of silkworms that distinguished them- 
 selves by first stripping our own mulberry-tree and those 
 of half a dozen neighbours, then occupying, in the paper- 
 bag stage, the walls of four rooms, finally covering with 
 their little green eggs all the available notepaper in the 
 establishment. Hobbies should, no doubt, be encouraged 
 in the young for educational purposes, but someone in the 
 house generally has to suffer ! 
 
 The beautiful little Harvest- mouse, smallest but one of 
 British quadrupeds, which brings up its large family in 
 a dainty hanging nest of dry grasses, the larger Wood- 
 mouse, with the white feet, and a little-known outdoor 
 mouse that wears a broad yellow necktie, complete the 
 roll of our rats and mice. 
 
 The winsome Squirrel, which heads this chapter, repre- 
 sents in these islands another family of rodents, most of 
 which live in trees. If you have not watched the little 
 red acrobat, with the bright eyes and pert winter ear- 
 tufts, ambling across your lawn or hopping amid the 
 branches overhead, you must at any rate have seen him 
 at work on the miniature treadmill that kind folks put in 
 his cage to prevent him dying for want of exercise. So 
 long as a dark box is added, to enable the lively gentle- 
 man to rest in peace when so minded, this wheel is 
 
KINSMEN OF THE MOUSE 53 
 
 probably by no means so cruel as some people make out. 
 There are some folks, you know, who find everything 
 cruel that they have no use for themselves. Spurs are 
 cruel; bits are cruel; whips are cruel. I suppose they are* 
 But if these good folks had to ride a few hundred miles 
 without them, how soon, I wonder, would they change 
 their tune? The fact is, the cruelty lies not in such 
 implements themselves, but in the abuse of them. 
 Temper, therefore, your squirrel's wheel with the avail- 
 able solace of a fixed cage warmly littered with clean 
 hay, and your conscience may rest easy. Better still, 
 perhaps, not to cage so free a creature at all ; but I have 
 known caged squirrels thrive exceedingly, and have, no 
 doubt, a better time of it all round than they would have 
 at large. So much depends on the owner ! 
 
 The most interesting fact in connection with the 
 squirrel's food is his habit of storing it away in trees 
 for time of scarcity. This he does chiefly with nuts, 
 which are about the only food suitable for such treat- 
 ment; but he also feeds largely on fruits and young 
 shoots of trees, as well as on birds and their eggs. 
 Attractive little person as the squirrel is, I fear he does 
 a good deal of damage to our fir-trees, though, as opinions 
 are divided on the subject, so delightful an elf may well 
 be given the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the most 
 characteristic feature of the squirrel is the bushy tail, 
 carried over his back in a manner to which allusion is 
 made on a later page. Like most of the rodents, squirrels 
 bring up their family of three or four in a roomy nest, 
 constructed high up in the firs, and have an unaccount- 
 able habit of building a number of these nests that are 
 never intended for use, and are, indeed, often left in 
 a half -finished state. The ear-tufts are shed every summer 
 
54 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 and renewed in autumn. Perhaps they are meant to 
 keep the ears warm, but I hardly think so. 
 
 In the Dormouse, another very interesting little rodent, 
 we have our first example of winter sleep, or hibernation. 
 Like your friend Caesar, the dormouse regularly goes into 
 winter-quarters, very sensibly sleeping through the cold 
 time of famine. Indeed, this hibernating is something 
 more than sleep, for the creature's faculties are, for the 
 time being, deadened, and it knows no pangs of hunger. 
 As a precaution against accidental awakening during this 
 period, which commonly lasts from October until March, 
 the dormouse stores nuts in handy corners close to its 
 bedside. This is where its sleep differs, as we shall pre- 
 sently see, from that of bats. The bats store no food, for 
 they have no intention of waking until insects are once 
 more on the wing. Wake a bat from its lethargic trance, 
 and it most probably dies of the excitement; wake 
 a dormouse, and I have never done so, but I understand 
 this to be the case it will make a square meal and drop 
 off to sleep again none the worse for the interruption. 
 Hazel-nuts are much liked by the dormouse, and it also 
 eats various insects. It has the same reddish colour as 
 the squirrel, and is not above one-third the size, being 
 further distinguished by a more mouse-like appearance, 
 absence of ear-tufts at any season, and a tail that cannot, 
 from the spectacular point of view, be regarded as a success. 
 Its range in these islands is far more limited than that of 
 the squirrel, for, whereas the latter occurs in almost every 
 part of the kingdom, the dormouse is found neither in the 
 far north of Scotland nor in Ireland. It nests in some 
 hole or in the deserted nest of some bird, and its family 
 numbers three or four. 
 
 In the Hare and Babbit we have a couple of well-known 
 
KINSMEN OF THE MOUSE 55 
 
 types of a fourth family of rodents (the rats and mice 
 are one; the squirrel represents a second, the dormouse a 
 third) ; but how many of you know how to tell .a hare 
 from a rabbit, I cannot say. Yet the difference is easily 
 recognisable, as you can see at a glance from Mr. 
 Caldwell's sketch at the end of the chapter, and lies, 
 apart from the larger size of the hare, in the tips of the 
 ears. The ears of nine hares out of every ten are tipped 
 with black; those of ninety-nine rabbits out of every 
 hundred are not. "But," you will say, "this doesn't 
 help me if I should chance to come across the tenth 
 hare or the hundredth rabbit!" This is true; but I 
 imagine that, by the time you encounter either of these 
 exceptions, you will know quite enough about either 
 animal to prevent you going wrong. The hare is, more- 
 over, a larger and more powerfully built animal, having, 
 even for its size, much longer ears and claws than its 
 small cousin. 
 
 The roof of the mouth of hares and rabbits, and, indeed, of 
 all rodents, presents a very interesting arrangement in- 
 tended to keep undigested food from the throat while the 
 animals are patiently gnawing, and this is a fur-clad parti- 
 tion that practically shuts off the back half of the mouth. 
 In the mouth of hares and rabbits, indeed, there is a good 
 deal more fur than in that of other rodents, and the cheeks 
 are as thickly lined inside as out. The precise object of this, 
 unless it be to prevent some kind of insect getting alive into 
 the throat, I do not understand, but you may be sure that, 
 if our whiskers grew inside the cheek as well as outside, 
 there would be good reason for it. 
 
 Even more distinct than the hare and rabbit in ap- 
 pearance are the dwellings in which each species passes its 
 life. The rabbit, living as it does in large colonies, knows 
 
56 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 that its safety from men and foxes lies in underground 
 burrows, and these it accordingly constructs; the hare, 
 on the other hand, being a solitary creature and a mighty 
 runner, lives in tolerable security above ground, lying all 
 day in a " form " hollowed in the grass. Another kind of 
 hare, which is found in Ireland and the north of Scotland, 
 as well as in one or two English counties, assumes, like 
 the stoat, a white coat in winter, and just as the stoat 
 retains the black tail, so does this hare keep black ear- 
 tips. 
 
 The food of hares and rabbits consists purely of vege- 
 table substances. The hare is probably dying out in 
 many parts of the country, while the rabbit, for all the 
 thousands that are shot every year, is able to hold its 
 own everywhere and in many districts to show a steady 
 increase. Both these animals have enormous families, as 
 many as fifty young ones in the course of a year; and 
 while the young hare, or leveret, is born with its eyes 
 open, the young rabbit is blind for a day or two after its 
 birth. 
 
 So much,, then, for our rodents, kinsmen of the despised 
 mouse with the pink feet and long tail. Singing mice, a 
 very small percentage of the race, are very interesting ; 
 and whenever you hear a singing mouse, you should catch 
 it and study it in captivity. A terrible trouble these 
 rodents, large and small, are to the farmer. It might, 
 therefore, have been expected that men would have thought 
 twice before introducing them into countries in which, for 
 wise reasons, they were not permitted to occur naturally. 
 Eats and mice could not always be excluded, for they 
 performed the voyage as stowaways in rotten old ships ; 
 but rabbits Qould not travel in this way, and one evil 
 

 KINSMEN OF THE MOUSE 
 
 57 
 
 day some enterprising person took rabbits to Australasia. 
 In New Zealand they are bad enough, but nowhere on 
 earth have they so got out of hand as in Australia, which, 
 with its rabbit plagues, furnishes one of the saddest 
 lessons outraged nature ever taught mankind. 
 
 
 
 HEAD OF HARE. 
 
 HEAD OF RABBIT. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OUR DEER 
 
 British Deer and their Horns Richmond Park Deer and Cuckoo The 
 three British species Geological evidence Introduction of the 
 Fallow Deer The Red Deer The Story of a Red Deer Our wild 
 herds The Fallow Deer In Epping Forest The Roe Deer Intro- 
 duced into Ireland Measurements ' ' Playing-rings " of Roe Deer 
 The young The antlers. 
 
 A VERY beautifully illustrated book on British Deer and 
 their Horns was published a year or two ago by Mr. J. G. 
 Millais, son of the late President of the Eoyal Academy ; 
 and one of these days you might try and get hold of that 
 book it is rather costly and learn, from its illustra- 
 tions, almost all you want to know of our three deer and 
 their habits. 
 
 What Eichmond Park would be without its deer, I 
 don't know; something, probably, like the seaside with- 
 out its gulls. A little lady of my acquaintance, by the 
 way, aged two, made an amusing, but not unnatural, 
 mistake with the Eichmond deer last summer. Deer, 
 as I told you in the Introduction, are as a rule silent 
 animals, as silent almost (not quite, perhaps, for I have 
 seen kangaroos struck down with rifle-bullets and pulled 
 down by dogs without uttering a sound) as kangaroos. 
 Well, it so happened that this little girl was being 
 wheeled through Eichmond Park one day last May, 
 when, at one and the same moment, she came upon her 
 
 58 
 
OUE DEER 
 
 59 
 
 first herd of deer and heard her first cuckoo. Promptly, 
 being an intelligent child, she associated the strange 
 beasts with the strange voice, and has since, I under- 
 stand, called all deer or pictures of deer " cuckoos." This 
 
 KOE. RED. FALLOW. 
 
 HEADS OF OUR THREE DEER. 
 
 only shows the danger of jumping at conclusions on 
 slender evidence. 
 
 Our deer are three in number : the Red, the Fallow and 
 the Roe. The red and roe were abundant in Great Britain 
 when Caesar visited it, and were probably indigenous to 
 the country. " How," you may ask, " do we know how long 
 any animal has inhabited a country ? " Well, the answer 
 to this belongs more properly to geology, but I may just 
 tell you that bones of these indigenous animals have been 
 dug up from great depths in which the history of past 
 changes is, for those who can read it, unmistakably 
 recorded in the different layers of the earth. 
 
 The Fallow deer, on the other hand, was introduced for 
 hunting purposes, either by the Romans or in Norman 
 
60 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 times. It furnishes the fattest venison (when a Roman 
 wanted to say " I hunt," he said " Tenor" hence, " veni- 
 son "), which may be due to the fact that it eats quantities 
 of chestnuts. 
 
 The Red deer is the largest and handsomest of our 
 species, its redness being shaded in winter-time with 
 a good deal of grey. In his Story of a Red Deer, Mr. 
 Fortescue has written one of the prettiest natural history 
 books ever published, and has contrived, in the guise of a 
 fairy tale, to tell all that need be known of the deer and 
 its woodland playmates. Read it when you get the 
 chance, and then lay it affectionately by on the shelf 
 beside Charles Kingsley's Water Babies. They are birds 
 of a feather. 
 
 We have not many really wild deer left in these islands, 
 though there are a few small herds in the highlands and 
 islands of Scotland, one or two in the New Forest and 
 rather more in Devon and Somerset. Nearly a hundred 
 herds are, moreover, kept in our parks, of which those at 
 Richmond are the best known to Londoners, who come 
 down in great numbers on Sundays and often show their 
 quaint pleasure by frightening the deer to make them 
 run. Now and again there is a mistake, as the old stags 
 are very touchy at certain seasons and apt to resent 
 liberties. Anyone interfering with them under these 
 conditions is liable to remain away for the next Sunday 
 or two. 
 
 The Fallow deer is a smaller animal, usually distin- 
 guished from the other by white spots that cover its 
 back and sides. It is also generally lighter in colour, 
 and has a longer tail. Of the striking difference in the 
 horns, or antlers, I shall speak presently. The fawns, or 
 young, of most deer are spotted, so that the chief distinc- 
 
OUR DEER 61 
 
 tion between the red and fallow species is not apparent in 
 extreme youth. Even at a later stage there are fallow 
 deer, some of which occur in Epping Forest, without 
 spots. Deer feed solely on varied vegetable diet, chiefly 
 on grass and young twigs, with acorns and chest- 
 nuts and mushrooms. The little Roe, no bigger than a 
 chamois, was introduced into Epping Forest in the year 
 1884, and has since done well there. It has likewise 
 been introduced into Ireland, which is not within its 
 natural range. It stands only a couple of feet at the 
 shoulder, as against the three feet of the fallow and the 
 four of the red species, and resembles the last-named 
 in its general colour of summer red and winter grey. 
 Mr. Millais gives a very amusing account of the "play- 
 ing rings" in which it races and chases in the early 
 morning. 
 
 The deer have not large families, and you may, in 
 early summer, see the red female accompanied by only 
 one little fawn, and the fallow and roe by a couple each. 
 
 And now I must, in concluding these few notes on the 
 deer, say a word of their remarkable antlers. In the 
 first place you must notice that, except in reindeer, it is 
 very unusual for the female to wear antlers, though female 
 roedeer have more than once been seen with this headgear. 
 "With cattle, as you know, it is different, for both cows and 
 bulls wear horns, and both retain the same horns, barring 
 accidents, for life. The stag, however, changes his antlers 
 every summer; they drop off about the month of April, 
 and the velvety knobs of the new pair at once begin to 
 grow. The velvet is soon rubbed off, and the dried antlers 
 are so much dead bone, quite different in structure from 
 the true horns of cattle. Cast antlers are often eaten by 
 the deer for the sake of the salts they contain, and these 
 
62 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 doubtless assist in forming the new set. The two larger 
 deer usually shed their antlers in April or May ; the roe 
 not, as a rule, until December. The marked differences in 
 the three types of antlers are very apparent in the drawings 
 sent me by Mr. Caldwell, and you can at once distinguish 
 the powerful round antlers of the largest species, carrying 
 six or eight or more points, the flattened spread of antler 
 on the fallow, and the straight, vertical, three-pointed 
 crest of the roe. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE BAT 
 
 A flying mammal Distinguished from birds on the wing Winter sleep 
 Food Tropical kinds German and French names Distinct from 
 Mice Nose-leaf Probable object of this Bats not blind Evidence 
 of this Experiment of an Italian Teeth of Bats A warning The 
 female and young Progress on the ground Swimming Number 
 of British kinds. 
 
 IN the seal I introduced you to a type of animal that, 
 although not a fish, spends most of its life in the water ; 
 in the Bat I have to describe an animal that, although not 
 a bird, passes most of its existence in the air. 
 
 The seal was fitted for its watery home by flippers like 
 those of the penguin; the bat is appropriately equipped 
 for its life in the air with wings. 
 
 Like the seal, the bat is able to get along, though not 
 with great comfort, on the ground, and it sleeps suspended, 
 head downwards, so that the moment it wakes it can 
 launch itself, like a swift from its nest, into space. 
 
 It is not difficult to distinguish bats from birds in the 
 air. In the first place, most birds as small as our bats 
 have gone to roost by the time the bats are about. And, 
 again, there is an apparent aimlessness about the direction 
 in which the bat flies, not in a straight line for some 
 objective, like birds, but in circles about the observer's head. 
 In reality this is not aimless at all, for the bat is feeding 
 all the while on insects which it captures by beating up the 
 air in this fashion. The flying apparatus of the bat differs, 
 
 63 
 
64 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 moreover, from that of birds in that it is a skin, or mem- 
 brane, joining the wrist and ankle of the right and left 
 hands and feet. It is also devoid of feathers, which 
 belong to birds only. I am always reminded of bats 
 when I see those serpentine dancers who hold their 
 voluminous skirts in their outstretched hands preparatory 
 to commencing their evolutions. Were one of these ladies 
 to quit the stage, soar up to the roof, and hang by her 
 feet from the chandelier, we should have a correct imita- 
 tion of the typical bat. 
 
 Of the winter sleep of bats something was said when 
 writing of the same function in dormice. Bats hibernate 
 in large colonies in towers, or hollow trees, or caves. As 
 to their food, British bats eat only insects, more parti- 
 cularly beetles and moths, and none of them, therefore, 
 do any harm. In fact, they are absolutely beneficial by 
 reason of the mischievous insects they destroy. In tropical 
 countries, however, there are large bats that rob the 
 orchards, and others that attack human beings in their 
 sleep and suck their blood. 
 
 In appearance the bat might at first strike the careless 
 observer as a winged mouse, with the ears of a rabbit. 
 But, of course, it has nothing to do with mice, so that 
 the German name of "flying-mouse" is quite incorrect, 
 while the French, equivalent to "bald mouse," is even 
 worse, since the bat is thickly clad in fur. The head is 
 also very different from that of mice, less tapering, and 
 sometimes, as in two of our species, having a peculiar 
 leaf-like growth over the muzzle, from which these two 
 are known as horseshoe-bats. The object of this append- 
 age is probably, like the cat's whiskers and the cod's 
 beard, to apprise the bat of its contact with food as it 
 wings its way silently through the gloaming. 
 
THE BAT 65 
 
 There is an expression " blind as a bat," which has, like 
 w grey as a badger " and " deaf as a post," passed current 
 for a good many years now. To the two latter, save, 
 perhaps, on the score of politeness, no objection can be 
 raised, but the first is a foolish slander on the organisa- 
 tion of these wonderful creatures, and might well be 
 dropped, for bats are not blind. If you have any doubt 
 on this score, throw a cap in the air where bats are flying, 
 and you will soon see how they swoop at it like hawks. 
 That they must, at the same time, choose their insect food 
 by touch quite as much as by sight, there cannot be much 
 doubt, and in proof of this we have the somewhat cruel 
 test made years ago by an Italian priest (not a member of 
 the K.S.P.C.A.), who put out the eyes of some bats and 
 then set them free in a room in which he had hung some 
 wands and threads. In no instance did the sightless 
 animals touch the suspended obstacles, and the wonderful 
 sensitiveness that enables them to keep clear of such 
 objects is thought to lie in the wing-membranes. 
 
 Bats have exceedingly sharp teeth, suitable for piercing 
 the tougher beetles on which they prey ; and I may take 
 this opportunity of cautioning you against imitating a 
 very foolish youth, in whose company I spent all my time 
 about twenty years ago, and thrusting your hand into any 
 hollow trunk where you fancy there may be bats. On 
 the particular occasion I have in mind there were bats. 
 Of that fact, though he did not wait to see them, the 
 young gentleman was not permitted to remain in doubt, 
 and there were marks on three fingers of his right hand 
 to remind him of the adventure for a month afterwards. 
 
 The female wraps her young one in the folds of her 
 wing, and the pair look very funny, though you are not 
 likely to come across them outside the Zoo or museum. 
 F 
 
66 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 Perfectly adapted to flying in the air, bats cut but a 
 clumsy figure on the ground, moving with a lame, halting 
 action, as if they had been crippled by some recent 
 accident. They are also able to swim, but only enter the 
 water when forced to do so. 
 
 The bats found in these islands number rather over 
 a dozen kinds, but their insect food and general mode of 
 life are almost the same in every case. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 OUR REMAINING QUADRUPEDS 
 
 The Shrews Strange death of Shrews in Summer Shrews, Owls, and 
 Cats Dying of fright Our smallest quadruped The Water-Shrew : 
 its tail "Grass-Mice" and "Shrew-Mice" Food of Shrews 
 Winter sleep Families Strength of the Mole Its food Worms 
 Services performed by the Mole Wild Life at Home Do Moles eat 
 worms when tunnelling ? Difference of opinion Hard life of the 
 Mole Its activity Absent from Ireland and parts of Scotland 
 Family Peculiarities of the Hedgehog Self-defence Winter sleep 
 Services and misdeeds Appearance Young Names of British 
 quadrupeds " Mole," ' ' Deer," ' ' Squirrel " Open-air natural 
 history Burn the catapult! 
 
 I HAVE now mentioned, individually or by inference, all 
 our British mammals save five. These are the mole, the 
 hedgehog, and three shrews. 
 
 I may as well dismiss the Shrews at once, for they are 
 the least important of the present order. It is scarcely 
 worth while troubling Mr. Caldwell to draw us a shrew, 
 for when you come across what looks like a small dead 
 mouse, only with a snout of considerable length, you 
 may safely set it down as a shrew. You have the best 
 chance of finding such a doubtful treasure towards the 
 end of the summer holidays, at which season shrews seem 
 to die in hundreds from no apparent cause. Owls are 
 partial to these little creatures, but cats do not eat them, 
 though I believe they seize numbers in mistake for mice 
 and then find out their error, the shrew having a peculiar 
 
 67 
 
68 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 smell, and leave them to die of fear. That they do die of 
 fear I have not a doubt. Only last summer, when I was 
 in Cornwall, a cat brought a couple of shrews to the back 
 door of my house and laid them trembling on the mat. 
 I watched the whole performance, and left the shrews 
 (which died very soon afterwards with no sign of violence) 
 where they were, to see if any other cat would take them, 
 but not one touched them. The Lesser, or Pigmy, shrew 
 is our tiniest quadruped, smaller than even the harvest- 
 mouse, and the water-shrew has already been named as 
 a probable consumer of the eggs of fishes. In place of 
 the webbed feet usually found in beasts and birds that 
 have to live in the water, we find in the water-shrew an 
 equally good arrangement of long bristles on the feet and 
 tail. The latter must be a capital rudder when the little 
 fellow has suddenly to turn in pursuit of some nimble 
 water-insect. The shrews are, of course, distinct from 
 mice, though Cornish folk call them " grass-mice," and in 
 other parts they are known as " shrew-mice." Their food 
 consists of insects mostly, though they are very pug- 
 nacious and often vanquish and devour field-mice and 
 lizards. In winter, like the dormouse, they become torpid, 
 and in summer they bring up their large families of six 
 to eight young ones at the end of a long burrow. The 
 young are born blind. 
 
 In the Mole we have a kind of magnified shrew, and 
 the strength of this wondrous engineer lies in its fore 
 limbs. The mole is built essentially for progress, and 
 it matters not that the hind limbs are weak and thin, 
 for they have merely to throw up the loose earth that 
 the powerful fore feet have already dug from the solid. 
 The chief food of the mole consists of worms. Now, 
 unless you are a fisherman, you very probably regard 
 
OUR REMAINING QUADRUPEDS 69 
 
 worms merely as worms (or "wormth," as the youthful 
 angler replied when asked what he had in his mouth). 
 But if you go a-fishing, you certainly know, at any rate, 
 the small red worm, the large meadow lob, and the 
 striped brandling. Should sea-fishing be your pleasure, 
 you must also know the fat lugworm and the flat rag- 
 worm. Worms, in short, at present embrace a vast 
 assemblage of ill-assorted creatures that will one of 
 these days be divided off more methodically by the 
 very careful gentlemen who live with one eye glued to 
 the microscope and invent long names for small things. 
 The sub-kingdom of worms includes all the leeches, and 
 in it we find a remarkable British sea-worm that is so 
 accommodating as to be able either to pack itself within 
 an inch or stretch itself to the length of nearly two 
 cricket-pitches! Thus does nature beat the contor- 
 tionists. It was once customary to speak contemptuously 
 of earthworms as "vile," but they are now known to do 
 good work by turning up the clogged earth. In refusing, 
 however, to thank the mole any longer for his great 
 consumption of these wriggling benefactors, it is only 
 fair to remember that, in his pursuit of them, he turns 
 the soil up far more thoroughly than they do themselves. 
 And the wireworm, a creature to which the mole is very 
 partial, is one of the farmer's most dreaded enemies. 
 
 Mr. Kearton says in his Wild Life at Home, a very 
 interesting little book, that he does not believe moles 
 devour many worms while going along underground, his 
 reason being that the worms are frightened by the noise 
 made by the mole, and have time to escape. He says, 
 and very rightly, that if a garden-fork be stuck in the 
 damp lawn and struck once or twice, the prongs set up 
 such a terrific vibration in the earth as to bring every 
 
70 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 worm within a yard to the surface. This is perfectly 
 true, and our snipe and woodcock use somewhat similar 
 means, sticking their long bills in the mud and pouncing 
 on such worms as they may disturb. But even if the 
 worms did glide up their shafts to see the cause of 
 the earthquake, their alarm would be just the mole's 
 opportunity, for he works steadily along close to the 
 surface, and would seize any worm in front of him just 
 before it reached the top. I am inclined rather to think 
 that he comes on his victims unawares, for I have often 
 seen sudden rushes when watching a mole working just 
 beneath the turf. Moreover, if the disturbance made by 
 the fork were reproduced by every animal, we should 
 have the worms coming to the surface every time a dog 
 or fowl scratched up a handful of earth. And if the 
 mole does not dig for worms, for what, in the name of 
 common sense, does he dig ? He is not a fool to go on 
 tunnelling and tunnelling with no other object than to 
 see how many lawns he can spoil. Not only indeed does 
 he drive his horizontal shafts for food, but he even bores, 
 in dry seasons, deep down for water. 
 
 I have already spoken of the mole as such another 
 marvel of construction as the whale. Think for a 
 moment of what the mole must do. It has to secure 
 a vast number of active creatures like worms, pursuing 
 them at all depths and without too perilously attracting 
 the greedy eye of stoats, owls and kestrels. At top 
 speed it has to charge through the solid earth, its trowel- 
 like fore feet loosening the opposing soil, which its hind 
 feet, like spades, throw up in its wake, hence the mole- 
 hill. Its eyes are so small and so well protected from the 
 dust by thick fur that many folks think the animal is 
 blind ; its soft fur is so short and so elastic that it never 
 
OUR REMAINING QUADRUPEDS 71 
 
 catches in the walls of the tunnel so as to impede the 
 animal's advance ; its pointed snout and needle-like teeth 
 enable it to seize any worm that crosses its path. Let 
 anyone show me a more perfectly made animal than the 
 little mole, and I shall be obliged. The mole hears the 
 slightest sound, yet, like our seals, it has no external ears. 
 It is among the most active of animals, never at rest; 
 and it runs, when pursued, at a great pace, even taking 
 to the water and swimming rapidly. So, unfortunately, 
 can its arch-enemy, the weasel. I have already men- 
 tioned its absence from Ireland, and it is also wanting 
 in the extreme north of Scotland and in several of the 
 islands of that country. It does not hibernate like 
 the other British members of the order. Its family 
 of five are brought up in a roomy nest distinct from the 
 mounds we call molehills. The young moles are much 
 lighter in colour than their black parents. 
 
 A very different customer is the Hedgehog, the last 
 type of quadruped we have to consider, and one that 
 has already received notice as a favourite article of food 
 with badgers and, less often, with foxes. Unless 
 approached very gently, or accustomed in captivity to 
 the presence of man, the hedgehog is usually seen in 
 the unpromising attitude of a ball of needle-pointed spines. 
 Dogs do not, as a rule, care to venture their nose within 
 some inches of this pincushion turned inside out, and 
 they usually, at this safe distance, achieve much snapping 
 and barking, which fails, however, to draw the imperturb- 
 able one from his snug retreat. An interesting chapter 
 might be written on some of the more curious methods 
 adopted by the weaker animals to escape the teeth of their 
 enemies, and none would surely beat that of the hedge- 
 hog. The little pill-woodlouse, a common inhabitant of our 
 
72 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 gardens, where it lurks in colonies beneath stones and rocks, 
 curls up in similar fashion when touched, resembling in 
 this position not so much the hedgehog as the armadillo, 
 a curious South American animal, of which more, perhaps, 
 in another volume. But the hedgehog does not always 
 behave like a sea-urchin. In the family circle, or even 
 in captivity, it is an interesting and lively creature, 
 though its activity, like that of the bats and shrews, 
 is limited to the warmer half of the year. Its food is 
 varied, insects and worms, perhaps, for preference, but 
 also eggs, birds, mice, lizards, and frogs. In neighbour- 
 hoods where much attention is given to game-preserving 
 or poultry-farming, the hedgehog's room may possibly 
 be preferable to his company; but it may be useful in 
 some houses, as it is a greedy eater of " black beetles," and 
 its fondness for slugs may find it a welcome berth in 
 gardens much troubled with those pests. 
 
 Intermingled with its curious spines, the hedgehog has 
 a coat of yellow bristles. The head, chest and limbs 
 have no spines. The claws are strong, but are obviously 
 not meant for digging. The young, six or seven in 
 number, have at first no spines, and are white, but to- 
 wards the end of the year, at the age of three or four 
 months, they grow darker and spiny. 
 
 So much, then, for the leading types of our quadrupeds 
 and whales. The whales are more useful than the 
 quadrupeds, only three or four of which are eatable, 
 and only one other, the badger, regularly supplying an 
 article of marketable value. 
 
 Yet they are a most interesting epitome of the animals 
 of this earth, and when it is my friend Mr. Bryden's 
 
OUK REMAINING QUADRUPEDS 73 
 
 turn to tell you of the animals of Africa, you will see 
 that, with the exception of the apes and monkeys, there 
 are few African quadrupeds that have not some relative, 
 however humble, in these islands. For we have, as 
 I have shown you, our flying animals, our burrowing 
 animals and our aquatic animals. 
 
 Some of the names we have given these creatures are 
 so simple and appropriate as to be understood at sight. 
 Such are the hedgehog, with its pig-like snout and grunt ; 
 the dormouse, that sleeps all winter ; and the hare, other- 
 wise "hair," the peculiarities of whose mouth we have 
 already noticed. Others of our animal names require 
 some little thought, and perhaps a dictionary, before 
 we grasp their meaning. The mole may have been so 
 called either on account of the mounds (moles Latin for 
 mound), or moles, that he constructs, or from the mould 
 he throws up in the process, his old name being moudie- 
 warf (werf en = throw, German). The word bat probably 
 refers to the beating of the wings. " Deer " is but a form 
 of the German word Thier, which means simply "animal," 
 a term not unnaturally applied to the tallest and most 
 conspicuous as typical of the rest. 
 
 The most interesting derivation, however, is that of the 
 word squirrel, which comes from a couple of Greek words 
 denoting shadow and tail, and referring to the animal's 
 habit of sitting in the shadow of its arched tail. 
 
 I have given you only the barest outline of our mam- 
 mals, for there is a great deal yet to tell you of our birds, 
 reptiles, fishes and invertebrates, and I do not want to 
 give you a heavy book that you cannot carry about. For, 
 best of all, would I have you read it in the shady ridings 
 of some little wood, looking up every now and again to 
 find Mr. Caldwell's models peering curiously at you from 
 
74 TYPES OF BRITISH ANIMALS 
 
 some bough or burrow. Quite apart from the attractive- 
 ness of the living animals themselves, it is a wonderful 
 training to cultivate the habit of creeping on them unob- 
 served and studying them at close quarters. Some folks 
 have the blessed gift of sympathy with the wild creatures, 
 and are privileged to approach much closer than others, 
 being hailed as friends by the objects of their curiosity. 
 Much, however, may be acquired when young, and there is a 
 boundless satisfaction in the knowledge that the feathered 
 tenants of your garden grow so fearless of your presence 
 as scarcely to notice any intrusion. If you doubt the 
 pleasure that is to be derived from this intimacy with the 
 beasts and birds, put your catapult in the fire and try 
 kindness for a month or two. You will never cut another 
 fork, or I am much mistaken. 
 
TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
JACKDAWS ON A HOUSETOP. 
 
 Face page 77 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 BIRDS OP THE HOUSETOP 
 
 Elimination " British " birds Technical differences Groups proposed 
 in this book Birds of our housetops Their drawbacks The 
 Sparrow a "bird of cultivation" Cats and Sparrows A knowing 
 Cat Sparrows as a nuisance Their food In America and Australia 
 Their plumage The nest and eggs Tree-Sparrow and Hedge- 
 Sparrow Habits of Starlings The Starling as a cage-bird Its food 
 In the orchard Nest and eggs Eggs of burrowing birds Differences 
 between the Swift and Swallow Their voice and flight On the 
 ground Bird migrations African visitors ' ' Hibernation " of 
 Swallows Nest of the Swallow Eggs of both kinds Appearance of 
 the Jackdaw and some of his kinsmen Unsuitable chimneys Food 
 of the Jackdaw Nest and eggs. 
 
 BY a process known as " elimination " (for explanation of 
 this, consult the gentlemen who condemned Dreyfus) I 
 have arrived at fifty bird types that may serve you as an 
 outline, necessarily slight, of the four hundred that are, 
 more or less, reasonably styled " British." And I am going 
 to take my fifty, in eight chapters, where we find them in 
 nature, and without regard to the classification set down 
 in books. 
 
 This I do merely in the hope of interesting you in the 
 subject, and not in any rebellion against the recognised 
 " orders M and " families." At a later stage, it may suit 
 you to know the serious differences between swifts and 
 swallows, ospreys and eagles, or the " bearded titmouse " 
 and the true titmice; and when you seek such know- 
 ledge, there are two hundred books already to give it to 
 
 77 
 
78 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 you. But I, greatly hoping that you may learn nature 
 at first hand, prefer to risk some slight confusion and 
 to show you the birds of my choice in their natural 
 haunts, particularly at the most interesting time of their 
 lives when nesting. 
 
 On this plan, then, I shall give you the following eight 
 groups : 
 
 I. Birds of the Housetop : 
 
 The Sparrow, Starling, Swallow, Swift and 
 
 Jackdaw. 
 II. Birds of the Garden : 
 
 The Blackbird, Redbreast, Nightingale, Great 
 Titmouse, Tree-creeper, Spotted Flycatcher 
 and Red-backed Shrike. 
 
 III. Birds of the Fields : 
 
 The Skylark, Rook, Landrail, Partridge and 
 Kestrel. 
 
 IV. Birds of the Woods: 
 
 Woodpecker, Cuckoo, Nuthatch, Crossbill, Mag- 
 pie, Woodpigeon, Capercailzie and Long- eared 
 Owl. 
 V. Birds of the Moors: 
 
 Grouse and Nightjar. 
 VI. Birds of the Marshes: 
 
 Bearded Reedling, Marsh-Warbler, Heron, Bit- 
 tern, Snipe and Lapwing. 
 VII. Birds of the River and Lake: 
 
 Dipper, Wagtail, Kingfisher, Coot and Crested 
 
 Grebe. 
 VIII. Birds of the Shore: 
 
 Gull, Tern, Cormorant, Gannet, Petrel, Guillemot, 
 Diver, White-tailed Eagle, Osprey, Swan, Wild 
 Duck and Turnstone. 
 
BIRDS OF THE HOUSETOP 79 
 
 And now for the birds of our housetops. 
 
 Five birds habitually nest for choice under our eaves. 
 Three of these cannot perhaps be regarded as entirely 
 welcome, for their food unfortunately includes vegetables 
 that are grown for our own use, and the untidy nests of 
 all three are invariably erected in such spots as to occa- 
 sion us much inconvenience, the jackdaw choking our 
 chimneys and the starling and sparrow blocking the 
 gutters and drain pipes and making no end of a mess. 
 What these house-birds did in the ages before men built 
 houses is shown by their present habit of also choosing 
 other situations. Thus the sparrow builds elaborate 
 nests in trees, or avails itself of the half-finished nests 
 left, as I told you in an earlier chapter, by squirrels. 
 The starling and jackdaw build in suitable holes in trees 
 or cliffs. The swift and swallow seem least of all willing 
 to live elsewhere than in our buildings, but they too will, 
 when compelled, content themselves with some ledge in 
 the cliffs. They are essentially neighbours of man, and 
 their preference is the more flattering seeing that they 
 live wholly on insect food and do not covet our corn or 
 our fruit. The love of the rest is, I fear, cupboard love. 
 The sparrow eats our corn, our fruit, and our seeds ; the 
 starling regales itself in our orchards. The jackdaw, 
 gifted with an extraordinary taste for poached eggs, digs 
 his stout beak into the pheasant's nest and sucks dry its 
 precious contents. 
 
 The Sparrow is the most familiar and least loved of our 
 town birds. When you hear the sparrow spoken of as 
 a " bird of cultivation " farmers have a variety of 
 impolite expressions meaning virtually the same thing 
 you are to understand that it soon finds out where 
 
80 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 man has ploughed the land and sown his seed, and 
 promptly establishes itself in his house so as to avail 
 itself of the harvest. It regards man, in fact, in the 
 light of a universal provider. (Sometimes the generosity 
 of man even provides a little powder and shot, and then 
 all that survive of the feathered host decamp to less 
 exciting pastures.) Except with hungry cats, then, the 
 sparrow is not a favourite. Cats are exceedingly fond of 
 its rich flesh, and will sit for hours to catch one. I know 
 of a black cat at Bournemouth that is clever enough to be 
 well aware that she is almost invisible in a certain corner 
 of an outhouse roof when the slates are wet after rain. 
 The reflected light has a peculiarly dazzling effect under 
 such conditions, which may be compared to that which 
 favours the shore-shooter stalking sanderling on the wet 
 sand with the light behind the birds, and sparrow after 
 sparrow alights on a ledge within a foot of the lurking 
 pirate and is promptly clawed. How on earth the cat 
 found out the secret of this roof I know not, for he has 
 been at the game for three or four years now, and those 
 who lived in the house before me took no interest in animal 
 life. In the streets of our overcrowded cities the sparrow 
 may be of some use in removing all manner of rubbish 
 that would otherwise accumulate too fast for the vestry to 
 deal with it. But in agricultural districts his room will 
 always, I suspect, be better than his company. He and 
 his wife may, it is true, take caterpillars and winged 
 insects to their large and clamorous broods, but they 
 themselves feed all the while on corn, cherries, young 
 peas and other delicacies in season. Nature omitted this 
 little feathered rascal from some lands where there were 
 no checks on its increase, and man, in his self-satisfied 
 wisdom, upset her arrangements and took the sparrow 
 
BIRDS OF THE HOUSETOP 81 
 
 and rabbit to the new home that they might remind him 
 of the old. Such playful freaks have already cost 
 American and Australian Governments thousands of 
 pounds, and in many districts the remedy lies as far 
 away as ever. Pray do not, however, imbued with the 
 wickedness of the sparrow, march forth with a mission 
 to slay every sparrow you see. Such a campaign would 
 involve you in an amount of cruelty that would, though 
 you might not know it, injure you almost as much as the 
 sparrows. There are plenty of gardeners and watchers to 
 deal with these pilferers. It cannot be said that the 
 sparrow excels in either beauty or music. On the other 
 hand, he is not naturally as black as he is painted by 
 London smoke, which rapidly smirches his smart brown 
 coat, bluish cap and black necktie, and I have heard his 
 usually monotonous voice develop in the nesting season 
 at least three notes. The hardy rogue does well in every 
 climate, and cold seems to numb as little as tropical heat 
 enervates him. The nest he builds in our roof is an un- 
 tidy bundle of grass, hair, paper and feathers, but when 
 he dwells in trees he wisely roofs his home to keep out the 
 rain. (The tree-sparrow, by the way, is another bird closely 
 related, and the hedge-sparrow belongs to a totally distinct 
 group of birds, and leads an absolutely different life.) 
 The sparrow's five or six eggs are about an inch in length, 
 and so great is the variation in their colour and marking 
 that it is by no means usual to find two precisely alike 
 even in the same nest. And, seen anywhere out of 
 London (where they all dress like sweeps), the birds differ 
 almost as widely. In most clutches (the group of eggs 
 laid by a bird is known as a " clutch ") of sparrow's eggs 
 there is one of lighter hue than the rest, and it is generally 
 addled and will not hatch out. 
 
82 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 The Starling is, as you know, a much larger bird and 
 very different in its habits and appearance. I have not 
 troubled Mr. Caldwell to draw such familiar birds for 
 you, for they can be seen any day from your window. 
 Early in the morning you may see the greenish-black 
 starling and his speckled mate strutting over the lawn 
 and thrusting their yellow bills after the worms that lie 
 beneath the dew ; later in the day you may watch them 
 flying in circles high overhead after gnats and midges, or 
 perched on the backs of sheep and cattle in search of 
 other forms of insect life ; and in the afterglow of sun- 
 set you may watch the male bird on your chimneys as he 
 takes a last look round before turning in, chattering and 
 chuckling, and craning his neck, and flapping his wings in 
 the most ludicrous manner imaginable. The shrill cry 
 and grating chatter of the starling fulfil his ambitions in 
 the musical line. But, for all his lack of voice, he is not an 
 uninteresting cage bird, being quick as a parrot (and a deal 
 quicker than some) to imitate the cat, the milkman's cry 
 and the various other sounds of an advanced civilisation. 
 Still it is perhaps a pity to confine a bird that may be 
 studied from the doorstep in its natural state. 
 
 If insects constituted the whole of the bird's natural 
 food, the starling would be a welcome neighbour and 
 ally, but unfortunately it is also partial to the treasures 
 of the orchard, particularly to wall-fruit. Nets over the 
 peaches are better than powder and shot, though, for the 
 latter often miss the wary birds and spoil the fruit. Be- 
 sides, the starling does good service at other seasons, and 
 may well be spared even on selfish grounds. 
 
 Its nest is almost as untidy as that of the sparrow; 
 but its long pale blue (or white) eggs, numbering five 
 or six, and having no spots or markings, are among the 
 
BIRDS OF THE HOUSETOP 83 
 
 handsomest in British collections. Like other eggs laid 
 in darkness, they have a wonderful gloss that the sunlight 
 has been powerless to dull. Equally characteristic of 
 eggs hatched under such conditions is the absence of 
 markings on the uniform ground colour. Spots on any 
 egg laid in an open nest help conceal it on the principle 
 of protective resemblance to surroundings I told you of 
 when describing the stoat in Chapter II. Such protec- 
 tive markings would be thrown away on eggs habitually 
 laid in darkness and out of reach of beasts or birds of 
 prey. Thus we find the dipper, kingfisher, sand-martin, 
 bee-eater, owl and many other cave-dwellers laying 
 perfectly white eggs. The sparrow, you will say, is an 
 exception. But I think not, for the sparrow was intended 
 by nature to lay its eggs in open nests. There are, how- 
 ever, exceptions, for all of which I doubt not some good 
 reason, did we but know it, could be found. Thus the 
 woodpigeon lays conspicuous white eggs in a very open 
 nest, but you must remember that, with an occasional 
 exception, the nest is placed in the topmost branches of 
 high, thick trees, where few hostile eyes can pry into it. 
 The nuthatch and titmice, on the other hand, lay well- 
 marked eggs in holes in trees, and this, I confess, is 
 puzzling. But that is merely because you and I are 
 rather stupid, and cannot read nature's meaning. It is 
 sound enough, but it is not written in our language ; that 
 is all. 
 
 In the Swallow and Swift I come to very different 
 birds, and I bracket them in this way solely by reason 
 of their habits. They really belong to different orders 
 of birds. The swallow is a member of the vast assem- 
 blage of perching birds ; the swift is not. You will say, 
 perhaps, that swallows very rarely perch, save on tele- 
 
84 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 graph wires, and where there is no telegraph they 
 probably seldom perch at all. Well, I do not want to 
 be driven into dry technical explanations, so, please, be- 
 lieve me that the swallows are, classed with the perchers, 
 and that they have, notwithstanding appearances are 
 rather against them, some claim to the distinction. 
 
 The outward differences between the swift and swallow 
 more than suffice to prevent their confusion. The jet- 
 black swift has but a relieving dash of grey across his 
 throat; his tail is but slightly notched; and his flight 
 is probably quicker, as his voice is shriller, than that 
 of any other British bird. The smaller swallow is black 
 only on the back ; his throat is crimson ; and there is buff 
 on his breast and white in the deeply forked tail. His 
 flight, though amazingly rapid, is inferior to the swift's, 
 and his voice is weaker and more pleasing; indeed, the 
 shrieking of swifts as they fly to and fro in the darkness 
 is most uncanny. Of our other members of the swallow 
 family, the house-martin may be distinguished by its 
 white breast and feathered legs, and the sand-martin 
 has a fairly conspicuous brown patch on its breast, and 
 is altogether far lighter in colour than the rest. Such 
 rapid fliers are necessarily a little difficult at first to 
 distinguish on the wing, but each one of the four has 
 its own peculiar action. 
 
 There are further differences in the foot that finally 
 separate the swift from the others, but into these we need 
 not perhaps enter. 
 
 It is indeed remarkable that two birds so widely 
 separated as the swift and swallow should have in 
 common so similar a manner of living. They pass 
 most of the day in the air, and are as active in pursuit 
 of their winged prey as the otter after fish, as untiring 
 
BIKDS OF THE HOUSETOP 85 
 
 ill the air as the mole underground. The swallow 
 alights tolerably often in country lanes for the luxury 
 of a dust-bath, dear to all birds that suffer from insect 
 tormentors ; but the long wings of the swift (which have 
 earned for it the well-deserved name it bears) combine 
 with the shortness of its legs to cause it some little 
 inconvenience in rising from the ground. I fancy, 
 however, if you try, as I often used to try, to walk 
 up to a swift, you will soon agree with me that this 
 difficulty exists mostly in books. The quantity of 
 insects consumed by these assiduous hunters when 
 bringing up their families must be enormous, for you 
 may see them return to feed the noisy brats every 
 few moments. At times, they are seen to chase the 
 flies at a great height, at others, close to the ground ; 
 and this is rightly understood to have some connection 
 with the weather prospects to the extent that when the 
 barometer is low the swifts and swallows generally fly 
 low, and vice versa. 
 
 It is now high time that I should say a word on the 
 subject of the wonderful migrations performed year after 
 year by these birds with an unfailing regularity that has 
 won the admiration, and entered into the proverbs, of all 
 races. You are doubtless aware of the fact that there 
 are neither swifts nor swallows in this country in the 
 winter months, and on these grounds it is possible that 
 you may blame me for regarding them as British types. 
 But, as they travel thousands of miles to bring up their 
 families on English soil, the least you can do is to regard 
 them as naturalised. From Africa it is that we get 
 these little forerunners of sunny weather. I have more 
 than once gone south in March I did so, in fact, 
 this year and met the restless swallows in Algeria 
 
86 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 and Morocco bustling about preparatory to their north- 
 ward flight. It would be a cruelty to rear such delicate 
 chicks as theirs on fare as tough as locusts, which, alas ! 
 is about the only insect life you see in those regions 
 when the sun grows merciless; so, with unerring 
 punctuality they are about the only residents in 
 Africa that practise the virtue they head northwards, 
 traversing at top speed lofty mountains and stormy 
 seas, to their cool nesting -places in the villages of 
 Europe. It was formerly believed by folks who ask 
 no better than to believe any fairy tale that the 
 swallows did not leave these shores in autumn, but 
 dived instead to the very bottom of our lakes and 
 rivers, and there lay torpid in the mud till awakened 
 by the quickening touch of spring. What the pike 
 and eels were supposed to be doing that they left such 
 dainty morsels untouched, the supporters of this ridiculous 
 theory did not say. 
 
 After the swallows' migrations, quite the most in- 
 teresting fact in their lives is their curious nest, and, 
 considering the loving labour with which they plaster 
 against our walls the mud of which it is composed, it 
 is not, I think, surprising that a pair of swallows should 
 return year after year to the same nest. " But," you may 
 say, " surely it is a tall order, particularly after what you 
 have just said about fairy tales, to ask me to believe that 
 a stupid thing like a swallow should, after a journey 
 of nearly 5000 miles and an absence of six months, 
 be able to hit on the same cottage, when, even to our 
 eyes, the cottages are so exactly alike that the owners 
 have to give them names or numbers to save themselves 
 going into the wrong one." Young man, I cannot help it 
 if you disbelieve this. Salmon are, in like manner, said 
 
BIRDS OF THE HOUSETOP 87 
 
 to plough their way over hundreds of miles of ocean 
 back to the same river that first supported their weak 
 little frames. We cannot explain these things, but we 
 are free to believe them or not. The plastered nest of 
 the swallow, clinging beneath the eaves and resembling in 
 shape a cup open at the top, is, of course, familiar to 
 you. Sometimes you will see them almost black, and 
 these seem to withstand the winter wind and rain better 
 than those of lighter colour. 
 
 The swift's nest, on the other hand, is uninteresting, 
 being even less complicated than that of the sparrow, a 
 mere bed of grass. The eggs of the two birds offer a 
 striking example of what I said above on the subject 
 of protective resemblance. The swift lays her eggs in 
 a dark place, and they are pure white; the nest of 
 the swallow opens to the sky, and the eggs are therefore 
 cunningly spotted with red and grey, so as to be less 
 conspicuous when jackdaws are passing that way. 
 
 The swift is with us only from May until August, 
 barely long enough to bring up a couple of children till 
 they can look after themselves; the swallow, on the 
 other hand, comes in March or April and remains until 
 October or November, bringing up two large families. 
 
 The Jackdaw, to which I have already alluded as an 
 egg-stealer, is the largest of our unbidden guests. More 
 commonly, perhaps, it makes its home on the cliffs, and 
 wheels in colonies over the shore, but I have known 
 of so many nests in chimneys that it is permissible to 
 describe the bird in this chapter. You may know your 
 jackdaw from the rest of the crow family, to which it 
 belongs, by its grey collar, just as you may tell the rook 
 by the bald patch in front of its eyes and the crow by 
 his bristly moustache. The jackdaw has a fine sense of 
 
88 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 self-preservation, which prompts him to avoid any risks 
 from chimneys blackened with smoke. It is not necessary 
 for a chimney to be actually smoking. There is a chimney 
 just in front of my study window at Bournemouth in 
 which a pair of jackdaws nested to my knowledge three 
 years in succession. Last year, however, a hitherto dis- 
 used wing of the house was thrown open, and the chimney 
 in question was used perhaps a dozen times in the cold 
 weather, just enough to blacken the chimney-pot very 
 slightly. It was enough, however, to make the jackdaws 
 desert the house altogether, thinking perhaps that a 
 blackened chimney is not to be trusted any more than 
 a slumbering volcano. 
 
 The crow tribe are a destructive gang, and, as already 
 mentioned, the jackdaw shares the tastes of the jay and 
 magpie for birds' eggs. But its food consists mainly, I 
 imagine, of insects, and it perches, like the starling, on 
 sheep and cows. A flock of jackdaws wheeling over the 
 breakers, their long wings lending themselves to the 
 sharpest twists and turns ever seen in birds so large, 
 is one of the most agreeable sights of a ramble along 
 the cliffs. For, save when nesting in the limited accom- 
 modation afforded by housetops, the jackdaw is a sociable 
 bird and lives in large companies. The nest, like any 
 other built in a hole, is a mere bundle of sticks and 
 feathers. Why should it be otherwise? Compactness 
 would be a mere waste of labour in a dwelling hidden 
 from the enemy and sheltered from wind and rain. 
 
 The eggs, three or four, or more, are of a green shade, 
 with faint spots. 
 
 These, then, are our five neighbours in the world of 
 birds. There are, of course, others. The robin and wren 
 
BIRDS OF THE HOUSETOP 89 
 
 build their nests in our stables and outhouses, and the 
 owls, if properly encouraged, will draw almost as near. 
 Perhaps, however, five are enough, though we could have 
 preferred three others in place of the starling, sparrow and 
 jackdaw. Still there is a certain attractiveness insepar- 
 able from the presence of birds about our dwellings, and 
 many of us do not mind some little annoyance for the 
 sake of their bright companionship. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 BIRDS OP THE GARDEN 
 
 Gardens and gardens Appearance of the Blackbird Its food A novel 
 drinking-trough Thrushes and Snails Gifts of the Greeks White 
 Blackbirds Character of the Redbreast Its food Migrations Voice 
 Nesting-places Number of eggs Voices of the night Migrations 
 of the nightingale Its range in England Reasons for this Nest 
 and eggs Food A way of attracting Titmice to the garden Voice 
 of the Great Titmouse Its food Nest and eggs Habits of the 
 Tree-creeper Method of feeding Nest and eggs The Spotted Fly- 
 catcher and its meals Its pied cousin Differences between the two 
 Nest and eggs Curious habit of the Shrikes Their victims The 
 "Woodchat in Morocco The hands of birds Nest, eggs, and peculiar 
 flight of the Shrikes. 
 
 THERE are, of course, gardens and gardens. There is the 
 six feet square of weedy gravel that does the duty of 
 garden to many London mansions, and there is the old 
 rambling garden that hides somewhere in its tangled 
 wilderness the two-storeyed cottage; there are the vast 
 wild gardens of Java and Australia, and there are the 
 carefully kept and more or less artificial gardens of some 
 of our own watering-places. As the garden, so the birds 
 that frequent it. Your London patch of desert will boast 
 nothing but sparrows and starlings, and your country 
 maze of bush and cover may shelter the golden oriole and 
 other creatures of rare beauty. 
 
 I have selected from the vast concourse of birds that 
 are seen in one garden or another seven of some interest. 
 
 90 
 
BIRDS OF THE GARDEN 91 
 
 The blackbird, redbreast, and nightingale belong to the 
 great family of thrushes, and the others represent each 
 an important family of wide distribution and entertaining 
 habits. Two of them, as well as the nightingale, visit 
 these islands only in the nesting season ; the other two, 
 with the blackbird and redbreast, are with us always. 
 All the seven birds herein described belong to the order 
 of perching birds, the most important perhaps in the 
 whole feathered world. 
 
 The Blackbird is, of course, familiar to anyone who 
 knows his garden birds, the male with his glossy black 
 coat and orange bill, his mate dressed in a soft brown 
 shade, and lacking the bright beak so conspicuous in her 
 lord and master. It must be confessed, I fear, that our 
 blackbird, though a beautiful singer, is a terrible nuisance 
 in the orchard. Still, out of regard for his music and his 
 destruction of insects when there is no fruit, it ought 
 surely to be possible to cover the trees with netting and 
 avoid having to shoot the bird. Few of our garden birds 
 drink more regularly than this one, particularly out of 
 the fruit season, and my friends the Bournemouth jack- 
 daws, mentioned in the last chapter, taught a neighbouring 
 blackbird where, in the gutter beneath the chimney-pots, 
 he could generally find a drink when the rain had soaked 
 through the loose, sandy soil of that district. The bird is 
 also said to eat quantities of snails; but I never saw it 
 with this food, as I have the thrush, its near relative. 
 There used to be a flat stone in the garden next mine 
 at Bournemouth to which all the thrushes of the neigh- 
 bourhood, I think, must have regularly repaired to crack 
 their snail-shells. The tapping of the shell, as the bird 
 held the head of the unfortunate occupant fast in his 
 beak, was a regular sound all the summer long. Somehow 
 
92 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 or other, the stone got removed, and I had another put in 
 its place; but the thrushes, fearing perhaps the gifts of 
 the Greeks (I am not a Greek ; but if you do not recollect 
 the allusion in your Virgil, it does not much signify), 
 would have none of this makeshift, and took their snails 
 elsewhere. This was discouraging ; but I did my best for 
 them, and could not do more. The blackbird is, as its 
 name indicates, generally black ; but brown, and even 
 white, examples have been found, and shot, and put in 
 museums. Originality is not a paying game for birds. 
 It is bound to lead them to the stuffer's shop. The 
 blackbird's nest is of grasses, not lined with mud like 
 that of the thrush, and may be found three or four feet 
 from the ground in hedges. The eggs, generally about 
 five in number, are pale green, with reddish spots, and 
 the bird brings up at least two families each summer. 
 
 The Redbreast, or Robin, is, perhaps after the thrush 
 and sparrow, our most familiar bird. Although a member 
 of the same family as the blackbird, it could not well be 
 more unlike it in appearance, its red breast-feathers, light 
 brown mantle and bright eye being as unmistakable as 
 its pert movements and its trust in ourselves. I sup- 
 pose this confidence has turned our heads, for we are apt 
 to regard the robin with affection as a very gentle little 
 bird, whereas in reality a more quarrelsome fellow does 
 not fly in these islands. The redbreast does not hesitate 
 to fly at other birds, and welcomes every opportunity of 
 breaking the peace. Yet it rarely helps itself to a dessert 
 of fruit, feeding almost entirely on worms, insects and 
 wild berries. The redbreast, as regards its movements, is 
 a kind of compromise, like the titmice and some others, 
 between the residents and the migrants. It is able and 
 no doubt a great many actually do so to remain through- 
 
BIKDS OF THE GARDEN 93 
 
 out the year in this country ; but large numbers also cross 
 and recross the Channel, and the birds move restlessly 
 over these islands themselves, doubtless for fresh food 
 supplies. The voice of this bird, though not very power- 
 ful, is sweet and pleasing, particularly at a season of the 
 year when few other birds are in tune. Its nest, a com- 
 pact saucer-like structure of feathers and old leaves and 
 grass, with a warm lining of feathers, is found in the 
 queerest places, as old cans and biscuit-boxes, garden- 
 rollers, and the like, though the favourite spot is in 
 some ditch-bank, or in any bundle of timber. The eggs 
 are thin- shelled and white, with or without red spots on 
 the broad end. Normally the bird lays five before sitting, 
 but most egg-collectors know that, if they are carefully 
 abstracted at the rate of one a day, and without scaring 
 the bird or disturbing the nest, she will go on laying as 
 many as ten or fifteen in all. 
 
 The Nightingale is, in its voice and in its movements, 
 more interesting than either of its cousins. It is one of 
 the finest singers among birds, its voice, already pure and 
 flexible, gaining charm from the bird's curious habit of 
 singing all through moonlight nights. Other birds, it 
 is true, fill the spring nights with sound, for the sedge- 
 warbler sings, the woodpigeons coo, landrails croak harshly, 
 owls hoot not unmelodiously, and swifts shriek like pass- 
 ing trains. The nightingale, however, beats them all for 
 sweetness, and his song is even conspicuous in the daytime. 
 The female does not sing, and, indeed, is little seen, being 
 busy with her household duties. It may safely be said, 
 moreover, that but for the magnetic attraction of his 
 voice her mate might also escape notice, for his brown 
 mantle and dull white shirt-front are by no means con- 
 spicuous in the thick hedge. But the throbbing "jug-jug- 
 
94 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 jug" draws the eye of the passer-by to a little throat 
 quivering in the sunlight, and one stands amazed and 
 wonders with old Izaak Walton what can be the music of 
 paradise when there are such singers on earth. The boy 
 who can stretch his catapult against such a target is a 
 boorish oaf, from whom I gladly would extract some music 
 more powerful, if less sweet, than that of his victim. 
 
 The movements of this voice of the night for the bird 
 is little beyond a voice are as interesting as those of any 
 of our visitors, more particularly after it has reached our 
 shores. It reaches us from the South in April, and is 
 gone in September, its beautiful song, indeed, often ceasing 
 early in June, when the care of the young absorbs all the 
 father's attention as well as the mother's. But it is, as I 
 say, after its arrival on our soil that the movements of the 
 nightingale have their keenest interest. It may practically, 
 for its half-year with us, be called an English, and not a 
 British, bird, for it has never yet been seen in either 
 Scotland or Ireland, and it rarely nests in Wales. The 
 fact is, it seeins so weary of wandering that it settles in 
 the first suitable district on the road, and I suppose the 
 score of counties enclosed by a line of latitude through 
 Norfolk and Leicestershire and another, meeting it, of 
 longitude through Hampshire and Warwick would em- 
 brace all its favourite nesting localities in the island, 
 though it undoubtedly does breed in diminishing numbers 
 both north and west of the region indicated. Caterpillars 
 and worms constitute most of its food, and poverty of soil 
 is consequently fatal to its welfare. This is why Bourne- 
 mouth folks listen for it in vain in and round their town, 
 although it is common a mile or so further east, where 
 the fertilising waters of Stour and Avon have softened 
 the harshness of the sandy Hampshire soil. 
 
BIEDS OF THE GARDEN 95 
 
 In numbering the nightingale among our garden birds, 
 I must revert to the remarks with which I started this 
 chapter. In your small town garden you might certainly 
 look long for nightingales, unless you caged them against 
 the wall. But in large, old-fashioned gardens, where the 
 soft, leafy nest can hide in thick-set hedges, with perhaps 
 a protecting veil of thistle or nettle, I have known the 
 birds readily trust their precious family close to our very 
 windows. As the nest is stuck within a foot of the 
 ground in the darkest part of the thickest hedge, the fine 
 little olive-brown eggs are by no means easy to distinguish, 
 and the mother sits so close that her plumage is still less 
 likely to attract notice. Some people say the nightingale 
 eats its share of fruit. I doubt it. Most of the genuine 
 fruit-eating birds nest close to the orchard, but I never 
 yet found the nightingale choose such a situation. 
 
 With the nightingale, we take leave of the thrush 
 family, and pass to that of the titmice, as represented by 
 the Great Titmouse, a powerful yet agile little acrobat 
 with a black cap and necktie, white cheeks and yellow 
 breast, who, like all his kind, turns somersaults in the fir- 
 trees, and even comes for food to our very doorstep. If, 
 in winter, you hang a lump of suet from any of your 
 trees, you are bound to draw all the titmice in the neigh- 
 bourhood to peck at the favourite bait. Noiseless as the 
 shadow of a bullet, the first of them, probably of the blue 
 kind, comes straight at the swinging target, and then, 
 having stayed his hunger with a preliminary peck or two, 
 whistles up his brothers and cousins from all around, and 
 straightway they reduce the suet to the very string that 
 holds it together. This is as pretty an experiment as you 
 can do with the birds, but, for goodness' sake, do not abuse 
 the hint I give you and shoot your visitors. A dead tit- 
 
96 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 mouse is but a poor bunch of feathers stuck in a puny 
 body that would not cover a florin, but the bird in life is 
 a fascinating gymnast, well worth a spare hour at the 
 window. More or less solitary in the summer months, 
 living at any rate only in pairs, the titmice become far 
 more sociable under the levelling influence of cold and 
 hunger, doubtless knowing from experience that when 
 food is scarce a dozen pairs of eyes see it better than two. 
 Like the redbreast, our titmice, though, properly speaking, 
 resident in these islands, pass freely between them and 
 the Continent. 
 
 The peculiarly sharp and staccato (if you do not learn 
 the piano, ask someone who does the meaning of this 
 word, for I cannot well explain it) note so characteristic 
 of the family is loudest in this the largest species. 
 A bird, as has already been said, of considerable strength, 
 this titmouse not only eats the fruits, seeds and insects 
 
 THE GEEAT TITMOUSE. 
 
 sought by all the family, the last-named being prized 
 from tree-trunks in the same manner as by the wood- 
 pecker, but also sucks the brain of birds and bats. Its 
 
BIRDS OF THE GARDEN 97 
 
 sturdy little beak, indeed, is well calculated to knock 
 a hole in skulls a good deal larger than its own. 
 
 Its neat apartment of moss, smoothly plastered with 
 hair and feathers, is thrust away in holes in trees and 
 walls or in squirrels' nests, and in many of the comical 
 situations chosen by the redbreast. Two families are 
 reared, the eggs of each clutch being half a dozen in 
 number and white, with bold red markings. 
 
 That fairly common resident, the Tree-creeper, re- 
 sembles in its zigzag way up gnarled old trunks a mouse 
 rather than a bird. Then the faint tapping and fainter 
 note betray the difference, and, as you get the light 
 between the little climber and the tree, you see the 
 curved bill probing every hole and the stiff tail pressing 
 against the bark. The bird's breast is white, and there 
 are conspicuous white feathers on the back and wings. 
 The tree-creeper should never be molested, for it eats 
 nothing beyond the grubs and spiders that it finds on the 
 trees. It is essentially a bird of old timber, and if your 
 garden is of too recent date, you must seek the tree-creeper 
 at work in the nearest wood. Up the trunk it goes, 
 moving in a spiral round the tree ; but the moment it sees 
 you watching it, the bird adroitly gets on the far side and 
 flies off unperceived to the next tree. In any case, it 
 ascends only to the first great branch, then flies noise- 
 lessly to the foot of a neighbouring tree, and so on da capo 
 (which is Italian for "over again") until its hunger is 
 satisfied. The nest of this mouse-like little bird is fixed in 
 the bark of the old trees that give it food, and is beauti- 
 fully constructed of twigs and bark and lined with feathers. 
 It lays six white eggs with red spots at the broad end. 
 
 Like the nutcracker, kingfisher, bee-eater, sparrow- 
 hawk and some others, the Spotted Flycatcher has a 
 name that at once tells you its food and that indicates 
 H 
 
98 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 something indeed of its appearance. The most interest- 
 ing feature of its feeding is less, however, the actual 
 food itself than the bird's peculiar fashion of capturing 
 it. There is no persistent flying round, like the swift, 
 or searching out of stowaways in old timber, like the 
 creeper. The flycatcher behaves more after the manner 
 of the kingfisher, perching on some branch that gives it 
 a good wide view and pouncing on every large winged 
 insect that passes, capturing it deftly in its hooked bill 
 and returning with the prize to its watch-tower. The 
 insect is either given to its mate in the little nest close 
 by or launched down its own throat, and the sport begins 
 anew. The spotted flycatcher has a pied cousin, who also 
 visits these islands between May and September, a hand- 
 some little black and white fellow of absolutely different 
 habits, a better singer, a more careless architect and 
 a ground-feeder, picking insects from the grass-roots 
 rather than catch them on the wing. Most of all does 
 the spotted bird differ in appearance, for it is one of our 
 least attractive birds, dull brown on the back and wings, 
 and with the breast faintly spotted, as you might imagine 
 that of the thrush would look after a heavy shower of rain. 
 The grass and feather nest of this bird is stuck firmly in 
 a hedge or laced against some wall-creeper. I have some- 
 where read that snakeskin is a favourite building material 
 with this flycatcher, but never yet, in the dozens of its 
 nests that I have found, have I noticed this, though 
 I must confess that I never pulled a nest to pieces for 
 the purpose. The eggs of the spotted flycatcher, about 
 five in number, are greenish white, with red spots ; those 
 of its pied relative, six or more, are pale blue and without 
 markings of any kind. 
 
 And now, in the Red-backed Shrike, we come to 
 
BIRDS OF THE GARDEN 
 
 99 
 
 a habit quite unique in the bird world. We have 
 already seen that the thrush breaks snails against a 
 stone, and, among the woodpeckers, I shall tell you 
 
 \ 
 
 THE RED-BACKED SHRIKE. 
 
 of a bird that stores nuts like the squirrel and dor- 
 mouse. But the Shrikes, or " Butcher-birds," as they 
 are appropriately called, impale their victims on long 
 thorns, and you may often come across such a larder of 
 frogs, lizards, mice, small birds, grasshoppers, bees, and 
 other creatures, and, unless you know the real culprit, 
 fancy that some brutal loafer has been at work. Curiously 
 enough, though I had rambled after birds all my life and 
 had seen thousands probably of the shrike's dead prisoners, 
 it was not until the spring of 1898, and then in Morocco, 
 that I saw the woodchat, a near relation of the present 
 species, actually pinning a very small frog on an aloes-bush. 
 There were numbers of woodchats round Tangier in the 
 month of May, but I only saw this one assassination, and 
 the rapidity with which the whole thing was done is not 
 easily forgotten. The object of this curious performance 
 
100 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 appears to be twofold. In the first place, the thorn serves 
 the shrike as a kind of fork, for he can very conveniently 
 tear shreds off the gentleman impaled on it. A bird, you 
 see, has no hands. He has his bill and his feet, and very 
 seldom are the latter used in feeding. The parrots and 
 eagles are an exception in this, and use their claws freely. 
 So the shrike uses the thorn as a kind of hand. The 
 second purpose seems to be some notion of storing, though 
 I fancy this is done more in our own imagination than in 
 reality, for animals exposed in such a position to sun and 
 rain, not to mention ants and other hungry insects, would 
 be of little use to their gaoler within an hour or two of 
 capture. 
 
 My Moorish friend, the woodchat, is but an occasional 
 straggler to England, and has not yet reached either Scot- 
 land or Ireland ; but the red-backed species, also a 
 chatterer, comes to us regularly every May and stays 
 until August, likewise keeping for the most part to our 
 midland and southern counties. To Scotland it rarely 
 penetrates, and only one or two have, I think, been seen in 
 Ireland. We have also a regular winter visitor in the shape 
 of a larger grey species. The summer bird has red and 
 grey plumage, black bill and pink-white breast feathers. 
 Its bulky nest, of moss with a soft feather lining, sways 
 with every gust of wind that catches the thorny bush in 
 which it is placed, and, already conspicuous by reason of 
 its size, the surrounding bodies of frogs and mice make it 
 still more remarkable. The eggs are six in number, 
 nearly an inch in length, and dull green, with brown 
 spots at the broad end. Like all birds that are accus- 
 tomed to flying great distances near the ground, the 
 shrikes move with an undulating flight, as if, like sheep 
 at an open gate, they were clearing imaginary obstacles. 
 
BIRDS OF THE GA&BEN 101 
 
 These, then, are a round half-dozen of our garden birds. 
 I might, of course, have chosen any other seven equally 
 interesting. The song-thrush, chaffinch, whitethroat, 
 goldcrest, garden-warbler, wren, and linnet would have 
 been almost as representative a group, but I have 
 planned this series on the basis of selected types, and 
 you cannot in such a programme expect to find every- 
 thing. There are numbers of books giving descriptions 
 of every British bird, and there is one that includes in 
 small compass some account of every British vertebrate. 
 If I had not written this last myself, I think I should 
 strongly recommend it to you. As it is don't ! 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 BIRDS OP THE FIELDS 
 
 Typical field-birds Size and colouring of the Skylark The Woodlark 
 The sitting of birds Larks and clover Nesting-places Eggs of 
 ground-birds Migration simplified A rascally family Turnips or 
 wireworms Rook-shooting Rookeries Defence of Partridge-shoot- 
 ing Food of the Partridge Protective colouring The French 
 Partridge Flight and nest Voice and appearance of the Landrail 
 Its migrations Its nest Flight of the Kestrel Its food Plumage 
 Eggs Disadvantages of open fields for the observation of birds. 
 
 BOOKS wheeling over the elms in the far corner; the 
 music of a skylark shivering in a cloud, and beckoning 
 a rival from the patch of cowslips beneath ; the grunt of 
 a landrail ventriloquising in the long grass ; partridges 
 cowering in misplaced fear of a kestrel that hovers over a 
 quaking field-mouse this is the bird life of our fields. 
 There are shrikes and hedge-sparrows, no doubt, in the 
 hedges, and buntings and pipits in the feathery grass, 
 but the typical field birds are those described as follow. 
 The Skylark, perhaps the bird of the fields, though we 
 are apt to think of him as nesting somewhere in the 
 clouds instead of on the ground, is a larger bird than 
 those who have only seen him a speck in the sky would 
 think. He attains to the dignity of a good seven inches, 
 that is to say the same length as our red-backed shrike, 
 and near half the length again of the redbreast ; and the 
 speckled grey plumage and white tail feathers redeem 
 him from the plainness characteristic of musical birds. 
 
 102 
 
BIRDS OF THE FIELDS 103 
 
 We have in this country another resident lark, a smaller 
 bird with white eyebrows, known as the woodlark, which 
 justifies its inclusion among the perching birds by stand- 
 ing in trees. Has it ever struck you, by the way, that 
 birds rarely sit, except on the nest ? I was just going to 
 say the woodlark sits on the boughs of trees, but the 
 difference occurred to me. The skylark, however, rarely 
 perches, and I am sure I cannot tell you the precise use 
 of its long hind claw, which has wrongly been referred to 
 this function. 
 
 The lark feeds chiefly on insects and useless seeds, but 
 his presence is suspiciously regarded by those who have 
 an interest in young clover. The nest, a homely affair 
 of grass lined with hair, is placed on the ground in open 
 fields, and a sloping shore is another favourite locality. 
 Two families are reared each season, and the second 
 generally numbers only three, being one or two short 
 of the first. The eggs are light or dark brown, and have 
 thick brown spots all over the shell. The nest of the 
 lark is not always easy to find, as the bird has a trick 
 of running some little distance in the grass, both on 
 leaving and returning. The wonder is, however, that 
 so few of these ground-birds' eggs are trodden on. Farm- 
 labourers and others plant their gigantic boots in every 
 corner of the fields, and yet the larks and buntings rear 
 their merry broods, and the nightjar and kestrel lay their 
 eggs in the very pathway. Protective colouring may save 
 them from the stoat and magpie, but surely not from 
 hobnails. And there are actually folks who say there 
 is no such thing as luck ! 
 
 All over these islands we find the skylark, though 
 severe weather will at times cause a good deal of desertion 
 in one district and overcrowding in another. The beasts 
 
104 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 and birds have no household ties like ourselves. Their 
 jerry-built dwellings are cheaply constructed; their young 
 ones occupy them for no more than a few weeks together; 
 and so, when the food supply runs short, or when the 
 calm of their home is invaded by the great boor called 
 man, they simply clear out. We call this "migration," 
 and make a good deal of unnecessary fuss about so wholly 
 natural a proceeding. 
 
 In the midst of our towns dwell the Rooks, most 
 familiar and most popular of the crow tribe, noisy 
 creatures of the old elms, fascinating by reason of the 
 traditions that cling around their ancestral homes. Their 
 voice harsh, their morals those of bandits, these birds 
 have yet, for all their shortcomings, kept a corner in 
 men's hearts. We hesitate, I know, before condemning 
 a man for the sins of his family, but really no cousin 
 of the crow could be as virtuous as it has pleased some 
 people to paint the rook. Their reason for assuming 
 that he eats only wireworms and other grubs is certainly 
 ingenious. As I think I have already mentioned, the 
 rook is easily distinguished by the bald, featherless patch 
 just at the base of his beak, and his admirers declare that 
 the poor bird wears this bare (since the face of the young 
 rooks is fully feathered) by digging his beak repeatedly 
 into the hard ground in search of wireworms. This 
 argument unfortunately cuts both ways. Not to 
 mention the fact that the crow, for all his bristling 
 moustache, digs in the ground just in the same way, 
 we must not forget that the ground hides more than 
 wireworms. There are, for instance, young turnips ! 
 Go up to a caged rook and whisper, " Young turnips ! " 
 and if he does not dash at the bars, I am much mistaken 
 in him. Perhaps, too, a faint and guilty blush may 
 
BIEDS OF THE FIELDS 105 
 
 suffuse his bare cheek, but he is a shameless rogue, and 
 as a rule blushes not at all over his own wickedness. 
 Yet young turnips get no peace when there are rooks 
 about, as there are in most parts; and young partridges 
 and game-birds' eggs generally, as well as grain and fruit, 
 are all taxed by this noisy robber. Being gifted with a large 
 appetite, he also finds room for quantities of wireworms 
 and other destructive grubs and insects. On the whole, 
 I am inclined to think that judicious rook-shooting 
 sufficiently keeps these birds within bounds. Kegarded 
 as a sport, and practised even with the authorised small- 
 bore rook-rifle, rook-shooting is, if it is allowed to say so, 
 a little ridiculous, and on a level perhaps with ratting ; 
 but, as a means to an end, it has much in its favour, and 
 its great popularity lies in the fact that it is at its best 
 when all other birds are under the protection of close- 
 time. In almost every corner of these islands you may 
 now find rookeries, though the bird was very scarce in the 
 north of Scotland only a few years ago. The nest, a massive 
 network of twigs with a grass lining, is often refurnished 
 year after year, and the fine eggs are green, and are 
 covered with rich dark spots. Although many folks 
 prize their rookeries, others, who buy their property, soon 
 get rid of the cawing tenants by lighting smoking fires to 
 windward of the nests, or by sawing the trees in which 
 the colony has established itself. To me the man who 
 could turn out a colony like this would be such a curiosity 
 that I do not greatly wonder at the old superstition about 
 bad luck pursuing him. But all these things, of course, 
 are matters of taste. Let us hold our own opinions and 
 leave other folks in peace to hold theirs. 
 
 In the Partridge we come to one of the commonest of 
 our game-birds, the birds that are strictly preserved in 
 
106 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 this country for shooting purposes. Two facts about these 
 game-birds, I always think, answer the objections of those 
 who criticise partridge-shooting. The birds are very 
 troublesome when there is any grain about, and, having 
 fattened on the grain, they are excellent eating. Like 
 the sparrow, the partridge is a bird of cultivation, and it 
 certainly gets as much as it can out of man until the day 
 comes on which it is butchered to make his holiday. 
 Besides stolen grain, however, and the Indian corn, ants' 
 eggs, hard-boiled eggs and other food given them by the 
 keepers, partridges eat quantities of insects and snails, 
 and are such careless feeders, indeed, that they pick up 
 numbers of worms that give them fatal illnesses. Pro- 
 tective colouring reaches a high degree of perfection in 
 a covey of partridges crouching in a ploughed field, and, 
 indeed, the black horseshoe on the breast of the old birds 
 is about the only distinctive mark in our common par- 
 tridge, though the running French species, a far handsomer, 
 though less sporting bird (a "sporting" bird, you must 
 observe, is one that suits the whims of the sportsman), 
 has his red legs and beak, white throat, and black bars on 
 the chest. Partridges roost on, or near, the ground, and 
 thus fall victims to foxes, stoats, shepherds' dogs, and 
 all manner of poachers. The curious, noiseless gliding of 
 partridges clearing a hedgetop, preceded by the loud 
 whirring of wings that can be heard on still days half 
 a mile off, is very characteristic of most game-birds. The 
 nest, placed on the ground beneath some bush or tuft, is 
 little more than a deep tray of grasses, and the eggs, a 
 dozen or eighteen in number and nearly an inch and a 
 half in length, are of a uniform greenish brown. 
 
 The grunt of the Corncrake, or Landrail, is more 
 familiar than his appearance, and, indeed, this summer 
 
BIRDS OF THE FIELDS 107 
 
 visitor of ours does not, with his black-spotted mantle, 
 reddish wings, and white throat, hide any very dazzling 
 beauty in the long grass. So plain a bird should, one 
 would think, own a sweeter voice. In hugging the earth 
 as he does, particularly when danger threatens, the landrail 
 is wise in his generation, for his pace in the air is very 
 inferior to what he can do on foot. You may hear his 
 harsh " crek-crek " day and night within a mile or two of 
 London during his four months' stay : from May until 
 September. Mr. Bryden, who has a weakness for landrails, 
 tells me that more of these birds were shot in England 
 last autumn than for years past; but whether this was 
 due to any unusually favourable conditions for migration, 
 or to any failing of seeds and insects, their favourite food, 
 in their Continental haunts, does not appear to be known. 
 The nest of fine grasses rests on the ground, and the eight 
 or nine white eggs, with red spots, seem to escape the 
 boots of the rustic as marvellously as do those of the 
 lark. 
 
 Of the birds of prey that frequent these islands the 
 mildest and commonest is undoubtedly the Kestrel. Only 
 those perhaps who have watched that majestic air-ship, 
 the giant albatross, keep in countenance with the swiftest 
 steamers for days together know any action of wings more 
 perfect than that of the kestrel poised, as if suspended by 
 invisible wire from the skies, over some field-mouse or 
 lizard. Ceaselessly the keen-eyed watcher scans from his 
 great height the farmer's fields for the farmer's foes, staying 
 his rapid flight every now and then to hover (hence called 
 also the " windhover ") above some suspicious moving thing 
 or yet more suspicious cover. Satisfied that a prize awaits 
 him, he stays his flute-like whistling and drops like a 
 bolt on some tiny victim, regaining the heights a moment 
 
108 
 
 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 later with his black claws gripping the object of his desire. 
 Now and again some small ground-bird, a pipit maybe or 
 a lark, is taken; but the kestrel never interferes with 
 game of any description. The spotted red coat and white 
 tail distinguish this handsome bird from his fellows, and, 
 as in all birds of prey, the female is rather larger than 
 the male. The kestrel builds no nest. The five or six 
 yellow eggs, with the bold red blotches, are laid either on 
 the bare ground or in any old crow's nest. 
 
 THE KESTREL. 
 
 So much, then, for the birds of the field. It is com- 
 monly supposed by those who know little of country 
 sights and sounds that the fields are the ideal hunting- 
 ground of the naturalist. Certainly they offer a 
 considerable variety of animal life, but they lack one 
 great essential of the study of wild animals, and that 
 is cover for the student. You cannot get sufficiently 
 near the birds and beasts of the field, even with your 
 binoculars, to study them to advantage. The starlings 
 that a moment ago perched peacefully on the backs of 
 
BIRDS OF THE FIELDS 109 
 
 your own cows quickly take the alarm, and their panic 
 is infectious. Man is a suspect, and what wonder? 
 
 In the woods, however, or beside the winding river, 
 your glasses may rest long and carefully on the objects 
 of your curiosity. The shades of the wood hide your 
 movements, and the voice of the river drowns any 
 crackling twig that grumbles beneath your weight. To 
 the friendly woods, then, we will now betake ourselves, 
 and find out what manner of birds are companions of the 
 badger and the squirrel. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 BIRDS OF THE WOODS 
 
 Woodland voices Food and feeding of "Woodpeckers The Green "Wood- 
 pecker Its tail, bill and tongue Spread of the species in Ireland 
 Storing food Migrations of the Cuckoo Its voice Advantages of 
 a small egg Foster-parents Habits of foreign Cuckoos Why shoot 
 the Cuckoo? The Cuckoo's food Resemblance to Hawks Small 
 birds and Hawks The fighting Nuthatch A plasterer Plumage of 
 the Nuthatch Meaning of the name Its food Distribution in 
 these islands Nature's scissors Appearance and food of Crossbills 
 Plumage of the Magpie Moulting Summer and winter dress Mag- 
 pies in France Magpies and dead Donkeys Poaching "Birds of 
 cultivation" Greed of the Ringdove The "crop" of birds 
 "Pigeon's milk" Natural history fables Australian Fruit-Pigeons 
 Spread of Woodpigeons in the United Kingdom Nest and eggs 
 Reintroduction of the Capercailzie by Lord Breadalbane Food of the 
 Capercailzie Its appearance "Horse of the Woods" Sport and 
 difficulty The long-eared Owl and little Owl Owls in Morocco 
 Owls and gamekeepers Owls' "castings" Nest and eggs. 
 
 THE voices of the wood are, with few exceptions, short 
 and harsh. You may perhaps enjoy the soft cooing of 
 the woodpigeons or the loud call of the cuckoo, but the 
 more usual bird -sounds of the wood are too forcible 
 to be pleasing, though they admirably serve as signals to 
 hidden friends. The woodpecker, crossbill, capercailzie, 
 owl and magpie are no musicians; the nuthatch is little 
 better than the best of them ; the ringdove's cooing and 
 the cuckoo's cry soon pall. There is, of course, glorious 
 melody in the woods when the nightingale dwells there, 
 but the nightingale needs dense undergrowth such as 
 is neither found in many typical woods, nor, moreover, 
 
 110 
 
WOODPIGEONS AND NEST. 
 
 Face page 110. 
 
BIRDS OF THE WOODS 111 
 
 essential to the comfort and well-being of the eight types 
 described in the present chapter. You might, perhaps, 
 have expected some account of that interesting sporting 
 visitor the woodcock, but I shall in a later chapter devote 
 a few words to the somewhat similar snipe. 
 
 Our woodpeckers are three, and the Green Woodpecker, 
 as the largest and least difficult to observe, may well 
 serve as a type. They owe their name to the habit of 
 clinging to trunks of trees and tapping on the bark to 
 discover the hiding-place of grubs. The wedge-shaped 
 bill and the most wonderful tongue, not excepting even 
 the chameleon's, ever designed by nature help them in 
 this. 
 
 The typical woodpecker is as wonderful a combination 
 of applied mechanical principles as the typical whale. 
 Each of these devices comes to the help of the next. 
 Nature does not need to cover her ingenuity with 
 patents, for it is simply inimitable. The long claws 
 of the woodpecker would not hold it firmly enough to 
 the trunk without the combined aid of the flat breast- 
 bone and stiff tail-feathers. The last-named, and not 
 its claws, are the bird's true climbing-spurs. Nor is its 
 food-equipment less wonderful. The wedge-shaped bill 
 chisels a way into any suspicious hollow that is found 
 by tapping the bark, and in a trice the end of the 
 tongue, furnished with sharp hooks that are moistened 
 in the bird's mouth, is inserted and withdrawn, rarely 
 empty, with the coiling force of a steel spring. It is 
 easy for me to tell you of the bird's marvellous tongue- 
 that lies coiled inside its head ready for work, but 
 you must watch the bird at work if you would really 
 appreciate its powers. Green-and-yellow plumage, with 
 a bright red cap and, in the male, a bright red stripe 
 
112 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 on the face, distinguishes this woodpecker from its 
 smaller spotted cousins. They all have the strident 
 call-note already mentioned, but you are more likely 
 to be attracted by their tapping, which can be distinctly 
 heard a considerable distance away. The green wood- 
 pecker is a resident bird, but its movements are 
 uncertain. Thus it was once very uncommon in 
 Ireland, but numbers appeared there some ten years 
 ago, and the bird now is widely distributed. Like all 
 the family, the green woodpecker drills a wide and 
 twisting tunnel down into a tree and widens the end 
 into a cup-shaped cavity, in which the half-dozen clouded 
 white eggs repose on a bed of chips and sawdust. As 
 the woodpeckers lack the cautious forethought of the 
 marsh-titmouse, which carefully removes all rubbish 
 from before its nest, there are generally tell-tale chips 
 at the foot of the tree that betray the occupant. The 
 wryneck, a near relation of the woodpeckers, simply 
 appropriates the old nests of woodpeckers or titmice, 
 and feeds a good deal on ground-ants and fallen berries. 
 There are foreign woodpeckers which make a regular 
 practice of storing nuts and acorns in crevices against 
 times of scarcity, and in America the birds have a habit 
 of storing these supplies in the telegraph-posts, to which 
 they are said to be attracted by the deceptive humming 
 of wind in the wires. 
 
 That restless wanderer, the Cuckoo, means for us the 
 fine weather, and indeed by much journeying the bird 
 manages to pass his life in perpetual sunshine. In March, 
 while our northern air is still raw, I have met him sun- 
 ning himself on the sandhills of Morocco, and a week or 
 two later he gets away from the extreme heat and cools 
 himself in the Pyrenees. The Channel is crossed by 
 
BIRDS OF THE WOODS 113 
 
 the middle of April, and the powerful cry resounds in 
 our woods, and the brown egg soon hides those of the 
 robin and hedge-sparrow. The cuckoo has, as a matter 
 of fact, other notes besides that familiar one which, as 
 I told you in a former chapter, a little girl of my ac- 
 quaintance associates with deer, but they are soft and 
 irregular. Another young lady, with just that little 
 knowledge which is apt to mislead, has defined the 
 cuckoo as the bird that does not lay her own egg. This 
 is incorrect; but at any rate she does not lay it in her 
 own nest. For she has none. She and her mate are the 
 gipsies of the bird world, roaming at their pleasure, and 
 quartering their young on other birds. It is for this 
 reason that nature has arranged for the cuckoo to lay an 
 egg so small that she may carry it in her bill to the 
 nearest nest and place it gently among the rest. If the 
 cuckoo's egg were as large in proportion to the bird her- 
 self as, for instance, that of the guillemot, she would 
 want a mouth as big as an elephant's. Nor could she 
 find any foster-parents that would not immediately gobble 
 up her young one. Only upon the smaller and feebler 
 kinds dare she billet her offspring, and the egg must 
 therefore be small to go in their nest. Not that the 
 resemblance is, as a rule, very close. I have found a 
 small-sized cuckoo's egg in the nest of a skylark where 
 it could almost have passed for one of the owner's ; but, 
 on the other hand, the cuckoo favours the hedge- 
 sparrow above most other birds for this purpose, and the 
 brown interloper can be seen among the five little blue 
 eggs from a long way off. The only possible conclusion, 
 then, seems to be that the small birds are deceived. 
 This does not perhaps argue, by our way of reckoning, 
 a very high degree of intellect, but, after all, we know 
 i 
 
114 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 very little about it, and such theories are mere guess- 
 work on our part. The young cuckoo grows so rapidly 
 that by the fourth or fifth day it is able to get its 
 dented back under its little foster-brothers and sisters 
 and toss them over the side of the nest. The youthful 
 murderer then has, I regret to say, a first-rate time of it, 
 for the parent birds, bereft of their own children, devote 
 all their care to their ungainly visitor, who presently feels 
 able to look after himself, and promptly flies away across 
 the seas in the wake of his real parents, who leave these 
 islands some little time earlier. There are foreign cuckoos 
 that even devour several of the eggs of the selected 
 foster-parents to make room for their own, but this is 
 not a habit with our bird. Now and then, it is true, she 
 has been shot (why should so harmless a bird be shot at 
 all ?) while carrying an egg in her mouth, but the egg was 
 her own, and she was merely bearing it to a nest. Other 
 foreign cuckoos, less given to wandering than ours, build 
 a nest of their own. 
 
 The food of our cuckoo consists entirely of insects in 
 one form or another, chiefly perhaps of hairy caterpillars. 
 His note ceases towards the end of June, and by August 
 the old birds are gone, and are followed early in September 
 by their deserted young ones. 
 
 The cuckoo utters his peculiar note so frequently, both 
 on the wing and when perching, that he may be distin- 
 guished by that alone from other birds. The black bars 
 on his white breast, the yellow feet and claws and the 
 long white-edged tail are also distinctive features, the 
 last giving him a very hawk-like appearance. This per- 
 haps deceives the small birds of the neighbourhood, for 
 you may often see an army of them flying after a shriek- 
 ing cuckoo, who tries in vain to break through his drivers 
 
BIRDS OF THE WOODS 115 
 
 In like manner the small birds will join forces to drive 
 any prowling hawk or belated owl out of the neighbour- 
 hood. I have seen half a dozen finches drive a sparrow- 
 hawk for a mile at least, and often wondered why so 
 powerful a bird did not find the courage to turn and 
 disperse them. 
 
 The little Nuthatch, a rare fighter whenever it gets 
 the chance, has two interesting habits, for the sake of 
 which I have selected it as one of our types. The one 
 consists in choosing a nesting-hole an inch or so too 
 large for it and plastering the entrance with mud and 
 stones until just the right size. This is a compromise, 
 you will notice, between the carpentering skill of the 
 woodpecker and the lazy indifference of the starling; 
 and the nuthatch may, perhaps, be regarded as the 
 plasterer of the bird world, just as the sand-martin is 
 the mason. 
 
 The other curious habit of this inconspicuous little 
 brown-and-white gentleman, easily known by a number 
 of white bars across the tail, is that of wedging nuts in 
 a fork or chink of the tree and hammering the shell with 
 his long and powerful beak. If you regard " hatch" as 
 an abbreviation of " hatchet," this trick solves the mystery 
 of the bird's name. Grubs and beechmast are also eaten 
 by the nuthatch, and it may be seen on tree- trunks 
 working away for its living like the smaller creeper and 
 larger woodpecker. Its five or six eggs (sometimes they 
 number as many as eight) are white, with brown blotches, 
 and lie on the soft rubbish within the hole. The nut- 
 hatch is not known in Ireland, and is exceedingly scarce 
 in Scotland. 
 
 That most useful implement, the scissors, may well 
 have been suggested to mankind by the very effective 
 
116 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 pliers that give the Crossbill his name and enable him 
 to cut clean through the pine scales to the seeds within. 
 This attractive little crimson bird is more familiar in the 
 pine forests of Scotland than in either this country or 
 Ireland. In the Scotch forests he builds a nest of twigs 
 lined with grass, and the four or five bluish eggs, with 
 red spots, somewhat resemble those of the greenfinch. 
 The female crossbill lacks her husband's crimson plumage, 
 and her prevailing colour is a greenish yellow. 
 
 Besides feeding regularly on the seeds of the pine and 
 fir, the crossbill eats various insects. I have seen an odd 
 crossbill or two most years in or near Bournemouth, but 
 I never found the nest there, though the bird is supposed 
 to build quite close to the town. The only crossbills' 
 nests I ever came across and they were in colonies were 
 in the extreme north of Germany, and they swayed with 
 every gust of wind that struck the topmost branches 
 of the firs. 
 
 The Magpie brings us back to the crow family, two 
 members of which, the jackdaw and rook, I have already 
 presented to you. I fear the magpie is as big a rascal, 
 for all his sober black-and-white plumage and fascinating, 
 impudent ways, as any of them. Certainly he is a hand- 
 some fellow, his bright black-and-white dress, particularly 
 after a recent moult, being in far better taste than the 
 gaudier feathers of the magpies one meets in Spain. A 
 moult, by the way, in case I have not explained it, is the 
 seasonal change of coat (like the change in the stoat or, 
 as we shall see, the " sloughing " of the snake) that birds 
 are always accomplishing. So gradually and evenly are 
 the shed feathers replaced that in very few cases is the 
 bird's flight impeded. Thus you will find the summer 
 and winter plumage of many birds so different that each 
 
BIKDS OF THE WOODS 117 
 
 might be a distinct species. The old feathers are dropped, 
 and the new sprout in their place, as those of you know 
 who keep pigeons or canaries. 
 
 Magpies, though fairly abundant all over these islands, 
 are still more so in many districts in France and Germany. 
 If you look out of the train window between Calais and 
 Paris, you will probably see hundreds of magpies and 
 few other birds of any kind whatever. Besides the smart 
 black-and-white plumage, the magpie's long tail is always 
 in evidence, either when the bird is moving over the 
 lawn or as it flies in its heavy way to some low branch, 
 giving the tail, like a signal flag, one or two final waves 
 before settling on its perch. 
 
 The bird has the varied tastes, as regards food, of 
 all the family, and it will even eat carrion, having been 
 seen feeding on a dead donkey. As I never yet met the 
 man who owned to having seen a dead donkey,* let alone 
 with a magpie at work on its delicate hide, I give this 
 story (from a scientific magazine) for what it is worth. 
 The bird's worst thefts, however, are known to the game- 
 keeper. The dead donkey could well be spared, but 
 young pheasants and partridges, as well as the eggs of 
 both species, are quite another matter. The magpie 
 does not much care where he puts his large nest. It 
 is constructed of sticks, with a mud plastering to keep 
 the wet out and a lining of fine grasses, and you may 
 find it perched, with the poorest attempt at hiding, in 
 the tops of trees, or in low bushes, or right on the ground. 
 The eggs, half a dozen in number, are green, and have 
 small brown spots. 
 
 * Since writing the above I have, during the present summer, seen no 
 fewer than three dead donkeys, all in Morocco, and one in the heart of 
 Morocco city. 
 
118 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 The Woodpigeon, likewise known, from its incomplete 
 white collar, as the Ringdove, and for some other reason 
 (that I cannot tell you because I do not know it myself) 
 as the Cushat, is one of our commonest birds, and may, 
 with the sparrow and other birds not beloved by the 
 farmer, be called a bird of cultivation. A "bird of 
 cultivation " does not, as I have tried to explain before, 
 mean a cultivated bird, but one that robs the farmer's 
 grain. Although the woodpigeon may consume large 
 quantities of useless weeds and seeds, it also, being the 
 very greediest fowl living, eats bushels of grain and 
 clover, the quantities that have been found in the crop 
 being almost beyond belief. A bird's crop is a part of its 
 stomach, or at any rate of its digestive machinery ; and 
 the pigeon, when it has young to feed, moistens the food 
 in its crop with a kind of milky stuff to make it soft for 
 them. So, you see, the boy who has been so laughed 
 at (I never met him, but maybe you have) for going to 
 buy a pennyworth of " pigeon's milk " was not quite such 
 a fool as a good many folks (who know nothing at all 
 about this crop and its milky fluid) are pleased to make 
 out. You will generally find some vestige of truth in 
 most natural history fables. The flashing tongue of the 
 chameleon doubtless gave some early traveller the notion 
 of fire darting from its throat ; and the mother pelican's 
 trick of pressing her red-tipped beak against her chest 
 to open her pouch and offer the fish to her chicks like- 
 wise gave rise to the old story about her stabbing herself 
 and feeding the young birds on her blood. When you 
 come to think what slight interest was taken in the 
 old days in the beasts and birds and how handicapped 
 observers must have been without the excellent field- 
 glasses that a sovereign or two will purchase nowadays, 
 
BIRDS OF THE WOODS 119 
 
 the wonder is, I think, that the fables are so few and 
 so moderate. 
 
 In Australia, I recollect the fruit-pigeons used to do 
 a good deal of damage; but, although we have none of 
 these, our own kinds do quite harm enough, and the 
 recent increase of game-preserving, with its resulting 
 persecution of hawks, has made these islands so much 
 more suited to the pigeons that they have invited over 
 large flocks from Norway, and these have taken up their 
 quarters in many parts of the United Kingdom where 
 formerly pigeons were unknown. 
 
 This large pigeon is as easily recognised on its rapid 
 flight over the fir-trees as by its low cooing note when on 
 the nest. The latter is a mere platform of sticks, so 
 loosely interlaced that, when the bird is not sitting, you 
 can look from beneath straight through it at the sky. 
 Where there is any fear of intrusion, the shy bird nests 
 only in the highest branches, but in secluded private 
 woods I have found the eggs within three or four feet of 
 the ground. Several families, each consisting of two, are 
 reared each summer, and the eggs are about an inch and 
 a half in length, pure white, and highly polished. 
 
 The Capercailzie, or Capercaillie, is the handsomest and 
 largest of our grouse family. My selection of this in- 
 teresting bird as a British type might, I fear, meet with 
 objections for the very reason that has attracted me to it. 
 The bird is, in fact, a unique example in our birds of 
 successful re-introduction. England never perhaps had 
 "caillies," as the birds are familiarly called; but they 
 were indigenous to both Scotland and Ireland, and were 
 exterminated in either country early in the eighteenth 
 century. For close on a hundred years, then, there were 
 no caillies in these islands, until, in the thirties or later, 
 
120 TYPES OF BKITISH BIRDS 
 
 the then Lord Breadalbane brought some over from 
 Norway and re-established them in the Scotch forests 
 that had resounded with their cry so many years before. 
 Lord Breadalbane writes me that he doubts whether his 
 predecessor re-introduced the birds so early as the thirties, 
 for there is no mention of any capercailzies being shot 
 during Her Majesty's visit to Taymouth Castle in 1842, 
 besides which Lord Breadalbane met in 1887 a Swedish 
 gentleman who had been instrumental in getting the eggs 
 over. An old keeper, who had charge of the rearing of 
 the birds, told Lord Breadalbane, when a boy, that the 
 imported eggs were placed under greyhens, which are the 
 females of the black grouse. Some years ago Lord 
 Breadalbane shot the record Scotch capercailzie, an old 
 cock, weighing nearly 16 pounds. No attempt has yet 
 been made to win the bird back to Ireland, but the 
 success that has attended the experiment in Scotland 
 is most encouraging, for the great grouse has once more 
 made itself quite at home in all the counties that provide 
 it with the proper food, the tender shoots that give its 
 flesh, so the Norwegians say, its peculiar aroma of turpen- 
 tine, and that otherwise suit its requirements. The caper- 
 cailzie wears feather leggings, but goes barefoot, differing 
 in this from the ptarmigan and red grouse, which have 
 feathered toes. Its tail is long and rounded at the end, 
 and is marked with faint white bars, the bird's most con- 
 spicuous white feathers being beneath the wings. The 
 tail of the capercailzie has not, then, the peculiar lyre- 
 shaped feathers that adorn that of its near relative, the 
 black grouse, but in crosses between the two species there 
 is a compromise in the shape of a forked tail. 
 
 The bird's Scotch name, capercaillie, signifies, I suppose 
 in allusion to its size and speed, " horse of th woods," and 
 
BIRDS OF THE WOODS 121 
 
 the Norwegians have a name for it (as this is not a spelling- 
 bee, I hesitate to write it down) that refers to the afore- 
 mentioned flavour of its flesh. To the sportsman the 
 capercailzie is ideal, for its rapid flight makes it, for all 
 its great size, a difficult target on the wing. Your real 
 sportsman you may say what you like about him, but 
 he always has this in his favour loves difficulty ; the more 
 and the stiffer the obstacles, the better he is, or should 
 be, pleased. Eor this reason I regret that a good many 
 English visitors to Norway take advantage of the local 
 close-time not including the nesting season, and shoot the 
 birds as they sing their love-song and forget in their love- 
 lorn state the dangers that surround them. It is one 
 thing to refrain, as I have already urged, from talking too 
 loudly against our neighbours' notions of sport, and quite 
 another thing to take part in their unsportsmanlike 
 practices. 
 
 The eggs of the capercailzie, seven to ten in number, 
 are deposited in a mere hollow in the ground, without any 
 pretence at a nest. They are rather over two inches in 
 length and are of a pale brown or reddish yellow, marked 
 with dark brown blotches. 
 
 The Owls are a race of birds apart. They are regarded 
 with a good deal of superstition in most countries I 
 have heard Arabs curse them in the most profane 
 language as servants of Satan and even puzzled scientific 
 men so much that they were formerly classed with the 
 birds of prey (eagles and hawks), but are now considered 
 as a separate order. On the whole, particularly the 
 smaller members of the tribe, owls are a useful race. Some 
 of the larger kinds certainly destroy a good deal of game ; 
 but, so far as we are concerned, only one of them is a 
 regular winter visitor to the north of Scotland, while two 
 
122 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 only of the rest appear in these islands at long intervals, 
 and none nest with us. 
 
 The Long-eared Owl, which must serve us as a type of 
 the rest, has all the virtues and none of the vices of its 
 race. Like most of its fellows, it is a bird of the twilight, 
 and when it does stay out after sunrise, it is either mobbed 
 by all the sparrows, finches and other feathered riff-raff 
 of the neighbourhood, or else it perches, stupidly dazzled, 
 on some tree-stump, gazing in pitiable plight at the passer- 
 by. The Little Owl, another species, is more given to 
 late hours perhaps than the rest, and I have ridden past 
 hundreds of these birds in Morocco so close, that I could 
 have killed them with my crop. (N.B. Do not confuse 
 this, please, with the pigeon's crop explained above.) 
 
 As the smaller owls feed only on mice and voles, bats, 
 fishes and insects, it is wanton folly to molest them, and 
 if your father has any keepers given to this practice, try 
 and get him to forbid it. There is always, to some tastes, 
 a " bit of rare sport " in knocking over some old owl with 
 a charge of shot, and many keepers and gardeners prefer 
 giving this evidence of their industry to doing harder and 
 more useful work. Others have still more refined notions 
 of the meaning of "honest toil," and employ traps and 
 poison about the estate. The victims accumulate in this 
 way while the energetic keeper smokes his pipe at home. 
 Perhaps I said enough in the second chapter on the sub- 
 ject of protecting the wild creatures; but once again, 
 without going into details, let me counsel moderation 
 either way. Kill your magpies and hedgehogs and 
 sparrows, by all means, if you are satisfied of their guilt, 
 and if you have a direct interest in their suppression; 
 but do not lend yourself to any wide programme of ex- 
 termination unless there is very good reason and the 
 
BIRDS OF THE WOODS 123 
 
 evidence is quite beyond suspicion. Above all, insist on 
 the quickest and most merciful death for the irreclaimable 
 thieves, either skilful shooting or humanely constructed 
 traps. There are many traps in use the original in- 
 ventors of more than one are, I believe, still living that 
 are so barbarous that it would scarcely be excessive 
 punishment to clap them on their designers' noses and 
 give them a taste of their own cruelty. 
 
 For the smaller owls, however, there should be neither 
 guns nor traps. Their worst offence is a somewhat dismal 
 hooting, that scares, or at any rate disturbs, many people 
 who are not accustomed to it. Even in this my friend, 
 the long-eared species, is a prince of owls, for it is very 
 seldom that he breaks the stillness of the night, and even 
 his flight is more silent than that of the rest. Owls are 
 remarkable for their silent movements, a great boon to 
 birds that have to steal upon sharp-eared mice during the 
 quietest part of the twenty-four hours. 
 
 A very peculiar habit noticed in the owls, nightjars, 
 and many birds of prey, is that of bringing up, as if they 
 were sick, round pellets, or " castings," containing the fur, 
 feathers and other portions of their food most difficult 
 to digest. 
 
 The long- eared owl is known from our others by his 
 prominent ear-tufts (ear-tufts, mind, as in the squirrel, not 
 ears), and his feet are wrapped in light brown feathers. 
 Watch the toes of a perching owl in life, not at the 
 stuffer's and you will learn the difference between its 
 feet and those of the perching birds proper. The latter 
 grasp the perch with three toes before and one behind, 
 whereas the owl has two on either side of it. 
 
 The owls all fail in the nest-building department ; but 
 this one is, I think, the only kind that always makes use 
 
124 
 
 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 of the deserted nests of squirrels or magpies or wood- 
 pigeons. Sometimes he refurnishes a particularly battered 
 nest; but not always does he even take this trouble. 
 The four or five eggs are pure white, not very glossy, and 
 more oval (and less round) than those of most owls. 
 In all the owls and birds of prey the female is the larger 
 bird of the two. 
 
 Do not, whatever you do, despise the owls as a stupid 
 race, nor, on the other hand, regard them, like the ancients, 
 as supernaturally wise. These are old wives' tales, and 
 the comparisons we draw in everyday conversation from 
 the supposed qualities of animals are all wrong. Fancy 
 " duck " (the dirty bird !) as a term of affection ! 
 
 THE LONG-EARED OWL. 
 
GROUSE 
 
 Face page 125. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 BIRDS OF THE MOORS 
 
 Value of Grouse-moors Scandinavian Grouse Size and appearance 
 Food and food-stores Distribution of Grouse in these islands 
 Grouse disease Eggs Fables about the Nightjar Food and manner 
 of feeding Voice Serrated toe Mode of perching. 
 
 THERE is more bird-life on the moors than anyone see- 
 ing them casually would imagine. But the hawks that 
 quarter the heather for food have travelled far from their 
 true home, and many of the smaller moor birds are equally 
 at home in the woods and hedges. 
 
 One bird, however, above all the rest, is characteristic 
 of the moors, and, indeed, since it is found nowhere else 
 (unless artificially introduced), of our islands. This is 
 the Eed Grouse, the darling of sportsmen (and eagles!), 
 the bird whose mere presence may bring the value of 
 a Scotch or Yorkshire moor from nothing to a thousand 
 a year. Eoughly, we may say that the rent of a grouse- 
 moor is worked out on the basis of half a sovereign 
 for each bird, no little value, you see, for a bird that 
 weighs but twenty ounces and measures barely sixteen 
 inches all told. 
 
 As the only bird peculiar (i.e., not found naturally 
 outside of them) to these islands, the red grouse has 
 for us an interest apart from that of any other. There 
 are, it is true, one or two kinds of grouse in Norway and 
 
 125 
 
126 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 Sweden very like our bird, but those who are responsible 
 for the making of species (nature, as I have told you, is 
 not) have decided that we really have a distinct grouse of 
 our own. 
 
 He is a handsome fellow, about a third again as large 
 as the partridge, and his plumage is of a rich reddish 
 brown, while his eyes are decorated with what look 
 like scarlet brows. The female bird is altogether less 
 attractive, her cloak being much duller. We human 
 beings differ in this respect from nearly all the animals 
 and particularly from the birds, with two or three 
 exceptions that with us the female is in every way 
 the better - looking (I trust I speak impartially), and 
 decks herself out in brighter colours than we men. The 
 gallants of a couple of centuries ago, with their gorgeous 
 coats and ruffles and wigs, came much nearer the ideal of 
 the male animal in nature. 
 
 The grouse is essentially a bird of the heather, feeding 
 chiefly on the young sprouts, though there are numbers 
 of grouse on many moors in the north of England where 
 heather is very scarce indeed. He also eats grasses, seeds 
 and bilberries, and is a much greater consumer of grain 
 than the capercailzie and black grouse. A closely related 
 bird that lives up in Spitzbergen has a very ingenious 
 habit of storing seeds and berries in snow burrows with 
 an entrance so narrow that the Arctic fox cannot get 
 at them. Thus does it escape starvation in the pitiless 
 northern winter. It seems pretty certain that heather- 
 fed grouse feed only in the evening, though many people 
 who know the moors declare that the birds make a meal 
 in the early morning as well. Like his cousin, the 
 ptarmigan (the bird that, as I have already mentioned, 
 puts on a winter mantle of white, but retains his black 
 
BIRDS OF THE MOORS 127 
 
 eye-stripe and tail feathers), the grouse has feathered legs 
 and feet, and his hind claw is very short. 
 
 The distribution of the grouse in these islands is not, 
 like that of so many of our animals, open to much doubt. 
 His headquarters may be placed in Scotland (hence called 
 Lagopus scoticus), but he also occurs on most suitable 
 moors, where poaching has not exterminated him, in 
 Northumberland, Yorkshire, Durham, and generally in 
 most counties north of, and including, Derbyshire, also 
 in many parts of "Wales and Ireland. In the southern 
 counties of England the bird does not find the requisite 
 conditions, and attempts to establish it in the New Forest 
 and elsewhere have invariably failed. 
 
 All animals have their illnesses, but those of the red 
 grouse are unusually complicated and severe, consisting 
 chiefly of pneumonia and the attacks of voracious 
 worms. The illness of so valuable a bird is a matter 
 of some importance, and a bad year of grouse epidemic 
 means a loss of thousands of pounds to those con- 
 cerned. 
 
 Some time in April the grouse lays in a round space 
 hollowed out in the ground a large number of eggs, vary- 
 ing from seven to fourteen, of a pale olive-brown with 
 red blotches, and the young birds are hatched out by 
 the middle of May. Fairly dry seasons are the best for 
 grouse, though, like all game-birds, they need a good deal 
 of water. 
 
 Another bird suggestive of the open moors is the 
 quaint and harmless Nightjar, and its chief interest 
 lies perhaps in the ridiculous stories that have been 
 told about it. From the earliest times in which natural 
 history books were written, the bird has been accused 
 of sucking the milk of goats and cows, an act its beak 
 
12S TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 is utterly unfitted for. In calling it "goatsucker," our 
 countryfolk are only translating the old name of capri- 
 mulgus given by the ancients, the name by which scien- 
 tific men still call the genus. " Give a dog a bad name," 
 says the proverb, " and hang it " ; and I fear that some 
 idea will linger that the calumny is deserved until we 
 have the courage to change its generic name. What 
 say you to Discornox ? 
 
 But, you are perhaps thinking, it is strange, if there is 
 no truth in the assertion, that the peasants and yokels of 
 almost every land should have the same belief in the 
 bird's guilt. Our farm-labourers certainly do not read 
 Pliny, or, for that matter, any other author calling the 
 bird by its Latin name. Well, as I told you in the last 
 chapter, these natural history mistakes generally come 
 about by a misunderstanding of some very simple natural 
 occurrence. Thus it is not difficult to imagine folks 
 seeing the nightjar dodging moths round about the ewes 
 and cattle resting in the evening stillness and, in the 
 uncertain light, declaring that they saw it sucking the 
 milk. Folks generally see a good deal more in the twi- 
 light and darkness than ever they saw in broad daylight, 
 and very often they see (or honestly think they see) 
 apparitions that are not there at all. A nightjar sucking 
 a cow is a very mild flight of the imagination compared 
 with some spectacles that " eye-witnesses," especially sea- 
 faring men and anglers, tell us of ; and if they saw the 
 bird perched on a stool and milking the cows into pails, 
 we could scarcely be surprised. 
 
 Occasionally you may come across a nightjar flying 
 round in the early afternoon, and I saw one at that time 
 of day a year or two ago in the Bournemouth Gardens ; 
 but it does not in the ordinary way start on its mothing 
 
BIRDS OF THE MOORS 129 
 
 expeditions until sunset. Silently the bird flies, like 
 the owls, and it is doubtless owing to its quiet habits 
 and retiring nature while daylight lasts that so many 
 people never notice it. For during its stay in these 
 islands, from May until September, the nightjar is 
 both plentiful and widely distributed. It lays two 
 eggs on the bare ground; they are rather over an inch 
 in length and of a creamy white hue with deep brown 
 blotches. 
 
 Moths chiefly, but also, where procurable, winged ants, 
 are the food of the nightjar, which is said to fly after 
 them open-mouthed and to entangle them, as in a butter- 
 fly-net, in the stiff bristles that grow over its beak. This 
 suggestion is interesting, and experience teaches us that, 
 wherever an ingenious device is in question, nature may 
 generally be given the benefit of the doubt; but I have 
 watched, as far as is possible in the dim light, hundreds 
 of nightjars on the wing, and I never yet saw the beak 
 open. What is more, I do not quite see how anyone 
 could see the exact method of procedure, except in cap- 
 tivity, and in captivity the bird has never done par- 
 ticularly well. A similar difficulty is found with caged 
 moreporks, a group of curious Australian birds very like 
 nightjars. 
 
 The ordinary voice of the nightjar is not as a rule 
 so bad as the name suggests, being no worse than a soft 
 purring note, though now and again it utters sounds com- 
 pared with which the rasping of a file on a slate would be 
 mellow music. 
 
 The queer, bristled mouth, the white spots on the 
 wings, as well as the generally red tone of its upper 
 plumage and the speckled breast, sufficiently distinguish 
 the nightjar from any other type of British bird. It has 
 
130 
 
 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 a curious serrated toe, the proper use of which we 
 have not yet discovered; and it perches not across a 
 bough, like other birds, but along it. Thus it cannot well 
 be confused with any other species, no matter in what 
 position it is discovered. 
 
 THE NIGHTJAR. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 BIRDS OP THE MARSHES 
 
 Great diversity in size of marsh-birds Their food Birds of the Broads 
 The Bearded Reedling not a Titmouse " Reed-pheasant "Its food 
 Nest and eggs The Warblers Dartford Warblers in Morocco 
 Limited range of the Marsh-Warbler Its nest and eggs Herons in 
 Richmond Park Curious choice of nesting-site Nest and eggs- 
 Food of Herons and method of feeding Heron-hawking Heron's 
 survival remarkable Difficult to shoot Heron's comb-like toe and 
 its uses Appearance and habits of the Bittern Its food American 
 Bitterns Differences between the Bittern and Heron The draining 
 of the marshes Snipe and Woodcock The wading birds Their 
 food and migrations Plumage of Snipe Its "drumming" Nest 
 and eggs Feeding of Snipe Mr. Morley'a Chameleon Appearance 
 and flight of the Lapwing "Green Plover" "Plovers' eggs" 
 Lapwings and Moles A cunning parent Vanity of the males 
 
 To appreciate the wonderful numbers and variety of the 
 fowl that either nest or seek their food in the marshland, 
 you should visit at the right season some country, like 
 Spain, with extensive marshes still left to the birds. We 
 have only the Broads left, though even in that limited 
 area it is still possible to study some of the most interest- 
 ing forms of marsh life; the bearded reedling, marsh- 
 titmouse, marsh -warbler, reed -warbler, sedge -warbler, 
 reed-bunting and the larger heron. 
 
 A great range of size is covered in these denizens of 
 the swamp, from the forty inches height of the gaunt 
 heron to the five-inch span, all told, of the marsh- 
 
 131 
 
132 
 
 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 warbler; and their food is as varied as their form, the 
 bearded reedling eating only reed seeds and molluscs, the 
 marsh-warbler insects, the heron and bittern fish and 
 frogs, and the snipe worms and the other soft booty of 
 his long bill. 
 
 Most of these you may, with luck, encounter on the 
 Broads, though the spread of wherry traffic and visita- 
 tions by London tourists 
 (who occasionally com- 
 plain in the newspapers 
 that the bye-laws inter- 
 fere with their " having 
 fun" with the gulls) do 
 not tend to improve the 
 conditions for bird life. 
 
 The Bearded Reedling 
 (wrongly known as the 
 bearded titmouse, and 
 once included with the 
 titmice) is a pretty little 
 bird with black side- 
 whiskers, grey crown, 
 pale pink breast, and a 
 
 tail so long for its size that folks on the Broads know 
 it as the "reed-pheasant." (Do not for a moment con- 
 fuse it with the black -crowned reed -bunting or the 
 white-throated reed-warbler with the yellow eyebrows.) 
 It is found in these islands nowhere but in our 
 southern counties, and nests only in the district of the 
 Broads, and perhaps in one or two spots in Devonshire. 
 Small snails and other molluscs (see Invertebrates), as 
 well as the seeds of reeds and water-plants, form the 
 food of the reedling. Its softly lined nest of reeds is 
 
 HERON AND NEST. 
 
BIRDS OF THE MARSHES 133 
 
 deep and cup-shaped, and is hidden in the half-sodden 
 flags. The eggs, about half a dozen in number, are cream- 
 coloured, and have reddish-brown lines. 
 
 The Marsh-warbler is not a resident in these islands, 
 but comes and goes with the swift, May and August being 
 the months of its arrival and departure. The warblers, 
 a large section of the thrush family, include over twenty 
 singing birds, among them the somewhat notorious Dart- 
 ford warbler, of which I have seen more in a week in 
 Morocco than during the three years I lived within a 
 couple of hundred yards of Dartford Heath. The marsh- 
 warbler has a sweet voice, like most of its kind, and I 
 rather think that, like the allied reed-warbler and sedge- 
 warbler, it keeps the nightingale company, and sings half 
 the early summer nights. Not a very conspicuous little 
 bird, measuring only about five or six inches (or as much 
 as a sparrow), the marsh-warbler has greenish-brown 
 plumage on the back and sides, a white throat, and 
 yellowish chest. It nests in several of our southern 
 counties, but not, I fancy, in many places north of the 
 Thames, nor does it visit either Scotland or Ireland. 
 
 Like most of the warblers, it feeds almost entirely on 
 insects, and is perfectly harmless. Its grass nest, softly 
 lined with hair, may be found low down in bushes beside 
 the water, and it lays five or six (or even seven, white 
 eggs with brown spots. 
 
 Few of our native birds are larger, few more interest- 
 ing, than that ragged-looking watchman of the marshes 
 the grim old Heron. The long black head-feathers, the 
 greyish plumage, the straggling plumes on the breast, and 
 the long yellow beak and legs are familiar in all the bird's 
 well-known positions, whether you see him as the one- 
 legged spearer of fish and frogs, or as the graceful high- 
 
134 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 flier with legs and crest streaming behind, or perched as 
 sentinel beside the clumsy nest on which sits the great 
 hen, with her snake-like neck tucked back in a fold. As 
 near London as Richmond Park you may see herons in 
 the family circle, and you may also see single birds flying 
 far overhead, beating music out of the air with their 
 powerful wings as an accompaniment to their low, grunt- 
 ing note. 
 
 Herons are sociable in the nesting season, and the 
 heronries, of which there are many in England and Wales, 
 and a few in Scotland and Ireland, are situated in the 
 tops of great elm -trees or on lofty cliffs. This would 
 seem an unusual choice for the great wading heron, but 
 no doubt, as Mr. Harting suggests, he knows where he 
 and his family are safe from interruption, and he will 
 even dispute the tree-tops in deadly battle with the rooks. 
 The great flat nest of sticks and grass is, like that of the 
 swan, constantly added to, and is firmly fixed, so as to 
 withstand the blows of the wind. The beautiful pale 
 green eggs are two and a half inches long, and number 
 from three to five. 
 
 Perhaps after their strange nesting habits, which are 
 quite different from those of the bitterns and other 
 family connections, the most interesting facts about the 
 heron are connected with its food and its manner of 
 procuring it. For the heron's bill is, never a doubt 
 of it, the original of the fish-spear. The accuracy with 
 which the bird strikes at passing fish is not quite as 
 unerring as some people make out, but he is none the 
 less a tolerably skilful spearer of fish and frogs, and 
 he also manages to secure water-voles and young moor- 
 hens, that are doubtless deceived by his quiet attitude. 
 I have seen him gobble more than one of the little birds 
 
BIKDS OF THE MARSHES 135 
 
 as they paddled fearlessly by the thin leg. Frogs I never 
 saw him eat, though he is known to devour them by the 
 score, but many a fish have I seen tossed in the air and 
 caught in that great bill. Whether they were troutlets 
 or not I never cared to ascertain by shooting the bird 
 in the act. Anyhow they were no trout of mine, for 
 I never owned any, and that makes all the difference 
 to the point of view. The heron also eats quantities of 
 molluscs and insects, and there is an Egyptian species 
 that, like our rook, follows the plough. 
 
 I have always been surprised by the continued survival 
 of so large a bird in open districts where, for ten shillings 
 a year, any idler can "have a slap" at it. Not many 
 birds are easier marks once you get within range, though 
 this is by no means easy to do, owing to the heron's 
 wariness when fishing and the great height at which it 
 flies. Formerly, when royalty went in for heron-hawking, 
 this survival of the bird was not difficult to understand, 
 for those who interfered with the amusements of royalty 
 had what colonial folks would call a thin time of it ; but 
 the sport is all but obsolete nowadays, and this special 
 protection has been withdrawn. This makes the heron's 
 survival all the more gratifying, for all said and done, 
 be he a poacher or not, the heron is a delightful bird, 
 and much of the damage he may do in the trout-stream 
 is in part counterbalanced by his destruction of eels 
 and moorhens. You may, perhaps, have read in some 
 book of the oil that flows from the heron's comb-like 
 toe to still the rippling water so that he may see the 
 fish, while it is further alleged to attract these to their 
 doom. Believe not a word of it. This curious toe, 
 not unlike that of the nightjar, might perchance serve 
 to stop an escaping eel, but its purpose is, in all prob- 
 
136 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 ability, nothing more warlike than the combing of the 
 bird's coarse plumage. 
 
 A far more mysterious fen-dweller is the Bittern, and 
 I fear it has long ceased laying its green eggs anywhere 
 in these islands. In winter-time, however, a certain 
 number of bitterns visit the Broads and remain until 
 early spring. Its singular habit of throwing back its 
 head and pointing its long bill at the skies is as dis- 
 tinctive as the long green legs ; and it also utters a peculiar 
 note, known as " booming," which is like no other sound 
 in bird language. 
 
 Like the heron, it feeds largely on frogs, but probably 
 eats far less fish. In America, there are bitterns that 
 eat anything and everything. Apart from some similarity 
 in their food, haunts, and appearances, the heron and 
 bittern lead very different lives. The bittern is a night- 
 bird, secretive in all its arrangements, and at no time 
 of year sociable like the heron. It nests in isolated places 
 down in the rank herbage that marks the border between 
 stagnant pools and the dry land. I cannot think bitterns 
 are much troubled by gunners. I recollect, in an Aus- 
 tralian swamp, a couple of bitterns rising almost from 
 under my feet, and they did not seem worth discharging 
 either barrel of the gun I carried at the time. If a bird 
 is no test of your skill, and when shot no good for the 
 table, it is poor sport, indeed, to shoot it. So I fancy 
 that the bittern's increasing scarcity in these islands must 
 be due to the draining of the marshland. Bitterns and 
 bearded reedlings may be interesting neighbours, but their 
 society is not profitable. Where cultivation comes into 
 fashion these aboriginals have to go. 
 
 Unlike the heron and bittern, our snipe and woodcock 
 are greatly prized for both shooting and eating. The 
 
BIRDS OF THE MARSHES 137 
 
 Snipe is hard to find, being uncertain in his movements, 
 still harder to hit when found, and excellent to cook and 
 eat when hit. There is, therefore, every inducement to 
 shoot it whenever the chance offers. Like the woodcock, 
 the snipe belongs to the vast order of Wading Birds, a 
 kind of intermediate group between the land and the 
 water-birds, which wade in the shallows, and are able to 
 thrust their long bills in the mud for worms and molluscs 
 without wetting their eyes. Only a few of the curlews 
 eat berries and other vegetable matter, the rest of the 
 waders, such as sandpipers, godwits, and snipes, eating 
 only soft animal food. Most of these birds are met with 
 on our shores in spring and autumn, on their way to and 
 from their nesting grounds in the far north. The British 
 islands are, in fact, a kind of half-way house for these 
 waders, which are, at the migration seasons, shot in great 
 numbers in our muddy estuaries and on other suitable 
 tracts of coastline. 
 
 The common snipe, however, is a resident, differing in 
 this respect from two other closely allied birds, the great 
 snipe and the jack-snipe, which are only winter visitors. 
 The snipe varies somewhat in colouring, though there 
 is little change of plumage after the different moults. 
 Generally speaking, the bird is dark above and mottled 
 with lighter feathers ; there is a white patch on the neck, 
 and the lower parts are pale brown to white. A very 
 dark variety, or race as it may be called, is also met with 
 in these islands, and was formerly spoken of as a distinct 
 species. The snipe measures rather over ten inches, includ- 
 ing the bill, which is nearly three. It is a silent bird of the 
 night, and it is in the dark hours that snipe procure their 
 food and perform their migrations. Few of our birds, 
 indeed, are more silent, though the snipe makes a unique 
 
138 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 sound, known as "drumming," which is caused by the 
 movement of air through his wings as the male bird 
 descends over the nest in which, in April and May, his 
 mate lays her four greenish eggs, splashed with dark 
 brown. Snipe rear but one family, and the bill of the 
 young bird is quite short. We regard the snipe in these 
 islands, even in that excellent snipe country, Ireland, as 
 solitary birds ; but in the alluvial lowlands of other parts 
 of the world you may find numbers together. The snipe's 
 method of extracting worms from the ooze has been 
 likened to suction ; but do not confuse this with the Irish 
 belief that the woodcock feeds only on water. You may 
 as well believe Mr. Morley when he assures us that the 
 chameleon feeds on air ! 
 
 The Lapwing, or Peewit, is the last of my marsh birds, 
 and a very attractive creature he is, with his dark green 
 plumage, black crest and throat, and white underparts, 
 his shrill of cry " Pee-weet," and his curious jerky flight. 
 You may sometimes see these birds tumbling in the air 
 like pigeons, the alternating of the white and dark sur- 
 faces, as each becomes exposed, giving a very curious 
 effect. From his green plumage and family connections, 
 the lapwing is also known as the " green plover," and he 
 certainly, along with various other waders and some of 
 the gulls, helps to supply those luxuries known as 
 " plovers' eggs." For plovers' eggs are, like " whitebait," 
 a number of different articles included under one name 
 for the convenience of tradesmen wishing to charge high 
 prices for them. The lapwing eats worms and insects. 
 Now the mole, as I told you before, also feeds on worms ; 
 so the cunning bird makes use of the industrious mole by 
 waiting till he sees it catch a worm, then frightening the 
 mole, and carrying off its prize. I have not seen this, 
 
BIRDS OF THE MARSHES 139 
 
 but it is told by a great naturalist named Romanes, and 
 you may take it as pretty correct. The cunning of my 
 friend, the lapwing, does not end here, indeed, for he has 
 a wonderful trick of pretending that his wing is broken, 
 hopping from side to side with a crippled movement, so 
 as to draw all manner of intruders, four-footed or two, 
 from the precious eggs. I have also, however, seen the 
 bird going through antics of this sort when there were 
 no eggs about. The lapwing is, in the nesting season, as 
 vain as most other birds, and you may find in the marshy 
 fields which they frequent numbers of depressions in the 
 ground in which the males have danced to their spouses. 
 The eggs are laid in similar depressions, with no more 
 nest than a few grasses plastered down by the sitting 
 bird. They are pear-shaped, four in number, over one 
 and a half inches in length, greenish brown, with black 
 blotches, and excellent for breakfast. Thus runs the 
 catalogue of the virtues of "plovers' eggs," 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 BIRDS OF THE RIVER AND LAKE 
 
 Difference in rivers Requirements of the birds Habits and appearance 
 of the Dipper The Mountains of California The Dipper and Trout- 
 fry Trout and Pike in Hampshire Probable food of the Dipper 
 Alleged singing under water Feet of the Wagtail Confusion between 
 resident and migrant Wagtails Appearance and voice of the pied 
 Wagtail Its food Nest and eggs Fables about the Kingfisher Its 
 real nesting habits Its food Kingfishers and Goldfish at Bath 
 Kingfishers in Winter Toes of the Coot Mode of feeding Coots on 
 the Fleet pond Curious habit of the Grebe Various explanations of 
 this Its appearance and food Nest and eggs. 
 
 RIVERS are not all alike. Without going deeply into 
 their differences, it is obvious that some are rapid, others 
 sluggish; some are clear, others muddy; some run over 
 gravel and between high, rocky banks, others over mud 
 and between low banks fringed with waving flags and 
 reeds. Some of these and other conditions affect the fish, 
 the insect, and the plant life of any particular river, and 
 consequently the bird life also. For the river-birds will 
 frequent only those rivers that afford them the right kind 
 of food and the necessary conveniences for getting it. 
 The dipper wants aquatic insects and foaming pools ; the 
 kingfisher looks for fish and a diving-board to pounce 
 from ; wagtails trip daintily over the mud after worms ; 
 the coot and grebe need small fish and seclusion ; and 
 small reed-birds of the kind mentioned in the last chapter 
 soon discover attractive patches of sedges and make their 
 homes in them. 
 
 The Dipper is about the only bird I know that walks 
 quietly into the tumbling waters till they completely 
 
 140 
 
BIRDS OF THE RIVER AND LAKE HI 
 
 cover it. Its movements in the water are quite distinct 
 from those of any of the web-footed ducks or other true 
 water-birds, and I should be inclined to think that it gets 
 along chiefly buoyed with the help of air imprisoned 
 beneath its wings. It is also known as the Water-ousel, 
 though no relation of the true ousel, a mountain-bird of 
 the thrush family ; and its conspicuous white breast, 
 together with its wren-like build and peculiar habits, will 
 always distinguish it from any of our other birds. To 
 read a really beautiful account of the dipper by one who 
 has studied it for months together, you must get hold of 
 an old book called The Mountains of California, by a 
 writer named Muir, and you will not, I think, have read 
 many pieces of natural history writing to equal his 
 chapter on this bird. 
 
 Now, the interesting question about our friend, the 
 dipper, once we have duly noted its queer manners in the 
 water, is the exact kind of food it expects to find there. 
 Many folks who readily give the worst possible character 
 to every animal they discuss declare that the dipper can 
 be up to no good if there are trout in the stream. There 
 is a good deal of nonsense written about this universal 
 preference for trout fry on the part of all fish-eating 
 animals. The pike, for instance, is said to be so fond 
 of young trout that he will swim for miles in search of 
 them, passing on the way shoals of untouched roach and 
 dace. The only creature I have ever known on sound 
 evidence to prefer trout to any other fish is the kingfisher, 
 and even with this bird I don't suppose the preference is 
 very marked. As for the pike, all I know is this, that 
 trout fry have been successfully introduced into a Hamp- 
 shire river famous as long as men can remember for its 
 large and voracious pike. This says a good deal either for 
 
142 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 the varied tastes of the pike, or for the little trout's 
 cleverness in taking care of itself. I suspect that the 
 dipper, if it does eat spawn and fry, would be as likely 
 to choose those of the minnow or gudgeon as those of 
 the trout. But it is more than questionable whether it 
 eats anything more valuable than water-beetles and other 
 insects and their larvae (see later chapter on Insects), 
 many of which assuredly feed on young fishes and fish 
 spawn. It may therefore be that the little dipper is 
 actually a benefactor to the trout-owner. You may hear 
 the little gentleman carolling a merry tune of his own as 
 he watches his reflection in a pool, but I rather doubt his 
 singing under water, as so many people declare he does. 
 I am not, as you who have followed me so far will admit, 
 quick to disbelieve the wonders of nature, but a bird 
 singing so loudly at the bottom of a running stream as 
 to be heard by persons on the bank is, I confess with 
 regret, a little beyond me. The egg-shaped nest of the 
 dipper is of moss lined with dead leaves, and you may 
 come across it in a variety of situations near the water, 
 particularly among the rocks or in some overhanging 
 stump. The eggs, about an inch in length, are pure 
 white; and two or three families, each numbering four, 
 five, or six, are brought up each summer. 
 
 The Pied Wagtail, or Water- wagtail, is a bird of muddy 
 rivers, a preference that we might guess from the nature 
 of its insect food and the shape of its feet. There are 
 few stronger links in the chain of evidence bearing on 
 the haunts and habits of any animal than the shape of 
 its feet. I have heard before now that you can tell 
 a man's character from his boots, but this is a mere fancy 
 compared with the real value of a proper study of feet in 
 beasts and birds. In the coot, I am about to introduce 
 
BIRDS OF THE EIVER AND LAKE 143 
 
 you to one of the most remarkable forms of bird-feet. 
 Those, however, of the wagtails are merely meant for 
 tripping over soft ground. 
 
 These wagtails occasion, like the allied pipits, some little 
 confusion between the actual residents and the migrants, 
 particularly when we attempt to consider any of them in 
 its relation to the British Islands as a whole. With 
 plenty of space for detail, it is, of course, easy to describe 
 each bird as a resident or visitor in every separate county, 
 but for general purposes some little allowance has to be 
 made for convenient and numerous exceptions. Take the 
 pied wagtail, for instance. Although numbers of pied 
 wagtails are to be found all the year round in different 
 parts of these islands, it is less convenient to regard the 
 bird as a resident than as a visitor making an unusually 
 long stay of eight months : from March until November. 
 
 This wagtail is easily recognised by the black and 
 white of its plumage (the face white and the back black) 
 and its long restless tail. Early in the nesting season the 
 male becomes inspired to sing several bars of a tune, but 
 the cry at ordinary times is sharp and unmusical. 
 
 Molluscs and aquatic insects form the food of the pied 
 wagtail, and the bird is also said to be fond of glow- 
 worms, though I never knew anyone who had seen it eat 
 them. It has the undulating flight of all the family, and 
 can also trip with ease over the softest mud and even with 
 the water coming over its feet. The nest, rather large 
 for the size of the bird, is of moss, with a feather lining, 
 and is placed on the ground, or in a wall or low stump 
 close to the water. Its eggs are pale grey with darker 
 grey spots, four or five in number, and rather less than an 
 inch in length. 
 
 The Kingfisher is, for brilliant colouring, the gem of 
 
144 
 
 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 THE KINGFISHER. 
 
 British birds. So much legend, however, has managed 
 to cling around it that its very simple life-story is not 
 easily disentangled from the mass of fable. Memories 
 
 of Ovid lines, that had to be 
 learnt by heart as a set-off 
 against the trifling offence of 
 wafting a ruler through the 
 schoolroom window, give many 
 fellows an idea that the 
 "Halcyon" rears its brood in 
 a nest floating on the sea 
 daring a fortnight of preter- 
 naturally calm weather. The 
 kingfisher, as a matter of fact, 
 keeps house in a very dirty 
 burrow in the river -bank, 
 which shames its gorgeous 
 green-and-azure mantle, reddish cheeks, and white throat ; 
 and the half-dozen spherical white eggs of each clutch 
 are hatched on a disgusting layer of undigested fish-bones 
 which, like the owl and nightjar, the kingfisher throws up 
 in pellets. This burrow is a couple of feet or more in length, 
 and is ingeniously bored with an upward slope, so that 
 the overflow water in flood-time shall not reach the eggs. 
 Although the kingfisher eats a great many insects, and 
 may even be seen on the sea-shore picking up small 
 shrimps and sandhoppers, it must be admitted that its 
 taste for the more valuable kinds of fish, particularly 
 trout, is too well known to be concealed. It is a pity 
 that so beautiful a bird should have to be shot for such 
 offences, but there is no need to go into hysterics over 
 the matter, as some folks recently did on the shooting 
 of some kingfishers which had eaten a lot of goldfish 
 
BIRDS OF THE RIVER AND LAKE 145 
 
 at Bath. One gentleman even declared his intention of 
 providing the kingfishers of the neighbourhood with a 
 plentiful supply of goldfish for the remainder of his life- 
 time. Nice, if you come to think of it, for the goldfish ! 
 
 The kingfisher cannot be regarded as particularly scarce 
 in the southern counties of England, though in parts of 
 Scotland and Ireland it is only a rare visitor. It is 
 never a sociable creature, but I have seen two or three 
 together (birds of a family, probably) close to Richmond 
 (Surrey), and have come across more than one frozen to 
 death in the reeds. "Wondrously beautiful as the bird is 
 when perched on some overhanging bough, the perfection 
 of its colouring is best seen when it hovers hawk-like 
 over some fish too deep for capture, with the sunlight in 
 full play on the glorious burnish of its quivering wings. 
 
 A very different-looking bird is the little Coot, the dark 
 grey water-bird with the white forehead and green lobed 
 toes. The flap of skin along the toes, drawn in at each 
 joint and leaving the claw quite free, probably serves the 
 purpose of a webbed foot in swimming without in any way 
 interfering with the bird's movements as it clambers over 
 the great water-lilies that stagnate on the surface of the 
 inland waters it frequents. For the coot is fonder of lakes 
 and ponds than of the running river. It is a smart diver, 
 as those soon discover who think to shoot it without 
 difficulty, and it remains some moments below the 
 surface in search of water-plants, animals and insects, 
 which, I think, rather than fish, form its food. If you 
 ever travel down the Southampton line on the London 
 and South Western Railway, you may see coots in 
 quantity in the Fleet pond, on either side of the train, 
 about a quarter of an hour after leaving Woking. The 
 nest of the coot is made of reeds and rushes, and is placed 
 
146 TYPES OF BBITISH BIRDS 
 
 close beside the water, and the eggs, from seven to ten in 
 number and a couple of inches in length, are grey or 
 brown, speckled with darker brown. 
 
 The Great Crested Grebe is chiefly interesting, apart 
 from its considerable size and the striking appearance 
 of its summer ornaments (a brown crest and black collar), 
 on account of its curious habit of swallowing quantities 
 of its own feathers. Various reasons have been given for 
 this. The most sensible seems that the habit has some- 
 thing to do with the bird's digestion, just as, with a 
 similar object in view, we know that ostriches and many 
 other birds swallow gravel and pebbles. Someone else 
 has suggested that the grebes eat feathers to prevent the 
 animals they have swallowed alive moving about uncom- 
 fortably in their inside. This has been suggested, I may 
 add, not by way of a joke, but in all seriousness, yet 
 it certainly reads rather funnily. For you would not 
 think that fishes or shrimps would, after a nip from 
 that beak, have much energy to jump about and incon- 
 venience the bird's inside ! 
 
 The great crested grebe, which remains all the year round 
 on the Broads and other inland waters, is a handsome 
 bird, measuring over a foot and a half, and particularly 
 conspicuous in summer, though losing its distinctive 
 dress in the cold weather. The neck is long, and the tail 
 very short, so short indeed that the grebe looks as if it 
 had no tail at all. 
 
 It feeds on fishes or frogs, also on water-insects and 
 some vegetable matter. The nest, like that of the poet's 
 kingfisher, does actually float, being a mass of sedges and, 
 like those of the swan and heron, continually improved on 
 with fresh material. The eggs, four in number and rather 
 over two inches in length, are a dull and dirty white. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 BIRDS OP THE SHORE 
 
 Shore-birds and Sea-fowl proper Gulls and Terns Size and appearance 
 of the Herring-Gull and Common Tern Their food Egg-eaters 
 Gulls at Seoul ton Mere Gulls and Terns as divers Nests and eggs 
 The Skua Differences between the Cormorant and Gannet Gannet- 
 fishing Cruel method of killing the Gannet " Solan Goose" 
 Nesting-places of Gannets in the British Islands Trained Cormorants 
 Nesting habits of the Storm-Petrel Its food and appearance Sea- 
 sick Petrels The egg of the Guillemot Size, shape and colouring 
 Barnacles Food and nest of the Diver Sea-Eagle and Osprey 
 Differences between Sea-Eagle and Golden Eagle Fish eaten by the 
 Sea-Eagle Nest and eggs Appearance of the Osprey Ospreys 
 fishing Amateur photography Ospreys and small birds Nest 
 and eggs Colour of the Turnstone Its food Measurements 
 British bird types Whistling Swan and Mute Swan Nesting 
 of Swans Food of Swans and Ducks Swans on the Thames 
 Shooting Swans Wild Duck and tame DuckNest and Eggs 
 British Ducks. 
 
 " BIRDS of the Shore," please take note, and not necessarily 
 sea-birds. I told you at the beginning of Chapter IX. 
 that my division of the birds according to the localities 
 in which we find them might cause some little confusion, 
 but I think we have got along pretty easily so far, and I 
 hope to pull through to the end without taking you too 
 far off the beaten track. Not more than, at any rate, 
 half of the twelve birds enumerated in this chapter can 
 be described as sea-fowl proper; but the other six are 
 characteristic at one time or another of the cliffs or low 
 foreshore, and are at least as appropriate in this place as 
 
 147 
 
148 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 they would have been in any of the localities that formed 
 the subjects of previous chapters. 
 
 Let us first, then, deal with our six sea-birds : the gull 
 and tern, the cormorant and gannet, and the petrel and 
 guillemot. 
 
 The Herring -gull and Common Tern will serve as 
 types of the large related sub-families of gulls and terns, 
 which include most of the familiar birds of our coasts. 
 The former of these is a resident, the latter a summer 
 visitor, with us only from May until September. The 
 herring-gull, far more abundant on our coasts all through 
 the year than the so-called " common gull," is nearly two 
 feet in length, and its grey plumage is relieved by some 
 black in the wings, while the under-parts are white. The 
 tip of the yellow bill deepens to red, and there is a yellow 
 line round the eye. In winter-time the pure white of the 
 head is variegated with black lines. The common tern, 
 scarcely two -thirds the size of this gull, may be known 
 by its deeply forked tail, black head, and orange-red bill 
 and feet. The forked tail of the terns, as well no doubt 
 as their characteristic wheeling flight between the wave- 
 crests, has acquired for them the name of " sea-swallows." 
 
 The food of these birds is interesting. You would 
 probably think of them off-hand as purely fish-eaters, but 
 this is a mistake, though they undoubtedly eat some fish. 
 Both gulls and terns are, to start with, great consumers of 
 eggs. The terns rob the gulls' nests, and there is a family 
 quarrel between the two birds. The gulls rob the nests 
 of game-preserves near the coast, and there lies also a 
 family quarrel between them and the gamekeepers. This 
 latter feud is not advantageous to the gull. 
 
 Gulls will also follow the plough along with the 
 rooks, and pick up wireworms, and will now and again 
 
BIRDS OF THE SHORE 149 
 
 (likewise with the rooks) snatch seed from the track 
 of the sower. 
 
 Some gulls, as those at Scoulton Mere, consume not 
 only quantities of insects, but also rats and mice, and the 
 rats return the compliment by sucking the gulls' eggs. 
 Fish are doubtless eaten, then, by these birds, but it is 
 quite a mistake, you see, to regard them purely as fish- 
 eaters, and there is even one large kind of tern that feeds 
 whenever it gets a chance on young potatoes. If you 
 have ever kept a captive gull (it makes an attractive pet 
 in the garden, but keep it clear of any ducklings or 
 chickens, or you may miss them), you will no doubt have 
 observed the curious trick these birds have of soaking all 
 crusts or other hard food in their drinking-dish, showing 
 that they eat chiefly soft food in the natural state. 
 
 Neither gulls nor terns are of much account as divers, 
 though you may see the latter snatch small fish at times 
 from several inches below the surface. Both these sub- 
 families have the webbed feet of the true waterfowl, and 
 all the members are strong on the wing, particularly in 
 a high wind. The herring-gull is among the kinds that 
 journey up the Thames in autumn and winter, and are 
 seen from the bridges in London. The terns are not, 
 I think, such eaters of carrion as the gulls, though they 
 will eat pieces of fish, for I have thrown such food to 
 them while fishing in Cornwall. The grassy nest of the 
 gull is placed either in lofty cliffs or on the ground beside 
 some mere or lake, and the eggs, three in number and 
 nearly three inches in length, are greenish brown and have 
 dark blotches. The tern's eggs are laid on the ground ; they 
 likewise number three, are under two inches long and 
 their grey shell is splashed with deep brown, almost black 
 in some cases. You will sometimes see a larger and darker 
 
150 TYPES OF BKITISH BIRDS 
 
 bird fighting in mid-air with a gull. This is a skua, and 
 its game is to pounce on the weaker gull, hampered with 
 a newly caught fish, until the prize is dropped and the 
 skua flies off with it. 
 
 The Cormorant and Gannet belong to another order of 
 birds, and are closely related to the pelican. For two 
 birds of such close affinity, they are remarkably unlike in 
 appearance and habits, though they are much of a size. 
 The cormorant, slightly the larger bird of the two, and 
 measuring fully three feet in length, is a bird of sombre 
 plumage, with white cheeks, yellow chin and a white 
 patch on its sides. In reality, its plumage is very dark 
 brown, while that of its cousin, the shag, is metallic green. 
 The gannet, on the other hand, is, save for some long 
 black feathers in the wings, entirely white. The cor- 
 morant is a fowl of the rocks, standing for long hours in 
 the sun, either stretching its wings to dry or combing its 
 wet feathers with the curved tip of its yellow bill. If 
 you do catch a cormorant on the wing, it is most probably 
 dashing along in a straight course, and within a couple of 
 feet of the surface. Or you may see the long neck of the 
 bird as it paddles about in the deep water, waiting for a 
 passing shoal of pilchards or sand-eels. 
 
 But our gannet is a bird of the air, and you may see 
 the fellow wheeling over the summer seas, and dropping 
 at short intervals with folded wings on the fish beneath. 
 Like a great hammer, its pointed bill comes on the top of 
 the shoal, and the bird comes to the surface and disposes 
 of such fish as it may have killed or stunned. Its beak is 
 not hooked, for it has not, like the shag and cormorant, 
 to pursue and seize slippery fishes under water, but trusts 
 to its falling weight to stun enough for a good mouthful. 
 Occasionally when some idler, with too much time on his 
 
BIKDS OF THE SHORE 151 
 
 hands, has been at his tricks, the plunging gannet finds its 
 beak fast in a board to which was fixed a decoy herring, 
 and dies from the shock. This is a senseless piece of 
 cruelty, for a dead gannet is not worth its weight in waste 
 paper, whereas the living birds are worth their weight in 
 gold to the fishing fleets by showing them each evening 
 where the herrings or mackerel or pilchards are shoaling, 
 and where the silver harvest lies ready to the nets. 
 
 If, however, you should get the chance of handling a 
 dead gannet (but do not kill one specially, and do not, for 
 your own sake, take any liberties with the beak of a live 
 one), be sure and notice the wonderful protecting skin 
 over the almost hidden nostrils, an arrangement by which 
 the bird is spared any choking or other inconvenience 
 when it strikes the water with such force as to send the 
 spray around like a falling shell at target practice. Those 
 who go after gannets on the water are careful to sail their 
 boat to windward of the birds (i.e., between them and the 
 point from which the wind is blowing), because all water- 
 fowl have to face the wind before they can rise from the 
 water. The full explanation of this would involve rather 
 a long departure from our subject ; but those of you who 
 have flown a kite or sailed a model yacht will probably 
 be able to think out the reason. 
 
 From its white plumage, I suppose, the gannet is also 
 known as the " solan goose " (in Cornwall you may hear 
 this rendered "stolen" goose); but it has, of course, 
 nothing to do with the true geese, which are related to 
 the swans and ducks. The bird, though found all round 
 these islands, is very particular in its choice of a nesting- 
 place, and breeds in less than ten spots within their 
 limits, including Lundy Island (Bristol Channel) and 
 another islet on the Pembroke coast, the Bass Kock (Firth 
 
152 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 of Forth), Ailsa Craig (Ayrshire coast), and three other 
 Scotch isles and two more spots in the south-west of 
 Ireland. 
 
 The abundance of gannets, indeed, points to the bird 
 having few natural enemies, for only one single egg is 
 laid, over three inches in length, bluish white, and of 
 chalky texture, in a nest of grass and seaweed. 
 
 The cormorant, on the other hand, lays three, an inch 
 shorter than those of the gannet, but otherwise similar 
 in appearance. I mentioned in an earlier chapter the 
 Eastern practice of training tame cormorants to catch 
 fish, an industry probably suggested in the first instance 
 by the well-known inability of these birds to swallow 
 their captured prey without coming to the surface. Had 
 they been able to feed below, the training would be more 
 difficult. 
 
 The Storm-petrel, so called from its habit of seeking 
 boats and human company generally on the approach of 
 storms (or, more popularly, from the old superstition that 
 the bird is unlucky and brings stormy weather along with 
 it), is a burrower, laying its single white egg, sometimes 
 marked with faint spots, at the end of a long tunnel 
 that smells as bad as that of the kingfisher. There are 
 thousands of these burrows at Lundy, Scilly and the few 
 other British spots on which the bird is known to breed. 
 Out of the nesting season, the petrel is a true sea-bird, 
 spending day and night on the waters, and feeding on 
 small fish, floating squid and any food, in fact, that it 
 may find on the surface; for the petrels are no divers. 
 The most characteristic features about them are perhaps 
 the hooked bill, tubular nostrils, and black-and-white 
 plumage, the last having a strong fishy smell. Occa- 
 sionally petrels are driven by a gale on board some 
 
BIRDS OF THE SHORE 153 
 
 tossing vessel, and they are then ludicrously sea-sick, or 
 at any rate behave as if they were. The larger fulmar, 
 an allied bird, is known to eat small birds in addition 
 to the usual family dishes. 
 
 The chief interest of the Guillemot, a familiar brown- 
 and-white bird with webbed feet and a long bill, lies 
 in its large pear-shaped egg, which, in contrast to that 
 of the cuckoo, is over three inches, or nearly one-fifth 
 of the bird's total length. These eggs vary a good deal 
 in colour, green, white, or grey being the most common 
 ground shades, and are thickly spotted and splashed with 
 dark brown or black. The shape of this large egg lessens 
 the chance of its rolling off the narrow ledges on which 
 the bird lays it, though accidents not infrequently happen, 
 for I have known of more than one case in which the 
 egg has fallen unbroken into the water, and got washed 
 along the bottom to the trawling-grounds outside, sub- 
 sequently coming up in the trawl-net. The bird breeds 
 all round these islands. The guillemot feeds on fish and 
 crustaceans, and I once saw a pair tearing barnacles from 
 a floating plank. Barnacles are very interesting animals, 
 about which I shall tell you something later on. 
 
 After these commoner sea-birds, I may mention the 
 Great Northern Diver, a large bird, measuring about 
 thirty inches, with handsome black-and-white-spotted 
 plumage, black head and white breast. It is said to 
 breed in the Shetland Islands, but is only a winter visitor 
 to English waters, where it does a good deal of damage in 
 rivers and lakes containing trout and other fish. It is 
 an ungainly bird, with its legs set far back ; and it so well 
 knows its clumsiness on land, that the nest is built close 
 to the water's edge, and the bird can slide into the water 
 like a boat launched from a boathouse. 
 
154 TYPES OF BRITISH BIKDS 
 
 The White-tailed Eagle and Osprey may, if we bear 
 in mind that they are hereditary enemies, and are (though 
 not, of course, on that account) separated by scientific 
 folk, so that the osprey occupies an order distinct from 
 the birds of prey, be taken together as cliff-birds. The 
 sea-eagle persecutes the osprey much as I told you the 
 skuas worry the gulls, and in like manner robs it of 
 its newly caught fish. We find in every class of animal 
 life pirates that, by superior strength or a deeper cunning, 
 manage to grow fat on the industry of others. 
 
 This white-tailed sea-eagle of ours is a magnificent 
 bird, the male measuring rather over thirty inches, the 
 female, as in all raptorial birds, being somewhat larger. 
 It is thus a trifle smaller than the golden eagle, for 
 which, particularly in the dress of youth, it is continually 
 mistaken. The white tail-feathers, however, and the grey 
 head and neck serve to distinguish the old birds. 
 
 There is a picture in the Royal Natural History of a 
 pair of these sea-eagles about to have a passage of arms 
 over a plump sterlet that one of them has clawed, and 
 on the Baltic shores, where I have seen them, such might 
 well be their everyday fare. Their food on our coasts, 
 however, must consist rather of mullet, salmon and bass, 
 fish that they can capture in the shallow estuaries, as 
 well as young seals, all manner of birds and any carrion 
 they come across. This eagle builds its huge nest of 
 twigs in the cliffs or in lofty trees inland (with us, only 
 in the Hebrides and one or two other inaccessible spots 
 on the Scotch and Irish coasts), and lays two or three 
 white eggs, nearly three inches in length. 
 
 The smaller osprey, a bird of some two feet in length, 
 is a far commoner bird on our coasts, but its nesting is 
 confined to some of the more lonely Scotch lochs, and in 
 
BIRDS OF THE SHORE 155 
 
 England, at any rate, it is best regarded as a winter 
 visitor only. I have seen one soaring over Christchurch 
 Harbour, in Hampshire, but not while the salmon were 
 going up the rivers, and its broad spread of wings, black 
 claws (really bluish when seen close), and white breast 
 (with a dark band, indistinguishable at a great height) 
 unmistakably proclaimed its species. Seen from above, 
 as I recollect once seeing a pair from the Spartel light- 
 house, on the coast of Morocco, the bird's white crown 
 and black beak are equally striking. A pair of ospreys 
 sailing high over some foaming rock pool make, I assure 
 you, a very beautiful picture, and I recollect, in my 
 photographic enthusiasm, wasting six or eight plates on 
 the Spartel ospreys, with, needless to say, no result. We 
 who amuse ourselves with hand-cameras are, no matter 
 how many years we have been at it, strangely given to 
 act on impulse in the desperate hope of getting some out- 
 of-the-way picture. 
 
 The late Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, a most 
 kindly and careful observer of nature, points out in one 
 of his books that the small birds of the neighbourhood 
 are perfectly fearless in presence of this large and fierce 
 bird, knowing quite well that it feeds only on fish and 
 will not molest them. 
 
 The osprey's nest, placed on the ground or in trees, is 
 an immense building of twigs and sticks, having a bed of 
 grasses and seaweeds for the three or four white eggs with 
 the brown-red blotches. The egg is over two inches in 
 length. 
 
 The little Turnstone is one of our commoner shore-birds 
 in spring and autumn on its passage to its northern 
 nesting-grounds or southern winter resorts. Like most 
 of the waders, it derives wonderful protection from the 
 
156 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 resemblance between its black-and-white plumage and 
 the variegated background of shingle over which it trips 
 for its food. Indeed, you do not as a rule notice the bird 
 until, disturbed by your approach, it flies, with a whistling 
 note, to more distant grounds. It owes its name to the 
 method it employs when feeding, turning up stones and 
 other likely cover for the shrimps and sand-hoppers 
 beneath. When you read of these birds eating carrion 
 on the sea-shore, remember that they were busy, not 
 with the carrion, but with the insects and other small 
 creatures gathered beneath it. 
 
 The turnstone is a small bird, only measuring about 
 eight inches, and it has almost the shortest beak of the 
 waders in proportion to its size. It lays four dark-spotted 
 eggs in a little sand-pit lined with grass. 
 
 With our wild Swan and Duck, otherwise the Whooper 
 and Mallard, my bird types are completed. Truly, I 
 think, by then we shall have a very fairly representative 
 assemblage, and one worthy of upholding British dignity 
 in the great parliament of birds. The nightingale for 
 music, the kingfisher for radiance, the swift for speed, 
 the sea -eagle and creeper for extremes of size and 
 strength these are fairly up to the average on their 
 respective merits. 
 
 Well, the swan and duck, the former met with on 
 the coast at the time of its coming and going, the latter 
 throughout the winter, must end the procession, and you 
 are so familiar, no doubt, with the domesticated birds 
 that I need not waste many words on the description of 
 the wild. 
 
 The Whooper, or Whistling Swan, so called to dis- 
 tinguish it from the tame species (wrongly known as the 
 Mute Swan), has the white plumage of most of the 
 
BIRDS OF THE SHORE 157 
 
 family, with a general grey hue in the young birds. 
 This kind has only the end of the bill black, two-thirds 
 of it nearest the head being yellow. It measures close 
 on five feet in length, and is a handsome and well-shaped 
 bird, very powerful on the wing and afloat. It nests only 
 in the far north, in the latitude of Iceland, coming south 
 each winter for food supplies. It lacks the shield on the 
 forehead that you see on our tame swans. The so-called 
 " whistling " is about as much like what we customarily 
 understand by whistling as the squeaking of a young pig, 
 and should not be mistaken for the sound made by the 
 rhythmic beat of the wings of swans that pass overhead 
 on cold and silent winter nights. 
 
 The food of the swans and ducks is a matter of some 
 interest on account of the need for knowing exactly what 
 damage they do to trout and other fresh-water fishes of 
 value to man. A certain amount of fish and fish-spawn 
 I fancy they all eat, and the bitter complaints made by 
 riverside anglers against the five hundred swans kept on 
 the Thames by the Queen and two of the liveried companies 
 are probably not without foundation, though, on the other 
 hand, it is to be remembered that the swans please a very 
 great number of people who visit the river for purposes 
 other than fishing. Tame ducks are known to be much 
 worse eaters of fish (and have even been seen to kill 
 young pheasants) than their wild cousins, and the proba- 
 bility is that the tame swan is likewise worse than the 
 whooper. That soft vegetable matter is the natural food 
 of most swans, geese, and ducks, no one who has examined 
 their beaks and knows anything of these matters would 
 deny. Unfortunately, however, they are among the 
 greediest and laziest of fowl; and when their proper 
 food gives out, they prefer to gorge themselves on any 
 
158 TYPES OF BRITISH BIRDS 
 
 other stuff that comes handy rather than travel far in 
 search of more. 
 
 Those who go after wild swans when there is much 
 snow about take a leaf out of the protective colouring 
 afforded by the white plumage of these birds, and dress 
 in white themselves, a precaution that often enables the 
 gunner to get within range of the difficult birds. 
 
 Of the Mallard, or wild duck, little remains to be said. 
 The drake's summer plumage is not particularly striking, 
 but in winter-time he is resplendent with his green head 
 and neck, white collar, curly blue tail-feathers, and red 
 legs and feet, and a handsomer bird is not to be found on 
 our waters. "But," you will say, " this is almost the exact 
 description of the ordinary tame drakes of our parks and 
 village ponds " ; and you are quite right, for the farmyard 
 duck is a descendant of the wild mallard, and has even 
 the same voice. The mallard nests on the ground, build- 
 ing a nest of grass with a soft lining, and the eight or 
 ten eggs are, like those of tame ducks, greenish white, 
 and rather more than two inches in length. 
 
 Most of our wild ducks are only winter visitors, chiefly 
 to our eastern counties, but there are, besides the mallard, 
 several others, as the wigeon and teal, that breed in most 
 parts of these islands. The larger goosander and mer- 
 ganser, which are closely allied to the ducks, are perhaps 
 the worst enemies of fish among British birds. 
 
THE WHITE-TAILED EAGLE. 
 
 Face page 158. 
 
TYPES OF REPTILES 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE COMMON LIZARD, THE SLOW- WORM, 
 THE ADDER AND THE RINGED SNAKE 
 
 Irish reptiles Harmlessness of some reptiles A strange cabin-companion 
 Appearance and food of the common Lizard Eggs and young of 
 Lizards Sloughing of Lizards Difference between the Slow- worm 
 and Snakes Food of some reptiles Tongue of Slow- worm and 
 Snakes Tail of the Slow-worm Its disposition Its young Adders 
 swallowing their young Are Adders dangerous ? Killing snakes at 
 sight Suggested compromise Snakes do not "sting" They are 
 venomous or not venomous Their tongue and its uses Food of the 
 Adder Its distribution in Great Britain Food and appearance of the 
 Ringed-Snake Curious fact about its eggs. 
 
 EEPTILES are distinctly unpopular, and if Ireland can lay 
 claim to one genial smile of fortune, it is her want of 
 
 SAND LIZARD. 
 
 snakes that is generally regarded in that light. With 
 the ferocious crocodiles and venomous snakes of tropical 
 countries this want of enthusiasm is not difficult to 
 understand ; but some of the lizards and harmless snakes 
 make, I do not hesitate to say, as interesting captives as 
 any animals, cleaner and less noisy than any beast or 
 M 161 
 
162 TYPES OF REPTILES 
 
 bird, so abstemious, that a month or so without food may 
 mean to them no more than a passing inconvenience. 
 A snake measuring six feet was on one occasion my 
 constant care during a sea-voyage that lasted over seventy 
 days, and a more interesting and less troublesome charge 
 I never want. 
 
 These islands do not, as I have already said, rank high 
 in the wealth or variety of their reptiles, for there are but 
 six, all told, and I suspect ninety people out of every 
 hundred never see one of them in the natural state from 
 one year to another. 
 
 The four I have selected to tell you something about 
 represent important and interesting reptilian groups, the 
 true and the limbless lizards and the venomous and 
 harmless snakes. My travelling companion above named 
 was a python, or constrictor, a great family of snakes 
 not represented in these islands, or, indeed, in Europe. 
 
 Agile in its movements and bright in its dress, our 
 common Lizard is typical of the group to which it belongs. 
 In length about six or seven inches, its general shade is 
 an olive brown, and there are dark bands from head to 
 tail, and black spots on its bright yellow under-surface. 
 Its food consists entirely of insects, after which it can 
 even swim or climb, and, unlike the somewhat larger 
 sand-lizard, which is chiefly found in the heathy areas 
 of Hampshire and Dorset, this species has no teeth in its 
 palate. The larger kind just mentioned lays eggs in the 
 sand ; but this species does not lay eggs at all. Its young, 
 numbering from three to six, are born in early summer. 
 It is found in most parts of Great Britain and Ireland. 
 
 All reptiles shed their skin, or " slough," each year, and 
 many of them, in captivity at any rate, eat their cast-off 
 clothes. The lizards mostly shed their skin in pieces ; the 
 
THE SLOW-WORM 163 
 
 slow-worms and snakes shed theirs entire. This process 
 is not unlike the moulting of birds. 
 
 The Slow-worm, which many folks regard as a snake, is 
 a lizard that has lost its limbs. There are traces of feet, 
 much as there would be if you were sewn up in a tight- 
 fitting sack; but the creature is practically limbless. 
 Yet it is distinguished from the snakes by many characters, 
 among others that it can close its eyes, just as we can, 
 and cannot open its mouth as wide as snakes. Snakes 
 have no eyelids, and cannot, therefore, wink; but they 
 are able to open their jaws to such a terrific width as 
 to swallow objects three or four times the normal size of 
 their own head. Thus pythons swallow absolutely whole 
 large game-birds and even lambs and fawns; but the 
 slow-worm eats nothing more formidable than snails and 
 worms. As already mentioned, the slow-worm resembles 
 the snakes in its manner of casting the " slough " in one 
 piece, and, like them, it is not found in Ireland. An extra- 
 large slow-worm will measure about sixteen inches, and 
 its colour is a glossy red or leaden grey above and greyish 
 white beneath. The head and eyes are small, though it is 
 a very great error to regard it as a blind worm, the name 
 by which it is known in many country districts, for not 
 only has it the ordinary two eyes, but there are even 
 traces of a third, which is, however, so far as we know, 
 of no use to it. Nor is the adder deaf merely because 
 it shows no trace of an ear. The tongue of the slow- 
 worm is notched, not forked, as in snakes, the difference 
 in form between the two types of tongue being approxi- 
 mately the same as that between the tail of the swift 
 and that of the swallow. 
 
 If not blind, however, it is well called the slow-worm, 
 for few reptiles are more leisurely when disturbed. If 
 you seize a slow-worm, it stiffens to the touch, and its 
 
164 TYPES OF REPTILES 
 
 tail, as is the case with many lizards, may even break 
 away in your hand, a loss that probably causes the creature 
 little or no pain, and is to some extent made good by 
 time, the healer, who gives the lizard a makeshift of a 
 new tail. The writer in the Royal Natural History says 
 the slow-worm is so inoffensive as not even to bite when 
 roughly handled. Inoffensive the little gentleman most 
 certainly is, being endowed with no power for evil ; but 
 I have known one bite my hand again and again. Like 
 the last species, the slow-worm deposits no eggs, its ten 
 or twelve young ones being born rather after midsummer. 
 I come now to the Adder, or Viper, our only venomous 
 reptile. Opinions differ almost as hotly as to how 
 dangerous the adder really is as they do on the subject 
 of its swallowing its young in time of danger. This 
 last episode in the adder's life is a terrible bone of 
 contention, and has done more, I daresay, to break 
 friendship and ruin tempers than many a political 
 difference. Briefly, the trouble is this. It is said by 
 many who profess to have seen it, as well as by some 
 who really think they have (and, for all I know, by a 
 few who really have), that the adder opens her mouth 
 when danger threatens and lets her young ones creep 
 down her throat for safety. My chief objection to this 
 remarkable story is that the young would be safer almost 
 anywhere, from either the boot of man or the heron's 
 beak, than in the commodious inside of their parent, 
 and I cannot contemplate nature sanctioning so foolish 
 a trusting of all the eggs in one basket when the far more 
 simple expedient of each one hiding itself in the heather 
 would meet the difficulty so much better. Still, if you 
 should come across a case, please send me all particulars,- 
 and be very sure that the baby snakes did not vanish 
 
THE ADDER 165 
 
 like one o'clock in the bracken while your attention was 
 diverted by the mother's open jaws and quivering tongue. 
 
 As I said above, some folks regard the adder as very 
 dangerous; others, again, do not. The fact is, a good 
 deal depends on the snake and its victim. There are 
 adders and adders. There is, for instance, a red variety 
 (the usual colour being dark brown) which is regarded 
 as more venomous than the rest. Again, the strength of 
 an adder's bite varies according to the state of its health 
 and the season of the year, not to mention the condition 
 of the object of its attentions at the moment of their first 
 making acquaintance. Thus, if your blood should be in a 
 bad state, the bite of a strong and healthy adder would 
 do you far more harm than that of a weak adder when 
 you are in good form. 
 
 In any case, it is better to try no experiments and take 
 no risks. Many people make a point of killing every 
 adder they come across, but I have always preferred to 
 hold my hand in a momentary indecision and let the 
 vanishing reptile solve the difficulty. This may be 
 wrong, for it is quite possible that some little child 
 coming that way an hour later might be fatally bitten 
 by the very snake I could have cut in two with my 
 stick. I only hope I have not in this way been the 
 indirect cause of any infant mortality, but, as there 
 are only about half a dozen authenticated fatal cases on 
 record in these islands, I daresay my conscience can be at 
 rest. My own experience points to the adder's invariable 
 readiness to get away quickly and quietly, though several 
 writers tell thrilling stories of the creature's fierce resent- 
 ment, particularly in the breeding season. I suggest a 
 compromise, then. Count ten, so as to give Master Adder 
 a chance of getting over his first surprise and making 
 
166 TYPES OF REPTILES 
 
 tracks. If by then he is not gone, club him. Only be 
 sure it is an adder, and not a harmless ringed or smooth 
 snake. The adder grows to a length of from one and 
 a half to two and a half feet, and, in addition to the 
 afore-mentioned brown colour, it has a black V plainly 
 stamped on the top of its head, as well as a zigzag black 
 line along its back. 
 
 I beg you not to speak of any snake as "stinging." 
 Wasps sting, if you will, but not snakes. Snakes bite. 
 Their danger lies in a venomous bite from the two poison- 
 fangs, which are supplied with venom from a little bag 
 in the upper jaw, the venom running down a passage 
 in the fangs, and so into the wound they inflict. Unless 
 required for use, these murderous fangs fold neatly back in 
 a groove, and if, as may sometimes happen, they get broken, 
 there are two ready to take their place, though you will 
 not often find these extra teeth hollowed for the passage 
 of the venom. 
 
 And when you have learnt to speak of a snake's bite, 
 and wo* its "sting," and to call it, please, venomous (if 
 it is so), and not "poisonous," will you also oblige me 
 by dropping, once and for all, the old notion of the forked 
 tongue contributing to the danger of its bite? The tongue 
 merely helps the snake to find its food and ascertain 
 whether any doubtful object is suited to its requirements. 
 It is quite harmless. 
 
 The adder feeds on mice and voles, birds and their eggs, 
 sand-lizards and slow-worms and various insects. Dr. 
 Leighton writes me from Hereford that he recently 
 caught a 19-inch adder on the bank of the Monnow, 
 which had two young water-voles in its stomach. The 
 adder is torpid in winter, as indeed are all our reptiles, 
 the slow-worm taking the shortest rest. 
 
THE RINGED SNAKE 167 
 
 Its distribution in Great Britain I have already told 
 you that Ireland has no snakes whatever is pretty 
 general, though it is uncommon in the far north of 
 
 THE ADDEK. 
 
 Scotland. In the deer-forests of Mull and Jura, how- 
 ever, the adder is rather more common than in those 
 of the adjoining mainland. 
 
 The Ringed Snake, commonest of our snakes in many 
 parts of the country (not, perhaps, in the north and west), 
 grows to a length of five or six feet, but is perfectly 
 harmless and has, of course, no venom-fangs. Frogs are, 
 perhaps, its favourite food, and it also eats toads, newts, 
 birds and their eggs, and fish. 
 
 From the adder this harmless and gentle creature is 
 easily distinguished. Instead of the other's V- patch 
 on the crown, it wears a yellow collar, already con- 
 spicuous in its dark-coloured young, and its general 
 colour is olive. 
 
 Unlike the common lizard and adder, this snake lays 
 from twenty to thirty eggs, white and leathery, in rubbish 
 heaps. Curiously enough, these eggs, more often than 
 not perhaps, lie snug through the winter, and hatch out 
 with the warming sun of the early spring. If any water 
 gets at them they swell to double their original size. 
 
TYPES OF AMPHIBIANS 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE FROG, THE TOAD AND THE GREAT 
 WARTY NEWT 
 
 Differences between amphibians and reptiles Early changes of amphibians 
 Their eggs and modes of depositing them The development of the 
 Tadpole Breathing of Frogs Their eye and colour Legs and feet 
 Appearance of the Toad Its behaviour when disturbed Fables about 
 Toads Feeding captive Toads Wedding garments of Newts Ap- 
 pearance and food of the Great Warty Newt. 
 
 I HAVE to present you in this short chapter with types of 
 our six amphibians. (I say six, and not seven, because 
 the edible frog was introduced some time in the seven- 
 teenth century, and is not naturally a British species.) 
 From the scaly reptiles, which formed the subject of the 
 preceding chapter, these scaleless amphibians differ in the 
 mixed life they lead, depositing their eggs in water, but 
 spending nearly all the rest of their time on land, and 
 also in the very interesting changes they undergo in early 
 life. Like the reptiles, they periodically cast their skin 
 and generally devour it. 
 
 All three of the classes we have so far had to do with 
 the mammals, the birds, and the reptiles undergo no 
 radical change during their development from infancy to 
 full size. True, the baby mammal may be born bare of 
 hair and without sight; the newly hatched bird may have 
 the very poorest pretence of feathers ; the youthful lizard 
 and snake may show none of the lively colouring of their 
 parents. But for all practical purposes they are but their 
 
 171 
 
172 TYPES OF AMPHIBIANS 
 
 elders in miniature. They breathe like them, and feed 
 like them, though necessarily on softer substances. 
 
 With the amphibians, however, we come to a very 
 different state of things. I suggested in the Introduction 
 to this book that they might, in an unofficial way, be 
 regarded as coming between the reptiles and the fishes, 
 and their curious changes show indeed a struggle between 
 the classes for mastery. For the eggs of these animals 
 are laid in the water those of the frogs in irregular 
 blocks; those of the toads in double chains; those of 
 the newts in the embrace of water-weeds and there 
 they hatch out, much as the spawn of fish. 
 
 And although the little tadpoles are by no means to 
 be regarded as fish, they are nevertheless very much like 
 them. The similarity in outline between a week -old 
 frog-tadpole and a young blenny is very striking. These 
 tadpoles swim freely with the aid of their long tails, 
 breathe with the aid of gills (at first worn outside), and 
 eat, with their beak-like mouths, a deal of vegetable as 
 well as animal matter. Gradual are the changes from this 
 tailed, limbless, gill-breathing vegetarian to the tailless, 
 four-legged, lung-breathing, insect-eating frog. (If you 
 happen to go in for German, this last sentence may be 
 translated almost word for word !) Gradually the limbs 
 sprout from the swelling body ; the tail and gills and 
 beak likewise go their way ; and, save at the spawning 
 season, the perfect frog henceforth forswears a watery 
 life for the dry land. To the end of his days, of course, 
 he remains an expert swimmer and diver ; but the action 
 is quite different, coming from the webbed hind feet after 
 the creature has discarded his tail. The female frog is 
 rather larger than her mate, and grows to a length of 
 about three and a half to four inches. 
 
THE TOAD 173 
 
 Frogs, which have teeth in the upper jaw only, feed 
 entirely on insects, which are necessarily swallowed alive 
 as a rule, and are chiefly captured by the notched and 
 sticky tongue. Their breathing also has peculiarities that 
 I need not trouble you with, but you may just bear in 
 mind that if a frog's mouth be kept open the animal very 
 soon chokes, and also that, in all these amphibians, there 
 are certain holes in the skin that form a kind of supple- 
 mentary breathing apparatus. 
 
 The eye of the frog differs somewhat from the typical 
 reptilian eye, for it has two distinct lids, and the frog can 
 not only close its eye, but can also look at you side- 
 ways in a comical fashion, best understood in the original. 
 In colour, the typical frog is olive, with or without dark 
 spots ; its hind legs are long, and bear webbed toes ; the 
 fore legs are short, and their toes are not webbed. 
 
 Much that was said above of the early developments of 
 tadpoles into frogs applies also to the Toad and Newt. The 
 toad's tadpole is somewhat smaller and blacker than that 
 of the frog, and the difference in their method of deposit- 
 ing the eggs has already been noticed. When full-grown, 
 the toad is easily distinguished by the black markings on 
 its brown skin and its white, black-spotted underparts, 
 the pimples that cover its body, the swellings over its 
 eyes and on the hind feet, which are much less webbed 
 than those of the frog, its shorter hind legs, and the 
 absence of teeth from both jaws. And, over and above all 
 these differences, you may tell the toad by his splendid 
 laziness. Never a chance does the frog give you of 
 examining either his teeth or his toes. Away he goes 
 with his flying leaps; and it is, particularly if there should 
 be a pond close at hand, sheer waste of time to follow. 
 But the toad, knowing well that he is a very disgusting- 
 
174 TYPES OF AMPHIBIANS 
 
 looking creature, and that he can at will cover himself 
 with a cold perspiration of most unpleasant liquid that, 
 if it gets to your eyes, will soon take your thoughts off to 
 other subjects, stands his ground, rolls his blinking eye 
 lazily at the intruder, and occasionally takes in a great 
 breath and puffs himself out to the size and shape of an 
 orange. 
 
 But there is no harm in the poor chap. Insects and 
 worms are his only food (though our smaller and livelier 
 natterjack also dines on mice), and, as for his spitting fire 
 or anything else, it is a story for the Horse Marines. 
 
 So, I expect, is the other legend of toads surviving for 
 centuries in tombs or other old buildings, bricked up with 
 no light, no air and no food. The story has a fascination 
 that makes it hard to have to smile over it, but although 
 our toad, like all our good reptiles and amphibians, goes 
 torpid all the winter, the abstinence that can face ages of 
 starvation and torpor is a little magnificent, but not, I 
 fear, natural. Do not, please, try experiments on toads. 
 They will merely die in the commonplace way, and, 
 to say nothing of their feelings in the matter, they 
 are infinitely more interesting alive than dead. It is 
 most amusing indeed to feed a captive toad on small 
 worms (not brandlings, for they disagree), dangling by 
 a loose loop of cotton. Be sure and fix it loosely, so 
 that the toad can without difficulty pull the worm 
 clear of the cotton, else will cotton and all get into his 
 little inside, and his funeral will be celebrated at an 
 early date. 
 
 Of the newts, with the Great Warty Newt (or Great 
 Water Newt, as it is also called) to represent them, not 
 very much need be said. They differ from the frogs and 
 toads in retaining the tail throughout life, as well as 
 
THE GREAT WARTY NEWT 
 
 175 
 
 in their habit, like that noticed in many of our birds, 
 of putting on smarter clothing in the breeding season. 
 The females do not as a rule make any change in their 
 apparel, but the males grow an elaborately festooned frill 
 on their back, and the present species also develops some 
 white lines on his black head and a bright yellowish band 
 on his tail. This particular newt, the largest of three 
 British species, grows to a length of over five inches. 
 Its general colour is brown or green; the under-surface 
 bright yellow speckled with black ; the toes yellow, and 
 banded with black. From the other newts it is also 
 distinguished by the warty growths and pores from 
 which it takes its name. All newts are carnivorous, 
 and this species feeds largely on the tadpoles of the 
 frog. It also eats water and land insects, and probably 
 small fishes and molluscs. 
 
 In. 
 
 THE NEWT. 
 
TYPES OF FISHES 
 
SALMON ANGLING. 
 
 Face page 179. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE SALMON AND THE TROUT 
 
 Definition of fishes Climbing fishes and lung-breathing fishes Scaleless 
 fishes Fishes that do not spawn Importance of the Salmon Close- 
 times and licences Genera and species Feeding in fresh water A 
 sea-fish or river-fish ? Life history Salmon in the Avon and Stour 
 Stour Pike Food of Salmon Rapid digestion Curious habit when 
 hooked What is " feeding" ? " Natural food "Appearance of the 
 Salmon Its hooked jaw and its uses Salmon-leaping Different 
 names Lateral line Trout and May-flyThames Trout Food of 
 coarse fish. 
 
 ALL the vertebrates that have so far been discussed in 
 these pages, with the exception of the whales and 
 porpoises, are able to live on land, and do indeed 
 save perhaps the seals, the water-shrew, the water-vole, 
 the newt and a few sea-birds spend most of their 
 lives there. Others, like the otter and dipper, resort 
 to the water for their food, or, like the frog, to deposit 
 their eggs. 
 
 In the class of fishes, of which we are about to 
 consider a dozen types, we have animals that live 
 wholly in the water. " But, bother ! " you say, " you did 
 not want to take these ten lines to tell us that fish 
 live in the water." Yes, I did. There is nothing like 
 getting at these things patiently. For instance, if I 
 were to hurry too much, I might forget to tell you 
 that there are, in other continents, climbing fishes that 
 can live out of water. You may see them, when 
 
 179 
 
SALMON ANGLING. 
 
 Face page l"i 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE SALMON AND THE TROUT 
 
 Definition of fishes Climbing fishes and lung-breathing fishes Scaleless 
 fishes Fishes that do not spawn Importance of the Salmon Close- 
 times and licences Genera and species Feeding in fresh water A 
 sea-fish or river-fish ? Life history Salmon in the Avon and Stour 
 Stour Pike Food of Salmon Rapid digestion Curious habit when 
 hooked What is "feeding" ? " Natural food "Appearance of the 
 Salmon Its hooked jaw and its uses Salmon-leaping Different 
 names Lateral line Trout and May-flyThames Trout Food of 
 coarse fish. 
 
 ALL the vertebrates that have so far been discussed in 
 these pages, with the exception of the whales and 
 porpoises, are able to live on land, and do indeed 
 save perhaps the seals, the water-shrew, the water-vole, 
 the newt and a few sea-birds spend most of their 
 lives there. Others, like the otter and dipper, resort 
 to the water for their food, or, like the frog, to deposit 
 their eggs. 
 
 In the class of fishes, of which we are about to 
 consider a dozen types, we have animals that live 
 wholly in the water. " But, bother ! " you say, " you did 
 not want to take these ten lines to tell us that fish 
 live in the water." Yes, I did. There is nothing like 
 getting at these things patiently. For instance, if I 
 were to hurry too much, I might forget to tell you 
 that there are, in other continents, climbing fishes that 
 can live out of water. You may see them, when 
 
 179 
 
180 TYPES OF FISHES 
 
 there are any in stock, in the new tortoise-house at 
 the Zoological Gardens, but they are neither British 
 nor even European, and need not further concern us 
 any more than the lung-breathing fishes of Africa, 
 South America, or Australia, for we are dealing with 
 British types only. 
 
 We may therefore, so far as this book is concerned, 
 regard fishes in a general way as aquatic vertebrate 
 animals with fins and scales, breathing by gills, and 
 hatched, like the frogs and newts, from eggs deposited 
 in the water, though not going through quite the same 
 early stages. This is a general definition of fishes, though 
 there are numerous exceptions in one way or another. 
 Thus the conger eel, the turbot and some of the blennies 
 have no scales ; and the young of the bergylt, as well as 
 those of one of the blennies, of many of the sharks and 
 dogfishes and the sting-ray, are not hatched from eggs 
 deposited in the water, but are born alive like young lizards 
 or adders. 
 
 The Salmon is in all respects the most important and 
 interesting of our fishes. As food, it is beaten by few, if 
 any; by sportsmen it is esteemed so highly that they 
 gladly, if they can afford it, pay hundreds of pounds for 
 a season's fishing on some Scotch or Norwegian river, and 
 there are wealthy agencies that buy up these fishing 
 rights and put them up for sale at enormous prices. Like 
 the grouse and partridge, this valuable sporting fish is 
 strictly protected against all manner of fishermen ; against 
 the netsmen for about five months, and against rods for 
 two or three. There are, in addition to these close-times, 
 which vary in date and length on different rivers accord- 
 ing to the local custom of the fish, other devices for 
 preventing too wholesale a destruction, such as the im- 
 
THE SALMON 181 
 
 position (I use the word in no uncomplimentary sense) of 
 taxes on both nets and rods, the fixing of minimum sizes 
 under which all fish have to be returned to the water, and 
 certain rules and regulations that compel the nets to stop 
 fishing for at least twenty-four hours each week-end and 
 to leave a free passage on one side or the other for the 
 fish to run up unchecked. If it were not for these very 
 wise precautions, we should probably have salmon at two- 
 pence a pound for a year or two, after which the price 
 would very probably go up to a couple of sovereigns. 
 
 There are several interesting questions connected with 
 this magnificent fish. Most of them entail a good deal 
 of wrangling, which only shows how very interesting they 
 are. 
 
 There is, in the first place, an everlasting and very 
 vigorous quarrel over how many genera and species the 
 salmon family should be made to embrace, whether 
 salmon and sea-trout and lake-trout and grey-trout and 
 all the rest are as many different fishes or only one fish 
 masquerading in different attires. Nature, as I have 
 already told you, recognises none of these distinctions, 
 and you and I may well be natural and leave such 
 quibbles for cleverer folk. 
 
 Another very interesting and vastly more important 
 discussion with regard to the salmon is on the exact 
 amount it eats during its stay in our rivers. For the. 
 salmon, you know, has a rather varied life of it. Whether 
 you like to regard it as a sea-fish or as a river-fish, you 
 must decide for yourself. No one can decide for you, and 
 even the analogy of an Englishman born in London, and, 
 after making his fortune in Calcutta, returning to his 
 native city to bring up his family and die in his prime, 
 would not be quite a fair one. Still you would not call 
 
182 TYPES OF FISHES 
 
 him a Hindoo, would you, merely because he found better 
 chances of a livelihood in Calcutta, and annually spent 
 some months there? Remember, there are plenty of 
 Londoners who do not have to go so far afield for a 
 living, and there are salmon, at any rate in Canada, that 
 find plenty to eat in fresh water, and never go down to 
 the salt. If, however, you prefer to regard salmon as a 
 sea-fish, you will have plenty of sympathisers. 
 
 All salmon are hatched out in some river or other, 
 generally in the native river of their parents. The old 
 fish about to spawn, or such of them as escape the nets, 
 get as high up the river as they possibly can, jumping all 
 kinds of obstacles on the way, and the eggs are deposited 
 in winter in furrows in the gravel. They hatch out in 
 four or five months, and the young fish stay in the river 
 a year or rather more, then go down to the sea, running 
 the gauntlet of all manner of voracious beasts, birds and 
 fishes. In the sea they must eat like pigs, for the 
 weight they put on in a few months is enormous. Next 
 summer they return to their native river (so it is said), 
 and deposit their eggs, as their parents did, and go straight 
 back to the sea, as they also did. Some rivers are much 
 more suitable to spawning salmon than others, and one of 
 the most striking illustrations of this that I know is fur- 
 nished by the Wiltshire Avon and Dorset Stour, which 
 mingle their waters at Christchurch, and run into the 
 Solent at the famous salmon fishery of Mudeford, a mile 
 or so lower down. Of all the fish that get past those 
 thirty deadly nets in the estuary, ninety out of every 
 hundred (this is as near a proportion as can be struck 
 on the facts as known) go up the Avon. (The Stour 
 is famous for its great pike, and whether earlier ex- 
 periences of their jaws warned salmon off the premises 
 
THE SALMON 183 
 
 or not is uncertain, but comparatively few venture up 
 that river.) Sand-eels and other fishes, and some 
 crustaceans probably, that give its flesh the well-known 
 pink colour, form the salmon's food, as far as we know, in 
 the sea, and it is also said to eat the young salmon of a 
 previous year that travel down to the salt water with it 
 when it returns. Whether it otherwise eats much during 
 its later visits to the fresh water is more really than I 
 can tell you, for I do not know. (Please give me credit 
 at any rate for absolute candour on this point. Nobody 
 does know; but a lot of opinions are published, some 
 going to show that it starves, others that it feeds like 
 a glutton.) It is quite impossible to keep such wanderers 
 under close observation in the natural state, and the 
 digestion of fishes is so rapid, that, added to their frequent 
 trick of bringing up their last meal when they feel the 
 hook, it would give you a very poor chance of finding in 
 their stomachs any evidence to go upon. " But," you may 
 say, " surely if salmon take the fly or prawn or worm, or 
 other suitable bait, in rivers, they must be feeding." All 
 credit to you for originality in the remark ; but I fear the 
 idea has already occurred to most of us. We must, how- 
 ever, agree to distinguish a little between actual feeding 
 on natural food and, out of sheer playfulness or greed, 
 seizing some bait that is drawn in challenge across the 
 creature's nose. Draw a carrot (minus the fish-hook, 
 please) before a puppy or kitten, and see if either will not 
 seize it. Yet carrots are not the natural food of dogs 
 and cats any more than painted feathers or spoon-shaped 
 pieces of metal are the natural food of salmon. I am not 
 even so sure that they mistake these ridiculous objects 
 for the things on which they feed. The element of play- 
 fulness is not made enough account of by those who 
 
184 TYPES OF FISHES 
 
 profess to solve all the mysteries of animal life, and it is 
 in this particular case by no means certain that salmon 
 are feeding whenever they take the hook. Still I will 
 leave you to form your own opinion on the matter. I 
 really do not know enough about it to be of any assist- 
 ance. 
 
 The silvery salmon, with the black X's along his sides, 
 as you see him at the fishmonger's is quite at his best; 
 but in early winter, at the spawning-time, he is not half 
 as smart, the silver being tarnished and the colouring 
 altogether duller. The most noteworthy points about 
 the typical salmon are the small, thick fin (known as the 
 "adipose," or fatty, fin; adeps is Latin for fat, but this is not 
 the derivation of "adept") just in front of the tail, the badge 
 of all the salmon tribe, and the hooked jaw with which 
 the males fight while in fresh water. This hook, which 
 develops rapidly when wanted, is not used like a trowel, 
 as some people think, in digging out the egg-troughs, or 
 "redds," in the gravel, for that is done entirely by the 
 body of the female, the male putting back the gravel over 
 the eggs when they are deposited. 
 
 The leaping of the salmon at a weir, or whenever rocks 
 or other obstacles bar its way, is a very beautiful sight. 
 Six or eight feet it will leap, straight into the air. (In 
 books, it leaps, I believe, anything up to twenty, but 
 books are generally shaky in figures of this kind.) Dur- 
 ing its wanderings the salmon takes (or we give it) a 
 variety of aliases. " Parr " is the infant of three or four 
 inches ; " smolt," the lad that goes down to the salt water 
 for the first time in his life; "grilse," the youth that 
 returns for the first time to the river ; " kelt," the middle- 
 aged salmon that returns for the second time to the sea. 
 After this it is a full-grown salmon, 
 
THE TROUT 185 
 
 The Trout, which is also carefully protected according 
 to its somewhat variable spawning-time, is closely related 
 to the salmon, but it is a smaller fish (though Thames 
 trout grow to a weight of probably 10 pounds), that lives 
 all its life in our rivers or lakes, and never goes to sea. 
 (Do not, then, confuse it with the sea-trout, a migratory 
 species like a small salmon.) "While the salmon grows 
 to a length of 4J feet and a weight of 60 pounds (the 
 lost salmon, S. perditus, is invariably about this weight), 
 the trout, commonly known from its lack of silver as the 
 brown trout, does not exceed a length of perhaps 3 feet, 
 and if we except the Thames examples, which are out 
 of the common, a weight of 4 or 5 pounds. The trout 
 is ordinarily green or brown, with some silver about 
 it, but far less than in the sea-going kinds, and has black- 
 and-red spots and X-marks. Young trout are marked 
 with dark bars, like young salmon, and these disappear in 
 time in both species. 
 
 If you look closely at the side of a salmon or trout, 
 you will see, as in the majority of our fishes, a well- 
 defined central line, following the curve of the fish. This, 
 being on the side, is known as the lateral line, and it 
 is really made up of a row of scales with holes in them, 
 through which a sticky liquid is said to flow gently from 
 the inside of the fish and to oil its surface so that it 
 can glide smoothly through the water, and not be wet 
 through all its life. I begin to have my doubts about 
 this oiling business. Once upon a time, as it seemed 
 an interesting theory, I accepted and quoted it, but 
 now, as I say, I have my doubts, for I have made careful 
 examination of this same lateral line in a good many 
 fishes caught by myself during last year, and in no case 
 did I find a particle of encouragement to keep me firm in 
 
186 TYPES OF FISHES 
 
 the belief. So that I merely give this explanation of the 
 lateral line as others have given it before me, and with 
 the recommendation that you should keep an open mind 
 on the subject. 
 
 The trout, as I have said, spends all his time in fresh 
 water, and about his constant feeding, particularly when 
 you see him rising at the May-fly, there can be no reason- 
 able doubt. The largest trout do not as a rule rise to 
 small floating flies except when the May-fly is out in its 
 myriads. Then all trout, large and small, come to the 
 top and suck in the flies (and often enough the hooks into 
 the bargain), and the angler rejoices. But as a rule the 
 larger trout probably feed only on small fish, crayfish and 
 the like. Large Thames trout, for instance, rarely rise to 
 the fly, even when it is on the water in numbers, and are 
 almost always angled for with a small fish as bait. And the 
 mention of this practice reminds me to warn you against 
 a too implicit acceptance of what fishermen and anglers 
 tell you about the food of fish. Going by their theories, 
 we should soon come to believe that the natural food- 
 stuff of the so-called "coarse fish." (roach, carp, etc.) 
 consists of something closely resembling paste or bran ! 
 The fact is, fish, like other animals, love variety and ex- 
 periment, and a particular bait often owes its success, I 
 really believe, to its absolute novelty, and not, as often 
 stated, to the fish mistaking it for something to which 
 they are accustomed. Of course trout-flies, particularly 
 those used dry-fly fashion, may be an exception to this ; 
 but I am not, for one, going to believe that the fish take 
 paste or greaves or pith for anything, animal or vege- 
 table, that they habitually find in their native river 
 without the angler's help. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 THE EEL AND THE CONGER 
 
 Recognised order of animal types Absence of such arrangement in this 
 book Differences between Eels and Congers Males and females 
 Spawning of Eels and Congers Researches of Professor Grassi 
 Salmon and Eel contrasted The Eel a sea-fish Proofs of this 
 Notion that Eels and Congers die after spawning The early stage of 
 the Eel Old beliefs Overland journeys Indifference to temperature 
 Eels in ice-blocks Differences between habits of Eels and Congers 
 The habits they have in common. 
 
 I AM not contemplating any recognised order for my 
 dozen fish-types. When you desire to follow up the 
 subject, as I sincerely hope you may (and ask no better 
 compliment than to drive you to larger and better books 
 than this), you will find abundance of authors ready to 
 give you a choice of regular scales of merit, starting our 
 mammals with the bats, our birds with either the crow, 
 the golden eagle, or the missel-thrush (delightful variety, 
 you see), and the fishes with the perch. But I have not 
 troubled you with the meanings of specialised and 
 generalised and aberrant types, so I throw all system 
 to the winds and ask you to bear a little longer with my 
 revolutionary independence while I try, at any rate, to 
 tell you something you can understand 
 
 Having, with a touching generosity, given myself a 
 perfectly free hand, I propose now to take our two eels, 
 which are, after the salmon, the most mysterious and 
 interesting fish we have. 
 
 187 
 
188 TYPES OF FISHES 
 
 The general shape of the eel is too well known to need 
 description, but I may just mention, by way of formally 
 introducing the eel and conger to you, the chief differences 
 between them. 
 
 Well, the Eel I do not call it the river or fresh- water 
 eel till I have said something on that score is either 
 olive-brown or (before going down to the sea) silvery, and 
 has very small scales, so deep in the skin that it seems to 
 have none at all. The Conger is dark above, white be- 
 neath ; it is really without scales, and has a black-edged 
 fin running round its body. In both, the female is the 
 larger, measuring up to three or four feet in the eel, and 
 six or eight, or more, in the conger. The male of the eel, 
 which is further distinguished by its blunt snout, rarely 
 exceeds eighteen inches, and that of the conger measures 
 only about thirty. The difference between the sexes of 
 the conger is, however, more striking when we consider 
 the weights, for whereas the full-grown male conger 
 probably weighs no more than 5 or 6 pounds, the female 
 may exceed 100 ! 
 
 And now I come to the most interesting episode in the 
 life of the eel and conger, and that is the spawning, which 
 was, until Professor Grassi, an Italian, came quite recently 
 to the help of a puzzled world, one of the greatest natural 
 mysteries still baffling the ingenuity of our scientific men. 
 
 The salmon, as we have seen, is virtually a fresh-water 
 fish, which, driven by the insufficient food supply in its 
 native river to seek more regular nourishment in the sea, 
 returns in due course to lay its eggs in the river that saw 
 its own start in life. In the eel, we have the very con- 
 verse of all this. You may rebel on being asked to regard 
 the " river " eel as a sea-fish ; you may absolutely decline 
 to, seeing that you have perhaps caught it yourself not 
 
THE EEL AND THE CONGER 189 
 
 only in rivers many miles from the sea, but even in lakes 
 and ponds with no outlet. I shall not be deeply offended 
 if you do refuse, but I had rather you did not. For is 
 not the logic even more convincing than that which pro- 
 nounces the salmon a river-fish ? The salmon, mark you, 
 does at any rate return to the sea year after year. Such 
 evidence as there is goes to show that the eel, on the 
 other hand, never re-enters our rivers once it has gone 
 down to spawn in the sea. That it spawns only in salt 
 water is now well known ; but, though the young eels, or 
 " elvers," are seen ascending the rivers in summer-time in 
 their thousands, no one ever yet saw the old eels going 
 up in like manner, and, what is more to the point, no one 
 ever caught old eels in eel-baskets pointing down stream. 
 Indeed, this belief, which is probably well founded, that 
 grown-up eels never again leave the sea has led to 
 another, that both the eel and conger die immediately 
 after spawning. Now, I am in a recanting mood this 
 evening, and I wish, after thinking over this at odd times 
 during the last two years, to express my disbelief in this. 
 I am not going to drag you into the controversy, but 
 I shall content myself with suggesting that this rule of 
 dying naturally at so early a stage has no parallel or 
 precedent among the vertebrates; that the evidence on 
 which the assumption rests is worth very little, being 
 based, in fact, on observations on congers in the unnatural 
 confines of an aquarium tank; and that it practically 
 amounts to this, that because no one has ever caught, 
 on the hook or in the trawl, congers either immediately 
 before or immediately after spawning, they die after the 
 operation. According to the evidence, however, as it 
 stands, it would be equally logical to conclude that they 
 die "before it ! This presumption, that a certain thing does 
 
190 TYPES OF FISHES 
 
 not exist, especially in so secretive a region as the deep 
 sea, simply because we have not seen it, is very risky. 
 
 I have already spoken of the mystery that until 
 recently enveloped the breeding of the eel and conger; 
 and the curious part of it is that we knew the young of 
 both species all the time, but took them for small fishes 
 of some distinct species and called them accordingly by 
 a frightful name. (It is a zoological irony, you will 
 notice, that very often the longest names are tacked on 
 to the smallest beings. Thus the huge porbeagle shark 
 is Lamna, but this baby eel is Leptocephalus /) Well, the 
 mystery of eel-life is solved now, but not so long ago 
 there were intelligent folks who believed eels sprang 
 from slime or horsehairs, and scientific men who regarded 
 them as born after the fashion of adders. 
 
 You may, as I said above, have caught eels in ponds 
 without an outlet. " How," you will ask, * did these eels 
 get there from the sea ? " Well, I cannot here go into the 
 different ways in which inland waters get peopled with 
 fish, though many of them are exceedingly interesting; 
 but I may mention one probable explanation of the 
 presence of eels in such ponds, and that is that the 
 elvers are able to wriggle their way through wet grass, 
 and might in this fashion have originally reached many 
 ponds. 
 
 Few fishes can bear greater extremes of temperature 
 than the eel, though the conger is very sensitive to great 
 cold, and I can remember hundreds of frost-bitten conger 
 being picked up some winters ago by the Hastings fisher- 
 men. The eel, however, is indifferent to frost, so much so, 
 indeed, that eels have been frozen in Kussia, sent con- 
 siderable distances in ice, and thawed back to life on 
 reaching their destination. So, at any rate, say old 
 
THE EEL AND THE CONGER 191 
 
 consular reports. In severe winters, too, you may see 
 in some of our larger rivers blocks of ice hurrying down 
 to the sea with eels imprisoned in their transparent 
 fastnesses. It is extremely probable that the warmer 
 sea-water subsequently melts the ice, and sets free the 
 eels, which probably remain in the salt water, and are 
 not, as has been suggested, immediately buried in the 
 mud along with the other frozen fish. One ingenious 
 writer suggested, indeed, that the bones of these frozen 
 eels would lie in the earth until washed up ashore to 
 puzzle the naturalist. Why, seeing that all eels appear 
 ultimately to die in the sea, the presence of their bones 
 there should puzzle any naturalist, I do not know. Indeed, 
 I have caught in former days so many eels (not conger) 
 from the breakwaters at the east end of Hastings, fish 
 that had probably come down the tidal river at Rye, not 
 to spawn, but merely to feed on the garbage drifting about 
 the coast, that I am never surprised to see " river " eels of 
 all sizes in the salt water. 
 
 Save in a general resemblance in form, the Conger, of 
 which I have already given you some particulars, is a very 
 different animal. The eel is a lover of thick water and 
 soft ooze; the conger will have nothing but deep, clear 
 water and rocks. The eel is a very unclean feeder, any 
 stale food suiting it, though worms, used for convenience 
 by the angler, are taken with great readiness, particularly 
 when intended for bream. The conger, on the other hand, 
 is a very particular gentleman in his meals ; only fresh, 
 sweet food suits him, and he prefers it soft. In their 
 nocturnal habits the two species agree, the larger congers 
 feeding only after dark. Eels, too, are best fished for in 
 the night, though, weather conditions having naturally 
 more influence on the shallow waters of a pond or river 
 
192 TYPES OF FISHES 
 
 than on the depths of the sea, a very dull and cloudy day 
 is sometimes nearly as good. 
 
 Another habit in which the two fish agree is that of 
 living for the most part on the bottom. Even at night, 
 congers feed close to the rocks, and eels suck the bait 
 down into the mud. All the day long, save in their 
 migrations, the eels lie up in holes in the mud, where 
 they will, however, generally take any bait that happens 
 to lie across the hole. I make this statement with every 
 confidence, not from theory, but from observations con- 
 ducted on the banks of a Cornish stream not six inches 
 deep, save after rain, and teeming with eels up to a couple of 
 pounds in weight. At every foot or two along the yellow 
 mud there is a hole, sometimes not half an inch across, from 
 which every now and then bubbles issue. When a baited 
 hook is dropped in any of these holes that are tenanted, 
 away goes the line, and by giving the gentleman half a 
 minute to get the hook in his small mouth, you can land 
 him the next moment in a pail of water. He is sub- 
 sequently used for bait out at sea. "What I was going to 
 say, however, is this: let the worm lie ever so close to 
 the hole, but not actually in it, and the eel makes no 
 attempt to touch it. Nor will such few eels as pass up 
 and down stream give it so much as a look. This accounts, 
 then, for the poverty of most eel-fishing by day, the few 
 eels one catches, save in exceptional cases, being when, 
 after shifting, the bait happens to fall in an eel-hole. 
 
 A very unpleasant slime covers both the eel and the 
 conger, and from the latter more particularly it peels off 
 in great flakes on the fisherman's hands and clothes. In 
 the mud-living eel this state of affairs is easily understood; 
 but it is rather curious in the rock-haunting conger, though, 
 as a rule, the rock-fish have the smoothest skins. The 
 
THE EEL AND THE CONGER 193 
 
 lateral line of the conger, by the way, is marked by white 
 patches, and is, therefore, very distinct. 
 
 The food of these two fish is very varied. The eel, a 
 foul feeder, eats almost any animal food that comes in its 
 way, anything, I should say, from a dead cat to a red 
 worm. In the Arun I have found dead roach or dace, 
 about three inches in length, to be the best bait for eels ; 
 but small birds are used in some parts, and worms more 
 perhaps than anything else. 
 
 The natural food of the conger must consist of small 
 fishes, as well as various crabs and lobsters, and such 
 molluscs as the squid and cuttle. The conger is among 
 the few of our fishes that make any sound, its " barking," 
 well known to conger-fishers when engaged in quieting 
 large congers, being a kind of loud grunt. Eels cause 
 a somewhat similar noise when lying during the day in 
 holes above the water's edge. How precisely this noise, 
 which resembles the drawing of a small cork from an 
 empty bottle, is produced, I do not know ; but you may 
 hear it any summer's day, and judge for yourself, by 
 walking slowly along the banks of the Chichester Canal, 
 or of any other water rich in eels. 
 
 THE CONGER. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE HALIBUT AND THE SOLE 
 
 Peculiarities of Flatfish Reasons for their habits and form Their eyes 
 Deformities Halibut An Australian rival Colour protection 
 Fables of the Halibut Its teeth and food Features of the Sole Its 
 food and mode of feeding Spawning of Flatfish Of Flounders 
 Other species. 
 
 I HAVE now to bring to your notice a type of fish 
 altogether different from the round salmon and snake- 
 like eel. The shape of the flatfishes is sufficiently 
 described in their name. They are flat, not round. The 
 family name in Latin also acquaints us with the fact 
 that they swim, when grown up, on their side. It is 
 not a very satisfactory name, perhaps, for it takes no 
 account of the fact that when quite young they do not 
 swim on their side, but as other fish, on their stomach as 
 you might say. I must tell you, then, something of this 
 curious change of habit. 
 
 Flatfish are a family of no very ancient lineage, and 
 it is supposed that their ancestors swam and behaved 
 generally like ordinary fish, and that at some time or 
 other, in presence, perhaps, of some particularly voracious 
 enemy, since become extinct, they took to their present 
 habit of lying on one side in the mud and losing the 
 trick of swimming like other fish. The protection 
 afforded by the habit, aided by a very keen instinct of 
 adopting the colouring of their background, must be very 
 
 194 
 
THE HALIBUT AND THE SOLE 195 
 
 great. Apart from the added difficulty of seeing a sand- 
 coloured fish lying flat and motionless on, or half buried 
 in, the sand, there is the difficulty of getting it out of 
 its retreat, and indeed only the shovel-nosed rays and 
 dogfishes are able to do this with ease. 
 
 Anyhow, whether, as seems more than probable, pro- 
 tection be their object or not, the interesting fact remains 
 that these fish have adopted this mode of life, and that 
 they swim on one side, some species on the left, others 
 on the right, with an undulating action peculiarly their 
 own. 
 
 Now, it will at once occur to you that if they lie con- 
 tinually, as they do, on the same side, the eye on that 
 side will be of little or no use. When hatched from the 
 egg, you see, these flatfish have, like other fishes, an eye 
 on either side of their head, and swim, as we should say, 
 on edge, really on their stomach. (Kemember that what 
 you would call the top and bottom of a sole are respec- 
 tively its right and left sides ; the real back and stomach 
 of the fish are what seem to you the left and right edges 
 as it lies on the fishmonger's slab.) The eye next the 
 sand soon resents this uselessness, and presently travels 
 either through or round the head (some way in some 
 species, the other way in the rest) to share the duties 
 of the other. A peculiar twist also takes place in the 
 head and mouth of most members of the family; and 
 an accompanying difference of colour (the upper side being 
 darkened by the action of the light, while the lower side 
 remains white, at most with a few dark spots) com- 
 pletes the transformation. 
 
 The halibut and sole, which I have selected as members 
 for Flatfishshire, both lie on the left side, and therefore 
 have their eyes and colouring on the right. In the turbot 
 
196 TYPES OF FISHES 
 
 and brill, on the other hand, as well as in one or two 
 others less familiar, the reverse is the case, for they lie on 
 the right side and look out of the left. 
 
 All manner of deformities are taken in the nets every 
 now and then, such as left-eyed soles and right-eyed 
 turbots. But, of course, there are exceptions to every 
 rule. 
 
 The Halibut (usually pronounced as if it were spelt 
 " holibut ") is, so far as we know at present, the giant of 
 its tribe, growing to a length of seven feet and a 
 weight of 200 or 300 pounds, and is a cold-water fish, 
 thriving most in northern, even in icy, seas. Of course, 
 the sea may any of these days give us a flatfish still 
 larger than the halibut, or we may find the halibut itself 
 in warmer seas. The fishes of tropical coasts are very 
 imperfectly known as yet, as sharks interfere somewhat 
 with fishing operations, and there is not, as a rule, much 
 systematic trawling done. But in time there will be 
 regular fishery centres in Australia, and then we may 
 look out for new wonders. Indeed, I recollect, when I 
 was in Queensland three or four years ago, Mr. Savile 
 Kent, the Government naturalist, had discovered an 
 enormous flatfish in those seas not entirely unlike a 
 halibut. 
 
 In colour the back of the halibut is dark olive-brown, 
 the lower surface, for the reason I have already given 
 you, white. I said something above of the power flat- 
 fishes have, in common with the chameleon, of adapting 
 their colours, for protective purposes, to those of their 
 surroundings and background. When I say they have 
 this power, I do not for a moment mean to imply that 
 they reason out the advisability of resembling their back- 
 ground and promptly adopt some means of doing so. 
 
THE HALIBUT AND THE SOLE 197 
 
 My meaning is simply that the colours of their surround- 
 ings act, in some way imperfectly understood by us, on 
 the colouring matter beneath their skin, and thus bring 
 about the desired change. As an interesting case in 
 point, a friend of mine in Cornwall showed me only last 
 summer a bucket full of baby turbot that he had newly 
 netted in the harbour, where indeed I had seen them 
 swimming not an hour before. In the light, milky clay- 
 water of the district, the little turbot were white and half- 
 transparent, but they had not been five minutes in the 
 iron bucket before they changed to a dark brown, with 
 beautiful pink and blue spots all over them. This change 
 was not, mind you, a mere trick of reflection, for they 
 were, when removed and laid on a sheet of white paper, 
 absolutely dark. The halibut is, according to some of the 
 older writers, said to have another means of hiding : by 
 letting sea - plants grow on its back. Unfortunately, 
 Goldsmith and the rest spoil a good story by declaring 
 that these weeds grow to such luxuriant bushes as to 
 force the unfortunate halibut to float at the surface and 
 then die of starvation for the benefit of the gulls. This 
 is simply ridiculous, but, short of this exaggeration, there 
 would be nothing, except perhaps the extreme smoothness 
 of the halibut's skin, against some such armour of weeds 
 or anemones, as these are a favourite cover under which 
 various fishes, and crustaceans still more so, stalk their 
 prey. 
 
 The teeth of the halibut, which grow closely in both 
 jaws, are pointed and strong, and its food probably con- 
 sists entirely of fishes and crustaceans. Cowper described 
 it confidently as browsing on pastures of seaweed, but 
 Cowper was a poet, and poets get a good deal of much- 
 needed licence. 
 
198 TYPES OF FISHES 
 
 In my other type of side-swimmer, the Sole, we have 
 a much more familiar and valuable food-fish, and one in 
 which certain differences from the halibut serve to illus- 
 trate some other peculiarities of the family. 
 
 There is no need to give a drawing of the fish, when 
 you may see a score at any fishmonger's, but notice, when 
 you next see a sole, the twist in the mouth (as if the fish 
 had been caught on a hook dipped in vinegar and died 
 with a wry face) and the queer curved nose. The sole 
 has teeth on the blind (or left : its eyes, like those of the 
 halibut, are on the right) side only, and this unequal 
 development of the jaws is also found in varying degrees 
 in the plaice, flounder, dab and several others. In the 
 halibut, however, which has not a wry mouth, as well as 
 in the turbot and brill, there is not this difference between 
 the two sides of the mouth. 
 
 Twenty-five inches and 8 or 9 pounds would repre- 
 sent respectively somewhere about the greatest length 
 and weight of soles. The skin of the sole is fairly 
 smooth, though there are scales everywhere except on 
 the white side of the head, just round the short ten- 
 tacles, or filaments, that probably tell the sole of the 
 sand-worms that it cannot see, its eyes being up above. 
 These worms probably constitute the bulk of its food, 
 though it may also eat some shrimps and molluscs. Like 
 most small-eyed fishes that hunt chiefly by scent, the sole 
 feeds most at night, and during the day is thought, like 
 nearly all the flatfish, to lie in the sand with only the 
 eyes and mouth showing. On very bright, still days 
 I have repeatedly watched small plaice and dabs in this 
 position at the bottom of the shallow water beneath 
 Bournemouth pier. 
 
 The spawning of these flatfish presents only in one 
 
THE HALIBUT AND THE SOLE 199 
 
 case anything that would be likely to interest you, and 
 that is in the case of the flounder, which, though it 
 spends most of its existence in our rivers, often at great 
 distances from the sea, is thought to deposit its eggs, like 
 the eel, in salt water only. Although the other species 
 pass most of their time in the sea, you must bear in 
 mind that the sole and some others are able, particularly 
 in tidal rivers, to flourish in fresh water. 
 
 These, then, are only a few facts in the strange life- 
 history of the flatfish. Had I not restricted myself to 
 the selection of types, I should have had to tell you of 
 the rough tubercles on the scaleless turbot, of the extra- 
 ordinarily fragile skin of the scald-fish and of the con- 
 fusion between young soles and solenettes, a distinct 
 species, and between the different kinds known on several 
 parts of the coast as lemon-soles. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 THE PILCHARD AND THE DOEY 
 
 Reasons for selecting the Pilchard How to distinguish it from the Sprat 
 and Herring Migrations of the Herring family Pilchards in Corn- 
 wall A night on a Pilchard-boat "Whitebait" Eggs of Pilchards 
 and Herrings Family connection of the John Dory Meaning of the 
 name Dory stalking its prey Naples Aquarium Our piers as fish 
 observatories Peculiar mouth of the Dory Its hard skin Maximum 
 size. 
 
 IF I am to give you an epitome of our typical fishes, as 
 I hope to, with the assistance of only twelve types, two 
 in a chapter, I must unavoidably start bracketing species 
 that are not even remotely connected. In the foregoing 
 chapters I took pairs of fish belonging to one and the 
 same family ; in this chapter I must break that rule, and 
 tell you something of the pilchard, as a truly British type 
 of the important family of herrings, and of the dory, as 
 representing a less important, but interesting, little family 
 related to the horse-mackerels. 
 
 It may occur to you to ask why, instead of choosing the 
 Pilchard to stand for the herrings, I should not rather 
 have selected the more familiar herring at once. Well, 
 to me the pilchard is as typically a British fish as even 
 the herring itself. At any rate, it is a more typically 
 English fish, I know if that is what you were going to 
 say that it is only the French " sardine " masquerading 
 under a Cornish name; but that does not make it the 
 
 200 
 
THE PILCHARD 201 
 
 less important in the south-western corner of this island, 
 where it now forms the mainstay during the greater 
 portion of the year of two-thirds of those who live on 
 the coast. 
 
 Let us, then, take the pilchard as our type of the 
 herrings, and see, to begin with, how it differs from the 
 herring, sprat and anchovy, the chief other members of 
 the family. From the sprat it is easily distinguished by 
 its smooth lower edge, that of the sprat being rough, like 
 a blunt saw, and the anchovy can be recognised by its 
 pointed nose and deep mouth. The differences between 
 the pilchard and herring are less striking, and, unless you 
 know either well, they must be placed side by side for 
 these differences to strike you. If this can be done, you 
 will find the pilchard of more decided green hue, its scales 
 much larger and looser than those of the herring, and its 
 back fin proportionately nearer to the head and further, 
 of course, from the tail end. A pilchard of fourteen 
 inches would be exceptionally large, whereas large her- 
 rings commonly measure as much. 
 
 The remarkable migrations of all the herring family are 
 well illustrated in the pilchard ; while in the shad, which 
 also belongs to the tribe, they take the form, as in the 
 salmon, of the periodic ascent of rivers for depositing the 
 eggs in fresh water. 
 
 None of the rest, at any rate in these islands, migrate 
 to fresh water ; but all of them move along the coast and 
 from deep to shallow water and back again. We cannot 
 in our present knowledge say whether the movements of 
 these fishes are as regular as those of our migratory birds 
 the cuckoo and swallow, for instance because the fishes 
 are so much more hidden from us, and their migrations 
 are watched by only a few people more or less directly 
 
202 TYPES OF FISHES 
 
 concerned. That there is, however, great regularity in 
 these movements is proved from the records of observers 
 resident on the coast ; but the old-fashioned belief in very 
 long journeys to and from the icy seas of the North is no 
 longer accepted. 
 
 Well, the pilchard anyhow is on the Cornwall coast in 
 summer-time, and as long as the pilchards last, things 
 cannot go much amiss. By day it would be useless to 
 spread the drifting nets for these wide-awake little fish, 
 and they must be left to the porpoises and sea-birds. 
 But later, after the sun is down in the west, the pilchards 
 make with one accord for the deeper water, and are 
 intercepted in their thousands by the nets laid parallel 
 with the shore. During the nights I have spent on 
 board of the pilchard boats, I have not seen one fish in 
 a thousand caught the other side of the net. It is quite 
 easy to tell, you see, for they simply swim head first 
 against the meshes of the net, and are caught by the neck. 
 
 Do not, when you get the chance, miss a fine night on 
 a pilchard boat, for you will see and hear more about fish 
 and how they are caught than in a month of book study. 
 But be careful to wrap up well, for even the August 
 nights can be very cold at sea ; and do not get in your 
 host's way more than you can help, remembering that 
 what is merely fun to you is to him hard work for his 
 daily bread. 
 
 Possibly you are fond of whitebait. Well, it is a good 
 taste, though rather an extravagant one. What I want, 
 however, to tell you is that " whitebait " are not a species 
 of fish to themselves, but a mixture of young sprats and 
 herrings, with a few of all sorts. Pilchards I have never 
 found in whitebait, and it is not, indeed, likely that they 
 would occur in the mixture, for whitebait are netted in 
 
THE DORY 203 
 
 estuaries of rivers, and the pilchard is not in the habit of 
 frequenting estuaries. 
 
 The eggs of the pilchard, like those of all our im- 
 portant fish, with the single exception of the herring, 
 float in the sea; those of the herring are heavy, and lie 
 at the bottom, where they adhere to weeds and stones, 
 and probably get a good deal disturbed by the trawl-nets. 
 But herrings lay so many eggs that a few millions or so 
 are not missed. 
 
 The John Dory is interesting in himself rather than 
 by reason of the undistinguished family he represents. 
 His most interesting connections are perhaps the horse- 
 mackerels the real horse-mackerel, or scad, he with the 
 bony swellings along his lateral line, and the pilot-fish, 
 of which I shall say more in my remarks on the shark 
 and even they are little more than near neighbours in the 
 fish realm. 
 
 The peculiar double name of this fish, a Christian 
 name and surname in fact, is sufficiently interesting. 
 One derivation is from two French words (jaune dorde) 
 that allude to the metallic yellow sheen of the fish ; the 
 other, which is still more interesting, you will appreciate 
 more when you hear our fishermen calling it "Johnny 
 Dory," supposed to be a corruption of the Italian name 
 for the fish, gianitore, which signifies the "gatekeeper." 
 This is in reference to the round black spot with the 
 yellow rim on each side of the fish, associated by popular 
 tradition with the finger and thumb of St. Peter when 
 he seized the fish for the tribute money. The impossi- 
 bility of his having fished a dory from the Sea of Galilee 
 does not appear to have occurred to those who are re- 
 sponsible for this version of the story, nor was " the fish 
 that first cometh up " out of that brackish lake any more 
 
204 TYPES OF FISHES 
 
 likely to be a haddock, a fish that is also, from the similar 
 black marks on its sides, associated with the episode. 
 
 The most interesting thing about the dory is, I think, 
 the fashion in which it stalks the small fish on which 
 it preys. I have repeatedly watched this on still, fine 
 summer mornings under Bournemouth pier. Beneath 
 this pier there congregate all July and August vast 
 shoals of sand-smelts and sand-eels, and on these the 
 dory loves to feed, creeping up to them edgewise, looking 
 no more conspicuous so than a strand of weed ; then, of a 
 sudden, opening its tube-like mouth and gulping down 
 two or three together. To see this most entertaining 
 sport, you must, if you get the chance any calm August 
 morning, go down the pier at five or six o'clock (before 
 even the early bathers spoil the fun) and stand perfectly 
 still for a few minutes at the end until the fish have got 
 over the fright of your shadow on the water and resumed 
 their little games. Later in the day, when the pleasure 
 steamers are stirring up the mud, it is, of course, quite 
 hopeless to watch for anything beneath the surface. 
 
 I suppose the queer dory is sufficiently familiar to you ; 
 anyhow you can have no difficulty in recognising it from 
 Mr. Caldwell's drawing. It almost resembles in form a 
 flatfish swimming on edge, as it were, and the long, 
 straggling ends of the back fin add to its weed-like 
 appearance as it stealthily looms on its victims. There 
 are many ways of warfare down in the deep sea, but none 
 perhaps more ingenious than the sidelong advance of the 
 dory. The best place I know for studying these struggles 
 of the fish world is the Naples Aquarium, where you may 
 watch and wonder by the hour. But of our piers, where 
 the opportunities are necessarily more limited, there is 
 none that I know (and I know most of them) better than 
 
THE DORY 205 
 
 those at Bournemouth and Swanage, for both lie in back- 
 waters, so to speak, and the clear water enables the 
 observer to see every detail of the abundance of life 
 between the weed-wrapped piles. 
 
 The tube-like mouth of the dory is among its most 
 curious features, and such a mouth is only found else- 
 where in our seas among the pipe-fishes, and even here 
 there is a wide difference, for these fish cannot, like the 
 dory, thrust their mouth forward. 
 
 The dory's skin is exceedingly hard and rough, but 
 there are few better fish to eat; not a beautiful fish 
 perhaps, even on a dish, but far more delicious than many 
 that are better-looking. Fortunately, it occurs all round 
 the kingdom, but is more plentiful on the west side. 
 Large dory are rather uncommon on our coasts, but the 
 fish grows to nearly two feet in length, and examples have 
 been caught weighing not far short of 20 pounds. 
 
 THE DORY. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 THE BASS AND THE PIKE 
 
 Important families necessarily omitted The River-PerchBass and 
 Perch divorced by South Kensington Sporting fish Appearance of 
 Bass Preserving specimen fish out of condition Small Bass in our 
 harbours Their favourite quarters in these islands Difficulties of 
 catching large Bass Bass in the lobster-pots Feeding at the surface 
 Fly-fishing and "coarse" fish Bass at Rome and Arundel 
 Migrations of Bass Danger of losing a fish Caution in handling 
 Bass The solitary and villainous Pike Great size Maximum 
 "records" "Jack "and "Pike" Pugnacious character Pike and 
 Tench Appearance of Pike Great strength of jaw Distribution 
 in the British Islands. 
 
 I HAVE no choice, if I am to be true to my programme, 
 but to overlook the important cod family, the most 
 interesting feature of which is the sensitive beard-like 
 growth found on the cod and some of the others; the 
 carp tribe, embracing the roach and other "coarse fish" 
 for which you may at one time or another have angled ; 
 and such small deer as the blennies, gobies, loaches, and 
 many others necessarily excluded from a small gallery 
 of selected types. Necessity again compels me in this 
 chapter to couple two absolute strangers. 
 
 With the river-perch, the handsome hog-backed fellow 
 with the black bands and red fins, you are almost sure to 
 be familiar. A voracious and sociable fish is the perch, 
 preying on small fish and even young waterfowl, and one 
 that can be caught, by those who know how, in the neigh- 
 bourhood of sluice or lock ; a bold biter, yet quick to take 
 fright if pricked and lost. 
 
 206 
 
THE BASS 207 
 
 Except for his uniformly green-and-silver colouring, 
 the sea Bass is not at all unlike the perch in appearance, 
 and is still more like it in habits. South Kensington has 
 for some time decreed that the bass has not much more 
 to do with the perch than with the moon, but I am, 
 
 THE BASS. 
 
 nevertheless, at liberty to associate them in so unscientific 
 a book as this, for, all said and done, anyone who has 
 caught dozens of each must find a strong resemblance. 
 Be ready, however, if sternly rebuked for daring to over- 
 look the distinctive development of the suborbital bone 
 in the bass, to give way, and do not hesitate to fix the 
 blame on him who led you astray. 
 
 Anglers are more interested perhaps in both the subjects 
 of this chapter than any other section of the community. 
 Neither of them can be called first-rate eating, though 
 quite small bass are not too bad, and on the Continent, 
 at any rate, you can get very nice dishes of pike. Still, 
 it is as sporting fish that they are chiefly interesting. 
 
 There can be no question, I think, about the beauty of 
 a large bass. Few handsomer fish swim in our seas. The 
 tapering form and green-and-silver hue suggest a strain 
 of the salmon; the high back fin recalls the perch; the 
 broad head, seen full face, reminds you of the chub. As 
 in all fish, much of the attractiveness of any particular 
 
208 TYPES OF FISHES 
 
 specimen depends on its condition when caught, And let 
 me give you a hint too often overlooked by those who are 
 eager to have their trophies set up for self-glorification. 
 It is utterly beyond the stuffer's art to make an ill- 
 conditioned fish look otherwise; indeed, by stuffing its 
 shrunken skin as fat as a Michaelmas goose he can only 
 make its faults all the more obvious. When, therefore, 
 you catch a large bass out of condition, going suddenly 
 thin behind the head or with its fins ragged, do not have 
 it set up, but rather eat it. Best of all, give it to some- 
 one else to eat ! 
 
 Like the perch, the bass is a sociable creature. Shoals 
 of six-inch bass simply swarm on our south coast all the 
 summer and autumn, and these infants are caught in 
 hundreds in such spots as Plymouth and Southampton 
 docks and Portsmouth and Chichester harbours, being 
 not at all shy and generally eager to seize anything bright 
 that you may offer them. Although, indeed, bass are to 
 some extent found all round these islands, they diminish 
 in numbers as we go north, and the English Channel may 
 be looked on as their headquarters in Great Britain, 
 though I fancy they are both large and abundant on 
 parts of the west coast of Ireland. The small bass are, 
 as already said, very easy fish to catch, but with the old 
 fish, which may measure a couple of feet and weigh 
 15 or 20 pounds, it is a very different matter. These 
 elderly rascals are difficult to hook and nearly as difficult 
 to land. When you have fished, as I often have, for the 
 same bass for the best part of a week (like trout, they 
 will feed in one particular spot each flood-tide for days) 
 without catching it in the end, you may fairly say that 
 you know something of the limits of patience in man and 
 wickedness in fish. You will often hear trout-fishermen 
 
THE BASS 209 
 
 sneer at the " art " of sea-fishing in such terms that you 
 would think, for all the world, that sea-fish are as easy to 
 catch as measles. Let them try the large bass for a 
 month. They will soon sing in another key. 
 
 Not that your bass is particularly clean, like a trout, 
 in his feeding, for, unlike the conger, he will eat very 
 disgusting food, and stale skate's liver is a first-rate bait. 
 I will give you a still stronger proof of his taste for high 
 game. When the lobster-pots you know the wickerwork 
 beehive traps by sight, no doubt are regularly hauled 
 each morning, it is by no means usual to find a bass in 
 them. But when some gale is raging, and the pots, their 
 whereabouts marked by floating corks, are left out for 
 perhaps a week, with their baits all stale, it is a common 
 thing to find a large bass or two coiled round at the bottom. 
 And I have repeatedly seen very fine bass routing up the 
 mud in some of our harbours after a storm has stirred the 
 water to its foulest depths. In addition, however, to this 
 low taste for dirty food, the bass also chases sand-eels and 
 other small fish close to the surface, and this it is that 
 commends him to the angler, who can catch him on the fly. 
 To capture bass on the fly is the height of the amateur 
 sea-fisherman's ambition. So high, indeed, do anglers rate 
 this style of fishing that they very quaintly confuse the 
 means with the end, and, instead of describing bait-fishing 
 as coarse, they vituperate as " coarse fish " all those kinds 
 that are not of small enough intellect to be habitually 
 deceived by a wisp of feathers. Naturalists know better, 
 and place the salmon and trout after the "coarse fish." 
 The bass, it is true, ranks high; but you will find that 
 the majority of bass that die on the fly have never existed 
 in the flesh, their genesis and exodus being alike a matter 
 of print arid paper. 
 
210 TYPES OF FISHES 
 
 Though a true sea-fish, the bass has a liking for estuaries, 
 even wandering some distance up rivers particularly 
 favoured by it. I have seen bass of good size at Eome, 
 taken, so I was told, only just below the city ; and I have 
 actually seen them taken above Arundel, a good six 
 miles from the mouth of the Arun. How far precisely 
 the "eternal city" lies up the Tiber, I am ashamed to 
 say I do not know; but doubtless you know it to a 
 hundred yards or so. Bass ascend the lower reaches of 
 rivers in this way on the inflowing tide as a rule, though 
 there used to be very little tidal influence in the Tiber as 
 I remember it. In bass-fishing at Arundel, indeed, the 
 angler always dips his finger in the water, and tastes it to 
 see whether it is saline. Until the salt water has made 
 itself perceptible in this way there is no chance of a bass. 
 
 Bass may be regarded as among the migratory fish of 
 our seas. I have already, in alluding to the herring and 
 pilchard, said something of the difficulties of observing 
 fish migrations with any degree of accuracy; but the 
 fishermen, at any rate, know that the bass must perform 
 fairly regular journeys, for these fish turn up on our south 
 coast some time during June or July, and remain close 
 inshore until the late autumn. As I said above, they are 
 sociable fish, and more may be caught as a rule where one 
 has been safely brought to bay without too much commo- 
 tion. But any clumsiness in landing the first is generally 
 fatal, and if you prick one and lose it, you may, as when 
 perch-fishing, just as well pack up and go home. Be also 
 singularly careful about handling a bass. The eight or 
 nine sharp spines in the back fin have generally a good 
 deal to say for themselves when given the chance. 
 
 The Pike is a very different kind of fish. He is among 
 the most solitary characters of the river world. Solitude 
 
THE PIKE 211 
 
 and villainy very often go together. And I fear no one 
 could make out a case for this old rogue. His wickedness 
 certainly pays, for his rich living makes him grow to a very 
 great weight, as compared with most other residents in 
 our inland waters. I am not going into the matter of the 
 largest pike ever caught in these islands. The subject is 
 a painful one, and cannot apparently be broached in the 
 gentle spirit that becomes the angler when talking of his 
 fish. Authorities have spoken confidently of pike weigh- 
 ing 80 pounds; but these same authorities have been 
 uncharitably described by others who pretend to no 
 special knowledge of the subject. Personally, I think the 
 authorities might well be allowed their way, so long as 
 you never expect nowadays to come across a British pike 
 weighing more than 30 pounds at the outside. If there 
 is no disappointment, these peaceful exaggerations can do 
 no earthly harm. 
 
 The colour of the pike is olive-brown, with bars and 
 blotches of yellow. In extreme youth, the fellow is 
 known by the name of "jack." The precise dividing- 
 line between the jack and the full-blown pike is a matter 
 of opinion. Probably 4 or 5 pounds would satisfy most 
 standards, but I am sure I do not know if one is 
 more generally accepted than the rest. At all ages, 
 whether jack or pike, this is one of our most greedy 
 and pugnacious fishes. Only the little stickleback, the 
 redbreast of the river, is in all probability as pugnacious 
 under water. Incessant warfare is waged by the pike on 
 every small fish, its own species not exempted ; and if it 
 leaves the perch alone, it is merely as a convenient mark 
 of respect to its prickly back fin. (When fishermen use 
 small perch as pike-baits, they cut off this fin.) There is, 
 or was, a superstition to the effect that tench also are safe 
 
212 TYPES OF FISHES 
 
 from the pike, owing to their so-called healing slime. I 
 would not, were I a tench (which, thank goodness, I am 
 not), be inclined to trust much to this, for tench bones 
 and scales have been found in the pike's stomach, and the 
 other favourite explanation of the tench's supposed im- 
 munity, which is to the effect that the tench always lies 
 in the mud, and is therefore not seen by the pike (which, 
 old hypocrite as he is, is always looking upward), rather 
 loses force when one remembers that it is a favourite 
 habit of tench to float on hot days at the surface. There 
 may be some truth in the alleged healing powers of the 
 tench, though I fear, interesting as they would be if 
 proved, they must be regarded with much suspicion. 
 
 The position of the single back fin of the pike, close to 
 its tail, distinguishes its outline at once from that of any 
 other fish of ours. So too does its expression of un- 
 paralleled atrocity, with the long jaws armed with great 
 fangs pointing towards the gullet truly a cavern, over 
 which the " Abandon hope " of Dante might fittingly be 
 inscribed. An extra touch of cruelty is imparted by the 
 protruding, bulldog-like lower jaw so characteristic of 
 the hake, pollack and other preying fishes. The strength 
 of jaw in the pike surpasses, I should think, that of any 
 other Briton, save perhaps the badger. If you care to 
 introduce your hand in the mouth of a baby jack of a 
 pound or two, you will no doubt learn much that I 
 cannot tell you. I have personally preferred conducting 
 such experiments with spoon-baits, but if you care about 
 getting your evidence at first hand, by all means do so. 
 
 Pike are found all over England and Ireland, and in 
 most parts of Scotland. Some of those taken from the 
 Irish lakes are very fine fish, but I fancy the handsomest 
 specimens are killed in swift, clear rivers. 
 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE BLUB SHARK AND THE STING-RAY 
 
 Sub- classes of fishes Sharks found in all open seas Not merely tropical 
 Sharks in Cornwall Popular disbelief in this British species 
 Size and appearance of the Blue Shark Characters of Sharks The 
 air-bladder in fishes Its nature and uses Shark skin Eyelid and 
 spiracles Teeth of Sharks The tail Smell of Sharks The Rays, 
 eagles of the sea Spine of the Sting-Ray Its weight and colour 
 Electric force in Rays Food of the Sting-Ray Eggs of Sharks 
 and Rays. 
 
 MORALLY, at any rate, the step from the pike to the shark 
 is a small one. The pike is often spoken of by those who 
 affect such expressions as thj " fresh- water shark," which 
 is not a happy choice, because there are several true fresh- 
 water sharks belonging to the present sub-class. The 
 sharks and rays, that is to say, form a sub-class, or sub- 
 division, of the class of fishes distinguished by their 
 cartilaginous or gristly skeleton and by certain other 
 peculiarities. Other sub-classes are the bony fishes, 
 usually designated by a name that is wickedly unpro- 
 nounceable, embracing all those kinds dealt with in the 
 last five chapters ; the Chimaeroids, represented on the 
 British list by a single sea-fish, so rare that we may 
 neglect him ; and a fourth, including the afore-mentioned 
 lung-fishes, which is not represented in our waters, or in 
 Europe, at all. The present chapter, then, will conclude 
 my remarks on the vertebrates, for I am not going to 
 
 213 
 
214 TYPES OF FISHES 
 
 trouble you with the lampreys, beyond just telling you 
 that they are not fishes, but belong to an even lower class 
 of vertebrates. 
 
 Sharks are, for some reason or other, associated with 
 tropical seas. There is no doubt that Nature puts her 
 scavengers in greatest force where she has most need of 
 them, and that Sydney Harbour, being rather dirtier, for 
 all its beauty, than the mouth of the Thames (a difference 
 due to the effects of a hot climate more than anything 
 else), is allotted a larger staff of sharks to keep it clean. 
 For a similar reason, you find the vultures retained for 
 work in the tropics, where a fallen horse or camel would, 
 without their interference, quickly poison the surround- 
 ing air. 
 
 Yet it is a mistake to regard sharks as in any measure 
 confined to the seas of hot countries, for they are found 
 in every open sea of this earth. When I mildly wrote to 
 the Times last summer and deprecated the risky habit of 
 bathing from yachts a mile or two from the coast and 
 putting unnecessary temptation in the way of the good- 
 sized sharks that I knew were swarming, at any rate, in 
 Cornish waters, a number of folks kindly declared that 
 I was evidently the victim of hallucinations, mistook 
 dogfish for sharks, and produced the latter from my over- 
 fertile imagination. It was rather amusing to read these 
 generous comments after the day's fishing, when I had 
 perhaps lost three or four strong wire and gimp lines and 
 even managed to get one or two of the smaller ruffians, 
 sharks of 20 pounds or so, into the fore-end of the boat ! 
 
 Well, there are believe one who has fed them with 
 many sovereigns' worth of tackle heaps of sharks off 
 Devon and Cornwall every July and August; and even in 
 the North Sea, where they are much more scarce, the 
 
THE BLUE SHARK 215 
 
 fishing-nets continually bring up monsters weighing two or 
 three hundredweight. Altogether, omitting the monkfish 
 (a kind of link between the sharks and rays) and several 
 large "dogs," we have six or seven British sharks, the 
 largest of them being a very harmless giant of twenty or 
 thirty feet, but some of the smaller being extraordinarily 
 fierce and greedy. 
 
 The Blue Shark, typical of the family, grows in our 
 seas to a length of six or eight feet, and the weight 
 of a large one may be from 80 to 100 pounds. It 
 is also the handsomest of its tribe, being deep blue on 
 the back and sides and white beneath, very gracefully 
 built and wonderfully active in the water, swimming, 
 even when hooked (a condition not calculated to give full 
 play to its ease of movement), with the elegant undulating 
 action so characteristic of its race. 
 
 The pointed snout, the position of the half - moon 
 mouth beneath the head, the longer top lobe of the tail 
 fin, and the five open gill-slits (in some species, six or 
 even seven) are the chief features of the shark ; and to 
 these you may add the absence of scales, the skin being 
 rough -grained and in some cases covered with prickly 
 tubercles. The gill-slits are peculiar to the sharks and 
 rays, and you will easily see the difference between them 
 and the usual horny gill-covers of, say, the herring and 
 salmon. 
 
 Most fish, too, have an air-bladder, filled with some 
 mixture of gases, in which there is more nitrogen than 
 anything else (if you take up chemistry, you no doubt 
 know a great deal more about nitrogen than I can tell 
 you; but at any rate it is the principal ingredient of 
 atmospheric air), and apparently useful in helping the fish 
 rise and sink in the water by increasing or lessening its 
 
216 TYPES OF FISHES 
 
 size according as the bladder is empty or inflated. This, 
 at any rate, is said to be the object of the " swimming- 
 bladder," as it is also called, though it is as well to 
 remember that among those fishes which are without such 
 a bladder are at once the sharks, very rapid swimmers, 
 that pass much of their time near the surface, and the 
 bullheads, slow and deliberate cousins of the gurnards, 
 that live mostly at the bottom. Sharks, then, have no 
 air-bladder. 
 
 I have already mentioned the file-like skin of the 
 shark, and it is my opinion that one of these days, when 
 we make better use of the natural resources around us, 
 the very attractive skin of the blue shark will be utilised 
 for binding books. A slice of this blue shagreen, just 
 where the blue merges into white, would make a hand- 
 some binding. 
 
 Like all its kind, this shark has a movable eyelid. 
 In scientific language, a nictitant membrane is present. 
 Vulgarly, the fish can wink. What it has not got, 
 however, are the breathing - holes, technically called 
 " spiracles," behind the eyes, which are present in most 
 of our sharks and dogfish and particularly large in the 
 spur-dog. 
 
 The teeth of sharks differ from those of bony fishes in 
 some peculiarities of their formation that I need not 
 bother you with. An interesting feature about them is 
 that they lie in several rows, those behind ready to take 
 the place of those in front. I mentioned a somewhat 
 similar arrangement in connection with the adder's 
 venom - fangs, though the structure is not quite the 
 same. 
 
 A blow from a large shark's tail is in reality a terrible 
 episode enough, and in books it grows gtill worse. Just as 
 
THE BLUE SHARK 21T 
 
 the enraged swan is reputed to sail about breaking any 
 intruder's leg with a flip of his wing, so the tail of the 
 shark is represented as making a clean sweep of the decks, 
 masts and all. That a large shark could easily knock a 
 man or two overboard is very apparent to anyone who has 
 had a tap on the chest from the tail of a 20-pounder, 
 as I have more than once ; but there is no need to ex- 
 aggerate a power that is already enormous. Like the 
 contortionists at our circuses, sharks are able to bend 
 until the tail almost meets the head. It is commonly 
 averred that if you hold the most deadly snake by the 
 tip of the tail, head downwards, it cannot turn and bite 
 your hand. This, I believe, is correct ; but I am not sure 
 that I would try the same experiment with a vigorous 
 young 10-pound blue shark. When these gentlemen 
 are hooked, they bolt to the top of the water, and twist 
 round at such a rate as to tie the line round them in 
 knots that score the skin, hard as it is. 
 
 Our sharks agree in one respect, and that is their ex- 
 ceedingly unpleasant smell. I have not in the foregoing 
 chapters dwelt on the characteristic smell of our wild 
 creatures, for, truth to tell, I do not know that, with the 
 exception perhaps of the wild cat, one or two burrowing 
 birds, and the cucumber-smelt, they have any. But the 
 horrible odour of a porbeagle shark, particularly when 
 wounded, is only surpassed among animal smells in the 
 insect world. (The smell of a healthy lady-bird or goat- 
 moth larva is unrivalled.) The shark odour is not quite 
 like anything else, but rancid fish-oil gives about the 
 closest approach to it; and more remarkable even than 
 its unpleasantness is its extraordinary tenacity. I have 
 known traces of a shark hang about a boat for days, 
 though the boards on which the brute drew its last breath 
 
218 TYPES OF FISHES 
 
 had been well washed and continually exposed to the air 
 and sea -spray. We know of this singular vitality of 
 the shark's scent down in the west country, for we take 
 precious good care to kill him outside the boat, and hang 
 him head downwards over the bow. 
 
 Our other sharks and their allies include the long- 
 tailed fox, or thresher, the dark, clumsy porbeagle, the 
 enormous and harmless basking shark aforementioned, 
 the spotted nurse-hound, the spur-dog, smooth-hound and 
 some others. 
 
 In the Skates and Bays we have another group of the 
 shark family, one characterised by the flattened body and 
 long tail (often armed with spikes or hooks) so familiar 
 in these fish. 
 
 The rays have aptly, though I forget by whom, been 
 likened to the eagles of the air, and there is something 
 decidedly hawk-like, as seen in an aquarium, in the way 
 these exceedingly ugly monsters soar to the surface, and 
 remain hovering over the smaller fishes cowering in the 
 sand. A good deal of this menacing attitude, by the way, 
 is purely imaginary on the part of the spectators, for many, 
 if not most, of the smaller rays feed only on what we call 
 shell-fish, i.e., crustaceans and molluscs. 
 
 The mouth of a ray is further back than it is in sharks, 
 and the gill-slits lie with it beneath the head. The breath- 
 ing spiracles are large, and the eyes have a kind of simple 
 eyelid in place of the afore-mentioned nictitant mem- 
 brane. 
 
 The Sting-ray, which I have selected to represent the 
 group, is among the commonest of them all. It carries in 
 its tail a jagged spine, with which it can inflict the most 
 fearful cuts, and whenever this delightful implement gets 
 broken another is promptly grown in its stead. Nature's 
 
THE STING-RAY 219 
 
 care for the welfare of even her ugliest children may not 
 always meet with our unqualified approval; but we can 
 scarcely withhold our admiration for this replacing of the 
 snake's fangs and shark's teeth and ray's spear. As in the 
 sharks, there are no scales on the body, which is tolerably 
 smooth. This ray grows in our seas to a weight of 60 or 
 80 pounds; but I have seen almost the identical fish in 
 Australia considerably heavier. 
 
 The colour of this atrocity is dull reddish, or sometimes 
 darker brown, and in some examples there are black 
 markings. Occasionally you will see in books a careless 
 confusion between this ray and the electric ray, or torpedo, 
 doubtless on account of the "stinging" power of the 
 latter's battery, which certainly can give a very powerful 
 shock. This gentleman also occurs in our seas, and its 
 method is to stun fish with its electric discharge, and then 
 swallow them whole. To some extent this electric force 
 is present in all the rays. The sting-ray is also a fish- 
 eater; but, as already stated, many of the rest, as the 
 homelyn and common skate, live largely on crabs and 
 lobsters. 
 
 Now, in conclusion, I must say a word on the very 
 curious eggs laid by these sharks and rays. We have 
 already noticed some peculiarities of the eggs of birds, 
 lizards, frogs, newts, and bony fishes; but those of the 
 sharks and rays are quite distinct from all these. The 
 spawn of most fishes, except the herring, drifts at the 
 mercy of the tides; that of the herring sinks to the 
 bottom, and sticks to the stones and weeds. Well, the 
 sharks and rays are still more careful that their species 
 shall survive, for they deposit each egg in a kind of bag, 
 or purse, of transparent horny substance, those of the 
 sharks having strings at each corner for attachment to 
 
220 TYPES OF FISHES 
 
 any convenient weed, while those of the rays, which differ 
 slightly in shape, have, instead of these strings, a natural 
 glue of their own, which answers the same purpose. On 
 the other hand, the porbeagle and smooth-hound, as well 
 as possibly the huge eagle-rays, lay no eggs, but the 
 young are born just like those of the bergylt and several 
 other fishes. 
 
 Here, then, for our purpose, end the vertebrates. On 
 looking rapidly through the gallery I do not know that 
 I could have selected a much better lot of types. Very 
 few of our more important mammals and birds have not 
 been mentioned, at any rate incidentally. The reptiles 
 and amphibians, being so meagre an assemblage, were 
 necessarily represented out of all proportion to the rest. 
 Only among the fishes have there unavoidably been very 
 many serious omissions. These go to my heart all the 
 more because I have always taken a deeper interest in 
 fish myself than in any other class. At the same time, 
 there is the consolation of knowing that you can find 
 heaps of information on their appearance and habits in 
 any of the numerous books on angling and natural history. 
 The fisherman of to-day is generally a bit of a naturalist, 
 and you will find few modern angling works that do not 
 devote a chapter or two to the habits of the fish whose 
 death is to be compassed. 
 
 To give an idea of the vertebrates residing in these 
 islands, not to mention three times the number that are 
 occasionally found in them (including, I very much fear, 
 a good many foreign birds that originally got blown out of 
 the bird-stuffer's back window), in the space of a couple 
 of hundred pages presented difficulties that call for some 
 
THE STI1S T G-RAY 221 
 
 indulgence. Such condensing has, however, been unavoid- 
 able, for I have now, with Mr. Colman's help, to give you 
 some chapters on the invertebrates. This is the first 
 single volume in which the whole British fauna, vertebrate 
 and invertebrate, has been summarised, and first attempts 
 are always the most difficult. Still, as long as you use 
 this book merely as an introduction to the important 
 works, and better still as a companion in the fields and 
 on the shore, I hope it cannot lead you far wrong. 
 
TYPES OF CRUSTACEANS, SPIDERS 
 AND INSECTS 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE LOBSTER, THE HERMIT-CRAB, THE 
 PRAWN AND THE BARNACLE 
 
 Importance of the invertebrates Not merely one sub-kingdom, but 
 several Their hard parts and where carried Land and water 
 crustaceans Their breathing The eyes of the Lobster Early 
 changes Love of fighting Lulworth Lobsters Renewal of shell 
 Lobster's eggs Our wasteful cooking Home of the Hermit-Crab 
 and its method of taking apartments Its companions Mutual 
 Benefit Societies Food of the Hermit Appearance and habits of the 
 Prawn Its breathing Its antennae Its saw Remarkable life-history 
 of the Barnacle Its partnerships Fables Centipedes. 
 
 I NOW come to the first sub-kingdom of the great back- 
 boneless host of animals, through which, with Mr. 
 Colman's assistance in two chapters, I am going to 
 scamper in a very few pages. Do not for a moment 
 imagine that this slight notice of the invertebrate crea- 
 tures is meant to be in proportion to their importance. 
 In all probability, when the full history of some of 
 them comes to be written, and when much that is still 
 mysterious has been made clear, we shall find that they 
 are playing a far more important part in the earth's 
 development than all the beasts, birds and fishes put 
 together. The locust is a greater scourge than the tiger ; 
 the coral polyp wrecks more boats than the whale. The 
 activity and importance of animals is by no means 
 reckoned by their size and strength, and in some of the 
 
 Q 225 
 
226 TYPES OF CRUSTACEANS 
 
 smallest and what naturalists call lowest of earth's crea- 
 tures will probably lie the final solution of the darkest 
 problems of life. This, however, is somewhat gloomy 
 talk, and I will at once pass on to the types of crusta- 
 ceans that are to form the subject of this chapter, with 
 just one warning. 
 
 I want you not to think of the " invertebrates " as one 
 sub-kingdom of animal life, balancing another sub-king- 
 dom, the "vertebrates." You should rather look on the 
 invertebrates as a collection of sub-kingdoms only so far 
 capable of collective consideration in that their many 
 classes embrace no single animal with a backbone. Kela- 
 tion they have, so far as we are concerned, none. We may 
 speak of a bird as a modified and improved reptile, and 
 there are many resemblances that go to prove the connec- 
 tion. But there is no more in common between a butterfly 
 and a jelly fish than between that same butterfly and a 
 sheep. True, there is the matter of backbone ; but that is 
 merely a distinction we have made, and there is no such 
 natural scale. 
 
 Most of the invertebrates carry their hard parts, if 
 they have any, outside. There are, as I shall show you 
 when describing the cuttle and its kind, exceptions, but 
 this carrying of the soft parts inside is peculiar. There is, 
 in this respect, about the same difference between you and 
 a lobster as between our English cherry and some so-called 
 cherries of Australia that grow inside their stone. The 
 lobster has, it is true, the protection of his armour ; but 
 once break through that, and the rest is unprotected and 
 soft. You, on the other hand, while lacking this outer 
 protection, have the advantage of a very powerful skeleton 
 to keep you together. The advantage of this bony frame- 
 work may best be appreciated on the top of the head, 
 
THE LOBSTER 227 
 
 where your flesh is thinnest ; and any friend will at once 
 illustrate this for you with a broomstick if you ask him. 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting of the sub-kingdoms we 
 have yet to consider is that which embraces the classes 
 having jointed limbs and jaws in the form of pairs of 
 appendages at the sides of the head, a curious form of 
 jaw that you can see for yourself whenever a house-fly 
 gets among the breadcrumbs on your breakfast-table. 
 These classes are variously known as the crustaceans, 
 centipedes, millipedes, spiders and insects. 
 
 We will commence with the crustaceans. And, first, 
 I will tell you of the Lobster. 
 
 You know, of course, a lobster when you see one, 
 whether in the blue -black livery of nature or in his 
 
 THE LOBSTER. 
 
 more familiar scarlet coat at the fishmonger's. The lobster 
 is, as you also doubtless know, a marine crustacean. 
 Most of our crustaceans (the little pill-woodlouse, that 
 rolls up like a hedgehog when disturbed, and that must 
 not be confused with the absolutely distinct pill-millipede, 
 is the most familiar British land crustacean I can think 
 
228 TYPES OF CRUSTACEANS 
 
 of) live in the water, either fresh or salt, mostly salt; 
 but in many hot countries there are land-crabs as well as 
 sea-crabs, and I have trodden accidentally on hundreds of 
 the hideous little fellows in Queensland, their larger claw 
 being snapped defiantly at the intruder. 
 
 As you will expect, the water-crustaceans breathe by 
 means of gills, in some cases attached to the thick end 
 of one pair of the limbs. Their eyes are mostly on movable 
 stalks, but in some cases are fixed. 
 
 The eyes of the lobster, for instance, are on such 
 stalks; and without having compound eyes all over its 
 head, like many insects, it is able to keep a sharp look- 
 out all round for skate and conger. We are not alone in 
 our appreciation of fresh lobster. 
 
 Like the frogs and newts, most crustaceans undergo 
 early changes, and the free-swimming, beaked baby crabs 
 and lobsters would never be taken by strangers for what 
 they really are. 
 
 They are a fighting clan ; and, while the hermit-crab is 
 not called "the soldier" for nothing, lobsters probably 
 love a spar as well as any of them. War at any price 
 is the lobster's ambition ; and he will even shed his legs 
 on the battlefield and stump off to some peaceful retreat 
 until they grow again. Nor is there much fear of his 
 bleeding to death, for his blood quickly thickens over any 
 bad wound, and thus stops too great a loss. Even the 
 claws get lost and replaced, and it is for this reason that 
 you find so many crabs and lobsters with one claw so 
 very much larger than its fellow. Curiously enough, too, 
 lobsters will even " shoot " their limbs in this way in a 
 thunderstorm or during artillery practice. The Lulworth 
 folks often lose by such means promising lobsters im- 
 prisoned in floating boxes in the Cove till wanted for 
 
THE LOBSTER 229 
 
 market. A sudden firing of the heavy guns at Portland 
 makes these nervous gentlemen partly shoot their claws ; 
 and, in the absence of anyone so obliging as to twist them 
 clean off and bring about the afore-mentioned thickening 
 of the blood, the lobsters bleed to death, and are thus 
 unsaleable. 
 
 I have already shown you that most creatures renew 
 some portion or other of their outer covering at any rate 
 once in each year. I told you, for instance, of the deer 
 shedding their antlers, the birds putting on new bridal 
 dresses and the reptiles casting their skin. 
 
 All these may have been matters of vanity. To the 
 poor old lobster, however, shut within a prison that does 
 not grow with the prisoner, it is a matter of stern 
 necessity to change his shell continually, two or three 
 times a year, I expect, while he is young and rapidly 
 growing, then, perhaps, only once a year, and, after he 
 has grown to full size, not at all, as witness the large 
 growths of shells and weed on old lobsters. Each time 
 he throws off his uncomfortable shell, his body expands 
 in all directions, so that he may be said to grow by leaps 
 and bounds a very disagreeable way of growing, no 
 doubt, but lobsters will be lobsters. 
 
 Obviously, they have to be off with the old shell 
 before they are on with the new, and in the meantime, 
 until the fresh coat has hardened, they hide away in 
 sheltering crevices and get what food they can without 
 showing themselves. The crabs, which always crawl, as 
 you have probably seen, sideways, have been called the 
 spiders of the sea ; and, in like manner, we might regard 
 lobsters as its grasshoppers, for their fan-like tail enables 
 them to take great leaps over the lawns of seaweed. 
 
 The eggs of the lobster are carried in a yellow mass 
 
230 TYPES OF CRUSTACEANS 
 
 beneath the body, and take nearly a year to hatch out. 
 We ought in reality to protect the " berried hen," as the 
 female is called when carrying her eggs in this way, very 
 strictly; but, being a very wasteful nation, we use millions 
 of these eggs for no better purpose than that of colouring 
 sauces. 
 
 The Hermit-crab looks like a small lobster without a 
 shell. At any rate, nature has not given it anything like 
 a decent coat to its back, in consequence of which it is 
 compelled to take for its own use the deserted home of 
 some whelk or other one-shelled mollusc. It has been 
 said that the hermit forcibly evicts the previous owner; 
 but I expect this is rubbish. Apart from the fact of 
 hermits having been seen in the aquarium trying un- 
 successfully to carry out this eviction, I do not see how 
 they could, even if successful in killing the whelk, get all 
 the corpse out of the shell. The labour would, at any 
 rate, be enormous, necessitating their thrusting in their 
 head and claws and exposing their unprotected back and 
 tail, and, with so many empty old shells about, I can 
 hardly think they would trouble about those already 
 occupied. The fishermen, it is true, will swear to you 
 that the crab does first devour the whelk ; but then they 
 will likewise swear that hermit-crabs are only young 
 lobsters. They may, therefore, be advantageously avoided 
 as guides in such matters. One thing is, however, certain ; 
 that is that the shell is in no case the crab's natural 
 property. Yet more than one naturalist of olden time 
 thought it was, just as they made an opposite mistake 
 respecting the beautiful shell of the nautilus, regarding 
 as borrowed a habitation that is the creature's very 
 own. 
 
 Our friend, the hermit, only affects whelk-shells, by the 
 
THE HERMIT-CRAB 231 
 
 way, when he is old and wants a roomy abode. I have 
 found young hermits in a variety of lodgings, including 
 the shells of periwinkles, natrias, cowries and wentle- 
 traps. For the obvious drawback about this borrowed 
 home is that it does not grow to suit the increasing 
 requirements of its tenant. Borrowed clothes are usually 
 a misfit. Consequently, just as the crabs and lobsters 
 have every now and then to cast off their clothing, the 
 hermit must periodically exchange his shell for a larger, 
 and he is, during the interval, even worse off than the 
 others, for he cannot lie low until the new armour hardens, 
 but must needs go wandering about until he can make a 
 bolt for some empty tenement of sufficient size. The 
 hermit has not a very graceful way of carrying his shell 
 about, though he does not, as one writer has suggested, 
 claw hold of the seaweeds and drag the shell after him. 
 And he is a hermit who loves company, at any rate, for 
 he keeps a long worm on board wages coiled away within 
 to keep his shell clean, and an anemone is usually perched 
 on the shell, with its mouth just beneath the crab's. 
 Friendships in the animal world (excluding, of course, 
 our own) are usually based, you will find, on a strictly 
 business understanding of mutual benefits. The anemone 
 gets free locomotion at a much quicker pace than it can 
 move by itself, and it likewise gets food, both in the way 
 of scraps from its landlord's table and by being carried 
 into currents that are, as I shall show you presently, 
 a great help to it in feeding; the other party to the 
 bargain, the hermit-crab, gets hidden by the anemone 
 from congers and other fish that prey on hermits. A good 
 deal has been said of the great antipathy that fishes have 
 for the smell of any anemone, and of this I shall also 
 say something more later on. While, however, anemone 
 
232 TYPES OF CRUSTACEANS 
 
 undoubtedly ranks very low among the foods sought by 
 fishes, I am of opinion that this antipathy has been very 
 much exaggerated, and that the chief protection arises out 
 of the suggestion that the anemone is adhering to a stone. 
 As a further advantage to the crab, the anemone in 
 some cases gradually eats away one wall of the shell, 
 and thereby gives the hermit more room. When he 
 changes his abode, the anemone shifts quarters with him. 
 They understand one another, these two, better than most 
 partners. Many other crabs, too, understand the advan- 
 tage of decorating their shell with growing seaweeds as 
 a protection against passing enemies. Those who pick up 
 a crawling hermit are generally startled and amused by 
 the smartness with which he jumps back into the shell, 
 and closes the entrance with his larger claw. This rapidity 
 of movement is effected by the great strength of the 
 jointed tail, which fits very firmly in the spiral end of the 
 shell. Like the lobster, the hermit is a fish-eater. These 
 crustaceans have a remarkable system of stomach-teeth, 
 not unlike the gizzard of birds. 
 
 The Prawn, almost invisible in his native rock-pool, 
 though blushing an attractive pink after he has been 
 lightly boiled, is probably well known to you, with his 
 long and slender antennae, delicate, two-fingered hands 
 and fan-shaped tail. A kick of the last-named against 
 the water sends him springing backwards thrice his own 
 length. He is an active little fellow, scenting his food 
 from afar, and quick alike to secure his victims and evade 
 his foes. His gill-chambers lie beside his head, and in 
 one of them there is generally a parasite, also crustacean, 
 but of a low order. His wonderful antennee, nearly twice 
 the length of his body, seem to be to him nose and ears in 
 one, for the senses of smell and hearing have been traced 
 
THE BAKNACLE 233 
 
 to them ; while, doubtless, like the cod's beard and cat's 
 whiskers, they also carry very sensitive organs of touch. 
 Like all crustaceans, the prawn is carnivorous, stealing 
 fish from the very stomach of anemones. The female 
 carries her eggs on her smaller " feet " (not really feet) until 
 hatched. Mention must be made of the characteristic 
 twelve-toothed saw that the prawn carries on its head, 
 whereby it is at once, no matter what its size be, distin- 
 guished from the shrimp. 
 
 Most remarkable, however, among crustaceans is the 
 " curly-footed " Barnacle. The kinds that I have so far 
 mentioned to you never at any rate, however curious the 
 changes they undergo, lose their freedom of movement 
 from one place to another. The grown-up crab and lobster 
 may crawl where their lighter offspring would drift or 
 swim ; but they could, slowly and surely, get over miles 
 of the sea-bed if they wished. As a matter of fact, they 
 do not, preferring to stay near one place. With the full- 
 grown barnacle, however, there is no question of prefer- 
 ence. Once he gives up the gipsy life of his roaming 
 childhood, he is as fixed as a tree. Those who regard 
 liberty as the highest ideal of life (I daresay you do, or 
 have, at twelve o'clock on a " half ") will perhaps look on 
 the young barnacle as better off than its elders, and will 
 scoff at the so-called "perfect" form (which loses most 
 of its eyesight with its liberty) as a good deal less perfect 
 than the earlier stage. This is, however, only prejudice. 
 As a matter of fact, the old barnacle is far better off once 
 he has settled down as a fixture. Anti-fouling paints and 
 ships' scrapers have, of course, interfered with his peace 
 of mind of late years, and he probably views with dis- 
 favour the modern tendency to building vessels of iron in 
 place of the more comfortable wood, But, with all these 
 
234 TYPES OF CRUSTACEANS 
 
 drawbacks, most barnacles get a very good time of it. 
 They run no risks; they do not bother to go to the 
 food, but wait till the food comes to them. They swing 
 in the current at the end of their long stalk and wave 
 their hands and feet, creating movement in the water and 
 seizing every particle of food that comes within reach. 
 The anatomy of the barnacle is rather too complicated to 
 bother you with, but you may see its fringe of hands and 
 feet working away for a living in any tank where these 
 remarkable creatures are kept. 
 
 I told you above that animal friendships are generally 
 founded on gain to both parties. The comfortable bar- 
 nacle, however, thinks it less blessed to give than to 
 receive, and keeps the advantages all his own way. He 
 gets food and locomotion in return for nothing at all. 
 Those kinds which reside on whales are perhaps no 
 actual trouble to their host, for they eschew stalks and 
 lie embedded in the monster's hide; but the stalked 
 barnacles of ships are a terrible hindrance to their pro- 
 gress through the water, and one way and another cost 
 the owners hundreds of pounds every year. 
 
 Yet the barnacle was not, forsooth, so wonderful in 
 itself but men must invent myths about it and swear 
 they had seen the barnacle goose hop out of its shell. 
 These critical newspaper days are as bad for the poor 
 traveller as anti-fouling paint for the honest barnacle. 
 He may no longer see such harmless episodes as nightjars 
 milking goats or October swallows diving into the shelter- 
 ing depths of ponds. No ; he must confine himself to 
 the bare facts of Nature, and must find his comfort in 
 the reflection that she holds wonders and mysteries 
 enough to last at any rate his time. 
 
THE BARNACLE 
 
 235 
 
 Somewhere between the crustaceans and insects come 
 the Centipede and Pill-millipede, the latter, which has 
 already been mentioned in this chapter, rolling up, like 
 a hedgehog, when touched, the former equally familiar in 
 our gardens, with its banded yellow body, like a worm with 
 thirty legs and sensitive antennae. All the centipedes are 
 carnivorous, poisoning worms and insects with their bite. 
 None attain to any size in these islands, but some of those 
 inhabiting tropical countries are dangerous to man, and 
 feed on small mammals and reptiles. 
 
 BARNACLES AND LAEVA. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 THE WOLF-SPIDBB, THE WATER-SPIDER 
 AND THE GARDEN-SPIDER 
 
 Prejudices against Spiders Difference between Spiders and insects- 
 Different groups of Spiders Habits of the Wolf-Spiders The Jump- 
 ing Spiders as parents Nest of the Water-SpiderSpider-Webs 
 How a web is spun. 
 
 BETWEEN the crustaceans and the insects, and showing 
 outwardly some resemblances to both, come the spiders, 
 
 viewed by many folks 
 with a good deal of un- 
 necessary aversion. Why 
 there should be anything 
 more repulsive in the 
 spectacle of a spider eat- 
 ing a fly than in that of 
 a bird eating a worm I 
 do not know; but it is 
 a fact that many hasty 
 people think nothing of 
 walking round a garden 
 and destroying every web 
 in which the spider is 
 
 at dinner. I suppose this is intended for kindness to the 
 fly, and there is no thought of the cruelty to the spider. 
 The prejudices that exist against our small and harmless 
 
 236 
 
 THE LARGE WEB-SPIDER. 
 
THE WOLF-SPIDER 237 
 
 spiders I would not, of course, propose extending our 
 sympathy to the poisonous tarantulas of other lands 
 are as unreasonable and ridiculous as those entertained 
 against harmless snakes, and you cannot be too emphatic 
 in arguing against them. (Of course, if you insist on 
 arguing the matter too warmly with a short-tempered 
 man of twice your own weight, you must look on virtue 
 as its own reward, and not blame me for the conse- 
 quences.) 
 
 A very few notes on spiders will run into all the room 
 the editor can spare me, and I must at any rate show you 
 why they are not, as many folks think them, insects. 
 
 The most obvious difference is that, as I shall tell you 
 in the next chapter, no insect has more than six legs, 
 whereas a spider has eight. The spider, again, breathes 
 with something closely approaching lungs, whereas insects 
 breathe through holes in their side. The spider's head, 
 too, instead of being well separated from its chest (or 
 "thorax"), like that of insects, is sunk, so to speak, 
 between its shoulders, giving it a most uncomfortable 
 look. Lastly, and most important of all, the young 
 spider comes straight from the egg as an exact minia- 
 ture of its mother, and without undergoing any of the 
 changes you have been told of in connection with frogs 
 and barnacles. 
 
 For all these simple reasons, then, and for others less 
 simple that I have no room for, we must regard spiders as 
 distinct from insects. 
 
 Now, the typical spider of your acquaintance spends 
 the day in the middle of its web, receiving all the 
 visitors that walk into its parlour; but you need not 
 on that account imagine that all spiders catch their food 
 in this manner. The Wolf-spiders, or Hunting-spiders, 
 
238 TYPES OF SPIDERS 
 
 as they are often called, spin no web, but run after their 
 prey. All spiders feed on living things, eating no vege- 
 table matter, and all spiders, moreover, spin cocoons for 
 their eggs to lie in till hatched. Their ferocity and greed 
 are unrivalled, and a healthy spider will, given favourable 
 conditions, eat two or three times his own weight of 
 insects in a day, and will even then go on catching more 
 to put by for the morrow. 
 
 These Wolf-spiders lead a vagabond life, making, as I 
 say, no webs and having no settled home. When they 
 go hunting they carry the cocoons and young with them, 
 and it is quite usual, any warm day on our sandy heaths 
 or in gravel-pits, to see these creatures scurrying over the 
 ground with their precious burden, and rushing at any 
 ant or small fly that may dare to cross their path. 
 
 The Jumping Spiders, which frequent much the same 
 localities, take their parental duties more easily, and the 
 mother simply sets the cocoon and family in a crack in 
 some old wall or tree, or sometimes beneath a stone. 
 
 The Water-spider is, however, without any question, 
 the most interesting of the hunting group. This air- 
 breathing spider seeks its food under water, and it has to 
 take down with it a supply of air-bubbles secreted about 
 its hairy skin, which make it look like a little animated 
 globule of quicksilver. Still more wonderful is its 
 airy nest, for it manages to collect numbers of bubbles 
 against a plant, and to surround the big bubble thus 
 formed with a net of silk, coated with some sticky 
 waterproof and airproof solution from a recipe of its 
 own. In this little diving-bell the water-spider takes 
 up its residence, keeping it stocked with food and bring- 
 ing up in it the family from the cocoon. 
 
 I come now to the true Spinning Spiders, and may 
 
THE GARDEN-SPIDER 239 
 
 distinguish the web-spinners and what I shall call the 
 snare-spinners, the snares being those small, close-woven 
 nets that we may see any summer's day in ill-swept 
 houses or in the vicinity of furze bushes. The house 
 type is a dark grey, dirty-looking carpet of web leading 
 to a tunnel, in which sits the receiver ; the open-air snare 
 is more attractive, being beautifully white and clean, care- 
 fully woven and partitioned at the inner end into rooms. 
 Not only is there a special chamber for the reception of 
 the cocoons, but note this well a back door for the 
 master and mistress of the house to escape by in case of 
 unwelcome visitors. 
 
 Finer even than these is the familiar web of the 
 Garden-spider, the building of which is one of the most 
 beautiful sights in nature. Go into the garden if you 
 have one to go into any summer's day when the sun 
 comes out after a heavy shower, and you are bound to 
 find our friends hard at work. Their methods vary a 
 little according to circumstances, but the general order of 
 things is somewhat as follows : 
 
 First, the main frontier of the web is marked out by 
 very strong, but not sticky, threads. The first of these 
 threads is thrown out, one end still fast to the spider, for 
 the wind to carry. It catches somewhere, and the spider 
 runs along the line and drops down, taking a thread with 
 her, from the opposite end. This second thread she 
 fastens to a leaf or twig ; runs up and back again ; drops 
 down from her first starting-point; and, when she has 
 fastened down her third thread in the bottom corner, 
 lets float another down the wind, which naturally drifts 
 parallel with the first and fastens somewhere. This com- 
 pletes, as you can see, the outer frame, all but a few 
 supports which are run in on the outside as an extra 
 
240 TYPES OF SPIDERS 
 
 precaution against possible strains. The spider now goes 
 back along the top line as far as its centre point, then 
 drops down to the centre of the parallel lower line and 
 fastens her thread. Back along this vertical line she goes 
 to the centre, where she fastens yet another thread, runs 
 with it to the top and a little distance along the top line, 
 and there makes it fast, the first spoke in the wheel we 
 know so well. 
 
 The other spokes are all put in in like manner, and it 
 then only remains for her to put in the spiral thread, 
 which is of finer and more sticky fabric. Starting at the 
 centre, she takes it round and round, fastening it to each 
 successive spoke and steadily getting nearer to the cir- 
 cumference, where, we may imagine with a deep sigh of 
 relief, she fastens it off and trots back to the centre to 
 wait for her visitors. 
 
 This is, very roughly, the manner in which the spider 
 builds that beautiful web that thoughtless fools break 
 down in a moment to save a fly! 
 
 If there is any excuse for a feeling of repulsion over 
 any British spider, the small-bodied, long-legged "harvest- 
 men," as they are called, might, though in reality quite 
 harmless, give rise to it. C. S. COLMAN. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 THE BBS, THE MOTH, THE BURYINGKBEETLE 
 AND THE DEAGON-FLY 
 
 A numerous family The disadvantages of the Mosquito, Tse-tse Fly 
 and White Ant Favoured England Definition of the word " Insect " 
 Distinguishing features of Bees, Wasps and Ants The Mason and 
 Humble Bees The Red Ant a slave trader War and burial Scale- 
 Winged Moths and Butterflies Peacock Butterfly Tiger Moth and 
 "Woolly Bear" Diptera Gnat and Daddy-long-legs Coleoptera 
 The Grave-digger, Ladybird, Glow-worm and Dytiscus Parental 
 instinct of the Earwig Water-Boatman Locusts in Morocco 
 " Blackbeetles "Great age of the race Caddis-Fly and May-Fly 
 Peculiarities of the Dragon-Fly Its pupa. 
 
 I HAVE now come to a division of the animal kingdom, 
 the insects, which ranks for numbers at the head of all. 
 Had space been allotted on 
 this basis, I should have 
 required the rest of the 
 book for the insects, while 
 the editor got through his 
 beasts, birds, and fishes in 
 the limits of this chapter. 
 But this is an unjust world, 
 and I must be satisfied with 
 
 what room I can get, and THE BKE IN THM!E STAGES . 
 do my best for you. It is 
 
 some satisfaction, however, to tell you that there are 
 more kinds of insects in the world than there are of all 
 R 241 
 
242 TYPES OF INSECTS 
 
 the vertebrate animals put together, and, though they are 
 so small, they count for a great deal. There are districts 
 in America quite uninhabitable on account of the mos- 
 quito; and the little tse-tse fly keeps civilisation out 
 of large African tracts, and is even responsible for the 
 slaves that have had to be substituted for those beasts of 
 burden that cannot live within the tse-tse domain. The 
 "white ants," too (not, by the way, ants at all), are a great 
 hindrance to building, for they work night and day, and 
 destroy in a month what has taken years to build up. 
 
 In England, happily, we have few noxious insects of 
 such importance, though the mosquitoes, when they do 
 come, are a terrible scourge (shades of 1893 !), and the 
 farmer is always more or less plagued with the green fly, 
 bean-fly, Hessian fly and, in some seasons, the Colorado 
 beetle. Fortunately, he has not to face the locust. 
 
 What is meant by an insect ? That appears to me to 
 be the first question that wants answering, for I have only 
 thrown some light on it incidentally when I wanted to 
 show you that spiders are not insects. In the first place, 
 the word means " cut into joints," or sections ; and if you 
 look at an insect in any stage, be it caterpillar or dragon- 
 fly, you will at once see these joints, like beads strung 
 closely on a thread and coupled up by strong and elastic 
 couplings. " But," you will perhaps say, " worms have the 
 self -same segments, or jointed body, and surely they are 
 not insects." You are quite right; but this is a mere 
 unprofitable interruption, for I am going to put before 
 you the qualifications of an insect, if you will give me 
 time, in unmistakable terms. Another point required, 
 then, for a true insect is the possession of six no more 
 and no lesslegs. " But," some wise collector here puts in, 
 " a caterpillar is surely an insect (although an imperfect 
 
THE BEE 243 
 
 one), yet it has many legs.' 1 This time the interruption is 
 still less warranted, for the objection rests on an error. 
 The caterpillar has, in fact, only six true legs, close to the 
 head, and the other things further back, that look like 
 legs, are merely folds in the skin. Although these folds 
 undeniably help the creature in walking, they are by no 
 means legs in the true sense of the word. 
 
 Furthermore, the breathing of insects deserves a word 
 in connection with the signs by which they may be distin- 
 guished from creatures of other classes. They breathe, 
 not through the mouth (with lungs), like mammals and 
 birds, nor with the aid of gills, like fishes, but through 
 holes in their sides, which you can easily see for yourself, 
 if only you will closely watch the sides of a caterpillar. 
 
 A last important character of insects is their habit of 
 going through three early stages before reaching the perfect 
 condition. Something of such changes, or metamorphoses 
 (as they are called by those who prefer dead languages to 
 living), you were told in connection with frogs and lobsters. 
 A baby is the image, in little, of a grown-up person ; you 
 would never take a kitten for anything else than a young 
 cat ; the chick that leaves the egg is obviously, however 
 uncertain its species, a young bird of some kind. In fishes 
 there are, it is true, some very early larval changes, but 
 none of these go on before our eyes like those of insects ; 
 nor, I fancy, is the final difference in any other case, save 
 possibly in that of the barnacle, so striking as between 
 the crawling caterpillar and gaudy butterfly. 
 
 The wing is the basis of insect classification. Pteron is 
 the Greek for a WING, and all insect orders are therefore 
 called by words ending in ptera = WINGS, the prefix giving 
 some indication of the nature of the wings. Thus the Bees 
 and Wasps are known as Hymenoptera, or MEMBRANOUS 
 
244 TYPES OF INSECTS 
 
 wings; the Moths and Butterflies are Lepidoptera, or 
 SCALY wings; the Gnats and Flies are Diptera, or TWO 
 wings; the Beetles are Coleopetra, or SCABBARD wings; 
 the Grasshoppers belong to the Ortkoptera, or STRAIGHT 
 wings ; and the Caddis is one of the Neuroptera, or NERVE 
 wings. I will now take one or two types of these orders 
 as they stand. 
 
 The Bees, "Wasps and Ants, then, are distinguished by 
 their clear membranous wings. You may perhaps fancy 
 the ants have no wings ; on the contrary, they both have 
 and use them to good purpose at some seasons of the year. 
 I said something above of the immense number of existing 
 insects, and when I put the membranous -winged group 
 alone at something like 25,000 kinds already known and 
 named and described, it may further help you to imagine 
 the vast muster of the entire insect world. The most 
 famous member of the order is the Honey-bee, which you 
 may watch at work in summer in almost any garden, 
 collecting pollen and honey from the flowers. The pollen 
 is intended for the young larvse ; but the honey is, unless 
 men make other arrangements for its ultimate destination, 
 stored up and eaten by the bees in winter. The bees are 
 sociable insects, living together in a nest in which they 
 build beautifully-finished six-sided cells of wax for the 
 reception of both the honey and young. Of course they mul- 
 tiply too fast for there to be room for all in the hive, and 
 thus it is that you may see in summer a great disturbance 
 around the entrance, the upshot of which is that the last 
 year's queen (or sometimes one of the newly-born queens) 
 dashes out with a swarm of emigrants, which go off and 
 found another colony elsewhere. It would take a book to 
 tell you of all the interesting rules and regulations of the 
 bee community, but I may just say that these desertions 
 
THE BEE 245 
 
 from the household are repeated each time a queen comes 
 out of her cell ; but when there have been enough migra- 
 tions, so as to leave plenty of room for everyone, the bees, 
 fearful lest the colony should become too small, go round 
 and put an end to the remaining queens before they can 
 get out and spread discontent. 
 
 The Mason-bees practise another style of architecture, 
 and you may find them in old window-sashes busy carving 
 out little cells for their children, not in companies, like 
 those of the honey-bees, but each for himself. In each 
 cell goes an egg, and with it whatever food may be suit- 
 able, pollen or a plump spider, according to taste. 
 
 The Humble-bees, or Bumble-bees, dig their holes in 
 the ground, or, if they get the chance of sparing them- 
 selves the labour, take over the old underground dwellings 
 of the field-mice. The mention of their borrowing these 
 caves suggests a word on the old dispute over the con- 
 nection between cats and clover, alluded to long ago by 
 Darwin. Few things look at first sight less connected 
 than cats and clover ; but, when you recollect that the red 
 clover cannot seed unless a bee goes to it (the honey-bee 
 has too short a tongue for the purpose, and has to leave 
 the clover to the bumble-bees), and that the bumble-bee 
 requires underground accommodation, the connection 
 becomes, in view of the relations between cats and mice, 
 more real. Briefly it is argued that where there are 
 many cats there will be correspondingly few field-mice, 
 few holes in the ground, few bees and very little clover. 
 It seems a pity to disturb so fascinating a chain of argu- 
 ment, binding as it does such opposite things as fragrant 
 clover and stray cats; but an irreverent little bird 
 whispers that, unless the cats eat up the mice, there 
 will, according to this argument, be no vacancies un- 
 
246 TYPES OF INSECTS 
 
 derground for the bumble-bees, or, on the other hand, 
 there should be abundance of fissures in the earth quite 
 suitable to their requirements and quite independent of 
 mice. In either case, the mice seem superfluous. 
 
 Perhaps the most attractive of the mason-bees is the 
 Leaf -cutter, which you may have the good luck to see at 
 work on the edge of a rose-leaf, cutting out beautiful 
 sections with which to roof and paper his children's rooms. 
 I have found as many as thirty of these cells, each with 
 its egg, or grub, its little store of pollen, and its beautiful 
 green rose-leaf walls. 
 
 Passing over the insect-eating Ichneumon-flies and the 
 Gall-flies, which deposit their eggs in the well-known gall- 
 growths on oaks, I come to the last important group of 
 the membrane-winged insects, the ants. There are many 
 interesting ants, including the Ked Ant, which makes 
 raids and captures black ants as slaves (strange this black 
 badge of slavery !), and the other great robber-ants. Many 
 kinds keep honey-bearing green flies (aphides, or plant-lice) 
 in their nests, just as we keep cows, for the sake of their 
 honey-dew. Burial is known among ants, as well as war 
 and slavery ; but most wonderful of all their institutions 
 is their social organisation. We may find in some nests 
 three types: there are the perfect males and females, 
 which are winged; the "warriors," or "soldiers," whose 
 duties include guarding the nest and all necessary fight- 
 ing; and the "workers," who carry on the complicated 
 business of keeping the house in repair and bringing up 
 the family. To get a good idea of the perfect organisation 
 of an ant's nest, you should put on a pair of top-boots and 
 some thick gloves, and disturb a good, large nest of red 
 ants, such as you may find any summer's day in the New 
 Forest or other suitable locality. What happens ? (Un- 
 
THE MOTH 247 
 
 less you take my advice as to encasing your extremities, 
 the first thing to happen will be your taking to your heels, 
 without any further entomological enthusiasm for at least 
 a week.) Out dash the workers, at once carrying under- 
 ground any exposed cocoons. Next, given a little time, 
 they turn their attention to clearing the gangway in any 
 passages that have got blocked; and, most wonderful of 
 all, the absent members of the nest come trooping back 
 from all directions, as if knowing well that something is 
 amiss at home. 
 
 The most handsome, however, as well as the most 
 familiar, group of insects is that which includes the scale- 
 winged Moths and Butterflies. Although these are com- 
 monly treated as distinct sub-orders, I would far rather 
 you did not regard the dividing line as too sharply drawn, 
 for the Skippers might almost go with either, and it is 
 sometimes hard to tell precisely where the butterflies end 
 and the moths begin. The best plan, until at any rate 
 you learn more about them out of doors, will be for you 
 to regard the butterflies as a group of day-flying moths. 
 They (the butterflies) are further distinguished by their 
 smooth, knobbed antennae, or horns, in which apparently 
 reside the organs of hearing and the sense of touch ; in 
 the moths, the antennae of the male are generally feathered 
 rather heavily from base to tip, while those of the female 
 are feathered either very slightly or not at all. Also the 
 butterfly has, as a rule, a more slender waist than the 
 moth. Yet at best their differences cannot be regarded 
 as of equal importance with their many points of re- 
 semblance. The most casual examination and handling 
 of the wings will convince you of the appropriateness of 
 the term " scale-winged," for the wings are, you will find, 
 covered with easily detachable feathery scales, that give 
 them the beautiful colouring we know so well. 
 
248 
 
 TYPES OF INSECTS 
 
 Conforming to the editorial plan of selecting types, 
 I shall now mention by name one butterfly and one moth. 
 You may see that most gorgeous of English butterflies, 
 the Peacock, with its groundwork of dark red and the 
 
 four grand peacock eyes, 
 hovering on most summer 
 days over a clover-field or 
 disused sand-pit fringed 
 with thistles, or along any 
 flowery river -bank. The 
 ambition of every collector 
 to possess so beautiful a 
 creature has unfortunately 
 thinned its ranks to such 
 an extent that it is said 
 to be getting much rarer, 
 and may even, in the next 
 twenty years, become as 
 scarce as the once plentiful 
 "Camberwell Beauty," or 
 even extinct, like the Large Copper. Almost as striking 
 in its more modest way is its black, hairy caterpillar 
 with the silver spangles. Its bristles, no doubt, protect 
 it against most birds, though the cuckoo has a weakness 
 for it. The mother -peacock lays her eggs upon the 
 nettle, on which the caterpillar feeds until full-grown; 
 then it hangs by its tail from a leaf or stalk, drops 
 head downwards, and turns into a chrysalis, from which, 
 in the course of a fortnight, the perfect insect emerges 
 in all its radiance. 
 
 As an illustration of the moth, I will take a commoner 
 insect, the Tiger Moth, with its familiar and appropri- 
 ately named caterpillar, the " Woolly Bear," 
 
 PEACOCK BUTTERFLY, LARVA, AND 
 CHRYSALIS. 
 
THE MOTH 
 
 249 
 
 TIGER MOTH, " WOOLLY BEAR," AND 
 CHRYSALIS. 
 
 This hardy caterpillar is excellent to rear and observe, 
 for its food is easily procured, and it is among those lively 
 species that afford plenty of occupation. I give a few 
 hints as to the best manner of watching this interesting 
 creature during its de- 
 velopment. The first 
 essential is a large box, 
 the larger the better; 
 a grocer's orange-box, 
 with the cracks stop- 
 ped up, will answer 
 the purpose admir- 
 ably. It should be 
 half filled with mould, 
 and in this should be 
 planted either docks 
 or stinging -nettles, 
 
 whichever come handier. The " woolly bear" is not particu- 
 lar. A covering of perforated zinc, or mill silk, completes 
 this simple and efficient cage. To find occupants for it, 
 you have only to walk along any roadside ditch in spring 
 or summer, carefully examining the under-side of the 
 nettle leaves, and you are bound to come across them 
 before long. Lift them off gently, and be careful to watch 
 how they sham dead, curl in a ball, and, when they think 
 the danger past, run at a pace you would never have 
 credited them with. Once in their new home, they feed 
 and fatten rapidly. After a time one of them may seem 
 off his feed, generally sulky, his hairy coat gradually 
 moulting to the unlovely appearance of a worn-out 
 clothes-brush. The fact is, he has outgrown his skin 
 and has to change it. In a little while you may see 
 it split across the shoulders, and a new head and face will 
 
250 TYPES OF INSECTS 
 
 be pushed up through the rent in the skin, He may take 
 a couple of hours over the final liberation, but at last he 
 is out, and his coat, a little tangled and crushed perhaps 
 at first from its recent imprisonment, is soon long and 
 glossy again. Soon, however, he changes his coat for the 
 last time, and must enter on the chrysalis stage. When 
 this is coming on, he shrinks in size and looks more like 
 an old clothes-brush than ever, for the chrysalis is form- 
 ing within the skin, and the caterpillar days are done. So 
 into a corner of the box he goes, and solemnly spins unto 
 himself a hammock, moving his head from side to side 
 and carefully making his silken bed. Yet once again, 
 this resting-place being ready, the skin bursts, and forth 
 wriggles the chrysalis, or pupa, in which already you may 
 trace the outlines of the coming moth. The pale yellow 
 of the new chrysalis is soon changed by the action of the 
 light to a blackish brown. 
 
 In about three weeks the moth within is fully de- 
 veloped, the pupa case bursts, and out stumbles the 
 Tiger -Moth in the perfect state. But the most rapid 
 and remarkable piece of transformation in the insect 
 world has now to be effected. The wings that have been 
 packed away to less than half an inch in the chrysalis 
 have now to grow to something like ten times their 
 present size, and in the course of an hour! You can 
 almost see them grow. Splendid indeed is the fully 
 developed tiger-moth, with his upper wings coloured in 
 heavy masses of rich chocolate and cream, and his lower 
 wings with their ground colour of scarlet spotted with 
 deepest blue -black. The tiger-moth's "deep-damasked 
 wings" have been the inspiration of poets before now; 
 and even in the collector without an atom of poetry in 
 him they cannot fail to arouse the deepest admiration, for 
 
THE FLIES 251 
 
 they are among the very beautiful things in nature that 
 of themselves make us glad we are alive. 
 
 One caution I must tender in taking leave of the 
 butterflies and moths. As a rule, it is better to learn 
 your natural history from the fields direct than from 
 books. Occasionally, however, the book student scores 
 distinctly. It is much better, for instance, that you 
 should take my word for the fact that a certain little 
 hairy caterpillar, brilliantly marked with red, black and 
 white, which makes every effort to hide away on the tips 
 of the hawthorn bough, should be severely left alone. 
 If, of course, you have any doubts on the subject, the 
 sooner you handle the gentleman and, for your pains, get 
 a prickly rash on your arm that will last you a week, the 
 better. Experience, they say, keeps a dear school, but I 
 am afraid the original text has it fools will learn in no 
 other. 
 
 Beauty, however, is not everything ; and there are other 
 orders of insects which, while considerably less attractive, 
 are of far greater importance in the working of nature. 
 
 The first of these groups, which I have already named 
 to you as the Diptera, or two-winged order, includes the 
 " flies " proper. Now, there are flies and flies. There is 
 the butterfly, which is not, in the strictest sense, a fly at 
 all; there is also the caddis-fly, and there is the dragon- 
 fly. Of these, more later on. Meanwhile the real, original 
 flies have not the four wings of the bees and moths, but 
 only two. These are the upper pair, the lower pair having 
 dwindled to mere stumps, known as " halters " (meaning 
 " balancers "), and formerly supposed to keep their owner 
 steady when flying. It is now more generally thought 
 that they act as ears, or, perhaps, help the breathing. 
 
 The wings move rather fast when these insects are 
 
252 TYPES OF INSECTS 
 
 flying in earnest ; and when you know that 330 beats of 
 the wing in a second are not considered excessive, it may 
 help you to keep your temper whenever you miss a 
 troublesome fly. 
 
 To this two -winged order belong the House-fly, the 
 Bluebottle, the Gnats and the Daddy-long-legs. With the 
 exception of the last, they probably, with their energetic 
 scavenging, do more good than harm ; but this work 
 makes them rather fond of the neighbourhood of decaying 
 matter, and it is as well never to let any of them settle 
 for a second on a sore place. We do not yet know for 
 certain precisely what influence they have in spreading 
 disease, but I may tell you that they rest just now under 
 very grave suspicion, and it is best to take no risks. 
 
 The life -history of the Gnat is interesting. The 
 mother lays her eggs in a compact, boat-shaped mass, 
 which floats on the surface of some pond or ditch until 
 the eggs are hatched, Then the larvae sink to the 
 bottom, and eat up all the decaying matter they can 
 find. Then they turn into pupae, not like the inactive 
 pupae of the moths and butterflies, with the legs, as you 
 may have seen in the "woolly bear," folded up inside 
 the case, but able to crawl about the whole time. This 
 liberty does not, however, improve the appetite of the 
 gnat-pupa, for it eats nothing until the case has broken 
 and the perfect gnat emerges. Keep a kindly thought 
 for the male gnat (and mosquito), for he is an inoffensive 
 stay-at-home, who harms no one, while it is the lady 
 who goes forth with her high-pitched hum, terrifying the 
 thin-skinned people that cower under the bed-clothes. 
 
 I am afraid the Daddy-long-legs, of whom you have, 
 no doubt, heard rhymes that reflect on his character, is 
 among those insects of which the less said the better. 
 
THE BEETLES 253 
 
 Even in his comparatively harmless old age, he is always 
 plumping into the lamp or the soup ; while in his young 
 days, when he goes by the graceful name of Leather Grub, 
 he is a terrible scourge to all manner of roots. But the 
 crops probably suffer far more through some of his 
 smaller relations, including the wheat -midge (with its 
 villainous larva, the " red worm ") and the Hessian fly. 
 There is considerable beauty in the members of one 
 little family of the true flies, which you may see in 
 glades hanging in the summer sunlight, their wings 
 beating so rapidly as to be a blur, their body fringed 
 with delicate fur, their long proboscis vibrating nervously. 
 Make the least attempt to capture one, and it starts 
 away like lightning; but if you remain motionless, it 
 will come quivering back into the sunshine. As these 
 delectable creatures lay their eggs in the nests of bees, the 
 young subsequently devouring both the nest and the 
 young bees with it, they can scarcely be described, like 
 the pens, as a boon and a blessing. 
 
 For intelligence and general bodily development, I 
 am not sure that the beetles ought not to head the 
 insect list, for they are beautifully organised, and their 
 internal machinery is amazingly delicate. Scientifically 
 they are known as Coleoptera, or scabbard-winged ; and if 
 you look for a moment at a ladybird, or, for that matter, 
 at any other beetle, you will at once see how the upper 
 (not the lower, as in the flies) pair of wings is modified, 
 not as balancers, but into cases, or scabbards, under 
 which the real wings fold away. I hesitate to bother 
 you with too many figures, for these are generally a 
 bore; but you may as well know that some 70,000 
 beetles have already been named and described. Of 
 these I must reject 69,996, and say a word about the 
 
254 TYPES OF INSECTS 
 
 other four. (I would much rather tell you of the odd 
 69,996, but the editor is inexorable in his economy of 
 space.) The most interesting of all, perhaps, is the 
 Grave-digger, or Burying-beetle, a small yellow-and-black 
 species, rather less than an inch in length. It is most 
 amusing to see these at work, burying some dead mole 
 or bird, digging away furiously underneath until the 
 body sinks in its grave. I am afraid, so far from their 
 entertaining any desire to perform the last rites for 
 the dead, their object is no more sentimental than to 
 lay their eggs in the corpse, so that the larvae may find 
 plenty of suitable food from the beginning of their 
 career. 
 
 The Ladybirds, which you know too well to need any 
 further description, are of great service, particularly in 
 the larval stage, in destroying green flies, or plant-lice, 
 and have even for these services been taken by man to 
 parts of the world where nature has liberally provided 
 plant-lice, but not ladybirds to look after them. As a 
 rule, however, these artificial remedies of nature's so- 
 called " omissions " (which are not the result of oversight 
 or neglect) have not much to recommend them. Do 
 not, in any case, kill ladybirds, for they are most 
 valuable, not to you directly, perhaps, but to other 
 people. 
 
 Another beetle, which you may see on damp hedgerows, 
 is the so-called Glow-worm (no more a worm, by the 
 way, than the slow-worm), whose body shines of nights 
 with a phosphorescent light that may, at its brightest, 
 be seen full eighty yards away. The female only has 
 this lamp, but she is prevented from growing too con- 
 ceited by the general shabbiness of her appearance by 
 daylight and the uselessness of her undeveloped wings. 
 
THE GRASSHOPPER 255 
 
 My fourth beetle is a waterman, and rejoices in the 
 surname of Dytiscus. Although he is modified in various 
 ways to suit his peculiar existence in stagnant ponds, 
 he breathes as other beetles, coming to the surface 
 when he wants fresh air, and storing the latter along 
 his sides for gradual use, an economic principle some- 
 what resembling that acted on by whales. He is a 
 fierce creature all his life, the larva preying on tadpoles, 
 the full-grown beetle on fishes and newts; an easy- 
 going person, too, for when the sun dries his pond up, 
 he clambers up the bank and flies away to another. 
 
 Somewhat difficult to classify, and usually stuck, with 
 many others, in a large and elastic order, are two insects 
 that must have passing mention : the Earwig and the 
 Water-boatman. The former, which, of course, you have 
 often trodden on, and which you may almost regard as 
 an eccentric beetle, is chiefly interesting by reason of the 
 mother's devoted solicitude for her eggs and young, 
 approaching nearer to the parental instincts of the bird 
 than any other insect. The water - boatmen, some of 
 which swim on their back, have their long hind legs 
 fringed with hairs (like the tail of the water-shrew), 
 and can swim and dive most admirably after their 
 living prey. 
 
 Of the Orthoptera, or straight-winged order, the chief 
 are the Grasshopper and the Cricket. The former you, 
 no doubt, know quite well ; the latter is more in evidence 
 by its familiar note. I do not know whether Wordsworth's 
 "still longed for, never seen," would not fit the cricket 
 far better than the cuckoo, to which they were dedicated. 
 The grasshopper has a notorious cousin in the locust, 
 once the plague of Egypt, and in later times the scourge 
 of lands as far distant one from the other as Cyprus, the 
 
256 
 
 TYPES OF INSECTS 
 
 Argentine, and South Africa. Any of our heaths in 
 summer - time will furnish you with as many grass- 
 hoppers as you are likely to want, and with a little energy 
 you may capture one. Examine well the powerful thighs, 
 and then, releasing your hold, watch the gentleman 
 unfold his wings for a short, jerky flight. Lastly, if 
 you like, imagine clouds of insects very like this, only 
 larger, passing for days over a country when the crops 
 are at their best, devouring everything before them, and 
 leaving only ruin behind. Huge fires, with much smoke, 
 are of some use in staying these hordes ; but prevention 
 is always better than cure, and the plan that is now 
 answering admirably in Morocco is a state-aided col- 
 lection of the eggs, tons of which are thrown into the 
 sea. 
 
 More familiar, and far more unpopular in England 
 than can be accounted for by any real harm it does, is 
 the so-called "Black-beetle," which is no more a beetle 
 than the ladybird is a bird, and which is better known 
 as the Cockroach. Not only is this creature no beetle, 
 but it is not even black, mahogany-brown being nearer 
 its true colour. 
 
 The lady who, when assured of the real family to 
 
 which the cockroach be- 
 longs, said, "Well, never 
 mind ; it is quite as horrid 
 as if it were a real beetle," 
 was certainly libelling that 
 very beautiful order. Cer- 
 tainly there are many folks 
 who would as soon tread 
 on a deadly snake as on 
 COCKROACH AND LARVA. this scuttlius inhabitant of 
 
THE DKAGON-FLY 257 
 
 kitchen cupboards adjoining the range. Yet, in addition 
 to its destruction of insects still more repulsive than 
 itself, the despised cockroach has a claim on our respect 
 as the oldest surviving inhabitant of the globe. Who 
 knows but it will still be scuttling over wall-papers 
 long after you and I are fossilised? 
 
 There is some little uncertainty among the authorities 
 as to the exact position of one or two insect families 
 that come midway between the straight-winged and the 
 last great order, the Neuroptera, or nerve-winged. For 
 the purpose of this volume I understand that these 
 learned quibbles over the rungs of the ladder are of 
 secondary importance, so it will perhaps suffice if I 
 mention the Caddis-fly, dear to anglers, and the equally 
 prized May-flies, which live almost entirely in the water, 
 the perfect insect having but a day, maybe but an hour, 
 to float and dance over the surface and down a trout's 
 throat. 
 
 Surely, however, the grandest of our insects are the 
 Dragon-flies. They are among insects what the hawks 
 are among birds, and add to extreme strength and 
 beauty the ferocity of the birds of prey. Of the many 
 species found in these islands you are sure to see two; 
 the grand old gold dragon-fly found in the neighbour- 
 hood of wood and water, which flashes by before the 
 net has half done its swing, and the delicate electric- 
 blue Demoiselle with the violet -blotched wings. This 
 smaller kind is not difficult to catch, but the larger one 
 generally means a long chase and a quick and well-timed 
 stroke at the end. 
 
 When you have caught one, hold it gently by its 
 wings, for, although it cannot sting, its bite is vigorous 
 and effective. Having secured the insect in a convenient 
 
258 TYPES OF INSECTS 
 
 position, examine for a moment the fierce mouth, which, 
 if you touch it with a blade of grass, opens right across the 
 head, showing a gape of nearly a quarter of an inch. 
 This mouth has always been the dragon-fly's proudest 
 feature. His enormous eye, too, stretching all over his 
 head, helps the dragon-fly to dodge the net or strike 
 down his prey with unerring precision. 
 
 The female lays her eggs under water, and, as the larva 
 has at an early stage to look after itself, nature has 
 wrapped its fearful jaws in a smooth mask, enabling the 
 deceiver to stroll about, the picture of innocence, until 
 within striking distance. Then the mask flies off, and 
 indeed, acting as a kind of tongue, helps the jaws by 
 clutching the quarry. Even the pupa does not abandon 
 these hunting practices; indeed, there is some question 
 whether this very active and voracious stage that precedes 
 the perfect dragon-fly can strictly be regarded as a pupa 
 at all. But you need not trouble about these matters of 
 detail, merely bearing in mind that the last stage but one 
 of the dragon-fly represents the extreme case of pupa 
 activity, as contrasted with the inert pupa of the moth 
 and the crawling, but fasting, pupa of the may-fly. No 
 such repose or abstemiousness, then, distinguishes the 
 dragon-fly pupa, and the only way to tell it from an 
 ordinary greedy larva is by its larger wing-pads. 
 
 When, at last, it feels its time at hand, the pupa crawls 
 up a reed till clear of the water, then, bursting from its 
 shell, hangs a little while in the air for its wings to dry. 
 Then away it flies to feed more greedily even than it did 
 in its earlier stages, all manner of smaller insects being 
 slain and devoured. 
 
 Here I must end these few rambling notes on British 
 spiders and insects. I hope that the little I have been 
 
THE DRAGON-FLY 
 
 259 
 
 able to tell you may serve as a skeleton round which 
 the knowledge may crystallise that you get from your 
 own watching of the common facts of outdoor insect 
 life. C. S. COLMAN. 
 
 DRAGON-FLY AND LARVA. 
 
TYPES OF MOLLUSCS 
 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 THE OYSTER, THE LIMPET AND THE SQUID 
 
 The feet and movements of molluscs Life of Oysters The Oyster's 
 "beard " Pearls and " Mother-of-Pearl" Shells Classes of 
 molluscs Adhesive power of the Limpet Different explanations 
 of this Hard parts of the Squid and Cuttle Catching Squid 
 Feeding and spawning of the cephalopoda. 
 
 I MUST now, after Mr. Colman's very agreeable interrup- 
 tion, complete for you in three short chapters my animal 
 gallery. 
 
 In the rhyme it is the oyster that walks upstairs, but in 
 nature the oyster is about the only one of that soft race, 
 the molluscs, that does not walk at all. It cannot, for it 
 has no foot. Now the foot is the chief and only limb in 
 these animals. They are, in some cases, nearly all foot. 
 The cockle can jump like a frog, and if its huge American 
 cousins, some of which weigh nearly 500 pounds, leap in 
 proportion to their size, they must go like kangaroos. 
 The limpet, apparently as fixed as the Pyramids, can 
 move slowly, but surely, with the combined aid of its 
 firm foot and rasping tongue. The solen, or razor-fish, 
 can burrow in the sodden sand at an extraordinary rate, 
 its foot being a kind of alpenstock and drill in one. 
 Even the mussel, by no means a lively subject, is able 
 with its hooked foot and clinging beard to pull itself 
 clumsily through the water. 
 
 263 
 
264 TYPES OF MOLLUSCS 
 
 But the Oyster, which has no head, no eyes, no brain 
 and no foot, must be content with Colchester or Carling- 
 ford or some other spot as the one scene of its monotonous 
 existence, and this inability to fight or run away gives 
 the oyster a very bad time of it with men, shore-birds, 
 starfish, whelks, barnacles, mussels and other rapacious 
 enemies. Fortunately it is very prolific, laying its eggs 
 (or " spat ") in thousands, and men take some little care 
 in hatching as well as in eating it. From the oyster's 
 point of view, even this measure of protection is probably 
 better than none at all, and he finds it 
 
 " Better to be hatched and gulped 
 Than never to be hatched at all." 
 
 Moreover, the charge of cruelty entailed in "eating 
 oysters alive " comes a moment too late, for to most of 
 these delicate bivalves (two-shelled creatures) exposure 
 to the air means instant death, and the oyster probably 
 expires with the first intrusion of the opener. 
 
 As the oyster has no chin, you may perhaps be sur- 
 prised to find it in possession of a beard. But the 
 "beard," or byssus, of bivalves is merely a bunch of 
 fibrous threads, spun (usually close to the foot of molluscs ; 
 but the oyster has not even a foot) by the animal and used 
 in anchoring it to the rocks. 
 
 Many, though by no means all, oysters are eatable, 
 while others furnish both pearls and the beautiful sub- 
 stance known as nacre, or "mother-of-pearl." Both, by 
 the way, are likewise found in the shells of mussels and 
 several other bivalves ; and, in fact, pearls have frequently 
 been taken on our coasts, more particularly in some of 
 the Scotch estuaries, worth as much as ten, and even 
 twenty, sovereigns apiece. 
 
THE OYSTER 265 
 
 The pearl-oyster is far stronger, and much harder to 
 open, than the kinds we eat. Indeed, if the latter were 
 even half as tough as one well-remembered pearl-oyster 
 that I once struggled with at Thursday Island (and 
 which, alas, recalled the difference is it not duly written 
 down in the French grammars? between a wine-glass 
 and a glass of wine!), the waiters would strike in a 
 body. 
 
 The shell, which is rough outside and smooth within, 
 as well as the nacre and some of the pearls, is " secreted " 
 (which means made, not hidden) by the creature's muscular 
 mantle ; but most of the pearls are thought to arise from 
 the attacks of a small parasite, or from the irritation 
 caused by a grain of sand or some such intruding 
 particle. 
 
 The molluscs, then, which are for the most part a 
 creeping race (though the octopus and squid and cuttle 
 can swim backwards through the water), differ in several 
 important points from the members of the foregoing 
 invertebrate sub-kingdom. 
 
 From the crustaceans more especially they are distin- 
 guished by the fact that their shell grows with them, 
 and is not therefore subject to the same periodic change. 
 
 The exact nature of this shell (which is chalky, with 
 varying proportions of animal and colouring matter), as 
 well as the method in which the animal makes (or 
 "secretes") it, lies somewhat outside the scope of these 
 notes, and belongs rather to the science of conchology, 
 which treats of the striking variations in shape, size and 
 colour. Collections of land shells, fresh-water shells and 
 marine shells are almost as popular as collections of birds' 
 eggs, and of at any rate greater historical interest. 
 
 As with our crustaceans, so our molluscs are mostly 
 
266 TYPES OF MOLLUSCS 
 
 marine. We have, it is true, the land snails and some 
 others, but the ordinary idea of a mollusc suggests the 
 seashore. 
 
 We must distinguish three groups, or classes: the 
 bivalves, the gastropods and the cephalopods. The first 
 dwell in two shells ; the second dwell in one shell, and 
 have a curious combination of foot and stomach; the 
 third have, for the most part, no outside shell at all, and 
 their legs and feet grow from their head. 
 
 Of the oyster, one of the bivalves, I have already said 
 a word. 
 
 As an example of the gastropods we may take the 
 Limpet, the fellow who lives in the single pyramid- 
 shaped shell that you may often have tried to kick from 
 its slippery rock. The limpet has, as I have already 
 mentioned, a foot, like most of its race, but its chief 
 and most precious possession, I imagine, is a ribbon-like 
 tongue, keen as a file, and armed with a couple of 
 thousand teeth of the hardness of flint. 
 
 It is with this wonderful organ, used with much skill 
 and more patience, that the limpet manages to hollow 
 out the little pit in which its shell fits so tightly. It 
 is in all probability by the use of some adhesive glue 
 that it contrives to stick there with a force that requires 
 the equivalent of close on two thousand times its own 
 weight to shift it. I don't know that this conveys very 
 much to you, but you can try and imagine yourself 
 standing so firmly in a field that not sixteen times the 
 weight of the elephant "Jumbo" could shift you! The 
 remarkable thing about this adhesion to the rock is that 
 once you have slipped your knife under the limpet and 
 wrenched it from its stronghold you cannot with your 
 finger feel the slightest stickiness on its foot. There 
 
THE SQUID 267 
 
 are the small black tentacles, with the mouth between, 
 and there is the fringe of gills surrounding the central 
 foot, but not the least trace of any glutinous stuff, such 
 as one would, if this is its method of holding on, expect 
 to find on either the shell or the rock. I have examined 
 hundreds of limpets of all sizes, and never yet found any 
 such sticky coating. This I suppose it was that lent 
 some colour to the theory that the creature held on by 
 exhausting the air and creating a vacuum, after the 
 plan of the wet indiarubber discs with which, attached 
 to a string, it is possible to raise heavy stones. One 
 great naturalist declared he had proved this air 
 exhaustion to be impossible, because after he had cut 
 the limpet in halves each half stuck to the rock as 
 before. This may be conclusive, and I do not for a 
 moment care about disputing it, but it is curious all 
 the same that the limpet should when removed from 
 the rock show no tendency to stick to one's finger. I 
 must admit I have not tried handling it under water. 
 It is just possible that the slime hardens instantly on 
 exposure to the air. The next chance you get, pray 
 remove a limpet in some pool and try whether its 
 surface is sticky. If you are unable to remove it from 
 your finger, then have it photographed in its new 
 position and send a print of it to the Koyal Society. 
 Someone will then write a memorandum on it in Latin, 
 and you ought to feel among the proud ones of the earth. 
 The Squid will serve as a type of the cephalopods, 
 which also include the repulsive eight-armed octopus, the 
 ten-armed cuttle and some other interesting members, 
 with which, as they are foreigners, we have here no concern. 
 The squid has not only the eight arms of the octopus, 
 studded along the whole length with powerful suckers, 
 
268 TYPES OF MOLLUSCS 
 
 but also two longer arms, with suckers only at the end 
 furthest from the head. These creatures have neither 
 the backbone of vertebrate animals nor the outside 
 armour of many invertebrates, but the squid carries 
 within it a transparent horny bone, and the cuttle has 
 a corresponding opaque chalky article, shaped rather 
 like a laurel leaf, and familiar in the bars of bird-cages. 
 That of the squid has the form of a spear-head, and is 
 called its "pen," a name deriving additional meaning 
 from the black inky fluid that, like the cuttle, it carries 
 in a bag and discharges, as do all its kind, on the approach 
 of an enemy. Besides this useful trick of raising a cloud 
 and backing away under cover of it, the squid has a 
 chameleon-like habit of adapting its colour to its sur- 
 roundings. 
 
 There is something rather disgusting about these 
 cephalopods. I have caught and cut up a good many 
 squid, for they make excellent bait, but never without 
 a feeling of aversion that not even familiarity can dispel. 
 I suppose it is due to the unlovely combination of the 
 goggle eyes, the flabby tentacles and general absence of 
 firmness and shape. 
 
 But the living squid is much less objectionable, and 
 you may easily get interested in his jerky manner of 
 swimming, mostly backwards, after a fish suspended by 
 a string over the side of the boat. In Cornwall we 
 catch these gentlemen, generally after sunset, in two 
 ways. Either the squid is coaxed close enough to the 
 boat to enable a practised hand to hook him out with 
 a special three-pronged gaff, or several hooks are lashed 
 to a small fish, and the squid impales its tentacles. 
 
 These creatures have two distinct ways of getting 
 about. They can crawl over the rocks with a sidelong 
 
THE SQUID 
 
 motion, like crabs, and they can also dart backwards 
 through the water by expelling water through a tube. 
 
 The bivalve and gastropod molluscs feed chiefly on 
 other molluscs, boring the shell with their file -like 
 tongues; but these cephalopods employ their powerful 
 tentacles and parrot-like, horny beaks to devour crusta- 
 ceans and fishes. There are few sights more fascinating 
 in the Naples Aquarium than that of the octopus flapping 
 lazily up to a crab, which the attendant lowers on a 
 string, and of a sudden embracing it with its deadly 
 arms. 
 
 The squid deposits its eggs enclosed in bunches of 
 transparent sheaths or purses; those of the cuttle are 
 protected by vessels like black grapes ; and those of the 
 octopus hang in clusters on a stalk. The squids of 
 tropical seas grow to an enormous size, but our own are 
 only a few inches in length. 
 
 CUTTLE FISH. 
 
 THE COMMON SQUID. 
 
TYPES OF ECHINODERMS 
 AND WORMS 
 
CHAPTEK XXIX. 
 
 THE STARFISH, THE LUGWORM AND THE 
 ROCK-LEECH 
 
 The sea the cradle of life The "arms" of the Starfish Its mode of 
 crawling Its food Worms The longest British animal Burrowing 
 of Lugworms Muscular strength of the Rock-Leech Breeding of 
 Leeches Parasites. 
 
 THE sea has rightly been termed the cradle of life. I 
 do not allude to the words in the song about the 
 "cradle of the deep," but to the more serious con- 
 clusions that have been arrived at concerning the 
 beginnings of all simple life in the sea. 
 
 At any rate, a morning's ramble along the seashore 
 will, given alternative stretches of sand and rock, yield 
 specimens of the few remaining animal types I have yet 
 to name to you. 
 
 First, there is the Starfish. It is our type of the 
 sub-kingdom having rough skins, like the hedgehog, and 
 therefore called echinoderms. 
 
 Of course, you know the common starfish, with its 
 five arms, red above, yellow where the hundreds of 
 suckers lie on the underside. The creature's mouth 
 lies at the centre point of these arms and on the lower 
 surface. The so-called arms, by the way, are not mere 
 limbs, but are directly connected with the animal's 
 stomach and digestive system. You might perhaps 
 regard the starfish as a fixture, and it is not, as a 
 T 273 
 
274 TYPES OF ECHINODKEM8 AND WORMS 
 
 matter of fact, particularly energetic; but it can move 
 about all the same by clinging to the rock with its 
 suckers and dragging itself along. It feeds on various 
 bivalve molluscs, being, like the whelk, a terrible enemy 
 of the oyster. 
 
 Now, the Worms have no connection whatever with 
 the echinoderms, and I only proceed to mention two of 
 them here because they lie in nature adjacent to the 
 starfish. On the same principle of convenience, I coupled 
 birds of very different orders according to their haunts, 
 and it is perhaps unnecessary to repeat here the reser- 
 vations I made on a foregoing page. 
 
 The old notion about the vileness of the earthworm is 
 no longer entertained in well-informed quarters, and we 
 do not even give the mole the unqualified praise he once 
 got for his great destruction of that useful creature. I 
 have already, I think, pointed out the error in the popular 
 names slow-worm and glow-worm as applied respectively 
 to a reptile and a beetle. Probably the longest of living 
 creatures is a planarian worm of our coasts, that can 
 occupy at its own sweet will either one inch or the 
 length of a couple of cricket - pitches on end. This 
 extraordinary creature, which dwarfs the pythons of 
 nature and the sea-serpents of fiction, is fairly common 
 on our shores, though not one person in a thousand has 
 ever seen one. 
 
 The fact is, the drawer of the zoological cabinet at 
 present labelled "Worms" is temporarily occupied by a 
 number of forms that have probably no right there. 
 
 The Lugworm, best of sea -baits, is less familiar to 
 those who walk along a sandy coast than are the cast- 
 ings that mark the entrance to its burrow. The pace at 
 which this somewhat unpleasant creature, with the 
 
THE ROCK-LEECH 275 
 
 mobile proboscis, gill-tufts and yellow blood, can burrow 
 in the sand may be appreciated by anyone who will 
 set about digging for it with a shovel slightly too large 
 for the work. > ^ 
 
 The worm is about five or six inches in length, and 
 either red or black, according to the colour of the sand or 
 mud, and may be placed in a pail of sea-water for more 
 convenient observation of its peculiar head and slender 
 tail, the latter often full of undigested sand and easily 
 detachable from the body. As it bores down, swallowing 
 the sand as it proceeds, and getting from it such nourish- 
 ment as it can, the lugworm also cements its tunnel, as 
 you may see by examining that portion of it that traverses 
 any of the lumps of sand thrown out by your shovel 
 when in pursuit. This prevents the wet sand filling up 
 the shaft, and thus leaves the worm a clear way of 
 escape. 
 
 The Leeches are among those groups that are still 
 permitted to repose among the "worms," though one of 
 these days there will probably come a rude awakening, 
 and they will be degraded from the ranks by a 
 court-martial of microscopists and forced to take a 
 lower social position. As yet, however, they are entitled 
 to rank as worms. Of these, too, the prolific rock-pools 
 will give us an example in the curious Kock-leech, which 
 differs from the more familiar medicinal leech in its 
 larger size and numerous warts. Otherwise it has the 
 usual sucker at either extremity, and that wonderful 
 muscular power of its class which enables it to contract 
 to the space of an inch or little more, and expand to 
 at least six. This creature lives as a parasite on sharks 
 and rays, the mouth sawing a way through the skin, the 
 sucker extracting the blood, and the leech swelling as 
 
276 TYPES OF ECHINODERMS AND WORMS 
 
 it drinks. It is remarkable how gently these blood- 
 suckers set about their work. I have more than once, 
 when marching warily after kangaroo and thinking of 
 nothing but how close I could get for a shot, had my 
 attention suddenly arrested by the wet state of my foot, 
 and found it all over blood, with a couple of bloated 
 leeches sleeping off their orgy in my sock. 
 
 Leeches have to be kept in water, and soon die in 
 excessive drought. This rock-leech probably carries its 
 eggs about with it till hatched, for it could scarcely, I 
 imagine, dig a cupboard in the rock for its egg-cases like 
 that which the common leech digs in the soft mud. 
 
 These, then, are two of the " worms." The sub-kingdom 
 also includes all the innumerable thread- worms and other 
 parasites, which infest all manner of hosts, including 
 beasts, birds and fishes. Some of those found in the 
 last-named are, when uncoiled, considerably longer than 
 their host; others inhabit more than one host during 
 their busy career, though how precisely the transition 
 is effected cannot always be determined. 
 
 We ourselves, for instance, share one such parasite 
 with the common mouse and house-cat. The passage 
 of this disgusting tourist from mouse to cat does not 
 require any mental effort to grasp, but the remainder of 
 its journey to the human terminus is a matter on which 
 I am distinctly disinclined to seek information. 
 
TYPES OF JELLY-FISHES, 
 SEA-ANEMONES AND SPONGES 
 
CHAPTEK XXX. 
 
 THE JELLY-FISH, THE ANEMONE AND THE 
 SPONGE 
 
 Jelly-Fish and their ways "Stinging" Swimming and feeding of 
 Jelly-Fish Jelly-Fish as transports Their eggs and young The 
 watery Anemone Anemones as bait Uses of their tentacles 
 Feeding Anemones by hand Exact nature of Sponges British 
 Sponges From highest to lowest. 
 
 WHEN I tell you that a Jelly-fish weighing sixteen 
 ounces would contain over fifteen of water and less 
 than one of animal matter, you may perhaps think it 
 time I brought these notes to a close, without drag- 
 ging them out so as to include uninteresting bags of 
 water. 
 
 Now, my thin-skinned friend (I hope you are thin- 
 skinned, otherwise you will never be convinced), if you 
 will go a -bathing in August, when the jelly-fish are 
 drifting merrily along the coast, and let one or two of 
 the smaller kinds rest against your chest for a moment, 
 I warrant you will find them quite as interesting as 
 any stinging-nettle you ever sat upon. The term 
 "stinging" is used carelessly enough of snakes and 
 dragon-flies, but in the jelly-fishes we come to a group 
 of animals that really do sting. Even the small 
 editions found on our coasts can make a fellow wish 
 himself back in the bathing-machine, and there is a 
 larger cousin, a mere visitor in stormy weather to 
 
 279 
 
280 TYPES OF JELLY-FISHES 
 
 our Cornish bays, that stings very severely indeed. 
 "Portuguese man -o'- war" is the name of this fear- 
 some yet beautiful creature, and of the two I had rather, 
 at any rate when in the water, meet its namesake. I 
 only once meddled with a live specimen, this year on 
 the coast of Morocco, and was very severely stung. 
 
 Quite apart, however, from its power of stinging, which 
 makes it merely odious, our jelly-fish, simple water-logged 
 umbrella though it be, is among the most interesting 
 inhabitants of the sea. It is, of course, simplicity itself, 
 carrying its mouth and stomach, almost united, in the 
 "umbrella-handle," drifting with the tide and scarce 
 having to keep itself afloat (as why, being water within 
 water, should it ?) by an occasional flap of the bell. Its 
 feeding is as primitive as its form, the small creatures 
 that it eats being paralysed by the stinging tentacles and 
 conveyed straight to the mouth, thence passing to the 
 stomach and nourishing the whole of its simple system. 
 Another very interesting aspect of the jelly-fishes, of 
 which the " Marigold " is a common British type, is that 
 of the free conduct their protecting folds give to small 
 foreign fishes, which, by way of paying their fare, devour 
 their host's tentacles during the journey. Sometimes, 
 after stormy weather, these stowaways get separated from 
 their craft and thrown up on our shores, where they 
 are pounced upon by collectors of curiosities and duly 
 recorded as ordinary visitors without reference to the 
 only probable means by which they could have reached 
 us. 
 
 But it is in their reproduction that most of the jelly- 
 fishes have the greatest interest for naturalists. This, 
 involving as it would a careful explanation of what is 
 learnedly known as " alternation of generations," is rather 
 
THE ANEMONE 281 
 
 beyond the ambitions of so small a book as this ; but I may 
 as well give you the merest suggestion of one view of the 
 matter. You may see the eggs on the jelly-fish in the 
 form of reddish rings on the disc. These eggs are fringed 
 with minute hairs, and they drift away from the parent 
 and settle on the rocks, producing first a small white 
 larva, then, on this, a number of flat round bodies that 
 likewise develop tentacles and break away, becoming in 
 their turn full-grown jelly-fish. 
 
 To the same sub-kingdom as the jelly-fishes belong the 
 beautiful Sea-anemones. They are more solid than the 
 jelly-fishes, having a tougher skin and more animal 
 matter, but they also contain when fully distended a 
 great proportion of water, as you may see by squeezing 
 one, so that the water squirts out and the creature 
 shrinks to a mere flabby button. 
 
 I have already had occasion to allude to the habit 
 of some anemones that attach themselves to the whelk- 
 shell tenanted by a hermit-crab, and likewise, in the 
 same connection, to the greatly exaggerated antipathy 
 entertained for them by sea-fish. Practical experience 
 is worth a good deal of theory in these matters, and I 
 may as well, though the issue is not of great importance, 
 give you the results of some recent experiments that 
 I made with anemones for bait. With two hooks down, 
 one baited with a piece of anemone and the other with 
 lugworm or mussel, the fish would not touch the anemone. 
 But, once the dabs and whiting were wildly on the feed, 
 and all the hooks were baited with anemone, they took 
 this as well as anything else, and still more so when 
 adjoining boats went away from the ground, and no one 
 was left using other bait of any sort. This is, of course, 
 interesting merely as an experiment, since no one would 
 
 T 2 
 
282 TYPES OF SPONGES 
 
 be foolish enough to waste his time with an inferior bait 
 when there are others to be had. 
 
 Although these anemones are of low structure, feeding, 
 like the jelly-fish, with the aid of stinging tentacles, and 
 having to throw out the undigested solid matter of their 
 meals, you must not, deceived by the familiar comparison 
 with their floral namesakes, regard them as fixtures, for 
 they are perfectly capable of shifting their position. 
 
 The tentacles are used in wafting small edible objects 
 within reach by setting the water in motion, as well as 
 in stinging them, if necessary, and conveying them to 
 the mouth. In order to find abundance and variety of 
 food, the anemone likes to plant itself in the tideway 
 and in currents that ebb and flow, and this, no doubt, is 
 its first object in entering into partnership with the 
 wandering hermit-crab. In the aquarium it is sometimes 
 necessary to feed anemones by hand, introducing directly 
 into the gaping mouth a small portion of fish or meat 
 at the end of a wooden skewer. I used to be rather fond 
 of doing this years ago at the now closed Crystal Palace 
 Aquarium, and the promptness with which the anemone 
 took all the work off my hands the moment it got wind 
 of the meal always reminded me of the "You press the 
 button ; we do the rest," in the advertisement of a well- 
 known camera. The reproduction of anemones is by 
 spawn, in some cases developed (and the young hatched 
 out) within the parental folds. 
 
 With the jelly-fishes and anemones the Sponges 
 (sub-kingdom Porifera) have nothing whatever to do, 
 and indeed the notion of a mere sponge, the flabby 
 thing you use in your morning tub, belonging to the 
 animal kingdom at all, may shock your notions of 
 propriety. But it does. Not that the sponge, as you 
 
THE SPONGE 283 
 
 know it, is, or ever was, a living animal in quite the same 
 way as you are. Its exact position is none too easy to 
 describe, but I imagine that in regarding it as the 
 remnant of what once was a colony of animals you 
 cannot go far wrong. In its innumerable canals and 
 cavities there once resided a host of jelly-like creatures, 
 living in perfect harmony and nourishing themselves on 
 the minute food particles borne on the water in its ebb 
 and flow throughout the mass. The living sponge gives 
 us, in short, the ideal picture of peaceful socialism and 
 perfect circulation and digestion. Very elementary are 
 its dwellers, but no one can fairly say that their organisa- 
 tion is in any way inadequate to their style of living, while 
 their reproduction, half animal and half vegetable, would, 
 if I could but explain it in sufficiently simple terms 
 (which, frankly, I cannot), be sure to strike you as still 
 more wonderful than any described in these pages. 
 
 Though I alluded to the bath-sponge as a familiar 
 example, you must bear in mind that there are hundreds 
 of kinds of sponges, some, as our British "breadcrumb" 
 sponge, being absolutely useless for commercial purposes. 
 This particular species, which is only one out of two or 
 three hundred met with on our coasts, lies on the rocks 
 in greenish masses, resembling minute volcano craters. 
 Although sponges are fixtures, the larvae swim freely. 
 
 And now we have come to the end of this small 
 collection of British types got together for your in- 
 spection. In life they are masterpieces, all from the 
 same studio. Each one of the creatures mentioned in 
 these pages is, for the time being, perfect in its way. 
 Lower yet than the sponges we might have travelled, 
 among the infusorians and amcebas, but with the sponges 
 
284 TYPES OF SPONGES 
 
 perhaps end the creatures that can reasonably serve as 
 types of a local fauna. As I have already said, the plan 
 of selecting types, while apparently making our task 
 simpler, really involves additional difficulties over and 
 above the invidious responsibility of choice and rejec- 
 tion. Perhaps the widest gap in the collection comes 
 after the fishes, where I said next to nothing of the 
 lamprey and hag-fish, and altogether omitted the truncate 
 sea-squirts and that worm-like dweller in the sand called 
 Bcdanoglossus. 
 
 Of the relationships of these different divisions of the 
 animal commonwealth you have been told little or nothing, 
 nor have these pages even conformed to the accepted 
 order from highest to lowest. It is, as a matter of fact, 
 rather difficult, particularly when we get down to the 
 zoological basement and cellars, to decide whether one 
 animal is more or less highly organised than, another. 
 Our point of view may not be nature's. Freedom of 
 movement and good eyesight would seem to be among 
 her choicest gifts ; yet would you on that account declare 
 the roving young barnacle more highly organised than its 
 stationary parent ? Be careful ere you accuse nature of 
 muddling progress and degeneration. If anything in this 
 book has unwittingly suggested so gross a libel, pitch 
 it on the fire, put on your cap and go forth and see for 
 yourself. 
 
 THE ''MARIGOLD" JELLY-FISH. 
 
INDEX 
 
 A DDER, 164. 
 
 -li Adipose Fin of Salmon, 184. 
 Ailsa Craig, Gannets breeding on, 
 
 152. 
 
 Air-bladder of fishes, 215. 
 Ambergris, 48. 
 Amphibians, 171. 
 Anchovy, 201. 
 Animals, 2. 
 
 Kindness to, 30. 
 
 Antlers, 61. 
 Arundel, Bass at, 210. 
 Australia, Fruit-pigeons in, 119. 
 
 Rabbits in, 57. 
 
 Sparrows in, 81. 
 
 Sting- ray in, 219. 
 
 Avon, Salmon in the Wiltshire, 182. 
 
 BADGER, 21, 25. 
 Balanoglossus, 284. 
 " Bald Mouse," 64. 
 Barnacles, 233. 
 
 Guillemot feeding on, 153. 
 
 Basking Shark, 218. 
 
 Bass, 207. 
 
 Bass Rock, Gannets on the, 151. 
 
 Bat, 63. 
 
 (meaning of the word), 73. 
 
 Bath-sponge, 283. 
 Bean-fly, 242. 
 Bearded Reedling, 131. 
 Beard of the Oyster, 264. 
 Bergylt, 180, 220. 
 Birds, 2, 77. 
 " Black-beetle," 72, 256. 
 Blackbird, 91. 
 Black grouse, 120. 
 Blennies, 180, 206. 
 "Blind as a bat, "65. 
 Blubber, 44. 
 Bluebottle, 252. 
 Blue Shark, 215. 
 
 Bournemouth, Crossbills at, 116. 
 
 Nightjar at, 128. 
 
 Pier, 205. 
 
 Breadalbane (Lord) on Capercailzie, 
 
 120. 
 
 Breadcrumb Sponge, 283. 
 Breathing of Insects, 243. 
 " British Deer and their Horns," 58. 
 Broads, Life on the, 131, 146. 
 Bryden (H. A.) on the Landrail, 
 
 107. 
 Buckland (F.) on Evidence of 
 
 Design, 47. 
 
 Bullen (F. T.) on Whaling, 47. 
 Bumble-bees, 245. 
 Burying-beetle, 254. 
 Butcher-birds, 99. 
 Butterflies, 247. 
 
 flADDIS FLY, 251, 257. 
 \J Camberwell Beauty, 248. 
 Canis, 3. 
 Capercailzie, 119. 
 Capybara, 49. 
 Carnivora, 3. 
 Carp tribe, 206. 
 "Castings "of Owls," 123. 
 Cat, 13. 
 
 Wild, 16, 19. 
 
 Caterpillar, 242. 
 
 Cats and Clover, 245. 
 
 Cattle, Wild, 2. 
 
 Centipedes, 227, 235. 
 
 Cephalopods, 266. 
 
 Chichester Canal, Eels in the, 193. 
 
 Harbour, Bass in, 208. 
 
 Chimaeroids, 213. 
 Christchurch, Osprey at, 155. 
 
 Salmon at, 182. 
 
 Class, 3. 
 Coarse fish, 209. 
 Cock-fighting, 26. 
 
286 
 
 ItfDEX 
 
 Cockle, 263. 
 Cockroach, 256. 
 Cod family, 206. 
 Coleoptera, 244, 253. 
 Colorado Beetle, 242. 
 Conger, 180, 188, 191. 
 Continent, Magpies on the, 117. 
 Coot, 140, 145. 
 Coral Polyp, 225. 
 Cormorant, 150, 152. 
 Corncrake, 106. 
 Cornwall, Sharks in, 214. 
 
 - Shrews in, 68. 
 Cowper on the Halibut, 197. 
 Crossbill, 116. 
 
 Crows, 87. 
 Crustaceans, 3, 227. 
 Cuckoo, 110, 112. 
 Cucumber Smelt, 217. 
 Curlew, 137. 
 Cushat, 118. 
 Cuttle, 226, 265. 
 
 DADDY-LONG-LEGS, 252. 
 Darwin on Cats and Clover, 2-15. 
 Deep-sea Fish, 45. 
 Deer, Fallow, 59. 
 
 - Red, 59. 
 
 - Roe, 59. 
 
 - (meaning of the word), 73. 
 Demoiselle Dragon-fly, 257. 
 Derbyshire, Grouse in, 127. 
 Devon, Bearded Reedling in, 132. 
 Dipper, 140. 
 
 Diptcra, 244, 251. 
 Diver, 153. 
 Dog, 3, 14. 
 Dormouse, 54. 
 Dorset, Sand-lizard in, 162. 
 Dory, 200, 203. 
 Dragon-fly, 251, 257. 
 "Drumming" of Snipe, 138. 
 Duck, 156. 
 
 Durham, Grouse in, 127. 
 is, 255. 
 
 EAGLE, White-tailed, 154. 
 Ear-tufts of Owls, 123. 
 - Squirrel, 53. 
 Earwig, 255. 
 Echinoderms, 273. 
 Eel, 188. 
 
 Eggs laid in dark nests, 83. 
 
 of Jelly-fish, 281. 
 
 of Lobster, 229. 
 
 of Shark, 219. 
 
 of Snakes, 167. 
 
 of Squid, 269. 
 
 Electric Ray, 219. 
 
 Elimination, 77. 
 
 Elvers, 189. 
 
 Epping Forest, Deer in, 61. 
 
 Ermine, 32, 34. 
 
 Eye of Flatfish, 195. 
 
 Frog, 173. 
 
 Lobster, 228. 
 
 Shark, 216. 
 
 FABLES, Origin of, 128. 
 Fallow Deer, 59, 60. 
 " Family," 3. 
 "Fauna," Meaning of, 5. 
 Fields, Birds of the, 78, 102. 
 Fishes, 5, 179. 
 Fishing with Otters, 29. 
 Flatfish, 194. 
 
 Fleet Pond, Coots on the, 145. 
 Flies, 251. 
 
 Flycatcher, Spotted, 97. 
 Fly-fishing, 209. 
 " Flying Mouse," 64. 
 " Form " of Hare, 56. 
 Fortescue (Hon. J.) on Red Deer, 
 
 60. 
 Fox, 4, 16, 20. 
 
 Shark, 218. 
 
 French Partridge, 106. 
 Frog, 172. 
 
 GALL-FLIES, 246. 
 Game Laws, 17. 
 Gannet, 150. 
 
 Garden, Birds of the, 78, 90. 
 Garden-spider, 239. 
 Gastropods, 266. 
 "Genus," 3. 
 Geology, 59. 
 
 Gill-slits in Sharks, 215. 
 Glow-worm, 254. 
 Gnat, 252. 
 
 Gnawing of rodents, 51. 
 Goatsucker, 128. 
 Gobies, 206. 
 Godwits, 137. 
 
INDEX 
 
 287 
 
 Goldfish and Kingfishers, 144. 
 Goldsmith on the Halibut, 197. 
 Grassi on Spawning of Eels, 188. 
 Grave-digger, 254. 
 Great Crested Grebe, 146. 
 Great Northern Diver, 153. 
 Great Water Newt, 174. 
 Grebe, 140, 146. 
 Green Fly, 242. 
 Grilse, 184. 
 Grouse, Black, 120. 
 
 Red, 120. 
 
 Guillemot, 153. 
 
 Gull, 148. 
 
 Seal feeding on, 40. 
 
 HAG-FISH, 284. 
 Halibut, 196. 
 Hampshire Pike, 141. 
 
 Sand-lizards in, 162. 
 
 Hamster, 50. 
 
 Hanover Rat, 50. 
 
 Hare, 54. 
 
 Harting (J. E.) on Herons' Nests, 
 
 134. 
 
 Harvest-mouse, 49, 52. 
 Hastings, Conger at, 190. 
 Hedgehog, 71. 
 Hedge-sparrow, 81. 
 Hermit-crab, 228, 230. 
 Heron, 133. 
 Herring, 200. 
 
 Eggs of, 219. 
 
 Herring-gull, 148. 
 Hessian-fly, 242, 253. 
 Hibernation of Dormouse, 54. 
 Honey-bee, 244. 
 Horns of Cattle, 61. 
 Horseshoe-bats, 64. 
 House-fly, 252. 
 
 Housetop, Birds of the, 78, 79. 
 Humble-bees, 245. 
 Hunting-spiders, 237. 
 Hymenoptera, 243. 
 
 TCHNEUMON-FLIES, 246. 
 
 1 Illnesses of Game-birds, 106 3 
 
 127. 
 
 " Indigenous," Meaning of, 19. 
 Insectivora, 3. 
 Insects, 227, 241. 
 Invertebrates, 2, 226. 
 
 Ireland, Animals of, 18, 161, 163. 
 Island Fauna, 8. 
 
 JACKDAW, 87. 
 Jay, 88. 
 Jelly-fish, 279. 
 John Dory, 203. 
 Jumping-spiders, 238. 
 
 KANAKA Pearl-divers, 46. 
 Kearton (R.) on Moles and 
 Worms, 69. 
 
 on Stoats and Eggs, 36. 
 
 Kelt, 184. 
 Kestrel, 102, 107. 
 " Kingdom," 2. 
 Kingfisher, 140, 143. 
 
 T ADYBIRD, 253, 254. 
 
 AJ Lampreys, 214. 
 
 Landrail, 102, 106. 
 
 Lapwing, 138. 
 
 Large Copper, 248. 
 
 Lateral line, 185, 193. 
 
 Leaf-cutter, 246. 
 
 Leaping of Salmon, 184. 
 
 Leather-grub, 253. 
 
 Leeches, 275. 
 
 Leighton (Dr. G.) on Food of 
 
 Adder, 166. 
 Lemmings, 50. 
 Lepidoptera, 244. 
 Lesser Shrew, 68. 
 Limpet, 263, 266. 
 Little Owl, 122. 
 Lizard, 162. 
 Loaches, 206. 
 Lobster, 227. 
 
 pots, 209. 
 
 Locust, 225, 255. 
 Long-eared Owl, 122. 
 Lugworm, 274. 
 Lul worth, Lobsters at, 228. 
 Lundy Island, Gannets on, 151. 
 
 Storm Petrels on, 152. 
 
 Lung-breathing Fishes, 180. 
 
 MAGPIE, 88, 116. 
 Mallard, 156. 
 Mammals, 2. 
 Marigold Jelly-fish, 280. 
 Marshes, Birds of the, 78, 131. 
 
288 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Marsh Warbler, 133. 
 Mason-bees, 245. 
 May-flies, 257. 
 
 Metamorphoses of Insects, 243. 
 Migration of Birds, 6, 85, 137. 
 
 Herring, 201. 
 
 Swallows, 86. 
 
 Millais (J. G.) on Deer, 58, 61. 
 Millipedes, 227. 
 Mole, 68, 274. 
 
 (meaning of the word), 73. 
 
 and Peewit, 138. 
 
 Molehills, 71. 
 
 Molluscs, 3, 263. 
 
 Monkfish, 215. 
 
 Moors, Birds of the, 78, 125. 
 
 Moreporks, 129. 
 
 Morocco, Locusts in, 256. 
 
 Dartford Warbler in, 133. 
 
 Ospreys in, 155. 
 
 Woodchat in, 99. 
 
 Mosquito, 242, 252. 
 Moths, 247. 
 Mouse, 49. 
 
 Harvest, 52. 
 
 Wood, 52. 
 
 Mudeford, Salmon at, 182. 
 Music, Seals and, 37. 
 Mussel, 263. 
 Mute Swan, 156. 
 
 NAPLES Aquarium, 204, 269. 
 Natural History, 1. 
 Nerve-winged, 257. 
 Neuroptera, 244, 257. 
 New Forest, Ants in the, 246. 
 
 Deer in the, 60. 
 
 Grouse in the, 127. 
 
 Newt, 174. 
 
 Nictitant Membrane in Sharks, 
 
 216. 
 
 Nightingale, 91, 93, 110. 
 Nightjar, 127. 
 
 Northumberland, Grouse in, 127. 
 Norway Rat, 50. 
 Nuthatch, 115. 
 
 OCTOPUS, 265, 267. 
 "Order, "3. 
 Orthoptera, 244, 255. 
 Osprey, 154. 
 Otter, 29. 
 
 Owls, 89, 121. 
 Oyster, 263, 264. 
 
 PARASITES, 276. 
 
 1 Parr, 184. 
 
 Partridge, 102, 105. 
 
 Peacock Butterfly, 248. 
 
 Pearl-oyster, 265. 
 
 " Peculiar," Meaning of, 125. 
 
 Peewit, 138. 
 
 Pelican feeding young, 118. 
 
 Pied Wagtail, 142. 
 
 Pigeons' Milk, 118. 
 
 Pigmy Shrew, 41, 68. 
 
 Pike, 210. 
 
 and young Trout, 141. 
 
 Pilchard, 200. 
 Pill -millipede, 235. 
 Plovers' Eggs, 138. 
 Plymouth, Bass at, 208. 
 Porbeagle Shark, 217. 
 Porifera, 282. 
 Portsmouth, Bass at, 208. 
 " Portuguese Man-o'-War, 280. 
 Postal Guide, The, 27, 32. 
 Prawn, 232. 
 
 Protection of Wild Animals, 32, 122. 
 Protective Colouring, 34, 83, 103, 
 158, 196, 268. 
 
 QUEENSLAND, Land-crabs in, 
 228. 
 Large Flatfish in, 196. 
 
 RABBIT, 54. 
 Range of the Nightingale, 94. 
 Rat, Black, 50. 
 
 Brown, 50. 
 
 Ratton, 50. 
 Ray, Electric, 219. 
 Razor-fish, 263. 
 Red Ant, 246. 
 Red-backed Shrike, 99. 
 Redbreast, 91, 92. 
 Red Deer, 59, 60. 
 
 Grouse, 125. 
 
 Worm, 253. 
 
 Reedling, Bearded, 131. 
 Reptiles, 5, 161. 
 Richmond, Deer at, 60. 
 
 Herons at, 134. 
 
 Kingfishers at, 145. 
 
INDEX 
 
 289 
 
 Right Whale, 42. 
 
 Ringdove, 118. 
 
 Ringed Snake, 167. 
 
 River and Lake, Birds of the, 78, 
 
 140. 
 
 Robin, 88, 92. 
 Rock-leech, 275. 
 Rodentia, 3. 
 Roe-deer, 59. 
 Romanes on the Peewit and Mole, 
 
 138. 
 
 Rome, Base at, 210. 
 Rook, 87, 102, 104. 
 
 shooting, 105. 
 
 Royal Natural History quoted, 154, 
 
 164. 
 Rudolf (late Crown Prince of 
 
 Austria) on the Osprey, 155. 
 Ruminantia, 3. 
 
 SALMON, 180. 
 Sand-lizard, 162. 
 Sandpipers, 137. 
 Sardine, 200. 
 
 Scabbard-winged, 244, 253. 
 Scale-winged, 247. 
 Scilly, Storm-petrels at, 152. 
 Scotch Hare, 56. 
 Scotland, Crossbills in, 116. 
 
 Grouse in, 125, 127. 
 
 Scoulton Mere, Gulls at, 149. 
 
 Sea-anemones, 281. 
 
 Sea-squirts, 284. 
 
 Sea-swallows, 148. 
 
 Seal, 37. 
 
 Shagreen, 216. 
 
 Sharks, 214. 
 
 Shells, Collections of, 265. 
 
 Shetlands, Divers breeding in the, 
 
 153. 
 
 Shore-birds, 78, 147. 
 Shrews, 67. 
 
 Shrike, Red-backed, 99. 
 Sibbald's Whale, 41. 
 Singing Mice, 56. 
 Skippers, 247. 
 Skua, 150. 
 Skylark, 102. 
 Slime of Eels, 192. 
 
 of Tench, 212. 
 
 "Slough "of Reptiles, 163. 
 Slow-worm, 163. 
 
 Smell of Sharks, 217. 
 Smolt, 184. 
 Smooth Hound, 218. 
 Snails, 266. 
 
 Thrush feeding on, 91. 
 
 Snake, Ringed, 167. 
 
 Snipe, 136. 
 
 Solan Goose, 151. 
 
 Sole, 195, 198. 
 
 Solen, 263. 
 
 Southampton, Bass at, 208. 
 
 Sparrow, 79. 
 
 Spartel, Ospreys at Cape, 155. 
 
 Spawning of Eels, 188. 
 
 Spermaceti, 48. 
 
 Sperm Whale, 47. 
 
 Spiders, 227, 236. 
 
 Spinning Spiders, 238. 
 
 Spiracles in Sharks, 216. 
 
 Spitzbergen Grouse, 126. 
 
 Sponges, 282. 
 
 Spotted Flycatcher, 97. 
 
 Spouting of Whales, 45. 
 
 Sprat, 201. 
 
 Spur-dog, 216, 218. 
 
 Squid, 265, 267. 
 
 Squirrel, 52. 
 
 (meaning of the word), 73. 
 
 Starfish, 273. 
 Starling, 79, 82. 
 Stickleback and Pike, 211. 
 Sting-ray, 218. 
 Stoat, 19, 32. 
 Storm-petrel, 152. 
 Stour, Salmon in the, 182. 
 Straight-winged, 255. 
 " Sub-kingdom," 2. 
 Swallow, 79, 83. 
 Swan, 156. 
 Swanage Pier, 205. 
 Swift, 79, 83. 
 
 rPENCH and Pike, 211. 
 L Tern, 148. 
 Thames, Swans on the, 157. 
 
 Trout, 185. 
 
 The Cruise of the Cachalot, 47. 
 The Mountains of California, 141. 
 The Story of a Red Deer, 60. 
 Thresher Shark, 218. 
 Thursday Island, Pearl-oysters at, 
 265. 
 
290 
 
 Tiger-moth, 248, 250. 
 Titmouse, Great, 95. 
 Toad, 173. 
 Tongue of Chameleon, 111. 
 
 - Slow- worm, 163. 
 
 - Snakes, 166. 
 
 - Woodpecker, 111. 
 Torpedo Ray, 219. 
 Tree-creeper, 97. 
 Tree-sparrow, 81. 
 Trout, 185. 
 
 Tse-tse Fly, 242. 
 Turbot, 180, 195. 
 Turnstone, 155. 
 "Type," 2. 
 
 INDEX 
 
 , 60. 
 
 Venom of adder, 165. 
 Vertebrates, 2, 226. 
 Viper, 164. 
 Voles, 50. 
 Vultures in the tropics, 214. 
 
 WADING BIRDS, 137. 
 Wagtail, 140, 142. 
 Walrus, 38. 
 
 Warbler, Dartford, 133. 
 - Marsh, 133. 
 Water-boatman, 255. 
 Water Newt, Great, 174. 
 
 Water-ousel, 141. 
 
 Water-rat, 51. 
 
 Water-shrew, 51, 68. 
 
 Water- wagtail, 142. 
 
 Weasel, 19. 
 
 Web of Spiders, 239. 
 
 Whale and Fish, Difference between, 
 
 Whalebone, 42. 
 "Whale-feed," 42. 
 Wheat-midge, 253. 
 Whelk, 274 
 Whistling Swan, 156. 
 Whitebait, 138, 202. 
 White-tailed Eagle, 154. 
 Whooper, 156. 
 Wild Life at Home, 36, 69. 
 Wireworm, 69, 104. 
 Wolf-spiders, 237. 
 Woodchat in Morocco, 99. 
 Woodcock, 111. 
 Wood-mouse, 52. 
 Woodpecker, Green, 111. 
 Woodpigeon, 110, 118. 
 Woods, Birds of the, 78, 110. 
 "Woolly Bear," 248. 
 Worms, 69, 274. 
 Wren, 88. 
 
 YORKSHIRE, Grouse in, 125, 
 
PLYMOUTH 
 BRENDON AND SON, 
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