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, PRINTERS UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, BERKELEY THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW Books not returned on time are subject to a fine of 50c per volume after the third day overdue, increasing to $1.00 per volume after the sixth day. Books not in demand may be renewed if application is made before expiration of loan period. MAR \ 50m-8,'26 496170 UBftARY G UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY