"ONE MORE UNFORTUNATE"
"ONE MORE UNFORTUNATE"
Was the puffin dead when the gull flew up with it? If it was, then had it found it so, or killed it itself? Did it drop it on purpose, to kill it, or let it fall by accident? These questions I am unable to answer; but in regard to the two last, gulls are credited here with letting crabs fall on the rocks, in order to break their shells. Even if the puffin were dead before, such a fall, by bursting or bruising the body, might make it easier to tear open—an operation which the gull, I believe, had not yet had time to perform.
The whole ground where this gull went up with its victim—for I have little doubt myself as to what had taken place—was honeycombed with puffin-burrows, and troops of puffins stood everywhere about. I sat down where I had halted, and before long two other herring-gulls came and stood in the same locality, close to several of these poor little birds, who, I thought, seemed embarrassed by their presence, but powerless to resent it, and perhaps not sufficiently intelligent to divine its true purport.
The gulls, I thought, had a sort of unpleasant, evil-boding look; a sullen, brazen, criminal appearance, like the two murderers in that scene with Clarence, just before the duke awakes—but this may have been partly due to imagination, after what I had just seen,with a late reading ofRichard III. I love that play; almost more than ambition, perhaps, the keynote to its hero-villain's character is to be sought in his tremendous energy and intellectual activity. These are so great that they, to a large extent, guard him against the intolerable anguish of remorse—that constant attendant on the undiseased evil-doer—so that he fares better than Macbeth, who is inferior to Richard in both these respects, and whose more poetic and sensitive nature is much against him. Not that Macbeth is not an energetic and able man, but he is only normally so, while Richard's working qualities are abnormal. His energy, especially, is more like that of a Napoleon or Julius Cæsar. It is such a mighty and rapidly-moving stream, that, hurried along by it, he has no leisure to repine. It floats his crimes easily, one may say, making little dancing boats of them, whereas those of Macbeth are like huge vessels in a stream that has hardly volume enough to bear them. Is it not, in fact, almost impossible to feel mental depression, so long as the brain is very actively employed? It is in the calms and lulls of this activity that disagreeable reflections force themselves upon us, just as rain that has been kept from falling by a violent wind, falls as soon as it subsides. Accordingly, though Richard's robuster nature goes almost scot free by day—at least, for a considerable time—it becomes the prey of conscience by night, when the huge energy of his disposition is in abeyance; when, in Tennyson's language, "to sleep he gives hispowers away." This we learn first through his wife Anne, who has been constantly "wakèd by his timorous dreams"—how strangely sounds the word "timorous" used of such a character!—and later—almost at the end—from himself, in that one terrifying outburst which gives the first and only clear view into the mental torments which this strong villain has to suffer, as soon as that daytime energy, which is to him as an armour, is laid aside. Is it not very striking—is it not the character-touch of this scene, how—when Richard is once fairly awake again, when the things of waking life have returned, with Ratcliff at the tent-door—how quickly this great load of suffering is shifted off?
A fortioriMacbeth suffers at night, too, buthislife is all suffering. We never get the idea of his enjoying life, which, with Richard, we really do; for he is humorous—jocular even—in fact, in tiptop spirits often, but all by day, during the bustle and action of an energetic career. Later, the wound of guilt begins to show itself, and here, too, we may make an instructive comparison between these two practitioners in crime, so alike in their motive and careers, so different in their fibre and temperament, and yet yielding to the same law. Macbeth, indeed, suffers so much that his mind becomes, at last, almost unhinged, and, in the very end, conscience, perhaps, ceases to afflict him. The machine, too delicate for such rough work, has been broken by repeated blows—the nerve has throbbed itself out. Shakespeareanparallels are, I think, very interesting and instructive, but they are seldom dwelt upon.
Thus far out of the path of what I am pledged to deal in, a fanciful comparison has led me; but I will go no further.Ne ultra crepidam sutor, etc., though, to be sure, I am no more altogether naturalist than King Lear's fool was "altogether fool." So as, from king or emperor downwards, I have no respect for titles, it is not much wonder if I forget now and again to be subservient to that of my own book.[16]Yet to do so is fiddle-de-dee, for books and people both, in this world, are judged of as they are labelled—often getting labelled by accident—and though, in this little excursion into other realms, I have talked no more nonsense than any literary critic may, without at all committing himself—excepttononsense, which doesn't at all matter—yet I talk it where it will not be thought sense. To return then—for your reviewer bites the thumb at a digression—I noticed many other herring-gulls hovering over these puffin-haunted slopes, and that they live largely upon the young of these birds, as well as on young kittiwakes, I do not now doubt. I can see no reason why they should not lie in wait, and drag the former from their holes. I must watch for this. This reminds me of how often I have found the newly-picked remains of puffins on the cliffs and shore; but these were all of full-grown birds. What bird, in especial,is responsible for this? Surely not gulls! And never having seen a peregrine falcon here, I have got to not much believe in him. I have seen no sign of such a thing on the part of the great skuas. The others, I think, are only robbers, or at least could hardly kill a puffin, whose beak should be more powerful than their own. It is somewhat of a mystery to me.
[16]But I needn't have forgotten my own afterthought "—and Digressions." Hurrah! That frees me.
[16]But I needn't have forgotten my own afterthought "—and Digressions." Hurrah! That frees me.
One more word upon the puffin. He is strongly ritualistic, if not actually a papist. I find it, as is so often the case, difficult to be sure which. See the whole series of pretty little genuflexions that he makes after coming down upon a rock, and then consider his vestments, his surplice—if that is the proper thing—"his rich dalmatic and maniple fine," his "rochet and pall," and so on—they are all there, I feel certain, for not otherwise could he look so extraordinary. His beak, too, if he only open it the least little bit in the world, is a bishop's mitre, and, for the ring, he wears it round his eye. "Pope," indeed, is one of his local names, but, on the whole, I class him as a ritualist, for he "out-herods Herod." Whether he secedes to Rome ever, or as near there as the mouth of the Tiber, I don't quite know; but if he does 'tis no matter, for he is sure to come back again.
CHAPTER XXXIII
GULLS AND GIBBON
A
ALL doubt as to the real nature of these horrid feastings of the herring-gulls on floating carcases of kittiwakes is now at an end. I had been watching the seals in one pool, when, turning to the other, I saw, as I thought, two gulls fighting together on one of the great rocks in the midst of it—a smaller "stack" one might almost call it. Raising the glasses, the truth was revealed. It was a herring-gull murdering a young kittiwake, and very soon it would have been "got done"—as Carlyle says with such a gusto—if I had not, in rising to follow it more closely, alarmed the murderer, who at once flew away. The poor little kittiwake got up—for it had been thrown on its back—and stood without moving on the rock, presenting a sick and sorry appearance, though there was as yet no blood about it, and it did not appear to have been seriously hurt. Its only chance now was to have flown away, but it stayed and stayed, seeming to doze after a while—the certain victim of the returning gull, as soon as the latter should have watched me off.
Turning my eyes from this disquieting spectacle—one brick in God's architecture—I looked over the water, and there, in this quiet little bay, which seems such a haven of rest and peace—il mio retiro, onewould think, to every creature in it—I saw another kittiwake being savagely murdered by another herring-gull. This was a repulsive sight, and through the glasses I could watch it closely, not a detail escaping. The gull, with the hook of its bill fixed in the kittiwake's throat, pressed it down on the water, shook it with violence, paused, got a better purchase, shook it again, then, opening and gobbling up with the mandibles, seemed to be trying to crush the head, or compress the throat, between them. By this the young bird's struggles, which had been of an innocent and quite ineffectual kind, had almost ceased, but its legs still kicked in the air as it lay on its back in the water—just as the other had lain on the rock. The gull now, having managed the preliminaries, ceased to be so rough and violent, but, backing a little out from the body, so as to get the proper swing, began, in a cold, deliberate manner, to pickaxe down into the exposed breast, each blow ending in a bite and tear. A crimson spot, becoming gradually larger and larger till it represented almost the whole upper surface, as the body cavity was laid open, responded to this treatment; and now the gull, seizing upon entrail and organ, helped each backward pull with a flap or two of the wings, feasting redly and royally.
So it goes on, and, in time, both the part-players in this little sample fragment of an infinitely great whole are drifted by the waves to that same towering "stack" which has lately been the scene of the puffintragedy. On it the gull lands, and, having dragged the carcase some way up, flings his head into the air, and exults with a wild, vociferous cry, in which his mate, who has now joined him, takes part. Then there is more feasting; but in spite of the community of feeling which this duet implies, the second gull is not allowed to partake of the good cheer, but must wait till the provider of it has finished. Should she approach too near, such intrusion is vigorously repelled. Well, thank God for the touch of poetry, whenever it appears! There is something picturesquely wild, as well as savage, in the latter part of this sea-scene—the gull'ste deum, flung out to sea and sky; but anything more horrid, more ignobly, sordidly vile than what has preceded it, it would be hard to imagine. A kittiwake in its first full plumage, which differs much from the parents', is a very pretty bird, dove-like and innocent-looking. To see it savagely shaken and flung about, a huge hooked implement fastened in its slender throat, and that soft little head towzled, bitten on, mumbled, the wings all the while flapping in helpless and quite futile efforts to escape, is sickening. It is not the worst scene in nature certainly—serious deliberation amongst enlightened statesmen can produce things a good deal more horrible—but it is bad enough, bad enough. It looks like the negation of God, but a much better case can be made out for its being the affirmation, so here is the consolatory reflection for which optimists are never at a loss. "There's comfort yet," as Macbeth says.
"NATURE RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW"
"NATURE RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW"
I suppose it sounds like a truism to say that the actual witnessing of nature's ruthlessness—of her "red tooth and claw"—has a very different effect upon one than is produced by the mere reading of it, however powerful the description may be. Judging by my own sensations, however, the difference is not merely of degree, but of kind, for such accounts, with the reflections made upon them, have in them a certain tone and tinting of the mind through which they pass, so that we get, not nature, but man softening her. "Why softening?" it may be asked. I am here speaking only of civilised man—who alone, perhaps, reflects about such matters—and it is my firm conviction that civilised man, in unconscious deference to his own peace of mind, does soften everything of a disagreeable nature, or if he cannot soften the thing itself—and itisdifficult sometimes—yet, at least, his hopes and faith and longings fling a balm upon it, which, rather than the sore, is what we receive. So, too, in all general reference. Man, not nature, is what we get. Thus, when Tennyson speaks of "nature red in tooth and claw," it is not only—or so much—this stern and horrid truth, that the line calls up. Tennyson himself, if we recognise it as his, immediately comes into our mind, and with him the idea of one who, though he can admit so much, yet sees comfort and hope through it all, who believes, or at least trusts—
That somehow goodWill be the final goal of ill.
Other nobly optimistic lines slide into the memory, sunlight passes over the desolate landscape, and the discomforting words, almost as they are uttered, are atoned for by the comforting personality of the poet who penned them. Thus nature, passing through the lips of man, is tempered and dulcified in the passage.
But supposing that such lines as the ones quoted, because their source is unknown to the hearer, can have no such comfort annexed to them, or supposing that the poet does not trust, but is a gloomy pessimist, or, which is more to the point, that instead of lines, with their music and generalisation, we have an actual horrid description, merely, of an actual horrid thing, all in the plainest prose, from some one whose personality we neither know, nor is worth the knowing—I have supplied an example—what softening influence is there here? Is not this but one degree better, in the sense I mean, than seeing the horror itself? I believe that here, too, the difference is of kind, and that a consolation is extracted which we cannot extract when brought face to face with nature herself, because the truth, then, is too overwhelming. The comfort, in such cases, comes not through the mind of the individual who is telling us, but through the general mind of which his is but a part, through the human ocean, rather than the human drop in it. For their own comfort, as I believe—in self-defence, to exclude misery—the great mass of mankind are optimistic, nor can any unit of the mass impart, or suggest, tous, ideas which are in opposition to this view, without suggesting, by association, the more popular and disseminated one, which we instantly lay hold of for our relief. If A can see no bright side to the thing he has witnessed, and can extract no comforting reflections out of it, yet B, C, D, etc., who have not witnessed it, can, and to the general alphabet, as against some exceptional letters of it, we immediately turn, and, enrolling ourselves amongst "les gros bataillons," feel that we are "in tune with the infinite," and of course that the infinite is in tune. But when, alone and amidst gloomy and stern scenery, we see a disagreeable little piece of this infinite, suggesting the whole, in actual manufacture before us, it is wonderful how little of music we find, either in it or ourselves. All seems "jangled, out of tune and harsh"; but for the "sweet bells," where are they? and were they ever there? We hear them not, even as a something behind, an undersong of hope. No, for there are no faces about us now, no comfortable looks and smiles, no good dinner or snug little circle round the fireside; no volumes of the poets either, and not a line of them, not one "smooth comfort false," comes to assist us. Man and his distortions are gone, and we have only nature—hard, stern, cold, uncompromising, truth-telling nature—before us. We look one way, and there are the huge cliffs and the iron rocks: another, and there is the great, wide, desolate sea: upwards, and there is the cold, grey sky—stern and cheerless as either. Nothingelse but the birds in their thousands; and there, on the insensate waves or rocks, amidst spectators as indifferent as they, one of them is slowly, methodically, almost fastidiously, hacking, hewing, and picking another to death. You see the struggles, the flights of escape, the horrid, remorseless re-catchings; you see it proceeding and proceeding, see the wound growing larger and larger, the blood running redder and redder, and reason, with an impetuous inrush, says to you, suddenly, and as though for the first time, "This is nature—thisis your God of Love—Hisscheme,Hisplan!"
And itisfor the first time if you have not seen the same thing, or something like it, before, and even then, if there has been anything of an interval. You have got a fact at first hand, from nature herself, instead of through the falsifying medium of humanity—truth strained through benevolent minds—and the difference is so great that it is, I maintain, one of kind, and not merely of degree. You cannot, whilst actually seeing these things, get that sort of comfort that you can and do get when only hearing or reading about them. It is nature that is speaking to you, not a man, whose voice, be it ever so harsh, is mild and puny in comparison, and which, moreover, calls up, by association, the extenuating voices of a host of other men, that sea of human comfort on whose waves you float off and escape. No, but you are, and you feel, alone. You forget, almost, for the time, your own personality, and no thoughts of other personalitiescome to relieve you. Afterwards, perhaps, as you walk away, they may; but for some time they have a strangely hollow ring about them. One quotation indeed, not of comfort, but as descriptive of the kind of impression made upon me by such sights as these, has often since come into my mind. It is not, however, from the poets, but out of the pages of a great historian—of Gibbon—that I get it, and it is this: "The son of Arcadius, who was accustomed only to the voice of flattery, heard with astonishment the severe language of truth; he blushed and trembled." This, I think, describes more nearly the sort of effect which getting away from man and his optimistic chirruppings, and seeing gulls kill kittiwakes, by myself, has had upon me. I have heard, all at once, the severe language of truth, and I have blushed and trembled—trembled at what I saw—blushed for what I had tried to believe. Afterwards, as I reflect upon it, there come to me with sterner meaning, even, than they had before, those words of Shakespeare—pointed by your friends, through life—
From Rumour's tonguesThey bring smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs.
Well, there are pleasanter sights than the one that has called forth this rigmarole, and I have just seen a seal playing with the long brown seaweed growing at the bottom of the sea, in a very delicious manner. He seized it in his mouth, and, rolling over and over, wrapped himself all round with it. Having thus puthimself into mock fetters, his delight was to break out of them, which he did with consummate ease, and the grace of a merman. He did not keep hold of the seaweed all the while, but grasped it now and again, often opening his mouth and making pretence to bite. He acted like a very playful dog, but had a distinct idea of thus entangling himself with the seaweed. No one could have mistaken this. The design was perfectly evident. Two other seals, on a rock, played together most humorously, or rather one kept playing with the other, teasing him, but in a kindly way, by which it differed from most teasing. He would scratch him softly on the chest with one of his fore-flippers, and when this was parried, with a protest in look and action, he got farther down and scratched, or, as I think one may say, tickled him on the belly, beyond the reach of his guard. This caused the poor animal to flounce about in a very absurd way, and, at last, to half rise, and put on that funny, expostulatory look, half appealing, half resenting, and wholly humorous, which I have noted before. Most playful and humorously playful animals these are.
Could we see something of the inner life—the domestics—of many animals, the record of it might be very interesting. This is what is really wanted. But who has done so? Who has cared to do so? Instead, we have a few bald, jejune facts—habitat, diet, time of bringing forth young, period of gestation (on which latter point a good deal of prurient curiosity is manifested), etc. But the heart of a wildanimal is seldom explored, for it needs a heart to explore it. She bears and tigresses have been robbed of their cubs, but who has waited by their cubs to see them return and fondle them? To do so might be both dangerous and difficult; but what danger is not undergone, what difficulty is not overcome, when merely to kill is the object? The zoologist of the future should be a different kind of man altogether: the present one is not worthy of the name. He should go out with glasses and notebook, prepared to see and to think. He should stalk the gorilla, follow up the track of the elephant, steal on the bear, get to windward of the moose or antelope, and lie in wait for the tiger returning to hiskill; but it should be to biographise these animals, not to shoot them. The real naturalist should be a Boswell, and every creature should be, for him, a Dr. Johnson. He should think of nothing but his hero's doings; he should love a beast and hate a gun. That is the naturalist that I believe in, or that I would believe in if ever he appeared on earth; and I would rather found a school of such than establish a triumphant religion, or make the bloodiest war that ever delighted a people or rolled a statesman into Westminster Abbey. Every man has his ambition. To make a naturalist who shall use neither a gun nor a cabinet, is mine.
Some men have strange ambitions. I have one:To make a naturalist without a gun.
"Pretty, i' faith."
The great seal is again asleep upon his rock (it seems to belong to him and the common one in turn), and looking down upon him, now, from the tops of the cliffs, through the glasses, there does not appear to be any admixture of brown whatever in the shade of his fur. Wherever the light falls upon it, it is an absolute silver, and, where in shadow, tends to shade a little into the colouring of a very light-skinned mole. But this last is merely an effect: the real colouring is, I believe, a uniform silver—very pretty indeed, where the light catches it. The fur seems close and thick—very mole-like in texture—the general appearance, indeed, is very much that of a gigantic mole, if only the head, the character of which is different, be not well seen. In the water, however, when more or less immersed, even the head partakes of this resemblance, or lends itself to it, and the whole animal becomes "perfectmole" ("mine eye hath well examined his parts, and finds him perfect Richard"). In itself, however, the head is not mole-like—as may well be believed—but, when held in some positions, looks remarkably like that of a polar-bear—a resemblance much moreà laRichard. He seems extremely fat—Falstaff's "three fingers on the ribs," I should say, at the very least.
A common seal has now, once or twice, swum close round him, and looks a mere pigmy by comparison. This latter may not be a large seal—I do not think he is—still, the juxtaposition of the two gives me a better idea of Falstaff's proportions than I had before. Hemust be more than twice the weight, I think, of the very largestphoca—phoca Antiquarius, as I would call the latter: lovers of Scott will take me. It is the great barrel of the body that is so immense. The build and general appearance is much more that of a walrus than of an ordinary seal. The fore-feet seem more modified, are more fin-like in appearance, than those of the latter, which are rounded—soft, round, fat pads—muffin-shaped, more like little cushions than fins; but here there is an approach to the true fin, an elongation and narrowing, and the toes all point inwards and tailwards.
As the water steals imperceptibly upon him, Falstaff—as I shall now always call him—stretches himself enjoyably, and makes some leviathan-like movements of his hinder, or tail, parts, looking somnolently up, from time to time, seeming to say, "O ocean, let me rest." How consummately happy he looks! lazily, sleepily happy—a god-like condition. Heroics for those who enjoy them—they are generally all in falsetto. The "cycle of Cathay" for me, and the untroubled sea-sleep of this grand old Proteus here! A good deal of his lower surface, and the whole of the rock he lies on, is now quite hidden by the sea, but still he sleeps or dozes on—immense, immovable—as though he were life-anchored there. At length, with a mighty yawn and stretch, he turns full upon his vasty stomach, and immediately, by virtue of the different appearance which his fur has when wet or dry, becomes a much smaller seal thathas climbed up upon a buoy—the lower, wet part of him looks like that; the upper, alone, is himself. Then gradually he soaks all over, till he is, again, huge and indivisible, a great, naked, blue, greasy, oiled bladder,—yet firm still, as though he grew to the rock. But the end is now near. Sparkling and gleaming, the waves come tumbling in; they dance about him like fairies, like little familiar elves; they slap him and pat him, lap up to—then over—his back, sway him this way and that, speak to him, call him by his familiar pet name, tell him it is time to go, until, at last, with a great somnolent heave, he floats, and they float him—it is done together—right off the now sunken rock: his body sinks down, his head, with the fur yet dry, remains, for a time, straight up in the water, then follows—his nose, to the last, still pointing, like the "stern finger" of "his duty"—not so stern as with us, though—"heavenwards." As he goes down, you see that his eyes are still shut—he continues to sleep.
CHAPTER XXXIV
ALL ABOUT SEALS
O
ON coming to the cliffs, to-day, I saw, lying on the rock in the little pool where I have watched the sea-leopard, as I call it, and that other which I have hitherto called the bottle-nosed seal, or Bottle-nose—because that seems to be a local name for it, and its nose, I thought, bore it out—a mighty creature, the same, I at once saw, as had lain there on the seaweed, that first morning. It presented, as before, an extraordinary appearance, seeming to be parti-coloured, light above and dark below. The tide was coming in, and, wishing to see it go off with the wash, I descended rapidly—indeed, a little too rapidly. My knee, which is sometimes, in a rheumatic sort of way, painful to bend, has lately become very much so in descending the cliffs. To ease it, therefore, I sat, and began to slide down the steep, green incline, and, in doing this, my foot missed, or slid over, the little depression that I had destined for it, which produced such an acceleration of speed that, with several great bumps and a change of position from the perpendicular to the horizontal, I had nearly still further abridged the distance, and eased, perhaps, more than my knee. However, I managed to stop myself some way before a sheer edge, which, though not much in the way of height, would, no doubt, have been as good asMercutio's wound for me—"'tis enough, 'twill serve." Continuing with more caution, I got down, and was on the promontory behind the "chevaux de frise" I had lately erected, before the tide was yet much over the rock. It would have floated off an ordinary seal perhaps, but this vast creature lay there, swayed to and fro by the waves, like a buoy, but still firmly anchored—"built," as one might say, "upon the rock."
At once, upon getting down, I saw that this was my bottle-nosed animal, and, also, that I had been entirely mistaken about his skin. On the lower side, where it was wet, this looked the same that it had ever done, as naked as that of the hippopotamus; but the other side, which was quite dry, showed a fur which seemed to be rather thick than otherwise, and of a brownish colour, but so light that it looked almost silvery. The head, whenever the creature looked round—for his burly back was turned to me—with the nose and muzzle, seemed much more elongated than in the common seal; it much resembled, in fact, that of the polar-bear—quite remarkably so, I thought, when turned profile. Now, however, I could see nothing very peculiar about the nose, nothing to justify the allusion to it contained in the local name—which, however, I have only heard once.Thebottle-nosed seal—for there is such a species—of course he is not, though, at first, in my want of all learned equipment, I thought he might be. What seal he is, scientifically, I know not,but he is certainly not the common one, for besides the pronounced difference in the shape of the head and face, colour and appearance of the fur, etc., he is much larger, the great barrel of the body being, perhaps, twice the size. The figure, too, though less human, is more buoy-like, increasing more rapidly, though very smoothly, from behind the head and below the chin, and tapering more abruptly towards the tail. The fur may have some markings upon it, but, if so, they are so faint as to give it the appearance of being of one uniform colour—a light, browny silver. When wet it becomes bluish, and how smooth it then lies may be judged by my having mistaken it, up to the present, for the naked skin. True, I know of no seal that has a naked skin; but when in the open, with my notebook, I like to forget what I know, and make my own discoveries.
I watched this great seal for some ten minutes or so, as he lay in indolent repose, throwing his head, every now and again, over his great, swelling shoulder, till at length the elevatory power of the sea became too much, even for his proportions, and after rolling lazily about for a little, half moved by, half helping the waves to move him, he at length heaved himself around, and with a vasty, whale-resembling motion, plunged and disappeared beneath the deeply submerged edge of the rock-mass on which he had been lying.
In the adjoining little twin cove, or pool, the usual complement of seals lay on the great slanting slabwith two or three upon the rocks around. Another was in the water, and I was much interested in watching the persistent but ineffectual efforts which this one made to get out upon a certain large rock, on which he had evidently set his fancy in a very unremovable manner. To look at this rock, no one would ever have thought of it as one on which a seal, or anything else, could lie. Its top was a sharp ridge, whilst its sides presented, every way, so steep a slope as to be quite unscalable. But there was a little projecting point, or chin—as sharp as Alice's Duchesse's chin—in which the central ridge ended, and behind which the mass was cleft, for some way, longitudinally, making a narrow ledge just large enough for one seal to lie on. This little spike of rock was a foot or so above the water, even when the sea swelled up towards it—it being not yet high tide—and as it projected out like a bowsprit, there was nothing underneath it for the seal's hind feet to get a hold on, so that everything had to be done by a first leap up from the sea. This leap the seal made over and over again, shooting up sometimes almost like a salmon—his hind feet alone remaining in the water—and grasping the hard little triangle between his fore-arms, or flippers, so as to assist the impetus by hoisting himself upon it. But he always had to fall back again, after clinging convulsively, and pressing tightly with his chin against the rough surface of the rock, which, just at this one little point only, had shell-fish upon it. He tried to time his efforts with the swell of the wave, but in this hewas not always successful; that is to say, he did not always hit the exact moment. Having tried and failed several times, he would fall into a sort of rage or pet. He bit at the rock, cuffed the water, as he fell back into it, with one of his flippers, and then, as though this were an insufficient outlet for his irritated feelings, flung about with tremendousbrio, revolving, contorting, curving his body to a bent bow, and then violently unbending it, diving and flashing up again, almost together, making a foam of the water, lashing it in all directions. Then, for a little, he would disappear, but always he would return and renew his efforts, always to be again frustrated in them. This lasted for half an hour, or longer. Once, after the first ten minutes or so, I thought he had given it up, for he swam to the great central slab, and began to make his way up towards the other seals. But when he had gone but a little way, he turned, and, flapping down again, swam back to that coveted rock, where it all commenced over again. This extremely human touch interested me greatly—as who would it not have done? How strong the desire must have been, and what an individual liking this seal must have taken for that particular rock, to make him leave a comfortable place amongst his companions, and go back to try, again, where he had so often failed before! How strong, too, must have been his memory of what he liked so much!—for it does not seem likely that any seal would so have tried to achieve a special practicable spot on an otherwise impracticable rock, unless he hadlain there before. If so, I can only account for his inability to get on to it on this occasion by supposing that it was not a sufficiently high tide, though, at the last, the waves, when they washed up to their highest point, were quite on a level with the point of rock. It certainly seems curious that he could not manage it, even then; but such great longing and striving must, I think, have been for a pleasure known and tasted.
I have ascribed this seal's biting of the rock to irritation, as those other actions which so well became him, and which I have very inadequately described, certainly were due to this. But another explanation is possible here. I have several times seen seals, when on the rocks, take the long brown seaweed, growing upon them, into their mouths, in such a manner as to make me think it might have been to pull themselves along by, as one would use a rope fixed at one end. However, I could never be sure whether it was for this or any other practical purpose, or only sportively, that it was laid hold of. But now, if seaweed is ever really used by seals in this way—to pull themselves along the rocks, that is to say, or to hoist themselves up on to them, then a strong growth of it here would have been most useful to this much-striving one, so that it may have been with an idea of this sort, though not amounting to more than a regret—an "Oh if there were only!" sort of feeling—that he bit upon the rock. If so, he showed another human touch, for the nakedness of this particular rock, and especially of this point of it that he had been so often nearly upon, must have been well known to him. Perhaps, however, he thought to get some purchase on it with his teeth; and there remains my first theory of petulance. I ought to add that in all these little outbursts of pique and disappointment which I have recorded, something of a frolicsome nature also entered; there was nothing morose or gloomy in them. At the worst, the creature was a disappointed seal only, and "in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of his passion" there was a touch of humour, a something of make-believe, a dash of most lovable playfulness.
Lovable and delightful creatures these seals are, indeed, for which reason the great idea is to shoot them, and they have been almost driven from our seas. The hunting instinct is an extremely strong, and a quite natural one, for it is lineally descended from our savage ancestors, who hunted and were demi-devils, of necessity. Therefore, perhaps, it may be said to be a healthy instinct, and therefore it seems right. Nevertheless, reason and humanity alike rebel against it, and there is no valid answer that I can see against their protest, except, indeed, that one I have already mentioned, viz. that it is in strict accordance with the scheme of the universe. I confess I hardly know how to get over this, except by admitting what I call an appeal against God; but putting this difficulty aside, then once let a man think (I mean, of course, a man who can think), and, if he be a sportsman, "farewell the quiet mind, farewell content." Though"Othello's occupation" be not yet "gone," yet from that moment he can no longer "go to 't" with that entire lightheartedness, that "in unreproved pleasures free" feeling, which hitherto he has done. A little leaven of uneasiness will mingle with what was once an unalloyed delight, it will grow and grow, until, at last, with some men, first the pleasure in the thing, and then the thing itself will cease. With others the instinct will remain too strong, but, even with them, something will have been done, since no thought, if only we could trace it out, is ever thought in vain. It occurred, no doubt, one day, to some Roman sitting in the colosseum, that what he was witnessing was not quite a right state of things. He continued all his life to witness it; but if thewholeprogress of that age could be laid before us, that thought would have its place.
I have said that both reason and humanity rebel at the unnecessary killing of wild animals. For the humanity, that is self-evident—to torture is not humane: and for the reason, when one comes to think of it a little, how absolutely silly it is! It is destruction, the child's pleasure, the unmaking of what one could not possibly make, smashing, breaking up, dashing to pieces, vandalism applied to the living works of nature, leading to their eternal perishing, with a hideous void in their stead. Something was alive, interesting, beautiful: you make it dead, uninteresting, ugly—at least, by comparison. And yet the hunting instinct—the heritage from countlessgenerations in whom it was a virtue—is so strong that those—and there are many—in whom it is not developed, should not judge those in whom it is, too harshly—indeed, not at all; for how should one judge what one cannot feel? One can only hope that that dreadful way of being interested in animals which leads to their killing, and, ultimately, to their extinction, will one day cease in man. Nor is the hope vain. It will cease. I know it will, and should be happy in the knowledge did I not also know that the animals will have ceased first. As it is, my only comfort is that I will have ceased before either.
It is beautiful to see seals thus active under natural conditions. In spite of what they are and what one might expect them to do, one has to be surprised. Everything is increased beyond expectation; they make a greater splashing, a greater noise in the water, produce more foam, give more elastic leaps, make swifter progress, than your imagination had supposed them capable of. They are creatures of the waves, you know, modified, adapted, made like unto fishes, and strong, as all animals are. Therefore, though you may have hitherto seen them only in their languid moods—and till now, in fact, there has been nothing very violent—yet you might have imagined, and you have tried to imagine, what theycouldbe when moved, roused, excited, "perplexed in the extreme." Yes, you have tried—but ineffectually. Nature, you find, as ever,emporter's itsur vous.Sur moi, I should rather say, perhaps, since there are certain lofty spirits towhom everything—the grandest sights of nature—come as disappointments, so much superior to them have been their own before-imaginings of what they were going to be. Well, I am not one of these. With Miranda, I can say, "my desires are, then, most humble." The sea, the Alps, the Himalayas, the Vale of Cashmere, the Falls of the Zambesi, the Zambesi itself, have all been good enough for me, as now these seals are, even. It is a humiliating reflection, but it is better to admit inferiority than affect the other thing—so I admit it freely.
Returning, now, to these seals, I have spoken of their great activity in the water, and yet I find myself wondering whether, on the principles of evolution, it ought not to be greater still. This craves a short disquisition. Give heed, then, ye puffins, ringing me round like a vast and attentive audience. "Lend me your ears." You shall know my thoughts on the matter; a lecture for nothing—for with you I am not shy—so "perpend." Is it not a somewhat curious thing, mark me, that, throughout nature, we find beings that are but partially adapted to some particular mode of existence, excelling others in it that, both by habit and structure, one might think would be altogether their superiors? Thus the seal, otter, penguin, cormorant, etc., creatures which, in comparison with fish, may be said to be but clumsily fitted for the water, are yet able to make the latter their prey. The reason, however—at least, I suppose so—lies in their greater size, since even the fleetest fishes cannot be expectedto go eight or nine times their own length in the same time that seals or penguins take to double theirs, only. In the case of the otter, however, there is often no such great discrepancy in size, and here we must suppose the victory of the mammal to be due to its superior intelligence, or its power—as, perhaps, a result of it—of taking the fish by surprise.[17]But it is not only in such cases as the above, that this curious law of the superiority of the apparently less fit may be made out, or imagined. It obtains also amongst animals differing but slightly from one another, and whose habits are identical, or nearly so. Look, for instance, at the seals themselves. The common one of our northern coasts has much more lost the typical mammalian form, and become much more like a fish, to look at, than several species that are moving in the same direction, amongst them the fur-bearing seal that is skinned alive to keep ladies here warm, whilst the Japanese in Manchuria wear sheep-skins. In these, all four limbs are still used for their original purpose of terrestrial locomotion, so that instead of jerking themselves painfully forward on their bellies, as the common seal and others have to do, they go upright, and even fairly fast, though with a peculiar swing and shuffle. Inasmuch, therefore, as they have become far less unfitted for the land, one might imagine that they would be less fitted for the water, and that the common seal, from having beenmore modified in relation to an aquatic life, would here have considerably the advantage of them. But the reverse is the case, at least if one can at all judge from a comparison of the swimming powers of the two kinds as exhibited in captivity. Never have I seen anything more wonderful than the way in which theseotariidætore through the water, when pieces of fish were thrown to them, in that wretched concrete basin which disgraces both our humanity and common sense at that beast-Bastille of our Gardens. The speed seemed really—I do not say it did—to approach to that of a galloping horse, and, in comparison to it, that of the seal, which could get nothing, and had to be fed afterwards, might almost be called slow. Yet whilst the latter swam with the motions of a fish, and looked like one, the other had more the appearance of a quadruped gone mad in the water. The great fore-flippers were largely used—indeed, they seemed to do the principal part of the work—whilst the much smaller ones of the common seal were pressed, as here, against the sides, and progress was almost wholly due to the fish-like motions of the posterior part of the body, and the hind feet or paddles, making, together, the tail. This was many years ago, when the common seals at the Gardens used to occupy the larger, or, to speak more properly, the less minute of the two concrete basins provided for oceanic animals. It was not till after the arrival of their more showy relatives that these poor creatures—the homely dwellers about our own coasts—wererelegated to one that, though an ordinary man might find it rather large for such a purpose, would be of a convenient size enough for Chang, or some other giant, to wash his hands in. In neither, naturally, could a pinnipede do himself justice, and perhaps these ones felt it more than the other kind. Now, however, I have seen them far more active in their native ocean, yet they fell short of those others, in captivity, to a degree which makes me think they would never be able to compete with them.