S
SEAL-COVE again to-day, and there, upon the same great slab, and at much the same time, five great seals are lying, whilst on other rocks there are six more. The tide is coming in, and one that is on a low rock goes gradually off with the wash of it. The others lie on, though now, at high noon, the tide, I think, must be in. Seals, therefore, do not go off their rocks at high tide, as a custom, unless the water leaves them no choice. Of course if they have a favourite rock which is covered at high tide, they are then compelled to do so, but in that case they can seek another one which is not so restricted, and lie there sleeping, if they will, "the washing of ten tides." Their bed-times are not governed by the ebb and flow of the sea.
The larger seal which I spoke of yesterday is called here, locally, a bottle-nosed seal, or at least some so designate it. He is here again to-day, rising at intervals and staring at the sky, in the other of these two-in-one-contained bays, which seems to be more particularly his own. When he rises he remains for a full minute standing upright, as it were, in the water, with his muzzle about six inches above it and pointing straight into the sky. Then it sinks for an instant, and the next his whole head appears abovethe surface, held horizontally. Another moment, and his back makes a bent bow in the water, as with a rolling motion, something like that of a porpoise, he dives and vanishes. He always makes for a great mass of brown seaweed clothing the rocks, now covered, where I had first seen him lying, and extending down into the depths. In this I lose him, but whether he stays there or merely coasts along it I cannot tell; but he always rises in about the same spot, and this suggests that he comes each time from the same place. Seals may, perhaps, lie upon the bottom, under the overarching edges of the rocks they bask on at low water, and wound amongst the seaweed that grows on them; but their sleep, if they slept, would be broken.
I took out my watch and measured the time this great seal stayed under water, finding it to be, on an average, from ten to twelve minutes, his longest submersion being fourteen minutes and a half. I then thought I would descend the cliffs and get along the shore to just opposite where he usually came up, which would be very near him. This I easily managed, concealing myself once, when I knew that he would rise, and going on again as soon as he was down. When he next came up I had the satisfaction of beholding him from some dozen or twenty yards. He was considerably larger than the common seal, his skin perfectly naked and of a bluish colour, which, with the breadth of his back, gave him something the appearance of a hippopotamus in the water. This was whenI just got his back, without the head or other parts. Seenin toto—or as much of him as could be seen—he more suggested, both by shape and colouring combined, a gigantic mole; or again, his head, with the long cylindrical-looking nose, had a very porcine appearance. But whilst floating upright in the way I have described, he looked like a buoy merely, of which the muzzle, with its round-bore nostrils—they looked as if a ping-pong ball would just fit into each of them—was the apex. All resemblance to a living thing was then gone; but when the great beast brought down his head again into a natural position, and looked about with full eyes, dark and mild, one saw that he was an intelligent and refined animal.
Modification seems to have gone considerably farther in this species than in the common seal. The skin, except for the long, strong whiskers, is absolutely smooth and hairless. The nose, head, and neck are more in a line, whilst the back rises from the latter with a still gentler undulation. This elongation and prominence of the nose, or rather the muzzle, which is broad, also, in proportion, take away from that full and rounded appearance of the forehead which gives such a look of intelligence—almost of humanity—to the common seal. But this, no doubt, is an inferiority in appearance only, and "the eye's black intelligence" remains. But though the jewel is there the setting of it is very poor. There appears to be no defined eyelid, so that when the eye is shut it looks like a mere slit in the naked skin. Eyebrows, however,are represented by three or four strong white bristles on either side. The nostrils open and close with strong expansive and contractive power, and blow the water away from them almost like the spouting of a miniature whale. When wide open they look as round as the aperture of a champagne or beer bottle, which they somewhat suggest, and this, perhaps, has given their bearer his title of bottle-nosed. Whether this is more than a local name amongst the Shetlanders I do not know. It is here that I first heard it, and that was two years ago when I was describing this very selfsame animal, as I now believe, to a young man who suggested that "perhaps it was a bottle-nosed seal."
Such was the peculiar creature which I now set myself to observe, and which, except for a long interval during which it disappeared altogether, continued to rise and sink and rise again, till after five, when I left, having observed it thoroughly. Several times he went down with a fine roll over, sideways, as well as forward. This I should not have seen had I gone away in an hour or two; but why I stayed so long was that I hoped to see this great bottle-nosed seal lie upon the seaweed-covered rocks at low water, as I had seen him do once before. For some reason or other, however—I doubt not there is a good one—there has been no such low tide since that day; the seaweed has but just shown for a little, and the great creature, who could hardly have lain there, has not lain anywhere else—not, at least, in this cove which heaffects, or for the greater part of the time. He seems to be a much less lazy sort of seal than the common kind. I am not quite sure why he went away, as he did for an hour, from about three. I thought at the time I had alarmed him, for although I lay flat upon a huge slanting rock, with my head not projecting beyond the edge, he seemed to look full at me with a questioning countenance, and then till four o'clock the pool that had known him knew him no more. Whilst he was gone I, with a lot of labour, brought a number of flat stones from the chaos of rocks and boulders which makes the beach here, and with these I made a sort of loopholed wall, through and from behind which I could look, as I had done before to watch the shags on my island. That, by the way, was still standing when I got there again after two years. I wonder how long this other may remain on this most lonely shore, to which no one, to judge by all appearances, ever comes down, from one year's end to another. Long may it be so!
Just before beginning my masonry I had an interesting experience. From a crevice in the pilings of these huge black boulders that lie strewn in wild confusion between the base of the cliffs and the sea—making the gloomy beach—from amongst these, I say, and within about three steps of me, forth hopped a little wren, and began immediately to procure food in the more or less near neighbourhood of my boots. The boulders had hitherto seemed bare enough, but wherever the wren went numbers of little hoppingthings, with long bodies and many legs, began to hop and skip about like a routed army. They seemed to know the enemy was amongst them, and for the wren, he pursued them with the most relentless activity, and looking very fierce about it. He came so near me that I could see him catch them individually, see the whole chase, all his little runs, hops, turns, flights, flutters, each with its distinct object; nor did I ever see him chase one that he did not shortly capture. From the very first, something in the bird's manner shot into me the idea that he had never before seen man—never, at least, with the eye of a full recognition. Supposing him to live and breed in this one great rocky amphitheatre, this would be likely enough, for even at the top of it, on the ness-side, one man only lives, and that but for three months in the year. It is true that during those three months the ness is often visited—by thieves and others—but none, it is safe to assume, either know of or come down to this cove.
At any rate this wren came at last so near me that I expected every instant he would hop on to one of my boots, and although he did not actually do this I believe it was simply because he saw nothing there to catch. He often ran up the steep, rough sides of these great blocks with the greatest ease, investigating all their chinks and every little piece of moss or lichen that adhered to them. Always he had an air of severity, somethingfarouche, about him, which was very amusing to see. It is fascinating, I think, thus towatch little familiar woodland birds by the wild sea shore and amidst stupendous scenery like this.
Puffins, at the right time, are, no doubt, very amorous, as even now, when they should be a littlepasséin such matters, I have seen them so. In this state they will sometimes indulge in quite a little frenzy first of kissing and then of cossetting—nibbling, that is to say, each other's feathers about the head and face. Indeed, such pretty little lover-like actions—mostly on the part of one bird of the two, I presume the female—were never seen.
But they are not only loving, these little birds. They are playful too, and, as I think, sympathetic. Thus when one, standing on the rock, gives its wings a little fluttering shake, another by the side of it—its mate, probably, but perhaps only its friend—will sometimes catch one of them in its adorned beak and playfully detain it. This is done with wonderful softness—obviously in good part, and so it is received. Is it not fun, then, playfulness? Perhaps it is not. It may be but a part of the passion-play, and we should not step too lightly in our judgment from primaries to secondaries. On my last visit here, for instance, whilst climbing painfully along this black beach—a horror of heaped stones and fragments, making, often, unscalable, albeit only miniature, precipices—I happened to see—looking down from a huge tilted rock that guarded one entrance to a little dark valley of confusion—I happened to see there a poor little puffin that had got its head caught in someway amongst the rocks at the bottom, and was struggling and flapping its wings to escape, as it lay flat along one of them. Another puffin was standing beside it, and whilst I looked it took hold of the distressed one's wing and, as it seemed to me, pulled at it as though trying to assist, but in a feeble half-knowing sort of way, which had its pathos. But here, too, how careful one should be in attributing motives, either to birds or men; for this puffin may merely have taken hold of its companion's wing, as I have seen others do whilst standing together at their ease. If so, then the action was not prompted by any idea of aiding, but merely by general good-will, unsharpened by a proper realisation of what had taken place. Here, once again, was a flapping wing, which may have suggested no more to the mind of the bird taking hold of it than it had upon other occasions. Not that I think this myself, but in the little I saw there was no certainty. Unfortunately, I startled away the helper (as I like to think of him) and this to no purpose, since after various attempts to get to the distressed puffin I had to give it up, for though I might have reached it there seemed a likelihood, if I did, of my having to remain there indefinitely in its place. To slide down a steep rock is one thing, but to climb up it again quite another—nor was there any other way that I could see of getting back when once at the bottom. Some time afterwards, however, I could not see the bird, so, though I purposely did not look very closely, I am glad to think that it had got free.
This little incident gives a hint as to some of the mischances which may befall puffins here. With such a jumble of heaped rocks and boulders there are great facilities for slipping or getting between them in such a way as might make it difficult to get out again, and an alarmed bird, caught as this one was, would, of course, pull and pull, wedging itself all the tighter. If found in this situation by a gull—or perhaps, skua—its fate would be sealed, and its picked and disembowelled carcase would then be left upon the rocks, as I have so often found it. Such a misfortune, indeed, cannot be supposed to be of common occurrence; but the hundreds of thousands of puffins must be considered.
I have said that puffins are amorous. They are bellicose also—the two, indeed, are interwoven together—and have a tendency—but this, perhaps, is included in the main proposition—to fight inmêlées. When two are about it a third and then a fourth joins, and so on, and several will stand menacing one another with their sharp, razor-like mandibles held threateningly open, and often moving like scissor-blades. Then, all at once, one springs on another, seizes him by the scruff of the neck, and—so it has often appeared to me—endeavours to throw him over whatever edge they both happen to be near—for they are generally near the edge of something. It is curious—or at least it takes one by surprise—that when the beak is thus opened it looks quite different to what it did before. Being divided, its breadth, which is such apeculiar feature, is much diminished, and the leaf-like shape is also lost since the mandibles diverge more and more widely towards the tips, like a real pair of scissors. Thus the bird itself, since the beak is so salient a part of it, suddenly loses its characteristic appearance.
Marvellous is this beak, and indeed, as far as its appearance is concerned, it exists now wholly and solely for courting and nuptial purposes, being put on each spring before the breeding season commences, like the false nose in a pantomime, which, though not so artistic and without the same justification for its employment, seems equally a necessity to the æsthetic susceptibilities of a British audience.[11]It reminds one something of the bill of a toucan, much abridged—beginning, as it were, from near the tip—and as far as it goes it is perhaps even more wonderful, for not only is it brilliant with rose-red, lemon-yellow, and bright bluish-grey, but the lines of colour correspond to alternate ridges and furrows running down the length of it, which give it a fine embossed appearance, as though both the sculptor and painter had exercised their art upon it. The funny little orange-vermilion legs are more brilliant even than the bill, but they are cruder. You do not think of a real artist in their case, only of a clever artisan with a paint-pot, who, employed by the other, has takenup each bird as its beak was finished, and given it several good coatings. That is what it looks like, and so close do the little toy things stand, and so little do they seem to think or care about you that, with the proper materials, you almost think you could do it yourself; yes, and would like to try, too—if only there were a few with the paint off—black coats, white waistcoats, vermilion legs and all: except the beak and face, which are beyond you, unless, indeed, you are an artist—and a clever one—yourself.
[11]No wonder, when such a play asThe Palace of Truthas played here by refined amateurs before the cultured and cultivated, is thought to require one—and very like a puffin's, too, it was, before it began to melt.
[11]No wonder, when such a play asThe Palace of Truthas played here by refined amateurs before the cultured and cultivated, is thought to require one—and very like a puffin's, too, it was, before it began to melt.
It is wonderful sitting here. To have a dozen or twenty of these little painted puffins on a rock within three paces of you, in full view, with nothing whatever intervening, some standing up, others couched on their breasts, some preening, some shaking their wings, most of them unconscious of your presence, a few just looking at you, from time to time, with an expression of mild curiosity unmixed with fear, seeming to say "And who mayyoube, sir?" is almost a new sensation.
Yes, this is Tammy-Norie-land. Puffins are everywhere. They dot all the steep, green slopes, and cluster on the flat surfaces or salient angles of half the grey boulders that pierce the soil, or lie scattered all about it. Great crowds of them float on the sea, and other crowds oppress the air with constant, fast-beating pinions, passing continually from land to sea and from sea to land again, whilst many, on the latter journey, even though laden with fish, circle many times round, in a wide circumference, before finallysettling. The soil, too, is honeycombed with their burrows, and in each of these, as well as in the nooks and chambers of rocks that lie closely together, there is a young fluffy black puffin, which increases the population by about a third, to say nothing of those parent birds which may also be underground. A million of puffins, I should think, must be standing, flying, or swimming in the more or less immediate vicinity; the air, especially, if it be a sunny day—or, rather, for a sunny minute or so—is like one great sunbeam full of little dancing bird-motes. On the shore they stand together in friendly groups and clusters, and leave it for those much larger gatherings where they ride, hundreds together, ducking and bobbing on the light waves like a fleet of little painted boats, each one with a highly ornamental bird- or, rather, puffin-headed prow. Thus their duties are carried on under the mantle of social pleasure; it is all a coming and going between a land-party and a sea-party, so that the domestic life of these birds would be a type and pattern of feminine happiness if only they were a little—by which I mean vastly—more noisy. Puffins indeed are somewhat silent birds—at least they have been so during the time I have seen them—from the middle of June, that is to say, till the middle of August—though as they can and do utter with effect, on occasions, they are, perhaps, more vociferous at an earlier period, before domestic matters have become so far advanced. Not that amidst such a huge number of them, their note—which I havedescribed—is not frequently heard; but still, whatever I have seen them doing they have generally been doing it dumbly. This includes the series of funny little bows or bobs, accompanied by a shuffling from one foot to the other, which the male, one may say with certainty, is in the habit of making to the female, but which probably the female—as in the case of other sea-birds I have mentioned—also sometimes makes to the male. A display of this sort is usually followed by a little kissing or nebbing match, after which, one of the birds, standing so as directly to face the other, will often raise, and then again lower, the head, some eight or nine times in succession, in a half solemn manner, at the same time opening its gaudy beak, sometimes to a considerable extent, yet all the while without uttering a sound. All this looks very affectionate, but I have often remarked that after one such display and interchange of endearments, the bird that has initiated or taken the leading part in both, turns to another, and repeats, or offers to repeat, the performance—for on such occasions it does not, as a rule, receive much encouragement from the second bird.
The male puffin, therefore—for I hardly suppose it to be the female who acts in this way—would seem to be of a large-hearted disposition. This silent opening of the bill which I have spoken of is, therefore, an accustomed—probably an important—part of the advances made by the one sex towards the other; and here again I have been much struck by the brightyellow colour of the buccal cavity which is thereby revealed, and the display of which supplies, in my opinion—as in the other cases I have brought forward—the true motive of the bird's conduct in this respect. Handsome—or, at any rate,outré—as the puffin's beak is, it is hardly, if at all, more striking to the eye than is this vivid gleam of one bright colour, revealed suddenly in a flash-light by this distension of the mandibles. It is like the sword gleaming out of the scabbard, whose brightness comes as a surprise, whereas the latter, however rich and ornate, is a permanent quantity, and so lacks the charm of novelty. The fact that the puffin's beak is a superlative ornament does not, in my opinion, render it unlikely that there should be another one lying within it. It is absurd in such a matter to say that this or that is enough, and in the puffin's case we are certainly debarred from doing so, since not only has the beak been decorated, but the parts adjacent to it, as well as the whole head, have also been, so as to join in the general effect. The eye is almost as salient a feature as the beak itself, and moreover, where the mandibles meet at their base, there is on either side a little orange button or rosette, formed by foldings of the naked skin, which must certainly rank as a sexual adornment in the eyes of all who believe in such a thing, and with which, apparently—as in the other cases—the inner coloration is continuous.
The puffin, therefore, makes the seventh species of sea-bird in which, as I believe from my own observation,the buccal cavity is displayed by the one sex as a charm or attraction before the eyes of the other, having been specially coloured in order to render it so. A question, however, is raised by this conclusion in regard to which I have, as yet, said nothing, but which I will shortly discuss in a separate chapter, since I have been unable to compress it into any of the foregoing ones. It had occurred to me as a result of my general field observations, before these particular ones which have only served to emphasise it.
CHAPTER XXIX
THOUGHTS IN A SENTRY-BOX
T
THAT wren was an interlude, and the puffins another. When he of the bottle-nose returned, I at first used the shelter which I had constructed during his absence, but soon left it for another great precipice of a rock that also overhung the pool, and in which a huge fracture, half-way up, made a splendid natural concealment. Afterwards, however, I came to the conclusion that as long as one behaved with any sense of propriety, avoiding loud or startling noises, and not putting oneself shamelesslyen évidence, these seals would never take alarm, for indeed they seemed to have lived all their lives in a happy unfamiliarity with man, upon which terms I devoutly hope they may continue.
Well, like the world, one does go forward, though slowly. Not so many years ago the sight of these seals would have made me want to shoot them. God alone knows why—or, rather, I know why, perfectly well: the inherited instinct of the savage, which is not in itself, as some humanitarians think, a bad thing, or at any rate in the savage it was not, only it is now out of place, and reason and morality together ought to insist upon crushing it. It is because the wish, or rather passion, to kill wild animals is so natural, that it seems so right to those who have it, for the strongdesire to do almost anything makes almost anything seem right, or rather the impelling force in such casesisa force, whereas that which seeks to restrain it is weak, cold, frigid, like the voice of reason in love.
Moreover, I believe that to sin out the evil in one is nature's true way of progress—in which I join issue with the spiritualistic doctrine of repression—and therefore were it not for the many ill consequences, the worst of which is specific extinction, I should not think a man did wrong to prey upon the animal world as long as to do sowashis nature—that is to say, the stronger part of his nature; nor can it be denied that he who does so is acting in accordance with the scheme of the universe, as far as it is possible to make it out, whereas the humanitarian seems for ever to be flying in the very face of the deity, who, "with no uncertain voice," has said, through all time, to all His creatures:—"Kill one another." Whether one would be right to obey such a deity after one's nature has begun to rebel against His methods is another question, though, as plants must be included amongst the creatures, it would be rather difficult not to; but that, at any rate, is what He, or nature, or whatever we may choose to call it, has most clearly said, and I think that humanitarians, though they may be very right, ought to consider the difficulty here involved. My impression is that they shirk it.
But in regard to sport, I wish that every civilised representative of the savage in this particular respectwould arrive at the point where I now stand, by the same natural process which has brought me there. One cannot long watch any creature without insensibly beginning to sympathise with it, to enter into its state, to imagine oneself it—which is to be it—and then, how can one shoot oneself? Why, it would be suicide. As for me, I watch wild animals, when I get the chance, not only with sympathy, but with envy. I am eternally wishing myself them—strange as it may appear to some who, I suppose, rate themselves highly. That was Iago's case. "Ere I would," says he, etc., etc. (something very preposterous), "I would exchange my humanity with a baboon." Well, and why not? With a guarantee against getting into the Zoological Gardens, most of us would be gainers by the bargain. I, at any rate—I say it merely as an expression of my conviction; let my enemies make the worst of it—I, at any rate, would. As to the advantages which would have accrued from the arrangement in Iago's case—not only to himself, but to almost all thedramatis personæof the play—they are too obvious to need pointing out. Baboons, however, stand so high in the scale that the change for many of us would, except in regard to surroundings, be hardly perceptible, so that the desire to bring it about may offer too little proof of that force of sympathy which I pretend to. But I do not stop there, and even at this very moment I would gladly exchange myself with this bottle-nosed seal I am watching, could I bring myself to cheat the poor fool so. Oh that finesensuous roll in the water! made with such sense of enjoyment—so slow, so lazy, eking it out—the whole of the animal seeming to smack its lips.
We "human mortals," I believe, quite underestimate the sensuous pleasures of animals. Their mere ways of moving must often be infinite joys to them, seeing that besides the motion itself—as with this seal, the gnu, or the springbok, the half-flying arboreal monkey, or the soaring bird—there is the ecstasy of perfect health and strength and the freedom of perfect nudity—absolute disencumbrance. The first of these may be felt almost, perhaps, in as great a degree by some savages, but if I may judge by my own experience it never is and never can be by a civilised man leading a civilised life. With us, speaking generally, health is more a negative than an affirmative proposition. To be well is not to be ill. But in the veldt, where one walks all day and eats one hearty meal by the camp-fire at the end of it, it is like a strong wine that one has drunk. It is a mighty, stirring, active, compelling force—ending, however, in fever, which the animals don't get. No doubt the pleasures of the intellect are of a higher order than those which spring from mere corporeal ecstasy; but is the civilised man, writing a treatise, happier than the savage in his war-dance, or the capercailzie going through his love antics? "Thatis the question"; or, in other words, does civilisation make for happiness?
Who, in spite of much laboured reasoning to thecontrary, can doubt that more happiness enters into the life of most savages than into that of most civilised men? Not I, who have seen the Kaffirs, unblessed by our rule, and read Wallace's account of the Papuans inThe Malay Archipelago, which, to show that I am not talking nonsense, I will here quote: "These forty black, naked, mop-headed savages seemed intoxicated with joy and excitement. Not one of them could remain still for a moment.... A few presents of tobacco made their eyes glisten; they would express their satisfaction by grins and shouts, by rolling on deck, or by a headlong leap overboard. Schoolboys on an unexpected holiday, Irishmen at a fair, or midshipmen on shore, would give but faint idea of the exuberant animal enjoyment of these people." The grown Papuan, therefore, is happier—so it struck Wallace—than the civilised schoolboy. It is a well-chosen point of comparison. We are not ashamed, most of us, to look back to our boyhood as to a state of high-tide happiness that, upon the whole, with a fluctuation or two not quite in favour of the intellect, has been receding ever since; but wekickat thinking savages happier than ourselves. Kick as we may, the Arab on his horse or his swift dromedary, the Lap on his snow-shoes, the Esquimaux in his canoe, the Indian chasing the buffalo—as he used to do—or the Pacific Islander surf-riding, carry it, I believe, as far as sheer happiness is concerned, high over the civilised man with all his greater powers of mind and his advanced morality.
"But witchcraft, with its terrors," says some one. True; but I have lain in a Kaffir village on the banks of the Zambesi, within the murmur of its Falls, and watched the young men and maidens dancing together in the full moon—there seemed little of terror there. And I have seen my own boys talking and smokingdacharound the camp fires. Where was the brooding terror, or the dark cloud? Savages do not anticipate, as we do. They feel no uncertain evils, not, at least, till they are very near indeed, till the wizard is actually "smelling" them out; they live, like the animal, in the joy or pain of the moment, and their moments have more of joy and less of pain in them than ours.
But if witchcraftwerethe "dark cloud that hangs for ever over savage life," that Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock) tells us it is, haveweno dark clouds, and have we less or more capacity for feeling them? What is an engagement to dine then, or an enforced call? and consider the dark cloud of having to go every year,en famille, to the seaside, that hangs over the civilised married wretch! Surely the certainty of things like these is worse than only the risk of a witchcraft exposure, a thing which, when it occurs amongst savages (and it was the same with ourselves) is often, if not generally, deserved—for evidence of which I would refer to Miss Kingsley.[12]
[12]West African Studies, pp. 157-68.
[12]West African Studies, pp. 157-68.
Then take travelling. It is referred to by Lord Avebury as one great source of pleasure which civilised people enjoy, but which savages do not.He should have restricted the proposition to civilised women. No word more terrible in the ears of a husband than "Paris" on the lips of a wife. What worry, what anxiety, fear of adventurers, horror of waiters, hatred of hotels—what misery, in short, of almost every degree and kind, do not men go through who have to travel with their families! How they would all stay at home if they only could, and how glad they are—but this is a set-off—when they get back! As a real fact—and every one must really know it—a very great number of so-called civilised pleasures are much more in the nature of pains—and acute ones—to those who are most truly civilised. The joys of the savage, however, are real joys.
But comparisons of this sort are of little value, since they can only be drawn by those who belong to one of the two states, and not to both of them, and who, therefore, besides their prejudices, and that their wish is generally father to their thought, are of necessity unable to feel, or even to imagine, much of what is felt by members of the opposite one. Practically, of course, it is always the civilised man who passes judgment, and in doing so he often adds cant and insincerity to the disabilities under which he labours. For whilst insisting to the utmost on all the pleasures—many of them empty and artificial—which belong to and represent the civilised state, he says little or nothing about certain elementary, and, therefore, very real ones, which savages enjoy much moreunrestrainedly than do we. Very fair, very impartial, truly, when the question is not which is the more advanced man, but which is the happier man. We have much the same sort of thing in the case of comparisons made by Christian divines and historians as between paganism and Christianity—their relative degree of truth, merit, influence in a right direction, etc.; judgment, of course, being always given in favour—generally immensely in favour—of the latter. Seeing that the pagans are all dead and cannot answer any point made against them, I wonder these complacent bestowers of unqualified approval on themselves are not ashamed to bluster so, where they have it all their own way. When I read one of these prejudiced panegyrics, affecting the form and manner of impartiality, I always seem to see a picture of some reverend old learned priest of Jupiter or Apollo, who, in similar pompous periods, and with the very same tones and gestures which one can imagine in the Christian author, goes over the same ground, and, with the same show of absolute fairness, settles everything precisely the opposite way.
As I have slidden out of a consideration of the relative happiness enjoyed by man and the lower animals into a similar appraisement as between the civilised man and the savage, I will just express my opinion (at this moment) that wherever the latter has the advantage over the former, the animala fortiorihas it still more. Amongst animals, moreover, there is not the same inequality of pleasure, as between thesexes, that there is, or is thought to be, amongst savages. But this is enough ofla haute philosophie.
How snug it is, now, whilst I write this by the red fire in the little sentry-box, on the great lonely ness that the wind howls over, whose head-gear are the wreathing mists, and whose skirtings the sea and the sea-birds! There is no one within near three miles, and I myself am alone. On the "great lonely veldt," as city journalists like to call it, you have your boys, the fires, and the oxen sitting by the waggon-chain, and chewing the cud—a picturesque, a romantic and interesting scene, but not a lonely one. Here it is real aloneness—yet I wish I had not to say, with Scipio, that "I am never less alone than when alone." True solitude should imply no fleas.
During the time that this large bottle-nosed seal was away, a small common one—the same that lies on the rock in this sea-pool every day from before it is uncovered to the flowing in of the tide—came and disported himself—as usual I had said, but it was not quite the same. He first began to dive and reappear, at regular intervals, as does the great one, and I soon found that he was behaving like him in all things, even to the standing on end in the water, like a peg-top, with his nose straight up in the air. As his body, however, is not so bladdery, and his nose not so extraordinary, he did not present so strange an aspect. He differed, moreover, in the length of his immersions, which was not more than five or six minutes, whilst those of the other one—the great,portly bottle-nose—were as under, viz., from 12.6 to 12.15; from 12.16½ to 12.26; from 12.27 to 12.36½; from 12.37½ to 12.48; from 4.26 to 4.39; from 4.40 to 4.54½; from 4.55½ to 5.7¾; from 5.9½ to 5.23; from 5.24½ to 5.37½; from 5.38½ to 5.51; from 5.52½ to 6.4¼; from 6.5½ to 6.18¾. Thus only three out of a dozen of his subaqueous excursions was for less than ten minutes, the shortest one being for nine minutes and the longest for fourteen minutes and a half. His stays above water were of even more uniform duration, varying between a minute and a minute and a half, except in one instance where he stayed a minute and three quarters. An animal of regular habits, by my fay! No doubt the great bottle-nose can stay down longer on occasions if he wishes it, but as this is his usual period, it must, I suppose, be what he finds most comfortable; and the same should apply to every other kind of seal. The nostrils of this larger one have the appearance of being more highly developed than in the common species, and this may have something to do with his more prolonged submersions, if I may take what I have seen in these two individuals as typical of their respective communities.
Returning now to the common seal, what distinguished him this afternoon from the bottle-nosed one was that, after he had come up and gone down again several times, he at last remained floating for half an hour or more in this perpendicular fashion, his head for the most part straight up in the air, whilst atintervals he would open his mouth widely, and keep it so for some seconds at a time, then shutting and again opening it, as though he had some special object in so doing, though I can form no conjecture as to what it was. The inside of his mouth being—especially the parts farthest down—of a deep and bright red, contrasted most vividly with the cold grey of the water and the general colourlessness of this northern scene. The grass must be excepted from this picture; but though bright enough if looked at by itself, it is unable to overpower the general effect imparted by sky, by sea, by naked rock and precipice. After a considerable time spent in this curious performance, the seal at last desists and swims to his rock, now but thinly covered by the waves. He circumnavigates it, hangs about it affectionately, lies upon it in the wash of the waves, swims away again, returns, and now, it being just possible to do so, reclines in earnest, adjusting himself to his greater satisfaction as the tide recedes.
But it is not only on the rocks that seals lie sleeping. They do so also—as one is doing now—in the sea itself, rising and sinking with the heave and subsidence of the wave, advancing and retiring with its flux and reflux without exhibiting any kind of independent motion—less, indeed, than they indulged in, in basking on the rocks; for they do not, whilst thus floating, seem so inclined to scratch or kick or stretch the legs, or go through any other of their various quaint, uncouth actions. The eyes are shut, but they open at long, lazy intervals. They float, or ratherdrift, thus, mostly belly downwards, but will roll to either side or even round on to the back, not lying horizontally, however, but aslant, with all except their head, or rather face, sunk down in the water, just like a sack of something, quite enough asleep to seem dead; in fact, as much as possible they make the sea a rock. Delicious they look, thus idly swayed about with the play of the waves—drawn this way and that, sucked down and then back again; mixed up with a tangle of seaweed. An amateur watcher of seals feels inclined to wonder what they ever do except sleep, or try to sleep. Great sleepers they certainly seem to be, and this is the daytime. Are they, then, nocturnal? The carnivorous land animals from whom they are descended probably were so.
CHAPTER XXX
INTERSEXUAL SELECTION
I
IN all the birds which I have enumerated as having a bright or pleasingly coloured mouth cavity, acquired, as I believe, through the agency of sexual selection, the sexes are alike, both in regard to this special feature, and also in their plumage and general appearance. They are alike also in their habit of opening and shutting the bill, as it were, at one another, and in their other nuptial actions or antics. The first of these two identities involves no difficulty. In many birds of bright plumage the female is as gaudy, or almost as gaudy, as the male, and it is then assumed (by those, at least, who follow Darwin) that each successive variation in the hue and markings of the latter has, by the laws of inheritance, been transmitted in an equal or only slightly less degree to the former. As far, therefore, as the particular kind of beauty which I am here considering is, in itself, concerned, the arguments for or against its acquirement by the male, through the choice of the female, are the same as in regard to that of any other kind, nor do they extend any farther; but in the display of it by the female as well as by the male a fresh element enters into the problem, as it does also in the case of any other nuptial display common to the two sexes.The brilliant mouth cavity can, of course, only be exhibited by the opening of the bill, and in doing this—in the particular way, and with the accompaniments described in each case—both sexes act alike. In other words, if there is really a conscious display in the matter then each sex displays to the other. What conclusion are we to draw from this? Either, as it appears to me, we must assume that both the male and female equally strive to please one another, or that, while the actions of the male mean something, those of the female mean nothing, or nothing in particular, having been transmitted to her, through him, by those same laws of inheritance which have given her, in these and other cases, his own ornamental plumage, and not in accordance with any principle by virtue of which she has been rendered more and more attractive to him. For, except in some special cases where the female is larger and handsomer than the male, the Darwinian theory does not suppose that the hen bird has been modified to please the taste of the cock, whose eagerness, it is assumed, has made this quite unnecessary.
But any uniformly repeated action is a habit, and habits must bear a relation to the psychology of the being practising them, from which it would seem to follow that whatever be the mental state of the male bird through whom any habit has been transmitted to the female, such mental state, being the cause of such habit, must have been transmitted to her along with it. To suppose, however, that the female acts in a certainway in order to please the male, but that since she has not learnt to do so under the true laws of sexual selection, but has acquired her character incidentally, merely, by transmission from the male, and that, therefore, her conduct has no effect upon the male, since it has not been brought about in relation to his disposition, which is so eager as to make it indifferent to him what hen he gets, as long as he gets one—to suppose all this is—well, for me it is very difficult. The plain common sense of the thing seems to be that if the female displays her charms to the male in the same way that he displays his to her, she must do it for the same purpose, and is no more likely to be wasting labour, or expending it unnecessarily, than is he. If we do not give the same value to actions identical in either sex—if we will not allow "sauce for thegander" to be "sauce for thegoose"—we become involved, as it appears to me, in inextricable confusion; and, moreover, can it be supposed that a habit which bore no fruit would remain fixed, or be governed by times and seasons, even if it did not cease on account of its inutility? Assuming, then, as I feel bound to assume, that the languishing actions of two fulmar petrels when sitting together on a ledge, or the throwing up of the head and opening the bill at each other of a pair of shags, each during the breeding season, are equally pleasing to one sex as to the other, may we not, or are we not rather compelled to think that such special adornments as we admit in the male to have been acquired through the agency of sexual selection(whether we include amongst these the bright colouring of the mouth or not), have been acquired by the female also in the same way—that there has been, in fact, a double process of sexual selection instead of a single one only; that the male, as well as the female, has been capable of exercising choice?
Great stress has been laid upon the eagerness of the male, as contrasted with the coyness of the female, in courtship, throughout nature; but were the latter to possess some eagerness also, her share of it need not be so great as the male's, so that we should not, by supposing her to, be contravening this principle: she might even fly, or seem to fly, from his pursuit. How, then, might her own ardour become valid to the extent of influencing the choice of the cock? As it appears to me, this might be brought about through the jealousy inspired in one hen bird by the sight of attentions paid to another. She, the jealous one, might have behaved coyly had the same, or another, male wooed her, but her feelings become inflamed and her modesty is lost when she sees that which, for all her seeming, she would have wished for herself, bestowed upon another. She interposes, let us say, at first, by attacking the favoured female, but if this one is as strong and as determined as herself, there will be now a series of indecisive combats, of which the cock will be the spectator; and why should not these combats be varied with displays, or something of that nature, on the part of either combatant, with the view of attracting him? If so, the cock who has previously,we will suppose, been chosen for his good looks, becomes in his turn—for how, under such circumstances, can he help it?—the chooser between those of others; and thus there will be a double process of selection carried on between the two sexes.
But may we not go a step farther in our suppositions?—for which, as I believe, there is a considerable body of evidence, in spite of the frequent great difficulty and consequent absence of proper observation. The theory of sexual selection is based upon the assumption that choice is exercised by the female, and this exercise of choice must go hand-in-hand with a corresponding development of the critical faculty in regard to the comparative merits of different males, which again would involve a power of taking a liking, or a dislike, to any one of them. How are we to reconcile all this with that quiescent, waiting-to-be-spoken-to frame of mind which we assume to be that of the hen bird in regard to the cock, during the season of courtship? A decided preference should show itself in actions. Why should she never exercise her critical faculty except as between such males as are rivals for her favour? If, for instance, she is courted by two or more males, why should she not declare in favour of a third or fourth that is either indifferent or courting another hen, on the ground of his superior beauty alone?
Why, in fact, should it not be with birds as it is with men and women? Women, to casual observation, seem at least as coy and modest as do hen birds,in whom, however, there can be noideaof modesty. They are supposed to be wooed, and not to woo; but they both can, and, to a considerable extent, do exercise the latter power. If they cannot ask, they can demand to be asked; and to think that the latter is a less powerful agency than the former is to think very naively. If women were not often, in reality, very active wooers, such common expressions as "setting her cap at him," "drawing him on," "throwing herself at his head," etc., etc., could hardly have arisen, and it must not be forgotten that the same thing can be done both coarsely and refinedly, visibly and so as to be hardly perceptible. No doubt there is something called modesty amongst civilised women, but there are also jealousy and prudential considerations—very powerful solvents of anything of the sort. Yet with all this we have the prevailing idea that (even in a civilised state of things) it is man who woos and woman who is won; man who advances and woman who retires; man who seeks and woman who shuns. The reason probably is that the actions of man are of a more downright nature, and easier to observe and follow, than those of woman—who, as a clever writer has remarked, approaches her object obliquely—and, secondly, that it is man mostly, and not woman, who has given his opinion on this and other matters through the most authoritative channels—for it is man who, by virtue of his intellect and his selfishness, holds the chief places of authority.
May not these factors have affected in some degree,also, our conclusions in regard to the lower animals? Here, too, the actions of the female may be often more subtle and difficult to follow than those of the male, though in many cases, as I believe, they are seen plainly enough, but, for a reason shortly to be mentioned, attributed to the male. Yet in the case of birds, at any rate, it is very noticeable in some species that the females, after the couples have once paired off, are extremely eager in their enticements of the males to hymeneal pleasures, and it seems difficult to reconcile this eagerness after marriage with any very real coldness before it—especially as the supposed coy sweetheart of one spring has been the forward wife of the spring before. But there is another point, in this connection, which it is of the utmost importance for us to bear in mind. Birds in which, if in any, we might expect to find the courting actions alike or similar in the male and female (and this would imply an active wooing on the part of each) are of two classes—viz. (1) those in which the sexes are alike or nearly so, and (2) those in which, though they may differ conspicuously, the one is as handsome, or nearly as handsome, as the other. In the first case, the colours of the hen must either be due to the selective agency of the cock, or they must have been transmitted to her through the latter (as being prepotent), in which case they can have no significance as far as the theory of sexual selection is concerned—two possibilities which equally require proving. In the second case—but examples of this nature are not, I believe, numerous—adouble process of sexual selection seems the only available explanation. Only when the female is plain and unadorned, and the male gaudy, does it seemprimâ facieevident that the latter, alone, has been selected for his beauty. But it is just this last class of cases that has attracted the largest amount of notice, for, as might have been expected, it is precisely here that we find the males—often the most ornate of birds—indulging in the most extraordinary antics, which, of course, arrest attention. In observing these birds, however, the sexes are at once, and without difficulty, distinguished, and as the females do not share in such antics, weassume, when we see similar ones on the part of birds, the sexes of which are indistinguishable, that here, also, the same law holds good, though there is by no means the same presumption that this should be the case. Confronted with a certain effect, which implies a corresponding causal process, in one case, we assume this same process in another, though we cannot there see the effect. We see, for instance, one stock-dove manifestly court another, and at once assume that the courting bird is the male. The courtship, as is often the case, ends in a pretty severe battle, where blows with the wing are given and received on either side. We may be surprised to see the female so belligerent, but we do not yet doubt the fact of her being the female. The courting bird is, at last, repelled, and a fight of much the same description takes place between him and another stock-dove. This one might just as well be a female as the first, but inthe midst of the strife both birds bow, several times, according to their custom, and we then feel sure that both are males. Meanwhile, however, our assured female, who has been left where she was, is seen to bow to another bird who has alighted near her, upon which we change our minds, conclude that she is a male after all, and that what we, at first, thought to be courtship, was only a fight between two cocks. And thus we go on, correcting and correcting our opinion—until in a gathering of perhaps a dozen or more stock-doves there would seem to be no female at all—because if they were pheasants or blackcocks the hens would not behave in this way. Again, when one first sees a shag throw itself down before another one, and go through a variety of strange gestures to which the latter makes no response—if not by a caress of the bill—it is impossible not to feel sure that the bird thus acting is the male shag, and the other the female. But when one afterwards sees two birds at the nest—male and female beyond a doubt—mutually or alternately performing some portion of these antics, though without the primary prostration,[13]what is one to think then? In such cases as these, where the sexes are not to be distinguished except by dissection, or having the bird in one's hands, we cannot be sure that it is always the male we see displaying to the female, and never the female to the male. I believe, however, that we have tacitly assumed this to be the case.