Edmund Selous

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have never seen anything like such vivid hues on the surface of rock or cliff exposed to the light of day, nor, indeed, in any landscape, if flowers and the autumn tints of leaves are excluded. Gaudily painted stage scenery, some enchanted or robber's cavern in a pantomime—Ali Baba's, for instance—is really the best comparison I can think of, nor shall I ever again think these exaggerated. Nature is really harder to outdo or burlesque than one may fancy—even on the stage, where the effort is so constantly, and, one would swear, successfully made. ”

“ Even to watch you, as you lay warm on your cold ledge in the daytime, gave me the lumbago, though wrapped in two good plaids. But at night, and with nothing round you, to leave even that shelter, to cast off from the sheer, horrid edge "into the empty, vast, and wandering air," and then souse into yeasty salt water, without cold or chill taken, without a touch of lumbago—oh, what an iron constitution! You are not the lathe painted to look like iron; you are feathers in steelwork, rather, a powder-puff made out of adamant. ”

“ What naturalist is there who would not esteem himself favoured of heaven, were he to see an anaconda seize and strangle its prey, in the forests of South America, or a cobra secure his, amidst the ruins of some jungle temple in India? Now, when the same naturalist keeps either these or any other snakes in captivity, what is the object with which he does, and which alone can justify his doing, so? There is—there can be—but one, which is, of course, to study its natural habits—for all others are puerile and contemptible. ”

“ The pretty little black guillemot—the dabchick of ocean—may often be seen sitting in a niche of the cliffs, and calling to another—its mate presumably—either above or below it. The cry is, for the most part, a weak, twittering sound, but occasionally rises into a very feeble little wail or scream. All the while the bird is uttering it he keeps raising and again depressing his head and opening his beak so as to show conspicuously the inside of his mouth, which is of a very pretty rose or blush-red hue, almost as vivid as that of the feet. ”

“ Thus one that came swimming up the little quiet bay, in quest of a rock to lie upon, seemed to delight in pretending to find first one and then another too steep and difficult to get up on to (for obviously they were not) and would fling himself off from them in a sort of little sham disappointment, gambolling and rolling about, twisting himself up with seaweed, and, generally, having a most lively solitary romp. ”

“ Be this as it may, it is certainly strange to see little fluffy chicks on the nest going through the same sort of pantomime as their parents do when in love. But why do I call them little? I have never seen such big baby things, and their size makes them look all the weirder. So great, indeed, is the chick's fluffiness that though the wings are tiny and the tail invisible, it looks almost, if not quite, as big as the graceful and delicately shaped parent bird sitting beside it.
The lethargy of these young fulmars is very noticeable. ”

“ It seems funny to be looking over a ledge, all day long, and to eat one's lunch whilst so doing. But I just look up to make my notes, and on looking down again, almost right under me, I see a seal hanging lazily in this quiet shore-pool of the sea; for to-day there is hardly a foam-line round the stacks and rocks. ”

“ Whatever the nature of that sexual appeal may be which every cock makes to every hen, and by virtue of which she feels that he is a cock, and not a hen like herself, why should we suppose that any two individuals should be more exactly alike in it than they are in anything else? But if there is not this absolute unity, then there is difference, and such difference in the degree of the sexual charm flung out by each male, must produce preference and choice in the female. The whole theory of evolution is based upon the undisputed and indisputable fact of individual variability ”

“ There is a gorget of rich ruddy chestnut on the throat, but the rest of it, with the head and chin, is of a very delicious plum-bloomy grey, which looks in the sunlight as though it would be purple if it dared, but were too modest—a lovely and æsthetic combination, soft, yet bright, and the whole with such a smoothness as no words can describe. There is another effect wrought by the sun, if it should happen to be shining, and if the bird should be swimming so as to give a profile view. ”

“ They are longer than the close feathers in front, and begin to be flecked with grey. It is just into this zone of deeper plumage that the young guillemot insinuates itself when wishing to go "sleepy-by." Also, when the old bird flaps its wings I seem to notice a little depression or alcove just underneath them—the chick's cradle, boudoir, or dormitory, as I am inclined to think—like a sleeping-bunk in the wall of a Highland cottage. ”

“ And in regard to suffering inflicted by one animal on another, I would ask only this one question, and be governed by the answer: "such suffering in accordance with the laws of nature, and the conditions of things in the world at large, or is it not?" In proportion as the power of exercising its natural functions and aptitudes is taken from it, I pity an animal, and that is why I hate—with an intellectual quite as much as with a humanitarian hatred—the miserable cellular confinement inflicted upon wild creatures in a Gardens like ours. ”

“ As explained by Darwin—and nothing better, that I can see, than opposition has ever been opposed to his views—the beauty of certain birds has been acquired through the principle of sexual selection, and the lesser degree of it, which we notice in the young, represents the earlier and less-finished beauty of the adult in times gone by. Of all the elements which go to make up the beauty thus acquired, colour, on the whole, plays the most conspicuous part, and nothing can be more brilliant and striking than some of the colours that I am here speaking of. ”

“ Out of it, ever and anon, some single bird shoots down, with a cry so sharp and shrill that it seems to pierce the ear like a pointed instrument. Occasionally an oyster-catcher darts in amongst them all, on quickly quivering wings, its quavering high-pitched note of "teep, teep!—teep, teep, teep!" threading, as it were, the general clamour, whilst like a grey, complaining shadow, the curlew circles, beyond and solitary, « 2 » shunning even the outer margin of the crowd. How lonely is this island, and yet how populous! ”

“ It is, indeed, extremely easy to miss a chick, even when one seems to see the whole ledge very plainly. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that one of the two on my ledge is gone. My own little one—still under its mother's left wing—is the only one left there now. After a while it comes out, and the mother, as she stands by it, from time to time just stirs or nibbles the feathers of its face with the end of her bill—an action which has all the spirit of wiping a child's face or nose. The father now walks up, stops in front of the chick, bends down its head, and jodels. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The mother fulmar—for I suppose it is the mother—cossets the chick as she sits beside it, leaning tenderly over it, and nibbling with her bill amidst its long, soft, white fluff, the chick sitting still, the while, with its beak held open, but not at all as though it were thinking of food. Sometimes, by inadvertence, the mother pricks the chick a little, with her bill, upon which it turns indignantly towards her, with distended jaws. ”

“ What makes, or helps to make, these scenes so very unpleasant, is the prosaic and unimposing manner « 352 » in which the gull goes to work. We have, here, no swoop and rush of wings, from giddy heights, as in the falcon tribe; there is no dilating of the plumage, no eloquent expression of the fiercer emotions; no fine embodiment of speed, power, rage, combined, is presented to us, nor does the victim lie, in an instant, prostrate and bleeding beneath the claws of its destroyer. ”

“ Scenes like this belong to the pebbled beach and gently sloping shore. There are others in the deeply indented, rocky bays that bound the greater part of the island. Here, in the frowning shadow of beetling, cavern-worn precipices, one may often see the little eider-ducklings crawl out to feed upon the steeply-sloping sides of rocks or mightier "stacks"—as those great detached spurs of the cliff that the water swirls round are called here—whilst their mother waits and watches on the sea close at hand. She does not bob now. ”

“ In beauty of form and of colour, in grace and speed of flight, in the wild, inspiring music of its cry, in its sportings, its piracies, its pretty sociable ablutions, and in its attacks, too, wherein the boldness is equal and the poised sweeps more splendid and lovely, the lesser skua, say I, the Arctic skua—Stercorarius crepidatus—a bird that has only one thing prosaic about it, its prænomen of "Richardson's" namely, which is a thing it can't help, it having been forced upon it by prosaic people. ”

“ Still, it would generally be an advantage for young birds to keep still when left by themselves, even in a field or wood, and how much more so where a step or two, or one little run, would be death. Looking at these fat, fluffy, odd-looking creatures as they sit motionless from hour to hour, and then at the grown bird sailing on spread wings, all grace and beauty,—a being that seems born of the air—the change from one to the other—from the fixed to the free phase of life—seems hardly less or more remarkable than that by which a chrysalis becomes a butterfly. ”

“ Also, though he often pegtops it, he has never yet pointed his nose straight up into the sky, which my bottle-nosed seal invariably does. Generally he soon adopts the horizontal attitude, and continues in it for the rest of the time he is up. When he goes down, he rolls round, as well as over—by which I mean both like a porpoise and like a barrel—and then his spotted, or rather blotched, belly makes a splendid mosaic under the water, for it is not only itself, which were enough of beauty, but the most lovely glaucous green is flung upon it, through which, all glorified, the pattern appears. ”

“ The skua, in the midst of the chase, will frequently sweep away, as if it had abandoned all hope, and then return in a wide circling rush, at the end of which there may be a sudden upward shoot, for the tern generally seeks to elude its pursuer by rising higher into the air. Often—and again this is just as with the peewit and gull—a pair of skuas will give chase to the same tern, and then one may see the slender, shining bird quite overshadowed by the two evil figures, as, pressing upon either side, they rise or sink towards it, often almost covering it up with their broad and dusky pinions. ”

“ Thus the balance of our emotions produces, or should produce, the exclamation, "How wonderful!" rather than the one, "How horrible!" but with the gull and kittiwake, only the latter is « 354 » possible. Do I, then, defend the feeding of snakes with their ordinary living prey, in captivity? Yes, I do, so long as the conditions of nature are properly preserved. I would make that the test. If it is not permissible to study the living habits of the living animal, to stand as a spectator and see how nature works, then there is no such thing as natural history, and no place for a naturalist. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Had it not been for that other chick that I saw go for quite a little walk by itself, I should have thought that they always were, till they left the ledge. But probably as they get older they become just a trifle more independent, and possibly also the size of the ledge or cranny they are born on makes a difference.
A more marked or prettier picture of maternal love than this mother guillemot sitting thus on the bare, cold ledge above the great sea, and closely clasping her little one to her side, I do not think all bird life has to offer. ”

“ The larger gulls grow hopelessly coarse and heavy; the kittiwake is not what it was, something is gone from the bold corsair-like sweeps of the Arctic skua, and even in the seeming-laboured grace of the tern the eye begins to dwell more on the labour and less on the grace. All these birds are bodies: the fulmar petrel more suggests a soul. ”

“ Not only the animal itself, but everything it suggests, as pertaining to it, that should make its appropriate setting in our minds, the sea, the mountain peaks, the sand-swept, bush-strewn desert, with the ideas belonging to each, the feelings they arouse, the whole mental picture in fact, is blurred or cruelly blotted out by the obtrusive image of some human face or form, which insists upon fitting itself to the irrelevant human name, and which, as there is no knowledge to guide it, is made up, usually, of the most commonplace elements. ”

“ These small whales are common off the Shetlands, but suddenly to see one is very exciting. It reminds me of when, from the rocks of Raasey Isle, I saw in the clear, pale light of the morning, true whales—huge monsters of the deep—leaping, head first, out of the water and falling back into it again with a roar, which, though several miles off, I heard each time most distinctly, and attributed, at first, to the breaking away of portions of the cliff on the opposite shores of Skye. ”

“ Men are gone, and gulls now take their place, become ennobled for want of a superior. Like snowy-toga'd Roman senators, they stand grouped about, or walk over the grassy amphitheatre—their natural senate-house—and it is wonderful with how slight an effort of the imagination—or indeed with none—the dissonant cries and shrieks, the clang and the jangle, become as the dignified utterance, eloquent oratory, to which one has sat and listened, spell-bound, in the gallery of the House of Commons. ”

“ They spin and shoot about, slap each other with their fins or tails, and, every now and again, one hears a curious burst of sound, like subaqueous thunder; whether caused by the swirl, as they go down, or being a growl, half-choked under the water, I do not know. Seals seem to lead a most happy life. I have mentioned one leaping out of the water, as it went along, in pure enjoyment—for what else could it have been? But how different is all this to the lonely sleep of that great thing yonder!—Falstaff—Proteus—Bottle-nose—but that last is a calumny on a very respectable feature. ”

“ Still the chick sleeps on and still the parents seem to doubt the advisability of waking him. At length, however, they admit it to be necessary. The father shuffles up into his usual position, the mother rises by slow and reluctant stages, as though apologetically, and finally stirs the chick several times with her bill till at last he rouses. Then, in a moment, he brisks up, and, seizing the large fish, swallows it in one good whole-hearted gulp. ”

“ 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 may you be, sir?" is almost a new sensation. ”

“ In spite, therefore, of the peculiar wedge-like bill with its obtuse tip that seems so well adapted for striking a limpet or other shell-fish with a sudden blow from the rock to which it had been clinging, I am beginning to doubt whether they often use it in this way, and especially whether limpets are a special food of theirs. I remember, however, once seeing a sea-pie make just the sort of blow required on the theory, but ineffectively, and in a peculiar half-hearted way, as a man might feebly clench his fist and strike in his sleep. ”