Philip Henry Gosse

“ There is beauty, too, in the soft, full liquid eye of these animals,—the "bright, black eye" of the "dear gazelle," which in the East is the very ideal of female loveliness. Its melting gaze seems full of tenderness, so that we cannot look without loving it.
Nor is beauty of colour wholly wanting. How rich is the tawny fur of the tiger, dashed with its black streaks! And the brighter yellow of the leopard and the jaguar, studded all over with rosettes of black spots! We forget the ferocity of the savage in its beautifully-painted coat. ”

“ This fowl, which is little less than a turkey, looks as if clothed in scale armour of iridescent metal, of which the specific hues can scarcely be indicated, so changeable are they; green, steel-blue, crimson, purple, and golden-bronze,—all of the utmost intensity of colour, and of dazzling refulgence, adorn this bird, set off by a broad square patch of pure white in the middle of the back, while the crown of the head carries a drooping crest of naked-shafted, broad-tipped, green feathers. ”

“ If it is a scene of painful interest, as surely it is to a well-constituted mind, to stand by and watch the death-struggles of one of the nobler brutes,—a dog or an elephant, for example,—to mark the failing strength, the convulsive throes, the appealing looks, the sobs and sighs, the rattling breath, the glazing eye, the stiffening limbs—how much more exciting is the interest with which we watch the passing away of a dying species. ”

“ The Emerald Paradise, the best known of the family, seems to have been in the poet's eye; and certainly the combination of form and colour in this species is very charming. The rich chocolate of the upper parts, and the delicate lemon-yellow of the neck, contrast well with the gemmeous green lustre of the front, when the velvety plumage flashes and gleams in the sunlight. And the numerous soft floating plumes that arch out from the flanks to a great distance on all sides are exquisite in loveliness. ”

“ Who has not admired the lustre and beauty of those eyelets,—the kidney-like nucleus of deepest purple, the surrounding band of green, widening in front and filling the notch of the pupil, the broad circle of brown, and the narrow black ring edged with chestnut, and then the decomposed barbs of the feather, gilded green, all presenting the effulgence of burnished metal, or rather the glitter and glow of precious gems, flashing in the varying light? ”

“ When we come to Birds, however, beauty is not the exception, but the rule. The form of a bird is almost always graceful; the rounded swellings and undulations of outline, and the smoothness of the plumage give pleasure to the eye, even when there is no attractiveness of hue. One has almost a difficulty in naming an inelegant bird. But when, as in a thousand instances, brilliancy of colouring is combined with elegance of shape and smoothness of plumage, we must be charmed. ”

“ Equally massive, equally heavy, equally vast, equally peaceful, the stranger resembles a huge rhinoceros elevated on much loftier limbs; but his most remarkable feature is an enormously long neck, like that of the camel, but carried to the altitude of that of the giraffe. Thus he thrusts his great muzzle into the very centre of the leafy trees, and gathering with his prehensile and flexible lip the succulent twigs and foliage, he too finds abundance of food for his immense body, in the teeming vegetation, without intruding upon the supply of his fellows. ”

“ The Dinothere and the Mastodon wallowed and browsed where great London now crowds its princely palaces. Through the greenwood shades of the forests of oak wandered hippopotamuses and rhinoceroses of several kinds, the long-tusked mammoth, and two or three species of horses. Two gigantic oxen—a bison and a urus—roamed over the fir-clad hills of Scotland, and a curious flat-headed ox, of small size and minute horns, made Ireland its peculiar home. That island, too, was the metropolis of a colossal fallow-deer, whose remains, ticketed as those of the Irish [Pg 15] Elk, astonish us in our museums. ”

“ It yields; the roots fly up; the earth is scattered wide upon the surrounding foliage; the tree comes down with a thundering crash, cracking and snapping the great boughs like glass; the frightened insects swarm out at every orifice; but the huge beast is in upon them; with his sharp hoofs he tears apart the crusty walls of the earth-nests, and licks out their living contents, fat pupæ, eggs and all, rolling down the sweet morsels, half sucking, half chewing, with a delighted gusto that repays him for all his mighty toil. ”

“ The whole upper parts of this bird, its fine coronal crest of erectile plumes, its shoulder-hackles, or long lance-shaped feathers, that droop over the sides, and the elongated tail-coverts which hang down beyond the tail to a length of three feet or more, curving elegantly under the bird, as it sits on a branch, are of the richest golden green, shining with a satiny radiance. The under parts are of a splendid scarlet, and the tail feathers are white, with broad black bars. ”

“ But this is far excelled in beauty by many of the exotic species; as, for example, the exquisite C. barbatum from Malacca. The very foliage is princely; for the nervures and cross-veins form a network pattern of dark green upon the light green area of each broad leaf. The blossom rears up its noble head erect, with its standard-petal of white, striped with green and purple, the wing-petals studded with purple tubercles along their edges, and the lip or slipper-shaped petal of a dark purple hue. ”

“ What sort of a body, and what kind of limbs, furnished the complement of this curiously-compound head, we do not exactly know; but surely it must have been a very remarkable form, as it browsed quietly and blamelessly, among the luxuriant shrubs of those sun-facing slopes.
In the same regions a land Tortoise of enormous bulk, far vaster than the vastest of now existing species, to which that ponderous one which will march merrily away with a ton weight on its back, is a mere pigmy, shook the earth with its waddle, and the forests with its hoarse bellowing. ”

“ In the Trogons of the tropical regions we see elegance of form combined with the most gorgeous colouring. Green and gold, crimson, scarlet, orange, and black, are the hues of these birds, which hide themselves in the deep dark recesses of the Amazonian and Indian forests. That species called the Resplendent is the noblest of the race, whose magnificence was so well appreciated by the ancient Mexican emperors, that none but members of the royal family were permitted to adorn themselves with its flowing plumes. ”

“ Exquisite ornaments are these to an Indian garden, where they delight in the flowering plants and shrubs. They creep to and fro about the stalks and twigs, clinging by their little purple feet, and rifling the tubular corollas of the honeyed blossoms, whence doubtless they gather many minute insects, licked up with the nectar, by the aid of their curiously pencilled tongue.
For that peculiar charm which resides in flashing light combined with the most brilliant colours, the lustre of precious stones, there are no birds, no creatures, that can compare with the Humming-birds. ”

“ Now, with his strong front teeth, he tears up the great fleshy arum-roots from the clay of the bank, and grinds them to pulp; and now, with another grunt, the vast bristly head sinks beneath the water, and we see it no more. Hundreds of other creatures are straying around,—sloths, bats, and monkeys, and birds of gay plumage, on the trees; ant-eaters and cavies, lizards and snakes, on the ground; butterflies and humming-birds hovering in the air ”

“ And the satiny plumes of the Pampas-grass projecting from the clump of leaves form a fine object. But the Bamboos, those great arborescent Grasses of the tropics, form a characteristic feature of the vegetation of those regions, of almost unexampled magnificence. I have seen them in their glory, and can sympathise with the philosophical Humboldt in the powerful effect which the grandeur of the Bamboo produces on the poetic mind. It is an object never to be forgotten, especially when growing in those isolated clumps, that look like tufts of ostrich-plumes magnified to colossal dimensions. ”

“ Again and again did the fly return to the combat, till in an unguarded moment it flew exactly into the open claw, which closing, rendered escape impossible. The generosity of a Mouravieff was scarcely to be looked for in the scorpion, which, as will be readily believed, lost no time in devouring its gallant captive. Possibly the fly may have been partly dazzled by the glare of the lamp. But undoubtedly it was in the main fascination, induced by the sight of the dread figure on the wall, that impelled it to begin the unequal contest, which could terminate only in the loss of its life. ”

“ Or is there any marine animal uniting so much of the general form of the fish with that of man as to have given the conception of the idol? A naturalist of deserved eminence has maintained, on purely scientific grounds, that such an animal must exist,—that the laws of nature absolutely require such a being; and though the amount of force which his reasoning, possesses will be estimated differently according as we reject or accept the hypothesis of the circularity of the great plan of nature, we may as well see what he has to say for a marine primate,—be he man or ape, mermaid or mermonkey. ”

“ The country is far more attractive than that on the Amazon; instead of a dead level, swampy and intersected by sluggish igaripés, or shallow ponds, overhung by impenetrably tangled thickets, and full of venomous flies, here are gentle hills, and tiny brooks of sparkling water, and a comparatively open forest, with bright clear glades in which the traveller may recline without persecution from the flies,—these pests being unknown on the "black waters." The ground is covered by evergreens of different species and exquisite forms, and many kinds of elegant ferns are growing in the valleys. ”

“ It begins to open as the sun declines, and is in full expanse throughout the night, shedding a delicious fragrance, and offering its brimming goblet, filled with nectareous juice, to thousands of moths, and other crepuscular and nocturnal insects. When the moon is at the full in those cloudless nights whose loveliness is known only in the tropics, the broad blossom is seen as a circular disk nearly a foot in diameter, very full of petals, of which the outer series are of a yellowish hue, gradually paling to the centre, where they shine in the purest white. ”

“ There is no reason whatever for concluding that the law of mortality of species does not extend to all the other classes, vertebrate and invertebrate, in an equal ratio, so that my estimate will appear, I think, a very moderate one. Yet it is a startling thought, and one which the mind does not entertain without a measure of revulsion, that the passing of every century in the world's history has left its fauna minus a hundred species of animals that were denizens of the earth when it began. ”

“ And in the saturated atmosphere of the tropical islands, where these lovely plants form a very large proportion of the entire vegetation, and some of them rise on slender stems thirty or forty feet in altitude, from the summit of which the wide-spreading fronds arch gracefully on every side, like a vast umbrella of twinkling verdure, through whose filagree work the sunbeams are sparkling,—what can be more charming than Ferns? ”

“ It is not the entire plumage of even a Humming-bird that displays these refulgent gleams: some of the brilliant hues are permanent, not changeable colours; such as the golden greens which adorn the back and wing-coverts in so many species; in which the colour is subject to little change, and the only effect produced by the alteration of the angle of the light is the transforming the tips of the feathers into the appearance of burnished gold. ”