Chapter 11

The effect of the contrast was grand. He shook himself again, and lifted and dropped his arms again, assuming, for the nonce, the peculiar aquiline slouch; and there before us stood the mighty bird of Jove, as we are accustomed to see it in the Zoological Gardens; its deep-set, desolate eyes looking through and beyond us; ruffling its dark plumage, and lifting its heavy wings as if about to scorn the earth, only to drop them again, and to utter one of those long dreary cries which seem to protest so eloquently against a barbarous destiny. Then he proceeded to tell us of the great raptor in its life of hopeless captivity; his stern, rugged countenance, deep bass voice, and grand mouth-filling polysllables suiting his subject well, and making his description seem to our minds a sombre magnificent picture never to be forgotten--at all events, never by an ornithologist.

Doubtless this part of his discourse proved eminently pleasing to the majority of his hearers, who, looking downwards into the depths of their own natures, would be able to discern there a glimmer, or possibly more than a glimmer of that divine quality he had spoken of, and which was, unhappily for them, not recognized by the world at large; so that, for the moment, he was addressing a congregation of captive eagles, all mentally ruffling their plumage and flapping their pinions, and uttering indignant screams of protest against the injustice of their lot.

The illustration pleased me for a different reason, namely, because, being a student of bird-life, his contrasted picture of the two widely different kinds, when deprived of liberty, struck me as being singularly true to nature, and certainly it could not have been more forcibly and picturesquely put. For it is unquestionably the fact that the misery we inflict by tyrannously using the power we possess over God's creatures, is great in proportion to the violence of the changes of condition to which we subject our prisoners; and while canary and eagle are both more or less aerial in their mode of life, and possessed of boundless energy, the divorce from nature is immeasurably greater in one case than in the other. The small bird, in relation to its free natural life, is less confined in its cage than the large one. Its smallness, perching structure, and restless habits, fit it for continual activity, and its flitting, active life within the bars bears some resemblance except in the great matter of flight, to its life in a state of nature. Again, its lively, curious, and extremely impressible character, is in many ways an advantage in captivity; every new sound and sight, and every motion, however slight, in any object or body near it, affording it, so to speak, something to think about. It has the further advantage of a varied and highly musical language; the frequent exercise of the faculty of singing, in birds, with largely developed vocal organs, no doubt reacts on the system, and contributes not a little to keep the prisoner healthy and cheerful.

On the other hand, the eagle, on account of its structure and large size, is a prisoner indeed, and must languish with all its splendid faculties and importunate impulses unexercised. You may gorge it with gobbets of flesh until its stomach cries, "Enough"; but what of all the other organs fed by the stomach, and their correlated faculties? Every bone and muscle and fibre, every feather and scale, is instinct with an energy which you cannot satisfy, and which is like an eternal hunger. Chain it by the feet, or place it in a cage fifty feet wide--in either case it is just as miserable. The illimitable fields of thin cold air, where it outrides the winds and soars exulting beyond the clouds, alone can give free space for the display of its powers and scope to its boundless energies. Nor to the power of flight alone, but also to a vision formed for sweeping wide horizons, and perceiving objects at distances which to short-sighted man seem almost miraculous. Doubtless, eagles, like men, possess some adaptiveness, else they would perish in their enforced inactivity, swallowing without hunger and assimilating without pleasure the cold coarse flesh we give them. A human being can exist, and even be tolerably cheerful, with limbs paralyzed and hearing gone; and that, to my mind, would be a parallel case to that of the eagle deprived of its liberty and of the power to exercise its flight, vision, and predatory instincts.

As I sit writing these thoughts, with a cage containing four canaries on the table before me, I cannot help congratulating these little prisoners on their comparatively happy fate in having been born, or hatched, finches and not eagles. And yet albeit I am not responsible for the restraint which has been put upon them, and am not their owner, being only a visitor in the house, I am troubled with some uncomfortable feelings concerning their condition--feelings which have an admixture of something like a sense of shame or guilt, as if an injustice had been done, and I had stood by consenting. I did not do it, but we did it. I remember Matthew Arnold's feeling lines on his dead canary, "Poor Matthias," and quote:

Yet, poor bird, thy tiny corse Moves me, somehow, to remorse; Something haunts my conscience, brings Sad, compunctious visitings. Other favourites, dwelling here, Open lived with us, and near; Well we knew when they were glad Plain we saw if they were sad; Sympathy could feel and show Both in weal of theirs and woe.

Birds, companions more unknown, Live beside us, but alone; Finding not, do all they can, Passage from their souls to man. Kindness we bestow and praise, Laud their plumage, greet their lays; Still, beneath their feathered breast Stirs a history unexpressed. Wishes there, and feeling strong, Incommunicably throng; What they want we cannot guess.

This, as poetry, is good, but it does not precisely fit my case; my "compunctious visitings" being distinctly different in origin and character from the poet's. He--Matthew Arnold--is a poet, and the author of much good verse, which I appreciate and hold dear. But he was not a naturalist--all men cannot be everything. And I, a naturalist, hold that the wishes, thronging the restless little feathered breast are not altogether so incommunicable as the melodious mourner of "Poor Matthias" imagines. The days--ay, and years--which I have spent in the society of my feathered friends have not, I flatter myself, been so wasted that I cannot small my soul, just as the preacher smalled his voice, to bring it within reach of them, and establish some sort of passage.

And so, thinking that a little more knowledge of birds than most people possess, and consideration for them--for I will not be so harsh to speak of justice--and time and attention given to their wants, might remove this reproach, and silence these vague suggestions of a too fastidious conscience, I have taken the trouble to add something to the seed with which these little prisoners had been supplied. For we give sweetmeats to the child that cries for the moon--an alternative which often acts beneficially--and there is nothing more to be done. Any one of us, even a philosopher, would think it hard to be restricted to dry bread only, yet such a punishment would be small compared with that which we, in our ignorance or want of consideration, inflict on our caged animals--our pets on compulsion. Small, because an almost infinite variety of flavours drawn from the whole vegetable kingdom--a hundred flavours for every one in the dietary which satisfies our heavier mammalian natures--is a condition of the little wild bird's existence and essential to its well-being and perfect happiness. And so, to remedy this defect, I went out into the garden, and with seeding grasses and pungent buds, and leaves of a dozen different kinds, I decorated the cage until it looked less like a prison than a bower. And now for an hour the little creatures have been busy with their varied green fare, each one tasting half a dozen different leaves every minute, hopping here and there and changing places with his fellows, glancing their bright little eyes this way and that, and all the time uttering gratulatory notes in the canary's conversational tone. And their language is not altogether untranslatable. I listen to one, a pretty pure yellow bird, but slightly tyrannical in his treatment of the others, and he says, or seems to say: "This is good, I like it, only the old leaf is tough; the buds would be better. . . . These are certainly not so good. _I tasted them out of compliment to nature, though they were scarcely palatable. . . ._" No, that was not my own expression; it was said by Thoreau, perhaps the only human a little bird can quote with approval. "This is decidedly bitter--and yet--yes, it does leave a pleasant flavour on the palate. Make room for me there--or I shall make you and let me taste it again. Yes, I fancy I can remember eating something like this in a former state of existence, ages and ages ago." And so on, and so on, until I began to imagine that the whole thing had been put right, and that the uncomfortable feeling would return to trouble me no more. But at the rate they are devouring their green stuff there will not be a leat, scarcely a stem left in another hour; and then? Why, then they will have the naked wires of their cage all round them to protect them from the cat and for hunger there will be seed in the box.

After all, then, what a little I have been able to do! But I flatter myself that if they were mine I should do more. I never keep captive birds, but if they were given to me, and I could not refuse, I should do a great deal more for them. All my knowledge of their ways and their requirements would teach me how to make their caged existence less unlike the old natural life, than it now is. To begin the ameliorating process, I should place them in a large cage, large enough to allow space for flight, so that they might fly to and fro, a few feet each way, and rest their little feet from continual perching. That would enable them to exercise their most important muscles and experience once more, although in a very limited degree, the old delicious sensation of gliding at will through the void air. The wires of their new cage would be of brass or of some bright metal, and the wooden parts and perches green enamelled, or green variegated with brown and grey, and the roof would be hung with glass lustres, to quiver and sparkle into drops of violet, red, and yellow light, gladdening these little lovers of bright colours; for so we deem them. I should also add gay flowers and berries, crocus and buttercup and dandelion, hips and haws and mountain ash and yellow and scarlet leaves--all seasonable jewellery from woods and hedges and from the orchard and garden. Then would come the heaviest part of my task, which would be to satisfy their continual craving for new tastes in food, their delight in an endless variety. I should go to the great seed-merchants of London and buy samples of all the cultivated seeds of the earth, and not feed them in a trough, or manger, like heavy domestic brutes, but give it to them mixed and scattered in small quantities, to be searched for and gladly found in the sand and gravel and turf on the wide floor of the cage. And, higher up, the wires of their dwelling would be hung with an endless variety of seeded grasses, and sprays of all trees and plants, good, bad, and indifferent. For if the volatile bird dines on no more than twenty dishes every day he loves to taste of a hundred and to have at least a thousand on the table to choose from.

Feeding the birds and keeping the cage always sweet and clean would occupy most, if not the whole of my time. But would that be too much to give if it made me tranquil in my own mind? For it must be noted that I have done all this, mentally and on paper, for my own satisfaction rather than that of the canaries. Birds are not worth much--_to us_. Are not five sparrows sold for three farthings? I have even shot many birds and have felt no compunction. True, they perished before their time, but they did not languish, and being dead there was an end of them; but the caged canaries continuing with us, cannot be dismissed from the mind with the same convenient ease. After all, I begin to think that my imaginary reforms, if carried out, would not quite content me. The "compunctious visitings" would continue still. I look out of the window and see a sparrow on a neighbouring tree, loudly chirruping. And as I listen, trying to find comfort by thinking of the perils which do environ him, his careless unconventional sparrow-music resolves itself into articulate speech, interspersed with occasional bursts of derisive laughter. He knows, this fabulous sparrow, what I have been thinking about and have written. "How would you like it," I hear him saying, "O wise man that knows so much about the ways of birds, if you were shut up in a big cage--in Windsor Castle, let us say--with scores of menials to wait on you and anticipate your every want? That is, I must explain, every want compatible with--ahem!--the captive condition. Would you be happy in your confinement, practising with the dumb-bells, riding up and down the floors on a bicycle and gazing at pictures and filigree caskets and big malachite vases and eating dinners of many, many courses? Or would you begin to wish that you might be allowed to live on sixpence a day--_and earn it_; and even envy the ragged tramp who dines on a handful of half-rotten apples and sleeps in a hay-stack, but is free to come and go, and range the world at will? You have been playing at nature; but Nature mocks you, for your captives thank you not. They would rather go to her without an intermediary, and take a scantier measure of food from her hand, but flavoured as she only can flavour it. Widen your cage, naturalist; replace the little twinkling lustres with sun and moon and milky way; plant forests on the floor, and let there be hills and valleys, rivers and wide spaces; and let the blue pillars of heaven be the wires of your cage, with free entrance to wind and rain; then your little captives will be happy, even happy as I am, in spite of all the perils which do environ me--guns and cats and snares, with wet and fog and hard frosts to come."

And, seeing my error, I should open the cage and let them fly away. Even to death, I should let them fly, for there would be a taste of liberty first, and life without that sweet savour, whether of aerial bird or earth-bound man, is not worth living.

CHANTICLEER

During the month of September I spent several days at a house standing on high ground in one of the pleasantest suburbs of London, commanding a fine view at the back of the breezy, wooded, and not very far-off Surrey hills; and all round, from every window, front and back, such a mass of greenery met the eye, almost concealing the neighbouring houses, that I could easily imagine myself far out in the country. In the garden the omnipresent sparrow, and that always pleasant companion the starling, associated with the thrush, blackbird, green linnet, chaffinch, redstart, wren, and two species of tits; and, better than all these, not fewer than half a dozen robins warbled their autumn notes from early morning until late in the evening. Domestic bird-life was also represented by fifteen fowls, and the wise laxity existing in the establishment made these also free of the grounds; for of eyesores and painful skeletons in London cupboards, one of the worst, to my mind, is that unwholesome coop at the back where a dozen unhappy birds are usually to be found immured for life. These, more fortunate, had ample room to run about in, and countless broad shady leaves from which to pick the green caterpillar, and red tortoise-shaped lady-bird, and parti-coloured fly, and soft warm soil in which to bathe in their own gallinaceous fashion, and to lie with outstretched wings luxuriating by the hour in the genial sunshine. And having seen their free wholesome life, I did not regard the new-laid egg on the breakfast-table with a feeling of repugnance, but ate it with a relish.

I have said that the fowls numbered fifteen; five were old birds, and ten were chickens, closely alike in size, colour and general appearance. They were not the true offspring of the hen that reared them, but hatched from eggs bought from a local poultry-breeder. As they advanced in age to their teens, or the period in chicken-life corresponding to that in which, in the human species, boy and girl begin to diverge, their tails grew long, and they developed very fine red combs; but the lady of the house, who had been promised good layers when she bought the eggs clung tenaciously to the belief that long arching tails and stately crests were ornaments common to both sexes in this particular breed. By and by they commenced to crow, first one, then two, then all, and stood confessed cockerels. Incidents like this, which are of frequent occurrence, serve to keep alive the exceedingly ancient notion that the sex of the future chick can be foretold from the shape of the egg. As I had no personal interest in the question of the future egg-supply of the establishment, I was not sorry to see the chickens develop into cocks; what did interest me were their first attempts at crowing--those grating sounds which the young bird does not seem to emit, but to wrench out with painful effort, as a plant is wrenched out of the soil, and not without bringing away portions of the lungs clinging to its roots. The bird appears to know what is coming, like an amateur dentist about to extract one of his own double-pronged teeth, and setting his feet firmly on the ground, and throwing himself well back before an imaginary looking-glass, and with arched-neck, wide-open beak, and rolling eyes, courageously performs the horrible operation. One cannot help thinking that a cockerel brought up without any companions of his own sex and age would not often crow, but in this instance there were no fewer than ten of them to encourage each other in the laborious process of tuning their harsh throats. Heard subsequently in the quiet of the early morning, these first tuning efforts suggested some reflections to my mind, which may not prove entirely without interest to fanciers who aim at something beyond a mere increase in our food-supply in their selecting and refining processes.

To continue my narration. I woke in the morning at my usual time, between three and four o'clock, which is not my getting-up time, for, as a rule, after half an hour or so I sleep again. The waking is not voluntary as far as I know; for although it may seem a contradiction in terms to speak of coming at will out of a state of unconsciousness, we do, in cases innumerable, wake voluntarily, or at the desired time, not perhaps being altogether unconscious when sleeping. If, however, this early waking were voluntary, I should probably say that it was for the pleasure of listening to the crowing of the cocks at that silent hour when the night, so near its end, is darkest, and the mysterious tide of life, prescient of coming dawn, has already turned, and is sending the red current more and more swiftly through the sleeper's veins. I have spent many a night in the desert, and when waking on the wide silent grassy plain, the first whiteness in the eastern sky, and the fluting call of the tinamou, and the perfume of the wild evening primrose, have seemed to me like a resurrection in which I had a part; and something of this feeling is always associated in my mind with the first far-heard notes of Chanticleer.

It was very dark and quiet when I woke; my window was open, with only a lace curtain before it to separate me from the open air. Presently the profound silence was broken. From a distance of fifty or sixty yards away on the left hand came the crow of a cock, soon answered by another further away on the same side, and then, further away still, by a third. Other voices took up the challenge on the right, some near, some far, until it seemed that there was scarcely a house in the neighbourhood at which Chanticleer was not a dweller. There was no other sound. Not for another hour would the sparrows burst out in a chorus of chirruping notes, lengthened or shortened at will, variously inflected, and with a ringing musical sound in some of them, which makes one wonder why this bird, so high in the scale of nature, has never acquired a set song for itself. For there is music in him, and when confined with a singing finch he will sometimes learn its song. Then the robins, then the tits, then the starlings, gurgling, jarring, clicking, whistling, chattering. Then the pigeons cooing soothingly on the roof and window-ledges, taking flight from time to time with sudden, sharp flap, flap, followed by a long, silken sound made by the wings in gliding. At four the cocks had it all to themselves; and, without counting the cockerels (not yet out of school), I could distinctly hear a dozen birds; that is to say, they were near enough for me to listen to their music critically. The variety of sounds they emitted was very great, and, if cocks were selected for their vocal qualities, would have shown an astonishing difference in the musical tastes of their owners. A dozen dogs of as many different breeds, ranging from the boar-hound to the toy terrier, would not have shown greater dissimilarity in their forms than did these cocks in their voices. For the fowl, like the dog, has become an extremely variable creature in the domestic state, in voice no less than in size, form, colour, and other particulars. At one end of the scale there was the raucous bronchial strain produced by the unwieldy Cochin. What a bird is that! Nature, in obedience to man's behests, and smiling with secret satire over her work, has made it ponderous and ungraceful as any clumsy mammalian, wombat, ardvaark, manatee, or hippopotamus. The burnished red hackles, worn like a light mantle over the black doublet of the breast, the metallic dark green sickle-plumes arching over the tail, all the beautiful lines and rich colouring, have been absorbed into flesh and fat for gross feeders; and with these have gone its liveliness and vigour, its clarion voice and hostile spirit and brilliant courage; it is Gallus bankiva degenerate, with dulled brains and blunted spurs, and its hoarse crow is a barbarous chant.

And far away at the other end, startling in its suddenness and impetuosity, was a trisyllabic crow, so brief, piercing, and emphatic, that it could only have proceeded from that peppery uppish little bird, the bantam. And of the three syllables, the last, which should be the longest, was the shortest, "short and sharp like the shrill swallow's cry," or perhaps even more like the shrieky bark of an enraged little cur; not a _reveille_ and silvern morning song in one, as a crow should be, but a challenge and a defiance, wounding the sense like a spur, and suggesting the bustle and fury of the cockpit.

If this style of crowing was known to Milton, it is perhaps accountable for the one bad couplet in the "Allegro":

While the cock with lively din Scatters the rear of darkness thin.