Chapter 3

But now behold another grub-hunter, which, distasting mud, has discovered an unworked mine in the trunks of trees. There, in deep burrows, lurked great succulent beetle-grubs, demanding only a tool with which they might be dug out. This has been perfected by many stages, and I have now before me a splendid specimen of the most improved pattern--namely, the bill of the great black woodpecker of Western India, a bird nearly as big as a crow. It is nothing else than a hatchet in two parts, which, when locked together, present a steeled edge about three-eighths of an inch in breadth. The hatchet is two and a half inches long by one in breadth at the base, and a prominent ridge, or keel, runs down the top from base to point. It is further strengthened by a keel on each side. Inside of it, ere the bird became a mummy, was her tongue, which I myself drew out three inches beyond the point of the bill. It was rough and tough, like gutta-percha, tipped with a fine spike, and armed on each side, for the last inch of its length, with a row of sharp barbs pointing backwards. The whole was lubricated with some patent stickfast, "always ready for use." That grub must sit tight indeed which this corkscrew will not draw when once the hatchet has opened a way.

The swallows and swifts, untirable on their wings, but too gentle to hold their own in a jostling crowd, soared away after the midges and May-flies and pestilent gnats that rise from marsh and pond to hold their joyous dances under the blue dome. Continually rushing open-mouthed after these, they have stretched their gape from ear to ear; but their bills have dwindled by disuse and left only an apology for their absence.

Compared with all these, the birds that can do with a diet of fruit only lead an easy life. They have just to pluck and eat--that is, if they are pleased with small fruits and content to swallow them whole. But the hornbills, being too bulky to hop among twigs, need a long reach; hence the portentous machines which they carry on their faces. The beak of a hornbill is nothing else than a pair of tongs long enough to reach and strong enough to wrench off a wild fig from its thick stem. If it were of iron it would be thin and heavy; being of cellular horn-stuff it is bulky but light. If you ask why it should rise up into an absurd helmet on the queer fowl's head, I cannot tell. Nature has quaint ways of using up surplus material.

An easy life begets luxury, and among fruit-eaters the parrot has become an epicure. It will not swallow its food whole, and its bill deserves study. In birds generally the upper mandible is more or less joined to the skull, leaving only the lower jaw free to move. But in the parrot the upper mandible is also hinged, so that each plays freely on the other. The upper, as we all know, is hooked and pointed; the lower has a sharp edge. The tongue is thick, muscular, and sensitive. The whole makes a wonderful instrument, unique among birds, for feelingly manipulating a dainty morsel, shelling, peeling, and slicing, until nothing is left but the sweetest part of the core. Of all gourmands Polly is the most shameless waster.

Long before land, trees, and air had been exploited the primitive bird must have discovered the harvest of the waters, and here the competition has been very keen indeed. Yet the form of bill most in use is very simple--just a plain pair of forceps, long and sharp-pointed like scissors. This is evidently hard to beat, for birds of many sorts use it, handling it variously. The kingfisher plumps bodily down on the minnow from an overhanging perch; the solan goose, soaring, plunges from a "pernicious height"; the heron, high on its stilts, darts out a long and serpentine neck; the diver, with similar beak and neck, but different legs, pursues the fleeing shoals under water; to the swift and slippery fish all are alike terrible in their certainty.

There are, however, other varieties of the fishing bill. Some have a hook at the point, as that of the cormorant, and some are straight at the top, but curved on the under side. This last form is handy for storks, which do not pluck fish out of water so much, but scoop up frogs, crabs, and reptiles from the ground. The ridiculous bill of the puffin, or sea-parrot, is an eccentricity. There may be some idea in it, but I suspect it is an effect of vanity merely, being coloured blue, yellow, and red, and quite in keeping with the other absurdities of the wearer.

Apart from all these and by itself stands a princely fisher whose bill is no modification, but an original invention and a marvellous one. Larger than a swan and gluttonous withal, the pelican cannot live on single fishes. It has given up angling altogether and taken to netting; and the way in which the net has been constructed out of the pair of forceps provided in the original plan of its construction is as well worth your examining as anything I know. It is a foot in length, the upper jaw is flat and broad, while the lower consists of two thin, elastic bones joined at the point, a mere ring to carry the curious yellow bag that hangs from it. In pictures this is represented as a creel in which the kind pelican carries home the children's breakfast; you are allowed to see the tail of a big fish hanging out. But it is not a creel; it is a net. The great birds, marshalled in line on some broad lake or marsh, and beating the water with their wings, drive the fish before them until they have got a dense crowd huddled in panic and confusion between them and the shore. Now watch them narrowly. As each monstrous bill opens, the thin bones of the lower jaw stretch sideways to the breadth of a span by some curious mechanism not described in the books, and at the same time the shrunken bag expands into a deep, capacious net. Simultaneously the whole instrument is plunged into the struggling, silvery mass and comes up full. The side bones instantly contract again, and the upper jaw is clapped on them like a lid. No wonder the fishermen of the East detest the pelican.

In the same marsh, perhaps, standing with unequalled grace upon the longest legs known in this world, is a troop of giant birds as wonderful as the pelican, but how opposite! The beautiful flamingo is a bird of feeble intellect, delicate appetite, and genteel tastes. It cannot eat fish, for its slender throat would scarcely admit a pea. Besides, the idea of catching anything, or even picking up food from the ground, does not occur to its simple mind. Its diet consists of certain small crustaceans, classed by naturalists with water-fleas, which abound in brackish water; and it has an instrument for taking these which it knows how to use. I kept flamingos once, and, after trying many things in vain, offered them bran, or boiled rice, floating in water. Then they dined, and I learned the construction and working of the most marvellous of all bills. The lower jaw is deep and hollow, and its upper edges turn in to meet each other, so that you may fairly describe it as a pipe with a narrow slit along the upper side. In this pipe lies the tongue, and it cannot get out, for it is wider than the slit, but it can be pressed against the top to close the slit, and then the lower jaw becomes an actual pipe. The root of the tongue is furnished on both sides with a loose fringe which we will call the first strainer. The upper jaw is thin and flat and rests on the lower like a lid, and it is beautifully fringed along both sides with small, leathery points, close set, like the teeth of a very fine saw. This is the second strainer. To work the machine you dip the point into dirty water full of water-fleas, draw back the tip of the tongue a little, and suck in water till the lower jaw (the pipe) is full, then close the point again with the tip of the tongue and force the water out. It can only get out by passing through the first strainers at the root of the tongue, then over the palate, and so through the second strainers at the sides of the bill; and all the solid matter it contained will remain in the mouth. The sucking in and squirting out of the water is managed by the cheeks, or rather by the cheek, for a flamingo has only one cheek, and that is situated under the chin. When the bird is feeding you will see this throbbing faster than the eye can follow it, while water squirts from the sides of the mouth in a continuous stream. I should have said that the whole bill is sharply bent downwards at the middle. The advantage of this is that when the bird lets down its head into the water, like a bucket into a well, the point of the bill does not stick in the mud, but lies flat on it, upside down.

In conclusion, let us not fail to note, whatever be our political creed, that, while all the birds pursue their respective industries, there sit apart, in pride of place, some whose bills are not tools wherewith to work, but weapons wherewith to slay. And these take tribute of the rest, not with their consent, but of right.

III

TAILS

The secrets of Nature often play like an iridescence on the surface, and escape the eye of her worshipper because it is stopped with a microscope. There are mysteries all about us as omnipresent as the movement of the air that lifts the smoke and stirs the leaves, which I cannot find that any philosopher has looked into. Often and deeply have I been impressed with this. For example, there is scarcely, in this world, a commoner or a humbler thing than a tail, yet how multifarious is it in aspect, in construction, and in function, a hundred different things and yet one. Some are of feathers and some of hair, and some bare and skinny; some are long and some are short, some stick up and some hang down, some wag for ever and some are still; the uses that they serve cannot be numbered, but one name covers them all. In the course of evolution they came in with the fishes and went out with man. What was their purpose and mission? What place have they filled in the scheme of things? In short, what is the true inwardness of a tail?

If we try to commence--as scientific method requires--with a definition, we stumble on a key, at the very threshold, which opens the door. For there is no definition of a tail; it is not, in its nature, anything at all. When an animal's fore-legs are fitted on to its backbone at the proper distance from the hind-legs, if any of the backbone remains over, we call it a tail. But it has no purpose; it is a mere surplus, which a tailor (the pun is unavoidable) would have trimmed off. And, lo! in this very negativeness lies the whole secret of the multifarious positiveness of tails. For the absence of special purpose is the chance of general usefulness. The ear must fulfil its purpose or fail entirely, for it can do nothing else. Eyes, nose and mouth, hands and feet, all have their duties; the tail is the unemployed. And if we allow that life has had any hand in the shaping of its own destiny, then the ingenuity of the devices for turning the useless member to account affords one of the most exhilarating subjects of contemplation in the whole panorama of Nature. The fishes fitted it up at once as a twin-propeller, with results so satisfactory that the whale and the porpoise, coming long after, adopted the invention. And be it noted that these last and their kin are now the only ocean-going mammals in the world. The whole tribe of paddle-steamers, such as seals and walruses and dugongs, are only coasters.

Among those beasts that would live on the dry land, the primitive kangaroo could think of nothing better to do with his tail than to make a stool of it. It was a simple thought, but a happy one. Sitting up like a gentleman, he has his hands free to scratch his ribs or twitch his moustache. And when he goes he needs not to put them to the ground, for his great tail so nearly equals the weight of his body that one pair of legs keeps the balance even. And so the kangaroo, almost the lowest of beasts, comes closer to man in his postures than any other. The squirrel also sits up and uses his forepaws for hands, but the squirrel is a sybarite who lies abed in cold weather, and it is every way characteristic of him that he has sent his tail to the furrier and had it done up into a boa, or comforter, at once warm and becoming. See, too, how daintily he lifts it over his back to keep it clean. The rat is a near relation of the squirrel zoologically, but personally he is a gutter-snipe, and you may know that by one look at the tail which he drags after him like a dirty rope. Others of the same family, cleaner, though not more ingenious, like the guinea-pig, have simply dispensed with the encumbrance; but the rabbit has kept enough to make a white cockade, which it hoists when bolting from danger. This is for the guidance of the youngsters. Nearly every kind of deer and antelope carries the same signal, with which, when fleeing through dusky woods, the leader shows the way to the herd and the doe to her fawn.

But of beasts that graze and browse, a large number have turned their tails rather to a use which throws a pathetic light on misery of which we have little experience. We do, indeed, growl at the gnats of a summer evening and think ourselves very ill-used. How little do we know or think of the unintermitted and unabated torment that the most harmless classes of beasts suffer from the bands of beggars which follow them night and day, demanding blood, and will take no refusal. Driven from the brow they settle on the neck, shaken from the neck they dive between the legs, and but for that far-reaching whisk at the end of the tail, they would found a permanent colony on the flanks and defy ejection, like the raiders of Vatersay. Darwin argues that the tail-brush may have materially helped to secure the survival of those species of beasts that possessed it, and no doubt he is right.

The subject is interminable, but we must give a passing glance to some quixotic tails. The opossum scampers up a tree, carrying all her numerous family on her back, and they do not fall off because each infant is securely moored by its own tail to the uplifted tail of its mother. The opossum is a very primitive beast, and so early and useful an invention should, one would think, have been spread widely in after time; but there appears to be some difficulty in developing muscles at the thin end of a long tail, for the animals that have turned it into a grasping organ are few and are widely scattered. Examples are the chameleon among lizards, our own little harvest mouse, and, pre-eminent above all, the American monkeys. To a howler, or spider-monkey, its long tail is a swing and a trapeze in its forest gymnasium. Humboldt saw (he says it) a cluster of them all hanging from a tree by one tail, which proceeded from a Sandow in the middle. I should like to see that too. It is worth noting, by the way, that no old-world monkey has attained to this application of its tail.

Then there is the beaver, whose tail I am convinced is a trowel. I know of no naturalist who has mentioned this, but such negative evidence is of little weight. The beaver, as everybody knows, is a builder, who cuts down trees and piles log upon log until he has raised a solid, domed cabin from seven to twenty feet in diameter, which he then plasters over with clay and straw. If he does not turn round and beat the work smooth with his tail, then I require to know for what purpose he carries that broad, heavy, and hard tool behind him.

How few even among lovers of Nature know why a frog has no tail! The reason-is simply that it used that organ up when it was in want. In early life, as a jolly tadpole, it had a flourishing tail to swim with, and gills for breathing water, and an infantile mouth for taking vegetable nourishment. But when it began to draw near to frog's estate, serious changes were required in its structure to fit it for the life of a land animal. Four tiny legs appeared from under its skin, the gills gave place to air-breathing lungs, and the infant lips to a great, gaping mouth. Now, during this "temporary alteration of the premises" all business was of necessity stopped. The half-fish, half-frog could neither sup like an infant nor eat like a man. In this extremity it fed on its own tail--absorbed it as a camel is said to absorb its hump when travelling in the foodless desert--and so it entered on its new life without one.

Aeronautics have changed the whole perspective of life for birds, as they may for us shortly; so it is no surprise to find that birds have, almost with one consent, converted their tails into steering-gear. A commonplace bird, like a sparrow, scarcely requires this except as a brake when in the act of alighting; but to those birds with which flight is an art and an accomplishment, an expansive forked or rounded tail (there are two patents) is indispensable. We have shot almost all the birds of this sort in our own country, and must travel if we would enjoy that enchanting sight--a pair of eagles or a party of kites gone aloft for a sail when the wind is rising, like skaters to a pond when the ice is bearing. For an hour on end, in restful ease or swift joy, they trace ever-varying circles and spirals against the dark storm-cloud, now rising, now falling, turning and reversing, but never once flapping their widespread pinions.

How is it done? How does the _Shamrock_ sail? Watch, and you will see. When the wind is behind, each stiff quill at the end of the wing stands out by itself and is caught and driven by the blast; but as the bird turns round to face the gale, they all close up and form a continuous mainsail, close-hauled. And all the while the expanded tail is in play, dipping first at one side and then at the other, and turning the trim craft with easy grace "as the governor listeth."

Besides ground birds, like the quail, there are some eccentrics, such as Jenny wren, which have despised their tails, and there are specialists also which require them for other purposes than flying. The woodpecker's tail is quite useless as a rudder, for he is a woodman and has altered and adapted it for a portable stool to rest against as he plies his axe.

But that man must be very blind to the place which birds have taken in the progress of civilisation who can suppose it possible that they should think only of utility in such a question as the disposal of their tails. It is a common notion among those who have acquired some smattering of the theory of evolution that fishes developed into reptiles, reptiles into birds, and birds into beasts; but this is as wrong as it could be. Whatever the genealogy of the beasts may be, they certainly were not evolved from birds, and are in many respects not above them but below them. These are two independent branches of the tree of living forms, as the Greeks and Romans were branches of the stock of Japheth. The beasts may stand for the conquering Romans if you like, but the birds are the Greeks, and have advanced far beyond them in all emotional and artistic sensibility. They worship in the temple of music and beauty. And, like ourselves, they have found no subject so worthy of the highest efforts of art as their own dress. But the clothing of the body must conform more or less to the figure, and so, for a field in which invention and fancy may sport untrammelled, a lady turns to her hat and a bird to its tail. And by both, with equal heroism, every consideration of mere comfort, convenience, health, or safety is swept aside in obedience to the higher aim. Is this only a flippant jocularity, or is there here in very truth some profound law of the mind revealing itself in spheres seemingly so disconnected?

Look at a peacock. Its train, by the way, is a false tail, like the chignon of twenty years ago, or the fringe of the present day; the true tail is under it, and serves no purpose but to support it. Now the peacock lives on the ground, among scrub and brushwood, haunted by jackals and wild cats. They, like soldiers in khaki, reconnoitre him in a uniform expressly designed to elude the eye, but he flaunts a flag resplendent with green and gold. And when his one chance of life lies in springing nimbly from the ground and committing himself to his strong wings, he must lift and carry this ponderous paraphernalia with him. And the terrible Bonelli's eagle is soaring above. But all is risked proudly for the sake of the morning hour in the glade where the ladies assemble. And the peacock is only one of many. Not to mention the lyre bird, the Argus pheasant, the bird of paradise, and other splendid examples, there are common dicky-birds which point the moral and adorn the tail as emphatically.

If the tail is a rudder, where should you look to find it in its most simple and efficient form but among the flycatchers, which make their living by aerial acrobatics after flies? Yet this family seems to be peculiarly prone to the vanity of a stylish tail. The paradise flycatcher flutters two streamers a foot long, like white ribbons, behind it. The fantail could hide behind its own fan. The bee-eater has the two central feathers prolonged and pointed. The drongos, which are flycatchers in habit, wear their tails very long and deeply forked; and one of them, the racket-tailed drongo, has the two side feathers extended beyond the rest for nearly a foot, and as thin as wires, expanding into a blade at the ends. I have seen nothing in ladies' hats more preposterous. It is vain to object that there can be no proper comparison between tails and hats because the woman chooses her own hat while the bird has to wear what Nature has given it. I know that, but the contention is utterly superficial. What choice has a woman as to the style of her hat? Fashion prescribes for her, and Nature for the birds; that is all the difference. No doubt she acquiesces when theoretically she might rebel. The bird cannot rebel, but does it not acquiesce? Does a lyre bird submit to its tail--wear it under protest, so to speak? Believe me, every bird that has an aesthetic tail knows the fact, and tries to live up to it. We may push the argument even further, for the motmot of Brazil is not content with a ready-made tail, but actually strips the web off the two long side feathers with its own beak, except a little patch at the end, so as to get the pattern which Nature, if one must use the phrase, gave to the racket-tailed drongo. A specimen is exhibited in the hall of the South Kensington Museum.

In this connection I may also say that the shape or colour of a tail is not everything. An observant eye may find much to note in the wearing of them. There is a stylish way of carrying a tail and a slovenly way, and there are coquettish arts for the display of recherche tails. A blackbird and a starling are both tidy birds, and both walk much on the ground, but the one lifts its skirts, while the other, more practical and less fashionable, wears a walking dress and saves itself trouble.