Part 3

Each of the little creatures, though so frail and so delicately formed that its body offered a scarcely greater obstacle to the passage of the sunlight than the water in which it swam, was decorated on either side by one, or sometimes two, of those exquisite ornaments seen in the greatest perfection in the train of the peacock, which are perhaps best described as the “peacock-eye.” It was no mere spot, lying in a ring of a different colour, such as decorates the sides of a trout or salmon, but a perfectly-developed peacock-gem, lying in its gorgeous rings of blue, green, and gold, equally rich and dark in tint, and even more striking from its contrast with the colourless and semi-transparent body of the creature it adorned. The analogy with the pattern on the peacock’s tail was even more complete than that which a first glance disclosed; for on many of the fish a third or rudimentary eye appeared, fainter and elongated, like a smudge of wet colour, and corresponding exactly with the gradation or evolutionary process of ornament, which Charles Darwin noted in the side-feathers of the peacock-train. This wonderful decoration, which was assumed, like the brilliant red and emerald of the English sticklebacks, for the period of courtship only, disappears later in the year; and the creatures abide in plain clothes till next spring. But the character of the ornament they wear suggests a further and separate interest, beyond that which their beauty naturally claims. _Pattern_, by which we mean the repetition of certain and regular forms, so as to produce an ornament which pleases the eye without making any demands on the mind, is by no means a common form of natural decoration in the higher animals. Contrasts of brilliant colours, as in the plumage of the birds of paradise, and of the parrots and lorys, are the usual and beautiful adornments of birds. Any visitor to the cases of a good natural history collection, will find a hundred instances of this form of decoration for one of true pattern. Even the wings of butterflies, though spangled with colours in dots, lines, and spots, are usually devoid of pattern, though the juxtaposition of a number of the same species would instantly produce the effect of pattern. But that effect, so far as it is given in a single individual, is, as a rule, only due to the fact that the creature is itself symmetrical, and that the lines and markings on one side of the body are repeated upon the other. The stripes upon a tiger’s skin, for instance, though in the nature of ornament, are not a pattern, though a number of tigers’ skins laid side by side might produce to the eye the effect of pattern. The patterns themselves are also few in number; and these limited and favourite forms of enrichment are applied indiscriminately, and with a certain indifference to congruity of species, yet with unfailing success in the result, to the most widely-different forms in the animal creation. Take, for example, the most complex, and perhaps the most beautiful of all, natural ornaments, which appears in the “eyes” in the peacock’s tail. The same pattern, with slight variations, is found, not only on the feathers of the beautiful grouse-like Polyplectron of Malacca, though modified, as Darwin noted, by the white edging, which makes it even more conspicuous than the bronze circle round the peacock-eye, but also in the peacock-pheasant, and the Ocelated Turkey of Honduras. In this splendid bird, the “eyes” are placed in a row at the end of the tail-feathers, and upon some of the upper tail-coverts, and are rimmed with gold. The same pattern, by a leap from an order of birds not distantly connected, appears in undiminished beauty in the little fish from Trinidad; and with an almost incredible difference of subject and sameness in effect, in the peacock-butterfly and eyed hawk-moth of England, in the emperor-moth, and a number of allied insects; and lastly, with a startling resemblance, in the centre of the beautiful peacock iris, which is now cultivated in English gardens. It would, perhaps, not be difficult to add to the instances of repetition of this particular pattern which we have given, by a careful survey of the specimens exhibited in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. But the fact of the repetition of the “peacock-eye” as ornament in the case of birds, fishes, moths, butterflies, and lastly of a common and beautiful flower, will sufficiently illustrate the fact to which we draw attention. The pattern, if less elaborate and exact in reproduction when found among the moths and butterflies, is an “impressionist” rendering of the same scheme, and if it were the reproduction of some human hand, would leave no doubt as to the identity of the motive and idea in each. The remaining natural patterns, even though of less complex form, may almost be counted on the fingers of the hand, and are applied with the same careless profusion to the adornment of creatures, like and unlike, without distinction, though the range is in most cases far more limited than in that of the peacock-eye. The most perfect form of the cup-and-ball pattern, which is seen in the feathers of the Argus pheasant, seems only to reappear on the wings of the Brahma moth, and of the eyed tortoise, though in one or two other small tortoises the effect of the ball ornament is produced by an actual embossing of the shell. Yet even in this case, not only is the form of the pattern reproduced, but also the beautiful brown colouring, which, by its soberness and exquisite gradation, produces the effect of low relief in monochrome. The wave-line, the spot, the scale-pattern, the bar-pattern, and, in rare instances, a chequer or diaper in black and white, almost exhaust the list of other natural patterns, and these, like the peacock-eye, recur in non-allied species in exactly the same arrangement, not only of form, but of colour. A most effective spot-pattern is that in which a rich chestnut ground is covered with minute white or cream-coloured spots. The result is most rich and beautiful, and it seems to be reserved for use in highly-decorated creatures of any class or family. It is seen at its best on the breast of the lovely harlequin-duck, in which the whole surface shines like enamel. But exactly the same pattern in the same colours appears on the neck of such a widely-different species as the chestnut-eared finch of Australia; and with the order of colour reversed, under the wings of the bar-breasted finch, both of which may be seen in the Parrot House at the Zoological Gardens. In the smaller wing-feathers of the Argus pheasant, this spot-pattern is reproduced on almost the same minute scale as on the harlequin-duck and the little finches. Then by a sudden change it is found on the back of the larvæ of the _Gallium_ hawk-moth, a chestnut-coloured insect, with a row of minute white spots down the middle of its back, and two rows of rather larger white spots, one on each side. The larvæ of the spurge hawk-moth, of the white-satin moth, and of the sycamore dagger-moth, also show it. Among butterflies, the _Salatura Melanippus_ has a border of white spots on chestnut ground round the edges of its wings; and the same arrangement may be seen on a shell—some kind of _Gastropoda_, if we remember rightly—which is “commonly observed” on cottage mantelpieces. The “scale-pattern” is generally due in the case of birds to the natural shape of the feathers, and not to surface-pattern. A good example is the neck of the Amherst pheasant, in which the feathers are scale-shaped, and being edged with black, produce a beautiful pattern, and the neck of the golden pheasant, in which the corresponding feathers have square ends, and the black edging merely falls into parallel lines. The perfect rectangular diaper pattern is extremely rare in birds, but not uncommon in the larvæ of moths and butterflies. It is seen in perfection on the backs of the great northern diver and its relations; and in a faint reproduction on the wings of the wood-leopard moth. A very elegant and decorative ornament is the “wave-line” pattern. This, like the chestnut ground and white spot, is constantly reproduced in the same colours, black on grey, or grey on black. It appears on the side of the wild duck, on Swinhoe’s pheasant, in which bird it is the main form of ornament, on the neck of the grass-parakeet, on the sand-grouse, on several common species of iris, and on the wings of the Brahma moths, surrounding the ball ornament to which we have referred. The inference to be drawn from these coincidences must be left to practical zoologists. But the fact that natural patterns, as applied to animals and plants, while at times showing the utmost elaboration of design, are so limited in number, and applied with so little modification in colour or form to birds, fishes, insects, and plants alike, seems an inviting subject for inquiry.

Meantime it would be a charming amusement to any one who desires a new and not too exacting intellectual interest in a visit to the Zoological Gardens, to go from the aviaries to the wild-fowl ponds, and from the pheasants in their runs to the finches in their cages in the Parrot House, and make a complete list of the possessors of each form of these distinct and arbitrary animal patterns. By so doing, he would incidentally secure an acquaintance with the most beautiful of all the birds, for the possessors of these ornaments are generally among the most elaborately marked of any of their species. The list given above is far from exhaustive, and as the first, and often the most pleasing, part of these minor inquiries into nature consists in the collection and classifying of likenesses, it offers an attraction as great as any obvious inducements to observation in the Society’s collection. Some day we shall perhaps see in the cases at South Kensington a collection of examples of the repetition of ornament, as well as of the evolution of ornament in nature. The origin of the first is now explained. But on what hypothesis can we account for the second?

The observation of these patterns should extend throughout the year if it is to be complete. The typical pheasants are only in perfect plumage in winter, and these delicate ornaments are much affected by the physical condition of the wearer. In the fish, as we have seen, they almost entirely disappear after the bodily vigour of the spring season has departed. In late summer and early autumn the pheasants and peacocks are moulting; the tropical moths, on the other hand, which have such beautiful analogies with the bird plumage, are hatching out in May. The pretty little tropical finches take far less time to moult than some of the larger birds, or are less affected in plumage, and the minute but accurate reproductions of the patterns on the wood-duck, wild duck, and jungle-fowl which appear on their diminutive bodies may be seen at almost any season in the Parrot House. The flower gardening at the Zoo is now maintained at so high a pitch of elaboration and beauty, that it would not be difficult to provide instances of animal pattern in beds of peacock iris, and of other plants which reproduce the less elaborate but equally distinct forms of pattern of which examples have been given above.

THE GIRAFFE’S OBITUARY.

THE winter of the year 1892, like the days of pestilence before the walls of Troy, was fatal both to man and beast. Even the carefully tended inmates of the Zoological Society’s Gardens did not escape; and as the new year opened with the death within a week of “Sally,” most human and most intelligent of apes, and of her neighbour “Tim,” the silver gibbon, who was almost as great a favourite of the London public as the educated chimpanzee, so the spring saw the death of the two beautiful giraffes, the sole survivors left in the collection. The experience which the Society has had in maintaining its stock of these interesting creatures has not, however, been altogether discouraging. Since the first four specimens were brought to England in 1836, no less than seventeen fawns have been born in the Gardens, and many of these lived to grow up. But the stock gradually diminished, until in 1866 two were burnt to death in their stable, and a third died of old age, leaving only the pair now lost.

The time of their death, unfortunately, coincided with the complete interruption of the ancient trade in wild animals up the Valley of the Nile by the Mahdi’s occupation of the Soudan, a trade as old as the days of Solomon, never organized, often interrupted for centuries, yet always ready to spring up again, and always dependent for its rarest products on the free navigation of the river of Egypt. Giraffes—which, not excepting the hippopotamus, have most excited the imagination of European capitals after the long intervals in which they have remained unseen by the nations of the West—seem always to have found their way hither from the land of the Pharaohs. The first seen in Europe since the “tertiary epoch” was obtained from Alexandria by Julius Cæsar, and exhibited at the Circensian Games to crowds who expected, from its name, “camelopard,” to find in it a combination of the size of a camel and the ferocity of a panther. Pliny, who described it, echoed the public disappointment. “It was as quiet,” he wrote, “as a sheep.” The trade probably reached its maximum after it became the fashion to exhibit combats of wild beasts at Rome; yet even then giraffes seem to have been scarce in the popular shows, though Pompey could exhibit five hundred lions at a time, and the Emperor Titus, at the dedication of his new theatre, caused the slaughter of five thousand wild beasts. Either the number of wild animals in the provinces must have been beyond anything since known, or the Roman Governors must have used their despotic powers freely to oblige their friends. No doubt they did this. Cælius, Cicero’s gossiping correspondent, says, when writing to him in Cilicia—“In nearly every letter I have written to you about panthers. It is a great shame. Pray send to Pamphylia, where most are said to be taken. You have only to give an order, and the thing is done. You know I hate trouble, while you like it, and yet you will not do this, which is no trouble. I have sent men to look after them and bring them here.”

Despots are the best collectors; and from the fall of the Roman Empire till the arrival of those placed in the Zoological Gardens in 1836, the rare appearances of the giraffe in Europe were in each case due to the munificence of Eastern Sultans and Pashas. The Prince of Damascus gave one to the Emperor Frederick II. in 1215; and the Soldan of Egypt presented another to Lorenzo the Magnificent, which became the pet of Florence, and used to be allowed to walk in the streets, and take the presents of fruit and cakes extended to it from the balconies. From this time the giraffe was not seen in Europe until, in 1827, the Pasha of Egypt sent four to Constantinople, Venice, England, and France respectively. The giraffe sent to England was in bad health, and soon died; but the Parisians went wild with excitement over the Pasha’s present. It had spent the winter at Marseilles, and throve there on the milk of the cows which the Pasha had sent over for its use from Egypt. The Prefect of Marseilles had the arms of France embroidered on its body-cloth, and it entered Paris escorted by a Darfour negro, Hassan, an Arab, a Marseilles groom, a mulatto interpreter, the Prefect of Marseilles himself, and a professor from the Jardin des Plantes, while troops kept back the crowd. Thousands came every day to see it, and men and women wore gloves, gowns, and waistcoats of the colour of its spots. But the successful expedition by which, in 1836, M. Thibaut procured a stock of giraffes for the Zoological Society, owed nothing to the patronage of the Pasha of Egypt, beyond permission to enter the Soudan. The caravan left the Nile near Dongola, and thence passed on to the desert of Kordofan. There M. Thibaut engaged the services of the Arab sword-hunters, whose skill and courage were of such service to Sir Samuel Baker in his expedition thirty years later to the sources of the Nile tributaries; and in two days they sighted the giraffes. A female with a fawn was first pursued by the Arabs, who killed the animal with their swords, and next day tracked and caught the fawn in the thorny mimosa scrub. For four days the young giraffe was secured by a cord, the end of which was held by one of the Arabs; at the end of that time it was perfectly tame, and trotted after the caravan with the female camels which had been brought to supply it with milk. The Arabs were excellent nurses, and taught the young creature to drink milk by putting their fingers into its mouth and so inducing it to suck. Four others which M. Thibaut caught died in the cold weather in the desert. But he replaced three of these, and brought four, including that first taken, down the Nile to Alexandria, and then by ship to Malta. “Providence alone,” he wrote, “enabled me to surmount these difficulties.”

The Report of the Council of the Society as to the progress of this great undertaking is worth quoting in full.

“The Council are now (April 1836) looking forward with interest to the completion of an attempt in which the Society is engaged for the importation of several giraffes, which they hope to see added to the Society’s collection in a very few weeks. In the earlier days of the Society’s existence, the acquisition of this singular and rare animal was among the most important objects to which the attention of the Council was directed, and they made many inquiries as to the probable means of effecting it, and then named a price which would be paid for one or two of them, on their being delivered, in good health, at the Society’s Gardens.

“In 1833 the inquiries were again resumed, through Mr. Bourchier of Malta, to whose valuable aid on numerous occasions the Society is almost incessantly indebted. Through his intervention, and the kindness of Colonel Campbell, her Majesty’s Consul-General for Egypt, an arrangement was made during the close of that year with M. Thibaut, who was then at Cairo, and he agreed to proceed to Nubia for the purpose of procuring giraffes on the Society’s behalf. The terms of his agreement imposed upon him the whole risk of the undertaking, previously to the delivery of the animals in Malta, and it was not until his landing them in that island that he was entitled to receive the stipulated price, which was at a fixed rate for each individual, diminishing in proportion to the number he should bring with him.”

After a brief reference to the capture of the animals, the report states that he reached Malta in safety with his valuable charges, three males and a female, on November 21, 1834. “Having thus fulfilled his engagement, M. Thibaut became entitled to receive the stipulated sum of £700, which has accordingly been paid him. But the Council has considered it so desirable to avail themselves of his experience with respect to these valuable animals, that they have arranged with him for the continuation of his services until their arrival in England. For the conveyance of the giraffes to this country, the Council have availed themselves of the _Manchester_, a steam vessel of great size and power, which proceeded to Lisbon at the beginning of the present month, having been specially engaged for the service of Prince Ferdinand of Portugal. From Lisbon the _Manchester_ is to proceed to Malta, whence she will return to London. Her arrival may be expected before the end of May. For the conveyance of the animals to England £1000 will be paid, and the necessary fittings for the accommodation of the giraffes will be prepared at the cost of the Society in her Majesty’s dockyard at Malta, orders to that effect having been sent thither by the Lords of the Admiralty.” Thus the giraffes came to this country under circumstances almost as imposing as those which marked the reception of that sent by the Pasha of Egypt to Paris. They travelled in one of the first steam vessels of the mercantile marine, one which had just conveyed a prince, and their comfort was provided for by the Admiralty and the Royal Dockyards.

All four were safely lodged in the Zoological Gardens on May 24, 1836, an event which the Council of the Society justly claimed as highly creditable to its resources. One died in the following winter, but the rest continued in excellent health, and became the greatest public favourites in the menagerie.