Front matter (continued 4)

It happened that in January some winters ago, there was a very great fall of snow in England, especially in the south and west. The snow fell without intermission all day and all night, and on the following morning Wells appeared half buried in it. He was then living with a daughter who kept house for him in a cottage standing in its own grounds on the outskirts of the town. On attempting to leave the house he found they were shut in by the snow, which had banked itself against the walls to the height of the eaves. Half an hour's vigorous spade work enabled him to get out from the kitchen door into the open, and the sun in a blue sky shining on a dazzling white and silent world. But no milkman was going his rounds, and there would be no baker nor butcher nor any other tradesman to call for orders. And there were no provisions in the house! But the milk for breakfast was the first thing needed, and so with a jug in his hand he went bravely out to try and make his way to the milk shop which was not far off.

A wall and hedge bounded his front garden on one side, and this was now entirely covered by an immense snowdrift, sloping up to a height of about seven feet. It was only when he paused to look at this vast snow heap in his garden that he caught sight of a goose, a very big snow-white bird without a grey spot in its plumage, standing within a few yards of him, about four feet from the ground. Its entire snowy whiteness with snow for a background had prevented him from seeing it until he looked directly at it. He stood still gazing in astonishment and admiration at this noble bird, standing so motionless with its head raised high that it was like the figure of a goose carved out of some crystalline white stone and set up at that spot on the glittering snowdrift. But it was no statue; it had living eyes which without the least turning of the head watched him and every motion he made. Then all at once the thought came into his head that here was something, very good succulent food in fact, sent, he almost thought providentially, to provision his house; for how easy it would be for him as he passed the bird to throw himself suddenly upon and capture it! It had belonged to some one, no doubt, but that great snowstorm and the furious north-east wind had blown it far far from its native place and it was lost to its owner for ever. Practically it was now a wild bird free for him to take without any qualms and to nourish himself on its flesh while the snow siege lasted. Standing there, jug in hand, he thought it out, and then took a few steps towards the bird in order to see if there was any sign of suspicion in it; but there was none, only he could see that the goose without turning its head was all the time regarding him out of the corner of one eye. Finally he came to the conclusion that his best plan was to go for the milk and on his return to set the jug down by the gate when coming in, then to walk in a careless, unconcerned manner towards the door, taking no notice of the goose until he got abreast of it, and then turn suddenly and hurl himself upon it. Nothing could be easier; so away he went and in about twenty minutes was back again with the milk, to find the bird in the same place standing as before motionless in the same attitude. It was not disturbed at his coming in at the gate, nor did it show the slightest disposition to move when he walked towards it in his studied careless manner. Then, when within three yards of it, came the supreme moment, and wheeling suddenly round he hurled himself with violence upon his victim, throwing out his arms to capture it, and so great was the impulse he had given himself that he was buried to the ankles in the drift. But before going into it, in that brief moment, the fraction of a second, he saw what happened; just as his hands were about to touch it the wings opened and the bird was lifted from its stand and out of his reach as if by a miracle. In the drift he was like a drowning man, swallowing snow into his lungs for water. For a few dreadful moments he thought it was all over with him; then he succeeded in struggling out and stood trembling and gasping and choking, blinded with snow. By-and-bye he recovered and had a look round, and lo! there stood his goose on the summit of the snow bank about three yards from the spot where it had been! It was standing as before, perfectly motionless, its long neck and head raised, and was still in appearance the snow-white figure of a carved bird, only it was more conspicuous and impressive now, being outlined against the blue sky, and as before it was regarding him out of the corner of one eye. He had never, he said, felt so ashamed of himself in his life! If the bird had screamed and fled from him it would not have been so bad, but there it had chosen to remain, as if despising his attempt at harming it too much even to feel resentment. A most uncanny bird! it seemed to him that it had divined his intention from the first and had been prepared for his every movement; and now it appeared to him to be saying mentally: "Have you got no more plans to capture me in your clever brain, or have you quite given it up?"

Yes, he had quite, quite given it up!

And then the goose, seeing there were no more plans, quietly unfolded its wings and rose from the snowdrift and flew away over the town and the cathedral away on the further side, and towards the snow-covered Mendips; he standing there watching it until it was lost to sight in the pale sky.

CHAPTER XII

THE DARTFORD WARBLER

HOW TO SAVE OUR RARE BIRDS

The most interesting chapter in John Burroughs' Fresh Fields contains an account of an anxious hurried search after a nightingale in song, at a time of the year when that "creature of ebullient heart" somewhat suddenly drops into silence. A few days were spent by the author in rushing about the country in Surrey and Hampshire, with the result that once or twice a few musical throbs of sound, a trill, a short detached phrase, were heard—just enough to convince the eager listener that here was a vocalist beautiful beyond all others, and that he had missed its music by appearing a very few days too late on the scene.

During the last seven or eight years I have read this chapter several times with undiminished interest, and with a feeling of keen sympathy for the writer in his disappointment; for it is the case that I, too, all this time, have been in chase of a small British songster—a rare elusive bird, hard to find at any time as it is to hear a nightingale pour out its full song in the last week in June. In these years I have, at every opportunity, in spring, summer, and autumn, sought for the bird in the southern half of England, chiefly in the south and south-western counties. In the Midlands, and in Devonshire, where he was formerly well known, but where the authorities say he is now extinct, I failed to find him. I found him altogether in four counties, in a few widely-separated localities; in every case in such small numbers that I was reluctantly forced to give up a long-cherished hope that this species might yet recover from the low state, with regard to numbers, in which it fingers, and be permanently preserved as a member of the British avifauna.

It would indeed hardly be reasonable to entertain such a hope, when we consider that the furze wren, or Dartford warbler, as it is named in books, is a small, frail, insectivorous species, a feeble flyer that must brave the winters at home; that down to within thirty years ago it was fairly common, though local, in the south of England, and ranged as far north as the borders of Yorkshire, and that in this period it has fallen to its present state, when but a few pairs and small colonies, wide apart, exist in isolated patches of furze in four or five, possibly six, counties.

There can be no doubt that the decline of this species, which, on account of its furze-loving habits, must always be restricted to limited areas, is directly attributable to the greed of private collectors, who are all bound to have specimens—as many as they can get—both of the bird and its nest and eggs. Its strictly local distribution made its destruction a comparatively easy task. In 1873 Gould wrote in his large work on British Birds: "All the commons south of London, from Blackheath and Wimbledon to the coast, were formerly tenanted by this little bird; but the increase in the number of collectors has, I fear, greatly thinned them in all the districts near the metropolis; it is still, however, very abundant in many parts of Surrey and Hampshire." It did not long continue "very abundant." Gould was shown the bird, and supplied with specimens, by a man named Smithers, a bird-stuffer of Churt, who was at that time collecting Dartford warblers and their eggs for the trade and many private persons, on the open heath and gorse-grown country that lies between Farnham and Haslemere. Gould in the work quoted, adds: "As most British collectors must now be supplied with the eggs of the furze wren, I trust Mr Smithers will be more sparing in the future." So little sparing was he, that when he died, but few birds were left for others of his detestable trade who came after him.

Three or four years ago I got in conversation with a heath-cutter on Milford Common, a singular and brutal-looking fellow, of the half-Gypsy Devil's Punch-Bowl type, described so ably by Baring-Gould in his Broom Squire. He told me that when he was a boy, about thirty-five years ago, the furze wren was common in all that part of the country, until Smithers' offer of a shilling for every clutch of eggs, had set the boys from all the villages in the district hunting for the nests. Many a shilling had he been paid for the nests he found, but in a few years the birds became rare; and he added that he had not now seen one for a very long time.

In Clark's Kennedy's Birds of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire we get a glimpse of the furze wren collecting business at an earlier date and nearer the metropolis. In 1868 he wrote:—"The only locality in the two counties in which this species is at all numerous, is a common in the vicinity of Sunninghill, where it is found breeding every summer, and from whence a person in the neighbourhood obtains specimens at all times of the year, with which to supply the London bird-stuffers."

When the district worked by Smithers, and the neighbouring commons round Godalming, where Newman in his Letters of Rusticus says he had seen the "tops of the furze quite alive with these birds," had been depleted, other favourite haunts of the little doomed furze-lover were visited, and for a time yielded a rich harvest. In a few years the bird was practically extirpated; in the sixties and seventies it was common, now there are many young ornithologists with us who have never seen it (in this country at all events) in a state of nature. In some cases even persons interested in bird life, some of them naturalists too, did not know what was going on in their immediate neighbourhood until after the bird was gone. I met with a case of the kind, a very strange case indeed, in the summer of 1899, at a place near the south coast where the bird was common after it had been destroyed in Surrey, but does not now exist. In my search for information I paid a visit to the octogenarian vicar of a small rustic village. He was a native of the parish, and loved his home above all places, even as White loved Selborne, and had been a clergyman in it for over sixty years; moreover he was, I was told, a keen naturalist, and though not a collector nor a writer of books, he knew every plant and every wild animal to be found in the parish. He better than another, I imagined, would be able to give me some authentic local information.

I found him in his study—a tall, handsome, white-haired old man, very feeble; he rose, and supporting his steps with a long staff, led me out into the grounds and talked about nature. But his memory, like his strength, was failing; he seemed, indeed, but the ruin of a man, although still of a very noble presence. What he called the vicarage gardens, where we strolled about among the trees, was a place without walks, all overgrown with grass and wildings; for roses and dahlias he showed me fennel, goat's-beard, henbane, and common hound's tongue; and when speaking of their nature he stroked their leaves and stems caressingly. He loved these better than the gardener's blooms, and so did I; but I wanted to hear about the vanished birds of the district, particularly the furze wren, which had survived all the others that were gone.

His dim eyes brightened for a moment with old pleasant memories of days spent in observing these birds; and leading me to a spot among the trees, from which there was a view of the open country beyond, he pointed to a great green down, a couple of miles away, and told me that on the other side I would come on a large patch of furze, and that by sitting quietly there for half an hour or so I might see a dozen furze wrens. Then he added: "A dozen, did I say? Why, I saw not fewer than forty or fifty flitting about the bushes the very last time I went there, and I daresay if you are patient enough you will see quite as many."

I assured him that there were no furze wrens at the spot he had indicated, nor anywhere in that neighbourhood, and I ventured to add that he must be telling me of what he had witnessed a good many years ago. "No, not so many," he returned, "and I am astonished and grieved to hear that the birds are gone—four or five years, perhaps. No, it was longer ago. You are right—I think it must be at least fifteen years since I went to that spot the last time. I am not so strong as I was, and for some years have not been able to take any long walks."

Fifteen years may seem but a short space of time to a man verging on ninety; in the mournful story of the extermination of rare and beautiful British birds for the cabinet it is in reality a long period. Fifteen years ago the honey buzzard was a breeding species in England, and had doubtless been so for thousands of years. When the price of a "British-killed" specimen rose to £25, and of a "British-taken" egg to two or three or four pounds, the bird quickly ceased to exist. Probably there is not a local ornithologist in all the land who could not say of some species that bred annually, within the limits of his own country, that it has not been extirpated within the last fifteen years.

In the instance just related, when the aged vicar, sorrying at the loss of the birds, began to recall the rare pleasure it had given him to watch them disporting themselves among the furze-bushes, something of the illusion which had been in his mind imparted itself to mine, for I could see what he was mentally seeing, and the fifteen years dwindled to a very brief space of time. Like Burroughs with the nightingale, I, too, had arrived a few days too late on the scene; the "cursed collector" had been beforehand with me, as had indeed been the case on so many previous occasions with regard to other species.

A short time after my interview with the aged vicar, at an inn a very few miles from the village, I met a person who interested me in an exceedingly unpleasant way. He was a big repulsive-looking man in a black greasy coat—a human animal to be avoided; but I overheard him say something about rare birds which caused me to put on a friendly air and join in the talk. He was a Kentish man who spent most of his time in driving about from village to village, and from farm to farm, in the southern counties, in search of bargains, and was prepared to buy for cash down anything he could find cheap, from an old teapot, or a print, or copper scuttle, to a horse, or cart, or pig, or a houseful of furniture. He also bought rare birds in the flesh, or stuffed, and was no doubt in league with a good many honest gamekeepers in those counties. I had heard of "travellers" sent out by the great bird stuffers to go the rounds of all the big estates in some parts of England, but this scoundrel appeared to be a traveller in the business on his own account. I asked him if he had done anything lately in Dartford warblers. He at once became confidential, and said he had done nothing but hoped shortly to do something very good indeed. The bird, he said, was supposed to be extinct in Kent, and on that account specimens obtained in that county would command a high price. Now he had but recently discovered that a few—two or three pairs—existed at one spot, and he was anxious to finish the business he had on hand so as to go there and secure them. In answer to further questions, he said that the birds were in a place where they could not very well be shot, but that made no difference; he had a simple, effective way of getting them without a gun, and he was sure that not one would escape him.

On my mentioning the fact that the Kent County Council had obtained an order for an all the year round protection of this very bird, he looked at me out of the corners of his eyes and laughed, but said nothing. He took it as a rather good joke on my part.

There is not the slightest doubt that our wealthy private collectors have created the class of injurious wretches to which this man belonged.

• • • • •

To some who have glanced at a little dusty, out of shape mummy of a bird, labelled "Dartford Warbler," in a museum, or private collection, or under a glass shade, it may seem that I speak too warmly of the pleasure which the sight of the small furze-lover can give us. They have never seen it in a state of nature, and probably never will. When I consider all these British Passeres, which, seen at their best, give most delight to the æsthetic sense—the jay, the "British Bird of Paradise," as I have ventured to call it, displaying his vari-coloured feathers at a spring-time gathering; the yellow-green, long-winged wood wren, most aërial and delicate of the woodland warblers; the kingfisher, flashing turquoise blue as he speeds by; the elegant fawn-coloured, black-bearded tit, clinging to the grey-green, swaying reeds, and springing from them with a bell-like note; and the rose-tinted narrow-shaped bottle-tit as he drifts by overhead in a flock; the bright, lively goldfinch scattering the silvery thistle-down on the air; the crossbill, that quaint little many-coloured parrot of the north, feeding on a pine-cone; the grey wagtail exhibiting his graceful motions; and the golden-crested wren, seen suspended motionless with swiftly vibrating wings above his mate concealed among the clustering leaves, in appearance a great green hawk-moth, his opened and flattened crest a shining, flame-coloured disc or shield on his head,—when I consider all these, and others, I find that the peculiar charm of each does not exceed in degree that of the furze wren—seen at his best. He is of the type of the white-throat, but idealised; the familiar brown, excitable Sylvia, pretty as he is and welcome to our hedges in April, is in appearance but a rough study for the smaller, more delicately-fashioned and richly-coloured Melizophilus, or furze-lover. On account of his excessive rarity he can now be seen at his best only by those who are able to spend many days in searching and in watching, who have the patience to sit motionless by the hour; and at length the little hideling, tired of concealment or overcome by curiosity, shows himself and comes nearer and nearer, until the ruby red of the small gem-like eye may been seen without aid to the vision. A sprite-like bird in his slender exquisite shape and his beautiful fits of excitement; fantastic in his motions as he flits and flies from spray to spray, now hovering motionless in the air like the wooing gold-crest, anon dropping on a perch, to sit jerking his long tail, his crest raised, his throat swollen, chiding when he sings and singing when he chides, like a refined and lesser sedge warbler in a frenzy, his slate-black and chestnut-red plumage showing rich and dark against the pure luminous yellow of the massed furze blossoms. It is a sight of fairy-like bird life and of flower which cannot soon be forgotten. And I do not think that any man who has in him any love of nature and of the beautiful can see such a thing, and exist with its image in his mind, and not regard with an extreme bitterness of hatred those among us whose particular craze it is to "collect" such creatures, thereby depriving us and our posterity of the delight the sight of them affords.

Of many curious experiences I have met in my quest of the rare little bird, or of information concerning it, I have related two or three: I have one more to give—assuredly the strangest of all. I was out for a day's ramble with the members of a Natural History Society, at a place the name of which must not be told, and was walking in advance of the others with a Mr A., the leading ornithologist of the county, one whose name is honourably known to all naturalists in the kingdom. The Dartford warbler, he said in the course of conversation, had unhappily long been extinct in the county. Now it happened that among those just behind us there was another local naturalist, also well known outside his own county—Mr B., let us call him. When I separated from my companion this gentleman came to my side, and said that he had overheard some of our talk, and he wished me to know that Mr A. was in error in saying that the Dartford warbler was extinct in the county. There was one small colony of three or four pairs to be found at a spot ten to eleven miles from where we then were; and he would be glad to take me to the place and show me the birds. The existence of this small remnant had been known for several years to half a dozen persons, who had jealously kept the secret;—to their great regret they had had to keep it from their best friend and chief supporter of their Society, Mr A., simply because it would not be safe with him. He was enthusiastic about the native bird life, the number of species the county could boast, etc., and sooner or later he would incautiously speak about the Dartford warbler, and the wealthy local collectors would hear of it, with the result that the birds would quickly be gathered into their cabinets.

My informant went on to say that the greatest offenders were four or five gentlemen in the place who were zealous collectors. The county had obtained a stringent order, with all-the-year-round protection for its rare species. Much, too, had been done by individuals to create a public opinion favourable to bird protection, and among the educated classes there was now a strong feeling against the destruction by private collectors of all that was best worth preserving in the local wild bird life. But so far not the slightest effect had been produced in the principal offenders. They would have the rare birds, both the resident species and the occasional visitants, and paid liberally for all specimens. Bird-stuffers, gamekeepers—their own and their neighbours'—fowlers, and all those who had a keen eye for a feathered rarity, were in their pay; and so the destruction went merrily on. The worst of it was that the authors of the evil, who were not only law-breakers themselves, but were paying others to break the law, could not be touched; no one could prosecute nor openly denounce them because of their important social position in the county.

There was nothing new to me in all this: it was an old familiar story; I have given it fully, simply because it is an accurate statement of what is being done all over the country. There is not a county in the kingdom where you may not hear of important members of the community who are collectors of birds and their eggs, and law-breakers, both directly and indirectly, every day of their lives. They all take, and pay for, every rare visitant that comes in their way, and also require an unlimited supply of the rarer resident species for the purpose of exchange with other private collectors in distant counties. In this way our finest species are gradually being extirpated. Within the last few years we have seen the disappearance (as breeding species) of the ruff and reeve, marsh harrier, and honey buzzard; and the species now on the verge of extinction, which will soon follow these and others that have gone before, if indeed some of them have not already gone, are the sea-eagle, osprey, kite, hen harrier, Montagu's harrier, stone curlew, Kentish plover, dotterel, red-necked phalarope, roseate tern, bearded tit, grey-lag goose, and great skua. These in their turn will be followed by the chough, hobby, great black-backed gull, furze wren, crested tit, and others. These are the species which, as things are going, will absolutely and for ever disappear, as residents and breeders, from off the British Islands. Meanwhile other species that, although comparatively rare, are less local in their distribution, are being annually exterminated in some parts of the country: it is poor comfort to the bird lover in southern England to know that many species that formerly gave life and interest to the scene, and have lately been done to death there, may still be met with in the wilder districts of Scotland, or in some forest in the north of Wales. Finally, we have among our annual visitants a considerable number of species which have either bred in these islands in past times (some quite recently), or else would probably remain to breed if they were not immediately killed on arrival—bittern, little bittern, night heron, spoonbill, stork, avocet, black tern, hoopoe, golden oriole, and many others of less well-known names.

This is the case, and that it is a bad one, and well-nigh hopeless, no man will deny. Nevertheless, I believe that it may be possible to find a remedy.

That "destruction of beautiful things," about which Ruskin wrote despairingly, "of late ending in perfect blackness of catastrophe, and ruin of all grace and glory in the land," has fallen, and continues to fall, most heavily on the beautiful bird life of our country. But the destruction has not been unremarked and unlamented, and the existence of a strong and widespread public feeling in favour of the preservation of our wild birds has of late shown itself in many ways, especially in the unopposed legislation on the subject during the last few years, and the willingness that Government and Parliament have shown recently to consider a new Act. There is no doubt that this feeling will grow until it becomes too strong even for the selfish Philistines, who are blind to all grace and glory in nature, and incapable of seeing anything in a rare and beautiful bird but an object to be collected. Those who in the years to come will inherit the numberless useless private collections now being formed will make haste to rid themselves of such unhappy legacies, by thrusting them upon local museums, or by destroying them outright in their anxiety to have it forgotten that one of their name had a part in the detestable business of depriving the land of these wonderful and beautiful forms of life—a life which future generations would have cherished as a dear and sacred possession.

But we cannot afford to wait: we have been made too poor in species already, and are losing something further every year; we want a remedy now.

So far two suggestions have been made. One is an alteration in the existing law, which will allow the infliction of far heavier fines on offenders. All those who are acquainted with collectors and their ways will at once agree that increased penalties will not meet the case; that the only effect of such an alteration in the law would be to make collectors and the persons employed by them more careful than they have yet found it necessary to be. The other suggestion vaguely put forth is that something of the nature of a private inquiry agency should be established to find out the offenders, and that they should be pilloried in the columns of some widely-circulating journal, a method which has been tried with some success in the cases of other classes of obnoxious persons. This suggestion may be dismissed at once as of no value; not one offence in a hundred would be discovered by such means, and the greatest sinners, who are not infrequently the most intelligent men, would escape scot free.

Perhaps I should have said that three suggestions have been made, for there is yet another, put forward by Mr Richard Kearton in one of his late books. He is thoroughly convinced, he tells us, that the County Council orders are perfectly useless in the case of any and every rare bird which collectors covet; and on that point we are all agreed; he then says: "We should select a dozen species admitted by a committee of practical ornithologists to be in danger, and afford them personal protection during the whole of the breeding season by placing reliable watchers, night and day, upon the nesting-ground."

Watchers provided and paid by individuals and associations have been in existence these many years, and this is undoubtedly the best plan in the case of all species which breed in colonies. These are mostly sea-birds—gulls, terns, cormorants, guillemots, razor-bills, etc. Our rare birds are distributed over the country, and in the case of some, if a hundred pairs of a species exist in the British Islands, a hundred or two hundred watchers would have to be engaged. But who that has any knowledge of what goes on in the collecting world does not know that the guarded birds would be the first to vanish? I have seen such things—pairs of rare birds breeding in private grounds, where the keepers had strict orders to watch over them, and no stranger could enter without being challenged, and in a little while they have mysteriously disappeared. The "watcher" is good enough on the exposed sea-coast or island where an eye is kept on his doings, and where the large number of birds in his charge enables him to do a little profitable stealing and still keep up an appearance of honesty. I have visited most of the watched colonies, and therefore know. The watchers, who were paid a pound a week for guarding the nests, were not chary of their hints, and I have also been told in very plain words that I could have any eggs I wanted.

It is hardly necessary to say here that the proposed alteration in the law to make it protective of all species will, so far as the private collector is concerned, leave matters just as they are.

There is really only one way out of the difficulty,—one remedy for an evil which grows in spite of penalties and of public opinion,—namely, a law to forbid the making of collections of British birds by private persons. If all that has been done in and out of Parliament since 1868 to preserve our wild birds—not merely the common abundant species, which are not regarded by collectors, but all species—is not to be so much labour wasted, such a law must sooner or later be made. It will not be denied by any private collector, whether he clings to the old delusion that it is to the advantage of science that he should have cabinets full of "British killed" specimens or not,—it will not be denied that the drain on our wild bird life caused by collecting is a constantly increasing one, and that no fresh legislation on the lines of previous bird protection Acts can arrest or diminish that drain. Thirty years ago, when the first Act was passed, which prohibited the slaughter of sea-birds during the breeding season, the drain on the bird life which is valued by collectors was far less than it is now; not only because there are a dozen or more collectors now where there was one in the sixties, but also because the business of collecting has been developed and brought to perfection. All the localities in which the rare resident species may be looked for are known, while the collectors all over the country are in touch with each other, and have a system of exchanges as complete as it is deadly to the birds. Then there is the money element; bird-collecting is not only the hobby of hundreds of persons of moderate means and of moderate wealth, but, like horse-racing, yachting, and other expensive forms of sport, it now attracts the very wealthy, and is even a pastime of millionaires. All this is a familiar fact, and clearly shows that without such a law as I have suggested it has now become impossible to save the best of our wild bird life.

The collectors will doubtless cry out that such a law would be a monstrous injustice, and an unwarrantable interference with the liberty of the subject; that there is really no more harm in collecting birds and their eggs than in collecting old prints, Guatemalan postage stamps, samplers, and first editions of minor poets; that to compel them to give up their treasures, which have cost them infinite pains and thousands of pounds to get together, and to abandon the pursuit in which their happiness is placed, would be worse than confiscation and downright tyranny; that the private collectors cannot properly be described as law-breakers and injurious persons, since they count among their numbers hundreds of country gentlemen of position, professional men (including clergymen), noblemen, magistrates, and justices of the peace, and distinguished naturalists—all honourable men.

To put in one word on this last very delicate point: Where, in collecting, does the honourable man draw the line, and sternly refuse to enrich his cabinet with a long-wished-for specimen of a rare British species?—a specimen "in the flesh," not only "British killed" but obtained in the county; not killed wantonly, nor stolen by some poaching rascal, but unhappily shot in mistake for something else by an ignorant young under-keeper, who, in fear of a wigging, took it secretly to a friend at a distance and gave it to him to get rid of. The story of the unfortunate killing of the rare bird varies in each case when it has to be told to one whose standard of morality is very high even with regard to his hobby. My experience is, that where there are collectors who are men of means, there you find their parasites, who know how to treat them, and who feed on their enthusiasms.

In my rambles about the country during the last few years, I have neglected no opportunity of conversing with landowners and large tenants on this subject, and, with the exception of one man, all those I have spoken to agreed that owners generally—not nine in every ten, as I had put it, but ninety-nine in every hundred—would gladly welcome a law to put down the collecting of British birds by private persons. The one man who disagreed is the owner of an immense estate, and he was the bitterest of all in denouncing the scoundrels who came to steal his birds; and if a law could be made to put an end to such practices he would, he said, be delighted; but he drew the line at forbidding a man to collect birds on his own property. "No, no!" he concluded; "that would be an interference with the liberty of the subject." Then it came out that he was a collector himself, and was very proud of the rare species in his collection! If I had known that before, I should not have gone out of my way to discuss the subject with him.

Clearly, then, there is a very strong case for legislation. How strong the case is I am not yet able to show, my means not having enabled me to carry out an intention of discussing the subject with a much greater number of landowners, and of addressing a circular later stating the case to all the landlords and shooting-tenants in the country. That remains to be done; in the meantime this chapter will serve to bring the subject to the attention of a considerable number of persons who would prefer that our birds should be preserved rather than that they should be exterminated in the interests of a certain number of individuals whose amusement it is to collect such objects.

That a law on the lines suggested will be made sooner or later is my belief: that it may come soon is my hope and prayer, lest we have to say of the Dartford warbler, and of twenty other species named in this chapter, as we have had to say of so many others that have gone

• • • • •

Note.—The foregoing chapter, albeit written so many years ago, is still "up-to-date"—still represents without a shadow of a shade of difference the state of the case. The extermination of our rare birds and "occasional visitors" still goes merrily on in defiance of the law, and the worst offenders are still received with open arms by the British Ornithologists' Union. Indeed, that Society, from the point of view of many of its members would have no raison d'être if membership were denied to the private collector of rare "British killed" birds and their eggs and to the "scientific" ornithologist whose mission is to add several new species annually to the British list. They still dine together and exhibit their specimens to one another. On the last occasion of my attending one of these meetings a member exhibited a small bird "in the flesh"—a bird from some far country which had been shot somewhere on the east coast and was so knocked to pieces by the shot that the ornithologists had great difficulty in identifying it. Although a collector himself he was anxious to dispose of the specimen, but none of his brother collectors would give him a five-pound note for it owing to its condition. It was handed round and examined and discussed by all the authorities present. I stood apart, looking at a group of ornithologists bending over the shattered specimen, all talking and arguing, when another member who by chance was not a collector moved to my side and whispered in my ear: "Just like a lot of little children!"

Is it not time to say to these "little children" that they must find a new toy—a fresh amusement to fill their vacant hours: that birds—living flying birds—are a part of nature, of this visible world in this island, the dwelling-place of some forty-five or fifty millions of souls; that these millions have a right in the country's wild life too—surely a better one than that of a few hundreds of gentlemen of leisure who have money to hire gamekeepers, bird-stuffers, wild-fowlers, and many others, to break the law for them, and to take the punishment when any is given?

By saying it will be understood that I mean enacting a law to prohibit private collection. It is surely time. But what prospects are there of such an Act being passed by a Parliament which has spent six years playing with a Plumage Prohibition Bill!

Well, just now we have a committee appointed by the Government to consider the whole question of bird protection with a view to fresh legislation. Will this committee recommend the one and only way to put a stop to the continuous destruction of our rarer birds? I don't think so. For such a law would be aimed at those of their own class, at their friends, at themselves.

At the end of the chapter I gave an account of an interview I had with a great landowner who happened to be a collector, and who cried out that such a law as the one I suggested would be an unwarrantable interference with the liberty of the subject. Another interview years later was with one who is not only a landowner, the head of a branch of a great family in the land, but a great power in the political world as well, and, finally, (not wonderful to relate) a great "protector of birds." "No," he said warmly, "I will not for a moment encourage you to hope that any good will come of such a proposal. If any person should bring in such a measure I would do everything in my power to defeat it. I am a collector myself and I am perfectly sure that such an interference with the liberty of the subject would not be tolerated."

That, I take it, is or will be the attitude of the committee now considering the subject of our wild bird life and its better protection.

CHAPTER XIII

VERT—VERT; OR PARROT GOSSIP

I am not an admirer of pet parrots. To me, and I have made the discovery that to many others too, it is a depressing experience, on a first visit to nice people, to find that a parrot is a member of the family. As a rule he is the most important member. When I am compelled to stand in the admiring circle, to look on and to listen while he exhibits his weary accomplishments, it is but lip service that I render: my eyes are turned inward, and a vision of a green forest comes before them resounding with the wild, glad, mad cries of flocks of wild parrots. This is done purposely, and the sound which I mentally hear and the sight of their vari-coloured plumage in the dazzling sunlight are a corrective, and keep me from hating the bird before me because of the imbecility of its owners. In his proper place, which is not in a tin cage in a room of a house, he is to be admired above most birds; and I wish I could be where he is living his wild life; that I could have again a swarm of parrots, angry at my presence, hovering above my head and deafening me with their outrageous screams. But I cannot go to those beautiful distant places—I must be content with an image and a memory of things seen and heard, and with the occasional sight of a bird, or birds, kept by some intelligent person; also with an occasional visit to the Parrot House in Regent's Park. There the uproar, when it is at its greatest, when innumerable discordant voices, shrill and raucous, unite in one voice and one great cry, and persons of weak nerves stop up their ears and fly from such a pandemonium, is highly exhilarating.

Of the most interesting captive parrots I have met in recent years I will speak here of two. The first was a St Vincent bird, Chrysotis guildingi, brought home with seven other parrots of various species by Lady Thompson, the wife of the then Administrator of the Island. This is a handsome bird, green, with blue head and yellow tail, and is a member of an American genus numbering over forty species. He received his funny specific name in compliment to a clergyman who was a zealous collector not of men's souls, but of birds' skins. To ornithologists this parrot is interesting on account of its rarity. For the last thirty years it has existed in small numbers; and as it is confined to the island of St Vincent it is feared that it may become extinct at no distant date. Altogether there are about five hundred species of parrots in the world, or about as many parrots as there are species of birds of all kinds in Europe, from the great bustard, the hooper swan, and golden eagle, to the little bottle-tit whose minute body, stript of its feathers, may be put in a lady's thimble. And of this multitude of parrots the St Vincent Chrysotis, if it still exists, is probably the rarest.

The parrot I have spoken of, with his seven travelling companions, arrived in England in December, and a few days later their mistress witnessed a curious thing. On a cold grey morning they were enjoying themselves on their perches in a well-warmed room in London, before a large window, when suddenly they all together emitted a harsh cry of alarm or terror—the sound which they invariably utter on the appearance of a bird of prey in the sky, but at no other time. Looking up quickly she saw that snow in big flakes had begun to fall. It was the birds' first experience of such a phenomenon, but they had seen and had been taught to fear something closely resembling falling flakes—flying feathers to wit. The fear of flying feathers is universal among species that are preyed upon by hawks. In a majority of cases the birds that exhibit terror and fly into cover or sit closely have never actually seen that winged thunderbolt, the peregrine falcon, strike down a duck or pigeon, sending out a small cloud of feathers; or even a harrier or sparrow-hawk pulling out and scattering the feathers of a bird it has captured, but a tradition exists among them that the sight of flying feathers signifies danger to bird life.

When I was in the young barbarian stage, and my playmates were gaucho boys on horseback on the pampas, they taught me to catch partridges in their simple way with a slender cane twenty to twenty-five feet long, a running noose at its tip made from the fine pliant shaft of a rhea's wing feather. The bird was not a real partridge though it looks like it, but was the common or spotted tinamou of the plains, Nothura maculosa, as good a table bird as our partridge. Our method was, when we flushed a bird, to follow its swift straight flight at a gallop, and mark the exact spot where it dropped to earth and vanished in the grass, then to go round the spot examining the ground until the tinamou was detected in spite of his protective colouring sitting close among the dead and fading grass and herbage. The cane was put out, the circle narrowed until the small noose was exactly over the bird's head, so that when he sprang into the air on being touched by the slender tip of the cane he caught and strangled himself. To make the bird sit tight until the noose was actually over his head, we practised various tricks, and a very common one was, on catching sight of the close-squatting partridge, to start plucking feathers from a previously-killed bird hanging to our belt and scatter them on the wind. Sometimes we were saved the trouble of scattering feathers when we were followed by a pair of big carrion hawks on the look-out for an escaped bird or for any trifle we throw to them to keep them with us. The effect was the same in both cases; the sight of the flying feathers was just as terrifying as that of the big hovering hawks, and caused the partridge to sit close.

This way of taking the tinamou may seem unsportsmanlike. Well, if I were a boy in a wild land again—with my present feelings about bird life, I mean—I should not do it. Nor would I shoot them; for I take it that the gun is the deadliest instrument our cunning brains have devised to destroy birds in spite of their bright instinct of self-preservation, their faculty of flight, and their intelligence. It is a hundred times more effective than the boy-on-horseback's long cane with its noose made of an ostrich feather—therefore more unsportsmanlike.

To return. The resemblance of falling flakes to flying white feathers does not deceive birds accustomed to the sight of snow: it is very striking, nevertheless, and so generally recognised that most persons in Europe have heard of the old woman plucking her geese in the sky. It is curious to find the subject discussed in Herodotus. In Book IV. he says: "The Scythians say that those lands which are situated in the northernmost parts of their territories are neither visible nor practicable by reason of the feathers that fall continually on all sides; for the earth is so entirely covered, and the air is so full of these feathers, that the sight is altogether obstructed." Further on he says: "Touching the feathers ... my opinion is that perpetual snows fall in those parts, though probably in less quantity during the summer than in winter, and whoever has observed great abundance of snow falling will easily comprehend what I say, for snow is not unlike feathers."

Probably the Scythians had but one word to designate both. To go back to the St Vincent parrot. Concerning a bird of that species I have heard, and cannot disbelieve, a remarkable story. During the early years of the last century a gentleman went out from England to look after some landed property in the island, which had come to him by inheritance, and when out there he paid a visit to a friend who had a plantation in the interior. His friend was away when he arrived, and he was conducted by a servant into a large, darkened, cool room; and, tired with his long ride in the hot sun, he soon fell asleep in his chair. Before long a loud noise awoke him, and from certain scrubbing sounds he made out that a couple of negro women were engaged in washing close to him, on the other side of the lowered window blinds, and that they were quarrelling over their task. Of course the poor women did not know that he was there, but he was a man of a sensitive mind and it was a torture to him to have to listen to the torrents of exceedingly bad language they discharged at one another. It made him angry. Presently his friend arrived and welcomed him with a hearty hand-shake and asked him how he liked the place. He answered that it was a very beautiful place, but he wondered how his friend could tolerate those women with their tongues so close to his windows. Women with their tongues! What did he mean? exclaimed the other in great surprise. He meant, he said, those wretched nigger washerwomen outside the window. His host thereupon threw up the blind and both looked out: no living creature was there except a St Vincent parrot dozing on his perch in the shaded verandah. "Ah, I see, the parrot!" said his friend. And he apologised and explained that some of the niggers had taken advantage of the bird's extraordinary quickness in learning to teach him a lot of improper stuff.

Another parrot, which interested me more than the St Vincent bird, was a member of the same numerous genus, a double-fronted amazon, Chrysotis lavalainte, a larger bird, green with face and fore-part of head pure yellow, and some crimson colour in the wings and tail. I came upon it at an inn, the Lamb, at Hindon, a village in the South Wiltshire downs. One could plainly see that it was a very old bird, and, judging from the ragged state of its plumage, that it had long fallen into the period of irregular or imperfect moult—"the sere, the yellow leaf" in the bird's life. It also had the tremor of the very aged—man or bird. But its eyes were still as bright as polished yellow gems and full of the almost uncanny parrot intelligence. The voice, too, was loud and cheerful; its call to its mistress—"Mother, mother!" would ring through the whole rambling old house. He talked and laughed heartily and uttered a variety of powerful whistling notes as round and full and modulated as those of any grey parrot. Now, all that would not have attracted me much to the bird if I had not heard its singular history, told to me by its mistress, the landlady. She had had it in her possession fifty years, and its story was as follows:—

Her father-in-law, the landlord of the Lamb, had a beloved son who went off to sea and was seen and heard of no more for a space of fourteen years, when one day he turned up in the possession of a sailor's usual fortune, acquired in distant barbarous lands—a parrot in a cage! This he left with his parents, charging them to take the greatest care of it, as it was really a very wonderful bird, as they would soon know if they could only understand its language, and he then began to make ready to set off again, promising his mother to write this time and not to stay away more than five or at most ten years.

Meanwhile, his father, who was anxious to keep him, succeeded in bringing about a meeting between him and a girl of his acquaintance, one who, he believed, would make his son the best wife in the world. The young wanderer saw and loved, and as the feeling was returned he soon married and endowed her with all his worldly possessions, which consisted of the parrot and cage. Eventually he succeeded his father as tenant of the Lamb, where he died many years ago; the widow was grey when I first knew her and old like her parrot; and she was like the bird too in her youthful spirit and the brilliance of her eyes.

Her young sailor had picked up the bird at Vera Cruz in Mexico. He saw a girl standing in the market place with the parrot on her shoulder. She was talking and singing to the bird, and the bird was talking, whistling, and singing back to her—singing snatches of songs in Spanish. It was a wonderful bird, and he was enchanted and bought it, and brought it all the way back to England and Wiltshire. It was, the girl had told him, just five years old, and as fifty years had gone by it was, when I first knew it, or was supposed to be, fifty-five. In its Wiltshire home it continued to talk and sing in Spanish, and had two favourite songs, which delighted everybody, although no one could understand the words. By and by it took to learning words and sentences in English, and spoke less in Spanish year after year until in about ten to twelve years that language had been completely forgotten. Its memory was not as good as that of Humboldt's celebrated parrot of the Maipures, which had belonged to the Apures tribe before they were exterminated by the Caribs. Their language perished with them, only the long-living parrot went on talking it. This parrot story took the fancy of the public and was re-told in a hundred books, and was made the subject of poems in several countries—one by our own "Pleasures of Hope" Campbell.

Nevertheless I thought it would be worth while trying a little Spanish on old Polly of the Lamb, and thought it best to begin by making friends. It was of little use to offer her something to eat. Poll was a person who rather despised sweeties and kickshaws. It had been the custom of the house for half a century to allow Polly to eat what she liked and when she liked, and as she—it was really a he—was of a social disposition she preferred taking her meals with the family and eating the same food. At breakfast she would come to the table and partake of bacon and fried eggs, also toast and butter and jam and marmalade, at dinner it was a cut off the joint with (usually) two vegetables, then pudding or tart with pippins and cheese to follow. Between meals she amused herself with bird seed, but preferred a meaty mutton-bone, which she would hold in one hand or foot and feed on with great satisfaction. It was not strange that when I held out food for her she took it as an insult, and when I changed my tactics and offered to scratch her head she lost her temper altogether, and when I persisted in my advances she grew dangerous and succeeded in getting in several nips with her huge beak, which drew blood from my fingers.

It was only then, after all my best blandishments had been exhausted, and when our relations were at their worst, that I began talking to her in Spanish, in a sort of caressing falsetto like a "native" girl, calling her "Lorito" instead of Polly, coupled with all the endearing epithets commonly used by the women of the green continent in addressing their green pets. Polly instantly became attentive. She listened and listened, coming down nearer to listen better, the one eye she fixed on me shining like a fiery gem. But she spoke no word, Spanish or English, only from time to time little low inarticulate sounds came from her. It was evident after two or three days that she was powerless to recall the old lore, but to me it also appeared evident that some vague memory of a vanished time had been evoked—that she was conscious of a past and was trying to recall it. At all events the effect of the experiment was that her hostility vanished, and we became friends at once. She would come down to me, step on to my hand, climb to my shoulder, and allow me to walk about with her.

It saddened me a few months later to receive a letter from her mistress announcing Polly's death, on 2nd December 1909.

I have thought since that this bird, instead of being only five years old when bought, was probably aged twenty-five years or more. Naturally, the girl who had been sent into the market-place to dispose of the bird would tell a possible buyer that it was young; the parrots one wants to buy are generally stated to be five years old. However, it may be that the bird grew old before its time on account of its extraordinary dietary. The parrot may have an adaptive stomach, still, one is inclined to think that half a century of fried eggs and bacon, roast pork, boiled beef and carrots, steak and onions, and stewed rabbit must have put a rather heavy strain on its system.

Many parrots have lived longer than Polly in captivity, long as her life was; and here it strikes me as an odd circumstance that Polly's specific name was bestowed on the species, the double-fronted amazon, as a compliment to the distinguished French ornithologist, La Valainte, who has himself recorded the greatest age to which a captive parrot has been known to attain. This bird was the familiar African grey species. He says that it began to lose its memory at the age of sixty, to moult irregularly at sixty-five, that it became blind at ninety, and died aged ninety-three.

We may well believe that if parrots are able to exist for fifty years to a century in the unnatural conditions in which they are kept, caged or chained in houses, over-fed, without using their enormously-developed wing-muscles, the constant exercise of which must be necessary to perfect health and vigour, their life in a state of nature must be twice as long.

To return to parrots in general. This bird has perhaps more points of interest for us than any other of the entire class: his long life, unique form, and brilliant colouring, extreme sociability, intelligence beyond that of most birds, and, last, his faculty of imitating human speech more perfectly than the birds of other families.

The last is to most persons the parrot's greatest distinction; to me it is his least. I do not find it so wonderful as the imitative faculty of some mocking birds or even of our delightful little marsh-warbler, described in another book. This may be because I have never had the good fortune to meet with a shining example, for we know there is an extraordinary difference in the talking powers of parrots, even in those of the same species—differences as great, in fact, as we find in the reasoning faculty between dog and dog, and in the songs of different birds of the same species. Not once but on several occasions I have heard a song from some common bird which took my breath away with astonishment. I have described in another book certain blackbirds of genius I have encountered. And what a wonderful song that caged canary in a country inn must have had, which tempted the great Lord Peterborough, a man of some shining qualities, to get the bird from its mistress, an old woman who loved it and refused to sell it to him, by means of a dishonest and very mean trick. Denied the bird, he examined it minutely and went on his way. In due time he returned with a canary closely resembling the one he wanted in size, colour, and markings, concealed on his person. He ordered dinner, and when the good woman was gone from the room to prepare it, changed his bird for hers, then, having had his meal, went on his way rejoicing. Still he was curious to learn the effect of his trick, and whether or not she had noticed any difference in her loved bird; so, after a long interval, he came once more to the inn, and seeing the bird in its cage in the old place began to speak in praise of its beautiful singing as he had heard it and remembered it so well. She replied sadly that since he listened to and wanted to buy it an unaccountable change had come over her bird. It was silent for a spell, perhaps sick, but when it resumed singing its voice had changed and all the beautiful notes which everyone admired were lost. The great man expressed his regret, and went away chuckling at his deliciously funny joke.

The ordinary talking parrot is no more to me than the ordinary or average canary, piping his thin expressionless notes; he is a prodigy I am pleased not to know. On the other hand there are numerous authenticated cases of parrots possessed of really surprising powers, and it was doubtless the mimicking powers of such birds of genius which suggested such fictions as that of the Totá Kuhami in the East; and in Europe, Gresset's lively tale of Vert Vert and the convent nuns.

It was perhaps a parrot of this rare kind which played so important a part in the early history of South America. It is nothing but a legend of the Guarani nation, which inhabit Paraguay, nevertheless I do believe that we have here an account mainly true of an important event in the early history of the race or nation. This parrot is not the impossible bird of the fictitious Totá Kahami order we all know, who not only mimics our speech but knows the meaning of the words he utters. He was nothing but a mimic, exceptionally clever, and the moral of the story is the familiar one that great events may proceed from the most trivial causes, once the passions of men are inflamed.

The tradition was related centuries ago to the Jesuit Fathers in Paraguay, and I give it as they tell it, briefly.

• • • • •

In the beginning a great canoe came over the waters from the east and was stranded on the shores of Brazil. Out of the canoe came the brothers Tupi and Guarani and their sons and daughters with their husbands and wives and their children and children's children.

Tupi was the leader, and being the eldest was called the father, and Tupi said to his brother: Behold, this great land with all its rivers and forests, abounding in fish and birds and beasts and fruit, is ours, for there are no other men dwelling in it; but we are few in number, let us therefore continue to live together with our children in one village.

Guarani consented, and for many years they lived together in peace and amity like one family, until at last there came a quarrel to divide them. And it was all about a parrot that could talk and laugh and sing just like a man. A woman first found it in the forest, and not wishing to burden herself with the rearing of it she gave it to another woman. So well did it learn to talk from its new mistress that everybody admired it and it grew to be the talk of the village.

Then the woman who had found and brought it, seeing how much it was admired and talked about, went and claimed it as her own. The other refused to give it up, saying that she had reared it and had taught it all it knew, and by doing so had become its rightful owner.

Now, no person could say which was in the right, and the dispute was not ended and tongues continued wagging until the husbands of the two women became engaged in the quarrel. And then brothers and sisters and cousins were drawn into it, until the whole village was full of bitterness and strife, all because of the parrot, and men of the same blood for the first time raised weapons against one another. And some were wounded and others killed in open fight, and some were treacherously slain when hunting in the forest.

Now when things had come to this pass Tupi the Father, called his brother to him and said: O brother Guarani, this is a day of grief to us who had looked to the spending of our remaining years together with all our children at this place where we have lived so long. Now this can no longer be on account of the great quarrel about a parrot, and the shedding of blood; for only by separating our two families can we save them from destroying one another. Come then, let us divide them and lead them away in opposite directions, so that when we settle again they may be far apart. Guarani consented, and he also said that Tupi was the elder and their head, and was called the Father, and it was therefore in his right to remain in possession of the village and of all that land and to end his days in it. He, on his part, would call his people together and lead them to a land so distant that the two families would never see nor hear of each other again, and there would be no more bitter words and strife between them.

Then the two old brothers bade each other an eternal farewell, and Guarani led his people south a great distance and travelled many moons until he came to the River Paraguay, and settled there; and his people still dwell there and are called by his name to this day.

Only, I beg to add, they do not call their nation by that word, as the Spanish colonists first spelt it in their carelessness, and as they pronounce it. Heaven knows how we pronounce it! They, the Guarani people, call themselves Wä-rä-nä-eé, in a soft musical voice. Also they call their river, which we spell Paraguay, and pronounce I don't know how, Pä-rä-wä-eé.

CHAPTER XIV

SOMETHING PRETTY IN A GLASS CASE

It was said by a Norfolk naturalist more than three-quarters of a century ago, that the desire to possess "something pretty in a glass case" caused the killing of very many birds, especially of such as were rare and beautiful, which if allowed to exist in our country would maintain the species and be a constant source of pleasure to all who beheld them. For who, walking by a riverside, does not experience a thrill of delight at the sudden appearance in the field of vision of that living jewel, the shining blue kingfisher! This is one of the favourites of all who desire to have something pretty in a glass case in the cottage parlour in room of the long-vanished pyramid of wax flowers and fruit. It is, however, not only the common people, the cottager and the village publican who desire to possess such ornaments. You see them also in baronial halls. Many a time on visiting a great house the first thing the owner has drawn my attention to has been his stuffed birds in a glass case: but in the great houses the peregrine, and hobby, and goshawk, and buzzard and harrier are more prized than the kingfisher and other pretty little birds.

The Philistine we know is everywhere and is of all classes.

It is to me a cause of astonishment that these mournful mementoes should be regarded as they appear to be, as objects pleasing to the eye, like pictures and statues, tapestries, and other decorative works of art. The sight of a stuffed bird in a house is revolting to me; it outrages our sense of fitness, and is as detestable as stuffed birds and wings, tails and heads, and beaks of murdered and mutilated birds on women's headgear. "Properly speaking," said St George Mivart in his greatest work, "there is no such thing as a dead bird." The life is the bird, and when that has gone out what remains is the case. These dead empty cases are as much to me as to any naturalist, and I can examine the specimens in a museum cabinet with interest. But the mental attitude is changed at the sight of these same dead empty cases set up in imitation of the living creature; and the more cleverly the stuffer has done his work the more detestable is the result.

It may be that some vague notion of a faint remnant of life lingering in the life-like specimen with glass eyes, is the cause of my hatred of the feathered ornament in a glass case. At all events I have had one experience, to be related here, which has almost made me believe that the idea of a sort of post-mortem life in the stuffed bird is not wholly fanciful. I will call it:

A DIALOGUE OF THE DEAD (AND STUFFED)

Ever since I came the wind has been blowing a gale on this furthermost, lonely, melancholy coast, as if I had got not only to the Land's End, but to the end of the world itself, to the confines of Old Chaos his kingdom, a region where the elements are in everlasting conflict. Two or three times during the afternoon I have resolutely put on my cap and water-proof and gone out to face it, only to be quickly driven in again by the bitter furious blast. Yet it was almost as bad indoors to have to sit and listen by the hour to its ravings. From time to time I get up and look through the window-pane at the few cold grey naked cottages and empty bleak fields, divided by naked grey stone fences, and, beyond the fields, the foam-flecked, colder, greyer, more desolate ocean. Would it be better, I wonder, to fight my way down to those wave-loosened masses of granite by the sea, where I would hear the roar and thunder of the surf instead of this perpetual insane howling and screaming of the wind round the house? I turn from the window with a shiver; a splash of rain hurled against it has blotted the landscape out; I go back once more to my comfortable easy-chair by the fire. Patience! Patience! By and by, I say to myself—I say it many times over—daylight will be gone; then the lamp will be brought in, the curtains drawn, and tea will follow, with buttered toast and other good things. Then the solacing pipe, and thoughts and memories and some pleasant waking drawn to while away the time.

What shall this dream be? Ah, what but the best of all possible dreams on such a day as this—a dream of spring! Somewhere in the sweet west country I shall stand in a wood where beeches grow; and it will be April, near the end of the month, before the leaves are large enough to hide the blue sky and the floating white clouds so far above their tops. Perhaps I shall sit down on one of the huge root-branches, "coiled like a grey old snake," so as to gaze at ease before me at the cloud of purple-red boughs, and interlacing twigs, sprinkled over with golden buds and silky opening leaves of a fresh brilliant green that has no match on the earth or sea, nor under the earth in the emerald mines. I shall watch the love-flight of the cushat above the wood, mounting higher and higher, then gliding down on motionless dove-coloured wings; and I shall listen to the wood wren, ever wandering and singing in the tree-tops—singing that same insistent, passionate—passionless strain to which one could listen for ever.

I shall ask for no other song, but there will be other creatures there. Down the tall grey trunk of a beech tree before me a squirrel will slip—down, down nearly to the mossy roots, then pause and remain so motionless as to seem like a squirrel-shaped patch of bright chestnut-red moss or lichen or alga on the grey bark. And on the next tree, but a little distance off, I shall presently catch sight of another listener and watcher—a green woodpecker clinging vertically against the trunk, so still as to look like a bird figure carved in wood and painted green and gold and crimson.

Just when I had got so far with the thought of what my dream was to be, I raised my eyes from the fire and allowed them to rest attentively for the first time on a collection of ornaments crowded together in a niche in the wall at the side of the fireplace. The ornamental objects one sees in a cottage are as a rule offensive to me, and I have acquired the habit of not seeing them; now I was compelled to look at these. There were photographs, little china vases and cups with boys or cupids, and things of that kind; these I did not regard; my whole attention was directed to a pair of glass-fronted cases and the living creatures in them. They were not really alive, but dead and stuffed and set up in life-like attitudes, and one was a squirrel, the other a green woodpecker. The squirrel with his back to his neighbour sat up on his mossy wood, his bushy tail thrown along his back, his two little hands grasping a hazel-nut, which he was in the act of conveying to his mouth. The green woodpecker was placed vertically against his branch, his side towards his neighbour, his head turned partly round so that he looked directly at him with one eye. That wide-open white glass eye and the whole attitude of the bird, with his wings half open and beak raised, gave him a wonderfully alert look, so that after regarding him fixedly for some time I began to imagine that, despite the old dead dusty look of the feathers, there was something of life still remaining in him and that he really was watching his neighbour with the nut very intently.

Why, of course he was alive—alive and speaking to the squirrel! I could hear him distinctly. The wind outside was madly beating against the house and trying to force its way through the window, and was making a hundred strange noises—little sharp shrill broken sounds that mixed with and filled the pauses between the wailing and shrieking gusts, and somehow the woodpecker was catching these small sounds in his beak and turning them into words.

"Hullo!" he said. "Who are you and what are you doing there?"

"I'm a squirrel," responded the other. "I've said so over and over again, but you will go on worrying me! My only wish is that I could bring my tail just a little more to the right so as to hide my head and paws altogether from you."

"But you can't. Hullo! squirrel, what are you doing there? You forgot to tell me that."

"I'm eating a nut, confound you! You know it; I've told you ten thousand times. I can't ever get it up quite close enough to bite it and I haven't tasted one for seventeen years. One forgets what a thing tastes like."

"I know. I've been fasting just as long myself. Never an ant's egg! Hullo! Have you got it up? How does it taste?"

"Taste! You fool! If I could only move I wouldn't mind the nut; I'd go for you like a shot, and if I could get at you I'd tear you to pieces. I hate you!"

"Why do you hate me, squirrel?"

"More questions! Because you're green and yellow like the woods where I lived. There were beeches and oaks. And because your head is crimson red like the agarics I used to find in the woods in autumn. I used to eat them for fun just because they said they were poisonous and it would kill you to eat them."

"And that's what you died of? Hullo! Why don't you answer me? Where did you find red agarics?

"I've told you, I've told you, I've told you, in Treve woods where I lived, very far from here on the other side of Lostwithiel."

"Treve woods, between the hills away beyond Lostwithiel! Why, squirrel, that's where I lived."

"So I've heard; you have said it every day and every night these seventeen years. I hate you."

"Hullo! Why do you hate me?"

"I always disliked woodpeckers. I remember a pair that made a hole in a beech near the tree my drey was in. I played those two yafflers with their laugh laugh laugh some good tricks, and the best of all was when their young began to come out. One morning when the old birds were away I hid myself in the fork above the hole and waited till they crept out and up close to me, when I suddenly burst out upon them, chattering and flourishing my tail, and they were so terrified they actually lost their hold on the bark and tumbled right down to the ground. How I enjoyed it!"

"You malicious little red beast! You chattering little red devil! They were my young ones, and I remember what a fright we were in when we came back and saw what had happened. It was lucky we didn't lose one! I shall never speak to you again. There you may sit trying to eat your nut for another seventeen years, and for a hundred years if this horrible life is going to last so long, but you'll never get another word from me."

"I thought that would touch you, woodpecker! Ha, ha, ha—who's the yaffler now? What a relief; at last I shall be left to eat my nut in peace and quiet, here in this glass case where they put me."

"Why did they put us here?"

"You are speaking to me! Are the hundred years over so soon?"

"There's no one else—what am I to do? Answer me, why did they put us here? Answer me, little red wretch! I don't mind now what you did—they were not hurt after all. You didn't know what you were doing—you had no young ones of your own."

"Hadn't I indeed! My little ones were there close by in the drey."

"And when they were out of the drey did you teach them to run about in the tree, and jump from one branch to another, and pass from tree to tree?"

"I never saw them leave the drey—I was shot."

"Where was that, squirrel?"

"In the Treve Woods where the big beeches are, beyond Lostwithiel."

"Never! Why, that's just where I lived and was shot, too. Did it hurt you, squirrel?"

"I don't know. I saw a flash and remembered no more until I found myself dead in the man's pocket pressed against some wet soft thing. Did it hurt you?"

"Yes, very much. I fell when he fired and tried to get away, but he chased and caught me and the blood ran out on to his hand. He wiped it off on his coat, then squeezed my sides with his finger and thumb until I was dead, then put me in his pocket. There was some dead warm soft thing in it."

Here there was a break in the talk owing to a momentary lull in the wind. I listened intently, but the shrieking and wailing noises without had ceased and with them the sharp little voices had died away. Then suddenly the wind rose and shrieked again and the talk recommenced.

"Hullo!" said the woodpecker. "Do you see a man sitting by the fire looking at us? He has been staring at us that way all the evening."

"What of it! Everyone who comes into this room and sits by the fire does the same. It's nothing new."

"It is—it is! Listen to me, squirrel. He looks as if he could hear and understand us. That's new, isn't it? And he has a strange look in his eyes. Do you know, I think he is going mad."

"I don't mind, woodpecker. I shouldn't care if he were to run out on to the rocks at the Land's End and cast himself into the sea."

"Nor should I. But just think, if before rashing out to put an end to himself he should, in his raving madness, snatch down our cases from the niche and crush them into the grate with his heel!"

"What do you mean, woodpecker? Could such a thing happen?"

"Yes, if he really is insane, and if he is listening to us, and we are making him worse."

"If I could believe such a thing! I should cease to hate you, woodpecker. No, no, I can't believe it!"

"Just think, old neighbour, to have it end at last! Burnt up to ashes and smoke—feathers and hair, glass eyes, cottonwool stuffing and all!"

"Never again to hear that everlasting Hullo! To hate you and hate you and tell you a thousand thousand times, only to begin it all over again!"

"To fly up away in the smoke, out out out in the wind and rain!"

"The rain! the rain!"

"The rain from the south-west that made me laugh my loudest! Raining all day, wetting my green feathers, wetting every green leaf in the woods beyond Lostwithiel. Raining until all the stony gullies were filled to overflowing, and the water ran and gurgled and roared until the whole wood was filled with the sound."

"No, no, woodpecker, I can't, I can't believe it!"

"It's true! It's true! Don't you see it coming, squirrel? Look at him! Look at him! Now, now! At last! At last! At last!"

Suddenly their sharp agitated voices fell to a broken whispering and died into silence. For the wind had lulled again. Looking closely at them I thought I could see a new expression in their immovable glass eyes. It frightened me, I began to be frightened at myself; for it now seemed to me that I really was becoming insane, and I was suddenly seized with a fierce desire to snatch the cases down and crush them into the fire with my heel. To save myself from such a mad act I jumped up, and picking up my candle, hurried upstairs to my bedroom. No sooner did I reach it than the wind was up again, wailing and shrieking louder than ever, and between the gusts there were the murmurings and strange small noises of the wind in the roof, and once more I began to catch the sound of their renewed talk. "Gone! gone!" they said or seemed to say. "Our last hope! What shall we do, what shall we do? Years! Years! Years!" Then by and by the tone changed, and there were question and answer. "When was that, squirrel?" I heard; and then a furious quarrel with curses from the squirrel, and "hullos" and renewed questions from the woodpecker, and memories of their life and death in Treve Wood, beyond Lostwithiel.

What wonder that, when hours later I fell asleep, I had the most distressing and maddest dreams imaginable!

One dream was that when men die and go to hell, they are sent in large baskets-full to the taxidermists of the establishment, who are highly proficient in the art, and set them up in the most perfect life-like attitudes, with wideawake glass eyes, blue or dark, in their sockets, their hair varnished to preserve its natural colour and glossy appearance. They are placed separately in glass cases to keep them from the dust, and the cases are set up in pairs in niches in the walls of the palace of hell. The lord of the place takes great pride in these objects; one of his favourite amusements is to sit in his easy-chair in front of a niche to listen by the hour to the endless discussions going on between the two specimens, in which each expresses his virulent but impotent hatred of the other, damning his glass eyes; at the same time relating his own happy life and adventures in the upper sunlit world, how important a person he was in his own parish of borough, and what a gorgeous time he was having when he was unfortunately nabbed by one of the collectors or gamekeepers in his lordship's service.

CHAPTER XV

SELBORNE

(1896)

First impressions of faces are very much to us; vivid and persistent, even long after they have been judged false they will from time to time return to console or mock us. It is much the same with places, for these, too, an ineradicable instinct will have it, are persons. Few in number are the towns and villages which are dear to us, whose memory is always sweet, like that of one we love. Those that wake no emotion, that are remembered much as we remember the faces of a crowd of shop assistants in some emporium we are accustomed to visit, are many. Still more numerous, perhaps, are the places that actually leave a disagreeable impression on the mind. Probably the reason of this is because most places are approached by railroad. The station, which is seen first, and cannot thereafter be dissociated from the town, is invariably the centre of a chaotic collection of ugly objects and discordant noises, all the more hateful because so familiar. For in coming to a new place we look instinctively for that which is new, and the old, and in themselves unpleasant sights and sounds, at such a moment produce a disheartening, deadening effect on the stranger:—the same clanging, puffing, grinding, gravel-crushing, banging, shrieking noises; the same big unlovely brick and metal structure, the long platform, the confusion of objects and people, the waiting vehicles, and the glittering steel rails stretching away into infinitude, like unburied petrified webs of some gigantic spider of a remote past—webs in which mastodons were caught like flies. Approaching a town from some other direction—riding, driving, or walking—we see it with a clearer truer vision, and take away a better and more lasting image.

Selborne is one of the noted places where pilgrims go that is happily without a station. From whichever side you approach it the place itself, features and expression, is clearly discerned: in other words you see Selborne, and not a brick and metal outwork or mask; not an excrescence, a goitre, which can make even a beautiful countenance appear repulsive. There is a station within a few miles of the village. I approached by a different route, and saw it at the end of a fifteen miles' walk. Rain had begun to fall on the previous evening; and when in the morning I looked from my bedroom window in the wayside inn, where I had passed the night, it was raining still, and everywhere, as far as I could see, broad pools of water were gleaming on the level earth. All day the rain fell steadily from a leaden sky, so low that where there were trees it seemed almost to touch their tops, while the hills, away on my left, appeared like vague masses of cloud that rest on the earth. The road stretched across a level moorland country; it was straight and narrow, but I was compelled to keep to it, since to step aside was to put my feet into water. Mile after mile I trudged on without meeting a soul, where not a house was visible—a still, wet, desolate country with trees and bushes standing in water, unstirred by a breath of wind. Only at long intervals a yellow hammer was heard uttering his thin note; for just as this bird sings in the sultriest weather which silences other voices, so he will utter his monotonous chant on the gloomiest day.

It may be because he sung

that I have long placed Faber among my best-loved minor poets of the past century. He alone among our poets has properly appreciated that the singer who never stops, but, "pleased with his own monotony," shakes off the rain and sings on in a mood of cheerfulness dashed with melancholy:

I remember that W. E. Henley once took me severely to task on account of some jeering remarks made about our poet's way of treating the birds and their neglect of so many of our charming singers. In the course of our correspondence he questioned me about the cirl bunting, that lively singer and pretty first cousin of the yellow hammer; and after I had supplied him with full information, he informed me that it was his intention to write a poem on that bird, and that he would be the first English poet to sing the cirl bunting.

He never wrote that lyric, "part in duty, part in mirth"; he was then near his end.

To return to my walk. At last the aspect of the country changed: in place of brown heath, with gloomy fir and furze, there was cheerful verdure of grass and deciduous trees, and the straight road grew deep and winding, running now between hills, now beside woods, and hop-fields, and pasture lands. And at length, wet and tired, I reached Selborne—the remote Hampshire village that has so great a fame.

To very many readers a description of the place would seem superfluous. They know it so well, even without having seen it; the little, old-world village at the foot of the long, steep, bank-like hill, or Hanger, clothed to its summit with beech-wood as with a green cloud; the straggling street, the Plestor, or village green, an old tree in the centre, with a bench surrounding its trunk for the elders to rest on of a summer evening. And, close by, the grey immemorial church, with its churchyard, its grand old yew-tree, and, overhead, the bunch of swifts, rushing with jubilant screams round the square tower.

I had not got the book in my knapsack, nor did I need it. Seeing the Selborne swifts, I thought how a century and a quarter ago Gilbert White wrote that the number of birds inhabiting and nesting in the village, summer after summer, was nearly always the same, consisting of about eight pairs. The birds now rushing about over the church were twelve, and I saw no others.

If Gilbert White had never lived, or had never corresponded with Pennant and Daines Barrington, Selborne would have impressed me as a very pleasant village set amidst diversified and beautiful scenery, and I should have long remembered it as one of the most charming spots which I had found in my rambles in southern England. But I thought of White continually. The village itself, every feature in the surrounding landscape, and every object, living or inanimate, and every sound, became associated in my mind with the thought of the obscure country curate, who was without ambition, and was "a still, quiet man, with no harm in him—no, not a bit," as was once said by one of his parishioners. There, at Selborne—to give an altered meaning to a verse of quaint old Nicholas Culpepper—

With a new intense interest I watched the swifts careering through the air, and listened to their shrill screams. It was the same with all the birds, even the commonest—the robin, blue tit, martin, and sparrow. In the evening I stood motionless a long time intently watching a small flock of greenfinches settling to roost in a hazel-hedge. From time to time they became disturbed at my presence, and fluttering up to the topmost twigs, where their forms looked almost black against the pale amber sky, they uttered their long-drawn canary-like note of alarm. At all times a delicate, tender note, now it had something more in it—something from the far past—the thought of one whose memory was interwoven with living forms and sounds.