FIG. 93. WING-FEATHER OF GOLDEN EAGLE 94. MALE AND FEMALE HUMMING-BIRD 95. MOA AND KIWI 96. PECTORAL GIRDLE OF APE PAGE 288 290 291 292 114. ANTLERS of Stag IN SUCCESSIVE YEARS. 115. SECTION THROUGH DOG'S HEAD 122. SEASONAL DIMORPHISM OF Papilio ajax . 123. SEASONAL CHANGES IN PUFFIN'S BILL 124. HALF-LOP RABBIT 394 THE STUDY OF ANIMAL LIFE PART I THE ACTIVITIES OF ANIMALS CHAPTER I THE WEALTH OF LIFE 1. Variety of life-2. Haunts of life-3. Wealth of form4. Wealth of numbers-5. Wealth of beauty. THERE can be no real appreciation of animal life without watching and searching, touching and testing. No booklore can take the place of personal observation, and though opportunities vary greatly, some are within the reach of all. Within a few hours' walk of even the largest of our towns the country is open and the animals are at home. Though we may not be able to see "the buzzard homing herself in the sky, the snake sliding through creepers and logs, the elk taking to the inner passes of the woods, or the razor-billed auk sailing far north to Labrador, we can watch some of the birds building their "homes without hands," we can study the frogs from the time that they trumpet in the early spring till they or their offspring seek winter quarters in the mud, we can follow the bees and detect their adroit burglary of the flowers. And if we are discontented with our opportunities, let us read Gilbert White's History of Selborne, or how Darwin watched earthworms for half a lifetime, or how Richard Jefferies saw in the fields and hedgerows of Wiltshire a vision of nature, which seemed every year to grow richer in beauty and marvel. It is thus that the study of Natural History should begin, as it does naturally begin in childhood, and as it began long before there was any exact Zoology,—with the observation of animal life in its familiar forms. The country schoolboy, who watches the squirrels hide the beech nuts and pokes the hedgehog into a living ball, who finds the nest of the lapwings, though they decoy him away with prayerful cries, who catches the speckled trout in spite of all their caution, and puzzles over the ants as they find their way home heavily laden with booty, is laying the foundation of a naturalist's education, which, though he may never build upon it, is certainly the surest. For it is in such studies that we get close to life. 66 The same truth has been vividly expressed by one whose own life-work shows that thoroughness as a zoologist is consistent with enthusiasm for open-air natural history. Of the country lad Dr. C. T. Hudson says, in a Presidential Address to the Royal Microscopical Society, that he wanders among fields and hedges, by moor and river, sea-washed cliff and shore, learning zoology as he learnt his native tongue, not in paradigms and rules, but from Mother Nature's own lips. He knows the birds by their flight and (still rarer accomplishment) by their cries. He has never heard of Edicnemus crepitans, the Charadrius pluvialis, or the Squatarola cinerea, but he can find a plover's nest, and has seen the young brown peewits peering at him from behind their protecting clods. He has watched the cunning flycatcher leaving her obvious and yet invisible young in a hole in an old wall, while she carries off the pellets that might betray their presence; and has stood so still to see the male redstart that a field-mouse has curled itself on his warm foot and gone to sleep." But the student must also attempt more careful studies of living animals, for it is easy to remain satisfied with vague "general impressions." He should make for himself -to be corrected afterwards by the labours of others—a "Fauna " and " Flora " of the district, or a "Naturalist's Year Book " of the flow and ebb of the living tide. He should select some nook or pool for special study, seeking a more and more intimate acquaintance with its tenants, watching them first and using the eyes of other students afterwards. Nor is there any difficulty in keeping at least freshwater aquaria—simply glass globes with pond water and weeds-in which, within small compass, much wealth of life may be observed. Those students are specially fortunate who have within reach such collections as the Zoological Gardens and the British Museum in London; but this is no reason for failing to appreciate the life of the sea-shore, the moor-pond, and the woods, or for neglecting to gain the confidence of fishermen and gamekeepers, or of any whose knowledge of natural history has been gathered from the experience of their daily life. 1. Variety of Life. Between one form of life and another there often seems nothing in common save that both are alive. Thus life is characteristically asleep in plants, it is generally more or less awake in animals. Yet among the latter, does it not doze in the tortoise, does it not fever in the hot-blooded bird? Or contrast the phlegmatic amphibian and the lithe fish, the limpet on the rock and the energetic squid, the barnacle passively pendent on the floating log and the frolicsome shrimp, the cochineal insect like a gall upon the leaf and the busy bee, the sedentary corals and the freeswimming jellyfish, the sponge on the rock and the minute Night-Light Infusorians which make the waves sparkle in the summer darkness. No genie of Oriental fancy was more protean than the reality behind the myth-the activity of life. 2. Haunts of Life. The variety of haunt and home is not less striking. There is the great and wide sea with swimming things innumerable, our modern giants the whales, the seals and walruses and the sluggish sea-cows, the flippered penguins and Mother Carey's chickens, the marine turtles and swift poisonous sea-serpents, the true fishes in prolific shoals, the cuttles and other pelagic molluscs; besides hosts of armoured crustaceans, swiftly gliding worms, fleets of Portuguese Men-of-War and throbbing jelly-fish, and minute forms of life as numerous in the waves as motes in the sunlit air of a dusty town. "But what an endless worke have I in hand, To count the seas abundant progeny, Whose fruitful seede farre passeth those on land, For much more eath to tell the starres on hy, Than to recount the seas posterity; So fertile be the floods in generation, So huge their numbers, and so numberlesse their nation." Realise Walt Whitman's vivid picture : "The World below the brine. Forests at the bottom of the sea-the branches and leaves, Sea-lettuce, vast lichens, strange flowers and seeds-the thick tangle, the openings, and the pink turf, Different colours, pale grey and green, purple, white, and goldthe play of light through the water, Dumb swimmers there among the rocks-coral, gluten, grass, rushes and the aliment of the swimmers, Sluggish existences grazing there, suspended, or slowly crawling close to the bottom : The sperm-whale at the surface, blowing air and spray, or disporting with his flukes, The leaden-eyed shark, the walrus, the turtle, the hairy sealeopard, and the sting ray. Passions there, wars, pursuits, tribes-sight in those ocean depths -breathing that thick breathing air, as so many do.” The sea appears to have been the cradle, if not the birthplace, of the earliest forms of animal life, and some have never wandered out of hearing of its lullaby. From the sea, animals seem to have migrated to the shore and thence to the land, but also to the great depths. Of the abundant life of the great abysses there has been rapidly increasing knowledge since the memorable time when the Challenger expedition (1872-76), under Sir Wyville Thomson's leadership, following the suggestions gained during the laying of the Atlantic cables and the tentative voyages of the Lightning (1868) and the Porcupine (1870), revealed what was virtually a new world. During 33 |