Concerning Animals And Other Matters - free ebook by Edward Hamilton Aitken

CONCERNING ANIMALS AND OTHER MATTERS

Special thanks are due to the Editors and Proprietors of the Strand Magazine, Pall Mall Magazine and Times of India for their courtesy in permitting the reprinting of the articles in this book which originally appeared in their columns....

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HALF-TONES

1. Portrait of 'Eha.' 2. The Nose of the Elephant Becoming a Hand Has Redeemed Its Mind 3. Good for any Rough Job 4. Here the Competition Has Been Very Keen indeed. 5. A Blackbird and a Starling—the one Lifts Its Skirts, While the Other Wears a Walking Dress. 6. The Nostrils of the Apteryx Are at the Tip of Its Beak. 7. The Long-Nosed Monkey....

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LINE BLOCKS

8. An Authentic Standard Foot. 9. These Beasts Are All Clodhoppers, and their Feet Are Hobnailed Boots. 10. It Has to Double them Under and Hobble About Like a Chinese Lady. 11. No Doubt Each Bird Swears by Its Own Pattern. 12. Its Bill Deserves Study 13. As Wonderful As the Pelican, But How Opposite! 14. There Are Some Eccentrics, Such As Jenny Wren, Which Have Despised their Tails. 15. At the Sight of a Rival the Dog Holds Its Tail up Stiffly 16. A Shrew Can Do It, But Not a Man. 17. A Bold at

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INTRODUCTION

Edward Hamilton Aitken, the author of the following sketches, was well known to the present generation of Anglo-Indians, by his pen-name of Eha, as an accurate and amusing writer on natural history subjects. Those who were privileged to know him intimately, as the writer of this sketch did, knew him as a Christian gentleman of singular simplicity and modesty and great charm of manner. He was always ready to help a fellow-worker in science or philanthropy if it were possible for him to do so. Thu

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I

It is evident that, in what is called the evolution of animal forms, the foot came in suddenly when the backboned creatures began to live on the dry land—that is, with the frogs. How it came in is a question which still puzzles the phylogenists, who cannot find a sure pedigree for the frog. There it is, anyhow, and the remarkable point about it is that the foot of a frog is not a rudimentary thing, but an authentic standard foot, like the yard measure kept in the Tower of London, of which all ot

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II

The prospectus, or advertisement, of a certain American typewriting machine commences by informing the public that "The —— typewriter is founded on an idea." When I saw this phrase I secured it for my collection, for I felt that, without jest, it contained the kernel of a true philosophy of Nature. The forms, the phainomena , of Nature are innumerable, multifarious, interwoven, and infinitely perplexing, and you may spend a happy life in unravelling their relations and devising their evolutions;

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III

The secrets of Nature often play like an iridescence on the surface, and escape the eye of her worshipper because it is stopped with a microscope. There are mysteries all about us as omnipresent as the movement of the air that lifts the smoke and stirs the leaves, which I cannot find that any philosopher has looked into. Often and deeply have I been impressed with this. For example, there is scarcely, in this world, a commoner or a humbler thing than a tail, yet how multifarious is it in aspect,

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IV

Some may think that I have chosen a trivial subject, and they will look for frivolous treatment of it. I can only hope that they will be disappointed. There is nothing that the progress of science has taught us more emphatically than this—that we must call nothing insignificant. Seemingly trivial pursuits have led to discoveries which have benefited all mankind, and priceless truths have been dug out of the most unpromising mines. I am not insinuating that anyone's nose is an unpromising mine, b

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V

Men and women have ears, and so have jugs and pitchers. In the latter case they are useful: jugs and pitchers are lifted by them. And what is useful is fit, and fitness is the first condition of beauty. But human ears are put to no use, except sometimes when naughty little boys are lifted by them in the way of discipline; and I can see no beauty in them. It is only because they are so common that we do not notice how ridiculous they are. In the days of Charles I. men sometimes had their ears cut

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VI

Among the many and various strangers within my gates who have helped to enliven the days of my exile, Tommy was one towards whom I still feel a certain sense of obligation because he taught me for the first time what an owl is. For Tommy was an owl. From any dictionary you may ascertain that an owl is a nocturnal, carnivorous bird, of a short, stout form, with downy feathers and a large head; and if that does not satisfy you, there is no lack of books which will furnish fuller and more precise d

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VII

A thunderstorm has burst on the common rat. Its complicity in the spread of the plague, which has been proved up to the hilt, has filled the cup of its iniquities to overflowing, and we have awakened to the fact that it is and always has been an arch-enemy of mankind. Simultaneously, in widely separated parts of the world, a "pogrom" has been proclaimed, and the accounts of the massacre which come to us from great cities like Calcutta and Bombay are appalling and almost incredible. They would mo

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VIII

Long before Jubal became the father of all such as handle the harp and the organ and Tubalcain the instructor of every artificer in brass and iron, Abel was a keeper of sheep, but the sacred writer has not informed us how he first caught them and tamed them. If we consult other records of the infancy of the human race, they reveal as little. When the Egyptians began to portray their daily life on stone 6,000 or 7,000 years ago, they already had cattle and sheep, geese and ducks and dogs and plen

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IX

I have met persons, otherwise quite sane, who told me that they would like to visit India if it were not for the snakes . Now there is something very depressing in the thought that this state of mind is extant in England, for it is calculated, on occasion, to have results of a most melancholy nature. By way of example, let us picture the case of a broken-hearted maiden forced to reject an ardent lover because duty calls him to a land where there are snakes. Think of his happiness blighted for ev

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X

We must wait for another month or two before we can think of the winter in this country in the past tense, but in India the month of March is the beginning of the hot season, and the tourists who have been enjoying the pleasant side of Anglo-Indian life and assuring themselves that their exiled countrymen have not much to grumble at will now be making haste to flee. During the month the various hotels of Bombay will be pretty familiar with the grey sun-hat, fortified with puggaree and pendent fl

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XI

In a little book on the snakes of India, published many years ago by Dr. Nicholson of the Madras Medical Service, the conviction was expressed that the snake-charmers of Burmah knew of some antidote to the poison of the cobra which gave them confidence in handling it. He said that nothing would induce them to divulge it, but that he suspected it consisted in gradual inoculation with the venom itself. Putting the question to himself why he did not attempt to attest this by experiment, he replied

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XII

Beharil Surajmul was the greatest moneylender in Dowlutpoor. He was a man of rare talents. He remembered the face of every man who had at any time come to borrow money of him since he began to work, as a little boy, in his father's office, so that it was impossible to deceive him. He had also such a miraculous skill in the making out of accounts that a poor man who had come to him in extremity for a loan of fifty rupees, to meet the expenses of his daughter's marriage, might go on making payment

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XIII

It was January 13 of a good many years ago, in those happy days that have "gone glimmering through the dream of things that were." The sun had scarcely risen, and I was sitting in the cosy cabin of my yacht enjoying my "chota hazree," which, being interpreted, means "lesser presence," and in Anglo-Indian speech signifies an "eye-opener" of tea and toast—the greater presence appears some hours later and we call it breakfast. I will not say that the view from my cabin windows was enchanting. The p

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XIV

I do not believe that the Member of Parliament who moved the adjournment of the House to consider the culpable carelessness of the Government of India in allowing the Rajah of Muttighur to fall into the moat of his own castle when he was drunk, could have told you what a Purbhoo is, not though you had spelled it Prabhu, so that he could find it in his Gazetteer . Of course he saw hundreds of them during that Christmas which he spent in the East before he wrote his book; but then he took them all

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XV

Among the classic fairy-tales which passed like shooting stars across those dark hours of our boyhood in which we wrestled with the grim rudiments of Latin and Greek, and which abide in the memory after nearly all that they helped to brighten has passed away, there was one which related to a contest between Neptune and Minerva as to which should confer the greatest benefit on the human race. Neptune first struck his trident on the ground (or was it on the waves? "Eheu fugaces"—no, that also is g

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XVI

One half the world does not know how the other half lives. Noticing a pot of areca nut toothpaste on a chemist's counter, I asked him what the peculiar properties of the areca nut were—in short, what was it good for. He replied that it was an astringent and acted beneficially on the gums, but he had never heard that it was used for any other purpose than the manufacture of an elegant dentifrice. I felt inclined to question him about the camel in order to see whether he would tell me that it was

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XVII

Poets may sing, "Let the ape and tiger die," but they are not quite dead yet, only caged, and where is the man in whose bosom there lurks no wish that he could open the door just once in a way and let them have a frisk? In the East there is no hypocrisy about the matter. The tiger's den is barred and locked, and the British Government keeps the key, but the ape has an appointed day in the year on which he shall have his outing. They call it the Holi , which is a misnomer, for of all Hindu festiv

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XVIII

When Mr. Keir Hardie was in India he satisfied himself that the standard of living among the working classes in India has been deteriorating. This is interesting psychologically, and one would like to know by what means Mr. Keir Hardie attained to satisfaction on such a great and important question. Doubtless he had the ungrudging assistance of Mr. Chowdry. The poverty of India has for a good many years been a handy weapon, like the sailor's belaying pin, for everyone who wanted to "have at" our

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XIX

Of the results of the Roman supremacy in Britain none have been so permanent as their influence on our language. No doubt this was less due to any direct effect that their residence among the Britons had at the time on vernacular speech than to the fact that, for many centuries after their departure, Latin was the language, throughout Europe, of literature and scholarship. Our supremacy in India is acting on the languages of that country in both ways, and though it has scarcely lasted half as lo

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