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DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST
DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST
BY THE SAME AUTHOR Science from an Easy Chair Science from an Easy Chair. Second Series From an Easy Chair Extinct Animals The Kingdom of Man A CORNER IN A MARINE AQUARIUM, PAINTED BY PHILIP HENRY GOSSE, F.R.S. The scene shews the great white Sea Anemone of Weymouth. In front are two richly coloured sea-worms (Serpula) issuing from their calcareous tubes, attached to a dead scallop's shell. The green sea-grass (Zostera) and a translucent pink sea-weed, left and right, complete the picture DIVERS
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PREFACE
PREFACE
AT this time of stress and anxiety we all, however steadfast in giving our service to the great task in which our country is engaged, must, from time to time, seek intervals of release from the torrent of thoughts which is set going by the tremendous fact that we are fighting for our existence. To very many relief comes in splendid self-sacrificing action, in the joyful exercise of youthful strength and vigour for a noble cause. But even these, as well as those who are less fortunate, need inter
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CHAPTER I ON A NORWEGIAN FIORD
CHAPTER I ON A NORWEGIAN FIORD
THE splendour of our Sussex Weald, with its shady forests and lovely gardens, around which rise the majestic Downs sweeping in long graceful curves marked by the history of our race, has charmed me during these sunny days of June. The orchids, the water-lilies, the engaging and quaintly named "petty whin," and the pink rattle are joined with the tall foxgloves and elder-blossoms in my memory. And for some reason—perhaps it is the heat—I am set thinking of very different scenes—the great, cool fi
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CHAPTER II NATURE-RESERVES
CHAPTER II NATURE-RESERVES
ONE of the new features of modern life—the result of the enormous development of the newspaper press and the vast increase in numbers of those who read and think in common—is the development of a sensitive "self-consciousness" of the community, a more or less successful effort to know its own history, to value the records of the past, and to question its own hitherto unconscious, unreflecting attitude in mechanically and as it were blindly destroying everything which gets in the way of that indu
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CHAPTER III FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
CHAPTER III FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
SOME men of unbalanced minds have lately proposed deliberately and completely to obliterate all the artistic work of past generations of man in order, as they openly profess, that they themselves and their own productions may obtain consideration. Even were they able to make such a clearance, it may be doubted whether the consideration given to their own performances would be favourable. These obscure individuals have immodestly dubbed themselves "futurists," and the name has been at once adopte
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CHAPTER IV THE GREAT GREY SEAL
CHAPTER IV THE GREAT GREY SEAL
IT is always pleasing to find that intelligent care can be brought to bear on the preservation of the rare and interesting animals which still inhabit parts of these British Islands, though it is not often that such care is actually exercised. Mr. Lyell (a nephew of the great geologist Sir Charles Lyell) in April 1914 introduced a Bill into the House of Commons which is called the Grey Seals (Protection) Bill. It came on for consideration before the Standing Committee, was ordered to be reported
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CHAPTER V THE GROUSE AND OTHER BIRDS
CHAPTER V THE GROUSE AND OTHER BIRDS
IN August when so many people are either shooting or eating that delectable bird—the grouse—a few words about him and his kind will be seasonable. "Grouse" is an English word (said to have meant in its original form "speckled"), and by "the" grouse we mean the British red grouse, which, though closely related to the willow grouse, called "rype" (pronounced "reepa") in Norway—a name applied also to the ptarmigan—is one of the very few species of birds peculiar to the British Islands. The willow-g
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CHAPTER VI THE SAND AND PEBBLES OF THE SEASHORE
CHAPTER VI THE SAND AND PEBBLES OF THE SEASHORE
THE "beach" on our English coast is an accumulation of pebbles or of sand, or of both, often accompanied by dead shells and other fragments thrown up by the sea. Very generally it slopes rapidly from above high-water mark to about half-tide limit, and then merges into a more horizontal expanse of fine, compact sand. This last is not "a beach" thrown up by waves, but a sediment or deposit. It forms a flat, often ripple-marked plain (much has been written as to how those ripple-marks are produced)
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CHAPTER VII THE CONSTITUENTS OF A SEABEACH
CHAPTER VII THE CONSTITUENTS OF A SEABEACH
I ONCE went down to Aldeburgh, on the Suffolk coast, with a party of friends, which included an American writer, himself as delightful and charming as his stories. Why should I not give his name? It was Cable, the author of "Old Creole Days." We walked through the little town to the sea-front, and came upon the immense beach spreading out for miles towards Orford Ness. "Well, I never!" said he to me; "I suppose the hotel people have put those stones there to make a promenade for the visitors. It
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CHAPTER VIII QUICKSANDS AND FIRE-STONES
CHAPTER VIII QUICKSANDS AND FIRE-STONES
THERE are curious facts about sand which can be studied on the seashore. There are the "quicksands," mixtures of sand and water, which sometimes engulf pedestrians and horsemen at low tide, not only at the Mont St. Michel, on the Normandy coast, but at many spots on the English, Welsh, and Scotch coasts. Small and harmless quicksands are often formed where the sand is not firmly "bedded" by the receding sea, and the sea-water does not drain off, but forms a sort of sand-bog. Then one may also st
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CHAPTER IX AMBER
CHAPTER IX AMBER
AMBER is not unfrequently picked up among the pebbles of the East Coast. I once picked up a piece on the beach at Felixstowe as big as a turkey's egg, thinking it was an ordinary flint-pebble and intending to throw it into the sea, when my attention was arrested by its extraordinary lightness, and I found that I had got hold of an unusually large lump of amber. There is a locality where amber occurs in considerable quantity. It is a long way off—namely, the promontory called Samland near Königsb
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CHAPTER X SEA-WORMS AND SEA-ANEMONES
CHAPTER X SEA-WORMS AND SEA-ANEMONES
LET us now leave the beach-pebbles and go down on to the rocks at low tide in order to see some of the living curiosities of the seashore. There are some seaside resorts where, when the tide goes down, nothing is exposed but a vast acreage of smooth sand, and here the naturalist must content himself with such spoils as may be procured by the aid of a shrimping-net and a spade. Wading in the shallow water and using his net, he will catch, not only the true "brown shrimp," but other shrimp-like cr
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CHAPTER XI CORAL-MAKERS AND JELLY-FISH
CHAPTER XI CORAL-MAKERS AND JELLY-FISH
A VERY beautiful kind of sea-anemone (common at Felixstowe) is the Daisy or Sagartia troglodytes, ( Fig. 6, a ), which has a very long body attached to a rock or stone far below the sandy floor of the pool, on the level of which it expands its thin, long, ray-like tentacles, coloured dark brown and white, and sometimes orange-yellow. As soon as you touch it it disappears into the sand, and is very difficult to dig out. The most beautifully coloured of all sea-anemones are the little Corynactids
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CHAPTER XII SHRIMPS, CRABS, AND BARNACLES
CHAPTER XII SHRIMPS, CRABS, AND BARNACLES
WE have no word in English to indicate the varied crab-and-shrimp-like creatures of salt and fresh waters in the same way as "insect" designates the six-legged, usually winged, terrestrial creatures of many kinds—beetles, bees, bugs, two-winged flies, dragonflies, day-flies, and butterflies. They are all "insects." Naturalists call the aquatic shrimp-and-crab creatures "crustaceans." Perhaps "crab" might be used in a large sense to include them all, together with the true crabs, as the Germans u
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CHAPTER XIII BARNACLES AND OTHER CRUSTACEANS
CHAPTER XIII BARNACLES AND OTHER CRUSTACEANS
THE ship's barnacle looks at first, when you see one of a group of them hanging from a piece of floating timber, like a little smooth, white bivalve shell, as big as your thumb-nail, at the end of a thickish, worm-like stalk, from one to ten inches long (Fig. 10). But you will soon see that there are not only two valves to the white shell, but three smaller ones as well as the two principal ones. This does not separate them altogether from the bivalve-shelled molluscs (mussels, clams, oysters),
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CHAPTER XIV THE HISTORY OF THE BARNACLE AND THE GOOSE
CHAPTER XIV THE HISTORY OF THE BARNACLE AND THE GOOSE
THE curious belief, widely spread in former ages—that the creatures (described in the last chapter) called "barnacles" or "ship's barnacles"—often found attached in groups to pieces of floating timber in the sea as well as fixed to the bottoms of wooden ships—are the young of a particular kind of goose called "the barnacle goose," which is supposed to hatch out of the white shell of the long-stalked barnacle, is a very remarkable example of the persistence of a tradition which is entirely fancif
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CHAPTER XV MORE AS TO THE BARNACLE AND THE GOOSE
CHAPTER XV MORE AS TO THE BARNACLE AND THE GOOSE
IT is clear that there was a widespread tradition known to the learned in the early centuries of the Christian era, according to which there existed in some distant Eastern land a tree which bore buds or fruits which became converted into birds. Connected with this, and perhaps really a part of it, there existed a tradition that marine "barnacles" gave birth to geese from within their shells, or are in some way converted into geese. The two stories were in some localities and narrations combined
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CHAPTER XVI SEA-SHELLS ON THE SEASHORE
CHAPTER XVI SEA-SHELLS ON THE SEASHORE
ANY hard coat or covering enclosing a softer material is called a "shell"—thus we speak of an egg-shell, a nut-shell, a bomb-shell, and the shell of a lobster. But there is a special and restricted use of the word to indicate as "true" and "real" shells the beautiful coverings made for their protection by the soft, mobile animals called Molluscs. These animals expand and contract first this and then that region of the body by squeezing the blood within it (by means of the soft muscular coat of t
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CHAPTER XVII SAND-HOPPERS
CHAPTER XVII SAND-HOPPERS
WHEREVER there is a sandy seashore with here and there masses of dead seaweed and corallines thrown up by the waves, you will find sand-hoppers feeding on the debris. They are crustaceans, like crabs, shrimps, and barnacles, but in general aspect resemble enormous fleas. I hope that this comparison will not enable any reader at once to picture the less familiar by the more familiar. A good-sized sand-hopper is about half an inch long, and jumps not by means of a specially large pair of legs as t
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CHAPTER XVIII A SWISS INTERLUDE
CHAPTER XVIII A SWISS INTERLUDE
AFTER the hot summer of 1911 I escaped from London in September and made straight for Interlaken. Thence I was "wafted" by the electric railway to the "Schynige Platte"—a wonderful hill-side, 4500 feet above the "Bödeli," the flat meadowland in which Interlaken is placed. At the Schynige Platte we are separated to the south from the Jungfrau and the great Oberland range of mountains only by a deep rift in which rushes the "Black Lütschine," coming down from Grindelwald to join its "white" brothe
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CHAPTER XIX SCIENCE AND DANCING
CHAPTER XIX SCIENCE AND DANCING
THERE is at the present day in this country a real and most happy revival of interest in the great art of dancing as exhibited on the stage. We owe this to the creative ability of the musical composers and directors of the Russian Imperial Ballet, as well as to the highly-trained and gifted Russian artists who have visited this country, and especially to the poetical genius of Madame Anna Pavlova. Though dancing may seem, on first thought, a subject remote from science, yet, like all other human
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CHAPTER XX COURTSHIP
CHAPTER XX COURTSHIP
IT is always amusing to find the lower animals behaving in various circumstances of life very much as we do ourselves. There is a tendency to look upon such conduct on the animals' part as a more or less clever mimicry of humanity—a sort of burlesque of our own behaviour. Really, however, it has a far greater interest; it is a revelation to us of the nature and origin in our animal ancestry of various deeply-rooted "behaviours" which are common to us and animals. The wooing of a maid by a man an
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CHAPTER XXI COURTSHIP IN ANIMALS AND MAN
CHAPTER XXI COURTSHIP IN ANIMALS AND MAN
THE German poet Schiller arrived long ago at the conclusion that the machinery of the world is driven by hunger and by love. If we join with hunger, which is the craving of the individual for nourishment, the activities which aim at self-defence,—whether against competitors for food, against would-be devourers, or against dangers to life and limb, from storm, flood, and temperature,—we may accept Schiller's statement as equivalent to this, namely, that the activities and the mechanisms of living
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CHAPTER XXII COURTSHIP AND DISPLAY
CHAPTER XXII COURTSHIP AND DISPLAY
THE "displays" made by male birds and by some other animals which lead to the "fascination" of the females, and apparently to a condition similar to that which is called "hypnotic" in man, are very remarkable. One is tempted to say that these "displays" are made "for the purpose" of fascinating the female. But though that would be correct in describing similar proceedings on the part of a human "gallant," it is not strictly so in the case of animals, any more than it is true that a bird grows it
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CHAPTER XXIII COURTSHIP, INSTINCT AND REASON
CHAPTER XXIII COURTSHIP, INSTINCT AND REASON
APART from the familiar instances of male colour-decoration afforded by birds, we find that even some of the minute water-fleas inhabiting freshwater lakes and the sea, and known as Crustacea Entomostraca, put on a courting dress at the breeding season; that is to say, the males become brilliantly coloured with patches of red and blue. And among the highest mammals we find that the same colours are, in some cases, displayed by the males as a fascination to the females. This is the case with the
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CHAPTER XXIV DADDY-LONG-LEGS
CHAPTER XXIV DADDY-LONG-LEGS
IN early September, golf links and other such grasslands swarm with a large gnat-like fly of reddish-brown body, feeble flight, and long, straggling legs. These flies are generally called "Daddy-Long-Legs," or, by the more learned, "Crane-flies." I find that they are sometimes confused with another fly of about the same size with bright reddish-brown body, which is very much less abundant and occasionally flutters around the lamps and candles in a country house when the windows are open in the e
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CHAPTER XXV THE MOTH AND THE CANDLE
CHAPTER XXV THE MOTH AND THE CANDLE
IN order to understand and interpret correctly the operation of natural selection in producing new species and maintaining them, by "the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life" (to use Darwin's words), we must take a wide and, at the same time, a minutely accurate survey of the living world. We must seek out the evidences of this operation and use the imagination in forming conceptions as to the varied steps of the process and the results which are likely to ensue from it at dif
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CHAPTER XXVI FROM APE TO MAN
CHAPTER XXVI FROM APE TO MAN
THE recent discoveries of the actual bones of very early races of man raise again a general interest in the inquiry as to what are the actual differences of structure between men and apes, and what were probably the steps by which, as the result of "survival of the fittest," some early man-like apes became ape-like men. The question also arises as to how long ago the transition actually took place, and whether it was a very gradual or a rapid one. We are to-day in possession of some important fa
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CHAPTER XXVII THE SKELETON OF APES AND OF MAN
CHAPTER XXVII THE SKELETON OF APES AND OF MAN
THE upright carriage of man has entailed remarkable changes in the proportions and shapes of parts of his body, as well as leading to special skill in the use of his hands. The vertebral column of man has not the single curve of a bow, as it has (practically) in the higher apes, but as he stands it curves (slightly, it is true, but definitely) forward at the neck, backward at the chest, forward at the loins, and backward again at the hips, an arrangement which appears to protect to some extent t
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CHAPTER XXVIII THE BRAIN OF APES AND OF MAN
CHAPTER XXVIII THE BRAIN OF APES AND OF MAN
A GREAT and undoubtedly very important difference between man and apes is the much greater size of the brain in man. This difference is most conveniently measured by filling the cavity of a skull, once occupied by the brain, with shot or other such material, and then measuring the bulk of the material required for that purpose. The unit which it is convenient to use in all such measurements is the cubic centimetre, because it is that used by scientific workers all over the world. A cubic centime
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CHAPTER XXIX THE MIND OF APES AND OF MAN
CHAPTER XXIX THE MIND OF APES AND OF MAN
JUST as man's brain is enormously larger than that of the ordinary monkeys, although his general make and anatomy is closely similar to theirs, so we find that the rhinoceros has an enormous brain as compared with extinct rhinoceros-like animals, the predecessors and ancestors of those now living. The extinct Titanotherium of the lower Miocene period managed to carry on its life in an efficient way and to hold its own for a considerable period with a brain which was only one-eighth the bulk of t
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CHAPTER XXX THE MISSING LINK
CHAPTER XXX THE MISSING LINK
UNTIL the discovery of the wonderful fossil jaw in the gravel of Piltdown, near Lewes in Sussex, a favourite view as to the probable relationship of man and existing apes was, that if you could trace back the pedigree of man and of the chimpanzee into remote antiquity far back in the Tertiary period—probably in the early Miocene—you would arrive at a smallish creature with, proportionately to its size, larger jaws and teeth than any modern man, yet smaller than those of the living man-like apes,
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CHAPTER XXXI THE SUPPLY OF PURE MILK
CHAPTER XXXI THE SUPPLY OF PURE MILK
IT is becoming more and more certain that the character and quality of the actual things—the natural products—which we use as food and accept as "diet" are far more important matters in regard to the preservation of health than had been until recently supposed. There has been a tendency, resulting from some of the well-ascertained chemical necessities of the animal body and the equally well-ascertained chemical composition of different articles of food, to suppose that all that we have to do in
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CHAPTER XXXII CHRISTMAS TREES AND OTHER PINE TREES
CHAPTER XXXII CHRISTMAS TREES AND OTHER PINE TREES
WHEN winter grips our land it is fitting to discourse about the sweet and refreshing pine trees which are especially associated in northern climes with the celebration of Christmas. The delicious perfume which they diffuse is destructive both of microbes and noxious insects, whilst they are always linked in our minds with glorious mountain-sides or breezy moorland, or the delightful sand dunes and grey rocks of the sunny shores of the Mediterranean. The decoration of trees on days of festival an
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CHAPTER XXXIII THE LYMPH AND THE LYMPHATIC SYSTEM
CHAPTER XXXIII THE LYMPH AND THE LYMPHATIC SYSTEM
MOST people do not know even of the existence in their own bodies of a fluid called "the lymph," and of a system of vessels and spaces containing it which ramify like the blood-vessels into every part of the body. This arises from the fact that the lymph is translucent and colourless. You can see the finest blood-vessels when the body of a dead rat, sheep, or man is opened, because they are filled with the beautiful red blood, and appear as a rich, coloured network. But the lymph and the lymph-v
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CHAPTER XXXIV THE BLOOD AND ITS CIRCULATION
CHAPTER XXXIV THE BLOOD AND ITS CIRCULATION
RED, crimson, scarlet, hot, the river of life, the carrier of all that is good and all that is bad by its myriad streams through our bodies; the rarest, most precious, most gorgeous of fluids; the daughter of the salt ocean, finer and more worshipful even than the waters of the great mother, the sea; the badge of horror and of accursed cruelty, yet also the emblem of nobility, of generosity, of all that is near and dear, of all that is splendid and beautiful; the blush of modesty and the flag of
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CHAPTER XXXV FISH AND FAST DAYS
CHAPTER XXXV FISH AND FAST DAYS
MOST people are familiar with the fact that fasting in the Christian Church has from early times been of two degrees—one in which no flesh of beast or bird or fish, not even eggs, not even milk, may be consumed, and a less severe degree in which the eating of fish is allowed. It is not at first sight clear why the eating of fish—and even of birds such as the Barnacle goose and the Sooty duck, supposed to be produced from fish—has been permitted by the Christian Church, since the flesh of fish is
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CHAPTER XXXVI SCIENCE AND THE UNKNOWN
CHAPTER XXXVI SCIENCE AND THE UNKNOWN
IT is a remarkable fact that although the first efforts of the founders of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Natural Knowledge, two hundred and fifty years ago, in this country, and of other such associations on the Continent, had the immediate effect of destroying a large amount of that fantastic superstition and credulity which had until then prevailed in all classes of society, and although that period marks the transition from the astounding and terrible nightmares of the Middle Ages to
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CHAPTER XXXVII DIVINATION AND PALMISTRY
CHAPTER XXXVII DIVINATION AND PALMISTRY
THE gradual passage of the race of man from the condition of "beasts that reason not" to that of "persons of understanding and reason" has been an immensely long and a very painful one. It is not yet complete—is far, indeed, from being so—even amongst the most favoured classes of the most highly civilized peoples of to-day. Just as our bodily evolution and adaptation to present conditions is incomplete and exhibits what Metchnikoff has called "disharmonies"—that is, retentions of ancestral struc
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CHAPTER XXXVIII TOADS FOUND LIVING IN STONE
CHAPTER XXXVIII TOADS FOUND LIVING IN STONE
IT is quite true that one should not refuse to entertain the possibility of something almost incredible taking place, simply because it is highly improbable that it has taken place. Also it is important that one should not accept and believe in the reality of the marvellous occurrence, merely because a decent sort of person has asserted that he has witnessed it and is satisfied of its reality. In a previous chapter ( p. 117 ) we have seen how the story of the Tree goose and the hatching of geese
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CHAPTER XXXIX THE DIVINING-ROD
CHAPTER XXXIX THE DIVINING-ROD
THE divining-rod, spoken of by the Romans as "virgula divina," and mentioned by Cicero and by Tacitus, was a different thing altogether from the modern forked twig of the water-finder, and seems to be of immemorial antiquity. Its use in "divination" was similar to that practised with a ring or a sieve suspended by a string. When the rod is thrown into the air and falls to the ground, or when the suspended object is set moving, it eventually comes to rest, and when thus at rest must point in one
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CHAPTER XL BIRTH-MARKS AND TELEGONY
CHAPTER XL BIRTH-MARKS AND TELEGONY
TWO widely-spread "beliefs"—in regard to the complicated and not generally familiar subject of the reproduction of animals—are, in addition to that dealt with in the last chapter, examples of the unjustified and primitive mode of forming a conclusion known as "post hoc ergo propter hoc." I refer, firstly, to the belief (which I have already mentioned) in the causation of what are called "birth-marks" by "maternal impressions," by which is meant the seeing of unusual and impressive things by the
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CHAPTER XLI HOW TO PROMOTE SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY BY MONEY
CHAPTER XLI HOW TO PROMOTE SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY BY MONEY
THE fact that five years ago Mr. Otto Beit, the brother of the late Mr. Alfred Beit, not only carried out the latter's intention of giving £50,000 to the promotion of research in connexion with the study of disease and the mastery of its causes, but added £150,000 on his own account to the amount originally proposed, produced great satisfaction among scientific men, and also in that large body of the public which, at the present day, understands something of the importance to the community of th
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