“The female otter was presented to the Society by Lady Rolle on February 4, 1840, being apparently at that time about three months old. In 1846 a large male was presented to the Society by the Rev. P. M. Brunwin, of Braintree, Essex. Its weight when first taken was 21 lbs.; but it was not half that weight when presented to the Society, having wasted much in confinement in a cellar. About a month after his arrival there was continual chattering between him and the female at night, which lasted for four or five nights, but they did not appear to be quarrelling. On August 13, the keeper who has charge of them went to give them a fresh bed, which he does once a week. While pulling out the old bed he saw two young ones, apparently about five or six days old, and about the size of a full-grown rat; he immediately put back the bed, with the young ones in it, and left them.
“On the twenty-first the mother removed them to the second sleeping-den; her object appeared to be to let them have a dry bed. On the 9th of September they were first seen out of the house; they did not go into the water, but crawled about, and appeared very feeble.
“On September 26 they were first seen to eat fish, and follow the mother into the water. They did not dive like the mother, but went in like a dog, with their head above water, and it was not till the middle of October that they were observed to plunge into the water like the old ones. When the water was let out of the pond for the purpose of cleaning it they were shut up, but got out, and into the pond when it was half full of water. The young ones were not able to get out without help, and for some minutes the mother appeared very anxious, and made several attempts to reach them from the side of the pond where she was standing, but without success, as they were not within reach.
“She then plunged into the water to them, and began to play with one of them for a short time, and put her head close to its ears, as if to make it understand what she meant; the next moment she made a spring out of the pond, with the young one holding on to the fur at the root of the tail by its teeth; this she did several times during a quarter of an hour, as the young ones kept going into the water as fast as she got them out. Sometimes the young held on by the fur of her sides, sometimes by that at the tail. As soon as there was sufficient water for her to reach them from the side of the pond, she took hold of them near the ears with her mouth, and drew them out, and led them round the pond close to the fence, and kept chattering to them, as if telling them not to go into the pond again.”
Otter Pursuing Fish. From a Japanese Drawing.
A litter of young raccoons were born in the spring of 1894. Unfortunately they all died, just as it was hoped that they had passed the most dangerous time of infancy. On the other hand, the little Caucasian bear cubs, which arrived at Easter, throve amazingly, and in three months grew to the size of a retriever dog, though they had not abandoned the youthful habit of sucking the paws and “humming,” to signify that they wanted to be fed. But the great and notable birth of the year, almost contemporaneous with that of the infant prince, and worthy to be noted as a prodigium, if the keeping of Sibylline books were part of the English Constitution, was the arrival of a young “gnu.” It was even uglier than its mother, whose compound features of a horse’s body, a bull’s horns, and a goat’s beard combine to make her one of the strangest beasts existing. The infant was exactly like its mamma, minus the horns, but plus a high nose, and a curly beard, which makes it in profile rather like a portrait of Sennacherib or Shalmanezar. Another most beautiful calf of the wild cattle, a cross between the Chartley bull and the white cow from the Bangor herd, is as pretty and pleasing as the gnu calf is ugly. But in each case the mother is vastly proud of its infant, and they are probably the best judges of what their offspring should be.
ANIMAL COLOURING.
The conclusions of naturalists as to the laws which govern the colouring of animals must, it seems, be modified. There is no reason, however, to fear any loss of interest in one of the prettiest and most attractive sides of natural history. The collection and comparison of the wonderful analogies in colour between animals and their environment, and between one animal and another, will still be guided by the leading principles which Bates and Wallace detected; and the delight and surprise with which the non-scientific world welcomed these discoveries need neither be regretted nor diminished. But without wishing to grudge one iota of the praise awarded to explanations, the dexterity and aptness of which would alone entitle them to admiration, it is still possible to doubt whether some of the minor hypotheses framed to account for facts which seemed to stand outside the explanation of colour mimicry by the general law of the survival of the fittest, are not almost too ingenious. The fascination of the subject is so great that it seems to develop an over-keenness of scientific insight. The facts of resemblance themselves are so wonderful, and the contrast between the colours of the sexes in birds so startling, that the temptation to make a great principle like that of natural selection fit the exact requirements of each case, and to explain the complexity of Nature in a sentence, is almost irresistible. It is quite possible that the principle of natural selection, which gives a perfect explanation of the wonderful phenomena of “protective mimicry,” may also be the master-key to the remaining problems of animal hues. The chief difficulties which remain, after accounting for protective coloration, are, first, the extraordinary differences between the tints and plumage of male and female in many birds; and, secondly, the conspicuous colours of certain creatures by which the attention of their enemies must necessarily be attracted. The first of these obvious difficulties has been explained by what is called “sexual selection,” which is an auxiliary to the general law of natural selection. The female pheasants, or birds of paradise, or pigeons, as the case may be, by an enduring good taste in choosing for their mates those with the brightest plumage and finest wattles and spurs, have played their part in the general scheme of evolution so well, that their progeny have in time developed all the beauties which they now possess. That theory is obviously quite consistent with the general law. It accounts logically in part, if not entirely, for the perilous beauties of the stronger sex. But there are creatures in gorgeous attire for which “sexual selection” could give no justification—caterpillars, for instance, which run additional risks by their conspicuous hues. “That,” said the naturalist, “is in order to advertise their inedible qualities!” “They require,” writes Mr. Wallace, “some signal, or danger flag, which shall serve as a warning to would-be enemies not to attack them, and they have usually obtained this in the form of conspicuous or brilliant coloration, very distinct from the protective tints of the defenceless animals allied to them.” There is one obvious objection to this explanation. It is really too clever. It fits the case so perfectly that, in the absence of further experiment and observation, one is reluctantly obliged to pause before yielding entirely to such a brilliant surmise, and to welcome the note of warning which Mr. Beddard, the Prosector of the Zoological Society, utters in his admirable work on “Animal Coloration.”[[9]] It is evident, from the space given to the two points of “Sexual Selection” and “Warning Colours” in this work, which aims only at furnishing a general notion of the facts and theories relating to animal coloration, that room exists for doubt as to the value to be attached to either theory. The contribution which Mr. Beddard makes towards solving the difficulty is threefold. He presents as alternatives to the theories of sexual selection and warning coloration, the ingenious speculations of Mr. Stoltzmann and Dr. Eisig, neither of which have yet found their way into works of a popular character; and he gives an account of numerous and careful experiments made at the Zoo, with insects of brilliant colouring and reputed evil flavour, as food for birds and reptiles. No care or pains was omitted to get at the truth of these supposed instances of warning colouring. No augurs, with the purest motives to guide their interpretation of the omens, ever watched the feeding of the sacred chickens in the Capitol with a more ardent desire to mark the real appetite of the prophetic fowls, than did Mr. Beddard and his predecessors, in observing the practical results of “warning coloration” when making trial of the birds at the Zoo. But the list of experiments does not give any clear line of refusal or acceptance between the “protectively coloured” insects and their more sober relations, and Mr. Beddard’s conclusion is that “the experiments which have been made might be taken to prove anything.” That is, so far, disappointing. But it is probable that with time and patience a body of evidence will be accumulated which will throw more light on the vexed question of the palatability of these gaudy insects or reptiles. Meantime, the discoveries of Dr. Eisig, to which Mr. Beddard introduces us, throw light on the question from a different point of view. If his surmises are confirmed, the fact will be additional evidence in favour of that minute and laborious specialization which so often goes without reward. His researches were devoted to the history of a small group of sea-worms. One of these he found living parasitically upon a marine sponge in the Bay of Naples. The sponge was of a yellow colour, caused by the presence of small particles of colouring-matter. The worm was of the same colour, with bright orange spots, and the pigment which coloured the sponge was found to be the same which coloured the worm, having been simply transferred from the tissues of the sponge to the skin of the worm, after going through part of the alimentary canal. Dr. Eisig is of opinion that the “pigment” so transferred from the alimentary canal to the skin is itself the cause of the creature being distasteful, which suggests the conclusion that the brilliant colour—that is, the secretion of a quantity of colouring-matter—has itself caused the inedibility of species, rather than that the inedibility has made necessary the production of bright colour as an advertisement. “This explanation,” Mr. Beddard remarks, “is not entirely contrary to the views of Wallace, Poulton, and others; for we may still suppose that the bright colours are actually ‘warning’ colours, although they have not been evolved for this purpose.” But the weakness, as well as the attraction, of the unmodified theory really lies in the supposition of the creation in the creature of colour, for the express purpose of advertisement. The modest conjecture of Dr. Eisig transfers the explanation to safer ground.