UNORTHODOX ATTITUDES
W
WHEN I saw eider-ducks eating seaweed off the coast of my island I was aware that they were doing something which they had no business to be doing; for it is stated in works of authority that they are purely animal feeders. I have had misgivings, therefore, ever since making the observation, but now, having seen a black guillemot also eating a piece of this same brown seaweed, I feel more comfortable about it, for surely this bird should be as exclusively a fish-eater as the eider-duck is supposed to be a devourer of shell-fish, crustaceans, etc. It was certainly, I think, a piece of this seaweed—short, brown, bunchy, and covered with little lobes—that this particular bird had in its bill. Through the glasses I could see it distinctly, and most distinctly it swallowed it. I doubt myself if there is any bird that feeds exclusively on anything, or that is absolutely confined to an animal or vegetable diet. They seem ever ready to enlarge their experience according to their opportunities of doing so, thus illustrating one of Darwin's most pregnant remarks.
When this "tysty" dived it presented a beautiful appearance under the water, owing to the snow-white patches on its wing-coverts, which flashed out distinguishably for some time. Besides this—whether or not this had anything to do with it—it became all at once of a lovely glaucous green colour, luminous, and with bubbles flashing about it. Gradually the form became lost, but the luminous green was never lost, and after becoming dimmer and dimmer began to get brighter and brighter again, till the bird reappeared out of it on the surface at some distance off. It seems just possible that this effect may be due in some measure to the white patches, since when the shag dives nothing of the sort, or, at any rate, nothing so marked, is to be seen, nor do I remember noticing it either in the guillemot, razorbill, or puffin, which are all dark above and only white underneath. On second thoughts, however, the colouring can have little or nothing to do with it, since the effect is very marked in the eider-duck of both sexes, and the female is uniformly dark. But how is the effect produced? by the clinging of innumerable small air-bubbles to the bird's plumage? If so, they may not cling equally to that of all species. The seal presented the finest appearance of all, but his size may perhaps have had something to do with this. Whatever may be the cause, I do not remember to have remarked the same thing in river-birds when diving. It is more difficult, indeed, to follow them under water when they dive, on account of the absence of cliffs to look down from. Still, one sees them sometimes, and, as I say, I do not remember noticing this luminous effect, so that it must be, at any rate, much less striking. I have seen the same thing with a shark at sea.
This morning the ravens again flew over the ness, going the other way, however, and I only saw three of them. As before, it was the skuas who informed me of this, but, in spite of their shrieking, they did not seem to meddle much with the grim, black birds. Though there is an impressiveness about the raven's whole appearance which, with the knowledge of what it is, sets the imagination working, yet there is nothing majestic in its actual flight, and these three, with their measured, laboured flappings, offer a clumsy contrast to the arrow-like grace of the skuas.
The chick is still upon the ledge, so I have still a chance of seeing him leave it; but even with two plaids, on one of which I lie and in the other wrap myself, like an embalmed mummy, it is cold work waiting—and still more when one has the lumbago. I was awakened early this morning by nasty pains, more right on the hip—the very bone of it—than in the true lumbagoey region; but it plays right lumbago music—"'tis enough, 'twill serve." This comes of lying on the rocks for six hours at a time in a Shetland summer. I was a fool, I think, to come here; but is there any one who is not, either in thinking or acting at any time ici bas?
When we are born we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools.
Now I have the lumbago, with very little for it, and had I not come here I should be regretting the loss of ten times as much as I have found, with no thought of the lumbago thereby avoided. Thus each way would have had its own particular foolery; and which way has not? Does not this apply to much greater matters, and often where there might seem to be no doubt as to where the foolery lay? The way of sin, for instance, that leads to remorse, has always been thought a foolish way, and that of virtue and clear conscience a wise one. Nevertheless, he who goes the first gains such knowledge by experience as can never be acquired in any other way, and is therefore to this extent the superior of the other unless he has already gained it, either in a life before this or in some other manner. If he has not, it seems probable that he will have to do so at one time or another, by the laws of development—assuming that personal life and personal development survive the thing called death. Who, then, if we make these assumptions, stands the better off, he who has learnt a great truth through his sinning, or he who, often owing to circumstances merely, has neither the sin nor the truth? Quite possibly, as it seems to me, the former; for what do we really know except through our own actual experience? What a dream must this life soon become to us if we are born, through death, into another one widely different from it! and seeing what death does to this body of ours, how can it be other than widely different? If, therefore, we could pass from life to life, or rather from stage to stage of life, keeping the knowledge gained in each to help us in the next, such knowledge, however bitterly, or, as we call it, evilly gained, would be really all in all good. The gain would be eternal and the pain transient as well as necessary. We may suppose, too, that it would become an ever-lessening quantity, as "John Brown went marching on." But somewhere and somehow all deep, essential knowledge—as the knowledge of good and evil—must, I believe, be individually gained if the individual is to advance. Innocence, though so highly recommended, is really a very trumpery thing.