Fido was a shaggy terrier who lived years ago in the old home on the farm by the beautiful brook. He was one of the very first acquaintances the writer of these lines made on coming into existence. In his earlier years, before age had dimmed his mind and rheumatism had fastened upon him, he was an exceedingly agreeable and clever canine, active in all the affairs of the farm. He knew the old homestead by heart, and he took about as much interest in having everything go right as anybody—more, perhaps, even than we boys did. He chased the pigs out of the orchard without being asked to do so, and guarded the house at night with the vigilance of a hired watchman. He seemed to realise the demands of everyday situations about as well as any of us. He could distinguish between neighbours who were accustomed to come on the premises and strangers who were not. He always knew when company came, for he invariably attempted to profit by the fact. He had been taught early the propriety of keeping in the background when his tyrants were feeding, and ordinarily on such occasions he slept dutifully by the kitchen stove. But just as sure as a guest sat at table, Fido would turn up, and, tapping the visitor gently to get his attention, would sit up perfectly straight, with his paws pendent and a peculiar grin on his face, in expectation of a morsel. Dear old Fido! How much he thought of all of us! And how meagerly, as I know now, were his matchless love and services requited; On Sundays sometimes the human members of the household would go away and stay all day, and Fido and the cat would be left alone to get along the best way they could. He knew as well as any of us when these days came around, and he dreaded them. I suppose he had learned from experience to associate cessation of farm work and peculiar preparations with a day alone. The long, lonely hours probably affected him somewhat as they do a human being who is compelled to stay alone all day with nothing to do. But what a welcome he gave us in the evening when we came back! This was indubitable evidence of his loneliness. The first familiar object we would see in the evening, on coming in sight of home, was faithful Fido, sitting out in the road on the hill above the house—sitting straight up in that peculiar way of his—watching and waiting for our home-coming. He knew, or seemed to know, the direction from which to expect us, and was able to recognise us a long way off. The years have been many, and Fido’s dust has long been scattered by the gusts over the farms of north-west Missouri; but now, in fancy, I can see this faithful creature bounding down the road in the sunset to meet us, as he used to do in the golden long-ago, leaping and smiling and wagging his tail, and wriggling and barking in a perfect ecstasy of gladness.
Well, I know Fido could feel and think, that he loved and feared and longed and dreaded and dreamed and hated and grieved and sympathised and reasoned and rejoiced—in short, that he was moved by about the same passions and considerations as human beings usually are. He gave the same evidence of it precisely as a human being does.
The dog is the oldest of human associates. Long before the historical period the dog was domesticated in Europe, Asia, and Africa. No race of men is too primitive to be without the dog. The bones of the dog are found in the middens of the Baltic, and rude representations of it are chiseled on the oldest monuments of Egypt and Assyria. The dog was the servant of man away in paleolithic times, when the mastodon was on earth, and man was a naked troglodyte, and Europe extended westward to the Azores. And he has been a faithful friend, a tireless ally, and an enthusiastic slave of a thankless and inhuman master ever since.
Birds are pre-eminently emotional and artistic. This is shown by their fondness for singing, their fine dress, their pining for their dead, their dainty architecture, their pretty forms and manners of life, their joyousness, and their love for their young. Birds are the most beautiful and engaging of all terrestrial beings. Endowed with the power of flight, eminently active, light-hearted and free, attired in all the colours of the rainbow, and with voices of unrivalled richness and melody, birds are the admiration and envy of all of those that dwell on the earth. Birds possess naturally and in marvellous perfection that power of locomotion which has been so long sought for by slow-shuffling man. Birds are also incomparable musicians, no other animals, not even men, approaching them in the surpassing brilliancy and sweetness of their song. No human musician in high-sounding hall can equal the artless lay of the wild bird ringing melodiously through the leafy colonnades of the woods. Like men, birds sing chiefly of love; but they also sing for pastime or pleasure. Their singing is sweetest during the season of courtship, and attains its highest development in the males. Birds are ardent lovers. To win their brides, the males contend with each other, and display their charms of plumage and song with the wildness of human Romeos.
The song of birds is generally acquired by inheritance from the species, but is sometimes borrowed by imitation from other birds, or even from other animals. Birds taken from their species when young, before they have heard their native song, sing generally the song of their kind, but it is likely to be interspersed with notes and phrases from the birds around them. Birds thus isolated have been known to adopt entirely the song of their surroundings. Olive Thorne Miller vouches for the fact that an English sparrow she once knew grew up in company with a canary, and came in time to sing the song of its more talented companion to perfection. It must have been a Shakspere of a bird, however, to have soared so high above the excruciating accomplishments of the generality of its species.
The songs of birds can be set to music just as the melodies of men can. The songs of several birds were published in the American Naturalist a few years ago. And Winchell, the well-known English student of birds, has written a clever book on the ‘Cries and Call-notes of Wild Birds,’ in which he prints the calls and songs of most of the native birds of England. According to this writer, who has perhaps studied the music of birds more critically than anyone else, the song of the nightingale, when printed in the notation of ordinary human music, is like a piano solo. It is made up of a score or so of different strains, with trills and crescendos, and all executed in so inimitable a manner that it is unrecognisable when repeated on a musical instrument or the human voice. One of these strains, curiously enough, is identical with the song of a certain bush-warbler of western Canada—as if the English vocalist had plagiarised the song of its humbler cousin in compiling its incomparable repertoire. The song of the mocking-bird is a magnificent medley, made up of the calls, trills, twitters, warbles, warnings, and love-songs, of a score or more of other birds. I have heard this bird along the Solomon and Arkansas valleys repeat in the most perfect manner the notes and songs of the pewee, purple martin, kingbird, flicker, blue jay, catbird, canary, crow, English sparrow, red-headed woodpecker, quail, cardinal, cuckoo, robin, red-wings, grackle, meadowlark, night-hawk, whip-poor-will, besides many other calls and notes, perhaps of birds I did not know. In the case of some of these birds the mocker made all of the different sounds of each bird. The song of the mocking-bird is delivered at any time, day or night, and generally in a state of high ecstasy and excitement, the performer flying from tree to tree and from house-top to barn-top, occasionally throwing himself into the air in the most absurd manner, and all the time pouring forth such a stream of melody that one would think all the birds in the neighbourhood had suddenly come together and let loose in a grand festival of song.
According to Chapman, many of the notes of birds are language notes rather than sounds expressive of sentiment. Of the robin this well-known student of birds says: ‘The song and call-notes of this bird, while familiar to everyone, are in reality understood by no one, and offer excellent subjects for the student of bird language. Its notes express interrogation, suspicion, alarm, and caution, and it signals to its companions to take wing. Indeed, few of our birds have a more extended vocabulary.’ Winchell says that the common English sparrow has as many as seven different notes, which it uses to express the thoughts and feelings passing through its rather active but not very highly honoured head: (1) The common note of address of the male to the female; (2) a note of alarm used by both male and female adults, but never by the young; (3) an emphatic alarm note, always uttered by sentinels when a hawk is near or when a man approaches with a gun; (4) the note of the female when surrounded by several noisy and contending male rivals; (5) an autumn cry uttered by the first one of the company perceiving danger and flying up from the hedges and fields—never uttered by young, but by adults of both sexes; (6) the love note of both male and female, used mostly by the female, and generally with a fluttering or shaking accompaniment of her wings; (7) a curious note sometimes heard in London—meaning not well understood, but supposed to be a sort of chuckle or sign of contentment. Each one of these several different notes may be used to stand for various ideas depending on the circumstances by being given different emphasis and inflection, just as in the languages of many primitive races of men a small vocabulary of words is used to stand for a much larger number of ideas by being pronounced differently. In the Chinese language, for instance, the words are increased to three or four times the original number by modulation; but the same thing is observed in all languages, both human and non-human. Verbal poverty is pieced out by verbal variation. We say ać-cent or ac-cent́, depending on whether we wish to express the idea of a noun or a verb.
The memory of birds is well developed. Many of them remember the very grove or meadow, and even the very knot-hole or bush, in which they built their nest the season before, although in the meantime they have journeyed over lands and seas and sojourned thousands of miles away. Every year, for several seasons past, in late summer and early fall, after the nesting-time is over and the young ones are all grown, the purple martins have gathered in large numbers about the Field Columbian Museum, in Jackson Park, Chicago. They stay here for a few weeks, foraging the surrounding air for insects by day, and sleeping on the great dome of the Museum by night, finally flying away to be seen no more in such numbers till next year. These birds, many of them anyway, must remember from one year to another this annual assembly here by the big waters, else why would they come together at this particular spot from all over the country? I have no doubt that some of them, having sojourned here year after year for some time, remember well the great ugly building where they meet, and are more or less familiar with the surrounding locality from having searched it so often. I wonder what led to the establishing of the custom in the first place. Customs do not fall from the skies. And what advantage is there in the practice? What are they up to as they chirp and wheel in the air, and flutter up the slopes and sail down again, and perch on the pinnacles and twitter? Maybe it is a sort of Saratoga for them, where they all come together ostensibly to dip their bills in the blue waves, but where sons swell in their new feathers, and sly mammas find prospects for unmarketable misses.
A parrot has been known to remember the voice of its mistress after an absence of a year and a half—a very remarkable feat even for the grey matter of a bird. A flock of geese mentioned by Romanes showed their knowledge of the arrival of market-day, which came every two weeks, by assembling regularly on such days, early in the morning, in front of the town inn where the market was held, to pick up the corn. They never came on the wrong day; and on one occasion, when the market was omitted on account of a holiday, here came the unfailing fowls cackling and shouting as usual in merry anticipation of their fortnightly feast, but ignorant of the national necessities which had doomed them to be disappointed.[6d]
Parrots remember and call for their absent friends, and mumble phrases in their dreams which have been taught to them. These gifted birds learn long poems by heart, and sing songs with considerable art. A parrot belonging to the canon of the Cathedral of Salzburg was given instruction regularly two hours every day for ten years, from 1830 to 1840. The bird became very proficient in speech and exceedingly intelligent. It took part in conversations, whistled tunes, and was able to sing a number of popular songs, among them an entire aria from Flotow’s opera of ‘Martha’.[7a]