79. One sweet instance of such simple conception, in the end of the Odyssey, must surely recur to your minds in connection with our subject of to-day, but you may not have noticed the recurrent manner in which Homer insists on the thought. When Ulysses first bends and strings his bow, the vibration of the chord is shrill, "like the note of a swallow." A poor and unwarlike simile, it seems! But in the next book, when Ulysses stands with his bow lifted, and Telemachus has brought the lances, and laid them at his feet, and Athena comes to his side to encourage him,—do you recollect the gist of her speech? "You fought," she says, "nine years for the sake of Helen, and for another's house:—now, returned, after all those wanderings, and under your own roof, for it, and its treasures, will you not fight, then?" And she herself flies up to the house-roof, and thence, in the form of the swallow, guides the arrows of vengeance for the violation of the sanctities of home.
80. To-day, then, I believe verily for the first time, I have been able to put before you some means of guidance to understand the beauty of the bird which lives with you in your own houses, and which purifies for you, from its insect pestilence, the air that you breathe. Thus the sweet domestic thing has done, for men, at least these four thousand years. She has been their companion, not of the home merely, but of the hearth, and the threshold; companion only endeared by departure, and showing better her loving-kindness by her faithful return. Type sometimes of the stranger, she has softened us to hospitality; type always of the suppliant, she has enchanted us to mercy; and in her feeble presence, the cowardice, or the wrath, of sacrilege has changed into the fidelities of sanctuary. Herald of our summer, she glances through our days of gladness; numberer of our years, she would teach us to apply our hearts to wisdom;—and yet, so little have we regarded her, that this very day, scarcely able to gather from all I can find told of her enough to explain so much as the unfolding of her wings, I can tell you nothing of her life—nothing of her journeying: I cannot learn how she builds, nor how she chooses the place of her wandering, nor how she traces the path of her return. Remaining thus blind and careless to the true ministries of the humble creature whom God has really sent to serve us, we in our pride, thinking ourselves surrounded by the pursuivants of the sky, can yet only invest them with majesty by giving them the calm of the bird's motion, and shade of the bird's plume:—and after all, it is well for us, if, when even for God's best mercies, and in His temples marble-built, we think that, "with angels and archangels, and all the company of Heaven, we laud and magnify His glorious name"—well for us, if our attempt be not only an insult, and His ears open rather to the inarticulate and unintended praise, of "the Swallow, twittering from her straw-built shed."
LECTURE III.
THE DABCHICKS.
81. I believe that somewhere I have already observed, but permit myself, for immediate use, to repeat what I cannot but think the sagacious observation,—that the arrangement of any sort of animals must be, to say the least, imperfect, if it be founded only on the characters of their feet. And, of all creatures, one would think birds were those which, continually dispensing with the use of their feet, would require for their classification some attention also to be paid to their bodies and wings,—not to say their heads and tails. Nevertheless, the ornithological arrangement at present in vogue may suffice for most scientific persons; but in grouping birds, so that the groups may be understood and remembered by children, I must try to make them a little more generally descriptive.
82. In talking of parrots, for instance, it is only a small part of the creature's nature which is told by its scientific name of 'Scansor,' or 'Climber.' That it only clutches with its claws, and does not snatch or strike with them;—that it helps itself about with its beak, on branches, or bars of cage, in an absurd manner, as if partly imagining itself hung up in a larder, are by no means the most vital matters about the bird. Whereas, that its beak is always extremely short, and is bent down so roundly that the angriest parrot cannot peck, but only bite, if you give it a chance; that it can bite, pinch, or otherwise apply the mechanism of a pair of nut-crackers from the back of its head, with effect; that it has a little black tongue capable of much talk; above all, that it is mostly gay in plumage, often to vulgarity, and always to pertness;—all these characters should surely be represented to the apprehensive juvenile mind, in sum; and not merely the bird's climbing qualities.
83. Again, that the race of birds called in Latin 'Rasores' do, in the search for their food, usually scratch, and kick out their legs behind, living for the most part in gravelly or littery places, of which the hidden treasures are only to be discovered in that manner, seems to me no supremely interesting custom of the animal's life, but only a manner of its household, or threshold, economy. But that the tribe, on the whole, is unambitiously domestic, and never predatory; that they fly little and low, eat much of what they can pick up without trouble—and are themselves always excellent eating;—yet so exemplary in their own domestic cares and courtesies that one is ashamed to eat them except in eggs;—that their plumage is for the most part warm brown, delicately and even bewitchingly spotty;—and that, in the goodliest species, the spots become variegated, and inlaid as in a Byzantine pavement, deepening to imperial purple and azure, and lightening into luster of innumerable eyes;—all this, I hold, very clearly and positively, should be explained to children as a part of science, quite as exact, and infinitely more gracious, than that which reckons up the whole tribe of loving and luminous creatures under the feebly descriptive term of 'Scratchers.'
I will venture therefore to recommend my younger readers, in classing birds, to think of them literally from top to toe—from toe to top I should say,—foot, body, and head, studying, with the body, the wings that bear it; and with the head, what brains it can bring to bear on practical matters, and what sense on sentimental. But indeed, primarily, you have to consider whether the bird altogether may not be little more than a fat, cheerful little stomach, in a spotted waistcoat, and with legs to it. That is the main definition of a great many birds—meant to eat all day, chiefly, grubs, or grain—not at all, unless under wintry and calamitous conditions, meant to fast painfully, or be in concern about their food. Faultless in digestion—dinner lasting all day long, with the delight of social intercourse—various chirp and chatter. Flying or fluttering in a practical, not stately, manner: hopping and creeping intelligently. Sociable to man extremely, building and nestling and rustling about him,—prying and speculating, curiously watchful of him at his work, if likely to be profitable to themselves, or even sometimes in mere pitying sympathy, and wonder how such a wingless and beakless creature can do anything.[17] ]
84. The balance of this kind of bird on its legs is a very important part of its—diagnosis; (we must have a fine word now and then!) Its action on the wing, is mere flutter or flirt, in and out of the hedge, or over it; but its manner of perch, or literally 'bien-séance,' is admirable matter of interest. So also in the birds which are on the water what these are on land; picking up anything anywhere; lazy and fortunate, mostly, themselves; fat, floating, daintiest darlings;—their balance on the water, also, and under it, in 'ducking,' a most essential part of their business and being.