It may be thought that I have forced—and not fallen into—my number 12, by packing the faculties of sight and hearing into by-corners. But the expression of a bird's head depends on the relation of eye to beak, as the getting of its food depends on their practical alliance of power; and the question, for instance, whether peacocks and parrots have musical ears, seems to me not properly debatable unless with due respect to the quality of their voices. It is curious, considering how much, one way or another, we are amused or pleased by the chatter and song of birds, that you will scarcely find in any ornithic manual more than a sentence, if so much, about their hearing; and I have not myself, at this moment, the least idea where a nightingale's ears are! But see Appendix, p. 122.
I retain, therefore, my dodecahedric form of catechism as sufficiently clear; and without binding myself to follow the order of it in strictness, if there be motive for discursory remark, it will certainly prevent my leaving any bird insufficiently distinguished, and enable me to arrange the collected statements about it in the most easily compared order.
115. We will try it at once on this second variety of the Titania, of which I find nothing of much interest in my books, and have nothing discursive myself to say.
1. Country. Arctic mostly; seen off Greenland, in lat. 68°, swimming among icebergs three or four miles from shore. Abundant in Siberia, and as far south as the Caspian. Migratory in Europe as far as Italy, yet always rare. (Do a few only, more intelligently curious than the rest, or for the sake of their health, travel?)
2. Food. Small thin-skinned crustacea, and aquatic surface-insects.
3. Form and flight. Stout, for a sea-bird; and they don't care to fly, preferring to swim out of danger. Body 7 to 8 inches long; wings, from carpal joint to end, 4¾,—say 5. These quarters of inches, are absurd pretenses to generalize what varies in every bird. 8 inches long, by 10 across the wings open, is near enough. In future, the brief notification 8 × 10, 5 × 7, or the like, will enough express a bird's inches, unless it possess decorative appendage of tail, which must be noted separately.
4. Foot. Chestnut-leaved in front toes, the lobes slightly serrated on the edges. Hind toe without membrane. Color of foot, always black.
5. Beak. Long, slender, straight. (How long? Drawn as about a fifth of the bird's length—say an inch, or a little over.) Upper mandible slightly curved down at the point. In Titania arctica, the beak is longer and more slender.
6. Voice. A sharp, short cry, not conceived by me enough to spell any likeness of it.
7. Temper. Gentle, passing into stupid, (it seems to me); one, in meditative travel, lets itself be knocked down by a gardener with his spade.