Love's Meinie: Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds

by John Ruskin

I leave Linnæus's for our Latin name, under some protest. Rallus is a late Latin adjective, meaning 'thin,' and if understood as 'Thin-bird,' or 'Lath-like' bird, would be reasonable; but if it stand, as it does practically, for Railing or Rattling bird, it is both bad Latin, and, as far as I can make out, calumnious of the usually quiet creature.

Note also, for a connected piece of scholarship, that our English verb to 'rail' does not properly mean to scold, or to abuse noisily; it is from 'railler,' and means to 'rally,' or jest at, which is often a much wickeder thing to do, if the matter be indeed no jest.

Note also of Samet or Samite, its derivation from late Greek εξαμιτος [Greek: examitos], silken stuff woven of six threads, of which I believe two were of gold. The French oriflamme was of crimson samite, and I don't see why the French shouldn't call this bird Poule de Soie, instead of by their present ugly name—more objectionable on all grounds, of sense, scholarship, and feeling, than the English one. But see the next species.

153. XII.A.

PULLA AQUATICA. WATER HEN.

There seems so much confusion in the minds, or at least the language, of ornithologists, between the Water Rail and Water Hen, that I give this latter bird under the number XII.A. rather than XIII., (which would, besides, be an unlucky number to end my Appendix with); and it would be very nice, if at all possible or proper, to keep these two larger dabchicks connected pleasantly in school-girl minds by their costumes, and call one 'Silken Runner,' and this,—which, as said above, Gesner seems to mean, Velvet Runner, or Velvet Hen.—Poule de Soie or Poule de Velours? I am getting a little confused myself, however, I find at last, between Poules, Poussins, Pullets, and Pullas; and must for the present leave the matter to the reader's choice and fancy, till I get some more birds looked at, and named:—only, for a pretty end of my Appendix, here are two bits of very precious letters, sent me by friends who know birds better than most scientific people, but have been too busy—one in a 'Dorcas Society,' and the other in a children's hospital—to write books, and only now write these bits of letters on my special petition. The member of the Dorcas Society sends me this brief but final and satisfactory answer to my above question about birds' ears:—

"We talk and think of birds as essentially musical and mimetic, or at least vocal and noisy creatures; and yet we seem to think that although they have an ear, they have no ears. Little or nothing is told us of the structure of a bird's ear. We are now too enlightened to believe in what we can't see; and ears that are never pricked, or cocked, or laid back,—that merely receive and learn, but don't express,—that are organs, not features, don't interest our philosophers now.

"If you blow gently on the feathers of the side of a bird's head, a little above and behind the corner of the beak, a little below and behind the eye, the parted feathers will show the listening place; a little hole with convolutions of delicate skin turning inwards, very much like what your own ear would be if you had none,—I mean, if all of it that lies above the level of the head had been removed, leaving no trace. No one who looks at the little hole could fail to see that it is an ear, highly organized—an ear for music; at least, I found it so among the finches I have examined; I know not if a simpler structure is evident in the ear of a rook or a peacock.

"The feathers are so planted round a bird's ears, that however ruffled or wet, they can't get in—and possibly they conduct sound. Birds have no need of ears with a movable cowl over them, to turn and twist for the catching of stray sounds, as foxes have, and hares, and other four-footed things; for a bird can turn his whole head so as to put his ear wherever he pleases in the twinkling of an eye; and he has too many resources, whatever bird he may be, of voice and gesture, to need any power of ear-cocking to welcome his friends, or ear-flattening to menace his foes.

"The long and the short of it is, that we may as well take the trouble first to look for, and then to look at, a bird's ear—having first made the bird like us and trust us so much, that he won't mind a human breath upon his cheek, but will let us see behind the veil, into the doorless corridor that lets music into the bird-soul."