Part pays, and justly, the deserving steer:
The hog, that ploughs not, nor obeys thy call,
Lives on the labours of this Lord of all.”
It will be seen that Gray makes his nightingale—his “Attic warbler”—feminine, “pours her throat,” while Pope, more correctly, makes his linnet songster a mate, “pours his throat;” and Pope who, indeed, from his habits of life, must have known more about birds than Gray, is right, for it is the males of song-birds that sing, and not the females. Milton makes the same mistake as Gray, and adds to the blunder by saying that the nightingale sings “the summer long,” which it does not. It is curious that our English poets should so frequently err, as Gray did, in attributing the melodies of song-birds to the females instead of to the males. The explanation, we suppose, is that, as amongst ourselves women as a rule are more musically inclined, and usually have sweeter voices than men, even so the poets, knowing no better, rashly conclude that the rule must hold good amongst song-birds also. The very contrary, however, is the fact. It is the male bird that always sings; the female attempts at song being extremely rare, and when attempted always a failure, never for a moment to be compared with the rich and long-sustained melodies of the male. Of all our song-birds, the most frequently mentioned by the poets is, of course, the nightingale, and almost invariably they make it a “she” instead of a “he.” One of the finest passages in English poetry is a reference to the nightingale in The Lover’s Melancholy of the dramatist John Ford (d. 1639). We are fond of reciting this passage when “i’ the vein” for such things, but we always take the liberty of changing the “she,” “hers,” and “her” of Ford, into the “he,” “his,” and “him” of ornithological fact.
CHAPTER LXIII.
March Dust—Moons of Mars—Planetoids—Occultation of Alpha Leonis—Zodiacal Light—Snow Bunting—Old Gaelic Ballad of “Deirdri:” Its Topography.
If for the first few days March [1878] seemed inclined to emulate the peaceful calm and sunshine of its predecessor, it very suddenly assumed a more warlike aspect; a change came over the spirit of its dream; it became boisterous and rude; snow, and sleet, and rain, and storm battling in wild comminglement. It still continued what is called “open” weather, however; there was no frost, no razor-edged and biting winds, and vegetation was rather temporarily checked than seriously hurt or hindered. After this wild burst, in vindication, it is to be presumed, of the month’s right to be called after the bellicose Mars, things slowly but steadily improved, and the weather is now such as permits us to get on with our spring work uninterruptedly and pleasantly enough. We have not yet, however, had a sufficiency of the “March dust,” so proverbially invaluable at seed-time; and nowhere perhaps so invaluable, so absolutely essential indeed, in its proper season, as in the West Highlands. The day, however, is now lengthening apace, and with a bright warm sun overhead, and brisk north-easterly breezes, we shall doubtless soon have dust enough and to spare.
Our reference to Mars the war-god, reminds us that Mars the planet, with whose fiery effulgence every one is familiar, has recently had an accession of dignity such as the old-world star-gazers never dreamt of in connection with the ruddy orb. It is found to have at least two attendant moons, small, and so exceedingly difficult of detection even by the aid of the best instruments, that it is only under the most favourable circumstances that they can be observed. It is more than suspected that a third, and even a fourth satellite, exists, and the planet will in consequence be subjected to the closest possible scrutiny at all the observatories at home and abroad for some time to come, in order to determine with certainty the number of its attendant moons, and whether they be two or more, to decide their sidereal revolutions, their diameters, masses, and inclinations of orbits. By reason of his retinue of satellites, Mars is now exalted to equal dignity with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; and by the discovery another point is scored in favour of the nebular hypothesists. It was on the night of the 1st January 1801 that the first of the planetoids, Ceres, was discovered by Piazzi of Palermo. Next year Olbers of Bremen discovered the second planetoid, Pallas, and so constant and searching has been the scrutiny to which the planetoidal zone, situated between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, has been subjected, that the number of these minor worlds is now no less than 182, the last three in the series, Nos. 180, 181, and 182, having been discovered since the beginning of February last. Of these three, two were discovered by French observers; the third by Professor Peters of Hamilton College, U.S., America. This last, however, is suspected to be only a rediscovery, so to speak; to be identical with Antigone, discovered five years ago by the same indefatigable observer. If this be so, the asteroidal series amounts at present date to 181. In favour of the ingenious hypothesis that accounted for the existence of these minor orbs by suggesting that they might be the fragments of a large disrupted world—of a large planet rent asunder by some terrible internal convulsion—a great deal could be said while the number of fragments was under half a dozen or even double that number, but when the fleet of orblets began to be counted by the score, the disrupted world theory was dropped as no longer tenable in the circumstances. The hypothesis of Olbers, however—for it originated with the discoverer of Pallas—led to a great deal of curious research that resulted in no little gain to astronomical science; and if it had to be given up as insufficient in the case of a planetoidal zone, it left us a legacy that may yet be turned to good account, that such a catastrophe, namely, as the disruption of a planetary world into fragments that in the shape of minor orbs would continue to revolve in orbits coincident with that of the parent globe, is not only possible, but, under certain easily enough conceivable circumstances, a probable enough occurrence.
Occultations by the moon of planets and first magnitude stars are always interesting phenomena, and for many years we have rarely missed observing such conjunctions as they became due, even if the hour was otherwise inconvenient, if only the weather chanced to be favourable. Last week there were two occultations, which for particular reasons we were very anxious to observe, and as the weather was clear and bright we had but little fear of disappointment. The stars to be occulted were Alpha and Delta Leonis, the one on the night of the 16th, the other on the night succeeding. Alpha Leonis is of the first magnitude, distinguished, like some others of its class, from the mere alphabetical order of stars by its proper name of Regulus. Up to within a quarter of an hour of the computed moment of occultation or disappearance of the star behind the moon’s disc, the sky was clear; and as we stood at our post everything promised a highly satisfactory and successful observation; but alas, as the moon and star, in nautical phrase, were close aboard each other, a huge bank of cloud, driven by a north-westerly breeze, swept over the scene, effectually occulting moon and stars alike from the most penetrating gaze. It was provoking enough, but there was no help for it. An observer in our climate must make up his mind to frequent disappointments of this kind. We were still in hopes that although the immersion was thus hidden from us we might be more fortunate in the case of the emersion—the reappearance, that is—of the star on the moon’s western limb. But it was no use. Two or three times, indeed, the moon shone forth for a minute or two together from through an old cathedral porch-like rent in the intervening wall of cloud, but only to be again obscured; and thus it continued so tantalisingly promising, that we stood to our post until a glance at the clock showed that the moment of emersion was already past, and it was useless waiting or watching any longer. The great object in closely watching these occultations is to observe, with all possible certainty, if there is any distortion or momentary projection on the moon’s disc of the planet or star occulted at the instant of immersion and emersion, in order to decide if the moon has an atmosphere or not. We have seen enough, we think, from our own observations during the last five and twenty years, to lead us to the conclusion that such distortion and projection is occasionally to be seen, and that therefore, contrary to the general belief of astronomers, a lunar atmosphere very probably exists, though it may be of greatly less weight and density than our own. Looking over our astronomical note-book, we find that the winter just past—let us hope that at this date we may so speak of it—was remarkable for two things—the almost total absence, namely, of auroral displays, and the exceeding brilliancy of the zodiacal light. We have only two recorded instances of the occurrence of the aurora borealis, both in December, and both but partial, faint, and ill-defined. The zodiacal light, on the contrary, was remarkably bright and noticeable on almost every evening in February and early March, its apex reaching up to and beyond the Pleiades, and with an outline clear and sharply defined as ever was sheaf of the brightest auroral light. So noticeable was it on several occasions, that all the people of the hamlet began to speak about it, and inquire what it could mean, for its perfect quiescence, its appearance night after night in the same quarter of the heavens, and the absence of anything like accompanying storms or aerial disturbance, satisfied even them that it was not the fir-chlis or “merry-dancers” as they used to know them. Let us assure our Celtic readers that an attempt on our part to explain the nature of the zodiacal light in Gaelic was no easy task; and if the truth were known, we fear our prelection quoad hoc was a sad failure.