Birds and Man

by W. H. Hudson

This was interesting but fails as an argument since it was taken for granted in the chapter that blue in a flower or anything else, and in fact any colour, possesses individual associations for every one of us, according to what we are, to the temper of our minds, to the conditions in which we exist, our vocation, our early life, and so on. Blue may suggest sea and sky and the Blue Peter to a sailor, and yet the blue flower have an expression due to its human association in him as in another.

But my critic dropped by chance into something better, when he went on to ask, "Why shouldn't the heaven's blue make us love flowers? It does in my case I know, and I can feel the different blues of skies and air and distance in flower blue."

Undoubtedly he was right; the blue sky, fair weather, the open air, was a suggestion of the blue flower. It amazed me to think of the years I had spent under blue skies and of all I had felt about blue flowers, without stumbling upon this very simple fact. So simple, so near to the surface that you no sooner hear it than you imagine you have always known it! It was impossible to look at blue flowers and not be convinced of its truth, especially when the flowers were spread over considerable areas, as when I looked at wild hyacinths in the spring woods, or followed the interminable blue band of the vernal squill on the west Cornish coast, or saw large arid tracts of land in Suffolk blue with viper's bugloss.

Oddly enough just after the letter containing this criticism had reached me, another correspondent who was also among my opponents, sent me this fine passage from the old writer Sir John Ferne, on azure in blazoning: "Which blew colour representeth the Aire amongst the elements, that of all the rest is the greatest favourer of life, as the only nurse and maintainer of spirits in any living creature. The colour blew is commonly taken from the blue skye which appeareth so often as the tempests be overblowne, and notes prosperous successe and good fortune to the wearer in all his affayres."

In conclusion, after having adopted this new idea, my view is still that the human association is the principal factor in the expression of the blue flower, or at all events in a majority of flowers that bloom more or less sparingly and are usually seen as single blooms, not as mere splashes of colour. Such are the pansy, violet, speedwell, hairbell, lungwort, blue geranium, etc. It may be that in all flowers of this kind too an element in the expression is due to the fair-weather associations with the colour; but these associations must be very much stronger in the case of a blue flower always seen in masses and sheets of colour as the wild hyacinth. Among dark-eyed races the fair-weather associations would alone give the blue flower its expression. I shouldn't wonder, if some explorer with a curious mind would try to find out what savages feel about flowers, that he would discover in them a special regard for the blue flower.

CHAPTER VIII

RAVENS IN SOMERSET

Mr Warde Fowler in his Summer Studies of Birds and Books has a pleasant chapter on wagtails, in which he remarks incidentally that he does not care for the big solemn birds that please, or are dear to, "Mr Hudson." Their bigness disturbs and their solemnity oppresses him. They do not twitter and warble, and flit hither and thither, flirting their feathers, and with their dainty gracefulness and airy, fairy ways wind themselves round his heart. Wagtails are quite big enough for him; they are, in fact, as big as birds should be, and so long as these charming little creatures abound in these islands he (Mr Fowler) will be content. Indeed, he goes so far as to declare that on a desert island, without a human creature to share its solitude with him, he would be happy enough if only wagtails were there to keep him company. Mr Fowler is not joking; he tells us frankly what he thinks and feels, and when we come to consider the matter seriously, as he wishes us to do, we discover that there is nothing astonishing in his confession—that his mental attitude is capable of being explained. It is only natural, in an England from which most of the larger birds have been banished, that he should have become absorbed in observing and in admiration of the small species that remain; for we observe and study the life that is nearest to us, and seeing it well we are impressed by its perfection—the perfect correspondence that exists between the creature and its surroundings—by its beauty, grace, and other attractive qualities, as we are not impressed by the life which is at a distance, and of which we only obtain rare and partial glimpses.

These thoughts passed through my mind one cold, windy day in spring, several hours of which I spent lying on the short grass on the summit of a cliff, watching at intervals a pair of ravens that had their nest on a ledge of rock some distance below. Big and solemn, and solemn and big, they certainly were, and although inferior in this respect to eagle, pelican, bustard, crane, vulture, heron, stork, and many another feathered notable, to see them was at the same time a pleasure and a relief. It also occurred to me at the time that, alone on a desert island, I should be better off with ravens than wagtails for companions; and this for an excellent reason. The wagtail is no doubt a very lively, pretty, engaging creature—so for that matter is the house fly—but between ourselves and the small birds there exists, psychologically, a vast gulf. Birds, says Matthew Arnold, live beside us, but unknown, and try how we will we can find no passages from our souls to theirs. But to Arnold—in the poem to which I have alluded at all events—a bird simply meant a caged canary; he was not thinking of the larger, more mammal-like, and therefore more human-like, mind of the raven, and, it may be added, of the crows generally.