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

Topino, (The mouse-color.)—Rondine de riva. I. Cotyle Riparia. G. Hirundo Riparia. Y.

Bank-Martin. B.

The Italian name, 'Topino,' is a good familiar one, the bird being scarcely larger than a mouse, and "the head, neck, breast, and back of a mouse-color." (B.) It is the smallest of the Swallow tribe, and shortest of wing; accordingly, I find Spallanzani's experiment on the rate of swallow-flight was, for greater certainty and severity, made with this apparently feeblest of its kind:—a marked Topino, brought from its nest at Pavia to Milan, (fifteen miles,) flew back to Pavia in thirteen minutes. I imagine a Swift would at least have doubled this rate of flight, and that we may safely take a hundred miles an hour as an average of swallow-speed. This, however, is less by three-fifths than Michelet's estimate. See above, Lecture II., § 48.

I have substituted 'bank' for 'sand' in the English name, since all the six quoted authorities give it this epithet in Latin or French, and Bewick in English. Also, it may be well thus to distinguish it from birds of the sea-shore.

V

145. HIRUNDO SAGITTA.  SWIFT

Hirundo Apus. L.

Martinet Noir. F.

Geyr-schwalbe. (Vulture-Swallow.) T.

Rondone. (Plural, Rondini.) I.

Cypselus Apus. G. and Y.

Swift, Black Martin, or Deviling. B.

I think it will be often well to admit the license of using a substantive for epithet, (as one says rock-bird or sea-bird, and not 'rocky,' or 'marine,') in Latin as well as in English. We thus greatly increase our power, and assist the brevity of nomenclature; and we gain the convenience of using the second term by itself, when we wish to do so, more naturally. Thus, one may shortly speak of 'The Sagitta' (when one is on a scientific point where 'Swift' would be indecorous!) more easily than one could speak of 'The Stridula,' or 'The Velox,' if we gave the bird either of those epithets. I think this of Sagitta is the most descriptive one could well find; only the reader is always to recollect that arrow-birds must be more heavy in the head or shaft than arrow-weapons, and fly more in the manner of rifle-shot than bow-shot. See Lecture II., §§ 46, 67, 71, in which last paragraph, however, I have to correct the careless statement, that in the sailing flight, without stroke, of the larger falcons, their weight ever acts like the string of a kite. Their weight acts simply as the weight of a kite acts, and no otherwise. (Compare § 65.) The impulsive force in sailing can be given only by the tail feathers, like that of a darting trout by the tail fin. I do not think any excuse necessary for my rejection of the name which seems most to have established itself lately, 'Cypselus Apus,' 'Footless Capsule.' It is not footless, and there is no sense in calling a bird a capsule because it lives in a hole, (which the Swift does not.) The Greeks had a double idea in the word, which it is not the least necessary to keep; and Aristotle's cypselus is not the swift, but the bank-martlet—"they bring up their young in cells made out of clay, long in the entrance." The swift being precisely the one of the Hirundines which does not make its nest of clay, but of miscellaneous straws, threads, and shreds of any adaptable rubbish, which it can snatch from the ground as it stoops on the wing,[26 - "I have in different times and places opened ten or twelve swifts' nests; in all of them I found the same materials, and these consisting of a great variety of substances—stalks of corn, dry grass, moss, hemp, bits of cord, threads of silk and linen, the tip of an ermine's tail, small shreds of gauze, of muslin and other light stuffs, the feathers of domestic birds, charcoal,—in short, whatever they can find in the sweepings of towns."—Buffon.Belon asserts (Buffon does not venture to guarantee the assertion), that "they will descry a fly at the distance of a quarter of a league"!] or pilfer from any half-ruined nests of other birds.

'Cotyle' is only a synonym for Cypselus, enabling ornithologists to become farther unintelligible. We will be troubled no more either with cotyles or capsules, but recollect simply that Hirundo, χελιδων [Greek: chelidôn], swallow, schwalbe, and hirondelle, are in each language the sufficing single words for the entire Hirundine race.

VI

146. HIRUNDO ALPINA. ALPINE SWIFT

Hirundo Melba. L.

Le grand Martinet a Ventre Blanc. F.

Cypselus Melba. G.

Cypselus Alpinus. Y.

Alpine Swift,—White-bellied Swift. Y.

Not in Bewick.

I cannot find its German name. The Italians compare it with the sea-swallow, which is a gull. What 'Melba' means, or ever meant, I have no conception.

The bird is the noblest of all the swallow tribe—nearly as large as a hawk, and lives high in air, nothing but rocks or cathedrals serving it for nest. In France, seen only near the Alps; in Spain, among the mountains of Aragon. "Almost every person who has had an opportunity of observing this bird speaks in terms of admiration of its vast powers of flight; it is not surprising, therefore, that an individual should now and then wing its way across the Channel to the British Islands, and roam over our meads and fields until it is shot." (G.) It is, I believe, the swallow of the Bible,—abundant, though only a summer migrant, in the Holy Land. I have never seen it, that I know of, nor thought of it in the lecture on the Swallow; but give here the complete series of Hirundines, of which some notice may incidentally afterwards occur in the text.

VII

147. NOCTUA EUROPÆA. NIGHT-JAR OF EUROPE

Caprimulgus Europæus. L.

L'Engoulevent. F. (Crapaud-volant, popular.)

Geissmelcher.—Nacht-schade. T.

Covaterra. I.

Caprimulgus Europæus. G. and Y.

Night-jar. B.

Dorrhawk and Fern-owl, also given by Bewick, are the most beautiful English names for this bird; but as it is really neither a hawk nor an owl, though much mingled in its manners of both, I keep the usual one, Night-jar, euphonious for Night-Churr, from its continuous note like the sound of a spinning wheel. The idea of its sucking goats, or any other milky creature, has long been set at rest; and science, intolerant of legends in which there is any use or beauty, cannot be allowed to ratify in its dog or pig-Latin those which are eternally vulgar and profitless. I had first thought of calling it Hirundo Nocturna; but this would be too broad massing; for although the creature is more swallow than owl, living wholly on insects, it must be properly held as a distinct species from both. Owls cannot gape like constrictors; nor have swallows whiskers or beards, or combs to keep both in order with, on their middle toes. This bird's cat-like bristles at the base of the beak connect it with the bearded Toucans, and so also the toothed mandibles of the American cave-dwelling variety. I shall not want the word Noctua for the owls themselves, and it is a pretty and simple one for this tribe, enabling the local epithet 'European,' and other necessary ones, of varieties, to be retained for the second or specific term. Nacht-schade, Night-loss, the popular German name, perhaps really still refers to this supposed nocturnal thieving; or may have fallen euphonious from Nacht-schwalbe, which in some places abides. 'Crapaud-volant' is ugly, but descriptive, the brown speckling of the bird being indeed toadlike, though wonderful and beautiful. Bewick has put his utmost skill into it; and the cut, with the Bittern and White Owl, may perhaps stand otherwise unrivaled by any of his hand.

Gould's drawing of the bird on its ground nest, or ground contentedly taken for nest, among heath and scarlet-topped lichen, is among the most beautiful in his book; and there are four quite exquisite drawings by Mr. Ford, of African varieties, in Dr. Smith's zoology of South Africa. The one called by the doctor Europæus seems a grayer and more graceful bird than ours. Natalensis wears a most wonderful dark oak-leaf pattern of cloak. Rufigena, I suppose, blushes herself separate from Ruficollis of Gould? but these foreign varieties seem countless. I shall never have time to examine them, but thought it not well to end the titular list of the swallows without notice of the position of this great tribe.

VIII

148. MERULA FONTIUM. TORRENT-OUZEL

Sturnus Cinclus. L.

Merle d'Eau. F.

Bach-Amsel. T.

Merla Aquaiola. I.

Cinclus Aquaticus. G. and Y.

Water Ouzel. B.

Turdus Cinclus, Pennant; Common Dipper, Y.; Didapper, Doucker, Water Crow, Water Piot, B.; Cincle Plongeur, Temminck; Wasser Trostel, Swiss.

The scientific full arrangement, according to Yarrell, is thus:—

1. Order—Insessores.

2. Tribe—Dentirostres.

3. Genus—Merulidæ.

4. Species—Cinclus.

5. Individual—Aquaticus.

You will please observe that some of the scientific people call it a blackbird—some a thrush—some a starling—and the rest a Cincle, whatever that may be. It remains for them now only to show how the Cincle has been developed out of the Winkle, and the Winkle out of the Quangle-Wangle. You will note also that the Yorkshire and Durham mind is balanced between the two views of its being a crow or a magpie. I am content myself to be in harmony with France and Italy, in my 'Merula,' and with Germany in my Torrent-Ouzel. Their 'bach' (as in Staubbach, Giesbach, Reichenbach) being essentially a mountain waterfall; and their 'amsel,' as our Damsel, merely the Teutonic form of the Demoiselle or Domicilla—'House-Ouzel,' as it were, (said of a nice girl)—Domicilla again being, I think, merely the transposition of Ancilla Domini,—Behold, the handmaid of the Lord: (see frontispiece to third volume of 'Modern Painters') which, if young ladies in general were to embroider on their girdles—though their dresses, fitting at present 'as close as a glove' (see description of modern American ideal in 'A Fair Barbarian') do not usually require girdles either for their keys or their manners,—it would probably be thought irreverent by modern clergymen; but if the demoiselle were none the better for it, she could certainly be none the worse.