Chapter III: Introduction: "eha" (2)

Apart from all these and by itself stands a princely fisher whose bill is no modification, but an original invention and a marvellous one. Larger than a swan and gluttonous withal, the pelican cannot live on single fishes. It has given up angling altogether and taken to netting; and the way in which the net has been constructed out of the pair of forceps provided in the original plan of its construction is as well worth your examining as anything I know. It is a foot in length, the upper jaw is flat and broad, while the lower consists of two thin, elastic bones joined at the point, a mere ring to carry the curious yellow bag that hangs from it. In pictures this is represented as a creel in which the kind pelican carries home the children's breakfast; you are allowed to see the tail of a big fish hanging out. But it is not a creel; it is a net. The great birds, marshalled in line on some broad lake or marsh, and beating the water with their wings, drive the fish before them until they have got a dense crowd huddled in panic and confusion between them and the shore. Now watch them narrowly. As each monstrous bill opens, the thin bones of the lower jaw stretch sideways to the breadth of a span by some curious mechanism not described in the books, and at the same time the shrunken bag expands into a deep, capacious net. Simultaneously the whole instrument is plunged into the struggling, silvery mass and comes up full. The side bones instantly contract again, and the upper jaw is clapped on them like a lid. No wonder the fishermen of the East detest the pelican.

In the same marsh, perhaps, standing with unequalled grace upon the longest legs known in this world, is a troop of giant birds as wonderful as the pelican, but how opposite! The beautiful flamingo is a bird of feeble intellect, delicate appetite, and genteel tastes. It cannot eat fish, for its slender throat would scarcely admit a pea. Besides, the idea of catching anything, or even picking up food from the ground, does not occur to its simple mind. Its diet consists of certain small crustaceans, classed by naturalists with water-fleas, which abound in brackish water; and it has an instrument for taking these which it knows how to use. I kept flamingos once, and, after trying many things in vain, offered them bran, or boiled rice, floating in water. Then they dined, and I learned the construction and working of the most marvellous of all bills. The lower jaw is deep and hollow, and its upper edges turn in to meet each other, so that you may fairly describe it as a pipe with a narrow slit along the upper side. In this pipe lies the tongue, and it cannot get out, for it is wider than the slit, but it can be pressed against the top to close the slit, and then the lower jaw becomes an actual pipe. The root of the tongue is furnished on both sides with a loose fringe which we will call the first strainer. The upper jaw is thin and flat and rests on the lower like a lid, and it is beautifully fringed along both sides with small, leathery points, close set, like the teeth of a very fine saw. This is the second strainer. To work the machine you dip the point into dirty water full of water-fleas, draw back the tip of the tongue a little, and suck in water till the lower jaw (the pipe) is full, then close the point again with the tip of the tongue and force the water out. It can only get out by passing through the first strainers at the root of the tongue, then over the palate, and so through the second strainers at the sides of the bill; and all the solid matter it contained will remain in the mouth. The sucking in and squirting out of the water is managed by the cheeks, or rather by the cheek, for a flamingo has only one cheek, and that is situated under the chin. When the bird is feeding you will see this throbbing faster than the eye can follow it, while water squirts from the sides of the mouth in a continuous stream. I should have said that the whole bill is sharply bent downwards at the middle. The advantage of this is that when the bird lets down its head into the water, like a bucket into a well, the point of the bill does not stick in the mud, but lies flat on it, upside down.

In conclusion, let us not fail to note, whatever be our political creed, that, while all the birds pursue their respective industries, there sit apart, in pride of place, some whose bills are not tools wherewith to work, but weapons wherewith to slay. And these take tribute of the rest, not with their consent, but of right.

III

TAILS

The secrets of Nature often play like an iridescence on the surface, and escape the eye of her worshipper because it is stopped with a microscope. There are mysteries all about us as omnipresent as the movement of the air that lifts the smoke and stirs the leaves, which I cannot find that any philosopher has looked into. Often and deeply have I been impressed with this. For example, there is scarcely, in this world, a commoner or a humbler thing than a tail, yet how multifarious is it in aspect, in construction, and in function, a hundred different things and yet one. Some are of feathers and some of hair, and some bare and skinny; some are long and some are short, some stick up and some hang down, some wag for ever and some are still; the uses that they serve cannot be numbered, but one name covers them all. In the course of evolution they came in with the fishes and went out with man. What was their purpose and mission? What place have they filled in the scheme of things? In short, what is the true inwardness of a tail?

If we try to commence--as scientific method requires--with a definition, we stumble on a key, at the very threshold, which opens the door. For there is no definition of a tail; it is not, in its nature, anything at all. When an animal's fore-legs are fitted on to its backbone at the proper distance from the hind-legs, if any of the backbone remains over, we call it a tail. But it has no purpose; it is a mere surplus, which a tailor (the pun is unavoidable) would have trimmed off. And, lo! in this very negativeness lies the whole secret of the multifarious positiveness of tails. For the absence of special purpose is the chance of general usefulness. The ear must fulfil its purpose or fail entirely, for it can do nothing else. Eyes, nose and mouth, hands and feet, all have their duties; the tail is the unemployed. And if we allow that life has had any hand in the shaping of its own destiny, then the ingenuity of the devices for turning the useless member to account affords one of the most exhilarating subjects of contemplation in the whole panorama of Nature. The fishes fitted it up at once as a twin-propeller, with results so satisfactory that the whale and the porpoise, coming long after, adopted the invention. And be it noted that these last and their kin are now the only ocean-going mammals in the world. The whole tribe of paddle-steamers, such as seals and walruses and dugongs, are only coasters.

Among those beasts that would live on the dry land, the primitive kangaroo could think of nothing better to do with his tail than to make a stool of it. It was a simple thought, but a happy one. Sitting up like a gentleman, he has his hands free to scratch his ribs or twitch his moustache. And when he goes he needs not to put them to the ground, for his great tail so nearly equals the weight of his body that one pair of legs keeps the balance even. And so the kangaroo, almost the lowest of beasts, comes closer to man in his postures than any other. The squirrel also sits up and uses his forepaws for hands, but the squirrel is a sybarite who lies abed in cold weather, and it is every way characteristic of him that he has sent his tail to the furrier and had it done up into a boa, or comforter, at once warm and becoming. See, too, how daintily he lifts it over his back to keep it clean. The rat is a near relation of the squirrel zoologically, but personally he is a gutter-snipe, and you may know that by one look at the tail which he drags after him like a dirty rope. Others of the same family, cleaner, though not more ingenious, like the guinea-pig, have simply dispensed with the encumbrance; but the rabbit has kept enough to make a white cockade, which it hoists when bolting from danger. This is for the guidance of the youngsters. Nearly every kind of deer and antelope carries the same signal, with which, when fleeing through dusky woods, the leader shows the way to the herd and the doe to her fawn.

But of beasts that graze and browse, a large number have turned their tails rather to a use which throws a pathetic light on misery of which we have little experience. We do, indeed, growl at the gnats of a summer evening and think ourselves very ill-used. How little do we know or think of the unintermitted and unabated torment that the most harmless classes of beasts suffer from the bands of beggars which follow them night and day, demanding blood, and will take no refusal. Driven from the brow they settle on the neck, shaken from the neck they dive between the legs, and but for that far-reaching whisk at the end of the tail, they would found a permanent colony on the flanks and defy ejection, like the raiders of Vatersay. Darwin argues that the tail-brush may have materially helped to secure the survival of those species of beasts that possessed it, and no doubt he is right.

The subject is interminable, but we must give a passing glance to some quixotic tails. The opossum scampers up a tree, carrying all her numerous family on her back, and they do not fall off because each infant is securely moored by its own tail to the uplifted tail of its mother. The opossum is a very primitive beast, and so early and useful an invention should, one would think, have been spread widely in after time; but there appears to be some difficulty in developing muscles at the thin end of a long tail, for the animals that have turned it into a grasping organ are few and are widely scattered. Examples are the chameleon among lizards, our own little harvest mouse, and, pre-eminent above all, the American monkeys. To a howler, or spider-monkey, its long tail is a swing and a trapeze in its forest gymnasium. Humboldt saw (he says it) a cluster of them all hanging from a tree by one tail, which proceeded from a Sandow in the middle. I should like to see that too. It is worth noting, by the way, that no old-world monkey has attained to this application of its tail.

Then there is the beaver, whose tail I am convinced is a trowel. I know of no naturalist who has mentioned this, but such negative evidence is of little weight. The beaver, as everybody knows, is a builder, who cuts down trees and piles log upon log until he has raised a solid, domed cabin from seven to twenty feet in diameter, which he then plasters over with clay and straw. If he does not turn round and beat the work smooth with his tail, then I require to know for what purpose he carries that broad, heavy, and hard tool behind him.

How few even among lovers of Nature know why a frog has no tail! The reason-is simply that it used that organ up when it was in want. In early life, as a jolly tadpole, it had a flourishing tail to swim with, and gills for breathing water, and an infantile mouth for taking vegetable nourishment. But when it began to draw near to frog's estate, serious changes were required in its structure to fit it for the life of a land animal. Four tiny legs appeared from under its skin, the gills gave place to air-breathing lungs, and the infant lips to a great, gaping mouth. Now, during this "temporary alteration of the premises" all business was of necessity stopped. The half-fish, half-frog could neither sup like an infant nor eat like a man. In this extremity it fed on its own tail--absorbed it as a camel is said to absorb its hump when travelling in the foodless desert--and so it entered on its new life without one.

Aeronautics have changed the whole perspective of life for birds, as they may for us shortly; so it is no surprise to find that birds have, almost with one consent, converted their tails into steering-gear. A commonplace bird, like a sparrow, scarcely requires this except as a brake when in the act of alighting; but to those birds with which flight is an art and an accomplishment, an expansive forked or rounded tail (there are two patents) is indispensable. We have shot almost all the birds of this sort in our own country, and must travel if we would enjoy that enchanting sight--a pair of eagles or a party of kites gone aloft for a sail when the wind is rising, like skaters to a pond when the ice is bearing. For an hour on end, in restful ease or swift joy, they trace ever-varying circles and spirals against the dark storm-cloud, now rising, now falling, turning and reversing, but never once flapping their widespread pinions.

How is it done? How does the _Shamrock_ sail? Watch, and you will see. When the wind is behind, each stiff quill at the end of the wing stands out by itself and is caught and driven by the blast; but as the bird turns round to face the gale, they all close up and form a continuous mainsail, close-hauled. And all the while the expanded tail is in play, dipping first at one side and then at the other, and turning the trim craft with easy grace "as the governor listeth."

Besides ground birds, like the quail, there are some eccentrics, such as Jenny wren, which have despised their tails, and there are specialists also which require them for other purposes than flying. The woodpecker's tail is quite useless as a rudder, for he is a woodman and has altered and adapted it for a portable stool to rest against as he plies his axe.

But that man must be very blind to the place which birds have taken in the progress of civilisation who can suppose it possible that they should think only of utility in such a question as the disposal of their tails. It is a common notion among those who have acquired some smattering of the theory of evolution that fishes developed into reptiles, reptiles into birds, and birds into beasts; but this is as wrong as it could be. Whatever the genealogy of the beasts may be, they certainly were not evolved from birds, and are in many respects not above them but below them. These are two independent branches of the tree of living forms, as the Greeks and Romans were branches of the stock of Japheth. The beasts may stand for the conquering Romans if you like, but the birds are the Greeks, and have advanced far beyond them in all emotional and artistic sensibility. They worship in the temple of music and beauty. And, like ourselves, they have found no subject so worthy of the highest efforts of art as their own dress. But the clothing of the body must conform more or less to the figure, and so, for a field in which invention and fancy may sport untrammelled, a lady turns to her hat and a bird to its tail. And by both, with equal heroism, every consideration of mere comfort, convenience, health, or safety is swept aside in obedience to the higher aim. Is this only a flippant jocularity, or is there here in very truth some profound law of the mind revealing itself in spheres seemingly so disconnected?

Look at a peacock. Its train, by the way, is a false tail, like the chignon of twenty years ago, or the fringe of the present day; the true tail is under it, and serves no purpose but to support it. Now the peacock lives on the ground, among scrub and brushwood, haunted by jackals and wild cats. They, like soldiers in khaki, reconnoitre him in a uniform expressly designed to elude the eye, but he flaunts a flag resplendent with green and gold. And when his one chance of life lies in springing nimbly from the ground and committing himself to his strong wings, he must lift and carry this ponderous paraphernalia with him. And the terrible Bonelli's eagle is soaring above. But all is risked proudly for the sake of the morning hour in the glade where the ladies assemble. And the peacock is only one of many. Not to mention the lyre bird, the Argus pheasant, the bird of paradise, and other splendid examples, there are common dicky-birds which point the moral and adorn the tail as emphatically.

If the tail is a rudder, where should you look to find it in its most simple and efficient form but among the flycatchers, which make their living by aerial acrobatics after flies? Yet this family seems to be peculiarly prone to the vanity of a stylish tail. The paradise flycatcher flutters two streamers a foot long, like white ribbons, behind it. The fantail could hide behind its own fan. The bee-eater has the two central feathers prolonged and pointed. The drongos, which are flycatchers in habit, wear their tails very long and deeply forked; and one of them, the racket-tailed drongo, has the two side feathers extended beyond the rest for nearly a foot, and as thin as wires, expanding into a blade at the ends. I have seen nothing in ladies' hats more preposterous. It is vain to object that there can be no proper comparison between tails and hats because the woman chooses her own hat while the bird has to wear what Nature has given it. I know that, but the contention is utterly superficial. What choice has a woman as to the style of her hat? Fashion prescribes for her, and Nature for the birds; that is all the difference. No doubt she acquiesces when theoretically she might rebel. The bird cannot rebel, but does it not acquiesce? Does a lyre bird submit to its tail--wear it under protest, so to speak? Believe me, every bird that has an aesthetic tail knows the fact, and tries to live up to it. We may push the argument even further, for the motmot of Brazil is not content with a ready-made tail, but actually strips the web off the two long side feathers with its own beak, except a little patch at the end, so as to get the pattern which Nature, if one must use the phrase, gave to the racket-tailed drongo. A specimen is exhibited in the hall of the South Kensington Museum.

In this connection I may also say that the shape or colour of a tail is not everything. An observant eye may find much to note in the wearing of them. There is a stylish way of carrying a tail and a slovenly way, and there are coquettish arts for the display of recherche tails. A blackbird and a starling are both tidy birds, and both walk much on the ground, but the one lifts its skirts, while the other, more practical and less fashionable, wears a walking dress and saves itself trouble.

This line of observation leads to a higher, and reveals the most important purpose that tails have served in the economy of beast, bird, and reptile, and, perhaps, even cold-blooded fish. Before the godlike countenance of man appeared on the earth, with its contractile forehead and erectile eyebrows, the answering light of the eye, the expansive nostrils, and subtilely mobile lips; before that the tail was the prime vehicle of emotion and safety-valve of passion. It is a great truth, too often buried in these days under rubbish of materialistic theories, that some way of self-manifestation is a supreme necessity of all sentient life. From the hot centre of thought and feeling the currents rush along the nervous ways and pervade the whole frame, seeking an outlet. But many passages are barred by duty, or fear, or eager purpose. A strong gust of passion may burst all barriers and force its way out at every point, but gentle currents flow along the lines of least resistance and find the idle tail. I do not know a better illustration of this than a cat watching a mouse. The ears are pricked forward, the eyes are fixed on the unsuspecting victim, every muscle of the legs is tense, like a bent bow ready to speed the arrow on its way. But see, the excitement with which the whole body is charged cannot be wholly restrained, and oozes out at the point of the tail.

Every emotion and passion takes this course. The happy kid wags its tail as it runs to its mother, the donkey when it has executed a successful bray, and the dog when it sees its master. At the sight of a rival the dog holds its tail up stiffly, unless, indeed, the rival is a bigger dog than itself, in which case the index goes down quickly between the legs. An elated horse elevates its tail, and so does a duck in the same mood. A lizard preparing to fight another lizard

Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail,

and the raging lion of fiction lashes its sides with the same nervous instrument.

It would be tedious to dwell on the pretty part which the tail plays in the courtships of sparrows and pigeons, or on the sprightly attitudes by which birds of all sorts let off their spirits when shower and sunshine have overfilled their hearts with gladness. But birds twitch their tails constantly, without meaning anything by it. The ceaseless wagging of a wagtail is a mere habit of cheerfulness, like the twirling of her thumbs by an idle Scotswoman. The long tail is there and something must be done with it. Look at the embarrassment which a nervous young man shows about the disposal of his hands; how he thrusts them into his trouser pockets, hangs them by their thumbs from the arm-holes of his waistcoat, or gives them a walking-stick to play with. I like to imagine what such a fellow would do with a long tail if he had it--how he would wind it round each leg in turn, rub up his back hair, and describe figures on the floor. But no animal so self-conscious as man could bear up long under the nervous strain of having to think continually of its tail. It would die young and the race would become extinct. Perhaps it did.

A final word on the conclusion of the whole matter, for these reflections have a moral. As habit becomes character, so expression hardens into feature. The tail of a sheep grows downwards, but that of a goat upwards, and this is the only infallible outward mark of distinction between the two animals. But it is the permanent record of a long history. The sheep was never anything but sheepish; the goat and its forefathers were pert as kids and insolent when their beards grew. It is useless to inquire why insolence should express itself by an upturned tail until someone can advance a reason why it should express itself in another way.

For proof of the fact you need go no farther than your own dogs. The ancestral wolf, or jackal, hunting and fighting, fearing and hoping, showed every changing mood by the pose of its tail; but a change came when it acquired an assured position of security and importance as the chosen companion of man, so dreaded by all its kith and kin. The tail went up at once and stayed there; when it could go no higher, it curled over. But promotion breeds conceit only in base natures. The greyhound is a gentleman, respectful and self-respecting, and it shows that by the very carriage of its tail. Only a snob at heart, petted and pampered for many generations, could have produced that perfect incarnation of smug self-satisfaction, the pug. Let us take the lesson home. The thoughts on which we let our minds dwell, and the sentiments that we harbour in our hearts, are the chisels with which we are carving out our faces and those of our children's children.

IV

NOSES

Some may think that I have chosen a trivial subject, and they will look for frivolous treatment of it. I can only hope that they will be disappointed. There is nothing that the progress of science has taught us more emphatically than this--that we must call nothing insignificant. Seemingly trivial pursuits have led to discoveries which have benefited all mankind, and priceless truths have been dug out of the most unpromising mines. I am not insinuating that anyone's nose is an unpromising mine, but I say that I am persuaded there is wisdom hidden in that organ for him who will observingly distil it out.

It possesses a peculiar and mystical significance not shared by any other feature. This is abundantly proved by common speech, which is one of the most trustworthy of all kinds of evidence. For example, we speak of a person turning up his nose at a good offer. The phrase is absurd, for the power of turning up his nose is one which no human being ever possessed. A shrew can do it, but not a man. Yet the meaning of the saying needs no interpretation. Akin to it is the classical phrase, _adunco suspendere naso_. What Horace means scarcely requires explanation, but no commentator has successfully explained it. These expressions well illustrate the mystery that enshrouds our most salient feature. They show that, while everybody can see that disdain is expressed through the nose, nobody can define how it is done. Then there is that curious expression "put his nose out of joint," which is quite inexplicable, the nose being destitute of joint. There are many other phrases and also gestures which point in the same direction, but need not be cited, being for the most part vulgar. Allusions to the nose have a tendency to be vulgar, which is another mystery inciting us to investigate it. So let us proceed.

The first thing required by the principles of scientific precedure is a definition. What is a nose? But this proves to be a much more difficult question than anyone would suspect before he tried to answer it. The individual human nose we can recognise, describe or sketch more easily than any other feature, but try to define the thing _nose_ in Nature and it is a most elusive phenomenon. When we speak of a man being led by the nose we imply that it is a part of him which is prominent and situated in front, when we speak of keeping one's nose above water we refer to it as the breathing orifice, but when we say that this or that offends our nose we are regarding it as the seat of the sense of smell. I believe that all these three ideas must be included in any definition. It should follow that insects, which breathe through holes in their sides, cannot have noses, and this is the truth.

Fishes, too, though they may have snouts, have not noses, because they breathe by gills. In truth, it seems that the nose was a very late and high acquisition, almost the finishing touch of the perfected animal form. And incidentally this leads us to notice what a great step was taken in evolution when the breathing holes were brought up to the region of the mouth. For the sense of taste is necessarily situated in the mouth, and the sense of smell is in close alliance with it. The mouth tastes food dissolved in the saliva during the process of mastication, and the primary use of the sense of smell is to detect and analyse beforehand the small particles given off by food and floating in the atmosphere.

A good many years ago, when the late Sally chimpanzee was the darling of the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park, I watched her eating dates. She was an epicure, and always peeled each date delicately with her preposterous lips before eating it, and during the process she would apply the date to her nose every second to test its quality or enjoy its aroma. The action was indescribably comical, but what would it have been if her nostrils had been situated among her ribs? Imagine a mantis, for example, as he chews up a fly, lifting one of his wings and applying it to his flanks to see if it smells gamey. That is where some naturalists believe that the sense of smell is situated in insects. Others, however, think, with reason, that it is in the antennae or mouth. Nobody knows; the senses of the lower animals seem to be stuck about all parts of the body.

But, even if the sense of smell is at the mouth, how limited must its usefulness be when it can only deal with substances that are held to it! A new era dawned when the passages by which the breath of life unceasingly comes and goes were transferred to the region of the mouth also. The nerves of smell quickly spread themselves over the lining membrane of those passages and became warders of the gate, challenging every waft of air that entered the body and examining what it carried. Thenceforth this region comprising the mouth, nostrils and surrounding parts holds a new and high place in the economy of the body, for the headquarters of the intelligence department are located there, and all the faculties of the brain converge on that point. Of course, the eyes and ears claim a share, but they are not far off.

Now it is being recognised more and more clearly by medical and physiological science that when the mind is much directed to any part of the body it exercises an influence in some way not understood on the flow of blood to that part to a degree which may seriously affect its functions and even its growth. When a person is suffering from any nervous affection, from heart disease, or even from weakness of the eyes, it is of the utmost importance to keep him from knowing it if possible, for if he knows it he will think about it, and that will inevitably aggravate it. This principle is well recognised in systems of physical culture. And surely it is impossible that so much intelligence should pass through that one sensitive region of the body which we are considering without affecting its growth and structure. Every muscle in it becomes quick to respond to various sensations in different ways, till the very recollection of those sensations will excite the same response.

Nay, we may go further. The mental emotions excited by those sensations will be expressed in the same way. For example, the sense of smell is peculiarly effective in exciting disgust. Anything which does violence to the sense of hearing exasperates, but does not disgust. If a man practises the accordion all day in the next room you do not loathe him, you only want to kill him. But anything that stinks excites pure disgust. Here you have the key to the fact that disgust and all feelings akin to it, disdain, contempt and scorn, express themselves through the nose. Darwin says that when we think of anything base or vile in a man's character the expression of the face is the same "as if we smelled a bad smell." This is an example of the temporary expression of a passing emotion, and there are many others like it. But each of us has his prevailing and dominant emotions which constitute the habitual attitude of his mind. And by the habitual indulgence of any emotion the features will become habituated to the expression of it, and so the set of our features comes at last to express our prevailing and dominant emotions; in other words, our _character_.

But let us return to the evolution of the nose. In these days of universal "Nature study" nobody need be told that the practice of breathing through the nostrils was introduced by the amphibians and reptiles. The former (frogs and toads) take to it only when they come of age, but lizards, snakes and all other reptiles do it from infancy. But the nose is not yet. That is something too delicate to come out of a cold-blooded snout covered with hard scales. Birds, too, by having their mouth parts encased in a horny bill seem to be debarred from wearing noses. And yet there is one primeval fowl, most ancient of all the feathered families, which has come near it. I mean the apteryx, that eccentric, wingless recluse which hides itself in the scrub jungles of New Zealand. Its nostrils, unlike those of every other bird, are at the tip of its beak, which is swollen and sensitive; and Dr. Buller says that as it wanders about in the night it makes a continual sniffing and softly taps the walls of its cage with the point of its bill. But the apteryx is one of those odd geniuses which come into the world too soon, and perish ineffectual. Its kindred are all extinct, and so will it be ere long.

When we come to the beasts we find the right conditions at last for the growth of the nose. Take the horse for an example of the average beast without idiosyncrasy. Its profile is nearly a straight line from the crown to the nostrils, beyond which it slopes downwards to the lips. The skin of this part is soft and smooth, without hair, and the horse dearly loves to have it fondled. The sense of touch is evidently uppermost. At this stage there was what to the eye of fancy looks like a bold attempt to grow a nose in the case of a tapir, but it miscarried. These hoofed beasts are all very hard up for something in the way of a hand to bring their food to their mouths. The camel employs its lips and the cow its tongue; the muntjae or barking deer of India has attained a tongue of such length that it uses it for a handkerchief to wipe its eyes. So the tapir could not resist the temptation to misapply its nose to the purpose of gathering fodder, and the ultimate result was the elephant, whose nose is a wonderful hand and a bucket and other things. The pig, being a swine, debased its nose in a worse way, making a grubbing tool of it.

There has been another attempt to misuse and pervert this part of the face which I scarcely dare to touch upon, for it is so utterly fantastic and mystical that I fear the charge of heresy if I give words to my thoughts. It occurs among bats, a tribe of obscure creatures about which common knowledge amounts to this, that they fly about after sunset, are uncanny, and fond of getting entangled in the hair of ladies, and should be killed. But there are certain families of bats, named horseshoe bats, leaf-nosed bats and vampires about which common knowledge is _nil_, and the knowledge possessed by naturalists very little, so I will tell what I know of them. They are larger than common bats, their wings are broad, soft and silent, like those of the owl, they sleep in caves, tombs and ruins, they do not flutter in the open air, but swiftly traverse gloomy avenues and shady glades, their prey is not gnats and midges, but the "droning beetle," the death's head moth, the cockchafer, croaking frogs, sleeping birds and _human blood_. The books will tell you that these bats are distinguished by "complicated nasal appendages consisting of foliaceous skin processes around the nostrils," which is quite true and utterly futile. It may do for a dried skin or a specimen in spirits of wine. I have had the foul fiend in a cage and looked him in the face. His whole countenance, from lips to brow and from cheek to cheek, is covered and hidden by a hideous design of

Spells and signs,
Symbolic letters, circles, lines,

sculptured in living, quivering skin. It is a sight to make the flesh creep. The books suggest that these foliaceous appendages are the organs of some special sense akin to touch. Futile again! There are things in Nature still which prompt the naturalist who has not atrophied his inner eye and starved his imagination to cry out:

Science ...
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?

Supposing there should be in the unseen universe an evil spirit, an imp of malice and mischief, not Milton's Satan, but the Deil of Burns:

Whyles ranging, like a roaring lion,
For prey, a' holes an' corners tryin;
Whyles on the strong-winged tempest flyin,
Tirlin the kirks;
Whyles in the human bosom pryin,

and supposing him to crave possession of a body through which he might get into touch with this material world and express himself in outward forms and motions; then oh! how fitly were this bat explained.

But let us go back to firm ground. If you compare a dog's profile with that of a horse you will note at once that the nostrils are in advance of the lips, and have a kind of portal to themselves. This is a distinct advance. The sense of smell has come to the front and pushed aside the lower sense of touch. You will observe, too, that with the growth of the brain the brain-pan has elevated itself above the level of the nose. Through the cat to the monkeys the process proceeds, the forehead advancing, the jaws retreating, and the nostrils leaving the lips, until they finally settle in a detached villa midway between the eyes and the mouth. This is the nose. I do not know the use of it. I cannot fathom the meaning of it. It is a solemn mystery. See the face of an orang-outang. It is a _countenance_, a signboard with three distinct lines of writing on it, the eyes, the nose and the mouth. You may not think much of this particular nose. Neither do I. I think it is situated rather too near the eyes and too far from the mouth. It is a little too small also, and wants style. But you must not judge a first attempt too critically. I have seen human noses of a pattern not unlike this, but they are not considered aristocratic: perhaps they indicate a reversion to the ancestral type.

But the noses even of monkeys are not all like this. In fact, there is a good deal of variety, and two in particular have struck me as quite remarkable. One is that of the long-nosed monkey (_Semnopithecus nasalis_). I think it must have suggested Sterne's stranger on a mule, who had travelled to the promontory of noses and threw all Strassburg into a ferment. I have often contemplated this nose in mute wonderment, and longed to see that monkey in life, if so be I might arrive at some understanding of it; for the taxidermist cannot rise above his own level, and the man who would mount _S. nasalis_ would need to be a Henry Irving. Then there is the sub-nosed monkey, labelled _rhinopithecus_, of which there is an expressive specimen at the South Kensington Museum. Who can consider that nose seriously and continue to believe in a recipe made up of struggle for existence, adaptation to environment, and natural selection _quantum suf_.? If I could dine with that monkey, ask it to drink a glass of wine with me, offer it a pinch of snuff and so on, I might come in time to feel, if not to comprehend, the import of its nose.

But one step further is required for the evolution of what we may call the human nose, and that is a solid foundation, a ridge of bone connecting it with the brow and separating the eyes from each other. I believe that the completeness of this is a fair index of the comparative advancement of different races of men. In the Greek ideal of a perfect face the profile forms a straight line from the top of the forehead to the tip of the nose. This is the type of face which painters have delighted to give to the Virgin Mary; and, when looking at their Madonnas, one cannot help wondering whether they forgot that Mary was a Jewess. According to the Hebrew ideal, a perfect nose was like "the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus" (Song of Solomon, vii. 4); but not even the ruins of that tower remain to help us to-day. The Romans, no doubt, accepted the ideal of the Greeks aesthetically, but their destiny had given them a very different nose, and they ruled the world.

Here is the nose of Julius Caesar as a coin has preserved it for us. I think that the outline is too straight for a typical Roman, but the deep dip under the brow and the downward point are characteristic. Now compare the nose of another race which rules an empire greater than that of the Caesars. Here is John Bull as _Punch_ usually represents him. It belongs to the same genus as that of the Roman. The reason why this should be the nose of command is not easy to give with scientific precision, for we are dealing with the play of very subtle influences, so the man without imagination will no doubt scoff. But I will take shelter under Darwin. Dealing with the expression of pride he says, "A proud man exhibits his sense of superiority by holding his head and body erect. He is haughty _(haut),_ or high, and makes himself appear as large as possible." Again, "The arrogant man looks down on others"; and yet again, "In some photographs of patients affected by a monomania of pride, sent me by Dr. Crichton-Browne, the head and body were held erect and the mouth firmly closed. This latter action, expressive of decision, follows, I presume, from the proud man feeling perfect self-confidence in himself."

Darwin says nothing about the nose, but I believe that, by physiological sympathy, it cannot but take part in the habitual downward look upon inferior beings. Darwin goes on to say that, "The whole expression of pride stands in direct antithesis to that of humility"; from which it follows, if my philosophy is sound, that the nose of Uriah Heep was turned upwards.

Of course, many emotions may share in the moulding of a nose, and the whole subject is too intricate and vast to be treated briefly. I have only given a few examples to illustrate my argument, and my conclusion is that the key to the peculiar significance and personal quality of the nose is to be found in its _immobility_. The eyes and lips are incessantly in motion, we can twitch and wrinkle the cheeks and forehead, and muscles to move the ears are there, though most men have lost control of them. But the nose stands out like some bold promontory on a level coast, or like the Sphinx in the Egyptian desert, with an ancient history, no doubt, and a mystery perhaps, but without response to any appeal. And for this very reason it is an index, not to that which is transient in the man, but to that which is permanent. He may knit his brows to seem thoughtful and profound, or compress his lips to persuade his friends and himself that he has a strong will, but he can play no trick with his nose. There it stands, an incorruptible witness, testifying to what he is, and not only to what he is, but to the rock whence he was hewn and to the pit whence he was digged. For his nose is a bequest from his ancestors, an entailed estate which he cannot alienate.

V

EARS

Men and women have ears, and so have jugs and pitchers. In the latter case they are useful: jugs and pitchers are lifted by them. And what is useful is fit, and fitness is the first condition of beauty. But human ears are put to no use, except sometimes when naughty little boys are lifted by them in the way of discipline; and I can see no beauty in them. It is only because they are so common that we do not notice how ridiculous they are. In the days of Charles I. men sometimes had their ears cut off for holding wrong opinions, which would have made them famous and popular in these enlightened days, but at that time it made all right-thinking people despise them, so the fashion of going without ears did not spread among us. If it had, then how differently we should all think of the matter now! If we were all accustomed to neat, round heads at drawing-rooms, levees and balls, how repulsive it Would be to see a well-dressed man with two ridiculous, wrinkled appendages sticking out from the sides of his face!

In saying this I am not drawing on my fancy, but on my memory. I can recollect the time when no gentleman, still less any lady, would have owned a terrier with its ears on. And why go back so far? The same sentiment is prevalent in good society with respect to men's beards in this year of grace and smooth faces. Yet, if one chance to be looking at a Rembrandt instead of at society, what an infinitely handsomer adjunct to a noble face is a fine beard than a pair of ears!

When woman first looked at her face in a polished saucepan, she was at once struck with the comicality of those things, and bethought herself what to do with them. She decided to use them for pegs to hang ornaments on. The improvement excited the admiration of her husband and the envy of her rivals to such a degree that all other women of taste in her tribe did the same, and from that day to this, in almost every country in the world, it has been accounted a shame for any respectable woman to show her face in public in the hideousness of naked ears. This discovery of its capabilities gave a new value to the ear, and a large, roomy one became an asset in the marriage market. I have seen a pretty little damsel of Sind with fourteen jingling silver things hanging at regular intervals from the outside edge of each ear. If Nature had been niggardly, the lobe at least could be enlarged by boring it and thrusting in a small wooden peg, then a larger one, and so on until it could hold an ivory wheel as large as a quoit, and hung down to the shoulders.

But Nature surely did not intend the ear for this purpose. Then what did she intend? A popular error is that the ears are given to hear with, but the ears cannot hear. The hearing is done by a box of assorted instruments (_malleus, incus, stapes_, etc.) hidden in a burrow which has its entrance inside of the ear. If you argue that the ears are intended to catch sounds and direct them down to the hearing instrument, then explain their absurd shape. They are useless. A man who wants to hear distinctly puts his hand to his ear. And why do they not turn to meet the sounds that come from different quarters? They are absolutely immovable, and therefore also expressionless. A savage expresses his mind with all the rest of his face; he smiles and grins and pouts and frowns, but his ears stand like gravestones with the inscriptions effaced. How different is the case when you turn from man to the "irrational" animals! The eyes of a fawn are lustrous and beautiful, but they would be as meaningless as polished stones without the eloquent ears that stand behind them and tell her thoughts. Curiosity, suspicion, alarm, anger, submission, friendliness, every emotion that flits across her quick, sensitive mind speaks through them. They are in touch with her soul, and half the music of her life is played on them. And if you abstract yourself from individuals and look at that thing, the ear, in the wide field of life, what a great, living reality it is!--a spiritual unity under infinite diversity of material form and fashion. It is like the telegraph wire overhead, the commonest and plainest of material things, but charged with the silent and invisible currents of the life of the world.

"Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore."

Birds have no ears, nor have crocodiles, nor frogs, nor snakes. Ears seem to be for beasts only. And not for all beasts. Seals are divided by naturalists into two great families--those with ears, and those without. The common seal belongs to the latter class, and the sea-lion to the former. A common seal lives in the sea, and when it does wriggle up on the beach of an iceberg there is nothing to hear, I suppose, or perhaps when it wants to listen it raises a flipper to its ear. I never saw one doing so, but we do not see everything that happens in the world. The sea-lion, with its stouter limbs, can lift its forepart, raise its head and look about it, and even flop about the ice-fields at a respectable rate. And there is no doubt that one of these is as much above an earless seal as fifty years of Europe are better than a cycle of Cathay. When performing seals are exhibited at a circus sitting on chairs, catching balls on the points of their noses and playing diabolo with them, or balancing billiard cues on their snouts, and doing other miraculous things, they are always sea-lions, not common seals. Of course, I do not mean to insinuate that sea-lions invented the ear and stuck it on: that would be unscientific; but I mean that their general intelligence and interest in affairs created that demand for more distinct hearing which led to the development of an ear trumpet. This view is wholly scientific, though pedants may quarrel with my way of putting it.

The sea-lion's ears are very minute, mere apologies one might think; but don't be hasty. The finny prey of the sea-lion makes no sound as it skims through the water; and perhaps the padded foot of that stealthy garrotter, the Polar bear, makes as little on the smooth ice; for catching the one and not being caught by the other the sea-lion must trust to the keenness of its great goggle eyes. But it is a social beast, and it wants to catch the bellowing of its fellows far across the foggy waste of ice-floes; and that little leather scoop standing behind the ear-hole seems to be just the instrument required to catch and send down those sounds which would otherwise glance off the glossy fur and never find entrance to the tiny orifice at all. If it were any larger than is absolutely necessary it would be a serious impediment to a professional diver and swimmer like the sea-lion. This is the reason why otters have very small ears, and why whales and porpoises have none at all.