Heads And Tales Part 17

ADMIRAL NAPIER AND THE LION IN THE TOWER.

Admiral Sir Charles Napier, K.C.B., when a boy in his fourteenth year, visited London on his way to join his first s.h.i.+p at Spithead, the _Renown_. His biographer tells us he was staying at the house of a relative, who, "after showing the youngster all the London sights, took him to see the lions at the Tower. Amongst them was one which the keeper represented as being so very tame that, said he, 'you might put your hand into his mouth.' Taking him at his word, the young middy, to the horror of the spectators, thrust his hand into the jaws of the animal, who, no doubt, was taken as much by surprise as the lookers-on. It was a daring feat; but providentially he did not suffer for his temerity."[143] This reminds the biographer of Nelson's feat with the polar bear, and of Charles Napier's (the soldier) bold adventure with an eagle in his boyhood, as related by Sir William Napier in the history of his gallant brother's life.

OLD LADY AND THE BEASTS ON THE MOUND.

When the houses were cleared from the head of the Mound in Edinburgh, a travelling menagerie had set up its caravans on that great earthen bridge, just at the time when George Ferguson, the celebrated Scotch advocate, better known by his justiciary t.i.tle of Lord Hermand, came up, full of Pitt.i.te triumph that the ministry of "all the talents" had fallen. "They are out! they are all out! every mother's son of them!" he shouted. A lady, who heard the words, and perceived his excited condition, imagined that he referred to the wild beasts; and seizing the judge by his arm, exclaimed, "Gude heaven! we shall a' be devoored!"[144]

FOOTNOTES:

[136] "Physics and Physicians: a Medical Sketch-Book," vol. i. p. 174.

It was published anonymously in 1839.

[137] "Life in the Mission, the Camp, and the Zenana; or, Six Years in India," vol. ii. p. 382.

[138] Mark Lemon, "Jest Book," p. 237.

[139] August 20, 1713. Chalmers's edition of "British Essayists," vol.

xviii. p. 85.

[140] Up for lost.

[141] August 28, 1713. Chalmers's edition of "British Essayists," vol.

xviii p. 116.

[142] "Memoirs of Antonio Canova," by J. S. Memes, A.M. 1825. Pp. 332, 334, 346.

[143] "The Life of Admiral Sir Charles Napier, K.C.B," by Major-General Elers Napier, vol. i. p. 8.

SEALS.

A most intelligent group of creatures, some of which the compiler has watched in Yell Sound, close to Mossbank. He has even seen them once or twice in the Forth, close to the end of the pier. In the Zoological Gardens a specimen of the common seal proved for months a great source of attraction by its mild nature, and its singular form and activity. It soon died, and, had a coroner's jury returned a verdict, it would have been "Death from the hooks swallowed with the fish" daily provided. We have heard seal-fishers describe the great rapidity of the growth of seals in the Arctic seas. They seem in about a fortnight after their birth to attain nearly the size of their mothers. The same has been recorded of the whale order. Both seals and whales have powers of a.s.similating food and making fat that are unparalleled even by pigs. The intelligence of seals is marvellous. Many who visited the Zoological Gardens in the Regent's Park in May and June 1866 witnessed instances of this in a seal from the South Seas, recently exhibited in London.

Persons on the sea-side might readily domesticate these interesting and truly affectionate creatures. Hooker's sea-bear, the species exhibited in London, was at first, so the kind Frenchman told us, very fierce, but soon got reconciled to him, and, when I saw it, great was the mutual attachment. It was a strangely interesting sight to see the great creature walk on its fin-like legs, and clamber up and kiss the genial-bearded French sailor.

DR ADAM CLARKE ON SHETLAND SEALS.

In Shetland, Dr Adam Clarke tells us the popular belief is that the seals, or, as they call them, _selkies_, are fallen spirits, and that it is dangerous to kill any of them, as evil will a.s.suredly happen to him who does. They think that when the blood of a seal touches the water, the sea begins to rise and swell. Those who shoot them notice that gulls appear to watch carefully over them; and Mr Edmonston a.s.sured him that he has known a gull scratch, a seal to warn it of his approach. Dr Clarke, in the second of his voyages to Shetland, had a seal on board, which was caught on the Island of Papa. He says:--"It refuses all nourishment; it is very young, and about three feet long; it roars nearly like a calf, but not so loud, and continually crawls about the deck, seeking to get again to sea. As I cannot bear its cries, I intend to return it to the giver. Several of them have been tamed by the Shetlanders, and these will attend their owners to the place where the cows are milked, in order to get a drink. This was the case with one Mr Henry of Burrastow brought up. When it thought proper it would go to sea and forage there, but was sure to return to land, and to its owner. They tell me that it is a creature of considerable sagacity. The young seal mentioned above made his escape over the gangway, and got to sea. I am glad of it; for its plaintive lowing was painful to me. We saw it afterwards making its way to the ocean."[145]

DR EDMONSTON ON SHETLAND SEALS.

Every one familiar with seals is struck with their plaintive, intelligent faces, and any one who has seen the seals from time to time living in the Zoological Gardens must have been pleased with the marks of attention paid by them to their keepers. Dr Edmonston of Balta Sound has published in the "Memoirs of the Wernerian Society"[146] a graphic and valuable paper on the distinctions, history, and hunting of seals in the Shetland Isles. As that gentleman is a native of Unst, and had, when he wrote the Memoir, been for more than twenty years actively engaged in their pursuit, both as an amus.e.m.e.nt and as a study, we may extract two or three interesting pa.s.sages.

He remarks (p. 29) on the singular circ.u.mstance that so few additions have been made to the list of domestic animals bequeathed to us from remote antiquity, and mentions the practicability of an attempt being made to tame seals; and also says that it is yet to be learned whether they would breed in captivity and remain reclaimed from the wild state.

The few instances recorded in books of natural history of tame seals refer to the species called _Phoca vitulina_, but of the processes of rearing and education we have no details. "The trials," continues Dr Edmonston, "I have made on these points have been equally numerous on the great as on the common seal. By far the most interesting one I ever had was a young male of the _barbata_ species: he was taken by myself from a cave when only a few hours old, and in a day or two became as attached as a dog to me. The varied movements and sounds by which he expressed delight at my presence and regret at my absence were most affecting; these sounds were as like as possible to the inarticulate tones of the human voice. I know no animal capable of displaying more affection than he did, and his temper was the gentlest imaginable. I kept him for four or five weeks, feeding him entirely on warm milk from the cow; in my temporary absence b.u.t.ter-milk was given to him, and he died soon after.

"Another was a female, also of the great seal species, which we captured in a cave when about six weeks old, in October 1830. This individual would never allow herself to be handled but by the person who chiefly had the charge of her, yet even she soon became comparatively familiar.

"It was amusing to see how readily she ascended the stairs, which she often did, intent, as it seemed, on examining every room in the house; on showing towards her signs of displeasure and correction, she descended more rapidly and safely than her awkwardness seemed to promise.

"She was fed from the first on fresh fish alone, and grew and fattened considerably. We had her carried down daily in a hand-barrow to the sea-side, where an old excavation admitting the salt water was abundantly roomy and deep for her recreation and our observation. After sporting and diving for some time she would come ash.o.r.e, and seemed perfectly to understand the use of the barrow. Often she tried to waddle from the house to the water, or from the latter to her apartment, but finding this fatiguing, and seeing preparations by her chairman, she would of her own accord mount her palanquin, and thus be carried as composedly as any Hindoo princess. By degrees we ventured to let her go fairly into the sea, and she regularly returned after a short interval; but one day during a thick fall of snow she was imprudently let off as usual, and, being decoyed some distance out of sight of the sh.o.r.e by some wild ones which happened to be in the bay at the time, she either could not find her way back or voluntarily decamped.

"She was, we understood, killed very shortly after in a neighbouring inlet. We had kept her about six months, and every moment she was becoming more familiar; we had dubbed her Finna, and she seemed to know her name. Every one that saw her was struck with her appearance.

"The smooth face without external ears--the nose slightly aquiline--the large, dark, and beautiful eye which stood the sternest human gaze, gave to the expression of her countenance such dignity and variety that we all agreed that it really was _super_-animal. The Scandinavian Scald, with such a mermaid before him, would find in her eye a metaphor so emphatic that he would have no reason to borrow the favourite oriental image of the gazelles from his Caucasian ancestors.

"This remarkable expressiveness and dignity of aspect of the _Haff-fish_, so superior to all other animals with which the fishermen of Shetland were acquainted, and the human character of his voice, may have procured for him that peculiar respect with which he was regarded by those who lived nearest his domains, and were admitted to most frequent intercourse with him. He was the favourite animal of superst.i.tion, and a few tales of him are still current. These, however, are not of much interest or variety, the leading ideas in them being these: That the great seal is a human soul, or a fallen angel in metempsychosis, and that to him who is remarkable for hostility to the phocal race some fatal retribution will ensue. I can easily conceive the feeling of awe with which a fisherman would be impressed when, in the sombre magnificence of some rocky solitude, a great seal suddenly presented himself, for an interview of this kind once occurred to myself.

"I was lying one calm summer day on a rock a little elevated above the water, watching the approach of seals, in a small creek formed by frowning precipices several hundred feet high, near the north point of the Shetland Islands.

"I had patiently waited for two hours, and the scene and the suns.h.i.+ne had thrown me into a kind of reverie, when my companion, who was more awake, arrested my attention. A full-sized female haff-fish was swimming slowly past, within eight yards of my feet, her head askance, and her eyes fixed upon me; the gun, charged with two b.a.l.l.s, was immediately pointed. I followed her with the aim for some distance, when she dived without my firing.

"I resolved that this omission should not recur, if she afforded me another opportunity of a shot, which I hardly hoped for, but which actually in a few moments took place. Still I did not fire, until, when at a considerable distance, she was on the eve of diving, and she eluded the shot by springing to a side. Here was really a species of fascination. The wild scene, the near presence and commanding aspect of the splendid animal before me, produced a spellbound impression which, in my sporting experience, I never felt before.

"On reflection, I was delighted that she escaped.

"The younger seals are the more easy to tame, but the more difficult to rear; under a month old they must be fed, and, especially the _barbata_, almost entirely on milk, and that of the cow seems hardly to agree with them.

"Perhaps their being suckled by a cow fed chiefly on fish, the giving them occasionally a little salt water, and then by degrees inducing them to eat fish, might be the best mode until they attained the age of being sustained on fish alone. In the _barbata_, to insure rapid taming, it appears to be necessary to capture them before the period of casting the foetal hair, a.n.a.logous to what I have observed in the case of the young of water-birds before getting up their first feathers, and when they are entirely covered with the egg down.

"These changes seem connected with a great development of the wild habits, and attachment to, and knowledge of, the localities where they have first seen the light. As the _barbata_ is until this period in reality a land animal, the chief difficulty we have to surmount with it is in the quality of the milk to be given it. The _vitulina_ is essentially an inhabitant of the water from its birth, yet the care of the mother is perhaps for weeks necessary to judge how long and how often it should be on land, and this we can hardly expect to imitate. In the young of this species a few days old, which we have tried to rear, a want of knowledge of this kind of management may have led to failure. I have not attempted to rear them at a greater age.

"The Greenland seal is, I have been informed, occasionally kept for a month or two on board the whalers, and thrives sufficiently well on the flesh of sea-birds. This species appears to bring forth in January, and therefore it is subjected to captivity.

"I know but comparatively little of its capability of being easily tamed; but this quality, of itself, is no evidence of superior intelligence.

"Might it not be easy to induce Greenland s.h.i.+pmasters to bring some of these animals to England, where they would be accessible to the observation of zoologists.

"One mode of attempting to tame them might be to take half-grown animals in a net, or surprise them on land, and then keep them in salt-water ponds in a semi-domestic state: if any of them were pregnant when caught, or could be got to breed, the main difficulty would be overcome."

Long as these extracts are, they possess great interest as being derived from observations on living animals made by one who was a friend of the Duke of Wellington, and was always welcomed by him. His northern Island of Unst is a fine field for studying marine animals. The sweeping currents of the Arctic oceans bring creatures to the quiet voes and sounds. Shetland in spring, summer, and autumn is a favoured locality for the naturalist and painter.

THE WALRUS.

There was some likelihood, a few years ago, that a most attractive animal would be added to the collection of the Zoological Society. But, unfortunately for the public gratification, as well as the remuneration of the spirited captain who brought the creature, it reached the gardens in a dying state, and only survived a few days. But it is not the first of its family which has travelled so far to the southward. Nearly 250 years ago a specimen was brought alive by some of the Arctic adventurers, and excited no little surprise, as old Purchas tells us. It was in the year 1608, when "the king and many honourable personages beheld it with admiration, for the strangeness of the same, the like whereof had never before beene seene alive in England. Not long after it fell sicke and died. As the beast in shape is very strange, so is it of strange docilitie, and apt to be taught, as by good experience we often proved."

The figure which accompanies this paper was drawn from our late lamented visitor by Mr Wolf, who sketched it before its removal to the Zoological Gardens. Captain Henry caught it during a whaling expedition, and sent it to London. Though quite young, it was nearly four feet in length; and when the person who used to feed it came into the room, it would give him an affectionate greeting, in a voice somewhat resembling the cry of a calf, but considerably louder. It walked about, but, owing to its weakness, soon grew tired, and lay down. Unlike the seals, to which it is closely allied, the walrus has considerable power with its limbs when out of the water, and can support its bulky body quite clear of the ground. Its mode of progression, however, is awkward when compared with ordinary quadrupeds; its hind-limbs shuffling along, as if inclosed in a sack. In some future season, when a lively specimen reaches the Gardens, and is accommodated with an extensive tank of water, there is no reason why the walrus should not thrive as well as the seal, or his close, though not kind, neighbour of the North, the Polar bear.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Walrus.]

The walrus, _morse_, or _sea-horse_ (_Trichechus rosmarus_, Linn.[147]), is one of the most characteristic inhabitants of the Arctic regions.