The Romance of Natural History Part 5

[31] The _Toghmall_ was a bird kept as a pet. "When Cuchulain slung a stone at Queen Meave he killed the Toghmall that was sitting on her shoulder."

[32] _Ruilech._--Unknown.

[33] _Snag._--Probably the Crane, or one of the Heron tribe.

[34] _Echtach._--From a legend attached to the locality, there is a possibility that these were a peculiar breed of horned cattle.

[35] _Drenn._--Probably the Wren.

[36] _Cainche_--Unknown.

[37] _Errfiach._--Unknown.

[38] _Cricharan._--Possibly the Squirrel, or the Marten.

[39] Mr Curry says, "In the dictionaries _Ormchre_ is the term for a leopard, but that animal did not exist in Ireland." But the caves of Britain shew that very formidable _Felidae_ roamed here in the Later Tertiary Era.

[40] _Riabhog._--The "cuckoo's waiting-maid," a little bird, is still so called in the west of Ireland. In England the wryneck (_Yunx torquilla_) bears this office, and also in Wales, where Pennant says it is called _Gwas y gog_, which means the same thing.

[41] _Peatans._--Conjectured to be Leverets.

[42] What is the difference between wild Boars and wild Hogs? The ransom, too, was to consist of a male and a _female_ of each kind of _wild_ animals.

[43] _Fereidhin._--Unknown.

[44] See note [42] _supra_.

[45] _Iaronn._--Unknown.

[46] _Geisechtachs._--"Screamers;"--perhaps Peac.o.c.ks. But is it likely that the Peac.o.c.k and the Pheasant (_vide supra_) were imported from the East so early?

[47] _Bruacharan._--Unknown.

[48] _Naescan._--The Snipe may be meant.

[49] The term _Spireog_ is still used in the locality referred to, and signifies the Sparrowhawk. It has, however, somewhat of a Saxon sound.

[50] _Sgreachog._--Conjecturally, Screech-owl; or Jay.

[51] _Geilt Glinne._--See note [28] on p. 58.

[52] The _Onchu_ has been mentioned before. See note [39] on p. 59.

There were several kindred _Felidae_ in the Pliocene period. May the word refer to two of these bearing the same name, but the one distinguished by the term _fleet_?

[53] "_Pigs_" again! This is the fourth time. "Wild Hogs, wild Boars, Pigs, and yet Pigs." From the prominence thus given to the grunting race in the ransom, one is tempted to conclude that "'Twas the Pig that paid the rint," then, as now!

[54] Mr Wilde, in an interesting paper "On the Unmanufactured Animal Remains belonging to the Royal Irish Academy," read before the Academy on the 9th and 25th of May, 1859, to which I am indebted for the foregoing poem, cites the following legend, which we might have referred to the _Megaceros_, but that he appears to consider the animal in question the Red Deer or Stag:--"On another occasion St Patrick and his retinue, with Cailte MacRonain, came to the house of a rich landholder who lived in the southern part of the present County of Kildare, near the river Slaney. The farmer complained to Cailte that although he sowed a great quant.i.ty of corn every year, it yielded him no profit, on account of _a huge wild Deer_ which every year came across the Slaney from the west when the corn was ripe for cutting, and, rus.h.i.+ng through it in all directions, trampled it down under his feet. Cailte undertook to relieve him, and he sent into Munster for his seven deer-nets, which arrived in due time. He then went out and placed his men and his hounds in the paths through which the great deer was accustomed to pa.s.s, and he set his deer-nets upon the cliffs, pa.s.ses, and rivers around, and when he saw the animal coming to the Ford of the Red Deer on the river Slaney, he took his spear and cast a fortunate throw at him, driving it the length of a man's arm out through the opposite side; and 'The Red Ford of the Great Deer' is the name of that pa.s.s on the Slaney ever since; and they brought him back to Drom Lethan, or 'The Broad Hill,'

which is called 'The Broad Hill of the Great Wild Deer.'"

[55] The Editor of "The Indian Field;" in the _Zoologist_, p. 6427.

[56] The Welsh "Triads," supposed to have been compiled in the seventh century, say that "the Kymri, a Celtic tribe, first inhabited Britain; before them were no men here, but only bears, wolves, beavers, and oxen with high prominences." Were these Bisons?

[57] See Vol. i, 203, _supra_.

[58] This is the more interesting because it includes the _Urus_ as well as the "_Schelch_," which latter, though the meaning of the word is not certain, some are disposed to identify with the Giant Deer of Ireland.

[59] See note [56] on p. 68.

[60] M.S. H. ii. 13.

[61] _Blackwood's Magazine_, January 1849.

[62] "Travels," 4th ed., 1677.

[63] Sloane MSS., No. 1839.

[64] _Zoologist_, p. 4298.

[65] _British Birds_, iii. 477, (Ed. 2.)

[66] Dr Charlton, in the _Trans. Tyneside Nat. Hist. Soc._

[67] _Nat. Voy._, ch. ix.

[68] Lecture; reported in the _Athenaeum_ for May 21, 1859.

[69] _Nat. Voyage_, ch. viii.

II.

THE MARVELLOUS.

The vulgar mind is very p.r.o.ne to love the marvellous, and to count for a prodigy every unusual phenomenon, every occurrence not perfectly accountable on any hypothesis which is familiar to them. The poetical period of history in every country is full of prodigies; for in the dawn of civilisation the physical laws of nature are little understood, and mult.i.tudes of natural phenomena are either referred to false causes, or, being unreferrible to any recognised cause, are set down as mere wonders. It is the province of science to dispel these delusions, to expose the undiscovered, but by no means undiscoverable, origins of unusual events, and thus to be continually narrowing the limits of the unknown. These limits, however, have not even yet quite reached the minuteness of a mathematical point; and there are a few marvels left for the indefatigable rummagings of modern science to explain.

Perhaps the predominant tendency of uneducated minds in the present day is rather to attribute effects to _false_ causes, than to leave them without any a.s.signable cause. It is much easier for an unreasoning person to say that Tenterden steeple is the cause of Goodwin Sands, than to leave Goodwin Sands quite unaccounted for; or to say, the plant-lice suddenly appear crowding the rose-twigs, "the east wind has cast a blight," or "it is something in the air," than "I do not know how to account for their appearance." To a reflecting person, indeed, who weighs forces, the east wind appears as incompetent to the production of living animals as the tall tower to the origination of a sand-bank; and this, though he might be able to suggest nothing a whit more competent.

What should he do in such a case? Manifestly this--test the actual existence and conditions of the phenomenon; see that it really has occurred; and, if the fact cannot be denied, admit it as a fact, and wait further light as to its causation.

I do not by any means presume to declare the universal "why and because"

of every familiar or unfamiliar occurrence: I leave that to more pretentious philosophers; smiling occasionally in my sleeve at the egotism which cannot see its own _non-sequiturs_. But still less can I consent to set aside every phenomenon which I cannot explain, with the common resource,--"Pooh! pooh! there must be some mistake!" Rather would I say, "There must still be some ignorance in me: near as I have reached to the summit of the ladder of knowledge, there must be still one or two rongs to be mounted before I can proclaim my mastery of all, absolutely _all_, the occult causes of things. Therefore, till then I must be content with the lowlier task of patiently acc.u.mulating evidence."

At various times and in various places popular superst.i.tion has been excited by the occurrence of what have been called showers of blood. The destruction of cities and of kingdoms has been, according to historians, preceded by this awful omen. Yet this has been explained by a very natural and accountable phenomenon. In the year 1553, the hedges and trees, the stones of the pathway, and the clothes of many persons, were sprinkled copiously with drops of red fluid, which was supposed to be blood, till some observant person noticed the coincident appearance of unusual swarms of b.u.t.terflies, and marked that the coloured drops proceeded from them. Again, at Aix la Chapelle in 1608, the same awful appearance occurred, especially on the walls of a particular churchyard.

M. Peiresc, an able naturalist, residing at Aix, traced the phenomenon here to the same cause. Just before, he had found a large chrysalis, which he had enclosed in a box, in order to identify the species to which it belonged. A few days after, hearing a rustling, he opened the box, and discovered a beautiful b.u.t.terfly evolved from the pupa, which had left upon the floor of its prison a large red stain. He saw that the character of this deposit agreed exactly with that of the ominous drops abroad, and remarking an unusual abundance of the same kind of b.u.t.terfly, he conceived that he had revealed the cause of the terrific phenomenon. He was confirmed in this belief by the circ.u.mstance that the supposed blood-drops were not found in the streets of the town, nor upon the roofs of the houses, where they must have occurred had they fallen from the sky; and, moreover, that it was rare to see any on the exposed parts of stones, walls, &c.; but rather under the protection of angles, and in slight cavities--which agrees well with the habits of the insects in question. No doubt this was the true explanation of the phenomenon, but it does not say much for the powers of observation which could have attributed it to blood, for the colour is by no means that of blood, especially _dried_ blood, but much more crimson; and the earthy deposit, resembling chalk, which copiously remains after the fluid part has evaporated, would in a moment convince any one who was in the habit of comparing things which differ, that, whatever the substance was, blood it certainly was not.

I myself not long ago met with an appearance which bore a much closer resemblance to drops of blood than this, and which yet was referrible to a widely different origin. In the neighbourhood of Ashburton, in Devon, a quarter of a mile or so from the town, there is a shallow horse-pond, the bottom of which consists of an impalpable whitish mud, much indented with hoof-holes and other irregularities. In these, the water being dimly clear from settlement, I observed what looked exactly like blood, in numerous patches, the appearance being as if two or three drops of blood had fallen in one spot, half-a-dozen in another, and so on. The colour was true, and even when I alighted, and looked carefully on the spots, they had just that curdled appearance that drops of blood a.s.sume when they fall into still water. But there appeared on minute examination a constant intestine motion in each spot, which caused me to bring my eye closer, when I discovered that I had been egregiously deceived. Each apparent drop of blood was formed of a number of slender worms, about as thick as a hog's bristle, and an inch and a half long, of a red hue, which protruded the greater part of their length from the mud, in a radiating form, each maintaining a constant undulatory movement. There were more or fewer centres of radiation, the circles frequently interrupted by, and merging into, others, just as drops of blood crowded together would do. On the slightest disturbance the little actors shrank out of sight into the soft mud; but by scooping up a little of this I contrived to get a number of them into a phial, which, as the sediment settled, were seen at the bottom playing as if in their pond. On examination of the specimens with a microscope I found them to be minute Annelids, such as I have described, apparently of the genus _Lumbriculus_ of Grube, with two rows of bristle-pencils, and two bristles in a pencil. The body was transparent and colourless, and the red hue was given by the great and conspicuous longitudinal blood-vessels, and by the lateral connecting vessels, which viewed sidewise took the form of loops. The animals soon died in captivity, but I kept some for three or four days alive.