Contributions to Natural History.

Opunake Times, Volume II, Issue 94, 28 May 1895, Page 3

Contributions to Natural History.

[By R. H. Edmunds.] 111. It is a question of considerable interest " Why birds sing ?"—especially as this faculty is no mere accident, but an express intention of their structure, as evidenced by their pneumatic sacs, which form a reserve of air for both lungs and larynx under the strain of flight or song ; aud when both muscular and musical efforts are conjoined, as when the lark mounts the long spiral stair into the zenith-flush of morning, threshing the air with fastthrobbing wings, and yet making the circling heaven palpitate with the passion of melody he is piping forth, it is difficult to see how be could perform this fine gymnastic feat without the provision of air within. Let an athlete try his half-mile spin, with the addition of singing at the top of his voice ; he would soon bo in Hamlet's case—" scant o' breath." Probably when the lark sets out he is as full of air —bones and all—as tho sponge of the sea is full of water. No wonder he comes down, as people say, " like a stone "—not all the way, though : he he is too mindful of his metatarsals to do that. All birds seem to be aware that these bones of the foot, which in the mammalia are formed of several pieces, joined together by an elastic intermediary (not having wings to break their fall) in the birds' feet, consist of a single piece only; hence we never see a canary jump down, even a few feet, without a flutter of the wings just before touching the ground, landing with a buoyant, dainty, skip—one of the graceful traits which make birds charming. But to the question—" Why do birds sing?" the poets give various rep'ies: Shakespeare to wit * "The-gentle lark, weary of rest, from his moist cabinet, mounts upon high, and wakes the morning." Another humbler versifier says : " Songs of grace and thanks ho pours." And the poet Gay has another version: " A nightingale that all day long " Had cheered the village with his song." But if we ask the birds themselves, they would appear to he actuated by none of these motive?. Here is my Lord Canary singing to My Lady Canary sitting on her nest; when he has given her the first verse, she answers with an approving "chee-e-p," and thus encouraged, he goes on to other cantos of his poem ; between each, shrill but sweet, the .lady's note pipes in like an " encore." Then there are. the right honorabks, sons and daughters of the above: each singer tries his lyre in turn —"Mating a sonnet to his mistress's eyebrows," and she admits the soft impeachment with the same reply, and so it goes on, stroppe and auti-stroppe all day long, with proper intervals for rest and refreshment. A single canary kept in a cage may often be set singiug by a prolonged " Sweet," imitating the cry of the hen bird. There is a Lady Goldfinch, too, who, from her peculiar plaintiff cry, is called "Mary." One day the canary sings to her, making the " welkin ring " with hii cadence, trill, and flourish; she sits wrapt in delighted attention. But the outraged Lady Canary sees all this "going on," aud sweeps down from her nest, like Nernises, on both offenders, and calls him to account for his conduct. They face each other on the floor; she with eyes ablaze, feathers erect, beak wide open, dancing about in irrepressible wrath ; and he ?—his one idea is to sing his best; his confident mien shows he knows his powers to charm, and fountains of melody come bubbling up from his panting bosom ; in an operatic aria he tells her he really loves her best, &c, but she won't listen—scolds him well, and drives him off. A curious episode follows: a lew minutes after his family are facing him in a class. Is he giving them a music lesson ? No, rather it is a jury of his countrymen all condemning him ! Aud their verdict is guilty, my gay Lotharia ! Sentence : banishment from good society— i.e., their own ; and all his voluble flood of song does not soften them, they close in, and drive him to a distant corner. A tragedy follows this little comedy, for when, a week after, " Mary " made a nest and laid therein a sweet little egg —looking like a tiny spoonful of custard, well grated over with-nutmeg at the larger end—was it not found cast out and broken next morning, and the following morning ravaged and destroyed ? Had some monster come by night to work this woe ? Yes, possibly the " green-eyed monstr, jealousy, m yellow feathers, who liked not that her lord should sing to other ladies, put this tragic touch to the closing scene. According to these small instances, the songs of birds are mainly, if not entirely, lyrics of the affections, and the lark sings louder as he soars higher, that his listening mate below may hear and share his clarion of joy, for are not all his earthly hopes down there—the family jewels, these four or five eggs, greyish yellow, prankt with brown, just a paler edition of the birds themselves.

It is a curious habit of the finches to open the beak wide to scare an opponent, seeing that it would be more formidable, when closed, as a weapon. It is too ludicrous to see one of these fragile creatures come dancing up to an enemy, with distended beak—yards wide—as though saying, " Look down ! look down ! here is your tomb if you do not fly ! I shall eat you, eat you ! " Another curious way with them is to progress by a succession of little jumps ; perhaps from the toe extending so far backwards they cannot walk ; even to climb wire-netting they release both feet and make a jump of it. If this be true of all Insessores or perching birds, the painters have misled us, like the poets, for we often see pictures of tbeßC birds walking up the branches.

This is flic reason why !he sparrows, when they have t-iken all the com from the surface of new-sown land, never- scratch up more —they do not refrain from generosity to the human race, but have not learned to stand on one leg yet. It is an interesting association in plant life when \\'e have the " sugar grass" (sorghum saccharatum) or black millet, with seeds shine jetty as the Ethiopian, whose corn it has grown, and whose circular huts it has roofed for ages—for De Caudo'le places it in his class A, that is, plants cultivated for at least 4000 years—growing beside the rye-corn (secale cereate), whose grain is shrivelled and dusky as the Lapp, among whose bleak wilds it perhaps alone could live. Sometime in the middle ages these two had met —the millet migrating northwards, the rye southwards, until as on neutral ground both were cultivated en the plains of northern Italy—as Hehn says, " To each other's astonishment when they met." The ends of the earth seem to come together when they shake hands again in this far Pacific isle! Sown last year for a comparison of their values as fodder, the rye's inherited hardihood enabled it to laugh at our light frosts, for it had lived in lands where the north wind has such a whetstone as the White Sea, with its 10,000 miles of ice to sharpen its spears upon, but the mullet's early memories were of a sun that hung plumb over people's heads and dropt heat like molten ore down on them; where the whole heaven is like a crucible, where gold is sweetly simmering and falls in migots in the shape of dates, bananas, aud what not. Still it fought a great fight, standing fairly well until midwinter, when it disappeared. Such as had not seeded, however, came up in spriDg, and with the vigor of *4O centuries of Darkest Africa in its veins, shot up its flower stalks to 13 feet high, ten to a root, weighing 30 pounds, giving GO tons per acre, filled with sap so sweet that syrup is made from it, commercially, in the United States, and horses, "pigs and cattle lose no time in incorporating it. Nothing can break its record us a fodder until frost—then the ryo comes in. It is probable the Indian milled, white seeded, introduced in Koine in Pliny's time (70 A.D.). and cultivated in temperate Europe ever since, from its longer acclimatisation might prove hardier than sorghum, and if not so sweet, be almost equally prolific. Thoroughly this cereal must, have spread over the Roman Empire, for the embassy sent by the Greeks to Attiia, King of the Huns, in 448 A.D., journeying through this immense stretch of country, got nothing but bread made of millet, and for drink, beer made of barley—with a little mead for the nobles." What a change since: wheat waves on every plaiu and the vineyards of a single tc.vn (Buda) produce 5,000,000 gallons annually. In other and vast regions beer and butter have gone out i,f use; the fat men neeebthey get from olives, and the German pint (three pints English) of wine is what the farmer sets before a guest. Will such changes occur here? Will the beer of Bass, or say Seccombe, give way to Wanganui port and sherry, and the oiive oust the cow? Certainly, when the increase of population compels" such au economic change. The fact extracted from grass—through" the cow —amounts to only 1 per cent; the olive gives nearly 83 per cent of oil; so that even now if the poor kauri lands of Aucklaud could be made to carry olives, these would be in these wastes a potentiality of wealth, as Dr Johnson puts it, " Beyond the dreams of avarice."