A SCOTCH WILD-FOWLER, AND A NORFOLK NATURALIST.*
IF Captain Marryat, instead of devoting his time after leaving the service to writing novels, and to learning the ways of Thames lightermen like Jacob Faithful from his. house at Hammersmith, had wandered off to a desolate island and turned wild-fowler and ornithologist, he might well have written such a book as that which the literary executors of the late Henry Davenport Graham have issued, ender the sober title of The Birds of Iona and Mull.
Captain Marryat did, in fact, for some time work a duck- decoy at Langham, in Norfolk. Graham, with a similar bent more strongly developed, withdrew from the service to sail and shoot in the Wild West of Scotland. But he never lost his sailor-habits, and parts of his story—for the book is a medley of fine confused reading," partly autobiography, partly sport• and natural history—reads like the opening chapters of a tale by the great sea-novelist. At thirteen he ran away from school, and tried to enlist on a man-of-war, but was cap- tured and taken home. Next year he was allowed to enter the service as a cadet, after an examination by the ship's school- master, in which the questions were, to write from dictation, " I have joined H.M.S. Zebra," and this rule-of-three (?) sum : If one bushel cost ten shillings, what will ten bushels cost ?" Like Peter Simple, he had to go aloft, and for gallantly refusing the Captain's advice to go through " the lubbers' hole," and surmounting the difficulties of the futtock shrouds, was presented in the evening with a pound of gingerbread by his Captain for "going aloft so well." After seeing service in a brig, he joined the Bellerophon,' a first-class battle-ship. The vessel was in a wretched state of discipline. On Christmas Day " the whole ship's company were drunk," and though she was lying a mile off the flagship, the 'Bellerophon' was sig- nalled by the Admiral to "make less noise." He saw the sieges of Beyrout and Acre, was shipwrecked, and then left the service. This much is autobiography, excellently told. In 1848 he "went for a visit" to the Free Church minister at Iona. The visit lasted five years, and except while he was engaged in drawing the ancient monuments for his book, The Antiquities of Iona, the greater part of his time was spent on the rocky islands among the wild-fowl, either alone in a scrap of a boat with his two "wee doggies," Don ' and
Doran,' or with an enterprising boy, the son of the minister, Mr. MacVean. He sailed these wild seas by day and night, sleeping in the caves of the coast, on heather covered with a plaid, or in the bottom of his boat. When the weather was too bad to be abroad, he made sketphes of the scenes he had left. The book is profusely illustrated with these " heart- pictures," and though abounding in bad drawing, they are most lifelike and humorous. It is only his men who are out of drawing; his birds and " doggies " are admirable, and there
• (1.) Birds of Iona and Hull. By the late H. D. Graham. Edinburgh David Douglas and Co.—(2.3 Birds of Norfdk. By the late Henry Stevenson, F.L.S. Continued by 1'. Soathwell, F.Z.S. London : Gurney and Jackson.
is in them a strong feeling for the scenery and atmosphere of the stormy coasts of the Hebrides. In his description of wild life, he rivals St. John. The following account of the "ice-ducks" may give an idea both of the author's style, and of the way in which his solitary roaming habits brought him face to face with Nature. The Highlanders call these birds lack binn, " the singing duck :"—" When the storms are at their loudest and the waves running mountains-high, then their glee seems to reach its highest pitch, and they appear thoroughly to enjoy the confusion. When watching them on one of these occasions, when I had been forced to take shelter behind a rock from the dreadful blast, accompanied by a very heavy snow which in a moment blotted out the whole land- scape, everything being enveloped in a shroud of mist and blinding sleet, then from the midst of the intense gloom there arose the triumphant song of these wild creatures rising above the uproar of the storm ; and when the mist lifted, I beheld the whole flock careering about the bay as if mad with delight."
Of the ravens and sea-fowl and choughs—St. Columba's birds —which built in the cathedral-tower, the author has much to say. But the most interesting and new account of bird-life is that of the stormy-petrels. These little birds nest in Staffs and Soay, an islet near Iona. They seem to fly almost entirely at night, and on shore, when nesting, their habits are more like those of bats than birds. On the island of Soay they nest in narrow burrows, two or three branching off from the main entrance. In one case, a wheatear was sitting on eggs in the vestibule, the back premises being occupied by two petrels, which must have walked over the wheatear's back each time they left the nest. " If the burrow be laid bare, we see," says the author, "a little black object shuffling off, its small white egg laid upon a few blades of dry grass (or sea-pink) to protect it from the hard rock. The bird scarcely makes an effort to escape. As if dazzled by the broad glare of daylight, or stunned by its misfortune, it lies passively in the hand of its captor, gives a faint squeak, and drops a pellucid tear, in the shape of a globule of oil, from its beak." The young petrels which the author kept were fed on cod-liver oil, and would suck a stick dipped in it very willingly, "clattering their beaks and shaking their heads with evident satisfaction." They had a curious instinct for climbing up any obstacle in their way. " When walking on the table," says the author, " every book and desk must be climbed by means of the hooked bill, with the assistance of claws and pinions. In an angle they would try to shuffle up with their elbows like chimney-sweeps in an old-fashioned chimney." The little petrels did not live to maturity; one boisterous night they both died, and the spirits of the stormy-petrels departed amid the roaring of the equinoctial storm.
The third volume of The Birds of Norfoll.•, edited and completed by Mr. T. Southwell, F.Z.S., is a last instalment of the work by Mr. Stevenson, the second volume of which appeared in 1870. The last volume is only a fragment, though rendered formally complete by the editor from his own knowledge and the notes left by Stevenson, whose easy, flowing chapters break off early in the book. His style, acceptable alike to the general reader and the specialist, is a model of its kind, clear, leisurely, and full. Taking the bird- life of Norfolk as his theme, he fitted it into its place in the general life of the district, never losing sight of his main subject, but putting it into perspective and relation with the natural features and human interests of the fine old county and its capital, with which his position as a local journalist made him so familiar. Cobbett remarks on the extraordinary place which sport occupies in the thoughts of country folks. But in Norfolk, famed though it is for its shooting, birds and business have always been connected. Stevenson was far too good a citizen of Norwich to omit this side of his subject ; and some of his best chapters are devoted to showing bow the thrifty East Anglians have made up for the loss of the wild- fowl, formerly taken in their marshes and decoys, by their artificial reproduction. The Grey Lag Goose, for instance, is probably the species from which our tame birds are mainly descended. Formerly, in the fen-country of Lincolnshire, and probably of Norfolk, the young wild-geese were caught, or raised from the eggs, and brought up in immense numbers by men called "gozzards," who led them out daily to the fens till they were fat enough to sell. Later, as the wild birds ceased to breed in the fens, the rearing of tame geese to supply their places became a great industry. Before the open-
ing of the railway, these were all driven to London. In 1783, a drove of nine thousand get se passed through Chelmsford on its way from the Eastern Counties. The gozzards were pro- vided with a long stick, with a red flag at one end to drive the birds forward, and a crook at the other to catch stragglers, while an ambulance cart followed to pick up the lame ones. Now that the railway is open, the trade is greater still. Young birds are bought in thousands in Holland, fatted in Norwich, and sent to London at Christmas. From sixty to seventy thousand geese, ducks, and turkeys are supplied yearly by one great dealer in Norwich.
The chapters on "Swans," both the true wild swan, or whooper, and the semi-wild mute swans of the broads and rivers, are excellent. In all hard winters the splendid whoopers visit the country. The great swan years of recent times were 1854, 18t10, 1870, and 1871. To these should be added 1881; and the year 1890 will not improbably be equally famous. The herds of whoopers, or "elks "—as Sir J. Browne, in his Birds of Norfolk calls them—do not confine them- selves to the coast. " Following the winding courses of our rivers," writes Mr. Stevenson, "they are almost sure to make their appearance during a prolonged frost, in certain favourite localities, even though far inland To this day the low meadows about Earlham, Bowthorpe, and Colney, and Costessy on the Wensum, all within three or four miles of Norwich, are a constant resort of the whooper." The mute swan has such an independent life on the broads and rivers, that even if stragglers do not visit us from its breeding-places on the Lower Danube and the Danish islands, it fully deserves to rank among Norfolk birds. The Broad district and the Yare are the great swanneries of the county. Each pair of swans has during the nesting-season its chosen tract of water on the river, within which no rivals are tolerated. They pair for life, and are most prolific birds. One pair on Surlingham Broad produced eighty-three cygnets from eighty-five eggs in eight years. As may be gathered from the proportion of cygnets hatched to eggs laid, they are devoted parents. The cock-swan sits on the eggs while the hen is getting her break- fast, and also while she dries her feathers on the bank ; and even when her toilet is completed, he has generally to be shouldered off the nest. Norwich swans, reared in St. Helen's Swan-Pit, are as celebrated as Norfolk turkeys ; and after trying one at the house of Mr. Walter Rye, the eminent Norfolk antiquary, we can say, in the phrase of Izlak Walton, that swan is " choicely good meat."
The book closes with some letters between a Mr. Mar•aham, of Rippon Hall, near Norwich, and Gilbert White, to whom Mr. Marsham had sent a drawing, by a lady, of some feathers of a new species—the wall-creeper—shot in his garden. White says of the artist : " Had she condescended to have drawn the
whole bird, I should have been doubly gratified but she will smile to find her present conquest is a very old man !" To which Marsham replies : "I hinted my wish for the whole bird. But she lent a deaf ear : and in that manner all young Women have treated me (when i ask favours"., since i was turned of 40."
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