BIRDS AND BIRD PROBLEMS.* MR. FINN . has done his book
an injustice by the selection of a title which suggests that it treats Nature from the standpoint of the travelling showman, and appeals to the purely irrational kind of interest which is only excited by deformities and aberrations. The collection of papers reprinted in this volume deals with various aspects of bird and animal life invariably in the spirit of an independent and skilful observer, and from a fund of experience different in extent and character from that of most other writers on these subjects. Mr. Finn bite; had unusual opportunities of observing the life of captive birds under tropical skies, which enable many species to prosper under conditions impossible in England ; and with many of our own familiar species of private and public aviaries lie is more or less well acquainted in lands where they are native or freely acclimatised. He has thus more acquaintance with the bird in life than most museum ornithologists, and a much wider field of observation and experience than falls to the lot of the ordinary field naturalist in Britain. Though some of the papers in the present volume are designedly popular in treatment, all show the same wide experience of fact, and reasoned judgment on leading problems in natural history. It is when Mr. Finn allows himself most fulness in the treatment of his own observa- tions that he reaches, in our opinion, his highest level. Few more detailed and charming passages of trained and vigilant appreciation have been given us by living ornithologists than the account of the Indian dabchicks which the author watched and tended on a Calcutta pond.
Like most experienced naturalists of the outdoor school, Mr. Finn finds many reasons for dissenting from the too extensive and rigid application of the theory of protective mimicry, which some followers of Darwin have developed with a comprehensive assurance which was foreign to their master's mind and methods. Among birds, for instance,
* Ornithological and other Oddities. By Frnnk Fiun. B.A.. F.Z.S., Into Deputy Superintendent of the Iodine Mosconi, Calcutta. With 56 Illustrations reproduced from Photographs. London: John Lane. [10s. 6d. net.]
which occupy nearly the whole of this book, there are examples of apparently protective likeness almost as remark- able as the familiar cases of the leaf and stick insects, or the common English " geometer" caterpillars which mimic the thorns or leaf-stems of their food-plant. But it is highly doubtful whether all such resemblances are to be regarded as having been entirely developed with this defensive meaning. In the often-quoted cases of the supposedly protective decoration of such nests as the long-tailed tit's and the chaffinch's, which are covered with lichens and often (but by no means always) built against the lichened bough of a tree, doubt must naturally be suggested when the nests are so often found built in green bushes where the same lichen- spangles actually increase their conspicuousness to our eyes. Mr. Finn gives some interesting examples of another still more significant fact, that remarkably close resemblances occur between species of birds which do not inhabit even the same continent, so that there is no possibility whatever of one profiting by its likeness to the other. One such notable resemblance, though it is not quite one of the closest, exists between our own nightingale and the well-known South American " oven-bird," which builds its hut-like nest of mud in trees on the pampas of Argentina. The presumption that many such resemblances may contain an element of pure accident—or, as we should prefer to say, of many other influences not yet discovered and diagnosed—is a good deal stronger still in the case of the decoration of the tit's and chaffinch's nests. Here we see instances in which the lichens are strongly protective in their effect, side by side every season with other cases in which they are exactly the reverse. Mr. Finn also contributes some interesting reflections and observations on the theory of sexual selection, which is equally apt to be pushed beyond the limits which a survey of all the facts will justify. It is argued by many naturalists that the adornments of many male birds, and their habit of posturing and displaying them to the best advantage, have been wholly developed for the purpose of attracting the attention of the hens. The song of birds is also explained on similar rigid lines as nothing but an expression of defiance, flung in the faces of rival bachelors. But a lark has been observed to burst into song on being hit by a stone thrown by a boy, a circumstance which it is difficult to explain except on the ground of song being an expression of any strong emotion; and as Mr. Finn points out, birds sometimes make their full display when there can hardly be any question of its being evoked by the instincts of courtship :-
"I have seen a peachick not larger than a fowl throw itself into full show position when startled by a cat passing near it. So with the turkey any emotion, angry as well as amorous, will throw him into this position, and his ordinarily meek spouse
will assume it when she is bent on aggression Facts like these may be explained in two ways ; either the characteristic display-attitude has been acquired by the male in order to display his beauty, and afterwards utilised for the expression of other than amorous emotions or this so-called display is really the means the species possesses of showing its emotions generally, and has merely been taken advantage of by sexual selection, if such a process exists."
In his chapter on " Birds which Blush " Mr. Finn shows that blushing (in such species as the turkey and certain bare-faced macaws) is another physical expression caused equally by pleasurable and angry emotion. Such points of argument, as well as a thousand impressions gathered from the observa- tion of wild birds, enforce the strongest conviction that both the display and the song of birds are simply the expression of the keen vitality of their nature—rO &ass/Ur, the "spirited element" of Plato's human psychology, almost exactly covers this dominant quality—and that matters of courtship and defiance of rivals merely provide some of the most powerful and constant occasions of its manifestation. Chaucer, who had a rare English appreciation of bird-life, instinctively bits on just the same feature in birds' characters when he describes in a very well-known passage how they can hardly sleep for singing in spring,—" so pricketh them nature in their corages." The last word here can be translated much more closely by Plato's 06p.or than by any phrase in modern
English. In the papers discussing "Park Animals for London" and "Foreign Birds at Large in England" Mr. Finn makes some very interesting and practical suggestions as to what might be done towards enriching the life of English fields, or, at any
rate, of English town parks and gardens, by the acclimatisa- tion of foreign birds and quadrupeds. Many persons have a strong objection to seeing the purity of our native fauna and flora confused by alien importations ; but so long as suitable candidates for admission were selected, it is probable that this initial antipathy would not outlast the few seasons which it took the newcomers to become fairly acclimatised. Nobody now objects to the pheasant as an intruder, while there is no tree more truly characteristic of Southern England than the common elm, which is also held to have been intro- duced in the time of the Romans. In town parks, where everything is half artificial by necessity, there is even less objection to new introductions on the score of tampering with Nature, and it would be a fine addition to the birds of London if, as Mr. Finn suggests, the kite could be reintroduced to soar above the streets where it was as numerous in the Middle Ages as the vultures in an Eastern town to-day. Kites should be able to support themselves to a great extent on the London sparrows, as owls do in Kensington Gardens every winter. They would also find sustenance round the suburban refuse-tips, which have drawn numbers of carrion crows to the neighbourhood of London. By comparison with the freedom with which the sparrow and a number of other species have spread in every quarter of the globe, it is remarkable how few foreign birds have already been acclimatised in England in a. perfectly wild state. There seems to be a firmness of equipoise about the balance of Nature in England which makes it far more difficult for a single intruding species to assure its footing. On the other hand, many English birds abroad possess the power of colonisation no less conspicuously than Englishmen. Only the pheasant and the French partridge can be reckoned as foreign species freely naturalised in this country, though the present Scotch stock of another game-bird, the capercailzie, is derived from a Scandinavian source, the native breed having become extinct a century and a half ago. Perhaps the little owl (which is the true Attic bird of Athene, and, being a day- flying species, has an extremely intelligent, and by no means a stupid or "owlish," appearance) ought now to be added to the list, as it seems to have established itself permanently in the Northamptonshire neighbourhood where it was introduced by the late Lord Lilford.
Other papers full of interesting personal observation, and only tantalising from their brevity of treatment, are those which describe the home life of some familiar cage-birds, and the nesting habits of the herons and cormorants which voluntarily established themselves in the Zoological Gardens at Calcutta, just as the wood-pigeon has settled in London parks and squares. The origin of most of the papers as separate con- tributions to periodicals explains their detached and sometimes truncated treatment, as well as occasional inconsiderable repetitions. It is to be wished that Mr. Finn would embody in fuller and more connected form the observations and experience which this book communicates in a series of more or less closely related reminiscences. Though he prefers the Americanism " back of " to its English equivalent " behind," and speaks of " eclectics " in the apparent sense of specialists or savants, his writing is always terse, straightforward, and vivid, and it bears, moreover, the unmistakable stamp of being based on full experience and knowledge. The illustrations vary in technical merit, but are all carefully chosen to elucidate the subject of the text.
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