Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  Travis is the keeper of the crows’ cages, as also of the great Western Aviary. He is a most surprising authority on birds, and is no fledgeling himself; he is the oldest keeper in the service, as his “No. 1” testifies, and has been here since the year 1851.

  I have been lingering over the name “Travis” for some time, separating it thoughtfully into T. R. Avis, with an ultimate idea of a pun, or an acrostic, or a rebus, or a charade, or conundrum, or something of the kind, but have regretfully given up the notion. Still, considering his almost unique knowledge of birds — not to mention the ability of his brother as a bird-staffer — I think Travis might arrange, by deed-poll, for some such name as Terrae Rara Avis, if the equal mutilation of name and catch-phrase be tolerated.

  Among the many curious birds in the domain of Travis is the laughing jackass. Now, there are several reasons why something should be said here of the laughing jackass.

  In the first place, this is a Zig-zag, and since it is headed “Zig-zag Corvine,” it is proper and in accordance with the correct spirit of Zig-zaggedness that something should he included that isn’t corvine at all. Moreover, it is fitting that a bird which is called a jackass and is indeed a king- fisher, and being a kingfisher doesn’t catch fish, should be classed with something that is neither jackass nor king-fisner nor fish, to carry out the original principle.

  The laughing jackass is a broad low-comedy sort of bird, who usually makes your acquaintance in a little game of spoof of his own. He knows that you have come to the cage to hear him laugh, so he won’t do it. But in order to keep you there in expectancy as long as possible, he pretends to have discovered an enemy, or something to eat, or the ghost of some other jackass, close by. He stares intently at nothing, and then turns round and inspects it on the other side. He crouches cautiously on his perch and looks at it cornerwise. He organizes an elaborate plan of strategy, and makes a beginning of approaching nothing on tip-toe. He finds that it has observed him, and forthwith ducks his head and looks out warily. It moves, and he follows it intently with his eyes; he seems about to spring at nothing, and you become excited; when he suddenly lets it go and grins at you, and you realize that you are sold.

  The laughing jackass is not a distinguished joker, like the raven. He is a very frantic sort of buffoon; one who imagines he has a funny reputation to maintain, and who strains to maintain it at all hazards. Which is why he bursts into his demoniac laugh at certain regular times of the day — a habit which has earned him the unflattering name of the “Settlers’ Clock.” The fact is, he has been trying for hours, unsuccessfully, to think of a joke, and laughs to make the world believe that he has made one. It is noticeable that with these birds laughing is highly infectious, and that when one starts the rest join at once, each trying to outscream the others. Every individual is trying to claim the joke for himself.

  Personally, I incline to the belief that the laughing jackass, as a tribe, has only one joke. Mutual admiration societies are formed, and the members tell each other this joke in turn, and laugh unanimously.

  You may see the system in operation here. One bird will burst upon a few friends with the air of a breathless discoverer and a vast number of chuckles. He tells the ancestral joke, in confidence, to jackass the second. Then the two scream and choke with delirious laughter, and the joke is passed on to jackass the third, and so forth — and fifth, and sixth — till every jackass is screaming for a minute together, till the regular amount of mutual admiration has been ex pended, and they stop suddenly and cock their beaks demurely for the approbation of visitors.

  For the laughing jackass’s own sake, I wouldn’t introduce him to a raven because the jackass would be sure to repeat the joke to his new acquaintance, and the raven, a sardonic and superior joker, would be apt to deal savagely with him; and this more because of the badness of the joke than its age. I know a raven named Elijah (there would appear to have been some confusion of Scriptural history at his christening) who would be a bad subject for the laughing jackass’s joke. He is not at the Zoo, but in private ownership, which is a great deal the worse in general devilment for the private owner, although he hasn’t discovered it for himself yet.

  Elijah’s chief delight, by the way, is to run loose in a flower garden or a conservatory, where the surroundings may be reduced to a salad in about five minutes. “Do you know why they call me a laughing jackass?” Dacelo gigantea might ask Elijah; for this conundrum, I am convinced, is the ancestral wheeze. “Perhaps it’s because you’re a jackass to laugh so much,” Elijah would say, severely. “No, you’re wrong!” would scream that fatuous kingfisher. “It’s because they think Jack — as good as any other name! Ha! ha! How’s that? Isn’t Jackass good as his master?” and he would guffaw deliriously while Elijah sharpened his big beak.

  “H’m,” Elijah would grunt, with savage calmness, when the laugh was over. “Just make another joke like that, will you?” And the unhappy jackass would have to save himself as best he might.

  The laughing jackass is all very well as a chorus, but he can’t sustain a separate low-comedy part. The raven can, the jackdaw and the magpie can, the jay can, and even the rook and the ordinary crow have their humoursome talents.

  The chaplain crow becomes a very passable Stiggins, under the influence of the sun, which acts as his pineapple rum. Hot sunshine opens the mouth of the chaplain crow, and causes a rolling of the head and eyes, suggestive of a lachrymose sermon; and a spasmodic croak that is an overcharged rant by itself. You grow more serious at each step nearer the chaplain crow on these occasions, and you pull up with a start at the thought of a collection. I am not sure that much of his distress is not caused by the laughing jackasses, who have an impious practice of laughing at their conundrum on Sunday.

  There is a temptation to call the three worst offenders among the jackasses Tom, and Bob, and Billy, and the chaplain crow Sir Macklin, by compliment or with apologies to the “Bab Ballads”; but, in good truth, there is no other name for the chaplain crow but Stiggins. His white choker is ragged and soiled and pulled askew on his neck. You look at him for long with an indefinite conviction that something is wanting in his equipment. A red beak would be an improvement, certainly and to secure it a cross with the chough might be tried; but what you really miss in Stiggins is a black bottle and bad umbrella.

  The raven was once white, Ovid tells us, but Apollo turned him black for tale-bearing. The rook and the crow must have told tales, too, unless Apollo condemned the lot at once, from uncertainty as to the actual culprit. The magpie and the chaplain crow are only partly black — offence not specified. Perhaps they told white lies. Here at the Zoo are two perfectly white jackdaws, and I have spent some time in an effort to discover for what conspicuously virtuous exploit they have been so distinguished. I can find nothing in their histories greatly to distinguish them from other jackdaws except the colour of their feathers.

  I have known many jackdaws and have possessed a few, but cannot, by any effort, imagine one of them doing anything particularly virtuous; jackdaws by nature are not intended to be pious. I have a jackdaw now who is a most interesting and pleasing thief, liar, and bully, but he neglects the more usual moral qualities. As a thief and a liar his performances are probably no more remarkable than those of other jackdaws, but as a bully he has ways of his own. He bullies every living thing with less brains than himself, irrespective of size, and eats such of them as are small enough. He hectors cats tremendously — merely by force of superior intellect.

  When a cat perceives a bird — the size of some she is in the habit of trying to catch — pelting headlong toward her down a garden-path, with furious eyes and beak, shouting “Hullo, Jack! Shut up! Shut up! Come along, old girl! Hi! hi! hi!” — that cat has some excuse for hastily retiring over the wall to think things over; and Jack cocks his head and chuckles. He bullies dogs when they will allow it; when he meets one that won’t, he finds a safe perch and abuses him violently. He will even bully a housemaid who is afraid of havi
ng her heels pecked. Once he went on a visit and tried to bully Elijah, but that was very nearly being another tale. Elijah is not the sort of bird anyone would bully for pastime, and Jack found speed as useful as intellect, for once in a way. But if he came to the Zoo to-morrow, he would probably begin by bullying Jung Perchad.

  The raven was never meant to be bullied. He is a wag, certainly, but a wag of a satanic sort. His very chuckle is fierce; and when the heat makes him open his mouth to pant, it isn’t with a lachrymation, as the chaplain crow, nor with a grin, as the magpie, but with a severe and business-like seriousness, that says plainly that somebody’s heels must be bitten for this; preferebly, I imagine, Apollo’s, as the gentleman that drives the sun; and who, also, first made the raven as black as he could possibly be painted. The full age of the raven is not known, and in the belief of many he shares with the donkey the reputation of immortality. Notwith standing which, Charles Dickens had a raven that died of too free indulgence in white paint.

  Like many another wag, the raven hates nothing so much as looking ridiculous; wherefore, in his private moments he practises dignity. It is the last thing one would expect of the raven, but he does it. Watch the occasion and you may observe him carefully practising a graceful and imposing emerging spring into his open cage, when he knows of nobody looking. And, in truth, the practised raven has a courtly bow, but it requires preparation and training. Betray your presence after he has substituted a downer with his nose for the stately bow and strut he had intended, and you will humiliate him as even plucking would not; and send him into retirement with a longing to snatch your watch.

  ZIG-ZAG ENTOMIC

  Entomology is a vast, a complicated, and a bewildering thing. Every entomologist has his own ideas as to classification, and each system of classification, considered separately, seems to consist of an aggravation of the confusions of all the other systems. Therefore let us have no system in our contemplation whatsoever it may please us unprofitably and frivolously to observe.

  The illustrative moralist has a way of rushing to the insect world for his lessons, though a moment’s reflection and a few inquiries would convince him that the insect world is the most immoral sphere of action existing. The pervading villainy of the whole insect kingdom is obvious in the very system of their existence; for if ever you inquire what is the earthly use of some particular insect, you always find that it is to eat some other insect, which, if allowed to increase, would do all sorts of frightful damage. You then find that the use of this second insect is to kill some other insect, an equal pest; the object in life of the third insect being to unite in large numbers and assassinate some entirely different and very large insect indeed, who spends his days and nights skirmishing about and devouring all the different sorts of insects we have just been speaking of.

  Therefore, since the mission of every insect is to kill some other, it is plain that murder is the chief occupation of the insect tribes, and even the illustrative moralist is reported to admit that murder is not a strictly moral amusement. Also, since it is proper that every insect should be kept in restraint by some other, it is plain that the sum of insect depravity, apart from murder, must be vast indeed; which disposes of the insect as a popular preacher. But the insect as an ogre, the insect as a pirate, as a flute, a flageolet, a torpedo, a Jew’s harp, a walking-stick, a double bass, and a Jack-in-the-box — in such characters he shines, often literally. For the beetle Xylotrupes, with his glossy back, is a double bass, and nothing in the world else — unless it be a bloated violoncello. Just as the stick insect may be a flute, a flageolet, a walking-stick, or a mere twig, as fancy may persuade you; and as the trap-door spider may be a Jack-in-the-box or a wicked ogre rising through the stage in a pantomime.

  Here, in the Insect House, one may see the trap-door in all its neatly fitting and spring-hinged guile, and there is no reason why a moral fable should not be built round him, or round any other insect, so long as he is not elevated to an ethical pedestal whereon he has no right. For instance, one might tell the Fable of the Artful Spider and the Fascinating Beetle thus: “A certain Green Beetle, that was a great Belle, was much Beloved by a Brown Spider, owning an elegant and convenient Trap-door in a Fashionable Situation.

  But his Suit had an unfavourable course owing to the intervention of a Prussian Blue Beetle, who was the more favoured Swain. Having thought on many Stratagems, the Spider at length placed a rustic seat near his Dwelling, and Advertised that that was the Place to Spend a Happy Day, knowing full well that he Green Beetle and the Prussian Blue Beetle would take Cheap Returns, and sit upon the rustic seat to Spoon. And when things fell out as he had intended, behold, he arose from his Den and Tickled the Prussian Blue Beetle in the Ribs, quietly Concealing himself. And having Repeated this, at length he left open the Trap-door, taking Ambush behind it; and when the Prussian Blue Beetle arose and investigated the Premises, with great Speed did the Spider hasten to shut down the Lid upon him, placing a Weight thereon, to reconcile him to his Incarceration. And straightway the Spider did make his Court unto the Green Beetle, and they lived as happy as usual ever afterward. Moral: We may learn from this History, that, as the Poet has already Taught, it is unwise to introduce your Dona to a Pal.”

  The big hairy Tarantula Spider, too, the ogre that will kill a bird or a mouse when large insects are scarce, is here with his venom and ugliness in complete order. He sheds his skin periodically, sometimes leaving it perfect throughout except in the one place through which he emerges, so that it would be possible to “have him stuffed” without killing him. Whereof one may tell the Fable of the Wicked Ogre, or the Tarantula Boom.

  “A certain Ogre, that was a Tarantula Spider, and dwelt in a Dark Place by the hillside, grew so oppressive in his Demands upon the neighbouring insects, as to create a Scare or Tarantula Boom, whereof a Song was written. For you must know that this Ogre, not satisfied with an occasional Cockroach, did levy daily contributions upon the population, and kept, hanging in his Larder, a great Store of Prime Joints, much greater than his Requirement. And the Song of the Tarantula Boom was sung more than ever, and people grew Mad. Among many other Things, this Ogre demanded the Sacrifice every day of a White Lady. And still did all the Crawling Things, being bitten by the Tarantula, or as some said. Tara-ra Boom, fall to Dancing and Singing the aforesaid Song like Mad, because of the Boom; all the White Ladies and all the others; and there was much High Kicking and Flinging of the Heels: Until at last all the Insects, finding the Tara-ra Boom beyond endurance, resolved to Come in their Thousands and Slay the Ogre. Of which the Ogre having privy Information, he set about to devise some means to Terrify his Assailants. To that end he Cast his Skin, taking much care not to Damage the suit of clothes, and set it Empty but seeming Full beside him. And when the Posse of Insects, driven Desperate with much repetition of the Tara-ra Boom (or as some did now call it, the Tara-ra Boom D.A., because it was Deuced Annoying), came unto the Ogre, behold, he was Twins. And they marvelled much, saying one to another, Lo, the Job has doubled in size; verily it would seem a Bit Too Thick. Thus they went Home in their Thousands, each diligently slinging his respective Hook, by Reason of the game not being Good enough. And so it was that the Tara-ra Boom D.A. lasted for ever. Moral, very.”

  Speaking of booms, by the way, one remembers that, according to Tennyson, “At eve the beetle boometh.” But the only beetle one remembers as effecting much in the way of a boom is the Colorado Beetle. The beetle, as a general thing, is not given to publicity of any sort, preferring a retired and quiet life. He never interferes in public affairs — having too many legs to look after. The Bombardier Beetle, however, can boom. Touch him, and you will hear.

  Quantrill, here, is very kind to the Tarantula Spiders, often giving them a steam bath to assist them in getting rid of their old suits of clothes. Quantrill keeps in order the moths, butterflies caterpillars, and spiders in the Insect House. He is a man who has arrived at a state of being when nothing feels crawly — not even a centipede.
To be on terms of daily intimacy with lions, tigers, elephants, and pelicans is a great thing, but I feel a more peculiar awe for a man who is the confidential friend of several scorpions, and who keeps two spider-ogres on show in glass cases; consequently, I am always respectful to Quantrill, and inspect his person carefully for stray scorpions before coming very near.

  A certain amount of entomology is forced on everybody, whether of a scientific turn or not. There are very many seaside lodging-houses where the whole of the inmates, without distinction of scientific tastes, sleeplessly adopt the study from their first night of residence.

  The sea air invariably stimulates interest in natural history. Nobody, therefore, however humble, need despair of acquiring entomological knowledge from want of material. The earnest student need do no more than buy an expensive sealskin cloak to gather together an instructive swarm of moths, sufficient to engage his attention for a long time. The Japanese, by-the-bye, have a pretty story to account for the rushing of moths at a flame. The moths, they say, in love with the night-flies, were bidden to fetch fire for their adornment.

  The moths, being naturally fools from the circumstance of being in love, rushed at the first flame available, and were damaged. This is a very pretty excuse for the moth, and perhaps more flattering than the belief prevalent in this country, which is that the moth is fool enough to burn himself without being in love. Because a moth never learns wisdom. Once having got away with the loss of half a wing, he might reasonably be expected, in future, on observing the light that caused the damage, to remark, knowingly, “Oh, that’s an old flame of mine,” and pass by on the other side. But he doesn’t. He flies into it again and burns his other wing, or, more probably, roasts himself completely. Thousands of generations of scorched and roasted moths have passed away without developing the least knowledge of the properties of fire in their descendants. The moth remains consistent, and a fool.