A hind in Richmond Park

Front matter

All books are subject to recall after two weeks

DATE DUE

GAYLORD PRINTED IN U.S.A.

Prefatory Note

Tue day before his death, Hudson told me that the last part of this book’s final chapter was practically finished. All that was needed by the fragmentary script then lying scattered on his table was the thorough revision his work invariably received. When I offered to have it typed, he said that no one could understand it but himself. This I took to refer to his handwriting, which at its best was at times difficult, even to one who had known it for forty years. He often scribbled so illegibly in pencil on odd pieces of paper that he was occasionally hard pressed to read what he had written. As the book remained incomplete, it was necessary for someone to put the last words into order, and the task fell to me since I was familiar with his themes and had discussed them in letters and in talk. He wrote to me on the and August of this year, “I did not want to add anything to the book, but it appears I must do it . . . and so I have had to go into the infernal question of the meaning of art generally—its origin and meaning. . . . And as soon as I get it done I want to send a copy for you to read—not for you to tell me to modify anything, but to see that I make myself understood.” I quote this, as I could quote other letters, to show why it lay upon me to undertake a laborious and very painful task. But, when I came to examine the incomplete script, the whole of it proved so difficult that many pages took days to interpret, and perhaps one-third were vu

Vili PREFATORY NOTE wholly indecipherable. I have therefore been obliged to divine, by the “suggestion of contiguity” to which Hudson so often refers, the place of each paragraph and sometimes that of separate significant sentences. My impression now is that the main argument runs clearly enough, for many of the little portions omitted had in them an intelligible line or two which showed that they did but contain additional illustrative reasoning, not necessary matter. I need scarcely say that I have added not a word and have omitted nothing which could find a logical place.

Morey Roserts.

October 1922.

Contents

I PAGE Richmond Park—Red deer—An adventure with a hind eating acorns—Watching a listening hind—Senses in dog and deer compared—Senses and instinct in wild and domestic animals—Man and beast compared— The hind divides her listening sense in two parts—The trumpet ear and the ear trumpet—Strange case of a deaf lady listening through an ear trumpet to a sermon I

II

Ears in man and other animals—Ears in primitive man— Atavism in ears, in the twitching-muscle and the teeth—Teeth-gnashing faculty—The teeth as a musical instrument—Cave men’s chamber music—A natural ear-pad—Helping our ears—Wind-made noises in our ears a defect—A wind symphony . : : 2 abs

III

Our senses—An atmospheric and wind sense—A difficult subject—Our feeling about the wind—Women’s unsuitable clothing— Eastern and Western dress—A woman’s fight with the wind—A ludicrous sight which was beautiful—An historical question—Light from the dark ages—Sheep-shearing—A saint’s biography —Ellen in News from Nowhere—Wind in poetical literature 3 . . : : : . . 19 ix

Xx CONTENTS

IV

PAGE On seeking for a way back to Nature—The natural man and his surroundings—When pain is pleasure—Man in unison with Nature—“ Intuition of snow,’’ a notion fantastic and true—Influence of the wind—The wind a promoter of thought—Flying thoughts—Help from the physicists—Phantasms in the wind—Telepathic messages—A domestic drama—Is the wind a mind-messenger >—A desire of the mind—The poet expresses it—Is it a delusion ?—Conjectures— Mental embry-

ology—Telepathy inherited from the animals . - 33

Vv

Wind and the sense of smell—Scent in deer and dog— Sense of smell in man—In the Queensland savage— Sense of smell in different races—Purely personal experience—The Smell of England: a mystery and its solution—Aromatic and fragrant smells—Wordsworth’s vision of Paradise—Sweet gale—Bracken—Gorse and its powerful effect—Spiritual quality in odours—Cowslip — Melancholy flowers— Honeysuckle and sweet-briar—Shakespeare and Chaucer on its scent—Chaucer, though old, still living—Scents and their pogo associations—Frankincense . : : . 59

VI

The idea of unconscious smelling and the light it lends— Effect of rest on nerves of smell: in caverns; at sea; on mountains—Character of a dog’s smell—A friend’s surprising experience—Racial smell—Smell a low subject—Physiology—Man-smelling by savages—Atavism and a man whose nose never deceived him—Cheek-smelling by Mosquito Indians—Case from Dugald

CONTENTS xi

PAGE Stewart—Estimating character by scent—The dog’s nose in judging character—Effect of human odour on animals—Wolves in the Zoological Gardens—Wolf-children—The jaguat’s beneficent impulses—Bear and puma—The mystery explained ‘ i a . 83

VII

Little knowledge of savages available—Observations on the lower animals—Nose-greeting in animals—Smell in savages—Our unconscious sense of smell—Gypsies and savages on a level—Nerves of smell—The dog in his world of smells—Small woodland beasts in their world —How we are moved by hidden causes—Antipathies— Classical cases and modern instances—Antipathies and second sight—A strange case; clairvoyance or sense of smell? : ‘i ‘ 3 F : ; . 103

Vill

An explanation and apology postponed—Smell in birds— An ancient controversy—The vulture’s two aspects —The way of the vulture—Pigeons—Smell in crows— Daws and ravens—Carrion crow—The rook’s double nature—An uncanny rook story—Panic fear in mammals—Horses and cattle scenting grass and water— Great stampedes preceding Indian invasions—Indian warfare in Argentina—A little frontier tragedy . Ir9

IX

The way this book is being written—-The hind in Richmond Park again—An imaginary colloquy—Sense of direction in animals and man—Snakes—lInsects—A foraging ant—Fishes, batrachians, birds and mammals —Smell in self-preservation—Horses: the history of a

Xil

CONTENTS homing horse—Sense of direction in man—A gaucho’s testimony—Sudden recovery of the sense of direction —Comments .

x

Migration unrelated to a sense of direction—Personal observations—The old simple account of the phenomenon — Migration a mystery still— Newton and Addison: the supernatural theory—Dr. Henry More —Erasmus Darwin and his tradition theory—Wallace and others—Canon Tristram’s theory of the origin of life in the Arctic regions—Glacial epochs and Seebohm in search of evidence—Benjamin Kidd and the simple sun theory—Aspects of migration in England—We are still left wondering—Recent futile methods of attacking the problem—A new method suggested

XI

Aspects of migration in southern South America—Migrants from the northern hemisphere—The abundance of bird life— Golden plover — Eskimo curlew — Buff-breasted sandpiper—Glossy ibis—Cow-bird—Military starling—Upland plover—The beautiful has vanished and returns not

XII

The migrants’ cry—Unrest previous to departure—Upland plover, swallows and others—Demonstrative and undemonstrative species—Parental solicitude—Swifts and house-martins—Strange case of a captive cuckoo— Night migration of diurnal species—Woodland migrants on the pampas—Reluctant migrants—Thistledown as

PAGE

CONTENTS xiil

PAGE an illustration—Migration of a troupial—Fear in birds and false associations—Direction of migration—Unrest—Flying north—Migration of rock-swallow—Pull of the north—Perturbations in migration—Upland plover . . : 4 : : ; ; . 183

XIII

No hard and fast line between migrants and non-migrants —Swallows and partridges—Contrasted behaviour in two mocking-birds—Spur-wing lapwing—An instinct in a state of flux—Migration in other creatures—Fishes and insects—Kirby and Spence speculate—Spiders— Mammals — Migration a danger —Sand-grouse and the ‘Tartar invasions of Europe’’—A “sense of polarity ’’ the origin of migration—A trace of this sense in man ‘ ‘ : : - : . 205

XIV

The pampas Indian’s battle-cry—tTerrifying effects of sound generally—Other aspects of sound—Effect of a powerful sneeze—The human voice at its loudest—Account of a man with a big voice—Sound in the ears of the drowning—Sound of big bells heard in a belfry—A great thunder-clap—The phenomenon and the dream —The wilderness of the mind 4 : : . 229

XV

The rhea’s voice—Sounds that carry farthest—Man and animals compared as to voice power—The swift’s flight—Melody—Music as art and instinctive—Mammalian music—Capybara—Quss—Tuco-tuco—Singing mouse and small rodents—Monkeys—Braying of the ass as music—A purge for the mind—The ass in fable and folk-story : . . . . ‘ . 239 xiv CONTENTS

XVI

PAGE Music of the lower animals—Of savage man and Hindoos —WMusic of the stone age—The cannibal Pan—Singing of savages— Origin of song— Diderot and Herbert Spencer—The cries of passion— Music founded on passion and play—Music older than speech—Origin of rhythm—Impassioned speech in savage and civilised man—Song in speech and speech in song—Darwin’s theory—Herbert Spencer’s theory of the function of music—What is Poetry ?>—Spiritual senses—Music and Poetry sister arts—Furthest apart at their greatest,

and nearest at their lowest. 2 é . - 255

XVII

Instrumental music, one with vocal music in its origin— Instrumental music in the lower animals—Insects— Cicada—Locusts—Ccanthus; silence, moonlight and tears made audible—Locusta viridissima and music in insects and man—A robber fly’s musical performance —Of insect wing-music generally—Hover-fly—Birds as instrumentalists—Storks and woodpeckers—Wings as instruments of music—Wing slappings and clappings —Bleating of snipe—Origin of wing-music ; . 281