Part 13 (1/2)

See yonder stately bird, nearly of the height of man, marching among the luxuriant musa-groves, and feeding on the succulent fruits. There is nothing very admirable in its coa.r.s.e, black, hair-like plumage; but the rich hues of its naked neck, azure, purple, and scarlet, of the most vivid intensity, attract the gaze. The most remarkable feature in its physiognomy, is the singular, tall ridge of horn on its head, which, like the crested helmet of some mailed warrior, imparts an air of martial prowess to the bird, little in accordance with its peaceful habits.

This protuberance is altogether a development of age. The skull, in the youth of the Ca.s.sowary, was scarcely more elevated than that of a chicken; but in the lapse of years, the bony ridge, encased in horn, has gradually elevated itself to the height which it now possesses.

Here again we have a record of time, which is belied by the fact of the bird's recent creation.

What is the glorious train of the Peac.o.c.k, all filled with eyes, but a false witness of the same kind? It leads us to infer that the bird is three years old at least, since before that period, the covert feathers, which are to form the splendid ornament of maturity, are not developed.

What are the lengthened tail-plumes of most refulgent blue, that adorn the Fork-tailed Humming-bird (_Trochilus forficatus_); what the gorgeously golden tail of the Resplendent Trogon; what the elegant lyre-shaped feathers of the Menura; what the l.u.s.trous plumage of the Birds of Paradise,--all of which have been but this hour created,--but so many testimonies, unworthy of confidence, to a past history?

But, further, every individual feather of this beautiful array of plumage concurs in bearing its unblus.h.i.+ng witness to the same untruth.

What says the physiologist, who is able to read off these autographic records?

[Ill.u.s.tration: GROWTH OF A FEATHER.]

”A little while ago, the tips of these feathers were seen each protruding from the extremity of a thick, opaque tube; and a little while before that, the tube itself, was a closed capsule, imbedded in a deep follicle of the skin. If you had then cut open the capsule, you would have found two concentric membranous tubes investing a highly vascular secreting pulp, abundantly supplied with nerves and blood-vessels through an orifice at the bottom of the capsule, and destined to form the substance of the coming feather. Indeed, you would have seen the soft, newly-formed barbs folded round the central organized matrix; and below, the incipient quill, filled with the living pulp-cells, and their blood-vessels, which were destined subsequently to wither up and collapse into the light skinny pith which you see in the perfectly matured feather. These are stages which each of these hundreds of feathers has pa.s.sed through; and these are but a single generation, which have replaced former series that have been lost in the process of moulting, every one of which had in its turn pa.s.sed through exactly corresponding stages, and so on backward, till we reach the first race of feathers, which were already partly developed when the chick burst forth from its imprisoning egg-sh.e.l.l.”

So says the physiologist; but is he not most egregiously in error, since this is the day of these lovely beings' creation?

There goes the great Whale, the true Whalebone Whale, rolling and wallowing in the trough of the sea, and exposing his enormous black back like an island amidst the white foam, which he stirs up, ”making the deep to be h.o.a.ry.” We will use our privilege and take a peep into his mouth, as we did just now into that of the Shark.

What a cavern! and all bristling with long black hair! Why it seems as if the hair grew on the wrong side of his head--on the inside instead of the outside!

Nay, what you call hair is really the Whale's teeth, or what represents teeth. This is the interior free fibrous margin of the _baleen_, which descends in long triangular plates from the upper jaw. There are about two hundred plates on each side, set face to face, with an interval between, and the edges outward. The inward edge runs off into those long hair-like filaments, which also extend from the slender tip. And the whole forms an effective sifting apparatus, by which the volume of sea-water, which the huge creature takes into his mouth in feeding, is drained of the sea-blubbers, the worms, the mollusks, and other small matters, which const.i.tute the subsistence of this vast body.

Now each of these four hundred plates, some twelve feet in length, has grown from a minute sort of bud, in the upper jaw. Its base is hollow, resting on the formative pulp which is developed from the gum. The pulp is understood to be the immediate origin of the hairy fringe, while a dense vascular substance, seated between the bases of the plates, forms the plate itself. When the plate reaches a certain length, its diameter has become greatly attenuated, and its tip is constantly breaking away, leaving the hair projecting. There is therefore a continual disappearance of the substance of the plates at the tips, and a continual growth at the base to supply the deficiency; and even more, at least during the period of adolescence, because the actual dimensions of the plates have to be increased in the ratio of the growth of the whole animal.

Here, again, we read a record of past history. The Whale is known to be a long-lived animal; and a period of many years must have pa.s.sed in bringing these plates of baleen to their present maturity. Yet the vast organism before us has been created in its vastness but to-day.

On the most prominent shelf of yonder precipice, a sharp b.u.t.tress of naked limestone, stands an Ibex, guarding, like a watchful sentinel, the herd in the sheltered valley which own his leaders.h.i.+p. The pair of n.o.ble horns, which are at once his defence and his pride, are marked throughout their ample curve with semi-rings, or k.n.o.bs, on their anterior side. These afford us an infallible criterion of the animal's age.

We can count in this Ibex fourteen of such prominent bosses. Now the horn in these animals is not shed during life, but consists of a persistent sheath of h.o.r.n.y substance, enveloping a bony core. Until full adult age, both the core of bone and the sheath of horn are continually growing; and in the spring, when there is an unusual augmentation of vital energy in the system, the increase is more than usually rapid. At this season, the new matter deposited in the corneous sheath acc.u.mulates in the form of one of these bosses, each of which is therefore produced at the interval of a year. As the first boss appears in the second year of the animal's age, we have but to add one to the number of the bosses on each horn, and we have the number of years which it has lived. The Ibex before us is just fifteen years old.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HORNS OF STAG;

In their successive developments.]

Yon Stag that is rubbing his branchy honours against a tree in the glade,--can we apply the same criterion to him? Not exactly: for the horns of all the Deer-tribe are of a different structure from those of the _Capradae_. They are bones of great solidity, not invested with any corneous sheath, but clothed for a certain portion of their duration with a living vascular skin, and are shed every year during life and as constantly renewed.

Yet the bony horns of the Stag are no less sure a criterion of age, at least up to a certain period--than are those of the hollow-horned Ibex.

In the spring of the second year of the Fawn, the horns first appear, seated on bony footstalks that spring from the frontal bone. The skin that covers these k.n.o.bs begins to swell and to become turgid with blood supplied by enlarging arteries. Layers of bone are now deposited, particle by particle, on the footstalks, with surprising rapidity, producing the budding horns, which grow day by day, still covered by the skin, which grows also in a corresponding ratio. This goes on till a simple rod of bone is formed, without any branches. When this is complete, the course of the arteries that supplied the skin is cut off by fresh osseous particles deposited in a thick ring around the base.

The enveloping skin then dies, and is soon rubbed off.

After a few months, the connexion of the now dead bone with the living is dissolved by absorption, and the horns fall off.

The next spring they are renewed again, but now with a branch or antler; and the whole falls again in autumn. Every spring sees them renewed, but always with an increase of development; and this increase is definite and well-known; so that the age of a Stag, at least of one in the vigour of life, can be readily and certainly stated.

For example, the individual Stag before us, now browsing so peacefully, has each horn composed of the following elements:--the beam, or main stem; two brow-antlers; one stem-antler, and a coronet of four snags, or royal-antlers, at the summit. This condition is peculiar to the seventh development, to which if we add one year for the hornless stage of fawnhood, we obtain eight years, as, beyond all doubt, the age of this Stag.

Both of these examples, however, the Ibex and the Stag, though so conclusive, and seemingly so irrefragable, are rendered nugatory by the opposing fact of a just recent creation.

See this Horse, a newly created, really wild Horse,