These two little episodes coming together set me thinking; ’tis a bad habit one indulges in when one walks too much alone in the open. In towns one doesn’t think, because the shop-windows, and the horses, and the noise, and the people, and the omnibuses distract one; but in the country, one gives way a great deal too readily to what Plato calls the “divine disease” of thinking. I began to philosophize. How curious, I said to myself, that we have but five kinds of bird in England that hawk12 on the wing after insects in the open; and of all those five, not one builds a proper respectable nest, woven of twigs13 and straws, like a sparrow or a robin14! Every one of them has some peculiar15 little fancy of his own—goes in for some individual freak of originality16. The night-jar, which is the simplest and earliest in type of the group, lays its eggs on the bare ground, and rises superior in its Spartan17 simplicity18 to such petty luxuries as beds and bedding. The swift, that ecclesiologically-minded bird, which loves the chief seats in the synagogue, the highest pinnacles19 of tower or steeple, gums together a soft nest of floating thistle-down and feathers, by means of a sticky secretion20 from its own mouth, distilled21 in the last resort from the juices of insects. The swallow and the house-martin, again, make domed22 mud huts, and line them inside with soft floating material. Finally, the sand-martin excavates23 with its bill the soft sandstone of cliffs or roadside cuttings, and strews24 a bed within for its callow young of cotton-grass and dandelion parachutes.
Why this curious variety among themselves, and this equally curious divergence25 from the common practice of bird-kind in general? Clearly, thought I, it must bear some definite relation to the habits and manners of the birds which exhibit it. Let me think what it means. Aha, aha, eureka! I have found it! The insect-hawking26 birds are not a natural group; by descent they have nothing at all to do with one another. Closely as the swift resembles the swallow in form, in flight, in shape of bill, in habits and manners, we now know that the swift is a specialized27 woodpecker, while the swallow and the martins are specialized sparrows. (I use both words, bien entendu, in quite their widest and most Pickwickian evolutionary28 acceptation.) The swift and the night-jar belong to one great family of birds; the swallow, the house-martin, and the sand-martin to another. The likeness29 in form and in mode of flight has been brought about by similarity in their style of living. Two different birds of two different types both took, ages since, to hawking after flies and midges in the open air. Each group was thus compelled to acquire long and powerful wings, a light and airy body, a good steering tail, a wide gape30 of mouth, and a rapid curved flight, so as to swoop9 down upon and catch its petty prey31 unsuspected. So, in the long run, the two types which hawk most in the open, the swifts and the swallows, have grown so like that only by minute anatomical differences can we refer the remoter ancestry32 of one species to the woodpeckers and humming-birds, and the remoter ancestry of the other to the tits and sparrows.
How does their manner of life affect their mode of nesting, however? Indirectly33, in this way. Birds that live largely off seeds and fruits and hard-shelled beetles34, have hard short beaks35 to grind their food with, and sit much in thickets36, scrub, or hedgerows. But birds that hawk on the wing after small soft flies must have wide soft bills, and a gaping37 mouth; they can hardly perch38 at all on trees or bushes, and their feet are too weak to be of much use for walking. Indeed, if a swift once alights on the ground, he can scarcely get up again, so difficult is it for the long wings to work in a narrow space, and so slight a power of jumping have the feeble little legs. Hence it follows that birds of the hedgerow type can readily build nests of twigs and straws, which they gather as they perch, or seek on the ground; and they are enabled to weave them with their hard bills and active feet; while birds of the hawking type cannot pick up sticks or gather straws on the ground, and have beaks quite unadapted for dealing39 with such intractable materials. The consequence is they have been compelled to find out each some new plan for itself, and to build their nest out of such stray material as their habits permit them.
The night-jar, a stranded40 nocturnal bird of early type, with very few modern improvements and additions, solves the problem in the easiest and rudest way by simply going without a nest at all, and laying her eggs unprotected in the open. Nocturnal creatures, indeed, are, to a great extent, the losers in the struggle for existence; they always retain many early and uncivilized ways, if I may speak metaphorically42. They are the analogues43 of the street arabs who sleep in Trafalgar Square under shelter of a newspaper. The sand-martin, an earlier type than the swallow or the house-martin, burrows in sandstone cliffs, which are pre-human features, though man’s roads and railways have largely extended his field of enterprise. But the house-martin and the swallow, later and far more civilized41 developments, have learned to take advantage of our barns and houses; they nest under the eaves; and being largely water-haunters, skimming lightly over the surface of ponds and lakes, they have naturally taken advantage of the mud at the edges as a convenient building material. Last of all, the soaring swift, the most absolutely a?rial type of the entire group, unable to alight on the ground at all, has acquired the habit of catching44 cottony seeds, and thistle-down, and floating feathers in his mouth as he flies, and gumming them together into a mucilaginous nest with his own saliva45. The Oriental sea-swifts have no chance of finding even such flying materials among their caves and cliffs, and they have consequently been driven into erecting46 nests entirely47 of their own inspissated saliva, without any basis of down or feathers. These are the famous edible48 birds’-nests of the Chinese; they look like gelatine, and they make excellent soup, somewhat thick and gummy.
点击收听单词发音
1 moor | |
n.荒野,沼泽;vt.(使)停泊;vi.停泊 | |
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2 twilight | |
n.暮光,黄昏;暮年,晚期,衰落时期 | |
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3 owl | |
n.猫头鹰,枭 | |
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4 abreast | |
adv.并排地;跟上(时代)的步伐,与…并进地 | |
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5 gliding | |
v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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6 gnats | |
n.叮人小虫( gnat的名词复数 ) | |
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7 burrows | |
n.地洞( burrow的名词复数 )v.挖掘(洞穴),挖洞( burrow的第三人称单数 );翻寻 | |
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8 swooping | |
俯冲,猛冲( swoop的现在分词 ) | |
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9 swoop | |
n.俯冲,攫取;v.抓取,突然袭击 | |
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10 darting | |
v.投掷,投射( dart的现在分词 );向前冲,飞奔 | |
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11 steering | |
n.操舵装置 | |
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12 hawk | |
n.鹰,骗子;鹰派成员 | |
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13 twigs | |
细枝,嫩枝( twig的名词复数 ) | |
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14 robin | |
n.知更鸟,红襟鸟 | |
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15 peculiar | |
adj.古怪的,异常的;特殊的,特有的 | |
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16 originality | |
n.创造力,独创性;新颖 | |
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17 spartan | |
adj.简朴的,刻苦的;n.斯巴达;斯巴达式的人 | |
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18 simplicity | |
n.简单,简易;朴素;直率,单纯 | |
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19 pinnacles | |
顶峰( pinnacle的名词复数 ); 顶点; 尖顶; 小尖塔 | |
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20 secretion | |
n.分泌 | |
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21 distilled | |
adj.由蒸馏得来的v.蒸馏( distil的过去式和过去分词 );从…提取精华 | |
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22 domed | |
adj. 圆屋顶的, 半球形的, 拱曲的 动词dome的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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23 excavates | |
v.挖掘( excavate的第三人称单数 );开凿;挖出;发掘 | |
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24 strews | |
v.撒在…上( strew的第三人称单数 );散落于;点缀;撒满 | |
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25 divergence | |
n.分歧,岔开 | |
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26 hawking | |
利用鹰行猎 | |
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27 specialized | |
adj.专门的,专业化的 | |
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28 evolutionary | |
adj.进化的;演化的,演变的;[生]进化论的 | |
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29 likeness | |
n.相像,相似(之处) | |
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30 gape | |
v.张口,打呵欠,目瞪口呆地凝视 | |
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31 prey | |
n.被掠食者,牺牲者,掠食;v.捕食,掠夺,折磨 | |
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32 ancestry | |
n.祖先,家世 | |
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33 indirectly | |
adv.间接地,不直接了当地 | |
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34 beetles | |
n.甲虫( beetle的名词复数 ) | |
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35 beaks | |
n.鸟嘴( beak的名词复数 );鹰钩嘴;尖鼻子;掌权者 | |
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36 thickets | |
n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 );丛状物 | |
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37 gaping | |
adj.口的;张口的;敞口的;多洞穴的v.目瞪口呆地凝视( gape的现在分词 );张开,张大 | |
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38 perch | |
n.栖木,高位,杆;v.栖息,就位,位于 | |
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39 dealing | |
n.经商方法,待人态度 | |
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40 stranded | |
a.搁浅的,进退两难的 | |
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41 civilized | |
a.有教养的,文雅的 | |
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42 metaphorically | |
adv. 用比喻地 | |
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43 analogues | |
相似物( analogue的名词复数 ); 类似物; 类比; 同源词 | |
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44 catching | |
adj.易传染的,有魅力的,迷人的,接住 | |
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45 saliva | |
n.唾液,口水 | |
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46 erecting | |
v.使直立,竖起( erect的现在分词 );建立 | |
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47 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
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48 edible | |
n.食品,食物;adj.可食用的 | |
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