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swifts (hirundines apodes) among the rubbish
But a clergyman, of an inquisitive turn, assures me, that when he was a great boy, some workmen, in pulling down the battlements of a church tower early in the spring, found two or three swifts (hirundines apodes) among the rubbish, which were at first appearance dead, but on being carried towards the fire revived. He told me, that out of his great care to preserve them, he put them in a paper bag, and hung them by the kitchen fire, where they were suffocated.
(Gilbert White, The Natural History of Selborne (1789))
It was characteristic of the vein of unhappy sluggishness and inertness in him that only when impressions had subsided into the remote past could he be thrilled by them. The reality of the present seemed always weighted with something hurting.
(John Cowper Powys, Weymouth Sands (1934))
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"out of his great care to preserve them, he put them in a paper bag, and hung them by the kitchen fire, where they were suffocated." That's so good, the urge to "preserve" rather than to heal and release the birds. I wonder how much present-day writing will become ironic in 200 years.
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting observation; I've been reading the same paragraph with the understanding that "preserve" meant something like, "keep the birds warm and alive," without any other projection into the future; not "keep them alive in order to retain them for himself," but just, "don't let them die." The boy operating on the logic that fire is a reviving agent, therefore more is better, and forgetting that birds need to breathe.
DeleteHa, that makes a lot more sense. Maybe I was letting the words "natural history" push me into thinking of museum specimens. I have no idea when I became so cynical.
DeleteYou make me wonder though, what would the implications of "preserve" have been if the "great boy" had succeeded, since he really was a real boy and not only a person in a book. What would have happened to the swifts?
Delete(Which is a question that can only be answered usefully by saying that they would be dead by now along with all the other swifts that were alive at the time, and along with White as well, and with the clergyman, and with the workmen, and everyone else, and all the other animals everywhere in the world that were not dead at that time; now they would be dead.)
DeleteThis is connected with the long-lasting debate over whether swifts and swallows hibernated or migrated. Samuel Johnson joined in: "Swallows certainly sleep all winter. A number of them conglobulate together, by flying round and round, and then all in a heap throw themselves under water, and lye in the bed of a river."
ReplyDeleteThe clergyman's intent was to keep the birds alive until they would have naturally woken, if he wasn't just teasing White.
Johnson was right of course. Swifts and swallows do not hibernate and they do not migrate, they conglobulate. Bears have also been known to conglobulate. Rodents of all kinds conglobulate in packs and go shopping every New Year's. My auntie conglobulated once. What times we had.
DeleteOh, the many heaps of swallows I've seen on riverbeds.
Delete