The Romance of the Animal World

Before there can be any romance—as I understand the word—in animal life, there must be some degree of intelligence in the romance-making animals. The question, therefore, is, at what stage in the ascending scale any conscious exertion of brain-power—any evidence of what we call a mind—begins to show itself. I say this because I have to begin somewhere, and in my selection of subject-matter to illustrate the title of this book, I had intended to pursue a plan similar in principle to that resolved on by Koko, in Mr. Gilbert’sMikado, who, with a view to becoming perfect as an executioner, was going “to begin with a guinea-pig and work his way through the animal kingdom, till he came to a second trombone.” Of course I must begin much lower down than a guinea-pig, and the nearest approach I can hope to make to a second trombone will be a gorilla—but the principle is the same. However, on further consideration, I think that this scheme, if rigidly followed, may prove too exacting, and also give an appearance of scientific pretension to this humble little work, which it is entirely guiltless of. I have decided, therefore, to soften and modify it by the employment, when occasion offers, of another and somewhat opposed principle, that, namely, of letting one thing link itself to another as it does in ordinary conversation, either through suggestion or association, quite irrespective of whether there is any or no natural—that is to say, systematic—connection between the two. For instance, should alligators be the theme, and should they, after lying like logs on the water, and so forth, proceed, in the dramatic development of their character, to seize and devour some unsuspecting mammal, I shall use the incident as a convenient opportunity for treating of that mammal—should there be anything to say about it—without waiting for its proper turn to be treated of to arrive, as upon the first-stated principle I should have to do. But where opportunities of this sort do not present themselves—if birds have only to do with birds, insects with insects, and so forth—then I shall be systematic, and so go on, letting the one method balance the other. A third principle—that, namely, of paying no attention to either of the other two—will also occasionally be acted upon, and if, as a result of the three, no principle at all should be discernible by the reader, I would ask him to look upon that as a merit, since “Summa ars est celare artem.” And now, having explained my system, which I think is an easy and flexible one, I will proceed to put it into practice in the best way I can.

The lowest of all animals are the protozoa, yet even here, as it appears to me, we begin to see the dawnings of that intelligence, without which that kind of interest which the life and acts of any creature should possess, in order to make it the subject for a work like this, can hardly be said to exist. The infusoria stand at the very bottom even of the protozoa. Most of them are so small as to be invisible, except through the microscope, and they are not supposed ever to think. Yet a creature belonging to this humble group, having a cup-shaped body, with a grasping arm or tail to it, has been seen to attach itself, with this, to the cup of another individual of the same species, considerably larger than itself, and cling there with a pertinacity very suggestive of a firm intent. Upon this the larger one became, to all appearance, very excited, and, moving about in the water—for these creatures are aquatic—till it came to some weed, fastened with its one limb on a piece of this, and proceeded to jerk itself backwards and forwards, with great suddenness and vigour, and with the evident design, as it seemed, of ridding itself of the intruder. The latter, however, held on like grim death, and this hard-pitched battle, which had all the appearance of being intelligently directed, went on between these two microscopic and simply formed creatures, for quite a long time. At length the smaller of the two was jerked off, upon which it made a second attempt to establish itself as before, but was defeated by the efforts of its more powerful adversary. The witness of this interesting scene tells us it was very difficult to believe that the two lowly organisms engaged in it, though consisting but of a single cell, without a head and with no trace of a nervous system, properly so called, were not sentient beings, conscious of what they were doing, and of why they were doing it.