146 BIRDS OF THE COUNTRYSIDE 



Chaucer's paraphrase is as follows : 



But nightingales, a full great rout 



That flien over his head about, 



The leaves felden as they flien, 



And he was all with birds wien, 



With popinjay, with nightingale, 



With chelaundre and with wodewale, 



With finch, with lark, and with archangel. 



He seemed as he were an angell, 



That down were comen from Heaven clear. 



What the chelaundre is I know not. According to 

 Ruskin (a very doubtful authority) " mesangel " (Anglice, 

 archangel) is a provincialism from /j,eioi> viz. smallest, 

 viz. a titmouse. But why not a goldcrest, then, or a 

 wren ? 



October 28th. I walked out into the wildest parts 

 of the hills. The country gets more desolate in this 

 direction, and there are some fine prospects, or rather 

 lines and slopes, for this part of Dorset is nearly all 

 form and no colour. I came across a bloodthirsty weasel, 

 dragging a large buck rabbit after it. The little savage 

 would only leave its prey when I was hard upon 

 it, and then only lopped off reluctantly for a few 

 yards. I am not sure that one cannot discover the 

 presence of evil in the weasel, so rare in nature. For 

 killing out of blood-lust (as the weasel does) and not 

 for food is surely evil as indeed it is useless. There 

 is no need to be too anthropomorphic or to apply 

 the standards of a higher stratum of evolution to 

 those of a lower. What is " evil " in the vertebrate 

 animal may be " good " in the mollusc. The truth 

 of the matter is in Lecky's saying that an individual 

 or nation which falls below the ethical standards of 

 his or its own time is more immoral than an individual 

 or nation of a lower grade which keeps pace with those 

 of his or its own time, even though absolutely the 

 action of the latter is morally much worse than that 

 of the former. Degeneration is a relative term, and we 

 justly call the cuckoo and the weasel " evil " because 

 their average conduct is inferior to that of their avian 

 and mammalian congeners. But it is a highly complex 



