78 How Theories are Manufactured 



interest to those who care to watch it. When that 

 most delightful of books, Alice in Wonderland^ was put 

 upon the stage, the juvenile audience, who thronged to 

 see it, joyously recognized for old friends each of the 

 actors as they came on : " There's the White Rabbit, 

 the Duchess, the Dormouse," was their cry ; and the 

 peculiarity of their pleasure was in seeing that done 

 which before they had read about. In something of 

 the same fashion we know the actors in Nature's serial 

 story, and we know what they will do, yet always find 

 it new in the doing. The Blackbird will, throughout 

 the season, at evening, sound the curfew of the woods 

 which the Hedge-Sparrow will echo with a modest 

 accompaniment. The Robin, though his voice be 

 drowned in the richer harmonies of spring, will make 

 his mark as a musician, singing sweetly in the falling of 

 the year. The Nightingale, "the liquid voice beloved 

 of men, come flying over many a windy wave in days 

 of budding April," will hold unchallenged supremacy 

 amongst all choristers for about a month, and will then 

 sink to the bottom of the scale, and be capable of 

 nothing but an unmusical croak; while the diminutive 

 Chiff-chaff, with his poor little ditty of two notes, will be 

 in the field a full month earlier, and will go unwearied 

 on three or four months later. The White-throat will 

 babble and jar by the sides of hedges, every now and 

 then darting vociferous up and down in the air, like a 

 singing sky-rocket. The Sedge- warbler will chatter and 

 prattle as he bounces about among the reeds and bushes 

 of the water-side, and throw in mimicries of his feathered 

 acquaintances. The Goat-sucker will purr the summer 

 nights through on the moorlands, while the Corncrake 

 complacently rehearses his interminable lay in the 

 meadows, and the Snipe drums circling in the sky 

 above. The Chaffinch will in winter be true to the 

 ungallant habit that has gained him the specific name 

 of "bachelor," 1 cocks and hens consorting in separate 

 flocks. The Rooks will leave their nesting-trees between 

 1 Fringilla calebs. 



