266 



KNOWLEDGE. 



[November 1, 1897. 



morning. Anything black, dull, or oppressive, is to him 

 a "colly" thing. A dark night is a "colly" night; a 

 black horse, cow, or dog is " a colly 'un," as the case may 

 be ; and whenever the prospect of a rustic's life is at all a 

 shadowed one, it is for him a very " colly outlook." This 

 word is as quaint as it is singular, and reveals the dwellers 

 in this delightful greenwood in quite a picturesque and 

 characteristic vein. 



To my thinking there are few prettier or more attractive 

 words in the vocabulary of the Warwickshire rustic than 

 the word " rimming." This is probably a word grown 

 exclusively in Shakespeare's greenwood, and is racy of the 

 soil, seeing that the lot of the peasant here, being (as he 

 is) chiefly a hired servant, condemns him to a continual 

 course of change. " I'm rimmin' to Long Compton this 

 Marti'mas," or " I shall hev to rim over to Hillboro' just 

 now, I reckon, as my time's up here," are familiar 

 sentences to those who are brought into contact with the 

 Warwickshire field worker. To " rim " is the rustic's 

 poetical way of saymg to "move" — to go from one place to 

 another. With him and his women folk it is " rimming," 

 not " moving," and it must be frankly admitted that 

 "rimming" is by far the more euphonious word of the two. 



Quite in accordance with the literary reputation of " leafy 

 Warwickshire," the rustic of that greenwood has the word 

 " scribe" in prominent use in his everyday tongue. The 

 sound of the name, however, is all that is literary about it. 

 " Ah," cries an anxious and fond mother with a tiresome 

 baby in her arms, "he's a poor dwindling scribe"; and 

 that outburst of lap-sorrow exactly explains the word. A 

 " scribe " is a weak, puling, and aUing child. 



This sympathetic word is perhaps more exclusively a 

 Warwickshire word than either " nesh," or " recklin'," or 

 dillin'," which were dealt with in my former jottings, and 

 which correspondents have informed me are in use in their 

 counties. Indeed, " scribe," with the rustic signification 

 attached to it, is a very fine and expressive word, and full 

 of humour to boot, as well as pathos. 



As a specimen of the enduring qualities of the Warwick- 

 shire rustic dialect, instance may be made of the popularly 

 current word " mortal." At the " Mothering " or 

 " Thomasing " this word is richly in evidence, and is full 

 of warmth, forethought, and homeliness. " Hey, I'm 

 mortal glad to see thee," will say the good mother to her 

 daughter, newly arrived from some distant outlying farm- 

 stead ; and the daughter will invariably reply, " So are 

 I glad to see thee, mother, though I were mortal afraid o' 

 comin' 'cause o' the floods." 



The ' ' mortal glad " of the rural dweller is the ' ' extremely 

 glad " of the resident in town. " Mortal," as the rustic 

 means it, is the extreme in everything. Now this word 

 " mortal," with precisely the same rendering as now 

 attaches to it, was used by Shakespeare in " As You Like 

 It " (Act II., Scene 4), where Touchstone says : " We that 

 are true lovers run into strange capers ; but as all is 

 mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly " 

 — signifying extreme in folly. 



With this fine and impressive example of the enduring 

 power of the language of Shakespeare's greenwood my brief 

 amplification must be brought to a close. It was my desire 

 in this set of sketches in Knowledge to write a few bright, 

 apposite jottings upon a subject which, though deeply 

 interesting, has had far too little attention paid to it ; and 

 my hope is that the wish has been realized. My claims 

 for the dialect of the Warwickshire rustic are, that it 

 is a strong, expressive, poetical, picturesque, simple, and 

 enduring language, and more nearly allied to the language 

 of the English Bible and the works of Shakespeare than 

 any other EngUsh dialect. 



EGG COLLECTING IN ITS RELATION TO 

 SCIENCE. 



By Leopold Field, F.K.S.E. 



" Oology is the poetry of ornitUology." — Seehohm. 



IF it be true that in all labour there is profit, then 

 every description of collecting should be remunera- 

 tive. For any collection, however trivial, and by 

 whatsoever process accumulated (except, of course, 

 that of out-and-out purchase), must have cost its 

 constructor a certain amount of mental and physical 

 exertion. Viewed in this light, even the collector of 

 stamps or crests acquires a certain status, as cave crabs 

 remain crabs although their organs are rudimentary. 

 Philatelism, certainly, has its ardent votaries and 

 apologists ; but beyond acting as a picturesque lackey to 

 political geography, it would be difficult to indicate the 

 precise manner in which that phase of the mhies 

 ciiUi(icn<U has advanced individual or general knowledge. 

 Considerably more can be said in favour of coins, pottery, 

 weapons, and all such objects as throw light upon, or 

 impart a more tangible interest to, our knowledge of man. 

 In these subjects, obviously, authenticity is the deside- 

 ratum : the difficulty of establishing it the stumbling-block. 

 In the domain of natural history alone can the collector 

 rely upon the genuine character of his evidence, and make 

 sound deductions therefrom, providing always he be able 

 and willing to appreciate it. It is not presumptuous to 

 assert that our knowledge of natural history is as largely 

 derived from the formation and study of collections as that 

 of the physical sciences is from experiment. 



Oology, which has but recently and grudgingly been 

 recognized as a science, owes its very existence to the love 

 of collecting. For the oologist no tree is too lofty, no 

 desert too hot, no climate too inclement, where there are 

 eggs to be obtained. The same instinct which leads the 

 schoolboy to brave the terrors of ferule and gamekeeper, 

 crag and pine tree, inspires him as man to spend months 

 in frozen tundras or on burning plains. Truly, oology 

 must ever remain a subordinate branch of bird-lore. But 

 it is an indispensable one, and its indications have occasion- 

 ally enabled naturalists to form and confirm opinions for 

 which the evidence of the bird itself gave inadequate 

 warrant. As Seehohm says : " It would be as absurd to base 

 a classification of birds on their eggs alone as it would be 

 to do so on any other single character No classifi- 

 cation based on one character alone can be of any value." 

 Now I hope to show, chiefly by the aid of others' experience, 

 in what manner oology may act as exponent to her elder 

 sister, ornithology. To begin, I will say a word or two on 

 the essentials of a good collection of eggs — good, that is, 

 in terms of scientific utility, without regard to neatness of 

 blowing or elegance of mounting. 



Prof. Newton, in his terse but pregnant pamphlet on this 

 subject, gives the two great essentials of an egg collection 

 as identification and authenticity. Eerdered colloquially 

 this signifies that a collector should first make himself 

 sure about his egg, and then mark it so that others may 

 always share his certainty. With the latter point, as 

 being more a question of technique, I do not propose to 

 deal ; but it is impossible to insist too strongly upon the 

 full and absolute identification of an egg, for eggs occupy 

 an almost unique position among other objects of collection, 

 in that they are subsidiary — bye-products, so to speak. 

 On reflection, I can find nothing analogous in nature, 

 except the seeds of plants — unless, indeed, one were to be 

 curious in the spawn of fishes. A flower, a shell, a bird, 

 leaves no room for doubt in the mind of a competent 

 possessor. The specimen is known to him, or it can be 



