SKILL OF THE SPARROW

Hokitika Guardian, 6 July 1929, Page 6

SKILL OF THE SPARROW

AVHY EGGS ARE COLOURED “My own belief is that the colouring of birds’ eggs had in. its origin, nothing whatever to do with utility,” writes Air Charles S. Bayne in “The Call o Idle Birds.” “It ,is primarily u matter of temperament; just iis -the painting of pictures. “1- can see hands raised in -horror at such an idea, but 1 have never been able to understand why, in all our discussions. and inquiries regarding the lower animals, we invariably begin by assuming that they have no interest whatever in their own lives or possessions, but are merely so many spinning -ops set going aiid entirely controlled oy fate,, or jus- so much mechanical mud actuated by something, akin to electricity and moulded by the freakish thumb of circumstance. s

.“I do not suggest that if we were to give a hedge sparrow' hands she would forthwith proceed to paint seascapes or fields of cornflowers, or even only vases of violets, but I do not believe that, without any loss of dignity or any wounding of our amour propre, we may admit that she has a simple aiid sound taste for a very charming shade of blue.

“It must he remembered that.in most cases the colouring matter is no part of the shell’s composition. It has not been produced by selected changes in the varying substance of tlie eggshell, but is an entirely new and separate acquisition, a thing which, If there had been none hut . white eggs 400 . years ago, a man might have been burned at the stake for, impiously prophesying. The shell 'is W’hite and the .colours arte usually washed upon its outside surface in one or more, coats, and whether the result is useful or not the result is always beautiful. In other words the WriT paints her eggs with her oviduct as the artist paints his canvas with his-bauds.