The Limits of Compromise

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 915, 22 February 1957, Page 26

The Limits of Compromise

by

SUNDOWNER

JANUARY 24

‘time in my life I saw a warbler feeding a _ cuckoo, The cuckoo was fully grown but not quite fully coloured, and the warbler fed it from above and behind, perhaps-its fluttering wings made its position difficult to determine -resting lightly on the cuckoo’s shoul- _ i ESTERDAY for the second

der. I went for my glasses, but the performance ended be-

fore i cowid use tem. Fortunately, it had been staged on our clothes-line not more than 20 feet from a window. There is, of course, no controversy about the feeding of young cuckoos, and I am surprised that there should still be argument about the arrival of the egg. I can’t believe that the placing of the eggs in the stolen nest has not been fully observed and accurately recorded, Men have been watching birds for hundreds of years, and I find it incredible that such a frequent and open performance as the cuckoo’s is still controversial on the highest levels. But as a bird watcher I am on the lowest levels and still do not know what is accepted higher up. Where it would be difficult, if not impossible, for a cuckoo itself to enter a commandeered nest-a warbler’s, for example-I am quite willing to believe that it lays its egg on the ground and then transfers it with its beak. But I have never seen that happen. I have read solemn assurances by other untrained observers that they have seen it, and if I receive their reports with caution it is not because I find the explanation itself difficult. The difficulty is always in the reporter and not in the report. If thrushes can fly off with cherries and blackbirds with gooseberries, cuckoos can fly off with eggs, and deliver them safely. But I can’t remember reading that Gilbert White or Hudson ever saw it, or finding it in a note by Guthrie-Smith, Edgar Stead, or R. A. Falla. If I-had not felled a pine tree with a perfectly made warbler’s nest attached to one of the branches I would not have found it easy to believe that yesterday’s cuckoo had been hatched in my plantation. But warblers come and go in our pines all the year round. This morning I saw seven or eight at work on our kowhai tree, but there was no fat cuckoo with them. Perhaps it was dozing in, the near-by hedge after a gorge of kowhai caterpillars. we oo ae

JANUARY 27

| AM vulgar enough to have enjoyed a recent row in the New Statesman between J. B. Priestley and F. R. Leavis. Squabbles .on that’ level and in that place are not merely diverting, but stimulating, even when the weapons of one disputant are the crude sarcasm

of littleness and injured vanity, and of the other superior-

ity and contempt.qlt is not a bad thing now and again that the lofty should be

plastered with mud, and I am muddy enough myself to have enjoyed the spectacle. But sympathy with the little and despised is one thing; approval of their arguments. is another thing. The issue in this’ case was whether Dr. Leavis was justified in suggesting in a public lecture on literature in his time that with two or three small exceptions there had been none worth talking ~-about. As Leavis is 60 and Priestley 61 he was certainly trailing his coat. But it was the coat of a perfectionist, and in art and literature there can.be only one standard. Leayis exalts that standard and fights for it. He feels, and he says, without quibbling or compromise, and almost as often as he opens his mouth, that there is no other standard. Naturally, the vulgarians hate him. But it is hatred in a good cause. His judgments may not always be right, but his principles can never be wrong. Compromise is necessary in politics; it is necessary in living; it is unavoidable in social, personal and domestic relationships. I think it is necessary ‘in religion. It is never permissible in tests of beauty and truth. There it breeds the second rate, the nuisances, the pretenders, the destroyers. It makes wisdom the servant of prudence, conscience the . follower of convenience, twists the upright, confuses the clear-eyed. I may lurk in the shadows sniggering when a Priestley asks a Leavis-as Mr, Hughes in Paris asked Mr. Wilson-who and what he thinks he is. But I know what he is, and with the part of me that is

not a literary larrikin I pray, and sometimes work, for his survival and triumph. Be * *

JAN. 29

NCE more our cat has brought home a rat, very dark in colour, with a sharp face and prominent eyes, and a tail about an inch longer than the body and head combined. The most striking feature, how-

ever, was the ears, which were large,

hairless, semi-transpar-ent, and overlapped easily when folded over the top of the head. All these features I gather from a Bulletin issued by the British Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, made it, with its small size, a ship and not a common rat (Rattus rattus and not Rattus norvegicus), But I had disposed of it before it occurred to me to consult a paper issued by our. own Department of Scien-

tific and Industrial Research, and after re-reading that I have lost confidence in the easy identification tests supplied to the farmers of the United Kingdom. While Britain has only two rats New Zealand has three-four if we call. the bush rat one-and exacting tests are necessary to isolate each species. There was, however, an easy test if I had thought to apply it to this specimen (a female)-the number and position of the teats: eight for the Maori rat, ten for the ship rat, and twelve for the common rat. If our cat makes another capture I,shall submit it, fleas and all, to the eyes and calipers of science. Meanwhile, it has not helped me much to read Wodzicki’s Introduced Mammals of New Zealand that our three rats are the native rat, the black rat, and the’ brown rat, and that .of these three the brown rat is the "prevailing species." Colour must be the least stable characteristic of all animals-I have shot a white stag, seen many yellow rabbits, and atleast one pink troutand I am not pleased, after my laborious attempt to be scientific, to be thrust back on to the plane of common usage and common sense. It is as bad as being told that what bit me last night was not Pulex irritans but a flea. I wonder if it would have helped James Heriot and his two farm hands to be told’ in 1840 that the creatures which ate their wheat and drove them off their Riccarton farm were just rats, and that a rat by any other name would still have liked grain better than garbage, (To be continued)