Concerning Animals and Other Matters | Page 4

man without a weakness is insupportable company,
and so is a man who does not feel the heat. There is a large grey
ring-dove that sits in the blazing sun all through the hottest hours of the
day, and says coo-coo, coo, coo-coo, coo until the melancholy sweet
monotony of that sound is as thoroughly mixed up in my brain with
110° in the shade as physic in my infantile memories with the
peppermint lozenges which used to 'put away the taste,' But as for these
creatures, which confess the heat and come into the house and gasp, I
feel drawn to them. I should like to offer them cooling drinks. Not that
all my midday guests are equally welcome: I could dispense, for
instance, with the grey-ringed bee which has just reconnoitred my ear
for the third time, and guesses it is a key-hole--she is away just now,
but only, I fancy, for clay to stop it up with. There are others also to
which I would give their congé if they would take it. But good, bad, or
indifferent they give us their company whether we want it or not."
Eha certainly found company in beasts all his life, and kept the charm
of youth about him in consequence to the end. If his lot were cast, as it
often was, in lonely places, he kept pets, and made friends besides of
many of the members of the tribes on his frontier; if in Bombay city he
consoled himself with his aquarium and the museum of the Bombay
Natural History Society. When the present writer chummed with him in
a flat on the Apollo Bunder in Bombay, he remembers well that

aquarium and the Sunday-morning expeditions to the malarious ravines
at the back of Malabar Hill to search for mosquito larvae to feed its
inmates. For at that time Mr. Aitken was investigating the capabilities
for the destruction of larvae, of a small surface-feeding fish with an
ivory-white spot on the top of its head, which he had found at Vehar in
the stream below the bund. It took him some time to identify these
particular fishes (Haplochilus lineatus), and in the meantime he dubbed
them "Scooties" from the lightning rapidity of their movements, and in
his own admirable manner made himself a sharer of their joys and
sorrows, their cares and interests. With these he stocked the ornamental
fountains of Bombay to keep them from becoming breeding-grounds
for mosquitoes, and they are now largely used throughout India for this
very purpose. It will be recognised, therefore, that Mr. Aitken studied
natural history not only for its own sake, but as a means of benefiting
the people of India, whom he had learned to love, as is so plainly
shown in Behind the Bungalow.
He was an indefatigable worker in the museum of the Bombay Natural
History Society, which he helped to found, and many of his papers and
notes are preserved for us in the pages of its excellent Journal, of
which he was an original joint-editor. He was for long secretary of the
Insect Section, and then president. Before his retirement he was elected
one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society.
Mr. Aitken was a deeply religious man, and was for some twenty years
an elder in the congregation of the United Free Church of Scotland in
Bombay. He was for some years Superintendent of the Sunday School
in connection with this congregation, and a member of the Committee
of the Bombay Scottish Orphanage and the Scottish High Schools. His
former minister says of him, "He was deeply interested in theology, and
remained wonderfully orthodox in spite of" (or, as the present writer
would prefer to say, because of) "his scientific knowledge. He always
thought that the evidence for the doctrine of evolution had been pressed
for more than it was worth, and he had many criticisms to make upon
the Higher Critics of the Bible. Many a discussion we had, in which,
against me, he took the conservative side."

He lets one see very clearly into the workings of his mind in this
direction in what is perhaps the finest, although the least well known of
his books, The Five Windows of the Soul (John Murray), in which he
discourses in his own inimitable way of the five senses, and how they
bring man and beast into contact with their surroundings. It is a book
on perceiving, and shows how according as this faculty is exercised it
makes each man such as he is. The following extract from the book
shows Mr. Aitken's style, and may perhaps induce some to go to the
book itself for more from the same source. He is speaking of the moral
sense. "And it is almost a truism to say that,