Under the open sky; being a year with nature

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New Pork
State Callege of Agriculture

At Gornell University
Sthaca, N. B.

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The original of this book is in
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http://www. archive.org/details/cu31924001119498

UNDER THE OPEN SKY

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The
Study of Nature

By SAMUEL C. SCHMUCKER, Ph.D.

‘¢ This book on nature-study is one of the
most complete ever issued in one volume. _ Its
completeness recommends it to the general
student of life and nature. Birds, insects, .
animals, plants, trees, are treated in detail in
all their many phases and varieties, and there
is added a chapter on the heavens, giving the
main simple geographical features of the moon
and the situation of the most prominent stars.’”

—Louisville Courier-Fournal.

FOUR FULL-FAGE COLOR
PLATES AND FIFT)-SEVEN
LINE DRAWINGS.
remo. CLOTH, $1.25.

J. B. LIPPINCOTT Co.

PUBLISHERS PHILADELPHIA

THE MEADOW-LARK WITH HER STREAKS OF BROWN AND BUFF

oar {/ NATURE

a

1

ao mk AXD LONDON
PRINK

Hi

A oe dor | COMPANY
\ ni I
Wi p10 fi

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CoPpyRIGHT, 1901-2
By CurTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

CopyRIGHT, 1910
By J. B. LippIncotT CoMPANY

Published September, 1910

Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company
The Washington Square Press, Philadelphia, U.S.A.

****Go forth under the open sky, and list
To Nature’s. teachings.”
—BRYAntT.

PREFACE

Tue purpose of this book is a very
humble one. The writer makes no claim
to scientific discovery or to remarkable
insight into Nature. But the woods, the
hills, the stream, the beach, with their ani-
mals and plants, have been his chosen
study and his constant companions through
many years. He has tried at the same
time to keep abreast, through both labora-
tory and library, with the modern move-
ments in biology. During much of this
time he has been a teacher of teachers and
a lecturer on these subjects in their untech-
nical aspects.

His aim, then, is to help people who are
feeling in themselves the quickening modern
longing for contact with, and understand-
ing of, Nature in her simpler manifesta-
tions. It is these he would send out-doors,
with the alphabet of nature lore in their

possession, that they may themselves spell
7

8 PREFACE

out the wonderful language—easy to read
in its beginnings and inexhaustible in its
profundity—that is inscribed over the face
of Mother Earth.

About one-third of what has.been written
here has previously appeared in the pages
of the Ladies’ Home Journal. The kind-
liness with which it was then received has
suggested a fuller and more connected treat-
ment of the subject than was there possible.
The thanks of the author are due to Mr.
Bok for many kindnesses, not the least of
which is the permission to use again the
material then contributed to the Journal.

me C.8.

CONTENTS

II.

II.

SPRING

When Nature’s year begins.—The sun a poor time-
piece.—Easter comes.—Nature’s spring plowing.
—The revival of life-—The meadowlark calls.—A
bird trick.—Skunk-cabbage sprouts.—The animal
that tunnels our lawns.—The mole awakes.—Nat-
ure’s use for the mole.

The great spring rush.—How sap ascends.—The
race of the flowers.—Arbutus blooms.—Why flowers
hate ants.—Our flowers and the Ice Age.—The run
of the shad.—Why fish ascend rivers.—The home
of the shad.—The run upstream.—Drawing the
shad net.—The work of the “Fish-hawk.’—The
blackbird’s cackle.—Are blackbirds our enemies?

The blossom month.—The fruit in the blossom.—

Where the apple gets its core—The peach and the

almond.—Bumble goes roving.—Bumble does not

know his children.—A queen’s old age.—Crab-apple

day.—The gleam of the humming-bird.—What the
9

41

75

10

CONTENTS

IV.

VI.

hummer once was.—Where marriage depends on
beauty.— The hummer’s nest.— The ‘“June-bug”
awakes.—An ancient cousin.

SUMMER

The tree month.—The shape of trees.—Green leaves
and heat.—Strawberries redden.—What is a berry ?
—The runner habit.—How Nature betters plants.—
The chipmunk gathers his stores.—A missing link.
—Providing for winter.—The safety of insignifi-
cance.—Violets bloom.—Why the bee likes the vio-
let.—How the violet is pollinated.—Secret flowers.
—Tares in the wheat.

The warmth of July.—Why July is hottest.—Birds
in July.—Hot weather suits the insects.—The lo-
cust’s hot song.—The locust’s drum.—His name.—
The seventeen-year locust.—The locust’s greatest
enemy.—The digger wasp.—Why he digs.—Summer
flowers.—The cardinal lobelia.—Black-eyed Susan.
—Not a flower but a bouquet.—The true aristocracy.

AUGUST. iene ines a lisiaasaaawad mandrel es

The cricket’s chirp.—It rises with the temperature.
—The cricket a fiddler.—His strange ear.—The Bal-
timore oriole.—Bright-colored birds.—The oriole’s
nest.—A new fearlessness in birds.—The tiger swal-
lowtail.—A color problem.—The double generation.
—Frozen animals.—The lily and the butterfly.

103

131

155

CONTENTS

11

VII. SEPTEMBER.................-. see dame res6

IX.

The end begins.—Fall migrants.—All-year birds.—
Poison ivy.—Its good points.—Never touch it.—
The dragon fly.—Beautiful colors of these insects.—
Turtles are dignified reptiles.—How the tortoise pro-
tects himself.

The color month.—Nature the great painter.—The
trees in fall.—Tulip poplar.—The maples.—The
oaks.—The sweet gum.—‘‘We all do fade like a
leaf.””—Fading as a leaf.—A pair of fall fruits.—
Beggar tick.—Indian corn.—The nuts.— Wild fruits
are best.—The keen chestnut.—The walnut.—The
white walnut.—A little sojourner.—The wood pewee.

The sportsman’s month.—The new sportsman.—
What is sport?—The king of fishermen.—A lone

. fisherman.—Halcyon days.—A winter butterfly.—

The mourning cloak.—Butterfly colors.—The grass-
hopper’s death.—A loveless old age.—The witch-
hazel.—The divining rod.—The squirrel.—A good
burglar.—Sunset.—When our nights are long.

WINTER
DECEMBER. ....0.. 240050009 6569 eae a ee ee senor es

Snow.—One inch of rain makes ten of snow.—Snow
crystals.—The whiteness of snow.—Nature’s irriga-
tion plans.—Winter music.—A bird inside a tree —

197

219

245

12

CONTENTS

XI.

XII.

The downy woodpecker.—Downy’s nesting.—Ferns
in winter.—The fern fashion.—The fern’s paternity.
—The mistletoe-—How mistletoe is planted.—The
Christmas custom.

JANUARY: 3 240dcrsies vekiowes ganhveenud dye

The resting month.—Sleep.—The hawk-moth.—The
“tomato worm.”’—An underground transformation.
—The final product.—The lace bug.—An American
tree.—The peeling trunk.—The winter shape of
trees.—How plants escape the cold.—Annual plants.
—The danger of burglars.—The Indian turnip.—
Poisonous roots.—Nature’s lesson to helpless ani-
mals.—The ruffed grouse.— White meat.—How Na-
ture makes new soil.—The soil becomes porous.

FEBRUARY ick oceasehees ta do watt ahlgene ark

Nature’s last nap.—The crow.—Everybody’s Jim.—
The winter assembly.—The paper wasp’s nest.—A
paper palace.—The result of winter.—The muskrat’s
mound.—The beaver’s heir-at-law.—The hand and
the brain.

265

287

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Meadow-lark with Her Streaks of Brown and Buff si
Frontispiece
SPIN Gis, see Vesna deuiae cu nde te he ahaha! 2b Headimgedy bn 15
The Sun-dial keeps Uneven Time...................... 20
The Clock keeps Even Time.................0.0-e0 ee Q1
Jackin the: Bul pits cc escscasaeca tose dinausie nad aree am inedleon exe 34
Spring, Herald sc cscs os .sieniawioasag iio se eteaie crass 35
Dig is Expressed in Every Line of the Mole’s Body...... 37
Arbutus is Certainly the Favorite (full page)............ 43
Our Splendid Native Sugar Maples. . mas 47
The Caleb and Joshua of the aavaneiug “Hosts of Black-
birds: (full page) .ccacss ov ee vieuaesesdhuseer ed son eyes 69
Surely the Apple is King ......... 0... 0.0. eee ee cea 79
The Heart of the Peach-blossom ...................... 80
Hosts of Bees Will Haunt the Clover................... 87
Here the Hummer Feeds . ihe Queer eterauenas sce. 90
The Humming-bird’s Home sgsthat care ete Miangee els caret capes ab 95
The Egyptian Scarab.. Seti p Mem eeamtiedeeg. | 09
Summers: oes eet eaas nae s bee Sees eat Se nee llvanian 101
A Chipmunk who Gleaned a Mountain Lane (full page) 117
Children and Bees Love the Violets..................4. 121
Cockle among the Wheat ............ 0.00 c eee eee cece 127
The Locust’s Twin Drums.............. 00000 e cece eens 137
We Should Call this Fellow the Cicada (full page) ...... 139

13

14. ILLUSTRATIONS

A Large Wasp is Digging Holes in Our Lawns. . ... 44
The Oriole Weaves a Deep, Round Pocket (full oe. 165
Balls. 2 cna-t¢ aaiiierv ad at yas tua s we peeked Ragedinowee as “195
Poison Ivy has the Qualities that Win in Life’s Race (full
Page) aves cden raise ee eee phe sadar eee 185
The Dragon-fly Haunts the Water ..................64- 192
The Box-tortoise has Quite a Taste for Mushrooms...... 195
A Ripe Old Age has Overtaken this Stalk .............. 209
A Courtly Old Gentleman (full page).................. 215
A Lone Fisherman (full page)..............000...020.. Q227
A Sheltered Spot to Pass the Winter.................... 2380
The Burglar .. oh es ce Bt grt Sestacansiar ences wail Mealaeo tale me OOO
A Good Job ab anlar etiinteh a nace he mtadaa ata OU
Wanted gecsecs Seip atta sate haloes eas aeeceg Waa aagee sleep ee eas 243
The Woodpecker is a Most Industrious Fellow.......... 255
The Christmas Fern........... 000.0000 0e ee eee eee ee 259
Phe: Hawk-m Oth a i4ned sce oeaesipcdvarateasenas can BM
he Lace= bug: scone $5 .8ee bt cata, dees eee ees 272
The Buttonwood Sets its Twigs with Uncompromising
ASSCrION sar encece ei cvs eee enema jeescsea ds mass a BIE
The Ruffed Gee srinie ase OR
The Flock Takes to the Hives of ie Gull Bane . 289
‘A Paper Palace nscconiwuin } acts aionie ig Gia Guae heey 297

The Beaver’s Heir-at-law (full page)..... ............. 303

SPRING

The year’s at the spring
And day’s at the morn:
Morning’s at seven;

The hillside’s dew-pearled:
The lark’s on the wing,
The snail’s on the thorn:
God’s in his heaven—
All’s right with the world!

Rosert BRownIne.

MARCH

WHEN NATURE’S YEAR BEGINS

< ; "HE nature lover’s year
ANS begins in March. ‘That
is when God’s year be-

gins; and any one who
_ loves God’s out-doors
—- cannot but begin his
year when it does. In
3 a the uistory corner of the
library, in the office of the business man, on
the engagement list of the society woman,
the year may begin on the first of January.
But the real year, God’s year, Nature’s year,
begins, for those of us at least who live on
this belt of the earth, when the sun crosses
the equator. For six months the southern
half of the world has had its turn; now ours
comes again. The sun begins to smile on us
earlier than this, and we warm up to him;

but now the smile breaks into a joyous
19

20 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

laugh, as he comes across the line. The long
days are with us, and the short nights. Our
friends in Buenos Ayres and Melbourne
must be content with short sun visits, as we
were driven to be a few months since.

THE SUN A POOR TIMEPIECE

At this season the sun joins in the gen-
eral rush. He is trying hard to catch up
with the clock, which in February was fifteen
minutes ahead. Our sun, to tell the truth,
is a very irregular timepiece. Astrono-
mers, who need time, and need it correct
to a fraction of which even a railroad never
dreams, cannot use him at all; and they
set their timepieces by the stars. ‘The old
sundial went out of use, not simply because
the shadow was not sharp enough to tell
the time closer than within five minutes at

‘the best. The great trouble is it does not
keep unvarying time. So we have con-
trived a clock, which shall make the inter-
val from twelve of one day until twelve of
the next always of the same length, and
» still come out even with the sun in the long

MARCH 91

run. 5o four times in the year the clock and
the sun are together in their race. From the
middle of April until the middle of June the
sun is ahead; then he drops back of the
clock until, startled, he recovers himself and
in September again drives ahead. But the
spurt does not last and the steady, unemo-
tional clock leads from late December until
the April meeting comes once more.

The truth is, the unvarying regularity of
Nature’s laws does not produce the dead
uniformity of our mechanical creations.
She allows so many laws to act at once in
the same matter that there results a divine
unevenness, underlaid by an all-pervading
rhythm, that is never monotonous, yet al-
ways accountable when once we know the
forces that are at work.

And, by the way, it is only a part of our
general egotism to lay all this seeming ir-
regularity at the door of the sun. Of.
course it is our own old earth that is to
blame. If she travelled in a circle, time
would be evenly divided. But her circle is
flattened and the sun is nearer one end. She

22 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

parts with him to go to the far end, quite
reluctantly, and hastens to near him as she
turns her most distant point. And for all this
natural reluctance and equally natural haste,
because forsooth it does not keep pace with
our cold and calculating clocks, we blame
the sun. But he goes on undisturbed and
now he is bringing us our great spring feast.

EASTER COMES

How blithely man packs together in his
mind the most incongruous things and
makes of them a charming mixture whose
ingredients it is often most difficult to un-
tangle! So it comes that on Easter we have
our eggs, and of all eggs in the world, rabbits’
eggs. How strangely the ancient world, the
Christian era, the old religion of our pagan
ancestors as they roamed the European
forest, and our modern returned sympathy
with nature join to make this a joyous feast.

The old Hebrew tribes, celebrating their
feast at the return of the sun, with the sac-
rifice of the young lamb, and linking it in
their minds with their escape from their

MARCH 23

bondage, furnish the earliest traceable link
in our chain. The Christ, whose visits to
the central city of his race at the time of
the great spring feast are the dividing points
of his life, met his death at the hands of his
foes the day before the feast. Two morn-
ings later the joy of the woman who mis-
took him for the gardener, and whose hap-
piness has since spread over so much of the
world, moved the festival one day later in
the calendar. The earnest Bishop Ulfilas
and his coadjutors who brought their good
message to our Teuton ancestors of the
European forests found there too a festival
of the returning year; and while the good
Bishop could cut down the sacred oaks, in
his desire to show them the helplessness of
their gods, he could not so easily root out
of their hearts the old pagan faith. So the
new, as it always must be, was tinged with
the old, and our spring feast has taken the
pagan name of KEaster,—for Easter was
the name of the goddess of the dawn,—
and in'our home and amongst our children
we celebrate the feast with the eggs of the

24 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

rabbit. So on the first Sunday after the
first full moon after the sun crosses the line
we celebrate our Easter. It is true that,
as we use the clock for a conventional sun,
so in finding Easter we use a conventional
moon. But in most years the result would
be quite the same, and probably is never
more than one week out.

But in the newness of the times we are
growing back to a touch with nature; a
tender, sympathetic, spiritual touch, closer
than any of our forebears ever knew. And
so we celebrate the feast with our purest
and fairest flowers, a sacrifice more inno-
cent than the blood of lambs. And we
sprinkle not the door-posts only, but our
whole homes and hearts with the sweet
offerings of nature’s oncoming New Year.

NATURE’S SPRING PLOWING

Nature, the most industrious and _per-
sistent of farmers, is now getting the soil
ready for the spring planting. All winter
long she has been pushing her frost down
into the ground and loosening it up, to make

MARCH 25

it airy and porous. Now she is spreading
the soil she has made over the places where
she best can use it.

The farmer who owns but a small area
of ground must content himself with pa-
tiently stirring up, over and over again, his
little plot. Perhaps he may buy in con-
centrated form the few elements his plants
are robbing from the soil, and throw them
back again in the form of fertilizers. Na-
ture is richer in land and may be more
prodigal. She will be content on her high-
lands with a more meagre crop. But it is
the meadows of her farm she dearly loves.
It is into them she pours out her best re-
sources, and they reward her by giving her
their most lavish returns. On that old
backbone of the mountain amongst the
crags of gneiss and granite, she has been
breaking up and getting ready for trans-
portation the alumina and potash and the
magnesia. From that rounded knob she
has slowly been loosening the lime; from
the edges of these cliffs she has been crack-
ing off the sandstone. So, all winter

26 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

through, the materials have been gathering.
Then on the hill-sides the old leaves and
the sticks have been accumulating. Slowly
they have been softening up and getting
ready to disintegrate. But all have been
held in place by the ice and the snow. Now
-all is ready. Once more the sun is “as a
bridegroom coming out of his chamber,”
once more “as a strong man’? he “rejoiceth
to run a race.” The snow melts,—the ice
loosens up; the water which has so long
lain chilled, too stiff to run down hill, now
too feels the quickening impulse, and yields
to the enticement of Mother Earth and to
its own most natural inclinations and goes
leaping and bounding down to the low-
lands. With it is carried its most precious
freight. Clear, beautiful, limpid water is
the water we admire. That is because it
so best serves for drinking. Our most im-
mediate need blots out our perception of
the blessing of mud. But when the spring
floods pour down our valleys they carry
with them all the loosened richness of ab-
solutely virgin soil from the highlands and

MARCH Q7

all the mouldering, enriching, fertilizing
admixture of leaves and sticks. But when
the river meets the meadow lands it spreads
out and carries all over this level ground,
which it had made by this same method in
years gone by, a new and richer layer.
When the water has gone back into its
winter channels, the plain at first glance may
seem a sorry sight. Fences are down, houses
perhaps are swept away, a coat of mud covers
everything, while against every projecting
twig and stone hangs an untidy coating of
leaves. But the fences and houses are not
of Nature’s making, and it is not strange if
‘ she is sometimes careless of the intrusions
on her fairest fields; and all the untidiness
will soon be mantled with a splendid wealth
of grasses and sedges, of alders and cat-tails.

It is on these broad meadows that men
first won enough subsistence from Nature to
gather themselves into stable groups. From
the mud of the Nile and of the Euphrates
sprang the first blossomings of the new
plant of civilization. Here to-day men
swarm in the densest clusters. A surpris-

28 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

ingly large portion of the human kind is
born, lives, and dies on the alluvial soil of
the Nile, the Ganges, the Yangtse, and the
Rhine. And just as from the hills comes
the renewing soil, from the hills come the
rulers of the population in the valleys, or
the guiding spirits of their settlers if the
settlement is of modern happening.

I think it would surprise most of us, if we
could see a map of our own country with
a red line drawn around all its patches of
alluvial soil, to realize how much of the
fairest and richest of our land would be
found thus encircled.

THE REVIVAL OF LIFE
The newness of the year first shows itself
in the bird world, in the greater activity of
those feathered friends who have been with
us all winter long.

THE MEADOW-LARK CALLS

The song sparrows who have simply
chirped about the thickets, only on rare
occasions bursting into genuine song, now
send out their distinctive triple challenge

MARCH 29

before launching out on their sparrow
strain. And the meadow-lark, who has
fed industriously but quietly all winter on
the weed seeds and scattered grain until he
looks as fat as a quail, before March is over
will send out his long-drawn “Now see
here”’ in calm irony, for he knows that you
cannot see him.

The meadow-lark has come to have as
elusive a suit of clothes as can well be found
on a bird. The color of his feathers is by
no means a hap-hazard matter. Slowly
and gradually they have become what they
are; and, while he himself is doubtless
unconscious of the change, he could
certainly choose no better for himself if
he tried.

There are three well-defined purposes
that color may serve in the bird world, and
the meadow-lark has taken all of them for
his own. A bird may dress himself so as to
elude his foes, to woo his mate, or to sum-
mon his children and friends. When he
dresses to escape the notice of his enemies
he must look like the background in which

30 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

he lives; and in our latitude a ground-
loving bird must be sombre in color. The
meadow-lark, with his streaks of brown
and buff running lengthwise of his body, is
practically lost in the maze of grass stems
and shadows amongst which he chiefly
lives.

But he is not doomed to wear altogether
sombre clothing. While he and his mate
have backs colored with reference to their
enemies, their breasts are surely colored for
each other. The whole under surface is a
rich canary yellow, with a beautiful cres-
centic necklace of black. It is chiefly in
the heart-to-heart talks of lovers, or in the
congregation of their friends, that this beau-
tiful adornment is conspicuous. The cas-
ual observer might see meadow-larks over
and over again, and never suspect that they
turned towards the earth so lovely a vest.

A BIRD TRICK

These two color schemes are plain in
their purpose, but the third was long mis-
understood. “Showing the white feather”

MARCH 31

has always been recognized as a common
bird trick, and almost uniformly it has been
misinterpreted. It is not a sign of coward-
ice at all, but at least of brotherly, if not of
parental, love. Later in the season, when
she is followed by her young, if you are
walking through the fields you may flush
a mother meadow-lark. Away she flies,
alternately fluttering and sailing, in low,
level course much like that of our bob-
white. But she soon reveals her identity
by spreading her tail, showing white feathers
on either side. These are her signal for her
young to follow her. When they fail to
come she often lights on a fence-rail and
flirts her tail, spreading and furling it re-
peatedly so as to catch their attention and
gather them to her as they scamper through
the grass.

During the earlier part of this month the
turf is so short and curly that the meadow-
lark feels that it is a poor protection. So
he is very apt to sit in the trees, where he
can see from afar the coming of his foes.
His reedy whistle too is withheld, until later

32 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

in the month. And because his yellow
breast, now growing more brilliant in readi-
ness for his nearing courtship, would betray
him amongst the bare branches, he is quite
in the habit of turning his back to any living
thing in the neighborhood whose move-
ments he mistrusts.

But it is not only or even chiefly the
animal world that feels the glad return
of the sun. The plants too are peeping
out to welcome him, perhaps none so
signally as one of our most despised swamp
plants.

SKUNK-CABBAGE SPROUTS

A flower pushing its way through ice is
certainly enterprising, and this the skunk-
cabbage can do. It puts out its first flowers
long before its leaves come, and it almost
seems that one should call them the last
blossoms of winter rather than the first of
spring. One crisp February day I found
in a swamp, beneath a clump of alders, a
number of these blooms. One was stand-
ing in a pool and was frozen tight in the

MARCH 33

ice, another had lifted the ice as it pushed
up, and a thin sheet was propped slant-
ingly against it. A flower which is liable
to venture out so early must, of course,
be suitably provided with a good, stout
overcoat.

Our humble friend is built like his more
pretentious, old-fashioned cousin the calla
lily, only on a more buxom scale. The
great white enfolding spathe of the calla
here becomes a purplish-red and firm coat,
and, while the calla keeps hundreds of
little flowers on the slender yellow rod that
sticks out of its back-turned white cape,
the skunk-cabbage clusters only about fifty
on its firm rounded head.

But March is more congenial than Feb-
ruary even to this enterprising plant, and
this month sees the lurid cones pushing
their way through all our swamps, while
beside them soon will come the tender
green spears which are to unfold later into
the great, crisp, wide-spreading leaves
that have given the plant the name of
cabbage.

8

34 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

What an important part it is these swamp
plants have to play! No sooner is a stream
dammed back by any obstruction than Na-
ture tries to fill up the lake so formed.
From the hills above and around she brings
her mud and dumps it into the upper end
of the lake. The first high water would
wash it all farther down did she not bind
the soil firmly in place. For this purpose
| she uses swamp plants. ‘The spatter-dock
‘and the arrow-leaf grow well out in the
water, and induce the first settlings of mud
about their roots. Then come the cat-
tails, with leaves erect and yet yielding
enough to stand an occasional flood, and
about their roots the soft ooze falls in a
tenacious mass. Still farther back stand
the bristling clumps of sedge, binding down
the soil the others have gathered, but al-
lowing runways for the water when it is
high. These are followed by the sheet of
lush meadow grasses, pinned down firmly
with deep anchors of skunk-cabbage, every
good-sized clump of which puts down about
a hundred roots, each as thick as a lead-

MARCH 35

pencil. All these plants are slowly march-
ing down to wrest the land from the lake.
It is true, no one plant ever moves, but it
will be found each year that the new plants
of each kind are growing a little farther
forward and that they keep steadily on,
always preserving the regular order of their
march. An observing and quick-witted
companion of many of my earlier walks
used to speak of the skunk-cabbage, and
its two close allies, the calla and the Jack-
in-the-pulpit, as “the aristocrat, the hypo-
crite, and the prodigal son.” The fashion-
able associations of the haughty calla made
its name most appropriate; Jack stands
constantly in his pulpit, but those who
know him to the very bottom know he is a
most peppery fellow; while the skunk-
cabbage has associated so long with the
swine as to carry a most unsavory odor.
Under the circumstances, one is scarcely
surprised that its doubtful fragrance should
not suit our perhaps rather fastidious sense
of smell. But there are animals other than
ourselves that certainly enjoy it. Our honey-

36 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

bees, when they first come from the hives
after their winter rest, find but scanty food.
The earliest pollen they bring home to feed
to the bee babies is the pollen of the skunk-
cabbage. The delicate, honey-loving flies
have scarcely appeared, and perhaps the
lurid color and abundant pollen are more
attractive to less dainty kinds, for it is they
that visit these flowers at this season when
we rarely find them elsewhere.

It is unkind to nickname a plant after
its one fault. If it could defend itself it
might not be so bad, but a plant is help-
less. I wish some one could rebaptize
this healthy, hearty friend of mine and
give it some more appreciative name—
“spring herald,’—perhaps, for it is our
first spring flower, and it carries a trumpet
beautiful enough in form and color to fit
any message.

But it is not only on the ground and in the
air that we see the signs of renewed activ-
ity. Even beneath the ground the creat-
ures that have kept far below the frost line,
or buried in deep sleep, are beginning to

MARCH 37

awake, and in the morning we find those’
long winding ridges in the lawn whose
source is unmistakable.

THE MOLE AWAKES

“Dig” is expressed in every line of the
mole’s body. Digging is his life-work, and
to this Nature has adapted his every organ.
His eyes are of no use in this underground
life, and so they have dwindled away until
externally there is little sign of them. Ob-
jects he probably never sees with any dis- *
tinctness, though he still can tell light from
darkness. But he seems to recognize light
only to avoid it. In the darkness of his
tunnels not only would his eyes be useless,
but dirt would be apt to get into them
while he is digging; so they are gradually
leaving him.

The ears, too, or that part of them that
projects from the head, would be in the
way. So they have been discarded. The
inner and essential part of the ear, how-
ever, still remains, and the mole hears
quite well.

38 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

The most remarkable deviation from or-
dinary animals is in the arms. These are
very short, and the hands are broad, hard,
and horny, and have very firm claws.
When I catch a good, vigorous mole, I find
I scarcely have force enough in my thumb
and forefinger to hold his front feet together.
He can often separate them in spite of all
my straining. His other muscles are com-
paratively weak. The hands have been
altered into great shovels, and when he tries
to walk over smooth, level ground or on a
floor he moves with odd, quick steps, rest-
ing on the sides and not on the palms of his
hands. He reminds one of a wound-up
toy that is held in the air and allowed to run
down. But when he gets under the sod,
the heaving line that forms over him as he
digs shows that there he is in his proper
element. Most animals would get dirty
leading such a life, but you never see a
cleaner animal than the mole. He comes
out of the loose earth and squirms about a
little, and he is clean. His smooth gray
fur, shading to a silvery hue when it is

MARCH 39

ruffled, is very short and close and exceed-
ingly dry. Indeed I know no animal with
a more velvety coat. He would be a delight-
ful pet to handle were it not for his cease-
less wriggling. ‘Then too he carries a strong
musky odor. This latter, indeed, is his
only defence and I fear it is a poor one.
Certainly it does not usually deter a dog
from snapping him up. -But perhaps it is
meant for his friends rather than his foes.
Congenial moles may scent each other from
afar, being denied the, to us at least, clearer
recognition of the eye.

The mole is a reversible machine. He
can run forward or backward at will.
Probably as a result of this habit, it is won-
derful how alike are the two ends of his
body, his nose and his tail. Each is slender
and. each is bare; each is very sensitive,
and the tail is just about as long as the nose.
I think he uses whichever happens to pre-
cede, as a feeler, when he is making his way
through his tunnel. For once having made
a good big runway, he is very apt to keep
on using it through the season. I doubt

40 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

not he is often forced to travel backwards
through his burrow. Then his tail must
serve him as an effective guide.

NATURE’S USE FOR THE MOLE

When Nature wants something done, her
plan is to inveigle an animal into doing it.
The mole is bent only on catching earth-
worms. He makes his long burrow near
the surface, and then travelling up and
down its length he picks up all the worms
that stumble into his way, his slender nose
serving as an effective instrument for with-
drawing them from their burrows. I think,
too, he eats the beetles and cut-worms that
lie in his path.

But while he is intent on his own work he
is at the same time loosening up the soil and
letting the air through it, and mixing up the
leaf-mould with the earth, thus enriching
the land. It is aggravating to see the ridges
that mar the surface of our lawns and gar-
dens, but we must put up with that for the
sake of the good of the soil. Besides I sus-
pect his claim to the land is older than ours.

APRIL

ARBUTUS IS CERTAINLY THE FAVORITE

II

THE GREAT SPRING RUSH

on. Out of bulb and
tuber come the sweet
spring flowers that are
starring every sunny
bank; out of the roots
and trunks comes the
rich store of sap that is
balding leat and blossom on our trees; out
of the ocean come the schools of fish whose
strange run up our rivers is one of the char-
acteristic features of the spring’s advance;
out of the warm southland come the birds
whose songs for the next few months will
be the sweetest music Nature renders.

Ever since last July the trees have been
getting ready for this moment. During the
whole of the summer the water came up

from the roots, carrying with it the small
45

4 HE great spring rush is

46 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

but much-needed supply of dissolved soil.
This current of crude sap runs through the
white wood that lies between the bark and
the torpid centre of the tree so inaptly
called the heart. Out through the branches
it flows and into the leaves,—for nowhere
else is this sort of sap of any use to the tree.
In the soft tissues that fill the gaps between
the veins of the leaf this crude material
meets the gases the tree has breathed in
from the air through the many little mouths
on the under side of the leaf. Wherever a
plant is green and has the sun shining on
it, there water and air and dissolved soil can
be built up into sugar and starch and such
like plant food. These are useful to the
tree because in them is stored the power of
the sun’s rays, in such form that the plant
can use it for doing its own work.- This
material too we:use for food and from it we
gain our energy. All the life power in the
world, be it in the trees of the forest, in the
beasts of the field, or in man himself, comes
from the sun and comes by the way of the
green tissues in the plant. As fast as this

APRIL 47

rich sap is built up in the leaf it is taken
away to be distributed to the growing por-
tions of the plant. Its pathway now lies
through the inner layers of the bark. Much
of the precious substance, not being im-
mediately needed, is stored away in the
silver grain that runs from the centre of the
tree to the bark, but probably most of it is
carried down to the roots and gorges them
with food, stored beyond the reach of frost.
As soon as winter begins to break, and
even before the snow has left the forest,
this sap starts on its return journey up the
tree, this time travelling, not through the
inner layers of the bark, but up the outer
layers of the wood. It is this rising flow of
richness that is tapped from our splendid
native sugar-maples.

HOW SAP ASCENDS

One of the very perplexing questions
which the plant suggests to the mind of
those who are trying to gain an insight into
the very life of the tree is that of the nature
of the forces which drive or draw or coax

48 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

the sap up the trunk. Certain it is that
many agencies unit in this work. The tips
of the roots of the trees are covered with
a fine plush-like coating of delicate hairs.
Into these the water soaks from the ground,
and once there and mixed with the sub-
stances inside, it cannot soak out nearly so
readily. This is just what happens when,
to use a familiar illustration, prunes are put
to soak in water over-night. By morning
the water has filled the fruit until it is
plump, and if then a tube were inserted
through the skin from this a stream of prune
juice would slowly flow.

The watery sap taken up by the root-
plush is passed by the hairs to pipes be-
ginning near the heart of the root, and then
up the stem. The very fact that these
pipes are small makes the water rise in
them just as ink soaks into a blotter or oil
rises in the wick of a lamp.

Meanwhile the water is evaporating from
the upper part of the tree, and is in this way
producing a diminished pressure which
serves to draw the sap to higher levels. The

APRIL 49

most perfect pumps can raise water only
thirty-four feet in an unbroken column; so
this would be of little value in tall trees were
it not for the introduction of small bubbles
of air into the column of sap. This makes
of it an alternation of bubble and sap,
bubble and sap. In such a column, known
to science as a Jamin chain, water rises to
higher levels, though of course in far less
quantity than if the stream were unbroken.

Meantime the tree is swaying with every
breath of wind. With each quiet breeze
the branches bend, and at every sweep the
little tubes are flattened. This, of course,
lessens their capacity, and a part of the sap
is forced upward out of them. As the bough
returns to its first position, once more the
tubes fill from below, only to unload a part
of their burden with the next puff of air.
So, as the tree sways from side to side under
the freshening wind, the quiet stream goes
ceaselessly on. When the storm sweeps
furiously over the forest not the least of its
results must be the renewed vigor of the

trees from the hastened flow of sap; much
4

50 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

as a man in winter may warm his fingers by
lashing his arms and thus increasing the
flow of the blood.

But not any, nor all of these put together,
seem enough to account for this work of
bearing the life-giving stream up the stem.
We are still waiting for the master mind
who shall fathom the forces which work so
silently.

THE RACE OF THE FLOWERS

What flower will win this year? Will the
bloodroot or the arbutus come in first? It
seems to me quite a question of location
and of the kind of weather. On a cleared
bank with southern exposure, if we have
a sudden burst of very warm spring weather,
sometimes the bloodroot will get here first
and its white stars will catch every eye.
Farther back in the woods, if the sun is
warm, the hepaticas will keep even with the
bloodroot, but if the weather grows gradu-
ally warmer the arbutus always beats them
both. What an entire readiness there must
be when plants so small as these can so sud-

APRIL 51

denly spring into flower! The truth of
the matter is the arbutus buds have been
there, ready to open, for at least six months.
At the same time the leaves of this hardy
plant have remained green all winter, and
though they are scarred and battered they
are prepared to take advantage of the first
warm rays. ‘The hepaticas too still bear
their fall leaves, and they have kept them
in much better condition than the arbutus.
But, in addition, the hepatica has a knob
at the base of the leaves swollen with stored
food. And this it draws on as soon as it
may. Its flowers are so tender, however,
that they need every precaution against
the cold, so each night they wrap themselves
tight in their furry coats, opening them
again when the new day brings new hope of
insect visitors.

But the bloodroot is the most dashing
worker of them all. Last year it stored its
building material in a long, fleshy, under-
ground stem. And from this it brings the
red sap in the spring to build up flower and
leaf together. Hardly, however, have they

52 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

gotten above the ground before the flower
pushes on ahead, spreads its radiant white
petals for a very few days, and then, like so
many of its sister poppies,—for the blood-
root is a poppy,—throws them away. Only
now may the broad single leaf take its turn.
The quick running sap is thick, like that of
the rest of the family, though here it is
“bloody” rather than milky. But here too
a hurtful ingredient, like the morphia of the
true poppy, serves to keep animals from
pilfering its winter store.

ARBUTUS BLOOMS

But whatever the order in which they
come, the arbutus is certainly the favorite
with most people. The bloodroot and the
hepatica droop quickly, and the arbutus
keeps bcautiful long after it has been
plucked. It is one of the few wild flowers
that is commonly offered for sale, during
the season, in our large cities. And it is a
charming flower to hunt. There is some-
thing so elusive about it, and it is so satis-
factory when found. Few odors are more

APRIL 53

delicate than that of the arbutus, and
when the perfume has for its accompani-
ment the woodsy odor of freshly disturbed
leaves and moss the charm is complete.
When it grows out in the open sun arbutus
is rose-red, in more protected situations it
is a faint pink, but when it nestles under
the leaves it is a clear, beautiful, and waxy
white. We are told, on the authority of
Eugene Field, that ‘“‘the color doesn’t mat-
ter when you're seein’ things at night.”
But it does. Most night-blooming flowers
are white, and when the arbutus nestles in
dark places it, too, is white. For white is
the best color for a flower that in the dusk
needs to catch the eye of the roving fly or
bee or butterfly. To this whiteness, night-
growing flowers usually add a_ powerful
fragrance. The arbutus, when found be-
neath the leaves, has a most delicious odor,
while that which grows in the open is often
quite lacking in perfume. Here the rose-
color catches the eye of the hovering fly
and attracts him to the nectar. In this way
the flower is helped to set its seed. But

54 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

all the allurements of a penetrating scent
and of lustrous whiteness are necessary
to guide the fly to the flower that nestles
in the dark.

WHY FLOWERS HATE ANTS

This nectar, lying so close to the ground,
is a great temptation to ants, and the flowers
hate ants. They are only willing to give
honey to insects that can carry pollen
from blossom to blossom and thus set the
seed. But ants are so smooth that pollen
falls off them as from a coat of mail. The
arbutus has provided itself with a defence
against them. It stuffs the throat of the
flower with a bunch of hair. For some rea-
son a hairy surface is quite distasteful to
ants. I suppose the fine tips get into their
spiracles and are like grass blades getting
into our nostrils. So the tuft of fine hair
in the mouth of the arbutus flower keeps out
the ants and reserves the nectar for the
longer tongued and more hairy insects
who will better answer its purpose. Then,
too, this furry covering keeps the pollen

APRIL 55

from accidental wetting. The arbutus like
most flowers carries the family likeness very
well. One needs be but an indifferent stu-
dent of plant life to see that the tough stem
and leathery leaves hint to us, what less
obvious characters confirm, and to associate
this little plant with our much-loved rhodo-
dendron and laurel. Most members of the
family have ingenious and sometimes com-
plicated devices for getting the insects to
carry their cobwebby pollen effectively.
The arbutus is still in a very undecided
state of mind, or at least of flower, in this
respect. Apparently it will end up by
adopting the plan taken by the melons,
having those with stamens on the one
plant and pistils on the other. But it has
not yet quite arrived at this result. The
flowers vary much from each other in
little details, and quite commonly set no
seed at all, though I have found well-
filled pods. Hence the little plant must
rely chiefly on its creeping habit if it is
to spread and multiply. This is one of
several reasons why, wherever it is much

56 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

picked, it is so apt to be soon cleared out
of the neighborhood. It is one of the first
flowers to disappear from the vicinity of
our large towns.

As was mentioned, the arbutus has many
more or less distant relatives, such as the
wintergreen and the partridge berry, the
prince’s pine, the rhododendron and the
laurel. But there is only one of them gen-
uinely close of kin in the world, and it lives
in Japan. This tells, to the botanist, a
strange story. When the climate of the
northern hemisphere was warmer, the com-
mon ancestor of these two plants grew in
the northern parts of both America and
Asia.

OUR FLOWERS AND THE ICE AGE

Then came that strange glacial period,
when the coating of ice and snow crept
down from the far north, covering all New
England and parts of the line of States out
from Pennsylvania through Ohio, Missouri,
Kansas, and Montana. It is this great
glacial sheet that scraped out and dammed

APRIL 57

up thousands of lakes throughout northern
United States and Canada. With the slow
descent of the ice-cap the plants were forced
to move downward through Asia and
through North America.

With the return of warmer seasons the
ice has retreated until now its southern
limit is in British America and lower Green-
land, and all these plants are slowly moving -
back again. The ancestral arbutus broke
into two migrating parties, one of which
went down through Eastern Asia, the other
through Eastern North America. When
the time came for the return, these two sets
of arbutus had been separated just long
enough and had been under surroundings
just varied enough to have brought about a
little difference in their appearance and
habit, and yet their common origin is still
clearly traceable. It may seem strange to
many, to have the botanist speak of plants
migrating. Of course it is not to be under-
stood that any one plant uproots itself,
travels over the country, and replaces itself
again. But every plant tends to spread

58 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

itself as far as it may in all directions, by
means of seeds or runners or by some such
method. If the climate of any region grows
warmer, inevitably those seeds which fall
or are carried towards the equator will meet
surroundings which on the average are too
warm for that plant; while those that are
carried to the northward meet, again on the
average, conditions a little more favorable
since the change. Hence it is that the line
of chestnuts must be moving north followed
slowly by the chinquapins. And such a
procession of wheat and corn and cotton
must also be moving northward. But
our lives and our histories are too short
for us to notice it in the case of our
cultivated plants. It is such facts as the
resemblance of our arbutus to its Japanese
relative that lead us to the conclusions I
have mentioned.

THE RUN OF THE SHAD

Not the least strange of all the spring
movements is the run of the fish up our
rivers. An odd procession too, it is. On

APRIL 59

the front of this great wave comes the little
alewife usually known in our easterri fish
markets as the herring. These fish are very
closely followed, indeed their run is over-
lapped, by that of the shad. This finest
of the marketed fresh fish of the eastern
United States is succeeded by the oily men-
hadden.

WHY FISH ASCEND RIVERS

Such fish as leave their home in the sea
and take their long journey up the rivers
to lay their eggs are known to fish students
as anadromous or “‘up-running”’ fish. We
used to say of fish having this peculiar
habit that they had originally been inhabi-
tants of the fresh water, and that genera-
tions ago they had taken to the ocean as a
better feeding ground. The changed life
we thought had not gone on long enough
for their entire adaptation to the new condi-
tions, and that the fish came up the river
in order that their young might find, in the
tender period of life, the ancestral condi-
tions to which their inherited constitutions

-

60 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

were best adapted. I think now, however,
the theory which receives most acceptance
is that these fish belong primarily and an-
cestrally to the ocean. But the large num-
ber of predatory animals in the sea makes
of its waters, especially near to the shore
where the crowding is particularly heavy,
an unusually dangerous locality in which
to rear baby fishes, large numbers of which
would fall a prey to their ravenous enemies.
Accordingly the salmon in the western
waters and the shad and their companions
in the eastern rivers have learned the trick
of retiring to a safer region to lay their eggs
and to have their young come to maturity.
But whatever may be the origin of the
habit, the fact itself is a most interesting
one.

THE HOME OF THE SHAD

Where the shad live during the balance
of the year no one is yet quite sure. Too
few of them have been caught in the ocean
to make the fact clear. Quite possibly
they keep to the deep water just off the

APRIL 61

“continental shelf.” As we pass out into
the Atlantic from the eastern shore of the
United States, the water grows deeper only
very gradually until we have gone out about
one hundred miles. Here it drops very
abruptly into depths far greater than any
known nearer the land. This is the true
edge of the American continent; and just
beyond is quite possibly the home of the
shad.

The pressure of the water at great depths
is so heavy that few fishes are adapted for
life there and at the surface too. But the
shad has a strange series of tubes in his
head to which water may be admitted, and
these probably are a part of the mechanism
that helps him to adapt himself to these
varying conditions.

THE RUN UPSTREAM

As spring comes and the water grows
warmer the shad rise to the surface and
make their way to the nearest river. It was
for a while thought that each shad returned
necessarily to the river in which he was

62 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

born; some good students even thought,
to the exact locality in the river. So that
a shad which had been hatched not far
above Trenton came in turn to the same
region to lay its eggs and did not follow its
fellow-voyagers to the bars farther up the
river. But the artificial introduction of
shad into the rivers of San Francisco Bay
and their gradual spread into those farther
up the coast show that this cannot be strictly
true, though it is quite probable it is gener-
ally the case. As the ice melts at the head
of the river and its water grows rapidly
warmer than that of the ocean, the shad
crowd about the mouth of the stream, often
entering the bay and there waiting until the
water shall reach a temperature of fifty-five
or sixty degrees Fahrenheit. In a back-
ward spring the fish may lie in the mouth of
Delaware Bay for weeks, sometimes ven-
turing up a little but again going back; the
regular run may come three weeks late.
When the great time comes, the horde
moves on up the river in a strange zigzag
procession. For the fish seem to want to

APRIL 63

swim against the current, and this is regu-
larly changing with the tide. Hence, when
the river current and the tide are both down-
stream, the fish run rapidly against it, but,
when the tide turns against the current and
the water moves slowly upstream, the fish
turn their heads once more to the ocean and
go a short distance back.

DRAWING THE SHAD NET

It is just at the change of the tide that the
fisherman puts out his long seine. On a
flat platform in the back of a great row-boat
of twelve or more oars, lies piled in careful
fashion the seine, sometimes half a mile in
length. Attached to each end of the net is
along rope. One end of this is fastened to
a windlass on the shore, and the boat starts
out. Far into the stream the rowers take
it, paying out the net steadily as they ad-
vance. When they have crossed as far as
they may go without obstructing the navi-
gation of the channel, they turn the boat
downstream and, swinging in a great circle,
they bring up at a point on the shore’some

64 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

distance below that from which they started.
Here is a second windlass, and to this the
rope attached to the other end of the net is
now tied. Horses are harnessed to the two
windlasses and the ropes are wound in
until the net is drawn up to the shore at
both ends. Since the boat landed, the
rowers have been sitting along the banks
waiting. Now they grasp hold of the net
and draw it in, piling both ends carefully on
the shore. Occasionally a shad that has
run his head through the meshes of the net
beyond the gill-covers, and then could not
withdraw it, is pulled up and taken out.
But the great majority of the fish are simply
trapped in the semicircle enclosed by the
net, and as this grows smaller the water
begins to be rippled and ruffled by the fins
of the fish swimming about in the narrow
space. Their pen grows smaller and
smaller until the water fairly boils with the
struggles of the captives, and the harvest is
at hand. One by one the fish are thrown
back on the sand, where they lie gasping.
All sorts of strange débris come up with the

APRIL 65

net, and after it has been drawn the bank is
literally alive with crayfish,—the small fresh-
water crabs,—which go scurrying about.

THE WORK OF THE “ FISH-HAWK”’

Meanwhile a boat with a white-suited
oarsman has drawn near. To this man
the fishermen are respectfully deferential,
though he comes to take from them at
nominal price a part of their proceeds.
Taking one of the finest of the shad between
his hands and holding it back down, he runs
his thumb steadily and firmly along its ab-
domen, pressing out the eggs or the milt, as
the case may be, into one or other of his
pails standing in the bow of the boat. Haw-
ing gathered this material, he rows to the
little white government steamboat, the
“Fish-hawk,” that is lying not far away.
It is the work of this boat and its crew that
prevents the extermination of the shad from
our eastern rivers. For the way of the shad
up the river is beset with seines and its
chances of escape are small. Then too it
is on its way to spawn, and this tremendous

5

66 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

slaughter of fish just before they have had a
chance to deposit their eggs is the quickest
way possible to end the race. So the gov-
ernment steps in and picks the best shad
from the seines. The white-coated “strip-
per” draws the spawn from the body of the
fish into his vessels and carries them to the
“Fish-hawk.” Here the fertilized eggs are
put into jars through which runs a constant
supply of fresh water. The eggs soon
hatch, and when the young are old enough
to take care of themselves they are carried
to the upper waters of the stream and al-
lowed to go free.

Meanwhile the few fish which have es-
caped the seines reach the higher waters of
the river. Towards evening the “does,”
hunting out the quiet reaches of water just
below the sand bars, deposit their eggs, and
the “milters” following soon after fertilize
these eggs. ‘The parent shad take no care
of their young, but begin almost immediate-
ly their return to the ocean.

All of this long run has been made abso-
lutely without food, as is the quicker re-

APRIL 67

‘turn. It is no wonder that after a two or
three months’ fast the leanness of a ‘‘ June
shad” should have become proverbial.

Comparatively few of the young shad es-
cape the vicissitudes of infant fish life,
though it often happens that a female shad
lays 200,000 eggs. Such, however, as out-
live the summer have grown by November
to be strong enough to follow their parents
down to the great deep,—to return perhaps
in about three years themselves to provide
for the future of their race.

But the voice of a more careful parent,
who has returned once more, salutes the ear.

THE BLACKBIRD’S CACKLE

The blackbird’s name is a reproach to us.
He is not black. That is only the setting.
Over his head and breast plays the most ex-
quisite series of peacock-blues, and greens,
and down his back runs a splendid sheet
of browns and bronzes, while across the
lower part of his back and across his tail
flashes a set of bars made of all the colors
of the rainbow.

68 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

These are magnificent hues that depend
on surface structure and not on patches of
pigment. They are the colors of the mother-
of-pearl, and not of the emerald; of the opal
and not of the ruby. They are the colors
that shimmer and gleam, that alter with
every altering angle of light. Beneath this
is the sombre hue that every one knows.
The gorgeous colors are so faint that they
only catch the eye of his dusky mate and of
the genuine lover of birds.

Already in February the Caleb and the
Joshua of the advancing hosts reached us,
spying out the promised land. Apparently
the inhabitants did not seem to them like
' giants, for some night in March the ad-
vancing hosts arrive. As if they had been
tempted beyond discretion, and had come
too soon into a region hostile to their wind-
pipes, it is the cackle and chatter, the
chuckle and cough of our visitors that on
the following morning greets our awaken-
ing ears.

Whatever doubts we may have had of the
advent of spring are now dispelled. The

THE CALEB AND JOSHUA OF THE ADVANCING HOSTS OF BLACKBIRDS

APRIL 71

flock soon breaks into small tribes that settle
each in its own clump of evergreens. Our
broad-leafed trees are still bare and would
offer small concealment to a blackbird’s nest.
Fortunately, however, our pines, spruces,
and hemlocks are more hospitable. Any
one who has several of these on his place is
almost sure of a colony of his own, and a
cemetery with its shady cluster is certain to
be seized upon.

By April the nests are quite well under
way. To this part of his duty the father
blackbird is very faithful. He is quite
willing to take care of the eggs while his
wife goes out for a little exercise. This
is the more creditable because in this matter
many bird husbands do not have any realiz-
ing sense of their duties, lacking the im-
pulse to do more than provide their home-
keeping folks with abundant food.

While he has young in the nest, the black-
bird gathers insects almost exclusively.
When the farmer begins to plow, the bird
follows him fearlessly through the furrows.
It is a cut-worm now and a wire-worm

72 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

then, and a big white grub still later that he
gathers. And here he does the farmer the
utmost service. He is quite a stately bird
as he walks through the rows. Most of our
common birds that fly well walk indiffer-
ently, and are very apt to hop along the
ground, lifting both feet at once. But the
blackbird walks deliberately and with dig-
nified poise; he also flies very well indeed.
Even here he has a marked trait of his own,
for when he has no great distance to go
he keels his tail. until the end of it looks like
the letter V. To these little eccentricities
of manner he adds a cast of eye that is ab-
solutely awesome. That a blackbird should
have a bright yellow eye seems altogether
out of place, and it gives him a look of pert
inquisitiveness that with his fearlessness
and his eternal cackle makes him quite an
original character.

ARE BLACKBIRDS OUR ENEMIES ?

The long debate as to whether the black-
bird is the farmer’s friend or his foe has, I
suppose, been fairly well settled by this

APRIL 73

time. He is his friend in the spring and
his enemy in the fall. In the spring he eats
insects and in the fall he eats grain. In the
spring the colonies are scattered and the
farmers reap the benefits of this good work.
In the fall the colonies reunite into a great
horde, and the bad work is chiefly detri-
mental to a few farmers in each locality.
That these should be his uncompromising
foes is not unnatural.

MAY

III

THE BLOSSOM MONTH

~ “NCIENT man, when
he made the orchard,
builded better than he
knew. He planted for
<4, the body and he reaped
Z i for the mind as well.
we Unconsciously he gath-

= =' p= ered about the home
his little stock of fruit: trees, and left the
more distant part of the farm for his other
crops. Each returning spring surrounds
him with a wealth of charm which appeals
even to those who scarcely realize that
they care for flowers. When an old home-
stead nestles in a bower of apple- and
peach- and cherry-trees, its May beauty is
sweeter and more fragrant than the most
elegant of parterres can make the finest
of villas.

V7

78 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

God set the plan for the fruit-trees and
we have carried it out. Rarely has man
worked better along lines laid down by the
Creator. The original trees were doubt-
less hardier, but that was because they had
to take care of themselves. We have re-
lieved them of that necessity, and the new
strain has responded to our kindness and
rewarded most magnificently man’s skilful
endeavor. So it comes that every little
country home is glorified at each return of
spring by the gorgeous beauty of the blos-
soming trees. ‘The peaches,show the sunny
home from which they came in the tender
rose of their rounded corollas. The cherries
and the plums try to make up by the pro-
fusion of their bloom and the purity of their
whiteness for their lack of the warm softness
of the peach-blossom. Last of all, the
apples surpass both of their predecessors
by putting the purity of the cherry on the
inside of the blossom and the warmth of the
peach on the swelling outside, and letting
each suffuse into the other until no one is
surprised when the botanist tells us that all

MAY 79

Pt

these flowers are near of kin to the rose.
And if the rose is queen of the family, most
surely the apple is king.

THE FRUIT IN THE BLOSSOM

To the observing eye each blossom has a

prophecy of its own and already foretells '.%

the character of the fruit. The peaches
bloom before their leaves are well out, so
their flowers run no risk of being hidden.
Accordingly they waste no material in mak-
ing stems, but each rose-colored blossom,
with its delicately bitter fragrance, nestles
close to the twig from which it springs. Of
course, when the fruit comes, it must hug
the branch. So you find practically no
stem on the peach. ‘Then, too, if you look
right into the heart of the peach-blossom,
you will see, already formed and deep hidden
at the bottom of a green cup, the little globe
that is to become the peach. The more
showy parts of the flower stand on the edge
of the cup, quite away from the forming
fruit, and they are thrown aside when the
blossom fades. When the little globe swells

80 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

into the meaty fruit, it pushes up out of this
green cup and leaves it behind as a shriveled
border about the point where the peach is
fastened to the branch. For this reason the
peach has no star opposite the stem, as the
apple has, but ends instead in a little point
that is almost lost in the general plumpness
of the fruit. For this reason too it lacks the
papery case we call a core in the apple.

WHERE THE APPLE GETS ITS CORE

The apple, coming late in the season,
finds leaves already before it. So it is com-
pelled to put stems to the flowers, though
even these are not so long as those of the
cherry. But the crowning peculiarity of
the apple-blossom is the rounded green
knob on the under side of the flower. Look-
ing at this bloom from the front, one cannot
see so deeply into it as he did into the peach-
blossom. The portion of the blossom
which was the cup in the peach closes in
over the knob and grows fast to it. Hence,
when the fruit ripens, not only are the seeds
covered with the pulp, as in the case of the

MAY 81

peach, but they are also cut off from the
rest of the fruit by a leathery case forming
the core. The bright white petals, touched
with pink, fall away with the passing of the
season, but the rest of the flower remains
dry and withered as the star of the apple,
opposite the stem.

If any one ever feels inclined to eat the
core with the apple, I would suggest that
he examine this star end with a magnifying
glass. After he has seen the menagerie of
animal life that takes refuge there, I think
he will be willing thereafter to discard the
core. ‘This is, of course, the only condition
on which the apple would insist if it could.
Its purpose in maturing all this rich pulp is
to persuade some animal for love of its fine
flavor to gather the fruit and eat the pulp.
But the leathery core is intended to deter
the animal from eating the seeds, which it
is hoped will be dropped in some new local-
ity, thus furnishing them with fresh soil
unexhausted by the growth of previous
apple-trees. This is Nature’s method’ of
securing her rotation of crops.

6

82 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

THE PEACH AND THE ALMOND

How much man can do to mould Nature’s
creations to his own fancy is rarely better
shown than in the case of the peach and
the almond. ‘There seems much reason to
believe that each is descended from. the
same wild ancestor and that each owes its
present delightful qualities to the fostering
care of man. ‘T'wo nations, whose needs
were altogether different, selected and then,
perhaps quite unconsciously, accentuated
different qualities in the same primitive
fruit.

Thomas Moore tells us,

*A Persian’s heaven is eas’ly made,
> Tis but black eyes and lemonade.”

To such people succulent fruits appealed
most strongly, and they seized upon and
strove to improve the amount and flavor of
the pulp, and the luscious peach is the
result of their labors. To the stone they
gave no heed, and here Nature took care
of her own. The hard coat protects the
kernel against the jaws of its enemies.
Even where, by reason of unusually heavy

MAY 83

teeth, an animal could work his way through
the shell, the kernel itself is filled with a
substance bitter in small quantities and in
larger amounts even poisonous. So, doubly
defended, the seed has held its own.
Meanwhile the wandering tribes of the
desert had quite other needs. To them a
successful food must be both portable and
imperishable. So, neglecting and even per-
haps discriminating against the pulp, they
selected and cultivated such fruits as were
provided with particularly thin shell and
sweet kernel. Gradually they improved
the native fruit until now in the finer varie-
ties the shell can no longer serve as a de-
fence even from man’s unaided fingers.
The kernel too has lost every trace of its
bitter taste, and we have the modern paper-
- shelled almond. Even yet the coarser va-
rieties have heavier shells, and the ancestral
flavor is well known as that of bitter al-
monds. If one will look over any large
quantity of almonds as they come to the
dealer, he can scarcely fail to find at least
one nut covered with a dried and furry

84 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

coat that proclaims immediately its con-
nection with the peach. But be the blos-
som what it may, its best friend is the bee,
whether bumble or honey.

BUMBLE GOES ROVING

Blossoms and bees belong together. They
were made for each other. The blossoms
give the bees honey; the bees carry the
pollen from blossom to blossom and set
the seeds. By the time the fruit-trees bloom
honey-bees are roving abundantly, but bum-
blebees are few, and, what is more, they
are all blackheads now, and big ones at
that. Every one of them, too, is a queen
in her own right, but her kingdom is yet
to arise. She must choose it for her-
self. She must build her own castle, or,
at least, must adapt it to her own royal
purpose.

BUMBLE DOES NOT KNOW HIS CHILDREN

Strangest of all, she must people her
kingdom with her own subjects, all of whom
will be her own children. Her husband

MAY 85

died last fall. He never sees his queen
established or knows his children, for he
dies before the kingdom has come or the
children have been born.

After their September wedding they had
the pleasant fall before them, but I fear that
even then each went the way that pleased
him best. So that when the cold of winter
came, and the husband died, his wife did
not miss him very much, especially as she
herself must have felt a drowsy stiffness
coming over her. Of the winter’ I doubt
whether she has any recollection at all.
But with the approach of warm weather
her wings began once more to quiver, her
legs to regain their old suppleness, and out
she came in good time to see the first
flowers in bloom. Over them she is now
busily creeping. She meets no others
excepting queens, who are perhaps to be
her neighbors, for as yet they too have no
subjects.

Hunting about the fields our bumblebee
finds some hole that runs beneath the sod.
Most likely it is one of the little tunnels

86 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

that the field-mouse has built. Perhaps a
mink, a hawk, or an owl has relieved the
home of its proper owner, and she takes
immediate possession. Perhaps it is a hol-
low fence-rail that catches her eye. But
whatever be the hollow she preémpts, in it
she carefully puts together a few little cups
of a yellowish-brown wax, which she fills
with a pasty mass of pollen and honey, and
in each of which she lays an egg or two.
These hatch before long, and from them
come her first subjects. ‘They are workers;
females, though never to be queens. Na-
ture has doomed them to be old maids and
. drudges. But they know no better, and go
contentedly to work.

The queen now gives up all employment
outside the palace, and inside her duty is
almost confined to laying eggs. The one.
great badge of their sex which the workers
share with their queen is the sting, for it
is a part of the egg-laying apparatus, though
eggs they will never lay.

But the possession of this instrument by
the workers is one of the proofs amongst

“MAY 87

others that these humble beings have not
always been so lowly. ‘There was primi-
tive woman amongst the bees too, and then
each was the equal of each. But with the
refinement of modern bee civilization class
distinctions have arisen, and queens and
drudges now live side by side. Even here
the lines are not so closely drawn as in the
more sophisticated hive, where the haughty
queen of the honey-bees disdains all work
and brooks no rivals. But now the eggs
are laid, and soon the field will be full of
workers, and hosts of bees will haunt the
clover.

A QUEEN’S OLD AGE

Later in the season her royal children
are born. Then white heads are abundant,
for the white heads are males, and of course,
having no egg apparatus, they have no
sting, as every country boy well knows.
These new bees are just in time to take the
place of the old queen mother. She has
reached her ripe bee age of twelve months.
If by reason of strength her months be

88 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

fifteen, yet are her latter days labor and
sorrow, for her battered wings are but
a weak dependence beside those that
greeted with their deep-toned hum the
first spring clover, and honey getting is
1 no longer easy.

» Farmers in Eastern Pennsylvania have
often told me there is little seed in their first
# crop of clover, while the second crop carries
abundant, well-filled pods. I wonder how
many of them understand who are their
friends in this matter. If they did, I think
* the sport of destroying bumblebees’ nests
s would not be so common as it is amongst
- country boys. The first crop of clover
blooms while as yet there are few bees.
By the time the second crop comes on,
bees are abundant, the pollen is well
carried, and so clover-seed will be abun-
dant as well.

Of all the trees I have ever watched,
none seems more wonderfully beloved by
insects than the wild crab-apple. For some
time past, swelling red globes have been
warning us that the festive day is near. But

MAY 89

it is as if the tree restrained the forward
buds until the more backward ones were
ready.

CRAB-APPLE DAY

Then comes a warm, clear, sunny day,
and that is crab-apple day, for that tree at
least. All over the tree the red globes swell
into open bowls of the most delicious nectar,
of an odor so pervading that even our poor
nostrils can catch it, in a gentle wind, nearly
a quarter of a mile away. ‘The flower is so
alluring and the odor so enticing that all
sorts and conditions of insects gather from
near and from far to join in the vernal revel.
Industrious hive bees, too busy for dissi-
pation, delve assiduously at the bottom of
the coral cup; filmy little flies hover round
the red stem, filling the air with the con-
stant hum of their rapidly moving wings.
Wasps gather too, and their yellow-banded
bodies add a new note to the beautiful color
scheme. Hornets gather, not so much to
feast on the nectar as to gobble up the other
feasters. But of them all the Bumble is

90 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

most happy. This is his day of wildest
glee. Not content with drawing up the
sweet nectar, he robs the flower of its golden
pollen. Fairly intoxicated with delight,
he rolls over and over amongst the stamens
until he is covered with the yellow grains.
Then, retiring to one side, he combs him-
self with his front legs and rolls the pollen
into balls which he claps into his bristly
pockets on his hind legs. These pellets he
carries home to be food for the bee babies.

THE GLEAM OF THE HUMMING-BIRD

But while the bumblebees are hovering
over the clover and the crab-apple, per-
forming for them their very helpful service,

“= a far higher and daintier animal is doing a

similarly valuable work for the wild azaleas
that are blooming in such luxuriant pro-
fusion on our hill-sides.
Where did the humming-bird learn its
~ flight? It is surely all its own. The hawk
may soar, the kingbird may hover for a few
seconds, but the hummer can poise in the
same spot indefinitely. Soaring is like the

MAY 91

flight of a skilfully thrown card and needs
little effort. But the humming-bird_ flies
by main muscle, and he works that muscle
at a rate of which we can scarcely conceive.
Nothing hums, to human ears at least, that-
does not shiver at a rate of at least sixteen
times each second. We can tell the rate by
catching the pitch. Our grouse, rapidly
as his wings seem to the eye to move, flutters
but little oftener than just enough for the
beats to blend into a very low hum, and this
is obscured by the whir of the separate
feathers, which is quite a different and
much higher note. More rapidly by far
- goes the wing of the hummer, and this for
him is not in the short, infrequent flight of
the grouse. In long-sustained, constant
exercise, the humming-bird probably keeps
continually a wing motion of perhaps twen-
ty-five or thirty beats to the second. With
this quick stroke he can advance, stop in
mid air, veer from side to side, and retreat
with precision. Indeed, so constantly is he
on the wing that his feet are but puny
affairs in contrast with the firm legs of the

92 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

ground-loving birds, like the meadow-lark
and the blackbird, and not to be compared,
even in proportion to the size of his small
body, with the firm scratching feet of the
grouse or of the chicken.

WHAT THE HUMMER ONCE WAS

The modern scientist is a great pedigree
hunter. He is never content with knowing
what an animal is: he wants to know even
more why he is so, and, most of all, how he
became so. The answer to this last ques-
tion is often very perplexing and sometimes
quite unsatisfactory. But in probing the
ancestry of any of our birds one of the main
helps is the study of his relatives. When
they all differ from him on the side of sim-
plicity, it needs little shrewdness to decide
that he was probably once much as they
still are. When we know that the nearest
of kin to the humming-birds are the whip-
poor-wills, the night-hawks, and the chim-
ney-swifts, the story begins to loom up be-
fore the scientific imagination.

The humming-birds must once have been

MAY 93

dull-colored, short-billed birds, that while
on the wing fed on little insects that hover
in the air. While their old-fashioned rela-
tives, the whip-poor-wills and the night-
hawks, flew at night, and their nearer cous-
ins, the chimney-swifts, skimmed and swam
the air after smaller flies and gnats, some-
where down in the tropics the ancestors of
the hummers learned the trick of going to
the flowers for the insects that gather there
in the search for honey.

Whenever a hummer came to have a
longer bill or greater precision of wing, he
found a richer feast, grew stronger and
more active, and left behind him at his
death a more vigorous offspring, possibly
with his own superior traits accentuated.
Gradually, and of course quite unconscious-
ly to the birds, longer bills arose, and quicker
wings developed. As the tongue and bill
penetrated deeper into the corollas the birds
began to get the flavor of the nectar that is
now so dear to them. But to this day they
have never lost their taste for insects. I
have seen the hummer desert the flowers

94 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

and take to cleaning from the bark of the
white oak the little bugs that infest it.
Even when feeding at the flowers he prob-
ably gets as much of his food from the in-
sects as from the nectar.

WHERE MARRIAGE DEPENDS ON BEAUTY

But perhaps the strangest part of the
transformation is yet to be told. Living
as they do among bright-colored flowers,
the hummers have become gradually more
esthetic in their tastes and more fastidious
in the demand for beauty in their mates.
The dull ones failed more and more com-
pletely in the matrimonial market, until
now only the brightest members are left to
tell the tale,—that is, the brightest males,
for here, as in so many cases, the females
must sit on an open nest. The dainty bed
covered with its protective crust of lichens,
in which the female rears her tiny brood, is
so open that a metallic-green mother would
‘invite her own destruction. It is doubtless
an added influence in the bright color change
that the quicker movements of the male

MAY 95

and his greater virility—for he is a most
pugnacious fighter—gave him a quicker
circulation that contributes to the remark-
able brilliance of his coloration.

THE HUMMER’S NEST

Not only is the hummer more exquisite
in his tastes and more dainty in his colora-
tion than his coarser congeners, his home
partakes of the same exquisite qualities.
The boldness with which he dares the gaze
of the passer-by is justified by the result,
for few people find the humming-bird’s nest.
Scarcely large enough to serve as a thimble
for your finger, it perches openly on the
limb. But the owner has concealed it by
covering it with a coat of lichens, that makes
it look like a mere swelling of the branch
itself. Meanwhile, that his mate may rest
more cozily in her dainty bed, he has gone
to the springing ferns, and from their tender,
uncurling fronds he has stripped the filmy
brown fur that kept them warm. With this
he makes the soft lining on which the eggs,
scarcely so large as the average cherry-stone,

96 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

shall lie securely until the emergence of the
little hummers. Strange to relate, these are
short billed, in reminiscence of the ancestral
condition. But before they leave the nest the
bill has lengthened, and their identity is plain.

Nature jumbles together, in strange jux-
taposition, the most dissimilar creatures,
and here comes a humble brown visitor,
just out from his winter nap.

THE “JUNE-BUG” AWAKES

The “June-bug”’ is not a bug, nor does
he arrive in June; he is a beetle and he
comes in May. It is true he keeps on com-
ing all through June, and that gives some
little excuse for half of the name. But the
other half has no justification whatever.
By persons not versed in this sort of lore
almost any insect is called a bug. In truth
that name should only be applied to such
insects as, inserting a piercing tongue into
the tissues of animals or plants, suck their
juices. The May-beetle, for such is the
proper name of the June-bug, does no such
thing. With a pair of small cutting jaws

MAY 97

he nibbles the leaves of trees, rarely, how-
ever, enough to do serious damage.

The sudden appearance of these mysteri-

-ous visitors is their most striking character-
istic. One day there are none to be seen.
That evening thousands of them will collect
about open lamps until they can be swept
with a broom into heaps. ‘The truth of the
matter is they have not been far away, but
they have been beneath the ground.

One day, about three years ago, the visit-
ing beetles of that year had laid eggs by the
dozens in little hollows in the ground
amongst fallen leaves. ‘These soon hatched
into the soft, fat, white, curled larvae, which
the fisherman knows under the name of
white worms and uses for bait. For about
two years these things had lived under the
ground, often chewing the roots of the grass
so badly that, in one case I knew, we could
roll back the sod and it was as loose from
the ground beneath as if it were a rug. Of
course such sod is very apt to burn out when
warm weather comes. After lying in a
quiescent stage for a few weeks the May

7

98 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

beetle took his final shape. But this is in
the fall, and this is no time to come out.
During the winter he lies there perfectly
quiet, and in the spring begins to travel
about in the soil. Now comes our May day
with its appropriate conditions, and, as if
by a common impulse, out of thousands of
holes come the hosts of May beetles to
swarm about the electric lights.

This is indeed a final experience of not
a few of them. Plunging blindly against
the shade of the light, the blow is shock
enough to paralyze what little wit they have,
and down they drop in that strange state
which we are apt to call “feigning death,”
but which is simple fright paralysis. Slowly
they recover from this condition, and it
seems as if they regained the use of the legs
sooner than that of the wings. In any
event, instead of flying, away they start to
run. This is the fatal step. For beneath
the light, in anticipation of this joyous feast,
there has gathered a -worshipful congrega-
tion of kneeling toads. Woe betide the un-
lucky beetle who allows himself to get within

MAY 99

an inch and a half of one of those sleepy-
looking creatures. A pink flash, which the
initiated know to be the flip of the animal’s
sticky tongue, and the beetle is gone.

AN ANCIENT COUSIN

It was a member of the same family that
excited the wonder of the early Egyptians.
The sudden appearance of the insects in
large numbers, then as now, attracted at-
tention. When to this was coupled the
habit, common in their species, as in the
“tumble-bugs,”” of depositing the egg in a
mass of droppings covered with earth and
then rolling the ball away to a safe place,
all the needed suggestion was at hand. The
scarab, for so they called him, seemed to be
without natural birth, and he was engaged,

when making his clay ball, in the act of |
creation. Naturally this made him sacred —

to the creator god, Ptah. So they cut him
out of stone, carved their names on the

under surface, bored these jewels, strung | |

them on strings, and then wore them about
their necks to gain the favor of the god.

SUMMER

And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;

Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays.”

J. R. Lowe...

JUNE

IV

THE TREE MONTH

a _2 |URELY June is the
eae tree month. At no
other time are the
leaves so firm, crisp,
and green. By this
time the trees have
gotten the greater part
: | of their annual stretch.
Few twigs lengthen much after this month,
though the stems may grow stouter. The
truth is, the trees as a class are very provi-
dent. All the remaining months of the
summer they will be storing up material
in root and trunk for the quick dart of next
spring. Now that the branches have gotten
their length, the leaves spread in splendid
cascades catching the sun at every possible
point. For the whole tree is one great or-
ganism stretching out after sunlight.

105

106 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

THE SHAPE OF TREES

Let them grow in the crowded forest
where the light can come easily only from
above, and the trees vie with each other in
the race toward the blue sky. As they
grow higher, the lower limbs have the light
cut away from them and they soon shrivel,
die, and finally drop. This may continue
until many of our tulip-poplars, cucumbers,
and hemlocks will tower for fifty feet with-
out a branch, while not a few may even
reach seventy feet from the ground before
we come to a limb of any material size. On
the other hand, if the tree can grow out in
the open, not only will it attain greater bulk,
but its shape will be completely altered.
Its lower limbs will spread quite as rapidly
as its trunk ascends; and, instead of the
majestic erectness of the forest, we get a
well-rounded contour, but scarcely half the |
height of its woodland congener of equal age.

GREEN LEAVES AND HEAT

The trees too are actually greener in June
than they will be later in summer. Just

JUNE 107

as little red plaques floating in a colorless
liquid form the red blood of our bodies, so
little green wax grains of chlorophyll, scat-
tered through the transparent protoplasm
of the plant, give to it its green coloration.
When the sun is not too warm, these little
grains swarm out into the sunlight to catch
its every beam, and the result is, the plant
looks very green. As the sun grows warmer,
the chlorophyll grains will not come out so
fully on the surface of the leaves, but are
inclined to hide behind one another so as
to avoid the extreme heat. As a result, in
July the leaves at noonday are distinctly
lighter and less vivid in their green than
they are earlier and later in the day, or
than they are all day in June.

STRAWBERRIES REDDEN

But while the trees are struggling for
sunlight in the upper air, a host of humbler
plants, less ambitious than they, are creep-
ing about their roots and contenting them-
selves with the stray gleams of sunshine
that filter through the crowded leafage

108 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

above. Wherever the trees stop, the vines
clamber out profusely, and one of the
charms of a June bank is the rambling wild
strawberry, its dainty red fruits entrancing
alike to the eye, the nostril, and the palate.
“Doubtless,” says Dr. Boteler, “God could
have made a better berry, but doubtless
God never did.”

WHAT IS A BERRY?

But the strawberry is not a berry at all.
At least the scientist will not consent to call
it so. To him a berry is a very definite
kind of fruit. It must be pulpy, and this
the strawberry is, but it must have its seeds
buried in the pulp, and this the strawberry
has not. A cranberry is to the scientist a
berry, and so is a currant; a strawberry is
not, nor is a blackberry, a raspberry, or a
mulberry. But, then, to him the grape
deserves that name, and so does the tomato.
In this case I believe Nature and the people
agree, and the scientist is on a side-track.

To the popular mind any small pulpy
fruit is a berry and Nature, I think, has

JUNE 109

classed them all together, for they are the
fruits with which she tempts the birds.
The pulp is theirs, if they will but scatter
the imbedded seeds. It is the birds we are
robbing when we eat the.small fruits. The
apple, the peach, and the plum are for us
and our like. But as we have taken the
wild strawberry under our care and taught
it to make fruit as big as plums, I suppose
we are entitled to our own share, though
we certainly have no right to be indignant
when the birds come for theirs. The cul-
tivated strawberry is not simply our own
wild plant brought into the garden and
tickled into fatness. Its native home is on
the drier plains of Chili. To this fact is
due the hairy coating over the stem and
leaves so common to higher and drier situ-
ations. Possibly in time our Chilian fruit
may grow smooth, like our own wild straw-
berry.

The strawberry has a double safeguard
against extermination. When an old plant
dies, a new one may spring up either from
the seed of the old or from runners.

110 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

THE RUNNER HABIT

Seeds are, of course, the usual provision
against such danger, and are used by all
higher plants unless interfered with by over-
cultivation, as in the case of the banana and
some oranges. But the runners are un-
common. ‘These are long, slender branches
whose leaves have degenerated into scales.
They stretch out just above the ground and
root at the end. Then a new plant springs
up from this point, and later the link con-
necting it with the original stalk dies, as
may the parent plant itself. But when this
is gone, there are left round about it half a
dozen baby plants. The interesting point
about these shoots is that, being actual parts
of a single parent, they are as much like it
and each other as it is possible for plants to
be. Hence, when the gardener hfas produced
a fine strain of berries, he “keeps it true” by
propagating it by runners. In this way no
new blood is brought in, and, with proper
care and nourishment, the plant may keep up
all its good qualities for many generations,
if generations they may properly be called.

JUNE 111

HOW NATURE BETTERS PLANTS

But Nature’s reason for using this method
so seldom is a valid one. It furnishes no
chance for improvement. Seeds are ever
so much more hopeful. Each of them has
been produced by parts of two plants, and
when it grows up it will be something be-
tween them. Of course this is quite as
likely to be poorer than either as to be better.
But this is easily corrected. Nature simply
kills out the poorer ones. Some go because
they cannot endure drought, others have
not strength of stem to stand up, or they
lack brightness of flowers to attract insects.
The competition is so keen that the de-
fective ones die and only the good ones grow
on. Better still, there comes now and then
a strawberry genius that is quite as success-
ful in its own world as a human genius is in
our world, and here is the starting-point for
a better and stronger race. The experi-
mental gardener, who is always on the
lookout for new features, has two sources
on which he must rely. Careful and slow
nurture with its gradual improvement is apt

112 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

to produce plants that will rapidly revert to
their former state when the care is relaxed.
For permanent results he must rely on
crosses and sports. By a cross he means
a plant which has for its parents two plants
that while nearly allied are not alike, each
one of which has qualities he would like to
fix. In this way the Kiefer pear was made
by crossing the gritty Chinese sand pear
with the fine-flavored and juicy Bartlett.
This resulted in a pear which, while lacking
the splendid table qualities of the latter,
had some of the firmer consistency of the
sand pear, thus producing a fruit firm
enough to handle and ship in bulk.

On the other hand, the Sharpless seedling
strawberry was a sport, a plant genius,
that in one generation immediately shoved
ahead of its parents, and has since main-
tained its place. It is plants such as these
that are the gardener’s hope. Hundreds
of them turn out worthless, but now and
then his efforts are rewarded by a new seed-
ling that repays him for his seemingly lost
labor.

JUNE 113

THE CHIPMUNK GATHERS HIS STORES

But while we are bent on satisfying our
immediate desires with the taste of the
berries on the bank, along the neighboring
fence scampers the little chipmunk, whose
provident habits put us to the blush.

A MISSING LINK

The “chippie”’ is one of Nature’s “links”
—an animal that lies close to the borderland
between two groups. It is only recently we
have come to recognize how many of these
there are, and they often furnish us our most
interesting forms. ‘The great squirrel fam-
ily in this country starts with the humble,
clumsy, stupid woodchuck, who has earned
for himself the disrespectful title of ground-
hog, and it ends with the active, soft-eyed,
beautiful flying squirrel. Just about mid-
way in the series, no longer so servilely
bound to the soil as the groundhog, and yet
not released from it like the squirrel, comes
our sprightly, thrifty, comely chipmunk.
Searcely any other of the four-footed wild
animals is more familiar or better loved in

8

114 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

the regions not too near the large cities.
His bunchy body, not so slender as that of
his true squirrel cousins, with its yellowish
brown coat and its striped back, is dear to
every country boy who is not mean enough
or thoughtless enough to stone it on sight.

PROVIDING FOR WINTER

The little fellow is the most provident of
all his tribe. He makes a burrow some-
times of considerable length under the
ground. Along its course are often several
storehouses, and these he fills with his win-
ter provisions, and in them he stays from
December until March. Then he comes
with the first song of the robin and blue-
bird and the first cheerful cackle of the
blackbird. Soon he will begin to hide
cherry-stones. Often in climbing over a
worm fence an old hollow rail has broken
under my hand, and from the open end
have come pouring cherry-stones by the
hundreds. What numberless journeys this
must mean! One chipmunk of my ac-
quaintance became quite a household pet,

JUNE 115

though all the time he maintained his wild
home. But he ran freely over the porches
and through the living-room of the moun-
tain cabin in which we were spending the
summer. We always kept a plate on the
porch for his especial benefit, and on this
plate we placed the stones of all the cherries
eaten in the house. Pecan kernels and
almond pits, both doubtless entirely new
to him, he ate from the first without hesita-
tion and relished exceedingly. Indeed, so
fond was he of them that he would climb up
into the lap of a young girl in the party,
and burrow into her clenched fists for the
toothsome dainties. While not quite so
familiar with other members of the party,
he nevertheless freely came and fed from
the fingers of any of us, though the presence
of a stranger made him considerably more
wary. The little fellow has fur-lined pock-
ets on the inner side of his cheeks, and
these he fills with the materials he is to
carry home.

One day I counted the cherry-stones our
provident friend could take away at a single

116 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

trip, and found that he could stretch his
cheek pouches until he had stowed away
thirty-nine. This process made his cheeks
bulge until the shape of his flattened head
gave him a ludicrous, snake-like look.

One of the daintiest wild sights I have
seen was that of a chipmunk who gleaned
a mountain lane after a wagon loaded with
wheat sheaves had passed by. The little
fellow would pick up a stalk of grain and
bite off its head. Then, holding it up with
the beard pointing downward and away
from his mouth, he worked quickly through
the entire spike. To see how the chaff flew
and his cheeks swelled with the store of
wheat kernels was most delightful. When
he had hulled three or four heads his pockets
would hold no more, so away he scampered.
Along the fence he ran in his quick, jerky
way, as if he never could assure himself of
his safety for more than five seconds at a
time. He would look about him, make a
dash, look about him again and take another
spurt. Still, I thought he soon learned
when one was friendly to him. He would

A CHIPMUNK WHO GLEANED A MOUNTAIN LANE

JUNE 119

come quite close, but any quick movement
in his direction sent him scurrying away.

The entrance to his home lay between two
big stones used to prop the worm fence, and
beneath the lower end of the slanting rail
was a fine chamber. A later visit to his
. quarters proved that in the fall he found
material easier to gather. He had hoarded
up nearly a half-bushel of chestnuts.

The only point in which our little friend
falls short of his squirrel cousins in beauty
is in the matter of tail. Squirrels have de-
veloped great, broad brushes that serve for
rudders in their splendid leaps from tree
to tree. The “chippie” has a far inferior
tail, but to make up for it he has a black
stripe along his back, and a dark stripe
with a white central line along each side.
The result is, at least to me, more pleasing
than that possessed by any true squirrel.

I fear, however, his mania for gathering
and storing food has made him selfish. At
least he rarely, if ever, shares his home and
his stores even with his mate. He is peace-
able and cheerful when not disturbed, but so

120 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

unsociable that he quite resents the intrusion
of another chippie upon his customary feed-
ing ground. In this respect he is far inferior
to the little red squirrel, who, however in-
clined he may be to quarrel now and then,
will play tag by the hour with a wantonness
of sport rarely seen in a wild animal. It is
interesting to see how the other wild things
learn to notice the scolding tone in the
chippie’s voice and to use it as a warning of
the near approach of a possible enemy.

THE SAFETY OF INSIGNIFICANCE
The whole rodent family, of which the

squirrels are important members, is a strik-
ing example of the safety that lies in insig-
nificance. There are more species of ro-
dents than of all other fur-bearing animals
combined. Man’s incursions into a neigh-
borhood simply seem to relieve them of their
enemies. Rabbits and squirrels are per-
haps more abundant to-day than they were
when the Indians roamed our forests. Cer-
tain it is that the advent of man in the
Northwest increased the numbers of the

JUNE 121

Jack rabbits. This set of animals is un-
usually adaptable to all the varied possibil-
ities of life. The muskrat takes to the
water, the chipmunk to a burrow in the
ground, the rabbit to the brush, the squirrel
to the trees, while the flying squirrel almost
takes to the air. But one and all they
are cautious, fearsome, and alert, and for
the most part extremely rapid in their
movements. Not a few of them find safety
in venturing out chiefly at night. So they
have found for themselves a secure footing
where the bear and the wolf, the deer and
the bison have failed. And as it is one of
the largest so it is one of the oldest groups
of fur-bearing animals that to-day has any |
prominence. Other old animal families are §
for the most part decadent, but the rodents |
show no sign of diminishing prosperity.

VIOLETS BLOOM

While the strawberries are creeping along {
the bank and the chipmunk is scuttling
along the fence, back in the fields the child-
ren are plucking violets.

122 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

WHY THE BEE LIKES THE VIOLET

Children and bees love the violets. Older
people seem to need highly scented or double
kinds, but the commonest road-side violets
are quite attractive enough to satisfy the
children, for they gather them by handfuls.
I have just asked a little girl why she is so
fond of them, and her answer is, “I like the
color,” and that certainly is the bee’s first
reason. Nectar is, of course, what he is
hunting, but, strange to say, he would al-
ways more gladly visit a blue flower to get
nectar than one of any other color. I have
seen bumblebees pass over gorgeous cannas
and gladioli as if they were nowhere in sight,
and hurry on to a tall, blue, mint-like plant
whose flowers would never have caught
my eye at half the distance at which their
gay neighbors arrested my attention im-
mediately.

The hooded violet, that grows so com-
monly in our fields and by our road-sides,
has almost all the good qualities of the
family in general and a few of its own.
About the only one it lacks is the odor,

JUNE 123

which indeed but few species have. As a
family they hang their heads, though not in
shame nor even in modesty. Their reason
is far more practical; they do not want their
pollen wetted. So they hold their faces
away from the possibility of being rain-
washed.

Plants that are to grow in the cropped
grass must be either very small or keep
their stems close to the ground, so that a
browsing animal may get nothing but
leaves, missing the short, hairy stalk, with
its many buds from which new leaves will
quickly spring.

HOW THE VIOLET IS POLLINATED

But the brightest piece of the violet’s
intelligence can only be seen when you look
it full and fair in the face. It has put its
nectar deep in the spur that projects from
the back of the flower. The whole color
and structure of the violet help the bee to
find his way to that nectar. The general
blue color summons him, the yellow centre
tells him the neighborhood of the door-way,

124 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

while on nearer approach a set of lines on
the lower petals tells him just where his
tongue will find the easiest entrance to the
sweet store. The way down to this treas-
ure is guarded by a fence of bristling hairs
that discourages any ants that might creep
up the stem. A pair of triggers, which are
just on the road down to the spur, are so set
that when the bee sticks his tongue into the
flower the pollen drops fairly into his face
and in turn is carried by him to the next
violet. Here it sets the seed. It is inter-
esting to see Bumble’s method of handling
this flower as he visits one of these plants.
He is quite at home there, and, strange to
say, instead of coming at it from the front,
he alights on the top, bends over the edge,
and turns his head quite upside down to get
his tongue into the opening. So when the
pollen falls it strikes him just under the chin,
if chin a mouth like his can be said to have.
Meanwhile he is so heavy that the flower
bends over with his weight, often letting
him rest fairly on the ground. This, how-
ever, disconcerts neither him nor the violet.

JUNE 125

He keeps at his work until he has drained
the draught of divine drink, and then-goes
his way, and the violet raises its face once
more into view. ‘This aristocratic flower,
in truth, has set itself out to attract bees and
them alone. But this very exclusive plan
is a case of that vaulting ambition that o’er-
leaps itself. The apparatus is too compli-
cated, or the bees are too clumsy; for some-
how, though probably adapted to each other
in the past, the bees and the violets are
parting company.

SECRET FLOWERS

As a result, these lovely blue flowers
commonly fail to set seed, even when freely
visited by the bees. So these plants have
been obliged in self-defence to take another
plan. Down in the ground about the base
of the plant may be found some of the most
peculiar flowers imaginable. They have
no colored petals, no odor, no nectar; they
never blossom, are never visited by insects.
But their own pollen fertilizes their own
ovules and sets their own seed. Of course

126 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

this is not as good as cross-fertilization; at
least so scientists seem to think. But one
thing is sure, these secret flowers of the violet
become fine pods full of big round seeds.
Surely they are better than no seeds at all.

To find these strange cleistogamous flow-
ers, as they are called, one must go after the
first flush of blue flowers is over and hunt
close to the ground, if not actuallv beneath
it. But late in June you can scarcely fail to
find them on our common violet, which, with
its dark flowers and heart-shaped leaves,
decorates every grassy country road-side and
invades almost every lawn and pasture.

Back of the fence the wheat is growing
tall and heavy and the harvest is not far off.
I fear, however, the man who planted this
field was not careful about his seed, for
there are amongst the grain many purple
flowers.

TARES IN THE WHEAT

In one of the older translations of the
Bible, the familiar passage in Matthew is
rendered, “The kingdom of heaven is re-

JUNE 127

sembled to a man that sowed good seede in
his field. But when men were a sleepe his i
enemy came and oversowed cockle among |. ~
the wheate and went his way.” The King
James version made the word tares instead
of cockle, to our confusion. The plant %y,
named in the Greek original is not our
cockle; but cockle is none the less a better
translation for our purposes than tares. We
have no tares; but all that in this case is §
true of the tares is true of the cockle as
well; and if the Christ were teaching in our
land to-day and wished to convey the same
lesson, he would certainly say cockle and °'''
not tares.

When cockle springs up, its long tender
leaves make it look much like the grain
amongst which it grows, and to weed it out
at that time would be quite a difficult task.
But let it go to maturity, and its warm-
colored flowers, lifting themselves out of
their swollen, bladdery cups, are easy to
see, as we look at this season over the ripen-
ing grain.

I suspect man himself has done much to

ee]

128 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

fit the cockle to its place as a weed infesting
the wheat. The lychnis group, to which
this plant belongs, all incline to narrowness
of leaves, but I know of no other member
where leaves are so very slender as are those
of the cockle. I doubt not broader-leaved
ones -have been plucked from grain fields
in the earlier times, when fields were smaller
and grain was hand sown and hand gath-
ered. ‘Those plants whose leaves inclined
to be slender more frequently escaped
notice, and were allowed to set their seeds.
Naturally their descendants had the nar-
rower leaved habit which in time became
universal. So perhaps man has uncon-
sciously helped the cockle to hide in the
wheat field.

It is interesting too to realize how he has
taught the cockle to time its flowering so as
to coincide with the ripening of the wheat.
Whenever a flower matured too soon and
set its seed earlier than the grain did, those
seeds rattled out of the pod to the ground
and lay there when the grain was gathered.
Any flowers which were late in forming

JUNE 129

their pods were cut before the seeds were
hard enough to join the wheat in the thresh-
ing. But whatever cockle bloomed just in
time to harden its seeds by the time the
grain was thoroughly ripened had its seeds
mingle with those of the wheat under the
flail. So man planted them with his wheat
at the next sowing and again selected, all
unconsciously, those seeds which coincided
in their ripening with the maturing of the
grain. Just as truly as man has, with set
purpose, developed a cow which shall give
large quantities of milk and come into milk-
ing often, he has, though quite without such
intention and even in spite of his desires,
cultivated a cockle that can hide in his
wheat when it is young, be gathered with
the wheat and scattered again with it in
preparation for the new crop.

The pink-purple flowers of the plant are
so narrow in the throat and deep in the tube
that only the long-tongued butterflies can
reach to the bottom. The nectar, how-
ever, is so abundant that bumblebees would
gladly rob it by means of their familiar

9

4

130 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

trick of biting a hole in the base of the flower
and thus stealing the stores without carry-
ing the pollen. The cockle, and its cousin
the catchfly, have both learned the same
trick of so swelling the chaffy calyx as to
make of it a fence that holds the bee at a
distance, and effectually removes the sugary
nectar beyond the reach of his pilfering
tongue.

JULY

Vv

THE WARMTH OF JULY

“” 'N each day now the heat
~ is higher than before.
The sun’s rays are hot-
test in this the northern
~ half of the world at the

end of June, but our
_ days are warmest in July

, and August.

WHY JULY IS HOTTEST

This at first seems, a paradox, but it is not.
A man is not necessarily richest when he is
earning most. Even though his receipts
diminish, so long as they exceed his ex-
penditures his wealth accumulates. We
gain warmth from the sun while our part
of the earth is turned toward him. But we
are losing heat, throwing it back into space,
all the time. During these long days we
133

134 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

get more than we can throw away, and
consequently we get warmer day by day.
With us, of course, the sun never gets
directly overhead. If it did we would be
in the torrid zone. But now it is daily
farther south of the overhead point at noon,
and we are getting its rays more and more
slantingly, and hence getting less and less
heat from them. For the more inclined the
sun’s rays are, the greater the area a given
amount of them will cover, and hence the
less they will heat any given spot. By
early August the income and outgo will bal-
ance, and from that time on we must con-
stantly draw on our accumulations. These
daily draughts on our store continue until
late December, when they are heaviest.
After that they grow daily less, for our in-
come slowly increases. But it is not until
February that our call on the reserve ceases
and our fortunes reach their lowest ebb.
From that time we add daily to our store.
But it is not the heat of July that oppresses
us so much as the moisture in the air. For
moisture interferes with our perspiration,

JULY 135

and it is this which keeps us comfortable.
At first sight it seems a poor plan to cool the
body by pouring warm water on it; and so
it is, unless that water will evaporate. It
takes as large an amount of heat to make
water evaporate as it does to boil it. But
we must distinguish between the amount
and the degree of the heat. A lower degree
of heat spread over a longer time will evapo-
rate the water that a higher degree would boil
in much less time. Now, the heat to evapo-
rate the perspiration is taken chiefly from our
bodies, which thus naturally become cooler.
On days when the air has taken up all the
water it will hold, we perspire in vain. The
moisture gathers in beads when it should
slowly disappear in the air. ‘These are the
days we call sultry, and they are more un-
comfortable than merely hot days though
the temperature be not so high.

BIRDS IN JULY

The birds particularly seem to feel the
heat. In every little stream they are splash-
ing and spattering the water over their warm

136 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

feathers.. The exuberance of their spring
songs is over now, and most of them sit
quiet on their perches. To be sure, their
carollings have accomplished their purpose,
and when the male has gained his mate and
helped to build the nest, there is work
enough in gathering food for his wife and
children to sober any father. Even yet his
joy bubbles over morning and evening; but
when the sun is high, the quiet persistent
note of the pewee must stand for almost the
whole choir of spring.

HOT WEATHER SUITS THE INSECTS

But, whatever the birds and we may
think of the weather, these are just the days
that suit the insects. The sun cannot shine
with rays hot enough to scorch their ardor,
and the hum of the bumblebee, the quick
flight of the wasp that is building its mud
hut under the eaves, and the buzz of the
hornet as he searches for flies are the pleas-
ant accompaniments of our summer lazings.
Through the warm air the butterflies wheel,
almost secure from the birds who sit in the

JULY 137

deep foliage with mouths open and wings
held away from the body. Over the hot,
dry ground of the cornfield the grasshopper
hovers in crackling, quivering glee, while
from the near-by grove the hum of the locust
starts out musically enough, though even it
gets wooden toward the end of the song.

As evening approaches the musicians
change, but their numbers, if anything, in-
crease. Denied the power of beauty, these
denizens of the night must depend on their
voices for winning their friends, and the
night is strident with the shrill fiddling of the
crickets and, later, of the katydids. Some of
the insects, afraid of the birds, cautiously
light their lanterns and start out on their
search for a comrade by night. Even here
their fear of lurking foes has taught them to
flash their lights intermittently. |

THE LOCUST’S HOT SONG
THE LOCUSTS DRUMS

It sounds hot when the locust sings. He
never seems quite happy with the ther-
mometer anywhere that pleases us. When

138 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

we begin to wilt, the locust tunes up his
twin drums and begins his gleeful song.
For here again it is the male that sings, and
if you will but catch him you will find his
instruments beneath the long flaps of his
vest. The wife wears no such vest, con-
ceals no such drums, and is mute. If you
will bend his body backward and forward
at the waist, you can beat his drums at
will. You need not hesitate to try this,
for he is in truth quite harmless. It is
almost impossible for him to puncture the
skin, and should he by any chance do
so, the result is likely to be far less hurtful
than would be the case were you to prick
yourself with a pin that had been lying

about a city street.

HIS NAME

It is rarely that any name comes to have
so hazy a meaning as does the word “lo-
cust.” It is applied by different classes of
persons to entirely different insects. When
the people at large use it they mean the
cicada, either the larger, greenish “harvest-

WE SHOULD CALL THIS FELLOW THE CICADA

JULY 141

fly” that comes every year, or the “seven-
teen-year locust’? which is smaller and
marked with reddish lines. When the man
who is interested particularly in the crop-
destroying insects mentions the locust, he
means the grasshopper; while the strict
scientist, when he names the locust family,
will include neither of these, but refers to
the katydid and its closer allies. Of course
we should call this fellow the cicada, but I
fear, in this country, popular usage has
called him locust so long that reform is hope-
less. We have, then, two insects popularly
known by the name of locust. The one
we see and hear every late July and early
August is broad over the shoulders and looks
as if he were made of tarnished copper. He
is a motley of blacks and greens with a
white blush here and there, and is better
known as the “harvest-fly.”

THE SEVENTEEN-YEAR LOCUST

The other one has long been known as the
seventeen-year locust. He is smaller and
redder, and only comes in any locality once

142 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

in seventeen years, arriving in June and
lasting into July. The truth of the matter
is, it takes seventeen years to make him.
Before his exact period had been recognized,
his coming, like that of the comets and all
other unexpected events, was considered to
presage war. ‘This was all the more clear
inasmuch as his front wings carry a very
plain W, and what else could this mean?
We now know that during the sixteen
intervening years he lives under the
ground, without wings, and thus escapes
our notice.

The mother locust cuts light slits in the
tender bark of the ends of the limbs of trees
and in them lays her eggs. She thus- in-
jures the wood, and soon the twig dies and
hangs down. The next high wind breaks
it off and it falls to the earth. By this time
the eggs have hatched, and the young
locust, not yet looking at all like his mother,
creeps into the earth. Here he goes through
a very slow growth and development, feed-
ing occasionally on tender roots. By the
summer of the seventeenth year he is ready

JULY 143

to emerge. He creeps out and up the tree
until he finds a place into which he can
clinch his toes. ‘Then his back splits open,
and the adult form, tender and limp,
‘ squirms out and later hardens into the per-
fect insect.

Ever since 1715 (and how often before
that no one knows) a brood of cicadas has
been reappearing every seventeen years in
the southeastern part of Pennsylvania and
over much of New Jersey, Delaware, and
Maryland.

In 1902 they returned in great abun-
dance, but by this time practically all super-
stition was gone in the matter, and the only
fear people had was that the insects might
do serious damage to trees. But even this
dread proved unnecessary, and practically
no harm resulted from their visit. Mean-
while the increase of general knowledge on
the subject was so great that probably no
brood of insects has ever been so intelli-
gently watched by so many curious eyes
as greeted the last brood of this long-known
series.

144 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

THE LOCUST’S GREATEST ENEMY

Nature never seems to make a good big
creature of any kind but she plants near him
a deadly enemy. It seems a wasteful plan
of working, but it turns out well in the end.
Steadily and relentlessly every weak crea-
‘ture is cut off in his early prime and leaves
behind him no progeny to continue his
particular weaknesses, while the alert and
active animal earns a lengthened life for him-
self and a more probable immunity for his
posterity. This effective duty of removing
delinquents is performed for the locust by a
most savage and unrelenting foe in the shape
of a long yellow and black banded wasp with
reddish wings and a body fully an inch long.

THE DIGGER WASP

Persons who live in Virginia or Mary-
land, or even in southern Pennsylvania and
New Jersey, will find frequently in July
that a large wasp of this kind is digging
holes in their lawns and disfiguring the
grass plots with large quantities of freshly
dug earth. This the wasp has kicked

JULY 145

out by means of her strongly spiked hind
legs. A little watching will show what it
all means. What at first appears to be a
tremendous insect comes sailing heavily
down to the hole. When it alights the size
is explained. It is a big sphex wasp carry-
ing, with considerable effort, a still bigger
locust. You will probably want to walk
about quite unobtrusively, if you care to
examine this matter closely, for the wasp
has altogether the finest sting it has ever
been my good fortune to see thrust out. It
is curved like a scimitar, fully half an
inch long, and exquisitely pointed. I do
not know how badly its sting might hurt,
but from the promptness with which it
paralyzes so large an insect as its prey is, I
should prefer omitting that piece of prac-
tical knowledge. The insect authorities
generally say that the sphex, when once
she comes to earth, must laboriously climb
to some high place, dragging her victim with
her, before she can gain sufficient impetus
to fly away with so great a weight. I have

repeatedly seen this wasp, when disturbed,
10

146 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

gather up her burden from the lawn and fly
away, often to a higher point, without any
apparently severe effort. More commonly,
when molested it deserted its prey. I was
quite surprised, however, that so formidable
a fellow should show so little disposition
to attack the intruding observer.

The battle between the cicada and the
sphex is often a long one, but it is always
certain to terminate in the same way.
Strong as is the cicada, he has no means of
defence. It is the constant effort of the
sphex to alight on the shoulders of her vic-
tim, between the great fluttering wings.
Then she curves her long sting around be-
neath the cicada’s body and punctures it
where the venom will soon soak into the
nerve centres that order the motions of the
animal’s body and paralysis soon sets in.
Now the wasp, grasping the overturned
locust by its legs, flies to one of the burrows
she has previously made and pushes her
victim to the very bottom of the hole. This
burrow has a somewhat winding course
and may be as much as a yard in depth.

JULY 147

WHY SHE DIGS

When once this big store of provision is
safely housed, its purpose becomes appar-
‘ent, for the wasp deposits against it an egg,
which soon develops into a club-shaped
larva. This feeds on the locust, grows big,
spins a cocoon, and then lies quiet for the
winter, coming out the next year just in
time for the new crop of cicadas.

SUMMER FLOWERS

People sometimes seem to forget that
flowers are not over with June. Spring flow-
ers are coquettish; summer blooms frankly
bid for attention. The faint, delicate pinks
and violets and whites have given place to
red and purple, to deep blue, to yellow and
orange. When white comes now, it is
more likely to come in masses or at night,
and if at night, then with a fulness and
richness of perfume that is almost oppres-
sive. I suppose each of us is most sensi-
tive to one particular color, and I am bar-
baric enough to like it dark red. Of all the
crops that grow in our fields none delights

148 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

me more than crimson clover. Of all the
flowers that brighten our woods and swamps
none seems to me more cheering from its
simple glow than the cardinal lobelia.

THE CARDINAL LOBELIA

The swamps are the places where Nature
is most active in reclaiming the ground.
How gracious it is that she should cover
her processes of decay, that are blackening
and enrichening the slime beneath, with the
dainty carpet of ferns and mosses, and spot
the surface here and there with such perfect
patches of color as come from the graceful
clusters of the yellow-fringed orchid or from
the tall, glowing spikes of the cardinal
flower.

The little blue lobelia of the fields, with
its inflated seed-pods, has long been used
in medicine. But to me the best adminis-
tration of lobelia is through the eye, and its
most potent effect is on the mind.

One summer day on the mountains a
companion and myself had lost our bearings.
There was nothing to do but follow down

JULY 149

a watercourse, confident that it would lead
us sooner or later to human habitations.
Our luncheon was eaten, we were foot-sore,
and my camera was heavy. ' Altogether
our spirits were down. The undergrowth
was so thick that our quickest progress was
made by wading down the bed of the stream.
A sudden turn of the rivulet brought us face
to face with a clump of birches. Their
pure white trunks, with the paper hanging
in delicate shreds, stood out clear and sharp
against the dark shadows of the under-
growth behind them. About their base,
on the top of the shelving bank, stood a
magnificent cluster of maidenhair ferns,
their dainty fronds scarcely swaying in the
summer air. ‘Through it all came the
‘dominant note of the cardinal flower.
Involuntarily we stopped and gazed; and
a brighter mood and a quicker step’ led
us on, and made it perhaps, a little
easier to bear when, on arriving at a
house half a mile farther on, we found
we had gone down the wrong side of the
mountain.

150 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

BLACK-EYED SUSAN

But while the cardinal flower may enliven
the swampy recesses with its cheering color,
there is a more dashing flower, whose out-
spoken presence, it seems to me, must be
frankly gladdening to every one who sees
it and who does not own the land on which
it grows. For we have gotten an artificial
but most understandable bias against the
sort of plants we call weeds. So I think
probably the owner of the pasture is little
inclined to rejoice over an intruding group
of “black-eyed Susans.” But when no
question of ownership arises, the laughing
audacity, the sturdy wholesomeness of the
black-eyed Susan and its unblushingly
flaunted color must make it a cheering sight
to every passer on the road, and a golden
store of treasure-trove to him, be he child
or grown man, who has crossed the bars
and is wading knee-deep in the clover.
They tell me this jaunty flower came to us
first with seed oats from Kansas. How
true this is I do not know, but if it did, I am
sure, to the nature lover at least, if not to the

JULY 151

farmer, our sister State has induced us to
entertain an angel unawares, even though it
be a breezy one, as becomes a western angel.
This dashing beauty belongs to a most
aristocratic family, indeed to the family
that scientists have come to put at the very
summit of the flower world. And here the
botanist and the flower lover are for once
agreed, and both opposed to the farmer.
For in this splendid group come the bright-
faced dandelion and the white-rayed daisy,
the blue-eyed chiccory and the sumptuous
golden-rod, the haughty chrysanthemum
of the fashionable flower show and the self-
sufficing thistle of the country road-side,
the stately “queen of the meadow”’ and the
richly purple iron-weed. But which of
them all gives to the landscape it adorns
a more instant challenge or a cheerier note
than Susannah of the dark brown eye?

NOT A FLOWER BUT A BOUQUET

The truth of the matter is, that in this
entire group what is commonly called a
flower is not at all a flower but an entire

152 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

bouquet. In the dandelion every narrow
strap is a flower in itself, and as many as two
hundred of them may unite to form the
bloom that catches our eye. In the thistle
each slender purple tube is the flower, and
the thistle head with its prickly surround-
ings may contain many hundreds of flowers.
In our yellow friend not only is each yellow
ray a flower but the brown eye of the cluster
is fairly packed with abundant florets. It
is this fine spirit of co-operation amongst
these flowers that has probably been the
biggest factor in making of this family the
successful group that itis. |

But another quality has also done much
to help them along in the world, and that is
their wonderful adaptability. Whatever the
nature of the surroundings, so long as there
is warmth enough, a place will be made for
itself by some “‘composite,” for so are the
members of this family named.

THE TRUE ARISTOCRACY

But even in this group there are degrees
of aristocracy, indeed examples of all shades

x

JULY 153

of opinion as to what constitutes aristocracy.
The chiccory, with its clear blue corollas,
bids only for the bees, for they are prac-
tically the only insects that really care for
blue. The purple of the iron-weed and of
the thistle is a litthe more inclusive in its
invitation. So the bees here are joined at
the feast chiefly by a varied group of flutter-
ing butterflies. But when it comes to the
black-eyed Susan and the golden-rod, with
their great flaring patches of yellow, every
insect that cares at all for color sees the
notice and heeds the call. So to these flock
all sorts and conditions of bugs, beetles,
flies, butterflies, and bees. It is this splen-
did prodigality of welcome, this genuine
understanding that true aristocracy is only
the call to service of the fullest and freest
kind, that, more than anything else, endears
to my heart this splendid, dashing, buxom,
western darling.

AUGUST

VI

THE CRICKET’S CHIRP

<=. “ASILY the dominant
4. note of August is the
—7. 4, cricket’s chirp. It is
hy K the one note to vie in
my charm with the purl-
. WA ing of the mountain
es Z WN brook. When we are
L '_, overpowered by the
heat of the day, the cooling suggestion of
‘water rippling over the stones brings such
a sense of relief as makes it most pleasing;
but when evening comes and we are less
biased in our judgments, the musical voice
of the cricket from out the grass comes with
peculiar charm.

For the voice of the insect is better than
that of the brook. The inanimate brook
sings an accidental song, which springs
from no movement of its inner nature,
157

158 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

and is without meaning except as we find
it suggest emotion in ourselves. But the
voice of the cricket is a love-song. ‘There
is doubtless a very limited stock of romance
in the little quadruple knot of nervous
matter which serves him for a brain. But
none the less, on his humble plane he
feels within him the universal desire for a
mate; and the outcome of that longing is
the chirp.

IT RISES WITH THE TEMPERATURE

But while his song is brightest and mer-
riest in the love time, which is the spring-
time, his cheery nature keeps bubbling over
well into fall, in sheer exuberance of spirits,
until cold weather dampens his ardor. His
joy, so a scientist tells us, rises and falls so
absolutely with the thermometer, that it is
possible to calculate the temperature with a
reasonable degree of precision by the pitch
of the cricket’s shrilling. But, however
the male cricket may evince his joy, we are
entirely in the dark as to the degree of re-
sponse in his dusky mate. Her story is

AUGUST 159

untold, at least in any language we have
learned to understand, for she is voiceless.

THE CRICKET A FIDDLER

‘Indeed, it is only by a stretch of the imagi-
nation that we may call the chirp of the
cricket its voice. ‘These strange creatures
are so entirely different from us in every
way that, though even the scientist uses
human terms in speaking of them, these
terms only apply by the roughest analogies.

Their eyes are unlike our eyes, and must
present a totally different picture of the
landscape. Their ears are so different
from ours and so strangely placed that we
were long in doubt as to what the organ
meant and still in many cases are uncertain.
Their jaws have positively no relation to our
jaws; indeed they probably were originally
legs, and they work from side to side in-
stead of up and down as our jaws do. And
so it is with the voice. Our voice, as well
as the bark of the dog, the song of the bird,
the hiss of the serpent, the croak of the frog,
all are made in some way or other by the

160 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

air we breathe. Every one of these sounds
is produced on a wind instrument. But the
cricket fiddles to his mate, and so do his
cousins the grasshopper and the katydid.
When the grasshopper tunes his musical
instrument the fiddle is the prominent vein
on his front wing, and for bow he uses his
long hind leg, drawing it gleefully across the
quivering wing. But the katydid and the
cricket, who are nearer of kin to each other
than either of them is to the grasshopper,
both use one wing for fiddle and the other
for bow. When they grow merry they rub
both wings together, much as a character
in the old-fashioned novel rubbed his hands.

HIS STRANGE EAR

But, strange as is his musical instrument,
his ear is stranger. Its only resemblance
to ours lies in the fact that it has a drum
and has nerves back of it. Of the flap,
which is the conspicuous but comparatively
less important part of ours, there is no trace,
and, such as this ear is, he wears it just be-
low the knee of his front leg.

AUGUST 161

It is interesting to notice how the cricket
has departed from the shape of the grass-
hopper to fit the station of life to which he
has been called. He has, perhaps to avoid
his enemies, perhaps because of a fondness
for roots, taken to living beneath the sod.
The long legs of the grasshopper have be-
come short, but intensely strong, and heavily
beset with spikes. These become power-
ful instruments to push him through the
earth, and make him an exceedingly un-
comfortable fellow to hold tight in one’s
hand. In such a life the gaudy colors with
which most grasshoppers deck such portions
of their bodies as they can promptly conceal
would be useless, because unseen, and the
cricket paints himself a dull brown. But
when his enemies have gone to sleep, the
cricket comes to the surface and under
the pale light of the stars fiddles, to the
listening knees of his skipping mate, the
old, old tale.

But while perhaps a genuine lover of na-
ture will reason out within himself the charm

of the cricket’s song, a more widely loved
11

162 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

songster, clad in raiment gorgeous even for
so renowned a singer, takes up a central
position in the scene and gives a note or two
to remind us of what he could do were the
concert season not already over.

THE BALTIMORE ORIOLE

Bright colors usually make a bird shy.
He cannot ordinarily afford to attract atten-
tion, except that of his mate, for it is un-
fortunately the case that almost any animal
that really notices the bird, except his mate,
is his enemy. Under such circumstances
it is most natural that a bird so brilliant in
his feathering and so melodious in his voice,
and yet so willing to live about the homes
of men, as is our Baltimore oriole, should
be a universal favorite. Popular admira-
tion has voiced itself by giving to him name
after name, all distinctive of some attractive
quality. Our English forefathers knew in
their old home an oriole which was orange
and black. So this bird, which reminded
them of their old friend, got the old name.
The Baltimore was added because he ecar-

AUGUST 163

ried the then well-known colors of Lord
Baltimore. The robin is the dearest bird
to the American heart, and our present
friend has often been gathered into the
inner circle by calling him the golden robin;
for his call is not at all unlike that of the
robin, though it is far more mellow, so that
in voice as well as in plumage our friend is
truly golden. That he is neither an oriole
nor a robin, scientifically speaking, is only
another instance of the small dependence
to be put on common names.

BRIGHT-COLORED BIRDS

The fearlessness of so brilliant a bird is
strange and does great credit, I am sure, to
the bird world, for I think it shows that the
timidity of our feathered friend is largely
a matter of anxiety for the safety of his wife
and childern, rather than of himself. The
tanagers and the thistle finches, birds about
as conspicuous as the oriole, are both more
difficult of approach. But each of these
has an open nest, and his mate when en-
gaged at her domestic duties must lie in a

164 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

position quite exposed to view. So even
when she herself is dull colored, as is the
case of the female of both these birds, it is
a matter of no little danger to be visited
constantly by so gaudy a companion.

THE ORIOLE’S NEST

But the oriole’s wife and children are se-
cure far beyond most birds. For her nest
is more of a concealment to its inmates
than that of any other of our common resi-
dents except the woodpeckers. Gathering
slivers of grape bark, fibres of milk-weed,
horse-hairs, or any such long-threaded ma-
terial, the oriole weaves them into a deep
round pocket, which hangs beneath some
pendent limb, often so far out that no enemy
save another bird could well reach it. The
long pendulous boughs of the elm form a
favorite resting-place, while the weeping
willow, though strange to the experience
of the race, has been adopted by this skilful
worker as a place for her woven nest. In-
deed, when we remember how thoroughly
many students of nature and of science have

THE ORIOLE WEAVES A DEEP, ROUND POCKET

AUGUST 167

believed in the almost unvarying character
of instinct, it is really remarkable to see how
this bird has taken possession of every sort
of string, yarn, silk, or ravelled rope that
man has thrown in her way, and applied it
to the purposes of her home building.

When this pocket is finished, it forms so
thorough a shelter from prying eyes that
Madam Oriole herself dares, as female birds
in our latitude rarely do, to adorn herself
with the colors of her brilliant mate. But
she does so discreetly and with a modest
reserve that is befitting a member of a class
of animals in which beauty is distinctly a
male prerogative.

A NEW FEARLESSNESS IN BIRDS

There is a matter which I hardly dare
record, since it must be largely a question
of impression. But I have had my own
feeling corroborated from a number of un-
expected sources and I venture to set it
down. The summer of nineteen hundred
and two marked a turning-point in the social
relations existing between man and bird in

168 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

the portions of Pennsylvania, New Jersey,
and Delaware adjacent to Philadelphia. In
that year there arose a generation of birds
who were, as a whole, noticeably more fear-
less of man than was the case very shortly
before. The Audubon Society and the Na-
ture study movement in the public schools
are, I think, chiefly responsible for the
change. Sure it is, the new state of affairs
is most gratifying to those of us who are
’ watching with sore hearts the disappearance
of the wild things we have known and
loved.

But the birds have no monopoly of bril-
liant coloration on this splendid August
afternoon.

THE TIGER SWALLOWTAIL

With all the lazy unconcern of insects
about the degree of heat, so long as there is
enough of it, there comes floating along
through the quivering atmosphere a butter-
fly, the most attractive of all our day-flying
insects. Broad of wing, striking of color,
it seems more than strange that so little of

AUGUST 169

the nervous fluttering which usually char-
acterizes the butterflies should disturb this
fellow. The broad yellow wings, with their
black stripes and margins, and with the
blue and orange buttons at the tip of their
slender tails, give to this beautiful butterfly
the name of the tiger swallowtail. Of
course this formidable title refers only to the
color, for a butterfly must, by his very
structure, be a harmless and _ inoffensive
animal. The beetle may sometimes pinch,
the bug or the fly may occasionally pierce
with his pointed tongue, the bee or the wasp
may sting; but the butterfly has no safety
in most cases but in avoiding notice or in
immediate and precipitate flight. Our com-
mon red-brown monarch is said to be so
offensive in his flavor as to be too unpleas-
ant to eat. But as for most butterflies, birds
can and do eat them with apparent relish.
Even our abused English sparrow, with
his bill shaped for seed-cracking, does not
disdain to double and turn now and then
to capture the venturesome little sulphur-
yellow butterfly.

170 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

A COLOR PROBLEM

So it is puzzling to me to see this splendid
big fellow sail lazily and easily through the
open air, up to the tree tops, over the houses,
lighting now and then to appease what we
might suppose to be a dainty yearning for
the nectar in the corolla of a flower did he
not disclose the catholicify of his tastes by
taking the very next sip from the mud of a
puddle.

Most butterflies too, when they alight,
fold their wings erect, against each other,
presenting thus merely a slender edge to
the eye of a passing bird, and thus doubt-
less escaping notice. But this fellow flaunts
his gaudy wings in the very eyes of ‘his sup-
posed enemies, lazily and insolently opening’
and closing them as he clings to the flower.
There must be something about him which
birds dislike, or he would surely be exter-
minated. |

THE DOUBLE GENERATION

This butterfly’s children will be longer
lived than he, almost beyond a doubt. Be-

AUGUST 171

tween them they will live a year; but he will
have two months of that year and they will
have ten. Not that they will get that
much more out of life, for they will prac-
tically sleep, many of them, eight months
of their ten, and he sleeps once only, and
then for about two weeks in all his two
months of life. His mother probably laid
her dainty egg on the leaf of a tulip-tree
some time in June. There his voracious
caterpillar childhood was passed. But when
the eggs laid by this generation have in their
turn spent their youth on the same beloved
tree, they will hang themselves up by a
shoulder-strap in some secure place, and
there they will swing through all the rigors
of winter without protection, and at any
temperature known in the United States.

FROZEN ANIMALS

It is almost startling to think of life that
can be frozen solid and not be any the worse
for it. But this is really not a very uncom-
mon event amongst many cold-blooded ani-
mals. Even the housed and pampered

172 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

goldfish may be in an aquarium of water
that freezes to the centre and bursts the
glass; but if there has been no other calam-
ity, the ice will melt and release the prison-
ers, who will resume the dull monotony of
their existence, apparently unaffected by the
lapse in their lives.

Next year, in June or early July, this dull
chrysalis will awake. The brown, stiff case
will split, and from it comes, slowly and with
great effort, a limp, flabby creature, with
small pads on his shoulders which within a
single hour will lengthen themselves out
into the splendid wings of our tiger swallow-
tail.

THE LILY AND THE BUTTERFLY

And it was high time he came; for the
gorgeous Canada lily is waiting. Its long
slender stamens are swinging their trembling
anthers in the afternoon sun and calling,
with all the power of their orange petals.
The call is strengthened by the brown
spots. And it is particularly this butterfly
for whom they are calling. He sees the

AUGUST 173

beckoning hue, gathers the projecting sta-
mens between his agile legs, uncoils his long
tubular tongue and plunges it deep into the
heart of the flower. He goes away, un-
mindful of the fact that his legs and his
hairy body and the almost feathery under-
side of his hind wings are red with rich
pollen. This he carries to the next inviting
lily, whose green, protruding pistil, sticky
now for just this purpose, picks from the
butterfly the fertilizing powder so essential
to the seed-bearing of our flowering plants.

FALL

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun:
Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage trees

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core.

Joun Keats.

SEPTEMBER

VII

THE END BEGINS
oh "ACH year as we grow

older, I think we grow
fonder of fall. I like
the good old name of
fall,—it means so much
more to us than au-
a tumn, and it shows it-
ae 25 | self so much our own
that we can at least pronounce it as we
spell it, which is more than we can say for
the longer word. Summer and winter do
not show, on the face of them, what they
mean, but spring and fall prove that the
mind of our ancestors was not without its
touch of poetry. The coming of the green
leaves and their going again marked for
them the striking events of the year.

And now the hope of spring and the strug-
gle of summer have culminated in the frui-
179

180 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

tion of fall, when all Nature rejoices in
things accomplished, luxuriates in the rich
colors of luscious fruits and gloats over the
beautiful old age of the leaves, before she
lies down, not to die, but to foster her
strength for the contest of another year.

FALL MIGRANTS

Not only are we now between seasons,
but our country is a between country for
many of the birds. ‘There were a few weeks
in May when our thickets and hedges were
delicious with the love calls of hosts of
dainty warblers. Out of the southland
they came, clean coated, bright feathered,
clear voiced, merry and active as they could
be. Then most of them left us and went on
to their summer camps in the Adirondacks
and the wilds of Canada. Now they are
with us once more, on their way to their
winter homes in the southland—often indeed
in Venezuela, Brazil, or even in the pampas
back of Buenos Ayres.

But what a change has come over them!
The bright clothes are worn out or cast

SEPTEMBER 181

aside, the cheery melodies are apparently
forgotten, the pursuits and flirtings are all
over, and a quiet and sedate band of trav-
ellers they have become.

The passage of these more extensive voy-
agers seems to set our own summer so-
journers to longing for their winter homes,
and one by one they will drop away. The
martins, that were scattered in little colonies
all over the countryside, will join in great
flocks and make the excursion together.
About the same time the Baltimore oriole
will leave her pendent cradle and take her
now grown children with her. The hum-
ming-birds with their glittering crests will
drop out, a few at a time, and cross the gulf
to join their tropical cousins.

ALL-YEAR BIRDS

Meanwhile some of our permanent birds
‘are beginning to get ready for winter by
changing their summer clothes. In the
spring-time every one so well knows and
loves one of our daintiest little birds that he
has received more names perhaps than any

182 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

other of our feathered friends. We call him
the thistle finch, the goldfinch, the salad
bird, the wild canary, or the yellow bird, as
best suits our individual fancy. Bright
as he was in his courting suit, he now puts
away his canary coat, and for the winter is
quite content to dress like his quiet wife and
his sparrow cousins. So it is that few realize
that this merry bird, with his toboggan-slide
flight, is with us all the year round.

POISON IVY

This is perhaps the most tempting season
of all the year for a walk, and a country lane
beneath the trees is never more lovely. But
there is a serpent in this Eden, in the form
of a creeping, enticing, but trouble-breeding
vine. ,

Poison ivy is a bold bad plant. It seems
so subtle in its attacks, so bitter in its hatred,
that we can hardly help believing it our
sworn enemy. But this is only our view of
the matter, and plant lovers all know there
must be another side to the story. From
its own stand-point the plant surely is most

. SEPTEMBER 183

ingenious. ‘That it is successful is evident
from its abundance. Unless relentlessly
weeded out by man, it covers our fence-
posts, climbs the trunks of our trees, and
clambers about our road-sides.

ITS GOOD POINTS

The truth is, poison ivy has the qualities
that win in life’s race. For one thing, it
knows how to take advantage of the labors
of others. The vital, active work of the
plants is done by their foliage. Their stems
exist almost for the sole purpose of holding
the leaves up into the air and sunlight. The
poison ivy has learned to put the least pos-
sible amount of material into its stem. It
uses the trunks of other trees or posts or
even walls to support itself, and thus saves
for making leaves the material that would
otherwise go to the stem. ‘There is in this
a temptation and a danger to the plant that
it will learn to rob its involuntary assistant
‘of nourishment as well as of support by
sinking its roots into the tissues and stealing
sap. When once this process begins, de-

184 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

generation is sure. But to this tempta-
tion the poison ivy has not succumbed. It
still works up its own sap, and so long as it
does this it is probably safe from the de-
grading fate that has overtaken the lowly
dodder as_.a result of yielding absolutely to
the same tempting habit. To give it this
power to cling to a support, the poison ivy
has developed a faculty of sending out
abundant roots all along its stem, and then
clinging to anything they touch. When the
plant lies prostrate on the earth, these roots
serve as additional feeders and help it to draw
nourishment from the ground, even should
an animal, in trampling about, break off the
twigs from the parent stem. But when a
suitable opportunity comes these roots help
the plant to rise by serving as holdfasts.
Then too the plant has learned to cater
to our blackbirds in the matter of fruit.
These birds are particularly fond of the
whitish berries which hang so tightly to the
stem that they may be found late in the
winter when fruits are scarce. Within this
toothsome pulp are seeds so small and hard

POISON IVY HAS THE QUALITIES THAT WIN

’

IN LIFES RACE

SEPTEMBER 187

that even the gizzard of a blackbird fails to
crush them. So these vagrants serve as the
active disseminators of the canny plant,
which thus gains a foothold in every fence
corner.

NEVER TOUCH IT

But, after all, the poison itself is probably
the strongest element in the plant’s success.
Every part of the plant contains it; every
season of the year finds it present and active.
Even dry and dead plants will still poison
if handled roughly by sensitive fingers. But
one count brought against the plant is false.
It wounds no one except in self-defence.
The idea, very prevalent, that sensitive
persons need only pass to leeward of it
when it is wet with dew, in order to be
poisoned by it is a mistaken one.

I know this is a statement that will be
seriously doubted by many careful observers,
but thorough research by a worker in one
of the great physiological laboratories of
the country has put this beyond doubt.

The poisonous substance in the plant is

188 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

an oil that is not volatile. It is, however,
most persistent, and can be easily trans-
ferred from one object to the other. One
person getting it on his hands and then
washing and wiping his hands on a towel
can later give it to any person who is un-
fortunate enough to use the same towel.
Furthermore, a person treading on the plant
can later transfer it to his skin on removing
his shoes. If a person who has unwittingly
brushed against it will promptly scrub his
hands well with warm water and soap, he
can often remove all trace of the oil before
the eruption appears. ‘The same treatment
early in the attack will sometimes be enough
to prevent its spread. Once well estab-
lished on the skin, no remedy seems to even
allay its violence until it has run its course.
Each person has his own pet treatment, but
none commands the general regard of phy-
sicians. One thing the oily nature of the
original poison makes evident, and that is,
that oily remedies run great risk of simply
dissolving the poison and thus spreading
the disease over a larger surface.

SEPTEMBER 189

The only plant likely to be confused with
our strenuous foe is the Virginia creeper.
This can be distinguished from the poison
ivy by the fact that its leaves have five
leaflets each, while its venomous double
is content with three. It seems strange that
so successful a device for the protection of
the plant as the formation of a poison should
have been so rarely seized upon by others
of our thousands of plants. The truth is
that while a few, like the tomato for in-
stance, are somewhat irritant to an occa-
sional sensitive skin, only one other plant
native to the eastern United States is seri-
ously poisonous to the touch and that is the
swamp sumac.

THE DRAGON-FLY

Over the neighboring pond darts that
fascinating insect, about which cling so
many strange notions. It would seem as if
the dragon-fly is the victim of a curse.
Many are the names under which he goes,
but every one is a reflection on his char-
acter.

190 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

Literary people call him the dragon-fly.
The small boy very commonly speaks of
him as the snake feeder or snake doctor,
or possibly the snake servant. His dis-
ciplinary parent, bent on using: the fly as a
‘bogie to ward off evil-doing, calls him the
devil’s darning-needle, and solemnly and
impressively tells the refractory child that
the insect’s chief duty is to sew up forever
the mouths of all those wicked little children
who tell lies.

The mean side of these awful names is
that they are all libels. The dragon-fly is
as harmless an insect as haunts the river-
side. I have caught them by the hundred
and handled them freely, and there is no
mistake whatever about it.

An insect’s power to harm lies at one end
or the other. A few have a small amount
of venom in their bite; these are chiefly flies
or bugs. A few have their egg-laying tube
sharpened to a fine point and have con-
nected with it a set of poison glands; these
are almost confined to the bees and wasps.
But this fellow can neither bite nor sting.

SEPTEMBER 191

His jaws are usually so small as to be unable
to gather up a fold of skin; or, if large
enough, can barely give a light pinch.
Sting, the dragon-fly has none.

If any one will overcome his prejudice
against this slandered insect and catch him,
he will find him extremely beautiful. We
often hear of the “thousand eyes” of the
fly, but few people ever see this compound
eye. If one of the big fellows, so common
in September, be examined, the facets will
show even to the naked eye, while a magni-
fying-glass brings them out very plainly.

BEAUTIFUL COLORS OF THESE INSECTS

Then too the coloring of these insects is
exquisite. Most colors are due to pig-
ments, but these belong to that wonderful
set whose surface structure determines their
beauty. They are the varying colors that
change with every angle at which the light
strikes them. They are the colors that
gleam in the pearl and glow in the opal,
that give to ancient glass its exquisite beauty. -

They are colors that, in an animal, are apt
13

192 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

to be very fugitive and to dim soon after his
death.

This fellow haunts the water because there
he best finds his food. It has been seri-
ously proposed to cultivate him for his great
fondness for mosquitoes. In connection
with this his one good name was suggested.
It was proposed to call him a “mosquito
hawk,”’ but the name never “took.”

Then too the dragon-fly lays her eggs in
the water and this brings her to our ponds.
Here she hovers over the surface, her long
‘tail bent down. Every few seconds at such

@ 7. atime, she dips the tip of the tail under the
a ee surface and deposits an egg, which sinks to
~< the bottom and adheres to the stones. Here
it develops into its baby stage. Often when
you have lifted a stone from the bed of a
stream a black, flat animal has scurried to
the underside of the stone. This was prob-
ably a young dragon-fly. This water-in-
- habiting and quite unlovely-looking animal
_. will stay here until next summer. ‘Then it
» will climb up the stem of a cat-tail or sedge,
“clinch its toes so as to hook firmly to the

SEPTEMBER 193

plant, and split down the back. From this
split skin will emerge a dragon-fly, limp
and flaccid at first, but soon stiffening up
and flitting away to enjoy his sunny time
of life.

TURTLES ARE DIGNIFIED REPTILES

“Mind your own business and keep your
own secrets”’ is the turtle’s motto. Of all
our reptiles he is the most inoffensive.
Snakes almost every one fears or hates;
lizards give most people a decidedly creepy
feeling; but no one fears the turtle. He
goes quietly on at his own slow gait, harm-
ing no one and harmed of none. The
lizard scurries for his life at the first strange
noise. The snake slinks quietly from the
pathway of the traveller, or perhaps, if
venomous, lies in intense quiet waiting the
need for a stroke. But the turtle does not
even interrupt the tenor of his way, but
continues walking or feeding until you fairly
kick up against him, and then he simply
pulls in his head and legs, curls his tail

about himself, and lies by nu the danger,
13

194 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

if any there be, has passed. Then, as leis-
urely and dignifiedly as he withdrew from
impending harm, he returns to his previous
occupation.

The truth of the matter is the turtle has
nothing to fear. Nature has provided him
with so excellent a coat of armor that he
needs no weapons. The bones of his back
and ribs have grown wider and smoother
and have united to plates formed in his skin.
These the animal has knit together so firmly
as to make a stronghold into which he can
most securely retreat. This box, being
made of bone, is of course white. It is
covered with a series of thin sheets of sub-
stance not unlike our finger-nails. It is
this material from certain large marine
turtles that forms what is known as tor-
toise-shell, from which so many beautiful
and useful articles are made.

HOW THE TORTOISE PROTECTS HIMSELF

Our common land-living box-tortoise is
the best-protected member of his tribe. Not
only can he, like all the rest of his friends,

SEPTEMBER 195

draw his head into the box, but the under-
side of the box is hinged and he can com-
pletely close the flaps. This arrangement
is the more necessary because he cannot
commonly hide in the mud and water, like
his pond cousins, the snapper and the
spotted turtle. These latter are the turtles
we often see as we approach a body of quiet
water. An old projecting log holds per-
haps a dozen of them, lying with out-
stretched necks, enjoying to the full the
warm rays of the summer sun. For they
are in truth children of the tropics, and ours
are wanderers into a clime too cool for them
during a considerable part of the year. So
they use every opportunity to enjoy the
luxury of a sun bath. But in such situa-
tions they are very much exposed. So on
the first sight of our approach, and their
sight is very keen, they drop most uncere-
moniously into the water.

The food of the box-tortoise is as humble
as himself. He has quite a taste for mush-
rooms, and it is astonishing how well versed
he is in the matter of their edibility. I have

196 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

seen him pass fine, firm amanitas as surely
as if he knew that death lurked in their
hidden cup and beneath their gauzy veil.
Three feet farther on he ate of russulas that
were certainly not nearly in as fine condi-
tion, but which lacked the protecting poison
of their more sophisticated relatives.

The wood-turtle, with his orange legs and
the yellow patches on the underside of the
shield, neither confines himself so sedu-
lously to the water as the spotted tortoise,
nor is he so well adapted to land living as
the box-tortoise. He has one trick too
which often betrays him to his enemies.
When the box-tortoise is startled and draws
in his head, he usually does so quite quietly,
but the wood-turtle cannot refrain from
showing his reptilian blood by emitting at
times a low but penetrating hiss. This is
quite sure to attract attention when, if he
had but been silent, he might easily have
escaped unnoticed.

OCTOBER

Vil

THE COLOR MONTH

1, eee indeed are
the woods in October.
People who have almost
lost their liking for the
outside world during
the rest of the year,
* often keep longest a
- _, fondness for the au-
tumnal landscape. Men who rarely look
from a car window seem at this season to
be drawn to the glories with which kindly
Nature fills our senses as she begins her
preparation for the winter’s sleep. Many
a man under the genial influence of an
October afternoon has taken down his for-
gotten gun and cleaned it up and planned for
the gunning trip which he intends shall come
when the “season opens,” but which as a mat-
ter of fact rarely arrives. It is all the subtle
199

200 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

effect of the gloriously restful tinge which the
great artist is giving to her greatest work.

NATURE THE GREAT PAINTER

For Nature is surely our greatest land-
scape painter, and the best that any other
artist can do is feebly to imitate her beauty.
There is but one Corot, and few of us can
see many of his pictures. But how often
does Nature show, to those of us who will
but open our eyes to see, the beauties of
the early morning when the thin mist still
overhangs the valley and everything is
covered with a purple haze. There is but
one Fortuny; but every clear sunny after-
noon in early summer gives, to each of us
who cares enough for it to look, as bright a
scene and as gorgeous a contrast of colors
as any ever painted, and gives them with
ever-varying effects. At no time of the year
is it more delightful to watch Nature at her
work than during these crisp October days.
She guards none of her secrets: she does all
her work openly. But we are too dim-
sighted to see into her methods.

OCTOBER 201

To those of us who have followed her
progress year by year and all the year
through, she has shown many moods, many
‘ caprices. Her pictures are never finished.
Always she retouches them, adding a little
here, painting out a little there. But this
month we catch her in one of her most ex-
alted moments. The exuberance of her
summer mood is over. She paints more
slowly; the colors are more mellow, more
mature: the yellows are less frankly yellow,
the reds more orange or more purple; the
blues are almost all left to the sky. But oh,
the richness of the scene! ‘That rock in the
foreground is flecked with the brownish-
green of the mosses, while from the little
rift the fern stretches out its emerald fronds.
The willows, fading backward through
their color scheme, have become yellowish-
green, and at last a faded, wearied yellow.

THE TREES IN FALL

TULIP POPLAR

For a tree that boldly glories in the au-
tumnal yellow give me the tulip poplar.

202 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

Here is no uncertain note. It is not a
washed-out green, it is not a yellow patch
nor a yellow line, but a clear, vivid chrome
yellow, with a lustre and a glow that make
it no apology, but a glory. It does not
pretend to anything beyond, and the rich-
ness of its tone is its own justification.

THE MAPLES

The maples aim at a more esthetic taste,
and they try their hands at the reds. They
practised a little, quietly, in the spring, and
now boldly attempt the work in the fall.
The sugar-maples are a little too staid to
accept the modern notions, and they paint
their autumn leaves a conventional yellow.
The silver maples put the red on in patches
and blotches. But the red maples, whose
*prentice work in the spring had been so
effective, now paint their leaves with mas-
terly skill. Beginning with the outer edge,
slowly they enrich the yellow, first with
golden, then with orange, and lastly with
red. And so the rainbow creeps in toward
the midrib of the leaf, which often is golden
to the last.

OCTOBER 203

THE OAKS

The oaks are more staid in their colora-
tion. They paint with the sombreness of
an old master. The richest colors only will
do for them.

THE SWEET-GUM

The starred leaves of the sweet-gum tree
are.in themselves so beautiful that they
form a tempting ground to which the tree
responds with the utmost abandon. First
of all, on the side toward the sun, she tints
herself a liquid yellow. As this yellow
slowly passes around the tree to the shaded
side, a wave of orange follows it. Creeping
after this comes:a crimson, which in turn
gives way to mahogany, to be followed in
the best of seasons by a glorious purple.
When one has watched such a tree day by
day, as the sweet richness of the changes in
color sink into him -he feels filled with a
reverence so intense that he knows it is well
the radiance should cease while he still has
power to appreciate the beauty which lies
before him.

204 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

“WE ALL DO FADE AS A LEAF”

FADING AS A LEAF

When the grand old prophet of the exile
told his people how they faded as a leaf,
he joined to it the further complaint that
their righteousness was as filthy rags. So
I fear he had no thought of flattering
them. But the truth of the matter is, the
most beautiful termination life can have is
to fade as does the leaf. It is not the
frost that makes the leaf fall. Trees in
hot countries shed their leaves. But they
do not cast them all at one time. In
the tropics a tree drops its leaves as a
bird moults its feathers, one by one, and
you never miss them. With us, winter
has taught the leaves to fall all at one
time, when they are of least use to the
tree and are most likely to prove a source
of danger.

It is the green portion of the tree that does
most of its work. In young, tender plants
this may mean the whole outside. In older
trees it means practically only the leaves and

OCTOBER 205

the young twigs. In these the food is pre-
pared that builds up all the rest of the plant.
This work can be done well only where the
sunlight is fairly strong.

As the days get shorter and the sun shines
more slantwise, there is not heat enough for
good growth, so our trees prepare to “close
up shop” for the winter. When they come
to do this, they find themselves with two
sorts of material in their leaves, the live
material, that did the work and is still good,
—protoplasm the scientist calls it,—and a
lot of by-product in the shape of mineral
matter brought up from the soil. The
protoplasm can be taken apart, carried back
into the trunk, and stored away for use next
year. It is getting too cold for the plant to
do this well, so it puts “warming up” cur-
tains at the windows,—that is, it colors
its leaves yellow or red, and thus absorbs
the sun’s rays and furnishes warmth enough
to permit the plant to carry the living sub-
stance out of the leaves into the trunk or
the roots.

Of the mineral matter in the leaves the

206 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

plant has quite enough for its present pur-
poses, so it is not carried away. Now the
leaves, thin and dry, as compared with their
summer condition, are cast aside, thus re-
turning to the soil the minerals that had
been taken up, and which now are in good
shape to be used over again. This is the
reason why woods earth is so good a soil
for potted plants: it is full of concentrated
nourishment from the decayed leaves. As
before hinted, the leaves may become a
source of positive danger to the tree. ‘They
have such broad surfaces that the heavy
winter winds could catch firm hold of them
and thus break off branches, or even uproot
the trees. ‘These same leaves would be
likely to catch and hold the snow, and thus
would be again more than the tree could
possibly bear.

So after all its lifework has been com-
pleted, with a gentle consideration for the
tree that bore it, the leaf gently draws
through the base of its own stem a sheet of
cork, dressing the wound, so as to prevent
infection even before the wound is made.

OCTOBER 207

Then only does it drop away, giving back
to the earth the precious materials it has
borrowed and used during its lifetime.
Who would not be proud to have it said of
him, in full truth, that he had faded as a
leaf ?

A PAIR OF FALL FRUITS

But while we have been philosophizing
we have walked fairly through a patch of
dried-up weeds, and now see the result.
Covered—yes, fairly covered—with beggar-
ticks. We did not see them? Of course
not. It will be a long time before we really
do see them unless they fasten themselves
upon our clothing. For that is just exactly
what they were made for. A month ago we
would easily have seen them, for they then
carried yellow flowers that were bidding for
attention. But now they hide themselves
carefully. Do you see those low brownish
plants, growing on both sides of the path?
That is where we got them. ‘There are
lots there still for the next person who
comes along.

208 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

BEGGAR-TICK

Innate depravity makes them grow along
the path, you say. You forget. That is
looking at it from the wrong side again.
Look at.it from their stand-point. You
see they want their children to grow up in
better surroundings than they did,—where
there is less crowding and a likelier chance
to make a living. So they send them off
hanging to each passer-by, hoping better
things for them. We are only doing our
part in the play, first when we carried them
along, and now as we sit here on this fence
and pick them off. Look at one of them.
How splendidly it is fitted for its work. The
seed part is ordinary enough, but these two
prongs, with their back-pointing barbs, do
the work. Now let us go ahead. There
you go, jumping into another patch. Well,
that is the patch some one planted last year,
in just the way we have set out another crop
for some one to jump into next fall. Of
course the beggar-ticks did not give their
seed that shape for the purpose of catching
you. They were meant to catch into the

OCTOBER 209

fur of humbler animals. But if you insist
on going about as a wolf in sheep’s clothing,
you must expect to do a sheep’s duty.

INDIAN CORN

But we are safely over the fence and out
of the weeds, and now for a walk along the
edge of this cornfield. Was there ever
another crop so beautiful, so impressive as
Indian corn? It is the richest legacy, be-
side the land itself, the Indians have left us.
Old age, a ripe old age, has overtaken these
stalks. The hair lacks the lustre, the silki-
ness of youth. The garments hang limp
about a form that has lost most of its curves.
The skin is getting brown and wrinkled and
spotted. Above all, the garrulousness of
old age has come on, and these stalks whis-
per constantly to each other, even to them-
selves. It is not a complaining whisper: it
is the quiet whisper of old age to old age—
that lovely old age that comes after a fruit-
ful life which has been spent in the faithful
performance of duty.

How much more complaisantly we look

14

210 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

upon the corn than upon the beggar-tick!
With our one-sided view-point the one is
our friend, the other our enemy. Of course
they have no such notion. Each is anxious
to provide well for its children: each takes a
different plan. One is unobtrusive, clings
to us, unconsciously to ourselves, and makes
us serve its purpose, not only without our
intending to do so, but clearly and distinctly
against our will.

The other has taken a less subtle plan.
Instead of arranging that each child shall be
dropped into a new region far from the
home competition, the corn provides each
baby plant with inheritance enough to live
on vigorous'y until it is quite able to take
care of itself. For that, of course, is the
meaning of all the starch and oil lying up
against the sprout in this big seed. Then
we come along, persuade ourselves that the
corn is doing all this for us, eat the baby,
inheritance and all, and go on our way re-
joicing that we have so good a friend as
Indian corn. And all this as a result of our
view-point!

OCTOBER Palle

THE NUTS

What would October be without the nuts ?
Those of you who get them from the grocer
have no suspicion of how delicious they are.
It seems to me the big Spanish and Japanese
chestnuts do not compare with our native
product. As for the English walnut, it may
be easy to crack, but it is a tasteless thing
beside our black walnut, and not to be
named in the same breath with the white
walnut, or butternut, as many of us were
taught to call it. The boy who has never
come home with his fingers blackened with
walnut stain that will not leave him for a
week—well, he deserves to be put with the
boy that cannot swim, that needs a cup to
drink from a running stream, and thinks
milk ‘‘comes”’ in a bottle.

WILD FRUITS ARE BEST

Indeed, these wild fruits are good almost
in proportion to the difficulty we experience
in gathering them. The wintergreen berries
and partridge berries are easy to gather,

but rather insipid. The May-apple, read-

212 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

ily found and simple to pick, is a tasteless
affair as you pluck it from the stalk. But
when fall comes it takes the practised eye to
discover nuts. You see, a nut-tree tries
every means to save its fruits from being
eaten; for are they not the seeds themselves ?
And these seeds, ever so much bigger than
even those of Indian corn, must do all that
in their power lies to elude the eyes of hun-
gry animals. The simple corn falls too easy
a prey; they must do better if they are to
escape and perpetuate their kind. Here
again two plans are evident. The chestnut
is more subtle; the walnut relies on its main
strength.

THE KEEN CHESTNUT

The chestnut, so primitive in the matter
of its yellow fall color, in the simple char-
acter of its leaves, in its quick growth for a
tree, is quite sophisticated in the matter of
its nuts. During the long growing season
the nut is covered by a hull which is green
in color. This means that against the back-
ground of the leaves it will, for the most

OCTOBER 213

part, escape observation. The coat, too, is
so prickly that few things except man, with
his skilful fingers, can open it. As the
leaves turn in the fall the burr turns too,
and to just the same shade. Then comes
a frost, and brown leaves cover the ground.
Now the burrs crack open, and the chest-
nuts fall and nestle closely in stray crevices,
there springing up, the next year, as chest-
nut seedlings.

THE WALNUT

The walnut is even more successful in
this effort. But in addition the coat is so
intensely bitter that no animal cares to bite
into it, while the shell is so rough and hard
that nothing but a squirrel can get through
it, until man, with his tool-handling ability,
comes and crushes the firm covering. The
kernel is never sweeter than when it is taken
from the walnut-shell crushed under its own
tree by means of a handy stone.

THE WHITE WALNUT

Some people think the white walnut is
not good to eat, that it is too oily. They

214 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

simply do not know how to take it. It is
our one summer nut. It should lie out
under its own tree over winter, and next
summer, for some strange reason, it will not
have sprouted. ‘Then is the time to eat it.
It is the very ambrosia of wild foods.

A LITTLE SOJOURNER

THE WOOD PEWEE

Already we have missed the great ma-
jority of our bird friends, and soon we must
part from most of the rest. There, sitting
on that projecting dead twig, is one of the
daintiest of them. He should have been
away before this—probably will be by to-
morrow. Hear his “pee-ee-wee-e” down
and up, as if to say “I’m he-re.” Most
birds neglect their music as soon as they
are married. Many others will not consent
to sing during the heat of the day. But the
wood pewee keeps up his modest, reassur-
ing note all day and all summer. His as-
pect is that of a courtly old gentleman who
is striving on slender means to keep up
appearances. His suit, apparently black,

A COURTLY OLD GIy iN

4

,

OCTOBER Q17

is rather rusty, and just a little white at the
edge of the pockets. His waistcoat, too,
has seen better days, and is sadly in want
of bleaching. But he keeps it all so neat,
and is so almost plaintively anxious to do
_nothing which is not entirely dainty and
proper, that he is a most lovable bird. See
that fluttering sally after a fly. Now he
is back on his perch. Oh, if all of us could
only go as patiently about our work, doing
our part cheerfully and contentedly, and
helping meanwhile to brighten the lives of
those about us!

NOVEMBER

IX

THE SPORTSMAN’S MONTH

. PORTSMEN have al-
~most had November for
their own. ‘This is the
open season for more
kinds of game than may
\ be shot in any other
See ’* month. So it has come
ean | _ to pass that many people
scarcely think of walking into the woods
unless they have with them gun and dog.
As a matter of fact, these have become
with very many American sportsmen simply
the excuse. It is a better spirit that really
animates them. Over every one there
comes, now and then, a swelling longing
to escape from the trammels and conven-
tions of civilization and to live the simple
and unconstrained life of the woods. But
most men would feel foolish if they were to
221

222 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

leave their business and put on old clothes
and siinply tramp in the woods. So the gun
offers the excuse. It really often does not
matter whether much game is found.

THE NEW SPORTSMAN

Indeed our finer-fibred sportsmen have
learned voluntarily to limit the size of their
game-bags. Standing and shooting tame
pheasants by the hundred would hardly be
called sport in America, as it is in England
and Germany. Better still, there has come
over a small and select body of our sports-
men a new spirit. The game is nearly gone,
say they; why shoot the rest? Why not
ieave these lingering remnants to tell us
what our woods once were? If you shoot
the deer with a gun, he is only that much
meat, that will last at best but for a short
time, and a head which though it may bear
witness to your prowess is at the same time
equal evidence of your butchery. But a
deer shot with a camera remains to enjoy
life. Indeed to take a successful snap-shot
of an animal requires a far higher degree of

NOVEMBER 228

wood skill than to fell him with a rifle-ball.
So it is, that the modern nature lover’s zeal
has grown out of the old sportsmanlike in-
stinct, influenced partly by the waning game
and partly by the newer sensitiveness to the
meanness of cruelty.

WHAT IS SPORT?

Not that the gunner is to be either de-
spised or pitied. We are better, so the
Great Teacher has told us, than many spar-
rows. And if man, worn by the routine
of life, finds himself refreshed and strength-
ened in the fall by his trip through the
woods, with gun and dog, surely we, who
slaughter sheep and oxen by the thousands
for our daily nourishment, have little right
to complain, when the sportsman comes
home with a few grouse or rabbits, or even
with a deer, a bear, or anelk. But he must
go at a sportsman’s season, must use a
sportsman’s weapon, must shoot at a sports-
man’s animal, must give the creature a fight-
ing chance, and must limit himself to a
sportsman’s share. Meanwhile, those of

224 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

us who think that all that is best in an ani-
mal goes with his life, and who love animals
too much to shoot them ourselves, cannot
help but wish that more men were of our
way of thinking, and could enjoy the wood,
without the gun. For a walk in November,
like virtue, is its own reward.

How quiet the woods are just now! ‘The
brown leaves lie in some places almost knee-
deep, and there is a childlike joy in wading
through them, breaking thus, as they crackle
beneath our feet, a stillness that is some-
times almost oppressive. For about all of
our summer birds are gone now. It is true
a few others have taken their places, but
songs are practically unheard. The light
hammer of an occasional downy wood-
pecker, the gentler tapping of the nuthatch
hunting for larvee in the crevices of the bark
and chattering to himself in a wiry under-
tone as he runs up and down the branches
of the trees, the inquisitive pertness of the
golden-crowned kinglet, who in spring com-
monly keeps to the top of the trees but now
becomes sociable: these are the unobtrusive

NOVEMBER 225

delights that reach the ear of the nature lov-
er, but which may all easily be missed by the
casual walker. But as we near the creek
a shrill, harsh clatter tells us that one of our
feathered friends has not yet gone, and that,
while man has taken to the gun, the ancient
fisherman is still plying his vocation.

THE KING OF FISHERMEN

A LONE FISHERMAN

Fishing is a selfish business. When you
have once found a hole in which the fish
really bite, you look with small affection on
the new-comer who tries to drop his hook
into the same pool. The birds are no better
than we are in this matter. ‘The kingfisher,
for example, has this human fishing trait
developed to an amazing degree. There is
one of these birds that haunts a few spots
on a creek I often visit. When I come too
near to one of his stations he leaves it for the
next, and as I go up the stream he keeps
ahead of me until I have chased him out
three or four times. Then he flies around

me and begins at the bottom again. He is
15

226 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

afraid of me; but let another kingfisher try
to fish in his waters and he drives him out
in short order. He allows no trespassing
on his domain. Even his wife receives
scant courtesy except during the nesting
season. ‘Then he makes her a dugout for
her home. In this, with a mattress of fish-
bones to sleep on, she must be content.
Commonly he sits on a dead limb that
overhangs the water. His dishevelled hair
shows how distracting a business fishing is
for him. His neck-tie, too, is awry, and his
blue-gray coat is flecked with patches of
dusty white. From his perch he peers
down into the water. If fish are scarce, a
frog or a crayfish answers, or even some
poor drowning bug that comes floating by.
When he sees the glitter of a fin below him,
he pounces head foremost into the water
and comes out with his prey sticking cross-
wise in his bill. Away he flies chattering,
to light at his next station, devour his catch,
and then watch for another. His voice, as
he clatters along, sounds as if fishing during
the cold weather had got into his windpipe,

A LONE FISHERMAN

NOVEMBER 229

for he is as hoarse as a wooden rattle. He
may leave us any day now for his long,
lonely flight into warmer regions. Most
of our birds are sociable, but this fellow has
been so unneighborly all through the fishing
season that he cannot bring himself to travel
with any one now.

There is, I believe, a record of kingfishers
living in a colony out in Illinois, but there
everybody is sociable.

HALCYON DAYS

In the countries north of the Mediterra-
nean there are a few weeks in midwinter
when the weather grows particularly balmy
and pleasant, somewhat in the manner of our
own Indian summer. It is at this time,
so the fable runs, that the kingfishers build
their nests, floating them upon the sea,
and in them hatching out their young.
Meanwhile Molus, the god of the winds,
tempers and restrains the breezes lest they
disturb these mating birds. For was not
his own daughter, Halcyon, changed into
a kingfisher when she joined her ship-

230 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

wrecked and drowned husband, and are not
all kingfishers dear to him for her sake?
So these lovely sunny days are called king-
fisher days—halcyon days, for halcyon is
the name of the kingfisher.

But belated as a kingfisher is at this time
of the year, surely he seems less out of place
than does a live butterfly, however dull and
sleepy it may be.

A WINTER BUTTERFLY

THE MOURNING CLOAK

Butterflies and winter do not seem to fit
together. A well-conducted butterfly ought
to die in the fall at least, if not in the summer.
And indeed the life of this airy creature,
after he has once gained his wings and
become truly a butterfly, is usually very
short. We have one family of them, how-
ever, of which several members have the
very unusual habit of overwintering. I
found one of them the other day under-
neath a sheltering stone on a neighboring
hill-side. She was probably born some-
time in September. That she is living now

NOVEMBER | 231

is due largely to the fact that she is one of ®
the most jerky fliers imaginable. All the ©
butterflies take a more or less zigzag course.
Many birds like to eat them, and this mo-
tion helps the butterflies to dodge their ene-
mies. [The mourning cloak and her rela-
tives are the best dodgers, and it helps them
to a long life. While other butterflies die
off in the fall, this one hunts out a sheltered
spot in which to pass the winter. ‘Thus she
has an early start in the spring, and her
children can be well on in life before the
first generation of other butterflies are much
more than under way.

There is another feature about this but-
terfly that helps to prolong her life. When
she settles down she folds the upper sides
of her wings together, and the under surface
is so dull, and harmonizes so thoroughly
with the background against which she rests,
that she is exceedingly hard to detect. So
it is that she eludes the beak of the preda-
tory bird, that might otherwise bring her to
an untimely end. But to have only dull
hues on her delicate wings would be alto-

232 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

gether too hard on so ethereal a creature as
a butterfly. Painted as sombrely as this,
life would be too apt to be loveless. So, if
one side of her wings is colored for her ene-
mies, the other is painted to attract her
color-loving mate. While the under sur-
face looks gray and dull and lined like rot-
ting wood, the upper side is decorated with
a coating of rich satiny brown, and its
beauty is enhanced by a wide edge of warm

buff.

BUTTERFLY COLORS

It is wonderful how delicate and frail are
these butterfly colors. Most insects have
thoroughly transparent wings, and so are
those of the butterfly if we will but rub
them between our fingers. Then the color
shows itself as a powdery deposit. Exam-
ined closely, this powder proves to be made
up of exceedingly small scales, put on like
shingles. Each scale is hollow, and into
it the blood of the butterfly easily pene-
trates. This becomes cut off, and just as
our blood in a bruise goes through a series

NOVEMBER 233

of degenerative changes from blue to black
and then olive and green and yellow before
the color disappears, so here color changes
come on, but are arrested in each scale at a
definite point that determines the color. If
it seems a cold business to analyze the hue
of a butterfly’s wing and bring it down to a
physiological process, forget it all and re-
member only the beauty.

Few insects have the hardihood to brave
the winter. The race is carried over from
year to year either in the egg or in a resting
stage as unlike the parent as an insect can
well be, and the parents often drag out a
useless existence until life comes to a tedi-
ous end.

THE GRASSHOPPER’S DEATH
A LOVELESS OLD AGE

Hard luck is the life portion of the grass-
hopper. The happy member of this tribe,
it seems to me, is the one the turkey picks
up, for his troubles are soon over. Miss-
ing this fate, a lingering death usually
awaits him. Sometimes his reckless leap

234 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

into the air, in search of fresh pastures,
proves his end. When he jumps he has not
the slightest idea of where he will come
down. Often he alights in the angle be-
tween a grass leaf and its stem. Caught
there he cannot release himself, and death
through starvation awaits him. If he, es-
cape this imprisonment, later in the season
a little red spider is apt to attach itself to
him just below the base of the wing. This
greedy villain slowly sucks away his life-
blood until gradually the wretched host
succumbs. Should the grasshopper escape
earlier accidents and live to old age, he is
still more to be pitied. The cold days of
fall stiffen the poor thing, and he lies ap-
parently dead in some crevice between the
stones. A warmer sun thaws him out again,
and he gives a few short jumps in the early
afternoon. With the cool of evening he
stiffens up once more, probably to remain
so for days, even for weeks. Finally the
cold becomes too great for him to bear, and
from torpor he passes into death. In the
latitude of Pennsylvania his wife some-

NOVEMBER 235

times lives over the winter. Should she do
so, it is only as a battered, dilapidated relic,
with no aim or purpose in her unnaturally
lengthened existence.

The truth of the matter is, that down
‘South grasshoppers live over the winter; in
the extreme North they never do. On the
border line—that is, the middle belt of the
ccountry—they sometimes do, though not as
a usual thing. But insects, however much
they may seem out of place in winter, are
surely no more so than are flowers, and yet
we have a not uncommon November bloom.

THE WITCH-HAZEL

The witch-hazel waits until all other
flowers are over; then, just as likely as not,
after it has thrown away all of its leaves and
is quite bare, in October or November, it
puts out its yellow flowers. I suspect it
does it to attract some of the little flies that
hover about at this time. The warm days
still bring out those insects, and now the
witch-hazel blossoms have no competition.
So they get their insect visitors, and thus set

236 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

their seeds, which is, after all, what they
want to do with their flowers. There is
another odd thing about this plant. While
it is just preparing to set its seed, it is still
carrying the fruits that matured from last
year’s flowers. They are the urn-like ob-
jects scattered over the branches. Some
bright morning, after a frosty night, each
fruit will split sharply into two, and partly
into four. The sections will bend away
from each other, and under the strain of the
curving pod four oblong, hard seeds will
shoot away for eight or ten feet. This is
the witch-hazel’s way of giving her children
a start in the race for life.

THE DIVINING ROD

Anything we do not understand we are
apt to attribute to the Deity or to the evil
one, and it seems then to need no further
explanation. Which of these is considered
the agent in the peculiar use sometimes
made of the witch-hazel, the name “ divin-
ing rod”’ would seem to indicate. A twig
of this plant, rightly balanced, is supposed

A Ve

NOVEMBER 237

to point out a good place in which to dig for
water. Of course this is all nonsense, but
the divining rod is often used in spite of that.

But here are the evidences of a citizen of
the woods who seems better prepared to
withstand the winter, for he has learned to
rifle nature’s storehouse.

THE SQUIRREL
A GOOD BURGLAR

A good burglar does a clean job. He
does not crack the windows and break the
furniture. He makes a neat entrance that
will answer his purpose and not do violence
to his professional pride. These empty
walnut-shells lying under an oak tree have
caught my eye. Now walnuts would seem
to have no business under an oak tree, and
doubtless some animal that ate the kernels
brought the nuts here. It was not a boy,
for he is an unskilful burglar and would
have cracked the shell with a stone. The
clean-cut hole in each side of each shell tells
that the tool of a professional burglar has
been at work here. A little red squirrel is

238 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

doubtless the culprit. Burglary is heredi-
tary in his family, and he has inherited not
only the splendid kit of tools, but also the
furtive habits necessary for the business.
As I watch one, he flies up the trunk of the
tree, out on its spreading limb, gives a quick
jump to the extended branch of the neigh-
boring tree, and runs down its trunk. If he
had only run across the ground he could
have got there in half the time. But time
is not such an object with him. His whole
life is a series of dangers, and on the tree
he is fairly safe. So he spends as little
time as possible on the ground. His curv-
ing nails, even sometimes his sharp teeth,
help him to hold securely to the bark. I
know it is the fashion to decry the red
squirrel. He is the Ishmael of the fur-
bearers, as the English sparrow is amongst
the birds. But, for the life of me, I cannot
help loving him. He has a reprehensible
habit of taking young birds from their nests,
but I have a predilection for spring chicken
myself which warns me not to be too hard
on a fellow sinner. Of all the wood crea-

NOVEMBER 239

tures he seems to me the most riotously
mirthful and good-natured. It is true he
is a teasing, harrying sprite, but he does not
seem at all ill-natured. And when he takes
to playing he does it with the utmost
abandon. ‘Tag is his game, by preference,
and surely when two red squirrels get well
interested in their sport, they are more en-
grossed in it than anything else but college
boys engaged in foot-ball—and the squirrels
need neither referee nor surgeon. When
it comes to leaping from one tree to the
next, or, if hard pressed, from the top of the
tree to the ground, the red squirrel spreads
his legs out wide. The loose flaps of skin
running from front to hind legs, and the
broad vibrant tail, give him a big surface to
resist the wind, and he fairly sails down.
Of course he cannot rival his cousin, the fly-
ing squirrel, in this feat, but he compensates
for this by being a far more active runner.

A wonderfully effective tool is that pair
of upper front teeth of the squirrel. ‘They
are long and curved, and his split upper lip
allows him to expose them fully for their

240 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

work. The hard enamel covers only the
front, while the more yielding ivory forms
the rear of the tooth. This softer back
keeps wearing away rapidly, leaving the
sharp edge of the enamel to do the cutting.
If you cage a squirrel and keep him on soft
food, it will be but a comparatively short
time before his front teeth are far too long
for his comfort.

But while all these delights are engaging
our attention we have forgotten that the
days are not now so long as they were and
that the sun is low down in the southwest.

SUNSET

There is a popular notion that the sun
rises in the east and sets in the west. That
we think so only shows how willing we are
to believe what we are told in spite of our
eyes. The truth is, there are only two days
in the whole year when the sun does any
such thing. ‘These two days are March
twentieth and September twenty-second,
when the days and the nights are each
twelve hours long.

NOVEMBER Q41

When the sun really means business in
our part of the country, it makes its appear-
ance at half past four in the morning and it
gets up in the northeast. It works hard all
day, and by the time it leaves for the night
at half past seven it has moved around to
the northwest. But now in this section of
the country the sun is deserting us. It keeps
out of sight in the morning until a quarter
before seven; then it comes up far south
of east, hurries across the sky in a half-
hearted kind of a way, keeping low down,
and dives under again, far south of the west
point, by a quarter before five in the even-
ing. Every day the sun gets up later and
farther south of east, until just before
Christmas, when it will come up in the
southeast, will stay out only about nine
hours, and slink away again by the time it
has crossed over to the southwest.

. WHEN OUR NIGHTS ARE LONG

It seems as if the sun were treating us
badly, but there are other people in the

world, and it is their turn now. Ours will
16

242 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

come again in good time. Meanwhile our
part of the world will have to prepare to be
content with but little of the sun’s society
for a time. We can console ourselves with
the thought that we are better off than the
poor creatures that live far north. Here
again we sometimes have a curious notion.
We often talk as if they had six months of
continuous day and six months of night.
The explorer who reaches the pole and stays
there for a year will perhaps be the first
man who ever experienced that state of
affairs. At the Arctic Circle there is one
night only when for twenty-four hours the
sun is gone, and the next night is a few
minutes shorter. The nearer the pole the
longer the nights, but it is only at the very
pole that the night is six months long, and
this we know only because “it must be so,”
and not because any one has ever experi-
enced it.

WINTER

Now comes the graybeard of the north;
The forests bare their rugged breasts
To every wind that wanders forth:
And in their arms the lonely nests
That housed the birdlings months ago
Are edged with flakes of drifted snow.

Henry ABBEY.

DECEMBER

xX

SNOW

(ECEMBER brings out
wall of Nature’s re-
; sources. The old
: mother has fed her
children with water in
‘the summer of their
growth, and now,

” when they lie down
for their long winter sleep, she turns the
water into a blanket which she carefully
tucks about them. And wonderful water it
is of which this covering is made. Clean,
soft, white, porous, it is an ideal protection.
When she turns her liquids into solids Na-
ture makes crystals of them. She has only
a few general plans for her crystals, but her
variations of these plans are infinite. The
one she uses when she builds up the snow
crystals is, of all others, the one that makes

them pack most loosely.
247

248 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

ONE INCH OF RAIN MAKES TEN
OF SNOW

SNOW CRYSTALS

Let the fine flakes of snow that fall on a
crisp, cold day drop on the surface of your
sleeve or hat, and you will see many patterns
in many storms, but they are all variations
of the six-pointed star. The points them-
selves have points, and these again may
branch, and all are put together into such a
delicate filigree as to take up a great deal
of room and weigh very little indeed. An
inch of rainfall, the drops frozen as they
form into delicate crystals, will make ten
inches of snow. As a result these crystals
cannot pack tightly and smother the life
that lies buried but not dead beneath them.
But, on the other hand, they keep it warm
and comfortable until the return of the
spring sun.

We are told that “God tempers the wind
to. the shorn lamb,” and it is equally true
that He tempers the winter winds to all His
creatures. Cold of itself does little harm

DECEMBER 249

so long as the air is dry. I have heard
Kennan, the Siberian traveller, say that he
had worked comfortably on a calm, dry day
when the temperature was sixty degrees
below zero. The very first thing that hap-
pens as the air begins to get cold is that the
moisture settles out of it in the graceful,
delicate form of snow, leaving the air dry,
pure, and exhilarating. And, with all its
other blessings, snow is white. Fluffy and
transparent as each crystal is, it could be
nothing else. For the light that enters it
is reflected from so many surfaces that it is
sure to come back whole, as it went in, and
whole light means white light.

THE WHITENESS OF SNOW

Black snow would be dangerous; so
would red or yellow. These are “warm-
ing-up colors,’ and they change the sun’s
rays to heat. Such snow would soon melt
again and prove a very poor protection.
But white snow throws back the sunlight in
just the form in which it receives it, con-
verting none of it into heat, and thus the

250 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

snow can lie long on the ground. Throw
dirt on the snow, and its dark color quickly
makes it eat its way in whenever the sun
shines on it. After a snow-storm, once let
the horses’ feet mingle the dirt of the road
with the snow and sleighing will soon be
over.

NATURE'S IRRIGATION PLANS

Nature secures another advantage by
changing the water into snow. All through
the winter, while the plant world has not
sufficient sunlight and warmth to grow, she
collects on the high regions the water not
now needed by the plants, and holds it back;
not in dams and lakes that might break and
flood the valleys, and which in any event
could only water the lowlands; but on every
height she gathers a store of water that will
not flow away and needs no-damming, but
which is ready, when the first warm, sun-
shiny days of spring come, to allow its life-
giving streams to find their way gently down
the hills to the valleys below, and to ooze
slowly through the ground to the plants that

DECEMBER 251

are all preparing at that time for their grand
onward rush into beauty and bloom.

I fear it needs such philosophizing on the
snow to console me for the fact that walking
at this time of the year is rather tiring, if one
cares to leave the broken track and plunge
through the woods and along the stream,
beneath the snow-laden hemlocks and the
cold, naked oaks and elms and maples.
But if one does not go so far afield, he ap-
preciates all the better whatever sight may
be silhouetted against the sharp background,
or whatever sound breaks out of the crisp
stillness, unbroken by the rustle of leaves,
the carol of birds, or the chirp of insects.
When we add to this the glorious sense of
exhilaration with which one is filled after
the battle with the wind and the cold, a
winter walk is not without its allurements
to the nature lover sufficiently hearty to
withstand its rigors.

WINTER MUSIC

This is winter. This morning the wagons
creaked as their wheels went over the snow

252 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

The frost crystals scream a brisk accom-
paniment to each step, and that means crisp
cold. ‘The wheels of the train ring on the
steel rails. You never catch such a clang
as that in the summer time. Watch the
long line of white cloud as the steam from
the locomotive stack trails back. It does
not build the piled cottony white masses
that follow the locomotive on a summer af-
ternoon, especially before a thunder-shower.
Instead, the white stream soon melts into
a whispy, curly, diaphanous cloud, that
floats away in flecks. And then too how
the telegraph wires sing this morning! This
is the time for these olian harps. On
these cold days the wires run in almost
straight lines from pole to pole. The cold
makes them shorter, and so tightens them
up. In summer they sag, and are not tense
enough to sing. But now every crisp breeze
sets them humming and ringing with a most
cheerful tune. If you have never heard
it before, lay your ear against the telegraph
pole, and you will catch music weird and
strange, with its absence of measured ca-

DECEMBER 253

dence, and yet full of captivating swellings
and of surgings from the gentlest, tenderest
pianissimos to the boldest, most stirring of
fortes. It obeys none of our laws of musi-
cal composition, and yet it is undoubtedly
supremely musical. ‘To me it seems rarely
strange that an instrument so planned by
man for a different and far more practical
purpose, should lend itself so readily to the
gentle touches of the invisible musician who
never seems to strike a discordant note.
And so, I say, this is winter: clear, typical
winter weather. But out-door life in winter
is, after all, by no means barren of attrac-
tions, and one of the most delightful of
them announces itself with a tap-tap-tap-
ping that is insistent enough to demand
attention.

A BIRD INSIDE A TREE

THE DOWNY WOODPECKER

Rarely do two things fit each other better
than do the tree trunk and the woodpecker.
He is born in the trunk of a tree; he lives on
the trunk, and when he leaves it, it is but

Q54 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

to go to another. His toes are built to cling
to it, while most birds have feet fashioned
to cling to the limbs or to walk on the ground.
His tail is made to brace him against the
trunk; most birds would hopelessly spoil
their tails by such use. He feeds on the
insects that infest the bark, and when he
wants to woo his downy mate, he uses some
dry old dead trunk as a drum and on it beats
what is to her a most fascinating tattoo.
Almost any other of our common birds has
a foot fashioned so as to allow him to put
three toes on the front of his perch and one
behind, and after he has settled himself
down he can hold tight enough to sleep
there. ‘The woodpecker is somewhat awk-
ward when he tries to sit across a twig, be-
cause he parts his toes in the middle and
puts two in front and two behind. But this
gives him a grip on the erect portions of the
tree that almost no bird not of his family
can equal. Then his tail feathers are firm
and pointed, and when he has fastened his
toes in the bark he spreads his stiff tail,
presses the points into the crevices of the

DECEMBER 255

tree, and is ready for his work,—that of
clearing the bark of insects and of those
“white worms” that will become full-
fledged insects later on.

The woodpecker is a most industrious
fellow, beginning near the bottom of a tree
and working his way up to the top. Even
in the very dead of winter he finds here a
hearty meal, and the poor insects that had
crept under the edges of the dried bark in
the autumn fall victims to his searching eye
and his strong, prying bill. Having worked
one trunk over thoroughly, from bottom to
top, he sweeps with undulating flight to the

bottom of another tree, and works his way ;

up it.

DOWNY’S NESTING

When the snow has gone and spring has
come, he will take to the dry, hollow, light-
ning-blasted top of a tree. On this far-
sounding drum he will rattle away cheerily
and industriously until some downy maiden
who loves a drummer responds. ‘Then he
turns to and digs her a home out of the same

Wer

256 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

dry trunk, and there they raise their downy
family.

He is one of the few birds we have that
stay with us all the year round. In the quiet
of the winter woods, the heart of the walker
is cheered when he hears the gentle “rat-
tat-tat-tat”’ of the pecker’s work, and the
subdued “twit, twit-chee, chee, chee”’ of his:
gentle voice. If it were not for these little
noises you would be very apt to miss seeing
him, for he is a speckled dweller on a
speckled trunk. His only touch of color is
the splash of red across the back of the neck,
and even this scanty adornment is denied his
wife. It is the old common trick in the males
of birds to monopolize the colored clothing
and to leave the plainer garb to their mates.

But not all the interest in this tree centres
around its feathered visitor. About its base,
peering through the snow, are the long,
hearty-looking fronds of the Christmas fern.

FERNS IN WINTER

The Creator has fashions in plants, and
the ferns are quite old-fashioned. There

DECEMBER 257

was a time when they were the vogue.
Then they grew rankly in every swamp
from the equator to the pole. But that
time is over now, and the ferns are quite out.
Then they grew of all sizes: tree-ferns were
common everywhere. Now tree-ferns are
practically unknown outside of the tropics.
The only reason why ferns have survived
at all is because they have sought safety in
their insignificance.

THE FERN FASHION

Plants grown from seeds are the fashion
now, but they are quite a modern introduc-
tion. The days when the coal was made
were the time of the fern fashion, and such
a thing as a seed plant, except in the primi-
tive form of the pines, had not yet been
invented. Now the seed plants are domi-
nating everything, and slowly driving the
rest into the cold regions and into the
swamps and up the hill-sides. Most of the
ferns take kindly to the swamps, and that
means death to all their exposed parts in
the winter when the water freezes. A few,

17

258 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

chiefly plain, tough specimens whose fronds
(as fern leaves are called) hug the ground
rather closely, have learned to stand the cold
of winter. It is a patch of this kind, called
the Christmas fern, that I have just found.
Some of the fronds are brown and dead,
but many, in the sheltered places, are al-
most as green as in the summer.

To many people the idea of a plant with-
out seeds is a strange one, but this is only
half of the strangeness. No fern in the
ordinary course of events has a fern for a
parent, and equally strangely no fern, as
events ordinarily happen, has a fern for its
child. But each fern has had a fern for its
grandfather and will in turn have a fern for
its grandchild.

THE FERN’S PATERNITY

When a fern has come to maturity, as
-will be readily remembered by any. one who
ever picks these exquisitely graceful plants,
brown spots appear somewhere about it,
commonly on the under side of the fronds.
From these spots, at full ripeness, a brown

DECEMBER 259

dust is dropped, indeed sometimes thrown
to a little distance. This brown powder
consists of little grains each of which is a
spore, and these serve the plant for the pur-
pose that seeds answer in the higher plants.
But they differ in this, that, while a seed is
really a child of two parents, the spore is
but a piece of one. A seed, springing up,
will produce a plant with qualities between
those of its parents, with all the possibilities
of improvement on either that this fact
implies. A spore transmits practically un-
changed the qualities of its single parent.
But the strange part of the process is
that when the spore grows it does not pro-
duce a fern at all; sprouting it grows into a
small heart-shaped shield. This is so in-
conspicuous as to escape attention on the
part of all but students and gardeners. And
it is this shield that comes nearest to flower-
ing in the sense of the crossing of individ-
uals to produce the new plant. For it is
from the crossing of two such shields that
a new fern arises.
But not all the green is in the ferns and »

260 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

on the hemlocks. Perhaps, if we are wan-
dering through New Jersey, Delaware, or
southward, a strange green tuft on an other-
wise brown tree will catch our eye.

THE MISTLETOE

Why will we set our hearts on the degen-
erates of life and despise those that are
wholesome and hearty? When a plant is
really robust and thoroughly able to take
care of itself, we turn up our noses at it and
call it a weed. Here at Christmas time we
hang from our chandeliers sprays of mistle-
toe, not only a degenerate, but, what is
worse, a parasite, and make it the accom-
paniment of our most festive season.

A strange plant it is, almost an uncanny
one. Other green plants work for them-
selves, but here is a plant that is just green
enough to help itself when it must, and
firmly enough rooted in the bark of its host
to draw from it a large share of its nourish-
ment. For the mistletoe never grows on
the ground. Its seeds, when they fall
there, come to nothing. Instead, we find

DECEMBER 261

it perched up in the tops of oaks and of the
sour-gum trees.

HOW MISTLETOE IS PLANTED

The story of how the mistletoe gets on the
trees is to me a most interesting one. Cov-
ering the mistletoe twigs are pearly white
berries. ‘These hang on to the plant until
the arrival of winter, when food is compar-
atively scarce, and hence some of our birds
eat them freely. Now, when a bird eats a
cherry he swallows simply the meat and
flips the stone away. The seed of the mis-
tletoe the bird cannot flip. It is sticky and
clings to his bill. His only resource is to
wipe it off, and he does so, leaving it stick-
ing to the branches of the tree on which he
is sitting. ‘This seed sprouts after a time,
and, not finding earth,—which indeed its
ancestral habit has made it cease wanting,—
it sinks its roots into the bark of the tree
and hunts there for the pipes that carry the
sap. Now, the sap in the bark is the very
richest in the tree, far richer than that in
the wood, and the mistletoe gets from its

262 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

host the choicest of food. In the case of
many parasites, this stealing of nourish-
ment leads to the entire loss of the leaves it
now no longer needs; but the mistletoe
keeps them, in at least partial support of it-
self. With an apparent shrewdness most
astonishing, it holds to them all the year
round, while its host has thrown away its
own leaves and stopped working for the
winter.

THE CHRISTMAS CUSTOM

The mistletoe, like the Easter egg, is one
of the evidences of the fact, that a new re-
ligion becomes superposed upon an old one,
rather than completely displaces it. In the
primitive worship of our Saxon ancestors,
the priests assembled their people beneath
the ancient oak, where often the horse served
for the bloody sacrifice. Reverencing the
oak as they did, what is more natural than
that an especial sacredness should attach
to the mysterious plant, the only one in
their experience, that flourished, green all
the year round, upon the branches of their

DECEMBER 263

holy tree? So, when the yule-tide came, the
mistletoe was taken into the house, and there
Christianity found it on the conversion of
the northern tribes. With the celebration
of the birth of “Christ the White,” concur-
ring as it did with the yule-tide, came the
strange combination of the Mass in the
church as the official ceremony, and the
mistletoe in England and the Christmas tree
in Germany as the celebration in the home,
in memory of the good old times. Of course
there is no longer any religious meaning
attached in our minds to the hanging up of
the mistletoe, but the sweet accident which
tradition makes liable to occur beneath its
overshadowing boughs tells us that its orig-
inal significance was certainly not baleful.

JANUARY

XI

THE RESTING MONTH

SLEEP
Ke ~ EW of us wonder at
A common things, or
sleep would Stile us.
To take leave of our-
Wy selves so completely, to
WZ sink the soul below the
threshold of conscious-
‘XS ness, and to lie blind,
dear penniless helpless for hours, is surely
marvel enough to make us pause. And
then to rise, with the ashes and the smoke
of yesterday’s fires cleared out of our tis-
sues, with brains alert to think, muscles
tense to act, digestive organs calling for
more fuel, lungs tingling for more of the
draught to feed the fires; this is what sleep
means to us. But glorious as is this rest

and refreshment, there are members of
267

A
NY i
Si

268 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

‘the insect world to whom sleep is not
only renewal, but, at the same time,
glorification.

THE HAWK-MOTH

To go to sleep ugly and wake up beauti-
ful—how charming it must be. It is still
more delightful to have no recollection of
your old estate. But it is best of all to lie
down in the fall, after a hearty feast, sleep
over the winter, and wake up in the spring
a lovely creature with a finer nature and a
daintier appetite. Such are the changes
now going on beneath the snow.

THE ‘TOMATO WORM”

A foot or so below the surface of the
ground, wherever, last summer, tomatoes
or potatoes were growing, Nature is at this
wonderful work. ‘These plants were “in-
fested”’ (as the farmer naturally says, look-
ing at it from his stand-point) by what most
people would call an ugly green worm. The
farmer calls it a “tomato worm.” Of
course it is not a worm, for a real worm has

JANUARY : 269

no legs, and a worm always remains just a
worm. Properly this thing is called a larva,
though this is quite by the way. It is as
long as your finger and nearly as heavy, and
has a most dangerous-looking horn on its
tail. The sight of it fills most people with
disgust, if not with fear. This, however,
is purely the result of our unconscious and
absurd horror of all creeping things. It is
very strange how many animals, at first
repugnant, lose their repulsiveness and
become even beautiful when we grow
interested in them. The green color so
common to the different species of these
larve is just a part of Nature’s old trick
of protection. Living as they do upon the
green background of the leaves, they would
be sure, were they not colored as they are,
to attract the notice of hungry birds which
have none of our repugnance for these busy
creatures.

The only apparent mission in life for
such a larva is to eat, and at this vocation
it busies itself so absorbingly that soon it
has filled itself completely and any further

270 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

feeding is out of the question. When it has
reached this condition, Nature teaches it
to clinch its toes firmly into the stem of the
plant on which it lives and await develop-
ments. These arrive in the shape of a split-
ting of the skin across the neck and down
the back. The creature, thus released from
the cramping pressure, wriggles out of its
own old skin and comes ‘out with a new
and larger covering. It now grows rapidly
for a few hours. Once more it has room
inside to fatten. This process repeats itself
until the larva has attained its full size.
Then it creeps down into the ground
and prepares for sleep. Here its last con-
scious act (if I am not too bold in imag-
ining its psychology) is to split its old
larval skin about the neck and shove it
back. ‘Then the larva sheds the skin and
leaves it to lie as a pellet just. back of it.
Now the creature looks like a long brown
pitcher with a slender handle. This is
the final external change for the season.
All through the winter it lies apparently
unaltered.

JANUARY Q71

AN UNDERGROUND TRANSFORMATION

But internally a most profound change
is at work. The little, nearly blind eyes are
developing into a magnificent set, adapted
for near and distant vision. The leaf-eat-
ing jaws are changing into a long, slender
tongue and a digestive apparatus for hand-
ling nothing less ethereal than the nectar of
flowers. The short, clumsy legs are be-
coming long, slender and delicate, and, best
of all, four splendid wings are growing out
from the shoulders. But all of this wonder-
ful change is still concealed inside the dull,
brown skin. By the time spring comes the
animal that had gone into the earth a long,
ugly, half-blind, wholly gross larva, once
more, and now for the last time, splits its
skin and emerges from the brown case a
beautiful creature.

THE FINAL PRODUCT

Have you ever noticed what seemed to
you a humming-bird hovering in the twi-
light before your moon-flowers and trum-
pet-vines or petunias ? Humming-birds like

272 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

to fly in the sunlight; so it could not be one
of them. Perhaps you called it a lady-bird,
though bird it was not. It was a hawk-
- moth. Active, lithe, graceful, covered with
the most delicate of powdery clothing, and
with a rare beauty of sedate coloration, it is
hard to realize that this was once a “tomato
worm.” Indeed I strongly doubt whether
the hawk-moth herself even for a moment
has recognized the relationship.

Is it not natural that men’s minds should
have seen in such marvellous changes as
these something that seemed to make them
understand, at least a little less dimly, how
we may be sown a natural body and raised a
spiritual body ?

But not all of our insects are so securely
packed away for the winter as is the hawk-
moth.

THE LACE-BUG

Do you want to see a beautiful bug
tucked away against the cold? Go to the
nearest sycamore tree and lift up a small
piece of its bark from the trunk at about

JANUARY 273

the height of your head from the ground.
There lives the lace-bug; active in summer,
asleep in winter.

This tiny creature is only about an eighth
of an inch long, and to the naked eye seems
simply white. But any ordinary magnify-
ing-glass will disclose its beauty. ‘Two long
sheets of lace down the back form its wings.
Its neck is surrounded by an Elizabethan
ruff of lace. It wears a lace cap on its head.
If you admire lace gowns, here is a real one,
fresh from the hand of the great Weaver.

One is at first inclined to wonder why so
small an insect should be so exquisitely
beautiful. Then we realize that uncon-
sciously we have measured by ourselves.
The lace-bug’s mate doubtless finds him
just the size to suit her taste and has no
doubt as to the value of all this charm.

To me it is a source of great satisfaction
to be able to turn up for my own delight so
beautiful an object to put under my pocket
lens. More than one winter day has shone
brighter for me because I lifted a fragment

of the bark of a sycamore tree.
18

Q74 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

AN AMERICAN TREE

For true American character give me the
sycamore. Not the European member of
the family, that comes from the nurseries
and that we are apt to plant on our lawns;
but our own sycamore, the buttonwood of
our meadows. Summer or winter alike,
it is always charming; but it seems to me
particularly beautiful in winter. Look at
the difference between the nurseryman’s
_tree and our own sycamore. The general
lines are just the same. There is the same
ruggedness and sturdiness. But in all the
details of the smaller branches there is a
yielding ease of curve in the European tree,
4 as becomes the more cosmopolitan experi-
ence of our travelled friend, while our own
sets its twigs with uncompromising assertion.

ines,
B

THE PEELING TRUNK

I wish I could catch the reason for the
difference in color of the syeamores in differ-
ent winters. ‘The smaller boughs always
shed their outer bark in winter and look
almost as white as if washed with lime.

JANUARY Q75

The trunk at the base, if large enough,
always retains a covering of dark brown,
old bark. During some winters the white
creeps ever so much farther down the trees
than it does during others. ‘The winter of
ninety-nine and nineteen hundred was the
“whitest”? winter for sycamore trees in my
recollection, and many good-sized trees
were clean almost to the ground. By the
next year the color had crept up much
farther, and kept going up for several years.

There is one quality in the sycamore tree
from which we must withhold our admira-
tion: it is unusually apt to be decayed at the
heart. Whole trees are often mere shells,
the hollow centre having served perhaps as
the chimney to the fireplace used by care-
less hunters or thoughtless boys. One
scarcely sees how the tree can suffer it and
live. In one of the New Jersey towns there
is an old buttonwood that showed consider-
able internal decay. The owners, anxious
to preserve a tree that had become historic,
put a man inside the trunk, who cut out all
the decayed wood and filled the cavity

276 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

with bricks and mortar. ‘The sycamore
has completely healed over the wound and
now shows no trace of the disease, although
the tree is probably more than a century old.

THE WINTER SHAPE OF TREES

It takes winter to bring out the character
of trees. Almost any tree can look well in
summer. Its leaves will pad out its de-
fects, round its angles, and cover its de-
formities. But in winter the tree itself
stands out in all its nakedness. Then the
oak shows its rugged grandeur, the elm its
courtly grace, the birch its gentle delicacy.
It is then the Carolina poplar, planted by an
evanescent land improvement company and
decapitated to make it “shapely,” shows out
all its hideous deformity. When will men
who want “‘bushy”’ trees learn to plant such
as have of themselves the bushy habit, in-
stead of taking such as the Creator has
taught to grow spindly, and cutting the heads
from them? In summer the deception is
fairly good, but in winter the poor things look
like dilapidated feather dusters. Carolina

JANUARY Q77

poplars begin to undress early in the fall,
the first leaves falling before August is over.
This being the case, they are the very last
trees we should undertake to deform.

This bareness of trees in winter, with its
putting away of tender parts and leaving
the hardier portions of the plant to with-
stand the inclemency of the season, is by
no means the only plan plants employ.

HOW PLANTS ESCAPE THE COLD

ANNUAL PLANTS

Plants cannot get out of the cold. The
robin may fly south to a warmer climate,
the groundhog may creep into his burrow,
deep in the earth, and go to sleep, the rabbit
may grow a thicker coat and brave it out.
But the plants are fixed and must stand it as
best they may. By all odds the greatest
number solve it in the very simplest way:
they die. Of course such kinds have learned
to flower and seed within one year, or there
would be an end of their race.

The lilies and the tulips take a different
plan. They are not content with one year’s

278 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

growth, and yet are not ambitious enough
to put up a structure that will resist the cold
as the trees do. So they grow fresh ten-
der leaves and flowers, but as winter comes
on they remove all their live material from
the parts above ground and run it down
into the earth. There they store it up as a
rich deposit of starch. This is what makes
the fleshy portion of plants of which we use
the underground parts for food, such as the
turnip and the potato. It is this portion
that we plant year after year in the case of
our tulips, crocuses, and caladiums. When
the supplies have been carried beneath
ground, these plants desert the old leaves
and stem and let the elements destroy them.
Next year they build all of them afresh.
Of course such plants never grow very large.
But, after all, it is a fairly successful plan
and one in very common use.

THE DANGER OF BURGLARS

The great drawback to the method is its
temptation to thieves. Many animals like
the starch that has been stored away; so

JANUARY 279

they dig it up and eat it. I suppose most
of them do it with the same philosophical
conceit that man has: they think that is
what it was made for. So the stupid,
lumpish potato usually comes to an untime-
ly end. It has put away a great store of
food, as useful to any animal as to itself,
and left it quite unprotected.

THE INDIAN TURNIP

Jack-in-the-pulpit has better sense. For
all the religious profession implied in his
name, he is at bottom a very hot-tempered
gentleman. The country boy is apt to learn
very early, through the solicitous efforts of
some companion, the taste of the “Indian
turnip,” which is only the underground
portion of Jack-in-the-pulpit. The sad les-
son is in active process of learning for just
about half an hour, for it takes fully that
long to get the hot sensation out of the
mouth. This is because Jack is shrewder
than the potato. When he puts his starch
away under the ground, he packs it as full
as it can stick with wonderfully minute but

280 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

intensely sharp needle-like crystals of oxa-
late of lime. These get into the tongue
and lining of the mouth, and irritate it so
intensely that I imagine few animals ever
need more than one taste.

POISONOUS ROOTS

Some plants, like the wild parsnip, are
vindictive enough to kill the burglar who
steals their stores. They mingle poison with
the starch. But the religious training of Jack-
in-the-pulpit has at least gone far enough to
keep him from such extremes, and he simply
preaches the robber a most pungent homily
and one not likely to be soon forgotten.

The bareness of the woods in January
puts many of Nature’s small creatures under
the necessity of keeping as thoroughly out
of sight as is possible.

NATURE’S LESSON TO HELPLESS
ANIMALS
If you look like the ground, sit still and

you are safe. This is Nature’s first lesson
to a helpless animal. It is the hopping

JANUARY 281

toad that startles you, and the gliding snake.
Let either lie quiet and you miss seeing him.
For every toad you see you probably pass
ten unnoticed. Even after a grasshopper
has caught your eye by flying, you usually
lose sight of him when he lights.

THE RUFFED GROUSE

During my walks through the winter
woods I occasionally meet a bird that has
learned this lesson well, and that is the
ruffed grouse. He is now, alas, too rare,
although even in eastern Pennsylvania he
was quite common within my memory.
The rich brown plumage, with its flecks of
black, corresponds so closely with the fallen
leaves and occasional patches of bare brown
earth that if he will but lie still you are al-
most sure to miss him. Should your path
run near his resting-place, almost from be-
neath your feet he rises to the level of your
head; then, with a speed that is at the same
time the admiration and the despair of the
gunner, he is away through the woods.
The low, firm hum of the wings tells of the

282 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

rapidity of the stroke. Few birds can keep
up long at that rate, and the grouse usually
drops before he has gone more than a few
hundred yards. So accurate is his flight
that in spite of his speed he never strikes
against the trees, even in the closest forest.
To accomplish this his tail is broad, fan-like,
and strong; for the tail is the rudder of the
bird, and on all birds that fly accurately it
must be well developed.

WHITE MEAT

Our common chicken, degenerate though
she is through captivity, flies for a short
distance with just the same motion of the
wings as the ruffed grouse. This is one of
the outward evidences of her not very dis-
tant kinship with this, the finest game-bird
in the eastern United States, the wild turkey
alone excepted. Many birds in this family,
including our own domestic chicken and
turkey, and the grouse and _ bob-white
amongst our wild birds, have taken so much
to running and are so little given to sus-
tained flight that the muscles of the breast

JANUARY 283

and wings have become distinctly degener-
ate. We may like the taste of white meat,
but it is not as useful to the chicken, and not
as nourishing to us, as the dark meat of her
legs, or as that on the breast of such birds
as use their wings frequently in flight.

HOW NATURE MAKES NEW SOIL

Now it is that we may see Nature getting
ready for the spring distribution of fertility
to her beloved meadows. ‘The soil which
she is going to scatter so lavishly in the
spring in the shape of mud she is now most
assiduously preparing. All through the
rocks run lines of weakness. ‘These may be
there because they mark the layers in which
the rock was originally formed. Sometimes
they are sheets of crystals that corrode on
exposure to the air more rapidly than the
other rock ingredients. Still again they may
be cracks formed when the rocks contracted
on cooling. But whatever may be the ori-
gin of these crevices, into them the water
soaks. When water freezes it swells with
a power well-nigh irresistible. That a very

284. UNDER THE OPEN SKY

little of it can crack an iron pipe most of us
have found to our cost. And so the water
which has percolated through the soil into
the rocks freezes there and tears them apart,
slowly but completely.

Thus the rock is split, and the pieces
made in this way are again broken into finer
and finer fragments until new soil is made
to take the place of that which each year
moves down to the lowlands. But this new
soil lacks fertility. It needs organic matter.
So the bacteria act on the old fallen leaves
and withered grasses and in the tangle of
roots of dead plants, and work them up into
the very best of compost for enriching the
soil.

THE SOIL BECOMES POROUS

These bacteria areas helpless as we are
unless they are well supplied with air. On
these winter days, as you walk along a coun-
try road after a frosty night, you can see how
Nature’s plowman is at work. Jack Frost
is loosening the top layers of the soil and
making them porous and airy. Nature

JANUARY 285

plows when the plants are asleep and will
not be hurt by the process. ‘The sod on the
top of the bank is lifted up on tall needles of
‘ice. If you walk on the turf your foot sinks
an inch or so at every step, and the crack-
ling of the crystals tells what has given way.
In the soil, thus opened up during the winter
by the frost, this work of the bacteria is
ready to go on with vigor as soon as warm
weather comes. Earlier than this the plant
could not use the material. Nature makes
her fertilizers just when she needs them.

It is the moisture that is deep in the
ground that really serves the needs of the
plants. Rain for the leaves is not of nearly
so much moment. So it bchooves Nature
to see that this water does not needlessly
evaporate. Any housewife who has left
uncapped the lamp beneath her chafing-
dish knows how soon the alcohol will have
evaporated. If the top of the wick were
more loosely braided and had larger air
spaces in it, this work would be slower.
But a lamp is intended to evaporate its burn-
ing fluid rapidly. When not in use such a

286 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

lamp must have a cap. In the same way
the moisture of the earth would dry up into
the atmosphere were it not for the covering
of fallen leaves and for the porous nature of
the top layer. These remove the level of
quick drying farther down. They serve
as the cap on the lamp.

FEBRUARY

OCK TAKES TO THE BLOCKS OF ICE

THE FL

XII

NATURE’S LAST NAP

‘LD Nature’s sleep is
nearly over. Already
she is beginning to turn
and stretch. She may
draw up the blanket of
snow again and take.
another nap, but it will

~“ not be a long one, nor

will it be deep. So, if we are to get our
last look at real winter, we must take it
now. And it is delightful, to one whose
eyes are open to the premonitory symptoms
of the awakening, to see how the plants
that grow in the beds of the little streams
will begin to show green before the month
is out. The twigs of the willows too will
redden, and the skunk-cabbage will push
out. But these are only symptoms of
the awakening and not the awakening
291

292 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

itself. February is true winter still, and
every trace of active animal life is striking
enough to be interesting.

THE CROW

There are a few of our animals for whom
winter with all its privations has no terrors;
and amongst these none maintains his equa-
nimity more entirely than the crow, who now
is holding his winter conclaves. I think the
convention assembled near my home this
winter must number a thousand members.

EVERYBODY'S JIM

Every one seems on easy terms with the
crow. No one hesitates to call him Jim,
nor does he ever seem to resent it. He is
the easy-going fellow of whom no one knows
any definite harm, yet for whom certainly
no one is willing to say anything distinctly
good. He is semi-disreputable without be-
ing thoroughly bad. So his name becomes
a byword. When you have a friendly
quarrel with a neighbor, you “pick a crow”’
with him. When you wish to point the

FEBRUARY 293

finger of scorn at a neglected horse, you call
him a “crow-bait.”” You could hardly
make a more unflattering remark concern-
ing any one’s personal appearance than to
call him a “scarecrow.”

Amongst his fellow birds his reputation
is even more doubtful. He has a fashion
of slinking about the backdoors of their
homes, and, when he finds the mother has
gone out for a minute, to get a bite of some-
thing or other or to look up a recreant hus-
band, Jim is not at all above snatching an
egg or even one of the children. So the rest
of the birds become anxious when he gets to
their end of the settlement, and they are
quite apt to gather together and say very
unflattering things about him as he ap-
proaches and are not above saying them to
his face when he arrives.

His tribe shares his bad reputation; and,
while in the sad tale of Cock Robin his
cousin the rook may take-the part of the
parson, I much doubt whether there is in it
any compliment to the sacred office. The
most serious attempt to give the family an

294 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

air of respectability was when the raven
“perched upon the bust of Pallas” just
above Poe’s chamber door, from which
point of vantage he interjected his depress-
ing remarks into the poet’s musings. I
know Poe calls him a raven, but if he met
him near his Baltimore home his raven cer-
tainly was a crow.

Jim takes on the manners of a respectable
bird for a time in the spring. During his
courtship and his early married life he is
really well-behaved. He forsakes his cron-—
ies and pays faithful and devoted atten-
tion to the “‘crowess” of his choice. To-
gether they build a rather shiftless-looking
sort of a home on some high tree. Here
they have their little romance, which is
probably as sweet to them as if they had
a more pretentious nest of grasses and horse-
hair and were in better odor with their
neighbors.

At this time their fare is quite a varied
one. I suggested eggs and young birds, but
these are only tid-bits as an occasional treat.
Their steady diet is more commonplace.

FEBRUARY 295

Bugs and locusts, cutworms and beetles,
form no small part of their food. For this
the farmer would be devoutly grateful did
they not demand such heavy pay in the
shape of corn and wheat and rye. Jim is
probably not learned in the matter of di-
astase and its power to turn starch to sugar,
but he has the practical side of that infor-
mation, for he knows that a few days after
corn has been planted it is delightfully
tender and sweet. This taste, more than
anything else, has been his ruin, and the
farmer is his uncompromising enemy.

THE WINTER ASSEMBLY

When fall comes, the charm of married
life wanes and he drifts back into disrepu-
table ways again. Joining himself with
other fellows of the baser sort, they form
crowds of hundreds or even thousands.
Seizing on some isolated grove on the moun-
tains for their refuge, they sally forth in
great flocks early each morning.

Many. a dweller in the towns, as he begins
the slow process of waking in a winter

296 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

morning, hears the strident “caw-caw-caw”’
of the marauding band. Their destination
is usually the banks of a river, perhaps even
twenty miles away “as the crow flies,” and
there they pass the day. Feeding along the
edge of the water, they pick up river snails
and garbage, carrion, or indeed anything
approaching edibility that happens to turn
up. Sometimes one will hover like a gull
and pick up scraps, or even a fish from the
water. When the stream is covered with
loose blocks of ice, the flock takes to these
and gathers from the river all sorts of float-
ing food. But when nightfall comes, they
return in noisy procession to their distant
mountain home.

Meanwhile amongst the limbs of the trees
in which the crows have had their winter
lodging I find the evidences of a less suc-
cessful battle against the biting frost.

THE PAPER WASP’S NEST

A wasp queen, like the queen of the bum-
blebees, is queen by divine right. She is
not elected to the throne, she does not in-

FEBRUARY gy

herit it, she has not usurped it. But the
place is hers, and her sway there is none to
dispute. For her subjects are all her own
children, even to the number of several
thousands. Late in the year she may share
the responsibility with her favored daugh-
ters, but in her early career she reigns
supreme and alone. The year has a
lonely beginning for her. At this season
she hangs, cold and stiff, behind some strip
of bark, or in some protecting stump.
Perhaps, fortunately for her, the cold has
benumbed her feelings, for her husband,
prince consort but never king, died last
fall after a very short married life, and
his posthumous children have not yet come
to comfort her.

A PAPER PALACE

With the first days of spring she sets in-
dustriously to work to establish her king-
dom. Her palace is a most unsubstantial
affair, for she builds it of paper. Very
modest indeed are her plans at first. She
flies to an old dry limb or to a fence-rail,

298 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

and gnaws loose little fragments of wood
and grinds them by means of her jaws, add-
ing saliva until she has a genuine paper
pulp, of which indeed her ancestors were
the inventors. Of this material she makes
a comb like that in which a bee stores
honey. But whereas a bee makes level
rooms in an upright comb, the wasp makes
a level comb with upright rooms. Perhaps
we had better call them downright, for
the entrance to each room is on the under
side, and the suite of apartments hangs by a
strand of paper from the limb of a tree. In
each room she puts an egg and enough
food for the baby wasp to eat when the egg
hatches. When she has done this, she
builds a paper roof which at first only shel-
ters, but later is brought down over the sides
until it completely surrounds, the comb.
By this time her first batch, of perhaps fifty
children, makes its appearance. She put
them immediately to work. Most of them
are ill-developed daughters who devote
themselves to the more menial household
duties. Indeed, they are maiden ladies

FEBRUARY 299

with neither the capacity nor the inclination
for raising families of their own. So they
build a new and larger comb, hanging it
beneath the old one. For in this com-
munity the top story is built first, and each
additional one is put under the last, until
the cold weather of fall brings the process
to an end, though often not before four or
five stories have been added. Of course,
the old enveloping walls are not able to hold
all this. So with each extension the wasps
tear pieces from the inside of the wall, chew
them into pulp, and add them again to the
outer side. In this way the walls keep
moving outward to accommodate the grow-
ing family. As the season advances the
colony increases in numbers until by fall
there may be a thousand inhabitants of the
one great nest.

THE RESULT OF WINTER

Cold weather coming on finds the old
queen now well provided with subjects, all
her own children. The very great majority
of them are the undeveloped females, who

300 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

do all the work of the colony. Some few
are males, useless gentlemen who toil not
neither do they spin. ‘To marry well, into
a neighboring royal family, and then to die,
is the full span of their duty. They even
lack the common weapon of defence in the
tribe, the sting. In addition to these are the
small number of fully developed females.
Genuine winter weather is too much for
most wasps. It usually surprises a good
many young who are only half developed
and who are killed by the frost. ‘The males
and workers all die. The queens, old and
young, forsake the nest, and each hunts a
quiet place where she will be protected
from the winter’s cold, and goes to sleep.
When she wakes, it is to enter into the round
of life pursued by her mother before her.
To the best of my knowledge, the old homes
are never used a second year.

As my walks lead me by the old neglected
mill-pond, I see the home of a colony whose
winter fight is a compromise. The mem-
bers will not brave it out as the crow does,
nor yet will they succumb as does the wasp.

FEBRUARY 301

Here a semi-activity on milder days alter-
nates with entire seclusion in the coldest
weather.

THE MUSKRAT’S MOUND

The ghost of the beaver is still in the land
and his name is muskrat. In practically
everything but size they are the same.
Take a muskrat, flatten his tail up and down
instead of sidewise, and magnify him, and
you have a beaver. ‘Thoreau once said he
had found in the Walden woods everything
but the Bengal tiger and the Victoria lily,
and that he confidently expected to find
them sometime. Nothing has better helped
me to understand his meaning than to study
the muskrat and call him beaver.

THE BEAVERS HEIR-AT-LAW

I recently came across a mound that re-
minded me of this afresh. A stream makes
its way into an abandoned mill-dam. This
has been allowed to fill up, and, for several
hundred yards all about it, earth has silted
in and formed a swamp. In Pennsylvania

302 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

our muskrats usually make burrows in the
banks of streams, leaving to their more
northerly brothers the mound-building trick.
But these fellows had built a genuine
mound. Not far away was a cornfield, and
cornstalks, cut into lengths of about a foot,
had served to furnish the main stiffening for
the structure. With this they had mixed
mud, carried up from the bed of the stream,
which they patted down amongst the rather
irregularly laid stalks. In this way the side
towards the stream had gotten a gentle slope
and showed chiefly the mud, while the op-
posite side was steep and full of projecting
stalks. They take the material they find
easiest to hand. I have recently seen two
others. One of them was made almost en-
tirely of mud, with a few old leaves; the
other was built of coarse grasses daubed
with mud. The entrance into the mound
has its mouth under water. The muskrats
have hollowed out the inside of the pile and
entering the tunnel they come up through
a hole in the floor. This is only a few inches
above the level of the water. Here they

THE BEAVER’S HEIR-AT-LAW

FEBRUARY 305

spend the winter, only sallying out in search
of food on bright days, unless pressed by
hunger. But even when it is quite cold,
a blow on the top of the mound will startle
them, and away they scurry, perhaps under
clear ice which may cover the stream. In
this pond the main food of the muskrat
seems to be the roots of the coarse water
plants that grow in the swamp. In a larger
stream some miles away, the habits of the
animal are quite different. Here he builds
no mound, which indeed would be too easily
swept away by the high floods. Instead,
he makes a tunnel, below the level of
the water, into the bank of the stream.
This passage-way rises and opens into a
chamber as big as a peck measure. Here
he chiefly spends his days and winters.
His journeys made in search of food are
commonly made at night. His food, as
well as his house, differs from that of his
pond-loving brother. He has given up, to
some extent, his vegetable diet, and has
taken to bivalves fresh from the shell.

Mussels, or fresh-water clams, seem to
20

306 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

his taste, and piles of the shells of these
litter the bottom of the stream or the bank
near his home.

THE HAND AND THE BRAIN

The muskrat is not only cousin to the
beaver, but is not much more distantly re-
lated to the squirrel and the rabbit. Con-
sequently, besides having the family traits
of the hare-lip and sharp front teeth, he also
has the habit of sitting up on his hind legs
and holding his food in his front feet. ‘This
posture is almost unknown in any other
group not provided with distinct hands.
Modern students of mind say that much
of the clearness of our thinking depends
on our facility in handling. They tell us
our ideas of size and form come primarily
from the sense of touch rather than from
sight. Perhaps much of the intelligence
of squirrels is due to their constant practice
in handling things. It would seem that in
this family the kind that sit up and handle
their food most are the brightest. But per-
haps this is putting it wrong end foremost.

ae eee

naceetienenierey =

FEBRUARY 307

It may be that the brighter they are, the
more likely they are to sit up and hold their
food.

I should not wonder if there were more
muskrats now than when the Indians
roamed the woods. We have killed off all
their enemies. Being small, nocturnal in
their habits, and of poor flavor owing to
their musky tang, they have been allowed to
multiply almost undisturbed. Such is the
safety that lies in mediocrity and unob-
trusiveness.

* * * * * * *

So all Nature awaits the return of Spring.
Whether it be the crow in his flock, the wasp
in her sheltered cranny, the muskrat in its
cave by the water, the rich thick sap in the
root of the tree, or the stored-up life in the
bulb, they all await the one far-off divine
event. For back of all Nature there lies a.
Power that has been and is and is to be.
What, after all, do we mean by Nature but
the sum total of all these manifestations of
purpose, of foresight, of helpfulness, of
striving for higher and ever higher levels?

308 UNDER THE OPEN SKY

Why does evolution mean life more abound-
ing, and degeneration mean atrophy and
death, if there be not, pervading the uni-
verse, a power, a principle, a stimulus, a
goal ?

And shall we, as did the Hebrew tribes
of old, falter to speak the ineffable name?
Shall we not rather worship Him humbly
as we see His power, thank Him gratefully
that we have been permitted to think His
thoughts after Him, look up to Him con-
fidently for that we have come to see how
He has infused us with Himself, and lovingly
call Him Father and God?

| __ Bureau Nature Study:
PRANELL UNIVERSITY: Ithaca, N.Y.

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