LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
Deceived C/l&V-^ ..,8
^Accessions No. $y D 31. Class No.
A SONG OF LIFE
SONG OF LIFE
BY
MARGARET WARNER MORLEY
ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR
AND ROBERT FORSYTH
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY
1894
(JOPYRIGHT
BY A. C. MCCLURG AND CO.
A.D. l8oi
CONTENTS.
PAGE
FLOWERS 9
FISHES 43
FROGS 63
BIRDS 71
THE END AND THE BEGINNING .... 87
THE WORLD'S CRADLE 105
A
LIFE.
FLOWERS.
A A TE all love flowers. Most of
us love them as we love jewels"
and sunshine and color ; they gratify
our love of beauty and by their pres^
ence make us happier. But some_
have a deeper reason for lovJing them;
to them ^j} the flower^* are one
sion of that/f&e of .which
man is but /
io A Song of Life.
another expression. They do not think
of man as something apart by himself,
but rather as a part of the universal
life which the plants and birds and all
living creatures share with him. Their
eyes and hearts are open to the sister life
in the world about them, and they look at
the flowers, not only with pleasure, but
with the love which recognizes in them a
sweet though simple existence like our
own. Most of us ignore the tie which
binds us to the plant as well as to our
human brother. In this respect we are
like him of whom it was said, '
" A primrose by the river brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more."
And yet the primrose is something more
than a bit of yellow on a green background ;
it has life, and in many important respects
life in the plants is the same as life in us.
That which is necessary to our existence
Flowers. 1 1
is also necessary to theirs. But not all of
us have stopped to think about this. We
pride ourselves upon possessing what we
call the breath of life. We consider our-
selves vastly superior to the humble plant
in this respect. We show in our litera-
ture, in our conversation, and in many
other ways, how highly we esteem our
power to breathe. But the plants breathe
too. They do not boast about it, but
they do it. All know that the air is
composed of a mixture of oxygen and
nitrogen gases, with, more or less watery
vapor and a very little carbonic acid gas,
and that oxygen is necessary to life, while
nitrogen, which forms four fifths of the
atmosphere, merely serves to dilute the
oxygen.
Animals breathe air into the lungs, the
lung-cells take oxygen from it and throw
back into it carbonic acid gas, which is an
impurity. Plants use air in the same
way, but as their lungs consist of cells
12
A Song of Life.
which cover all their leaves, the plants
breathe over the whole surface of their
bodies. As the air bathes them, the plant-
cells, eager for oxygen, seize upon it and
compel it to leave the air and join them.
From them it is transferred to the other
tissues that need it, and the carbonic acid
gas set free by the chemical work going
on inside the plant, finds its way, by the
work of the cells, back into the air
as an impurity, the process being
the same as when we breathe.
But we too breathe over the
whole surface of our bodies,
cells in the skin haying
the same
exchanging
carbonic
acid gas for \
oxygen as have
the cells of the
Implants and the cells of the
:X_ lungs. But since the
lungs are specially adapted
for exchanging carbonic
gas for oxygen,
the greater part of that work
is done by them, and conse-
quently we think of the lungs as the only
breathing organs until somebody reminds
us that we breathe all over our bodies,
like plants.
And plants eat. Not such gross food
as we take, for they are dainty feeders
upon things too fine for us even to taste.
Down in the ground the roots creep about
among the rocks and soil, and drink in
the moisture and the gases and other
mineral elements there, and this food they
A Song of Life.
send up the stem in spite of the force
of gravity, whose business it is to pull
everything down. Thus are fed the stems
and leaves and flowers, for as the fluid
food passes along, touching every part
of the plant, each tissue draws to itself
the material it needs for building new
tissue or rebuilding that which is worn
out. In this way the plant grows. But the
roots do not supply all the food, for the
leaves feed too, taking in nourishment
over their whole surface, feeding gen-
erously wherever air and light touch
them. In fact iMfthe leaves absorb food
^ v if ' ^ r\
with as much vfc\ /^7/^! ease as they
roots take
food from
Flowers.
the soil; the leaves take it from the air,
for the plant feeds upon the elements
which make up the air and the earth,
combining them in various ways, and
finally converting them into its own liv-
ing substance. In this way it grows and
becomes food for animals.
Its power to change mineral matter into
living substance is so important that with-
out it there could be no life on earth. The
plant is the chemical laboratory in which
is prepared the food of the world. Take
away the plant, leaving only animal life
and mineral substances, and the animal
life would at once die. Too far re-
moved from the nature of the mineral;
it could not come into sym-
pathy witK
^~~^,.j vi v \
IT
1 6 A Song of Life.
it, it could not give life to the rock; it
could not transform the mineral's cold
matter into its own living tissue ; it would
starve to death. Now introduce the plant.
Modest yet full of power, it stands at the
border-land of life. On one side is the
lifeless mineral, on the other the helpless
animal. The plant, with its humble life,
reaches down to the mineral, touches it
with a living touch; and the mineral,
otherwise lifeless forever, responds to the
touch of the plant, shares its life, and
becomes a part of it. Thus provided
with abundant living material, the plant
yields nutriment to the life above it; so
that every animal, including man, is de-
pendent upon plant-life for its existence.
All animals feed upon the plant ; remotely,
it may be, as when one animal feeds upon
another, yet ultimately, the plant is the
source whence comes the material for the
animal form. The plant exists by creating
life ; the animal by destroying it.
Flowers. 1 7
In still another way plant-life renders
animal-life possible. Plants consume car-
bonic acid gas as food. They take it
from the air in large quantities, and thus
clear, the atmosphere of a dangerous ele-
ment, for a small amount of carbonic acid
gas renders air unfit for animals to breathe.
The plants, therefore, live upon and con-
vert to a good use the waste of breathing,
which might otherwise accumulate in suffi-
cient quantities to be dangerous to the
higher life. But this is not all. When
carbonic acid gas has been taken as food
the plant tissues use the carbon, but the
oxygen, which forms a part of carbonic
acid gas, they reject and send back to the
air, thus giving to animals the oxygen,
which is necessary to their lives, and tak-
ing away the carbonic acid gas, which is
fatal to life.
The breathing and feeding of plants
are so easily confused that it may be well
to insist that they are two entirely different
1 8 A Song of Life.
functions. Plants breathe out carbonic
acid gas and take in oxygen just like ani-
mals ; so inasmuch as they breathe they
render the air impure. They eat carbonic
acid gas and throw off oxygen as a waste,
so, inasmuch as they eat they purify the
air. The products of feeding are much
greater than those of breathing, very much
greater, so that plants are powerful puri-
fiers of the air and keep it fit for animals
to breathe. During the flowering season,
however, the plant is less active as a puri-
fying means, and in cases where there is
a great mass of bloom may even belong
to the destructive forces, vitiating more
air than it purifies; for, the flowers, being
so fragile and perfect and not obliged to
grow, feed little and breathe much. That
is why some people consider them un-
healthful in a sick-room, the flowers
breathe the air which the patient needs.
Besides breathing and feeding, plants
reproduce themselves. Like higher forms
Flowers.
of life they issue from the egg. We
call the plant's egg a seed and so lose
sight of what it really is ; but recall for a
moment that the plant's seed kept warm
moist produces a young plant,
while the fish's egg kept warm
and moist produces a young fish,
and the bird's egg kept
warm and dry produces
a young bird, and
the true nature of
the seed is apparent,
-it is the egg of the
plant.
" Everything springs from the
egg; it is the world's cradle."
That is the way the wise an-
cients told the secret of how life
begins. But they told only half
the truth when they said nothing
'of the vital spark which kindles the
"egg to growth and adds to it a new
Vange of possibilities. Like them, we
20
A Song of Life.
commonly fail of due reverence for pater-
nal life, and attribute the miracle of regen-
eration wholly to the power in the egg.
Walking through the fields in the autumn,
we wade waist-high through a patch of
golden-rod. As we jostle the stately
plumes, out pours a cloud of fine yellow
powder which settles upon our clothes
like dust. We carelessly brush it off and
pass on, not giving it another thought.
We look into the heart of the rose and
see there golden grains which tell
nothing; we watch the alder cat-
kins soften and tremble and
^m> powder the air with a great
shower of i^ old-dust
Flowers.
21
no question; we see the white temple of
the Easter lily marred by the copious yellow
dust which falls from its anthers; we are
powdered by the evening primrose. In
fact, in nearly every flower we know, we
find the pollen-powder, the dust of the
flowers. And we are indifferent to it,
seeing it all our lives, until one day we
ask what it is and discover to our wonder
that it has much to do with the life of
the plant, and that the seeds which are hid-
den in the hearts of the flowers owe their
development to it. There are
jmany things in the life of the
plant worth knowing, but
of all the wonderful facts
of plant-life which man
has discovered, nothing is
stranger or more
beautiful than
what is known
of the dust, or
pollen, of the plant,
and of its ovules, or seeds.
22 A Song of Life.
Even though every one may know the
truth concerning the pollen and the ovules,
their story, like all the best stories in the
world, will bear telling a great many times ;
and this time it is one link in a chain of
great meaning which begins in the plant
and passes through all other life, until
it ends in man, binding all life to-
gether in close bonds of relationship.
But before going so deeply into the
secrets of plant-life as the story of the
pollen would lead us, we shall have to
consider a number of facts, just as one is
obliged to cut through a mass of fibre
to reach the kernel of the cocoanut. The
first fact shall be a seed. We will examine
one to set us thinking.
From the morning-glory vine we pluck
a ripe, brown seed-vessel. Carefully open-
ing it we find three little silky nests, in
each of which are two seeds. Very deli-
cately removing the outer skin from one
of these seeds we find inside a green
Flowers. 23
core covered with a clear, jelly-like sub-
stance. (If the seed is hard and dry, it
should be soaked in warm water for a few
minutes before examination.) We next
remove all of the outer covering and
the jelly-like substance and spread out
the green core. It seems to be a tiny
leaf. Examined more carefully it proves
to be two leaves lying close together and
having at the point of union a tiny
bud-like root. In fact there is a whole
plant thus skilfully packed away in the little
hard seed. Plant the seed, and the young
morning-glory will issue forth. The first
leaves that appear above the ground are
different from the later, heart-shaped
leaves ; they are the two blunt little
absurdities we found in the seed, and they
push up to the light while the root pushes
down into the soil. The next leaf, how- ,
ever, is heart-shaped, and bears no :
resemblance to the seed-leaves, whose duty
it was to be as compact and sturdy as
A Song of Life.
possible in order to start the plant. Being
now fairly started, the plant grows rapidly
until it is a full-sized vine and bears flow-
ers. Thus it would seem that in some way
the tiny seed held the idea of the perfected
plant within its walls. Open a bean pod
and find the seeds there, each in a soft,
white nest.
Take one of the beans and let it
be the seed we next examine, for we
are in no hurry and may as well be-
come acquainted with seeds while
we are in the mood for it. Again
removing the outer skin, which in
this case is leathery and white, we
find no jelly-like substance. The bean
seems split into two fleshy parts, and
at their point of union is a tiny sprout
consisting of two leaves folded close
together. Plant the bean and the sprout
grows. The two little yellow atoms of
leaves become large and green, and a root
strikes down into the ground. After a time
Flowers.
r.
two fleshy parts turn green ;
we find they
are veined, and in fact are
the seed-leaves, which were packed
full of starch to
start the young
lant. They are larger and
fatter than the morning-
glory seed-leaves, because there
is no jelly-like food packed about
the young bean plant, and it must
feed upon the starch in its seed-leaves
until it is strong enough
to draw nourishment from the
earth. Opening a peanut
and/examining the meat, we find it
a seed. The part we eat is the
seed-leaves, stored with food
with which the plant may start
on its career. At the point of
union of the seed-leaves, the
young little plant may be plainly
seen. Looking into a squash seed
we find the
young plant stored
away there, root, leaves,
and all. Looking into any
" seed we see the young
plant waiting for the right
conditions of warmth and moisture
to wake up and grow into
a plant like its parent.
Each plant puts itself, as it
were, into its seed. Forth from
the poppy seed springs the
poppy, forth from the pea seed
springs the pea, and forth from
the morning-glory seed springs the r
morning-glory, never any mistake *
or any springing of a poppy from
a water-melon seed or a water-melon
vine from a lily seed. And yet the seed
of a white morning-glory may bear
a purple blossom, and the
Flowers. 27
seed of a red verbena may bear red-and-
white blossoms. If we grow white flowers
and red flowers of the same species to-
gether, their seed will be apt to give us
flowers. Our petunia seed
<) will not " come true " if two or
ore colors are grown to-
gether, but the seeds of the white
J^ petunias will yield purple and white
flowers, or red and white ones. The
flowers will in fact be apt to be striped
or spotted by the colors of all the petu-
nias in the garden. Flowers seem to
have some strange influence over each
other which causes their seed to inherit
the peculiarities of neighboring plants of
the same species. In order to understand
this strange habit we will pass from the
seed, which has thought-matter enough to
to last us a lifetime, and will question
the pollen. But first we shall be obliged
carefully to examine a flower. The morn-
ing-glory blossom will answer the pur-
pose very well. Its most showy part, the
28 A Song of Life.
bright-colored bell, or corolla, as it is
technically called, surrounds delicate inner
organs. The first set of these organs
grows fast to the bottom of the corolla,
and when the corolla is pulled
H\ awa y ^ey come too. They are
ythe stamens, and have a delicate
white filament, or stem, with a
powder box, or anther, at the
top. Each anther has two cells,
and these cells hold the pollen. When
the anther is ripe the cells split open
Df| and let the pollen fall out. The pollen
[/being the essential part of the. stamen,
; the stamens of some kinds of flowers
.-.
have no filaments. The pollen every
flower must have if the plant is to bear
seed, but that is the only part of the
stamen that is absolutely necessary.
When corolla and stamens were pulled
away from the morning-glory, but a seem-
ingly unimportant part of the flower was
left. This central column, however, is
Flowers. 29
of the greatest value, for it is the pistil,
and at the base of the pistil, in its thick,
round bottom, is the seed-case, or ovary.
A slender white column, the style, rises
from the ovary and is topped with a
round, ball-like stigma. The ovary
and stigma are the necessary parts of
the pistil, the style is only a passage-
way from one to the other, and
some flowers have no styles. Ovary
and stigma every flower must have
if it is to bear seed. If the morn-
ing-glory ovary be. cut across, six
little seed-like bodies are seen em-
bedded there. These are the ovules, and
would one day have been the seeds if
the pollen had done its duty and the
flower had not been disturbed. But the
ovule is not the seed. No ovule alone
could become a seed. It would seem
as though the plant were not content with
what its one life could give, as though it
longed to reach out and touch other life
A Song of Life.
\
and have the power in that other
life added to what it
could give its seed-
children; and so its
ovules were not granted
life enough to unfold alone, but lay
passive until aroused by the magic touch
of other life.
This other life is the pollen. When
the pistil which we may consider the
mother-part of the plant, because it
cherishes the 'seed-children, or ovules
is ripe, the stigma is moist and sticky.
The grains of pollen from the . stamen,
which we may with justice consider
the father-part of the plant, fall against
^">
f ) } the stigma ; or the pollen from
neighboring plants is rubbed against
it by bees and other insects going
from flower to flower, or is blown
against it by the wind. When the
tiny pollen-grain touches the sticky
Flowers.
stigma it is held fast. The pollen-grain,
which in most kinds of plants is so small
that to see its shape one needs a micro-
scope, is nevertheless a sac filled with oil
and other substances, and containing two
or more very small living bodies. In these
living bodies, strange as it may seem, is
the life the ovule must add to its own
before it can become a seed. In these
microscopic atoms, too, is contained the
whole idea of the plant that bore
the stamen. The idea of the
father-plant is there, even to the
color of the flowers and their (
odor; but the power to live and
develop unaided into a plant is
not in the pollen. The two lives,
that of the pollen and
that of the ovule, must
unite before either
can fulfil its destiny.
But the pollen-grain
is too large to pass
A Song of Life.
through the stigma and work its way
down through the loose tissue of the style
to the ovary. Contact with the moist
stigma has, however, caused it to swell,
and soon one part of it is seen dipping
down into the stigma like the finger of a
glove. This part continues to lengthen,
forming a long tube which finds its way
down throughfthe style to the ovary. The
living essential atoms in the pollen-grain
slip down the lengthening tube, and
J> when the little tube finally enters
the ovary the little living bodies break
through the delicate wall of the. tube and
enter the ovule. One can see in the cut
how it is done in the pistil of the
buckwheat, which has three stigmas.
In other flowers the process is essen-
tially the same. As soon as the pollen
atom has joined, or to speak scientifi-
cally, fertilized, the ovule, a change takes
place. The ovule enlarges and has formed
within it the tiny plant we see in the
Flowers. 33
seed. The ovule, in some wonderful way,
contains within its tiny walls the whole
idea of the mother-plant. Through it can
be transmitted any or every peculiarity of
the mother, if the pollen touches it to life.
But the pollen can also transmit any
peculiarity of the father-plant if the ovule
touches it to life. The red verbena has
.the red ideal in its ovule and in its pollen.
The white one has the white ideal. If a
bee, in passing from the red to the white
flower, should bear grains of pollen from
one to the other, the stigma of the white
flower would eagerly receive the pollen of
the red; and thus the seed so produced
would be rich in color-life, and might
bear a flower either red or white or both
red and white.
The power of life seems stronger where
new elements join; and for this reason
fertilization from another plant, or as the
botanists say, cross-fertilization, as a rule
produces stronger plants than self-fertiliza-
34
A Song of Life.
tion ; and so keenly is this cross-fertili-
zation desired by the flowers that they
have evolved many curious devices to
bring it about. For instance,
'the plant called "Dame Rocket"
"ripens the pistils and stamens of
the same flower at different times.
When the pistil is ripe the anthers ^
are still closed, so that
pistil must be fertil-
.
ized by. pollen brought by
insects hom^m another flower whose an-
thers Jflfare ripe. When the an-
thers are ripe and. let out
the pollen, the pistil
in that flower is past
its stage of activity and
no pollen can affect it.
Every one knows of the
ingenious contrivance of the
orchids to prevent self-fertilization. They
have but two stamens, and their pollen-
grains are fastened together by threads
Flowers. 35
like fine spider-web, so that the whole
mass of pollen keeps together. The sta-
mens are so placed that the pollen cannot
fall upon its own stigma, but the honey
sac is so situated that when Sir Moth
puts his head into Madame Orchid's honey
pot he touches the sticky pollen masses
and bears them away, one attached to
each eye. Being fond of Orchid honey
he hurries off to call on another flower,
for where one grows more are not far off,
and as he finds his way to the nectar sac
the pollen on his eye touches the sticky
stigma and is left there, while he gets a
new supply to take to the next flower.
Thus he becomes the bearer of new life,
and peoples the woods with future orchids.
The pumpkin has settled the manner of
fertilization most emphatically. All of the
stamens are banished from the blossom
that bears the pistil, and no pistil is found
in the one that holds the stamens. The
pumpkin will be cross-fertilized or not at
36 A Song of Life.
all. The begonia is sometimes still more
exacting, and has all the flowers upon one
plant staminate flowers that is, flowers
bearing only stamens and all upon an-
other plant pistillate flowers.
Some nut trees have the same habit, and
this is why one tree will always have nuts
and a companion tree never. Cut down
the apparently useless tree and there will
be no nuts on its neighbor, for half the
life of the nuts came from the nutless tree.
Maples and elms have the stamens and
pistils in separate flowers. The anthers
hang out on long thread-like filaments,
dressing the tree in dainty fringe, and
pollen is scattered in light abundance on
the wind, which blows it from flower
to flower.
The pine-tree pours such a wealth of
pollen into the air in trust for its cones,
where the seeds lie, that it is carried for
miles and forms a yellow scum on the
neighboring ponds. The grasses dust the
Flowers.
37
air with every breeze that blows. Wher-
ever the wind is to act the part of priest
in the marriage of the flowers
amount of pollen is almost in-
credible. The bees are
better guardians of
the plant-life. Indeed
bees are the best
the
owes
its bur-
d e n of
fruit to them/^jfe : ^^ffT For unless
the its work
in the apple- blossom there
will be no^P Dapple, and the wind
is a fickle helper. The clover keeps its
pollen stored away where the wind can-
not reach it, and relies upon the bumble-
bee to convey it from flower to flower.
Unless a flower is fertilized, it will wither
and fall and leave no trace of its existence.
The ovule has seldom power to become a
A Song of Life.
seed unaided by the pollen, and it is for
the sake- of the seed that the fruit forms,
so we owe our apples and peaches and
other fruits to the pollen, as well as to
the ovary.
The essential organs, stamens and pis-
so wonderful
in
struct-
ure and
beautiful
are tne authors of
so $'$|!i\" many ingenious contrivances to
insure fertilization and the scattering of
seed, that one cannot look intelligently
into the commonest flower without being
filled with admiration. The thistle is
a revelation and the burdock a psalm.
The ovary of the orange is a globe of
nectar ; and the cherry ovary, fortunately
for the birds and us, is a rich, juicy
Flowers.
39
pulp. The ovaries of the strawberry are
perched upon a pyramid which is deli-
cious *%*f$^ in flavor and delightful in
fra ^^grance. The fruit of the dan-
delion flies away on wings
^Xof down. The stamens
the blue flag are hidden
xaway, and the anthers
le ^wintergreen open by a
little pore in the top of each
cell. The mountain laurel has a romance
well worth the reading.
The pollen-grains, often so small that to
see them requires a microscope, are of
strange and beautiful forms. The musk-
plant has them ^wV\ spherical and beau-
tifully T ove d.(yLj^ In the star-cucum-
ber they are again spherical but markedjji
a peculiar manner which makes them
different from all other pollen-grains.
In the hibiscus we j^V* find again spher-
ical pollen-grains, igttwi but covered
with little points, ^llpr In the mountain
A Song of Life.
In
laurel they are like^, several spheres
fastened together. In the evenA ing
primrose they are^ip/ three-sided,
the milk-weed they are attached
to each other / in masses, like those
of the orchid, ^y and form two pear-
shaped bodies. j| J| And yet, though each
grain of pollen fp |f is full of dormant life,
its life responds only to a life akin to its
own. The pollen of a hawthorn blossom,
active at once in the ovule of any other
hawthorn, is powerless upon the stigma of
a stranger plant. It cannot fertilize a lily,
it cannot fertilize a sweet-pea. -It can
continue to live only when in union with
its own kind ; so though the verbenas
will exchange colors with each other and
be all the better for it, they
not be modified by any other'
of flower.
Flowers.
-*'
and the ovules they naturally made use
of their knowledge to produce modified
forms which should gratify their tastes
in ^ various ways. And thus were origi-
f ' - nated many rare flowers and fine
varieties of berries, grapes, and other
fruits. Plant-life, like all other life, is
mysterious; and the results of the
union of any two plants cannot be
foretold. The gardener having
one variety of grape, fine
in size and color but lack-
ing in flavor, may fer-
tilize its flowers with
pollen from another va-
riety, fine in flavor but
lacking in color and size.
When the vine raised
from the new seed bears fruit, the fruit
may chance to combine the good qualities
of both parents, or it may be so unfor-
tunate as to have inherited the bad quali-
ties of both. Man, with all his pride of
4 2
A Song of Life.
knowledge, cannot control or even in-
fallibly foresee the action of life in that
other life, akin to but different from his,
the plant-life.
FISHES.
IN the water as upon the land,
life is abundant. The things that
live in the sea consider it but air diluted
to suit their delicate organs; for the life
in them is governed by the same laws
that govern life out of the water. The
land animal and land plant breathe oxygen
diluted with nitrogen. Pure oxygen would
intoxicate, consume them, burn them up,
as effectually as if they had fallen into
a raging furnace. Pure air would intoxi-
cate, consume the creatures of the sea;
their oxygen must be diluted with nitro-
gen, and their air with water. But air, in
small quantities, they must have or die ;
44
A Song of Life.
and there is air in the water which the
sea things breathe. The
storm is
the angel who
stirs their pool and brings
life to the inhabitants of -
the deep. The storms _:
and
^bodies of
water, aerating
= them and keeping
them fresh and life-
- giving. Otherwise the
- oceans would be
great
stag-
nant masses of
death and decay which would speedily put
Fishes. 45
an end to all the higher forms of life that
now exist. But under the storm-purified
waves there is carried on a life varied and
wonderful. One who loves this water-life
has thus told about his friends : -
" For warriors, lo ! we have the fish
known as the goby, who turns quite black
with rage when he beholds his prey, and
whose turquoise-colored eyes light up with
fury as he dashes to the fierce encounter.
We have, too, the graceful stickleback, who
makes his nest like a bird, waits upon his
mistress with all the gentle complaisance
of the knight-errant of old, and enters the
lists in his uniform of glowing scarlet
trimmed with white and green, or deep,
deep purple, to do battle for the object
of his affections. The stickleback adores
the tournament. In the heat of the con-
flict his gorgeous colors flash out in-
tensely in their brilliance. Defeated, his
war-paint fades into the dullest hues, or
only flickers changefully up in his dying
46 A Song of Life.
throes, as if in death he had a dream of
victory.
" For ogres, we have the actiniae, who,
garbed in the seductive costume of the
gayest flowers, lie in wait for thoughtless
victims. Their delicate petals are a thou-
sand murderous arms, prepared to grasp all
of annelid life that may be tempted to em-
brace them, while every pretty crimson dot
conceals a poisoned barb, which they pro-
ject unerringly as death at passing infusoria.
"For sentimental performers, we have the
sea cucumber and the starfish. Some
of the former, when irritated, deliberately
commit suicide by expectorating the whole
of their intestines, leaving their empty
shells behind. Some of the latter, un-
der like circumstances, suddenly ex-
plode themselves into fragments, as
though filled with gunpowder, and .
touched off by electricity.
Fisbes. 47
For beauties, we have the sea mouse,
clothed in silken hair, and glittering in all
the iridescent colors of the butterfly; we
have the sea slug, covered with gem-like
specks that may well pass muster for
sapphires and emeralds ; we have the min-
now, the dandy of his tribe, with his vest
of roses and his coat of olive green.
" For Jeremy Diddlers, we have the
hermit crab, who pilfers a whelp shell for
his residence; we have the nereis, who
attaches himself, perdu, to the crab's door-
way, and gourmandizes on all the food he
can seize as it enters; and we have the
cloak anemone, which insidiously mantles
the two, and then devours all it can ab-
stract from the mouths of both. To this
category we might add the phyllodoce,
who turn themselves inside out like a
stocking, and when the inverted stomachs
fill with passing pabulum, restore the
sated organs to their original position.
"The comic actors on this stage of life
4 8
A Song of Life.
are too multitudinous for detail. The
climbing frog and climbing crab are gym-
<=s^ -^ \ nasts of the first order; the
rednose carries a natural
syringe, with which he
squirts water upon all who incon-
venience him ; the caddis worm
sports a portable domicile of sticks
and stones; the newt is alive. with
graceful evolutions, full of merry twists
and laughable eccentricities."
Those who have visited the
fish at home that is to say,
have stood before the glass tanks
of a sea aquarium and watched their
every-day life will gladly place
them close to the flowers in thought
and affection.
There goes a rounded,
quis ^^ itely curved
fellow,
Fishes. 49
smaller than the palm of your hand and
colored like mother-of-pearl. Suspended
in the pure sea-water, he is worthy a place
among Neptune's crown jewels ; and when
he .moves words cannot be found to de-
scribe the beauty of his undulations. Near
him is an Oriental aristocrat, brilliant as an
ocean sunset, and with long, soft, float-
ing fins and tail like the drapery of an
Egyptian princess. The flowers are not
more brilliant in color or more varied in
form than are the fish in the various
tanks.
Many, however, are more curious than
beautiful, and odder forms than have come
out of the sea to finish their lives in the
aquarium never passed through an x opium-
eater's dream.
"You strange, astonished -looking-,
angle-faced,
Dreary -mouthed, gaping wretches
of the sea ! "
says Leigh Hunt.
50 A Song of Life.
But the sea, the splendid, invigorating
salt sea, does not hold all the fishes. They
have gone up the streams into the land,
and have peopled the lakes and ponds,
wherever the conditions for fish-life were
favorable. Every one has known, as a
child, the minnows in the brooks, flashes
of silver easy to catch; and also that bit
of brightness in the ponds, rightly named
the sunfish. The catfish, too, homely and
ugly to deal with, because of his "horns,"
has made a lasting impression upon most
country boys and girls.
Strange as the cold, unlifelike - life of
the fishes may seem to our different way
of looking at life, they are true animals;
and unlike the flowers, which are able
to exist upon air and earth, demand for
their A //I nourishment food which is
the aLw result of some other life. In
fact, their appetite for living
^food is something to be
regarded with amazement
Fishes. 5 T
1 consternation by creatures like
ourselves, unable to look at can-
nibalism and the eating of live
victims from the fish's point
of view.
They do not absorb nutriment over
the whole surface of the body, as is the
dainty habit of the flowers, but have a
distinct receptacle for their struggling
meals, which they pursue and capture and
consign to a laboratory which quickly re-
duces them to an elementarv form of
animal substance; for in the stomach of
the fish its food is saturated with diges-
tive fluids which change it into a liquid
material which can be dissolved and ab-
sorbed into the blood. The blood c
ries the new material to all parts ^
the body, and each tissue, as this
liquid food hurries along,
takes from it the materials
it needs to build or rebuild;
so ultimately the fish disposes/
A Song of Life.
of its food in the same way that the plant
does, only the plant-food, being already in
a soluble state, does not need the services
of a stomach.
The breathing of the fish, too, is the
same as that of the plant, except in the
smaller amount of surface which in
the fish serves the purpose of
lungs. No doubt the fish
takes in oxygen and casts out
carbonic acid gas over the whole
surface of its body, as does the
plant ; but in the fish certain cells
are much more active in that re-
spect than are any others ; and these cells
are situated in the gills, where the air-
laden water constantly bathes them. The
oxygen in the air is seized by these gill-
cells, and passed along to the tissue that
needs it, while the carbonic acid gas,
which has been formed by the chemical
changes going on in the animal, is sent
by the gill-cells out into the water.
Fishes. 53
Interesting as pulling fish out of the
water, with a hook in their gills and death
in their hearts, is found to be by some, it
is nothing compared to the delight of
watching them at home, full of life,
familiar yet strange life, doing the every-
day acts of feeding and breathing that
we do, and moving with an inexpres-
sible charm, akin to that of flying
through the cool waters.
"The fish is swift, small -needing,
vague yet clear,
A cold, sweet, silver life, wrapped
in round waves,
Quickened with touches of trans-
porting fear,"
says Leigh Hunt, doing exquisite justice
to his now dainty subject.
And life is in the fish. Life, whatever
that is, resides in these creatures, which
are more like animated crystals than things
of flesh and blood. And life in them re-
news itself as it does in the flower.
54
A Song of Life.
In the Wisconsin lakes live numbers of
black bass. They are not so handsome as
the scup or the golden perch, but are easy
to watch, and are full of affection for their
offspring. Early in the spring, inside the
female bass, as at the right season is true
of all female fish, there lay two long, broad
bags of tiny eggs, one in each side of the
body. During the winter, both eggs and
bags were so small that they were scarcely
noticeable; but as spring came, and the sun
warmed and brightened the j water, and on
all sides joy in the nev\
year broke forth, lo ! life
wo.nderful awakened in
well, their eggs be
grow. TheyW
' th all other 1 * 1
life,
both
life of the
new and
Fishes. 55
plant and animal, responded joyfully to the
warm caress of spring. In the swamps
the willow-stems grew crimson and gold,
showers of catkins swung from the alders,
and the silver "pussies" peeped from their
nut-brown coats. All over the fields the
buds grew large upon the trees and the
dry twigs changed and looked alive, as a
delicate indefinable color crept over them.
Not a leaf to be seen, yet all Nature glowed
in anticipation of the joyous life soon
to unfold. And everywhere the fish, too,
leaped for joy, and their eggs grew. In
the Northern lakes the bass, with number-
less fresh-water companions, felt the stir-
ring of new life. Everywhere in the ponds
the little fish were filled with the joy of
existence. At the great river mouths,
where icy water sweeps from the regions
of snow out into the open sea, the salmon
leaped up the cold current, eager for the
fresh-water pools, where their offspring
were to come to a life of their own. Out
A Song of Life.
in the Gulf Stream the young eggs of the
skate took shape and became the purses
with clinging tendrils to anchor the
quaint cradle with its baby to the
weeds at the bottom of the sea.
Everywhere in the sea, the rivers,
the lakes, and little ponds the
fish had felt the stirring of life and
the eggs grew. They grew until, in
the ordinary fish, they filled a large
part of the body cavity. The sac which
holds these flower-seeds of the deep is the
ovary, and the eggs themselves the ova.
The eggs grow until they are ripe and
ready to be deposited in the water. But
these flower-seeds, these ova, are in them-
selves incomplete; they have not enough
of life to perfect the future
fish ; they, like the true flow-
need the touch of other life,
the adding of new power to their
own possibilities. And this life,-like that in
the pollen of the flowers, grows as the eggs
Fishes.
57
grow, that it may be ready,
when the time comes, to join
f ] them. As spring draws near,
f I A/i male fish, too, feels the mys-
|/tery of life stirring within him.
He also has sacs like the egg sacs,
but they are filled with the other half
of the egg-life, the pollen, as we should
call it if it were a flower, the fertiliz-
ing fluid since it is a fish. This fer-
tilizing fluid contains numberless minute
living bodies, transparent as glass, delicately
formed, full of motion and beautiful to
look at, though they are so small as to
be invisible except through the microscope.
During the winter these sacs, like the
ovaries, were small; but they grew with
the spring, and the owner of them was
filled with the joy of new life that moved
in him as well as in the buds and twigs.
And in the Northern lakes a time came
when the bass prepared nests for their
young. Two by two they swam away
A Song of Life.
to a quiet place in the clear water; and
each pair having selected a smooth spot
on the bottom of the pond, they carefully
fanned away all small sticks and other
rubbish with their fins, and in
their mouths carried away the little
stones^ until each pair had formed upon
the dark bottom of the pond a- round
^ ^Bfcl white floor, as clean as though
it had been swept. Into these
nests the eggs were deposited. As soon as
they were laid in the sand by the mother,
the* other fish poured over them the fertiliz-
ing fluid; and when the tiny living par-
ticles of this wonderful fluid had touched
the eggs, lo ! the eggs became living be-
ings. The new presence aroused them from
inactivity. They began to grow, and were
in time transformed into myriads of
little bass. And thus do the eggs
and fertilizing principle of all
fish join to produce new life.
To the young fish come
Fishes.
59
not only the possibilities from its mother's
life, but also the possibilities from its
father's life. In the tiny egg was con-
tained the whole idea of the mother fish.
In the tiny living atom in the fertilizing
principle was contained the whole idea of
the father fish. The young fish has thus
much opportunity for variety, but the
power to vary is confined within certain
strict limits. The young bass may be un-
like any other bass, but he must possess
the characteristics which distinguish the
bass family. He may be himself,
must keep within the limits of
basshood; he cannot share the
characteristics of the eel or cod
or any other species of fish.
Like the pollen, which can fertil
only its own kind, the fishj can fertilize
only the eggs of its Jl own specie^
Each fish is true to^CTk his kind,
and if some profligate fj3S3j\ were to be
untrue to his raceAi\Jl\he would
6o A Song of Life.
but waste his vital power, for no egg
will grow if fertilized by an alien. Eel
and bass cannot mingle, nor can cod and
pike. He who stocks his pond with trout
is quite sure as to what the result will be.
Having laid and fertilized the eggs, the
parent bass do not, as many fish do, desert
their offspring. They swim about the nest,
or hover over it, until the young are
hatched and grown large enough to care
for themselves. It is an edifying sight to
see the parent fish surrounded by a black
cloud of tiny creatures to whom he teaches
the art of getting a living.
Fish are as prolific as flowers. Some-
times millions of eggs come from one
ovary. One pair of shad and their offspring
could fill the Atlantic ocean from^3fe brim
to brim in a few years, if none $ were
destroyed. But many^^ #5s*jisb
are cannibals, and into
their ever-ready stom-
achs the superfluous life
Fishes.
61
is received, and many little fish are thus
converted into material for one big fish.
One cannot help wondering what would
happen if the big fish thus nourished were
to assimilate the feelings as well as the
bodies of the little fish so heartlessly
consumed.
FROGS.
COMEWHAT higher than the fish
in the scale of life is the frog. Al-
though he begins life as a fish, and
in the tadpole state breathes by gills,
he soon discards the water-diluted air
of the pond, and with perfect lungs/
boldly inhales the pure air of the
upper world. His life as a tad- \
pole, although so fish-like, is much ^^ in-
ferior to true fish life ; tor though the fish
has not the perfect lung, he has a modifi-
cation of it which he , fills
6 4
A Song of Life.
with air, not for breathing purposes, but
as an air-sac to make him float like a
bubble in the water. Will he rise to the
surface? he inflates the air-bladder. Will
* he sink to the bottom ? he compresses the
air-bladder. But in the frog the air-blad-
\ der changes into the lungs, and is never
the delicate balloon which floats the fish
in aqueous space. When the frog's lungs
are perfected, his gills close and he for-
ever abandons fish-life, though being
a cold-blooded creature he needs
comparatively little air, and delights to
return to his childhood's home 'in the
bottom of the pond. But although he
can stay under water for a long time,
he is obliged to hold his breath while
there, and when he would breathe must
come to the surface^ so - It *
possible to drown
holding him under water.
As a feeder the
relies upon animal life, which e^l \ex-
Frogs.
pertly seizes with a tongue fastened by the
wrong end, as compared with our tongues.
He is a certain marksman, and when he
aims at an insect the chances are that the
insect will enter his stomach and be there
speedily changed into a new form of ani-
mal life.
Although from the moment the gills
disappear the frog is a true land animal
he is obliged, on account of the fish-like
character of his young, to lay his eggs in
the water. For this purpose the frogs
enter the pools in early spring. The sur-
face of every country pond swarms with
the bright-eyed little creatures. They have
from a .. .^ s ~~->> ^
66 A Song of Life.
to find the spring about them and within
them. Life has suddenly become abundant
and joyous. Their sluggish blood flows
faster, their hearts beat quicker ; they leap,
they swim, they swell out their throats
and call to each other in various keys.
The toads are with them, and the pretty
tree-frogs that change their color to suit
their emotions. And all are rapturously
screaming. Their voices are not musical,
according to man's standard, but seem to
afford great satisfaction to the performers
in the shrill orchestra of the swamps, who
thus give vent to the flood of 'life that
sweeps through them after the still, icy
winter.
As though the new spring-life were too
plentiful to find room in the frogs and
toads already existing, it calls for more
frogs and toads; and new creatures are
born to share the extra vitality. Like the
flowers and the fish, the frogs, too, give
forth new life. Within them, too, the
Frogs.
67
miracle is performed. The tiny eggs of
the one wake up and begin to grow. The
tiny living bodies in the fertilizing princi-
ple of the other also wake up and begin
to grow. But higher life is better guard-
ed, because less prolific. The frog and
the toad lay but few eggs as compared
with the fish. Fish eggs may drop under
the stones or float away, and so escape
the vital touch of the fertilizing principle.
There are so many that numbers may be
lost and yet enough remain to continue
the family. Not so with the frog family.
No egg may be lost. So we find that
the eggs of the frog are not dropped
singly, like so many shot, but are bound
together by a colorless, transparent, jelly-
iL like substance, much like
that found in the morning-
glory seed, and which like
that supplies nourishment
to the young life, for
the tadpole feeds
68
A Song of Life.
upon it until he is able to seek other food.
Moreover, instinct has taught the frog the
need of extreme caution in the act of fer-
tilization. Every egg must be fertilized.
As the time draws near for the dropping
of the few eggs into the water, the male
frog so places himself that the moment
the eggs are being laid, he pours over
them, one by one, as they fall into the
water, the fertilizing fluid.
And thus the mystery of life is again
repeated. The union of the living, mi-
croscopic bodies of
fertilizing principle with
laid egg is followed by the growth of
the two elements into a living creature,
able to eat, to breathe,- to -see, to feel.
In some unknown way the atom of fer-
tilizing principle seems to have con-
the whole life of the father-
for it can give to his sons
and daughters any of
his peculiarities, either
Frogs. 69
of color, form, motion, or disposition ; and
the tiny egg seems to have contained the
whole life of the mother-frog, and can
give to her sons and daughters any of
her peculiarities ; though, as is true of all
inheritance, the tadpoles, as the young
frogs are called, share the natures of both
parents, inheriting some peculiarities from
the father and others from the mother.
But, like other life, although the frogs
may vary a good deal within frog limits,
none of them can escape their own limits
and enter into those of any other life.
Once a frog, always a frog ; and no frog-
egg may hope to develop into a turtle,
or a bird, or anything but a frog. The
life in the fertilizing principle of the frog
is sacred to frog eggs, and is lifeless in
contact with any other.
Our common frogs, like many of the
fishes, do not trouble themselves about
the fate of their eggs after they are care-
fully laid in a safe place. They trust
A Song of Life.
Mother Nature to see the little tadpoles
safely through the perils of childhood, to
help them change their dresses and get
rid of their tails, and cut, not their teeth,
but their arms and legs.
In Venezuela, however, there dwells a
frog with well developed maternal instinct.
The mothers have .pockets on their backs,
not for their own convenience, but as
cradles for their babies. The fathers put
the fertilized eggs into the pockets of
the k mothers ; and there they remain, well
guav rded, until the young are able to
care for themselves.
BIRDS.
TTO talk intelligently of birds, one needs
to be a bird or an angel. One who
moves always upon the surface of the
earth, unable to hang suspended above it
for even an inch of space, cannot conceive
of what it is to be a bird with wings.
All animals, and plants too, live on air;
but their relation to it is commonplace,
ignoble, compared to the relation between
the birds and the air. One is tempted to
assert that birds are air, they are so full
of it. Michelet, the bird's lover, thus
speaks of it:-
'But this faculty, this rapid in-
halation or expulsion of air, . . .
does it proceed? From an
A Song of Life.
unique, unheard-of power of respiration.
The man who should inhale a similar
quantity of air at one breath would be
suffocated. The bird's elastic and pow-
erful lung quaffs it, grows full of it,
grows intoxicated with vigor and delight,
and pours it abundantly into its aerial
cells. Each aspiration is renewed, second
after second, withN^Jtegp^^ ' tremend-
ous rapidity. The blood, cease-
lessly vivified with freslyXair,/ supplies\
cle
jnexhaust
ihich no
f being
'ith that
ible energy
possesses, and
^/hich belongs only to the
"elements."
,fish swims in the
sea, the bird swims in the
air, Tol|j|L propel it through space
it h/as a winf^Lpf rare mechanism, to
whjfich^/ Michemlet does honor. Speak-
ing of the% wing of the frigate-
bird, he says:
Birds.
~"S
"The instrument acts so directly
73
on the mover, the oar on
rower, and unites with him so per-"\
fectly, that the impetuous frigate-bird *^
swe'eps along at the rate of eighty \x
leagues an hour, five
six times
rapid
trains, out-
r stripping the hurricane, and with no
ival but the lightning."
And every one knows of the equally
marvellous vibrations of the humming-
bird's wings, though few understand the
tremendous muscular power such vibration
expresses. The bird is concentrated vitality.
In no other creature is life so like a flame.
He seeks in his food fuel to feed the flame,
and we find him eating seeds, the part
of the plant where most nutrition, most
vitality is stored ; or he takes fruits, the
74 A Song of Life.
best product of the plant next to the
seed; or he regales himself upon insects,
which, next to himself, contain the fiercest
heat of life. He will not feed upon the
grass-blades, or coarser fibres of vegetable
life ; he takes the heart, the life of the
plant, for his food.
Where destined to consume decaying
animal matter, the bird has a power of
digestion as wonderful as is his power of
flight; and there is seemingly no limit to
the amount of foul nutrition the vulture
can convert, in the intense laboratories of
crop and gizzard, into the strong 'fibre of
his body.
The bird is so full of life that ceaseless
activity is the consequence, and the over-
plus vitality impels him to violent contests
with his fellow birds. The sparrow, oblivi-
ous to everything but the rage that ani-
mates him, will sometimes allow
himself to be caught rather than let
go his hold on his hated rival. The
Birds. 75
little king-bird will boldly attack and per-
sistently worry the eagle or owl. A lion
is not as fierce as a humming-bird, nor as
ready to fight against odds.
And there is with the birds, as with all
other life, a time of intensest vitality, a
hen life, from its very fulness,
creates new life to succeed its de-
cline. As spring colors the earth,
birds sing aloud; their glad-
ness bursts forth from tree and hedge and
fence-top, from swamp and hillock ; it rises
from the earth, it falls from heaven, it
flies on swift bright wings. It is the life
which overflows from every bird, for the
bird which only croaks or squawks at other
times makes music in the spring. The
new life-current is so strong that not
even the swift wings can fully ^express
it; it bursts forth in tones \//' 1 of
transport. The vitality is sol?v /in
tense that the very plumage
glows. Even though it be"
76 A Song of Life.
or black it shines with a new light, and
in many birds, for a brief time, flashes
forth in gorgeous brilliancy of color. Joy-
ous indeed is the life of the birds in the
springtime. Space is their dwelling-place
and color their heritage, and how dreary
earth would be without them! A world
without birds, meadows without bob-o-
links, hedges without thrushes, skies with-
out swallows, door-yards
without robins and blue-
birds, their color, motion,'
music, missing!
But the overflow of life in the
springtime has a meaning full of
hope for the future. New birds are to
be. The exuberant vitality is a dowry for
the next generation. The life that is, is
about to produce other life ; and all the
joyous vitality finally centres about that
one point. With the beautiful spring
awakening there awoke a new life in each
bird. In one the tiny egg began to grow,
Birds. 77
in the other the fertilizing principle to
develop.
But this strange, sweet life of the bird
is different from all else we have con-
sidered. It is more like our f( ^v
own. There is red, hot p
blood; there is a highly />
complicated mechanism of
form ; and more than all, a quick
intelligence, which places the bird
high up in the scale of animal^ life.
The frog's eggs were more precious than
those of the fish, because of the more
complex life of the frog and consequent
smaller number of eggs; the bird's eggs
are far more precious still. The simple
flower lays its countless eggs; the simple
fish also lays countless eggs; the less sim-
ple frog lays fewer eggs ; and the bird, less
simple yet, lays but few, often at the end
of the laying season having but four or
five. And the life in the bird's egg, how
complex it is; how marvellous the power
78 A Song of Life.
that converts the formless substance into
this complicated, living creature 1
How great the planning to produce the
perfect bird, all from an egg and an
atom of fertilizing fluid! And when the
young bird comes, how helpless it is, un-
able to do aught but open its mouth for
food! The care of it is something prodi-
gious, and begins long before it leaves the
mother's body. The fish and frogs drop
their eggs into the water, where they are
fertilized in the simplest manner. The
bird builds a nest and sits upon her eggs,
supplying warmth from her body until the
young come forth. This sitting upon the
egg makes necessary a protection to the
delicate contents. Were the bird's eggs
jelly-like, as are those of the fish and
frog, they would soon be crushed and
destroyed; but they come forth provided
with a hard, firm shell of lime, porous to
let in the air for even the chick in the
egg must have air but impervious to
Birds.
79
liquids. Thus they would seem to be
protected against life itself, against the
fertilizing fluid, for that cannot penetrate
the shell. But there is a time in the his-
tory of the egg when it has no shell.
The bird's ovaries are on either side of
the body, and are filled with tiny, soft
eggs, not so large as a pin's head. These
eggs grow one at a time, instead of all
together, as in the fish and frog. As an
egg grows, it becomes separated from the
other eggs in the ovary and slides down
a tube leading from the ovary to the outer
world ; but it has no shell. And now is
the time for the fertilizing fluid to do its
work. Instinct again provides for the new
life, and the male bird deposits the fertiliz-
ing fluid where the shelless egg lies ready
for it. As the egg /^//^proceeds on its
^r /X
journey it become^^^/coated with a
covering of lime^^^^^^^^until the hard,
firm shell i>p||ife|r^loses, not
the egg
&%?g3^
TTWTVWfcST*^
8o A Song of Life.
alone, but the vital spark of ,the fertilizing
fluid as well, holding these two wondrous
elements bound in its close embrace, until
they burst it asunder, and marvel of
marvels emerge from the formless egg-
mass, a bird!
One after the other the eggs grow, are
fertilized, receive the shell, and are laid.
Then comes the long and trying period \
of incubation, or hatching. //The
bird must sit, day afterl^^^^day, upon
the changing eggs. C^^Scarcely a mo-
ment can they be left, for a chill might
prove fatal to the life of the forming birds.
To no animal can a long period of en-
forced rest be so trying as to a bird, with
its quick-flowing, hot blood, its impetu-
ously throbbing heart, and its love of
activity. Why, then, does it do this?
Every mother knows ; and Michelet, him-
self a sort of human bird, judging from
his tender knowledge of all that touches
bird-life, has told it. He is talking of
the egg when he says,
if. Birds. 8 1
j?rV j
v " What is it ? I know not ; but
she knows well, yonder trembling
/'? MS creature who with outstretched wings
fx^embraces and matures it with her
warmth; she who until now the free
/f #
gr queen of the air, lived at her own wild
will, and suddenly fettered, sits motionless
on that mute object which one would call
a stone, and which as yet gives forth no
sign of life. . . .
" Yes/ that mother knows and sees dis-
tinctly by means of the penetration and
clairvoyance of love. Through the thick,
calcareous shell where your rude hand per-
ceives nothing, she feels by a delicate tact
the mysterious being which she nourishes
and forms. It is this feeling which sus-
tains her through the ^ard\ x uous labor
of incubation, during
protracted captivity. She^^jgbk CJ ^>^\(
sees it, delicate and /raftcharmP^, ^
ing in its soft down /^T^,"
of infancy, and she'"
82
A Song of Life.
predicts with the vision oi hope that it
will be vigorous and bold, when with out-
spread wings, it shall eye the sun and
breast the storm.
"A delightful spectacle,
even more sublime than s3as ^Sl| delight-
ful. Let us be modest here. With us the
mother loves that which stirs in her
bosom, that which she touches, clasps,
enfolds in assured possession ; she
loves the reality, certain, agitated,
and moving, which responds to her
own movements. But th'is one
loves the future and the unknown ;
her heart beats solitarily, and noth-
ing as yet responds to its pulsa-
tions. Yet is not her love the less
intense; she devotes herself and
suffers unto death for her dream and
her faith."
What a tribute is this to the unself-
ish, trusting love of the birdl It would
Birds. 83
seem that its power to love is as
great as its marvellous vitality.
All are familiar with the family life of
the birds ; all know of the tireless devotion
and jealous care of both parents during
the infancy of the young. All know of
the fearless manner in which the parent-
bird defends its nest, risking its own
life rather than desert its beloved. When
danger threatens, its parental love flames
forth with a fury that stifles every other
emotion. Its own safety is forgotten. It
forgets that it is feeble.
" But how help them ? It can do nothing
but remain at its post and die; it cannot
fly away, for its love has broken its wings."
All have watched the demure little mo-
ther industriously assisting her busy mate
in caring for the family. Bright wings
do hard work then.
And in the nest each
young bird matures
into a being
8 4
A Song of Life.
like both parents and like neither. Within
each egg was wonderfully concealed all the
possibilities of the mother-bird. With-
1 .
in each microscopic
atom of the fer-/
more wonerfully
den the
sibilities of
bird, his shape, his olor, hisV /
motions, his song were j*^there. How'
was that song of his re-
membered by a micro-
scopic atom and handed^^^clown to his
sons, so that when they stood up to
sing, out poured the same melody? Even
though the young bird were exiled, so
that he never heard his father's song, or
the song of other birds of his kind, yet
an hour would come when the impulse
Birds.
to sing would move him, and forth would
burst the old strangely remembered but
never heard melody.
The law that ruled the flower-life and
the fish-life and the frog-life rules
also the bird-life, and indeed, all
other life there is on earth. A univer-
sal law has decreed that the flower-
father, the fish-father, the frog-
father, every father shall live again in
the microscopic particle of fertilizing prin-
ciple ; it has decreed that every mother shall
live again in the tiny cell we call the egg ;
it has decreed that these minute particles
shall retain the most perfect stamp of their
owners, be able to transmit
any power^^the owner may posses^.
1
THE END
AND THE BEGINNING.
DURELY physical vitality reaches its climax
in the bird. Such intensity of life and
joy we find nowhere else; it throbs in
every atom of the hot little body, it per-
forms prodigious feats of flight, it escapes
in song so loud and long that no other
creature could stand an equal strain.
Think of the amount of air set in vibra-
tion by a wood-thrush or mocking-bird
during its prolonged solo, and then think
of the size of the organs that do it. Re-
call the form of the song-sparrow on the
topmost bough of some tree, head thrown
back, body quivering, every muscle con-
tracted, while a loud and prolonged melody
88 A Song of Life.
pours from the atom of intense life. No
other creature can enter the lists of pure
physical life with the bird; there it is
without peer.
What is left for the creature who, in the
course of development, must surpass it?
The bird has reached the v
of physical existence, thewk
next form of life advances /^ <f
./ ***. J
farther toward an ^T \>-
a which is more than physical.
jj c\ Above the bird and at the top of ( \
1 1 **/ V
0P animal life stands the mammal, the
wonderful creature that feeds its
-young with miik manufactured
in its^f own body, as though it could
not trust to less carefully prepared or
more uncertain supplies to nourish the
new life for which it is responsible. In
the cow and the goat all are familiar with
the milk-giving animals, or mammals, as
they are called, and which embrace most
of the four-legged and the highest forms of
The End and the Beginning. 89
the two-legged animals. From the great
elephant and fierce lion to the tiny mouse
and frisky squirrel we find them. In its
power of breathing, the mammal falls
short of the bird; its blood is not so hot,
and does not flow so fast; its food, in
the adult state, is less concentrated, more
crude than is that of most birds; and yet
somewhere in its creation a new note has
been struck, a new being has been formed
which is as much higher above the bird
as the bird is above the sluggish, stupid,
cold-blooded reptile. A type has appeared
which finds its highest expression in hu-
man life, for man himself is the crown of
the mammal. To the less intense physical
life is united a higher development of the
mind-life.
This mind-life dawns low down in the
animal kingdom, but not until the higher
mammals were reached did it give a hint
of the possibilities it contained, and which
in man were to reach such marvellous re-
90 A Song of Life.
suits. The bird may stand at the summit
of physical life, man stands at the summit
of mental life. The vitality which creates
a great thought is more wonderful than
that which propels the frigate-bird through
the air. Man's wings are in his brain ; he
can outfly the wind, electricity cannot
girt the globe quicker than his thought.
The farthest star is not so far but that
his mind can wing its way through the
illimitable space and alight there.
And from his high position man gets the
first dim glimpses of a still higher state.
Having reached the summit of earthly pos-
sibilities he finds himself at the borderland
of another life. Like the plant, which is
joined to the lifeless mineral on one side
and just touches the warm animal vitality
on the other, he is joined to the crude
animal life on one side and just touches
the dim mystery of the spirit life on the
other. He catches brief glimpses of a life
of blinding possibilities, which cast over
The End and the Beginning. 91
his prosaic, every-day life on earth a help-
ful glow.
And this wonderful spirit of man is
lodged in a body whose complexity sur-
passes that of all other animals. Although
more active, even the bird is less complex ;
and its wing, wonderful as it is, cannot
compare in structure with the hand of
man. The human hand alone, with its
delicacy of touch and its ingenious struc-
ture which enables it to make thousands
of different movements, is enough to make
its possessor master of the world.
We have observed how, as the creature
becomes more complex, its reproduction be-
comes a matter of greater moment. The
young bird-life is jealously guarded, and
parental love is strong in
bird heart. But there
is an ascending scale
of love in Naty<^ure for her
children; andy^V^while she
ingeniously -. j A protects
92 A Song of Life.
her bird-life, she exhausts device in caring
for her noblest offspring, the mammal.
The mammalian mother is united to her
child by peculiar and all-powerful bonds.
She literally shares her life with it. Hers
is the perfect motherhood, and her love
for her child pales every other passion.
There are among the lower animals parents
that desert their young, or deliver them
over to the care of strangers. Among
birds there are species that lay their eggs
in other birds' nests, and take no further
thought of them. There is nothing like
this in mammalian life. In its' whole
range there is no mother that deserts her
child. The life of mother and child are
so intimately connected that neither can
exist without the other. The motherhood
of mammalian life is the most sacred thing
in physical existence. The very food of
the young animal is part of its mother's
life and is formed within her body. No
other food is so sufficient and so concen-
The End and the Beginning. 93
trated. It is manufactured in a laboratory
whose secrets have never been discovered.
We analyze milk and know what it is made
of, but nowhere else in natx \ure, or
through artificial means,
can we get even the in-
gredients for this per-
fect food. No other fat
is like butter, no other albu-
minous matter is like cheese,
no other sugar is like sugar
of milk.
And what is the origin of
this most complex of all life?"
Whence springs the young mam-
mal? We see it for the first time
at its mother's side, fully formed. It is
feeble, but it^Js perfect. Has Nature
changed x"^"^ her whole plan of
r e p r o d u c
evolved
life from
94 A Song of Life.
cast it away as inadequate to the needs of
the mammal? Has she through the egg
solved the question of reproduction for
plants as well as animals and at last failed
because her plan was not perfect enough
to go one step further?
To contemplate the subject before us,
let us go into the wild wood, far away
from the noise of cities. Let us go where
all is clean and sweet and fresh in the
beauty of early summer. The birds are
not there, for they love the more open
places ; but life is there in shapes as beau-
tiful, for between the distant tree-trunks
move dim forms. A magnificent pair of
antlers is half hidden by the leaves. A
slender doe daintily speeds away with a
speckled fawn at her side. Pretty, horn-
less heads and great soft eyes bear witness
to the presence of other members of the
same family, but they are so shy we seem
to feel rather than see them ; and to our
half dreaming senses the breeze and flut-
The End and the Beginning. 95
tering leaves take up the song of life.
And this is the song they sing:
" The beautiful doe as well as her fawn,
the stag with his antlers, all began life as
a tiny, oh very tiny egg."
"O wind and leaves, you must be
mistaken ! "
But the wind shakes the leaves and
laughs aloud, and goes sweeping through
the forest singing this refrain:
" The egg is the source of life, the
wonderful egg. Within it was once
held the stag, as well as the doe and
^
the fawn. The fierce tiger
of the torrid zone was
once a harmless egg. The
elephant was but an idea
impressed upon an egg.
The rhinoceros with
cruel horn, and the hippo-
potamus with the cavernous
.
huge
VW I
96 A Song of Life.
mouth were only eggs. The race-horse
began life as an egg. The watch-dog,
too, was a very little egg. The black cat
now stealing the egg from the hen's nest
was herself once an egg a hundred times
smaller than that she steals. Oh the egg,
the wonderful egg egg the egg!"
And the wind dies away, leaving us
much food for thought, for all that we
have heard is true. The mammalian egg
is as much a reality as is that of the fish
or the bird. But under ordinary circum-
stances it is never seen, being exceedingly
small and remaining during its period of
development a captive within the mother's
body. It is therefore not strange that for
ages the presence of this hidden mystery
escaped detection. All sorts of theories
were afloat as to the origin of the young
mammalian life, but that it came from an
egg, like all other life, was not apparent.
Nevertheless, on either side of the mam-
malian mother's body, just as in the fish,
The End and tbe Beginning. 97
frog, and bird, lie the ovaries. The eggs
they contain are so small that to predict
a living animal, like a lamb or a calf, or
even a rabbit or a mouse, from one of
them seems absurd; and yet the whole
life of the animal is compressed within
the tiny vital spheres. The doe's egg is
not so large as the smallest pea. Its pos-
sibilities are colossal. Let us consider its
development. One egg, or sometimes
two, develops at a time. The egg, when
mature, leaves its companions in the ovary
and finds its way through a tube con-
nected with the ovary Into a pouch into
which the tube opens. Although no
larger than a number eight shot, within
this tiny egg is the possibility of becom-
ing a deer. But its life is not abundant
enough to effect the transformation alone;
other life must be added to it. As in the
case of the bird, the fertiliz-
ing principle is added to the
incomplete life eager to live /
98 A Song of Life.
and grow. Two infinitely small atoms of
vitality join forces, and the result is the
complex creature we call a deer.
Slowly the new life forms; to the origi-
nal tiny particle of living matter must
be added great store of nourishment. In
the other eggs considered, food was stored
up in the egg and pure air found its way
through the porous egg-covering ; but here
is no provision in the tiny egg for either
food or air. This child must owe all to
its mother. Every particle of life must
proceed directly from her. Her lungs must
breathe the oxygen it needs. Her food
must furnish it material for growing. Its
very blood must flow from her heart ;
and she is, in every fibre of her loving
body, ready to meet the demand. Large
blood-vessels seek the room in which
the formless captive lies, and carry to it
blood, rich and pure. The food which
the mother eats serves not only for her
own nourishment but also for the growth
The End and the Beginning. 99
and nourishment of that wonderful being,
her other self, that lies under her heart.
As the fawn grows larger, more and more
of the nourishment the mother takes goes
to its support, until, after several months
of this development, it is fully formed and
ready for its new life in the open air.
The story is only the story of the egg (
told over again. In the lower animals the
eggs were laid and then hatched; but here J^
the life is too precious to be exposed '
to the dangers which would menace
it if it were developed in the
outer world, and so, safe near
\ the mother's heart, the little new
/ form is perfected. And when it
enters the world, too feeble to do
\vaught but eat, its table is spread /
a food kings could not buy.
Seeds may grow for the
^ birds, grain and fruit for
other creatures, /
but the food
ioo A Song of Life.
of the little fawn comes only with the
sweet mystery of motherhood.
And what is this milk, this food
which gold cannot buy, but which is a
free gift from the mother to her child,
this delectable drink that springs from the
mysterious fountain of life? It is all that
the fawn is. It is bones, muscles, blood,
tissues, and organs of all descriptions.
Complex as the animal is, it contains
nothing which did not at first exist in
some form in the milk.
The doe-mother is nothing as far as
the development of her own life is con-
cerned. She is for the time obliterated,
merged in the life of her fawn. The
lime she consumes does not go to replen-
ish her own bones, it collects in the milk
to develop the bones of the fawn. The
albumen she extracts from her food does
not nourish her muscles, it is stored
away in the milk for the fawn; and the
mother loses flesh and beauty because
The End and the Beginning. 101
giving the best of her life to her child.
And all her loyal mother's life she will
gladly give if her child requires it. Justly
man reverences motherhood.
It is unnecessary to repeat that the
manner of reproduction of all mammals
is the same. Man himself passes through
the wonderful transformation. The higher
mental powers, already begun in the lower
animal, find their fullest development in
him ; but he starts like the rest, as a form-
less speck of living matter.
The child is everywhere but a bud-
ding of the parent, a blossoming of exist-
ing adult life into the lovely flowers of
infancy.
We know the facts of renewed life ; the
great mystery of it we do not know.
The soul within the strange and beautiful
body is shrouded from our gaze as com-
pletely as it was from the gaze of our
forefathers.
We have outstripped them in knowledge
102 A Song of Life.
of material facts; in knowledge of spirit-
ual ones we have not advanced one step.
This only is certain, that we go on and
on forever. Not only what we have in-
herited, but what we have gained by our
own efforts, sets its stamp upon our vital
forces, and vibrates through the future
ages. We, more than all the rest of the
animal creation, have knowledge. This
knowledge informs us that our bodies are
temples, sacred receptacles of a soul, and
are the altar-flames for future beings.
Knowledge enables us to care for our
bodies so that they may become stronger,
more beautiful, and more perfect than our
inherited bodies could have been if left to
A j, chance. Knowledge makes us able to
%A 1 / / ^ develop our minds and souls so that
'^,xjr \,'*^ i
l ^ff|^^^i they, too, may be finer and higher
our inheritance. And grandest
of all, ^~~v knowledge has taught
us that /\|^v every power we add
to , our own lives
The End and the Beginning. 103
may be handed down, a richer inheritance
than gold, to our sons and daughters.
We know that the efforts we make are
tendencies stored up like the bird's song,
and that in some mysterious way these
tendencies may wake up in our beloved
child and through his efforts grow yet
stronger. We know that each new gen-
eration may reach greater perfection than
the one before it, and we know that the
lives which we of to-day live are the
stamps that impress the possibilities upon
the life of the future. Were man's desire
in proportion to his knowledge, he could
soon people the earth with inhabitants of
perfect beauty and nobility.
itnWlkVl!'
O ^ C
O
'" V*,'
s
THE
o WORLD'S CRADLE.
t>
^1 "EVERYTHING SPRINGS FROM THE EGG; ;i ^
IT IS THE WORLD'S CRADLE." ' v% ^ y
THE WORLD'S CRADLE.
AA7ITHIN the egg may lie dormant
the future statesman or next
summer's butterfly. So far as the appear-
ance of the egg-substance is concerned
there is no more reason to expect
the one from it than the other. ^A
The butterfly's cradle, to human g^p ken,
contains neither less nor more than
the man's. The finest chemical test
cannot point out that something in the
one which makes it a man, or ^*^ that
something in the other which
makes it a butterfly; they
are to all seeming
similar bits of semi-
fluid, animal matter.
io8 A Song of Life.
The best he who is curious about the
life within the egg can do to understand
the miracle is to watch the changes that
occur as the egg advances from a struct-
ureless fluid to an organized being, to
watch it proceed from so simple a thing
as an egg appears to be into so compli-
cated a thing as a frog or a robin or a
Sir Isaac Newton. Human eyes cannot,
under ordinary circumstances, see these
changes; the wonderful eye of the micro-
scope must first be fixed upon them. Ob-
servation has, however, told every one a
few facts about the hen's egg which are
helpful in understanding the development
of all eggs. We know that the hen's egg
consists of a yelk surrounded by the soft,
jelly-like "white;" and if we have looked
carefully enough we know that the yelk
is held in place by a delicate wall, which
surrounds it and separates it from the
"white." When we examine other eggs
we find that all have a part correspond-
The World's Cradle. 109
ing to the yelk, surrounded by a wall,
and generally a part corresponding to the
"white." In the yelk of the egg lies the
vital something which is to awaken into
conscious life. The "white" is merely
food stored up to nourish the young crea-
ture while it is being formed. The yelk
is a mixture of oil and other materials,
among which is a clear, jelly-like sub-
stance which resembles the "white" of
egg, and is called protoplasm.
What could appear less interesting than
this semi-fluid, slimy protoplasm? Yet
approach it reverently, for it is the one
great, inscrutable mystery of the physical
world. The Alps tower snow-clad above
the plains below, and man gazes at them
with awe. The stars shine out as they
follow through fixed courses night after
night, and year after year; and the immen-
sity and mystery they express fills the
earth-bound gazer with more than awe.
And when he turns to the insignificant
i io A Song of Life.
atom of protoplasm at his feet, and his
mind suddenly opens to its meaning, be-
hold! it is greater than the Alps, more
marvellous than the stars, for in it is con-
tained the mystery called life. Protoplasm
is the only living substance. Every plant
and every animal which now lives, or has
ever lived, began life as a bit of proto-
plasm. It is the protoplasm which builds
the animal or vegetable form. It is the
protoplasm which is the living part of
every creature.
And what is this protoplasm? The
chemist has dared to analyze it. 'He tells
us it is composed of carbon, hydrogen,
oxygen, and nitrogen. A delusion! The
moment he separates it into carbon, hydro-
gen, oxygen, and nitrogen, it is no longer
protoplasm. The one essential thing
protoplasm is life. Separated
elements it no
^"^v ""
The World's Cradle. in
no longer change into a tadpole or a bird,
or any living being. This dead thing the
chemist analyzes has no more interest for
us than so much charcoal. The chemist
failed to seize upon life. As soon as he
began his analysis that escaped. All his
wonderful appliances were not wonderful
enough to find it; and to-day we are as
ignorant of the true nature of protoplasm
as though chemistry and biology and phil-
osophy, and all the other sciences, had
never existed. We only know that it is
a mysterious living substance upon which
every living thing depends; that unmixed
with other substances it is clear and jelly-
like, while mixed with oil and other ma-
terials it forms the most important part of
the egg-yelk, the part destined to become
the animal.
When protoplasm, existing alone or
mixed with other substances, is surround-
ed by a wall like the wall of the egg-
yelk, we call the little bag of protoplasm
ii2 A Song of Life.
a cell. A cell may also exist as a bit of
protoplasm without a wall, and may be of
almost any shape. A cell is usually found
in combination with other cells, though it
may exist alone. In fact, there is a com-
plete animal which is no more nor less
than a naked cell of protoplasm. Its name
is moneron. It has no nerves, no heart,
no lungs, not even a cell-wall. And yet
it is a living thing, and something in it
makes it want to move. It has no legs
to go on, but its body is most convenient,
being a speck of protoplasm, all parts of
which are alike endowed with the power
to serve every purpose. Thus, when it
^ would move, it protrudes a finger-
like bit of its body, like a feeler;
the rest of the body gradually
flows along until it has caught up
to the advanced part, or if the
creature is minded to go yet farther,
another finger-like part
Tbe World's Cradle. 113
advanced like the first to tempt the main
part on. Being an animal, the moneron
must eat. This it does by enfolding its
body substance about the bit of matter
it is to consume. This body, though it
seems but a speck of jelly, attracts all of
the nutritious matter from the speck it
has encased, and this done, flows away
and leaves the rest.
The moneron would have a child. It
contracts through the middle, and con-
tinues to contract until there is no middle
left. The moneron has thus divided into
two parts, made two monera of itself,
though which is parent and which is
child is an unanswerable question. In the
picture we see the upper moneron putting
out a finger-like process to the left. Just
below it is a moneron dividing into two
monera. Next below we see the division
complete, and after that the monera assum-
ing all sorts cr ^_ of rather regular forms,
ii4 A Song of Life.
somewhat more regular than usual, as they
are desirous of forming a pleasing decora-
tion of themselves.
Although the moneron is an example of
a single cell conducting itself as an inde-
pendent animal, the cell is usually only
one infinitesimal part of the whole animal
or plant. It is generally supplied with a
wall, and is usually very small, often so
small that, like the moneron, it can be
seen only with a microscope. The yelk
of the hen's egg is therefore a very large
cell. The tiny living bodies in the pollen
and in the fertilizing fluid are small cells,
and their shapes are often wonderful. In
fact the cell assumes a special form for
each kind of tissue, and under the micro-
scope may be recognized as the irregular
nerve cell, the spherical fat cell, the hex-
agonal pigment cell, or whatever it may
be; and with the connecting tissues in
which it embeds itself forms very wonder-
ful and beautiful combinations, in both
The World's Cradle. 115
form and color. Believing that the inter-
est felt by many young people in the
beauties revealed by the microscope is
greater than their knowledge of micro-
scopic facts, the animal cells have planned
to place themselves in an attractive form
before- the readers of these pages. They
accordingly present themselves in their mi-
croscopic shapes, accommodatingly lending
themselves to the purposes of decoration
by forming groups in pretty conventional
designs.
We remember that the yelk of the egg
is composed of protoplasm, oil, and other
materials. The protoplasm may be mixed
uniformly through the yelk; or, as is the
case in the eggs of some animals, the
protoplasm may be collected in one part
of the yelk, the rest of the yelk being
composed of the oils and other materials.
As soon as an egg has been fertilized its
protoplasm suddenly wakens to the fact
that it is alive and has work to do. It is
A Song of Life.
stirred with a desire to become a trout,
or a frog, or a robin, or whatever creature
its parent may be. But what can it do?
It is but a simple jelly-like speck, a liv-
ing speck, however, and one bent upon
becoming more complex; so it performs
a simple act, as befitting so simple a crea-
ture, it imitates the moneron and divides
into two parts. Its division, however,
does not make of it two creatures equally
simple; it remains one creature still, but
a less simple one. It has taken the first
step in the life-changes that convert an
egg into an animal.
This division into two parts is the
triumphant departure from formless matter
to complex life. Is not a creature com-
posed of two parts twice as complex
as a creature composed of
The World's Cradle.
117
one? it seems to ask. Where the proto-
plasm is mixed uniformly through the
yelk, at the moment of division the whole
yelk divides into two parts. The proto-
plasm has heard a voice it must obey ; the
fat and other matters are so thoroughly
mixed with it that it cannot separate itself
from them, so at its moment of division
it carries all with it, and thus the whole
yelk divides into two yelks. Where, how-
ever, the protoplasm is collected by itself
in one part of the yelk, the protoplasm
divides into two parts, leaving a portion of
the yelk still unchanged. This unchanged
portion afterward serves for food, and is
absorbed into the body of the animal as
it grows.
The two parts formed by division of
\) VX the protoplasm have
n8
A Song of Life.
rounded corners. They have become two
perfect cells. And in these active
cells we have all that is necessary to
make the most complicated animal in
the world for man himself is made of
cells of protoplasm. Each cell has mys-
teriously impressed upon it an ideal to-
ward which it must strive. The future
animal lies all unformed, a shapeless some-
thing which is to take a definite form.
Of all the forms possible to animal life,
but one form is possible to it, the form
of its parent. Its cells foresee this form,
and every tiny one of them disposes of
itself in the one way that will result in
that form. This they do in obedience
to,j a law as mysterious as the law that
holds the planets in their courses.
Fairly aroused, the cells, with food for
their nourishment and with right sur-
7 roundings, grow and form other cells,
until the ,. egg has fulfilled its pos-
sibilities and become a
living being.
The World's Cradle. 119
At the beginning the cell seems to do
nothing but divide, for we are hardly sure
the protoplasm has divided into two parts
before we discover it has divided into
four. Each of these four cells divides ; the
new cells so produced divide ; and so on
until the original yelk mass has lost its
smooth, oily nature and become a much
firmer mass of tiny cells. These little cells
which we have seen formed crowd close
together, and finally flatten out against the
yelk wall, where they adhere to each other
by their edges and form its inside lin- /giggx
ing. This lining, which we must (|| };
not forget was once the yelk and is
now a layer of cells, is called the blasto-
dermio membrane; and we can forgive its
long name when we learn that it is now
the body of the embryo, as the animal in
these early stages is called.
It is no longer a formless mass, but
a true living animal. Its cells have not,
moneron-like, divided into a number of
I2O
A Song of Life.
separate creatures, they have formed a little
community in which each cell has its own
special work to do. The moneron cell
is a savage, it must do everything for
itself. It must, as it were, be its own
cook, shoemaker, tailor, hunter, and all
else. Consequently its life is very simple;
for the savage, being obliged to do every-
thing for himself, cannot have so much
as the civilized man who does one thing
well and quickly and exchanges it for
some other person's work, or who acts in
combination with other workers. The
egg-cell is highly civilized, each
cell having its own work to do,
and each cell working with
reference to all other cells/
Thus the animal, when
completed, is a
great and
perfect
The World's Cradle. 121
community
composed of more
individuals than the largest
city in the world can boast
of. And so well is the gov-
ernment of this great commu-
nity regulated that each cell is
'an expert in its own line, and is satis-
fied with its station in life. The skin cells
are satisfied to make good skin, the bone
cells to make good bone ; and no one ever
heard of the cells going on a strike, un-
less that is what they do when the body
is abused and the cells rebel, and then
we call it disease.
But in the embryo stage, while the cells
rule, and before the completed animal tries
to rule or overrule their good action,
the cells all do happily and well their
own work. Although the cells that flatten
themselves against the yelk-wall are the
122 A Song of Life.
earliest form of the young animal, it is in
that state so immature that we no more
recognize in it an animal of any kind than
we recognize a frog in a tadpole, unless
we. have watched a tadpole change into
a frog, as we are now about to watch
the blastodermic membrane change into
an animal.
What is it to become? a fish? a frog?
a child? That we do not know; for
up to the present stage of transformation
fish, frog, child, or any other high form
of animal life must travel the same road.
In all alike the protoplasm must change
to cells and the cells must form the blas-
todermic membrane. Although up to a
certain period the first simple changes in
the eggs of all animals are so alike that it
seems as though the egg might as easily
become one thing as another, yet the seal
of the parent is somewhere set upon the
budding life and impels it to assume the
one form. Michelet, speaking of the de-
The World's Cradle. 123
velopment of the young bird, has beau-
tifully expressed the parental prompting
which moulds the form in the egg of
every creature :
" But see how, in this divine sleep, it
has recognized its mother and her mag-
netic warmth. And it, too, begins to
dream. Its dream is of motion ; it imi-
tates, it conforms to its mother; its first
act, the act of an obscure love, is to re-
semble her."
Though the creature is now but a layer
of cells, yet in that simple form is some-
where hidden the "obscure love" which
prompts it to grow to the likeness of its
parent. And after a time the being hid-
den in the blastodermic membrane of each
egg asserts itself. It is no longer content
to remain in a state common to all ani-
mals. It begins to express its obedience
to the law of heredity; it is about to
resemble its parents. And since the blas-
todermic membrane is about to disclose
124 A Song of Life.
itself, to show what definite creature it
has been meditating during these early
obscure changes, whether a tadpole, a
robin, a rabbit, it will be well for us to
fix our whole attention upon the blasto-
dermic membrane of one egg, and watch
it reveal its secret. We select an egg in
which this membrane has just formed.
As we watch it, it divides into two lay-
ers, thus providing the yelk-wall with a
double lining, the outer and inner layers
of the blastodermic membrane, and supply-
ing itself with two corps of workers, each
corps fitted to a special kind of work.*
Each layer is formed of cells. The cells
that make the outer layer (a) are small
and close together, and build up the
* As a matter of fact the blastodermic membrane has formed
still another layer between the outer and inner layers. This
middle layer has again divided into two layers. But as the mid-
dle layers are formed from the outer and inner layers and share
their work with them, we will not give the inner layers any atten-
tion, for simplicity's sake speaking only of the outer and inner
layers.
The World's Cradle. 125
denser parts of the animal, such as skin,
bone, muscle. Those that make the
inner layer (b) are larger and looser,
and. build up the less dense parts
of the animal, such as the intestines; c
in the diagram is the unchanged yelk,
which is to form food for the embryo.
The cells build and we watch. But
what a disappointment is here! Our em-
bryo is only that of a worm ! We are
well acquainted with the development of
a certain primitive form of sea-worm, and
here it is. We are about to turn away
from the microscope through which we
have been gazing, when we notice that
one point in the outer layer of the blasto-
dermic membrane, that which forms the
outer covering to our forming worm, be-
gins to thicken. We see the cells at that
point dividing very fast and crowding
close together about a certain oval space,
until two ridges are formed which rise up
on each side of the space and meet over-
1
i26 A Song of Life.
head, forming a hollow canal. And now
we know that the cells have not designed
a worm, for a worm has no brain, and
this hollow canal is the first step toward
what will one day be a spinal cord and
brain.
The cells would have stopped building,
and finished the creature into a worm,
had it not been for that parent form
which urged them to itself, and toward
which they loyally pushed. And so, blind
to every other form of life, the cells work
on, those already formed grow, and divide
into other cells, and these in turn grow
and divide, and so on and on. Each kind
of cell has, as we know, its own shape.
Each unerringly fits into its own place
and does its own work.
We see the tiny cells swiftly forming
along that line of the spinal
cord. We see other u * cells
appear ing at
The World's (Cradle. 127
different places, cell joining cell, forming
mysterious little points and projections.
O cells, who tells you what to do? In
your dark little house how do you know,
each one of you, just the one form,
out of numberless possible forms, which
you are to take? How do you know just
the one spot which you are to occupy in
that confused something which is forming
there? O cells, tell us of the Power back
of you, which we value more than all
your work !
But the cells silently, swiftly take their
places, forming a more and more compli-
cated-looking object, which we
here see as it was once seen by
a great man, after he had spent
many hours working with the mi
croscope, for the object we are watching
is so small that it is invisible without the
aid of the microscope. It seems meaning-
less at a first glance; at a, b, c, are the
cells which have grouped themselves to
128
A Song of Life.
form the beginning of the spinal cord.
We see there a tube, the walls of which
are formed by cells which will one day
grow into the brain and spinal cord.
Curving around at a is what will be the
head, with the upper end of the spinal
cord enlarged into the brain. The space
below, d, is where the digestive canal will
finally be formed, and in e, below that,
we can readily distinguish the enlarged
abdomen. In fact, it requires but little
imagination to transform the part at a
into the head, to see legs budding at the
opposite ends of e, or wings from one
end and legs from the other, or fins from
both ends instead of legs or wings.
We can easily transform, in imagina-
tion, that primitive form into any ani-
mal we please to make it. And yet
the only thing \ its form
so far has \ / really
The World's Cradle. 129
told us is that it is to have a spinal canal
and brain. We are sure, therefore, that it
will not be a clam or a fly or a worm;
and were it not for its size which tells
part of the secret, for our egg is too large
to belong to a mammal we would not
know to which class of back-boned ani-
mals it belongs, and might well hesitate
to give an opinion as to whether it is
destined to become a lizard or a kitten.
Meanwhile the cells, relentless as fate, are
building the future animal. The creature
they are forming passes through many
stages similar to those passed through by
the embryos of other animals, yet is its
destination as certain as though no other
creature ever travelled that road. The road
of development ends in the highest form
of animal life, even man ; yet, unless the
parent of this creature is man it will
not go to the end of the road,
1 3 o
A Song of Life.
but will finally reach a side path leading
to its own parent form, and down this
path it must turn. To pass the entrance
to that pathway and go even one step
beyond is as impossible for it as it would
be for the sun to change its course. If
it will not enter that path it must die.
Its life is to be found there and there
only.
The cells are as loyal to their caste as
were the ancient Hindus. The cells of
the fish do not aspire to form a bird, their
only desire is to make a perfect fish.
Their highest ideal is the fish.
And the cells we have been
watching, still intent y upon,
the creat v ure
r they are
d forming,
f
The World's Cradle. 131
busily grow and divide, grouping them-
selves about and below the embryo, until
they have formed a body-wall quite around
it Here is a side view, a, b, c re-
presenting the back of the embryo.
That which we now see is the work done
by the cells in the outer layer of the blas-
todermic membrane. These cells continue
to group themselves, forming muscles and
skin and bone; and now behold our mys-
terious animal with a tail! Cell after cell
builds itself into the forming body
until we are at last sure that
an animal which we can recognize is
coming. Here he is beyond a doubt, the
most interesting baby frog, or tad-
pole, as he prefers to be called, that
our eyes ever beheld; for have we
not seen him grow up, cell by cell, from
the very foundation?
But what have the cells of the inner
layer of the blastodermic membrane been
doing all this time ? Have they' forgotten
132 A Song of Life.
their work? If we recall the way our
animal was last represented we find there
is a very important work still to be done;
for the outer layer of the blastodermic
membrane, which thus far has occupied
all our attention, has made only the outer
parts of the embryo. Our tadpole has a
back-bone and a brain, it is true; he has
skin, too, and muscles and eyes and ears,
and is a very satisfactory tadpole to look
at; but when he leaves the egg what is
to become of him without a stomach?
And what will he do without a heart, and
without lungs and kidneys and liver, and
all those organs necessary to an animal
whose food is no longer a part of him?
We have been so intently watching the
outer layer of the blastodermic membrane
make the outside of the embryo, that we
have failed to notice how the inner layer
was just as silently and surely forming
cells in exact places to form the internal
organs of the creature. Let us look again
The World's Cradle. 133
at our tadpole, and do justice to the work
the inner layer has done, and we shall
find that he has a stomach. It has been
building cell by cell from the inner layer,
while the skin, -skeleton, and other organs
were building from the outer layer.
At first his stomach was so large as to
fill nearly the whole abdominal cavity, and
he had no mouth for receiving food ; and
if he had had one it would have availed
him little, for there was no opening at
the other end of the digestive canal for
the escape of food refuse. But the cells
were equal to this emergency, for some of
those in the outer layer of the blastoder-
mic membrane died away and left an
opening at either end of the digestive
canal, and the digestive
canal itself grew so long
from the addition of cells
from the inner layer of the blastodermic
membrane that it could not lie straight
but had to curl up. Moreover, cells from
134
A Song of Life.
the inner layer of the blastodermic mem-
brane built themselves into a heart and
blood-vessels, and into the other organs
necessary to tadpole life; and here is our
tadpole, \out of his egg and swimming
about in
His transformation is, however, not yet
complete, for he is now in the fish stage.
He is, in reality, a fish, swimming with a
tail and breathing by gills. He must go
one step farther, get lungs and legs and
become a land animal. Such changes in
other animals take place in the egg, but
with the tadpole the last great transforma-
tion takes place after he leaves the egg.
The cells, still active within him, have
already built the beginnings of lungs and
legs ; and before long, as every one knows
The World's Cradle.
'35
who has watched a tadpole change into a
frog, the legs come out, first the hind-
legs, then the fore-legs. At the same time
the tail and gills shrink away, the lungs
form cell by cell, until finally tail and gills
are quite gone, legs and lungs are fully
formed, and the tadpole is transformed
from a fish into a frog.
And now have we the secret of the
blastodermic membrane in the frog's egg?
No more than we have the secret of the
artist when we watch him put his crea-
tions on canvas. We see the work
done by the cells, we may even
see the cells at work; but why
one forms bone, another muscle, an-
other brain, or how the different cells
^ change to form the different tissues,
we do not know. The outer life *#
r- ^/ '/
of the cells we can follow; their inner ,/
life is their own secret. X
136 A Song of Life.
Wherever we examine the developing
egg we find it travelling the same high-
road as that travelled by the tadpole. The
changes in the fish's egg are so like those
in the frog's egg that the wonder is they
ever find out which they are to become.
In some fish eggs the blastodermic mem-
brane does not close closely about the
body of the embryo, as it does in the
frog, but hangs loosely in a sac which is
filled with the food-yelk, so that this yelk
is partly inside the fish and partly outside,
as you can see in any stream in
the springtime where fish eggs are
hatching. This yelk is gradually absorbed
into the body, and affords nourishment for
the young fish until he is able to provide
food for himself. This failure of the blas-
todermic membrane to enclose the yelk,
and the consequent forming of the yelk
sac, is common in all the higher forms of
egg development.
And now for the mystery of higher life.
The World's Cradle. 137
If we watch the transformation of the
bird's egg, we see it first pass through
changes similar to those early ones passed
through by the eggs of the fish and the
frog ; and as though that were not strange
enough, we are filled with wonder to find
that the creature forming in the bird's egg
shows gill openings. Surely this egg ha?
made a mistake, and is about to develop
into a monstrous fish 1 But no. The cells
know well that this egg cannot become a
fish; they but do a moment's homage to
the humble ancestors of the bright form
they are about to perfect. " Once, way,
way back in the world's history," they
seem to say, " in those ancient times when
change was possible, there were no birds;
there were only fish-like creatures which
were like birds and like fish, and from
whom our pretty bird's ancestors were
descended ; and we would not have him,
in his pride of flight, forget his relation-
ship to these humble creatures."
138 A Song of Life.
And so the cells build the old ancestral
fish form as a foundation for the higher
bird form, knowing that these gill open-
ings are the best beginnings for beak and
other bird parts; and that the cells of the
outer layer of the blastodermic membrane
can conduct the easily guided form safely
past the fish stage, while the inner layer
can as safely conduct the internal organs
past the fish stage, moulding the air-
bladder into lungs, dividing the heart into
four ^chambers instead of leaving it in
two, and attending to the numerous other
details that separate the structure of the
bird from that of the fish. Thus we see
how, as the egg develops, a time comes
when the little creature seems on the
verge of becoming a fish. It is more like
a fish than anything else. Why does it
not stop there and finish into a fish ? An
"obscure love" hurries it on, gives it
life and strength to pass the road down
which the fish must turn. Its vitality is
The World's Cradle.
too great to be compressed into the limits
of fish life; it must go on until it finds
its parent.
.In anticipation of the greater work to be
done by the bird embryo, the bird's egg
was more carefully fertilized and guarded
than were the eggs of frog and fish. We
now see how much more work the egg-
cells must do to complete the bird. The
following series of pictures shows some
of the successive changes that appear in
the bird's egg.
140 A Song of Life.
If the egg belongs to a creature still
higher in the scale of animal life than
do those eggs we have watched, we find
it going through the same changes, and
its embryo developing through stage after
stage similar to those passed through by
the animals below it. The mammal begins
life as one cell, like the lowly moneron.
Impressed with the desire to grow, it
becomes a creature like the worm. It
scarcely pauses at that point, however,
there is such a powerful impulse hurrying
it along the high-road of life. It passes
stage after stage in quick succession ; it
has the gill openings that belong to the
embryo of the fish, but it has the life of
the mammal, it must become a cat, a
horse, a dog; and so its gill openings be-
come the foundation of the lower jaw
and ear. Each embryo, intent upon its
own form, hastens toward the goal ; each
acquires by degrees the organs peculiar to
its kind.
The World's Cradle. 141
Although all are mammals, and all are
built on the same general plan, the cells
of each know exactly where that plan is
to be modified. The cells of the rabbit
never fail to make long hind legs, and
teeth suitable for gnawing. The cells of
the dog never fail to make teeth sharp
and strong, and of the peculiar shape and
size that characterize flesh-eating animals.
More than this, every cell in the rabbit is
a rabbit cell, and every cell in the dog is
a dog cell, each kind making hide, hair,
form, intellect, everything about its own
animal characteristic of rabbit or dog, and
different from every other animal.
And the human being, too, begins life
as a single cell. He, too, passes through
stage after stage of animal life, owning a
far-away relationship to the simple crea-
tures he so far outstrips. Gill openings
convict him, too, of kinship with the
fishes; and he passes through
a stage where, from one
142 A Song of Life.
point of view, he looks absurdly like the
embryo of a fish. But the strong wave
of life bears him speedily past that point,
and carries him toward the plane of the
mammal. And for a time we find him in
a very unsatisfactory state, neither bird nor
yet beast; though with his undeveloped
heart and budding extremities he more
resembles the young bird than any other
animal. On he sweeps to the true mam-
malian form, and there passes through a
stage which all mammals share with him.
Here he cannot be distinguished from an
embryo pig or dog. But he does not
long continue to so closely resemble these
lower forms ; his cells work away in a dis-
tinctly human direction, so that from
being indistinguishable from a dog he
becomes indistinguishable from an
ape ; but even here the cells ne\ver
make a ,^L mistake,
/
The Worlds Cradle. 143
never grow confused and finish him into
an ape, but keep steadily at work until he
is built into a human being.
When his form is sufficiently developed,
he, like other mammals, is born. This
does not mean that his cells have accom-
plished their work. Far from it, his
cells are as busy as ever. They fasten
upon the milk he drinks and form it into
themselves; the muscle cells turn it into
muscle, the bone cells into bone, the
brain cells into brain. Later, when he
eats solid food, the cells seize upon that.
His blood carries his food in a dissolved
state, djissol ved by the work of certain
cells, all over his body. It
DWS everywhere, touch-
ing every spot ; and as it flows
seize/ upon whatever
they want,
144 A Song of Life.
to make new tissue or replace that which
is worn out.
Thus the body is dependent upon the
cells as long as it lives. When the cells
cease their work the body is dead. The
cells are dependent upon the food they
get for the kind of work they can do.
At first milk supplies all that is needful;
then comes a more varied diet, vegeta-
bles, fruits, grains, and meats being taxed
to supply the never-ceasing cry of the
cells for food. Nerve cells in the mouth
and nose test 'this food and decide upon
its merit.
But these nerve cells are better pleased
with some things than others; the nerve
of taste rejoices in sugar and certain com-
binations of flour and butter called pastry,
and certain stimulating spices. To a lim-
ited extent such food is proper; but be-
cause it "tastes good" the ignorant feeder
eats it to the exclusion of other foods
which are more digestible, and finally
The 14/orld's Cradle. 145
the cells of the stomach, overworked and
weak, refuse to dispose of the indigestible
stuff. Although warned by the uncom-
fortable feeling caused by the rebellious
cells, the victim sometimes continues to
transgress.
What is the result? The cells refuse to
do their work ; they grow sullen and irri-
table ; and the food in an undigested state
is turned out of the stomach. The blood
cannot get the materials that it needs for
this ill-prepared food, and of course the
cells cannot get what they need from the
blood. Some of the cells starve to death ;
others do their best, but the tissue they
build is weak and flabby. Others again,
not able to build what they wish, take the
poor material and build another kind of
tissue, which being unnatural, does all
sorts of mischief in the body. All of the
cells are discontented and sick, and allow
the germs of foul diseases to lodge in
their midst, if such germs appear and
10
146 A Song of Life.
ask admission. The brain cells, being
poorly nourished, are irritable, and cause
all sorts of suffering in the way of head-
ache and nervousness to the victim. The
skin cells do not trouble to build up good
skin ; but when the old falls off, there is a
bare and sore spot underneath.
Everything seems out of order, and the
victim of this careless treatment of the
cells is told by the doctor that he has
dyspepsia; and he thinks dyspepsia is a
stomach trouble, when it is really the star-
^vation of the cells all over his body. The
cells, like the people they are a part of,
form habits. When the stomach cells have
formed a habit of not performing the
work of digestion, this habit grows upon
them; so while the young person may
not suffer seriously from a careless habit
of eating, he is laying up terrible trouble
for future years.
The use of tobacco has a curious effect
upon the cells of the body. The nerve
The World's Cradle. 147
cells feel it first. When tobacco is first
smoked to excess the cells resent it with
all their might. The stomach cells often
become violent and force the contents of
the stomach out through the mouth, but
after a while the cells become demoralized ;
the overdoses of tobacco deaden them and
thus relieve the discomfort at first caused.
This is probably the reason they seem
to crave it. They want the thing that
poisoned them to poison them more, and
so deaden their discomfort.
Tobacco is very irritating to some cells,
while it is soothing, or deadening, to
others; and so, when used to excess, it
sometimes causes incurable ulcers in throat
and mouth. The cells, finding that they
cannot make good mucous membrane in
the presence of tobacco poison, make pus
cells instead. The senses grow less acute
under the influence of tobacco, until those
of taste and smell are dull, and the victim
can no longer enjoy the odor of the but-
148 A Song of Life.
tercups and daisies when he walks in the
fields, and probably comes to prefer the
stale tobacco odor which he constantly
carries about with him to anything the
sweet fields can offer.
The cells of the body are very sympa-
thetic, as we thus see. Ready to do good
work if properly treated, they are very apt
to unite against oppression if ill-treated ;
so that harm done to even a few cells
will often affect the whole body. Of all
the abuses to which the cells are subjected
none is more harmful than the habit some
people contract of poisoning them with
alcohol. At first the alcohol stimulates cer-
tain nerve cells, and this causes a feeling
of pleasure. But if the alcohol has been
taken in excess the pleasurable feeling
soon passes, and then the cells are weak
and weary. Whenever they are thus over-
excited an abnormal action is set up.
Like the cells irritated by tobacco, those
poisoned by alcohol crave more of the
The World's Cradle. 149
poison to make them forget their discom-
fort; so the victim is led on by slow but
fatal steps until his cells are thoroughly
demoralized and will do nothing right.
The stomach cells refuse to act, the food
is not properly digested, and after a time
the inside of the stomach becomes cov-
ered with sores. The cells that ought to
make liver go to making fat instead. In
fact, the cells all over the body seem to
have lost all moral rectitude, and instead
of building up sound tissue, take a drunk-
en delight in converting the alcohol-satu-
rated blood that comes to them into all
sorts of abnormal tissue; until finally the
victim dies of some terrible disease with
which his wine or beer drinking had ap-
parently nothing to do, but which was
really at the bottom of the whole trouble.
And what do we mean by dying?
What is this thing named death ? What
becomes of the body when it is buried;
of the flower when it falls; of the plant
150
A Song of Life.
when
under
leaves.
that
same leaves from
we should 1
disappear. Where
are fluttering
it has done
its work?
Walk through
autumn; the dry
foot and we
Could we watch
year to year
in time they
they ? They
d full of sap,
in their old places on the trees; they
are breaking out into the white bloom
of the wild plum ; they are throbbing in
the heart of the wood-pigeon, and
painting the sky with sunset colors.
When the leaves fell it seemed a mis- 7
fortune, and those who used concerning
them the dread word death did not know
that they had but completed one beautiful
form of life, and become free to enter
into another. The carbon, hydrogen,
oxygen, nitrogen, and other elements
that had been so long bound into
The World's Cradle.
plant protoplasm let go, each one, its hold
its neighbor, the oldjxmd was dis-
freed ele-
formed new
combi-
nations.
Our leaf is now
a quantity of
water, ammonia, dif-
ferent forms of lime, magnesia,
potash, soda, acids of various kinds, and
combinations of iron, as well as many
other substances. Behold our leaf returned
to the mineral kingdom. Though not
wholly. Certain of its elements enter at
once into lowly forms of vegetable life,
which are lying ready to seize upon them
and develop waiting spores into growing
life; and still others find their way at
once into the animal life.
The leaf now finds itself in a myriad
of forms, and distributes itself through life.
The ammonia, the ashes, sink into the
i5 2 A Song of Life.
ground, and are wooed by the rootlets of
the forest trees to ascend through the
branches
unite with
tissue in
to form next ^X year's leaves.
The rootlets of * the wild grape eagerly
seek the aid of these wandering leaf ele-
ments, that its branches may be clothed
with verdure; the wild rose would have
a share; the burdock, too, and the wood
anemone wish to attract them; the birds
and the insects appropriate the fruit they
have gone to form; their vapor, rising
through the air and condensing into clouds,
adorns the blue sky and reflects the sunset
hues.
And yet men talk of dead leaves, call
them dead because they would leave a stiff
triangle of wood fibre and green tissue to
mingle with the universe!
Thus, too, with the bird. One day it
The World's Cradle. 153
lies down and rises no more, and men
would have us believe it is dead. The
spirit that bound its countless cells into
one harmonious whole has loosed the
bond; the bird's body its immortal body
is now free to enter other forms of life.
Like the cells of the fallen leaf, the cells
of the fallen bird dissolve, they free the
elements which formed them; and these
elements, quite unchanged by their long
captivity, joyously greet the change, enter
into new and delightful combinations, and
lo! our whilom bird is now a lovely bit
of vegetable life, the same atoms of car-
bon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and sul-
phur which formed his protoplasm being
happily united into the new protoplasm of
the plant. Every atom of the pretty bird's
body is somewhere in Nature, active as
ever, helping the flowers to bloom, the
birds to sing, the bees to store up honey,
the deer to run, and the little mouse to
hide.
154 A Song of Life.
We thus see that when a body dies it
is not destroyed, it but changes its form.
Its countless cells, composed of the ele-
ments gathered from the air and from
food, are now about to give up those ele-
ments, but not the smallest atom can be
lost. Each one will be but freed to seek
a new life according to its surroundings
and its nature. The all-powerful principle
of life but rearranges its cells to express
life in other ways. The spirit, having
clothed itself in a finite form, which for
a time it wore, has at length restored that
form to the elements from which, cell by
cell, it called it forth. The spirit, no
longer needing the cell-built body, re-
leases it, and the body finds its place in
a new form of life.
The immortal spirit, free from the cell-
built body, clothes itself in what un-
known glory!
The immortal body, free from the con-
trolling spirit which held it in a definite
The World's Cradle.
form, is shaped into what forms of wonder
and beauty!
" Full fathom five thy father lies ;
Of his bones are coral made ;
Those are pearls that were his eyes
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange."
TITTLE MARJORIES LOVE STORY.
By MARGUERITE BOUVET, Author of " Sweet
William." Fully illustrated by Helen Maitland Arm-
strong. Small 4to, $1.00.
' Miss BOUVET'S popularity as a writer for the young was
at once established on the publication of her first and very
successful book, " Sweet William." Her
new book, "Little Marjorie's Love Story,"
cannot fail to be equally popular. The un-
selfish love of plain, timid Little Marjorie
for her beautiful, gifted, imperious bro-
ther, and his denial of her when at the
zenith of his career, at a time when he
was carrying peace and comfort to the
souls of hundreds by the angel-like sweet-
ness of his voice, is told with that charm
which Miss Bouvet possesses in such a
singular degree. The beauty and pathos
of the story are touching, and the delicate
way in which the characteristics of the
one child are contrasted with those of
the other is as effective as the lights and
shadows of a picture. Pride and selfish-
ness never seemed more contemptible
than in the person of the handsome
Gerald, nor unselfish love and self-sacrificing sisterly devotion
more beautiful than in that of sweet little Marjorie. The
illustrator, Miss Armstrong, has told the story in picture as
effectively as the author has in words.
Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by
e/f. C. McCLURG AND CO., Publishers,
Cor. Wabash Ave. and Madison St., Chicago.
SWEET WILLIAM.
By MARGUERITE BOUVET. With Illustrations
by Helen and Margaret /^^ Armstrong.
Small quarto, 209 pages, //*& ^ * $1.50.
THIS very at-
tractive little vol-
ume is unlike any
other book we can
think of. It takes
us back to mediae-
val times, and in-
troduces us to the
lords and ladies
who then inhab-
ited the splendid
castle that still
looks down from
the heights of Mount St. Michael, on the coast of Normandy.
It tells the pathetic story (with a happy ending) of a little boy,
who had he lived to-day would have been a genuine Little Lord
Fauntleroy, and introduces us also to a Little Lady Fauntleroy,
with whom we cannot help falling in love. The illustrations
are singularly beautiful and appropriate, and make it altogether
one of the most attractive juvenile books of recent years.
For sale by booksellers generally, or will be sent, post-paid, on
receipt of the price, by
<^. C. McCLURG AND CO., Publishers,
CHICAGO.
THE STORY OF TONTY.
An Historical Romance. By MARY HARTWELL
CATHERWOOD, author of "The Romance of
Dollard," " The Lady of Fort St. John," etc.
Profusely Illustrated from original drawings by
Mr. Enoch Ward. 12mo, 224 pages, $1.25.
" THE Story of Tonty," in which Mrs. CatherwoocTs genius
for historical romance reaches perhaps its highest manifestation,
is a Western story, beginning at Montreal, tarrying at Fort
Frontenac, and ending at the old fort at Starved Rock, on the
Illinois river. It weaves the adventures of the two great ex-
plorers, the intrepid La Salle and his faithful lieutenant, Tonty,
into a tale as thrilling and romantic as the descriptive portions
are brilliant and vivid. It is superbly illustrated with twenty-
three masterly drawings by Mr. Enoch Ward.
For sale by booksellers generally, or will be sen/, post-paid, on
receipt of the price, by
*A. C. McCLURG AND CO., Publishers,
CHICAGO.
HORT HISTORY o* ENGLAND
FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. By Miss E. S.
KIRKLAND, author of " A Short History of France,"
" Speech and Manners," etc.
i2mo, cloth, price, $1.25.
IN reviewing Miss Kirkland's " Short History of France,"
the " Nation " said Miss Kirkland had " composed it in the way
in which a history for young people should be written." It is
therefore natural that many admirers of the earlier work should
have urged its author to write a history of England on the same
plan. This seemed especially desirable to those who think that
no history of England adapted to the needs of young people
now exists. Miss Kirkland has yielded to the urgency, and this
book is the result ; but it was not written until after years of
careful preparation.
It is believed that the book will be found to be even an
improvement upon her admirable history of France, as the
experience gained in writing that volume has greatly aided Miss
Kirkland in preparing this. It will not be found a book for
adults simply put into childish language, nor will it be found full
of the divine right of kings nor of the unwisdom of the American
colonies in breaking away from the good and parental govern-
ment of the mother country; but it will be found very inter-
esting, calm, judicial, and somewhat original in its judgments,
thoroughly abreast with the results of recent investigations,
and making the effort at least to tell the entire story justly and
dispassionately, and with thought and language alike adapted
to the capacity and the needs of the young.
Sold by all booksellers, or mailed, on receipt of price, by
*A. C. McCLURG AND CO., Publishers,
Cor. Wabash Ave., and Madison St., Chicago.
BSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE
STAMPED BELOW
OCT 19 191S
JAN 2^ 1916
ST X 1925
fill
'G 9 I,
30m-l,'15
