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Alexander Wetmore
1946 pee es |
THE MOUSE IN THE BIRD'S NEST.
Fo
£2.
FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING,
Glimpses of American Natnral History
Py. ft RN EST INGERSOLL
ILLUSTRATED
Nature is an admirable school - mistress. —THoREau
SONIA
CieRARIES
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS. FRANKLIN SQUARE
|
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1880, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
All rights reserved.
CONTENTS:
Tuer author gladly acknowledges his obligations to the
publishers of the periodicals named below, for courteously
permitting him to reprint these essays from their pages,
as follows:
PAGE
PMMA TEER rie c's ales dels «(24,24 rs «sie see os» -SCriOners Monthly, - 9
= ( Appletons’ Journal. )
BRU MEOLEY arcu c¥a oie en avn c/a. afe ai'ens'e «16 aeverdee lene oi alos 36
t Lippincott’s Magazine.
RETIN ee ee ree oy cs, ois wns 'ohn es, cdl RESO RE 3 Se ea St. Nicholas, 57
PNP ORNITHOLOGICAT): LECTURE... os eccees cde reves. Seribner’s Monthly. 85
I ENIETE GS SEETIS ofa Oo 8, 3 ogo a al esdini os ons 2 oob.0 oea Appletons’ Journal. 106
PEM SUEKALO AND HIS WATE... 1. . 602s 2. es ws Popular Science Monthly. 140
_ HIDCTSUINEES 12/14) BI ne The Field (London). 171
BSDSERIZUNG? ENNTUENCES) «2/6 icc <0 oa'ee'e bode we Nelew ed 8 Sunday Afternoon. 182
MN VMETRIRUATSS GUT OMI. 5s odie. sik ors «0/0 Geis Slee es Scribner's Monthly. 199
ee ADSTUMMUULE CE EINGIO | coas dic aceidiwia oh bess oad a sae Harper's Magazine, 222
RES ATROWS cps. ct «ches 0 6, «ene woh o's «0 's\ 9 0's oats Popular Science Monthly. 241
shy
ye
Sane per ta sh ys ‘=>
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PLEUSTIRATLIONS.
Tre Mouse IN THE Birp’s NEst......... Geet tar Mee
Butiwus, CycLostoMa, AND OTHER TROPICAL SNAILS... .
ANATOMY OF THE CoMMON WHITE-LIPPED HELIX......
Tome APPHE-SNAIL, AND: IES EGGS... 3.02. 655 oe ee ee
Tue ComL-SHELL (PLANORBIS) AND A LIMNEA..........
PoaeUNDER. SIDE OF A Wri. CHIP... 3% %..00e 6. oe.
THe SNAILS OF THE TORRENTS......... Servet Soe
PUMP SNATEN 6. sect oveica evicsate ce a san 0% Mat. > Bey.
ines ctr ELUMBLE CIRCUMSTANCES: © ce .clcccec sce 0 e ceeteee sees oe ee
ININGBAUEDEING ING THE ORLEAR 5 60s ace d bcc cscs deve ee sess
LQTS ee ae A es loves
Tue HOUSE-MOUSE........ Hee E re Bose RN on eH ete
THE JUMPING-MOUSE (JACULUS)...........-2 0-20 cee
PAGE
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HW OUSH ANDe THE OVSTOR. 65... sce ace see fa
MWAVING » HOME, 0.3 )s ec wa bce es Shi Poe EG Hic UIA CER RECTOR Aaa
SEMI WALT He ME SNIAKWE) 5 os, cote ces) cae cae ecerere
RMN GHo RHE, EURRON, .:/2t2-.5 a0. caiccs Gras eds eee
PRED MIGUNGHISHIED 5 oo jou « soo nnelecansiacel dias Ole dete. « RE Ps ee ere Sy edge ae
RNG MEE: OWCBERIG: oa. cra! s-«' deal uae. « oo ataten bohee cle od) sta, eis
YELLOW-BREASTED CHATS...........-3. Sl ee EGE Cee Eee sass
ca, PONE MORNING, ..:<00%.e'e.0 lacie ss 0 Pent 25,0 os, ogi Nm hoe cet a ee
ar ELUMAENG-RIRD SINESD: Sc oc's cs bietsu cw Sols ele sce 0 eee
SON YaRAGEE Ce AEST De eneeee ne MS, icy case aera aire od Soa etemereo sneceeelebeleefas ead 6
... Mrontispiece
11
14.
16
ay
18
19
24.
26
28
40
58
61
67
70
15
78
86
87
89
92,
95
97
98
5 ILLUSTRATIONS.
HUAISEIES SO thesia ta oe kos ole Tore te eee Ee ee ce pee oe eee
THE PLOVER.» osc ohne sos bed eee 101
Br OW OOD-PE WEEN 5.5. S33. bs db anes oe ee tee ee eee ee Pee eee 103
RORKEY-BUZZARBDS. <345 os %sss ea teele sc steers oe BCR Risa Boe! dicta St eR ee 104
SMOWGBUNTING (0's s< 6 os hoe eee Bain, Sante Manes OOS Oe ie Renee ee 109
IBBOWN JOREEPERS. net eeen tee bes es ae. abe teee SO eo uae” 5 pe peati. water
CARDINAE-GROSSBEAK -5 Os Tete WV IP Eke. ate sien air oie Se eile Seca S Beene none ot eae
A YELLOW-BIRD IN WINTER DRESS.........-..-. UD fake, Sees ea oe eee ee
REO RINNE Acs 5 ot Ob Le ae a i eee eek ee re gt One as aR oan cea: peer
BPSERED aN VAR WVLUING cee Jo 0 tare ate ae sere pats Bus ae eee tee Pt Te aoe eee ae . 1380
PSEA Bis 3. obpecee MEERA RA ae Be Bot Ae eS SES Dh hate eee 139
A MOTHER AND CHILDMOF “PHE Ue LAING = se. ances clos s waedeeeiates shine Ae ate lee:
De A ETANG \G EROS Occ: ce se cue = eas or teehee eee sere ES oe eNO tat 282 37
SHE WIGNAL——DUFEALO ELERD IN, (OIGHT'.\.).%.505c se wlade ete eee oe ee eee
Inprans KitLtinc BUFFALOES ON THE Upper MISSOURI.......... ie) Abe
(A: FIGHT 2AGAINST Farms. 2. os Sk det Bat ATI AR SMe eee ys eee
SEARS ES a) Sie SC ge A RR RE EN SAY AE ce Be ee oe BRO
GN “FOR ‘THE “BOYS “BUT Jari ees BW ls oe Sa ee eee 243
A Narrow ESvAPE......... ESAS sR i pie) AN Se ea Bas eee
FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
i be
HONG AC’ SNA LE len,
Two-ruirps of the persons to whom I show the little
land and fresh-water mollusks in my snailery either start
!’ which causes me
back with an “Oh! the horrid things
some amusement, or else gaze straight out of the window,
. ° = ¢ a . - e 39 ° . -
saying languidly, “ How interesting!’ which hurts my
pride. I confess, therefore, that it is contrary to experi-
ence to attempt to interest general readers with an ac-
count of
“Ye little snails, with slippery tails,
Who noiselessly travel across my gravel.”
Yet why not? Snails are of vast multitude and variety,
ancient race, graceful form, dignified manners, industrious
habits and gustatory excellence ; quod est demonstrandum.
Snails differ from.other gasteropodous mollusks chiefly
10 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
in that they are provided with lungs, and thereby are fitted
to live in air‘ instead of water. Hence all true snails are
terrestrial. As the snail crawls upon a cabbage-leaf, all
that you can see of the body is the square head bearing
two long and two short horns, with the muscular base ta-
pering behind. There is an oily skin, and on the back is
_ borne a shell containing the rest of the body, twisted up in
its spiral chamber. Extending along the whole under sur-
face of the body is the tough corrugated disk upon which
the animal creeps. This foot is the last part of the body to
be withdrawn into the shell, and to its end, in a large divi-
sion of pulmonate as well as marine mollusks, is attached a
little horny valve which just fits the aperture of the shell
and completely stops it up when the animal is within. This
is called the operculum. The foot secretes a viscid fluid
which greatly facilitates exertion by lubricating the path,
and snails may often be traced to their hiding-places by a
silvery trail of dried slime. So tenacious is this exudation
that some species can hang in mid-air by spinning out a
mucous thread ; but, unlike the spider, have not the power
to retrace their way by reeling in the gossamer cable. The
slime also serves the naked species as a protection, birds
and animals disliking the sticky, disgusting fluid; and it
serves others as a weapon, seeming to benumb whatever
BULIMUS, CYOLOSTOMA, AND OTHER TROPIOAL SNATLS,
IN A SNAILERY. 13
small creature it touches. The oleacina, of Cuba, thus fre-
quently is able to feed upon mollusks of twice its strength.
The snail possesses an elaborate anatomy for the per-
formance of all the functions of digestion, respiration, cir-
culation, and reproduction. A collar of nervous matter
encircles the throat, whence two trunks carry nerves
throughout the body, and filaments pass forward to the
“horns,” the longer and superior pair of which end in
minute eyes and are called “eye-stalks,” while the shorter
pair are only tactile organs, and hence “feelers.” These
tentacles are as expressive as a mule’s ears, giving an ap-
pearance of listless enjoyment when they hang down, and
an immense alertness if they are rigid, as happens when
the snail is on a march. ‘The eyes are of little real use,
being excelled for service by the senses of smell and taste,
and it is doubtful whether the nerves generally are very
sensitive, since a slug will be eaten without manifesting pain.
It is not surprising, perhaps, to find great tenacity of life
in so lowly an animal; but Spallanzani, whose experiments
with bats are celebrated, was the first to ascertain that not
only parts of the head, but even the whole head might be
reproduced, although not always. The shell is easily and
frequently repaired, albeit hastily and not with the fine
workmanship of the original.
FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
14
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IN A SNAILERY. 15
The pulmonates unite both sexes in one individual, but
it requires the mutual union of two individuals to fertilize
the eggs. The eggs are laid in May or June, when large
numbers of snails gather in sunny places. When about to
lay, the snail burrows into damp soil or decaying leaves,
underneath a log, or in some other spot sheltered from the
sun’s rays, and there drops a cluster of thirty to fifty eggs
looking like homeopathic pills. Three or four such de-
posits are made, and abandoned. This is the ordinary
method of the genus helix, but some of the land and all
the pond-snails present variations. The ova of slugs are
attached by the ends in strings, like a rosary, and many de-
posits are made during the year. Bulimus and other South
American genera isolate each egg, which in the case of some
of the largest species is as big as a pigeon’s. Vitrina and
succinea glue them in masses upon stones and the stems of
plants, while the tropical bulimi cement the leaves of trees
together to form nests for their progeny. The pond-snails
hang little globules of transparent gelatine containing a few
eggs, or otherwise secure their fry to wet stones, floating
chips, and the leaves of aquatic plants. In neritina, a brack-
ish water inhabitant, the ova, immediately upon being laid,
become attached to the surface of the parent’s shell, and
when the embryo hatches each egg splits about the middle,
16 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
the upper part
lifting off like a
lid. Lastly, the
egos of the stout
paludinee of our
THE APPLE-SNAIL, AND ITS EGGS.
western lakes and rivers are’not laid at all, but the embryos
hatch out in the oviduct.
Under the microscope the translucent egg-envelopes pre-
sent a beautiful appearance, being studded with glistening.
erystals of lime, so that the infant within seems to wear a
IN A SNAILERY. AEF
gown embroidered with diamonds. Ordinarily the young
snail gnaws his way out in about twenty or thirty days af-
ter the laying of the egg; but eggs laid in the autumn
often remain unchanged until spring; and, indeed, may
keep many years if they remain cool or dry. The vitality
of snails’ eggs almost passes belief. They have been so
THE OOIL-SHELL (PLANOBBIS) AND A LIMNEA.
completely dried as to be friable between the fingers, and
desiccated in a furnace until reduced to almost invisible
minuteness, yet always have regained their original bulk
upon exposure to damp, and the young have been devel-
oped with the same success as from eggs not handled.
More or less wholly dependent on moisture, the young
2
18 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
snails at once seek out their habitual solitary retreats, and
must be looked for under leaves, logs, and loose stones in
THE UNDER SIDE OF A WEY CAlIP.
the woods and pastures; at the roots of fern-tufts, lurk-
ing in the moss beside mountain brooklets; hiding in the
crevices of rocky banks and old walls, crawling over the
mud at the edge of swampy pools, creeping in and out of
the crannies of bark on aged trees, or clinging to the under
side of the leaves. Some forms are so minute that they
would not hide the letter o in this print, yet you will soon
come to perceive them amid the grains of mnd adhering
to the lower side of a soaked chip.
For fresh-water species, various resorts are to be searched.
Go to the torrents with rocky bottoms for the paludinas
IN A SNAILERY. 19
and periwinkles (Melania); to quiet brooks for physas and
coil-shells; for limneas to the reeking swamps and stag-
nant pools in the wet ooze. I know no better place in the
world for pond-snails than the tule marshes of the Pacific
slope, where hundreds of the great graceful Limnea stag-
nalis lie among the rotting vegetation, or float upside down
at the surface of the still water. But some of the fresh-
water mollusks remain most of the time at the bottom, com-
ing to the surface only to breathe now and then; and to get
their shells it is necessary to use a sieve-bottomed dipper, or
THE SNALLS OF THE TORRENTS.
some sort of dredge. When the water becomes low they
bury themselves in the mud; it is therefore always profit-
20) FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
able, late in the summer, to rake ont the bottom of mud-
holes where the water has entirely disappeared. Another |
plan is gently to pull up the water-weeds by the roots, and
cleanse them in a basin of water. You will thus secure
many very small species. Experience will quickly teach
the collector where he may expect to find this and that
kind, and that some caution and much sharpness of obser-
vation are necessary, since some species by their naturally
dead tints, and others by a coating of mud, assimilate them-
selves so nearly to their surroundings as easily to be over-
looked by man as well as other enemies.
The shell is increased rapidly for the first two or three
years, and the delicate lines of increment, parallel with the
outlines of the aperture, are readily visible on all the larger
specimens. Various other signs indicate youth or adult
age in the shell.
Mollusks prosper best, ceteris paribus, in a broken land-
scape, with plenty of lime in the soil. The reason, no doubt,
why the West India Islands, the Cumberland Mountains,
and similar regions are so peculiarly rich in shells of every
sort, is that a ravine-cut surface and a wide area of lime-
stone rocks. characterize those districts; on the other hand,
it is not surprising that I found nine-tenths of the Rocky
Mountain species to be minute, since the geology is repre-
IN A‘SNAILERY. Y1
sented by sandstone and volcanic rocks.* Hof springs are
very likely to be inhabited by mollusks, even when the tem-
perature exceeds 100° Fahr., and the waters are very strong-
ly impregnated with mineral salts.
Snails are mainly vegetarians, and all their mouth-parts
and digestive organs are fitted for this diet. Just beneath
the lower tentacles is the mouth, having on the upper lip a
crescent-shaped jaw of horny texture, with a knife-like, or
sometimes saw-like, cutting-edge. The lower lip has noth-
ing of this kind, but in precisely the same attitude as our
tongue is arranged a lingual membrane, long, narrow and
cartilaginous, which may be brought up against the cutting-
edge of the upper jaw. This “tongue” is studded with
rows of infinitesimal silicious “teeth,” 11,000 of which are
possessed by our common white-lipped helix, although its
ribbon is not a quarter of an inch long. All these sharp
denticles point backward, so that the tongue acts not only
as a rasp, but takes a firm hold upon the food. On hold-
ing the more transparent snails up to the light it is easy to
see how they eat, and you can hear a nipping noise as the
semicircular piece is bitten out of the leaf. Their voracity
* See Dr. Hayden’s Report of the United States Geological Survey, 1874;
and the Popular Science Monthly, July, 1875.
22 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
often causes immense devastation,
particularly in England, where the
great gray slugs will ruin a garden
in one night, if the gardener is not
daily on the watch. Our own straw-
berries sometimes suffer, but a bor-
der of sawdust, sand, or ashes around
the bed is an adequate protection in
dry weather. In trying to cross it,
the marauders become so entangled
in the particles adhering to their
slimy bodies that they exhaust them-
selves in the attempt to get free.
They also are very fond of fungi,
including many poisonous kinds.
At the first hint of frost our snail
feels the approach of a resistless las-
situde, and, creeping under some
mouldering log, or half-buried bowl-
der, it attaches itself, aperture up-
ward, by exuding a little glue, and
settles itself for a season of hiber-
nating sleep. . Withdrawing into the
shell, the animal throws across the
IN A SNAILERY. 23
aperture a film of slimy mucus, which hardens.as tight as
-a miniature drum-head. As the weather becomes colder,
the creature draws itself a little farther in, and makes an-
other ‘“epiphragm,” and so on until often five or six pro-
tect the animal sleeping snugly coiled in the deepest. re-
cesses of his domicile.
This state of torpidity is so profound that all the ordi-
nary functions of the body cease—respiration being so en-
tirely suspended that chemical tests are said to discover no
change from its original purity in the air within the epi-
phragm. Thus the snail can pass without exhaustion the
long cold months of the north, when it would be impossi-
ble for it to secure its customary food. This privilege of
privacy reminds me of an old distich about another hiber-
nater :
“The tortoise securely from danger does well,
When he tucks up his head and his tail in his shell.”
The reviving sun of spring first interrupts this deep
slumber, and the period of awakening is therefore delayed
with the season, according to the varying natures of the dif-
ferent species. A few species, however, seem to hibernate
very little, vitrina, for example, having been seen active in
cold weather, and even crawling about in the snow; while
the finest American specimens live high up on the Itocky
24. FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
Mountains. At any time, nevertheless, an artificial raising
of the temperature breaks the torpor, the warmth of the
hand being enough to set the heart beating. Extreme
drouth also will cause snails to seal their doors hermetically,
without even hanging a eard-basket outside. This is to
shut off the evaporation of their bodily moisture, and hap-
pens in midsummer; hence it is termed estivation. Cer-
AN EDIBLE SNAIL.
tain foreign slugs (Testacellidee) which have no shells, are
able to protect themselves under the same circumstances
by a gelatinous appendage of the mantle, which, in ease of
sudden change of temperature, can be extended like an
outer mantle, so to speak, from its place’ of storage, un-
der the “buckler,”’ and having wrapped themselves, they
burrow into the soil. These carnivorous testacelles are
IN A SNAILERY. 25
the fiercest of all their race, and one might be excused for
quoting:
“But he lay like a warrior taking his rest
With his martial cloak around him.”
Snails are found in the most barren deserts and on the
smallest islands all over the globe, reaching to near the line
of perpetual snow on mountains, and restricted only by the
arctic boundary of vegetation. There is a great difference
between the snails of the tropics and those of high latitudes
—size, number of species in a given district, and intensity
of color decreasing as you go away from the equator; but
this statement must be taken in a very general sense.*
Different quarters of the globe are characterized by special
groups of land mollusks as of other animals—thus, achati-
nella, with 3800 species, is confined to the Sandwich Islands.
But helix—the true snail—with its many subgenera and
2000 species, is absolutely cosmopolitan. The fresh-water
forms, also, are spread everywhere, except in Australia, and
flourish in cold countries, pupa having the hardihood to live
* Mr. A. R. Wallace’s late work, “‘ Tropical Nature,” contained a long series
of observations upon the colors of terrestrial mollusks among other animals.
In two articles in “Science News,” vol.i., pp. 52 and 84, Mr. Thomas Bland
studied Wallace’s principles in their application to American snails, and found
that color is a matter of less account than it has hitherto been considered to be.
26 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
nearer the north pole than any other known shell. Yet it
is a remarkable fact, that, however erratic and extensive
may be the range of the genera to which they belong, the
majority of the species of pulmonates of all sorts have an
extremely limited habitat, in some cases comprising only a
few square rods. A second noteworthy fact, obtaining in
no other extensive group of animals, is, that many more
species of land shells exist in the islands than on the conti-
nents of the world. Mr. A. R. Wallace accounts for this
eurious fact by explaining how certain influences make isl-
ands—particularly if long insulated
HELIGES IN HUMBLE CIRCUMSTANCES.
IN A SNAILERY. ME
—more productive than continents, and at the same time
liable to be deficient in enemies to snails.
How has this curious distribution come to pass? How
have seemingly impassable barriers been overcome, so that
closely related forms are now found at the antipodes?
Snails are of domestic tastes. ‘The Heathen painted be-
fore the modest women’s doors Venus sitting upon a snail,
que domi forta vocatur, called a House bearer, to teach
them to stay at home, and to carry their houses about with
them.” They are also slow of pace, as a list of poets are
ready to stand up and testify; but they have had a long
time in which to “ get a good ready,” first to start, and af-
terward to accomplish their travels, since their existence as
arace goes back to when dark forests of ferns waved their
heavy fronds over the inky paleeozoic bogs. Distance dis-
appears in the presence of such prodigious time. Lands
like our western plains, now an arid waste impassable to
mollusks, in by- gone ages were clothed with dense and
limitless verdure, where every form of terrestrial life
abounded. Between the present and even the laying down
of those eretaceous sandstones that make the soil of our
level plains, the Rocky Mountains have been elevated from
an altitude at which any. mollusk could probably have lived
upon their summits, until now they may be a barrier to
28 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
many species. Such changes may have happened any-
where, again and again, and thus the two halves of a com-
munity been divided. In succeeding centuries the mem-
bers of the parted sections may have diverged in their de-
AN ALIEN IN THE CELLAR.
velopment, until on this side of a mountain range, or desert,
or sea, we now find one set of species and on that side an-
other set, which belong to the same genera, and may in
some cases be proved, as well as surmised, to have had an
identical origin.
IN A SNAILERY. 29
But the main explanation of their dispersion is undoubt-
edly to be found in a land connection once existing be-
tween the different islands of present archipelagoes, and
between these and the neighboring main-lands. It has been
pretty satisfactorily demonstrated that during the glacial
period the oceans must have been drained of water repre-
senting a universal depth of 1000 feet, in order to construct
the enormously thick ice-caps which covered the polar
hemispheres. This would expose a vast area of shallows,
before and since deeply submerged, across which snails
might easily migrate to other latitudes; when, at the end
of the glacial period, the melted ice reclaimed the shallows,
the snails would be left colonized upon the high points now
widely separated by water.
More casual circumstances have always contributed to
this world-wide distribution. Snails frequently conceal
themselves in crevices of bark, or firmly attach themselves
to branches and foliage, and thus might be drifted long dis-
tances, since they are able to resist starvation for an im-
mense period, and protect themselves against injury from
salt-water or excessive heat by means of opercula and epi-
phragms; violent storms might frequently transport living
shells a considerable distance, aquatic birds carry them or
their eggs from pond to pond attached to feet or plumage.
30 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
The astonishing vitality of the snails in every stage of
existence favors the theory that they endure such acciden-
tal means of travel and thrive at the end of it. Professor
Morse records that he has seen certain species frozen in
solid blocks of ice, and afterward regain their activity; and
enduring an equal extreme of heat, where the sun’s rays
crisped the leaves for weeks together, without any bad ef-
fect. They have been shut up for years in pill-boxes, glued
for years (seven years in one case, Dr. Newcomb, of Cornell
University, told me) to tablets in museums, and yet a trifle
of moisture has been sufficient to resuscitate them. They
survive so well being buried in the ballast of ships that at
every seaport, almost, you may find species imported in that
way, which came to life when the ballast was dumped at
the time of unloading. That birds occasionally carry them
about is well verified.
Such are some of the methods of dispersion. Yet stu-
dents are obliged to confess that the causes of the present
puzzling geographical distribution of land shells are so com-
plex that we can hardly hope to determine them with much
exactness.
As to the longevity of snails, little is known; but some
individuals no doubt attain great age. Some species of
cylindrella have a habit of deserting the point of the spire
IN A SNAILERY. 31
of their long, slender shells as they grow old. The aban-
doned portion speedily becomes dead, and cracks off upon
the least injury. The sign of a perfect adult shell in these
species, therefore, is that it is broken! Mr. Thomas Bland,
the distinguished student of West Indian conchology, dis-
covered this enrious fact. After the cylindrella has thus
voluntarily left the upper part of his shell, he builds a par-
tition across behind him. Often other mollusks are driven
to a similar expedient by accident or the decay of extreme
age. This is called decortication, and is almost always to
be seen in the beaks of the larger unios or fresh-water mus-
sels of our inland rivers. The spiral shells most likely to
be thus affected are those that live in swift running water,
where the bottom is rocky—such as the members of the
families viviparidse and strepomatide. The latter are rare-
ly seen otherwise than dreadfully broken.
Another curious thing is to be noticed in this connection:
whole species sometimes suddenly die out. Not only a
conchologist, but others, travelling through certain parts
of our western territories, are. struck by the prodigious
quantities of dead white snail-shells scattered over the
ground. These are the //elix cooper, of which a few are
stil] living in nooks and corners of the mountains. They
are of all sizes, degrees of variation, and ages, and lie
a. FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
bleached in millions on the surface of the ground. Mr.
E. L. Layard, in a recent number of the London /%ed, men-
tions a precisely similar case in Mozambique and another
in Fiji. Why have these species thus suddenly become ex-
tinct? As far as we can see, there is no cause for their epi-
demic death.
Snails, being great eaters, meet their just reward in being
eaten. The paludine forms are sought after by all sorts of
water birds, particularly ducks and rails; while the thrush-
es and other birds crush the shells of the land snails and
extract their jnicy bodies. The woodland birds, however,
will not eat the naked-bodied slugs: the slime sticks to
their beaks and soils their feathers; but the ducks seem to
have no such dainty prejudices. Some mammals, like the
raccoons and wood-rats, also eat them; insects suck their
juices, and the carnivorous slugs prey upon one another.
Lastly, man, the greatest enemy of the brute creation, em-
ploys several species of snails for culinary purposes. By
the Romans they were esteemed a great luxury, and por-
tions of plantations were set apart for the cultivation of the
large, edible Helix pomatia, where they were fattened by
the thousand upon bran sodden in wine. From Italy this
taste spread throughout the Old World, and colonies of
this exotic species, survivors of classical “ preserves,” are
iN A SNAILERY. 33
yet found in Great Britain where the Roman encampments
were. They are still regarded as a delicacy in Italy and
France, the favorite method of preparation being to boil
in milk, with plenteous seasoning. Frank Buckland says
that several of the larger English species are excellent food
for hungry people, and recommends them either boiled in
milk, or, in winter, raw, after soaking for an hour in salt
and water. Some of the French restaurants in London
have them placed regularly upon their bills of fare. Thou-
sands are collected annually and sent to London as food for
eage-birds. Dr. Edward Gray stated, a few years ago, that
immense quantities were shipped alive to the United States
“Cas delicacies ;” but I am inclined to consider this an exag-
geration growing out of the fact that, among our fancy gro-
eeries “a few jars of pickled snails, imported from Italy,”
figure as a curiosity, rather than something needed, for the
table. The same author records that the glassmen at New-
castle once a year have a snail feast, collecting the animals
in the fields and hedges on the Sunday before.
Mr. W.G. Binney, for whom a sirup of snails was pre-
scribed by two regular physicians in Paris in 1863, points
out how old is the belief that land mollusks possess valua-
ble medicinal qualities. In the Middle Ages the rudimen-
tary shell of the slug acquired a high rank among the nu-
8
34 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
merous bezoars and amulets which were supposed to pro-
tect the body from evil influences, and to impart health and
activity. ‘The accounts of these virtues, copied from one
author to another, have perpetuated the early superstitions
until it is difficult to overcome them by the light of the
present day, when, even in England, snails are supposed to
possess a useful power in cases of lung trouble.
THE FIGHT WITH THE SNAKE.
WILD MICE. 79
gathering of his food, and the building of his house, costs
him ‘mony a weary nibble,” and he must constantly be on
the alert, for dangers haunt him on every side. One of his
enemies is the snake, all the larger sorts of which pounce
upon him in the grass, lie in wait for him in his highway,
or steal into his burrow and seize his helpless young, in
spite of the frantic fighting of the father, and the stout
attempts of the mother to drag her little ones away into
safety. A gentleman in L[llinois once saw a garter-snake
pass rapidly by with a young meadow-mouse in its mouth.
Presently an old meadow-mouse came ont of the tall grass
in pursuit of the snake, which she finally overtook and in-
stantly attacked. The snake stopped, disgorged its prey,
and defended itself by striking at its assailant, which ap-
peared to be beating it, when both animals were killed by
the gentleman watching. Iam sorry the incident ended so
tragically. The courage and affection of the little mother
deserved a better reward, and even the garter-snake was en-
titled to some sympathy.
Probably our snakes depend more upon catching mice
than upon any other resource for their daily food, and they
hunt for them incessantly. Most of the mice have the bad
habit of being abroad mainly at night; so have the snakes;
and the mice thus encounter more foes, and fall an easier
50 FRIENDS, WORTH KNOWING.
prey, than if they deferred their ramblings until daylight.
Being out nights is a bad practice! The prairie rattle-
snakes are especially fond of mice; minks, weasels, skunks,
and badgers eat as many as they can catch, and this proba-
bly is not a few; domestic cats hunt them eagerly, seem-
ing to prefer them to house-mice—no doubt they are more
sweet and delicate; foxes also enjoy them; dogs and wolves
dig them out of their burrows and devour them; prairie
fires burn multitudes of them, and farmer-boys trap them.
But, after all, perhaps their chief foes are the flesh-eating
birds. I hardly ever take a walk without finding the re-
mains of an owl’s or hawk’s dinner where our little subject
has been the main dish.
We have in this country two black, white, and gray birds
called shrikes, or butcher-birds, which are only about the
size of robins, but are very strong, brave, and noble in ap-
pearance. These shrikes have the curious habit of killing
more game than they need, and hanging it up on thorns, or
lodging it in a crack in the fence or the crotch of a tree.
They seem to hunt just for the fun of it, and kill for the
sake of killing. Now their chief game is the unhappy
field- mouse; and in [llinois they are known as “ mouse-
birds.” They never seem to eat much of the flesh of their
victims, generally only pecking their brains out, but murder
WILD MICE. 81
an enormous number, and keep up the slaughter through
the whole year; for when the loggerhead shrike retreats
southward in the autumn, the great northern shrike comes
from British America to supply his place through the win-
ter. Then all the hawks, from the nimble little sharp-shin-
ned to the great swooping buzzard, prey upon mice, and
in winter hover day after day over the knolls where they
have been driven by floods in the surrounding lowlands,
pouncing upon every one that is imprudent enough to
show his black eyes above ground. As for the marsh-
hawk, it regularly quarters the low fields like a harrier, and
eats little but mice. The owls, too, are constantly after
them, hunting them day and night, on the prairies and in
the woods, esteeming them fine food for the four owlets in
the hollow tree hard by; while the sand-hill crane and
some of the herons make a regular business of seeking the
underground homes, and digging out the timorous fugitives
with their pick-axe beaks. In addition to all the rest, the
farmer everywhere persecutes the mouse, as a pest to his,
orchards and crops.
Has the poor little animal, then, no friends whatever ?
Very few, except his own endurance and cunning; yet he
is already so numerous, and increases so rapidly, that all his
enemies have not been able to rid the earth of lim, but
6
8Y FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
only to keep him in check, and thus preserve that nice bal-
ance of nature in which consists the welfare of all.
An important part of the history of these pretty wild
mice would be untold if I were to say nothing about the
mischief they do to the farmer’s fields and fruit- trees.
From the story I have related of the little “thieves in the
night” who stole my friend’s rye, and of their underground
stores, you may guess how they make the grain-fields suffer.
Jt is done so quietly and adroitly, too, that few are ever
caught at it, and much of the blame is put on the moles,
squirrels, and woodchucks that have enough sins of their
own to answer for. The meadow-mouse of Europe, which
is very, like our own, forty or fifty years ago came near
causing a famine in parts of England, ruining the crops
before they could get fairly started, and killing almost all
the young trees in the orchards and woods. More than
30,000 of the little rascals were trapped in one month in a
single piece of forest, besides all those killed by animals.
About 1875, again, a similar disaster was threatened in
Scotland, where millions of mice appeared, and gnawed off
the young grass at the root just when it should have been
in prime condition for the sheep; and when that was all
gone they attacked the garden vegetables. The people lost
vast numbers of sheep and lambs from starvation, and thou-
WILD MIOE. 83
sands of dollars’ worth of growing food ; but, finally, by all
together waging war upon them, the pests were partially
killed off. The mice did not in either case come suddenly,
but had been increasing steadily for years previous, because
the game-keepers had killed so many of the “ vermin” (as
owls, hawks, weasels, snakes, etc., are wrongly called), which
are the natural enemies of the mice, and keep their num-
bers down. Farmers are slow to learn that it doesn’t pay
to kill the birds or rob their nests; but the boys and girls
ought to understand this truth and remember it. In this
country the greatest mischief done by the field-mice is the
gnawing of bark from the fruit-trees, so that in some of the
Western States this is the most serious difficulty the or-
chardist has te contend with. Whole rows of young trees
in nurseries are stripped of their bark, and of course die;
and where apple-seeds are planted, the mice are sure to dig
half of them up to eat the kernels. This mischief is mainly
done in the winter, when the trees are packed away from
the frost; or if they are growing, because then the mice
ean move about concealed under the snow, and nibble all
the bark away up to the surface. Rabbits get much of the
credit of this naughty work, for they do a good deal of it
on their own account. The gardener has the same trouble,
often finding, when he uncovers a rare and costly plant in
$4 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
the spring, that the mice have enjoyed good winter-quarters
in his straw covering, and have been gnawing to death his
choice roses. Millions of dollars, perhaps, would not pay
for all the damage these small creatures thus accomplish
each year in the United States, and I fear they will become
more and more of a plague if we continue to kill off the
harmless hawks, owls, butcher-birds, and snakes, which are
the policemen appointed by Nature to look after the mice,
and protect us against them.
In captivity the wild mice, especially the white-footed
Hesperomys, make very pretty pets; and one can easily
study all their ways by giving them earth in which to bur-
row, and the various sorts of food in which they delight.
EV.
BaeOrNITHOLOGTCOAL LECTURE,
I wap almost written my title, unconsciously, Beautiful
Birds, for they have become symbols to us of all that is
blithesome and free. No one of all the classes of animals
is more worthy of attention, or more easily studied. In-
cluding within their number every variety of costume and
shape; present everywhere, and at all times; making us
their confidants by coming to our door-steps, or awaiting
us with newer and newer surprises if we go to the remote
woods, the pathless ocean, or snowy mountain; marshalling
their ranks over our heads, coming and going with the sea-
sons, and defying our pursuit; surely, here is something for
the poet and artist, as well as the naturalist, to think upon.
.\/ But a bird is something more than a flitting fairy, or an
inearnation of song. It has substance and form; it moves
swiftly, mysteriously from place to place, and looks out
carefully for its own protection and subsistence; it cun-
ningly builds a home, where it raises its young and teaches
86 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
HAUNT OF THE HERON.
them to care for themselves. The how and why of some
of these incidents of bird-life I want to tell you—I say
some, for after all many of the ways of our familiar birds
are unexplained.
The most prominent fact about a bird is a faculty in
AN ORNITHOLOGICAL LECTURE. 87
which it differs from every other creature except the bat
and insects—its power of flying. For this purpose, the
bird’s arm ends in only one long slender finger, instead of
a full hand. To this are attached the quills and small
feathers (coverts) on the upper side, which make up the
wing. Observe how light all this is: in the first place, the
bones are hollow; then the shafts of the feathers are hol-
low; and, finally, the feathers themselves are made of the
most delicate filaments, interlocking and clinging to one
another with little grasping hooks of microscopic fineness.
THE KINGFISHER,
88 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
Well, how does a bird fly? It seems simple enough to de-
scribe, and yet it is a problem that the wisest in such mat-
ters have not yet worked out to everybody’s satisfaction.
This explanation, by the Duke’ of Argyle, appears to me to
be the best: An open wing forms a hollow on its under-
side like an inverted saucer; when the wing is forced
down; the upward pressure of the air caught under this
concavity lifts the bird up, much as you hoist yourself up
between the parallel bars in a gymnasium. but he could
never in this way get ahead, and the hardest question is
still to be answered. Now, the front edge of the wing,
formed of the bones and muscles of the forearm, is rigid
and unyielding, while the hinder margin is merely the soft
flexible ends of the feathers; so, when the wing is forced
down, the air under it, finding this margin yielding the
easier, would rush ont here, and, in so doing, would bend
up the ends of the quills, pushing them forward out of the
way, which, of course, would tend to shove the bird ahead.
This process, quickly repeated, results in the phenomenon
of flight.
The vigor and endurance that birds upon the wing dis-
play is astonishing. Nearly all the migratory species of
Europe must cross the Mediterranean without resting.
Many take the direct course between the coast of Africa
AN ORNITHOLOGICAL LECTURE. 89
and England, which is still farther. Our little bluebird
pays an annual visit to the Bermudas, six hundred miles
from the continent, and Wilson estimated its apparently
SUMMER YELLOW-BIRDS.
very moderate flight at much more than a mile a minute.
Remarkable stories are told of the long flights tame falcons
have been known to take—one going a thousand three hun-
dred miles in a day. Yarrell mentions earrier-pigeons that
90 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
flew from Rouen to Ghent, one hundred and fifty miles, in
an hour and a half; but this speed is surpassed by our own
wild pigeons, which have been shot in New York before
the rice they had picked in Georgia had been digested. / It
is ascertained that a certain warbler must wing its “way
from Egypt to Heligoland, one thousand two hundred
miles, in one night, and it is probable that martins endure
equal exertion every long summer’s day, in their ceaseless
pursuit of insects. | Taking, then, one hundred miles per
hour as the rate of flight during migrations, we need not.
be surprised that representatives of more than thirty spe-
cies of our wood-birds have been shot in the British Isles,
since they could well sustain the sixteen hundred miles be-
tween Newfoundland and Ireland.
“A good ornithologist,” says White of Selborne, “should
be able to distinguish birds by their air, as well as their
colors and shape, on the ground as well as on the wing,
and in the bush as well as in the hand.” Almost every
family of birds has its peculiarities of manner. Thus, the
kites and buzzards glide round in circles with wings ex-
panded and motionless; marsh-hawks or harriers fly low
over meadows and stubble-fields, beating the ground regu-
larly. Crows and jays lumber along as though it were
hard work; and herons are still more clumsy, having their
ee
AN ORNITHOLOGICAL LECTURE. 91
long necks and longer legs to encumber them. The wood-
pecker’s progress is in a series of long undulations, opening
and closing the wings at every stroke. Our thistle-loving
goldfinch also flies this way, but the most of the /7ingil-
lide (finches, sparrows, etc.) have a short, jerking flight,
accompanied with many bobbings and flirtings. Warblers
and fly-catchers fly high up, smoothly and swiftly. Swal-
lows and night-hawks seem to be mowing the air with
cimitar wings, and move with surprising energy. On the
ground, most small birds are hoppers, like the sparrows,
but a few, like the robin and water-thrush, truly and grace-
fully walk, and the “shore-birds” are emphatically runners.
Among all sorts, queer movements are assumed in the love
season, not noticeable at other times.
There is no part of the world where the feathered tribe
is not represented; but no two quarters of the globe, and
scarcely any two places a hundred miles apart, have pre-
cisely the same sort of birds, or in similar abundance.
There are several reasons for this: first, the influence of
climate. Birds provided with the means of resisting the
extreme cold of northern regions would be very uncom-
fortable under a southern sun. The geographical distribu-
tion of plants has long been recognized, but it is only re-
cently that a like distribution of birds has been proved
99 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
to exist. Moreover,
oceans and high
mountain chains lim-
it the range of many
kinds. Europe and
America have searee-
ly any species in
common, save of wa-
ter- birds and large
hawks. Those from
the Pacific coast are
essentially different
from those found in
the Mississippi Val-
ley. Each « district
has a set of birds—
and other animals as
well—peculiar to its
peculiar geography.
Another great cir-
cumstance, deter-
S=>S=S= = . .
SSS mining the pres-
YELLOW-BREASTED OHATS.
ence or absence of
certain birds in the breeding season, is the abundance or
-AN ORNITHOLOGICAL LECTURE. 95
scarcity of suitable food, not only for themselves, but also
for their young; as the food of birds at that time is often
very different from their ordinary diet, it requires a close
acquaintance with them to prophesy confidently what birds
would be likely to be found breeding at a given point.
But few birds remain in the same region all the year
round. Out of about two hundred and seventy-five spe-
cies occurring in New England or New York in June, only
twenty-five or so stay throughout the year; of these forty
or fifty come to us in winter only, leaving us two hundred
and twenty-five species of spring birds, half of which num-
ber merely pass through to their northern breeding places.
With this disparity, no wonder that we look for the return
of the birds, and hail with delight the bluebird calling to us
through clear March mornings, the velvet-coated robins, the
battalions of soldierly cedar-birds, the ghostly turtle-doves
sighing their surging refrain, the pewees, and thrushes, and
golden orioles, till at last, amid the bursting foliage and
quickness of May life, a full host of brilliant choristers
holds jubilee in the sunny tree-tops. |
In a very few days, as suddenly. and mysteriously as they
came, half the gay company has passed us, going farther
north to breed. Could we follow this army, we should find
it thinning gradually, as one species after another found its
94 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
appropriate station—a part in upper New England and
Canada, many about Hudson’s Bay ; while not a few (water-
birds especially) would lead us to the very shores of Arctic .
fjords. For them the summer is so short that ice and snow
start them south before we have any thought of cold weath-
er. On their way they pick up all the Labrador and Can-
ada birds, re-enforced by their young, so that an even: great-
er army invades our woods amid the splendor of October
than made them ring in the exuberance of June. Then
our own birds catch the infection, and singly, or in squads,
companies, and regiments, join the great march to the sa-
vannas of the Gulf States, the table-lands of Central Amer-
ica, and on even to the jungles of the Orinoco. What a
wonderful perception is that which teaches them to migrate;
tells them just the day to set out, the proper course to take,
and keeps them true to it over ocean and prairie, and mo-
notonous forests, and often in the night! That the young,
learning the route from the parent, remember it, would be
no less remarkable were it true, which it probably is not;
for many species seem to go north by one route, as along
the coast, and return by another west of the Alleghanies,
or vice versa. In proceeding northward, the males go ahead
of the females a week or so; returning in the fall, the males
again take the lead, and the young bring up the rear. Yet
i ~~ gal
7 fay)
\ Ze Path
A JUNE MORNING.
ts ;
Parte a}
won A et al a at hn cea Ie
AN ORNITHOLOGICAL LECTURE. 97
there are many exceptions to this rule, for with not a few
birds the males and females travel together; and with some,
old and fully plumaged males are the last to arrive. All
birds migrate more or less—even such, like the crow and
song -sparrow, as stay with us through the year; for we
probably do not see the same individuals both winter and
summer. Even tropical birds move a little way from the
equator, and back again with the season; and in monntain-
ous regions most of the birds, and many small quadrupeds,
THE HUMMING-BIRD’S NEST,
have a vertical migration only, descending to the valleys in
winter, and reascending to the summits in summer-—differ-
t
98 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
ence of altitude accomplishing the same climatic results as
a change in latitude.
We can see various causes of these migrations, some of
** ONLY A OAT-BIRD.”’
which have already been suggested, but the chief cause
seems to be the necessity of their accustomed food. We
find that those birds which make the longest and most com-
plete migrations are insect and honey-eaters; while the
graminivorous and omnivorous birds, and such, like the tit-
mouse and nut-hatch, as subsist on the young of insects to
be found under the bark of trees, go but a short distance to
escape inclement weather, or do not migrate at all. Sports-
AN ORNITHOLOGICAL LECTURE. 99
men recognize the fact that the snipe and woodcock have
returned, not because the rigorous winter days are wholly
passed, but because the frost is sufficiently out of the ground
to allow the worms to come to the surface; and know that
in warm, springy meadows these birds may often be found
all through the year. Man no doubt influences the mi-
gratory habits of birds. To many he offers inducements
in the shelter, and in the abundance of insects which his
industry occasions, to linger later in the fall than was their
wont, and return earlier in the spring. While, on the con-
trary, the persecution which the shy wild-fowl have received
has caused them generally to repair to secluded breeding-
places, far north of their haunts of fifty years ago. But
the migrations of most birds are somewhat irregular, and
we have so few reliable data that we can hardly yet deter-
mine the laws which govern their seasonal movements,
much less assert the ancient origin of the “ migratory in-
stinct,”’ so called, or state the varied influences that have
led to the present powerful habit, and have pointed out
the routes which the flocks now follow, spring and fall,
The geologist must aid the zoological student in solving
these problems.
The true home of a bird, then, is where it rears its young,
even though it be not there more than a third of the year,
100 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
ia \\\
\ it
me
EAGLES.
and everywhere else it is merely a traveller or mzgrant.
Should you then, after say two years of observation, want
to write down a list of the birds inhabiting your district—
and you would thus be doing a real service to science—it
AN ORNITHOLOGICAL LECTURE. 101
is important that you mention whether each bird breeds
there, passes through spring and autumn, or is only a win-
ter visitor.
Perhaps there is no animal in the world that comes near-
er to man’s heart, and seems more akin, than the bird, be-
THE PLOVER.
cause of its beautiful home-life, and the loving care with
which it anticipates and provides for its brood. There is
a charm about the nest of a bird that does not linger about
the hive of the wild bees, the burrow of the woodchuck,
or the dome of the musk-rat. It is more a home than any
102 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
of them. The situation varies as much as the birds them-
selves. Trees, however, form the most common support:
among the tip-top branches of them warblers fix their tiny
cradles; to the outer drooping twigs of them orioles and
vireos can swing their hammocks; upon their stout horizon-
tal limbs the thrushes and tanagers may come and build;
against the trunk, and in the great forks, hawks, and crows,
and jays will pile their rude structures; and in the cracks
and crannies, titmice, nut-hatches, and woodpeckers clean
-out old holes, or chisel new, in which to deposit their
eggs. But most of the large birds of prey inhabit lone
crags, making an eyrie which they repair from year to year
for the new brood. The ground, too, bears the less preten-
tious houses of sparrows and larks, and the scattered eggs
of sand-pipers, gulls, and terns; the marshes are occupied
by rails, herons, and ducks; the banks of rivers are bur-
rowed into by kingfishers and sand-martins; so that al-
most every conceivable position is adopted by some bird
or another, and its peculiar custom usually, thongh not by
any means invariably, adhered to by that species. A curi-
ous instance of change in this respect is shown by the two
barn-swallows and the chimney-swallow, which, before the
civilization of this country, plastered their nests in caves,
and in the inside of hollow trees, as indeed they yet do in
a
AN ORNITHOLOGICAL LECTURE. 103
the far north-west. In the materials used, and the con-
struction of the nest, birds adapt themselves largely to cir-
cumstances. In the Northern States, for example, the Bal-
timore oriole uses hempen fibres, cotton twine, e¢ cetera, for
its nest; but in the heat of Louisiana the same pouch-shaped
THE WOOD-PEWEER,
structure is woven of Spanish moss, and is light and cool.
The intelligence and foresight that some birds exhibit in
their architecture prove reason rather than instinct, as we
popularly use these words; while others are so stupid as to
upset all our respect for their faculties of calculation. Both
sexes usually help in building the nest, and work industri-
104 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
ously at it till it is ready for the egegs—sometimes finishing
it even after the female has begun to sit.
The best known birds probably are such famous songsters
TURKEY-BUZZARDS.
AN ORNITHOLOGICAL LECTURE. 105
as the nightingale and the skylark; and because these and
our canaries are foreign, most persons suppose that we have
no equally fine songsters of our own. Let a doubter go
into the June woods only once! June is harvest-month
for the ornithologist. Then the birds are dressed in their
best, are showing off all their good points to their lady-
loves, are building their nests, and—being very happy—are
in full song. Morning and evening there is such a chorus
as makes the jubilant air fairly quiver with melody, while all
day you catch the yeap of pigmies in the tree-tops, the chat-
tering and twittering of garrulous sparrows and swallows,
and the tintinnabulation of wood-thrushes. I cannot even
name all these glorious singers. Perhaps the many-tongued
mocking-bird stands at the head of the list; possibly the
hermit-thrush, whose song is of “serene religious beati-
tude,” or the blue grossbeak or winter wren. As you
ehoose. The bird you think pre-eminent to-day will be
excelled to-morrow, and you will refuse to distinguish be-
tween them for the love and admiration you bear them all.
Ve
OUR WINTER BILD Ss:
Nor often in the genial days of early and late summer,
or even in the torrid heat of its middle months, do we re-
call winter with pleasure, or wish ourselves surrounded by
its scenes; while, on the contrary, the dark hours of the
long winter evenings are often enlivened with reminiscences
of balmy weather, the fireplace is adorned with bouquets
of dried flowers, and every indication of returning spring is
eagerly welcomed. Nothing is more precious to the eye,
weary of the desolation which snow and ice bring to the
landscape, than the winter birds, whose bright forms alone
diversify the bare and colorless world, and whose cheery
notes alone break the stillness and apparent immobility of
Nature. They always earry a bit of the June sunshine
about with them, and dropping it from their wings, like
seed, wherever they flit, seem thus to preserve the season
through the ravages of winter, to which all else succumbs.
Some words about them may, therefore, help to keep the
OUR WINTER BIRDS. 107
sense of summer alive in our hearts through this midnight
of the year.
Most persons are surprised when told of the large num-
ber of these feathered friends which begin the new year
with us; for in January, in the near neighborhood of New
York city, over fifty species appear with more or less reg-
ularity. They comprise two classes: those which reside in
our fields the year round, like the bluejay; and such, like
the snow-flake, as are driven to our milder climate by the
severity of a Northern winter that even their arctic-bred,
hardy constitutions are unable to endure. The members
of the latter class visit us in varying numbers, but are es-
pecially numerous in snowy seasons.
It is probably less a fear of the dreadful temperature,
even in the frigid zones, which compels the birds to seek
our milder latitudes, than the inability to obtain food when
snow buries the seed-bearing weeds and sends the smaller
animals to their hibernacula, and the increasing darkness
of the long arctic night shuts out from view what the snow
has not covered. All birds—or almost all—on their south-
ward migration, fly at night, resting during the day. We
have the most abundant evidence of this; and it has oceur-
red to me that possibly it is the deepening darkness of high
latitudes which first warns them off; that the natural re-
108 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
currence of night seems to them like being overtaken by
the darkness which they thought they had left behind, but
which they must again flee; that, therefore, they keep upon
the wing until each morning’s light, supposing that they
have thus again and again outstripped the pursuing gloom,
until they reach a region of abundant food, and perhaps
learn wisdom from its resident birds. I will confess that
I do not myself put much faith in this theory, but a curi-
ous and sustaining fact is, that the northward migration,
in spring, is mostly accomplished by day-journeys instead
of at night.
Whatever the motive, no sooner has the crowd of au-
tumnal migrants, with rustling wings and faint voices, swept
through our woods—slowly during the long, mellow Octo-
ber days, when the earth seems to stand still, and the sea-
sons to be in equipoise; swiftly when the first blast of No-
vember sends them skurrying onward with the deadened
leaves—than their places are taken by the brave little fel-
lows whose fame I celebrate.
Taking my way to the woods some bright, still morn-
ing in January, when the snow is crisp and the ice in the
swamps firm, I shall find the sombre fields full of a life of
their own well worth my while to see, even if the exhila-
vation of the walk does not prove reward enough. Here
OUR WINTER BIRDS. 109
on this fence-rail is the track of a squirrel, and in the cor-
ner of the rail and rider is the half-eaten body of a chicka-
dee which some butcher-bird has hung up. How the dry
wood ereaks as I climb over, and how resonant is that dead
ash under the vigorous hammer of the little woodpecker
SNOW-BUNTING.
whose red crest glows like a spark of fire against the white
limb! Around this spice-bush the mice have been at work,
nibbling the bark off up to the surface of the snow, and we
can see the entrance to their tunnel. This path, trod bare
by the cows, leads to the hilly brush-pasture where the
southern sun shines all the afternoon, and thither let me
follow.
110 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
Sunny hill-sides, the wooded banks of creeks, the hedge-
rows and brier-grown fences along the country roads, are
all favorite places for the winter birds. Here come the
sparrows and finches, the winter wren and rare cardinal,
skulking about the thickets, hopping through the dead
fern-brakes, threading the mazy passages of the log-heaps
and brush-piles ready to be burnt in the spring, coming
out upon the fence-post or way-side trees to sing their
morning roundelay and take their daily airing in pleasant
weather. In the open meadows are the grass-finches, snow-
birds, and the few robins and medlarks that stay with us;
in the edge of the woods the bluejay, flicker, and butcher-
bird; in the orchards and evergreens the crossbills, the
pine grossbeaks, red-polls, and cedar-bird; the deep woods
shelter the tiny nuthatches, titmice, and the little wood-
peckers; the open sky affords space for the birds of prey,
and the sea-shore harbors for the gulls, sea-ducks, and fish-
hawk. Such are the chosen resorts of the different varie-
ties, yet, of course, we shall occasionally meet all every-
where, and sometimes spots apparently most favorable
will be totally uninhabited. In very severe weather the
wildest birds are often compelled to come close to the
house and barn in search of out-door relief from gentle
hands.
OUR WINTER BIRDS. 111
“ How do the birds manage at night and in tempestuous
weather ?” is a question often asked me.
The time is not long passed when it was universally be-
lieved that many of them hibernated—especially the swal-
lows—burying themselves in the mud like frogs, or curl-
ing up in holes in rocks like the bats; and the common
phenomenon of the appearance of a few summer birds dur-
ing “warm spells” in winter was assumed to prove that
they had been torpid, but had waked up under the genial
warmth, as bats often do. It was not three months ago
that I saw in an English newspaper a letter from a man
who claimed to have found a hedge-sparrow (I think) tor-
pid somewhere in the mud. But the search for proofs of
this theory discovered that the birds supposed to hibernate
migrated, while of the birds which remained in this lati-
tude through the cold months we saw more in warm, fine
weather, for the natural reason that then they forsook the
sheltered hollows and cosy recesses of the woods where
they had retreated during stormy days, and came out into
the sunlight. Dense cedars and the close branches of small
spruces and other evergreens afford them good shelter, and
thickets of brambles are made use of when these are not
to be found; hollow trees are natural houses in which large
numbers huddle, and the cave-like holes under the roots
142 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
of trees growing on steep banks become favorite hospices.
The grouse plunges through the snow down to the ground,
where it scrapes a “form,” or crawls under the hemlock
and spruce boughs that droop to the earth with the weight
of snow, and allows the white mantle to drift over it, sub-
sisting the while on the spruce-buds; when the storm ceases
it can easily dig its way out, but sometimes a rain arid
hard frost follow, which make such a crust on the snow
that it cannot break up through, and so it starves to
death. The more domestic sparrows, robins, and flickers
burrow into the.hay-mow, find a warm roost in the barn
near the cattle, or, attracted by the warmth of the furnace,
creep under the eaves or into a chink next the chimney of
the greenhouse or country dwelling. The meadow-lark
and quail seek out sunny nooks in the fields and crouch
down out of the blast; while the woodcock hides among
the moss and ferns of damp woods where only the very
severest cold can chain the springs. Along the coast many
birds go from the interior to the sea-shore in search cf a
milder climate.
Nevertheless, in spite of all these resources in the way of
shelter; in spite of their high degree of warmth and vital-
ity, probably not exceeded by any other animal; in spite
of the fact that they can draw themselves up into a per-
OUR WINTER BIRDS. tS
fect ball of feathers which are the best of clothing, and
that they can shelter themselves from the driving storm,
it appears that birds often perish from cold in large num-
bers. Ordinarily, birds seem able to foretell a change of
weather, and prepare. The reports of the United States
weather bureau certainly show, that, during the fall and
winter, the ducks, geese, cranes, crows, and other notable
species—and apparently generally —abandon their former
haunts upon the approach of a cold wave or hard win-
ter storm for more southern localities, often passing beyond
the reach of the severity of such storms, though taking
their departure only a few hours before these unfavorable
changes. Resident species, not caring, or not able, to run
away to warmer latitudes, ought to know enough to hide
away from the fury of the gale; and they do. But some-
times there come sudden, unpresaged changes —cold, icy
gales, which charge down upon us after thawing-days, con-
verting the air, which was almost persuading the grass to
revive, into an atmosphere that cuts the skin like the im-
pinging of innumerable particles of frost, and shrivels ev-
ery object with cold, or buries it under dry and drifting
snow. ‘Then it is that the small birds, caught unprepared,
suffer. At first, such as are overcome seem unusually ac-
tive, running about apparently in search of food, but tak-
8
114 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
ing little notice of one’s approach. “Should one attempt
to fly,” writes a recent observer, “it immediately falls on its
back as if shot. The legs and toes are stretched out to their
BROWN CREEPER.
farthest extent, and are quite rigid; the eyes protrude, are
insensible to the touch, and the whole body quivers slight-
ly. It remains in this state from one to two minntes, when
it recovers suddenly, and seems as active as before. If
taken in the hand, it will immediately go into convulsions,
even if it has been in a warm room for several hours, and
has been supplied plentifully with food. Death usually
puts an end to its suffering in a day or two.”
Such catastrophes are more likely to occur, however, in
the spring, after the birds have begun to come northward,
than in the steadier weather of January; and even the song-
OUR WINTER BIRDS. 115
sparrows and snow-birds, which have successfully withstood
the rigors of the lowest midwinter temperature, as often
succumb as the less inured songsters from the South.
The favorite among our winter birds, perhaps because
the most domestic, taking the place of England’s robin-red-
breast, is the slate-colored snow-bird, which is one of the
sparrows. It comes to us with the first frosts, and stays
until the wake-robin and spring-beauty bloom. Even
then some of them do not go far away to spend the sum-
mer, for they breed in the heights behind the Delaware
Water-Gap, and also in the Catskills. The main body,
nevertheless, go to Canada and Labrador. In the Rocky
Mountains I have seen them many times in midsummer
as far sonth as the latitude of Cincinnati; but there the
Canada jay also breeds, although in the East its nest is nev-
er found—great altitude in the Sierras affording the same
climate which eastward is only to be at tained at high lat-
itudes.
The nest of the snow-bird is placed on the ground among
the moss, or under the protection of the root of a tree, and
is built of grass, weed-stalks, and various fibres. The eggs
are whitish, sprinkled with pale chocolate and dark red-
dish-brown. Several species besides our Sunco hyemalis
are found in mountainous parts of the far West and North-
116 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
west, but they inter-
grade — confusingly,
and their nidification
is essentially the same.
A snow-bird is a snow-
bird from one end of
the country to the oth-
er, and the sharp, me-
tallic note is charae-
teristic of the whole
genus.
Truer spirits of the
driving snow—for the
junco is a sort of fair-
weather bird after all
—are the snow-bunt-
ings, or snow- flakes,
or white snow-birds,
or, absurdest of all,
| "4 Winter - geese, as the
! 4 a uy | elf { Nahant fishermen eall
f PNT bees Y them. Their system-
CARDINAL-GROSSBEAK,
atic name is Plectro-
phanes nivalis, and their plumage is handsomely marked
OUR WINTER BIRDS. 117
with white and chocolate-brown. Sometimes a flock of
these buntings will whirl into our door-yard for a brief mo-
ment; but in general you must go to the upland fields and
frozen marshes to find them, and the best time is just after
a “cold snap” or a heavy snow. The Hackensack mead-
ows at such times are full of them, and I have seen flocks
of hundreds pirouetting over the ice-covered, wind-swept
A YELLOW-BIRD IN WINTER DRESS.
shores of Lake Erie, or whirling down the bleak sands of
Cape Cod. What attracted them to such exposed and
dreary spots I could never divine. When they first come
they seem unsuspicious of any special danger from man,
yet are continually skurrying away from some imaginary
cause of alarm. Never going far south of New York, w
see few of them even here in mild seasons, and, as the close
118 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
of the winter approaches, they are among the first to hasten
to their home within the arctic circle. In every alternate
flock of snow-flakes may perhaps be found one or two Lap-
land longspurs—another bird which builds its nest in the
moss at the foot of Greenland glaciers. Its coat is white
and black and chestnut, so that it is easily distinguishable
from its lighter fellow, but it is very uncommon.
Next to the diminutive humming-bird, the smallest bird
on this continent is the golden-crested kinglet, on whose
tiny brow rests a coronet of gold, fiery red and_ black,
below which the jewelled eye is set in a soft, dusky back-
ground of olive-green. From tooth to tail he is not so long
as your finger, yet this pygmy braves the fury and desola-
tion of winter as cheerily as though soft skies arched over-
head. I owe him many thanks for piping his nonchalant,
contented little lecture into my ears when I have growled
at the weather and the “foolishness” which dragged me
out-of-doors on certain terrible days, only to see what such
absurd fellows as he were about. He is the most indepen-
dent, irrepressible little chap I know of, and for the life of
me I never can be down-hearted when he is by. In sum-
mer the gold-crest (like his royal brother, the ruby-crown)
is a fly-catcher, expertly seizing insects on the wing; and
on warm days in winter he forages in the tree-tops for such
OUR WINTER BIRDS. neh?
moths and beetles as are abroad; but necessarily he must
subsist chiefly on the larvee which hibernate under the rot-
ten bark, and upon insects’ eggs. Thus he is helped to
many a meal by the sapsuckers and tomtits, whose strong-
er bills tear open the recesses where the larve lie. In
summer the kinglets retreat to boreal regions to rear their
young; but we know very little about their domestic life.
Just before they leave us in the spring I may, perhaps,
have the rare treat to hear a long way off the resonant song
of this minute minstrel—bold and clear, carrying me away
aloft like that of the English skylark.
Another personification of
“Contented wi’ little, and canty wi’ mair,”
is the brown creeper, whose bill is curved, and long, and
tender, so that he can do very little digging for himself,
but follows in the track of the woodpeckers and nut-
hatches, and picks up the grubs which their vigorous beaks
have dislodged, or searches carefully for such small insects,
and their eggs, as are not well concealed. There is one
now in the tree next my window, in the edge of the city,
as I write. He flew from the neighboring horse-chestnut
to the foot of the ailantus, and began a spiral march up-
ward. I see him creep steadily round and round and
120 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
round the trunk, with his tail pressed in against the tree
to sustain him (like the pointed stick trailing behind a
Pennsylvania wagon), peering into every crevice, poking
his bill into all the knot-holes and scars where limbs have
been shivered off, running out on each branch, here picking
up half a dozen eggs that only a bird’s sharp eye could
find, there transfixing with his pointed tongue some dor-
mant beetle laid away on his bark shelf, or tearing open the
pupa-case of some unlucky young moth, snugly dreaming
of a successful début in May. This creeper is always to
be found in our winter woods and orchards, yet is nowhere
abundant; its life is a solitary one, and, although not shy,
it is so restlessly active as easily to elude the eye. If, in
the early spring, you have the rare fortune to hear its song,
regard the privilege as precious.
Another creeping bird, almost always moving head down-
ward, more often seen in midwinter, because then he ap-
proaches civilized life, while in summer he retires to the
remote woods to rear his brood, is the familiar nuthatch,
whose pecnhar nee-nee-nee—the most indifferent, don’t-
care-a-bit utterance in the world—is heard from every other
tree-trunk. Like the brown creeper, the nuthatches seek
their food on the boles of trees, examining every part by a
spiral survey—a sort of triangulation—and are not content
OUR WINTER BIRDS. 121
till the top is reached, when they dive straight to the roots
of the next tree, and begin a new exploration. There is
no time wasted by these little engineers in foolish flying
about or profitless research. Not allowing a cranny to go
untouched, they drag out every unhappy grub it shelters
before raiding the next hiding-place of insect-life. Their
feet are broad and strong for clinging; their bills are small
pickaxes, their tongues harpoons, and their brains marine
clocks, just as steady one side up as another. Thus they
are able to live on the injurious borers and the like which
pass through their metamorphoses beneath the bark; and,
except when everything is incased in ice, do not eat seed,
or even alight on the ground. They are among the most
active and serviceable of the fruit-grower’s benefactors,
continuing, during the cold months, the good work drop-
ped in October by the summer birds, and finding in his in-
sidious enemies their favorite food. The nuthatch is the
leader of that admirable little company composed of the
chickadee, the crested titmouse, the downy woodpecker,
and sometimes of the red-bellied nuthatch and spirituel
creeper, which Wilson truthfully describes as “ proceeding
regularly from tree to tree through the woods like a corps
of pioneers; while, in a cali day, the rattling of their bills,
and the rapid motions of their bodies, thrown like so many
122 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
tumblers and rope-dancers into numberless positions, to-
gether'with the peculiar chatter of each, are altogether very
amusing, conveying the idea of hungry diligence, bustle,
and activity.” ‘
Every one knows the black-capped titmouse—our jolly
little chickadee, and his jolly little chant:
“ Ohick-chickadeedee! Saucy note,
Out of sound heart and merry throat,
As if it said: ‘Good-day, good sir!
Fine afternoon, old passenger !
Happy to meet you in these places,
ee)
Where January brings few faces.
He is the hero of the woods; there are courage and good-
nature enough in that compact little body, which you may
hide in your fist, to supply a whole groveful of May song-
sters. He has the Spartan virtue of an eagle, the cheerful-
ness of the thrushes, the nimbleness of the sparrow, the
endurance of the sea-birds, condensed into his tiny frame,
and there have been added a “ peartness” and ingenuity all
his own. His curiosity is immense, and his audacity equal
to it; I have even had one alight upon the barrel of the
gun over my shoulder as I sat quietly under his tree. The
chickadees come to us with the first frost; and keen eyes
may discover them all the year round in the Catskills, or
oe
OUR WINTER BIRDS. mo3
among the heights of the upper Delaware River, whither
they go to nest, the majority, nevertheless, passing to Can-
ada for that purpose.
There is a winter wren also, but, although considerably.
smaller, it is frequently mistaken for the inquisitive and
saucy house-wren, which fled south in October. It is a
species heard rather than seen, evading observation in the
dense brush, through which it moves more like a mouse
than a bird. Its prolonged and startling bugle-song is a
wonder, and its whole history is charming, but I must pass
it by. If you wish to become acquainted with him (and
several of his midwinter associates) in more genial days,
you have only to go to the depths of the Catskills or Adi-
rondacks, where he spends his summer.
The family of sparrows, finches, and buntings—the Frin-
gillide—supples more of the winter woodland birds than
any other single group, the list of those regularly present
in January including the pine-grossbeak, the red and the
white-winged crossbills, the two red-poll linnets, the pine,
grass, and gold finches, the song, tree, and English sparrows,
besides an occasional straggler like the purple finch, eardi-
nal, and white-throat. The first five mentioned are polar
bred, and return to their native heaths at the earliest in-
timation of spring. The pine-grossbeak is a big, clumsy-
124 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
looking bird, with a plumage reminding you of a blossom-
ing clover-field—a mixture of red and dull green. It has
found out what its thick, strong bill was made for, and
crushes the scales of the tough pine-cones as though they
were paper. The pine-grossbeaks often come into the vil-
CROSSBILL.
lage streets, hopping about in search of almost anything to
eat, and are very tame and interesting. Their note is a
cheery one, and when captured they thrive well in the
cage, eat apple-seeds greedily, and become very entertain-
ing. The pine-finch, or siskin, is its miniature, and seeks
much the same sort of food, but must get it from softer
a
7. oan
OUR WINTER BIRDS. 125
cones, for its bill does not seem half as stout. It is erratic
in its visits, and its actions outside of the pine-trees are
precisely like those of its cousin, the yellow-bird.
All winter you may notice along the field-fences and in
the grassy plats beside the railway, where weeds have gone
to seed, active flocks of small, plainly-attired little birds,
as cheerful as can be. These are our thistle-loving gold-
finches, or yellow-birds, whose simple, sweet song and _bil-
lowy flight were part of the delight of last summer, but
which now have exchanged their gay livery of canary-yel-
low and black for sober undress suits of Quaker drab. The
goldfinches, as such, appear with the apple-blossoms, and
are seen no later than the gathering of the fruit; but
their seeming disappearance in autumn, and reappearance
in spring, are only changes of plumage. Nevertheless, they
are not so abundant in winter as in summer, many moving
a little distance southward. The crossbills are naturally
so named, for the tips of their mandibles slide by one an-
other instead of shutting squarely together. Whether or
not this peculiarity has been gradually acquired to meet
the necessity of a peculiar instrument to twist open the
cones and other tough pericarps, upon the contents of
which they feed; or whether it is an accident perpetuated
and made the best of; or whether the crossed bill was “ ere-
126 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
ated” in that fashion in the beginning, with a definite inten-
tion toward pine-cones, we may theorize upon to suit our
tastes: but certain it is that it answers the bird’s purpose
most admirably. The red crossbill is the more common
of the two, but the white-winged is not greatly different.
They fly in small flocks, often coming among the gardens,
where their odd appearance never fails to attract attention.
In addition to pine-seeds, they feed on the seeds and buds
of the cedar, birch, alder, mountain-ash, Virginia creeper,
etc., and probably add apples, haws, and berries to their
bill of fare,as does the grossbeak. They are wonderfully
happy creatures, fluttering in and out of the evergreens, or
passing swiftly from one to another, working away at a
swinging cone “teeth and toe-nail,” heads or tails up—it
doesn’t matter—till every kernel is extracted, then with
one quick impulse launching into the air and departing—
perhaps for the arctic circle—before you have had time to
bid them good-bye.
One of the earliest and handsomest migrants from the
frozen North is the little red-poll linnet, which is about the
size of a stout canary. He is a dandy, changing his gay
suit of black, brown, white, saffron, pink, red, and crimson
several times a year, and—at least until he is three or four
years old—never dressing twice alike. He is an exceed-
OUR WINTER BIRDS. 127
ingly melodious if not a very versatile singer, in England is
often kept in cages and mated with the canary, and might
be here. There would be no difficulty in catching him.
Two other of the familiar friends who make our spring
meadows vocal with an incessant concert, the song-sparrow
and grass-finch, remain with us through the winter also;
but more than half the song-sparrows are frightened south-
ward by the first snow-storm. A few, however, are always
to be met with in the swamps and edges of the woods dur-
ing January, living under cover of the briers and brush-
heaps, and upon the seeds of various grasses and herbs,
scratching up the leaves to get at dormant insects or their
egos, here picking up a checker-berry which the snow has
not drifted over, there nibbling at the dried remains of
blackberries, raspberries, and wrinkled crab-apples, squeez-
ing the gum from a swelling bud, tearing open the seed-
case of the wild-rose whose blossom they shook to pieces
as they darted to their nests in early June. The brown
easily recognized by the two white feathers
erass-finch
shown in the tail when flying—seems scarcely ever to leave
the field in which it was born. It is emphatically a bird of
the meadows, where its song is heard loudest in the long
summer twilights when most other birds are silent, so that
Wilson Flagg called it the vesper sparrow. Building its
128 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
nest in a little hollow on the ground, finding its food
among the grass, it seems hardly to fly over the boundary-
fence from one year’s end to another. How these finches
are able to stand the winter in the open fields, is a mystery ;
perhaps they go elsewhere at night, or crawl into holes;
but you may meet them scudding across the uplands every
month of the year, keeping company with the few meadow-
larks that remain.
All this month, in hedge-rows, wooded hollows, and
thickets, beside springs of water, where very likely you
may flush a woodeock, will be heard the low warble of the
tree-sparrows, northern cousins of the trilling chippy of our
lilac-bushes, and of the pretty field-sparrow that from every
green pasture calls out, O-7-e-e-p, ¢-r-e-e-p, c-r-e-e-p, catch’m,
catch’m, catch’m / as my mother used to phrase it for me.
They receive the name from the habit of taking to the
trees when disturbed, instead of diving into the bushes and
skulking away as do the other sparrows; but the less com-
mon name, Canada sparrow, is better. Once in awhile
they come into the towns: I saw one yesterday in the
horse-chestnut in front of my window, which seemed to
be finding plenty to eat about the bark and scanty leaves
that remained, until the English sparrows got news of his
presence and drove’ him away in their buccaneering style.
OUR WINTER BIRDS. 129
These same outrageous English sparrows are the most con-
spicuous, really, of all our January birds. They are spread-
ing widely through the suburbs of the city, especially be-
tween here and Philadelphia; and I am sorry to see it, for
they are uncompromising enemies to all our native birds.
It would lead me to far overstep the reasonable limits
of this essay if I attempted to extend to all the winter
birds even the brief sketch I have given of some of the
woodland species. A mere mention must sufiice.
Some birds besides those already noticed are residents
with us the year round: thus a few robins, bluebirds, crows,
bluejays, cedar-birds, kingfishers, flickers, blackbirds, pur-
ple finches, wild pigeons, quails, grouse, and woodcocks, are
always likely to be found in the neighborhood of New
York in January; while one or two of the arctic wood-
peckers, the Canada jay, the waxwing, and some other rari-
ties, may be met with at long intervals. Of the birds of
prey, we have in greater or less numbers this. month the
golden and bald eagles (about the Palisades), an occasional
osprey, the rough-legged, red-shouldered, and red-tailed
buzzards, the marsh-harrier, and some others; and, among
owls, the fierce snowy owl, which will take a grouse from
its roost, or carry off a hare; the barred, great horned, long-
eared, short-eared, mottled, and little saw-whet owls. Along
9
130 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
the adjacent shores of Long Island and New Jersey are
seen the various sea- ducks, “ coots,’ and geese; the loon,
and an occasional northern sandpiper, like the splendid
purple one; the herring, kittiwake, langhing, black-backed,
and several other gulls; and irregularly certain wandering
THE WAXWING.
sea-birds whose lives are not so much affected by climatic
conditions as are those of the land-birds.
Deprived of the small reptiles, the young of squirrels
and other mammals, eggs, and the large night-flying moths
and beetles which in summer form a good portion of their
subsistence, the predaceous birds become more fierce in win-
ter than at any other time, and exercise all their cunning
OUR WINTER BIRDS. 131
in the pursuit of such meadow-mice and other animals as
are imprudent enough to step out of their subnivean gal-
leries, or in the capture of weaker birds. The few late
fish-hawks remain by the sea-shore, plunging in now and
then for their finny prey, which the bald eagle very often
compels them to relinquish to him. The golden eagle, coy-
ering the landscape with keen and comprehensive glance
as he sweeps over in vast circuits, swoops upon hares, foxes,
and the like, sometimes even picking up an early lamb, or
catching a grouse before it can baftle its dreaded pursuer
by burying itself in the snow. The buzzard and marsh-
hawk sail low over the meadows in slow and easy flight, or
stand motionless above some elevated spot in the lowlands,
watching intently until a mole, or shrew, or mouse, shows
itself below, when they drop upon it like a shot, and carry
it off before the poor victim has time to recover from its
palsy of terror. Less frequently do these species seem to
eatch birds, and between Christmas and Easter they lead a
very precarious existence. The owls, too, must “live by
their wits,” but, being nocturnal, they have the advantage of
the birds, and, we may be sure, snatch many a tender one
rudely from its roost in the open trees, although the dense
twigs and sharp needles of the cedars and other close-
boughed evergreens must offer such obstacles to the rapid
132 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
passage of the owl as to allow many an intended yictim to
escape. The larger species, as the farmer well knows, will
UNWELCOME!
often in continued cold weather come into the very barn-
yard and earry off his chickens; while the nocturnal habits
of most of the smaller mammals not hibernating in Janu-
OUR WINTER. BIRDS. 133°
ary lead them abroad when the owls are mostly flying, and
on moonlight nights these prowlers get many a good meal,
no doubt.
It would seem, therefore, as if the chances of death pre-
sented to the lesser winter birds by scarcity of food, rigor
of climate, hawks by day and owls by night, outnumbered
the chances of life offered by their alertness and enduring
vitality. But there are some additional circumstances fa-
vorable to their escape from the latter fate, their resources
against starvation and freezing having already been ex-
plained. One of these circumstances is the vigilance of
the birds: they never are forgetful. Sometimes their curi-
osity leads them into danger, or an enemy like man, which
they do not suspect, may approach them by being very
quiet; but a hawk could never insinuate himself into a
sparrow’s good eraces, nor could an owl win his confidence ;
both must trust to surprising him or overtaking him in an
open race, which is about as difficult as “catching a weasel
asleep.” Then the hiding-places of the birds in hollow
trees, crannies in walls, dense thickets, and brush-piles, dur-
ing the night and in bad weather, are such as afford excel-
lent security from their nocturnal winged enemies, although
quite accessible to foxes and weasels. It is a curious fact
that fourteen or fifteen of our January birds choose hollows
.
134 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
in trees or holes in the ground for nesting-places, as though
consciously profiting by their experience of the security
afforded.
Another very important circumstance favoring the pres-
ervation of small birds at this season is the fact that in the
majority of cases the tints of their plumages are precisely
such as best harmonize with the surroundings in which
they are most often seen, and thus make them less discern-
ible than they otherwise might be. Looking through our
list of winter birds, many striking examples of this pro-
tective coloration are found—more, in proportion, than in
summer, when there does not seem to be so great need of
individual safety, and the “struggle for existence” is not
narrowed down to such a strait, and beset with so many
difficulties. The kinglets, for instance, spend their time
in flitting about the tops of the trees, and their plumage is
found to be a dusky green, like an old leaf, while the fiery
crowns which both wear are concealed, except at moments
(of love-passion, I imagine) when they wish to display
them. Easier to detect than the kinglets, yet plainly dress-
ed, are the titmice and nuthatches; but these frequent
widely different scenes, and, moreover, have compensating
advantages beyond most other birds in the habit of living
mostly in the deep woods where diurnal birds of prey are
OUR WINTER BIRDS. 135
uncommon, and at night of secreting themselves in small
holes where the owls cannot get at them. This is also true
of the small spotted woodpeckers, which, nevertheless, are
very inconspicuous objects upon the dead and white trunks
they frequent.
The brown and white streaks of the creeper (Certhia
americana), however, seem to me to furnish a decided case
of protective colors in plumage, since they harmonize so
exactly with the rough, cracked bark along which the
ereeper glides, that the wee bird is hardly to be followed
by the eye at a moderate distance. Again, no coat would
better help the wren to scout unobserved about the tangled
thickets and through the piles of wind-drifted leaves in
and out of this and that shadowy crevice than the plain
brown one he wears; while the lighter tints of the gold-
finch’s livery are precisely those which agree with the rus-
set weeds and grass whose harvest he diligently gathers.
The group of exclusively boreal birds seems especially pro-
tected from harm by the correspondence of their coat and
their surroundings. Their home is among the evergreens,
where an occasional dead branch or withered stem relieves
the verdancy with yellowish patches, and the thick-hanging
cones dot the tree with spots of reddish-brown; their plu-
mage is mottled with green, tints of yellow and brown, an
136 - FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
inconspicuons red, and a little black and white—just the
colors one’s eye takes in at a glance as he looks at a hem-
lock. The practical result for our eyes (or a falcon’s) is,
that the pine-grossbeaks and finches, the crossbills and
purple finches, blend with the foliage and cones and dead
branches until they are lost to any but the most attentive
gaze. The snow-bunting rejoices in a cloak of white, and
thus mingles inextricably to the eye with the feathery
flakes he whirls among, while his companion, the longspur,
is almost equally ghostly. All the winter sparrows are of
the brown color of the sere grass, withered leaves, and
broken branches among which they dwell, except the slaty
snow-bird, and he is of a neutral tint, easily lost to view in
a shadow.
This protection of adaptive colors is not enjoyed to any
great extent by the robin, bluebird, meadow-lark, cardinal-
grossbeak, and kingfisher—but none of these are “ winter”
birds here, properly speaking, but only loiterers behind the
summer host, and ought really to be excluded from the
comparison; nor by the crow, crow-blackbirds, bluejay,
Canada jay, and butcher-bird—but these are all large and
strong, able for the most part to defend themselves; while,
on the contrary, the colors of the large but timid and de-
fenceless woodcock, quail, and grouse are highly protective.
| a
OUR WINTER BIRDS. 37
Birds of prey themselves scarcely need such protection
from one another, yet some of them regularly exchange
their summer plumage for a winter dress of lighter and
(in the general white of the landscape) less conspicuous
tints; but this may operate to their advantage in the re-
verse way of allowing them to attain a closer, because un-
observed, approach to their quarry. This leaves us, among
the land-birds, only the bright red-poll and the waxwings
as exceptions to the supposed rule that the plumages of
winter birds are colored in a way directly favorable to their
special preservation at that season of augmented danger.
They are cases of which I have no account to give other
than that
these are the exceptions which “ favor the rule.”
let me beg the reader charitably to believe—
But against one persecutor no concealment of natural
color or artful device avails, and the brains of the pretty
songsters, so full of wit to avoid other enemies and provide
for each day’s need, are -his choice repast. This dainty
tyrant wears an overcoat of bluish ash trimmed with black
and white, a vest of white marked with fine, wavy, trans-
verse lines, white knee-breeches, and black stockings. His
eyes are dark and piercing; his nose Napoleonic; his fore-
head high and white; his mustache as heavy and black as
that of any cavalier in Spain. This Mephistopheles among
138 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
birds is a ruffian, truly, yet with polish and a courage with-
out bravado which commend him. Being an outlaw in «he
avian kingdom, he can only maintain himself by adroit-
ness and force, but has such singular impetuosity, prudence,
and fortitude, that he is not only able to keep himself and
his retainers in health and wealth and happiness, but to
gratify his blood-thirsty love of revenge by killing number-
less innocents without mercy. Thus he has struck terror
to the heart of every feathered inhabitant of the January
woods. Like Ceasar, he knows and joyously endures hun-
ger and cold and thirst. Is it biting, freezing weather, and
blinding snow? Little cares he; he can then the more
easily surprise his benumbed prey. Is it a warm, sap-start-
ing, inviting day? He is at the festival of the birds—a
fatal intruder into many a happy circle. His favorite perch
is the high rider of some lonely fence, where he quietly
waits till a luckless field-mouse creeps out and he is able
to pounce upon it; or an incautious sparrow or kinglet
dashes past, unconscious of the watchful foe who seizes him
like a flash of lightning. Having felled his quarry with a
single blow, he returns to his fence-post and eats the brains
—rarely more—or perhaps does not taste a single billful,
but impales the body upon a thorn, or hangs it in an angle
of the fence, as a butcher suspends his quarters of beef. It
7 * i. ae
_—
OUR WINTER BIRDS. 139
used to be thought this murderer thus impaled nine cap-
tives, and no more, so he was christened nine-killer; the
book-men labelled him Collurio borealis ; we know him as
the butcher-bird: he is the arctic brother of the shrikes,
and the boldest, bravest, noblest, and wickedest of his sav-
age race.
A SIIRIKE.
VI.
THH BUFFALO AND HIS FATHS
Prruars no indigenous animal of this country has at-
tracted more attention or met with a greater number of
biographers than the bison or buffalo. Its history has
been a tale of extermination, and a very short time will be
likely to see the last of these noble beasts roaming over
the plains. for hundreds of years a small remnant of the
ancient herds of aurochs, the native European bison, have
been preserved in the parks of the nobility; but in this
“free” country not even this means of safety seems left
to our persecuted buffalo.
To the Spanish colonists the American bison was com-
monly known under the name of czvola, while the French
usually called it le bweuf, buffle, vache sauvage, or bison
* A review of Prof. J. A. Allen’s “The Bison, Past and Present, in this Coun-
try,’ forming Part IL. of Volume I. of the ‘‘ Memoirs of the Geological Survey
of Kentucky,” Prof. N. 8. Shaler, Geologist, in charge; also reprinted by the
Museum of Comparative Zoology as one of its “‘ Memoirs.” Cambridge, 1875.
il
|
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Hl
:
|
Wa
A MOTHER ANTI OHILD OF THE PLAINS,
THE BUFFALO AND HIS FATE. 143
d’ Amérique. Peter Kalm, who travelled through Amer-
ica in 1749, spoke of them as wilde ochsen and hithe. But
the word buffalo—at first spelled bugfelo—soon replaced the
earlier names. Scientific men claim that our species (4zson
americanus, Smith) should be called bison, as “ buffalo” is
applicable only to the East Indian genus Lubalus.
It appears that our bison has already outlived at least
two other races, which exceeded it in size—the Bison lati-
Jrons and the Bison antiquus. The former was contem-
porary with the mastodon, and was an ox of gigantic bulk,
the tips of whose horns were eleven or twelve feet apart,
and which probably stood as high as an elephant. Of the
latter species more abundant remains have been dug up,
particularly from the ice-cliffs at Escholtz Bay, on the Are-
tic coast north of Alaska. This fossil ox was of smaller
size than the ison latifrons, but much larger than the ex-
isting buffalo, although not greatly different from it in
form. It seems to have been spread over the northwestern
half of the continent from the Ohio Valley to Alaska, its
remains occurring everywhere with those of the larger ex-
tinct mammalia, yet it may have survived to a compara-
tively regent date.
With the appearance of the buffalo, which only a few
decades ago swarmed in prodigious herds over nearly a
144 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
third of North America, all are familiar. The male meas-
ures about nine feet from the muzzle to the insertion of
the tail; the female about six and a half feet. The height
to the top of the hump of the male is five and a half to six
feet, and of the female about five feet, sloping in each case
to a height at the hips of four and a half to four feet. The
weight of the old males is nearly two thousand pounds,
while the cows weigh one thousand to twelve hundred
pounds. The horns are short, thick at the base, curved,
and sharply pointed; the hoofs are short and broad; the
short tail ends in a tuft of long hairs. In winter the head
and whole under parts are blackish brown; the upper sur-
face lighter, fading as spring advances. Young animals
are of a darker, richer brown than the old ones, age bleach-
ing the thick masses of long, woolly hair, which falls so
abundantly over the shoulders and face, to a light yellow-
ish-brown. In the spring the hinder parts are almost naked
through the moulting of the hair, while that upon the shag-
gy fore parts remains permanently. Pied coats are occa-
sionally met, and examination and measurements of skulls
and skeletons show much individual variation in form and
proportions.
As is well known, the buffalo is pre-eminently gregarious
—herds numbering millions of individuals, and blackening
TRAVELLING HERDS,
¥
irs
sales
THE BUFFALO AND HIS FATE. 147
the whole landscape, having formerly been met with con-
stantly on the plains. Emigrant trains used to be delayed
by the passing of dense herds, and during the first years of
the Kansas Pacific Railway its trains were frequently stop-
ped by the same cause. These masses seem to have some
sort of organization, consisting of small bands which unite
in migration or when pursued, but separate when feeding.
The cows, with their calves and the younger animals, are
generally toward the middle of the small herd, while the
older bulls are found on the outside, and the patriarchs of
the herd bring up the rear. Much romancing has been
wasted on this simple and natural grouping by writers who
have described the supposed regularity and almost military
precision of their movements. The sluggish, partly-disa-
bled old males constitute the “lordly sentinels” of such
tales, who are supposed to watch with fatherly care over
the welfare of their “harems.” The truth is, that these
protectors, fancied so alert, are the most easily approached
of any of the flock, and the real guardians are the vigilant
cows themselves, who usually lead the movements of the
herd.
The rutting-season is July and August. The period of
pregnancy is nine months, and rarely more than a single
calf is born, which follows the mother for a year or more.
148 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
During the rutting-season the bulls wage fierce battles, but
they rarely result fatally. The short horns are not very
dangerous weapons, and the masses of hair on the forehead
break the force of the stunning collisions. At this season
the bulls become lean, regaining their flesh in autumn, while
the cows are fattest in June. During its monlting in mid-
summer the animal possesses a very ragged and uncouth
appearance, the hair hanging here and there in matted,
loosened patches, with intervening naked spaces; and it en-
deavors to free itself from this loosened hair by rubbing
against rocks and trees, or rolling on the ground. The
coats are in prime condition for robes in December.
The buffalo is nomadic in its habits, roaming in the
course of the year over vast areas in search of food or
safety. The fires that annually sweep across thousands of
square miles of the grassy plains, the ravages of grasshop-
pers, often destroying equally extensive tracts of vegeta-
tion, and the habit of keeping in compact herds, which
soon exhaust the herbage of a single region, all compel con-
stant movement. There is a popular belief that the buffa-
loes used to migrate from the northern plains to Texas in
fall and back again in spring, but this seems erroneous.
Before the intersection of the West by railroads and emi-
grant trails their movements were more regular, no doubt,
IGHT,
NS
RD I
THE SIGNAL.—BUFFALO HE
THE BUFFALO AND HIS FATE. 151
than at present, and slight northward and southward mi-
erations are well attested as occurring in Texas and also on
the Saskatchewan plains; ‘but the herds constantly winter
as far north as the latter region, and for twenty-five years
have not passed southward even to the Platte. In the ex-
treme north they leave the exposed plains in winter and
take shelter among the wooded hills. Such local move-
ments as these were formerly very regular, and hunters
knew just where to look for their game at any season of
the year.
The behavior of the buffaloes is very much lke that of
domestic cattle, but their speed and endurance seem to be
far greater. When well under way it takes a fleet horse
to overtake them, and they raise a column of dust which
marks their progress when miles away. They swim rivers
with ease, even amid ‘floating ice, and show a surprising
agility and expertness in making their way down precip-
itous cliffs and banks of streams, plunging headlong where
a man would pick his way with hesitation. Ordinarily,
however, the buffalo exhibits commendable sagacity in his
choice of routes, usually taking the easiest grades and the
most direct course, so that a buffalo-trail—often worn deep
into the ground—can be depended on as affording the most
feasible road through the region it traverses.
Bo2 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
When belligerent, the old bulls make the most blustering
demonstrations, but. are really cowardly. Facing the ap-
proaching hunter with a boastful and defiant air, they will
pace to and fro, threateningly pawing the earth, only to
take to their heels the next moment. The bulls greatly
enjoy pawing the earth and throwing it up with their
horns, digging into banks or getting down upon one knee
to strike into the level surface, so that the sheaths of their
horns are always badly splintered. They are very fond, too,
of rubbing themselves, and evidently regard the telegraph-
poles along the railroads as set there for their especial con-
venience in this respect. A line of telegraph was built
between Helena, Montana, and Fort Benton. But it was
found impracticable to maintain it beyond Fort Shaw,
where the mountains end, and when I passed there in 1877
the attempt had been abandoned. The buffaloes pushed
the poles down, and then getting entangled in the wire,
broke it to pieces. Fragments of this wire, twisted about
their horns, were carried many miles, and are still occasion-
ally picked up by hunters all over the grassy uplands that
stretch so boundlessly northward from the upper Missouri.
But their chief delight is “ wallowing.’ Finding in the
low parts of the prairie a little stagnant water among the
grass, or at least the surface soft and moist, an old bull
THE BUFFALO AND HIS FATE ay)
plunges his horns into the ground, tearing up the earth and
soon making an excavation into which the water trickles,
forming for a short time a cool and comfortable bath, in
which he wallows like a hog in the mire, swinging himself
round and round on his side, and thus enlarging the pool
until he is nearly immersed. At length he rises besmeared
with a coating of mud, which, drying, insures him immu-
nity from insect pests for many hours. Others follow,
each enlarging the “ wallow” until it becomes twenty feet
in diameter, remains a prominent feature in the landscape,
and forms a cistern where a grateful supply of water is
often long retained for the thirsty denizens of that dry
region, both animal and human.
Like the other species of the bovine group, the bison is
of sluggish disposition, and mild and timid, ferocious as his
shaggy head and vicious eye make him look. He rarely
attacks, except in the last hopeless effort of self-defence.
‘“‘Kndowed with the smallest possible amount of instinct,”
says Colonel hk. I. Dodge, “the little he has seems adapted
rather for getting him into difficulties than out of them.
If not alarmed at sight or smell of a foe, he will stand stu-
pidly gazing at his companions in their death-throes until
the whole herd is shot down. He will walk unconsciously
into a quicksand or quagmire already choked with strug-
154 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
gling, dying victims.” Having made up his mind to go a
certain way, it is almost impossible to swerve him from his
purpose, and he will rush heedless into sure destruction.
Two trains were “ditched” in one week on the Atchison,
Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad by herds of buffaloes rush-
ing blindly against and in front of them. Finally the con-
ductors “ got the idea,” and gave the original occupants of
the soil the right of way whenever they asked it. During
a voyage that I made down the upper Missouri in 1577,
our steamer more than once had to stop to allow swimming
herds to get out of the way, and once we completely keel-
hauled a sorry old bull. Yet, as Mr. Allen suggests, their
inertness may be exaggerated by writers, as their sagacity
certainly has been. This stupidity, unwariness, or liability
to demoralizing panic, places them at the mercy of the
hunter, who is their only enemy besides the wolves. In for-
mer times, young or weak animals straying from the herds,
and all the wounded and aged that could be separated from
their fellows, were quickly set upon and worried to death
by wolves; but now these brutes have become so reduced
as not to form a serious check upon their increase.
The early explorers of the Mississippi Valley believed
that the buffalo might be made to take the place of the
domestic ox in agricultural pursuits, and at the same time
‘THNOSSIN UXddA AHL NO SFOTVAIND ONITITA SNVIGNI
wry
ate
Have wip
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af Tarersieng nae
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THE BUFFALO AND HIS FATE. 157
yield a fleece of wool equal in quality to that of the sheep ;
but no persistent attempts have yet been made to utilize it
by domestication. That the buffalo-calf may be easily rear:
ed and thoroughly tamed has been conclusively proved,
but little attention has been paid to their reproduction in
confinement, or to training them to labor. During the last
century they were domesticated in various parts of the
colonies, and interbred with domestic cows, producing a
half-breed race which is fertile, and which readily amalga-
mates with the domestic cattle. The half-breeds are large,
fine animals, possessing most of the characteristics of their
wild parentage. They can be broken to the yoke, but are
not so sober and manageable in their work as the tame
breed—sometimes, for instance, making a dash for the near-
est water, with disastrous results to the load they are draw-
ing. It is somewhat difficult, also, to build a fence which
shall resist the destructive strength of their head and horns.
But the efforts at taming buffaloes have not been many, or
seriously carried on, and no attempt appears to have been
made to perpetuate an unmixed domestic race. Probably
after a few generations they would lose their natural un-
tractableness, and when castrated would doubtless form su-
perior working-cattle, from their greater size, strength, and
natural agility.
158 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
“The fate of extermination so surely awaits, sooner or
later, the buffalo in its wild state, that its domestication be-
comes a matter of great interest, and is well worthy the at-
tention of intelligent stock-growers, some of whom should
be willing to take a little trouble to perpetuate the pure
race in a domestic state. The attempt can be hardly regard-
ed otherwise than as an enterprise that would eventually
yield a satisfactory and profitable result, with the possibili-
ty of adding another valuable domestic animal to those we
now possess.”
The precise limit of the range of the buffalo when the
first Europeans visited America is still a matter of uncer-
tainty, yet its boundaries at that time can be established
with tolerable exactness. It was beyond doubt almost ex-
clusively an animal of the prairies and the woodless plains,
ranging only to a limited extent into the forested districts
east of the Mississippi River. The results of the present
exhaustive inquiries seem to show that its extension to the
northward, east of the Mississippi, was limited by the Great
Lakes. Contrary to the supposition of several recent writ-
ers, Mr. Allen has not been able to find a single mention of
its occurrence within the present limits of Canada, New
England, or New York State, although the name of the
city of Buffalo and the neighboring “ Buffalo Creek ” prob-
“ALVA LSNIVOV LAST V
y
ig
i
THE BUFFALO AND HIS FATE. 161
ably imply that this animal once extended its travels to
that point. All the supposed references to its being seen
on the St. Lawrence, or in Canada West, turn out to mean
the elk—the same indefinite terms being often used for
both by early writers—or else to apply to some part of the
broad territory then called Canada, but not now included
within its limits. Changes in political boundaries have
constantly to be borne in mind in studying ancient nar-
ratives.
Furthermore, no remains of the bison have been found
ainong the bones in the shell-heaps along the Atlantic coast,
and there is no unquestionable evidence, among all the
early lists of the natural products of the country, of its oc-
currence anywhere on the seaboard north of the Potomac
for a long period preceding the discovery of the continent
by Europeans. The only well-authenticated instances of
its being found east of the Blue Ridge are the apparently
casual passage of small herds through the mountains from
West Virginia into the upper parts of North and South
Carolina by way of the New, Holston, and French Broad
rivers. They seem to have been common on the savannahs
about the heads of rivers in the western parts of those
states; but it is well attested that they never came down
to the sea-coast. Nor can good evidence be shown that
Al
162 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
they ever reached any part of Georgia, Florida, or Alabama
(although possibly Mississippi), as at present bounded, not
appearing habitually to have penetrated south of the Ten-
nessee River—unless just along the bank of the Father of
Waters—on account of the thickness of the forest.
The records in general, then, show that at the beginning
of the seventeenth century the range of the buffalo east of
the Mississippi, with the exception of its occasional appear-
ance on the eastern slope of the Alleghanies in the Caro-
linas and Virginia, was restricted to the area drained by
the Ohio River (except over the lowlands at its mouth),
and to the eastern tributaries of the Mississippi in northern
Wisconsin and Minnesota; also that it was very numerous,
and uniformly distributed over the prairies of Illinois and
Indiana, and also about the upper tributaries of the Ohio;
but less numerously and uniformly over Ohio, West Vir-
ginia, Kentucky, western Pennsylvania, and the northern
portion of Tennessee, being everywhere restricted to the
prairies and scantily wooded land along the streams.
In the appendix to Mr. Allen’s admirable monograph,
Professor N. 8. Shaler offers a short discussion of the prob-
able age of the bison in the Ohio Valley. In the swamps
surrounding the “salt-licks” of Kentucky, buffalo-bones
are found packed in great quantities in the mucky soil, but
THE BUFFALO AND HIS FATE. , 163
only about the latest vents of the saline waters, which
have from time to time changed their points of escape.
from the ground. The caverns of Kentucky and Tennes-
see, which were the homes of the aboriginal people of the
region, and receptacles for their dead, and where have been
found skeletons of the beaver, deer, wolf, bear, and many
other mammals, have never yielded any bones of the bison.
Moreover, among all the many figures of animals and birds
found on the pottery and ornaments of the prehistoric races
of the West, the marked form of the buffalo does not ap-
pear, making it presumable that this animal was unknown
to the people who built the mounds. Professor Shaler is of
the opinion, held by many ethnologists, that the “ mound-
builders” were essentially related to the Natchez group of
Indians, and were driven southward by ruder tribes of red-
men from the north and north-west. The Indians north of
the Ohio are known to have been much in the habit of
burning the forests, and no doubt the invaders alluded
to above signalized their advance by such conflagrations.
This making of plains by the repeated burning of forests,
aided by “ the continued decrease of the rainfall, which was
a concomitant of the disappearance of the glacial period,”
permitted the buffalo to advance rapidly eastward as far as
the Alleghanies, and, coincidently, as far as the mound-
a
164 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
building people appear to have settled the country. Its
-advent thus seems to have been singularly recent.
The question of the origin of the buffalo and its relation
to the earliest tribes of people in the Ohio Valley is made
still more complicated by the fact that an earlier and close-
ly related species of buffalo, probably coeval with the mam-
moth and musk-ox, and possibly with the caribou and elk,
was living at the time just following the close of the gla-
cial epoch. ‘I am strongly disposed to think,” writes Pro-
fessor Shaler, “that in the Bison americanus we have the
descendant of the Lvson latifrons, modified by existence
in the new conditions of soil and climate to which it was
driven by the great changes closing the last ice age.” But
he adds that future explorations will probably show that
there was an interval of some‘thousands of years between
the two species along the Ohio.
Although the main chain of the Rocky Mountains has
been supposed commonly to form the western limit of the
range ot the buffalo, there is abundant proof of its former
existence over a vast area westward, including a large part
of the Utah basin, the Green River plateau, and the plains
of the Columbia, as far as the Blue Mountains of Ore-
gon and the Sierra Nevada. Evidence of this is found in
the bleached skulls, in accounts of early explorers, and in
THE BUFFALO AND HIS FATEH. 165
traditions of the Indians. During the very severe and
snowy winter of 1836-37 large herds were lost through
starvation; by 1840 it had retreated eastward to the forks
of the Yellowstone, and been extirpated in the Utah Val- .
ley and about the head-waters of the Colorado; and ten
years later was never to be found west of the Rocky
Mountains, between the British possessions and the Rio
Grande del Norte. Westward of this great river it does
not seem, within the past two centuries, to have extended
itself at all into the highlands of New Mexico; but, farther
south, there is proof of its former range over the north-
eastern provinces of Mexico to at least the twenty-fifth par-
allel, though it was never abundant there, and abandoned
that region before the beginning of the current century.
The great centre of buffalo-life in ages past was the vast
expanse of treeless plains which stretch uninterruptedly
from the Texas coasts almost to the Arctic Circle, and here,
in restricted areas, they have been able to survive until the
present time.
When Cabeca de Vaca met the buffaloes in 1530 they
ranged throughout nearly all Texas, the higher prairie-
lands of north-western Louisiana and Arkansas, and thence
uniformly northward and westward. But soon after. 1820
they disappeared altogether from Arkansas, and were not
166 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
seen in western Missouri and southern Jowa later than
1825; but immense herds still roamed over the northern
half of the latter State. Since 1845, however, few have
been seen anywhere within Iowa, nor did they linger many
years longer in Minnesota.
The stream of emigration across the plains to California
about 1859 had a curious and permanent effect on the buf-
faloes. The overland route followed up the Kansas and
Platte rivers, and thence westward by the North Platte to
the South Pass. The buffaloes were soon all driven from
this line of travel; and the great herd which had stretched
from the Rio Grande to the Saskatchewan was permanent-
ly divided into two—a northern and a southern herd —
whieh were more and more widely separated by the con-
struction of the Union Pacific Railroad. Year by year
since, the limits of the range of each division have been
contracting under relentless persecution and the encroach-
ments of civilization, until now they are easily cireum-
scribed. The poor beasts have been hunted by the In-
dians, have been followed incessantly by white men—pro-
fessional hunters, sportsmen, hide-seekers, and_ soldiers,
who have been afforded easy access to their haunts by the
railroads that have penetrated to their ancient pastures,
and been given the means of keeping up the hunt by the
Tee
“INA WALLIT AHL
f
; G57
THE BUFFALO AND HIS FATE. 169
nearness of the frontier settlements to the resorts of each
herd. Enormous destruction has ensued in Kansas and
Colorado, and has had the effect to drive the southern di-
vision southward and south-westward into Texas, where
hunters cannot or (on account of Indians) dare not follow
them. They are, therefore, just now afforded a tempo-
rary rest from persecution; but, unless legal interference
be quickly made and strict regulations rigorously enforced,
the fate of the buffalo south of the Platte will be a repeti-
tion of its history east of the Mississippi—speedy extermi-
nation. |
As to the northern herd, while twenty years ago buffaloes
were accustomed to frequent the whole region between the
Missouri River and the forty-ninth parallel, from the west-
ern boundary of Dakota to the Rocky Mountains and even
far into their valleys, they are now restricted to the com-
paratively small area drained by the southern tributaries of
the Yellowstone, and northward over the most of Montana
to the Missouri. North of the Missouri River almost a
separate subdivision of the herd seems to exist, which feeds
between longitude 106° and the Rocky Mountains, and
northward to the wooded region of the Athabasca and
Peace rivers. Within thirty years they have become ex-
tirpated over half of this fertile region north of our boun-
170 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
dary, and their numbers, probably, have correspondingly
decreased.
It thus appears that in three-quarters of a century the
buffalo has been compelled to relinquish a habitat cover-
ing a third of the continent for two regions not greater
together than the present Territories of Montana and Da-
kota; and they were formerly just as numerous over the
whole extent as they now are in favored spots within their
range. Hence the theory that they have not been so mach
reduced in numbers as they have been circumscribed in
range and concentrated upon narrow limits, will not hold
good. Over much of this great region they were actually
killed on the spot, not driven out.
Wir:
THE SONG-SPARROW.
Tne American song-sparrow is a peculiar lover of old
fields where Nature is fast reasserting herself after the tem-
porary rule of man. The tumbling, lichen-patched stone
fences; the gray cattle-paths diverging from the muddy
bar-way to those parts of the pasture where the grass is
sweetest; the weedy banks of the sluggish brook wind-
‘ing indolently among mossy bowlders and tangled thickets
and patches of fragrant herbage—are all congenial to it,
and are its chosen resort. Yet it is so common throughout
most of the United States that you may find it almost any-
where—skulking about the currant and raspberry bushes
in the village gardens; taking a riotous bath in some pool
by the roadside, about whose rim, perhaps, the ice still lin-
gers; hastening to the top of a forest-tree to plume its
dripping feathers, and shake off at once the crystal water
and a erystal song.
Our favorite is the very first bird to greet us in the
72 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
spring —in fact, many remain through the winter as far
north even as Boston and Lake Erie. It is thought by
ornithologists, however, that the winter song-sparrows are
not the same individuals that were with us in summer, and
which have gone southward, but are inhabitants of more
northern latitudes, that have come down with the snow-
birds; and it is said that these are far hardier birds, better
and more versatile musicians.
During the winter the song-sparrow remains, quiet and
busy, along the edges of the woods on warm hill-sides in
company with the spotted woodpeckers and snow-birds, or
associates with the fowls in the barn-yard for a share of the
housewife’s bounty. But as the March snow melts, and the
sun sends genial warmth to awaken the buds, he mounts
the topmost twigs of the brush pile whose labyrinths he has
spent the winter in exploring, and pours forth a rapturous
welcome to the couriers of summer. Then through all the
spring days, whether they be shady or sunny, from early
morn till long after sunset, are heard the sweet and cheery
cadences of his song, trilled out over and over again like a
canary’s. He starts off with a few low rattling notes, makes
a quick leap to a high strain, ascends through many a melo-
dious variation to the key-note, and suddenly stops, leaving
his song to sing itself through ia your brain. To amplify
THE SONG-SPARROW. £3
another’s illustration, it is as though he said “ press-press-
PREsS- BY - TEEEE-rian-2an/” His clear tenor, the gur-
gling, bubbling alto of the blackbirds, the slender purity
of the bluebird’s soprano, and the solid basso profundo of
the frogs, with the accompaniment of the April wind pip-
ing on the bare reeds of winter, or the drumming of rain-
drops, form the naturalist’s spring quartette—as pleasing, if
not as grand, as the full chorus of early June.
The song of the sparrow varies in different individuals,
and often changes with the season. A single bird has been
observed through several successive summers to sing nine
or ten different sets of notes, usually uttering them one
after another in the same order over and over. Careful
attention will show almost any of our songsters to vary
their melodies from time to time, but none have greater in-
dividuality than our subject. “Last season,” writes John
Burroughs, “the whole summer through, one sung about
my grounds like this: swee-e-t, swee-e-t, sweet, bitter. Day
after day, from May to September, I heard this strain,
which I thought a simple but very profound summing up
of life, and wondered where the little bird had learned it so
quickly. The present season I heard another with a song
equally original, but not so easily worded. Among a large
troop of them in April, my attention was attracted to one
174 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
that was a master songster—some Shelley or ‘Thomson
among its kind. The strain was remarkably prolonged, in-
tricate, and animated, and far surpassed anything I ever be-
fore heard from that source.”
Occasionally the song-sparrow sings on the wing while
dropping to the ground from the top of a high tree—a
favorite perch in early spring; and during the mating sea-
son many strange modifications of his tune strike the ear.
As the summer comes on, his song, in common with that
of all other birds, is less often repeated until it almost
ceases in the fall; yet it may be heard, by an observing
listener, every month in the year. Tis call to his mate is
a simple chuck or hwit.
Rarely leaving his native copses until late in autumn, he
has little need to exert large powers of flight, and moves
from one low bush to another with a jerking, undulatory
motion. lis home is near the ground, and it is only the
excitement of love which in‘spring prompts the males to
seek the tree-tops.
His food is principally procured from the ground and
among the branches and leaves of the wild shrubbery, and
consists of blossoms, seeds, berries, and insects, varying ac-
cording to the season and the age of its nestlings. Early
in spring he is, as Mr. Gentry puts it, ‘a vegetarian,” living
THE SONG-SPARROW. 175
upon the blossoms of the red maple and other early-bloom-
ing forest-trees, green ginger-berries, and the seeds of veg-
etables, in search of which it frequents the kitchen-gardens,
and associates with the noble fox-sparrows and chattering
gvoldfinches. As warm weather advances, the song-spar-
row leaves the gardens, and seeks, in wilder spots, less of
vegetable and more of animal food —eating strawberries,
wild cherries, raspberries, ete., now and then as a relish;
but depending for regular fare upon the young of the in-
sect world just hatching out. It would be quite impossi-
ble to enumerate all the kinds eaten; probably everything
palatable is welcome. I remember one June day watching
one little fellow industriously picking very minute lice-like
bugs from the under-side of the leaves of an apple-tree.
He seemed inordinately fond of them, and swallowed twen-
ty or thirty a minute, uttering the while a quick metallic
chirp. Many kinds of caterpillars he lkewise devours,
among them clothes’ moths and the loathsome tent-cater-
pillar, that stretches its canopied webs among the twigs of
our orchard and shade trees, and drops down upon our
heads in all its ugly nastiness; also ants, earthworms, and
young beetles.
When the insects mature, and betake themselves beyond
his easy reach, small fruits still remain; and, as these grad-
176 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
ually disappear, he gives himself up more and more to a
strictly graminivorous diet, breaking open the seed-vessels
stored up by the wilderness of weeds growing in every
field which the farmer has let “run to waste” for himself,
but only thus cultivated the more for the sparrows. There
is always enough of this material, either in the unbroken
pods or fallen to the ground, to last through the winter
such adventurous birds as brave our snows, screening them-
selves from the chilling blast in recesses of the dense thick-
ets, or taking shelter under piles of logs and brush.
During the latter part of April, in ordinary seasons, the
song-sparrow finds himself married, and he and his wife be-
gin to construct their home. - The site chosen is the green
bank of some meadow brook, a tussock beside a country
road, a hollow under some decaying log, where the nest
shall be well secreted in a little thicket of grasses and flow-
ers, Or, In many cases, on bushes, vines, or even,as Mr. J.
S. Howland assures me, in an old broken woodpecker’s hole
in an apple-tree. A friend in Astoria, Long Island, on
May 8th, 1877, found a pair of these sparrows snugly en-
sconced in an ivy growing along the inner wall of a green-
house. The birds had evidently watched their opportuni-
ty when the door was open or the glass raised during the
warm days, and constructed their nest and deposited three
@
THE SONG-SPARROW. LY
egos before they were discovered. In 1875 they built a
nest in the same place, and the year before on the ground
against the wall just outside. A pair has been around
there for a great while; a nest being found within a hun-
dred feet of the spot for some six or seven years. Wher-
ever placed, it is a model and poetic bird-dwelling.
“What care the bird has taken not to disturb one straw
or spear of grass, or thread of moss! You cannot approach
it and put your hand into it without violating the place
more or less, and yet the little architect has wrought day
after day, and left no marks. There has been an excava-
tion, and yet no grain of earth appears to have been moved.
If the nest had slowly and silently grown, like the grass
and the moss, it could not have been more nicely adjusted
to its place and surroundings. There is absolutely nothing
to tell the eye it is there. Generally a few spears of dry
grass fall down from the turf above, and form a slight
screen before it. How commonly and coarsely it begins,
blending with the débris that les about, and how it refines
and comes to the centre, which is modelled so perfectly,
and lined so softly.”
Grasses are the timbers of the house—coarse stalks upon
the outside, fine stems and soft leaves twined within; the
edge of the nest overcast. It seems to be well proved that
12
=
178 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
the nests found on the ground are built by young birds,
while older and more experienced sparrows place their
houses in vines and small trees, finding that at a little height
they are less liable to danger; furthermore, these nests
built at an elevation, being more exposed to the wind and
less braced, are more compactly and skilfully constructed
than those on the ground, the projecting ends of the straws
being neatly interwoven, or tied down, so as to present a
tolerably smooth exterior. The nests in the tussocks seem
manufactured chiefly out of the dead stems of crab-grasses
and other stuff within easy reach; but a variety of sub-
stances enter into the composition of the elevated nests,
such as flowering weeds, narrow leaves, paper, strips of
bark, and raw cotton (which sometimes thatches the whole
outside), with horse-hair and milk-weed silk to give addi-
tional softness to the lining. When circumstances favor, a
sort of sheltering platform is arranged over the nest in the
tree or vines; just as frequently the approach to the nest
hidden in the meadow lies through a tunnel like a field-
mouse’s path under the tall grasses.
The labor of building occupies the attention of the pair
during the cool of the mornings and evenings of four or
five busy days. Both birds work diligently, the male
bringing the materials, and the female adjusting them.
THE SONG-SPARROW. 179
The day after the nest is done an egg is laid, and one more
each succeeding day until there are five; and very hard to
distinguish from the eggs of several other ground-building
sparrows they are. The ground-color runs through all in-
termediate tints from grayish or brownish white to decided
green. ‘The blotching is generally profuse, and often con-
fluent into a wreath about the large end, the colors being un-
derlying purples and bright brown surface painting. They
are inclined to be thick and blunt rather than elongated,
and will average about .90 by .60 of an inch. I ean find
no variations worth stating between the eggs of the differ-
ent varieties. Those from the Pacific coast appear to be
the largest, and those from southern localities the smallest ;
but the variety in size, shape, ground-color, and pattern is
almost limitless, and I repeat that the strongest identifica-
tion is necessary to make sure between these eggs and those
of the swamp-sparrow, the grass-finch, the Zonotrichia, and
several other members of the family.
The female sits eleven or twelve days, occasionally re-
lieved by the male while she takes a brief rest. He assidu-
ously provides her with food from hour to hour, but spends
all his leisure at home,-ready to resist invasion or insult,
and enlivening the tedium of her sitting with his love
ditties.
180 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
When the young are born, both parents are exceedingly
devoted to their wants, carefully removing every trace of
the old ege-shells and all foul matter far from the nest, and
working with great energy to keep the hungry mouths fill-
ed. The nestlings are fed upon the young of many small in-
sects, and as they grow older are given larger larvee—earth-
worms, house-flies, plant-lice, ants, and small night-flying
moths. When twelve or thirteen days old, the young birds
leave the nest, and in ten days more have learned to care
for themselves. Meanwhile the mother has abandoned
them to the father’s guidance, and busies herself in the
construction of a new home for a second family. Although
left strong and neat, the first nest rarely seems to be used
again; but the new one is built in close proximity to it.
As before, the male is dutiful and loving, and the second
brood is brought out in July, or sometimes earlier, so that
even a third brood can be raised. But accidents or climate
generally prevent this degree of success.
In autumn the song-sparrows are to be seen dodging
about stone walls, roadside thickets, and old pastures, in lit-
tle family companies of six or eight, no doubt consisting of
parents with their second brood ef young, which remain
together in happy idleness, and move southward at their
leisure.
THE SONG-SPARROW. 181
Here the younger sons appear to have an advantage over
their elder brethren of the first brood, who are early sent
out to seek their fortunes, in that they enjoy the continued
example and counsel of their parents during many weeks
after they may be said to have “come of age,” although
possibly they may chafe under the restraints» of paternal
guidance, not to say old-fogyism, from which the young-
sters of the first brood are now gayly delivered; but it
would not be wonderful if it could be shown that the next
year this latter brood, profiting by distasteful discipline, ex-
celled in nest-building and in general prosperity over the
others, who had enjoyed less advantages in the way of home
education. Here is a new factor in the problem of natural
selection.
aie & &
CIVILIZING INFLUENCES.
To say that the settlement of North America has pro-
duced a marked effect upon the animal life of the conti-
nent, and upon the birds as a part of the fanna, may seem
too much of a truism to be worth discussion. Yet the
degree to which this effect has been felt, and the various
ways in which man’s influence has been exerted upon ani-
mals, may still be objects of interesting inquiry. I confine
myself alone to the effects produced by the white man, be-
cause the Indian seems to have caused hardly an apprecia-
ble change, either for good or evil, in the comparative plen-
itude, or in the habits, of the creatures dwelling about
him. He himself was really as wild and indigenous as
they, hunting, like the carnivores, purely for food, and, with
the osprey, fishing only when his wants were urgent; his
mind was too grim to entertain the idea of pursuing ani-
mals for sport, and his civilization too limited to cause
much disturbance of natural conditions.
—
CIVILIZING INFLUENCES. 183
During the last two and a half centuries white men have
spread everywhere, and in almost every part of the conti-
nent their machinery has replaced the original simplicity
of nature. ‘Thousands of square miles of forest have been
cleared, marshes have been drained, rivers obstructed and
tormented with mill-wheels, and cities have sprung up as
swiftly as the second growth of scrub pines follows the
levelling of an oak wood.
The inevitable result must follow that all our ani-
inals, birds included, would have been so harassed by their
changed surroundings and the persecutions of human foes,
that they would have rapidly disappeared. With the vast
majority of the quadrupeds this has actually been the ease.
‘Wild beasts” no longer haunt our forests, to the terror of
the traveller; nor can the hunter now find game that a few
decades ago was abundant almost at his door. It has been
much the same with wildfowl and game birds. They have
deserted their ancient nesting-places within our borders
for the safer Arctic heaths, or old and young have been all
but exterminated by gun and snare. Nevertheless, a large
number of the smaller birds of our woodlands and prairies,
as I hope to show, have been decidedly benefited by the
advent of white men. I know of but one sort of quad-
ruped—field-mice—of which this can also be said.
184 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
It is commonly observed that scarcely any small birds
are seen in the depths of a forest, but they become abun-
dant as one approaches the neighborhood of settlements.
Travellers through Siberia know that they are coming near.
a village when they begin to hear the voices of birds, which’
are absent from the intervening solitudes. Every ornithol-
ogist has proved these facts in his own experience, and ex-
plorers who go to uninhabited and primeval regions have
learned not to expect there the chorus that greets their
ears from the great army of songsters thronging the fields
in populous countries.
The song-birds—the small denizens of our summer
groves, pastures, and meadows—seem, then, to recognize
the presence of man’s civilization as a blessing, and have
taken advantage of it, both from love of human society and
for more solid and prosaic reasons.
The settlement of a country implies the felling of for-
ests, the letting in upon the ground of light and warmth,
the propagation of seed-bearing cereals, weeds, and grasses
enormously in excess of a natural state of things, the de-
struction of noxious quadrupeds and reptiles, and the intro-
duction of horses and eattle. Each of these alterations of
nature (except in some few cases, like that of the relation
of the woodpecker to the cutting away of timber) is a di-
CIVILIZING INFLUENCES. 1395
rect benefit to the little birds. It is not difficult to demon-
strate this.
Birds naturally choose sunny spots in which to build
their nests, such as some little glade on the bank of a
stream; when roads were cut and fields levelled in the
midst of sombre woods, the area suitable for nesting was
of course greatly added to, and a better chance thus afford-
ed for successfully hatching and rearing broods of young.
The way in which the wood-roads cut by the hemlock bark-
peelers throngh the dense forests that clothe the remote
Catskills have become the haunt of birds and insects, is a
capital example in urging this point. One of the largest
avian families—that of the sparrows, finches, and buntings
—subsists almost exclusively on seeds of weeds and grasses ;
and the members of a large proportion of other families de-
pend somewhat for their daily supply on this sort of food.
Under the universal shade of trees weeds can grow only
sparingly, and on prairies the crop is often killed by
drought, or is burnt in the autumn; but the cultivation
of immense fields of grain and hay, and the making of
vroad pastures and half-worn roads, which almost imme-
diately become filled with weeds, has furnished the birds
with an inexhaustible and unfailing harvest.
Birds suffer much harm from many quadrupeds—foxes,
186 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
weasels, skunks, rats, ete.—which catch them on their roosts,
suck their eggs, and kill their fledglings. Snakes also are
fond of them, and destroy many nests every season—in
early summer subsisting almost alone on eggs. All these
animals, particularly foxes, skunks, and serpents, are great-
ly reduced in number by settlements, although it must be
confessed that their absence is somewhat compensated for
by the introduction of domestic cats, which go foraging
through the woods, to the grief of all their feathered in-
habitants. No longer in fear of their natural enemies, and
learning that there is little reason to be apprehensive of
harm from mankind, the small birds forsake their silent,
shy manners, come out of the thickets where they have
been hiding, and let their voices be heard in ringing tones,
easily interpreted as rejoicing at deliverance from fear, and
thanksgiving for liberty to sing as loud as pleases them.
All small birds are more or less completely insectivorous
(even the cone-billed seed-eaters having to feed their young
with larve at first), and naturally congregate where this
food is most abundantly supplied. There would seem to
be enough anywhere; but the ploughing and manuring of |
the soil facilitates the growth and increase of such insects
as go throngh their metamorphoses in the ground; and the
culture of orchards furnishes an excellent resort for many
ite
CIVILIZING. INFLUENCES. 187
boring and fruit-loving moths, beetles, and the like, which
find the best possible circumstances for their multiplication
in the diseased trunks and juicy fruit of the apple, plum,
cherry, and peach. No part of the farm has so many
winged citizens as the orchard.
The presence of horses, cattle, and sheep offers to flies
and other insect tribes excellent opportunities for the safe
rearing of their eggs in the dunghills and heaps of wet
straw always lying about barns, and attracts a great colony
of those minute beetles upon which the fly-eatching birds
principally maintain themselves. The cattle-yard, there-
fore, forms a sort of game-preserve for such birds, and
many species flock thither. Swallows are hardly ever
found except in the vicinity of barns; the cow- bunting
receives its name from its habit of constantly associating
with cattle; and the king-bird finds the stable-yard his
most profitable hunting-ground. Near the habitations of
men, small birds also enjoy protection from hawks and
owls, which hesitate to venture away from the shelter of
the woods, and whose numbers are reduced, unwisely per-
haps, by incessant persecution.*
* In several States of the Union bounties are offered, sometimes by county
authorities, sometimes by game-protective associations, and hundreds of hawks
and owls are killed annually.
188 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
The logic of the case is simple; birds will assemble
chiefly where food for themselves and their young is in
greatest abundance, and where they are least exposed to
enemies. These two prime conditions of prosperity, with
many favorable concomitants, man’s art supplies to the in-
sessorial birds, which, on the other hand, suffer little direct
injury from his contact. Yet some species seem little af-
fected by the civilizing of the country, either in numbers
or habits, while others increase rapidly on the first settle-
ment of a region, and then decrease again. Of this class
are the prairie-hen (Cupidonia cupido) and the mallard.
“They find abundance of food in the corn and wheat
fields; while the population is sparse and larger game so
abundant, they are hunted very little; but as the popula-
tion increases they are gradually thinned out, and become
in some cases exterminated. Other birds, as the quail, are
wholly unknown beyond the frontier, and only appear af-
ter the country has been settled a short time. Still others,
woodland species, appear in regions where they were never
known before, as groves of trees are planted, and thick
woods spring up on the prairies as soon as the ravages of
the fires are checked.”
Striking examples of how some of our birds have accept-
ed this tacit invitation to make men their confidants occur
CIVILIZING INFLUENCES. 189
in the history of the American swallows and swifts. Our
purple martins spread themselves in summer all over North
America, but are becoming rare in the New England States,
whence they seem to have been driven by the white-bellied
swallows, which have gradually grown more numerous, and
which, preceding the martins in the spring, take possession
of all the boxes put up for the accommodation of the mar-
tins, and exclude the rightful tenants v2 e¢ armis. Their
natural nesting-places were hollow trees and cavities in
rocks; but now, throughout the whole breadth of the land,
it is rare to find martins resorting to such quarters, except
in the most remote parts of the Kocky Mountains. They
have everywhere abandoned the woods, and come into the
villages, towns, and even cities, choosing to nest in commu-
nities about the eaves of houses and barns, and in sheltered
portions of piazzas, or to take possession of garden bird-
boxes, where their social, confiding dispositions have ren-
dered them general favorites.
A very similar case is presented in the case of our chim-
ney-swift, which finds a chimney a far more desirable resi-
dence than a hollow tree in the woods.
Other species of American swallows afford still more
striking illustrations of a change in the manner of life ef-
fected by association with men. Perhaps the most curious
190 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
example is the case of the eave-swallow (Petrochelidon
lunifrons). ‘This bird remained undiscovered until 1820
when it was met with by the celebrated Thomas Say when
naturalist to Major Long’s expedition to the Rocky Moun-
tains, a memento of which remains in the name of one of
the loftiest heights of the snowy range—Long’s Peak. In
1825, however, the bird suddenly appeared at Fort Chip-
pewa, in the Fur Country, and contentedly built its nest
under the eaves. Even earlier it had been seen on the
Ohio River, at Whitehall, New York, and very soon after
was found breeding in the Green Mountains, in Maine, in
New Brunswick, and among the high limestone cliffs of
the islands along that precipitous coast. It occurs also
westward to the Pacific coast. It is hardly to be supposed
that these swallows were indigenous to some restricted
locality in the West, whence they suddenly made such a
startling exodus; but rather it is believed that they always
had existed in isolated spots all over the country, but so
far apart, and so uncommonly, that they were overlooked.
The experience of the barn-swallow (/Zirundo horreorum)
has been much the same; and the Rocky Mountain swallow
(Lachycineta thalassina), which breeds in far-separated col-
onies throughout the mountainous West, is fast following
its example in scraping acquaintance with mankind.
CIVILIZING. INFLUENCES. 191
The natural breeding-place of all the three species I have
mentioned is in caves and crevices of rock, the irregu-
larities and hollows of limestone crags affording them the
best chanees. ‘Swallows’ Cave,” at Nahant, is remember-
ed as one of their hospices. I have seen all three species
breeding together among the ragged ledges of Middle Park,
Colorado; but considerable differences were noticeable be-
tween the houses of these uncivilized builders and those
of their educated brethren at the East, who now, perhaps,
would find it rather hard to rough it as did their ancestors.
Under the shelter of warm barns, and with such an abun-
dance of food at hand that they have plenty of leisure be-
tween meals to cultivate their tastes and give scope to their
ingenuity, our barn and eave swallows have shown a won-
drous improvement in architecture. The nests of the barn-
swallows that I saw at the hot sulphur springs in Colorado
consisted only of a loose bed of straw and feathers, for the
hollow floors of the niches in which they were placed form-
ed cavity and barrier for the safety of the eggs. Some
nests, resting on more exposed ledges, had a rude founda-
tion and rim of mud, but did not compare with the elab-
orate half-bowls, lined with hay and feathers, that are plas-
tered by the same species so firmly against the rafters of
our barns, or with the large nest that is balanced on the
192 . FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
beam, with its edges built up so high that the callow young
can hardly climb, much less tumble out, until quite ready
to fly. Nevertheless, the general character of the nest is
the same; the eastern, civilized swallows have only made
use of their superior advantages to perfect the inherited
idea. In the case of the barn-swallow, its civilization re-
sults in an addition to its pains (is it not a natural conse-
quence 4), in that its nest now is required to be much larger,
more carefully, and hence more laboriously, made. On the
other hand, its neighbor, the eave-swallow, has contrived to
save itself labor by the change from wild life.
This latter species is sometimes called the republican
swallow, because at the breeding-season it gathers in ex-
tensive colonies, where its homes are crowded together as
closely as the cells in a honey-comb, one wall often serv-
ing for two or more contiguous structures. The nests are
gourd-shaped, or like a chemist’s retort, and are fastened by
the bulb to the cliff, generally where it overhangs, with the
curving necks opening outward and affording an entrance
just large enough to admit the owner. This retort is con-
structed of pellets of mud, well compacted in the little ma-
son’s beak, and made adhesive by mixture with the glue-
like saliva with which all swallows are provided. In this
snug receptacle the pretty eggs are laid upon a bed of soft
CIVILIZING INFLUENCES. 1938
straw and feathers. Such was the elaborate structure deem-
ed necessary by the swallows so long as they nested in ex-
posed places, where they had to guard against the weather
and crafty enemies. ‘“ But since these birds have placed
themselves under the protection of man, they have found
that there is no longer any need of all this superfluous
architecture, and the shape of their nest has been gradually
simplified and improved. In 1857, on one of the islands
in the Bay of Fundy, Dr. T. M. Brewer met with a large
colony whose nests, on the side of the barn, were placed
between two projecting boards put up for them by the
friendly proprietor. The very first year they occupied
these convenient quarters, every one of these sensible swal-
lows built nests open at the top, discarding the old patri-
archal domes and narrow entrances of their forefathers.”
This is not an isolated case, but rather has come to be the
rule wherever there was a roof over them, so far as my own
observation goes.
The purple martin and white-bellied swallow both accept
of houses ready made, saving themselves all trouble except
in furnishing them; and even the burrowing bank and rough-
winged swallows are learning that it is cheaper to build in
a snug eranny in an old wall than laboriously to dig a deep
erypt in a sand-bank wherein to lay their pearly eggs.
13 <
194 ¢ FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
Men’s industries have supplied the birds with some new
and exceedingly useful building materials, such as furnish-
ing those weavers, the orioles and vireos, with strings and
yarn for the warp of their fabrications, and the yellow-bird
with cotton and wool to make her already downy bed still
softer. Instances of abnormally late and early breeding
seem to be very common in England, and are coming to
be more and more frequently recorded on this side of the
Atlantic. This is not to be wondered at, since our oper-
ations insure to the birds a continued supply of suitable
food, and thus enable them to rear their young at seasons
when in a wild state it would not be possible to do so.
The English sparrows, breeding all the year round, or near-
ly so, in the parks of our coast cities, are a case in point.
That civilization has to some extent governed the migra-
tions and geographical distribution of many species of our
birds not directly warred upon as pot game, for amuse-
ment, or because they are obnoxious to crops, could easily
be shown had I space allowed me to bring forward illustra-
tions; and when another two centuries have rolled around
the effect will be very striking. The mocking and Be-
wick’s wrens, the rose-breasted grossbeak, chestnut- sided
warbler, and other species, have spread northward and be-
come more abundant since the time of Wilson and Audu
CIVILIZING INFLUENCES. 195
bon; the bobolink has kept pace with the widening eulti-
vation of rice and grain fields; the red-headed woodpecker
has retreated from New England; the Arkansas flycatcher
has multiplied and spread as a town bird through all the
cities and villages from Council Bluffs to Denver; the ra-
ven has gradually retired before the wood-cutter, until it has
almost ceased to exist; while year by year the crow has ex-
tended its range, without seeming in the least to diminish
its force in the older districts, but crowding the wild and
refractory raven farther and farther beyond the frontier.
Although none have abandoned their old way of life so
completely as the swallows, many other birds have _profit-
ed by the constructions and friendship of the human race.
The bluebird and house-wren, chickadees and nuthatches
dig holes in the fence-posts conveniently rotting for their
use; and even such wild species as the western flycatcher,
great-crested kingbird, and Bewick’s wren, occasionally at-
tach themselves to mankind, and hatch their young under
his roof for greater security. Even the whippoorwill and
nighthawk, asleep all day in the swamp, are glad to come
to the farmer’s house in the evening, and now and then to
deposit their eggs on a flat roof. In the Rocky Moun-
tains I have seen flocks of white ptarmigans nimbly hop-
ping around the door-steps of miners who were seeking
196 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
silver far above timber-line, picking up the crumbs thrown
to them, as tame as pet chickens.
In not a few instances, here as well as abroad, supersti-
tion brings profit to our birds. An honest old Pennsylva-
nia Dutchman, around whose barn clouds of swallows hov-
ered, told Wilson that he must on no account shoot any,
for if one was killed his cows would give bloody milk, and
that so long as the swallows inhabited the barns his build-
ings were in no danger of being struck by lightning. The
arrival of the fish-hawk or osprey on the New Jersey coast,
at the vernal. equinox, notes the beginning of the fishing-
season. In some parts of New England the appearance of
the golden-winged woodpecker means the same thing, for
the bird is known as the “shad-spirit.” The coming of
both is therefore hailed with satisfaction, and it is consid-
ered so “lucky” to have an osprey nesting upon one’s
farm, that proprietors cherish its huge house in the lone
tree with uncommon eare, recalling the reverent fostering
that a family of storks will enjoy from the peasant of the
Netherlands on whose roof their nest has been placed.
The result of all these cirenmstances, as 1t seems to me,
is, that the aggregate army of singing birds in the United
States, east of the Mississippi, has been very considerably
enlarged during the last two centuries, and is still on the
CIVILIZING. INFLUENCES. 197
increase. This can be owing only to the fact that by cut-
ting down the forests, etc., civilized man has tempered the
rigor of the climate, has multiplied the sources of bird
food, has appended many additional places suitable for the
young, and has enabled more fledglings to be brought to
inaturity by reducing the ranks of the enemies of the birds.
This has not only augmented their number, and very ap-
preciably modified their habits of nesting and migration,
but probably has somewhat changed even their physical
and mental characteristics. There is little doubt in my
mind, for instance, that in making their lives less laborious,
apprehensive, and solitary, man has left the birds time and
opportunity for far more singing than their hard-worked,
scantily-fed, and timorous ancestors ever enjoyed—a privi-
lege a bird would not be slow to avail itself of.
But, on the other hand, it seems to me equally certain
that the music of our more domestic birds, though greater
in volume, is not so sweet in tone as that of their wild-
er brethren. Our foreign street sparrows (the London
“ Jims”) are naturally, I suppose, rather harsh-voiced ; but,
whatever they might have been a thousand years ago, they
could hardly be otherwise now, when the rattle-te-bang of
the city pavements has been their only teacher for many
centuries. The mocking-bird has learned to imitate the
198 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
sereech of the ungreased wheelbarrow and the how] of the
farmer’s dog—no duleet sounds. Many of the noises con-
stantly uttered by men and evoked by their work are any-
thing but melodious, and young birds born and bred in
their midst must surely turn out less sweet and accomplish-
ed singers than if reared among the gentle whisperings of
leafy woods, and learning music only from the golden-
mouthed minstrels of the sylvan choir.
Ex.
HOW ANIMALS GET HOME.
One of the most striking powers possessed by animals is
that of finding their way home from a great distance, and
over a road with which they are supposed to be unacquaint-
ed. It has long been a question whether we are to attrib-
ute these remarkable performances to a purely intuitive
perception by the animal of the direction and the practica-
ble route to his home, or whether they are the results of a
conscious study of the situation, and a definite carrying out
of well-judged plans.
Probably the most prominent example of this wonderful
power is the case of homing pigeons. These pigeons are
very strong of wing, and their intelligence is cultivated to
a high degree; for their peculiar “ gift” has been made use
of since “time whereof the memory of man runneth not
to the contrary.” The principle of heredity, therefore, now
acts with much force; nevertheless, each young bird must
be subjected to severe training in order to fit it for those
200 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
arduous competitions which annually take place among
first-rate birds. As soon as the fledgling is fairly strong
on its wings, it is taken a few miles from the cot and
released. It rises into the air, looks about it and starts
straight away for home. There is no mystery about this
at all; when it has attained the height of a few yards the
bird can see its cot, and full of that strong love of home
which is so characteristic of its wild ancestors, the blue-rocks,
it hastens back to the society of its mates. The next day
the trial-distance is doubled, and the third day is still fur-
ther increased, until in a few weeks it will return from a
distance of seventy miles, which is all that a bird-of-the-
year is “fit” to do; and when two years old, will return
from two hundred miles, longer distances being left to
more mature birds. but all this training must be in a
continuous direction; if the first lesson was toward the
east, subsequent lessons must also be; nor can the added
distance each time exceed a certain limit, for then, after
trying this way and that, and failing to recognize any
landmark, the bird will simply come back to where it was
thrown up. Moreover, it must always be clear weather.
Homing pigeons will make no attempt to start in a fog, or
if they do get away, a hundred chances to one they will be
lost. Nor do they travel at night, but settle down at dusk
HOW ANIMALS GET HOME. 201
and renew their journey in the morning. When snow dis-
guises the landscape, also, many pigeons go astray. None
of these circumstances seriously hampers the semi-annual
inigrations of swallows or geese. They journey at night,
as well as by day, straight over vast bodies of water and
flat deserts, true to the north or south. Homing pigeons
fly northward or southward, east or west, equally well, and
it is evident that their course is guided only by observa-
tion. Watch one tossed. On strong pinions it mounts
straight up into the air a hundred feet. Then it begins
to sweep around in great circles, rising higher and higher,
until—if the locality is seventy-five or one hundred miles
beyond where it has ever been before—it will go almost
out of sight. Then suddenly you will see it strike off upon
a straight course, and that course is homeward. But take
the same bird there a second time and none of these aérial
revolutions will occur—its time is too pressing, its home-
sickness too intense for that; instantly it turns its face
toward its owner’s dove-cot.
These facts mean something. They show that two defi-
nite intellectual processes serve to decide for the bird the
direction he is to take—observation and memory. He gets
high enough, and turns about times enough, to catch sight
of some familiar object, and he makes for it; arrived there,
202 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
another known feature catches his eye,and thus by ever
narrowing stages he is guided home. Few persons have
any idea of the distance one can see at great elevations.
More than once I have stood on the Rocky Mountains,
where, had I been a pigeon, I could have steered my flight
by another mountain more than one hundred miles dis-
tant. Balloonists say that at the height of half a mile
the whole course of the Thames or the Seine, from end to
end, is spread out as plain as a map beneath their eyes.
There is no doubt that a pigeon may rise to where he can
recognize, in clear weather,a landscape one hundred and
fifty miles away; it has been done repeatedly, though only
by the best birds, specially trained for that particular line
of flight. There is no greater error than to suppose that
carrier-pigeons sent a long distance from home in any di-
rection will always return, as though attracted by a load-
stone. The benevolent lady received only a good-natured
laugh for her pains, when she offered to equip the late
British Arctic expedition with these winged messengers,
who, she supposed, could be despatched from any point
with tidings, and have a fair chance of getting straight
back to England.
aN pigeon’s power of memory is really wonderful. Be-
ginning with short stages, perhaps of not more than a
HOW ANIMALS GET HOME. 203
dozen miles, the final stage of a match-flight of five hun-
dred miles will be more than one hundred. The country
has been seen but once, yet the bird remembers it, and not
only for the three or four days of a match, but for months.
In June, 1877, birds trained from Bath to London were
twice flown. On June 11th of 1878 they repeated the
trip at good speed. Such feats are not uncommon with
Belgian birds—the best of. all
eral authenticated instances of their going off-handed from
and there have been sev-
England to Belgium after having been kept in confinement
many months. But the homing intelligence of pigeons is
subject to much irregularity of action, and this very cir-
cumstance insists that it shall not be considered an unvary-
ing, unreasoning instinct.
Enough has now been said, perhaps, to enable one to see
that, however much the bird may be aided by an acute
sense of direction—a capability, | mean, of preserving a
straight course, once ascertained, which sense some may
prefer to speak of as an “instinct”? —the homing faculty
of le voyageur pigeon is the result of education, and is not
a matter of intuition at all.
The bee pursues a truly similar course. When he is
loaded with nectar, you will note him cease humming about
the heads of the flowers and spring up in a swift, vertical
204 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
spiral, and after circling about a moment, shoot homeward
“in a bee-line.” Evidently he has “got his bearings.” Had
you watched him the first time he ever left his hive you |
would have observed precisely similar conduct to acquaint
himself with the surroundings.
How a bird like the albatross, the man-of-war-hawk, or
the petrel, swinging on tireless pinions in apparently aim-
less flight over the tossing and objectless ocean, suddenly
rouses its reserve of strength to traverse in a day or two
the hundreds of miles between it and the rocky shores
where it builds its nest; or how it finds the lone islet
which these winged wanderers of the sea alone render pop-
ulous, is not easily explained. Nor can we readily under-
stand how once a year the salmon comes back (from con-
jecture only guesses where), not to the coast alone, for
that would be no more than an ordinary case of migra-
tion, but to the identical stream where it was born; and
to prove that it was not a blind emotion that led it, would
be harder than in the case of the pigeon, the bee, or even
the frigate-bird. Yet who knows that the fishes may not
be able to perceive the differences in the water which we
designate “ variations of temperature and density,” or still
more delicate properties, and thus distinguish the fluid of
their native place from the outside element? It is a ques-
HOW ANIMALS GET HOME. 905
tion, however, whether this phenomenon comes properly
within the scope of this article.
Many domestic animals show a true homing faculty, and
often in a degree which excites our surprise. One of the
most remarkable cases I knew was that of two of the mules
of a pack-train which, plainly by concerted action, left our
camp one morning without cause or provocation. We were
in south-western Wyoming, about seventy-five miles north-
west of Rawlins Station, where we had begun our march.
Our course, however, had been an exceedingly roundabout
one, including a great deal of very bad country, where no
road or trail existed. These mules made no attempt to
trace it back, but struck straight across the country. They
were chased many miles, and showed not the least hesitancy
in choosing their way, keeping straight on across the rolling
plain, with a haste which seems not to have been. diminished
until Rawlins was almost reached, when they were caught
by some prospectors. For weeks they had to be kept care-
fully hobbled to prevent a repetition of the experiment.
Ilow did these animals know the direction with such
certainty? Mules frequently follow a very obscure trail
backward for many miles, and, even more than horses, may
be trusted to find the way home in the dark; but this is
only when they have been over the road before, and is
206 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
quite as fully due to their superior eyesight as to their
strong sense of locality. I have also seen mules following
the trail of a pack-train a few hours in advance, almost
wholly by scenting; but the two runaways before mention-
ed had no other conceivable help in laying their course
than some distant mountain-tops north and east of (and
hence behind) them, and to profit by these would have re-
quired a sort of mental triangulation.
But the most common instances of homing ability are
presented by our domestic pets, which often come back to
us when we have parted with them, in a way qnite unac-
countable at first thought. An extremely instructive series
of authentic examples of this were published in successive
numbers of that excellent newspaper, the London Field.
The discussion was begun by a somewhat aggressive article
by Mr. Tegetmeier, in which he expressed the opinion that
most of such stories current were “nonsense,” and cordial-
ly assigned to the regions of the fabulous those narratives
which seemed to attribute this power to a special faculty
possessed by the animal, instancing himself two cases where
a dog and a cat found their way home, as he very justly
supposes, by using their memories. The distance was not
great; they obtained a knowledge of the routes, and took
their departure. ‘ Very interesting,’ replied a correspond-
HOW ANIMALS GET HOME. 207
ent, “but no argument against another cat or dog home-
returning twenty or thirty miles across a strange district
by means of instinct.” And as evidence of his conclusion
that “there is an attribute of animals, neither scent, sight,
nor memory, which enables them to perform the home-re-
turning journeys,” this gentleman said :
“When I resided at Selhurst, on the Brighton and South
Coast Railway, a friend living at Sutton gave me an Irish
retriever bitch. She came over to him about a month pre-
viously from the County Limerick, where she was bred;
and during her stay at Sutton she was on chain the whole
time, with the exception of two walks my friend gave her
in the direction of Cheam, which is in an opposite quarter
to Selhurst from Sutton. She came to me per rail in a
covered van, and the distance from home to home is about
nine miles. She was out for exercise next morning, ran
away, and turned up at her previous home the same after-
noon.”
But this proved to be a mild instance of such perform-
ances. A fox-hound was taken by train in a covered van
forty miles from the kennels of one hunt to those of an-
other in Ireland. The hound was tied up for a week, and
then she was taken out with the pack. She hunted with
them for the day, and returned in the evening to within a
208 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
hundred yards of the kennel. “Here,” relates the narra-
tor, “I noticed her go into a field, sit down, and look about
her. I called out to the young gentleman who hunts the
hounds, whose way home was the same as mine: ‘J., Pre-
cious is not going on with you.’ ‘Oh, there’s no fear of
ae
her,
was the reply. ‘As she came so far, she will come
the rest of the way.’ So we went on to the kennel close
by, but Precious did not appear, and we came back at once
to the spot, sounded the horn, and searched everywhere.
That was at six o’clock in the evening. On the following
morning at six o’clock, when the messman went to the ken-
nel door at Doneraile, Precious was there.”
An officer took a pointer which certainly had never been
in Ireland before, direct from Liverpool to Belfast, where
he was kept for six months at the barracks. He was then
sent by train and cart, in a dog-box, thirty-four miles into
the country, and tied up for three days. Being let out on
the morning of the fourth, he at once ran away, and was
found that same evening at the barracks at Belfast.
A sheep-dog was sent by rail and express wagon from
the city of Birmingham to Wolverton, but, escaping from
confinement the next Saturday at noon, on Sunday morn-
ing reappeared in Birmingham, having travelled sixty miles
in twenty-four hours. Says one writer: “I was stopping
HOW ANIMALS GET HOME. 209
with a friend about eighteen miles from Orange, New South
Wales. My host brought a half-grown kitten sixteen miles
by a eross-bush track, tied in a flour-bag at the bottom of a
buggy. She was fed that night; in the morning she had
disappeared. She was home again in rather less than four
days.” The same person owned a horse in the interior of
Australia, which, after two years of quiet residence on his
run, suddenly departed, and was next heard of one hundred
miles away, at the run of the old master from whom it had
been stolen years before.
A rough-coated cur was taken by a gentleman to whom
he had been given from Manchester to Liverpool by train,
thence to Bangor, North Wales, by steamboat; but on
Janding at Bangor the dog ran away, and the fourth day
afterward, fatigued and foot-sore, was back in his home
kennel, having undoubtedly travelled straight overland the
whole distance. The same gentleman knew of a kitten
that was carried in a covered basket six miles from one
side of Manchester to the other, and found its way back
the next day through the turbulent streets. Similarly, a
fox-hound transported in a close box between points one
hundred and fifty miles distant, and part of the way
through the city of London, came back as soon as let
loose. A retriever bitch did the same thing from Hud-
14
210 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
dersfield to Stroud, a fortnight after being taken to the
former place by rail; and a fox-hound returned from Kent
to Northamptonshire, which are on opposite sides of the
Thames; finally a dog came back to Liverpool from a dis-
tant point, whither he had been forwarded by rail 7 the
night.
So many such instances are recorded that I refrain from
mentioning more, except a couple of very illustrative ones
which I find vouched for in the Rev. J. G. Wood’s valuable
little book, “* Man and Beast.” A mechanic who worked
in Manchester, but lived at Holywell, Wales, having been
home on a visit, was given a dog to take back with him.
“ He led the animal from Holywell to Bagill by road, a dis-
tance of about two miles. Thence he took the market-boat
to Chester, a distance of about twelve miles, if I remember
right. Then he walked through Chester, and took rail for
Birkenhead. From that station he walked to the landing-
stage, and crossed the Mersey to Liverpool. He then walk-
ed through Liverpool to the station in Lime Street. Then
he took rail to Manchester, and then had to walk a distance
of a mile and a half to his home. This was on Wednesday.
He tied the dog up, and went to his work on Thursday as
usual; and on the Sunday following, thinking that the dog
was accustomed to the place, he set it at liberty. He soon
HOW ANIMALS GET HOME. 211
lost sight of it, and on the Wednesday following he re-
ceived a letter from his mother, stating that the dog had
-returned to her. Now you will see that the dog went first
by road, then by market-boat, then through streets, then by
rail, then by steamer, then through streets again, then by
rail again, then through streets again, it being dark at the
time.’ Whether the animal really did follow the back-
track with all this exactness or not, one thing is certain,
he had sagacity enough to find his way, and (as is note-
worthy in all these incidents) did so with astonishing speed.
The second instance is still more striking, and illustrates
very forcibly the strong love of home in the dog, which is
the motive in all these extraordinary and difficult journeys.
“A gentleman in Calcutta wrote to a friend living near
Inverkeithing, on the shores of the Frith of Forth, request-
ing him to send a good Scotch collie dog. This was done
in due course, and the arrival of the dog was duly acknowl-
edged. But the next mail bronght accounts of the dog
having disappeared, and that nothing could be seen or
heard of him. Imagine the astonishment of the gentle-
man in Inverkeithing when, a few weeks later, friend
Collie bounced into his house, wagging his tail, barking
furiously, and exhibiting, as only a dog can, his great joy
at finding his master.” Inquiry showed that the dog had
O12 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING. x
come aboard a Dundee collier from a ship hailing from
Calcutta.
Comparing all these examples and many others—for hun-
dreds, almost, of similar cases with various animals might
be cited—certain general facts appear.
First, incidentally, brutes equally with men become home-
sick. Those that stay away, as well as those that return to
their former homes, show this very plainly, and often piti-
ably. This feeling is the motive which leads them to un-
dergo perils and hardships that no other emotion would
prompt them to undertake or enable them to endure. But
it is the most thoroughly domesticated and most intelli-
gent breeds of animals that this homesickness attacks the
most severely ; while, correlatively, the most difficult feats
of finding their way home are manifested by the same class.
It is the finely-bred horses, the carefully-reared pigeons, the
highly-edueated pointers, fox-hounds, and collies that return
from the longest distances and over the greatest obstacles.
This would seem to indicate that the homing ability is
largely the result of education; whatever foundation there
may have been in the wild brute, it has been fostered un-
der civilizing influences, until it has developed to an aston-
ishing degree. I would like to ask any one who believes
that this ability is wholly a matter of intuition—an innate
HOW ANIMALS GET HOME. OTS
faculty—why such an instinct should have been planted in
the breast of animals like dogs and horses in their wild con-
dition? They had no homes to which they could become
attached as they do now in their artificial life; or when they
did settle during the breeding season in any one spot, either
they did not quit it at all, wandered only for a short dis-
tance, or else the females alone remained stationary, while
the males roved as widely as usual. There would seem to
be no call, therefore, for such an instinct in the wild animal.
That they may always have had, and do now possess, a very
acute sense of direction, enabling them to keep the points
of the compass straight in their minds far better than we
ean, I am willing to admit; but I doubt whether the evi-
dence proves a nearer approach to a homing “ instinct”
than this. On the contrary, I believe, as I have already
hinted, that beyond this the performances of animals in the
line of our inquiry are the result of accurate observation
and very retentive memory. That all these animals now
and then do miss their bearings, get “turned around” and
wholly lost, is true, and is a fact to be remembered in this
discussion.
In the case of. the birds, observation by sight is sufficient.
They rise to a height whence they can detect a landmark,
and flying thither, catch sight of another. The experience
914 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
of pigeon-trainers shows this satisfactorily, and that of the
faleoners supports it. The far-reaching eyesight of birds
is well known. Kill a goat on the Andes, and in half an
hour flocks of condors will be disputing over the remains,
though when the shot was fired not a single sable wing blot-
ted the vast blue arch. The same is true of the vultures
of the Himalayas and elsewhere. Gulls drop unerringly
upon a morsel of food in the surf, and hawks pounce from
enormous heights upon insignificant mice crouching in fan-
cied security among the meadow stubble, while an Arctic
owl will perceive a hare upon the snow (scarcely more
white than himself) three times as far as the keenest-eyed
Chippewa who ever trapped along Hudson’s Bay. The
eyesight, then, of pigeons and falcons is amply powerful to
show them the way in a country they have seen before,
even though the points they are acquainted with be a hun-
dred miles apart.
In the eases of horses, dogs, and cats the explanation
may be more difficult, and not always possible to arrive
at. Horses and mules are extremely observant animals,
and quick to remember places; everybody who has ever
had anything to do with them must know this. Their
recollection is astonishing. The Rev. J. G. Wood tells of a
horse which knew its old master after sixteen years, though
HOW ANIMALS GET HOME. 215
he had grown from a boy to a man, and was, of course,
much changed in both voice and appearance. It is prob-
able that where horses come back, they do so mainly by
sight and memory.
As for dogs, they not only can see well, but they awe
the additional help of their intelligent noses. The profi-
ciency to which some breeds of dogs have brought their
smelling powers—the precision with which they will an-
alyze and detect different scents—is surprising. I have
lately seen trustworthy accounts of two hunting-dogs, one
of which pointed a partridge on the farther side of a stone
wall, much to the surprise of his master, who thought his
dog was an idiot; and the other similarly indicated a bird
sitting in the midst of a decaying carcass, the effluvium of
which was disgustingly strong, yet not sufficiently so to dis-
guise the scent of the bird to the dog’s delicate nostrils.
Fox-hounds will trace for miles, at full speed and with
heads high, the step of a Mercury-footed fox, simply by
the faint odor with which his lightly touching pad has
tainted the fallen leaves.
There are few cases where a dog is taken from one home
to another, when he could not see most of the time where
he was going. In that complicated journey of the Holy-
well workman’s pet from northern Wales to Manchester,
216 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
the little fellow had his eyes open the whole distance, we
may be sure, and if he could speak he would no doubt tell
us that he remembered his previous journey pretty well.
But many times, especially where transported by rail, it is
unquestionable that dogs rely upon their noses to get them
back. Finding that they are being kidnapped, carried off
from home and friends in this confined, alarming fashion,
unable to see out of the tight box or the close ear, they do
just what you or I would under similar cireumstances—exert
every possible means left them of discovering whither they
are going, and take as many notes as possible of the ronte,
intending to escape at the very first opportunity. One
means of investigation remaining is the scent, and this
they would use to great advantage, examining the differ-
ent smells as their journey progressed, and stowing them
away in their memory to be followed back in inverse order
when they have a chance to return. Granting to these ani-
mals the discriminating sense of smell which experience
shows to be possessed by them, I do not see any reason why
they should not be able to remember a journey by its suc-
cession of odors just as well as they would by its successive
landmarks to the eye. Even we, with our comparatively
useless noses, can smell the sea from afar; can scent the
sweetness of the green fields as well as the smokiness of
HOW ANIMALS GET HOME. O17
black towns; and can distinguish these general and contin-
uous odors from special or concentrated odors, which lat-
ter would change direction as the smeller changed position.
How far this sense has really been developed in the human
subject, perhaps few know; but in the history of Julia
Brace, the deaf and blind mute of Boston, for whom the
late Doctor Howe accomplished so much, occurs a striking
example. In her blindness and stillness, Julia’s main oc-
cupation was the exercise of her remaining senses of touch,
taste, and smell. It was upon the last, we are told, that she
seemed most to rely to obtain a knowledge of what was go-
ing on around her, and she came finally to perceive odors
utterly insensible to other persons. When she met a per-
son whom she had met before, she instantly recognized him
by the odor of his hand or glove. If it was a stranger,
she smelled his hand, and the impression remained so
strong that she could recognize him long after by again
smelling his hand, or even his glove, if he had just taken
it off; and if, of half a dozen strangers, each one should
throw his glove into a hat, she would take one, smell it,
then smell the hand of each person, and unerringly assign
each glove to its owner. She would pick out the gloves
of a brother and sister by the similarity of odor, but could
not distinguish between them. Similar cases might be pro-
218 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
duced, though hardly one of superior education in this re-
spect; and in the light of it, it is not difficult to suppose
that a sharp dog should be able to follow back a train of
odors that he had experienced shortly before.
But there is another way by which anxious animals may
learn their route both going and coming, and that is by
listening and inquiring. It is remarkable how much of
what is said by their masters all dogs understand. The
books and periodicals of natural history and sport abound
with illustrations of this, and one lately occurred within my
own experience. A very good-natured and amusing, but
utterly unthoroughbred, little dog was a member of a fam-
ily which I was visiting. The dog and I became very good
friends at once, and remained so until the second day, when
I casually began to joke his master upon owning such a
miserable cur. At once the little dog pricked up his ears,
and, noticing this, I continued my disparagements in a
quiet, off-hand tone, his master meanwhile defending and
condoling with him, until at last the dog could stand it no
longer, but, without any provocation beyond my language,
which was not addressed to him at all, sprung up and softly
bit at my heel, as though to give me warning of what
might happen if the joke went any further; and after that
he utterly broke off our friendship.
HOW ANIMALS GET HOME. 219
I mention this incident to call attention to the alertness
of our household pets in hearing and comprehending what
is being said. Could not a dog on a railway remember the
names of the towns through which he passed as they were
ealled out by the attendants and spoken by travellers, and
so be able to judge something of his way in return? The
Rev. Mr. Wood snggested that the collie which returned
from India was enabled to find the right vessel at Calcutta
by hearing the well-known language and accent of the
Scotch sailors; and again picked out from among many
others the right collier in which to finish the journey, part-
ly by remembrance of the rig, but also by recognizing the
still more familiar and home-like dialect of the Dundee
men. In a country where dialects are so marked as in
Great Britain, this sort of observation would no doubt be
of great help to an intelligent animal. Take the case of
the Holywell workman’s dog. It is quite possible that he
discovered the right route from Liverpool, whither it would
not be so difficult to make his way from Manchester, by
following some rough-tongued Welshman until he found
himself among his own hills again.
But there is still more to be said about this part of a
homesick animal’s resources and ingenuity. I am firm in
my belief that animals have a language of signs and utter-
220 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
ances by which they communicate with each other, and
that their vocabulary, so to speak, is much larger than it
has generally beem considered to be. Dupont de Ne
mours declared that he understood fourteen words of the
eat tongue. JI am perfectly convinced that those two
wicked little mules of ours, which ran away so disgrace-
fully from our camp in Wyoming, had planned the whole
thing out beforehand, and thus very likely had made up
their minds as to the road. They had been bitter enemies,
biting and kicking each other, contesting for coveted places
in the line, and quarrelling the whole trip. But the even-
ing before they ran away they were observed to be very am-
icable. It attracted our notice, and the last that was seen
of them in the morning, just before they bolted, they stood
apart from the rest with their heads together and their
ears erect, waiting the right moment to dart away togeth-
er. Tell a mountain mule-driver that the little beasts do
not talk among themselves (chiefly in planning cunning
mischief), and he will laugh in your face.
Cats, we know, consult a great deal together, and two
street dogs often become great cronies. Why should not
these dogs and eats be able to tell stray companions some-
thing which should help them on their way? I believe
they do—just how, I don’t pretend to say.
HOW ANIMALS GET HOME. 291
It seems to me, therefore, that the examples cited above,
and a host of others like them, show that all domestic ani-
mals have a very strong love of pla@wes and persons. In
many cases this homesickness is so strong as to lead them
to desert a new abode, when transferred to it, and attempt
to return to their former home; but they rarely or never
do so without having a definite idea in their minds as to
the route, although it is often very long and circuitous, and
hence they almost invariably succeed; otherwise, they do
not try. It is not every animal, by a long list, that deserts
a new home the moment the chain is loosed; only one, now
and then. In regard to the method used by them to find
their way, it appears that they have no special instinct to
guide them, but depend upon their memory of the route,
the knowledge of which was acquired by an attentive study
through the senses of sight, smell, and hearing, possibly by
communication with other animals. The phenomenon, as
a whole, affords another very striking example of animal
intelligence.
DK.
A MIDSUMMER PRINCE.
Crcitius Catvert, second Baron of Baltimore, has a hold
upon the recollections of mankind far surpassing that se-
cured by any monument in the noble city which he found-
ed, in the fact that the most charming bird that makes its
summer home in the parks of that city bears his name.
That bird is the Baltimore oriole—Jcterus baltimore of Lin-
neeus. Its plumage is patterned in orange and black, the
baronial colors of the noble lord’s livery; and Linneeus only
paid an appropriate compliment to the source to which he
owed his specimen of the new species, when, in 1766, he
recognized the coincidence in the name.
Then as now the orioles were among the most beautiful
and conspicuous of woodland birds. From their winter re-
treat under the tropies they return northward as the warm
weather advances, arriving in Maryland during the latter
part of April, and reaching central New England by the
middle of May. In these migrations, performed mostly by
A MIDSUMMER PRINCE. 293
day, they fly continuously and in a straight line
high overhead. About sunset they halt, and
uttering low notes, dive into the thickets to va
feed, and afterward to rest. They go singly, | .2
or two or three together. The males
come in advance, and instant-
; ly announce their presence by a
loud and joyous song, continual-
ly emulating one another dur-
ing the week or more that elapses
before the arrival of the females. But this
aie emulation does not end with vying in song;
they have many pitched battles, chasing each other
from tree to tree and through the branches with angry
notes. The coming of the females offers some diversion
to these pugnacious cavaliers, or at least furnishes a new
casus belli; for, while they devote themselves with great
ardor to wooing and winning their coy mistresses, their
jealousy is easily aroused, and their fighting is often re-
224 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
sumed. Even the lady-loves sometimes forget themselves so
far as to savagely attack their fancied rivals, or drive out of
sight the chosen mate of some male bird whom they want
for themselves. This is not all fancy, but lamentable fact.
Mademoiselle Oriole is not so showy as her gay beau.
Persuade the pair to keep quiet a moment, and compare
them. They are in size between a bluebird and a robin,
but rather more slender than either. The plumage of the
male is of a rich but varying orange upon all the lower
parts, underneath the wings, upon the lower part of the
back, and the outer edges of the tail; the throat, head,
neck, the part between the shoulders, wing quills, and mid-
dle tail feathers are velvety black; the bill and feet are
bluish ; there is a white ring around the eye, and the lesser
wing quills are edged with white. In the female the pat-
tern of color is the same, but the tints are duller. The jet
of the male’s head and neck is rusty in his mate, and each
feather is margined with olive. The orange part of the
plumage is more like yellow in the female, and wing and
tail quills are spotted and dirty. Three years are required
for the orioles to receive their complete plumage, the grad-
ual change of which is beautifully represented in one of
Audubon’s gigantic plates. “Sometimes the whole tail of
a [young] male individual in spring is yellow, sometimes
A MIDSUMMER PRINCE. 225
only the two middle feathers are black, and frequently the
black on the back is skirted with orange, and the tail tip-
ped with the same color.” Much confusion arose among
the earlier naturalists from this cireumstance, though not
quite so much as ensued upon the discovery of the cousin
of this species—the orchard oriole—which bears the spe-
cific name spurius to this day as a memory of the time
when ornithologists called it a “ bastard.”
The singing of the males is at its height now that the
females have come, and they are to be heard, not only from
field and grove and country way-side, but in the streets of
villages, and even in the parks of cities, where they are rec-
ognized by every school-boy, who calls them fire-birds, gold-
en-robins, hang-nests, and Baltimore birds. The lindened
avenues of Philadelphia, the elm-embowered precincts of
New Haven, the sacred trees of Boston Common, the clas-
sic shades of Harvard Square, and the malls of Central
Park all echo to their spring-time music.
The song of the oriole is indescribable, as to me are the
tunes of most of the songsters. Nuttall’s ingenious sylla-
bles are totally useless in expressing the pure and versatile
fluting which floats down from the elm top. Wilson ecatch-
es its spirit when he says that ‘‘there is in it a certain wild
plaintiveness and ndévveté extremely interesting,” and that
15
226 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
it is uttered “with the pleasing tranquillity of a careless
ploughboy whistling for his own amusement.” It is a joy-
ous, contented song, standing out from the chorus that
greets our half-awakened ears at daylight as brightly as its
author shines against the dewy foliage. T. W. Higginson
exclaims, “ Yonder oriole fills with light and melody the
thousand branches of a neighborhood.” It is a song vary-
ing with the tune and circumstances, and, as among all
birds, some orioles are better performers than others. Dr.
Brewer thought that when they first arrived, and were
awaiting the females, the voices of the males were loud
and somewhat shrill, as though in lamentation, and that
this song changed into a “richer, lower, and more pleasing
refrain”? when they were joined by their partners. The
quality of their music is certainly different in different
parts of the country, seeming, for example, to be more sub-
dued toward the northern limit of their range.
A writer in an old number of Putnam's Magazine de-
scribes two orioles with which he had been acquainted for
several summers. These birds had taken up their resi-
dences within about a quarter of a mile of each other, one
in a public park, and the other in an orchard. “And often,”
says the narrator, “have I heard the chief musician of the
orchard, on the topmost bough of an ancient apple-tree, sing,
A MIDSUMMER PRINCE. GY
a eee pee ee Sg een pe
i eae ne ee
| |
to which the chorister of the park, from the summit of a
maple, would respond, in the same key,
ae =4
(aa [ea Panda Sea
and, for the life of me, I never was able to tell whether
their songs were those of rivalry or of greeting and friend-
ly intercourse. And now if you will strike these notes on
the piano, or, which is better, breathe them from the flute,
you will know the song of the oriole, or rather obtain an
idea of its general characteristics, for no two that I have
ever heard sung the same melody.”
The female also has a pretty song, which mingles with
the brilliant tenor of the male during all the season of love-
making ; but as May merges into June, and the business of
the summer begins, both cease their exalted strains, and only
the mellow, ringing whistle is heard; then, as family cares
increase, they lay aside even this, and, except at dawn, are
rarely heard at all.
But, after all, the chief interest about our oriole is its
wonderful home, which hangs upon the outmost branches
228 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
of the elms along the street or in the grove, and is com-
pleted by June 10. The nest is never found in the deep
woods. Its maker is a bird of the sunlight, and is sociable
with man. The haunts of the orioles are those grand trees
which the farmer leaves here and there in his field as shade.
for his cattle, to lean over the brier-tangled fence of the
lane, or droop toward the dancing waters of some rural riv-
er. “There is,” says Thomas Nuttall, “nothing more re-
markable in the whole instinct of our golden-robin than
the ingenuity displayed in the fabrication of its nest, which
is, in fact, a pendulous, cylindric pouch of five to seven
inches in depth, usually suspended from near the extremi-
ties of the high drooping branches of trees (such as the
elm, the pear, or apple tree, wild-cherry, weeping-willow,
tulip-tree, or button-wood).”
These words might in a general way apply to all the
Lcteri, most of which inhabit North or South America, have
brilliant plumages, and build nests of matchless workman-
ship, woven and entwined in such a way as would defy the
skill of the most expert seamstress, and unite dryness, safe-
ty,and warmth. They are mostly pendulous from the ends
of branches, and form thus a security from snakes and oth-
er robbers, which could easily reach them if placed on a
more solid foundation. They are formed of the different
A MIDSUMMER PRINCE. 229
grasses, dry roots, lichens, long and slender mosses, and
other advantageous materials often supplied by man’s art.
Among different species the structures vary in shape from
resembling a compact ball to nearly every bottle-shaped
gradation of form, until they exceed three or four feet in
length. Many species being gregarious, they breed numer-
ously in the same vicinity or on the same tree, resembling
in this and other respects the weaver-birds, to which they
are closely allied. But for us our Baltimore’s nest possess-
es the most attractions; and as I shall have much to say
concerning this fine example of a bird’s architecture, I can-
not begin better than by quoting Nuttall’s description of it.
It would be impossible for me to say anything different,
and as well:
“Tt is begun by firmly fastening natural strings of the
flax of the silk-weed, or swamp hollyhock, or stout artificial
threads, around two or more forked twigs, corresponding to
the intended width and depth of the nest. With the same
materials, willow down, or any accidental ravellings, strings,
thread, sewing-silk, tow, or wool that may be lying near the
neighboring houses or around grafts of trees, they inter-
weave and fabricate a sort of coarse cloth into the form
intended, toward the bottom of which they place the real
nest, made chiefly of lint, wiry grass, horse and cow hair:
230 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
sometimes, in defect of hair, lining the interior with a mixt-
ure of slender strips of smooth vine bark, and rarely with
a few feathers; the whole being of a considerable thick-
ness and more or less attached to the external pouch. Over
the top the leaves,as they grow out, form a verdant and
agreeable canopy, defending the young from the sun and
rain. There is sometimes a considerable difference in the
manufacture of these nests, as well as in the materials
which enter into their composition. Both sexes seem to
be equally adepts at this sort of labor; and I have seen the
female alone perform the whole without any assistance,
and the male also complete this laborious task nearly with-
out the aid of his consort, who, however, in general, is the
principal worker.”
Many persons believe that there is a constant tendency
in birds to vary their architecture to suit their surround-
ings, in accordance with climate, greater or less readiness of
certain materials, and security. The Baltimore oriole af-
fords a good illustration of this tendency. Like the swal-
lows, robin, bluebird, pewit, and others, the oriole has aban-
doned the wilds for the proximity to man’s settlements, do-
ing it chiefly for two reasons—the greater abundance of
insect food, and protection from hawks, owls, and crows,
which are fewer in number and less bold in the clearings.
A MIDSUMMER PRINCE. 231
In the swamps of the Gulf States, the Baltimore, find-
ing no necessity for great warmth or shelter from chilling
winds, fabricates an airy nest of Spanish moss (7%dlandsia
usneordes). Audubon described and figured such a one,
but the exact truth of Audubon’s description was rather
doubted until the Boston Society of Natural History re-
ceived other similar nests from Florida. In these cases the
bird chose material perfectly suited to the temperature, in
preference to the flax and felt which it would have used in
the North. This is a modification due to difference of lat-
itude and accompanying difference of climate; but I vent-
ure to say that the Baltimores’ nests, in general, built during
an unusually hot season in any latitude will be much light-
er than those built during a cool or backward year.
We may suppose that the oriole, having learned that the
place for its home safest from all marauding animals and
reptiles was out upon the tips of the swaying twigs, which
would not bear the marander’s weight, would also have
learned the shape best adapted to that situation; and that
if it knew enough to choose the lesser danger from man in
order to escape a greater one from hawks when it came out
of the deep woods, it would also have reason enough to
alter its style of building in such a way as should best hide
the sitting bird from the prying eyes of its winged enemies,
232 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
and at the same time afford dryness and warmth to the in-
terior. Both of these were secured in the thick branches
of the primeval forest by the leaves overhead and around.
It is hence found that in the same climate the more ex-
posed a nest is the denser its composition, the deeper the
pouch, and the smaller its mouth. Pennant and others of
the earlier writers on American birds described the orioles’
nests as having only a hole near the top for entrance and
exit, like those of some of the Sonth American species.
Wilson, who was the first real critic of our ornithology, said
this was certainly an error, adding, “I have never met with
anything of the kind.” Both authors seem to have made too
sweeping assertions, and, as usual, there is a golden mean of
fact. Our hang-nest has enough discernment to select the
safest and best site for a nest ever chosen by a tree-build-
ing bird. He has sufficient discretion to inhabit trees where
his young will be least exposed to birds of prey. He has
sense and skill enough to build a warm or cool house to
suit the climate—a deep and tight one where the sun shines
brightly, and sharp eyes might see the orange coat of
himself or his mate within, and a loose and (in labor) less
expensive one where deep shadows hide it. Surely, then,
this consummate workman has ingenuity enough to put a
roof over his dwelling to shed the rain and the hawk’s
A MiDSUMMER PRINCE. 2838
glances, leaving only a little door in the side. Both of
these things the hang-nest actually does. I myself have
seen a nest of his making, over the open top of which a
broad leaf had been bent down and tied by glutinous
threads in such a way as to make a good portico. Mr.
Thomas Gentry found a much more complete example at
Germantown (Philadelphia), Pennsylvania, where the ori-
oles “were constrained to erect a permanent roof to their
dwelling by interwoven strings through their deprivation
of the verdant and agreeable canopy which the leaves would
naturally afford..... So nicely is the roof adjusted that
even the most critical investigation cannot discern the
union. ‘The entrance is a circular opening situated in the
superior third of the nest, facing southwardly.” Mr. Gen-
try considers this the latest improvement upon a nest which
in the beginning was simply a hammock in the fork of a
tree, like a vireo’s, but which has been made more and
more pendulous, until what was at first the whole nest is
now only the lining at the bottom of a deep enclosing bag.
With the idea of testing Wallace’s theory that birds of
bright colors, easily detected by birds of prey, are always
found to occupy concealing nests, Dr. C. C. Abbott, of
Trenton, New Jersey, made extensive notes upon the nests
of our subject. In every instance those nests which fully
aoe FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
concealed the sitting bird were at a considerable distance
from any house in uncultivated parts. In all such local-
ities sparrow-hawks were seen frequently, as compared
with the neighborhoods selected for building the shallower
open-topped nests, all of which were in willow or elm trees
in the yards of farm-houses. The conclusion drawn was
that the oricles knew where danger from hawks was to be
apprehended, and constructed accordingly—the less elabo-
rate nest in the farmer’s yard answering every purpose for
incubation. Dr. Abbott says, however, that of the nests
that did conceal the sitting bird, every one was really open
at the top, and the bird entered from above. Its weight,
when in the nest, appeared to draw the edges of the rim
together sufficiently to shut out all view of the occupant.
It is his opinion, however, that years ago, when its enemies
were more numerous, the nest of this oriole was perfectly
closed at the top, and with a side opening; but he finds
none so now.
The question why this species alone among our birds is
supposed to have learned by dear experience to take such
precautions against its foes has already been answered: it
is because the Baltimore oriole is almost the only species
in which the female is not protected from observation by
her neutral and dull colors, and in which the brightly plu-
A MIDSUMMER PRINCE. 935
maged male also sits upon the eggs. Mother Necessity nes
prompted the marvellous invention.
Nuttall thought both sexes equally expert at nest-build-
ing, although the labor principally devolved upon the fe-
male. The latter clause in particular Mr. Gentry has con-
firmed, and tells us that the male occupies himself only in
collecting materials for his mate. They labor very steadily,
but a week’s work is necessary for the completion of their
home. It seems strange that domiciles constructed with so
much pains should not be occupied successive seasons, but
this seems never to be the case. It sometimes happens,
however, that orioles will pick to pieces an old nest to get
materials for a new one, just as the Indians of Peru often
construct their huts of the cut-stone blocks of the ancient
palaces of the Incas. These birds are very knowing in
gathering stuff for the framework of their homes, and per-
ceive the adaptability to their needs of the housewife’s yarn
and laces, hung out to dry, much sooner than they perceive
the immorality of stealing them. White cotton strings
are rarely absent from their nests, which are sometimes al-
most entirely composed of them. Some curious anecdotes
have been related of this economical propensity and its re-
sults; Nuttall tells the following:
“A female (oriole), which I observed attentively, carried
236 FRIENDS WORTH KNOWING.
a
off to her nest a piece of lamp-wick ten or twelve feet long.
This long string and many other shorter ones were left
hanging out for about a week before both ends were wat-
tled into the sides of the nest. Some other little birds,
making use of similar materials, at times twitched these
flowing ends, and generally brought out the busy Baltimore
from her occupation in great anger.”
A lady once told John Burroughs that one of these birds
snatched a skein of yarn from her window-sill, and made
off with it to its half-finished nest. But the perverse yarn
caught fast in the branches, and, in the bird’s efforts to ex-
tricate it, got hopelessly tangled. She tugged away at it
all day, but was finally obliged to content herself with a
few detached portions. The fluttering strings were an eye-
sore to her ever after, and passing and repassing she would
give them a spiteful jerk, as much as to say, “ There is that
confounded yarn that gave me so much trouble!”
A gentleman in Pennsylvania, observing an oriole begin-
ning to build, hung ont “skeins of many-colored zephyr
yarn, which the eager artist readily appropriated. He man-
aged it so that the bird used nearly equal quantities of vari-
ous high, bright colors. The nest was made unusually deep
and capacious, and it may be questioned if such a thing of
beauty was ever before woven by the cunning of a bird.”
A MIDSUMMER PRINCE. 237
The nest being done, the female begins to deposit her
egos on the successive day, and continues laying one each
day until four or five are laid. The eggs are pointed oval,
0.90 by 0.60 of an inch in dimensions, grayish-white, with
a roseate tinge in fresh and transparent specimens, and va-
riously marked with blotches and irregular lines, like pen
scratches, of purplish-brown. On the day following, incu-
bation begins, and the eggs hatch at the end of about fif-
teen days, bringing it to the middle of June.
The courage and devotion of the parents in defence of
their nests are known to every ornithologist. They expose
themselves fearlessly to danger rather than desert their
charge, and call upon heaven and earth to witness their
persecution. I remember one such instance. I discovered
a nest with eggs in a sycamore on the banks of the Yantic
River, in Connecticut. In trying to examine it I roused
the ire of the owners, who showed the most intense anger
and dismay. Enjoying this little exhibition, I did all I
could to terrify the fond parents without harming them ag
all, and then quietly watched the result. The birds flew
close about the nest, screaming and uttering a loud roll-
ing ery like a policeman’s rattle, which very soon brought
plenty of sympathetic and curious friends.