T

In the Acadian Land

NATURE STUDIES

BY

ROBERT R. McLEOD

BOSTON
BRADLEE WHIDDEN

,

COPYRIGHT, 1899,

BY
ROBERT B. MoLEOD

DEDICATED

TO

Agues Sophia

MY

WIFE

INTRODUCTION.

IT has pleased my fancy and suited my purpose to
locate the following chapters on the Molega Road.
To find it one must go to the northern district of
Queens County, Nova Scotia. It connects a small
gold-mining community with other villages. Only a
distance of six miles through barren and brush, and
meadow, past fringes of old woods, and swamps of
spruce and maple, over ledges, two brooks and a
river. A very commonplace stretch of new road, but
in passing over it several thousand times, in all seasons
and all weathers, it became more charming, more to
be seen, and learned, and admired. It would be a
pleasant employment for me to fill volumes with the
unwritten diaries of these journeys. However, I cele-
brate them with this little book, in the hope some
readers will become interested, and thereby life en-
larged and curiosity stimulated to know more of the
wonderful world so easily accessible to all dwellers in
the country, and that, too, without money and without
price.

ROBERT R. McLEOD.

BROOKFIELD, QUEENS COUNTY, N. S., 1899.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

THE WOODS 7

A BUTTERFLY 23

OAK APPLES 32

HARES 39

WEASELS 49

SPIDERS 66

A GOLD MINE 63

LUNCH BY THE BROOKSIDE 74

THE CAT-OWL 85

LEDGES 91

BATS .... 98

6 CONTENTS.

PAQB

BY THE RIVERSIDE 105

THE RED SQUIRREL 114

BIRDS 127

MICMAC INDIANS 141

PUFF-BALLS, TOADSTOOLS AND THAT SORT OK THING . 156

THE WOODS.

14 THE woods were made for the hunters of dreams,

The brooks for the fishers of song ;
To the hunters who hunt for the guiiless game

The streams and the woods belong.
There are thoughts that moan from the soul of the pine

And thoughts in a flower-bell curled ;
And the thoughts that are blown with the scent of the fern

Are as new and as old as the world." — FOBS.

ON first impression one might say that there
are no woods worth consideration on the
Molega Road. It is quite true that there are no
trees desirable for lumber or ship-timber ; there
are no dusky forest-aisles, but for all this lack-
ing there are woods crowded with objects of
interest, and replete with subtle beauty. An
acquaintance of Turner, the great landscape
painter, once stood by him while he sketched a
scene. As he proceeded to complete the work
his companion remarked,

" But, Mr. Turner, I do not see in the land-
scape the beauty you have put in your picture."

" Don't you wish you could see it ? " was the
artist's reply.

8 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

It depends upon what taste and love of nature
that one brings to tlie landscape or the woods,
whether he will discover beauty therein. If the
woods are only to be looked upon as an assem-
blage of trees serviceable for saw-logs, ship-
timber, cordwood, harrow-crotches and sled-run-
ners, then this is the view of the browsing moose.
He knows the locality as a feeding-ground and
shelter. We do not blame him for not looking
deeper, because his natural capacity goes no
farther. But man has finer endowments, that,
if rightly cultivated and properly used, enable
him to appreciate the beauty and diversity and
infinite resources of nature. Even the great
works of men's minds and hands are worthy of
study and admiration. How much more worthy
are the products of the master mind that brings
forth suns in galaxies, and finds room in the
commonest toadstool to exercise a skill and
power that passes our comprehension. It is
the proper part of education, at home and in the
school, to draw out these higher qualities of
the mind, that show themselves in the eager
curiosity and enthusiasm of childhood and youth.
Alas, that our methods are so well calculated
to suppress the opening buds of higher promise I
Alas that the " life star " that was born with us
"fades into the light of common day " and the

THE WOODS. 9

vision by which we were attended vanishes
forever !

We will return to a consideration of trees and
forests. The most unpromising feature in this
direction one soon comes upon after entering
the road. Here and there among the hoop-pole
wire birch are dead pines — victims of fires that
killed them many years ago. They are too
crooked, and crotched, and beset with strong
limbs and knots, to serve for lumber; so they
remain, scattered, gaunt, bare and gray, reach-
ing out long naked arras defiantly to all winds.
They are merely touched with decay ; only the
" sap," or last growth, an inch or two in thick-
ness, has become tattered and weather-stricken ;
all the rest is sound and strong. These pines
are unlike those of the same species that grow
in the thick forests of their kind. In those
conditions there is hard competition for room
to live. There thousands of seeds of pine
sprout and begin to grow within a small area.
It is simply impossible for them all to reach
maturity, or even arrive to a height of a few
inches. They will be thinned out by natural
selection ; that is to say, those that are best fitted
to continue will live. The advantage may be
small, a mere bit more light or a better rootage
or sounder seed, but on these points their lives

10 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

depend. " Many are called but few are chosen,"
— that is the universal law of all life. The
straightest saplings with no more limbs than
are needed will get their tops into the sunshine
and their roots into good ground, and become
great trees, smooth and clean. The closer to-
gether they grow the straighter they will be,
and less knots and limbs. Scrubby specimens
beginning life there, are doomed to decline and
meet an early death. In the forests, all are shel-
tered from the force of the wind ; they stand by
each other right loyally. But out on the open
barren here and there a wind-wafted pine seed
germinates and slowly grows. There is no
lack of sunshine, there is no serious competition ;
but the soil is not friendly : they are underfed.
The roots grapple with obstructing rocks, fierce
winds wrestle with the sturdy branches and
resisting trunk. In the long run of a centuiy
such a tree comes to plainly show the marks of
its struggles with the elements. The grain of
the wood is close, and hard, and twisted. Where
the limbs join the trunk there are encircling
bosses formed of wood wherein the grain or fibre
is wound round and round, in sturdy self-defence
of the winds ; for on these branches are the
lungs, and thereby hangs the life. With this
understanding about them, these dead scrub*

THE WOODS. 11

pines are not without a living interest, and fancy
pleasantly invests them with more than the eye
can see, and Science lingers over them, knowing
right well they can teach her many a lesson
worth knowing.

Our Molega Road, woods, are but the strag-
gling fringes of larger tracts that run back into
low hills and swamps. They are not growths
where some particular species lords it over all,
but many kinds struggle for a foothold. Spruce
and fir, birches, oaks, maples, pines, hemlock,
and beech jostle each other in thickets. These
deeper solitudes, where a human footstep does
not pass perhaps in years, although not more
than a couple of miles from houses, are the
abodes of squirrels, and rabbits, and mice, and
wildcats, and foxes. Birds are not abundant in
such retreats, but there are always enough to
enliven the scene with their presence.

Leaving local considerations, we will accept
the invitation that beckons us to a wider discus-
sion of this theme. Let me remark that it can
be shown that life existed on this earth many
hundred thousand years before there was a tree.
The earliest water-made or sedimentaiy rocks
have preserved the records of those times. In
them are the remains and impressions of sea-
weeds, lichens, club-mosses, ferns and other

12 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

forms of vegetation, wherein there was no blos-
som, and therefore no fruit. The first trees
were giant club-mosses and ferns ; their trunks
are imbedded in coal mines, and they have be-
come coal. Trees that bear fruit came late in
the world's histoiy. They are products of evo-
lutionary action, whereby creation proceeds to
higher and more complex forms. Our trees all
have pedigrees that run back into the lowest
and earliest vegetable life. They have been a
weary while in the making, as we reckon time.
They have all been elected by processes that
operated without sentiment, and permitted only
the fittest to survive. They have all come forth
out of great tribulation, and every outward feat-
ure and every inward disposition and tendency
of each species is either a scar of conflict, a plan
for propagation, a vestige of ancestry, or a taint
of on-coming dissolution. The dimensions when
full-grown, the nature of the grain, the peculiar-
ities of the bark, the shape of the leaves, the
contour of the foliage, are all what they are be-
cause of the experiences of the species and its
ancestries. To deny this statement would be to
ignore the plainest truths. If any reader feels
that the Creator is not recognized in this way
then let him consider how a tree is not called
into existence to-day, but grows slowly from a

THE WOODS. 13

seed; but that is the manner in which the
Creator operates. Because an oak-tree, for in-
stance, was not suddenly called into existence
loaded with leaves and acorns, but, through
millions of years, has been produced, is none the
less a creative act.

Our vast ages are God's days. The computa-
tions of his calendar, are not to be fitted into
our petty almanacs. The philosophy of evolu-
tion clothes the Deity with greater grandeur
than the theory of sudden creations permits. It
enables us to see not only the plan or design of
the structure, but its upbuilding ; not only the
finished product, but the various steps of its
development. We are not merely moved to
throw up our hands in pious admiration of the
completed object, be it tree or man, but we are
moved to reverent wonder, or religious awe
when viewing the marvellous transformations
through which it was guided to completion.
When we study the evolution of any kind of
tree we are soon in the midst of a wonderland
of captivating charms. We thus enter the
laboratory of nature ; we see not only the mov-
ing wheels, but the " life within the vast ma-
chine ; " we may even realize a real presence
in leaf, and blade, and bloom, making and un-
making, till —

14 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

"What it hath wrought is better than hath been ;
Slow grows the splendid pattern that it plans
Its wistful hands between."

An evolutionist may fail to believe in God,
and there are irreverent astronomers, but the
God of an evolutionist is not a shadowy possi-
bility, nor an absentee deity from this world,
but an indwelling presence, not identical with
material nature, but no material world apart
from him. He may say for himself,

"I am the mote in the sunbeam, and I am the burning sun.
' Rest here," whispers the atom ; I call to the orb, ' Roll on ! '
I am the blush of the morning and I am the evening's breeze
I am the leaf's low murmur, the swell of the terrible seas ;
I am the breath of the flute, I am the mind of man ;
Gold's glitter, the light of the diamond, the sea-pearl's lustre

wan;

I am what was, will be, creation's ascent and fall ;
The link, the chain of existence, beginning and end of all."

We are not heedful enough of our trees.
When Abraham bought the field and the cave
of Machpelah "all the trees that were in the
field, that were in all the borders round about,
were made sure ; " and he did not cut them down,
but sat under their shade, where aforetime he
had entertained angels. A treeless world would
be a manless world, so far as this planet is con-
cerned. The forests can do better without man,
but we could not do without them. Not only do

THE WOODS. 15

we depend upon them for wood of all kinds, but
without them streams and springs would become
dry, rainfalls would quickly run away and evap-
orate, where now the water is retained in cool
shades and slowly fed to the sources of great
rivers. With the disappearance of trees would
go great troops of birds that feed on the insects
or fruits that are found on them.

Trees are associated with the history of our
race more intimately than any other natural
feature of the earth. They have played an in-
dispensable part in the creation of mankind.
If there had been no fruit-trees there would
never have been evolved an animal to climb them,
and help himself to the concentrated foods. No
great advancement of brain could be reached on
other lines. But the hands of monkeys, apes
and men are all of the same pattern. Human
hands were evolved before our ancestors were
human. This marvellous instrument was formed
in the long run for climbing, and swinging from
branch to branch, for breaking the shells of nuts,
and all purposes for which apes use it to-day.
The hand was the pioneer of our race. It be-
came the servant of the brain. Slowly released
from the drudgery of bearing the body, it en-
tered the service of the mind. And the first of
our ancestors who used his fingers to fasten a

16 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

handle to a stone to form a club, inaugurated
without ceremonies, the opening of the epoch,
wherein mind was to measure itself with muscles
and claws and win the dominion of the world,
and analyze the light of sun and stars. The
first men were forest dwellers ; their homes were
amid tropical trees, where their ancestors had
dwelt for unknown ages. The Bible has it, that
Adam was placed in a lovely spot, where the
Lord God had made to grow eveiy tree that is
" pleasant to the sight and good for food." The
sight was to be gratified as well as the appetite.
The love of beauty was considered before the
demand for food. " Trees pleasant to the sight "
shows that the Creator expected a responsive
admiration on the part of man. He was not to
exclaim first of all, what delicious-looking berries !
but, what beautiful trees! — sentiment first and
stomach afterwards. IE it be contended that we
cannot live on sentimental considerations, I
reply that neither can we live on " bread alone."
Eating and drinking are mere coal-heaving opera-
tions, to enable us to make a voyage of life
wherein the highest qualities may come to
growth. If that be not the truth, then far
better would it have been, that man never ad-
vanced beyond the stage where the satisfaction
of life was in the gratification of appetite. The

THE WOODS. 17

man who goes through the woods and sees
nothing in them but lumber, ship-timber, and
cordwood has missed a princely birthright. But
people find a charm in the woods who are not
moved by beauty. Even city born and bred
men and women discover an indefinable some-
thing in the unspoiled forests that is restful and
healing to body and mind ; they come there to
a patrimony all their, own ; there old instincts
are satisfied.

Says the poet, " The groves were man's first
temples." They were also his first homes ; there
he made his first rude roofs, and there under
the lowly thatch the family life began, that will
not be complete till a recognition of human
brotherhood silences the last cannon and sheaths
the last sword. So deep-rooted and mysterious
has been the love of this old home that men of
antiquity everywhere worshipped trees, and it
still continues in India and other Oriental lands.
The sacred Bo-tree of Anuradhopura, in Ceylon,
is visited by many thousand pilgrims every year,
and happy is he who bears away a leaf that has
dropped within his reach. During two thou-
sand one hundred and thirty years Buddhists
have held this to be a sacred tree, grown from a
scion or shoot of a tree under which the " Blessed
One," the founder of Buddhism, contemplated

18 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

and wrought out by prayer and penance a royal
road for suffering man, and more than three
hundred million people call him the " Blessed
One " after the lapse of all these centuries.
The Bible has frequent allusions to sacred trees
and groves. It has a tree of knowledge of
good and evil, on which grew the fateful " fruit
of finest colors, mixed ruddy and gold." It
was Abraham who " planted a grove in Beer-
sheba and called there on the name of the Lord."
Josephus, the Jewish historian, tells us that the
burning bush in which Moses saw Jehovah's
presence was a sacred tree before that event.
It was a natural stick that Moses had in his
hand, and was afterwards used for miraculous
purposes as a magic rod. Hezekiah cut down
the sacred groves, and his great-great-grandson
cut down another growth in his effort to root out
the foreign worship that clung to the forests.

The Greeks had sacred groves, and many of
their gods had trees sacred to them in popular
estimation. Thus the oak fell to Zeus, the
greatest of all, to Apollo the laurel, to Athene
the olive, etc. The ancient Germans worshipped
in groves. The Celtic draids of France and
England, Ireland and Scotland had their reli-
gious sanctuaries in the deep forests. The Norse-
men, of Norway and Sweden, told wondrous

THE WOODS. 19

stories of a mythical ash-tree. It is related in
their sagas that "it is the largest and best of
trees ; its branches spread all over the world and
reach up over the heaven," and, much more, that
all had a meaning in the " brave days of old," to
these our rugged ancestors.

It is by no accident that the trees and groves
and woods play so large a part in human history,
that they are interwoven with myths and legends
and religious rites. Through poetry, ancient and
modern, runs always the same echo of an unwrit-
ten forest hymn. The Hebrew prophets extol the
beauties of the cedars, and the virtues of the
"Balm of Gilead." "And the glory of Lebanon
shall come unto thee, the fir tree and the box
tree together, to beautify the place of my sanc-
tuary." This universal sentiment of mankind
finds a voice in the poets ; Bryant exclaims :

"Father, thy hand

Hath reared these venerable columns ; them
Did'st weave this verdant roof ! "

Longfellow writes :

" There is a spirit in these quiet woods ;
With what a tender and impassioned voice
It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought.

Hence gifted bards

Have ever loved the calm and quiet shades ;
For them there was an eloquent voice in all
The sylvan pomp of woods."

20 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

In her sonnet on "Trees" Mrs. Hemans
writes thus :

"And ye are strong to shelter ! All weak things,
All that need a home and covert, love your shade ! "

Says Cowper of the "Woods " :

" Meditation here

May think down hours to moments. Here the heart
May give a useful lesson to the head
And learning wiser grow without his books."

Emerson quits the city for the country and
celebrates his escape in a poem, in part running
thus :

" Good-by, proud world, I 'm going home ;
I go to seek my own hearthstone
Bosomed in yon green hills alone ;
A secret lodge in a pleasant land,
Whose groves the frolic fairies planned —
Oh, when I am safe in my sylvan home
I mock at the pride of Greece and Rome !
And when I am stretched beneath the pine*,
Where the evening star so holy shines,
I laugh at the lore and pride of man,
At the sophist's school and the learned clan ;
For what are they all in their high conceit,
When man in the bush with God may meet ? "

Swinburne, in his " Palace of Pan," touches
this inspiring theme in forceful and moving
verse. Here follows a stanza or two that will
indicate their quality and merit to those who

THE WOODS. 21

feel the mystic charm and moving beauty that
inspire his muse :

" Far eastward and westward the sun-colored lands

Smile warm as the light on them smiles ;
And statelier than temples upbuilded by hands,
Tall column by column the sanctuary stands,
Of the pine forest's infinite aisles.

" A temple whose transepts are measured by miles,

Whose chancel has morning for priest.
"Whose floor-work the foot of no spoiler defiles,
Whose musical silence no music beguiles,
No festival limits its feast."

In a true sense the forests are sacred. They
may well have been " God's first temples."
They are not to be wantonly injured nor lightly
destroyed. They have come down to us from
other generations, and with a reasonable use of
their products we are bound in duty to deliver
them to our successors. Our oldest oaks and
hemlocks were no mere saplings when Colum-
bus discovered America. It takes many cen-
turies to produce the great trees in our own
forests, to anchor them fast by the gnarled and
tangled clutch of sturdy rootage, to drape them
in bearded lichens till they stand " like Druids
of eld," to garnish the bark with mosses and
decorate the dead with the finery of elfin fungus
and wreaths of living ferns. Long centuries it

22 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

took to win the confidence of the daintiest flowers
and draw them from the fierce struggle for exist-
ence with contending species that must have
the glaring sunshine or perish from the earth.
These forests became an asylum for delicate
forms that could not hold their own outside
with coarser species. No thistles nor docks, nor
daisies nor buttercups, nor any of their clans
ever grow and bloom in leafy mould or mossy
tussock of our deeper woods. Nestled there

" la beauty, such as blooms not in the glare
Of the broad sun. The delicate forest flower
With scented breath, and looks so like a smile,
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,
An emanation of the indwelling Life,
A visible token of the upholding Love,
That are the soul of this wide unirene."

A BUTTERFLY.

" So much to learn ! Old Nature's ways
Of glee and gloom with rapt amaze,
To study, probe ami paint — brown earth,
Salt seas, blue hearens, the tilth and dearth,
Birds, grasses, trees, the natural things
That throb or grope, or poise on wings."

THE largest of our butterflies are out in
great force to-day. I refer to yellow and
black species, mostly yellow. The name in
books, by which students know them all over
the world, is Papilio turnus. On the edges of
the muddy puddles in the road many of them
are settled down for something to drink. Not
one pei-son out of a dozen knows how they do
that. If you take one of them in your hands
and examine his head you will find under his
chin a threadlike, close coil. If you take a pin
or a needle and pull it out the length will be
found to be about one inch. This instrument
is hollow ; it is used principally for sucking
honey from blossoms. But there is no accounting
for taste ; and here are these beautiful creatures
so delighted and intoxicated with the washings

24 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

of the road that one may pick them up with
thumb and fingers. Here are a half-dozen
crowding each other, their wings nervously
trembling with excitement. Among them is
one with a bit taken out of each wing ; the gaps
are of the same pattern. It is the work of a
bird. The insect was seized while at rest with
wings together: in no other way could it be
done. Birds are their greatest enemies. One
often sees them with tattered and broken wings,
where they have escaped as by the skin of their
teeth. Any of our insect-eating birds will now
and then make a dash for a butterfly, but to
actually capture one is not an easy matter. One
often hears the expression a "butterfly exist-
ence," meaning a life. of gay trifling, flitting here
and there among sweets all the long summer
days in peace and security. It is all a mistake.
Nature bestows these blessings in full measure
on no living thing. Struggle and warfare, fight-
ing and dodging, creeping upon and being crept
upon, are what we find in every department ot
life. Our pretty yellow and black butterfly
does not find nectar in every flower he visits :
other hungry insects may have drained it of
sweets. Many blossoms are so made that he
cannot partake of their treasures. One may see
them try this one and that one during a half-

A BUTTERFLY.

hour, only to be unrewarded, and all the time
obliged to keep a sharp lookout for hungry
birds. It takes some food to furnish energy to
keep up their flight. They will gladly help
themselves from sap that issues from a wounded
tree, and some nourishment there must be in
the muddy water, and it helps them over a hard
time. I have known this species to frequent
the drainage of a distillery, and become so drunk
they could not fly, and the birds made havoc of
them in great numbers, till their wings were
scattered like autumn leaves over the treacher-
ous ground — an insect tragedy resulting from
the same agency that has so often torn and
crushed the wings of human hope and love.

These individuals now flying here and there
have all come forth out of great tribulations and
hairbreadth escapes. It is but early summer
yet, and before the ground freezes nearly all
will have been eaten, or fatally wounded. The
battered remnant will perish of cold, and not
one of them will see the sun of another summer.
Let us look a little further into this matter.
Each female will lay not less than two hundred
green eggs. These will be placed, one here,
and another there, on leaves of trees — apple,
plum, cherry, birch, willow, etc. In two weeks,
if nothing serious has happened to them, they

26 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

will hatch. Now the serious thing that may
happen is this : a very small fly with a very
large concern for her future brood, thinks she
knows a good thing when she sees it, and if she
finds these eggs there will be no butterflies ever
come from them, but her own kind of flies in-
stead. She is provided with a sharp hollow
tube that connects with the eggs in her own
body. She thrusts it into the butterfly's egg,
and sends through a dozen or more of her own,
and then serves others in the same way. Now
if this event does not happen, and no other acci-
dent befalls them, the butterfly's egg will hatch,
and out of it will come a tiny brown caterpillar,
and then the battle begins in earnest. Enemies,
from ants to birds, are looking for him. The
chances to ever reach the butterfly stage are not
one to one hundred, but he is bound to make
trial for that chance. He begins to gnaw the
leaf and spin a bit of web carpet to stretch him-
self upon when not at work eating. As he
feeds, his skin becomes tighter, and in four days
it bursts open and he is larger and a little
changed in color. In five days more he has
become too big for his jacket and moults again.
Then he is about one-half inch in length, quite
green with the exception of a little marking ;
this color like the leaf is a great advantage,

A BUTTERFLY. 27

now that he is quite large enough to be seen.
If he were red or black on a green leaf the
chances of escaping would be very much less.
The larger he grows the greater his danger.
But all this was understood when two hundred
eggs were laid — the number was in proportion
to the enemies and risks to be run. In four
days more the skin gives out again, it is sloughed
off and he is an inch in length, green, with a
brown head and dash of yellow in dots, with a
very few short hairs. The moulting business is
almost complete, and still he is a long way from
a butterfly. It has been a dangerous journey
thus far, helplessly hanging to a leaf in the
presence of enemies, but if he were to take an-
other step out in the open all would be over
with him. If he moulted and showed his sprout-
ing wings, yellow against the green leaves, a
bird would be blind that did not see him. When
he is a butterfly there will be no more eating
solid food with jaws, but it will be daintily
sipped through a delicate tube. To tiy to live
outside while such a change was being made
would end in starvation if death came in no
other manner. Old Nature knows the way !
So this thing must be done in a sealed up cham-
ber. No eye shall look in upon the mystery of
transformation by which this lowly grub is to

28 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

become a winged beauty caressing the clover
and lilacs, and slanting down the sunbeams on
gilded vans. Before the next step is taken the
caterpillar makes himself fast by a loop of web
to a leaf, or leafstalk, or twig, and becomes by
another change a chrysalis — a hard shell with
a blunt end for the head, outlines of cases under
which the wings will grow, and all of a dull old-
gold color, with the tail end fastened by web to
the leaf or twig, looking like an Indian pappoose
on its mother's back. It has now to run the
risks of hungry birds for many months till the
next spring. More than that, there are small
flies all fitted with hollow drills, to make holes
in this chrysalis, and through these drills shoot
their eggs into what promised to become a but-
terfly, and under the new arrangement will
only furnish food for another insect. Such are
Nature's ways, and, begin where we will to in-
vestigate her, she presently leads us into worlds
of wonders, where the wisest of mortals is a
stranger.

One might conclude that the object of Nature
was to create a beautiful butterfly to enjoy itself
playing hide-and-seek among the flowers, sipping
their sweets and bathing in the sunshine. One
might think that these crawling caterpillars are
only steps to this beautiful and delightful end.

A BUTTERFLY. 29

The hard facts do not agree with such conclu-
sions. There are butterflies that never feed at
all, because they have no proper mouth for the
purpose ; they mate, and lay eggs, and starve to
death in a few days. Moths are mere nightflying
butterflies, and there are moths, like the well-
known gypsy moth, of which the female, a beau-
tiful creature, lays her eggs a few hours after
coming out of the chrysalis, and lingers near
them, and dies in a few days without feeding,
although she has the means to do so. The males
live on a much longer time.

There is a species of moths to be found in this
Province of which the female never has wings,
but lays eggs the same, while the male is
decked out in pretty buff-brown wings, enjoying
life in moth fashion. This has no common
name. It is known as Orygia leucostigma.

Again, there are caterpillars that actually lay
eggs without mating, and these eggs produce
other caterpillars that produce butterflies. This
is evidently a move to keep from being utterly
extinguished by their enemies. Then, there are
moths that never mate and yet produce eggs
that are fertile, but the caterpillars are apt to be
mostly all of one sex.

There are a great many small flies that drill
holes in the eggs and in the chrysalis of butter-

30 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

flies and moths, and by so doing they keep down
these crawling pests, that would otherwise give
us much more trouble than they do. In New
England, and especially Massachusetts, there is
a small moth that was brought from Europe
thirty yeai-s ago by a French naturalist in order
to make some experiments about its ability to
spin web useful for making silk. Three or four
of these insects escaped in the town of Medford.
In ten years they began to make trouble, as their
caterpillars fed on almost all kinds of leaves and
they gained in numbers. In twenty years they
were very destructive in Medford and had ex-
tended in small numbers to other localities, and
there was a fight kept up by owners of orchards,
and gardens, and woodlands ; but still the enemy
increased. Nine years ago the State Legislature
was petitioned to find some means to abate this
scourge. Twenty-five thousand dollars was
voted to be expended in fighting this enemy.
The next year fifty thousand dollars was voted for
this war fund, and the battle raged with fire and
poisons and tar, but the caterpillars continued
to increase.

In 1892 the Legislature voted seventy-five
thousand dollars for the annual " Gypsy Moth
Fund," as it was called. In 1893 it was infesting
thirty cities and towns, and laying waste the

A BUTTERFLY. 31

country, and the Legislature voted one hundred
thousand dollars to carry on the war. During
1892 and 1893 the committee in charge of the
work asked for much more than they received.
In 1894 one hundred thousand was again voted*
Then it was considered of national importance,
and Congress was petitioned to come to the
aid from the National Treasury, and forty thou-
sand dollars was voted. In 1895 Massachusetts
voted one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for
that year, and three hundred men were constantly
in the fight with these caterpillars, eggs, and
moths. Since that date the sum has increased,
and now the Legislature is petitioned for about
five hundred thousand dollars to be expended in
the expectation that this pest may be got under
so it may be kept there for a few thousand a year.
I tell this story to show how easy it is for
even a single species of insect to destroy all
crops. It is only by the help of birds and other
insects that destroy their eggs and caterpillars
that man is able to live on this earth. If the
gypsy moth had not been opposed wholesale
there would not be a living orchard or green bit
of woodland in New England to-day, and it
would be useless to plant a crop.

OAK APPLES.

"IT la impossible to walk across so much as a rood of the natural
earth, with mind unagitated and rightly poised, without receiving
strength from some stone, flower, leaf or sound, nor without a sense
as of dew falling on you out of the sky." -DE. SAMUEL JOHNSOX.

AS I jogged along this cool autumn morning
more than once I pulled up my faithful
old horse and got out. He had by long experi-
ence become acquainted with my habits, as I
had his. He did not approve of my liking to
investigate so many things by the wayside.
His preference was to go straight on to the end
of the journey, and he followed me with his
eyes reprovingly till I took my seat again.
This morning seemed a favorable time to col-
lect some objects of interest. There were plenty
of them, and well worth study and observation.
I could have had empty bird's-nests, telling
much of the little builders. I could have had
toadstools of various species, all of them with
curious histories and habits; but coming upon
some "oak apples," I filled a pocket with the

OAK APPLES. 33

hollow things and went my way, and now we
will discuss them.

I recall that when I was a boy it seemed
singular to me that such a plump, tight, invit-
ing looking fruit with a nice name was clearly
no apple at all, and utterly unfit to eat. When
broken open it proved to be nearly all shell.
In the centre of it was a spidery looking lump,
hard and woody. If some person had come
forward and explained the difficulty how gladly
would he have been received, but the aptitudes
and eager curiosity of children are but little
heeded, and if all taste and talent are not either
quenched by open rebuke or servile drudgery it
is because some finer traits can survive even the
most unfriendly treatment.

We will now cut open this apple and take
out this spider-like core and carefully open it.
Separating it into several pieces we find three
or four small grubs, alive and active. The first
question is to learn how they got there. There
are no holes through which they entered. They
were hatched from eggs where they are. Now
there are flies that lay their eggs in apple
blossoms just where the tiny apples begin, and
these hatch, and hence the worms in the
apples.

The same takes place in other fruit. Here

34 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

in the oak apple we have in the grubs, the
young of a small fly. The female has a hollow
drill connected with the eggs in her body. She
is a gall-fly, and the proper name of these
apples is gall. When the season comes around
the gall-fly finds an oak-tree, and in a tiny grow-
ing leaf or twig she drills a hole and shoots into
it her eggs, three or four in number, and then
repeats the operation. Now we may use a needle
and prick a bud or leaf, and do what we will in
that way there is only a slight scar left ; but the
work of that drill, finer than a cambric needle,
has changed the mode of growth — apparently
poisoned the delicate cell-structure. Quickly
following the wound the swelling begins, and
the result of it is this globular shell, with kernel
at the centre of very rich food for grubs, much
more nutritious than the leaves of the oak, and
there is nothing for them to do but eat and
grow fat. This is followed up with occasional
moulting of the old skin, till another stage is
reached, when they become pupae, do themselves
up in tiny cases, and wait for wings and other
organs like their parents. When this is done
they gnaw out of their prison, and join their
kind in the outside world. The fly is about
one-quarter of an inch in length. It is not dif-
ficult to get them by plucking the green apples

OAK APPLES. 35

and keeping them in a box till they come out.
Now there are very many species of gall-flies,
but each kind has its own tree, or shrub, or
plant in which the eggs are placed. Here, then,
we have in this oak gall a most curious and
interesting object. It turns out to be an in-
habited house provided with food for tiny help-
less creatures, that, so far as we can see, serve
no useful purpose, and have no great enjoyment
of existence. But the fact is that here is a well-
devised plan in their interest. The mother, a
small four-winged fly, is provided with an egg-
depositor and drill combined, most delicate and
ingeniously contrived and constructed for its pur-
pose. This tool would be of no value without
intelligence to use it, and therefore we have in
this mere mote, the faculty to distinguish an
oak-tree from others, and the skill to get the
drill in place and make a proper use of it when
there. Shall we go further and say that she
knows the eggs she never saw will produce
grubs that must have food and shelter ? If she
does know that, then is she endowed with some
higher faculty than we are ; if she does not,
then she is a machine, acting because she must
and not because she wills. If we flinch about
accepting that view, we are at once driven to
the same thing with the oak-tree that becomes

36 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

a party to this transaction, and helps to carry
out the plan ; and we cannot well hold that the
tree exercises any will in the matter, but it
must do the proper thing when operated on, or
the drill is in vain. This tool implies the help-
ful co-operation of the tree ; with that under-
standing it was constructed, and the oak lives
strictly up to the terms, and becomes foster-
mother to the brood of an insect, that wounds
and poisons the wound to start the apple or
gall. This is the golden rule in practice where
one would least expect to find it. Say the
Hindoo scriptures :

"Be like the sandal-tree that perfumes the
ax that cuts it ; but the oak, with injured cells,
pierced by this Cynlps confluent^ proceeds at
once to build a neat, safe house, and stores
around the eggs a concentrated food, and intro-
duces a bitter element into the apple shell, to
make it distasteful to birds and squirrels, and
grows horns and legs in the cradle of the grubs
in order that no prying jay or woodpecker shall
try to swallow it."

Here we are dealing with small objects as we
are wont to measure them, but they are deeply
involved with great questions. Saturn and his
rings and moons in all their stately grandeur
are not invested with the reverent interest

OAK APPLES. 37

awakened by this tiny gall, that we crush in
our fingers, or pass unheeded in our walks
abroad.

We are not yet at the end of our story. If
we collect a dozen or more of these oak apples,
and keep them in boxes till the flies appear —
and that may be over winter in some instances
— we will be quite sure to find that there are
at least two species, looking very much alike to
untrained eyes. One of these is a gall-fly, the
other is a guest-fly — he is an uninvited guest of
the owners of the gall. He is the offspring of a
mother that could drill a hole and lay her eggs
in a gall after it was started, but had no power
to begin one on her own account. She prob-
ably lacks the poison organ for such an opera-
tion. Here, then, is a creature equipped with a
fine arrangement to take advantage of the co-
operation of the oak-tree and gall-fly, and make
them provide for her brood. There seems to be
a moral disorder in nature : there is no sense of
fair play ; pirates and plunderers and parasites
abound everywhere. These guest-flies are a nu-
merous race, living always as young ones on the
ready-made galls, or often grubs of the gall-
makers.

Not without some service to mankind are
these oak galls. They have long been used in

38 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

the preparation of the best inks, and still are an
article of commerce. They are produced in
Asia Minor in a species of oak. Shakespeare

" Thither write, my queen,

And with mine eyes I'll drink the words you send,
Though ink be made of gall."

HARES.

'• THE origin, history, and structure of animals, their habits, senses,
and intelligence, offer an endless field of interest and wonder."—
LUBBOCK.

ALL the year through rabbits, or properly
hares, are common objects on the Molega
Road. In the spring, when the grass starts up
by the wayside, there is a standing invitation to
these little creatures to come and partake of this
new bounty of nature. No doubt it is a very
delicious change from the steady diet of twigs
and bark. They have become very tame, and
do not run away at the approach of teams, but
merely take a few leaps to one side. I some-
times see them in playful mood, bounding here
and there about each other like lambs. Mornings
and evenings are the best times to find them, for
they do not often venture from their " forms "
or hiding places later in the day. The hare has
had his part in superstitious whims of people.
It is a wide-spread belief in many portions of
Europe that witches transform themselves into
hares, and it is generally considered a bad sign

40 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

to meet one. "Melancholy as a hare" is the
way Shakespeare has it, and he is always in touch
with the common people and all their sayings.
After the little fellow was dead, then there was
a better opinion of him, as often turns out with
mortal man. The great Francis Bacon tells us
with due solemnity that " The brains of hares are
very serviceable for strengthening the memory
and brightening up the faculties," when made
into a palatable dish. If there is any truth in
his assertion, he should have strongly recom-
mended a liberal diet of that sort of thing to
most people. Another old English writer gravely
tells us that " The knee-bone of a hare taken
out when the animal is alive, and worne about
the necke, is excellente against convulsive fits."
There was scant consideration for the poor brute
in that remedy. To carry in the pocket the
right foot of a hare was once considered a fine
remedy for rheumatism. It might answer such
a purpose. Horse-chestnuts, or a potato carried
in a pocket for rheumatism, have worked like
charms, and that is the virtue of the cure, —
their faith has made them whole. One can
see now, in 1899, the fore feet of rabbits,
mounted in silver, and offered for sale in shop
windows of Boston as charms much in use by
smart people.

HARES. 41

But we will return to .Molega Road and its
attractions. In the winter twilight one may see
them quietly browsing, or bounding here and
there as noiseless as ghosts. They have a habit
of taking a course through the bushes where
there is the least obstruction of limbs, and thus
beat out paths through the moss, and in the
winter through the snow. They prefer to run
in these paths, and turn out here and there to
feed. Boys are aware of their habits, and easily
snare them by placing a small pole across the
path and tying a wire snare to it, and sticking
some brush cunningly on each side of the snare
to hold it steady, and bar up all other ways but
the one through the snare. Now Bunny could
jump over the pole with the greatest ease, but
he will not ; he stops, lays his ears well kick,
and carefully puts his head into the snare as if
he were bent on committing suicide. In a
moment the fatal noose is tightened about his
neck, he jumps here and there in the most frantic
fashion, and ends by strangling. The owner of
the snare finds him in the morning, a few feet
from the path, all " drawn up " and frozen, even
to his eyes. Sometimes the snare is tied to a
bent sapling, and the rabbit in his struggle sets
it free, only to find himself dangling in mid-air.
Either his meat, or his fur, or both, is the

42 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

temptation to take his life, and the average
boy has no " bowels of compassion " for wild
animals. The boys seem to have all had the
apostolic vision, and heard the command, " Rise,
Peter, kill and eat."

Hares are not very intelligent creatures any-
where, and our species is no exception to the
rule. The fact is that his manner of life is
against him. For hundreds of thousands of
years he has not done anything to add a brain
cell to his slender outfit. The fossil remains of
this family are found in ancient rocks of the
Tertiary Time, in Dacotah and elsewhere. He
has changed somewhat in structure since then,
but his teeth indicate that his feeding habits
have not changed. In the many divisions and
subdivisions of the quadruped mammalian life,
that come about largely through struggle for
existence, the hare family was evolved, or slowly
formed, with adaptations to eat and thrive upon
food that existed in plenty, and for wliich it
would not have to dispute with other animals.
Tender twigs and leaves, and wild grasses and
barks of trees, all of them the products of waste
places, were things he desired for food. To
secure them no planning was needed, no demand
was made for intelligence. A few leaps here
and there, and he could fill himself like an ox

HARES. 43

with this coarse food, and retire into his hiding
place a whole day while it digested. Under
such circumstances jio animal advances in brain
capacity. Such gifts of the brain are won out
of the stress, and struggle, and makeshifts that
our most intelligent creatures have experienced.
The species of animal that does not feel the
spur of necessity urging the use of brain power
will either remain comparatively stupid, or de-
generate into deformed parasites. It is a stern
law of nature that the possessor of one tal-
ent must put it out at some kind of profit, or
even that shall be taken away. Says Josh
Billings, " Them as has gets." Rabbits find life
too easy. They fulfil the promise of the Psalm-
ist, " The meek shall eat and be satisfied." If
it is just as well to be stupid and filled to the
throat with bark and browse as it is to be smart
and clever, then " Br. Rabbit " needs no sym-
pathy. The old Romans had a saying, that " He
who knows nothing spends the happiest life."
That may be true, but what is the quality of
the "happiness ? Is it not more desirable to be
Newton, demonstrating the problems of plane-
tary movements, than it is to be a toad under a
leaf absorbed in catching bugs and beetles?
One truth can be clearly made out in the study
of organic life, and it is this : Through millions

44 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

of years living forms have become more complex
and more intelligent, until man emerges from
the process, and asks, "From whence have I
come and whither am I going ? " One may fairly
hold, in view of this fact, that to become more
intelligent is advancement for any animal ; to
become less intelligent is to go backward and
fall out of line, and lose rank in the march of
life. Compared with a weasel, or a mink, or a
fox, or a crow, our rabbit is an idiot. All of
these creatures live on concentrated food, and
they are busy in search of it, with their senses
alert. This hare family are great for multiply-
ing and replenishing the earth. Two and three
litters in a season, and several in a litter, is the
regular practice. If it were not for their ene-
mies they would soon drive us from our farms.
If these animals were creatures of more brains
there would be fewer young. The power of
reproduction is gauged and proportioned to the
dangers that are sure to make an end of many
of them before arriving at maturity. A codfish
produces a half-million eggs and only two es-
cape to replace the parents. The number of
eggs indicates the perils that beset them. English
rabbits, not hares, were taken out to Australia
where nature had not produced any. They
were innocent pets, but they soon spread abroad,

HAEES. 45

and began to possess the land as if the promise
that "the meek shall inherit the earth" was
intended only for themselves. They grew into
vast armies, eating every green thing that
seemed good for them. In spite of guns, and
dogs, and fences by the thousands of miles,
they could not be kept within bounds. Now
they are killed and dressed wholesale and re-
turned to England for food purposes.

Our species is not a rabbit, but a hare. There
are no rabbits in America, but tame ones
brought here for pets. They belong to the
same family or group, called Leporidce, but
there are marked differences in structure. Rab-
bits have shorter ears and shorter hinder legs
than hares. Rabbits bring forth their young
naked in underground burrows, while hares
give birth to fur-covered young in open " forms "
or partially exposed coverts. As a family the
hares are widely distributed, even extending far
up into the treeless polar regions, where they
manage to subsist on the dwarf Arctic vegeta-
tion. There are about twenty-five species in all
the world.

I notice that our "rabbits," as we will call
them, are evidently on the lookout for enemies,
that may at any time attack them. Owls,
hawks, wild-cats, foxes, and weasels are all dis-

46 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

posed to kill and eat them. Nature takes many
plans to preserve her various species as long as
possible. In the case of the rabbit Nature de-
cided that he shall not fight. She made a non-
combatant of him, and " his table is always pre-
pared in the presence of his enemies," and this
fact is never forgotten by him. He depends
upon his eyes and ears to warn him of danger,
and then he depends on his hinder legs to take
him away from it. It is not often he is caught
in a race for life, but he is still-hunted and
pounced upon suddenly. Nature has provided
another protection in their changing color with
the seasons. Doubtless brown is the true color,
and white is a seasonal accommodation answer-
ing protective purposes. Where there is no
snow to speak of they do not become white. In
fact our rabbits are only white on the tips of
the hairs. I have seen one kept in confinement
turn white on all the hinder parts in one night.
In the grouse family the ptarmigans change
color in the same way. In the Arctic regions,
where they live, their greatest enemies are the
foxes, but they, too, become white in winter
from bluish in summer, and this becomes a
very favorable feature, enabling them to creep
unperceived on their prey. Arctic wolves and
bears and owls are also white. Ravens are com-

HARES. 47

mon in the same regions, and I hardly need to
say how black they are. For them to change
would serve no useful purpose, for they very
largely live on dead carcasses cast up by the
waves, or on young birds in their nests, or their
eggs. The polar bear remains white in all
seasons, and that color may well be the work of
natural selection, but the change of color is a
subject that needs more light thrown on it by
careful study.

It would seem to be the most in line with
observations that the change of color is due to
the effect of cold on the fur, by which it reflects
all the light instead of a portion of it. That the
change is beneficial to the hares is very certain,
but that it was brought about for their benefit
is not at all clear. It would be a good thing
for our partridges, but they have got along
without it, although their cousins, the ptarmi-
gans of Newfoundland and Quebec, have the
advantage of this seasonal change of color. It
may be asked, of what benefit is it to inquire
about such matters ? Why not say, God willed
it that hares should turn white in winter and
brown in summer? If a very ingenious man
made a wonderful piece of machinery and
showed it to me, and I merely remarked that I
knew he was clever enough to make such a

48 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

thing, and never looked into it further, it would
be a very stupid, discourteous treatment of the
inventor. We often treat the Maker of all
things no better. When the Creator produces,
as he always does, vast numbers more than can
live, then we may well inquire by what means
some survive, and through what causes others
die before reaching adult life. We shall find
that the fittest survive, those that have some
advantage of teeth, or strength, or swiftness, or
weapons, or ability to get food, or keep out of
sight, etc. The smallest advantage will be
of great service, and may win the race of life,
when competition is so close. When one thou-
sand men start together for a foot-race, it will
be decided by perhaps less than a quarter of an
inch ; had there been but ten, the victor would
probably have gained by many feet.

WEASELS.

"SAUCY and as quarrelsome as a weasel." —SHAKE SPEARK.

WEASELS do not appear to be common
with us, or iii fact anywhere. This
winter morning I saw one dodging in and out a
pile of snow-covered brush. All his upper parts
were nearly as white as the snow, his thighs and
under portions a sulphury-yellowish, the tip of
his tail jet-black. This is the ermine weasel,
Putorius erminea. We are credited by writers
with another species, Putorius vulgarly about
the same size, with a shorter tail, no sulphur-
yellowish, no black on the tip of the tail. If
we have this latter species it must be much
rarer than the former, which I will proceed to
discuss. This white dress is the weasel's winter
coat, as most people know, but it is not generally
observed that his under parts are always white
or yellowish-white. In the warm season he is a
mahogany brown on the back and sides. This
change of color is worth consideration. There
can be no question but the change is a decided

50 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

advantage to the weasel. He lives by hunting,
and to be as white as the snow prevents his
intended victims from readily seeing him. The
under portion of his body is not exposed, and
summer and winter remains unchanged. Where
there is little or no snow these animals retain
the brown and white all the year. There is
some question whether the white is a new hair
in the fall, and the brown a new coat in the
spring. I think the truth is that the old coat
turns rapidly white with cold weather, but this
is replaced by a new brown one in the spring.
If we got at the roots of this matter of change,
it seems to me it would be found that the whiten-
ing is due to the cold; that it serves a good
purpose for the animal — is rather a lucky hit for
him than a providential purpose. Brutes, as
well as other people, find luck in their favor
sometimes. If it is providential design, why
not bestow it upon our red squirrels and par-
tridges, and all winter birds and beasts? It
would be a fine tiling for them all. If it were
not for this advantage in color, the weasel
would not be found among the snow. It is
hard enough, as matters stand for him, to make
a living, but without this advantage the unequal
fight would be useless. This animal is able to
stay just because he is helped out by his natural

WEASELS. ' 51

variation of color. In all living creatures one
sees adaptations of many kinds to enable them
to secure their prey or hide from their enemies,
but nowhere is man and a snare, or a trap, or a
shotgun taken into account with them. This
shows that we are the latest arrivals. Before our
coming it was all scratching and biting and run-
ning and hiding ; but the human animal twisted
a withe handle around a stone and made a club,
tied string to a limb and made a bow, dug a
pit and covered it for a trap ; in short, he turned
mind and wit against the shaggy horde and
mastered them. I am led to this remark by the
fact that this beautiful mimicry of the snow in
the white of the weasels, that proved so advan-
tageous to them, has been the cause of their
greatest slaughter ; for men took a fancy to the
dainty ermine fur, and countless numbers have
been killed to satisfy the demand.

So Nature provided the Arctic seals with beau-
tiful close, soft fur, but human animals were
not anticipated, who would kill them to the last
pup and pelt for this gift of Mother Nature to
her four-footed children. Birds of such delight-
ful plumage that millions of years have been
covered while natural forces were at work per-
fecting them ; but man comes on the scene,
exclaims, " This is all mine ! " and, the primitive

52 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

savage that he is, kills the most beautiful birds
to make a head-dress for himself and a girdle
for his swarthy mate ; and although many,
many thousands of years have passed away
since then, still the finest feathered gems are
sacrificed to the lingering love of ornament and
display.

But we will not forget my weasel ! I am
bound to confess, despite his pure, innocent
matching of the " beautiful snow," that he is
far from attractive. There is something serpent-
like in his aspect and general make-up. His
flat, triangular, rattlesnake head, almost de-
formed by great jaw muscles, is set on his long
neck with a vicious cant like a hoe on a handle ;
his beady black eyes seem so eager and wakeful
that one may well believe that it would be hard
" to catch a weasel asleep." There is nothing
frolicsome and prankish in his appearance.
Keen, inquisitive, restless, bloodthirsty, cruel,
courageous, these describe his leading character-
istics. He is a creature of solitary habits, pre-
fers his own company to any other, and shares
neither his luck nor his misery with another.
No other animal of its size is possessed of such
audacious pluck. They will seize a rabbit, or
partridge, or hen, and overmaster them in many
instances. When it comes to eating they pre-

WEASELS. 53

fer the brains and next the blood. When neither
of these dainties are to be had they will take
the next best. Young birds in their nests, mice
and rats and insects, all are appreciated. Squir-
rels fall victims to their rapacity, especially the
striped squirrel, for he dives into a hole, and
there his pursuer will finish him. He can also
climb a tree, and swim a stream. When he is in
especial good luck, and kills several mice and birds
within a small space, he drags them together,
perhaps to better guard them, perhaps to make
a better showing and please his pride. When
his larder is full, and he has a bit to spare, he
buries it out of sight — a very common and wide-
spread instinct. Sometimes a mousing hawk
or owl seizes a weasel in his claws, and flies
away to make a meal of him ; unless he has
been careful about securing his head and neck,
he will get even by eating into the vitals of
his captor and bring him to the ground in a
death struggle, while he gets off with a few
scratches and lives to feast on the brains of his
big enemy. If revenge is sweet, then the little
fellow has his morsel well sauced with it.

Among the delicacies of weasels, one must
not forget to mention eggs of birds and fowl.
Shakespeare, who was once a countiy boy, and
knew all the beasts and birds and plants and

54 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

creeping things, makes Jacques say in "As
You Like It":

" I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks
eggs."

And again in " Henry V " :

" For once the eagle England being in prey,
To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot
Conies sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs."

It is a rare find to come across a nest- full of
young weasels ; the mother seeks out a place in
a hollow log, or beneath stones or trees, and
there gives birth to four or five young, and this
occurs early in the season. They have been
found when the mother was white in winter
dress. She is a bold defender of her young to
the utmost. In some localities more than one
litter is born in a season. Such rapid multipli-
cation of a creature like this ought to make
them very abundant, but they are not. It is a
very interesting question, what keeps them
in check ? So many young in a litter indicates
a special danger, but I hardly know an enemy
but mankind, and but few are destroyed with
us by traps or guns. They are strong, hardy,
acute animals favored by changing colors, and
food enough and to spare, and yet not one iu

WEASELS. 55

four of their young comes to maturity. Evi-
dently here is opportunity to learn something
of interest.

In North America there are several species
of weasel, and a larger relative, the American
blackfooted stoat, twenty inches in length.
This animal is found in Kansas and other West-
ern States. It is rare, in fact very rare, and
seems to live mostly on the little rodents known
as prairie dogs. These live in underground
burrows, congregating into villages, where grass
can be found for food. The stoat attacks them
in their dens, although they are nearly as large,
with teeth like rats, and disposed to use them
when cornered. Great numbers of weasel skins
were once sent to Europe from the Hudson Bay
region with other furs, but now they are not in
much demand.

SPIDERS.

" THE spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in king'i palaces. —
PROVERBS xxx, 28.

OF all the little folks about us but few are
more common than spiders ; none are
better worth study, and yet they are neither
liked nor admired, and but few give them care-
ful attention. They are not properly insects
but more nearly related to scorpions and crabs.
It is a very large group, embracing many genera
and species. With rare exceptions, and they
do not exist with us, spiders are entirely harm-
less. They are not inclined to bite ; occasion-
ally they do, but I have never heard of such a
wound causing mucli pain but in one instance.
These animals are not only harmless but they
are very good friends of mankind. They live
altogether on insects except when the females
turn cannibals and devour their feebler mates.
Unless one carefully took into consideration the
great numbers of our spiders, he would scarcely
do justice to their good services in our behalf.

SPIDEKS. 57

She not only taketh hold with her hands in
king's palaces but she festoons the dingy attic
and cellars with silken nets. She covers the
fields, and pastures, and shrubs, and orchards, and
fences, with dainty traps, which are tended and
repaired and watched with hungry eyes for vic-
tims.

I have been induced to write this chapter on
account of the interesting features that come
within its scope, but perhaps it would not have
been written but for the fact that a recent early
morning ride to the mine gave me a capital op-
portunity to see spiders' webs everywhere decked
in glittering gems of dew, that served to make
them not only visible but beautiful in the level
sunbeams. They were stretched across the road
in sagging curves, threaded closely with beads
that unbraided the white light of the sunbeam,
and revealed its hidden rainbow of colors. From
naked branches and fragrant fir limbs they hung
in dainty wheels, woven in spokes and spirals,
and braced with skill and judgment. They car-
peted the unsightly brush-piles in gleaming gos-
samer. Under the magic of dew and sunshine
the works of these marvellous spinners and weav-
ers stood revealed. Many species had taken part
in the performance. Each one had its own way
of constructing a trap. All this decking the

58 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

roadside was not done with an eye to beauty ;
there was no thought about the gentle dew
adorning them with jewels; no consideration
that the sunbeams would be wrecked in their
pendant pearls, and a human eye would be there
to enjoy the spectacle. Quite otherwise: every
net had been made for the special purpose of
entangling some living thing. As a rule, only
the female spiders can make webs. The males
are smaller, slimmer, and prowl around the webs
of species smaller than their own kind, and rob
them. When pressed by hunger they will vent-
ure a combat with a female of their species, for
the sake of a meal on a captured fly. Not very
long ago I witnessed an encounter of that kind.
The female, one of the wheel-making kind, a
strong, active thing, that would more than cover
a copper cent, had made a fine trap between
two bits of a timber of a bridge. It was about
a foot across. She sat in the centre, with each
foot grasping a spoke and thus able to quickly
feel any disturbance, and ready to run toward
the point where a fly would be caught. The
twilight was over all, and spider-life was becom-
ing very active. A large male spider that had
been in hiding near the fly-trap of his relative
— one of the same species — ran quickly out on
the edge of the web, seized a thread of it and

SPIDERS. 59

jerked it rapidly, to learn if the owner was at
the centre. Neither of them could trust their
sight for that distance. The vigilant proprie-
tress seemed to know at once that this was no
struggling fly or moth. There was an unmis-
takable defiant twang of the web that told an-
other story. Her rights were evidently being
invaded. She would have twanged the spokes
herself had it been a victim, to make sure of
the impression, but now she ran straight to the
intruder. He hesitated, but concluded to fight.
They were bent on biting. Each of them sparred
for a chance to seize the other by a leg, and as
there were sixteen between the two, it was
rather spry work to take care of them. After
a fierce round of a half-minute the female drove
him to the outside ropes of the web. At that
point each one lost a leg, but like

" Worthington, of doleful dumps,
Who when his legs were smitten off,
He fought upon his stumps,"

they did not appear to notice their loss. They
would withdraw from a grapple for a few sec-
onds and then renew the combat. In one of
these mind-collecting moments the female made
a dash for the centre of the web and gathered
herself sulkingly into a vigilant attitude. The
male followed a bit into the disputed territory,

60 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

and contented himself with "daring her out"
by strumming on the cords again. She was un-
easy and angry, but as he ventured nearer there
was nothing to do but fight or retreat, so she
fairly sprang upon him. But he was not asleep ;
they clinched and kicked, and bit, till they lost
their grip on the lines and fell out of sight,
locked in as venomous and spiteful an embrace
as one could witness. Two tigers could not
have outdone them in every appearance of anger.
The female generally wins. She will kill and
eat the male who would have been the father
of her brood.

Let us go back on our track a little. When
a true bug or beetle or fly is hatched, a worm is
the first result — not a true worm but a grub,
and it matures by undergoing many changes.
A spider is born complete. As he increases in
size he sheds or moults his skin or shell like
lobsters. They have six pairs of limbs: four
pairs are used for legs; a pair of palpi, or
feelers, used also for other purposes ; a hinder
pair of legs are used to guide the thread.
They are furnished with three claws and a
brush of fine hair ; the other legs are clawed in
the same way. On the under side, a little
behind the first pair of legs, are two nostrils,
concealed by covers. At the end of the body,

SPIDERS. 61

and somewhat beneath, are the spinnerets;
there are three pairs. The webbing or silk
issues from the body through these holes and
becomes joined in one thread afterwards. It is
often asked, how spiders string their single
lines from tree-top to tree-top, across roads or
from building to building? Having crawled
up to a desirable elevation, they start the
thread either by a muscular effort or by stick-
ing the end to a limb or board, and then *« pay "
it out by using the hinder feet to pull it out of
the body. The slight wind will do the rest,
drifting it upon some holding-ground where it
ties itself. Small spiders in great numbers are
carried through the air at the end of long web-
lines.

In South America a web is made by a large
spider, in which small birds are caught and
held fast ; the owner greedily feeds on them.
To tell of all their curious and often wonderful
nests and traps would be a long story, but an
interesting and instructive one. As a rule,
spiders trail their webs along, to be ready for
any emergency. With a sudden breath you
may blow one of them from his position to give
him a fall, but it will be found that he is
dangling at the end of a thread. On the water
they are generally very much at home, and our

62 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

black water spider does not make a web, but
lurks about the shores and springs on its victim.
Here I must take leave of these most inter-
esting little animals. Their habits, instincts,
structures and dispositions are all marked with
peculiar distinctness, and a careful study of
them is no idle amusement but a pleasant and
praiseworthy task.

A GOLD MINE.

" SORELY there is a vein for silver and a place for gold where they
fine it." — JOB xxviii.

AFTER loitering so long on a road that
leads to a gold mining district it might
seem in order to devote a chapter to this natu-
ral feature of the country. Falling in with
that view I will proceed to put down what
strikes me to be the most interesting features.
If I do not succeed in making a readable
chapter for those who like this kind of literat-
ure, it will not be for lack of experience or
want of interest on my part. I do not know
of any branch of human industry where there
are such misconceptions, delusions and utter
ignorance as there is in the matter of gold min-
ing, and how gold exists in its natural condi-
tions and locations. In the first place, gold is
not a rare metal. Chemically combined with
the element chlorine it exists in all ocean water
to the value of about three cents to a ton of
water. Gold in minute quantities to the cubic

64 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

foot is often found distributed over wide ranges
of country. But to find gold, brought together
by natural operations in sufficient quantities to
mine it with profit, is the difficult point. To
find gold iii rocks or gravel is not a matter
requiring much effort. So far as we know, all
the gold that man has obtained in Nova Scotia
has either been mined out of a quartz vein or
washed out of gravel containing gold that has
been broken out of veins and washed into the
surface by natural agencies; and apparently
this is true over all the earth.

Let us first get a clear idea of a mineral vein
or lead. If the rocks of all this region were
completely stripped of the covering of gravel,
sand, mud and clay, and laid clean and naked
to view, we would see long broken ledges in
upturned positions, running easterly and west-
erly sometimes the layers would be standing
on edge, quite perpendicular, and in that case
they would be found to slant or " dip " or in-
cline, gradually increasing the slant with the
distance on both sides of the perpendicular and
in opposite directions. If you will set a book
on its edge, and then lean against it, on each
side, other books, bracing against the central
one and supporting it in place, you will then
have the position of the rocks, only the books

A GOLD MINE. 65

must slant more and more till they are flat, and
then begin to be piled up to make another book
ledge. At the point where the rocks or strata
are perpendicular it is termed an anteclinal ; at
the point where they have flattened out it is
termed a synclinal. Now from one of these
antecliuals to another the distance is generally
several miles. The ledges or strata are all of
two varieties — quartzite and slate ; they rest
against each other in alternating layers, perhaps
of a few feet, or many feet, or a few inches in
width. Both of these kinds of rocks are of
shore origin; they are sediments and sands
ground up on a seashore many million years
ago ; there can be no proper question as to this
statement. Now supposing that all the region
is bare, we would see white lines running along
between the layers of rocks ; examination would
show that they were veins of hard rock, varying
in width from a mere line to five feet, and run-
ning easterly and westerly with the ledges in
which they are enclosed. If you will put leaves
of paper and pasteboard between the books I
have imagined to be piled up, then these will
show the positions of the veins in the rocks.
Then you will see that some veins will be per-
pendicular and others more or less slanting;
these are called "regular" veins, or interstrati-

66 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

fied or interbedded veins. If all were clear as
we suppose, other veins in plenty would be seen
running in various directions and entering the
rocks at differing angles. These are known as
" angulars " or " crossleads." In both kinds of
leads or veins they are formed of white quartz
or silica.

In conditions like we have here imagined,
where nothing would hide the solid surface of
rocks, there would be no great difficulty for the
" first comers " to locate a gold mine that would
be a fortune in itself. It would only be neces-
sary to examine these white lines of outcrop-
ping quartz veins, where gold would be found
in some of them, and then select the richest
veins. As matters now stand, the once bare
rocks and veins are covered throughout the
district, with few exceptions, with an average
depth of seven or eight feet of gravel, sand
and clay. In places this superficial deposit is
fifty feet deep. Of course all this upper mate-
rial is made up of other rocks broken into dif-
ferent degrees of fineness. The underlying
" bed rock " or " country rock " belongs to the
Silurian group, and therefore to be reckoned
among the earliest of water-made or sediment-
ary formations ; but this overlying material, in
which all the vegetable life is rooted, is com-

A GOLD MINE. 67

paratively fresh and new. It is the scattered
debris of the great Ice Age, that closed some-
where within one hundred thousand years,
reasoning from many data. When that reign
of cold prevailed a body of snow, compressed
into ice several thousand feet in thickness,
covered all the northern portion of North
America, and this locality was included. This
ice sheet or glacier moved very slowly — a few
inches in a day — in a southeasterly direction
to the ocean. It was continually fed by snows.
In this movement over the naked rocks it car-
ried along fragments of them, frozen in its
embrace, and broke off and pushed forward the
more exposed projecting veins and ledges. Al-
though no historian of that time wrote this
down in a book for us to consult, still Nature
herself made a record, readily interpreted and
destined to outlast mankind and all his works.
The proof is very simple. Let me illustrate:
If any one of us had ever seen and carefully
observed a bear and his tracks, and afterwards
went into another country and saw bear tracks
about the woods, he would know the animal
had been where he made and left the impres-
sions of his feet. Now there are immense
glaciers in Greenland, Alaska and other Polar
regions. Of smaller dimensions they are found

68 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

in the Swiss Alps and other mountains. We
know his tracks ; we can see what he does ;
and we find the same tracks abundant here on
these " Molega Barrens " and all over northern
North America.

I would not tell this story about the glacier
only that it explains the prospector's mode of
operation. In looking for a gold-bearing vein
we seek for fragments of quartz on the surface,
among the bushes and bracken, and when found
they are broken and examined. These pieces
of quartz are known as " float " or " drift," and
when a promising bit is found the prospector
looks northward for more; if he finds other
portions of the vein he continues northward
until no more are to be found on top of ground;
then he begins to dig a trench, still going north-
ward, and, if he succeeds, the vein will be
found anywhere from twenty-five to several
hundred feet from where the last "float" was
obtained on the surface. The reason why the
prospector goes northward is because experience
has taught him that the fragments of the vein
are always south of it. Here science steps in
and explains that the glacier was the cause that
broke the vein and carried its fragment in its
course, and was aided by the rushing floods that
moved seaward too, when the Glacial Period

A GOLD MINE. 69

slowly came to a close, after existing several
thousand years. These quartz veins are the
meeting-places of the metals all over the world.
In them are huddled minerals of almost all
known varieties. The metals seem to have their
loves or affinities. Never yet was gold found
without a trace or more of silver intermingled.
Like Ruth with Naomi, there is a tacit declara-
tion that " Whither thou goest I will go, and
where thou lodgest I will lodge." Gold, as
found in nature, anywhere out of the ocean, is
always uncorabined with any other element.
With silver it is simply alloyed. In these veins
at Molega it is associated with base metals, that
exist as sulphides. We have chemically com-
bined these : sulphur and iron, or iron pyrites,
sulphur and lead, or galena, sulphur and zinc,
or blende or " black jack " of the miners ; sul-
phur, iron and copper, or copper pyrites, sulphur,
iron and arsenic, or mispicked or " white iron "
of the miners. These minerals occur as crystals,
distributed in varying quantities through the
vein-matter or quartz. The visible gold is to
be found usually, either actually in contact with
these minerals or very near them. Always
there is fine invisible gold caught in the crystals
of these base metals. The quantity varies from
twenty dollars to two hundred dollars or more

YO IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

a ton, over all the Province of Nova Scotia. Here
on these Molega ores it is about twenty dollars,
and since it is too fine to save in a stamp-mill
it is lost, and can only be saved by a chemical
process. This fine gold was entrapped in these
base-metal crystals when they were formed from
solutions that contained the dissolved silica and
all its associates in the vein.

It will now be in order to say something about
the origin of these quartz veins, that prove so
useful to mankind that without them we would
not be able to have gold and silver, and copper
and tin, and antimony and zinc, and many other
metals. Iron ore also occurs very largely in
veins. The metals might have existed in the
same quantities, and yet be either dissolved in
water or scattered in minute quantities through
vast strata of rocks. In just those conditions they
once existed, and the ocean is the great storehouse
of precious metals held in solution, and all the
veins in the world contain but a very small per-
centage of what is distributed through the rocky
crust. I know of no other natural feature that
seems so clearly to indicate a preparation for
the human race as these storehouses of metals —
these hoards of needed material — brought to-
gether by the subtle action of chemical laws
working with physical conditions of the crust

A GOLD MINE. 71

of the earth. Without iron and steel mankind
does not advance above barbarism. To conquer
the material world he must have tools and
machinery. Without metals mankind could
neither make a conquest of material nature nor
extricate himself from the lower brute stratum
of life, and without the metals brought together
in veins it would be impossible to obtain them.
Thus, " On small hinges turn great doors." All
veins mark the places of rents or cracks in the
rocks ; no matter whether they are great fissure
veins many miles in length, and from ten to two
or three hundred feet in width in places, or
whether they are only a few feet in length and
thinner than a knife blade, the origin is the
same ; they are healed rents.

For the most part, over all the earth this
mending or healing the wound is done with
silica or quartz. This is a very common mineral,
entering largely into the composition of almost
all kinds of rocks. It is one of nature's main
materials used in the construction of this earth.
When analyzed by a chemist it is found to be
made of two elements, namely, oxygen, on which
we depend for the breath of life, and silicon, a
metal never found outside of the clutches of this
terrible oxygen. They are interlocked in an
embrace that was formed when the earth was

72 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

a fluid mass ; it will not be broken till the ele-
ments shall " melt with fervent heat " and our
planet reduced to vapors again. Here in the
quartz of the world is oxygen sufficient for
another atmosphere ; but it is " retired from cir-
culation " ; its terrors are masked and bound by
silicon, its affinity. Free in the air, where it is
intermingled with nitrogen, its activities produce
the heat in all animals, the flames of all fires, the
rust on all metals. It gives color to the blood
that blushes on a maiden's cheek, kindles the
first breath of all infancy, and feeds the torch of
life to the last throb of vitality. It dissolves
into elemental stuff the lifeless bodies of all
creatures. It builds and burns with ceaseless
activity and awful energy, tearing down moun-
tains, roaring in the volcano's throat, and yet
tending the vital flame in the tiniest insects and
pulsing through microscopic structures where
all life would cease without its tireless ministra-
tions.

Such, then, is this beneficent but awful
agency meekly slumbering in this flint, or
quartz, or silica that makes up the material of
our veins. Mingled through it are the other
minerals, and gold among them. Nothing can
be clearer than this to an observer. This quartz
was not melted when the metals were introduced

A GOLD MINE. 73

into it ; in that case they would be arranged in
layers according to their specific gravity or
weight, but they are not. Then, again, the most
delicate crystals and threads of gold are mingled
and interlaced in such ways that a melted mass
forced up into the rents would not permit
to form. The explanation is that the quartz was
introduced into all veins either from below
through the agencies of hot water and steam, in
which it and all its metals were dissolved, or it
oozed from the walls out of the surrounding
rocks, through which there is always a circulation
of water. There are abundant reasons for this ex-
planation, but here there is no space for stating
them. At the Steamboat Hot Springs of Nevada
this making a quartz vein with metallic contents
is going on to-day, and open to all observers, and
it is accomplished as I have indicated.

Now for a little further notice about gold. It
is mined with drills, picks and shovels, and
dynamite in the hands of strong, hardy men.
They do not "dig" gold only in gravel deposits.
With us the quartz is blasted out, and hauled to
a stamping-mill or crusher, where it is pounded
into sand by stamps weighing about nine hun-
dred pounds each. The gold is thus cleared
from the quartz, melted into bars, and sold in
New York to the United States Government.

LUNCH BY THE BROOKSIDE.

" AND this our life, exempt from public haunts,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything." — SHAKESPEARE.

AT a distance of more than a mile in the
Molega Road is the crossing of a small
brook on a pole bridge. At this point the stream,
about a rod in width, is gently running over a
gravel bed, and half hiding in the bushes as it
makes its way to the river, nearly a mile away.
For a small part of that distance it tumbles along
the margin of a neglected field, and then dives
into the primeval forests of birch, oaks, hemlocks
and firs, carpeted with mosses and hung with
lichens.

Reaching the edge of the wood before it does
the river it leaves the shadows, and with many
a turn and twist, through a stretch of meadow,
where the hardbacks and the polypods fringe its
banks, and the herons hide, and bittens boom, it
joins at last " the brimming river. " Slyly glid-
ing behind a little hemlock islet it there mingles
its waters with the greater stream.

LUNCH BY THE BKOOKSIDE. 75

But let us return to the little bridge. From
the northward comes the brook, winding here
and there through meadow and swamp, from its
source miles away among the hills and barrens.
For the most part of the distance it has loitered
through meadows, where it becomes deep and
smooth — a beautiful mirror reflecting the upper
world in softened shades, where the sky is a ten-
derer blue, and shrubs and grass and trees are
therein pictured with a softening touch of beauty.
Hither come the herons to dress their plumes,
the swallows to run down their prey, and the
dragon-flies all day long court this " amorous
looking-glass " in many a wayward dash and turn.

But I must not loiter also. Here, then, betwixt
the road and a pole dam, we will rest and re-
fresh ourselves with the water at our feet. There
are so many native inhabitants of this spot that
one will needs be blind not to heed them. With-
out stirring ten rods away one might find enough
of life to employ him for years in observing it
and writing down what he learned. At a vent-
ure, within a circle of ten rods in diameter grow
fifty different species of plants or vegetable life ;
of animal life, including birds and beasts and in-
sects of all kinds, there are still more. One may
sit on this tiny rustic bridge, and luxuriously hang
his legs over the end of it, till his feet almost

76 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

touch the water, where the long-legged skippers
are hurrying in hasty skating-like strides hither
and thither. These are a species of bugs. There
is a rather large family of them. The older name
of our species is Gf-erris remiges. If one will throw
crumbs of bread to them they will eagerly seize
bits of it and scurry away as fast as possible.
Some of them are provided with wings, but I have
never yet observed one of them fl}'ing. About
midsummer one may see myriads of young ones,
small copies of the parents. They are all sharp-
sighted and quick to move on the appearance of
danger from below or above, especially from the
water. It is very interesting to notice how their
feet press the water into little dimples, but do
not become wet and sink into it ; they are clad all
over with waterproof down. Many of them live
over winter, mostly crawling under water in fa-
vorable localities among sunken brush and drift-
wood. In the spring the eggs are laid on twigs
and dead grasses about the water. They live on
smaller insects, but not leaving the water for that
purpose.

These little oarsmen are not the only claim-
ants of these shores. Here are other boatmen
with oars, but they do not perch themselves
up on long stilt-like legs, but rest their bodies flat
on the water. These are the " whirligig beetles, "

LUNCH BY THE BROOKSIDE. 77

Q-yrinus natator. We have all seen them looking
so trim and tight in their steel-blue armor, whirl-
ing about eacli other by means of invisible legs,
or huddling together side by side in the sociable
fashion. If we manage to catch one he will prove
worth looking at, as much so as an elephant, when
one gets his eyes open and full of curiosity to learn
of everything. With a little pocket glass we may
plainly see that there are two prominent beetle
eyes on each side of the head. These are joined
side by side, and when the beetle is on the water
the lower eye is under the surface and the upper
one out of water. This is a very convenient ar-
rangement for a creature with fish enemies be-
neath him and bird enemies above him. Now
this beetle belongs to a group of insects that are
good crawlers, as a rule, but if we capture one of
those " whirligigs, " and let him try to walk, we
will see that he cannot " get a move on him, " as
the boys say. His limbs have become oars and
paddles and graspers.

I say they have become thus, because there is
abundant evidence to show that they are de-
scendants of beetles that lived on the land, and
crawled and flew, as most of them do now. In
the always hard struggle for existence the dis-
tant forefathers of the " whirligigs " came to
frequent banks of streams and ponds, as good

78 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

hunting-grounds. Much food would tempt them
into the water, and then those best adapted
to swim would be, through many generations,
naturally preserved, and the water became their
home. The eyes, although two on a side, are but
one eye partitioned for two purposes. Now if
we take a pin and use it carefully we can lift up
the hard shining back in two plates that cover a
pair of delicate and sickly wings. They are what
is left of the stronger ones of its distant ances-
tors. They have suffered for lack of use. I have
never observed one in flight, but one may see
them occasionally jump in the air a few inches
when alarmed from below, and then the wings
are used. They are good divers. The eggs are
placed end-to-end on leaves of water plants. The
young are white or whitish grubs ; these when
full-grown make coccoons, or web nests, on the
under sides of leaves or twigs near the water, and
when their time has expired they find their way
out and drop into the water. One may ask, of
what use it is to know this story about a little
beetle. True there is no money in it, but there
is what is better than money, there is knowledge
of a high order. The same power that designed
and sustains these little creatures, also designed
and sustains the universe. Man is " fearfully
and wonderfully made, " and this little insect is

LUNCH BY THE BROOKSIDE. 79

also "fearfully and wonderfully made." En-
closed in that burnished tiny shell is a complete
nervous system, a complete digestive apparatus,
and organs of generation for the propagation of
its kind. There are delicate muscles to move the
wings and legs. There is a system for the circu-
lation of blood, organs for breathing air, and a
marvellous brain to preside over all, to receive
messages from the eyes and ears, and act upon the
messages intelligently. The eyes are constructed
of hundreds of little crystal facets or lenses on
the outside, while within, the mechanism of vis-
ion is more complicated still. We do not know
what such a creature has for a world. He can
see and hear and feel, he can suffer from hunger
and fear, he can act intelligently, he knows his
kind and likes to have great numbers of them
about him. He does not know much beyond his
little cove or eddy, and neither do we ; he soon
comes to the limits of his knowledge, so do we.
Our special advantage is in a wider range of in-
telligence, but in an infinite universe neither man
nor beetle ever does more than learn a little. It is
our privilege to extend our knowledge by study-
ing this wonderful world. No greater nor grander
is likely to be found anywhere, and nothing that
lives is insignificant, because all are the products
of infinite resources.

80 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

This whirligig calls up another member of the
family that has taken to the water. It would
not require much dredging up of mire mud from
the brook-bed above in the meadow to secure a
specimen. He is dark brown, almost black,
about three-quarters of an inch long, very-
round on the back, and rather thin. His legs are
adapted to swimming. This is the big water
beetle, Dysticus marginalis. He lives mostly
under water, but he must breathe, so he comes
to the surface, like a porpoise, once in a while,
to get a breath, but one scarcely notices this
act, as he makes but little show of himself. He
is an insect shark, even attacking small fish.
They fly from one locality to another, even
miles away. The males have suckers on their
fore legs very much like those on squid and
devil-fish ; these are to better enable them to
hold their victims while eating them.

While I have been observing these " whirli-
gigs " another fellow-mortal, who would not
mind swallowing them all in a gulp or two, has
been furtively showing himself from time to
time from under the foam-flecked shadow of the
bridge. He is about seven inches in length,
clad in burnished scales from head to tail. His
sides glisten like polished bronze, and his red
fins winnow the water as he rests above the yel-

LUNCH BY THE BROOKSIDE. 81

low pebbles, and works his shining gill-plates,
that maintain a current through the red net-
work of gills by which he breathes. This is no
other than our common yellow perch, Perca
fluviatilis by his Latin name. If he were not so
common he would be thought a marvel of beauti-
ful colors. If one is to see him in all the glory
of tints and shades, he must jerk him out of his
element with a hook. He will come under a
sturdy protest, with his spiny fins spread angrily
abroad, like a full-rigged man-of-war with all
sail set. We underrate this perch as a food
fish. Good judges of such matters declare him
to be an excellent pan fish. One perch lays
about twenty-eight thousand eggs as large as
small poppy seeds. They hatch in a few days,
and in two or three years will reach an average
size. The great number of eggs indicates great
danger to eggs and young, and one of the most
serious is from the parent fish. They will de-
vour their own young, and would not leave one
alive if they could capture them all. They
know young fish make good food, but they do
not know they have any young ones. Very dif-
ferent is this from some fish, that carry their
eggs in their gills, or others, that make a nest of
sticks and grass and web of their own making,
and guard the eggs till they hatch, and the

B2 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

young through their feeblest stage. This species
of yellow perch will, with good food and plenty
of it, grow to much larger size than we see
them. But now we will let him go and I will
move over to the pole dam, a rod or two distant,
where there is an inviting-looking puddle, cool
and clear in the shadow.

It does not take a long search of an experi-
enced eye to discover the tyrant of this minia-
ture pond. It is not a fish nor a reptile, but an
insect " scarce half made up." It is the " devil's
darning-needle," or dragon-fly, one of the
LibellulidcB in an undeveloped stage. So far as
outward appearances are concerned, there is no
hint of his future destiny, when he will course
the air in burnished armor, and "down the
listed sunbeam ride resplendant with steel-blue
mail and shield!" We may readily see him,
and study him only a few days, or even hours,
it may be, before the great change overtakes
him. It is a creature of about one inch in
length, with two stubs of what are really wing-
cases on his fore back; the hinder portion of
his body is grub-like, covered with a shell.
There are six stout legs. The head is large,
the eyes bulging, and jaws stout. We will
watch him closely now and see him use a " con-
cealed weapon " that he carries neatly tucked up

LTJNCH BY THE BROOKSEDE. 83

under his chest. He is a voracious fellow, and
now has his eye on a small bug resting on a bit
of grass-blade. Cautiously the dragon creeps
forward to within less than an inch, when he
raises himself well up in front, and shoots out a
bit of breast-plate material with two movable
arms coming out of the forward end of it, and a
sharp hook on each one of them. This instru-
ment is hinged to the throat, folds back when
not in use, and when needed is flung forward,
seizing the prey in the hooks, and is by them
passed to the mouth, for whose service this cruel
tool is designed. If I had been in luck here
this creature would have crawled out of the
water into the sunshine, selected a position on a
log or stick where he could get a good hold with
his claws, and then wait till the sun dried his
shell, when it would crack along the back ; at
that signal he would begin to struggle out, till
in the course of a half-hour he would be clear
of it. During this time his wings are con-
stantly attempting to open, for they are wet
and folded close, and if they dry in that con-
dition all will be over with him. If there is no
accident, in two hours he will be standing be-
side his " outgrown shell," glittering in brilliant
hues, with wings delicate as a fairy's fancy
might make them, and quivering responsive to

84 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

the air that caresses them. While we admire
him he launches away as if the atmosphere
were his native element, and he loved the
breeze and the sunshine. He left behind him,
still clinging to its anchorage, the old husk with
its glassy eyes reduced to transparent shards,
its clutching gear folded at its breast in meek
mockery, its claws deep sunk in their last grip.
The past is past with this dragon forever ; there
will be no revisiting of his old haunts where he
prowled for prey with his grappling tongs ; he
said no " good-bye " to his useless shroud cling-
ing there in mimicry of life : " Let the dead
bury their dead."

Thus Nature teaches us or may teach us all
possible things are easily possible, and it is
scarce harder to believe that even human
creatures will in some way, no more wonderful,
enter upon a new life for which this is a mere
larval or preparatory stage. The book of Nature
is writ in eloquent language, and illustrated by
endless designs, and the more's the pity that
"the world is so much with us getting and
spending " that we do not have eyes nor ears for
her lessons and her delights.

THE CAT-OWL.

" INTELLIGENCE like our own is seen to be looking out upon us
from every tuft of grass, and from every heathery knoll, from the soli-
tudes of the forests and the shady dells."— CALDERWOOD.

THIS midwinter twilight I ride over the
clean white track, and note the changing
shadows of the departing day as they deepen
into darker purple along the overhanging snow-
drifts, where the north wind, the "fierce arti-
ficer," has built in " frolic architecture " the
endless curves of beauty. The voice of every
beast and bird is hushed, the short twilight is
fast disappearing, the solemn star-eyed night,
with shade after shade, shuts out the distant
hill and nearer wood. Like some spirit of the
oncoming darkness, with stealthy wings a huge
bird comes directly towards me, like a black
spot slanting across the snowy background.
He passed me with an upward swirl of his
strong pinions, and turns his ugly countenance
on me with a twist of his neck, and I can see
the yellow-green of his eyes, the hook of his

86 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

bill, and his cruel claws drawn up into fists and
ready for action. There is no need to mistake
the mission of this feathered marauder. All
day long he has slept and dozed in the gloomi-
est retreat of yonder hemlock wood. As the
day wore on the pangs of hunger grew stronger;
the eyes opened wider as the fading light went
out. He must have meat or he must die. No
other food will keep life in him. He has glided
off his perch to kill something. For that pur-
pose is he equipped with night-seeing eyes like
tigers and cats, with fierce and strong claws
and tearing beak. His noiseless wings are
covered with a velvet-like texture of finest
feather-work. He expects to pounce on some
sleeping bird or feeding rabbit. This is the
cat-owl, or horned owl (Bubo virginianus).
He has no need to fear any enemy but man.
The whole family of them seem to represent a
night side of Nature. They have never been in
favor with mankind. Their solitary habits,
their preference for dark places in the daytime,
their murderous dispositions have all been
against them, from our point of view. Pliny,
the old Roman author, says of owls: "They
are the veiy ministers of the night, neither cry-
ing nor singing clear, but uttering certain
heavy groans, and if therefore they be seen

THE CAT-OWL. 87

within cities, or otherwise abroad in any place,
it is not good, but foretellent some fearful mis-
fortune." Shakespeare often introduces the
owl to intensify some feature of horror or dread,
and that was the prevalent feeling about them
in England. Thus, in a famous play, Lady
Macbeth listens to the receding steps of her
husband as he goes into another room to mur-
der King Duncan, and she exclaims, " Hark !
Peace ! It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal
bellman which givest the stern'st good-night ! "
In England it is a belief in the rural districts
that owl's broth is a great remedy for the
cramp. Sometimes I have taken off their skins
when they were too fat for comfort. The broth
might be palatable. One need not be very
hungry before making trial of its food qualities.
If this particular owl I mentioned does not
feast on rabbit to-night, then his calculations
will be upset, for he laid his course a little
beyond a bit of swamp, where rabbits have
their feeding-grounds. Already they are out,
jumping here and there, cutting the tender
twigs for food. Hark, now, to the pitiful child-
like cry that rings out on the frosty air ! There
is a forest tragedy being enacted over there. A
few more fainter screams and sobs and all is still.
It was the " Passing " of poor Bunny. Life was

88 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

sweet to him. All day he sat in a snug retreat
beneath a bush, and, urged by hunger, leaped
nimbly forth to fill himself with the food that no
other creature wanted. I do not need to witness
the performance this time to realize what it was.
In an instant that great black shadow was upon
him, with upraised wings and gleaming yellow
eyes, and crooked, sharp, long claws driven
deep into the quivering sides of his victim, that
struggles in vain with such a foe. This feath-
ered beast will fill himself, eating even the skin
and bones if his appetite is keen. I have ob-
served one devour a full-grown rabbit at a meal
that lasted over an hour. One must not suppose
that all this crude material goes through his
digesting machinery. Nature has been very
considerate in his case ; he has no need to pick
and cull, but bolts it down wholesale, and after
an hour or two the hair and bones will be snugly
put up in cartridge-like lumps, and sent back
the way they came down. If this owl had not
been in luck with the rabbit he would have
looked sharp for a sleeping partridge, or some
other bird with its head under its wing. Doubt-
less he sometimes hunts all night long in vain,
and waits another day for a meal. I have
killed one of these owls, that might have been
taken for a skunk if one's nose alone was al-

THE CAT-OWL. 89

lowed to testify. Other men have had a like
experience with them. I do not know whether
these owls actually kill and eat skunks. I de-
sired to get at the inside of the one that fell to
my gun, to make sure about it, but a close ac-
quaintance like that required was out of the
question. It may be that they are pounced
upon through a mistake, and it may be that the
owl is insensible to the odor. It may be that
he likes it. People are fond of musk, secreted
by a species of deer, and the skunk-odor is a
glandular product a trifle more pungent, and
might be exactly of the desired strength to
tickle the smell-sense of the cat-owl. If one
could see the animals of vaiious kinds that a
single owl of this species eats in a lifetime it
would be truly surprising. They subsist on
birds and rabbits and mice and frogs — an average
of one a day is a moderate estimate. Here and
there an individual would live ten years; but
for accidents and hard times they might well
live twice as long. The fact that they lay but
two eggs at a hatching and rear only one brood
in a season is proof that they are well secured
against enemies, or they would soon run out
altogether. The robin lays four eggs, and brings
out two broods of young, and still just holds her
own ; the young that reach maturity are only

90 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

enough to fill up the ranks where the adult
birds perish in one way and another. If the
young owls can get through the first year they
will be over the most dangerous ground, but
there is a point when they demand great quan-
tities of food and yet are not old enough to get
it for themselves. The parent birds are often
hard driven to furnish enough to meet their
own wants, and enough for their gluttonous
babies. There, doubtless, is the pinch where
some of them perish. So far as we can see,
there is no need to protect owls. They are a
scourge on small useful birds, and a shotgun
can be employed to advantage on them all.

LEDGES.

" SPEAK to the earth and it shall teach thee." — JOB.

WITHIN a half mile of the main road on
the way to Molega there is a sharp
upraise, and a sudden turn to get over a quart-
zite ledge that abruptly bars the way. One may
see it, like an old battered hand-made wall run-
ning off to east and west through the brackens
and scrub underbrush. It is only five or six
feet in height at best, and it dips or slants a
little to the northward. All this steep side is
more or less cracked and rent, affording rootage
for rock polypod, ferns, dwarf spruce and firs,
and other plants of the locality. On the more
or less bare surface of this ledge, a few rods in
width, there is a most interesting variety of vege-
table life. There are great gray carpets of
white lichens, clean and cool, and in June they
are bordered with nodding lady's-slippers, or
cypripediums, fashioned like daintiest shells.
Slender wire-birches, clad in gray and green,
stand guard over those woodland gems, that the

92 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

sun shall not smite them, while they have their
days of beautiful existence. And all the while
the roots become charged with some subtle
medicament that has power to heal the shattered
nerves of weary men, as the bloom has a charm
to minds and hearts that love all lovely things.
Let us go back to the ledge itself ; flowers can
have no greater interest. When we stand upon
its shattered flank we are then on " bed-rock,"
as the miners call it, or on the " countiy rock," as
the geologists term it. Between our feet and
the other side of this globe the distance is
about eight thousand miles; all the way it is
some kind of solid rock or metal. The soil, the
mud, and gravel, and sand, in which men plant
and sow, and Nature grows her forests, is noth-
ing more than rocks made more or less fine and
mixed with some vegetable mould. This earth
is really a ball of stone or mineral about as
heavy as if it were iron, and it floats through
space like a bubble in the air, or a toy bal-
loon rolling over and over along the viewless
track around the sun, that is fourteen hun-
dred thousand times larger than this toy world,
that can neither get away from it nor fall
into it. We live on the outside, at the bot-
torn of an ocean of air, a few miles in depth,
and with us are a great many other people,

LEDGES. 93

some with two legs, some with six, some with
none.

This reef or ledge is called quartzite be-
cause it is made up of grains of quartz sand
that were made by rocks rolling each other
on a seashore that existed before the "moun-
tains were brought forth," before animal life
existed on the naked, treeless land of the world.
Time must be reckoned by many million years
since the sand be.ach was formed that in the
long run went to the making of this old ledge
at our feet. One might be tempted to deny
that we can know so much of its age, but care-
ful study makes it certain that we do know.
This earth is a globe for the same reasons that
a dewdrop hanging on a grass-blade, or a rain-
drop falling through the air, is a globe. It was
once liquid, and took this shape by laws of
attraction, as the sun, moon, and stars did the
same. All the rocks and metals were once
melted ; then there was no water and no atmos-
phere like we now have. Hydrogen and oxy-
gen gases became chemically united, and water
was the result. The first rain was warm ; the
first ocean covered all the earth, and was boil-
ing hot ; the steam from it cooled and returned,
as rain, and was sent back, and thus the ocean
was cooled. No one was there to observe all

94 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

this, but we know it as a hunter knows where
his game has been, by his tracks.

Our world had a beginning; it will have
an ending. The nightly skies show pavilions of
suns clustering in millions beyond the reach of
all instruments. Among an endless procession
of worlds ours is included. Whether this ledge
of rock was begun twenty million or forty
million years ago is all the same, when we con-
sider that time had no beginning and can have
no ending. We measure it by our sunshine, but
if all suns were instantly quenched, time would
survive. We do not alter the passage of time
by stopping all the clocks, so if all suns disap-
peared events could transpire, although the
scale of measuring their duration was lost.
Eternity reaches backward as well as forward.
We are never in it, because the present is neither
in it nor out of it, and we only live instant by
instant. So we need not scant ourselves with
time in considering the geological history of the
globe. We are obliged to reckon in millions of
years when dealing with this subject.

If we go into the eastern part of our province,
the coal mines will be there to interest you. If
you do not already know, then you may readily
know that the coal beds of the world are formed
of leaves, branches and trunks of trees, and

LEDGES. 95

ferns. You will also learn by examining the
coal, or by reading the proper books, that this
vegetation grew so long ago that there was not
a flower in existence, and all the plant life was
flowerless, like our ferns and club mosses. This
ledge is millions of years older than the coal
mines. To prove this we can show that a series
of rocks lies between it and the coal, and they
are made up of sand that was formed on the sea-
shore. In the Annapolis valley at Nictaux one
may see these Devonian rocks packed with fossil
shells. This ledge was made of rocks still older ;
it belongs to the very lowest or earliest of water-
made rocks. The first rocks were cooled lavas,
and when an ocean began to surge and break
against the low sides of a crumbling crust then
sand and mud were formed, and sedimentary rocks
were in the making ; our old ledge that runs along
like an ancient rib of the earth was then begun.
The sullen waves in ceaseless action reduced the
shore lines to material that the undertow and tides
carried backward, where it fell to the bottom, and
by natural action of gravity and elements was
assorted in strata or layers of coarse sand and
fine muds ; one to form quartzite like the ledge,
the other to form slates that we find exposed
or hidden running beside them.

If this earth were a dead body, an unmoving

96 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

thing, that never shrunk, and shivered and shook,
and groaned, and tilted up and down, then these
layers of mud and sand would have remained
flat on the floor of the ocean, and there would
be no ledge for us to observe and discuss. But
quite otherwise is the truth.

A very shaky affair is our old planet. It is
cracked and mended in millions of places ; wher-
ever a quartz vein exists there was once a rent.
The rocky crests of the loftiest mountains are
often gleaming with imbedded fossil shells, that
were ocean-born. Deep down in the great mines
one hears the groaning of the mighty strata of
rocks. This is a cooling planet, and as it cools
it shrinks, and the hard crust rises in great crum-
ples of mountain ranges. On a small scale, a
baked apple is wrinkled ; the inside has become
smaller, while the skin has not shrunken. Dur-
ing this shrinkage our infant ledge was, with all
the adjoining rocks, pushed sidewise into waves
or crumples, thus forcing what was once a flat
surface of rock into various slants or angles, and
at the same time pushing them out of water.
Through many million years the agencies of air
and atmosphere, and heat and cold, and ice, and
mighty glaciers and running waters, have worn
away the highest parts of the ridges, and left
the hardest portions tipped on edge by the

LEPGB8. 97

shrinkage of the globe, and shining grim and
gaunt above the kindly attempt of Nature to
cover it with the leaves and flowers of a later
world.

Here, then, is a most interesting antiquity.
It is crowded with inscriptions, written all over
with the records of past ages. To be able to
read them gives an added charm to life, and the
time to give to such lessons is so far from lost
that it is devoted to an elevated and worthy
task.

BATS.

" IF indeed thy heart were right, then would every creature be to
thee a mirror of life, a book of holy doctrine." — THOMAS 1
KEMPIS.

THIS midsummer evening a bat flitted out
of the shadow, dodging hither and
thither after the manner of his kind. I doubt
if there is another animal common to our coun-
try so often seen and about which so little is
generally known. It is all the more surprising
when we consider what a truly wonderful creat-
ure it is. On the wing nothing is more agile,
on the ground it is helplessness personified.
Birds and insects can fly, but they can also
walk or hop, or run or crawl, but a bat can do
no more than hitch himself along on his fore-
elbows and hinder feet. When at rest he
neither lies down, nor sits up, nor goes to roost,
but he hangs himself up by his thumb-nails and
rests his body in the slack of his wings. He
has been a puzzle to people, who could not
make out where he belongs in the animal king-

BATS. 99

dom. In the Mosaic law he is classed with
birds : " The stork and heron, the lapwing and
the bat," all unclean (Lev. 11: 19). But
bird he certainly is not, neither is he nearly
related to birds. The Arabs, a kindred people
to the Jews, call it Gessim-al-sheytan, meaning
"devil's bird." The Germans call it Fleder-
maus, or "flying mouse." Always a creature
of ill omen. Among the Greeks it was sacred
to Proserpine, the queen of hell. Among the
old Norse or Northmen it figures in their
literature as a messenger of the Goddess of
Darkness and Death. Painters always use the
wings of bats for the Devil and his imps, and
the wings of birds for angels, — not that there
is any good reason for the choice, beyond the
general dislike of the bats.

As a rule they are not only harmless but of
no small service to mankind, for they live on
insects, which they destroy in great numbers.
I say as a rule, for there are bats in South
America that alight on cattle and even sleeping
people, and bite till the blood starts, and fill
themselves with it. In the Islands of the East-
ern Ocean — Java and Batavia — there are
fruit-eating bats, looking not unlike foxes and
as large as a cat, with wings measuring four
feet from tip to tip. They are fond of bananas

100 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

and prove very destructive to plantations.
There are about four hundred species known to
science. They are to be found in all climates,
even where it is much colder than in Nova
Scotia. During the cold season, of fully six
months, they congregate in caves, hanging to
the roof in great bunches, where they have been
found in midwinter white with frost but un-
frozen and alive. With us they pass the winter
in old buildings where they can hide under the
finish, also in hollow trees, and holes among
rocks, etc. It is truly wonderful that they are
not frozen in such localities, where the tem-
perature must be often many degrees below
freezing. Old Nature knows the way, and
these curious animals, slung in their wings,
sleep on during half a year, without fuel or
nourishment, and awake to renew the perils and
pleasures of an existence that would hardly
seem worth the having.

It will be worth the study to examine the
wing structure of a bat. The wings of a bird
are constructed on the two fore limbs. They
are arms and wrists and fingers with quills and
feathers on them. Until the wrist is reached
the bones are very much like our own, the
fingers are soldered together, and on them are
supported the long quills. From the wrist to

BATS. 101

the elbow the secondary quills are merely glued
or stuck at the veiy ends to the arm bone, the
ulna. The thumb appears as a hook in some
birds ; in others it has an outgrowth of a short
quill, " a spurious primary." Now the wing of
a bat is arranged on a fore leg or a fore arm,
but on a different plan from the bird. The five
fingers are very long, and between them is
stretched a most delicate membrane, that ex-
tends backward around the body from both
sides of it, and takes in the hinder legs and tail
in all insect-eating bats. Fruit-eating bats, in
some instances, do not have the wings extend-
ing backward to the tail.

There is no other animal with such an ar-
rangement for flight. In the far East there is a
tree-frog with very long toes on all four feet,
and these, being webbed, are used not for swim-
ming, nor properly for flying, but as aids to
jumping, like our so-called flying-squirrel.
When this frog desires to jump from one tree
to another within range, he makes the leap,
spreads his legs and toes, and glides forward
and downward ; but this is not true flying.
Our bat is an expert on the wing ; no bird is
quite his equal when it comes to short turns, as
any one knows who has tried to bring one down
in a room. The wings are richly supplied with

102 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

nerves, and are sensitive to a degree that we
can hardly imagine. Through that means the
animal feels the presence of near objects even
in dark rooms and caves, and avoids them.
Probably there is a sensible difference in the air
currents near any object. Many species of bats
have peculiar leaf-like structures growing
straight up from the end of the nose, and these
are thought to be feelers.

It is well known that bats live upon flying
bugs and beetles that are out for an airing at
night. It is also a common saying, " Blind as a
bat." Now, if a bat is blind, how does he man-
age to find his food in the dusky twilight, and
even in the dark? The fact is he has very
keen sight, and also very sensitive wings, to tell
him if he has run against any living thing that
may serve as food. I think it is not generally
known how they are captured. The mouth is
small; there are no hands, no bill, nothing,
apparently, to aid in capturing his prey. He
makes a net of his wings, he draws his tail well
under him when about to take an insect, thus
forming a bag, and the insect is run down and
run into it, and then seized and eaten. One may
readily observe them do this; they halt in a
hurried, scuffing way and then go on for more.
When one considers that they have no nests to

BATS. 103

lie down in, no roosts to sit on, then the matter
of caring for their young becomes a curious
problem. I will try to explain : Two are gen-
erally born at a birth ; they are very small, help-
less creatures. The mother places them at her
breasts, and they cling to her hair with the
hinder claws and thumb hooks, and there they
remain till they are able to fly. By some natu-
ralists it is stated that the male bats assist in
carrying the young, but this is very likely a
mistake, as they could not feed them. Some
tropical bats are almost without hair, but they
have pockets or pouches in which the young are
carried, as they could not cling to them. The
next time one of my readers runs screaming
away from one of our harmless little bats let
her take a second thought of this tiny fellow-
creature, so fearfully and wonderfully made, so
richly endowed with motherly feeling, so ten-
derly cared for by a Providence that overlooks no
living thing, and marks a sparrow's fall or a
planet's birth. Much more than I have set
down is to be learned of the habits of these
animals.

They are not at all related to mice. Their
teeth are near to the moles. For a very long
time they have been in the world. Their fossil
remains are found in rocks whose origin was

104 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

many million years ago. They clustered in the
twilight and captured their prey ages before
man came on this earth. Some time, doubtless,
the earlier rocks will reveal the remains of their
immediate ancestry, which is not now known.

In all these chapters I take it for granted
that all our forms of life are outgrowths from
older and different forms. There are about ten
million different species of animal and vegetable
life now known to science, and there are vast
numbers of microbes that are visible only with
the best microscopes. All observation and rea-
soning warrant the belief that there were not
ten million separate creations, but they are the
varied branches from one or a few original liv-
ing creatures of simple structure. We can say
with certainty that all naturalists take that
view of the matter, because it explains numer-
ous difficulties, and harmonizes conflicting
phenomena.

BY THE RIVERSIDE.

"THE earth is all enchanted ground. With its light and shade,
its ebb and flow, it is all thine." — PARBEE SCRIPTURES.

WITHIN a mile or more of the gold mines
on this road of many marvels there is
a bridge crossing the Wildcat River. This is
a brisk stream, forty or fifty feet in width at
this point, but a few rods below it opens into a
large pond, where the white and yellow lilies
grow, where the wild ducks feed, and the swal-
lows skim its gleaming surface.

I have halted here this October afternoon
because many things invited me, and there was
no good reason why I should not accept the
invitations. There are no lovelier days in all
the year than these. June has its peculiar
charms of unrolling leaves, of white banners on
the wild-pear trees, and all the promise of
flower and fruit, but October is the realization
of the promise. The barns are filled, the
meadows are picturesque with stacks of hay
peeping out of the alders and red-leaved maples,

106 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

like domes of Eastern temples in a picture
landscape.

In these early sunny days of the month the
atmosphere is perfect, the light is softened and
tempered by the tints and colors of ripened
foliage. Thistles and milkweeds have sent
their winged seeds on the friendly winds to be
sown far and wide, to improve their chances
for life ; and now, looking into the sunbeam,
one sees these silken voyagers loitering and
playing with the zephyrs, till the dew-damp air
saturates their wings and they come to earth,
perchance to germ and grow, perchance to
perish.

Amid all this autumn ripeness here is our
witch-hazel, Hamamelis virginianus, tricked out
in the bravery of yellow flowers, growing on
the same branches with the nut-like seeds and
fading leaves. I think this curiosity is gen-
erally unobserved. The blossom is rather a
curious or exceptional make-up, but it is pretty
in color and dainty in structure. A calyx or
cup notched on the rim holds a tiny boquet of
four strap-shaped petals, and eight stamens, and
two styles.

This late display of blossoms is only getting
ready for an early start in the spring. Then all
the seed will be set, and may proceed to grow

BY THE EIVERSIDE. 107

at once. All our trees that are not evergreens
make preparations for the new leaves, in buds
stored with food, and often varnished over,
as if each one was an object of special provi-
dence. Our mayflowers, or trailing arbutus,
produce the flower buds in the autumn, and
sometimes these preparations for the next spring
are pushed too far by favoring weather; and
then one finds here and there a fall blossom,
born out of due season, instead of being tucked
up under a snow blanket in a sound sleep of
months.

This witch-hazel with us never grows to more
than ten feet in height, but in the Southern
States it is much taller. It is an old belief
that rods of hazel had magic powers, and so far
is this from being outgrown that I have seen a
sane practical farmer searching for gold mines
by the aid of a hazel crotch, and he called it a
"mineral rod." What the rod did not do in
the way of " drawing " his imagination helped
out. He never found a mine with its aid, but
he did not lose confidence in the stick — to do
that would l>e to drop a superstition, and that
kind of a devil does not quit short of " fasting
and prayer." So far as we know, this belief is
of the remotest antiquity.

The earliest written history of Greeks, Romans,

108 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

Hebrews and Egyptians relates something of
magic rods, and certain kinds of woods were
believed to have superior virtues. The Greeks
and Romans and Germanic peoples used them
in their search for metals. Our Bible makes
frequent references to them and their magic
properties ; they are mentioned as tokens of
power, as the " rod of mine anger " and " thy
rod and thy staff, they comfort me."

However, I must not dwell on this tempting
subject, where so much of interest might be
written. Here there are many other things
most worthy of special notice. Plants and
trees, as we all know, have their proper prefer-
ences and places of growth. Some grow under
water altogether, some grow partly in and
partly out, and others hold to the damp margins,
and others, again, the swamps and drier uplands.
Here within a few rods are great varieties of
soil where trees and shrubs and grasses may
manage to grow. But always there is crowding,
and hard struggle for existence. Nature sows
her seeds by the thousand to get one to grow
and reproduce its kind. Sometimes they are
cast on the ground and quickly covered with
leaves, and thus shut out from proper heat they
long remain waiting for a day of germination.
Many seasons may pass away, and yet they are

BY THE RIVERSIDE. 109

in some sense still alive. After two thousand
years buried seeds have germinated and grown.
On our own forest lands, when the old growth
is burnt over, a new one of a different character
springs up. They are from seeds deep buried
in the mould, where the fire did not reach them.
Wild cherries are common in such second
growths ; the seeds have been dropped by birds
that had eaten the fruit — and just here let us
say that all the eatable part of the cherries was
Nature's plan to get the seeds cast abroad. By
this means the birds are made to do her work ;
she offers the palatable juicy pulp to the birds
that swallow it and then cany the seed away.
Thus with all fruits and berries, they were not
produced by the trees and shrubs that grew on
this earth before birds appeared. There were
no birds when the great forests grew through
millions of years that furnished the material
for coal mines. Birds and berries came along
together in the order of creation, as we read
from the fossil history of once living forms.
The first true seeds were naked seeds. Nature
never exactly repeats herself — the thing " that
hath been " will never exactly be again ; so there
must be immense variety ; and some seeds will
have a covering worth eating, and if they do
hungry birds will try their qualities; it will be

110 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

then that the seeds with the most toothsome
peel and pulp will be surest to get swallowed.
Now the naked seeds are digestible in birds and
form a great portion of their food, but the seeds
of berries and fruits are not digestible. They
are able to withstand the digestive action. At
the first this was probably true of only a few
out of many, but the tough ones got them-
selves planted, and brought forth after their
kind according to law. Sparrows and all
seed-eating birds eat the seed for food, while
thrushes and all other berry-eating birds swal-
low the berries, seed and all, for the sake of
the pulp.

But let us return from this tempting by-path
to the riverside. Here on the plashy brink,
crowded among the small stones is the common
"blue flag," to call it by a common name. It
is the Iris virginica of science, and the Flower-
de-luce or Fleur-de-lis of heraldry and senti-
ment. I am too late to salute the beautiful
flowers where they bloomed a few weeks ago on
the slender stalks that upheld them like staves
of royal banners, and now overloaded with the
clutasy seed vessels, that will keep their hold
the winter long. If the flower were not so
common it would be considered one of the most
beautiful and curiously constructed of all our

BY THE RIVERSIDE. Ill

flora. Longfellow taking this gem for a theme
gave us one of his most pleasing poems. I can-
not find place for it all, but here are given a few
stanzas :

" Beautiful lily, dwelling by still rivers

Or sheltering mere,

Or where the sluggish meadow-brook delivers
Its waters to the weir.

"Born in the purple, born to joy and pleasance,

Thou dost not toil nor spin,
But makest glad and radiant with thy presence
The meadow and the lin.

" O flower-de-luce, bloom on and let the river

Linger to kiss thy feet !
O flower of song, bloom on and make forever
The world more fair and sweet ! "

The poet calls this flower a lily, which it is
not ; but there has been a good deal of con-
fusion about it in song and story, where it is
often termed a lily. Fleur-de-lis is a corruption
from Fleur-de-Louis, for Louis VII of France
chose it as his heraldic emblem when he went
on his crusade to the Holy Land. We have
also a white variety growing here and there
among the blue. I do not think it is to be
reckoned as a species, although it is surely well
on the way to that distinction. The root of the
blue flag is used in medicine, but I do not know

112 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

if that is any reason for supposing that it has
any curative properties. However, the world
is " more fair and sweet " by its dainty charms
above ground, and we will not dig for its hidden
virtues.

Within a few feet of the flags, a gravelly,
dry bank comes abruptly to the stream, grows
a shrub worthy a longer notice than can be
given it here. I refer to the bayberry, Myrica
cerifera. It is pleasant to the eye, with its cool
gray stems and branches and its glossy green
leaves. It is grateful to the sense of smell ; so
clean and aromatic that pillows filled with the
leaves are delicious soothers of tired nerves and
weary cares. The flowers are very small, and
only to be seen by looking for them, but the
seeds, which are hard-shelled, are covered with a
vegetable wax. They are gathered in bunches
close to the branches and well hidden by the
clustering leaves. Our older settlers here, and
in New England often gathered these "wax
berries," or bayberries, and boiled them till the
wax floated, when it was cooled, and made into
candles. Four pounds of berries would yield
about one pound of wax of a greenish tinge and
a pleasant odor. This was also made into soap.
It is still used, and may be purchased at well-
furnished drug stores.

BY THE RIVERSIDE. 113

A close cousin of the bayberry is keeping it
company here, the "sweet fern," Myrica aspleni
folium. It, too, is blessed with a healthy fra-
grance through all its leaves that outlasts the life
of them. They seem to have been all their days
gathering in, by some cunning chemistry, the
pungent aroma of the wayward winds and the
kindly soil. The bark, and twigs, and leaves are
rich in the material serviceable for tanning pur-
poses. It is not a showy shrub, neither is it of
much service to man, but it is a pleasing feature
of nature, growing in waste places, covering un-
sightly surfaces with restful green and gracious
influences.

Here this chapter must come to a close with-
out more than a glance here and there, where
one might linger long with profit if he loves
the life, and varied aspects in which the Maker
of all has made his presence known.

THE RED SQUIRREL.

" I LIE abstracted and hear beautiful tales of

things and the reasons of things ;
They are so beautiful, I nudge myself to
listen." — WALT WHITMAN.

THIS morning, in the month of February,
the cold is below zero. The sky is clear,
the air is still, the trees crack, the snow gives
way under the sleigh with a distinct crunch. All
sounds are easily heard. The chirp of a kinglet
the call of the chickadee, the tapping of the
woodpecker, break the stillness as if all the
world was dead beside. Almost within reach
of my arm, perched on the end of a fir limb, is a
red squirrel, or pine squirrel, or chickaree, or
Sciurus hudsonius. By all these names he is
known. His winter coat shows to advantage,
the long hair on the ears especially, and some-
what longer on the whole body than in summer,
is silver-tipped with frost. He is making his
breakfast on the tender frozen ends of the branch
on which he is seated. My heart is touched by
his misfortune. Only a few months ago he was

THE BED SQUIRREL. 115

revelling in berries, and nuts, and eggs, his coat
was glossy, his tail aloft, and life seemed a frolic
and all the world made for him and his. No
glimpse of this dreary morning clouded his day
of sunshine. Now he has got down to the hard
realities of life. Such a breakfast is a notice to
all beholders that winter is pressing him sore,
and it is at the same time an exhibition of his
intelligent ability to meet an emergency. There
is nothing very nourishing in fir brush however
filling it may be, but enough of it will sustain
life, and that is the pinch where our little " fel-
low-mortal " is caught. When he is driven out
of a warm bed by grim hunger, and obliged to
face a temperature below zero, and look out on
a world covered with snow, and no pine cones
in store, then he must find something that will
answer for food, or die. There is plenty of fir,
and porcupines and rabbits subsist, during the
winter, very largely on the bark of trees, but
they have inside arrangements to accommodate
and digest great quantities after the fashion of
cattle ; by eating a deal of crude material they
extract enough to nourish their bodies. Quite
otherwise with our little squirrel, his digestive
organs are adapted to deal with food in concen-
trated forms of seeds, and berries, and eggs, and
young birds. One beech-nut is worth more for

116 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

food than twenty times its weight in fir twigs.
This ability to tide over a famine with his eyes
open is one proof of the red squirrel's high rank
in squirrel intelligence. He stands at the head
of a large family to be found all over the world
excepting Australia, Madagascar, and the Polar
regions. With some minor differences of shades
of color, and slight variations of markings, our
squirrels may be found from Nova Scotia to
British Columbia, from Hudson's Bay to the
mountains of the Southern States. They are
near relations of the gophers and prairie dogs,
and woodchucks or ground-hogs. The prairie
dogs and woodchucks are grass-eating, burrow-
ing, winter-sleeping, slow, stupid creatures in
comparison with these pine squirrels, who have
descended from a parent stock of the woodchuck
type. The ability to climb a tree quickly, to be
agile and nimble, to use the front feet for
hands, and secure the best food in small quanti-
ties are all developments in the line of intelli-
gence. In the common striped squirrel we have
a creature midway in the upward journey ; he is
vastly nearer to the parent stock, he lives in
dens of his own making under ground, he sleeps
through the winter ; he can climb a tree but not
nimbly, he prefers the ground and only climbs
for food occasionally. If hard pressed by dogs

THE RED SQUIRREL. 117

or boys he will take refuge in a tree, but he is
uneasy and soon makes a dash for liberty down
the trunk, in the maddest defiance of danger
that often ends in death. Only in his den or
some dark hole does he feel safe. On the
branches he is clumsy and easily shaken down.
Not so our red squirrel : he loves the trees. Just
watch him as he makes his way from limb to
limb in the forests, swiftly and surely, till one
must run to keep up with his movements. On
the ground he is quick and sprightly, and on a
fence next to a tree he can show to advantage
all his best points. He fearlessly and swiftly
swims a river, and makes use of a chip or any
bit of floating wood for a raft if it comes in his
reach. I have paddled my birch canoe across the
course of a swimming squirrel ; quick as a flash
he sprang into it and over it and made for the
shore again. Thus we see that he is an all-
round fellow, — on the ground, in the water,
on the trees he is at home. He looks the bright,
smart chap that he is. He challenges me in the
forest from a lofty perch with a saucy call, and
then begins to jerk himself down the tree to
make a nearer acquaintance, till of a sudden
he turns with a cry of alarm and scurries
back to his perch, only to repeat that perform-
ance as long as one likes to watch him. His

118 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

intelligent curiosity prompts him to a close
interview, but his fears defeat his well-meant
intentions.

I have mentioned that our squirrel was driven
to eat fir browse when his stock of stored-up cones
was exhausted — and thereby hangs a pretty tale
if I can manage to tell it aright :

In the early autumn, the last of September,
or even a little earlier, whoever will go into the
pine forests will soon find that the red squirrels
are cutting off the cones that grow on the upper
branches and allowing them to drop. After
working at that for a while they come down
and carry them away and hide them under old
logs and stumps and roots ; and once I saw
one stowing them by the half-bushel in a water-
hole where he had built quite a little wharf
in that way, taking some pains to put them in
place.

If we examine the cones at this time they
will be found to have a seed under each scale,
excepting near the small end of the cone. It
will be seen that the cone itself is but a protect-
ing growth to cover the seed— each one for
itself ; and the pine has no other intention than
to get the seeds ripe and let the winds sow them.
At this green stage the seeds are filled with a
milky juice containing all the nourishing ele-

THE RED SQUIRREL. 119

ments wherewith to feed the seedling pine at
the outset of life. Had the squirrels waited till
the seed ripened the opportunity to get any
would have been lost, for then the protecting
scales dry and curl up, allowing the seeds to
escape ; and each one is provided with a wing,
and as it falls the winds drift it away from the
parent tree, where, perchance, some better con-
dition of light or soil awaits its coming. So it
turns out that the cone has been cut in the very
nick of time, if it is to be had at all when the
seeds in it are good. Not only that, but to
store it in damp places is the right thing to do,
for it never shrivels up there. The turpentine
in it and on it prevents decay, and the seed
hardens and will remain sound and sweet during
more than one season. When the snow covers
all the land these squirrels almost entirely live
on the stores of cones. They will burrow down
through two or three feet of snow to their treas-
ures and come up with their breakfasts in their
mouths. The cutting of these unripe cones —
and they do the same by spruce and fir — and
storing them in proper damp places for a winter
that many of them have never experienced is a
very interesting example of what is called " in-
stinct," and by that word we generally mean an
implanted sense, a natural mechanical disposi-

120 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

tion or inclination to do the best thing for itself
without thinking at all. In that case we may
inquire if this instinct was revealed to the first
pair of squirrels of this species, and has passed
by inheritance ever since to all of them, or is it
imparted after birth to each individual ? If we
can get at the bottom facts this instance of in-
stinct may be explained in a natural way, but
many other instances thus far have had no solu-
tion. It will be found that our squirrels have
inherited a habit of their ancestors. But what
about their ancestors ? How did they acquire
the habit? The first fact of prime importance
in the study of all living things is the hard
struggle for existence that all forms of life must
surely meet. To get clear of being eaten and
find something to eat have always been the
chief aims of animal life. Hunger is a sharp
demand that cannot be long delayed, or death
will claim a victim ; but there are always more
mouths than morsels; by far the larger por-
tion of all lower animals produced are either
eaten by other animals, or they starve to death.
Throw to a flock of hens a handful or two of
bits of bread and notice, if they are hungry,
how eagerly they contend, and how each one
tries to secure the largest piece in her bill and
run away to a place where she can eat it

THE RED SQUIRREL. 121

securely alone. In the sharp competition for
food everywhere prevailing many have been
the plans and devices to secure it, to keep it, to
use it to the best purpose. Mankind has often
stumbled by accident upon discoveries and
inventions that have proved of great service,
and doubtless in the animal world below him
the same thing has occurred. If an animal were
to hide a portion of food not then needed, it
would be an act that might save his life, and, if
it became a habit in his descendants, might pre-
serve the species to which he belonged. As a
matter of fact, many meat-eating animals do
hide portions of their food not needed at that
time. We have all seen or known of dogs bury-
ing meat bones for future use, and weasels and
other creatures do the same. I have seen a tame
crow hide portions of food, even covering them
with a chip, and taking much pains to do it
well. Very often he did not return for it, be-
cause he had an abundance elsewhere. His act
was an inherited habit, the surplus bit of food
suggested and prompted the hiding it. This
habit, or now called instinct, of hiding or stor-
ing food by animals may have originated acci-
dentally. Any ravenous, hungry creature seiz-
ing his portion, or a good deal more, and run-
ning, as the hens do, to a place of safety, would

122 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

try to get out of sight and hearing of others.
From hiding himself and his booty it is not a
long step to more or less cover up what he
could not then eat. To hide it from eyes would
not be so important to him as to hide it from
noses. Smelling was more to be feared than
seeing ; to bury it would seem to the owner the
way to best protect it. Such a habit would be
of immense benefit to the possessor of it. Such
habit could be easily formed, it seems to me. It
is certain that different families of animals
practise it and profit by it. A good instance of
it in birds may be seen in the California wood-
peckers. In the autumn they make small shal-
low holes in the thick bark of pine-trees ; into
each one they crowd an acorn till it is about
level with the bark. I have seen hundreds of
them on a single tree. These woodpeckers do
not, as a rule, eat acorns. I have watched in
vain to see them do it. The explanation is
probably to be found by referring the habit to
distant ancestors, not yet fully woodpeckers,
who did store acorns for food, and to them it
was of great value. The habit has outlasted its
use.

The squirrel family and their near relatives
the gophers are noted for carrying away stores
for future use, and our striped squirrels do the

THE RED SQUIRREL. 123

same. Our red squirrel keeps up a family habit
when he lays aside something he may need
further on in the season ; but how does he come
to cut and hide the cones before the seeds in
them are ripe, but just in the " nick of time," if
he is to get them at all ? Let us consider the
case. The cones hang tips downward from the
ends of the branches. When the seeds are ripe
the scales over them become dry and curl up-
ward, and the winds toss the branches, and the
winged seeds fall out during the highest winds
and are scattered wide away. Now it is clear
that the squirrel could not get the ripe seeds ;
before that could be done he must cut away the
cone. But there he is met with a difficulty : the
seeds do not ripen and all get clear on the same
day out of a cone. The scales near the small
end curl up first. There is no proper time to
cut a ripe one and secure more than a very small
portion of the seeds. Searching for food very
long ago in squirrel history they put their teeth
into the green cone, and discovered the juicy
seeds and ate them. What they did not need
they hid away, as they would do with some other
food, and the habit was of so much value that
the squirrels who did that were able to live over
winter in pine forests. Our squirrels now do by
inherited habit what was acquired by other gen-

124 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

erations. They hide in damp places because they
are the most numerous and convenient localities
for storage purposes.

To get back to our squirrel making his break-
fast on browse. I had never noticed before how
useful his tail was on a cold morning. It was
drawn tight over his back to make the most of
it for a blanket. To see him in frolicsome mood
in the summer one would think lie considered
his tail a mere plaything to be flirted and whisked
for fun. When he curls up in his nest his tail
is made to do duty for bed-clothing. A very
serious charge lies at our red squirrel's door :
he is a bold bad robber of birds' nests, eating
eggs or young with great relish. All our small
birds are unable to drive him away, and their
young become victims to his appetite. I was
witness to an attempt on a robin's nest that was
built on the end of a birch limb about thirty feet
from the ground. The outcry of the pair of
birds attracted my attention. The squirrel was
within six feet of the nest, hitching along in
short jerks, while the indignant birds almost
alighted on his back. At last one of them made
a desperate drive at him and knocked him off
the limb. He made himself as flat as a pancake,
and although he struck on a granite boulder he
scurried away at once. This ability to fall from

THE RED SQUIRREL. 125

a long distance unhurt is a peculiar trick of the
tree squirrels.

While I am amused and interested in the red
squirrel, and would not like to see them exter-
minated, still it must be admitted that through
their ravages on useful birds they are not a desir-
able part of our population so far as bread and
butter are concerned. But the forests and road-
sides would lose a very pretty feature if this
nimble bright animal was taken away. He
doubtless has his " inalienable " rights to live and
be as happy as he can, or he would not be at all.
Everything was not made for us, and for our
use. We are at the head of the class, but that
gives us no title to put all others below us under
our feet. Our boasted superiority is, after all,
only in mental and moral directions. The foxes
and deer have keener sense of smell than we
have, birds have better eyes, and superior
means of locomotion, spiders sling their wheel
nets like trained engineers, fishes return from
ocean voyages to their own rivers, birds fly
from the Arctic to the Torrid zones with no other
guide than their own natural ability, bees and
ants organize into governments ; and so one might
go on to show that all the mind in this world
is not in mankind. The squirrel knows his little
world of trees and fences, and old stumps and

126 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

hollow logs, and where nuts are to bo found and
toadstools grow, he knows the common birds
and beasts by sight, as a dumb person knows
them without names, he plans and acts in such
ways as each day has needs, he does not know
beyond the limits of his wanderings. We too
are soon lost. Begin where we will to study, to
investigate, and directly we arrive at the boun-
dary of all human knowledge in that direction,
and can only say, witli the apostle of old, " God
knows, I cannot tell."

BIRDS.

"THE birds, great Nature's happy commoners." — ROWK.
"The poetry of earth is never dead." — KEATS.

AMONG the many attractions to a natural-
ist on the Molega Road are the birds. To
pass over them without notice in these studies
would be an ungracious act on my part. Often
enough my drives would have been lacking in
some special feature of interest had it not been
for my feathered acquaintances. I am painfully
aware that the general run of people do not give
much attention to birds. Residents of the coun-
try districts, although in the midst of good op-
portunities, seldom know even the names of
common birds. They recognize swallows, part-
ridges, owls, woodpeckers, chickadees, sparrows
and hawks ; but these are family names, and it
is rather a loose-jointed kind of knowledge
that does not go any farther than that. I am
not of the opinion that it is an easy matter to
learn the names of all or even half of our birds-
It requires enthusiastic interest, books and speci-

128 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

mens, and much perseverance. Still it is quite
desirable that knowledge increase in this direc-
tion. It is not realized that for the most part
birds are so useful that we could not hold our
own against insects without them. We would
surely be driven out of the land by caterpillars,
grubs and bugs, and beetles and flies, if our
feathered allies did not destroy them by millions
every day, even within the area of one small
county. Long ages before mankind appeared
on this earth birds were here. Their fossil re-
mains imbedded in the ancient rocks proves
this statement beyond question. It is then
very evident that they can live without us,
but without them human existence could only
be maintained within narrow limits. No
grains could be grown, no trees could live.
The insect-eating birds are to mankind what
the embankments that keep back the ocean
are to Holland. If the wall was removed
or broken down the whole country would
be overwhelmed with water. Insects destruc-
tive to vegetable and animal life exist in
countless species, and their ability to mul-
tiply their numbers even in one year is some-
thing incredible. They are held in check by
birds. There are other agencies that help in
this direction, but they would prove unequal

BIKDS. 129

to the work, and to the birds we owe a great
consideration.

I am thinking that some readers with nat-
uralist's taste may turn over these pages for
information and recreation, and it is my aim
that something of both may be found here.

To begin with the information, I set down a
list of such birds as one with good eyes and
ears for them would identify in the course of
two or three years, making about four trips a
week with an old horse and plenty of time and
enthusiasm over the Molega Road :

THRUSHES.

Hermit Thrush, or Swamp Robin, Turdus analaskce.
Olive-backed Thrush, Turdus ustulatus.
Robin, Merula miyratorius.
Cat-bird, Galeoscoptes carolinensis.

WARBLERS.

Summer Yellow Bird, Dendroica cestiva.
Black-throated Green Warbler, Dendroica virens.
Black-throated Blue Warbler, Dendroica ceruksens.
Black-polled Warbler, Dendroica coronata.
Chestnut^sided Warbler, Dendroica pennsylvanica.
Bay-breasted Warbler, Dendroica castanenea.
Cape May Warbler, Dendroica tigrina.
Black-and-Yellow Warbler, Dendroica maculosa.
Yellow Red-Poll Warbler, Dendroica palmarum.

130 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

Blackburn's Warbler, Dendroica blackbumia. Com-
mon.

Pine Creeping Warbler, Dendroica vigorsii. Com-
mon.

Maryland Yellow-throated Warbler, Geothlypis tri-
chfis. Common.

Mourning Warbler, Geothlypis Philadelphia. Rare.

Connecticut Warbler, Geothlypis agilis. Very rare.

Nasbville Warbler, Helminthophaga ruficapilla. Fairly
common.

Tennessee Warbler, Helminthophaga peregrina. Rare.

Canadian Flycatching Warbler, Sylvania canadensis.
Not rare.

American Redstart, Setophaga ruticella. Very com-
mon.

Black and White Creeping Warbler, Mniotilta varia.
Abundant.

Black-capped Flycatching Warbler, Sylvania pusilla.
Rare.

Northern Parula Warbler, Comsothlypis americana
usne<K. Common.

VlREOS.

Red-eyed Vireo, Vireo olivaceous. Very abundant
Solitary Vireo, Vireo solitarius. Common.
Yellow-throated Vireo, Vireo Jlavifrons. Rare.

SPARROWS, FINCHES, ETC.

Song Sparrow, Melospizafascidta. Very abundant.
Swamp Sparrow, Meluspiza georgiana. Common.

BIRDS. 131

Snow Sparrow (" Blue Bird "), Junco hiemalis. Very
common.

English Sparrow, Passer domesticus. Too common.

Eastern Fox Sparrow, Passerella ittiaca. Common
sometimes.

Tree Sparrow, Spizella monticolo. Common in winter.

Chipping Sparrow, Spizella socialis. Bare.

White-throated Sparrow, Zonotrichia albicollis. Par-
ticularly abundant on this road.

Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Habia ludovicianus. Com-
mon.

Pine Grosbeak, Pinicola enucleator. Common.

Snow Bunting, Plectrophanes nivalis. Common in
winter.

American Crossbill, Loxia curvirostra. Common in
winter and spring.

White-winged Crossbill, Loxia leucoptera. Quite
common.

Pine Finch, or Siskin, Spinus pimts. Common, not
in summer.

Red-poll Linnet, Acanthis linaria. Common in win-
ter.

Lapland Longspur, Calcarius lapponicus. Occasional.

Purple Finch, Carpodacus purpursus. Very abun-
dant.

American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis. Quite common.

FLYCATCHERS.

Water Pewee, Sayornis phcebe. Rare.

Olive-sided Flycatcher, Contopus borealis. Common.

132 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

Kingbird, Tyrannus tyrannus. Very abundant.
Traill's Flycatcher, Empidonax traillii. Not very

common.

Least Flycatcher, JZmpidonax minimus. Common.
Wood Pewee, Contopus virens. Common.
Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, Empidonax flaviventris.

Rare.

WOODPECKERS.

Hairy Woodpecker, Dryobates villosus. Common.
Downy Woodpecker, Dryobates pubescent. Common.
Yellow-bellied Woodpecker, Sphyrapicus varius. Com-
mon.
Flicker Golden-winged Woodpecker, Colaptes auratus.

Common.
Pileated Woodpecker ("Woodcock"), Ceophlceu*

pileatus. Rare.
Arctic Three-toed Woodpecker, Picoides arcficus.

Rare.
American Three-toed Woodpecker, Picoides ameri-

canus. Rare.

Kingfisher, Ceryle alcyon. Common.
Black-billed Cuckoo, Coccyzus erythrophthalmus. Fairly

common.

Crow, Corvus frugivorus. Abundant.
Raven, Corrus corax. Somewhat rare.
Blue Jay, Cyanocitta cristata. Very abundant
Canada Jay ("Meat Bird"), Periosoreus canadensis.

Common.
Rusty Blackbird, Scoleocophagus carolinus. Very

common.

BIRDS. 133

Cow-pen Bird, Molothrus ater. Rare.

Butcher Bird, Lanins borealis. Rare.

Cedar Bird, Ampelis cedrorum. Common.

Ruffed Grouse, Bonasa umbellw. Common.

Spruce Grouse, Tetrao canadensis. Rare.

Cliff Swallow (Eaves Swallow), Petrochelidon luni-
frons. Very common.

Barn Swallow, Ghelidon erythrogastra. Common.

" Stump Swallow," Tachycineata bicolor. Common.

Ruby- throated Hummer, Trochilus colubris. Common.

Night-Hawk, Chordeiles virgin ianus. Abundant.

Chimney Swift, Chcetura pelagica. Very abundant.

Blue Bird, Sialia sialis. Very rare.

Golden-crowned Kinglet, Regulus cakndulus. Abun-
dant.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet, Regulus satrapa. Common.

Black-capped Chickadee, Parus atricapilhis. Very
abundant.

Hudsonian Chickadee, Parus hudsonicus. Rare.

White-breasted Nuthatch, Sitta carolinensis. Com-
mon.

Red-breasted Nuthatch, Sitta canadensis. Common.

Brown Creeper, Certhia familiaris. Common.

HAWKS.

Sharp-shinned Hawk, Accipiter fuscus. Not very

common.

Cooper's Hawk, Accipiter cooperii. Rare.
American Goshawk, Astur atricapillus. Rather rare.
Marsh Hawk, Circus hudsonius. Fairly common.

134 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

Sparrow Hawk, Falco sparverius. Common.
Pigeon Hawk, Falco columbarius. Rare.
Red-tailed Buzzard, Buteo boreatis. Common.
Broad-winged Buzzard, Buteo pennsylranicus. Rare.
Fish Hawk, Pandion halieetus. Common.

OWLS.

Great-horned Owl, Bubo virginianus. Common.
Barred Owl, Syrnium nebulosum. Common.
Saw-whet Owl, Nyctale acadica. Not common.

HERONS.

Great Blue Heron (" Crane "), Ardea herodias. Com-
mon.
American Bittern (Stake-driver), Botaurus kntigionsus.

Common.

SHORE BIRDS, ETC.

Spotted Sandpiper, Actitis macularia. Common.

Least Sandpiper, Tringa minutilla. Common.

American Woodcock, Philohela minor. Fairly com-
mon.

Black Duck, Anas obscura. Common.

Wild Goose, Branta canadensis.

Wood Duck (Summer Duck), Aix sponsa. Common
in the fall.

American Whistler Duck, Glaucionetta clangula.
Common.

Shelldrake, Merganser arnericana. Common.

Herring Gull. Laxus argentatus. Occasional.

Loon, Urinator imber. Common.

BIRDS. 135

Here then are one hundred and fourteen spe-
cies. The list could be enlarged by taking in
the lakes and some other features of the dis-
trict, which is twenty-seven miles from the sea-
coast, where, of course, numerous additions could
be made of beach and ocean birds. Among so
many as I have named, one comes as a matter of
course to have his favorites, but all are interest-
ing. Some of them are delightful songsters,
others are almost dumb, and others, again, are
harsh screamers. The swamp-robin, or hermit-
thrush, is the most charming of the musical fra-
ternity. The jays are the noisiest ; the cedar-
birds the most silent. The most unsocial are
the raven, the olive-sided flycatcher and his
cousin, the wood pewee. The hardest fighters
are kingbirds. The most ferocious is the
goshawk. The most intelligent is the crow, and
the least intelligent, night-hawks and spruce
partridges. The most beautiful nests are made
by humming-birds and wood pewees, and the
worst by the cuckoos. The cow-pen bird makes
no nest, but lays her eggs in the nest of other
birds for them to hatch. The raven is most
distinguished as a bird of bad omens. The only
good thing I ever read about them is the ac-
count of them taking food to the prophet Elijah.
They are so eager and greedy to eat all they can

136 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

find that nothing short of a providential watch-
ing would prevent them from devouring the
prophet's morsel.

An old fourteenth-century manuscript writ-
ten in the English of that time relates in rude
verse the raven's outgoing from the ark as

follows :

" Then opin Noe his windowe
Let ut a rauen and forth lie flew
Dune and up, sought here and thare
A stede to sett upon somewquar,
Upon the water sone he fand
A drinkled beste ther flotand
Of that fless was he so fain
To ship come he neuer againe."

Spenser, the old poet, tells us of

" The hoarse night rauen trump of doleful drere."

Shakespeare has it that the raven

" Tolls

The sick man's passport in her hollow bill,
And in the shadow of the silent night
Doth shake contagion from her sable wings."

It was believed that the nestlings could be
made into medicine, and here is the way to do
it as given by Guillim, who wrote so long ago
that his English may not be understood at a
glance :

BIRDS. 137

"Take rauens bryddes all quyke oute of here neste and
loke yot ye touche not the erth nor yot yei coimnen in none
hous and brenne him in a neu potte all to powdir and gif it
ye seke man to drynnke."

Or in modern fashion :

" Take raven's birds (young) alive out of her nest, and look
that you touch not the earth nor yet come into any house,
and burn him in a new pot, and give it to the sick man to
drink."

" Any old thing " did for sick people in those
days, and the custom dies hard.

Among the birds on my list the kingfisher is
most pleasantly interwoven in myth and song
and story. The old Greeks had it that Halcyone
was a daughter of vEolus. Her husband was
drowned in the JEgean Sea and as she wandered
on the shore she saw afar the dead body of her
husband. The gods in pity changed her into a
kingfisher, and her husband shared the same
happy fate. Halcyon means brooding on the
sea, and it was pretended that kingfishers made
floating nests on the sea, and during fourteen
days while the eggs were hatching the winds
went down ; and these were " Halcyon days. "
The older English poets often allude to this
myth. Dray ton has it thus :

" The halcyon whom the sea obeys
When she her nest upon the water lays."

138 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

Dryden writes:

" Amidst our arms as quiet you shall be
As halcyon brooding on a winter sea."

Milton says :
" While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave. "

The kingfisher of the myths is a very differ-
ent fellow from the rough-and-ready, practical,
every-day bird of that name. So far is she from
nesting on the " charmed " sea that she digs a
long tunnel in a bank and there the eggs are
laid. As a family they are birds of fine feather,
but their grating, loud voice is against them,
with many, and there is no elegance of form.
Their feet are deformed into palms for grasping
a fish while eating it. Their bills are large and
powerful, adapted to seizing the nimble and strug-
gling fish, on which they depend altogether for
food. When a kingfisher quits his perch by a
river or brook side he always starts, and keeps
up a clattering, horse-fiddle outcry, as if he de-
sired to let everybody know of his coming. I
do not object to his announcement ; it fits him
exactly, for he comes, low down and direct on-
ward, like a feathered express. In fact, I am so
far away from good taste in musical sounds that
I am more moved by the loon's long midnight

BIRDS. 139

" holoo " across a lake than I am by the liquid
notes of the hermit-thrush. Something that
goes deeper with me is the whistling scream of
the circling hen-hawk, as he mounts the dizzy
spirals of the sky, than there is in the cat-bird's
jocund song. I prefer the " Too, hoo, hoo " of
the "boding owl" from his perch in the dark
hemlocks, to the robin's evening lay. The owl
starts the " goose-flesh " on me ; it is as if some
phase of the night side of nature had found a
voice for itself. Even the muffled " honk " of
wild geese at nightfall moved Bryant to write
the finest poem in all bird literature. There
is in it a'loftiness of feeling and beauty of ex-
pression that place it in the first ranks of short
poems. No melody of singing bird could have
moved him like this wild cry, shouted down
from the depths of the twilight sky by this flock
of chartless and compassless voyagers.

To learn to like these voices and aspects of
nature is to get more out of life that is worth
having ; to neglect them is to pass by the sources
of true and healthy enjoyment. While such
negligence may not be a sin, it is an ill-man-
nered reception of a princely birthright. " To
consider the lilies how they grow, and notice
that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed
like one of them," is not an idle sauntering by

140 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

the way, but a becoming attention to the splen-
dor of God. It is either a narrow mind, or a
sadly neglected one, that never rejoicingly says
to himself or another, " Lo the winter is past,
the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the
singing of birds is come, and the voice of the
dove is heard in our land."

MICMAC INDIANS.

" RUGGED type of primal man,
Grim utilitarian ;
Loving woods for hunt and prowl,
Lake and hill for fish and fowl." — WHITTIEB.

I HAD almost forgotten to say that our road
to the mines ran across an Indian reserva-
tion. After the white men had disposessed the
red men of the lands they had owned for many
centuries, then the generous Christian granted
back again a small portion of his plunder. A
few Indians have lingered on these acres well
watered by streams and lakes, but his pale-face
brothers come there by dozens to whip the
waters for trout. Long ago the Indians bowed
to the inevitable ; resistance to the invaders
became hopeless.

About three hundred and fifty years ago the
French made the acquaintance of these people
of the forest. That was their first introduction
to Europeans. They were hunters and trappers
and fishers. Not a single tool or weapon of
metal could be found among them. They

142 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

were not destitute of fine qualities, and re-
ceived the white strangers with dignified hospi-
tality. They were quick to see the advantages
of muskets and iron axes over bows and arrows
and stone tools. In all the province there
were about four thousand Indians. They were
well acquainted with the shores and the in-
terior. They had named the harbors, and head-
lands and bays, and mountains and lakes, and
could make maps 01 the countiy and far out-
side to Quebec and New England. While
they did not live in grand houses and make a
great show in the world, still they were far
from being a very low type of men and women.
They had no law books, but there was an un-
written code demanding the observance of the
common virtues of life. In the nature of
things they could not live in large communities,
for they did not till the soil to secure food.
Certain families had their homes from genera-
tion to generation in the same district. Among
themselves they led a quiet life, in some meas-
ure subject to a head man or chief of the tribe,
who was chosen for some fitting qualities. The
Mohawk Indians from the State of New York
were an adventurous, fearless tribe, looking for
scalps, and became a menace and terror to the
Indians of Nova Scotia and what are now the

MICMAC INDIANS. 143

neighboring provinces. The French soon man-
aged to be on good terms with the natives ; they
settled among them and traded with them,
lived often in their wigwams and married their
daughters. More than this, French priests came
out and lived with them and learned their
language, and converted them to their creed.
This was not a difficult task, for the Indians be-
lieved in a good spirit who made all good
things ; in an evil spirit who was the author of
all evil. They believed in a heaven and a hell,
and also a middle state, or purgatory, says
Father Vetromile. This was a long start in the
right direction, and the devoted missionaries
gathered them all into the Roman Church,
where, as a rule, their descendants remain.
Before their conversion they were veiy cruel
in war, and afterward they perpetrated dreadful
deeds, but white Christians were setting them
no better example. In New England Eliot,
Tupper and Mayhew were preaching to the
Indians with a desire to save their souls, but all
their work bore no great fruit. Eliot translated
the Bible into their language, and I believe
there is not a man who can read it, unless
Father Vetromile be still alive. One may well
doubt that it ever served the purpose intended.
The New England white men who brought

144 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

the Bible stole the Indians' belongings, sold
them into West Indian slavery, and when they
conquered and killed, in 1675, their leader,
Chief Philip, they cut off his head, brought it
to Plymouth and stuck it high on a pole where
the skull rattled for generations over the heads
of these pious savages. The wrens at last came
to nest in this brain-box, wherein had been
hatched many daring schemes before ever a
wrenlet saw light there.

Rev. Dr. Rand, with great zeal and ability,
mastered the Micmac language and translated
and printed the New Testament, Genesis and
Exodus, together with reading-books ; and some
Indians learned to read it, but they had no
great inclination in that direction, not more
than white people, and that is not much. Dr.
Rand says that many of the Indians had not
" so much as heard of the Bible," although they
were all Christians by baptism. That Dr. Rand
filled a long-felt need by furnishing them with
the scriptures is not credible. They were evi-
dently not greatly neglected by their own
church, for even Dr. Rand said after he spent
forty years in this work :

"I have never made it a special object to
change their religion ; 1 could not see the
slightest advantage it would be to them."

MICMAC INDIANS. 145

If he had taken that view of the matter
at the outset he would never have entered on
a mission to the Micmacs, and gone into an
ecstasy of rejoicing when he had translated
the first verse of scripture, as if the letter
was much more than the spirit. The Micmacs
were the first Indians north of Mexico to em-
brace Christianity, and their teachers were
missionaries of rare zeal and piety, deserving
of great praise for their self-denial and devotion
to humanity.

In his later years, when his knowledge of
Micmac language was thorough, Dr. Rand must
have been both pained and amused over his
crude translations made when his zeal outran
his knowledge. Eliot, the famous New England
missionary to the Indians, relates that when he
was making his translation of the Bible, and
came to Judges v : 28, " The mother of Sisera
looked out at a window and cried through the
lattice," etc., he was unable to find a word
for lattice. He explained to his Indians that a
lattice was a bit of wood-work made of narrow
strips placed side by side, but not very close to-
gether. So they gave him a word, and he used
it in the translation. Long afterwards he saw
that the passage read thus, " The mother of
Sisera looked out at a window and cried

146 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

through the eel-pot." The fact is that an
eel-pot as still made by the Micraacs is really a
lattice-work in hoops, to allow the escape of the
water, but not the eels, when it is set in a
stream.

The Micmacs were a comparatively docile
and gentle people, and the missionaries found
the task of conversion much easier on that
account. In New York State, where the Five
Nations dwelt, an Indian confederacy, there was
a stern opposition to the introduction of Chris-
tianity. Their great Seneca chief, Red Jacket,
who died in 1830, was an eloquent pagan to the
last. A missionary visited them, and they came
together to hear him. Among other things, he
told them "there was but one religion, and
without that they could not prosper. They had
lived all their lives in gross darkness, and,
finally, if any objections could be made he
would like to hear them."

To show how the matter looked to Red
Jacket I introduce his famous speech, as it will
at the same time give the reader a good idea of
Indian argument and eloquence :

"Brother, you say you want an answer to
your talk before you leave this place. Listen
to what we say: There was a time when our
forefathers owned this great land. Their seats

MICMAC INDIANS. 147

extended from the rising to the setting sun.
The Great Spirit had made it for the use of
Indians. He had created the buffalo, the deer,
and other animals for food. He made the bear
and the beaver ; their skins served us for cloth-
ing. He had caused the earth to produce corn
for bread. All this he had done for his red
children because he loved them. But an evil
day came upon us. Your forefathers crossed
the great waters and landed here. Their num-
bers were small. They told us they had fled
from their country for fear of wicked men.
They asked for a small portion of land. We
took pity on them, granted their request ; they
sat down among us. We gave them corn and
meat. They gave us poison fire-water in return.
You have now become a great people and we
have scarcely a place left to spread our blankets.
You have got our country, but are not satisfied.
You want to force your religion upon us. You
say that you are sent to instruct us how to wor-
ship the Great Spirit agreeable to his mind;
and if we do not take hold of the religion you
white people teach we shall be unhappy here-
after. You say that you are right and we are
lost. How do we know this to be true ? We
understand that your religion is written in a
book. If it was intended for us as well as for

148 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

you, why has not the Great Spirit given it to
us ? and not only to us, but why did he not give
our forefathers the knowledge of that book with
the means of understanding it rightly? We only
know what you tell us about it. How shall we
know when to believe, being so often deceived
by the white people ?

"Brother, you say there is but one way to
worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is
but one religion, why do you white people differ
so much about it ? Why not all agree, as you
can all read the book ?

" Brother, we do not understand these things.
We are told that your religion was given to
your forefathers, and has been handed down
from father to son. We also have a religion
which was given to our forefathers and has
been handed down to us their children. We
worship that way. It teaches us to be thankful
for all favors we receive, to love each other,
and to be united. We never quarrel about
religion.

" Brother, the Great Spirit has made us all.
He has given us a different complexion and
different customs. Since lie has made so great
a difference between us in other tilings, why
may we not conclude that he has given us a
different religion according to our understand-

MICMAC INDIANS. 149

ing? The Great Spirit does right. He knows
what is best for his children. We are satis-
fied. We do not want to destroy your religion
or take it from you, we only want to enjoy
our own.

" Brother, you have now heard our answer to
your talk, and this is all we have to say at
present. As we are going to part, we will come
and take you by the hand and hope the Great
Spirit will protect you and return you safe to
your friends."

Red Jacket had a mind of his own, and clung
to the old way of the fathers. It was his mis-
fortune to come much in contact with the greed
and intolerance of white men, and he could not
believe in their religion.

The Indians of New England and the British
maritime provinces were divided into many
clans or tribes. In general appearance, customs
and language they were much alike. The lan-
guage did not differ more than English differed
a century ago in England from shire to shire.
The Indians of Nova Scotia did not call them-
selves Micmacs, it was a nickname given them
by the French. They were known as Souri-
quois. They were great believers in magic and
witches, and Malike was an old name for witch-
craft, and out of this word was derived Micmac.

150 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

If the Indian had discovered iron, and learned
how to change it into steel, a thousand years
before America was discovered, he might well
have made a name for himself among civilized
nations. Their language was admirably calcu-
lated for all manner of literary purposes. It is
not a rude, harsh, barbarous tongue, but smooth
and soft, and immensely rich in words.
On this point Dr. Silas T. Rand says :
" The Micmac, like many, if not all, of the na-
tive American languages, is remarkable for its
copiousness, its regularity of declension and con-
jugation, its expressiveness, its simplicity of
vocables, and its mellifluousness ; in all of these
particulars and others it will not suffer in com-
parison with any of the most learned and pol-
ished languages of the world."

Dr. Rand was not only learned in Micmac
but he was wonderfully acquainted with many
other languages, including Greek and Latin.
Our Indian, who thinks in his own speech and
talks in English, makes a rather awkward at-
tempt. The difficulty is this : he tries to trans-
late the arrangement of his words into something
equivalent in ours, but the whole structure and
grammar of his language bear no resemblance
to English; hence he makes such blunders as
the following :

MICMAC INDIANS. 151

" Long time ago, when first Indian makeum
God."

Or this :

"Joe Williams his hogs my heelus (eels)
eatem all up."

This is a language where the roots of words
are all smoothly dovetailed into one another to
form one long word, which is really a sentence.
Here is such a word : Ydle-oole-wiaktdiue-pokose.
This signifies, "I am walking about carrying a
beautiful black umbrella over my head." The
word is made up from other words, as follows:
Ydlea, I walk about ; maktdudre, I am black ;
welae, I am beautiful ; pokuoson, a shelter over
the head. The roots of all these words are
easily discovered in the long word that is a reg-
ular verb in the indicative mood, present tense,
first person, singular. As a sample of such
long words, here we have one meaning " They
are going to eat supper together " : Najdejemow-
weoolowouadullaolteedussuneega. This word-
building is a very different thing from simply
throwing whole words together, as if we were to
write it in English thus : Theyaregoingtoeat-
suppertogether.

A very much nicer arrangement is in the In-
dian speech. The speaker makes the long word
when he needs it, and he does that by certain

152 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

rules of construction, and he can express the
nicest shades of meaning by the introduction of
a single sound.

The older Indians had a good deal of pride in
their language and aimed to speak it with pro-
priety. When the French came amongst them,
bringing many things they had never before
heard of, then they either attempted to use the
French name or they coined a new word ; for
example, they called the French Wenjoo, and
they named cow Wenjooteam, meaning French
moose, as Tedm is their name for moose. An
apple they named Wenjoosoon, or French cran-
berry. The Indian name for horse is Taseboo ;
this is a mere attempt to use the French des
chevaux. They had no oars, but used a paddle
instead, which they called ' Thargan ; so they
named an oar French paddle : Wenjootaagan.

A slight change in the termination of a word
enables the Indian to express a great variety of
meaning. To illustrate, we will take the word
for bear, Mooin; for bear's grease, Mooinone;
for bear meat, Mooindwd ; for bear skin, Mooinu ;
I am a bear, Mooindwe.

However barren of results Dr. Rand's work
may have been from a religous point of view, it
was well worth doing from other considerations.
It is not for me to say that there were no good

MICMAC INDIANS. 153

results ; evidently there were, but they were dis-
appointing in their meagreness and not propor-
tioned to the effort made to produce them.
Through the long and difficult labors of Dr.
Rand, the student of human history has a dic-
tionary of their language, and a collection of
their folk-lore tales, and many items of interest
besides.

It is a prevailing notion that this tribe is dis-
appearing, but the census shows a steady in-
crease, thus : 1851, there were 1.056 ; 1861,
1,407; 1871,1,666; 1881,2,125; 1892,2,157.

It has been a very difficult task for the In-
dians to comply with the new conditions that
the white man enforced upon them. From time
reaching back thousands of years they had been
hunters and fishers. Even as they walk on the
streets and roads there is a soft yield ing-at-the-
knee stealthiness of step that tells the story of
their past life in the forest. To work the soil for
a living is utterly foreign to their nature. In
fact, to settle down in a place and remain there
is contrary to their natural instincts as much as it
would be to a wild goose. They can no longer
live by hunting, and even white men, as a rule,
in Nova Scotia find that farming needs a good
deal of piecing out to yield a living. The In-
dians have given up their bark wigwams, their

154 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

bows and arrows, and moccasins and blankets,
and now cling to the outskirts of the white man's
towns and villages, living for the most part in
huts, and using their mechanical aptitude in
coopering, canoe-building and basket-making.
They act as guides to hunters and fishermen,
and in these various ways, with a little plant-
ing, manage to live in a manner not well calcu-
lated to make the best of them. They are a
quiet, orderly people, very hospitable and unself-
ish with one another.

The Indian family on the Molega Road con-
sists of a widow, " Kate Jeremy, '" and her mar-
ried son and child, and an unmarried son. They
live in a snug, clean cottage, have quite a farm,
keep oxen and a horse, are very industrious,
sober people. Even with them the old ingrained
tendencies and dispositions crop out in their
canoe-building, moose-hunting and fishing — oc-
cupations that demand some of their time.

What the future of this tribe will be it is diffi-
cult to tell Avith certainty ; but one may be sure
that they will not come into close competition
with the whites in any trade or business ; most
probable that they will long continue to exist
as a separate people, retaining their language
but losing their peculiar customs. They are not
long-lived, and a large proportion of them die

MICMAC INDIANS. 155

young. Consumption carries away many of
them. Strong drink has proved a great curse
to them, in even a greater degree than to white
men. They have taken kindly to the white
man's vices, and his virtues of steady industry
and thriftiness have been largely neglected. Al-
though they live in houses and cook on stoves,
and sleep on bedsteads and sit on chairs, and
wear our cut of garments, still they are born
children of the forests, and all their dispositions
and aptitudes go back to the old conditions of
the rude hunter life of their forefathers.

The question is often asked, From whence
came the Indians ? A great deal of study and
laborious research has been given to the matter,
but as yet there is no sure answer. It is most
probable that they originally came from Asia,
entering in the vicinity of Behring Straits.
Their faces, complexion and language favor
this view. The indications are that they were
not the first people who lived on this Continent.

PUFF-BALLS, TOADSTOOLS AND
THAT SORT OF THING.

" THE grisly toadstool grown there mought I see
And loathed paddock lording on the same." — SI-KXSER.

I WANT to say a word for these overlooked,
half-despised commonplaces of nature.
" Puff-balls " are known on sight by all fre-
quenters of fields and pastures and rural road-
sides. Country boys find some amusement in
squeezing the "smoke" out of them. They
are looked upon as things that grow without
seed or root, but come up at night in a hurry,
wherever they will. In England they were long
regarded as something not good. A common
name for them is the " Devil's snuff-box, " also
" Puck's fist " or " Puck-ball " — and Puck here
is only another word for " Old Fellow."

So far is this dainty thing from being a
"Devil's snuff-box v that it is a veritable casket
of wonders. It would require a large book to
explain and illustrate them all, but we will call

PUFF-BALLS AND TOADSTOOLS. 157

attention to some of them. In the first place,
let it be understood that this puff-ball is one
of the great Fungus family, wherein are all
toadstools, mushrooms, mildews, black-knot, po-
tato-blight, rusts, etc.

The puff-ball is not a freak of nature, but
the seed-vessel of a low order of plants. When
it first appears as a small solid ball breaking
through the soil then the real plant may be
found running in white threads through the
ground. These grow with great rapidity, and at
the proper time they put out into the light this
tiny globe, that is fed from the roots and grows
with astonishing vigor and rapidity. In four or
five days it has reached an inch or two in di-
ameter, changed inside from a clear white pulp
to a sack of purple-brown powder. It has
shrivelled up at the base, burst open at the top,
broken away from its anchorage, become the
sport of the winds, breathing from its tattered
chimney little clouds of dust, until decay fin-
ishes its existence. All this has a meaning.
There is method in it from start to finish, and
it is the privilege of the human mind to inves-
tigate and understand it, in a measure at least.
If we breathe on a bit of glass and then force
the smoke of the puff-ball against it till there is
a little cloud on the glass, and place it under

158 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

a microscope of fairly good power, we shall
see that this dust is altogether made up of
regular-shaped bodies with little tails to them.
Under very high magnifying instruments and
in skilful hands these little bodies are found
to be a naked kind of seeds with no embryos,
called spores, and the tail is really a wing ; and
a common puff-ball as large as a small apple
contains not less than ten millions of these
seeds, and every one of them would grow if it
had a favorable opportunity. The fact that
there are so many indicates the difficulties of
getting a footing in the world. The living or-
ganism under ground, the mycelium, pushes this
little globe outside and stuffs it with millions
of seed spores, all winged for the air, fills it
with gases till it bursts away an opening for
them to escape, cuts it off from its rootage,
that the winds may sport with it and thus the
seeds be sown far away from the grounds al-
ready occupied by its kind. The human mind
cannot conceive or in any way adequately com-
prehend the energy and intelligent action in
that little ball, that within a few days brought
forth so many millions of spores, so minute
that the naked eye cannot see them, only as
dust or smoke, and yet so made, that once
lodged where soil, and moisture, and heat, are

PUFF-BALLS AND TOADSTOOLS. 159

favorable, each one will become the centre of
such living activities that all about it the earth
will respond to its call and myriad million atoms
will come trooping to its demand in order that
it may grow and furnish other " puff-balls "
while the earth endures. The sun is a globe
fourteen hundred thousand times larger than
this earth, and we know something of its sub-
stance, and the dimensions are very great, and
nations have worshipped it as the fountain of
light and the giver of life ; but, after all, one
may find in this little gray-skinned ball the
evidences of vital powers intelligently fashion-
ing in a few hours more of these wonderful
seeds than there are stars within the whole
range of the best telescope ! The human mind
is startled and amazed in the presence of such
microscopic marvels, and the night-sky, lit with
many million suns, as it surely is, does not de-
mand a grander cause for its existence than
this tiny sphere at our feet, stuffed with millions
of living germs wherein are held the latent
forces that will reproduce their kind when oppor-
tunity off ere.

I make such comment as this because I am
persuaded that the supreme benefit of all nat-
ural-history studies lies in their power to arouse
the faculties to considerations that take hold on

160 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

realities that outrank the material objects that
suggest them.

We have at least two common species of
puff-balls. One is brownish-white, with a short
stem, and somewhat pear-shaped and warty ;
this is the Ly coper don gemmatum. The other
rests close on the ground, is white, and a little
warty ; this is the Lycoperdon saccotum. They
are both good food when properly cooked and
plucked in season. They should be gathered
when fresh, while the inside is pure white, cut
in slices and fried in butter. Many good judges
of such things prefer them to eggs.

Now we will take up another branch of this
Fungus family. The toadstools are known to
all who "take their walks abroad." There is
one group or family of which there are many
members common all about us. These are the
Agarics, and the common mushroom of the ta-
ble and market belongs here. They are shaped
like an umbrella. On the under side of the
cap, or pileus, are the gills, arranged around the
stem, like spokes of a wheel. When it is just
showing itself through the earth it is a tiny
ball, but if we cut it in halves the indications
of the umbrella-shape will be seen. When fully
out of the soil there is a thin veil drawn over
the gills, and it soon breaks, and shrivels up

PUFF-BALLS AND TOADSTOOLS. 161

around the stem, and remains a good mark of
this family of Agarics. The toadstools are but
the seed-bearing organs of this cellular crypto-
gamic plant, that flourishes in the dark soil in
the form of rootlets and threads. The spores,
or seeds, are formed in the gills by millions and
continually shed, but we do not see them, and
the lightest breath of air carries them away.
However, it is an easy matter to get a view of
them in this way: slice off the cap and care-
fully place it on a bit of black paper, or even
brown, and cover it over with a dish, and let it
remain for a few hours. Upon examination
you will find that the spores have dropped
upon the paper, forming a beautiful wheel as
each gill threw down its own portion directly
under it. In some species the spores are daz-
zling white, in others pink, in others golden ;
but in all, when under a good microscope, can
be seen beauty and elegance of finish, as if each
one was the pride of some master eye and hand.
These wheel patterns are so beautiful that one
may preserve them for the pleasure of looking
at them. This is easily done by gumming the
paper with a little mucilage and allowing it to
dry, and placing on the top of the specimen a
piece of damp cloth ; this will yield enough
moisture to make the paper slightly sticky,

162 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

and the spores will be fixed where they fall
on it.

The general impression is that toadstools are
poisonous when eaten, but the charge is too
sweeping. There are about two thousand spe-
cies known and described. Out of that number
less than fifty are believed to be poisonous, and
the others are good food and very largely eaten.
In Russia, especially, almost all kinds are freely
eaten. In this province there is the " deadly
Aminita" To make matters worse, this is closely
related by family ties to the edible mushrooms.
The resemblance has been the death of many
people, who were deceived by appearances, and
ate the poisonous fraud. It is of a medium
size, with a yellow-russet or pale-yellow cap,
and a white stem and gills, and when full grown
has a shrivelled veil furled about the .stem. At
an earlier growth the veil covers the gills. The
distinguishing mark that brands it as dangerous
is not always, nor often, in sight. The stem
rises out of a little cup with ragged edges:
this is the sign ; have no further acquaintance
with it, for even the smell of it is sickening to
some persons. We have another that must not
be eaten. It is known as the Fly-blow agaric,
and one may find them in abundance — a large
stout species, with a reddish or even red and

PUFF-BALLS AND TOADSTOOLS. 163

yellowish cap, well covered with white warty
particles, resembling "fly-blows"; this is not
considered fatally poisonous, and in some coun-
tries it is freely eaten, after a treatment with
salt. The natives of Siberia and Kamschatka
manage to get drunk on this species, and as all
other intoxicants are very scarce, and they pre-
fer very often to be drunk rather than sober,
they consequently hold this species in great
esteem. I have often noticed that our cattle
in the autumn, when there is a good crop of
toadstools in the woods, and they get a taste
of them, become almost crazed for more, and if
allowed to range at large will make a bee-line
for the place where they grow. They seem to
prefer a very large white species, and I never
heard of any bad results to them or to those
who drank their milk. Our red squirrels eat
freely of a small red mushroom of the Agaric
family. One may often see them scampering
away with a lunch in their teeth.

The bracket fungus, that grows out from the
sides of trees and logs and stumps, is often more
than a foot across. It is arranged on a different
plan from toadstools : there are no gills, but on
the under side there are innumerable holes run-
ning up through the latest annual growth ; they
are as smooth as rifle barrels. The spores are

164 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

formed at the upper ends, and shot like bullets
into the air. Once I had the good fortune to
see this process in full operation. The fungus
grew on the side of a stump in the woods ; I
chanced to take a rest on the other side, and a
glint of sunshine fell across the bracket, that I
could not see from my position, but what I did
notice was regular pulsations of brilliant, glis-
tening particles, forming little puffs, like steam,
as they drifted across the sunbeam and vanished
instantly in the common daylight. Before look-
ing for the cause I guessed rightly that it was
a fungus sowing its spores by the tens of mil-
lions, and they were carried away on the sum-
mer air. The pulsation, or rhythmical action,
must have been in the mechanism of the object
itself, — all its little guns fired at once.

It would be " o'er long a tale to tell " of the
various forms taken by these things. They pro-
duce the dry-rot of timber, the "punk" of pines,
the touchwood of the yellow birch. They at-
tack dead trunks and limbs and help to reduce
them to their elements. Hardly a living spe-
cies of animal that does not suffer from this
great fungus tribe. They particularly seize
upon insects of many kinds, entering their
bodies by various channels. Once there, the
spore germinates and grows, at the expense of

PUFF-BALLS AND TOADSTOOLS. 165

its host. Death is the certain result. Our
house-flies come to grief in this way, and the
pity is that more of them did not meet with a
like fate. We may often see them on neglected
window panes, dead or dying in the centre of
a whitish cloud , this cloud is made of mildew
threads. After filling the body of the fly they
grow and flourish outside — a purely fungus
growth from a mildew spore lodged in the in-
sect. Caterpillars in various parts of the world
are carried off in this way. In Australia one
may see living caterpillars crawling with a stalk
of fungus, more than an inch in height, grow-
ing from the head, and sure to kill. Of this
fungus group, by some lines of relationship, are
the microbes and bacilli that are the causes of
diphtheria, consumption, fevers, cholera, and
most other diseases of men and beasts. We lit-
erally have to contend with powers of the air,
an invisible host of living cells that enter our
lungs at every breath, flourish in our blood,
colonize in our muscles and bones and teeth,
and there multiply by growing and breaking
in pieces. Without mouths they eat, without
stomachs they digest, without organs of gener-
ation they multiply by myriads in a day. If it
were not that some feed on other kinds we
would fare worse than we do. To have lived

166 IN THE ACADIAN LAND.

at all amid such enemies is a marvel in itself i
and if it were not that most of them do us
no harm and some of them help us, the end of
mankind could not be far away. This is at
first glance a long bit away from puff-balls, but
my text added " and that sort of thing."

Here, then, is a brief essay on a subject de-
serving attention, and my only hope is that
some reader will be stimulated to study in this
promising and delightful field. Indeed, I may
say in this closing sentence of my little book,
that the object nearest my heart in writing it
has been to arouse in some small measure an
enthusiasm for out-of-door studies, that are so
full of health and happiness, with ever-widen-
ing visions of nature and life.

Qf-

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