In the open

WILD GARDENS

Improvement easily becomes an affectation, from which all healthy natures suffer periodic reactions that take them to the mountains and the forest, to those primeval estates loved of wild bees, of the phœbe and the wren. One feels a sympathy with those renegade plants known as garden escapes—star of Bethlehem, bouncing-bet, and the rest—which have run away from the garden for the freedom of the woods and highways. The conventionalities of spade and hoe are odious to them. They wander far from the assemblage of the elect; they will live wild and free, these Philistines, following the open road wherever it may lead, with a sort of tramp instinct. Even the staid and domestic apple will break away from the fold to seek the unregenerate society of the pastures.

The hemlock woods, the meadow and the bog are wild gardens which require no cultivating themselves, but only a certain cultivation and appreciation in us, which they repay with gentle and unfailing interest year after year. What we get from them will depend on what we take to them.

Flowers are nothing away from their haunts. We must have the field in which the clover blossomed—bees and all, the cranberry-bog, the mossy bank of the violet, the white birch on which the polyporus grew. Take, for example, the clintonia, solitary amidst fallen spruce logs on the mountain slope. Imagine it transferred to a trim garden! If you have really seen that flower of the solitudes, you have seen the mossy rock overhanging it, the spruce cones lying thick about; sniffed the balsam and heard the veery on the mountain. Or consider this mountain sheep pasture with its clumps of stunted spruce and balsam, its scattered boulders and patches of sensitive fern, its reddening sorrel and running cinquefoil; bluets lie over the ground like a light fall of snow; pasture stones are incrusted with parmelias and set in a frame of hair-cap moss and reindeer lichens, incomparable mosaics; wild strawberries nestle among dainty speedwells, half hidden under the bent grass. It is a whole, an homogeneous piece of work, like a tapestry. There is not a bog-rush nor a buttercup to be spared.

From the first fragrant spicebush to the last witch-hazel, no cultivated shrub is to be compared with them, for the virtue of the wild is not to be transplanted and is never imprisoned in flower-beds. These shrubs of the pasture have a personality derived from immemorial contact with the virgin and uncultivated soil. They have been nourished by the very juices of earth and by the bone and sinew of the mountains. If you would have the barberry, you must move the pasture itself. It is of wild gardens solely, an untamed and untamable beauty. And so it is with the dogwood, for what is this but sunshine in the May woods—rifts of light breaking here and there through the overarching green of oak and tulip trees? It were as easy to catch sunbeams as to carry this away.

The mountain is the mother of these wild gardens; a vigorous dame to bring forth so gentle a brood—as the slopes of Vesuvius produce a mellow wine which has taken only a kindly warmth from the raging heart of the volcano. All her fairest virtues have blossomed in her children; her graces would remain unsuspected but for them. Let the gods but fling down a bit of rock anywhere and presently, after a few ages, it shall dissolve into violets and anemones. Grind it to powder by the wayside and you have only made it into thistles and burdock; scatter it over the fields and it becomes daisies and sunflowers.

Imperceptibly, granite melts at its outer edge into a fringe of dicksonia and wild rose. Limestone will bring forth a richer garden than sandstone, as though, like the rock-maple, it had more sweetness in its veins than another. Some of the most delightful gardens arise from disintegrating basalt. Perchance this rock retains a little of its old volcanic heat and has more of the finer graces in its make-up than that which was coldly laid down under water. Fiery lava, tempered and mollified by Time, has become kindly and amenable. Where was only desolation, after countless days the dicentra hangs out its white flags in truce to the warring elements. The sand hillocks of the terminal moraine are the chosen land of mountain laurel, and there are untold acres where this constitutes almost the sole undergrowth. What a hanging garden, when, on a level with the eye, one continuous bloom spreads through the twilight of the woods—the single buds like miniature urns of rose quartz so delicately are they sculptured,—here a warm rosy tint and there a ghostly pallid blossom. This soil, the detritus of glacial torrents, despite its many washings, has not given up all its gold, but is rich in arbutus and in pedata violets. It is, after all, granite, the mother-lode of the earth; granite after endless transmutations but still retaining some of its virtues.

To the first flowers belongs a charm, the most exquisite of any, something tender and appealing, as though they enshrined the fairest virtues of the year—its modesty, its purity, its sweetness—in violets, anemones and bloodroot. This charm, so elusive, has never been described, nor shall be indeed. It is like music which is a language in itself and will bear no translation. The bee must approach these with some humility and more gentleness than is shown to the sturdy blossoms of summer. They are eminently the "gentle race" of flowers, born in the enchanted time.

We go with hungry eyes at this season. By midsummer we have been well feasted and no longer see individual blossoms so much as masses of bloom. Bloodroot and hepatica are like the dewdrops of early morning which disappear before the sun. They can be found just once in a year; after that they will not appear the same. It is cheering to come upon such a fair company of spring beauty where but a few days since were none; to enter a stretch of woodland and find it populous with these friends of a lifetime, now returned to their old haunts. We do not commonly reflect that they have been under the snow all the while. Scattered among them, the anemones lie in drifts, like a late flurry of snow and quite as evanescent, lingering in the shadows only. These are the delicate children of April; May is their foster-mother. Contact with them is like the glimpse of a spirituelle face. But the adder's-tongue which nestles by the brook has more fire in its veins than the rest. Its spotted leaves give it an almost feline beauty as it droops with the southern languor of the lily.

Serenity dwells with the woodland flowers. There is about them some subtle refinement and exclusiveness. They appear fit symbols of lowliness and modesty. A strip of woodland beside the turnpike is like an ancient chapel left amid the din and hubbub of city streets. The sturdier plants, both coarse and gay, halt at the edge of the wood. Within, the light is subdued; nothing obtrudes upon the eye or ear. It is obvious that the cathedral had its origin in the forest. What a fair and devout congregation has jack-in-the-pulpit, where the Canada violet stands side by side with the medeola and the painted trillium. The medeola declines its unfertilized flower, so that its maiden life is hid from view beneath the tri-leaved canopy, and only in its mature and matronly days does it begin to ascend and take a position where the seed shall crown the plant and be in evidence. From what insect despoiler is this shy virgin so carefully hid?

It seems as if the light that penetrates these woods has undergone a change, or been deprived of some of its rays, so that the wood flowers are nourished by a finer food than the rest, as with ambrosia. It is perhaps the subdued light which inspires a certain solemn and hymn-like quality in the notes of wood birds, as in the thrushes and the altogether didactic tone of the redeye. There is here none of that self-assertiveness among the flowers that is to be observed among certain groups of plants; the competitive spirit is lacking. Solomon's-seal, bellworts and twisted-stalk, like medeola, are rather at pains to conceal themselves. There is no self-advertising among them. What could be more unassuming than goldthread and wood-sorrel? They live close to the soil of which they are the offspring—a rich, odorous soil, black with the accumulated nutriment of centuries. He must be in hot haste indeed who treads on a patch of mountain wood-sorrel, such is its mute, appealing beauty. It holds the eye and stays the foot of every saunterer in the woods.

But follow the by-roads in early summer and you shall have very different company. It is here you will find the sturdy travelers, who will go the length of any road in all weathers; and there are none more cheerful and uncomplaining. They have no fault to find; the world suits them very well. You must be prepared to greet mullein and burdock as equals. Here on the road they are as good as any; they hobnob with the rose. Wild carrot borders the dusty lanes with a fringe of lacework—a real lace from the deft hand of Nature. There is no brighter gold than the St.-John's-wort, albeit it will not pass current in the town.

The winds sow the fairest hedge by the roadside—the winds and the birds; it seems that they take kindly to these wayfarers. They are the good fairies who plant elder and blackberry and scatter the wild rose. Timothy and redtop and witch-grass are the very children of Æolus. The pollen-bearing wind mothers the grass and plantain; the seed-carrying wind distributes the thistle and willow. Birds are very willing to carry cherry-pits provided they may have the cherry for their trouble.

The breeze comes laden with thistle-down, such fragile craft embark on these untried seas with all sails set. The story of such a seed would read like a fairy tale. Has not the wind whispered daily to it as its silken sail was spread? And the seed has tugged at its moorings like any boat till these were loosed and she was off, beating in and out among the high blueberries and shadbushes of the pastures, at last sailing clear of all such reefs and ascending in air to drift out into the open. How it rises and falls on the currents, like a ship riding the long swells of the sea; again it drives free before the wind to settle down at last in some pasture. If, perchance, such a seed fall on stony ground it is no great matter. The marvelous silken sail will now fall away, for the craft has reached port, no more forever to sail these seas. On occasion one is caught in a spider's web, whereupon the spider comes out to see what luck. Evidently all is not fish that comes to her net. But the self-reliant crane's bill looks neither to bird nor beast nor again to the winds of heaven, for it does its own planting, flinging the seeds away with almost an intelligent and conscious action.

This relation between the wind and the plants of the field is an agreeable stimulus to the imagination, in a matter-of-fact day when fairies are not so common as of old. Consider how the breezes have blown the pollen of the pine and later are to help carry the seed. They thus serve the trees of the forest and the grass of the prairie. These same winds urge the fruit that it should leave the parent tree. "Come, follow us!" say they, and first gently draw, then roughly compel, till the apple falls. They whisper all through the summer to the leaves so green, and at length, on October days, draw them irresistibly.

Verily of wild gardens there is no end; our estates are without number. But among them all the mountain is unique, for to ascend is like going northward, and at the same time to reverse the season. One, which I climbed the middle of June, is little more than four thousand feet, and yet, whereas in the valley there were daisies and wild carrot, on the summit the wild red cherry was just in bloom. In that short distance one walked upward—or rather backward—from the middle of June to late April. Another four thousand feet would have carried one back into the depths of winter. The seasons are thus with us throughout the summer; we have only to go up in the air after them.

Warblers were nesting on the mountain slopes which would otherwise hardly have been found at that season this side of Canada, such as the black-throated blue, the magnolia and myrtle. The winter wren was fairly abundant, and on the very summit a snowbird had her nest. About half way up, the butternuts of the ravine gave way to spruce and balsam. As the ascent continued, mountain-maple and mountain-ash suggested higher latitudes. But what impressed one most was the subtle recession to the early year. The seasons having fairly begun to revolve, it was as though some power were slowly turning them back again.

Some hundred feet or more up the face of an overhanging cliff, a bower of columbines hung out into the grim ravine. They were clustered just under the brink, gems of the first water in a rude setting. The red blossoms glowed faintly against the bald cliff like rubies set in the walls of a rock temple. From under the roots of the clinging spruce a small stream slid like molten glass over the escarpment above and burst into spray, gently undulating like a fine veil, as it descended to the pool below with the dominant and strenuous song of the waterfall.

Probably honey bees do not leave their mountain meadows for this dim twilight region, though they may possibly become acquainted with these hanging gardens on their way to some bee-tree in the woods. It is left to the wandering bumblebee to fertilize most woodland flowers, and in the case of the columbine, perhaps to the humming-bird. On the same cliff were tufts of the alpine woodsia and dense patches of rock-brake—but these stand in no need of the bee.

When, at some three thousand feet, wood-anemones were blooming, summer slipped gently away and April took its place. It seemed quite natural then to find adder's-tongue and to see wake-robins and bunchberry everywhere. The last part of the ascent might have been through a swamp, so strong was the suggestion of swamp life. Spagnum grew in places along the trail, and the fern moss was in evidence on the rocks. False hellebore was abundant, and on the very top stood a poison sumac—a typical bog plant. Yet the summit was rocky and covered for the most part with stunted balsam as thickly matted together as a hedge. The mountain pokes its cold head up into the clouds, and is continually refreshed by the dews of heaven. In some unaccountable manner the swamp plants, as if guided by instinct, ascend and find their natural environment at the top.

When I descended, it was to leave spring behind with every step, not again to meet her in that year.

WEEDS

A strange analogy exists between plant life and some aspects of human life. The same stern necessity of the survival of the fittest—physical in one, and in the other mental and spiritual—seems to inhere in both. Among the weeds, competition is the dominant note, as it is in our world. In some higher circles it is sounded faintly, while untold legions of the more delicate plants—like sensitive natures—are driven to the wall, unequal to the struggle.

There are weeds whose ways suggest the arrogant monopoly, and others which recall the parasites of society. The dodder fastens upon its victim and the bindweed throttles the innocent. To withstand the severe competition of pigweed and ragweed, the garden patch requires your energy, plus its own; and the more war is waged upon these, the more does it seem to encourage the purslane, which thrives like a freebooter in this sort of warfare.

One can imagine no more irrepressible rabble than these weeds of the garden. They seem possessed almost of a conscious life, and to push and shove and scramble for place like a hard-headed, thick-skinned, piratical crew. Many of them are immigrants, the riffraff of Europe, who have found their way to our shores, some to become good citizens, and others to remain pestilent anarchists, opposed to the law and order of the kitchen-garden and rebelling against all government by the hoe. Yet how happy are the bob-whites and the tree-sparrows for the poor seeds of the ragweed when the snow lies deep. They repair to these as to an unfailing larder, which may lie between them and starvation at such times. Through some kind providence, the seeds remain into the winter to be shaken down upon the snow. The obnoxious weed of summer rises to the dignity of usefulness and becomes a food plant—grain and corn to the hungry birds.

There are weeds and there are weeds. So much depends upon the point of view; is it a weed on the lawn, or is the lawn but a background for the dandelions which star the grass? What bright day-stars are these which beam upon us from the orchards and by-roads with cheerful golden radiance! And when these shining stars have grown dim and faded from their firmament of green, there appear in their place such white wraiths of their former selves as resemble the moon seen by the light of day. They are now so many extinct suns, so many ghosts of the dandelions, soon dissolving into still less substantial state, to be spirited away on the winds.

During the summer the common dandelions gradually disappear, and at length the fall dandelions suddenly spring into prominence, poking their flower-heads up on long scapes. With commendable thrift these are closed every night, that a little pollen may not be wet by the dew. These fall flowers appear to be more numerous even than the early species. They can sustain themselves in tall grass where the latter could not, keeping their flower-heads always floating on the rising tide of green. You may see fields of red clover mixed with dandelions, while the Virginia creeper lies in scarlet splendor along stone walls, and goldenrod and asters are massed on the borders—Elysian fields surely. The play of light and color is a kind of music, and stimulates one to some inner hearing. The deaf could hear this. And were the blind to listen to the crickets' reverie, they might see these fields.

Is there anywhere a more audacious beauty than the pokeweed in autumn? It flaunts itself in your face—one of the respectable bourgeoisie of weeds, now suddenly arrayed in this regal fashion and mocking you with its splendid beauty. A weed! Why are not roses weeds as they stand all forlorn before this voluptuous child of the people? Out of the plebeian rabble there comes here and there such a superb creature as this.

Consider the milkweeds,—a family of beauties. Something luxuriant and sensuous there is in their ample proportions. They have an excessive health, an exuberance of vitality; a full-blooded race, if you so much as break a leaf from one it bleeds like a wounded creature. From the mud, the swamp-milkweed has derived some rich hue, while the butterfly-weed in the pasture has caught the very sunshine itself and become a living flame. The great pod of the milkweed is the luxuriant fruit of this fine plant, as tropical in appearance as any mango or cocoa bean. When it is ripe, in place of a luscious flavor, it discloses a mass of finest silk, a fluffy ball. Who would guess the treasure within these grotesque pods with their long beaks, their spines and wrinkles? They are like curious old junks with a cargo of rich stuffs of the East, which children—young pirates that they are—overhaul on the high seas of the pasture and despoil of their treasure.

It is the sturdy character, if nothing more, of some weeds which constitutes their charm, for health is beautiful everywhere. Ironweed and joepye-weed are such lusty, vigorous plants, and burdock and jimson-weed. The earth shall nourish them; they push themselves to the front; they do not live by any one's favor. How can the impoverished dust of the roadside sustain these burdocks with their incredible leaves? The richest swamp produces no such extravagant foliage. As for the ironweed, it clothes the pastures with a royal purple, so rich a hue it compels the eye, and is a kind of stimulant. One may become mildly intoxicated with such color.

In August the high-roads and by-roads are painted—stripes of gamboge and patches of delicate blue—and all because of some weeds. It would be worth while riding through the country at this season, if for no other reason than this. Vivid streaks of tansy stretch in narrow lines for rods together. Where the road skirts a pond, the eye is refreshed by the pickerel-weed, resting like aureoles above the surface of the water. In the fields beyond is the celestial blue of the chicory—so common a weed, so divine a hue; while everywhere a fringe of wild carrot trails in the dust, the lace border of that gorgeous mantle. Such laces and jewels nature provides if you are but rich enough in thought to possess them.

In the pastures mullein and thistle grow side by side, two pronounced personalities, as different as it is possible to be, yet nourished by the same soil and under the same conditions. The mullein seems to invite you to take hold of its leaves, while the thistle as plainly says, Hands off! They suggest similar types of people, one bristling and repellent, the other suave and genial. These great flannel leaves of the mullein are caressing and soft to the touch. Contact with them is agreeable, well nigh soothing. If, perchance, your feelings have been ruffled by a bellicose thistle, address yourself to the tender young leaves of the mullein and you shall feel their soothing effect.

The perfume of the Canada thistle is equal to that of most wild flowers and superior to many. It is wholly refined, with no taint of coarseness. With what vulgar effrontery a cheap perfume assails the nose. But here is a despised thistle which brings itself to notice by an influence not plebeian but patrician. You might pass this thistle day in and day out and never suspect it had any such virtue, till you had gone out of your way to cultivate a closer acquaintance. Call it a weed if you will, it has an individuality that separates it from other common plants, and by reason of which it commands attention.

Floating in nebulous masses about the blackberry thicket, the delicately conspicuous hue of the fireweed catches the eye. If you will but watch the slender pods you may now and again see one suddenly open and its four walls silently withdraw, while there emerges from the interior a phantom shape, the filmy mass of pappus-down with rows of golden seeds attached. This white cloud of silk gradually takes shape, as the mist might rise from a mountain lake, lingers a moment, and then sails away on a passing breeze—ethereal still as the mist—growing less and less, and vanishing at length, as if resolved again into the invisible.

Old gravelly roads, which meander across the pasture and seem destitute of any special beauty, are often adorned from end to end with the round-leaved spurge, of richest hue, varying from maroon to plum color. This little weed is so unpretentious, so sincerely humble and unassuming, that probably very few ever see it or are aware of its existence. It lies prone upon the earth, where, once it attracts the attention, it is seen to be a beautiful embroidery on the bare ground. Here grows the poverty-grass which on misty days is covered with dewdrops—incrusted with jewels—while more pretentious plants are not decked in any such beautiful array. The mist descends upon the poorest of them all, and makes that resplendent.

In the society of weeds there is this tendency to segregate, quite as in human society. Even the beach has its clique, a curious throng quite distinct from any of the fields, which defy the encroachment of the waves. About these coarse weeds of the beach is something peculiarly in keeping with their environment. The strange spiny fruit of the orache suggest sculpins, or some sea-shells, while the innumerable erect stems of the spreading house-leek resemble the backbone of fish. Carrying with it its air-sacs and paraphernalia of the sea, the rockweed, which is a "weed" of another world, grows as far up on the land as it can go, while the weeds of the beach approach the water as near as they dare. Here is the frontier, the edge of their world, and one and all would scramble over the border could they sustain life on the other side.

INSECT LORE

Apis the bee, Vespa the wasp, and Arachne the spider—these might properly figure in many a saga. Mighty are the works of the tribes of Apis, while Bombus the bumblebee befriends the pale flowers of the forest as do the winds the pine. Arachne beguiles the fly, for she is a very Medusa; the solitary wasp slays the Gorgon and lays her in the tomb she has prepared, rolling a stone over the entrance; lastly, from the body of the spider springs the race of wasps, like warriors from dragons' teeth in the days of Jason.

From the first flowering shrubs to the last goldenrod there is the hum of industry. The willows, on mild April days, resound with the roar of insect traffic. The bees push in rudely among the bunches of stamens, and the red anthers so neatly and compactly arranged are soon disheveled, the filaments bent by the myriad insect legs which scramble and kick through them. It is everywhere bustle and hurry; all are wrought to a tense degree. Life is here at a white heat—purposeful, Anglo-Saxon; yet it appears to move without friction. Occasionally a bee visits the meek-looking pistillate shrub near by, which patiently waits while the buzz and din continue uninterrupted across the path.

It is always a mystery just how the honey-bee transfers the pollen to the pollen-basket—even in view of the explanation. It appears to be scraped from one leg to the other, and gradually shifted from fore to aft by a dexterous process until lodged in the proper place, the bee remaining all the time on the wing so that the legs are moved with perfect freedom. Finally it is stowed more neatly and compactly than any pack-mule's load, and the panniers are good to see, rich and yellow as pumpkins glistening in the corn field. Doubtless the bee is careful to keep the balance and not put more in one basket than in the other. Since pollen-grains are of distinct and definite shapes in different plants, is it not possible that the insect, from its near point of view, detects these differences, and in place of so much indistinguishable dust, finds itself handling minute cubes, spheres and variously shaped blocks?

How readily bees are apprised of the blossoming of any flower. On the very instant the dwarf-sumacs open, the place hums with them. Solitary bumblebees continually scout through the woods and discover when the Indian-pipe, the shinleaf, the pipsissewa are in bloom. Only the queen bumblebee can have any memory of these flowers, as the life of the workers is but a season long. Probably they do not communicate the news, but each hunts for itself. With the honey-bees, however, this is the gossip of the hive as much as the state of the crops with farmers: "Meadow sweet is open today!" "Clethra is in bloom!" "The first goldenrod!" Imagine the news circulating like wildfire through the hives. Honey-bees have little time or patience to hunt up solitary and retiring flowers. They want masses of bloom, fields of blossom, having a large work to do—a city to build, a host to feed.

The bumblebee is the good angel of the woodland flowers, the visiting priest—or shall I say priestess—to all outlying parishes, calling at every ledge and gorge and dell where is any colony of blossoms or a lone settler or two. The bee discovers the pale pendent blossoms of the checkerberry under the leaves and almost prone upon the ground. In order to reach them it sometimes turns on its back upon the hemlock needles as it inserts its tongue in the flower above. In winter when you gather a checkerberry now and then in your walk you shall bestow a thought upon the buzzing priest of Flora who solemnized these nuptials. It visits every flower in the transparent groups of Indian-pipes which push their way up through the leaf mould to stand like an assembly of the pale-sheeted dead, and looks singularly rich and velvety against these stems of alabaster. Here is a botanist who knows the flora well, and takes a tithe from every blossom to which is brought a grain of pollen—the marriage fee. It is hard to believe so willing an agent is unaware of the service; that it fills an office which it does not recognize, while we, the biographers, alone perceive the relation.

Tell me, is there not something heroic in the life of the queen bumblebee? She awakens after her winter sleep, the sole survivor of her race, and bravely goes forth to collect pollen, lay her eggs and become the founder of a new race of workers. There is rude and virile romance in the life of this bee with its flavor of the forest. She is the queen-mother indeed, no mere figurehead, but strong, capable, self-reliant. Think of her retiring under the moss and leaves at the approach of winter, the last of her race; or, rather, do they all resign themselves to a sleep from which she alone is to awaken. She remains encircled by Cold—as Brunhilde was engirdled with Fire—till the sun shall cross the magic line and awaken the sleeping Amazon.

Today I split open a dead twig of sumac in which the little upholsterer-bee had laid her eggs. From the summit a well or shaft was sunk some ten inches through the central pith. This I cautiously descended by means of a jack-knife and found it partitioned into a dozen cells, in each of which lay a pupa, the pallid sleepers like mummies in their royal tombs awaiting a resurrection.

The cells were lined—upholstered—in silk and partitioned from each other by walls of chips cemented together. In some cases the pupa was being devoured by the minute larvæ of a chalcid fly, and in one cell only the dried skin remained. For that pupa there was to be no resurrection into the life of the bee, but as the cell was opened, out stepped a tiny chalcid into the light of day, its dapper little person shining blue-black and its minute wings of an iridescent green.

You may see many broken twigs of sumac, elder and blackberry, perforated at the end in evidence that in the cells below are the larvæ of a bee, or perhaps the pupæ wrapped in their transforming slumbers. This sepulcher is sign to the chalcid fly as well. In one such that I opened were several perfect bees, beautiful little green creatures. Immediately they stepped out upon my hand and began dusting and cleaning themselves, but appeared to be troubled by the brightness, and eager to hide. When offered the open end of a tube, such as they had recently come from, they seemed glad to enter. They were not yet fitted for contact with the world of light and preferred to return to the darkness and security of their cells. A spider had concealed herself in a silken room at the mouth of one tube, perhaps seeking this privacy in which to change her skin. When their time had come to emerge, the inmates would naturally have walked into the spider's den, while the light of day appeared beyond, but for a single instant, as a faint glimmer which they were destined never to reach.

However, there is a Theseus for every monster. A spider was one day spinning her web in an outer angle of the veranda, laying the first strands, the scaffolding. Attaching one point she swung out on her line and fixed a second, aided by the breeze. Without the wind she perhaps could not have erected her scaffolding in that place. The morning sunlight caught these first threads, stretched from post to beam, and they gleamed like silver or spun glass. At length a wide space was to be bridged and she swung free at the end of a long strand. The breeze carried her to and fro, far out from under the roof, so that she remained suspended in mid-air.

But other eyes were watching her at her work. As she swung thus, self-possessed and at ease, suddenly a mud-dauber pounced upon her. The silver strand parted in the sunlight, and the spider was carried to the beam above, where the wasp apparently stung her several times. A moment after she rose in air holding the large globular spider, now paralyzed and inert, and sailed away over the treetops in the direction of her nest. The victim was to be immured in a sarcophagus of mud together with the egg of the wasp. When the egg hatched, the larva in this tomb with the body of the spider would find such gruesome state congenial enough—being of the wasps. In this case a spider the less means a wasp the more.

Late one afternoon a spider was constructing her web. She already had her first line stretched between two small shrubs. On this she crossed and recrossed several times, each trip reeling out a new strand from her spinnerets, until she had a stout cable from which the gossamer structure was to depend. From an end of this she dropped to the ground and fastened a thread, then ascended, traversed the cable and dropped lines from the other end to the twigs beneath. All were remarkably taut and firm. By crossing two she now established the center of the web—not the geometric center—and from the overhead cable spun some radii to this point and from this to the lower strand. In an incredibly short time she had lines radiating in all directions from the center like the spokes of a wheel.

She now fairly ran over these spokes paying out the strand as she laid the spiral web upon the gleaming radii. Starting at the center she traveled from left to right, passing the thread through the claw of one of the last pair of legs. By this means it was held from her as far as possible and quickly attached to each of the radii. A very short time sufficed for her to complete this spiral of perhaps a foot in diameter, and she had only to return over the ground with the final thread, on which are strung the viscid drops.

She paused as if resting, and in that moment a Social wasp descended like a fury and bore her to the ground. The wasp quickly rose holding the spider in her embrace, and returning to the bush suspended herself by one hind claw. Here she held the body of the spider with two pair of legs, and turning it about, as though it were on a spit, bit off some of the head parts with her strong jaws which worked like a pair of shears. So near was I that I could see these jaws meet and sever the thorax, which fell and glanced from a leaf a few inches below with the faintest imaginable sound. The wasp then proceeded to tear open the abdomen. The builder of gossamer bridges, who overcame space and flung her nets to the breeze, was no more. I looked again at the unfinished web and in it struggled a small fly.

In stretching the first strand the spider avails herself of the wind to some extent. When crossing from one point to another it is by no means necessary she should drop from a height equal to the distance to be crossed; for if the wind is strong enough she has but to descend a little way, and then, as it holds her out at right angles, she pays out the line and so continues moving in mid-air. As soon as she comes in contact with some object she at once attaches her thread. I have more than once observed a spider drop a short distance when there was no breeze to carry her, but by the movement of her body she imparted a slight motion to the line and thus set herself to gyrating until she finally swung across the intervening space.

The spinners of flat webs in the grass are associated with dog-days and with foggy weather, as if they spread their tents only at such times to fold them again and steal away with the appearance of the sun. As a matter of fact these spiders work in clear weather and at different hours of the day, but the web is so fine as to be next to invisible unless covered with moisture, when it at once attracts the eye, like a writing in invisible ink which becomes manifest only under the right conditions.

There are other spiders which become evident only at the approach of winter. It is something to the credit of these small spiders that, being without wings, they should still aspire to fly; whereas the ants, born with wings, are in haste to tear them off. The past year they were so in evidence on the 11th of November that I shall henceforth associate that day with the flight of the Erigone. The weather was cool, but with a suggestion of Indian summer in the air. I first noticed the spiders on top of a hill, for the bare twigs of sumacs were streaming with gossamer threads which shone like silver. From time to time little spiders descended from the upper regions and ran about over my coat. One, which was spinning threads on my sleeve, finally ran out upon my hand and, elevating its spinnerets, began paying out a line, which I could see as I held it against the sun. When this had reached a length of several feet the little spider was whisked off by the breeze and carried away.

Toward sunset a delicate network of gossamer threads covered the open pastures like a silver mesh in which the earth lay captive. These minute spiders have a way at this time of allowing the strands to be drawn from their spinnerets by the wind, until they carry sail enough to be lifted off their feet. They fly away thus on the wings of the winds, perhaps carried high above the earth by ascending currents. Lo, the hegira of the spiders!

It would appear that the Solitary wasps are more ingenious and self-reliant, and less governed by tradition, than the Social bees and wasps; for I have seen a small black one which was unable to rise on the wing with the large spider it was carrying, finally drag it up the trunk of an oak to the height of seven feet and from that vantage fly away. Such an one pulled a spider much larger than herself up on my knee and left it there, paralyzed but alive, while she made explorations, after which she returned and took it away. As I was making some notes at the time with reference to wasps, the incident made a pleasant impression, quite as though she had taken me into her confidence and had gone out of her way to reveal some facts of her life.

One day I encountered a sand-wasp which had just stung a wireworm and was dragging it over the ground. The worm, which resembled a brown twig, was three inches long and as large around as a slate-pencil, while the wasp was not over an inch and a quarter in length and very slender. Seizing the victim in her jaws and straddling it, the wasp walked along in this uncomfortable fashion, over ground strewn with pebbles and partly covered with brush. Difficulties were many, and she was kept constantly pulling, tugging and boosting to get the worm along.

At length she penetrated the brush and came out bearing the worm into an open gravelly space. Here she turned off sharply for a distance of two yards, and, after running nervously to and fro, stopped in front of a small hole. She had been over an hour dragging the worm. During that time one main direction had been followed, though never had she to my knowledge left her burden and risen above the brush and trees to get her bearings; yet she found her way unerringly, and only turned aside because of the boulders and clumps of white birch stumps. The whole distance was about forty feet in a straight line, but further as the wasp had gone.

Backing into the hole, she seized the worm and attempted to drag it in after her, but the entrance proved too small. She therefore came out and began rapidly enlarging it by seizing bits of gravel with her jaws and fore legs, rising in the air and carrying them off six or eight inches. Again she entered, and this time was able to pull the worm in after her. She remained three or four minutes in the hole, during which time she was depositing her eggs, then her head reappeared at the opening.

She now began filling in. Dropping two or more bits of gravel, she would then turn her back and rapidly scratch in dirt with her fore legs, evidently to fill up the interstices. Twice she took out a bit of gravel and carried it away, precisely as a mason might throw aside a stone that was not the right shape or size. As her head was thus inserted in the hole a black ant approached and peered into the depths. Suddenly the wasp turned and gave one look, whereupon the ant fled in haste.

When the hole was filled to the brim she tamped it down with her head. This occupied her some minutes and she appeared to take the utmost care. Gravel was then brought and piled upon the spot until it exactly resembled its surroundings. The stones carried varied in size from those as large as a buckshot to some the size of a marrowfat pea. They were lifted and carried seemingly without effort, and dropped almost before one could see what she was about. Twenty minutes were consumed in filling up the hole and restoring the surface.

On a sudden she vanished, and with her vanished the place itself where she had been at work. It was as if a trap-door had closed, and no sign was left. So carefully had she done her work and so closely imitated the surroundings, like a miser burying his gold, it was only after careful search I could again locate the spot.

Thus in the economy of Nature every insect appears to be food for some other. On the leaves of the Virginia creeper you may usually find, in early autumn, some caterpillars which have received the eggs of a small chalcid fly. These caterpillars, otherwise so large and green and awesome to the beholder, have become limp and lean and have an aged and decrepit look. They hold feebly to the vine but no longer eat anything. I brought home one of them and in a short time there emerged from its body a great number of small white grubs, fifty or more by actual count. Upon the back of their emaciated host they proceeded to spin for themselves marvelous little cocoons of white silk which they did in a very brief time. Moving their heads this way and that they spun the fine threads about themselves until they were completely enveloped. Here were a great number of little spinners, making for themselves garments of silk, and at last spinning themselves out of sight. The caterpillar now bristled with the small white cocoons which stood upon end on its back, where they were attached, and almost hid it from view.

The wary caterpillar has many foes. If it escapes the hungry warblers and vireos, there is still the army of goggle-eyed wasps and nervous ichneumons to circumvent. Yet a prodigious number survive. Were it not for their enemies they would overrun the earth. The butterflies sporting in the sunshine, and the small moths flitting about the lamp, have come through many perils, and may almost be said to have lived by their wits, so astonishing are the ruses they have devised to deceive their pursuers.

THE WAYS OF THE ANT

If you would see the ants to advantage—to your own, that is—you must turn over a pasture stone under which one of the species of small yellow ants has its nest. By thus gently removing the roof, if it is a good-sized stone, the whole colony will be in view at once. The red-ant hill presents difficulties. To dig into it or to pull it apart is quite useless, as the earth falls in and nothing is to be seen but a struggling heap of dusty and indignant ants. It rarely happens that such a hill may be built around a small boulder. If this boulder is suddenly and deftly removed, not dragged or rolled aside, but lifted clear of the hill so that the sides of the nest may not be broken in, a remarkable scene is disclosed.

I have found such an ant hill, and by removing the stone the household was placed on exhibition—but not all its secrets revealed by any means. From several large chambers, now roofless, galleries and corridors radiated in all directions. The instant the stone was lifted the ants swarmed from the galleries into these chambers, which were packed with the large cocoons. There were thousands of pupæ, of a delicate brown tint, looking wonderfully clean and fresh, but with such celerity did the ants work that inside of ten minutes all were carried from view.

Among the rest were perhaps a dozen young ants, the head and thorax being white and the abdomen a pale mauve. These creatures moved feebly about, taking no interest in the proceedings, and were for the most part seized by the workers and conveyed into the galleries. Apparently they were individuals that had just emerged from their pupa-cases.

Under another large stone were two very numerous colonies living side by side, of different species. The nests were, of course, entirely separate and under opposite ends of the stone. The smaller of the two appeared to be stinging ants, for they clustered in great numbers over their small pupæ, elevating their abdomens in a threatening manner like so many diminutive scorpions. The other species were large and active ants of a polished bronze hue. Their pupæ were naked, which gave the nest the appearance of being filled with grains of rice.

These large ants set to work with frenzied activity and removed all of their own pupæ. Then, and not until then, they swarmed over into the adjoining nest and began carrying the cocoons of the small ants back into their own nest. Now and then some small ant bolder than the rest would resist, and an individual combat ensued which ended by the large ant carrying off her small antagonist. There was, however, very little resistance of this sort, and the pillage, if such it were, continued until the remaining cocoons had all been carried over into the nest of the large ants. So few of the small ants made any resistance that it gave one the agreeable impression the larger ants were only offering assistance. But I failed to find on subsequent visits that they had returned the pupæ. And although they daily brought their own pupæ out of the galleries, the smaller cocoons never more came to view, and the small ants subsequently abandoned their nest. Thereafter I felt some compunction in thus disturbing a whole community for mere curiosity.

It is noticeable above all how the ants at such times take no thought for their own safety, but for that of their charge solely. Whether their interest is in any sense maternal or merely a property interest does not appear. Another feature evident in disturbing a formicary is the general harmony in which the individuals of any one colony work together. Here is no less than a catastrophe, as if the roof of one's house were suddenly to be removed and everything upset. And yet not one runs away or apparently conflicts with any other. There are no cross purposes; no two get in each other's way; but animated by a common motive, and by one only, the community proceeds with despatch to the work in hand.

Is this socialism among ants something preordained for them as the condition of their life, or is it in part an acquired tendency of the ants themselves? That they do acquire tendencies would seem clear enough. If it should be proven that this social state is in fact the result of an evolution among them, it would be one of the most significant facts of natural history.

It serves the community admirably at any rate. But with them the individual does not count. Ants are ahead of us in one respect in that they have order without coercion. There is such harmony, such co-operation among them, they have evolved no ruling class, the queens being such only in name and more properly the mother ants. The life of the community is all, and every one looks out for it.

On warm afternoons early in September you may look for the swarming of the queens, when myriads of ants sail into the air in their desultory marriage flight. In apparently endless succession they pass, every now and then one alighting, whereupon begins the curious part of the performance, for they run rapidly about, throwing themselves upon their backs to squirm from side to side after the manner of a dog scratching. They then get upon all sixes and continue running to and fro. After these contortions the wings wear a most disheveled appearance, and, as the process continues, become more and more crumpled, until at length one or more are missing.

Sometimes in sheer desperation an ant will lie on her back and revolve rapidly in this position. In some cases the wings seem to resist all attempts to remove them and the ants redouble their efforts. Their frenzy appears to know no bounds; they fairly stand on their heads and repeatedly fall over miniature precipices and into Lilliputian crevices in their blind determination to tear off the wings. Again they seem to use their legs as though trying to twist off a wing. It is the most fanatical performance to be witnessed among insects.

Such dogged persistence must sooner or later attain its end, and presently the ant is seen running about wingless or perhaps with only a torn stub left. The behavior is no longer frantic as before, but she now moves about as if enjoying great relief. During one such flight great numbers came down into a gravelly path through a huckleberry patch. They apparently avoided the bushes on either hand, and chose to alight in the path, for it was alive with ants twisting and turning and wriggling upon their backs in the gravel. Others, having gotten rid of their wings, were attempting to go head foremost into the ground, possibly with a view of laying their eggs, or merely because the soil was their natural element.

Around the formicary itself the workers were grouped en masse, endeavoring either to restrain the new brood of queens in the old colony or to coerce them into leaving. They appeared to drive them as a squad of police might force back a crowd. But it is manifestly difficult to interpret their motives with any assurance, and it is more likely they were provoking them to flight. At such times they ascend the branches of a bush and collect in excited little groups on the buds and flowers around the females, as if determined they should go. No doubt it is an exciting day with them, a sort of Labor Day demonstration. In this case it is the womenfolk who are thus bent on asserting their rights and doing as they will. But why, having once ascended into the larger world and the liberty of winged creatures, must they insist on tearing off this means of freedom to become crawling, laborious insects? They appear to hear two calls, one from above and the other of the earth, earthy, and to obey the latter. But it is with them the race and the future—always the future.

To an ant a tree is a forest in itself. Ascending its mammoth trunk to the upper regions, she follows the great highways of the branches, out into the unknown and trackless wilderness of leaves in pursuit of her game—the aphid. She knows well in what wild and solitary uplands to look for this mountain-goat.

The under side of maple leaves affords good pasturage to numerous green aphids which there browse contentedly in the pleasant shade and under the watchful eyes of the small brown ants that herd them. The aphids are all sizes and ages, though as to age the difference is probably but a few days. With a glass, the process of "milking" may be observed, the ants merely stroking the aphids with their antennæ. Two small tubes, like sap quills, protrude from the back of the aphid, and from time to time minute glistening drops are seen to exude from these tubes and are removed by the ants in attendance. Surely, to the ant here is the land of milk and honey. They move constantly to and fro among the aphids, now and then stopping to stroke one. Apparently they detect by some signs which are ready to yield the sweet fluid. Their presence appears to be agreeable to the aphids and is never in the least resented. After long watching with the glass, I have never seen anything akin to insubordination. Pluck the leaf ever so gently and hold it in a proper position, the difference is at once apparent to the aphids, for there begins an exodus, and large and small troop up the stem of the leaf and so on to whatsoever it may be attached; nor does it cease until they have deserted to the last one.

But the life of ants is by no means given over to these bucolic pursuits. While the meadow-ants seem to be in the pastoral stage, the red species and the large black ones are hunters and warriors. The most sanguinary conflict I have witnessed was a battle of the ants. Two armies of the same black species met on the floor of a neighbor's barn. The battle lasted throughout several days, and both sides fought with indescribable ferocity. Where they came from was a mystery, as no such colonies of ants had ever been seen thereabouts.

They appeared to be of the species Formica pennsylvanica which nests in trees, but these do not occur in very large colonies, whereas the contending hosts upon the barn floor were as the Tartar hordes. The floor was strewn with struggling pairs and with the dead and injured, and always fresh forces were arriving.

The persistence with which they fought is only to be compared to that of bulldogs, while they showed the ferocity of weasels. Once let an ant get another by the thorax and she would continue crunching and sawing until she had severed the head, notwithstanding in the meantime one or several of her own legs had been cut off by her antagonist. This was the usual outcome of the various individual combats.

From time to time I placed pairs of combatants on the slide of a dissecting lens, and through the glass observed them as in an arena. It was a miniature combat of gladiators, but with no appeal for mercy on the part of the vanquished. Much evidently depended on the best hold, as in wrestling, for there was no dislodging an ant once she had secured it. Under the lens the comparatively great strength and the skill and relentless ferocity of these miniature warriors became more evident and was astonishing to witness.

A bird's-eye view of the battle-field revealed no plan of action nor any directing genius. It was every one for himself—or rather herself—but there was absolute unity of purpose. Occasionally some could be seen running about with the heads of the vanquished suspended on their antennæ, whereon the jaws had closed in the death-struggle, not again to be relaxed. These ants appeared to seek no relief from such a monstrous encumbrance, nor seemingly was any offered by their comrades. Others were crawling on an uneven number of legs in search of new foes. The cause of such a conflict among ants of the same species remains a mystery—one of the many mysteries.

Every year the red ants raid the common blacks for the purpose of making slaves—a most highhanded proceeding. This season I came upon the invading host marching up the road about ten in the morning of July 28th. The invasion had but lately begun, as the ants were carrying no pupæ; it was the skirmish line. As the column advanced, frequent and rapid communication took place between individuals and stragglers who were coming back. Later, when the raid was well under way, there was little of this. The nest of the red ants was by the side of a path in the woods which led out to the wagon road, while the negroes were domiciled some distance up this lane. Now the column of red ants followed the path and the road the entire way, in place of going directly through the bushes, though it doubled the distance, which thus amounted to some fifty yards.

Red ants were soon pouring out of the various openings in the nest of the blacks, carrying both pupæ and larvæ, and rarely one passed with a bunch of small white eggs. Several black queens came out of the nest, and as they emerged were set upon by red ants, which tried to hold them by their wings. They managed, however, to throw off their assailants, and ran under my feet, where they were followed by a score of black workers, all of whom crowded under the soles of my shoes as I stood on the loose gravel. At noon I timed the ants and found that, on the average, forty pupæ and larvæ were carried past a given point every minute. Two unbroken columns now extended the entire distance between the nests, one advancing and the other returning.

Occasionally one passed carrying a portion of a black ant, a head and thorax, or an abdomen. Again, one would appear with a live black, which, when liberated by me, frantically made her escape. Very young negroes when carried off were never injured. On one occasion several red ants were struggling with a black, and among them was a black who fought against her own friend. This is the only case in which I saw a black ant help the enemy in this way—a traitor, evidently, but presumably one whose pupa had been captured the year before and reared in slavery. Whereas the red ants always came to each other's assistance, the blacks rarely did so.

By five o'clock the raid was practically over for the day. It ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Early in the struggle a slender, straggling column had diverged from the main line, about half way between the nests. I now found the entire body of ants moving in this new direction. The one raid over, they had undertaken another upon a colony of blacks some twenty-five yards distant, and were transporting the pupæ and larvæ at about the same rate as before. To reach this nest, the column must cross the wagon road, and here a number were crushed from time to time by passing vehicles. But the marching army passed by with the stolen pupæ and paid no heed to their wounded comrades. This second foray ceased before nightfall.

The following morning by ten o'clock the raid had been renewed and a great stream of ants were bearing away pupæ as before. Whenever the column moved over dry leaves its progress was distinctly audible, a rustling sound suggesting the curiously dry crik crik of a serpent. The footfall of the ants was as incessant as the patter of rain; a barefooted insect host, a rabble of sans culottes, and the sound of their marching feet reached my listening ears, as it were in the clouds above them.

On the fourth day the slavers began kidnapping the blacks themselves and carrying them unharmed to the nest. Quite often I found them carrying individuals of their own species. These may have been deserters or they may have been ants from some other community, who, learning of the raid, thought to be present at the final sack and perhaps share in the spoils. A still more puzzling thing was the fact that some few red ants bore negroes in the wrong direction,—that is, from the red back to the black colony. I have noticed on former occasions that the raid may become thus complicated toward its close as if the ants, drunk with victory, were beside themselves.

On the 7th of August the raid was directed against a new negro colony some distance further down the road. It was carried on with something like the usual vigor until the 25th of the month, when it apparently ceased. The first nests of blacks, in which some few ants remained, were no longer molested, though the besieging army passed them on its way to the field of operation. Thus the series of raids of this one colony of red ants continued for nearly a month.

I found no less than three other raids in progress at this time, among widely separated communities, so that the marauding spirit was contagious among them and spread like the war fever. The red warriors were everywhere in arms and bent on pillage. One hill, being free from grass, offered a clear view of what was going on at the doorway at least. Here the black workers—the slaves of a former raid—were carrying out bits of gravel, while the train of red ants entered, bearing the stolen pupæ from the pillaged nest. The red ants were at this time bringing some large queen pupæ which they had great difficulty in getting over the ground. As they approached the entrance, the black workers deposited their bits of gravel and ran to their assistance. Several blacks which remained near the entrance seemed to act thus as porters, while others about the top of the hill were engaged as laborers.

Stopping work at about five o'clock, the train of red ants melted away before one's eyes. They dropped their task very much as a gang of men do when the whistle blows. Their day at that sort of labor was therefore only about seven or eight hours, as if some of the principles of Labor Union were in vogue among these brigands. They would kidnap only so many hours a day. The slaves, however, kept at work until dusk. Perhaps the red ants continued inside the nest, disposing of the pupæ captured during the day, but they brought in none after five o'clock.

Three days had elapsed from the close of this raid when, for some reason, the entire colony of red ants deserted the hill, carrying the newly captured slaves and their pupæ with them. They took up their abode under a cement walk, an unusual place for red ants, and a week of incessant labor was consumed in carrying the black ants and pupæ to the new site. This was, then, a bona fide exodus of an entire community.

Under the cement walk to which the colony of red ants had migrated with their slaves were numerous nests of small brown ants. These swarmed one sultry afternoon, and as they came pouring out of the cracks in the walk and clustered on the surface, the fierce red ants fell upon them with fury, slaying hundreds and leaving most of the bodies on the walk, though many were carried away. This I took to be a veritable hunting expedition. Like some other "sportsmen," they appeared to kill more than they wanted, and the little heaps of winged dead were left to be scattered by a gust of wind.

On the following day a new chapter opened in the history of this remarkable colony, for I found them attacking a large negro colony some distance away. Contrary to custom, the blacks defended their nests with spirit, and at first seemed to hold their own. Not divining what was to follow, I was surprised to find the red ants carrying away no pupæ. But the next day it was made plain enough, for the red ants appeared in a compact column bearing pupæ and slaves, which but a week before they had deposited under the walk, and which they were now moving for the third time. Was this a second exodus or had the move to the walk been merely an expedient until they should find a more suitable place? Without further ado they invaded the nest, and four distinct colonies (the red ants held slaves of a previous year), one red and three black, with all larvæ and pupæ and some eggs, were thus housed together. One may imagine the feelings of the unfortunate community on finding not only an invading army of freebooters, but that some thousands of their own cousins, children and all, were come bag and baggage to live with them.

Now the marching column passed close by the nests of the little brown ants which had been their hunting-ground of the few past days. They were too engrossed in carrying pupæ to follow the chase, but I found three of their slaves posted by some small holes in the cement through which the brown ants left their nests. These negroes remained near the opening, and, as the brown ants appeared, would reach over the edge and pull one forth which was soon crushed and tossed aside. During the several hours that I watched them the three slaves remained so engaged. From time to time they would run about among the wounded, and picking up one here or there, apparently give it a nip.

This final move occupied some eight days, and nothing further transpired in the history of this colony,—that is, above ground. The war fever subsided as suddenly as it had arisen, and the erstwhile warriors were perhaps become peaceful educators of the slaves now being born into captivity with only some vague instinct of freedom, some race memory handed down from the halcyon days before the advent of the red Tartar.

If the sluggard is to go to the ant, then let it not be to the red ant, nor again to the slave, but to some Syrian species known to Solomon, which stored up provender for the winter, or to the little brown ant which herds the aphid. Huber relates that he found the slave-making ant of Europe (P. rufescens) unable to feed itself, so that, if isolated, it would miserably starve in the midst of plenty. Not to such an ant, then, should the sluggard go, but to that wise yellow species which, declares Lubbock, actually brought in and cared for the eggs of an aphid through the winter, and carried out the young aphids in the spring to their proper food plant. Certainly should we ever attain to the dignity of wings, there will be no occasion to emulate the ant, which, being born into that freedom, tears them from its body, the rest of its days to crawl upon the earth.