Where we were standing was upon an arch over an avenue which crossed our course beneath us. The reverberations on Echo River, a point I did not reach, can hardly be more surprising, though they are described as wonderful.
There are four or five levels in the cave, and a series of avenues upon each. The lowest is some two hundred and fifty feet below the entrance. Here the stream which has done all this carving and tunneling has got to the end of its tether. It is here on a level with Green River in the valley below and flows directly into it. I say the end of its tether, though if Green River cuts its valley deeper, the stream will, of course, follow suit. The bed of the river has probably, at successive periods, been on a level with each series of avenues of the cave. The stream is now doubtless but a mere fraction of its former self. Indeed, every feature of the cave attests the greater volume and activity of the forces which carved it, in the earlier geologic ages. The waters have worn the rock as if it were but ice. The domes and pits are carved and fluted in precisely the way dripping water flutes snow or ice. The rainfall must have been enormous in those early days, and it must have had a much stronger and sharper tooth of carbonic acid gas than now. It has carved out enormous pits with perpendicular sides, two or three hundred feet deep. Goring Dome I remember particularly. You put your head through an irregularly shaped window in the wall at the side of one of the avenues, and there is this huge shaft or well, starting from some higher level and going down two hundred feet below you. There must have been such wells in the old glaciers, worn by a rill of water slowly eating its way down. It was probably ten feet across, still moist and dripping. The guide threw down a lighted torch, and it fell and fell, till I had to crane my neck far out to see it finally reach the bottom. Some of these pits are simply appalling, and where the way is narrow have been covered over to prevent accidents.
No part of Mammoth Cave was to me more impressive than its entrance, probably because here its gigantic proportions are first revealed to you, and can be clearly seen. That strange colossal underworld here looks out into the light of day, and comes in contrast with familiar scenes and objects. When you are fairly in the cave, you cannot see it; that is, with your aboveground eyes; you walk along by the dim light of your lamp as in a huge wood at night; when the guide lights up the more interesting portions with his torches and colored lights, the effect is weird and spectral; it seems like a dream; it is an unfamiliar world; you hardly know whether this is the emotion of grandeur which you experience, or of mere strangeness. If you could have the light of day in there, you would come to your senses, and could test the reality of your impressions. At the entrance you have the light of day, and you look fairly in the face of this underground monster, yea, into his open mouth, which has a span of fifty feet or more, and down into his contracting throat, where a man can barely stand upright, and where the light fades and darkness begins. As you come down the hill through the woods from the hotel, you see no sign of the cave till you emerge into a small opening where the grass grows and the sunshine falls, when you turn slightly to the right, and there at your feet yawns this terrible pit; and you feel indeed as if the mountain had opened its mouth and was lying in wait to swallow you down, as a whale might swallow a shrimp. I never grew tired of sitting or standing here by this entrance and gazing into it. It had for me something of the same fascination that the display of the huge elemental forces of nature have, as seen in thunder-storms, or in a roaring ocean surf. Two phœbe-birds had their nests in little niches of the rocks, and delicate ferns and wild flowers fringed the edges.
Another very interesting feature to me was the behavior of the cool air which welled up out of the mouth of the cave. It simulated exactly a fountain of water. It rose up to a certain level, or until it filled the depression immediately about the mouth of the cave, and then flowing over at the lowest point, ran down the hill towards Green River, along a little watercourse, exactly as if it had been a liquid. I amused myself by wading down into it as into a fountain. The air above was muggy and hot, the thermometer standing at about eighty-six degrees, and this cooler air of the cave, which was at a temperature of about fifty-two degrees, was separated in the little pool or lakelet which is formed from the hotter air above it by a perfectly horizontal line. As I stepped down into it I could feel it close over my feet, then it was at my knees, then I was immersed to my hips, then to my waist, then I stood neck deep in it, my body almost chilled, while my face and head were bathed by a sultry, oppressive air. Where the two bodies of air came into contact, a slight film of vapor was formed by condensation; I waded in till I could look under this as under a ceiling. It was as level and as well defined as a sheet of ice on a pond. A few moments' immersion into this aerial fountain made one turn to the warmer air again. At the depression in the rim of the basin one had but to put his hand down to feel the cold air flowing over like water. Fifty yards below you could still wade into it as into a creek, and at a hundred yards it was still quickly perceptible, but broader and higher; it had begun to lose some of its coldness, and to mingle with the general air; all the plants growing on the margin of the watercourse were in motion, as well as the leaves on the low branches of the trees near by. Gradually this cool current was dissipated and lost in the warmth of the day.
XV
HASTY OBSERVATION
When Boswell told Dr. Johnson that while in Italy he had several times seen the experiment tried of placing a scorpion within a circle of burning coals, and that in every instance the scorpion, after trying to break through the fiery circle, retired to the centre and committed suicide by darting its sting into its head, the doctor showed the true scientific spirit by demanding further proof of the fact. The mere testimony of the eye under such circumstances was not enough; appearances are often deceptive. "If the great anatomist Morgagni," said the doctor, "after dissecting a scorpion on which the experiment had been tried, should certify that its sting had penetrated its head, that would be convincing." For almost the only time in his life the superstitious doctor showed himself, I say, a true scientist, a man refusing to accept the truth of appearances.
But this frame of mind was not habitual to him, for the next moment he said that swallows sleep all winter in the bed of a river or pond, "conglobulated" into a ball. The scientific spirit would have required him to insist upon the proof of the alleged fact in this case the same as in the other. Has any competent observer verified this statement? Have swallows been taken out of the mud, or been seen to throw themselves into the water?
Albertus Magnus (1193-1280), in his book on animals, says that the eel leaves the water in the nighttime, and invades the fields and gardens to feed upon peas and lentils. A scientific man makes this statement, and probably upon no stronger proof than that some eels dropped by poachers in their hasty retreat had been found in a pea patch. If peas had been found, and found in many cases, in the stomachs of eels, that would have been pretty conclusive proof that eels eat peas.
The great thing in observation is not to be influenced by our preconceived notions, or by what we want to be true, or by our fears, hopes, or any personal element, and to see the thing just as it is. A person who believes in ghosts and apparitions cannot be depended upon to investigate an alleged phenomenon of this sort, because he will not press his inquiry far enough, and will take for granted the very fact we want proof of.
The eye does not always see what is in front of it. Indeed it might almost be said, it sees only what is back of it, in the mind. Whenever I have any particular subject in mind, every walk gives me new material. If I am thinking about tree-toads, I find tree-toads. If I am dwelling upon birds' nests, I find plenty of nests which otherwise I should have passed by. If bird-songs occupy me, I am bound to hear some new or peculiar note.
Every one has observed how, after he has made the acquaintance of a new word, that word is perpetually turning up in his reading, as if it had suddenly become the fashion. When you have a thing in mind, it is not long till you have it in hand. Torrey and Drummond, the botanists, were one day walking in the woods near West Point. "I have never yet found so and so," said Drummond, naming a rare kind of moss. "Find it anywhere," said Torrey, and stooped and picked it up at their feet. Thoreau could pick up arrow-heads with the same ease. Many people have the same quick eye for a four-leafed clover. I may say of myself without vanity, that I see birds with like ease. It is no effort, I cannot help it. Either my eye or my ear is on duty quite unbeknown to me. When I visit my friends, I leave a trail of birds behind me, as old Amphion left a plantation of trees wherever he sat down and played.
The scientific habit of mind leads a man to take into account all possible sources of error in such observations. The senses are all so easily deceived. People of undoubted veracity tell you of the strange things they have known to rain down, or of some strange bird or beast they have seen. But if you question them closely, you are pretty sure to find some flaw in the observation, or some link of evidence wanting. We are so apt to jump to conclusions; we take one or two steps in following up the evidence, and then leap to the result that seems to be indicated. If you find a trout in the milk, you may be justified in jumping to a conclusion not flattering to your milkman, but if you find angle-worms in the barrel of rain-water after a shower, you are not to conclude that therefore they rained down, as many people think they do.
Or if after a shower in summer you find the ground swarming with little toads, you are not to infer that the shower brought them down. I have frequently seen large numbers of little toads hopping about after a shower, but only in particular localities. Upon a small, gravelly hill in the highway along which I was in the habit of walking, I have seen them several seasons, but in no other place upon that road. Just why they come out on such occasions is a question; probably to get their jackets wet. There was a pond and marshy ground not far off where they doubtless hatched. Because the frogs are heard in the marshes in spring as soon as the ice and snow are gone, it is a popular belief that they hibernate in these places. But the two earliest frogs, I am convinced, pass the winter in the ground in the woods, and seek the marshes as soon as the frost and ice are gone. I have heard the hyla pipe in a feeble tentative manner in localities where the ground was free from frost, while the marshes near by were yet covered with solid ice; and in spring I have dug out another species from beneath the leaf mould in the woods. Both these species are properly land-frogs, and only take to the water to breed, returning again to the woods later in the season. The same is true of the tree-frog, which passes the winter in the ground or in hollow trees, and takes to the marshes in May to deposit its eggs. The common bullfrog and the pickerel frog doubtless pass the winter in the bed of ponds and streams. I think it is quite certain that hibernating animals in the ground do not freeze, though by no means beyond the reach of frost. The frogs, ants, and crickets are probably protected by some sort of acid which their bodies secrete, though this is only a guess of my own. The frog I dug out of the leaves one spring day, while the ground above and below him was frozen hard, was entirely free from frost, though his joints were apparently very stiff. A friend of mine in felling some trees in winter cut through a den of field crickets; the ground was frozen about their galleries, but the crickets themselves, though motionless, were free from frost. Cut the large, black tree ants out of a pine log in winter, and though apparently lifeless, they are not frozen.
There is something in most of us that welcomes a departure from the ordinary routine of natural causes; we like to believe that the impossible happens; we like to see the marvelous and mysterious crop out of ordinary occurrences. We like to believe, for instance, that snakes can charm their prey; can exert some mysterious influence over bird or beast at a distance of many feet, which deprives it of power to escape. But there is probably little truth in this popular notion. Fear often paralyzes, and doubtless this is the whole secret of the power of snakes and cats to charm their prey. It is what is called a subjective phenomenon; the victim is fascinated or spellbound by the sudden and near appearance of its enemy. A sportsman, in whose veracity I have full confidence, told me that his pointer dog had several times worked up to a woodcock or partridge and seized it in his mouth. Of course the dog brought no mysterious power to bear upon the bird. He could hardly have seen the bird till he came plump upon it; he was wholly intent upon unraveling its trail. The bird, in watching the eager motions and the gradual approach of the dog, must have been thrown into such a state of fear or consternation as to quite paralyze its powers, and suffered the dog to pick it up. In the case of snakes, they doubtless in most instances approach and seize their prey unawares. I have seen a little snake in the woods pursue and overtake a lizard that was trying to escape from it. There was no attempt at charming; superior speed alone gave the victory to the snake. I have known a red squirrel to be caught and swallowed by a black snake, but I have no belief that the squirrel was charmed; it was more probably seized from some ambush.
One can hardly understand how a mouse can be caught by a hawk except upon the theory that the mouse is suddenly paralyzed by fear. The meadow mouse when exposed to view is very wary and quick in its movements; it is nibbling grass in the meadow bottom, or clearing its runway, or shaping its nest, when the hawk poises on wing high in the air above it. When the hawk discovers its victim, it descends with extended talons to the earth and seizes it. It does not drop like a bolt from heaven; its descent, on the contrary, is quite deliberate, and must be attended by a sound of rushing wings that ought to reach the mouse's ear, if the form escapes its eye.
There is doubtless just as much "charming" in this case as in any other, or when a fish hawk falls through the air and seizes a fish near the surface in perfectly clear water—what hinders the fish from seeing and avoiding its enemy? Apparently nothing; apparently it allows itself to be seized. Every fisherman knows how alert most fish are, how quickly they discover him and dart away, even when he is immediately above them. All I contend for is that the snake, the cat, the hawk, does not exert some mysterious power over its prey, but that its prey in many cases loses its power to escape through fear. It is said that a stuffed snake's skin will charm a bird as well as the live snake.
I came near reaching a hasty conclusion the other day with regard to a chickadee's nest. The nest is in a small cavity in the limb of a pear-tree near my study, and the birds and I are on very friendly terms. As the nest of a pair of chickadees had been broken up here a few seasons ago by a mouse or squirrel, I was apprehensive lest this nest share the same fate. Hence when, one morning, the birds were missing, and I found on inspection what appeared to be the hair of some small animal adhering to the edges of the hole that leads to the nest, I concluded that the birds had been cleaned out again. Later in the day I examined the supposed hair with my pocket glass, and found it was not hair, but some vegetable fibre. My next conclusion was that the birds had not been molested, but that they were furnishing their apartment, and some of the material had stuck to the door jambs. This proved to be the correct inference. The chickadee makes a little felt-like mat or carpet with which it covers the bottom of the nest-cavity. A day or two later, in my vineyard near by, I found where a piece of heavy twine that held a young grapevine to a stake had been pulled down to the ground and picked and beaten, and parts of it reduced to its original tow. Here, doubtless, the birds had got some of their carpeting material.
I recently read in a work on ornithology that the rings of small holes which we see in the trunks and limbs of perfectly sound apple-trees are made by woodpeckers in search of grubs and insects. This is a hasty inference. These holes are made by woodpeckers, but the food they obtain at the bottom of them is not the flesh of worm or insect, but the flesh of the apple-tree—the soft, milky inner bark. The same writer says these holes are not hurtful to the tree, but conducive to its health. Yet I have seen the limbs of large apple-trees nearly killed by being encompassed by numerous rings of large, deep holes made by the yellow-bellied woodpecker. This bird drills holes in the sugar maple in the spring for the sap. I have known him to spend the greater part of a bright March day on the sunny side of a maple, indulging in a tipple of maple sap every four or five minutes. As fast as his well holes filled up he would sip them dry.
A lady told me that a woodpecker drilled holes in the boards that form the eaves of her house, for the grubs of the carpenter bumblebee. This also seemed to me a hasty conclusion, because the woodpeckers made holes so large that the next season the bluebirds nested there. The woodpeckers were probably drilling for a place to nest. A large ice-house stands on the river bank near me, and every season the man in charge has to shoot or drive away the high-holes that cut numerous openings through the outer sheathing of hemlock boards into the spaces filled with sawdust, where they find the digging easy and a nesting-place safe and snug.
My neighbor caught a small hawk in his shad-net, and therefore concluded the hawk ate fish. He put him in a cage, and offered him fragments of shad. The little hawk was probably in pursuit of a bird which took refuge under the net as it hung upon the drying-poles; or he may have swooped down upon the net in the spirit of pure bluster and bravado, and thus came to grief in a hurry. The fine, strong threads of the net defied his murderous beak and talons. He was engulfed as completely as is a fly in a spider's web, and the more he struggled the more hopeless his case became. It was a pigeon hawk, and these little marauders are very saucy.
My neighbor says that in the city of Brooklyn he has known kingbirds to nest in boxes like martins and bluebirds. I question this observation, though it may be true. The cousin of the kingbird, the great crested flycatcher, builds in cavities in trees, and its relative, the phœbe-bird, nests under bridges and hay-sheds. Hence there is this fact to start with in favor of my neighbor's observation.
But when a lady from Pennsylvania writes me that she has seen "swallows rolling and dabbling in the mud in early spring, their breasts so covered with it that it would take but little stretch of imagination to believe they had just emerged from the bottom of the pond beside which they were playing," I am more than skeptical. The lady has not seen straight. The swallows were not rolling in the mud; there was probably not a speck of mud upon their plumage, but a little upon their beaks and feet. The red of their breasts was their own proper color. They were building their nests, as my correspondent knew, but they did not carefully mix and knead the mud, as she thought they did; they had selected mortar already of the proper sort.
The careful observer is not long in learning that there is truth in the poet's remark, that "things are not what they seem." Everywhere on the surface of nature things seem one thing, and mean quite another. The hasty observer is misled by the seeming, and thus misses the real truth.
The little green snake that I saw among the "live-for-evers" the other day, how nearly it escaped detection by the close resemblance of its color to that of the plant! And when, a few days later, I saw one carelessly disposed across the top of the bending grass and daisies, but a few feet from where I sat, my eye again came near being baffled.
The little snake was probably lying in wait for some insect. Presently it slid gently down into the grass, moving so slowly as to escape any but the most watchful eye. After its head and a part of its body were upon the ground, its tail still pointed straight up and exactly resembled some fresh vegetable growth. The safeguard of this little snake is in his protective coloring; hence his movements are slower and more deliberate than those of the other snakes.
This simulation is very common in nature. Every creature has its enemy, and pretends to be that which it is not, in order to escape detection. The tree-frog pretends to be a piece of bark, or a lichen upon a tree; the wood frog is the color of the dry leaves upon which it hops, though when spawning in the little black pools and tarns in spring its color is very dark, like the element it inhabits.
One day, in my walk in the woods, I disturbed a whip-poor-will where she sat upon her eggs on the ground. When I returned to the spot some hours afterward, and tried to make out the bird upon her nest, my eye was baffled for some moments, so successful was she in pretending to be only a mottled stick or piece of fallen bark.
Only the most practiced eye can detect the partridge (ruffed grouse) when she sits or stands in full view upon the ground in the woods. How well she plays her part, rarely moving, till she suddenly bursts up before you, and is gone in a twinkling! How well her young are disciplined always to take their cue from her! Not one will stir till she gives the signal.
One day in my walk, as I paused on the side of a steep hill in the edge of the woods, my eye chanced to fall upon a partridge, sitting upon the leaves beside a stump scarcely three paces from me. "Can she have a nest there?" was my first thought. Then I remembered it was late in the summer, and she certainly could not be incubating. Then why is she sitting there in that exposed manner? Keeping my eye upon her, I took a step forward, when, quick as a flash, she sprang into the air and went humming away. At the same moment, all about me, almost from under my feet, her nearly grown young sprang up and went booming through the woods after her. Not one of them had moved or showed fear till their mother gave the word.
To observe Nature and know her secrets, one needs not only a sharp eye, but a steady and patient eye. You must look again and again, and not be misled by appearances. All the misinformation about the objects and phenomena of nature afloat among country people is the result of hasty and incomplete observation.
In parts of the country where wheat is grown there is quite a prevalent belief among the farmers that if the land is poor or neglected the wheat will turn into chess or cheat grass. Have they not seen it, have they not known the wheat to disappear entirely, and the chess to be there in its place?
But like so many strange notions that are current in the rural districts, this notion is the result of incomplete observation. The cheat grass was there all the while, feebler and inconspicuous, but biding its time; when the wheat failed and gave up possession of the soil, the grass sprang forward and took its place.
Nature always has a card to play in that way. There is no miracle nor case of spontaneous generation about the curious succession of forest trees—oak succeeding pine, or poplar succeeding birch or maple—if we could get at the facts. Nature only lets loose germs which the winds or the birds and animals have long since stored there, and which have only been waiting their opportunity to grow.
A great many people are sure there is such a creature as a glass snake, a snake which breaks up into pieces to escape its enemies, and then when danger is past gets itself together again and goes its way.
Not long since a man published an account in a scientific journal of a glass snake which he had encountered in a hay-field, and which, when he attempted to break its head, had broken itself up into five or six pieces. He carefully examined the pieces and found them of regular lengths of three or four inches, and that they dovetailed together by a nice and regular process. He left the fragments in the grass, and when he returned from dinner they were all gone. He therefore inferred the snake had reconstructed itself and traveled on. If he had waited to see this process, his observation would have been complete. On another occasion he cut one in two with his scythe, when the snake again made small change of itself. Again he went to his dinner just at the critical time, and when he returned the fragments of the reptile had disappeared.
This will not do. We must see the play out before we can report upon the last act.
There is, of course, a small basis of fact in the superstition of the glass snake. The creature is no snake at all, but a species of limbless lizard quite common in the West. And it has the curious power of voluntarily breaking itself up into regular pieces when disturbed, but it is only the tail which is so broken up; the body part remains intact. Break this up and the snake is dead. The tail is disproportionately long, and is severed at certain points, evidently to mislead its enemies. It is the old trick of throwing a tub to a whale. The creature sacrifices its tail to secure the safety of its body. These fragments have no power to unite themselves again, but a new tail is grown in place of the part lost. When a real observer encountered the glass or joint snake, these facts were settled.
The superstition of the hair-snake is founded upon a like incomplete observation. Everywhere may be found intelligent people who will tell you they know that a horsehair, if put into the spring, will turn into a snake, and that all hair-snakes have this origin. But a hair never turns into a snake any more than wheat is transformed into chess. The so-called hair-snake is a parasitical worm which lives in the bodies of various insects, and which at maturity takes to the water to lay its eggs.
What boy, while trout-fishing in July and August, and using grasshoppers for bait, has not been vexed to find the body of the insect, when snapped at by the trout, yielding a long, white, brittle thread, which clogged his hook, and spoiled the attractiveness of the bait? This thread is the hair-worm. How the germ first gets into the body of the grasshopper I do not know. After the creature leaves the insect, it becomes darker in color, and harder and firmer in texture, and more closely resembles a large hair.
See what pains the trapper will take to outwit the fox; see what art the angler will practice to deceive the wary trout. One must pursue the truth with the like patience and diligence.
The farmers all think, or used to think, that the hen-hawk was their enemy, but one spring the Agricultural Department procured three hundred hen-hawks, and examined the craw of each of them, and made the valuable discovery that this hawk subsisted almost entirely upon meadow mice, thus proving it to be one of the farmer's best friends. The crow, also, when our observations upon his food habits are complete, is found to be a friend, and not an enemy. The smaller hawks do prey upon birds and chickens, though the pretty little sparrow hawk lives largely upon insects.
Gilbert White quotes the great Linnæus as saying that "hawks make a truce with other birds as long as the cuckoo is heard." This is also a superstition. Watch closely, and you will see the small hawks in pursuit of birds at all seasons; and when a hawk pursues a bird, or when one bird pursues another, it has the power to tack and turn, and to time its movements to that of the bird pursued, which is quite marvelous. The sparrow might as well dodge its own shadow as to dodge the sharp-shinned hawk. It escapes, if at all, by rushing into a bush or tree, where the movements of its enemy are impeded by the leaves and branches.
Speaking of hawks, reminds me that I read the other day in one of the magazines a very pretty poem, in which a hawk was represented poised in mid-air, on motionless wing, during the calm of a midsummer day. Now of a still day this is an impossible feat for a hawk or any other bird. The poet had not observed quite closely enough. She had noted (as who has not?) the hawk stationary in the air on motionless wing, but she failed to note, or she had forgotten, that the wind was blowing. He cannot do it on a calm day; the blowing wind furnishes the power necessary to buoy him up. He so adjusts his wings to the moving currents that he hangs stationary upon them. When the hawk hovers in the air of a still day, he is compelled to beat his wings rapidly. He must expend upon the air the power which, in the former case, is expended upon him. Thus does hasty and incomplete observation mislead one.
One day in early April as I was riding along the road I heard the song of the brown thrasher. The thrasher is not due yet, I said to myself, but there was its song, and no mistake, with all its quibs and quirks and interludes, being chanted from some treetop a few yards in advance of me. Let us have a view of the bird, I said, as I approached the tree upon which I fancied he was perched. The song ceased and no thrasher was visible, but there sat a robin, which, as I paused, flew to a lower tree in a field at some distance from the road. Then I moved on, thinking the songster had eluded me. On looking back I chanced to see the robin fly back to the top of the tree where I had first disturbed it, and in a moment or two more forth came the thrasher's song again. Then I went cautiously back and caught the robin in the very act of reproducing perfectly the song of the brown thrasher. A bolder plagiarist I had never seen; not only had he got the words, as it were correctly, but he delivered them in the same self-conscious manner. His performance would probably have deceived the brown thrasher himself. How did the robin come by this song? I can suggest no other explanation than that he must have learned it from the brown thrasher. Probably the latter bird sang near the nest of the robin, so that the young heard this song and not that of their own kind. If so it would be interesting to know if all the young males learned the song.
Close attention is the secret of learning from nature's book, as from every other. Most persons only look at the pictures, but the real student studies the text; he alone knows what the pictures really mean. There is a great deal of by-play going on in the life of nature about us, a great deal of variation and out-cropping of individual traits, that we entirely miss unless we have our eyes and ears open.
It is not like the play at the theatre, where everything is made conspicuous and aims to catch the eye, and where the story clearly and fully unfolds itself. On nature's stage many dramas are being played at once, and without any reference to the lookers-on, unless it be to escape their notice. The actors rush or strut across the stage, the curtain rises or falls, the significant thing happens, and we heed it not, because our wits are dull, or else our minds are preoccupied. We do not pay strict attention. Nature will not come to you; you must go to her; that is, you must put yourself in communication with her; you must open the correspondence; you must train your eye to pick out the significant things. A quick open sense, and a lively curiosity like that of a boy are necessary. Indeed, the sensitiveness and alertness of youth and the care and patience of later years are what make the successful observer.
The other morning my little boy and I set out to find the horse, who had got out of the pasture and gone off. Had he gone up the road or down? We did not know, but we imagined we could distinguish his track going down the road, so we began our search in that direction. The road presently led through a piece of woods. Suddenly my little boy stopped me.
"Papa, see that spider's web stretched across the road: our horse has not gone this way."
My face had nearly touched the web or cable of the little spider, which stretched completely across the road, and which certainly would have been swept away had the horse or any other creature passed along there in the early morning. The boy's eye was sharper than my own. He had been paying stricter attention to the signs and objects about him. We turned back and soon found the horse in the opposite direction.
This same little boy, by looking closely, has discovered that there are certain stingless wasps. When he sees one which bears the marks he boldly catches him in his hand. The wasp goes through the motions of stinging so perfectly, so works and thrusts with its flexible body, that nearly every hand to which it is offered draws back. The mark by which the boy is guided is the light color of the wasp's face. Most country boys know that white-faced bumblebees are stingless, but I have not before known a boy bold enough to follow the principle out and apply it to wasps as well. These white-faces are the males, and answer to the drones in the beehive; though the drones have not a white face.
We cannot all find the same things in Nature. She is all things to all men. She is like the manna that came down from heaven. "He made manna to descend for them, in which were all manner of tastes; and every Israelite found in it what his palate was chiefly pleased with. If he desired fat in it, he had it. In it the young men tasted bread; the old men, honey; and the children, oil." But all found in it substance and strength. So with Nature. In her are "all manner of tastes," science, art, poetry, utility, and good in all. The botanist has one pleasure in her, the ornithologist another, the explorer another, the walker and sportsman another; what all may have is the refreshment and the exhilaration which come from a loving and intelligent scrutiny of her manifold works.
XVI
BIRD LIFE IN AN OLD APPLE-TREE
Near my study there used to stand several old apple-trees that bore fair crops of apples, but better crops of birds. Every year these old trees were the scenes of bird incidents and bird histories that were a source of much interest and amusement. Young trees may be the best for apples, but old trees are sure to bear the most birds. If they are very decrepit, and full of dead and hollow branches, they will bear birds in winter as well as summer. The downy woodpecker wants no better place than the brittle, dozy trunk of an apple-tree in which to excavate his winter home. My old apple-trees are all down but one, and this one is probably an octogenarian, and I am afraid cannot stand another winter. Its body is a mere shell not much over one inch thick, the heart and main interior structure having turned to black mould long ago. An old tree, unlike an old person, as long as it lives at all, always has a young streak, or rather ring, in it. It wears a girdle of perpetual youth.
My old tree has never yet failed to yield me a bushel or more of gillyflowers, and it has turned out at least a dozen broods of the great crested flycatcher, and robins and bluebirds in proportion. It carries up one large decayed trunk which some one sawed off at the top before my time, and in this a downy woodpecker is now, January 12, making a home. Several years ago a downy woodpecker excavated a retreat in this branch, which the following season was appropriated by the bluebirds, and has been occupied by them nearly every season since. When the bluebirds first examined the cavity in the spring, I suppose they did not find the woodpecker at home, as he is a pretty early riser.
I happened to be passing near the tree when, on again surveying the premises one afternoon, they found him in. The male bluebird was very angry, and I suppose looked upon the innocent downy as an intruder. He seized on him, and the two fell to the ground, the speckled woodpecker quite covered by the blue coat of his antagonist. Downy screamed vigorously, and got away as soon as he could, but not till the bluebird had tweaked out a feather or two. He is evidently no fighter, though one would think that a bird that had an instrument with which it could drill a hole into a tree could defend itself against the soft-billed bluebird.
Two seasons the English sparrows ejected the bluebirds and established themselves in it, but were in turn ejected by myself, their furniture of hens' feathers and straws pitched out, and the bluebirds invited to return, which later in the season they did.
The new cavity which downy is now drilling is just above the old one and near the top of the stub. Its wells are usually sunk to a depth of six or eight inches, but in the present case it cannot be sunk more than four inches without breaking through into the old cavity. Downy seems to have considered the situation, and is proceeding cautiously. As she passed last night in her new quarters I am inclined to think it is about finished, and there must be at least one inch of wood beneath her. She worked vigorously the greater part of the day, her yellow chips strewing the snow beneath. I paused several times to observe her proceedings. After her chips accumulate she stops her drilling and throws them out. This she does with her beak, shaking them out very rapidly with a flirt of her head. She did not disappear from sight each time to load her beak, but withdrew her head and appeared to seize the fragments as if from her feet. If she had had a companion I should have thought he was handing them up to her from the bottom of the cavity. Maybe she had them piled up near the doorway.
The woodpeckers, both the hairy and the downy, usually excavate these winter retreats in the fall. They pass the nights and the stormy days in them. So far as I have observed, they do not use them as nesting-places the following season. Last night when I rapped on the trunk of the old apple-tree near sundown, downy put out her head with a surprised and inquiring look, and then withdrew it again as I passed on.
I have spoken of the broods of the great crested flycatchers that have been reared in the old apple-tree. This is by no means a common bird, and as it destroys many noxious insects I look upon it with a friendly eye, though it is the most uncouth and unmusical of the flycatchers. Indeed, among the other birds of the garden and orchard it seems quite like a barbarian. It has a harsh, froglike scream, form and manners to suit, and is clad in a suit of butternut brown. It seeks a cast-off snakeskin to weave into its nest, and not finding one, will take an onion skin, a piece of oiled paper, or large fish scales. It builds in a cavity in a tree, rears one brood, and is off early in the season. I never see or hear it after August 1st.
A pair have built in a large, hollow limb in my old apple-tree for many years. Whether it is the same pair or not I do not know. Probably it is, or else some of their descendants. I looked into the cavity one day while the mother bird was upon the nest, but before she had laid any eggs. A sudden explosive sound came up out of the dark depths of the limb, much like that made by an alarmed cat. It made me jerk my head back, when out came the bird and hurried off. For several days I saw no more of the pair, and feared they had deserted the spot. But they had not; they were only more sly than usual. I soon discovered an egg in the nest, and then another and another.
One day, as I stood near by, a male bluebird came along with his mate, prospecting for a spot for a second nest. He alighted at the entrance of this hole and peeped in. Instantly the flycatcher was upon him. The blue was enveloped by the butternut brown. The two fell to the ground, where the bluebird got away, and in a moment more came back and looked in the hole again, as much as to say, "I will look into that hole now at all hazards." The barbarian made a dash for him again, but he was now on his guard and avoided her.
Not long after, the bluebirds decided to occupy the old cavity of the downy woodpecker from which I had earlier in the season expelled the English sparrows. After they had established themselves here a kind of border war broke out between the male bluebird and the flycatchers, and was kept up for weeks. The bluebird is very jealous and very bold. He will not even tolerate a house wren in the vicinity of his nest. Every bird that builds in a cavity he looks upon as his natural rival and enemy. The flycatchers did not seek any quarrel with him as long as he kept to his own domicile, but he could not tolerate them in the same tree. It was a pretty sight to see this little blue-coat charging the butternut through the trees. The beak of the latter would click like a gunlock, and its harsh, savage voice was full of anger, but the bluebird never flinched, and was always ready to renew the fight.
The English sparrow will sometimes worst the bluebird by getting possession of the box or cavity ahead of him. Once inside, the sparrow can hold the fort, and the bluebird will soon give up the siege; but in a fair field and no favor, the native bird will quickly rout the foreigner.
Speaking of birds that build in cavities reminds me of a curious trait the high-hole has developed in my vicinity, one which I have never noticed or heard of elsewhere. It drills into buildings and steeples and telegraph poles, and in some instances makes itself a serious nuisance. One season the large imitation Greek columns of an unoccupied old-fashioned summer residence near me were badly marred by them. The bird bored into one column, and finding the cavity—a foot or more across—not just what it was looking for, cut into another one, and still into another. Then he bored into the ice-house on the premises, and in the sawdust filling between the outer and inner sheathing found a place to his liking. One bird seemed like a monomaniac, and drilled holes up and down and right and left as if possessed of an evil spirit. It is quite probable that if a high-hole or other woodpecker should go crazy, it would take to just this sort of thing, drilling into seasoned timber till it used its strength up. The one I refer to would cut through a dry hemlock board in a very short time, making the slivers fly. The sound was like that of a carpenter's hammer. It may have been that he was an unmated bird, a bachelor whose suit had not prospered that season, and who was giving vent to his outraged instincts in drilling these mock nesting-places.
XVII
THE WAYS OF SPORTSMEN
I have often had occasion to notice how much more intelligence the bird carries in its eye than does the animal or quadruped. The animal will see you, too, if you are moving, but if you stand quite still even the wary fox will pass within a few yards of you and not know you from a stump, unless the wind brings him your scent. But a crow or a hawk will discern you when you think yourself quite hidden. His eye is as keen as the fox's sense of smell, and seems fairly to penetrate veils and screens. Most of the water-fowl are equally sharp-eyed. The chief reliance of the animals for their safety, as well as for their food, is upon the keenness of their scent, while the fowls of the air depend mainly upon the eye.
A hunter out in Missouri relates how closely a deer approached him one day in the woods. The hunter was standing on the top of a log, about four feet from the ground, when the deer bounded playfully into a glade in the forest, a couple of hundred yards away. The animal began to feed and to move slowly toward the hunter. He was on the alert, but did not see or scent his enemy. He never took a bite of grass, says the sportsman, without first putting his nose to it, and then instantly raising his head and looking about.
In about ten minutes the deer had approached within fifty yards of the gunner; then the murderous instinct of the latter began to assert itself. His gun was loaded with fine shot, but he dared not make a move to change his shells lest the deer see him. He had one shell loaded with No. 4 shot in his pocket. Oh! if he could only get that shell into his gun.
The unsuspecting deer kept approaching; presently he passed behind a big tree, and his head was for a moment hidden. The hunter sprang to his work; he took one of the No. 8 shells out of his gun, got his hand into his pocket, and grasped the No. 4. Then the shining eyes of the deer were in view again. The hunter stood in this attitude five minutes. How we wish he had been compelled to stand for five hundred!
Then another tree shut off the buck's gaze for a moment; in went the No. 4 shell into the barrel and the gun was closed quickly, but there was no time to bring it to the shoulder. The animal was now only thirty yards away. His hair was smooth and glossy, and every movement was full of grace and beauty. Time after time he seemed to look straight at the hunter, and once or twice a look of suspicion seemed to cross his face.
The man began to realize how painful it was to stand perfectly still on the top of a log for fifteen minutes. Every muscle ached and seemed about to rebel against his will. If the buck held to his course he would pass not more than fifteen feet to one side of the gun, and the man that held it thought he might almost blow his heart out.
There was one more tree for him to pass behind, when the gun could be raised. He approached the tree, rubbed his nose against it, and for a moment was half hidden behind it. When his head appeared on the other side the gun was pointed straight at his eye—and with only No. 4 shot, which could only wound him, but could not kill him.
The deer stops; he does not expose his body back of the fore leg, as the hunter had wished. The latter begins to be ashamed of himself, and has about made up his mind to let the beautiful creature pass unharmed, when the buck suddenly gets his scent, his head goes up, his nostrils expand, and a look of terror comes over his face. This is too much for the good resolutions of the hunter. Bang! goes the gun, the deer leaps into the air, wheels around a couple of times, recovers himself and is off in a twinkling, no doubt carrying, the narrator says, a hundred No. 4 shot in his face and neck. The man says: "I've always regretted shooting at him."
I should think he would. But a man in the woods, with a gun in his hand, is no longer a man—he is a brute. The devil is in the gun to make brutes of us all.
If the game on this occasion had been, say a wild turkey or a grouse, its discriminating eye would have figured out the hunter there on that log very quickly. This manly exploit of the Western hunter reminds me of an exploit of a Brooklyn man, who last winter killed a bull moose in Maine. It was a more sportsmanlike proceeding, but my sympathies were entirely with the moose. The hero tells his story in a New York paper. With his guides, all armed with Winchester rifles, he penetrated far into the wilderness till he found a moose yard. It was near the top of a mountain. They started one of the animals and then took up its trail. As soon as the moose found it was being followed, it led right off in hopes of outwalking its enemies. But they had snow-shoes and he did not; they had food and he did not. On they went, pursued and pursuers, through the snow-clogged wilderness, day after day. The moose led them the most difficult route he could find.
At night the men would make camp, build a fire, eat and smoke, and roll themselves in their blankets and sleep. In the morning they would soon come up to the camping-place of the poor moose, where the imprint of his great body showed in the snow, and where he had passed a cold, supperless night.
On the fifth day the moose began to show signs of fatigue; he rested often, he also tried to get around and behind his pursuers and let them pass on. Think how inadequate his wit was to cope with the problem—he thought they would pass by him if he went to one side.
On the morning of the sixth day he had made up his mind to travel no farther, but to face his enemies and have it out with them. As he heard them approach, he rose up from his couch of snow, mane erect, his look fierce and determined. Poor creature, he did not know how unequal the contest was. How I wish he could at that moment have had a Winchester rifle, too, and had known how to use it. There would have been fair play then. With such weapons as God had given him he had determined to meet the foe, and if they had had only such weapons as God had given them, he would have been safe. But they had weapons which the devil had given them, and their deadly bullets soon cut him down, and now probably his noble antlers decorate the hall of his murderer.
XVIII
TALKS WITH YOUNG OBSERVERS
I
To teach young people or old people how to observe nature is a good deal like trying to teach them how to eat their dinner. The first thing necessary in the latter case is a good appetite; this given, the rest follows very easily. And in observing nature, unless you have the appetite, the love, the spontaneous desire, you will get little satisfaction. It is the heart that sees more than the mind. To love Nature is the first step in observing her. If a boy had to learn fishing as a task, what slow progress he would make; but as his heart is in it, how soon he becomes an adept.
The eye sees quickly and easily those things in which we are interested. A man interested in horses sees every fine horse in the country he passes through; the dairyman notes the cattle; the bee culturist counts the skips of bees; the sheep-grower notes the flocks, etc. Is it any effort for the ladies to note the new bonnets and the new cloaks upon the street? We all see and observe easily in the line of our business, our tasks, our desires.
If one is a lover of the birds, he sees birds everywhere, plenty of them. I think I seldom miss a bird in my walk if he is within eye or ear shot, even though my mind be not intent upon that subject. Walking along the road this very day, feeling a cold, driving snow-storm, I saw some large birds in the top of a maple as I passed by. I do not know how I came to see them, for I was not in an ornithological frame of mind. But I did. There were three of them feeding upon the buds of the maple. They were nearly as large as robins, of a dark ash-color, very plump, with tails much forked. What were they? My neighbor did not know; had never seen such birds before. I instantly knew them to be pine grosbeaks from the far north. I had not seen them before for ten years. A few days previously I had heard one call from the air as it passed over; I recognized the note, and hence knew that the birds were about. They come down from the north at irregular intervals, and are seen in flocks in various parts of the States. They seem just as likely to come mild winters as severe ones. Later in the day the birds came about my study. I sat reading with my back to the window when I was advised of their presence by catching a glimpse of one reflected in my eye-glasses as it flew up from the ground to the branch of an apple-tree only a few feet away. I only mention the circumstance to show how quick an observer is to take the hint. I was absorbed in my reading, but the moment that little shadow flitted athwart that luminous reflection of the window in the corner of my glasses, something said "that was a bird." Approaching the window, I saw several of them sitting not five feet away. I could inspect them perfectly. They were a slate-color, with a tinge of bronze upon the head and rump. In full plumage the old males are a dusky red. Hence these were all either young males or females. Occasionally among these flocks an old male may be seen. It would seem as if only a very few of the older and wiser birds accompanied these younger birds in their excursions into more southern climes.
Presently the birds left the apple-bough that nearly brushed my window, and, with a dozen or more of their fellows that I had not seen, settled in a Norway spruce a few yards away, and began to feed upon the buds. They looked very pretty there amid the driving snow. I was flattered that these visitants from the far north should find entertainment on my premises. How plump, contented, and entirely at home they looked. But they made such havoc with the spruce buds that after a while I began to fear not a bud would be left upon the trees; the spruces would be checked in their growth the next year. So I presently went out to remonstrate with them and ask them to move on. I approached them very slowly, and when beside the tree within a few feet of several of them, they heeded me not. One bird kept its position and went on snipping off the buds till I raised my hand ready to seize it, before it moved a yard or two higher up. I think it was only my white, uncovered hand that disturbed it. Indeed,