<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<h1> Birds and All Nature<br /> <span class="xx-smaller">IN NATURAL COLORS</span></h1>
<hr class="small" />
<p class="ac p2">A MONTHLY SERIAL<br/>
<span class="smaller">FORTY ILLUSTRATIONS BY COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY</span></p>
<p class="ac"><span class="sc x-smaller">A GUIDE IN THE STUDY OF NATURE</span></p>
<hr class="small" />
<p class="ac p2"><span class="sc">Two Volumes a Year</span></p>
<p class="ac">VOLUME VI.</p>
<p class="ac"><span class="sc">June, 1899, to December, 1899</span></p>
<hr class="small" />
<p class="ac">EDITED BY C. C. MARBLE</p>
<hr class="small" />
<p class="ac p2">CHICAGO<br/>
A. W. MUMFORD, <span class="sc">Publisher</span><br/>
203 Michigan Ave.<br/>
1900</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p class="ac">COPYRIGHT, 1899<br/>
<span class="xx-smaller">BY</span><br/>
<span class="sc">Nature Study Publishing Co.<br/>Chicago</span></p>
<hr class="chap" />
<h2 class="ac" style="margin-bottom:2em;"><span class="larger">BIRDS AND ALL NATURE.</span></h2>
<p class="ac" style="margin-bottom:2em;"><span class="smaller">ILLUSTRATED BY</span>
COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY.</p>
<div class="vlouter">
<div class="volumeline">
<div class="volumeleft"><span class="sc">Vol. VI.</span></div>
<div class="volumeright"><span class="sc">No. 1.</span></div>
<div class="ac">JUNE, 1899.</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<h2 style="margin-top:2em;"><SPAN name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></SPAN>CONTENTS</h2>
<table class="toctable" id="TOC">
<tr>
<td class="c1"> </td>
<td class="c2"><span class="sc">Page</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#MY_NEIGHBOR_IN_THE_APPLE_TREE">
MY NEIGHBOR IN THE APPLE TREE.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#A_DAY_IN_JUNE">A DAY IN JUNE.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">8</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#WESTERN_YELLOW-THROAT">WESTERN YELLOW THROAT.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">11</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#CHARLEY_AND_THE_ANGLEWORM">
CHARLEY AND THE ANGLEWORM.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">12</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#THE_MYRTLE_WARBLER">THE MYRTLE WARBLER.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">14</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#TAFFY_AND_TRICKSEY">TAFFY AND TRICKSEY.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">17</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#A_SUGGESTION_TO_OOLOGISTS">
A SUGGESTION TO OOLOGISTS.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">20</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#THE_BLUE-WINGED_YELLOW_WARBLER">
THE BLUE-WINGED YELLOW WARBLER.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">23</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#INDIRECTION">INDIRECTION.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">23</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#OUT-DOOR_SCIENCE">OUT-DOOR SCIENCE.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">24</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#THE_GOLDEN-WINGED_WARBLER">
THE GOLDEN-WINGED WARBLER.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">26</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#PET_ANIMALS_AS_CAUSES_OF_DISEASE">
PET ANIMALS AS CAUSES OF DISEASE.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">26</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#A_FLY-CATCHING_PLANT">A FLY-CATCHING PLANT.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">29</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#TREES_AND_ELOQUENCE">TREES AND ELOQUENCE.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">30</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#BATS_IN_BURMESE_CAVES">BATS IN BURMESE CAVES.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">32</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#A_METAL_BIRDS_NEST">A METAL BIRD'S NEST.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">32</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#THE_MOURNING_WARBLER">THE MOURNING WARBLER.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">35</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#THE_RAVEN_AND_THE_DOVE">THE RAVEN AND THE DOVE.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">36</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#THE_MAYFLOWERS">THE MAYFLOWERS.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">37</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#THE_CHESTNUT-SIDED_WARBLER">
THE CHESTNUT-SIDED WARBLER.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">38</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#NATURE_STUDY_HOW_A_NATURALIST_IS_TRAINED">
NATURE STUDY—HOW A NATURALIST IS TRAINED.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">41</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#JOHNS_HAWK">JOHN'S HAWK.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">42</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#CURIOUS_TREES">CURIOUS TREES.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">44</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#THE_BLACK-THROATED_BLUE_WARBLER">
THE BLACK-THROATED BLUE WARBLER.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">47</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="c1"><SPAN href="#THE_EMPERORS_BIRDS_NEST">THE EMPEROR'S BIRD'S NEST.</SPAN></td>
<td class="c2">48</td>
</tr>
</table>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</SPAN></span></p>
</div>
<h2><SPAN name="MY_NEIGHBOR_IN_THE_APPLE_TREE" id="MY_NEIGHBOR_IN_THE_APPLE_TREE"></SPAN> MY NEIGHBOR IN THE APPLE TREE.</h2>
<p class="ac">NELLY HART WOODWORTH.</p>
<div>
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_t.jpg" width-obs="58" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">TROPICAL portions of the American
continent, rich in an endless
variety and beauty of bird-life,
have shared with New
England but a single species of Trochilidæ,
<i>Trochilus colubris</i>, the ruby-throated
humming bird.</p>
<p>This "glittering fragment of a rainbow"
adds a decorative feature to our
gardens, its nest so protected through
diminutive size and perfect adaptation
to the surroundings that it rarely comes
under one's observation.</p>
<p>It is commonly asserted that the
male is an arrant shirk, that he leaves
the entire labor of building and furnishing
the house as well as the heavy
duties of housekeeping to the faithful
mother, being in the fullest sense a
<i>silent</i> partner either from choice or
otherwise, a mere apology for a husband
and head of a family.</p>
<p>Nor does he redeem himself when
the prospective "twins" arrive and slender
bills are lifted appealingly for
food! No thanks to him that the naked,
squirming little atoms replacing the
two white eggs become gradually
stronger, that some hint of plumage
duly covers their nudeness, or that bye-and-bye
they become birds in reality.</p>
<p>Two years ago this "little lady in
green" made her nest upon an apple
tree branch, concealing it so deftly that
the gardener at work near by was unaware
of the distinguished guests until
the brooding was nearly over. When
the little birds had flown the lichened
residence, becoming a family possession,
was considered the daintiest
souvenir of the summer.</p>
<p>Being anxious to know if this rare,
interesting episode would be repeated,
the following summer I watched carefully
for its repetition. Promptly in
June I found that a humming bird was
again "at home," this time upon a horizontal
maple branch, twelve feet from
the ground and directly over the sidewalk.
This nest was soldered upon
a long slender bough half an inch in
thickness at the intersection of another,
a mere twig a quarter of an inch
through, the latter inwrought with, and
concealed for a full inch in the structural
fiber. Upon the 22d of the same
month, by the aid of a ladder I found
that two eggs "the size of yellow
beans" were lying inside the downy
cup shaped nest. Before this luckless
visitation the tail of the brooding bird
could be seen from the ground, but
during the next two days there was no
sign of life thereabout.</p>
<p>In the afternoon of the third day my
bird was in the maple, darting hither
and thither like a swallow, plunging
into the insect swarms and securing
several before they realized her presence.
Then she came to the honeysuckle
beside me, hovering over it in a
bewildered, irresolute manner as if debating
whether she could safely probe
its scarlet cups. Just at this moment
a big miller flew by and off she went
in close chase, capturing it upon the
wing. Then she rested upon a maple
twig, leisurely preened her feathers,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</SPAN></span>
drawing each one gently through her
beak, and after a second visit to the
honeysuckles darted toward the nest.
Now, I thought, is the time, if ever, to
decide if she is still housekeeping, and
following quickly, I saw her standing
upon the edge of the silken cradle.
Her head moved rapidly from side to
side as she regarded its contents, after
which she rose lightly in the air,
dropped upon the nest with the airy
grace of a thistledown, and spread
above it the feathered blanket of her
soft, warm breast. For several minutes
she ignored my presence, drawing her
beak across the leaves or springing into
the air for a passing insect which was
captured and apparently given to her
family. Once I detected a "squeak,"
and her head was instantly thrown to
one side in a listening attitude. If it
was the note of the mate he did not
approach the nest, the thick leaves
hiding the tree-top from which the
sound proceeded.</p>
<p>There was a furious wind that night
and the warm days were followed by a
sudden fall in temperature.</p>
<p>From that time the nest was deserted;
I could only conjecture that I
had presumed too much upon her defenselessness,
or, that the young, if
young there were, were dislodged by
the wind. This abandoned homestead
was as round and perfect as a new coin
just issued from nature's mint, a marvel
of elegance in which all the instinctive
gifts of decorative art united.</p>
<p>There were no visible signs of rebuilding
during the twelve days that
followed; casual trips to the honeysuckle,
hovering over the flowers like
some gorgeous insect with colors scintillating
in the full sunshine, alone gave
evidence of further interest or intention.</p>
<p>Upon the thirteenth day there was a
marked change. Again she flew excitedly
about the lawn, stopping
abruptly to wheel about and dart off in
an opposite direction, a vitalized complement
of the spirit of the trees, mingling
with and pervading the garden as
freely as did the light and air. She
threw herself against a summer warbler
almost knocking him off his perch and,
not content with this treatment, drew
him from the lawn, which, by the way,
was his own harvest field where he had
gleaned diligently for several days.</p>
<p>Then the bird poised before me in
mid-air, circled about my head before
plunging into an apple tree in whose
leafy mazes she disappeared. Just at
that moment an accommodating breeze
displaced the leaves; there was a flutter
within, a flash of wings, an unusual
agitation that told of something quite
beyond the ordinary. As the breeze
died away the leaves resumed their
place thus preventing all further inspection.
From the parlor windows,
fortunately, there was less obstruction,—she
was still twisting about, going
and returning, dropping within the
foliage and going through the most
singular antics.</p>
<p>An opera-glass revealed the meaning;
she dropped into a half-finished
nest that had all this time been directly
in range of vision. The tiny tenement
was so deftly concealed, blending in
color and apparent texture with the
bough that held it, and so sheltered by
overhanging leaves that it was still
difficult to locate a second time.</p>
<p>With unbounded delight I watched
her come and go a dozen times in less
than that number of minutes, bringing
at each arrival a quantity of vegetable
fiber soft as a silken cobweb, adjusted
invariably while standing inside the
nest and turning completely around
several times as if shaping the interior
to her better satisfaction. She reached
far over and pulled the fluffy cotton
into place, beating it here and jerking
it there, sinking her little breast into
and shaping it to fit the soft contours
of her body; or, covering the outside
with trailing wings, beat them rapidly
against the felted foundation which at
these times was entirely hidden beneath
their iridescence. Though still
unfinished the delicate structure was
lichen-decorated, simply perfect so far
as it went, in this case defying the
assertion that humming birds' nests
are always completed before this ornate
decoration is added.</p>
<table class="sp2 mc w50 p2" title="Feathers.">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="3"><span class="ac w100 figcenter">
<SPAN name="i_008.jpg" id="i_008.jpg"> <ANTIMG style="width:100%"
src="images/i_008.jpg" width="369" height="600" alt="" /></SPAN></span>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xx-smaller ac w30">6-99</td>
<td class="x-smaller ac w40">The changes a Feather undergoes in turning
from Green to Yellow.</td>
<td class="xx-smaller ac w30">COPYRIGHT 1899,<br/>
NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>In the succeeding weeks—weeks in
which I entertained an angel, not unawares,
her two ways of approach
were unvaried; either passing the nest
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</SPAN></span>
entirely to rise from beneath, or, hovering
over and over, drop down as
lightly as a snowflake or the petal of
an apple blossom. And such a pretty
proprietary air—the complacence and
importance for which great possessions
are often answerable! As if the trees
were there for her alone, the garden
made simply for her convenience!</p>
<p>After working rapidly for two full
hours she paused to rest upon a dead
twig, opening and closing her wings in
the twinkling fashion of a bluebird, an
exercise prefacing a breakfast taken in
the nearest tree as she poised beneath
the leaves.</p>
<p>With appetite appeased she dropped
upon the unfinished cradle and sat so
still for twenty minutes that I was certain
an egg was deposited. Doubtless
the misfortunes attending previous
nesting had interrupted the even tenor
of life, the second housekeeping was
more urgent than was anticipated.</p>
<p>For ten minutes more her form was
motionless though her head moved
from side to side in a ceaseless surveillance—a
warbler lunching in the next
tree glanced casually in her direction,
and was evidently just wild with curiosity.</p>
<p>The situation was too much for him;
he left his post hurriedly, flew over her
and looked down, flew under and looked
up, peered at her from an airy poise,
still undecided as to who was rocking
in that wonderful cradle. Craning his
neck he hopped along the branch till
he stood beside her, so near that his
yellow coat literally brushed her garments,
his attitude a quick pantomime
of his thoughts, half paralyzed with
questioning surprise as to what this
remnant of a bird might be, not by any
means to be bought <i>cheap</i> because it
was a remnant.</p>
<p>A quick thrust from the hummer's
beak brought him to his senses; he took
leave for a few seconds, returning
cross-lots to stare again from the same
near point of view, which unwarranted
impertinence was borne without flinching
or changing her position. Later
on these tours of inspection were thoroughly
resented, the right of territory
contested in many a battle when the
defendant advanced and retreated with
the rapidity of lightning, making furious
thrusts at her adversary, and chasing
him about till sheer exhaustion
compelled her to desist. Then she
would drop upon the nest still regarding
him with undistinguished contempt
till he took her to the tree-top, keeping
an eye upon her as he dropped a song
or swallowed an insect.</p>
<p>A young woodpecker came one day
to her door; two quarrelsome robins
stopped to say good morning; and goldfinches
lisped their soft love notes,
while she only hugged her eggs more
closely with the dear, delicious shyness
of affection.</p>
<p>When my little house-builder left
that morning I was sure that the edge
of a white egg rose above the low rim
of the nest. From the attic window it
was plainly visible, the cradled egg
rocking in the wind, but, though the
warbler was close by, to his credit be
it said he did not once trespass upon
other people's property.</p>
<p>Twice that afternoon my lady buzzed
through the trees without halting to
look in at home, nor when night came
down did the wanderer return. She
was busy about the next morning, all
work being done in the early hours,
and by eight o'clock a second egg lay
beside the first. By nine o'clock the
following morning the regular brooding
began, the finishing touches being
given to the nest long before the breakfast
hour.</p>
<p>It was a noisy location, what with the
clatter of lawn mowers, the drumming
of pianos, and the singing of canaries,
to which she listened with neighborly
interest. In that chosen place, directly
over the path leading from the sidewalk
to the door, it was impossible to
find even a degree of seclusion. The
weather was fine, the piazza rarely vacant,
and there were few hours in the
day but someone passed the nest.</p>
<p>Nor did the trouble end with daylight;
bicycle parties made the yard a
starting-point for evening excursions,
lanterns flashed while parting guests
halted beneath the little house-beautiful,
until I trembled for poor
"Queenie" thus barred away from her
own door.</p>
<p>Though she unvaryingly left the nest,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</SPAN></span>
the persons passing were never once
conscious of the nearness of bird or
nest, swinging breezes often bringing
the latter so near that it almost touched
their faces.</p>
<p>I could see it hourly from my window,
the overhanging leaf, the opalized
lustre of the brooding bird, as if a
store of sunshine was shivered, and
falling over her feathers, then momentarily
hidden as the swinging leaf intervened.
More solid pursuits were
forgotten or for the time regarded as of
little importance; each delicate outline
became familiar; the brooding leaf assumed
a personality; it was a guardian
of the home, vitalized, spiritualized,
protective. It seemed to change position
as the sun made the need apparent,
shielding the little one in the long waiting
days, so patient and passive in the
sweet expectancy of nearing motherhood.
My memory pictures her still,
while a more tangible photograph upon
my desk gives permanence to my "bird
of the musical wing" as she brooded
over the apple-tree nest.</p>
<p>With this home as a focus, lawn and
garden seemed to hold the sunshine in
suspension; uplifted grasses gave it
recognition in smiling approval; shadows
were invested with humane and
beneficent attributes, and the very air
was radiant with scent and gracious influence.</p>
<p>Sometimes the bird came to my window,
her beak clicking against the
glass in a vain effort to probe the flowers
within.</p>
<p>There were visits, too, to the piazza,
when the family were gathered there,
poising above the embroidered flowers
upon a lady's slipper and trying persistently
to taste their illusive sweetness.</p>
<p>Thrice upon the fourth day of sitting
she improved the nest with an extra
beakful of cotton, holding it firmly
for five or ten minutes before it was
inwrought. This was repeated after
two weeks when there was a decided
change—the little, warm breast was
pressed less closely against the nest
treasures. Some amazing instinct, directly
opposed to that dear experience
by which <i>we</i> find a short path to a long
wandering, taught her that their increased
fragility would yield to her
full weight, and her touch was of exquisite
softness.</p>
<p>When three full weeks had passed a
homely baby no bigger than a honey
bee lay in the nest, a one day's advantage
kept to the end, and noticeable in
both size and strength. The next
morning this mite was duplicated, their
whole bodies trembling with every
heart beat.</p>
<p>Life became now a problem of supply
and demand, only a clearer expression
of the one that has from all
time agitated humanity. Then began
that marvel of marvels, the feeding of
the newly hatched birds. It was hardly
worth while to question the wisdom of
the process, though I confess that after
each feeding I expected only two little
mangled corpses would remain!</p>
<p>The food, partially digested in the
mother's stomach, was given by regurgitation,
her beak being thrust so far
down their throats that I surmised it
would pierce the bottom of the nest, to
say nothing of the frail bodies churned
violently up and down meanwhile. The
great wonder was that the infants survived
this seemingly brutal and dangerous
exercise in which they were
sometimes lifted above the nest, the
food being given alternately at intervals
of half an hour to an hour. They
thrived, however, under a treatment
that gave strength to the muscles, besides
aiding in the digestion of food.</p>
<p>From the first, the comparative
length of beak was their most noticeable
feature, the proportion becoming
less marked by the fourth day when
fine hairy pin-feathers appeared, these
increasing in size and reinforced by a
decided plumage seen above the rim of
the nest before the second week ended.</p>
<p>By the ninth day they attempted
their first toilet, drawing the incipient
feathers, mere hairs, through the beak,
and on the tenth day, more surprising
still, they had found their voices. Several
times daily the branch was pulled
down to the level of my eyes, the twins
regarding me with the surprise and innocence
of babyhood, sinking low into
the nest meanwhile, and emitting a
plaintive cry almost human in its
pathos and expression.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>So far as I know no observer has recorded
this pleading, pathetic note
from the infant hummers so noticeable
whenever I came too near. The branch
replaced and the disturbing element
removed, they reappeared above the
nest's rim, the slight form of the mother
palpitant as she hovered near. Early
in their lives when a cold rain followed
the long drouth, her enforced absences
were brief; hasty trips merely to the
flower garden in the rear of the house,
or to the flowering beans in the next
yard, a favorite lunch counter patronized
every hour ordinarily.</p>
<p>The leaf that served to so good purpose
in the sunny days became heavy
with raindrops, tilted to one side, and
little streams trickled down upon her
back and ran off her tail, while big
drops splashing down from the higher
branches threatened to annihilate the
whole affair. Undaunted still, my Lilliputian
mother hugged her precious
charges, with drooping tail hanging
over the edge of the nest, head drawn
into her feathers, her whole appearance
as limp and bedraggled as a hen
caught out in a shower. When the infants
had seen two weeks of life they
refused to be longer brooded. From
this time on they matured rapidly, filling
the nest so full that my lady found
no place for the sole of her foot, and
often alighted upon their backs to give
them food. In four days more their
baby dresses were quite outgrown.
These were replaced by green graduating
gowns of stylish texture and fit,
and, as my bird book stated that young
hummers left the nest when a week old,
I was watching eagerly for their debut.</p>
<p>Long before this the nest proper began
to show signs of hard service. Before
its occupants left it became a thing
of the past, positively dissolving to a
mere shelf or platform, and one side
falling out entirely, the imperturbable
twins sitting or standing upon what remained,
content in the silence that all
completed tasks deserve.</p>
<p>As I have said before, one of these
little grown-ups surpassed the other in
size and vigor, insisting gently or forcibly
upon the best standing-place, and
vibrating its wings for several seconds
at a time. Plainly this one would be
the first to launch upon the world.</p>
<p>Twenty-two days after hatching it
spread its wings without apparent effort
and alighted upon a neighboring twig.
Clearly, life was regarded from a mature
standard as it preened its plumage
and looked about with an undaunted
air.</p>
<p>Two days later the smaller twin followed
the example, reaching the upper
branches as easily as if flight were an
every-day occurrence, both birds flitting
about the familiar tree, and fed by
the parent, until after the third day,
they were seen no more.</p>
<hr class="sect" />
<p>There is something noble, simple,
and pure in a taste for trees. It argues,
I think, a sweet and generous nature to
have this strong relish for beauties of
vegetation, and this friendship for the
hardy and glorious sons of the forest.
There is a grandeur of thought connected
with this part of rural economy.
It is worthy of liberal and freeborn
and aspiring men. He who plants an
oak looks forward to future ages, and
plants for posterity. Nothing can be
less selfish than this. He cannot expect
to sit in its shade nor enjoy its
shelter, but he exults in the idea that
the acorn which he has buried in the
earth shall grow up into a lofty pile
and shall keep on flourishing and
increasing and benefiting mankind
long after he shall have ceased to
tread his paternal fields.—<i>Washington
Irving.</i></p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</SPAN></span></p>
</div>
<h2><SPAN name="A_DAY_IN_JUNE" id="A_DAY_IN_JUNE"></SPAN>A DAY IN JUNE.</h2>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Bright is this day of smiling June,</div>
<div class="verse">When nature's voice is all atune</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">In music's swelling flow, to sing</div>
<div class="verse">Sweet songs of praise to nature's king.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">From azure heights the lark's loud song</div>
<div class="verse">Is borne the balmy breeze along;</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">The robin tunes his sweetest strain,</div>
<div class="verse">And blithely sings his glad refrain</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Of summer days and summer joys;</div>
<div class="verse">The tawny thrush his voice employs,</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">In chorus with the warbling throng,</div>
<div class="verse">To fill his measure of the song.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">The river, too, with rippling flow,</div>
<div class="verse">As it winds through its banks below,</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">And leaps and plays in merry glee,</div>
<div class="verse">O'er rocky bed, 'neath grassy lea,</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Or silent glides through sylvan shade,</div>
<div class="verse">To laugh again in sunny glade,</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Sends back its murm'ring voice to swell</div>
<div class="verse">The music of each lovely dell,</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Where Flora decks with brilliant sheen</div>
<div class="verse">The virgin sward of velvet green.</div>
<div class="verse ar">—<i>From a forthcoming poem by Geo. H. Cooke,
Chicago</i>.</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</SPAN></span></p>
<table class="sp2 mc w50" title="Western Yellow-Throat Warbler.">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="3"><span class="ac w100 figcenter">
<SPAN name="i_020.jpg" id="i_020.jpg"> <ANTIMG style="width:100%"
src="images/i_020.jpg" width="451" height="600" alt="" /></SPAN></span>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xx-smaller ac w30">FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.<br/>6-99</td>
<td class="x-smaller ac w40">Life-size.</td>
<td class="xx-smaller ac w30">COPYRIGHT 1899,<br/>
NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</SPAN></span></p>
</div>
<h2><SPAN name="WESTERN_YELLOW-THROAT" id="WESTERN_YELLOW-THROAT"></SPAN>WESTERN YELLOW-THROAT. <br/> <span class="xx-smaller"><span style="font-weight:lighter;"> (<i>Geothlypis trichas occidentalis.</i>)</span></span></h2>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse">The birds are here, for all the season's late.</div>
<div class="verse">They take the sun's height, an' don' never wait;</div>
<div class="verse">Soon's he officially declares it's spring,</div>
<div class="verse">Their light hearts lift 'em on a north'ard wing,</div>
<div class="verse">An' th' aint an acre, fur ez you can hear,</div>
<div class="verse">Can't by the music tell the time o' year.</div>
<div class="verse ar"> —<i>Lowell.</i></div>
</div></div>
<div class="p2">
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_t.jpg" width-obs="58" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">THIS common, but beautiful resident
of the western United
States begins to arrive about
the middle of April and leaves
during the month of September. It is
one of the most conspicuous of the
warbler family, is very numerous and
familiar, and is decked with such a
marked plumage that it cannot fail to
be noticed. The adult male is olive-green
above, becoming browner on the
nape. The female is duller in color
than the male without black, gray, or
white on head, which is mostly dull
brownish. The yellow of throat is
much duller than in the male. The
young are somewhat like the adult female.
This is said to be the prevailing
form in Illinois and Indiana, the larger
number of specimens having the more
extensively yellow lower parts of the
western form, though there is much
variation.</p>
<p>This little fellow is found among the
briars or weed-stalks, in rose bushes
and brambles, where it sings throughout
the day. Its nest, generally built
between upright weed-stalks or coarse
grass in damp meadow land, is shaped
like a cup, the opening at the top. The
eggs vary from four to six, and are of a
delicate pinkish-white, the larger end
marked by a ring of specks and lines
of different shades of brown. The
western yellow-throat inhabits the Mississippi
valley to the Pacific coast. It
is found as far north as Manitoba;
south in winter from the southern
United States, through central and
western Mexico to Guatemala. With
a few exceptions the warblers are migratory
birds, the majority of them
passing rapidly across the United States
in the spring on the way to the northern
breeding-grounds. It is for this
reason that they are known to few except
the close observers of bird life,
though in season they are known to
literally swarm where their insect food
is most plentiful—"always where the
green leaves are, whether in lofty tree-top,
by an embowered coppice, or budding
orchard. When the apple trees
bloom the warblers revel among the
flowers, vying in activity and numbers
with the bees; now probing the recesses
of a blossom for an insect which
has effected lodgment there, then darting
to another, where, poised daintily
upon a slender twig, or suspended from
it, he explores, hastily, but carefully
for another morsel. Every movement
is the personification of nervous activity,
as if the time for the journey was
short; and, indeed, such appears to be
the case, for two or three days, at most,
suffice some species in a single locality;
a day spent in gleaning through
the woods and orchards of one neighborhood,
with occasional brief siestas
among the leafy bowers, then the
following night in continuous flight
toward its northern destination, is probably
the history of every individual of
the moving throng."</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</SPAN></span></p>
</div>
<h2><SPAN name="CHARLEY_AND_THE_ANGLEWORM" id="CHARLEY_AND_THE_ANGLEWORM"></SPAN> CHARLEY AND THE ANGLEWORM.</h2>
<p class="ac">ALICE DE BERDT.</p>
<div>
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_c.jpg" width-obs="54" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">CHARLEY was going fishing and
he took great pride in the quantity
of squirming bait he carried
in the tin box.</p>
<p>He was quite a small boy, only eight
years old, but country boys learn to
take care of themselves sooner than
city children.</p>
<p>When he reached the little stream
where he meant to fish, he found some
one before him. It was a stranger
whom Charley had seen once or twice
at a neighbor's, where he was boarding
during the summer.</p>
<p>The old mill was the best place in
miles for fish, and Charley wished that
the city boarder had chosen some other
spot in which to read his book.</p>
<p>He gave a shy, not very cordial reply
to the stranger's pleasant "Good
morning!" and began to arrange his line.
In a few minutes one of the largest
earthworms was wriggling in the water
at the end of Charley's hook, and he
himself was sprawled out upon the
ground at the end of a long beam projecting
from the mill intently regarding
the water.</p>
<p>"No luck, my boy?" asked the stranger,
watching Charley work with the
struggling worm that was as hard to
get off the hook as it had been to put
on.</p>
<p>"No, sir," replied the little boy.
"The fishes don't seem to bite."</p>
<p>"Not hungry to-day, eh?" said the
stranger. "I should think that would
be a good thing for the worms."</p>
<p>Charley opened his eyes. It had
never occurred to him to consider the
worms in the matter. They were to
him nothing but ugly, stupid things,
which, his father said, injured the roots
of plants.</p>
<p>"Don't you think the worms are as
fond of their life as you are of yours?"
went on Charley's new friend. "In
their little underground earth houses
they are very comfortable and happy."</p>
<p>Charley smiled. This was a new view
of the case to him, and he edged nearer
to the stranger to hear what more he
would say.</p>
<p>"They's on'y worms," said Charley.</p>
<p>"And a worm is a very good sort of
creature in its way. They are harmless,
cleanly animals. See, I can take
that one of yours in the palm of my
hand and it will not harm me in the
least. Let me put it down on the
ground and see how it hurries to get
away. It is frightened. Now it is trying
to force a way into that damp earth. I
wonder if you know just how the worm
makes its way through the ground."</p>
<p>Charley shook his head, and the stranger
said:</p>
<p>"You have often noticed the shape of
the worm, I dare say. One end of its
body is much thicker than the other,
which runs to a point. The thicker
end of the body is the head. The body
itself, you will see, is made of many
small rings, held together by tiny muscles
and skin, making it possible for the
worm to bend and curl and wriggle in
a way that is impossible for you and
me, whose bones are fewer and fitted
tightly together, so that they move
about less easily.</p>
<p>"Now, if you will take this one in
your hand," said the stranger, "and run
your fingers very gently down its sides
from tail to head, you will find that the
body of the worm is covered with fine
hooks. If you run your fingers along
the worm in the other direction, you
will think the body perfectly smooth.
This is because all the hooks point in the
other direction.</p>
<p>"When the worm wishes to enter the
earth, it pushes its blunt head through
the soil, lengthening its body by means
of the muscles that hold together the
soft, cartilage-like rings. At first only
a few rings go into the ground. Master
Worm then draws up his body into a
thick roll by shortening his muscles.
In this way he forces apart the soft
earth to make room for his body, the
points on the sides holding it there
while he again lengthens his head, pushing
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</SPAN></span>
more earth apart. It is in this way,
by alternately or in turn lengthening or
shortening his body that he makes his
way through the earth, which is pushed
aside to give him passage through its
dark depths.</p>
<p>"As his home is underground, eyes
would not be of much use to him, so
Mother Nature, whose children we all
are, has given him none. One of her
laws is that none of us shall have what
we cannot or do not make use of. He
has a strong mouth, however. It is
placed on the second ring of the body.
His food is earth, which he swallows to
obtain the organic particles contained
in it. This makes him especially interesting,
for nearly all animals obtain
their food from the soil quite indirectly.
Some get it from plants, the plants
themselves having gathered theirs from
the earth through their roots. Certain
animals depend on other creatures,
which in turn get food from the plants.</p>
<p>"The life-giving particles which go
to build up all bodies come directly or
indirectly from the earth itself. It
seems odd that a man who is starving,
no matter where he may be, starves
with the very food which he needs directly
beneath his feet, only he does
not know, nor has the wisest man yet
learned, how to convert it into food
which will directly sustain and give
health to the body. Yet the little earthworm,
which you despise as stupid, has
this wonderful secret, which day by
day it puts into operation for its own
benefit. Worms also eat leaves, which
sometimes they drag into their homes.</p>
<p>"The worm has no feet as we understand
them, but moves along the ground
by sticking its sharp claws into the
ground and by in turn lengthening and
shortening its flexible body.</p>
<p>"The young worms grow from eggs,
which are deposited in the earth in the
autumn. They have to look out for
themselves. During the winter they
burrow deep into the ground, coming
to the surface with the warm rains of
spring. Worms also come to the earth's
surface at night. If you look carefully
in the garden with a lantern some evening,
you may see them."</p>
<p>Charley was looking at his bait box
with a good deal of respect.</p>
<p>"I guess I'll let the worms have another
chance," he said, and he dumped
them in a heap upon the ground, when,
I regret to say, two hungry robins
promptly pounced upon them and flew
jubilantly home with two of the fattest
in their beaks for a meal.</p>
<p>The stranger smiled kindly upon
Charley.</p>
<p>"Never mind, my boy. Old Dame
Nature meant the worms for food for
the robins and perhaps bait for your
hook when you really need fish for food,
but she never meant any of us to needlessly
harm any living creature, for
when you are older and have learned to
read well in her great story book you
will find that after all, from earthworms
to kings, we are only brothers and sisters
in wise old Mother Nature's great
family.</p>
<p>"I once knew a little boy like you
who used to salute every living creature
he met with 'Good morning' or 'Good
afternoon' or 'Good evening.' He said
it made him feel more friendly toward
them. In his spare moments he loved
to watch the woodland creatures and
learn the secrets of their busy, useful
lives."</p>
<p>"Where does he live?" asked Charley.</p>
<p>"Well, when he is not rambling over
the earth hunting for curious insects he
lives in a big city, where he sometimes
writes books about butterflies and moths
and other insects, and people, who as a
rule know very little about the humbler
children of nature's family, give him
credit for being a rather wise man; but
he really knows very little—there is so
much to learn. Some day, when you
are a man, if you keep your eyes open
to what goes on around you, you yourself
may know how little. That boy is
a man now and takes great pleasure in
having introduced you to Master Chætopoda,
one of the humblest but most
interesting members of Mother Nature's
household."</p>
<p>And then Charley smiled, for he
knew the stranger was talking about
himself.—<i>Success.</i></p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</SPAN></span></p>
</div>
<h2><SPAN name="THE_MYRTLE_WARBLER" id="THE_MYRTLE_WARBLER"></SPAN>THE MYRTLE WARBLER. <br/> <span class="xx-smaller"><span style="font-weight:lighter;"> (<i>Dendroica coronata.</i>)</span></span></h2>
<p class="ac">C. C. M.</p>
<div>
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_o.jpg" width-obs="57" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">ONE of the most interesting facts
concerning this beautiful warbler
is that, though not common,
it is a winter sojourner,
and therefore of perpetual interest to
the student of birds. About the last
of March, however, multitudes of them
may be seen as they begin to move
northward. By the middle of April
all but a few stragglers have left us,
and it is not till the last of September
that they begin to return, the majority
of them arriving about the middle of
October. The habitat of the myrtle
warbler includes the whole of North
America, though it is chiefly found
east of the Rocky Mountains, breeding
from the northern United States northward
into the Arctic regions; and,
what is regarded as strange for so
hardy a bird, has been found nesting
in Jamaica. Its winter home is from
about latitude 40° south into southern
Central America.</p>
<p>The adult female myrtle warbler is
similar to the male, but much duller in
color. In winter the plumage of the
sexes is said to be essentially alike.
The upper parts are strongly washed
with umber brown, and lower parts
more or less suffused with paler wash
of the same. The young have no yellow
anywhere, except sometimes on the
rump. The whole plumage is thickly
streaked above and below with dusky
and grayish white.</p>
<p>The places to study these attractive
warblers are the open woods and borders
of streams. In their northern
winter homes, during the winter
months, spiders, eggs and larvæ of insects
constitute their principal food,
though they also feed upon the berries
of the poison ivy, and in the early
spring, as they move northward, upon
"insects that gather about the unfolding
leaves, buds, and blossoms." Col.
Goss says that in the spring of 1880 he
found the birds in large numbers on
Brier Island and other places in Nova
Scotia, feeding along the beach, in
company with the horned lark, upon
the small flies and other insects that
swarm about the kelp and debris
washed upon the shore. "They utter
almost continually, as they flit about,
a <i>tweet</i> note, the males often flying to
the tops of the small hemlocks to give
vent to their happiness in song, which
is quite loud for warblers—rather short,
but soft and pleasing."</p>
<p>These birds usually build their nests
in low trees and bushes, but Mr. MacFarlane,
who found them nesting at
Anderson River, says they occasionally
nest on the ground. Mr. Bremer
says that in the summer of 1855, early
in July, he obtained a nest of the
myrtle warbler in Parsborough, Nova
Scotia. It was built in a low bush, in
the midst of a small village, and contained
six eggs. The parents were
very shy, and it was with great difficulty
that one of them was secured for
identification. The nest was built on a
horizontal branch, the smaller twigs of
which were so interlaced as to admit
of being built upon them, though their
extremities were interwoven into its
rim. The nest was small for the bird,
being only two inches in depth and
four and a half in diameter. The cavity
was one and one-half inches deep
and two and a half wide. Its base and
external portions consisted of fine,
light dry stalks of wild grasses, and
slender twigs and roots. Of the last
the firm, strong rim of the nest was
exclusively woven. Within the nest
were soft, fine grasses, downy feathers,
and the fine hair of small animals.</p>
<p>The eggs are three to six, white to
greenish white, spotted and blotched,
with varying shades of umber brown to
blackish and pale lilac: in form they
are rounded oval.</p>
<p>In autumn, when the myrtle warblers
return from Canada, they mostly haunt
the regions where the juniper and bayberries
are abundant. The latter (<i>Myrica
cerifera</i>), or myrtle waxberries, as they
are frequently called, and which are
the favorite food of this species, have
given it their name. These warblers
are so restless that great difficulty is
experienced in identifying them.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</SPAN></span></p>
<table class="sp2 mc w50 p2" title="Myrtle Warbler.">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="3"><span class="ac w100 figcenter">
<SPAN name="i_030.jpg" id="i_030.jpg"> <ANTIMG style="width:100%"
src="images/i_030.jpg" width="461" height="600" alt="" /></SPAN></span>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xx-smaller ac w30">FROM COL. F. M. WOODRUFF.<br/>6-99</td>
<td class="x-smaller ac w40">MYRTLE WARBLER.<br/>
Life-size.</td>
<td class="xx-smaller ac w30">COPYRIGHT 1899,<br/>
NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</SPAN></span></p>
</div>
<h2><SPAN name="TAFFY_AND_TRICKSEY" id="TAFFY_AND_TRICKSEY"></SPAN>TAFFY AND TRICKSEY.</h2>
<p class="ac">CAROLINE CROWNINSHIELD BASCOM.</p>
<div>
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_a.jpg" width-obs="58" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">A FEW of my readers may know
who Taffy and Tricksey are,
but as more will not I think it
best to introduce them.</p>
<p>Taffy is the handsomest tiger cat I
have ever seen, and as he has the crook
in his tail, he belongs to the Tabby
breed. Taffy is very large, usually
weighing fourteen pounds, but he has
a very small head, and very small,
finely shaped paws. The under parts
of them look like black velvet. In
color he is jet black and the other fur
very much like a raccoon's, light tan at
the ends shading into yellow, then into
drab. As the sun strikes him every
hair seems full of light and he is one
mass of iridescent colors. His marking
is most beautiful. The top of his
head is black branching out into five
narrow black stripes down his neck.
A black stripe three inches wide (without
one light hair) going all the way
down the back and to the end of the
tail and under two inches; of course, on
the tail the stripe is much narrower.
Then, narrow black stripes go down
each side of his back and tail. His
tail is not long, but very bushy like a
nice boa. I never saw more exquisite
coloring and marking than Taffy has
underneath, from his throat to his tail.
His coat is beautifully soft and thick,
and shines like satin, and his eyes are
very green. He is particular about his
toilet, but insists upon my helping him
to keep it glossy. His own comb is
kept on my dressing-table, and he asks
me to comb him twice a day, and sometimes
oftener.</p>
<p>I can tell you nothing of Taffy's antecedents,
as I found him one morning
in our back yard starved almost to
death, and about as thick through the
body as a shingle. At first I thought
he had dropped down from Heaven,
but I soon learned from his sayings
and doings that he must have been
quite intimate with the inmates of the
lower region. I tempted him with
chicken but it was some little time before
I could put my hand on him; and
to tame any animal you must be able
to touch it with your hand. After two
or three pats he seemed to realize that
I was a good friend. Soon I had him
in the house and for three years we
have been devoted to each other. I
have had a great many cats, but never
one who had so much of the wild
animal in him. All of my friends said
I never could tame Taffy and it was
many weeks before I had much influence
over him, and I never feel
quite sure now whether I am to be
loved or scratched, as he still has the
temper and the actions of a tiger when
anything goes the wrong way.</p>
<p>He usually lies down like a tiger
with legs straight out in front, tail
straight out behind, and when I speak
to him he will always blink his eyes
and speak to me. If you touch him in
passing he will grab at your feet and
spit and growl. He never mews when
he wants anything to eat, but will
chase me or my maid, and grab at our
feet. If he does not like what is given
him to eat, he will walk all about his
plate, and scratch as if he were covering
it up.</p>
<p>I am the only one Taffy ever shows
much affection for, but to me he is
very loving. He will lie as long as I
will let him with his paws about my
neck, and head on my shoulder. If he
is sound asleep anywhere, and I begin
to read aloud, sing, or whistle, he will
get directly up, jump on my lap, put
his paws about my neck, his face close
to mine, and begin to purr. As he always
looks very pleasant I flatter myself
he likes the tone of my voice.</p>
<p>When I had my bird, Little Billie, it
would make Taffy simply furious if I
put him out of my room and closed the
door. One morning he was so ugly
my maid did not dare open the door to
come in. After that when I wanted
him to go down stairs, I had my maid
come to the bottom of the stairs and
call "Taffy!" then there was never any
trouble. When he is in a tearing rage
I can always quiet him, by taking
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</SPAN></span>
tight hold of his paws, and kissing his
eyes. I have told all of these things
about Taffy so my readers will appreciate
what I have been able to do with
him. It is needless to say that when
Little Billie went away, Taffy was the
happiest cat in town. His devotion increased
daily to me and he lived in my
room, only going down to get something
to eat.</p>
<p>I think by this time you are very
well acquainted with Mr. Taffy, and I
will present Tricksey to you. Of all
the canary birds I have ever seen
Tricksey is the prettiest, daintiest little
bird you can possibly imagine. His
color is light yellow with a much
deeper shade between his wings, shading
into almost an orange. His wings
and tail are white with just a line of
yellow on some of the feathers. His
eyes are unusually large and bright,
and his little legs and claws are very
pink, and so slender they do not look
strong enough to support his finely
shaped body. Tricksey came from
George H. Holden's, New York, so
you will all know he is a very superior
bird and sings like an angel.</p>
<p>Tricksey had never been out of his
cage when he came to me, but before I
had had him a week, he came out,
perched on my finger, took things from
my finger or mouth, would kiss me,
and go all about my room on my
finger, and very soon went all about
the house with me. He was very fond
of sweet apple, but I never let him
have it inside his cage, but made him
come to me for it. I kept a piece in a
little dish on my table and he soon
found out where it was and would help
himself on the sly. I also kept on my
table in a little china cup, some hemp
seed which I gave to Tricksey as a
great treat. Every time I would tap
on the cup and make it ring, Tricksey
would come out of his cage, down
from a picture frame, or wherever he
was, for a seed.</p>
<p>One day he had had his one hemp
seed, and teased for more, but I said
"no" and he went flying about the
room having a fine time. Soon he flew
back on the table, hopped over to the
cup, gave it two or three taps to make
it ring, then hopped on to the top,
reached down and helped himself to
two seeds. Tricksey is a very vain
little bird and likes nothing better
than to go over on my dressing table,
walk back and forth in front of the
mirror or sit on my pin cushion and
admire himself.</p>
<p>Tricksey came to me one afternoon
and Taffy knew nothing about his arrival
until the next morning. When
he came upstairs and saw a little
yellow bird in a house of gold, he was
like the little girl's Bunnie, who "was
not a bit afraid, but awfully much surprised,"
when she heard firecrackers
for the first time. His eyes were like
balls of fire, while his mouth opened
and shut making a hissing sound, and
his tail going at the rate of a mile a
minute. He walked into my room like
a wild tiger, with an air as much as to
say, "If this is Little Billie come back
dressed in yellow, die he must," and
sprang at the cage. I took him firmly
by the paws, looked straight into his
big angry eyes and said in a soft, firm
voice, "Taffy, this is Tricksey, and he
is not to be eaten or hurt any more
than my Little Billie who went away."
I let go of his paws, he walked out of
my room and downstairs without looking
back. In about an hour I looked
out into the hall, and there sat my
dear old Taffy on the top step looking
very meek and wishful. I spoke kindly
to him and asked him to come in and
see his new brother Tricksey. After a
few moments he came in very slowly
and went behind my bed. Soon he
came from under the valance, (the
cage sat on a chair and I in front of it)
never looked at the cage, jumped into
my lap, put his paws about my neck
and began loving me. I took him to
bed with me and he never moved until
Tricksey began to sing in a most delightful
way, then he looked at him
and listened very intently. I talked
to him, and "smoothed his feathers," and
soon he snuggled down in my arms
and went to sleep. When he got out
of bed he never glanced at the cage,
but went directly downstairs, and I
felt I had made a good beginning.
Everyone said I could never teach
Taffy not to catch Tricksey, and the
reason his catship did not kill Little
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</SPAN></span>
Billie was because he was afraid of
him, and so carefully watched. I knew
there was not a place in the house I
could hang the cage where Taffy could
not get at it if he made up his mind to
do so. Of course for days and weeks
I felt anxious, and did not mean to
leave them alone together. I never
turned Taffy out of my room. If he
went up to the cage and put up his
paw I would say "Taffy, you must <i>not</i>
put your paw on the cage," and as he
always minds he would take it right
down, sit by the cage, and I would
talk to him kindly. Fortunately
Tricksey was not at all afraid of Taffy.</p>
<p>Taffy always wears a yellow satin
collar with bells all around. Often I
would hear him coming upstairs when
I was lying down and I would keep very
quiet to see what he would do. Sometimes
he would come over to the cage,
look at Tricksey pleasantly, then lie
down by the fire and go to sleep; more
often he would lie down without even
looking at him. But the moment he
heard me talking to Tricksey he would
get up and come to me to be petted,
and I always gave him a great deal.
One day when Taffy was in another
room I let Tricksey out, and tried to
be very quiet. I was sitting on the
floor with Tricksey hopping about me.
Before I hardly knew it Taffy was in
my lap, and soon I had Tricksey on
my knee eating seeds. If I took the
cage on my lap with Tricksey inside
Taffy would immediately jump up and
crowd in between the cage and me.</p>
<p>Taffy was very much afraid the first
time he saw Tricksey take his bath, and
ran under the bed and peeped out from
under the valance.</p>
<p>One morning the cage sat on the
floor, and Tricksey was ready for his
bath, when Taffy came in and sat close
to the cage. Tricksey took a big drop
of water into his bill and threw it into
Taffy's face, Taffy moved back a little
and looked all about to see where it
came from. While he was looking
Tricksey went into his bath, and
splashed the water all over Taffy's face
in a very roguish way. To say Taffy
was surprised is speaking mildly. He
turned to me with an angry cry and
went out of the room. The next morning
the same thing happened; but instead
of going out of the room, he
went on the other side, out of reach
of the water, but where he could see
all that went on.</p>
<p>After that he became so interested
he did not mind if the water was
splashed all over his face and would
sit as close to the cage as he could get.
While Tricksey was eating his breakfast
he would lie down close to the
cage and go to sleep. As I previously
said I never meant to leave Taffy in the
room with Tricksey, but he was often
there hours before I knew it. When I
found him he was always asleep in
front of the cage or by the fire.</p>
<p>One morning after the bath I put the
cage up in the window. Taffy did not
seem to like it at all. He looked at
me most wishfully, and began talking
cat language, and I knew he was saying,
"Please put Tricksey back on the
floor." I did so, and Taffy began to
sing, lay down with his back close to
the cage, stretched out and went to
sleep. He had been lying that way
for an hour when some visitors came.
It seemed too bad to disturb Taffy so I
left him, and thought I would risk it.</p>
<p>Two hours passed before I went back,
and you may imagine my delight when
I found my two boys (so different in
color, size and disposition) as happy
as two kittens. Tricksey was singing
merrily. Taffy had wakened, changed
his position, and looked as if he felt
very proud, being left to take care of
his small brother. His eyes were as
soft as velvet, and he spoke to me in a
soft, cooing tone. Since then I have
never felt there was any danger in
leaving them together. I regret to say
Tricksey has a strong will of his own
and almost as bad a temper as Taffy.</p>
<p>At different times I had three wee
baby birds brought in to me, but they
all died. Tricksey was very jealous of
them, and when he saw me feeding
them he would become very angry,
beat his wings against his cage, and beg
for me to let him out. One day I put
one of the little strangers on the floor
and let Tricksey out. He flew at the
waif and tore feathers out of the top of
his head. I took the poor little frightened
thing in my hand. Tricksey flew
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</SPAN></span>
on my finger and pecked at him. I
put him in my other hand and Tricksey
flew at him more angry than ever.
Then I put him on the floor, and Tricksey
was so happy he flew on my head,
hopped about my shoulders and kissed
me in the mouth. In the middle of
the performance in walked dignified
Mr. Taffy with a look which plainly
said, "What more are you going to
bring into this room?" He sat by my
side looking at the newcomer and, before
I knew what he was going to do,
reached out his paw, and gave him a
good slap which sent him off my lap
onto the floor.</p>
<p>Early in the fall before I had any
fire in my room I would bring Tricksey
down in the morning and keep him
until evening, and for two weeks Taffy
never went near my room during
the day, but stayed down there with
Tricksey. The first day I had a fire in
my room I did not bring Tricksey
down as usual. After I gave Taffy his
luncheon I missed him, but did not go
to my room until five o'clock, and there
was faithful Taffy sound asleep close
to Tricksey's cage, and now he stays in
my room all day. He has plainly
shown that if Tricksey stays there he
stays too.</p>
<p>I find that animals want to be treated
very much like children. The more intelligent
they are the easier it is to influence
them, and the quicker they are
to read you. First give them a great
deal of love and kindness, always
be firm, very patient, and above all
<i>never</i> deceive them in the most trivial
thing. I hope this little sketch of Taffy's
and Tricksey's life may be of some
help to those who love cats and dogs,
but have felt they could not teach them
to live in harmony together.</p>
<hr class="chap" /></div>
<h2><SPAN name="A_SUGGESTION_TO_OOLOGISTS" id="A_SUGGESTION_TO_OOLOGISTS"></SPAN> A SUGGESTION TO OOLOGISTS.</h2>
<p class="ac">FRANK L. BURNS,<br/>
<span class="smaller">In Oberlin <i>Bulletin</i>.</span></p>
<div>
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_b.jpg" width-obs="56" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">BEFORE we enter upon another
active campaign of bird-nesting,
it is fitting that we should pause
a moment to reflect upon the
true aim of our toil, risks, and trouble,
as well as delight and recreation. How
many of us can define the phrase "collecting
for scientific purposes," which, like
liberty, is the excuse for many crimes?</p>
<p>If it is true, as has been asserted,
that oology as a scientific study has
been a disappointment, I am convinced
that it is not on account of its limited
possibilities, but simply because the
average oologist devotes so much time
to the collection and bartering of
specimens that no time is left for the
actual study of the accumulating shells.
In other words, he frequently undertakes
a journey without aim or object.</p>
<p>The oologist has done much toward
clearing up the life-history of many of
our birds, but as observations of this
nature can often be accomplished without
the breaking up of the home of the
parent bird, it alone will not suffice as
an excuse for indiscriminate collecting.
After preparing the specimen for the
cabinet his responsibility does not end
but only begins. A failure to add
something to the general knowledge is
robbing the public as well as the birds.
He who talks fluently of the enforcement
of strict laws for the preservation
of our wild birds, their nests and eggs,
and fails to protect and encourage
those about his premises, falls short of
his duty; and if his cabinet contains
bird skins or egg shells which might
just as well have remained where
Nature placed them, he is inconsistent,
demanding that others abstain that he
may indulge.</p>
<p>In conclusion I would say that when
an oologist constantly keeps in mind
and acts under the assumption that the
birds are his best friends and not his
deadly enemies, he cannot go far
wrong, and the means he employs will
be justified in the light of subsequent
study and research of data and specimens.
If any of us fall short in this
we have only ourselves to blame. Let
us then collect with moderation and
fewer eggs and more notes be the
order of the day.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</SPAN></span></p>
<table class="sp2 mc w50" title="Blue-Winged Yellow Warbler.">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="3"><span class="ac w100 figcenter">
<SPAN name="i_043.jpg" id="i_043.jpg"> <ANTIMG style="width:100%"
src="images/i_043.jpg" width="420" height="600" alt="" /></SPAN></span>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xx-smaller ac w30">FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.<br/>6-99</td>
<td class="x-smaller ac w40">BLUE-WINGED YELLOW WARBLER.<br/>
Life-size.</td>
<td class="xx-smaller ac w30">COPYRIGHT 1899,<br/>
NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table></div>
<h2><SPAN name="THE_BLUE-WINGED_YELLOW_WARBLER" id="THE_BLUE-WINGED_YELLOW_WARBLER"></SPAN> THE BLUE-WINGED YELLOW WARBLER.<br/> <span class="xx-smaller"><span style="font-weight:lighter;"> (<i>Helminthophila pinus.</i>)</span></span></h2>
<div>
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_n.jpg" width-obs="56" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">NOT a great deal is known about
many of the warblers, and comparatively
little has been observed
of this member of the
very large family, comprising more
than one hundred species. This specimen
is also recognized by the name of
the blue-winged swamp warbler. Its
habitat is eastern United States, chiefly
south of 40 degrees and west of the
Alleghanies, north irregularly to Massachusetts
and Michigan, and west to
border of the great plains. In winter it
lives in eastern Mexico and Guatemala.</p>
<p>It has been pointed out that the
name of this bird is misleading, as the
blue of the wing is dull and inconspicuous,
and not blue at all in the sense in
which this color distinction is applied
to some other birds. When applied to
the warblers, it simply means either a
bluish-gray, or slate, which seems
barely different from plain gray at a
short distance.</p>
<p>In half-cleared fields which have
grown up to sprouts, and in rich open
woods in the bottom-lands, where the
switch-cane forms a considerable proportion
of the undergrowth, the blue-winged
yellow warbler is one of the
characteristic birds, says Ridgway. The
male is a persistent singer during the
breeding-season, and thus betrays his
presence to the collector, who finds
this, of all species, one of the easiest to
procure. His song is very rude. The
nest is built on the ground, among upright
stalks, resting on a thick foundation
of dry leaves. The eggs are four
or five, white, with reddish dots. The
food of the warbler consists almost
wholly of spiders, larvæ, and beetles,
such as are found in bark, bud, or
flower. The birds are usually seen
consorting in pairs. The movements
of this warbler are rather slow and
leisurely, and, like a chickadee, it may
sometimes be seen hanging head downward
while searching for food.</p>
<hr class="chap" /></div>
<h2><SPAN name="INDIRECTION" id="INDIRECTION"></SPAN>INDIRECTION.</h2>
<p class="ac smaller">"We hear, if we attend, a singing in the sky."</p>
<p class="ac">RICHARD REALF.</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Fair are the flowers and the children, but their subtle
suggestion is fairer;</div>
<div class="verse">Rare is the rose-burst of dawn, but the secret that clasps
it is rarer;</div>
<div class="verse">Sweet the exultance of song, but the strain that precedes
it is sweeter;</div>
<div class="verse">And never a poem was writ, but the meaning outmastered
the meter.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Never a daisy that grows, but a mystery guideth the
growing;</div>
<div class="verse">Never a river that flows, but a majesty scepters the
flowing;</div>
<div class="verse">Never a Shakespeare that soared, but a stronger than he did
enfold him;</div>
<div class="verse">Never a prophet foretold, but a mightier seer hath
foretold him.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Back of the canvas that throbs, the painter is hinted
and hidden;</div>
<div class="verse">Into the statue that breathes, the soul of the sculptor
is bidden;</div>
<div class="verse">Under the joy that is felt, lie the infinite issues of
feeling;</div>
<div class="verse">Crowning the glory revealed, is the glory that crowns
the revealing.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Great are the symbols of being, but that which is symboled
is greater;</div>
<div class="verse">Vast the creation beheld, but vaster the inward Creator;</div>
<div class="verse">Back of the sound broods the silence; back of the gift
stands the giving;</div>
<div class="verse">Back of the hand that receives, thrills the sensitive
nerve of receiving.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Space is nothing to spirit; the deed is outdone by the
doing;</div>
<div class="verse">The heart of the wooer is warm, but warmer the heart of the
wooing;</div>
<div class="verse">And up from the pits where these shiver and up from the
heights where those shine,</div>
<div class="verse">Twin voices and shadows swim starward, and the essence of
life divine.</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</SPAN></span></p>
</div>
<h2><SPAN name="OUT-DOOR_SCIENCE" id="OUT-DOOR_SCIENCE"></SPAN>OUT-DOOR SCIENCE.</h2>
<p class="ac">FREDERICK A. VOGT,<br/>
<span class="smaller">Principal Central High School, Buffalo.</span></p>
<div>
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_t.jpg" width-obs="58" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">THE first step to take in teaching
science to young people and in
popularizing the study among
older people is to throw away
much of the traditional polysyllabic
phraseology and use a little common
sense and good old Anglo-Saxon now
and then—to teach nature, instead of
science.</p>
<p>There is not only great danger in
being too technical, but in telling too
much. We all like to talk on our pet
subjects. We rattle along, airing our
opinions and pouring out big volumes
of knowledge, and expect the poor
pupils, like great dry sponges, to absorb
the gracious gift. But they don't
absorb; it isn't their business; they belong
to quite another sub-kingdom;
and while we are just about to congratulate
ourselves on our facility of expression
and wise beneficence, we are
rudely made aware that our eloquence
was all lost; and, worse still, we have
been guilty of repression, of stifling
natural curiosity, and crushing what
might become a priceless, inquiring,
intellectual habit.</p>
<p>Is it any wonder that so few ever go
on with this geology, mineralogy, botany,
or zoölogy, after they leave school?
What is our object as teachers? Is it
to cram geology and botany down passive
throats in one or two school terms,
or is it to lead our students so gently
and awaken so keen a desire that they
shall study these sciences all their lives,
to be a never-ending joy, a pure pleasure
and a solace amid coming cares
and darkening days? Oh, I, too, have
been guilty, and may heaven forgive
my exceeding foolishness! The remainder
of my days are being spent in
penance, in propitiating the office of
the recording angel by a more humble
and righteous way of life.</p>
<p>So much for the language of the
teacher, and now for the means of giving
reality to his teaching efforts. This
can only be done by the laboratory
method or investigation in the field.
With the latter, out-door work only
does this paper especially treat.</p>
<p class="ac p2">ACTUAL CONTACT WITH NATURE.</p>
<p>While I do not for a moment decry
the use of books, either for collateral
reading or for text-books—in fact, I
plead for a wider reading and profounder
study of the best scientific
writers—still, I feel just as you must
feel, that there is something radically
wrong in much of our science teaching,
and that we have come to regard
books as more real than the earth,
the sky, the rocks; the plants, and the
animals, which are all about us.</p>
<p>Just why this is so, I am unable to
understand. Nature is so lavish! On
all sides, easy of access, are the phenomena
and the realities, while the
school-room is artificial, and the teacher,
alas, in perfect keeping with the school-room.</p>
<p>Can it be that pupils are averse to
actual contact with nature? Not at all.
From the earliest childhood throughout
life there is in most persons a remarkable
turn toward curious investigation,
and thorough understanding of the
things of nature. That I know from
my own experience while teaching in
the grammar schools.</p>
<p>One day I asked the pupils to bring
me in any specimens of stones they
might find in the vacant lots and the
fields; and then I promised to give
them a talk about these stones. I expected
perhaps twenty or thirty specimens.
What was my amazement and
secret horror when, the next day and
the next came dozens and dozens of
specimens until, in a few days, I had
over a ton and a half, containing
3,000 specimens. There were granites,
gneisses and schists and quartzes; there
were sandstones, slates, shales, limestones,
glacial scratchings, marbles and
onyx; there were geodes, crystals, ores,
stone hammers, arrow-heads, brickbats,
furnace slag, and fossils. I took everything
smilingly, and at night the janitor
and I buried many duplicates and the
useless stuff in a deep hole where they
wouldn't be likely to get hold of it
again.</p>
<p>We soon possessed an excellent cabinetful,
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</SPAN></span>
and had fine times talking about
the making of stones—the crust of the
earth—former inhabitants, the great ice
age, and such simple geology as they
could understand; and they did understand;
that did not end it. We studied
plants in the same way; physics and
chemistry, with home-made apparatus.
Of course, it all took time, and a good
deal of it; and there wasn't any extra
pay for it, either; but there are labors
whose recompense is far more precious
than dollars and cents.</p>
<p>And so I find enthusiasm also for out-door
science, among secondary pupils
and among the great body of intelligent
people of our cities; and if nature
is so accessible, and pupils are so eager
for its secrets, and we still worship
books and ignore the visible objects
and forces so freely at our disposal,
there is no other conclusion to arrive
at, except that the teacher himself is
either too ignorant or too indolent to
make proper use of them. It takes
time; it needs enthusiasm; it needs a
genuine love for the subject in hand,
and a profound interest in and sympathy
with the student.</p>
<p>The subjects in which field work may
be made very useful are geography,
geology, botany, and zoölogy, and the
objects are, of course, apparent to all.
First, it cultivates a familiarity with
nature, which is wholesome and desirable.
We are living in an artificial age.
Children nowadays get too much pocket
money; there is too much theater; too
much smartness; too much flabbiness
for the real business of life; too much
blasé yawning; too many parties; too
much attention to dress; the color of
the necktie; the crease of the trowsers,
or the make of a gown. The only
meaning science has for many of the
richer classes is the curved ball of the
pitcher, the maneuvers of the quarterback,
or the manly art of self-defense.</p>
<p>I know of nothing that will counter-act
the indifference of parents and lead
the young mind back to a simpler and
more humanizing condition of life than
to make it familiar with old mother
earth, the stream, the valley, the tree,
the flower, and the bird.</p>
<p>Another object of field work is to
develop habits of correct observation.
Pupils ordinarily take too much for
granted. They will swallow anything
that is printed in a book, or that the
teacher may choose to tell, always providing
the pupil is sufficiently awake to
perform the function. It is hardly an
exaggeration that they would believe
the moon was made of green cheese,
providing the statement came with
august solemnity from the teacher's
chair. There is too hasty generalization
and a prevailing unwillingness to
careful examination. Careful field work
opens the eye and corrects much of
this slovenly mode of thinking, creates
honest doubt, and questions an unsupported
statement. The pupil wants to see
the pollen on the bee before he believes
in cross-fertilization; he wants to see
rocks actually in layers before he will
believe they could have been deposited
in water, and he pounds up a fragment
of sandstone to get at the original sand;
he wants to see the actual castings before
he will believe all that Darwin
says about his wonderful earthworms;
and few things escape the eye of the
pupils who go out with the understanding
that it is business and their duty to
observe and take notes.</p>
<p>Another object of field study is to
see life in its environment. Stuffed
birds and animals in cases are all very
good; shells look pretty behind nice
glass doors, and herbaria play a very
important part; yet, after all, how much
better to see a thrush's flight; to hear
the pewee's song; how much more satisfactory
to watch a snail creep and
feed; how much more delightful to
study the blossoming hepatica; to note
its various leaves, its soil, its surroundings,
and discover why it blooms at the
very opening of springtime.</p>
<p>More can be learned from a handful
of pebbles on the beach than a whole
book written upon the same subject.</p>
<p>Yet another object is to acquire
specific information not contained in
books. The feel of a leaf, the odor of
the honeysuckle, or the pine, the cry
of the kingfisher, the locomotion of a
horse, and the locomotion of a cow, the
formation of miniature gorges in a rain
storm, and the wearing of a shore
under the action of the waves, these
and countless other manifestations can
never be described in mere words.—<i>The
School Journal.</i></p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</SPAN></span></p>
<table class="sp2 mc w50" title="Golden-Winged Warbler.">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="3"><span class="ac w100 figcenter">
<SPAN name="i_055.jpg" id="i_055.jpg"> <ANTIMG style="width:100%"
src="images/i_055.jpg" width="440" height="600" alt="" /></SPAN></span>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xx-smaller ac w30">FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.<br/>6-99</td>
<td class="x-smaller ac w40">GOLDEN-WINGED WARBLER.<br/>
Life-size.</td>
<td class="xx-smaller ac w30">COPYRIGHT 1899,<br/>
NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table></div>
<h2><SPAN name="THE_GOLDEN-WINGED_WARBLER" id="THE_GOLDEN-WINGED_WARBLER"></SPAN> THE GOLDEN-WINGED WARBLER.<br/> <span class="xx-smaller"><span style="font-weight:lighter;"> (<i>Helminthophila chrysoptera.</i>)</span></span></h2>
<div>
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_t.jpg" width-obs="58" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">THIS member of the large family
of warblers is considered rare,
or only common in certain localities
of its range, which is
eastern United States in summer and
Central America in winter. Its common
names are blue golden-winged
warbler, and golden-winged swamp
warbler. It makes its appearance in
May, when it may occasionally be seen
about orchards. It soon retires into
dense underbrush, however, and few
persons who are not woodsmen ever
get more than a glimpse of it. It
breeds all through its range, but only
casually north of Massachusetts. It
builds its nest on or near the ground,
in a plant tuft. It is made of grass,
and is deep and bulky. The eggs
are four or five, white, with reddish
dots.</p>
<p>Ridgway says that June, 1885, he
found these birds breeding along the
southern edge of Calhoun Prairie, Richland
county, Illinois, and Mr. H. K.
Coale states that on May 11, 1884, in a
wood on the Kankakee river, in Starke
county, Indiana, he found the golden-winged
warbler quite common. Eight
were seen—all males, which were singing.
Some were flushed from the ground
and flew up to the nearest small tree,
where they sat motionless next the
trunk. The locality was a moist situation,
overgrown with young trees and
bushes.</p>
<hr class="chap" /></div>
<h2><SPAN name="PET_ANIMALS_AS_CAUSES_OF_DISEASE" id="PET_ANIMALS_AS_CAUSES_OF_DISEASE"></SPAN> PET ANIMALS AS CAUSES OF DISEASE.</h2>
<div>
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_p.jpg" width-obs="51" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">PAPERS presented last summer at
the French Congress for Tuberculosis
at Paris demonstrate,
says <i>The Medical News</i>, what has
hitherto been very doubtful, that aviary
and human tuberculosis are essentially
the same pathologic process due to the
same germ modified by a cultural environment,
but convertible under favorable
circumstances one into the other. An
Englishman has found that more than
ten per cent. of canaries and other song
birds that die in captivity succumb to
tuberculosis, and parrots have come in
for a share of condemnation in this
connection. By far the larger number
of monkeys who die in captivity are
carried off by tuberculosis, and while,
fortunately, the keeping of monkeys as
house pets is not very general, at the
same time there is some danger of contagion.
Nocard, the greatest living
authority on tuberculosis in animals,
and the man to whom we owe the best
culture methods for the tubercle bacillus,
found in a series of autopsies on
dogs that out of two hundred successive
autopsies on unselected dogs that died
at the great veterinary school at Alfort,
near Paris, in more than one-half the
cases there were tubercular lesions, and
in many of them the lesions were of such
a character as to make them facile and
plenteous disseminators of infective
tuberculous materials.</p>
<p>Parrots are known to be susceptible
to a disease peculiar to themselves, and
a number of fatal cases in human beings
of what was at first supposed to be
malignant influenza, pneumonia was
traced to the bacillus which is thought
to be the cause of the parrot disease.
Cats are sometimes known to have
tuberculosis, and that they have in
many cases been carriers of diphtheria
and other ordinary infections is more
than suspected. There is not at present
any great need for a crusade on
sanitary grounds against the keeping
of pet animals, but they are multiplying
more and more, and it does not
seem unreasonable that greater care in
the matter of determining the first signs
of disease should be demanded of their
owners, and then so guarding them as
to prevent their being a source of contagion
to human beings. Attention
should be paid to this warning as regards
children, as animals play more
freely with them and the children are
more apt to be infected.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</SPAN></span></p>
</div>
<h2><SPAN name="A_FLY-CATCHING_PLANT" id="A_FLY-CATCHING_PLANT"></SPAN> A FLY-CATCHING PLANT.</h2>
<p class="ac">WILLIAM KERR HIGLEY,<br/>
<span class="smaller">Secretary of The Chicago Academy of Sciences.</span></p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="verse">Queen of the Marsh, imperial Drosera treads</div>
<div class="verse">Rush-fringed banks, and moss-embroidered beds.</div>
<div class="verse ar">—<i>Erasmus Darwin, in The Botanic Garden, 1789.</i></div>
</div></div>
<div class="p2">
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_s.jpg" width-obs="60" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">SOME of the most interesting forms
of nature are not the most showy
and are not easily observed by
the untrained eye. Many of
their characteristics can only be known
by carefully conducted investigations,
both in the field and in the laboratory.</p>
<p>The advance of science has shown
us that it is as natural for some plants to
obtain much of their nourishment from
the animal world, by a true process of
feeding, as it is for animal forms to obtain
their sustenance, either directly or
indirectly, from the vegetable world.</p>
<p>There are many species among the
lower orders of plants that are well
known animal parasites, but there are
also, among our more highly organized
flowering species, forms that improvise
a stomach and secrete an acid fluid
for the digestion of nitrogenous food
which is afterwards absorbed and used
in tissue building. These are in no
sense of the term parasites.</p>
<p>Such a plant is our common round-leaved
sundew (<i>Drosera rotundifolia</i>, L.).
The generic name Drosera is from the
Greek, meaning dew.</p>
<p>This rather insignificant, but pretty
little plant is distributed nearly
throughout the world, and is usually
found in bogs, or in wet sand near some
body of water. The flower stalk is seldom
more than six or eight inches in
height and bears very small white or
pinkish-white flowers.</p>
<p>The interesting feature of this species,
however, lies in the rosette of
about five or six leaves growing from
the base of the stem. These leaves lie
upon the ground and are usually about
one-fourth to one-half of an inch in
length, and are generally nearly orbicular
in form. The upper side is covered
with gland-bearing tentacles. The
glands are covered by a transparent
and viscid secretion which glitters in
the sunlight, giving rise to the common
name of the plant. There are
usually over two hundred tentacles on
each leaf and, when they are not irritated,
they remain spread out. The
viscid fluid of the glands serves as an
organ of detention when an insect lights
upon the leaf. The presence of an insect,
or, in fact, any foreign matter, will
cause the tentacles, to which it is adhering,
to bend inward toward the
center of the leaf and within a very
short time all the tentacles will be
closed over the captured insect, which
is soon killed by the copious secretion
filling its breathing apparatus.</p>
<p>Though these sensitive tentacles are
not excited by either wind or rain they
are by the repeated touchings of a
needle, or any hard substance. It is
said that a fragment of hair weighing
but 1-78,740 of a grain will cause a perceptible
movement.</p>
<p>By experiment it has been shown
that a bit of hard-boiled egg, or a fragment
of meat as well as an insect will
cause not only an inflection of the tentacles
but also of the edges of the
leaves, thus forming an improvised
stomach, the secretion of the glands then
increasing and becoming acid. At this
stage the secretion is not only capable
of digesting but is also highly antiseptic.</p>
<p>This power of digesting and absorbing
nitrogenous food is absolutely necessary
to the existence of the sundew,
for it usually grows in a poor soil and
its few and not greatly elongated roots
are of little service except to absorb
water, of which it needs a large amount
for the production of the copious secretion.
Specimens may be developed by
planting in moist cotton and furnishing
with plenty of water.</p>
<p>The length of time that the tentacles
will remain inflected depends on the
vigor of the leaf and the solubility of
the material causing the excitement.
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</SPAN></span>
The time varies from one to seven or
eight days.</p>
<p>Easily dissolved and readily absorbed
food in too large an amount seems to
cause overexcitement and overtaxation,
and frequently results in the death of
the leaf.</p>
<p>The large number of insects, especially
flies, captured by these plants
would lead one to believe that they are
attracted by the odor of the plant, or
the purplish color of the tentacles,
rather than by the desire to use the
leaves as a resting-place.</p>
<p>The sundew belongs to the natural
order <i>Droseraceæ</i>. This contains about
one hundred and twenty-five species, of
which one hundred and ten belong to
the genus Drosera, and are chiefly natives
of Australia, though the round-leaved
species is common throughout
the United States, Europe, and Asia.</p>
<p>Closely related to the sundew is the
Venus fly-trap (<i>Dionæa muscipula</i>, Ellis).
This is a native in the eastern
part of North Carolina only.</p>
<p>The leaf of this plant is provided
with two lobes, which close quickly
when the sensitive hairs, which are situated
on the upper surface of the leaf,
are irritated by an insect. The acid
secretion flows out and the leaves remain
closed till digestion and absorption
are completed.</p>
<p>Dr. Asa Gray has referred to this
species as "that most expert of fly-catchers."</p>
<hr class="chap" /></div>
<h2><SPAN name="TREES_AND_ELOQUENCE" id="TREES_AND_ELOQUENCE"></SPAN>TREES AND ELOQUENCE.</h2>
<p class="ac">W. E. WATT.</p>
<div>
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_f.jpg" width-obs="59" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">FORTY years in the pulpit of Plymouth
Church in Brooklyn
Henry Ward Beecher stood and
poured forth a stream of eloquence
which shook the world. During
the stress of civil war he stemmed
the current of English sentiment with
his peculiar powers and brought about
a change of feeling which was the salvation
of our Union. This greatest of
our pulpit orators was a lover of trees,
and some of his finer passages were inspired
by them.</p>
<p>Without doubt, better trees there
might be than even the most noble and
beautiful now. I suppose God has, in
his thoughts, much better ones than he
has ever planted on this globe. They
are reserved for the glorious land. Beneath
them may we walk!</p>
<p>To most people a grove is a grove,
and all groves are alike. But no two
groves are alike. There is as marked
a difference between different forests
as between different communities. A
grove of pines without underbrush,
carpeted with the fine-fingered russet
leaves of the pine, and odorous of resinous
gums, has scarcely a trace of
likeness to a maple woods, either in the
insects, the birds, the shrubs, the light
and shade, or the sound of its leaves.
If we lived in olden times, among young
mythologies, we should say that pines
held the imprisoned spirit of naiads
and water-nymphs, and that their
sounds were of the water for whose
lucid depths they always sighed. At
any rate, the first pines must have
grown on the seashore, and learned
their first accents from the surf and the
waves; and all their posterity have inherited
the sound, and borne it inland
to the mountains.</p>
<p>I like best a forest of mingled trees,
ash, maple, oak, beech, hickory, and
evergreens, with birches growing along
the edges of the brook that carries
itself through the roots and stones,
toward the willows that grow in yonder
meadow. It should be deep and sombre
in some directions, running off into
shadowy recesses and coverts beyond
all footsteps. In such a wood there is
endless variety. It will breathe as
many voices to your fancy as might be
brought from any organ beneath the
pressure of some Handel's hands. By
the way, Handel and Beethoven always
remind me of forests. So do some
poets, whose numbers are as various as
the infinity of vegetation, fine as the
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</SPAN></span>
choicest cut leaves, strong and rugged
in places as the unbarked trunk and
gnarled roots at the ground's surface.
Is there any other place, except the
seaside, where hours are so short and
moments so swift as in the forest?
Where else except in the rare communion
of those friends much loved, do
we awake from pleasure, whose calm
flow is without a ripple, into surprise
that whole hours are gone which we
thought but just begun—blossomed and
dropped, which we thought but just
budding?</p>
<p>Thus do you stand, noble elms!
Lifted up so high are your topmost
boughs that no indolent birds care to
seek you, and only those of nimble
wings, and they with unwonted beat,
that love exertion and aspire to sing
where none sing higher. Aspiration!
so heaven gives it pure as flames to the
noble bosom. But debased with passion
and selfishness it comes to be only
Ambition!</p>
<p>It was in the presence of this pasture-elm,
which we name the Queen,
that we first felt to our very marrow
that we had indeed become owners of
the soil! It was with a feeling of awe
that we looked up into its face, and
when I whispered to myself, "This is
mine," there was a shrinking as if there
were sacrilege in the very thought of
<i>property</i> in such a creature of God as
this cathedral-topped tree! Does a
man bare his head in some old church?
So did I, standing in the shadow of this
regal tree, and looking up into that
completed glory, at which three hundred
years have been at work with noiseless
fingers! What was I in its presence
but a grasshopper? My heart said, "I
may not call thee property, and that
property mine! Thou belongest to the
air. Thou art the child of summer.
Thou art the mighty temple where
birds praise God. Thou belongest to
no man's hand, but to all men's eyes
that do love beauty, and that have
learned through beauty to behold God!
Stand, then, in thine own beauty and
grandeur! I shall be a lover and a
protector, to keep drought from thy
roots, and the axe from thy trunk."</p>
<p>For, remorseless men there are crawling
yet upon the face of the earth,
smitten blind and inwardly dead, whose
only thought of a tree of ages is, that
it is food for the axe and the saw!
These are the wretches of whom the
scripture speaks: "A man was famous
according as he had lifted up axes upon
the thick trees."</p>
<p>Thus famous, or rather infamous, was
the last owner but one, before me, of
this farm. Upon the crown of the hill,
just where an artist would have planted
them, had he wished to have them exactly
in the right place, grew some two
hundred stalwart and ancient maples,
beeches, ashes and oaks, a narrow belt-like
forest, forming a screen from the
northern and western winds in winter,
and a harp of endless music for the
summer. The wretched owner of this
farm, tempted of the devil, cut down
the whole blessed band and brotherhood
of trees, that he might fill his
pocket with two pitiful dollars a cord
for the wood! Well, his pocket was the
best part of him. The iron furnaces
have devoured my grove, and their
huge stumps that stood like gravestones
have been cleared away, that a grove
may be planted in the same spot, for
the next hundred years to nourish into
the stature and glory of that which is
gone.</p>
<p>In many other places I find the
memorials of many noble trees slain;
here a hemlock that carried up its eternal
green a hundred feet into the winter
air; there, a huge double-trunked chestnut,
dear old grandfather of hundreds
of children that have for generations
clubbed its boughs, or shook its nut-laden
top, and laughed and shouted as
bushels of chestnuts rattled down.
Now, the tree exists only in the form of
loop-holed posts and weather-browned
rails. I do hope the fellow got a sliver
in his fingers every time he touched the
hemlock plank, or let down the bars
made of those chestnut rails!</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</SPAN></span></p>
</div>
<h2><SPAN name="BATS_IN_BURMESE_CAVES" id="BATS_IN_BURMESE_CAVES"></SPAN> BATS IN BURMESE CAVES.</h2>
<div>
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_i.jpg" width-obs="24" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">INTERESTING caves exist at Hpagat,
twenty-six miles up the Salween,
from Moulmein. They are
hollowed out in the base of an
isolated limestone hill about 250 feet
high, rising precipitously from the river.
Capt. A. R. S. Anderson, the surgeon-naturalist,
gives an interesting account
of these caves in an Indian government
report which is abstracted by "Natural
Science." The entrance is about twelve
feet high and is much ornamented by
Buddhistic sculptures. As the sun was
setting the party took their stand on
the sand-spit facing the entrance of
the caves and soon saw a pair of falcons
leave their perch on the trees and
fly to and fro over the river. They
were speedily joined by other birds,
including common kites and jungle
crows, and the entire flock, to the
number of sixty or a hundred, flew to
the entrance of the caves, close to
which they remained wheeling about
in mid-air. A few minutes later the
bats began to issue in ones and twos,
and were soon pursued by the birds of
prey, but appeared to have no great
difficulty in eluding capture by their
rapid and jerky flight, and their pursuers
made no very determined or long-sustained
efforts to capture them, but
soon returned to their vigil over the
cave. A minute or two passed and a
sudden rush of wings was heard, and
the bats were seen to emerge from the
cave in a dense stream which slowly
became more and more packed, and
continued of about the same density
for some ten minutes and then gradually
thinned away, until, at the end of
twenty minutes, the last had emerged.
The stream of bats when at its maximum
was ten feet square, and so dense
as to closely resemble smoke pouring
from a chimney in a gale of wind.
This resemblance was increased by the
slightly sinuous course pursued by the
bats as they flew off into the afterglow.
They were so densely crowded that
they frequently upset each other and
fell helplessly into the river below,
where they succeeded in reaching the
bank only to fall a prey to the expectant
crow. When the great rush occurred
the falcons, kites, and crows entered
the stream of bats and, flying
along with it and in it, seized as many
bats as they required for food. Capt.
Anderson, by throwing his walking-stick
into the stream of bats, obtained
six specimens. During the last twenty
years the bats appear to have considerably
diminished in numbers, owing to
the depredations of their bird enemies
and to their constant disturbance by
collectors of bat manure.</p>
<hr class="chap" /></div>
<h2><SPAN name="A_METAL_BIRDS_NEST" id="A_METAL_BIRDS_NEST"></SPAN>A METAL BIRD'S NEST.</h2>
<div>
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_i.jpg" width-obs="24" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">IN THE Museum of Natural History
at Soleure, in Switzerland, there is
said to be a bird's nest made entirely
of steel. There are a number
of clockmaking shops at Soleure,
and in the yards of these shops there
are often found lying disused or broken
springs of clocks. One day a clock-maker
noticed in a tree in his yard a
bird's nest of peculiar appearance. Examining
it he found that a pair of wag-tails
had built a nest entirely of clock
springs. It was more than four inches
across and perfectly comfortable for
the birds. After the feathered architects
had reared their brood, the nest
was taken to the museum, where it is
preserved as a striking illustration of
the skill of birds in turning their surroundings
to advantage in building
their nests.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</SPAN></span></p>
<table class="sp2 mc w50" title="Mourning Warbler.">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="3"><span class="ac w100 figcenter">
<SPAN name="i_065.jpg" id="i_065.jpg"> <ANTIMG style="width:100%"
src="images/i_065.jpg" width="436" height="600" alt="" /></SPAN></span>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xx-smaller ac w30">FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.<br/>6-99</td>
<td class="x-smaller ac w40">MOURNING-WARBLER.<br/>
Life-size.</td>
<td class="xx-smaller ac w30">COPYRIGHT 1899,<br/>
NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</SPAN></span></p>
</div>
<h2><SPAN name="THE_MOURNING_WARBLER" id="THE_MOURNING_WARBLER"></SPAN> THE MOURNING WARBLER.<br/> <span class="xx-smaller"><span style="font-weight:lighter;"> (<i>Geothlypis philadelphia.</i>)</span></span></h2>
<div>
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_b.jpg" width-obs="56" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">BASKETT, in his valuable "Story
of the Birds," says that the warbler
forms feed variously, but
they use little vegetable matter.
Some have ground-haunting, and even
swamp-haunting habits; others have
fringed tongues hinting of juices and
nectars, while tree-trunk exploring, as
in creepers, nuthatches, titmice, etc.,
also prevails. They have been described
as at once the most fascinating
and the most exasperating of birds. In
the spring they come with a rush and
although the woods may be full of
them, only a faint lisp from the tree
tops gives note of their presence, and
unless you are a very good observer you
will not know they are about at all. If
you listen to other birds, instead of resolutely
devoting yourself to warblers,
you will lose the opportunity of the
sight of a diminutive bird disappearing
in a tree top. Some of the warblers
dash about among the leaves on the
ground hunting for gnats, others hunt
over the branches of the trees, though
some of them hop gaily on the ground,
while others walk sedately, bobbing
their heads or tilting their tails. The
majority of the tribe fly northward to
nest in pine forests. A few, however,
remain and build in our parks, gardens
and shrubbery. They are all insect-eaters,
destroying ants, flies, caterpillars,
larvæ, plant lice, canker-worms, and
May flies. They are therefore of great
value in the protection of vegetation.</p>
<p>The mourning warbler, whose common
name is black-throated ground
warbler, has its habitat in eastern North
America, breeding from northern
United States northward; more rare in
the Atlantic states. It winters in south-eastern
Mexico, and Costa Rica, and
thence south to Colombia. During the
spring migration this bird is very common.
Early in May, 1881, they were
found in abundance near wheat lands in
Indiana, most of them being observed
about brush piles in a clearing, and
along fences in the immediate vicinity.
In the early part of June, 1871, a pair
were seen in a thicket along the border
of Fox Prairie, in Richland Co., Illinois,
and it was presumed at the time
that they were breeding there, but they
may have been merely late migrants.
It is known to breed in mountainous
portions of Pennsylvania, New England,
New York, Michigan, Minnesota, and
eastern Nebraska, northward. It has
been found nesting in Illinois south of
latitude 39. Its nest is built on or near
the ground in woods. One discovered
by Burroughs in the state of New York
was built in ferns about a foot from the
ground, on the edge of a hemlock wood.
It contained three eggs. The nests are
usually composed of fine strips of bark
and other fibrous material, lined with
fine hair. The eggs are white, with a
sprinkling of reddish dots near the
larger ends.</p>
<hr class="sect" />
<p>The feeling that all life is one life
slumbers in the child's soul. Only very
gradually, however, can this slumbering
feeling be transfigured into a waking
consciousness. Slowly, through a
sympathetic study of nature and of
human life, through a growing sense of
the soul and meaning of all natural
facts and of all human relationships,
and through recreating in various forms
that external world which is but the
objective expression of his own inmost
being, the individual attains to a consciousness
and unity of life and to a
vision of the Eternal Fountain of Life.—<i>The
Nest.</i></p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</SPAN></span></p>
</div>
<h2><SPAN name="THE_RAVEN_AND_THE_DOVE" id="THE_RAVEN_AND_THE_DOVE"></SPAN> THE RAVEN AND THE DOVE.</h2>
<p class="ac">ELANORA KINSLEY MARBLE.</p>
<div>
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_y.jpg" width-obs="65" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">YEA, master," croaked the raven,
"I understand," and spreading
his sable wings over the waste
of waters he flew, anxious, as
was Noah, for a sight of dry land.</p>
<p>The day passed, evening fell, and the
raven had not returned.</p>
<p>"An ill-omened bird," gloomily said
Shem, "so black and uncanny looking.
His croak, even, hath to mine ear an
evil sound."</p>
<p>"What thou sayest is true, brother,"
returned Ham. "Verily the raven hath
a wicked look. A bird of more cheerful
aspect, it seemeth to me, might
well have been chosen. The albatross,
so majestic, with powers of flight excelling
all other creatures of the air;
the eagle, or better still the stormy
petrel, so light of body, its webbed feet
enabling it, with expanding wing, to
rest at will upon the face of the waters."</p>
<p>"Coo-o-o," came a low, plaintive call
from a far corner. "Coo-o-o."</p>
<p>"Ah, my turtle dove," responded
Japheth, "so loving, so true! Had the
choice of a messenger been left to me,
my brothers, verily would I have
chosen the dove. Naught but death
would have kept it, believe me, from its
mate and us."</p>
<p>Noah turned from the window and
gazed sternly upon his three sons.</p>
<p>"What signifieth the complexion of
bird, beast, or man," he demanded
gravely, "when one standeth in need of
courage, intelligence, strength? Among
all the winged creatures of the air
within the ark, canst thou name one
with instinct more subtle than the
raven's? Black and uncanny looking,
forsooth! Witness his speech, I tell
thee," decisively, "the bird hath understanding."</p>
<p>As Noah ceased speaking, there
came a low, faint tapping at the window.
With a glad countenance he
hastened to open it, and in flew the
raven, quite exhausted.</p>
<p>"Water, water, everywhere," croaked
the bird, and after wearily eating the
food Noah gave him, tucked his head
beneath his wing and was soon fast
asleep.</p>
<p>Upon the morning of the next day,
Noah again sent the raven forth, also
the next, and the next.</p>
<p>"Water, water, everywhere," croaked
the raven, as before, upon his return,
and after wearily eating of the food
which Noah gave him, tucked his head
beneath his wing and was soon fast
asleep.</p>
<p>"Verily," sneered Ham, who with his
brothers had grown very impatient,
"the sable-plumaged bird which thou
dost insist upon sending forth daily,
knoweth naught, to my mind, but the
words which he so glibly speaketh.
Surely he hath heard them uttered an
hundred times."</p>
<p>Noah reflected. "What thou sayest,
my son, may be true," he responded,
"for of a surety when gazing from the
window these many, many months,
those words of our speech have been
the daily burden. To-morrow, then,"
his gaze fixed upon the stormy petrel,
"we will send forth——"</p>
<p>"Coo-o-o" came a plaintive call from
the corner. "Coo-o-o."</p>
<p>"The dove," finished Noah, thoughtfully,
"for verily it doth seem to answer
me. Though devoid of speech, its affectionate
nature may yet prompt it to
devise some way by which its message
may be interpreted."</p>
<p>And so upon the morning of the
next day Noah opened the window of
the ark and, the dove, poising upon his
finger, spread her beautiful wings and
over the waste of waters took her joyful
flight.</p>
<p>The day passed, evening fell, and the
dove had not returned.</p>
<p>A dark frown was settling upon the
brow of Ham, when a faint tapping was
heard at the window.</p>
<p>"Water, water, everywhere," croaked
the raven, maliciously, as Noah hastened
to open it and draw the exhausted
bird within. "Water, water, everywhere."</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>"Verily, oh, raven!" despondently
said Noah, "it doth appear that the
dove, not more than thou, didst find a
place for the sole of her foot. I will
wait yet another seven days," he added
thoughtfully, "ere I send her forth
again."</p>
<p>And Noah waited seven days, and on
the morning of the eighth he sent the
dove forth again in quest of dry land.</p>
<p>The day passed, but ere evening fell
the bird returned, bearing in her bill,
as a token that the waters had abated,
a freshly-plucked olive leaf.</p>
<p>"Thou art God's own messenger,"
joyfully said Noah, tenderly caressing
the dove. "Verily something more
than instinct guided and prompted thee
in thy flight this day."</p>
<p>And Noah waited yet another seven
days ere he again sent forth the dove.</p>
<p>This time, to the ark, the dove returned
no more.</p>
<p>"Coo-o-o," more plaintively than
usual, called her mate the next morning.
"Co-o-o-o."</p>
<p>"He mourns for his lost love," pityingly
said Japheth, the youngest son.
"Verily, something hath befallen the
bird!"</p>
<p>"Nay," responded Noah, "liberty is
sweet. After long captivity in a dark,
close house-boat, freedom might well
try the fidelity of e'en a turtle dove.
She awaits his coming, perchance, in
the nearest pine or willow tree. Open
then the window and let him forth."</p>
<p>And Japheth did as his father commanded,
but sorrowfully, for it chanced
that in close companionship, lo, these
many days, with these innocent children
of nature, Japheth had come to
acquire a tender love and care for both
beast and bird.</p>
<p>"Go, thou mourning dove," he said,
unconsciously bestowing a fitting name
upon the gentle bird. "Go!" And,
spreading his beautiful wings, off the
dove joyfully flew, following with unerring
instinct the path in the air yesterday
taken by his mate.</p>
<p>And yet a few days and Noah removed
the covering from the ark and
looked, and behold, the face of the
ground was dry.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
</div>
<h2><SPAN name="THE_MAYFLOWERS" id="THE_MAYFLOWERS"></SPAN>THE MAYFLOWERS.</h2>
<p class="smaller ac">(The trailing arbutus, or Mayflower, grows abundantly in the
vicinity of Plymouth, and
was the first flower that greeted the Pilgrims after their fearful winter.)</p>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Sad Mayflower! watched by winter stars</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">And nursed by winter gales,</div>
<div class="verse">With petals of the sleeted spars</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">And leaves of frozen sails!</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">What had she in those dreary hours,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Within her ice-rimmed bay,</div>
<div class="verse">In common with the wild-wood flowers,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">The first sweet smiles of May?</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Yet, "God be praised!" the Pilgrim said,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Who saw the blossoms peer</div>
<div class="verse">Above the brown leaves, dry and dead,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">"Behold our Mayflower here!"</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">"God wills it: here our rest shall be,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Our years of wandering o'er,</div>
<div class="verse">For us the Mayflower of the sea</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Shall spread her sails no more."</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">O sacred flowers of faith and hope,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">As sweetly now as then</div>
<div class="verse">Ye bloom on many a birchen slope,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">In many a pine-dark glen.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Behind the sea-wall's rugged length,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Unchanged, your leaves unfold,</div>
<div class="verse">Like love behind the manly strength</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Of the brave hearts of old.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">So live the fathers in their sons,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Their sturdy faith be ours,</div>
<div class="verse">And ours the love that overruns</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Its rocky strength with flowers.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">The Pilgrim's wild and wintry day</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Its shadows round us draws;</div>
<div class="verse">The Mayflower of his stormy bay,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Our Freedom's struggling cause.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">But warmer suns ere long shall bring</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">To life the frozen sod;</div>
<div class="verse">And through dead leaves of hope shall spring</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Afresh the flowers of God!</div>
<div class="verse ar">—<i>Whittier.</i></div>
</div></div>
</div>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</SPAN></span></p>
<table class="sp2 mc w50" title="Chestnut-Sided Warbler.">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="3"><span class="ac w100 figcenter">
<SPAN name="i_071.jpg" id="i_071.jpg"> <ANTIMG style="width:100%"
src="images/i_071.jpg" width="428" height="600" alt="" /></SPAN></span>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xx-smaller ac w30">FROM COL. F. M. WOODRUFF.<br/>6-99</td>
<td class="x-smaller ac w40">CHESTNUT-SIDED WARBLER.<br/>
Life-size.</td>
<td class="xx-smaller ac w30">COPYRIGHT 1899,<br/>
NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table></div>
<h2><SPAN name="THE_CHESTNUT-SIDED_WARBLER" id="THE_CHESTNUT-SIDED_WARBLER"></SPAN> THE CHESTNUT-SIDED WARBLER.<br/> <span class="xx-smaller"><span style="font-weight:lighter;"> (<i>Dendroica pennsylvanica.</i>)</span></span></h2>
<p class="ac">LYNDS JONES.</p>
<div>
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_f.jpg" width-obs="59" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">FOR one reason or another we
come to think of this or that
bird as an exquisite. This may
be due to color pattern, form,
carriage or song, but whatever it be,
the bird's presence adds color and
beauty to all our surroundings. It is
not easy to tell why the chestnut-sided
warbler impresses me as an exquisite.
His colors are not so bright, nor their
pattern in either the contrast or harmony
that may be found with other
warblers, but there seems to be something
about the bird that makes the
day brighter, the wearing field-work
easier, and hours of fasting forgotten
when he flits into view. I have sometimes
half suspected that he was more
than half conscious of my admiration
from the manner in which he displayed
his pretty colors and trim form. But
no doubt this is base slander. The
slightly opened wings, spread tail, and
quick movements give an alertness to
the little fellow which adds to his otherwise
bright appearance. The females
and fall birds lack the distinct contrasts
of color found in the male in his spring
dress, but they usually have some trace
of the chestnut on the side of the body,
which, with the small size, will serve to
distinguish them from all others.</p>
<p>The tree-tops seem to possess few
attractions for this warbler, but in village
parks he may often be found well
up among the branches gleaning from
the buds and new leaves for insects and
their eggs. In the woods he gleans
much nearer the ground, but I have
never seen him upon the ground searching
among the fallen leaves. Many
times he may be found among the low
underbrush, preferably not at the edge
of the woods, but usually a few rods in.
He seems rather partial to damp woods,
but may often be found among the uplands
as well, where insect life is abundant.</p>
<p>The song is uttered while feeding,
the bird seldom arresting his search
for food, but turning his head this way
and that scanning each leaf and stem.
It is often a less spirited song than that
of many other warblers, seeming to be a
sort of soliloquizing accompaniment to
the pressing duties of sustaining life,
but it is none the less a pleasing song.
There is a somewhat close resemblance
to some phrases of the yellow warbler's
song in the rendering of the chestnut-side,
but a little attention and a
discriminating ear will readily distinguish
the difference both in quality
and in quantity. The song is more
often heard on the college campus here
than in the woods, and there it sounds
something like this: "<i>Wee-chee wee-chee
wee-chee-e-e-e</i>," with the accent on
the first syllable of each phrase. This,
in common with other warbler songs,
cannot be well represented by a whistle,
but rather by hissing or whispering
the syllables between the closed
teeth. The pitch is too high for my
whistle. In the woods a common form
of the song is, "<i>te te te te wee chu</i>;" and
occasionally, "<i>to wee to wee to wee tee e-e-e</i>."
In the woods the song seems to
be far more spirited than in the village,
as well as being different. This difference
may be rather due to the fact that
the first migrants are those that visit
the village, while the later ones are
found in the woods. It is well known
that with many of the warblers the first
singers, or at least the first songs heard,
are often different from the later ones.</p>
<p>In the vicinity of Oberlin, Ohio, this
little warbler makes his appearance
about the fifth of May and does not
leave for the north until the last week
of May. It can not be called common
at any time, some years not being seen
at all, but may usually be found in the
shrubbery fringing woods, or in the
shade trees in the village. None have
been found during the summer months,
and it is doubtful if any remain to nest.
The winter is spent in the Bahamas and
Mexico, and from there southward.
The species ranges north to Manitoba,
Ontario, and Newfoundland, and west
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</SPAN></span>
to the plains, being a bird of eastern
North America. It breeds from New
Jersey and Illinois northward. I once
found it breeding in central Iowa.</p>
<p>The nest resembles that of the yellow
warbler, both in situation and composition.
It is usually placed in the fork
of a bush or shrub from two to eight or
nine feet from the ground, made of the
fibrous bark of the milk-weed, or some
other hempen material, grass and
sometimes leaves, lined with some sort
of plant down and long hairs. The
bark fibers are wound about the bush
twigs, securely lashing the nest into
the crotch. The four or five eggs are
of a creamy-white color, with a wreath
of reddish and dark brown spots and
dots around the larger end, the spots
becoming smaller and less numerous
both ways from this wreath. They
average about .66 × .50 of an inch.</p>
<p>In the fall they are among the first
warblers to appear, often being seen
early in August, and continuing in the
region for several weeks. At this time
of year their bright colors are wanting,
but they are the same birds for all that,
and may be readily recognized by their
trim form and animated carriage.</p>
<hr class="chap" />
</div>
<h2><SPAN name="NATURE_STUDY_HOW_A_NATURALIST_IS_TRAINED" id="NATURE_STUDY_HOW_A_NATURALIST_IS_TRAINED"></SPAN> NATURE STUDY—HOW A NATURALIST IS TRAINED.</h2>
<p class="ac">SOME VIEWS OF JOHN BURROUGHS.</p>
<div>
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_t.jpg" width-obs="58" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">THE knowledge of nature that
comes easy, that comes through
familiarity with her, as through
fishing, hunting, nutting, walking,
farming—that is the kind that
reaches and affects the character and
becomes a grown part of us. We absorb
this as we absorb the air, and it
gets into our blood. Fresh, vital knowledge
is one thing; the desiccated fact
is another. Do we know the wild
flower when we have analyzed it and
pressed it, or made a drawing of it?
Of course this is one kind of knowledge
and is suited to certain minds;
but if we cannot supplement it with the
other kind, the knowledge that comes
through the heart and the emotions,
we are poor indeed.</p>
<p>I recently had a letter from the principal
of a New England high school
putting some questions to me touching
these very matters: Do children love
nature? How shall we instil this love
into them? How and when did I myself
acquire my love for her? etc. In
reply I said: The child, in my opinion,
does not consciously love nature;
it is curious about things; about everything;
its instincts lead it forth into the
fields and woods; it browses around; it
gathers flowers; they are pretty; it
stores up impressions. Boys go forth
into nature more as savages; they are
predaceous, seeking whom they may
devour; they gather roots, nuts, wild
fruit, berries, eggs, etc. At least this
was my case. I hunted, I fished, I
browsed, I wandered with a vague longing
in the woods, I trapped, I went
cooning at night, I made ponds in the
little streams, I boiled sap in the maple-woods
in spring, I went to sleep under
the trees in summer, I caught birds on
their nests, I watched for the little
frogs in the marshes, etc. One keen
pleasure which I remember was to take
off my shoes and stockings when the
roads got dry in late April or early May,
and run up and down the road until I
was tired, usually in the warm twilight.
I was not conscious of any love for nature,
as such, till my mind was brought
in contact with literature. Then I discovered
that I, too, loved nature, and
had a whole world of impressions stored
up in my subconscious self upon which
to draw. I found I knew about the birds,
the animals, the seasons, the trees, the
flowers, and that these things have become
almost a grown part of me. I
have been drawing upon the reservoir
of youthful impressions ever since.</p>
<p>If nature is to be a resource in a
man's life, one's relation to her must
not be too exact and formal, but more
that of a lover and friend. I should
not try directly to teach young people
to love nature so much as I should aim
to bring nature and them together, and
let an understanding and intimacy
spring up between them.—<i>The Outlook.</i></p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</SPAN></span></p>
</div>
<h2><SPAN name="JOHNS_HAWK" id="JOHNS_HAWK"></SPAN>JOHN'S HAWK.</h2>
<p class="ac">EMMA YARNALL ROSS.</p>
<div>
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_j.jpg" width-obs="48" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">JOHN came home one evening
from a ramble in the country
with a peach-box under his arm.
He set the box very carefully on
the back porch and then sat down himself
on the top of the box.</p>
<p>His mother was watering some geraniums
in a bed near by and paused in
her work to look at the lad.</p>
<p>"Where did you get those peaches,
John?" she asked, coming toward him
with a pleasant smile.</p>
<p>John gave a low laugh. "This is a
peach <i>box</i>, mother," he said, "but if
what is in it is a <i>peach</i>, it belongs to a
new variety, I think. Look at him, he
is a beauty!"</p>
<p>"John Bonham, I hope you have not
brought another pet to this house!
Where in the world are we to stow
away all these creatures on one little
town lot? There is your groundhog,
your owl, the crow, the coot, the tub of
fish, the big dog, the little dog, and
three Christopher Columbus cats."</p>
<p>"Now, mother, please stop; poor
Chuck stays most of the time in his
hole under the corner of the house, and
the owl keeps the mice out of the cellar,
and Jim Crow has not stolen anything
for a month except that half dollar
and your piece of lace and sister's
red ribbon. You said I might have the
wash boiler to make a swimming-pool
for the coot, and I am going to feed
the fish to him, so they will soon be
gone and you can have your tub again.
I heard you tell Mrs. Bland that our dogs
guarded the whole neighborhood from
burglars, and my Christopher Columbus
cats are cute enough for anyone to
be glad to have them. Mrs. Goodall
says she 'wants one of them real bad.'
You see, mother," said John, persuasively,
"this fellow was such a beauty
I just had to bring him home. Jake
Timmons shot him through the wing
as he was carrying off a dove; he was
going to wring the hawk's head off, but
I told him I would give him ten cents
for it, for I wanted to try an experiment
with the bird. I know I can tame
him and make a pet of him; see, he
can move around even if his wing is
broken."</p>
<p>John's mother looked through the
bars of the peach crate and saw a full-grown
hawk with a beautiful brown
head, eyes with blood-red rims, a
strong, hooked beak, and long talons
which he struck angrily into the stick
John thrust at him through the bars.</p>
<p>"I never saw a more fierce, cruel-looking
bird," she said. "See him tear at
that stick! He will be tearing you
next."</p>
<p>"I shall give him no chance to tear
me, mother, for I intend to tame him."</p>
<p>"You might as well try to tame a
tiger."</p>
<p>"Well, I am going to try taming
him," said John, in a low, determined tone.
When his mother heard him speak in
that way she knew his mind was made
up to succeed, and he had never yet
failed in taming any of his pets.</p>
<p>John put the hawk in his dog-house,
the front of which was formed of strong
iron bars, and the next day his mother
saw him sitting before this improvised
bird-cage, going through some fantastic
motions with his hands and gently
chirping to the bird. No accident happened
to the young naturalist in his
care of the hawk, and gradually his
mother ceased to think of it.</p>
<p>One afternoon, about three weeks
after this, the family were seated on
the piazza when they were startled at
seeing John come around the corner of
the house bearing the hawk on his
wrist. Over the bird's head was drawn
a gay-colored hood adorned with tiny
bells and tassels—John had read how
hawks were dressed in medieval times,
and had made the hood himself. A
long string was tied to one of the
hawk's legs, and, setting the bird down
gently, the boy tied the string to a
small tree. All were watching him to
see what he would do next, and all kept
silence as he lifted a warning hand and
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</SPAN></span>
uttered a low "H-u-s-h!" He then removed
the hood from the bird's head,
when it immediately began tearing at
the string, snapping viciously at objects
near it, and running to and fro in an
excited and angry manner.</p>
<p>John seated himself on the ground
before the bird and began clucking to
it softly, with the index finger of his
right hand extended and pointing
straight at the bird's eyes; then he turned
quietly in whichever direction the bird
moved, slowly waving his hand round
and round in a circle and never taking
his eyes off the bird's eyes.</p>
<p>Gradually the hawk ceased to run
about, then stood still gazing steadily,
as though fascinated, at John's finger.
It would shut its eyes slowly, then
open them suddenly, only to shut them
again more slowly than before. At
first the bird stood perfectly erect;
then its head began gradually falling
over on its shoulder, and, without any
warning, it tumbled backwards, its eyes
shut, its legs sticking straight up in
the air, its body perfectly rigid. John
continued for a time to wave his hand
in a circle with the index finger extended;
then he walked over to the
porch leaving the hawk on the ground,
where he lay for nearly thirty minutes,
when he gradually returned to consciousness.</p>
<p>A number of persons walking by
had stopped in the street to look at
John and the bird, and now exclamations
of surprise were heard as they
saw the actions of the hawk.</p>
<p>"What did you do to that bird?"
asked a gentleman of John; "I never
in my life witnessed so strange a performance."</p>
<p>"I call that hypnotism," said the lad.
"I have been working with him every
day since I brought him home, and for
a week I have never failed to bring
him under my influence and put him to
sleep in this way. If I go to the cage
to feed him, he flies at me in a great
rage at first, but if I pass my finger in a
circle before him several times he becomes
quiet, and will take a mouse
from my hand without biting or tearing
me with his talons. Sometimes I
partly hypnotize him and lay the
mouse at his feet, and although he
may be very hungry he will not touch
the food until I let him out from under
the influence of my finger. When he is
over being hypnotized he is as fierce
as he was when I brought him home,
and I do not believe he can ever be
made tame like other birds. Perhaps
if I had captured him when he was
young, with the down still on him, I
could have tamed him, but now he is
too old and fierce."</p>
<p>"Well, my lad," said one of the men,
laughing, "if he is not tamed you have
him pretty well under your thumb and
finger at least."</p>
<p>John's wonderful hypnotic influence
over the hawk was soon known throughout
the town and crowds of people
often gathered to see him go through
this truly wonderful feat of hypnotizing
the fierce hawk.</p>
<p>The hawk belongs to the family of
the <i>Falconidæ</i>, which is so called from
the Latin word <i>falcis</i>, meaning a scythe,
the talons of the <i>Falconidæ</i> being
curved in the form of a scythe, thus
giving the name to the species.</p>
<p>The wings of the hawk are so short
they do not extend to the tip of the
tail, for which reason it is called an
ignoble bird of prey, to distinguish it
from the true falcon, the wings of
which extend to the tip of the tail and
which is called a noble bird of prey.
The hawk's bill is short, curved from
the base, often terminating in a sharp
point called a tooth. They have rather
short, exceedingly strong legs and
long incurved talons with which they
tear their prey.</p>
<p>The species are numerous and widely
distributed over the world; the goshawk
and the sparrowhawk are the
best known and most important. The
hawk is a diurnal bird of prey, which
means that it hunts in the day time.
It flies with exceeding swiftness,
having been known to travel a distance
of 1,350 miles in twenty-four hours.</p>
<p>The hawk has very acute vision;
hence the expression, "Keen-eyed as a
hawk." It soars to a great height,
always endeavoring to get above the
bird it is pursuing in order to swoop
down upon it from above. It soars
in a series of arcs and against the wind,
which helps it to rise as it does a kite.
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</SPAN></span>
The hawk does not attack its prey
with its beak, as is generally supposed,
but with its talons. After securing its
prey by swooping on it and fastening
its claws in its victim it gently descends
to the ground.</p>
<p>The young hawk yet in the nest is
called an eyas, one that can hop is a
brancher, and a young hawk able to
catch game is called a soar hawk.
Young hawks taken in flying are called
passage hawks, and the training of
these is called reclaiming.</p>
<p>Hawking was for many years a sport
followed by kings and the nobility in
Europe. It is of very ancient origin, having
been followed in Asia and Europe
before the time of the Christian era.</p>
<p>The hawk builds its nest in the
forks of a tree or on some inaccessible
cliff. The female is larger than the
male and lays two or three eggs.</p>
<hr class="chap" /></div>
<h2><SPAN name="CURIOUS_TREES" id="CURIOUS_TREES"></SPAN>CURIOUS TREES.</h2>
<p>1. In Malabar, a tree called "the tallow
tree" grows; from the seeds of it,
when boiled, is procured a firm tallow
which makes excellent candles.</p>
<p>2. The "butter tree" was discovered
by Park in the central part of Africa;
from its kernel is produced a nice butter
which will keep a year.</p>
<p>3. The <i>palo de vaca</i>, or "cow tree,"
grows on rocks in Venezuela, South
America. It has dry and leathery
leaves, and from incisions made in its
trunk a kind of milk oozes out, which
is tolerably thick and of an agreeable
balmy smell. At sunrise, the natives
may be seen hastening from all quarters
furnished with large bowls to receive
the milk.</p>
<p>4. A tree of Madagascar, called the
"traveler's tree," yields a copious supply
of fresh water from its leaves, very
grateful to the traveler. It grows in
the most arid countries, and is another
proof of the tender care of our Heavenly
Father in supplying all His creatures'
wants. Even in the driest
weather a quart of water can be obtained
by piercing a hole at the bottom
of the leaf stalk, and the liquid is pure
and pleasant to the taste. The leaves
are of enormous size, varying from ten
to fifteen feet in length.</p>
<p>5. The date tree is a species of palm,
and almost every part of it is valuable.
Its fruit is delicious and it is also esteemed
for the palm wine drawn from
its trunk. Its leaves are made into
hats, baskets, fans, and many other
articles, and the fibres of the leaf stems
are made into cord and twine. A department
store might almost be furnished
from this tree.</p>
<p>6. The "sorrowful tree" is found on
the island of Goa, near Bombay. It is
so called because it flourishes in the
night. At sunset no flowers are to be
seen, but soon after it is covered with
them. They close up or drop off as the
sun rises. It has a fragrant odor, and
blossoms at night the year round.</p>
<p>7. There is a tree in Jamaica called
the "life tree," whose leaves grow even
when severed from the plant. It is impossible
to kill it save by fire.—<i>Normal
Instructor.</i></p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</SPAN></span></p>
<table class="sp2 mc w50" title="Black-Throated Blue Warbler.">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="3"><span class="ac w100 figcenter">
<SPAN name="i_101.jpg" id="i_101.jpg"> <ANTIMG style="width:100%"
src="images/i_101.jpg" width="444" height="600" alt="" /></SPAN></span>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="xx-smaller ac w30">FROM COL. F. M. WOODRUFF.<br/>6-99</td>
<td class="x-smaller ac w40">BLACK-THROATED BLUE WARBLER.<br/>
Life-size.</td>
<td class="xx-smaller ac w30">COPYRIGHT 1899,<br/>
NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.<br/>
CHICAGO COLORTYPE CO., CHIC & NEW YORK</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table></div>
<h2><SPAN name="THE_BLACK-THROATED_BLUE_WARBLER" id="THE_BLACK-THROATED_BLUE_WARBLER"></SPAN> THE BLACK-THROATED BLUE WARBLER.<br/> <span class="xx-smaller"><span style="font-weight:lighter;"> (<i>Dendroica cærulescens.</i>)</span></span></h2>
<p class="ac">LYNDS JONES.</p>
<div>
<ANTIMG class="drop-cap" src="images/initial_t.jpg" width-obs="58" height-obs="70" alt="" /></div>
<p class="drop-cap">THE bird-lover has many red-letter
days in his calendar, particularly
when the birds are moving
northward. The earliest arrivals,
while snow still covers the ground,
give their own peculiar thrill of delight,
and waken in him new energy and
great anticipations for the coming season
of bird study. But these early
arrivals soon become a part of the
landscape and cease to lend any peculiar
delight. Not so with the host of
warblers, for they are here one day and
may be up and away the next, not to be
seen again for two or three months or
even a year. One must be on the alert
during warbler time if he expects to
catch a glimpse of the passing host.
But there are distinctively "warbler
days" during this warbler time. These
vary in different years with the weather
and the advance of vegetation, from
late April to the second or even
third week of May, in northern Ohio
and central Iowa, and proportionately
later or earlier north or south of that
latitude.</p>
<p>The subject of our sketch is not
among the early migrating warblers nor
yet among the later ones. He usually
travels with the second large flight, and
may then be expected late in April or
early in May. The earliest Oberlin,
Ohio, record falls on April 27, 1896,
and the latest on May 10, 1897.
Whether the birds arrive early or late
they usually remain in the vicinity two
weeks, the males being present during
the first week and the females during
the second. I have never found the
two sexes present on the same date.
The species cannot be said to be common
even during the height of the
spring migration, nor yet are they rare.
Few are seen during the fall migration
at Oberlin, and they during the last
week of September and the first week
of October. Further west in the Mississippi
valley the fall migrants seem
greatly to outnumber those of spring.</p>
<p>This is not a tree-top inhabiting species,
but seems to prefer the middle
branches of the trees or the tops of
shrubbery, often descending to the
ground and gleaning there much after
the fashion of the Maryland Yellow-throat.
In the higher woods free from
underbrush he seems to prefer ground
gleaning, but where low underbrush
affords a place for low gleaning he is
seldom seen on the ground. In village
parks he is fond of a much higher
perch, and must be looked for there
well up in the trees, even to the topmost
branches, where he gleans among
the bursting buds and new leaves. On
the Oberlin College campus he is a regular
spring visitor in early May, and
here seems to appreciate his environment
and rare opportunities, for he
sings his best to the accompaniment of
the medley of pianos in the Conservatory
of Music across the way, and the
deeper tones of the great pipe organ in
the chapel hard by. Here I have heard
him singing at all hours of the day,
while in the woods his song is less often
given. One is at a loss to assign a reason
for the decided preference for the
college campus, which is in the center
of the village activities. Rumbling
wagons and tramping feet cause the
birds not the slightest alarm, but swiftly
moving bicycles act upon the birds'
nervous system much as upon that of
an elderly woman.</p>
<p>The song of this warbler is variously
rendered by the various writers upon
bird songs. None of these renderings
seems to describe the song as I hear it
on the college campus. It is singing
as I write: "<i>Tu euu euu e-e-e-e-e!</i>" A
variation sounds, "<i>C'weu, c'weu, c'wee-e-e-e</i>;"
sometimes "<i>c'weu, c'weu, c'w',
c'w', c'wee-ee-e-e-e</i>." There is also often
a single phrase which sounds more like
a scolding note than a song. It is:
"<i>Tw', tw', tw', tw', twee'e-e-e-e-e</i>," or
even "<i>Z-z-e-e-e-e</i>," rarely it may
sound simply "<i>Z-z-z-z-z-z</i>." The song
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</SPAN></span>
is uttered in a spirited manner while
the bird is feeding and flitting about in
the foliage, it interfering with the
feeding only as a sort of after-thought,
causing a momentary pause as the bird
raises his head and straightens his body
for the effort. It is one of the warbler
songs that are easily recognized and not
readily forgotten.</p>
<p>Were it not for the white spot or
patch on the wing of both male and
female at all seasons of the year and in
all plumages, this warbler would easily
escape the notice of all but the alert
ornithologist. His black throat and
breast, white belly and blue back and
wings and tail are not conspicuous in
the trees and foliage.</p>
<p>The black-throated blue warbler
spends the winter months in Guatemala
and the West Indies, and migrates north
to Labrador and Hudson's Bay, nesting
there and in the northern parts of the
United States. It ranges west to the
border of the plains.</p>
<p>The nest is placed in low shrubs or
bushes from a few inches to two feet
above the ground, and is composed of
dry fibrous bark, twigs, and roots, lined
with black rootlets and hair. The outside
is often more or less covered with
cocoons. The thick swampy woods
with an undergrowth seems to be the
favorite resort for the nesting birds.
The four eggs are buffy-white to greenish-white,
rather heavily blotched with
varying shades of brown. They average
about .69 × .50 of an inch.</p>
<hr class="chap" /></div>
<h2><SPAN name="THE_EMPERORS_BIRDS_NEST" id="THE_EMPERORS_BIRDS_NEST"></SPAN> THE EMPEROR'S BIRD'S NEST.</h2>
<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Once the Emperor Charles of Spain,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">With his swarthy, grave commanders—</div>
<div class="verse">I forget in what campaign—</div>
<div class="verse">Long besieged, in mud and rain,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Some old frontier town of Flanders.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Up and down the dreary camp,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">In great boots of Spanish leather,</div>
<div class="verse">Striding with a measured tramp,</div>
<div class="verse">These Hidalgos, dull and damp,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Cursed the Frenchmen, cursed the weather.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Thus, as to and fro they went,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Over upland and through hollow,</div>
<div class="verse">Giving their impatience vent,</div>
<div class="verse">Perched upon the Emperor's tent,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">In her nest, they spied a swallow.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Yes, it was a swallow's nest,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Built of clay and hair of horses,</div>
<div class="verse">Mane or tail, or dragoon's crest,</div>
<div class="verse">Found on hedge-rows east and west,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">After skirmish of the forces.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Then an old Hidalgo said,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">As he twirled his gray mustachio,</div>
<div class="verse">"Sure this swallow overhead</div>
<div class="verse">Thinks the Emperor's tent a shed,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">And the Emperor but a <i>macho</i>!"</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Hearing his imperial name</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Coupled with those words of malice,</div>
<div class="verse">Half in anger, half in shame,</div>
<div class="verse">Forth the great campaigner came</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Slowly from his canvas palace.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">"Let no hand the bird molest,"</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Said he solemnly, "nor hurt her!"</div>
<div class="verse">Adding then, by way of jest,</div>
<div class="verse">"Golondrina is my guest,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">'Tis the wife of some deserter!"</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Swift as bowstring speeds a shaft,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Through the camp was spread the rumor,</div>
<div class="verse">And the soldiers as they quaffed</div>
<div class="verse">Flemish beer at dinner, laughed</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">At the Emperor's pleasant humor.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">So unharmed and unafraid,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Sat the swallow still and brooded,</div>
<div class="verse">Till the constant cannonade</div>
<div class="verse">Through the walls a breach had made</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">And the siege was thus concluded.</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">Then the army, elsewhere bent,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Struck its tents as if disbanding,</div>
<div class="verse">Only not the Emperor's tent,</div>
<div class="verse">For he ordered, ere he went,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Very curtly, "Leave it standing!"</div>
</div>
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse">So it stood there all alone,</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Loosely flapping, torn and tattered,</div>
<div class="verse">Till the brood was fledged and flown,</div>
<div class="verse">Singing o'er those walls of stone</div>
<div class="verse indent-2">Which the cannon-shot had shattered.</div>
<div class="verse ar">—<i>Longfellow.</i></div>
</div></div>
</div>
<hr class="chap" /></div>
<div class="transnote">
<h3>Transcriber's Note:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.</li>
<li>Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant form was
found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.</li>
<li>Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.</li>
<li>Mid-paragraph illustrations have been moved between paragraphs
and some illustrations have been moved closer to the text that
references them.</li>
<li>The Contents table was added by the transcriber.</li>
</ul></div>
<SPAN name="endofbook"></SPAN>
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