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-Many a perfume breathed
From plants that wake when
others sleep: .

From timid buds that keep Ss<-
Their odour to themselves *

But when the sunlight diés

Let the delicious secret otit
oevery breeze that roams

all d ay

aw ay,

about ”’

EVENING PRIMROSES,

      
TROLLS BY STARLIGHT
AND SUNSHINE * #

BY
W. HAMILTON GIBSON

AUTHOR OF ‘‘PASTORAL DAYS” ‘‘ HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS” ETC.

Mlustrated by the Author

“ The truth of Nature is a part of the truth of God; to him
who does not search it out, darkness ; to him who does, infinity”

 

NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE

1891
Copyright, 1890, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

 

Ad rights reserved.
a. A. G.

“A HEALTHY MAN IS THE COMPLEMENT OF THE
SEASONS, AND IN WINTER SUMMER IS IN HIS HEART.
THERE IS THE SOUTH. THITHER HAVE ALL BIRDS AND
INSECTS MIGRATED, AND AROUND THE WARM SPRINGS
IN HIS BREAST ARE GATHERED THE ROBIN AND THE
LARK.”

*
 

A MIDNIGHT RAMBLE
NIGHT WITCHERY .
BIRD NOTES

BIRD CRADLES
PREHISTORIC BOTANISTS
THE WILD GARDEN

INDEX .

PAGE

45
61
gl
119
ee
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact.
It will one day flower in a truth.”
 

EVENING PRIMROSES

SLEEPING DalsIES .

SLEEPY-HEADS AND NIGHT-CapPs. tS as GS ees Bee
IN THE LAND OF Nop (Desmodium and Partridge-pea)
Awake: Locust (Locust, Melilot, Lupine, and Oxalis).
ASLEEP: Locust (Locust, Melilot, Lupine, and Oxalis).
NaSTURTIUMS AT NIGHT .

SLEEPING PopPlES . . .

Drowsy Frinces (Asters and Fringed Gentian) .
TWILIGHT HONEYSUCKLES . . . . . .

THe Motn’s Kiss .

FLOATING PONDWEED. . . . . . |

THE PENITENT ‘‘ IMPATIENS”’. i tee

TAIL-PIECE . . . .

NIGHT WITCHERY .

THE FRAGRANT Mist .

A Misty MOoNLIGHT .

PooR, MALIGNED, FEATHERED GRIMALKIN !

TAIL-PIECE

PAGE
Frontispiece
13
14
t5
18
19
21
24
20
30
31
35
40
42
45
48
51
53
57
8 ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE
‘‘BiRDS IN THE BUSH”. . . . ee es Lo 61
HAUNT OF THE PHBE. . 2, ele uss CRE ~tbe OE a Me Be EEG BL OS
A TREE-TOP SINGER. . . - . =. eee wt ee Se ah 67
THe BROWN THRASHER . . oI N40 SL 93° ae. ce a OD tp ae ee WYO
THE BoBoLinkK aT HOME ea cha do, ie wee oe BBA RS at ah eh eS ae a 27S
WIDE-AWAKE Day-DOZERS. . . . - 7s WL ae A ee oe: 380
THE ARTFUL ‘‘DRUMMER”. 2. 0. eee By od HE 84
"TAILSBIEGESc. se. Ge Ge. Bp a A a a : ‘ 87
THe HANc-BirD’s NesT. . . oe ge alee a ig lag. el et ae. COI
THE ‘‘POLITICIAN” . . . ee ee It IL), wees aha atu ee SOB
IN THE TRAIL OF THE COON. . . . a oo 96
VIsITORS TO THE CATERPILLAR TENT . ee Me acts, YE . 98
“No Rose WITHOUT a THORN” . . . Ai Ge Be B 4 2 100
A SNAKE-SKIN SPECIALIST . . be dy The he de SE SB a tet ep
THe RepsTart’s Nest. . . . : ig ay leh tg 104
THE DANDELION THIEF. . . . Se bs LER NGL Se is » 4 105
FERN-WOOL GLEANERS . . - . ) ee eee : 107
HaunT AND HoME OF THE REDWING . . Se ar 110
To FEATHER THE NEST . . . . . . . Ha (a BB
ALLEN’S HUMMING-BIRD AT Home (Tail-piece) . . . . . 2 = « 116
Turee Insect Botanists (Comma, Semicolon, and White J. Butterflies) 119
GLACIAL BOTANISTS . . B.S Bus cht. otis os i of dla ols 28 125
THe BUTTERFLY OF THE UMBEL FAMILY . . . . . . 1... 129
AN ExpERT ON THE MusSTARD FAMILY Be they ot et De, Sat, BI32
A BoTANisT THAT KNOWS BEANS 4 © citeeiin ath: ua ths BY
DISCRIMINATING ‘‘SKIPPERS” . : Ry ck, eee RS tae Sie ot ah e136
A Random Posy . . . . . eee TAI
THe BUTTERFLY OF THE FIGWORTS a ee ee yo AS 145
PasT AND Present (Tail-piece) . . 2... Be 03 : Loe. 149
A WitpD GaRDEN . . . . . ‘ ‘ ee
White CyprRIPEDIUM . . . eee 55

A Group oF Orcuips (Spiranthes, Calopogon, Goodyera, and Pogonia) 157
INDIAN-PIPES . a a fe Se. ‘ . 160
THE HAREBELL eos ‘ a 2 br Ac od 161
THE FALSE FOXGLOVE
THE SNEEZE-WEED

A CLump oF Lupines

A FRAGRANT GRouP
FIRE-LIEIES .

WHITE FRINGED GENTIAN

SOLOMON’S-SEAL (Tail-piece) .

-

ILLUSTRATIONS.

  
 

PAGE

Bi Obst gt ta fet, 1TOD

oo ae ee LT

i ele a om. 199
186
“T shall be a benefactor if I conquer some reals from the night ;
if I report to the gazettes anything transpiring about us at that season
worthy of their attention; if I can show men that there is some beauty
awake while they are asleep; tf I add to the domains of poetry.”
 
““To-night I bunt ye darklynge wode,
Fine sporte mine schall bee,
Where deere and fox do brush ye dew

And glow thir eres to me.
* * * *

““Mine be ye howlets eies to-night,
Ye satlynge moone my sonne,
Ye glo-bugge for my lanterne brite,
And humanitie my gunue.”
  
  

  
 
 

; A SR Cee oe

dowhan-that:tisEue] rvnne blithe

eS RrOear- Sur Senne sinhih WHA ie

» Tere? thin Felawer: how: heavill 6e-1o-ret

Nf Feor-feare-f Nignt<S Shatethhedarlinyzee
BH -Her- cheer’. iv-plainlie.preadity \pytenter

PPS ne = for thir twill

ie Sy

Geof Chaueer

  
  

  

 
 
     
 
 
  
   
 
 
 

HAUCER knew the daisy as no bot-
anist had ever known it before him.
The flower is immortalized in his tender verse.

“ And ever I love it and ever like new
And ever I schall till that mine hart die,”

he exclaims, with the simple joyousness of a child with its daisy
chain, and herein has he set a worthy text for all the botanists
and nature students present and to come, if they would gather
the higher harvest of their calling.
14 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

What is the aftermath which the poet gleans in,
his neighbor’s field?

  
   
   
 
  
   
    
   
  
 
 

“A second crop thy acres yield,
Which I gather in a song,”

sings Emerson. That is a poor and lifeless botany
that is not written full with songs.

Chaucer’s daisy was his favored companion; his
devotion was unremitting. He met its opening
fringes at the dawn; he lingered by it as it closed

its eye at twilight. Sleeping or waking, noon or
midnight, he could give an account of his protégée for
every hour. How few of the proud followers, of Lin-
nzus know how their erudition is mocked in

the meadow masquerade, or what their
hard-named minions are up to in
the dark hours!

My first midnight walk was a
revelation, and a severe shock to
my comfortable self-conceit. The
woods and meadows had been full of
faces that I had known and welcomed famil-
iarly for years in my daily walks. But when
I sallied forth with my lantern that night, I
stepped from my threshold upon foreign
sod. I found no greeting nor open
palms, and I lost my way as though in
a strange land. Indeed “is not the mid-

night like Central Africa to most of us?”

As I stood in perplexity scanning my sur-
roundings in the meadow a strange form closely
hooded beneath its folded leaves seemed to mur-
mur at my elbow, and I listened.

“Say not that you know a single one of us,” it
said, in a roguish clover-scented whisper. “It is not

)
A MIDNIGHT RAMBLE.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  

enough, Zomo sapiens, to note our form, our
anatomy, the color of our raiment, or hang a
Latin tag about our necks, or to check us
off upon your proud list and lay us on the
shelf in the musty Zortus scccus of your self-
complacency. No; leave us to our pleasant
dreams, omnivorous mammal, get thee to the
hay-mow; there is thy garden, there thou wilt
find thy sympathetic friends and thy greet-
ing.” Such was the burden of the silent
slumberous murmur floating all about me in
the tangle of fragrant dreams dispelled in my
onward tread. But the eager pupil of my
inward eye was even now converted, and 4 .
having wet my knees in the dews in (
fitting propitiation of humility, I was
welcomed again, and opened a fresh
humble page in my botany. And
there was much to chronicle. In what-
ever direction I might look over the
broad meadow I found the same
strange complexion everywhere to the
limits of my vision, and what “a pleas-
ing land of drowsy-head it was!”

x»

“We are a’ noddin’, nid-nid-noddin’,

seemed the universal lullaby. What a
convocation of nightcaps and sleepy-
heads!

The clovers are indeed a drowsy
family; they keep regular hours, and
make a thorough business of their slum-
ber — red clovers with ‘their heads tucked
under their wings, as it were, the young
blossom clusters completely hooded beneath
the overlapping upper pair of leaves, and
16 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

every individual leaf below bowed with folded palms. The white
clovers were similarly well brought up, and continued their ves-
pers through the livelong night, their little praying bands to be
seen everywhere along the path. The yellow hop clover played
all sorts of antics with its leaves without seeming rhyme or
reason. The tall bush clover, rising here and there among the
slumberous beds, presented a complete surprise, being entirely
changed from its diurnal aspect, the ordinary generous leafy
spread of foliage now assuming the shape of an upright wand,
each three-foliate leaf being raised upon its stem, with the leaf-
lets folded inward, clasping the maternal stalk. It had its arms
full indeed, and seemed conscious of its heavy responsibility. The
trailing ground-nut vine and the delicate wild bean were hardly
recognizable in their odd night-dress; and the desmodiums at
the border of the woods presented a singular contrast of drooping
listlessness, with each leaflet hanging as vertically as a plummet.
I sought the familiar plumy beds of the little partridge-pea, won-
dering what sort of a reception I would meet from that quarter,
but I found these plants even more fast asleep and transformed
than their drowsy neighbors, and had trodden on a number of the
plants ere I discerned them, for, like the sensitive mimosa, which
they so much resemble, and which

“opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
And closed them beneath the kisses of night,”

these tiny leaflets were now folded in a long flat ribbon for each
leaf, presenting thin edges to the sky, and hardly distinguishable
from the thin seed-pods among them. Nor were these all. Folded
leaves and strange sleeping forms were nodding about me on
every hand as I walked this dreamy realm —acres of “billowy
| drowse”” nursed in the cradle of a zephyr. What sort of a “ wide-
awake” poet was that, I mused, who lamented from his troubled
pillow:
“A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by

One after one; the sound of rain, and bees
Murmuring; the fall of rivers, winds, and seas;
A MIDNIGHT RAMBLE. 17

Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky:
I’ve thought of all by turns, and still I lie
Sleepless.”

There is a belief as old as tradition that Nature in her mercy
sends the bane and the antidote side by side, and a ready remedy
for every ill. The bruised dock assuages the nettle’s sting. “In
dock, out nettle!” exclaims the whimpering British lad, suiting
the action to the word. Thoreau, when he sprained his ankle on
Mount Washington, looked about him, and for the first time dis-
covered the Arvzzca at his elbow. How fortunate had it been
with our wakeful poet had he but realized his resources, for the
most confirmed victim of insomnia could hardly have repressed
a yawn at the sight of this land of nod beneath his window.

The nature of the nocturnal movements and attitudes of plants,
both in leaves and flowers, has long been a theme of speculation
among botanists. In the case of many flowers the night atti-
tudes have been conclusively shown to have relation solely to
their fertilization by insects.

The drooping attitude of leaves at night was commonly sup-
posed to indicate an aversion to moisture, many plants assuming
the same position during rain as in the dew, thus seeming to
verify the conjecture; but when the same pranks were played in
a cloudy day or a dewless night, the explanation had to be aban-
doned. In the clover tribe the nocturnal positions already de-
scribed seem to be assumed only in the darkness, and this invari-
ably, dew or no dew, while the leaves seem to revel in the rain,
remaining freely open.

I doubt not that if our eyes were sharp enough they might
discern a certain strangeness in the nocturnal expression of every
plant and tree, such as is remarkably emphasized in the locust,
which is here pictured, and which, by-the-way, is a member of |
that same leguminous order of plants with the clovers, especially
noted for the pronounced irritability of the leaves and odd noc-
turnal capers, and whose seeming vital consciousness has caused
some botanists to class them at the extremity of their system,

3
18 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

in contact with the limits of the animal
kingdom.

A midnight visit to one’s garden,
even by the most venerable devotee of
his “own ground,” will perchance reveal
the fact that he “doesn’t know beans” af-
ter all.

The perennial familiar blooming borders of
those “old-fashioned flowers,” as well as
the more prosaic domain of our gar-
dener’s immediate concern, whose paths
lead to the kitchen, wear a strange look
at night, and seem peopled with foreign
shapes. His “ Limas” and scarlet -run-
ners now excite his wonder, if not solici-
tude, with their apparent drooping
foliage, all the three leaflets nodding
as if broken at their juncture with
the stem, the two side leaflets in
many instances touching their
backs beneath the stem.
But he will find them
firm and self-willed in
their attitude.

His pea blossoms
have taken in sail, and
nod on their keels.
4 the leaves of his
young cabbage-plant,
usually more or less
& spreading, now stand
e quite erect, guarding that
ke/ promising young head with-
ut A in, for this plebeian cabbage-

\ Wie 's head knows a trick or two
above its garden associates, and

 
  
 
  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
   
A MIDNIGHT RAMBLE. 19

can get a blessing from the ambrosial ether in 4
a bright glistening sheen and a border of dew- \
drops, even on a cloudy night, when all his
neighbors are athirst.

The tobacco-field over the wall looks be-
witched and all on end, the plants simulating the
conical shape they soon shall bear in the drying-
house. The flowers on the potato-plants, saucer-
shaped by day, are now perchance nodding with
their open rim puckered in gathers around the
central stamens—a common caprice of these
flowers, but dependent upon some whim which
I have not yet solved.

Turning to his “posies,” our
floriculturist may pick an exotic
bouquet from his own familiar
borders. His starry “ blue-bot-
tles” have raised their horns,
and assumed the shape of a ¢”
shuttlecock. His balsams wear
a hang-dog look, with every
leaf sharply declined. Certain
of his coreopsis blossoms are
turned vertically by a sharp
bend at the summit of the stem.
Many of his favorites, like the
Eschscholtzia blossoms, have
closed their eyes or perhaps hung
their heads, and refuse to look
him in the face, while his climbing
nasturtiums, especially if they should be
of the dwarf variety (zzus), await his
coming in hushed expectancy, and their wall
of sheeny shields flashes a “boo” at him out
of the darkness, which immediately reveals the
changed position of their foliage. Every individual

  
 
 
  
 
  
  
  
  
   
 
   
20 STARLIGHT AND SUNSAINE.

shield is now seen to stand perpendicularly, the stem being bent
in a sharp curve. In the midst of his surprise the flowers one
by one now seem to steal into view, peering out here and there
behind the leaves, and he will discern a grimace there that he
never noted before. That bright bouquet upon his mantel will
henceforth wear a new expression for him and a fresh identity.
He will find himself exchanging winks thitherward now and then,
and hover about the room among his friends in the proud con-
sciousness of a certain preferment not vouchsafed to common
mortals. *

The effect of such a bank of nasturtium leaves as the writer
recently observed is irresistibly queer. So instinct with mischiev-
ous consciousness did it seem that he found himself entering into
conversation at once, and laughed outright in the darkness. It
has been supposed that this vertical position of the leaf was as-
sumed to avoid the collection of dew, but this is obviously an
error. There is no disposition in the nasturtium to avoid moist-
ure, as would be apparent to any one who has watched the leaves
during rain, catching and coddling the great dancing drop at its
hollowed centre, and loath to let it fall.

Our midnight gardener has still further surprises in store for
him among his plantations. Following the alluring fragrance of
his melilot, he turns the rays of his lantern among its branches,
and finds them full of nocturnal capers. The single leaflet of
the melilot is threefold, like a clover, to which it is closely akin.
At night these three leaflets twist edge uppermost on their stems,
with the faces of the outer pair turned inward, while the end
leaflet folds its face flat to one side or the other, to the cheek of
its chosen chum for the night. And there they are, a dozy com-
pany in truth, yet not without a subtle suggestion that it may all
be a subterfuge for the moment to cover some mischief or other.

And here is another interesting specimen close by, a member
of that same somniferous tribe—the blue lupine—the “sad lu-
pine” of Virgil (dres¢zs lupcwus). Just why Virgil should have
attributed sadness to the lupine I believe has not been satisfac-
torily decided, although many learned pens and much printer's
A MIDNIGHT RAMBLE. 21

       
  
 

ink have been devoted towards a
solution of the problem, one authority
finding a last resource in his exasper-
ation in the belief that the antique
poet “stood in need for the metre of
his verse of two long syllables which the
word ¢rzstzs supplied him with.”

The plant is certainly bright and cheery
enough by day, and whatever its changed
aspect by night, it is certainly not one of
sadness. The blue flower-spikes rise up {
precisely as at mid-day, but the foliage ©) 94
presents a striking contrast, every wheel- — yasrurrrums,
shaped leaf now drooping like a closed
parasol against the stem. The various lupines are full of indi-
vidual whims in their choice of sleeping postures, some species
raising their leaflets in the form of a beaker, and others following
22 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

the bent of the nasturtium already described. Every corner of
our garden offers some similar revelation, and even the plebeian
weeds have caught the odd contagion, and “do as the Ro-
mans do,”

The formidable mats of pusley which our gardener had sin-
gled out for extermination on the morrow—with anticipation,
perhaps, of a “mess o’ greens” —are now supplanted by an un-
recognizable net-work of knotty stems, the artful leaves concealed
flat against the prostrate red stalks, and with edges upward.

Tall strange columns loom up, white and ghostly, beneath the
glare of your lantern, here and there among the potato- plants.
They prove to be pigweeds, but for strangeness they might have
sprung up like mushrooms since your last visit, most of the upper
leaves, which during the day had extended wide on their long
stems, now inclining upward against the stalk, and enclosing the
tops of younger branches. Still other older plants are seen with
leaves extended much as at mid-day, but nearly all turned edge-
wise by a twist in the stem.

The chickweed’s eye is closed, and

‘Closed is the pink-eyed pimpernel.”

The creeping- mallow blossom now ignores its proud array of
“cheeses,” coiling in a close cone, and the oxalis flower has left
her shooting pods to keep the vigil, closed and nodding upon its
| stem, while its foliage masquerades in one of the oddest disguises
of all this somnambulistic company, the three heart-shaped leaf-
lets reflexed and adjusting themselves back to back around the
stem with many curious contortions.

Whatever the disputed function of this nocturnal movement,
it has at least been shown to be essential to the life of the
plant, careful experiment having demonstrated, according to one
authority, that “if the leaves are prevented from so regulating
their surface, they lose their color and die in a few days.” Dar-
win also conclusively demonstrated the same fact with various
other plants.
A MIDNIGHT RAMBLE. 23

The sleepiest beds in the garden, at least as to the flowers,
will be found among the poppies.

“Not poppy, nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou ow’dst yesterday,”

mutters Iago to Othello. The poppy, “lord of the land of dreams,”
sets a beautiful example of that somnolence for which it is itself
the emblem and ministering nepenthe.

In a recent moonlight stroll in Switzerland I visited the
poppies in their native haunts, the common wild species whose
flaming scarlet sets the foreign summer fields ablaze in the mid-
day sun. But I found their fires now smouldering beneath the
dew, and giving no token beneath the moon, for the blossoms
were closed in luxurious slumber.

“How many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep !”

moans Shakespeare’s king.

“O sleep! O gentle sleep!
Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down,
And steep my senses in forgetfulness ?”

What a device of mockery had our midnight poppy proved to
this monarch with “uneasy head,” who wooed in vain, and even
traduced, the “dull god sleep” that should affiliate with the
“happy low” and shun “the kingly couch” —the “canopies of
costly state” in the “perfumed chambers of the great”! For
is not the crowned head of this poppy “pavilioned richer than
the proudest king’s”? its sleep lulled in its own drowsy incense, in
luxurious “perfumed chambers,” curtained in canopies of lustrous
damask ?

In the dim moonlight I beheld thousands of these folded
     
    
 

flowers sway-
ing among the familiar daisies
and grasses of my own land, and
otherwise attended by a host of
meadow flowers whose names I
had not yet learned. The night
ephemere fluttered here and there,
and a large moth, which seemed al-
most phosphorescent in its whiteness,
hovered spirit-like close above the
poppies, recalling to mind a weird
picture which I had once lingered
"8. over in genuine fascination—* The Soul

of the Opium-Eater”— representing a

SLEEPING POLVPIES

gauze-winged moth in the moonlight sipping “the drop serene”
of 2 5S sipping ps

 

from the open chalice of a poppy—a bold Hawthornesque conceit
A MIDNIGHT RAMBLE. 25

worthy a more notable recognition than it received, none the less
so because it quarrelled with literal fact, for my spirit moth found !
no open poppy-cups at midnight. The poppy welcomes all the
“meadow tribes” during the day, but at night her four damask )
curtains are closely drawn, the two inner petals being coiled with-
in each other above the tiny head that wears a crown within,
and the outer pair enfolding all in their crumpled bivalve clasp.
And yet how few have ever seen a sleeping poppy!

The wilds are full of companion instances of sleeping beauty,
but there are few lovelier than is afforded in our own fringed
gentian.

“Thus doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,”

sings Bryant in his beautiful tribute to this flower—a sentiment
which is true of the blossom by day, but this darling closes its
“fringed curtains” at night like other blue-eyed folk. So do
many of the asters, their drowsy fringes coiling close in various!
sleepy curls and cuddles. We have already noted, in our initial
vignette, the daisy, “how he will go to rest.”

“Oft have I watched thy closing buds at eve,
Which for the parting sunbeams seem to grieve,”

says a poet who followed the footsteps of Chaucer; as did Words-
worth also:

‘*And when at dusk, by dews opprest,
Thou sink’st, the image of thy rest
Hath often eased my pensive breast

Of careful sadness.”

Shakespeare, with his characteristic omniscience and felicity, al-
ludes to the similar habit of the marigold—

“that goes to bed with the sun,
And with him rises weeping.”
26 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

And again in the following lines — what
an inspiring epitome of the dawn!

   
  
 
   
 
   
 
 
   

“Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings,
And Pheebus ’gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes.”

Indeed, the daisy and the marigold are not
singular in this retiring tendency. It may
be said that most flowers manifest a dis-

position to nod or close at nightfall—the

wild rose, mallow, pea-blossom, crane’s - bill,

oxalis, chickweed, mullein, and certain butter-

cups, for example, and the list might be mul-
tiplied indefinitely.

To all these dozy tribes is opposed a
striking contrast in our beautiful evening
primrose, one of the loveliest of night-
blooming flowers. In the midst of all

this somnolescence what, then, in this
- particular flower, is that

“golden care
y_./ That keeps the ports of slumber open wide
To many a wakeful night?”

Not the quality of “care” in the
poet’s thought, ’tis true, but care
certainly in the sense of conscious,
hopeful purpose and bright anticipation.
For who that has lingered in the twi-
light and watched the eager bursting
buds of the primrose, seen the im-
pulsive greeting in the open welcome
A MIDNIGHT RAMBLE. 27

of its chalice, and caught the enticing fragrance of its earliest
breath — who that has known these can deny the spell of its
sweet consciousness? It is a rash hand that will pluck the prim-
rose in the twilight. How well Keats knew its impulsive ways !—

“A tuft of evening primroses,
O’er which the wind may hover till it dozes,
O’er which it well might take a pleasant sleep,
But that ’tis ever startled by the leap
Of buds into ripe flowers.”

I recall also the beautiful lines of Emerson to his recluse Rho-
dora, and which are equally applicable to the twilight primrose:

“Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted’ on the marsh and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being.”

But such counsel would be wasted on both flowers. I am sure
the evening primrose would carry no such message to the sages;
for whatever of sweet vanity she may or might possess, hers is
a deeper consciousness.

The flower that blooms by night, moreover, could hardly be
suspected of vanity. Our evening primrose does not bloom in
the dark hours for mere sentiment or moonshine, but from a mo-
tive which lies much nearer her heart. “Often when the nights
are very dark,” says an old writer, “her petals emit a mild phos-!
phoric light, and look as if illuminated for a holiday. And he
who does not fear to be out in her wild and lonely haunt may
see a variety of nocturnal ephemere hovering around the lighted ,
petals, or sipping at the flowery fountains, while others rest among
the branches or hurry up the stems as if fearing to be too late.”*

From the first moment of her wooing welcome our evening
primrose listens for murmuring wings, and awaits that supreme ‘
fulfilment anticipated from her infant bud. For it will almost

spre WAN Re aver Ge co aN Mas ol?
28 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

invariably be found that those blossoms which open in the twi-
‘light have adapted themselves to the crepuscular moths and other
nocturnal insects. This finds a striking illustration in the in-
stances of many long tubular-shaped night-blooming flowers, like
the honeysuckle and various orchids, whose nectar is beyond the
(reach of any insect except the night-flying hawk-moth. It is
true that in other less deep nocturnal flowers the sweets could
be reached by butterflies or bees during the day if the blossoms
‘remained open, but the night murmurers receive the first fresh
invitation, which, if met, will leave but a wilted, half-hearted blos-
‘som to greet the sipper of the sunshine. This beautiful expec-
tancy of the flower determines the limit of its bloom. Thus,
in the event of rain or other causes preventive of insect visits,
the evening primrose will remain open for the butterflies during
the following day, when otherwise it would have drooped per-
ceptibly, and extended but a listless welcome. I have seen this
fact strikingly illustrated in a spray of mountain-laurel, whose
blossoms lingered in expectancy nearly a week in my parlor,
when the flowers on the parent shrub in the woods had fallen
several days before, their mission having been fulfilled. In the
house specimens the radiating stamens remained in their pockets
in the side of the blossom cup, and seemed to brace the corolla
upon its receptacle. These stamens are naturally dependent upon
insect agency for their release, and the consequent discharge of
pollen, and I noticed that when this operation was artificially con-
summated the flower-cup soon dropped off or withered.

Coleridge told only half the truth, and that without knowing it
—and something of a libel besides—in the lines of his poem “ No
Life Vain "—

“The very shadow of an insect’s wing,

For which the violet cared not while it staid,
Yet felt the lighter for its vanishing ”—

for that brief period perhaps compassed the dream and consum-
mation of our violet’s life. There is a similar negative recogni-
tion of a beautiful harmony in nature in Shelley’s allusion to those
A MIDNIGHT RAMBLE. 29

“soft moths that kiss
The sweet lips of flowers, and harm not.”

Bryant often sang of the bee:

“In meadows red with blossoms all summer long the ‘bee
Murmurs, and loads his yellow thighs,”

he says, but leaves us to conjecture the gladness of the blossom
as it helps the little plunderer load his saddle-bags in the fulfil. !
ment of a divine design of which his greed is but the instrument.

“Bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest peak of Furness fells,”

sings Wordsworth again—a rather long flight for an uninvited
guest !—allusions which occur to my mood as emphasizing a miss-
ing element in the poetry of flowers, at least in their association
with insect life. When the poet’s butterfly visits the flower, the
insect is commonly the hero, the flower but a passive agent or'
a pretty background in the performance. The bee seeks the
blossom; the blossom does not consciously await the bee, but'
always plays second fiddle to his murmuring. They have wed-
ded the rose to the nightingale, but the beautiful plan of vital
interdependence and reciprocity unwittingly suggested in the
line of Hood’s—

“The broom’s betrothed to the bee ’”?—

has been quite generally overlooked by a devoted class of nat-
ure’s devotees, from whom we had a right to expect a forecast
of the more philosophical revelations of the scientist, for the poet
sees, where the scientist merely discovers.

Browning has proven the seer of the twilight flower, and in a
tender allegory has truly voiced its perfume. It is the flower
that now sings, and though “in a gondola,” how like the voice of
the evening primrose !—or the woodbine !—
 

yt “The moth’s

kiss first!
if you made believe
not sure this ey

Kiss me as
You were e
How my face, your flower, h

ad pursed
Its petals up.
So here and there

You brush it, till I grow aware
Who wants me, and wide open burst.

 

x, My heart at some noonday,
A bud that dared not disallow
The claim, so all is rendered up,
And passively its shattered cup

“The bee’s kiss now!
Over your head to sleep I bow.”

Kiss me as if you entered gay
32 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

“ Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history,” says Plato,
and in similar vein of thought Hawthorne avers that “creation
was not finished until the poet came to interpret and complete it.”
But after all, were not such disciples as Darwin and Miller and
Sprengel, the prophets of the flowers, more than mere scientists?

Returning to our primrose glen, how irresistibly do we bring
to mind those fragrant lines of Moore’s, even though they now
sing to my twilight “primrose,” where they sang of woodbine
and “jasmine buds” with him !

“°*Twas midnight —through the lattice wreathed
With woodbine many a perfume breathed
From plants that wake when others sleep.
From timid jasmine buds that keep
Their odor to themselves all day,

But when the sunlight dies away
Let the delicious secret out
To every breeze that roams about.”

Look! Our misty primrose dell is fast lighting its pale lamps

in the twilight. One by one they flash out in the gloom as if

obedient to the hovering touch of some Ariel unseen—or is it the

‘bright response to the fire-fly’s flitting torch?? The sun has long
sunk beneath the hill. And now, when the impenetrable dusk

has deepened round about, involving all, where but a moment

since all was visible, this shadowy dell has forgotten the sunset,

and knows a twilight all its own, independent of the fading glow

of the sky. It was a sleepy nook by day, where it is now all life

and vigilance; it was dark and still at noon, where it is now

bright and murmurous. The “delicious secret” is now whispered

; abroad, and where in all the mystic alchemy of odors or attars
shall you find such a witching fragrance as this which is here

borne on the diaphanous tide of the jealous gliding mist, and

‘fills the air with its sweet enchantment—the stilly night’s own
spirit guised in perfume? Yonder bright cluster, deep within

the recess of the alders, how it glows! fanned by numerous

feathery wings, it glimmers in the dark like a phosphorescent

i
tay as 2
a ae. 4 Nb Sat
A MIDNIGHT RAMBLE. 33

aureole—verily as though some merry will-o’--the-wisp, tired of his

dancing, had perched him there, while other luminous spires rise

above the mist, or here and there hover in Jambent banks be- !
yond, or, like those throbbing fires beneath the ocean surge,

illume the fog with half-smothered halo. This lustrous tuft at

our elbow! Let us turn our lantern upon it. Its nightly whorl

of lamps is already lit, save one or two that have escaped our ,
fairy in his rounds, but not for long, for the green veil of this

sunset bud is now rent from base to tip. The confined folded

petals are pressing hard for their release. In a moment more,

with an audible impulse, the green apex bursts asunder, and the

four freed sepals slowly refiex against the hollow tube of the

flower, while the lustrous corolla shakes out its folds, saluting the '
air with its virgin breath.

The slender stamens now explore the gloom, and hang their 2
festoons of webby pollen across their tips. None too soon, for
even now a silvery moth circles about the blossom, and settles
among the out-stretched filaments, sipping the nectar in tremulous ?
content. But he carries a precious token as he hies away, a
golden necklace, perhaps, and with it a message to yonder blos-°
som among the alders, and thus until the dawn, his rounds di-
rected with a deep design of which he is an innocent instrument, ,
but which insures a perpetual paradise of primroses for future
sippers like himself.

Nor is it necessary to visit the haunt of the evening primrose
to observe this beautiful episode. The same may be witnessed
almost any summer evening much nearer home, even about your
porch, and among city walls, heralded by those fresh, dewy whiffs
from the night-blooming honeysuckle, where the bright bevies of
blushing buds are bursting in anticipation of that “kiss which |
harms not,” as the welcome sphinx-moth, piloted by the two great.
glowing lanterns of its eyes, hovers in the murmurous cloud i
its humming phantom-wings. How often have I watched these
mimic humming-birds in the gathering dusk, whirling about the
flowers, following the circuit of each fresh-blown cluster, tilting °
and swaying in their buoyant poise above the blossom’s throat,

5
-_

34 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

only their long bodies visible in the fuzzy, buzzy halos of wings,
the slender capillary tongues uncoiled, nearly six inches in length,
and thrust in turn deep into the honeyed tubes.

The honeysuckle bush was a favorite twilight haunt in those
memorable early years of my entomological fervor. One single
evening I remember bringing to my net over thirty specimens,
great and smal!. What a strange fascination they always had
for me, with their great bulging eyes, their grotesque shape, their
mysterious flight, and queer exotic look generally —as unlike the
creatures of the sunshine as though from the Stygian world.
Indeed, my first specimen could not have amazed me more had
I bagged a chimera fresh from the moon, for these sphinx-moths
are hid from the sharpest eyes by day; protégés of gray rocks
and fences, or merged in the fissured bark of trees, eluding the
most careful search, their frequent glowing color now smoulder-
ing beneath the ashes of their upper wings, from which they rise
like a phceenix in the dusk. These moths are mostly dressed in
sombre colors, but some of them bear the aureate hues of the
sunset on their wings, others are black as night, or painted with
olives dark as the midnight trees, and one there is lit with the
rosy tints of dawn, as though thus to typify in their motley the
sombre interval of their animated being. Who that has wit-
nessed this revelation among the honeysuckles could be any
longer insensible to the vital interdependence between this blos-
som and the moth?

Most of the nocturnal flowers have thus adapted themselves
especially to these long-tongued Lepidoptera, hiding their honey

'in such deep tubes or spurs that it is only accessible to the

hawk-moths. To these, then, is intrusted the perpetuity of many
night-flowering plants.

In attributing a phosphorescent quality to the evening prim-
rose I have mainly followed the license of fancy, although, if the
scientists are to be believed, I have indeed scarcely wandered
from the literal truth. For the singular luminous glow of this
and other nocturnal flowers has long attracted the attention of
the curious, and positive qualities of inherent light have been
A MIDNIGHT RAMBLE. 35

accorded in many instances. It is true, as one authority avers,
that “the evening primrose is perfectly visible in the darkest
night,” from which fact phosphorescent proper-
ties have been ascribed to it. “Many perfectly
authenticated instances are on record of lumi-

 

    

' nous, electrical, lightning-like phosphorescence
playing about flowers. The daughter of Lin-

    
  

naeus was the first
to note it,’ ob-
serves one writ-
er. Pursh also

 

subsequently ob-
served and chroni-
cled it. Similar
flashes or corona
have been dis-

PONDWEED,

 
 

cerned on nastur-
tiums, double mari-
gold, red poppy,
geraniums, tuberose, sunflower, and evening primrose, according
to various authorities. It is a rash and overweening commentator
who would challenge this array of competence, and so I forbear.
Saint Elmo’s light may have taken to dry land and favored the
midnight watch of the primrose above the fog, but I have never
seen it with my natural eye.
36 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

Goethe also discerned a similar luminous aureole around the
poppy, but explained it as a “spectral image in complementary
color”; an instance, it seems to me, of where the poet’s vision
was more keen and philosophic than that of the scientist. This
spectral image can be evoked by any one in a simple philosophic
experiment. A moment’s steady gaze at the left side of a blos-
som cluster, the eyes being then instantly turned to the opposite
side, will reveal the colored aureole around this portion of the
cluster, and always in the complementary hue—a halo which
plays incessantly around the petals as the eyes are shifted. Thus
the spectre of the poppy is a ghostly green-white; that of the
primrose is purple.

Whether or not the primrose is thus endowed may be simi-
larly demonstrated by any one, and I think it will be found, as in
the writer’s experience, that the brightest cluster, however luminous
‘it may appear in its haunt as a condensing mirror of the midnight
sky, will be invisible in a perfectly dark closet — conditions under
‘which true phosphorescence would glow with added brilliancy.

I have observed this same luminous deception prettily illus-
trated in the instance of the pondweed (Utricularia), with its

, floating candlestick dancing on the ripples, the faint light from
its yellow petals attended by numerous circling moths.

But we are not without numerous examples of true phospho-
rescence among our vegetation, for the “fox-fire” of the midnight

‘forest is a true plant. How it gleams in the dank nocturnal
me oods !—most brilliant in the deepest recesses, as though feeding
‘its fire from the very darkness. There is a whole tribe of these
phosphorescent fungi—luminous moulds, mushrooms, and_toad-
stools. They shine through crevices in the bark of trees or
among the leafy loam. They glare at you with true feline sug-
| gestiveness from the deep hole in decayed tree or shadowy den
! amid the rocks. Following the hint of a peeping speck of fire,
I have torn the bark from a decayed prostrate trunk in the
woods, and liberated a flood of brilliant light covering several
square feet in area.

Hawthorne, among his reminiscent sketches, relates a similar
A MIDNIGHT RAMBLE. 37

discovery in a midnight journey on a canal—*a fallen tree that
was wholly converted into a mass of diseased splendor, which
threw a ghastliness around.” The strange fascination of the
scene invited him thither and evolved a train of moral philoso-
phy, in which he became so deeply absorbed that he missed his
boat and was obliged to “foot it” for miles with “a flambeau
from the old tree” to light his path.

Another night-walker describes a phosphorescent log twenty-
four feet long “a mass of light.” Fallen trees, bleached and
entirely devoid of bark, and innocent enough by day, are thus
frequently transfigured at night. Look! this brilliant glowworm
in your path!—certainly so appearing — but it proves to be only
a mimetic fragment of clean, bare twig, saturated with the bright
mycelium, though it would deceive a fire-fly.

That was an observant poet, by-the-way, who jotted down the
following episode in his night stroll:

“ Among the crooked lanes, on every hedge,
The glowworm lights her gem, and through the dark
A moving’ radiance twinkles.”

The last line is especially felicitous and graphic, and brings vividly
to mind this animated spark down deep among the dewy grass.

“What!” says the oracle Pliny to the star-gazing husbandman,
“standest thou staring still into the sky and holdest up thy nose
aloft into the aire? Why searchest thou the course of starres?
Hast thou not another brood-hen star, other Vergiliz, I say, even
before and under thy very feet? I mean those pretty glo-wormes.
Surely these come duly at their set daies; these keep time with
those of heaven, as if they were linked to that star by some
neare affinitie in such sort as a man may resolve & hold for
certaine, that engendered they be no otherwise but by the influ-
ence thereof, the very brood and chickens of the aforesaid hen.”
From all of which it may safely be inferred, at least, that these
insects are a much more conspicuous feature in foreign fields
than with us.

~

-
38 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

What a happy blending of natural and poetic truth have we
in these lines of Coleridge!

“Many a glowworm in the shade
Lights up her love torch ;”

for, like Hero, who lit her nightly torch to guide her fond Le-
ander, even so the glowworm gives this bright token to her
ardent flame hovering above the grass, the glowworm being in
truth but the wingless mate of the fire-fly.

But in all our midnight stroll I have said comparatively little
of the dew, yet in the whimseys of the dew alone there is a sufh-
cient invitation to “let the moon shine on thee in thy solitary
walk.” The path of the night rambler is paved and illuminated
iwith brilliants, and to the tyro in these fields seems especially
decked out for the occasion. A sheen of iridescent silver flashes
through the grass on right and left at every swing of the lantern,
like a flitting phantom of a rainbow. The mazes of the spider
festoon the grass in a drapery of diaphanous silver lace pendent
in sparkling spans from clover head to grass tip, and enveloping
the entire meadow beneath its glistening meshes. An answer-
ing pearly spangle greets your passage hither and yon from the
wheel-shaped gossamers everywhere hung among the herbage, for
nature crowns this airy marvel with a rare diadem.t These in-
numerable “wheels of lace,’ such as remain intact, are mostly
invisible by day, except to a quiet searching eye, and the greater
portion of their number are renewed or freshly brought into be-
ing during the twilight, and are quickly baptized with dew, every
thread and strand strung with brilliants, suggesting a possible
clew to the old-time popular belief that gossamers were “com-
posed of dew burned by the sun.”

In the caprice of the various leaves in their attitude towards
moisture there is much of interest; the fastidiousness of this leaf,
the eager affinity of that, one appearing as dry as at midnoon,
and another laved and revelling in the nocturnal bath. Here is
the common plantain at our feet as wet as though fresh from
A MIDNIGHT RAMBLE. 39

immersion, its dripping surface condensing the moisture in rivu-
lets along its parallel veins, and conducting through the grooved
stem a long and generous quaff to the parched earth at its root.
Other leaves are clothed in a glistening sheen resembling hoar-
frost; they flash a fugitive response to your lantern, and upon
the slightest touch let fall their bright disguise and leave their
surface dry. Another great lush leaf exhibits a strange contra-
diction of caprice, and seems hardly to know its own mind, its

general surface appearing perfectly free from moisture, yet nurs- ,

ing its great crystal globe at every depression upon its uneven
surface. Its moveless poise seems almost instinct with avarice.
Its cup is brimful, and each silvery restless bead,

“Scarce touching where it lies,”

grows apace until the accumulated weight disturbs the equilib-
rium, which is the tremorous signal for a general release and a
net-work of flashing rills.

Following the sound of the water in the runnel, a rare spec-
tacle awaits us where the Zguzsetum, the plebeian “horse- tail,”
or scouring-rush, of the daylight, now stands transfigured, a mar-
vel of nature’s bijoutry, each whorl of its curved fringes drooping
with its weight of gems, a mimic fountain worthy the court of
any Faerie Queene, like that in Spenser’s “ bower of bliss,”

“So pure and shiny that the silver flood
Through every channell running one might see.”

The freaks of dewy decoration seem endless in variety. The,

feathery tops of blooming grasses are all a-tangle with flashing
spangles, while their drooping blades are often free from moisture,
or perhaps upraised, hang a border along their edge, or pierce a
solitary bead at their tips. Here is a bristling bed of fox-tail
grass, an army of those “peaceful spears of the field,” each bearing
aloft its glittering trophy unto the dawn. Why this seeming con-
tradiction and violation of natural law as evinced in the case of
‘\\
“S THE PENITENT ‘‘IMPATIENS,”’

 

Oe ee a "the dripping plantain leaf
: ae : ~ already mentioned on the
4 © one hand, and in this erect dry

blade of grass where the distilla-
tion seems to aspire aloft, often con-
verging at the extreme apex, whence it floats away for aught I

know? Let us descend beneath the hill to the borders of the
pond, for here is a charmed spot. I have reserved it for the last,
A MIDNIGHT RAMBLE. 41

the bright consummation, for it holds the crown-jewel of all this
brilliant realm.

‘Every one knows the “jewel-weed,” the bright reveller of
the brook-side copse, with its golden “ear-drops” and luxuriant
spray, murmurous haunt of humming-birds and humble-bees, the
Lmpatiens, or noli-me-tangere of the French, the “touch-me-not” or
“snapweed” of the loitering school-boy, with its touchy, jumping }
pods, popping even at a hard look or breath.

There has been some speculation concerning the more com-
mon christening of this pretty plant, the “jewel” not having yet
disclosed itself, except in the “trinket-like blossom” and “silvery
immersed leaf.” But these unworthy conjectures may now be
dismissed, for the jewel is a verity, a moonstone of the first water,
until now in close keeping of the fairies, unless, as I half suspect,
some wide-awake seer like myself long ago got a glimpse of it,
and stood godfather at the happy christening; but if so he re-
ceives no credit in any botany that I have met. The night has
kept his secret.

Let us lay our lantern amid the succulent stems here by the
brook. What a lavish display of gems! Every leaf among the
lush, translucent canopy, though apparently as dry as at high
noon, now drooping low in a listless fashion, and bordered with
its pendent array of pure limpid diamonds, a spectacle such as
Aladdin might have awakened beneath his supernal lamp, but
which finds few parallels in natural fields.

The analytic eye discovers minute glands along the edge of
the leaf at the crenate points, and one or two on the stem, each
of which seems possessed of some secret power of distillation de-
nied to other plants. Whole beds of the /mpatzens will some-
times be seen scintillating with their gems when little or no dew
is discernible elsewhere.

The jewels first begin to show themselves at dusk, and at
midnight have reached their full splendor.

There are many beautiful surprises among these dewy shad-
ows, but none comparable to this tearful dell where the penitent.

Impatiens tells her beads.
6

-

-

°
42 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

But though the dial sleeps, the hours have flown. A long
jaunt this for daylight folk. Already the “keen insistent hint of
dawn” hovers above the eastern hill, and yet, lost in the absorbing
panorama beneath our lantern, how much of the night’s truest
witchery have we passed without a tribute!—The balmy mist, the
songs of dreaming birds, the flutter of wings unseen, the drone
of beetles, the sly footfall among the dried leaves, the glowing
eyes among the shadowy herbage, the thousand mysteries of scent
and sound—one or all, each enters into that pleasant sense of
‘new and welcome acquisition which now is ours. We return to
our pillow conscious that in this night we have not only doubled
our own possessions, but have won a supreme title to those of
our neighbor, against which no litigation can prevail. We have
explored a new world—a realm which we can look in the face on
the morrow with an exchange of recognition impossible yesterday.

 
 
“In such a night let me abroad remain
Till morning breaks and all’s confused again.”
 

 

 

OW are the senses piqued and sharpened in the total dark-

ness of the woods! For though the path of the midnight
rambler, surprised beneath the lantern’s glare, reveals an unknown
world among the freaks of dewy vegetation—the nodding som-
46 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

nolence of leaf and blossom, the twinkling earth-stars bursting
into bloom beneath the brooding galaxy for soft-winged nestling
moths and poising murmurers—nevertheless, with all its strange
surprises, for a full appreciation of the night’s true witchery one
must become a sympathetic element of its mysteries, and see
the darkness unalloyed. With the light extinguished you now
become a harmonious instead of a disturbing element. You are
taken into confidence, and experience a new joy of sensation not
found in your illuminated path, that speculative charm which
Keats found in the haunt of the nightingale:

“Tender is the night,

And haply the Queen-moon is on her throne,
Clustered around by all her starry fays;

But here there is no light
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs;
But in embalmed darkness guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets covered up in leaves;

And mid-May’s oldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of bees on summer eves.”

In the total darkness the eager pupils are restless, and the
eyes roll in “fine frenzy” at the new importance of their com-
panion faculties. Their occupation is gone. The ear and the
nostril now take the watch, seeming possessed of a retina of
their own, picturing facts and surrounding events which the jeal-
ous eye strives in vain to prove. In the dark woods you are
conscious as never before of tension and muscular movement in
your ears; they loom up in importance, as it were, and are
pricked forward and backward like those of other alert but hum-
bler beings. Unaided by the sight, they carry on a subtle analysis
NIGHT WITCHERY. 47

of sound which seems independent of your reason—a slight aug-
mented rustle among the wind-stirred leaves! the creaking of
a limb! the soft burst of applause among the aspen leaves! a
capricious patter of falling dew from the tree-tops, a snap of twig
not precisely timed to your footfall, or a few inches too far re-
moved therefrom; a falling object from the tree—an acorn, per-
haps, were it not that for an inanimate thing it has rolled a foot
too far upon the leaves! What events!

And so with your nose: you see with it. Now, if never be-
fore, it warrants its conspicuous position in your physiognomy,
and becomes a member of utility as well as a luxurious ornament.
In these midnight woods you follow your nose like a hound. It,
pilots the senses. Could this eclipsed eye ever have pictured
more vividly the pungent copse of spice-wood through which you
have just pressed, or that drooping branch of aromatic hickory
which touched your shoulder, or that plume of tansy that now
brushes against your elbow? Does our midnight poet affirm,

“T cannot see what flowers are at my feet?”

And why not, pray? This mint at your foot—is it spearmint, or
peppermint, or horsemint, or pennyroyal? Your nose will tell
you ata glance. The texture of the vaporous vault of the still
midnight woods seems to the hungry, desperate eye marbled or
party-colored with floating incense of odors.

“Where hast thou wandered, gentle gale, to find

The perfumes thou dost bring?
* * * * *

O’er the pale blossoms of the sassafras \
And o’er the spice-bush spray,

Among the opening buds thy breathings pass, »
And come embalmed away.”

You may sit in the ambrosial current upon some jutting rock or
log, and take your fragrant quaffs as they glide by, each in its
season—a whiff of arbutus, perhaps? how pink it smells! or an
48 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

odorous yellow hint of primrose soft and luscious—in the dark
it seems to the nostril what melting marsh-mallow confection is
to the tongue—or a spicy glimpse of
colt’sfoot or wild-ginger. And so the

 

 
   

fa Hy

    
  
   

redolent procession passes, now a visible aroma of sweet-fern,
followed by a perfumed vision of sweet-pyrolas, ground-nut, or
‘smilacena, or a cool, phosphorescent scent of toadstool or soggy
NIGHT WITCHERY. 49

wood, or the brown smell of mouldy loam. A misty messenger '
from the swamp without the woods now finds its way thither,
borne on the pink breath of sweet azalea or visioned in the
fragrant hint of clethra. And now it is the sweet-fern again.
Yes, sweet-fern tinctured with a faint gamy scent that plays Tan- !
talus to our taunted vision as we search the gloom for two beads
of animated fox-fire, for Reynard has recently passed this way,
or is even now threading through the fragrant underwood. And
what is this—for let us be true to the integrity of these nocturnal
zephyrs—this faint piquant suspicion which now sophisticates the
wild bouquet, this pronounced acrimony—how the impetuous eyes /
now begin to roll!—this overwhelming, painful effluvium which
now ‘sweeps the wilds in annihilating conquest? How graphic!
more real than life—caustic, saturating, mordant! Mephitis, I
could trace thy shaggy portrait to a hair from that pictorial smell!

It is part of the poet’s creed that all the sights and sounds of
nature are, or ought to be, beautiful in their environment. Even
the perfume of many a favorite blossom of the woods becomes
unpleasantly oppressive in-doors. “The saunterer’s apple not
even the saunterer can eat in the house.” The distant midnight
baying of a hound is to many a night rambler a pleasant sound,
though few perhaps have yet learned to “bathe their being”
therein as Thoreau did—a feat which would seem more logical
in relation to the skunk’s accompaniment, many a midnight trav-
eller having waded through the acrid, saturated mist in its evil °
premonition or trail.

It is true, however, that when only faintly perceived, the odor
of Hosea Bigelow’s “essence peddler” is not unpleasant. Nay,
nay, my dainty damosel! turn not aside thy fastidious nostril, nor
raise the spurning palm. How many times on a blustering win-
ter’s day hast thou nursed the rosy tip of that same delicate nose
in the warm “Alaska sable” muff and found a pleasant pungency °
therein! Thus, in highly diluted doses, the odor of the “Alaska
sable” is a not unpleasant occasional ingredient in the nocturnal '
nosegay. It is a sort of spice which brings alert variety in our

midnight stroll.
7
50 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

The odor of the fox is readily detected by a keen nostril, es-
pecially at night. The noisomeness of the warren is distinctly
perceptible where unperceived by day, and the taint is carried
abroad in the ambling fur, the contaminated wake held in equi-
librium, as it were, in the heavy mist. Even the tiny emerald
lace-wing fly or the caddis-moth will sometimes thus leave
its malodorous trail threading the maze of redolence in the
mist; and the bronzy scented beetle will challenge your nostril
as you loiter in the dark woods, perhaps within the course of
its recent droning flight or in the neighborhood of its haunt
upon oozy tree-trunk near by. Often have I trailed him like
a hound, and captured him in his concealment in the fissured
bark.

The bibulous convivialist welcomes a certain ambrosial nectar
which mortals call a fousse café, but which is said to be of the
gods, wherein the several tempting ingredients are so deftly de-
canted as to lie unblended in their fragrant equipoise for a full
minute; how much longer, it has possibly never been permitted
to reveal. Something of the same phenomenon is naturally dem-
onstrated in the scented distillations of the dew. In the shel-
tered lowlands, when the night is still, the motley ingredients of
this odorous tangle seem to find their equilibrium, and lie in
strata, as it were. How the redolence of the witch-hazel revels.
in the mist, weaving itself into the pale fabric as it floats above
the marsh! It is the most volatile incense which we shall meet
in the moonlight glens, and seems to float like oil upon the
denser air, laden with the heavy emanations of the swamp. You
may walk with your nostrils tingling in its tide, and leave it high
and dry as you sit to rest. I have noted the same fact with
regard to the evening primrose, but fancy the perfume is less
volatile than the Hamameelis, and occupies a lower plane. Here
are veritable zones of varying humidity and temperature, each
with its haunting fragrance, often capricious, and yet again quite
constant in its recurrence. In a certain well-known glen, for
instance, you will always pass through a fugitive stratum of mead-
ow-rue or lindén, or other faithful perfume for each season; in
 

 
52 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

another swampy fallow you may confidently expect the welcome
of the elders or wild grape.

I remember a certain nook which in still August nights is
redolent of clethra, that constant blossom of the swamp, though
no shrubs are there to be seen by day: a tribute from the
marshy pond far up the mist-hung brook, where the reedy bor-
ders are fringed with the densely blooming shrub, where the al-
mond-scented fog floods the sedgy waters, and the herons wade

'among the grasses, half-veiled in the tinctured tide. Here, too,

the floating pond-weed claims its lowly plain below the mist,
, anointing the lily-pads in its aromatic perfume as its yellow blos-
som-clusters dance upon the ripples.

In another narrow glen the heavy distillation from the sloping
chestnut woods always seems to pour, with annihilation of all
subtle midnight odors. On the pasture slope above the wood
the cool, stimulating exhalations of the mint follow your path, and
linger till morn in the foggy hollows, while high up on the hill
one seems suddenly to leave the dews and greet a whiff which
brings a vision of the day—that “stratum of warm air” which
quickened the happy muse of Thoreau in his “ Moonlight Walk”
—‘a blast which has come up from the sultry plains of noon.
It tells of the day, of sunny noontide hours and banks, of the
laborer wiping his brow, and the bee humming amid flowers.
It is an air in which work has been done—which men have
breathed. It circulates about from wood-side to hill-side like a
dog that has lost its master, now that the sun is gone.”

Though

“the restless day,
Expiring, lays the warbling world asleep,”

the night, too, hath its wary broods, that with illuminated eyes,
‘like glowing head-lights, turn darkness into day, and know the
teeming bird-chorus of the dawn only as a lullaby. Of such is
the mystic whippoorwill. How few have seen the daylight ten-
lement of this ominous wandering voice! And there’s the mous-
ing owl, on muffled wing, with fiery, flitting, curious eyes and

T Mprwodarnry Fara d.alpe a haere. 2
| teries of the darkness

ee

NIGHT WITCHERY. . 53

foreboding, tremulous' wail; for it would seem that the bird of
wisdom has not yet lived down the evil aspersion of its antique
slanderers. “The scritch owl,” says Pliny, “alwaies betokeneth
some heavie newes, and is most execrable and accursed. In
summe he is the very monster of the night, neither crying nor
singing out cleare, but uttering a certaine heavie groane of dole-
ful mourning, and therefore if it be seene to fly abroad in any
place it prognosticateth some fearful misfortune ;” a belief which
still prevails quite commonly among credulous country-folk, to
whom this nightly visitant in the orchard or maples is the signal
for the direst foreboding. Poor maligned,
feathered grimalkin! What does he say
to me here in the moonlight gloom of the
woods, as he sits there in the shadow
on the pine branch, his glowing
eyes revealing all the mys-

in their illuminated
searching shafts, and
now with alert poise
and ears uppricked, his
eyes quenched as he turns
his head away towards the
opening of the wood, filling
the leafy vault with the soft, tremulous cry? And what is this
to the rightly informed ear but the message, not of “doleful
mourning” and “heavie newes,” but the same that is borne in the
song of the thrush, the tidings rather of life and love, a wooing
to the listening mate, whose echo answers with near and nearer
response across the valley mist? How infinitely more musical
and welcome, this witching nocturne of the owl, than the dismal
midnight duo of his quadrupedal counterpart of the backyard
fence, that yet brings no compensating terrors of superstition !

As in the owl we have our nocturnal puss of featherdom, so
also in the dusky bat have we our winged mouse. We hear
their nightly squeaking convocation in the loosened clapboards

   
 
  
 
  
54 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

of the shed or barn as we pass—or perhaps feel an occasional
fanning of their pellicle wings even when the eye detects no sign
of them in the gloom—this accepted type of blindness that
chooses the dark hours for flight, that dodges with artful purpose
against the stars, or in the blackest night fills its little red maw
with the most agile insects caught on the wing! and this, too,
under disadvantages that would seem rather discouraging, for if
an ancient philosopher is to be believed, a most astounding feat
of aerial acrobatics is here in progress under cover of the dark-
ness. “She is the only bird that suckleth her little ones,” says
my authority, “and these she will carry about her two at once,
embracing them as she flieth,” the difficulties of which will be
appreciated when we consider that the bat in reality “flieth” with
her arms.

What deeds are doing beneath the winking stars! with the
owls and wild-cats and martens mousing among the slumbering
trees; the foxes, skunks, and weasels following their dark trails
among the herbage, to the terror of the hares and the meadow-
mice and low-cradled birds. Most of the feathered tribes have
their heads beneath their wings, though a few, more wakeful than
the rest, will sometimes anticipate the day in nocturnal minstrelsy.
I have twice heard the veery-thrush uttering its weird call at
midnight, and have been startled by the challenge of the oven-
bird, from its mossy hut beneath the ledge —«rracuer, TEACHER,
TEACHER, TEACHER, TEACHER”— awakening the dreaming woods in
its reverberating echoes. The chipping-sparrow occasionally sings
at night, and the white-throated sparrow often dreams aloud. I
have occasionally heard, also, the chewink and cat-bird, while the
nighthawk, though neither a hawk nor, in spite of its name, as
much a creature of the night as of the dawning and waning day,
will sometimes amble from its prostrate perch upon the wall and
take a turn aloft, making the welkin echo to its wild screech, and
frightening the tree-tops with its swooping twang. I have often
heard the drum of the partridge well into the small hours, and
that feathered rogue, the yellow-breasted chat, once almost threw
me prostrate in my dewy tracks in the woods as he screamed in
NIGHT WITCHERY. 55

my shrinking ear, “Chick whew! get away!” like a very goblin;
for there seemed no possible perch upon which the bird could
have rested, and I failed to discern a flutter of feather.

With the exception of the katydids and the throbbing lyres
of vesper tree-crickets or an occasional tree-toad, the woods,
however, are usually comparatively silent at night. It is in the
wet lowlands where we find the chief nocturnal activity. The
midnight summer swamp or marshy-bordered pond is literally
palpitating with a life unknown to sunlight; the rippling moon
dancing a filigree attendance among the reeds, and speeding in
wavy chase across the deeps peopled now with pouts and eels
which the daylight angler would have sought in vain. The liz-
ards’ tails (Saururus) shake their drooping plumes with a tremor
all inconsistent with the listless breeze. The pickerel-weeds stir
with submerged life, and the quivering tips of the reeds betray
the rude progress of the turtles towards the shore as they seek
the sandy banks to pile their nests of eggs. The placid sleep of
the pond is vexed with multitudinous tickle, marked by the span-
gling touches of the moonlight insect broods; of fluttering caddis-
flies now making their first essay with their new-found satin
wings, emerging by the legion from their water-baskets or crystal
mosaic tubes everywhere among the bordering shallows, while myr-
iad ephemerz spread their pallid wings and dance their midnight
revels, making merry through their short sunless day of life which
perchance ends with the dawn. The musk-rat or the mink leads
a long, silent, glittering trail across the glassy water, or with a
splash at the brink sets the lily-pads and spatter-docks in gliding
dance on the ripples, and starts upon their telltale chase across
the pond a hundred gleaming circles at whose common centre,
though hid in verdurous gloom at the bank, a random rifle-ball
would surely win its sleek and dripping quarry, now crouched in
muddy tracks with luckless prey of frog or tadpole.

What with the tremulous drool of the toads and the sprightly
pipes of the hyla tree-toads here celebrating their nuptials in
their native element, or, later, the trump and splash of the bull-
frog, together with the rasping accompaniment of the cgne-head
56 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

grasshopper imps among the sedges, the midnight swamp will
sing in our ears till morning.
Then there is

“the loon’s weird laughter far away”

that comes up to us as we ascend the hill, the midge-cloud’s
tingling hum which we left behind us as we entered the wood,
where

“ain a wailful choir the small gnats mourn,”

and the “blind” bat hovers yet, or the quawking chorus of the
night-herons far down the misty river-bend, or the pumping of
‘the bittern in the fen beyond, or it may be far beneath the valley
1 fog—for many have heard the “stake-driver” but few shall locate
the stake! Only once have I identified this strange nocturnal
voice to be positively sure of it, and this, as it occasionally came
across the placid midnight waters of Lake Winipiseogee, alter-
nating or accompanied with the “loon’s wild whinny” from the
distant shore, the while I floated alone in my boat as though
poised in equilibrium between two limitless starlit skies, one above
and one below, without a visible vestige of land save the great
black rim of the distant shore to give prosaic source to the weird
nocturnal duo.

I have said that the midnight forest is comparatively silent;
but the stillest woods may be made to divulge strange secrets
not vouchsafed to the ordinary night listener. In a recent ro-
mance by Mr. W. H. H. Murray, in which he touches incident-
ally upon woodcraft and the acute ear-sense of the Indian, I
find the following note:

I have often been surprised at the many and strange sounds which may at
times be heard by putting my ear flat to the sod or to the bark of trees. Even
the sides of rocks are not dumb, but often resonant with noises of running waters,
probably deep within. It would seem that every formation of matter had in some
degree the characteristics of a whispering gallery, and that, were our ears only
acute enough, we might hear all the sounds moving in the world.
NIGHT WITCHERY. 57

Who has listened to the eolian-harp of the telegraph? !
What wondrous harmony is here wooed from the passing breeze,
or almost from the calm air itselfi—or from some remote tem-
pest, perhaps—and reverberated in cathedral tones to the ear
laid close against the resonant, weather-seasoned pole! Did the
reader ever listen close against the dead pine-tree and marvel
at the sounds of teeming life thus disclosed within—life which
knows no night nor day nor rest? Think you that the wood-
pecker in its snug cave aloft, or the squirrel in the hollow rail,
has heard your stealthy footfall through its door-way? No; the
tidings have come through turf and root and trunk, vibrated into
their being. If you would know the haunting tenants of the si-
lent beech by your side in the dark woods, lay your ear closely
against its bark, when, if the trunk be roughly struck, the slight-
est movement within its heartis betrayed in the vibrant wood
and conducted to your ear. More than once in my strolls have
I thus listened beneath the flicker’s hole, and heard the clinging
claws apparently beneath the bark at my ear as the sharp head
peered out from the little round door-way aloft.

 
“Tt ts as when a family, your neighbors, return to an empty house
after a long absence, and you hear the cheerful bum of voices and the
laughter of children, and see the smoke from the kitchen fire. The doors
are thrown open, the children go screaming through the ball. So the
| flicker dashes through the aisles of the grove, throws up a window here
and cackles out of tt, and then there, atring the house. It is as good
as a house-warming to all Nature.”

THOREAU.
 
‘‘Hard ts the heart that loveth nought
In May, when all this mirth ts wrought,
When he may on these braunches here
The small birdes singen clere
Thir blissful swete song piteous.”
CHAUCER.
  

hes i N those perfect days of early
AR

    
   
     

‘““Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays,”

what a grateful and multitudinous response
is hers in the choral of the birds! Begun
long before the dawn, to cease only with the
starlight, nor hardly then, for the vesper-spar-
row, the whippoorwill, the chat, and the owl
still hold the diminuendo for the awakening
auroral choir.
If it is true—and the poet but vitalizes
a natural law as pertinent to sound-waves
as to rippling water—that

“Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,
Or dip thy paddle in the lake,
But it carves the bow of beauty there, \
And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake,”

x &

pe yo o then what a bewildering maze is this pal-
oe pitating vault, where the very haze seems all
| : a tremor to the trilling throats!
62 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

The April breeze brings hope and aspiration on its wings, of
which this bright June morning is the supreme fulfilment. And
yet in the rapt enjoyment of this perfect day, when former darker
days seem past belief, and the future knows no dread, how little
are we wont to recognize the claims of the birds for the rare
enchantment which is ours! An isolated note here and there—
the song of an oriole in the elm, or perhaps the sputtering chal-
lenge of the wren in the cornice cranny above—accentuates the
wondrous symphony, and as a distinct feature wins our passing
appreciation. But what of the welling under-harmony which fills
the earth and sky, and buoys us thither unaware? For though
laden with fragrance of sweetest flowers, and borne from a para-
dise of blossoming fields, that were a false and barren breeze of
June which bore no message from the birds. What are the ti-
dings which they help to bring?

“We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing
That skies are clear and grass is growing.
The breeze comes whispering in our ear
That dandelions are blossoming near,
That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing,
That the river is bluer than the sky,
That the robin is plastering his house hard by:
And if the breeze kept the good news back!
We could guess it by yon heifer’s lowing—
And hark! how clear bold chanticleer,
Warmed with the new wine of the year,
Tells all in his lusty crowing!”

Thus, like the “clarion” of the cock, one by one some famil-
iar note accentuates the musical murmur, and we are willing to
accept the passing whim that the robin or the oriole, the song-
sparrow or the bluebird, “ tells it all” and “makes the summer.”

For several years every succeeding June has found me in the
fulfilment of this ideal dolce far niente which our poet describes,
reclining in my hammock beneath my cottage porch, my fancy
floating hither and yon at the beck and call of warble and per-
BIRD NOTES. 63

fume. And yet, as in the buzzing insect din of the August fields,
how few of us ever seek to analyze the units of the complex
unison! Here is this great bird-symphony which fills the June
morning of a continent with unceasing harmony, while only the
notes of a few prominent performers are relieved against the vast
perspective of sound. Our own immediate choir extends even
to the horizon’s brim, many of these perfectly audible ripples of
sound doubtless finding their vocal centre on the hill a half a
mile or more away: all intermingled and entangled, and though
never arrested or swerved in their course, only an occasional note
more penetrating than the rest reaching our imperfect ears un-
broken; while from the nearer woods below, the neighboring or-
chard, the meadow, and the sky, each contributes its faithful voice
to the ever-precious medley.

Few people would seem to master the art of seeing with their
ears—perceiving, locating the precise source of sound—for the
analytical resources of the second sense are not fully appreciated.
The eye may view the panorama as a unit, and yet revel in its
elements at will. Even so the ear, while sensitive to the unison,
may resolve the same to its units of sound. Indeed, a trained
musical ear detects, almost without effort, the various parts in a
harmony, while an immortal Beethoven, even though humanly
deaf, traces from the music of his exalted interior vision the ele-
ments of a vast overwhelming unison, apportioning to each crude
instrumentalist the orchestral score by which less favored hu-
manity may hear the echo of that divine inspiration. In a more
modest degree, this analytical power may be brought to bear
upon the oratorio of the birds.

On these June mornings I have repeatedly asked my more or
less ornithological friend to name such individual songs as he
can detect, the result being generally a list of from seven to ten
of the more prominent vocalists, prominent generally because of
their proximity. “Do you know the song of the purple finch?” I
ask. “Yes, perfectly,” is the reply. “Can you not hear it now
almost continually?” But careful listening fails to detect the
song. Focus your ear on the summit of yonder spruce by the

—
64 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

road, and be deaf to your robin and wren. The song reveals it-
self instantly, and is readily caught thereafter.

Sitting thus with closed eyes and ears alert almost any bright
morning in early June, a few minutes’ patience rewards me with
the distinct identification of the following elements of song, veri-
fied from careful notes which tally year by year—what a revela-
tion to the pilgrim from city walls, where the scolding of the
!garrulous sparrows in the ivy, the occasional scream of the night-
hawk, the cooing of the pigeon, and, perhaps, an occasional pro-
fane parrot, have summed up the ornithological inspiration !—
robin, bobolink, wood-thrush, cat-bird, oriole, orchard oriole, mead-
ow-lark, wren, kingbird, brown thrush, Wilson’s thrush, red-eyed
vireo, warbling vireo, white-eyed vireo, yellow-hammer, chewink,
rose-breasted grosbeak, purple finch, song-sparrow, yellow winged
sparrow, chipping-sparrow, field-sparrow, bluebird, phoebe, yellow
warbler, swallow, goldfinch, quail, nighthawk, and crow. Nor are
these all, incredulous reader. My list is confined only to those
songs which are more or less zzcessax¢t in my merry medley. I
have omitted the tanager, the grackle, the indigo-bird, the red-
start, and others, whose notes either occasionally reach my ears or
are involved in doubt, to say nothing of the owl and whippoorwill,
with their duet lullaby of the twilight.

And what an endless, diversion, this picturesque, kaleidoscopic
music, this pastoral opera, every fresh recognition bringing its
vision of some favorite feathered songster, each with its welcome
of personal reminiscence !

The fringe of wood beneath the hill sends up its faithful com-
plement through the rippling maze of song, in which the weird
call of the veery, the bell of the wood-thrush, and the challenge
of the chewink form a more or less interrupted trio, occasionally
silenced by the piercing note of the meadow-lark or the whistle
of the quail, while again the resonant tattoo of the yellow-hammer
rings from its hollow tree, or that coaxing, cooing note now fills
some momentary lull: —how are the flashes of golden wing, the
; pearly lucent eggs, the old bleached limb and all, embodied in
that pictorial sound —* wick, wick, wick, wick, wick!”
    
  

“PHOEBE.”

Why this brief vision of
golden filigree that seems sud-
denly flung across my fancy?
What is the talisman? “I’ve cheated ye, per chick o pee, per
chick o pee.” What but the tiny goldfinch that has passed over-

=

head in its looping flight, festooning the ether in glancing drap-
ery of black and gold, each embroidered loop pinned with a wisp
of song! The crimson tufts of the thistle-blooms now seem hov-

ering there, or in magic fruition, the silvery down glistens in the
9 \
66 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

airy eddies, for are not all the meadow-thistles following him?
Now gleams a sunflash from some familiar glassy pond, as

“the thin-winged swallow, skating on the air,”

leaves a brief token of twitter in exchange for a buzzing fly that
erewhile hovered beneath the porch.

And now the soft breeze seems laden with a new enchant-
ment. A shadow falls upon my closed eyes, and the scent of
grass and clover gives place to the cool hint of hemlock, and
tinctured mould, and pungent spikenard roots, and mossy trick-
ling rocks; I hear the gurgling of the brook and the sounds of a
rumbling bridge, and all seem dancing attendance on a vague,
mossy nest somewhere stowed away; for has not that brief call of
“ Phoebe!” spoken for all from the barn beyond?

Hark, from the apple-tree in the field below, that note so
full and ripe and mellow! “A robin,” say you? No; nor an
oriole. There is a distinct individuality in that song, which, while
suggesting both these birds, still differentiates it in many re-
spects as the superior to either, as though from a fuller throat, a
more ample vocal source. It is one of the rarest, choicest voices
among all our feathered songsters, in ¢zmdrve and volume surpass-
ing the thrush, and in these qualities unequalled, I think, by any
of our birds. Listen to the overflowing measure of its melody!
How comparatively few the notes, and yet how telling!—no sin-
gle tone lost, no superficial intricacies. Sensuous, and suffused
)with color, it is like a rich, pulpy, luscious, pink-cheeked tropic
fruit rendered into sound. Such would seem the irresistible fig-
ure as I listen with closed eyes to the welling notes—a figure
entirely independent of, though certainly sustained in, the ornitho-
logical form pictured in the song, sitting quietly on an upper
twig, with full plump breast as carmine-cheeked as the autumn
apples now promised in the swelling blossom calyxes among
l\Wwhich it so quietly nestles. I can see the jetty head, and quills
splashed with silvery white, and the intervals of song seemed
\ spanned with rosy light as pure as the prism released from those
  
 
 
 

 
 

upraised wings as the
singer preens his plumage
with ivory bill. This is the rose-
breasted grosbeak, with his overflow-
ing cup, his pastoral cornucopia, his !
musical horn of plenty.
If, as Hawthorne believed —a
most inspiring and ennobling faith
for the fields—‘ each humblest weed
stands there to express some thought
or mood of ours, and yet how long it
stands in vain,’ what shall be said of
the conscious, buoyant, throbbing singing-birds? “How many
human aspirations are realized in their free holiday lives, and how
many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!” How
many are the burdens lifted on their wings and dissipated in
their music, whose mysterious message has brought peace!
“Verily verily: you wow it: you see it: cheery are wé: we
cheery you”—such is the melodious witness that seems to descend

   
  

‘THE PREACHER.” **,
68 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

from heaven through the maple-tree above us. ‘“ You are weary:
we see it: listen to mé: meekly: cheery are wé: O why 2s it:
verily verily: ¢hzs is it: holy spirit: devoteé: verily verily: there
we owe it: delieve me: 'tis real: we know it: Selah!”

It is the voice of the “preacher” celebrating his matins in his
temple of the tree-top, and filling the morning with unremitting
praise and counsel—the most sustained and tireless song, and the
most communicative voice among all our birds. No other one
of them speaks so clearly in our own tongue, or seems so much
to imply a listener. As will be seen, the song is not a rapid,
elusive warble. It is a deliberate, continuous recitative rather
than a song, each phrase followed by a distinct pause, and each
pause seeming to formulate with an oracular effect the brief pas-
sage which follows, all of which are variously accented and full
of variety of inflection, as I have endeavored to indicate.

Often have I sat by the hour beneath his shrine, and long is
the list of mellifluous exclamations, exhortations, texts, and pre-
cepts which I have caught from his votive throat. On one occa-
sion alone I filled my page, and though he had been in continu-
ous song for exactly three-quarters of an hour, I left him ere he
had reached his “secondly.”

Bringing my testimony to date, I can add furthermore that
during last July, subsequent to the writing of the above in a
magazine article, he surpassed himself in eloquence. At that
time I occupied my summer studio in the woods. He had me
at an advantage and did most commendable missionary work.
On one particular morning, at nine o'clock, he greeted me with
his “listen to me” and “there we owe it”; and having thus
voiced his theme, preached without ceasing until half-past twelve,
at which hour, when I left for luncheon, he was yet undiminished
jin unction, and apparently no nearer the benediction than when
he announced his text.

I have said that he speaks the human tongue, and in partial
proof thereof I may mention that long before I knew of our
red-eyed vireo’s title of ‘“ Preacher’—given, I believe, by Wilson
Flagg—I had noted down the “you know it” and “you see it”
BIRD NOTES. ; 69

which he quotes from the tree-top singer, while further incontest-
able evidence of the bird’s orthodoxy is given in another portion
of this volume.

What else our oruzthological bird is doing up there in the
tree-top is shown in the following from Nuttall: “For all the
while that this chorus enchants the hearer, the singer is casually
hopping from spray to spray in quest of his active or crawling
prey; and if a cessation occurs in his untiring lay, it is occa-
sioned by the caterpillar or fly he has just captured ”— which re-
calls a doxmot in relation to the bird which I once heard from
Mr. Beecher, who remarked to me upon his piazza at “ Bosco-
bel,” while his fancy hovered aloft in the maples, “That little fel-
low has found a land of plenty up there, and he says grace like!
a little Christian at every mouthful.”

The world had long been wondering what tidings lay within
the robin’s song that should carry the same joyous message to
all, until an inspired poet told us. Were we, then, deaf never to
have heard those words before: ‘“Cheerily, cheer up! cheer up!
Cheerily, cheerily, cheer up!” It is not every one of our birds,
however, that has found such an interpreter as he who has given
us this most beautiful and perfect onomatopceia; but there are
many songs which, whether as sympathetically rendered or not,
have nevertheless been so aptly paraphrased as to afford their
ready recognition. There is the brown thrasher, for instance,
whose stray notes reach our ears from the grassy road yonder. In
Concord, we learn, he was wont to superintend the spring planting
—of beans, perhaps—with lively interest and counsel. ‘“ Drop it,
drop it; cover it up, cover it up; pull it up, pull it up, pull it up!”
in perfect Anglo-Saxon. Over the border in Connecticut, I can
vouch for his somewhat similar strain, while farmers everywhere
will recognize that faithful voice of the pasture, that curt and com-
prehensive summons from the tangled lane, always associated with
the brown furrows of the cornfield and the time of blooming dog-

woods:

“Shuck it, shuck it; sow it, sow it;
Plough it, plough it; hoe it, hoe it!”
7O STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

     
 

As affording

some lheht on the

ig
popular name of “thrash-
er,’ I might mention the
remark of a certain matter-of-fact rustic who answered my query
for enlightenment on the subject. “Some fokes sez it’s becuz
he’s aliz a-thrashin’ around so in the bushes, 'n’ others sez it’s
becuz he’s ferever tellin’ uw em to ‘¢hrash 74, thrash it’ But
thet’s all puppy-cut; he sez exnything you like.’ What would this
unconverted heretic say to the “ Peverly bird,” that won this local
christening as a tribute from a perplexed husbandman hesitating
at his choice of crops:—“Sow wheat, Peverly, Peverly”—a refrain
which is vouched for by many discriminating listeners. Yet there
are other heretics who aver that this is all “ puppy-cut,” and that
the little white-throated sparrow in reality voiced a reproof to old
Peverly which he wouldn’t own:—*All day whittling, whittling,
whittling.”
BIRD NOTES. 71

There are few happier, more unmistakable, transcripts from
bird notes than in that line of Emerson’s:

“The redwing flutes his ‘O ka lee.’”

In this brief transcript have we not an epitome of the sentinel-
starling, scarlet epaulets, sable uniform, precious magazine of spot-
ted eggs and all? In the “Conk-a-ree” so often found among
the pages of Thoreau’s spring notes we have an equally felicitous
reminiscence of this tenant of the bog. Such is the challenge
that comes to you across the spatter-docks, the tussocks, and the
alders almost any day in May. With either key you will find
your bird; and yet I am satisfied from dearly bought experience
that a closer intimacy with the source of the sound reveals a cer-
tain subtle, soggy, boggy regurgitation which is missed in both of
them—echoes caught from a safe distance. There is more of the
gurgle and the wet ooze in it—‘‘Gl-oogl-eee” is the distinct, un-
colored utterance with which patience in a sheltered, knee-deep
mud-hole will reward you after the “quit, quit” has subsided
among the cat-tails and the willows.

Who could not name the Maryland yellow-throat from the
challenge caught by Burroughs as he loitered in the bushy retreat
of the bird —“ Which way, sir? which way, sir? which way, sir?”
or his “ Teacher, teacher, teacher, teacher” of the woods, known
else as the oven-bird; or his bluebird, whose warble he calls “ the
violet of sound,” and which says “Purity, purity” to him and ever-
more to us all? But, alas! how are our senses attuned to our
moods! or is this “drearily, drearily” among the flying leaves of
November in truth the same song which we heard in April?

Among these incessant spring roundels you certainly have not
failed to note that occasional piercing shaft of song which seems
to cleave the air straight from the hill-side meadow beyond—“ I
see; I see you.” Who needs to prowl among fence-rails to dis-
cover that black crescent breast and tapering bill of the meadow-
lark, the young sportsman’s tempting target, and the playful
“cache, cache” of the little French folk of our Acadian country?
72 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

Not a few of our common birds have been self-christened, and
are at one in the popular as well as the scientific vocabularies.
The pheebe, chickadee, chebec, chewink, towhee, pewee, and Bob
White need no printed plate or page for their identification. Nor
does the whippoorwill, known throughout the continent by its
weird nocturnal cry. Indeed, how little else than this uncanny
“wandering voice” of the bird is known to the popular mind!
How many a rural octogenarian will you find who has ever seen
the strange, wide-eyed, mottled bird that from earliest memory,
\perhaps, has made its nightly haunt upon his well-sweep or even
the domestic door-sill ?

The penny trumpet of the nuthatch’ occasionally takes up its
tiny part in the orchestral score from the maple above the house.
“ Quah, quah,” says Thoreau; but the “Yank, yank” of Burroughs
is certainly more truly caught, not only in its phonetic quality, but
in its suggestiveness of that prying, tugging bill among the scales
and crevices of bark.

I am not aware that poet or ornithological stenographer has
yet transcribed the vocal performance of the wren—those “ five
notes to wanst,” as the Hibernian listener once observed (and pat
it was in truth)—being certainly very discouraging to such an
undertaking. And there is another of our bird songs scarcely
less disheartening in its intricacy. How have the bird historians
and poets labored in its whirling rapids—cast their hooks and
nets, as it were, to catch the bursting bubbles in its rippling
wake! Listen! that pell-mell, gushing rhapsody from the mead-
ow below—a sextet, with obligato and piccolo variations—all
from a single throat. Can it be possible, indeed, that yonder
sable minstrel swaying on the dock is alone responsible for all
this Babel? Hark! a moment more and he will find his breath
again. There! ‘Bob o’ 4x o’ loo o' happy go lucky O lucky.”
Such is often the introductory refrain, once or twice repeated,
with a brief interval. But who shall follow the subsequent vocal
revelations? Even though possible of analysis by the ear, would
'it not take six pens in simultaneous effort to chronicle? Who
knows what unsuspected melody may not be submerged in that
BIRD NOTES. rae

tiny impulsive torrent? The temperate guide of the music-box
cylinder yields a long and pleasing strain to the ear; but what
is the chaos when from defective machinery that barrel is per-
mitted to revolve its circuit in a few seconds! Such is the par-
allel always suggested by this song of the bobolink. I feel that
beneath all that dizzy tintinnabulary some rare melody is smoth-
ered. O Bob! what precious strain might we not disclose to the
world could we but control the wild spring impulse within your
-- breast and put a fly-wheel on your vocal machinery!

From time to time through a long period of years I have
added an occasional note or two to my singular vocabulary caught
from this meadow doggerel—a syllable here, a word there, from
my trip across the meadow, a few more from my covert by the
stone wall, or a whole string of them as I lay beneath the elder-
bush, while the minstrel swayed upon the blossomed roof over-
head. Certain notes would seem easily translatable, almost as
though implying an Anglo-Saxon intention on the part of the
bird, but others can only be phonetically suggested. Here is the
list, copied from my random notes covering a number of years.
And what a pot-pourrt they make when strung together, with oc-
casional interpolations for sequence!

“ Bob o’ 4k o’ love o’ lucky o’ linkum o’ linkum a jingle a jin-
gle a ditty bob for bonny Missus Linkum see see keep an eye
up here my sweet see see hear me tinkle tinkle sprinkle such a
liquid mellow glee wet your whistle bob temperance O gush a
gurgle scatter splatter such a carol as she alone can follow fol-
low pipe it pipe it bob O tintinnabulate for temperance temper-
ance whink a seeble seeble here I go across the clover sprink
a jinkle sprinkle treble burst a bubble purl a babble gabble glee
shake it out upon the meadow chink a link a wheedle see
look’ee look’ee ninkum ninkum deacon yonder see yessir yessir
funny fellow he whew whew but I must seek a rest for my cap
is coming off and I can hardly keep my jacket on whew tem-
perance temperance.”

But why attempt the impossible? Why add another to the
many parodies of this elusive meadow song? The phonograph
74 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

talone shall resolve that performance to its elements and render

us its units of sound. Not until thus secured, and his phonetic
“cylinder” then slowly revolved for analysis, shall we learn what
Robert has so long been guarding from our ears beneath all this
vocal acrobatics.

Many friends of Mr. Beecher will recall his “bobolink” jar-
gon, with which he was wont “to set the table on a roar,” and in
whose mad whirl this half-drowned ingredient of “temperance ”
occasionally struggled to the surface. And I note that Bur-
roughs also has detected in the song this same token of rebel-
lious conscience, while, whether from anticipation or not, my own
ears have certainly discerned something very like it interspersed
with Pickwickian effect—catching at straws, as it were—in the

‘tide of this exuberant, bubbling effervescence.

How have the poets followed Bob afield, eavesdropping in his
domain, but while they have occasionally reflected his ecstatic
spirit, who among them has brought back his voice? The robin,
the bluebird, the chickadee, and various other birds have found
'their stenographers, but not Bobolink.

Bryant’s well-known poem makes only a slight attempt at
onomatopeeia, while in Wilson Flagg’s noted tribute to the bird
I find a much more satisfying and accurate presentation both in
spirit and phonetic suggestion of song. We all remember that
delightful chapter in which Irving evolves a touching moral to
birds and boys through this his favorite “joy of the meadows,”
and our page can readily bear a repetition of that true bit of por-
traiture by Lowell, as voiced in the provincial tongue of Hosea
Biglow:

‘“‘June’s bridesman, poet o’ the year,
Gladness on wings, the bobolink is here ;
Half hid in tip-top apple-bloom he sings,
Or climbs against the breeze with quiverin’ wings,
Or, givin’ way to ’t in a mock despair,
‘Runs down a brook o’ laughter thro’ the air.”

That last line is worth a whole page of phonetics, and recalls
that wonderful parallel passage of Thoreau’s—to me the most
 

THE BOBOLINK AT HOME.
76 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

felicitous effort within my knowledge of similar descriptive litera-
ture. What keenness of perception, subtle appreciation of tone
quality, and literary art are embodied in that remarkable para-
graph! How does it revive that eager anticipation quickened
by the first notes of the song—a prelude promise which Bob
never fulfils—that

“Single note, so sweet and low,
Like a full heart’s overflow;
But which we fail to hear again.”

“J hear the note of the bobolink concealed in the top of an
apple-tree behind me. Though this bird’s full strain is ordinarily
somewhat trivial, this one seems meditating a strain as yet un-
heard in meadow or orchard. Paulo majora canamus. He is
‘just touching the string of his theorbo, his glassichord, his water-
organ—and one or two notes globe themselves and fall in liquid
bubbles from his tuning throat. It is as if he touched his harp
‘within a vase of liquid melody, and when he lifted it out the
notes fell like bubbles from the trembling strings. Methinks they
are the most liquidly sweet and melodious sounds I ever heard.
They are as refreshing to my ear as the first distant tinkling and
gurgling of a rill to the thirsty man. Oh never advance further
in your art, never let us hear your full strain, sir! But away he
‘launches, and the meadow is all bespattered with melody.”

It matters not that the English dictionary affords us no ti-
dings of the “glassichord” or “ water-organ.” The dictionary is
inadequate to the occasion, for these are the veritable instruments
of the bobolink prelude as truly as that last line is the epitome of
the musical cascade which follows.

But it was reserved for Florence Percy to give us our rol-
licking, “devil-may-care Bob” as we all know him—an inter-
preter who, presenting the bird under the character of “the tell-
tale,” has infused the very mischief of that “wild and saucy song”
into her page. Who that has noted that suggestive, self-suffused,
ecstatic strut of the gay Romeo, as with drooping wings and
BIRD NOTES. a9

circling pirouette he waltzes about his little brown mate down
there in the grass, will not recognize the portrait? What does
the saucy banterer say to the startled sparrow “ warbling his wed-
ding tune” in supposed seclusion ?

“Balancing on a blackberry brier,
The bobolink sung with his heart on fire: *
‘Chink? If you wish to kiss her, do!
Do it, do it, you coward you!
Kiss her! kiss kiss her! who will see?
Only we three, we three, we three!”

And when the little pair sought a safer retreat:

“Again beside them the tempter went,
Keeping the thread of his argument:
“Kiss her! kiss her! chink-a-chee chee.

Tl not mention it; don’t mind me!

I'll be sentinel—I can see

All around from this tall birch-tree !”

But ah! they noted, nor deemed it strange,
In his rollicking chorus a trifling change.
“Do it, do it! with might and main
Warbled the telltale—‘ do it again /’”

Bryant has given us a hint of Bob’s apparel:

‘Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest,
Wearing a bright black wedding-coat ;
White are his shoulders and white his crest.”

A “wedding” dress, in poetic fancy as well as in fact; for the
full-grown fledgling in the tussock nest would scarcely recognize
the courtly sire of its pin-feather days. This festive costume is
assumed only at the mating season, a sort of sympathetic outward
expression of the ornamental vocal accomplishment, for both sub-
side in company.

During the month of July the sobering process is conspicuous,
78 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

while in August you will seek in vain for your bobolink, though
the meadow be full of them.

This Protean accomplishment of the bird has led to much
misconception, not only in the popular mind, but among the orni-
thologists as well, the dual guise suggesting two distinct species,
a common supposition even yet among those who have not wit-
jnessed the metamorphosis. Bob, moreover, pays a severe penalty
‘in this relinquishment of his merry motley of cap and bells.

In his annual September migrations, from Maine to Florida,
he runs the gantlet of the gourmand guns aimed at those two
prospective bites from his plump breast; for whether as “ reed-
bird” in Pennsylvania or “rice-bird” in Louisiana, the appearance

‘of his flocks is a whet to the epicurean appetite and to wholesale
slaughter.+ Go to our market-stalls, not only in the South, but
here in the very haunt where his song has barely ceased in the
meadows, and see the sickening traffic in these plucked and man-

' gled little bodies. “Reed-birds, twenty-five cents a bunch!” Alas!
there would seem to be a hundred of our population who enjoy
their bobolinks oz toast to one who realizes the song that will be
forever missed.

My hill-top piazza affords a rare opportunity for observing the
aerial play of the nighthawks. Regularly every afternoon, in the
interval between four o’clock and sunset, they awake from their
day-dozing, and one by one join the revellers aloft —now climbing
the heavens with rapid spiral flight, whence with a sudden dip
and folded wings they plunge headlong down, down, as though to
dive into the glassy mill-pond in the valley below; and now, with
2 sweeping curve of magnificent grace and proportions, skimming
the tree- -tops in buoyant upward glide, while we catch the “bien
twang of the cleaving wings.

How has that mysterious sound puzzled the investigators!
What is its source? I have attributed it to the wings; but all
of our ornithologists have had their guess at this “boom,” as it is
called. Wilson Flagg apparently considered it a vocal effort, as
implied in his remark that “it utters a singular note, resembling
the twang of a viol string.” Others have laid the sound to the
BIRD NOTES. 79

door of that “capacious mouth while passing through the air.”
Wilson so inferred, and significantly compared the noise to that
produced “by blowing strongly into the bung-hole of an empty
hogshead.” Audubon, I believe, was the first to suspect the wings
of the bird as the resonant source, presumably the long quill
vanes; and there would seem to be many circumstances to ver-
ify his conjecture, the sudden horizontal tilt of the wings which
determines the upward finish of the swoop, and which is always
simultaneous with the “boom,” tending to reinforce his theory.
The fact which I have discovered, that a fair imitation of the
sound can be produced by blowing between the leaves of a book,
loosely held, would seem to suggest a similar vibratory origin.

On two occasions, moreover, I have observed a quite similar,
though, of course, diminished sound, produced by swallows, and
in both cases unquestionably proceeding from the wings and dur-
ing a quick curvet of flight as they dove about the “ well-dissem-
bled fly” which I swung aloft from my fishing-rod.

I have never attempted the test, but have often wondered
whether a nighthawk’s wing, skilfully adjusted to a slender fish-
ing-rod and swept through the air, might not be made to give
forth that veritable twang!

Once, while passing through a pasture, I almost stepped upon
what appeared to be an irregular piece of bark which had fallen
from a neighboring fence-rail. It lay there in the grass, and only
the effect of exact symmetry in form, accentuated by the white
spots upon its pinions, dispelled the illusion—for it was a night-
hawk. The position of the bird showed at once something un-
usual. According to its habit, by day, its eyes were closed to
a mere crevice. MHalf-supposing the bird to be dead, I stooped
to pick it up, but only to be met with an angry flutter, the bird
darting at me, showing the full interior of his throat and uttering
a hoarse screech, while the black depths of the now widely open-1
ed eyes simultaneously lit up with a lurid rosy glare. This was
repeated at my slightest movement towards the wounded bird, for
I soon discerned that its wing was broken, presumably a cruel
penalty for a heedless swoop against a telegraph-wire overhead.
SO SLARLICHT AND SUNSHINE:

I took the wounded bird home, and
{for some days fed it with rose-bugs,
. which it swallowed by
» the handful after smear-
eae "ing the same with a vis-
ae Aya cid gluten which exuded

 

ce it from the mouth. Woe,
indeed, to the hapless fly
; that chances to get into
that limed pit!

    

Not many days after the
above incident, I chanced upon
a nighthawk with young. The
mother-bird flew up almost at
my feet and ambled off, pursu-
ing the familiar flopping antics of her
kind, simulating the broken wing and
epileptic fit, and flattening herself out
on the stone wall, followed precisely the same manceuvres which
I had often noticed in her congener, the whippoorwill, under

SD

 
BIRD NOTES. 81

similar circumstances; the same waddling uneasy squat, with out-
stretched wings and staring eyes. Observing that the bird had
risen from a small, flat, lichen-tufted rock, I intently focused my
eye for those anticipated animated bits of moss in the shape of
fledglings, and soon differentiated from the bed of lichen their
fuzzy identity. They were not drow, as Wilson says, but sug-
gested a tufty spot of gray mould not only in color but in
melting cloudy quality, its edge on the one side seeming to
vanish, while on the other mainly manifest by relief against its
shadow on the rock. The callow twins were presumably about
two days old, and the wisdom of their singular flat build now
seemed perfectly attested, as they hugged close and motionless
to their bed. Thus they appeared when first observed, their in-
herited instinct teaching them the perfect safety of their dis-
guise and the prudence of quiescence. The immediate surprise
being over, however, the two sluggish, sleepy-eyed innocents were
suddenly transformed. With surprising agility they were both
on their feet, and with out-stretched necks and comical skinny
wings high upraised, they made quick time for the bordering jun-
gle of grasses. The sudden appearance of these long fuzzy el-
bowed flippers seemed like hocus pocus, for the downy sides give
no hint of their presence. When headed off and returned to
their original nest—for the nest of the nighthawk is simply a
hollow, among lichen worn by the nesting bird—the outlandish
little babes became quite docile, following my out-stretched finger
with wide-open mouths and quivering flippers, and uttering weak,
high-keyed plaints somewhat suggestive of the comfortable whis-
pering interchange beneath the brooding hen in the coop.

In the night I revisited the scene, with the intention of kid-
napping this interesting family—a fool’s errand, it might be said,
knowing full well that those same sleepy, half-closed eyes which
at noontide would delude you to steal a hand upon that boozy!
sphinx upon the wall are now inviting all the visible darkness to
their full round depths. Remembering, however, the mesmeric
effect of the “jack-light” upon other nocturnal game, I conclud-

ed to test the effect of my dark-lantern’s glare upon my bird.
II
82 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

Creeping close to the spot already carefully located, the rock soon
gleamed in the full light of my bull’s-eye; but it was only after
several minutes of the closest scrutiny that the form of the bird
gradually assumed shape mysterious and sphinx-like as she brood-
ed her downy fledglings. Can I ever forget these soft, deep,
round black eyes, motionlessly staring into the glare now held
close before her face? I had come to lay hands upon her, but
now with her form within easy reach, and my hand in eager
spread, I was vanquished.

For a period, I know not how long, I crouched in the shadow
of my lantern, my face barely two feet from the statuesque form
of this strange bird; and although intent on her capture, yet in
the soft, unwinking, all-observing stare of those great mild eyes,
I confess to a mesmeric charm that stayed my eager hand. At
last, in a momentary triumph of prosaic scientific fervor, I made
a clutch for my prize—but presto! my open fingers only arched
above an empty void which soon disclosed the two downy sleep-
ing sphinxlets manifest only by touch. The parent bird had
seemingly spirited herself into air, and in the mood of the mo-
ment such seemed the fitting denouement.

Only by feeling could the two chicks be found. The light of
the lantern failed to locate them even then, except by the shad-
ows which they cast. Though apparently asleep, they were, in
truth, keenly awake, for after the lapse of a minute or so they
were up and on their feet, pursuing the same acts as at mid-day,
running off into the grass with surprising agility for two babes
rudely awakened from the cradle, uttering the familiar plaintive
peep which, with the fleeting shadows accompanying them, af-
forded the only means of following their imperceptible identity.
Foreseeing the danger both to mother and young from a too
eager clutch, and having little confidence in my alertness against
such odds of vision and hocus pocus, I returned home, and af-
ter allowing the bird ample time to get herself together again,
I revisited the scene, provided with a butterfly net. Again steal-
ing upon the bird as before, and without permitting myself to
be brought beneath her spell, I lost no time in clapping the net
BIRD NOTES. 83

over her, and thus secured the whole queer family. I took
them home, and on the following morning made the studies from
which the accompanying pen-drawing was perfected. The moth-
er-bird seemed to be oblivious to all but her two hungry babes,
brooding them and uttering a low hoarse croak, to which they
always responded. The young became very tame, and manifest-
ed a degree of hunger entirely consistent with their cavernous
resources, pursuing my finger with open mouths whose capacity
seemed to reach the core of their being. From whichever side
I approached, these two comical little creatures came for me pre-
cipitately, with pleading, upraised wings and gaping mouths.

In the so-called “drumming” of the ruffed grouse, that soft
murmurous tattoo by which his ardent lordship musters his little
company of willing captives, we have another familiar sound as
yet as much wrapped in mystery as the “boom” of the nighthawk.
How felicitously Trowbridge revives this exciting reminiscence of
the woods:

“The partridge beats his throbbing drum.”

But he leaves us to surmise the nature of that “drum” which
has so long puzzled the world. Wilson, though a professional
natural observer, from whom a more specific account might have
been expected, is equally non-committal. “The bird strikes with
stiffened wings in short, quick strokes,” he says, with perfect safe-
ty. Elliot is equally guarded in his observation that the drum-
mer “beats swiftly downward.” Burroughs, however, is more to
the point, and assures us that the bird strikes “its own proud
breast,” which tallies with the authority of Audubon, who dis-
covered that the wings “beat the sides of the bird.” Bryant is
of the same opinion; so is Peabody, and a host of others, though
Burroughs, I believe, later changed his view.

Earlier naturalists, too numerous to recount, however, have
definitely located this mysterious drum, the hollow “drumming-
log” having long been considered a necessary adjunct to this
muffled roll. Such has been the most commonly accepted theory,
seemingly abetted by the bird itself, from its singular preference
84 SLARLAGH LT AND: SUN SALINE:

aay

mee |

 

for a fallen log as the seat of the musical performance. Even
the sporting authorities are so convinced, one recent prominent
writer asserting that “if the bird happens to find a dry, well-

 
BIRD NOTES. 85

placed log his tattoo can be heard a mle.” Since, however, it
has been repeatedly discovered that the mysterious resonant flut-
ter is accomplished equally as well upon a rock, or even upon the
bare ground, the “drumming-log” theory has lost favor. Now ap-
pears a conservative coterie who would seem desirous of concili-
ating the disputants, while determined to be on the winning side
anyhow; Brewer, for instance, who claims that the bird “ beats
its sides and the log” simultaneously, a belief which is shared
by Samuels and many followers.

Against this I would oppose the witness of another unprofes-
sional but equally close observer, the writer, in truth, who deposes
and says that the bird does nothing of the kind; that in the one
instance, though brief, where its movements were observed by
him, the clearly defined limit of the visible whir of the wings
seen from behind demonstrated that no feather of the bird’s wing
touched the body or the log upon which the bird stood; while,
on the other hand, the feathery halo almost merged over the
back, suggesting a new possibility in the resonant source.

Not to be outdone by the opposing diplomatists, here we find
another class who would seem to rest their case in the artful non-
committal of Wilson, claiming to connect his negative suggestion
above with the positive statement that the bird “strikes nothing
but the azn.”

Following the suggestion intimated from my own observation
opens up a new line of investigation. Here is the testimony of
Wilson Flagg, for instance: “ Whenever I have gained sight of a
partridge in the act of drumming, he seemed to elevate his wings
and strike them together over his back, increasing the rapidity of
the strokes,” etc.

But Thoreau long anticipated him, as witness the following
from his journal for the year 1855, in which he chronicles the
discovery of a neighbor who was wont to prove his assertions:
“ He had seen a partridge drum standing on a wall; said it stood
very upright, and produced the sound by striking its wings to-
gether dehind its back, as a cock often does, but did not strike
the wall or its body. This he is sure of, and declares that he
86 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

is mistaken who affirms the contrary, though it were Audubon
himself.”

This is the utterance of conviction, and its unqualified tran-
script in Thoreau’s page adds almost the value of his indorsement.
Nor is this all the mystery connected with the “drummer.”

There is almost as wide a difference of opinion concerning
the attitude of the performer as there is in relation to his tech-
nique. We may take our choice between position erect, as in
the instance last mentioned, which is verified by many authorities;
or horizontal, as described by Elliot, while Audubon leaves us to
take our choice, simply assuring us that the bird “stretches him-
self out” during the process. Some say that his head is thrown
back towards the tail, others that it is lowered. Indeed no two
grouse would seem to follow the same professional method. Here
is certainly an opportunity for some investigator to distinguish
himself. The authorities are all at sixes and sevens on the mat-
ter, and so long as the mere eye-memory is the only witness the
riddle will still remain unsolved. The musical flutter of the
grouse will continue to hoodwink the human eye.

We have all seen ocular demonstration of otherwise occult
facts through the revelations of the Muybridge photographs of
animals in motion—the astonishing transitory attitudes of trotting
horse, kicking mule, jumping dog, and even the flight of birds—
picturing what would seem anatomical impossibilities. What a
chance for the “snap-shot” camera in this rapid manceuvre of the
grouse! I am not aware that the bird will drum in captivity.
Who, then, among our amateurs with the camera will pit his wits
against the shy mysterious drummer in his own haunts, and bring
away his secret in the unimpeachable photograph? Why not an
artful screen, fortified with camera, by the side of that favorite
“drumming-log”? Such has been a long-brooding plan of mine,
but as yet unfulfilled.

Whatever the final verdict shall be, the writer is serenely con-
fident that if this muffled roll of the grouse demands anything
beyond the atmosphere as its drum, it will prove to be chanti-
cleer who gives the key-note to his gallinaceous tribe as he “claps

!
BIRD NOTES. 87

his wings at dawn.” Yet here again, what wonder that the elu-
sive whir of the partridge should have defied analysis, when no
less an authority than the peerless Audubon himself was deceived
even in the moderate performance of the clumsy rooster—or can
it be that all the rest of us are blind?—for does he not tell us
that the grouse “beats his szdes after the manner of the domestic
cock”? J recall also the parallel lines from the “ Summer-day ”
of Hume, where the “crested bird” is again misrepresented:

“With gilded eyes and open wings,
The cock his courage shows ;
With claps of joy his breast he dings,
And twenty times he crows.”

This will be news to many a country boy who knows the clumsy
antics of his pet “ Shanghai.”

We all know the “drummer”; many of us have heard the ;
“drumming,” but who will show us the drum ?

 
“O Birds, your perfect virtues bring,
Your song, your forms, your rhythmic flight,
Your manners for the heart's delight,
Nestle in hedge, or barn, or roof.

Here weave your chamber weather proof ;
Forgive our harms, and condescend
To man, as to a lubber friend,

yAnd, generous, teach his awkward race

Courage, and probity, and grace!’
EMERSON.
if

2

w
=

 
‘“Of birdes nests,
Ye sowrce of all thir armonte.”
   
   

   
   

HAT is but a
superficial stu-
Lica dent of ornithology who is
: ee content to know his birds by
‘x the mere specific characters of
' anatomy, plumage, and egg; who |
shoots his bird, and names the
dead body afterwards by the analytical key—a songless orni-
thology. Even though he shall name his specimen at a glance—
Latin tag and all—he may yet have less orxzthology in his soul
than his unlettered country cousin—the old miller, perhaps, who
will tell us that “the hang-bird has been there on such a morn-
ing, unravelling his bagging or stealing his tie string;” who will
point out to us “the teeter-bird that picks the water-bugs from
the wet stones for his long-legged fuzzy young uns;” or the “lit-
tle brown chap with speckled breast that builds a nest jest like

 
 
  
   

~
92 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

an oven, year after year, down yonder among the weeds below
the mill, and calls ‘gueeche, gueeche’ every time I look out of the
window.” Does he not £zow his birds, even though he might
fail to identify their skins?
Even the amusing testimony of the savants of the French
Academy who presented to Cuvier for identification a descrip-
tion of a certain “red fish that walked backward” is not with-
out its distinct value. “Of course,” replied the naturalist instant-
, ly, “you mean a crab, though it is not a fish, neither is it red,
nor does it walk backward.” The learned tyro would at least
show his “fish” where he found it in its native element, and
though his vision appears to have been somewhat askew, his was
a worthier aim and attitude than the other extreme of exact sci-
_vence which has to do merely with museum specimens, with a
ready list of synonyms in place of an inspiring reminiscence, with

‘wire and tow as a substitute for animation and song. “A bird
in the hand is worth two in the bush” is a pagan motto for the
ornithologist. ‘The bird is not in its ounces and inches,” says

Emerson, “but in its relations to nature; and the skin or skele-
ton you show me is no more a heron than a heap of ashes into
which his body has been reduced is Dante or Washington.”
The true ornithologist knows his bird in the bush before he
converts it into a specimen; and to truly know his bird in its
bush he must have been admitted to its home. Neither the
color of the plumage nor the shape and decoration of its egg,
while so essential in the scientific classification of the bird, are
‘any index to its conscious being—the true bird. Bobolink doffs
,his white cap, not from desire or volition, but because he can’t
help it. These functions are fulfilled in spite of the bird and
are beyond his control, while even the finer attributes of hab-
its and song may be said to be scarcely less spontaneous and
automatic.

Not so the nest—the home, the cradle. In these exquisite
fabrics, materializations of the supreme aspirations in the life of
the bird, we have at once a key to its mind, an epitome of its
loves, its hope, solicitude, providence, its individuality, its energy,
BIRD CRADLES. 93

caution, intelligence, reason and
economy, discrimination, taste,
fancy, even its caprice and
whim, almost of its humor.

In their arts we may learn

 
 
 
 
   
    
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 

something of their mental re-
sources, even as the antiquary dis-
covers in the remnant decorated rel-
ics of an extinct people testimonies not
disclosed by the mummy. To know
the nidification and nest life of a bird
is to get the cream of its history,
We may snap our fingers at vocab-
ularies and synonyms.

Even an empty nest is still elo-
quent with interest. A few of them
have been gathered about me as I
write; and how beautiful they are!
Here is one picked up at random. Not
a rare specimen from the tropics, but
an every-day affair of our country
walks. What an interesting study
of ways and means and confident
skill! Hung by its edge from
a horizontal fork of a maple
twig, with a third of its cir-
cumference unsupported, it
is yet so boldly wrought
that this very span shall
serve as the perch of the parent
bird. Its edge is plainly com-
pressed, though barely depressed,
by evident continual use, and con-
sidering the nature of the materials
at this portion its stability was perfectly = [fs ”
insured. What nice discrimination in the
94 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

choice of strands by which the nest is anchored to the swinging
, bough, its support being almost entirely dependent upon a cer-
tain brown silk from the cocoon spider (Argzope Riparia).

Often in my rambles have I pulled this floss from its round

'tough cocoon suspended among the weeds, and wondered wheth-

er the arts might not yet prove its utility! And here it is, ad-
justed with artful design just where its need is most apparent
and its strength recommends it, lapping and overlapping the
forks, and extending across the span from twig to twig, where it
is interwoven and twisted with strong strips of bark and long
wisps from the stalk of the milk-weed or similar hempen sub-
stance. The economy of this spider silk is manifest in all the
five nests of this kind which are before me, and while it appears
occasionally lower down in the structure, these outcroppings
prove to be only the ends of the loops which encompass the
twig and are securely anchored among the interwoven meshes
of the fabric. The reliance of the bird on the strength of this
material would seem perfectly plain, for in the nests wherein it is
largely employed much fewer strands of bark are passed about
"the twigs than when the inferior white cobweb is used at this
point of support—a fact which I have often noticed.

The cobweb element forms an important amalgam in the
nests of all the vireos, of which the above will be recognized as a
specimen. Laid on in snowy tufts, or artfully twisted into fine
threads—I cannot believe this twisting to be accidental—meshed
about the basket framework or drawn across some precious bit of
hornet’s nest or glistening yellow birch-bark or newspaper clip-
ping, or hung below in fluffy tassels, it is a recognized badge of
this particular tribe of feathered architects, whose pendent nests
are among the most picturesque of all our birds. The hereditary
art of nidification of the vireos has probably suffered little change
through the ages. As a rule their nests, unlike those of other
pensile builders, are wrought from Nature’s own raw materials,
and, even as we generally find them, might have been constructed
a thousand miles from the haunts of man or a thousand years
ago. And yet, in one particular respect, it must be admitted, the
BIRD CRADLES. 95

nest often betrays the degenerating human contact. It is an ad-
mitted fact that many of the vireos manifest a strange fascination
for the newspaper, fragments of which are often a conspicuous
contamination in their motley fabrics, composed most commonly
of generous strips of white and yellow birch, hornet’s nest, dried
leaves, grape-vine bark, asclepias hemp, bits of wood and pith,
and various other ingredients.

It was this well-known propensity of the bird that won it the
name of “the Politician” from an ornithological friend of Wil-
son; an appellation especially given to the white-eyed vireo, al-
though from my experience the others are equally deserving of
the soft impeachment.

How often have I paused in the woods to study the strange
ingredients of these vireos’ nests, of which I have dissected at
least a hundred, in many of which the newspaper had formed an
element. And why is it that I am always led with such eager
quest—yes, even at the risk of life and limb on one occasion —to
scan these ragged, weather-beaten fragments of print, as though
consulting the oracle! ’Tis true they usually disclose but little
intrinsic reason for their conspicuous preferment, though I do re-
member one or two exceptional instances; once in my boyhood,
when I enjoyed a great laugh at the disclosures of one such lit-
erary fragment, the precise nature of which has escaped me, save
that it was an advertisement having a comical relation to the
bird world. But my memory is distinct of having brought the
editorial selection home in my pocket, where it was subsequently
forgotten and reduced to pi among the jack-knives, buttons, jack-
stones, and other usual concomitants of the small boy’s outfit.
The nest I well remember. It was suspended in a small thicket
and variously supported by the bend of a bramble and stalks of
hardhack and meadow-rue. I did not see the birds, as the nest
was abandoned, and though not a typical vireo’s nest, it was so
conspicuously decked out with editorials and advertisements that,
out of respect to Wilson, I was constrained to accept it as a bad
case of “the Politician.” ‘

It has remained for the red-eyed vireo, however, to reward my
96 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

j curious pains for enlightenment as to the
editorial discrimination of these nests,
and considering the popular name
which Wilson Flagg has bestowed
upon the bird, “the Preacher,”
from its well-known habit of
launching precepts by the hour
from its tree-top pulpit—the
text from my nest would cer-
tainly seem to reinforce his
happy title. In this nest are
about six pieces of newspaper,
of various jagged shapes and
sizes; but among them all
the only complete sen-
tence anywhere to be
discovered in the print
—and this appearing as
though obviously treas-
ured—is the follow-
ing: “Have im view
the will of God.”
And yet I
suppose there
are those who
would affirm that
this selection was a
matter in which the voli-
tion of the bird had no part
whatever !
‘ It has always been a
favorite pastime with me,
in my autumn walks, this
dissecting of abandoned nests of all kinds, then disclosed to view
in the denuded woods—this unravelling of the warp and woof
of these nature-woven fabrics, extracting the secrets of the downy

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

    
    

:
ates

  
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
  
BIRD CRADLES. 97

bed of warblers, analyzing the queer components in the hollow of
a stump, picking apart the felted masses in deserted woodpeckers’
dens, since plainly occupied by chickadee, creeper, bluebird, nut-
hatch, or crested flycatcher, and disclosing by the aid of a mag-
nifier a wide variety of curious textile elements. How endless
and whimsical the choice of building materials for which Nature
has been laid in tribute by the bird, from the tree-top cradles of
the orioles to the soft feather-beds of the wrens, the curled-hair
mattress of the chipping-sparrow, the basket cribs of the starlings
among the rushes, the mossy snuggeries of the oven-bird, and the
adobe of swallow, phoebe, and robin, with their various preferences
of pine-roots, bark, strings, feathers, hornet’s nest, caterpillar hairs,
wool, skeletonized leaves, cobwebs, spider-egg tufts, fur of various
animals, pappus of seeds of all sorts—dandelion, thistle, cat-tail
willow — gleaned from the thickets, the trees, the air, the barn-
yard, the stable, the poultry-yard, even from your vestibule door-
mat or window-sill.

The individual preferences of a few of our more common
birds afford a number of interesting facts. “When I want a
horse-hair for my compass-sight,” says Thoreau, “I must go to
the stable; but the hair-bird, with her sharp eyes, goes to the
road.” The nest of the chipping-sparrow is commonly lined
with horse-hair, a fact which has won the name of hair-bird to the
species; although several others of the sparrows, notably the field-
sparrow and song-sparrow, are equally partial to this particular
carpet for their nursery. Burroughs recounts the bold incident
of a sparrow picking a hair from the body of a horse. Who ever
sees a coon-hair in the woods? And yet here is the solitary
vireo that gleans in the crafty trail of that animal, through fern
and brier and hollow logs, and rarely fails to feather her nest
with the soft fur. What is the secret of this peculiar preference?
In the wilder regions of the country the hair of the deer is also
said to be a common substitute or accompaniment. Certain ob-
servers claim that the red-eyed vireo has an occasional fancy
for squirrel-hair, which is sometimes found in considerable quan-
tities in its nest. I have found what I have assumed to be the

13
98 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

      

abandoned nest of the
solitary vireo, distin-
guished mainly from
the others by the
hairy lining and the employment of moss
and lichen within the interior; one nest
being plentifully lined with sheep wool from
a neighboring pasture. The snow-bunting would be at a loss in
its boreal nest without the fur of the arctic fox. Various of these
cradle-building ingredients readily recommend their utility in the
qualities of strength, phability, warmth, etc., while others again
are only to be accounted for on the hypothesis of the passing
whim or humor of the builder. Twigs, strips of tough bark,
string, wiry roots, grass, spider silk, cocoons, vegetable strands
of one kind and another, all appeal to our sense of the fitness of
things, but what special advantage is indicated in the following
instances of caprice? Here is the worm-eating warbler, for in-
stance, whose nest is seldom free from dried hickory and chestnut
BIRD CRADLES. 99

catkins. The oven-bird’s hut is generally intermeshed with fruit-
ing stems of urn moss, with their dried spore-caps. The Nash-
ville warbler is partial to a mesh of pine needles'and horse-hair;
while the purple finch considers hog-bristles and horse-hair a
more suitable compound. The Kentucky warbler, and various
other warblers, show a preference for the pith of weeds. Per-
haps the prairie warbler has discovered some rare virtue in cast-
off caterpillar skins that ordinary humanity cannot guess, its nest,
I am told, usually showing a penchant towards this singular in-
gredient.

But this bird is not alone in this odd choice, of which others
of the warblers and the vireos occasionally avail themselves. In
addition to spider silk, and cocoon silk, I have discovered evi-
dences that the web-tent of the apple-tree caterpillar is occasion-
ally raided for material, having identified numbers of the cater-
pillar skins among the web meshes of the vireos and redstart.
The oriole visits the web-nest too, but on a different errand for
her cradle. I once observed one of these birds mysteriously pry-
ing about one of these tents. It left me hardly time to guess its
object, but quickly thrust its head through the silken walls and
took its pick of the fattest caterpillars in the squirming interior,
carrying them to what it evidently considered as more appropri-
ate surroundings in the hang-nest above. I once found a nest
of the red-eye which exhibited a marked entomological preference,
being composed largely of the hairy cocoons of the small tussock-
moth, and conspicuously decorated with a hundred or more of the
black skins of the aztzopa caterpillar, of all ages. What a singu-
lar waste of energy one would naturally think was here revealed
in the search for a material which at best must be a rare in-
gredient in the wild gleaning. But the inference does injustice
to the bird’s intelligence. Assuming that there is an advantage
in the material, and granting the bird even a school-boy’s knowl-
edge of the habits of a conspicuous insect, few substances could
be acquired at a less expense of time than these withered skins;
for the caterpillars of the azt:ofa live in swarms of hundreds,
sometimes of thousands, in the elms and swamp-willows, and
100 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

leave their black, spiny, cast-off skins —of all their five periodic
moults—attached to the denuded branches upon which the larvee
have fed.

In another amusing specimen I found a large piece of hor-
net’s nest, four inches broad, arranged as a pendant, and dangling
from this a string of brilliants that glittered like emeralds, and
which proved to be three dead blue-bottle flies entangled in spider
silk. Whether or not the bird had appreciated the
especial attractions of some particular remnant of
cobweb thus en- %@~ kes riched, or had deliberately ad-
5 fi so yy
justed the flies by “, way of ornament, I could not
determine. But it is undeniable that a similar
decorative sense is frequently displayed in their

  
  
   
  
   
  
  

nests, certain rare treasures being held in Be oe
reserve for finishing touches of adornment,
even as I once. actually witnessed the careful adjustment of a
bright green iridescent feather of a peacock beneath a pendent
nest in a rose-bush just outside the closed blinds of my room.
What twitterings of congratulation, mutual suggestion, and expert-
mental touches ere the dainty prize found its final setting!

In the same bush I discovered, later, a small narrow wisp of
lace, abandoned to the antagonism of the thorns, though not
BIRD CRADLES. IOI

without obvious evidences of struggle and disappointment—fresh
commentary on a well known text in proverbial philosophy.

There is obvious wisdom in the use of cocoons and hornets’
nests,so much sought after by pensile builders—compact, tough
fabrics in themselves, they are naturally chosen for their strength.
But it is not easy to explain, on any grounds of utility, the un-
canny discrimination of the great crested flycatcher, whose nest
in the hollow tree would seem to demand no thought for other
qualities than softness and warmth. Once, in my boyhood, while
investigating the fascinating hollow in an old willow-tree, where
I had once surprised a day-dozing owl, I found the familiar
matted felt at the bottom largely intermixed with fragments of
snake-skin. Knowing the habits of snakes in the casting of
their skins, having once or twice found them in the grass, I fell
to wondering whether it could be a common practice of the
black snake or “racer” to climb a tree for the purpose of exu-
viation. Later on the mystery was solved, having learned in
my ornithology that the great crested flycatcher considered the
snake-skin the ze plus ultra of nest-linings. The nidification
of this bird usually takes place in the deserted retreat of the
woodpecker, and is seldom without its complement of one or
more snake-skins, which are frequently interwoven in a bed of
hog-bristles and feathers, rather indicating a peculiar fancy for
CXxUVIE.

But here, again, who knows but what some stray vireo’s nest
—those catch-alls, samplers of nature’s nest-textiles— may not
have given the flycatcher the hint. I have a vireo’s nest in my
possession which is largely composed of snake-skins, and they. are
frequently thus found.

The purple finch, according to some authorities, is addicted
to a similar whim occasionally. Of course either of these excep-
tional cases may represent nothing more than a successful raid
on some abandoned nest of the flycatcher.

The toad is said to habitually swallow its cast-off skin, in
which case the red-eye must have once surprised him in the gas-
tronomic act, for in one of my analyses of these nests I discov-
102 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

ered an unmistakable fragment of

 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
  

one of these skins, tipped with its
tiny pellucid glove.

The winged seeds of plants are
a staple article in the harvest
for the nests. The great or-
der of Composite feathers the

A SNAKE-SKIN SPECIALIST.

cradles of thousands of our
birds, enveloping their egg-
treasures or fledglings in a
bed as soft as swan’s-down;
the plumy seeds of thistle, milk-weed, dandelion, and lettuce be-
ing probably the most favored.

Nuttall gives us a pretty picture of the home-building whims
of the yellow warbler

 

a prize for the cabinet truly!
“The nest 1s extremely neat and durable; the exterior 1s

formed of layers of silk-weed lint, glutinously though shghtly at-
tached to the supporting twig, mixed with some slender strips of

fine bark and pine leaves, and thickly bedded with the down of
BIRD CRADLES. 103

willows, the Nankeen wool of the Virginia cotton-grass (Evzopho-
rum Virginicum), the down of fine stalks, the hair of the downy
seeds of the button-wood (Pla¢anus), or the pappus of compound
flowers, and then lined either with fine bent grass (Agvrosétzs) or
down and horse-hair, and, rarely, with a few accidental feathers,”
presenting a fanciful bit of bird architecture as well as a keen
piece of analysis, in which the erudite botanist is as conspicuous
as the ornithologist.

One other “ yellow bird,” the goldfinch, builds a similarly ex-
quisite home, but reserves its nesting till a much later season
than most of our birds, a fact which has caused no little discus-
sion among naturalists; the commonly accepted, though hardly
satisfactory, theory having reference to a scarcity of the required
seed-food for the young during the vernal months. In a similar
vein of reasoning it might be claimed that the nesting was de-
ferred to await the ripening of certain favorite plumy seeds of
which the structure is usually composed. One theory is as good
as the other, for both are somewhat shattered by numerous in-
stances of nidification as early as the middle of May, in which
the nest is of course composed of seasonable downy elements;
for the willows and poplars then offer their silken tribute, and
the dandelion balls cloud the meadows.

For some years I was puzzled to account for a certain muti-
lation which I had often observed on the dandelion. As is well
known to some of my readers, the dandelion usually blooms three
consecutive days, after which the calyx finally closes about the
withered flower, and withdraws beneath the leaves. Here it re-
mains for a week or more, its stem gradually lengthening while
the seeds are maturing, until, on the fourteenth day from the
date of first flowering, the smoky ball expands. For some days
prior to this fulfilment the seeds are practically full-feathered, the
growing pappus having forced the withered petals from the tip
of the calyx. On several occasions I have observed the side of
their calyces torn asunder and the interior completely emptied of
its contents of a hundred or more winged seeds. I had attrib-
uted the theft to some whimsical caterpillar appetite, until one
104 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

day I surprised the true burglar in the act. I observed a small
black bird rummaging suspiciously in the grass, and suddenly
saw him fly to a branch near by with a tiny puff in his bill—a
downy tuft on one side and a bundle of seeds on the other—
the spot from which
he flew disclosing one
of the telltale rifled
calyces of the dande-
lion. The bird,

not immediately

 
  
  
 
   
 

identified, soon spread its name abroad
in the rosy gleam from its fan-shaped tail
—the redstart. I subsequently discovered
the nest in a low-hanging fork of an apple-
tree, and a dainty structure it was, exquisitely

adorned with gray moss and skeleton leaves, and in this case
showing an unusual preference for dandelion seeds, with which
its soft bulk was well felted. Inasmuch as there were thousands
of the dandelion balls opening every sunny day this feat of for-
age was not one of anticipation of a natural harvest; rather a
question of economy of labor—a whole dandelion ball at one
compact pinch. be
Wilson gives the nest material of the yellow warbler as “silk-
weed floss and willow cotton,” which present a singular incongru-
ity as to chronology, the willow cotton being a buoyant feature
of the May breeze, while the asclepias does not take wing until
late August and September, the silky seeds of the previous year
being then of course obliterated. Is it possible that the warbler,
like the redstart, may anticipate the bursting pod by an occasional
burglary, assisted, perhaps, by those hairy caterpillars which so
BIRD CRADLES. 105

often lay bare the interior? How else the bird could procure the
material is a mystery.

The “cat-tail” offers an inexhaustible store of down to the
later nest-builders. Packed with incredible compactness in its
cylindrical equilibrium, when once ruptured—the keystone among
the feathered seeds once removed, as it were—what a revelation!
The magician’s inexhaustible hat is not a cir-
cumstance to it. Rolling out in fluffy masses,
a very effervescence of down, which seems to
multiply to infinity even after launching in
the air. Unless my estimate of bird-wisdom
is much overwrought, it finds its way into
many a warm nest, even though gleaned from
the last year’s stalks.

But it is not alone to the soft seeds of
plants that the nests are indebted for their
downy lining. If the home of the yellow
| warbler is a chef a’ euvre
PEN!

Seige

    
 
    

      

f what shall be said of this,

   
 
  

the work of the small
blue-gray gnatcatcher,
one of the most refined
art treasures among our
native nests? It is usu-
ally hung among the twigs
of a tree, somewhat like that
of a vireo, though sometimes placed Ye

on a branch. The body of the

nest is closely felted together with THE DANDELION MYSTERY SOLVED,

14
106 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

the softest materials of the forest, bud scales, dried blossoms, veg-
etable downs, and the delicate cottony substance which envelops
the unfolding fronds of fern, with flexible skeletons of leaves as
an external framework. The rim of the nest is generally con-
tracted. But the most marked feature of the structure is its or-
namentation; the whole exterior being closely thatched with small,
brightly colored, greenish-gray lichen.

The woolly, unrolling fronds of many of our ferns are a famil-
iar feature of the spring woods, and offer at this season, and
later, from the mature stems, a tempting crop to a number of our
more diminutive birds, including the various warblers, the black
and white creeper, and humming-bird, etc.

This exquisitely soft, buff-colored material, for convenience
called “fern-cotton,” however, is not all from the ferns. A close
analysis with the magnifier discloses a diversity of elements.
Some of it has been sheared from the mullein. The woolly
bloom from young linden leaves and buds of white and red oak
have already been identified in the substance, the stems of ever-
lasting have furnished a generous share, and there are doubtless
elements from a hundred other sources best known to the birds.
Some of it, too, has already served in the winter snuggery of the
horse-chestnut bud beneath the varnished scales.

I once observed a tiny bird gleaning among the opening
leaves, now webbed and festooned with the liberated soft yellow
down, that most beautiful of all the spring’s revelations of burst-
ing buds, so aptly figured by Lowell in the provincial tongue of
Hosea Biglow:

“The gray hoss-chestnut’s leetle hands unfold
Softer’n a baby’s be at three days old.”

How irresistibly does this recall that companion couplet in the
“ Pastoral line” from the same memorable paragraph, so true to
the spirit of the vernal season:

“Tn ellum shrouds the flashin’ hang-bird clings
An’ for the summer vy’ge his hammock slings.”
BIRD CRADLES. 107

For the skilful nests of the vireos have yet their matchless
pattern in the work of that prince of weavers, the “hang-bird,”
or Baltimore oriole, whose swinging, pendulous nest is a master-
piece, not only of textile art, but equally of constructive skill,
whether from an engineering or architectural point of view. What
sagacious perception of means and intelligent discrimination in
their employment are here disclosed! The trite maxim
that “the strength of a chain is only that of its weakest

link” would
seem, on a su-
perficial glance at
the nest, to be entire-
ly ignored by the ori-
ole, the attachment of
the nest often seem-
ing to exhibit a
daring dearth of
material and in
singular contrast
to the elaborate density of the weaving
below. A closer examination, however,
shows a most sagacious compensation in
the economy of this apparently weak
portion, for here it will be found in al-
most every instance the toughest fibre in
the entire nest has been concentrated, in most
cases that have come under my observation ;
and in three specimens now before me, consist-
ing of remnants of strings, fish-line, strips of cloth
securely twisted and looped around the forked
or drooping twigs, the loose ends below be-
ing intricately interwoven among the gray
hempen fibres of which the body of the
iP nest is composed, the whole structure
being literally sewed through and

\ FERN-WOOL GLEANERS. through with long horse-hairs.

  
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
ae

108 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

Remembering Wilson's investigations into the similarly com-
pact nest-fabric of the orchard oriole, from which he disentan-
gled a strand of grass only thirteen inches long, but which in
that distance was thirty-four times hooked through and returned
in the meshes, the relation of which fact led an old lady acquaint-
ance of his to ask whether “it would not be possible to teach the
birds to darn stockings,” I was led to test the darning skill of
the hang-bird which uses the horse-hair in true regulation style.
With much labor I succeeded in following a single hair through
fourteen passes from outside to interior in the length of about
ten inches, which I was then quite willing to assume as an aver-
age as to the total, which would doubtless have reached at least
thirty stitches. When this is multiplied by the hundreds of simi-
lar sinews with which the body of the nest is compacted some
idea may be formed of its strength.

Two types of the nest, both beautiful specimens, are now be-
fore me. One, a true example of the “hang-nest,” being sus-
pended from the tips of the Jong, drooping branches of an elm,
while the other, more ample, is hung from a horizontal fork of a
maple. It is larger at the mouth than the first, but, like it, is sus-
pended from stout strings, twisted round and round the twigs
and spanning the fork. For a long period the nature of this
peculiar gray hempen fibre which forms the bulk of the oriole’s
nest was a puzzle. And even now that the tough material has
been identified principally as the dred strips of the stalks of
common milk-weed, which Nuttall observed the bird to tear from
the plants “and hackle into flax,” I am not aware that the hint
of the oriole, as to its evident utility as a textile for the spinning-
wheel or loom, has ever been respected. A strip of this tough
dried bark, even when drawn firmly across the finger-nail, sepa-
rates into the finest of flax, almost reminiscent of the milk-weed
seed- floss in its white glossy sheen.

The oriole’s nests are not all made in the same mould nor of
the same material, but generally reflect the resources of the local-
ity in which they are built. There are numerous instances of
anomalous nests, in which the eager quest of the bird has been
BIRD CRADLES. 109

artfully humored by the housewife or the ornithological curio
hunter, resulting in works of questionable art sophisticated with
all manner of contaminations—rags and ribbons, tape and lamp-
wick, or perhaps patriotic pendants flying the national colors of
red, white, and blue in party-colored zones and strips of gaudy
flannel. In contrast to these I cannot but revert with relief to
that beautiful fancy which Chadwick has woven into one of these
beautiful nests, and in which the intertwined golden and silvery
locks of childhood and old age tell a pathetic story.

In one case at least the hint of the oriole would appear to
have been appreciated, his nest having first introduced to the
public the utility of the black flexible compound which is so
common an ingredient towards the centre of our costly “curled-
hair” mattresses.

During a recent Southern trip I noted one or two of these
pendulous mattresses of the oriole, their black color giving little
hint to the observer of the gray Southern moss of which they
are really constructed. In the Long Island Historical Rooms
there is a specimen of one of these Southern nests, fully eighteen
inches long, composed entirely of this glossy black fibre—a veri-
table piece of hair-cloth to all appearances, no single thread, I
believe, showing its familiar gray complexion, the entire material
having been presumably abstracted from the drying-poles of the
“moss gatherers,” beneath whose arts the Southern moss is con-
verted into “genuine curled hair” by the rotting and subsequent
removal of the gray covering, leaving only the black shiny core,
which is duly shipped and subsequently sold and “ warranted ” at
fifty cents a pound.

In strong contrast to the foregoing products of warp and
woof is the humbler art of the plastic builders—the adobe-dwell-
ers among our birds. Of such are the robin—true child of the
sod, with its domicile of mud and coarse grass—and the thrushes
generally, the phcebe, pewee, and the swallows. Solid and sub-
stantial fair-weather structures, they are yet far inferior in the
scale of architectural intelligence; for while in the textile nests
even a drenching rain serves but to amalgamate the mass, the

~

~
TIO SLARLIGHL AND SUNSHINE.

mud-builders are often at the mercy
7*< of the storm; a possible fate which
is not always anticipated in the se-
lection of a building site. In the
case of the swallow beneath the
eaves, and the phcebe under the
bridge, the home is safe, but the
robin occasionally pays a heavy
penalty for the daring exposure of

its nest, the fair structure of the
. sunshine literally melting away

 

      
 

 

 

in the rain. During the past wet sea-
son two such mishaps occurred upon
my lawn, the nests having disintegrated
and fallen in shapeless masses, scatter-
ing the egg contents upon the ground.
Recently I chanced upon another
reckless nest, that of the yellow-billed
cuckoo, or rain-crow, in the top of

an apple-tree —if, indeed, the loose

pile of sticks could be dignified by

the name of nest at all, being more
suggestive of a gridiron, through which
the outlines of the head and the lone
projecting tail of the bird were distinctly
perceptible against the sky. «As I climbed
BIRD CRADLES. I11

the tree the bird flew to the neighboring branches, uttering an
occasional hoarse croak in its familiar tone, obedient, as it were,
to a periodic pumping stroke of the long tail. I found the nest
occupied by a single fledgling, and was moved to congratulate
the remnant for having managed to reach his pin-feather days
without tumbling out of bed, which I fancied must have been
the fate of his presumably former bedfellows, for the edge of
the open pile of sticks was lower than the centre whereon he
rested.

Examples of this sort of nest-building are happily not com-
mon, and in the case of this bird, a near congener to the Euro-
pean cuckoo, though entirely without its parasitic habits, it would
seem to have a somewhat parallel sin of shiftlessness. In all the
four nests of this bird which I have found, this contributory neg-
ligence towards the destruction of its offspring has been manifest.
My fancy has sometimes suggested the query whether this may
not be an example of the process of evolution from a lower para-
sitical to a higher state, the dawning intelligence in the art of
nest-building.

The turtle-dove is accused of a like carelessness in the con-
struction of its nest. The nighthawk and the whippoorwill,
though building no nest at all, are more considerate of their
babes, at least assuring them against the fate of the cuckoo’s
brood by nesting on the ground.

Last summer I was favored with a rare neighbor in the shape
of a red-headed woodpecker, not a common visitant in Connecti-
cut, at least in the section familiar to me. Remembering that
this was the bird whose flashing plumage and flaming scarlet
head kindled the ornithological fervor of Wilson, which led to his
subsequent fame, my visitor came doubly recommended. The
nest was excavated on the underside of a large branch of an
apple-tree near the house; and even though naturally safe from
observation, the bird seemed little desirous of concealment, pirou-
etting about the elm trunk close by the window and speeding
like a rocket directly to its nest.

At first thought the peculiar conditions of the woodpecker’s
112 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

nest would appear to offer advantages of safety above those of
other birds, as in truth it does, being at least secure against the
hawks and owls and foxes. Yet it is by no means invulner-
able. The black snake has a well-known fancy for young wood-
peckers, and has often been surprised within the burrow, to the
horror of the small boy oologist, perhaps, who is thinking only of
the rare white eggs as he feels the depths of the hollow. The
birds are also an easy prey to the murderous red squirrel, one
of the archenemies of our nesting birds. Last year two of my
woodpecker fledglings fell his victims, and only a few weeks since
a whole family of flickers, which built in a large neighboring
maple, were wellnigh exterminated by the same brigand. Two
fully pinioned fledglings were found dead on the ground beneath
the hole, each with an ugly gash at the throat, and one of which
the squirrel was observed dragging by the head, while endeavor-
ing to ascend the trunk—treating birds like pine-cones—drop-
ping his cone first to enjoy it at his leisure. But one survivor
of the brood was seen later, and this doubtless followed the fate
of the others. The woodpeckers, in addition to serving their
own ends, are also pioneers for a number of smaller fry among
the birds, the deserted tunnels being in great demand for apart-
ments, and often a prize won only by supreme strategy or victory
among the bluebirds, nuthatches, creepers, wrens, and chickadees,
though the last has been known to excavate its own domicile.
Indeed, to the wren a hole of any kind possesses great attrac-
tions, “it will build in anything that has an accessible cavity,
'from an old boot to a bomb-shell,” says Burroughs. But whether
it be a palatial tin box, a post-hole, a tin oil-can, auger-hole,
| pump-spout, pocket of an old coat, wheel-hub, or tomato-can, the
interior is always brought to the same level of luxury in its copi-
ous feather- bed.

I remember once, in the days of my early ornithological fer-
vor, discovering a wren’s nest in a shallow knot-hole of an old
apple-tree. The bird scolded and sputtered at the entrance like
‘a typical setting hen, and even suffered herself to be poked from

' the hole; and if there be those who think that birds cannot swear,
BIRD CRADLES. 113

they should have witnessed the subsequent vocal exercises. The
feather-bed disclosed twelve pinkish eggs by actual count, for I
remember in humiliation my scandalous pride at having “eleven
duplicates for trade.”

There are a number of especially well-known favorites among
the nests which should be mentioned, either one of which is a
sufficient quest for a summer's walk.

There is the grass hammock
of the indigo-bird, so artfully
swung between two or
three upright branches
of weed; the skilfully
woven basket of the
red-wing blackbird
in the bog, either ss
meshed within its
tussock, twisted into
the button-bush, or
suspended among the
reeds. Then there are
the quaint covered nests
of the oven-bird at the
edge of the brook, the beehive of the
marsh-wren among the sedges, or the . 2;
Maryland yellow-throat in the swamp, and crt |
the rare snuggeries of the golden-crested
wren and blue, yellow-backed warbler—the
former a tiny hermitage, built on the
branch of an evergreen, composed of moss and lichen, with only
a small hole left for entrance, and the interior lined with down;
the latter a dainty den, constructed, according to Samuels, of the
“long gray Spanish moss (lichen?) so plentiful in the States of
Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The long hairs of the
moss are woven and twined together in a large mass, on one
side of which is the entrance to the nest—a mere hole in the
moss. The lining is nothing but the same material, only of finer

15

  
  
   
  
  
 
 
 

TO FEATHER THE NEST,
114 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

quality.” I have seen but two specimens of this nest—one com-
posed entirely of the long gray lichen which beards the patri-
archal trees of our Northern forests, and the other of a shorter
species found on fences and rocks.

The nest of the blue-winged yellow warbler is really worth
a search. Few of our ornithologists have found it. According
to Wilson, it is usually placed in a bunch or tussock of long
grass, and is in the form of an inverted cone or funnel, the bot-
tom thickly bedded with dry beech-leaves, the sides formed of
the dry bark of strong weeds, lined with fine dry grass. These
materials are not placed in the usual manner, circularly, but shelv-
ing downward on all sides from the top, the mouth being wide,
the bottom very narrow and filled with leaves.

Nor must I forget to mention that curious and anomalous
three, four, and once, I believe, five-storied nest which has occa-
sionally rewarded the search of the persevering oologist—a novel
piece of architectural art—a monument, as it were, to the intelli-
gence and indefatigable pluck of the yellow warbler in overtop-
ping the wit of the parasitic cow-bird, each story of the curious
domicile being erected over the insinuated portentous egg, and
sufficiently separated therefrom to insure against its incubation,
when the builder shall at last have exhausted her adversary’s re-
sources and nestled in peace on the summit of her lofty pile, an
apt if facetious embodiment of “ Patience on a monument.”

We have already alluded in superlative terms to the nest of
the blue-gray gnatcatcher, but even that artistic production must
yield to its easy rival and model of the humming-bird, in truth
ithe prize among all our nests. Well does the ruby-throat deserve
‘the medal which he wears upon his breast. From picture or
cabinet specimens this beautiful mimetic structure saddled on its
branch is familiar to most of my readers, few of whom, I am
sure, will ever have disclosed it in its haunts, even though the
eye may have rested on it a dozen times. The construction of
this nest, barely an inch and a half in diameter, is well described
by Wilson: “The outward coat is formed of small pieces of bluish-
gray lichen, that vegetates on old trees and fences, thickly glued
BIRD CRADLES. II5

on with the saliva of the bird, giving firmness and consistency
to the whole as well as keeping out moisture. Within this are
thick matted layers of the fine wings of certain flying seeds,
closely laid together; and lastly the downy substance from the
great mullein and from the stalks of fern lines the whole. The
base of the nest is continued around the branch, to which it
closely adheres; and when viewed from below appears a mere
mossy knot or accidental protuberance.”

I have found but two in my lifetime, but am confident that a
systematic search among the orchards in the glittering trail of
the bird as he leaves the trumpet blossoms would reveal one or
two more. For there is a strange inconsistency in the bird,
which, in spite of its secretive art work, does not hesitate to re-
veal it by her telltale actions, hovering about an intruder’s head
like a sphinx-moth in the twilight, and, far from decoying one’s
attention away from her treasure, like other birds, deliberately
settling herself thereon in preference to alighting elsewhere—a
conscious jewel that would seem to know its most appropriate
setting.

The United States is favored with but a dozen species of the
humming-bird, only one of which is found east of the plains.
But what glints and gleams and scintillations and spangles among
the flowery tropics! where the hundreds of species of these sun-
gems sport among their suggestive legion of companion orchids,
each feathery atom with its especial whim of nest, here suspended
among slender grasses, there hung upon a tendril or poised upon
a leaf, or perhaps glued flat upon its swinging, drooping tip. But
there is a choice even among diamonds, and it may be doubted
whether even the famed tropics afford a more unique example of
artistic refinement than this of our native Western humming-bird,
described by Dr. Brewer, a species only recently discovered by
Mr. Allen, whose name it bears.

“ This nest is of a delicate cup-shape, and is made of the most
slender branches of the hypnum mosses, each stem bound to the
other and all firmly tied into one compact and perfect whole by
interweavings of silky webs of spiders. Within it is finely and
116 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

softly lined with silky vegetable down. Even in the drawer of a
cabinet, without its living natural framework, it is a perfect little
gem in beauty. What, then, must it have been in its original
position, with the graceful, waving leaf of the maiden-hair fern for
its appropriate and natural setting. It was fastened to the fern
not two feet above the ground, and to this frail support it was
secured by threads of spider-webs so slender as to be hardly
visible.” +

We know not what other nest-treasures yet await us in the
woods. There are many rare finds yet in store for the ornithol-
ogist in the long list of bird-species, well known by their skins,
and even by their songs, but whose nidification is wrapped in
mystery—dozens of the warblers, sparrows, flycatchers, and vireos,
and others yet awaiting their true historian.

 
 
‘*Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly,
but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond
her. To look at her is as fatal as to look at the head of Medusa—uit
turns the man of Science to stone.”

THOREAU.
 
   
 
 
 
  
   
 

 
 

PREHISTORIC
BOTANISTS

MONG my earliest memories associ-

ated with nature, and one that will
always vividly linger, is that thrilling
spectacle of a winter butterfly hovering about
the farm-yard of my New England home. It
was the middle of January, one of those balmy
days of respite from the north wind, when the

careful alder catkins are beguiled, and the

puss-willow’s paws first peep from beneath

their snuggeries. The odors of wet twigs
and sweet sap and soggy snow, tinctured with
the wine of quickened loam, saturated the air.
The patches of thawing drifts lay like mimic gla-
ciers amid their melting areas on the barn and
120 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

barrack roofs, slowly stealing down the shingle or hovering in
impending avalanche at the dripping eaves. High on the ridge-
pole of the barn my butterfly first disclosed itself, now flutter-
ing against the sky, now alighting with expanded, gently moving
wings, sipping at the steamy edge of the snow, or sailing across
its white field. How I sighed to bag the prize! What yearn-
ings and heart-throbs, wondrous stratagems of allurement, and
superhuman schemes of capture! what hopes and fears animated
my demoralized being as I watched the sportive antics of the
sprite, as in turn it circled close to the eaves among the swallow-
nests or disappeared behind the peak or gable! What a marvel-
lous account of this strange visitor could I have given had not
prosaic fortune at last permitted its identification !

An event like this is a perpetual spring to the spirit. How
often through the years have I drank therefrom and been re-
freshed! But in my present mood the incident recurs with a new
significance. That enrapturing butterfly happily is still free, but
a similar one since captured proved to be a species familiar in my
cabinet — the aztiopa, the same that fluttered among the winter
mosses of the “Old Manse” of Hawthorne. ‘“ Rare butterflies,”
he writes, “came before the snow was off, flaunting in the chill
breeze and looking forlorn and all astray, in spite of all the mag-
nificence of their dark velvet cloaks with golden borders.” In
this “lone butterfly” of the winter sun, as Wilson mistakenly
calls it, we have a representative of a small family of beautiful
insects for which the cold has no terrors; for it is not true, as
the poet of “the butterfly” would have us believe, that

“‘each gay little rover
Shrinks from the breath of the first autumn day” ;

nor, as Shakespeare implied in the lines—

“Men, like butterflies,
Show not their mealy wings but to the summer”;
PREHISTORIC BOTANISTS. 121

for though upon the approach of the blighting frosts one by one
“the painted meadow tribes” have succumbed and fallen, the
antiopa has scarcely lost a feather from its wing or a buoyant
plume from its sunny spirit.

In the bare woods of November he sails across your path, or
challenges your curious zeal as he merges into rock or tree, extin-
guished amid his own folded wings. Upon the pungent pile of
pomace at the cider- mill he suns himself in questionable content
as his wings

““Expand and shut in silent ecstasy,”

joined by a bibulous, convivial company, not only painted like
himself, but dressed in gayer plumage, though all close akin. The
Milbert’s butterfly is here, also the Atlanta, the Comma, perhaps
the White J, and the Progne—for this is a family party, in the
enjoyment of a seemingly common inherited proclivity. Who has
not seen that deep orange-red sylph with jagged, spotted wings,
like a bright, lingering leaf in an autumn eddy, circling about
one’s progress through the denuded woods, tempting one’s heed-
less foot in the orchard path, or alighting on the fence, head
downward, with alert wings out-spread?

The winnowing process of the cold has left but these few con-
spicuous remnants, all members of the same interesting group, the
Angle-wings, boreal butterflies, the hardy Alpine species of our
Lepidoptera, if I may so speak, for these butterflies are Alpine
in a larger sense than mere hardihood. While most of our com-
mon kinds are peculiar to our continent, these late survivors of
the winter, hibernating in crevices and crannies during the cold-
est periods, and taking the slightest hint of genial moderation
to lend their animated being to the dormant landscape, are in
truth cosmopolitan types; the Painted Lady (and Comma?) is
found in northern Europe; the Atlanta is common in Europe,
Africa, and the East Indies; while the azfopa, the prominent
member of the group, is an almost world-wide denizen—at home
in arctic snows, omnipresent from Alaska to Brazil, and from

Lapland to northern Africa.
16
122 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

It was doubtless the spell of one of these butterflies that crys-
tallized the arctic simile of Wordsworth:

““T’ve watched you now a full half-hour
Self - poised upon that yellow flower;
And, little butterfly, indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed.

How motionless !—not frozen seas
More motionless ”’;

and quickened the insight of Joachim Miller:

“Gold-barred butterflies, to and fro
And over the water-side wandered and wove,
As heedless and idle as clouds that rove
And drift by the peaks of perpetual snow”;

for are these Alpine similes not truly prophesied in the nether
mirror of these folded wings, with their bordering aiguilles, their
verdant zone beneath their peaked borders, their merging veins
lof mimic glacial streams and isolated patch of silver, like the
, tiny lingering remnant of an avalanche in a vast field of striate
granite? All these wondrous hieroglyphs are here apparent to
the inward eye, though only revealed to mine, as I have said, as
though: in a mirror, from this storied wing of a butterfly, the
“Comma,” captured by my own hand on the ice midway in the
Mer de Glace of Switzerland. “Every object rightly seen un-
locks a new faculty of soul,” says Emerson; and while I would
make no claim, even as the humblest interpreter of the infinite
design throughout nature—where, as Lubbock believes, from the
irresistible force of a long array of facts, *not a hair or line or
‘a spot of color is without a reason, or has not a purpose or a
meaning,” every touch of the Infinite Creator the symbol of a
‘ thought and purpose—I may at least offer the tribute of a beau-
tiful simile which came, not as a guess at truth, but as a swift
! revelation from the painted wing which I had seen before a hun-
dred times, a mere gray specimen in my scientific cabinet. Shall
PREHISTORIC BOTANISTS. 123

I ever again look upon the folded wings of the Progne or Faunus
butterfly without a consciousness that I now see “through and
beyond” where before I had only looked upon its scales?

Not the least among the pleasant episodes of a recent Euro-
pean trip was the continual recurrence of this familiar compan-
ion, the azézopa. In the lanes of Cheshire—though I learn the
insect is here a rare visitor—I was fortunate enough to find him;
among the dikes of Holland I saw him, and even among the
mountain crags of Switzerland, hovering high aloft in buoyant
flight above the sea of ice, as though with heart set upon the
cloud-veiled pinnacle. How irresistibly,-then, do I return to my
introductory picture of the snow upon the shingles! What remi-
niscent innate dreams of eons past were compassed in the flight
of that brown sylph above the mimic glacial fields upon the roof!
—for the aztzopa of to-day but links the present with the prime-
val past. Then, as now, our Angle-wings revelled in the boreal
clime, hibernating in rocky fissures, and sipping the sweets from
the fringe of blossoms at the skirts of the glacial fields, its pres-
ent welcome for the cold being but an inheritance from its sturdy
ancestry.

It has long been my intention to gather together my obser-
vations touching a certain phase of insect life of singular inter-
est, and one not sufficiently dwelt upon, it seems to me, in the
literature of natural history. I refer to the strange innate bo-
tanical instinct possessed by a large number of insects, notably
of the lepidopterous tribe, which, with the exception of the bees,
are most intimately associated with the floral kingdom. For the
“idle butterfly” of the poet—

“The sportive rover of the meadows, \
Kissing all buds that are pretty and sweet,”

the universal type of dole far nzente—under the guide of en-
lightened science now rebukes the heedless estimate of the past,
proving its buoyant rounds to have been directed by a divine
purpose, concerned in the perpetuation of many of the very
r24 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

flowers which through the centuries had served the bard merely
as a pretty background to its quivering poise. As the lover and
companion of flowers, then, the butterfly is thus a botanist par
excellence, and as an ally of the Infinite, a botanist divine. But
it is not with either of these functions, so ably dwelt upon by
more learned pens than mine, that I am at present concerned.
In another more literal and prosaic, perhaps, but equally marvel-
lous resource — the scientific classification of species—the butter-
fly has proven a prehistoric antecedent to the fathers of botany,
and an oracle not sufficiently regarded in later times.

Botanical history is full of learned dissensions among the
wise heads upon the botanical affinities of this or that non-com-
mittal plant, whether it should be placed here or there among the
natural orders. How many a martyr blossom has served but as a
shuttlecock in the learned mé/ée, tossed back and forth for years
ere it found its final rest among its congenial kindred, while a
mere appeal to the butterfly might long ago have solved the
problem and brought immediate peace.

Unimaginable ages before Linnzeus, our prehistoric botanist
hovered around the blossoming moraines, singling out the affini-
ties of nettle and nettle, saxifrage and saxifrage, and linked them
all in its flight. What are my authorities, is it asked? Fancy
and inference—inference tested by analogy, analogy reinforced by
present facts, and, last, the absolute seal of authority everywhere
imprinted in the great book of stone—the witness of the fossil
wing and its companion tribes of extinct vegetation.

In the delicate intaglios of the shale and bibliolite, in the
bead of amber we may find a full text and epitome:

“IT saw a flie within a beade

' Of amber cleanly buried;

, The urne was little, but the room
More rich than Cleopatra’s tombe.”

|In the heart of this limpid shrine are entombed thousands of
species now extinct, while even the solid rock has divulged a
  

 

  
 
 
 

number of in-
taglios and ri-
levos so perfect
“@, as to reveal their
hi precise charac-

ters and permit
their easy classifi-
cation.

 
     
  

    
     
     
 

A glance at

  
126 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

quence of fossil insects with their companions of vegetation re-
veals many interesting and cumulative facts. In the Carbonifer-
ous period, as pictured in the coal, we find vegetation consisting
entirely of ferns, club-mosses, and “ horse-tail,” in luxuriant growth,
as well as the most primitive pines—the lowest in organization
among the true flowering plants. The companion insects were
of the dragon-fly, locust, and beetle tribes. Inasmuch as these
are insects that rarely frequent flowers, we find that the com-
panion plants are all flowerless genera, that require no insect aid
for perpetuation, or of trees whose existing counterparts—white
pine and spruce, etc.—even to-day ignore the existence of in-
sects, and depend wholly upon the wind in the scattering of their
pollen and consequent perpetuation.

The Reptilian age, which followed after the annihilation of all
preceding species, we find ushered in by a luxuriant growth of
seemingly freshly created types of the previous mentioned tribe
of plants, followed in the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous pe-
riods by the successive multiplication of Palms and Cycads—
wind fertilized plants again—succeeded at last by a countless
host of blossoming trees and flowery fragrant vegetation: oaks
and willows, beech, alder, tulip-tree and blossoming herbs and
shrubs, accompanied by a myrmidon representation of all the
tribes of insects now known. In the light of modern scientific
revelation who shall question the analogy or significance of this
simultaneous creation, or that the prehistoric bee and butterfly
were called into being obedient to the same design which we see
them now fulfilling among the fragrant blossoms of our mead-
ows?—for fragrance had not been wasted on the desert air of
those earlier mesozoic times.

“Geologists inform us,” says Hugh Macmillan, “that all the
eras of the earth’s history previous to the upper miocene were
destitute of perfumes. It is only when we come to the periods
immediately antecedent to the human that we meet with an odor-
iferous flora.” An era of gladness in anticipation of the birth of
man.

In further reinforcement bearing upon the functions and an
PREHISTORIC BOTANISTS. 127

tiquity of my botanists, Macmillan records having seen several
butterflies of the beautiful Apollo species at home eight thousand
feet above the sea. Another traveller observed a butterfly hover-
ing high above him while on the summit of Mont Blanc. I my-
self saw several butterflies revelling among Alpine flowers at an
elevation of six thousand feet, to say nothing of the occasional
individuals which I observed floating far above me about the
crags. Willis chronicles the discovery of numerous specimens in
glacial ice fourteen thousand feet in altitude. Moreover, on the
summit of Flégére, six thousand feet, I found a large moth which
had just emerged from its chrysalis, affording conclusive proof
that its entire existence in the caterpillar state had been spent in
this Alpen clime.

That was rather a hap-hazard poet, therefore, who sang of his
delight to breathe the “iced air of the mountain-top’”—

“Where the birds dare not build, nor insect’s wing 1
Flit o’er the herbless granite.”

Indeed, these Alpen fastnesses have a beautiful sturdy flora and
fauna of their own, and are replete with life. The Asododendron
Nivale defies the elements upon its storm-beaten stronghold sev-
enteen thousand feet in altitude, two thousand feet higher than
the summit of Mont Blanc, and with its scarcely less doughty
companion, the “least willow,” are among the last plants with
woody stems which one will meet in the ascent of the Alpen
summits.

In the last named little shrub alone is furnished a fitting in-
dorsement to the claim of antiquity suggested by my title, and a
complete refutation also of the common belief concerning the ab-
sence of insect life on the loftiest Alpen summits, as this little
omnipresent herbaceous willow, barely three inches high, often in-
deed not more than an inch, still, with its ambitious show of honey-
baited blossoms, is absolutely dependent upon insect visits for its
perpetuation, the pollen-bearing flowers being on separate plants
from those which produce the seed. Miiller observed a small
128 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

moth acting as sponsor to these hardy blossoms. Need we doubt
that the ancestry of these tiny flowers saw the light obedient to
the same divine plan disclosed in the blossom of to-day, or that
the mission of their companion honey-sippers was ever else than
at present?

Is not the same conclusion equally irresistible with regard to
the other strange, present functions of the butterfly, which form
the subject of this paper and which I now illustrate—a function
which has presumably deteriorated rather than otherwise through
the ages.

Deep in the damp woods of late summer we shall often find a
constant presence flitting above the succulent herbage, alighting
;now here now there, its bright orange wings flashing in the sun-
beams, or gently fanning its own shadow as it rests upon some
tempting leaf or sprig. Observe its rounds carefully. Here is a
thick undergrowth of spikenard, ferns, bedstraw, colt’sfoot, rue,
bidens, ampelopsis, aster, wood-nettle, horse-balm, sunflower, and
an attendant host of plants. Our butterfly is now sunning its

‘damask feathers on the topmost leaf of yonder wood-nettle, now
creeping around its edge, and revealed only by the translucent
shadow responding to the gentle fanning motion of the wings.
In another moment we catch the fiery gleam in a sunbeam as
' the sylph again soars above the herbage to settle among. the tall
sunny leaves beyond; these also are nettles. Now it floats above
our heads and alights upon the pale green plant at our elbow;
and what is this? It is a wood-nettle. And thus it flits by the
| hour, draping the underwood in ethereal festoons from every net-
tle spray among the copse.

A closer scrutiny of these plants will throw a little light upon
this discriminating flight. The leaves are seen to be partially
devoured, and an occasional one appears to droop with an un-
natural attitude, a position readily explained when we discover
the angular pitch caused by the severing of the three promi-
nent veins close to the stem, the edges of the leaf being also
drawn together below. Upon plucking one of these leaves, and
looking beneath, we discover the curious recluse, at once explaining
PREHISTORIC BOTANISTS. 129

the artful tented leaf and the presence of the butterfly,
the gray spotted and spiny caterpillar of the Comma +
Angle-wing.
To be sure, it may be said that the nettle is not

a particularly difficult plant to distinguish. Indeed, old
Culpeper, the herbalist, assures us of
the fact that “it may be found even,
in the darkest night by simply feel-
ing for it.” But such hap-hazard bot-
any is not the necessary resource of
our butterfly. The discrimination

of a nettle, botanically consid-

ered, requires a much deeper
insight. How is this insight
possessed by the Comma?
Let us see. Yonder on the
stone wall a clambering
hop-vine would seem sy
to afford a tempting
sporting-ground for
a small brood of red
butterflies. On nearer
approach they prove to
be the Comma joined a,
by a few near relatives
equally interesting.
Here and there our
careful search dis-
closes a tented leaf
precisely similar to
those already described, ae
while beneath we may dis-
cover the same spiny tenant.
Continual search reveals a num-
ber of similar spiny caterpillars, though variously variegated, and
perhaps a gilded chrysalis or two among the stems and crevices

17

  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  

 
130 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE,

between the stones. Suppose we now transfer them all, perhaps
a hundred or more specimens, to our box, and await the transfor-
} mation from those pendent nymphs which soon will begem the
interior. After the lapse of a fortnight, upon opening the lid the
|! former sleepy hollow seems to have blossomed with painted wings.
Here shall we find our Comma by the dozens, and very likely,
too, counterparts of all the bright tribe which fluttered above the
vine upon the wall—Semicolon and White J. A bright orange
butterfly is now seen sunning itself upon the young elm-tree near
by. We capture the insect with our net, and find it identical
with the Semicolon in our box, while examination of the elm
leaves reveals not only the suggestive empty chrysalis shell, but
several thorny caterpillars beneath those well-known tented leaves.

If we care to continue our investigation among the herbage
we may discover these same caterpillars upon the little clear-
weed in the dank shade of the orchard, a succulent plant hardly
a foot high, the very opposite to a nettle in its glossy smoothness;
and also on the pellitory, a companion weed. Upon all of these
plants, in addition to the various nettles, I have found the insects,
and once on the hemp. I have also seen their deserted tents on
the paper-mulberry, an exotic tree, only sparingly cultivated, but a
careful search has failed to disclose the caterpillar on any other
plants. Entomologists say that they are also frequently found on
the Celtis, or sugar-berry tree. Here, then, we have the following
summary and completed list of plants upon which the eggs of the
butterfly have been laid: wood-nettle, great stinging nettle, and
all other nettles; false nettle, all the elms, clear-weed, pellitory,
hemp, paper-mulberry, and sugar-berry tree. What light does our
botany throw upon this list? Turning to “wood-nettle” we are
referred to Urdézcacez, or the “nettle family,” wherein are disclosed
all of the above species of plants, which actually complete the list
of genera and nearly all the native species of the order.

‘I am not informed whether this list is extended with the ad-
ditional species to be found in the remoter parts of our country,
but in the West and South I should confidently look for the cater-
pillar on the Osage orange, Planer-tree, and the fig, as it must
PREHISTORIC BOTANISTS. 131

most certainly also inhabit the mulberry. Have we not here a
prehistoric prophecy fulfilled in an immemorial, emphatic indorse-
ment of the recent classification of a difficult group of plants, con-
cerning which the botanical fathers were long at differences?

There would indeed appear to be little in common between
the nettle and the elm-tree, or sugar-berry tree with its sweet
edible drupes, but the modern scientific analyst readily discovers
their close affinity, though for years, under sanction of learned
authorities, the elm and Celtis and others of the group were
classed among totally distinct orders of plants.

An equally remarkable fidelity to a single group of vegetation
is seen in the example of our beautiful black Swallow-tail butter-
fly—the papilio of the umbelworts or Parsley family.

In the early summer we may find upon the garden fennel or
parsley the beautifully marked caterpillar of this species—bright
apple green, with circling bands of sable velvet studded with
golden yellow buttons. They are conspicuous to the eye in their
beauty, and when disturbed, conspicuous in a less gratifying sense
to the nostril, giving forth an obnoxious odor from an extensible
double glandular horn, usually concealed within the front seg-
ment of the body. The caterpillar is easily recognized any-
where, and its habitat is wide. Let us examine its bill of fare.
The plants commonly attributed to this species are parsley, fen-
nel, carrot, and celery. Harris found them also on poison-hem-
lock, czcwta, dill, caraway, and anise, to which list I can append
the further additions from observation: wild carrot, sanicle, with
its tenacious burs (in the woods), angelica, archangelica, cow-
parsnip, and lovage. All of these will be found to follow in their
natural sequence, in the classification of our botanies, under the
order Umbellifere.

This strange fidelity of the Asterias to a single order of
plants I had noted even in boyhood, and had welcomed my but-
terfly as an infallible aid in my botanical study. But one day my
confidence was shattered by the discovery of a number of caterpil-
lars feeding upon a creeping, round-leaved plant growing by the
edge of the brook—a prostrate succulent herb, seemingly devoid

~
132 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

of flowers, quite distinct from all the other food plants, and new
to me. I simply noted it as an exception, and lowered my but-
terfly a peg in my esteem. Not until years later, in the more
serious pursuit of botanical study, did I dis-
cover what a rare lesson in botany the As-
terias had wasted upon me; that the little

unknown plant was in truth a distinct um-

belwort like the rest—the water-pennywort.
In this plant we have an example which
none but a careful botanist would
identify as belonging to this fam-
ily, the habit being entirely ex-
ceptional, the leaf totally dis-
similar to any other species,

having more the resem-

blance, indeed, to a mallow,
or geranium, or 7rop@olum,
and bearing a flower and
seed so peculiar and incon-

  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 

spicuous that only a

keen, analytic eye could
trace their botanical
characters.

Thus we have
cited two prime au-
thorities on Urticacee

and Uméellifere. In the
lead of the little white but-
, terfly of our gardens (Pve-
vis oleracea) we may be
introduced to an entirely
new tribe of vegetation, in-
dicated by the insects’ spe-
cific name—the cabbage or potherb butterfly—a member of a
small tribe of unimpeachable experts on the Mustard family. For
it matters not whether in the form of candy-tuft or sweet-alyssum,
PREHISTORIC BOTANISTS. 133

cabbage, horseradish, kohl-rabi, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, turnip,
or radish, the “fragrant wallflower gay,” or

“lady’s-smock, all silver white,”

it is all one to them. Among all the members of this mustard-
loving tribe, whether American or exotic, whether among the
yellow mustard-fields of Holland or the peppergrass of the New
England road-side, the Cruczferous plants are to them the cream’
and spice of all creation.

The botanical characters of this order are quite distinct, it is
true. It is not difficult to trace a plant to this tribe by the qua-
ternate petals and construction of its fruit, those important requi-
sites for the human botanist, but the insight of our white butter-
fly is not so superficial. There are neither flowers nor fruit on
many of the plants at the time they are selected by the in-
sect; and furthermore, in anticipation of the possible suggestion
that this selection may be the result of reminiscent associations
from a previous caterpillar state, 1 may mention the interesting
fact that I have seen this same white butterfly singling out with
marked partiality all the turnip roots and radishes from among
the baskets of a grocery shop in the city streets. These roots, of
course, the insect could never have tasted nor seen, even though
the previous caterpillar had possessed the power of vision, which
is denied by entomologists.

What lover of the country will not own his tribute to the
omnipresent little yellow butterfly, companion of our September
fields, its folded wings, like a tiny rudder of gold, taking the helm
of all the wind-blown golden-rods of the road-sides, whose bright
bevies circle the borders of every mud-puddle, rising from their
obscurity to swarm in mazy tangle about our carriage as we
pass? Honey sippers and tipplers, they now would seem to fulfil
the impeachment of the “idle revellers” of the poet; but such
inference is unjust, for though now content in the sweets of
aster, solidago, and other autumn blossoms, these are but their
recess flowers. Their previous and most busy attention has
134 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

already been bestowed upon another widely different class of
plants. This PAzlodice butterfly is one of our most accomplished
botanical authorities —a botanist who knows beans, in very truth;
for where is the genus of the bean tribe of vegetation that it has
skipped in the choice of foster-plants for that future offspring?
Lima beans, scarlet-runners, peas, sweet-peas, wild - bean, indigo,
red clover, hop clover, white
clover, puss clover, medic,

medicago, lucern, melilot,
rattlebox, vetch, and
many more—all of
the leguminous or 7 7
bean tribe. .

 
 
 

yy
ave

ae ok
aes
ee

   
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
   

ro Here is a near
European relative of

this same butterfly which
feeds upon “ Coronilla and
broom and other diadelphous
plants,” and another allied spe-
cies that feeds upon Cy¢zsus, all of
which our botany of course includes
: under Legumznose. It is interesting to
Cras note further that certain other individ-

uals in this same butterfly tribe, Colas

(exotic species in the heart of Brazil), continue the list among the
tropical Leguminose ; all of which proves the close affinity be-
tween the animated winged genus, Coézas, and the “winged” co-
rollas of the pea-blossomed flowers. —
In the agile white-banded “skipper” (Zztyrus) we have an-
other remarkable illustration of discrimination among the same
order of plants, for this butterfly, like most of its tribe, is partial
to “a mess of beans,” and are indeed discriminating “skippers”
of all but “pulse and pease.” The curious, big-headed caterpillar
may be disclosed in its cocoon-like nest of leaves among the
PREHISTORIC BOTANISTS. 135

foliage of the common locust and viscid locust and thorny acacia
and wistaria, these being the food plants commonly given by the
authorities; but the descendant of this intellectual larva also in-
cludes the delicate wild pea-nut vine, and ground-nut vine, and
bush clover, Hedysarum, garden bean, and all the Desmodiums in
its order of the Legumes for its bill of fare, for I have discovered
the species on all these plants.

There are many other insects for which the Pea family pos-
sesses special attraction. There is the tiny pea-weevil, a repre-
sentative of a tribe of beetles whose early existence is spent
within the ripening seeds—doubtless a common ingredient in our
appetizing dish of green peas. I remember once reading of a
Baltimore oriole having been shot for “eating peas,” the con-
tents of the craw afterwards disclosing only such peas as were
infested with the weevil. This diminutive insect, indicated in
our “random posy,’” probes the pod shortly after the withering of
the blossom, and lays its eggs therein. The young immediately
penetrate the peas, and there fulfil their existence, emerging in
the following spring as perfect beetles. Our little “wild” rattle.
box has a similar tenant, which upon its escape leaves a clean,
round hole in the black pods of autumn, these tenanted pods, by
some strange consciousness, generally remaining intact, while the
perfect specimens have burst and scattered their seed.

In the same illustration may be seen a singular rolled leaf
upon a hazel branch, and concerning which I will quote a page
from my notes of years ago: “Those small rolled brown packets
upon the hazels again! Shall I ever solve them—precious goods
done up in small parcels, but by what insect, and how? This
mysterious bundle committed to the hazel has been a poser to me
all my life, I never yet having been able to discover the artist at
its work—for artist it is indeed. I found to-day a number of the
prize packages freshly done up, the folded leaf yet green though
half severed by the teeth of the insect, and hanging pendent to
the stem. A tiny yellow egg had been deposited at the tip of
the leaf—as shown by analysis of unrolling—and the leaf then
folded in half at mid-vein, then rolled from tip upward to stem,
136 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

and retained in its compact coil
by some touch of jugglery which
I have not been able to divine,
as no gluten nor web of silk can
be found. Just try and roll up
one of these packages yourself,
and without recourse to your ac-
customed string, leave it thus
closely and firmly intact! No

web, no gum, no stitch, but
much of the know
how. Whoever

 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
  

the clerk who does
up these packages,
he has a long head
and has kept his
secret from me
very securely.”
Since the writing of
the above, though not
‘* SKIPPERS,” PgN fs yet any more enlightened as
to the author of this hocus-pocus
bundle, I have several times observed a suspicious-looking brown
beetle nosing among its folds, and in his strange make-up freely
realizing the unconscious prophecy of the “long-head,” for the
PREHISTORIC BOTANISTS. 137

insect is one of the weevils, which are noted for their extensive
frontal development.

I have also observed numbers of similar packets on alders, in
some instances every leaf upon a given branch serving as a wrap-
per or showing its bare stub, the ground beneath being strewn
with the tiny bundles. Neither do I know the author of these
packets, but would venture the assertion that this is an expert on
the alders as the other is on hazels.

Touching beetles, there is that living gem faithful to the dog-
bane. What a pleasant surprise it was to discover this same
bright beetle on a mountain plant of Switzerland in my descent
from Righi Culm! But no, on close examination it proved to be
a slightly distinct species, and, singularly enough, the food plant
so closely similar to the dog-bane in appearance as to leave no
doubt of its botanical alliance.

There are a few small moths whose lives are interesting. Has
the reader ever paused in his country walks to examine the even-
ing primrose plant by day? If not, it will well repay a careful
search among these faded cups of last night’s whorl of blossoms.
They are still haunted by a constant friend of their gayer hours,
a small moth which hides within the wilted blossom, only the
nether tip of its wings appearing at the rim of the withering co-
rolla, now tinged with pink.

It is the little noctuid of the evening primrose, the moth, ear-
liest among its twilight sippers, while it nestles compassionately
by day within the shattered cup, lending its mimetic yellow wings,
like added petals, to the drooping flower, sympathetic even to
their pale pink mottlings, the identical flush which often mantles
the fading petals among which they merge.

The tiny caterpillar of this beautiful insect even now eludes
you among the leaves and green seed-pods of the plant, and you
may find it also on the crimson fire-weed and various other
plants of second choice —all, however, in the same brotherhood of
CEnothera, the Primrose family.

From Maine to Mexico another small noctuid, known as the

Cotton-moth, is found, its chosen haunt being indicated by its
18

~~
138 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

name. “Its food plant in the North has not yet been discovered,”
says a prominent entomologist. Look to your hollyhocks, altheas,
and mallows, my scientific friend, for here you will certainly find
the recluse in congenial company. Here is the little“ gourd” ex-
pert, a tiny moth that shows no evidence of inherited dyspepsia,
though its broods devour indiscriminately the leaves and green
fruit of cucumber, watermelon, gourd, muskmelon, pumpkin, squash,
and wild star-cucumbers, all of the Melon family. The imported
silk-worm, it is said, will starve on most substitutes offered in
place of its native food, the mulberry, but is found to thrive on
the Osage orange—why? For the same intuitive reason that
many species of butterflies which feed exclusively on grasses rec-
ognize a grass in the sugar-cane and Indian-corn.

We have noted various specialists in quite a list of botanical
orders. This buzzing humming-bird-like moth which now whirls
about our evening lamps is a reminder of another instructive
instance of botanical skill. It is a Hawk-moth, or Sphinx, a name
applied by Linnzeus to a class of moths noted for the strange
arch attitude of their caterpillars; but the name is further borne
out in their attributes of wisdom. Of these, one group has been
named by Harris, Phzlampelus—‘I1 love the vine.” “I love the
Vitis,’ or its classic equivalent, would have been nearer the mark,
for all this tribe of sphinxes, of which I recall five familiar ex-
amples, are equally fond of the grape and the Virginia-creeper, or
“five-leaved ivy,’ as it is sometimes called. On these two plants
only are the insects found. What shall we infer from this cir-
cumstance? That these plants are the only two native genera
in the order V’z¢ace@ —an inference which we find is sustained in
our botany. acd

Not many years since, however, a prominent florist imported
a new and beautiful exotic vine—a native of Japan, a luxuriant,
close-clinging, rapid climber—which met with great popular favor,
and which now completely embowers many of our metropolitan
churches, and even private dwellings, clambering from basement
to cornice during a period of three or four years. In appearance
it is as much like an ivy as anything else—indeed, quite ivy-like
PREHISTORIC BOTANISTS. 139

in its habit of growth; but the eye of the Sphinx knew better, and
has begun to adopt the plant in its limited diet, for is it not the
Ampelopsts tricuspidata, a grape-bearing vine close akin to our
Virginia-creeper? I have found the caterpillars feeding upon it.

A smaller Sphinx, with thorn upon its tail, known as the
“Hog Caterpillar,” is perhaps the most common species found
upon the Vzézs. But, says my incredulous observer, “Here is the
identical caterpillar which I have found upon a sprig of wild aza-
lea, and have often seen upon the Axdromeda and Clethra and
other plants of the Heath family.” And the impeachment would
certainly seem complete. If we keep the insect until the follow-
ing spring, however, the moth which emerges from the chrysalis
will dispel all doubt. It is found to be a distinct species—the
Versicolor, which is as partial to the Heath family as its double
was to the Vzézs.

Then there is that great green Sphinx caterpillar, which is the
pest of the tobacco- grower, and the thrilling prize of the small
boy entomologist, and whose loud-humming, long-tongued moth
hovers about our twilight honeysuckles— one of the largest of its
kind. It is hardly necessary to mention that this is the same
voracious feeder which we find upon tomato and potato plants,
as well as occasionally upon the red-berried nightshade, ground-
cherry, and apple of Peru. I have never happened to find it on
henbane or stramonium; but who shall dispute that the botanical
skill which should include the former list might not also extend
to all the rest of the Solaxum tribe?

Once, when a boy, I found a voracious Sphinx upon “pusley,”
the “mean” weed of the garden, and reared it to the moth—the
white-lined Sphinx. The following year I found the same cater-
pillar on the flowering portulaca, and I have no doubt he is as fond
of the “spring beauty” as are the poets, if we could only chance
to observe it, for the Purslane family embraces all these plants.

The botanical acumen of the Sphinx extends to various other
plant tribes. The sphinx Kalmzz knows not only the mountain-
laurel, but many other heathworts, notably whortleberry, azalea,
and cranberry. The Oleander sphinx finds the oleander flavor in
140 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

the creeping blue-flowered periwinkle or “myrtle” of our gardens.
Another black and yellow individual, whose name I do not know,
is true to the Madder family. Another takes the pine, spruce,
and hemlock in its exclusively conzfer diet. The Sphinx Cizerea
has disclosed itself to me on ash, lilac, the cultivated fringe-tree,
and privet—a consecutive lesson in botany which was committed
to memory, and verified by my manual in the Olive family.

There is a beautiful moth known as the rosy Dryocampa. I
have found its black-horned caterpillars on sugar- maples, silver
and red maples, and one day discovered it also on the box- elder.
How did this little moth know that this ash-leaved bough of
spring was only a maple in masquerade? Who but a skilled bot-
anist could ever have identified it? What the Dryocampa does
for the maples the Thisbe butterfly does for the “arrow-woods,”
and the Phaeton and Lavinia butterflies for the figworts. The
white snowball of our shrubberies is a favorite haunt of the for-
mer insect, but it finds the nannyberry-bush an equally attractive
Viburnum, while the painted-cup, snake-head, and toad-flax form
the principal choice of the last two insects, which preside over
the family Schrophulariacee. Among the more modest wild flow-
ers we find the same revelation. The violets have a whole brood
of faithful dependants. The handsome silver-spotted Aphrodite
butterfly knows that the tall yellow violet of the woods is only a
less conspicuous cousin to the blue “ bird-foot” species, and that

the pansy is only a vain descendant of the wild * Johnny jumper”
of past ages, which the progenitor of all the aphrodites sought
for the care of .its offspring.

I. remember once, when a lad, observing a very strange slug
caterpillar upon a skunk-cabbage leaf, and subsequently discov-
ered it again on the sweet-flag, or calamus, little dreaming the bo-
tanical significance of the event, for both of these herbs are in
the Arum family —a striking instance of the wide, outward dis-
similarity which often exists between allied species. We have
already noted, for instance, the affinity between the elm and the
nettle, the puss clover and the locust-tree. In further illustration,
there would seem to be no greater gap possible in the vegetable
LOO PREHISTORIC BOTANISTS. 141

kingdom than that between the pineapple and
fe the Southern moss which drapes our subtropi-
el cal trees. And yet the discriminating eye of
} the botanical analyst readily detects their
-=ew-, Close kinship, and places them side by
side. My knowledge of the Southern
flora and fauna is limited. I do not
happen to know of any insect that
inhabits the swinging fringe of the
bayou, but if any there be I should
confidently expect its discovery also
upon the leaves of the pine-
apple. There is, indeed,
scarcely a single family of
plants without its responsi-
ble specialist among the in-
sect tribes. We have already
noted a number of such, and
the list of ready authorities
is doubtless as complete
throughout this primal su-
preme botany as in the
modern human infringement.
Among these orders not al-
ready mentioned is the Willow
family —the popla?s and _ wil-
lows being interchangeable as
the choice of many insects.
The great Composite have
" many experts, likewise the
oak pink, polygonum, mint, and
vanunculus. There are many dis-
Z : ea ciples of the Rose—keen senses
fl ae that discover it in the apple, cherry,
” plum, hawthorn bramble, cinquefoil,
spirea, and strawberry. The Apple-tree moth

A RANDOM POSY, ‘

   
    
  
 
  
 
   
 
~~

142 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

is an example, never intrusting that waterproof circlet of eggs
(shown in my “random posy”) to any tree outside of this family,
most commonly contenting herself with the apple and wild-cherry.

I might indefinitely prolong the list of testimonials to this
divine plan of association between the insect and the plant; and
while it is not a necessary assumption, inasmuch as “we have no
experience in the creation of worlds,” it would seem a perfectly
justifiable inference that all species of butterflies and moths were
created with a special affinity to some congenial order of plants.
It would then appear that this power of nice distinction has de-
teriorated in many insects, either through the degraded instinct
of the parent or less fastidious appetite in the caterpillar off-
spring, and inasmuch as the “exception” has come to be consid-
ered as an important attribute in proving the rule, I will append
a few such instances, some of which, indeed, are quite as inter-
esting and instructive as the “ infallibles.”

In the examples of the large Cecropza, Polyphemus, Prome-
theus, and Luna moths, as well as in a number of butterflies, it is
true the power of discernment seems to have been lost, the se-
lection of food plants extending into various families, though even
here, it must be remembered, we are taking a thousand insects as
a unit, there being a strong probability that any one individual
parent and its offspring may yet be found true to a particular bo-
tanical affinity to which its brood is intrusted, the various peculi-
arities being, as it were, the hereditary result of some confusion of
Babel in the remote past. The Saturuza /o belies the great show
of “bull’s-eyes” upon its wings, being blindly indiscriminate. But
what do we find in the instance of the Monarch or Archippus
butterfly, the protégé of the milk-weeds? You will find its black-
and-yellow banded caterpillar on all the six species of New Eng-
land Asclepzas if you look with sufficient patience, though chiefly
upon the common silk-weed. It is a faithful nursling of this lac-
tescent tribe. On one occasion, however, J have found it thriving
on the dog-bane, a similarly milky-juiced plant. But what is the
fiat of the human botanical judges? The dog-bane is ordered out
of the milk-weeds, though it immediately precedes them in the
PREAISTORIC BOTANISTS. 143

botanical sequence, and certain affinities are readily traceable be-
tween the two orders, both plants having milky sap, opposite,
entire leaves, long pods, silky seeds, and other more intricate
resemblances. Looking a little further into the subject, we find,
moreover, that while now separated in classification, the earlier
botanists had included the plant with the milk-weeds, from which
it was withdrawn only after much scholarly discussion. Clearly,
the antecedent classification of the butterfly should have been re-
spected at the hands of the learned disputants. The dog-bane
was linked with the milk-weed eons before the world knew a
human botanist. When the writer's botany appears, this priority
of Danais Archippus, Ph.D., D.D., F.D.S., will be duly recognized.

I have never seen this caterpillar on the closely allied peri-
winkle, but would almost expect to find it there even as I once
observed the butterfly suggestively hovering about a vine of
Hoya or wax-plant, a cultivated exotic trained about a porch,
but which is a true relative of the milk-weed.

A somewhat parallel instance of botanical priority is to be
seen in the Parnassus Apollo butterfly, the beautiful sylph of the
Swiss Alps, member of a boreal tribe, rarely found below an ele-
vation of 1500 feet—lovers of the mountains, as their name im-
plies, and one of which, pictured at the right of my Alpen de-
sign, I observed among the Alpine cowslips on the summit of
Righi Culm. The food plant of this insect, according to the
authorities, is confined to the saxifrages, a tribe of plants com-
prising a large number of Alpine species. I learn, also, that the
caterpillars are sometimes found on a species of sedum—a stone-
crop—two families distinctly separated in the botanies, though
following each other in Gray’s sequence; and research further
shows that De Candolle originally traced the closest affinity be-
tween these two orders. It is not on record whether Apollo gave
him the hint. This airy butterfly is common alike in the flow-
ery vales and snowy heights of Switzerland, doubtless finding
abundant congenial companions among this genus of Alpine
plants (Saxifrages), which have accompanied the surface drifts and
hugged the skirts of the glacier through the ages, many of which,
144 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

haunting the crevices of the steep aiguilles, have served as modest
factors in that process of disintegration which has hurled this vast
burden of moraine upon the sea of ice—* Saxa-fraga, I break a
stone,” says the etymologist.

Some authorities affirm that the “semicolon,” which is so
wonderfully discriminating in the Nettle family, as already shown,
is occasionally found on the Linden. I have never happened to
verify this statement. It is certainly not a common choice of the
insect in the localities which I have frequented, and I half sus-
pect that the placing of that * Linden” egg was a case of careless
mispunctuation on the part of the “semicolon” (if not of the au-
thor), or may be referred to some lapsing ancestor which has
bequeathed his degeneracy to a single small line of descendants.

In a former work I have alluded to those pretty petal bowers
upon the everlasting in which the spiny, white-spotted caterpillar
of the hunter’s butterfly lies concealed by day, or hangs its jew-
elled chrysalis—of all its tribe the true model of the poet:

“T’d be a butterfly born in a bower.”

Other observers have found the larve on many plants of the
same genus only, and in the one next allied, Andexnaria. But
Scudder says the “forget-me-not,” an unassociated plant, is also
included among its diet. There is some mistake here. Let us
hope that the fickle deserter may yet listen to the message of the
Flora Symbolica, and return to its deserted immortelles.

Our Painted Lady butterfly is another interesting exception, as
showing a dual botanical mission in selecting the plants of two
natural orders, and never going outside of them, representing,
doubtless, an hereditary choice in each given brood, rather than
mixed impartially in one. The caterpillar is quite commonly found
upon thistles of all kinds, constructing a web-tent hung from the
spiny points of the leaves, whence it emerges at night to feed.
“It is found, also,” says an authority, “on sunflower, hollyhock,
burdock, and other rough-leaved plants,” but these other “ rough-
leaved plants” could most certainly be traced to one of the two
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    

PREHISTORIC BOTANISTS. Az,

families represented in the list, Composcte and Malvacee.
Other entomologists give the following plants: Mal-
lows of all kinds, althea, selybum chiccory, helanthus,
marianum, velvet-leaf, and okra,
and it may be looked for with
confidence upon the cotton plant.
The Phaeton butterfly of
my illustration is partial
to the Figwort family,
its list of selec-
tions chiefly ye.
comprising the LGR
turtle-head, toad- ‘Se 7.
flax, schrophularia, oN
moth-mullein, and
painted-cup. The
latter, with the scar-
let leaves posing as

   
  

wy

S a blossoms, no one
“S)" but an expert would
think of associating
with the other plants
. mentioned. But I learn
from Scudder that this
caterpillar is also found on

the honeysuckle—a poser, this,

in truth—were it not that it
seems a clear case of heedless-
ness, an egg that was left while
the butterfly was sipping the honey

ae pp = tubes, of course.
i . My experience has never disclosed the
cH weird-looking eye-spotted caterpillars of the
~\ ee ~ Troilus butterfly, or blue swallow-tail, upon
i any other foliage than those of sassafras and

spice-wood, the only two Northern species of
19
146 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

the family Zauracee, upon which it conceals itself in the neatly
folded leaf, as pictured. And yet I see that some collectors have
found it also on the prickly-ash, hop-tree (Péelea), and syringa.
Concerning the last mentioned, I can offer no explanation, but
the other two exceptions—both in the Rue family—have a some-
what interesting significance, taken in connection with the insect
next considered. The Azlantus silk -worm—introduced into this
country from China about twenty years ago, and now very com-
mon in certain sections—for years was not known to swerve in
its allegiance to its own companion, “tree of heaven.” On the
basis of the facts already set forth, would any one doubt that if
its favorite food plant were suddenly exterminated there would be
a winged stampede, as it were, to the prickly-ash and hop-tree
(Ptelea), the only two native allies to the Azlantus? But what
are the singular facts? The moth, I am told by careful observ-
ers, has quite recently proven fickle to its original diet, and yet
ignores the kindred plants. As a naturalized foreigner, under new
conditions, it has concluded to “do as the Romans do,” and out
of compliment takes the “ad of zts closest insect ally, our Pro-
metheus moth, whose favorite selections are the sassafras and its
relative the spice-wood, upon both of which the Azlantus is now
occasionally found. There certainly would seem to be some oc-
cult affinity between these two orders of plants, Lauracee and
Rutacee, which the botanists have not discovered.

The exceptions, however, only emphasize by contrast the infi-
nite number of almost infallible instances, enforcing the irresisti-
ble deduction of an original universal law of botanical distinction
among the insect tribes. These lapses, if not instances of mere
temporary aberration eventually to be discountenanced by the
“survival of the fittest,” may perhaps be significantly associated
with these remarkable freaks of transition noted by collectors—
those strange dissimilar double broods of the same insect in which
some scientists discover the pioneers of newly created species.*

 

*In the “Semicolon,” for instance, which I have shown to lapse occasionally
in its botany, and the Alope butterfly and many others, the two succeeding broods
PREHISTORIC BOTANISTS. 147

It might be imagined that allied plants possessed some essen-
tial quality in common by which the insect might associate them,
but such an hypothesis is needless, as the butterfly does not taste
the plants upon which its eggs are laid, and rarely visits them
even when in blossom, its roving days being spent among hon-
eyed flowers quite indiscriminately.

While the foregoing facts are largely the result of personal
observation, research only further emphasizes the seeming law
involved. Whether in the tropics or the arctic regions, from
Labrador to Patagonia, the butterflies have always pursued this
wise prerogative, and doubtless in many regions yet unexplored
by man have even now anticipated the botanists of the future.

In a preferment of the arctic or glacial environment of my
subject I have shown unconscious allegiance to the mother-earth
my feet have trod—our own blossoming moraines.

Perhaps, also, that inspiriting winter butterfly is somewhat
responsible for my point of view and the resultant flight of fancy;
but if any doubts as to the consequent deductions had been pos-
sible with me, they are now forever set at rest; for here, in the
middle of January, upon the last day of the completion of my
writing, I am visited with a sudden and strange vision of that
same inspiring butterfly. I know not whether it is the same free
spirit which enraptured my boyhood, or the buoyant sylph which
hovered above those Alpen snows, but it lent its presence once
more to me to-day, much to the amazement of several witnesses.
As I sat in the reference-room of our city library, even as I
consulted the authorities upon its own ubiquitous existence, it
perched upon the rail close by, and applauded my efforts with its
palpitating wings.

A

 

of the season are sometimes so widely dissimilar that, according to Scudder, they
have been universally classified as distinct species, until their common parentage
was proved. Mr. Edwards gives three distinct forms of the Zebra swallow- tail
appearing in successive broods in spring, summer, and autumn. It is not diffi-
cult to imagine accidental conditions of weather, and resultant effects in habits,
or natural selection, through which one of these particular types might be perpetu-
ated as the permanent fixed form.
148 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

Thus once more led to the snows, I am reminded of a boreal
recluse which I had almost forgotten, and with which I may fit
tingly bring my rambling essay to a close. Here, among the
Alpen peaks of our own country, we may learn a lesson from
antiquity, in the example if not of the most beautiful, certainly
in many respects the most interesting, butterfly among its tribe.
Much has been written concerning this strange lover of the cold.
I will quote a recent reference of Grant Allen:

“On and near the summit of Mount Washington a small community of butter-
flies, belonging to an old glacial and arctic species, still lingers over a very small
area where it has held its own for the eighty thousand years that have elapsed
since the termination of the great ice age. The actual summit of the mountain
rises to a height of 6293 feet ; and the butterflies do not range lower than the 5000
feet line... . Again, from Mount Washington to Long’s Peak in Colorado the dis-
tance amounts to 1800 miles, while from the White Mountains to Hopedale in Lab-
rador, where the same butterflies first appear, makes a bee-line of fully a thousand
miles. In the intervening districts there are no insects of the same species,
Hence we must conclude that a few butterflies left behind in the retreating main
guard of their race on that one New Hampshire peak have gone on for thousands
and thousands of years producing eggs, and growing from caterpillars into full-
fledged insects without once effecting a cross with the remainder of their conge-
ners among the snows of the Rocky Mountains, or in the chilly plains of sub-
arctic America. So far as they themselves know, they are the only representatives
of their kind now remaining on the whole earth, left behind like the ark on Ararat
amid the helpless ruins of an antediluvian world.”

For 200,000 years, according to geological data, these boreal
' broods must have wooed the frozen seas, driven southward by the
overwhelming ice, companions of the verdant fringe of the vast
glacier, following in its retreat, at length beguiled by remnant ice-
fields lodged in the “great gulfs” of the Presidential range, and
at last stranded among the furrowed peaks.

For years this butterfly in the foreground of my Alpen de-
sign was supposed to be confined to Mount Washington, but, as
shown above, it has revealed itself on other distant summits. It
is also credited to Mount Monadnock, and I think revealed itself
to me on the peak of Mount Lafayette, though decoying me
PREHISTORIC BOTANISTS. 149

beyond the limits of prudence, and thus defeating capture, or even
perfect identification.

Who shall question that through the ages, as now, this mount-
ain sprite has been true to the companion plants upon which its
broods are found, even as it is still true in its mimetic wings to!
the everlasting rocks among which it hibernates?

Thus, whether in the tropics or beneath the glacial drift, the
testimonies of the rocks abide, disclosing the prehistoric leaf side
by side with the feathery intaglio, telling not of the “idle rover”
and “Epicurean of June,” but of divine emissaries, sponsors to
their companion blossoms through the prescribed period of their
being, and myriads of whose species now extinct were linked
through the ages, even unto the present, in the faithful bond of
the butterflies’ flight. .

 
“(A woodland walk,
A quest of river grapes, a mocking thrush,
A wild rose, a rock-loving columbine,
Salve my worst wounds.”
EMERSON.
 
“Stranger, if thou hast learned a truth which needs
No school of long experience, that the world

fs full of guilt and misery, and hast seen

Enough of all its sorrows, crimes, and cares

To tire thee of it, enter this wild wood

And view the Haunts of Nature. The calm shade
Shall bring a kindred calm, and the sweet breeze
That makes the green leaves dance shall waft a balm
To thy sick heart. Thou wilt find nothing here

Of all that pained thee in the haunts of men

And made thee loathe thy life.”

BRYANT.
 

“Uf T could put my woods in sony
And tell what's there enjoyed,
All men would to my garden throng

And leave the cities void.”

   

JURING a recent
visit to England

 

 

I devoted a whole
day to a stroll through
those glazed acres of the famous
London conservatories. After walking

in sensuous delight through miles of

perfumed bowers and all manner of won-
drous floral luxuriance, I was at length invited, as a special cour-
tesy, to view what I was assured would prove the climax of inter-
est and beauty, the reigning sensation in the way of an “orchid
hybrid.” Following my guide, I soon entered the “ propagating-
house,” wherein are born into the world every year those hun-
dreds of hapless nondescripts against which Nature protests in

20

      
 
154 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

vain. There, among a coterie of its kind, in blushing conscious-
ness, more sinned against than sinning, stood the poor innocent
which was the talk of the town, a Cypripedium mongrel, flanked
on either side by the two helpless parent species.

Twelve years of eager waiting, I was told, had this very week
rewarded the “culturist” with the first fruit of this unnatural
union. An “improvement,” it was called, and one in which the
instigator seemed to take as much pride as though the waif had
deserved the Lord’s blessing.

Those voluptuous, oppressive roses, too, which, like the fair
ones of certain Oriental countries, are admired, it would seem, in
proportion to their overgrowth, all “improved,” we are told, from
“a mere wild rose.” O pagan marplot! How had your enter-
taining courtesy changed to gall could you have read the vigor-
ous pitying comment beneath the non-committal exterior of your
guest! How much else of the mysteries of that hybrid depart-
ment would have been disclosed to his scientific scrutiny had he
dared intimate that he preferred the Lord’s Cypripedium even to
Smith’s, and the eglantine of Parnassus to the “improved Ori-
ental Beauty” or the Souvenzr de Grande Duchesse de Paragon,
splendidissimum, superbum grandiforum! Six thousand dollars

‘for a mongrel tulip, when a pure type, direct from the divine

hand, might be had for the asking !

With what a sigh of relief and exaltation of spirit do I leave
the degenerate precincts of a garden such as this for the wild
garden of innocence and peace!

Truly has Goethe said, ‘Some flowers are only lovely to the
eye, but others are lovely to the heart.” For whatever of purely
sensuous or intellectual delight the conservatory may hold for us,
it is to the wild garden that we turn for the higher delights of
the spirit. Though the apple of the Hesperides bloom there,
we shall miss its golden fruit.

To be brought face to face with one of those wondrous
orchids of the tropics—the Ovxczdium papilio or Spirito santo,
even robbed of the magic attribute of their native environment—
is indeed a memorable experience; but what compared to the
emotional thrill
that awaits me

 

yonder in the hemlock woods? Me
Here is a sanctuary unprofaned, pre-

sided over by a presence which always By ee eee ee

brings peace without alloy. The dim aisles

are redolent with sacred incense and filled with prophecy. All

my wonted fellow-worshippers are here; one by one I pass them;

now lightly hovering, or there prostrate on the hushed carpet,
156 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

till at length, my sins confessed, my matins said, my soul re-
freshed, as I leave the temple inspired for the work of a new day,
I am led as though by an unseen hand to a bright spot where
the sunbeams penetrate the gloom through a window in the
pines, and I stand transfixed! ‘“ What,” do you ask, “a vision ?”
Yes. Look! yonder in the chancel, those snowy lilies hovering
among the ferns! A vision? Yes. What matters it that my
seraph assumed the material form which man has called “ Cypri-
pedium?” In the archetypal botany of the Infinite we know not
what may be its correspondence.

“Not a natural flower can grow on earth
Without a flower upon the spiritual side,
Substantial, archetypal, all aglow
With blossoming causes —not so far away
That we, whose spirit sense is somewhat cleared,
May not catch something of the bloom and breath.”

How many of my congenial spirits everywhere that chance to
read my page will have known with me the exaltation of mo-
ments such as this! How readily will they pardon me if I
“paint the lily” in the hope of reawakening an experience
which, perchance, may have become obscured through the years,
but for which life has been the sweeter, the happier, and the
better! Such is the harvest of the wild garden—divine fruits
not reckoned in the conservatory nor yet in the botany.

As in the artificial garden we pass from parterre to parterre,
or to conservatory or shaded fernery, each with its appropriate
denizens, so in the wilds we find the worthier model, every condi-
tion of sod, of light, of shade finding its true expression. The
“forest ledge” has its own family, which the botanists well know.
The pine wood has its faithful broods; the yielding loam, with
“soft brown silence carpeted,” is figured with bloom and garland
easily numbered in anticipation. The beech woods have a rival
company. The hemlocks hold the darling of the mould, the
trailing arbutus, always with a numerous attendant complement.
The meadow-blooms that fall in the swath of the new-mown hay
THE WILD GARDEN. 157

we all know—the daisies, the clovers, buttercups, lilies, and mead-
ow-rue. Even in the burning sand-dunes of the sea-shore or the
desert we may be sure of a number of faithful missionaries, while
the same sand that chances to rim the lake
nurses a distinctly different brood.

The swamp claims a long list of choice
favorites, while even from the ripples of the
lake or the “depths beneath” you may
gather the same consistent bouquet.

When the geologist hears of the open-
ing of a new quarry or the blasting of a
tunnel he is quickly on the spot for his
harvest of crystal. So with the botanist;
the same new conditions turn up nuggets
for him also.

Burroughs discovered a blasted ledge
draped in the beautiful climbing fumito-
ry where the plant had never before been
known, which singular fact may possibly
throw some light on the old belief
which is said to have christened the
flower. “The fumitory,’ as Gerarde
says of an allied plant with similar
ways of sudden appearance in broken
ground, “is fabled to be engendered of
a coarse fumosity rising from the earth,
which windeth and wrieth about, and £4

  
  
  
 
 
  
  
   
  
   
    

—

A : ‘ i peace oy
by working in the air and sun is turned NG ee
into this herb.” How simple it all seems { = )
when it is explained ! ,

I once visited a similar blast in a haunt
known all my life, and was astonished to
| find the ruins rosy with literal beds of the
small catchfly pink, accompanied by a rank
growth of pasture mullein, growing in the depths of a dense wood !
Who knows what a wild garden might be coaxed from a

A GROUP OF ORCHIDS.
158 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

spadeful of earth taken at random from the depths of the sod?
A fire sweeps over the mountains; next year you will find its
jblack carbon bed afire with bloom that those calcined ledges
never saw before; but the wind has been taking care of that.
A railroad has perhaps just been desecrating the woods in your
vicinity. Follow its embankment and you may pick a bouquet
‘as rare to you as though from the Orient. The railroad track
seems to have especial attractions for a number of restless bohe-
mian plants that would seem to thrive on abnormal excitement.
The very oily refuse dropped from the engine invites many a
‘sleepless floral gamin, the ambition of whose lives would seem to
be to dodge the whirling train or duck beneath the cow-catcher,
while they challenge the coals and the clouds of steam. The
lithe purple toad-flax is one of these tough little bohemians, and
the tiny dwarf dandelion is a favorite companion.

The prospecting miner knows how the lime or gold or zinc
or silver will blossom on the surface in those “indicative” flora,
the lucrative resources of the keen-eyed “ douser,” and doubtless
the frequent charm that gives the dip to the artful divining-rod.

Scatter wood-ashes almost anywhere on your lawn, and the
chances are that you will receive thanks the following year in the
breath of white clover, while coal-ashes yield a response in their
own kind, as a casual botanical examination of vacant city lots
will attest; I have found some of the rarest though not the most
beautiful species of our New England flowers among those un-
sightly ash-heaps.

Indeed, let the botanist go into new fields anywhere, or even
across lots by a new path, and the rare bloom that he has been
seeking all his life is likely to carpet the ground before him.

The beautiful pansy-like bird-foot violet is at best a not very
common species, and is often gregarious; but I once discovered
far up a mountain slope, where I would as soon have looked for
the Nile lotus, a bed ten feet square as blue as though spread
with an azure silk counterpane. I know a certain sand-hill that
is clothed in royal purple every year with the same flowers, for
they rival the harebell in their blue and the aster in their purple;

~—
THE WILD GARDEN. 159

and a certain field at Hempstead, Long Island, invites every sea-
son its select pilgrimage to visit its sea of bloom. The little
blue-eyed grass (Svsyrinchium) stars the meadows on sunny sum-
mer days, though usually in a widely scattered galaxy; but during
a ride last summer I was decoyed from my carriage across a long
swampy meadow by a blue haze that seemed to hang over the
distant sedges—a cloud which was soon dissipated about my feet
in a billion of these tiny flowers.

Many a wild botanist—for they are all wild, wild in their
haunts, wild with delight and enthusiasm, or else do not deserve
to be called botanists — guards as the apple of his eye his orchid
brood far up in the mountain tamarack swamp, or his isolated
Calypso, or his treasury of sun-dew gems, or other precious
riches. We all “know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows.”
The heart of Columbus throbs in every true botanist’s bosom.
He enters a new swamp or woods with his heart in his mouth.
He is all on tiptoe with wonder and expectancy. The cry of
“Land ahead!” is always imminent and always realized. But the
seasons revolutionize his observations. His autumn soundings are
out of date; he must sail by a new chart in the spring. Only
last June I stood on the shores of such an unknown country—a
large swampy wood, which I had known only in the season of
bare trees, when there are few secrets in the woods. What new
exaltation awaits me here? I mused. What new friend will ac-
company me as I emerge from the other side of the forest? |
had barely gone three steps when my question was answered, be-
ing confronted with a strange botanical shape which I had never
seen before. We stood on no formality, for the fame of the indi-
vidual had already gone before him, and he assured me that he
had been looking for me these many years. My new friend was
guised in most singular botanical fashion, and I hope he did not
chance to notice my smile at his expense. He stood full four
feet high, holding above his head, without the slightest seeming
necessity, a large tropical umbrella-like leaf two feet across, cut
into sixteen drooping divisions; and he sported a flower tucked
snugly in his lapel, which was a singular choice indeed for a
160 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

boutonniére—a green hood-like, tubular affair, somewhat suggest-
ing a Jack-in-the-pulpit or skunk-cabbage flower, about six inch-
es long, with a tapering green spadix projecting fully five inches
above the summit of the pointed hood, making in all a floral dis-
play of nearly a foot in length. He looked like a naturalized
brave from the tropics, and, indeed, favors

f

lA 2 certain of his Brazilian kindred.

5 ee Of course my botanical brethren will at
ad om aN once recognize the eccentric blossom, the
Pr ws Dragon Arum (Arum dracontium), though

 
 
 
  
  

I imagine that few of them have ever
chanced upon a finer individual than this,
my first, though not my last specimen, for
I subsequently discovered more.

“o» One of our most common orchids,
), though hardest to find because of its

obscurity, is the O /acera, or ragged
orchis, its inconspicuous petals being cut
into a coarse fringe. Various specimens
met me on all sides among the ferns. For
years I had vainly sought for the rare po-
gonia (Pogonza vertiillata) in my walks—
not for its beauty, but for its very retiring
qualities; for one does not like to feel that
perhaps he has every day slighted a friend
whose only fault is her modesty. It is no
greater compliment to the cardinal - flower
in that it is hailed from afar. Remember-
ing that a certain guardian of the secrets
of these woods had whispered to me that
the pogonia was to be found here, near a
certain turn in an old wood road, I sought
the spot; and there, in an isolated nook among a thick growth
of medeola, or Indian-cucumber, ginseng, Solomon’s-seal, wood
betony, pale Indian-pipes, and other wood growths, I came upon
the object of my search growing in profusion, treading them
THE WILD GARDEN. 161

underfoot ere I was aware; the imitative whorled foliage of the
medeolas having beguiled my discrimination. The secret was
safe, this secluded haunt having been selected as the choice of
all the earth by a nestling whippoorwill, which fluttered
,from my feet, disclosing her downy brood like a spot of Ne
mould down there on the brown leaves. But my po- or <
gonias were long past their prime, and I could get We ag
little idea of their flower. Here bloomed, also, the hee
small green orchis and the purple-fringed orchis, i 4
the Uvularias, and the cranesbill and loosestrife, € ‘ff 8 Yo
and the Solomon’s-seal with its palm-like spray  & :
and drooping yellowish pendants, and the An- i
dromeda with its chime of ten thousand bells.
,The swamp azalea shed a slight fragrance
from its remnant blossoms, and offered its juicy
apples that to me are never offered in vain.

That whispered password to the pogonia
opened the door also to a rare wild-flower %
bed that justly deserves the fame it has a
won. All the dwellers of the “forest ra
ledge” were here; the rue and maiden-  ~\¢
hair; the early harebells hung from
the crags above, and continued the
dance which the lingering “rock-lov- gag
ing columbines” were now bequeath- © ~
ing; while the spotted leaves of liver-
worts, and spiry pods of bloodroots, and the
plenteous foliage of rue-anemone, and wind-
flower, and matted beds of arbutus, bore witness
of what a rare May-day had been celebrated hereabouts, and
doubtless the sweet deerberry, with its fragrant bells, and. the
airy fumitory were there, draping the rocks, could I only have
happened their way.

The lofty gnarled laurels ever and anon protested “no thor-
oughfare” as I crossed their path; and once, having made the

breach, somewhat to the disparagement of my garments, I was
21

 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
   
   
162 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

met with the applause of a whole bevy of the rare blazing-star—
their long spires of pure white feathery bloom standing sentinel
over a bog of considerable expanse and filling the adjacent air
with their almond-like perfume.

A swamp or a bog! What a rallying-cry to the botanist, and
what a treasure-ground to the wild-gardener! To say nothing
of the untold witnesses of extinct species
down deep in the peat, look at the wealth
of the present rare spirits it nourishes!
Thoreau has been frequently ridiculed for

his extravagant expressions. He has
averred, among other things, that some
of his happiest moments have been
spent while “up to

* his eyes in the mud
of a swamp”; and

it may be said that
those who cannot under-
stand this are not likely to
appreciate much else that he
¥ has to say, and are consequent-
sh ss ly to be commiserated. We bot-
~  anists know all about it. We need
no commentator on this passage of Tho-
reau's, which was so plainly reminiscent of
his eager wooing of Arethusa, the sweetest
nymph of the marshy mist, and who fre-
quently exacts some such pleasant and willing
chivalry as this ere she will yield her rosy lip. Or
was it lovely Calypso, her only rival? Did ever
glimpse of the rarest caged exotic awake such a thrill as this
which speeds you on through the knee-deep mud to lay your
rude hand upon her? I have known even a lesser light to pre-
 cipitate a similar impetuosity. There among the reeds it lifts its
feathery cylinder of purple blooms; another and another reveal
themselves among the calamus and blueflags and galingales as

 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  

 
   
  
  

 
  

We
THE WILD GARDEN. 163

you proceed, half dazed in the witching fragrance, which hangs
like incense in the evening mist—an aromatic perfume giving
no hint of any other flower, unless, perhaps, the witch-hazel. It
is an event to date from, this first victory over Calypso, Arethu-
sa, or even the purple-fringed orchid, just described—not that
the latter is so great a rarity as the others; but, then, it is an
ORCHID.

Indeed, what is that occult attribute of an orchid which should
so differentiate it in our fancy from all the floral tribe? Long be-
fore I had heard of Darwin, except as a name, I had been brought
beneath their spell.

What wild-flower hunter can ever forget his first glimpse of
the white cypripedium sunning its snowy cup far out in the cin-
namon ferns or brakes, or its yellow counterpart in the dark
woods, or the common moccasin-flower of the hemlocks, or the
rattlesnake plantain, which divulged its orchidaceous spirit to me
long before I knew its name, and whose unique reticulated leaf
has always haunted my fancy as a futile reminder of something
which will not be recalled —a relic of the old Adam within me,
perhaps?

Calypso and Arethusa are often found in questionably queer
company; indeed, to the lovers of the eccentric our flora affords
quite a variety show. The botanical enthusiast who has never
found the side-saddle-flower or pitcher-plant has a sensation in
store for him. I recall one such notable swamp; it nestles in a
huge bowl on the side of Black Mountain, Lake George, a quak-
ing sphagnum bog closing in around a tiny lake. I make no
hesitation in placarding the haunt, not only because its inaccessi-
bility protects it, but because its army is more than a match for
the whole tribe of vandals.

I had heard for some time as a sort of tradition of a certain
impassable bog nestling somewhere towards the summit of the
mountain, where brimming pitchers were offered to all guests, and
one day, like Rip Van Winkle, I determined to sample the good
cheer. With what meagre directions I could obtain I mounted
my mustang and set out. For the first mile the path was clear,
164 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

but thereafter I was obliged to hitch my horse and follow an
unblazed trail, through overgrown wood roads and over moss-
grown rocks and fallen trees, until I soon completely lost my
way, my progress being further besieged by every conceivable
sort of mountain bloom to tempt my loitering.

But I must have scented my goal unknown from afar, and at
length, after a hard scramble, was rewarded with a glimpse of it
through the trees. It was the first real important mountain bog
that I had visited. I was prepared for a surprise, but it came in
a shape unsuspected. Almost my first glimpse had offered me a
puzzle as I looked down upon the tarn beneath the crags, its
broad shores impurpled with a composite hue whose elements |
could not guess. With eager approach I was soon penetrating
the border jungle of clethra, Cassandra, and bay—as I now recall
them—whose roots were embedded in the cushioned sphagnum;
and having passed the guard, emerged to find myself in a sea of
purple pitcher-plants; no beggarly cluster of the hot-house, but
a compact throng, extending, I had almost said, for acres on all
sides, each cluster crowding among its fellows, and presided over
by its company of strange nodding lurid blossoms, and all im-
pacted in the dense moss.

It was some little time before I regained my composure suff-
ciently to scrape acquaintance with my new friends, who seemed
very hospitably inclined, literally dancing on all sides at my ap-
proach on the quaking bog, and at length becoming very com-
municative, drenching my feet at every step with the anointing
from their brimming amphore.

I remember turning the averted face of the blossom, and won-
dering whether I could ever coax it to divulge to me the mystery
of that singular large disk-shaped stigma which covers a well-kept
secret not yet disclosed to the analyst.

Those conscious, thinking pitchers, too, artful pitfalls, each
with its disintegrating mass of insect victims! That net-work of
turgid lurid veins upon the hollow leaf seems a fitting commentary
on their carnivorous lives! Examination of these pitchers dis-
closed another fact which has probably been noted before, but of
THE WILD GARDEN. 165

which I had never read—that the insect prisoners were not all
victims, almost every pitcher disclosing one, two, or three larve
which were entirely proof against the digestive arts of the leaf,
and which in reality robbed the latter of its rightful prey. These
larve I soon discovered to be those of a peculiar fly, doubtless a
distinct species dependent upon the pitcher-plant, the transfor-
mation being completed in the pitchers, wherein I found their
chrysalides; and at length, after much search, my conjectures were
verified by the discovery of a newly hatched fly
(creeping up the dangerous tube, which had de-
fied the escape of less knowing insects—an ac-
complishment for which I doubt not he had
been especially equipped by nature.

Another conspicuous eccentricity is
the Monotropa (we have been treated.
to the beaker, here is the pipe as
well), that pallid child of the dank _
woods that might well pass for a
fungus did we not know that it carries
a flower as botanically perfect as the
laurel or the pyrola or any other of the
great Heath family, to which it belongs.

No discourse upon our notable wild
flowers would be complete without re-
calling the foxglove, whose tall sprays
of tubular blossoms light up many a dark nook
in the woods, and whose pure, even color always
suggests to me the canary, even as the cardinal-
flower invariably brings another ornithological
parallel. Is it not to our flowers what the scar-
let tanager is to our birds? But even as the tanager must yield
the crown, as it were, to the tiny kinglet whose olive crest con-
ceals the crowning touch of purest red among all our native |
plumage, so must the cardinal make his prettiest bow to the hum-
ble painted-cup, which boasts the brightest dab of red the wild}
palette can show.

 
   
 
  

oe
LY

SNEEZE-WEED.
166 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

“Scarlet tufts
Are glowing in the green, like flakes of fire ;
The wanderers of the prairie know them well,
And call that brilliant flower the painted-cup,”

~

sings Bryant of a Western species. But on second thought per-
haps the cardinal may still retain his prestige on a technicality,
for, strictly speaking, the “ brilliant flower” of the painted-cup is a
misnomer. The actual blossom is an inconspicuous affair, but it
wears a gorgeous cape and mantle which have apparently been
dipped half way in the rarest of brilliant dyes, the color being in
truth displayed upon the floral leaves rather than on the flowers.

What a fine pure yellow is that of the toad-flax! But our
finest and most conspicuous yellows are among the golden-rods
and sunflowers and their kin of rudbeckias and sneeze-weeds.
The finest orange flaunts in the bloom of the butterfly-weed
(Asclepias tuberosa). The asters“ Amethystinus” and Nove Angle
wear the choicest purple, and in the tiny forget-me-not we find a
touch of pure prismatic blue, which nature has here economized
as in a turquoise; its like is nowhere repeated in our flora.

I know of few finer and more harmonious displays of color to
be found in the whole wild garden than is afforded by a bed of
blue lupines —a typical bed, such as I have in mind, with their
dense foliage and spires of bloom thrown in bold relief against a
background of sunlit sand It is worth a ten-mile walk to see
one such bed in its prime. “Blue lupine” it is called, but it
rings the changes on the sapphire tints, and lays the amethyst in
tribute as well, with its infinite variety, from deepest purple to
palest pink or white, and in its perfect complementary contrast of
the background of sunny sand affords a rare harmony of color.

That is a fine sample of maroon velvet which the ground-nut
(Aptos tubcrosa) blossom holds within its heart. You will find it
on no other petal. This ground-nut blossom is one of the most
powerfully fragrant of our native wild flowers, exhaling a perfume
somewhat suggesting that of the wild grape, and both of which
bring reminders of mignonette.

\
THE WILD GARDEN. 167

What a delicious occasional whiff is this which greets us at
the portal of the early July woods! and what a pleasant anticipa-
tion it brings: the welcome of the
pyrolas, which now hold the syl-

van censer unchal- ,
4 lenged—for the arbu-
. tus and showy orchis

    
    

 

and moccasin-flower

 
 

and squirrel-corn

  
    

 

have had their day, and
the nodding bells of the twin-

flower have rung themselves out.

Say te Emerson

‘*Saw beneath dim aisles, in odorous beds,
The slight Linnza hang its twin-born heads,”

and how many a saunterer has felt his heart
leap into his throat as he suddenly came upon

LUPINES.
168 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

a cluster of the sweet pink flowers in the woods! But these
“odorous beds” are strewn with the pale pink bells when the
pyrolas come upon the scene, and the tiny creeping-twins of the
fragrant partridge-vine hardly make their lisps known as against
the more asserting presence of the pyrolas. It is hard to speak
in moderation of these perennial woodland plants. There are
four or five of them in more or less constant association, all with
their lily-of-the-valley breath. -

The pyrola is the perennial hostess of the groves. She does
the honors at all seasons. Go into the woods at any time and
you are sure of her. Even in the bleakest winter’s day how do
her spires of seed-pods and her fresh, lusty leaves against the
snow quicken our pulses and bring back the summer! The
shin-leaf, with its light green foliage of spring suggesting a tiny
clump of lettuce, is perhaps the most omnipresent of the group;
but the two pipsissewas, known as the princess pine and spotted
wintergreen—the former with its rich green, highly polished leaf,
and the latter dull of surface but conspicuously veined with white
—are perhaps the most beautiful, and with their reptilian com-
panions of rattlesnake hawkweed and rattlesnake plantain, form a
notable quartet of lowly foliaged plants.

Who has gathered the complete posy of our fragrant wild
flowers? I have not yet chanced to see a list that pretended to
include them all. My own list I thought complete long ago, but
every year adds its fresh item. Here it is up to date—confined,
especially, to our New England flora—and with apologies to the

slighted ones:
FRAGRANT FLOWERS.

HERBS AND UNDER-SHRUBS.

Trailing arbutus (Zpzg@a repens), White clover (7rzfolzum repens),

Dutchman's Breeches (Dicentra Canaden- Buffalo clover (7rzfolzum reflexum),
sts), Yellow melilot (Aelzlotus officinalzs),

Partridge-vine (A/ztchella repens), White melilot (AZellotus alba),

Evening primrose ((Enxothera biennzs), Lucern (Medicago satzva),

Ground-nut (Afgzos tuberosa), Twin-flower (Lzxne@a borealis),

Toad-flax (Lznaréa vulgarts), Pine-sap (onotropa hypopitys),

Moth mullein (Verbascum blattariéa), False wintergreen (Pyrola rotundifolia),

Red clover (7rzfolcum pratense), Shin-leaf (Pyrola elliptica),
THE

‘Small pyrola (Pyrola chlorantha),
Pipsissewa (Chzmaphila umbellata),
May-apple (Podophyllum peltatum),
Water-lily (Wymphea odorata),
Devil’s-bit (Chamelérium luteum),

*False Solomon’s-seal (Smzlacina stellata),
Small smilacina (S7clacina bzfolia),
Three-leaved smilacina (Sie/acena trzfolza),
Starry smilacina (Smmzlaczna stellata),
Purple fringed orchis (Platanthera psy-

codes),
Arethusa (Avethusa bulbosa),
Calopogon (Calopogon pulchellus),
Pogonia (Pogonza ophzoglossozdes),
Lady’s-tresses (Spzranthes cernua),
Moccasin-flower (Cyprzpedium acaule),
Yellow lady’s-slipper (Cypripedium par-
vifiorum),
Showy orchis (Orchi's spectabzlis),
Coral-root (Corallorhiza multiflora),

WILD

GARDEN. 169

*Hairy loosestrife (Lysimachia ctltata),
Milk-weed (Asclefias cornutz),
Dog-bane (Apocynum androsemzfoliun),

*Liverwort (epatica trzloba),
Everlasting (Guaphalium polycephalum),
Sweet colt’sfoot (Vardosmia palmata),
Broad-leaved golden-rod (Soldago /att-

folta),

*Dandelion (7araxacum dens leonts),
Pasture thistle (Cerszum pumzlum),
Sweet scabious (Arigeron annuum),
Peppermint (Afentha pipertta),

Horned pondweed (Utrecularza cornuta),
Dewberry (Rubus Canadensis),

*Ground-nut (Aralza trzfolza),

Yellow bedstraw (Galum verum),
White violet (l’zo/a blanda),

*Canada violet (Vzola Canadensis),

*Spurred violet (Vola Selkirkz’),

Yellow violet (Vzola rotundzfolia).

SHRUBS AND TREES.

White alder (Clethra alnifolia),

Sweet bay (AZagnolia glauca),

Deerberry (Vaccznzum stamineumt),

White azalea (Azalea viscosa),

Smooth azalea (Azalea arborescens),

Pinxter-flower (Azalea nudifiora),

Swamp blueberry (Vacczntum corymbo-
Sul72),

Dwarf blueberry (Vacccnzum Pennsylva-
nicum),

*Huckleberry (Gaylussacza restnosa),
Witch-hazel (Hammamelis Virgintana),
Flowering raspberry (Rubus odoratus),
Wild-rose (Rosa nztzda),

Wild-rose (Rosa luctda),

Eglantine (Rosa rudzgznosa),

Smaller sweetbrier (Rosa micrantha),
Fox-grape (V7tzs labrusca),
Summer-grape (V7z¢zs estzvalzs),
Frost-grape (Vz¢zs cordzfolia),
White-thorn (Crategus coccinea),
Wild-cherry (Prunus serotina),

*Elder (Sambucus Canadenszs),

Honeysuckle (Louzcera grata),
Sugar-maple (Acer saccharinuim),
Linden (7eléa Americana),
Locust (Robina pseudacacia),
Locust (Robenza vescosa),

Apple (Pyrius malus),

Willow (?).

In this list, numbering a total of eighty-two species, I have
included a few blossoms that may be provoked into a mild in-
cense; the common thistle, for instance, if we take it as the
humblebee does. Of the omitted, the mountain-laurel, or sheep-
laurel, and various species of whortleberry, will often yield a per-
ceptible odorous response to a vigorous sniff. Doubtless, too, the
two unnamed pyrolas are sweet-scented, had I thought to test

22
170 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

them. I have included the hepatica mainly on the witness of
other noses than my own, it never having revealed to me an
odor entitled to the distinction of fragrance; certainly no more
so than the bloodroot and wind-flower (Axemone nemorosa), which
have a breath but not a perfume. The inflorescence of the sweet
golden-rod (Solzdago odora) emits a distinct scent from that of its
leaves, and various others of the mints than that mentioned yield
a sweet blossom-breath which is lost in the aroma of their foliage.
I have drawn the line at the secretive blooms, referring mainly
to such spontaneous communicative examples as are wont

“to bud out faire and throwe their sweete smels all arownd.”

A few which I have marked with a star may be supplemented
with a few words; the dandelion, for instance, without even re-
sorting to the humblebee fashion of smelling, even as you recline
near it, yields a readily perceptible and pleasant odor. The gin
seng ground-nut and moth mullein are or are not odorous accord-
ing to their whim. I have given four species of violets, only two
of which are commonly accorded perfume, /. ddanda and V. Can-
adensts. The yellow species, so feelingly commemorated in Bry-
ant’s poem, is included here in honor of the poet, who detected its
“faint perfume in the virgin air” of April, but which has as yet
brought no such sweet message to me. As to the / Selkirkz, I
confess to a venture as to title, having ascribed that name to a
specimen which was brought to me in Williamstown, Mass., late
in October, several years ago, and which, undetermined at the
time in the absence of my botany, was without doubt the species
credited. It was larger by considerable than any other of our wild
violets, with the possible exception of the bird-foot (V. peda¢a), and
its other characters plainly referred it to the species given. But
in addition it exhaled a fragrance almost equal to the delicious
English species, and in this respect far surpassed either of our
two other fragrant violets. I shall always regret that circum-
stances prevented my seeking the plant in its habitat and secur-
ing its seed, for no such fragrant violet is accredited to our flora.
   
   

The toad-flax may
or may not be fragrant
according to the season.
The late autumn blos-
soms are generally faintly J |
odorous, but a cluster of the Z
earliest bloom is redolent. The s
larger Swelactna is also some-
what whimsical. Perhaps the too /
fastidious nostril might take ex-
ception to the elder and the cor- 4 FRAGRANT GRoup (‘‘PYROLAS”).
al-root as hardly entitled to the
attribute of fragrance, relegating them to a front seat, perhaps,
among a scented group deservedly in bad odor, and which, more-
—

172 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

over, make up in quantity what they lack in quality—the chestnut,
stramonium, meadow-rue, skunk-cabbage, and carrion-flower—the
latter of which, with its clambering green brier and beautiful glossy
heart-shaped leaves and spherical clusters of fringy flowers, must
be seen only to be enjoyed, to speak paradoxically. In other words,
it is more enjoyably viewed from the windward, otherwise we may
readily appreciate the expressive impeachment of the discriminat-
ing little girl who gave it the name of the “Oh phew! flower.”

Of the blossom odors which possess the breeze, perhaps the
wild-grape is the most redolent, its powerful mignonette-like fra-
grance often filling some secluded bower in the woods like incense.
The pretty chime of bells of the deerberry ring out a sweet cur-
few in the twilight woods, and the fringy white spire of the blaz-
ing-star, already mentioned, or devil’s-bit, as it is also called —
though the gods only know why—deserves credit for a sweet al-
mond-like perfume which I have never seen credited.

How have we hypercritical sticklers for truth stumbled upon
that shy “yellow violet” of Bryant’s verse!

He apostrophizes it as the avant-courriére of spring:

“Of all its train the hands of Spring
First plant thee in the watery mould.”

He opens the season of Flora with this flower. According to
him the gentle goddess takes her first vernal peep through the
“gentle eye” of the yellow violet, even braving

“the snowbank’s edges cold,”

and her last—as she “nods” to sleep—through the “sweet and
quiet eye” of the fringed gentian, of which he says:

“Thou waitest late and com’st alone
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is at an end.”
THE WILD GARDEN. 173

and again in his “ November”:

“The blue gentian’s flower that in the breeze
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.”

I have sincerely tried to verify these specific statements—all
but the “nod”—and must admit without success; but then per-
haps I have not yet happened to find that particular sunny slope
of Parnassus which the poet discovered all by himself. No, the
truth must be met though Pegasus foam and cavort with incense,
that of all her train the first flower that is planted in the watery
mould by the hands of Spring is the skunk-cabbage, and the
bees know it and gather sweets from it even though the poets
do not. The swamp-cabbage flower literally breaks the ice in
the reconciliation of the warring forces of Boreas and Phoebus.
But if the too fastidious must needs rule out this plebeian of the
bog simply because he does not appear to advantage in a button- |
hole, what then? What a brood of wood blooms stand ready to
look down on him as they usurp his place! The incomparable
arbutus, darling of the mould; the airy rue-anemone; the wind-
flower, with its white saucers or pink drooping bells; the rock-
flower—a tiny white Jdowtonniére in itself; the liverwort; the
downy dwarf everlasting; the bloodroot, with ruddy pulse; the
squirrel-corn, redolent of hyacinth; the colt’sfoot, with its ginger
roots, and the pale spring beauty, to say nothing of the whitlow-
flower and dandelion. Which one shall wear the stolen pennant?
What change of heart has now come over our beloved poet of
the violet? What is the testimony of his later years in his
“Winter Piece” as he seeks for the first heralds of spring?

“Lodged in a sunny cleft
Where the cold breezes come not, blooms alone
The little zzndlower, whose just opened eye
Is blue as the spring heaven it gazes at—
Startling the loiterer in the naked groves
With unexpected beauty, for the time
Of blossoms and green leaves is yet afar.”
174 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

?

There is no “ yellow violet” here; but as the “ wind-flower” is
never “blue,” and the hepatica often is, it was of course the
latter flower that really “blossomed alone” amid these lingering
snows.

In further justice to our poet, who evidently discovered the
error of his early botanical ways, let me turn to his chronicle of
the Twenty-seventh of March, written several years later again, as
opposed to his AprzZ “ yellow violet”:

‘“When March, just ready to depart, begins
To soften into April, ... within the woods
Tufts of ground-laurel creeping underneath
The leaves of the last summer, send their sweets
Up to the chilly air, and by the oak
The squirrel-cups, a graceful company,
Hide in their bells a soft aerial blue ’—

a passage which truly holds the mirror up to nature, and disarms
our censorship. Such is the sunny spot in the April woods that
we all know so well, his “squirrel- cups” being identical with the
intended hepaticas of his previous passage, and whose blossoms
the yellow violet rarely sees in their prime.

It is to the hepatica, then, that Flora intrusts the first greeting
to the returning birds, and the bards leaving the lowly “ cabbage’-
head to entertain the frogs and lizards, bees and flies.

Thoreau, in one of his books, pretends to give precise dates
for the turning of the leaves in autumn—a task as idle as to fore-
cast the début of the flowers; for while the order and association
in a given neighborhood is probably identical from year to year,
the eccentric conditions of American weather are wont to con-
found our oracles. In the past season, for instance, the early
flowers were two weeks ahead all along the line —the New Eng-
land line, at least. In ordinary seasons I have frequently picked
the little rock-saxifrage (Saxzfraga Virg.) in early April almost
frozen with the cold; and long before the bloodroots and rue-
anemone and wind-flowers—a congenial trio—were out; and the
little silky-leaved everlasting (dutennaria plantaginifolia) has not
THE WILD GARDEN. 175

won the tribute it deserves as an early riser, vying with the he-
patica, as i¢ does, in its anticipation of spring. I have gathered
it, with its compact tiny cushions of bloom on the naked stems
barely two inches high, in early March, when it had plainly stolen
a march on the liverworts in its immediate vicinity. But I have
never chanced to pick it beneath the snow, which I have done
with both the arbutus and hepatica, having found a ruddy cluster
of the former as early as February. But the following experi-
ence, quoted from a letter from a friend bearing date of January
25, 1887, Boston, as far as I know beats the record in driving
back the vernal bloom towards the season of the asters, and
which, greeting the festal flags of the December witch-hazels,
carries the possible wild-flower garland all round the calendar:
“The gth of December,” writes my friend, * Mr. , my wife’s
father, said to me that he felt quite confident that he could go
to the woods in Melrose and bring home hepatica blossoms. I
had found them myself in January, but it was after a week or
more of warm weather, with the ground bare of snow. In this
case, however, a foot or more of snow had fallen a day or two
before, preceded by icy cold weather; so I said, ‘No,’ not sup-
posing he had any thought of putting his confidence to the test.
But he took the train, went directly to the spot where grew a
cluster of plants which he well knew, dug away the snow, picked
an open blossom, and brought it home.”

In the same letter my observant friend continues: “A year
ago, in taking a walk from Fabyan’s to the Crawford House, I
discovered a plant of meadow-rue (7halictrum cornuti) having
purple blossoms. A very distinct variety it seemed to me—a
very decided color; not so soft and graceful as the blossoms of
the white, but having a quite pleasing effect. The stem of the
plant was also of a dark color. You may be sure I was surprised
and delighted, as I had never heard of such a thing. I took the
root to add to my collection of native plants growing in my gar-
den. Last summer the plant blossomed handsomely. I took the
flowers to Horticultural Hall, but no one there had ever seen
them, and no description or allusion can I find in any botany. I

 
176 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE,

have also found a clump of fire-weed plants which have pure
white blossoms, which I have plucked for three years. I have
come across no one who has ever seen the like—have you?”
Yes, my friend, I have. There are a whole
brood of them. Their whiteness is only skin-deep,
for they are the black sheep in Dame Nature’s
household. But she discountenances their pranks,
and, as a rule, stirs herself to head off their mis-
chief. It must be admitted, too, that they occa-
sionally put on a very pretty face to
cover their waywardness, and their
lives would prove harmless if the
evil “culturists” would only cease to
play the devil with them; for it is
from scions such as these that our
prized “varieties” are begotten. In
a burned mountainous tract I once
found a number of white Zfzlodcum
such as my friend describes, and I have
met with them occasionally since in my
walks. It is a lapse in the plant that is im-
itated in various other species — abnormal
freaks, analogous to the albino among ani-
mals, which is recognized as a degenerate type.
For years I saw from my studio window an al-
most pure white English sparrow. I have seen a
white robin, a very pale bluebird, and even as I
write a snowy pink-eyed squirrel is roving among
the trees near my country home.

In addition to the fire-weeds, I have found albinos
of red clover, closed gentian, purple - flowering rasp-
FIRE-LILIES, berry, blueflag, burdock, purple Zupatorium, lupine, blue

violet, and bird-foot violet, and have heard of a white
cardinal-flower and white fire-lily. But the prettiest of all these
wayward children is the white-fringed gentian. I know a certain
plant which every year sends up its candelabra of snowy blossoms,

   
  
   
  
  
  
   
THE WILD GARDEN. 177

and will continue so to do if my friends the vandals will only

be content to
“love the flower,
And leave it on its stalk”’;

for at best, and to be consistent, I cannot feel that Nature will
long countenance its existence, and fain would I see it die a nat-
ural death. There is a long list of similar exceptions to tempt
the curious scientific eye to be found in our walks. The purple
meadow-rue of my friend is by no means as rare a find as he
imagines. He has simply happened to miss it. Almost any fa-
vorite habitat of the plant will disclose its purple specimen. Pink
yarrow and pink wild-carrot are also frequently to be met with,
in the latter case that customary purple-black floret in the centre
of the white bloom seeming to have dissolved like pigment and
spread throughout the saucer.

I once found a blueflag plant upon which nearly all the flow-
ers were four-parted instead of three, as in the true type; and
singularly enough, on examination, I found that the only pod
which had approached maturity was empty, its seeds having been
devoured by a caterpillar. “Mere chance?” say you. Well, we
cannot decide that point. No derision shall change my faith
that this caterpillar had a special mission to fulfil.

One of the rarest of all these freaks came to my notice for
the first time this summer in a singular specimen of the Indian- >
pipe, and one which it would seem has thus far escaped the bot-
anist. It was not the “pale pipe” which we all know, but from
root to summit was of a deep crimson color, the petals being
tipped with bright yellow. Its botanical characters referred it to >
the ordinary species (Monotropa uniflora), the more notable dis-
tinction besides the color being a fine close down, which was in
decided contrast to the glossy smoothness of the ordinary form.

It was doubtless a mere “variety” and not a new species,
and suggests the speculation as to which of the two forms is the
true type: whether this ruddy individual may not be a sturdy,
faithful remnant of the ancestral stock, and the pale uncanny

23
7

178 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

“corpse plant” of the dark woods a degenerate penitent which,
for some unpardonable lapse from grace in the past, has immo-
lated itself to the sombre life of an anchorite. I half suspect
that the “ ghost-flower” might even yet be reclaimed; that a few
successive generations reared against their will, in the light of
day, might once more restore the ruddy pulse, and revive the
bloom and crimson flush of health. I sought the open woods in
which my crimson pipe was found, but it had evidently bloomed
alone amid hundreds of its pallid kindred.

As with the lapsing flowers, so with the verdure. I think I
could go this day to a small hickory-tree one-half of the foliage
of which is creamy white. I innocently brought a specimen of it
once to a noted botanist, and he half proposed to confer upon me
the questionable distinction of propagating it under the title of
“Variety Gibsoni!” I will venture the guess that the squirrel
wastes little time on its shell-barks. There is a parallel case of a
certain bramble (Rudus Canadensis), a “sport” whose shady haunt
I well know. I always see him hanging around the same corner.
The leaves of the plant are cut into a deep-toothed fringe almost
to the midrib—a charm which the eye of the typical gardener
would covet as an instance of where Nature had taken a hand
in self-improvement, and outdone herself; but, of course, as might
have been expected, the degeneracy is further proved by the few
though showy double flowers, that as yet have yielded no fruit
that I could discern. I fancy the poor thing is rather pitied than
otherwise by the companions in its neighborhood.

Look well to your wild flower, O poet or botanist, ere you
claim to know it. How has that little fringed polygala laughed
in its purple sleeve as you described its beauties to your friend!
Most wild-flower hunters are familiar with this lovely blossom,
with its close cluster of leaves suggesting those of the checker-
berry, and its singular orchid-like purple-winged flower inevitably
suggesting a tiny butterfly with a long fringed tail. It is always
a prize, but the real nugget is below. A search down there among
the moss at its root discloses a singular secret not generally given
away in the nosegay. For this vain purple banneret signals the
THE WILD GARDEN. 179

way to a new and unsuspected path in our wild garden —the céezs-
togamic flowers—the plant having one blossom for the light and }
another for the darkness. Like many of its congeners and a long
list of other plants, the fringed polygala shows one face to the

world and another to mother-earth. ‘“ Here, worldling,” she would
seem to say, “take my fluttering pennant if you will, but spare !
my anchor.” These subterranean anchor flowers

are borne on long stems, and are entirely with-
out petals, appearing indeed more like small
roundish pods than flowers; but they plant
the mould with seed and doubtless keep (]
many a spot in the woods perennially tuft- ~jWos
ed with the purple broods, else exterminated Wily» by/
by the vandal hand, whether that of bot- YT)
anist or eager childhood. I have rarely
met with a wild-flower enthusiast who ys, iG
knows even the spring violet. Take the
common blue species, for instance (Vzola
cucullata); you know it of course. “It
blossoms in the early spring,” say
you. Oh yes, for poet and douton- fy
nzere, but not for posterity. Go H OB
now, even in October, to your favor-
ite violet-bed in the woods, and find
your dozen blossoms where there was
one in May—if you can. The dry
leaves are rattling to the sowing of their
seed showers, shot afar from the pods ripen-
ing from perfect flowers every day. I have
a clump of this wild violet in my city yard, FRINGED GENTIAN.
and even as late as November I have picked

its blooms, nodding among a veritable galaxy of white three-cor-
nered stars of the open pods, either empty or loaded full with
their charge of seed. This flower is not for beauty but for utility, |
looking merely like a close-pointed green calyx; but it is loaded
with a potent energy unknown to its vain vernal predecessor.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
     

ee

T 45
B

|
|
180 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

For it would seem to be a law of Nature that fruition is in-
versely as the petals of the flower. Flowers artificially doubled
by turning the stamens into petals are often without seed, or with
seeds which are germless. In the wilds where Nature wishes to
insure a fruitful life it would seem she sometimes entirely de-
prives the flower of its corolla, as in the instances given—a preg-
nant text which is feelingly committed to the prayerful consider-
ation of the world’s garden, where all is vanity. This cautious
peculiarity is found in various plants, and is doubtless the saving
grace of many, as in the case of the beautiful little polygala, oth-
erwise in certain districts eradicated in posies. The cistus or
frost-weed has a golden rose or two for the poet, but later on
lower branches a thousand microscopic blossoms which bear the
responsibility of posterity. The gay young jewel-weed is decked
with golden trinkets, but later forgets her eardrops in the cares
of maternity. Certain of the clovers, like the peanut, bury their
flowers in the earth to insure the seed.

We have a graceful, delicate, climbing vine known as the wild
bean, twining about woodland weeds and briers, its drooping ra-
cemes of pale pink blossoms and large flat pods giving little to-
ken of the queer blooms on subterranean stems, each yielding its
tiny, round, hairy, and edible peanut’ Hog-peanut, it is called,
presumably because, of all grubbers in the woods, the hog, from
his natural propensities, is most apt to find it.

The earth about the roots of plants holds other secrets not
generally guessed by the bouquet-hunters. Clambering over the
stone wall or shrubbery by the road-side or meadow we have an-
other wild vine, whose curious clusters of deep maroon flowers
are heavy with the scent of mignonette. It is allied to the hog-
peanut just described, and bears the same popular name in our
botany —the “wild bean”; rather a misnomer, for it has no bean
worthy to distinguish it, and it is no wilder than many another
of the bean tribe. It is called, also, “ ground-nut "—a misnomer
again, as it has no nut; but in the botanical name, Agczos tuberosa,
we get at the kernel of the matter; a turn or two with the spade
at the root of the plant discloses the “nuts” in the shape of edible
THE WILD GARDEN. 181

tubers, formerly a favorite food of those silent tribes whose flints

are now turned up by the plough within the shadow of the plant. '

What pathetic traditions of the primeval American are brought
from the wilderness to our doors in the fragrance of this true na-
tive vine! How many of the wild blossoming things among which
it now twines are but its comparatively new acquaintances —
plants which have usurped the soil in the revolutionary path of
the “ pale-face,” and equally deserving the historic impeachment
of the “rib-grass plantain,” known everywhere among the Indians
as the “white man’s foot!”

The list of “naturalized foreigners” among our wildest and
most common flora would astonish the botanical neophyte even as
it continually does the student of botany. These European floral
immigrants have followed the track of the white man, and so mo-
nopolized the soil that it is no longer possible to distinguish the
native from the naturalized. Indeed, the “true American” would
seem to be equally indistinguishable, whether among the blossoms
or their patriotic admirers.

Summer after summer, through the medium of the journals,
the public is treated to the annual warm discussion concerning
the most worthy choice of a national flower; a perennial crop of
special pleas of mingled wheat, chaff, and tares, which offers much
food for mirthful, tolerant, or serious consideration to the consist-
ent citizen, whether he be botanical, natural historical, poetical, or
patriotic in his bias. A long list of candidates has been put in
the field. If there has been one feature stranger than another in
the amiable and entirely needless controversy, it has been that the
one and only authorized floral claimant for the nation’s honor, the
one perfect symbol of the democracy, unity, grace, wealth, pros-
perity, generosity, and beckoning welcome of the new continent,
should have found only a bare majority of champions. The won-
der is that she should have stood in need of a champion at all,
when she speaks so ably for herself along every road-side, in
every field, wood, and prairie, from Nova Scotia to Mexico, and
from Puget Sound to Key West—a prophet of El Dorado in the
primeval wilderness, and a preordained embodiment of the new
182 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

and shining light which has since won the christening of “Amer-
ica!” “What shall be our national flower?” is it asked. Say,
rather, What zs our national flower? What other coud it be than
the golden-rod ?

Let us look at a few of its most popular fair competitors.
The mountain-laurel and the wild rhododendron are the choice
of many, but these flowers are without any inherent claims to
consideration as a national emblem. Like the golden-rod, they
are distinctly American botanical types, it is true, and natives of
the primeval woods, but there the resemblance ceases; for, unlike
the golden-rod, they shrink from the haunts of man, and are fast
becoming exterminated in his path.

And here is fair Epigzea, with hesitating step. No,“ my pretty
recluse!” We want no trailing arbutus on our shield or banner;
\no shrinking blossom that must be sought out in its exclusive
nook, and which permits itself to be trodden underfoot without a
token. In the far millennium this lovely flower may serve its turn,
but the time is not yet. The shy, blushing bloom hiding its face
beneath its leaves is no symbol for a country that looms upon the
horizon of the world and beckons to all mankind. The golden-
rod alone does this. How irresistibly are its claims asserted!
How unconsciously and prophetically are its attributes cham-
pioned! Even in the conventional torch of our beneficent god-
dess we see a replica of its spire of bloom.

“The fringed gentian?” say you. A faithful American type,
truly, but it is not wide-awake enough to meet the requirements
ot an ensign. We want no fair-weather blossom, that loses heart
at every cloud or drop of rain. Give us an ensign that is always
flying its colors, a flower with the same bright face night or day,
rain or shine; one that is known not merely to the poet and the
swain and the botanist of a restricted vicinity, but to the common-
wealth. Such is the golden-rod.

The “cardinal-flower” has had many warm votaries; but the
cardinal-flower is a stranger to all but a few of our population, and
‘is known at all only in a comparatively restricted section of our
land. Besides, its name is against it. Let us avoid the slightest
THE WILD GARDEN.

opportunity for controversy or contention among the brethren. It
would never do to flaunt this firebrand among them.

Many enthusiasts, with more sentiment than discrimination,
have commended the dandelion. But are we seeking a national
flower? What is the dandelion? A naturalized foreigner—an at-
tribute, it is true, which has much to recommend it; but unfortu-
nately it is more than this; it is the same “dear common flower”
the world over —Asia, Africa, Europe—a non-committal, conserva-
tive cosmopolitan that smiles as sweetly by the King’s highway
as by the path of freedom. Do we want the dandelion? Better
the loyal witch-hazel, our own discriminating divining-rod, that
refuses to be reconciled to royal soil.

The pond-lily has a number of sponsors, but without reason,
having no other notable distinction from its foreign counterparts
than its perfume—a quality which, up to date, has not been suc-
cessfully conveyed through the visible arts.

The wild-rose and the violet have recently come prominent-
ly to the front as important floral candidates. But where is the
country on the globe which will not show us this same wild-rose
and violet? Their close counterparts are omnipresent, and our
American blossoms have little, in the popular sense, worthy to
distinguish them as a national emblem.

One by one these and many other fair claimants have brought
their credentials, and though primed for the occasion, retire in dis-
comfiture.

What of the golden-rod? She is not called. She comes with
confidence in her heart and victory on her brow; and thus she
speaks :

“My name is Golden-rod. I am the ordained messenger of
that untold natural wealth which has blessed your land and is
still your heritage. My divining-rods are scattered broadcast
over your continent. They are in reach of all, and my dividend
is a hundred per cent. on every square foot.

“Tam a member of a hardy American family, which have al-
ways been true to their native sod. There are nearly one hun-
dred of us, all told, gladly living among you, a united family, true
184 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

gold, without alloy, having long ago sentenced our only two
black sheep to Europe in exile.

“We belong to a noble order known as the Composzte, which
means a wit composed of many, each of my golden stars being
composed of many flowers; and our immediate family are called
Solidago by your prophets, which name, as one of them affirms, is
‘derived from solidus and ago, to draw together, to join, to make
whole.’

“Am I not indeed Columbia’s true emblem? My being is a
harmonious assemblage of individuals with hearts that beat as
one; and since those far ages when ‘America’ received her primal
christening £ pluribus unum has been my motto.”

If the golden-rod has not been nominated by acclamation, it
is because its claims have not been appreciated. In its selection
no sectional jealousy will be aroused. It will certainly be a sur-
prise to most people to know that the genus is practically con-
fined to the American continent—a rare botanical phenomenon
—and that of the nearly one hundred American species, sevemty-
ezght are found in the United States. The two sole European
species, unlike hundreds of other floral immigrants, never have
been seen here, much less naturalized.

Considered in the abstract, its conspicuous beauty alone is a
sufficient champion; its recommendations of color, grace, stately
ornamental symmetry being self-evident, lending itself to all man-
ner of art treatment or conventional decoration. Moreover, if we
are to be consistent in our choice; if we are to regard the inher-
ent attributes of the contending flora, it is the composzte flower
that must typify the zzoz. And such a flower should be a true
child of the sod. Among all the native composzte, the only two
genera between which there is the slightest ground for rivalry are
the golden-rods, with seventy-eight species, and the asters, with one
hundred and twenty-four. But who would hesitate a moment as
between the former and the royal group that wears the “purple?”

No, I repeat, the question is not * What shall be our national
flower?” The Solidago zs our national flower and ever will be,
\ even though it continue to cry in the wilderness.
THE WILD GARDEN. 185

The wild garden is bounded by snow-banks, the heaping drift
of November on the one hand, and the thawing ice of March on
the other, and the hardy hepatica, witch-hazel, and chickweed
open and close the floral season.

But in paying our tribute to the exceptional vigor of these
plants, we are entirely forgetting a noted group which hold the
honors for hardihood.

Did the “ Appalachian” climber: ever stop to think what our
mountain summits would be without the heath? True, we have
none of the heather that impurples the Highland fells of Great
Britain, but that foreign type is replaced with us by other species
that paint our June mountain ranges with beauty; inspiring mis-
sionaries whose mission it is to soften the grim austerity of the
crags, to reclaim the bleak desert and reconcile the earth and sky
—in short, to carry the garden heavenward. It would indeed be
like taking the entire garment from the granite backs of the
White Hills were we to withdraw the heath-blooms. How they
tuft and pillow the crags and spurs! What a troop of them,
too! Rhododendrons and azaleas, with their purple glow flood-
ing the chaparral; bilberries of several kinds making green many
a chink and cranny among the rocks; the moss-like cassiope with
its nodding bells; dwarf blueberries and cranberries, and cow-
berries with their deep red and tonic acid fruit. The pretty yel-
low phyllodoce is here, and the ledum with its leaves backed with
their woollen blanket carefully hemmed at its edges, and various
others.

Always fresh and green, their blossoms ruddy with the blast
or drenched with the flying, freezing scud, exposed to the fiercest
storms, even incased in solid ice or buried deep for months be-
neath mountainous depths of snow, they dwell in peace, and in
abiding faith expand their blossom-buds for spring. Do they not
speak to us?

“Oh, lovely is the rose!” who, indeed, shall challenge its beau-
ty? This nodding “Mermet” in the beam of sunlight within
the conservatory, for instance. What lush life and sensuous con-

24
186 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE.

sciousness are betrayed in every petal! What a delight to the
eye, what a perfect compendium to the disciple of “art for art
alone”! Its bewildering complexity of flowing lines, its infinite
modulations of form and light and shade and color, each curling,
moulded petal in itself an epitome of art, with its half-tones, its
single key-note of pure color, and its line of reflected sheen at
the curling edge, where the borrowed hue tells of the sky or
cloud, or, perhaps, of some neighboring sunny bloom. See the
shadows of petal on petal transmitted through the sunlit glow
of the overhanging corolla, while all below is painted with com-
plex light and shade, each shaded petal nursing the shadow of
itself within its chalice, each shadowed cup, again, lit up with
reflected light frora within, and carrying around its edge that
wondrous gamut of pearly grays which have been the despair of
art. Yes, yes, I grant it all; it is ravishing. Paint me the rose,
O Arvé, and thenceforth hesitate at nothing!

Verily may I conclude with Goethe, “Some flowers are lovely
only to the eye, others are lovely to the heart.” Others, again,
are lovely to the soul, and it is the wild garden alone that leads
us into the clouds.

 
AILANTUS silk-worm. See Moth.

‘*Albino” flowers, 176.

Alder, leaf-roller of, 137, 176.

Alder, white. See Clethra.

Allen, Grant, quoted, 148.

Alpine flowers, 127; Alpine willow, 127; Alpine
insects, 121, 128, 143, 147, 148.

Amber, insects in, 124.

Andromeda (A. Jigustrina), 161.

Anemone nemorosa, 170, 173.

Anemone, rue ( 7halictrum anemonoides), 161.

Apple, 169.

Apple-tree moth, botanical selection of, 141.

Arbutus. See Trailing Arbutus.

Archippus butterfly (Dazais), a botanical expert,
142. See Butterfly.

Arethusa (A. dz/bosa), 162.

Arnica, 17.

Arum, dragon, 160; insect specialist of, 140.

Asclepias. See Milk-weed.

Ashes, plants growing in, 158.

Asterias butterfly, 131.

Asters, 166; at night, 25; number of species,
184.

Audubon, 79; quoted, 83, 86, 87.

Autumn color of foliage, 174.

Azalea:—Alpen, 184; ** apples” of, 161; Pinxter,
169; smooth, 169; swamp (A. viscosa), 32, 33,
49, 161, 169.

BACHELOR’S-BUTTONS (Centauria) at night, 19.
Balsams, leaves of, at night, 19.

Baltimore oriole. See Oriole.

Basswood. See Linden.

 

 

Bat, 53, 56.

Bay (A/yrica gale), 164.

Bean family of plants, distinguished by butter-
flies, 133, 135.

Bean leaves at night, 18.

Bedstraw, 169.

Beecher, Henry Ward, quoted, 69, 74.

Bee-marten. See King-bird.

Bees and blossoms, 29, 46.

Beetle:—Fragrant, 50; leaf-rolling of hazel and
alder, 1353; of dog-bane, 137; pea-weevil, 135;
Swiss, 137.

Bellwort (C/vularia), 161.

Bilberries, 184.

Bird songs, 61, 87; nocturnal, 54.

Bird-foot violet. See Violet.

Birds, albino, 176.

Birds, nocturnal, 52-56, 81-83.

Birds’-nests, 91-116; singular materials of, 97.

Bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus), 56.

Blackberry, freak of, 177.

Blackbird, cow. See Cow-bird.

Blackbird, red-winged. See Starling.

Black-eyed Susan. See Cone-flower.

Blazing-star (Chamelirium luteum), 162, 172.

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria Canadensis), 161, 170,
173.

Bluebells. See Harebell.

‘‘Blue-bottles” (Centaurea) flowers at night, 19.

Blueberry, 169, 184.

Bluebird, 64, 71, 97, 112; albino, 176.

Blue-eyed grass (Stsyrinchium), 159.

Blueflag (/ris versicolor), abnormal variety of, 177;
albino of, 176.
188

Bobolink, 64; change of plumage,-78, 92; ‘‘on
toast,” 78; song of, 72.

‘* Bob White,” 72.

Botanists, 156, 159, 162; insect, 119-149.

Botany, 14, divine, 156.

Brewer, quoted, 85, 115.

Broom and bee, 29.

Browning, Elizabeth, quoted, 156; Robert, quot-
ed, 30, 31.

Bryant, quoted, 25, 29, 74, 152; bobolink, 77;
grouse, 83; painted-cup, 166, violet, 170, 172.

Bull-frog, 55.

Bull’s-eye moth. See Saturnia Moth.

Bunting, cow. See Cow-bird.

Bunting, snow, nest material of, 98.

Burdock (Lafpa major), albino, 176.

Burnt land, vegetation of, 158.

Burroughs, John, references and quotations, 72,
74, 83, 97, 112, 157.

Bush clover at night, 16.

Buttercups at night, 26.

Butterflies and flowers, 28.

Butterflies:—Alope, 146; Alpine, 121, 128, 143,
147, 148; ‘‘Angle-wings,” 121, 123; antiopa,
T1g-121, 123,147; Aphrodite, 140; Apollo, 127,
143; Archippus, 142; as botanists, II1g-149;
Atlanta, 121; Comma, I21—as a botanist, 128,
132 —suggestive decoration of, 122, 128-136;
Faunus, 123; foreign, 147; fossil, 124; in win-
ter, 119; Lavinia, 140; Milbert’s, 121; Mon-
arch, 142; Mount Washington (Semddea), 148 ;
‘*Painted Lady,” 121, 144; Phaeton, 145;
Semicolon, 128, 131, 144, 146; Skipper ( 774y-
rus), 136; Swallow -tail, black, as botanists,
131; Swallow-tail, blue, 145; Swallow-tail,
zebra, 147; Swiss, 122, 123, 127, 143; Thisbe,
140; Troilus, 145; white, garden, as botanists,
132; white J, 121, 131; yellow ( PAz-lodice ), as
botanists, 133.

Butterfly-weed (A sclepias tuberosa) 166.

Butterfly orchid (Oncidium papilio), 154.

CABBAGE leaves at night, 18.

Caddis-flies, 55.

Calopogon, 169.

Calypso (Calypso borealis), 159, 162.

Cardinal - flower (Lobelia cardinalis), 160, 165;
albino, 176; a ‘‘national flower” candidate,
182.

Carnivorous-plant. See Pitcher-plant.

Carrion-flower (Swtlax herbacea), 172.

Cassandra (C. Calyculata), 164.

Cassia at night, 16.

Cassiope, 184.

Cat-bird, night song of, 54, 64.

Catchfly pink 157.

Caterpillar :—of Blueflag, 177; of evening prim-

 

INDEX.

rose, 137; hog, 139; of milk-weed, 142; silk of
in birds’-nests, 99; skins of as birds’-nest mate-
rial, 99; sphinx, 138, 139.

Catfish. See Pout.

Cat-tail seed-down, 103

Cecropia moth, 142.

Chat, yellow-breasted (/cteria viridis), night song
of, 54.

Chaucer, quoted, 13, 60.

Chebec flycatcher (Zmpidonax minimus), 72

Cherry, wild, 169.

Chestnut blossoms, odor of, 52, 170.

Chewink (P7pz/o), night song of, 54, 64.

Chickadee, 72, 97, 112.

Chickweed, at night, 22, 26; hardihood of, 134.

Chipping - sparrow (Spizella socialis), night song
of, 54, 64; nest material of, 97.

Clethra, 164, 169; night fragrance of, 49, 52.

Climbing fumitory (Ad/umia), 157, 161.

Clovers:—Albino, 176; buffalo, 168; fragrant, 168;
in rain, 17; lucern, 168; melilot, 20; red, 168;
sleep of, 15; underground pods of, 170; va-
rious nocturnal attitudes of, 16,17, 20; white
clover and wood ashes, 158.

Coleridge, quoted, 28, 39.

Colt’sfoot (Asarum Canadense), 48,1733 sweet,
169.

Columbine (Aguilegia Canadensis), 161.

Comma butterfly. See Butterflies,

Compositz, butterfly experts on, 141, 145.

Cone-flower (Audbeckia), 166.

Conservatories, London, 153.

Conservatory versus ‘‘ Wild Garden,” 153-185.

Coon-hair in birds’-nests, 97.

Coral-root. See Orchid.

Coreopsis flowers at night, I9.

Corpse-plant. See Indian-pipe.

Cotton-moth, 137.

Cow-berry, 184.

Cow-bird (AZolothrus pecoris), 114.

Cranberry, 184.

Cranesbill (Geranium maculatum), 161; at night,
26,

Creeper, 97, I12.

Creeping mallow (M/. rotundifolia) at night, 22,
26; creeping warbler (A/nzoti/ta), 106.

Crow, 64.

Cuckoo, European, 111, yellow-billed (Coceygus
Amer.), nest of, 110, III.

Cuvier, quoted, 92.

Cypripedium:—Hybrid, 153; white(C. spectadilis),
155, 163; moccasin- flower, lady’s-slipper (C.
acaule), 163, 167, 169; yellow (C. parviflorum),
163, 169.

Dalsy, 13, 157; and the poets, 25, 26.
Dandelion, 169, 170, 173; as a candidate for the
INDEX.

“*national flower,” 182; seeds of in birds’-nests,
103.

Decorative sense in nest-building, 100.

Deerberry ( Vaccinium stamineum), 161, 169, 172.

Deer-hair in birds’-nests.

Desmodium, night aspect of, 16.

Devil’s-bit, 169.

Dew, capricious condensation of on leaves, 38, 41.

Dewberry, 169.

Dewy gossamers, 38.

Dock, 17.

Dog-bane, 169; beetle of the, 137; butterfly bot-
anist of, 142.

Double flowers, degeneracy of, 178, 179.

Dove, turtle, nest of, I11.

Dragon arum (Arum dracontium), 160.

‘‘Drum” of grouse, 83-87.

Dutchman’s Breeches. See Squirrel-corn.

EAR-SIGHT, 46, 63.

Edwards, reference, 147.

Eels, 55.

Eglantine, 169.

Elder, 52, 169, 170.

Elliott, quoted, 83, 86.

Emerson, R. W., quoted, 14, 27, 72, 92, 122, 150,
167.

Equisetum in the dew, 39.

Eschscholtzia blossoms at night, 19.

Evening primrose, 26, 28, 32, 33, 168; explosive
unfolding of flower, 33; family distinguished
by insect, 137; half-hearted welcome to butter-
fly, 28; its moth, 137; perfume of, 32, 48, 50,
168; phosphorescence of, 27,34; welcoming the
night-moths, 27, 33.

Everlasting, 169 ; dwarf, 173, 174.

FALSE FOXGLOVE (Gerardia flava), 165.

False Solomon’s-seal (Swzlacina), 48, 169, 170.

False wintergreen. See Pyrola.

Fern-wool in birds’-nests, 106.

Figwort family (Schrophulariacee) distinguished
by butterflies, 140, 145.

Finch, purple, 63; nest ingredients of, gg, ror.

Fire, plants following,

Fire-fly and glowworm, 37, 38.

Fire-weed (Zpilobium angustifolium), 158; white
specimens, 176.

Flagg, Wilson, quoted, 68, 74, 78, 85, 96.

Flicker (Colaptes auratus), 60, 64, 112.

Floral nondescripts and monstrosities, 153.

Flower, the national, 180-184.

Flowering wintergreen (Polygala pauciflora), un-
derground blossoms of, 178.

Flowers:—Augmented fragrance at night, 47-52;
awaiting insects, 28; cleistogamic, 178, 179;
‘* doubling” of, 178, 179; fragrant, 168; freaks,

 

189

176; interdependence of flowers and insects,
28, 141; in their relation to insects, 27-34, 123,
127, 137, 141; leaves posing as, 166; phospho-
rescent, 27, 34-36; underground, 178, 179;
wild and cultivated, 153-185.

Fly, remarkable, in pitcher-plant, 165.

Flycatcher, crested, nest of, 97; singular choice
of building material, ror.

Foliage, freaks in, 177.

Forget-me-not, 166.

Fossils, insects, 124-126; plants, 124-126.

Fox-fire. See Phosphorescent fungi.

Fox, fur of, in bird’s-nest, 98.

Foxglove. See False foxglove.

Fox-grape, 169.

Fragrance of flowers, 126; at night, 47-52.

Fragrant wild-flowers, list of, 168.

Freaks among wild-flowers, 176, 177.

Fringed gentian, 172.

Frost-grape, 169.

Frost-weed (Helianthemum Canadense), two sorts
of flowers, 179.

Fumitory, climbing (Ad/umia), 157, 161.

GENTIAN : closed (G. Andrewszi), albino freak,
176; as a national flower, 182; at night, 25—
Bryant’s poem, 176; fringed (G. crinita), 172.

Geological indicators among plants, 158.

Geological succession of plants and insects, 126.

Geranium, phosphorescence at night, 35.

Geranium, wild (G. maculatum),161; at night, 26.

Gerarde quoted, ‘‘ fumitory,” 157.

Ginseng (Aralia nudicaulis), 160.

Glowworm and fire-fly, 37, 38.

Gnatcatcher, blue-gray, nest of, 105.

Golden-crested wren, nest of, 113.

Goethe, quoted, 36, 154, 186.

Golden-crowned thrush. See Thrush.

Golden-rod, 166; broad-leaved, 169; distribution
of species, 183; sweet, 170; the preordained
national flower of America, 181-184.

Goldfinch, 64, 65; nest and nidification of, 103.

Gossamers and dew, 38.

Grackle, 64.

Grape family ( Vitacee), insect botanists of, 138.

Grape, wild, fragrance of, 52.

Grasses, in the dew, 39; insect specialists on, 138.

Grasshopper, nocturnal, 55.

Grossbeak, rose-breasted, 64; song of, 66.

‘Ground-nut (Apios tuberosa), 166; leaves at night,
16; odor of blossoms, 48, 168, 180; tubers of,
180; ginseng, (Avadia) 169, 170.

Ground robin. See Chewink.

Grouse. See Ruffed grouse.

HAIR-BIRD. See Sparrow, chipping.
Hang-bird. See Oriole.
190

Harebells (Campanula rotundifolia), 161.

Harris, reference, 131.

Hawk-moths, 28, 33, 34; botanical instincts of,
138, 139; colors of, 34; their intimate relation
to flowers, 28, 34.

Hawkweed (Averactum venosum), 168.

Hawthorne, quoted, 32, 37, 67, 120.

Hazel leaf-roller, 135.

Ileath family (Zricacee), hardihood of Alpine
species, 184; insect specialists on, 139; species
contrasted, 165.

Iiempstead, L. I., violet field, 159.

Hepatica. See Liverwort.

Herons, 56.

Herrick, Robert, quoted, 124.

Hickory, freak of, 177.

Hog-bristles in birds’-nests, gg, 10T.

Hog-peanut (A mphicarpaea), 16, 179.

Holy Ghost flower (Spzrtto Santo),

Honeysuckle, 169.

Hood, quoted, 29.

Hop clover ( 77ifolium agrarium) at night, 16.

Hornet-nest, paper of, in birds’-nests, 94, 100.

Horse-chestnut buds, 106.

Horse-hair in birds’-nests, 97, 99, 108.

Horse-tail. See Equisetum.

Huckleberry, 169; squaw, see Deerberry.

Hume, quoted, 87.

Humming-bird, nest of, 106, 114; various nests,
II5, 116; Allen’s, 115.

Hybrids, 153.

‘IMPROVED "’ species, 153-185.

Indian cucumber (A/edeola Virginica), 160, 161.

Indian-pipe (J/onotropa unt flora), 160, 165; crim-
son variety of, 177.

“Indicative ” flowers, 158.

Indigo-bird (Cyanospiza), 64; nest of, 113.

Insects:—Alpine, 121-128; as botanists, 119-149;
boring in dead pine, 57; dwellers in pitcher-
plant, 165; fossil, 124-126; in amber, 124-126;
in their relation to flowers, 27-29, 33, 34, 123,
127, 141; nocturnal, 55; odors of at night, 50;
victims of pitcher-plant, 164.

Insectivorous-plant. See Pitcher-plant.

JASMINE, flowers at night, 32.
Jewel-weed (/mpatrens), begemmed with dew, 41;
secret flowers of, 179.

KEATS, quoted, 27, 46.
Kingbird (7yrannus Carolinensis), 64.
Kinglet, ruby-crowned (Regulus calendula), 165.

LABRADOR TEA (Ledum), 185.
Lace in bird’s-nest, 100.
Lace-wing fly, odor of, 50.

 

INDEX.

Lady’s-slipper. See Cypripedium.

Lady’s-tresses. See Orchid.

Lake George swamp, 163.

Laurel. See Mountain-laurel.

Laurel family (Zawracez,) insect specialists on,
145.

Laurel and Rue families, 146.

Leaf-roller, of alder, 137; of hazel, 135.

Leguminous plants, distinguished by insects, 133-
135; irritable leaves of, 17.

Lily, fire (Lilium Philadelphicum), albino of, 176.

Linden, fragrance of at night, 50, 169.

Liverwort (Hepatica triloba), 161, 169, 173, 174;
under snow, 175, 184.

Lizard’s tail (Saururus), 55.

Locust. leaves of at night,17; fragrance of, 169.

Long moss in bird's-nest, 109, 141.

Loon (Colymbus torquatus), 56.

Loosestrife, hairy, 169.

Lousewort. See Wood betony.

Lowell, quoted, 62, 66, 74, 106.

Lubbock, quoted, 122.

Lucern. See Clover.

Luna moth, 142.

Lupine, blue, 166; various attitudes at night, 20,
21; albino, 176.

MADDER family (Galium) distinguished by in-
sects, 140.

Maiden-hair fern (Adiantum pedatum), 161.

Mallow, creeping, at night, 22, 26.

Mallow family (A/a/vacea) distinguished by in-
sects, 138, 145.

Maple family (4cevina) distinguished by a moth,
169.

Marigold, at night, 25, 26; phosphorescence of, 35.

Marsh-wren, nest of, 113.

Marten, 54.

Maryland yellow-throat, 71, 113.

May-apple, 169. See also Azalea.

May-flower. See Trailing arbutus.

McMillan, Hugh, quoted, 126.

Meadow-lark, 64, 71.

Meadow-rue, odor of at night, 50; purple speci-
mens, 175, 177; small ( 7halictrum dioicum),
161; tall, 172.

Melilot clover, singular night attitude, 20.

Melon family (Czrcebitacee), distinguished by in-
sects, 138.

‘“Midnight Ramble,” 13-42.

Milk-weed, 169; bark of in birds’-nests, 94, 95,
108; remarkable caterpillar of, 142; seeds in
nest, IOT.

Milk-weed family, 2 butterfly expert on, 142.

Miller, Joachim, quoted, 122.

Mimosa, 16.

Miner, ‘‘ indicative" plants for, 158.
INDEX.

Mink, 55.

Mint, odors of, 52.

Mints, 170.

Moccasin-flower. See Cypripedium.

Monarch butterfly, 142, 143.

Moore, quoted, 32.

Moth:—Ailantus, 146 ; Cecropia, 142; evening
primrose, 137; Luna, 142; Polyphemus, 142 ;
Prometheus, 142, 146; Saturnia, 142.

Moth mullein (Verdascum blattaria), 168, 170.

Moths and flowers, 27, 30, 31, 34, 128, 137, 142.

Mount Washington butterfly (Semddea), 148.

Mountain bog, 163.

Mountain-laurel (Kalmia latifolia), 161, 165, 169;
as a candidate for national flower, 181; blos-
soms awaiting insects, 28.

Mullein, 157; at night, 26.

Murray, W. H. H., quoted, 56.

Muskrat, 55.

Mustard family of plants distinguished by butter-
flies, 132.

Nairn, Lady, quoted, 15.

Nasturtiums :—At night, 19; in rain, 20; phos-
phorescence of, 35.

National flower, 180-184. .

Nests of birds, 92-116.

Nettle and antidote, 17.

Nettle family distinguished by butterfly, 128-131.

Newspaper fragments in birds’-nests, 94.

Night animals, 49-56.

Night aspect of plants, 13-42; causes, 17.

Night-blooming flowers, 26-34; phosphorescent
light from, 27; welcoming insects, 27-34; won-
derful adaptability to hawk-moths and butter-
flies, 28, 34.

Nighthawk :—At night, 54, 64; ‘‘ booming” of, 78;
deceptive antics of, 80; lurid eyes, 79; nest and
young, 80-83, 111; plumage of, 79; source of
the ‘‘ boom” of, 78; visiting nest of, at night,
82, 83; viscid mouth, 79.

Night-herons, 56.

Night moths, companionship with flowers, 27, 34,
137.

Night odors, 47-52.

“Night Witchery,” 45-57.

Nocturnal animals, 49, 50, 52-56.

Nose, the, as a midnight pilot, 47.

Nuthatch (Sztta Carolinensis), 72, 97, 112.

Nuttall, quoted, 69, 102, 108.

Opors of flowers intensified at night, 50.

Olive family (O/eacez) distinguished by «a moth,
140.

Orchard oriole (7. spurius), 64.

Orchids :—Adapted to moths, 28; Avethusa bul-
bosa, 162, 169; Calopogon, 169; Calypso borealis,

 

IgI

159, 162; coral-root (Corallorhiza), 109, 170;
lady’s-tresses (Spzvanthes), 169; Pogonia verti-
cillata, Pogonia oph,, 160, 169; purple-fringed
(P. psycodes), 161, 162, 169; rattlesnake plan-
tain (Goodyera pubescens), 163 ; ragged orchis
(0. lacera), 160; showy (O. spectabilis), 167,
169; small green (0. 4racteata), 161. See also
Cypripedium, natural and ‘‘improved,” 153,154.

Oriole :—Baltimore (/ceterius Baltimore), 63, 99,
106, 135; anomalous nests, 109; Chadwick’s
nest, 109; construction of nest, 107-109; nest,
material of, 91,97; nests of southern moss, 109.

Ornithology, genuine and superficial, g1, 92.

Oven-bird (Sciurus aurocapillus), ingredients of
nest, 99; nest of, 92,97, 133; song of, 71; night
song, 54.

Owl, 52, 53, 64.

Oxalis, at night, 22, 26.

PAINTED-CUP (Castilleia coccinea), 165, 166.

Painted Lady butterfly. See Butterfly.

Parsley family of plants distinguished by a but-
terfly, 131.

Partridge. See Ruffed Grouse.

Partridge-pea (Cassza), night aspect of, 16.

Partridge-vine (A/ttchella repens), 108.

Pea-blossoms at night, 18, 26.

Peabody, quoted, 83.

Peabody-bird, night song of, 54, 70.

Peanut, 179.

Peppermint, 169.

Percy, Florence, quoted, 77.

Pewee. See Phebe.

Pheehe-bird (Sayornis fusczs), 64, 66, 72; nest of,
97, 109.

Phosphorescence from flowers, 27, 34-36.

Phosphorescent fungi, 36; log, 37; ‘‘ fox-fire”’
torch, 37.

Phyllodoce, 185.

Pickerel-weeds, 55.

Pig-weeds, at night, 22.

Pimpernel, at night, 22.

Pineapple, 141.

Pine family (Cozzfere) distinguished by insects,
140,

Pine-sap (AZonotropa), 168.

Pink, wild, 157.

Pipsissewa (Chimaphila wmbellata), 168, 169; (C.
maculata), 168.

Pitcher-plant (Savacenia purpurea), 163; acres of,
163; its curious stigma, insect victims, and in-
sect protégés, 164. A

Plantain (Planiago major), in the dew, 38; Eng-
lish (P. lanceolata), 180.

Plants :—As ‘‘geological indicators,” 158; follow-
ing man, 180; fossil, 124-126; naturalized, 180;
on burnt ground, 158.
192

Plato, quoted, 32.

Pliny, quoted, 37, 53, 54.

Poetry and History, 32.

Pogonia. See Orchid.

Polyphemus-moth, 142.

Pond-weed (U¢ricularia), luminous flowers, 36;
fragrance of, 52, 169.

Poplar family distinguished by insects, 141.

Poppy, phosphorescence of petals, 35; poppy and
poet, 25, 36; sleep of, 23-25.

Potato, flowers of, at night, 19.

Pouts, 55.

Primrose. See Evening Primrose.

Prince’s-pine. See Pipsissewa (C. zmbellata).

Prometheus-moth, 142. °

Purple-finch. See Finch.

Purple-fringed orchis. See Orchis.

Purslane family, insect specialists on, 139.

Pusley, night attitude of, 22.

Pyrola, 165, 167, 168; at night, 48; false winter-
green, 168; shin-leaf (7. e//iptica), 168; small,
169.

QUAIL, 64.

RAGGED orchis (0. /acera), 160.

Railroad plants, 158.

Rain, clovers in, 17; evening primrose in, 28 ;
nasturtiums in, 20.

Rain-crow, nest of, IIo.

Raspberry, albino of, 176; flowering, 169.

Rattle-box (Crota//aria), msect tenant of, 135.

Rattlesnake hawkweed ( Averactum venosum ),
168.

Rattlesnake plantain (Goodyera pubescens), 163,
168.

Red admiral Butterfly. See Butterfly, Atlanta.

Red clover (77ifolium pratense). See Clover.

Red-eyed vireo, 64; song of, 68.

Redstart, 64; gathering dandelion-seeds, 103 ;
nest ingredients of, gg.

Red-wing starling, nest of, 97, 113; song of, 71.

“* Reed-birds,” 78.

Rhododendron, Alpen, 184; nivale (2. maxi-
mum), 127.

Rhodora, 27.

Rib-grass (Plantago lanceolata). See Plantain.

“*Rice-birds,” 78. :

Robin, albino of, 176; nest of, 62,97, 109; song
of, 69.

Rock-flower (Saxifraga Virginiensis), 173, 174.

Rooster, flapping wings of, 86, 87.

Rose :—As a ‘‘national flower,” 182; at night, 26;
eglantine, 169; of the conservatory, 154, 185;
wild, 154, 169; family (Rosacez), 169 ; species
distinguished by insects, 141.

Rose-breasted Grosbeak, 64, 66.

 

INDEX.

Rue-anemone. See Anemone.
Ruffed grouse: — Attitudes, 86; drumming at
night, 54; the ‘tdrum” of, 83-86.

SAMUELS, quoted, 85, 113.

Sand, flowers growing in, 157, 158.

Sandpiper, ‘‘ teeter-bird,” gr.

Saxifrage family, butterfly specialist on, 143.

Scabious, sweet, 169.

Scarlet tanager, 64, 165.

Scouring-rush. See Equisetum.

Scudder, reference, 142.

Sea-shore, plants of, 157.

Secret flowers, 178, 179.

Seeds, as bird-nest material, 102, 103; winged,
158.

Semicolon-butterfly. See Butterfly.

Sensitive-plant, wild. See Partridge-pea.

Shakespeare, quoted, 23, 25, 26, 120.

Shelley, quoted, 16, 29.

Shin-leaf. See Pyrola.

Sidesaddle-flower. See Pitcher-plant.

Silk-weed. See Milk-weed.

Skunk, 49, 54.

Skunk-cabbage, 172, 173, 174.

Sleep of plants, 13-42.

Smilacena, 48.

Snake and woodpecker, 112.

Snake-skins as a nest lining, Ior.

Snap-weed. See Jewel-weed.

Sneeze-weed (Helenium autumnale), 166.

Snow-bunting (Hectrophanes nivalis), nest mate-
rial of, 98.

Solanum family (So/anace@), insect experts on,
139.

Solomon’s-seal (Polygonatum biflorum), 160, 161.

Sparrow :—Chipping, 54, 64; ‘‘ hair-bird,” nest of,
97; song of, 54; English, 64; field (Spizella
pusilla), 64; song-sparrow, 64 ; white-throated
(Fringilla albicollis), song of, 70; night song
of, 54; yellow-winged Coturniculus passeri-
nus, O4.

Spenser, quoted, 39.

Sphagnum-bog, 163.

Sphinx-moths. See Hawk-moths.

Spider-silk in bird-nests, 93, 97, 116.

Spider-webs. See Gossamer.

Spiritual correspondences in flowers, 156.

Spotted wintergreen. See Pipsissewa (AZaculata).

Spring beauty (C/aytonia), 173.

Squirrel-corn (Dicentra Canadensis), 167, 168,
173.

Squirrel-cups. See Liverwort.

Squirrel-hair in bird-nest, 97.

Squirrel, albino, 176 ; red, the enemy of birds, 112.

‘* Stake-driver,’’ 56.

Subterranean flowers, 178, 179.
INDEX.

Sugar-maple, 169.

Sundews (Drosera), 159.

Sunflower, phosphorescence of, 35.

Sunflowers, 166.

Swallow, 64,66; nests of, 109; sound from wings,

9.

Swallow-tail. See Butterfly.

Swamp, Black Mountain, Lake George, 163; veg-
etation of, 157, 159, 162, 163.

Swamp-honeysuckle. See Azalea.

Sweet-bay, 169.

Sweetbrier, 169.

Sweet-fern (Comptonia), 48, 49.

Switzerland, moonlight meadows of, 23.

TANAGER, 64, 165.

Telegraph-harp, 57.

Thistle, 169.

Thistle-bird. See Goldfinch.

Thoreau, H. D., 17; quoted, 10, 49, 52,60, 72,97,
118; on the bobolink, 74; on the grouse, 85 ;
on the swamp, 162.

Thorn-apple (Stramonium), 170.

Thoroughwort (Eupatorium purpureum), albino,
176,

Thrush:—Brown, 64; song of, 69; golden-crown-

_ ed, 71; night song of, 54; veery (Wilson’s), 54,
64; wood, 64.

Thrushes, nests of, 109.

Tick trefoil (Desmodium), at night, 16,

Toad, 55; skins of, in birds’-nests, Tor.

Toad-flax, blue (Zzxaria Canadensis), 158; yel-
low (L. Vulgaris), 166, 168, 170.

Tobacco-plant, at night, 18.

Towhee bunting. See Chewink.

Trailing arbutus, 156,161; as a ‘‘national flow-
er,’ 181; fragrance at night, 47, 167, 168, 172,
174; under snow, 175. 7

Tree-toad, 55.

Trowbridge, J. T., quoted, 83.

Tuberose, phosphorescence of, 35.

Tulip, natural and ‘‘improved,” 154.

Turtle-dove, nest of, III.

Turtles, 55.

Twin-flower (Zznnea borealis), 167, 168.

“

UMBELLIFEROUS plants distinguished by a but-
terfly, 131.
Underground flowers, 178, 179.

VeEERY. See Thrush.

Viburnum family, insect specialists on, 140.

Violet :—A candidate for ‘‘national flower,” 182 ;
albino of, 176; and insect, 28; bird-foot (/7zo-
Ja pedata), 158,170; blue (V7. Cucullata), Can-
ada, 169;. cleistogamic flowers of, 178; family,
distinguished by butterflies, 140; fragrant, 170,

25

 

193

172; shooting seeds, 178; spurred, 169; yellow,
169, 172, 174.

Vireo:—Red-eyed, 64; curious nest material of,
94, 101; newspaper fragments in nest, 94-96;
“politician,” 95; solitary, nest material of, 98;
the ‘‘preacher,” 96; warbling, 64.

WARBLER :—Black and white creeping, 106; blue
yellow-backed, 112; blue-winged yellow, nest
of, 114; Kentucky, nest materials of, 99; Nash-
ville, nest materials of, 99; prairie, 99; worm-
eating, nest materials of, 98; yellow, 64; nest
of, 102, r04; five-storied nest of, 114.

Water-lily, white, 169.

Weasel, 54.

Weeds, significance of, 67.

Weevil, pea, 135; leaf-rolling, 135, 137.

Whippoorwill, 52,64,72; deceptive antics of, 80;
nest of, r11; nest and brood, 161.

White-alder. See Clethra.

White-clover (Zi folium repens).

White-thorn, 169.

Whitlow-flower (Drada verna), 173.

Whittier, quoted, 56.

Whortleberry, 169.

Wild-bean (Agios tuberosa). See Ground-nut.

Wild-bean ( Amphicarpea), leaves at night, 16;
subterranean flowers of, 179.

Wild-carrot (Daucus carota), freak, 177.

Wild-cat, 54.

Wild-cherry, 169.

Wild flowers, 153-186; and cultivated contrast-
ed, 153-185 ; as geological indicators, 158; of
swamp, 157,159; fragrant, 168; freaks among,
176; white or albino specimens, 176.

Wild garden versus conservatory, 153, 154.

Wild-ginger (Asarum Canadense), 48, 173.

Wild-grape, fragrance of, 52, 166, 169, 172.

Wild-pink, 157.

Wild-rose, versus cultivated, 154,185; as the ‘‘na-
tional flower,” 182 ; at night, 26.

Willow, 169; alpine, 127.

Willow family (Sa/ix), insect experts on, 141.

Willow-herb (Zpilobium angustifolium), 158 ;
abnormal varieties of, 176.

Wilson .—On the grouse, 83,85; on the nighthawk,
79; ‘‘ politician,” 95 ; quoted, 104, 107, 114, 120.

Wilson’s thrush. See Thrush.

Wind-blown seeds, 158.

Wind-flowers. See Anemone.

Winter butterfly, 120.

See Clover.

Winter flowers, 175.

Witch-hazel, 184; odor of, 163, 169; odorous at
night, 50; as an American, 182.

Wood-betony (Pedicularis Canadensis), 160.

Woodbine honeysuckle, 32.

Wood-flowers, 156.
194 INDEX.

Woodpecker, 57; enemies of, 112; nest of, 97; | YARROW, pink, 176.
golden-winged, 112; red-headed, nest of, 111. | Yellow-billed cuckoo, nest of, 110.

Wood-sorrel, at night, 22. Yellow foxglove. See False foxglove.
Wood-thrush, 64. Yellow-hammer. See Flicker.

Wool in bird-nest, 98. Yellow snapdragon. See Toad-flax.
Wordsworth, quoted, 16, 25, 29, 122. Yellow-throat, Maryland, 72; nest of, 113.

Wren, 64, 72; nest of, 97, 112; golden-crested, | Yellow warbler (Dendroica @stiva), 64; nest of,
nest of, 113; marsh, nest of, 113. j 102, 104; five-storied nest of, 114.

THE END.
 

 

WILLIAM HAMILTON GIBSON’S WORKS.

STROLLS BY STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. °

Written and Illustrated hy William Hamilton Gibson.
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